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17730	----	* * * * * A STUDY OF THE TEXTILE ART IN ITS RELATION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF FORM AND ORNAMENT BY WILLIAM H. HOLMES. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-'85, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 189-252 * * * * * CONTENTS. Page Introduction. 195 Form in textile art. 196 Relations of form to ornament. 201 Color in textile art. 201 Textile ornament. 202 Development of a geometric system within the art. 202 Introduction. 202 Relief phenomena. 203 Ordinary features. 203 Reticulated work. 210 Superconstructive features. 211 Color phenomena. 215 Ordinary features. 215 Non-essential constructive features. 226 Superconstructive features. 228 Adventitious features. 231 Geometricity imposed upon adopted elements. 232 Extension of textile ornament to other forms of art. 244 ILLUSTRATIONS. FIG. Page. 286. Mat or tray with esthetic attributes of form 197 287. Tray having decided esthetic attributes of form 198 288. Pyriform water vessel 198 289. Basket with esthetic characters of form 199 290. Basket of eccentric form 200 291. Character of surface in the simplest form of weaving 204 292. Surface produced by impacting 204 293. Surface produced by use of wide fillets 204 294. Basket with ribbed surface 205 295. Bottle showing obliquely ribbed surface 205 296. Tray showing radial ribs 205 297. Combination giving herring bone effect 206 298. Combination giving triangular figures 206 299. Peruvian work basket 206 300. Basket of Seminole workmanship 207 301. Surface effect produced in open twined combination 207 302. Surface effect produced in open twined combination 207 303. Surface effect produced by impacting in twined combination 208 304. Surface effect produced by impacting the web strands in twined combination 208 305. Surface effect produced by crossing the web series in open twined work 208 306. Tray with open mesh, twined combination 208 307. Conical basket, twined combination 209 308. Example of primitive reticulated weaving 210 309. Simple form of reticulation 211 310. Reticulated pattern in cotton cloth 211 311. Peruvian embroidery 213 312. Basket with pendent ornaments 213 313. Basket with pendent ornaments 213 314. Tasseled Peruvian mantle 214 315. Pattern produced by interlacing strands of different colors 216 316. Pattern produced by interlacing strands of different colors 216 317. Pattern produced by interlacing strands of different colors 216 318. Pattern produced by interlacing strands of different colors 217 319. Base of coiled basket 218 320. Coiled basket with geometric ornament 218 321. Coiled basket with geometric ornament 219 322. Coiled basket with geometric ornament 220 323. Coiled basket with geometric ornament 220 324. Coiled basket with geometric ornament 221 325. Coiled basket with geometric ornament 223 326. Coiled tray with geometric ornament 224 327. Coiled tray with geometric ornament 225 328. Tray with geometric ornament 225 329. Tray with geometric ornament 226 330. Ornament produced by wrapping the strands 227 331. Ornament produced by fixing strands to the surface of the fabric 227 332. Basket with feather ornamentation 227 333. Basket with feather ornamentation 227 334. Piece of cloth showing use of supplementary warp and woof 228 335. Piece of cloth showing use of supplementary warp and woof 228 336. Example of grass embroidery 230 337. Example of feather embroidery 231 338. Figures from the Penn wampum belt 233 339. Figures from a California Indian basket 234 340. California Indian basket 234 341. Figures from a Peruvian basket 235 342. Figure from a piece of Peruvian gobelins 236 343. Figures from a Peruvian vase 237 344. Figure from a circular basket 238 345. Figure of a bird from a Zuñi shield 239 346. Figure of a bird woven in a tray 240 347. Figure of a bird woven in a basket 241 348. Figures embroidered on a cotton net by the ancient Peruvians 242 349. Figures of birds embroidered by the ancient Peruvians 243 350. Conventional design painted upon cotton cloth 243 351. Herring bone and checker patterns produced in weaving 246 352. Herring bone and checker patterns engraved in clay 246 353. Earthen vase with textile ornament 247 354. Example of textile ornament painted upon pottery 248 355. Textile pattern transferred to pottery through costume 248 356. Ceremonial adz with carved ornament of textile character 250 357. Figures upon a tapa stamp 251 358. Design in stucco exhibiting textile characters 251 TEXTILE ART IN ITS RELATION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF FORM AND ORNAMENT. BY WILLIAM H. HOLMES. INTRODUCTION. The textile art is one of the most ancient known, dating back to the very inception of culture. In primitive times it occupied a wide field, embracing the stems of numerous branches of industry now expressed in other materials or relegated to distinct systems of construction. Accompanying the gradual narrowing of its sphere there was a steady development with the general increase of intelligence and skill so that with the cultured nations of to-day it takes an important, though unobtrusive, place in the hierarchy of the arts. Woven fabrics include all those products of art in which the elements or parts employed in construction are largely filamental and are combined by methods conditioned chiefly by their flexibility. The processes employed are known by such terms as interlacing, plaiting, netting, weaving, sewing, and embroidering. The materials used at first are chiefly filiform vegetal growths, such as twigs, leaves, roots, and grasses, but later on filiform and then fibrous elements from all the kingdoms of nature, as well as numerous artificial preparations, are freely used. These are employed in the single, doubled, doubled and twisted, and plaited conditions, and are combined by the hands alone, by the hands assisted by simple devices, by hand looms, and finally in civilization by machine looms. The products are, first, individual structures or articles, such as shelters, baskets, nets, and garments, or integral parts of these; and, second, "piece" goods, such as are not adapted to use until they are cut and fitted. In earlier stages of art we have to deal almost exclusively with the former class, as the tailor and the house furnisher are evolved with civilization. In their bearing upon art these products are to be studied chiefly with reference to three grand divisions of phenomena, the first of which I shall denominate _constructive_, the second _functional_, and the third _esthetic_. The last class, with which this paper has almost exclusively to deal, is composed mainly of what may be called the superconstructive and superfunctional features of the art and includes three subdivisions of phenomena, connected respectively with (1) form, (2) color, and (3) design. Esthetic features of form are, in origin and manifestation, related to both function and construction; color and design, to construction mainly. In the following study separate sections are given to each of these topics. It is fortunate perhaps that in this work I am restricted to the products of rather primitive stages of culture, as I have thus to deal with a limited number of uses, simple processes, and simple shapes. In the advanced stages of art we encounter complex phenomena, processes, and conditions, the accumulation of ages, through which no broad light can fall upon the field of vision. In America there is a vast body of primitive, indigenous art having no parallel in the world. Uncontaminated by contact with the complex conditions of civilized art, it offers the best possible facilities for the study of the fundamental principles of esthetic development. The laws of evolution correspond closely in all art, and, if once rightly interpreted in the incipient stage of a single, homogeneous culture, are traceable with comparative ease through all the succeeding stages of civilization. FORM IN TEXTILE ART. Form in the textile art, as in all other useful arts, is fundamentally, although not exclusively, the resultant or expression of function, but at the same time it is further than in other shaping arts from expressing the whole of function. Such is the pliability of a large portion of textile products--as, for example, nets, garments, and hangings--that the shapes assumed are variable, and, therefore, when not distended or for some purpose folded or draped, the articles are without esthetic value or interest. The more rigid objects, in common with the individuals of other useful arts, while their shape still accords with their functional office, exhibit attributes of form generally recognized as pleasing to the mind, which are expressed by the terms grace, elegance, symmetry, and the like. Such attributes are not separable from functional attributes, but originate and exist conjointly with them. In addition to these features of form we observe others of a more decidedly superfunctional character, added manifestly for the purpose of enhancing the appearance. In very primitive times when a utensil is produced functional ideas predominate, and there is, perhaps, so far as its artificial characters are concerned, a minimum of comeliness. But as the ages pass by essential features are refined and elements of beauty are added and emphasized. In riper culture the growing pressure of esthetic desire leads to the addition of many superficial modifications whose chief office is to please the fancy. In periods of deadened sensibility or even through the incompetence of individual artists in any period, such features may be ill chosen and erroneously applied, interfering with construction and use, and thus violating well founded and generally accepted canons of taste. In respect to primitive works we may distinguish four steps in the acquisition of esthetic features of form, three of which are normal, the fourth abnormal: First, we have that in which functional characters alone are considered, any element of beauty, whether due to the artist's hand or to the accidents of material, construction, or model, being purely adventitious; second, that in which the necessary features of the utensil appear to have experienced the supervision of taste, edges being rounded, curves refined, and symmetry perfected; third, that in which the functionally perfect object, just described, undergoes further variations of contour, adding to variety, unity, &c., thus enhancing beauty without interfering with serviceability; and, fourth, that in which, under abnormal influences, beauty is sought at the sacrifice of functional and constructive perfection. [Illustration: FIG. 286. Mat or tray exhibiting a minimum of esthetic attributes of form. Moki work--1/8.] The exact relations of the various classes of forces and phenomena pertaining to this theme may be more fully elucidated by the aid of illustrations. Woven mats, in early use by many tribes of men and originating in the attempt to combine leaves, vines, and branches for purposes of comfort, are flat because of function, the degree of flatness depending upon the size of filaments and mode of combination; and in outline they are irregular, square, round, or oval, as a result of many causes and influences, embracing use, construction, material, models, &c. A close approach to symmetry, where not imposed by some of the above mentioned agencies, is probably due to esthetic tendencies on the part of the artist. The esthetic interest attaching to such a shape cannot be great, unless perhaps it be regarded, as all individuals and classes may be regarded, in its possible relations to preceding, associated, and succeeding forms of art. The varied features observed upon the surface, the colors and patterns (Fig. 286), pertain to design rather than to form and will receive attention in the proper place. [Illustration: FIG. 287. Tray having decided esthetic attributes of form. Obtained from the Apache--1/2.] In point of contour the basket tray shown in Fig. 287 has a somewhat more decided claim upon esthetic attention than the preceding, as the curves exhibited mark a step of progress in complexity and grace. How much of this is due to intention and how much to technical perfection must remain in doubt. In work so perfect we are wont, however unwarrantably, to recognize the influence of taste. [Illustration: FIG. 288. Pyriform water vessel used by the Piute Indians--1/8.] A third example--presented in Fig. 288--illustrates an advanced stage in the art of basketry and exhibits a highly specialized shape. The forces and influences concerned in its evolution may be analyzed as follows: A primal origin in function and a final adaptation to a special function, the carrying and storing of water; a contour full to give capacity, narrow above for safety, and pointed below that it may be set in sand; curves kept within certain bounds by the limitations of construction; and a goodly share of variety, symmetry, and grace, the result to a certain undetermined extent of the esthetic tendencies of the artist's mind. In regard to the last point there is generally in forms so simple an element of uncertainty; but many examples may be found in which there is positive evidence of the existence of a strong desire on the part of the primitive basketmaker to enhance beauty of form. It will be observed that the textile materials and construction do not lend themselves freely to minuteness in detail or to complexity of outline, especially in those small ways in which beauty is most readily expressed. Modifications of a decidedly esthetic character are generally suggested to the primitive mind by some functional, constructive, or accidental feature which may with ease be turned in the new direction. In the vessel presented in Fig. 289--the work of Alaskan Indians--the margin is varied by altering the relations of the three marginal turns of the coil, producing a scalloped effect. This is without reference to use, is uncalled for in construction, and hence is, in all probability, the direct result of esthetic tendencies. Other and much more elaborate examples may be found in the basketry of almost all countries. [Illustration: FIG. 289. Vessel with esthetic characters of form. Work of the Yakama--1/4.] In the pursuit of this class of enrichment there is occasionally noticeable a tendency to overload the subject with extraneous details. This is not apt to occur, however, in the indigenous practice of an art, but comes more frequently from a loss of equilibrium or balance in motives or desires, caused by untoward exotic influence. When, through suggestions derived from contact with civilized art, the savage undertakes to secure all the grace and complexity observed in the works of more cultured peoples, he does so at the expense of construction and adaptability to use. An example of such work is presented in Fig. 290, a weak, useless, and wholly vicious piece of basketry. Other equally meretricious pieces represent goblets, bottles, and tea pots. They are the work of the Indians of the northwest coast and are executed in the neatest possible manner, bearing evidence of the existence of cultivated taste. [Illustration: FIG. 290. Basket made under foreign influence, construction and use being sacrificed to fancied beauty--1/3.] It appears from the preceding analyses that _form_ in this art is not sufficiently sensitive to receive impressions readily from the delicate touch of esthetic fingers; besides, there are peculiar difficulties in the way of detecting traces of the presence and supervision of taste. The inherent morphologic forces of the art are strong and stubborn and tend to produce the precise classes of results that we, at this stage of culture, are inclined to attribute to esthetic influence. If, in the making of a vessel, the demands of use are fully satisfied, if construction is perfect of its kind, if materials are uniformly suitable, and if models are not absolutely bad, it follows that the result must necessarily possess in a high degree those very attributes that all agree are pleasing to the eye. In a primitive water vessel function gives a full outline, as capacity is a prime consideration; convenience of use calls for a narrow neck and a conical base; construction and materials unite to impose certain limitations to curves and their combinations, from which the artist cannot readily free himself. Models furnished by nature, as they are usually graceful, do not interfere with the preceding agencies, and all these forces united tend to give symmetry, grace, and the unity that belongs to simplicity. Taste which is in a formative state can but fall in with these tendencies of the art, and must be led by them, and led in a measure corresponding to their persistency and universality. If the textile art had been the only one known to man, ideas of the esthetic in shape would have been in a great measure formed through that art. Natural forms would have had little to do with it except through models furnished directly to and utilized by the art, for the ideas of primitive men concentrate about that upon which their hands work and upon which their thoughts from necessity dwell with steady attention from generation to generation. RELATIONS OF FORM TO ORNAMENT. It would seem that the esthetic tendencies of the mind, failing to find satisfactory expression in shape, seized upon the non-essential features of the art--markings of the surface and color of filaments--creating a new field in which to labor and expending their energy upon ornament. Shape has some direct relations to ornament, and these relations may be classified as follows: First, the contour of the vessel controls its ornament to a large extent, dictating the positions of design and setting its limits; figures are in stripes, zones, rays, circles, ovals, or rectangles--according, in no slight measure, to the character of the spaces afforded by details of contour. Secondly, it affects ornament through the reproduction and repetition of features of form, such as handles, for ornamental purposes. Thirdly, it is probable that shape influences embellishment through the peculiar bias given by it to the taste and judgment of men prior to or independent of the employment of ornament. COLOR IN TEXTILE ART. Color is one of the most constant factors in man's environment, and it is so strongly and persistently forced upon his attention, so useful as a means of identification and distinction, that it necessarily receives a large share of consideration. It is probably one of the foremost objective agencies in the formation and development of the esthetic sense. The natural colors of textile materials are enormously varied and form one of the chief attractions of the products of the art. The great interest taken in color--the great importance attached to it--is attested by the very general use of dyes, by means of which additional variety and brilliancy of effect are secured. Color employed in the art is not related to use, excepting, perhaps, in symbolic and superstitious matters; nor is it of consequence in construction, although it derives importance from the manner in which construction causes it to be manifested to the eye. It finds its chief use in the field of design, in making evident to the eye the figures with which objects of art are embellished. Color is employed or applied in two distinct ways: it is woven or worked into the fabric by using colored filaments or parts, or it is added to the surface of the completed object by means of pencils, brushes, and dies. Its employment in the latter manner is especially convenient when complex ideographic or pictorial subjects are to be executed. TEXTILE ORNAMENT. DEVELOPMENT OF A GEOMETRIC SYSTEM OF DESIGN WITHIN THE ART. INTRODUCTION. Having made a brief study of form and color in the textile art, I shall now present the great group or family of phenomena whose exclusive office is that of enhancing beauty. It will be necessary, however, to present, besides those features of the art properly expressive of the esthetic culture of the race, all those phenomena that, being present in the art without man's volition, tend to suggest decorative conceptions and give shape to them. I shall show how the latter class of features arise as a necessity of the art, how they gradually come into notice and are seized upon by the esthetic faculty, and how under its guidance they assist in the development of a system of ornament of world wide application. For convenience of treatment esthetic phenomena may be classed as _relieved_ and _flat_. Figures or patterns of a relievo nature arise during construction as a result of the intersections and other more complex relations--the bindings--of the warp and woof or of inserted or applied elements. Flat or surface features are manifested in color, either in unison with or independent of the relieved details. Such is the nature of the textile art that in its ordinary practice certain combinations of both classes of features go on as a necessity of the art and wholly without reference to the desire of the artist or to the effect of resultant patterns upon the eye. The character of such figures depends upon the kind of construction and upon the accidental association of natural colors in construction. At some period of the practice of the art these peculiar, adventitious surface characters began to attract attention and to be cherished for the pleasure they gave; what were at first adventitious features now took on functions peculiar to themselves, for they were found to gratify desires distinct from those cravings that arise directly from physical wants. It is not to be supposed for a moment that the inception of esthetic notions dates from this association of ideas of beauty with textile characters. Long before textile objects of a high class were made, ideas of an esthetic nature had been entertained by the mind, as, for example, in connection with personal adornment. The skin had been painted, pendants placed about the neck, and bright feathers set in the hair to enhance attractiveness, and it is not difficult to conceive of the transfer of such ideas from purely personal associations to the embellishment of articles intimately associated with the person. No matter, however, what the period or manner of the association of such ideas with the textile art, that association may be taken as the datum point in the development of a great system of decoration whose distinguishing characters are the result of the geometric textile construction. In amplifying this subject I find it convenient to treat separately the two classes of decorative phenomena--the relieved and the flat--notwithstanding the fact that they are for the most part intimately associated and act together in the accomplishment of a common end. RELIEF PHENOMENA. _Ordinary features._--The relieved surface characters of fabrics resulting from construction and available for decoration are more or less distinctly perceptible to the eye and to the touch and are susceptible of unlimited variation in detail and arrangement. Such features are familiar to all in the strongly marked ridges of basketry, and much more pleasingly so in the delicate figures of damasks, embroideries, and laces. So long as the figures produced are confined exclusively to the necessary features of unembellished construction, as is the case in very primitive work and in all plain work, the resultant patterns are wholly geometric and by endless repetition of like parts extremely monotonous. In right angled weaving the figures combine in straight lines, which run parallel or cross at uniform distances and angles. In radiate weaving, as in basketry, the radial lines are crossed in an equally formal manner by concentric lines. In other classes of combination there is an almost equal degree of geometricity. When, however, with the growth of intelligence and skill it is found that greater variety of effect can be secured by modifying the essential combinations of parts, and that, too, without interfering with constructive perfection or with use, a new and wide field is opened for the developmental tendencies of textile decoration. Moreover, in addition to the facilities afforded by the necessary elements of construction, there are many extraneous resources of which the textile decorator may freely avail himself. The character of these is such that the results, however varied, harmonize thoroughly with indigenous textile forms. To make these points quite clear it will be necessary to analyze somewhat closely the character and scope of textile combination and of the resultant and associated phenomena. We may distinguish two broad classes of constructive phenomena made use of in the expression of relieved enrichment. As indicated above, these are, first, essential or actual constructive features and, second, extra or superconstructive features. First, it is found that in the practice of primitive textile art a variety of methods of combination or bindings of the parts have been evolved and utilized, and we observe that each of these--no matter what the material or what the size and character of the filamental elements--gives rise to distinct classes of surface effects. Thus it appears that peoples who happen to discover and use like combinations produce kindred decorative results, while those employing unlike constructions achieve distinct classes of surface embellishment. These constructive peculiarities have a pretty decided effect upon the style of ornament, relieved or colored, and must be carefully considered in the treatment of design; but it is found that each type of combination has a greatly varied capacity of expression, tending to obliterate sharp lines of demarkation between the groups of results. It sometimes even happens that in distinct types of weaving almost identical surface effects are produced. It will not be necessary in this connection to present a full series of the fundamental bindings or orders of combination, as a few will suffice to illustrate the principles involved and to make clear the bearing of this class of phenomena upon decoration. I choose, first, a number of examples from the simplest type of weaving, that in which the web and the woof are merely interlaced, the filaments crossing at right angles or nearly so. In Fig. 291 we have the result exhibited in a plain open or reticulated fabric constructed from ordinary untwisted fillets, such as are employed in our splint and cane products. Fig. 292 illustrates the surface produced by crowding the horizontal series of the same fabric close together, so that the vertical series is entirely hidden. The surface here exhibits a succession of vertical ribs, an effect totally distinct from that seen in the preceding example. The third variety (Fig. 293) differs but slightly from the first. The fillets are wider and are set close together without crowding, giving the surface a checkered appearance. [Illustration: FIG. 291. Surface relief in simplest form of intersection.] [Illustration: FIG. 292. Surface relief produced by horizontal series crowded together.] [Illustration: FIG. 293. Surface relief produced by wide fillets set close together.] The second variety of surface effect is that most frequently seen in the basketry of our western tribes, as it results from the great degree of compactness necessary in vessels intended to contain liquids, semiliquid foods, or pulverized substances. The general surface effect given by closely woven work is illustrated in Fig. 294, which represents a large wicker carrying basket obtained from the Moki Indians. In this instance the ridges, due to a heavy series of radiating warp filaments, are seen in a vertical position. [Illustration: FIG. 294. Basket showing ribbed surface produced by impacting the horizontal or concentric filaments. Moki work--1/8.] [Illustration: FIG. 295. Alternation of intersection, producing oblique or spiral ribs. Piute work--1/8.] [Illustration: FIG. 296. Radiating ribs as seen in flat work viewed from above. Moki work--1/4.] It will be observed, however, that the ridges do not necessarily take the direction of the warp filaments, for, with a different alternation of the horizontal series--the woof--we get oblique ridges, as shown in the partly finished bottle illustrated in Fig. 295. They are, however, not so pronounced as in the preceding case. The peculiar effect of radiate and concentric weaving upon the ribs is well shown in Fig. 296. By changes in the order of intersection, without changing the type of combination, we reach a series of results quite unlike the preceding; so distinct, indeed, that, abstracted from constructive relationships, there would be little suggestion of correlation. In the example given in Fig. 297 the series of filaments interlace, not by passing over and under alternate strands, as in the preceding set of examples, but by extending over and under a number of the opposing series at each step and in such order as to give wide horizontal ridges ribbed diagonally. [Illustration: FIG. 297. Diagonal combination, giving herring bone effect.] [Illustration: FIG. 298. Elaboration of diagonal combination, giving triangular figures.] This example is from an ancient work basket obtained at Ancon, Peru, and shown in Fig. 299. The surface features are in strong relief, giving a pronounced herring bone effect. [Illustration: FIG. 299. Peruvian work basket of reeds, with strongly relieved ridges.] Slight changes in the succession of parts enable the workman to produce a great variety of decorative patterns, an example of which is shown in Fig. 298. A good illustration is also seen in Fig. 286, and another piece, said to be of Seminole workmanship, is given in Fig. 300. These and similar relieved results are fruitful sources of primitive decorative motives. They are employed not only within the art itself, but in many other arts less liberally supplied with suggestions of embellishment. [Illustration: FIG. 300. Effects produced by varying the order of intersection. Seminole work--1/8.] Taking a second type of combination, we have a family of resultant patterns in the main distinguishable from the preceding. [Illustration: FIG. 301. Surface effect in open twined combination.] [Illustration: FIG. 302. Surface effect of twined, lattice combination in basketry of the Clallam Indians of Washington Territory--1/8.] Fig. 301 illustrates the simplest form of what Dr. O.T. Mason has called the twined combination, a favorite one with many of our native tribes. The strands of the woof series are arranged in twos and in weaving are twisted half around at each intersection, inclosing the opposing fillets. The resulting open work has much the appearance of ordinary netting, and when of pliable materials and distended or strained over an earthen or gourd vessel the pattern exhibited is strikingly suggestive of decoration. The result of this combination upon a lattice foundation of rigid materials is well shown in the large basket presented in Fig. 302. Other variants of this type are given in the three succeeding figures. [Illustration: FIG. 303. Surface effect in impacted work of twined combination.] The result seen in Fig. 303 is obtained by impacting the horizontal or twined series of threads. The surface is nearly identical with that of the closely impacted example of the preceding type (Fig. 292). The peculiarities are more marked when colors are used. When the doubled and twisted series of strands are placed far apart and the opposing series are laid side by side a pleasing result is given, as shown in Fig. 304 and in the body of the conical basket illustrated in Fig. 307. [Illustration: FIG. 304. Surface effect obtained by placing the warp strands close together and the woof cables far apart.] [Illustration: FIG. 305. Surface effect obtained by crossing the warp series in open twined work.] In Fig. 305 we have a peculiar diagonally crossed arrangement of the untwisted series of filaments, giving a lattice work effect. [Illustration: FIG. 306. Decorative effects produced by variations in the radiate or warp series in an open work tray. Klamath work--1/4.] Fig. 306 serves to show how readily this style of weaving lends itself to the production of decorative modification, especially in the direction of the concentric zonal arrangement so universal in vessel-making arts. The examples given serve to indicate the unlimited decorative resources possessed by the art without employing any but legitimate constructive elements, and it will be seen that still wider results can be obtained by combining two or more varieties or styles of binding in the construction and the embellishment of a single object or in the same piece of fabric. A good, though very simple, illustration of this is shown in the tray or mat presented in Fig. 286. In this case a border, varying from the center portion in appearance, is obtained by changing one series of the filaments from a multiple to a single arrangement. [Illustration: FIG. 307. Conical basket of the Klamath Indians of Oregon, showing peculiar twined effect and an open work border--1/8.] The conical basket shown in Fig. 307 serves to illustrate the same point. In this case a rudely worked, though effective, border is secured by changing the angle of the upright series near the top and combining them by plaiting, and in such a way as to leave a border of open work. Now the two types of construction, the interlaced and the twined, some primitive phases of which have been reviewed and illustrated, as they are carried forward in the technical progress of the art, exhibit many new features of combination and resultant surface character, but the elaboration is in all cases along lines peculiar to these types of weaving. Other types of combination of web and woof, all tapestry, and all braiding, netting, knitting, crochet, and needle work exhibit characters peculiar to themselves, developing distinct groups of relieved results; yet all are analogous in principle to those already illustrated and unite in carrying forward the same great geometric system of combination. _Reticulated work._--A few paragraphs may be added here in regard to reticulated fabrics of all classes of combination, as they exhibit more than usually interesting relievo phenomena and have a decided bearing upon the growth of ornament. In all the primitive weaving with which we are acquainted definite reticulated patterns are produced by variations in the spacings and other relations of the warp and woof; and the same is true in all the higher forms of the art. The production of reticulated work is the especial function of netting, knitting, crocheting, and certain varieties of needlework, and a great diversity of relieved results are produced, no figure being too complex and no form too pronounced to be undertaken by ambitious workmen. In the following figures we have illustrations of the peculiar class of primitive experiments that, after the lapse of ages, lead up to marvelous results, the highest of which may be found in the exquisite laces of cultured peoples. The Americans had only taken the first steps in this peculiar art, but the results are on this account of especial interest in the history of the art. An example of simple reticulated hand weaving is shown in Fig. 308. It is the work of the mound builders and is taken from an impression upon an ancient piece of pottery obtained in Tennessee. [Illustration: FIG. 308. Incipient stage of reticulated ornament. Fabric of the mound builders.] Fig. 309 illustrates a bit of ancient Peruvian work executed on a frame or in a rude loom, a checker pattern being produced by arranging the warp and woof now close together and now wide apart. Open work of this class is sometimes completed by after processes, certain threads or filaments being drawn out or introduced, by which means the figures are emphasized and varied. In Fig. 310 we have a second Peruvian example in which the woof threads have been omitted for the space of an inch, and across this interval the loose warp has been plaited and drawn together, producing a lattice-like band. [Illustration: FIG. 309. Simple form of ornamental reticulation. Ancient Peruvian work.] [Illustration: FIG. 310. Reticulated pattern in cotton cloth. Work of the ancient Peruvians.] In a similar way four other bands of narrow open work are introduced, two above and two below the wide band. These are produced by leaving the warp threads free for a short space and drawing alternate pairs across each other and fixing them so by means of a woof thread, as shown in the cut. Examples of netting in which decorative features have been worked are found among the textile products of many American tribes and occur as well in several groups of ancient fabrics, but in most cases where designs of importance or complexity are desired parts are introduced to facilitate the work. _Superconstructive features._--These features, so important in the decoration of fabrics, are the result of devices by which a construction already capable of fulfilling the duties imposed by function has added to it parts intended to enhance beauty and which may or may not be of advantage to the fabric. They constitute one of the most widely used and effective resources of the textile decorator, and are added by sewing or stitching, inserting, drawing, cutting, applying, appending, &c. They add enormously to the capacity for producing relievo effects and make it possible even to render natural forms in the round. Notwithstanding this fact--the most important section of this class of features--embroidery is treated to better advantage under color phenomena, as color is very generally associated with the designs. [Illustration: FIG. 311. Open work design embroidered upon a net-like fabric. From a grave at Ancon, Peru.] One example of lace-like embroidery may be given in this place. It is probably among the best examples of monochrome embroidery America has produced. In design and in method of realization it is identical with the rich, colored embroideries of the ancient Peruvians, being worked upon a net foundation, as shown in Fig. 311. The broad band of figures employs bird forms in connection with running geometric designs, and still more highly conventional bird forms are seen in the narrow band. Appended ornaments are not amenable to the geometric laws of fabrication to the extent observed in other classes of ornament. They are, however, attached in ways consistent with the textile system, and are counted and spaced with great care, producing designs of a more or less pronounced geometric character. The work is a kind of embroidery, the parts employed being of the nature of pendants. These include numberless articles derived from nature and art. It will suffice to present a few examples already at hand. [Illustration: FIG. 312. Basket with pendent buckskin strands tipped with bits of tin. Apache Indians--1/8.] Fig. 312 illustrates a large, well made basket, the work of the Apache Indians. It serves to indicate the method of employing tassels and clustered pendants, which in this case consist of buckskin strings tipped with conical bits of tin. The checker pattern is in color. [Illustration: FIG. 313. Basket with pendants of beads and bits of shell, work of the northwest coast Indians.--1/4.] Fig. 313 illustrates the use of other varieties of pendants. A feather decked basket made by the northwest coast Indians is embellished with pendent ornaments consisting of strings of beads tipped with bits of bright shell. The importance of this class of work in higher forms of textiles may be illustrated by an example from Peru. It is probable that American art has produced few examples of tasseled work more wonderful than that of which a fragment is shown in Fig. 314. It is a fringed mantle, three feet in length and nearly the same in depth, obtained from an ancient tomb. The body is made up of separately woven bands, upon which disk-like and semilunar figures representing human faces are stitched, covering the surface in horizontal rows. To the center of these rosette-like parts clusters of tassels of varying sizes are attached. The fringe, which is twenty inches deep, is composed entirely of long strings of tassels, the larger tassels supporting clusters of smaller ones. There are upwards of three thousand tassels, the round heads of which are in many cases woven in colors, ridges, and nodes to represent the human features. The general color of the garment, which is of fine, silky wool, is a rich crimson. The illustration can convey only a hint of the complexity and beauty of the original. [Illustration: FIG. 314. Tassel ornamentation from an ancient Peruvian mantle.] We have now seen how varied and how striking are the surface characters of fabrics as expressed by the third dimension, by variation from a flat, featureless surface, and how all, essential and ornamental, are governed by the laws of geometric combination. We shall now see how these are related to color phenomena. COLOR PHENOMENA. _Ordinary features._--In describing the constructive characters of fabrics and the attendant surface phenomena, I called attention to the fact that a greater part of the design manifested is enforced and supplemented by color, which gives new meaning to every feature. Color elements are present in the art from its very inception, and many simple patterns appear as accidents of textile aggregation long before the weaver or the possessor recognizes them as pleasing to the eye. When, finally, they are so recognized and a desire for greater elaboration springs up, the textile construction lends itself readily to the new office and under the esthetic forces brings about wonderful results without interfering in the least with the technical perfection of the articles embellished. But color is not confined to the mere emphasizing of figures already expressed in relief. It is capable of advancing alone into new fields, producing patterns and designs complex in arrangement and varied in hue, and that, too, without altering the simple, monotonous succession of relievo characters. In color, as in relieved design, each species of constructive combination gives rise to more or less distinct groups of decorative results, which often become the distinguishing characteristics of the work of different peoples and the progenitors of long lines of distinctions in national decorative conceptions. In addition to this apparently limitless capacity for expression, lovers of textile illumination have the whole series of extraordinary resources furnished by expedients not essential to ordinary construction, the character and scope of which have been dwelt upon to some extent in the preceding section. I have already spoken of color in a general way, as to its necessary presence in art, its artificial application to fabrics and fabric materials, its symbolic characters, and its importance to esthetic progress. My object in this section is to indicate the part it takes in textile design, its methods of expression, the processes by which it advances in elaboration, and the part it takes in all geometric decoration. It will be necessary, in the first place, to examine briefly the normal tendencies of color combination while still under the direct domination of constructive elaboration. In the way of illustration, let us take first a series of filaments, say in the natural color of the material, and pass through them in the simplest interlaced style a second series having a distinct color. A very simple geometric pattern is produced, as shown in Fig. 315. It is a sort of checker, an emphasized presentation of the relievo pattern shown in Fig. 291, the figures running horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. Had these filaments been accidentally associated in construction, the results might have been the same, but it is unnecessary to indicate in detail the possibilities of adventitious color combinations. So far as they exhibit system at all it is identical with the relievo elaboration. [Illustration: FIG. 315. Pattern produced by interlacing strands of different colors.] [Illustration: FIG. 316. Pattern produced by modifying the alternation of fillets.] [Illustration: FIG. 317. Isolated figures produced by modifying the order of intersection.] Assuming that the idea of developing these figures into something more elaborate and striking is already conceived, let us study the processes and tendencies of growth. A very slight degree of ingenuity will enable the workman to vary the relation of the parts, producing a succession of results such, perhaps, as indicated in Fig. 316. In this example we have rows of isolated squares in white which may be turned hither and thither at pleasure, within certain angles, but they result in nothing more than monotonous successions of squares. [Illustration: FIG. 318. Pattern produced by simple alternations of light and dark fillets. Basketry of the Indians of British Guiana.] Additional facility of expression is obtained by employing dark strands in the vertical series also, and large, isolated areas of solid color may be produced by changing the order of intersection, certain of the fillets being carried over two or more of the opposing series and in contiguous spaces at one step, as seen in Fig. 317. With these elementary resources the weaver has very considerable powers of expression, as will be seen in Fig. 318, which is taken from a basket made by South American Indians, and in Fig. 341, where human figures are delineated. The patterns in such cases are all rigidly geometric and exhibit stepped outlines of a pronounced kind. With impacting and increased refinement of fillets the stepped character is in a considerable measure lost sight of and realistic, graphic representation is to a greater extent within the workman's reach. It is probable, however, that the idea of weaving complex ideographic characters would not occur to the primitive mind at a very early date, and a long period of progress would elapse before delineative subjects would be attempted. I do not need to follow this style of combination into the more refined kinds of work and into loom products, but may add that through all, until perverted by ulterior influences, the characteristic geometricity and monotonous repetition are allpervading. * * * * * For the purpose of looking still more closely into the tendencies of normal textile decorative development I shall present a series of Indian baskets, choosing mainly from the closely woven or impacted varieties because they are so well represented in our collections and at the same time are so very generally embellished with designs in color; besides, they are probably among the most simple and primitive textile products known. I have already shown that several types of combination when closely impacted produce very similar surface characters and encourage the same general style of decoration. In nearly all, the color features are confined to one series of fillets--those of the woof--the other, the warp, being completely hidden from view. In the preceding series the warp and woof were almost equally concerned in the expression of design. Here but one is used, and in consequence there is much freedom of expression, as the artist carries the colored filaments back and forth or inserts new ones at will. Still it will be seen that in doing this he is by no means free; he must follow the straight and narrow pathway laid down by the warp and woof, and, do what he may, he arrives at purely geometric results. [Illustration: FIG. 319. Base of coiled basket showing the method of building by dual coiling. The base or warp coil is composed of untwisted fiber and is formed by adding to the free end as the coiling goes on. The woof or binding filament, as it is coiled, is caught into the upper surface of the preceding turn--1/8.] [Illustration: FIG. 320. Coiled basket with simple geometric ornament. Work of the northwest coast Indians--1/8.] I will now present the examples, which for the sake of uniformity are in all cases of the coiled ware. If a basket is made with no other idea than that of use the surface is apt to be pretty uniform in color, the natural color of the woof fillets. If decoration is desired a colored fillet is introduced, which, for the time, takes the place and does the duty of the ordinary strand. Fig. 319 serves to show the construction and surface appearance of the base of a coil made vessel still quite free from any color decoration. Now, if it is desired to begin a design, the plain wrapping thread is dropped and a colored fillet is inserted and the coiling continues. Carried once around the vessel we have an encircling line of dark color corresponding to the lower line of the ornament seen in Fig. 320. If the artist is content with a single line of color he sets the end of the dark thread and takes up the light colored one previously dropped and continues the coiling. If further elaboration is desired it is easily accomplished. In the example given the workman has taken up the dark fillet again and carried it a few times around the next turn of the warp coil; then it has been dropped and the white thread taken up, and again, in turn, another dark thread has been introduced and coiled for a few turns, and so on until four encircling rows of dark, alternating rectangles have been produced. Desiring to introduce a meandered design he has taken the upper series of rectangles as bases and adding colored filaments at the proper time has carried oblique lines, one to the right and the other to the left, across the six succeeding ridges of the warp coil. The pairs of stepped lines meeting above were joined in rectangles like those below, and the decoration was closed by a border line at the top. The vessel was then completed in the light colored material. In this ornament all forms are bounded by two classes of lines, vertical and horizontal (or, viewed from above or below, radial and encircling), the lines of the warp and the woof. Oblique bands of color are made up of series of rectangles, giving stepped outlines. Although these figures are purely geometric, it is not impossible that in their position and grouping they preserve a trace of some imitative conception modified to this shape by the forces of the art. They serve quite as well, however, to illustrate simple mechanical elaboration as if entirely free from suspicion of associated ideas. [Illustration: FIG. 321. Coiled basket with encircling bands of ornament in white, red, and black, upon a yellowish ground. Obtained from the Indians of the Tule River, California--1/8.] In Fig. 321 I present a superb piece of work executed by the Indians of the Tule River, California. It is woven in the closely impacted, coiled style. The ornament is arranged in horizontal zones and consists of a series of diamond shaped figures in white with red centers and black frames set side by side. The processes of substitution where changes of color are required are the same as in the preceding case and the forms of figures and the disposition of designs are the same, being governed by the same forces. [Illustration: FIG. 322. Coiled basket with ornament arranged in zigzag rays. Obtained from the Pima Indians of Arizona--1/8.] Another choice piece, from the Pima Indians of Arizona, is given in Fig. 322. The lines of the ornament adhere exclusively to the directions imposed by the warp and the woof, the stripes of black color ascending with the turns of the fillet for a short distance, then for a time following the horizontal ridges, and again ascending, the complete result being a series of zigzag rays set very close together. These rays take an oblique turn to the left, and the dark figures at the angles, from the necessities of construction, form rows at right angles to these. A few supplementary rays are added toward the margin to fill out the widening spaces. Another striking example of the domination of technique over design is illustrated in Fig. 323. [Illustration: FIG. 323. Coiled basket with two bands of meandered ornament. Obtained from the Pima Indians of Arizona--1/4.] Two strongly marked, fret-like meanders encircle the vessel, the elements of which are ruled exclusively by the warp and woof, by the radiate and the concentric lines of construction. This is the work of the Pima Indians of Arizona. [Illustration: FIG. 324. Coiled basket with geometric ornament composed of triangular figures. Obtained from the McCloud River Indians, California--1/8.] I shall close the series with a very handsome example of Indian basketry and of basketry ornamentation (Fig. 324). The conical shape is highly pleasing and the design is thoroughly satisfactory and, like all the others, is applied in a way indicative of a refined sense of the decorative requirements of the utensil. The design is wholly geometric, and, although varied in appearance, is composed almost exclusively of dark triangular figures upon a light ground. The general grouping is in three horizontal or encircling bands agreeing with or following the foundation coil. Details are governed by the horizontal and the oblique structure lines. The vertical construction lines have no direct part in the conformation of the design excepting in so far as they impose a stepped character upon all oblique outlines. These studies could be carried through all the types of primitive textile combination, but such a work seems unnecessary, for in all cases the elaboration in design, relieved and colored, is along similar lines, is governed by the same class of forces, and reaches closely corresponding results. * * * * * We have observed throughout the series of examples presented a decided tendency toward banded or zonal arrangement of the ornamentation. Now each of these bands is made up of a number of units, uniform in shape and in size and joined or linked together in various suitable and consistent ways. In contemplating them we are led to inquire into the nature of the forces concerned in the accomplishment of such results. The question arises as to exactly how much of the segregating and aggregating forces or tendencies belongs to the technique of the art and how much to the direct esthetic supervision of the human agent, questions as to ideographic influence being for the present omitted. This is a difficult problem to deal with, and I shall not attempt more here than to point out the apparent teachings of the examples studied. The desires of the mind constitute the motive power, the force that gives rise to all progress in art; the appreciation of beauty and the desire to increase it are the cause of all progress in purely decorative elaboration. It appears, however, that there is in the mind no preconceived idea of what that elaboration should be. The mind is a growing thing and is led forward along the pathways laid out by environment. Seeking in art gratification of an esthetic kind it follows the lead of technique along the channels opened by such of the useful arts as offer suggestions of embellishment. The results reached vary with the arts and are important in proportion to the facilities furnished by the arts. As I have already amply shown, the textile art possesses vast advantages over all other arts in this respect, as it is first in the field, of widest application, full of suggestions of embellishment, and inexorably fixed in its methods of expression. The mind in its primitive, mobile condition is as clay in the grasp of technique. A close analysis of the forces and the influences inherent in the art will be instructive. For the sake of simplicity I exclude from consideration all but purely mechanical or non-ideographic elements. It will be observed that order, uniformity, symmetry, are among the first lessons of the textile art. From the very beginning the workman finds it necessary to direct his attention to these considerations in the preparation of his material as well as in the building of his utensils. If parts employed in construction are multiple they must be uniform, and to reach definite results (presupposing always a demand for such results), either in form or ornament, there must be a constant counting of numbers and adjusting to spaces. The most fundamental and constant elements embodied in textile art and available for the expression of embellishment are the minute steps of the intersections or bindings; the most necessary and constant combination of these elements is in continuous lines or in rows of isolated figures; the most necessary and constant directions for these combinations are with the web and the woof, or with their complementaries, the diagonals. If large areas are covered certain separation or aggregation of the elements into larger units is called for, as otherwise absolute sameness would result. Such separation or aggregation conforms to the construction lines of the fabric, as any other arrangement would be unnatural and difficult of accomplishment. When the elements or units combine in continuous zones, bands, or rays they are placed side by side in simple juxtaposition or are united in various ways, always following the guide lines of construction through simple and complex convolutions. Whatever is done is at the suggestion of technique; whatever is done takes a form and arrangement imposed by technique. Results are like in like techniques and are unlike in unlike techniques; they therefore vary with the art and with its variations in time and character. All those agencies pertaining to man that might be supposed important in this connection--the muscles of the hand and of the eye, the cell structure of the brain, together with all preconceived ideas of the beautiful--are all but impotent in the presence of technique, and, so far as forms of expression go, submit completely to its dictates. Ideas of the beautiful in linear geometric forms are actually formed by technique, and taste in selecting as the most beautiful certain ornaments produced in art is but choosing between products that in their evolution gave it its character and powers, precisely as the animal selects its favorite foods from among the products that throughout its history constitute its sustenance and shape its appetites. * * * * * Now, as primitive peoples advance from savagery to barbarism there comes a time in the history of all kinds of textile products at which the natural technical progress of decorative elaboration is interfered with by forces from without the art. This occurs when ideas, symbolic or otherwise, come to be associated with the purely geometric figures, tending to arrest or modify their development, or, again, it occurs when the artist seeks to substitute mythologic subjects for the geometric units. This period cannot be always well defined, as the first steps in this direction are so thoroughly subordinated to the textile forces. Between what may be regarded as purely technical, geometric ornament and ornament recognizably delineative, we find in each group of advanced textile products a series of forms of mixed or uncertain pedigree. These must receive slight attention here. [Illustration: FIG. 325. Coiled basket ornamented with devices probably very highly conventionalized mythological subjects. Obtained from the Apache--1/8.] Fig. 325 represents a large and handsome basket obtained from the Apache. It will be seen that the outline of the figures comprising the principal zone of ornament departs somewhat from the four ruling directions of the textile combination. This was accomplished by increasing the width of the steps in the outline as the dark rays progressed, resulting in curved outlines of eccentric character. This eccentricity, coupled with the very unusual character of the details at the outer extremities of the figures, leads to the surmise that each part of the design is a conventional representation of some life form, a bird, an insect, or perhaps a man. By the free introduction of such elements textile ornament loses its pristine geometric purity and becomes in a measure degraded. In the more advanced stages of Pueblo art the ornament of nearly all the textiles is pervaded by ideographic characters, generally rude suggestions of life forms, borrowed, perhaps, from mythologic art. This is true of much of the coiled basketry of the Moki Indians. True, many examples occur in which the ancient or indigenous geometric style is preserved, but the majority appear to be more or less modified. In many cases nothing can be learned from a study of the designs themselves, as the particular style of construction is not adapted to realistic expression, and, at best, resemblances to natural forms are very remote. Two examples are given in Figs. 326 and 327. I shall expect, however, when the art of these peoples is better known, to learn to what particular mythic concept these mixed or impure geometric devices refer. [Illustration: FIG. 326. Coiled tray with geometric devices probably modified by ideographic association. Moki work--1/4.] The same is true of other varieties of Pueblo basketry, notably the common decorated wickerware, two specimens of which are given in Figs. 328 and 329. This ware is of the interlaced style, with radially arranged web filaments. Its geometric characters are easily distinguished from those of the coiled ware. Many examples exhibit purely conventional elaboration, the figures being arranged in rays, zones, checkers, and the like. It is to be expected, however, that the normal ornament of this class of products should be greatly interfered with through attempts to introduce extraneous elements, for the peoples have advanced to a stage of culture at which it is usual to attempt the introduction of mythologic representations into all art. Further consideration of this subject will be necessary in the next section of this paper. [Illustration: FIG. 327. Coiled tray with geometric devices, probably modified by ideographic association. Moki work--1/4.] [Illustration: FIG. 328. Tray of interlaced style of weaving, showing geometric ornament, probably modified by ideographic association. Moki work--1/4.] The processes of pure geometric elaboration with which this section is mainly concerned can be studied to best advantage in more primitive forms of art. [Illustration: FIG. 329. Tray of interlaced style of weaving, showing geometric ornament, probably modified by ideographic association. Moki work--1/4.] _Non-essential constructive features._--Now, all the varied effects of color and design described in the preceding paragraphs are obtained without seriously modifying the simple necessary construction, without resorting to the multiple extraordinary devices within easy reach. The development and utilization of the latter class of resources must now receive attention. In the preceding examples, when it was desired to begin a figure in color the normal ground filament was dropped out and a colored one set into its place and made to fill its office while it remained; but we find that in many classes of work the colored elements were added to the essential parts, not substituted for them, although they are usually of use in perfecting the fabric by adding to serviceability as well as to beauty. This is illustrated, for example, by the doubling of one series or of both warp and woof, by the introduction of pile, by wrapping filaments with strands of other colors, or by twisting in feathers. Savage nations in all parts of the world are acquainted with devices of this class and employ them with great freedom. The effects produced often correspond closely to needlework, and the materials employed are often identical in both varieties of execution. The following examples will serve to illustrate my meaning. The effect seen in Fig. 330 is observed in a small hand wallet obtained in Mexico. The fillets employed appear to be wide, flattened straws of varied colors. In order to avoid the monotony of a plain checker certain of the light fillets are wrapped with thin fillets of dark tint in such a way that when woven the dark color appears in small squares placed diagonally with the fundamental checkers. Additional effects are produced by covering certain portions of the filaments with straws of distinct color, all being woven in with the fabric. By other devices certain parts of the fillets are made to stand out from the surface in sharp points and in ridges, forming geometric figures, either normal or added elements being employed. Another device is shown in Fig. 331. Here a pattern is secured by carrying dark fillets back and forth over the light colored fabric, catching them down at regular intervals during the process of weaving. Again, feathers and other embellishing media are woven in with the woof. Two interesting baskets procured from the Indians of the northwest coast are shown in Figs. 332 and 333. Feathers of brilliant hues are fixed to and woven in with certain of the woof strands, which are treated, in the execution of patterns, just as are ordinary colored threads, care being taken not to destroy the beauty of the feathers in the process. The richly colored feathers lying smoothly in one direction are made to represent various figures necessarily geometric. This simple work is much surpassed, however, by the marvelous feather ornamentation of the Mexicans and Peruvians, of which glowing accounts are given by historians and of which a few meager traces are found in tombs. Much of the feather work of all nations is of the nature of embroidery and will receive attention further on. A very clever device practiced by the northwest coast tribes consists in the use of two woof strands of contrasting colors, one or the other being made to appear on the surface, as the pattern demands. [Illustration: FIG. 330. Ornament produced by wrapping certain light fillets with darker ones before weaving. Mexican work.] [Illustration: FIG. 331. Ornamental effect secured by weaving in series of dark fillets, forming a superficial device. Work of the Klamath Indians.] [Illustration: FIG. 332. Baskets ornamented with feather work. Northwest coast tribes--1/4.] [Illustration: FIG. 333. Baskets ornamented with feather work. Northwest coast tribes--1/4.] An example from a higher grade of art will be of value in this connection. The ancient Peruvians resorted to many clever devices for purposes of enrichment. An illustration of the use of extra-constructional means to secure desired ends are given in Figs. 334 and 335. Threads constituting a supplemental warp and woof are carried across the under side of a common piece of fabric, that they may be brought up and woven in here and there to produce figures of contrasting color upon the right side. Fig. 334 shows the right side of the cloth, with the secondary series appearing in the border and central figure only. Fig. 335 illustrates the opposite side and shows the loose hanging, unused portions of the auxiliary series. In such work, when the figures are numerous and occupy a large part of the surface, the fabric is really a double one, having a dual warp and woof. Examples could be multiplied indefinitely, but it will readily be seen from what has been presented that the results of these extraordinary means cannot differ greatly from those legitimately produced by the fundamental filaments alone. [Illustration FIG. 334. Piece of cotton cloth showing the use of a supplementary web and woof. Ancient Peru.] [Illustration FIG. 335. Piece of cotton cloth showing the use of a supplementary web and woof. Ancient Peru.] _Superconstructive features._--In reviewing the superconstructive decorative features in the preceding section I classified them somewhat closely by method of execution or application to the fabric, as stitched, inserted, drawn, cut, applied, and appended. It will be seen that, although these devices are to a great extent of the nature of needlework, all cannot be classed under this head. Before needles came into use the decorative features were inserted and attached in a variety of ways. In open work nothing was needed but the end of the fillet or part inserted; again, in close work, perforations were made as in leather work, and the threads were inserted as are the waxed ends of the shoemaker. The importance of this class of decorative devices to primitive peoples will be apparent if we but call to mind the work of our own Indian tribes. What a vast deal of attention is paid to those classes of embroideries in which beads, feathers, quills, shells, seeds, teeth, &c., are employed, and to the multitude of novel applications of tassels, fringes, and tinkling pendants. The taste for these things is universal and their relation to the development of esthetic ideas is doubtless very intimate. Needlework arose in the earliest stages of art and at first was employed in joining parts, such as leaves, skins, and tissues, for various useful purposes, and afterwards in attaching ornaments. In time the attaching media, as exposed in stitches, loops, knots, and the like, being of bright colors, were themselves utilized as embellishment, and margins and apertures were beautified by various bindings and borders, and finally patterns were worked in contrasting colors upon the surfaces of the cloths and other materials of like nature or use. No other art so constantly and decidedly suggested embellishment and called for the exercise of taste. It was the natural habitat for decoration. It was the field in which technique and taste were most frequently called upon to work hand in hand. With the growth of culture the art was expanded and perfected, its wonderful capacity for expression leading from mere bindings to pretentious borders, to patterns, to the introduction of ideographs, to the representation of symbols and mythologic subjects, and from these to the delineation of nature, the presentation of historical and purely pictorial scenes. And now a few words in regard to the character of the work and its bearing upon the geometric system of decoration. As purely constructive ornamentation has already been presented, I will first take up that class of superconstructive work most nearly related to it. In some varieties of basketry certain bindings of the warp and woof are actually left imperfect, with the idea of completing the construction by subsequent processes, the intersections being gone over stitch by stitch and lashed together, the embroidery threads passing in regular order through the openings of the mesh. This process is extremely convenient to the decorator, as changes from one color to another are made without interfering with construction, and the result is of a closely similar character to that reached by working the colors in with warp and woof. In a very close fabric this method cannot be employed, but like results are reached by passing the added filaments beneath the protruding parts of the bindings and, stitch by stitch, covering up the plain fabric, working bright patterns. Fig. 336 is intended to show how this is done. The foundation is of twined work and the decorating fillets are passed under by lifting, with or without a needle. This process is extensively practiced by our west coast tribes, and the results are extremely pleasing. The materials most used are quills and bright colored straws, the foundation fabric being of bark or of rushes. The results in such work are generally geometric, in a way corresponding more or less closely with the ground work combination. [Illustration: FIG. 336. Grass embroidery upon the surface of closely impacted, twined basketry. Work of the northwest coast Indians.] A large class of embroideries are applied by like processes, but without reference to the construction of the foundation fabric, as they are also applied to felt and leather. Again, artificially prepared perforations are used, through which the fillets are passed. The results are much less uniformly geometric than where the fabric is followed; yet the mere adding of the figures, stitch by stitch or part by part, is sufficient to impart a large share of geometricity, as may be seen in the buckskin bead work and in the dentalium and quill work of the Indians. Feather embroidery was carried to a high degree of perfection by our ancient aborigines, and the results were perhaps the most brilliant of all these wonderful decorations. I have already shown how feathers are woven in with the warp and woof, and may now give a single illustration of the application of feather work to the surfaces of fabrics. Among the beautiful articles recovered from the tombs of Ancon, Peru, are some much decayed specimens of feather work. In our example delicate feathers of red, blue, and yellow hues are applied to the surface of a coarse cotton fabric by first carefully tying them together in rows at regular distances and afterwards stitching them down, as shown in Fig. 337. The same method is practiced by modern peoples in many parts of the world. Other decorative materials are applied in similar ways by attachment to cords or fillets which are afterwards stitched down. In all this work the geometricity is entirely or nearly uniform with that of the foundation fabrics. Other classes of decoration, drawn work, appliqué, and the like, are not of great importance in aboriginal art and need no additional attention here, as they have but slight bearing upon the development of design. [Illustration: FIG. 337. Feather embroidery of the ancient Peruvians, showing the method of attaching the feathers.] Attached or appended ornaments constitute a most important part of decorative resource. They are less subject to the laws of geometricity, being fixed to surfaces and margins without close reference to the web and woof. They include fringes, tassels, and the multitude of appendable objects, natural and artificial, with which primitive races bedeck their garments and utensils. A somewhat detailed study of this class of ornament is given at the end of the preceding section. _Adventitious features._--Ornament is applied to the surfaces of fabrics by painting and by stamping. These methods of decoration were employed in very early times and probably originated in other branches of art. If the surface features of the textile upon which a design is painted are strongly pronounced, the figures produced with the brush or pencil will tend to follow them, giving a decidedly geometric result. If the surface is smooth the hand is free to follow its natural tendencies, and the results will be analogous in character to designs painted upon pottery, rocks, or skins. In primitive times both the texture of the textiles and the habits of the decorator, acquired in textile work, tended towards the geometric style of delineation, and we find that in work in which the fabric lines are not followed at all the designs are still geometric, and geometric in the same way as are similar designs woven in with the fabric. Illustrations of this are given in the next section. * * * * * I have dwelt at sufficient length upon the character and the tendencies of the peculiar system of embellishment that arises within textile art as the necessary outgrowth of technique, and now proceed to explain the relations of this system to associated art. In the strong forward tendency of the textile system of decoration it has made two conquests of especial importance. In the first place it has subdued and assimilated all those elements of ornament that have happened to enter its realm from without, and in the second place it has imposed its habits and customs upon the decorative systems of all arts with which the textile art has come in contact. GEOMETRICITY IMPOSED UPON ADOPTED ELEMENTS OF DESIGN. At a very early stage of culture most peoples manifest decided artistic tendencies, which are revealed in attempts to depict various devices, life forms, and fancies upon the skin and upon the surfaces of utensils, garments, and other articles and objects. The figures are very often decorative in effect and may be of a trivial nature, but very generally such art is serious and pertains to events or superstitions. The devices employed may be purely conventional or geometric, containing no graphic element whatever; but life forms afford the most natural and satisfactory means of recording, conveying, and symbolizing ideas, and hence preponderate largely. Such forms, on account of their intimate relations with the philosophy of the people, are freely embodied in every art suitable to their employment. As already seen, the peculiar character of textile construction places great difficulties in the way of introducing unsymmetric and complex figures like those of natural objects into fabrics. The idea of so employing them may originally have been suggested by the application of designs in color to the woven surfaces or by resemblances between the simpler conventional life form derivatives and the geometric figures indigenous to the art. At any rate, the idea of introducing life forms into the texture was suggested, and in the course of time a great deal of skill was shown in their delineation, the bolder workmen venturing to employ a wide range of graphic subjects. Now, if we examine these woven forms with reference to the modifications brought about by the textile surveillance, we find that the figures, as introduced in the cloth, do not at all correspond with those executed by ordinary graphic methods, either in degree of elaboration or in truthfulness of expression. They have a style of their own. Each delineative element upon entering the textile realm is forced into those peculiar conventional outlines imposed by the geometric construction, the character of which has already been dwelt upon at considerable length. We find, however, that the degree of convention is not uniform throughout all fabrics, but that it varies with the refinement of the threads or filaments, the compactness of the mesh, the character of the combination, the graphic skill of the artist, and the tendencies of his mind; yet we observe that through all there is still exhibited a distinct and peculiar geometricity. So pronounced is this technical bias that delineations of a particular creature--as, for example, a bird--executed by distant and unrelated peoples, are reduced in corresponding styles of fabric to almost identical shapes. This conventionalizing force is further illustrated by the tendency in textile representation to blot out differences of time and culture, so that when a civilized artisan, capable of realistic pictorial delineation of a high order, introduces a figure into a certain form of coarse fabric he arrives at a result almost identical with that reached by the savage using the same, who has no graphic language beyond the rudest outline. A number of examples may be given illustrating this remarkable power of textile combination over ornament. I select three in which the human figure is presented. One is chosen from Iroquoian art, one from Digger Indian art, and one from the art of the Incas--peoples unequal in grade of culture, isolated geographically, and racially distinct. I have selected specimens in which the parts employed give features of corresponding size, so that comparisons are easily instituted. The example shown in Fig. 338 illustrates a construction peculiar to the wampum belts of the Iroquois and their neighbors, and quite unlike ordinary weaving. It is taken from the middle portion of what is known as the Penn wampum belt. The horizontal series of strands consists of narrow strips of buckskin, through which the opposing series of threads are sewed, holding in place the rows of cylindrical shell beads. Purple beads are employed to develop the figures in a ground of white beads. If the maker of this belt had been required to execute in chalk a drawing depicting brotherly love the results would have been very different. [Illustration: FIG. 338. Figures from the Penn wampum belt, showing the conventional form imposed in bead work.] My second illustration (Fig. 339) is drawn from a superb example of the basketry of the Yokut Indians of California. The two figures form part of a spirally radiating band of ornament, which is shown to good advantage in the small cut. Fig. 340. It is of the coiled style of construction. The design is worked in four colors and the effect is quiet and rich. [Illustration: FIG. 339. Conventional figures from a California Indian basket.] [Illustration: FIG. 340. Basket made by the Yokut Indians of California.] Turning southward from California and passing through many strange lands we find ourselves in Peru, and among a class of remains that bespeak a high grade of culture. The inhabitants of Ancon were wonderfully skilled in the textile art, and thousands of handsome examples have been obtained from their ancient tombs. Among these relics are many neat little workbaskets woven from rushes. One of these, now in the National Museum, is encircled by a decorated belt in which are represented seven human figures woven in black filaments upon a brown ground. The base and rim of the basket are woven in the intertwined combination, but in the decorated belt the style is changed to the plain right angled interlacing, for the reason, no doubt, that this combination was better suited to the development of the intended design. Besides the fundamental series of fillets the weaver resorted to unusual devices in order to secure certain desired results. In the first place the black horizontal series of filaments does not alternate in the simplest way with the brown series, but, where a wide space of the dark color is called for, several of the brown strands are passed over at one step, as in the head and body, and in the wider interspaces the dark strands pass under two or more of the opposing strands. In this way broad areas of color are obtained. It will be observed, however, that the construction is weakened by this modification, and that to remedy the defect two additional extra constructive series of fillets are added. These are of much lighter weight than the main series, that they may not obscure the pattern. Over the dark series they run vertically and over the light obliquely. [Illustration: FIG. 341. Conventional human figures from an ancient Peruvian basket.] It will be seen that the result, notwithstanding all this modification of procedure, is still remarkably like that of the preceding examples, the figures corresponding closely in kind and degree of geometricity. The fact is that in this coarse work refinement of drawing is absolutely unattainable. It appears that the sharply pronounced steps exhibited in the outlines are due to the great width of the fillets used. With the finer threads employed by most nations of moderate culture the stepped effect need not obtrude itself, for smooth outlines and graceful curves are easily attainable; yet, as a rule, even the finer fabrics continue to exhibit in their decorations the pronounced geometric character seen in ruder forms. I present a striking example of this in Fig. 342, a superb piece of Incarian gobelins, in which a gaily costumed personage is worked upon a dark red ground dotted with symbols and strange devices. The work is executed in brilliant colors and in great detail. But with all the facility afforded for the expression of minutely modulated form the straight lines and sharp angles are still present. The traditions of the art were favorable to great geometricity, and the tendencies of the warp and woof and the shape of the spaces to be filled were decidedly in that direction. [Illustration: FIG. 342. Human figure in Peruvian gobelins, showing characteristic textile convention. From chromolithographs published by Reiss and Stübel in The Necropolis of Ancon.] [Illustration: FIG. 343. Human figures from a Peruvian vase, done in free hand, graphic style.] In order that the full force of my remarks may be appreciable to the eye of the reader, I give an additional illustration (Fig. 343). The two figures here shown, although I am not able to say positively that the work is pre-Columbian, were executed by a native artist of about the same stage of culture as was the work of the textile design. These figures are executed in color upon the smooth surface of an earthen vase and illustrate perfectly the peculiar characters of free hand, graphic delineation. Place this and the last figure side by side and we see how vastly different is the work of two artists of equal capacity when executed in the two methods. This figure should also be compared with the embroidered figures shown in Fig. 348. The tendencies to uniformity in textile ornament here illustrated may be observed the world over. Every element entering the art must undergo a similar metamorphosis; hence the remarkable power of this almost universally practiced art upon the whole body of decorative design. [Illustration: FIG. 344. Human figure modified by execution in concentric interlaced style of weaving--1/3.] That the range of results produced by varying styles of weaving and of woven objects may be appreciated, I present some additional examples. Coiled wares, for instance, present decorative phenomena strikingly at variance with those in which there is a rectangular disposition of parts. Instead of the two or more interlacing series of parallel fillets exhibited in the latter style, we have one radiate and one concentric series. The effect of this arrangement upon the introduced human figure is very striking, as will be seen by reference to Fig. 344, which represents a large tray obtained from the Moki Indians. The figure probably represents one of the mythologic personages of the Moki pantheon or some otherwise important priestly functionary, wearing the characteristic headdress of the ceremony in which the plaque was to be used. The work is executed in wicker, stained in such bright tints as were considered appropriate to the various features of the costume. Referring in detail to the shape and arrangement of the parts of the figure, it is apparent that many of the remarkable features are due to constructive peculiarities. The round face, for example, does not refer to the sun or the moon, but results from the concentric weaving. The oblique eyes have no reference to a Mongolian origin, as they only follow the direction of the ray upon which they are woven, and the headdress does not refer to the rainbow or the aurora because it is arched, but is arched because the construction forced it into this shape. The proportion of the figure is not so very bad because the Moki artist did not know better, but because the surface of the tray did not afford room to project the body and limbs. [Illustration: FIG. 345. Figure of a bird painted upon a Zuñi shield, free hand delineation.] Now, it may be further observed that had the figure been placed at one side of the center, extending only from the border to the middle of the tray, an entirely different result would have been reached; but this is better illustrated in a series of bird delineations presented in the following figures. With many tribes the bird is an object of superstitious interest and is introduced freely into all art products suitable for its delineation. It is drawn upon walls, skins, pottery, and various utensils and weapons, especially those directly connected with ceremonies in which the mythical bird is an important factor. The bird form was probably in familiar use long before it was employed in the decoration of basketry. In Fig. 345 I present an ordinary graphic representation. It is copied from a Zuñi shield and is the device of an order or the totem of a clan. The style is quite conventional, as a result of the various constraints surrounding its production. But what a strange metamorphosis takes place when it is presented in the basketmaker's language. Observe the conventional pattern shown upon the surface of a Moki tray (Fig. 346). We have difficulty in recognizing the bird at all, although the conception is identical with the preceding. The positions of the head and legs and the expanded wings and tail correspond as closely as possible, but delineation is hampered by technique. The peculiar construction barely permits the presentation of a recognizable life form, and permits it in a particular way, which will be understood by a comparison with the treatment of the human figure in Fig. 344. In that case the interlaced combination gives relievo results, characterized by wide, radiating ribs and narrow, inconspicuous, concentric lines, which cross the ribs in long steps. The power of expression lies almost wholly with the concentric series, and detail must in a great measure follow the concentric lines. In the present case (Fig. 346) this is reversed and lines employed in expressing forms are radiate. [Illustration: FIG. 346. Figure of a bird executed in a coiled Moki tray, textile delineation.] The precise effect of this difference of construction upon a particular feature may be shown by the introduction of another illustration. In Fig. 347 we have a bird woven in a basket of the interlaced style. We see with what ease the long sharp bill and the slender tongue (shown by a red filament between the two dark mandibles) are expressed. In the other case the construction is such that the bill, if extended in the normal direction, is broad and square at the end, and the tongue, instead of lying between the mandibles, must run across the bill, totally at variance with the truth; in this case the tongue is so represented, the light vertical band seen in the cut being a yellow stripe. It will be seen that the two representations are very unlike each other, not because of differences in the conception and not wholly on account of the style of weaving, but rather because the artist chose to extend one across the whole surface of the utensil and to confine the other to one side of the center. [Illustration: FIG. 347. Figure of a bird woven in interlaced wicker at one side of the center.] It is clear, therefore, from the preceding observations that the convention of woven life forms varies with the kind of weaving, with the shape of the object, with the position upon the object, and with the shape of the space occupied, as well as with the inherited style of treatment and with the capacity of the artist concerned. These varied forces and influences unite in the metamorphosis of all the incoming elements of textile embellishment. It will be of interest to examine somewhat closely the modifications produced in pictorial motives introduced through superstructural and adventitious agencies. We are accustomed, at this age of the world, to see needlework employed successfully in the delineation of graphic forms and observe that even the Indian, under the tutelage of the European, reproduces in a more or less realistic way the forms of vegetal and animal life. As a result we find it difficult to realize the simplicity and conservatism of primitive art. The intention of the primitive artist was generally not to depict nature, but to express an idea or decorate a space, and there was no strong reason why the figures should not submit to the conventionalizing tendencies of the art. I have already shown that embroidered designs, although not from necessity confined to geometric outlines, tend to take a purely geometric character from the fabric upon which they are executed, as well as from the mechanical processes of stitching. This is well shown in Fig. 348, a fine specimen given by Wiener in his work Pérou et Bolive. [Illustration: FIG. 348. Embroidery upon a cotton net in which the textile combinations are followed step by step. Ancient Peruvian work.] A life form worked upon a net does not differ essentially from the same subject woven in with the web and woof. The reason is found in the fact that in embroidery the workman was accustomed from the first to follow the geometric combination of the foundation fabric step by step, and later in life delination he pursued the same method. It would seem natural, however, that when the foundation fabric does not exhibit well marked geometric characters, as in compactly woven canvas, the needlework would assume free hand characters and follow the curves and irregularities of the natural object depicted; but such is not the case in purely aboriginal work. An example of embroidery obtained from an ancient grave at Ancon, Peru, is shown in Fig. 349. A piece of brown cotton canvas is embellished with a border of bird figures in bright colored wool thread. The lines of the figures do not obey the web and woof strictly, as the lines are difficult to follow, but the geometric character is as perfectly preserved as if the design were woven in the goods. [Illustration: FIG. 349. Embroidery in which the foundation fabric is not followed accurately, but which exhibits the full textile geometricity. Ancient Peruvian work.] [Illustration: FIG. 350. Design painted in color upon a woven surface, exhibiting the full degree of geometric convention. Ancient Peruvian work. Copied from The Necropolis of Ancon.] So habit and association carry the geometric system into adventitious decoration. When the ancient Peruvian executed a design in color upon a woven surface (Fig. 350), using a pencil or brush, the result was hardly less subject to textile restraint. As a matter of course, since there are two distinct styles of decorative design--the textile and the free hand--there exist intermediate forms partaking of the character of both; but it is nevertheless clear that the textile system transforms or greatly modifies all nature motives associated with it, whether introduced into the fabric or applied to its surface. In countries where the textile art is unimportant and the textile system of decoration does not obtrude itself, free hand methods may prevail to such an extent that the geometric influence is but little felt. The Haidah Indians, for example, paint designs with great freedom and skill, and those applied to woven surfaces are identical with those executed upon skins, wood, and stone, but this art is doubtless much modified by the means and methods of Europeans. Our studies should be confined wholly to pure indigenous art. EXTENSION OF TEXTILE ORNAMENT TO OTHER FORMS OF ART. I have now dwelt at sufficient length upon the character of the textile system of ornament and have laid especial stress upon the manner in which it is interwoven with the technical constitution of the art. I have illustrated the remarkable power of the art by which decorative elements from without, coming once within the magic influence, are seized upon and remodeled in accordance with the laws of textile combination. Pursuing the investigation still further it is found that the dominion of the textile system is not limited to the art, but extends to other arts. Like a strong race of men it is not to be confined to its own original habitat, but spreads to other realms, stamping its own habits and character upon whatever happens to come within its reach. Its influence is felt throughout the whole range of those arts with which the esthetic sense of man seeks to associate ideas of beauty. It is necessary, before closing this paper, to examine briefly the character and extent of this influence and to describe in some detail the agencies through which the results are accomplished. First and most important are the results of direct transmission. House building, or architecture as it is called in the higher stages, is in primitive times to a great extent textile; as culture develops, other materials and other systems of construction are employed, and the resultant forms vary accordingly; but textile characters are especially strong and persistent in the matter of ornament, and survive all changes, howsoever complete. In a similar way other branches of art differentiated in material and function from the parent art inherit many characters of form and ornament conceived in the textile stage. It may be difficult to say with reference to any particular example of design that it had a textile origin, for there may be multiple origins to the same or to closely corresponding forms; but we may assert in a general way of the great body of geometric ornament that it owes something--if not its inspiration, its modes of expression--to the teachings of the textile system. This appears reasonable when we consider that the weaver's art, as a medium of esthetic ideas, had precedence in time over nearly all competitors. Being first in the field it stood ready on the birth of new forms of art, whether directly related or not, to impose its characters upon them. What claim can architecture, sculpture, or ceramics have upon the decorative conceptions of the Digger Indians, or even upon those of the Zuñi or Moki? The former have no architecture, sculpture, or ceramics; but their system of decoration, as we have seen, is highly developed. The Pueblo tribes at their best have barely reached the stage at which esthetic ideas are associated with building; yet classic art has not produced a set of geometric motives more chaste or varied. These examples of the development of high forms of decoration during the very early stages of the arts are not isolated. Others are observed in other countries, and it is probable that if we could lift the veil and peer into the far prehistoric stages of the world's greatest cultures the same condition and order would be revealed. It is no doubt true that all of the shaping arts in the fullness of their development have given rise to decorative features peculiar to themselves; for construction, whether in stone, clay, wood, or metal, in their rigid conditions, exhibits characters unknown before, many of which tend to give rise to ornament. But this ornament is generally only applicable to the art in which it develops, and is not transferable by natural processes--as of a parent to its offspring--as are the esthetic features of the weaver's art. Besides the direct transmission of characters and forms as suggested in a preceding paragraph, there are many less direct but still efficacious methods of transfer by means of which various arts acquire textile decorative features, as will be seen by the following illustrations. Japanese art is celebrated for its exquisite decorative design. Upon superb works of porcelain we have skillful representations of subjects taken from nature and from mythology, which are set with perfect taste upon fields or within borders of elaborate geometric design. If we should ask how such motives came to be employed in ceramic decoration, the answer would be given that they were selected and employed because they were regarded as fitting and beautiful by a race of decorators whose taste is well nigh infallible. But this explanation, however satisfactory as applied to individual examples of modern art, is not at all applicable to primitive art, for the mind of man was not primarily conscious of the beauty or fitness of decorative elements, nor did he think of using them independently of the art to which they were indigenous. Now the ceramic art gives rise to comparatively few elements of decoration, and must therefore acquire the great body of its decorative motives from other arts by some process not primarily dependent upon the exercise of judgment or taste, and yet not by direct inheritance, as the techniques of the two arts are wholly distinct. Textile and fictile arts are, in their earlier stages, to a large extent, vessel making arts, the one being functionally the offshoot of the other. The textile art is the parent, and, as I have already shown, develops within itself a geometric system of ornament. The fictile art is the offshoot and has within itself no predilection for decoration. It is dependent and plastic. Its forms are to a great extent modeled and molded within the textile shapes and acquire automatically some of the decorative surface characters of the mold. This is the beginning of the transfer, and as time goes on other methods are suggested by which elements indigenous to the one art are transferred to the other. Thus we explain the occurrence, the constant recurrence of certain primary decorative motives in primitive ceramics. The herring bone, the checker, the guilloche, and the like are greatly the heritage of the textile art. Two forms derived from textile surfaces are illustrated in Figs. 351 and 352. In the first example shown, herring bone patterns appear as the result of textile combination, and in the second a triangular checker is produced in the same way. In Fig. 352 we see the result of copying these patterns in incised lines upon soft clay. [Illustration: FIG. 351. Herring bone and checker patterns produced in textile combinations.] [Illustration: FIG. 352. Herring bone and checker figures in fictile forms transferred from the textile.] Again, the ancient potter, who was in the habit of modeling his wares within baskets, seems to have conceived the idea of building his vessels by coiling just as he built his baskets. The surface exhibits coiled ridges like basketry, as shown in Fig. 353, and the textile character was further imposed upon the clay by marking these coils with the thumb and with implements to give the effect of the transverse series of filaments, and the geometric color patterns of the basketry were reproduced in incised lines. When these peoples came to paint their wares it was natural that the colored patterns native to the basketry should also be reproduced, and many more or less literal transfers by copying are to be found. A fine example of these painted textile designs is shown in Fig. 354. It is executed in a masterly style upon a handsome vase of the white ware of ancient Tusayan. Not only are the details reproduced with all their geometric exactness, but the arrangement of the designs upon the vessel is the same as in the textile original. Nine-tenths of the more archaic, Pueblo, ceramic, ornamental designs are traceable to the textile art, and all show the influence of textile convention. [Illustration: FIG. 353. Earthen vase built by coiling, exhibiting decorative characters derived from basketry.] [Illustration: FIG. 354. Ceramic ornament copied literally from a textile original.] Another peculiar class of transfers of a somewhat more indirect nature may be noticed. All the more advanced American nations were very fond of modeling the human form in clay, a large percentage of vessels having some trace of the human form or physiognomy. Now, in many cases the costume of the personage represented in the clay is also imitated, and generally in color, the details of the fabrics receiving their full share of attention. Such an example, from a sepulcher at Ancon, is shown in Fig. 355. Here the poncho or mantle thrown across the shoulders falls down upon the body in front and behind and the stripes and conventional fishes are accurately reproduced. In this way both style and matter of the textile decoration are introduced into the ceramic art. [Illustration: FIG. 355. Textile patterns transferred to pottery through the copying of costume. From The Necropolis of Ancon, by Reiss and Stübel, Pl. 94.] It will be seen by these illustrations that there are many natural methods, automatic or semiautomatic in character, by which the one art receives aid from the other; that in the beginning of the transfer of textile ornament to fictile forms the process is purely mechanical, and that it is continued automatically without any very decided exercise of judgment or taste. As a result, these borrowed decorations are generally quite as consistent and appropriate as if developed within the art itself. Later in the course of progress the potter escapes in a measure from this narrow groove and elaborates his designs with more freedom, being governed still to a certain extent by the laws of instinctive and automatic procedure. When, finally, intellect assumes to carry on the work independently of these laws, decoration tends to become debased. Turning to other branches of art, what traces do we find of the transfer to them of textile features? Take, for example, sculpture. In the wood carving of the Polynesians we observe a most elaborate system of decoration, more or less geometric in character. We do not need to look a second time to discover a striking likeness to the textile system, and we ask, Is it also derived from a textile source? In the first place let us seek within the art a reason for the peculiar forms. In carving wood and in tracing figures upon it with pointed tools the tendency would certainly be towards straight lines and formal combinations; but in this work there would be a lack of uniformity in execution and of persistency in narrow lines of combination, such as result from the constant necessity of counting and spacing in the textile art. In the presentation of natural forms curved lines are called for, and there is nothing inherent in the carver's art to forbid the turning of such lines with the graver or knife. Graphic art would be realistic to an extent regulated by the skill and habits of the artist. But, in reality, the geometric character of this work is very pronounced, and we turn naturally toward the textile art to ask whether in some way that art has not exercised an influence. The textile arts of these peoples are highly developed and were doubtless so in a degree from very early times, and must have had a close relation with the various arts, and especially so in the matter of ornament. Specific examples may be cited showing the intimacy of wood carving to textilia. Bows, spears, arrows, &c. are bound with textile materials to increase their strength. Knives and other weapons are covered with textile sheaths and handles of certain utensils are lashed on with twisted cords. In ceremonial objects these textile features are elaborated for ornament and the characteristic features of this ornament are transferred to associated surfaces of wood and stone by the graver. A most instructive illustration is seen in the ceremonial adzes so numerous in museums (Fig. 356). The cords used primarily in attaching the haft are, after loss of function, elaborately plaited and interwoven until they become an important feature and assume the character of decoration. The heavy wooden handles are elaborately carved, and the suggestions of figures given by the interlaced cords are carried out in such detail that at a little distance it is impossible to say where the real textile surface ceases and the sculptured portion begins. All things considered, I regard it as highly probable that much of the geometric character exhibited in Polynesian decoration is due to textile dominance. That these peoples are in the habit of employing textile designs in non-textile arts is shown in articles of costume, such as the tapa cloths, made from the bark of the mulberry tree, which are painted or stamped in elaborate geometric patterns. This transfer is also a perfectly natural one, as the ornament is applied to articles having functions identical with the woven stuffs in which the patterns originate, and, besides, the transfer is accomplished by means of stamps themselves textile. Fig. 357 illustrates the construction of these stamps and indicates just how the textile character is acquired. [Illustration: FIG. 356. Ceremonial adz, with carved ornament imitating textile wrapping. Polynesian work.] Textile materials are very generally associated with the human figure in art, and thus sculpture, which deals chiefly with the human form, becomes familiar with geometric motives and acquires them. Through sculpture these motives enter architecture. But textile decoration pervades architecture before the sculptor's chisel begins to carve ornament in stone and before architecture has developed of itself the rudiments of a system of surface embellishment. Textile art in mats, covers, shelters, and draperies is intimately associated with floors and walls of houses, and the textile devices are in time transferred to the stone and plaster. The wall of an ancient Pueblo estufa, or ceremonial chamber, built in the pre-esthetic period of architecture, antedating, in stage of culture, the first known step in Egyptian art, is encircled by a band of painted figures, borrowed, like those of the pottery, from a textile source. The doorway or rather entrance to the rude hovel of a Navajo Indian is closed by a blanket of native make, unsurpassed in execution and exhibiting conventional designs of a high order. [Illustration: FIG. 357. Portion of a tapa stamp, showing its subtextile character. A palm leaf is cut to the desired shape and the patterns are sewed in or stitched on.] [Illustration: FIG. 358. Design in stucco, exhibiting textile characters.] The ancient "hall of the arabesques" at Chimu, Peru, is decorated in elaborate designs that could only have arisen in the textile art (Fig. 358), and other equally striking examples are to be found in other American countries. The classic surface decorations known and used in Oriental countries from time immemorial prevailed in indigenous American architecture at a stage of culture lower than any known stage of classic art. It may appear that I have advocated too strongly the claims of the textile art to the parentage of geometric ornament and that the conclusions reached are not entirely satisfactory, but I have endeavored so to present the varied phenomena of the art that the student may readily reach deductions of his own. A correspondingly careful study of other branches of art will probably enable us finally to form a just estimate of the relative importance of the forces and tendencies concerned in the evolution of decoration. * * * * * INDEX Alaskan Indians, illustration of ornamentation by 199 Ancon, Peru, examples of ornamentation from graves at 212, 230, 231, 236, 243, 248 Apache, illustrations of ornamentation by 198, 213, 223 British Guiana Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 217 Chimu, Peru, ornamentation of "hall of arabesques" at 251, 252 Clallam Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 207 Color in textile art 201, 202 Color phenomena in textile ornament 215-232 Form in textile art and its relation to ornament, with illustrations from Indian work 196-201 Geometric design, relations of, to textile ornament 202-244 Holmes, W. H. paper by, on textile art in its relation to the development of form and ornament 189-252 Klamath Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 208, 209, 227 McCloud River Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 221 Moki, illustrations of ornamentation by 197, 205, 224, 225, 226, 238, 240 Northwest Coast Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 213, 218, 227, 230 Penn wampum belt 233 Peruvians, ancient, illustrations of ornamentation by 211, 212, 214, 228, 230, 231, 235, 236, 237, 242, 243, 248 Pima Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 220 Piute Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 198, 205 Polynesian ornamentation, illustrations of 249, 250 Seminole Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 207 Textile art in its relation to the development of form and ornament, paper by W. H. Holmes on 189-252 Tule River Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 219 Tusayan ornament, illustrations of 247, 248 Wiener, cited 242 Yokut Indians, illustrations of ornamentation by 233, 234 Zuñi, illustrations of ornamentation by 239 * * * * * 
3648	----	THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT By WINSTON CHURCHILL Volume 3. CHAPTER XV Occasionally the art of narrative may be improved by borrowing the method of the movies. Another night has passed, and we are called upon to imagine the watery sunlight of a mild winter afternoon filtering through bare trees on the heads of a multitude. A large portion of Hampton Common is black with the people of sixteen nationalities who have gathered there, trampling down the snow, to listen wistfully and eagerly to a new doctrine of salvation. In the centre of this throng on the bandstand--reminiscent of concerts on sultry, summer nights--are the itinerant apostles of the cult called Syndicalism, exhorting by turns in divers tongues. Antonelli had spoken, and many others, when Janet, impelled by a craving not to be denied, had managed to push her way little by little from the outskirts of the crowd until now she stood almost beneath the orator who poured forth passionate words in a language she recognized as Italian. Her curiosity was aroused, she was unable to classify this tall man whose long and narrow face was accentuated by a pointed brown beard, whose lips gleamed red as he spoke, whose slim hands were eloquent. The artist as propagandist--the unsuccessful artist with more facility than will. The nose was classic, and wanted strength; the restless eyes that at times seemed fixed on her were smouldering windows of a burning house: the fire that stirred her was also consuming him. Though he could have been little more than five and thirty, his hair was thinned and greying at the temples. And somehow emblematic of this physiognomy and physique, summing it up and expressing it in terms of apparel, were the soft collar and black scarf tied in a flowing bow. Janet longed to know what he was saying. His phrases, like music, played on her emotions, and at last, when his voice rose in crescendo at the climax of his speech, she felt like weeping. "Un poeta!" a woman beside her exclaimed. "Who is he?" Janet asked. "Rolfe," said the woman. "But he's an Italian?" The woman shrugged her shoulders. "It is his name that is all I know." He had begun to speak again, and now in English, with an enunciation, a distinctive manner of turning his phrases new to such gatherings in America, where labour intellectuals are little known; surprising to Janet, diverting her attention, at first, from the meaning of his words. "Labour," she heard, "labour is the creator of all wealth, and wealth belongs to the creator. The wage system must be abolished. You, the creators, must do battle against these self-imposed masters until you shall come into your own. You who toil miserably for nine hours and produce, let us say, nine dollars of wealth--do you receive it? No, what is given you is barely enough to keep the slave and the slave's family alive! The master, the capitalist, seizes the rightful reward of your labour and spends it on luxuries, on automobiles and fine houses and women, on food he can't eat, while you are hungry. Yes, you are slaves," he cried, "because you submit like slaves." He waited, motionless and scornful, for the noise to die down. "Since I have come here to Hampton, I have heard some speak of the state, others of the unions. Yet the state is your enemy, it will not help you to gain your freedom. The legislature has shortened your hours,--but why? Because the politicians are afraid of you, and because they think you will be content with a little. And now that the masters have cut your wages, the state sends its soldiers to crush you. Only fifty cents, they say--only fifty cents most of you miss from your envelopes. What is fifty cents to them? But I who speak to you have been hungry, I know that fifty cents will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the neck of pork, or six quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will help pay the rent of the rat-holes where you live." Once more he was interrupted by angry shouts of approval. "And the labour unions, have they aided you? Why not? I will tell you why--because they are the servile instruments of the masters. The unions say that capital has rights, bargain with it, but for us there can be only one bargain, complete surrender of the tools to the workers. For the capitalists are parasites who suck your blood and your children's blood. From now on there can be no compromise, no truce, no peace until they are exterminated. It is war." War! In Janet's soul the word resounded like a tocsin. And again, as when swept along East Street with the mob, that sense of identity with these people and their wrongs, of submergence with them in their cause possessed her. Despite her ancestry, her lot was cast with them. She, too, had been precariously close to poverty, had known the sordidness of life; she, too, and Lise and Hannah had been duped and cheated of the fairer things. Eagerly she had drunk in the vocabulary of that new and terrible philosophy. The master class must be exterminated! Was it not true, if she had been of that class, that Ditmar would not have dared to use and deceive her? Why had she never thought of these things before?... The light was beginning to fade, the great meeting was breaking up, and yet she lingered. At the foot of the bandstand steps, conversing with a small group of operatives that surrounded him, she perceived the man who had just spoken. And as she stood hesitating, gazing at him, a desire to hear more, to hear all of this creed he preached, that fed the fires in her soul, urged her forward. Her need, had she known it, was even greater than that of these toilers whom she now called comrades. Despite some qualifying reserve she felt, and which had had to do with the redness of his lips, he attracted her. He had a mind, an intellect, he must possess stores of the knowledge for which she thirsted; he appeared to her as one who had studied and travelled, who had ascended heights and gained the wider view denied her. A cynical cosmopolitanism would have left her cold, but here, apparently, was a cultivated man burning with a sense of the world's wrongs. Ditmar, who was to have led her out of captivity, had only thrust her the deeper into bondage.... She joined the group, halting on the edge of it, listening. Rolfe was arguing with a man about the labour unions, but almost at once she knew she had fixed his attention. From time to time, as he talked, his eyes sought hers boldly, and in their dark pupils were tiny points of light that stirred and confused her, made her wonder what was behind them, in his soul. When he had finished his argument, he singled her out. "You do not work in the mills?" he asked. "No, I'm a stenographer--or I was one." "And now?" "I've given up my place." "You want to join us?" "I was interested in what you said. I never heard anything like it before." He looked at her intently. "Come, let us walk a little way," he said. And she went along by his side, through the Common, feeling a neophyte's excitement in the freemasonry, the contempt for petty conventions of this newly achieved doctrine of brotherhood. "I will give you things to read, you shall be one of us." "I'm afraid I shouldn't understand them," Janet replied. "I've read so little." "Oh, you will understand," he assured her, easily. "There is too much learning, too much reason and intelligence in the world, too little impulse and feeling, intuition. Where do reason and intelligence lead us? To selfishness, to thirst for power-straight into the master class. They separate us from the mass of humanity. No, our fight is against those who claim more enlightenment than their fellowmen, who control the public schools and impose reason on our children, because reason leads to submission, makes us content with our station in life. The true syndicalist is an artist, a revolutionist!" he cried. Janet found this bewildering and yet through it seemed to shine for her a gleam of light. Her excitement grew. Never before had she been in the presence of one who talked like this, with such assurance and ease. And the fact that he despised knowledge, yet possessed it, lent him glamour. "But you have studied!" she exclaimed. "Oh yes, I have studied," he replied, with a touch of weariness, "only to learn that life is simple, after all, and that what is needed for the social order is simple. We have only to take what belongs to us, we who work, to follow our feelings, our inclinations." "You would take possession of the mills?" she asked. "Yes," he said quickly, "of all wealth, and of the government. There would be no government--we should not need it. A little courage is all that is necessary, and we come into our own. You are a stenographer, you say. But you--you are not content, I can see it in your face, in your eyes. You have cause to hate them, too, these masters, or you would not have been herein this place, to-day. Is it not so?" She shivered, but was silent. "Is it not so?" he repeated. "They have wronged you, too, perhaps,--they have wronged us all, but some are too stupid, too cowardly to fight and crush them. Christians and slaves submit. The old religion teaches that the world is cruel for most of us, but if we are obedient and humble we shall be rewarded in heaven." Rolfe laughed. "The masters approve of that teaching. They would not have it changed. But for us it is war. We'll strike and keep on striking, we'll break their machinery, spoil their mills and factories, and drive them out. And even if we do not win at once, it is better to suffer and die fighting than to have the life ground out of us--is it not?" "Yes, it is better!" she agreed. The passion in her voice did not escape him. "Some day, perhaps sooner than we think, we shall have the true Armageddon, the general strike, when the last sleeping toiler shall have aroused himself from his lethargy to rise up and come into his inheritance." He seemed to detach himself from her, his eyes became more luminous. "`Like unseen music in the night,'--so Sorel writes about it. They may scoff at it, the wise ones, but it will come. `Like music in the night!' You respond to that!" Again she was silent. They had walked on, through familiar streets that now seemed strange. "You respond--I can tell," he said. "And yet, you are not like these others, like me, even. You are an American. And yet you are not like most of your countrywomen." "Why do you say that?" "I will tell you. Because they are cold, most of them, and trivial, they do not feel. But you--you can feel, you can love and hate. You look calm and cold, but you are not--I knew it when I looked at you, when you came up to me." She did not know whether to resent or welcome his clairvoyance, his assumption of intimacy, his air of appropriation. But her curiosity was tingling. "And you?" she asked. "Your name is Rolfe, isn't it?" He assented. "And yours?" She told him. "You have been in America long--your family?" "Very long," she said. "But you speak Italian, and Rolfe isn't an Italian name." "My father was an Englishman, an artist, who lived in Italy--my mother a peasant woman from Lombardy, such as these who come to work in the mills. When she was young she was beautiful--like a Madonna by an old master." "An old master?" "The old masters are the great painters who lived in Italy four hundred years ago. I was named after one of them--the greatest. I am called Leonard. He was Leonardo da Vinci." The name, as Rolfe pronounced it, stirred her. And art, painting! It was a realm unknown to her, and yet the very suggestion of it evoked yearnings. And she recalled a picture in the window of Hartmann's book-store, a coloured print before which she used to stop on her way to and from the office, the copy of a landscape by a California artist. The steep hillside in the foreground was spread with the misty green of olive trees, and beyond--far beyond--a snow-covered peak, like some high altar, flamed red in the sunset. She had not been able to express her feeling for this picture, it had filled her with joy and sadness. Once she had ventured to enter and ask its price--ten dollars. And then came a morning when she had looked for it, and it was gone. "And your father--did he paint beautiful pictures, too?" "Ah, he was too much of a socialist. He was always away whey I was a child, and after my mother's death he used to take me with him. When I was seventeen we went to Milan to take part in the great strike, and there I saw the soldiers shooting down the workers by the hundreds, putting them in prison by the thousands. Then I went to live in England, among the socialists there, and I learned the printer's trade. When I first came to this country I was on a labour paper in New York, I set up type, I wrote articles, and once in a while I addressed meetings on the East Side. But even before I left London I had read a book on Syndicalism by one of the great Frenchmen, and after a while I began to realize that the proletariat would never get anywhere through socialism." "The proletariat?" The word was new to Janet's ear. "The great mass of the workers, the oppressed, the people you saw here to-day. Socialism is not for them. Socialism--political socialism --betrays them into the hands of the master class. Direct action is the thing, the general strike, war,--the new creed, the new religion that will bring salvation. I joined the Industrial Workers of the World that is the American organization of Syndicalism. I went west, to Colorado and California and Oregon, I preached to the workers wherever there was an uprising, I met the leaders, Ritter and Borkum and Antonelli and Jastro and Nellie Bond, I was useful to them, I understand Syndicalism as they do not. And now we are here, to sow the seed in the East. Come," he said, slipping his arm through hers, "I will take you to Headquarters, I will enlist you, you shall be my recruit. I will give you the cause, the religion you need." She longed to go, and yet she drew back, puzzled. The man fired and fascinated her, but there were reservations, apprehensions concerning him, felt rather than reasoned. Because of her state of rebellion, of her intense desire to satisfy in action the emotion aroused by a sense of wrong, his creed had made a violent appeal, but in his voice, in his eyes, in his manner she had been quick to detect a personal, sexual note that disturbed and alarmed her, that implied in him a lack of unity. "I can't, to-night," she said. "I must go home--my mother is all alone. But I want to help, I want to do something." They were standing on a corner, under a street lamp. And she averted her eyes from his glance. "Then come to-morrow," he said eagerly. "You know where Headquarters is, in the Franco-Belgian Hall?" "What could I do?" she asked. "You? You could help in many ways--among the women. Do you know what picketing is?" "You mean keeping the operatives out of the mills?" "Yes, in the morning, when they go to work. And out of the Chippering Mill, especially. Ditmar, the agent of that mill, is the ablest of the lot, I'm told. He's the man we want to cripple." "Cripple!" exclaimed Janet. "Oh, I don't mean to harm him personally." Rolfe did not seem to notice her tone. "But he intends to crush the strike, and I understand he's importing scabs here to finish out an order--a big order. If it weren't for him, we'd have an easier fight; he stiffens up the others. There's always one man like that, in every place. And what we want to do is to make him shut down, especially." "I see," said Janet. "You'll come to Headquarters?" Rolfe repeated. "Yes, I'll come, to-morrow," she promised. After she had left him she walked rapidly through several streets, not heeding her direction--such was the driving power of the new ideas he had given her. Certain words and phrases he had spoken rang in her head, and like martial music kept pace with her steps. She strove to remember all that he had said, to grasp its purport; and because it seemed recondite, cosmic, it appealed to her and excited her the more. And he, the man himself, had exerted a kind of hypnotic force that partially had paralyzed her faculties and aroused her fears while still in his presence: her first feeling in escaping had been one of relief--and then she began to regret not having gone to Headquarters. Hadn't she been foolish? In the retrospect, the elements in him that had disturbed her were less disquieting, his intellectual fascination was enhanced: and in that very emancipation from cant and convention, characteristic of the Order to which he belonged, had lain much of his charm. She had attracted him as a woman, there was no denying that. He, who had studied and travelled and known life in many lands, had discerned in her, Janet Bumpus, some quality to make him desire her, acknowledge her as a comrade! Tremblingly she exulted in the possession of that quality --whatever it might be. Ditmar, too, had perceived it! He had not known how to value it. With this thought came a flaming suggestion--Ditmar should see her with this man Rolfe, she would make him scorch with the fires of jealousy. Ditmar should know that she had joined his enemies, the Industrial Workers of the World. Of the world! Her shackles had been cast off at last!... And then, suddenly, she felt tired. The prospect of returning to Fillmore Street, to the silent flat--made the more silent by her mother's tragic presence--overwhelmed her. The ache in her heart began to throb again. How could she wait until the dawn of another day?... In the black hours of the morning, with the siren dinning in her ears a hoarse call to war, Janet leaped from her bed and began to dress. There is a degree of cold so sharp that it seems actually to smell, and as she stole down the stairs and out of the door she shivered, assailed by a sense of loneliness and fear. Yet an insistent voice urged her on, whispering that to remain at home, inactive, was to go mad; salvation and relief lay in plunging into the struggle, in contributing her share toward retribution and victory. Victory! In Faber Street the light of the electric arcs tinged the snow with blue, and the flamboyant advertisements of breakfast foods, cigarettes and ales seemed but the mockery of an activity now unrealizable. The groups and figures scattered here and there farther down the street served only to exaggerate its wide emptiness. What could these do, what could she accomplish against the mighty power of the mills? Gradually, as she stood gazing, she became aware of a beating of feet upon the snow; over her shoulder she caught the gleam of steel. A squad of soldiers muffled in heavy capes and woolen caps was marching along the car-tracks. She followed them. At the corner of West Street, in obedience to a sharp command she saw them halt, turn, and advance toward a small crowd gathered there. It scattered, only to collect again when the soldiers had passed on. Janet joined them. She heard men cursing the soldiers. The women stood a little aside; some were stamping to keep warm, and one, with a bundle in her arms which Janet presently perceived to be a child, sank down on a stone step and remained there, crouching, resigned. "We gotta right to stay here, in the street. We gotta right to live, I guess." The girl's teeth were chattering, but she spoke with such vehemence and spirit as to attract Janet's attention. "You worked in the Chippering, like me--yes?" she asked. Janet nodded. The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face. She smiled, and her white teeth were fairly dazzling. Impulsively she thrust her arm through Janet's. "You American--you comrade, you come to help?" she asked. "I've never done any picketing." "I showa you." The dawn had begun to break, revealing little by little the outlines of cruel, ugly buildings, the great mill looming darkly at the end of the street, and Janet found it scarcely believable that only a little while ago she had hurried thither in the mornings with anticipation and joy in her heart, eager to see Ditmar, to be near him! The sight of two policemen hurrying toward them from the direction of the canal aroused her. With sullen murmurs the group started to disperse, but the woman with the baby, numb with cold, was slow in rising, and one of the policemen thrust out his club threateningly. "Move on, you can't sit here," he said. With a lithe movement like the spring of a cat the Italian girl flung herself between them--a remarkable exhibition of spontaneous inflammability; her eyes glittered like the points of daggers, and, as though they had been dagger points, the policeman recoiled a little. The act, which was absolutely natural, superb, electrified Janet, restored in an instant her own fierceness of spirit. The girl said something swiftly, in Italian, and helped the woman to rise, paying no more attention to the policeman. Janet walked on, but she had not covered half the block before she was overtaken by the girl; her anger had come and gone in a flash, her vivacity had returned, her vitality again found expression in an abundant good nature and good will. She asked Janet's name, volunteering the information that her own was Gemma, that she was a "fine speeder" in the Chippering Mill, where she had received nearly seven dollars a week. She had been among the first to walk out. "Why did you walk out?" asked Janet curiously. "Why? I get mad when I know that my wages is cut. I want the money--I get married." "Is that why you are striking?" asked Janet curiously. "That is why--of course." "Then you haven't heard any of the speakers? They say it is for a cause --the workers are striking for freedom, some day they will own the mills. I heard a man named Rolfe yesterday--" The girl gave her a radiant smile. "Rolfe! It is beautiful, what Rolfe said. You think so? I think so. I am for the cause, I hate the capitalist. We will win, and get more money, until we have all the money. We will be rich. And you, why do you strike?" "I was mad, too," Janet replied simply. "Revenge!" exclaimed the girl, glittering again. "I understan'. Here come the scabs! Now I show you." The light had grown, but the stores were still closed and barred. Along Faber Street, singly or in little groups, anxiously glancing around them, behind them, came the workers who still clung desperately to their jobs. Gemma fairly darted at two girls who sought the edge of the sidewalk, seizing them by the sleeves, and with piteous expressions they listened while she poured forth on them a stream of Italian. After a moment one tore herself away, but the other remained and began to ask questions. Presently she turned and walked slowly away in the direction from which she had come. "I get her," exclaimed Gemma, triumphantly. "What did you say?" asked Janet. "Listen--that she take the bread from our mouths, she is traditore--scab. We strike for them, too, is it not so?" "It is no use for them to work for wages that starve. We win the strike, we get good wages for all. Here comes another--she is a Jewess--you try, you spik." Janet failed with the Jewess, who obstinately refused to listen or reply as the two walked along with her, one on either side. Near West Street they spied a policeman, and desisted. Up and down Faber Street, everywhere, the game went on: but the police were watchful, and once a detachment of militia passed. The picketing had to be done quickly, in the few minutes that were to elapse before the gates should close. Janet's blood ran faster, she grew excited, absorbed, bolder as she perceived the apologetic attitude of the "scabs" and she began to despise them with Gemma's heartiness; and soon she had lost all sense of surprise at finding herself arguing, pleading, appealing to several women in turn, fluently, in the language of the industrial revolution. Some--because she was an American--examined her with furtive curiosity; others pretended not to understand, accelerating their pace. She gained no converts that morning, but one girl, pale, anemic with high cheek bones evidently a Slav--listened to her intently. "I gotta right to work," she said. "Not if others will starve because you work," objected Janet. "If I don't work I starve," said the girl. "No, the Committee will take care of you--there will be food for all. How much do you get now?" "Four dollar and a half." "You starve now," Janet declared contemptuously. "The quicker you join us, the sooner you'll get a living wage." The girl was not quite convinced. She stood for a while undecided, and then ran abruptly off in the direction of West Street. Janet sought for others, but they had ceased coming; only the scattered, prowling picketers remained. Over the black rim of the Clarendon Mill to the eastward the sky had caught fire. The sun had risen, the bells were ringing riotously, resonantly in the clear, cold air. Another working day had begun. Janet, benumbed with cold, yet agitated and trembling because of her unwonted experience of the morning, made her way back to Fillmore Street. She was prepared to answer any questions her mother might ask; as they ate their dismal breakfast, and Hannah asked no questions, she longed to blurt out where she had been, to announce that she had cast her lot with the strikers, the foreigners, to defend them and declare that these were not to blame for the misfortunes of the family, but men like Ditmar and the owners of the mills, the capitalists. Her mother, she reflected bitterly, had never once betrayed any concern as to her shattered happiness. But gradually, as from time to time she glanced covertly at Hannah's face, her resentment gave way to apprehension. Hannah did not seem now even to be aware of her presence; this persistent apathy filled her with a dread she did not dare to acknowledge. "Mother!" she cried at last. Hannah started. "Have you finished?" she asked. "Yes." "You've b'en out in the cold, and you haven't eaten much." Janet fought back her tears. "Oh yes, I have," she managed to reply, convinced of the futility of speech, of all attempts to arouse her mother to a realization of the situation. Perhaps--though her heart contracted at the thought perhaps it was a merciful thing! But to live, day after day, in the presence of that comfortless apathy!... Later in the morning she went out, to walk the streets, and again in the afternoon; and twice she turned her face eastward, in the direction of the Franco-Belgian Hall. Her courage failed her. How would these foreigners and the strange leaders who had come to organize them receive her, Ditmar's stenographer? She would have to tell them she was Ditmar's stenographer; they would find it out. And now she was filled with doubts about Rolfe. Had he really thought she could be of use to them! Around the Common, in front of the City Hall men went about their affairs alertly, or stopped one another to talk about the strike. In Faber Street, indeed, an air of suppressed excitement prevailed, newsboys were shouting out extras; but business went on as though nothing had happened to disturb it. There was, however, the spectacle, unusual at this time of day, of operatives mingling with the crowd, while policemen stood watchfully at the corners; a company of soldiers marched by, drawing the people in silence to the curb. Janet scanned the faces of these idle operatives; they seemed for the most part either calm or sullen, wanting the fire and passion of the enthusiasts who had come out to picket in the early hours of the day; she sought vainly for the Italian girl with whom she had made friends. Despondency grew in her, a sense of isolation, of lacking any one, now, to whom she might turn, and these feelings were intensified by the air of confidence prevailing here. The strike was crushed, injustice and wrong had triumphed--would always triumph. In front of the Banner office she heard a man say to an acquaintance who had evidently just arrived in town:--"The Chippering? Sure, that's running. By to-morrow Ditmar'll have a full force there. Now that the militia has come, I guess we've got this thing scotched..." Just how and when that order and confidence of Faber Street began to be permeated by disquietude and alarm, Janet could not have said. Something was happening, somewhere--or about to happen. An obscure, apparently telepathic process was at work. People began to hurry westward, a few had abandoned the sidewalk and were running; while other pedestrians, more timid, were equally concerned to turn and hasten in the opposite direction. At the corner of West Street was gathering a crowd that each moment grew larger and larger, despite the efforts of the police to disperse it. These were strikers, angry strikers. They blocked the traffic, halted the clanging trolleys, surged into the mouth of West Street, booing and cursing at the soldiers whose threatening line of bayonets stretched across that thoroughfare half-way down toward the canal, guarding the detested Chippering Mill. Bordering West Street, behind the company's lodging-houses on the canal, were certain low buildings, warehouses, and on their roofs tense figures could be seen standing out against the sky. The vanguard of the mob, thrust on by increasing pressure from behind, tumbled backward the thin cordon of police, drew nearer and nearer the bayonets, while the soldiers grimly held their ground. A voice was heard on the roof, a woman in the front rank of the mob gave a warning shriek, and two swift streams of icy water burst forth from the warehouse parapet, tearing the snow from the cobbles, flying in heavy, stinging spray as it advanced and mowed the strikers down and drove them like flies toward Faber Street. Screams of fright, curses of defiance and hate mingled with the hissing of the water and the noise of its impact with the ground--like the tearing of heavy sail-cloth. Then, from somewhere near the edge of the mob, came a single, sharp detonation, quickly followed by another--below the watchmen on the roof a window crashed. The nozzles on the roof were raised, their streams, sweeping around in a great semi-circle, bowled down the rioters below the tell-tale wisps of smoke, and no sooner had the avalanche of water passed than the policemen who, forewarned, had sought refuge along the walls, rushed forward and seized a man who lay gasping on the snow. Dazed, half drowned, he had dropped his pistol. They handcuffed him and dragged him away through the ranks of the soldiers, which opened for him to pass. The mob, including those who had been flung down, bruised and drenched, and who had painfully got to their feet again, had backed beyond the reach of the water, and for a while held that ground, until above its hoarse, defiant curses was heard, from behind, the throbbing of drums. "Cossacks! More Cossacks!" The cry was taken up by Canadians, Italians, Belgians, Poles, Slovaks, Jews, and Syrians. The drums grew louder, the pressure from the rear was relaxed, the throng in Faber Street began a retreat in the direction of the power plant. Down that street, now in double time, came three companies of Boston militia, newly arrived in Hampton, blue-taped, gaitered, slouch-hatted. From columns of fours they wheeled into line, and with bayonets at charge slowly advanced. Then the boldest of the mob, who still lingered, sullenly gave way, West Street was cleared, and on the wider thoroughfare the long line of traffic, the imprisoned trolleys began to move again.... Janet had wedged herself into the press far enough to gain a view down West Street of the warehouse roofs, to see the water turned on, to hear the screams and the curses and then the shots. Once more she caught the contagious rage of the mob; the spectacle had aroused her to fury; it seemed ignominious, revolting that human beings, already sufficiently miserable, should be used thus. As she retreated reluctantly across the car tracks her attention was drawn to a man at her side, a Slovak. His face was white and pinched, his clothes were wet. Suddenly he stopped, turned and shook his fist at the line of soldiers. "The Cossack, the politzman belong to the boss, the capitalist!" he cried. "We ain't got no right to live. I say, kill the capitalist--kill Ditmar!" A man with a deputy's shield ran toward them. "Move on!" he said brutally. "Move on, or I'll roil you in." And Janet, once clear of the people, fled westward, the words the foreigner had spoken ringing in her ears. She found herself repeating them aloud, "Kill Ditmar!" as she hurried through the gathering dusk past the power house with its bottle-shaped chimneys, and crossed the little bridge over the stream beside the chocolate factory. She gained the avenue she had trod with Eda on that summer day of the circus. Here was the ragpicker's shop, the fence covered with bedraggled posters, the deserted grand-stand of the base-ball park spread with a milky-blue mantle of snow; and beyond, the monotonous frame cottages all built from one model. Now she descried looming above her the outline of Torrey's Hill blurred and melting into a darkening sky, and turned into the bleak lane where stood the Franco-Belgian Hall--Hampton Headquarters of the Industrial Workers of the World. She halted a moment at sight of the crowd of strikers loitering in front of it, then went on again, mingling with them excitedly beside the little building. Its lines were simple and unpretentious, and yet it had an exotic character all its own, differing strongly from the surrounding houses: it might have been transported from a foreign country and set down here. As the home of that odd, cooperative society of thrifty and gregarious Belgians it had stimulated her imagination, and once before she had gazed, as now, through the yellowed, lantern-like windows of the little store at the women and children waiting to fill their baskets with the day's provisions. In the middle of the building was an entrance leading up to the second floor. Presently she gathered the courage to enter. Her heart was pounding as she climbed the dark stairs and thrust open the door, and she stood a moment on the threshold almost choked by the fumes of tobacco, bewildered by the scene within, confused by the noise. Through a haze of smoke she beheld groups of swarthy foreigners fiercely disputing among themselves--apparently on the verge of actual combat, while a sprinkling of silent spectators of both sexes stood at the back of the hall. At the far end was a stage, still set with painted, sylvan scenery, and seated there, alone, above the confusion and the strife, with a calmness, a detachment almost disconcerting, was a stout man with long hair and a loose black tie. He was smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper which he presently flung down, taking up another from a pile on the table beside him. Suddenly one of the groups, shouting and gesticulating, surged toward him and made an appeal through their interpreter. He did not appear to be listening; without so much as lowering his newspaper he spoke a few words in reply, and the group retired, satisfied. By some incomprehensible power he dominated. Panting, fascinated, loath to leave yet fearful, Janet watched him, breathing now deeply this atmosphere of smoke, of strife, and turmoil. She found it grateful, for the strike, the battle was in her own soul as well. Momentarily she had forgotten Rolfe, who had been in her mind as she had come hither, and then she caught sight of him in a group in the centre of the hall. He saw her, he was making his way toward her, he was holding her hands, looking down into her face with that air of appropriation, of possession she remembered. But she felt no resentment now, only a fierce exultation at having dared. "You've come to join us!" he exclaimed. "I thought I'd lost you." He bent closer to her that she might hear. "We are having a meeting of the Committee," he said, and she smiled. Despite her agitation, this struck her as humorous. And Rolfe smiled back at her. "You wouldn't think so, but Antonelli knows how to manage them. He is a general. Come, I will enlist you, you shall be my recruit." "But what can I do?" she asked. "I have been thinking. You said you were a stenographer--we need stenographers, clerks. You will not be wasted. Come in here." Behind her two box-like rooms occupying the width of the building had been turned into offices, and into one of these Rolfe led her. Men and women were passing in and out, while in a corner a man behind a desk sat opening envelopes, deftly extracting bills and post-office orders and laying them in a drawer. On the wall of this same room was a bookcase half filled with nondescript volumes. "The Bibliotheque--that's French for the library of the Franco-Belgian Cooperative Association," explained Rolfe. "And this is Comrade Sanders. Sanders is easier to say than Czernowitz. Here is the young lady I told you about, who wishes to help us--Miss Bumpus." Mr. Sanders stopped counting his money long enough to grin at her. "You will be welcome," he said, in good English. "Stenographers are scarce here. When can you come?" "To-morrow morning," answered Janet. "Good," he said. "I'll have a machine for you. What kind do you use?" She told him. Instinctively she took a fancy to this little man, whose flannel shirt and faded purple necktie, whose blue, unshaven face and tousled black hair seemed incongruous with an alert, business-like, and efficient manner. His nose, though not markedly Jewish, betrayed in him the blood of that vital race which has triumphantly survived so many centuries of bondage and oppression. "He was a find, Czernowitz--he calls himself Sanders," Rolfe explained, as they entered the hall once more. "An Operative in the Patuxent, educated himself, went to night school--might have been a capitalist like so many of his tribe if he hadn't loved humanity. You'll get along with him." "I'm sure I shall," she replied. Rolfe took from his pocket a little red button with the letters I.W.W. printed across it. He pinned it, caressingly, on her coat. "Now you are one of us!" he exclaimed. "You'll come to-morrow?" "I'll come to-morrow," she repeated, drawing away from him a little. "And--we shall be friends?" She nodded. "I must go now, I think." "Addio!" he said. "I shall look for you. For the present I must remain here, with the Committee." When Janet reached Faber Street she halted on the corner of Stanley to stare into the window of the glorified drugstore. But she gave no heed to the stationery, the cameras and candy displayed there, being in the emotional state that reduces to unreality objects of the commonplace, everyday world. Presently, however, she became aware of a man standing beside her. "Haven't we met before?" he asked. "Or--can I be mistaken?" Some oddly familiar quizzical note in his voice stirred, as she turned to him, a lapsed memory. The hawklike yet benevolent and illuminating look he gave her recalled the man at Silliston whom she had thought a carpenter though he was dressed now in a warm suit of gray wool, and wore a white, low collar. "In Silliston!" she exclaimed. "Why--what are you doing here?" "Well--this instant I was just looking at those notepapers, wondering which I should choose if I really had good taste. But it's very puzzling--isn't it?--when one comes from the country. Now that saffron with the rough edges is very--artistic. Don't you think so?" She looked at him and smiled, though his face was serious. "You don't really like it, yourself," she informed him. "Now you're reflecting on my taste," he declared. "Oh no--it's because I saw the fence you were making. Is it finished yet?" "I put the last pineapple in place the day before Christmas. Do you remember the pineapples?" She nodded. "And the house? and the garden?" "Oh, those will never be finished. I shouldn't have anything more to do." "Is that--all you do?" she asked. "It's more important than anything else. But you have you been back to Silliston since I saw you? I've been waiting for another call." "You haven't even thought of me since," she was moved to reply in the same spirit. "Haven't I?" he exclaimed. "I wondered, when I came up here to Hampton, whether I mightn't meet you--and here you are! Doesn't that prove it?" She laughed, somewhat surprised at the ease with which he had diverted her, drawn her out of the tense, emotional mood in which he had discovered her. As before, he puzzled her, but the absence of any flirtatious suggestion in his talk gave her confidence. He was just friendly. "Sometimes I hoped I might see you in Hampton," she ventured. "Well, here I am. I heard the explosion, and came." "The explosion! The strike!" she exclaimed; suddenly enlightened. "Now I remember! You said something about Hampton being nitro-glycerine--human nitro-glycerine. You predicted this strike." "Did I? perhaps I did," he assented. "Maybe you suggested the idea." "I suggested it! Oh no, I didn't--it was new to me, it frightened me at the time, but it started me thinking about a lot of things that had never occurred to me." "You might have suggested the idea without intending to, you know. There are certain people who inspire prophecies--perhaps you are one." His tone was playful, but she was quick to grasp at an inference--since his glance was fixed on the red button she wore. "You meant that I would explode, too!" "Oh no--nothing so terrible as that," he disclaimed. "And yet most of us have explosives stored away inside of us--instincts, impulses and all that sort of thing that won't stand too much bottling-up." "Yes, I've joined the strike." She spoke somewhat challengingly, though she had an uneasy feeling that defiance was somewhat out of place with him. "I suppose you think it strange, since I'm not a foreigner and haven't worked in the mills. But I don't see why that should make any difference if you believe that the workers haven't had a chance." "No difference," he agreed, pleasantly, "no difference at all." "Don't you sympathize with the strikers?" she insisted. "Or--are you on the other side, the side of the capitalists?" "I? I'm a spectator--an innocent bystander." "You don't sympathize with the workers?" she cried. "Indeed I do. I sympathize with everybody." "With the capitalists?" "Why not?" "Why not? Because they've had everything their own way, they've exploited the workers, deceived and oppressed them, taken all the profits." She was using glibly her newly acquired labour terminology. "Isn't that a pretty good reason for sympathizing with them?" he inquired. "What do you mean?" "Well, I should think it might be difficult to be happy and have done all that. At any rate, it isn't my notion of happiness. Is it yours?" For a moment she considered this. "No--not exactly," she admitted. "But they seem happy," she insisted vehemently, "they have everything they want and they do exactly as they please without considering anybody except themselves. What do they care how many they starve and make miserable? You--you don't know, you can't know what it is to be driven and used and flung away!" Almost in tears, she did not notice his puzzled yet sympathetic glance. "The operatives, the workers create all the wealth, and the capitalists take it from them, from their wives and children." "Now I know what you've been doing," he said accusingly. "You've been studying economics." Her brow puckered. "Studying what?" "Economics--the distribution of wealth. It's enough to upset anybody." "But I'm not upset," she insisted, smiling in spite of herself at his comical concern. "It's very exciting. I remember reading a book once on economics and such things, and I couldn't sleep for a week. It was called `The Organization of Happiness,' I believe, and it described just how the world ought to be arranged--and isn't. I thought seriously of going to Washington and telling the President and Congress about it." "It wouldn't have done any good," said Janet. "No, I realized that." "The only thing that will do any good is to strike and keep on striking until the workers own the mills--take everything away from the capitalists." "It's very simple," he agreed, "much simpler than the book I read. That's what they call syndicalism, isn't it?" "Yes." She was conscious of his friendliness, of the fact that his skepticism was not cynical, yet she felt a strong desire to convince him, to vindicate her new creed. "There's a man named Rolfe, an educated man who's lived in Italy and England, who explains it wonderfully. He's one of the I.W.W. leaders--you ought to hear him." "Rolfe converted you? I'll go to hear him." "Yes--but you have to feel it, you have to know what it is to be kept down and crushed. If you'd only stay here awhile." "Oh, I intend to," he replied. She could not have said why, but she felt a certain relief on hearing this. "Then you'll see for yourself!" she cried. "I guess that's what you've come for, isn't it?" "Well, partly. To tell the truth, I've come to open a restaurant." "To open a restaurant!" Somehow she was unable to imagine him as the proprietor of a restaurant. "But isn't it rather a bad time?" she gasped. "I don't look as if I had an eye for business--do I? But I have. No, it's a good time--so many people will be hungry, especially children. I'm going to open a restaurant for children. Oh, it will be very modest, of course--I suppose I ought to call it a soup kitchen." "Oh!" she exclaimed, staring at him. "Then you really--" the sentence remained unfinished. "I'm sorry," she said simply. "You made me think--" "Oh, you mustn't pay any attention to what I say. Come 'round and see my establishment, Number 77 Dey Street, one flight up, no elevator. Will you?" She laughed tremulously as he took her hand. "Yes indeed, I will," she promised. And she stood awhile staring after him. She was glad he had come to Hampton, and yet she did not even know his name. CHAPTER XVI She had got another place--such was the explanation of her new activities Janet gave to Hannah, who received it passively. And the question dreaded about Ditmar was never asked. Hannah had become as a child, performing her tasks by the momentum of habituation, occasionally talking simply of trivial, every-day affairs, as though the old life were going on continuously. At times, indeed, she betrayed concern about Edward, wondering whether he were comfortable at the mill, and she washed and darned the clothes he sent home by messenger. She hoped he would not catch cold. Her suffering seemed to have relaxed. It was as though the tortured portion of her brain had at length been seared. To Janet, her mother's condition when she had time to think of it--was at once a relief and a new and terrible source of anxiety. Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect on that tragedy, else her own sanity might have been endangered. As soon as breakfast was over she hurried across the city to the Franco-Belgian Hall, and often did not return until nine o'clock at night, usually so tired that she sank into bed and fell asleep. For she threw herself into her new labours with the desperate energy that seeks forgetfulness, not daring to pause to think about herself, to reflect upon what the future might hold for her when the strike should be over. Nor did she confine herself to typewriting, but, as with Ditmar, constantly assumed a greater burden of duty, helping Czernowitz--who had the work of five men--with his accounts, with the distribution of the funds to the ever-increasing number of the needy who were facing starvation. The money was paid out to them in proportion to the size of their families; as the strike became more and more effective their number increased until many mills had closed; other mills, including the Chippering, were still making a desperate attempt to operate their looms, and sixteen thousand operatives were idle. She grew to know these operatives who poured all day long in a steady stream through Headquarters; she heard their stories, she entered into their lives, she made decisions. Some, even in those early days of the strike, were frauds; were hiding their savings; but for the most part investigation revealed an appalling destitution, a resolution to suffer for the worker's cause. A few complained, the majority were resigned; some indeed showed exaltation and fire, were undaunted by the task of picketing in the cold mornings, by the presence of the soldiery. In this work of dealing with the operatives Janet had the advice and help of Anna Mower, a young woman who herself had been a skilled operative in the Clarendon Mill, and who was giving evidence of unusual qualities of organization and leadership. Anna, with no previous practise in oratory, had suddenly developed the gift of making speeches, the more effective with her fellow workers because unstudied, because they flowed directly out of an experience she was learning to interpret and universalize. Janet, who heard her once or twice, admired and envied her. They became friends. The atmosphere of excitement in which Janet now found herself was cumulative. Day by day one strange event followed another, and at times it seemed as if this extraordinary existence into which she had been plunged were all a feverish dream. Hither, to the absurd little solle de reunion of the Franco-Belgian Hall came notables from the great world, emissaries from an uneasy Governor, delegations from the Legislature, Members of the Congress of the United States and even Senators; students, investigators, men and women of prominence in the universities, magazine writers to consult with uncouth leaders of a rebellion that defied and upset the powers which hitherto had so serenely ruled, unchallenged. Rolfe identified these visitors, and one morning called her attention to one who he said was the nation's foremost authority on social science. Janet possessed all unconsciously the New England reverence for learning, she was stirred by the sight of this distinguished-looking person who sat on the painted stage, fingering his glasses and talking to Antonelli. The two men made a curious contrast. But her days were full of contrasts of which her mood exultingly approved. The politicians were received cavalierly. Toward these, who sought to act as go-betweens in the conflict, Antonelli was contemptuous; he behaved like the general of a conquering army, and his audacity was reflected in the other leaders, in Rolfe, in the Committee itself. That Committee, a never-ending source of wonder to Janet, with its nine or ten nationalities and interpreters, was indeed a triumph over the obstacles of race and language, a Babel made successful; in a community of Anglo-Saxon traditions, an amazing anomaly. The habiliments of the west, the sack coats and sweaters, the slouch hats and caps, the so-called Derbies pulled down over dark brows and flashing eyes lent to these peasant types an incongruity that had the air of ferocity. The faces of most of them were covered with a blue-black stubble of beard. Some slouched in their chairs, others stood and talked in groups, gesticulating with cigars and pipes; yet a keen spectator, after watching them awhile through the smoke, might have been able to pick out striking personalities among them. He would surely have noticed Froment, the stout, limping man under whose white eyebrows flashed a pair of livid blue and peculiarly Gallic eyes; he held the Belgians in his hand: Lindtzki, the Pole, with his zealot's face; Radeau, the big Canadian in the checked Mackinaw; and Findley, the young American-less by any arresting quality of feature than by an expression suggestive of practical wisdom. Imagine then, on an afternoon in the middle phase of the strike, some half dozen of the law-makers of a sovereign state, top-hatted and conventionally garbed in black, accustomed to authority, to conferring favours instead of requesting them, climbing the steep stairs and pausing on the threshold of that hall, fingering their watch chains, awaiting recognition by the representatives of the new and bewildering force that had arisen in an historic commonwealth. A "debate" was in progress. Some of the debaters, indeed, looked over their shoulders, but the leader, who sat above them framed in the sylvan setting of the stage, never so much as deigned to glance up from his newspaper. A half-burned cigar rolled between his mobile lips, he sat on the back of his neck, and yet he had an air Napoleonic; Nietzschean, it might better be said--although it is safe to assert that these moulders of American institutions knew little about that terrible philosopher who had raised his voice against the "slave morals of Christianity." It was their first experience with the superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, when a lull arrived in the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen be given chairs. "Sure, give them chairs," assented Antonelli in a voice hoarse from speech-making. Breath-taking audacity to certain spectators who had followed the delegation hither, some of whom could not refrain from speculating whether it heralded the final scrapping of the machinery of the state; amusing to cynical metropolitan reporters, who grinned at one another as they prepared to take down the proceedings; evoking a fierce approval in the breasts of all rebels among whom was Janet. The Legislative Chairman, a stout and suave gentleman of Irish birth, proceeded to explain how greatly concerned was the Legislature that the deplorable warfare within the state should cease; they had come, he declared, to aid in bringing about justice between labour and capital. "We'll get justice without the help of the state," remarked Antonelli curtly, while a murmur of approval ran through the back of the hall. That was scarcely the attitude, said the Chairman, he had expected. He knew that such a strike as this had engendered bitterness, there had been much suffering, sacrifice undoubtedly on both sides, but he was sure, if Mr. Antonelli and the Committee would accept their services here he was interrupted. Had the mill owners accepted their services? The Chairman cleared his throat. The fact was that the mill owners were more difficult to get together in a body. A meeting would be arranged--"When you arrange a meeting, let me know," said Antonelli. A laugh went around the room. It was undoubtedly very difficult to keep one's temper under such treatment. The Chairman looked it. "A meeting would be arranged," he declared, with a long-suffering expression. He even smiled a little. "In the meantime--" "What can your committee do?" demanded one of the strike leaders, passionately--it was Findley. "If you find one party wrong, can your state force it to do right? Can you legislators be impartial when you have not lived the bitter life of the workers? Would you arbitrate a question of life and death? And are the worst wages paid in these mills anything short of death? Do you investigate because conditions are bad? or because the workers broke loose and struck? Why did you not come before the strike?" This drew more approval from the rear. Why, indeed? The Chairman was adroit, he had pulled himself out of many tight places in the Assembly Chamber, but now he began to perspire, to fumble in his coat tails for a handkerchief. The Legislature, he maintained, could not undertake to investigate such matters until called to its attention.... Later on a tall gentleman, whom heaven had not blessed with tact, saw fit to deplore the violence that had occurred; he had no doubt the leaders of the strike regretted it as much as he, he was confident it would be stopped, when public opinion would be wholly and unreservedly on the side of the strikers. "Public opinion!" savagely cried Lindtzki, who spoke English with only a slight accent. "If your little boy, if your little girl come to you and ask for shoes, for bread, and you say, `I have no shoes, I have no bread, but public opinion is with us,' would that satisfy you?" This drew so much applause that the tall law-maker sat down again with a look of disgust on his face.... The Committee withdrew, and for many weeks thereafter the state they represented continued to pay some four thousand dollars daily to keep its soldiers on the streets of Hampton.... In the meanwhile Janet saw much of Rolfe. Owing to his facile command of language he was peculiarly fitted to draft those proclamations, bombastically worded in the French style, issued and circulated by the Strike Committee--appeals to the polyglot army to withstand the pangs of hunger, to hold out for the terms laid down, assurances that victory was at hand. Walking up and down the bibliotheque, his hands behind his back, his red lips gleaming as he spoke, he dictated these documents to Janet. In the ecstasy of this composition he had a way of shaking his head slowly from side to side, and when she looked up she saw his eyes burning, down at her. A dozen times a day, while she was at her other work, he would come in and talk to her. He excited her, she was divided between attraction and fear of him, and often she resented his easy assumption that a tie existed between them--the more so because this seemed to be taken for granted among certain of his associates. In their eyes, apparently, she was Rolfe's recruit in more senses than one. It was indeed a strange society in which she found herself, and Rolfe typified it. He lived on the plane of the impulses and intellect, discarded as inhibiting factors what are called moral standards, decried individual discipline and restraint. And while she had never considered these things, the spectacle of a philosophy--embodied in him--that frankly and cynically threw them overboard was disconcerting. He regarded her as his proselyte, he called her a Puritan, and he seemed more concerned that she should shed these relics of an ancestral code than acquire the doctrines of Sorel and Pouget. And yet association with him presented the allurement of a dangerous adventure. Intellectually he fascinated her; and still another motive--which she partially disguised from herself--prevented her from repelling him. That motive had to do with Ditmar. She tried to put Ditmar from her mind; she sought in desperation, not only to keep busy, but to steep and lose herself in this fierce creed as an antidote to the insistent, throbbing pain that lay ambushed against her moments of idleness. The second evening of her installation at Headquarters she had worked beyond the supper hour, helping Sanders with his accounts. She was loath to go home. And when at last she put on her hat and coat and entered the hall Rolfe, who had been talking to Jastro, immediately approached her. His liquid eyes regarded her solicitously. "You must be hungry," he said. "Come out with me and have some supper." But she was not hungry; what she needed was air. Then he would walk a little way with her--he wanted to talk to her. She hesitated, and then consented. A fierce hope had again taken possession of her, and when they came to Warren Street she turned into it. "Where are you going?" Rolfe demanded. "For a walk," she said. "Aren't you coming?" "Will you have supper afterwards?" "Perhaps." He followed her, puzzled, yet piqued and excited by her manner, as with rapid steps she hurried along the pavement. He tried to tell her what her friendship meant to him; they were, he declared, kindred spirits--from the first time he had seen her, on the Common, he had known this. She scarcely heard him, she was thinking of Ditmar; and this was why she had led Rolfe into Warren Street they might meet Ditmar! It was possible that he would be going to the mill at this time, after his dinner! She scrutinized every distant figure, and when they reached the block in which he lived she walked more slowly. From within the house came to her, faintly, the notes of a piano--his daughter Amy was practising. It was the music, a hackneyed theme of Schubert's played heavily, that seemed to arouse the composite emotion of anger and hatred, yet of sustained attraction and wild regret she had felt before, but never so poignantly as now. And she lingered, perversely resolved to steep herself in the agony. "Who lives here" Rolfe asked. "Mr. Ditmar," she answered. "The agent of the Chippering Mill?" She nodded. "He's the worst of the lot," Rolfe said angrily. "If it weren't for him, we'd have this strike won to-day. He owns this town, he's run it to suit himself, He stiffens up the owners and holds the other mills in line. He's a type, a driver, the kind of man we must get rid of. Look at him --he lives in luxury while his people are starving." "Get rid of!" repeated Janet, in an odd voice. "Oh, I don't mean to shoot him," Rolfe declared. "But he may get shot, for all I know, by some of these slaves he's made desperate." "They wouldn't dare shoot him," Janet said. "And whatever he is, he isn't a coward. He's stronger than the others, he's more of a man." Rolfe looked at her curiously. "What do you know about him?" he asked. "I--I know all about him. I was his stenographer." "You! His stenographer! Then why are you herewith us?" "Because I hate him!" she cried vehemently. "Because I've learned that it's true--what you say about the masters--they only think of themselves and their kind, and not of us. They use us." "He tried to use you! You loved him!" "How dare you say that!" He fell back before her anger. "I didn't mean to offend you," he exclaimed. "I was jealous--I'm jealous of every man you've known. I want you. I've never met a woman like you." They were the very words Ditmar had used! She did not answer, and for a while they walked along in silence, leaving Warren Street and cutting across the city until they canoe in sight of the Common. Rolfe drew nearer to her. "Forgive me!" he pleaded. "You know I would not offend you. Come, we'll have supper together, and I will teach you more of what you have to know." "Where?" she asked. "At the Hampton--it is a little cafe where we all go. Perhaps you've been there." "No," said Janet. "It doesn't compare with the cafes of Europe--or of New York. Perhaps we shall go to them sometime, together. But it is cosy, and warm, and all the leaders will be there. You'll come--yes?" "Yes, I'll come," she said.... The Hampton was one of the city's second-class hotels, but sufficiently pretentious to have, in its basement, a "cafe" furnished in the "mission" style of brass tacks and dull red leather. In the warm, food-scented air fantastic wisps of smoke hung over the groups; among them Janet made out several of the itinerant leaders of Syndicalism, loose-tied, debonnair, giving a tremendous impression of freedom as they laughed and chatted with the women. For there were women, ranging from the redoubtable Nellie Bond herself down to those who may be designated as camp-followers. Rolfe, as he led Janet to a table in a corner of the room, greeted his associates with easy camaraderie. From Miss Bond he received an illuminating smile. Janet wondered at her striking good looks, at the boldness and abandon with which she talked to Jastro or exchanged sallies across the room. The atmosphere of this tawdry resort, formerly frequented by shop girls and travelling salesmen, was magically transformed by the presence of this company, made bohemian, cosmopolitan, exhilarating. And Janet, her face flushed, sat gazing at the scene, while Rolfe consulted the bill of fare and chose a beefsteak and French fried potatoes. The apathetic waiter in the soiled linen jacket he addressed as "comrade." Janet protested when he ordered cocktails. "You must learn to live, to relax, to enjoy yourself," he declared. But a horror of liquor held her firm in her refusal. Rolfe drank his, and while they awaited the beefsteak she was silent, the prey of certain misgivings that suddenly assailed her. Lise, she remembered, had sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict in the streets, the suffering in the tenements. She glanced at Rolfe, noting the manner in which he smoked cigarettes, sensually, as though seeking to wring out of each all there was to be got before flinging it down and lighting another. Again she was struck by the anomaly of a religion that had indeed enthusiasms, sacrifices perhaps, but no disciplines. He threw it out in snatches, this religion, while relating the histories of certain persons in the room: of Jastro, for instance, letting fall a hint to the effect that this evangelist and bliss Bond were dwelling together in more than amity. "Then you don't believe in marriage?" she demanded, suddenly. Rolfe laughed. "What is it," he exclaimed, "but the survival of the system of property? It's slavery, taboo, a device upheld by the master class to keep women in bondage, in superstition, by inducing them to accept it as a decree of God." "Did the masters themselves ever respect it, or any other decrees of God they preached to the slaves? Read history, and you will see. They had their loves, their mistresses. Read the newspapers, and you will find out whether they respect it to-day. But they are very anxious to have you and me respect it and all the other Christian commandments, because they will prevent us from being discontented. They say that we must be satisfied with the situation in this world in which God has placed us, and we shall have our reward in the next." She shivered slightly, not only at the ideas thus abruptly enunciated, but because it occurred to her that those others must be taking for granted a certain relationship between herself and Rolfe.... But presently, when the supper arrived, these feelings changed. She was very hungry, and the effect of the food, of the hot coffee was to dispel her doubt and repugnance, to throw a glamour over the adventure, to restore to Rolfe's arguments an exciting and alluring appeal. And with renewed physical energy she began to experience once more a sense of fellowship with these free and daring spirits who sought to avenge her wrongs and theirs. "For us who create there are no rules of conduct, no conventions," Rolfe was saying, "we do not care for the opinions of the middle class, of the bourgeois. With us men and women are on an equality. It is fear that has kept the workers down, and now we have cast that off--we know our strength. As they say in Italy, il mondo e a chi se lo piglia, the world belongs to him who is bold." "Italian is a beautiful language," she exclaimed. "I will teach you Italian," he said. "I want to learn--so much!" she sighed. "Your soul is parched," he said, in a commiserating tone. "I will water it, I will teach you everything." His words aroused a faint, derisive echo: Ditmar had wish to teach her, too! But now she was strongly under the spell of the new ideas hovering like shining, gossamer spirits just beyond her reach, that she sought to grasp and correlate. Unlike the code which Rolfe condemned, they seemed not to be separate from life, opposed to it, but entered even into that most important of its elements, sex. In deference to that other code Ditmar had made her his mistress, and because he was concerned for his position and the security of the ruling class had sought to hide the fact.... Rolfe, with a cigarette between his red lips, sat back in his chair, regarding with sensuous enjoyment the evident effect of his arguments. "But love?" she interrupted, when presently he had begun to talk again. She strove inarticulately to express an innate feminine objection to relationships that were made and broken at pleasure. "Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes, the life-force working in us. And when that attraction ceases, what is left? Bondage. The hideous bondage of Christian marriage, in which women promise to love and obey forever." "But women--women are not like men. When once they give themselves they do not so easily cease to love. They--they suffer." He did not seem to observe the bitterness in her voice. "Ah, that is sentiment," he declared, "something that will not trouble women when they have work to do, inspiring work. It takes time to change our ideas, to learn to see things as they are." He leaned forward eagerly. "But you will learn, you are like some of those rare women in history who have had the courage to cast off traditions. You were not made to be a drudge...." But now her own words, not his, were ringing in her head--women do not so easily cease to love, they suffer. In spite of the new creed she had so eagerly and fiercely embraced, in which she had sought deliverance and retribution, did she still love Ditmar, and suffer because of him? She repudiated the suggestion, yet it persisted as she glanced at Rolfe's red lips and compared him with Ditmar. Love! Rolfe might call it what he would--the life-force, attraction between the sexes, but it was proving stronger than causes and beliefs. He too was making love to her; like Ditmar, he wanted her to use and fling away when he should grow weary. Was he not pleading for himself rather than for the human cause he professed? taking advantage of her ignorance and desperation, of her craving for new experience and knowledge? The suspicion sickened her. Were all men like that? Suddenly, without apparent premeditation or connection, the thought of the stranger from Silliston entered her mind. Was he like that?... Rolfe was bending toward her across the table, solicitously. "What's the matter?" he asked. Her reply was listless. "Nothing--except that I'm tired. I want to go home." "Not now," he begged. "It's early yet." But she insisted.... CHAPTER XVII The next day at the noon hour Janet entered Dey Street. Cheek by jowl there with the tall tenements whose spindled-pillared porches overhung the darkened pavements were smaller houses of all ages and descriptions, their lower floors altered to accommodate shops; while in the very midst of the block stood a queer wooden building with two rows of dormer windows let into its high-pitched roof. It bore a curious resemblance to a town hall in the low countries. In front of it the street was filled with children gazing up at the doorway where a man stood surveying them --the stranger from Silliston. There was a rush toward him, a rush that drove Janet against the wall almost at his side, and he held up his hands in mock despair, gently impeding the little bodies that strove to enter. He bent over them to examine the numerals, printed on pasteboard, they wore on their breasts. His voice was cheerful, yet compassionate. "It's hard to wait, I know. I'm hungry myself," he said. "But we can't all go up at once. The building would fall down! One to one hundred now, and the second hundred will be first for supper. That's fair, isn't it?" Dozens of hands were raised. "I'm twenty-nine!" "I'm three, mister!" "I'm forty-one!" He let them in, one by one, and they clattered up the stairs, as he seized a tiny girl bundled in a dark red muffler and set her on the steps above him. He smiled at Janet. "This is my restaurant," he said. But she could not answer. She watched him as he continued to bend over the children, and when the smaller ones wept because they had to wait, he whispered in their ears, astonishing one or two into laughter. Some ceased crying and clung to him with dumb faith. And after the chosen hundred had been admitted he turned to her again. "You allow visitors?" "Oh dear, yes. They'd come anyway. There's one up there now, a very swell lady from New York--so swell I don't know what to say to her. Talk to her for me." "But I shouldn't know what to say, either," replied Janet. She smiled, but she had an odd desire to cry. "What is she doing here?" "Oh, thrashing 'round, trying to connect with life--she's one of the unfortunate unemployed." "Unemployed?" "The idle rich," he explained. "Perhaps you can give her a job--enlist her in the I.W.W." "We don't want that kind," Janet declared. "Have pity on her," he begged. "Nobody wants them--that's why they're so pathetic." She accompanied him up the narrow stairway to a great loft, the bareness of which had been tempered by draped American flags. From the trusses of the roof hung improvised electric lights, and the children were already seated at the four long tables, where half a dozen ladies were supplying them with enamelled bowls filled with steaming soup. They attacked it ravenously, and the absence of the talk and laughter that ordinarily accompany children's feasts touched her, impressed upon her, as nothing else had done, the destitution of the homes from which these little ones had come. The supplies that came to Hampton, the money that poured into Headquarters were not enough to allay the suffering even now. And what if the strike should last for months! Would they be able to hold out, to win? In this mood of pity, of anxiety mingled with appreciation and gratitude for what this man was doing, she turned to speak to him, to perceive on the platform at the end of the room a lady seated. So complete was the curve of her back that her pose resembled a letter u set sidewise, the gap from her crossed knee to her face being closed by a slender forearm and hand that held a lorgnette, through which she was gazing at the children with an apparently absorbed interest. This impression of willowy flexibility was somehow heightened by large, pear-shaped pendants hanging from her ears, by a certain filminess in her black costume and hat. Flung across the table beside her was a long coat of grey fur. She struck an odd note here, presented a strange contrast to Janet's friend from Silliston, with his rough suit and fine but rugged features. "I'm sorry I haven't a table for you just at present," he was saying. "But perhaps you'll let me take your order,"--and he imitated the obsequious attitude of a waiter. "A little fresh caviar and a clear soup, and then a fish--?" The lady took down her lorgnette and raised an appealing face. "You're always joking, Brooks," she chided him, "even when you're doing things like this! I can't get you to talk seriously even when I come all the way from New York to find out what's going on here." "How hungry children eat, for instance?" he queried. "Dear little things, it's heartrending!" she exclaimed. "Especially when I think of my own children, who have to be made to eat. Tell me the nationality of that adorable tot at the end." "Perhaps Miss Bumpus can tell you," he ventured. And Janet, though distinctly uncomfortable and hostile to the lady, was surprised and pleased that he should have remembered her name. "Brooks," she had called him. That was his first name. This strange and sumptuous person seemed intimate with him. Could it be possible that he belonged to her class? "Mrs. Brocklehurst, Miss Bumpus." Mrs. Brocklehurst focussed her attention on Janet, through the lorgnette, but let it fall immediately, smiling on her brightly, persuasively. "How d'ye do?" she said, stretching forth a slender arm and taking the girl's somewhat reluctant hand. "Do come and sit down beside me and tell me about everything here. I'm sure you know--you look so intelligent." Her friend from Silliston shot at Janet an amused but fortifying glance and left them, going down to the tables. Somehow that look of his helped to restore in her a sense of humour and proportion, and her feeling became one of curiosity concerning this exquisitely soigneed being of an order she had read about, but never encountered--an order which her newly acquired views declared to be usurpers and parasites. But despite her palpable effort to be gracious perhaps because of it--Mrs. Brocklehurst had an air about her that was disconcerting! Janet, however, seemed composed as she sat down. "I'm afraid I don't know very much. Maybe you will tell me something, first." "Why, certainly," said Mrs. Brocklehurst, sweetly when she had got her breath. "Who is that man?" Janet asked. "Whom do you mean--Mr. Insall?" "Is that his name? I didn't know. I've seen him twice, but he never told me." "Why, my dear, do you mean to say you haven't heard of Brooks Insall?" "Brooks Insall." Janet repeated the name, as her eyes sought his figure between the tables. "No." "I'm sure I don't know why I should have expected you to hear of him," declared the lady, repentantly. "He's a writer--an author." And at this Janet gave a slight exclamation of pleasure and surprise. "You admire writers? He's done some delightful things." "What does he write about?" Janet asked. "Oh, wild flowers and trees and mountains and streams, and birds and humans--he has a wonderful insight into people." Janet was silent. She was experiencing a swift twinge of jealousy, of that familiar rebellion against her limitations. "You must read them, my dear," Mrs. Brocklehurst continued softly, in musical tones. "They are wonderful, they have such distinction. He's walked, I'm told, over every foot of New England, talking to the farmers and their wives and--all sorts of people." She, too, paused to let her gaze linger upon Insall laughing and chatting with the children as they ate. "He has such a splendid, `out-door' look don't you think? And he's clever with his hands he bought an old abandoned farmhouse in Silliston and made it all over himself until it looks as if one of our great-great-grandfathers had just stepped out of it to shoot an Indian only much prettier. And his garden is a dream. It's the most unique place I've ever known." Janet blushed deeply as she recalled how she had mistaken him for a carpenter: she was confused, overwhelmed, she had a sudden longing to leave the place, to be alone, to think about this discovery. Yet she wished to know more. "But how did he happen to come here to Hampton--to be doing this?" she asked. "Well, that's just what makes him interesting, one never can tell what he'll do. He took it into his head to collect the money to feed these children; I suppose he gave much of it himself. He has an income of his own, though he likes to live so simply." "This place--it's not connected with any organization?" Janet ejaculated. "That's the trouble, he doesn't like organizations, and he doesn't seem to take any interest in the questions or movements of the day," Mrs. Brocklehurst complained. "Or at least he refuses to talk about them, though I've known him for many years, and his people and mine were friends. Now there are lots of things I want to learn, that I came up from New York to find out. I thought of course he'd introduce me to the strike leaders, and he tells me he doesn't know one of them. Perhaps you know them," she added, with sudden inspiration. "I'm only an employee at Strike Headquarters," Janet replied, stiffening a little despite the lady's importuning look--which evidently was usually effective. "You mean the I.W.W.?" "Yes." Meanwhile Insall had come up and seated himself below them on the edge of the platform. "Oh, Brooks, your friend Miss Bumpus is employed in the Strike Headquarters!" Mrs. Brocklehurst cried, and turning to Janet she went on. "I didn't realize you were a factory girl, I must say you don't look it." Once more a gleam of amusement from Insall saved Janet, had the effect of compelling her to meet the affair somewhat after his own manner. He seemed to be putting the words into her mouth, and she even smiled a little, as she spoke. "You never can tell what factory girls do look like in these days," she observed mischievously. "That's so," Mrs. Brocklehurst agreed, "we are living in such extraordinary times, everything topsy turvy. I ought to have realized --it was stupid of me--I know several factory girls in New York, I've been to their meetings, I've had them at my house--shirtwaist strikers." She assumed again the willowy, a position, her fingers clasped across her knee, her eyes supplicatingly raised to Janet. Then she reached out her hand and touched the I.W.W. button. "Do tell me all about the Industrial Workers, and what they believe," she pleaded. "Well," said Janet, after a slight pause, "I'm afraid you won't like it much. Why do you want to know?" "Because I'm so interested--especially in the women of the movement. I feel for them so, I want to help--to do something, too. Of course you're a suffragist." "You mean, do I believe in votes for women? Yes, I suppose I do." "But you must," declared Mrs. Brocklehurst, still sweetly, but with emphasis. "You wouldn't be working, you wouldn't be striking unless you did." "I've never thought about it," said Janet. "But how are you working girls ever going to raise wages unless you get the vote? It's the only way men ever get anywhere--the politicians listen to them." She produced from her bag a gold pencil and a tablet. "Mrs. Ned Carfax is here from Boston--I saw her for a moment at the hotel she's been here investigating for nearly three days, she tells me. I'll have her send you suffrage literature at once, if you'll give me your address." "You want a vote?" asked Janet, curiously, gazing at the pearl earrings. "Certainly I want one." "Why?" "Why?" repeated Mrs. Brocklehurst. "Yes. You must have everything you want." Even then the lady's sweet reasonableness did not desert her. She smiled winningly, displaying two small and even rows of teeth. "On principle, my dear. For one reason, because I have such sympathy with women who toil, and for another, I believe the time has come when women must no longer be slaves, they must assert themselves, become individuals, independent." "But you?" exclaimed Janet. Mrs. Brocklehurst continued to smile encouragingly, and murmured "Yes?" "You are not a slave." A delicate pink, like the inside of a conch shell, spread over Mrs. Brocklehurst's cheeks. "We're all slaves," she declared with a touch of passion. "It's hard for you to realize, I know, about those of us who seem more fortunate than our sisters. But it's true. The men give us jewels and automobiles and clothes, but they refuse to give us what every real woman craves --liberty." Janet had become genuinely interested. "But what kind of liberty?" "Liberty to have a voice, to take part in the government of our country, to help make the laws, especially those concerning working-women and children, what they ought to be." Here was altruism, truly! Here were words that should have inspired Janet, yet she was silent. Mrs. Brocklehurst gazed at her solicitously. "What are you thinking?" she urged--and it was Janet's turn to flush. "I was just thinking that you seemed to have everything life has to give, and yet--and yet you're not happy." "Oh, I'm not unhappy," protested the lady. "Why do you say that?" "I don't know. You, too, seem to be wanting something." "I want to be of use, to count," said Mrs. Brocklehurst,--and Janet was startled to hear from this woman's lips the very echo of her own desires. Mrs. Brocklehurst's feelings had become slightly complicated. It is perhaps too much to say that her complacency was shaken. She was, withal, a person of resolution--of resolution taking the form of unswerving faith in herself, a faith persisting even when she was being carried beyond her depth. She had the kind of pertinacity that sever admits being out of depth, the happy buoyancy that does not require to feel the bottom under one's feet. She floated in swift currents. When life became uncomfortable, she evaded it easily; and she evaded it now, as she gazed at the calm but intent face of the girl in front of her, by a characteristic inner refusal to admit that she had accidentally come in contact with something baking. Therefore she broke the silence. "Isn't that what you want--you who are striking?" she asked. "I think we want the things that you've got," said Janet. A phrase one of the orators had used came into her mind, "Enough money to live up to American standards"--but she did not repeat it. "Enough money to be free, to enjoy life, to have some leisure and amusement and luxury." The last three she took from the orator's mouth. "But surely," exclaimed Mrs. Brocklehurst, "surely you want more than that!" Janet shook her head. "You asked me what we believed, the I.W.W., the syndicalists, and I told you you wouldn't like it. Well, we believe in doing away with you, the rich, and taking all you have for ourselves, the workers, the producers. We believe you haven't any right to what you've got, that you've fooled and cheated us out of it. That's why we women don't care much about the vote, I suppose, though I never thought of it. We mean to go on striking until we've got all that you've got." "But what will become of us?" said Mrs. Brocklehurst. "You wouldn't do away with all of us! I admit there are many who don't--but some do sympathize with you, will help you get what you want, help you, perhaps, to see things more clearly, to go about it less--ruthlessly." "I've told you what we believe," repeated Janet. "I'm so glad I came," cried Mrs. Brocklehurst. "It's most interesting! I never knew what the syndicalists believed. Why, it's like the French Revolution--only worse. How are you going to get rid of us? cut our heads off?" Janet could not refrain from smiling. "Let you starve, I suppose." "Really!" said Mrs. Brocklehurst, and appeared to be trying to visualize the process. She was a true Athenian, she had discovered some new thing, she valued discoveries more than all else in life, she collected them, though she never used them save to discuss them with intellectuals at her dinner parties. "Now you must let me come to Headquarters and get a glimpse of some of the leaders--of Antonelli, and I'm told there's a fascinating man named Rowe." "Rolfe," Janet corrected. "Rolfe--that's it." She glanced down at the diminutive watch, set with diamonds, on her wrist, rose and addressed Insall. "Oh dear, I must be going, I'm to lunch with Nina Carfax at one, and she's promised to tell me a lot of things. She's writing an article for Craven's Weekly all about the strike and the suffering and injustice--she says it's been horribly misrepresented to the public, the mill owners have had it all their own way. I think what you're doing is splendid, Brooks, only--" here she gave him an appealing, rather commiserating look--"only I do wish you would take more interest in--in underlying principles." Insall smiled. "It's a question of brains. You have to have brains to be a sociologist," he answered, as he held up for her the fur coat. With a gesture of gentle reproof she slipped into it, and turned to Janet. "You must let me see more of you, my dear," she said. "I'm at the best hotel, I can't remember the name, they're all so horrible--but I'll be here until to-morrow afternoon. I want to find out everything. Come and call on me. You're quite the most interesting person I've met for a long time--I don't think you realize how interesting you are. Au revoir!" She did not seem to expect any reply, taking acquiescence for granted. Glancing once more at the rows of children, who had devoured their meal in an almost uncanny silence, she exclaimed, "The dears! I'm going to send you a cheque, Brooks, even if you have been horrid to me--you always are." "Horrid!" repeated Insall, "put it down to ignorance." He accompanied her down the stairs. From her willowy walk a sophisticated observer would have hazarded the guess that her search for an occupation had included a course of lessons in fancy dancing. Somewhat dazed by this interview which had been so suddenly forced upon her, Janet remained seated on the platform. She had the perception to recognize that in Mrs. Brocklehurst and Insall she had come in contact with a social stratum hitherto beyond the bounds of her experience; those who belonged to that stratum were not characterized by the possession of independent incomes alone, but by an attitude toward life, a manner of not appearing to take its issues desperately. Ditmar was not like that. She felt convicted of enthusiasms, she was puzzled, rather annoyed and ashamed. Insall and Mrs. Brocklehurst, different though they were, had this attitude in common.... Insall, when he returned, regarded her amusedly. "So you'd like to exterminate Mrs. Brocklehurst?" he asked. And Janet flushed. "Well, she forced me to say it." "Oh, it didn't hurt her," he said. "And it didn't help her," Janet responded quickly. "No, it didn't help her," Insall agreed, and laughed. "But I'm not sure it isn't true," she went on, "that we want what she's got." The remark, on her own lips, surprised Janet a little. She had not really meant to make it. Insall seemed to have the quality of forcing one to think out loud. "And what she wants, you've got," he told her. "What have I got?" "Perhaps you'll find out, some day." "It may be too late," she exclaimed. "If you'd only tell me, it might help." "I think it's something you'll have to discover for yourself," he replied, more gravely than was his wont. She was silent a moment, and then she demanded: "Why didn't you tell me who you were? You let me think, when I met you in Silliston that day, that you were a carpenter. I didn't know you'd written books." "You can't expect writers to wear uniforms, like policemen--though perhaps we ought to, it might be a little fairer to the public," he said. "Besides, I am a carpenter, a better carpenter than a writer.." "I'd give anything to be an author!" she cried. "It's a hard life," he assured her. "We have to go about seeking inspiration from others." "Is that why you came to Hampton?" "Well, not exactly. It's a queer thing about inspiration, you only find it when you're not looking for it." She missed the point of this remark, though his eyes were on her. They were not like Rolfe's eyes, insinuating, possessive; they had the anomalistic quality, of being at once personal and impersonal, friendly, alight, evoking curiosity yet compelling trust. "And you didn't tell me," he reproached her, "that you were at I.W.W. Headquarters." A desire for self-justification impelled her to exclaim: "You don't believe in Syndicalism--and yet you've come here to feed these children!" "Oh, I think I understand the strike," he said. "How? Have you seen it? Have you heard the arguments?" "No. I've seen you. You've explained it." "To Mrs. Brocklehurst?" "It wasn't necessary," he replied--and immediately added, in semi-serious apology: "I thought it was admirable, what you said. If she'd talked to a dozen syndicalist leaders, she couldn't have had it put more clearly. Only I'm afraid she doesn't know the truth when she hears it." "Now you're making fun of me!" "Indeed I'm not," he protested. "But I didn't give any of the arguments, any of the--philosophy," she pronounced the word hesitatingly. "I don't understand it yet as well as I should." "You are it," he said. "It's not always easy to understand what we are --it's generally after we've become something else that we comprehend what we have been." And while she was pondering over this one of the ladies who had been waiting on the table came toward Insall. "The children have finished, Brooks," she informed him. "It's time to let in the others." Insall turned to Janet. "This is Miss Bumpus--and this is Mrs. Maturin," he said. "Mrs. Maturin lives in Silliston." The greeting of this lady differed from that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. She, too, took Janet's hand. "Have you come to help us?" she asked. And Janet said: "Oh, I'd like to, but I have other work." "Come in and see us again," said Insall, and Janet, promising, took her leave.... "Who is she, Brooks?" Mrs. Maturin asked, when Janet had gone. "Well," he answered, "I don't know. What does it matter?" Mrs. Maturin smiled. "I should say that it did matter," she replied. "But there's something unusual about her--where did you find her?" "She found me." And Insall explained. "She was a stenographer, it seems, but now she's enlisted heart and soul with the syndicalists," he added. "A history?" Mrs. Maturin queried. "Well, I needn't ask--it's written on her face." "That's all I know," said Insall. "I'd like to know," said Mrs. Maturin. "You say she's in the strike?" "I should rather put it that the strike is in her." "What do you mean, Brooks?" But Insall did not reply. Janet came away from Dey Street in a state of mental and emotional confusion. The encounter with Mrs. Brocklehurst had been upsetting; she had an uneasy feeling of having made a fool of herself in Insall's eyes; she desired his approval, even on that occasion when she had first met him and mistaken him for a workman she had been conscious of a compelling faculty in him, of a pressure he exerted demanding justification of herself; and to-day, because she was now pledged to Syndicalism, because she had made the startling discovery that he was a writer of some renown, she had been more than ever anxious to vindicate her cause. She found herself, indeed, wondering uneasily whether there were a higher truth of which he was in possession. And the fact that his attitude toward her had been one of sympathy and friendliness rather than of disapproval, that his insight seemed to have fathomed her case, apprehended it in all but the details, was even more disturbing--yet vaguely consoling. The consolatory element in the situation was somehow connected with the lady, his friend from Silliston, to whom he had introduced her and whose image now came before her the more vividly, perhaps, in contrast with that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. Mrs. Maturin--could Janet have so expressed her thought! had appeared as an extension of Insall's own personality. She was a strong, tall, vital woman with a sweet irregularity of feature, with a heavy crown of chestnut hair turning slightly grey, quaintly braided, becomingly framing her face. Her colour was high. The impression she conveyed of having suffered was emphasized by the simple mourning gown she wore, but the dominant note she had struck was one of dependability. It was, after all, Insall's dominant, too. Insall had asked her to call again; and the reflection that she might do so was curiously comforting. The soup kitchen in the loft, with these two presiding over it, took on something of the aspect of a sanctuary.... Insall, in some odd manner, and through the medium of that frivolous lady, had managed to reenforce certain doubts that had been stirring in Janet--doubts of Rolfe, of the verity of the doctrine which with such abandon she had embraced. It was Insall who, though remaining silent, just by being there seemed to have suggested her manner of dealing with Mrs. Brocklehurst. It had, indeed, been his manner of dealing with Mrs. Brocklehurst. Janet had somehow been using his words, his method, and thus for the first time had been compelled to look objectively on what she had deemed a part of herself. We never know what we are, he had said, until we become something else! He had forced her to use an argument that failed to harmonize, somehow, with Rolfe's poetical apologetics. Stripped of the glamour of these, was not Rolfe's doctrine just one of taking, taking? And when the workers were in possession of all, would not they be as badly off as Mrs. Brocklehurst or Ditmar? Rolfe, despite the inspiring intellectual creed he professed, lacked the poise and unity that go with happiness. He wanted things, for himself: whereas she beheld in Insall one who seemed emancipated from possessions, whose life was so organized as to make them secondary affairs. And she began to wonder what Insall would think of Ditmar. These sudden flashes of tenderness for Ditmar startled and angered her. She had experienced them before, and always had failed to account for their intrusion into a hatred she cherished. Often, at her desk in the bibliotheque, she had surprised herself speculating upon what Ditmar might be doing at that moment; and it seemed curious, living in the same city with him, that she had not caught a glimpse of him during the strike. More than once, moved by a perverse impulse, she had ventured of an evening down West Street toward the guard of soldiers in the hope of catching sight of him. He had possessed her, and the memory of the wild joy of that possession, of that surrender to great strength, refused to perish. Why, at such moments, should she glory in a strength that had destroyed her and why, when she heard him cursed as the man who stood, more than any other, in the way of the strikers victory, should she paradoxically and fiercely rejoice? why should she feel pride when she was told of the fearlessness with which he went about the streets, and her heart stop beating when she thought of the possibility of his being shot? For these unwelcome phenomena within herself Janet could not account. When they disturbed and frightened her, she plunged into her work with the greater zeal.... As the weeks went by, the strain of the strike began to tell on the weak, the unprepared, on those who had many mouths to feed. Shivering with the cold of that hardest of winters, these unfortunates flocked to the Franco-Belgian Hall, where a little food or money in proportion to the size of their families was doled out to them. In spite of the contributions received by mail, of the soup kitchens and relief stations set up by various organizations in various parts of the city, the supply little more than sufficed to keep alive the more needy portion of the five and twenty thousand who now lacked all other means of support. Janet's heart was wrung as she gazed at the gaunt, bewildered faces growing daily more tragic, more bewildered and gaunt; she marvelled at the animal-like patience of these Europeans, at the dumb submission of most of them to privations that struck her as appalling. Some indeed complained, but the majority recited in monotonous, unimpassioned tones their stories of suffering, or of ill treatment by the "Cossacks" or the police. The stipends were doled out by Czernowitz, but all through the week there were special appeals. Once it was a Polish woman, wan and white, who carried her baby wrapped in a frayed shawl. "Wahna littel money for milk," she said, when at length their attention was drawn to her. "But you get your money, every Saturday," the secretary informed her kindly. She shook her head. "Baby die, 'less I have littel milk--I show you." Janet drew back before the sight of the child with its sunken cheeks and ghastly blue lips .... And she herself went out with the woman to buy the milk, and afterwards to the dive in Kendall Street which she called home--in one of those "rear" tenements separated from the front buildings by a narrow court reeking with refuse. The place was dank and cold, malodorous. The man of the family, the lodgers who lived in the other room of the kennel, were out on the streets. But when her eyes grew used to the darkness she perceived three silent children huddled in the bed in the corner.... On another occasion a man came running up the stairs of the Hall and thrust his way into a meeting of the Committee--one of those normally happy, irresponsible Syrians who, because of a love for holidays, are the despair of mill overseers. Now he was dazed, breathless, his great eyes grief-stricken like a wounded animal's. "She is killidd, my wife--de polees, dey killidd her!" It was Anna Mower who investigated the case. "The girl wasn't doing nothing but walk along Hudson Street when one of those hirelings set on her and beat her. She put out her hand because she thought he'd hit her --and he gave her three or four with his billy and left her in the gutter. If you'd see her you'd know she wouldn't hurt a fly, she's that gentle looking, like all the Syrian women. She had a `Don't be a scab' ribbon on--that's all she done! Somebody'll shoot that guy, and I wouldn't blame 'em." Anna stood beside Janet's typewriter, her face red with anger as she told the story. "And how is the woman now?" asked Janet. "In bed, with two ribs broken and a bruise on her back and a cut on her head. I got a doctor. He could hardly see her in that black place they live."... Such were the incidents that fanned the hatred into hotter and hotter flame. Daily reports were brought in of arrests, of fines and imprisonments for picketing, or sometimes merely for booing at the remnant of those who still clung to their employment. One magistrate in particular, a Judge Hennessy, was hated above all others for giving the extreme penalty of the law, and even stretching it. "Minions, slaves of the capitalists, of the masters," the courts were called, and Janet subscribed to these epithets, beheld the judges as willing agents of a tyranny from which she, too, had suffered. There arrived at Headquarters frenzied bearers of rumours such as that of the reported intention of landlords to remove the windows from the tenements if the rents were not paid. Antonelli himself calmed these. "Let the landlords try it!" he said phlegmatically.... After a while, as the deadlock showed no signs of breaking, the siege of privation began to tell, ominous signs of discontent became apparent. Chief among the waverers were those who had come to America with visions of a fortune, who had practised a repulsive thrift in order to acquire real estate, who carried in their pockets dog-eared bank books recording payments already made. These had consented to the strike reluctantly, through fear, or had been carried away by the eloquence and enthusiasm of the leaders, by the expectation that the mill owners would yield at once. Some went back to work, only to be "seen" by the militant, watchful pickets--generally in their rooms, at night. One evening, as Janet was walking home, she chanced to overhear a conversation taking place in the dark vestibule of a tenement. "Working to-day?" "Yah." "Work to-morrow?" Hesitation. "I d'no." "You work, I cut your throat." A significant noise. "Naw, I no work." "Shake!" She hurried on trembling, not with fear, but exultingly. Nor did she reflect that only a month ago such an occurrence would have shocked and terrified her. This was war.... On her way to Fillmore Street she passed, at every street corner in this district, a pacing sentry, muffled in greatcoat and woollen cap, alert and watchful, the ugly knife on the end of his gun gleaming in the blue light of the arc. It did not occur to her, despite the uniform, that the souls of many of these men were divided also, that their voices and actions, when she saw them threatening with their bayonets, were often inspired by that inner desperation characteristic of men who find themselves unexpectedly in false situations. Once she heard a woman shriek as the sharp knife grazed her skirt: at another time a man whose steps had been considerably hurried turned, at a safe distance, and shouted defiantly: "Say, who are you working for? Me or the Wool Trust?" "Aw, get along," retorted the soldier, "or I'll give you yours." The man caught sight of Janet's button as she overtook him. He was walking backward. "That feller has a job in a machine shop over in Barrington, I seen him there when I was in the mills. And here he is tryin' to put us out --ain't that the limit?" The thud of horses' feet in the snow prevented her reply. The silhouettes of the approaching squad of cavalry were seen down the street, and the man fled precipitately into an alleyway.... There were ludicrous incidents, too, though never lacking in a certain pathos. The wife of a Russian striker had her husband arrested because he had burned her clothes in order to prevent her returning to the mill. From the police station he sent a compatriot with a message to Headquarters. "Oye, he fix her! She no get her jawb now--she gotta stay in bed!" this one cried triumphantly. "She was like to tear me in pieces when I brought her the clothes," said Anna Mower, who related her experience with mingled feelings. "I couldn't blame her. You see, it was the kids crying with cold and starvation, and she got so she just couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand it, neither." Day by day the element who wished to compromise and end the strike grew stronger, brought more and more pressure on the leaders. These people were subsidized, Antonelli declared, by the capitalists.... CHAPTER XVIII A more serious atmosphere pervaded Headquarters, where it was realized that the issue hung in the balance. And more proclamations, a la Napoleon, were issued to sustain and hearten those who were finding bread and onions meagre fare, to shame the hesitating, the wavering. As has been said, it was Rolfe who, because of his popular literary gift, composed these appeals for the consideration of the Committee, dictating them to Janet as he paced up and down the bibliotheque, inhaling innumerable cigarettes and flinging down the ends on the floor. A famous one was headed "Shall Wool and Cotton Kings Rule the Nation?" "We are winning" it declared. "The World is with us! Forced by the unshaken solidarity of tens of thousands, the manufacturers offer bribes to end the reign of terror they have inaugurated.... Inhuman treatment and oppressive toil have brought all nationalities together into one great army to fight against a brutal system of exploitation. In years and years of excessive labour we have produced millions for a class of idle parasites, who enjoy all the luxuries of life while our wives have to leave their firesides and our children their schools to eke out a miserable existence." And this for the militia: "The lowest aim of life is to be a soldier! The `good' soldier never tries to distinguish right from wrong, he never thinks, he never reasons, he only obeys--" "But," Janet was tempted to say, "your syndicalism declares that none of us should think or reason. We should only feel." She was beginning to detect Rolfe's inconsistencies, yet she refrained from interrupting the inspirational flow. "The soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine." Rolfe was fond of adjectives. "All that is human in him, all that is divine has been sworn away when he took the enlistment oath. No man can fall lower than a soldier. It is a depth beyond which we cannot go." "All that is human, all that is divine," wrote Janet, and thrilled a little at the words. Why was it that mere words, and their arrangement in certain sequences, gave one a delicious, creepy feeling up and down the spine? Her attitude toward him had become more and more critical, she had avoided him when she could, but when he was in this ecstatic mood she responded, forgot his red lips, his contradictions, lost herself in a medium she did not comprehend. Perhaps it was because, in his absorption in the task, he forgot her, forgot himself. She, too, despised the soldiers, fervently believed they had sold themselves to the oppressors of mankind. And Rolfe, when in the throes of creation, had the manner of speaking to the soldiers themselves, as though these were present in the lane just below the window; as though he were on the tribune. At such times he spoke with such rapidity that, quick though she was, she could scarcely keep up with him. "Most of you, Soldiers, are workingmen!" he cried. "Yesterday you were slaving in the mills yourselves. You will profit by our victory. Why should you wish to crush us? Be human!" Pale, excited, he sank down into the chair by her side and lit another cigarette. "They ought to listen to that!" he exclaimed. "It's the best one I've done yet." Night had come. Czernowitz sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the lane into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of Franco-Belgian Hall. But now the wind had fallen.... Presently, as his self-made music ceased to vibrate within him, Rolfe began to watch the girl as she sat motionless, with parted lips and eyes alight, staring at the reflection of the lamp in the blue-black window. "Is that the end?" she asked, at length. "Yes," he replied sensitively. "Can't you see it's a climax? Don't you think it's a good one?" She looked at him, puzzled. "Why, yes," she said, "I think it's fine. You see, I have to take it down so fast I can't always follow it as I'd like to." "When you feel, you can do anything," he exclaimed. "It is necessary to feel." "It is necessary to know," she told him. "I do not understand you," he cried, leaning toward her. "Sometimes you are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other way. Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I were a del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as your New England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a Puritan." She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscence at the word. Ditmar had called her so, too. "I can't help what I am," she said. "It is that which inhibits you," he declared. "That Puritanism. It must be eradicated before you can develop, and then--and then you will be completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I will teach you many things--develop you. We will read Sorel together he is beautiful, like poetry--and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and Tasso--yes, and d'Annunzio. We shall live." "We are living, now," she answered. The look with which she surveyed him he found enigmatic. And then, abruptly, she rose and went to her typewriter. "You don't believe what I say!" he reproached her. But she was cool. "I'm not sure that I believe all of it. I want to think it out for myself--to talk to others, too." "What others?" "Nobody in particular--everybody," she replied, as she set her notebook on the rack. "There is some one else!" he exclaimed, rising. "There is every one else," she said. As was his habit when agitated, he began to smoke feverishly, glancing at her from time to time as she fingered the keys. Experience had led him to believe that he who finds a woman in revolt and gives her a religion inevitably becomes her possessor. But more than a month had passed, he had not become her possessor--and now for the first time there entered his mind a doubt as to having given her a religion! The obvious inference was that of another man, of another influence in opposition to his own; characteristically, however, he shrank from accepting this, since he was of those who believe what they wish to believe. The sudden fear of losing her--intruding itself immediately upon an ecstatic, creative mood--unnerved him, yet he strove to appear confident as he stood over her. "When you've finished typewriting that, we'll go out to supper," he told her. But she shook her head. "Why not?" "I don't want to," she replied--and then, to soften her refusal, she added, "I can't, to-night." "But you never will come with me anymore. Why is it?" "I'm very tired at night. I don't feel like going out." She sought to temporize. "You've changed!" he accused her. "You're not the same as you were at first--you avoid me." The swift gesture with which she flung over the carriage of her machine might have warned him. "I don't like that Hampton Hotel," she flashed back. "I'm--I'm not a vagabond--yet." "A vagabond!" he repeated. She went on savagely with her work.. "You have two natures," he exclaimed. "You are still a bourgeoise, a Puritan. You will not be yourself, you will not be free until you get over that." "I'm not sure I want to get over it." He leaned nearer to her. "But now that I have found you, Janet, I will not let you go." "You've no rights over me," she cried, in sudden alarm and anger. "I'm not doing this work, I'm not wearing myself out here for you." "Then--why are you doing it?" His suspicions rose again, and made him reckless. "To help the strikers," she said.... He could get no more out of her, and presently, when Anna Mower entered the room, he left it.... More than once since her first visit to the soup kitchen in Dey Street Janet had returned to it. The universe rocked, but here was equilibrium. The streets were filled with soldiers, with marching strikers, terrible things were constantly happening; the tension at Headquarters never seemed to relax. Out in the world and within her own soul were strife and suffering, and sometimes fear; the work in which she sought to lose herself no longer sufficed to keep her from thinking, and the spectacle --when she returned home--of her mother's increasing apathy grew more and more appalling. But in Dey Street she gained calmness, was able to renew something of that sense of proportion the lack of which, in the chaos in which she was engulfed, often brought her to the verge of madness. At first she had had a certain hesitation about going back, and on the occasion of her second visit had walked twice around the block before venturing to enter. She had no claim on this man. He was merely a chance acquaintance, a stranger--and yet he seemed nearer to her, to understand her better than any one else she knew in the world. This was queer, because she had not explained herself; nor had he asked her for any confidences. She would have liked to confide in him--some things: he gave her the impression of comprehending life; of having, as his specialty, humanity itself; he should, she reflected, have been a minister, and smiled at the thought: ministers, at any rate, ought to be like him, and then one might embrace Christianity--the religion of her forefathers that Rolfe ridiculed. But there was about Insall nothing of religion as she had grown up to apprehend the term. Now that she had taken her courage in her hands and renewed her visits, they seemed to be the most natural proceedings in the world. On that second occasion, when she had opened the door and palpitatingly climbed to the loft, the second batch of children were finishing their midday meal,--rather more joyously, she thought, than before,--and Insall himself was stooping over a small boy whom he had taken away from the table. He did not notice her at once, and Janet watched them. The child had a cough, his extreme thinness was emphasized by the coat he wore, several sizes too large for him. "You come along with me, Marcus, I guess I can fit you out," Insall was saying, when he looked up and saw Janet. "Why, if it isn't Miss Bumpus! I thought you'd forgotten us." "Oh no," she protested. "I wanted to come." "Then why didn't you?" "Well, I have come," she said, with a little sigh, and he did not press her further. And she refrained from offering any conventional excuse, such as that of being interested in the children. She had come to see him, and such was the faith with which he inspired her--now that she was once more in his presence--that she made no attempt to hide the fact. "You've never seen my clothing store, have you?" he asked. And with the child's hand in his he led the way into a room at the rear of the loft. A kit of carpenter's tools was on the floor, and one wall was lined with box-like compartments made of new wood, each with its label in neat lettering indicating the articles contained therein. "Shoes?" he repeated, as he ran his eye down the labels and suddenly opened a drawer. "Here we are, Marcus. Sit down there on the bench, and take off the shoes you have on." The boy had one of those long faces of the higher Jewish type, intelligent, wistful. He seemed dazed by Insall's kindness. The shoes he wore were those of an adult, but cracked and split, revealing the cotton stocking and here and there the skin. His little blue hands fumbled with the knotted strings that served for facings until Insall, producing a pocket knife, deftly cut the strings. "Those are summer shoes, Marcus--well ventilated." "They're by me since August," said the boy. "And now the stockings," prompted Insall. The old ones, wet, discoloured, and torn, were stripped off, and thick, woollen ones substituted. Insall, casting his eye over the open drawer, chose a pair of shoes that had been worn, but which were stout and serviceable, and taking one in his hand knelt down before the child. "Let's see how good a guesser I am," he said, loosening the strings and turning back the tongue, imitating good-humouredly the deferential manner of a salesman of footwear as he slipped on the shoe. "Why, it fits as if it were made for you! Now for the other one. Yes, your feet are mates--I know a man who wears a whole size larger on his left foot." The dazed expression remained on the boy's face. The experience was beyond him. "That's better," said Insall, as he finished the lacing. "Keep out of the snow, Marcus, all you can. Wet feet aren't good for a cough, you know. And when you come in to supper a nice doctor will be here, and we'll see if we can't get rid of the cough." The boy nodded. He got to his feet, stared down at the shoes, and walked slowly toward the door, where he turned. "Thank you, Mister Insall," he said. And Insall, still sitting on his heels, waved his hand. "It is not to mention it," he replied. "Perhaps you may have a clothing store of your own some day--who knows!" He looked up at Janet amusedly and then, with a spring, stood upright, his easy, unconscious pose betokening command of soul and body. "I ought to have kept a store," he observed. "I missed my vocation." "It seems to me that you missed a great many vocations," she replied. Commonplaces alone seemed possible, adequate. "I suppose you made all those drawers yourself." He bowed in acknowledgment of her implied tribute. With his fine nose and keen eyes--set at a slightly downward angle, creased at the corners --with his thick, greying hair, despite his comparative youth he had the look one associates with portraits of earlier, patriarchal Americans.... These calls of Janet's were never of long duration. She had fallen into the habit of taking her lunch between one and two, and usually arrived when the last installment of youngsters were finishing their meal; sometimes they were filing out, stopping to form a group around Insall, who always managed to say something amusing--something pertinent and good-naturedly personal. For he knew most of them by name, and had acquired a knowledge of certain individual propensities and idiosyncrasies that delighted their companions. "What's the trouble, Stepan--swallowed your spoon?" Stepan was known to be greedy. Or he would suddenly seize an unusually solemn boy from behind and tickle him until the child screamed with laughter. It was, indeed, something of an achievement to get on terms of confidence with these alien children of the tenements and the streets who from their earliest years had been forced to shift for themselves, and many of whom had acquired a precocious suspicion of Greeks bearing gifts. Insall himself had used the phrase, and explained it to Janet. That sense of caveat donor was perhaps their most pathetic characteristic. But he broke it down; broke down, too, the shyness accompanying it, the shyness and solemnity emphasized in them by contact with hardship and poverty, with the stark side of life they faced at home. He had made them--Mrs. Maturin once illuminatingly remarked--more like children. Sometimes he went to see their parents,--as in the case of Marcus--to suggest certain hygienic precautions in his humorous way; and his accounts of these visits, too, were always humorous. Yet through that humour ran a strain of pathos that clutched--despite her smile--at Janet's heartstrings. This gift of emphasizing and heightening tragedy while apparently dealing in comedy she never ceased to wonder at. She, too, knew that tragedy of the tenements, of the poor, its sordidness and cruelty. All her days she had lived precariously near it, and lately she had visited these people, had been torn by the sight of what they endured. But Insall's jokes, while they stripped it of sentimentality of which she had an instinctive dislike--made it for her even more poignant. One would have thought, to have such an insight into it, that he too must have lived it, must have been brought up in some dirty alley of a street. That gift, of course, must be a writer's gift. When she saw the waifs trooping after him down the stairs, Mrs. Maturin called him the Pied Piper of Hampton. As time went on, Janet sometimes wondered over the quiet manner in which these two people, Insall and Mrs. Maturin, took her visits as though they were matters of course, and gave her their friendship. There was, really, no obvious excuse for her coming, not even that of the waifs for food--and yet she came to be fed. The sustenance they gave her would have been hard to define; it flowed not so much from what they said, as from what they were; it was in the atmosphere surrounding them. Sometimes she looked at Mrs. Maturin to ask herself what this lady would say if she knew her history, her relationship with Ditmar--which had been her real reason for entering the ranks of the strikers. And was it fair for her, Janet, to permit Mrs. Maturin to bestow her friendship without revealing this? She could not make up her mind as to what this lady would say. Janet had had no difficulty in placing Ditmar; not much trouble, after her first surprise was over, in classifying Rolfe and the itinerant band of syndicalists who had descended upon her restricted world. But Insall and Mrs. Maturin were not to be ticketed. What chiefly surprised her, in addition to their kindliness, to their taking her on faith without the formality of any recommendation or introduction, was their lack of intellectual narrowness. She did not, of course, so express it. But she sensed, in their presence, from references casually let fall in their conversation, a wider culture of which they were in possession, a culture at once puzzling and exciting, one that she despaired of acquiring for herself. Though it came from reading, it did not seem "literary," according to the notion she had conceived of the term. Her speculations concerning it must be focussed and interpreted. It was a culture, in the first place, not harnessed to an obvious Cause: something like that struck her. It was a culture that contained tolerance and charity, that did not label a portion of mankind as its enemy, but seemed, by understanding all, to forgive all. It had no prejudices; nor did it boast, as the Syndicalists boasted, of its absence of convention. And little by little Janet connected it with Silliston. "It must be wonderful to live in such a place as that," she exclaimed, when the Academy was mentioned. On this occasion Insall had left for a moment, and she was in the little room he called his "store," alone with Mrs. Maturin, helping to sort out a batch of garments just received. "It was there you first met Brooks, wasn't it?" She always spoke of him as Brooks. "He told me about it, how you walked out there and asked him about a place to lunch." Mrs. Maturin laughed. "You didn't know what to make of him, did you?" "I thought he was a carpenter!" said Janet. "I--I never should have taken him for an author. But of course I don't know any other authors." "Well, he's not like any of them, he's just like himself. You can't put a tag on people who are really big." Janet considered this. "I never thought of that. I suppose not," she agreed. Mrs. Maturin glanced at her. "So you liked Sflliston," she said. "I liked it better than any place I ever saw. I haven't seen many places, but I'm sure that few can be nicer." "What did you like about it, Janet?" Mrs. Maturin was interested. "It's hard to say," Janet replied, after a moment. "It gave me such a feeling of peace--of having come home, although I lived in Hampton. I can't express it." "I think you're expressing it rather well," said Mrs. Maturin. "It was so beautiful in the spring," Janet continued, dropping the coat she held into the drawer. "And it wasn't just the trees and the grass with the yellow dandelions, it was the houses, too--I've often wondered why those houses pleased me so much. I wanted to live in every one of them. Do you know that feeling?" Mrs. Maturin nodded. "They didn't hurt your eyes when you looked at them, and they seemed to be so much at home there, even the new ones. The new ones were like the children of the old." "I'll tell the architect. He'll be pleased," said Mrs. Maturin. Janet flushed. "Am I being silly?" she asked. "No; my dear," Mrs. Maturin replied. "You've expressed what I feel about Silliston. What do you intend to do when the strike is over?" "I hadn't thought." Janet started at the question, but Mrs. Maturin did not seem to notice the dismay in her tone. "You don't intend to--to travel around with the I. W. W. people, do you?" "I--I hadn't thought," Janet faltered. It was the first time Mrs. Maturin had spoken of her connection with Syndicalism. And she surprised herself by adding: "I don't see how I could. They can get stenographers anywhere, and that's all I'm good for." And the question occurred to her--did she really wish to? "What I was going to suggest," continued Mrs. Maturin, quietly, "was that you might try Silliston. There's a chance for a good stenographer there, and I'm sure you are a good one. So many of the professors send to Boston." Janet stood stock still. Then she said: "But you don't know anything about me, Mrs. Maturin." Kindliness burned in the lady's eyes as she replied: "I know more now --since you've told me I know nothing. Of course there's much I don't know, how you, a stenographer, became involved in this strike and joined the I. W. W. But you shall tell me or not, as you wish, when we become better friends." Janet felt the blood beating in her throat, and an impulse to confess everything almost mastered her. From the first she had felt drawn toward Mrs. Maturin, who seemed to hold out to her the promise of a woman's friendship--for which she had felt a life-long need: a woman friend who would understand the insatiate yearning in her that gave her no rest in her search for a glittering essence never found, that had led her only to new depths of bitterness and despair. It would destroy her, if indeed it had not already done so. Mrs. Maturin, Insall, seemed to possess the secret that would bring her peace--and yet, in spite of something urging her to speak, she feared the risk of losing them. Perhaps, after all, they would not understand! perhaps it was too late! "You do not believe in the Industrial Workers of the World," was what she said. Mrs. Maturin herself, who had been moved and excited as she gazed at Janet, was taken by surprise. A few moments elapsed before she could gather herself to reply, and then she managed to smile. "I do not believe that wisdom will die with them, my dear. Their--their doctrine is too simple, it does not seem as if life, the social order is to be so easily solved." "But you must sympathize with them, with the strikers." Janet's gesture implied that the soup kitchen was proof of this. "Ah," replied Mrs. Maturin, gently, "that is different to understand them. There is one philosophy for the lamb, and another for the wolf." "You mean," said Janet, trembling, "that what happens to us makes us inclined to believe certain things?" "Precisely," agreed Mrs. Maturin, in admiration. "But I must be honest with you, it was Brooks who made me see it." "But--he never said that to me. And I asked him once, almost the same question." "He never said it to me, either," Mrs. Maturin confessed. "He doesn't tell you what he believes; I simply gathered that this is his idea. And apparently the workers can only improve their condition by strikes, by suffering--it seems to be the only manner in which they can convince the employers that the conditions are bad. It isn't the employers' fault." "Not their fault!" Janet repeated. "Not in a large sense," said Mrs. Maturin. "When people grow up to look at life in a certain way, from a certain viewpoint, it is difficult, almost impossible to change them. It's--it's their religion. They are convinced that if the world doesn't go on in their way, according to their principles, everything will be destroyed. They aren't inhuman. Within limits everybody is more than willing to help the world along, if only they can be convinced that what they are asked to do will help." Janet breathed deeply. She was thinking of Ditmar. And Mrs. Maturin, regarding her, tactfully changed the subject. "I didn't intend to give you a lecture on sociology or psychology, my dear," she said. "I know nothing about them, although we have a professor who does. Think over what I've said about coming to Silliston. It will do you good--you are working too hard here. I know you would enjoy Silliston. And Brooks takes such an interest in you," she added impulsively. "It is quite a compliment." "But why?" Janet demanded, bewildered. "Perhaps it's because you have--possibilities. You may be typewriting his manuscripts. And then, I am a widow, and often rather lonely--you could come in and read to me occasionally." "But--I've never read anything." "How fortunate!" said Insall, who had entered the doorway in time to hear Janet's exclamation. "More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read." Mrs. Maturin laughed. But Insall waved his hand deprecatingly. "That isn't my own," he confessed. "I cribbed it from a clever Englishman. But I believe it's true." "I think I'll adopt her," said Mrs. Maturin to Insall, when she had repeated to him the conversation. "I know you are always convicting me of enthusiasms, Brooks, and I suppose I do get enthusiastic." "Well, you adopt her--and I'll marry her," replied Insall, with a smile, as he cut the string from the last bundle of clothing. "You might do worse. It would be a joke if you did--!" His friend paused to consider this preposterous possibility. "One never can tell whom a man like you, an artist, will marry." "We've no business to marry at all," said Insall, laughing. "I often wonder where that romantic streak will land you, Augusta. But you do have a delightful time!" "Don't begrudge it me, it makes life so much more interesting," Mrs. Maturin begged, returning his smile. "I haven't the faintest idea that you will marry her or any one else. But I insist on saying she's your type--she's the kind of a person artists do dig up and marry--only better than most of them, far better." "Dig up?" said Insall. "Well, you know I'm not a snob--I only mean that she seems to be one of the surprising anomalies that sometimes occur in--what shall I say?--in the working-classes. I do feel like a snob when I say that. But what is it? Where does that spark come from? Is it in our modern air, that discontent, that desire, that thrusting forth toward a new light --something as yet unformulated, but which we all feel, even at small institutions of learning like Silliston?" "Now you're getting beyond me." "Oh no, I'm not," Mrs. Maturin retorted confidently. "If you won't talk about it, I will, I have no shame. And this girl has it--this thing I'm trying to express. She's modern to her finger tips, and yet she's extraordinarily American--in spite of her modernity, she embodies in some queer way our tradition. She loves our old houses at Silliston--they make her feel at home--that's her own expression." "Did she say that?" "Exactly. And I know she's of New England ancestry, she told me so. What I can't make out is, why she joined the I.W.W. That seems so contradictory." "Perhaps she was searching for light there," Insall hazarded. "Why don't you ask her?" "I don't know," replied Mrs. Maturin, thoughtfully. "I want to, my curiosity almost burns me alive, and yet I don't. She isn't the kind you can ask personal questions of--that's part of her charm, part of her individuality. One is a little afraid to intrude. And yet she keeps coming here--of course you are a sufficient attraction, Brooks. But I must give her the credit of not flirting with you." "I've noticed that, too," said Insall, comically. "She's searching for light," Mrs. Maturin went on, struck by the phrase. "She has an instinct we can give it to her, because we come from an institution of learning. I felt something of the kind when I suggested her establishing herself in Silliston. Well, she's more than worth while experimenting on, she must have lived and breathed what you call the `movie atmosphere' all her life, and yet she never seems to have read and absorbed any sentimental literature or cheap religion. She doesn't suggest the tawdry. That part of her, the intellectual part, is a clear page to be written upon." "There's my chance," said Insall. "No, it's my chance--since you're so cynical." "I'm not cynical," he protested. "I don't believe you really are. And if you are, there may be a judgment upon you," she added playfully. "I tell you she's the kind of woman artists go mad about. She has what sentimentalists call temperament, and after all we haven't any better word to express dynamic desires. She'd keep you stirred up, stimulated, and you could educate her." "No, thanks, I'll leave that to you. He who educates a woman is lost. But how about Syndicalism and all the mysticism that goes with it? There's an intellectual over at Headquarters who's been talking to her about Bergson, the life-force, and the World-We-Ourselves-Create." Mrs. Maturin laughed. "Well, we go wrong when we don't go right. That's just it, we must go some way. And I'm sure, from what I gather, that she isn't wholly satisfied with Syndicalism." "What is right?" demanded Insall. "Oh, I don't intend to turn her over to Mr. Worrall and make a sociologist and a militant suffragette out of her. She isn't that kind, anyhow. But I could give her good literature to read--yours, for instance," she added maliciously. "You're preposterous, Augusta," Insall exclaimed. "I may be, but you've got to indulge me. I've taken this fancy to her --of course I mean to see more of her. But--you know how hard it is for me, sometimes, since I've been left alone." Insall laid his hand affectionately on her shoulder. "I remember what you said the first day I saw her, that the strike was in her," Mrs. Maturin continued. "Well, I see now that she does express and typify it--and I don't mean the `labour movement' alone, or this strike in Rampton, which is symptomatic, but crude. I mean something bigger --and I suppose you do--the protest, the revolt, the struggle for self-realization that is beginning to be felt all over the nation, all over the world today, that is not yet focussed and self-conscious, but groping its way, clothing itself in any philosophy that seems to fit it. I can imagine myself how such a strike as this might appeal to a girl with a sense of rebellion against sordidness and lack of opportunity--especially if she has had a tragic experience. And sometimes I suspect she has had one." "Well, it's an interesting theory," Insall admitted indulgently. "I'm merely amplifying your suggestions, only you won't admit that they are yours. And she was your protegee." "And you are going to take her off my hands." "I'm not so sure," said Mrs. Maturin. CHAPTER XIX The Hampton strike had reached the state of grim deadlock characteristic of all stubborn wars. There were aggressions, retaliations on both sides, the antagonism grew more intense. The older labour unions were accused by the strikers of playing the employers' game, and thus grew to be hated even more than the "capitalists." These organizations of the skilled had entered but half-heartedly into a struggle that now began to threaten, indeed, their very existence, and when it was charged that the Textile Workers had been attempting to secure recruits from the ranks of the strikers, and had secretly offered the millowners a scale of demands in the hope that a sufficient number of operatives would return to work, and so break the strike; a serious riot was barely averted. "Scab-hunting agencies," the unions were called. One morning when it was learned that the loom-fixers, almost to a man, had gone back to the mills, a streetcar was stopped near the power house at the end of Faber Street, and in a twinkling, before the militia or police could interfere, motorman, conductor, and passengers were dragged from it and the trolley pole removed. This and a number of similar aggressive acts aroused the mill-owners and their agents to appeal with renewed vigour to the public through the newspapers, which it was claimed they owned or subsidized. Then followed a series of arraignments of the strike leaders calculated to stir the wildest prejudices and fears of the citizens of Hampton. Antonelli and Jastro--so rumour had it--in various nightly speeches had advised their followers to "sleep in the daytime and prowl like wild animals at night"; urged the power house employees to desert and leave the city in darkness; made the declaration, "We will win if we raise scaffolds on every street!" insisted that the strikers, too, should have "gun permits," since the police hirelings carried arms. And the fact that the mill-owners replied with pamphlets whose object was proclaimed to be one of discrediting their leaders in the eyes of the public still further infuriated the strikers. Such charges, of course, had to be vehemently refuted, the motives behind them made clear, and counter-accusations laid at the door of the mill-owners. The atmosphere at Headquarters daily grew more tense. At any moment the spark might be supplied to precipitate an explosion that would shake the earth. The hungry, made more desperate by their own sufferings or the spectacle of starving families, were increasingly difficult to control: many wished to return to work, others clamoured for violence, nor were these wholly discouraged by a portion of the leaders. A riot seemed imminent--a riot Antonelli feared and firmly opposed, since it would alienate the sympathy of that wider public in the country on which the success of the strike depended. Watchful, yet apparently unconcerned, unmoved by the quarrels, the fierce demands for "action," he sat on the little stage, smoking his cigars and reading his newspapers. Janet's nerves were taut. There had been times during the past weeks when she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents. Inexperience had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of her work, the excitement due to the strange life of conflict, of new ideas, into which she had so unreservedly flung herself, the resentment that galvanized her--all these had diverted her from worry. At night, hers had been the oblivious slumber of the weary.... And then, as a desperate wayfarer, pressing on, feels a heavy drop of rain and glances up to perceive the clouds that have long been gathering, she awoke in the black morning hours, and fear descended upon her. Suddenly her brain became hideously active as she lay, dry-upped, staring into the darkness, striving to convince herself that it could not be. But the thing had its advocate, also, to summon ingeniously, in cumulative array, those omens she had ignored: to cause her to piece together, in this moment of torture, portions of the knowledge of sexual facts that prudery banishes from education, a smattering of which reaches the ears of such young women as Janet in devious, roundabout ways. Several times, in the month just past, she had had unwonted attacks of dizziness, of faintness, and on one occasion Anna Mower, alarmed, had opened the window of the bibliotheque and thrust her into the cold air. Now, with a pang of fear she recalled what Anna had said:--"You're working too hard--you hadn't ought to stay here nights. If it was some girls I've met, I'd know what to think." Strange that the significance of this sentence had failed to penetrate her consciousness until now! "If it was some girls I've met, I'd know what to think!" It had come into her mind abruptly; and always, when she sought to reassure herself, to declare her terror absurd, it returned to confront her. Heat waves pulsed through her, she grew intolerably warm, perspiration started from her pores, and she flung off the blankets. The rain from the roofs was splashing on the bricks of the passage.... What would Mr. Insall say, if he knew? and Mrs. Maturin? She could never see them again. Now there was no one to whom to turn, she was cut off, utterly, from humanity, an outcast. Like Lise! And only a little while ago she and Lise had lain in that bed together! Was there not somebody --God? Other people believed in God, prayed to him. She tried to say, "Oh God, deliver me from this thing!" but the words seemed a mockery. After all, it was mechanical, it had either happened or it hadn't happened. A life-long experience in an environment where only unpleasant things occurred, where miracles were unknown, had effaced a fleeting, childhood belief in miracles. Cause and effect were the rule. And if there were a God who did interfere, why hadn't he interfered before this thing happened? Then would have been the logical time. Why hadn't he informed her that in attempting to escape from the treadmill in which he had placed her, in seeking happiness, she had been courting destruction? Why had he destroyed Lise? And if there were a God, would he comfort her now, convey to her some message of his sympathy and love? No such message, alas, seemed to come to her through the darkness. After a while--a seemingly interminable while--the siren shrieked, the bells jangled loudly in the wet air, another day had come. Could she face it--even the murky grey light of this that revealed the ashes and litter of the back yard under the downpour? The act of dressing brought a slight relief; and then, at breakfast, a numbness stole over her--suggested and conveyed, perchance, by the apathy of her mother. Something had killed suffering in Hannah; perhaps she herself would mercifully lose the power to suffer! But the thought made her shudder. She could not, like her mother, find a silly refuge in shining dishes, in cleaning pots and pans, or sit idle, vacant-minded, for long hours in a spotless kitchen. What would happen to her?... Howbeit, the ache that had tortured her became a dull, leaden pain, like that she had known at another time--how long ago--when the suffering caused by Ditmar's deception had dulled, when she had sat in the train on her way back to Hampton from Boston, after seeing Lise. The pain would throb again, unsupportably, and she would wake, and this time it would drive her--she knew not where. She was certain, now, that the presage of the night was true.... She reached Franco-Belgian Hall to find it in an uproar. Anna Mower ran up to her with the news that dynamite had been discovered by the police in certain tenements of the Syrian quarter, that the tenants had been arrested and taken to the police station where, bewildered and terrified, they had denied any knowledge of the explosive. Dynamite had also been found under the power house, and in the mills--the sources of Hampton's prosperity. And Hampton believed, of course, that this was the inevitable result of the anarchistic preaching of such enemies of society as Jastro and Antonelli if these, indeed, had not incited the Syrians to the deed. But it was a plot of the mill-owners, Anna insisted--they themselves had planted the explosive, adroitly started the rumours, told the police where the dynamite was to be found. Such was the view that prevailed at Headquarters, pervaded the angrily buzzing crowd that stood outside--heedless of the rain--and animated the stormy conferences in the Salle de Reunion. The day wore on. In the middle of the afternoon, as she was staring out of the window, Anna Mower returned with more news. Dynamite had been discovered in Hawthorne Street, and it was rumoured that Antonelli and Jastro were to be arrested. "You ought to go home and rest, Janet," she said kindly. Janet shook her head. "Rolfe's back," Anna informed her, after a moment. "He's talking to Antonelli about another proclamation to let people know who's to blame for this dynamite business. I guess he'll be in here in a minute to dictate the draft. Say, hadn't you better let Minnie take it, and go home?" "I'm not sick," Janet repeated, and Anna reluctantly left her. Rolfe had been absent for a week, in New York, consulting with some of the I.W.W. leaders; with Lockhart, the chief protagonist of Syndicalism in America, just returned from Colorado, to whom he had given a detailed account of the Hampton strike. And Lockhart, next week, was coming to Hampton to make a great speech and look over the ground for himself. All this Rolfe told Janet eagerly when he entered the bibliotheque. He was glad to get back; he had missed her. "But you are pale!" he exclaimed, as he seized her hand, "and how your eyes burn! You do not take care of yourself when I am not here to watch you." His air of solicitude, his assumption of a peculiar right to ask, might formerly have troubled and offended her. Now she was scarcely aware of his presence. "You feel too much--that is it you are like a torch that consumes itself in burning. But this will soon be over, we shall have them on their knees, the capitalists, before very long, when it is known what they have done to-day. It is too much--they have overreached themselves with this plot of the dynamite." "You have missed me, a little?" "I have been busy," she said, releasing her hand and sitting down at her desk and taking up her notebook. "You are not well," he insisted. "I'm all right," she replied. He lit a cigarette and began to pace the room--his customary manner of preparing himself for the creative mood. After a while he began to dictate--but haltingly. He had come here from Antonelli all primed with fervour and indignation, but it was evident that this feeling had ebbed, that his mind refused to concentrate on what he was saying. Despite the magnificent opportunity to flay the capitalists which their most recent tactics afforded him, he paused, repeated himself, and began again, glancing from time to time reproachfully, almost resentfully at Janet. Usually, on these occasions, he was transported, almost inebriated by his own eloquence; but now he chafed at her listlessness, he was at a loss to account for the withdrawal of the enthusiasm he had formerly been able to arouse. Lacking the feminine stimulus, his genius limped. For Rolfe there had been a woman in every strike--sometimes two. What had happened, during his absence, to alienate the most promising of all neophytes he had ever encountered? "The eyes of the world are fixed on the workers of Hampton! They must be true to the trust their fellows have placed in them! To-day the mill-owners, the masters, are at the end of their tether. Always unscrupulous, they have descended to the most despicable of tactics in order to deceive the public. But truth will prevail!..." Rolfe lit another cigarette, began a new sentence and broke it off. Suddenly he stood over her. "It's you!" he said. "You don't feel it, you don't help me, you're not in sympathy." He bent over her, his red lips gleaming through his beard, a terrible hunger in his lustrous eyes--the eyes of a soul to which self-denial was unknown. His voice was thick with uncontrolled passion, his hand was cold. "Janet, what has happened? I love you, you must love me--I cannot believe that you do not. Come with me. We shall work together for the workers--it is all nothing without you." For a moment she sat still, and then a pain shot through her, a pain as sharp as a dagger thrust. She drew her hand away. "I can't love--I can only hate," she said. "But you do not hate me!" Rolfe repudiated so gross a fact. His voice caught as in a sob. "I, who love you, who have taught you!" She dismissed this--what he had taught her--with a gesture which, though slight, was all-expressive. He drew back from her. "Shall I tell you who has planned and carried out this plot?" he cried. "It is Ditmar. He is the one, and he used Janes, the livery stable keeper, the politician who brought the dynamite to Hampton, as his tool. Half an hour before Janes got to the station in Boston he was seen by a friend of ours talking to Ditmar in front of the Chippering offices, and Janes had the satchel with him then. Ditmar walked to the corner with him." Janet, too, had risen. "I don't believe it," she said. "Ah, I thought you wouldn't! But we have the proof that dynamite was in the satchel, we've found the contractor from whom it was bought. I was a fool--I might have known that you loved Ditmar." "I hate him!" said Janet. "It is the same thing," said Rolfe. She did not answer.... He watched her in silence as she put on her hat and coat and left the room. The early dusk was gathering when she left the hall and made her way toward the city. The huge bottle-shaped chimneys of the power plant injected heavy black smoke into the wet air. In Faber Street the once brilliant signs above the "ten-foot" buildings seemed dulled, the telegraph poles starker, nakeder than ever, their wires scarcely discernible against the smeared sky. The pedestrians were sombrely garbed, and went about in "rubbers"--the most depressing of all articles worn by man. Sodden piles of snow still hid the curb and gutters, but the pavements were trailed with mud that gleamed in the light from the shop windows. And Janet, lingering unconsciously in front of that very emporium where Lisehad been incarcerated, the Bagatelle, stared at the finery displayed there, at the blue tulle dress that might be purchased, she read, for $22.99. She found herself repeating, in meaningless, subdued tones, the words, "twenty-two ninety-nine." She even tried--just to see if it were possible--to concentrate her mind on that dress, on the fur muffs and tippets in the next window; to act as if this were just an ordinary, sad February afternoon, and she herself once more just an ordinary stenographer leading a monotonous, uneventful existence. But she knew that this was not true, because, later on, she was going to do something--to commit some act. She didn't know what this act would be. Her head was hot, her temples throbbed.... Night had fallen, the electric arcs burned blue overhead, she was in another street--was it Stanley? Sounds of music reached her, the rumble of marching feet; dark, massed figures were in the distance swimming toward her along the glistening line of the car tracks, and she heard the shrill whistling of the doffer boys, who acted as a sort of fife corps in these parades--which by this time had become familiar to the citizens of Hampton. And Janet remembered when the little red book that contained the songs had arrived at Headquarters from the west and had been distributed by thousands among the strikers. She recalled the words of this song, though the procession was as yet too far away for her to distinguish them:-- "The People's flag is deepest red, It shrouded oft our martyred dead, And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, Their life-blood dyed its every fold." The song ceased, and she stood still, waiting for the procession to reach her. A group of heavy Belgian women were marching together. Suddenly, as by a simultaneous impulse, their voices rang out in the Internationale--the terrible Marseillaise of the workers:-- "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! Arise, ye wretched of the earth!" And the refrain was taken up by hundreds of throats:-- "'Tis the final conflict, Let each stand in his place!" The walls of the street flung it back. On the sidewalk, pressed against the houses, men and women heard it with white faces. But Janet was carried on.... The scene changed, now she was gazing at a mass of human beings hemmed in by a line of soldiers. Behind the crowd was a row of old-fashioned brick houses, on the walls of which were patterned, by the cold electric light, the branches of the bare elms ranged along the sidewalk. People leaned out of the windows, like theatregoers at a play. The light illuminated the red and white bars of the ensign, upheld by the standard bearer of the regiment, the smaller flags flaunted by the strikers--each side clinging hardily to the emblem of human liberty. The light fell, too, harshly and brilliantly, on the workers in the front rank confronting the bayonets, and these seemed strangely indifferent, as though waiting for the flash of a photograph. A little farther on a group of boys, hands in pockets, stared at the soldiers with bravado. From the rear came that indescribable "booing" which those who have heard never forget, mingled with curses and cries:--"Vive la greve!" "To hell with the Cossacks!" "Kahm on--shoot!" The backs of the soldiers, determined, unyielding, were covered with heavy brown capes that fell below the waist. As Janet's glance wandered down the line it was arrested by the face of a man in a visored woollen cap--a face that was almost sepia, in which large white eyeballs struck a note of hatred. And what she seemed to see in it, confronting her, were the hatred and despair of her own soul! The man might have been a Hungarian or a Pole; the breadth of his chin was accentuated by a wide, black moustache, his attitude was tense,--that of a maddened beast ready to spring at the soldier in front of him. He was plainly one of those who had reached the mental limit of endurance. In contrast with this foreigner, confronting him, a young lieutenant stood motionless, his head cocked on one side, his hand grasping the club held a little behind him, his glance meeting the other's squarely, but with a different quality of defiance. All his faculties were on the alert. He wore no overcoat, and the uniform fitting close to his figure, the broad-brimmed campaign hat of felt served to bring into relief the physical characteristics of the American Anglo-Saxon, of the individualist who became the fighting pioneer. But Janet, save to register the presence of the intense antagonism between the two, scarcely noticed her fellow countryman.... Every moment she expected to see the black man spring,--and yet movement would have marred the drama of that consuming hatred.... Then, by one of those bewildering, kaleidoscopic shifts to which crowds are subject, the scene changed, more troops arrived, little by little the people were dispersed to drift together again by chance--in smaller numbers--several blocks away. Perhaps a hundred and fifty were scattered over the space formed by the intersection of two streets, where three or four special policemen with night sticks urged them on. Not a riot, or anything approaching it. The police were jeered, but the groups, apparently, had already begun to scatter, when from the triangular vestibule of a saloon on the corner darted a flame followed by an echoing report, a woman bundled up in a shawl screamed and sank on the snow. For an instant the little French-Canadian policeman whom the shot had missed gazed stupidly down at her.... As Janet ran along the dark pavements the sound of the shot and of the woman's shriek continued to ring in her ears. At last she stopped in front of the warehouse beyond Mr. Tiernan's shop, staring at the darkened windows of the flat--of the front room in which her mother now slept alone. For a minute she stood looking at these windows, as though hypnotized by some message they conveyed--the answer to a question suggested by the incident that had aroused and terrified her. They drew her, as in a trance, across the street, she opened the glass-panelled door, remembering mechanically the trick it had of not quite closing, turned and pushed it to and climbed the stairs. In the diningroom the metal lamp, brightly polished, was burning as usual, its light falling on the chequered red table-cloth, on her father's empty chair, on that somewhat battered heirloom, the horsehair sofa. All was so familiar, and yet so amazingly unfamiliar, so silent! At this time Edward should be reading the Banner, her mother bustling in and out, setting the table for supper. But not a dish was set. The ticking of the ancient clock only served to intensify the silence. Janet entered, almost on tiptoe, made her way to the kitchen door, and looked in. The stove was polished, the pans bright upon the wall, and Hannah was seated in a corner, her hands folded across a spotless apron. Her scant hair was now pure white, her dress seemed to have fallen away from her wasted neck, which was like a trefoil column. "Is that you, Janet? You hain't seen anything of your father?" The night before Janet had heard this question, and she had been puzzled as to its meaning--whether in the course of the day she had seen her father, or whether Hannah thought he was coming home. "He's at the mill, mother. You know he has to stay there." "I know," replied Hannah, in a tone faintly reminiscent of the old aspersion. "But I've got everything ready for him in case he should come--any time--if the strikers hain't killed him." "But he's safe where he is." "I presume they will try to kill him, before they get through," Hannah continued evenly. "But in case he should come at any time, and I'm not here, you tell him all those Bumpus papers are put away in the drawer of that old chest, in the corner. I can't think what he'd do without those papers. That is," she added, "if you're here yourself." "Why shouldn't you be here?" asked Janet, rather sharply. "I dunno, I seem to have got through." She glanced helplessly around the kitchen. "There don't seem to be much left to keep me alive.... I guess you'll be wanting your supper, won't you? You hain't often home these days--whatever it is you're doing. I didn't expect you." Janet did not answer at once. "I--I have to go out again, mother," she said. Hannah accepted the answer as she had accepted every other negative in life, great and small. "Well, I guessed you would." Janet made a step toward her. "Mother!" she said, but Hannah gazed at her uncomprehendingly. Janet stooped convulsively, and kissed her. Straightening up, she stood looking down at her mother for a few moments, and went out of the room, pausing in the dining-room, to listen, but Hannah apparently had not stirred. She took the box of matches from its accustomed place on the shelf beside the clock, entered the dark bedroom in the front of the flat, closing the door softly behind her. The ghostly blue light from a distant arc came slanting in at the window, glinting on the brass knobs of the chest of drawers-another Bumpus heirloom. She remembered that chest from early childhood; it was one of the few pieces that, following them in all their changes of residence, had been faithful to the end: she knew everything in it, and the place for everything. Drawing a match from the box, she was about to turn on the gas--but the light from the arc would suffice. As she made her way around the walnut bed she had a premonition of poignant anguish as yet unrealized, of anguish being held at bay by a stronger, fiercer, more imperative emotion now demanding expression, refusing at last to be denied. She opened the top drawer of the chest, the drawer in which Hannah, breaking tradition, had put the Bumpus genealogy. Edward had never kept it there. Would the other things be in place? Groping with her hands in the left-hand corner, her fingers clasped exultantly something heavy, something wrapped carefully in layers of flannel. She had feared her father might have taken it to the mill! She drew it out, unwound the flannel, and held to the light an old-fashioned revolver, the grease glistening along its barrel. She remembered, too, that the cartridges had lain beside it, and thrusting her hand once more into the drawer found the box, extracting several, and replacing the rest, closed the drawer, and crept through the dining-room to her bedroom, where she lit the gas in order to examine the weapon --finally contriving, more by accident than skill, to break it. The cartridges, of course, fitted into the empty cylinder. But before inserting them she closed the pistol once more, cocked it, and held it out. Her arm trembled violently as she pulled the trigger. Could she do it? As though to refute this doubt of her ability to carry out an act determined upon, she broke the weapon once more, loaded and closed it, and thrust it in the pocket of her coat. Then, washing the grease from her hands, she put on her gloves, and was about to turn out the light when she saw reflected in the glass the red button of the I.W.W. still pinned on her coat. This she tore off, and flung on the bureau. When she had kissed her mother, when she had stood hesitatingly in the darkness of the familiar front bedroom in the presence of unsummoned memories of a home she had believed herself to resent and despise, she had nearly faltered. But once in the street, this weakness suddenly vanished, was replaced by a sense of wrong that now took complete and furious possession of her, driving her like a gale at her back. She scarcely felt on her face the fine rain that had begun to fall once more. Her feet were accustomed to the way. When she had turned down West Street and almost gained the canal, it was with a shock of surprise that she found herself confronted by a man in a long cape who held a rifle and barred her path. She stared at him as at an apparition. "You can't get by here," he said. "Don't you know that?" She did not reply. He continued to look at her, and presently asked, in a gentler tone:--"Where did you wish to go, lady?" "Into the mill," she replied, "to the offices." "But there can't anybody go through here unless they have a pass. I'm sorry, but that's the order." Her answer came so readily as to surprise her. "I was Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer. I have to see him." The sentry hesitated, and then addressed another soldier, who was near the bridge. "Hi, sergeant!" he called. The sergeant came up--a conscientious Boston clerk who had joined the militia from a sense of duty and a need for exercise. While the sentry explained the matter he gazed at Janet. Then he said politely:--"I'm sorry, Miss, but I can't disobey orders." "But can't you send word to Mr. Ditmar, and tell him I want to see him?" she asked. "Why, I guess so," he answered, after a moment. "What name shall I say?" "Miss Bumpus." "Bumpus," he repeated. "That's the gatekeeper's name." "I'm his daughter--but I want to see Mr. Ditmar." "Well," said the sergeant, "I'm sure it's all right, but I'll have to send in anyway. Orders are orders. You understand?" She nodded as he departed. She saw him cross the bridge like a ghost through the white mist rising from the canal. And through the mist she could make out the fortress-like mass of the mill itself, and the blurred, distorted lights in the paymaster's offices smeared on the white curtain of the vapour. "Nasty weather," the sentry remarked, in friendly fashion. He appeared now, despite his uniform, as a good-natured, ungainly youth. Janet nodded. "You'd ought to have brought an umbrella," he said. "I guess it'll rain harder, before it gets through. But it's better than ten below zero, anyhow." She nodded again, but he did not seem to resent her silence. He talked about the hardship of patrolling in winter, until the sergeant came back. "It's all right, Miss Bumpus," he said, and touched his hat as he escorted her to the bridge. She crossed the canal and went through the vestibule without replying to the greeting of the night-watchman, or noticing his curious glance; she climbed the steel-clad stairway, passed the paymaster's offices and Mr. Orcutt's, and gained the outer office where she had worked as a stenographer. It was dark, but sufficient light came through Ditmar's open door to guide her beside the rail. He had heard her step, and as she entered his room he had put his hands heavily on his desk, in the act of rising from his chair. "Janet!" he said, and started toward her, but got no farther than the corner of the desk. The sight of her heaving breast, of the peculiar light that flashed from beneath her lashes stopped him suddenly. Her hands were in her pockets. "What is it?" he demanded stupidly. But she continued to stand there, breathing so heavily that she could not speak. It was then that he became aware of an acute danger. He did not flinch. "What is it?" he repeated. Still she was silent. One hand was thrust deeper into its pocket, he saw a shudder run through her, and suddenly she burst into hysterical weeping, sinking into a chair. He stood for some moments helplessly regarding her before he gained the presence of mind to go to the door and lock it, returning to bend over her. "Don't touch me!" she said, shrinking from him. "For God's sake tell me what's the matter," he begged. She looked up at him and tried to speak, struggling against the sobs that shook her. "I--I came here to--to kill you--only I can't do it." "To kill me!" he said, after a pause. In spite of the fact that he had half divined her intention, the words shocked him. Whatever else may be said of him, he did not lack courage, his alarm was not of a physical nature. Mingled with it were emotions he himself did not understand, caused by the unwonted sight of her loss of self-control, of her anger, and despair. "Why did you want to kill me?" And again he had to wait for an answer. "Because you've spoiled my life--because I'm going to have a child!" "What do you mean? Are you?... it can't be possible." "It is possible, it's true--it's true. I've waited and waited, I've suffered, I've almost gone crazy--and now I know. And I said I'd kill you if it were so, I'd kill myself--only I can't. I'm a coward." Her voice was drowned again by weeping. A child! He had never imagined such a contingency! And as he leaned back against the desk, his emotions became chaotic. The sight of her, even as she appeared crazed by anger, had set his passion aflame--for the intensity and fierceness of her nature had always made a strong appeal to dominant qualities in Ditmar's nature. And then--this announcement! Momentarily it turned his heart to water. Now that he was confronted by an exigency that had once vicariously yet deeply disturbed him in a similar affair of a friend of his, the code and habit of a lifetime gained an immediate ascendency--since then he had insisted that this particular situation was to be avoided above all others. And his mind leaped to possibilities. She had wished to kill him--would she remain desperate enough to ruin him? Even though he were not at a crisis in his affairs, a scandal of this kind would be fatal. "I didn't know," he said desperately, "I couldn't guess. Do you think I would have had this thing happen to you? I was carried away--we were both carried away--" "You planned it!" she replied vehemently, without looking up. "You didn't care for me, you only--wanted me." "That isn't so--I swear that isn't so. I loved you I love you." "Oh, do you think I believe that?" she exclaimed. "I swear it--I'll prove it!" he protested. Still under the influence of an acute anxiety, he was finding it difficult to gather his wits, to present his case. "When you left me that day the strike began--when you left me without giving me a chance--you'll never know how that hurt me." "You'll never know how it hurt me!" she interrupted. "Then why, in God's name, did you do it? I wasn't myself, then, you ought to have seen that. And when I heard from Caldwell here that you'd joined those anarchists--" "They're no worse than you are--they only want what you've got," she said. He waved this aside. "I couldn't believe it--I wouldn't believe it until somebody saw you walking with one of them to their Headquarters. Why did you do it?" "Because I know how they feel, I sympathize with the strikers, I want them to win--against you!" She lifted her head and looked at him, and in spite of the state of his feelings he felt a twinge of admiration at her defiance. "Because you love me!" he said. "Because I hate you," she answered. And yet a spark of exultation leaped within him at the thought that love had caused this apostasy. He had had that suspicion before, though it was a poor consolation when he could not reach her. Now she had made it vivid. A woman's logic, or lack of logic--her logic. "Listen!" he pleaded. "I tried to forget you--I tried to keep myself going all the time that I mightn't think of you, but I couldn't help thinking of you, wanting you, longing for you. I never knew why you left me, except that you seemed to believe I was unkind to you, and that something had happened. It wasn't my fault--" he pulled himself up abruptly. "I found out what men were like," she said. "A man made my sister a woman of the streets--that's what you've done to me." He winced. And the calmness she had regained, which was so characteristic of her, struck him with a new fear. "I'm not that kind of a man," he said. But she did not answer. His predicament became more trying. "I'll take care of you," he assured her, after a moment. "If you'll only trust me, if you'll only come to me I'll see that no harm comes to you." She regarded him with a sort of wonder--a look that put a fine edge of dignity and scorn to her words when they came. "I told you I didn't want to be taken care of--I wanted to kill you, and kill myself. I don't know why I can't what prevents me." She rose. "But I'm not going to trouble you any more--you'll never hear of me again." She would not trouble him, she was going away, he would never hear of her again! Suddenly, with the surge of relief he experienced, came a pang. He could not let her go--it was impossible. It seemed that he had never understood his need of her, his love for her, until now that he had brought her to this supreme test of self-revelation. She had wanted to kill him, yes, to kill herself--but how could he ever have believed that she would stoop to another method of retaliation? As she stood before him the light in her eyes still wet with tears--transfigured her. "I love you, Janet," he said. "I want you to marry me." "You don't understand," she answered. "You never did. If I had married you, I'd feel just the same--but it isn't really as bad as if we had been married." "Not as bad!" he exclaimed. "If we were married, you'd think you had rights over me," she explained, slowly. "Now you haven't any, I can go away. I couldn't live with you. I know what happened to me, I've thought it all out, I wanted to get away from the life I was leading--I hated it so, I was crazy to have a chance, to see the world, to get nearer some of the beautiful things I knew were there, but couldn't reach.... And you came along. I did love you, I would have done anything for you--it was only when I saw that you didn't really love me that I began to hate you, that I wanted to get away from you, when I saw that you only wanted me until you should get tired of me. That's your nature, you can't help it. And it would have been the same if we were married, only worse, I couldn't have stood it any more than I can now--I'd have left you. You say you'll marry me now, but that's because you're sorry for me--since I've said I'm not going to trouble you any more. You'll be glad I've gone. You may--want me now, but that isn't love. When you say you love me, I can't believe you." "You must believe me! And the child, Janet,--our child--" "If the world was right," she said, "I could have this child and nobody would say anything. I could support it--I guess I can anyway. And when I'm not half crazy I want it. Maybe that's the reason I couldn't do what I tried to do just now. It's natural for a woman to want a child --especially a woman like me, who hasn't anybody or anything." Ditmar's state of mind was too complicated to be wholly described. As the fact had been gradually brought home to him that she had not come as a supplicant, that even in her misery she was free, and he helpless, there revived in him wild memories of her body, of the kisses he had wrung from her--and yet this physical desire was accompanied by a realization of her personality never before achieved. And because he had hitherto failed to achieve it, she had escaped him. This belated, surpassing glimpse of what she essentially was, and the thought of the child their child--permeating his passion, transformed it into a feeling hitherto unexperienced and unimagined. He hovered over her, pitifully, his hands feeling for her, yet not daring to touch her. "Can't you see that I love you?" he cried, "that I'm ready to marry you now, to-night. You must love me, I won't believe that you don't after --after all we have been to each other." But even then she could not believe. Something in her, made hard by the intensity of her suffering, refused to melt. And her head was throbbing, and she scarcely heard him. "I can't stay any longer," she said, getting to her feet. "I can't bear it." "Janet, I swear I'll care for you as no woman was ever cared for. For God's sake listen to me, give me a chance, forgive me!" He seized her arm; she struggled, gently but persistently, to free herself from his hold. "Let me go, please." All the passionate anger had gone out of her, and she spoke in a monotone, as one under hypnosis, dominated by a resolution which, for the present at least, he was powerless to shake. "But to-morrow?" he pleaded. "You'll let me see you to-morrow, when you've had time to think it over, when you realize that I love you and want you, that I haven't meant to be cruel--that you've misjudged me --thought I was a different kind of a man. I don't blame you for that, I guess something happened to make you believe it. I've got enemies. For the sake of the child, Janet, if for nothing else, you'll come back to me! You're--you're tired tonight, you're not yourself. I don't wonder, after all you've been through. If you'd only come to me before! God knows what I've suffered, too!" "Let me go, please," she repeated, and this time, despairingly, he obeyed her, a conviction of her incommunicability overwhelming him. He turned and, fumbling with the key, unlocked the door and opened it. "I'll see you to-morrow," he faltered once more, and watched her as she went through the darkened outer room until she gained the lighted hallway beyond and disappeared. Her footsteps died away into silence. He was trembling. For several minutes he stood where she had left him, tortured by a sense of his inability to act, to cope with this, the great crisis of his life, when suddenly the real significance of that strange last look in her eyes was borne home to him. And he had allowed her to go out into the streets alone! Seizing his hat and coat, he fairly ran out of the office and down the stairs and across the bridge. "Which way did that young lady go?" he demanders of the sergeant. "Why--uh, West Street, Mr. Ditmar." He remembered where Fillmore Street was; he had, indeed, sought it out one evening in the hope of meeting her. He hurried toward it now, his glance strained ahead to catch sight of her figure under a lamp. But he reached Fillmore Street without overtaking her, and in the rain he stood gazing at the mean houses there, wondering in which of them she lived, and whether she had as yet come home.... After leaving Ditmar Janet, probably from force of habit, had indeed gone through West Street, and after that she walked on aimlessly. It was better to walk than to sit alone in torment, to be gnawed by that Thing from which she had so desperately attempted to escape, and failed. She tried to think why she had failed.... Though the rain fell on her cheeks, her mouth was parched; and this dryness of her palate, this physical sense of lightness, almost of dizziness, were intimately yet incomprehensibly part and parcel of the fantastic moods into which she floated. It was as though, in trying to solve a problem, she caught herself from time to time falling off to sleep. In her waking moments she was terror-stricken. Scarce an hour had passed since, in a terrible exaltation at having found a solution, she had gone to Ditmar's office in the mill. What had happened to stay her? It was when she tried to find the cause of the weakness that so abruptly had overtaken her, or to cast about for a plan to fit the new predicament to which her failure had sentenced her, that the fantasies intruded. She heard Ditmar speaking, the arguments were curiously familiar--but they were not Ditmar's! They were her father's, and now it was Edward's voice to which she listened, he was telling her how eminently proper it was that she should marry Ditmar, because of her Bumpus blood. And this made her laugh.... Again, Ditmar was kissing her hair. He had often praised it. She had taken it down and combed it out for him; it was like a cloud, he said--so fine; its odour made him faint--and then the odour changed, became that of the detested perfume of Miss Lottie Myers! Even that made Janet smile! But Ditmar was strong, he was powerful, he was a Fact, why not go back to him and let him absorb and destroy her? That annihilation would be joy.... It could not have been much later than seven o'clock when she found herself opposite the familiar, mulberry-shingled Protestant church. The light from its vestibule made a gleaming square on the wet sidewalk, and into this area, from the surrounding darkness, came silhouetted figures of men and women holding up umbrellas; some paused for a moment's chat, their voices subdued by an awareness of the tabernacle. At the sight of this tiny congregation something stirred within her. She experienced a twinge of surprise at the discovery that other people in the world, in Hampton, were still leading tranquil, untormented existences. They were contented, prosperous, stupid, beyond any need of help from God, and yet they were going to prayer-meeting to ask something! He refused to find her in the dark streets. Would she find Him if she went in there? and would He help her? The bell in the tower began to clang, with heavy, relentless strokes --like physical blows from which she flinched--each stirring her reluctant, drowsy soul to a quicker agony. From the outer blackness through which she fled she gazed into bright rooms of homes whose blinds were left undrawn, as though to taunt and mock the wanderer. She was an outcast! Who henceforth would receive her save those, unconformed and unconformable, sentenced to sin in this realm of blackness? Henceforth from all warmth and love she was banished.... In the middle of the Stanley Street bridge she stopped to lean against the wet rail; the mill lights were scattered, dancing points of fire over the invisible swift waters, and she raised her eyes presently to the lights themselves, seeking one unconsciously--Ditmar's! Yes, it was his she sought; though it was so distant, sometimes it seemed to burn like a red star, and then to flicker and disappear. She could not be sure.... Something chill and steely was in the pocket of her coat--it made a heavy splash in the water when she dropped it. The river could not be so very cold! She wished she could go down like that into forgetfulness. But she couldn't.... Where was Lise now?... It would be so easy just to drop over that parapet and be whirled away, and down and down. Why couldn't she? Well, it was because--because--she was going to have a child. Well, if she had a child to take care of, she would not be so lonely--she would have something to love. She loved it now, as though she felt it quickening within her, she wanted it, to lavish on it all of a starved affection. She seemed actually to feel in her arms its soft little body pressed against her. Claude Ditmar's child! And she suddenly recalled, as an incident of the remote past, that she had told him she wanted it! This tense craving for it she felt now was somehow the answer to an expressed wish which had astonished her. Perhaps that was the reason why she had failed to do what she had tried to do, to shoot Ditmar and herself! It was Ditmar's child, Ditmar's and hers! He had loved her, long ago, and just now--was it just now?--he had said he loved her still, he had wanted to marry her. Then why had she run away from him? Why had she taken the child into outer darkness, to be born without a father,--when she loved Ditmar? Wasn't that one reason why she wanted the child? why, even in her moments of passionate hatred she recalled having been surprised by some such yearning as now came over her? And for an interval, a brief interval, she viewed him with startling clarity. Not because he embodied any ideal did she love him, but because he was what he was, because he had overcome her will, dominated and possessed her, left his mark upon her indelibly. He had been cruel to her, willing to sacrifice her to his way of life, to his own desires, but he loved her, for she had seen, if not heeded in his eyes the look that a woman never mistakes! She remembered it now, and the light in his window glowed again, like a star to guide her back to him. It was drawing her, irresistibly.... The sentry recognized her as she came along the canal. "Mr. Ditmar's gone," he told her. "Gone!" she repeated. "Gone!" "Why, yes, about five minutes after you left he was looking for you--he asked the sergeant about you." "And--he won't be back?" "I guess not," answered the man, sympathetically. "He said good-night." She turned away dully. The strength and hope with which she had been so unexpectedly infused while gazing from the bridge at his window had suddenly ebbed; her legs ached, her feet were wet, and she shivered, though her forehead burned. The world became distorted, people flitted past her like weird figures of a dream, the myriad lights of Faber Street were blurred and whirled in company with the electric signs. Seeking to escape from their confusion she entered a side street leading north, only to be forcibly seized by some one who darted after her from the sidewalk. "Excuse me, but you didn't see that automobile," he said, as he released her. Shaken, she went on through several streets to find herself at length confronted by a pair of shabby doors that looked familiar, and pushing one of them open, baited at the bottom of a stairway to listen. The sound of cheerful voices camp to her from above; she started to climb--even with the help of the rail it seemed as if she would never reach the top of that stairway. But at last she stood in a loft where long tables were set, and at the end of one of these, sorting out spoons and dishes, three women and a man were chatting and laughing together. Janet was troubled because she could not remember who the man was, although she recognized his bold profile, his voice and gestures.... At length one of the women said something in a low tone, and he looked around quickly and crossed the room. "Why, it's you!" he said, and suddenly she recalled his name. "Mr. Insall!" But his swift glance had noticed the expression in her eyes, the sagged condition of her clothes, the attitude that proclaimed exhaustion. He took her by the arm and led her to the little storeroom, turning on the light and placing her in a chair. Darkness descended on her.... Mrs. Maturin, returning from an errand, paused for an instant in the doorway, and ran forward and bent over Janet. "Oh, Brooks, what is it--what's happened to her?" "I don't know," he replied, "I didn't have a chance to ask her. I'm going for a doctor." "Leave her to me, and call Miss Hay." Mrs. Maturin was instantly competent .... And when Insall came back from the drug store where he had telephoned she met him at the head of the stairs. "We've done everything we can, Edith Hay has given her brandy, and gone off for dry clothes, and we've taken all the children's things out of the drawers and laid her on the floor, but she hasn't come to. Poor child,--what can have happened to her? Is the doctor coming?" "Right away," said Insall, and Mrs. Maturin went back into the storeroom. Miss Hay brought the dry clothes before the physician arrived. "It's probably pneumonia," he explained to Insall a little later. "She must go to the hospital--but the trouble is all our hospitals are pretty full, owing to the sickness caused by the strike." He hesitated. "Of course, if she has friends, she could have better care in a private institution just now." "Oh, she has friends," said Mrs. Maturin. "Couldn't we take her to our little hospital at Silliston, doctor? It's only four miles--that isn't much in an automobile, and the roads are good now." "Well, the risk isn't much greater, if you have a closed car, and she would, of course, be better looked after," the physician consented. "I'll see to it at once," said Insall.... CHAPTER XX The Martha Wootton Memorial Hospital was the hobby of an angel alumnus of Silliston. It was situated in Hovey's Lane, but from the window of the white-enameled room in which she lay Janet could see the bare branches of the Common elms quivering to the spring gusts, could watch, day by day, the grass changing from yellow-brown to vivid green in the white sunlight. In the morning, when the nurse opened the blinds, that sunlight swept radiantly into the room, lavish with its caresses; always spending, always giving, the symbol of a loving care that had been poured out on her, unasked and unsought. It was sweet to rest, to sleep. And instead of the stringent monster-cry of the siren, of the discordant clamour of the mill bells, it was sweet yet strange to be awakened by silvertoned chimes proclaiming peaceful hours. At first she surrendered to the spell, and had no thought of the future. For a little while every day, Mrs. Maturin read aloud, usually from books of poetry. And knowing many of the verses by heart, she would watch Janet's face, framed in the soft dark hair that fell in two long plaits over her shoulders. For Janet little guessed the thought that went into the choosing of these books, nor could she know of the hours spent by this lady pondering over library shelves or consulting eagerly with Brooks Insall. Sometimes Augusta Maturin thought of Janet as a wildflower--one of the rare, shy ones, hiding under its leaves; sprung up in Hampton, of all places, crushed by a heedless foot, yet miraculously not destroyed, and already pushing forth new and eager tendrils. And she had transplanted it. To find the proper nourishment, to give it a chance to grow in a native, congenial soil, such was her breathless task. And so she had selected "The Child's Garden of Verses." "I should like to rise and go Where the golden apples grow"... When she laid down her book it was to talk, perhaps, of Silliston. Established here before the birth of the Republic, its roots were bedded in the soil of a racial empire, to a larger vision of which Augusta Maturin clung: an empire of Anglo-Saxon tradition which, despite disagreements and conflicts--nay, through them--developed imperceptibly toward a sublimer union, founded not on dominion, but on justice and right. She spoke of the England she had visited on her wedding journey, of the landmarks and literature that also through generations have been American birthrights; and of that righteous self-assertion and independence which, by protest and even by war, America had contributed to the democracy of the future. Silliston, indifferent to cults and cataclysms, undisturbed by the dark tides flung westward to gather in deposits in other parts of the land, had held fast to the old tradition, stood ready to do her share to transform it into something even nobler when the time should come. Simplicity and worth and beauty--these elements at least of the older Republic should not perish, but in the end prevail. She spoke simply of these things, connecting them with a Silliston whose spirit appealed to all that was inherent and abiding in the girl. All was not chaos: here at least, a beacon burned with a bright and steady flame. And she spoke of Andrew Silliston, the sturdy colonial prototype of the American culture, who had fought against his King, who had spent his modest fortune to found this seat of learning, believing as he did that education is the cornerstone of republics; divining that lasting unity is possible alone by the transformation of the individual into the citizen through voluntary bestowal of service and the fruits of labour. Samuel Wootton, the Boston merchant who had given the hospital, was Andrew's true descendant, imbued with the same half-conscious intuition that builds even better that it reeks. And Andrew, could he have returns to earth in his laced coat and long silk waistcoat, would still recognize his own soul in Silliston Academy, the soul of his creed and race. "Away down the river, A hundred miles or more, Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore."... Janet drew in a great breath, involuntarily. These were moments when it seemed that she could scarcely contain what she felt of beauty and significance, when the ecstasy and pain were not to be borne. And sometimes, as she listened to Mrs. Maturin's voice, she wept in silence. Again a strange peace descended on her, the peace of an exile come home; if not to remain, at least to know her own land and people before faring forth. She would not think of that faring yet awhile, but strive to live and taste the present--and yet as life flowed back into her veins that past arose to haunt her, she yearned to pour it out to her new friend, to confess all that had happened to her. Why couldn't she? But she was grateful because Mrs. Maturin betrayed no curiosity. Janet often lay watching her, puzzled, under the spell of a frankness, an ingenuousness, a simplicity she had least expected to find in one who belonged to such a learned place as that of Silliston. But even learning, she was discovering, could be amazingly simple. Freely and naturally Mrs. Maturin dwelt on her own past, on the little girl of six taken from her the year after her husband died, on her husband himself, once a professor here, and who, just before his last illness, had published a brilliant book on Russian literature which resulted in his being called to Harvard. They had gone to Switzerland instead, and Augusta Maturin had come back to Silliston. She told Janet of the loon-haunted lake, hemmed in by the Laurentian hills, besieged by forests, where she had spent her girlhood summers with her father, Professor Wishart, of the University of Toronto. There, in search of health, Gifford Maturin had come at her father's suggestion to camp. Janet, of course, could not know all of that romance, though she tried to picture it from what her friend told her. Augusta Wishart, at six and twenty, had been one of those magnificent Canadian women who are most at home in the open; she could have carried Gifford Maturinout of the wilderness on her back. She was five feet seven, modelled in proportion, endowed by some Celtic ancestor with that dark chestnut hair which, because of its abundance, she wore braided and caught up in a heavy knot behind her head. Tanned by the northern sun, kneeling upright in a canoe, she might at a little distance have been mistaken for one of the race to which the forests and waters had once belonged. The instinct of mothering was strong in her, and from the beginning she had taken the shy and delicate student under her wing, recognizing in him one of the physically helpless dedicated to a supreme function. He was forever catching colds, his food disagreed with him, and on her own initiative she discharged his habitant cook and supplied him with one of her own choosing. When overtaken by one of his indispositions she paddled him about the lake with lusty strokes, first placing a blanket over his knees, and he submitted: he had no pride of that sort, he was utterly indifferent to the figure he cut beside his Amazon. His gentleness of disposition, his brilliant conversations with those whom, like her father, he knew and trusted, captivated Augusta. At this period of her life she was awakening to the glories of literature and taking a special course in that branch. He talked to her of Gogol, Turgenief, and Dostoievsky, and seated on the log piazza read in excellent French "Dead Souls," "Peres et Enfants," and "The Brothers Karamazoff." At the end of August he went homeward almost gaily, quite ignorant of the arrow in his heart, until he began to miss Augusta Wishart's ministrations--and Augusta Wishart herself.... Then had followed that too brief period of intensive happiness.... The idea of remarriage had never occurred to her. At eight and thirty, though tragedy had left its mark, it had been powerless to destroy the sweetness of a nature of such vitality as hers. The innate necessity of loving remained, and as time went on had grown more wistful and insistent. Insall and her Silliston neighbours were wont, indeed, gently to rally her on her enthusiasms, while understanding and sympathizing with this need in her. A creature of intuition, Janet had appealed to her from the beginning, arousing first her curiosity, and then the maternal instinct that craved a mind to mould, a soul to respond to her touch.... Mrs. Maturin often talked to Janet of Insall, who had, in a way, long been connected with Silliston. In his early wandering days, when tramping over New England, he used unexpectedly to turn up at Dr. Ledyard's, the principal's, remain for several weeks and disappear again. Even then he, had been a sort of institution, a professor emeritus in botany, bird lore, and woodcraft, taking the boys on long walks through the neighbouring hills; and suddenly he had surprised everybody by fancying the tumble-down farmhouse in Judith's Lane, which he had restored with his own hands into the quaintest of old world dwellings. Behind it he had made a dam in the brook, and put in a water wheel that ran his workshop. In play hours the place was usually overrun by boys.... But sometimes the old craving for tramping would overtake him, one day his friends would find the house shut up, and he would be absent for a fortnight, perhaps for a month--one never knew when he was going, or when he would return. He went, like his hero, Silas Simpkins, through the byways of New England, stopping at night at the farm-houses, or often sleeping out under the stars. And then, perhaps, he would write another book. He wrote only when he felt like writing. It was this book of Insall's, "The Travels of Silas Simpkins", rather than his "Epworth Green" or "The Hermit of Blue Mountain," that Mrs. Maturin chose to read to Janet. Unlike the sage of Walden, than whom he was more gregarious, instead of a log house for his castle Silas Simpkins chose a cart, which he drove in a most leisurely manner from the sea to the mountains, penetrating even to hamlets beside the silent lakes on the Canadian border, and then went back to the sea again. Two chunky grey horses with wide foreheads and sagacious eyes propelled him at the rate of three miles an hour; for these, as their master, had learned the lesson that if life is to be fully savoured it is not to be bolted. Silas cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples beside the stone walls: usually he slept in the cart in the midst of the assortment of goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert in applied psychology. At first you might have thought Silos merely a peddler, but if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to perceive that peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty. Silos was in a way a sage--but such a human sage! He never intruded with theories, he never even hinted at the folly of the mortals who bought or despised his goods, or with whom he chatted by the wayside, though he may have had his ideas on the subject: it is certain that presently one began to have one's own: nor did he exclaim with George Sand, "Il n'y a rien de plus betement mechant que l'habitant des petites villes!" Somehow the meannesses and jealousies were accounted for, if not excused. To understand is to pardon. It was so like Insall, this book, in its whimsicality, in its feeling of space and freedom, in its hidden wisdom that gradually revealed itself as one thought it over before falling off to sleep! New England in the early summer! Here, beside the tender greens of the Ipswich downs was the sparkling cobalt of the sea, and she could almost smell its cool salt breath mingling with the warm odours of hay and the pungent scents of roadside flowers. Weathered grey cottages were scattered over the landscape, and dark copses of cedars, while oceanward the eye was caught by the gleam of a lighthouse or a lonely sail. Even in that sandy plain, covered with sickly, stunted pines and burned patches, stretching westward from the Merrimac, Silas saw beauty and colour, life in the once prosperous houses not yet abandoned.... Presently, the hills, all hyacinth blue, rise up against the sunset, and the horses' feet are on the "Boston Road"--or rud, according to the authorized pronunciation of that land. Hardly, indeed, in many places, a "rud" to-day, reverting picturesquely into the forest trail over which the early inland settlers rode their horses or drove their oxen with upcountry produce to the sea. They were not a people who sought the easiest way, and the Boston Road reflects their characters: few valleys are deep enough to turn it aside; few mountains can appal it: railroads have given it a wide berth. Here and there the forest opens out to reveal, on a knoll or "flat," a forgotten village or tavern-stand. Over the high shelf of Washington Town it runs where the air is keen and the lakes are blue, where long-stemmed wild flowers nod on its sunny banks, to reach at length the rounded, classic hills and sentinel mountain that mark the sheep country of the Connecticut.... It was before Janet's convalescence began that Mrs. Maturin had consulted Insall concerning her proposed experiment in literature. Afterwards he had left Silliston for a lumber camp on a remote river in northern Maine, abruptly to reappear, on a mild afternoon late in April, in Augusta Maturin's garden. The crocuses and tulips were in bloom, and his friend, in a gardening apron, was on her knees, trowel in hand, assisting a hired man to set out marigolds and snapdragons. "Well, it's time you were home again," she exclaimed, as she rose to greet him and led him to a chair on the little flagged terrace beside the windows of her library. "I've got so much to tell you about our invalid." "Our invalid!" Insall retorted. "Of course. I look to you to divide the responsibility with me, and you've shirked by running off to Maine. You found her, you know--and she's really remarkable." "Now see here, Augusta, you can't expect me to share the guardianship of an attractive and--well, a dynamic young woman. If she affects you this way, what will she do to me? I'm much too susceptible." "Susceptible" she scoffed. "But you can't get out of it. I need you. I've never been so interested and so perplexed in my life." "How is she?" Insall asked. "Frankly, I'm worried," said Mrs. Maturin. "At first she seemed to be getting along beautifully. I read to her, a little every day, and it was wonderful how she responded to it. I'll tell you about that I've got so much to tell you! Young Dr. Trent is puzzled, too, it seems there are symptoms in the case for which he cannot account. Some three weeks ago he asked me what I made out of her, and I can't make anything--that's the trouble, except that she seems pathetically grateful, and that I've grown absurdly fond of her. But she isn't improving as fast as she should, and Dr. Trent doesn't know whether or not to suspect functional complications. Her constitution seems excellent, her vitality unusual. Trent's impressed by her, he inclines to the theory that she has something on her mind, and if this is so she should get rid of it, tell it to somebody--in short, tell it to me. I know she's fond of me, but she's so maddeningly self-contained, and at moments when I look at her she baffles me, she makes me feel like an atom. Twenty times at least I've almost screwed up my courage to ask her, but when it comes to the point, I simply can't do it." "You ought to be able to get at it, if any one can," said Insall. "I've a notion it may be connected with the strike," Augusta Maturin continued. "I never could account for her being mixed up in that, plunging into Syndicalism. It seemed so foreign to her nature. I wish I'd waited a little longer before telling her about the strike, but one day she asked me how it had come out--and she seemed to be getting along so nicely I didn't see any reason for not telling her. I said that the strike was over, that the millowners had accepted the I.W.W. terms, but that Antonelli and Jastro had been sent to jail and were awaiting trial because they had been accused of instigating the murder of a woman who was shot by a striker aiming at a policeman. It seems that she had seen that! She told me so quite casually. But she was interested, and I went on to mention how greatly the strikers were stirred by the arrests, how they paraded in front of the jail, singing, and how the feeling was mostly directed against Mr. Ditmar, because he was accused of instigating the placing of dynamite in the tenements." "And you spoke of Mr. Ditmar's death?" Insall inquired. "Why yes, I told her how he had been shot in Dover Street by a demented Italian, and if it hadn't been proved that the Italian was insane and not a mill worker, the result of the strike might have been different." "How did she take it?" "Well, she was shocked, of course. She sat up in bed, staring at me, and then leaned back on the pillows again. I pretended not to notice it--but I was sorry I'd said anything about it." "She didn't say anything?" "Not a word." "Didn't you know that, before the strike, she was Ditmar's private stenographer?" "No!" Augusta Maturin exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me?" "It never occurred to me to tell you," Insall replied. "That must have something to do with it!" said Mrs. Maturin. Insall got up and walked to the end of the terrace, gazing at a bluebird on the edge of the lawn. "Well, not necessarily," he said, after a while. "Did you ever find out anything about her family?" "Oh, yes, I met the father once, he's been out two or three times, on Sunday, and came over here to thank me for what I'd done. The mother doesn't come--she has some trouble, I don't know exactly what. Brooks, I wish you could see the father, he's so typically unique--if one may use the expression. A gatekeeper at the Chippering Mills!" "A gatekeeper?" "Yes, and I'm quite sure he doesn't understand to this day how he became one, or why. He's delightfully naive on the subject of genealogy, and I had the Bumpus family by heart before he left. That's the form his remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was born in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the Plymouth Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed with gritty, yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the Historical Society. He speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the old New Englander, never slurring his syllables, and he has a really fine face, the kind of face one doesn't often see nowadays. I kept looking at it, wondering what was the matter with it, and at last I realized what it lacked--will, desire, ambition,--it was what a second-rate sculptor might have made of Bradford, for instance. But there is a remnant of fire in him. Once, when he spoke of the strike, of the foreigners, he grew quite indignant." "He didn't tell you why his daughter had joined the strikers?" Insall asked. "He was just as much at sea about that as you and I are. Of course I didn't ask him--he asked me if I knew. It's only another proof of her amazing reticence. And I can imagine an utter absence of sympathy between them. He accounts for her, of course; he's probably the unconscious transmitter of qualities the Puritans possessed and tried to smother. Certainly the fires are alight in her, and yet it's almost incredible that he should have conveyed them. Of course I haven't seen the mother." "It's curious he didn't mention her having been Ditmar's stenographer," Insall put in. "Was that reticence?" "I hardly think so," Augusta Maturin replied. "It may have been, but the impression I got was of an incapacity to feel the present. All his emotions are in the past, most of his conversation was about Bumpuses who are dead and buried, and his pride in Janet--for he has a pride--seems to exist because she is their representative. It's extraordinary, but he sees her present situation, her future, with extraordinary optimism; he apparently regards her coming to Silliston, even in the condition in which we found her, as a piece of deserved fortune for which she has to thank some virtue inherited from her ancestors! Well, perhaps he's right. If she were not unique, I shouldn't want to keep her here. It's pure selfishness. I told Mr. Bumpus I expected to find work for her." Mrs. Maturin returned Insall's smile. "I suppose you're too polite to say that I'm carried away by my enthusiasms. But you will at least do me the justice to admit that they are rare and--discriminating, as a connoisseur's should be. I think even you will approve of her." "Oh, I have approved of her--that's the trouble." Mrs. Maturin regarded him for a moment in silence. "I wish you could have seen her when I began to read those verses of Stevenson's. It was an inspirations your thinking of them." "Did I think of them?" "You know you did. You can't escape your responsibility. Well, I felt like--like a gambler, as though I were staking everything on a throw. And, after I began, as if I were playing on some rare instrument. She lay there, listening, without uttering a word, but somehow she seemed to be interpreting them for me, giving them a meaning and a beauty I hadn't imagined. Another time I told her about Silliston, and how this little community for over a century and a half had tried to keep its standard flying, to carry on the work begun by old Andrew, and I thought of those lines, "Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore." That particular application just suddenly, occurred to me, but she inspired it." "You're a born schoolma'am," Insall laughed. "I'm much too radical for a schoolmam," she declared. "No board of trustees would put up with me--not even Silliston's! We've kept the faith, but we do move slowly, Brooks. Even tradition grows, and sometimes our blindness here to changes, to modern, scientific facts, fairly maddens me. I read her that poem of Moody's--you know it:-- 'Here, where the moors stretch free In the high blue afternoon, Are the marching sun and the talking sea.' and those last lines:-- 'But thou, vast outbound ship of souls, What harbour town for thee? What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, Shall crowd the banks to see? Shall all the happy shipmates then Stand singing brotherly? Or shall a haggard, ruthless few Warp her over and bring her to, While the many broken souls of me Fester down in the slaver's pen, And nothing to say or do?'" "I was sorry afterwards, I could see that she was tremendously excited. And she made me feel as if I, too, had been battened down in that hold and bruised and almost strangled. I often wonder whether she has got out of it into the light--whether we can rescue her." Mrs. Maturin paused. "What do you mean?" Insall asked. "Well, it's difficult to describe, what I feel--she's such a perplexing mixture of old New England and modernity, of a fatalism, and an aliveness that fairly vibrates. At first, when she began to recover, I was conscious only of the vitality--but lately I feel the other quality. It isn't exactly the old Puritan fatalism, or even the Greek, it's oddly modern, too, almost agnostic, I should say,--a calm acceptance of the hazards of life, of nature, of sun and rain and storm alike--very different from the cheap optimism one finds everywhere now. She isn't exactly resigned--I don't say that--I know she can be rebellious. And she's grateful for the sun, yet she seems to have a conviction that the clouds will gather again.... The doctor says she may leave the hospital on Monday, and I'm going to bring her over here for awhile. Then," she added insinuatingly, "we can collaborate." "I think I'll go back to Maine," Insall exclaimed. "If you desert me, I shall never speak to you again," said Mrs. Maturin. "Janet," said Mrs. Maturin the next day, as she laid down the book from which she was reading, "do you remember that I spoke to you once in Hampton of coming here to Silliston? Well, now we've got you here, we don't want to lose you. I've been making inquiries; quite a number of the professors have typewriting to be done, and they will be glad to give their manuscripts to you instead of sending them to Boston. And there's Brooks Insall too--if he ever takes it into his head to write another book. You wouldn't have any trouble reading his manuscript, it's like script. Of course it has to be copied. You can board with Mrs. Case --I've arranged that, too. But on Monday I'm going to take you to my house, and keep you until you're strong enough to walk." Janet's eyes were suddenly bright with tears. "You'll stay?" "I can't," answered Janet. "I couldn't." "But why not? Have you any other plans?" "No, I haven't any plans, but--I haven't the right to stay here." Presently she raised her face to her friend. "Oh Mrs. Maturin, I'm so sorry! I didn't want to bring any sadness here--it's all so bright and beautiful! And now I've made you sad!" It was a moment before Augusta Maturin could answer her. "What are friends for, Janet," she asked, "if not to share sorrow with? And do you suppose there's any place, however bright, where sorrow has not come? Do you think I've not known it, too? And Janet, I haven't sat here all these days with you without guessing that something worries you. I've been waiting, all this time, for you to tell me, in order that I might help you." "I wanted to," said Janet, "every day I wanted to, but I couldn't. I couldn't bear to trouble you with it, I didn't mean ever to tell you. And then--it's so terrible, I don't know what you'll think." "I think I know you, Janet," answered Mrs. Maturin. "Nothing human, nothing natural is terrible, in the sense you mean. At least I'm one of those who believe so." Presently Janet said, "I'm going to have a child." Mrs. Maturin sat very still. Something closed in her throat, preventing her immediate reply. "I, too, had a child, my dear," she answered. "I lost her." She felt the girl's clasp tighten on her fingers. "But you--you had a right to it--you were married. Children are sacred things," said Augusta Maturin. "Sacred! Could it be that a woman like Mrs. Maturity thought that this child which was coming to her was sacred, too? "However they come?" asked Janet. "Oh, I tried to believe that, too! At first--at first I didn't want it, and when I knew it was coming I was driven almost crazy. And then, all at once, when I was walking in the rain, I knew I wanted it to have--to keep all to myself. You understand?" Augusta Maturity inclined her head. "But the father?" she managed to ask, after a moment. "I don't wish to pry, my dear, but does he--does he realize? Can't he help you?" "It was Mr. Ditmar." "Perhaps it will help you to tell me about it, Janet." "I'd--I'd like to. I've been so unhappy since you told me he was dead --and I felt like a cheat. You see, he promised to marry me, and I know now that he loved me, that he really wanted to marry me, but something happened to make me believe he wasn't going to, I saw--another girl who'd got into trouble, and then I thought he'd only been playing with me, and I couldn't stand it. I joined the strikers--I just had to do something." Augusta Maturity nodded, and waited. "I was only a stenographer, and we were very poor, and he was rich and lived in a big house, the most important man in Hampton. It seemed too good to be true--I suppose I never really thought it could happen. Please don't think I'm putting all the blame on him, Mrs. Maturity--it was my fault just as much as his. I ought to have gone away from Hampton, but I didn't have the strength. And I shouldn't have--" Janet stopped. "But--you loved him?" "Yes, I did. For a long time, after I left him, I thought I didn't, I thought I hated him, and when I found out what had happened to me--that night I came to you--I got my father's pistol and went to the mill to shoot him. I was going to shoot myself, too." "Oh!" Mrs. Maturity gasped. She gave a quick glance of sheer amazement at Janet, who did not seem to notice it; who was speaking objectively, apparently with no sense of the drama in her announcement. "But I couldn't," she went on. "At the time I didn't know why I couldn't, but when I went out I understood it was because I wanted the child, because it was his child. And though he was almost out of his head, he seemed so glad because I'd come back to him, and said he'd marry me right away." "And you refused!" exclaimed Mrs. Maturity. "Well, you see, I was out of my head, too, I still thought I hated him --but I'd loved him all the time. It was funny! He had lots of faults, and he didn't seem to understand or care much about how poor people feel, though he was kind to them in the mills. He might have come to understand--I don't know--it wasn't because he didn't want to, but because he was so separated from them, I guess, and he was so interested in what he was doing. He had ambition, he thought everything of that mill, he'd made it. I don't know why I loved him, it wasn't because he was fine, like Mr. Insall, but he was strong and brave, and he needed me and just took me." "One never knows!" Augusta Maturity murmured. "I went back that night to tell him I'd marry him--and he'd gone. Then I came to you, to the soup kitchen. I didn't mean to bother you, I've never quite understood how I got there. I don't care so much what happens to me, now that I've told you," Janet added. "It was mean, not to tell you, but I'd never had anything like this--what you were giving me--and I wanted all I could get." "I'm thankful you did come to us!" Augusta Maturin managed to reply. "You mean--?" Janet exclaimed. "I mean, that we who have been more--fortunate don't look at these things quite as we used to, that the world is less censorious, is growing to understand situations it formerly condemned. And--I don't know what kind of a monster you supposed me to be, Janet." "Oh, Mrs. Maturin!" "I mean that I'm a woman, too, my dear, although my life has been sheltered. Otherwise, what has happened to you might have happened to me. And besides, I am what is called unconventional, I have little theories of my own about life, and now that you have told me everything I understand you and love you even more than I did before." Save that her breath came fast, Janet lay still against the cushions of the armchair. She was striving to grasp the momentous and unlooked-for fact of her friend's unchanged attitude. Then she asked:--"Mrs. Maturin, do you believe in God?" Augusta Maturin was startled by the question. "I like to think of Him as light, Janet, and that we are plants seeking to grow toward Him--no matter from what dark crevice we may spring. Even in our mistakes and sins we are seeking Him, for these are ignorances, and as the world learns more, we shall know Him better and better. It is natural to long for happiness, and happiness is self-realization, and self-realization is knowledge and light." "That is beautiful," said Janet at length. "It is all we can know about God," said Mrs. Maturin, "but it is enough." She had been thinking rapidly. "And now," she went on, "we shall have to consider what is to be done. I don't pretend that the future will be easy, but it will not be nearly as hard for you as it might have been, since I am your friend, and I do not intend to desert you. I'm sure you will not let it crush you. In the first place, you will have something to go on with--mental resources, I mean, for which you have a natural craving, books and art and nature, the best thoughts and the best interpretations. We can give you these. And you will have your child, and work to do, for I'm sure you're industrious. And of course I'll keep your secret, my dear." "But--how?" Janet exclaimed. "I've arranged it all. You'll stay here this spring, you'll come to my house on Monday, just as we planned, and later on you may go to Mrs. Case's, if it will make you feel more independent, and do typewriting until the spring term is over. I've told you about my little camp away up in Canada, in the heart of the wilderness, where I go in summer. We'll stay there until the autumn, until your baby comes, and, after that, I know it won't be difficult to get you a position in the west, where you can gain your living and have your child. I have a good friend in California who I'm sure will help you. And even if your secret should eventually be discovered--which is not probable--you will have earned respect, and society is not as stern as it used to be. And you will always have me for a friend. There, that's the bright side of it. Of course it isn't a bed of roses, but I've lived long enough to observe that the people who lie on roses don't always have the happiest lives. Whenever you want help and advice, I shall always be here, and from time to time I'll be seeing you. Isn't that sensible?" "Oh, Mrs. Maturin--if you really want me--still?" "I do want you, Janet, even more than I did--before, because you need me more," Mrs. Maturin replied, with a sincerity that could not fail to bring conviction.... CHAPTER XXI As the spring progressed, Janet grew stronger, became well again, and through the kindness of Dr. Ledyard, the principal, was presently installed with a typewriter in a little room in an old building belonging to the Academy in what was called Bramble Street, and not far from the Common. Here, during the day, she industriously copied manuscripts' or, from her notebook, letters dictated by various members of the faculty. And she was pleased when they exclaimed delightedly at the flawless copies and failed to suspect her of frequent pilgrimages to the dictionary in the library in order to familiarize herself with the meaning and manner of spelling various academic words. At first it was almost bewildering to find herself in some degree thus sharing the Silliston community life; and an unpremeditated attitude toward these learned ones, high priests of the muses she had so long ignorantly worshipped, accounted perhaps for a great deal in their attitude toward her. Her fervour, repressed yet palpable, was like a flame burning before their altars--a flattery to which the learned, being human, are quick to respond. Besides, something of her history was known, and she was of a type to incite a certain amount of interest amongst these discerning ones. Often, after she had taken their dictation, or brought their manuscripts home, they detained her in conversation. In short, Silliston gave its approval to this particular experiment of Augusta Maturin. As for Mrs. Maturin herself, her feeling was one of controlled pride not unmixed with concern, always conscious as she was of the hidden element of tragedy in the play she had so lovingly staged. Not that she had any compunction in keeping Janet's secret, even from Insall; but sometimes as she contemplated it the strings of her heart grew tight. Silliston was so obviously where Janet belonged, she could not bear the thought of the girl going out again from this sheltered spot into a chaotic world of smoke and struggle. Janet's own feelings were a medley. It was not, of course, contentment she knew continually, nor even peace, although there were moments when these stole over her. There were moments, despite her incredible good fortune, of apprehension when she shrank from the future, when fear assailed her; moments of intense sadness at the thought of leaving her friends, of leaving this enchanted place now that miraculously she had found it; moments of stimulation, of exaltation, when she forgot. Her prevailing sense, as she found herself again, was of thankfulness and gratitude, of determination to take advantage of, to drink in all of this wonderful experience, lest any precious memory be lost. Like a jewel gleaming with many facets, each sunny day was stored and treasured. As she went from Mrs. Case's boarding-house forth to her work, the sweet, sharp air of these spring mornings was filled with delicious smells of new things, of new flowers and new grass and tender, new leaves of myriad shades, bronze and crimson, fuzzy white, primrose, and emerald green. And sometimes it seemed as though the pink and white clouds of the little orchards were wafted into swooning scents. She loved best the moment when the Common came in view, when through the rows of elms the lineaments of those old houses rose before her, lineaments seemingly long familiar, as of old and trusted friends, and yet ever stirring new harmonies and new visions. Here, in their midst, she belonged, and here, had the world been otherwise ordained, she might have lived on in one continuous, shining spring. At the corner of the Common, foursquare, ample, painted a straw colour trimmed with white, with its high chimneys and fan-shaped stairway window, its balustraded terrace porch open to the sky, was the eighteenth century mansion occupied by Dr. Ledyard. What was the secret of its flavour? And how account for the sense of harmony inspired by another dwelling, built during the term of the second Adams, set in a frame of maples and shining white in the morning sun? Its curved portico was capped by a wrought-iron railing, its long windows were touched with purple, and its low garret--set like a deckhouse on the wide roof--suggested hidden secrets of the past. Here a Motley or a Longfellow might have dwelt, a Bryant penned his "Thanatopsis." Farther on, chequered by shade, stood the quaint brick row of professors' houses, with sloping eaves and recessed entrances of granite--a subject for an old English print.... Along the border of the Common were interspersed among the ancient dormitories and halls the new and dignified buildings of plum-coloured brick that still preserved the soul of Silliston. And to it the soul of Janet responded. In the late afternoon, when her tasks were finished, Janet would cross the Common to Mrs. Maturin's--a dwelling typical of the New England of the past, with the dimensions of a cottage and something of the dignity of a mansion. Fluted white pilasters adorned the corners, the windows were protected by tiny eaves, the roof was guarded by a rail; the classically porched entrance was approached by a path between high clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is one glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, and another of the Michaelmas daisy and the aster. Insall was often there, and on Saturdays and Sundays he took Mrs. Maturin and Janet on long walks into the country. There were afternoons when the world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the sun; and afternoons stained with blue,--the landscape like a tapestry woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were clouds of bluets, wild violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering beside the star moss all a-shimmer with new green. The Canada Mayflower spread a carpet under the pines; and in the hollows where the mists settled, where the brooks flowed, where the air was heavy with the damp, ineffable odour of growing things, they gathered drooping adder's-tongues, white-starred bloodroots and foam-flowers. From Insall's quick eye nothing seemed to escape. He would point out to them the humming-bird that hovered, a bright blur, above the columbine, the woodpecker glued to the trunk of a maple high above their heads, the red gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit foliage, the oriole and vireo where they hid. And his was the ear that first caught the exquisite, distant note of the hermit. Once he stopped them, startled, to listen to the cock partridge drumming to its mate.... Sometimes, of an evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths. Mrs. Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always follow it. "Now, Brooks," she would say, "you've just got to suggest something to put in that border to replace the hyacinths." "I had larkspur last year--you remember--and it looked like a chromo in a railroad folder." "Let me see--did I advise larkspur?" he would ask. "Oh, I'm sure you must have--I always do what you tell me. It seems to me I've thought of every possible flower in the catalogue. You know, too, only you're so afraid of committing yourself." Insall's comic spirit, betrayed by his expressions, by the quizzical intonations of his voice, never failed to fill Janet with joy, while it was somehow suggestive, too, of the vast fund of his resource. Mrs. Maturin was right, he could have solved many of her questions offhand if he had so wished, but he had his own method of dealing with appeals. His head tilted on one side, apparently in deep thought over the problem, he never answered outright, but by some process of suggestion unfathomable to Janet, and by eliminating, not too deprecatingly, Mrs. Maturin's impatient proposals, brought her to a point where she blurted out the solution herself. "Oriental poppies! How stupid of me not to think of them!" "How stupid of me!" Insall echoed--and Janet, bending over her weeding, made sure they had been in his mind all the while. Augusta Maturin's chief extravagance was books; she could not bear to await her turn at the library, and if she liked a book she wished to own it. Subscribing to several reviews, three English and one American, she scanned them eagerly every week and sent in orders to her Boston bookseller. As a consequence the carved walnut racks on her library table were constantly being strained. A good book, she declared, ought to be read aloud, and discussed even during its perusal. And thus Janet, after an elementary and decidedly unique introduction to worth-while literature in the hospital, was suddenly plunged into the vortex of modern thought. The dictum Insall quoted, that modern culture depended largely upon what one had not read, was applied to her; a child of the new environment fallen into skilful hands, she was spared the boredom of wading through the so-called classics which, though useful as milestones, as landmarks for future reference, are largely mere reminders of an absolute universe now vanished. The arrival of a novel, play, or treatise by one of that small but growing nucleus of twentieth century seers was an event, and often a volume begun in the afternoon was taken up again after supper. While Mrs. Maturin sat sewing on the other side of the lamp, Janet had her turn at reading. From the first she had been quick to note Mrs. Maturin's inflections, and the relics of a high-school manner were rapidly eliminated. The essence of latter-day realism and pragmatism, its courageous determination to tear away a veil of which she had always been dimly aware, to look the facts of human nature in the face, refreshed her: an increasing portion of it she understood; and she was constantly under the spell of the excitement that partially grasps, that hovers on the verge of inspiring discoveries. This excitement, whenever Insall chanced to be present, was intensified, as she sat a silent but often quivering listener to his amusing and pungent comments on these new ideas. His method of discussion never failed to illuminate and delight her, and often, when she sat at her typewriter the next day, she would recall one of his quaint remarks that suddenly threw a bright light on some matter hitherto obscure.... Occasionally a novel or a play was the subject of their talk, and then they took a delight in drawing her out, in appealing to a spontaneous judgment unhampered by pedagogically implanted preconceptions. Janet would grow hot from shyness. "Say what you think, my dear," Mrs. Maturin would urge her. "And remember that your own opinion is worth more than Shakespeare's or Napoleon's!" Insall would escort her home to Mrs. Case's boarding house.... One afternoon early in June Janet sat in her little room working at her letters when Brooks Insall came in. "I don't mean to intrude in business hours, but I wanted to ask if you would do a little copying for me," he said, and he laid on her desk a parcel bound with characteristic neatness. "Something you've written?" she exclaimed, blushing with pleasure and surprise. He was actually confiding to her one of his manuscripts! "Well--yes," he replied comically, eyeing her. "I'll be very careful with it. I'll do it right away." "There's no particular hurry," he assured her. "The editor's waited six months for it--another month or so won't matter." "Another month or so!" she ejaculated,--but he was gone. Of course she couldn't have expected him to remain and talk about it; but this unexpected exhibition of shyness concerning his work--so admired by the world's choicer spirits--thrilled yet amused her, and made her glow with a new understanding. With eager fingers she undid the string and sat staring at the regular script without taking in, at first, the meaning of a single sentence. It was a comparatively short sketch entitled "The Exile," in which shining, winged truths and elusive beauties flitted continually against a dark-background of Puritan oppression; the story of one Basil Grelott, a dreamer of Milton's day, Oxford nurtured, who, casting off the shackles of dogma and man-made decrees, sailed with his books to the New England wilderness across the sea. There he lived, among the savages, in peace and freedom until the arrival of Winthrop and his devotees, to encounter persecution from those who themselves had fled from it. The Lord's Brethren, he averred, were worse than the Lord's Bishops--Blackstone's phrase. Janet, of course, had never heard of Blackstone, some of whose experiences Insall had evidently used. And the Puritans dealt with Grelott even as they would have served the author of "Paradise Lost" himself, especially if he had voiced among them the opinions set forth in his pamphlet on divorce. A portrait of a stern divine with his infallible Book gave Janet a vivid conception of the character of her ancestors; and early Boston, with yellow candlelight gleaming from the lantern-like windows of the wooden, Elizabethan houses, was unforgettably etched. There was an inquisition in a freezing barn of a church, and Basil Grelott banished to perish amid the forest in his renewed quest for freedom.... After reading the manuscript, Janet sat typewriting into the night, taking it home with her and placing it besides her bed, lest it be lost to posterity. By five the next evening she had finished the copy. A gentle rain had fallen during the day, but had ceased as she made her way toward Insall's house. The place was familiar now: she had been there to supper with Mrs. Maturin, a supper cooked and served by Martha Vesey, an elderly, efficient and appallingly neat widow, whom Insall had discovered somewhere in his travels and installed as his housekeeper. Janet paused with her hand on the gate latch to gaze around her, at the picket fence on which he had been working when she had walked hither the year before. It was primly painted now, its posts crowned with the carved pineapples; behind the fence old-fashioned flowers were in bloom, lupins and false indigo; and the retaining wall of blue-grey slaty stone, which he had laid that spring, was finished. A wind stirred the maple, releasing a shower of heavy drops, and she opened the gate and went up the path and knocked at the door. There was no response--even Martha must be absent, in the village! Janet was disappointed, she had looked forward to seeing him, to telling him how great had been her pleasure in the story he had written, at the same time doubting her courage to do so. She had never been able to speak to him about his work and what did her opinion matter to him? As she turned away the stillness was broken by a humming sound gradually rising to a crescendo, so she ventured slowly around the house and into the orchard of gnarled apple trees on the slope until she came insight of a little white building beside the brook. The weathervane perched on the gable, and veering in the wet breeze, seemed like a live fish swimming in its own element; and through the open window she saw Insall bending over a lathe, from which the chips were flying. She hesitated. Then he looked up, and seeing her, reached above his head to pull the lever that shut off the power. "Come in," he called out, and met her at the doorway. He was dressed in a white duck shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of faded corduroy trousers. "I wasn't looking for this honour," he told her, with a gesture of self-deprecation, "or I'd have put on a dinner coat." And, despite her eagerness and excitement, she laughed. "I didn't dare to leave this in the house," she explained. Mrs. Vesey wasn't home. And I thought you might be here." "You haven't made the copy already!" "Oh, I loved doing it!" she replied, and paused, flushing. She might have known that it would be simply impossible to talk to him about it! So she laid it down on the workbench, and, overcome by a sudden shyness, retreated toward the door. "You're not going!" he exclaimed. "I must--and you're busy." "Not at all," he declared, "not at all, I was just killing time until supper. Sit down!" And he waved her to a magisterial-looking chair of Jacobean design, with turned legs, sandpapered and immaculate, that stood in the middle of the shop. "Oh, not in that!" Janet protested. "And besides, I'd spoil it--I'm sure my skirt is wet." But he insisted, thrusting it under her. "You've come along just in time, I wanted a woman to test it--men are no judges of chairs. There's a vacuum behind the small of your back, isn't there? Augusta will have to put a cushion in it." "Did you make it for Mrs. Maturin? She will be Pleased!" exclaimed Janet, as she sat down. "I don't think it's uncomfortable." "I copied it from an old one in the Boston Art Museum. Augusta saw it there, and said she wouldn't be happy until she had one like it. But don't tell her." "Not for anything!" Janet got to her feet again. "I really must be going." "Going where?" "I told Mrs. Maturin I'd read that new book to her. I couldn't go yesterday--I didn't want to go," she added, fearing he might think his work had kept her. "Well, I'll walk over with you. She asked me to make a little design for a fountain, you know, and I'll have to get some measurements." As they emerged from the shop and climbed the slope Janet tried to fight off the sadness that began to invade her. Soon she would have to be leaving all this! Her glance lingered wistfully on the old farmhouse with its great centre chimney from which the smoke was curling, with its diamond-paned casements Insall had put into the tiny frames. "What queer windows!" she said. "But they seem to go with the house, beautifully." "You think so?" His tone surprised her; it had a touch more of earnestness than she had ever before detected. "They belong to that type of house the old settlers brought the leaded glass with them. Some people think they're cold, but I've arranged to make them fairly tight. You see, I've tried to restore it as it must have been when it was built." "And these?" she asked, pointing to the millstones of different diameters that made the steps leading down to the garden. "Oh, that's an old custom, but they are nice," he agreed. "I'll just put this precious manuscript inside and get my foot rule," he added, opening the door, and she stood awaiting him on the threshold, confronted by the steep little staircase that disappeared into the wall half way up. At her left was the room where he worked, and which once had been the farmhouse kitchen. She took a few steps into it, and while he was searching in the table drawer she halted before the great chimney over which, against the panel, an old bell-mouthed musket hung. Insall came over beside her. "Those were trees!" he said. "That panel's over four feet across, I measured it once. I dare say the pine it was cut from grew right where we are standing, before the land was cleared to build the house." "But the gun?" she questioned. "You didn't have it the night we came to supper." "No, I ran across it at a sale in Boston. The old settler must have owned one like that. I like to think of him, away off here in the wilderness in those early days." She thought of how Insall had made those early days live for her, in his story of Basil Grelott. But to save her soul, when with such an opening, she could not speak of it. "He had to work pretty hard, of course," Insall continued, "but I dare say he had a fairly happy life, no movies, no Sunday supplements, no automobiles or gypsy moths. His only excitement was to trudge ten miles to Dorset and listen to a three hour sermon on everlasting fire and brimstone by a man who was supposed to know. No wonder he slept soundly and lived to be over ninety!" Insall was standing with his head thrown back, his eyes stilt seemingly fixed on the musket that had suggested his remark--a pose eloquent, she thought, of the mental and physical balance of the man. She wondered what belief gave him the free mastery of soul and body he possessed. Some firm conviction, she was sure, must energise him yet she respected him the more for concealing it. "It's hard to understand such a terrible religion!" she cried. "I don't see how those old settlers could believe in it, when there are such beautiful things in the world, if we only open our eyes and look for them. Oh Mr. Insall, I wish I could tell you how I felt when I read your story, and when Mrs. Maturin read me those other books of yours." She stopped breathlessly, aghast at her boldness--and then, suddenly, a barrier between them seemed to break down, and for the first time since she had known him she felt near to him. He could not doubt the sincerity of her tribute. "You like them as much as that, Janet?" he said, looking at her. "I can't tell you how much, I can't express myself. And I want to tell you something else, Mr. Insall, while I have the chance--how just being with you and Mrs. Maturin has changed me. I can face life now, you have shown me so much in it I never saw before." "While you have the chance?" he repeated. "Yes." She strove to go on cheerfully, "Now I've said it, I feel better, I promise not to mention it again. I knew--you didn't think me ungrateful. It's funny," she added, "the more people have done for you-when they've given you everything, life and hope,--the harder it is to thank them." She turned her face away, lest he might see that her eyes were wet. "Mrs. Maturin will be expecting us." "Not yet," she heard him say, and felt his hand on her arm. "You haven't thought of what you're doing for me." "What I'm doing for you!" she echoed. "What hurts me most, when I think about it, is that I'll never be able to do anything." "Why do you say that?" he asked. "If I only could believe that some day I might be able to help you--just a little--I should be happier. All I have, all I am I owe to you and Mrs. Maturin." "No, Janet," he answered. "What you are is you, and it's more real than anything we could have put into you. What you have to give is --yourself." His fingers trembled on her arm, but she saw him smile a little before he spoke again. "Augusta Maturin was right when she said that you were the woman I needed. I didn't realize it then perhaps she didn't--but now I'm sure of it. Will you come to me?" She stood staring at him, as in terror, suddenly penetrated by a dismay that sapped her strength, and she leaned heavily against the fireplace, clutching the mantel-shelf. "Don't!" she pleaded. "Please don't--I can't." "You can't!... Perhaps, after a while, you may come to feel differently --I didn't mean to startle you," she heard him reply gently. This humility, in him, was unbearable. "Oh, it isn't that--it isn't that! If I could, I'd be willing to serve you all my life--I wouldn't ask for anything more. I never thought that this would happen. I oughtn't to have stayed in Silliston." "You didn't suspect that I loved you?" "How could I? Oh, I might have loved you, if I'd been fortunate--if I'd deserved it. But I never thought, I always looked up to you--you are so far above me!" She lifted her face to him in agony. "I'm sorry--I'm sorry for you--I'll never forgive myself!" "It's--some one else?" he asked. "I was--going to be married to--to Mr. Ditmar," she said slowly, despairingly. "But even then--" Insall began. "You don't understand!" she cried. "What will you think of me?--Mrs. Maturin was to have told you, after I'd gone. It's--it's the same as if I were married to him--only worse." "Worse!" Insall repeated uncomprehendingly.... And then she was aware that he had left her side. He was standing by the window. A thrush began to sing in the maple. She stole silently toward the door, and paused to look back at him, once to meet his glance. He had turned. "I can't--I can't let you go like this!" she heard him say, but she fled from him, out of the gate and toward the Common.... When Janet appeared, Augusta Maturin was in her garden. With an instant perception that something was wrong, she went to the girl and led her to the sofa in the library. There the confession was made. "I never guessed it," Janet sobbed. "Oh, Mrs. Maturin, you'll believe me--won't you?" "Of course I believe you, Janet," Augusta Maturity replied, trying to hide her pity, her own profound concern and perplexity. "I didn't suspect it either. If I had--" "You wouldn't have brought me here, you wouldn't have asked me to stay with you. But I was to blame, I oughtn't to have stayed, I knew all along that something would happen--something terrible that I hadn't any right to stay." "Who could have foreseen it!" her friend exclaimed helplessly. "Brooks isn't like any other man I've ever known--one can never tell what he has in mind. Not that I'm surprised as I look back upon it all!" "I've hurt him!" Augusta Maturity was silent awhile. "Remember, my dear," she begged, "you haven't only yourself to think about, from now on." But comfort was out of the question, the task of calming the girl impossible. Finally the doctor was sent for, and she was put to bed.... Augusta Maturity spent an agonized, sleepless night, a prey of many emotions; of self-reproach, seeing now that she had been wrong in not telling Brooks Insall of the girl's secret; of sorrow and sympathy for him; of tenderness toward the girl, despite the suffering she had brought; of unwonted rebellion against a world that cheated her of this cherished human tie for which she had longed the first that had come into her life since her husband and child had gone. And there was her own responsibility for Insall's unhappiness--when she recalled with a pang her innocent sayings that Janet was the kind of woman he, an artist, should marry! And it was true--if he must marry. He himself had seen it. Did Janet love him? or did she still remember Ditmar? Again and again, during the summer that followed, this query was on her lips, but remained unspoken.... The next day Insall disappeared. No one knew where he had gone, but his friends in Silliston believed he had been seized by one of his sudden, capricious fancies for wandering. For many months his name was not mentioned between Augusta Maturity and Janet. By the middle of June they had gone to Canada.... In order to reach the camp on Lac du Sablier from the tiny railroad station at Saint Hubert, a trip of some eight miles up the decharge was necessary. The day had been when Augusta Maturity had done her share of paddling and poling, with an habitant guide in the bow. She had foreseen all the needs of this occasion, warm clothes for Janet, who was wrapped in blankets and placed on cushions in the middle of a canoe, while she herself followed in a second, from time to time exclaiming, in a reassuring voice, that one had nothing to fear in the hands of Delphin and Herve, whom she had known intimately for more than twenty years. It was indeed a wonderful, exciting, and at moments seemingly perilous journey up the forested aisle of the river: at sight of the first roaring reach of rapids Janet held her breath--so incredible did it appear that any human power could impel and guide a boat up the white stairway between the boulders! Was it not courting destruction? Yet she felt a strange, wild delight in the sense of danger, of amazement at the woodsman's eye that found and followed the crystal paths through the waste of foam.... There were long, quiet stretches, hemmed in by alders, where the canoes, dodging the fallen trees, glided through the still water... No such silent, exhilarating motion Janet had ever known. Even the dipping paddles made no noise, though sometimes there was a gurgle, as though a fish had broken the water behind them; sometimes, in the shining pools ahead, she saw the trout leap out. At every startling flop Delphin would exclaim: "Un gros!" From an upper branch of a spruce a kingfisher darted like an arrow into the water, making a splash like a falling stone. Once, after they had passed through the breach of a beaver dam, Herve nodded his head toward a mound of twigs by the bank and muttered something. Augusta Maturin laughed. "Cabane de castor, he says--a beaver cabin. And the beavers made the dam we just passed. Did you notice, Janet, how beautifully clean those logs had been cut by their sharp teeth?" At moments she conversed rapidly with Delphin in the same patois Janet had heard on the streets of Hampton. How long ago that seemed! On two occasions, when the falls were sheer, they had to disembark and walk along little portages through the green raspberry bushes. The prints of great hooves in the black silt betrayed where wild animals had paused to drink. They stopped for lunch on a warm rock beside a singing waterfall, and at last they turned an elbow in the stream and with suddenly widened vision beheld the lake's sapphire expanse and the distant circle of hills. "Les montagnes," Herve called them as he flung out his pipe, and this Janet could translate for herself. Eastward they lay lucent in the afternoon light; westward, behind the generous log camp standing on a natural terrace above the landing, they were in shadow. Here indeed seemed peace, if remoteness, if nature herself might bestow it. Janet little suspected that special preparations had been made for her comfort. Early in April, while the wilderness was still in the grip of winter, Delphin had been summoned from a far-away lumber camp to Saint Hubert, where several packing-cases and two rolls of lead pipe from Montreal lay in a shed beside the railroad siding. He had superintended the transportation of these, on dog sledges, up the frozen decharge, accompanied on his last trip by a plumber of sorts from Beaupre, thirty miles down the line; and between them they had improvised a bathroom, and attached a boiler to the range! Only a week before the arrival of Madame the spring on the hillside above the camp had been tapped, and the pipe laid securely underground. Besides this unheard-of luxury for the Lac du Sablier there were iron beds and mattresses and little wood stoves to go in the four bedrooms, which were more securely chinked with moss. The traditions of that camp had been hospitable. In Professor Wishart's day many guests had come and gone, or pitched their tents nearby; and Augusta Maturin, until this summer, had rarely been here alone, although she had no fears of the wilderness, and Delphin brought his daughter Delphine to do the housework and cooking. The land for miles round about was owned by a Toronto capitalist who had been a friend of her father, and who could afford as a hobby the sparing of the forest. By his permission a few sportsmen came to fish or shoot, and occasionally their campfires could be seen across the water, starlike glows in the darkness of the night, at morning and evening little blue threads of smoke that rose against the forest; "bocane," Delphin called it, and Janet found a sweet, strange magic in these words of the pioneer. The lake was a large one, shaped like an hourglass, as its name implied, and Augusta Maturin sometimes paddled Janet through the wide, shallow channel to the northern end, even as she had once paddled Gifford. Her genius was for the helpless. One day, when the waters were high, and the portages could be dispensed with, they made an excursion through the Riviere des Peres to the lake of that name, the next in the chain above. For luncheon they ate the trout Augusta caught; and in the afternoon, when they returned to the mouth of the outlet, Herve, softly checking the canoe with his paddle, whispered the word "Arignal!" Thigh deep in the lush grasses of the swamp was an animal with a huge grey head, like a donkey's, staring foolishly in their direction--a cow moose. With a tremendous commotion that awoke echoes in the forest she tore herself from the mud and disappeared, followed by her panic-stricken offspring, a caricature of herself.... By September the purple fireweed that springs up beside old camps, and in the bois brute, had bloomed and scattered its myriad, impalpable thistledowns over crystal floors. Autumn came to the Laurentians. In the morning the lake lay like a quicksilver pool under the rising mists, through which the sun struck blinding flashes of light. A little later, when the veil had lifted, it became a mirror for the hills and crags, the blue reaches of the sky. The stinging air was spiced with balsam. Revealed was the incredible brilliance of another day,--the arsenic-green of the spruce, the red and gold of the maples, the yellow of the alders bathing in the shallows, of the birches, whose white limbs could be seen gleaming in the twilight of the thickets. Early, too early, the sun fell down behind the serrated forest-edge of the western hill, a ball of orange fire.... One evening Delphin and Herve, followed by two other canoes, paddled up to the landing. New visitors had arrived, Dr. McLeod, who had long been an intimate of the Wishart family, and with him a buxom, fresh-complexioned Canadian woman, a trained nurse whom he had brought from Toronto. There, in nature's wilderness, Janet knew the supreme experience of women, the agony, the renewal and joy symbolic of nature herself. When the child was bathed and dressed in the clothes Augusta Maturin herself had made for it, she brought it into the room to the mother. "It's a daughter," she announced. Janet regarded the child wistfully. "I hoped it would be a boy," she said. "He would have had--a better chance." But she raised her arms, and the child was laid in the bed beside her. "We'll see that she has a chance, my dear," Augusta Maturin replied, as she kissed her. Ten days went by, Dr. McLeod lingered at Lac du Sablier, and Janet was still in bed. Even in this life-giving air she did not seem to grow stronger. Sometimes, when the child was sleeping in its basket on the sunny porch, Mrs. Maturin read to her; but often when she was supposed to rest, she lay gazing out of the open window into silver space listening to the mocking laughter of the loons, watching the ducks flying across the sky; or, as evening drew on, marking in the waters a steely angle that grew and grew--the wake of a beaver swimming homeward in the twilight. In the cold nights the timbers cracked to the frost, she heard the owls calling to one another from the fastnesses of the forest, and thought of life's inscrutable mystery. Then the child would be brought to her. It was a strange, unimagined happiness she knew when she felt it clutching at her breasts, at her heart, a happiness not unmixed with yearning, with sadness as she pressed it to her. Why could it not remain there always, to comfort her, to be nearer her than any living thing? Reluctantly she gave it back to the nurse, wistfully her eyes followed it.... Twice a week, now, Delphin and Herve made the journey to Saint Hubert, and one evening, after Janet had watched them paddling across the little bay that separated the camp from the outlet's mouth, Mrs. Maturin appeared, with an envelope in her hand. "I've got a letter from Brooks Insall, Janet," she said, with a well-disguised effort to speak naturally. "It's not the first one he's sent me, but I haven't mentioned the others. He's in Silliston--and I wrote him about the daughter." "Yes," said Janet. "Well--he wants to come up here, to see you, before we go away. He asks me to telegraph your permission." "Oh no, he mustn't, Mrs. Maturin!" "You don't care to see him?" "It isn't that. I'd like to see him if things had been different. But now that I've disappointed him--hurt him, I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his kindness." After a moment Augusta Maturin handed Janet a sealed envelope she held in her hand. "He asked me to give you this," she said, and left the room. Janet read it, and let it fall on the bedspread, where it was still lying when her friend returned and began tidying the room. From the direction of the guide's cabin, on the point, came the sounds of talk and laughter, broken by snatches of habitant songs. Augusta Maturin smiled. She pretended not to notice the tears in Janet's eyes, and strove to keep back her own. "Delphin and Herve saw a moose in the decharge," she explained. "Of course it was a big one, it always is! They're telling the doctor about it." "Mrs. Maturin," said Janet, "I'd like to talk to you. I think I ought to tell you what Mr. Insall says." "Yes, my dear," her friend replied, a little faintly, sitting down on the bed. "He asks me to believe what--I've done makes no difference to him. Of course he doesn't put it in so many words, but he says he doesn't care anything about conventions," Janet continued slowly. "What I told him when he asked me to marry him in Silliston was a shock to him, it was so --so unexpected. He went away, to Maine, but as soon as he began to think it all over he wanted to come and tell me that he loved me in spite of it, but he felt he couldn't, under the circumstances, that he had to wait until--now. Although I didn't give him any explanation, he wants me to know that he trusts me, he understands--it's because, he says, I am what I am. He still wishes to marry me, to take care of me and the child. We could live in California, at first--he's always been anxious to go there, he says." "Well, my dear?" Augusta Maturin forced herself to say at last. "It's so generous--so like him!" Janet exclaimed. "But of course I couldn't accept such a sacrifice, even if--" She paused. "Oh, it's made me so sad all summer to think that he's unhappy because of me!" "I know, Janet, but you should realize, as I told you in Silliston, that it isn't by any deliberate act of your own, it's just one of those things that occur in this world and that can't be foreseen or avoided." Augusta Maturin spoke with an effort. In spite of Janet's apparent calm, she had never been more acutely aware of the girl's inner suffering. "I know," said Janet. "But it's terrible to think that those things we unintentionally do, perhaps because of faults we have previously committed, should have the same effect as acts that are intentional." "The world is very stupid. All suffering, I think, is brought about by stupidity. If we only could learn to look at ourselves as we are! It's a stupid, unenlightened society that metes out most of our punishments and usually demands a senseless expiation." Augusta Maturin waited, and presently Janet spoke again. "I've been thinking all summer, Mrs. Maturin. There was so much I wanted to talk about with you, but I wanted to be sure of myself first. And now, since the baby came, and I know I'm not going to get well, I seem to see things much more clearly." "Why do you say you're not going to get well, Janet? In this air, and with the child to live for!" "I know it. Dr. McLeod knows it, or he wouldn't be staying here, and you've both been too kind to tell me. You've been so kind, Mrs. Maturin --I can't talk about it. But I'm sure I'm going to die, I've really known it ever since we left Silliston. Something's gone out of me, the thing that drove me, that made me want to live--I can't express what I mean any other way. Perhaps it's this child, the new life--perhaps I've just been broken, I don't know. You did your best to mend me, and that's one thing that makes me sad. And the thought of Mr. Insall's another. In some ways it would have been worse to live--I couldn't have ruined his life. And even if things had been different, I hadn't come to love him, in that way--it's queer, because he's such a wonderful person. I'd like to live for the child, if only I had the strength, the will left in me--but that's gone. And maybe I could save her from--what I've been through." Augusta Maturin took Janet's hand in hers. "Janet," she said, "I've been a lonely woman, as you know, with nothing to look forward to. I've always wanted a child since my little Edith went. I wanted you, my dear, I want your child, your daughter--as I want nothing else in the world. I will take her, I will try to bring her up in the light, and Brooks Insall will help me...." 
3647	----	THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT By WINSTON CHURCHILL Volume 2 CHAPTER IX At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement that the leash might break--and then what? Here was a situation, she knew instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to think about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of anomalies and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her knowledge and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which is rapidly discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to achieve the morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance. Tradition, convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the movies, even her mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom with which the sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her. The thought, however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise, despite a fancied superiority, did occasionally shake her and bring about a revulsion against Ditmar. Janet's problem was in truth, though she failed so to specialize it, the supreme problem of our time: what is the path to self-realization? how achieve emancipation from the commonplace? Was she in love with Ditmar? The question was distasteful, she avoided it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused in her. It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage. Plainly, he did not intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so, a profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her present mood, have led her to refuse. She felt a fine scorn for the woman who, under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all a man's worldly goods in return for that which it was her privilege to give freely; while the notion of servility, of economic dependence--though she did not so phrase it--repelled her far more than the possibility of social ruin. This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton and Ditmar had nothing to do with that.... Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind, invaded her dreams. When she likened herself to the other exploited beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,--of whom Mr. Siddons had spoken--her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours. In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having hesitated. A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to hurt him before she left. At such times, however, unforeseen events invariably intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans. One evening at supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have achieved the comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after struggle, she gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah concerning the stove, the condition of which for many months had been a menace to the welfare of the family. Edward, it appeared, had remarked mildly on the absence of beans. "Beans!" Hannah cried. "You're lucky to have any supper at all. I just wish I could get you to take a look at that oven--there's a hole you can put your hand through, if you've a mind to. I've done my best, I've made out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in. He says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything. A new one'll cost thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy it. And the fire-box is most worn through." "Well, mother, we'll see what we can do," said Edward. "You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do anything," retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply. Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many sheets. "It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with asthma," he observed presently. "His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816, and fought in the war of 1812. I've told you about him. This Caleb was born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in Detroit.... Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction company. Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's descendants. He married Sarah Styles" (reading painfully) "`and they had issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet. John went to Middlebury, Vermont, and married '" Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily. "A lot of good it does us to have all that information about Eben Wheeler's asthma!" she complained. "It'll buy us a new stove, I guess. Him and his old Bumpus papers! If the house burned down over our heads that's all he'd think of." As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous. Accustomed as Janet was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it was gradually borne in upon her now--despite a preoccupation with her own fate--that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect a family crisis of the first magnitude. She was stirred anew to anger and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be threatened in its continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when, glancing at her sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of self-disgust. Was she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed? Lise, in her evening finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was awaiting the hour set for a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the Boston evening sheet whose glaring red headlines stretched across the page. When the newspaper fell to her lap a dreamy expression clouded Lise's eyes. She was thinking of some man! Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered on his face as he bent over the letter once more. Suddenly she experienced an overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's plight,--the destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in the confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs. Never had a destiny seemed so appalling. And yet Janet resented that pity. The effect of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion she was no longer a free agent, to leave Hampton and Ditmar when she chose. Without her, this family was helpless. She rose, and picked up some of the dishes. Hannah snatched them from her hands. "Leave 'em alone, Janet!" she said with unaccustomed sharpness. "I guess I ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet." And a flash of new understanding came to Janet. The dishes were vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had been cheated by fate. A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something of a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers.... Janet left the room swiftly, entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out. Across the street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and through the window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his chair, his feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at the ceiling. When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down his chair on the floor with a bang. "Why, it's Miss Janet!" he exclaimed. "How are you this evening, now? I was just hoping some one would pay me a call." Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper of pessimism, and she was moved to reply:--"You know you were having a beautiful time, all by yourself." "A beautiful time, is it? Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some young lady a-coming to pay me a visit." "Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?" "Then it's dreaming I am, still," retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly. Janet laughed. His tone, though bantering, was respectful. One of the secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability to estimate his fellow creatures. His manner of treating Janet, for instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise. In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to attempt to pull wool over his eyes. Janet had the intelligence to trust him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble. It was his great quality. Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her, and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and self-respect. For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless family in the clay-yellow flat across the street. And there was nothing, she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family. So she said:--"I've come to see about the stove." "Sure," he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected. "Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet. I've got a stove here I know'll suit your mother. It's a Reading, it's almost new. Ye'd better be having a look at it yourself." He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the store. "It's in need of a little polish," he added, as he turned on a light, "but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal." He opened the oven and took off the lids. "I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves," she told him. "But I'll trust your judgment. How much is it?" she inquired hesitatingly. He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture. "Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars. If that's too much--mebbe we can find another." "Can you put it in to-morrow morning?" she asked. "I can that," he said. She drew out her purse. "Ye needn't be paying for it all at once," he protested, laying a hand on her arm. "You won't be running away." "Oh, I'd rather--I have the money," she declared hurriedly; and she turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the bills, how little was left in her purse. "I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon," he said, as he escorted her to the door. And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,--a part which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was indeed a bewildering thing.... The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints continued, Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her return home in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of protector and preserver of the family. She would have preferred, if possible, to give the stove anonymously. Not that the expression of Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and done it!" And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:--"Somebody had to do it--didn't they? Who else was there?" "It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things. You'd ought to save it you'll need it," Hannah continued illogically. "It's lucky I had the money," said Janet. Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other, were the explosive expressions of deep feeling. Janet knew that her mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice. She herself was moved by Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation. "I hope the stove's all right, mother," she said. "Mr. Tiernan seemed to think it was a good one." "It's a different thing," declared Hannah. "I was just wondering this evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the other. Come and see how nice it looks." Janet followed her into the kitchen. As they stood close together gazing at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again. She seized her apron and clapped it to her face. "You hadn't ought to be made to do it!" she sobbed. And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their intercourse. She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the room.... Supper was an ordeal. Janet did not relish her enthronement as a heroine, she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her father, which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie her affection for him. Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took on the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as compared with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in some sort to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder daughter's act. "I guess you notice the difference in that pork," she would exclaim, and when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah observed: "As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a daughter like her!" Janet squirmed. Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him powerless before her mother's reproaches. After the meal was over he sat listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured, pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy. That evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner, untouched. What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who also came in for her share of implied reproach. Of late Lise had become an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to make this occasion an object lesson. And though parental tenderness had often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness in failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise, might do well to cultivate. Lise was equally determined to withhold any such acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that Hannah invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with it another --the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and ridicules the lack of such knowledge in others. Its implication was made certain when the two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper. Lise, feverishly occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the silence there by inquiring:--"Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy a stove, too. How much does Ditmar give you, sweetheart?" Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister. Lise struggled to escape. "Leave me go" she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which had flopped to one side of her head. "I didn't mean nothin', I was only kiddie' you--what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?" "I'm not like-you," said Janet. "I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her mouth. "Forget it." When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to rock agitatedly. What had really made her angry, she began to perceive, was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's intimation concerning Ditmar. Why should she have, in Lise, continually before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals? or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the truth about herself? For some time Janet had more than suspected that her sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from discussing; an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her conquests before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with an engaging though cynical freedom. Although the existence of this gentleman was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined to believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton. What was he like? It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways possibly resemble Ditmar. Thus he became the object of a morbid speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him. Janet, also, had recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man. The very next Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple, on three sides were massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones. Shortly after this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The Paris had alluringly and craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak ordained by providence to "go" with the hat. Miss Schuler declared it would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity but the trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two more pay-days and endure the suspense arising from the possibility that some young lady of taste and means might meanwhile become its happy proprietor. Had not the saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had it on credit; but she did succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing Saturday, in having it withdrawn from public gaze. The second Saturday Lise triumphantly brought the cloak home; a velvet cloak,--if the eyes could be believed,--velvet bordering on plush, with a dark purple ground delicately and artistically spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged with a material which--if not too impudently examined and no questions asked--might be mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white fox. Both investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of Janet's increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before the bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself with a defiant apology. "I just had to have something--what with winter coming on," she declared, seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back. "You might as well get your clothes chick, while you're about it--and I didn't have to dig up twenty bones, neither--nor anything like it--" a reflection on Janet's most blue suit and her abnormal extravagance. For it was Lise's habit to carry the war into the enemy's country. "Sadie's dippy about it--says it puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last Sunday's supplement. Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?" and she wheeled around for her sister's inspection. "If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the rain." "What's chewin' you now?" demanded Lise. She was not lacking in imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its purpose of summoning up a somewhat abject image of herself in wet velvet and bedraggled feathers--an image suggestive of a certain hunted type of woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror. And she was the more resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like a canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes. She swung on Janet furiously. "I get you, all right!" she cried. "I guess I know what's eatin' you! You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy what I need. You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of them Polak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look nice." And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:--"If I were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an introduction. You asked me what I thought. I don't care about the money!" she exclaimed passionately. "I've often told you you were pretty enough without having to wear that kind of thing--to make men stare at you." "I want to know if I don't always look like a lady! And there's no man living would try to pick me up more than once." The nasal note in Lise's voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger. "You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher." "I'd rather look like a floorwasher than--than another kind of woman," Janet declared. "Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart," said Lise. "You needn't be scared anybody will pick you up." "I'm not," said Janet.... This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the stove. Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also been moved to protest; futile protest. Its only effect on Lise was to convince her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to make her more secretive and sullen than ever before. "Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter," Hannah said dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after Lise had gone out. "I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and blood--I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it. I guess it's what the minister in Dolton used to call a visitation. I suppose I deserve it, but sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might have been able to put a stop to the way she's going on. She ain't like any of the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find out. She just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong. Well, the world has got all jumbled up--it beats me." Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink. "I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit hopin'. I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I could honestly wish him to have her." "Mother!" protested Janet. Sometimes, in those conversations, she was somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister. "Well, I don't," insisted Hannah, "that's a fact. I'll tell you what she looks like in that hat and cloak--a bad woman. I don't say she is--I don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my daughter to look like one." "Oh, Lise can take care of herself," Janet said, in spite of certain recent misgivings. "This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one," declared Hannah who, from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels. And after a moment's silence she inquired: "Who's this man that's payin' her attention now?" "I don't know," replied Janet, "I don't know that there's anybody." "I guess there is," said Hannah. "I used to think that that Wiley was low enough, but I could see him. It was some satisfaction. I could know the worst, anyhow.... I guess it's about time for another flood." This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so frequent in her recent experience. Her mother had used the words "right" and "wrong." But what was "right," or "wrong?" There was no use asking Hannah, who--she perceived--was as confused and bewildered as herself. Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong? because, if she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be punished in an after life? She was not at all sure whether she believed in an after life,--a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled her friend Eda Rawle, who had "got religion" from an itinerant evangelist and was now working off, in a "live" church, some of the emotional idealism which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young unmarried women of a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks. This was not, of course, Janet's explanation of the change in her friend, of whom she now saw less and less. They had had arguments, in which neither gained any ground. For the first time in their intercourse, ideas had come between them, Eda having developed a surprising self-assertion when her new convictions were attacked, a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that Janet found neither inspiring nor convincing. She resented being prayed for, and an Eda fervent in good works bored her more than ever. Eda was deeply pained by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her heroine-worship persisted. Her continued regard for her friend might possibly be compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has developed a hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte. Janet was not wholly without remorse. She valued Eda's devotion, she sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had felt instinctively from the first that the friendship was not founded on, mental harmony, and now it was brought home to her that Eda's solution could never be hers. Eda would have been thrilled on learning of Ditmar's attentions, would have advocated the adoption of a campaign leading up to matrimony. In matrimony, for Eda, the soul was safe. Eda would have been horrified that Janet should have dallied with any other relationship; God would punish her. Janet, in her conflict between alternate longing and repugnance, was not concerned with the laws and retributions of God. She felt, indeed, the need of counsel, and knew not where to turn for it, --the modern need for other than supernatural sanctions. She did not resist her desire for Ditmar because she believed, in the orthodox sense, that it was wrong, but because it involved a loss of self-respect, a surrender of the personality from the very contemplation of which she shrank. She was a true daughter of her time. On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived and interrupted him. Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to file away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from her work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder. The two men were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that struck her as dramatic. Both were vital figures, dominant types which had survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize. She surveyed Holster critically. He was short, heavily built, with an almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun. His nasal voice was complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by gestures. The veins stood out on his forehead. She wondered what his history had been. She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face she was quick to detect a look she had seen before--a contraction of the eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw. That look, and the peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a responsive sense of championship. "All right, Ditmar," she heard the other exclaim. "I tell you again you'll never be able to pull it off." Ditmar's laugh was short, defiant. "Why not?" he asked. "Why not! Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January." "What's that got to do with it?" Ditmar demanded. "You'll see--you'll remember what I told you fellows at the conference after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor insisted on signing it. I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in Hampton,--didn't I? I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and make all the other strikes we've had here look like fifty cents. Didn't I say that? Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool people. You remember? You were the man who stood out against it, and they listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing about it. Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that law goes into effect. You'll see what'll happen! You'll never be able to fill that Bradlaugh order in God's world." "Oh hell," retorted Ditmar, contemptuously. "You're always for lying down, Holster. Why don't you hand over your mill to the unions and go to work on a farm? You might as well, if you're going to let the unions run the state. Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony? When they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to fifty-four and we kept on payin' 'em for fifty-six, against my advice, what happened? Did they thank us? I guess not. Were they contented? Not on your life. They went right on agitating, throwing scares into the party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,--and now it's fifty-four hours. It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then we'll have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South and donate our mills to the state for insane asylums." "No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side. They're getting sick of the unions now." Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it. "The public!" he exclaimed contemptuously. "A whole lot of good they'll do us." Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar. She held her breath, her blood ran faster,--the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal. "All right--remember what I say--wait and see where you come out with that order." Holster's voice trembled with anger. He hesitated, and left the office abruptly. Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and seated himself in his chair. His eyes, still narrowed, had in them a gleam of triumph that thrilled her. Combat seemed to stimulate and energize him. "He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with the Clarendon," Ditmar exclaimed. "Well, he'll have to guess again. I've got his number." He began to turn over his letters. "Let's see, where were we? Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the door." Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a pencil on a pad. The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea of Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever that hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that strange surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited, had wholly disappeared. Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she, somehow, enlisted once again on his side. "By the way," he said abruptly, "you won't mention this--I know." "Won't mention what?" she asked. "This matter about the pay envelopes--that we don't intend to continue giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-four when this law goes into effect. They're like animals, most of 'em, they don't reason, and it might make trouble if it got out now. You understand. They'd have time to brood over it, to get the agitators started. When the time comes they may kick a little, but they'll quiet down. And it'll teach 'em a lesson." "I never mention anything I hear in this office," she told him. "I know you don't," he assured her, apologetically. "I oughtn't to have said that--it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it spoken of. You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator might make by getting them stirred up? You can see what it means to me, with this order on my hands. I've staked everything on it." "But--when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that they are not receiving their full wages--as Mr. Holster said?" Janet inquired. "Why, they may grumble a little--but I'll be on the lookout for any move. I'll see to that. I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push this business of shorter hours and equal pay. It's the unskilled workers who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized. If we can keep out the agitators, we're all right. Even then, I'll show 'em they can't come in here and exploit my operatives." In the mood in which she found herself his self-confidence, his aggressiveness continued to inspire and even to agitate her, to compel her to accept his point of view. "Why," he continued, "I trust you as I never trusted anybody else. I've told you that before. Ever since you've been here you've made life a different thing for me--just by your being here. I don't know what I'd do without you. You've got so much sense about things--about people,--and I sometimes think you've got almost the same feeling about these mills that I have. You didn't tell me you went through the mills with Caldwell the other day," he added, accusingly. "I--I forgot," said Janet. "Why should I tell--you?" She knew that all thought of Holster had already slipped from his mind. She did not look up. "If you're not going to finish your letters," she said, a little faintly, "I've got some copying to do." "You're a deep one," he said. And as he turned to the pile of correspondence she heard him sigh. He began to dictate. She took down his sentences automatically, scarcely knowing what she was writing; he was making love to her as intensely as though his words had been the absolute expression of his desire instead of the commonplace mediums of commercial intercourse. Presently he stopped and began fumbling in one of the drawers of his desk. "Where is the memorandum I made last week for Percy and Company?" "Isn't it there?" she asked. But he continued to fumble, running through the papers and disarranging them until she could stand it no longer. "You never know where to find anything," she declared, rising and darting around the desk and bending over the drawer, her deft fingers rapidly separating the papers. She drew forth the memorandum triumphantly. "There!" she exclaimed. "It was right before your eyes." As she thrust it at him his hand closed over hers. She felt him drawing her, irresistibly. "Janet!" he said. "For God's sake--you're killing me--don't you know it? I can't stand it any longer!" "Don't!" she whispered, terror-stricken, straining away from him. "Mr. Ditmar--let me go!" A silent struggle ensued, she resisting him with all the aroused strength and fierceness of her nature. He kissed her hair, her neck,--she had never imagined such a force as this, she felt herself weakening, welcoming the annihilation of his embrace. "Mr. Ditmar!" she cried. "Somebody will come in." Her fingers sank into his neck, she tried to hurt him and by a final effort flung herself free and fled to the other side of the room. "You little--wildcat!" she heard him exclaim, saw him put his handkerchief to his neck where her fingers had been, saw a red stain on it. "I'll have you yet!" But even then, as she stood leaning against the wall, motionless save for the surging of her breast, there was about her the same strange, feral inscrutableness. He was baffled, he could not tell what she was thinking. She seemed, unconquered, to triumph over her disarray and the agitation of her body. Then, with an involuntary gesture she raised her hands to her hair, smoothing it, and without seeming haste left the room, not so much as glancing at him, closing the door behind her. She reached her table in the outer office and sat down, gazing out of the window. The face of the world--the river, the mills, and the bridge--was changed, tinged with a new and unreal quality. She, too, must be changed. She wasn't, couldn't be the same person who had entered that room of Ditmar's earlier in the afternoon! Mr. Caldwell made a commonplace remark, she heard herself answer him. Her mind was numb, only her body seemed swept by fire, by emotions--emotions of fear, of anger, of desire so intense as to make her helpless. And when at length she reached out for a sheet of carbon paper her hand trembled so she could scarcely hold it. Only by degrees was she able to get sufficient control of herself to begin her copying, when she found a certain relief in action--her hands flying over the keys, tearing off the finished sheets, and replacing them with others. She did not want to think, to decide, and yet she knew--something was trying to tell her that the moment for decision had come. She must leave, now. If she stayed on, this tremendous adventure she longed for and dreaded was inevitable. Fear and fascination battled within her. To run away was to deny life; to remain, to taste and savour it. She had tasted it--was it sweet?--that sense of being swept away, engulfed by an elemental power beyond them both, yet in them both? She felt him drawing her to him, and she struggling yet inwardly longing to yield. And the scarlet stain on his handkerchief--when she thought of that her blood throbbed, her face burned. At last the door of the inner office opened, and Ditmar came out and stood by the rail. His voice was queer, scarcely recognizable. "Miss Bumpus--would you mind coming into my room a moment, before you leave?" he said. She rose instantly and followed him, closing the door behind her, but standing at bay against it, her hand on the knob. "I'm not going to touch you--you needn't be afraid," he said. Reassured by the unsteadiness of his voice she raised her eyes to perceive that his face was ashy, his manner nervous, apprehensive, conciliatory,--a Ditmar she had difficulty in recognizing. "I didn't mean to frighten, to offend you," he went on. "Something got hold of me. I was crazy, I couldn't help it--I won't do it again, if you'll stay. I give you my word." She did not reply. After a pause he began again, repeating himself. "I didn't mean to do it. I was carried away--it all happened before I knew. I--I wouldn't frighten you that way for anything in the world." Still she was silent. "For God's sake, speak to me!" he cried. "Say you forgive me--give me another chance!" But she continued to gaze at him with widened, enigmatic eyes--whether of reproach or contempt or anger he could not say. The situation transcended his experience. He took an uncertain step toward her, as though half expecting her to flee, and stopped. "Listen!" he pleaded. "I can't talk to you here. Won't you give me a chance to explain--to put myself right? You know what I think of you, how I respect and--admire you. If you'll only let me see you somewhere --anywhere, outside of the office, for a little while, I can't tell you how much I'd appreciate it. I'm sure you don't understand how I feel--I couldn't bear to lose you. I'll be down by the canal--near the bridge --at eight o'clock to-night. I'll wait for you. You'll come? Say you'll come, and give me another chance!" "Aren't you going to finish your letters?" she asked. He stared at her in sheer perplexity. "Letters!" he exclaimed. "Damn the letters! Do you think I could write any letters now?" As a faint ray in dark waters, a gleam seemed to dance in the shadows of her eyes, yet was gone so swiftly that he could not be sure of having seen it. Had she smiled? "I'll be there," he cried. "I'll wait for you." She turned from him, opened the door, and went out. That evening, as Janet was wiping the dishes handed her by her mother, she was repeating to herself "Shall I go--or shan't I?"--just as if the matter were in doubt. But in her heart she was convinced of its predetermination by some power other than her own volition. With this feeling, that she really had no choice, that she was being guided and impelled, she went to her bedroom after finishing her task. The hands of the old dining-room clock pointed to quarter of eight, and Lise had already made her toilet and departed. Janet opened the wardrobe, looked at the new blue suit hanging so neatly on its wire holder, hesitated, and closed the door again. Here, at any rate, seemed a choice. She would not wear that, to-night. She tidied her hair, put on her hat and coat, and went out; but once in the street she did not hurry, though she knew the calmness she apparently experienced to be false: the calmness of fatality, because she was obeying a complicated impulse stronger than herself--an impulse that at times seemed mere curiosity. Somewhere, removed from her immediate consciousness, a storm was raging; she was aware of a disturbance that reached her faintly, like the distant throbbing of the looms she heard when she turned from Faber into West Street She had not been able to eat any supper. That throbbing of the looms in the night! As it grew louder and louder the tension within her increased, broke its bounds, set her heart to throbbing too--throbbing wildly. She halted, and went on again, precipitately, but once more slowed her steps as she came to West Street and the glare of light at the end of the bridge; at a little distance, under the chequered shadows of the bare branches, she saw something move--a man, Ditmar. She stood motionless as he hurried toward her. "You've come! You've forgiven me?" he asked. "Why were you--down there?" she asked. "Why? Because I thought--I thought you wouldn't want anybody to know--" It was quite natural that he should not wish to be seen; although she had no feeling of guilt, she herself did not wish their meeting known. She resented the subterfuge in him, but she made no comment because his perplexity, his embarrassment were gratifying to her resentment, were restoring her self-possession, giving her a sense of power. "We can't stay here," he went on, after a moment. "Let's take a little walk--I've got a lot to say to you. I want to put myself right." He tried to take her arm, but she avoided him. They started along the canal in the direction of the Stanley Street bridge. "Don't you care for me a little?" he demanded. "Why should I?" she parried. "Then--why did you come?" "To hear what you had to say." "You mean--about this afternoon?" "Partly," said Janet. "Well--we'll talk it all over. I wanted to explain about this afternoon, especially. I'm sorry--" "Sorry!" she exclaimed. The vehemence of her rebuke--for he recognized it as such--took him completely aback. Thus she was wont, at the most unexpected moments, to betray the passion within her, the passion that made him sick with desire. How was he to conquer a woman of this type, who never took refuge in the conventional tactics of her sex, as he had known them? "I didn't mean that," he explained desperately. "My God--to feel you, to have you in my arms--! I was sorry because I frightened you. But when you came near me that way I just couldn't help it. You drove me to it." "Drove you to it!" "You don't understand, you don't know how--how wonderful you are. You make me crazy. I love you, I want you as I've never wanted any woman before--in a different way. I can't explain it. I've got so that I can't live without you." He flung his arm toward the lights of the mills. "That--that used to be everything to me, I lived for it. I don't say I've been a saint--but I never really cared anything about any woman until I knew you, until that day I went through the office and saw you what you were. You don't understand, I tell you. I'm sorry for what I did to-day because it offended you--but you drove me to it. Most of the time you seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate me, and then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other night, as you seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a chance, and then, when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why, I didn't know what I was doing. I just had to have you. A man like me can't stand it." "Then I'd better go away," she said. "I ought to have gone long ago." "Why?" he cried. "Why? What's your reason? Why do you want to ruin my life? You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it. I never knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you. There's that mill," he repeated, naively. "I've made it the best mill in the country, I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you went away I wouldn't care a continental about it. If you went away I wouldn't have any ambition left. Because you're a part of it, don't you see? You--you sort of stand for it now, in my mind. I'm not literary, I can't express what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of that mill as a woman--and now you've come along--" Ditmar stopped, for lack of adequate eloquence. She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of the successful Ditmar, the Ditmar of great affairs, that appealed to her most strongly. She was softened, touched; she felt, too, a responsive thrill to such a desire as his. Yet she did not reply. She could not. She was learning that emotion is never simple. And some inhibition, the identity of which was temporarily obscured still persisted, pervading her consciousness.... They were crossing the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail. The hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,--only the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river. Against the flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the power plant. Ditmar's shoulder touched hers. He was still pleading, but she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters falling over the dam. His words were like that, suggestive of a torrent into which she longed to fling herself, yet refrained, without knowing why. Her hands tightened on the rail; suddenly she let it go, and led the way toward the unfrequented district of the south side. It was the road to Silliston, but she had forgotten that. Ditmar, regaining her side, continued his pleading. He spoke of his loneliness, which he had never realized. He needed her. And she experienced an answering pang. It still seemed incredible that he, too, who had so much, should feel that gnawing need for human sympathy and understanding that had so often made her unhappy. And because of the response his need aroused in her she did not reflect whether he could fulfil her own need, whether he could ever understand her; whether, at any time, she could unreservedly pour herself out to him. "I don't see why you want me," she interrupted him at last. "I've never had any advantages, I don't know anything. I've never had a chance to learn. I've told you that before." "What difference does that make? You've got more sense than any woman I ever saw," he declared. "It makes a great deal of difference to me," she insisted--and the sound of these words on her own lips was like a summons arousing her from a dream. The sordidness of her life, its cruel lack of opportunity in contrast with the gifts she felt to be hers, and on which he had dwelt, was swept back into her mind. Self-pity, dignity, and inherent self-respect struggled against her woman's desire to give; an inherited racial pride whispered that she was worthy of the best, but because she had lacked the chance, he refrained from offering her what he would have laid at the feet of another woman. "I'll give you advantages--there's nothing I wouldn't give you. Why won't you come to me? I'll take care of you." "Do you think I want to be taken care of?" She wheeled on him so swiftly that he started back. "Is that what you think I want?" "No, no," he protested, when he recovered his speech. "Do you think I'm after--what you can give me?" she shot at him. "What you can buy for me?" To tell the truth, he had not thought anything about it, that was the trouble. And her question, instead of enlightening him, only added to his confusion and bewilderment. "I'm always getting in wrong with you," he told her, pathetically. "There isn't anything I'd stop at to make you happy, Janet, that's what I'm trying to say. I'd go the limit." "Your limit!" she exclaimed. "What do you mean?" he demanded. But she had become inarticulate --cryptic, to him. He could get nothing more out of her. "You don't understand me--you never will!" she cried, and burst into tears--tears of rage she tried in vain to control. The world was black with his ignorance. She hated herself, she hated him. Her sobs shook her convulsively, and she scarcely heard him as he walked beside her along the empty road, pleading and clumsily seeking to comfort her. Once or twice she felt his hand on her shoulders.... And then, unlooked for and unbidden, pity began to invade her. Absurd to pity him! She fought against it, but the thought of Ditmar reduced to abjectness gained ground. After all, he had tried to be generous, he had done his best, he loved her, he needed her--the words rang in her heart. After all, he did not realize how could she expect him to realize? and her imagination conjured up the situation in a new perspective. Her sobs gradually ceased, and presently she stopped in the middle of the road and regarded him. He seemed utterly miserable, like a hurt child whom she longed to comfort. But what she said was:--"I ought to be going home." "Not yet!" he begged. "It's early. You say I don't understand you, Janet--my God, I wish I did! It breaks me all up to see you cry like that." "I'm sorry," she said, after a moment. "I--I can't make you understand. I guess I'm not like anybody else I'm queer--I can't help it. You must let me go, I only make you unhappy." "Let you go!" he cried--and then in utter self-forgetfulness she yielded her lips to his. A sound penetrated the night, she drew back from his arms and stood silhouetted against the glare of the approaching headlight of a trolley car, and as it came roaring down on them she hailed it. Ditmar seized her arm. "You're not going--now?" he said hoarsely. "I must," she whispered. "I want to be alone--I want to think. You must let me." "I'll see you to-morrow?" "I don't know--I want to think. I'm--I'm tired." The brakes screamed as the car came joltingly to a stop. She flew up the steps, glancing around to see whether Ditmar had followed her, and saw him still standing in the road. The car was empty of passengers, but the conductor must have seen her leaving a man in this lonely spot. She glanced at his face, white and pinched and apathetic--he must have seen hundreds of similar episodes in the course of his nightly duties. He was unmoved as he took her fare. Nevertheless, at the thought that these other episodes might resemble hers, her face flamed--she grew hot all over. What should she do now? She could not think. Confused with her shame was the memory of a delirious joy, yet no sooner would she give herself up, trembling, to this memory when in turn it was penetrated by qualms of resentment, defiling its purity. Was Ditmar ashamed of her?... When she reached home and had got into bed she wept a little, but her tears were neither of joy nor sorrow. Her capacity for both was exhausted. In this strange mood she fell asleep nor did she waken when, at midnight, Lise stealthily crept in beside her. CHAPTER X Ditmar stood staring after the trolley car that bore Janet away until it became a tiny speck of light in the distance. Then he started to walk toward Hampton; in the unwonted exercise was an outlet for the pent-up energy her departure had thwarted; and presently his body was warm with a physical heat that found its counterpart in a delicious, emotional glow of anticipation, of exultant satisfaction. After all, he could not expect to travel too fast with her. Had he not at least gained a signal victory? When he remembered her lips--which she had indubitably given him!--he increased his stride, and in what seemed an incredibly brief time he had recrossed the bridge, covered the long residential blocks of Warren Street, and gained his own door. The house was quiet, the children having gone to bed, and he groped his way through the dark parlour to his den, turning on the electric switch, sinking into an armchair, and lighting a cigar. He liked this room of his, which still retained something of that flavour of a refuge and sanctuary it had so eminently possessed in the now forgotten days of matrimonial conflict. One of the few elements of agreement he had held in common with the late Mrs. Ditmar was a similarity of taste in household decoration, and they had gone together to a great emporium in Boston to choose the furniture and fittings. The lamp in the centre of the table was a bronze column supporting a hemisphere of heavy red and emerald glass, the colours woven into an intricate and bizarre design, after the manner of the art nouveau--so the zealous salesman had informed them. Cora Ditmar, when exhibiting this lamp to admiring visitors, had remembered the phrase, though her pronunciation of it, according to the standard of the Sorbonne, left something to be desired. The table and chairs, of heavy, shiny oak marvellously and precisely carved by machines, matched the big panels of the wainscot. The windows were high in the wall, thus preventing any intrusion from the clothes-yard on which they looked. The bookcases, protected by leaded panes, held countless volumes of the fiction from which Cora Ditmar had derived her knowledge of the great world outside of Hampton, together with certain sets she had bought, not only as ornaments, but with a praiseworthy view to future culture,--such as Whitmarsh's Library of the Best Literature. These volumes, alas, were still uncut; but some of the pages of the novels--if one cared to open them--were stained with chocolate. The steam radiator was a decoration in itself, the fireplace set in the red and yellow tiles that made the hearth. Above the oak mantel, in a gold frame, was a large coloured print of a Magdalen, doubled up in grief, with a glory of loose, Titian hair, chosen by Ditmar himself as expressing the nearest possible artistic representation of his ideal of the female form. Cora Ditmar's objections on the score of voluptuousness and of insufficient clothing had been vain. She had recognized no immorality of sentimentality in the art itself; what she felt, and with some justice, was that this particular Magdalen was unrepentant, and that Ditmar knew it. And the picture remained an offence to her as long as she lived. Formerly he had enjoyed the contemplation of this figure, reminding him, as it did, of mellowed moments in conquests of the past; suggesting also possibilities of the future. For he had been quick to discount the attitude of bowed despair, the sop flung by a sensuous artist to Christian orthodoxy. He had been sceptical about despair--feminine despair, which could always be cured by gifts and baubles. But to-night, as he raised his eyes, he felt a queer sensation marring the ecstatic perfection of his mood. That quality in the picture which so long had satisfied and entranced him had now become repellent, an ugly significant reflection of something --something in himself he was suddenly eager to repudiate and deny. It was with a certain amazement that he found himself on his feet with the picture in his hand, gazing at the empty space where it had hung. For he had had no apparent intention of obeying that impulse. What should he do with it? Light the fire and burn it--frame and all? The frame was an integral part of it. What would his housekeeper say? But now that he had actually removed it from the wall he could not replace it, so he opened the closet door and thrust it into a corner among relics which had found refuge there. He had put his past in the closet; yet the relief he felt was mingled with the peculiar qualm that follows the discovery of symptoms never before remarked. Why should this woman have this extraordinary effect of making him dissatisfied with himself? He sat down again and tried to review the affair from that first day when he had surprised in her eyes the flame dwelling in her. She had completely upset his life, increasingly distracted his mind until now he could imagine no peace unless he possessed her. Hitherto he had recognized in his feeling for her nothing but that same desire he had had for other women, intensified to a degree never before experienced. But this sudden access of morality--he did not actually define it as such--was disquieting. And in the feverish, semi-objective survey he was now making of his emotional tract he was discovering the presence of other disturbing symptoms such as an unwonted tenderness, a consideration almost amounting to pity which at times he had vaguely sensed yet never sought imaginatively to grasp. It bewildered him by hampering a ruthlessness hitherto absolute. The fierceness of her inflamed his passion, yet he recognized dimly behind this fierceness an instinct of self-protection--and he thought of her in this moment as a struggling bird that fluttered out of his hands when they were ready to close over her. So it had been to-night. He might have kept her, prevented her from taking the car. Yet he had let her go! There came again, utterly to blot this out, the memory of her lips. Even then, there had been something sorrowful in that kiss, a quality he resented as troubling, a flavour that came to him after the wildness was spent. What was she struggling against? What was behind her resistance? She loved him! It had never before occurred to him to enter into the nature of her feelings, having been so preoccupied with and tortured by his own. This realization, that she loved him, as it persisted, began to make him uneasy, though it should, according to all experience, have been a reason for sheer exultation. He began to see that with her it involved complications, responsibilities, disclosures, perhaps all of those things he had formerly avoided and resented in woman. He thought of certain friends of his who had become tangled up--of one in particular whose bank account had been powerless to extricate him.... And he was ashamed of himself. In view of the nature of his sex experience, of his habit of applying his imagination solely to matters of business rather than to affairs of the heart,--if his previous episodes may be so designated,--his failure to surmise that a wish for marriage might be at the back of her resistance is not so surprising as it may seem; he laid down, half smoked, his third cigar. The suspicion followed swiftly on his recalling to mind her vehement repudiation of his proffered gifts did he think she wanted what he could buy for her! She was not purchasable--that way. He ought to have known it, he hadn't realized what he was saying. But marriage! Literally it had never occurred to him to image her in a relation he himself associated with shackles. One of the unconscious causes of his fascination was just her emancipation from and innocence of that herd-convention to which most women--even those who lack wedding rings--are slaves. The force of such an appeal to a man of Ditmar's type must not be underestimated. And the idea that she, too, might prefer the sanction of the law, the gilded cage as a popular song which once had taken his fancy illuminatingly expressed it--seemed utterly incongruous with the freedom and daring of her spirit, was a sobering shock. Was he prepared to marry her, if he could obtain her in no other way? The question demanded a survey of his actual position of which he was at the moment incapable. There were his children! He had never sought to arrive at even an approximate estimate of the boy and girl as factors in his life, to consider his feelings toward them; but now, though he believed himself a man who gave no weight to social considerations--he had scorned this tendency in his wife--he was to realize the presence of ambitions for them. He was young, he was astonishingly successful; he had reason to think, with his opportunities and the investments he already had made, that he might some day be moderately rich; and he had at times even imagined himself in later life as the possessor of one of those elaborate country places to be glimpsed from the high roads in certain localities, which the sophisticated are able to recognize as the seats of the socially ineligible, but which to Ditmar were outward and visible emblems of success. He liked to think of George as the inheritor of such a place, as the son of a millionaire, as a "college graduate," as an influential man of affairs; he liked to imagine Amy as the wife of such another. In short, Ditmar's wife had left him, as an unconscious legacy, her aspirations for their children's social prestige.... The polished oak grandfather's clock in the hall had struck one before he went to bed, mentally wearied by an unwonted problem involving, in addition to self-interest, an element of ethics, of affection not wholly compounded of desire. He slept soundly, however. He was one of those fortunate beings who come into the world with digestive organs and thyroid glands in that condition which--so physiologists tell us--makes for a sanguine temperament. And his course of action, though not decided upon, no longer appeared as a problem; it differed from a business matter in that it could wait. As sufficient proof of his liver having rescued him from doubts and qualms he was able to whistle, as he dressed, and without a tremor of agitation, the forgotten tune suggested to his consciousness during the unpleasant reverie of the night before,--"Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage!" It was Saturday. He ate a hearty breakfast, joked with George and Amy, and refreshed, glowing with an expectation mingled with just the right amount of delightful uncertainty that made the great affairs of life a gamble, yet with the confidence of the conqueror, he walked in sunlight to the mill. In view of this firm and hopeful tone of his being he found it all the more surprising, as he reached the canal, to be seized by a trepidation strong enough to bring perspiration to his forehead. What if she had gone! He had never thought of that, and he had to admit it would be just like her. You never could tell what she would do. Nodding at Simmons, the watchman, he hurried up the iron-shod stairs, gained the outer once, and instantly perceived that her chair beside the window was empty! Caldwell and Mr. Price stood with their heads together bending over a sheet on which Mr. Price was making calculations. "Hasn't Miss Bumpus come yet?" Ditmar demanded. He tried to speak naturally, casually, but his own voice sounded strange, seemed to strike the exact note of sickening apprehension that suddenly possessed him. Both men turned and looked at him in some surprise. "Good-morning, Mr. Ditmar," Caldwell said. "Why, yes, she's in your room." "Oh!" said Ditmar. "The Boston office has just been calling you--they want to know if you can't take the nine twenty-two," Caldwell went on. "It's about that lawsuit. It comes into court Monday morning, and Mr. Sprole is there, and they say they have to see you. Miss Bumpus has the memorandum." Ditmar looked at his watch. "Damn it, why didn't they let me know yesterday?" he exclaimed. "I won't see anybody, Caldwell--not even Orcutt--just now. You understand. I've got to have a little time to do some letters. I won't be disturbed--by any one--for half an hour." Caldwell nodded. "All right, Mr. Ditmar." Ditmar went into his office, closing the door behind him. She was occupied as usual, cutting open the letters and laying them in a pile with the deftness and rapidity that characterized all she did. "Janet!" he exclaimed. "There's a message for you from Boston. I've made a note of it," she replied. "I know--Caldwell told me. But I wanted to see you before I went--I had to see you. I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking of you. Aren't you glad to see me?" She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his approach--a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of inner values. He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness--but when she turned away her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek, spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft contour of her arm, his passion conquered.... Still he was acutely conscious of a resistance within her--not as before, physically directed against him, but repudiating her own desire. She became limp in his arms, though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential self of her he craved still evaded and defied him. And he clung to her the more desperately--as though by crushing her peradventure he might capture it. "You're hurting me," she said at last, and he let her go, standing by helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment instinctive to women. Even in these he read the existence of the reservation he was loth to acknowledge. "Don't you love me?" he said. "I don't know." "You do!" he said. "You--you proved it--I know it." She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay idle in her hand. "For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" he exclaimed. "I can't stand this. Janet, aren't you happy?" She shook her head. "Why not? I love you. I--I've never been so happy in my life as I was this morning. Why aren't you happy--when we love each other?" "Because I'm not." "Why not? There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy--you know that. Tell me!" "You wouldn't understand. I couldn't make you understand." "Is it something I've done?" "You don't love me," she said. "You only want me. I'm not made that way, I'm not generous enough, I guess. I've got to have work to do." "Work to do! But you'll share my work--it's nothing without you." She shook her head. "I knew you couldn't understand. You don't realize how impossible it is. I don't blame you--I suppose a man can't." She was not upbraiding him, she spoke quietly, in a tone almost lifeless, yet the emotional effect of it was tremendous. "But," he began, and stopped, and was swept on again by an impulse that drowned all caution, all reason. "But you can help me--when we are married." "Married!" she repeated. "You want to marry me?" "Yes, yes--I need you." He took her hands, he felt them tremble in his, her breath came quickly, but her gaze was so intent as seemingly to penetrate to the depths of him. And despite his man's amazement at her hesitation now that he had offered her his all, he was moved, disturbed, ashamed as he had never been in his life. At length, when he could stand no longer the suspense of this inquisition, he stammered out: "I want you to be my wife." "You've wanted to marry me all along?" she asked. "I didn't think, Janet. I was mad about you. I didn't know you." "Do you know me now?" "That's just it," he cried, with a flash of clairvoyance, "I never will know you--it's what makes you different from any woman I've ever seen. You'll marry me?" "I'm afraid," she said. "Oh, I've thought over it, and you haven't. A woman has to think, a man doesn't, so much. And now you're willing to marry me, if you can't get me any other way." Her hand touched his coat, checking his protest. "It isn't that I want marriage--what you can give me--I'm not like that, I've told you so before. But I couldn't live as your--mistress." The word on her lips shocked him a little--but her courage and candour thrilled him. "If I stayed here, it would be found out. I wouldn't let you keep me. I'd have to have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all I've got--I'd kill myself." She spoke as calmly as though she were reviewing the situation objectively. "And then, I've thought that you might come to believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't realize what you were doing, or what might happen if we were married. I've tried to tell you that, too, only you didn't seem to understand what I was saying. My father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer than some of the operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in Hampton wouldn't understand. Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--" she spoke with more effort, "there are your children. When I've thought of them, it all seems impossible. I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear it, I wouldn't stay with you. You see, I ought to have gone away long ago." Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made matters far less difficult. But these scruples of hers, so startlingly his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that might become extremely troublesome and complicated. His very reluctance to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had been swept into deep waters. On the other hand, her splendid resistance appealed to him, enhanced her value. And accustomed as he had been to a lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme desire was not to be borne. Such were the shades of his feeling as he listened to her. "That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished. "You're a lady --I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your father came here--it's as good as any in New England. What do you suppose I care, Janet? We love each other--I've got to have you. We'll be married in the spring, when the rush is over." He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her will--and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own. Her lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him and hid her face in his shoulder. His sensations in the presence of this thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he had ever known. It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and suffering, of creation and life--of the universe itself. "Janet--aren't you happy?" he said again. She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears. "I don't know. What I feel doesn't seem like happiness. I can't believe in it, somehow." "You must believe in it," he said. "I can't,--perhaps I may, later. You'd better go now," she begged. "You'll miss your train." He glanced at the office clock. "Confound it, I have to. Listen! I'll be back this evening, and I'll get that little car of mine--" "No, not to-night--I don't want to go--to-night." "Why not?" "Not to-night," she repeated. "Well then, to-morrow. To-morrow's Sunday. Do you know where the Boat Club is on the River Boulevard? I'll be there, to-morrow morning at ten. I'd come for you, to your house," he added quickly, "but we don't want any one to know, yet--do we?" She shook her head. "We must keep it secret for a while," he said. "Wear your new dress--the blue one. Good-bye--sweetheart." He kissed her again and hurried out of the office.... Boarding the train just as it was about to start, he settled himself in the back seat of the smoker, lit a cigar, inhaling deep breaths of the smoke and scarcely noticing an acquaintance who greeted him from the aisle. Well, he had done it! He was amazed. He had not intended to propose marriage, and when he tried to review the circumstances that had led to this he became confused. But when he asked himself whether indeed he were willing to pay such a price, to face the revolution marriage--and this marriage in particular--would mean in his life, the tumult in his blood beat down his incipient anxieties. Besides, he possessed the kind of mind able to throw off the consideration of possible consequences, and by the time the train had slowed down in the darkness of the North Station in Boston all traces of worry had disappeared. The future would take care of itself. For the Bumpus family, supper that evening was an unusually harmonious meal. Hannah's satisfaction over the new stove had by no means subsided, and Edward ventured, without reproof, to praise the restored quality of the pie crust. And in contrast to her usual moroseness and self-absorption, even Lise was gay--largely because her pet aversion, the dignified and allegedly amorous Mr. Waiters, floor-walker at the Bagatelle, had fallen down the length of the narrow stairway leading from the cashier's cage. She became almost hysterical with glee as she pictured him lying prone beneath the counter dedicated to lingerie, draped with various garments from the pile that toppled over on him. "Ruby Nash picked a brassiere off his whiskers!" Lise shrieked. "She gave the pile a shove when he landed. He's got her number all right. But say, it was worth the price of admission to see that old mutt when he got up, he looked like Santa Claus. All the girls in the floor were there we nearly split trying to keep from giving him the ha-ha. And Ruby says, sympathetic, as she brushed him off, `I hope you ain't hurt, Mr. Waiters.' He was sore! He went around all afternoon with a bunch on his coco as big as a potato." So vivid was Lise's account of this affair which apparently she regarded as compensation for many days of drudgery-that even Hannah laughed, though deploring a choice of language symbolic of a world she feared and detested. "If I talked like you," said Lise, "they wouldn't understand me." Janet, too, was momentarily amused, drawn out of that reverie in which she had dwelt all day, ever since Ditmar had left for Boston. Now she began to wonder what would happen if she were suddenly to announce "I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar." After the first shock of amazement, she could imagine her father's complete and complacent acceptance of the news as a vindication of an inherent quality in the Bumpus blood. He would begin to talk about the family. For, despite what might have been deemed a somewhat disillusionizing experience, in the depths of his being he still believed in the Providence who had presided over the perilous voyage of the Mayflower and the birth of Peregrine White, whose omniscient mind was peculiarly concerned with the family trees of Puritans. And what could be a more striking proof of the existence of this Providence, or a more fitting acknowledgment on his part of the Bumpus virtues, than that Janet should become the wife of the agent of the Chippering Mills? Janet smiled. She was amused, too, by the thought that Lise's envy would be modified by the prospect of a heightened social status; since Lise, it will be remembered, had her Providence likewise. Hannah's god was not a Providence, but one deeply skilled in persecution, in ingenious methods of torture; one who would not hesitate to dangle baubles before the eyes of his children--only to snatch them away again. Hannah's pessimism would persist as far as the altar, and beyond! On the whole, such was Janet's notion of the Deity, though deep within her there may have existed a hope that he might be outwitted; that, by dint of energy and brains, the fair things of life might be obtained despite a malicious opposition. And she loved Ditmar. This must be love she felt, this impatience to see him again, this desire to be with him, this agitation possessing her so utterly that all day long she had dwelt in an unwonted state like a somnambulism: it must be love, though not resembling in the least the generally accepted, virginal ideal. She saw him as he was, crude, powerful, relentless in his desire; his very faults appealed. His passion had overcome his prudence, he had not intended to propose, but any shame she felt on this score was put to flight by a fierce exultation over the fact that she had brought him to her feet, that he wanted her enough to marry her. It was wonderful to be wanted like that! But she could not achieve the mental picture of herself as Ditmar's wife--especially when, later in the evening, she walked up Warren Street and stood gazing at his house from the opposite pavement. She simply could not imagine herself living in that house as its mistress. Notwithstanding the testimony of the movies, such a Cinderella-like transition was not within the realm of probable facts; things just didn't happen that way. She recalled the awed exclamation of Eda when they had walked together along Warren Street on that evening in summer: "How would you like to live there!"--and hot with sudden embarrassment and resentment she had dragged her friend onward, to the corner. In spite of its size, of the spaciousness of existence it suggested, the house had not appealed to her then. Janet did not herself realize or estimate the innate if undeveloped sense of form she possessed, the artist-instinct that made her breathless on first beholding Silliston Common. And then the vision of Silliston had still been bright; but now the light of a slender moon was as a gossamer silver veil through which she beheld the house, as in a stage setting, softening and obscuring its lines, lending it qualities of dignity and glamour that made it seem remote, unreal, unattainable. And she felt a sudden, overwhelming longing, as though her breast would burst.... Through the drawn blinds the lights in the second storey gleamed yellow. A dim lamp burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary. And then, as though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of the living room at the north end of the house. Two figures chased one another around the centre table--Ditmar's children! Was Ditmar there? Impelled irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she went forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement, stepped over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the lawn, feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid fascination. The children continued to romp. The boy was strong and swift, the girl stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her body; he caught her and twisted her arm, roughly--Janet could hear her cries through the window-=when an elderly woman entered, seized him, struggling with him. He put out his tongue at her, but presently released his sister, who stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in evident recrimination and complaint. The faces of the two were plain now; the boy resembled Ditmar, but the features of the girl, heavy and stamped with self-indulgence, were evidently reminiscent of the woman who had been his wife. Then the shade was pulled down, abruptly; and Janet, overcome by a sense of horror at her position, took to flight.... When, after covering the space of a block she slowed down and tried to imagine herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those children, she found it impossible. Despite the fact that her attention had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the farther wall, the music rack. Evidently the girl was learning to play. She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the woman who had been her mother had possessed--that in her, Janet, had lacked the advantages of development. Could it--could it ever be developed now? Had this love which had come to her brought her any nearer to the unknown realm of light she craved?... CHAPTER XI Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and dispersed. And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat, felt resurging in her the divine recklessness that is the very sap of life. The future, save of the immediate hours to come, lost its power over her. The blue and white beauty of the sky proclaimed all things possible for the strong; and the air was vibrant with the sweet music of bells, calling her to happiness. She was going to meet happiness, to meet love--to meet Ditmar! The trolley which she took in Faber Street, though lagging in its mission, seemed an agent of that happiness as it left the city behind it and wound along the heights beside the tarvia roadway above the river, bright glimpses of which she caught through the openings in the woods. And when she looked out of the window on her right she beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps" built by residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more elaborate summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with queer names that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug Harbour," "Buena Vista,"--of course,--which she thought pretty, though she did not know its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing, "Klein aber Mein." Though the windows of these places were now boarded up, though the mosquito netting still clung rather dismally to the porches, they were mutely suggestive of contentment and domestic joy. Scarcely had she alighted from the car at the rendezvous he had mentioned, beside the now deserted boathouse where in the warm weather the members of the Hampton Rowing Club disported themselves, when she saw an automobile approaching--and recognized it as the gay "roadster" Ditmar had exhibited to her that summer afternoon by the canal; and immediately Ditmar himself, bringing it to a stop and leaping from it, stood before her in the sunlight, radiating, as it seemed, more sunlight still. With his clipped, blond moustache and his straw-coloured hair--as yet but slightly grey at the temples--he looked a veritable conquering berserker in his huge coat of golden fur. Never had he appeared to better advantage. "I was waiting for you," he said, "I saw you in the car." Turning to the automobile, he stripped the tissue paper from a cluster of dark red roses with the priceless long stems of which Lise used to rave when she worked in the flower store. And he held the flowers against her suit her new suit she had worn for this meeting. "Oh," she cried, taking a deep, intoxicating breath of their fragrance. "You brought these--for me?" "From Boston--my beauty!" "But I can't wear all of them!" "Why not?" he demanded. "Haven't you a pin?" She produced one, attaching them with a gesture that seemed habitual, though the thought of their value-revealing in some degree her own worth in his eyes-unnerved her. She was warmly conscious of his gaze. Then he turned, and opening a compartment at the back of the car drew from it a bright tweed motor coat warmly lined. "Oh, no!" she protested, drawing back. "I'll--I'll be warm enough." But laughingly, triumphantly, he seized her and thrust her arms in the sleeves, his fingers pressing against her. Overcome by shyness, she drew away from him. "I made a pretty good guess at the size--didn't I, Janet?" he cried, delightedly surveying her. "I couldn't forget it!" His glance grew more concentrated, warmer, penetrating. "You mustn't look at me like that!" she pleaded with lowered eyes. "Why not--you're mine--aren't you? You're mine, now." "I don't know. There are lots of things I want to talk about," she replied, but her protest sounded feeble, unconvincing, even to herself. He fairly lifted her into the automobile--it was a caress, only tempered by the semi-publicity of the place. He was giving her no time to think --but she did not want to, think. Starting the engine, he got in and leaned toward her. "Not here!" she exclaimed. "All right--I'll wait," he agreed, tucking the robe about her deftly, solicitously, and she sank back against the seat, surrendering herself to the luxury, the wonder of being cherished, the caressing and sheltering warmth she felt of security and love, the sense of emancipation from discontent and sordidness and struggle. For a moment she closed her eyes, but opened them again to behold the transformed image of herself reflected in the windshield to confirm the illusion--if indeed it were one! The tweed coat seemed startlingly white in the sunlight, and the woman she saw, yet recognized as herself, was one of the fortunately placed of the earth with power and beauty at her command! And she could no longer imagine herself as the same person who the night before had stood in front of the house in Warren Street. The car was speeding over the smooth surface of the boulevard; the swift motion, which seemed to her like that of flying, the sparkling air, the brightness of the day, the pressure of Ditmar's shoulder against hers, thrilled her. She marvelled at his sure command over the machine, that responded like a live thing to his touch. On the wide, straight stretches it went at a mad pace that took her breath, and again, in turning a corner or passing another car, it slowed down, purring in meek obedience. Once she gasped: "Not so fast! I can't stand it." He laughed and obeyed her. They glided between river and sky across the delicate fabric of a bridge which but a moment before she had seen in the distance. Running through the little village on the farther bank, they left the river. "Where are you going?" she asked. "Oh, for a little spin," he answered indulgently, turning into a side road that wound through the woods and suddenly stopping. "Janet, we've got this day--this whole day to ourselves." He seized and drew her to him, and she yielded dizzily, repaying the passion of his kiss, forgetful of past and future while he held her, whispering brokenly endearing phrases. "You'll ruin my roses," she protested breathlessly, at last, when it seemed that she could no longer bear this embrace, nor the pressure of his lips. "There! you see you're crushing them!" She undid them, and buttoning the coat, held them to her face. Their odour made her faint: her eyes were clouded. "Listen, Claude!" she said at last,--it was the first time she had called him so--getting free. "You must be sensible! some one might come along." "I'll never get enough of you!" he said. "I can't believe it yet." And added irrelevantly: "Pin the roses outside." She shook her head. Something in her protested against this too public advertisement of their love. "I'd rather hold them," she answered. "Let's go on." He started the car again. "Listen, I want to talk to you, seriously. I've been thinking." "Don't I know you've been thinking!" he told her exuberantly. "If I could only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours! If you keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm. And now do you know what you are? One of those dusky red roses just ready to bloom. Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em." "Listen!" she repeated, making a great effort to calm herself, to regain something of that frame of mind in which their love had assumed the proportions of folly and madness, to summon up the scruples which, before she had left home that morning, she had resolved to lay before him, which she knew would return when she could be alone again. "I have to think --you won't," she exclaimed, with a fleeting smile. "Well, what is it?" he assented. "You might as well get it off now." And it took all her strength to say: "I don't see how I can marry you. I've told you the reasons. You're rich, and you have friends who wouldn't understand--and your children--they wouldn't understand. I--I'm nothing, I know it isn't right, I know you wouldn't be happy. I've never lived--in the kind of house you live in and known the kind of people you know, I shouldn't know what to do." He took his eyes off the road and glanced down at her curiously. His smile was self-confident, exultant. "Now do you feel better--you little Puritan?" he said. And perforce she smiled in return, a pucker appearing between her eyebrows. "I mean it," she said. "I came out to tell you so. I know--it just isn't possible." "I'd marry you to-day if I could get a license," he declared. "Why, you're worth any woman in America, I don't care who she is, or how much money she has." In spite of herself she was absurdly pleased. "Now that is over, we won't discuss it again, do you understand? I've got you," he said, "and I mean to hold on to you." She sighed. He was driving slowly now along the sandy road, and with his hand on hers she simply could not think. The spell of his nearness, of his touch, which all nature that morning conspired to deepen, was too powerful to be broken, and something was calling to her, "Take this day, take this day," drowning out the other voice demanding an accounting. She was living--what did it all matter? She yielded herself to the witchery of the hour, the sheer delight of forthfaring into the unknown. They turned away from the river, crossing the hills of a rolling country now open, now wooded, passing white farmhouses and red barns, and ancient, weather-beaten dwellings with hipped roofs and "lean-tos" which had been there in colonial days when the road was a bridle-path. Cows and horses stood gazing at them from warm paddocks, where the rich, black mud glistened, melted by the sun; chickens scratched and clucked in the barnyards or flew frantically across the road, sometimes within an ace of destruction. Janet flinched, but Ditmar would laugh, gleefully, boyishly. "We nearly got that one!" he would exclaim. And then he had to assure her that he wouldn't run over them. "I haven't run over one yet,--have I?" he would demand. "No, but you will, it's only luck." "Luck!" he cried derisively. "Skill! I wish I had a dollar for every one I got when I was learning to drive. There was a farmer over here in Chester--" and he proceeded to relate how he had had to pay for two turkeys. "He got my number, the old hayseed, he was laying for me, and the next time I went back that way he held me up for five dollars. I can remember the time when a man in a motor was an easy mark for every reuben in the county. They got rich on us." She responded to his mood, which was wholly irresponsible, exuberant, and they laughed together like children, every little incident assuming an aspect irresistibly humorous. Once he stopped to ask an old man standing in his dooryard how far it was to Kingsbury. "Wal, mebbe it's two mile, they mostly call it two," said the patriarch, after due reflection, gathering his beard in his band. "Mebbe it's more." His upper lip was blue, shaven, prehensile. "What did you ask him for, when you know?" said Janet, mirthfully, when they had gone on, and Ditmar was imitating him. Ditmar's reply was to wink at her. Presently they saw another figure on the road. "Let's see what he'll say," Ditmar proposed. This man was young, the colour of mahogany, with glistening black hair and glistening black eyes that regarded the too palpable joyousness of their holiday humour in mute surprise. "I no know--stranger," he said. "No speaka Portugueso?" inquired Ditmar, gravely. "The country is getting filthy with foreigners," he observed, when he had started the car. "I went down to Plymouth last summer to see the old rock, and by George, it seemed as if there wasn't anybody could speak American on the whole cape. All the Portuguese islands are dumped there --cranberry pickers, you know." "I didn't know that," said Janet. "Sure thing!" he exclaimed. "And when I got there, what do you think? there was hardly enough of the old stone left to stand on, and that had a fence around it like an exhibit in an exposition. It had all been chipped away by souvenir hunters." She gazed at him incredulously. "You don't believe me! I'll take you down there sometime. And another thing, the rock's high and dry--up on the land. I said to Charlie Crane, who was with me, that it must have been a peach of a jump for old Miles Standish and Priscilla what's her name." "How I'd love to see the ocean again!" Janet exclaimed. "Why, I'll take you--as often as you like," he promised. "We'll go out on it in summer, up to Maine, or down to the Cape." Her enchantment was now so great that nothing seemed impossible. "And we'll go down to Plymouth, too, some Sunday soon, if this weather keeps up. If we start early enough we can get there for lunch, easy. We'll see the rock. I guess some of your ancestors must have come over with that Mayflower outfit--first cabin, eh? You look like it." Janet laughed. "It's a joke on them, if they did. I wonder what they'd think of Hampton, if they could see it now. I counted up once, just to tease father--he's the seventh generation from Ebenezer Bumpus, who came to Dolton. Well, I proved to him he might have one hundred and twenty-six other ancestors besides Ebenezer and his wife." "That must have jarred him some," was Ditmar's comment. "Great old man, your father. I've talked to him--he's a regular historical society all by himself. Well, there must be something in it, this family business. Now, you can tell he comes from fine old American stock-he looks it." Janet flushed. "A lot of good it does!" she exclaimed. "I don't know," said Ditmar. "It's something to fall back on--a good deal. And he hasn't got any of that nonsense in his head about labour unions--he's a straight American. And you look the part," he added. "You remind me--I never thought of it until now--you remind me of a picture of Priscilla I saw once in a book of poems Longfellow's, you know. I'm not much on literature, but I remember that, and I remember thinking she could have me. Funny isn't it, that you should have come along? But you've got more ginger than the woman in that picture. I'm the only man that ever guessed it isn't that so?" he asked jealously. "You're wonderful!" retorted Janet, daringly. "You just bet I am, or I couldn't have landed you," he asserted. "You're chock full of ginger, but it's been all corked up. You're so prim-so Priscilla." He was immensely pleased with the adjective he had coined, repeating it. "It's a great combination. When I think of it, I want to shake you, to squeeze you until you scream." "Then please don't think of it," she said. "That's easy!" he exclaimed, mockingly. At a quarter to one they entered a sleepy village reminiscent of a New England of other days. The long street, deeply shaded in summer, was bordered by decorous homes, some of which had stood there for a century and a half; others were of the Mansard period. The high school, of strawberry-coloured brick, had been the pride and glory of the Kingsbury of the '70s: there were many churches, some graceful and some hideous. At the end of the street they came upon a common, surrounded by stone posts and a railing, with a monument in the middle of it, and facing the common on the north side was a rambling edifice with many white gables, in front of which, from an iron arm on a post, swung a quaint sign, "Kingsbury Tavern." In revolutionary and coaching days the place bad been a famous inn; and now, thanks to the enterprise of a man who had foreseen the possibilities of an era of automobiles, it had become even more famous. A score of these modern vehicles were drawn up before it under the bare, ancient elms; there was a scene of animation on the long porch, where guests strolled up and down or sat in groups in the rocking-chairs which the mild weather had brought forth again. Ditmar drew up in line with the other motors, and stopped. "Well, here we are!" he exclaimed, as he pulled off his gauntlets. "I guess I could get along with something to eat. How about you? They treat you as well here as any place I know of in New England." He assumed their lunching together at a public place as a matter of course to which there could not possibly be an objection, springing out of the car, removing the laprobe from her knees, and helping her to alight. She laid the roses on the seat. "Aren't you going to bring them along?" he demanded. "I'd rather not," she said. "Don't you think they'll be safe here?" "Oh, I guess so," he replied. She was always surprising him; but her solicitation concerning them was a balm, and he found all such instinctive acts refreshing. "Afraid of putting up too much of a front, are you?" he asked smilingly. "I'd rather leave them here," she replied. As she walked beside Ditmar to the door she was excited, unwontedly self-conscious, painfully aware of inspection by the groups on the porch. She had seen such people as these hurrying in automobiles through the ugliness of Faber Street in Hampton toward just such delectable spots as this village of Kingsbury--people of that world of freedom and privilege from which she was excluded; Ditmar's world. He was at home here. But she? The delusion that she somehow had been miraculously snatched up into it was marred by their glances. What were they thinking of her? Her face was hot as she passed them and entered the hall, where more people were gathered. But Ditmar's complacency, his ease and self-confidence, his manner of owning the place, as it were, somewhat reassured her. He went up to the desk, behind which, stood a burly, red-complexioned man who greeted him effusively, yet with the air of respect accorded the powerful. "Hullo, Eddie," said Ditmar. "You've got a good crowd here to-day. Any room for me?" "Sure, Mr. Ditmar, we can always make room for you. Well, I haven't laid eyes on you for a dog's age. Only last Sunday Mr. Crane was here, and I was asking him where you'd been keeping yourself." "Why, I've been busy, Eddie. I've landed the biggest order ever heard of in Hampton. Some of us have to work, you know; all you've got to do is to loaf around this place and smoke cigars and rake in the money." The proprietor of the Kingsbury Tavern smiled indulgently at this persiflage. "Let me present you to Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. "This is my friend, Eddie Hale," he added, for Janet's benefit. "And when you've eaten his dinner you'll believe me when I say he's got all the other hotel men beaten a mile." Janet smiled and flushed. She had been aware of Mr. Hale's discreet glance. "Pleased to meet you, Miss Bumpus," he said, with a somewhat elaborate bow. "Eddie," said Ditmar, "have you got a nice little table for us?" "It's a pity I didn't know you was coming, but I'll do my best," declared Mr. Hale, opening the door in the counter. "Oh, I guess you can fix us all right, if you want to, Eddie." "Mr. Ditmar's a great josher," Mr. Hale told Janet confidentially as he escorted them into the dining-room. And Ditmar, gazing around over the heads of the diners, spied in an alcove by a window a little table with tilted chairs. "That one'll do," he said. "I'm sorry, but it's engaged," apologized Mr. Hale. "Forget it, Eddie--tell 'em they're late," said Ditmar, making his way toward it. The proprietor pulled out Janet's chair. "Say," he remarked, "it's no wonder you get along in business." "Well, this is cosy, isn't it?" said Ditmar to Janet when they were alone. He handed her the menu, and snapped his fingers for a waitress. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming to this place?" she asked. "I wanted to surprise you. Don't you like it?" "Yes," she replied. "Only--" "Only, what?" "I wish you wouldn't look at me like that--here." "All right. I'll try to be good until we get into the car again. You watch me! I'll behave as if we'd been married ten years." He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress hurried up to take their orders. "Kingsbury's still dry, I guess," he said to the girl, who smiled sympathetically, somewhat ruefully. When she had gone he began to talk to Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fuse oil distributed on the sly. "I'll bet I could go out and find half a dozen rum shops within a mile of here!" he declared. Janet did not doubt it. Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he wanted, had amused and distracted her. She was growing calmer, able to scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the other tables, only to discover that she and Ditmar were not the objects of the universal curiosity she had feared. Once in a while, indeed, she encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as she regained her poise. She must be nice looking--more than that--in her new suit. On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair. This new and amazing adventure began to go to her head like wine.... When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while Ditmar smoked his cigar. His digestion was good, his spirits high, his love-making--on account of the public nature of the place--surreptitious yet fervent. The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely disquieting. At last she said: "Oughtn't we to be going home?" "Home!" he ridiculed the notion. "I'm going to take you to the prettiest road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls. I only wish it was summer." "I must be home before dark," she told him. "You see, the family don't know where I am. I haven't said anything to them about--about this." "That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation: "I didn't think you would. There's plenty of time for that--after things get settled a little--isn't there?" She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they walked to the motor. He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the tweed coat, and she humoured him. The winter sun had already begun to drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky, distant copses were stained lilac. And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at a world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic. At times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air: it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of the beauty so poignantly revealed to her. Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired. Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand, to reassure himself that she was at least physically present. And though she did not resent these tokens, submitting passively, he grew perplexed and troubled; his optimistic atheism concerning things unseen was actually shaken by the impression she conveyed of beholding realities hidden from him. Shadows had begun to gather in the forest, filmy mists to creep over the waters. He asked if she were cold, and she shook her head and sighed as one coming out of a trance, smiling at him. "It's been a wonderful day!" she said. "The greatest ever!" he agreed. And his ardour, mounting again, swept away the unwonted mood of tenderness and awe she had inspired in him, made him bold to suggest the plan which had been the subject of an ecstatic contemplation. "I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "we'll take a little run down to Boston and have dinner together. We'll be there in an hour, and back by ten o'clock." "To Boston!" she repeated. "Now?" "Why not?" he said, stopping the car. "Here's the road--it's a boulevard all the way." It was not so much the proposal as the passion in his voice, in his touch, the passion to which she felt herself responding that filled her with apprehension and dismay, and yet aroused her pride and anger. "I told you I had to be home," she said. "I'll have you home by ten o'clock; I promise. We're going to be married, Janet," he whispered. "Oh, if you meant to marry me you wouldn't ask me to do this!" she cried. "I want to go back to Hampton. If you won't take me, I'll walk." She had drawn away from him, and her hand was on the door. He seized her arm. "For God's sake, don't take it that way!" he cried, in genuine alarm. "All I meant was--that we'd have a nice little dinner. I couldn't bear to leave you, it'll be a whole week before we get another day. Do you suppose I'd--I'd do anything to insult you, Janet?" With her fingers still tightened over the door-catch she turned and looked at him. "I don't know," she said slowly. "Sometimes I think you would. Why shouldn't you? Why should you marry me? Why shouldn't you try to do with me what you've done with other women? I don't know anything about the world, about life. I'm nobody. Why shouldn't you?" "Because you're not like the other women--that's why. I love you--won't you believe it?" He was beside himself with anxiety. "Listen--I'll take you home if you want to go. You don't know how it hurts me to have you think such things!" "Well, then, take me home," she said. It was but gradually that she became pacified. A struggle was going on within her between these doubts of him he had stirred up again and other feelings aroused by his pleadings. Night fell, and when they reached the Silliston road the lights of Hampton shone below them in the darkness. "You'd better let me out here," she said. "You can't drive me home." He brought the car to a halt beside one of the small wooden shelters built for the convenience of passengers. "You forgive me--you understand, Janet?" he asked. "Sometimes I don't know what to think," she said, and suddenly clung to him. "I--I forgive you. I oughtn't to suspect such things, but I'm like that. I'm horrid and I can't help it." She began to unbutton the coat he had bought for her. "Aren't you going to take it?" he said. "It's yours." "And what do you suppose my family would say if I told them Mr. Ditmar had given it to me?" "Come on, I'll drive you home, I'll tell them I gave it to you, that we're going to be married," he announced recklessly. "Oh, no!" she exclaimed in consternation. "You couldn't. You said so yourself--that you didn't want, any one to know, now. I'll get on the trolley." "And the roses?" he asked. She pressed them to her face, and chose one. "I'll take this," she said, laying the rest on the seat.... He waited until he saw her safely on the trolley car, and then drove slowly homeward in a state of amazement. He had been on the verge of announcing himself to the family in Fillmore Street as her prospective husband! He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal. And the ever-recurring question presented itself--was he prepared to go that length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him intensely--the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty. When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the back of a drawer. Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love.... The weeks that immediately followed were strange ones. All the elements of life that previously had been realities, trivial yet fundamental, her work, her home, her intercourse with the family, became fantastic. There was the mill to which she went every day: she recognized it, yet it was not the same mill, nor was Fillmore Street the Fillmore Street of old. Nor did the new and feverish existence over whose borderland she had been transported seem real, save in certain hours she spent in Ditmar's company, when he made her forget--hers being a temperament to feel the weight of an unnatural secrecy. She was aware, for instance, that her mother and even her father thought her conduct odd, were anxious as to her absences on certain nights and on Sundays. She offered no explanation. It was impossible. She understood that the reason why they refrained from questioning her was due to a faith in her integrity as well as to a respect for her as a breadwinner who lead earned a right to independence. And while her suspicion of Hannah's anxiety troubled her, on the occasions when she thought of it, Lise's attitude disturbed her even more. From Lise she had been prepared for suspicion, arraignment, ridicule. What a vindication if it were disclosed that she, Janet, had a lover--and that lover Ditmar! But Lise said nothing. She was remote, self-absorbed. Hannah spoke about it on the evenings Janet stayed at home. She would not consent to meet Ditmar every evening. Yet, as the days succeeded one another, Janet was often astonished by the fact that their love remained apparently unsuspected by Mr. Price and Caldwell and others in the office. They must have noticed, on some occasions, the manner in which Ditmar looked at her; and in business hours she had continually to caution him, to keep him in check. Again, on the evening excursions to which she consented, though they were careful to meet in unfrequented spots, someone might easily have recognized him; and she did not like to ponder over the number of young women in the other offices who knew her by sight. These reflections weighed upon her, particularly when she seemed conscious of curious glances. But what caused her the most concern was the constantly recurring pressure to which Ditmar himself subjected her, and which, as time went on, she found increasingly difficult to resist. He tried to take her by storm, and when this method failed, resorted to pleadings and supplications even harder to deny because of the innate feminine pity she felt for him. To recount these affairs would be a mere repetition of identical occurrences. On their second Sunday excursion he had actually driven her, despite her opposition, several miles on the Boston road; and her resistance only served to inflame him the more. It seemed, afterwards, as she sat unnerved, a miracle that she had stopped him. Then came reproaches: she would not trust him; they could not be married at once; she must understand that!--an argument so repugnant as to cause her to shake with sobs of inarticulate anger. After this he would grow bewildered, then repentant, then contrite. In contrition--had he known it--he was nearest to victory. As has been said, she did not intellectualize her reasons, but the core of her resistance was the very essence of an individuality having its roots in a self-respecting and self-controlling inheritance--an element wanting in her sister Lise. It must have been largely the thought of Lise, the spectacle of Lise--often perhaps unconsciously present that dominated her conduct; yet reinforcing such an ancestral sentiment was another, environmental and more complicated, the result in our modern atmosphere of an undefined feminism apt to reveal itself in many undesirable ways, but which in reality is a logical projection of the American tradition of liberty. To submit was not only to lose her liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to lose Ditmar's love.... No experience, however, is emotionally continuous, nor was their intimacy by any means wholly on this plane of conflict. There were hours when, Ditmar's passion leaving spent itself, they achieved comradeship, in the office and out of it; revelations for Janet when he talked of himself, relating the little incidents she found most illuminating. And thus by degrees she was able to build up a new and truer estimate of him. For example, she began to perceive that his life outside of his interest in the mills, instead of being the romance of privileged joys she had once imagined, had been almost as empty as her own, without either unity or direction. Her perception was none the less keen because definite terms were wanting for its expression. The idea of him that first had captivated her was that of an energized and focussed character controlling with a sure hand the fortunes of a great organization; of a power in the city and state, of a being who, in his leisure moments, dwelt in a delectable realm from which she was excluded. She was still acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of direction--save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills. The rest of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance to the sea. As was quite natural, this gradual discovery of what he was--or of what he wasn't--this truer estimate, this partial disillusionment, merely served to deepen and intensify the feeling he had aroused in her; to heighten, likewise, the sense of her own value by confirming a belief in her possession of certain qualities, of a kind of fibre he needed in a helpmate. She dwelt with a woman's fascination upon the prospect of exercising a creative influence--even while she acknowledged the fearful possibility of his power in unguarded moments to overwhelm and destroy her. Here was another incentive to resist the gusts of his passion. She could guide and develop him by helping and improving herself. Hope and ambition throbbed within her, she felt a contempt for his wife, for the women who had been her predecessors. He had not spoken of these, save once or twice by implication, but with what may seem a surprising leniency she regarded them as consequences of a life lacking in content. If only she could keep her head, she might supply that content, and bring him happiness! The thought of his children troubled her most, but she was quick to perceive that he got nothing from them; and even though it were partly his own fault, she was inclined to lay the heavier blame on the woman who had been their mother. The triviality, the emptiness of his existence outside of the walls of the mill made her heart beat with pure pity. For she could understand it. One of the many, and often humorous, incidents that served to bring about this realization of a former aimlessness happened on their second Sunday excursion. This time he had not chosen the Kingsbury Tavern, but another automobilists' haunt, an enlightening indication of established habits involving a wide choice of resorts. While he was paying for luncheon and chatting with the proprietor, Ditmar snatched from the change he had flung down on the counter a five dollar gold coin. "Now how in thunder did that get into my right-hand pocket? I always keep it in my vest," he exclaimed; and the matter continued to disturb him after they were in the automobile. "It's my lucky piece. I guess I was so excited at the prospect of seeing you when I dressed this morning I put it into my change. Just see what you do to me!" "Does it bring you luck?" she inquired smilingly. "How about you! I call you the biggest piece of luck I ever had." "You'd better not be too sure," she warned him. "Oh, I'm not worrying. I has that piece in my pocket the day I went down to see old Stephen Chippering, when he made me agent, and I've kept it ever since. And I'll tell you a funny thing--it's enough to make any man believe in luck. Do you remember that day last summer I was tinkering with the car by the canal and you came along?" "The day you pretended to be tinkering," she corrected him. He laughed. "So you were on to me?" he said. "You're a foxy one!" "Anyone could see you were only pretending. It made me angry, when I thought of it afterwards." "I just had to do it--I wanted to talk to you. But listen to what I'm going to tell you! It's a miracle, all right,--happening just at that time--that very morning. I was coming back to Boston from New York on the midnight, and when the train ran into Back Bay and I was putting on my trousers the piece rolled out among the bed clothes. I didn't know I'd lost it until I sat down in the Parker House to eat my breakfast, and I suddenly felt in my pocket. It made me sick to think it was gone. Well, I started to telephone the Pullman office, and then I made up my mind I'd take a taxi and go down to the South Station myself, and just as I got out of the cab there was the nigger porter, all dressed up in his glad rags, coming out of the station! I knew him, I'd been on his car lots of times. `Say, George,' I said, `I didn't forget you this morning, did I?' "`No, suh,' said George, 'you done give me a quarter.' "`I guess you're mistaken, George,' says I, and I fished out a ten dollar bill. You ought to have seen that nigger's eyes." "`What's this for, Mister Ditmar?' says he. "`For that lucky gold piece you found in lower seven,' I told him. `We'll trade.' "'Was you in lower seven?--so you was!' says George. Well, he had it all right--you bet he had it. Now wasn't that queer? The very day you and I began to know each other!" "Wonderful!" Janet agreed. "Why don't you put it on your watch chain?" "Well, I've thought of that," he replied, with the air of having considered all sides of the matter. "But I've got that charm of the secret order I belong to--that's on my chain. I guess I'll keep it in my vest pocket." "I didn't know you were so superstitious," she mocked. "Pretty nearly everybody's superstitious," he declared. And she thought of Lise. "I'm not. I believe if things are going to happen well, they're going to happen. Nothing can prevent it." "By thunder" he exclaimed, struck by her remark. "You are like that You're different from any person I ever knew...." From such anecdotes she pieced together her new Ditmar. He spoke of a large world she had never seen, of New York and Washington and Chicago, where he intended to take her. In the future he would never travel alone. And he told her of his having been a delegate to the last National Republican Convention, explaining what a delegate was. He gloried in her innocence, and it was pleasant to dazzle her with impressions of his cosmopolitanism. In this, perhaps, he was not quite so successful as he imagined, but her eyes shone. She had never even been in a sleeping car! For her delectation he launched into an enthusiastic description of these vehicles, of palatial compartment cars, of limited, transcontinental trains, where one had a stenographer and a barber at one's disposal. "Neither of them would do me any good," she complained. "You could go to the manicure," he said. There had been in Ditmar's life certain events which, in his anecdotal moods, were magnified into matters of climacteric importance; high, festal occasions on which it was sweet to reminisce, such as his visit as Delegate at Large to that Chicago Convention. He had travelled on a special train stocked with cigars and White Seal champagne, in the company of senators and congressmen and ex-governors, state treasurers, collectors of the port, mill owners, and bankers to whom he referred, as the French say, in terms of their "little" names. He dwelt on the magnificence of the huge hotel set on the borders of a lake like an inland sea, and related such portions of the festivities incidental to "the seeing of Chicago" as would bear repetition. No women belonged to this realm; no women, at least, who were to be regarded as persons. Ditmar did not mention them, but no doubt they existed, along with the cigars and the White Seal champagne, contributing to the amenities. And the excursion, to Janet, took on the complexion of a sort of glorified picnic in the course of which, incidentally, a President of the United States had been chosen. In her innocence she had believed the voters to perform this function. Ditmar laughed. "Do you suppose we're going to let the mob run this country?" he inquired. "Once in a while we can't get away with it as we'd like, we have to take the best we can." Thus was brought home to her more and more clearly that what men strove and fought for were the joys of prominence, privilege, and power. Everywhere, in the great world, they demanded and received consideration. It was Ditmar's boast that if nobody else could get a room in a crowded New York hotel, he could always obtain one. And she was fain to concede --she who had never known privilege--a certain intoxicating quality to this eminence. If you could get the power, and refused to take it, the more fool you! A topsy-turvy world, in which the stupid toiled day by day, week by week, exhausting their energies and craving joy, while others adroitly carried off the prize; and virtue had apparently as little to do with the matter as fair hair or a club foot. If Janet had ever read Darwin, she would have recognized in her lover a creature rather wonderfully adapted to his environment; and what puzzled her, perhaps, was the riddle that presents itself to many better informed than herself--the utter absence in this environment of the sign of any being who might be called God. Her perplexities--for she did have them--took the form of an instinctive sense of inadequacy, of persistently recurring though inarticulate convictions of the existence of elements not included in Ditmar's categories--of things that money could not buy; of things, too, alas! that poverty was as powerless to grasp. Stored within her, sometimes rising to the level of consciousness, was that experience at Silliston in the May weather when she had had a glimpse--just a glimpse! of a garden where strange and precious flowers were in bloom. On the other hand, this mysterious perception by her of things unseen and hitherto unguessed, of rays of delight in the spectrum of values to which his senses were unattuned, was for Ditmar the supreme essence of her fascination. At moments he was at once bewildered and inebriated by the rare delicacy of fabric of the woman whom he had somehow stumbled upon and possessed. Then there were the hours when they worked together in the office. Here she beheld Ditmar at his best. It cannot be said that his infatuation for her was ever absent from his consciousness: he knew she was there beside him, he betrayed it continually. But here she was in the presence of what had been and what remained his ideal, the Chippering Mill; here he acquired unity. All his energies were bent toward the successful execution of the Bradlaugh order, which had to be completed on the first of February. And as day after day went by her realization of the magnitude of the task he had undertaken became keener. Excitement was in the air. Ditmar seemed somehow to have managed to infuse not only Orcutt, the superintendent, but the foremen and second hands and even the workers with a common spirit of pride and loyalty, of interest, of determination to carry off this matter triumphantly. The mill seemed fairly to hum with effort. Janet's increasing knowledge of its organization and processes only served to heighten her admiration for the confidence Ditmar had shown from the beginning. It was superb. And now, as the probability of the successful execution of the task tended more and more toward certainty, he sometimes gave vent to his boyish, exuberant spirits. "I told Holster, I told all those croakers I'd do it, and by thunder I will do it, with three days' margin, too! I'll get the last shipment off on the twenty-eighth of January. Why, even George Chippering was afraid I couldn't handle it. If the old man was alive he wouldn't have had cold feet." Then Ditmar added, half jocularly, half seriously, looking down on her as she sat with her note-book, waiting for him to go on with his dictation: "I guess you've had your share in it, too. You've been a wonder, the way you've caught on and taken things off my shoulders. If Orcutt died I believe you could step right into his shoes." "I'm sure I could step into his shoes," she replied. "Only I hope he won't die." "I hope he won't, either," said Ditmar. "And as for you--" "Never mind me, now," she said. He bent over her. "Janet, you're the greatest girl in the world." Yes, she was happiest when she felt she was helping him, it gave her confidence that she could do more, lead him into paths beyond which they might explore together. She was useful. Sometimes, however, he seemed to her oversanguine; though he had worked hard, his success had come too easily, had been too uniform. His temper was quick, the prospect of opposition often made him overbearing, yet on occasions he listened with surprising patience to his subordinates when they ventured to differ from his opinions. At other times Janet had seen him overrule them ruthlessly; humiliate them. There were days when things went wrong, when there were delays, complications, more matters to attend to than usual. On one such day, after the dinner hour, Mr. Orcutt entered the office. His long, lean face wore a certain expression Janet had come to know, an expression that always irritated Ditmar--the conscientious superintendent having the unfortunate faculty of exaggerating annoyances by his very bearing. Ditmar stopped in the midst of dictating a peculiarly difficult letter, and looked up sharply. "Well," he asked, "what's the trouble now?" Orcutt seemed incapable of reading storm signals. When anything happened, he had the air of declaring, "I told you so." "You may remember I spoke to you once or twice, Mr. Ditmar, of the talk over the fifty-four hour law that goes into effect in January." "Yes, what of it?" Ditmar cut in. "The notices have been posted, as the law requires." "The hands have been grumbling, there are trouble makers among them. A delegation came to me this noon and wanted to know whether we intended to cut the pay to correspond to the shorter working hours." "Of course it's going to be cut," said Ditmar. "What do they suppose? That we're going to pay 'em for work they don't do? The hands not paid by the piece are paid practically by the hour, not by the day. And there's got to be some limit to this thing. If these damned demagogues in the legislature keep on cutting down the hours of women and children every three years or so--and we can't run the mill without the women and children--we might as well shut down right now. Three years ago, when they made it fifty-six hours, we were fools to keep up the pay. I said so then, at the conference, but they wouldn't listen to me. They listened this time. Holster and one or two others croaked, but we shut 'em up. No, they won't get any more pay, not a damned cent." Orcutt had listened patiently, lugubriously. "I told them that." "What did they say?" "They said they thought there'd be a strike." "Pooh! Strike!" exclaimed Ditmar with contemptuous violence. "Do you believe that? You're always borrowing trouble, you are. They may have a strike at one mill, the Clarendon. I hope they do, I hope Holster gets it in the neck--he don't know how to run a mill anyway. We won't have any strike, our people understand when they're well off, they've got all the work they can do, they're sending fortunes back to the old country or piling them up in the banks. It's all bluff." "There was a meeting of the English branch of the I. W. W. last night. A committee was appointed," said Orcutt, who as usual took a gloomy satisfaction in the prospect of disaster. "The I. W. W.! My God, Orcutt, don't you know enough not to come in here wasting my time talking about the I. W. W.? Those anarchists haven't got any organization. Can't you get that through your head?" "All right," replied Orcutt, and marched off. Janet felt rather sorry for him, though she had to admit that his manner was exasperating. But Ditmar's anger, instead of cooling, increased: it all seemed directed against the unfortunate superintendent. "Would you believe that a man who's been in this mill twenty-five years could be such a fool?" he demanded. "The I. W. W.! Why not the Ku Klux? He must think I haven't anything to do but chin. I don't know why I keep him here, sometimes I think he'll drive me crazy." His eyes seemed to have grown small and red, as was always the case when his temper got the better of him. Janet did not reply, but sat with her pencil poised over her book. "Let's see, where was I?" he asked. "I can't finish that letter now. Go out and do the others." Mundane experience, like a badly mixed cake, has a tendency to run in streaks, and on the day following the incident related above Janet's heart was heavy. Ditmar betrayed an increased shortness of temper and preoccupation; and the consciousness that her love had lent her a clairvoyant power to trace the source of his humours though these were often hidden from or unacknowledged by himself--was in this instance small consolation. She saw clearly enough that the apprehensions expressed by Mr. Orcutt, whom he had since denounced as an idiotic old woman, had made an impression, aroused in him the ever-abiding concern for the mill which was his life's passion and which had been but temporarily displaced by his infatuation with her. That other passion was paramount. What was she beside it? Would he hesitate for a moment to sacrifice her if it came to a choice between them? The tempestuousness of these thoughts, when they took possession of her, hinting as they did of possibilities in her nature hitherto unguessed and unrevealed, astonished and frightened her; she sought to thrust them away, to reassure herself that his concern for the successful delivery of the Bradlaugh order was natural. During the morning, in the intervals between interviews with the superintendents, he was self-absorbed, and she found herself inconsistently resenting the absence of those expressions of endearment--the glances and stolen caresses--for indulgence in which she had hitherto rebuked him: and though pride came to her rescue, fuel was added to her feeling by the fact that he did not seem to notice her coolness. Since he failed to appear after lunch, she knew he must be investigating the suspicions Orcutt had voiced; but at six o'clock, when he had not returned, she closed up her desk and left the office. An odour of cheap perfume pervading the corridor made her aware of the presence of Miss Lottie Myers. "Oh, it's you!" said that young woman, looking up from the landing of the stairs. "I might have known it you never make a get-away until after six, do you?" "Oh, sometimes," said Janet. "I stayed as a special favour to-night," Miss Myers declared. "But I'm not so stuck on my job that I can't tear myself away from it." "I don't suppose you are," said Janet. For a moment Miss Myers looked as if she was about to be still more impudent, but her eye met Janet's, and wavered. They crossed the bridge in silence. "Well, ta-ta," she said. "If you like it, it's up to you. Five o'clock for mine,"--and walked away, up the canal, swinging her hips defiantly. And Janet, gazing after her, grew hot with indignation and apprehension. Her relations with Ditmar were suspected, after all, made the subject of the kind of comment indulged in, sotto voce, by Lottie Myers and her friends at the luncheon hour. She felt a mad, primitive desire to run after the girl, to spring upon and strangle her and compel her to speak what was in her mind and then retract it; and the motor impulse, inhibited, caused a sensation of sickness, of unhappiness and degradation as she turned her steps slowly homeward. Was it a misinterpretation, after all--what Lottie Myers had implied and feared to say?... In Fillmore Street supper was over, and Lise, her face contorted, her body strained, was standing in front of the bureau "doing" her hair, her glance now seeking the mirror, now falling again to consult a model in one of those periodicals of froth and fashion that cause such numberless heart burnings in every quarter of our democracy, and which are filled with photographs of "prominent" persons at race meetings, horse shows, and resorts, and with actresses, dancers,--and mannequins. Janet's eyes fell on the open page to perceive that the coiffure her sister so painfully imitated was worn by a young woman with an insolent, vapid face and hard eyes, whose knees were crossed, revealing considerably more than an ankle. The picture was labelled, "A dance at Palm Beach--A flashlight of Mrs. 'Trudy' Gascoigne-Schell,"--one of those mysterious, hybrid names which, in connection with the thoughts of New York and the visible rakish image of the lady herself, cause involuntary shudders down the spine of the reflecting American provincial. Some such responsive quiver, akin to disgust, Janet herself experienced. "It's the very last scream," Lise was saying. "And say, if I owned a ball dress like that I'd be somebody's Lulu all right! Can I have the pleasure of the next maxixe, Miss Bumpus?" With deft and rapid fingers she lead parted her hair far on the right side and pulled it down over the left eyebrow, twisted it over her ear and tightly around her head, inserting here and there a hairpin, seizing the hand mirror with the cracked back, and holding it up behind her. Finally, when the operation was finished to her satisfaction she exclaimed, evidently to the paragon in the picture, "I get you!" Whereupon, from the wardrobe, she produced a hat. "You sure had my number when you guessed the feathers on that other would get draggled," she observed in high good humour, generously ignoring their former unpleasantness on the subject. When she had pinned it on she bent mockingly over her sister, who sat on the bed. "How d'you like my new toque? Peekaboo! That's the way the guys rubberneck to see if you're good lookin'." Lise was exalted, feverish, apparently possessed by some high secret; her eyes shone, and when she crossed the room she whistled bars of ragtime and executed mincing steps of the maxixe. Fumbling in the upper drawer for a pair of white gloves (also new), she knocked off the corner of the bureau her velvet bag; it opened as it struck the floor, and out of it rolled a lilac vanity case and a yellow coin. Casting a suspicious, lightning glance at Janet, she snatched up the vanity case and covered the coin with her foot. "Lock the doors!" she cried, with an hysteric giggle. Then removing her foot she picked up the coin surreptitiously. To her amazement her sister made no comment, did not seem to have taken in the significance of the episode. Lise had expected a tempest of indignant, searching questions, a "third degree," as she would have put it. She snapped the bag together, drew on her gloves, and, when she was ready to leave, with characteristic audacity crossed the room, taking her sister's face between her hands and kissing her. "Tell me your troubles, sweetheart!" she said--and did not wait to hear them. Janet was incapable of speech--nor could she have brought herself to ask Lise whether or not the money had been earned at the Bagatelle, and remained miraculously unspent. It was possible, but highly incredible. And then, the vanity case and the new hat were to be accounted for! The sight of the gold piece, indeed, had suddenly revived in Janet the queer feeling of faintness, almost of nausea she had experienced after parting with Lottie Myers. And by some untoward association she was reminded of a conversation she had had with Ditmar on the Saturday afternoon following their first Sunday excursion, when, on opening her pay envelope, she had found twenty dollars. "Are you sure I'm worth it?" she had demanded--and he had been quite sure. He had added that she was worth more, much more, but that he could not give her as yet, without the risk of comment, a sum commensurate with the value of her services.... But now she asked herself again, was she worth it? or was it merely--part of her price? Going to the wardrobe and opening a drawer at the bottom she searched among her clothes until she discovered the piece of tissue paper in which she had wrapped the rose rescued from the cluster he had given her. The petals were dry, yet they gave forth, still, a faint, reminiscent fragrance as she pressed them to her face. Janet wept.... The following morning as she was kneeling in a corner of the room by the letter files, one of which she had placed on the floor, she recognized his step in the outer office, heard him pause to joke with young Caldwell, and needed not the visual proof--when after a moment he halted on the threshold--of the fact that his usual, buoyant spirits were restored. He held a cigar in his hand, and in his eyes was the eager look with which she had become familiar, which indeed she had learned to anticipate as they swept the room in search of her. And when they fell on her he closed the door and came forward impetuously. But her exclamation caused him to halt in bewilderment. "Don't touch me!" she said. And he stammered out, as he stood over her:--"What's the matter?" "Everything. You don't love me--I was a fool to believe you did." "Don't love you!" he repeated. "My God, what's the trouble now? What have I done?" "Oh, it's nothing you've done, it's what you haven't done, it's what you can't do. You don't really care for me--all you care for is this mill --when anything happens here you don't know I'm alive." He stared at her, and then an expression of comprehension, of intense desire grew in his eyes; and his laugh, as he flung his cigar out of the open window and bent down to seize her, was almost brutal. She fought him, she tried to hurt him, and suddenly, convulsively pressed herself to him. "You little tigress!" he said, as he held her. "You were jealous--were you--jealous of the mill?" And he laughed again. "I'd like to see you with something really to be jealous about. So you love me like that, do you?" She could feel his heart beating against her. "I won't be neglected," she told him tensely. "I want all of you--if I can't have all of you, I don't want any. Do you understand?" "Do I understand? Well, I guess I do." "You didn't yesterday," she reproached him, somewhat dazed by the swiftness of her submission, and feeling still the traces of a lingering resentment. She had not intended to surrender. "You forgot all about me, you didn't know I was here, much less that I was hurt. Oh, I was hurt! And you--I can tell at once when anything's wrong with you--I know without your saying it." He was amazed, he might indeed have been troubled and even alarmed by this passion he had aroused had his own passion not been at the flood. And as he wiped away her tears with his handkerchief he could scarcely believe his senses that this was the woman whose resistance had demanded all his force to overcome. Indeed, although he recognized the symptoms she betrayed as feminine, as having been registered--though feebly compared to this! by incidents in his past, precisely his difficulty seemed to be in identifying this complex and galvanic being as a woman, not as something almost fearful in her significance, outside the bounds of experience.... Presently she ceased to tremble, and he drew her to the window. The day was as mild as autumn, the winter sun like honey in its mellowness; a soft haze blurred the outline of the upper bridge. "Only two more days until Sunday," he whispered, caressingly, exultantly.... CHAPTER XII It had been a strange year in Hampton, unfortunate for coal merchants, welcome to the poor. But Sunday lacked the transforming touch of sunshine. The weather was damp and cold as Janet set out from Fillmore Street. Ditmar, she knew, would be waiting for her, he counted on her, and she could not bear to disappoint him, to disappoint herself. And all the doubts and fears that from time to time had assailed her were banished by this impulse to go to him, to be with him. He loved her! The words, as she sat in the trolley car, ran in her head like the lilt of a song. What did the weather matter? When she alighted at the lonely cross-roads snow had already begun to fall. But she spied the automobile, with its top raised, some distance down the lane, and in a moment she was in it, beside him, wrapped in the coat she had now come to regard as her own. He buttoned down the curtains and took her in his arms. "What shall we do to-day," she asked, "if it snows?" "Don't let that worry you, sweetheart," he said. "I have the chains on, I can get through anything in this car." He was in high, almost turbulent spirits as he turned the car and drove it out of the rutty lane into the state road. The snow grew thicker and thicker still, the world was blotted out by swiftly whirling, feathery flakes that melted on the windshield, and through the wet glass Janet caught distorted glimpses of black pines and cedars beside the highway. The ground was spread with fleece. Occasionally, and with startling suddenness, other automobiles shot like dark phantoms out of the whiteness, and like phantoms disappeared. Presently, through the veil, she recognized Silliston--a very different Silliston from that she had visited on the fragrant day in springtime, when the green on the common had been embroidered with dandelions, and the great elms whose bare branches were now fantastically traced against the flowing veil of white --heavy with leaf. Vignettes emerged--only to fade!--of the old-world houses whose quaint beauty had fascinated and moved her. And she found herself wondering what had become of the strange man she had mistaken for a carpenter. All that seemed to have taken place in a past life. She asked Ditmar where he was going. "Boston," he told her. "There's no other place to go." "But you'll never get back if it goes on snowing like this." "Well, the trains are still running," he assured her, with a quizzical smile. "How about it, little girl?" It was a term of endearment derived, undoubtedly, from a theatrical source, in which he sometimes indulged. She did not answer. Surprisingly, to-day, she did not care. All she could think of, all she wanted was to go on and on beside him with the world shut out--on and on forever. She was his--what did it matter? They were on their way to Boston! She began, dreamily, to think about Boston, to try to restore it in her imagination to the exalted place it had held before she met Ditmar; to reconstruct it from vague memories of childhood when, in two of the family peregrinations, she had crossed it. Traces remained of emotionally-toned impressions acquired when she had walked about the city holding Edward's hand--of a long row of stately houses with forbidding fronts, set on a hillside, of a wide, tree-covered space where children were playing. And her childish verdict, persisting to-day, was one of inaccessibility, impenetrability, of jealously guarded wealth and beauty. Those houses, and the treasures she was convinced they must contain, were not for her! Some of the panes of glass in their windows were purple--she remembered a little thing like that, and asking her father the reason! He hadn't known. This purple quality had somehow steeped itself into her memory of Boston, and even now the colour stood for the word, impenetrable. That was extraordinary. Even now! Well, they were going to Boston; if Ditmar had said they were going to Bagdad it would have been quite as credible--and incredible. Wherever they were going, it was into the larger, larger life, and walls were to crumble before them, walls through which they would pass, even as they rent the white veil of the storm, into regions of beauty.... And now the world seemed abandoned to them alone, so empty, so still were the white villages flitting by; so empty, so still the great parkway of the Fells stretching away and away like an enchanted forest under the snow, like the domain of some sleeping king. And the flakes melted silently into the black waters. And the wide avenue to which they came led to a sleeping palace! No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar told her, as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches and fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the far side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles. And here at last was Boston--Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it, as one chose. Ditmar, removing one of the side curtains that she might see, with just a hint in his voice of a reverence she was too excited to notice, pointed out the stern and respectable facades of the twin Chippering mansions standing side by side. Save for these shrines--for such in some sort they were to him--the Back Bay in his eyes was nothing more than a collection of houses inhabited by people whom money and social position made unassailable. But to-day he, too, was excited. Never had he been more keenly aware of her sensitiveness to experience; and he to whom it had not occurred to wonder at Boston wondered at her, who seemed able to summon forth a presiding, brooding spirit of the place from out of the snow. Deep in her eyes, though they sparkled, was the reflection of some mystic vision; her cheeks were flushed. And in her delight, vicariously his own, he rejoiced; in his trembling hope of more delight to come, which this mentorship would enhance,--despite the fast deepening snow he drove her up one side of Commonwealth Avenue and down the other, encircling the Common and the Public Garden; stopping at the top of Park Street that she might gaze up at the State House, whose golden dome, seen through the veil, was tinged with blue. Boston! Why not Russia? Janet was speechless for sheer lack of words to describe what she felt.... At length he brought the car to a halt opposite an imposing doorway in front of which a glass roof extended over the pavement, and Janet demanded where they were. "Well, we've got to eat, haven't we?" Ditmar replied. She noticed that he was shivering. "Are you cold?" she inquired with concern. "I guess I am, a little," he replied. "I don't know why I should be, in a fur coat. But I'll be warm soon enough, now." A man in blue livery hurried toward them across the sidewalk, helping them to alight. And Ditmar, after driving the car a few paces beyond the entrance, led her through the revolving doors into a long corridor, paved with marble and lighted by bulbs glowing from the ceiling, where benches were set against the wall, overspread by the leaves of potted plants set in the intervals between them. "Sit down a moment," he said to her. "I must telephone to have somebody take that car, or it'll stay there the rest of the winter." She sat down on one of the benches. The soft light, the warmth, the exotic odour of the plants, the well-dressed people who trod softly the strip of carpet set on the marble with the air of being at home--all contributed to an excitement, intense yet benumbing. She could not think. She didn't want to think--only to feel, to enjoy, to wring the utmost flavour of enchantment from these new surroundings; and her face wore the expression of one in a dream. Presently she saw Ditmar returning followed by a boy in a blue uniform. "All right," he said. At the end of the corridor was an elevator in which they were shot to one of the upper floors; and the boy, inserting a key in a heavy mahogany door, revealed a sitting-room. Between its windows was a table covered with a long, white cloth reaching to the floor, on which, amidst the silverware and glass, was set a tall vase filled with dusky roses. Janet, drawing in a deep breath of their fragrance, glanced around the room. The hangings, the wall-paper, the carpet, the velvet upholstery of the mahogany chairs, of the wide lounge in the corner were of a deep and restful green; the marble mantelpiece, with its English coal grate, was copied--had she known it--from a mansion of the Georgian period. The hands of a delicate Georgian clock pointed to one. And in the large mirror behind the clock she beheld an image she supposed, dreamily, to be herself. The bell boy was taking off her coat, which he hung, with Ditmar's, on a rack in a corner. "Shall I light the fire, sir?" he asked. "Sure," said Ditmar. "And tell them to hurry up with lunch." The boy withdrew, closing the door silently behind him. "We're going to have lunch here!" Janet exclaimed. "Why not? I thought it would be nicer than a public dining-room, and when I got up this morning and saw what the weather was I telephoned." He placed two chairs before the fire, which had begun to blaze. "Isn't it cosy?" he said, taking her hands and pulling her toward him. His own hands trembled, the tips of his fingers were cold. "You are cold!" she said. "Not now--not now," he replied. The queer vibrations were in his voice that she had heard before. "Sweetheart! This is the best yet, isn't it? And after that trip in the storm!" "It's beautiful!" she murmured, gently drawing away from him and looking around her once more. "I never was in a room like this." "Well, you'll be in plenty more of them," he exulted. "Sit down beside the fire, and get warm yourself." She obeyed, and he took the chair at her side, his eyes on her face. As usual, she was beyond him; and despite her exclamations of surprise, of appreciation and pleasure she maintained the outward poise, the inscrutability that summed up for him her uniqueness in the world of woman. She sat as easily upright in the delicate Chippendale chair as though she had been born to it. He made wild surmises as to what she might be thinking. Was she, as she seemed, taking all this as a matter of course? She imposed on him an impelling necessity to speak, to say anything--it did not matter what--and he began to dwell on the excellences of the hotel. She did not appear to hear him, her eyes lingering on the room, until presently she asked:--"What's the name of this hotel?" He told her. "I thought they only allowed married people to come, like this, in a private room." "Oh!" he began--and the sudden perception that she had made this statement impartially added to his perplexity. "Well," he was able to answer, "we're as good as married, aren't we, Janet?" He leaned toward her, he put his hand on hers. "The manager here is an old friend of mine. He knows we're as good as married." "Another old friend!" she queried. And the touch of humour, in spite of his taut nerves, delighted him. "Yes, yes," he laughed, rather uproariously. "I've got 'em everywhere, as thick as landmarks." "You seem to," she said. "I hope you're hungry," he said. "Not very," she replied. "It's all so strange--this day, Claude. It's like a fairy story, coming here to Boston in the snow, and this place, and--and being with you." "You still love me?" he cried, getting up. "You must know that I do," she answered simply, raising her face to his. And he stood gazing down into it, with an odd expression she had never seen before.... "What's the matter?" she asked. "Nothing--nothing," he assured her, but continued to look at her. "You're so--so wonderful," he whispered, "I just can't believe it." "And if it's hard for you," she answered, "think what it must be for me!" And she smiled up at him. Ditmar had known a moment of awe.... Suddenly he took her face between his hands and pressed his rough cheek against it, blindly. His hands trembled, his body was shaken, as by a spasm. "Why, you're still cold, Claude!" she cried anxiously. And he stammered out: "I'm not--it's you--it's having you!" Before she could reply to this strange exclamation, to which, nevertheless, some fire in her leaped in response, there came a knock at the door, and he drew away from her as he answered it. Two waiters entered obsequiously, one bearing a serving table, the other holding above his head a large tray containing covered dishes and glasses. "I could do with a cocktail!" Ditmar exclaimed, and the waiter smiled as he served them. "Here's how!" he said, giving her a glass containing a yellow liquid. She tasted it, made a grimace, and set it down hastily. "What's the trouble?" he asked, laughing, as she hurried to the table and took a drink of water. "It's horrid!" she cried. "Oh, you'll get over that idea," he told her. "You'll be crazy about 'em." "I never want to taste another," she declared. He laughed again. He had taken his at a swallow, but almost nullifying its effect was this confirmation--if indeed he had needed it--of the extent of her inexperience. She was, in truth, untouched by the world --the world in which he had lived. He pulled out her chair for her and she sat down, confronted by a series of knives, forks, and spoons on either side of a plate of oysters. Oysters served in this fashion, needless to say, had never formed part of the menu in Fillmore Street, or in any Hampton restaurant where she had lunched. But she saw that Ditmar had chosen a little fork with three prongs, and she followed his example. "You mustn't tell me you don't like Cotuits!" he exclaimed. She touched one, delicately, with her fork. "They're alive!" she exclaimed, though the custom of consuming them thus was by no means unknown to her. Lise had often boasted of a taste for oysters on the shell, though really preferring them smothered with red catsup in a "cocktail." "They're alive, but they don't know it. They won't eat you," Ditmar replied gleefully. "Squeeze a little lemon on one." Another sort of woman, he reflected, would have feigned a familiarity with the dish. She obeyed him, put one in her mouth, gave a little shiver, and swallowed it quickly. "Well?" he said. "It isn't bad, is it?" "It seems so queer to eat anything alive, and enjoy it," she said, as she ate the rest of them. "If you think they're good here you ought to taste them on the Cape, right out of the water," he declared, and went on to relate how he had once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won a bet. He was fond of talking about wagers he had won. Betting had lent a zest to his life. "We'll roll down there together some day next summer, little girl. It's a great place. You can go in swimming three times a day and never feel it. And talk about eating oysters, you can't swallow 'em as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open 'em. It's some trick to open 'em." He described the process, but she--scarcely listened. She was striving to adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience; to the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot plates before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a creamy soup, a fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully disguised, a breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of coffee. Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were aroused in her. What would it be like always to be daintily served, to eat one's meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner? As her physical hunger was satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank in the caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the heavy scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to the storm without,--so the storm flinging itself against the windows, powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold, black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and limitations. Had her existence been like that? or was it a dream, a nightmare from which she had awakened at last? From time to time, deep within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this illusion, but she fought it down. She wanted--oh, how she wanted to believe in the illusion! Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from that existence, who had at his command these delights to bestow. She loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband--yet there were moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place. And once it crossed her mind--what would she think of another woman who did this? What would she think if it were Lise? She could not then achieve a sense of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity. And little by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known, that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an expression of the man himself. He was the source of it. More and more, as he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand, as he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her. When the waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains, the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light; and she paused before the grand piano in the corner. "I'd like to be able to play!" she said. "You can learn," he told her. "I'm too old!" He laughed. And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly. Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand. At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding them. The picture fascinated Janet. "It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?" she asked. "What? That? I guess so." He got up and came over to her. "Sure," he said. "I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel, which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown to the lions just as we like to see football games. I'll get the book again--we'll read it together." Janet shivered.... "Here's another picture," he said, turning to the other side of the room. It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and a small, aristocratic head. Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of pearls. "Isn't she beautiful!" Janet sighed. "Beautiful!" He led her to the mirror. "Look!" he said. "I'll buy you pearls, Janet, I want to see them gleaming against your skin. She can't compare to you. I'll--I'll drape you with pearls." "No, no," she cried. "I don't want them, Claude. I don't want them. Please!" She scarcely knew what she was saying. And as she drew away from him her hands went out, were pressed together with an imploring, supplicating gesture. He seized them. His nearness was suffocating her, she flung herself into his arms, and their lips met in a long, swooning kiss. She began instinctively but vainly to struggle, not against him --but against a primal thing stronger than herself, stronger than he, stronger than codes and conventions and institutions, which yet she craved fiercely as her being's fulfilment. It was sweeping them dizzily --whither? The sheer sweetness and terror of it! "Don't, don't!" she murmured desperately. "You mustn't!" "Janet--we're going to be married, sweetheart,--just as soon as we can. Won't you trust me? For God's sake, don't be cruel. You're my wife, now--" His voice seemed to come from a great distance. And from a great distance, too, her own in reply, drowned as by falling waters. "Do you love me?--will you love me always--always?" And he answered hoarsely, "Yes--always--I swear it, Janet." He had found her lips again, he was pulling her toward a door on the far side of the room, and suddenly, as he opened it, her resistance ceased.... The snow made automobiling impossible, and at half past nine that evening Ditmar had escorted Janet to the station in a cab, and she had taken the train for Hampton. For a while she sat as in a trance. She knew that something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic, which had irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left Hampton that same morning--an age ago. But she was unable to realize the metamorphosis. In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime, exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless to feel any more. The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of people returning to homes scattered through the suburbs and smaller cities north of Boston--a mixed, Sunday-night crowd; and presently she began, in a detached way, to observe them. Their aspects, their speech and manners had the queer effect of penetrating her consciousness without arousing the emotional judgments of approval or disapproval which normally should have followed. Ordinarily she might have felt a certain sympathy for the fragile young man on the seat beside her who sat moodily staring through his glasses at the floor: and the group across the aisle would surely have moved her to disgust. Two couples were seated vis-a-vis, the men apparently making fun of a "pony" coat one of the girls was wearing. In spite of her shrieks, which drew general attention, they pulled it from her back--an operation regarded by the conductor himself with tolerant amusement. Whereupon her companion, a big, blond Teuton with an inane guffaw, boldly thrust an arm about her waist and held her while he presented the tickets. Janet beheld all this as one sees dancers through a glass, without hearing the music. Behind her two men fell into conversation. "I guess there's well over a foot of snow. I thought we'd have an open winter, too." "Look out for them when they start in mild!" "I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until morning. I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got to watch every minute...." Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed at the time to strike Janet as having any significance. They were discussing with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by the fifty-four hour law which was to come into effect on Monday. They denounced the mill owners. "They speed up the machine and make work harder," said one. "I think we goin' to have a strike sure." "Bad sisson too to have strike," replied the second pessimistically. "It will be cold winter, now." Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms. Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that journey through the whiteness to Boston.... Awakened, listening, she heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of music. She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming to behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little and great, great and little. She was seated once more leaning back in the corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt Ditmar's hand working in her own, and she heard his voice pleading forgiveness--for her silence alarmed him. And she heard herself saying:--"It was my fault as much as yours." And his vehement reply:--"It wasn't anybody's fault--it was natural, it was wonderful, Janet. I can't bear to see you sad." To see her sad! Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken those words--or was it three times? Was there a time she had forgotten? And each time she had answered: "I'm not sad." What she had felt indeed was not sadness,--but how could she describe it to him when she herself was amazed and dwarfed by it? Could he not feel it, too? Were men so different?... In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to be compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise. She had actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace. Even as he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the quality of his touch. Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of life?--not life itself? Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though she divined the secret. And yet she loved him--loved him with a fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her.... At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common, following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to Fillmore Street. She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room door, and paused on the threshold. Hannah and Edward sat there under the lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday newspaper. On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap. "Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!" she exclaimed. "Thank goodness you're home, anyway. You haven't seen Lise, have you?" "Lise?" Janet repeated. "Hasn't she been home?" "Your father and I have been alone all day long. Not that it is so uncommon for Lise to be gone. I wish it wasn't! But you! When you didn't come home for supper I was considerably worried." Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her gloves. "I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced. For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the old-fashioned clock. "Mr. Ditmar!" said Hannah, at length. "You're going to marry Mr. Ditmar!" Edward was still inarticulate. His face twitched, his eyes watered as he stared at her. "Not right away," said Janet. "Well, I must say you take it rather cool," declared Hannah, almost resentfully. "You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar just like you were talking about the weather." Hannah's eyes filled with tears. There had been indeed an unconscious lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope. The result was a suffocating flame. Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift perception of this. She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and kissed her. It was as though the relation between them were reversed, and the daughter had now become the mother and the comforter. "I always knew something like this would happen!" said Edward. His words incited Hannah to protest. "You didn't anything of the kind, Edward Bumpus," she exclaimed. "Just to think of Janet livin' in that big house up in Warren Street!" he went on, unheeding, jubilant. "You'll drop in and see the old people once in a while, Janet, you won't forget us?" "I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father," said Janet. "Well, he's a fine man, Claude Ditmar, I always said that. The way he stops and talks to me when he passes the gate--" "That doesn't make him a good man," Hannah declared, and added: "If he wasn't a good man, Janet wouldn't be marrying him." "I don't know whether he's good or not," said Janet. "That's so, too," observed Hannah, approvingly. "We can't any of us tell till we've tried 'em, and then it's too late to change. I'd like to see him, but I guess he wouldn't care to come down here to Fillmore Street." The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their own suggested appalling complications to her mind. "I suppose I won't get a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then." "There's plenty of time to think about that, mother," answered Janet. "I'd want to have everything decent and regular," Hannah insisted. "We may be poor, but we come of good stock, as your father says." "It'll be all right--Mr. Ditmar will behave like a gentleman," Edward assured her. "I thought I ought to tell you about it," Janet said, "but you mustn't mention it, yet, not even to Lise. Lise will talk. Mr. Ditmar's very busy now,--he hasn't made any plans." "I wish Lise could get married!" exclaimed Hannah, irrelevantly. "She's been acting so queer lately, she's not been herself at all." "Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother," Edward exclaimed. He could not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with benevolence. "Lise'll get married some day. I don't suppose we can expect another Mr. Ditmar...." "Well," said Hannah, presently, "there's no use sitting up all night." She rose and kissed Janet again. "I just can't believe it," she declared, "but I guess it's so if you say it is." "Of course it's so," said Edward. "I so want you should be happy, Janet," said Hannah.... Was it so? Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more. And--what would they say if they knew what had happened to her this day? When she had reached her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents. Had it not been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the score of her recent absences from home? Yes, that was it, and because the news would make them happy. And then the mere assertion to them that she was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself. But, now that reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the scope of her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered circumstance long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized that she was tired--too tired to think any more. But despite her exhaustion there remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her, unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived. When her head touched the pillow she fell asleep.... When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay awhile groping in the darkness. Where was she? Who was she? The discovery of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right hand was broken, gave her a clew. She had broken that nail in reaching out to save something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses on a table with a white cloth. Ditmar had tipped it over. The sudden flaring up of this trivial incident served to re-establish her identity, to light a fuse along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating redly all the events of the day before. It was sweet to lie thus, to possess, as her very own, these precious, passionate memories of life lived at last to fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given herself and taken--all. A longing to see Ditmar again invaded her: he would take an early train, he would be at the office by nine. How could she wait until then? With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out her hand to arouse her sister. The coldness of the sheets on the right side of the bed sent a shiver through her--a shiver of fear. "Lise!" she called. But there was no answer from the darkness. And Janet, trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed, searched for the matches, and lit the gas. There was no sign of Lise; her clothes, which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were nowhere to be seen. Janet's eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence of several knick-knacks, including a comb and brush, and with a sudden sickness of apprehension she darted to the wardrobe and flung open the doors. In the bottom were a few odd garments, above was the hat with the purple feather, now shabby and discarded, on the hooks a skirt and jacket Lise wore to work at the Bagatelle in bad weather. That was all.... Janet sank down in the rocking-chair, her hands clasped together, overwhelmed by the sudden apprehension of the tragedy that had lurked, all unsuspected, in the darkness: a tragedy, not of Lise alone, but in which she herself was somehow involved. Just why this was so, she could not for the moment declare. The room was cold, she was clad only in a nightdress, but surges of heat ran through her body. What should she do? She must think. But thought was impossible. She got up and closed the window and began to dress with feverish rapidity, pausing now and again to stand motionless. In one such moment there entered her mind an incident that oddly had made little impression at the time of its occurrence because she, Janet, had been blinded by the prospect of her own happiness--that happiness which, a few minutes ago, had seemed so real and vital a thing! And it was the memory of this incident that suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all of Lise's conduct during the past months--her accidental dropping of the vanity case and the gold coin! Now she knew for a certainty what had happened to her sister. Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm, filled with the smell of frying meat. Streaks of grease smoke floated fantastically beneath the low ceiling, and Hannah, with the frying-pan in one hand and a fork in the other, was bending over the stove. Wisps of her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn knot at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet she looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her dumb --pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that lent a staggering insight into life itself. Hannah had once been young, desirable, perhaps, swayed by those forces which had swayed her. Janet wondered why she had never guessed this before, and why she had guessed it now. But it was Hannah who, looking up and catching sight of Janet's face, was quick to divine the presage in it and gave voice to the foreboding that had weighed on her for many weeks. "Where's Lise?" And Janet could not answer. She shook her head. Hannah dropped the fork, the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing Janet by the shoulders. "Is she gone? I knew it, I felt it all along. I thought she'd done something she was afraid to tell about--I tried to ask her, but I couldn't--I couldn't! And now she's gone. Oh, my God, I'll never forgive myself!" The unaccustomed sight of her mother's grief was terrible. For an instant only she clung to Janet, then becoming mute, she sat down in the kitchen chair and stared with dry, unseeing eyes at the wall. Her face twitched. Janet could not bear to look at it, to see the torture in her mother's eyes. She, Janet, seemed suddenly to have grown old herself, to have lived through ages of misery and tragedy.... She was aware of a pungent odour, went to the stove, picked up the fork, and turned the steak. Now and then she glanced at Hannah. Grief seemed to have frozen her. Then, from the dining-room she heard footsteps, and Edward stood in the doorway. "Well, what's the matter with breakfast?" he asked. From where he stood he could not see Hannah's face, but gradually his eyes were drawn to her figure. His intuition was not quick, and some moments passed before the rigidity of the pose impressed itself upon him. "Is mother sick?" he asked falteringly. Janet went to him. But it was Hannah who spoke. "Lise has gone," she said. "Lise--gone," Edward repeated. "Gone where?" "She's run away--she's disgraced us," Hannah replied, in a monotonous, dulled voice. Edward did not seem to understand, and presently Janet felt impelled to break the silence. "She didn't come home last night, father." "Didn't come home? Mebbe she spent the night with a friend," he said. It seemed incredible, at such a moment, that he could still be hopeful. "No, she's gone, I tell you, she's lost, we'll never lay eyes on her again. My God, I never thought she'd come to this, but I might have guessed it. Lise! Lise! To think it's my Lise!" Hannah's voice echoed pitifully through the silence of the flat. So appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise, wherever she was, would have heard it. Edward was dazed by the shock, his lower lip quivered and fell. He walked over to Hannah's chair and put his hand on her shoulder. "There, there, mother," he pleaded. "If she's gone, we'll find her, we'll bring her back to you." Hannah shook her head. She pushed back her chair abruptly and going over to the stove took the fork from Janet's hand and put the steak on the dish. "Go in there and set down, Edward," she said. "I guess we've got to have breakfast just the same, whether she's gone or not." It was terrible to see Hannah, with that look on her face, going about her tasks automatically. And Edward, too, seemed suddenly to have become aged and broken; his trust in the world, so amazingly preserved through many vicissitudes, shattered at last. He spilled his coffee when he tried to drink, and presently he got up and wandered about the room, searching for his overcoat. It was Janet who found it and helped him on with it. He tried to say something, but failing, departed heavily for the mill. Janet began to remove the dishes from the table. "You've got to eat something, too, before you go to work," said Hannah. "I've had all I want," Janet replied. Hannah followed her into the kitchen. The scarcely touched food was laid aside, the coffee-pot emptied, Hannah put the cups in the basin in the sink and let the water run. She turned to Janet and seized her hands convulsively. "Let me do this, mother," said Janet. She knew her mother was thinking of the newly-found joy that Lise's disgrace had marred, but she released her hands, gently, and took the mop from the nail on which it hung. "You sit down, mother," she said. Hannah would not. They finished the dishes together in silence while the light of the new day stole in through the windows. Janet went into her room, set it in order, made up the bed, put on her coat and hat and rubbers. Then she returned to Hannah, who seized her. "It ain't going to spoil your happiness?" But Janet could not answer. She kissed her mother, and went out, down the stairs into the street. The day was sharp and cold and bracing, and out of an azure sky the sun shone with dazzling brightness on the snow, which the west wind was whirling into little eddies of white smoke, leaving on the drifts delicate scalloped designs like those printed by waves on the sands of the sea. They seemed to Janet that morning hatefully beautiful. In front of his tin shop, whistling cheerfully and labouring energetically with a shovel to clean his sidewalk, was Johnny Tiernan, the tip of his pointed nose made very red by the wind. "Good morning, Miss Bumpus," he said. "Now, if you'd only waited awhile, I'd have had it as clean as a parlour. It's fine weather for coal bills." She halted. "Can I see you a moment, Mr. Tiernan?" Johnny looked at her. "Why sure," he said. Leaning his shovel against the wall, he gallantly opened the door that she might pass in before him and then led the way to the back of the shop where the stove was glowing hospitably. He placed a chair for her. "Now what can I be doing to serve you?" he asked. "It's about my sister," said Janet. "Miss Lise?" "I thought you might know what man she's been going with lately," said Janet. Mr. Tiernan had often wondered how much Janet knew about her sister. In spite of a momentary embarrassment most unusual in him, the courage of her question made a strong appeal, and his quick sympathies suspected the tragedy behind her apparent calmness. He met her magnificently. "Why," he said, "I have seen Miss Lise with a fellow named Duval--Howard Duval--when he's been in town. He travels for a Boston shoe house, Humphrey and Gillmount." "I'm afraid Lise has gone away with him," said Janet. "I thought you might be able to find out something about him, and--whether any one had seen them. She left home yesterday morning." For an instant Mr. Tiernan stood silent before her, his legs apart, his fingers running through his bristly hair. "Well, ye did right to come straight to me, Miss Janet. It's me that can find out, if anybody can, and it's glad I am to help you. Just you stay here--make yourself at home while I run down and see some of the boys. I'll not be long--and don't be afraid I'll let on about it." He seized his overcoat and departed. Presently the sun, glinting on the sheets of tin, started Janet's glance straying around the shop, noting its disorderly details, the heaped-up stovepipes, the littered work-bench with the shears lying across the vise. Once she thought of Ditmar arriving at the office and wondering what had happened to her.... The sound of a bell made her jump. Mr. Tiernan had returned. "She's gone with him," said Janet, not as a question, but as one stating a fact. Mr. Tiernan nodded. "They took the nine-thirty-six for Boston yesterday morning. Eddy Colahan was at the depot." Janet rose. "Thank you," she said simply. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "I'm going to Boston," she answered. "I'm going to find out where she is." "Then it's me that's going with you," he announced. "Oh no, Mr. Tiernan!" she protested. "I couldn't let you do that." "And why not?" he demanded. "I've got a little business there myself. I'm proud to go with you. It's your sister you want, isn't it?" "Yes." "Well, what would you be doing by yourself--a young lady? How will you find your sister?" "Do you think you can find her?" "Sure I can find her," he proclaimed, confidently. He had evidently made up his mind that casual treatment was what the affair demanded. "Haven't I good friends in Boston?" By friendship he swayed his world: nor was he completely unknown--though he did not say so--to certain influential members of his race of the Boston police department. Pulling out a large nickel watch and observing that they had just time to catch the train, he locked up his shop, and they set out together for the station. Mr. Tiernan led the way, for the path was narrow. The dry snow squeaked under his feet. After escorting her to a seat on the train, he tactfully retired to the smoking car, not to rejoin her until they were on the trestle spanning the Charles River by the North Station. All the way to Boston she had sat gazing out of the window at the blinding whiteness of the fields, incapable of rousing herself to the necessity of thought, to a degree of feeling commensurate with the situation. She did not know what she would say to Lise if she should find her; and in spite of Mr. Tiernan's expressed confidence, the chances of success seemed remote. When the train began to thread the crowded suburbs, the city, spreading out over its hills, instead of thrilling her, as yesterday, with a sense of dignity and power, of opportunity and emancipation, seemed a labyrinth with many warrens where vice and crime and sorrow could hide. In front of the station the traffic was already crushing the snow into filth. They passed the spot where, the night before, the carriage had stopped, where Ditmar had bidden her good-bye. Something stirred within her, became a shooting pain.... She asked Mr. Tiernan what he intended to do. "I'm going right after the man, if he's here in the city," he told her. And they boarded a street car, which almost immediately shot into the darkness of the subway. Emerging at Scollay Square, and walking a few blocks, they came to a window where guns, revolvers, and fishing tackle were displayed, and on which was painted the name, "Timothy Mulally." Mr. Tiernan entered. "Is Tim in?" he inquired of one of the clerks, who nodded his head towards the rear of the store, where a middle-aged, grey-haired Irishman was seated at a desk under a drop light. "Is it you, Johnny?" he exclaimed, looking up. "It's meself," said Mr. Tiernan. "And this is Miss Bumpus, a young lady friend of mine from Hampton." Mr. Mulally rose and bowed. "How do ye do, ma'am," he said. "I've got a little business to do for her," Mr. Tiernan continued. "I thought you might offer her a chair and let her stay here, quiet, while I was gone." "With pleasure, ma'am," Mr. Mulally replied, pulling forward a chair with alacrity. "Just sit there comfortable--no one will disturb ye." When, in the course of half an hour, Mr. Tiernan returned, there was a grim yet triumphant look in his little blue eyes, but it was not until Janet had thanked Mr. Mulally for his hospitality and they had reached the sidewalk that he announced the result of his quest. "Well, I caught him. It's lucky we came when we did--he was just going out on the road again, up to Maine. I know where Miss Lise is." "He told you!" exclaimed Janet. "He told me indeed, but it wasn't any joy to him. He was all for bluffing at first. It's easy to scare the likes of him. He was as white as his collar before I was done with him. He knows who I am, all right he's heard of me in Hampton," Mr. Tiernan added, with a pardonable touch of pride. "What did you say?" inquired Janet, curiously. "Say?" repeated Mr. Tiernan. "It's not much I had to say, Miss Janet. I was all ready to go to Mr. Gillmount, his boss. I'm guessing he won't take much pleasure on this trip." She asked for no more details. CHAPTER XIII Once more Janet and Mr. Tiernan descended into the subway, taking a car going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows of boarding--and rooming-houses. They alighted at a certain corner, walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps. Climbing these, he pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face like a fungus grown in darkness. "I want to see Miss Lise Bumpus," Mr. Tiernan demanded. "You've got the wrong place. There ain't no one of that name here," said the woman. "There ain't! All right," he insisted aggressively, pushing open the door in spite of her. "If you don't let this young lady see her quick, there's trouble coming to you." "Who are you?" asked the woman, impudently, yet showing signs of fear. "Never mind who I am," Mr. Tiernan declared. "I know all about you, and I know all about Duval. If you don't want any trouble you won't make any, and you'll take this young lady to her sister. I'll wait here for you, Miss Janet," he added. "I don't know nothing about her--she rented my room that's all I know," the woman replied sullenly. "If you mean that couple that came here yesterday--" She turned and led the way upstairs, mounting slowly, and Janet followed, nauseated and almost overcome by the foul odours of dead cigarette smoke which, mingling with the smell of cooking cabbage rising from below, seemed the very essence and reek of hitherto unimagined evil. A terror seized her such as she had never known before, an almost overwhelming impulse to turn and regain the air and sunlight of the day. In the dark hallway of the second story the woman knocked at the door of a front room. "She's in there, unless she's gone out." And indeed a voice was heard petulantly demanding what was wanted--Lise's voice! Janet hesitated, her hand on the knob, her body fallen against the panels. Then, as she pushed open the door, the smell of cigarette smoke grew stronger, and she found herself in a large bedroom, the details of which were instantly photographed on her mind--the dingy claret-red walls, the crayon over the mantel of a buxom lady in a decollete costume of the '90's, the outspread fan concealing the fireplace, the soiled lace curtains. The bed was unmade, and on the table beside two empty beer bottles and glasses and the remains of a box of candy--suggestive of a Sunday purchase at a drug store--she recognized Lise's vanity case. The effect of all this, integrated at a glance, was a paralyzing horror. Janet could not speak. She remained gazing at Lise, who paid no attention to her entrance, but stood with her back turned before an old-fashioned bureau with a marble top and raised sides. She was dressed, and engaged in adjusting her hat. It was not until Janet pronounced her name that she turned swiftly. "You!" she exclaimed. "What the--what brought you here?" "Oh, Lise!" Janet repeated. "How did you get here?" Lise demanded, coming toward her. "Who told you where I was? What business have you got sleuthing 'round after me like this?" For a moment Janet was speechless once more, astounded that Lise could preserve her effrontery in such an atmosphere, could be insensible to the evils lurking in this house--evils so real to Janet that she seemed actually to feel them brushing against her. "Lise, come away from here," she pleaded, "come home with me!" "Home!" said Lise, defiantly, and laughed. "What do you take me for? Why would I be going home when I've been trying to break away for two years? I ain't so dippy as that--not me! Go home like a good little girl and march back to the Bagatelle and ask 'em to give me another show standing behind a counter all day. Nix! No home sweet home for me! I'm all for easy street when it comes to a home like that." Heartless, terrific as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting, almost sympathetic note in Janet. She herself had revolted against the monotony and sordidness of that existence She herself! She dared not complete the thought, now. "But this!" she exclaimed. "What's the matter with it?" Lise demanded. "It ain't Commonwealth Avenue, but it's got Fillmore Street beat a mile. There ain't no whistles hereto get you out of bed at six a.m., for one thing. There ain't no geezers, like Walters, to nag you 'round all day long. What's the matter with it?" Something in Lise's voice roused Janet's spirit to battle. "What's the matter with it?" she cried. "It's hell--that's the matter with it. Can't you see it? Can't you feel it? You don't know what it means, or you'd come home with me." "I guess I know what it means as well as you do," said Lise, sullenly. "We've all got to croak sometime, and I'd rather croak this way than be smothered up in Hampton. I'll get a run for my money, anyway." "No, you don't know what it means," Janet repeated, "or you wouldn't talk like that. Do you think this man will support you, stick to you? He won't, he'll desert you, and you'll have to go on the streets." A dangerous light grew in Lise's eyes. "He's as good as any other man, he's as good as Ditmar," she said. "They're all the same, to girls like us." Janet's heart caught, it seemed to stop beating. Was this a hazard on Lise's part, or did she speak from knowledge? And yet what did it matter whether Lise knew or only suspected, if her words were true, if men were all alike? Had she been a dupe as well as Lise? and was the only difference between them now the fact that Lise was able, without illusion, to see things as they were, to accept the consequences, while she, Janet, had beheld visions and dreamed dreams? was there any real choice between the luxurious hotel to which Ditmar had taken her and this detestable house? Suddenly, seemingly by chance, her eyes fell on the box of drug-store candy from which the cheap red ribbon had been torn, and by some odd association of ideas it suggested and epitomized Lise's Sunday excursion with a mama hideous travesty on the journey of wonders she herself had taken. Had that been heaven, and this of Lise's, hell?... And was. Lise's ambition to be supported in idleness and luxury to be condemned because she had believed her own to be higher? Did not both lead to destruction? The weight that had lain on her breast since the siren had awakened her that morning and she had reached out and touched the chilled, empty sheets now grew almost unsupportable. "It's true," said Janet, "all men are the same." Lise was staring at her. "My God!" she exclaimed. "You?" "Yes-me," cried Janet.--"And what are you going to do about it? Stay here with him in this filthy place until he gets tired of you and throws you out on the street? Before I'd let any man do that to me I'd kill him." Lise began to whimper, and suddenly buried her face in the pillow. But a new emotion had begun to take possession of Janet--an emotion so strong as to give her an unlookedfor sense of detachment. And the words Lise had spoken between her sobs at first conveyed no meaning. "I'm going to have a baby...." Lise was going to have a child! Why hadn't she guessed it? A child! Perhaps she, Janet, would have a child! This enlightenment as to Lise's condition and the possibility it suggested in regard to herself brought with it an overwhelming sympathy which at first she fiercely resented then yielded to. The bond between them, instead of snapping, had inexplicably strengthened. And Lise, despite her degradation, was more than ever her sister! Forgetting her repugnance to the bed, Janet sat down beside Lise and put an arm around her. "He said he'd marry me, he swore he was rich--and he was a spender all right. And then some guy came up to me one night at Gruber's and told me he was married already." "What?" Janet exclaimed. "Sure! He's got a wife and two kids here in Boston. That was a twenty-one round knockout! Maybe I didn't have something to tell him when he blew into Hampton last Friday! But he said he couldn't help it--he loved me." Lise sat up, seemingly finding relief in the relation of her wrongs, dabbing her eyes with a cheap lace handkerchief. "Well, while he'd been away--this thing came. I didn't know what was the matter at first, and when I found out I was scared to death, I was ready to kill myself. When I told him he was scared too, and then he said he'd fix it. Say, I was a goat to think he'd marry me!" Lise laughed hysterically. "And then--" Janet spoke with difficulty, "and then you came down here?" "I told him he'd have to see me through, I'd start something if he didn't. Say, he almost got down on his knees, right there in Gruber's! But he came back inside of ten seconds--he's a jollier, for sure, he was right there with the goods, it was because he loved me, he couldn't help himself, I was his cutie, and all that kind of baby talk." Lise's objective manner of speaking about her seducer amazed Janet. "Do you love him?" she asked. "Say, what is love?" Lise demanded. "Do you ever run into it outside of the movies? Do I love him? Well, he's a good looker and a fancy dresser, he ain't a tight wad, and he can start a laugh every minute. If he hadn't put it over on me I wouldn't have been so sore. I don't know he ain't so bad. He's weak, that's the trouble with him." This was the climax! Lise's mental processes, her tendency to pass from wild despair to impersonal comment, her inability, her courtesan's temperament that prevented her from realizing tragedy for more than a moment at a time--even though the tragedy were her own--were incomprehensible to Janet. "Get on to this," Lise adjured her. "When I first was acquainted with him he handed me a fairy tale that he was taking five thousand a year from Humphrey and Gillmount, he was going into the firm. He had me razzle-dazzled. He's some hypnotizes as a salesman, too, they say. Nothing was too good for me; I saw myself with a house on the avenue shopping in a limousine. Well, he blew up, but I can't help liking him." "Liking him!" cried Janet passionately. "I'd kill him that's what I'd do." Lise regarded her with unwilling admiration. "That's where you and me is different," she declared. "I wish I was like that, but I ain't. And where would I come in? Now you're wise why I can't go back to Hampton. Even if I was stuck on the burg and cryin' my eyes out for the Bagatelle I couldn't go back." "What are you going to do?" Janet demanded. "Well," said Lise, "he's come across--I'll say that for him. Maybe it's because he's scared, but he's stuck on me, too. When you dropped in I was just going down town to get a pair of patent leathers, these are all wore out," she explained, twisting her foot, "they ain't fit for Boston. And I thought of lookin' at blouses--there's a sale on I was reading about in the paper. Say, it's great to be on easy street, to be able to stay in bed until you're good and ready to get up and go shopping, to gaze at the girls behind the counter and ask the price of things. I'm going to Walling's and give the salesladies the ha-ha--that's what I'm going to do." "But--?" Janet found words inadequate. Lise understood her. "Oh, I'm due at the doctor's this afternoon." "Where?" "The doctor's. Don't you get me?--it's a private hospital." Lise gave a slight shudder at the word, but instantly recovered her sang-froid. "Howard fixed it up yesterday--and they say it ain't very bad if you take it early." For a space Janet was too profoundly shocked to reply. "Lise! That's a crime!" she cried. "Crime, nothing!" retorted Lise, and immediately became indignant. "Say, I sometimes wonder how you could have lived all these years without catching on to a few things! What do you take me for! What'd I do with a baby?" What indeed! The thought came like an avalanche, stripping away the veneer of beauty from the face of the world, revealing the scarred rock and crushed soil beneath. This was reality! What right had society to compel a child to be born to degradation and prostitution? to beget, perhaps, other children of suffering? Were not she and Lise of the exploited, of those duped and tempted by the fair things the more fortunate enjoyed unscathed? And now, for their natural cravings, their family must be disgraced, they must pay the penalty of outcasts! Neither Lise nor she had had a chance. She saw that, now. The scorching revelation of life's injustice lighted within her the fires of anarchy and revenge. Lise, other women might submit tamely to be crushed, might be lulled and drugged by bribes: she would not. A wild desire seized her to get back to Hampton. "Give me the address of the hospital," she said. "Come off!" cried Lise, in angry bravado. "Do you think I'm going to let you butt into this? I guess you've got enough to do to look out for your own business." Janet produced a pencil from her bag, and going to the table tore off a piece of the paper in which had been wrapped the candy box. "Give me the address," she insisted. "Say, what are you going to do?" "I want to know where you are, in case anything happens to you." "Anything happens! What do you mean?" Janet's words had frightened Lise, the withdrawal of Janet's opposition bewildered her. But above all, she was cowed by the sudden change in Janet herself, by the attitude of steely determination eloquent of an animus persons of Lise's type are incapable of feeling, and which to them is therefore incomprehensible. "Nothing's going to happen to me," she whined. "The place is all right --he'd be scared to send me there if it wasn't. It costs something, too. Say, you ain't going to tell 'em at home?" she cried with a fresh access of alarm. "If you do as I say, I won't tell anybody," Janet replied, in that odd, impersonal tone her voice had acquired. "You must write me as soon--as soon as it is over. Do you understand?" "Honest to God I will," Lise assured her. "And you mustn't come back to a house like this." "Where'll I go?" Lise asked. "I don't know. We'll find out when the time comes," said Janet, significantly. "You've seen him!" Lise exclaimed. "No," said Janet, "and I don't want to see him unless I have to. Mr. Tiernan has seen him. Mr. Tiernan is downstairs now, waiting for me." "Johnny Tiernan! Is Johnny Tiernan downstairs?" Janet wrote the address, and thrust the slip of paper in her bag. "Good-bye, Lise," she said. "I'll come down again I'll come down whenever you want me." Lise suddenly seized her and clung to her, sobbing. For a while Janet submitted, and then, kissing her, gently detached herself. She felt, indeed, pity for Lise, but something within her seemed to have hardened--something that pity could not melt, possessing her and thrusting heron to action. She knew not what action. So strong was this thing that it overcame and drove off the evil spirits of that darkened house as she descended the stairs to join Mr. Tiernan, who opened the door for her to pass out. Once in the street, she breathed deeply of the sunlit air. Nor did she observe Mr. Tiernan's glance of comprehension.... When they arrived at the North Station he said:--"You'll be wanting a bite of dinner, Miss Janet," and as she shook her head he did not press her to eat. He told her that a train for Hampton left in ten minutes. "I think I'll stay in Boston the rest of the day, as long as I'm here," he added. She remembered that she had not thanked him, she took his hand, but he cut her short. "It's glad I was to help you," he assured her. "And if there's anything more I can do, Miss Janet, you'll be letting me know--you'll call on Johnny Tiernan, won't you?" He left her at the gate. He had intruded with no advice, he had offered no comment that she had come downstairs alone, without Lise. His confidence in her seemed never to have wavered. He had respected, perhaps partly imagined her feelings, and in spite of these now a sense of gratitude to him stole over her, mitigating the intensity of their bitterness. Mr. Tiernan alone seemed stable in a chaotic world. He was a man. No sooner was she in the train, however, than she forgot Mr. Tiernan utterly. Up to the present the mental process of dwelling upon her own experience of the last three months had been unbearable, but now she was able to take a fearful satisfaction in the evolving of parallels between her case and Lise's. Despite the fact that the memories she had cherished were now become hideous things, she sought to drag them forth and compare them, ruthlessly, with what must have been the treasures of Lise. Were her own any less tawdry? Only she, Janet, had been the greater fool of the two, the greater dupe because she had allowed herself to dream, to believe that what she had done had been for love, for light! because she had not listened to the warning voice within her! It had always been on the little, unpremeditated acts of Ditmar that she had loved to linger, and now, in the light of Lise's testimony, of Lise's experience, she saw them all as false. It seemed incredible, now, that she had ever deceived herself into thinking that Ditmar meant to marry her, that he loved her enough to make her his wife. Nor was it necessary to summon and marshal incidents to support this view, they came of themselves, crowding one another, a cumulative and appalling array of evidence, before which she stood bitterly amazed at her former stupidity. And in the events of yesterday, which she pitilessly reviewed, she beheld a deliberate and prearranged plan for her betrayal. Had he not telephoned to Boston for the rooms, rehearsed in his own mind every detail of what had subsequently happened? Was there any essential difference between the methods of Ditmar and Duval? Both were skilled in the same art, and Ditmar was the cleverer of the two. It had only needed her meeting with Lise, in that house, to reveal how he had betrayed her faith and her love, sullied and besmirched them. And then came the odd reflection,--how strange that that same Sunday had been so fateful for herself and Lise! The agony of these thoughts was mitigated by the scorching hatred that had replaced her love, the desire for retaliation, revenge. Occasionally, however, that stream of consciousness was broken by the recollection of what she had permitted and even advised her sister to do; and though the idea of the place to which Lise was going sickened her, though she achieved a certain objective amazement at the transformation in herself enabling her to endorse such a course, she was glad of having endorsed it, she rejoiced that Lise's child would not be born into a world that had seemed--so falsely--fair and sweet, and in reality was black and detestable. Her acceptance of the act--for Lise--was a function of the hatred consuming her, a hatred which, growing in bigness, had made Ditmar merely the personification of that world. From time to time her hands clenched, her brow furrowed, powerful waves of heat ran through her, the craving for action became so intense she could scarcely refrain from rising in her seat. By some odd whim of the weather the wind had backed around into the east, gathering the clouds once more. The brilliancy of the morning had given place to greyness, the high slits of windows seemed dirtier than ever as the train pulled into the station at Hampton, shrouded in Gothic gloom. As she left the car Janet was aware of the presence on the platform of an unusual number of people; she wondered vaguely, as she pushed her way through them, why they were there, what they were talking about? One determination possessed her, to go to the Chippering Mill, to Ditmar. Emerging from the street, she began to walk rapidly, the change from inaction to exercise bringing a certain relief, starting the working of her mind, arousing in her a realization of the necessity of being prepared for the meeting. Therefore, instead of turning at Faber Street, she crossed it. But at the corner of the Common she halted, her glance drawn by a dark mass of people filling the end of Hawthorne Street, where it was blocked by the brick-coloured facade of the Clarendon Mill. In the middle distance men and boys were running to join this crowd. A girl, evidently an Irish-American mill hand of the higher paid sort, hurried toward her from the direction of the mill itself. Janet accosted her. "It's the strike," she explained excitedly, evidently surprised at the question. "The Polaks and the Dagoes and a lot of other foreigners quit when they got their envelopes--stopped their looms and started through the mill, and when they came into our room I left. I didn't want no trouble with 'em. It's the fifty-four hour law--their pay's cut two hours. You've heard about it, I guess." Janet nodded. "They had a big mass meeting last night in Maxwell Hall," the girl continued, "the foreigners--not the skilled workers. And they voted to strike. They tell me they're walking out over at the Patuxent, too." "And the Chippering?" asked Janet, eagerly. "I don't know--I guess it'll spread to all of 'em, the way these foreigners are going on--they're crazy. But say," the girl added, "it ain't right to cut our pay, either, is it? They never done it two years ago when the law came down to fifty-six." Janet did not wait to reply. While listening to this explanation, excitement had been growing in her again, and some fearful, overpowering force of attraction emanating from that swarm in the distance drew her until she yielded, fairly running past the rows of Italian tenements in their strange setting of snow, not to pause until she reached the fruit shop where she and Eda had eaten the olives. Now she was on the outskirts of the crowd that packed itself against the gates of the Clarendon. It spread over the width of East Street, growing larger every minute, until presently she was hemmed in. Here and there hoarse shouts of approval and cheers arose in response to invisible orators haranging their audiences in weird, foreign tongues; tiny American flags were waved; and suddenly, in one of those unforeseen and incomprehensible movements to which mobs are subject, a trolley car standing at the end of the Hawthorne Street track was surrounded, the desperate clanging of its bell keeping pace with the beating of Janet's heart. A dark Sicilian, holding aloft the green, red, and white flag of Italy, leaped on the rear platform and began to speak, the Slav conductor regarding him stupidly, pulling the bellcord the while. Three or four policemen fought their way to the spot, striving to clear the tracks, bewildered and impotent in the face of the alien horde momentarily growing more and more conscious of power. Janet pushed her way deeper and deeper into the crowd. She wanted to savour to the full its wrath and danger, to surrender herself to be played upon by these sallow, stubby-bearded exhorters, whose menacing tones and passionate gestures made a grateful appeal, whose wild, musical words, just because they were uncomprehended, aroused in her dim suggestions of a race-experience not her own, but in which she was now somehow summoned to share. That these were the intruders whom she, as a native American, had once resented and despised did not occur to her. The racial sense so strong in her was drowned in a sense of fellowship. Their anger seemed to embody and express, as nothing else could have done, the revolt that had been rising, rising within her soul; and the babel to which she listened was not a confusion of tongues, but one voice lifted up to proclaim the wrongs of all the duped, of all the exploited and oppressed. She was fused with them, their cause was her cause, their betrayers her betrayers. Suddenly was heard the cry for which she had been tensely but unconsciously awaiting. Another cry like that had rung out in another mob across the seas more than a century before. "Ala Bastille!" became "To the Chippering!" Some man shouted it out in shrill English, hundreds repeated it; the Sicilian leaped from the trolley car, and his path could be followed by the agitated progress of the alien banner he bore. "To the Chippering!" It rang in Janet's ears like a call to battle. Was she shouting it, too? A galvanic thrill ran through the crowd, an impulse that turned their faces and started their steps down East Street toward the canal, and Janet was irresistibly carried along. Nay, it seemed as if the force that second by second gained momentum was in her, that she herself had released and was guiding it! Her feet were wet as she ploughed through the trampled snow, but she gave no thought to that. The odour of humanity was in her nostrils. On the left a gaunt Jew pressed against her, on the right a solid Ruthenian woman, one hand clasping her shawl, the other holding aloft a miniature emblem of New World liberty. Her eyes were fixed on the grey skies, and from time to time her lips were parted in some strange, ancestral chant that could be heard above the shouting. All about Janet were dark, awakening faces.... It chanced that an American, a college graduate, stood gazing down from a point of vantage upon this scene. He was ignorant of anthropology, psychology, and the phenomena of environment; but bits of "knowledge" --which he embodied in a newspaper article composed that evening stuck wax-like in his brain. Not thus, he deplored, was the Anglo-Saxon wont to conduct his rebellions. These Czechs and Slavs, Hebrews and Latins and Huns might have appropriately been clad in the skins worn by the hordes of Attila. Had they not been drawn hither by the renown of the Republic's wealth? And how essentially did they differ from those other barbarians before whose bewildered, lustful gaze had risen the glittering palaces on the hills of the Tiber? The spoils of Rome! The spoils of America! They appeared to him ferocious, atavistic beasts as they broke into the lumberyard beneath his window to tear the cord-wood from the piles and rush out again, armed with billets.... Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside the canal--presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill. Across the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury. The halt was for a moment only. The bridge rocked beneath the weight of their charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow-filled tracks by the wall of the mill. Some, in a frenzy of passion, hurled their logs against the windows; others paused, seemingly to measure the distance and force of the stroke, thus lending to their act a more terrible and deliberate significance. A shout of triumph announced that the gates, like a broken dam, had given way, and the torrent poured in between the posts, flooding the yard, pressing up the towered stairways and spreading through the compartments of the mill. More ominous than the tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this absorption of the angry spirits of the mob. Little by little, as the power was shut off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled. Pinioned against the parapet above the canal--almost on that very spot where, the first evening, she had met Ditmar--Janet awaited her chance to cross. Every crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave her a fierce throb of joy. She had not expected the gates to yield--her father must have insecurely fastened them. Gaining the farther side of the canal, she perceived him flattened against the wall of the gatehouse shaking his fist in the faces of the intruders, who rushed past him unheeding. His look arrested her. His face was livid, his eyes were red with anger, he stood transformed by a passion she had not believed him to possess. She had indeed heard him give vent to a mitigated indignation against foreigners in general, but now the old-school Americanism in which he had been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect for the convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame. He was ready to fight for it, to die for it. The curses he hurled at these people sounded blasphemous in Janet's ears. "Father!" she cried. "Father!" He looked at her uncomprehendingly, seemingly failing to recognize her. "What are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing her and attempting to draw her to the wall beside him. But she resisted. There sprang from her lips an unpremeditated question: "Where is Mr. Ditmar?" She was, indeed, amazed at having spoken it. "I don't know," Edward replied distractedly. "We've been looking for him everywhere. My God, to think that this should happen with me at the gates!" he lamented. "Go home, Janet. You can't tell what'll happen, what these fiends will do, you may get hurt. You've got no business here." Catching sight of a belated and breathless policeman, he turned from her in desperation. "Get 'em out! Far God's sake, can't you get 'em out before they ruin the machines?" But Janet waited no longer. Pushing her way frantically through the people filling the yard she climbed the tower stairs and made her way into one of the spinning rooms. The frames were stilled, the overseer and second hands, thrust aside, looked on helplessly while the intruders harangued, cajoled or threatened the operatives, some of whom were cowed and already departing; others, sullen and resentful, remained standing in the aisles; and still others seemed to have caught the contagion of the strike. Suddenly, with reverberating strokes, the mill bells rang out, the electric gongs chattered, the siren screeched, drowning the voices. Janet did not pause, but hurried from room to room until, in passing through an open doorway in the weaving department she ran into Mr. Caldwell. He halted a moment, in surprise at finding her there, calling her by name. She clung to his sleeve, and again she asked the question:-- "Where's Mr. Ditmar?" Caldwell shook his head. His answer was the same as Edward's. "I don't know," he shouted excitedly above the noise. "We've got to get this mob out before they do any damage." He tore himself away, she saw him expostulating with the overseer, and then she went on. These tower stairs, she remembered, led to a yard communicating by a little gate with the office entrance. The door of the vestibule was closed, but the watchman, Simmons, recognizing her, permitted her to enter. The offices were deserted, silent, for the bells and the siren had ceased their clamour; the stenographers and clerks had gone. The short day was drawing to a close, shadows were gathering in the corners of Ditmar's room as she reached the threshold and gazed about her at the objects there so poignantly familiar. She took off her coat. His desk was littered with books and papers, and she started, mechanically, to set it in order, replacing the schedule books on the shelves, sorting out the letters and putting them in the basket. She could not herself have told why she should take up again these trivial tasks as though no cataclysmic events had intervened to divide forever the world of yesterday from that of to-morrow. With a movement suggestive of tenderness she was picking up Ditmar's pen to set it in the glass rack when her ear caught the sound of voices, and she stood transfixed, listening intently. There were footsteps in the corridor, the voices came nearer; one, loud and angered, she detected above the others. It was Ditmar's! Nothing had happened to him! Dropping the pen, she went over to the window, staring out over the grey waters, trembling so violently that she could scarcely stand. She did not look around when they entered the room Ditmar, Caldwell, Orcutt, and evidently a few watchmen and overseers. Some one turned on the electric switch, darkening the scene without. Ditmar continued to speak in vehement tones of uncontrolled rage. "Why in hell weren't those gates bolted tight?" he demanded. "That's what I want to know! There was plenty of time after they turned the corner of East Street. You might have guessed what they would do. But instead of that you let 'em into the mill to shut off the power and intimidate our own people." He called the strikers an unprintable name, and though Janet stood, with her back turned, directly before him, he gave no sign of being aware of her presence. "It wasn't the gatekeeper's fault," she heard Orcutt reply in a tone quivering with excitement and apprehension. "They really didn't give us a chance--that's the truth. They were down Canal Street and over the bridge before we knew it." "It's just as I've said a hundred times," Ditmar retorted. "I can't afford to leave this mill a minute, I can't trust anybody--" and he broke out in another tirade against the intruders. "By God, I'll fix 'em for this--I'll crush 'em. And if any operatives try to walkout here I'll see that they starve before they get back--after all I've done for 'em, kept the mill going in slack times just to give 'em work. If they desert me now, when I've got this Bradlaugh order on my hands--" Speech became an inadequate expression of his feelings, and suddenly his eye fell on Janet. She had turned, but her look made no impression on him. "Call up the Chief of Police," he said. Automatically she obeyed, getting the connection and handing him the receiver, standing by while he denounced the incompetence of the department for permitting the mob to gather in East Street and demanded deputies. The veins of his forehead were swollen as he cut short the explanations of the official and asked for the City Hall. In making an appointment with the Mayor he reflected on the management of the city government. And when Janet by his command obtained the Boston office, he gave the mill treasurer a heated account of the afternoon's occurrences, explaining circumstantially how, in his absence at a conference in the Patuxent Mill, the mob had gathered in East Street and attacked the Chippering; and he urged the treasurer to waste no time in obtaining a force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike. Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been the day before. It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard it, could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was determined to starve and crush if they dared to upset his plans and oppose his will were human beings with wills and passions and grievances of their own. Until to-day her eyes had been sealed. In agony they had been opened to the panorama of sorrow and suffering, of passion and evil; and what she beheld now as life was a vast and terrible cruelty. She had needed only this final proof to be convinced that in his eyes she also was but one of those brought into the world to minister to his pleasure and profit. He had taken from her, as his weed, the most precious thing a woman has to give, and now that she was here again at his side, by some impulse incomprehensible to herself--in spite of the wrong he had done her!--had sought him out in danger, he had no thought of her, no word for her, no use save a menial one: he cared nothing for any help she might be able to give, he had no perception of the new light which had broken within her soul.... The telephoning seemed interminable, yet she waited with a strange patience while he talked with Mr. George Chippering and two of the most influential directors. These conversations had covered the space of an hour or more. And perhaps as a result of self-suggestion, of his repeated assurances to Mr. Semple, to Mr. Chippering, and the directors of his ability to control the situation, Ditmar's habitual self-confidence was gradually restored. And when at last he hung up the instrument and turned to her, though still furious against the strikers, his voice betrayed the joy of battle, the assurance of victory. "They can't bluff me, they'll have to guess again. It's that damned Holster--he hasn't any guts--he'd give in to 'em right now if I'd let him. It's the limit the way he turned the Clarendon over to them. I'll show him how to put a crimp in 'em if they don't turn up here to-morrow morning." He was so magnificently sure of her sympathy! She did, not reply, but picked up her coat from the chair where she had laid it. "Where are you going?" he demanded. And she replied laconically, "Home." "Wait a minute," he said, rising and taking a step toward her. "You have an appointment with the Mayor," she reminded him. "I know," he said, glancing at the clock over the door. "Where have you been?--where were you this morning? I was worried about you, I--I was afraid you might be sick." "Were you?" she said. "I'm all right. I had business in Boston." "Why didn't you telephone me? In Boston?" he repeated. She nodded. He started forward again, but she avoided him. "What's the matter?" he cried. "I've been worried about you all day --until this damned strike broke loose. I was afraid something had happened." "You might have asked my father," she said. "For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last been established. He was conscious, however, of irritation because this whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere with his cherished plans--for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of humanity by the yardstick of his desires. Her question as to why he had not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude. As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn on him. His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck him. "I hate you!" she said. She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate, concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic quality of a bullet. And save for the impact of it--before which he physically recoiled--its import was momentarily without meaning. "What?" he exclaimed, stupidly. "I might have known you never meant to marry me," she went on. Her hands were busy with the buttons of her coat. "All you want is to use me, to enjoy me and turn me out when you get tired of me--the way you've done with other women. It's just the same with these mill hands, they're not human beings to you, they're--they're cattle. If they don't do as you like, you turn them out; you say they can starve for all you care." "For God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded. "What have I done to you, Janet? I love you, I need you!" "Love me!" she repeated. "I know how men of your sort love--I've seen it--I know. As long as I give you what you want and don't bother you, you love me. And I know how these workers feel," she cried, with sudden, passionate vehemence. "I never knew before, but I know now. I've been with them, I marched up here with them from the Clarendon when they battered in the gates and smashed your windows--and I wanted to smash your windows, too, to blow up your mill." "What are you saying? You came here with the strikers? you were with that mob?" asked Ditmar, astoundedly. "Yes, I was in that mob. I belong there, with them, I tell you--I don't belong here, with you. But I was a fool even then, I was afraid they'd hurt you, I came into the mill to find you, and you--and you you acted as if you'd never seen me before. I was a fool, but I'm glad I came--I'm glad I had a chance to tell you this." "My God--won't you trust me?" he begged, with a tremendous effort to collect himself. "You trusted me yesterday. What's happened to change you? Won't you tell me? It's nothing I've done--I swear. And what do you mean when you say you were in that mob? I was almost crazy when I came back and found they'd been here in this mill--can't you understand? It wasn't that I didn't think of you. I'd been worrying about you all day. Look at this thing sensibly. I love you, I can't get along without you--I'll marry you. I said I would, I meant it I'll marry you just as soon as I can clean up this mess of a strike. It won't take long." "Don't touch me!" she commanded, and he recoiled again. "I'll tell you where I've been, if you want to know,--I've been to see my sister in--in a house, in Boston. I guess you know what kind of a house I mean, you've been in them, you've brought women to them,--just like the man that brought her there. Would you marry me now--with my sister there? And am I any different from her? You you've made me just like her." Her voice had broken, now, into furious, uncontrolled weeping--to which she paid no heed. Ditmar was stunned; he could only stare at her. "If I have a child," she said, "I'll--I'll kill you--I'll kill myself." And before he could reply--if indeed he had been able to reply--she had left the office and was running down the stairs.... CHAPTER XIV What was happening to Hampton? Some hundreds of ignorant foreigners, dissatisfied with the money in their pay envelopes, had marched out of the Clarendon Mill and attacked the Chippering and behold, the revered structure of American Government had quivered and tumbled down like a pack of cards! Despite the feverish assurances in the Banner "extra" that the disturbance was merely local and temporary, solid citizens became panicky, vaguely apprehending the release of elemental forces hitherto unrecognized and unknown. Who was to tell these solid, educated business men that the crazy industrial Babel they had helped to rear, and in which they unconsciously dwelt, was no longer the simple edifice they thought it? that Authority, spelled with a capital, was a thing of the past? that human instincts suppressed become explosives to displace the strata of civilization and change the face of the world? that conventions and institutions, laws and decrees crumble before the whirlwind of human passions? that their city was not of special, but of universal significance? And how were these, who still believed themselves to be dwelling under the old dispensation, to comprehend that environments change, and changing demand new and terrible Philosophies? When night fell on that fateful Tuesday the voice of Syndicalism had been raised in a temple dedicated to ordered, Anglo-Saxon liberty--the Hampton City Hall. Only for a night and a day did the rebellion lack both a leader and a philosophy. Meanwhile, in obedience to the unerring instinct for drama peculiar to great metropolitan dailies, newspaper correspondents were alighting from every train, interviewing officials and members of labour unions and mill agents: interviewing Claude Ditmar, the strongest man in Hampton that day. He at least knew what ought to be done, and even before his siren broke the silence of the morning hours in vigorous and emphatic terms he had informed the Mayor and Council of their obvious duty. These strikers were helots, unorganized scum; the regular unions--by comparison respectable--held aloof from them. Here, in effect, was his argument: a strong show of force was imperative; if the police and deputies were inadequate, request the Governor to call out the local militia; but above all, waste no time, arrest the ringleaders, the plotters, break up all gatherings, keep the streets clear. He demanded from the law protection of his property, protection for those whose right to continue at work was inalienable. He was listened to with sympathy and respect--but nothing was done! The world had turned upside down indeed if the City Government of Hampton refused to take the advice of the agent of the Chippering Mill! American institutions were a failure! But such was the fact. Some unnamed fear, outweighing their dread of the retributions of Capital, possessed these men, made them supine, derelict in the face of their obvious duty. By the faint grey light of that bitter January morning Ditmar made his way to the mill. In Faber Street dark figures flitted silently across the ghostly whiteness of the snow, and gathered in groups on the corners; seeking to avoid these, other figures hurried along the sidewalks close to the buildings, to be halted, accosted, pleaded with--threatened, perhaps. Picketing had already begun! The effect of this pantomime of the eternal struggle for survivals which he at first beheld from a distance, was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of the wide street, to emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and a bluish darkness lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were frosted in quaint designs. Where were the police? It was not fear that Ditmar felt, he was galvanized and dominated by anger, by an overwhelming desire for action; physical combat would have brought him relief, and as he quickened his steps he itched to seize with his own hands these foreigners who had dared to interfere with his cherished plans, who had had the audacity to challenge the principles of his government which welcomed them to its shores. He would have liked to wring their necks. His philosophy, too, was environmental. And beneath this wrath, stimulating and energizing it the more, was the ache in his soul from the loss for which he held these enemies responsible. Two days ago happiness and achievement had both been within his grasp. The only woman--so now it seemed--he had ever really wanted! What had become of her? What obscure and passionate impulse had led her suddenly to defy and desert him, to cast in her lot with these insensate aliens? A hundred times during the restless, inactive hours of a sleepless night this question had intruded itself in the midst of his scheming to break the strike, as he reviewed, word by word, act by act, that almost incomprehensible revolt of hers which had followed so swiftly--a final, vindictive blow of fate--on that other revolt of the workers. At moments he became confused, unable to separate the two. He saw her fire in that other.... Her sister, she had said, had been disgraced; she had defied him to marry her in the face of that degradation--and this suddenly had sickened him. He had let her go. What a fool he had been to let her go! Had she herself been--! He did not finish this thought. Throughout the long night he had known, for a certainty, that this woman was a vital part of him, flame of his flame. Had he never seen her he would have fought these strikers to their knees, but now the force of this incentive was doubled. He would never yield until he had crushed them, until he had reconquered her. He was approaching one of the groups of strikers, and unconsciously he slowed his steps. The whites of his eyes reddened. The great coat of golden fur he wore gave to his aspect an added quality of formidableness. There were some who scattered as he drew near, and of the less timorous spirits that remained only a few raised dark, sullen glances to encounter his, which was unflinching, passionately contemptuous. Throughout the countless generations that lay behind them the instinct of submission had played its dominant, phylogenetic role. He was the Master. The journey across the seas had not changed that. A few shivered--not alone because they were thinly clad. He walked on, slowly, past other groups, turned the corner of West Street, where the groups were more numerous, while the number of those running the gantlet had increased. And he heard, twice or thrice, the word "Scab!" cried out menacingly. His eyes grew redder still as he spied a policeman standing idly in a doorway. "Why in hell don't you do your duty?" he demanded. "What do you mean by letting them interfere with these workers?" The man flinched. He was apologetic. "So long as they're peaceable, Mr. Ditmar--those are my orders. I do try to keep 'em movin'." "Your orders? You're a lot of damned cowards," Ditmar replied, and went on. There were mutterings here; herded together, these slaves were bolder; and hunger and cold, discouragement at not being able to stop the flow toward the mills were having their effect. By the frozen canal, the scene of the onslaught of yesterday, the crowd had grown comparatively thick, and at the corner of the lodging-house row Ditmar halted a moment, unnoticed save by a few who nudged one another and murmured. He gave them no attention, he was trying to form an estimate of the effect of the picketing on his own operatives. Some came with timid steps; others, mostly women, fairly ran; still others were self-possessed, almost defiant--and such he marked. There were those who, when the picketers held them by the sleeve, broke precipitately from their annoyers, and those who hesitated, listening with troubled faces, with feelings torn between dread of hunger for themselves and their children and sympathy with the revolt. A small number joined the ranks of the picketers. Ditmar towered above these foreigners, who were mostly undersized: a student of human nature and civilization, free from industrial complexes, would from that point of vantage have had much to gather from the expressions coming within his view, but to Ditmar humanity was a means to an end. Suddenly, from the cupolas above the battlement of the mill, the bells shattered the early morning air, the remnant of the workers hastened across the canal and through the guarded gates, which were instantly closed. Ditmar was left alone among the strikers. As he moved toward the bridge they made a lane for him to pass; one or two he thrust out of his way. But there were mutterings, and from the sidewalk he heard a man curse him. Perhaps we shall understand some day that the social body, also, is subject to the operation of cause and effect. It was not what an ingenuous orthodoxy, keeping alive the fate of the ancient city from which Lot fled, would call the wrath of heaven that visited Hampton, although a sermon on these lines was delivered from more than one of her pulpits on the following Sunday. Let us surmise, rather, that a decrepit social system in a moment of lowered vitality becomes an easy prey to certain diseases which respectable communities are not supposed to have. The germ of a philosophy evolved in decadent Europe flies across the sea to prey upon a youthful and vigorous America, lodging as host wherever industrial strife has made congenial soil. In four and twenty hours Hampton had "caught" Syndicalism. All day Tuesday, before the true nature of the affection was developed, prominent citizens were outraged and appalled by the supineness of their municipal phagocytes. Property, that sacred fabric of government, had been attacked and destroyed, law had been defied, and yet the City Hall, the sanctuary of American tradition, was turned over to the alien mob for a continuous series of mass meetings. All day long that edifice, hitherto chastely familiar with American doctrine alone, with patriotic oratory, with perorations that dwelt upon the wrongs and woes of Ireland--part of our national propaganda--all day long that edifice rang with strange, exotic speech, sometimes guttural, often musical, but always impassioned, weirdly cadenced and intoned. From the raised platform, in place of the shrewd, matter-of-fact New England politician alive to the vote--getting powers of Fourth of July patriotism, in place of the vehement but fun-loving son of Erin, men with wild, dark faces, with burning black eyes and unkempt hair, unshaven, flannel skirted--made more alien, paradoxically, by their conventional, ready-made American clothes--gave tongue to the inarticulate aspirations of the peasant drudge of Europe. From lands long steeped in blood they came, from low countries by misty northern seas, from fair and ancient plains of Lombardy, from Guelph and Ghibelline hamlets in the Apennines, from vine-covered slopes in Sicily and Greece; from the Balkans, from Caucasus and Carpathia, from the mountains of Lebanon, whose cedars lined the palaces of kings; and from villages beside swollen rivers that cross the dreary steppes. Each peasant listened to a recital in his own tongue--the tongue in which the folklore, the cradle sayings of his race had been preserved--of the common wrongs of all, of misery still present, of happiness still unachieved in this land of liberty and opportunity they had found a mockery; to appeals to endure and suffer for a common cause. But who was to weld together this medley of races and traditions, to give them the creed for which their passions were prepared, to lead into battle these ignorant and unskilled from whom organized labour held aloof? Even as dusk was falling, even as the Mayor, the Hon. Michael McGrath, was making from the platform an eloquent plea for order and peace, promising a Committee of Arbitration and thinking about soldiers, the leader and the philosophy were landing in Hampton. The "five o'clock" edition of the Banner announced him, Antonio Antonelli, of the Industrial Workers of the World! An ominous name, an ominous title,--compared by a well-known publicist to the sound of a fire-bell in the night. The Industrial Workers, not of America, but of the World! No wonder it sent shivers down the spine of Hampton! The writer of the article in the Banner was unfamiliar with the words "syndicalism" and "sabotage," or the phrase "direct action," he was too young to know the history of the Knights, he had never heard of a philosophy of labour, or of Sorel or Pouget, but the West he had heard of,--the home of lawlessness, of bloodshed, rape, and murder. For obvious reasons he did not betray this opinion, but for him the I.W.W. was born in the West, where it had ravaged and wrecked communities. His article was guardedly respectful, but he ventured to remind his readers that Mr. Antonelli had been a leader in some of these titanic struggles between crude labour and capital--catastrophes that hitherto had seemed to the citizens of Hampton as remote as Kansas cyclones.... Some of the less timorous of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, "to suffocation." Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than he looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout. In the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared one of the, strange and terrifying creatures which, in times of upheaval, are thrust from the depths of democracies to the surface, with gifts to voice the longings and passions of those below. He did not blink in the light; he was sure of himself, he had a creed and believed in it; he gazed around him with the leonine stare of the conqueror, and a hush came over the hall as he arose. His speech was taken down verbatim, to be submitted to the sharpest of legal eyes, when was discovered the possession of a power--rare among agitators--to pour forth in torrents apparently unpremeditated appeals, to skirt the border of sedition and never transgress it, to weigh his phrases before he gave them birth, and to remember them. If he said an incendiary thing one moment he qualified it the next; he justified violence only to deprecate it; and months later, when on trial for his life and certain remarks were quoted against him, he confounded his prosecutors by demanding the contexts. Skilfully, always within the limits of their intelligence, he outlined to his hearers his philosophy and proclaimed it as that of the world's oppressed. Their cause was his--the cause of human progress; he universalized, it. The world belonged to the "producer," if only he had the courage to take possession of his own.... Suddenly the inspirer was transformed into the man of affairs who calmly proposed the organization of a strike committee, three members of which were to be chosen by each nationality. And the resolution, translated into many tongues, was adopted amidst an uproar of enthusiasm. Until that moment the revolt had been personal, local, founded on a particular grievance which had to do with wages and the material struggle for existence. Now all was changed; now they were convinced that the deprivation and suffering to which they had pledged themselves were not for selfish ends alone, but also vicarious, dedicated to the liberation of all the downtrodden of the earth. Antonelli became a saviour; they reached out to touch him as he passed; they trooped into the snowy street, young men and old, and girls, and women holding children in their arms, their faces alight with something never known or felt before. Such was Antonelli to the strikers. But to those staid residents of Hampton who had thought themselves still to be living in the old New England tradition, he was the genius of an evil dream. Hard on his heels came a nightmare troop, whose coming brought to the remembrance of the imaginative the old nursery rhyme:--"Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark, The beggars are come to town." It has, indeed, a knell-like ring. Do philosophies tend also to cast those who adopt them into a mould? These were of the self-same breed, indubitably the followers of Antonelli. The men wore their hair long, affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that fell over the lapels of their coats. Loose morals and loose ties! The projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity--not of the clandestine sort to be found in decent communities--but of free love that flaunts itself in the face of an outraged public. For there were women in the band. All this, and more, the invaders suggested--atheism, unfamiliarity with soap and water, and, more vaguely, an exotic poetry and art that to the virile of American descent is saturated with something indefinable yet abhorrent. Such things are felt. Few of the older citizens of Hampton were able to explain why something rose in their gorges, why they experienced a new and clammy quality of fear and repulsion when, on the day following Antonelli's advent, these strangers arrived from nowhere to install themselves--with no baggage to speak of --in Hampton's more modest but hitherto respectable hostelries. And no sooner had the city been rudely awakened to the perilous presence, in overwhelming numbers, of ignorant and inflammable foreigners than these turned up and presumed to lead the revolt, to make capital out of it, to interpret it in terms of an exotic and degenerate creed. Hampton would take care of itself--or else the sovereign state within whose borders it was would take care of it. And his Honour the Mayor, who had proclaimed his faith in the reasonableness of the strikers, who had scorned the suggestions of indignant inhabitants that the Governor be asked for soldiers, twenty-four hours too late arranged for the assembly of three companies of local militia in the armory, and swore in a hundred extra police. The hideous stillness of Fillmore Street was driving Janet mad. What she burned to do was to go to Boston and take a train for somewhere in the West, to lose herself, never to see Hampton again. But--there was her mother. She could not leave Hannah in these empty rooms, alone; and Edward was to remain at the mill, to eat and sleep there, until the danger of the strike had passed. A messenger had come to fetch his clothes. After leaving Ditmar in the office of the mill, Janet crept up the dark stairs to the flat and halted in the hallway. Through the open doorway of the dining-room she saw Hannah seated on the horsehair sofa --for the first time within memory idle at this hour of the day. Nothing else could have brought home to her like this the sheer tragedy of their plight. Until then Janet had been sustained by anger and excitement, by physical action. She thought Hannah was staring at her; after a moment it seemed that the widened pupils were fixed in fascination on something beyond, on the Thing that had come to dwell here with them forever. Janet entered the room. She sat down on the sofa and took her mother's hand in hers. And Hannah submitted passively. Janet could not speak. A minute might have passed, and the silence, which neither had broken, acquired an intensity that to Janet became unbearable. Never had the room been so still! Her glance, raised instinctively to the face of the picture-clock, saw the hands pointing to ten. Every Monday morning, as far back as she could recall, her father had wound it before going to work--and to-day he had forgotten. Getting up, she opened the glass door, and stood trying to estimate the hour: it must be, she thought, about six. She set the hands, took the key from the nail above the shelf, wound up the weight, and started the pendulum. And the sound of familiar ticking was a relief, releasing at last her inhibited powers of speech. "Mother," she said, "I'll get some supper for you." On Hannah, these simple words had a seemingly magical effect. Habit reasserted itself. She started, and rose almost briskly. "No you won't," she said, "I'll get it. I'd ought to have thought of it before. You must be tired and hungry." Her voice was odd and thin. Janet hesitated a moment, and ceded. "Well, I'll set the dishes on the table, anyway." Janet had sought refuge, wistfully, in the commonplace. And when the meal was ready she strove to eat, though food had become repulsive. "You must take something, mother," she said. "I don't feel as if I ever wanted to eat anything again," she replied. "I know," said Janet, "but you've got to." And she put some of the cold meat, left over from Sunday's dinner, on Hannah's plate. Hannah took up a fork, and laid it down again. Suddenly she said:--"You saw Lise?" "Yes," said Janet. "Where is she?" "In a house--in Boston." "One of--those houses?" "I--I don't know," said Janet. "I think so." "You went there?" "Mr. Tiernan went with me." "She wouldn't come home?" "Not--not just now, mother." "You left her there, in that place? You didn't make her come home?" The sudden vehemence of this question, the shrill note of reproach in Hannah's voice that revealed, even more than the terrible inertia from which she had emerged, the extent of her suffering, for the instant left Janet utterly dismayed. "Oh mother!" she exclaimed. "I tried--I--I couldn't." Hannah pushed back her chair. "I'll go to her, I'll make her come. She's disgraced us, but I'll make her. Where is she? Where is the house?" Janet, terrified, seized her mother's arm. Then she said:--"Lise isn't there any more--she's gone away." "Away and you let her go away? You let your sister go away and be a--a woman of the town? You never loved her--you never had any pity for her." Tears sprang into Janet's eyes--tears of pity mingled with anger. The situation had grown intolerable! Yet how could she tell Hannah where Lise was! "You haven't any right to say that, mother!" she cried. "I did my best. She wouldn't come. I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she promised to write, to send me her address." "Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love, and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she must be to Hannah. No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could efface it. The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman, her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one. This, then, was what it meant to be a mother! All the years of deadening hope had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered body it was still alive and quick. The agony of that revelation was scarcely to be borne. And it seemed that Lise, even in the place where she was, must have heard that cry and heeded it. And yet--the revelation of Lise's whereabouts, of Lise's contemplated act Janet had nearly been goaded into making, died on her lips. She could not tell Hannah! And Lise's child must not come into a world like this. Even now the conviction remained, fierce, exultant, final. But if Janet had spoken now Hannah would not have heard her. Under the storm she had begun to rock, weeping convulsively.... But gradually her weeping ceased. And to Janet, helplessly watching, this process of congealment was more terrible even than the release that only an unmitigated violence of grief had been able to produce. In silence Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when these were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying listless in her lap. She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have exhausted the gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst, had been the fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that knows no touch of fire.... The next morning Janet was awakened by the siren. Never, even in the days when life had been routine and commonplace, had that sound failed to arouse in her a certain tremor of fear; with its first penetrating shriek, terror invaded her: then, by degrees, overcoming her numbness, came an agonizing realization of tragedy to be faced. The siren blew and blew insistently, as though it never meant to stop; and now for the first time she seemed to detect in it a note of futility. There were those who would dare to defy it. She, for one, would defy it. In that reflection she found a certain fierce joy. And she might lie in bed if she wished --how often had she longed to! But she could not. The room was cold, appallingly empty and silent as she hurried into her clothes. The dining-room lamp was lighted, the table set, her mother was bending over the stove when she reached the kitchen. After the pretence of breakfast was gone through Janet sought relief in housework, making her bed, tidying her room. It was odd, this morning, how her notice of little, familiar things had the power to add to her pain, brought to mind memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when Lise had upset it. She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant remark. And there was the streak in the wall-paper caused one night by the rain leaking through the roof. After the bed was made and the room swept she stood a moment, motionless, and then, opening the drawer in the wardrobe took from it the rose which she had wrapped in tissue paper and hidden there, and with a perverse desire as it were to increase the bitterness consuming her, to steep herself in pain, she undid the parcel and held the withered flower to her face. Even now a fragrance, faint yet poignant, clung to it.... She wrapped it up again, walked to the window, hesitated, and then with a sudden determination to destroy this sole relic of her happiness went to the kitchen and flung it into the stove. Hannah, lingering over her morning task of cleaning, did not seem to notice the act. Janet turned to her. "I think I'll go out for a while, mother," she said. "You'd ought to," Hannah replied. "There's no use settin' around here." The silence of the flat was no longer to be endured. And Janet, putting on her coat and hat, descended the stairs. Not once that morning had her mother mentioned Lise; nor had she asked about her own plans--about Ditmar. This at least was a relief; it was the question she had feared most. In the street she met the postman. "I have a letter for you, Miss Janet," he said. And on the pink envelope he handed her, in purple ink, she recognized the unformed, childish handwriting of Lise. "There's great doings down at the City Hall," the postman added "the foreigners are holding mass meetings there." Janet scarcely heard him as she tore open the envelope. "Dear Janet," the letter ran. "The doctor told me I had a false alarm, there was nothing to it. Wouldn't that jar you? Boston's a slow burg, and there's no use of my staying here now. I'm going to New York, and maybe I'll come back when I've had a look at the great white way. I've got the coin, and I gave him the mit to-night. If you haven't anything better to do, drop in at the Bagatelle and give Walters my love, and tell them not to worry at home. There's no use trying to trail me. Your affectionate sister Lise." Janet thrust the letter in her pocket. Then she walked rapidly westward until she came to the liver-coloured facade of the City Hall, opposite the Common. Pushing through the crowd of operatives lingering on the pavement in front of it, she entered the building.... 
34419	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) THE ANCIENT LAW BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE WHEEL OF LIFE THE DELIVERANCE THE BATTLE-GROUND THE FREEMAN, AND OTHER POEMS THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET THE DESCENDANT The Ancient Law By ELLEN GLASGOW New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1908 COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHED, JANUARY, 1908 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN TO MY GOOD FRIEND EFFENDI CONTENTS BOOK FIRST--THE NEW LIFE CHAPTER PAGE I. The Road 3 II. The Night 15 III. The Return to Tappahannock 31 IV. The Dream of Daniel Smith 42 V. At Tappahannock 54 VI. The Pretty Daughter of the Mayor 62 VII. Shows the Graces of Adversity 72 VIII. "Ten Commandment Smith" 90 IX. The Old and the New 101 X. His Neighbour's Garden 111 XI. Bullfinch's Hollow 123 XII. A String of Coral 135 BOOK SECOND--THE DAY OF RECKONING I. In Which a Stranger Appears 147 II. Ordway Compromises With the Past 162 III. A Change of Lodging 174 IV. Shows That a Laugh Does not Heal a Heartache 185 V. Treats of a Great Passion in a Simple Soul 196 VI. In Which Baxter Plots 209 VII. Shows That Politeness, Like Charity, Is an Elastic Mantle 222 VIII. The Turn of the Wheel 234 IX. At the Cross-roads 248 X. Between Man and Man 256 XI. Between Man and Woman 268 BOOK THIRD--THE LARGER PRISON I. The Return to Life 281 II. His Own Place 290 III. The Outward Pattern 303 IV. The Letter and the Spirit 317 V. The Will of Alice 329 VI. The Iron Bars 341 VII. The Vision and the Fact 353 VIII. The Weakness in Strength 363 BOOK FOURTH--LIBERATION I. The Inward Light 379 II. At Tappahannock Again 392 III. Alice's Marriage 409 IV. The Power of the Blood 420 V. The House of Dreams 434 VI. The Ultimate Choice 443 VII. Flight 454 VIII. The End of the Road 469 IX. The Light Beyond 482 BOOK FIRST THE NEW LIFE CHAPTER I THE ROAD Though it was six days since Daniel Ordway had come out of prison, he was aware, when he reached the brow of the hill, and stopped to look back over the sunny Virginia road, that he drank in the wind as if it were his first breath of freedom. At his feet the road dropped between two low hills beyond which swept a high, rolling sea of broomsedge; and farther still--where the distance melted gradually into the blue sky--he could see not less plainly the New York streets through which he had gone from his trial and the walls of the prison where he had served five years. Between this memory and the deserted look of the red clay road there was the abrupt division which separates actual experience from the objects in a dream. He felt that he was awake, yet it seemed that the country through which he walked must vanish presently at a touch. Even the rough March wind blowing among the broomsedge heightened rather than diminished the effect of the visionary meeting of earth and sky. As he stood there in his ill-fitting clothes, with his head bared in the sun and the red clay ground to fine dust on his coarse boots, it would have been difficult at a casual glance to have grouped him appropriately in any division of class. He might have been either a gentleman who had turned tramp or a tramp who had been born to look a gentleman. Though he was barely above medium height, his figure produced even in repose an impression of great muscular strength, and this impression was repeated in his large, regular, and singularly expressive features. His face was square with a powerful and rather prominent mouth and chin; the brows were heavily marked and the eyes were of so bright a blue that they lent an effect which was almost one of gaiety to his smile. In his dark and slightly coarsened face the colour of his eyes was intensified until they appeared to flash at times like blue lights under his thick black brows. His age was, perhaps, forty years, though at fifty there would probably be but little change recorded in his appearance. At thirty one might have found, doubtless, the same lines of suffering upon his forehead and about his mouth. As he went on over some rotting planks which spanned a stream that had gone dry, the road he followed was visible as a faded scar in a stretch of impoverished, neutral-toned country--the least distinctive and most isolated part of what is known in Virginia as "the Southside." A bleached monotony was the one noticeable characteristic of the landscape--the pale clay road, the dried broomsedge, and even the brownish, circular-shaped cloud of smoke, which hung over the little town in the distance, each contributing a depressing feature to a face which presented at best an unrelieved flatness of colour. The single high note in the dull perspective was struck by a clump of sassafras, which, mistaking the mild weather for a genial April, had flowered tremulously in gorgeous yellow. The sound of a wagon jolting over the rough road, reached him presently from the top of the hill, and as he glanced back, he heard a drawling curse thrown to the panting horses. A moment later he was overtaken by an open spring wagon filled with dried tobacco plants of the last season's crop. In the centre of the load, which gave out a stale, pungent odour, sat a small middle-aged countryman, who swore mild oaths in a pleasant, jesting tone. From time to time, as the stalks beneath him were jostled out of place, he would shift his seat and spread out his short legs clad in overalls of blue jean. Behind him in the road the wind tossed scattered and damaged leaves of tobacco. When the wagon reached Ordway, he glanced over his shoulder at the driver, while he turned into the small grass-grown path amid the clumps of sassafras. "Is that Bernardsville over there?" he asked, pointing in the direction of the cloud of smoke. The wagon drew up quickly and the driver--who showed at nearer view to be a dirty, red-bearded farmer of the poorer class--stared at him with an expression which settled into suspicion before it had time to denote surprise. "Bernardsville! Why, you've come a good forty miles out of your road. That thar's Tappahannock." "Tappahannock? I hadn't heard of it." "Mebbe you ain't, but it never knowed it." "Anything going on there? Work, I mean?" "The biggest shippin' of tobaccy this side o' Danville is goin' on thar. Ever heard o' Danville?" "I know the name, but the tobacco market is about closed now, isn't it? The season's over." The man's laugh startled the waiting horses, and lifting their heads from a budding bush by the roadside, they moved patiently toward Tappahannock. "Closed? Bless you, it never closes--Whoa! thar, won't you, darn you? To be sure sales ain't so brisk to-day as they war a month back, but I'm jest carryin' in my leetle crop to Baxter's warehouse." "It isn't manufactured, then--only bought and sold?" "Oh, it's sold quick enough and bought, too. Baxter auctions the leaf off in lots and it's shipped to the factories in Richmond an' in Danville. You ain't a native of these parts, I reckon?" "A native--no? I'm looking for work." "What sort of work? Thar's work an' work. I saw a man once settin' out in an old field doin' a picture of a pine tree, an' he called it work. Wall, wall, if you're goin' all the way to Tappahannock, I reckon I kin give you a lift along. Mebbe you kin pick up an odd job in Baxter's warehouse--thar's a sayin' that he feeds all the crows in Tappahannock." He drove on with a chuckle, for Ordway had declined the proffered "lift," and the little cloud of dust raised by the wagon drifted slowly in the direction of the town. A mile farther on Ordway found that as the road approached Tappahannock, the country lost gradually its aspect of loneliness, and the colourless fields were dotted here and there with small Negro cabins, built for the most part of unbarked pine logs laid roughly cross-wise to form square enclosures. Before one of these primitive dwellings a large black woman, with a strip of checked blue and white gingham bound about her head, was emptying a pail of buttermilk into a wooden trough. When she saw Ordway she nodded to him from the end of the little path, bordered by rocks, which led from the roadside to the single stone step before her cabin door. As he watched the buttermilk splash into the trough, Ordway remembered, with a spasm of faintness, that he had eaten nothing since the day before, and turning out of the road, he asked the woman for a share of the supper that she gave the pigs. "Go 'way, honey, dis yer ain' fit'n fur you," she replied, resting the pail under her arm against her rolling hip, "I'se des' thowin' hit ter de hawgs." But when he had repeated his request, she motioned to a wooden bench beside a scrubby lilac bush on which a coloured shirt hung drying, and going into the single room inside, brought him a glass of buttermilk and a piece of corn bread on a tin plate. While he ate hungrily of the coarse food a half-naked Negro baby, covered with wood ashes, rolled across the threshold and lay sprawling in the path at his feet. After a little rambling talk the woman went back into the cabin, where she whipped up cornmeal dough in an earthenware bowl, turning at intervals to toss a scrap or two to a red and white cock that hovered, expectant, about the doorway. In the road a covered wagon crawled by, and the shadow it threw stretched along the path to the lilac bush where the coloured shirt hung drying. The pigs drank the buttermilk from the trough with loud grunts; the red and white cock ventured, alert and wary, across the threshold; and the Negro baby, after sprawling on its stomach in the warm earth, rolled over and lay staring in silence at the blue sky overhead. There was little beauty in the scene except the beauty which belongs to all things under the open sky. Road and landscape and cabin were bare even of any chance effect of light and shadow. Yet there was life--the raw, primal life of nature--and after his forty years of wasted experience, Ordway was filled with a passionate desire for life. In his careless pursuit of happiness he had often found weariness instead, but sitting now homeless and penniless, before the negro's cabin, he discovered that each object at which he looked--the long road that led somewhere, the smoke hanging above the distant town, the deep-bosomed negro mother and the half-naked negro baby--that each of these possessed an interest to which he awakened almost with a start of wonder. And yielding to the influence of his thought, his features appeared to lose gradually their surface coarseness of line. It was as if his mouth grew vague, enveloped in shadow, while the eyes dominated the entire face and softened its expression to one of sweetness, gaiety and youth. The child that is in every man big enough to contain it looked out suddenly from his altered face. He was thinking now of a day in his boyhood--of an early autumn morning when the frost was white on the grass and the chestnuts dropped heavily from the spreading boughs and the cider smelt strong and sweet as it oozed from the crushed winesaps. On that morning, after dressing by candlelight, he had gone into town with his maiden aunt, a lady whom he remembered chiefly by her false gray curls which she wore as if they had been a halo. At the wayside station, while they had waited for the train to the little city of Botetourt, he had seen a convict brought in, handcuffed, on his way to the penitentiary, and in response to the boy's persistent questioning, his aunt had told him that the man was wicked, though he appeared to the child's eyes to be only miserable--a thin, dirty, poorly clad labourer with a red cotton handkerchief bound tightly about his jaw. A severe toothache had evidently attacked him, for while he had stared sullenly at the bare planks of the floor, he had made from time to time a suffering, irritable movement with his head. At each gesture the guard had called out sharply: "Keep still there, won't you?" to which the convict had responded by a savage lowering of his heavy brows. For the first time it had occurred to the child that day that there must be a strange contradiction--a fundamental injustice in the universal scheme of nature. He had always been what his father had called impatiently "a boy with ideas," and it had seemed to him then that this last "idea" of his was far the most wonderful of them all--more wonderful than any he had found in books or in his own head at night. At the moment he had felt it swell so large in his heart that a glow of happiness had spread through his body to his trembling hands. Slipping from his aunt's hold he had crossed the room to where the convict sat sullenly beside his guard. "I'll give you all my money," he had cried out joyously, "because I am so much happier than you." The convict had started and looked up with an angry flash in his eyes; the guard had burst into a loud laugh while he spat tobacco juice through the window; the silver had scattered and rolled under the benches on the plank floor; and the child's aunt, rustling over in her stiff brocade, had seized his arm and dragged him, weeping loudly, into the train. So his first mission had failed, yet at this day he could remember the joy with which he had stretched out his little hand and the humiliation in which he had drawn it back. That was thirty years ago, but he wondered now if the child's way had been God's way, after all? For there had come an hour in his life when the convict of his boyhood had stood in closer relationship to his misery than the people whom he had touched in the street. His childish memories scattered like mist, and the three great milestones of his past showed bare and white, as his success, his temptation and his fall. He remembered the careless ambition of his early youth, the brilliant promise of his college years, and the day on which he had entered as a younger member the great banking house of Amos, Bonner, and Amos. Between this day and the slow minutes when he had stood in his wife's sitting-room awaiting his arrest, he could find in his thoughts no gradation of years to mark the terrible swiftness of his descent. In that time which he could not divide Wall Street had reached out and sucked him in; the fever of speculation had consumed like disease the hereditary instincts, the sentiments of honour, which had barred its way. One minute he had stood a rich man on the floor of the Stock Exchange--and was it an instant or a century afterwards that he had gone out into the street and had known himself to be a beggar and a criminal? Other men had made millions with the use of money which they held in trust; but the star of the gambler had deserted him at the critical hour; and where other men had won and triumphed, he had gone down, he told himself, dishonoured by a stroke of luck. In his office that day a mirror over the mantel had showed him his face as he entered, and he had stopped to look at it almost with curiosity--as if it were the face of a stranger which repelled him because it bore some sinister likeness to his own. After this there had come days, weeks, months, when at each sudden word, at each opening of the door, he had started, half sickened, by fear of the discovery which he knew must come. His nerves had quivered and given way under the pressure; he had grown morose, irritable, silent; and in some half-insane frenzy, he had imagined that his friends, his family, his wife, even his young children, had begun to regard him with terror and suspicion. But at last the hour had come, and in the strength with which he had risen to meet it, he had won back almost his old self--for courage, not patience, was the particular virtue of his temperament. He had stood his trial bravely, had heard his sentence without a tremor, and had borne his punishment without complaint. The world and he were quits now, and he felt that it owed him at least the room for a fair fight. The prison, he had said once, had squared him with his destiny, yet to-day each act of his past appeared to rivet, not itself, but its result upon his life. Though he told himself that he was free, he knew that, in the reality of things, he was still a prisoner. From the lowest depths that he had touched he was reached even now by the agony of his most terrible moment when, at the end of his first hopeless month, he had found awaiting him one day a letter from his wife. It was her final good-bye, she had written; on the morrow she would leave with her two children for his father's home in Virginia; and the single condition upon which the old man had consented to provide for them was that she should separate herself entirely from her husband. "The condition is hard," she had added, "made harder, too, by the fact that you are his son and my only real claim upon him is through you--yet when you consider the failure of our life together, and that the children's education even is unprovided for, you will, I feel sure, admit that my decision has been a wise one." The words had dissolved and vanished before his eyes, and turning away he had flung himself on his prison bed, while the hard, dry sobs had quivered like blows in his chest. Yet she was right! His judgment had acquitted her in the first agony of his reproach, and the unerring justice in her decision had convicted him with each smooth, calm sentence in her letter. As he lay there he had lost consciousness of the bare walls and the hot sunshine that fell through the grating, for the ultimate desolation had closed over him like black waters. A little later he had gone from his cell and taken up his life again; but all that he remembered of it now was a voice that had called to him in the prison yard. "You look so darn sunk in the mouth I'll let you have my last smoke--damn you!" Turning sullenly he had accepted the stranger's tobacco, unaware at the moment that he was partaking of the nature of a sacrament--for while he had smoked there in his dogged misery, he had felt revive in his heart a stir of sympathy for the convict he had seen at the wayside station in Virginia. As if revealed by an inner illumination the impressions of that morning had started, clear as light, into his brain. The frost on the grass, the dropping chestnuts, the strong sweet smell of the crushed winesaps--these things surrounded in his memory the wretched figure of the man with the red cotton handkerchief bound tightly about his swollen jaw. But the figure had ceased now to stand for itself and for its own degradation alone--haunting, tragic, colossal, it had become in his thoughts the image of all those who suffer and are oppressed. So through his sin and his remorse, Ordway had travelled slowly toward the vision of service. With a word of thanks to the woman, he rose from the bench and went down the little path and out into the road. The wind had changed suddenly, and as he emerged from the shelter of a thicket, it struck against his face with a biting edge. Where the sun had declined in the western sky, heavy clouds were driving close above the broken line of the horizon. The night promised to be cold, and he pushed on rapidly, urged by a feeling that the little town before him held rest and comfort and the new life beneath its smoking chimneys. Walking was less difficult now, for the road showed signs of travel as it approached the scattered houses, which appeared thrust into community by the surrounding isolation of the fields. At last, as he ascended a slight elevation, he found that the village, screened by a small grove of pines, lay immediately beneath the spot upon which he stood. CHAPTER II THE NIGHT The scattered houses closed together in groups, the road descended gradually into a hollow, and emerging on the opposite side, became a street, and the street slouched lazily downhill to where a railroad track ran straight as a seam across the bare country. Quickening his steps, Ordway came presently to the station--a small wooden building newly painted a brilliant yellow--and pushed his way with difficulty through a crowd of Negroes that had gathered closely beside the waiting train. "Thar's a good three hundred of the critters going to a factory in the North," remarked a man behind him, "an' yit they don't leave more'n a speck of white in the county. Between the crows an' the darkies I'll be blamed if you can see the colour of the soil." The air was heavy with hot, close smells--a mingling of smoke, tobacco, dust and humanity. A wailing sound issued from the windows of the cars where the dark faces were packed tightly together, and a tall Negro, black as ebony, in a red shirt open at the throat, began strumming excitedly upon a banjo. Near him a mulatto woman lifted a shrill soprano voice, while she stood beating the air distractedly with her open palms. On the other side of the station a dog howled, and the engine uttered an angry whistle as if impatient of the delay. After five years of prison discipline, the ugly little town appeared to Ordway to contain an alluring promise of freedom. At the instant the animation in the scene spoke to his blood as if it had been beauty, and movement seemed to him to possess some peculiar æsthetic quality apart from form or colour. The brightly dyed calicos on the Negro women; the shining black faces of the men, smooth as ebony; the tragic primitive voices, like voices imprisoned in the soil; the strumming of the rude banjo; the whistling engine and the howling dog; the odours of smoke and dust and fertilisers--all these things blended in his senses to form an intoxicating impression of life. Nothing that could move or utter sounds or lend a spot of colour appeared common or insignificant to his awakened brain. It was all life, and for five years he had been starved in every sense and instinct. The main street--Warehouse Street, as he found later that it was called--appeared in the distance as a broad river of dust which ran from the little station to where the warehouses and small shops gave place to the larger dwellings which presided pleasantly over the neighbouring fields. As Ordway followed the board sidewalk, he began idly reading the signs over the shops he passed, until "Kelly's Saloon," and "Baker's General Store" brought him suddenly upon a dark oblong building which ran back, under a faded brick archway. Before the entrance several men were seated in cane chairs, which they had tilted conveniently against the wall, and at Ordway's approach they edged slightly away and sat regarding him over their pipes with an expression of curiosity which differed so little in the different faces that it appeared to result from some internal automatic spring. "I beg your pardon," he began after a moment's hesitation, "but I was told that I might find work in Baxter's warehouse." "Well, it's a first-rate habit not to believe everything you're told," responded an enormous man, in half-soiled clothes, who sat smoking in the middle of the archway. "I can't find work myself in Baxter's warehouse at this season. Ain't that so, boys?" he enquired with a good-natured chuckle of his neighbours. "Are you Mr. Baxter?" asked Ordway shortly. "I'm not sure about the Mister, but I'm Baxter all right." He had shifted his pipe to the extreme corner of his mouth as he spoke, and now removing it with what seemed an effort, he sat prodding the ashes with his stubby thumb. His face, as he glanced down, was overspread by a flabbiness which appeared to belong to expression rather than to feature. "Then there's no chance for me?" enquired Ordway. "You might try the cotton mills--they's just down the next street. If there's a job to be had in town you'll most likely run up against it there." "It's no better than a wild goose chase you're sending him on, Baxter," remarked a smaller member of the group, whose head protruded unexpectedly above Baxter's enormous shoulder; "I was talking to Jasper Trend this morning and he told me he was turning away men every day. Whew! but this wind is getting too bitter for me, boys." "Oh, there's no harm can come of trying," insisted the cheerful giant, pushing back his chair as the others retreated out of the wind, "if hope doesn't fill the stomach it keeps the heart up, and that's something." His great laugh rolled out, following Ordway along the street as he went in pursuit of the fugitive opportunity which disported itself now in the cotton factory at the foot of the hill. When he reached the doors the work of the day was already over, and a crowd of operatives surged through the entrance and overflowed into the two roads which led by opposite ways into the town. Drawing to one side of the swinging doors, he stood watching the throng a moment before he could summon courage to enter the building and inquire for the office of the manager. When he did so at last it was with an almost boyish feeling of hesitation. The manager--a small, wiry man with a wart on the end of his long nose--was hurriedly piling papers into his desk before closing the factory and going home to supper. His hands moved impatiently, almost angrily, for he remembered that he had already worked overtime and that the muffins his wife had promised him for supper would be cold. At any other hour of the day he would have received Ordway with politeness--for he was at heart a well-disposed and even a charitable person--but it happened that his dinner had been unsatisfactory (his mutton had been served half raw by a new maid of all-work) and he had particularly set his hopes upon the delicious light muffins in which his wife excelled. So when he saw Ordway standing between him and his release, his face grew black and the movements of his hands passed to jerks of frantic irritation. "What do you want? Say it quick--I've no time to talk," he began, as he pushed the last heap of papers inside, and let the lid of his desk fall with a bang. "I'm looking for work," said Ordway, "and I was told at Baxter's warehouse----" "Darn Baxter. What kind of work do you want?" "I'll take anything--I can do bookkeeping or----" "Well, I don't want a bookkeeper." He locked his desk, and turning to take down his hat, was incensed further by discovering that it was not on the hook where he had placed it when he came in. Finding it at last on a heap of reports in the corner, he put it on his head and stared at Ordway, with his angry eyes. "You must have come a long way--haven't you? Mostly on foot?" "A good distance." "Why did you select Tappahannock? Was there any reason?" "I wanted to try the town, that was all." "Well, I tell you what, my man," concluded the manager, while his rage boiled over in the added instants of his delay; "there have been a blamed sight too many of your kind trying Tappahannock of late--and the best thing you can do is to move on to a less particular place. When we want bookkeepers here we don't pick 'em up out of the road." Ordway swallowed hard, and his hands clinched in a return of one of his boyish spasms of temper. His vision of the new life was for an instant defaced and clouded; then as he met the angry little eyes of the man before him, he felt that his rage went out of him as suddenly as it had come. Turning without a word, he passed through the entrance and out into the road, which led back, by groups of negro hovels, into the main street of the town. His anger gave place to helplessness; and it seemed to him, when he reached presently the larger dwellings upon the hill, and walked slowly past the squares of light that shone through the unshuttered windows, that he was more absolutely alone than if he had stood miles away from any human habitation. The outward nearness had become in his thoughts the measure of the inner distance. He felt himself to be detached from humanity, yet he knew that in his heart there existed a stronger bond than he had ever admitted in the years of his prosperity. The generous impulses of his youth were still there, but had not sorrow winnowed them from all that was base or merely selfish? Was the lesson that he had learned in prison to be wholly lost? Did the knowledge he had found there count for nothing in his life--the bitterness of shame, the agony of remorse, the companionship with misery? He remembered a Sunday in the prison when he had listened to a sermon from a misshapen little preacher, whose face was drawn sideways by a burn which he had suffered during an epileptic seizure in his childhood. In spite of his grotesque features the man had drawn Ordway by some invisible power which he had felt even then to be the power of faith. Crippled, distorted, poorly clad, the little preacher, he felt, had found the great possession which he was still seeking--this man believed with a belief that was larger than the external things which he had lost. When he shut his eyes now he could still see the rows of convicts in the chapel, the pale, greenish light in which each face resembled the face of a corpse, the open Bible in its black leather binding, and beside it the grotesque figure of the little preacher who had come, like his Master, to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance. The sun had dropped like a ball below the gray horizon, and the raw March wind, when it struck him now, brought no longer the exhilaration of the afternoon. A man passed him, comfortable, well-fed, wheezing slightly, with his fat neck wrapped in a woollen muffler, and as he stopped before a whitewashed gate, which opened into the garden surrounding a large, freshly painted house, Ordway touched his arm and spoke to him in a voice that had fallen almost to a whisper. At his words, which were ordinary enough, the man turned on him a face which had paled slightly from surprise or fear. In the twilight Ordway could see his jaw drop while he fumbled awkwardly with his gloved hands at the latch of the gate. "I don't know what you mean--I don't know" he repeated in a wheezing voice, "I'm sorry, but I really don't know," he insisted again as if in a helpless effort to be understood. Once inside the garden, he closed the gate with a bang behind him, and went rapidly up the gravelled walk to the long piazza where the light of a lamp under a red shade streamed through the open door. Turning away Ordway followed the street to the end of the town, where it passed without distinct change of character into the country road. On this side the colour of the soil had paled until it looked almost blanched under the rising moon. Though the twilight was already in possession of the fields a thin red line was still visible low in the west, and beneath this the scattered lights in negro cabins shone like obscure, greenish glow-worms, hidden among clumps of sassafras or in stretches of dried broomsedge. As Ordway looked at these humble dwellings, it seemed to him that they might afford a hospitality denied him by the more imposing houses of the town. He had already eaten of the Negro's charity, and it was possible that before dawn he might be compelled to eat of it again. Beneath his feet the long road called to him as it wound a curving white line drawn through the vague darkness of the landscape. Somewhere in a distant pasture a bull bellowed, and the sound came to him like the plaintive voice of the abandoned fields. While he listened the response of his tired feet to the road appeared to him as madness, and stopping short, he turned quickly and looked back in the direction of Tappahannock. But from the spot on which he stood the lights of the town offered little promise of hospitality, so after an uncertain glance, he moved on again to a bare, open place where two roads met and crossed at the foot of a blasted pine. A few steps farther he discovered that a ruined gate stood immediately on his right, and beyond the crumbling brick pillars, he made out dimly the outlines of several fallen bodies, which proved upon nearer view to be the prostrate forms of giant cedars. An avenue had once led, he gathered, from the gate to a house situated somewhere at the end of the long curve, for the great trees lying across the road must have stood once as the guardians of an estate of no little value. Whether the cedars had succumbed at last to age or to the axe of the destroyer, it was too dark at the moment for him to ascertain; but the earth had claimed them now, magnificent even in their ruin, while under the dim tent of sky beyond, he could still discern their living companions of a hundred years. So impressive was the past splendour of this approach that the house seemed, when he reached it, almost an affront to the mansion which his imagination had reared. Broad, low, built of brick, with two long irregular wings embedded in English ivy, and a rotting shingled roof that sloped over dormered windows, its most striking characteristic as he first perceived it under the moonlight was the sentiment which is inevitably associated with age and decay. Never imposing, the dwelling was now barely habitable, for the roof was sagging in places over the long wings, a chimney had fallen upon one of the moss-covered eaves, the stone steps of the porch were hollowed into dangerous channels, and the ground before the door was strewn with scattered chips from a neighbouring wood pile. The air of desolation was so complete that at first Ordway supposed the place to be uninhabited, but discovering a light presently in one of the upper windows, he ascended the steps and beat with the rusted knocker on the panel of the door. For several minutes there was no answer to his knock. Then the sound of shuffling footsteps reached him from the distance, drawing gradually nearer until they stopped immediately beyond the threshold. "I ain' gwine open dis yer do' ef'n hits oner dem ole hants," said a voice within, while a sharp point of light pierced through the keyhole. An instant later, in response to Ordway's assurance of his bodily reality, the bolt creaked back with an effort and the door opened far enough to admit the slovenly head and shoulders of an aged negress. "Miss Meely she's laid up en she cyar'n see ner comp'ny, Marster," she announced with the evident intention of retreating as soon as her message was delivered. Her purpose, however, was defeated, for, slipping his heavy boot into the crack of the door, Ordway faced her under the lamp which she held high above her head. In the shadows beyond he could see dimly the bare old hall and the great winding staircase which led to the painted railing of the gallery above. "Can you give me shelter for the night?" he asked, "I am a stranger in the county, and I've walked thirty miles to-day." "Miss Meely don' wan'ner comp'ny," replied the negress, while her head, in its faded cotton handkerchief, appeared to swing like a pendulum before his exhausted eyes. "Who is Miss Meely?" he demanded, laying his hand upon her apron as she made a sudden terrified motion of flight. "Miss Meely Brooke--Marse Edward's daughter. He's daid." "Well, go and ask her. I'll wait here on the porch until you return." Her eyelids flickered in the lamplight, and he saw the whites of her eyes leap suddenly into prominence. Then the door closed again, the bolt shot back into place, and the shuffling sound grew fainter as it passed over the bare floor. A cold nose touched Ordway's hand, and looking down he saw that an old fox-hound had crept into the porch and was fawning with pleasure at his feet. He was conscious of a thrill of gratitude for the first demonstrative welcome he had received at Tappahannock; and while he stood there with the hound leaping upon his chest, he felt that, in spite of "Miss Meely," hidden somewhere behind the closed door, the old house had not lost utterly the spirit of hospitality. His hand was still on the dog's head when the bolt creaked again and the negress reappeared upon the threshold. "Miss Meely she sez she's moughty sorry, suh, but she cyarn' hev ner strange gent'mun spendin' de night in de house. She reckons you mought sleep in de barn ef'n you wanter." As the door opened wider, her whole person, clad in a faded woollen dress, patched brightly in many colours, emerged timidly and followed him to the topmost step. "You des go roun' ter de back en den thoo' de hole whar de gate used ter be, en dar's de barn. Nuttin' ain' gwine hu't you lessen hits dat ar ole ram 'Lejab." "Well, he shall not find me unprepared," responded Ordway, with a kind of desperate gaiety, and while the old hound still leaped at his side, he found his way into a little path which led around the corner of the house, and through the tangled garden to the barn just beyond the fallen gateposts. Here the dog deserted him, running back to the porch, where a woman's voice called; and stumbling over a broken ploughshare or two, he finally reached the poor shelter which Miss Meely's hospitality afforded. It was very dark inside, but after closing the door to shut out the wind, he groped his way through the blackness to a pile of straw in one corner. The place smelt of cattle, and opposite to the spot on which he lay, he distinguished presently a soft, regular sound which he concluded to be caused by the breathing of a cow. Evidently the barn was used as a cattleshed also, though his observation of the mansion did not lead him to suppose that "Miss Meely" possessed anything approaching a herd. He remembered the old negress's warning allusion to the ram, but so far at least the darkness had revealed nothing that could prove hostile to his company. His head ached and his will seemed suddenly benumbed, so stretching himself at full length in the straw he fell, after a few troubled moments, into the deep and dreamless sleep of complete physical exhaustion. An instant afterwards, it seemed to him, he was aroused by a light which flashed into his face from the opening door. A cold wind blew over him, and as he struggled almost blindly back into consciousness, he saw that a girl in a red cape stood holding a lantern above her head in the centre of the barn. At his first look the red cape warmed him as if it had been flame; then he became aware that a voice was speaking to him in a peculiar tone of cheerful authority. And it seemed to him that the red cape and the rich voice expressed the same dominant quality of personality. "I thought you must be hungry," said the voice with energy, "so I've brought your supper." Even while he instinctively grasped the tray she held out, he observed with quickened attention that the hands which offered him the food had toiled out of doors in good and bad weather--though small and shapely they were chapped from cold and roughened by marks of labour. "You'd better drink your coffee while it's hot," said the voice again. The practical nature of her advice put him immediately at his ease. "It's the first hot thing I've had for a week," he responded. "Then it will be all the better for you," replied the girl, while she reached up to hang the lantern from a rusted nail in the wall. As the light fell over her, the red cape slipped a little from her shoulder and she put up her hand to catch it together on her bosom. The movement, slight as it was, gave Ordway a chance to observe that she possessed a kind of vigorous grace, which showed in the roundness of her limbs and in the rebellious freedom of her thick brown hair. The airy little curls on her temples stood out, he noticed, as if she had been walking bareheaded in the wind. At his first look it did not occur to him that she was beautiful; what impressed him most was the quality of radiant energy which revealed itself in every line of her face and figure--now sparkling in her eyes, now dimpling in her cheek, now quickening her brisk steps across the floor, and now touching her eyes and mouth like an edge of light. It may have been merely the effect of the red cape on a cold night, but as she moved back and forth into the dark corners of the barn, she appeared to him to gather both warmth and animation out of the gloom. As she did not speak again during her work, he found himself forced to observe the same friendly silence. The ravenous hunger of the afternoon had returned to him with the odour of the food, and he ate rapidly, sitting up on his straw bed, while she took up a bucket and a piece of wood sharpened at one end and prepared a bran mash for the cow quartered in a stall in one corner. When a little later she gathered up an armful of straw to replenish the animal's bed, Ordway pushed the tray aside and made a movement as if to assist her; but stopping an instant in her task, she waved him aside with the easy dignity of perfect capability. "I can do it myself, thank you," she said, smiling; and then, glancing at his emptied plate, she added carelessly, "I'll send back presently for the tray and lantern--good-night!" Her tone had changed perceptibly on the last word, for its businesslike authority had given place to the musical Southern drawl so familiar to his ears in childhood. In that simple phrase, accompanied by the gracious bend of her whole person, she had put unconsciously generations of social courtesy--of racial breeding. "Thank you--good-night," he answered, rising, and drawing back with his hand on the heavy latch. Then before she could reach the door and pass through, a second lantern flashed there out of the blackness beyond, and the terrified face of a Negro urchin was thrust into the full glare of light. "Fo' de good Lawd, Miss Em'ly, dat ar ole ram done butt Sis Mehitable clean inter de smoke 'us." Perfectly unruffled by the news the girl looked at Ordway, and then held out her small, strong hand for the lantern. "Very well, I'll come and shut him up," she responded quietly, and holding the red cape together on her bosom, she stepped over the threshold and followed the Negro urchin out into the night. CHAPTER III THE RETURN TO TAPPAHANNOCK At sunrise he came out of the barn, and washed his face and hands at the well, where he found a coarse towel on the moss-covered trough. The day was breaking clear, but in the fine golden light the house and lawn appeared even more desolate than they had done under the full moon. Before the war the place had been probably a comfortable, unpretentious country mansion. Some simple dignity still attached to its bowers of ivy and its ancient cedars, but it was easy to imagine that for thirty years no shingle had been added to its crumbling roof, and hardly a ship gathered from the littered walk before the door. At the end of the avenue six great trees had fallen a sacrifice, he saw now, to the mere lust for timber--for freshly cut and still odorous with sap, the huge trunks lay directly across the approach over which they had presided through the tragic history of the house. Judged by what it must have been in a fairly prosperous past, the scene was sad enough even to the eyes of a stranger; and as Ordway walked slowly down the dim, fragrant curve of the avenue, he found it difficult to place against so sombre a background, a figure as full of life and animation as that of the girl he had seen in the barn on the evening before. She appeared to his imagination as the embodiment of youth amid surroundings whose only remaining beauties were those of age. Though he had resolved yesterday not to return to Tappahannock, he found himself presently retracing, almost without an effort of will, the road which he had travelled so heavily in the night. Something between sunrise and sunset had renewed his courage and altered his determination. Was it only the wasted strength which had returned to him in his sleep? Or was it--he hesitated at the thought--the flush of shame which had burned his face when the girl's lantern had flashed over him out of the darkness? In that pitiless illumination it was as if not only his roughened surface, but his secret sin was laid bare; and he had felt again all the hideous publicity that had touched him and put him as one apart in the court-room. Though he had outgrown the sin, he knew now that he must carry the scar of it until his death; and he knew, also, that the reality of his punishment had been in the spirit and not in the law. For a while he walked rapidly in the direction of Tappahannock; then sitting down in the sunshine upon the roadside, he ate the piece of cornbread he had saved last night from his supper. It would be several hours at least before he might hope to find the warehouses open for the day, so he sat patiently eating his bread under the bared boughs of a young peach-tree, while he watched the surface of the long white road which appeared to hold for him as much despondency as freedom. A farmer driving a spotted cow to market spoke to him presently in a friendly voice; and rising to his feet, he overtook the man and fell into the jogging pace which was rendered necessary by the reluctance of the animal to proceed. "I declar' the sense in them thar critters do beat all," remarked the farmer, after an ineffectual tug at the rope he held. "She won't be drove no more 'n a woman will--her head is what she wants no matter whar it leads her." "Can you tell me," inquired Ordway, when they had started again upon the advance, "the name of the old house I passed a mile or so along the road?" "Oh, you mean Cedar Hill, I reckon!--thar now, Betsey, that thar toad ain't a turnip!" "Cedar Hill, is it? Well, they appear to be doing their level best to get rid of the cedars." "Mr. Beverly did that--not Miss Em'ly. Miss Em'ly dotes on them trees jest the same as if they were made of flesh and blood." "But the place belongs to Mr. Beverly, I presume?" "If thar's a shingle of it that ain't mortgaged, I reckon it does--though for that matter Miss Em'ly is overseer and manager, besides teachin' every day in the public school of Tappahannock. Mr. Beverly's got a soft heart in his body--all the Brookes had that they say--but the Lord who made him knows that he ain't overblessed with brains. He used to speculate with most of the family money, but as luck would have it he always speculated wrong. Then he took to farmin', but he's got such a slow gentlemanly way about him that nothin' he puts in the ground ever has spirit enough to come up agin. His wife's just like him--she was Miss Amelia Meadows, his second cousin from the up-country, and when the children kept on comin' so thick and fast, as is the Lord's way with po' folks, people said thar warn't nothin' ahead of 'em but starvation. But Miss Em'ly she come back from teachin' somewhar down South an' undertook to run the whole place single-handed. Things are pickin' up a little now, they say--she's got a will of her own, has Miss Em'ly, but thar ain't anybody in these parts that wouldn't work for her till they dropped. She sent for me last Monday to help her mend her henhouse, and though I was puttin' a new roof over my wife's head, I dropped everything I had and went. That was the day Mr. Beverly cut down the cedars." "So Miss Emily didn't know of it?" "She was in school, suh--you see she teaches in Tappahannock from nine till three, so Mr. Beverly chose that time to sell the avenue to young Tom Myers. He's a sly man, is Mr. Beverly, for all his soft, slow ways, and if Young Tom had been on time he'd have had half the avenue belted before Miss Em'ly got back from school. But he got in some mess or other at the store, and he was jest hewin' like thunder at his sixth cedar, when up come Miss Em'ly on that old white horse she rides. Good Lord! I hope I'll never see anybody turn so white agin as she did when her eyes lighted on them fallen trees. 'Beverly,' she called out in a loud, high voice, 'have you dared to sell the cedars?' Mr. Beverly looked a little sick as if his stomach had gone aginst him of a sudden, but he stood right up on the trunk of a tree, and mumbled something about presarvin' useless timber when the children had no shoes an' stockings to thar feet. Then Miss Em'ly gave him a look that scorched like fire, and she rode straight up to Myers on her old horse and said as quiet as death: 'Put up your axe, Tom, I'll give you back your money. How much have you paid him down?' When Young Tom looked kind of sheepish and said: 'a hundred dollars,' I saw her eyelids flicker, but she didn't hesitate an instant. 'You shall have it within an hour on my word of honour,' she answered, 'can you wait?' 'I reckon I can wait all day, Miss,' said Young Tom--and then she jumped down from her horse, and givin' me the bridle, caught up her skirt and ran indoors. In a minute she came flying out agin and before we had time to catch our breath she was ridin' for dear life back to town. 'You'd better go on with yo' work,' said Mr. Beverly in his soft way, but Young Tom picked up his axe, and sat down on the big stump behind him. 'I reckon I can take her word better 'n yours, Mr. Beverly,' he answered, 'an' 'I reckon you can, too, Young Tom,' said I----." "But how did she raise the money?" inquired Ordway. "That's what nobody knows, suh, except her and one other. Some say she sold a piece of her mother's old jewelry--a locket or something she had put by--and some believe still that she borrowed it from Robert Baxter or Jasper Trend. Whichever way it was, she came ridin' up within the hour on her old white horse with the notes twisted tight in her handkerchief. She was mighty quiet, then, but when it was over, great Lord, what a temper she was in. I declar' she would have struck Mr. Beverly with the sour gum twig she used for a whip if I hadn't slipped in between 'em an' caught her arm. Then she lashed him with her tongue till he seemed to wither and shrink all over." "And served him right, God bless her!" said Ordway. "That's so, suh, but Mr. Beverly ain't a bad man--he's jest soft." "Yet your Miss Emily still sticks to him, it seems?" "If she didn't the farm wouldn't hold together a week. What she makes from teachin' is about all they have to live on in my opinion. Last summer, too, she started raisin' garden things an' poultry, an' she'd have got quite a thrivin' business if she had had any kind of help. Then in July she tried her hand at puttin' up preserves and jellies to send to them big stores in the North." Ordway remembered the cheerful authority in her voice, the little cold red hands that had offered him his supper; and his heart contracted as it did at the memory of his daughter Alice. Yet it was not pity alone that moved him, for mingled with the appeal to his sympathy there was something which awoke in him the bitter agony of remorse. So the girl in the red cape could endure poverty such as this with honour! At the thought his past sin and his present disgrace appeared to him not only as crime but as cowardliness. He recalled the angry manager of the cotton mills, but there was no longer resentment in his mind either against the individual or against society. Instead it seemed to him that all smaller emotions dissolved in a tenderness which placed this girl and Alice apart with the other good and inspiring memories of his life. As he walked on in silence a little incident of ten years before returned to his thoughts, and he remembered the day he had found his child weeping beside a crippled beggar on his front steps. When, a little later, they reached Tappahannock, the farmer turned with his reluctant cow into one of the smaller paths which led across the common on the edge of the town. As it was still too early to apply for work, Ordway sat down on a flat stone before an iron gate and watched the windows along the street for any signs of movement or life within. At length several frowsy Negro maids leaned out while the wooden shutters swung slowly back against the walls; then a milk wagon driven by a small boy clattered noisily round the corner, and in response to the shrill whistle of the driver, the doors opened hurriedly and the Negro maids rushed, with outstretched pitchers, down the gravelled walks to the iron gates. Presently an appetising odour of bacon reached Ordway's nostrils; and in the house across the street a woman with her hair done up on pins, came to the window and began grinding coffee in a wooden mill. Not until eight o'clock did the town open its gates and settle itself to the day's work. When the doors of the warehouses were fastened back, Ordway turned into the main street again, and walked slowly downhill until he came to the faded brick archway where the group of men had sat smoking the evening before. Now there was an air of movement in the long building which had appeared as mere dim vacancy at the hour of sunset. Men were passing in and out of the brick entrance, from which a thin coat of whitewash was peeling in splotches; covered wagons half filled with tobacco were standing, unhitched, along the walls; huge bags of fresh fertilisers were thrown carelessly in corners; and in the centre of the great floor, an old Negro, with a birch broom tied together with coloured string, was sweeping into piles the dried stems left after yesterday's sales. As he swept, a little cloud of pungent dust rose before the strokes of his broom and floated through the brick archway out into the street. This morning there was even less attention paid to Ordway's presence than there had been at the closing hour. Planters hurried back and forth preparing lots for the opening sale; a wagon drove into the building, and the driver got down over the muddy wheel and lifted out several willow crates through which Ordway could catch a glimpse of the yellow sun-cured leaf. The old Negro swept briskly, piling the trash into heaps which would finally be ground into snuff or used as a cheap grade of fertiliser. Lean hounds wandered to and fro, following the covered wagons and sniffing suspiciously at the loose plants arranged in separate lots in the centre of the floor. "Is Baxter here this morning?" Ordway asked presently of a countryman who lounged on a pile of bags near the archway. "I reckon you'll find him in his office," replied the man, as he spat lazily out into the street; "that thar's his door," he added, pointing to a little room on the right of the entrance--"I seed him go in an' I ain't seed him come out." Nodding his thanks for the information, Ordway crossed the building and rapped lightly on the door. In response to a loud "come in," he turned the knob and stood next instant face to face with the genial giant of the evening before. "Good-morning, Mr. Baxter, I've come back again," he said. "Good-morning!" responded Baxter, "I see you have." In the full daylight Baxter appeared to have increased in effect if not in quantity, and as Ordway looked at him now, he felt himself to be in the presence less of a male creature than of an embodied benevolent impulse. His very flabbiness of feature added in a measure to the expansive generosity of mouth and chin; and slovenly, unwashed, half-shaven as he was, Baxter's spirit dominated not only his fellow men, but the repelling effect of his own unkempt exterior. To meet his glance was to become suddenly intimate; to hear him speak was to feel that he had shaken you by the hand. "I hoped you might have come to see things differently this morning," said Ordway. Baxter looked him over with his soft yet penetrating eyes, his gaze travelling slowly from the coarse boots covered with red clay to the boyish smile on the dark, weather-beaten face. "You did not tell me what kind of work you were looking for," he observed at last. "Do you want to sweep out the warehouse or to keep the books?" Ordway laughed. "I prefer to keep the books, but I can sweep out the warehouse," he replied. "You can--can you?" said Baxter. His pipe, which was never out of his hand except when it was in his mouth, began to turn gray, and putting it between his teeth, he sucked hard at the stem for a minute. "You're an educated man, then?" "I've been to college--do you mean that?" "You're fit for a clerk's position?" "I am sure of it." "Where did you work last?" Ordway's hesitation was barely perceptible. "I've been in business," he answered. "On your own hook?" inquired Baxter. "Yes, on my own hook." "But you couldn't make a living at it?" "No; I gave it up for several reasons." "Well, I don't know your reasons, my man," observed Baxter, drily, "but I like your face." "Thank you," said Ordway, and he laughed again with the sparkling gaiety which leaped first to his blue eyes. "And so you expect me to take you without knowing a darn thing about you?" demanded Baxter. Ordway nodded gravely. "Yes, I hope that is what you will do," he answered. "I may ask your name, I reckon, mayn't I?--if you have no particular objection." "I don't mind telling you it's Smith," said Ordway, with his gaze on a huge pamphlet entitled "Smith's Almanac" lying on Baxter's desk. "Daniel Smith." "Smith," repeated Baxter. "Well, it ain't hard to remember. If I warn't a blamed fool, I'd let you go," he added thoughtfully, "but there ain't much doubt, I reckon, about my being a blamed fool." He rose from his chair with difficulty, and steadying his huge body, moved to the door, which he flung open with a jerk. "If you've made up your mind dead sure to butt in, you might as well begin with the next sale," he said. CHAPTER IV THE DREAM OF DANIEL SMITH He had been recommended for lodging to a certain Mrs. Twine, and at five o'clock, when the day's work at Baxter's was over, he started up the street in a bewildered search for her house, which he had been told was situated immediately beyond the first turn on the brow of the hill. When he reached the corner there was no one in sight except a small boy who sat, crying loudly, astride a little whitewashed wooden gate. Beyond the boy there was a narrow yard filled with partly dried garments hung on clothes lines, which stretched from a young locust tree near the sidewalk to the front porch, where a man with a red nose was reading the local newspaper. As the man with the red nose paid no attention to the loud lamentations of the child, Ordway stopped by the gate and inquired sympathetically if he could be of help. "Oh, he ain't hurt," remarked the man, throwing a side glance over his paper, "he al'ays yells like that when his Ma's done scrubbed him." "She's washed me so clean that I feel naked," howled the boy. "Well, you'll get over that in a year's time," observed Ordway cheerfully, "so suppose you leave off a minute now and show me the way to Mrs. Twine's." At his request the boy stopped crying instantly, and stared up at him while the dirty tearmarks dried slowly on his cheeks. "Thar ain't no way," he replied solemnly, "'cause she's my ma." "Then jump down quickly and run indoors and tell her I'd like to see her." "'T ain't no use. She won't come." "Well, go and ask her. I was told to come here to look for board and lodging." He glanced inquiringly at the man on the porch, who, engrossed in the local paper, was apparently oblivious of the conversation at the gate. "She won't come 'cause she's washin' the rest of us," returned the boy, as he swung himself to the ground, "thar're six of us an' she ain't done but two. That's Lemmy she's got hold of now. Can't you hear him holler?" He planted his feet squarely on the board walk, looked back at Ordway over his shoulder, and departed reluctantly with the message for his mother. At the end of a quarter of an hour, when Ordway had entered the gate and sat down in the cold wind on the front steps, the door behind him opened with a jar, and a large, crimson, untidy woman, splashed with soapsuds, appeared like an embodied tempest upon the threshold. "Canty says you've come to look at the dead gentleman's room, suh," she began in a high voice, approaching her point with a directness which lost none of its force because of the panting vehemence with which she spoke. "Baxter told me I might find board with you," explained Ordway in her first breathless pause. "To be sure he may have the dead gentleman's room, Mag," put in the man on the porch, folding his newspaper, with a shiver, as he rose to his feet. "I warn't thinkin' about lettin' that room agin'," said Mrs. Twine, crushing her husband's budding interference by the completeness with which she ignored his presence. "But it's jest as well, I reckon, for a defenceless married woman to have a stranger in the house. Though for the matter of that," she concluded in a burst of domestic confidence, "the woman that ain't a match for her own husband without outside help ain't deservin' of the pleasure an' the blessin' of one." Then as the man with the red nose slunk shamefacedly into the passage, she added in an undertone to Ordway, "and now if you'll jest step inside, I'll show you the spare room that I've got to let." She led the way indoors, scolding shrilly as she passed through the hall, and up the little staircase, where several half-dressed children were riding, with shrieks of delight, down the balustrade. "You needn't think you've missed a scrubbing because company's come," she remarked angrily, as she stooped to box the ears of a small girl lying flat on her stomach upon the landing. "Such is my taste for cleanness," she explained to Ordway, "that when my hands once tech the soap it's as much as I can do to keep 'em back from rubbin' the skin off. Thar 're times even when the taste is so ragin' in my breast that I can hardly wait for Saturday night to come around. Yet I ain't no friend to license whether it be in whiskey or in soap an' water. Temperance is my passion and that's why, I suppose, I came to marry a drunkard." With this tragic confession, uttered in a matter of fact manner, she produced a key from the pocket of her blue gingham apron, and ushered Ordway into a small, poorly furnished room, which overlooked the front street and the two bared locust trees in the yard. "I kin let you have this at three dollars a week," she said, "provided you're content to do yo' own reachin' at the table. Thar ain't any servant now except a twelve year old darkey." "Yes, I'll take it," returned Ordway, almost cheerfully; and when he had agreed definitely as to the amount of service he was to receive, he closed the creaking door behind her, and looked about the crudely furnished apartment with a sense of ownership such as he had not felt since the afternoon upon which he had stood in his wife's sitting-room awaiting his arrest. He thought of the Florentine gilding, the rich curtains, the long mirrors, the famous bronze Mercury and the Corot landscape with the sunlight upon it--and then of the terrible oppression in which these familiar objects had seemed closing in upon him and smothering him into unconsciousness. The weight was lifted now, and he breathed freely while his gaze rested on the common pine bedstead, the scarred washstand, with the broken pitcher, the whitewashed walls, the cane chairs, the rusted scuttle, filled with cheap coal, and the unpainted table holding a glass lamp with a smoked chimney. From the hall below he could hear the scolding voice of Mrs. Twine, but neither the shrill sound nor the poor room produced in him the smothered anguish he felt even to-day at the memory of the Corot landscape bathed in sunlight. An hour later, when he came upstairs again as an escape from the disorder of Mrs. Twine's supper table, he started a feeble blaze in the grate, which was half full of ashes, and after lighting the glass lamp, sat watching the shadows flicker to and fro on the whitewashed wall. His single possession, a photograph of his wife taken with her two children, rested against the brick chimney piece, and as he looked at it now it seemed to stand in no closer relationship to his life than did one of the brilliant chromos he had observed ornamenting the walls of Mrs. Twine's dining-room. His old life, indeed, appeared remote, artificial, conjured from unrealities--it was as if he had moved lightly upon the painted surface of things, until at last a false step had broken through the thin covering and he had plunged in a single instant against the concrete actuality. The shock had stunned him, yet he realised now that he could never return to his old sheltered outlook--to his pleasant fiction--for he had come too close to experience ever to be satisfied again with falsehood. The photograph upon the mantel was the single remaining link which held him to-day to his past life--to his forfeited identity. In the exquisite, still virgin face of his wife, draped for effect in a scarf of Italian lace--he saw embodied the one sacred memory to which as Daniel Smith he might still cling with honour. The face was perfect, the expression of motherhood which bent, flamelike, over the small boy and girl, was perfect also; and the pure soul of the woman seemed to him to have formed both face and expression after its own divine image. In the photograph, as in his memory, her beauty was touched always by some rare quality of remoteness, as if no merely human conditions could ever entirely compass so ethereal a spirit. The passion which had rocked his soul had left her serenity unshaken, and even sorrow had been powerless to leave its impress or disfigurement upon her features. As the shadows flickered out on the walls, the room grew suddenly colder. Rising, he replenished the fire, and then going over to the bed, he flung himself, still dressed, under the patchwork quilt from which the wool was protruding in places. He was thinking of the morning eighteen years ago when he had first seen her as she came, with several girl companions, out of the old church in the little town of Botetourt. It was a Christmas during his last year at Harvard, when moved by a sudden interest in his Southern associations, he had gone down for two days to his childhood's home in Virginia. Though the place was falling gradually to ruin, his maiden great-aunt still lived there in a kind of luxurious poverty; and at the sight of her false halo of gray curls, he had remembered, almost with a start of surprise, the morning when he had seen the convict at the little wayside station. The station, the country, the muddy roads, and even the town of Botetourt were unchanged, but he himself belonged now to another and what he felt to be a larger world. Everything had appeared provincial and amusing to his eyes--until as he passed on Christmas morning by the quaint old churchyard, he had seen Lydia Preston standing in the sunshine amid the crumbling tombstones of several hundred years. Under the long black feather in her hat, her charming eyes had dwelt on him kindly for a minute, and in that minute it had seemed to him that the racial ideal slumbering in his brain had responded quickly to his startled blood. Afterward they had told him that she was only nineteen, a Southern beauty of great promise, and the daughter of old Adam Preston, who had made and lost a fortune in the last ten years. But these details seemed to him to have no relation to the face he had seen under the black feather against the ivy-covered walls of the old church. The next evening they had danced together at a ball; he had carried her fan, a trivial affair of lace and satin, away in his pocket, and ten days later he had returned, flushed with passion, to finish his course at Harvard. Love had put wings to his ambition; the following year he had stood at the head of his class, and before the summer was over he had married her and started brilliantly in his career. There had been only success in the beginning. When had the tide turned so suddenly? he wondered, and when had he begun to drift into the great waters where men are washed down and lost? Lying on the bed now in the firelight, he shivered and drew the quilt closer about his knees. She had loved beauty, riches, dignity, religion--she had loved her children when they came; but had she ever really loved him--the Daniel Ordway whom she had married? Were all pure women as passionless--as utterly detached--as she had shown herself to him from the beginning? And was her coldness, as he had always believed, but the outward body of that spiritual grace for which he had loved her? He had lavished abundantly out of his stormy nature; he had spent his immortal soul upon her in desperate determination to possess her utterly at her own price; and yet had she ever belonged to him, he questioned now, even in the supreme hours of their deepest union? Had her very innocence shut him out from her soul forever? In the end the little world had closed over them both; he had felt himself slipping further--further--had made frantic efforts to regain his footing; and had gone down hopelessly at last. Those terrible years before his arrest crowded like minutes into his brain, and he knew now that there had been relief--comfort--almost tranquillity in his life in prison. The strain was lifted at last, and the days when he had moved in dull hope or acute despair through the crowd in Wall Street were over forever. To hold a place in the little world one needed great wealth; and it had seemed to him in the time of temptation that this wealth was not a fugitive possession, but an inherent necessity--a thing which belonged to the inner structure of Lydia's nature. A shudder ran over him, while he drew a convulsive breath like one in physical pain. The slow minutes in which he had waited for a rise in the market were still ticking in agony somewhere in his brain. Time moved on, yet those minutes never passed--his memory had become like the face of a clock where the hands pointed, motionless, day or night, to the same hour. Then hours, days, weeks, months, years, when he lived with ruin in his thoughts and the sound of merriment, which was like the pipe of hollow flutes, in his ears. At the end it came almost suddenly--the blow for which he had waited, the blow which brought something akin to relief because it ended the quivering torture of his suspense, and compelled, for the hour at least, decisive action. He had known that before evening he would be under arrest, and yet he had walked slowly along Fifth Avenue from his office to his home; he recalled now that he had even joked with a club wit, who had stopped him at the corner to divulge the latest bit of gossip. At the very instant when he felt himself to be approaching ruin in his house, he remembered that he had complained a little irritably of the breaking wrapper of his cigar. Yet he was thinking then that he must reach his home in time to prevent his wife from keeping a luncheon engagement, of which she had spoken to him at breakfast; and ten minutes later it was with a sensation of relief that he met the blank face of his butler in the hall. On the staircase his daughter ran after him, her short white, beruffled skirts standing out stiffly like the skirts of a ballet dancer. She was taking her music lesson, she cried out, and she called to him to come into the music room and hear how wonderfully she could run her scales! Her blue eyes, which were his eyes in a child's face, looked joyously up at him from under the thatch of dark curls which she had inherited from him, not from her blond mother. "Not now, Alice," he answered, almost impatiently, "not now--I will come a little later." Then she darted back, and the stumbling music preceded him up the staircase to the door of his wife's dressing-room. When he entered Lydia was standing before her mirror, fastening a spotted veil with a diamond butterfly at the back of her blond head; and as she turned smilingly toward him, he put out his hand with a gesture of irritation. "Take that veil off, Lydia, I can't see you for the spots," he said. Complaisant always, she unfastened the diamond butterfly without a word, and taking off the veil, flung it carelessly across the golden-topped bottles upon her dressing-table. "You look ill," she said with her charming smile; "shall I ring for Marie to bring you whiskey?" At her words he turned from her, driven by a torment of pity which caused his voice to sound harsh and constrained in his own ears. "No--no--don't put that on again," he protested, for while she waited she had taken up the spotted veil and the diamond pin. Something in his tone startled her into attention, and moving a step forward, she stood before him on a white bearskin rug. Her face had hardly changed, yet in some way she seemed to have put him at a distance, and he felt all at once that he had never known her. From the room downstairs he heard Alice's music lesson go on at broken intervals, the uncertain scales she ran now stopping, now beginning violently again. The sound wrought suddenly on his nerves like anger, and he felt that his voice was querulous in spite of the torment of pity at his heart. "There's no use putting on your veil," he said, "a warrant is out for my arrest and I must wait here till it comes." * * * * * His memory stopped now, as if it had snapped suddenly beneath the strain. After this there was a mere blank of existence upon which people and objects moved without visible impression. From that minute to this one appeared so short a time that he started up half expecting to hear Alice's scales filling Mrs. Twine's empty lodgings. Then his eyes fell on the whitewashed walls, the smoking lamp, the bare table, and the little square window with the branches of the locust tree frosted against the pane. Rising from the bed, he fell on his knees and pressed his quivering face to the patchwork quilt. "Give me a new life, O God--give me a new life!" CHAPTER V AT TAPPAHANNOCK After a sleepless night, he rose as soon as the dawn had broken, and sitting down before the pine table wrote a letter to Lydia, on a sheet of paper which had evidently been left in the drawer by the former lodger. "It isn't likely that you'll ever want me," he added at the end, "but if you should happen to, remember that I am yours, as I have always been, for whatever I am worth." When he had sealed the envelope and written her name above that of the town of Botetourt, he put it into his pocket and went down to the dining-room, where he found Mrs. Twine pouring steaming coffee into a row of broken cups. A little mulatto girl, with her hair plaited in a dozen fine braids, was placing a dish of fried bacon at one end of the walnut-coloured oil-cloth on the table, around which the six children, already clothed and hungry, were beating an impatient tattoo with pewter spoons. Bill Twine, the father of the family, was evidently sleeping off a drunken headache--a weakness which appeared to afford his wife endless material for admonition and philosophy. "Thar now, Canty," she was remarking to her son, "yo' po' daddy may not be anything to be proud of as a man, but I reckon he's as big an example as you'll ever see. He's had sermons p'inted at him from the pulpit; they've took him up twice to the police court, an' if you'll believe me, suh," she added with a kind of outraged pride to Ordway, "thar's been a time when they've had out the whole fire department to protect me." The coffee though poor was hot, and while Ordway drank it, he listened with an attention not unmixed with sympathy to Mrs. Twine's continuous flow of speech. She was coarse and shrewish and unshapely, but his judgment was softened by the marks of anxious thought on her forehead and the disfigurements of honest labour on her hands. Any toil appeared to him now to be invested with peculiar dignity; and he felt, sitting there at her slovenly breakfast table, that he was closer to the enduring heart of humanity than he had been among the shallow refinements of his past life. Mrs. Twine was unpleasant, but at her worst he felt her to be the real thing. "Not that I'm blamin' Bill, suh, as much as some folks," she proceeded charitably, while she helped her youngest child to gravy, "for it made me downright sick myself to hear them carryin' on over his beatin' his own wife jest as much as if he'd been beatin' somebody else's. An' I ain't one, when it comes to that, to put up with a white-livered, knock-kneed, pulin' sort of a critter, as I told the Jedge a-settin' upon his bench. When a woman is obleeged to take a strappin' thar's some real satisfaction in her feelin' that she takes it from a man--an' the kind that would lay on softly with never a broken head to show for it--well, he ain't the kind, suh, that I could have helt in any respect an' honour. And as to that, as I said to 'em right then an' thar, take the manly health an' spirit out o' Bill, an' he's jest about as decent an' law abidin' as the rest. Why, when he was laid up with malaria, he never so much as rized his hand agin me, an' it'll be my belief untwel my dyin' day that chills an' fever will keep a man moral when all the sermons sence Moses will leave him unteched. Feed him low an' work him hard, an' you kin make a saint out of most any male critter, that's my way of thinkin'." While she talked she was busily selecting the choicest bit of bacon for Bill's plate, and as Ordway left the house a little later, he saw her toiling up the staircase with her husband's breakfast on a tin tray in her hands. "If you think I'm goin' to set an' wait all day for you to get out o' bed, you've jest about clean lost yo' wits, Bill Twine," she remarked in furious tones, as she flung open a door on the landing above. Out of doors Ordway found that the wind had died down, though a sharp edge of frost was still in the air. The movement of the day had already begun; and as he passed the big house on the brow of the hill he saw a pretty girl, with her hair tied back with a velvet ribbon, run along the gravelled walk to meet the postman at the gate. A little farther, when he had reached the corner, he turned back to hand his letter to the postman, and found to his surprise that the pretty girl was still gazing after him. No possible interest could attach to her in his thoughts; and with a careless acknowledgment of her beauty, she faded from his consciousness as rapidly as if she had been a ray of sunshine which he had admired as he passed along. Then as he turned into the main street at the corner, he saw that Emily Brooke was riding slowly up the hill on her old white horse. She still wore her red cape, which fell over the saddle on one side, and completely hid the short riding-skirt beneath. On her head there was a small knitted Tam-o'-shanter cap, and this, with the easy freedom of her seat in the saddle, gave her an air which was gallant rather than graceful. The more feminine adjective hardly seemed to apply to her at the moment; she looked brave, strong, buoyant, a creature that had not as yet become aware of its sex. Yet she was older, he discovered now, than he had at first imagined her to be. In the barn he had supposed her age to be not more than twenty years; seen in the morning light it was impossible to decide whether she was a year younger or ten years older than he had believed. The radiant energy in her look belonged, after all, less to the accident of youth than to some enduring quality of spirit. As she neared him, she looked up from her horse's neck, rested her eyes upon him for an instant, and smiled brightly, much as a charming boy might have done. Then, just as she was about to pass on, the girth of her saddle slipped under her, and she was thrown lightly to the ground, while the old horse stopped and stood perfectly motionless above her. "My skirt has caught in the stirrup," she said to Ordway, and while he bent to release her, he noticed that she clung, not to his arm, but to the neck of the horse for support. To his surprise there was neither embarrassment nor amusement in her voice. She spoke with the cool authority which had impressed him during the incident of the ram's attack upon "Sis Mehitable." "I don't think it is quite safe yet," he said, after he had drawn the rotten girth as tight as he dared. "It looks as if it wouldn't last, you see." "Well, I dare say, it may be excused after forty years of service," she returned, smiling. "What? this saddle? It does look a little quaint when one examines it." "Oh, it's been repaired, but even then one must forgive an old servant for growing decrepit." "Then you'll ride it again?" he asked, seeing that she was about to mount. "Of course--this isn't my first tumble--but Major expects them now and he knows how to behave. So do I," she added, laughing, "you see it doesn't take me by surprise." "Yes, I see it doesn't," he answered gaily. "Then if you chance to be about the next time it happens, I hope it won't disturb you either," she remarked, as she rode up the hill. The meeting lingered in Ordway's mind with a freshness which was associated less with the incident itself than with some vivid quality in the appearance of the girl. Her face, her voice, her carriage--even the little brown curls blowing on her temples, all united in his thoughts to form a memory in which Alice appeared to hold a place. Why should this country girl, he wondered, bring back to him so clearly the figure of his daughter? But there was no room for a memory in his life just now, and by the time he reached Baxter's Warehouse, he had forgotten the interest aroused in him a moment before. Baxter had not yet appeared in his office, but two men, belonging evidently to the labouring class, were talking together under the brick archway. When Ordway joined them they did not interrupt their conversation, which he found, after a minute, to concern the domestic and financial troubles of the one whom he judged to be the poorer of the two. He was a meanly clad, wretched looking workman, with a shock of uncombed sandy hair, a cowed manner, and the expression of one who has been beaten into apathy rather than into submission. A sordid pathos in his voice and figure brought Ordway a step closer to his side, and after a moment's careless attention, he found his mind adjusting itself to the small financial problems in which the man had become entangled. The workman had been forced to borrow upon his pathetic personal securities; and in meeting from year to year the exorbitant rate of interest, he had paid back several times the sum of the original debt. Now his wife was ill, with an incurable cancer; he had no hope, as he advanced beyond middle age, of any increase in his earning capacity, and the debt under which he had struggled so long had become at the end an intolerable burden. His wife had begged him to consult a lawyer--but who, he questioned doggedly, would take an interest in him since he had no money for a fee? He was afraid of lawyers anyway, for he could give you a hundred cases where they had stood banded together against the poor. As Ordway listened to the story, he felt for an instant a return of his youthful enthusiasm, and standing there amid the tobacco stems in Baxter's warehouse, he remembered a great flour trust from which he had withdrawn because it seemed to him to bear unjustly upon the small, isolated farmers. Beyond this he went back still further to his college days, when during his vacation, he had read Virginia law in the office of his uncle, Richard Ordway, in the town of Botetourt. He could see the shining rows of legal volumes in the walnut bookcases, the engraving of Latane's Burial, framed in black wood above the mantel, and against this background the silent, gray haired, self-righteous old man so like his father. Through the window, he could see still the sparrows that built in the ivied walls of the old church. With a start he came back to the workman, who was unfolding his troubles in an abandon of misery under the archway. "If you'll talk things over with me to-night when we get through work, I think I may be able to straighten them out for you," he said. The man stared at him out of his dogged eyes with a helpless incredulity. "But I ain't got any money," he responded sullenly, as if driven to the defensive. "Well, we'll see," said Ordway, "I don't want your money." "You want something, though--my money or my vote, and I ain't got either." Ordway laughed shortly. "I?--oh, I just want the fun," he answered. The beginning was trivial enough, the case sordid, and the client only a dull-witted labourer; but to Ordway it came as the commencement of the new life for which he had prayed--the life which would find its centre not in possession, but in surrender, which would seek as its achievement not personal happiness, but the joy of service. CHAPTER VI THE PRETTY DAUGHTER OF THE MAYOR The pretty girl whom Ordway had seen on the gravelled walk was Milly Trend, the only child of the Mayor of Tappahannock. People said of Jasper Trend that his daughter was the one soft spot in a heart that was otherwise as small and hard as a silver dollar, and of Milly Trend the same people said--well, that she was pretty. Her prettiness was invariably the first and the last thing to be mentioned about her. Whatever sterner qualities she may have possessed were utterly obscured by an exterior which made one think of peach blossoms and spring sunshine. She had a bunch of curls the colour of ripe corn, which she wore tied back from her neck with a velvet ribbon; her eyes were the eyes of a baby; and her mouth had an adorable little trick of closing over her small, though slightly prominent teeth. The one flaw in her face was this projection of her teeth, and when she looked at herself in the glass it was her habit to bite her lips closely together until the irregular ivory line was lost. It was this fault, perhaps, which kept her prettiness, though it was superlative in its own degree, from ever rising to the height of beauty. In Milly's opinion it had meant the difference between the glory of a world-wide reputation and the lesser honour of reigning as the acknowledged belle of Tappahannock. She remembered that the magnificent manager of a theatrical company, a gentleman who wore a fur-lined coat and a top hat all day long, had almost lost his train while he stopped to look back at her on the crowded platform of the station. Her heart had beat quickly at the tribute, yet even in that dazzling minute she had felt a desperate certainty that her single imperfection would decide her future. But for her teeth, she was convinced to-day, that he might have returned. If a woman cannot be a heroine in reality, perhaps the next best thing is to look as if she might have been one in the age of romance; and this was what Milly Trend's appearance suggested to perfection. Her manner of dressing, the black velvet ribbon on her flaxen curls, her wide white collars open at her soft throat, her floating sky-blue sashes and the delicate peach bloom of her cheeks and lips--all these combined to produce a poetic atmosphere about an exceedingly poetic little figure. Being plain she would probably have made currant jelly for her pastor, and have taught sedately in the infant class in Sunday school: being pretty she read extravagant romances and dreamed strange adventures of fascinating highwaymen on lonely roads. But many a woman who has dreamed of a highwayman at eighteen has compromised with a bank clerk at twenty-two. Even at Tappahannock--the veriest prose piece of a town--romance might sometimes bud and blossom, though it usually brought nothing more dangerous than respectability to fruit. Milly had read Longfellow and _Lucille_, and her heroic ideal had been taken bodily from one of Bulwer's novels. She had played the graceful part of heroine in a hundred imaginary dramas; yet in actual life she had been engaged for two years to a sandy-haired, freckled face young fellow, who chewed tobacco, and bought the dry leaf in lots for a factory in Richmond. From romance to reality is a hard distance, and the most passionate dreamer is often the patient drudge of domestic service. And yet even to-day Milly was not without secret misgivings as to the wisdom of her choice. She knew he was not her hero, but in her short visits to larger cities she had met no one who had come nearer her ideal lover. To be sure she had seen this ideal, in highly coloured glimpses, upon the stage--though these gallant gentlemen in trunks had never so much as condescended to glance across the foot-lights to the little girl in the dark third row of the balcony. Then, too, all the ladies upon the stage were beautiful enough for any hero, and just here she was apt to remember dismally the fatal projection of her teeth. So, perhaps, after all, Harry Banks was as near Olympus as she could hope to approach; and there was a mild consolation in the thought that there was probably more sentiment in the inner than in the outward man. Whatever came of it, she had learned that in a prose age it is safer to think only in prose. On the morning upon which Ordway had first passed her gate, she had left the breakfast table at the postman's call, and had run down the gravelled walk to receive a letter from Mr. Banks, who was off on a short business trip for his firm. With the letter in her hand she had turned to find Ordway's blue eyes fixed in careless admiration upon her figure; and for one breathless instant she had felt her insatiable dream rise again and clutch at her heart. Some subtle distinction in his appearance--an unlikeness to the masculine portion of Tappahannock--had caught her eye in spite of his common and ill-fitting clothes. Though she had known few men of his class, the sensitive perceptions of the girl had made her instantly aware of the difference between him and Harry Banks. For a moment her extravagant fancy dwelt on his figure--on this distinction which she had noticed, on his square dark face and the singular effect of his bright blue eyes. Then turning back in the yard, she went slowly up the gravelled walk, while she read with a vague feeling of disappointment the love letter written laboriously by Mr. Banks. It was, doubtless, but the average love letter of the average plain young man, but to Milly in her rosy world of fiction, it appeared suddenly as if there had protruded upon her attention one of the great, ugly, wholesome facts of life. What was the use, she wondered, in being beautiful if her love letters were to be filled with enthusiastic accounts of her lover's prowess in the tobacco market? At the breakfast table Jasper Trend was pouring maple syrup on the buckwheat cakes he had piled on his plate, and at the girl's entrance he spoke without removing his gaze from the plated silver pitcher in his hand. "Any letters, daughter?" he inquired, carefully running his knife along the mouth of the pitcher to catch the last drop of syrup. "One," said Milly, as she sat down beside the coffee pot and looked at her father with a ripple of annoyance in her babyish eyes. "I reckon I can guess about that all right," remarked Jasper with his cackling chuckle, which was as little related to a sense of humour as was the beating of a tin plate. He was a long, scraggy man, with drab hair that grew in scallops on his narrow forehead and a large nose where the prominent red veins turned purple when he became excited. "There's a stranger in town, father," said Milly as she gave him his second cup of coffee. "I think he is boarding at Mrs. Twine's." "A drummer, I reckon--thar're a plenty of 'em about this season." "No, I don't believe he is a drummer--he isn't--isn't quite so sparky looking. But I wish you wouldn't say 'thar,' father. You promised me you wouldn't do it." "Well, it ain't stood in the way of my getting on," returned Jasper without resentment. Had Milly told him to shave his head, he might have protested freely, but in the end he would have gone out obediently to his barber. Yet people outside said that he ground the wages of his workers in the cotton mills down to starvation point, and that he had been elected Mayor not through popularity, but through terror. It was rumoured even that he stood with his wealth behind the syndicate of saloons which was giving an ugly local character to the town. But whatever his public vices may have been, his private life was securely hedged about by the paternal virtues. "I can't place him, but I'm sure he isn't a 'buyer,'" repeated Milly, after a moment's devotion to the sugar bowl. "Well, I'll let you know when I see him," responded Jasper as he left the table and got into his overcoat, while Milly jumped up to wrap his neck in a blue spotted muffler. When he had gone from the house, she took out her lover's letter again, but it proved, on a second trial, even more unsatisfactory than she had found it to be at her first reading. As a schoolgirl Milly had known every attribute of her divinity from the chivalry of his soul to the shining gloss upon his boots--but to-day there remained to her only the despairing conviction that he was unlike Banks. Banks appeared to her suddenly in the hard prosaic light in which he, on his own account, probably viewed his tobacco. Even her trousseau and the lace of her wedding gown ceased to afford her the shadow of consolation, since she remembered that neither of these accessories would occupy in marriage quite so prominent a place as Banks. The next day Ordway passed at the same hour, still on the opposite side of the street. After this she began to watch regularly for his figure, looking for it when it appeared on Mrs. Twine's little porch, and following it wistfully until it was lost beyond the new brick church at the corner. She was not aware of cultivating a facile sentiment about the stranger, but place a riotous imagination in an empty house and it requires little effort to weave a romance from the opposite side of the street. Distance, that subtle magnifier of attachments, had come to her aid now as it had failed her in the person of Harry Banks. Even from across the street it was impossible to invest Mr. Banks with any quality which might have suggested an historic background or a mysterious past. He was flagrantly, almost outrageously himself; in no fictitious circumstances could he have appeared as anything except the unvarnished fact that he was. No legendary light could have glorified his features or improved the set of his trousers--which had taken their shape and substance from the legs within. With these features and in these trousers, she felt that he must usurp the sacred precincts where her dream had dwelt. "It would all be so easy if one could only be born where one belongs," she cried out hopelessly, in the unconscious utterance of a philosophy larger than her own. And so as the week went by, she allowed her rosy fancies to surround the figure that passed three times daily along the sidewalk across the way. In the morning he walked by with a swinging stride; at midday he passed rapidly, absorbed in thought; in the evening he came back slowly, sometimes stopping to watch the sunset from the brow of the hill. Not since the first morning had he turned his blue eyes toward Milly's gate. At the end of the month Mr. Banks returned to Tappahannock from a business trip through the tobacco districts. He was an ugly, freckled face, sandy-haired young fellow--an excellent judge of tobacco--with a simple soul that attired itself in large checks, usually of a black and white variety. On the day of his first visit to Milly he wore a crimson necktie pierced by a scarf-pin bearing a turtle-dove in diamonds. "Who's that fellow over there?" he inquired as Ordway came up the hill to his dinner. "I wonder if he's the chap Hudge was telling me about at breakfast?" "Oh, I don't know," answered Milly, in a voice that sounded flat in her own ears. "Nobody knows anything about him, father says. But what was Hudge telling you?" she asked, impelled by a devouring yet timid curiosity. "Well, if he's the man I mean, he seems to be a kind of revivalist out of a job--or something or other queer. Hudge says he broke up a fight last Saturday evening in Kelly's saloon--that's the place you've never heard the name of, I reckon," he added hesitatingly, "it's where all the factory hands gather after work on Saturday to drink up their week's wages." For once Milly's interest was stronger than her modesty. "And did he fight?" she demanded in a suspense that was almost breathless. "He wasn't there, you know--only passing along the street outside, at least that's what they say--when the rumpus broke out. Then he went in through the window and----" "And?" repeated Milly, with an entrancing vision of heroic blows, for beneath her soft exterior the blood of the primitive woman flowed. "And preached!" finished Banks, with a prodigious burst of merriment. "Preached?" gasped Milly, "do you mean a sermon?" "Not a regular sermon, but he spoke just like a preacher for a solid hour. Before he'd finished the men who were drunk were crying like babies and the men who weren't were breaking their necks to sign the pledge--at any rate that's something like the tale they tell. There was never such speaking (Hudge says he was there) heard before in Tappahannock, and Kelly is as mad as a hornet because he swears the town is going dry." "And he didn't strike a single blow?" asked Milly, with a feeling of disappointment. "Why, he had those drunken fools all blubbering like kids," said Banks, "and then when it was over he got hold of Kit Berry (he started the row, you know) and carried him all the way home to the little cottage in the hollow across the town where Kit lives with his mother. Next Sunday if it's fine there's going to be an open air meeting in Baxter's field." There was a sore little spot in Milly's heart, a vague sentiment of disenchantment. Her house of dreams, which she had reared so patiently, stood cold and tenantless once more. "Did you ever find out his name?" she asked, with a last courageous hope. "Smith," replied Banks, with luminous simplicity. "The boys have nick-named him 'Ten Commandment Smith.'" "Ten Commandment Smith?" echoed Milly in a lifeless voice. Her house of dreams had tottered at the blow and fallen from its foundation stone. CHAPTER VII SHOWS THE GRACES OF ADVERSITY On the morning after the episode in the barroom which Banks had described to Milly, Ordway found Baxter awaiting him in a condition which in a smaller person would have appeared to be a flutter of excitement. "So you got mixed up in a barroom row last night, I hear, Smith?" "Well, hardly that," returned Ordway, smiling as he saw the other's embarrassment break out in drops of perspiration upon his forehead. "I was in it, I admit, but I can't exactly say that I was 'mixed up.'" "You got Kit Berry out, eh?--and took him home." "Nothing short of a sober man could have done it. He lives on the other side of the town in Bullfinch's Hollow." "Oh, I've been there," said Baxter, "I've taken him home myself." The boyish sparkle had leaped to Ordway's eyes which appeared in the animation of the moment to lend an expression of gaiety to his face. As Baxter looked at him he felt something of the charm which had touched the drunken crowd in the saloon. "His mother was at my house before breakfast," he said, in a tone that softened as he went on until it sounded as if his whole perspiring person had melted into it. "She was in a great state, poor creature, for it seemed that when Kit woke up this morning he promised her never to touch another drop." "Well, I hope he'll keep his word, but I doubt it," responded Ordway. He thought of the bare little room he had seen last night, of the patched garments drying before the fire, of the scant supper spread upon the table, and of the gray-haired, weeping woman who had received his burden from him. "He may--for a week," commented Baxter, and he added with a big, shaking laugh, "they tell me you gave 'em a sermon that was as good as a preacher's." "Nonsense. I got angry and spoke a few words, that's all." "Well, if they were few, they seem to have been pretty pointed. I hear Kelly closed his place two hours before midnight. Even William Cotton went home without falling once, he said." "There was a good reason for that. I happened to have some information Cotton wanted." "I know," said Baxter, drawing out the words with a lingering emphasis while his eyes searched Ordway's face with a curiosity before which the younger man felt himself redden painfully. "Cotton told me you got him out of a scrape as well as a lawyer could have done." "I remembered the law and wrote it down for him, that's all." "Have you ever practised law in Virginia?" "I've never practised anywhere, but I intended to when--" he was going to add "when I finished college," but with a sudden caution, he stopped short and then selected his words more carefully, "when I was a boy. I read a good deal then and some of it still sticks in my memory." "I see," commented Baxter. His heart swelled until he became positively uncomfortable, and he coughed loudly in the effort to appear perfectly indifferent. What was it about the chap, he questioned, that had pulled at him from the start? Was it only the peculiar mingling of pathos and gaiety in his look? "Well, I wouldn't set about reforming things too much if I were you," he said at last, "it ain't worth it, for even when people accept the reforms they are pretty likely to reject the reformer. A man's got to have a mighty tough stomach to be able to do good immoderately. But all the same," he concluded heartily, "you're the right stuff and I like you. I respect pluck no matter whether it comes out in preaching or in blows. I reckon, by the way, if you'd care to turn bookkeeper, you'd be worth as good as a hundred a month to me." There was a round coffee stain, freshly spilled at breakfast, on his cravat, and Ordway's eyes were fixed upon it with a kind of fascination during the whole of his speech. The very slovenliness of the man--the unshaven cheeks, the wilted collar, the spotted necktie, the loosely fitting alpaca coat he wore, all seemed in some inexplicable way, to emphasise the large benignity of his aspect. Strangely enough his failures as a gentleman appeared to add to his impressiveness as a man. One felt that his faults were merely virtues swelled to abnormal proportions--as the carelessness in his dress was but a degraded form of the lavish generosity of his heart. "To tell the truth, I'd hoped for that all along," said Ordway, withdrawing his gaze with an effort from the soiled cravat. "Do you want me to start in at the books to-day?" For an instant Baxter hesitated; then he coughed and went on as if he found difficulty in selecting the words that would convey his meaning. "Well, if you don't mind there's a delicate little matter I'd like you to attend to first. Being a stranger I thought it would be easier for you than for me--have you ever heard anybody speak of Beverly Brooke?" The interest quickened in Ordway's face. "Why, yes. I came along the road one day with a farmer who gave me his whole story--Adam Whaley, I heard afterward, was his name." Baxter whistled. "Oh, I reckon, he hardly told you the whole story--for I don't believe there's anybody living except myself who knows what a darn fool Mr. Beverly is. That man has never done an honest piece of work in his life; he's spent every red cent of his wife's money, and his sister's too, in some wild goose kind of speculation--and yet, bless my soul, he has the face to strut in here any day and lord it over me just as if he were his grandfather's ghost or George Washington. It's queer about those old families, now ain't it? When they begin to peter out it ain't just an ordinary petering, but a sort of mortal rottenness that takes 'em root and branch." "And so I am to interview this interesting example of degeneration?" asked Ordway, smiling. "You've got to make him understand that he can't ship me any more of his worthless tobacco," exclaimed Baxter in an outburst of indignation. "Do you know what he does, sir?--Well, he raises a lazy, shiftless, worm-eaten crop of tobacco in an old field--plants it too late, tops it too late, cuts it too late, cures it too late, and then lets it lie around in some leaky smokehouse until it isn't fit for a hog to chew. After he has left it there to rot all winter, he gathers the stuff up on the first pleasant day in spring and gets an old nigger to cart it to me in an open wagon. The next day he lounges in here with his palavering ways, and demands the highest price in the market--and I give it to him! That's the damned outrage of it, I give it to him!" concluded Baxter with an excitement in which his huge person heaved like a shaken mountain. "I've bought his trash for twenty years and ground it into snuff because I was afraid to refuse a Brooke--but Brooke or no Brooke there's an end to it now," he turned and waved his hand furiously to a pile of tobacco lying on the warehouse floor, "there's his trash and it ain't fit even for snuff!" He led Ordway back into the building, picked up several leaves from the pile, smelt them, and threw them down with a contemptuous oath. "Worm-eaten, frost-bitten, mildewed. I want you to go out to Cedar Hill and tell the man that his stuff ain't fit for anything but fertiliser," he went on. "If he wants it he'd better come for it and haul it away." "And if he refuses?" "He most likely will--then tell him I'll throw it into the ditch." "Oh, I'll tell him," responded Ordway, and he was aware of a peculiar excitement in the prospect of an encounter with the redoubtable Mr. Beverly. "I'll do my best," he added, going through the archway, while Baxter followed him with a few last words of instruction and advice. The big man's courage had evidently begun to ebb, for as Ordway passed into the street, he hurried after him to suggest that he should approach the subject with as much delicacy as he possessed. "I wouldn't butt at Mr. Beverly, if I were you," he cautioned, "just edge around and work in slowly when you get the chance." But the advice was wasted upon Ordway, for he had started out in an impatience not unmixed with anger. Who was this fool of a Brooke? he wondered, and what power did he possess that kept Tappahannock in a state of slavery? He was glad that Baxter had sent him on the errand, and the next minute he laughed aloud because the big man had been too timid to come in person. He had reached the top of the hill, and was about to turn into the road he had taken his first night in Tappahannock, when a woman, wrapped in a shawl, hurried across the street from one of the smaller houses fronting upon the green. "I beg your pardon, sir, but are you the man that helped William Cotton?" Clearly William Cotton was bringing him into notice. At the thought Ordway looked down upon his questioner with a sensation that was almost one of pleasure. "He needed business advice and I gave it, that was all," he answered. "But you wrote down the whole case for him so that he could understand it and speak for himself," she said, catching her breath in a sob, as she pulled her thin shawl together. "You got him out of his troubles and asked nothing, so I hoped you might be willing to do as much by me. I am a widow with five little children, and though I've paid every penny I could scrape together for the mortgage, the farm is to be sold over our heads and we have nowhere to go." Again the glow that was like the glow of pleasure illuminated Ordway's mind. "There's not one chance in a hundred that I can help you," he said; "in the case of William Cotton it was a mere accident. Still if you will tell me where you live, I will come to you this evening and talk matters over. If I can help you, I promise you I will with pleasure." "And for nothing? I am very poor." He shook his head with a laugh. "Oh, I get more fun out of it than you could understand!" After writing down the woman's name in his notebook, he passed into the country road and bent his thoughts again upon the approaching visit to Mr. Beverly. When he reached Cedar Hill, which lay a sombre shadow against the young green of the landscape, he saw that the dead cedars still lay where they had fallen across the avenue. Evidently the family temper had assumed an opposite, though equally stubborn form, in the person of the girl in the red cape, and she had, he surmised, refused to allow Beverly to profit by his desecration even to the extent of selling the trees he had already cut down. Was it from a sentiment, or as a warning, he wondered, that she left the great cedars barring the single approach to the house? In either case the magnificent insolence of her revenge moved him to an acknowledgment of her spirit and her justice. In the avenue a brood of young turkeys were scratching in the fragrant dust shed by the trees; and at his approach they scattered and fled before him. It was long evidently since a stranger had penetrated into the melancholy twilight of the cedars; for the flutter of the turkeys, he discovered presently, was repeated in an excited movement he felt rather than saw as he ascended the stone steps and knocked at the door. The old hound he had seen the first night rose from under a bench on the porch, and came up to lick his hand; a window somewhere in the right wing shut with a loud noise; and through the bare old hall, which he could see from the half open door, a breeze blew dispersing an odour of hot soapsuds. The hall was dim and empty except for a dilapidated sofa in one corner, on which a brown and white setter lay asleep, and a rusty sword which clanked against the wall with a regular, swinging motion. In response to his repeated knocks there was a sound of slow steps on the staircase, and a handsome, shabbily dressed man, holding a box of dominoes, came to the door and held out his hand with an apologetic murmur. "I beg your pardon, but the wind makes such a noise I did not hear your knock. Will you come inside or do you prefer to sit on the porch where we can get the view?" As he spoke he edged his way courteously across the threshold and with a hospitable wave of his hand, sat down upon one of the pine benches against the decaying railing. In spite of the shabbiness of his clothes he presented a singularly attractive, even picturesque appearance, from the abundant white hair above his forehead to his small, shapely feet encased now in an ancient pair of carpet slippers. His figure was graceful and well built, his brown eyes soft and melancholy, and the dark moustache drooping over his mouth had been trained evidently into an immaculate precision. His moustache, however, was the one immaculate feature of his person, for even his carpet slippers were dirty and worn threadbare in places. Yet his beauty, which was obscured in the first view by what in a famous portrait might have been called "the tone of time," produced, after a closer and more sympathetic study, an effect which, upon Ordway at least, fell little short of the romantic. In his youth Beverly had been, probably, one of the handsomest men of his time, and this distinction, it was easy to conjecture, must have been the occasion, if not the cause, of his ruin. Even now, pompous and slovenly as he appeared, it was difficult to resist a certain mysterious fascination which he still possessed. When he left Tappahannock Ordway had felt only a humorous contempt for the owner of Cedar Hill, but sitting now beside him on the hard pine bench, he found himself yielding against his will to an impulse of admiration. Was there not a certain spiritual kinship in the fact that they were both failures in life? "You are visiting Tappahannock, then?" asked Beverly with his engaging smile; "I go in seldom or I should perhaps have seen you. When a man gets as old and as much of an invalid as I am, he usually prefers to spend his days by the fireside in the bosom of his family." The bloom of health was in his cheeks, yet as he spoke he pressed his hand to his chest with the habitual gesture of an invalid. "A chronic trouble which has prevented my taking an active part in the world's affairs," he explained, with a sad, yet cheerful dignity as of one who could enliven tragedy with a comic sparkle. "I had my ambitions once, sir," he added, "but we will not speak of them for they are over, and at this time of my life I can do little more than try to amuse myself with a box of dominoes." As he spoke he placed the box on the bench between them and began patiently matching the little ivory blocks. Ordway expressed a casual sympathy, and then, forgetting Baxter's warning, he attempted to bring the conversation to a practical level. "I am employed now at Baxter's warehouse," he began, "and the object of my call is to speak with you about your last load of tobacco." "Ah!" said Beverly, with warming interest, "it is a sufficient recommendation to have come from Robert Baxter--for that man has been the best, almost the only, friend I have had in life. It is impossible to overestimate either his character or my admiration. He has come to my assistance, sir, when I hardly knew where to turn for help. If you are employed by him, you are indeed to be envied." "I am entirely of your opinion," observed Ordway, "but the point this morning----" "Well, we'll let that rest a while now," interrupted Beverly, pushing the dominoes away, and turning his beautiful, serious face upon his companion. "When there is an opportunity for me to speak of Baxter's generosity, I feel that I cannot let it escape me. Something tells me that you will understand and pardon my enthusiasm. There is no boy like an old boy, sir." His voice broke, and drawing a ragged handkerchief from the pocket of his corduroy coat, he blew his nose and wiped away two large teardrops from his eyes. After such an outburst of sentiment it seemed a positive indecency to inform him that Baxter had threatened to throw his tobacco into a ditch. "He regrets very much that your crop was a failure this year," said Ordway, after what he felt to be a respectable pause. "And yet," returned Beverly, with his irrepressible optimism, "if things had been worse it might even have rotted in the ground. As it was, I never saw more beautiful seedlings--they were perfect specimens. Had not the tobacco worms and the frost and the leak in the smokehouse all combined against me, I should have raised the most splendid crop in Virginia, sir." The spectacle of this imaginary crop suffused his face with a glow of ardour. "My health permits me to pay little attention to the farm," he continued in his eloquent voice, "I see it falling to rains about me, and I am fortunate in being able to enjoy the beauty of its decay. Yes, my crop was a failure, I admit," he added, with a touching cheerfulness, "it lay several months too long in the barn before I could get it sent to the warehouse--but this was my misfortune, not my fault, as I am sure Robert Baxter will understand." "He will find it easier to understand the case than to sell the tobacco, I fancy." "However that may be, he is aware that I place the utmost confidence in his judgment. What he does will be the right thing, sir." This confession of artless trust was so overpowering that for a moment Ordway hung back, feeling that any ground would be dangerous ground upon which to proceed. The very absorption in which Beverly arranged the dominoes upon the bench added to the childlike simplicity of his appearance. Then a sudden irritation against the man possessed him, for he remembered the girl in the red cape and the fallen cedars. From where he sat now they were hidden by the curve of the avenue, but the wonderful trees, which shed their rich gloom almost upon the roof of the house, made him realise afresh the full extent of Beverly's folly. In the fine spring sunshine whatever beauties were left in the ruined place showed in an intenser and more vernal aspect. Every spear of grass on the lawn was tipped with light, and the young green leaves on the lilacs stood out as if illuminated on a golden background. In one of the ivy-covered eaves a wren was building, and he could see the flutter of a bluebird in an ancient cedar. "It is a beautiful day," remarked Beverly, pensively, "but the lawn needs trimming." His gaze wandered gently over the tangled sheep mint, orchard grass and Ailantus shoots which swept from the front steps to the fallen fence which had once surrounded the place, and he added with an outburst of animation, "I must tell Micah to turn in the cattle." Remembering the solitary cow he had seen in a sheltered corner of the barn, Ordway bit back a smile as he rose and held out his hand. "After all, I haven't delivered my message," he said, "which was to the effect that the tobacco is practically unfit for use. Baxter told me to request you to send for it at your convenience." Beverly gathered up his dominoes, and rising with no appearance of haste, turned upon him an expression of suffering dignity. "Such an act upon my part," he said, "would be a reflection upon Baxter's ability as a merchant, and after thirty years of friendship I refuse to put an affront upon him. I would rather, sir, lose every penny my tobacco might bring me." His sincerity was so admirable, that for a moment it obscured even in Ordway's mind the illusion upon which it rested. When a man is honestly ready to sacrifice his fortune in the cause of friendship, it becomes the part of mere vulgarity to suggest to him that his affairs are in a state of penury. "Then it must be used for fertilisers or thrown away," said Ordway, shortly. "I trust myself entirely in Baxter's hands," replied Beverly, in sad but noble tones, "whatever he does will be the best that could be done under the circumstances. You may assure him of this with my compliments." "Well, I fear, there's nothing further to be said," remarked Ordway; and he was about to make his final good-bye, when a faded lady, wrapped in a Paisley shawl, appeared in the doorway and came out upon the porch. "Amelia," said Beverly, "allow me to present Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, Mrs. Brooke." Mrs. Brooke smiled at him wanly with a pretty, thin-lipped mouth and a pair of large rather prominent eyes, which had once been gray but were now washed into a cloudy drab. She was still pretty in a hopeless, depressed, ineffectual fashion; and though her skirt was frayed about the edges and her shoes run down at the heel, her pale, fawn-coloured hair was arranged in elaborate spirals and the hand she held out to Ordway was still delicately fine and white. She was like a philosopher, who, having sunk into a universal pessimism of thought, preserves, in spite of himself, a small belief or so in the minor pleasures of existence. Out of the general wreck of her appearance she had clung desperately to the beauties of her hair and hands. "I had hoped you would stay to dinner," she remarked in her listless manner to Ordway. Fate had whipped her into submission, but there was that in her aspect which never permitted one for an instant to forget the whipping. If her husband had dominated by his utter incapacity, she had found a smaller consolation in feeling that though she had been obliged to drudge she had never learned to do it well. To do it badly, indeed, had become at last the solitary proof that by right of birth she was entitled not to do it at all. At Ordway's embarrassed excuse she made no effort to insist, but stood, smiling like a ghost of her own past prettiness, in the doorway. Behind her the bare hall and the dim staircase appeared more empty, more gloomy, more forlornly naked than they had done before. Again Ordway reached for his hat, and prepared to pick his way carefully down the sunken steps; but this time he was arrested by the sound of smothered laughter at the side of the house, which ran back to the vegetable garden. A moment later the girl in the red cape appeared running at full speed across the lawn, pursued by several shrieking children that followed closely at her skirts. Her clear, ringing laugh--the laugh of youth and buoyant health--held Ordway motionless for an instant upon the porch; then as she came nearer he saw that she held an old, earth-covered spade in her hands and that her boots and short woollen skirt were soiled with stains from the garden beds. But the smell of the warm earth that clung about her seemed only to increase the vitality and freshness in her look. Her vivid animation, her sparkling glance, struck him even more forcibly than they had done in the street of Tappahannock. At sight of Ordway her laugh was held back breathlessly for an instant; then breaking out again, it began afresh with redoubled merriment, and sinking with exhaustion on the lowest step, she let the spade fall to the ground while she buried her wind-blown head in her hands. "I beg your pardon," she stammered presently, lifting her radiant brown eyes, "but I've run so fast that I'm quite out of breath." Stopping with an effort she sought in vain to extinguish her laughter in the curls of the smallest child. "Emily," said Beverly with dignity, "allow me to present Mr. Smith." The girl looked up from the step; and then, rising, smiled brightly upon Ordway over the spade which she had picked up from the ground. "I can't shake hands," she explained, "because I've been spading the garden." If she recognised him for the tramp who had slept in her barn there was no hint of it in her voice or manner. "Do you mean, Emily," asked Beverly, in his plaintive voice, "that you have been actually digging in the ground?" "Actually," repeated Emily, in a manner which made Ordway suspect that the traditional feminine softness was not included among her virtues, "I actually stepped on dirt and saw--worms." "But where is Micah?" "Micah has an attack of old age. He was eighty-two yesterday." "Is it possible?" remarked Beverly, and the discovery appeared to afford him ground for cheerful meditation. "No, it isn't possible, but it's true," returned the girl, with good-humoured merriment. "As there are only two able-bodied persons on the place, the mare and I, it seemed to me that one of us had better take a hand at the spade. But I had to leave off after the first round," she added to Ordway, showing him her right hand, from the palm of which the skin had been rubbed away. She was so much like a gallant boy that Ordway felt an impulse to take the hand in his own and examine it more carefully. "Well, I'm very much surprised to hear that Micah is so old," commented Beverly, dwelling upon the single fact which had riveted his attention. "I must be making him a little present upon his birthday." The girl's eyes flashed under her dark lashes, but remembering Ordway's presence, she turned to him with a casual remark about the promise of the spring. He saw at once that she had achieved an indignant detachment from her thriftless family, and the ardent, almost impatient energy with which she fell to labour was, in itself, a rebuke to the pleasant indolence which had hastened, if it had not brought about, the ruin of the house. Was it some temperamental disgust for the hereditary idleness which had spurred her on to take issue with the worn-out traditions of her ancestors and to place herself among the labouring rather than the leisure class? As she stood there in her freshness and charm, with the short brown curls blown from her forehead, the edge of light shining in her eyes and on her lips, and the rich blood kindling in her vivid face, it seemed to Ordway, looking back at her from the end of his forty years, that he was brought face to face with the spirit of the future rising amid the decaying sentiment of the past. CHAPTER VIII "TEN COMMANDMENT SMITH" When Ordway had disappeared beyond the curve in the avenue, Emily went slowly up the steps, her spade clanking against the stone as she ascended. "Did he come about the tobacco, Beverly?" she asked. Beverly rose languidly from the bench, and stood rubbing his hand across his forehead with an exhausted air. "My head was very painful and he talked so rapidly I could hardly follow him," he replied; "but is it possible, Emily, that you have been digging in the garden?" "There is nobody else to do it," replied Emily, with an impatient flash in her eyes; "only half the garden has been spaded. If you disapprove so heartily, I wish you'd produce someone to do the work." Mrs. Brooke, who had produced nothing in her life except nine children, six of whom had died in infancy, offered at this a feeble and resigned rebuke. "I am sure you could get Salem," she replied. "We owe him already three months' wages," returned the girl, "I am still paying him for last autumn." "All I ask of you, Emily, is peace," remarked Beverly, in a gentle voice, as he prepared to enter the house. "Nothing--no amount of brilliant argument can take the place of peace in a family circle. My poor head is almost distracted when you raise your voice." The three children flocked out of the dining-room and came, with a rush, to fling themselves upon him. They adored him--and there was a live terrapin which they had brought in a box for him to see! In an instant his depression vanished, and he went off, his beautiful face beaming with animation, while the children clung rapturously to his corduroy coat. "Amelia," said Emily, lowering her voice, "don't you think it would improve Beverly's health if he were to try working for an hour every day in the garden?" Mrs. Brooke appeared troubled by the suggestion. "If he could only make up his mind to it, I've no doubt it would," she answered, "he has had no exercise since he was obliged to give up his horse. Walking he has always felt to be ungentlemanly." She spoke in a softly tolerant voice, though she herself drudged day and night in her anxious, tearful, and perfectly ineffectual manner. For twenty years she had toiled patiently without, so far as one could perceive, achieving a single definite result--for by some unfortunate accident of temperament, she was doomed to do badly whatever she undertook to do at all. Yet her intention was so admirable that she appeared forever apologising in her heart for the incompetence of her hands. Emily placed the spade in the corner of the porch, and desisting from her purpose, went upstairs to wash her hands before going in to dinner. As she ascended the wide, dimly lighted staircase, upon which the sun shone with a greenish light from the gallery above, she stopped twice to wonder why Beverly's visitor had slept in the barn like a tramp only six weeks ago. Before her mirror, a minute later, she put the same question to herself while she braided her hair. The room was large, cool, high-ceiled, with a great brick fireplace, and windows which looked out on the garden, where purple and white lilacs were blooming beside the gate. On the southern side the ivy had grown through the slats of the old green shutters, until they were held back, crumbling, against the house, and in the space between one of the cedars brushed always, with a whispering sound, against the discoloured panes. In Emily's absence a curious melancholy descended on the old mahogany furniture, the greenish windows and the fireless hearth; but with the opening of the door and the entrance of her vivid youth, there appeared also a light and gracious atmosphere in her surroundings. She remembered the day upon which she had returned after ten years' absence, and how as she opened the closed shutters, the gloom of the place had resisted the passage of the sunshine, retreating stubbornly from the ceiling to the black old furniture and then across the uncarpeted floor to the hall where it still held control. For months after her return it had seemed to her that the fight was between her spirit and the spirit of the past--between hope and melancholy, between growth and decay. The burden of debt, of poverty, of hopeless impotence had fallen upon her shoulders, and she had struggled under it with impetuous gusts of anger, but with an energy that never faltered. To keep the children fed and clothed, to work the poor farm as far as she was able, to stay clear of any further debts, and to pay off the yearly mortgage with her small income, these were the things which had filled her thoughts and absorbed the gallant fervour of her youth. Her salary at the public school had seemed to Beverly, though he disapproved of her position, to represent the possibility of luxury; and in some loose, vague way he was never able to understand why the same amount could not be made to serve in several opposite directions at the same time. "That fifty dollars will come in very well, indeed, my dear," he would remark, with cheerfulness, gloating over the unfamiliar sight of the bank notes, "it's exactly the amount of Wilson's bill which he's been sending in for the last year, and he refuses to furnish any groceries until the account is settled. Then there's the roof which must be repaired--it will help us there--then we must all have a supply of shoes, and the wages of the hands are due to-morrow, I overlooked that item." "But if you pay it all to Wilson," Emily would ask, as a kind of elementary lesson in arithmetic, "how is the money going to buy all the other things?" "Ah, to be sure," Beverly would respond, as if struck by the lucidity of the idea, "that is the question." And it was likely to remain the question until the end of Beverly--for he had grown so accustomed to the weight of poverty upon his shoulders that he would probably have felt a sense of loss if it had been suddenly removed. But it was impossible to live in the house with him, to receive his confidences and meet his charming smile and not to entertain a sentiment of affection for him in one's heart. His unfailing courtesy was his defence, though even this at times worked in Emily an unreasonable resentment. He had ruined his family, and she felt that she could have forgiven him more easily if he had ruined it with a less irreproachable demeanour. After her question he had said nothing further about the tobacco, but a chance meeting with Adam Whaley, as she rode into Tappahannock on the Sunday after Ordway's visit, made clear to her exactly what the purpose of that visit had been. "It's a pity Mr. Beverly let his tobacco spoil, particular' arter his wheat turned out to be no account," remarked Adam. "I hope you don't mind my sayin', Miss Em'ly, that Mr. Beverly is about as po' a farmer as he is a first rate gentleman." "Oh, no, I don't mind in the least, Adam," said Emily. "Do you know," she asked presently, "any hands that I can get to work the garden this week?" Whaley shook his head. "They get better paid at the factories," he answered; "an' them that ain't got thar little patch to labour in, usually manage to git a job in town." Emily was on her old horse--an animal discarded by Mr. Beverly on account of age--and she looked down at his hanging neck with a feeling that was almost one of hopelessness. Beverly, who had never paid his bills, had seldom paid his servants; and of the old slave generation that would work for its master for a song, there were only Micah and poor half-demented Aunt Mehitable now left. "The trouble with Mr. Beverly," continued Adam, laying his hand on the neck of the old horse, "is that he was born loose-fingered jest as some folks are born loose-moraled. He's never held on to anything sense he came into the world an' I doubt if he ever will. Why, bless yo' life, even as a leetle boy he never could git a good grip on his fishin' line. It was always a-slidin' an' slippin' into the water." They had reached Tappahannock in the midst of Adam's philosophic reflection; and as they were about to pass an open field on the edge of the town, Emily pointed to a little crowd which had gathered in the centre of the grass-grown space. "Is it a Sunday frolic, do you suppose?" she inquired. "That? Oh no--it's 'Ten Commandment Smith,' as they call him now. He gives a leetle talk out thar every fine Sunday arternoon." "A talk? About what?" "Wall, I ain't much of a listener, Miss, when it comes to that. My soul is willin' an' peart enough, but it's my hands an' feet that make the trouble. I declar' I've only got to set down in a pew for 'em to twitch untwel you'd think I had the Saint Vitus dance. It don't look well to be twitchin' the whole time you are in church, so that's the reason I'm obleeged to stay away. As for 'Ten Commandment Smith,' though, he's got a voice that's better than the doxology, an' his words jest boom along like cannon." "And do the people like it?" "Some, of 'em do, I reckon, bein' as even sermons have thar followers, but thar're t'others that go jest out of the sperit to be obleegin', an' it seems to them that a man's got a pretty fair licence to preach who gives away about two-thirds of what he gits a month. Good Lord, he could drum up a respectable sized congregation jest from those whose back mortgages he's helped pay up." While he spoke Emily had turned her horse's head into the field, and riding slowly toward the group, she stopped again upon discovering that it was composed entirely of men. Then going a little nearer, she drew rein just beyond the outside circle, and paused for a moment with her eyes fixed intently upon the speaker's face. In the distance a forest, still young in leaf, lent a radiant, springlike background to the field, which rose in soft green swells that changed to golden as they melted gradually into the landscape. Ordway's head was bare, and she saw now that the thick locks upon his forehead were powdered heavily with gray. She could not catch his words, but his voice reached her beyond the crowd; and she found herself presently straining her ears lest she miss the sound which seemed to pass with a peculiar richness into the atmosphere about the speaker. The religious significance of the scene moved her but little--for she came of a race that scorned emotional conversions or any faith, for that matter, which did not confine itself within four well-built walls. Yet, in spite of her convictions, something in the voice whose words she could not distinguish, held her there, as if she were rooted on her old horse to the spot of ground. The unconventional preacher, in his cheap clothes, aroused in her an interest which seemed in some vague way to have its beginning in a mystery that she could not solve. The man was neither a professional revivalist nor a member of the Salvation Army, yet he appeared to hold the attention of his listeners as if either their money or their faith was in his words. And it was no uncultured oratory--"Ten Commandment Smith," for all his rough clothes, his muddy boots and his hardened hands, was beneath all a gentleman, no matter what his work--no matter even what his class. Though she had lived far out of the world in which he had had his place, she felt instinctively that the voice she heard had been trained to reach another audience than the one before him in the old field. His words might be simple and straight from the heart--doubtless they were--but the voice of the preacher--the vibrant, musical, exquisitely modulated voice--was not merely a personal gift, but the result of generations of culture. The atmosphere of a larger world was around him as he stood there, bare-headed in the sunshine, speaking to a breathless crowd of factory workers as if his heart went out to them in the words he uttered. Perfectly motionless on the grass at his feet his congregation sat in circles with their pathetic dumb eyes fixed on his face. "What is it about, Adam? Can't you find out?" asked Emily, stirred by an impulsive desire to be one of the attentive group of listeners--to come under the spell of personality which drew its magic circle in the centre of the green field. Adam crossed the space slowly, and returned after what was to Emily an impatient interval. "It's one of his talks on the Ten Commandments--that's why they gave him his nickname. I didn't stay to find out whether 'twas the top or the bottom of 'em, Miss, as I thought you might be in a hurry." "But they can get that in church. What makes them come out here?" "Oh, he tells 'em things," said Adam, "about people and places, and how to get on in life. Then he's al'ays so ready to listen to anybody's troubles arterward; and he's taken over Martha Frayley's mortgage--you know she's the widow of Mike Frayley who was a fireman and lost his life last January in the fire at Bingham's Wall--I reckon, a man's got a right to talk big when he lives big, too." "Yes, I suppose he has," said Emily. "Well, I must be going now, so I'll ride on ahead of you." Touching the neck of the horse with her bare hand, she passed at a gentle amble into one of the smaller streets of Tappahannock. Her purpose was to call upon one of her pupils who had been absent from school for several days, but upon reaching the house she found that the child, after a slight illness, had recovered sufficiently to be out of doors. This was a relief rather than a disappointment, and mounting again, she started slowly back in the direction of Cedar Hill. A crowd of men, walking in groups along the roadside, made her aware that the gathering in the field had dispersed, and as she rode by she glanced curiously among them in the hope of discovering the face of the speaker. He was walking slightly behind the crowd, listening with an expression of interest, to a man in faded blue overalls, who kept a timid yet determined hold upon his arm. His face, which had appeared grave to Emily when she saw it at Cedar Hill, wore now a look which seemed a mixture of spiritual passion and boyish amusement. He impressed her as both sad and gay, both bitter and sympathetic, and she was struck again by the contrast between his hard mouth and his gentle eyes. As she met his glance, he bowed without a smile, while he stepped back into the little wayside path among the dusty thistles. Unconsciously, she had searched his face as Milly Trend had done before her, and like her, she had found there only an impersonal kindliness. CHAPTER IX THE OLD AND THE NEW When she reached home she found Beverly, seated before a light blaze in the dining-room, plunged in the condition of pious indolence which constituted his single observance of the Sabbath. To do nothing had always seemed to him in its way as religious as to attend church, and so he sat now perfectly motionless, with the box of dominoes reposing beside his tobacco pouch on the mantel above his head. The room was in great confusion, and the threadbare carpet, ripped up in places, was littered with the broken bindings of old books and children's toys made of birchwood or corncob, upon which Beverly delighted to work during the six secular days of the week. At his left hand the table was already laid for supper, which consisted of a dish of batter-bread, a half bared ham bone and a pot of coffee, from which floated a thin and cheap aroma. A wire shovel for popping corn stood at one side of the big brick fireplace, and on the hearth there was a small pile of half shelled red and yellow ears. Between the two long windows a tall mahogany clock, one of the few pieces left by the collector of old furniture, ticked with a loud, monotonous sound, which seemed to increase in volume with each passage of the hands. "Did you hear any news, my dear?" inquired Beverly, as Emily entered, for in spite of the fact that he rarely left his fireside, he was an insatiable consumer of small bits of gossip. "I didn't see anybody," answered Emily in her cheerful voice. "Shall I pour the coffee?" She went to the head of the table, while her brother, after shelling an ear of corn into the wire shovel, began shaking it slowly over the hickory log. "I thought you might have heard if Milly Trend had really made up her mind to marry that young tobacco merchant," he observed. Before Emily could reply the door opened and the three children rushed in, pursued by Aunt Mehitable, who announced that "Miss Meely" had gone to bed with one of her sick headaches and would not come down to supper. The information afforded Beverly some concern, and he rose to leave the room with the intention of going upstairs to his wife's chamber; but observing, as he did so, that the corn was popping finely, he sat down again and devoted his attention to the shovel, which he began to shake more rapidly. "The terrapin's sick, papa," piped one of the children, a little girl called Lila, as she pulled back her chair with a grating noise and slipped into her seat. "Do you s'pose it would like a little molasses for its supper?" "Terrapins don't eat molasses," said the boy, whose name was Blair. "They eat flies--I've seen 'em." "My terrapin shan't eat flies," protested Bella, the second little girl. "It ain't your terrapin!" "It is." "It ain't her terrapin, is it, papa?" Beverly, having finished his task, unfastened the lid of the shovel with the poker, and suggested that the terrapin might try a little popcorn for a change. As he stood there with his white hair and his flushed face in the red firelight, he made a picture of beautiful and serene domesticity. "I shouldn't wonder if he'd get quite a taste for popcorn if you could once persuade him to try it," he remarked, his mind having wandered whimsically from his wife to the terrapin. Emily had given the children batter-bread and buttermilk, and she sat now regarding her brother's profile as it was limned boldly in shadow against the quivering flames. It was impossible; she discovered, to survey Beverly's character with softness or his profile with severity. "Don't you think," she ventured presently, after a wholesome effort to achieve diplomacy, "that you might try to-morrow to spade the seed rows in the garden. Adam can't find anybody, and if the corn isn't dropped this week we'll probably get none until late in the summer." "'I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed,'" quoted Beverly, as he drank his coffee. "It would lay me up for a week, Emily, I am surprised that you ask it." She was surprised herself, the moment after she had put the question, so hopeless appeared any attempt to bend Beverly to utilitarian purposes. "Well, the tomatoes which I had counted on for the market will come too late," she said with a barely suppressed impatience in her voice. "I shouldn't worry about it if I were you," returned Beverly, "there's nothing that puts wrinkles in a pretty face so soon as little worries. I remember Uncle Bolingbroke (he used to be my ideal as a little boy) told me once that he had lived to be upward of ninety on the worries from which he had been saved. As a small child I was taken to see him once when he had just come to absolute ruin and had been obliged to sell his horses and his house and even his wife's jewellery for debt. A red flag was flying at the gate, but inside sat Uncle Bolingbroke, drinking port wine and cracking nuts with two of his old cronies. 'Yes, I've lost everything, my boy,' he cried, 'but it doesn't worry me a bit!' At that instant I remember noticing that his forehead was the smoothest I had ever seen." "But his wife had to take in dressmaking," commented Emily, "and his children grew up without a particle of education." "Ah, so they did," admitted Beverly, with sadness, "the details had escaped me." As they had escaped him with equal success all his life, the fact seemed to Emily hardly deserving of comment, and leaving him to his supper, she went upstairs to find Mrs. Brooke prostrate, in a cold room, with her head swathed in camphor bandages. In answer to Emily's inquiries, she moaned plaintively that the pantry shelves needed scouring and that she must get up at daybreak and begin the work. "I've just remembered lying here that I planned to clean them last week," she said excitedly, "and will you remind me, Emily, as soon as I get up that Beverly's old brown velveteen coat needs a patch at the elbow?" "Don't think of such things now, Amelia, there's plenty of time. You are shivering all over--I'll start the fire in a moment. It has turned quite cool again." "But I wanted to save the pine knots until Beverly came up," sighed Mrs. Brooke, "he is so fond of them." Without replying to her nervous protest, Emily knelt on the hearth and kindled a blaze which leaped rosily over the knots of resinous pine. Of the two family failings with which she was obliged to contend, she had long ago decided that Beverly's selfishness was less harmful in its results than Amelia's self-sacrifice. Inordinate at all times, it waxed positively violent during her severe attacks of headache, and between two spasms of pain her feverish imagination conjured up dozens of small self-denials which served to increase her discomfort while they conferred no possible benefit upon either her husband or her children. Her temperament had fitted her for immolation; but the character of the age in which she lived had compelled her to embrace a domestic rather than a religious martyrdom. The rack would have been to her morally a bed of roses, and some exalted grace belonging to the high destiny that she had missed was visible at times in her faded gray eyes and impassive features. "Mehitable brought me an egg," she groaned presently, growing more comfortable in spite of her resolve, as the rosy fire-light penetrated into the chill gloom where she lay, "but I sent it down to Blair--I heard him coughing." "He didn't want it. There was plenty of batter-bread." "Yes, but the poor boy is fond of eggs and he so seldom has one. It is very sad. Emily, have you noticed how inert and lifeless Mr. Brooke has grown?" "It's nothing new, Amelia, he has always been that way. Can't you sleep now?" "Oh, but if you could have seen him when we became engaged, Emily--such life! such spirits! I remember the first time I dined at your father's--that was before Beverly's mother died, so, of course, your mother wasn't even thought of in the family. I suppose second marriages are quite proper, since the Lord permits them, but they always seem to me like trying to sing the same hymn over again with equal fervour. Well, I was going to say that when your father asked me what part of the fowl I preferred and I answered 'dark meat, sir,' he fairly rapped the table in his delight: 'Oh, Amelia, what a capital wife you'll make for Beverly,' he cried, 'if you will only continue to prefer dark meat!'" She stopped breathlessly, lay silent for a moment, and then began to moan softly with pain. Emily swept the hearth, and after putting on a fresh log, went out, closing the door after her. There was no light in her room, but she reflected with a kind of desperation that there was no Beverly and no Amelia. The weight of the family had left her bruised and helpless, yet she knew that she must go downstairs again, remove the supper things, and send the three resisting children off to bed. She was quite equal to the task she had undertaken, yet there were moments when, because of her youth and her vitality, she found it harder to control her temper than to accomplish her work. At ten o'clock, when she had coaxed the children to sleep, and persuaded Amelia to drink a cup of gruel, she came to her room again and began to undress slowly by the full moonlight which streamed through the window. Outside, beyond the lilac bushes, she could see the tangled garden, with the dried stubble of last year's corn protruding from the unspaded rows. This was the last sight upon which her eyes turned before she climbed into the high tester bed and fell into the prompt and untroubled sleep of youth. Awaking at six o'clock she went again to the window, and at the first glance it seemed to her that she must have slipped back into some orderly and quiet dream--for the corn rows which had presented a blighted aspect under the moonlight were now spaded and harrowed into furrows ready for planting. The suggestion that Beverly had prepared a surprise for her occurred first to her mind, but she dismissed this the next instant and thought of Adam, Micah, even of the demented Aunt Mehitable. The memory of the fairy godmother in the story book brought a laugh to her lips, and as she dressed herself and ran downstairs to the garden gate, she half expected to see the pumpkin chariot disappearing down the weed-grown path and over the fallen fence. The lilac blossoms shed a delicious perfume into her face, and leaning against the rotting posts of the gate, she looked with mingled delight and wonder upon the freshly turned earth, which flushed faintly pink in the sunshine. A heavy dew lay over the landscape and as the sun rose slowly higher the mist was drawn back from the green fields like a sheet of gauze that is gathered up. "Beverly? Micah? Mehitable?" each name was a question she put to herself, and after each she answered decisively, "No, it is impossible." Micah, who appeared at the moment, doting, half blind and wholly rheumatic, shook his aged head helplessly in response to her eager inquiries. There was clearly no help to be had from him except the bewildered assistance he rendered in the afternoon by following on her footsteps with a split basket while she dropped the grains of corn into the opened furrows. His help in this case even was hardly more than a hindrance, for twice in his slow progress he stumbled and fell over a trailing brier in the path, and Emily was obliged to stop her work and gather up the grain which he had scattered. "Dese yer ole briers is des a-layin' out fur you," he muttered as he sat on the ground rubbing the variegated patch on his rheumatic knee. When the planting was over he went grumbling back to his cabin, while Emily walked slowly up and down the garden path and dreamed of the vegetables which would ripen for the market. In the midst of her business calculations she remembered the little congregation in the green field on Sunday afternoon and the look of generous enthusiasm in the face of the man who passed her in the road. Why had she thought of him? she wondered idly, and why should that group of listeners gathered out of doors in the faint sunshine awake in her a sentiment which was associated with some religious emotion of which she had been half unconscious? The next night she awoke from a profound sleep with the same memory in her mind, and turning on her pillow, lay wide awake in the moonlight, which brought with it a faint spring chill from the dew outside. On the ivy the light shone almost like dawn, and as she could not fall asleep again, she rose presently, and slipping into her flannel dressing-gown, crossed to the window and looked out upon the shining fields, the garden and the blossoming lilacs at the gate. The shadow of the lilacs lay thick and black along the garden walk, and her eyes were resting upon them, when it seemed to her that a portion of the darkness detached itself and melted out into the moonlight. At first she perceived only the moving shadow; then gradually a figure was outlined on the bare rows of the garden, and as her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she saw that the figure had assumed a human shape, though it was still followed so closely by its semblance upon the ground that it was impossible at a distance to distinguish the living worker from his airy double. Yet she realised instantly that her mysterious gardener was at work before her eyes, and hastening into her clothes, she caught up her cape from a chair, and started toward the door with an impulsive determination to discover his identity. With her hand on the knob, she hesitated and stopped, full of perplexity, upon the threshold. Since he had wished to remain undiscovered was it fair, she questioned, to thrust recognition upon his kindness? On the other hand was it not more than unfair--was it not positively ungrateful--to allow his work to pass without any sign of acceptance or appreciation? In the chill white moonlight outside she could see the pointed tops of the cedars rising like silver spires. As the boughs moved the wind entered, bringing mingled odours of cedar berries, lilacs and freshly turned soil. For an instant longer her hesitation lasted; then throwing aside her cape, she undressed quickly, without glancing again down into the garden. When she fell asleep now it was to dream of the shadowy gardener spading in the moonlight among the lilacs. CHAPTER X HIS NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN In his nightly work in the Brookes' garden, Ordway was prompted at first by a mere boyish impulse to repay people whose bread he had eaten and in whose straw he had slept. But at the end of the first hour's labour the beauty of the moonlight wrought its spell upon him, and he felt that the fragrance of the lilacs went like strong wine to his head. So the next night he borrowed Mrs. Twine's spade again and went back for the pure pleasure of the exercise; and the end of the week found him still digging among the last year's plants in the loamy beds. By spading less than two hours a night, he had turned the soil of half the garden before Sunday put a stop to his work. On his last visit, he paused at the full of the moon, and stood looking almost with sadness at the blossoming lilacs and the overgrown path powdered with wild flowers which had strayed in through the broken fence. For the hours he had spent there the place had given him back his freedom and his strength and even a reminiscent sentiment of his youth. While he worked Lydia had been only a little farther off in the beauty of the moonlight, and he had felt her presence with a spiritual sense which was keener than the sense of touch. As he drew his spade for the last time from the earth, he straightened himself, and standing erect, faced the cool wind which tossed the hair back from his heated forehead. At the moment he was content with the moonlight and the lilacs and the wind that blew over the spring fields, and it seemed easy enough to let the future rest with the past in the hands of God. Swinging the spade at his side, he lowered his eyes and moved a step toward the open gate. Then he stopped short, for he saw that Emily Brooke was standing there between the old posts under the purple and white lilacs. "It seemed too ungrateful to accept such a service and not even to say 'thank you,'" she remarked gravely. There was a drowsy sound in her voice; her lids hung heavily like a child's over her brown eyes, and her hair was flattened into little curls on one side by the pressure of the pillow. "It has been a pleasure to me," he answered, "so I deserve no thanks for doing the thing that I enjoyed." Drawing nearer he stood before her with the spade on his shoulder and his head uncovered. The smell of the earth hung about him, and even in the moonlight she could see that his blue eyes looked almost gay. She felt all at once that he was younger, larger, more masculine than she had at first believed. "And yet it is work," she said in her voice of cheerful authority, "and sorely needed work at that. I can thank you even though I cannot understand why you have done it." "Let's put it down to my passion to improve things," he responded with a whimsical gravity, "don't you think the garden as I first saw it justified that explanation of my behaviour?" "The explanation, yes--but not you," she answered, smiling. "Then let my work justify itself. I've made a neat job of it, haven't I?" "It's more than neat, it's positively ornamental," she replied, "but even your success doesn't explain your motive." "Well, the truth is--if you will have it--I needed exercise." "You might have walked." "That doesn't reach the shoulders--there's the trouble." She laughed with an easy friendliness which struck him as belonging to her gallant manner. "Oh, I assure you I shan't insist upon a reason, I'm too much obliged to you," she returned, coming inside the gate. "Indeed, I'm too good a farmer, I believe, to insist upon a reason anyway. Providence disposes and I accept with thanks. I may wish, though, that the coloured population shared your leaning toward the spade. By the way, I see it isn't mine. It looks too shiny." "I borrowed it from Mrs. Twine, and it is my suspicion that she scrubs it every night." "In that case I wonder that she lets it go out to other people's gardens." "She doesn't usually," he laughed as he spoke, "but you see I am a very useful person to Mrs. Twine. She talks at her husband by way of me." "Oh, I see," said Emily. "Well, I'm much obliged to her." "You needn't be. She hadn't the remotest idea where it went." Her merriment, joining with his, brought them suddenly together in a feeling of good fellowship. "So you don't like divided thanks," she commented gaily. "Not when they are undeserved," he answered, "as they are in this case." For a moment she was silent; then going slowly back to the gate, she turned there and looked at him wonderingly, he thought. "After all, it must have been a good wind that blew you to Tappahannock," she observed. Her friendliness--which impressed him as that of a creature who had met no rebuffs or disappointments from human nature, made an impetuous, almost childlike, appeal to his confidence. "Do you remember the night I slept in your barn?" he asked suddenly. She bent down to pick up a broken spray of lilac. "Yes, I remember." "Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night--I was beaten down, desperate, hopeless. Something in your kindness and--yes, and in your courage, too, put new life into me, and the next morning I turned back to Tappahannock. But for you I should still have followed the road." "It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee," she said in her frank, almost boyish way. "There's something in that, of course," he answered quietly. "I _was_ hungry, God knows, but I was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my fault, you understand--I had made an awful mess of things, and I had to begin again low down--at the very bottom." It was in his mind to tell her the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the day that he had returned to Tappahannock; but he was schooling himself hard to resist the sudden impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his words with an effort, he lowered the spade from his shoulder, and leaning upon the handle, stood waiting for her to speak. "Then you began again at Baxter's warehouse the morning afterward?" she asked. "I had gone wrong from the very base of things, you see," he answered. "And you are making a new foundation now?" "I am trying to. They're decent enough folk in Tappahannock, aren't they?" he added cheerfully. "Perhaps they are," she responded, a little wistfully, "but I should like to have a glimpse of the world outside. I should like most, I think, to see New York." "New York?" he repeated blankly, "you've never been there?" "I? Oh, no, I've never been out of Virginia, except when I taught school once in Georgia." The simple dignity with which she spoke caused him to look at her suddenly as if he had taken her in for the first time. Perfectly unabashed by her disclosure, she stood before him as calmly as she would have stood, he felt, had he possessed a thousand amazed pairs of eyes. Her confidence belonged less to personal experience, he understood now, than to some inherited ideal of manner--of social values; and it seemed to him at the moment that there was a breadth, a richness in her aspect which was like the atmosphere of rare old libraries. "You have, I dare say, read a great many books," he remarked. "A great many--oh, yes, we kept our books almost to the last. We still have the entire south wall in the library--the English classics are there." "I imagined so," he answered, and as he looked at her he realised that the world she lived in was not the narrow, provincial world of Tappahannock, with its dusty warehouses, its tobacco scented streets, its red clay roads. She had turned from the gate, but before moving away she looked back and bowed to him with her gracious Southern courtesy, as she had done that first night in the barn. "Good-night. I cannot thank you enough," she said. "Good-night. I am only paying my debt," he answered. As he spoke she entered the house, and with the spade on his shoulder he passed down the avenue and struck out vigorously upon the road to Tappahannock. When he came down to breakfast some hours later, Mrs. Twine informed him that a small boy had come at daybreak with a message to him from Bullfinch's Hollow. "Of course it ain't any of my business, suh," she continued impressively, "but if I were you I wouldn't pay any attention to Kit Berry or his messages. Viciousness is jest as ketchin' as disease, that's what I say, an' you can't go steppin' aroun' careless whar it is in the air an' expect to git away with a whole morality. 'Tain't as if you were a female, either, for if I do say it who should not, they don't seem to be so thin-skinned whar temptation is concerned. 'Twas only two weeks ago last Saturday when I went to drag Bill away from that thar low lived saloon (the very same you broke into through the window, suh) that Timmas Kelly had the imperence to say to me, 'This is no place for respectable women, Mrs. Twine.' 'An, indeed, I'd like to know, Mr. Kelly,' said I to him, 'if it's too great a strain for the women, how the virtue of the men have stood it? For what a woman can't resist, I reckon, it's jest as well for a man not to be tempted with.' He shet up then tight as a keg--I'd wish you'd have seen him." "In his place I should probably have done the same," admitted Ordway, as he took his coffee from her hands. He was upon excellent terms with Mrs. Twine, with the children, and even with the disreputable Bill. "Wall, I've done a lot o' promisin', like other folks," pursued Mrs. Twine, turning from the table to pick up a pair of Canty's little breeches into which she was busily inserting a patch, "an' like them, I reckon, I was mostly lyin' when I did it. Thar's a good deal said at the weddin' about 'love' and 'honour' and 'obey', but for all the slick talk of the parson, experience has taught me that sich things are feelin's an' not whalebones. Now if thar's a woman on this earth that could manage to love, honour and obey Bill Twine, I'd jest like for her to step right up an' show her face, for she's a bigger fool than I'd have thought even a female could boast of bein'. As for me, suh, a man's a man same as a horse is a horse, an' if I'm goin' to set about honourin' any animal on o'count of its size I reckon I'd as soon turn roun' an' honour a whale." "But you mustn't judge us all by our friend Bill," remarked Ordway, picking up the youngest child with a laugh, "remember his weakness, and be charitable to the rest of us." Mrs. Twine spread the pair of little breeches upon her knee and slapped them into shape as energetically as if they had contained the person of their infant wearer. "As for that, suh," she rejoined, "so far as I can see one man differs from another only in the set of his breeches--for the best an' the worst of 'em are made of the same stuff, an' underneath thar skin they're all pure natur. I've had three of 'em for better or for worse, an' I reckon that's as many specimens as you generally jedge things by in a museum. A weak woman would have kept a widow after my marriage with Bob Cotton, the brother of William, suh--but I ain't weak, that's one thing can be said for me--so when I saw my opportunity in the person of Mike Frazier, I up an' said: 'Wall, thar's this much to be said for marriage--whether you do or whether you don't you'll be sure to regret it, an' the regret for things you have done ain't quite so forlorn an' impty headed a feelin' as the regret for things you haven't.' Then I married him, an' when he died an' Bill came along I married him, too. Sech is my determination when I've once made up my mind, that if Bill died I'd most likely begin to look out for another. But if I do, suh, I tell you now that I'd try to start the next with a little pure despisin'--for thar's got to come a change in marriage one way or another, that's natur, an' I reckon it's as well to have it change for the better instead of the worst." A knock at the door interrupted her, and when she had answered it, she looked back over her shoulder to tell Ordway that Mr. Banks had stopped by to walk downtown with him. With a whispered promise to return with a pocket-full of lemon drops, Ordway slipped the child from his knee, and hurriedly picking up his hat, went out to join Banks upon the front steps. Since the day upon which the two men had met at a tobacco auction Banks had attached himself to Ordway with a devotion not unlike that of a faithful dog. At his first meeting he had confided to the older man the story of his youthful struggles, and the following day he had unburdened himself with rapture of his passion for Milly. "I've just had breakfast with the Trends," he said, "so I thought I might as well join you on your way down. Mighty little doing in tobacco now, isn't there?" "Well, I'm pretty busy with the accounts," responded Ordway. "By the way, Banks, I've had a message from Bullfinch's Hollow. Kit Berry wants me to come over." "I like his brass. Why can't he come to you?" "He's sick it seems, so I thought I'd go down there some time in the afternoon." They had reached Trend's gate as he spoke, to find Milly herself standing there in her highest colour and her brightest ribbon. As Banks came up with her, he introduced Ordway, who would have passed on had not Milly held out her hand. "Father was just saying how much he should like to meet you, Mr. Smith," she remarked, hoping while she uttered the words that she would remember to instruct Jasper Trend to live up to them when the opportunity afforded. "Perhaps you will come in to supper with us to-night? Mr. Banks will be here." "Thank you," said Ordway with the boyish smile which had softened the heart of Mrs. Twine, "but I was just telling Banks I had to go over to Bullfinch's Hollow late in the afternoon." "Somebody's sick there, you know," explained Banks in reply to Milly's look of bewilderment. "He's the greatest fellow alive for missionarying to sick people." "Oh, you see it's easier to hit a man when he's down," commented Ordway, drily. He was looking earnestly at Milly Trend, who grew prettier and pinker beneath his gaze, yet at the moment he was only wondering if Alice's bright blue eyes could be as lovely as the softer ones of the girl before him. As they went down the hill a moment afterward Banks asked his companion, a little reproachfully, why he had refused the invitation to supper. "After all I've told you about Milly," he concluded, "I hoped you'd want to meet her when you got the chance." Ordway glanced down at his clothes. "My dear Banks, I'm a working man, and to tell the truth I couldn't manufacture an appearance--that's the best excuse I have." "All the same I wish you'd go. Milly wouldn't care." "Milly mightn't, but you would have blushed for me. I couldn't have supported a comparison with your turtle-dove." Banks reddened hotly, while he put his hand to his cravat with a conscious laugh. "Oh, you don't need turtle-doves and things," he answered, "there's something about you--I don't know what it is--that takes the place of them." "The place of diamond turtle-doves and violet stockings?" laughed Ordway with good-humoured raillery. "You wouldn't be a bit better looking if you wore them--Milly says so." "I'm much obliged to Milly and on the whole I'm inclined to think she's right. Do you know," he added, "I'm not quite sure that you are improved by them yourself, except for the innocent enjoyment they afford you." "But I'm such a common looking chap," said Banks, "I need an air." "My dear fellow," returned Ordway, while his look went like sunshine to the other's heart, "if you want to know what you are--well, you're a downright trump!" He stopped before the brick archway of Baxter's warehouse, and an instant later, Banks, looking after him as he turned away, vowed in the luminous simplicity of his soul that if the chance ever came to him he "would go to hell and back again for the sake of Smith." CHAPTER XI BULLFINCH'S HOLLOW At five o'clock Ordway followed the uneven board walk to the end of the main street, and then turning into a little footpath which skirted the railroad track, he came presently to the abandoned field known in Tappahannock as Bullfinch's Hollow. Beyond a disorderly row of negro hovels, he found a small frame cottage, which he recognised as the house to which he had brought Kit Berry on the night when he had dragged him bodily from Kelly's saloon. In response to his knock the door was opened by the same weeping woman--a small withered person, with snapping black eyes and sparse gray hair brushed fiercely against her scalp, where it clung so closely that it outlined the bones beneath. At sight of Ordway a smile curved her sunken mouth; and she led the way through the kitchen to the door of a dimly lighted room at the back, where a boy of eighteen years tossed deliriously on a pallet in one corner. It was poverty in its direst, its most abject, results, Ordway saw at once as his eyes travelled around the smoke stained, unplastered walls and rested upon the few sticks of furniture and the scant remains of a meal on the kitchen table. Then he looked into Mrs. Berry's face and saw that she must have lived once amid surroundings far less wretched than these. "Kit was taken bad with fever three days ago," she said, "an' the doctor told me this mornin' that the po' boy's in for a long spell of typhoid. He's clean out of his head most of the time, but whenever he comes to himself he begs and prays me to send for you. Something's on his mind, but I can't make out what it is." "May I see him now?" asked Ordway. "I think he's wanderin', but I'll find out in a minute." She went to the pallet and bending over the young man, whispered a few words in his ear, while her knotted hand stroked back the hair from his forehead. As Ordway's eyes rested on her thin shoulders under the ragged, half soiled calico dress she wore, he forgot the son in the presence of the older and more poignant tragedy of the mother's life. Yet all that he knew of her history was that she had married a drunkard and had brought a second drunkard into the world. "He wants to speak to you, sir--he's come to," she said, returning to the doorway, and fixing her small black eyes upon Ordway's face. "You are the gentleman, ain't you, who got him to sign the pledge?" Ordway nodded. "Did he keep it?" Her sharp eyes filled with tears. "He hasn't touched a drop for going on six weeks, sir, but he hadn't the strength to hold up without it, so the fever came on and wore him down." Swallowing a sob with a gulp, she wiped her eyes fiercely on the back of her hand. "He ain't much to look at now," she finished, divided between her present grief and her reminiscent pride, "but, oh, Mr. Smith, if you could have seen him as a baby! When he was a week old he was far and away the prettiest thing you ever laid your eyes on--not red, sir, like other children, but white as milk, with dimples at his knees and elbows. I've still got some of his little things--a dress he wore and a pair of knitted shoes--and it's them that make me cry, sir. I ain't grievin' for the po' boy in there that's drunk himself to death, but for that baby that used to be." Still crying softly, she slunk out into the kitchen, while Ordway, crossing to the bed, stood looking down upon the dissipated features of the boy who lay there, with his matted hair tossed over his flushed forehead. "I'm sorry to see you down, Kit. Can I do anything to help you?" he asked. Kit opened his eyes with a start of recognition, and reaching out, gripped Ordway's wrist with his burning hand, while he threw off the ragged patchwork quilt upon the bed. "I've something on my mind, and I want to get it off," he answered. "When it's once off I'll be better and get back my wits." "Then get it off. I'm waiting." "Do you remember the night in the bar-room?" demanded the boy in a whisper, "the time you came in through the window and took me home?" "Go on," said Ordway. "Well, I'd walked up the street behind you that afternoon when you left Baxter's, and I got drunk that night on a dollar I stole from you." "But I didn't speak to you. I didn't even see you." "Of course you didn't. If you had I couldn't have stolen it, but Baxter had just paid you and when you put your hand into your pocket to get out something, a dollar bill dropped on the walk." "Go on." "I picked it up and got drunk on it, there's nothing else. It was a pretty hard drunk, but before I got through you came in and dragged me home. Twenty cents were left in my pockets. Mother found the money and bought a fish for breakfast. "Well, I did that much good at least," observed Ordway with a smile, "have you finished, Kit?" "It's been on my mind," repeated Kit deliriously, "and I wanted to get it off." "It's off now, my boy," said Ordway, picking up the ragged quilt from the floor and laying it across the other's feet, "and on the whole I'm glad you told me. You've done the straight thing, Kit, and I am proud of you." "Proud of me?" repeated Kit, and fell to crying like a baby. In a minute he grew delirious again, and Ordway, after bathing the boy's face and hands from a basin of water on a chair at the bedside, went into the kitchen in search of Mrs. Berry, whom he found weeping over a pair of baby's knitted shoes. The pathos of her grief bordered so closely upon the ridiculous that while he watched her he forced back the laugh upon his lips. "Kit is worse again," he said. "Do you give him any medicine?" Mrs. Berry struggled with difficulty to her feet, while her sobs changed into a low whimpering sound. "Did you sit up with him last night?" asked Ordway, following her to the door. "I've been up for three nights, sir. He has to have his face and hands bathed every hour." "What about medicine and food?" "The doctor gives him his medicine free, every drop of it, an' they let me have a can of milk every day from Cedar Hill. I used to live there as a girl, you know, my father was overseer in old Mr. Brooke's time--before he married Miss Emily's mother----" Ordway cut short her reminiscences. "Well, you must sleep to-night," he said authoritatively, "I'll come back in an hour and sit up with Kit. Where is your room?" She pointed to a rickety flight of stairs which led to the attic above. "Kit slept up there until he was taken ill," she answered. "He's been a hard son to me, sir, as his father was a hard husband because of drink, but to save the life of me I can't forgit how good he used to be when he warn't more'n a week old. Never fretted or got into tempers like other babies----" Again Ordway broke in drily upon her wandering recollections. "Now I'll go for an hour," he said abruptly, "and by the way, have you had supper or shall I bring you some groceries when I come?" "There was a little milk left in the pitcher and I had a piece of cornbread, but--oh, Mr. Smith," her small black eyes snapped fiercely into his, "there are times when my mouth waters for a cup of coffee jest as po' Kit's does for whiskey." "Then put the kettle on," returned Ordway, smiling, as he left the room. It was past sunset when he returned, and he found Kit sleeping quietly under the effect of the medicine the doctor had just given him. Mrs. Berry had recovered sufficient spirit, not only to put the kettle on the stove, but to draw the kitchen table into the square of faint light which entered over the doorstep. The preparations for her supper had been made, he saw, with evident eagerness, and as he placed his packages upon the table, she fell upon them with an excited, childish curiosity. A few moments later the aroma of boiling coffee floated past him where he sat on the doorstep smoking his last pipe before going into the sick-room for the night. Turning presently he watched the old woman in amazement while she sat smacking her thin lips and jerking her shrivelled little hands over her fried bacon; and as he looked into her ecstatic face, he realised something of the intensity which enters into the scant enjoyments of the poor. The memory of his night in the Brookes' barn returned to him with the aroma of the coffee, and he understood for the first time that it is possible to associate a rapture with meat and drink. Then, in spite of his resolve to keep his face turned toward his future, he found himself contrasting the squalid shanty at his back with the luxurious surroundings amid which he had last watched all night by a sick-bed. He could see the rich amber-coloured curtains, the bowls of violets on the inlaid table between the open windows, the exquisite embroidered coverlet upon the bed, and the long pale braid of Lydia's hair lying across the lace ruffles upon her nightgown. Before his eyes was the sunken field filled with Negro hovels and refuse heaps in which lean dogs prowled snarling in search of bones; but his inward vision dwelt, in a luminous mist, on the bright room, scented with violets, where Lydia had slept with her baby cradled within her arm. He could see her arm still under the falling lace, round and lovely, with delicate blue veins showing beneath the inside curve. In the midst of his radiant memory the acrid voice of Mrs. Berry broke with a shock, and turning quickly he found that his dream took instant flight before the aggressive actuality which she presented. "I declare I believe I'd clean forgot how good things tasted," she remarked in the cheerful tones of one who is full again after having been empty. Picking up a chip from the ground, Ordway began scraping carelessly at the red clay on his boots. "It smells rather nice anyway," he rejoined good-humouredly, and rising from the doorstep, he crossed the kitchen and sat down in the sagging split-bottomed chair beside the pallet. At sunrise he left Kit, sleeping peacefully after a delirious night, and going out of doors for a breath of fresh air, stood looking wearily on the dismal prospect of Bullfinch's Hollow. The disorderly road, the dried herbage of the field, the Negro hovels, with pig pens for backyards, and the refuse heaps piled with tin cans, old rags and vegetable rinds, appeared to him now to possess a sordid horror which had escaped him under the merciful obscurity of the twilight. Even the sun, he thought, looked lean and shrunken, as it rose over the slovenly landscape. With the first long breath he drew there was only dejection in his mental outlook; then he remembered the enraptured face of Mrs. Berry as she poured out her coffee, and he told himself that there were pleasures hardy enough to thrive and expand even in the atmosphere of Bullfinch's Hollow. As there was no wood in the kitchen, he shouldered an old axe which he found leaning in one corner, and going to a wood-pile beyond the doorstep, split up the single rotting log lying upon a heap of mould. Returning with his armful of wood, he knelt on the hearth and attempted to kindle a blaze before the old woman should make her appearance from the attic. The sticks had just caught fire, when a shadow falling over him from the open door caused him to start suddenly to his feet. "I beg your pardon," said a voice, "but I've brought some milk for Mrs. Berry." At the words his face reddened as if from shame, and drawing himself to his full height, he stood, embarrassed and silent, in the centre of the room, while Emily Brooke crossed the floor and placed the can of milk she had brought upon the table. "I didn't mean to interrupt you," she added cheerfully, "but there was no one else to come, so I had to ride over before breakfast. Is Kit better?" "Yes," said Ordway, and to his annoyance he felt himself flush painfully at the sound of his own voice. "You spent last night with him?" she inquired in her energetic tones. "Yes." As he stood there in his cheap clothes, with his dishevelled hair and his unwashed hands, she was struck by some distinction of personality, before which these surface roughnesses appeared as mere incidental things. Was it in his spare, weather-beaten face? Or was it in the peculiar contrast between his gray hair and his young blue eyes? Then her gaze fell on his badly made working clothes, worn threadbare in places, on his clean striped shirt, frayed slightly at the collar and cuffs, on his broken fingernails, and on the red clay still adhering to his country boots. "I wonder why you do these things?" she asked so softly that the words hardly reached him. "I wonder why?" Though she had expected no response to her question, to her surprise he answered almost impulsively as he stooped to pick up a bit of charred wood from the floor. "Well, one must fill one's life, you know," he said. "I tried the other thing once but it didn't count--it was hardly better than this, when all is said." "What 'other thing' do you mean?" "When I spoke I was thinking of what people have got to call 'pleasure,'" he responded, "getting what one wants in life, or trying to get it and failing in the end." "And did you fail?" she asked, with a simplicity which saved the blunt directness of the question. He laughed. "Do you think if I had succeeded, I'd be splitting wood in Bullfinch's Hollow?" "And you care nothing for Kit Berry?" "Oh, I like him--he's an under dog." "Then you are for the under dog, right or wrong, as I am?" she responded with a radiant look. "Well, I don't know about that," he answered, "but I have at least a fellow feeling for him. I'm an under dog myself, you see." "But you won't stay one long?" "That's the danger. When I come out on top I'll doubtless stop splitting wood and do something worse." "I don't believe it," she rejoined decisively. "You have never had a chance at the real thing before." "You're right there," he admitted, "I had never seen the real thing in my life until I came to Tappahannock." "Do you mind telling me," she asked, after an instant's hesitation, "why you came to Tappahannock? I can't understand why anyone should ever come here." "I don't know about the others, but I came because my road led here. I followed my road." "Not knowing where it would end?" He laughed again. "Not _caring_ where it would end." Her charming boyish smile rippled across her lips. "It isn't necessary that I should understand to be glad that you kept straight on," she said. "But the end isn't yet," he replied, with a gaiety beneath which she saw the seriousness in his face. "It may lead me off again." "To a better place I hope." "Well, I suppose that would be easy to find," he admitted, as he glanced beyond the doorway, "but I like Tappahannock. It has taken me in, you know, and there's human nature even in Bullfinch's Hollow." "Oh, I suppose it's hideous," she remarked, following his look in the direction of the town, "but I can't judge. I've seen so little else, you know--and yet my City Beautiful is laid out in my mind." "Then you carry it with you, and that is best." As she was about to answer the door creaked above them and Mrs. Berry came down the short flight of steps, hastily fastening her calico dress as she descended. "Well, I declare, who'd have thought to see you at this hour, Miss Emily," she exclaimed effusively. "I thought you might need the milk early," replied the girl, "and as Micah had an attack of rheumatism I brought it over on horseback." While the old woman emptied the contents of the can into a cracked china pitcher, Emily held out her hand to Ordway with an impulsive gesture. "We shall have a flourishing kitchen garden," she said, "thanks to you." Then taking the empty can from Mrs. Berry, she crossed the threshold, and remounted from the doorstep. CHAPTER XII A STRING OF CORAL As Emily rode slowly up from Bullfinch's Hollow, it seemed to her that the abandoned fields had borrowed an aspect which was almost one of sentiment. In the golden light of the sunrise even the Negro hovels, the refuse heaps and the dead thistles by the roadside, were transfigured until they appeared to lose their ordinary daytime ugliness; and the same golden light was shining inwardly on the swift impressions which crowded her thoughts. This strange inner illumination surrounded, she discovered now, each common fact which presented itself to her mind, and though the outward form of life was not changed, her mental vision had become suddenly enraptured. She did not stop to ask herself why the familiar events of every day appear so full of vivid interests--why the external objects at which she looked swam before her gaze in an atmosphere that was like a rainbow mist? It was sufficient to be alive to the finger tips, and to realise that everything in the great universe was alive around one--the air, the sky, the thistles along the roadside and the dust blowing before the wind, all moved, she felt, in harmony with the elemental pulse of life. On that morning she entered for the first time into the secret of immortality. And yet--was it only the early morning hour? she asked herself, as she rode back between the stretches of dried broomsedge. Or was it, she questioned a moment later, the natural gratification she had felt in a charity so generous, so unassuming as that of the man she had seen at Mrs. Berry's? "It's a pity he isn't a gentleman and that his clothes are so rough," she thought, and blushed the next instant with shame because she was "only a wretched snob." "Whatever his class he _is_ a gentleman," she began again, "and he would be quite--even very--good-looking if his face were not so drawn and thin. What strange eyes he has--they are as blue as Blair's and as young. No, he isn't exactly good-looking--not in Beverly's way, at least--but I should know his face again if I didn't see it for twenty years. It's odd that there are people one hardly knows whom one never forgets." Her bare hands were on Major's neck, and as she looked at them a displeased frown gathered her brows. She wondered why she had never noticed before that they were ugly and unwomanly, and it occurred to her that Aunt Mehitable had once told her that "ole Miss" washed her hands in buttermilk to keep them soft and white. "They're almost as rough as Mr. Smith's," she thought, "perhaps he noticed them." The idea worried her for a minute, for she hated, she told herself, that people should not think her "nice"--but the golden light was still flooding her thoughts and these trivial disturbances scattered almost before they had managed to take shape. Nothing worried her long to-day, and as she dismounted at the steps, and ran hurriedly into the dining-room, she remembered Beverly and Amelia with an affection which she had not felt for years. It was as if the mere external friction of personalities had dissolved before the fundamental relation of soul to soul; even poor half-demented Aunt Mehitable wore in her eyes, at the minute, an immortal aspect. A little later when she rode in to the public school at Tappahannock, she discovered that the golden light irradiated even the questions in geography and arithmetic upon the blackboard; and coming out again, she found that it lay like sunshine on the newly turned vegetable rows in the garden. That afternoon for the first time she planted in a discarded pair of buck-skin gloves, and as soon as her work was over, she went upstairs to her bedroom, and regarded herself wistfully by the light from a branched candlestick which she held against the old greenish mirror. Her forehead was too high, she admitted regretfully, her mouth was too wide, her skin certainly was too brown. The blue cotton dress she wore appeared to her suddenly common and old-fashioned, and she began looking eagerly through her limited wardrobe in the hopeless quest for a gown that was softened by so much as a fall of lace about the throat. Then remembering the few precious trinkets saved from the bartered heirlooms of her dead mother, she got out the old black leather jewel case and went patiently over the family possessions. Among the mourning brooches and hair bracelets that the box contained there was a necklace of rare pink coral, which she had meant to give Bella upon her birthday--but as her gaze was arrested now by the cheerful colour, she sat for a moment wondering if she might not honestly keep the beads for her own. Still undecided she went to the bureau again and fastened the string of coral around her firm brown throat. "I may wear it for a week or two at least," she thought. "Why not?" It seemed to her foolish, almost unfeminine that she had never cared or thought about her clothes until to-day. "I've gone just like a boy--I ought to be ashamed to show my hands," she said; and at the same instant she was conscious of the vivid interest, of the excitement even, which attached to this new discovery of the importance of one's appearance. Before going downstairs she brushed the tangles out of her thick brown hair, and spent a half hour arranging it in a becoming fashion upon her neck. The next day Micah was well enough to carry the milk to Mrs. Berry's, but three mornings afterward, when she came from the dairy with the can, the old negro was not waiting for her on the porch, and she found, upon going to his cabin, that the attack of rheumatism had returned with violence. There was nothing for her to do but carry the milk herself, so after leading Major from his stall, she mounted and rode, almost with a feeling of shyness, in the direction of Bullfinch's Hollow. The door was closed this morning, and in answer to her knock, Mrs. Berry appeared, rubbing her eyes, beyond the threshold. "I declare, Miss Emily, you don't look like yourself at all," she exclaimed at the girl's entrance, "it must be them coral beads you've got on, I reckon. They always was becomin' things--I had a string once myself that I used to wear when my po' dead husband was courtin' me. Lord! Lord!" she added, bursting into sobs, "who'd have thought when I wore those beads that I'd ever have come to this? My po' ma gave 'em to me herself--they were her weddin' present from her first husband, and when she made up her mind to marry again, she kind of thought it warn't modest to go aroun' wearin' what she'd got from her first marriage. She was always powerful sensitive to decency, was po' ma. I've seen her scent vulgarity in the most harmless soundin' speech you ever heard--such as when my husband asked her one day if she was afflicted with the budges in her knee, and she told me afterward that he had made a sneakin' allusion to her leg. Ten years from that time, when all my trouble came upon me, she held that over me as a kind of warnin'. 'If you'd listened to me, Sarindy,' she used to say, 'you'd never have got into this scrape of marryin' a man who talked free befo' women. For a man who is indecent in his language can't be decent in his life,' she said." As she talked she was pouring the milk into the cracked pitcher, and Emily breaking in at the first pause, sought to hasten the washing of the can, by bringing the old woman's rambling attention back to Kit. "Has he had a quiet night?" she asked. "Well, yes, miss, in a way, but then he always was what you might call a quiet sleeper from the very hour that he was born. I remember old Aunt Jemima, his monthly nurse, tellin' me that she had never in all her experience brought a more reliable sleeper into the world. He never used to stir, except to whimper now and then for his sugar rag when it slipped out of his mouth." Hurriedly seizing the half-washed can, Emily caught up her skirt and moved toward the door. "Did you sit up with him last night?" she asked, turning upon the step. "That was Mr. Smith's night, miss--he's taken such a fancy to Kit that he comes every other night to watch by him--but he gets up and leaves now a little before daybreak. I heard him choppin' wood before the sun was up." "He has been very kind about it, hasn't he?" "Lord, miss, he's been a son and a brother as far as work goes, but I declare I can't help wishin' he wasn't quite so shut mouthed. Every blessed sound he utters I have to drag out of him like a fox out of a burrow. He's a little cranky, too, I reckon, for he is so absent-minded that sometimes when you call his name he never even turns aroun'. But the Lord will overlook his unsociable ways, I s'pose, for he reads his Bible half the night when he sets up, jest as hard as if he was paid to do it. That's as good a recommendation, I reckon, as I need to have." "I should think his charity would be a better one," rejoined Emily, with severity. "Well, that's as it may be, Miss," returned Mrs. Berry, "I'm not ungrateful, I hope, and I'm much obliged for what he gives me--particularly for the coffee, which ain't as thin as it might be seein' it's a present. But when all's said I ain't so apt to jedge by things like that because charity is jest a kind of Saint Vitus dance with some folks--it's all in the muscles. Thank you, miss, yes, Kit is doin' very well." Mounting from the step, Emily turned back into the Tappahannock road, aware as she passed through the deserted fields that her exaltation of the morning had given way before a despondency which seemed to change the face of nature. The day was oppressive, the road ugly, Mrs. Berry more tiresome than usual--each of these things suggested itself as a possible reason for the dissatisfaction which she could not explain. Not once during her troubled mood did the name or the face of Ordway appear as the visible cause of her disturbance. So far, indeed, was his individual aspect from her reflections, that some hours later, when she rode back to school, it was with a shock of surprise that she saw him turn the corner by the new brick church, and come rapidly toward her from the brow of the long hill. That he had not at first seen her was evident, for he walked in an abstracted reverie with his eyes on the ground, and when he looked up at last, she had drawn almost within speaking distance. At sight of his face her heart beat so quickly that she dropped the reins on Major's neck, and raised her free hand to her bosom, while she felt the blood mount joyously to her cheeks; but, to her amazement, in the first instant of recognition, he turned abruptly away and entered the shop of a harness maker which happened to be immediately on his right. The action was so sudden that even as she quickened her horse's pace, there flashed into her mind the humiliating conviction that he had sought purposely to avoid her. The throbs of her heart grew faster and then seemed to die utterly away, yet even as the warm blood turned cold in her cheeks, she told herself with spirit that it was all because she "could not bear to be disliked." "Why should he dislike me?" she questioned presently; "it is very foolish of him, and what have I done?" She searched her memory for some past rudeness of which she had been guilty, but there was nothing she could recall which would justify, however slightly, his open avoidance of a chance meeting. "Perhaps he doesn't like the colour of my hair. I've heard men were like that," she thought, "or the freckles on my face? Or the roughness of my hands?" But the instant afterward she saw how ridiculous were her surmises, and she felt angry with herself for having permitted them to appear in her mind. She remembered his blue eyes with the moonlight upon them, and she wondered why he had seemed to her more masculine than any man that she had ever known. With the memory of his eyes and his smile she smelt again the odour of the warm earth that had clung about him, and she was conscious that this and everything about him was strange and new as if she had never looked into a pair of blue eyes or smelt the odour of the soil before. After this meeting she did not see Ordway again for several weeks, and then it was only to pass him in the road one Sunday afternoon when he had finished his sermon in the old field. As he drew back among the thistles, he spoke to her gravely, with a deference, she noticed, which had the effect of placing him apart from her as a member of the working class. Since Kit Berry's recovery she had not gone again to Bullfinch's Hollow; and she could not fail to observe that even when an opportunity appeared, Ordway made no further effort to bridge the mere casual acquaintance which divided rather than united them. If it were possible to avoid conversation with her he did so by retiring into the background; if the event forced him into notice, he addressed her with a reserve which seemed at each meeting to widen the distance between them. Though she hardly confessed it to herself, her heart was wounded for a month or two by his frank indifference to her presence. Then one bright afternoon in May, when she had observed him turn out of his path as she rode up the hill, she saved the situation in her mind by the final triumph of her buoyant humour. "Everybody is privileged to be a little fool," she said with a laugh, "but when there's the danger of becoming a great big one, it's time to stop short and turn round. Now, Emily, my dear, you're to stop short from this minute. I hope you understand me." That the Emily she addressed understood her very clearly was proved a little later in the afternoon, when going upstairs to her bedroom, she unfastened the coral beads and laid them away again among the mourning brooches and the hair bracelets in the leather case. BOOK SECOND THE DAY OF RECKONING CHAPTER I IN WHICH A STRANGER APPEARS On a bright June morning, when Ordway had been more than two years at Tappahannock, he came out upon Mrs. Twine's little porch as soon as breakfast was over, and looked down the board walk for Harry Banks, who had fallen into the habit of accompanying him to the warehouse. From where he stood, under the hanging blossoms of the locust trees, he could see the painted tin roofs and the huddled chimneys of the town, flanked by the brazen sweep of the cornfields along the country roads. As his eyes rested on the familiar scene, they softened unconsciously with an affection which was almost paternal--for in the last two years Tappahannock had become a different place from the Tappahannock he had entered as a tramp on that windy afternoon in March. The town as it stood to-day was the town which he had helped to make, and behind each roll of progress there had been the informing purpose of his mind, as well as the strength of his shoulder at the wheel. Behind the law which had closed the disreputable barrooms; behind the sentiment for decency which had purified the filthy hollows; behind the spirit of charity which had organised and opened, not only a reading room for the factory workers, but an industrial home for the poorer classes--behind each of these separate movements there had been a single energy to plan and act. In two years he had watched the little town cover the stretch of ten years' improvement; in two years he had aroused and vitalised the community into which he had come a stranger. Tappahannock was the child of his brain--the life that was in her to-day he had given her out of himself, and the love he felt for her was the love that one bestows upon one's own. Standing there his eyes followed the street to the ugly brick church at the corner, and then as his mental vision travelled down the long, hot hill which led to the railroad, he could tell himself, with a kind of exultation, that there was hardly a dwelling along the way which had not some great or little reason to bless his name. Even Kelly, whose saloon he had closed, had been put upon his feet again and started, with a fair chance, in the tobacco market. Yes, a new life had been given him, and he had made good his promise to himself. The clothes he wore to-day were as rough as those in which he had chopped wood in Bullfinch's Hollow; the room he lived in was the same small, bare lodging of Mrs. Twine's; for though his position at Baxter's now assured him a comfortable income, he had kept to his cramped manner of life in order that he might contribute the more generously to the lives of others. Out of his little he had given abundantly, and he had gained in return the happiness which he had ceased to make the object of his search. In looking back over his whole life, he could honestly tell himself that his happiest years since childhood were the ones that he had spent in Tappahannock. The gate closed with a slam, and Banks came up the short brick walk inside, mopping his heated face with a pink bordered handkerchief. "I'm a minute late," he said, "but it doesn't matter, does it? The Trends asked me to breakfast." "It doesn't matter in the least if you spent that minute with Milly," replied Ordway, with a laugh, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and descended the steps. "The hot weather has come early, hasn't it?" "Oh, we're going in for a scorcher," responded Banks, indifferently. There was a heavy gloom in his manner which was hardly to be accounted for by the temperature in which he moved, and as they closed the gate behind them and passed under the shade of the locust trees on the board walk, he turned to Ordway in an outburst which was little short of desperation. "I don't know how it is--or whether it's just a woman's way," he said, "but I never can be sure of Milly for ten minutes at a time. A month ago I was positive that she meant to marry me in the autumn, but now I'm in a kind of blue funk about her doing it at all. She's never been the same since she went North in April." "My dear chap, these things will vary, I suppose--though, mind you, I make no claim to exact knowledge of the sex." "It isn't the sex," said Banks, "it's Milly." "Well, I certainly can't claim any particular knowledge of Milly. It would be rather presumptuous if I did, considering I've only seen her about a dozen times--mostly at a distance." "I wish you knew her better, perhaps you could help me," returned Banks in a voice of melancholy. "To save the life of me I don't see how it is--I've done my best--I swear I've done my best--yet nothing somehow seems to suit her. She wants to make me over from the skin and even that doesn't satisfy her. When my hair is short she wants it long, and when it's long she says she wants it short. She can't stand me in coloured cravats and when I put on a black tie she calls me an undertaker. I had to leave off my turtle-dove scarf-pin and this morning," he rolled his innocent blue eyes, like pale marbles, in the direction of Ordway, "she actually got into a temper about my stockings." "It seems to be a case for sympathy," commented Ordway seriously, "but hardly, I should say, for marriage. Imagine, my dear Banks, what a hell you'd make out of your domesticity. Suppose you give her up and bear it like a man?" "Give her up? to what?" "Well, to her own amiability, we'll say." "I can't," said Banks, waving his pink bordered handkerchief before his face in an effort either to disperse the swarming blue flies or to conceal the working of his emotion. "I'd die--I'd kill myself--that's the awful part of it. The more she bangs me over the head, the more I feel that I can't live without her. Is that natural, do you s'pose?" he inquired uneasily, "or have I gone clean crazy?" Checking his smile severely, Ordway turned and slipped his left arm affectionately through his companion's. "I've heard of similar cases," he remarked, "though I confess, they sounded a little strained." "Do you think I'd better see a doctor? I will if you say so." "By no means. Go off on a trip." "And leave Milly here? I'd jump out of the train--and, I reckon, she'd bang my head off for doing it." "But if it's as bad as that, you couldn't be much more miserable without her." "I know it," replied Banks obstinately, "but it would be a different sort of miserableness, and that happens to be the sort that I can't stand." "Then I give it up," said Ordway, cheerfully, "there's no hope but marriage." With his words they turned under the archway of Baxter's warehouse, and Banks's passionate confidences were extinguished in the odour of tobacco. A group of men stood talking loudly in the centre of the building, and as Ordway approached, Baxter broke away, with his great rolling laugh, and came to join him at the door of his private office. "Catesby and Frazier have got into a squabble about that lot of tobacco they brought in last February," he said, "and they have both agreed to accept your decision in the matter." Ordway nodded, without replying, as he followed the other through the doorway. Such judicial appeals to him were not uncommon, and his power of pacification, as his employer had once remarked, was one of his principal qualifications for the tobacco market. "Shall I hear them now? or would it be as well to give them time to cool off?" he asked presently, while Baxter settled his great person in a desk chair that seemed a size too small to contain it. "If they can cool off on a day like this they're lucky dogs," returned Baxter, with a groan, "however, I reckon you might as well get it over and let 'em go home and stew in peace. By the way, Smith, I forgot to tell you that Major Leary--he's the president of the Southside Bank, you know, was asking me yesterday if I could tell him anything about you before you came to work for me." "Of the Southside Bank," repeated Ordway, while his hand closed tightly over a paper weight, representing a gambolling kitten, which lay on Baxter's desk. With the words he was conscious only of the muffled drumming of his pulses, and above the discord in his ears, the cheerful tones of Baxter sounded like an echo rather than a real voice. At the instant he was back again in his room in the great banking house of Amos, Bonner & Amos, in the midst of the pale brown walls, the black oak furniture and the shining leather covered volumes behind the glass doors of the bookcases. With peculiar vividness he remembered the eccentric little bird on the bronze clock on the mantel, which had hopped from its swinging perch to strike the hour with its beak; and through the open windows he could hear still the din of traffic in the street below and the ceaseless, irregular tread of footsteps upon the pavement. "Oh, I didn't mean to raise your hopes too high," remarked Baxter, rising from his chair to slap him affectionately upon the shoulder, "he isn't going to make you president of the bank, but of the Citizen's Improvement League, whose object is to oust Jasper Trend, you know, in the autumn. The Major told me before he left that you'd done as much for Tappahannock in two years as any other man had done in a lifetime. I said I thought he'd hit the nail pretty squarely, which is something he doesn't generally manage to do." "So I'm to fight Jasper Trend, am I?" asked Ordway, with sudden interest. The sound of his throbbing arteries was no longer in his ears, and as he spoke, he felt that his past life with his old identity had departed from him. In the swift renewal of his confidence he had become again "Ten Commandment Smith" of Tappahannock. "Well, you see, Jasper has been a precious bad influence around here," pursued Baxter, engrossed in the political scheme he was unfolding. "The only thing on earth he's got to recommend him is his pretty daughter. Now, I've a soft enough heart, as everybody knows, when the ladies come about--particularly if they're pretty--but I'm ready to stand up and say that Jasper Trend can't be allowed to run this town on the platform of pure chivalry. There's such a thing as fairness, suh, even where women are concerned, and I'll back my word with my oath that it ain't fair!" "And I'll back your word with another that it isn't," rejoined Ordway. "There's no doubt, I reckon," continued Baxter, "that Jasper has connived with those disorderly saloons that you've been trying to shut up, and for all his money and the men he employs in the cotton mills there's come a considerable reaction against him in public sentiment. Now, I ain't afraid to say, Smith," he concluded with an ample flourish of his dirty hand, "that the fact that there's any public sentiment at all in Tappahannock is due to you. Until you came here there weren't six decent men you could count mixed up in the affairs of this town. Jasper had everything his own way, that's why he hates you." "But I wasn't even aware that he did me so much honour." "You mean he hasn't told you his feelings to your face. Well, he hasn't gone so far as to confide them to me either--but even if I ain't a woman, I can hear some things that ain't spoke out in words. He's made a dirty town and you're sweepin' it clean--do you think it likely that it makes him love you?" "He's welcome to feel about me anyway he pleases, but do you know, Baxter," he added with his whimsical gravity, "I've a pretty strong conviction that I'd make a jolly good street sweeper." "I reckon you're right!" roared Baxter, "and when you're done, we'll shoot off some sky-rockets over the job--so there you are, ain't you?" "All right--but there's Jasper Trend also," retorted Ordway. "Oh, he can afford to send off his own sky-rockets. We needn't bother about him. He won't be out of a job like Kelly, you know. Great Scott!" he added, chuckling, "I can see your face now when you marched in here the day after you closed Kelly's saloon, and told me you had to start a man in tobacco because you'd taken him out of whiskey." His laugh shook through his figure until Ordway saw his fat chest heave violently beneath his alpaca coat. Custom had made the younger man almost indifferent to the external details which had once annoyed him in his employer, and he hardly noticed now that Baxter's coat was turning from black to green and that the old ashes from his pipe had lodged in the crumpled bosom of his shirt. Baxter was--well, Baxter, and tolerance was a virtue which one acquired sooner or later in Tappahannock. "I suppose I might as well get at Catesby and Frazier now," remarked Ordway, watching the other disinter a tattered palm leaf fan from beneath a dusty pile of old almanacs and catalogues. "Wait a minute first," said Baxter, "there's something I want to say as soon as I get settled. I ain't made for heat, that's certain," he pursued, as he pulled off his coat, and hung it from a nail in the wall, "it sweats all my morals out of me." Detaching the collar from his shirt, he placed it above his coat on the nail, and then rolling up his shirt sleeves, sank, with a panting breath, back into his chair. "If I were you I'd get out of this at night anyway, Smith," he urged. "Why don't you try boarding for the next few months over at Cedar Hill. It would be a godsend to the family, now that Miss Emily's school has stopped." "But I don't suppose they'd take me in," replied Ordway, staring out into the street, where the dust rose like steam in the air, and the rough-coated country horses toiled patiently up the long hill. Across the way he saw the six stale currant buns and the three bottles of pale beer behind the fly-specked window panes of a cheap eating house. In front of them, a Negro woman, barefooted, with her ragged calico dress tucked up about her waist, was sousing the steaming board walk with a pailful of dirty water. From his memory of two years ago there floated the mingled odours of wild flowers and freshly turned earth in the garden of Cedar Hill, and Emily appeared in his thoughts only as an appropriate figure against the pleasant natural background of the lilacs and the meadows. In the past year he had seen her hardly more than a dozen times--mere casual glimpses for the most part--and he had almost forgotten his earlier avoidance of her, which had resulted from an instinctive delicacy rather than from any premeditated purpose. His judgment had told him that he had no right to permit a woman to become his friend in ignorance of his past; and at the same time he was aware of a terrible shrinking from intruding his old self, however remotely, into the new life at Tappahannock. When the choice came between confessing his sin and sacrificing the chance acquaintance, he had found it easier simply to keep away from her actual presence. Yet his interest in her had been so closely associated with his larger feeling for humanity, that he could tell himself with sincerity that it was mere folly which put her forward as an objection to his boarding for the summer at Cedar Hill. "The truth is," admitted Baxter, after a pause, "that Mrs. Brooke spoke to me about having to take a boarder or two, when I went out there to pay Mr. Beverly for that tobacco I couldn't sell." "So you bought it in the end," laughed Ordway, "as you did last year after sending me out there on a mission?" "Yes, I bought it," replied Baxter, blushing like a boy under the beads of perspiration upon his face. "I may as well confess it, though I tried to keep it secret. But I ask you as man to man," he demanded warmly, "was there another blessed thing on God's earth for me to do?" "Let Mr. Beverly go about his business--that's what I'd have done." "Oh, no, you wouldn't," protested Baxter softly, "not when he'd ruin himself for you to-morrow if you were to walk out and ask him." "But he couldn't," insisted Ordway with the brutality of the naked fact, "he did that little job on his own account too long ago." "But that ain't the point, Smith," replied Baxter in an awed and solemn accent. "The point ain't that he couldn't, but that he _would_. As I make it out that's the point which has cost me money on him for the last thirty years." "Oh, well, I suppose it's a charity like any other, only the old fool is so pompous about his poverty that it wears me out." "It does at Tappahannock, but it won't when you get out to Cedar Hill, that's the difference between Mr. Beverly in the air and Mr. Beverly in the flesh. The one wears you out, the other rests you for all his darnation foolishness. Now, you can board out there for twenty-five dollars a month and put a little ready money where it ought to be in Mrs. Brooke's pocket." "Of course I'd like it tremendously," said Ordway, after a moment in which the perfume of the lilacs filled his memory. "It would be like stepping into heaven after that stifling little room under the tin roof at Mrs. Twine's. Do you know I slept out in the fields every hot night last summer?" "You see you ain't a native of these parts," remarked Baxter with a large resigned movement of his palm leaf fan, "and your skin ain't thick enough to keep out the heat. I'll speak to 'em at Cedar Hill this very day, and if you like, I reckon, you can move out at the beginning of the week. I hope if you do, Smith, that you'll bear with Mr. Beverly. There's nothing in the universe that he wouldn't do for me if he had the chance. It ain't his fault, you see, that he's never had it." "Oh, I promise you I'll bear with him," laughed Ordway, as he left the office and went out into the warehouse. The knot of men was still in the centre of the building, and as Ordway walked down the long floor in search of Catesby and Frazier, he saw that a stranger had drifted in during his half hour in Baxter's office. With his first casual glance all that he observed of the man was a sleek fair head, slightly bald in the centre, and a pair of abnormally flat shoulders in a light gray coat, which had evidently left a clothing shop only a day or two before. Then as Frazier--a big, loud voiced planter--turned toward him with the exclamation, "here's Smith, himself, now!"--he saw the stranger wheel round abruptly and give vent the next instant to a sharp whistle of surprise. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said. For a minute the tobacco dust filled Ordway's throat and nostrils, and he felt that he was stifling for a breath of air. The dim length of the warehouse and the familiar shadowy figures of the planters receded before his eyes, and he saw again the bare walls of the prison chapel, with the rows of convicts seated in the pale, greenish light. With his recognition of the man before him, it seemed to him suddenly that the last year in Tappahannock was all a lie. The prison walls, the grated windows, and the hard benches of the shoe shop were closer realities than were the open door of the warehouse and the free, hot streets of the little town. "I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Smith," said the stranger, as he held out his hand with a good-humoured smile. "I beg your pardon," returned Ordway quietly, "but I did not catch your name." At the handshake a chill mounted from his finger tips to his shoulder, but drawing slightly away he stood his ground without so much as the perceptible flicker of an eyelash. "My name is Brown--Horatio Brown, very much at your service," answered the other, with a manner like that of a successful, yet obsequious commercial traveller. It was on Ordway's tongue to retort: "You lie--it's Gus Wherry!"--but checking the impulse with a frown, he turned on his heel and asked the two men for whom he was looking to come with him to settle their disagreement in Baxter's office. As he moved down the building an instant later, it was with an effort that he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead through the archway, for he was aware that every muscle in his body pricked him to turn back and follow Wherry to the end. That the man would be forced, in self-defence, to keep his secret for a time at least, he had caught in the smiling insolence of his glance; but that it was possible to enter into a permanent association or even a treaty with Gus Wherry, he knew to be a supposition that was utterly beyond the question. The crime for which the man had been sentenced he could not remember; but he had a vague recollection that something morbidly romantic in his history had combined with his handsome face to give him an ephemeral notoriety as the Adonis of imaginative shop-girls. Even in prison Wherry had attained a certain prominence because of his beauty, which at the time when Ordway first saw him had been conspicuous in spite of his convict's clothes. In the years since then his athletic figure had grown a trifle too heavy, and his fair hair had worn a little thin on the crown of his head; yet these slight changes of time had left him, Ordway admitted reluctantly, still handsome in the brawny, full-blooded style, which had generally made fools of women. His lips were still as red, his features as severely classic, and his manner was not less vulgar, and quite as debonnair as in the days when the newspapers had clamoured for his pictures. Even the soft, girlish cleft in his smooth-shaven chin, Ordway remembered now, with a return of the instinctive aversion with which it had first inspired him. Yet he was obliged to confess, as he walked ahead of Catesby and Frazier down the dusty floor of the warehouse, that if Wherry had been less of an uncompromising rascal, he would probably have made a particularly amiable acquaintance. CHAPTER II ORDWAY COMPROMISES WITH THE PAST When Ordway came out of Baxter's office, he found that Gus Wherry had left the warehouse, but the effect upon him of the man's appearance in Tappahannock was not to be overcome by the temporary withdrawal of his visible presence. Not only the town, but existence itself seemed altered, and in a way polluted, by the obtrusion of Wherry's personality upon the scene. Though he was not in the building, Ordway felt an angry conviction that he was in the air. It was impossible to breathe freely lest he might by accident draw in some insidious poison which would bring him under the influence of his past life and of Gus Wherry. As he went along the street at one o'clock to his dinner at Mrs. Twine's, he was grateful for the intensity of the sun, which rendered him, while he walked in it, almost incapable of thought. There was positive relief in the fact that he must count the uneven lengths of board walk which it was necessary for him to traverse, and the buzzing of the blue flies before his face forced his attention, at the minute, from the inward to the outward disturbance. When he reached the house, Mrs. Twine met him at the door and led him, with an inquiry as to his susceptibility to sunstroke, into the awful gloom of her tightly shuttered parlour. "I declar' you do look well nigh in yo' last gasp," she remarked cheerfully, bustling into the dining-room for a palm leaf fan. "Thar, now, come right in an' set down an' eat yo' dinner. Hot or cold, glad or sorry, I never saw the man yit that could stand goin' without his dinner at the regular hour. Sech is the habit in some folks that I remember when old Mat Fawling's second wife died he actually hurried up her funeral an hour earlier so as to git back in time for dinner. 'It ain't that I'm meanin' any disrespect to Sary, Mrs. Twine,' he said to me right whar I was layin' her out, 'but the truth is that I can't even mourn on an empty stomach. The undertaker put it at twelve,' he said, 'but I reckon we might manage to git out to the cemetery by eleven.'" "All the same if you'll give me a slice of bread and a glass of milk, I'll take it standing," remarked Ordway. "I'm sorry to leave you, Mrs. Twine, even for a few months," he added, "but I think I'll try to get board outside the town until the summer is over." "Well, I'll hate to lose you, suh, to be sure," responded Mrs. Twine, dealing out the fried batter with a lavish hand despite his protest, "for I respect you as a fellow mortal, though I despise you as a sex." Her hard eyes softened as she looked at him; but his gaze was on the walnut coloured oilcloth, where the flies dispersed lazily before the waving elm branch in the hands of the small Negro, and so he did not observe the motherly tenderness which almost beautified her shrewish face. "You've been very kind to me," he said, as he put his glass and plate down, and turned toward the door. "Whatever happens I shall always remember you and the children with pleasure." She choked violently, and looking back at the gasping sound, he saw that her eyes had filled suddenly with tears. Lifting a corner of her blue gingham apron, she mopped her face in a furious effort to conceal the cause of her unaccustomed emotion. "I declar' I'm all het up;" she remarked in an indignant voice, "but if you should ever need a friend in sickness, Mr. Smith," she added, after a moment in which she choked and coughed under the shelter of her apron, "you jest send for me an' I'll drop every thing I've got an' go. I'll leave husband an' children without a thought, suh, an' thar's nothin' I won't do for you with pleasure, from makin' a mustard plaster to layin' out yo' corpse. When I'm a friend, I'm a friend, if I do say it, an' you've had a way with me from the very first minute that I clapped eyes upon you. 'He may not have sech calves as you've got,' was what I said to Bill, 'but he's got a manner of his own, an' I reckon it's the manner an' not the calves that is the man.' Not that I'm meaning any slur on yo' shape, suh," she hastened to explain. "Well, I'll come to see you now and then," said Ordway, smiling, "and I shan't forget to take the children for a picnic as I promised." But with the words he remembered Gus Wherry, as he had seen him standing in the centre of Baxter's warehouse, and it seemed to him that even his promise to the children was rendered vain and worthless. The next day was Sunday, and immediately after dinner he walked over to Baxter's house, where he learned that Mrs. Brooke had expressed her willingness to receive him upon the following afternoon. "We had to talk Mr. Beverly over," said Baxter, chuckling. "At first he didn't like the idea because of some notion he'd got out of his great-grandfather's head about the sacredness of the family circle. However, he's all right now, though if you take my advice, Smith, you'll play a game of dominoes with him occasionally just to keep him kind of soft. The chief thing he has against you is your preachin' in the fields, for he told me he could never bring himself to countenance religion out of doors. He seems to think that it ought to be kept shut up tight." "Well, I'm glad he doesn't have to listen to me," responded Ordway. "By the way, you know I'm speaking in Catlett's grove of pines now. It's pleasanter away from the glare of the sun." Then as Baxter pressed him to come back to supper, he declined the oppressive hospitality and went back to Mrs. Twine's. That afternoon at five o'clock he went out to the grove of pines on the Southern edge of the town, to find his congregation gathered ahead of him on the rude plank benches which had been placed among the trees. The sunshine fell in drops through the tent of boughs overhead, and from the southwest a pleasant breeze had sprung up, blowing the pine needles in eddies about his feet. At sight of the friendly faces gathered so closely around him, he felt his foreboding depart as if it had been blown from him by the pure breeze; and beginning his simple discourse, he found himself absorbed presently in the religious significance of his subject, which chanced to be an interpretation of the parable of the prodigal son. Not until he was midway of his last sentence did he discover that Gus Wherry was standing just beyond the little wildrose thicket on the edge of the grove. In the instant of recognition the words upon his lips sounded strangely hollow and meaningless in his ears, and he felt again that the appearance of the man had given the lie, not only to his identity, but to his life. He knew himself at the instant to have changed from Daniel Smith to Daniel Ordway, and the name that he had worn honestly in Tappahannock showed to him suddenly as a falsehood and a cheat. Even his inward motive was contemptible in his eyes, and he felt himself dragged back in a single minute to the level upon which Wherry stood. As he appeared to Wherry, so he saw himself now by some distorted power of vision, and even his religion seemed but a convenient mask which he had picked up and used. When he went on a moment later with his closing words, he felt that the mockery of his speech must be evident to the ears of the congregation that knew and loved him. The gathering broke up slowly, but after speaking to several men who stood near him, Ordway turned away and went out into the road which led from Tappahannock in the direction of Cedar Hill. Only after he had walked rapidly for a mile, did the sound of footsteps, following close behind him, cause him to wheel round abruptly with an impatient exclamation. As he did so, he saw that Wherry had stopped short in the road before him. "I wanted to tell you how much obliged I am for your talk, Mr. Smith," he said, with a smile which appeared to flash at the same instant from his eyes and his teeth. "I declare you came pretty near converting me--by Jove, you did. It wouldn't be convenient to listen to you too often." Whatever might be said of the effusive manner of his compliments, his good humour was so evident in his voice, in his laugh, and even in his conspicuously flashing teeth, that Ordway, who had been prepared for a quarrel, was rendered almost helpless by so peaceable an encounter. Turning out of the road, he stepped back among the tall weeds growing in the corner of the old "worm" fence, and rested his tightly clinched hand on the topmost rail. "If you have anything to say to me, you will do me a favour by getting it over as soon as possible," he rejoined shortly. Wherry had taken off his hat and the red disc of the setting sun made an appropriate frame for his handsome head, upon which his fair hair grew, Ordway noticed, in the peculiar waving circle which is found on the heads of ancient statues. "Well, I can't say that I've anything to remark except that I congratulate you on your eloquence," he replied, with a kind of infernal amiability. "If this is your little game, you are doing it with a success which I envy from my boots up." "Since this is your business with me, there is no need for us to discuss it further," returned Ordway, at white heat. "Oh, but I say, don't hurry--what's the use? You're afraid I'm going to squeeze you, now, isn't that it?" "You'll get nothing out of me if you try." "That's as much as I want, I guess. Have I asked you for as much as a darned cent? Haven't I played the gentleman from the first minute that I spotted you?" Ordway nodded. "Yes, I suppose you've been as fair as you knew how," he answered, "I'll do you the justice to admit that." "Well, I tell you now," said Wherry, growing confidential as he approached, "my object isn't blackmail, it's human intercourse. I want a decent word or two, that's all, on my honour." "But I won't talk to you. I've nothing further to say, that's to be understood." "You're a confounded bully, that's what you are," observed Wherry, in the playful tones which he might have used to a child or an animal. "Now, I don't want a blooming cent out of you, that's flat--all I ask for is a pleasant word or two just as from man to man." "Then why did you follow me? And what are you after in Tappahannock?" Wherry laughed hilariously, while his remarkably fine teeth became the most prominent feature in his face. "The reply to your question, Smith," he answered pleasantly, "is that I followed you to say that you're an all-fired, first rate sort of a preacher--there's not harm in that much, is there? If you don't want me to chaff you about it, I'll swear to be as dead serious on the subject as if it were my wife's funeral. What I want is your hand down, I say--no matter what is trumps!" "My hand down for what?" demanded Ordway. "Just for plain decency, nothing more, I swear. You've started on your road, and I've started on mine, and the square thing is to live and let live, that's as I see it. Leave room for honest repentance to go to work, but don't begin to pull back before it's had a chance to begin. Ain't we all prodigals, when it comes to that, and the only difference is that some of us don't get a bite at the fatted calf." For a moment Ordway stared in silence to where the other stood with his face turned toward the red light of the sunset. "We're all prodigals," repeated Wherry, as if impressed by the ethical problem he had uttered unawares, "you and me and the President and every man. We've all fallen from grace, ain't we?--and it's neither here nor there that you and I have got the swine husks while the President has stuffed and eaten the fatted calf." "If you've honestly meant to begin again, I have certainly no wish to interfere," remarked Ordway, ignoring the other's excursion into the field of philosophy. As he spoke, however, it occurred to him that Wherry's reformation might have had better chance of success if it had been associated with fewer physical advantages. "Well, I'm much obliged to you," said Wherry, "and I'll say the same by you, here's my hand on it. Rise or fall, we'll play fair." "You haven't told me yet why you came to Tappahannock," rejoined Ordway, shortly. "Oh, a little matter of business. Are you settled here now?" "At the moment you can answer that question better than I." "You mean when I come, you quit?" Ordway nodded. "That's something like it." "Well, I shan't drive you out if I can help it--I hate to play the sneak. The truth is if you'd only get to believe it, there's not a more peaceable fellow alive if I don't get backed up into a place where there's no way out. When it comes to that I like the clean, straight road best, and I always have. From first to last, though, it's the women that have been dead against me, and I may say that a woman--one or more of 'em--has been back of every single scrape I ever got into in my life. If I'd had ten thousand a year and a fine looking wife, I'd have been a pillar in the Church and the father of a family. My tastes all lean that way," he added sentimentally. "I've always had a weakness for babies, and I've got it to this day." As he could think of nothing to reply to this touching confession, Ordway picked up a bit of wood from the ground, and taking out his knife, began whittling carelessly while he waited. "I suppose you think I want to work you for that fat old codger in the warehouse," observed Wherry suddenly, passing lightly from the pathetic to the facetious point of view, "but I'll give you my word I haven't thought of it a minute." "I'm glad you haven't," returned Ordway, quietly, "for you would be disappointed." "You mean you wouldn't trust me?" "I mean there's no place there. Whether I trust you or not is another question--and I don't." "Do you think I'd turn sneak?" "I think if you stay in Tappahannock that I'll clear out." "Well, you're a darn disagreeable chap," said Wherry, indignantly, "particularly after all you've had to say about the prodigal. But, all the same," he added, as his natural amiability got the better of his temper, "it isn't likely that I'll pitch my tent here, so you needn't begin to pack for a day or two at least." "Do you expect to go shortly?" "How about to-morrow? Would that suit you?" "Yes," said Ordway, gravely, "better than the day afterward." He threw the bit of wood away and looked steadily into the other's face. "If I can help you live honestly, I am ready to do it," he added. "Ready? How?" "However I can." "Well, you can't--not now," returned Wherry, laughing, "because I've worked that little scheme already without your backing. Honesty is going to be my policy from yesterday on. Did you, by the way," he added abruptly, "ever happen to run up against Jasper Trend?" "Jasper Trend?" exclaimed Ordway, "why, yes, he owns the cotton mills." "He makes a handsome little pile out of 'em too, I guess?" "I believe he does. Are you looking for a job with him?" At this Wherry burst again into his hilarious humour. "If I am," he asked jokingly, "will you promise to stand off and not spoil the game?" "I have nothing to do with Trend," replied Ordway, "but the day you come here is my last in Tappahannock." "Well, I'm sorry for that," remarked Wherry, pleasantly, "for it appears to be a dull enough place even with the addition of your presence." He put on his hat and held out his hand with a friendly gesture. "Are you ready to walk back now?" he inquired. "When I am," answered Ordway, "I shall walk back alone." Even this rebuff Wherry accepted with his invincible good temper. "Every man to his company, of course," he responded, "but as to my coming to Tappahannock, if it is any comfort to you to know it, you needn't begin to pack." CHAPTER III A CHANGE OF LODGING When Ordway awoke the next morning, it seemed to him that Wherry had taken his place among the other nightmares, which, combined with the reflected heat from the tin roof, had rendered his sleep broken and distracted. With the sunrise his evil dreams and his recollections of Wherry had scattered together, and when, after the early closing at Baxter's warehouse, he drove out to Cedar Hill, with the leather bag containing his few possessions at his feet, he felt that there had been something morbid, almost inhuman, in the loathing aroused in him by the handsome face of his fellow prisoner. In any case, for good or for evil, he determined to banish the man utterly from his thoughts. The vehicle in which he sat was an ancient gig driven by a decrepit Negro, and as it drew up before the steps at Cedar Hill, he was conscious almost of a sensation of shame because he had not approached the ruined mansion on foot. Then descending over the dusty wheel, he lifted out his bag, and rapped twice upon the open door with the greenish knocker which he supposed had once been shining brass. Through the hall a sleepy breeze blew from the honeysuckle arbour over the back porch, and at his right hand the swinging sword still clanked against the discoloured plaster. So quiet was the house that it seemed as if the movement of life within had been suspended, and when at last the figure of Mrs. Brooke floated down the great staircase under the pallid light from the window above, she appeared to him as the disembodied spirit of one of the historic belles who had tripped up and down in trailing brocades and satin shoes. Instead of coming toward him, she completed her ghostly impression by vanishing suddenly into the gloom beyond the staircase, and a moment afterward his knock was answered by a small, embarrassed darky in purple calico. Entering the dining-room by her invitation, he stumbled upon Beverly stretched fast asleep, and snoring slightly, upon a horsehair sofa, with the brown and white setter dozing on a mat at his feet. At the approach of footsteps, the dog, without lifting its head, began rapping the floor heavily with its tail, and aroused by the sound, Beverly opened one eye and struggled confusedly into an upright position. "I was entirely overcome by the heat," he remarked apologetically, as he rose from the sofa and held out his hand, "but it is a pleasure to see you, Mr. Smith. I hope you did not find the sun oppressive on your drive out. Amelia, my dear," he remarked courteously, as Mrs. Brooke entered in a freshly starched print gown, "I feel a return of that strange dizziness I spoke of, so if it will not inconvenience you, may I beg for another of your refreshing lemonades?" Mrs. Brooke, who had just completed the hasty ironing of her dress, which she had put on while it was still warm, met his request with an amiable but exhausted smile. "Don't you think six lemonades in one day too many?" she asked anxiously, when she had shaken hands with Ordway. "But this strange dizziness, my dear? An iced drink, I find far more effective than a bandage." "Very well, I'll make it of course, if it gives you any relief," replied his wife, wondering if she would be able to bake the bread by the time Beverly demanded supper. "If you'll come up stairs now, Mr. Smith," she added, "Malviny will show you to the blue room." Malviny, who proved upon further acquaintance to be the eldest great-grandchild of Aunt Mehitable, descended like a hawk upon his waiting property, while Mrs. Brooke led the procession up the staircase to an apartment upon the second floor. The blue room, as he discovered presently, contained a few rather fine pieces of old mahogany, a grandfather's chair, with a freshly laundered chintz cover, and a rag carpet made after the "log cabin" pattern. Of the colour from which it had taken its name, there was visible only a faded sampler worked elaborately in peacock blue worsteds, by one "Margaret, aged nine." Beyond this the walls were bare of decoration, though an oblong streak upon the plaster suggested to Ordway that a family portrait had probably been removed in the hurried preparations for his arrival. After remarking that she hoped he would "make himself quite at home," Mrs. Brooke was glancing inquiringly about the room with her large, pale, rather prominent eyes, when a flash of purple in the doorway preceded the announcement that "Marse Beverly done turn right green wid de dizziness, en wus axin' kinder faintlike fur his lemonade." "My poor husband," explained the exhausted wife, "contracted a chronic heart trouble in the War, and he suffers so patiently that at times we are in danger of forgetting it." Pressing her aching head, she hurried downstairs to prepare Beverly's drink, while Ordway, after closing the broken latch of the door, walked slowly up and down the large, cool, barely furnished room. After his cramped chamber at Mrs. Twine's his eyes rested with contentment upon the high white ceiling overhead, and then descended leisurely to the stately bedstead, with its old French canopy above, and to the broad, red brick hearth freshly filled with odorous boughs of cedar. The cleanly quiet of the place restored to him at once the peace which he had missed in the last few days in Tappahannock, and his nerves, which had revolted from Mrs. Twine's scolding voice and slovenly table, became composed again in the ample space of these high white walls. Even "Margaret, aged nine," delivered a soothing message to him in the faded blues of her crewel work. When he had unpacked his bag, he drew the chintz-covered chair to the window, and leaning his elbow on the sill, looked out gratefully upon the overgrown lawn filled with sheepmint and clover. Though it was already twilight under the cedars, the lawn was still bright with sunshine, and beyond the dwindling clump of cabbage roses in the centre, he saw that the solitary cow had not yet finished her evening meal. As he watched her, his ears caught the sound of light footsteps on the porch below, and a moment afterward, he saw Emily pass from the avenue to the edge of the lawn, where she called the cow by name in a caressing voice. Lifting her head, the animal started at a slow walk through the tangled weeds, stopping from time to time to bite a particularly tempting head of purple clover. As the setting sun was in Emily's eyes, she raised her bared arm while she waited, to shield her forehead, and Ordway was struck afresh by the vigorous grace which showed itself in her slightest movement. The blue cotton dress she wore, which had shrunk from repeated washings until it had grown scant in the waist and skirt, revealed the firm rounded curve of her bosom and her slender hips. Standing there in the faint sunshine against the blue-black cedars, he felt her charm in some mysterious way to be akin to the beauty of the hour and the scene. The sight of her blue gown was associated in his mind with a peculiar freshness of feeling--an intensified enjoyment of life. When the cow reached her side, the girl turned back toward the barnyard, and the two passed out of sight together beyond the avenue. As he followed them with his gaze, Ordway had no longer any thought of Gus Wherry, or of his possible presence in Tappahannock upon the morrow. The evil association was withdrawn now from his consciousness, and in its place he found the tranquil pleasure which he had felt while he watched the sunshine upon the sheepmint and clover--a pleasure not unlike that he had experienced when Emily's blue cotton dress was visible against the cedars. The faces of the men who had listened to him yesterday returned to his memory; and as he saw them again seated on the rude benches among the pines, his heart expanded in an emotion which was like the melting of his will into the Divine Will which contained and enveloped all. A knock at the door startled him back to his surroundings, and when he went to answer it, he found the small frightened servant standing outside, with an old serving tray clutched desperately to her bosom. From her excited stutter he gathered that supper awaited him upon the table, and descending hastily, he found the family already assembled in the dining-room. Beverly received him graciously, Emily quietly, and the children assured him enthusiastically that they were glad he had come to stay because now they might eat ham every night. When they had been properly suppressed by Emily, her brother took up the conversation which he carried on in a polite, rambling strain that produced upon Ordway the effect of a monologue delivered in sleep. "I hope the birds won't annoy you at daybreak, Mr. Smith," he remarked, "the ivy at your windows harbours any number of wrens and sparrows." "Oh, I like them," replied Ordway, "I've been sleeping under a tin roof in Tappahannock which no intelligent bird or human being would approach." "I remember," said Mr. Beverly pensively, "that there was a tin roof on the hotel at Richmond I stayed at during the War when I first met my wife. Do you recall how very unpleasant that tin roof was, Amelia? Or were you too young at the time to notice it? You couldn't have been more than fifteen, I suppose? Yes, you must have been sixteen, because I remember when I marched past the door with my regiment, I noticed you standing on the balcony, in a long white dress, and you couldn't have worn long dresses before you were sixteen." Mrs. Brooke glanced up calmly from the coffee-pot. "The roof was slate," she remarked with the rigid adherence to a single idea, which characterised her devoted temperament. "Ah, to be sure, it was slate," admitted Beverly, turning his genial face upon Ordway, "and I remember now it wasn't the roof that was unpleasant, but the food--the food was very unpleasant indeed, was it not, Amelia?" "I don't think we ever got enough of it to test its quality," replied Mrs. Brooke, "poor mama was so reduced at the end of a month that she had to take up three inches of her bodice." "It's quite clear to me now," observed Beverly, delightedly, "it was not that the food was unpleasant, but that it was scarce--very scarce." He had finished his supper; and when he had risen from the table with his last amiable words, he proceeded to install himself, without apparent selection, into the only comfortable chair which the room contained. Drawing out his pipe a moment afterward, he waved Ordway, with a hospitable gesture, to a stiff wooden seat, and invited him in a persuasive tone, to join him in a smoke. "My tobacco is open to you," he observed, "but I regret to say that I am unable to offer you a cigar. Yet a cigar, I maintain, is the only form in which a gentleman should use tobacco." Ordway took out the leather case he carried and offered it to him with a smile. "I'm afraid they are not all that they might be," he remarked, as Beverly supplied himself with a murmured word of thanks. Mrs. Brooke brought out her darning, and Emily, after disappearing into the pantry, sent back the small servant for the dishes. The girl did not return again before Ordway took his candle from the mantel-piece and went upstairs; and he remembered after he had reached his bedroom that she had spoken hardly two words during the entire evening. Had she any objection, he asked himself now, to his presence in the household? Was it possible, indeed, that Mrs. Brooke should have taken him in against her sister-in-law's inclination, or even without her knowledge? In the supposition there was not only embarrassment, but a sympathetic resentment; and he resolved that if such proved to be the case, he was in honour bound to return immediately to Tappahannock. Then he remembered the stifling little room under the tin roof with a feeling of thankfulness for at least this one night's escape. Awaking at dawn he lay for a while contentedly listening to the flutter of the sparrows in the ivy, and watching the paling arch of the sky beyond the pointed tops of the cedars. A great peace seemed to encompass him at the moment, and he thought with gratitude of the quiet evening he had spent with Beverly. It was dull enough probably, when one came to think of it, yet the simple talk, the measured courtesies, returned to him now as a part of the pleasant homeliness of his surroundings. The soft starlight on the sheepmint and clover, the chirp of the small insects in the trees, the refreshing moisture which had crept toward him with the rising dew, the good-night kisses of the children, delivered under protest and beneath Mrs. Brooke's eyes--all these trivial recollections were attended in his thoughts by a train of pensive and soothing associations. Across the hall he heard the soft opening and closing of a door, and immediately afterward the sound of rapid footsteps growing fainter as they descended the staircase. Already the room was full of a pale golden light, and as he could not sleep again because of the broken shutter to the window which gave on the lawn, he rose and dressed himself with an eagerness which recalled the early morning risings of his childhood. A little later when he went downstairs, he found that the front door was still barred, and removing the heavy iron fastenings, he descended the steps into the avenue, where the faint sunbeams had not yet penetrated the thick screen of boughs. Remembering the garden, while he stood watching the sunrise from the steps, he turned presently into the little footpath which led by the house, and pushing aside the lilacs, from which the blossoms had all dropped, he leaned on the swinging gate before the beds he had spaded on those enchanted nights. Now the rank weeds were almost strangling the plants, and it occurred to him that there was still work ready for his hand in the Brooke's garden. He was telling himself that he would begin clearing the smothered rows as soon as his morning at the warehouse was over, when the old hound ran suddenly up to him, and turning quickly he saw Emily coming from the springhouse with a print of golden butter in her hand. "So it was you I heard stirring before sunrise!" he exclaimed impulsively, as his eyes rested on her radiant face, over which the early mist had scattered a pearly dew like the fragrant moisture upon a rose. "Yes, it was I. At four o'clock I remembered there was no butter for breakfast, so I got up and betook myself to the churn." "And this is the result?" he asked, glancing down at the delicious creamy mould she had just worked into shape and crowned with a printed garland of thistles. "It makes me hungry enough for my muffins upon the minute." "You shall have them shortly," she said, smiling, "but do you prefer pop-overs or plain?" He met the question with serious consideration. "Well, if the choice is mine I think I'll have pop-overs," he replied. Before his unbroken gravity her quick humour rippled forth. "Then I must run to Aunt Mehitable," she responded merrily, "for I suspect that she has already made them plain." With a laughing nod she turned from him, and following the little path entered the house under the honeysuckle arbour on the back porch. CHAPTER IV SHOWS THAT A LAUGH DOES NOT HEAL A HEARTACHE When Emily entered the dining-room, she found that Beverly had departed from his usual custom sufficiently to appear in time for breakfast. "I hardly got a wink of sleep last night, my dear," he remarked, "and I think it was due entirely to the heavy supper you insisted upon giving us." "But, Beverly, we must have hot things now," said Emily, as she arranged the crocheted centrepiece upon the table. "Mr. Smith is our boarder, you know, not our guest." "The fact that he is a boarder," commented Beverly, with dignity, "entirely relieves me of any feeling of responsibility upon his account. If he were an invited guest in the house, I should feel as you do that hot suppers are a necessity, but when a man pays for the meals he eats, we are no longer under an obligation to consider his preferences." "His presence in the household is a great trial to us all," observed his wife, whose attitude of general acceptance was modified by the fact that she accepted everything for the worst. Her sense of tragic values had been long since obliterated by a gray wash of melancholy that covered all. "Well, I don't see that he is very zealous about interfering with us," remarked Emily, almost indignantly, "he doesn't appear to be of a particularly sociable disposition." "Yes, I agree with you that he is unusually depressing," rejoined Mrs. Brooke. "It's a pity, perhaps, that we couldn't have secured a blond person--they are said to be of a more sanguine temperament, and I remember that the blond boarder at Miss Jennie Colton's, when I called there once, was exceedingly lively and entertaining. But it's too late, of course, to give advice now; I can only hope and pray that his morals, at least, are above reproach." As the entire arrangement with Baxter had been made by Mrs. Brooke herself upon the day that Wilson, the grocer, had sent in his bill for the fifth time, Emily felt that an impatient rejoinder tripped lightly upon her tongue; but restraining her words with an effort, she observed cheerfully an instant later that she hoped Mr. Smith would cause no inconvenience to the family. "Well, he seems to be a respectable enough person," admitted Beverly, in his gracious manner, "but, of course, if he were to become offensively presuming it would be a very simple matter to drop him a hint." "It reminds me of a case I read of in the newspaper a few weeks ago," said Mrs. Brooke, "where a family in Roanoke took a stranger to board with them and shortly afterward were all poisoned by a powder in the soup. No, they weren't all poisoned," she corrected herself thoughtfully, "for I am positive now that the boarder was the only one who died. It was the cook who put the poison into the soup and the boarder who ate all of it. I remember the Coroner remarked at the inquest that he had saved the lives of the entire family." "All the same I hope Mr. Smith won't eat all the soup," observed Emily. "It terrifies me at times," murmured Amelia, "to think of the awful power that we place so carelessly in the hands of cooks." "In that case, my dear, it might be quite a safeguard always to have a boarder at the table," suggested Beverly, with his undaunted optimism. "But surely, Amelia," laughed Emily, "you can't suppose that after she has lived in the family for seventy years, Aunt Mehitable would yield at last to a passing temptation to destroy us?" "I imagine the poor boarder suspected nothing while he ate his soup," returned Mrs. Brooke. "No, I repeat that in cases like that no one is safe, and the only sensible attitude is to be prepared for anything." "Well, if I'm to be poisoned, I think I'd prefer to take it without preparation," rejoined Emily. "There is Mr. Smith now in the hall, so we may as well send Malviny to bring in breakfast." When Ordway entered an instant later with his hearty greeting, even Mrs. Brooke unbent a trifle from her rigid melancholy and joined affably in the conversation. By a curious emotional paradox she was able to enjoy him only as an affliction; and his presence in the house had served as an excuse for a continuous parade of martyrdom. From the hour of his arrival, she had been perfectly convinced not only that he interfered with her customary peace of mind, but that he prevented her as surely from receiving her supply of hot water upon rising and her ordinary amount of food at dinner. But as the days went by he fell so easily into his place in the family circle that they forgot at last to remark either his presence or his personal peculiarities. After dinner he would play his game of dominoes with Beverly in the breezy hall, until the sunlight began to slant across the cedars, when he would go out into the garden and weed the overgrown rows. Emily had seen him but seldom alone during the first few weeks of his stay, though she had found a peculiar pleasure in rendering him the small domestic services of which he was quite unconscious. How should he imagine that it was her hand that arranged the flowers upon his bureau, that placed his favourite chair near the window, and that smoothed the old-fashioned dimity coverlet upon his bed. Still less would he have suspected that the elaborate rag carpet upon his floor was one which she had contributed to his comfort from her own room. Had he known these things he would probably have been melancholy enough to have proved congenial company even to Mrs. Brooke, though, in reality, there was, perhaps, nothing he could have offered Emily which would have exceeded the pleasure she now found in these simple services. Ignorant as she was in all worldly matters, in grasping this essential truth, she had stumbled unawares upon the pure philosophy of love--whose satisfaction lies, after all, not in possession, but in surrender. She was still absorbed in the wonder of this discovery, when going out into the garden one afternoon to gather tomatoes for a salad, she found him working among the tall, green corn at the end of the long walk. As he turned toward her in the late sunshine, which slanted across the waving yellow tassels, she noticed that there was the same eager, youthful look in his face that she had seen on the night when she had come down to find him spading by the moonbeams. In response to her smile he came out from among the corn, and went with her down the narrow space which separated two overgrown hills of tomato plants. He wore no coat and his striped cotton shirt was open at the throat and wrists. "It's delicious in the corn now," he said; "I can almost fancy that I hear the light rustle along the leaves." "You love the country so much that you ought to have been a farmer," she returned, "then you might have raised tobacco." "That reminds me that I worked yesterday in your brother's crop--but it's too sticky for me. I like the garden better." "Then you ought to have a garden of your own. Is all your chopping and your digging merely for the promotion of the general good?" "Isn't it better so?" he asked, smiling, "particularly when I share in the results as I shall in this case? Who knows but that I shall eat this wonderful tomato to-night at supper?" She took it from his hand and placed it on the lettuce leaves in the bottom of the basket upon her arm. "You make a careful choice, I see," she observed, "it is a particularly fine one." "I suppose your philosophy would insist that after plucking it I should demand the eating of it also?" "I don't know about my philosophy--I haven't any--but my common sense would." "I'm not sure," he returned half seriously, "that I have much opinion of common sense." "But you would have," she commented gravely, "if you had happened to be born with Beverly for a brother. I used to think that all men were alike," she added, "but you don't remind me of Beverly in the very least." As she spoke she turned her face slightly toward him, and still leaning over the luxuriant tomato row, looked up at him joyously with her sparkling eyes. Her breath came quickly and he saw her bosom rise and fall under the scant bodice of her blue cotton gown. Almost unconsciously he had drifted into an association with her which constituted for him the principal charm of his summer at Cedar Hill. "On the other hand I've discovered many points of resemblance," he retorted in his whimsical tone. "Well, you're both easy to live in the house with, I admit that." "And we're both perfectly amiable as long as everybody agrees with us and nobody crosses us," he added. "I shouldn't like to cross you," she said, laughing, "but then why should I? Isn't it very pleasant as it is now?" "Yes, it is very pleasant as it is now," he repeated slowly. Turning away from her he stood looking in silence over the tall corn to the amber light that fell beyond the clear outline of a distant hill. The association was, as she had just said, very pleasant in his thoughts, and the temptation he felt now was to drift on with the summer, leaving events to shape themselves as they would in the future. What harm, he demanded, could come of any relation so healthful, so simple as this? "I used to make dolls of ears of corn when I was little," said Emily, laughing; "they were the only ones I had except those Beverly carved for me out of hickory nuts. The one with yellow tassels I named Princess Goldylocks until she began to turn brown and then I called her Princess Fadeaway." At her voice, which sounded as girlish in his imagination as the voice of Alice when he had last heard it, he started and looked quickly back from the sunset into her face. "Has it ever occurred to you," he asked, "how little--how very little you know of me? By you I mean all of you, especially your brother and Mrs. Brooke." Her glowing face questioned him for a moment. "But what is knowledge," she demanded, "if it isn't just feeling, after all?" "I wonder why under heaven you took me in?" he went on, leaving her words unanswered. Had Mrs. Brooke stood in Emily's place, she would probably have replied quite effectively, "because the grocer's bill had come for the fifth time"; but the girl had learned to wear her sincerity in a less conspicuous fashion, so she responded to his question merely by a polite evasion. "We have certainly had no cause to regret it," was what she said. "What I wanted to say to you in the beginning and couldn't, was just this," he resumed, choosing his words with a deliberation which sounded strained and unnatural, "I suppose it can't make any difference to you--it doesn't really concern you, of course--that's what I felt--but," he hesitated an instant and then went on more rapidly, "my daughter's birthday is to-day. She is fifteen years old and it is seven years since I saw her." "Seven years?" repeated Emily, as she bent over and carefully selected a ripe tomato. "Doubtless I shouldn't know her if I were to pass her in the street," he pursued, after a minute. "But it's worse than that and it's harder--for it's as many years since I saw my wife." She had not lifted her head from the basket, and he felt suddenly that her stillness was not the stillness of flesh, but of marble. "Perhaps I ought to have told you all this before," he went on again, "perhaps it wasn't fair to let you take me in in ignorance of this and of much else?" Raising her head, she stood looking into his face with her kind, brown eyes. "But how could these things possibly affect us?" she asked, smiling slightly. "No," he replied slowly, "they didn't affect you, of course--they don't now. It made no difference to any of you, I thought. How could it make any?" "No, it makes no difference to any of us," she repeated quietly. "Then, perhaps, I've been wrong in telling you this to-day?" She shook her head. "Not in telling me, but," she drew a long breath, "it might be as well not to speak of it to Beverly or Amelia--at least for a while." "You mean they would regret their kindness?" "It would make them uncomfortable--they are very old-fashioned in their views. I don't know just how to put it, but it seems to them--oh, a terrible thing for a husband and wife to live apart." "Well, I shan't speak of it, of course--but would it not be better for me to return immediately to Tappahannock?" For an instant she hesitated. "It would be very dreadful at Mrs. Twine's." "I know it," he answered, "but I'm ready to go back, this minute if you should prefer it." "But I shouldn't," she rejoined in her energetic manner. "Why should I, indeed? It is much wiser for you to stay here until the end of the summer." When she had finished he looked at her a moment without replying. The light had grown very faint and through the thin mist that floated up from the fields her features appeared drawn and pallid. "What I can't make you understand is that even though it is all my fault--every bit my fault from the beginning--yet I have never really wanted to do evil in my heart. Though I've done wrong, I've always wanted to do right." If she heard his words they made little impression upon her, for going out into the walk, she started, without speaking, in the direction of the house. Then, when she had moved a few steps from him, she stopped and looked back as if she had forgotten something that had been in her thoughts. "I meant to tell you that I hope--I pray it will come right again," she said. "I thank you," he answered, and drew back into the corn so that she might go on alone. A moment later as Emily walked rapidly down the garden path, it seemed to her that the distance between the gate and the house covered an immeasurable space. Her one hope was that she might go to her room for at least the single hour before supper, and that there, behind a locked door with her head buried in the pillows, she might shed the hot tears which she felt pressing against her eyelids. Entering the hall, she had started swiftly up the staircase, with the basket of tomatoes still on her arm, when Mrs. Brooke intercepted her by descending like a phantom from the darkened bend. "O Emily, I've been looking for you for twenty minutes," she cried in despairing tones. "The biscuits refused to rise and Aunt Mehitable is in a temper. Will you run straight out to the kitchen and beat up a few quick muffins for supper." Drawing back into the corner of the staircase, Emily glanced down upon the tomatoes lying in the bottom of the basket; then without raising her eyes she spoke in a voice which might have uttered appropriately a lament upon the universal tragedy of her sex. "I suppose I may as well make them plain?" she said. CHAPTER V TREATS OF A GREAT PASSION IN A SIMPLE SOUL FOR several weeks in August Ordway did not go into Tappahannock, and during his vacation from the warehouse he made himself useful in a number of small ways upon the farm. The lawn was trimmed, the broken fences mended, the garden kept clear of wiregrass, and even Mrs. Brooke's "rockery" of portulaca, with which she had decorated a mouldering stump, received a sufficient share of his attention to cause the withered plants to grow green again and blossom in profusion. When the long, hot days had drawn to a close, he would go out with a watering-pot and sprinkle the beds of petunias and geraniums which Emily had planted in the bare spots beside the steps. "The truth is I was made for this sort of thing, you know," he remarked to her one day. "If it went on forever I should never get bored or tired." Something candid and boyish in his tone caused her to look up at him quickly with a wondering glance. Since the confession of his marriage her manner to him had changed but little, yet she was aware, with a strange irritation against herself, that she never heard his voice or met his eyes without remembering instantly that he had a wife whom he had not seen for seven years. The mystery of the estrangement was as great to her as it had ever been, for since that afternoon in the garden he had not referred again to the subject; and judging the marriage relation by the social code of Beverly and Amelia, she had surmised that some tremendous tragedy had been the prelude to a separation of so many years. As he lifted the watering-pot he had turned a little away from her, and while her eyes rested upon his thick dark hair, powdered heavily with gray above the temples, and upon the strong, sunburnt features of his profile, she asked herself in perplexity where that other woman was and if it were possible that she had forsaken him? "I wonder what she is like and if she is pretty or plain?" she thought. "I almost hope she isn't pretty, and yet it's horrid of me and I wonder why I hope so? What can it matter since he hasn't seen her for seven years, and if he ever sees her again, she will probably be no longer young. I suppose he isn't young, and yet I've never thought so before and somehow it doesn't seem to matter. No, I'm sure his wife is beautiful," she reflected a moment later, as a punishment for her uncharitable beginning, "and she has fair hair, I hope, and a lovely white skin and hands that are always soft and delicate. Yes, that is how it is and I am very glad," she concluded resolutely. And it seemed to her that she could see distinctly this woman whom she had imagined and brought to life. "I can't help believing that you would tire of it in time," she said presently aloud. "Do you tire of it?" he asked in a softened voice, turning his gaze upon her. "I?" she laughed, with a bitterness he had never heard in her tone before, "oh, yes, but I suppose that doesn't count in the long run. Did there ever live a woman who hasn't felt at times like railing against the milk pans and denying the eternal necessity of ham and eggs?" Though she spoke quite seriously the simplicity of her generalisation brought a humorous light to his eyes; and in his imagination he saw Lydia standing upon the white bearskin rug against the oval mirror and the gold-topped bottles upon her dressing-table. "Well, if I'd made as shining a success at my job as you have at yours, I think I'd be content," was all he said. She laughed merrily, and he saw that the natural sweetness of her temper was proof against idle imaginings or vain desires. "You think then that it is better to do a small thing well than a big thing badly?" she inquired. "But it isn't a small thing," he protested, "it's a great big thing--it's the very biggest thing of all." A provoking smile quivered on her lips, and he saw the dimple come and go in her cheek. "I am glad at least that you like my ham and eggs," she retorted mockingly. "I do," he answered gravely, "I like your ham and eggs, but I admire your courage, also." She shook her head. "It's the cheapest of the virtues." "Not your kind, my dear child--it's the rarest and the costliest of achievements." "Oh, I don't know how serious you are," she answered lightly, "but it's a little like putting a man on a desert island and saying, 'make your bed or lie on the rocks.' He's pretty apt to make his bed, isn't he?" "Not in the least. He usually puts up a flag of distress and then sits down in the sand and looks out for a ship." Her voice lost its merriment. "When my ship shows on the horizon, it will be time enough to hoist my flag." A reply was on his lips, but before he could utter it, she had turned away and was moving rapidly across the lawn to the house. The next morning Ordway went into Tappahannock, not so much on account of the little business he found awaiting him at the warehouse, as urged by the necessity of supplying Beverly with cigars. To furnish Beverly three times a day with the kind of cigar he considered it "worth while for a gentleman to smoke"--even though his choice fell, in Ordway's opinion, upon a quite inferior brand--had become in the end a courtesy too extravagant for him to contemplate with serenity. Yet he knew that almost in spite of himself this tribute to Beverly was now an established fact, and that as long as he remained at Cedar Hill he would continue to supply with eagerness the smoke which Beverly would accept with affability. The town was dull enough at mid August, he remembered from the blighting experience of last summer; and now, after a fierce drought which had swept the country, he saw the big, fan-shaped leaves on Mrs. Twine's evening glory hanging like dusty rags along the tin roof of the porch. Banks was away, Baxter was away, and the only acquaintance he greeted was Bill Twine, sitting half drunk, in his shirt sleeves and collarless, on the front steps. There was positive relief when, at the end of an hour, he retraced his steps, with Beverly's cigars under his right arm. After this the summer declined slowly into autumn, and Ordway began to count the long golden afternoons as they dropped one by one into his memory of Cedar Hill. An appeal to Mrs. Brooke, whom he had quite won over by his attentions to Beverly and the children, delayed his moving back into Tappahannock until the beginning of November, and he told himself with satisfaction that it would be possible to awake on frosty October mornings and look out upon the red and gold of the landscape. Late in September Banks returned from his vacation, and during his first visit to Cedar Hill, he showed himself painfully nervous and ill at ease. But coming out for a walk with Ordway one afternoon, he suggested at the end of their first mile that they should sit down and have a smoke beneath a young cherry tree upon the roadside. As he lit his pipe he held the match in his hand until it burned his fingers; then throwing it into the grass, he turned upon his companion as eloquently despairing a look as it is in the power of a set of naturally cheerful features to assume. "Smith," he asked in a hollow voice, "do you suppose it's really any worse to die by your own hand than by disease?" "By Jove!" exclaimed Ordway, and the moment afterward, "Come, now, out with it, Banks. How has she been behaving this time?" Banks lowered his voice, while he glanced suspiciously up at the branches of the cherry tree beneath which they sat. "She hates the sight of me," he answered, with a groan. "Nonsense," rejoined Ordway, cheerfully. "Love has before now worn the mask of scorn." "But it hasn't worn the mask of boredom," retorted the despairing Banks. For a minute his answer appeared final even to Ordway, who stared blankly over the ripened cornfield across the road, without, for the life of him, being able to frame a single encouraging sentence in reply. "If it's the last word I speak," pursued Banks, biting desperately at the stem of his pipe, "she cannot abide the sight of me." "But how does she show it?" demanded Ordway, relieved that he was not expected to combat the former irrefutable statement. "She tried to keep me away from the springs where she went, and when I would follow her, whether or no, she hardly opened her mouth to me for the first two days. Then if I asked her to go to walk she would say it was too hot for walking, and if I asked her to drive she'd answer that she didn't drive with men. As if she and I hadn't been together in a dog-cart over every road within twenty miles of Tappahannock!" "But perhaps the custom of the place was different?" "No, sir, it was not custom that kept her," replied Banks, in a bitterness that scorned deception, "for she went with others. It was the same thing about dancing, too, for if I asked her to dance, she would always declare that she didn't have the strength to use her fan, and the minute after I went away, I'd see her floating round the ball-room in somebody else's arms. Once I did get her to start, but she left off after the first round, because, she said, we could not keep in step. And yet I'd kept in step with her ever since we went on roller skates together." He broke off for an instant, knocked the cold ashes out of his pipe, and plucking a long blade of grass, began chewing it nervously as he talked. "And yet if you could only have seen her when she came down to the ball-room in her white organdie and blue ribbons," he exclaimed presently, in an agony of recollection. "Well, I'm rather glad on the whole that I didn't," rejoined Ordway. "You'd have fallen in love with her if you had--you couldn't have helped it." "Then, thank heaven, I escaped the test. It's a pretty enough pickle as it is now." "I could have stood it all," said Banks, "if it hadn't been for the other man. She might have pulled every single strand of my hair out if she'd wanted to, and I'd have grit my teeth and pretended that I liked it. I didn't care how badly she treated me. What hurt me was how well she treated the other man." "Did she meet him for the first time last summer?" asked Ordway. "Oh no, she's known him ever since she went North in the spring--but it's worse now than it's ever been and, upon my word, she doesn't seem to have eyes or ears for anybody else." "So you're positive she means to marry him?" "She swears she doesn't--that it's only fun, you know. But in my heart I believe it is as good as settled between them." "Well, if she's made up her mind to it, I don't, for the life of me, see how you're going to stop her," returned Ordway, smiling. "But a year ago she'd made up her mind to marry me," groaned Banks. "If she's as variable as that, my dear boy, perhaps the wind will blow her heart back to you again." "I don't believe she's got one," rejoined Banks, with the merciless dissection of the pure passion; "I sometimes think that she hasn't any more heart than--than--I don't know what." "In that case I'd drag myself together and let her alone. I'd go back to my work and resolve never to give her another thought." "Then," replied Banks, "you might have all the good sense that there is in the business, but you wouldn't be in love. Now I love her for what she is, and I don't want her changed even if it would make her kinder. When she used to be sweet I thought sweetness the most fascinating thing on earth, and now that she bangs me, I've come to think that banging is." "I begin to understand," remarked Ordway, laughing, "why you are not what might be called a successful lover." "It isn't because I don't know the way," returned Banks gloomily, "it's because I can't practice it even after I've planned it out. Don't I lie awake at night making up all sorts of speeches I'm going to say to her in the morning? Oh, I can be indifferent enough when I'm dressing before the mirror--I've even put on a purple cravat because she hated it, but I've always taken it off again before I went downstairs to breakfast. Then as soon as I lay my eyes upon her, I feel my heart begin to swell as if it would burst out of my waistcoat, and instead of the flippant speeches I've planned, I crawl and whimper just as I did the day before." They were seated under a cherry tree by the side of the road which led to Tappahannock, and as Banks finished his confessions, a large, dust covered buggy was seen approaching them from the direction of the town. As Ordway recognised Baxter through the cloud of dust raised by the wheels, he waved his hat with a shout of welcome, and a minute later the buggy reached them and drew up in the patch of briars upon the roadside. "I was just on my way to see you, Smith," said Baxter, as he let fall the reins and held out his great dirty hand, "but I'm too heavy to get out, and if I once sat down on the ground, I reckon it would take more than the whole of Tappahannock to pull me up again." "Well, go ahead to Cedar Hill," suggested Ordway, "and we'll follow you at a brisk walk." "No, I won't do that. I can say what I have got to say right here over the wheel, if you'll stand awhile in the dust. Major Leary was in to see me again this morning, and the notion he's got in his head now is that you're the man to run for Mayor of Tappahannock." "I!" exclaimed Ordway, drawing back slightly as he spoke. "He forgets that I'm out of the question. I refuse, of course." "Well, you see, he says you're the only man we've got strong enough to defeat Jasper Trend--and he's as sure as shot that you'd have something like a clean walk-over. He's already drawn up a big red flag with 'The People's Candidate: Ten Commandment Smith,' upon it. I asked him why he wouldn't put just plain 'Daniel,' but he said that little Biblical smack alone was worth as much as a bushel of votes to you. If you drew the line at 'Ten Commandment' he's going to substitute 'Daniel-in-the-Lions'-Den Smith' or something of that kind." "Tell him to stop it," broke in Ordway, with a smothered anger in his usually quiet voice, "he's said nothing to me about it, and I decline it absolutely and without consideration!" "You mean you won't run?" inquired Baxter, in astonishment. "I mean I won't run--I can't run--put it any way you please." "I thought you'd put your whole heart and soul into defeating Trend." "I have, but not that way--where's Trenton whom we've been talking of all summer?" "He's out of it--consumption, the doctor says--anyway he's going South." "Then there's but one other man," said Ordway, decisively, "and that's Baxter." "Me?" said Baxter softly, "you mean me, do you say?" His chuckle shook the buggy until it creaked upon its rusty wheels. "I can't," he added, with a burst of humour, "to tell the truth, I'm afraid." "Afraid?" repeated Ordway, "you're afraid of Jasper Trend?" "No," said Baxter, "it ain't Jasper--it's my wife." He winked slowly as he caught Ordway's eyes, and then picking up the reins, made a movement as if to turn back to Tappahannock. "So you're dead sure then that you can't be talked over?" he asked. "As sure as you are," returned Ordway promptly; then as the buggy started back in the direction from which it had come, he went over to Banks, who had risen to his feet and was leaning heavily against the cherry tree, with the long blade of grass still between his teeth. "What do you think of their wanting to make me Mayor, Banks?" he inquired, with a laugh. Banks started from his gloomy reverie. "Mayor!" he exclaimed almost with animation. "Why, they've shown jolly good sense, that's what I think!" "Well, you needn't begin to get excited," responded Ordway, "for I didn't accept, and you won't have to quarrel either with me or with Jasper Trend." "There's one thing you may be sure of," said Banks with energy, "and that is that I'd quarrel with Jasper every time." "In spite of Milly?" laughed Ordway. "In spite of Milly," repeated Banks in an awed but determined voice; "she may manage my hair and my cravats and my life to come, but I'll be darned if she's going to manage my vote!" "All the same I'm glad you can honestly stick to Jasper," said Ordway, "he counts on you now, doesn't he?" "Oh, I suppose so," returned Banks, without enthusiasm; "at any rate, I think he'd rather she'd marry me than Brown." There was a moment's silence in which the name brought no association into Ordway's consciousness. Then in a single flashing instant the truth leaped upon him, and the cornfields across the road surged up to meet his eyes like the waves of a high sea. "Than whom?" he demanded in so loud a tone that Banks fell back a step and looked at him with blinking eyelids. "Than marry whom?" asked Ordway for the second time, dropping his voice almost to a whisper before the blank surprise in the other's face. "Oh, his name's Brown--Horatio Brown--I thought I'd told you," answered Banks, and he added a moment later, "you've met him, I believe." "Yes," said Ordway, with an effort, "he's the handsome chap who came here last June, isn't he?" "Oh, he's handsome enough," admitted Banks, and he groaned out presently. "You liked him, didn't you?" Ordway smiled slightly as he met the desperation in the other's look. "I like him," he answered quietly, "as much as I like a toad." CHAPTER VI IN WHICH BAXTER PLOTS When Baxter reached the warehouse the following morning, he found Major Leary pacing restlessly back and forth under the brick archway, with the regular military step at which, during the four years' war, he had marched into battle. "Come in, sir, come in and sit down," said Baxter, leading the way into his office, and sweeping a pile of newspapers from an armchair with a hospitable gesture. "Have you seen Smith? and is he all right?" were the Major's first words, as he placed his hat upon the table and took a quick, impatient turn about the room before throwing himself into the chair which the other had emptied. He was a short, erect, nervous man, with a fiery face, a pair of small gray eyes, like steel points, and a long white moustache, discoloured where it overhung his mouth by the faint yellow stain of tobacco. "Oh, I've see him," answered Baxter in a soothing voice, "but he won't run--there's no use talking. He's dead set against it." "Won't run?" cried the Major, furiously. "Nonsense, sir, he must run. There's no help for it. Did you tell him that we'd decided that he should run?" "I told him," returned Baxter, "but, somehow, it didn't look as if he were impressed. He was so positive that he would not even let me put in a word more on the subject. 'Are you dead sure, Smith?' I said, and he answered, 'I'm as dead sure as you are yourself, Baxter.'" The Major crossed his knees angrily, stretched himself back in his chair, and began pulling nervously at the ends of his moustache. "Well, I'll have to see him myself," he said authoritatively. "You may see him as much as you please," replied Baxter, with a soft, offended dignity, "but I'll be mightily surprised, sir, if you get him to change his mind." "Well, I reckon you're right, Bob," admitted the other, after a moment's reflection, "what he won't do for you, it isn't likely that he'll do for the rest of Tappahannock--but the fact remains that somebody has got to step up and defeat Jasper Trend. Now I ask you pointblank--where'll you get your man?" "The Lord knows!" sighed Baxter, and he sucked hard at the stem of his pipe. "Then I tell you if you can't make Smith come out, it's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself." Baxter relapsed into a depressed silence, in the midst of which his thoughts were invaded not so much by the political necessity of the occasion as by the small, but dominant figure of his wife. The big man, who had feared neither shot nor bayonet, trembled in spirit as he imagined the outraged authority that could express itself in a person that measured hardly a fraction more than five feet from her shoes to the curling gray fringe above her forehead. He remembered that once in the early days of his marriage, he had allowed himself to be seduced by the promise of political honours, and that for a whole miserable month he had gone without griddle cakes and syrup for his breakfast. "No--no, I could never tell Marthy," he thought, desperately, still seeing in imagination the pretty, indignant face of Mrs. Baxter. "It's your duty as an honest citizen to run yourself," repeated the Major, rapping the arm of his chair to enforce his words. "I can't," rejoined Baxter, hopelessly, "I can't sir," and he added an instant afterward, "you see women have got the idea somehow, that politics ain't exactly moral." "Women!" said the Major, in the dry, contemptuous tone in which he might have uttered the word, "Pshaw!" "I don't mean just 'women,'" replied Baxter, "I mean my wife." "Oh!" said the Major, "you mean your wife would be opposed to the whole thing?" "She wouldn't hear of it, sir, she simply wouldn't hear a word of it." For a long pause the Major made no answer; then rising from his chair he began pacing with his military stride up and down the floor of the little room. At the end of five minutes he turned upon Baxter with an exclamation of triumph, and threw himself again into the armchair beside the desk. "I have it, Bob!" he said, slapping his knee until the dust flew out of his striped trousers, "I knew I'd get it in the end and here it is. The very thing, on my word, sir, I've discovered the very thing." "Then I'm out of it," said Baxter, "an' I'm mighty glad of that." "Oh, no, you aren't out of it--not just yet," said the Major, "we're to start you in, Bob, you're to start in as a candidate; and then a week before the nomination, something will crop up to make you fall out of the race, and you'll turn over all your votes to Smith. It would be too late, then, for him to back out--he'd simply have to keep in to save the day." In spite of the roar of delight with which the Major ended his speech, Baxter sat unconvinced and unmoved, shaking his great head in a voiceless protest against the plot. "It's the only way, I tell you," urged the Major, half pleased, half angry. "After Smith you're by long odds the most popular man in Tappahannock, and if it isn't one of you, it's Jasper Trend and his everlasting barrooms." "But suppose Smith still declines," said Baxter remembering his wife. "Oh, he won't--he isn't a blamed fool," returned the Major, "and if he does," he added impressively, "if he does I swear to you I'll go into the race myself." He held out his hand and Baxter grasped it in token of good faith. "Then I'll do it," said the big man, "provided--" he hesitated, cleared his throat, and went on bravely, "provided there's no objection to my telling my wife the scheme"--bending his ear an instant, he drew back with an embarrassed and guilty face, "that's Smith's step in the warehouse. He'll be in here in less than two minutes." The Major took up his hat, and flung back the door with a hurried movement. "Well, good-bye, I'll see Smith later about the plans," he returned, "and meanwhile, we'll go hard to work to whip our friend Jasper." Meeting Ordway an instant later upon the threshold, he passed him with a flourish of his hat, and marched rapidly under the brick archway out into the street. As his bookkeeper entered Baxter appeared to be absorbed in a newspaper which he had picked up hastily from the pile upon the floor. "Good-morning," said Ordway, a little surprised; "it looks as if I'd put the fiery Major to flight." "Smith," said Baxter, dropping his paper, and lifting his big, simple face to the younger man, "Smith, you've got me into a hole, and I want you to pull me out again." "A hole?" repeated Ordway; then as light broke on him, he laughed aloud and held out his hand. "Oh, I see, he's going to make you Mayor of Tappahannock!" With a groan Baxter prodded fresh tobacco into his pipe, and applying a match, sat for several minutes brooding in silence amid the cloud of smoke. "He says it's got to be either you or me," he pursued presently, without noticing Ordway's ejaculation, "and on my word, Smith, seeing I've got a wife who's all against it, I think it would be but fair to me to let me off. You're my friend now, ain't you? Well, I'm asking you, Smith, as friend to friend." A flush passed slowly over Ordway's face, and the unusual colour lent a peculiar animation to his glance. As Baxter met his eyes, he was conscious that they pierced through him, bright blue, sparkling, as incisive as a blade. "To tell the truth, the thing is all but impossible," said Ordway, after a long pause. "You don't know, I suppose, that I've never even touched politics in Tappahannock." "That ain't the point, Smith--it's going on three years since you came here--am I right?" "Yes--three years next March, and it seems a century." "Well, anyway, you've as good a right as I to be Mayor, and a long sight better one than Jasper Trend has. Come, now, Smith, if you don't get me out of this hole I'm in, heaven knows how I 'm going to face the Major." "Give me time," said Ordway, quickly, "give me time--a week from to-morrow I am to make my first speech in the town hall. May I have till then?" "Till Thursday week? Oh, I say, Smith, you've got to give in in the end--and a week sooner or later, what's the difference?" Without replying, Ordway walked slowly to the window and stood looking out upon the steep street that crawled up from the railroad track, where an engine whistled. He had held out till now, but with Baxter's last words he had heard in his thoughts a question larger and older than any of which his employer had dreamed. "Why not?" he asked himself again as he looked out upon the sunshine. "Why should not Daniel Smith, for a good purpose, resume the rights which Daniel Ordway has forfeited?" And it appeared to him while he stood there that his decision involved not himself alone, and that the outcome had ceased to be merely an election to the highest office in Tappahannock. Infinitely deep and wide, the problem belonged not only to his individual life, but to the lives of all those who had sinned and paid the penalty of sin and asked of humanity the right and the freedom to begin anew. The impulsive daring which he had almost lived down stirred for an instant in his pulses, and turning quickly he looked at Baxter with a boyish laugh. "If I go in, Baxter, I go in to win!" he cried. At the moment it had seemed to him that he was obliging rather than ambitious in the choice that he had made; but several days later, when he came out of the warehouse to find the Major's red flag flying in the street, he felt the thrill of his youthful enthusiasm quicken in his blood. There was a strangely martial air about the red flag in the sunshine, and the response in his pulses was not unlike the ardour of battle. "After all the world is no smaller here than it is in New York," he thought, "only the littleness of the one is different from the littleness of the other. In either place success would have meant nothing in itself, but in Tappahannock I can be more than successful, I can be useful." With the words it seemed to him that his heart dissolved in happiness, and as he looked now on the people who passed him in the street--on the old Negro midwife waddling down the board walk; on the Italian who kept a fruit stand at the corner; on the pretty girl flirting in the door of the harness shop; and on the rough-coated, soft-eyed country horses--he felt that one and all of these must recognise and respond to the goodwill that had overflowed his thoughts. So detached from personal bitterness, indeed, was even his fight against Jasper Trend that he went out of his way at the top of the hill to pick up a small whip which the Mayor had dropped from horseback as he rode by. The scowling thanks with which Jasper received the courtesy puzzled him for a moment until he remembered that by the man in the harness shop they were regarded probably as enemies. At the recollection he stopped short in his walk and laughed aloud--no, he was not interested in fighting anything so small, so insignificant as Jasper Trend. It was the injustice, the social disease he combated and not the man. "I wonder if he really hates me?" he thought, for it seemed to him absurd and meaningless that one man should waste his strength in hating another. "If he'd been five years in prison he would have learned how foolish it all is," he added; and an instant afterward he asked himself almost with terror if his punishment had been, in reality, the greatest good that had come to him in life? Without that terrible atonement would he have gone on like Jasper Trend from fraud to fraud, from selfishness to damnation? Looking round him in the perfect October weather, he felt that the emotion in his heart swelled suddenly to rapture. Straight ahead the sunshine sifted in drops through the red and yellow trees that bordered the roadside, while in the field on his right the brown cornricks crowded in even rows to where the arch of the hill was outlined against the deep blue sky. Here was not only peace, but happiness, and his old life, as he glanced back upon it, appeared hollow, futile, a corpse without breath or animation. That was the mere outward form and body of existence; but standing here in the deserted road, with his eyes on the brilliant October fields, he could tell himself that he had come at last into the ways and the understanding of faith. As he had once walked by sight alone and stumbled, so he moved now blindly like a child that is led step by step through the dark. From the road behind him a happy laugh struck on his ears, and turning quickly he saw that a dog-cart was rolling rapidly from Tappahannock. As he stepped back upon the roadside to avoid the dust raised by the wheels, he lifted his eyes to the face of Milly Trend, who sat, flushed and smiling, under a pink sunshade. She bowed joyfully; and it was not until a moment afterward, when the cart had gone by, that Ordway realised, almost with the force of a blow struck unawares, that he had acknowledged the obsequious greeting of Gus Wherry. After the pink sunshade had vanished, Milly's laugh was still blown back to him on the rising wind. With the happy sound of it in his ears, he watched the dust settle again in the road, the tall golden poplars close like a screen after the passing wheels, and the distance resume its aspect of radiant loneliness. Nothing was changed at which he looked, yet he was conscious that the rapture had passed from his thoughts and the beauty from the October landscape. The release that he had won appeared to him as an illusion and a cheat, and lifting his face to the sunshine, he watched, like a prisoner, the flight of the swallows across the sky. At dinner Beverly noticed his abstraction, and recommended a mint julep, which Emily went out immediately to prepare. "The blood is easily chilled at this season," he said, "and care should be taken to keep it warm by means of a gentle stimulant. I am not a great drinker, sir, as you may have remarked, but in cases either of sickness or sorrow, I have observed that few things are more efficacious than a thimbleful of whiskey taken at the proper time. When I had the misfortune to break to my uncle Colonel Algernon Brooke the distressing news of the death of his wife by drowning, I remember that, though he was one of the most abstemious men alive, his first articulate words were: 'bring the whiskey jug.'" Even with the cheering assistance of the mint julep, however, it was impossible for Ordway to eat his dinner; and making an excuse presently, he rose from the table and went out into the avenue, where he walked slowly up and down in the shadow of the cedars. At the end of his last restless turn, he went indoors for his hat, and coming out again started rapidly toward Tappahannock. With his first decisive step he felt that the larger share of his burden had fallen from him. * * * * * The Tappahannock Hotel was a low, whitewashed frame building, withdrawn slightly from the street, where several dejected looking horses, with saddle-bags attached to them, were usually fastened to the iron rings in the hitching-rail upon the sidewalk. The place was the resort chiefly of commercial travellers or of neighbouring farmers, who drove in with wagon loads of garden produce or of sun-cured tobacco; and the number of loungers reclining on the newly painted green benches upon the porch made Ordway aware that the fall trade was already beginning to show signs of life. In answer to his questions, the proprietor an unctuous person, whose mouth was distorted by a professional habit of welcome--informed him that a gentleman by the name of Brown had registered there the evening before, and that he was, to the best of his belief, upstairs in number eighteen at the present moment. "To tell the truth I can't quite size him up," he concluded confidentially. "He don't seem to hev' come either to sell or to buy an' thar's precious little else that ever brings a body to Tappahannock." "Please add that I wish particularly to see him in private," said Ordway. Without turning his head the proprietor beckoned, by a movement of his thumb delivered backward over his left shoulder, to a Negro boy, who sat surreptitiously eating peanuts out of a paper bag in his pocket. "Tell the gentleman in number eighteen, Sol, that Mr. Smith, the people's candidate for Mayor, would like to have a little talk with him in private. I'm mighty glad to see you out in the race, suh," he added, turning again to Ordway, as the Negro disappeared up the staircase. "Thank you," replied Ordway, with a start, which brought him back from his approaching interview with Gus Wherry to the recollection that he was fighting to become the Mayor of Tappahannock. "Thar's obleeged to be a scrummage, I reckon," resumed the loquacious little man, when he had received Ordway's acknowledgments--"but I s'pose thar ain't any doubt as to who'll come off with the scalps in the end." His manner changed abruptly, and he looked round with a lurking curiosity in his watery eyes. "You knew Mr. Brown, didn't you say, suh?--before you came here?" Ordway glanced up quickly. "Did you tell me he got here yesterday?" he asked. "Last night on the eight-forty-five, which came in two hours after time." "An accident on the road, wasn't it?" "Wreck of a freight--now, Mr. Brown, as I was saying----" At this instant, to Ordway's relief, the messenger landed with a bound on the floor of the hall, and picking himself up, announced with a cheerful grin, that "the gentleman would be powerful pleased to see Mr. Smith upstairs in his room." Nodding to the proprietor, Ordway followed the Negro up to the first landing, and knocked at a half open door at the end of the long, dark hall. CHAPTER VII SHOWS THAT POLITENESS, LIKE CHARITY, IS AN ELASTIC MANTLE When Ordway entered the room, he turned and closed the door carefully behind him, before he advanced to where Wherry stood awaiting him with outstretched hand. "I can't begin to tell you how I appreciate the honour, Mr. Smith. I didn't expect it--upon my word, I didn't," exclaimed Wherry, with the effusive amiability which made Ordway bite his lip in anger. "I don't know that I mean it for an honour, but I hope we can get straight to business," returned Ordway shortly. "Ah, then there's business?" repeated the other, as if in surprise. "I had hoped that you were paying me merely a friendly call. To tell the truth I've the very worst head in the world for business, you know, and I always manage to dodge it whenever I get half a chance." "Well, you can't dodge it this time, so we may as well have it out." "Then since you insist upon that awful word 'business,' I suppose you mean that you've come formally to ratify the treaty?" asked Wherry, smiling. "The treaty? I made no treaty," returned Ordway gravely. Laughing pleasantly, Wherry invited his visitor to be seated. Then turning away for an instant, he flung himself into a chair beside a little marble topped table upon which stood a half-emptied bottle of rye whiskey and a pitcher of iced water on a metal tray. "Do you mean to tell me you've forgotten our conversation in that beastly road?" he demanded, "and the prodigal? Surely you haven't forgotten the prodigal? Why, I never heard anything in my life that impressed me more." "You told me then distinctly that you had no intention of remaining in Tappahannock." "I'll tell you so again if you'd like to hear it. Will you have a drink?" Ordway shook his head with an angry gesture. "What I want to know," he insisted bluntly, "is why you are here at all?" Wherry poured out a drink of whiskey, and adding a dash of iced water, tossed it down at a swallow. "I thought I told you then," he answered, "that I have a little private business in the town. As it's purely personal I hope you'll have no objection to my transacting it." "You said that afternoon that your presence was, in some way, connected with Jasper Trend's cotton mills." Wherry gave a low whistle. "Did I?" he asked politely, "well, perhaps, I did. I can't remember." "I was fool enough to believe that you wanted an honest job," said Ordway; "it did not enter my head that your designs were upon Trend's daughter." "Didn't it?" inquired Wherry with a smile in which his white teeth flashed brilliantly. "Well, it might have, for I was honest enough about it. Didn't I tell you that a woman was at the bottom of every mess I was ever in?" "Where is your wife?" asked Ordway. "Dead," replied Wherry, in a solemn voice. "If I am not mistaken, you had not less than three at the time of your trial." "All dead," rejoined Wherry in the same solemn tone, while he drew out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes with a flourish, "there ain't many men that have supported such a treble affliction on the same day." "I may as well inform you that I don't believe a word you utter." "It's true all the same. I'll take my oath on the biggest Bible you can find in town." "Your oath? Pshaw!" "Well, I always said my word was better," observed Wherry, without the slightest appearance of offence. He wore a pink shirt which set off his fine colouring to advantage, and as he turned aside to pour out a second drink of whiskey, Ordway noticed that his fair hair was brushed carefully across the bald spot in the centre of his head. "Whether they are dead or alive," responded Ordway, "I want you to understand plainly that you are to give up your designs upon Milly Trend or her money." "So you've had your eye on her yourself?" exclaimed Wherry. "I declare I'm deuced sorry. Why, in thunder, didn't you tell me so last June?" A mental nausea that was almost like a physical spasm seized Ordway suddenly, and crossing to the window, he stood looking through the half-closed shutters down into the street below, where a covered wagon rolled slowly downhill, the driver following on foot as he offered a bunch of fowls to the shop-keepers upon the sidewalk. Then the hot, stale, tobacco impregnated air came up to his nostrils, and he turned away with a sensation of disgust. "If you'd only warned me in time--hang it--I'd have cut out and given you the field," declared Wherry in such apparent sincerity that Ordway resisted an impulse to kick him out into the hall. "That's my way. I always like to play fair and square when I get the chance." "Well, you've got the chance now, and what's more you've got to make it good." "And leave you the open?" "And leave me Tappahannock--yes." "I don't want Tappahannock. To tell the truth I'm not particularly struck by its attractions." "In that case you've no objection to leaving immediately, I suppose?" "I've no objection on earth if you'll allow me a pretty woman to keep me company. I'm a deuced lonely bird, and I can't get on by myself--it's not in my nature." Ordway placed his hand upon the table with a force which started the glasses rattling on the metal tray. "I repeat for the last time that you are to leave Milly Trend alone," he said. "Do you understand me?" "I'm not sure I do," rejoined Wherry, still pleasantly enough. "Would you mind saying that over again in a lower tone?" "What I want to make plain is that you are not to marry Milly Trend--or any other women in this town," returned Ordway angrily. "So there are others!" commented Wherry jauntily with his eye on the ceiling. The pose of his handsome head was so remarkably effective, that Ordway felt his rage increased by the mere external advantages of the man. "What I intend you to do is to leave Tappahannock for good and all this very evening," he resumed, drawing a sharp breath. The words appeared to afford Wherry unspeakable amusement. "I can't," he responded, after a minute in which he had enjoyed his humour to the full, "the train leaves at seven-ten and I've an engagement at eight o'clock." "You'll break it, that's all." "But it wouldn't be polite--it's with a lady." "Then I'll break it for you," returned Ordway, starting toward the door, "for I may presume, I suppose, that the lady is Miss Trend?" "Oh, come back, I say. Hang it all, don't get into a fury," protested Wherry, clutching the other by the arm, and closing the door which he had half opened. "Here, hold on a minute and let's talk things over quietly. I told you, didn't I? that I wanted to be obliging." "Then you will go?" asked Ordway, in a milder tone. "Well, I'll think about it. I've a quick enough wit for little things, but on serious matters my brain works slowly. In the first place now didn't we promise each other that we'd play fair?" "But you haven't--that's why I came here." "You're dead wrong. I'm doing it this very minute. I'll keep my mouth shut about you till Judgment Day if you'll just hold off and not pull me back when I'm trying to live honest." "Honest!" exclaimed Ordway, and turned on his heel. "Well, I'd like to know what you call it, for if it isn't honesty, it certainly isn't pleasure. My wife's dead, I swear it's a fact, and I swear again that I don't mean the girl any harm. I was never so much gone on a woman in my life, though a number of 'em have been pretty soft on me. So you keep off and manage your election--or whatever it is--while I go about my business. Great Scott! after all it ain't as if a woman were a bank note, is it?" "The first question was mine. Will you leave to-day or will you not?" "And if I will not what are you going to do about it?" "As soon as I hear your decision, I shall let you know." "Well, say I won't. What is your next move then?" "In that case I shall go straight to the girl's father after I leave this room." "By Jove you will! And what will you do when you get there?" "I shall tell him that to the best of my belief you have a wife--possibly several--now living." "Then you'll lie," said Wherry, dropping for the first time his persuasive tone. "That remains to be proved," rejoined Ordway shortly. "At any rate if he needs to be convinced I shall tell him as much as I know about you." "And how much," demanded Wherry insolently, "does that happen to be?" "Enough to stop the marriage, that is all I want." "And suppose he asks you--as he probably will--how in the devil it came to be any business of yours?" For a moment Ordway looked over the whiskey bottle and through the open window into the street below. "I don't think that will happen," he answered slowly, "but if it does I shall tell him the whole truth as I know it--about myself as well as about you." "The deuce you will!" exclaimed Wherry. "It appears that you want to take the whole job out of my hands now, doesn't it?" The flush from the whiskey had overspread his face, and in the midst of the general redness his eyes and teeth flashed brilliantly in an angry laugh. An imaginative sympathy for the man moved Ordway almost in spite of himself, and he wondered, in the long pause, what Wherry's early life had been and if his chance in the world were really a fair one? "I don't want to be hard on you," said Ordway at last; "it's out of the question that you should have Milly Trend, but if you'll give up that idea and go away I'll do what I can to help you--I'll send you half my salary for the next six months until you are able to find a job." Wherry looked at him with a deliberate wink. "So you'd like to save your own skin, after all, wouldn't you?" he inquired. Taking up his hat from the table, Ordway turned toward the door and laid his hand upon the knob before he spoke. "Is it decided then that I shall go to Jasper Trend?" he asked. "Well, I wouldn't if I were you," said Wherry, "but that's your affair. On the whole I think that you'll pay more than your share of the price." "It's natural, I suppose, that you should want your revenge," returned Ordway, without resentment, "but all the same I shall tell him as little as possible about your past. What I shall say is that I have reason to believe that your wife is still living." "One or more?" enquired Wherry, with a sneer. "One, I think, will prove quite sufficient for my purpose." "Well, go ahead," rejoined Wherry, angrily, "but before you strike you'd better be pretty sure you see a snake in the grass. I'd advise you for your own sake to ask Milly Trend first if she expects to marry me." "What?" cried Ordway, wheeling round, "do you mean she has refused you?" "Oh, ask her--ask her," retorted Wherry airily, as he turned back to the whiskey bottle. In the street, a moment later, Ordway passed under the red flag, which, inflated by the wind, swelled triumphantly above his head. From the opposite sidewalk a man spoke to him; and then, turning, waved his slouch hat enthusiastically toward the flag. "If he only knew," thought Ordway, looking after him; and the words brought to his imagination what disgrace in Tappahannock would mean in his life. As he passed the dim vacancy of the warehouse he threw toward it a look which was almost one of entreaty. "No, no, it can't be," he insisted, as if to reassure himself, "it is impossible. How could it happen?" And seized by a sudden rage against circumstances, he remembered the windy afternoon upon which he had come for the first time to Tappahannock--the wide stretches of broomsedge; the pale red road, which appeared to lead nowhere; his violent hunger; and the Negro woman who had given him the cornbread at the door of her cabin. A hundred years seemed to have passed since then--no, not a hundred years as men count them, but a dissolution and a resurrection. It was as if his personality--his whole inner structure had dissolved and renewed itself again; and when he thought now of that March afternoon it was with the visual distinctness that belongs to an observer rather than to an actor. His point of view was detached, almost remote. He saw himself from the outside alone--his clothes, his face, even his gestures; and these things were as vivid to him as were the Negro cabin, the red clay road, and the covered wagon that threw its shadow on the path as it crawled by. In no way could he associate his immediate personality either with the scene or with the man who had sat on the pine bench ravenously eating the coarse food. At the moment it seemed to him that he was released, not only from any spiritual bondage to the past, but even from any physical connection with the man he had been then. "What have I to do with Gus Wherry or with Daniel Ordway?" he demanded. "Above all, what in heaven have I to do with Milly Trend?" As he asked the question he flushed with resentment against the girl for whom he was about to sacrifice all that he valued in his life. He thought with disgust of her vanity, her shallowness, her insincerity; and the course that he had planned showed in this sudden light as utterly unreasonable. It struck him on the instant that in going to Wherry he had been a fool. "Yes, I should have thought of that before. I have been too hasty, for what, after all, have I to do with Milly Trend?" With an effort he put the question aside, and in the emotional reaction which followed, he felt that his spirit soared into the blue October sky. Emily, looking at him at dinner, thought that she had never seen him so animated, so light-hearted, so boyishly unreserved. When his game of dominoes with Beverly was over, he followed the children out into the orchard, where they were gathering apples into great straw hampers; and as he stood under the fragrant clustering boughs, with the childish laughter in his ears, he felt that his perplexities, his troubles, even his memories had dissolved and vanished into air. An irresponsible happiness swelled in his heart while he watched the golden orchard grass blown like a fringe upon the circular outline of the hill. But when night fell the joy of the sunshine went from him, and it was almost with a feeling of heaviness that he lit his lamp and sat down in the chintz-covered chair under the faded sampler worked by Margaret, aged nine. Without apparent cause or outward disturbance he had passed from the exhilaration of the afternoon into a pensive, almost a melancholy mood. The past, which had been so remote for several hours, had leaped suddenly to life again--not only in his memory, but in every fibre of his body as well as in every breath he drew. "No, I cannot escape it, for is it not a part of me--it is I myself," he thought; and he knew that he could no more free himself from his duty to Milly Trend than he could tear the knowledge of her existence from his brain. "After all, it is not Milly Trend," he added, "it is something larger, stronger, far more vital than she." A big white moth flew in from the dusk, and fluttered blindly in the circle of light which the lamp threw on the ceiling. He heard the soft whirring of its wings against the plaster, and gradually the sound entered into his thoughts and became a part of his reflections. "Will the moth fall into the flame or will it escape?" he asked, feeling himself powerless to avert the creature's fate. In some strange way his own destiny seemed to be whirling dizzily in that narrow circle of light; and in the pitiless illumination that surrounded it, he saw not only all that was passed, but all that was present as well as all that was yet to come. At the same instant he saw his mother's face as she lay dead with her look of joyous surprise frozen upon her lips; and the face of Lydia when she had lowered a black veil at their last parting; and the face of Alice, his daughter; and of the girl downstairs as he had seen her through the gray twilight; and the face of the epileptic little preacher, who had preached in the prison chapel. And as these faces looked back at him he knew that the illumination in which his soul had struggled so blindly was the light of love. "Yes, it is love," he thought, "and that is the meaning of the circle of light into which I have come out of the darkness." He looked up startled, for the white moth, after one last delirious whirl of ecstasy, had dropped from the ceiling into the flame of the lamp. CHAPTER VIII THE TURN OF THE WHEEL At eight o'clock the next morning Ordway entered Jasper Trend's gate, and passed up the gravelled walk between borders of white and yellow chrysanthemums. In a window on his right a canary was singing loudly in a gilt cage; and a moment later, the maid invited him into a room which seemed, as he entered it, to be filled with a jubilant burst of music. As he waited here for the man he had come to see, he felt that, in spite of his terrible purpose, he had found no place in Tappahannock so cheerful as this long room flooded with sunshine, in the midst of which the canary swung back and forth in his wire cage. The furniture was crude enough, the colours of the rugs were unharmonious, the imitation lace of the curtains was offensive to his eyes. Yet the room was made almost attractive by the large windows which gave on the piazza, the borders of chrysanthemums and the smoothly shaven plot of lawn. His back was turned toward the door when it opened and shut quickly, and Jasper Trend came in, hastily swallowing his last mouthful of breakfast. "You wanted to see me, Mr. Smith, I understand," he said at once, showing in his manner a mixture of curiosity and resentment. It was evident at the first glance that even in his own house he was unable to overcome the political antagonism of the man of little stature. The smallest social amenity he would probably have regarded as a kind of moral subterfuge. "I must ask you to overlook the intimate nature of my question," began Ordway, in a voice which was so repressed that it sounded dull and lifeless, "but I have heard that your daughter intends to marry Horatio Brown. Is this true?" At the words Jasper, who had prepared himself for a political onslaught, fell back a step or two and stood in the merciless sunlight, blinking at his questioner with his little, watery, pale gray eyes. Each dull red vein in his long nose became suddenly prominent. "Horatio Brown?" he repeated, "why, I thought you'd come about nothing less than the nomination. What in the devil do you want anyway with Horatio Brown. He can't vote in Tappahannock, can he?" "I'll answer that in time," replied Ordway, "my motive is more serious than you can possibly realise--it is a question which involves your daughter's happiness--perhaps her life." "Good Lord, is that so?" exclaimed Jasper, "I don't reckon you're sweet on her yourself, are you?" Ordway's only reply was an impatient groan which sent the other stumbling back against a jar of goldfish on the centre table. Though he had come fully prepared for the ultimate sacrifice, he was unable to control the repulsion aroused in him by the bleared eyes and sunken mouth of the man before him. "Well, if you ain't," resumed Jasper presently, with a fresh outburst of hilarity, "you're about the only male critter in Tappahannock that don't turn his eyes sooner or later toward my door." "I've barely a speaking acquaintance with your daughter," returned Ordway shortly, "but her reputation as a beauty is certainly very well deserved." Mollified by the compliment, Jasper unbent so far as to make an abrupt, jerky motion in the direction of a chair; but shaking his head, Ordway put again bluntly the question he had asked upon the other's entrance. "Am I to understand seriously that she means to marry Brown?" he demanded. Jasper twisted his scraggy neck nervously in his loose collar. "Lord, how you do hear things!" he ejaculated. "Now, as far as I can see, thar ain't a single word of truth in all that talk. Just between you and me I don't believe my girl has had her mind on that fellow Brown more'n a minute. I'm dead against it and that'll go a long way with her, you may be sure. Why, only this morning she told me that if she had to choose between the two of 'em, she'd stick to young Banks every time." With the words it seemed to Ordway that the sunshine became fairly dazzling as it fell through the windows, while the song of the canary went up rapturously like a pæan. Only by the relief which flooded his heart like warmth could he measure the extent of the ruin he had escaped. Even Jasper Trend's face appeared no longer hideous to him, and as he held out his hand, the exhilaration of his release lent a note that was almost one of affection to his voice. "Don't let her do it--for God's sake don't let her do it," he said, and an instant afterward he was out on the gravelled walk between the borders of white and yellow chrysanthemums. At the gate Milly was standing with a letter in her hand, and when he spoke to her, he watched her face change slowly to the colour of a flower. Never had she appeared softer, prettier, more enticing in his eyes, and he felt for the first time an understanding of the hopeless subjection of Banks. "Oh, it's you, Mr. Smith!" she exclaimed, smiling and blushing as she had smiled and blushed at Wherry the day before, "I was asking Harry Banks yesterday what had become of you?" "What had become of me?" he repeated in surprise, while he drew back quickly with his hand on the latch of the gate. "I hadn't seen you for so long," she answered, with a laugh which bore less relation to humour than it did to pleasure. "You used to pass by five times a day, and I got so accustomed to you that I really missed you when you went away." "Well, I've been in the country all summer, though that hardly counts, for you were out of town yourself." "Yes, I was out of town myself." She lingered over the words, and her voice softened as she went on until it seemed to flow with the sweetness of liquid honey, "but even when I am here, you never care to see me." "Do you think so?" he asked gaily, and the next instant he wondered why the question had passed his lips before it had entered into his thoughts, "the truth is that I know a good deal more about you than you suspect," he added; "I have the honour, you see, to be the confidant of Harry Banks." "Oh, Harry Banks!" she exclaimed indifferently, as she turned from the gate, while Ordway opened it and passed out into the street. For the next day or two it seemed to him that the lightness of his heart was reflected in the faces of those about him--that Baxter, Mrs. Brooke, Emily, Beverly each appeared to move in response to some hidden spring within himself. He felt no longer either Beverly's tediousness or Mrs. Brooke's melancholy, for these early October mornings contained a rapture which transfigured the people with whom he lived. With this unlooked for renewal of hope he threw himself eagerly into the political fight for the control of Tappahannock. It was now Tuesday and on Thursday evening he was to deliver his first speech in the town hall. Already the preparations were made, already the flags were flying from the galleries, and already Baxter had been trimmed for his public appearance upon the platform. "By George, I believe the Major's right and it's the Ten Commandment part that has done it," said the big man, settling his person with a shake in the new clothes he had purchased for the occasion. "I reckon this coat's all right, Smith, ain't it? My wife wouldn't let me come out on the platform in those old clothes I've been wearing." "Oh, you're all right," returned Ordway, cheerfully--so cheerfully that Baxter was struck afresh by the peculiar charm which belonged less to manner than to temperament, "you're all right, old man, but it isn't your clothes that make you so." "All the same I'll feel better when I get into my old suit again," said Baxter, "I don't know how it is, but, somehow, I seem to have left two-thirds of myself behind in those old clothes. I just wore these down to show 'em off, but I shan't put 'em on again till Thursday." It was the closing hour at the warehouse, and after a few eager words on the subject of the approaching meeting, Ordway left the office and went out into the deserted building where the old Negro was sweeping the floor with his twig broom. A moment later he was about to pass under the archway, when a man, hurrying in from the street, ran straight into his arms and then staggered back with a laugh of mirthless apology. "My God, Smith," said the tragic voice of Banks, "I'm half crazy and I must have a word with you alone." Catching his arm Ordway drew him into the dim light of the warehouse, until they reached the shelter of an old wagon standing unhitched against the wall. The only sound which came to them here was the scratching noise made by the twig broom on the rough planks of the floor. "Speak now," said Ordway, while his heart sank as he looked into the other's face, "It's quite safe--there's no one about but old Abraham." "I can't speak," returned Banks, preserving with an effort a decent composure of his features, "but it's all up with me--it's worse than I imagined, and there's nothing ahead of me but death." "I suppose it's small consolation to be told that you look unusually healthy at the minute," replied Ordway, "but don't keep me guessing, Banks. What's happened now?" "All her indifference--all her pretence of flirting was pure deception," groaned the miserable Banks, "she wanted to throw dust, not only in my eyes, but in Jasper's, also." "Why, he told me with his own lips that his daughter had given him to understand that she preferred you to Brown." "And so she did give him to understand--so she did," affirmed Banks, in despair, "but it was all a blind so that he wouldn't make trouble between her and Brown. I tell you, Smith," he concluded, bringing his clenched fist down on the wheel of the wagon, from which a shower of dried mud was scattered into Ordway's face, "I tell you, I don't believe women think any more of telling a lie than we do of taking a cocktail!" "But how do you know all this, my dear fellow? and when did you discover it?" "That's the awful part, I'm coming to it." His voice gave out and he swallowed a lump in his throat before he could go on. "Oh, Smith, Smith, I declare, if it's the last word I speak, I believe she means to run away with Brown this very evening!" "What?" cried Ordway, hardly raising his voice above a whisper. A burning resentment, almost a repulsion swept over him, and he felt that he could have spurned the girl's silly beauty if she had lain at his feet. What was a woman like Milly Trend worth, that she should cost him, a stranger to her, so great a price? "Tell me all," he said sharply, turning again to his companion. "How did you hear it? Why do you believe it? Have you spoken to Jasper?" Banks blinked hard for a minute, while a single large round teardrop trickled slowly down his freckled nose. "I should never have suspected it," he answered, "but for Milly's old black Mammy Delphy, who has lived with her ever since she was born. Aunt Delphy came upon her this morning when she was packing her bag, and by hook or crook, heaven knows how, she managed to get at the truth. Then she came directly to me, for it seems that she hates Brown worse than the devil." "When did she come to you?" "A half hour ago. I left her and rushed straight to you." Ordway drew out his watch, and stood looking at the face of it with a wondering frown. "That must have been five o'clock," he said, "and it is now half past. Shall I catch Milly, do you think, if I start at once?" "You?" cried Banks, "you mean that you will stop her?" "I mean that I must stop her. There is no question." As he spoke he had started quickly down the warehouse, scattering as he walked, a pile of trash which the old Negro had swept together in the centre of the floor. So rapid were the long strides with which he moved that Banks, in spite of his frantic haste, could barely keep in step with him as they passed into the street. Ordway's face had changed as if from a spasm of physical pain, and as Banks looked at it in the afternoon light he was startled to find that it was the face of an old man. The brows were bent, the mouth drawn, the skin sallow, and the gray hair upon the temples had become suddenly more prominent than the dark locks above. "Then you knew Brown before?" asked Banks, with an accession of courage, as they slackened their pace with the beginning of the hill. "I knew him before--yes," replied Ordway, shortly. His reserve had become not only a mask, but a coffin, and his companion had for a minute a sensation that was almost uncanny as he walked by his side--as if he were striving to keep pace uphill with a dead man. Banks had known him to be silent, gloomy, uncommunicative before now, but he had never until this instant seen that look of iron resolve which was too cold and still to approach the heat of passion. Had he been furious Banks might have shared his fury with him; had he shown bitterness of mood Banks might have been bitter also; had he given way even to sardonic merriment, Banks felt that it would have been possible to have feigned a mild hilarity of manner; but before this swift, implacable pursuit of something he could not comprehend, the wretched lover lost all consciousness of the part which he himself must act, well or ill, in the event to come. At Trend's gate Ordway stopped and looked at his companion with a smile which appeared to throw an artificial light upon his drawn features. "Will you let me speak to her alone first," he asked, "for a few minutes?" "I'll take a turn up the street then," returned Banks eagerly, still panting from his hurried walk up the long hill. "She's in the room on the right now," he added, "I can see her feeding the canary." Ordway nodded indifferently. "I shan't be long," he said, and going inside the gate, passed deliberately up the walk and into the room where Milly stood at the window with her mouth close against the wires of the gilt cage. At his step on the threshold the girl turned quickly toward the door with a fluttering movement. Surprise and disappointment battled for an instant in her glance, and he gathered from his first look that he had come at the moment when she was expecting Wherry. He noticed, too, that in spite of the mild autumn weather, she wore a dark dress which was not unsuitable for a long journey, and that her sailor hat, from which a blue veil floated, lay on a chair in one corner. A deeper meaning had entered into the shallow prettiness of her face, and he felt that she had passed through some subtle change in which she had left her girlhood behind her. For the first time it occurred to him that Milly Trend was deserving not only of passion, but of sympathy. At the withdrawal of the lips that had offered him his bit of cake, the canary fluttered from his perch and uttered a sweet, short, questioning note; and in Milly's face, as she came forward, there was something of this birdlike, palpitating entreaty. "Oh, it is you, Mr. Smith," she said, "I did not hear your ring." "I didn't ring," responded Ordway, as he took her trembling outstretched hand in which she still held the bit of sponge cake, "I saw you at the window so I came straight in without sending word. What I have to say to you is so important that I dared not lose a minute." "And it is about me?" asked Milly, with a quiver of her eyelids. "No, it is about someone else, though it concerns you in a measure. The thing I have to tell you relates directly to a man whom you know as Horatio Brown----" He spoke so quickly that the girl divined his meaning from his face rather than from his words. "Then you know him?" she questioned, in a frightened whisper. "I know more of his life than I can tell you. It is sufficient to say that to the best of my belief he has a wife now living--that he has been married before this under different names to at least two living women----" He stopped and put out his hand with an impulsive protecting gesture, for the wounded vanity in the girl's face had pierced to his heart. "Will you let me see your father?" he asked gently, "would it not be better for me to speak to him instead of to you?" "No, no!" cried Milly sharply, "don't tell him--don't dare to tell him--for he would believe it and it is a lie--it is a lie! I tell you it is a lie!" "As God is my witness it is the truth," he answered, without resentment. "Then you shall accuse him to his face. He is coming in a little while, and you shall accuse him before me----" She stopped breathlessly and the pity in his look made her wince sharply and shrink away. With her movement the piece of sponge cake fell from her loosened fingers and rolled on the floor at her feet. "But if it were true how could you know it?" she demanded. "No, it is not true--I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" she repeated in a passion of terror. At her excited voice the canary, swinging on his perch, broke suddenly into an ecstasy of song, and Milly's words, when she spoke again, were drowned in the liquid sweetness that flowed from the cage. For a minute Ordway stood in silence waiting for the music to end, while he watched the angry, helpless tremor of the girl's outstretched hands. "Will you promise me to wait?" he asked, raising his voice in the effort to be heard, "will you promise me to wait at least until you find out the truth or the falsehood of what I tell you?" "But I don't believe it," repeated Milly in the stubborn misery of hopeless innocence. "Ask yourself, then, what possible reason I could have in coming to you--except to save you?" "Wait!" cried the girl angrily, "I can't hear--wait!" Picking up a shawl from a chair, she flung it with an impatient gesture over the cage, and turning immediately from the extinguished bird, took up his sentence where he had broken off. "To save me?" she repeated, "you mean from marriage?" "From a marriage that would be no marriage. Am I right in suspecting that you meant to go away with him to-night?" She bowed her head--all the violent spirit gone out of her. "I was ready to go to-night," she answered, like a child that has been hurt and is still afraid of what is to come. "And you promise me that you will give it up?" he went on gently. "I don't know--I can't tell--I must see him first," she said, and burst suddenly into tears, hiding her face in her hands with a pathetic, shamed gesture. Turning away for a moment, he stood blankly staring down into the jar of goldfish. Then, as her sobs grew presently beyond her control, he came back to the chair into which she had dropped and looked with moist eyes at her bowed fair head. "Before I leave you, will you promise me to give him up?--to forget him if it be possible?" he asked. "But it is not possible," she flashed back, lifting her wet blue eyes to his. "How dare you come to me with a tale like this? Oh, I hate you! I shall always hate you! Will you go?" Before her helpless fury he felt a compassion stronger even than the emotion her tears had aroused. "It is not fair that I should tell you so much and not tell you all, Milly," he said. "It is not fair that in accusing the man you love, I should still try to shield myself. I know that these things are true because Brown's--Wherry is his name--trial took place immediately before mine--and we saw each other during the terms which we served in prison." Then before she could move or speak he turned from her and went rapidly from the house and out into the walk. CHAPTER IX AT THE CROSS-ROADS At the corner he looked down the street and saw the red flag still swelling in the wind. A man spoke to him; the face was familiar, but he could not recall the name, until after a few congratulatory words about his political prospects, he remembered, with a start, that he was talking to Major Leary. "You may count on a clean sweep of votes, Mr. Smith--there's no doubt of it," said the Major, beaming with his amiable fiery face. "There's no doubt of it?" repeated Ordway, while he regarded the enthusiastic politician with a perplexed and troubled look. The Major, the political campaign, the waving red flag and the noisy little town had receded to a blank distance from the moment in which he stood. He wondered vaguely what connection he--Daniel Ordway--had ever held with these things? Yet his smile was still bright and cheerful as he turned away, with an apologetic word, and passed on into the road to Cedar Hill. The impulse which had driven him breathlessly into Milly's presence had yielded now to the mere dull apathy of indifference, and it mattered to him no longer whether the girl was saved or lost in the end. He thought of her vanity, of her trivial pink and white prettiness with a return of his old irritation. Well, he had done his part--his temperament had ruled him at the decisive instant, and the ensuing consequences of his confession had ceased now to affect or even to interest him. Then, with something like a pang of thought, he remembered that he had with his own hand burned his bridges behind him, and that there was no way out for him except the straight way which led over the body of Daniel Smith. His existence in Tappahannock was now finished; his victory had ended in flight; and there was nothing ahead of him except the new beginning and the old ending. A fresh start and then what? And afterward the few years of quiet again and at the end the expected, the inevitable recurrence of the disgrace which he had begun to recognise as some impersonal natural law that followed upon his footsteps. As the future gradually unrolled itself in his imagination, he felt that his heart sickened in the clutch of the terror that had sprung upon him. Was there to be no end anywhere? Could no place, no name even afford him a permanent shelter? Looking ahead now he saw himself as an old man wandering from refuge to refuge, pursued always by the resurrected corpse of his old life, which though it contained neither his spirit nor his will, still triumphed by the awful semblance it bore his outward body. Was he to be always alone? Was there no spot in his future where he could possess himself in reality of the freedom which was his in name? Without seeing, without hearing, he went almost deliriously where his road led him, for the terror in his thought had become a living presence before which his spirit rather than his body moved. He walked rapidly, yet it seemed to him that his feet were inert and lifeless weights which were dragged forward by the invincible torrent of his will. In the swiftness of his flight, he felt that he was a conscious soul chained to a body that was a corpse. When he came at last to the place where the two roads crossed before the ruined gate, he stopped short, while the tumult died gradually in his brain, and the agony through which he had just passed appeared as a frenzy to his saner judgment. Looking up a moment later as he was about to enter the avenue, he saw that Emily Brooke was walking toward him under the heavy shadow of the cedars. In the first movement of her surprise the mask which she had always worn in his presence dropped from her face, and as she stepped from the gloom into the sunlight, he felt that the sweetness of her look bent over him like protecting wings. For a single instant, as her eyes gazed wide open into his, he saw reflected in them the visions from which his soul had shrunk back formerly abashed. Nothing had changed in her since yesterday; she was outwardly the same brave and simple woman, with her radiant smile, her blown hair, and her roughened hands. Yet because of that revealing look she appeared no longer human in his eyes, but something almost unearthly bright and distant, like the sunshine he had followed so often through the bars of his prison cell. "You are suffering," she said, when he would have passed on, and he felt that she had divined without words all that he could not utter. "Don't pity me," he answered, smiling at her question, because to smile had become for him the easier part of habit, "I'm not above liking pity, but it isn't exactly what I need. And besides, I told you once, you know, that whatever happened to me would always be the outcome of my own failure." "Yes, I remember you told me so--but does that make it any easier to bear?" "Easier to bear?--no, but I don't think the chief end of things is to be easy, do you?" She shook her head. "But isn't our chief end just to make them easier for others?" she asked. The pity in her face was like an illumination, and her features were enkindled with a beauty he had never found in them before. It was the elemental motherhood in her nature that he had touched; and he felt as he watched her that this ecstasy of tenderness swelled in her bosom and overflowed her lips. Confession to her would have been for him the supreme luxury of despair; but because his heart strained toward her, he drew back and turned his eyes to the road, which stretched solitary and dim beyond them. "Well, I suppose, I've got what I deserved," he said, "the price that a man pays for being a fool, he pays but once and that is his whole life long." "But it ought not to be so--it is not just," she answered. "Just?" he repeated, bitterly, "no, I dare say, it isn't--but the facts of life don't trouble themselves about justice, do they? Is it just, for instance, that you should slave your youth away on your brother's farm, while he sits and plays dominoes on the porch? Is it just that with the instinct for luxury in your blood you should be condemned to a poverty so terrible as this?" He reached out and touched the little red hand hanging at her side. "Is this just?" he questioned with an ironical smile. "There is some reason for it," she answered bravely, "I feel it though I cannot see it." "Some reason--yes, but that reason is not justice--not the little human justice that we can call by the name. It's something infinitely bigger than any idea that we have known." "I can trust," she said softly, "but I can't reason." "Don't reason--don't even attempt to--let God run his world. Do you think if we didn't believe in the meaning--in the purpose of it all that you and I could stand together here like this? It's because we believe that we can be happy even while we suffer." "Then you will be happy again--to-morrow?" "Surely. Perhaps to-night--who knows? I've had a shock. My brain is whirling and I can't see straight. In a little while it will be over and I shall steady down." "But I should like to help you now while it lasts," she said. "You are helping me--it's a mercy that you stand there and listen to my wild talk. Do you know I was telling myself as I came along the road just now that there wasn't a living soul to whom I should dare to say that I was in a quake of fear." "A quake of fear?" She looked at him with swimming eyes, and by that look he saw that she loved him. If he had stretched out his arms, he knew that the passion of her sorrow would have swept her to his breast; and he felt that every fibre of his starved soul and body cried out for the divine food that she offered. At the moment he did not stop to ask himself whether it was his flesh or his spirit that hungered after her, for his whole being had dissolved into the longing which drew him as with cords to her lips. All he understood at the instant was that in his terrible loneliness love had been offered him and he must refuse the gift. A thought passed like a drawn sword between them, and he saw in his imagination Lydia lowering her black veil at their last parting. "It's a kind of cowardliness, I suppose," he went on with his eyes on the ground, "but I was thinking that minute how greatly I needed help and how much--how very much--you had given me. If I ever learn really to live it will be because of you--because of your wonderful courage, your unfailing sweetness----" For the first time he saw in her face the consciousness of her own unfulfilment. "If you only knew how often I wonder if it is worth while," she answered. At this he made a sudden start forward and then checked himself. "The chief tragedy in my life," he said, "is that I knew you twenty years too late." Until his words were uttered he did not realise how much of a confession he had put into them; and with the discovery he watched her face bloom softly like a flower that opens its closed petals. "If I could have helped you then, why cannot I help you now?" she asked, while the innocence in her look humbled him more than a divine fury would have done. The larger his ideal of her became, the keener grew his sense of failure--of bondage to that dead past from which he could never release his living body. As he looked at her now he realised that the supreme thing he had missed in life was the control of the power which lies in simple goodness; and the purity of Lydia appeared to him as a shining blank--an unwritten surface beside the passionate humanity in the heart of the girl before him. "You will hear things from others which I can't tell you and then you will understand," he said. "I shall hear nothing that will make me cease to believe in you," she answered. "You will hear that I have done wrong in my life and you will understand that if I have suffered it has been by my own fault." She met his gaze without wavering. "I shall still believe in you," she responded. Her eyes were on his face and she saw that the wan light of the afterglow revealed the angularities of his brow and chin and filled in with shadows the deeper hollows in his temples. The smile on his lips was almost ironical as he answered. "Those from whom I might have expected loyalty, fell away from me--my father, my wife, my children----" "To believe against belief is a woman's virtue," she responded, "but at least it is a virtue." "You mean that you would have been my friend through everything?" he asked quickly, half blinded by the ideal which seemed to flash so closely to his eyelids. There was scorn in her voice as she answered: "If I had been your friend once--yes, a thousand times." Before his inward vision there rose the conception of a love that would have pardoned, blessed and purified. Bending his head he kissed her little cold hand once and let it fall. Then without looking again into her face, he entered the avenue and went on alone. CHAPTER X BETWEEN MAN AND MAN When he entered Tappahannock the following morning, he saw with surprise that the red flag was still flying above the street. As he looked into the face of the first man he met, he felt a sensation of relief, almost of gratitude because he received merely the usual morning greeting; and the instant afterward he flinched and hesitated before replying to the friendly nod of the harness-maker, stretching himself under the hanging bridles in the door of the little shop. Entering the warehouse he glanced nervously down the deserted building, and when a moment later he opened the door into Baxter's office, he grew hot at the familiar sight of the local newspaper in his employer's hands. The years had divided suddenly and he saw again the crowd in Fifth Avenue as he walked home on the morning of his arrest. He smelt the smoke of the great city; he heard the sharp street cries around him; and he pushed aside the fading violets offered him by the crippled flower seller at the corner. He even remembered, without effort, the particular bit of scandal retailed to him over a cigar by the club wit who had joined him. All his sensations to-day were what they had been then, only now his consciousness was less acute, as if the edge of his perceptions had been blunted by the force of the former blow. "Howdy, Smith, is that you?" remarked Baxter, crushing the top of the paper beneath the weight of his chin as he looked over it at Ordway. "Did you meet Banks as you came in? He was in here asking for you not two minutes ago." "Banks? No, I didn't see him. What did he want?" As he put the ordinary question the dull level of his voice surprised him. "Oh, he didn't tell me," returned Baxter, "but it was some love-lorn whining he had to do, I reckon. Now what I can't understand is how a man can be so narrow sighted as only to see one woman out of the whole bouncing sex of 'em. It would take more than a refusal--it would take a downright football to knock out my heart. Good Lord! in this world of fine an' middling fine women, the trouble ain't to get the one you want, but to keep on wanting the one you get. I've done my little share of observing in my time, and what I've learned from it is that the biggest trial a man can have is not to want another man's wife, but to _want_ to want his own." A knock at the door called Ordway out into the warehouse, where he yielded himself immediately to the persuasive voice of Banks. "Come back here a minute, will you, out of hearing? I tried to get to you last night and couldn't." "Has anything gone wrong?" inquired Ordway, following the other to a safe distance from Baxter's office. At first he had hardly had courage to lift his eyes to Banks' face, but reassured by the quiet opening of the conversation, he stood now with his sad gaze fixed on the beaming freckled features of the melancholy lover. "I only wanted to tell you that she didn't go," whispered Banks, rolling his prominent eyes into the dusky recesses of the warehouse, "she's ill in bed to-day, and Brown left town on the eight-forty-five this morning." "So he's gone for good!" exclaimed Ordway, and drew a long breath as if he had been released from an emotional tension which had suspended, while it lasted, the ordinary movement of life. Since he had prepared himself for the worst was it possible that his terror of yesterday would scatter to-day like the delusions of an unsettled brain? Had Wherry held back in mercy or had Milly Trend? Even if he were spared now must he still live on here unaware how widely--or how pitifully--his secret was known? Would this ceaseless dread of discovery prove again, as it had proved in the past, more terrible even than the discovery itself? Would he be able to look fearlessly at Milly Trend again?--at Baxter? at Banks? at Emily? "Well, I've got to thank you for it, Smith?" said Banks. "How you stopped it, I don't know for the life of me, but stop it you did." The cheerful selfishness in such rejoicing struck Ordway even in the midst of his own bitter musing. Though Banks adored Milly, soul and body, he was frankly jubilant over the tragic ending of her short romance. "I hope there's little danger of its beginning anew," Ordway remarked presently, with less sympathy than he would have shown his friend twelve hours before. "I suppose you wouldn't like to tell me what you said to her?" inquired Banks, his customary awe of his companion swept away in the momentary swing of his elation. "No, I shouldn't like to tell you," returned Ordway quietly. "Then it's all right, of course, and I'll be off to drape the town hall in bunting for to-morrow night. We're going to make the biggest political display for you that Tappahannock has ever seen." At the instant Ordway was hardly conscious of the immensity of his relief, but some hours later, after the early closing of the warehouse, when he walked slowly back along the road to Cedar Hill, it seemed to him that his life had settled again into its quiet monotonous spaces. The peaceful fields on either side, with their short crop of live-ever-lasting, in which a few lonely sheep were browsing, appeared to him now as a part of the inward breadth and calm of the years that he had spent in Tappahannock. In the loneliness of the road he could tell himself that the fear of Gus Wherry was gone for a time at least, yet the next day upon going into town he was aware of the same nervous shrinking from the people he passed, from the planters hanging about the warehouse, from Baxter buried behind his local newspaper. "They've got a piece as long as your arm about you in the Tappahannock _Herald_, Smith," cried Baxter, chuckling; and Ordway felt himself redden painfully with apprehension. Not until the evening, when he came out upon the platform under the floating buntings in the town hall, did he regain entirely the self-possession which he had lost in the presence of Milly Trend. In its white and red decorations, with the extravagant glare of its gas-jets, the hall had assumed almost a festive appearance; and as Ordway glanced at the crowded benches and doorways, he forgot the trivial political purpose he was to serve, in the more human relation in which he stood to the men who had gathered to hear him speak. These men were his friends, and if they believed in him he felt a triumphant conviction that they had seen their belief justified day by day, hour by hour, since he had come among them. In the crowd of faces before him, he recognised, here and there, workingmen whom he had helped--operatives in Jasper Trend's cotton mills, or in the smaller factories which combined with the larger to create the political situation in Tappahannock. Closer at hand he saw the shining red face of Major Leary; the affectionate freckled face of Banks; the massive benevolent face of Baxter. As he looked at them an emotion which was almost one of love stirred in his breast, and he felt the words he had prepared dissolve and fade from his memory to reunite in an appeal of which he had not thought until this minute. There was something, he knew now, for him to say to-night--something so infinitely large that he could utter it only because it rose like love or sorrow to his lips. Of all the solemn moments when he had stood before these men, with his open Bible, in the green field or in the little grove of pines, there was none so solemn, he felt, as the approaching instant in which he would speak to them no longer as a man to children, but as a man to men. On the stage before him Baxter was addressing the house, his soft, persuasive voice mingling with a sympathetic murmur from the floor. The applause which had broken out at Ordway's entrance had not yet died away, and with each mention of his name, with each allusion to his services to Tappahannock, it burst forth again, enthusiastic, irrepressible, overwhelming. Never before, it seemed to him, sitting there on the platform with his roughened hands crossed on his knees, had he felt himself to be so intimately a part of the community in which he lived. Never before--not even when he had started this man in life, had bought off that one's mortgage or had helped another to struggle free of drink, had he come quite so near to the pathetic individual lives that compose the mass. They loved him, they believed in him, and they were justified! At the moment it seemed to him nothing--less than nothing--that they should make him Mayor of Tappahannock. In this one instant of understanding they had given him more than any office--than any honour. While he sat there outwardly so still, so confident of his success, it seemed to him that in the exhilaration of the hour he was possessed of a new and singularly penetrating insight into life. Not only did he see further and deeper than he had ever seen before, but he looked beyond the beginning of things into the causes and beyond the ending of them into the results. He saw himself and why he was himself as clearly as he saw his sin and why he had sinned. Out of their obscurity his father and his mother returned to him, and as he met the bitter ironical smile of the one and the curved black brows and red, half open mouth of the other, he knew himself to be equally the child of each, for he understood at last why he was a mixture of strength and weakness, of gaiety and sadness, of bitterness and compassion. His short, troubled childhood rushed through his thoughts, and with that swiftness of memory which comes so often in tragic moments, he lived over again--not separately and in successive instants--but fully, vitally, and in all the freshness of experience, the three events which he saw now, in looking back, as the milestones upon his road. Again he saw his mother as she lay in her coffin, with her curved black brows and half open mouth frozen into a joyous look, and in that single fleeting instant he passed through his meeting with the convict at the wayside station, and through the long suspended minutes when he had waited in the Stock Exchange for the rise in the market which did not come. And these things appeared to him, not as detached and obscure remnants of his past, but clear and delicate and vivid as if they were projected in living colours against the illumination of his mind. They were there not to bewilder, but to make plain; not to accuse, but to vindicate. "Everything is clear to me now and I see it all," he thought, "and if I can only keep this penetration of vision nothing will be harder to-morrow than it is to-night." In his whole life there was not an incident too small for him to remember it and to feel that it was significant of all the rest; and he knew that if he could have seen from the beginning as clearly as he saw to-night, his past would not have been merely different, it would have been entirely another than his own. Baxter had stopped, and turning with an embarrassed upheaval of his whole body, he spoke to Ordway, who rose at his words and came slowly forward to the centre of the stage. A hoarse murmur, followed by a tumult of shouts, greeted him, while he stood for a moment looking silently among those upturned faces for the faces of the men to whom he must speak. "That one will listen because I nursed him back to life, and that one because I brought him out of ruin--and that one and that one--" He knew them each by name, and as his gaze travelled from man to man he felt that he was seeking a refuge from some impending evil in the shelter of the good deeds that he had done. Though he held a paper in his hand, he did not look at it, for he had found his words in that instant of illumination when, seated upon the stage, he had seen the meaning of his whole life made plain. The present event and the issue of it no longer concerned him; he had ceased to fear, even to shrink from the punishment that was yet to come. In the completeness with which he yielded himself to the moment, he felt that he was possessed of the calm, almost of the power of necessity; and he experienced suddenly the sensation of being lifted and swept forward on one of the high waves of life. He spoke rapidly, without effort, almost without consciousness of the words he uttered, until it seemed to him presently that it was the torrent of his speech which carried him outward and upward with that strange sense of lightness, of security. And this lightness, this security belonged not to him, but to some outside current of being. * * * * * His speech was over, and he had spoken to these factory workers as no man had spoken before him in Tappahannock. With his last word the silence had held tight and strained for a minute, and then the grateful faces pressed round him and the ringing cheers passed through the open windows out into the street. His body was still trembling, but as he stood there with his sparkling blue eyes on the house, he looked gay and boyish. He had made his mark, he had spoken his best speech, and he had touched not merely the factory toilers in Tappahannock, but that common pulse of feeling in which all humanity is made one. Then the next instant, while he still waited, he was aware of a new movement upon the platform behind him, and a man came forward and stopped short under the gas jet, which threw a flickering yellow light upon his face. Though he had seen him but once, he recognized him instantly as the short, long-nosed, irascible manager of the cotton mills, and with the first glance into his face he had heard already the unspoken question and the reply. "May I ask you, Mr. Smith," began the little man, suddenly, "if you can prove your right to vote or to hold office in Virginia?" Ordway's gaze passed beyond him to rest upon Baxter and Major Leary, who sat close together, genial, elated, rather thirsty. At the moment he felt sorry for Baxter--not for himself. "No," he answered with a smile which threw a humorous light upon the question, "I cannot--can you prove yours?" The little man cleared his throat with a sniffling sound, and when he spoke again it was in a high nasal voice, as if he had become suddenly very excited or very angry. "Is your name Daniel Smith?" he asked, with a short laugh. The question was out at last and the silence in which Ordway stood was like the suspension between thought and thought. All at once he found himself wondering why he had lived in hourly terror of this instant, for now that it was upon him, he saw that it was no more tragic, no less commonplace, than the most ordinary instant of his life. As in the past his courage had revived in him with the first need of decisive action, so he felt it revive now, and lifting his head, he looked straight into the angry, little eyes of the man who waited, under the yellow gaslight, on the platform before him. "My name," he answered, still smiling, "is Daniel Ordway." There was no confusion in his mind, no anxiety, no resentment. Instead the wonderful brightness of a moment ago still shone in his thoughts, and while he appeared to rest his sparkling gaze on the face of his questioner, he was seeing, in reality, the road by which he had come to Tappahannock, and at the beginning of the road the prison, and beyond the prison the whole of his past life. "Did you serve a term in prison before you came here?" "Yes." "Were you tried and convicted in New York?" "Yes." "Were you guilty?" Looking over the head of the little man, Ordway's gaze travelled slowly across the upturned faces upon the floor of the house. Hardly a man passed under his look whom he had not assisted once at least in the hour of his need. "I saved that one from drink," he thought almost joyfully, "that one from beggary--I stood side by side with that other in the hour of his shame----" "Were you guilty?" repeated the high nasal voice in his ear. His gaze came quickly back, and as it passed over the head of Baxter, he was conscious again of a throb of pity. "Yes," he answered for the last time. Then, while the silence lasted, he turned from the platform and went out of the hall into the night. CHAPTER XI BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN He walked rapidly to the end of the street, and then slackened his pace almost unconsciously as he turned into the country road. The night had closed in a thick black curtain over the landscape, and the windows of the Negroes' cabins burned like little still red flames along the horizon. Straight ahead the road was visible as a pale, curving streak across the darkness. A farmer, carrying a lantern, came down the path leading from the fields, and hearing Ordway's footsteps in the road, flashed the light suddenly into his face. Upon recognition there followed a cheerful "good-night!" and the offer of the use of the lantern to Cedar Hill. "It's a black night and you'll likely have trouble in keeping straight. I've been to look after a sick cow, but I can feel my way up to the house in two minutes." "Thank you," returned Ordway, smiling as the light shone full in his face, "but my feet are accustomed to the road." He passed on, while the farmer turned at the gate by the roadside, to shout cheerfully after him: "Well, good-night--Mayor!" The gate closed quickly, and the ray of the lantern darted like a pale yellow moth across the grass. As Ordway went on it seemed to him that the darkness became tangible, enveloping--that he had to fight his way through it presently as through water. The little red flames danced along the horizon until he wondered if they were burning only in his imagination. He felt tired and dazed as if his body had been beaten into insensibility, but the hour through which he had just passed appeared to have left merely a fading impression upon his brain. Not only had he ceased to care, he had ceased to think of it. When he tried now to recall the manager of the cotton mills, it was to remember, with aversion, his angry little eyes, his high nasal voice, and the wart upon the end of his long nose. At the instant these physical details were the only associations which the man's name presented to his thoughts. The rest was something so insignificant that it had escaped his memory. He felt in a vague way that he was sorry for Baxter, yet this very feeling of sympathy bored and annoyed him. It was plainly ridiculous to be sorry for a person as rich, as fat, as well fed as his employer. Wherever he looked the little red flames flickered and waved in the fields, and when he lifted his eyes to the dark sky, he saw them come and go in short, scintillant flashes, like fire struck from an anvil. They were in his brain, he supposed, after all, and so was this tangible darkness, and so, too, was this indescribable delicacy and lightness with which he moved. Everything was in his brain, even his ridiculous pity for Baxter and the angry-eyed little manager with the wart on his long nose. He could see these things distinctly, though he had forgotten everything that had been so clear to him while he stood on the stage of the town hall. His past life and the prison and even the illumination in which he had remembered them so vividly were obscured now as if they, too, had been received into the tangible darkness. From the road behind him the sound of footsteps reached him suddenly, and he quickened his pace with an impulse, rather than a determination of flight. But the faster he walked the faster came the even beat of the footsteps, now rising, now falling with a rhythmic regularity in the dust of the road. Once he glanced back, but he could see nothing because of the encompassing blackness, and in the instant of his delay it seemed to him that the pursuit gained steadily upon him, still moving with the regular muffled beat of the footsteps in the thick dust. A horror of recognition had come over him, and as he walked on breathlessly, now almost running, it occurred to him, like an inspiration, that he might drop aside into the fields and so let his pursuer pass on ahead. The next instant he realised that the darkness could not conceal the abrupt pause of his flight--that as those approaching footsteps fell on his ears, so must the sound of his fall on the ears of the man behind him. Then a voice called his name, and he stopped short, and stood, trembling from head to foot, by the side of the road. "Smith!" cried the voice, "if it's you, Smith, for God's sake stop a minute!" "Yes, it's I," he answered, waiting, and a moment afterward the hand of Banks reached out of the night and clasped his arm. "Hold on," said Banks, breathing hard, "I'm all blown." His laboured breath came with a struggling violence that died gradually away, but while it lasted the strain of the meeting, the awkwardness of the emotional crisis, seemed suddenly put off--suspended. Now in the silence the tension became so great that, drawing slightly away from the detaining hold, Ordway was about to resume his walk. At his first movement, however, Banks clung the more firmly to his arm. "Oh, damn it, Smith!" he burst out, and with the exclamation Ordway felt that the touch of flesh and blood had reached to the terrible loneliness in which he stood. In a single oath Banks had uttered the unutterable spirit of prayer. "You followed me?" asked Ordway quietly, while the illusions of the flight, the physical delicacy and lightness, the tangible darkness, the little red flames in the fields, departed from him. With the first hand that was laid on his own, his nature swung back into balance, and he felt that he possessed at the moment a sanity that was almost sublime. "As soon as I could get out I came. There was such a crush," said Banks, "I thought I'd catch up with you at once, but it was so black I couldn't see my hand before me. In a little while I heard footsteps, so I kept straight on." "I wish you hadn't, Banks." "But I had to." His usually cheerful voice sounded hoarse and throaty. "I ain't much of a chap at words, Smith, you know that, but I want just to say that you're the best friend I ever had, and I haven't forgot it--I haven't forgot it," he repeated, and blew his nose. "Nothing that that darn fool of a manager said to-night can come between you and me," he went on laboriously after a minute. "If you ever want my help, by thunder, I'll go to hell and back again for you without a word." Stretching out his free hand Ordway laid it upon his friend's shoulder. "You're a first-rate chap, Banks," he said cheerfully, at which a loud sob burst from Banks, who sought to disguise it the instant afterward in a violent cough. "You're a first-rate chap," repeated Ordway gently, "and I'm glad, in spite of what I said, that you came after me just now. I'm going away to-morrow, you know, and it's probable that I shan't see you again." "But won't you stay on in Tappahannock? In two weeks all this will blow over and things will be just what they were before." Ordway shook his head, a movement which Banks felt, though he did not see it. "No, I'll go away, it's best," he answered, and though his voice had dropped to a dull level there was still a cheerful sound to it, "I'll go away and begin again in a new place." "Then I'll go, too," said Banks. "What! and leave Milly? No, you won't come. Banks, you'll stay here." "But I'll see you sometimes, shan't I?" "Perhaps?--that's likely, isn't it?" "Yes, that's likely," repeated Banks, and fell silent from sheer weight of sorrow. "At least you'll let me go with you to the station?" he said at last, after a long pause in which he had been visited by one of those acute flashes of sympathy which are to the heart what intuition is to the intellect. "Why, of course," responded Ordway, more touched by the simple request than he had been even by the greater loyalty. "You may do that, Banks, and I'll thank you for it. And now go back to Tappahannock," he added, "I must take the midday train and there are a few preparations I've still to make." "But where will you go?" demanded Banks, swinging round again after he had turned from him. "Where?" repeated Ordway blankly, and he added indifferently, "I hadn't thought." "The midday train goes west," said Banks. "Then, I'll go west. It doesn't matter." Banks had already started off, when turning back suddenly, he caught Ordway's hand and wrung it in a grip that hurt. Then without speaking again, he hurried breathlessly in the direction from which he had come. A few steps beyond the cross-roads Ordway saw through the heavy foliage the light in the dining-room at Cedar Hill. Then as he entered the avenue, he lost sight of it again, until he had rounded the curve that swept up to the front porch. At his knock Emily opened the door, with a lamp held in her hand, and he saw her face, surrounded by dim waves of hair, shining pale and transparent in the glimmering circle of light. As he followed her into the dining-room, he realised that after the family had gone upstairs to bed, she had sat at her sewing under the lamp and waited for his knock. At the knowledge a sense of comfort, of homeliness came over him, and he felt all at once that his misery was not so great as he had believed it to be a moment ago. "May I get you something?" she asked, placing the lamp upon the table and lowering the wick that the flame might not shine on his pallid and haggard face. He shook his head; then as she turned from him toward the hearth, he followed her and stood looking down at the smouldering remains of a wood fire. Her work-basket and a pile of white ruffles which she had been hemming were on the table, but moved by a feeling of their utter triviality in the midst of a tragedy she vaguely understood, she swept them hurriedly into a chair, and came over to lay her hand upon his arm. "What can I do? Oh, what can I do?" she asked. Taking her hand from his sleeve, he held it for an instant in his grasp, as if the pressure of her throbbing palm against his revived some living current under the outer deadness that enveloped him. "I am going away from Tappahannock to-morrow, Emily," he said. "To-morrow?" she repeated, and laid her free hand upon his shoulder with a soothing, motherly gesture--a gesture which changed their spiritual relations to those of a woman and a child. "A man asked me three questions to-night," he went on quietly, yet in a voice which seemed to feel a pang in every word it uttered. "He asked me if my name was Daniel Smith, and I answered--no." As he hesitated, she lifted her face and smiled at him, with a smile which he knew to be the one expression of love, of comprehension, that she could offer. It was a smile which a mother might have bent upon a child that was about to pass under the surgeon's knife, and it differed from tears only in that it offered courage and not weakness. "He asked me if I had been in prison before I came to Tappahannock--and I answered--yes." His voice broke, rather than ceased, and lifting his gaze from her hands he looked straight into her wide-open eyes. The smile which she had turned to him a moment before was still on her lips, frozen there in the cold pallor of her face. Her eyes were the only things about her which seemed alive, and they appeared to him now not as eyes but as thoughts made visible. Bending her head quickly she kissed the hand which enclosed her own. "I still believe," she said, and looked into his face. "But it is true," he replied slowly. "But it is not the whole truth," she answered, "and for that reason it is half a lie." "Yes, it is not the whole truth," he repeated, in his effort to catch something of her bright courage. "Why should they judge you by that and by nothing else?" she demanded with passion. "If that was true, is not your life in Tappahannock true also?" "To you--to you," he answered, "but to-morrow everything will be forgotten about me except the fact that because I had been in prison, I have lived a lie." "You are wrong--oh, believe me, you are wrong," she said softly, while her tears broke forth and streamed down her white face. "No," he returned patiently, as if weighing her words in his thoughts, "I am right, and my life here is wasted now from the day I came. All that I do from this moment will be useless. I must go away." "But where?" she questioned passionately, as Banks had questioned before her. "Where?" he echoed, "I don't know--anywhere. The midday train goes west." "And what will you do in the new place?" she asked through her tears. He shook his head as if the question hardly concerned him. "I shall begin again," he answered indifferently at last. She was turning hopelessly from him, when her eyes fell upon a slip of yellow paper which Beverly had placed under a vase on the mantel, and drawing it out, she glanced at the address before giving it into Ordway's hands. "This must have come for you in the afternoon," she said, "I did not see it." Taking the telegram from her, he opened it slowly, and read the words twice over. "Your father died last night. Will you come home? "RICHARD ORDWAY." BOOK THIRD THE LARGER PRISON CHAPTER I THE RETURN TO LIFE As the train rounded the long curve, Ordway leaned from the window and saw spread before him the smiling battlefields that encircled Botetourt. From the shadow and sunlight of the distance a wind blew in his face, and he felt suddenly younger, fresher, as if the burden of the years had been lifted from him. The Botetourt to which he was returning was the place of his happiest memories; and closing his eyes to the landscape, he saw Lydia standing under the sparrows that flew out from the ivied walls of the old church. He met her pensive gaze; he watched her faint smile under the long black feather in her hat. "His death was unexpected," said a strange voice in his ear, "but for the past five years I've seen that he was a failing man." The next instant his thoughts had scattered like startled birds, and without turning his head, he sat straining his ears to follow the conversation that went on, above the roar of the train, in the seat behind him. "Had a son, didn't he?" inquired the man who had not spoken. "What's become of him, I'd like to know? I mean the chap who went to smash somewhere in the North." "Oh, he misappropriated trust funds and got found out and sent to prison. When he came out, he went West, I heard, and struck a gold mine, but, all the same, he left his wife and children for the old man to look after. Ever seen his wife? Well, she's a downright saint, if there ever lived one." "And yet he went wrong, the more's the pity." "It's a funny thing," commented the first speaker, who was evidently of a philosophic bent, "but I've often noticed that a good wife is apt to make a bad husband. It looks somehow as if male human nature, like the Irish members, is obliged to sit on the Opposition bench. The only example that ever counts with it, is an example that urges the other way." "Well, what about this particular instance? I hope at least that she has come into the old man's money?" "Nobody can tell, but it's generally believed that the two children will get the most of it. The son left a boy and a girl when he went to prison, you know." "Ah, that's rather a pity, isn't it?" "Well, I can't say--they've got good blood as well as bad, when it comes to that. My daughter went to school with the girl, and she was said to be, by long odds, the most popular member of her class. She graduated last spring, and people tell me that she has turned out to be the handsomest young woman in Botetourt." "Like the mother?" "No, dark and tall, with those snapping blue eyes of her grandmother's----" * * * * * So Alice was no longer the little girl in short white skirts, outstanding like a ballet dancer's! There was a pang for him in the thought, and he tried in vain to accustom himself to the knowledge that she would meet him to-night as a woman, not as a child. He remembered the morning when she had run out, as he passed up the staircase, to beg him to come in to listen to her music lesson; and with the sound of the stumbling scales in his ears, he felt again that terrible throbbing of his pulses and the dull weight of anguish which had escaped at last in an outburst of bitterness. With a jolting motion the train drew up into the little station, and following the crowd that pressed through the door of the car, he emerged presently into the noisy throng of Negro drivers gathered before the rusty vehicles which were waiting beside the narrow pavement. Pushing aside the gaily decorated whips which encircled him at his approach, he turned, after a moment's hesitation, into one of the heavily shaded streets, which seemed to his awakened memory to have remained unaltered since the afternoon upon which he had left the town almost twenty years ago. The same red and gold maples stirred gently above his head; the same silent, green-shuttered houses were withdrawn behind glossy clusters of microphylla rose-creepers. Even the same shafts of sunshine slanted across the roughly paved streets, which were strewn thickly with yellowed leaves. It was to Ordway as if a pleasant dream had descended upon the place, and had kept unchanged the particular golden stillness of that autumn afternoon when he had last seen it. All at once he realised that what Tappahannock needed was not progress, but age; and he saw for the first time that the mellowed charm of Botetourt was relieved against the splendour of an historic background. Not the distinction of the present, but the enchantment of the past, produced this quality of atmosphere into which the thought of Tappahannock entered like a vulgar discord. The dead, not the living, had built these walls, had paved these streets, had loved and fought and starved beneath these maples; and it was the memory of such solemn things that steeped the little town in its softening haze of sentiment. A thrill of pleasure, more intense than any he had known for months, shot through his heart, and the next instant he acknowledged with a sensation of shame that he was returning, not only to his people, but to his class. Was this all that experience, that humiliation, could do for one--that he should still find satisfaction in the refinements of habit, in the mere external pleasantness of life? As he passed the old church he saw that the sparrows still fluttered in and out of the ivy, which was full of twittering cries like a gigantic bird's nest, and he had suddenly a ghostly feeling as if he were a moving shadow under shadowy trees and unreal shafts of sunlight. A moment later he almost held his breath lest the dark old church and the dreamy little town should vanish before his eyes and leave him alone in the outer space of shadows. Coming presently under a row of poplars to the street in which stood his father's house--a square red brick building with white Doric columns to the portico--he saw with a shock of surprise that the funeral carriages were standing in a solemn train for many blocks. Until that moment it had not occurred to him that he might come in time to look on the dead face of the man who had not forgiven him while he was alive; and at first he shivered and shrank back as if hesitating to enter the door that had been so lately closed against him. An old Negro driver, who sat on the curbing, wiping the broad black band on his battered silk hat with a red bandanna handkerchief, turned to speak to him with mingled sympathy and curiosity. "Ef'n you don' hurry up, you'll miss de bes' er hit, marster," he remarked. "Dey's been gwine on a pow'ful long time, but I'se been a-lisenin' wid all my years en I ain' hyearn nairy a sh'ut come thoo' de do'. Lawd! Lawd! dey ain' mo'n like I mo'n, caze w'en dey buried my Salviny I set up sech a sh'uttin' dat I bu'st two er my spar ribs clean ter pieces." Still muttering to himself he fell to polishing his old top hat more vigorously, while Ordway quickened his steps with an effort, and entering the gate, ascended the brick walk to the white steps of the portico. A wide black streamer hung from the bell handle, so pushing open the door, which gave noiselessly before him, he entered softly into the heavy perfume of flowers. From the room on his right, which he remembered dimly as the formal drawing-room in the days of his earliest childhood, he heard a low voice speaking as if in prayer; and looking across the threshold, he saw a group of black robed persons kneeling in the faint light which fell through the chinks in the green shutters. The intense odour of lilies awoke in him a sharp anguish, which had no association in his thoughts with his father's death, and which he could not explain until the incidents of his mother's funeral crowded, one by one, into his memory. The scent of lilies was the scent of death in his nostrils, and he saw again the cool, high-ceiled room in the midst of which her coffin had stood, and through the open windows the wide green fields in which spring was just putting forth. That was nearly thirty years ago, yet the emotion he felt at this instant was less for his father who had died yesterday than for his mother whom he had lost while he was still a child. At his entrance no one had observed him, and while the low prayer went on, he stood with bowed head searching among the veiled figures about the coffin for the figure of his wife. Was that Lydia, he wondered, kneeling there in her mourning garments with her brow hidden in her clasped hands? And as he looked at her it seemed to him that she had never lifted the black veil which she had lowered over her face at their last parting. Though he was outwardly now among his own people, though the physical distance which divided him from his wife and children was barely a dozen steps, the loneliness which oppressed him was like the loneliness of the prison; and he understood that his real home was not here, but in Tappahannock--that his true kinship was with the labourers whose lives he had shared and whose bitter poverty he had lessened. In the presence of death he was conscious of the space, the luxury, the costly funeral wreaths that surrounded him; and these external refinements of living produced in him a sensation of shyness, as if he had no longer a rightful place in the class in which he had been born. Against his will he grew ashamed of his coarse clothes and his roughened hands; and with this burning sense of humiliation a wave of homesickness for Tappahannock swept over him--for the dusty little town, with its hot, close smells and for the blue tent of sky which was visible from his ivied window at Cedar Hill. Then he remembered, with a pang, that even from Tappahannock he had been cast out. For the second time since his release from prison, he felt cowed and beaten, like an animal that is driven to bay. The dead man in his coffin was more closely woven into his surroundings than was the living son who had returned to his inheritance. As the grave faces looked back at him at the end of the prayer, he realised that they belonged to branches, near or distant, of the Ordway connections. With the first glimpse of his figure in the doorway there came no movement of recognition; then he observed a slight start of surprise--or was it dismay? He knew that Lydia had seen him at last, though he did not look at her. It appeared to him suddenly that his return was an insult to her as well as to the dead man who lay there, helpless yet majestic, in the centre of the room. Flight seemed to him at the instant the only amendment in his power, and he had made an impulsive start back from the threshold, when the strained hush was broken by a word that left him trembling and white as from a blow. "Father!" cried a voice, in the first uncontrollable joy of recognition; and with an impetuous rush through the crowd that surrounded her, Alice threw herself into his arms. A mist swam before his eyes and he lost the encircling faces in a blur of tears; but as she clung to his breast and he held her close, he was conscious of a fierce joy that throbbed, like a physical pain, in his throat. The word which she had uttered had brought his soul up from the abyss as surely as if it were lifted by the hands of angels; and with each sobbing breath of happiness she drew, he felt that her nature was knit more firmly into his. The repulse he had received the moment before was forgotten, and while he held her drawn apart in the doorway, the silence of Lydia, and even the reproach of the dead man, had ceased to affect him. In that breathless, hysterical rush to his embrace Alice saved him to-day as Emily's outstretched hand had saved him three years before. "They did not tell me! Oh, why, did they not tell me?" cried the girl, lifting her head from his breast, and the funeral hush that shrouded the room could not keep back the ecstasy in her voice. Even when after the first awkward instant the others gathered around him, nervous, effusive, friendly, Alice still clung to his hands, kissing first one and then the other and then both together, with the exquisite joyous abandonment of a child. Lydia had kissed him, weeping softly under her long black veil, and hiding her pale, lovely face the moment afterwards in her clasped hands. Dick, his son, had touched his cheek with his fresh young mouth; Richard Ordway, his father's brother, had shaken him by the hand; and the others, one and all, kinsmen and kinswomen, had given him their embarrassed, yet kindly, welcome. But it was on Alice that his eyes rested, while he felt his whole being impelled toward her in a recovered rapture that was almost one of worship. In her dark beauty, with her splendid hair, her blue, flashing Ordway eyes, and her lips which were too red and too full for perfection, she appeared to him the one vital thing among the mourning figures in this house of death. Her delight still ran in little tremors through her limbs, and when a moment later, she slipped her hand through his arm, and followed Lydia and Richard Ordway down the steps, and into one of the waiting carriages, he felt that her bosom quivered with the emotion which the solemn presence of his father had forced back from her lips. CHAPTER II HIS OWN PLACE Some hours later when he sat alone in his room, he told himself that he could never forget the drive home from the cemetery in the closed carriage. Lydia had raised her veil slightly, as if in a desire for air, and as she sat with her head resting against the lowered blind, he could trace the delicate, pale lines of her mouth and chin, and a single wisp of her ash blond hair which lay heavily upon her forehead. Not once had she spoken, not once had she met his eyes of her own accord, and he had discovered that she leaned almost desperately upon the iron presence of Richard Ordway. Had his sin, indeed, crushed her until she had not power to lift her head? he asked passionately, with a sharper remorse than he had ever felt. "I am glad that you were able to come in time," Richard Ordway remarked in his cold, even voice; and after this the rattle of the wheels on the cobblestones in the street was the only sound which broke the death-like stillness in which they sat. No, he could never forget it, nor could he forget the bewildering effect of the sunshine when they opened the carriage door. Beside the curbing a few idle Negroes were left of the crowd that had gathered to watch the coffin borne through the gate, and the pavement was thick with dust, as if many hurrying feet had tramped by since the funeral had passed. As they entered the house the scent of lilies struck him afresh with all the agony of its associations. The shutters were still closed, the chairs were still arranged in their solemn circle, the streamer of crape, hurriedly untied from the bell handle, still lay where it had been thrown on the library table; and as he crossed the threshold, he trod upon some fading lilies which had fallen, unnoticed, from a funeral wreath. Then, in the dining-room, Richard Ordway poured out a glass of whiskey, and in the very instant when he was about to raise it to his lips, he put it hurriedly down and pushed the decanter aside with an embarrassed and furtive movement. "Do you feel the need of a cup of coffee, Daniel?" he asked in a pleasant, conciliatory tone, "or will you have only a glass of seltzer?" "I am not thirsty, thank you," Daniel responded shortly, and the next moment he asked Alice to show him the room in which he would stay. With laughing eagerness she led him up the great staircase to the chamber in which he had slept as a boy. "It's just next to Dick's," she said, "and mother's and mine are directly across the hall. At first we thought of putting you in the red guest-room, but that's only for visitors, so we knew you would be sure to like this better." "Yes, I'll like this better," he responded, and then as she would have moved away, he caught her, with a gesture of anguish, back to his arms. "You remember me, Alice, my child? you have not forgotten me?" She laughed merrily, biting her full red lips the moment afterward to check the sound. "Why, how funny of you! I was quite a big girl--don't you remember?--when you went away. It was so dull afterwards that I cried for days, and that was why I was so overjoyed when mamma told me you would come back. It was never dull when you lived at home with us, because you would always take me to the park or the circus whenever I grew tired of dolls. Nobody did that after you went away and I used to cry and kick sometimes thinking that they would tell you and bring you back." "And you remembered me chiefly because of the park and the circus?" he asked, smiling for joy, as he kissed her hand which lay on his sleeve. "Oh, I never forget anything, you know. Mamma even says that about me. I remember my first nurse and the baker's boy with red cheeks who used to bring me pink cakes when I was three years old. No, I never forget--I never forget," she repeated with vehemence. Animation had kindled her features into a beauty of colour which made her eyes bluer and brighter and softened the too intense contrast of her full, red lips. "All these years I've hoped that you would come back and that things would change," she said impulsively, her words tripping rapidly over one another. "Everything is so dreadfully grave and solemn here. Grandfather hated noise so that he would hardly let me laugh if he was in the house. Then mamma's health is wrecked, and she lies always on the sofa, and never goes out except for a drive sometimes when it is fair." "Mamma's health is wrecked?" he repeated inquiringly, as she paused. "Oh, that's what everybody says about her--her health is wrecked. And Uncle Richard is hardly any better, for he has a wife whose health is wrecked also. And Dick--he isn't sick, but he might as well be, he is so dull and plodding and over nice----" "And you Alice?" "I? Oh, I'm not dull, but I'm unhappy--awfully--you'll find that out. I like fun and pretty clothes and new people and strange places. I want to marry and have a home of my own and a lot of rings like mamma's, and a carriage with two men on the box, and to go to Europe to buy things whenever I please. That's the way Molly Burridge does and she was only two classes ahead of me. How rough your hands are, papa, and what a funny kind of shirt you have on. Do people dress like that where you came from? Well, I don't like it, so you'll have to change." She had gone out at last, forgetting to walk properly in her mourning garments, tripping into a run on the threshold, and then checking herself with a prim, mocking look over her shoulder. Not until the door had closed with a slam behind her black skirt, did Ordway's gaze turn from following her and fix itself on the long mirror between the windows, in which he could see, as Alice had seen the moment before, his roughened hands, his carelessly trimmed hair and his common clothes. He was dressed as the labourers dressed on Sundays in Tappahannock; though, he remembered now, that in that crude little town he had been conspicuous for the neatness, almost the jauntiness, of his attire. As he laid out presently on the bed his few poor belongings, he told himself, with determination, that for Alice's sake even this must be changed. He was no longer of the class of Baxter, of Banks, of Mrs. Twine. All that was over, and he must return now into the world in which his wife and his children had kept a place. To do Alice honour--at least not to do her further shame--would become from this day, he realised, the controlling motive of his life. Then, as he looked down at the coarse, unshapely garments upon the delicate counterpane, he knew that Daniel Smith and Daniel Ordway were now parted forever. He was still holding one of the rough blue shirts in his hand, when a servant entered to inquire if there was anything that he might need. The man, a bright young mulatto, was not one of the old family slaves; and while he waited, alert and intelligent, upon the threshold, Ordway was seized by a nervous feeling that he was regarded with curiosity and suspicion by the black rolling eyes. "Where is uncle Boaz? He used to wait upon me," he asked. "He's daid, suh. He drapped down daid right on de do' step." "And Aunt Mirandy?" "She's daid, too, en' I'se her chile." "Oh, you are, are you?" said Ordway, and he had again the sensation that he was watched through inquisitive eyes. "That is all now," he added presently, "you may go," and it was with a long breath of relief that he saw the door close after the figure of Aunt Mirandy's son. When a little later he dressed himself and went out into the hall, he found, to his annoyance, that he walked with a cautious and timid step like that of a labourer who has stumbled by accident into surroundings of luxury. As he descended the wide curving staircase, with his hand on the mahogany balustrade, the sound of his footsteps seemed to reverberate disagreeably through the awful funereal silence in which he moved. If he could only hear Alice's laugh, Dick's whistle, or even the garrulous flow of the Negro voices that he had listened to in his childhood. With a pang he recalled that Uncle Boaz was dead, and his heart swelled as he remembered how often he had passed up and down this same staircase on the old servant's shoulder. At that age he had felt no awe of the shining emptiness and the oppressive silence. Then he had believed himself to be master of all at which he looked; now he was conscious of that complete detachment from his surroundings which produces almost a sense of the actual separation of soul and body. Reaching the hall below, he found that some hurried attempt had been made to banish or to conceal the remaining signs of the funeral. The doors and windows were open, the shreds of crape had disappeared from the carpet, and the fading lilies had been swept out upon the graveled walk in the yard. Upon entering the library, which invited him by its rows of calf-bound books, he discovered that Richard Ordway was patiently awaiting him in the large red leather chair which had once been the favourite seat of his father. "Before I go home, I think it better to have a little talk with you, Daniel," began the old man, as he motioned to a sofa on the opposite side of the Turkish rug before the open grate. "It has been a peculiar satisfaction to me to feel that I was able to bring you back in time for the service." "I came," replied Daniel slowly, "as soon as I received your telegram." He hesitated an instant and then went on in the same quiet tone in which the other had spoken, "Do you think, though, that he would have wished me to come at all?" After folding the newspaper which he had held in his hand, Richard laid it, with a courteous gesture upon the table beside him. As he sat there with his long limbs outstretched and relaxed, and his handsome, severe profile resting against the leather back of his chair, the younger man was impressed, as if for the first time, by the curious mixture of strength and refinement in his features. He was not only a cleverer man than his brother had been, he was gentler, smoother, more distinguished on every side. In spite of his reserve, it was evident that he had wished to be kind--that he wished it still; yet this kindness was so removed from the ordinary impulse of humanity that it appeared to his nephew to be in a way as detached and impersonal as an abstract virtue. The very lines of his face were drawn with the precision, the finality, of a geometrical figure. To imagine that they could melt into tenderness was as impossible as to conceive of their finally crumbling into dust. "He would have wished it--he did wish it," he said, after a minute. "I talked with him only a few hours before his death, and he told me then that it was necessary to send for you--that he felt that he had neglected his duty in not bringing you home immediately after your release. He saw at last that it would have been far better to have acted as I strongly advised at the time." "It was his desire, then, that I should return?" asked Daniel, while a stinging moisture rose to his eyes at the thought that he had not looked once upon the face of the dead man. "I wish I had known." A slight surprise showed in the other's gesture of response, and he glanced hastily away as he might have done had he chanced to surprise his nephew while he was still without his boots or his shirt. "I think he realised before he died that the individual has no right to place his personal pride above the family tie," he resumed quietly, ignoring the indecency of emotion as he would have ignored, probably, the unclothed body. "I had said much the same thing to him eight years ago, when I told him that he would realise before his death that he was not morally free to act as he had done with regard to you. As a matter of fact," he observed in his trained, legal voice, "the family is, after all, the social unit, and each member is as closely related as the eye to the ear or the right arm to the left. It is illogical to speak of denying one's flesh and blood, for it can't be done." So this was why they had received him. He turned his head away, and his gaze rested upon the boughs of the great golden poplar beyond the window. "It is understood, then," he asked "that I am to come back--back to this house to live?" When he had finished, but not until then, Richard Ordway looked at him again with his dry, conventional kindness. "If you are free," he began, altering the word immediately lest it should suggest painful associations to his companion's mind, "I mean if you have no other binding engagements, no decided plans for the future." "No, I have made no other plans. I was working as a bookkeeper in a tobacco warehouse in Tappahannock." "As a bookkeeper?" repeated Richard, as he glanced down inquiringly at the other's hands. "Oh, I worked sometimes out of doors, but the position I held was that of confidential clerk." The old man nodded amiably, accepting the explanation with a readiness for which the other was not prepared. "I was about to offer you some legal work in my office," he remarked. "Dry and musty stuff, I fear it is, but it's better--isn't it?--for a man to have some kind of occupation----" Though the words were uttered pleasantly enough, it seemed to the younger man that the concluding and significant phrase was left unspoken. "Some kind of occupation to keep you out of temptation" was what Richard had meant to say--what he had withheld, from consideration, if not from humanity. While the horror of the whole situation closed over Daniel like a mental darkness, he remembered the sensitive shrinking of Lydia on the drive home, the prying, inquisitive eyes of the mulatto servant, the furtive withdrawal of the whiskey by the man who sat opposite to him. With all its attending humiliation and despair, there rushed upon him the knowledge that by the people of his own household he was regarded still as a creature to be restrained and protected at every instant. Though outwardly they had received him, instinctively they had repulsed him. The thing which stood between them and himself was neither of their making nor of his. It belonged to their very nature and was woven in with their inner fibre. It was a creation, not of the individual, but of the race, and the law by which it existed was rooted deep in the racial structure. Tradition, inheritance, instinct--these were the barriers through which he had broken and which had closed like the impenetrable sea-gates behind him. Though he were to live on day by day as a saint among them, they could never forget: though he were to shed his heart's blood for them, they would never believe. To convince them of his sincerity was more hopeless, he understood, than to reanimate their affection. In their very forgiveness they had not ceased to condemn him, and in the shelter which they offered him there would be always a hidden restraint. With the thought it seemed to him that he was stifling in the closeness of the atmosphere, that he must break away again, that he must find air and freedom, though it cost him all else besides. The possibility of his own weakness seemed created in him by their acceptance of it; and he felt suddenly a terror lest the knowledge of their suspicion should drive him to justify it by his future in Botetourt. "Yes, it is better for me to work," he said aloud. "I hope that I shall be able to make myself of some small use in your office." "There's no doubt of that, I'm sure," responded Richard, in his friendliest tone. "It is taken for granted, then, that I shall live on here with my wife and children?" "We have decided that it is best. But as for your wife, you must remember that she is very much of an invalid. Do not forget that she has had a sad--a most tragic life." "I promise you that I shall not forget it--make your mind easy." After this it seemed to Daniel that there was nothing further to be said; but before rising from his chair, the old man sat for a moment with his thin lips tightly folded and a troubled frown ruffling his forehead. In the dim twilight the profile outlined against the leather chair appeared to have been ground rather than roughly hewn out of granite. "About the disposition of the estate, there were some changes made shortly before your father's death," remarked Richard presently. "In the will itself you were not mentioned; a provision was made for your wife and the bulk of the property left to your two children. But in a codicil, which was added the day before your father died, he directed that you should be given a life interest in the house as well as in investments to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This is to be paid you in the form of a quarterly allowance, which will yield you a personal income of about six thousand a year." "I understand," replied the younger man, without emotion, almost without surprise. At the moment he was wondering by what name his father had alluded to him in his will. Had he spoken of him as "my son," or merely as "Daniel Ordway"? "That is all, I think," remarked the other, with a movement which expressed, in spite of him, a sensation of relief. With a smile which appeared to be little more than a muscular contraction of his mouth, he held out his hand and stood for a moment, vainly searching for a phrase or a word that would fit the delicate requirements of the occasion. "Well, I shall never cease to be thankful that you were with us at the cemetery," he said at last in a tone which was a patent admission that he had failed. Then, with a kindly inclination of his head, he released the hand he held and passed at his rapid, yet dignified step out of the house. CHAPTER III THE OUTWARD PATTERN The front door had hardly closed when a breath of freshness blew into the library with the entrance of Alice, and a moment afterwards the butler rolled back the mahogany doors of the dining-room and they saw the lighted candles and the chrysanthemums upon the dinner table. "We hardly ever dress," said Alice, slipping her hand through his arm, "I wish we did." "Well, if you'll only pardon these clothes to-night I'll promise to call on the tailor before breakfast," he returned, smiling, conscious that he watched in anxiety lest the look of delight in his presence should vanish from her face. "Oh, it doesn't matter now, because we're in the deepest grief--aren't we?--and mamma isn't coming down. She wants to see you, by the way, just for a minute when you go upstairs. It is to be just for a minute, I was to be very particular about that, as she is broken down. I wonder why they have put so many covers. There is nobody but you and Dick. I asked Uncle Richard, but he said that he wouldn't stay. It's just as well he didn't--he's so dreadfully dull, isn't he, papa?" "All I wish is that I were dull in Uncle Richard's way," remarked Dick, with his boyish air of superiority, "I'd be the greatest lawyer in the state then, when my turn came." "And you'd be even more tiresome than you are now," retorted the girl with a flash of irritation which brought out three fine, nervous wrinkles on her delicate forehead. "Well, I shouldn't have your temper anyway," commented Dick imperturbably, as he ate his soup. "Do you remember, papa, how Alice used to bite and scratch as a baby? She'd like to behave exactly that way now if she weren't so tall." "Oh, I know Alice better than you do," said Ordway, in a voice which he tried to make cheerful. The girl sat on his right, and while she choked back her anger, he reached out and catching her hand, held it against his cheek. "We stand together, Alice and I," he said softly--"Alice and I." As he repeated the words a wave of joy rose in his heart, submerging the disappointment, the bitterness, the hard despair, of the last few hours. Here also, as well as in Tappahannock, he found awaiting him his appointed task. Dick laughed pleasantly, preserving always the unshakable self-possession which reminded his father of Richard Ordway. He was a good boy, Daniel knew, upright, honest, manly, all the things which his grandfather and his great-grandfather had been before him. "Then you'll have to stand with Geoffrey Heath," he said jestingly, "and, by Jove, I don't think I'd care for his company." "Geoffrey Heath?" repeated Ordway inquiringly, with his eyes on his daughter, who sat silent and angry, biting her lower lip. Her mouth, which he had soon discovered to be her least perfect feature, was at the same time her most expressive one. At her slightest change of mood, he watched it tremble into a smile or a frown, and from a distance it was plainly the first thing one noticed about her face. Now, as she sat there, with her eyes on her plate, her vivid lips showed like a splash of carmine in the lustreless pallor of her skin. "Oh, he's one of Alice's chums," returned Dick with his merciless youthful sneer, "she has a pretty lot of them, too, though he is by long odds the worst." "Well, he's rich enough anyway," protested Alice defiantly, "he keeps beautiful horses and sends me boxes of candy, and I don't care a bit for the rest." "Who is he, by the way?" asked Daniel. "There was a family of Heaths who lived near us in the country when I was a boy. Is he one of these?" "He's the son of old Rupert Heath, who made a million out of some panic in stocks. Uncle Richard says the father was all right, but he's tried his best to break up Alice's craze about Geoffrey. But let her once get her nose to the wind and nobody can do anything with her." "Well, I can, can't I, darling?" asked Ordway, smiling in spite of a jealous pang. The appeal of the girl to him was like the appeal of the finer part of his own nature. Her temptations he recognised as the old familiar temptations of his youth, and the kinship between them seemed at the moment something deeper and more enduring than the tie of blood. Yet the thought that she was his daughter awoke in him a gratitude that was almost as acute as pain. The emptiness of his life was filled suddenly to over-flowing, and he felt again that he had found here as he had found at Tappahannock both his mission and his reward. When dinner was over he left the boy and girl in the library and went slowly, and with a nervous hesitation, upstairs to the room in which Lydia was lying on her couch, with a flower-decked tray upon the little inlaid table beside her. As he entered the room something in the luxurious atmosphere--in the amber satin curtains, the white bearskin rugs, the shining mirrors between the windows--recalled the early years of his marriage, and as he remembered them, he realised for the first time the immensity of the change which divided his present existence from his past. The time had been when he could not separate his inner life from his surroundings, and with the thought he saw in his memory the bare cleanliness of the blue guest-room at Cedar Hill--with its simple white bed, its rag carpet, its faded sampler worked in blue worsteds. That place had become as a sanctuary to him now, for it was there that he had known his most perfect peace, his completest reconciliation with God. As he entered the room Lydia raised herself slightly upon her elbow, and without turning her head, nervously pushed back a white silk shawl which she had thrown over her knees. A lamp with an amber shade cast its light on her averted profile, and he noticed that its perfect outline, its serene loveliness, was untouched by suffering. Already he had discovered those almost imperceptible furrows between Alice's eyebrows, but when Lydia looked up at him at last, he saw that her beautiful forehead, under its parting of ash blond hair, was as smooth as a child's. Was it merely the Madonna-like arrangement of her hair, after all, he wondered, not without bitterness, that had bestowed upon her that appealing expression of injured innocence? "You wished to speak to me, Alice said," he began with an awkward gesture, acutely conscious, as he stood there, of the amber light in the room, of the shining waves of her hair, of the delicate perfume which floated from the gold-topped boxes upon her dressing-table. An oval mirror above the mantel gave back to him the reflection of his own roughly clad figure, and the violent contrast between himself and his surroundings stung him into a sense of humiliation that was like a physical smart. "I thought it better to speak to you--Uncle Richard and Dick advised me to----" she broke off in a gentle confusion, lifting her lovely, pensive eyes for the first time to his face. "Of course it is better, Lydia," he answered gravely. "You must let me know what you wish--you must tell me quite frankly just what you would rather that I should do----" The look of gratitude in her face gave him a sudden inexplicable pang. "I am hardly more than an invalid," she said in a voice that had grown firm and sweet, "Uncle Richard will tell you----" Her reliance upon Richard Ordway aroused in him a passion of resentment, and for an instant the primitive man in him battled hotly against the renunciation his lips had made. "I know, I understand," he said hurriedly at last. "I appreciate it all and I shall do whatever is in my power to make it easier for you." As he looked at her bowed head a wave of remorse rose in his breast and swept down, one by one, the impulses of anger, of pride, of self-righteousness. "O my dear, my dear, don't you think I know what I have done to you?" he asked, and going a step toward her, he fell on his knees beside the couch and kissed passionately the hand that lay in her lap. "Don't you think I know that I have ruined your life?" For a moment her eyes dwelt thoughtfully upon his, and she let her hand lie still beneath his remorseful kisses, until her withdrawal of it had lost any appearance of haste or of discourtesy. "Then you will not object to my living on in this way? You will not seek to change anything? You will----" She hesitated and broke off, not impulsively, but with the same clear, sweet voice in which she had put her question. Lifting his head, he looked up at her from his knees, and the dumb loneliness in his eyes caused her at last to drop her own to the rug upon which he knelt. "If you will only let me care for you--serve you--work for you," he implored brokenly. "If you will only let me make up, however poorly, something of what you have suffered." A vague discomfort, produced in her by the intensity of his gaze, moved her to draw slightly away from him, while she turned restlessly on her pillows. At the first shade of perplexity, of annoyance, that showed in her face, he felt, with a terrible power of intuition, that she was seeking in vain to estimate each of his heartbroken words at its full value--to read calmly by the light of experience the passion for atonement to which his lips had tried hopelessly to give expression. The wall of personality rose like a visible object between them. He might beat against it in desperation until his strength was gone, yet he knew that it would remain forever impenetrable, and through its thickness there would pass only the loud, unmeaning sound of each other's voice. "Have you lost all love for me, Lydia?" he asked. "Have you even forgotten that I am the father of your children?" As soon as his words were uttered, he stumbled to his feet, horrified by the effect upon her. A change that was like a spasm of physical nausea had shaken her limbs, and he felt rather than saw that she had shrunk from him, convulsed and quivering, until she was crushed powerless against the back of the sofa on which she lay. Her whole attitude, he realised, was the result, not of a moral judgment, but of a purely physical antipathy. Her horror of him had become instinctive, and she was no more responsible for its existence than a child is responsible for the dread aroused in it by the goblins of nursery rhymes. His life as a convict had not only unclassed him in her eyes, it had put him entirely outside and below the ordinary relations of human beings. To his wife he must remain forever an object of pity, perhaps, but of intense loathing and fear also. The wave of remorse turned to bitterness on his lips, and all the tenderer emotions he had felt when he knelt by her side--the self-reproach, the spiritual yearning, the passion for goodness, all these were extinguished in the sense of desolation which swept over him. "Don't be afraid," he said coldly, "I shall not touch you." "It was nothing--a moment's pain," she answered, in a wistful, apologetic voice. She was playing nervously with the fringe of the silk shawl, and he stood for a minute in silence while he watched her long, slender fingers twine themselves in and out of the tasseled ends. Then turning aside she pushed away the coffee service on the little table as if its fragrance annoyed her. "Is it in your way? Do you wish it removed?" he inquired, and when she had nodded in reply, he lifted the tray and carried it in the direction of the door. "Don't be afraid. It is all right," he repeated as he went out. Back in his own room again, he asked himself desperately if this existence could be possible? Would it not be better for him to lose himself a second time--to throw in his lot with a lower class, since his own had rejected him? Flinging himself on the floor beside the window, he pressed his forehead against the white painted wood as if the outward violence could deaden the throbbing agony he felt within. Again he smelt the delicate, yet intense perfume of Lydia's chamber; again he saw her shrinking from him until she lay crushed and white against the back of the sofa; again he watched her features contract with the instinctive repulsion she could not control. The pitiful deprecating gesture with which she had murmured: "It is nothing--a moment's pain," was seared forever like the mark from a burning iron into his memory. "No, no--it cannot be--it is impossible," he said suddenly aloud. And though he had not the strength to frame the rest of his thought into words, he knew that the impossible thing he meant was this life, this torture, this slow martyrdom day by day without hope and without end except in death. After all there was a way of escape, so why should it be closed to him? What were these people to him beside those others whom he might yet serve--the miserable, the poor, the afflicted who would take from him the gifts which his own had rejected? What duty remained? What obligation? What responsibility? Step by step he retraced the nineteen years of his marriage, and he understood for the first time, that Lydia had given him on her wedding day nothing of herself beyond the gentle, apologetic gesture which had followed that evening her involuntary repulsion. From the beginning to the end she had presided always above, not shared in his destiny. She had wanted what he could give, but not himself, and when he could give nothing more she had shown that she wanted him no longer. While he knelt there, still pressing his forehead against the window sill, the image of her part in his life rose out of the darkness of his mind, which opened and closed over it, and he saw her fixed, shining and immovable, to receive his offerings, like some heathen deity above the sacrificial altar. The next instant the image faded and was replaced by Emily as she had looked at him on that last evening with her soft, comforting gaze. The weakness of self pity came over him, and he asked himself in the coward's luxury of hopeless questioning, what Emily would have done had she stood to him in Lydia's place? He saw her parting from him with her bright courage at the prison doors; he saw her meeting him with her smile of welcome and of forgiveness when he came out. As once before he had risen to the vision of service, so now in the agony of his humiliation he was blessed at last with the understanding of love. For many minutes he knelt there motionless by the open window, beyond which he could see the dimly lighted town on which a few drops of rain had begun to fall. The faint perfume of lilies came up to him from the walk below, where the broken sprays swept from the house were fading under the slow, soft rain. With the fragrance the image of Emily dissolved as in a mist to reappear the minute afterwards in a more torturing and human shape. He saw her now with her bright dark hair blown into little curls on her temples, with her radiant brown eyes that penetrated him with their soft, yet animated glance. The vigorous grace of her figure, as he had seen it outlined in her scant blue cotton gown against the background of cedars, remained motionless in his thoughts, bathed in a clear golden light that tormented his senses. Rising from his knees with an effort, he struck a match and raised the green shade from the lamp on the table. Then while the little blue flame flickered out in his hand, he felt that he was seized by a frantic, an irresistible impulse of flight. Gathering his clothes from the bed in the darkness, he pushed them hurriedly back into the bag he had emptied, and with a last glance at the room which had become unendurable to him, opened the door and went with a rapid step down the great staircase and into the hall below. The direction of his journey, as well as the purpose of it, was obscure in his mind. Yesterday he had told himself that he could not remain in Tappahannock, and to-day he knew that it was impossible for him to live on in his father's house. To pass the hall door meant release--escape to him; beyond that there lay only the distance and the unknown. The lights burned dimly on the staircase, and when he reached the bottom he could see on the carpet the thin reddish stream which issued from the closed door of the library. As he was about to pass by, a short sob fell on his ear, arresting him as authoritatively as if it had been the sound of his own name. While he stood there listening the sobs ceased and then broke out more loudly, now violent, now smothered, now followed by quick, furious steps across the floor within. Alice was shut in the room alone and suffering! With the realisation the bag fell from his hand, and turning the knob softly, he opened the door and paused for an instant upon the threshold. At the noise of the opening door the girl made a single step forward, and as she raised her hands to conceal her distorted features, her handkerchief, torn into shreds, fell to the carpet at her feet. Around her the room showed other signs of an outbreak of anger--the chairs were pushed hurriedly out of place, the books from the centre table were lying with opened backs on the floor, and a vase of dahlias lay overturned and scattered upon the mantel. "I don't care--I don't care," she repeated, convulsively. "Why do they always interfere with me? What right has Dick or Uncle Richard to say whom I shall see or whom I shall not? I hate them all. Mamma is always against me--so is Uncle Richard--so is everybody. They side with Dick--always--always." A single wave of her dark hair had fallen low on her forehead, and this, with the violent colour of her mouth, gave her a look that was almost barbaric. The splendid possibilities in her beauty caused him, in the midst of his pity, a sensation of dread. "Alice," he said softly, almost in a whisper, and closing the door after him, he came to the middle of the room and stood near her, though still without touching her quivering body. "They side with Dick always," she repeated furiously, "and you will side with him, too--you will side with him, too!" For a long pause he looked at her in silence, waiting until the convulsive tremors of her limbs should cease. "I shall never side against my daughter," he said very slowly. "Alice, my child, my darling, are you not really mine?" A last quivering sob shook through her and she grew suddenly still. "They will tell you things about me and you will believe them," she answered sternly. "Against you, Alice? Against you?" "You will blame me as they do." "I love you," he returned, almost as sternly as she had spoken. An emotional change, so swift that it startled him, broke in her look, and he saw the bright red of her mouth tremble and open like a flower in her glowing face. At the sight a sharp joy took possession of him--a joy that he could measure only by the depth of the agony out of which he had come. Without moving from his place, he stretched out his arms and stood waiting. "Alice, I love you," he said. Then his arms closed over her, for with the straight flight of a bird she had flown to his breast. CHAPTER IV THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT Awaking before dawn, he realised with his first conscious thought that his life had been irrevocably settled while he slept. His place was here; he could not break away from it without leaving a ragged edge; and while he had believed himself to be deciding his future actions, that greater Destiny, of which his will was only a part, had arranged them for him during the dim pause of the night. He could feel still on his arm, as if it had persisted there through his sleep, the firm, almost viselike pressure of Alice's hands, and his whole sensitive nature thrilled in response to this mute appeal to his fatherhood. Yes, his purpose, his mission, and his happiness were here in his father's house. At breakfast he found a white rosebud on his plate, and as he took it up, Alice rushed in from the garden and threw herself into his arms. "I thought you were never, never coming down!" she exclaimed, choking with laughter, and utterly forgetful of the shadow of death which still lay over the house. "At first I was afraid you might have gone away in the night--just as you went that awful day eight years ago. Then I peeped out and saw your boots, so I went back to bed again and fell asleep. Oh, I'm so glad you've come! Why did you stay away such an age? Now, at last, I'll have somebody to take my side against mamma and Dick and Uncle Richard----" "But why against them, Alice? Surely they love you just as I do?" Biting her lips sharply, she bent her heavy brows in a stern and frowning expression. "Oh, they're horrid," she said angrily, "they want me to live just as mamma does--shut up all day in a hot room on a hateful sofa. She reads novels all the time, and I despise books. I want to go away and see things and to have plenty of clothes and all the fun I choose. They let Dick do just as he pleases because he's a boy, but they try to make me dull and stupid and foolish all because I'm a girl. I won't have it like that and it makes them angry----" "Oh, well, we'll have fun together, you and I," returned Ordway, with a sinking heart, "but you must wait a bit till I catch up with you. Don't be in a precious hurry, if you please." "Shall we have a good time, then? Shall we?" she persisted, delighted, kissing him with her warm mouth until he was dazzled by her beauty, her fascination, her ardent vitality. "And you will do just what I wish, won't you?" she whispered in his ear as she hung on his shoulder, "you will be good and kind always? and you will make them leave me alone about Geoffrey Heath?" "About Geoffrey Heath?" he repeated, and grew suddenly serious. "Oh, he's rich and he's fun, too," she responded irritably. "He has asked me to ride one of his horses--the most beautiful chestnut mare in the world--but mamma scolds me about it because she says he's not nice and that he did something once years ago about cards. As if I cared about cards!" By the fear that had gripped him he could judge the strength of her hold on his heart. "Alice, be careful--promise me to be careful!" he entreated. At his words he felt her arms relax from their embrace, and she seemed instantly to turn to marble upon his breast. "Oh, you're just like the others now. I knew you would be!" she exclaimed, as she drew away from him. Before the coldness of her withdrawal he felt that his will went out of him; and in one despairing flight of imagination he saw what the loss of her affection would mean now in his life. An emotion which he knew to be weakness pervaded not only his heart, but his soul and his senses and the remotest fibre of his physical being. "Whatever comes I shall always stand by you, Alice," he said. Though she appeared to be mollified by his subjection, the thin almost imperceptible furrows caused by the moment's anger, were still visible between her eyebrows. There was a certain fascination, he found, in watching these marks of age or of experience come and go on her fresh, childlike forehead, with its lustrous pallor, from which her splendid dark hair rolled back, touched with light, like a moonlit cloud. It was a singular characteristic of her beauty that its appeal was rather to the imagination than to the eye, and the moments, perhaps, when she dazzled least were those in which she conquered most through her enigmatical charm. "You will buy some clothes, first of all, will you not?" she said, when, having finished his breakfast, he rose from the table and went out into the hall. He met her eyes laughing, filled with happiness at the playful authority she assumed, and yet fearful still lest some incautious word of his should bring out those fine nervous wrinkles upon her forehead. "Give me a week and I'll promise you a fashion plate," he responded gaily, kissing his hand to her as he went down the steps, and, under the trailing rose creepers at the gate, out into the street. Rain had fallen in the night, and the ground was covered with shining puddles beneath which a few autumn leaves showed drenched and beaten. From the golden and red maples above a damp odour was wafted down into his face by the October wind, which now rose and now died away with a gentle sound. In the pale sunshine, which had not yet drained the moisture from the bricks, a wonderful freshness seemed to emanate from the sky and the earth and the white-pillared houses. As he approached the corner, he heard his name called in a clear emphatic voice from the opposite sidewalk, and turning his head, he saw hastening toward him, a little elderly lady in a black silk gown trimmed heavily with bugles. As she neared him, followed by a young Negro maid bearing a market basket filled with vegetables, he recognised her as an intimate friend of his mother's, whom he had known familiarly in his childhood as "Aunt Lucy." It seemed so long now since his mother's death that he was attacked by a ghostly sensation, as if he were dreaming over his past life, while he stood face to face with the old lady's small soldierly figure and listened to the crisp, emphatic tones in which she welcomed him back to Botetourt. He remembered his frequent visits to her solemn old house, which she kept so dark that he had always stumbled over the two embroidered ottomans on the parlour hearth. He recalled the smell of spices which had hung about her storeroom, and the raspberry preserves which she had never failed to give him out of a blue china jar. "Why, my dear, blessed child, it's such a pleasure to have you back!" she exclaimed now with an effusion which he felt to be the outward veil of some hidden embarrassment. "You must come sometimes and let me talk to you about your mother. I knew your mother so well--I was one of her bridesmaids." Seizing his arm in her little firm, clawlike hands, she assured him with animation of her delight at his return, alluding in a shaking voice to his mother, and urging him to come to sit with her whenever he could stand the gloom of her empty house. "And you will give me raspberry preserves out of the blue china jar?" he asked, laughing, "and let me feed crackers to the green parrot?" "What a boy! What a boy!" she returned. "You remember everything. The parrot is dead--my poor Polly!--but there is a second." Her effusiveness, her volubility, which seemed to him to be the result of concealed embarrassment, produced in him presently a feeling of distrust, almost of resentment, and he remembered the next instant that, in his childhood, she had been looked upon as a creature of uncontrolled charitable impulses. Upon the occasion of his last meeting with her was she not hastening upon some ministering errand to the city gaol? At the casual recollection an unreasoning bitterness awoke in his mind; her reiterated raptures fell with a strange effect of irritation upon his ears; and he knew now that he could never bring himself to enter her house again, that he could never accept her preserved raspberries out of the blue china jar. Her reception of him, he saw, was but a part of the general reception of Botetourt. Like her the town would be voluble, unnatural, overdone in its kindness, hiding within itself a furtive constraint as if it addressed its speeches to the sensitive sufferer from some incurable malady. The very tenderness, the exaggerated sympathy in its manner would hardly have been different, he understood, if he had been recently discharged as harmless, yet half-distraught, from an asylum for the insane. As the days went on this idea, instead of dissolving, became unalterably lodged in his brain. Gradually he retreated further and further into himself, until the spiritual isolation in which he lived appeared to him more and more like the isolation of the prison. His figure had become a familiar one in the streets of Botetourt, yet he lived bodily among the people without entering into their lives or sharing in any degree the emotions that moved their hearts. Only in periods of sorrow did he go willingly into the houses of those of his own class, though he had found a way from the beginning to reach the poor, the distressed, or the physically afflicted. His tall, slightly stooping figure, in its loose black clothes, his dark head, with the thick locks of iron gray hair upon the temples, his sparkling blue eyes, his bright, almost boyish smile, and the peculiar, unforgettable charm of his presence--these were the things which those in sickness or poverty began to recognise and to look for. In his own home he lived, except for the fitful tenderness of Alice, as much apart as he felt himself to be in the little town. They were considerate of him, but their consideration, he knew, contained an ineradicable suspicion, and in the house as outside, he was surrounded by the watchful regard that is given to the infirm or the mentally diseased. He read this in Lydia's gently averted eyes; he felt it in Richard Ordway's constrained manner; he detected it even in the silent haste with which the servants fulfilled his slightest wish. His work in his uncle's office, he had soon found to be of the most mechanical character, a mere pretext to give him daily employment, and he told himself, in a moment of bitterness that it was convincing proof of the opinion which the older man must hold of his honesty or of his mental capacity. It became presently little more than a hopeless round to him--this morning walk through the sunny streets, past the ivied walls of the old church, to the clean, varnish scented office, where he sat, until the luncheon hour, under the hard, though not unkind, eyes of the man who reminded him at every instant of his dead father. And the bitterest part of it, after all, was that the closer he came to the character of Richard Ordway, the profounder grew his respect for his uncle's unwavering professional honour. The old man would have starved, he knew, rather than have held back a penny that was not legally his own or have owed a debt that he felt had begun to weigh, however lightly, upon his conscience. Yet this lawyer of scrupulous rectitude was the husband, his nephew suspected, of a neglected, a wretchedly unhappy wife--a small, nervous creature, whom he had married, shortly after the death of his first wife, some twenty years ago. The secret of this unhappiness Daniel had discovered almost by intuition on the day of his father's funeral, when he had looked up suddenly in the cemetery to find his uncle's wife regarding him with a pair of wonderful, pathetic eyes, which seemed to gaze at him sadly out of a blue mist. So full of sympathy and understanding was her look that the memory of it had returned to him more than a year later, and had caused him to stop at her gate one November afternoon as he was returning from his office work. After an instant's pause, and an uncertain glance at the big brick house with its clean white columns, he ascended the steps and rang the bell for the first time since his boyhood. The house was one of the most charming in Botetourt, but as he followed the servant down the hall to the library, it seemed to him that all these high, imposing walls, with their fine white woodwork, enclosed but so much empty space to fill with loneliness. His uncle had no children, and the sad, fair-haired little wife appeared to be always alone and always suffering. She was seated now in a low rocking-chair beside the window, and as she turned her head at his entrance, he could see, through the lace curtains, a few pale November leaves, which fluttered down from an elm tree beside the porch. When she looked at him he noticed that her eyes were large and beautiful and of a changeable misty colour which appeared now gray, now violet. "It is so good of you, Daniel," she said, in a soft, grateful voice, removing her work-basket from the chair at her side so that he might come within the reach of her short-sighted gaze. "I've wanted to come ever since I saw you for the first time after my return," he answered cheerfully. "It is strange, isn't it?--that I hardly remember you when I lived here. You were always ill, were you not?" "Yes, ill almost always," she replied, smiling as she met his glance. "When you were married I remember I couldn't go to the wedding because I had been in bed for three months. But that's all over now," she added, fearing to produce in him a momentary depression. "I am well again, you see, so the past doesn't matter." "The past doesn't matter," he repeated in a low voice, struck by the words as if they held more than their surface meaning for his ears. She nodded gravely. "How can it matter if one is really happy at last." "And you are happy at last?" As he watched her it seemed to him that a pale flame burned in her face, tinging its sallow wanness with a golden light. "I am at peace and is that not happiness?" she asked. "But you were sad once--that day in the cemetery? I felt it." "That was while I was still struggling," she answered, "and it always hurts one to struggle. I wanted happiness--I kept on wanting it even after I ceased to believe in its existence. I fought very hard--oh, desperately hard--but now I have learned that the only way to get anything is to give it up. Happiness is like everything else, it is only when one gives it back to God that one really possesses it." He had never seen a face in which the soul spoke so clearly, and her look rather than her words came to him like the touch of divine healing. "When I saw you standing beside your father's grave, I knew that you were just where I had been for so many years--that you were still telling your self that things were too hard, that they were unendurable. I had been through it all, you see, so I understood." "But how could you know the bitterness, the shame of feeling that it was all the result of my own mistake--of my own sin." Taking his hand in hers, she sat for a moment in silence with her ecstatic gaze fixed on his face. "I know that in spite of your sin you are better than they are," she said at last, "because your sin was on the outside--a thing to be sloughed off and left far behind, while their self-righteousness is of their very souls----" "Oh, hush, hush," he interrupted sternly, "they have forgiven me for what I did, that is enough." "Sixteen years ago," she returned, dropping her voice, "my husband forgave me in the same way, and he has never forgotten it." At his start of surprise, he felt that she clung the more closely to the hand she held. "Oh, it wasn't so big a thing," she went on, "I had been married to him for five years, and I was very unhappy when I met someone who seemed to understand and to love me. For a time I was almost insane with the wonder and delight of it--I might have gone away with him--with the other--in my first rapture, had not Richard found it all out two days before. He behaved very generously--he forgave me. I should have been happier," she added a little wistfully, "if he had not." As she broke off trembling, he lifted her hand to his lips, kissing it with tenderness, almost with passion. "Then that was the beginning of your unhappiness--of your long illness!" he exclaimed. She nodded smiling, while a tear ran slowly down her flushed cheek. "He forgave me sixteen years ago and he has never allowed me to forget it one hour--hardly a minute since." "Then you understand how bitter--how intolerable it is!" he returned in an outbreak of anger. "I thought I knew," she replied more firmly than he had ever heard her speak, "but I learned afterwards that it was a mistake. I see now that they are kind--that they are good in their way, and I love them for it. It isn't our way, I know, but the essence of charity, after all, is to learn to appreciate goodness in all its expressions, no matter how different they may be from our own. Even Richard is kind--he means everything for the best, and it is only his nature that is straightened--that is narrow--not his will. I felt bitterly once, but not now because I am so happy at last." Beyond the pale outline of her head, he saw the elm leaves drifting slowly down, and beyond them the low roofs and the dim church spires of the quiet town. Was it possible that even here he might find peace in the heart of the storm? "It is only since I have given my happiness back to God that it is really mine," she said, and it seemed to him again that her soul gathered brightness and shone in her face. CHAPTER V THE WILL OF ALICE When he reached home the servant who helped him out of his overcoat, informed him at the same time that his uncle awaited him in the library. With the news a strange chill came over him as if he had left something warm and bright in the November sunset outside. For an instant it seemed to him that he must turn back--that he could not go forward. Then with a gesture of assent, he crossed the hall and entered the library, where he found Lydia and the children as well as Richard Ordway. The lamps were unlit, and the mellow light of the sunset fell through the interlacing half-bared boughs of the golden poplar beyond the window. This light, so rich, so vivid, steeped the old mahogany furniture and the faded family portraits in a glow which seemed to Daniel to release, for the first time, some latent romantic spirit that had dwelt in the room. In the midst of this glamor of historic atmosphere, the four figures, gathered so closely together against the clear space of the window, with its network of poplar leaves beyond the panes, borrowed for the moment a strange effectiveness of pose, a singular intensity of outline. Not only the figures, but the very objects by which they were surrounded appeared to vibrate in response to a tragic impulse. Richard Ordway was standing upon the hearthrug, his fine head and profile limned sharply against the pale brown wall at his side. His right hand was on Lydia's shoulder, who sat motionless, as if she had fallen there, with her gentle, flower-like head lying upon the arm of her son. Before them, as before her judges, Alice was drawn to her full height, her girlish body held tense and quivering, her splendid hair loosened about her forehead, her trembling mouth making a violent contrast to the intense pallor of her face. Right or wrong Ordway saw only that she was standing alone, and as he crossed the threshold, he turned toward her and held out his hand. "Alice," he said softly, as if the others were not present. Without raising her eyes, she shrank from him in the direction of Richard Ordway, as if shielding herself behind the iron fortitude of the man whom she so bitterly disliked. "Alice has been out driving alone with Geoffrey Heath all the afternoon," said Lydia in her clear, calm voice. "We had forbidden it, but she says that you knew of it and did not object to her going." With the knowledge of the lie, Ordway grew red with humiliation, while his gaze remained fastened on the figure in the carpet at Alice's feet. He could not look at her, for he felt that her shame was scorching him like a hot wind. To look at her at the moment meant to convict her, and this his heart told him he could never do. He was conscious of the loud ticking of the clock, of the regular tapping of Richard's fingers upon the marble mantel-piece, of the fading light on the poplar leaves beyond the window, and presently of the rapid roll of a carriage that went by in the street. Each of these sounds produced in him a curious irritation like a physical smart, and he felt again something of the dumb resentment with which he had entered his wife's dressing-room on the morning of his arrest. Then a smothered sob reached his ear, and Alice began to tremble from head to foot at his side. Lifting his eyes at last, he made a step forward and drew her into his arms. "Was it so very wrong? I am sorry," he said to Lydia over the bowed head of their child. Until the words were uttered, and he felt Alice's tense body relax in his arms, he had not realised that in taking sides with her, he was not only making himself responsible for her fault, he was, in truth, actually sharing in the lie that she had spoken. The choice was an unconscious one, yet he knew even in the ensuing moment of his clearer judgment that it had been inevitable--that from the first instant, when he had paused speechless upon the threshold, there had been open to him no other course. "I am sorry if it was wrong," he repeated, turning his glance now upon Richard Ordway. "Do you know anything of Geoffrey Heath? Have you heard him spoken of by decent people since you have been in Botetourt?" asked the old man sternly. "I have heard little of him," answered Daniel, "and that little was far from good. We are sorry, Alice, are we not? It must not happen again if we can help it." "It has happened before," said Lydia, lifting her head from Dick's arm, where it had lain. "It was then that I forbade her to see him alone." "I did not know," responded Daniel, "but she will do as you wish hereafter. Will you not, Alice?" "How does it concern them? What have they to do with me?" demanded Alice, turning in his arms to face her mother with a defiant and angry look, "they have never cared for me--they have always preferred Dick--always, even when I was a little child." He saw Lydia grow white and hide her drooping face again on Dick's shoulder. "You are unjust to your mother, Alice," he said gravely, "she has loved you always, and I have loved you." "Oh, you are different--I would die for you!" she exclaimed passionately, as she wept on his breast. While he stood there holding her in his arms, it seemed to him that he could feel like an electric current the wave of feeling which had swept Alice and himself together. The inheritance which was his had descended to her also with its keen joys and its sharp anguish. Even the road which he had travelled so lately in weariness was the one upon which her brave young feet were now set. Not his alone, but his child's also, was this mixture of strength and weakness, of gaiety and sadness, of bitterness and compassion. "If you will leave me alone with her, I think I can make her understand what you wish," he said, lifting his eyes from the dark head on his breast to Lydia, who had risen and was standing before him with her pensive, inquiring gaze fixed on his face. "She is like me," he added abruptly, "in so many ways." "Yes, she is like you, I have always thought so," returned Lydia, quietly. "And for that reason, perhaps, you have never quite understood her," he responded. She bowed her head as if too polite or too indifferent to dissent from his words; and then slipping her hand through Richard Ordway's arm, she stood waiting patiently while the old man delivered his last bit of remonstrance. "Try to curb her impulses, Daniel, or you will regret it." He went out, still holding Lydia's hand, and a moment afterwards, when Daniel looked up at the sound of the hall door closing quickly, he saw that Dick also had vanished, and that he was alone in the library with Alice, who still sobbed on his breast. A few moments before it had seemed to him that he needed only to be alone with her to make all perfectly clear between them. But when the others had passed out, and the door had closed at last on the empty silence in which they stood, he found that the words which he had meant to utter had vanished hopelessly from his mind. He had said to Lydia that Alice was like himself, but there had never been an hour in his life when his hatred of a lie had not been as intense, as uncompromising, as it was to-day. And this lie which she had spoken appeared to divide them now like a drawn sword. "Alice," he said, breaking with an effort through the embarrassment which had held him speechless, "will you give me your word of honour that you will never tell me a falsehood again?" She stirred slightly in his arms, and he felt her body grow soft and yielding. "I didn't to you," she answered, "oh, I wouldn't to you." "Not to the others then. Will you promise?" Her warm young arm tightened about his neck. "I didn't mean to--I didn't mean to," she protested between her sobs, "but they forced me to do it. It was more than half their fault--they are so--so hateful! I tried to think of something else, but there was nothing to say, and I knew you would stand by me----" "You have almost broken my heart," he answered, "for you have lied, Alice, you have lied." She lifted her head and the next instant he felt her mouth on his cheek, "I wish I were dead! I have hurt you and I wish I were dead!" she cried. "It is not hurting me that I mind--you may do that and welcome. It is hurting yourself, my child, my Alice," he answered; and pressing her upturned face back on his arm, he bent over her in an ecstasy of emotion, calling her his daughter, his darling, the one joy of his life. The iron in his nature had melted beneath her warm touch, and he felt again the thrill, half agony, half rapture, with which he had received her into his arms on the day of her birth. That day was nearer to him now than was the minute in which he stood, and he could trace still the soft, babyish curves in the face which nestled so penitently on his arm. His very fear for her moved him into a deeper tenderness, and the appeal she made to him now was one with the appeal of her infancy, for its power lay in her weakness, not in her strength. "Be truthful with me, Alice," he said, "and remember that nothing can separate me from you." An hour later when he parted from her and went upstairs, he heard Lydia's voice calling to him through her half open door, and turning obediently, he entered her bedroom for the first time since the night of his return. Now as then the luxury, the softness, of his wife's surroundings produced in him a curious depression, an enervation of body; and he stood for an instant vainly striving to close his nostrils against the delicious perfume which floated from her lace-trimmed dressing-table. Lydia, still in her light mourning gown, was standing, when he entered, before a little marquetry desk in one corner, her eyes on an open letter which she appeared to have left partially unread. "I wanted to tell you, Daniel," she began at once, approaching the point with a directness which left him no time to wonder as to the purpose of her summons, "that Alice's intimacy with Geoffrey Heath has already been commented upon in Botetourt. Cousin Paulina has actually written to me for an explanation." "Cousin Paulina?" he repeated vaguely, and remembered immediately that the lady in question was his wife's one rich relation--an elderly female who was greatly respected for her fortune, which she spent entirely in gratifying her personal passion for trinkets. "Oh, yes," he added flippantly, "the old lady who used to look like a heathen idol got up for the sacrifice." He felt that his levity was out of place, yet he went on rashly because he knew that he was doomed forever to appear at a disadvantage in Lydia's presence. She would never believe in him--his best motives would wear always to her the covering of hypocrisy; and the very hopelessness of ever convincing her goaded him at times into the reckless folly of despair. "She writes me that people are talking of it," she resumed, sweetly, as if his untimely mirth had returned still-born into the vacancy from which it emerged. "Who is this Geoffrey Heath you speak of so incessantly?" he demanded. "There was a Heath, I remember, who had a place near us in the country, and kept a barroom or a butcher's shop or something in town." "That was the father," replied Lydia, with a shudder which deepened the slightly scornful curve of her lip. "He was a respectable old man, I believe, and made his fortune quite honestly, however it was. It was only after his son began to grow up that he became socially ambitious----" "And is that all you have against him?" "Oh, there's nothing against the old man--nothing at least except the glaring bad taste he showed in that monstrous house he built in Henry Street. He's dead now, you know." "Then the son has all the money and the house, too, hasn't he?" "All he hasn't wasted, yes." As she spoke she subsided into a chair, with a graceful, eddying motion of her black chiffon draperies, and continued the conversation with an expression of smiling weariness. All her attitudes were effective, and he was struck, while he stood, embarrassed and awkward, before her, by the plaintive grace that she introduced into her smallest gesture. Though he was aware that he saw her now too clearly for passion, the appeal of her delicate fairness went suddenly to his head. "Then there's not much to be said for the chap, I suppose?" he asked abruptly, fearing the prolonged strain of the silence. "Very little for him, but a good deal about him, according to Cousin Paulina. It seems that three years ago he was sent away from the University for something disgraceful--cheating at cards, I believe; and since then he has been conspicuous chiefly because of his low associations. How Alice met him, I could never understand--I can't understand now." "And do you think she cares for him--that she even imagines that she does?" he demanded, while his terror rose in his throat and choked back his words. "She will not confess it--how could she?" replied Lydia wearily, "I believe it is only wildness, recklessness, lack of discipline that prompts her. Yet he is good-looking--in a vulgar way," she added in disgust, "and Alice has always seemed to like vulgar things." Her eyes rested on him, not directly, but as if they merely included him in their general pensive survey of the world; yet he read the accusation in her gentle avoidance of his gaze as plainly as she had uttered in it her clear, flute-like tones. "It is very important," she went on, "that she should be curbed in her impulses, in her extravagance. Already her bills are larger than mine and yet she is never satisfied with the amount of her allowance. We can do nothing with her, Uncle Richard and I, but she seems to yield, in a measure, to your influence, and we thought--we hoped----" "I will--I will," he answered. "I will give my life to help her if need be. But Lydia," he broke out more earnestly, "you must stand by and aid me for her sake, for the sake of our child, we must work together----" Half rising in her chair, she looked at him fixedly a moment, while he saw her pupils dilate almost as if she were in physical fear. "But what can I do? I have done all I could," she protested, with an injured look. By this look, without so much as a gesture, she put the space of the whole room between them. The corners of her mouth quivered and drooped, and he watched the pathos creep back into her light blue eyes. "I have given up my whole life to the children since--since----" She broke off in a frightened whisper, but the unfinished sentence was more expressive than a volley of reproaches would have been. There was something in her thoughts too horrible to put into words, and this something of which she could not bring herself to speak, would have had no place in her existence except for him. He felt cowed suddenly, as if he had been physically beaten and thrust aside. "You have been very brave--I know--I appreciate it all," he said, and while he spoke he drew away from her until he stood with his back against one of the amber satin curtains. Instinctively he put out his hand for support, and as it closed over the heavy draperies, he felt that the hard silken texture made his flesh creep. The physical sensation, brief as it was, recalled in some strange way the effect upon him of Lydia's smooth and shining surface when he had knelt before her on the night of his homecoming. Yet it was with difficulty even now that he could free himself from the conviction that her emotional apathy was but one aspect of innocence. Would he admit to-day that what he had once worshipped as purity of soul was but the frost of an unnatural coldness of nature? All at once, as he looked at her, he found himself reminded by her calm forehead, her classic features, of the sculptured front of a marble tomb which he had seen in some foreign gallery. Was there death, after all, not life hidden for him in her plaintive beauty? The next instant, as he watched her, he told himself that such questions belonged to the evil promptings of his own nature. "I realise all that you have been, all that you have suffered," he said at last, aware that his words sounded hysterical in the icy constraint which surrounded them. When his speech was out, his embarrassment became so great that he found himself presently measuring the distance which divided him from the closed door. With a last effort of will, he went toward her and stretched out his hand in a gesture that was almost one of entreaty. "Lydia," he asked, "is it too painful for you to have me here? Would it be any better for you if I went away?" As he moved toward her she bent over with a nervous, mechanical movement to arrange her train, and before replying to his question, she laid each separate fold in place. "Why, by no means," she answered, looking up with her conventional smile. "It would only mean--wouldn't it?--that people would begin to wonder all over again?" CHAPTER VI THE IRON BARS As the days went on it seemed to him that his nature, repressed in so many other directions, was concentrated at last in a single channel of feeling. The one outlet was his passion for Alice, and nothing that concerned her was too remote or too trivial to engross him--her clothes, her friendships, the particular chocolate creams for which she had once expressed a preference. To fill her life with amusements that would withdraw her erring impulses from Geoffrey Heath became for a time his absorbing purpose. At first he told himself in a kind of rapture that success was apparent in his earliest and slightest efforts. For weeks Alice appeared to find interest and animation in his presence. She flattered, scolded, caressed and tyrannised, but with each day, each hour, she grew nearer his heart and became more firmly interwoven into his life. Then suddenly a change came over her, and one day when she had been kissing him with "butterfly kisses" on his forehead, he felt her suddenly grow restless and draw back impatiently as if seeking a fresh diversion. A bored look had come into her eyes and he saw the three little wrinkles gather between her eyebrows. "Alice," he said, alarmed by the swift alteration, "are you tired of the house? Shall we ride together?" She shook her head, half pettishly, half playfully, "I can't--I've an engagement," she responded. "An engagement?" he repeated inquiringly. "Why, I thought we were always to ride when it was fair." "I promised one of the girls to go to tea with her," she repeated, after a minute. "It isn't a real tea, but she wanted to talk to me, so I said I would go." "Well, I'm glad you did--don't give up the girls," he answered, relieved at once by the explanation. In the evening when she returned, shortly after dark, "one of the girls" as she called laughingly from the library, had come home for the night with her. Ordway heard them chatting gayly together, but, when he went in for a moment before going upstairs to dress, they lapsed immediately into an embarrassed silence. Alice's visitor was a pretty, gray-eyed, flaxen-haired young woman named Jenny Lane, who smiled in a frightened way and answered "Yes--no," when he spoke to her, as if she offered him the choice of his favourite monosyllable from her lips. Clearly the subject which animated them was one in which, even as Alice's father, he could have no share. For weeks after this it seemed to him that a silence fell gradually between them--that silence of the heart which is so much more oppressive than the mere outward silence of the lips. It was not, he told himself again and again, that there had come a perceptible change in her manner. She still met him at breakfast with her flower and her caress, still flung herself into his arms at unexpected moments, still coaxed and upbraided in her passionate, childish voice. Nevertheless, the difference was there, and he recognised it with a pang even while he demanded of himself in what breathless suspension of feeling it could consist? Her caresses were as frequent, but the fervour, the responsiveness, had gone out of them; and he was brought at last face to face with the knowledge that her first vivid delight in him had departed forever. The thing which absorbed her now was a thing in which he had no share, no recognition; and true to her temperament, her whole impulsive being had directed itself into this new channel. "She is young and it is only natural that she should wish to have her school friends about her," he thought with a smile. In the beginning it had been an easy matter to efface his personality and stand out of the way of Alice's life, but as the weeks drew on into months and the months into a year, he found that he had been left aside not only by his daughter, but by the rest of the household as well. In his home he felt himself to exist presently in an ignored, yet obvious way like a familiar piece of household furniture, which is neither commented upon nor wilfully overlooked. It would have occasioned, he supposed, some vague exclamations of surprise had he failed to appear in his proper place at the breakfast table, but as long as his accustomed seat was occupied all further use for his existence seemed at an end. He was not necessary, he was not even enjoyed, but he was tolerated. Before this passive indifference, which was worse to him than direct hostility, he found that his sympathies, his impulses, and even his personality, were invaded by an apathy that paralysed the very sources of his will. He beheld himself as the cause of the gloom, the suspicion, the sadness, that surrounded him, and as the cause, too, of Alice's wildness and of the pathetic loneliness in which Lydia lived. But for him, he told himself, there would have been no shadow upon the household; and his wife's pensive smile was like a knife in his heart whenever he looked up from his place at the table and met it unawares. At Tappahannock he had sometimes believed that his past was a skeleton which he had left behind; here he had grown, as the years went by, to think of it as a coffin which had shut over him and from which there was no escape. And with the realisation of this, a blighting remorse, a painful humbleness awoke in his soul, and was revealed outwardly in his face, in his walk, in his embarrassed movements. As he passed up and down the staircase, he went softly lest the heavy sound of his footsteps should become an annoyance to Lydia's sensitive ears. His manner lost its boyish freedom and grew awkward and nervous, and when he gave an order to the servants it seemed to him that a dreadful timidity sounded in his voice. He began to grow old suddenly in a year, before middle age had as yet had time to soften the way. Looking in the glass one morning, when he had been less than three years in Botetourt, he discovered that the dark locks upon his forehead had turned almost white, and that his shoulders were losing gradually their youthful erectness of carriage. And it seemed to him that the courage with which he might have once broken away and begun anew had departed from him in this new and paralysing humility, which was like the humility of a helpless and burdensome old age. After a day of peculiar loneliness, he was returning from Richard's office on this same afternoon, when a voice called to him from beneath the fringed linen cover of a little phaeton which had driven up to the crossing. Turning in surprise he found Aunt Lucy holding the reins over a fat pony, while she sat very erect, with her trim, soldierly figure emerging from a mountain of brown-paper parcels. "This is the very chance I've been looking for, Daniel Ordway!" she exclaimed, in her emphatic voice. "Do you know, sir, that you have not entered my house once in the last three years?" "Yes," he replied, "I know--but the fact is that I have hardly been anywhere since I came back." "And why is that?" she demanded sharply. He shook his head, "I don't know. Perhaps you can tell me." "Yes, I can tell you," she snapped back, with a rudeness which, in some singular way, seemed to him kinder than the studied politeness that he had met. "It's because, in spite of all you've gone through, you are still more than half a fool, Daniel Ordway." "Oh, you're right, I dare say," he acknowledged bitterly. With a frown, which struck him curiously as the wrong side of a smile, she nodded her head while she made room for him among the brown-paper parcels on the low linen covered seat of the phaeton. "Come in here, I want to talk to you," she said, "there's a little matter about which I should like your help." "My help?" he repeated in astonishment, as a sensation of pleasure shot through his heart. It was so seldom that anybody asked his help in Botetourt. "Is the second green parrot dead, and do you want me to dig the grave?" he inquired, checking his unseemly derision as he met her warning glance. "Polly is perfectly well," she returned, rapping him smartly upon the knee with her little tightly closed black fan which she carried as if it were a baton, "but I do not like Richard Ordway." The suddenness of her announcement, following so inappropriately her comment upon the health of the green parrot, caused him to start from his seat in the amazement with which he faced her. Then he broke into an echo of his old boyish merriment. "You don't?" he retorted flippantly. "Well, Lydia does." Her eyes blinked rapidly in the midst of her wrinkled little face, and bending over she flicked the back of the fat pony gently with the end of the whip. "Oh, I'm not sure I like Lydia," she responded, "though, of course, Lydia is a saint." "Yes, Lydia is a saint," he affirmed. "Well, I'm not talking about Lydia," she resumed presently, "though there's something I've always had a burning curiosity to find out." For an instant she held back, and then made her charge with a kind of desperate courage. "Is she really a saint?" she questioned, "or is it only the way that she wears her hair?" Her question was so like the spoken sound of his own dreadful suspicion that it took away his breath completely, while he stared at her with a gasp that was evenly divided between a laugh and a groan. "Oh, she's a saint, there's no doubt of that," he insisted loyally. "Then I'll let her rest," she replied, "and I'm glad, heaven knows, to have my doubts at an end. But where do you imagine that I am taking you?" "For a drive, I hope," he answered, smiling. "It's not," she rejoined grimly, "it's for a visit." "A visit?" he repeated, starting up with the impulse to jump over the moving wheel, "but I never visit." She reached out her wiry little fingers, which clung like a bird's claw, and drew him by force back upon the seat. "I am taking you to see Adam Crowley," she explained, "do you remember him?" "Crowley?" he repeated the name as he searched his memory. "Why, yes, he was my father's clerk for forty years, wasn't he? I asked when I came home what had become of him. So he is still living?" "He was paralysed in one arm some years ago, and it seems he has lost all his savings in some investment your father had advised him to make. Of course, there was no legal question of a debt to him, but until the day your father died he had always made ample provision for the old man's support. Crowley had always believed that the allowance would be continued--that there would be a mention made of him in the will." "And there was none?" "It was an oversight, Crowley is still convinced, for he says he had a distinct promise." "Then surely my uncle will fulfil the trust? He is an honourable man." She shook her head. "I don't know that he is so much 'honourable' as he is 'lawful.' The written obligation is the one which binds him like steel, but I don't think he cares whether a thing is right or wrong, just or unjust, as long as it is the law. The letter holds him, but I doubt if he has ever even felt the motion of the spirit. If he ever felt it," she concluded with grim humour, "he would probably try to drive it out with quinine." "Are we going there now--to see Crowley, I mean?" "If you don't mind. Of course there may be nothing that you can do--but I thought that you might, perhaps, speak to Richard about it." He shook his head, "No, I can't speak to my uncle, though I think you are unjust to him," he answered, after a pause in which the full joy of her appeal had swept through his heart, "but I have an income of my own, you know, and out of this, I can help Crowley." For an instant she did not reply, and he felt her thin, upright little figure grow rigid at his side. Then turning with a start, she laid her hand, in its black lace mitten, upon his knee. "O my boy, you are your mother all over again!" she said. After this they drove on in silence down one of the shaded streets, where rows of neat little houses, packed together like pasteboard boxes, were divided from the unpaved sidewalks by low whitewashed fences. At one of these doors the phaeton presently drew up, and dropping the reins on the pony's back, Aunt Lucy alighted with a bound between the wheels, and began with Ordway's help, to remove the paper parcels from the seat. When their arms were full, she pushed open the gate, and led him up the short walk to the door where an old man, wearing a knitted shawl, sat in an invalid's chair beyond the threshold. At the sound of their footsteps Crowley turned on them a cheerful wrinkled face which was brightened by a pair of twinkling black eyes that gave him an innocent and merry look. "I knew you'd come around," he said, smiling with his toothless mouth like an amiable infant. "Matildy has been complaining that the coffee gave out at breakfast, but I said 'twas only a sign that you were coming. Everything bad is the sign of something good, that's what I say." "I've brought something better than coffee to-day, Adam," replied Aunt Lucy, seating herself upon the doorstep. "This is Daniel Ordway--do you remember him?" The old man bent forward, without moving his withered hand, which lay outstretched on the cushioned arm of the chair, and it seemed to Ordway that the smiling black eyes pierced to his heart. "Oh, I remember him, I remember him," said Crowley, "poor boy--poor boy." "He's come back now," rejoined Aunt Lucy, raising her voice, "and he has come to see you." "He's like his mother," remarked Crowley, almost in a whisper, "and I'm glad of that, though his father was a good man. But there are some good people who do more harm than bad ones," he added, "and I always knew that old Daniel Ordway would ruin his son." A chuckle broke from him, "but your mother: I can see her now running out bareheaded in the snow to scold me for not having on my overcoat. She was always seeing with other people's eyes, bless her, and feeling with other people's bodies." Dropping upon the doorstep, Ordway replaced the knitted shawl which had slipped from the old man's shoulder. "I wonder how it is that you keep so happy in spite of everything?" he said. "Happy?" repeated Crowley with a laugh. "Well, I don't know, but I am not complaining. I've seen men who hadn't an ache in their bodies, who were worse off than I am to-day. I tell you it isn't the thing that comes to you, but the way you look at it that counts, and because you've got a paralysed arm is no reason that you should have a paralysed heart as well. I've had a powerful lot of suffering, but I've had a powerful lot of happiness, too, and the suffering somehow, doesn't seem to come inside of me to stay as the happiness does. You see, I'm a great believer in the Lord, sir," he added simply, "and what I can't understand, I don't bother about, but just take on trust." All the cheerful wrinkles of his face shone peacefully as he talked. "It's true there've been times when things have gone so hard I've felt that I'd just let go and drop down to the bottom, but the wonderful part is that when you get to the bottom there's still something down below you. It's when you fall lowest that you feel most the Lord holding you up. It may be that there ain't any bottom after all but I know if there is one the Lord is surely waiting down there to catch you when you let go. He ain't only there, I reckon, but He's in all the particular hard places on earth much oftener than He's up in His heaven. He knows the poorhouse, you may be sure, and He'll be there to receive me and tell me it ain't so bad as it looks. I don't want to get there, but if I do it will come a bit easier to think that the Lord has been there before me----" The look in his smiling, toothless face brought to Ordway, as he watched him, the memory of the epileptic little preacher who had preached in the prison chapel. Here, also, was that untranslatable rapture of the mystic, which cannot be put into words though it passes silently in its terrible joy from the heart of the speaker to the other heart that is waiting. Again he felt his whole being dissolve in the emotion which had overflowed his eyes that Sunday when he was a prisoner. He remembered the ecstasy with which he had said to himself on that day: "I have found the key!" and he knew now that this ecstasy was akin to the light that had shone for him while he sat on the stage of the town hall in Tappahannock. A chance word from the lips of a doting old man, who saw the doors of the poorhouse swing open to receive him, had restored to Ordway, with a miraculous clearness, the vision that he had lost; and he felt suddenly that the hope with which he had come out of the prison had never really suffered disappointment or failure. CHAPTER VII THE VISION AND THE FACT As he walked home along one of the side streets, shaded by an irregular row of flowering linden trees, it appeared to him that his life in Botetourt, so unendurable an hour before, had been rendered suddenly easy by a miracle, not in his surroundings, but in himself. His help had been asked, and in the act of giving there had flowed back into his heart the strength by which he might live his daily life. His unrest, his loneliness, his ineffectiveness, showed to him now as the result of some fatal weakness in his own nature--some failure in his personal attitude to the people among whom he lived. Straight ahead of him a fine white dust drifted down from the blossoming lindens, lying like powder on the roughly paved street, where the wind blew it in soft swirls and eddies against the crumbling stone steps which led down from the straight doorways of the old-fashioned houses. The boughs overhead made a green arch through which the light fell, and it was under this thick tent of leaves, that, looking up presently, he saw Emily Brooke coming toward him. Not until she was so close to him that he could hear the rustle of her dress, did she lift her eyes from the pavement and meet his cry of welcome with a look of joyful surprise. "Emily!" he cried, and at his voice, she stretched out her hand and stood smiling at him with the soft and animated gaze which, it seemed to him now, he had but dimly remembered. The thought of her had dwelt as a vision in his memory, yet he knew, as he looked into her face, that the ideal figure had lacked the charm, the radiance, the sparkling energy, of the living substance. "So you came to Botetourt and did not send me word," he said. "No, I did not send you word," she answered, "and now I am leaving within an hour." "And you would have gone without seeing me?" For an instant she hesitated, and he watched the joy in her face melt into a sorrowful tenderness. "I knew that you were well and I was satisfied. Would it have been kind to appear to you like an arisen ghost of Tappahannock?" "The greatest kindness," he answered gravely, "that you--or anyone could do me." She shook her head: "Kindness or not, I found that I could not do it." "And you go in an hour?" "My train leaves at seven o'clock. Is it nearly that?" He drew out his watch, a mechanical action which relieved the emotional tension that stretched like a drawn cord between them. "It is not yet six. Will you walk a little way with me down this street? There is still time." As she nodded silently, they turned and went back along the side street, under the irregular rows of lindens, in the direction from which he had come. "One of the girls I used to teach sent for me when she was dying," she said presently, as if feeling the need of some explanation of her presence in Botetourt. "That was three days ago and the funeral was yesterday. It is a great loss to me, for I haven't so many friends that I can spare the few I love." He made no answer to her remark, and in the silence that followed, he felt, with a strange ache at his heart, that the distance that separated them was greater than it had been when she was in Tappahannock and he in Botetourt. Then there had stretched only the luminous dream spaces between their souls; now they stood divided by miles and miles of an immovable reality. Was it possible that in making her a part of his intense inner life, he had lost, in a measure, his consciousness of her actual existence? Then while the vision still struggled blindly against the fact, she turned toward him with a smile which lifted her once more into the shining zone of spirits. "If I can feel that you are happy, that you are at peace, I shall ask nothing more of God," she said. "I am happy to-day," he answered, "but if you had come yesterday, I should have broken down in my weakness. Oh, I have been homesick for Tappahannock since I came away!" "Yet Botetourt is far prettier to my eyes." "To mine also--but it isn't beauty, it is usefulness that I need. For the last two years I have told myself night and day that I had no place and no purpose--that I was the stone that the builders rejected." "And it is different now?" "Different? Yes, I feel as if I had been shoved suddenly into a place where I fitted--as if I were meant, after all, to help hold things together. And the change came--how do you think?" he asked, smiling. "A man wanted money of me to keep him out of the poorhouse." The old gaiety was in his voice, but as she looked at him a ray of faint sunshine fell on his face through a parting in the leaves overhead, and she saw for the first time how much older he had grown since that last evening in Tappahannock. The dark hair was all gray now, the lines of the nose were sharper, the cheek bones showed higher above the bluish hollows beneath. Yet the change which had so greatly aged him had deepened the peculiar sweetness in the curves of his mouth, and this sweetness, which was visible also in his rare smile, moved her heart to a tenderness which was but the keener agony of renouncement. "I know how it is," she said slowly, "just as in Tappahannock you found your happiness in giving yourself to others, so you will find it here." "If I can only be of use--perhaps." "You can be--you will be. What you were with us you will be again." "Yet it was different. There I had your help, hadn't I?" "And you shall have it here," she responded, brightly, though he saw that her eyes were dim with tears. "Will you make me a promise?" he asked, stopping suddenly before some discoloured stone steps "will you promise me that if ever you need a friend--a strong arm, a brain to think for you--you will send me word?" She looked at him smiling, while her tears fell from her eyes. "I will make no promise that is not for your sake as well as for mine," she answered. "But it is for my sake--it is for my happiness." "Then I will promise," she rejoined gravely, "and I will keep it." "I thank you," he responded, taking the hand that she held out. At his words she had turned back, pausing a moment in her walk, as if she had caught from his voice or his look a sense of finality in their parting. "I have but a few minutes left," she said, "so I must walk rapidly back or I shall be late." A sudden clatter of horses' hoofs on the cobblestones in the street caused them to start away from each other, and turning his head, Ordway saw Alice gallop furiously past him with Geoffrey Heath at her side. "How beautiful!" exclaimed Emily beneath her breath, for Alice as she rode by had looked back for an instant, her glowing face framed in blown masses of hair. "Yes, she is beautiful," he replied, and added after a moment as they walked on, "she is my daughter." Her face brightened with pleasure. "Then you are happy--you must be happy," she said. "Why, she looked like Brunhilde." For a moment he hesitated. "Yes," he answered at last, "she is very beautiful--and I am happy." After this they did not speak again until they reached the iron gate before the house in which she was staying. On his side he was caught up into some ideal realm of feeling, in which he possessed her so utterly that the meeting could not bring her nearer to him nor the parting take her farther away. His longing, his unrest, and his failure, were a part of his earthly nature which he seemed to have left below him in that other life from which he had escaped. Without doubt he would descend to it again, as he had descended at moments back into the body of his sin; but in the immediate exaltation of his mood, his love had passed the bounds of personality and entered into a larger and freer world. When they parted, presently, after a casual good-bye, he could persuade himself, almost without effort, that she went on with him in the soft May twilight. At his door he found Lydia just returning from a drive, and taking her wraps from her arm, he ascended the steps and entered the house at her side. She had changed her mourning dress for a gown of pale gray cloth, and he noticed at once that her beauty had lost in transparency and become more human. "I thought you had gone riding with Alice," she said without looking at him, as she stooped to gather up the ends of a lace scarf which had slipped from her arm. "No, I was not with her," he answered. "I wanted to go, but she would not let me." "Are you sure, then, that she was not with Geoffrey Heath?" "I am sure that she was with him, for they passed me not a half hour ago as I came up." They had entered the library while he spoke, and crossing to the hearth, where a small fire burned, Lydia looked up at him with her anxious gaze. "I hoped at first that you would gain some influence over her," she said, in a distressed voice, "but it seems now that she is estranged even from you." "Not estranged, but there is a difference and I am troubled by it. She is young, you see, and I am but a dull and sober companion for her." She shook her head with the little hopeless gesture which was so characteristic of her. Only yesterday this absence of resolution, the discontented droop of her thin, red lips, had worked him into a feeling of irritation against her. But his vision of her to-day had passed through some softening lens; and he saw her shallowness, her vanity, her lack of passion, as spiritual infirmities which were not less to be pitied than an infirmity of the body. "The end is not yet, though," he added cheerfully after a moment, "and she will come back to me in time when I am able really to help her." "Meanwhile is she to be left utterly uncontrolled?" "Not if we can do otherwise. Only we must go quietly and not frighten her too much." Again she met his words with the resigned, hopeless movement of her pretty head in its pearl gray bonnet. "I have done all I can," she said, "and it has been worse than useless. Now you must try if your method is better than mine." "I am trying," he answered smiling. For an instant her gaze fluttered irresolutely over him, as if she were moved by a passing impulse to a deeper utterance. That this impulse concerned Alice he was vaguely aware, for when had his wife ever spoken to him upon a subject more directly personal? Apart from their children he knew there was no bond between them--no memories, no hopes, no ground even for the building of a common interest. Lydia adored her children, he still believed, but when there was nothing further to be said of Dick or of Alice, their conversation flagged upon the most trivial topics. Upon the few unfortunate occasions when he had attempted to surmount the barrier between them, she had appeared to dissolve, rather than to retreat, before his approach. Yet despite her soft, cloud-like exterior, he had discovered that the rigour of her repulsion had hardened to a vein of iron in her nature. What must her life be, he demanded in a sudden passion of pity, when the strongest emotion she had ever known was the aversion that she now felt to him? All the bitterness in his heart melted into compassion at the thought, and he resisted an impulse to take her into his arms and say: "I know, I understand, and I am sorry." Yet he was perfectly aware that if he were to do this, she would only shrink farther away from him, and look up at him with fear and mystification, as if she suspected him of some hidden meaning, of some strategic movement against her impregnable reserve. Her whole relation to him had narrowed into the single instinct of self-defence. If he came unconsciously a step nearer, if he accidentally touched her hand as he passed, he had grown to expect the flaring of her uncontrollable repugnance in the heightened red in her cheeks. "I know that I am repulsive to her, that when she looks at me she still sees the convict," he thought, "and yet the knowledge of this only adds to the pity and tenderness I feel." Lydia had moved through the doorway, but turning back in the hall, she spoke with a return of confidence, as if the fact of the threshold, which she had put between them, had restored to her, in a measure, the advantage that she had lost. "Then I shall leave Alice in your hands. I can do nothing more," she said. "Give me time and I will do all that you cannot," he answered. When she had gone upstairs, he crossed the hall to the closed door of the library, and stopped short on hearing Alice's voice break out into song. The girl was still in her riding habit, and the gay French air on her lips was in accord with the spirited gesture with which she turned to him as he appeared. Her beauty would have disarmed him even without the kiss with which she hastened to avert his reproach. "Alice, can you kiss me when you know you have broken your promise?" "I made no promise," she answered coldly, drawing away. "You told me not to go riding with Geoffrey, but it was you that said it, not I, and you said it only because mamma made you. Oh, I knew all the time that it was she!" Her voice broke with anger and before he could restrain her, she ran from the room and up the staircase. An instant afterward he heard a door slam violently above his head. Was she really in love with Geoffrey Heath? he asked in alarm, or was the passion she had shown merely the outburst of an undisciplined child? CHAPTER VIII THE WEAKNESS IN STRENGTH At breakfast Alice did not appear, and when he went upstairs to her room, she returned an answer in a sullen voice through her closed door. All day his heart was oppressed by the thought of her, but to his surprise, when he came home to luncheon, she met him on the steps with a smiling face. It was evident to him at the first glance that she meant to ignore both the cause and the occasion of last evening's outburst; and he found himself yielding to her determination before he realised all that his evasion of the subject must imply. But while she hung upon his neck, with her cheek pressed to his, it was impossible that he should speak any word that would revive her anger against him. Anything was better than the violence with which she had parted from him the evening before. He could never forget his night of anguish, when he had strained his ears unceasingly for some stir in her room, hoping that a poignant realisation of his love for her would bring her sobbing and penitent to his door before dawn. Now when he saw her again for the first time, she had apparently forgotten the parting which had so tortured his heart. "You've been working too hard, papa, and you're tired," she remarked, rubbing the furrows between his eyebrows in a vain endeavour to smooth them out. "Are you obliged to go back to that hateful office this afternoon?" "I've some work that will keep me there until dark, I fear," he replied. "It's a pity because I'd like a ride of all things." "It is a pity, poor dear," protested Alice, but he noticed that there was no alteration in her sparkling gaiety. Was there, indeed, almost a hint of relief in her tone? and was this demonstrative embrace but a guarded confession of her gratitude for his absence? Something in her manner--a veiled excitement in her look, a subtle change in her voice--caused him to hold her to him in a keener tenderness. It was on his lips to beg for her confidence, to remind her of his sympathy in whatever she might feel or think--to assure her even of his tolerance of Geoffrey Heath. But in the instant when he was about to speak, a sudden recollection of the look with which she had turned from him last evening, checked the impulse before it had had time to pass into words. And so because of his terror of losing her, he let her go at last in silence from his arms. His office work that afternoon was heavier than usual, for in the midst of his mechanical copying and filing, he was abstracted by the memory of that strange, unnatural vivacity in Alice's face. Then in the effort to banish the disturbing recollection, he recalled old Adam Crowley, wrapped in his knitted shawl, on the doorstep of his cottage. A check of Richard's contributing six hundred dollars toward the purchase of a new organ for the church he attended gave Daniel his first opportunity to mention the old man to his uncle. "I saw Crowley the other day," he began abruptly, "the man who was my father's clerk for forty years, and whose place," he added smiling, "I seem to have filled." "Ah, indeed," remarked Richard quietly. "So he is still living?" "His right arm has been paralysed, as you know, and he is very poor. All his savings were lost in some investments he made by my father's advice." "So I have heard--it was most unfortunate." "He had always been led to believe, I understand, that he would be provided for by my father's will." Richard laid down his pen and leaned thoughtfully back in his chair. "He has told me so," he rejoined, "but we have only his word for it, as there was no memorandum concerning him among my brother's papers." "But surely it was well known that father had given him a pension. Aunt Lucy was perfectly aware of it--they talked of it together." "During his lifetime he did pay Crowley a small monthly allowance in consideration of his past services. But his will was an extremely careful document--his bequests are all made in a perfectly legal form." "Was not this will made some years ago, however, before the old man became helpless and lost his money?" Richard nodded: "I understood as much from Crowley when he came to me with his complaint. But, as I reminded him, it would have been a perfectly simple matter for Daniel to have made such a bequest in a codicil--as he did in your case," he concluded deliberately. The younger man met his gaze without flinching. "The will, I believe, was written while I was in prison," he observed. "Upon the day following your conviction. By a former will, which he then destroyed, he had bequeathed to you his entire estate. You understand, of course," he pursued, after a pause in which he had given his nephew full time to possess himself of the information, as well as of the multiplied suggestions that he had offered, "that the income you receive now comes from money that is legally your own. If it should ever appear advisable for me to do so, I am empowered to make over to you the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in securities. The principal is left in my hands merely because it is to your interest that I should keep an eye on the investments." "Yes, I understand, and I understand, too, that but for your insistence my father would probably have left me nothing." "I felt very strongly that he had no right to disinherit you," returned Richard. "In my eyes he made a grave mistake in refusing to lend you support at your trial----" "As you did, I acknowledge gratefully," interrupted Daniel, and wondered why the fact had aroused in him so little appreciation. As far as the observance of the conventional virtues were concerned, Richard Ordway, he supposed, was, and had been all his life, a good man, yet something in his austere excellence froze instantly all the gentler impulses in his nephew's heart. It was impossible after this to mention again the subject of Crowley, so going back to his work, he applied himself to his copying until Richard put down his papers and left the office. Then he locked his desk wearily and followed his uncle out into the street. A soft May afternoon was just closing, and the street lamps glimmered, here and there, like white moths out of the mist which was fragrant with honeysuckle and roses. An old lamplighter, who was descending on his ladder from a tall lamppost at the corner, looked down at Ordway with a friendly and merry face. "The days will soon be so long that you won't be needing us to light you home," he remarked, as he came down gingerly, his hands grasping the rungs of the ladder above his head. When he landed at Daniel's side he began to tell him in a pleasant, garrulous voice about his work, his rheumatism and the strange sights that he had seen in his rounds for so many years. "I've seen wonders in my day, you may believe it," he went on, chuckling, "I've seen babies in carriages that grew up to be brides in orange blossoms, and then went by me later as corpses in hearses. I've seen this town when it warn't mo'n a little middlin' village, and I've seen soldiers dyin' in blood in this very street." A train went by with a rush along the gleaming track that ran through the town. "An' I've known the time when a sight like that would have skeered folks to death," he added. For a minute Ordway looked back, almost wistfully, after the flying train. Then with a friendly "good-bye!" he parted from the lamplighter and went on his way. When he reached home he half expected to find Alice waiting for him in the twilight on the piazza, but, to his surprise, Lydia met him as he entered the hall and asked him, in a voice which sounded as if she were speaking in the presence of servants, to come with her into the library. There she closed the door upon him and inquired in a guarded tone: "Has Alice been with you this afternoon? Have you seen or heard anything of her?" "Not since luncheon. Why, I thought that she was at home with one of the girls." "It seems she left the house immediately after you. She wore her dark blue travelling dress, and one of the servants saw her at the railway station at three o'clock." For an instant the room swam before his eyes. "You believe, then, that she has gone off?" he asked in an unnatural voice, "that she has gone off with Geoffrey Heath?" In the midst of his own hideous anguish he was impressed by the perfect decency of Lydia's grief--by the fact that she wore her anxiety as an added grace. "I have telephoned for Uncle Richard," she said in a subdued tone, "and he has just sent me word that after making inquiries, he learned that Geoffrey Heath went to Washington on the afternoon train." "And Alice is with him!" "If she is not, where is she?" Her eyes filled with tears, and sinking into a chair she dropped her face in her clasped hands. "Oh, I wish Uncle Richard would come," she moaned through her fingers. Again he felt a smothered resentment at this implicit reliance upon Richard Ordway. "We must make sure first that she is gone," he said, "and then it will be time enough to consider ways and means of bringing her back." Turning abruptly away from her, he went out of the library and up the staircase to Alice's room, which was situated directly across the hall from his own. At the first glance it seemed to him that nothing was missing, but when he looked at her dressing-table in the alcove, he found that it had been stripped of her silver toilet articles, and that her little red leather bag, which he had filled with banknotes a few days ago, was not in the top drawer where she kept it. Something in the girl's chamber, so familiar, so redolent of associations with her bright presence, tore at his heart with a fresh sense of loss, like a gnawing pain that fastens into a new wound. On the bed he saw her pink flannel dressing-gown, with the embroidered collar which had so delighted her when she had bought it; on the floor at one side lay her pink quilted slippers, slightly soiled from use; and between the larger pillows was the delicate, lace-trimmed baby's pillow upon which she slept. The perfume of her youth, her freshness, was still in the room, as if she had gone from it for a little while through a still open door. At a touch on his arm he looked round startled, to find one of the servants--the single remaining slave of the past generation--rocking her aged body as she stood at his side. "She ain' gwine come back no mo'--Yes, Lawd, she ain' gwine come back no mo'. Whut's done hit's done en hit cyarn be undone agin." "Why, Aunt Mehaley, what do you mean?" he demanded sternly, oppressed, in spite of himself by her wailing voice and her African superstition. "I'se seen er tur'ble heap done in my day wid dese hyer eyes," resumed the old negress, "but I ain' never seen none un um undone agin atter deys wunst been done. You kin cut down er tree, but you cyarn' mek hit grow back togedder. You kin wring de neck er a rooster, but you cyarn' mek him crow. Yes, my Lawd, hit's easy to pull down, but hit's hard to riz up. I'se ole, Marster, en I'se mos' bline wid lookin', but I ain' never seen whut's done undone agin." She tottered out, still wailing in her half-crazed voice, and hastily shutting the drawers of the dressing-table, he went downstairs again to where Lydia awaited him in the library. "There's no doubt, I fear, that she's gone with Heath," he said, with a constraint into which he had schooled himself on the staircase. "As he appears to have stopped at Washington, I shall take the next train there, which leaves at nine-twenty-five. If they are married----" He broke off, struck by the pallor that overspread her face. "But they are married! They must be married!" she cried in terror. For an instant he stared back at her white face in a horror as great as hers. Was it the first time in his life, he questioned afterwards, that he had been brought face to face with the hideous skeletons upon which living conventions assume a semblance of truth? "I hope to heaven that he has _not_ married her!" he exclaimed in a passion from which she shrank back trembling. "Good God! do you want me to haggle with a cad like that to make him marry my child?" "And if he doesn't? what then?" moaned Lydia, in a voice that seemed to fade away while she spoke. "If he doesn't I shall be almost tempted to bless his name. Haven't you proved to me that he is a cheat and a brute and a libertine, and yet you dare to tell me that I must force him to marry Alice. Oh, if he will only have the mercy to leave her free, I may still save her!" he said. She looked at him with dilated eyes as if rooted in fear to the spot upon which she stood. "But the consequences," she urged weakly at last in a burst of tears. "Oh, I'll take the consequences," he retorted harshly, as he went out. An hour later, when he was settled in the rushing train, it seemed to him that he was able to find comfort in the words with which he had separated from his wife. Let Alice do what she would, there was always hope for her in the thought that he might help her to bear, even if he could not remove from her, the consequences of her actions. Could so great a force as his love for her fail to avert from her young head at least a portion of her inevitable disillusionment? The recollection of her beauty, of her generosity, and of the wreck of her womanhood almost before it had begun, not only added to his suffering, but seemed in some inexplicable way to increase his love. The affection he had always felt for her was strengthened now by that touch of pity which lends a deeper tenderness to all human relations. Upon reaching Washington he found that a shower had come up, and the pavements were already wet when he left the station. He had brought no umbrella, but he hardly heeded this in the eagerness which drove him from street to street in his search for his child. After making vain inquiries at several of the larger hotels, he had begun to feel almost hopeless, when going into the newest and most fashionable of them all, he discovered that "Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Heath" had been assigned an apartment there an hour before. In answer to his question the clerk informed him that the lady had ordered her dinner served upstairs, leaving at the same time explicit instructions that she was "not at home" to anyone who should call. But in spite of this rebuff, he drew out his card, and sat down in a chair in the brilliantly lighted lobby. He had selected a seat near a radiator in the hope of drying his damp clothes, and presently a little cloud of steam rose from his shoulders and drifted out into the shining space. As he watched the gorgeous, over-dressed women who swept by him, he remembered as one remembers a distant dream, the years when his life had been spent among such crowds in just such a dazzling glare of electric light. It appeared false and artificial to him now, but in the meantime, he reflected, while he looked on, he had been in prison. A voice at his elbow interrupted his thoughts, and turning in response to an invitation from a buttoned sleeve, he entered an elevator and was borne rapidly aloft among a tightly wedged group of women who were loudly bewailing their absence from the theatre. It was with difficulty that he released himself at the given signal from his escort, and stepped out upon the red velvet carpet which led to Alice's rooms. In response to a knock from the boy who had accompanied him, the door flew open with a jerk, and Alice appeared before him in a bewildering effect of lace and pink satin. "O papa, papa, you naughty darling!" she exclaimed, and was in his arms before he had time to utter the reproach on his lips. With her head on his breast, he was conscious at first only of an irresponsible joy, like the joy of the angels for whom evil no longer exists. To know that she was alive, that she was safe, that she was in his arms, seemed sufficient delight, not only unto the day, but unto his whole future as well. Then the thought of what it meant to find her thus in her lace and satin came over him, and drawing slightly away he looked for the first time into her face. "Alice, what does it mean?" he asked, as he kissed her. Pushing the loosened hair back from her forehead, she met his question with a protesting pout. "It means that you're a wicked boy to run away from home like this and be all by yourself in a bad city," she responded with a playful shake of her finger. Then she caught his hand and drew him down on the sofa beside her in the midst of the filmy train of her tea-gown. "If you promise never to do it again, I shan't tell mamma on you," she added, with a burst of light-hearted merriment. "Where were you married, Alice? and who did it?" he asked sternly. At his tone a ripple of laughter broke from her lips, and reaching for her little red leather bag on the table, she opened it and tossed a folded paper upon his knees. "I didn't ask his name," she responded, "but you can find it all written on that, I suppose." "And you cared nothing for me?--nothing for my anxiety, my distress?" "I always meant to telegraph you, of course. Geoffrey has gone down now to do it." "But were you obliged to leave home in this way? If you had told me you loved him, I should have understood--should have sympathised." "Oh, but mamma wouldn't, and I had to run off. Of course, I wanted a big wedding like other girls, and a lot of bridesmaids and a long veil, but I knew you'd never consent to it, so I made up my mind just to slip away without saying a word. Geoffrey is so rich that I can make up afterwards for the things I missed when I was married. This is what he gave me to-day. Isn't it lovely?" Baring her throat she showed him a pearl necklace hidden beneath her lace collar. "We're sailing day after to-morrow," she went on, delightedly, "and we shall go straight to Paris because I am dying to see the shops. I wouldn't run away with him until he promised to take me there." There was no regret in her mind, no misgiving, no disquietude. The thought of his pain had not marred for an instant the pleasure of her imaginary shopping. "O papa, I am happy, so happy!" she sang aloud, springing suddenly to her full height and standing before him in her almost barbaric beauty--from the splendid hair falling upon her shoulders to the little feet that could not keep still for sheer joy of living. He saw her red mouth glow and tremble as she bent toward him. "To think that I'm really and truly out of Botetourt at last!" she cried. "Then you've no need of me and I may as well go home?" he said a little wistfully as he rose. At this she hung upon his neck for a minute with her first show of feeling. "I'd rather you wouldn't stay till Geoffrey comes back," she answered, abruptly releasing him, "because it would be a surprise to him and he's always so cross when he's surprised. He has a perfectly awful temper," she confided in a burst of frankness, "but I've learned exactly how to manage him, so it doesn't matter. Then he's so handsome, too. I shouldn't have looked at him twice if he hadn't been handsome. Now, go straight home and take good care of yourself and don't get fat and bald before I come back." She kissed him several times, laughing in little gasps, while she held him close in her arms. Then putting him from her, she pushed him gently out into the hall. As the door closed on her figure, he felt that it shut upon all that was living or warm in his heart. BOOK FOURTH LIBERATION CHAPTER I THE INWARD LIGHT On the day that he returned to Botetourt, it seemed to Ordway that the last vestige of his youth dropped from him; and one afternoon six months later, as he passed some schoolboys who were playing ball in the street, he heard one of them remark in an audible whisper: "Just wait till that old fellow over there gets out of the way." Since coming home again his interests, as well as his power of usefulness, had been taken from him; and the time that he had spent in prison had aged him less than the three peaceful years which he had passed in Botetourt. All that suffering and experience could not destroy had withered and died in the monotonous daily round which carried him from his home to Richard's office and back again from Richard's office to his home. Outwardly he had grown only more quiet and gentle, as people are apt to do who approach the middle years in a position of loneliness and dependence. To Richard and to Lydia, who had never entirely ceased to watch him, it appeared that he had at last "settled down," that he might be, perhaps, trusted to walk alone; and it was with a sensation of relief that his wife observed the intense youthful beam fade from his blue eyes. When his glance grew dull and lifeless, and his features fell gradually into the lines of placid repose which mark the body's contentment rather than the spirit's triumph, it seemed to her that she might at last lay aside the sleepless anxiety which had been her marriage portion. "He has become quite like other people now," she said one day to Richard, "do you know that he has grown to take everything exactly as a matter of course, and I really believe he enjoys what he eats." "I'm glad of that," returned Richard, "for I've noticed that he is looking very far from well. I advised him several weeks ago to take care of that cough, but he seems to have some difficulty in getting rid of it." "He hasn't been well since Alice's marriage," observed Lydia, a little troubled. "You know he travelled home from Washington in wet clothes and had a spell of influenza afterward. He's had a cold ever since, for I hear him coughing a good deal after he first goes to bed." "You'd better make him attend to it, I think, though with his fine chest there's little danger of anything serious." "Do you suppose Alice's marriage could have sobered him? He's grown very quiet and grave, and I dare say it's a sign that his wildness has gone out of him, poor fellow. You remember how his laugh used to frighten me? Well, he never laughs like that now, though he sometimes stares hard at me as if he were looking directly through me, and didn't even know that he was doing it." As she spoke she glanced out of the window and her eyes fell on Daniel, who came slowly up the gravelled walk, his head bent over an armful of old books he carried. "He visits a great deal among the poor," remarked Richard, "and I think that's good for him, provided, of course, that he does it with discretion." "I suppose it is," said Lydia, though she added immediately, "but aren't the poor often very immoral?" A reply was on Richard's lips, but before he could utter it, the door opened and Daniel entered with the slow, almost timid, step into which he had schooled himself since his return to Botetourt. As he saw Richard a smile--his old boyish smile of peculiar sweetness--came to his lips, but without speaking, he crossed to the table and laid down the books he carried. "If those are old books, won't you remember to take them up to your room, Daniel?" said Lydia, in her tone of aggrieved sweetness. "They make such a litter in the library." He started slightly, a nervous affection which had increased in the last months, and looked at her with an apologetic glance. As he stood there she had again that singular sensation of which she had spoken to Richard, as if he were gazing through her and not at her. "I beg your pardon," he answered, "I remember now that I left some here yesterday." "Oh, it doesn't matter, of course," she responded pleasantly, "it's only that I like to keep the house tidy, you know." "They do make rather a mess," he admitted, and gathering them up again, he carried them out of the room and up the staircase. They watched his bent gray head disappear between the damask curtains in the doorway, and then listened almost unconsciously for the sound of his slow gentle tread on the floor above. "There was always too much of the dreamer about him, even as a child," commented Richard, when the door was heard to close over their heads, "but he seems contented enough now with his old books, doesn't he?" "Contented? Yes, I believe he is even happy. I never say much to him because, you see, there is so very little for us to talk about. It is a dreadful thing to confess," she concluded resolutely, "but the truth is I've been always a little afraid of him since--since----" "Afraid?" he looked at her in astonishment. "Well, not exactly afraid--but nervous with a kind of panic shudder at times--a dread of his coming close to me, of his touching me, of his wanting things of me." A shiver ran through her and she bit her lip as if to hide the expression of horror upon her face. "There's nobody else on earth that I would say it to, but when he first came back I used to have nightmares about it. I could never get it out of my mind a minute and if they left me alone with him, I wanted almost to scream with nervousness. It's silly I know, and I can't explain it even to you, but there were times when I shrieked aloud in my sleep because I dreamed that he had come into my room and touched me. I felt that I was wrong and foolish, but I couldn't help it, and I tried--tried--oh, so hard to bear things and to be brave and patient." The tears fell from her eyes on her clasped hands, but her attitude of sorrow only made more appealing the Madonna-like loveliness of her features. "You've been a saint, Lydia," he answered, patting her drooping shoulder as he rose to his feet. "Poor girl, poor girl! and no daughter of my own could be dearer to me," he added in his austere sincerity of manner. "I have tried to do right," replied Lydia, lifting her pure eyes to his in an overflow of religious emotion. Meanwhile the harmless object of their anxiety sat alone in his room under a green lamp, with one of the musty books he had bought open upon his knees. He was not reading, for his gaze was fixed on the opposite wall, and there was in his eyes something of the abstracted vision which Lydia dreaded. It was as if his intellect, forced from the outward experience back into the inner world of thought, had ended by projecting an image of itself into the space at which he looked. While he sat there the patient, apologetic smile with which he had answered to his wife was still on his lips. "I suppose it's because I'm getting old that people and things no longer make me suffer," he said to himself, "it's because I'm getting old that I can look at Lydia unmoved, that I can feel tenderness for her even while I see the repulsion creep into her eyes. It isn't her fault, after all, that she loathes me, nor is it mine. Yes, I'm certainly an old fellow, the boy was right. At any rate, it's pleasanter, on the whole, than being young." Closing the book, he laid it on the table, and leaned forward with his chin on his hands. "But if I'd only known when I was young!" he added, "if I'd only known!" His past life rose before him as a picture that he had seen, rather than as a road along which he had travelled; and he found himself regarding it almost as impersonally as he might have regarded the drawing upon the canvas. The peril of the inner life had already begun to beset him--that mysterious power of reliving one's experience with an intensity which makes the objective world appear dull and colourless by contrast. It was with an effort at times that he was able to detach his mind from the contemplative habit into which he had fallen. Between him and his surroundings there existed but a single bond, and this was the sympathy which went out of him when he was permitted to reach the poor and the afflicted. To them he could still speak, with them he could still be mirthful; but from his wife, his uncle, and the members of his own class, he was divided by that impenetrable wall of social tradition. In his home he had ceased to laugh, as Lydia had said; but he could still laugh in the humbler houses of the poor. They had received him as one of themselves, and for this reason alone he could remember how to be merry when he was with them. To the others, to his own people, he felt himself to be always an outsider, a reclaimed castaway, a philanthropic case instead of an individual; and he knew that if there was one proof the more to Lydia that he was in the end a redeemed character, it was the single fact that he no longer laughed in her presence. It was, he could almost hear her say, unbecoming, if not positively improper, that a person who had spent five years in prison should be able to laugh immoderately afterward; and the gravity of his lips was in her eyes, he understood, the most satisfactory testimony to the regeneration of his heart. And yet Lydia, according to her vision, was a kind, as well as a conscientious woman. The pity of it was that if he were to die now, three years after his homecoming, she would probably reconstruct an imaginary figure of him in her memory, and wear crape for it with appropriate grace and dignity. The works of the imagination are manifold, he thought with a grim humour, even in a dull woman. But as there was not likely to occur anything so dramatic, in the immediate present, as his death, he wondered vaguely what particular form of aversion his wife's attitude would next express. Or could it be that since he had effaced himself so utterly, he hardly dared to listen to the sound of his footsteps in the house, she had grown to regard him with a kind of quiet tolerance, as an object which was unnecessary, perhaps, yet entirely inoffensive? He remembered now that during those terrible first years in prison he had pursued the thought of her with a kind of hopeless violence, yet to-day he could look back upon her desertion of him in his need with a compassion which forgave the weakness that it could not comprehend. That, too, he supposed was a part of the increasing listlessness of middle age. In a little while he would look forward, it might be, to the coming years without dread--to the long dinners when he sat opposite to her with the festive bowl of flowers between them, to the quiet evenings when she lingered for a few minutes under the lamp before going to her room--those evenings which are the supreme hours of love or of despair. Oh, well, he would grow indifferent to the horror of these things, as he had already grown indifferent to the soft curves of her body. Yes, it was a thrice blessed thing, this old age to which he was coming! Then another memory flooded his heart with the glow of youth, and he saw Emily, as she had appeared to him that night in the barn more than six years ago, when she had stood with the lantern held high above her head and the red cape slipping back from her upraised arm. A sharp pain shot through him, and he dropped his eyes as if he had met a blow. That was youth at which he had looked for one longing instant--that was youth and happiness and inextinguishable desire. For a moment he sat with bent head; then with an effort he put the memory from him, and opened his book at the page where he had left off. As he did so there was a tap at his door, and when he had spoken, Lydia came in timidly with a letter in her hand. "This was put into Uncle Richard's box by mistake," she said, "and he has just sent it over." He took it from her and seeing that it was addressed in Baxter's handwriting, laid it, still unopened, upon the table. "Won't you sit down?" he asked, pushing forward the chair from which he had risen. A brief hesitation showed in her face; then as he turned away from her to pick up some scattered papers from the floor, she sat down with a tentative, nervous manner. "Are you quite sure that you're well, Daniel?" she inquired. "Uncle Richard noticed to-day that you coughed a good deal in the office. I wonder if you get exactly the proper kind of food?" He nodded, smiling. "Oh, I'm all right," he responded, "I'm as hard as nails, you know, and always have been." "Even hard people break down sometimes. I wish you would take a tonic or see a doctor." Her solicitude surprised him, until he remembered that she had never failed in sympathy for purely physical ailments. If he had needed bodily healing instead of mental, she would probably have applied it with a conscientious devotedness. "I am much obliged to you, but I'm really not sick," he insisted, "it is very good of you, however." "It is nothing more than my duty," she rejoined, sweetly. "Well, that may be, but there's nothing to prevent my being obliged to you for doing your duty." Puzzled as always by his whimsical tone, she sat looking at him with her gentle, uncomprehending glance. "I wish, all the same," she murmured, "that you would let me send you a mustard plaster to put on your chest." He shook his head without replying in words to her suggestion. "Do you know it is three months since we had a letter from Alice," he said, "and six since she went away?" "Oh, it's that then? You have been worrying about Alice?" "How can I help it? We hardly know even that she is living." "I've thought of her day and night since her marriage, though it's just as likely, isn't it, that she's taken up with the new countries and her new clothes?" "Oh, of course, it may be that, but it is the awful uncertainty that kills." With a sigh she looked down at her slippered feet. "I was thinking to-day what a comfort Dick is to me--to us all," she said, "one is so sure of him and he is doing so splendidly at college." "Yes," he agreed, "Dick is a comfort. I wish poor Alice was more like him." "She was always wild, you remember, never like other children, and it was impossible to make her understand that some things were right and some wrong. Yet I never thought that she would care for such a loud, vulgar creature as Geoffrey Heath." "Did she care for him?" asked Daniel, almost in a whisper, "or was it only that she wanted to see Paris?" "Well, she may have improved him a little--at least let us hope so," she remarked as if she had not heard his question. "He has money, at any rate, and that is what she has always wanted, though I fear even Geoffrey's income will be strained by her ceaseless extravagance." As she finished he thought of her own youth, which she had evidently forgotten, and it seemed to him that the faults she blamed most in Alice were those which she had overcome patiently in her own nature. "I could stand anything better than this long suspense," he said gently. "It does wear one out," she rejoined. "I am very, very sorry for you." Some unaccustomed tone in her voice--a more human quality, a deeper cadence, made him wonder in an impulse of self-reproach if, after all, the breach between them was in part of his own making? Was it still possible to save from the ruin, if not love, at least human companionship? "Lydia," he said, "it isn't Alice, it is mostly loneliness, I think." Rising from her chair she stood before him with her vague, sweet smile playing about her lips. "It is natural that you should feel depressed with that cough," she remarked, "I really wish you would let me send you a mustard plaster." As the cough broke out again, he strangled it hilariously in a laugh. "Oh, well, if it's any comfort to you, I don't mind," he responded. When she had gone he picked up Baxter's letter from the table and opened it with trembling fingers. What he had expected to find, he hardly knew, but as he read the words, written so laboriously in Baxter's big scrawling writing, he felt that his energy returned to him with the demand for action--for personal responsibility. "I don't know whether or not you heard of Mrs. Brooke's death three months ago," the letter ran, "but this is to say that Mr. Beverly dropped down with a paralytic stroke last week; and now since he's dead and buried, the place is to be sold for debt and the children sent off to school to a friend of Miss Emily's where they can go cheap. Miss Emily has a good place now in the Tappahannock Bank, but she's going North before Christmas to some big boarding school where they teach riding. There are a lot of things to be settled about the sale, and I thought that, being convenient, you might take the trouble to run down for a day and help us with your advice, _which is of the best always_. "Hoping that you are in good health, I am at present, BAXTER." As he folded the letter a flush overspread his face. "I'll go," he said, with a new energy in his voice, "I'll go to-morrow." Then turning in response to a knock, he opened the door and received the mustard plaster which Lydia had made. CHAPTER II AT TAPPAHANNOCK AGAIN He had sent a telegram to Banks, and as the train pulled into the station, he saw the familiar sandy head and freckled face awaiting him upon the platform. "By George, this is a bully sight, Smith," was the first shout that reached his ears. "You're not a bit more pleased than I am," he returned laughing with pleasure, as he glanced from the station, crowded with noisy Negroes, up the dusty street into which they were about to turn. "It's like coming home again, and upon my word, I wish I were never to leave here. But how are you, Banks? So you are married to Milly and going to live contented forever afterward." "Yes, I'm married," replied Banks, without enthusiasm, "and there's a baby about which Milly is clean crazy. Milly has got so fat," he added, "that you'd never believe I could have spanned her waist with my hands three years ago." "Indeed? And is she as captivating as ever?" "Well, I reckon she must be," said Banks, "but it doesn't seem so mysterious, somehow, as it used to." His silly, affectionate smile broke out as he looked at his companion. "To tell the truth," he confessed, "I've been missing you mighty hard, Smith, marriage or no marriage. It ain't anything against Milly, God knows, that she can't take your place, and it ain't anything against the baby. What I want is somebody I can sit down and look up to, and I don't seem to be exactly able to look up to Milly or to the baby." "The trouble with you, my dear Banks, is that you are an incorrigible idealist and always will be. You were born to be a poet and I don't see to save my life how you escaped." "I didn't. I used to write a poem every Sunday of my life when I first went into tobacco. But after that Milly came and I got used to spending all my Sundays with her." "Well, now that you have her in the week, you might begin all over again." They were walking rapidly up the long hill, and as Ordway passed, he nodded right and left to the familiar faces that looked out from the shop doors. They were all friendly, they were all smiling, they were all ready to welcome him back among them. "The queer part is," observed Banks, with that stubborn vein of philosophy which accorded so oddly with his frivolous features, "that the thing you get doesn't ever seem to be the same as the thing you wanted. This Milly is kind to me and the other wasn't, but, somehow, that hasn't made me stop regretting the other one that I didn't marry--the Milly that banged and snapped at me about my clothes and things all day long. I don't know what it means, Smith, I've studied about it, but I can't understand." "The meaning of it is, Banks, that you wanted not the woman, but the dream." "Well, I didn't get it," rejoined Banks, gloomily. "Yet Milly's a good wife and you're happy, aren't you?" "I should be," replied Banks, "if I could forget how darn fascinating that other Milly was. Oh, yes, she's a good wife and a doting mother, and I'm happy enough, but it's a soft, squashy kind of happiness, not like the way I used to feel when I'd walk home with you after the preaching in the old field." While he spoke they had reached Baxter's warehouse, and as Ordway was recognized, there was a quiver of excitement in the little crowd about the doorway. A moment later it had surrounded him with a shout of welcome. A dozen friendly hands were outstretched, a dozen breathless lips were calling his name. As the noise passed through the neighbouring windows, the throng was increased by a number of small storekeepers and a few straggling operatives from the cotton mills, until at last he stopped, half laughing, half crying, in their midst. Ten minutes afterward, when Baxter wedged his big person through the archway, he saw Ordway standing bareheaded in the street, his face suffused with a glow which seemed to give back to him a fleeting beam of the youth that he had lost. "Well, I reckon it's my turn now. You can just step inside the office, Smith," remarked Baxter, while he grasped Ordway's arm and pulled him back into the warehouse. As they entered the little room, Daniel saw again the battered chair, the pile of Smith's Almanacs, and the paper weight, representing a gambolling kitten, upon the desk. "I'm glad to see you--we're all glad to see you," said Baxter, shaking his hand for the third time with a grasp which made Ordway feel that he was in the clutch of a down cushion. "It isn't the way of Tappahannock to forget a friend, and she ain't forgotten you." "It's like her," returned Ordway, and he added with a sigh, "I only wish I were coming back for good, Baxter." "There now!" exclaimed Baxter, chuckling, "you don't, do you? Well, all I can say, my boy, is that you've got a powerful soft spot that you left here, and your old job in the warehouse is still waiting for you when you care to take it. I tell you what, Smith, you've surely spoiled me for any other bookkeeper, and I ain't so certain, when it comes to that, that you haven't spoiled me for myself." He was larger, softer, more slovenly than ever, but he was so undeniably the perfect and inimitable Baxter, that Ordway felt his heart go out to him in a rush of sentiment. "Oh, Baxter, how is it possible that I've lived without you?" he asked. "I don't know, Smith, but it's a plain fact that after my wife--and that's nature--there ain't anybody goin' that I set so much store by. Why, when I was in Botetourt last spring, I went so far as to put my right foot on your bottom step, but, somehow, the left never picked up the courage to follow it." "Do you dare to tell me that you've been to Botetourt?" demanded Ordway with indignation. "Well, I could have stood the house you live it, though it kind of took my breath away," replied Baxter, with an embarrassed and guilty air, "but when it came to facing that fellow at the door, then my courage gave out and I bolted. I studied him a long while, thinking I might get my eyes used to the sight of him, but it did no good. I declar', Smith, I could no more have put a word to him than I could to the undertaker at my own funeral. Bless my soul, suh, poor Mr. Beverly, when he was alive, didn't hold a tallow candle to that man." "You might have laid in wait for me in the street, then, that would have been only fair." "But how did I know, Smith, that you wan't livin' up to the man at your door?" "It wouldn't have taken you long to find out that I wasn't. So poor Mr. Beverly is dead and buried, then, is he?" Baxter's face adopted instantly a funereal gloom, and his voice, when he spoke, held a quaver of regret. "There wasn't a finer gentleman on earth than Mr. Beverly," he said, "and he would have given me his last blessed cent if he'd ever had one to give. I've lost a friend, Smith, there's no doubt of that, I've lost a friend. And poor Mrs. Brooke, too," he added sadly. "Many and many is the time I've heard Mr. Beverly grieven' over the way she worked. 'If things had only come out as I planned them, Baxter,' he'd say to me, 'my wife should never have raised her finger except to lift food to her lips.'" "And yet I've seen him send her downstairs a dozen times a day to make him a lemonade," observed Ordway cynically. "That wasn't his fault, suh, he was born like that--it was just his way. He was always obliged to have what he wanted." "Well, I can forgive him for killing his wife, but I can't pardon him for the way he treated his sister. That girl used to work like a farm hand when I was out there." "She was mighty fond of him all the same, was Miss Emily." "Everybody was, that's what I'm quarreling about. He didn't deserve it." "But he meant well in his heart, Smith, and it's by that that I'm judgin' him. It wasn't his fault, was it, if things never went just the way he had planned them out? I don't deny, of course, that he was sort of flighty at times, as when he made a will the week before he died and left five hundred dollars to the Tappahannock Orphan Asylum." "To the Orphan Asylum? Why, his own children are orphans, and he didn't have five hundred dollars to his name!" "Of course, he didn't, that's just the point," said Baxter with a placid tolerance which seemed largely the result of physical bulk, "and so they have had to sell most of the furniture to pay the bequest. You see, just the night before his stroke, he got himself considerably worked up over those orphans. So he just couldn't help hopin' he would have five hundred dollars to leave 'em when he came to die, an' in case he did have it he thought he might as well be prepared. Then he sat right down and wrote the bequest out, and the next day there came his stroke and carried him off." "Oh, you're a first-rate advocate, Baxter, but that doesn't alter my opinion of Mr. Beverly. What about his own orphans now? How are they going to be provided for?" "It seems Miss Emily is to board 'em out at some school she knows of, and I've settled it with her that she's to borrow enough from me to tide over any extra expenses until spring." "Then we are to wind up the affairs of Cedar Hill, are we? I suppose it's best for everybody, but it makes me sad enough to think of it." "And me, too, Smith," said Baxter, sentimentally. "I can see Mr. Beverly to the life now playin' with his dominoes on the front porch. But there's mighty little to wind up, when it comes to that. It's mortgaged pretty near to the last shingle, and when the bequest to the orphans is paid out of what's over, there'll be precious few dollars that Miss Emily can call her own. The reason I sent for you, Smith," he added in a solemn voice, "was that I thought you might be some comfort to that poor girl out there in her affliction. If you feel inclined, I hoped you'd walk out to Cedar Hill and read her a chapter or so in the Bible. I remembered how consolin' you used to be to people in trouble." With a prodigious effort Ordway swallowed his irreverent mirth, while Baxter's pious tones sounded in his ears. "Of course I shall go out to Cedar Hill," he returned, "but I was wondering, Baxter," he broke off for a minute and then went on again with an embarrassed manner, "I was wondering if there was any way I could help those children without being found out? It would make me particularly happy to feel that I might share in giving them an education. Do you think you could smuggle the money for their school bills into their Christmas stockings?" Baxter thought over it a moment. "I might manage it," he replied, "seein' that the bills are mostly to come through my hands, and I'm to settle all that I can out of what's left of the estate." As he paused Daniel looked hastily away from him, fearful lest Baxter might be perplexed by the joy that shone in his face. To be connected, even so remotely, with Emily in the care of Beverly's children, was a happiness for which, a moment ago, he had not dared to hope. "Let me deposit the amount with you twice a year," he said, "that will be both the easiest and the safest way." "Maybe you're right. And now it's settled, ain't it, that you're to come to my house to stay?" "I must go back on the night train, I'm sorry to say, but if you'll let me I'll drop in to supper. I remember your wife's biscuits of old," he added, smiling. "You don't mean it! Well, it'll tickle her to death, I reckon. It ain't likely, by the way, that you'll find much to eat out at Cedar Hill, so you'd better remember to have a snack before you start." "Oh, I can fast until supper," returned Daniel, rising. "Well, don't forget to give my respects to Miss Emily, and tell her I say not to worry, but to let the Lord take a turn. You'll find things pretty topsy-turvy out there, Smith," he added, "but if you don't happen to have your Bible handy, I'll lend you one and welcome. There's the big one with gilt clasps the boys gave me last Christmas right on top of my desk." "Oh, they're sure to have one around," replied Ordway gravely, as he shook hands again before leaving the office. From the top of the hill by the brick church, he caught a glimpse of the locust trees in Mrs. Twine's little yard, and turning in response to a remembered force of habit, he followed the board sidewalk to the whitewashed gate, which hung slightly open. In the street a small boy was busily flinging pebbles at the driver of a coal wagon, and calling the child to him, Ordway inquired if Mrs. Twine still lived in that house. "Thar ain't no Mrs. Twine," replied the boy, "she's Mrs. Buzzy. She married my pa, that's why I'm here," he explained with a wink, as the door behind him flew open, and the lady in question rushed out to welcome her former lodger. "I hear her now--she's a-comin'. My, an' she's a tartar, she is!" "It's the best sight I've laid eyes on sense I saw po', dear Bill on his deathbed," exclaimed the tartar, with delight. "Come right in, suh, come right in an' set down an' let me git a look at you. Thar ain't much cheer in the house now sence I've lost Bill an' his sprightly ways, but the welcome's warm if the house ain't." She brought him ceremoniously into her closed parlour, and then at his request led him out of the stagnant air back into her comfortable, though untidy, kitchen. "I jest had my hand in the dough, suh, when I heard yo' voice," she observed apologetically, as she wiped off the bottom of a chair with her blue gingham apron. "I knew you'd be set back to find out I didn't stay long a widder." "I hadn't even heard of Bill's death," he returned, "so it was something of a surprise to discover that you were no longer Mrs. Twine. Was it very sudden?" "Yes, suh, 'twas tremens--delicious tremens--an' they took him off so quick we didn't even have the crape in the house to tie on the front do' knob. You could a heard him holler all the way down to the cotton mills. He al'ays had powerful fine lungs, had Bill, an' if he'd a-waited for his lungs to take him, he'd be settin' thar right now, as peart as life." Her eyes filled with tears, but wiping them hastily away with her apron, she took up a pan of potatoes and began paring them with a handleless knife. "After your former marriages," he remarked doubtful as to whether he should offer sympathy or congratulations, "I should have thought you would have rested free for a time at least." "It warn't my way, Mr. Smith," she responded, with a mournful shake of her head. "To be sure I had a few peaceful months arter Bill was gone, but the queer thing is how powerful soon peace can begin to pall on yo' taste. Why, I hadn't been in mo'nin' for Bill goin' on to four months, when Silas Trimmer came along an' axed me, an' I said 'yes' as quick as that, jest out a the habit of it. I took off my mo'nin' an' kep' comp'ny with him for quite a while, but we had a quarrel over Bill's tombstone, suh, for, bein' a close-fisted man, he warn't willin' that I should put up as big a monument as I'd a mind to. Well, I broke off with him on that account, for when it comes to choosin' between respect to the dead an' marriage to the livin' Silas Trimmer, I told him 'I reckon it won't take long for you to find out which way my morals air set.' He got mad as a hornet and went off, and I put on mo'nin' agin an' wo' it steddy twil the year was up." "And at the end of that time, I presume, you were wearied of widowhood and married Buzzy?" "It's a queer thing, suh," she observed, as she picked up a fresh potato and inspected it as attentively as if it had been a new proposal, "it's a queer thing we ain't never so miserable in this world as when we ain't got the frazzle of an excuse to be so. Now, arter Bill went from me, thar was sech a quiet about that it began to git on my nerves, an' at last it got so that I couldn't sleep at nights because I was no longer obleeged to keep one ear open to hear if he was comin' upstairs drunk or sober. Bless yo' heart, thar's not a woman on earth that don't need some sort of distraction, an Bill was a long sight better at distractin' you than any circus I've ever seen. Why, I even stopped goin' to 'em as long as he was livin', for it was a question every minute as to whether he was goin' to chuck you under the chin or lam you on the head, an' thar was a mortal lot a sprightliness about it. I reckon I must have got sort a sp'iled by the excitement, for when 't was took away, I jest didn't seem to be able to settle down. But thar are mighty few men with the little ways that Bill had," she reflected sadly. "Yet your present husband is kind to you, is he not?" "Oh, he's kind enough, suh," she replied, with unutterable contempt, "but thar ain't nothin' in marriage that palls so soon as kindness. It's unexpectedness that keeps you from goin' plum crazy with the sameness of it, an' thar ain't a bit of unexpectedness about Jake. He does everything so regular that thar're times when I'd like to bust him open jest to see how he is wound up inside. Naw, suh, it ain't the blows that wears a woman out, it's the mortal sameness." Clearly there was no comfort to be afforded her, and after a few words of practical advice on the subject of the children's education, he shook hands with her and started again in the direction of Cedar Hill. The road with its November colours brought back to him the many hours when he had tramped over it in cheerfulness or in despair. The dull brown stretches of broomsedge, rolling like a high sea, the humble cabins, nestling so close to the ground, the pale clay road winding under the half-bared trees, from which the bright leaves were fluttering downward--these things made the breach of the years close as suddenly as if the divided scenery upon a stage had rolled together. While he walked alone here it was impossible to believe in the reality of his life in Botetourt. As he approached Cedar Hill, the long melancholy avenue appeared to him as an appropriate shelter for Beverly's gentle ghost. He was surprised to discover with what tenderness he was able to surround the memory of that poetic figure since he stood again in the atmosphere which had helped to cultivate his indefinable charm. In Tappahannock Beverly's life might still be read in the dry lines of prose, but beneath the historic influences of Cedar Hill it became, even in Ordway's eyes, a poem of sentiment. Beyond the garden, he could see presently, through a gap in the trees, the silvery blur of life everlasting in the fallow land, which was steeped in afternoon sunshine. Somewhere from a nearer meadow there floated a faint call of "Coopee! Coopee! Coopee!" to the turkeys lost in the sassafras. Then as he reached the house Aunt Mehitable's face looked down at him from a window in the second story: and in response to her signs of welcome, he ascended the steps and entered the hall, where he stopped upon hearing a child's voice through the half open door of the dining-room. "May I wear my coral beads even if I am in mourning, Aunt Emily?" "Not yet, Bella," answered Emily's patient yet energetic tones. "Put them away awhile and they'll be all the prettier when you take them out again." "But can't I mourn for papa and mamma just as well in my beads as I can without them?" "That may be, dear, but we must consider what other people will say." "What have other people got to do with my mourning, Aunt Emily?" "I don't know, but when you grow up you'll find that they have something to do with everything that concerns you." "Well, then, I shan't mourn at all," replied Bella, defiantly. "If you won't let me mourn in my coral beads, I shan't mourn a single bit without them." "There, there, Bella, go on with your lesson," said Emily sternly, "you are a naughty girl." At the sound of Ordway's step on the threshold, she rose to her feet, with a frightened movement, and stood, white and trembling, her hand pressed to her quivering bosom. "You!" she cried out sharply, and there was a sound in her voice that brought him with a rush to her side. But as he reached her she drew quickly away, and hiding her face in her hands, broke into passionate weeping. It was the first time that he had seen her lose her habit of self-command, and while he watched her, he felt that each of her broken sobs was wrung from his own heart. "I was a fool not to prepare you," he said, as he placed a restraining hand on the awe-struck Bella. "You've had so many shocks I ought to have known--I ought to have foreseen----" At his words she looked up instantly, drying her tears on a child's dress which she was mending. "You came so suddenly that it startled me, that is all," she answered. "I thought for a minute that something had happened to you--that you were an apparition instead of a reality. I've got into the habit of seeing ghosts of late." "It's a bad habit," he replied, as he pushed Bella from the room and closed the door after her. "But I'm not a ghost, Emily, only a rough and common mortal. Baxter wrote me of Beverly's death, so I came thinking that I might be of some little use. Remember what you promised me in Botetourt." As he looked at her now more closely, he saw that the clear brown of her skin had taken a sallow tinge, as if she were very weary, and that there were faint violet shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes. These outward signs of her weakness moved him to a passion deeper and tenderer than he had ever felt before. "I have not forgotten," she responded, after a moment in which she had recovered her usual bright aspect, "but there is really nothing one can do, it is all so simple. The farm has already been sold for debt, and so I shall start in the world without burdens, if without wealth." "And the children? What of them?" "That is arranged, too, very easily. Blair is fifteen now, and he will be given a scholarship at college. The girls will go to a friend of mine, who has a boarding school and has made most reasonable terms." "And you?" he asked in a voice that expressed something of the longing he could not keep back. "Is there to be nothing but hard work for you in the future?" "I am not afraid of work," she rejoined, smiling, "I am afraid only of reaching a place where work does not count." As he made no answer, she talked on brightly, telling him of her plans for the future, of the progress the children had shown at their lessons, of the arrangements she had made for Aunt Mehitable and Micah, and of the innumerable changes which had occurred since he went away. So full of life, of energy, of hopefulness, were her face and voice that but for her black dress he would not have suspected that she had stood recently beside a deathbed. Yet as he listened to her, his heart was torn by the sharp anguish of parting, and when presently she began to question him about his life in Botetourt, it was with difficulty that he forced himself to reply in a steady voice. All other memories of her would give way, he felt, before the picture of her in her black dress against the burning logs, with the red firelight playing over her white face and hands. An hour later, when he rose to go, he took both of her hands in his, and bending his head laid his burning forehead against her open palms. "Emily," he said, "tell me that you understand." For a moment she gazed down on him in silence. Then, as he raised his eyes, she kissed him so softly that it seemed as if a spirit had touched his lips. "I understand--forever," she answered. At her words he straightened himself, as though a burden had fallen from him, and turning slowly away he went out of the house and back in the direction of Tappahannock. CHAPTER III ALICE'S MARRIAGE It was after ten o'clock when he returned to Botetourt, and he found upon reaching home that Lydia had already gone to bed, though a bottle of cough syrup, placed conspicuously upon his bureau, bore mute witness to the continuance of her solicitude. After so marked a consideration it seemed to him only decent that he should swallow a portion of the liquid; and he was in the act of filling the tablespoon she had left, when a ring at the door caused him to start until the medicine spilled from his hand. A moment later the ring was repeated more violently, and as he was aware that the servants had already left the house, he threw on his coat, and lighting a candle, went hurriedly out into the hall and down the dark staircase. The sound of a hand beating on the panels of the door quickened his steps almost into a run, and he was hardly surprised, when he had withdrawn the bolts, to find Alice's face looking at him from the darkness outside. She was pale and thin, he saw at the first glance, and there was an angry look in her eyes, which appeared unnaturally large in their violent circles. "I thought you would never open to me, papa," she said fretfully as she crossed the threshold. "Oh, I am so glad to see you again! Feel how cold my hands are, I am half frozen." Taking her into his arms, he kissed her face passionately as it rested for an instant against his shoulder. "Are you alone, Alice? Where is your husband?" Without answering, she raised her head, shivering slightly, and then turning away, entered the library where a log fire was smouldering to ashes. As he threw on more wood, she came over to the hearth, and stretched out her hands to the warmth with a nervous gesture. Then the flame shot up and he saw that her beauty had gained rather than lost by the change in her features. She appeared taller, slenderer, more distinguished, and the vivid black and white of her colouring was intensified by the perfect simplicity of the light cloth gown and dark furs she wore. "Oh, he's at home," she answered, breaking the long silence. "I mean he's in the house in Henry Street, but we had a quarrel an hour after we got back, so I put on my hat again and came away. I'm not going back--not unless he makes it bearable for me to live with him. He's such--such a brute that it's as much as one can do to put up with it, and it's been killing me by inches for the last months. I meant to write you about it, but somehow I couldn't, and yet I knew that I couldn't write at all without letting you see it. Oh, he's unbearable!" she exclaimed, with a tremor of disgust. "You will never know--you will never be able to imagine all that I've been through!" "But is he unkind to you, Alice? Is he cruel?" She bared her arm with a superb disdainful gesture, and he saw three rapidly discolouring bruises on her delicate flesh. The sight filled him with loathing rather than anger, and he caught her to him almost fiercely as if he would hold her not only against Geoffrey Heath, but against herself. "You shall not go back to him," he said, "I will not permit it!" "The worst part is," she went on vehemently, as if he had not spoken, "that it is about money--money--always money. He has millions, his lawyers told me so, and yet he makes me give an account to him of every penny that I spend. I married him because I thought I should be rich and free, but he's been hardly better than a miser since the day of the wedding. He wants me to dress like a dowdy, for all his wealth, and I can't buy a ring that he doesn't raise a terrible fuss. I hate him more and more every day I live, but it makes no difference to him as long as he has me around to look at whenever he pleases. I have to pay him back for every dollar that he gives me, and if I keep away from him and get cross, he holds back my allowance. Oh, it's a dog's life!" she exclaimed wildly, "and it is killing me!" "You shan't bear it, Alice. As long as I'm alive you are safe with me." "For a time I could endure it because of the travelling and the strange countries," she resumed, ignoring the tenderness in his voice, "but Geoffrey was so frightfully jealous that if I so much as spoke to a man, he immediately flew into a rage. He even made me leave the opera one night in Paris because a Russian Grand Duke in the next box looked at me so hard." Throwing herself into a chair, she let her furs slip from her shoulders, and sat staring moodily into the fire. "I've sworn a hundred times that I'd leave him," she said, "and yet I've never done it until to-night." While she talked on feverishly, he untied her veil, which she had tossed back, and taking off her hat, pressed her gently against the cushions he had placed in her chair. "You look so tired, darling, you must rest," he said. "Rest! You may as well tell me to sleep!" she exclaimed. Then her tone altered abruptly, and for the first time, she seemed able to penetrate beyond her own selfish absorption. "Oh, you poor papa, how very old you look!" she said. Taking his head in her arms, she pressed it to her bosom and cried softly for a minute. "It's all my fault--everything is my fault, but I can't help it. I'm made that way." Then pushing him from her suddenly, she sprang to her feet and began walking up and down in her restless excited manner. "Let me get you a glass of wine, Alice," he said, "you are trembling all over." She shook her head. "It isn't that--it isn't that. It's the awful--awful money. If it wasn't for the money I could go on. Oh, I wish I'd never spent a single dollar! I wish I'd always gone in rags!" Again he forced her back into her chair and again, after a minute of quiet, she rose to her feet and broke into hysterical sobs. "All that I have is yours, Alice, you know that," he said in the effort to soothe her, "and, besides, your own property is hardly less than two hundred thousand." "But Uncle Richard won't give it to me," she returned angrily. "I wrote and begged him on my knees and he still refused to let me have a penny more than my regular income. It's all tied up, he says, in investments, and that until I am twenty-one it must remain in his hands." With a frantic movement, she reached for her muff, and drew from it a handful of crumpled papers, which she held out to him. "Geoffrey found these to-night and they brought on the quarrel," she said. "Yesterday he gave me this bracelet and he seems to think I could live on it for a month!" She stretched out her arm, as she spoke, and showed him a glittering circle of diamonds immediately below the blue finger marks. "There's a sable coat still that he doesn't know a thing of," she finished with a moan. Bending under the lamp, he glanced hurriedly over the papers she had given him, and then rose to his feet still holding them in his hand. "These alone come to twenty thousand dollars, Alice," he said with a gentle sternness. "And there are others, too," she cried, making no effort to control her convulsive sobs. "There are others which I didn't dare even to let him see." For a moment he let her weep without seeking to arrest her tears. "Are you sure this will be a lesson to you?" he asked at last. "Will you be careful--very careful from this time?" "Oh, I'll never spend a penny again. I'll stay in Botetourt forever," she promised desperately, eager to retrieve the immediate instant by the pledge of a more or less uncertain future. "Then we must help you," he said. "Among us all--Uncle Richard, your mother and I--it will surely be possible." Pacified at once by his assurance, she sat down again and dried her eyes in her muff. "It seems a thousand years since I went away," she observed, glancing about her for the first time. "Nothing is changed and yet everything appears to be different." "And are you different also?" he asked. "Oh, I'm older and I've seen a great deal more," she responded, with a laugh which came almost as a shock to him after her recent tears, "but I still want to go everywhere and have everything just as I used to." "But I thought you were determined to stay in Botetourt for the future?" he suggested. "Well, so I am, I suppose," she returned dismally, "there's nothing else for me to do, is there?" "Nothing that I see." "Then I may as well make up my mind to be miserable forever. It's so frightfully gloomy in this old house, isn't it? How is mamma?" "She's just as you left her, neither very well nor very sick." "So it's exactly what it always was, I suppose, and will drive me to distraction in a few weeks. Is Dick away?" "He's at college, and he's doing finely." "Of course he is--that's why he's such a bore." "Let Dick alone, Alice, and tell me about yourself. So you went to Europe immediately after I saw you in Washington?" "Two days later. I was dreadfully seasick, and Geoffrey was as disagreeable as he could be, and made all kinds of horrid jokes about me." "You went straight to Paris, didn't you?" "As soon as we landed, but Geoffrey made me come away in three weeks because he said I spent so much money." Her face clouded again at the recollection of her embarrassments. "Oh, we had awful scenes, but I hadn't even a wedding dress, you know, and French dressmakers are so frightfully expensive. One of them charged me five thousand dollars for a gown--but he told me that it was really cheap, because he'd sold one to another American the day before for twelve thousand. I don't know who her husband is," she added wistfully, "but I wish I were married to him." The wildness of her extravagance depressed him even more than her excessive despair had done; and he wondered if the vagueness of her ideas of wealth was due to the utter lack in her of the imagination which foresees results? She had lived since her girlhood in a quiet Virginia town, her surroundings had been comparatively simple, and she had never been thrown, until her marriage, amid the corrupting influences of great wealth, yet, in spite of these things, she had squandered a fortune as carelessly as a child might have strewed pebbles upon the beach. Her regret at last had come not through realisation of her fault, but in the face of the immediate punishment which threatened her. "So he got you out of Paris? Well, I'm glad of that," he remarked. "He was perfectly brutal about it, I wish you could have heard him. Then we went down into Italy and did nothing for months but look at old pictures--at least I did, he wouldn't come--and float around in a gondola until I almost died from the monotony. It was only after I found a lace shop, where they had the most beautiful things, that he would take me away, and then he insisted upon going to some little place up in the Alps because he said he didn't suppose I could possibly pack the mountains into my trunks. Oh, those dreadful mountains! They were so glaring I could never go out of doors until the afternoon, and Geoffrey would go off climbing or shooting and leave me alone in a horrid little hotel where there was nobody but a one-eyed German army officer, and a woman missionary who was bracing herself for South Africa. She wore a knitted jersey all day and a collar which looked as if it would cut her head off if she ever forgot herself and bent her neck." Her laughter, the delicious, irresponsible laughter of a child, rippled out: "She asked me one day if our blacks wore draperies? The ones in South Africa didn't, and it made it very embarrassing sometimes, she said, to missionary to them. Oh, you can't imagine what I suffered from her, and Geoffrey was so horrid about it, and insisted that she was just the sort of companion that I needed. So one day when he happened to be in the writing-room where she was, I locked the door on the outside and threw the key down into the gorge. There wasn't any locksmith nearer than twenty miles, and when they sent for him he was away. Oh, it was simply too funny for words! Geoffrey on the inside was trying to break the heavy lock and the proprietor on the outside was protesting that he mustn't, and all the time we could hear the missionary begging everybody please to be patient. She said if it were required of her she was quite prepared to stay locked up all night, but Geoffrey wasn't, so he swung himself down by the branches of a tree which grew near the window." All her old fascination had come back to her with her change of mood, and he forgot to listen to her words while he watched the merriment sparkle in her deep blue eyes. It was a part of his destiny that he should submit to her spell, as, he supposed, even Geoffrey submitted at times. He was about to make some vague comment upon her story, when her face changed abruptly into an affected gravity, and turning his head, he saw that Lydia had come noiselessly into the room, and was advancing to meet her daughter with outstretched arms. "Why, Alice, my child, what a beautiful surprise! When did you come?" As Alice started forward to her embrace, Ordway noticed that there was an almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles of her body. "Only a few minutes ago," she replied, with the characteristic disregard of time which seemed, in some way, to belong to her inability to consider figures, "and, oh, I am so glad to be back! You are just as lovely as ever." "Well, you are lovelier," said Lydia, kissing her, and adding a moment afterward, as the result of her quick, woman's glance, "what a charming gown!" Alice shrugged her shoulders, with a foreign gesture which she had picked up. "Oh, you must see some of my others," she replied, "I wish that my trunks would come, but I forgot they were all sent to the other house, and I haven't even a nightgown. Will you lend me a nightgown, mamma? I have some of the loveliest you ever saw which were embroidered for me by the nuns in a French convent." "So, you'll spend the night?" said Lydia, "I'm so glad, dear, and I'll go up and see if your bed has sheets on it." "Oh, it's not only for the night," returned Alice, defiantly, "I've come back for good. I've left Geoffrey, haven't I, papa?" "I hope so, darling," answered Ordway, coming for the first time over to where they stood. "Left Geoffrey?" repeated Lydia. "Do you mean you've separated?" "I mean I'm never going back again--that I detest him--that I'd rather die--that I'll kill myself before I'll do it." Lydia received her violence with the usual resigned sweetness that she presented to an impending crisis. "But, my dear, my dear, a divorce is a horrible thing!" she wailed. "Well, it isn't half so horrible as Geoffrey," retorted Alice. Ordway, who had turned away again as Lydia spoke, came forward at the girl's angry words, and caught the hand that she had stretched out as if to push her mother from her. "Let's be humbly grateful that we've got her back," he said, smiling, "while we prepare her bed." CHAPTER IV THE POWER OF THE BLOOD When he came out into the hall the next morning, Lydia met him, in her dressing-gown, on her way from Alice's room. "How is she?" he asked eagerly. "Did she sleep?" "No, she was very restless, so I stayed with her. She went home a quarter of an hour ago." "Went home? Do you mean she's gone back to that brute?" A servant's step sounded upon the staircase, and with her unfailing instinct for propriety, she drew back into his room and lowered her voice. "She said that she was too uncomfortable without her clothes and her maid, but I think she had definitely made up her mind to return to him." "But when did she change? You heard her say last night that she would rather kill herself." "Oh, you know Alice," she responded a little wearily; and for the first time it occurred to him that the exact knowledge of Alice might belong, after all, not to himself, but to her. "You think, then," he asked, "that she meant none of her violent protestations of last night?" "I am sure that she meant them while she uttered them--not a minute afterward. She can't help being dramatic any more than she can help being beautiful." "Are you positive that you said nothing to bring about her decision? Did you influence her in any way?" "I did nothing more than tell her that she must make her choice once for all--that she must either go back to Geoffrey Heath and keep up some kind of appearances, or publicly separate herself from him. I let her see quite plainly that a state of continual quarrels was impossible and indecent." Her point of view was so entirely sensible that he found himself hopelessly overpowered by its unassailable logic. "So she has decided to stick to him for better or for worse, then?" "For the present at all events. She realised fully, I think, how much she would be obliged to sacrifice by returning home?" "Sacrifice? Good God, what?" he demanded. "Oh, well, you see, Geoffrey lives in a fashion that is rather grand for Botetourt. He travels a great deal, and he makes her gorgeous presents when he is in a good humour. She seemed to feel that if we could only settle these bills for her, she would be able to bring about a satisfactory adjustment. I was surprised to find how quietly she took it all this morning. She had forgotten entirely, I believe, the scene she made downstairs last night." This was his old Alice, he reflected in baffled silence, and apparently he would never attain to the critical judgment of her. Well, in any case, he was able to do justice to Lydia's admirable detachment. "I suppose I may have a talk with Heath anyway?" he said at last. "She particularly begs you not to, and I feel strongly that she is right." "Does she expect me to sit quietly by and see it go on forever? Why, there were bruises on her arm that he had made with his fingers." Lydia paled as she always did when one of the brutal facts of life was thrust on her notice. "Oh, she doesn't think that will happen again. It appears that she had lost her temper and tried her best to infuriate him. He is still very much in love with her at times, and she hopes that by a little diplomacy she may be able to arrange matters between them." "Diplomacy with that insufferable cad! Pshaw!" Lydia sighed, not in exasperation, but with the martyr's forbearance. "It is really a crisis in Alice's life," she said, "and we must treat it with seriousness." "I was never more serious in my life. I'm melancholy. I'm abject." "Last night she told me that Geoffrey threatened to go West and get a divorce, and this frightened her." "But I thought it was the very thing she wanted," he urged in bewilderment. "Hadn't she left him last night for good and all?" "She might leave him, but she could not give up his money. It is impossible, I suppose, for you to realise her complete dependence upon wealth--the absurdity of her ideas about the value of money. Why, her income of five thousand which Uncle Richard allows her would not last her a month." "I realised a little of this when I glanced over those bills she gave me." "Of course we shall pay those ourselves, but what is twenty thousand dollars to her, when Geoffrey seems to have paid out a hundred thousand already. He began, I can see, by being very generous, but she confessed to me this morning that other bills were still to come in which she would not dare to let him see. I told her that she must try to meet these out of her income, and that we would reduce our living expenses as much as possible in order to pay those she gave you." "I shall ask Uncle Richard to advance this out of my personal property," he said. "But he will not do it. You know how scrupulous he is about all such matters, and he told me the other day that your father's will had clearly stated that the money was not to be touched unless he should deem it for your interest to turn it over to you." Her command of the business situation amazed him, until he remembered her long conversations with Richard Ordway, whose interests were confined within strictly professional limits. His fatal mistake in the past, he saw now, was that he had approached her, not as a fellow mortal, but as a divinity; for the farther he receded from the attitude of worship, the more was he able to appreciate the quality of her practical virtues. In spite of her poetic exterior, it was in the rosy glow of romance that she showed now as barest of attractions. The bottle of cough syrup on his bureau still testified to her ability to sympathise in all cases where the imagination was not required to lend its healing insight. "But surely it is to my interest to save Alice," he said after a pause. "I think he will feel that it must be done by the family, by us all," she answered, "he has always had so keen a sense of honour in little things." An hour later, when he broached the subject to Richard in his office, he found that Lydia was right, as usual, in her prediction; and with a flash of ironic humour, he pictured her as enthroned above his destiny, like a fourth fate who spun the unyielding thread of common sense. "Of course the debt must be paid if it is a condition of Alice's reconciliation with her husband," said the old man, "but I shall certainly not sacrifice your securities in order to do it. Such an act would be directly against the terms of your father's will." There was no further concession to be had from him, so Daniel turned to his work, half in disappointment, half in admiration of his uncle's loyalty to the written word. When he went home to luncheon Lydia told him that she had seen Alice, who had appeared seriously disturbed, though she had shown her, with evident enjoyment, a number of exquisite Paris gowns. "She had a sable coat, also, in her closet, which could not have cost less, I should have supposed, than forty thousand dollars--the kind of coat that a Russian Grand Duchess might have worn--but when I spoke of it, she grew very much depressed and changed the subject. Did you talk to Uncle Richard? And was I right?" "You're always right," he admitted despondently, "but do you think, then, that I'd better not see Alice to-day?" "Perhaps it would be wiser to wait until to-morrow. Geoffrey is in a very difficult humour, she says, more brutally indifferent to her than he has been since her marriage." "Isn't that all the more reason she ought to have her family about her?" "She says not. It's easier to deal with him, she feels, alone--and any way Uncle Richard will call there this afternoon." "Oh, Uncle Richard!" he groaned, as he went out. In the evening there was no news beyond a reassuring visit from Richard Ordway, who stopped by, for ten minutes, on his way from an interview with Geoffrey Heath. "To tell the truth I found him less obstinate than I had expected," he said, "and there's no doubt, I fear, that he has some show of justice upon his side. He has agreed now to make Alice a very liberal allowance from the first of April, provided she will promise to make no more bills, and to live until then within her own income. He told me that he was obliged to retrench for the next six months in order to meet his obligations without touching his investments. It seems that he had bought very largely on margin, and the shrinkages in stocks has forced him to pay out a great deal of money recently." "I knew you would manage it, Uncle, I relied on you absolutely," said Lydia, sweetly. "I did only my duty, my child," he responded, as he held out his hand. The one good result of the anxiety of the last twenty-four hours--the fact that it had brought Lydia and himself into a kind of human connection--had departed, Daniel observed, when he sat down to dinner, separated from her by six yellow candle shades and a bowl of gorgeous chrysanthemums. After a casual comment upon the soup, and the pleasant reminder that Dick would be home for Thanksgiving, the old uncomfortable silence fell between them. She had just remarked that the roast was a little overdone, and he had agreed with her from sheer politeness, when a sharp ring at the bell sent the old Negro butler hurrying out into the hall. An instant later there was a sound of rapid footsteps, and Alice, wearing a long coat, which slipped from her bare shoulders as she entered, came rapidly forward and threw herself into Ordway's arms, with an uncontrollable burst of tears. "My child, my child, what is it?" he questioned, while Lydia, rising from the table with a disturbed face, but an unruffled manner, remarked to the butler that he need not serve the dessert. "Come into the library, Alice, it is quieter there," she said, putting her arm about her daughter, with an authoritative pressure. "O, papa, I will never see him again! You must tell him that. I shall never see him again," she cried, regardless alike of Lydia's entreaties and the restraining presence of the butler. "Go to him to-night and tell him that I will never--never go back." "I'll tell him, Alice, and I'll do it with a great deal of pleasure," he answered soothingly, as he led her into the library and closed the door. "But you must go at once. I want him to know it at once." "I'll go this very hour--I'll go this very minute, if you honestly mean it." "Would it not be better to wait until to-morrow, Alice?" suggested Lydia. "Then you will have time to quiet down and to see things rationally." "I don't want to quiet down," sobbed Alice, angrily, "I want him to know now--this very instant--that he has gone too far--that I will not stand it. He told me a minute ago--the beast!--that he'd like to see the man who would be fool enough to keep me--that if I went he'd find a handsomer woman within a week!" "Well, I'll see him, darling," said Ordway. "Sit here with your mother, and have a good cry and talk things over." As he spoke he opened the door and went out into the hall, where he got into his overcoat. "Remember last night and don't say too much, Daniel," urged Lydia in a warning whisper, coming after him, "she is quite hysterical now and does not realise what she is saying." "Oh, I'll remember," he returned, and a minute later, he closed the front door behind him. On his way to the Heath house in Henry Street, he planned dispassionately his part in the coming interview, and he resolved that he would state Alice's position with as little show of feeling as it was possible for him to express. He would tell Heath candidly that, with his consent, Alice should never return to him, but he would say this in a perfectly quiet and inoffensive manner. If there was to be a scene, he concluded calmly, it should be made entirely by Geoffrey. Then, as he went on, he said to himself, that he had grown tired and old, and that he lacked now the decision which should carry one triumphantly over a step like this. Even his anger against Alice's husband had given way to a dragging weariness, which seemed to hold him back as he ascended the brown-stone steps and laid his hand on the door bell. When the door was opened, and he followed the servant through the long hall, ornamented by marble statues, to the smoking-room at the end, he was conscious again of that sense of utter incapacity which had been bred in him by his life in Botetourt. Geoffrey, after a full dinner, was lounging, with a cigar and a decanter of brandy, over a wood fire, and as his visitor entered he rose from his chair with a lazy shake of his whole person. "I don't believe I've ever met you before, Mr. Ordway," he remarked, as he held out his hand, "though I've known you by sight for several years. Won't you sit down?" With a single gesture he motioned to a chair and indicated the cigars and the brandy on a little table at his right hand. At his first glance Ordway had observed that he had been in a rage or drinking heavily--probably both; and he was seized by a sudden terror at the thought that Alice had been so lately at the mercy of this large red and black male animal. Yet, in spite of the disgust with which the man inspired him, he was forced to admit that as far as a mere physical specimen went, he had rarely seen his equal. His body was superbly built, and but for his sullen and brutal expression, his face would have been remarkable for its masculine beauty. "No, I won't sit down, thank you," replied Ordway, after a short pause. "What I have to say can be said better standing, I think." "Then fire away!" returned Geoffrey, with a coarse laugh. "It's about Alice, I suppose, and it's most likely some darn rot she's sent you with." "It's probably less rot than you imagine. I have taken it upon myself to forbid her returning to you. Your treatment of her has made it impossible that she should remain in your house." "Well, I've treated her a damned sight better than she deserved," rejoined Geoffrey, scowling, while his face, inflamed by the brandy he had drunk, burned to a dull red; "it isn't her fault, I can tell you, that she hasn't put me into the poorhouse in six months." "I admit that she has been very extravagant, and so does she." "Extravagant? So that is what you call it, is it? Well, she spent more in three weeks in Paris than my father did in his whole lifetime. I paid out a hundred thousand for her, and even then I could hardly get her away. But I won't pay the bills any longer, I've told her that. They may go into court about it and get their money however they can." "In the future there will be no question of that." "You think so, do you? Now I'll bet you whatever you please that she's back here in this house again before the week is up. She knows on which side her bread is buttered, and she won't stay in that dull old place, not for all you're worth." "She shall never return to you with my consent." "Did she wait for that to marry me?" demanded Geoffrey, laughing uproariously at his wit, "though I can tell you now, that it makes precious little difference to me whether she comes or stays." "She shall never do it," said Ordway, losing his temper. Then as he uttered the words, he remembered Lydia's warning and added more quietly, "she shall never do it if I can help it." "It makes precious little difference to me," repeated Geoffrey, "but she'll be a blamed fool if she doesn't, and for all her foolishness, she isn't so big a fool as you think her." "She has been wrong in her extravagance, as I said before, but she is very young, and her childishness is no excuse for your brutality." Rage, or the brandy, or both together, flamed up hotly in Geoffrey's face. "I'd like to know what right you have to talk about brutality?" he sneered. "I've the right of any man to keep another from ill-treating his daughter." "Well, you're a nice one with your history to put on these highfaluting, righteous airs, aren't you?" For an instant the unutterable disgust in Ordway's mind was like physical nausea. What use was it, after all, to bandy speeches, he questioned, with a mere drunken animal? His revulsion of feeling had moved him to take a step toward the door, when the sound of the words Geoffrey uttered caused him to stop abruptly and stand listening. "Much good you'll do her when she hears about that woman you've been keeping down at Tappahannock. As if I didn't know that you'd been running back there again after that Brooke girl----" The words were choked back in his throat, for before they had passed his lips Ordway had swung quickly round and struck him full in the mouth. With the blow it seemed to Daniel that all the violence in his nature was loosened. A sensation that was like the joy of health, of youth, of manhood, rushed through his veins, and in the single exalted instant when he looked down on Geoffrey's prostrate figure, he felt himself to be not only triumphant, but immortal. All that his years of self-sacrifice had not done for him was accomplished by that explosive rush of energy through his arm. There was blood on his hand and as he glanced down, he saw that Geoffrey, with a bleeding mouth, was struggling, dazed and half drunk, to his feet. Ordway looked at him and laughed--the laugh of the boastful and victorious brute. Then turning quickly, he took up his hat and went out of the house and down into the street. The physical exhilaration produced by the muscular effort was still tingling through his body, and while it lasted he felt younger, stronger, and possessed of a courage that was almost sublime. When he reached home and entered the library where Lydia and Alice were sitting together, there was a boyish lightness and confidence in his step. "Oh, papa!" cried Alice, standing up, "tell me about it. What did he do?" Ordway laughed again, the same laugh with which he had looked down on Geoffrey lying half stunned at his feet. "I didn't wait to see," he answered, "but I rather think he got up off the floor." "You mean you knocked him down?" asked Lydia, in an astonishment that left her breathless. "I cut his mouth, I'm sure," he replied, wiping his hand from which the blood ran, "and I hope I knocked out one or two of his teeth." Then the exhilaration faded as quickly as it had come, for as Lydia looked up at him, while he stood there wiping the blood from his bruised knuckles, he saw, for the first time since his return to Botetourt, that there was admiration in her eyes. So it was the brute, after all, and not the spirit that had triumphed over her. CHAPTER V THE HOUSE OF DREAMS FROM that night there was a new element in Lydia's relation to him, an increased consideration, almost a deference, as if, for the first time, he had shown himself capable of commanding her respect. This change, which would have pleased him, doubtless, twenty years before, had only the effect now of adding to his depression, for he saw in it a tribute from his wife not to his higher, but to his lower nature. All his patient ideals, all his daily self-sacrifice, had not touched her as had that one instant's violence; and it occurred to him, with a growing recognition of the hopeless inconsistency of life, that if he had treated her with less delicacy, less generosity, if he had walked roughshod over her feminine scruples, instead of yielding to them, she might have entertained for him by this time quite a wholesome wifely regard. Then the mere possibility disgusted him, and he saw that to have compromised with her upon any lower plane would have been always morally repugnant to him. After all, the dominion of the brute was not what he was seeking. On the morning after his scene with Geoffrey, Alice came to him and begged for the minutest particulars of the quarrel. She wanted to know how it had begun? If Geoffrey had been really horrible? And if he had noticed the new bronze dragon she had bought for the hall? Upon his replying that he had not, she seemed disappointed, he thought, for a minute. "It's very fine," she said, "I bought it from what's-his-name, that famous man in Paris? If I ever have money enough I shall get the match to it, so there'll be the pair of them." Then seeing his look of astonishment, she hastened to correct the impression she had made. "Of course, I mean that I'd like to have done it, if I had been going to live there." "It would take more than a bronze dragon, or a pair of them, to make that house a home, dear," was his only comment. "But it's very handsome," she remarked after a moment, "everything in it is so much more costly than the things here." He made no rejoinder, and she added with vehemence, "but of course, I wouldn't go back, not even if it were a palace!" Then a charming merriment seized her, and she clung to him and kissed him and called him a dozen silly pet names. "No, she won't ever, ever play in that horrid old house again," she sang gaily between her kisses. For several days these exuberant spirits lasted, and then he prepared himself to meet the inevitable reaction. Her looks drooped, she lost her colour and grew obviously bored, and in the end she complained openly that there was nothing for her to do in the house, and that she couldn't go out of doors because she hadn't the proper clothes. To his reminder that it was she herself who had prevented his sending for her trunks, she replied that there was plenty of time, and that "besides nobody could pack them unless she was there to overlook it." "If anybody is obliged to go back there, for heaven's sake, let me be the one," he urged desperately at last. "To knock out more of poor Geoffrey's teeth? Oh, you naughty, naughty, papa!"--she cried, lifting a reproving finger. The next instant her laughter bubbled out at the delightful picture of "papa in the midst of her Paris gowns. I'd be so afraid you'd roll up Geoffrey in my precious laces," she protested, half seriously. For a week nothing more was said on the subject, and then she remarked irritably that her room was cold and she hadn't her quilted silk dressing-gown. When he asked her to ride with him, she declared that her old habit was too tight for her and her new one was at the other house. When he suggested driving instead, she replied that she hadn't her fur coat and she would certainly freeze without it. At last one bright, cold day, when he came up to luncheon, Lydia told him, with her strange calmness, that Alice had gone back to her husband. "I knew it would come in time," she said, and he bowed again before her unerring prescience. "Do you mean to tell me that she's willing to put up with Heath for the sake of a little extra luxury?" he demanded. "Oh, that's a part of it. She likes the newness of the house and the air of costliness about it, but most of all, she feels that she could never settle down to our monotonous way of living. Geoffrey promised her to take her to Europe again in the summer and I think she began to grow restless when it appeared that she might have to give it up." "But one of us could have taken her to Europe, if that's all she wanted. You could have gone with her." "Not in Alice's way, we could never have afforded it. She told me this when I offered to go with her if she would definitely separate from Geoffrey." "Then you didn't want her to go back? You didn't encourage it?" "I encouraged her to behave with decency--and this isn't decent." "No, I admit that. It decidedly is not." "Yet we have no assurance that she won't fly in upon us at dinner to-night, with all the servants about," she reflected mournfully. His awful levity broke out as it always did whenever she invoked the sanctity of convention. "In that case hadn't we better serve ourselves until she has made up her mind?" he inquired. But the submission of the martyr is proof even against caustic wit, and she looked at him, after a minute, with a smile of infinite patience. "For myself I can bear anything," she answered, "but I feel that for her it is shocking to make things so public." It was shocking. In spite of his flippancy he felt the vulgarity of it as acutely as she felt it; and he was conscious of something closely akin to relief, when Richard Ordway dropped in after dinner to tell them that Alice and Geoffrey had come to a complete reconciliation. "But will it last?" Lydia questioned, in an uneasy voice. "We'll hope so at all events," replied the old man, "they appeared certainly to be very friendly when I came away. Whatever happens it is surely to Alice's interest that she should be kept out of a public scandal." They were still discussing the matter, after Richard had gone, when the girl herself ran in, bringing Geoffrey, and fairly brilliant with life and spirits. "We've decided to forget everything disagreeable," she said, "we're going to begin over again and be nice and jolly, and if I don't spend too much money, we are going to Egypt in April." "If you're happy, then I'm satisfied," returned Ordway, and he held out his hand to Geoffrey by way of apology. To do the young man justice, he appeared to cherish no resentment for the blow, though he still bore a scar on his upper lip. He looked heavy and handsome, and rather amiable in a dull way, and the one discovery Daniel made about him was that he entertained a profound admiration for Richard Ordway. Still, when everybody in Botetourt shared his sentiment, this was hardly deserving of notice. As the weeks went on it looked as if peace were really restored, and even Lydia's face lost its anxious foreboding, when she gazed on the assembled family at Thanksgiving. Dick had grown into a quiet, distinguished looking young fellow, more than ever like his Uncle Richard, and it was touching to watch his devotion to his delicate mother. At least Lydia possessed one enduring consolation in life, Ordway reflected, with a rush of gratitude. In the afternoon Alice drove with him out into the country, along the pale brown November roads, and he felt, while he sat beside her, with her hand clasped tightly in his under the fur robe, that she was again the daughter of his dreams, who had flown to his arms in the terrible day of his homecoming. She was in one of her rare moods of seriousness, and when she lifted her eyes to his, it seemed to him that they held a new softness, a deeper blueness. Something in her face brought back to him the memory of Emily as she had looked down at him when he knelt before her; and again he was aware of some subtle link which bound together in his thoughts the two women whom he loved. "There's something I've wanted to tell you, papa, first of all," said Alice, pressing his hand, "I want you to know it before anybody else because you've always loved me and stood by me from the beginning. Now shut your eyes while I tell you, and hold fast to my hand. O papa, there's to be really and truly a baby in the spring, and even if it's a boy--I hope it will be a girl--you'll promise to love it and be good to it, won't you?" "Love your child? Alice, my darling!" he cried, and his voice broke. She raised her hand to his cheek with a little caressing gesture, which had always been characteristic of her, and as he opened his eyes upon her, her beauty shone, he thought, with a light that blinded him. "I hope it will be a little girl with blue eyes and fair hair like mamma's," she resumed softly. "It will be better than playing with dolls, won't it? I always loved dolls, you know. Do you remember the big wax doll you gave me when I was six years old, and how her voice got out of order and she used to crow instead of talking? Well, I kept her for years and years, and even after I was a big girl, and wore long dresses, and did up my hair, I used to take her out sometimes and put on her clothes. Only I was ashamed of it and used to lock the door so no one could see me. But this little girl will be real, you know, and that's ever so much more fun, isn't it? And you shall help teach her to walk, and to ride when she's big enough; and I'll dress her in the loveliest dresses, with French embroidered ruffles, and a little blue bonnet with bunches of feathers, like one in Paris. Only she can't wear that until she's five years old, can she?" "And now you will have something to think of, Alice, you will be bored no longer?" "I shall enjoy buying the little things so much, but it's too soon yet to plan about them. Papa, do you think Geoffrey will fuss about money when he hears this?" "I hope not, dear, but you must be careful. The baby won't need to be extravagant, just at first." "But she must have pretty clothes, of course, papa. It wouldn't be kind to the little thing to make her look ugly, would it?" "Are simple things always ugly?" "Oh, but they cost just as much if they're fine--and I had beautiful clothes when I came. Mamma has told me about them." She ran on breathlessly, radiant with the promise of motherhood, dwelling in fancy upon the small blond ideal her imagination had conjured into life. It was dark when they returned to town, and when Daniel entered his door, after leaving Alice in Henry Street, he found that the lamps were already lit in the library. As he passed up the staircase, he glanced into the room, and saw that Lydia and Dick were sitting together before the fire, the boy resting his head on her knees, while her fragile hand played caressingly with his hair. They did not look up at his footsteps, and his heart was so warm with happiness that even the picture of mother and son in the firelit room appeared dim beside it. When he opened his door he found a bright fire in his grate, and throwing off his coat, he sat down in an easy chair with his eyes on the glowing coals. The beneficent vision that he had brought home with him was reflected now in the red heart of the fire, and while he gazed on it, he told himself that the years of his loneliness, and his inner impoverishment, were ended forever. The path of age showed to him no longer as hard and destitute, but as a peaceful road along which he might travel hopefully with young feet to keep him company. With a longing, which no excess of the imagination could exhaust, he saw Alice's child as she had seen it in her maternal rapture--as something immortally young and fair and innocent. He thought of the moment so long ago, when they had first placed Alice in his arms, and it seemed to him that this unborn child was only a renewal of the one he had held that day--that he would reach out his arms to it with that same half human, half mystic passion. Even to-day he could almost feel the soft pressure of her little body, and he hardly knew whether it was the body of Alice or of her child. Then suddenly it seemed to him that the reality faded from his consciousness and the dream began, for while he sat there he heard the patter of the little feet across his floor, and felt the little hands creep softly over his lips and brow. Oh, the little hands that would bring healing and love in their touch! And he understood as he looked forward now into the dreaded future, that the age to which he was travelling was only an immortal youth. CHAPTER VI THE ULTIMATE CHOICE On Christmas Eve a heavy snowstorm set in, and as there was but little work in the office that day, he took a long walk into the country before going home to luncheon. By the time he came back to town the ground was already covered with snow, which was blown by a high wind into deep drifts against the houses. Through the thick, whirling flakes the poplars stood out like white ghosts of trees, each branch outlined in a delicate tracery, and where the skeletons of last spring's flowers still clung to the boughs, the tiny cups were crowned with clusters of frozen blossoms. As he passed Richard's house, the sight of his aunt's fair head at the window arrested his steps, and going inside, he found her filling yarn stockings for twenty poor children, to whose homes she went every Christmas Eve. The toys and the bright tarleton bags of candy scattered about the room gave it an air that was almost festive; and for a few minutes he stayed with her, watching the glow of pleasure in her small, pale face, while he helped stuff the toes of the yarn stockings with oranges and nuts. As he stood there, surrounded by the little gifts, he felt, for the first time since his childhood, the full significance of Christmas--of its cheer, its mirth and its solemnity. "I am to have a tree at twelve o'clock to-morrow. Will you come?" she asked wistfully, and he promised, with a smile, before he left her and went out again into the storm. In the street a crowd of boys were snowballing one another, and as he passed a ball struck him, knocking his hat into a drift. Turning in pretended fury, he plunged into the thick of the battle, and when he retreated some minutes afterward, he was powdered from head to foot with dry, feathery flakes. When he reached home, he discovered, with dismay, that he left patches of white on the carpet from the door to the upper landing. After he had entered his room he shook the snow from his clothes, and then looking at his watch, saw to his surprise, that luncheon must have been over for at least an hour. In a little while, he told himself, he would go downstairs and demand something to eat from the old butler; but the hearth was so bright and warm that after sinking into his accustomed chair, he found that it was almost impossible to make the effort to go out. In a moment a delicious drowsiness crept over him, and he fell presently asleep, while the cigar he had lighted burned slowly out in his hand. The sound of the opening and closing door brought him suddenly awake with a throb of pain. The gray light from the windows, beyond which the snow fell heavily, was obscured by the figure of Lydia, who seemed to spring upon him out of some dim mist of sleep. At first he saw only her pale face and white outstretched hands; then as she came rapidly forward and dropped on her knees in the firelight, he saw that her face was convulsed with weeping and her eyes red and swollen. For the first time in his life, it occurred to him with a curious quickness of perception, he looked upon the naked soul of the woman, with her last rag of conventionality stripped from her. In the shock of the surprise, he half rose to his feet, and then sank back helplessly, putting out his hand as if he would push her away from him. "Lydia," he said, "don't keep me waiting. Tell me at once." She tried to speak, and he heard her voice strangle like a live thing in her throat. "Is Alice dead?" he asked quietly, "or is Dick?" At this she appeared to regain control of herself and he watched the mask of her impenetrable reserve close over her features. "It is not that--nobody is dead--it is worse," she answered in a subdued and lifeless voice. "Worse?" The word stunned him, and he stared at her blankly, like a person whose mind has suddenly given way. "Alice is in my room," she went on, when he had paused, "I left her with Uncle Richard while I came here to look for you. We did not hear you come in. I thought you were still out." Her manner, even more than her words, impressed him only as an evasion of the thing in her mind, and seizing her hands almost roughly, he drew her forward until he could look closely into her face. "For God's sake--speak!" he commanded. But with his grasp all animation appeared to go out of her, and she fell across his knees in an immovable weight, while her eyes still gazed up at him. "If you can't tell me I must go to Uncle Richard," he added. As he attempted to rise she put out her hands to restrain him, and in the midst of his suspense, he was amazed at the strength there was in a creature so slight and fragile. "Uncle Richard has just come to tell us," she said in a whisper. "A lawyer--a detective--somebody. I can't remember who it is--has come down from New York to see Geoffrey about a check signed in his name, which was returned to the bank there. At the first glance it was seen to be--to be not in his writing. When it was sent to him, after the bank had declined to honour it, he declared it to be a forgery and sent it back to them at once. It is now in their hands----" "To whom was it drawn?" he asked so quietly that his voice sounded in his own ears like the voice of a stranger. "To Damon & Hanska, furriers in Fifth Avenue, and it was sent in payment for a sable coat which Alice had bought. They had already begun a suit, it seems, to recover the money." As she finished he rose slowly to his feet, and stood staring at the snow which fell heavily beyond the window. The twisted bough of a poplar tree just outside was rocking back and forth with a creaking noise, and presently, as his ears grew accustomed to the silence in the room, he heard the loud monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantel, which seemed to grow more distinct with each minute that the hands travelled. Lydia had slipped from his grasp as he rose, and lay now with her face buried in the cushions of the chair. It was a terrible thing for Lydia, he thought suddenly, as he looked down on her. "And Geoffrey Heath?" he asked, repeating the question in a raised voice when she did not answer. "Oh, what can we expect of him? What can we expect?" she demanded, with a shudder. "Alice is sure that he hates her, that he would seize any excuse to divorce her, to outrage her publicly. He will do nothing--nothing--nothing," she said, rising to her feet, "he has returned the check to the bank, and denied openly all knowledge of it. After some violent words with Alice in the lawyer's presence, he declared to them both that he did not care in the least what steps were taken--that he had washed his hands of her and of the whole affair. She is half insane with terror of a prosecution, and can hardly speak coherently. Oh, I wonder why one ever has children?" she exclaimed in anguish. With her last words it seemed to him that the barrier which had separated him from Lydia had crumbled suddenly to ruins between them. The space which love could not bridge was spanned by pity; and crossing to where she stood, he put his arms about her, while she bowed her head on his breast and wept. "Poor girl! poor girl!" he said softly, and then putting her from him, he went out of the room and closed the door gently upon her grief. From across the hall the sound of smothered sobs came to him, and entering Lydia's room, he saw Alice clinging hysterically to Richard's arm. As she looked round at his footsteps, her face showed so old and haggard between the splendid masses of her hair, that he could hardly believe for a minute that this half distraught creature was really his daughter. For an instant he was held dumb by the horror of it; then the silence was broken by the cry with which Alice threw herself into his arms. Once before she had rushed to his breast with the same word on her lips, he remembered. "O papa, you will help me! You must help me!" she cried. "Oh, make them tell you all so that you may help me!" "They have told me--your mother has told me, Alice," he answered, seeking in vain to release himself from the frantic grasp of her arms. "Then you will make Geoffrey understand," she returned, almost angrily. "You will make Geoffrey understand that it was not my fault--that I couldn't help it." Richard Ordway turned from the window, through which he had been looking, and taking her fingers, which were closed in a vice-like pressure about Daniel's arm, pried them forcibly apart. "Look at me, Alice," he said sternly, "and answer the question that I asked you. What did you say to Geoffrey when he spoke to you in the lawyer's presence? Did you deny, then, that you had signed the check? Don't struggle so, I must hear what you told them." But she only writhed in his hold, straining her arms and her neck in the direction of Daniel. "He was very cruel," she replied at last, "they were both very cruel. I don't know what I said, I was so frightened. Geoffrey hurt me terribly--he hurt me terribly," she whimpered like a child, and as she turned toward Daniel, he saw her bloodless gum, from which her lower lip had quivered and dropped. "I must know what you told them, Alice," repeated the old man in an unmoved tone. "I can do nothing to help you, if you will not speak the truth." Even when her body struggled in his grasp, no muscle altered in the stern face he bent above her. "Let me go," she pleaded passionately, "I want to go to papa! I want papa!" At her cry Daniel made a single step forward, and then fell back because the situation seemed at the moment in the command of Richard. Again he felt the curious respect, the confidence, with which his uncle inspired him in critical moments. "I shall let you go when you have told me the truth," said Richard calmly. She grew instantly quiet, and for a minute she appeared to hang a dead weight on his arm. Then her voice came with the whimpering, childlike sound. "I told them that I had never touched it--that I had asked papa for the money, and he had given it to me," she said. "I thought so," returned Richard grimly, and he released his hold so quickly that she fell in a limp heap at his feet. "I wanted it from her own lips, though Mr. Cummins had already told me," he added, as he looked at his nephew. For a moment Daniel stood there in silence, with his eyes on the gold-topped bottles on Lydia's dressing table. He had heard Alice's fall, but he did not stoop to lift her; he had heard Richard's words, but he did not reply to them. In one instant a violent revulsion--a furious anger against Alice swept over him, and the next he felt suddenly, as in his dream, the little hands pass over his brow and lips. "She is right about it, Uncle Richard," he said, "I gave her the check." At the words Richard turned quickly away, but with a shriek of joy, Alice raised herself to her knees, and looked up with shining eyes. "I told you papa would know! I told you papa would help me!" she cried triumphantly to the old man. Without looking at her, Richard turned his glance again to his nephew's face, and something that was almost a tremor seemed to pass through his voice. "Daniel," he asked, "what is the use?" "She has told you the truth," repeated Daniel steadily, "I gave her the check." "You are ready to swear to this?" "If it is necessary, I am." Alice had dragged herself slowly forward, still on her knees, but as she came nearer him, Daniel retreated instinctively step by step until he had put the table between them. "It is better for me to go away, I suppose, at once?" he inquired of Richard. The gesture with which Richard responded was almost impatient. "If you are determined--it will be necessary for a time at least," he replied. "There's no doubt, I hope, that the case will be hushed up, but already there has been something of a scandal. I have made good the loss to the bank, but Geoffrey has been very difficult to bring to reason. He wanted a divorce and he wanted revenge in a vulgar way upon Alice." "But she is safe now?" asked Daniel, and the coldness in his tone came as a surprise to him when he spoke. "Yes, she is safe," returned Richard, "and you, also, I trust. There is little danger, I think, under the circumstances, of a prosecution. If at any time," he added, with a shaking voice, "before your return you should wish the control of your property, I will turn it over to you at once." "Thank you," said Daniel quietly, and then with an embarrassed movement, he held out his hand. "I shall go, I think, on the four o'clock train," he continued, "is that what you would advise?" "It is better, I feel, to go immediately. I have an appointment with the lawyer for the bank at a quarter of five." He put out his hand again for his nephew's. "Daniel, you are a good man," he added, as he turned away. Not until a moment later, when he was in the hall, did Ordway remember that he had left Alice crouched on the floor, and coming back he lifted her into his arms. "It is all right, Alice, don't cry," he said, as he kissed her. Then turning from her, with a strange dullness of sensation, he crossed the hall and entered his room, where he found Lydia still lying with her face hidden in the cushions of the chair. At his step she looked up and put out her hand, with an imploring gesture. "Daniel!" she called softly, "Daniel!" Before replying to her he went to his bureau and hurriedly packed some clothes into a bag. Then, with the satchel still in his hand, he came over and stopped beside her. "I can't wait to explain, Lydia; Uncle Richard will tell you," he said. "You are going away? Do you mean you are going away?" she questioned. "To-morrow you will understand," he answered, "that it is better so." For a moment uncertainty clouded her face; then she raised herself and leaned toward him. "But Alice? Does Alice go with you?" she asked. "No, Alice is safe. Go to her." "You will come back again? It is not forever?" He shook his head smiling. "Perhaps," he answered. She still gazed steadily up at him, and he saw presently a look come into her face like the look with which she had heard of the blow he had struck Geoffrey Heath. "Daniel, you are a brave man," she said, and sobbed as she kissed him. Following him to the threshold, she listened, with her face pressed against the lintel, while she heard him go down the staircase and close the front door softly behind him. CHAPTER VII FLIGHT NOT until the train had started and the conductor had asked for his ticket, did Ordway realize that he was on his way to Tappahannock. At the discovery he was conscious of no surprise--scarcely of any interest--it seemed to matter to him so little in which direction he went. A curious numbness of sensation had paralysed both his memory and his perceptions, and he hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry, warm or cold. In the same way he wondered why he felt no regret at leaving Botetourt forever--no clinging tenderness for his home, for Lydia, for Alice. If his children had been strangers to him he could not have thought of his parting from them with a greater absence of feeling. Was it possible at last that he was to be delivered from the emotional intensity, the power of vicarious suffering, which had made him one of the world's failures? He recalled indifferently Alice's convulsed features, and the pathetic quiver of her lip, which had drooped like a child's that is hurt. These things left him utterly unmoved when he remembered them, and he even found himself asking the next instant, with a vague curiosity, if the bald-headed man in the seat in front of him was going home to spend Christmas with his daughter? "But what has this bald-headed man to do with Alice or with me?" he demanded in perplexity, "and why is it that I can think of him now with the same interest with which I think of my own child? I am going away forever and I shall never see them again," he continued, with emphasis, as if to convince himself of some fact which he had but half understood. "Yes, I shall never see them again, and Alice will be quite happy without me, and Alice's child will grow up probably without hearing my name. Yet I did it for Alice. No, I did not do it for Alice, or for Alice's child," he corrected quickly, with a piercing flash of insight. "It was for something larger, stronger--something as inevitable as the law. I could not help it, it was for myself," he added, after a minute. And it seemed to him that with this inward revelation the outer covering of things was stripped suddenly from before his eyes. As beneath his sacrifice he recognised the inexorable law, so beneath Alice's beauty he beheld the skeleton which her radiant flesh clothed with life, and beneath Lydia's mask of conventionality her little naked soul, too delicate and shivering to stand alone. It was as if all pretence, all deceit, all illusions, had shrivelled now in the hard dry, atmosphere through which he looked. "Yes, I am indifferent to them all and to everything," he concluded; "Lydia, and Dick and even Alice are no closer to me than is the bald-headed man on the front seat. Nobody is closer to another when it comes to that, for each one of us is alone in an illimitable space." The swinging lights of the train were reflected in the falling snow outside, like orbed blue flames against a curtain of white. Through the crack under the window a little cold draught entered, blowing the cinders from the sill into his face. It was the common day coach of a local train, and the passengers were, for the most part, young men or young women clerks, who were hastening back to their country homes for Christmas. Once when they reached a station several girls got off, with their arms filled with packages, and pushed their way through the heavy drifts to a sleigh waiting under the dim oil lamp outside. For a minute he followed them idly in his imagination, seeing the merry party ploughing over the old country roads to the warm farm house, where a bright log fire and a Christmas tree were prepared for them. The window panes were frosted over now, and when the train started on its slow journey he could see only the orbed blue flames dancing in the night against the whirling snowflakes. It was nine o'clock when they pulled into Tappahannock and when he came out upon the platform he found that the storm had ceased, though the ground lay white and hard beneath the scattered street lamps. Straight ahead of him, as he walked up the long hill from the station, he heard the ring of other footsteps on the frozen snow. The lights were still burning in the little shops, and through the uncurtained windows he could see the variegated display of Christmas decorations. Here and there a woman, with her head wrapped in a shawl, was peering eagerly at a collection of toys or a wreath of evergreens, but, for the rest, the shops appeared singularly empty even for so late an hour on Christmas Eve. In the absorption of his thoughts, he scarcely noticed this, and he was conscious of no particular surprise when, as he reached the familiar warehouse, he saw Baxter's enormous figure loom darkly under the flickering light above the sidewalk. Behind him the vacant building yawned like a sepulchral cavern, the dim archway hung with a glistening fringe of icicles. "Is that you, Baxter?" he asked, and stretched out his hand with a mechanical movement. "Why, bless my soul, Smith!" exclaimed Baxter, "who'd ever have believed it!" "I've just got off the train," returned Ordway, feeling vaguely that some explanation of his presence was needed, "and I'm trying to find a place where I can keep warm until I take the one for the West at midnight. It didn't occur to me that you would be in your office. I was going to Mrs. Buzzy's." "You'd better come along with me, for I don't believe you'll find a living soul at Mag Buzzy's--not even a kid," replied Baxter, "her husband is one of Jasper Trend's overseers, you know, and they're most likely down at the cotton mills." "At the cotton mills? Why, what's the matter there?" "You haven't heard then? I thought it was in all the papers. There's been a big strike on for a week--Jasper lowered wages the first of the month--and every operative has turned out and demanded more pay and shorter hours. The old man's hoppin', of course, and the funny part is, Smith, that he lays every bit of the trouble at your door. He says that you started it all by raisin' the ideas of the operatives." "But it's a pretty serious business for them, Baxter. How are they going to live through this weather?" "They ain't livin', they're starvin', though I believe the union is comin' to their help sooner or later. But what's that in such a blood-curdlin' spell as this?" A sudden noise, like that of a great shout, rising and falling in the bitter air, came to them from below the slope of the hill, and catching Ordway's arm, Baxter drew him closer under the street lamp. "They're hootin' at the guards Trend has put around the mills," he said, while his words floated like vapour out of his mouth into the cold, "he's got policemen stalkin' up an' down before his house, too." "You mean he actually fears violence?" "Oh, well, when trouble is once started, you know, it is apt to go at a gallop. A policeman got his skull knocked in yesterday, and one of the strikers had his leg broken this afternoon. Somebody has been stonin' Jasper's windows in the back, but they can't tell whether it's a striker or a scamp of a boy. The truth is, Smith," he added, "that Jasper ought to have sold the mills when he had an offer of a hundred thousand six months ago. But he wouldn't do it because he said he made more than the interest on that five times over. I reckon he's sorry enough now he didn't catch at it." For a moment Ordway looked in silence under the hanging icicles into the cavernous mouth of the warehouse, while he listened to the smothered sounds, like the angry growls of a great beast, which came toward them from the foot of the hill. Into the confusion of his thoughts there broke suddenly the meaning of Richard Ordway's parting words. "Baxter," he said quietly, "I'll give Jasper Trend a hundred thousand dollars for his mills to-night." Baxter let go the lamp post against which he was leaning, and fell back a step, rubbing his stiffened hands on his big shaggy overcoat. "You, Smith? Why, what in thunder do you want with 'em? It's my belief that they will be afire before midnight. Do you hear that noise? Well, there ain't men enough in Tappahannock to put those mills out when they are once caught." Ordway turned his face from the warehouse to his companion, and it seemed to Baxter that his eyes shone like blue lights out of the darkness. "But they won't burn after they're mine, Baxter," he answered. "I'll buy the mills and I'll settle this strike before I leave Tappahannock at midnight." "You mean you'll go away even after you've bought 'em?" "I mean I've got to go--to go always from place to place--but I'll leave you here in my stead." He laughed shortly, but there was no merriment in the sound. "I'll run the mills on the cooperative plan, Baxter, and I'll leave you in charge of them--you and Banks." Then he caught Baxter's arm with both hands, and turned his body forcibly in the direction of the church at the top of the hill. "While we are talking those people down there are freezing," he said. "An' so am I, if you don't mind my mentionin' it," observed Baxter meekly. "Then let's go to Trend's. There's not a minute to lose, if we are to save the mills. Are you coming, Baxter?" "Oh, I'm comin'," replied Baxter, waddling in his shaggy coat like a great black bear, "but I'd like to git up my wind first," he added, puffing clouds of steam as he ascended the hill. "There's no time for that," returned Ordway, sharply, as he dragged him along. When they reached Jasper Trend's gate, a policeman, who strolled, beating his hands together, on the board walk, came up and stopped them as they were about to enter. Then recognising Baxter, he apologised and moved on. A moment later the sound of their footsteps on the porch brought the head of Banks to the crack of the door. "Who are you? and what is your business?" he demanded. "Banks!" said Ordway in a whisper, and at his voice the bar, which Banks had slipped from the door, fell with a loud crash from his hands. "Good Lord, it's really you, Smith!" he cried in a delirium of joy. "Harry, be careful or you'll wake the baby," called a voice softly from the top of the staircase. "Darn the baby!" growled Banks, lowering his tone obediently. "The next thing she'll be asking me to put out the mills because the light wakes the baby. When did you come, Smith? And what on God's earth are you doing here?" "I came to stop the strike," responded Ordway, smiling. "I've brought an offer to Mr. Trend, I must speak to him at once." "He's in the dining-room, but if you've come from the strikers it's no use. His back's up." "Well, it ain't from the strikers," interrupted Baxter, pushing his way in the direction of the dining-room. "It's from a chap we won't name, but he wants to buy the mills, not to settle the strike with Jasper." "Then he's a darn fool," remarked Jasper Trend from the threshold, "for if I don't get the ringleaders arrested befo' mornin' thar won't be a brick left standin' in the buildings." "The chap I mean ain't worryin' about that," said Baxter, "provided you'll sign the agreement in the next ten minutes. He's ready to give you a hundred thousand for the mills, strikers an' all." "Sign the agreement? I ain't got any agreement," protested Jasper, suspecting a trap, "and how do I know that the strike ain't over befo' you're making the offer?" "Well, if you'll just step over to the window, and stick your head out, you won't have much uncertainty about that, I reckon," returned Baxter. Crossing to the window, Ordway threw it open, waiting with his hand on the sash, while the threatening shouts from below the hill floated into the room. "Papa, the baby can't sleep for the noise those men make down at the mills," called a peremptory voice from the landing above. "I told you so!" groaned Banks, closing the window. "I ain't got any agreement," repeated Jasper, in helpless irritation, as he sank back into his chair. "Oh, I reckon Smith can draw up one for you as well as a lawyer," said Baxter, while Ordway, sitting down at a little fancy desk of Milly's in one corner, wrote out the agreement of sale on a sheet of scented note paper. When he held the pen out to Jasper, the old man looked up at him with blinking eyes. "Is it to hold good if the damned thing burns befo' mornin'?" he asked. "If it burns before morning--yes." With a sigh of relief Jasper wrote his name. "How do I know if I'm to get the money?" he inquired the next instant, moved by a new suspicion. "I shall telegraph instructions to a lawyer in Botetourt," replied Ordway, as he handed the pen to Baxter, "and you will receive an answer by twelve o'clock to-morrow. I want your signature, also, Banks," he continued, turning to the young man. "I've made two copies, you see, one of which I shall leave with Baxter." "Then you're going away?" inquired Banks, gloomily. Ordway nodded. "I am leaving on the midnight train," he answered. "So you're going West?" "Yes, I'm going West, and I've barely time to settle things at the mills before I start. God bless you, Banks. Good-bye." Without waiting for Baxter, who was struggling into his overcoat in the hall, he broke away from the detaining hold of Banks, and opening the door, ran down the frozen walk, and out into the street, where the policeman called a "Merry Christmas!" to him as he hurried by. When he gained the top of the hill, and descended rapidly toward the broad level beyond, where the brick buildings of the cotton mills stood in the centre of a waste of snow, the shouts grew louder and more frequent, and the black mass on the frozen ground divided itself presently into individual atoms. A few bonfires had started on the outskirts of the crowd, and by their fitful light, which fell in jagged, reddish shadows on the snow, he could see the hard faces of the men, the sharpened ones of the women, and the pinched ones of little children, all sallow from close work in unhealthy atmospheres and wan from lack of nourishing and wholesome food. As he approached one of these fires, made from a burning barrel, a young woman, with a thin, blue face, and a baby wrapped in a ragged shawl on her breast, turned and spat fiercely in his direction. "This ain't no place for swells!" she screamed, and began laughing shrilly in a half-crazed voice. In the excitement no one noticed her, and her demented shrieks followed him while he made his way cautiously along the outskirts of the strikers, until he came to the main building, before which a few men with muskets had cleared a hollow space. They looked cowed and sullen, he saw, for their sympathies were evidently with the operatives, and he realised that the first organised attack would force them from their dangerous position. Approaching one of the guards, whom he remembered, Ordway touched him upon the arm and asked to be permitted to mount to the topmost step. "I have a message to deliver to the men," he said. The guard looked up with a start of fear, and then, recognising him, exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "My God, boys, it's 'Ten Commandment Smith' or it's his ghost!" "Let me get through to the steps," said Ordway, "I must speak to them." "Well, you may speak all you want to, but I doubt if they'd listen to an angel from heaven if he were to talk to them about Jasper Trend. They are preparing a rush on the doors now, and when they make it they'll go through." Passing him in silence, Ordway mounted the steps, and stood with his back against the doors of the main building, in which, when he had last entered it, the great looms had been at work. Before him the dark mass heaved back and forth, and farther away, amid the bonfires in the waste of frozen snow, he could hear the shrill, mocking laughter of the half-crazed woman. "We won't hear any talk," cried a spokesman in the front ranks of the crowd. "It's too late to haggle now. We'll have nothin' from Jasper Trend unless he gives us what we ask." "And if he says he'll give it who will believe him?" jeered a woman, farther back, holding a crying child above her head. "He killed the father and he's starvin' the children." "No--no, we'll have no damned words. We'll burn out the scabs!" shouted a man, lifting a torch he had just lit at a bonfire. As the torch rose in a splendid blaze, it lighted up the front of the building, and cast a yellow flame upon Ordway's face. "I have nothing to do with Jasper Trend!" he called out, straightening himself to his full height. "He has no part in the mills from to-night! I have bought them from him!" With the light on his face, he stood there an instant before them, while the shouts changed in the first shock of recognition from anger to surprise. The minute afterward the crowd was rocked by a single gigantic emotion, and it hurled itself forward, bearing down the guards in its efforts to reach the steps. As it swayed back and forth its individual members--men, women and children--appeared to float like straws on some cosmic undercurrent of feeling. "From to-night the mills belong to me!" he cried in a voice which rang over the frozen ground to where the insane woman was laughing beside a bonfire. "Your grievances after to-night are not against Jasper Trend, but against me. You shall have fair pay, fair hours and clean rooms, I promise you----" He went on still, but his words were drowned in the oncoming rush of the crowd, which rolled forward like great waters, surrounding him, overwhelming him, sweeping him off his feet, and bearing him out again upon its bosom. The cries so lately growls of anger had changed suddenly, and above all the din and rush he heard rising always the name which he had made honoured and beloved in Tappahannock. It was the one great moment of his life, he knew, when on the tremendous swell of feeling, he was borne like a straw up the hillside and back into the main street of Tappahannock. An hour later, bruised, aching and half stunned, he entered the station and telegraphed twice to Richard Ordway before he went out upon the platform to take the train. He had left his instructions with Baxter, from whom he had just parted, and now, as he walked up and down in the icy darkness, broken by the shivering lights of the station, it seemed to him that he was like a man, who having been condemned to death, stands looking back a little wistfully at life from the edge of the grave. He had had his great moment, and ahead of him there was nothing. A freight train passed with a grating noise, a station hand, holding a lantern ran hurriedly along the track, a whistle blew, and then again there was stillness. His eyes were wearily following the track, when he felt a touch on his arm, and turning quickly, saw Banks, in a fur-lined overcoat, looking up at him with an embarrassed air. "Smith," he said, strangling a cough, "I've seen Baxter, and neither he nor I like your going West this way all by yourself and half sick. If you don't mind, I've arranged to take a little holiday and come along. To tell the truth, it's just exactly the chance I've been looking for. I haven't been away from Milly twenty-four hours since I married her, and a change does anybody good." "No, you can't come, Banks, I don't want you. I'd rather be alone," replied Ordway, almost indignantly. "But you ain't well," insisted Banks stubbornly. "We don't like the looks of you, Baxter and I." "Well, you can't come, that's all," retorted Ordway, as the red eyes of the engine pierced the darkness. "There, go home, Banks," he added, as he held out his hand, "I'm much obliged to you. You're a first-rate chap. Good-bye." "Then good-bye," returned Banks hastily turning away. A minute afterward, as Ordway swung himself on the train, he heard the bells of a church, ringing cheerfully in the frosty air, and remembered, with a start, that it was Christmas morning. CHAPTER VIII THE END OF THE ROAD In the morning, after a short sleep on the hard plush seat, he awoke with a shooting pain in his head. When the drowsiness of exhaustion had overcome him, he remembered, he had been idly counting the dazzling electric lights of a town through which they were passing. By the time he had reached "twenty-one" he had dropped off into unconsciousness, though it seemed to him that a second self within him, wholly awake, had gone on through the night counting without pause, "twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five--" Still in his brain the numbers went on, and still the great globular lights flashed past his eyes. Struggling awake in the gray dawn, he lay without changing his position, until the mist gave place slowly to the broad daylight. Then he found that they were approaching another town, which appeared from a distant view to resemble a single gigantic factory, composed chiefly of a wilderness of chimneys. When he looked at his watch, he saw that it was eight o'clock; and the conductor passing through the coach at the instant, informed the passengers generally that they must change cars for the West. The name of the town Ordway failed to catch, but it made so little difference to him that he followed the crowd mechanically, without inquiring where it would lead him. The pain in his head had extended now to his chest and shoulders, and presently it passed into his lower limbs, with a racking ache that seemed to take from him the control of his muscles. Yet all the while he felt a curious drowsiness, which did not in the least resemble sleep, creeping over him like the stealthy effect of some powerful drug. After he had breathed the fresh air outside, he felt it to be impossible that he should return to the overheated car, and pushing his way through the crowded station, where men were rushing to the luncheon counter in one corner, he started along a broad street, which looked as if it led to an open square at the top of a long incline. On either side there were rows of narrow tenements, occupied evidently by the operatives in the imposing factories he had observed from the train. Here and there a holly wreath suspended from a cheap lace curtain, reminded him again that it was Christmas morning, and by some eccentricity of memory, he recalled vividly a Christmas before his mother's death, when he had crept on his bare feet, in the dawn, to peep into the bulging stocking before her fireplace. At the next corner a small eating house had hung out its list of Christmas dainties, and going inside he sat down at one of the small deserted tables and asked for a cup of coffee. When it was brought he swallowed it in the hope that it might drive away the heaviness in his head, but after a moment of relief the stupor attacked him again more oppressively than ever. He felt that even the growing agony in his forehead and shoulders could not keep him awake if he could only find a spot in which to lie down and rest. After he came out into the street again he felt stronger and better, and it occurred to him that his headache was due probably to the fact that he had eaten nothing since breakfast the day before. He remembered now that he had missed his luncheon because of his long walk into the country, and the recollection of this trivial incident seemed to make plain all the subsequent events. Everything that had been so confused a moment ago stood out quite clearly now. His emotions, which had been benumbed when he left Botetourt, revived immediately in the awakening of his memory; and he was seized with a terrible longing to hold Alice in his arms and to say to her that he forgave her and loved her still. It seemed to him impossible that he should have come away after a single indifferent kiss, without glancing back--and her face rose before him, not convulsed and haggard as he had last seen it, but glowing and transfigured, with her sparkling blue eyes and her lips that were too red and too full for beauty. Then, even while he looked at her with love, the old numbness crept back, and his feeling for her died utterly away. "No, I have ceased to care," he thought indifferently. "It does not matter to me whether I see her again or not. I must eat and lie down, nothing else is of consequence." He had reached the open space at the end of the long graded hill, and as he stopped to look about him he saw that a small hotel, frequented probably by travelling salesmen, stood directly across the square, which was now deep in snow. Following the pavement to the open door of the lobby, he went inside and asked for a room, after which he passed into the restaurant and drank a second cup of coffee. Then turning away from his untasted food, he went upstairs to the large, bare apartment, with a broken window pane, which they had assigned him, and throwing himself upon the unmade bed, fell heavily asleep. When he awoke the pain was easier, and feeling oppressed by the chill vacancy of the room, he went downstairs and out into the open square. Though it was a dull gray afternoon, the square was filled with children, dragging bright new sleds over the snow. One of them, a little brown-haired girl, was trundling her Christmas doll and as she passed him, she turned and smiled into his face with a joyful look. Something in her smile was vaguely familiar to him, and he remembered, after a minute, that Emily had looked at him like that on the morning when he had met her for the first time riding her old white horse up the hill in Tappahannock. "Yes, it was that look that made me love her," he thought dispassionately, as if he were reviewing some dimly remembered event in a former life, "and it is because I loved her that I was able to do these things. If I had not loved her, I should not have saved Milly Trend, nor gone back to Botetourt, nor sacrificed myself for Alice. Yes, all these have come from that," he added, "and will go back, I suppose, to that in the end." The little girl ran by again, still trundling her doll, and again he saw Emily in her red cape on the old horse. For several hours he sat there in the frozen square, hardly feeling the cold wind that blew over him. But when he rose presently to go into the hotel, he found that his limbs were stiff, and the burning pain had returned with violence to his head and chest. The snow in the square seemed to roll toward him as he walked, and it was with difficulty that he dragged himself step by step along the pavement to the entrance of the hotel. After he was in his room again he threw himself, still dressed, upon the bed, and fell back into the stupor out of which he had come. When he opened his eyes after an hour, he was hardly sure, for the first few minutes, whether he was awake or asleep. The large, bare room in which he had lost consciousness had given place, when he awoke, to his prison cell. The hard daylight came to him through the grated windows, and from a nail in the wall he saw his gray prison coat, with the red bars, won for good behaviour, upon the sleeve. Then while he looked at it, the red bars changed quickly to the double stripes of a second term, and the double stripes became three, and the three became four, until it seemed to him that he was striped from head to foot so closely that he knew that he must have gone on serving term after term since the beginning of the world. "No, no, that is not mine. I am wearing the red bars!" he cried out, and came back to himself with a convulsive shudder. As he looked about him the hallucination vanished, and he felt that he had come out of an eternity of unconsciousness into which he should presently sink back again. The day before appeared to belong to some other life that he had lived while he was still young, yet when he opened his eyes the same gray light filled the windows, the same draught blew through the broken pane, the same vague shadows crawled back and forth on the ceiling. The headache was gone now, but the room had grown very cold, and from time to time, when he coughed, long shivers ran through his limbs and his teeth chattered. He had thrown his overcoat across his chest as a coverlet, but the cold from which he suffered was an inward chill, which was scarcely increased by the wind that blew through the broken pane. There was no confusion in his mind now, but a wonderful lucidity, in which he saw clearly all that had happened to him last night in Tappahannock. "Yes, that was my good moment," he said "and after such a moment there is nothing, but death. If I can only die everything will be made entirely right and simple." As he uttered the words the weakness of self pity swept over him, and with a sudden sense of spiritual detachment, he was aware of a feeling of sympathy for that other "I," who seemed so closely related to him, and yet outside of himself. The real "I" was somewhere above amid the crawling shadows on the ceiling, but the other--the false one--lay on the bed under the overcoat; and he saw, when he looked down that, though he himself was young, the other "I" was old and haggard and unshaven. "So there are two of us, after all," he thought, "poor fellows, poor fellows." But the minute afterward the perception of his dual nature faded as rapidly as the hallucination of his prison cell. In its place there appeared the little girl, who had passed him, trundling her Christmas doll, in the square below. "I have seen her before--she is vaguely familiar," he thought, troubled because he could not recall the resemblance. From this he passed to the memory of Alice when she was still a child, and she came back to him, fresh and vivid, as on the day when she had run out to beg him to come in to listen to her music. The broken scales ran in his head again, but there was no love in his heart. His gaze dropped from the ceiling and turned toward the door, for in the midst of his visions, he had seen it open softly and Banks come into the room on tiptoe and stop at the foot of the bed, regarding him with his embarrassed and silly look "What in the devil, am I dreaming about Banks for?" he demanded aloud, with an impatient movement of his feet, as if he meant to kick the obtruding dream away from his bed. At the kick the dream stopped rolling its prominent pale eyes and spoke. "I hope you ain't sick, Smith," it said, and with the first words he knew that it was Banks in the familiar flesh and not the disembodied spirit. "No I'm not sick, but what are you doing here?" he asked. "Enjoying myself," replied Banks gloomily. "Well, I wish you'd chosen to enjoy yourself somewhere else." "I couldn't. If you don't mind I'd like to stuff the curtain into that window pane." "Oh, I don't mind. When did you get here?" "I came on the train with you." "On the train with me? Where did you get on? I didn't see you." "You didn't look," replied Banks, from the window, where he was stuffing the red velveteen curtain into the broken pane. "I was in the last seat in the rear coach." "So you followed me," said Ordway indignantly. "I told you not to. Why did you do it?" Banks came back and stood again at the foot of the bed, looking at him with his sincere and kindly smile. "Well, the truth is, I wanted an outing," he answered, "it's a good baby as babies go, but I get dog-tired of playing nurse." "You might have gone somewhere else. There are plenty of places." "I couldn't think of 'em, and, besides, this seems a nice town. The're a spanking fine lot of factories. But I hope you ain't sick Smith? What are you doing in bed?" "Oh, I've given up," replied Ordway gruffly. "Every man has a right to give up some time, hasn't he?" "I don't know about every man," returned Banks, stolidly, "but you haven't, Smith." "Well, I've done it anyway," retorted Ordway, and turned his face to the wall. As he lay there with closed eyes, he had an obscure impression that Banks--Banks, the simple; Banks, the impossible--was in some way operating the forces of destiny. First he heard the bell ring, then the door open and close, and a little later, the bleak room was suffused with a warm rosy light in which the vague shadows melted into a shimmering background. The crackling of the fire annoyed him because it suggested the possibility of physical comfort, and he no longer wanted to be comfortable. "Smith," said Banks, coming over to the bed and pulling off the overcoat, "I've got a good fire here and a chair. I wish you'd get up. Good Lord, your hands are as hot as a hornet's nest. When did you eat anything?" "I had breakfast in Botetourt," replied Ordway, as he rose from the bed and came over to the chair Banks had prepared. "I can't remember when it was, but it must have been since the creation of the world, I suppose." The fire grew suddenly black before him, "I'd rather lie down," he added, "my head is splitting and I can't see." "Oh, you'll see all right in a minute. Wait till I light this candle, so the electric light won't hurt your eyes. The boy's gone for a little supper, and as soon as you've swallowed a mouthful you'll begin to feel better." "But I'm not hungry. I won't eat," returned Ordway, with an irritable feeling that Banks was looming into a responsibility. Anything that pulled one back to life was what he wanted to escape, and even the affection of Banks might prove, he thought, tenaciously clinging. One resolution he had made in the beginning--he would not take up his life again for the sake of Banks. "Yes, you must, Smith," remonstrated the other, with an angelic patience which gave him, if possible, a more foolish aspect. "It's after six o'clock and you haven't had a bite since yesterday at eight. That's why your head's so light and you're in a raging fever." "It isn't that, Banks, it's because I've got to die," he answered. "If they don't hush things up with money, I may have to go back to prison." As he said the words he saw again the prison coat, with the double stripes of a second term, as in the instant of his hallucination. "I know," said Banks, softly, as he bent over to poke the fire. "There was a line or two about it in a New York paper. But they'll hush it up, and besides they said it was just suspicion." "You knew all the time and yet you wanted me to go back to Tappahannock?" "Oh, they don't read the papers much there, except the _Tappahannock Herald_, and it won't get into that. It was just a silly little slip anyway, and not two dozen people will be likely to know what it meant." "And you, Banks? What do you think?" he asked with a mild curiosity. Banks shook his head. "Why, what's the use in your asking?" he replied. "Of course, I know that you didn't do it, and if you had done it, it would have been just because the other man ought to have written his name and wouldn't," he concluded, unblushingly. For a moment Ordway looked at him in silence. "You're a good chap, Banks," he said at last in a dull voice. Again he felt, with an awakened irritation, that the absurd Banks was pulling him back to life. Was it impossible, after all, that a man should give up, as long as there remained a soul alive who believed in him? It wasn't only the love of women, then, that renewed courage. He had loved both Emily and Alice, and yet they were of less importance in his life at this hour than was Banks, whom he had merely endured. Yet he had thought the love of Emily a great thing and that of Banks a small one. His gaze went back to the flames, and he did not remove it when a knock came at the door, and supper was brought in and placed on a little table before the fire. "I ordered a bowl of soup for you, Smith," said Banks, crumbling the bread into it as he spoke, as if he were preparing a meal for a baby, "and a good stout piece of beefsteak for myself. Now drink this whiskey, won't you." "I'm not hungry," returned Ordway, pushing the glass away, after it had touched his lips. "I won't eat." Banks placed the bowl of soup on the fender, and then sat down with his eyes fastened on the tray. "I haven't had a bite myself since breakfast," he remarked, "and I'm pretty faintish, but I tell you, Smith, if it's the last word I speak, that I won't put my knife into that beefsteak until you've eaten your soup--no, not if I die right here of starvation." "Well, I'm sorry you're such a fool, for I've no intention of eating it. I left you my whiskey, you can take that." "I shouldn't dare to on an empty stomach. I get drunk too quick." For a few minutes he sat in silence regarding the supper with a hungry look; then selecting a thin slice of bread, he stuck it on the end of a fork, and kneeling upon the hearthrug, held it out to the glowing coals. As it turned gradually to a delicious crisp brown, the appetising smell of it floated to Ordway's nostrils. "I always had a particular taste for toast," remarked Banks as he buttered the slice and laid it on a hot plate on the fender. When he took up a second one, Ordway watched him with an attention of which he was almost unconscious, and he did not remove his gaze from the fire, until the last slice, brown and freshly buttered, was laid carefully upon the others. As he finished Banks threw down his fork, and rising to his feet, looked wistfully at the beefsteak, keeping hot before the cheerful flames. "It's kind of rare, just as I like it," he observed, "thick and juicy, with little brown streaks from the broiler, and a few mushrooms scattered gracefully on top. Tappahannock is a mighty poor place for a steak," he concluded resignedly, "it ain't often I have a chance at one, but I thought to-night being Christmas----" "Then, for God's sake, eat it!" thundered Ordway, while he made a dash for his soup. But an hour after he had taken it, his fever rose so high that Banks helped him into bed and rushed out in alarm for the doctor. CHAPTER IX THE LIGHT BEYOND Out of the obscurity of the next few weeks, he brought, with the memory of Banks hovering about his bed, the vague impression of a woman's step across his floor and a woman's touch on his brow and hands. When he returned to consciousness the woman's step and touch had vanished, but Banks was still nursing him with his infinite patience and his silly, good-humoured smile. The rest was a dream, he said to himself, resignedly, as he turned his face to the wall and slept. On a mild January morning, when he came downstairs for the first time, and went with Banks out into the open square in front of the hotel, he put almost timidly the question which had been throbbing in his brain for weeks. "Was there anybody else with me, Banks? I thought--I dreamed--I couldn't get rid of it----" "Who else could there have been?" asked Banks, and he stared straight before him, at the slender spire of the big, gray church in the next block. So the mystery would remain unsolved, Ordway understood, and he would go back to life cherishing either a divine memory or a phantasy of delirium. After a little while Banks went off to the chemists' with a prescription, and Ordway sat alone on a bench in the warm sunshine, which was rapidly melting the snow. It was Sunday morning, and presently the congregation streamed slowly past him on its way to the big gray church just beyond. A bright blue sky was overhead, the sound of bells was in the air, and under the melting snow he saw that the grass was still fresh and green. As he sat there in the wonderful Sabbath stillness, he felt, with a new sense of security, of reconciliation, that his life had again been taken out of his hands and adjusted without his knowledge. This time it had been Banks--Banks, the impossible--who had swayed his destiny, and lacking all other attributes, Banks had accomplished it through the simple power of the human touch. In the hour of his need it had been neither religion nor philosophy, but the outstretched hand, that had helped. Then his vision broadened and he saw that though the body of love is one, the members of it are infinite; and it was made plain to him at last, that the love of Emily, the love of Alice, and the love of Banks, were but different revelations of the same immortality. He had gone down into the deep places, and out of them he had brought this light, this message. As the people streamed past him to the big gray church, he felt that if they would only stop and listen, he could tell them in the open, not in walls, of the thing that they were seeking. Yet the time had not come, though in the hope of it he could sit there patiently under the blue sky, with the snow melting over the grass at his feet. At the end of an hour Banks returned, and stood over him with affectionate anxiety. "In a few days you'll be well enough to travel, Smith, and I'll take you back with me to Tappahannock." Ordway glanced up, smiling, and Banks saw in his face, so thin that the flesh seemed almost transparent, the rapt and luminous look with which he had stood over his Bible in the green field or in the little grove of pines. "You will go back to Tappahannock and Baxter will take you in until you grow strong and well, and then you can start your schools, or your library, and look after the mills instead of letting Baxter do it." "Yes," said Ordway, "yes," but he had hardly heard Banks's words, for his gaze was on the blue sky, against which the spire of the church rose like a pointing finger. His face shone as if from an inward flame, and this flame, burning clearly in his blue eyes, transfigured his look. Ah, Smith was always a dreamer, thought Banks, with the uncomprehending simplicity of a child. But Ordway was looking beyond Banks, beyond the church spire, beyond the blue sky. He saw himself, not as Banks pictured him, living quietly in Tappahannock, but still struggling, still fighting, still falling to rise and go on again. His message was not for Tappahannock alone, but for all places where there were men and women working and suffering and going into prison and coming out. He heard his voice speaking to them in the square of this town; then in many squares and in many towns---- "Come," said Banks softly, "the wind is changing. It is time to go in." With an effort Ordway withdrew his gaze from the church spire. Then leaning upon Banks's arm, he slowly crossed the square to the door of the hotel. But before going inside, he turned and stood for a moment looking back at the grass which showed fresh and green under the melting snow. 
21534	----	Textiles and Clothing BY KATE HEINTZ WATSON GRADUATE ARMOUR INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR IN DOMESTIC ART LEWIS INSTITUTE LECTURER UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO [Illustration: American School of Home Economics seal] CHICAGO AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS 1907 COPYRIGHT 1906, 1907, BY HOME ECONOMICS ASSOCIATION THE LIBRARY OF HOME ECONOMICS A COMPLETE HOME-STUDY COURSE ON THE NEW PROFESSION OF HOME-MAKING AND ART OF RIGHT LIVING; THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THE MOST RECENT ADVANCES IN THE ARTS AND SCIENCES TO HOME AND HEALTH PREPARED BY TEACHERS OF RECOGNIZED AUTHORITY FOR HOME-MAKERS, MOTHERS, TEACHERS, PHYSICIANS, NURSES, DIETITIANS, PROFESSIONAL HOUSE MANAGERS, AND ALL INTERESTED IN HOME, HEALTH, ECONOMY AND CHILDREN TWELVE VOLUMES NEARLY THREE THOUSAND PAGES, ONE THOUSAND ILLUSTRATIONS TESTED BY USE IN CORRESPONDENCE INSTRUCTION REVISED AND SUPPLEMENTED [Illustration: American School of Home Economics seal] CHICAGO AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS 1907 Copyright, 1907 by Home Economics Association Entered at Stationers' Hall, London _All Rights Reserved._ AUTHORS ISABEL BEVIER, Ph. M. Professor of Household Science, University of Illinois. Author U. S. Government Bulletins, "Development of The Home Economics Movement in America," etc. ALICE PELOUBET NORTON, M. A. Assistant Professor of Home Economics, School of Eduction, University of Chicago; Director of the Chautauqua School of Domestic Science. S. MARIA ELLIOTT Instructor in Home Economics, Simmons College; Formerly Instructor School of Housekeeping, Boston. ANNA BARROWS Director Chautauqua School of Cookery; Lecturer Teachers' College, Columbia University, and Simmons College; formerly Editor "American Kitchen Magazine;" Author "Home Science Cook Book." ALFRED CLEVELAND COTTON, A. M., M. D. Professor Diseases of Children, Rush Medical College, University of Chicago; Visiting Physician Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago; Author of "Diseases of Children." BERTHA M. TERRILL, A. B. Professor in Home Economics in Hartford School of Pedagogy; Author of U. S. Government Bulletins. KATE HEINTZ WATSON Formerly Instructor in Domestic Economy, Lewis Institute; Lecturer University of Chicago. MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE Editor "The Mothers' Magazine;" Lecturer Chicago Froebel Association; Author "Everyday Essays," "Family Secrets," etc. MARGARET E. DODD Graduate Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Teacher of Science, Woodard Institute. AMY ELIZABETH POPE With the Panama Canal Commission; Formerly Instructor in Practical and Theoretical Nursing, Training School for Nurses, Presbyterian Hospital, New York City. MAURICE LE BOSQUET, S. B. Director American School of Home Economics; Member American Public Health Association and American Chemical Society. CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS ELLEN H. RICHARDS Author "Cost of Food," "Cost of Living," "Cost of Shelter," "Food Materials and Their Adulteration," etc., etc.; Chairman Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics. MARY HINMAN ABEL Author of U. S. Government Bulletins, "Practical Sanitary and Economic Cooking," "Sale Food," etc. THOMAS D. WOOD, M. D. Professor of Physical Education, Columbia University. H. M. LUFKIN, M. D. Professor of Physical Diagnosis and Clinical Medicine, University of Minnesota. OTTO FOLIN, Ph. D. Special Investigator, McLean Hospital, Waverly, Mass. T. MITCHELL PRUDDEN, M. D., LL. D. Author "Dust and Its Dangers," "The Story of the Bacteria," "Drinking Water and Ice Supplies," etc. FRANK CHOUTEAU BROWN Architect, Boston, Mass.; Author of "The Five Orders of Architecture," "Letters and Lettering." MRS. MELVIL DEWEY Secretary Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics. HELEN LOUISE JOHNSON Professor of Home Economics, James Millikan University, Decatur. FRANK W. ALLIN, M. D. Instructor Rush Medical College, University of Chicago. MANAGING EDITOR MAURICE LE BOSQUET, S. B. Director American School of Home Economics. BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS MRS. ARTHUR COURTENAY NEVILLE President of the Board. MISS MARIA PARLOA Founder of the first Cooking School in Boston; Author of "Home Economics," "Young Housekeeper," U. S. Government Bulletins, etc. MRS. MARY HINMAN ABEL Co-worker in the "New England Kitchen," and the "Rumford Food Laboratory;" Author of U. S. Government Bulletins, "Practical Sanitary and Economic Cooking," etc. MISS ALICE RAVENHILL Special Commissioner sent by the British Government to report on the Schools of Home Economics in the United States; Fellow of the Royal Sanitary Institute, London. MRS. ELLEN M. HENROTIN Honorary President General Federation of Woman's Clubs. MRS. FREDERIC W. SCHOFF President National Congress of Mothers. MRS. LINDA HULL LARNED Past President National Household Economics Association; Author of "Hostess of To-day." MRS. WALTER McNAB MILLER Chairman of the Pure Food Committee of the General Federation of Woman's Clubs. MRS. J. A. KIMBERLY Vice President of National Household Economics Association. MRS. JOHN HOODLESS Government Superintendent of Domestic Science for the province of Ontario; Founder Ontario Normal School of Domestic Science, now the MacDonald Institute. [Illustration: DRESS MAKING IN MEXICO] CONTENTS Primitive Methods 3 Weaving 14 Fibers 29 Cotton 29 Wool 37 Flax 43 Silk 53 Modern Methods 59 Weaving 69 Weaves 72 Bleaching and Dyeing 78 Printing 81 Finishing 83 Cotton Goods 85 Linens 86 Woolens and Worsteds 88 Silks 90 Names of Fabrics 94 Bibliography on Textiles 103 Hand Sewing 107 Ornamental Stitches 114 Hems 123 Tucks and Seams 128 Plackets 135 Sewing on Bands 138 Fastenings 141 Patching 149 Darning 155 Mitering Embroidery, Joining Lace 158 Machine Sewing 162 Dressmaking 167 Patterns 171 Making Seven-Gored Skirt 172 Making Shirt Waists 182 Lined Waist 186 Sleeves 194 Collars 198 Seamless Yokes 200 Pressing 201 Construction and Ornament in Dress 203 Ornament of Textiles 212 Color 214 Children's Clothes 216 Care of Clothing 219 Cleaning 221 Repairing 225 Bibliography on Sewing and Dressmaking 229 References: History of Costume; Ornament and Design 234 Program for Supplemental Study 236 Index 241 [Illustration: "THE THREAD OF LIFE" Spinning with the Distaff and Spindle. From a Painting.] TEXTILES AND CLOTHING [Sidenote: Origin of Textile Arts] Spinning and weaving are among the earliest arts. In the twisting of fibers, hairs, grasses, and sinews by rolling them between the thumb and fingers, palms of the hands, or palms and naked thigh, we have the original of the spinning wheel and the steam-driven cotton spindle; in the roughest plaiting we have the first hint of the finest woven cloth. The need of securing things or otherwise strengthening them then led to binding, fastening, and sewing. The wattle-work hut with its roof of interlaced boughs, the skins sewn by fine needles with entrails or sinews, the matted twigs, grasses, and rushes are all the crude beginnings of an art which tells of the settled life of to-day. [Sidenote: Primitive Methods] Nothing is definitely known of the origin of these arts; all is conjecture. They doubtless had their beginning long before mention is made of them in history, but these crafts--spinning and weaving--modified and complicated by inventions and, in modern times transferred largely from man to machine, were distinctively woman's employment. The very primitive type of spinning, where no spindle was used, was to fasten the strands of goats' hair or wool to a stone which was twirled round until the yarn was sufficiently twisted when it was wound upon the stone and the process repeated over and over. [Illustration: ITALIAN WOMAN SPINNING FLAX Spindle and Distaff. From Hull House Museum. (In This Series of Pictures the Spinners and Weavers Are in Native Costume.)] [Illustration: RUSSIAN SPINNING Flax Held on Frame, Leaving Both Hands Free to Manage the Thread and Spindle. From Hull House Museum.] [Sidenote: Spinning with the Spindle] The next method of twisting yarn was with the spindle, a straight stick eight to twelve inches long on which the thread was wound after twisting. At first it had a cleft or split in the top in which the thread was fixed; later a hook of bone was added to the upper end. The spindle is yet used by the North American Indians, the Italians, and in the Orient. The bunch of wool or flax fibers is held in the left hand; with the right hand the fibers are drawn out several inches and the end fastened securely in the slit or hook on the top of the spindle. A whirling motion is given to the spindle on the thigh or any convenient part of the body; the spindle is then dropped, twisting the yarn, which is wound on the upper part of the spindle. Another bunch of fibers is drawn out, the spindle is given another twirl, the yarn is wound on the spindle, and so on. [Sidenote: Spindle Whorl] A spindle containing a quantity of yarn was found to rotate more easily, steadily and continue longer than an empty one, hence the next improvement was the addition of a _whorl_ at the bottom of the spindle. These whorls are discs of wood, stone, clay, or metal which keep the spindle steady and promote its rotation. The process in effect is precisely the same as the spinning done by our grandmothers, only the spinning wheel did the twisting and reduced the time required for the operation. [Illustration: SPINNING WITH CRUDE WHEEL AND DISTAFF Distaff Thrust Into the Belt.] [Illustration: "GOSSIP" IN THE OLDEN TIMES] [Illustration: COLONIAL WOOL WHEEL The Large Wheel Revolved by Hand Thus Turning the Spindle and Twisting the Yarn, Which Is Then Wound on the Spindle; Intermittent in Action.] [Illustration: COLONIAL FLAX WHEEL Worked by a Foot Treddle; Distaff on the Frame of the Wheel; "Fliers" on the Spindle, Continuous in Action; Capacity Seven Times That of Hand Spindle.] [Illustration: DUTCH WHEEL Spinner Sits in Front of the Wheel Spinning Flax at Hull House.] [Sidenote: Distaff] Later the distaff was used for holding the bunch of wool, flax, or other fibers. It was a short stick on one end of which was loosely wound the raw material. The other end of the distaff was held in the hand, under the arm or thrust in the girdle of the spinner. When held thus, one hand was left free for drawing out the fibers. [Illustration: Graphic Diagram Showing Time During which Different Methods of Spinning Has Been Used.] [Sidenote: Wheel Spinning] On the small spinning wheel the distaff was placed in the end of the wheel bench in front of the "fillers"; this left both hands free to manage the spindle and to draw out the threads of the fibers. [Illustration: SYRIAN SPINNING Spinner Sits on the Floor, Wheel Turned by a Crank; Spindle Held in Place by Two Mutton Joints Which Contain Enough Oil for Lubrication. At Hull House.] The flax spinning wheel, worked by means of a treadle, was invented in the early part of the sixteenth century and was a great improvement upon the distaff and spindle. This it will be seen was a comparatively modern invention. The rude wheel used by the natives of Japan and India may have been the progenitor of the European wheel, as about this time intercourse between the East and Europe increased. These wheels were used for spinning flax, wool, and afterwards cotton, until Hargreaves' invention superseded it. WEAVING Someone has said that "weaving is the climax of textile industry." It is an art practiced by all savage tribes and doubtless was known before the dawn of history. The art is but a development of mat-making and basketry, using threads formed or made by spinning in place of coarser filaments. [Illustration: PUEBLO WOMAN WORKING HEDDLE IN WEAVING A BELT] [Illustration: A NAVAJO BELT WEAVER] [Illustration: ZUNI WOMAN WEAVING CEREMONIAL BELT] [Illustration: PRIMITIVE HEDDLES] [Sidenote: The Heddle] In the beginning of the art the warp threads were stretched between convenient objects on the ground or from horizontal supports. At first the woof or filling threads were woven back and forth between the warp threads as in darning. An improvement was the device called the "heald" or "heddle," by means of which alternate warp threads could be drawn away from the others, making an opening through which the filling thread could be passed quickly. One form of the heddle was simply a straight stick having loops of cord or sinew through which certain of the warp threads were run. Another form was a slotted frame having openings or "eyes" in the slats. This was carved from one piece of wood or other material or made from many. Alternate warp threads passed through the eyes and the slots. By raising or lowering the heddle frame, an opening was formed through which the filling thread, wound on a rude shuttle, was thrown. The next movement of the heddle frame crossed the threads over the filling and made a new opening for the return of the shuttle. At first the filling thread was wound on a stick making a primitive bobbin. Later the shuttle to hold the bobbin was devised. [Illustration: NAVAJO LOOM One on the Earliest Types of Looms. At Hull House.] [Illustration: SIMPLE COLONIAL LOOM] [Sidenote: The Reed] Before the "reed" was invented, the filling threads were drawn evenly into place by means of a rude comb and driven home by sword-shaped piece of wood or "batten." The reed accomplished all this at one time. [Illustration: A JAPANESE LOOM.] [Illustration: A FOUR HARNESS HAND LOOM Weaving Linen in the Mountains of Virginia. (Photograph by C. R. Dodge).] [Illustration: TYPICAL COLONIAL HAND LOOM Two Harnesses in Use; Weaving Wool at Hull House.] [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF A HAND LOOM _A_--Warp Beam; _B_--Cloth Beam; _DD_--Lees Rods; _H_--Harness; _T_--Treddle.] [Sidenote: Definition of a Loom] It is probable that the European looms were derived from those of India as they seem to be made on the same principle. From crude beginnings, the hand loom of our grandmothers' time developed. A loom has been defined as a mechanism which affects the following necessary movements: 1. The lifting of the healds to form an opening, or shed, or race for the shuttle to pass through. 2. The throwing of the weft or filling by means of a shuttle. 3. The beating up of the weft left in the shed by the shuttle to the cloth already formed. This thread may be adjusted by means of the batten, needle, comb, or any separate device like the reed. 4 & 5. The winding up or taking up of the cloth as it is woven and the letting off of the warp as the cloth is taken up. [Illustration: SWEDISH HAND LOOM Norwegian Woman Weaving Linen at Hull House.] [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF THE WORKING PARTS OF A LOOM. _S_--Shuttle for carrying the woof; _R_--Reed for beating up the woof; _H_--Frame holding heddles, with pullies (_P_) making the harness; _T_--Treddles for moving the harness.] [Sidenote: Colonial Loom] No essential changes have been made since our grandmothers made cloth a hundred years ago. The "harnesses" move part of the warp now up, now down, and the shuttle carries the weft from side to side to be driven home by the reeds to the woven cloth. Our grandmothers did all the work with swift movements of hands and feet. The modern weaver has her loom harnessed to the electric dynamo and moves her fingers only to keep the threads in order. If she wishes to weave a pattern in the cloth, no longer does she pick up threads of warp now here, now there, according to the designs. It is all worked out for her on the loom. Each thread with almost human intelligence settles automatically into its appointed place, and the weaver is only a machine tender. [Illustration: FLY SHUTTLE HAND LOOM. The Pulling of the Reed Automatically Throws the Shuttle Back and Forth and Works the Harness, Making a Shed at the Proper Time.] [Sidenote: Primitive Fabrics] No textiles of primitive people were ever woven in "pieces" or "bolts" of yards and yards in length to be cut into garments. The cloth was made of the size and shape to serve the particular purpose for which it was designed. The mat, robe, or blanket had tribal outlines and proportions and was made according to the materials and the use of common forms that prevailed among the tribes. The designs were always conventional and sometimes monotonous. The decoration never interfered with its use. "The first beauty of the savage woman was uniformity which belonged to the texture and shape of the product." The uniformity in textile, basketry, or pottery, after acquiring a family trait, was never lost sight of. Their designs were suggested by the natural objects with which they were familiar. [Illustration: PICKING COTTON. From Department of Agriculture Bulletin, "The Cotton Plant."] FIBERS Both the animal and vegetable kingdoms furnish the materials for clothing as well as for all the textiles used in the home. The fleece of sheep, the hair of the goat and camel, silk, furs, and skins are the chief animal products. The principal vegetable fibers are cotton, flax, ramie, jute, and hemp. [Sidenote: Chief Fibers] Cotton linen, wool, and silk have heretofore formed the foundation of all textiles and are the principal fibers used for clothing materials. Ramie or China grass and pineapple fibers are sometimes used as adulterants in the manufacture of silk. When woven alone, they give soft silky textiles of great strength and beauty. COTTON [Illustration: PRODUCTION OF COTTON] Cotton is now our chief vegetable fiber, the yearly crop being over six billion pounds, of which the United States raises three-fourths. Texas is the largest producer, followed by Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The remainder of the world supply comes chiefly from India, Egypt, Russia, and Brazil. The Hindoos were the first ancient people to make extensive use of the cotton fiber. Not until the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1794 did the cotton begin to reach its present importance. Only four or five pounds of the fiber could be separated by hand from the seed by a week's labor. The modern saw gins turn out over five thousand pounds daily. [Sidenote: Native Home] Cotton is the white downy covering of the seed of several special of cotton of cotton plant. It is a native of many parts of the world, being found by Columbus growing in the West Indies and on the main land, by Cortez in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru. [Illustration: COTTON FIBER ATTACHED TO SEED] [Sidenote: Sea Island Cotton] The value of cotton depends upon the strength, and evenness of the fiber. In ordinary cotton the individual fiber is about an inch in length. The sea island cotton grown chiefly on the islands off the coast of Georgia, Carolina, and Florida is the most valuable variety, having a fine fiber, one and one-half to two inches in length. Some of the Egyptian cotton belongs to this species. Sea island cotton is used chiefly for fine laces, thread and knit goods and for the finest lawns and muslins. [Sidenote: Upland Cotton] The short fiber or upland cotton is the most common and useful variety. It is grown in Georgia, North and South Carolina and Alabama. Texas cotton is similar to upland, but sometimes is harsh with shorter fiber. Gulf cotton occupies a position between upland and sea island cotton. [Illustration: UPLAND COTTON PLANT WITH FULLY DEVELOPED BOLES From Bulletin No. 31, Georgia Experiment Station.] [Illustration: COTTON BOLE FULLY DEVELOPED From Year Book of the Department of Agriculture, 1903.] [Illustration: BOLE OPENED, COTTON READY FOR PICKING Year Book of 1903.] The Brazilian and Peruvian cotton yields a long staple and is sometimes used to adulterate silk and other fibers. Some varieties of this cotton are harsh and wooly and are prized for use in mixing with wool. [Sidenote: Nankin Cotton] The Nankin cotton grown in China and India and in the southwestern part of Louisiana is characterized by its yellow color. It is used in weaving cloth of various kinds in the "fireside industries" which have become popular in the United States and England. [Illustration: COTTON FIBERS _A A_--Unripe Fibers; _B B_--Half-ripe Fibers; _C C_--Ripe Fibers.] [Sidenote: Spinning Qualities] Very fine yarn can be spun from cotton because of the spiral character of the fibers. This twist of the fibers is peculiar to cotton, being present in no other animal or vegetable fiber. On account of this twist, cotton cloths are much more elastic in character than those woven from linen, the fibers of which are stiff and straight. After the removal of the seed, no other fiber is so free from impurities--5 per cent is the loss sustained by cleaning and bleaching. In its natural condition, cotton will not dye readily because of a waxy substance on the surface of the fibers. This must be removed by washing. [Sidenote: Picking and Ginning] Cotton should be picked only when it is fully ripe when the pods are fully burst and the fibers expanded. The unripe fiber is glassy, does not attain its full strength and resists the dye. After picking, the cotton is sent to the ginning factory to have the seed removed. It is then pressed into bales by hydraulic presses, five hundred pounds being the standard bale in the United States. [Illustration: COTTON BALES] [Sidenote: Physical Characteristics] Purified bleached cotton is nearly pure cellulose. It resists the action of alkalis well, but is harmed by hot, strong acids, or if acid is allowed to dry on the fabric. It is not harmed by high temperature, and so may be ironed with a hot iron. [Illustration: WOOL FIBER AND SUBSTITUTES 1. South American Wool; 2. Noil from the Same; 3. Tangled Waste; 4. Waste Combed Out; 5. Lap Waste; 6. Shoddy.] WOOL [Sidenote: Character of Fiber] Wool is the most important animal fiber. Strictly speaking the name applies only to the hairy covering of sheep, but the hair of certain goats and of camels is generally classified under the same terms. The wool fiber is distinguished by its scale-like surface which gives it its felting and spinning properties. Hair as distinguished from wool has little or no scaly structure being in general a smooth filament with no felting properties and spinning only with great difficulty. Fur is the undergrowth found on most fur-bearing animals and has in a modified way the scaly structure and felting properties of wool. [Illustration: MICROSCOPIC APPEARANCE OF WOOL FIBERS] [Sidenote: Value for Clothing] The great value of wool as a fiber lies in the fact that it is strong, elastic, soft, very susceptible to dye stuffs and being woven, furnishes a great number of air spaces, rendering clothing made from it very warm and light. [Sidenote: Quality of Wool] Climate, breed, and food influence the quality of the wool. Where the pasturage is barren and rocky, the wool is apt to be coarse. [Illustration: MERINO RAMS The Variety of Sheep Giving the Finest Wool.] [Sidenote: Varieties of Sheep] There are supposed to be about thirty distinct varieties of sheep, nearly half of which are natives of Asia, one-third of Africa, and only four coming from Europe, and two from America. Wool is divided into two general classes--long and short staple, according to the average length of fiber. The long fiber wool is commonly carded, combed and spun into _worsted_ yarn. The short fiber is usually carded and spun into woolen yarn. The short fiber obtained in combing long staple wool is called "noil." It is used for woolens. [Sidenote: Goat Wools] Alpaca, Vicuna and Llama wools are obtained from animals which are native to the mountains of Peru and Chile. The Angora goat, originally from Asia Minor, furnishes the mohair of commerce. This fiber does not resemble the hairs of common goats in any respect. It is a very beautiful fiber of silky luster, which constitutes its chief value. [Illustration: ANGORA GOATS] [Sidenote: Fur] The fur of beavers and rabbits can be and is used in manufacture, either spun into yarn or made into felt. The fibers of both animals enter largely into the manufacture of felt hats. [Sidenote: Sorting Wool] The fleece of sheep after being sheared is divided into different parts or _sorted_, according to the quality of the wool, the best wool coming from the sides of the animal. [Illustration: WOOL FIBERS _a_--Medium Wool; _b_--Camel's Hair; _c_--Diseased Fiber; _d_--Merino Wool; _e_--Mohair.] [Sidenote: Scouring Wool] As it comes from the sheep, the wool contains many substances besides the wool fiber which must be removed before dyeing or spinning. This cleansing is called _scouring_. Before scouring, the wool is usually dusted by machines to remove all loose dirt. The scouring must be done by the mildest means possible in order to preserve the natural fluffiness and brilliancy of the fiber. The chief impurity is the wool grease or "yolk" which is secreted by the skin glands to lubricate the fiber and prevent it from matting. [Illustration: ONE METHOD OF WOOL SORTING 1--The Best Grade; 2--Lowest Grade; 3--Fair; 4--Medium Grade.] [Sidenote: Scouring Agents] In the scouring of wool, soap is the principal agent. Soft soap made from caustic potash is generally used as it is less harmful than ordinary hard soda soap. Potassium carbonate--"pearl ash"--is often used in connection with the soap. If the water for scouring is hard, it is softened with pearl ash. The temperature of wash water is never allowed to go above 120° F. The scoured wool weighs from a little over a half to one-third or less of the weight of the fleece. [Sidenote: Hydroscopic Moisture] Wool has the remarkable property of absorbing up to 30 per cent or more of its weight of water and yet not feel perceptibly damp to the touch. This is called "hydroscopic moisture." To this property wool owes its superiority as a textile for underclothing. [Illustration: WOOL SORTING] The thoroughly cleansed fiber is made up chiefly of the chemical substance keratin, being similar in composition to horn and feathers. In burning it gives off a characteristic disagreeable odor. It is a substance very weakly acid in its nature, for which reason it combines readily with many dyes. Wool resists the action of acids very well, but is much harmed by the alkalis, being dissolved completely by a warm solution of caustic soda. High temperature harms wool. FLAX Next to wool and cotton, flax is used most largely in our textile manufactures. The linen fiber consists of the bast cells of certain species of flax grown in Europe, Africa, and the United States. All bast fibers are obtained near the outer surface of the plant stems. The pith and woody tissues are of no value. The flax plant is an annual and to obtain the best fibers it must be gathered before it is fully ripe. To obtain seed from which the best quality of linseed oil can be made it is usually necessary to sacrifice the quality of the fibers to some extent. [Illustration: FLAX] [Sidenote: Treatment of Flax] Unlike cotton, flax is contaminated by impurities from which it must be freed before it can be woven into cloth. The first process to which the freshly pulled flax is submitted is that of "rippling" or the removal of the seed capsules. Retting, next in order, is the most important operation. This is done to remove the substances which bind the bast fibers to each other and to remove the fiber from the central woody portion of the stem. This consists of steeping the stalks in water. [Illustration: A FIELD OF FLAX IN MINNESOTA The Flax Must Be Pulled Up by the Roots to Give Fibres with Tapered Ends. (Photograph of C. R. Dodge).] [Sidenote: Retting] (1) Cold water retting, either running or stagnant water. (2) Dew retting. (3) Warm water retting. [Illustration: RETTING TANK _A_--Inlet; _B_--Undisturbed Water; _C_--Bundles of Flax.] Cold water retting in running water is practiced in Belgium. Retting in stagnant water is the method usually employed in Ireland and Russia. The retting in stagnant water is more rapidly done, but there is danger of over-retting on account of the organic matter retained in the water which favors fermentation. In this case the fiber is weakened. [Illustration: RETTING FLAX IN THE RIVER LYS, BELGIUM From the Government Bulletin, "Flax for Seed and Fiber."] In dew retting, the flax is spread on the field and exposed to the action of the weather for several weeks without any previous steeping. This method of retting is practiced in Germany and Russia. Warm water retting and chemical retting have met with limited success. When the retting is complete, the flax is set up in sheaves to dry. The next operations consist of "breaking," "scutching," and "hackling" and are now done by machinery. [Illustration: FIBERS OF FLAX] Breaking removes the woody center from the retted and dried flax by being passed through a series of fluted rollers. The particles of woody matter adhering to the fibers are detached by scutching. [Sidenote: Hackling] Hackling or combing still further separates the fibers into their finest filaments--"line" and "tow." The "flax line" is the long and valuable fiber; the tow, the short coarse tangled fiber which is spun and used for weaving coarse linen. [Illustration: FLAX A, Unthrashed Straw; B, Retted; C, Cleaned or Scutched; D, Hackled or Dressed. (Photograph of C. R. Dodge).] [Illustration: HACKLING FLAX BY HAND The "Tow" Is Seen at the Left and a Bunch of "Flax line" on the Bench. (Photograph of C. R. Dodge, Special Agent U. S. Department of Agriculture.)] [Sidenote: Characteristics of Linen] When freed from all impurities the chief physical characteristics of flax are its snowy whiteness, silky luster and great tenacity. The individual fibers may be from ten to twelve inches in length; they are much greater in diameter than cotton. It is less pliant and elastic than cotton and bleaches and dyes less readily. Linen cloth is a better conductor of heat than cotton and clothing made from it is cooler. When pure, it is, like cotton, nearly pure cellulose. [Sidenote: Ramie] Besides the linen, there is a great number of bast fibers fit for textile purposes, some superior, some inferior. India alone has over three hundred plants that are fiber yielding. One-third of these furnish useful fibers for cordage and fabrics. The next in importance to linen is ramie or rhea, and China grass. China grass comes from a different plant but is about the same as ramie. The staple is longer and finer than linen. The great strength of yarn made from it is due to length of the staple. The variety and great value of the ramie fibers has long been recognized, but difficulties attending the separation and degumming of the fibers have prevented its employment in the manufactures to any great extent. The native Chinese split and scrape the plant stems, steeping them in water. The common retting process used for flax is not effective on account of the large amount of gummy matter, and although easy to bleach it is difficult to dye in full bright shades without injuring the luster of the fibers. [Sidenote: Jute and Hemp] Jute and hemp belong to the lower order of bast fibers. The fiber is large and is unfit for any but the coarsest kind of fabrics. Jute is mainly cultivated in Bengal. The fiber is separated from the plant by retting, beating, etc. [Illustration: JUTE GROWING IN LOUISIANA. From Culture of Hemp and Jute, Report of U. S. Department of Agriculture.] [Illustration: DRYING HEMP IN KENTUCKY From "Culture of Hemp and Jute."] [Sidenote: Olona] Olona, the textile fiber of Hawaii, is found to have promising qualities. This plant resembles ramie and belongs to the nettle family also, but it is without the troublesome resin of the ramie. The fiber is fine, light, strong, and durable. The Philippines are rich in fiber producing plants. The manila hemp is the most prominent, of which coarse cloth is woven, besides the valuable cordage. The sisal hemp, pineapple, yucca, and a number of fiber plants growing in the southern part of the United States are worthy of note. These fiber industries are conducted in a rude way, the fiber being cleaned by hand, except the pineapple. SILK The silk fiber is the most perfect as well as the most beautiful of all fibers. It is nearly faultless, fine and continuous, often measuring from 1000 to 4000 feet long, without a scale, joint, or a blemish, though not of the same diameter or fineness throughout its entire length, as it becomes finer as the interior of the cocoon is approached. Silk differs from all other vegetable or animal fibers by being devoid of all cellular structure. [Sidenote: Where Produced] Southern Europe leads in the silk worm culture--Italy, southern France, and Turkey, with China and India. Several species of moths, natives of India, China, and Japan, produce the wild silk. The most important of the "wild silks" are the Tussah. Silk plush and the coarser varieties of buff colored fabrics are made of this silk. While manufacturers do not favor the wild silk, the coarse uneven weave and softness make it a favorite with artists and it is being used for interior decoration as well as for clothing. [Sidenote: Silk Worm] The silk of commerce begins with an egg no bigger than a mustard seed, out of which comes a diminutive caterpillar, which is kept in a frame and fed upon mulberry leaves. When the caterpillars are full grown, they climb upon twigs placed for them and begin to spin or make the cocoon. The silk comes from two little orifices in the head in the form of a glutinous gum which hardens into a fine elastic fiber. With a motion of the head somewhat like the figure eight, the silk worm throws this thread around the body from head to tail until at last it is entirely enveloped. The body grows smaller and the thread grows finer until at last it has spun out most of the substance of the body and the task is done. If left to itself, when the time came, the moth would eat its way out of the cocoon and ruin the fiber. A few of the best cocoons are saved for a new supply of caterpillars; the remainder are baked at a low heat which destroys the worm but preserves the silk. This now becomes the cocoon of commerce. [Sidenote: Reeling Silk] Next the cocoons go to the reelers who wind the filaments into the silk yarn that makes the raw material of our mills. The cocoons are thrown into warm water mixed with soap in order to dissolve the gum. The outer or coarser covering is brushed off down to the real silk and the end of the thread found. Four or five cocoons are wound together, the sticky fibers clinging to each other as they pass through the various guides and are wound as a single thread on the reels. The silk is dried and tied into hanks or skeins. As the thread unwinds from the cocoon, it becomes smaller, so other threads must be added. [Illustration: SILK:--CATERPILLAR, COCOON, CHRYSALIS, MOTH] [Sidenote: Organize and Tram] At the mill the raw silk goes to the "throwster" who twists the silk threads ready for the loom. These threads are of two kinds--"organize" or warp and "tram" or filling. The warp runs the long way of woven fabric or parallel with the selvage and it must be strong, elastic, and not easily parted by rubbing. To prepare the warp, two threads of raw silk are slightly twisted. Twist is always put into yarn of any kind to increase its strength. These threads are united and twisted together and this makes a strong thread capable of withstanding any reasonable strain in the loom and it will not roughen. For the woof or tram which is carried across the woven cloth on the shuttle, the thread should be as loose and fluffy as possible. Several threads are put together, subjected to only a very slight twist--just enough to hold the threads together so they will lie evenly in the finished fabric. [Sidenote: Boiling Off] After the yarn leaves the spinners it is again run off on reels to be taken to the dye house. First the yarn is boiled off in soapy water to remove the remaining gum. Now the silk takes on its luster. Before it was dull like cotton. The silk is now finer and harder and is known as "souple." [Sidenote: Loading Silk] The silk fiber has a remarkable property of absorbing certain metallic salts, still retaining much of its luster. This process is known as "loading" or "weighting," and gives increased body and weight to the silk. Silk without weighting is known as "pure dye," of which there is little made, as such goods take too much silk. [Illustration: REELING SILK] For the weighting of white or light colored silk goods, tin crystals (stanous chloride) are used and for dark shades and black, iron salts and tannin. By this means the original weight of the fiber may be increased three or four hundred per cent. This result is not attained, however, except through the weakening of the fiber. [Sidenote: Action of Common Salt] Common salt has a very curious action on weighted silk. It slowly weakens the fiber. A silk dress may be ruined by being splashed with salt water at the seashore. Most often holes appear after a dress comes back from the cleaners; these he may not be to blame for, as salt is abundant in nearly all the bodily secretions,--tears, perspiration, urine. [Sidenote: Artificial Silk] Artificial silk is made by dissolving cellulose obtained from cotton. It is lacking in strength and water spoils all kinds manufactured at present. [Sidenote: Characteristics of Silk] Silk, like wool, has the property of absorbing considerable moisture without becoming perceptibly damp. Like wool and all the animal fibers, it is harmed by alkalis. The important physical properties of silk are its beautiful luster, strength, elasticity and the readiness with which it takes dyes. Silk combines well with other fibers, animal and vegetable. [Sidenote: Value of Raw Fibers] A comparison of the relative value of textile fibers may be seen from the following approximate prices: Cotton--$.07 to $.14 per pound; loss in cleaning and bleaching 5 per cent. Flax--$.12 to $.30 per pound; loss in cleaning and bleaching about 20 per cent. Wool--$.15 to $.30 per pound; loss in scouring 20 to 60 per cent. Raw Silk--$7.00 to $10.00 per pound; loss in "boiling off" about 30 per cent which is made up and much more by "loading." MODERN METHODS All the complex processes and machinery of the textile industry are but developments of the old-time methods of the home. Brief outlines only will be given here for the processes are most intricate in detail. SPINNING The spinning of cotton yarn (thread) is typical of all the fibers. The stages may be divided into-- 1. Opening and picking. 2. Carding. 3. Combing. 4. Drawing. 5. Spinning. [Sidenote: Picking and Carding] The picking and carding have for their object the removal of all foreign substances with as little damage to the fiber as possible. The foreign substances in cotton are sand, dirt, pieces of leaves, seed, husk, etc., which have become mixed with the fiber during the process of growing, ginning and transportation. [Sidenote: Cleaning] The cotton bales are opened and thrown into the automatic feeder which carries up a layer of cotton on a spiked apron from which it is removed by a rapidly revolving "doffer" underneath which is a screen which catches some of the dirt. It is next fed between rolls in front of a rapidly revolving blunt-edged knife which throws out more of the dirt through a screen. There is a suction of air through the screen which helps remove the foreign substances. The cotton passes through several of such machines, being formed into a soft web or "lap" which is wound into a roll. [Sidenote: Carding] The carding machine further cleans the fibers and lays them in a general parallel position. From this machine the web is formed into "sliver," a loose rope of cotton fiber about two inches in diameter. This is received in circular cans. [Illustration: COTTON OPENER AND PICKER The cotton from the bale is thrown into _A_, carried by the spiked aprons _B_ and _C_, evened by _E_, removed from the apron by _F_ (some of the dirt falls through the screen into box _G_) is beaten by the revolving "knife," _N P_, more dirt being removed through screen _N_, then goes through the flue _C_ to the next machine.] [Sidenote: Combing] The combing is omitted for short fiber cotton, but is used in worsted spinning and with long staple cotton to remove the short fibers. Cotton to be used for making yarn suitable for hosiery, underwear, sewing thread, lace, and for very fine cotton fabrics is carded. In drawing, from six to sixteen "slivers" are run together and the fibers drawn out in several stages until the soft rope is about an eighth of an inch in diameter, called "roving." This tends to get rid of any unevenness and makes the fibers all parallel. From this machine the roving is wound on a bobbin ready for the spinning frame. [Illustration: COTTON CARD The roll of webbing _A_ is beaten and transferred to the cylinder _H H_, carded by the spiked belt _E_, removed by the "doffer" and formed into a "sliver" which runs into the can _M_.] [Sidenote: Spinning] The spinning frame may have a hundred spindles or more, each one of which is drawing out its supply of "roving" to the required size of yarn and giving it the twist necessary to bind the fibers together. The yarn to be used for the warp is given a harder twist so that it may be strong enough to stand the strain in weaving. The yarn for filling is usually left soft. [Illustration: COTTON COMB, USED FOR LONG STAPLE] [Illustration: RECEIVING THE "SLIVER" AT THE BACK OF THE DRAWING FRAME.] [Illustration: DRAWING FRAME Drawing the Roving Finer.] [Illustration: A FLY SPINNING FRAME The Spools of Roving Above Are Being Drawn Out, Given the Twist by the Fliers, and Wound on Bobbins Below.] [Illustration: MULE DRAWING AND SPINNING FRAME Always used for wool. Part of the machine moves away from the frame, thus drawing out the thread, which is then twisted.] [Illustration: MODERN RING SPINNING FRAME FOR COTTON. SIXTY-EIGHT SPINDLES Gives the Largest Production.] [Illustration: A PLAIN POWER LOOM WEAVING LINEN] The yarn for warp is now usually given a coating or "sizing" of starch and gums so that the thread may not become unwound and break during weaving. The process of spinning is much the same for flax and for wool, although somewhat differently constructed machines must be used. Flax is usually spun wet. WEAVING [Sidenote: Modern Loom] The modern power driven loom is a wonderful piece of machinery. The principle of its operation is essentially the same as the hand loom, but it is almost perfectly automatic in its action, a man or woman being able to tend from ten to fifteen looms weaving plain cotton goods. [Sidenote: Warping] The yarn coming from the spinning frame is sometimes dyed before weaving. The warp is formed by winding as many threads as the width of the fabric is to contain on a slowly revolving drum, called a "beam," in the same relative position in which they are to appear in the finished cloth. From its position on the beam at the back of the loom, each thread is brought through its particular loop or eye with the heddle, then passes through its own slot in the reed, and down to the roller or "cloth beam" that is to take up the woven cloth. This is called "drawing in the warp." If there is a piece of cloth coming from the loom, the work is very simple, for the ends of the new warp are tied to the ends remaining from the warp that has been woven out. The shuttle with its bobbin, containing the yarn of the filling, is much the same as is used in the hand looms, except for form and size, which varies according to the requirements and size of the warp being used. At first only one shuttle was used, but in 1760 Robert Kay invented a mechanism by which several shuttles containing different grades or colors of yarn might be used. Each throw of the shuttle across the width of the goods is called a "pick." [Sidenote: The Harness] In making a cloth with plain weave, that is, with every thread interlacing with every other, as in darning, only two harnesses are required, but the modern loom may have up to about twenty-four harnesses so that an infinite variety of weaves may be obtained. Various cams and levers move the harness frame and so raise or lower the threads required for the design. [Sidenote: Jacquard Loom] The Jacquard loom is arranged on a different principle. In this loom, all kinds of fancy weaves may be obtained as in table linen, tapestries and carpets. Each warp thread is supplied with a separate hook and by means of perforated card the desired threads are raised or depressed at each throw of the shuttle. The cards are worked out by the designer. A set of a thousand or more cards may be required to produce the desired design. Jacquard looms are sometimes to be seen at fairs and expositions weaving handkerchiefs with some picture design. [Illustration: JACQUARD HAND LOOM Weaving Ingrain Carpet at Hull House.] WEAVES The great variety of weaves found in the textiles of to-day are modifications of a few fundamental weaves invented in the earliest times. The chief fundamental weaves are: (1) Plain weave. (2) Twills. (3) Sateen. To which may be added the derivatives-- (4) Rib weave. (5) Basket weave. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF FANCY KNIT GOODS] These do not include the many fancy weaves, too numerous to classify, and the open work weaves, made in the Leno loom, in which some of the threads are crossed. Knit goods are made by the interlooping of a single thread, by hand or on circular knitting machines and lace by an analogous process, using several systems of threads. Felt is made up of matted fibers of fur and wool and has no thread structure. [Illustration: WEAVE DIAGRAMS] [Sidenote: Plain Weave] The plain weave is the most common, nearly all light weight goods being thus woven. In plain weaving, each thread of both warp and filling passes alternately over and under the threads at right angles. This makes a comparatively open cloth, requiring the smallest amount of yarn for the surface covered. This weave is used in nearly all cotton goods, as in muslins, sheetings, calicoes, ginghams, and thin woolen goods. Even in the plain weave variety is obtained by having some of the threads larger than others, either in warp or filling or both, thus producing stripes and checked effects. [Illustration: SECTIONS OF WEAVES _a_--Plain weave; _b_--Prunella twill; _c_--Cassimere twill; _d_--Swansdown twill.] [Sidenote: Twills] After the plain weave the twill is the most common, being much used for dress goods, suitings, etc., as well as some of the thicker cottons. In this weave the intersections of the threads produce characteristic lines diagonally across the fabric, most often at an angle of 45°. The twill may be hardly visible or very pronounced. The simplest twills are the so-called "doeskin" and "prunella." In the doeskin the filling threads pass over one and under two of the warp threads and in the prunella twill over two and under one. The most common twill is the cassimere twill in which both the warp and filling run over two and under two of the threads at right angles. [Illustration: DIAGRAM OF RIB AND BASKET WEAVE AND DOUBLE CLOTH] [Sidenote: Uneven Twills] A twill made by running both warp and filling under one and over three threads is called a swansdown twill and the reverse is known as the crow weave. In these the diagonal twilled effect is much more marked. Various twills are often combined with each other and with plain weave, making a great variety of texture. Numerous uneven twills are made, two over and three under, etc., etc. [Sidenote: Sateen Weave] In the sateen weave, nearly all of either the warp or the filling threads are on the surface, the object being to produce a smooth surface fabric like sateen. With this weave it is possible to use a cotton warp and silk filling, having most of the silk appear on the surface of the fabric. [Illustration: TEXTILE DESIGN _A_--On cross-section paper; _B_--Graphic diagram.] [Sidenote: Rib and Basket Weaves] The rib and basket weaves are derivatives of the plain weave, two or more threads replacing the single strand. In the rib weave, either the warp or the filling threads run double or more, thus making a corded effect. In the basket weave, both warp and filling are run double or treble, giving a coarse texture. This weave is sometimes called the panama weave. [Sidenote: Double Cloth] In the thicker fabrics like men's suitings and overcoatings, there may be a double series of warp threads, only one series appearing on the face of the goods, and in the still thicker fabrics, there may be a double set of both warp and filling threads, making double cloth, the two sides of which may be entirely different in color and design. [Sidenote: Velvet] In weaving plush, velvet and velveteen, loops are made in the filling or warp threads which are afterwards cut, producing the pile. BLEACHING, DYEING, PRINTING, FINISHING When the cloth comes from the loom it is by no means ready for the market. Nearly all kinds are washed and pressed and in some classes of goods the finishing process is very elaborate. BLEACHING AND DYEING The fiber may be dyed in a loose or unspun state, as is customary with wool; after it has been spun and is in the form of yarn, as in the case of silk and linen; and when it has been woven to form cloth, as is most commonly the case with cotton. [Sidenote: Madder Bleach] The bleaching of cotton involves a number of steps, the most thorough process being called the "madder bleach," in which the cloth is (1) wet out, (2) boiled with lime water, (3) rinsed, (4) treated with acid, (5) rinsed, (6) boiled with soap and alkali, (7) rinsed, (8) treated with bleaching powder solution, (9) rinsed, (10) treated with acid, (11) finally rinsed again. All this is done by machines and hundreds of yards go through the process at a time. The product is a pure white cloth suitable for dyeing light shades and for white goods. When cloth is to be dyed a dark shade the treatment is less elaborate. [Sidenote: Singeing and Shearing] If the cloth is to be printed for calicoes, before bleaching it is singed by passing through gas flames or over a red hot plate and then sheared in a shearing machine constructed somewhat on the principle of the lawn mower, the cloth being run close to the rapidly revolving knives. Although cotton is usually dyed in the piece, it may be dyed in the form of yarn, as for ginghams, and sometimes before being woven, in the loose state. [Sidenote: Mordant Colors] Cotton is more difficult to dye than wool or silk. Although there are now what are called "direct" cotton colors, the usual process is to first treat the cotton goods with a "mordant"--various salts of aluminum, chromium, iron, tin and copper, fixing these on the fiber by means of tannin or alkali. The mordanted cloth is then entered into the dye bath and boiled for an hour or longer, until the desired shade is obtained or the dye bath exhausted. The salts of aluminum are used as mordants for the lighter shades, the salts of chromium for the medium shades, and iron for the dark shades. In general, chromium mordants give the fastest dyes. [Sidenote: Aniline Dyes] The discovery of the so-called aniline dyes has greatly increased the variety of colors available. Although some of the first aniline dyes to be made were not fast to washing or to light and they thus received a bad reputation, they are now to be obtained which compare favorably in fastness with the natural dye stuffs such as cochineal, madder, etc., provided sufficient time and care are given to dyeing. The chief trouble is that in the endeavor to furnish cheap goods, processes are hurried and results are unsatisfactory. [Sidenote: Home Dyeing] Home dyeing is practically confined to the use of direct aniline colors. These are put up in small quantities and sold in many places. Directions for their use are given on the packages. The chief precautions are to have the goods perfectly clean and thoroughly wet before entering into the dye bath (this is by no means as easy as one might think), and to keep the goods in motion while dyeing so as to prevent unevenness of shade. Wool and silk dyes cannot be used for cotton and linen, nor the reverse. Of course cloth already colored cannot be dyed a lighter shade of the same color and the original shade must be very light to enable one to change the color, say from red to blue, etc. The original color always modifies that of the dye somewhat and it is best to experiment first with a small portion of the dye and cloth. Rather dark shades are apt to be most successful. [Sidenote: Natural Dyestuffs] Indigo for blue, madder for Turkey red, logwood with fustic for black, cutch or gambia for browns on cotton are about all the natural dyestuffs which are used to any extent commercially at the present time. The artificial product alizerin, the active principle of madder, has about superseded the natural dyestuff, and artificial indigo is gaining on the natural product. Linen is bleached and dyed in much the same manner as cotton, although the process is more difficult. The process of bleaching weakens linen more than cotton. [Sidenote: Dyeing Woolen and Silk] Woolen and silk may be dyed directly with a great variety of dyes without the addition of a mordant, although they are often mordanted. Both must be well washed or scoured before dyeing. When white or delicate shades on woolen or silk are desired they are bleached. The bleaching is usually done with sulphurous acid gas, the cloth or yarn being exposed in a damp condition to the fumes of burning sulphur. Were it not for the expense, hydrogen peroxide would be the ideal bleaching agent for the animal fibers. PRINTING A great variety of colored designs are produced on the loom by using different colored warp and filling yarns and different weaves, but in all these the designs are easily made only in somewhat rectangular patterns. [Sidenote: Block and Machine Printing] Print goods have doubtless evolved from the decoration of fabrics with the brush. Block printing was first used, the design being engraved in relief on blocks of wood. These are dipped in the colored paste, spread thinly, and applied to successive portions of the cloth by hand. These blocks are now replaced in the printing machine by engraved copper rolls, the design being such that it is repeated once or a number of times in each revolution of the cylinder. There is a printing roll for each color of the design. Sometimes both the background and the design are printed on the cloth, but the more common process is for the design only to be printed on the cloth which may be dyed afterwards. In the paste of the printed design there is some chemical which prevents the portions printed from taking the dye, consequently these remain white or a different color. This is called the "resist" process. Another process is to first dye the cloth and then print on some chemical which, when the calico is steamed, discharges the color. This is called the "discharge" process. Sometimes this weakens the goods in the places where the color has been discharged. [Sidenote: Fixing the Print] The color paste used for printing contains both the dye and the mordant. After the calico has been printed it is steamed to develop and fix the color, washed, sometimes very slightly bleached, to clear the whites, and usually given a sizing of starch or gum, and then pressed and dried by passing over slowly revolving, steam-heated drums. In general print goods are not so fast to washing and to light as those that have been dyed in the regular way, although the better grades are reasonably fast. Prints are sometimes made in imitation of the more costly gingham or other goods in which the color design is made in the weaving. It is easy to detect the imitation as the design of printed fabrics does not penetrate to the back of the cloth. [Sidenote: Warp Printing] Sometimes the warps are printed before the cloth is woven, thus giving very pretty indefinite designs, especially in silk. FINISHING [Sidenote: Burling and Mending] The finishing of woolen and worsted goods has much to do with their appearance. No cloth comes from the loom in a perfect condition, therefore inspection is the first process. Loose threads and knots are carefully cut off by the "burler" and imperfections in the weaving rectified by the "menders." The goods may now be singed and sheared. [Sidenote: Fulling] [Sidenote: Flocks] Woolens, and sometimes worsteds, are next "fulled" or felted by being run round and round in a machine while moistened with soap. The friction of the cloth on itself produces some heat which, with the moisture and soap, causes the goods to shrink in length and width while increasing in thickness. During this process, "flocks" are often added, especially for smooth finished woolen goods. These flocks are fine fibers of wool obtained from the shearing machine or made by cutting up old woolen cloth. They are felted with the fibers of the goods and add weight and firmness. [Sidenote: Raising the Nap] After the fulling, the goods is washed to remove the soap, dyed, if desired, and often "speck dyed" with a special dye which colors the bits of burs, remaining in the cloth, but not the wool. The next process is the "gigging" which raises the nap. The cloth is run close to rapidly revolving "teazels" and also may be run through a napping machine. It may be sheared again and then steamed and pressed. This is but a brief outline; there are generally more processes. Woolen cloth coming from the loom may be so treated in the finishing room as to produce fabrics entirely different in appearance. One of the chief objects of the finishing is to give to the cloth as fine an appearance as possible to attract the buyer. Much of the fine finish disappears through wear, especially with inferior goods made from poor materials. The wearing quality of the goods is primarily dependent upon the strength and quality of the fibers of which it is made, so that the yarn of the filling and the warp should be examined when selecting materials. In general hard twisted yarn will give the better wearing cloth. FABRICS The present day shops offer such a great variety of fabrics that only a few of the most important can be mentioned here. COTTON GOODS Cotton is cool and heavy, is a non-conductor of heat, crushes easily, but like all vegetable fibers it may be laundered without injury to the fibers. Cotton does not take the darker dyes as well as animal fibers and for this reason it does not combine satisfactorily with wool. As an adulterant it wears shabby and loses its brightness. It is only when cotton does not pretend to be anything else that it is our most useful and durable textile. The readiness with which cotton takes the lighter dyes and improved methods of ginning, spinning, and weaving have made cotton goods superior to any other for summer use. [Sidenote: Muslin] Muslin, calico, and gingham must always head the list of cotton goods. Muslin is coarse and fine, bleached, unbleached, and half bleached, twilled or plain weave. Under the head of muslin brought to a high degree of perfection in weave and finish will be found dimity, mull, Indian lawn, organdie, Swiss, and Madras, and a host of others equally beautiful. Madras muslin has a thin transparent ground with a heavily raised pattern woven of a soft, thick thread unlike the ground work. Waste is used for the pattern. Organdie muslin is soft, opaque, white, or colored, with raised dots of pattern and plain weave. Dimity has a fine cord running with the selvage. Gingham is a smooth, close cotton usually woven in checks or stripes. The yarn is dyed before being woven, making the cloth alike on both sides, and the weave is either plain or twilled. Ginghams are also woven of silk and cotton mixed or of silk and ramie. Cretonne, chintz, dress linings, crape, velveteen, and lace are made of cotton. Flannelette, which is woven to imitate flannel, is soft and light and is preferred by many who find woolen irritating. It does not shrink as woolen does and is made in beautiful, soft colors and the best grades do not fade. For nightdresses, underwear, and sheets, during cold weather this inexpensive fabric is unequaled. Among the heavier cotton fabrics may be mentioned denim and ticking which are now printed in beautiful designs and colors and used for interior decoration as well as for clothing and bedding. The great variety of fibers, the many different ways of preparing each for manufacture, the differences in the preparatory processes in spinning, weaving, or in any of the later processes of finishing produce the varied appearance of the finished product in cotton as in other fabrics. LINENS Linen is one of the oldest textiles; it was used by the early Egyptians for the priests' garments and for the wrappings of mummies. Many housekeepers think that there is no material for sheets and pillow cases comparable to linen, but it is not an ideal dressing for beds, for in spite of its heavier body, it wrinkles and musses much more readily than good cotton. For table service, however, for the toilet, and for minor ornamental purposes linen has no equal. Its smoothness of texture, its brilliancy which laundering increases, its wearing qualities, its exquisite freshness, make it the one fabric fit for the table. [Sidenote: Table Linen] Table linen is woven plain and figured, checked and diapered. In the figured or damask cloth the patterns stand out distinctly. This is due to the play of light and shade on the horizontal and vertical lines. In some lights the pattern is scarcely noticeable. When buying a cloth, let it be between the observer and the light, for in this position the pattern will show to the best advantage. There is a certain amount of shade on all horizontal lines or of shadow cast by them, while the vertical lines are illuminated, thus although the warp and woof threads are of the same color, the pattern seems to stand out from the background. Linen should not be adulterated. It should be for use and not for show, for use brightens and whitens it. Linen adulterated with cotton becomes fuzzy through wear because of the much shorter cotton fibers. The tendency can often be seen by rolling the goods between the thumb and fingers. Crash of different widths and quality furnishes tea towels, "huck," damask and other weaves come in various widths and may be purchased by the yard. Russia crash is best for kitchen towels. WOOLENS AND WORSTEDS [Sidenote: Standard Goods] The many grades of wool with the great variety of weaves and finish make an almost infinite variety of woolen and worsted fabrics. New goods are constantly being put upon the market, or old goods with new names. Standard goods, such as serges, cashmere, Henrietta cloth, and covert cloth, are always to be found in the shops. These are all twilled goods. The serges are woven of combed wool and are harsh, tough, springy, worsted fabrics of medium and heavy weight, with a distinct twill, rather smooth surface, and plainer back. There are also loosely woven serges. Cashmere and Henrietta cloth have a fine, irregular twill--the finest made. They are woven with silk, wool, and cotton warp, but the latter gives an inferior textile. [Sidenote: Tweeds] Tweeds and homespuns are names given to coarse cloth of which the wool is spun by hand and woven on hand looms. These goods vary according to the locality in which they are made. The wool is mixed without regard to color, the yarn being spun and twisted in the most primitive manner, giving the cloth an uneven, unfinished appearance. These are among the best wearing cloths on the market and are especially suitable for suits that will receive hard wear. Scotland and Ireland are famous for their tweeds and homespuns and what are known as the "cottage industries" have been recently revived in those countries as the products of their hand looms have become deservedly popular abroad. [Sidenote: Harris Tweeds] The "Harris Tweeds," made on the Island of Lewis and Harris, north of Scotland, are in the old style by the "crofters." After weaving the goods are "waulked"--milled or felted--with the bare feet, accompanied by singing the waulking song and beating time with the feet. The dyeing is done in pots in the old-fashioned way and until recently the dyestuffs were obtained from mosses, lichens, heather, broom, and other plants. Now, however, some of the best aniline dyes are being used. A peculiar characteristic of the Harris tweed is the peat smoke smell caused by the fabric being woven in the crofters' cottages, where there is always a strong odor of peat "reek" from the peat which is burned for fuel. The ordinary so-called Harris tweeds sold in this country are made on the southern border of Scotland, in factories, and are but imitations of the real Harris tweeds. The light colored tweeds--natural color of wool--come from the island of St. Kilda. This island stands out in mid ocean, barren and wild, devoid of plants or shrubs of any kind for making dyes. The crofters content themselves without dyestuffs. The industry is maintained by nobility to help the islanders and the fabrics are fashionable and high priced. Covert cloth is a twilled woven cloth of great beauty and durability. It is rather heavy, of hard finish and is used for jackets and winter suits. To this list of woolen goods may be added the crape cloth with crinkled, rough surface, nun's veiling, flannel which is woven in a variety of ways, broadcloth, wool canvas, and poplins. This list includes only a few of the fabrics manufactured, but these are always to be found on the market, are always good in color and are the best of all wool textiles for wear. [Sidenote: Mohair] [Sidenote: Alpaca] Mohair is a material made from the hair of the angora goat, woven with silk, wool, worsted, or cotton warp. It is a dust-shedding material, does not shrink, and bears hard wear well. Alpaca, on account of its softness, elasticity, and exemption from shaggy defects, combines admirably with cotton in the manufacture of fine goods, which attains almost the glossy brightness of silk. The yarn is used for weaving alpaca linings and light coatings for warm climates. SILKS Many silks can be washed without injury to the fibers, but they cannot be boiled without destroying the luster. Silks may be had in various widths and endless variety of weaves. Many are reversible. [Sidenote: Loading Silk] Silks are adulterated with cotton and ramie fibers. The chemicals used in "loading" or "dynamiting" to give the weight lost by cleaning or removing the gum from the raw silk give to the cheaper grades the stiff, harsh feeling and cause the splitting and cracking of the silk, hence the quality of the fiber should be considered when selecting a silk, not the weight. Taffeta is often heavily loaded. Foulard and surah are twilled silks. Corded silks are woven with a cord running from selvage to selvage. To this class belong the grosgrains, Ottoman, faille Francaise--a silk resembling grosgrain, but softer and brighter. Irish poplins and bengalines have wool for the filling instead of silk. [Sidenote: Wash Silks] Great improvement has been made in the manufacture of wash silks. They are fine in color and have a glossy surface. Pongee is a beautiful, durable silk in different shades of natural color. It is woven in different widths. This silk is especially valuable for underwear. The first cost is greater, but it outwears muslin or linen. It is also used for children's garments and for outside wraps. For many purposes, no better textile can be found. Crepe de Chine is an incomparable textile possessing as much softness as strength. It is always supple, never creases, launders well, and comes in the most beautiful soft shades as well as in black and dark colors. Satin is distinguished by its glossy, lustrous surface, obtained in the weaving. [Sidenote: Piled Fabrics] Piled fabrics are rich, thick materials made of silk, wool, mohair, and cotton, comprising the velvets, velveteens, plushes, corduroys, and wilton and velvet carpets. The soft, raised pile is first woven in loops--Brussels carpet is a good example--and the loops are cut. The back of the goods is plain. [Sidenote: Velvet] Velvet has always and justly been regarded as the most beautiful of textiles. No matter how fashions change in regard to other materials, velvet never loses its vogue. For robes and cloaks, for mantles and jackets, for hats and bonnets, for trimming and decoration, velvet has been popular for a greater period than the life of any living mortal, but never before has it been so cheap, so varied and so beautiful as it is now. One can in the passing throng of pedestrians on any crowded street see the use and abuse of this noble material. There is scarcely an article of dress into whose composition it does not enter and it is worn upon all occasions. Many things have brought about this result. The tendency of fashion is towards the decorative and picturesque and in these qualities velvet excels all other fabrics. Silk waste and thread are cheaper than ever before so that velvet costs much less than formerly. The men behind the looms have evolved more designs and novelties in the making of velvet than has ever been known and colors beautiful in themselves are seemingly enhanced when applied to velvet. [Sidenote: Velveteen] All that has been said in favor of velvet applies equally as well to the best velveteen,--in fact it is a textile of even greater value and beauty than velvet. The best grades are not cheap, but they wear better than silk velvet, are fine and silky, excellent in color and sheen, launder well, and do not press-mark as does silk velvet. Velveteen takes the dye so beautifully and finishes so well that it has taken rank with our best standard fabrics. It is made entirely of cotton. It varies in width but is always wider than velvet. [Sidenote: Widths of Fabrics] A knowledge of the various widths of textiles is important in buying. Transparent fabrics are usually wider than heavier goods made of the same fiber. Muslin is wider than calico or ordinary print, and thin silk fabrics such as mull and chiffon are wider than velvet. In wool dress goods various distinct widths are known as single--thirty and thirty-six inches--double fold (forty-five and fifty-four inches), etc. Silk, velvet, and velveteen are single width. The velvet ranges from eighteen to twenty-four inches in width and velveteen twenty-seven. Bodice linings vary from thirty-five to thirty-eight inches; skirt linings come in both single and double fold. Household linen including bedding varies in width from one yard to two and one-fourth and two and one-half yards for sheeting and from thirty-eight to fifty-four inches for pillow case muslin. Table linen is woven in both square and circular cloths of various sizes, and napkins vary in width from the small sizes to a yard square. No fixed widths can be given for any textile as width often changes with the weave. NAMES OF FABRICS Textiles usually take their names from the country, city, port, or province from whence they originated; from the names of the makers; and methods of weaving, dyeing, ornamentation, etc. The fixing of localities, methods, etc., is oftentimes guesswork. The textiles of to-day bearing the same name as those of the middle ages have nothing in common. Buckram was originally made in and called from Bokkara. In the middle ages it was costly, fine, and beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for covering lecterns, cathedral flags, and in the 16th century for the lining of velvet gowns. The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc. [Sidenote: Fustian] Fustian, a kind of corduroy or velveteen, was originally woven at Fustat on the Nile. The warp was stout linen, the woof of cotton so twilled and cut that it gave a low thick pile. Chaucer's knight in the fourteenth century wore fustian. In the fifteenth century Naples was famous for the weaving of fustians. A cloth made in France at a town called Mustrevilliers was known as "mustyrd devells." [Sidenote: Damask] China is supposed to be the first country to weave patterned silks. India, Persia, Syria, and Byzantine Greece followed. Those were known as "diaspron" or diaper, a name given them at Constantinople. In the twelfth century, the city of Damascus, long famed for her beautiful textiles, outstripped all other places for beauty of design and gave the Damascen or damask, so we have in modern times all fabrics whether of silk, cotton, wool, or linen, curiously woven and designed, known as damask, and diaper, which means pattern, is almost forgotten, or only a part of the elaborate design on damask. Bandekin, a costly cloth, took its name from Bagdad. Dorneck an inferior damask woven of silk, wool, linen, thread and gold, was made in Flanders at the city of Dorneck. [Sidenote: Muslin] From the Asiatic city Mosul came the muslin used then as it is now throughout the world. So skilled were its weavers that the threads were of hair-like fineness. This was known as the invisible muslin, the weaving of which has become a lost art. To this beautiful cloth were given many fanciful and poetic names. It was woven with strips of gold and silver. [Sidenote: Calico] Calico derives its name from the city of Calicut in India. The city is scarcely known to-day; it was the first Indian city visited by Europeans. In the thirteenth century Arras was famous for its areste or tapestry, "the noblest of the weaving arts"; in it there is nothing mechanical. Mechanical weaving repeats the pattern on the cloth within comparatively narrow limits and the number of colors is in most cases limited to four or five. Silks and cottons are distinguished through their colors and shades. Tarsus was a purple silk. Other cities gave their name to various shades, according as they were dyed at Antioch, Alexandria, or at Naples. Watered or moire silk takes its name from the finish. From "canabis," the Latin name for hemp or flax, we have the word "canvas" to mean any texture woven of hempen thread. To this list of fabrics might be added many others of cotton, linen, wool, and silk with new names, closely resembling the old materials, having greater or less merit. The following lists of fabrics and terms may be helpful for reference: Art linen--With round, hard twisted threads. "Albert cloth"--Named for England's prince, is a reversible all-wool material each side of different colors and so finished that no lining is required. It is used chiefly for overcoats and better known as "golf cloth," "plaid back," etc. Armure--A cloth woven in miniature imitation of feudal metal armor plates, heraldic devices, diamonds, birdseye, and seeded effects. Astrakhan--A woolen or silk material with a long and closely curled pile in imitation of the fur from which it is named. Backed-cloth worsteds or other fabrics which are woven with an extra layer of warp or other filling underneath the face, usually for increased weight and bulk. Batiste--The French word for lawn, fine white cotton or linen fabric. Sometimes printed. Batting or padding, cotton or wool prepared in sheets for quilting or interlining. Beaver--Similar to Kersey, but with a longer nap, soft, thick nap inside. Bedford cord--A closely woven woolen or cotton cloth having a raised corded surface similar to pique, used for women's suits. Bonde--A loosely woven fabric with a curly, hairy surface, usually made with a jersey or stockinet body. Bourette--An effect of weaving produced by fancy yarns showing in lumps at intervals over the face of the cloth; used for women's and children's suits. Beverteen--A heavy cotton cloth used for men's hunting garments. Broadcloth--A fine woolen cloth with a glossy finished surface, the better grades being woven with a twilled back. It takes its name from its width. It is used for men's and women's wear. Buckram--A coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material used for stiffening. Buckskin--A stout doe skin with a more defined twill. Butternut--The coarse brown twilled homespun cloth woven of wool prior to the Civil War--colored brown with dye from the butternut or walnut tree; used for men's wear and for decorative purposes. Cambric--Fine white linen, also made in cotton in imitation. Camel's hair--A beautiful, soft, silky fabric, usually woven like cheviot of hair of camel and goat. Canvas--A linen, cotton, silk, or wool cloth of different weaves and widths, used for many purposes--clothing, as a background for embroidery, hangings, spreads, etc. Canton flannel--A stout, twilled cotton cloth with a nap on one or both sides, used for clothing and decorative purposes. Cassimere--A general term for all-wool fabrics woven either plain or twilled, coarse or fine, of woolen yarn. The pattern is always woven plain and distinct and the cloth is never napped. Castor Beaver--A heavy, milled, face-finished, all-wool cloth lighter in weight than ordinary beaver. Chinchilla--A thick, heavy, double woven fabric with a long napped surface curled up into little tufs in imitation of chinchilla fur; used for coats. Clan Tartan--The plaids of the various highland clans of Scotland. Clay--A name given to serges, worsteds, and diagonals woven after a process of J. & P. Clay of Haddersfield, England. Coating--Those woolen and worsted fabrics most especially adapted to men's dress and overcoats. Corduroy--A thick cotton pile material, corded or ribbed on the surface; used for men's, women's and children's wear. Corkscrew-worsted goods--So-called from its fancied resemblance to the twists of the corkscrew. Cotton worsted--All cotton or part cotton worsted-wove cloth. Cottonade--Stout cotton cloth in imitation of woolen or worsted; used for men's trousers. Covert--A twill-woven cloth sometimes with full face, sometimes sheared to imitate whipcord. Crape cloth--A stout worsted fabric with surface in imitation of silk crape, used for dress coats. Crash--A strong, course linen cloth of different widths, used for towels, suits, table linen, hangings, bed spreads; in fact, there is no end to the uses to which this textile can be adapted. Cravenette--Cloths treated and finished before weaving by an improved process which renders them rainproof. A secret process owned by the Cravenette Company and by Priestly & Company of England and the United States. Crepe--A light weight silk, silk and wool, or all wool or cotton cloth of irregular weave. Diagonal--A worsted cloth with prominent diagonal ridges. Doeskin--A compact twilled woolen, soft and pliable. Drap D'Alma--A fine, close, flat-ribbed, twilled fabric of wool or silk and wool, finished on but one side. Drap D'Ete--A fine, light worsted fabric woven in longitudinal cords. Drilling--General term for various cotton stuffs used for lining men's wear, and general purposes. Empress cloth--A heavy dress goods with napped or corded surface, named for the Empress Eugenia; sometimes called Electrol cloth or Beretz. Etamine--A light woolen cloth similar to batiste and nun's cloth, used for women's and children's wear. Faille Francaise--A soft, lustrous silk of wider cord than grosgrain, but narrower than ottoman. Farmer Satin--A lining of cotton chain or warp and wool filling, finished with a high lustre, also called Italian cloth. Flannel--A soft, light weight woolen fabric of which the yarn is but lightly twisted, plain weave or twilled; used for clothing etc. Flannelette--A half cotton or all cotton flannel-like fabric. Frieze--A thick, shaggy, heavy nap woolen overcoat cloth. Gingham was first manufactured in Gonghamp in France and was known as Madras gingham. Seersucker gingham was originally a thin linen fabric made in the East Indies. Zephyr gingham is a soft fine variety of Scotch and French ginghams, are superior qualities, heavier in weight. Fur Beaver--A long napped cloth imitation fur. Grass cloth--A fine, smooth, linen woven in checks of blue and white, red and white, etc., used for dish towels; also a thin dress material of ramie and cotton, etc. Grenadine--A thick silk gauze, either plain with a solid design or pattern upon it or combined in stripes with other weaves, as satin, moire, etc. Grosgrain--A close-woven, finely ribbed or corded silk with but little lustre. Haircloth--A cloth woven of horse hair, from which it takes its name, for weft with cotton or linen warp; used for facings, linings, furniture cover, etc. Holland--A stout, plain-wove, unbleached, linen cloth used for linings, window shades, etc. Homespun--A cloth woven on hand looms or made in imitation of such cloth for both men's and women's wear. Hop-sacking--A plain woven canvas dress fabric of wool. Huchaback--A corruption of huckster-back, meaning originally pedler's ware--Toweling made of all linen, linen and cotton, cotton and wool, either by the yard or as separate towels; the part wool huck always separate towels. Irish linen--Full bleached, fine, plain woven linen used for shirts, collars, cuffs, etc., of different widths. Jersey cloth--Woolen stockinette. Kaikai--A thin Japanese silk. Kersey--A heavy, closely woven cloth with a smooth face and glossy finish. Kerseymere--A fine, twilled, woolen cloth of peculiar texture, one thread of warp and two of wool being always above. Khaki--A light, yellow-brown colored cotton cloth used for army service in hot countries. Ladies' cloth--A fine, wide, wool flannel, slightly napped, similar to broadcloth. Lusterine--A thin, twilled, cotton lining finished with high lustre in imitation of silk. Marseilles--A sort of figured pique, used for women's and children's clothes and for men's coats. Matelasse--A silk and wool or all wool brocade, usually for coats. Melton--A stout woolen cloth, fulled, sheared, and finished without a nap; like Kersey, but without a gloss. Merino--A thin woolen fabric made of the fine wool of the marion sheep, generally used for women's and children's wear, vestings, and underclothing. Mohair--A shiny fabric of great durability, made from the wool of the Angora goat; used for both men's and women's clothing. Moire--The water effect produced on silk, moreen, and like fabrics. The finest watered silks are known as Moire Antique. Moreen is a woolen or mixed fabric to which the same process has been applied. Moleskin--A medium heavy twilled cotton cloth, napped inside; used for men's wear and ornamental purposes. Muslin--A cotton fabric of various classes and names; bleached and unbleached, half bleached, cambric, book muslin, long cloth, mull, organdie, lawns, etc.; used for all purposes. Nankeen--A peculiar fabric of a pale dull yellow or orange color, woven out of the fibrous tissue which lies between the outer and sap-wood of a tree or shrub that grows in the East Indies and especially in China. The name is derived from the city of Nankin. An imitation is made out of cotton, colored with Annato. The genuine nankeen is never more than eighteen or twenty inches wide and is used for light summer clothing. Overcoating--Fabrics woven especially for overcoats--covert, kersey, melton, beaver, frieze, vicuna, whipcord, cheviot, chinchilla, etc., made of both wool and worsted. Pique--A heavy cotton cloth having a surface that is corded or having a raised lozenge pattern; used for women's and children's suits, men's vests, etc. Prunella--Lasting cloth. Sateen--A close twilled cotton fabric, soft and glossy, used for lining. Satin--A silk fabric having a high lustre on its face. Satinet--A cheap clothing material similar to cassimere, made with a cotton warp and a filling of short, inferior, shoddy wool which is mixed with enough long wool to enable it to be spun and woven in a way to bring that filling to the surface of the cloth; afterwards fulled, sheared, and the pattern printed on the face. Serge--A lining of cotton or linen warp and a wool or mohair filling, woven three-leaf twill. Serge--A fine, diagonal, twilled, worsted--both all worsted and with a worsted warp and woolen filling; used for men's and women's suits. Shetlands--Very shaggy overcoatings, named from the Shetland pony, the coat of which it is supposed to imitate in appearance. Shoddy--Waste thrown off in spinning--shredded rags, and bits of cloth manipulated into new cloth. Sicilian--A mohair fabric. Silesia--A light, close-woven, fine twilled cotton fabric used for dress linings, etc. Stockinet--A plain, elastic texture made on a knitting frame, used for underwear, etc. Surah--A twilled silk similar to serge; first made in Surat, India. Tricot--A double-twill cloth having both a warp and filling effect. Tweed--Much like homespun in appearance, both being either twilled or plain. They are made from rough worsted yarn spun at home. In tweed the yarn is harder twisted, giving a more distinct twill. It is generally more compact, less rough, and better finished than homespun. Uniform cloth--Cloth suitable for uniforms, usually a stout, fulled, woolen cloth, similar to kersey. Venetian--A cloth milled and cropped bare in finish. Vicuna--A soft twilled cloth similar to cheviot, made of the Andes vicuna, hence its name. Whipcord--A worsted cloth having a small, prominent twill. Yacht cloth--A flannel heavier than ordinary serge or flannel. * * * * * Cord--The general term is applied to any fabric in which the lines run in the same direction as the selvage. Count--In spinning, the number given to any thread or yarn, except silk, to indicate its relative fineness, based on the number of yards required to weigh one pound. Felt--A cloth of wool, hair, fur, etc., not woven, but felted together; used for hats, slippers, boot tops, etc. Flock--Finely divided woolen waste used in finishing cheap woolens. Kemps--Fibers or hair like structure that sometimes come in wool, always in goat hair. They do not take the dye. Mercerized--A term applied to cotton fabrics of which the yarn is chemically treated with a strong solution of caustic soda, giving the appearance of silk, more or less permanent; named after Mercer, discoverer of the process. Mill ends--Trade term referring to short lengths, seconds, damaged pieces, etc., of cloth, embroideries, etc., that accumulate in mills and shops and are usually sold at a nominal price. Narrow cloth--Trade term for fabrics less than 29 inches wide. Wider cloths are called broad cloths. Oil-boiled--Trade term for colors so treated to insure permanence. Oiled silk--The plain silk boiled in oil. Silk boiled in oil and dried, becoming translucent and waterproof; used as a perspiration guard. Pepper-and-salt--A black and white or grayish mixture, effected in weaving. Rubber cloth--Usually cotton sheeting or drilling with a coating of rubber on one side; used as a protective cloth for various purposes. Shepherd check--Tiny checks, usually black and white. Twilled--Woven in such a manner as to produce lines or ribs diagonally or across the surface of the fabric. Woolens--Name of fabrics or carded wool, usually soft woven. Worsteds--Fabrics made of combed wool, usually hard woven. The combing is the process of arranging the fibers of wool, mohair, cotton, linen, into a parallel condition, preparatory to spinning into a smooth, even and regular yarn. The perfected application of the combing principle. BIBLIOGRAPHY ON TEXTILES Historical and Art Arts and Crafts Essays $1.00 Morris, Crane, et al. Postage .10 Colonial Days in Old New England 1.25 Alice Morse Earle. Postage .12 The Primitive Family 1.25 Starcke. Postage .12 Man Before Metals 1.75 Joly. Postage .14 Origin of Inventions 1.50 Mason. Postage .16 Woman's Share in Primitive Culture 1.75 Mason. Postage .16 Textiles--The Lesser Arts 1.00 William Morris. Postage .10 Industrial Evolution of the United States 1.25 Carroll D. Wright. Postage .16 Technical Books Through a special arrangement with the American School of Correspondence we are able to lend or sell to our students some of their textile books, which are technical though simple. Price 50 cents per part, postage 4c. Textile Chemistry and Dyeing. 4 Parts. Part I. Textile Fibers. Part II. Bleaching. Part III. Mordants and Natural Dyes. Part VI. Artificial Dyestuffs. Cotton Fiber. Cotton Spinning. 5 parts. Weaving. 3 Parts. Textile Design. 5 Parts. Woolen and Worsted Spinning. 4 parts. Woolen and Worsted Finishing. 4 parts. Textile Fibers $3.50 Mathews. Postage .16 Textile Fabrics .90 Rock. Postage .08 Dyeing of Textile Fabrics 1.75 Hummell. Postage .12 Bleaching and Calico Printing 4.00 Duerr. Postage .14 _Note._--Books may be ordered through the School or may be borrowed by members for one week. Send postage with request. U. S. Government Publication _Free_ of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.: Flax for Seed and Fiber, Farmers' Bulletin No. 27. Cotton Seed and Its Products, Farmers' Bulletin No. 36. Raising Sheep, Farmers' Bulletin No. 96. The Angora Goat, Farmers' Bulletin No. 137. Silk Worm Culture, Farmers' Bulletin No. 165. Essential Steps in Securing an Early Crop of Cotton, Farmers' Bulletin No. 217. The Cotton Seed Industry, Reprint No. 239. The Hemp Industry in U. S., Reprint No. 254. Improvement of Cotton by Seed Selection, Reprint No. 279. The Growing of Long-Staple Upland Cotton, Reprint No. 314. Principal Commercial Plant Fibers, Reprint No. 321. _For sale_ by the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C. Send coin or money order,--stamps not accepted: Sheep and Wool, Report No. 66, Office of the Secretary. Price 5c. The Cotton Plant: Its History, Botany, Chemistry, Enemies, and Uses. Bulletin No. 33. Office of Experiment Stations. Price 60c. Cotton Culture in Egypt. Bulletin No. 42. Price 5c. OFFICE OF FIBER INVESTIGATIONS. Uncultivated Bast Fibers. Report No. 6. Price 10c. Cultivation of Ramie. Report No. 7. Price 10c. Culture of Hemp and Jute. Report No. 8. Price 10c. Flax Culture for Seed and Fiber. Report No. 10. Price 10c. TEST QUESTIONS The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the regular members of the A. S. H. E. answer in writing and send in for the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the lesson. TEXTILES AND CLOTHING PART I READ CAREFULLY. Place your name and address on the first sheet of the test. Use a light grade of paper and write on one side of the sheet only. Leave space between the answers for the notes of the instructor. _Answer every question fully._ Read the lesson paper a number of times before attempting to answer the question. 1. Give a brief outline of the craft of spinning, primitive and modern. 2. Outline the same for weaving. 3. Describe the hand loom. 4. Describe the cotton fiber. What kinds are there? 5. Who invented the cotton gin and how did this invention affect the cotton industry? 6. Give the chief characteristics of wool. Name the wool and fur bearing animals. How does wool differ from hair? 7. Trace briefly the preparation of wool from the fleece to the finished product. 8. Describe flax and outline the method for the preparation of the fibers. What is the name of the manufactured product of flax? 9. Name some other bast fibers and their products? 10. How do the textile fibers compare in the raw state in condition and price? 11. Give a brief description of silk from the egg to the woven cloth. 12. (a) What is the chief constituent of the vegetable fibers? (b) How does their affinity for dyestuffs compare with wool and silk? (c) How do the alkalies affect wool? 13. Describe the principal weaves and give examples of each. 14. (a) How are cotton and flax bleached? (b) What is a mordant? (c) How should material be prepared for dyeing? (d) State what you know about old time methods of dyeing. 15. How are print goods made? Name some printed fabrics. 16. Define woolens and worsteds. 17. Describe the finishing of woolen and worsted cloths. 18. What is noil; shoddy; felt; flocks? 19. With what dress goods have you had experience, and with what results? 20. What factors determine the use of fabrics? 21. Of what value is the study of textiles? What have you gained by the study of this lesson? _Note._--After completing the test sign your full name. [Illustration: EMBROIDERED INITIALS _W_ and _L_--Sewed on initials; _B_--Satin stitch in wreath of feather stitches; _C_--Outline and seed work; _D_--Chain and French knots; _H_--Cross stitch; _L_--Chain; _H_--At the right, and the cross stitch _H_ are made over canvas and the canvas threads drawn.] TEXTILES AND CLOTHING PART II HAND SEWING Good sewing, good pressing, well finished ends and corners, lightness of touch which holds the work without apparently touching it, thus giving to the finished garment a fresh look--all these are important considerations. [Sidenote: Kinds of Sewing] The sewing done on wool, silk, and dresses of all kinds differs from that on underwear and white work. Muslin underwear requires frequent washing and ironing, hence the first essential is durability; close, small stitches, all raw edges carefully turned and stitched securely. Seams that are to come close to the body should lie perfectly flat. A round seam would wear out sooner by coming into frequent contact with the washboard and iron, besides irritating the skin. In dressmaking, unless the stitching is used for ornamental purposes, it should never show on the outside. Periods of beautiful and dignified costume have been periods of fine needlework--one art leading to and helping on the production of the other. [Sidenote: Plain Stitches] Stitches may be divided into plain and ornamental. The plain stitches are the (1) basting, (2) running, (3) the running and back stitch, (4) half back stitch, (5) back stitch, (6) overhand or whipping stitch, (7) overcast, (8) hemming, and (9) blind or slip stitch. [Sidenote: Ornamental Stitches] The ornamental stitches most frequently used are (1) outline, (2) chain, (3) cat or herringbone, (4) blanket or loop, (5) feather, coral or briar, (6) hemstitching, (7) French knots, (8) button hole, and (9) cross stitch. Excepting the cross stitch, these are all variations of the plain and button hole stitches. The plain stitches may be used for ornamental purposes. The basting stitch is known as Queen Anne darned work. The back stitch, known as "seed work," is used in embroidering letters and monograms. The overhand stitch is used as an ornamental stitch for joining selvages and in hemming. The chain stitch, besides being ornamental, makes one of the best darning stitches, reproducing the stitch in knitting. The cat stitch is also useful in binding down open seams for flannel hems, patching, etc. [Sidenote: Basting] (1) Basting proper is used only in the preparation of work to hold the stuff and lining, or any two or more parts of the work together while it is being stitched, none being left in the finished garment. It is also used as a guide for sewing, feather stitching, etc. [Sidenote: Tacking] The slanting basting stitch or "tacking" is used in dressmaking for holding linings. The needle is pointed towards the worker. Even basting is used for holding several thicknesses of cloth and if the garment is to be fitted, the stitches should be placed rather close. Uneven basting is used for hems and seams to be machine stitched. Several short stitches with one long one are used to baste crape and wiry fabrics, for this method holds them better than stitches of equal length. [Illustration: BASTING STITCHES _a_--Even; _b_--Uneven; _c_--For wiry fabrics; _d_--Tacking; _e_--Overcasting; _f_--Double or tailor overcasting.] [Sidenote: Fastening the Thread] All basting should be fastened at start with a knot or knot and back stitch and finished with two or three back stitches. The length of thread may be broken or cut from the spool, but should always be cut from the work. Breaking weakens the fastening and biting off soils delicate work with the moisture from the breath, to say nothing of the injury to the teeth. Basting for large work should usually be done with the goods lying flat on the sewing table. [Sidenote: Drawing Basting Threads] For ordinary work, basting threads should be cut every few inches and drawn out. In velvet, every alternate stitch should be cut and drawn out on the right side with the pile of the goods. In the basting for velvet where the slanting stitch is used, only one end of the stitch touches the line of the seam--the rest is on the outside of the seam. Silk thread should be used to baste velvet and gauze; the thread should be used for basting. [Illustration: POSITION OF THE HANDS IN RUNNING] [Sidenote: Running Stitch] (2) Running is closely related to basting. It is not used for any seams that have to bear great strain, but for joining seams in this material, gathering, tucking, making cords, etc. The stitches are usually of equal length on both sides. Take one stitch in the seam and hold the goods between the thumb and first finger of each hand, as shown in the illustration, with the back of the thimble on the eye of the needle. Then, with as free wrist motion as possible, run or shake the needle through the material. The motion of the hand should come from the elbow joint. Gathering, gauging, casing, etc., are used for drawing up the fullness of skirts, ruffles, flounces, etc., into a given space. The running stitch is used for these. [Sidenote: Gathering] For gathering, the cloth is held in the same manner as for running. The needle, ordinarily, need not be taken out of the work, the stitches being pushed back over the eye as they are made; but for running long skirt seams in delicate material which would crinkle at the line of sewing and roughen the seam, the needle should be drawn through and the line of sewing smoothed on the thread at each needleful of stitches. [Sidenote: Stroking] Never use a double thread for gathering, as it is apt to knot, but put in two lines of gathering threads--one a full one-eighth of an inch below the other--and slip the stitches along the needle as described above. This method is a saving of time in the end. When the gathering threads are in, remove the needle, place a pin vertically close to the last stitch, and wind the thread around it a few times in the form of a figure eight. Use a coarse needle for stroking. Hold the work between the thumb and fingers of the left hand with the thumb on the gathering threads. To place the gathers, put the point of the needle _under_ the lower gathering thread and press the plait or gather under the thumb, drawing the needle down, or simply pressing on the needle. Care must be taken not to scratch or tear the material. Continue entirely across the gathers, putting the needle under each stitch and holding the plait firmly between the thumb and finger: turn the material and stroke the _upper_ edge of the gathers. [Sidenote: Gauging] The gauging stitch is usually longer on the face than on the back, draws the material up into distinct plaits, making it easy to dispose of the fullness neatly, regularly and securely by overhanding the top edge of each plait to the bottom edge of the band. The right side of the skirt and the right side of the belt are placed against each other and each gather oversewed to the belt. The space into which the material is to be gathered determines the length of the long stitch. The succeeding rows of stitches should be _directly_ under those of the first. [Sidenote: Running and Back Stitch] (3) The running and back stitch is made by taking a few running stitches, drawing out the needle and making a back stitch over the last running stitch to strengthen the seam. Care must be taken not to hold the side next the worker too full and not to miss the under material, but to take the stitches even on both sides. [Sidenote: Half Back Stitch] (4) The half-back stitch is made by taking one stitch and placing the needle half way back, then bringing it out twice the length of the stitch and placing the needle half way back each time from where the last stitch ended. The appearance on the right side will be of regular space as in the running stitch. [Sidenote: Back Stitch] (5) The back stitch is made by placing the needle back to the last stitch, bringing it out once the length of the last stitch, then placing the needle back into the last stitch, and so on, making the stitches follow each other without any space between. This is used in all places that are to bear great strain. [Illustration: PLAIN STITCHES _a_--Running; _b_--Running and back; _c_--Half back; _d_--Back stitch.] [Sidenote: Whipping Stitch] (6) Overhanding, oversewing, whipping, top sewing are one and the same--small stitches taken over edges, to join folded edges or selvages, for sewing bands on gathers, sewing lace and insertion, and for sewing carpet strips together. The pieces for an overhand seam should be pinned carefully, placing the pins at right angles to the edge. The folded edges or selvages are placed together, the right side of the goods being in. Do not use a knot to begin sewing, but leave the knot end of the thread and sew it in with the first stitches, carrying the thread on top of the seam. To finish off the seam, overhand back over the last few stitches. [Sidenote: Position in Overhanding] In sewing this seam, the goods should be held between the thumb and first finger of the left hand parallel with the chest, not over the end of finger. Point the needle towards the left shoulder, thus giving a slanting stitch. Care should be taken not to pucker or draw the seam. When the seam is finished, it should be opened and pressed flat. [Sidenote: Overcasting] (7) Overcasting is a slanting stitch used to keep raw edges from ravelling. This stitch, like oversewing, may be worked from right to left or from left to right. The hem stitch and blind or slip stitch will be considered under hems. ORNAMENTAL STITCHES Never use a knot in any embroidery, but start by running a few stitches along the line which is to be covered. [Sidenote: Outline Stitch] (1) The outline stitch is the simplest of all embroidery stitches. Take a long stitch on the surface, with the needle pointing towards the chest in the line to be covered, and a short back stitch on the under side of the material. The effect of the under or wrong side of the material is exactly that of an ordinary back stitch. The beauty of this stitch depends upon its regularity and in always keeping the thread on the same side of the needle. [Illustration: ORNAMENTAL STITCHES _a_--Outline; _b_--Chain; _c_--Cat; _c'_--Catch; _d_--Single Feather; _e_--Double Feather; _f_--Tripple Feather; _g_--Modified Feather; _h_--Double Feather with Knots; _i_--French Knots and Outline; _j_--Herring Bone; _k_--Fancy Feather; _l_--Cat Stitch with French Knots.] [Sidenote: Chain Stitch] (2) The chain stitch when perfectly done should look like the stitch made by a single-thread machine. This stitch is made by taking the thread toward the worker, and before the needle is drawn out of the cloth the thread is held by the thumb under the point of the needle, as in a buttonhole, making a loop. The needle is inserted in the last loop for the next stitch. The chain stitch is used in modern embroidery as an outline and for darning, but in old embroidery, the outline and chain stitches were used for filling as well. They are found in Persian, Indian, and Italian Renaissance work. Like the feather stitch, the chain stitch is worked towards the worker. [Sidenote: Cat Stitch] (3) The cat stitch or herringbone stitch is an alternate slanting back stitch, the needle being placed first to the right and then to the left. This stitch must be worked evenly to be effective. It is used to finish flannel seams and hems, fasten down linings, opened seams, and canvas facings and featherbone, in millinery--in fact, this stitch is one of the most useful in sewing. The _catch_ stitch is a variation of the cat stitch. Instead of pointing the needle towards the chest, the stitch is taken parallel with the chest. It is used for about the same purposes as the cat stitch. As with the outline stitch, the cat stitch is worked _from_ the worker. [Sidenote: Loop Stitch] (4) Blanket or loop stitch, used to ornament the edge of blankets, etc., and for finishing the edge of stockinet or web material, is worked from left to right, the edge of the material being held towards the worker. Start with three or four running stitches along the edge so the line of stitching will cover them. Insert the needle the desired width from the edge, draw it towards you down over the thread, being careful not to draw the thread too tightly over the edge of the flannel. Fasten the thread by taking running stitches under the last blanket stitch on the wrong side. [Illustration: _HEM STITCHING_ _a_--Position of Needle; _a'_--Finished Hem Stitch; _b_--Ladder Stitch; _c_--Example of Drawn Work Finished with Loop and Cat Stitches.] [Sidenote: Feather Stitch] (5) Single, double, and triple feather or coral stitches may be made very ornamental and are used in all kinds of sewing and on all materials. They are always made towards the worker, the stitches being taken alternately to the right and left of the line of the design. The thread should always be carried under the needle as in a buttonhole stitch. The design may be varied by taking the stitches diagonally or straight, by making them close or separated, etc. [Sidenote: Hem Stitch] (6) Hemstitching is used for ornament in making hems and tucks. The first step in hemstitching is the drawing of threads. Rubbing the cloth along the line of threads to be drawn will make the drawing easier if the cloth is sized. After the threads are drawn, the hem is turned and basted even with the lowest edge of the drawn space. Insert the needle into the edge of the hem and material, taking up a cluster of threads bring the thread under the needle to form a buttonhole stitch or make a simple stitch in the edge of the fold. The number of threads drawn and the number in a cluster must be determined by the coarseness or fineness of the material, the greater number being drawn and taken in fine material. There are several methods of hemstitching, but the results are about the same. [Illustration: EMBROIDERY STITCHES Eyelet Embroidery, Embroidery Button Hole, Flat Satin Stitch.] [Sidenote: French Knots] (7) French knots are used in connection with other stitches for borders enclosed in outline and chain stitches, in initials, centers of flowers, and as a filling-in stitch. The simplest method is of taking a small back stitch, bringing the thread from the _eye_ of the needle under the point from right to left and drawing the needle perpendicularly from the cloth. Place the needle back of the knot and bring the point out in the place where the next knot is to be made. The size of the thread will determine the size of the knot. [Sidenote: Embroidery Buttonhole] (8) The embroidery buttonhole stitch has many possibilities and many variations. It is worked from left to right instead of from right to left as in a buttonhole. The thread from the work is carried under the point of the needle from left to right, just the reverse of the buttonhole. This stitch is used on flannel and in embroidery of all kinds; it may be padded or worked flat and the stitches may be taken a distance apart or near together. [Sidenote: Cross Stitch] (9) The cross stitch is worked on linen, scrim, canvas, or any open-meshed material. If done on a flat, smooth surface, it will be necessary to work over canvas, afterwards drawing out the canvas threads. The canvas should be well basted on the material, the warp threads of the canvas lying _perfectly straight_ on a line with the warp threads of the material on which the pattern is worked. The stitches should always run the same way. If the first ground stitches are made from left to right, from bottom towards the top, the cross stitches should be made from right to left from the top towards the bottom. All the ground stitches run one way and the cross stitches in the opposite way. This stitch is used for marking table linen, underwear, and embroidery designs. When marking linen and unlined work, make the under side very neat by running the thread under the stitches already made, instead of taking a long stitch when beginning in another part of the letter or design. [Sidenote: Satin Stitch] (10) The satin stitch is an over and over stitch and is used on materials of all kinds for marking linen, etc. The _padding_ is the first step and should be done in long even stitches placed closely and over one another in the center. The size and proportions of the figure or letters determine the size of the thread. Fine thread gives the best results. The outline should be run twice; this keeps the edge firm. An even darning or basting stitches, chain stitches or outline stitch may be used if the space is not too small. The padding may be worked in an embroidery hoop to keep it smooth and even. Scallops may be padded in the same way or worked flat. [Illustration: EMBROIDERY BUTTON HOLE AND BLANKET STITCHES Scallops Outlined and Padded.] In large figures the stitches are laid closely and exactly parallel the entire length of the form. They may be straight across or at an angle, but the one slant must be maintained throughout. In small curved figures, the stitches may be placed more closely at the inner edge and spread slightly at the outer edge. In flat work where the leaf or petal is large, two or three stitches taken in the cloth, back of the face stitch, holds them even and prevents misplacement in laundering. (All embroidery should be ironed on the wrong side.) [Illustration: ARROW HEAD, DOUBLE ARROW HEAD AND CROW'S FOOT.] [Sidenote: Eyelet Embroidery] Eyelet embroidery is a simple over and over stitch forming a smooth, round edge. Like satin stitch, all outlines are run with an even darning stitch, except the very small eyelet holes, made with a stiletto. Long or oval openings must be cut through the center. [Sidenote: Shadow Embroidery] Shadow embroidery is worked on the wrong side of thin material, using the cat stitch. The outline of the design only shows on the right side, the body of the design being seen dimly through the material. [Sidenote: Arrow Heads] The arrow head and crow's foot are ornamental fastenings used in fine tailoring as endings for seams, tucks, plaits, and at corners. They are made as shown in the illustration. Mercerized cotton, linen, or any of the embroidery silks can be used for these stitches, in all sizes and colors, or they can be worked with ordinary thread, cotton or linen, sewing silk, or twist. Cotton thread wears better than linen. HEMS [Sidenote: Folding Hems] A hem is a fold of goods twice folded to protect a raw edge. The first turn or fold of the hem is the most important. It should be straight and even, _folded to a thread_, for upon it depends the beauty of the hem. The hem should always be turned towards the worker and creased firmly, but never pleated along the fold. First crease the narrow fold, then crease the second fold the desired width, marking by a measure and baste not too near the edge. The first fold _along_ the _woof_ threads should be at least one-fourth of an inch in width, as the woof threads give or stretch more than the warp threads; otherwise it will not lie flat. [Sidenote: Sewing Hems] In sewing the hem, the needle should take up only the edge to be hemmed down and just enough to hold on the cloth or lining. In white work the stitches should be fine, showing as little as possible. [Sidenote: Bias Hem] All bias and curved edges should have the first fold basted. In cloth or silk this first basting thread should match the material and not be taken out. [Sidenote: Faced hem] A facing or faced hem is also used as a protection to the edge of a garment. A true bias or fitted facing should be used for a facing if the edges of the garment are curved. An extension hem is one in which the whole width of the hem is used. [Illustration: HEMMING _a_--Shows method of cutting to do away with a clumsey corner.] [Sidenote: Slip-Stitching] Slip-stitching or invisible hemming is done on silk, wool, and thick material. The hem is pressed with an iron, a stitch as fine as possible is taken on the surface of the cloth and the needle slipped under and through the first fold, drawing the thread lightly. The needle and thread used in this stitch must be very fine. [Illustration: MITERED CORNERS Method of Folding and Cutting.] [Illustration: ROLLED HEM AND WHIPPED GATHERS _a_--Rolled Hem Gathered; _b_--Whipped Roll; _c_--Double Whipped; _d_--Roll Hemmed; _e_--Gathers Sewed to Band.] [Sidenote: Rolled Hem] Rolled hem and whipped gathers are made with the wrong side of the material next the worker. Make a tiny roll of the edge towards the worker, using the left thumb and index finger, rolling an inch at a time (and no more) before hemming. Make fine, even stitches in the roll and goods. Keep the hem perfectly round, firm and not too large. This hem is adapted only to fine material and the edge across the warp is the more easily rolled. [Sidenote: Whipped Gathers] To gather, whip the rolled hem without hemming, making overcasting stitches towards you, even and not too fine. Use coarser thread than for hemming. This gathering thread is used to hold down the edge as well as for drawing up the gathers and it not to be taken out, as is the ordinary gathering thread. It should _not_ catch in the roll. Have the thread the length of the plain space to which it is to be sewed and regulate the gathers as you do the gathering. After the edge is rolled, whipped and gathered, it is sewed to the garment by the little scallops or raised parts made by the whipping. This is used only for making ruffles or gathering on very fine hand work. [Sidenote: French Hem] The French hem is used for table linen. Fold as in an ordinary hem, then fold the hem back on the right side and overhand the edge formed, taking fine stitches. Press the hem flat from the right side. [Sidenote: Flannel Hems] Flannel hems should _not_ be twice folded, for there will be a ridge instead of a flat surface after the garment has been laundered, owing to the felting properties of the wool. Hems on flannel should not be stitched by hand or machine, but cat stitched on the wrong side and finished on the right side with any ornamental stitch. Hems in infants' clothing may be turned on the right side and made ornamental by feather stitching. No selvage should ever be used on a hem. The selvage is more closely woven and will draw or pucker in laundrying. TUCKS Tucks are folds made on thin material for ornament, to shorten or to provide for lengthening a garment. If done by hand, a card measure is preferable to a tape measure for marking the space and width of the tucks. The folds should be creased to a thread, basted and sewed with a running stitch showing but little on the face, or stitched on the machine. Fine thread should be used. SEAMS A seam is the line of sewing that joins material; it may be plain or ornamental. The most important are the overhand, felled, French, slot, lapped, flannel, and beaded. The overhand seam is described under the overhand stitch. [Sidenote: Felled Seam] A fell is a seam hemmed down to the goods to protect the raw edge. It is usually made in night dresses, drawers, corset covers, etc. Baste with the piece farthest from the worker extended one-eighth of an inch beyond the other and sewed _with the grain_ of the goods, beginning at the widest part of any bias. Press the seam with the nail on the right side, turn the wide edge down flat to cover the raw edge and line of sewing, and hem flat either by hand or machine. Care should be taken to keep the seam flat on the right as well as on the wrong side. If the felling is done with the machine hemmer, the wide edge must be on the opposite side. The seam may be basted with both edges even if preferred, cutting off one edge after stitching. [Illustration: SEAMS _a_--Full; _b_--French Screen.] [Illustration: BEADED AND TAPED SEAMS _A_--Tape basted on one edge, and the other edge turned and stitched; _B_--Beading whipped to the folded edges; _a_--Stitched hem; _b_--Hem finished with feather stitching.] [Sidenote: French Seam] A French seam is sewed twice--first on the right side as near the raw edge as possible. Cut off all frayed edges, turn the material by folding _on the seam_ or line of sewing, so the seam is folded inside and the second sewing is on the wrong side below the raw edges. This is not a good seam for underwear worn next the body, as it leaves a ridge on the wrong side, but it is useful for skirts of thin material, etc. It is more easily made than a fell. [Sidenote: Beaded Seam] Beaded seams used for fine white work have a line of beading overhanded between gores, hems, or gathers. The hem along the seam should be folded on the right side, leaving a perfectly flat surface to iron on the wrong side, and finished with an ornamental stitch covering the hem. [Sidenote: Slot Seams] The slot seam, used in cloth dresses and jackets, requires exact basting with silk or very fine thread with small, even stitches. If a coarse thread is used, the material will be badly marked. After basting, press the seam open as if it had been stitched, and baste the strap or under strip of the dress material (which has been cut perfectly straight and even) over the wrong side of the seam, having the center of the seam on the center of the strap. Stitch any width desired beyond the center through the three thicknesses. This will hold the seam in position. Now remove the bastings from the seam and the slot effect is complete. If desired, there may be a double row of stitching, an extra row on the edge of the fold or plait. These seams may be finished at the bottom with arrow heads or stitched designs. The lines of machine stitching should not end without some ornament to _appear_ to hold the plait. [Illustration: SLOT SEAM FINISHED WITH ARROW HEAD] [Illustration: FLANNEL SEAMS AND HEMS Finished with various Ornamental Stitches.] [Sidenote: Lapped Seam] In the lapped seam the edges are folded each within the other or one over the other so that both sides are alike. If made of heavy material, the raw edges are left unturned; in muslin or linen the edges are inturned, lapped, basted and the hem stitched on both edges or hemmed down on both sides by hand. [Illustration: PLACKETS _A_--Made by folding a wide hem over a narrow one; _B_--Tape faced sewing for the purpose of a gusset. Method of folding the tape shown.] [Sidenote: Flannel Seams] Flannel seams should be stitched, opened and pressed _flat_, either on the right or wrong side of the garment. If on the right side, taffeta ribbon should be basted over the seam, so that the raw edges of flannel will not show, and cat stitched or buttonhole stitched on both sides of the ribbon, or any fancy stitch--not too long--may be used. This is the Dorothy seam. For the seam on the wrong side, the edges should be cat stitched with fine thread. Any ornamental stitch may be used on the right side of the seam. Always press flannel seams and hems before finishing. Flannel should never be hem stitched. PLACKETS A placket is an opening in a garment allowing it to be put on. The simplest placket is made by cutting a slit and folding a wide hem over a narrow one turned on the face of the goods; this makes a pleat below the vent. There should be a double line of stitching across the bottom of the hem to strengthen the placket. [Sidenote: Tape Faced Placket] The tape faced placket is stronger and may be used in children's drawers, etc., in place of a gusset to strengthen the end of the opening. A single piece of tape folded back as for a loop is stitched along all edges, making an opening without a lap. This offers as much resistance as a gusset and is more quickly done. [Illustration: FACED PLACKET _A_--Wrong side, opened, showing tape; _B_--Right side showing on-set piece; _aa_ and _bb_ the same ends of the tape; 1-2 method of folding and cutting end of on-set piece.] [Sidenote: Faced Placket] In a third kind of placket, the opening is faced with a continuous piece of tape on both sides and finished with a piece of material on the outside. See illustration. This makes a strong and simple placket. When a tape cannot be used, a hem or facing may be made on the under side of the opening and a facing on the upper side, over which the on-set piece is stitched. The on-set piece and facing may be cut from one piece, but the fitting is more troublesome. In figured goods, the piece set on should match the pattern exactly. [Illustration: SKIRT PLACKET WITH LAP] A simple placket for underwear is made from a single strip of the goods put on like an extension hem. On drawers it may be turned in at the buttonhole end, but not stitched down except at the band. The placket of a skirt should have an underlap extending well below the opening. SEWING ON BANDS [Sidenote: Gathering] Divide the top of unhemmed edge of the garment in halves and mark with a cross stitch, notch or pin. Gather from the placket to the middle of the front gore, if a skirt, apron, or dress. Take a new thread and gather the remainder. Put in a second gathering thread one-eighth to one-fourth of an inch below the first. Two gathering threads are better than one and they should be longer than the length of space to be gathered. Stroke or lay the gathers above and below the threads. Divide the band and pin the middle to the center of the garment, placing the right side of the band on the wrong side of the garment. Pin in the middle and at each end, secure the gathering threads by winding around the pin, adjust the gathers, and baste between the gathering threads. Stitch just below the line of basting. Fold the band over on the right side, press, baste over the line of stitching, press again, then stitch on the right side after having turned in both ends and over-sewed. Turn the _top_ of the band over on the right side one-eighth or one-fourth of an inch and stitch securely. This upper fold keeps the edge from wearing and stretching and is a stay for children's skirts and drawers where button holes are used and serves as a finish for the top of the band. [Illustration: FINISHES _a_--Bias Facing; _b_--Band on Gathers; _c_--Corded edge.] For flannel, pleating or gathers may be used to put fullness into a band. Two rows of gathering threads should be used and the stitches should not be too fine. The band should be made of cotton or at least lined with it to avoid clumsiness and prevent shrinking. Ruffles are set in hems, etc., in the same manner. [Illustration: DRAW TAPE FINISH FOR UNDER SKIRT] [Sidenote: Drawing Tapes] In finishing the top of an underskirt, many like to dispense with the placket and fitted band. This may be done by using drawing tapes at the back. The upper edge is faced with a piece of material which should be bias in front to accommodate it to the curve, but may be straight across the back. Work a button hole at each side of the back, insert a tape through one button hole and draw it over an inch beyond the opposite one and fasten securely by two lines of stitching across the tape. A second tape is put through the other button hole and fastened in the same way. By pulling the tape on each side the fullness may be adjusted. [Sidenote: Bias Facings] All facings around curves, such as arm holes and neck, should be a true bias which is cut by holding the warp threads diagonally across the woof threads. These strips for facings, pipings, ruffles, etc., should be cut exactly even in width. All bands, ruffles, etc., of serge, twilled, or diagonal materials should be cut _across_ the twill and not with it, in order to have the ruffle hang well. FASTENINGS The standard fastenings are buttons and button holes, hooks and eyes or hand made loops, lacings through rings and eyelet holes, loops over buttons, and fancy frogs, clasps, studs, ball and socket, "notta-hooks," etc. [Sidenote: Making Button Holes] Button holes should be carefully measured and marked before cutting. They should be a little longer than the diameter of the button for flat buttons and one and one-quarter the diameter for round buttons. Having decided upon the distance apart they are to be placed, cut a marker from a piece of cardboard and measure off the space, marking with pins, French chalk, pencil, or thread. The distance from the edge (one-fourth inch), as well as the length of the button hole may also be marked with the card. The scissors should be sharp, the hand must be steady, and the cut should be made with one firm slash, not with two or three jerks. Great care must be taken that each button hole is of the same length. The goods should be cut to a thread, for it is impossible to make a neat buttonhole if it is improperly cut. In cutting a round end buttonhole for thick goods, a punch may be used for the end, after which the remainder of the buttonhole is cut directly on a line with the center of the circle. The same marker may be used to mark the position for the buttons. All markings for buttons and buttonholes, or for hooks and eyes, should be made at one time. [Sidenote: Overcasting Buttonholes] After cutting, the button holes are overcast. This should always be done directly after cutting, especially if the goods ravels easily, otherwise it will be impossible to work a neat buttonhole. Overcasting should be done with very fine thread (No. 150 for white goods), split silk for wool and silk. Three overcast stitches on each side are sufficient for an ordinary size buttonhole. A very good plan to follow in cutting a buttonhole in heavy material or material that frays easily is to chalk the position and length of the buttonhole, then stitch a row of machine stitching each side of this mark, the two rows being a little more than one-eighth of an inch apart. This holds all the thicknesses together and the buttonhole may then be cut easily. It also serves as a guide in working the buttonhole stitches. [Illustration: BUTTONS, BUTTON HOLES, EYELETS, LOOPS] The buttonholing is begun at the inner side of the slit. Always place the knot on the outside of the garment a short distance to the right of the buttonhole, leaving a long stitch underneath which can be cut off when the buttonhole is finished. A buttonhole should be completed with one thread if possible as it is difficult to mend the thread securely and neatly. Letter D for twist is usually employed. [Sidenote: Making Buttonholes] Insert the needle in the edge of the material and when half way through, take the two threads at the eye of the needle, bringing them towards you at the right and under the point of the needle, and draw the thread from you, making the purl or loop stitch directly on the edge of the buttonhole. The stitches should be about the width of the needle apart to allow for the purl. Be careful to complete each stitch with a uniform movement so that the line will be perfectly straight and not wavy. The stitches are placed more closely together in the rounded end of the buttonhole where the chief wear comes. [Sidenote: Staying] Many workers, particularly tailors, always "stay" or "bar" around a buttonhole before working. This may be done with several threads of twist or with a cord so that the worked edge of the buttonhole will be firm and distinct. Tailors usually use a cord as this makes the edges heavier. It is always well to stay buttonholes in heavy material as it strengthens them very much and improves their appearance. [Sidenote: Bar Tack] When the buttonhole has been worked all around, the end is completed with a bar tack made by taking two or three stitches across the end of the buttonhole, drawing the edges closer together. This bar is covered with buttonhole stitches worked close together. The thread is fastened securely on the wrong side. [Sidenote: Large Buttonholes] After very large buttonholes are finished, their straight edges should be closely basted together by an over and over stitch and then pressed under a damp cloth. Before they are dry, a bodkin or stiletto should be pushed vigorously up through each eyelet until that opening becomes perfectly round and the stitches on its edges are regular and distinct. When the basting is removed, the buttonhole will be symmetrical in appearance. Buttonholes which are to bear a strain are cut in the direction of the pull, but sometimes they are cut in the opposite direction, as for a shirt waist. Such a buttonhole may be completed with a bar tack on each end. [Sidenote: Sewing on Buttons] Ordinary buttons should never be sewed down tightly, but the thread should be loose so that it may be wound around at the end, thus protecting the holding threads from wear. The shank prevents the buttonhole from being crowded out of shape. Loose sewing can most easily be done by placing a pin or needle across the top of the button and sewing over it. If a button is much concaved, the pin may be placed underneath. The pin is removed before winding. In sewing on a four-hole button, the stitches should be made symmetrically, either parallel or crossed, but not both. If parallel or in a two-holed button the stitches should run in the line of the buttonhole. The thread should always be fastened at the beginning and at the end of the work. Place the knot upon the outside of the garment where it may be cut off when the button is sewed securely. The knot is sometimes placed under the button. [Sidenote: Cloak Buttons] In sewing buttons on a cloak or coat an extra strip of canvas or silesia over the canvas interlining should be placed the entire length of the buttoning for strength. This should be applied before the work on the garment is too far advanced and if cut sufficiently wide, will allow any slight alteration. The sewing should go through the canvas facing and stay, but not through the under side or facing of the material. In sewing buttons on bodices a tape should be sewed over the front basting for a stay. If sufficient material has not been allowed for a lap, this should be added, as a lap is necessary under the opening of such buttonholes. Buttons may be sewed through lining having a small button on the wrong side. This method prevents the cloth from tearing and makes an ornamental finish as well as a substantial one. Buttons which are supplied with wire shanks should be sewed down firmly as the shank already provided permits the buttons to set up well from the material. They should be placed in such a position that the wire shank will run parallel with the buttonhole and not cross it. [Sidenote: Hooks and Eyes] The position for hooks and eyes should be marked before sewing on. The simplest, though least desirable, method of sewing-on these fastenings is to place the eye at the edge of the seam or facing and the hook sufficiently far back from the opposite side to give a lap. A much preferable method is to baste a bias strip of crinoline along the positions to be occupied by the hooks and eyes; this gives strength to the finish. Sufficient material should be allowed for folding over the shanks after the hooks and eyes have been sewed on, or they may be covered with silk ribbon, slipping the edge under the beak of each hook and then catstitched in position. The hooks and eyes are sewed securely through the crinoline and one thickness, but the stitches should not show on the outside. Over and over stitches are taken through the small rings in the line of the full and again on each bar of the eye and on the shank of the hook so that they may be held in position securely. In many cases, it is advisable to have an underlap of the material. This should be slip-stitched in position on the garment after the eyes have been sewed in place. [Illustration: HOOKS AND EYES Sewed on tape, Shanks covered with taffeta tape and with fold of the goods.] [Sidenote: Eyelets] Eyelet holes are made with a stiletto which forces the threads aside, but does not cut them. The edge is finished with over and over stitches placed closely together, or with a buttonhole stitch making the purl on the outer edge of the stitches. Loops are made by buttonholing very closely over several foundation threads, making the purl on the outside edge. The needle may be run under the loop eye first if preferred. PATCHING [Sidenote: Underset Patch] With the underset patch have the part to be patched pressed smooth, baste the patch on the wrong side of the garment before cutting out the worn place. (If the garment or article to be mended is worn or faded and shrunken by laundering, boil the piece in soap, soda and water to fade the patch, if of cotton or linen.) After basting, cut away all the worn cloth, making a square or oblong hole. Cut to a thread. Cut each corner, diagonally, one-eighth or one-quarter of an inch, turn all four edges of the garment towards the wrong side. Begin at the center of one side and hem all around the square, taking slanting even stitches, not too close together. Remove the basting, trim the edges of the patch, press the patch on the wrong side and catch stitch to the garment. This shows less on the right side and does not make a hard line as if the patch were turned back on the edge. If the cloth has a pattern or stripe, match it perfectly, having the warp threads of both running the same way. Cut both hole and patch square. An oval or round patch is unworkmanlike and does not wear well. Keep the corners square and hem down well. The object of pressing is to keep both garment and patch flat and even. Flannel patches should be cat-stitched on the right side. No flannel edges should ever be inturned. [Illustration: UNDERSET PATCH, RIGHT SIDE, EDGE TURNED AND HEMMED TO PATCH] [Illustration: WRONG SIDE OF PATCH, CAT STITCHED] [Illustration: WRONG SIDE OF PATCH IN TABLE CLOTH--RAW EDGE OVERCAST] [Sidenote: Onset Patch] The onset patch is used on lined garments and linings. The patch should be rectangular and larger than the worn place. Fold the four edges on the wrong side of the patch, place the patch with its wrong side on the right side of the garment directly over the center of the hole. This will bring the folded edges of the patch between the two pieces of cloth and both right sides towards the worker. Do not baste, but pin carefully. After the garment has been folded back until there are two folded edges side by side, overhand the seam with even slanting stitches. See that the corners are well sewed, that warp and woof threads run in the same direction, that pattern and stripes match. [Illustration: LINEN PATCH; CROSS STITCH INITIAL] [Illustration: RIGHT SIDE OF FLANNEL PATCH Edge cat stitched but not turned, back cat stitched in the same way.] The worn part of the garment under the patch is cut away, leaving one-fourth of an inch on the three sides. Cut the corners diagonally and turn back the edge quarter of an inch, overcast and press. If this patch is sewed on a lining, the worn part is not cut away. If this patch is used to repair skirts near the band, only three sides are oversewed, the upper edge should be gathered into the band. A large patch is less conspicuous than a small one. [Sidenote: Patch for Trowsers] An onset patch may be used for the seats of trousers by shaping the patch like the pieces on the seats of bicycle trousers and stitching on the machine. Heavy cloth will need no inturned edges. The same precautions are necessary regarding warp and woof, pattern, etc. DARNING [Sidenote: Thread for Darning] Darning is usually done with a running stitch, with or without a piece of net or cloth underset. Thread for darning should be as near as possible the size of the threads in the garment. Whenever it can be done, a warp thread of the garment should be used. No sewing silk is fine enough to use without separating the thread and using one of the strands. Never use the thread as it is, as it is too hard twisted. Cotton and linen thread of the finest quality, untwisted, should be used for darning stockings and underwear. Linen may be darned with linen or mercerized cotton. Cotton is preferable. A long slender needle with a large eye should be used. Darning should never be commenced with a knot, nor finished with a back stitch. [Sidenote: Bias Darn] A bias or diagonal cut and a three-cornered tear are the most difficult to repair. If the place is badly pulled and frayed, a piece of the same material should be basted on the wrong side of the material and darned in even stitches. Always darning _parallel_ with the warp threads and the woof threads. In the diagonal tear, as the threads are cut diagonally, to prevent drawing apart, the darning threads must cross each other. The stitches around any darn should not end in a stiff even line; this makes a hard edge which does not wear and is unsightly, and uncomfortable if on underwear. [Sidenote: Darning a Three Cornered Tear] The three-cornered tear may be darned in two ways. Begin by darning diagonally through the center, darning back and forth towards the end of the tear until one-half has been finished; then begin at the center and work in the opposite direction. At the corner, the stitches should form the shape of a fan. The other method, which is the stronger, is done by darning a square in the angle, first with the warp threads, then with the woof threads and finishing each end across the tear. Stocking darning may be done on the right side. Begin by picking up the stitches and drawing the edges together. This should always be done in any kind of stocking darning, but not so close as to make a wrinkle. [Illustration: STOCKINET DARNING OVER NET Interlaced Stitches and Chain Stitches.] In knees and heels of stockings, or knitted underwear, a piece of net large enough to extend beyond the thin part should be basted carefully; then darn down the outer edges of the net and finally the hole or thin place. This makes a strong, neat piece of mending. If the hole is large, the net may be covered with the chain stitch, thus imitating the knitting stitch. This should be done on the right side of the garment. If the hole is to be filled in with the interlaced stitches, draw the edges together, darn beyond the thin places lengthwise of the knitted garment, making each line of stitches longer until the center of the hole is reached, then decrease in the same manner, making a diamond in shape. Darn across the hole in the same way, taking up every alternate stitch as in weaving. Leave a tiny loop at the end of each row of darning, so that the threads will not draw. [Sidenote: Machine Darning] Darning, satisfactory for some purposes, may be done quickly on a double thread sewing machine. It is best done in an embroidery ring, first drawing the edges together. Loosen the tension on the presser foot, use fine thread with light tension. Sew back and forth, first along the warp threads and then at right angles along the woof threads. The machine will be sewing backwards part of the time, but if the pressure is light, there will be no difficulty. For large holes, paper may be placed underneath. MITERING EMBROIDERY OR LACE The mitering of lace or embroidery is often necessary in making collars and in finishing corners. Before applying, plan carefully and select a scallop or portion of the embroidery which will produce the best effects when finished. This can be accomplished by folding the embroidery over at various portions of the pattern until a suitable point is found. Fold over at right angles and mark along the line to be mitered. The triangle may now be cut, but an extra width must always be allowed for the seam, as there is frequently a slight unevenness and one side may have to be held a little full or stretched to make a perfect match. The mitered seam is over-sewed. [Illustration: MITERING AND JOINING EMBROIDERY _A_--Finished with a stitched seam; _B_--Edge hemmed down and cloth cut away underneath; _C_--Joined with lapped seam.] After the corner is properly made, cut away the cloth of the embroidery, allowing only enough for an inturned seam on the edge. This seam may be stitched on the machine on both edges, or oversewed to the goods, or the embroidery may be securely sewed on the plain part, after which the underlying cloth may be cut away. This will make an almost perfect corner. Lace may be matched and mitered in a similar way. MATCHING AND JOINING LACE In joining lace, avoid a seam if possible. Select portions of the design that will match, placing one pattern of the same design over the other. Cut away a portion of the thick part of the pattern underneath and hem the edges and inner part of the design down with fine thread. Smyrna or Torchon lace is more difficult to hem or join when very open or very fine. A small, felled seam is better than lapping and trying to match the pattern. Embroidery can be matched in the same way. Never let two heavy designs lap over each other. The one on the wrong side should be cut out and the edge sewed securely to the upper part of the design. [Illustration: INSERTION WITH MITRED CORNER, TAPED AND FACED; EMBROIDERY ROLLED WHIPPED AND GATHERED] The plain material above the embroidery can be joined by a lapped seam, turning first the right side and then the wrong side and hemming on both sides of the seam. MACHINE SEWING The sewing machine has taken away much of the drudgery of home sewing, but its use does not lessen the need of skill in hand work. No machine can finish ends of belts, collars, sew on trimmings, fastenings, and like work and the finish has much to do with the general appearance of a garment. [Sidenote: Types of Machines] All the prominent makes of sewing machines were invented in the decade following Howe's patent in 1846. The two chief types of machines are the lock stitch, using double thread, and the chain or loop stitch, using a single thread. Whatever the make of machine it should be run in accordance with the rules accompanying it. The worker should familiarize herself with the directions for setting and threading the needle, winding the bobbin, regulating the tension and the stitch and all other technicalities of the particular machine she has to operate. Agencies of the various machines usually have skilled workers to give instruction to beginners. While it is not always an economy of time to use the attachments for hemming, tucking, etc., unless much work is to be done, it is worth while to know how to use them if desired. As much or more skill is required for neat machine work as for hand sewing. Results will not be satisfactory without careful basting. [Sidenote: Care of the Machine] The machine should be kept well oiled, free from dust and gum and it should he run evenly. In case it becomes "gummed" a drop of kerosene on the parts that have been oiled will cut the gum. Remove the shuttle and run the machine rapidly for a moment, then wipe off all the kerosene and oil the machine carefully with good machine oil--only the best should be used. A machine should always be wiped thoroughly before any work is placed upon it. [Sidenote: Needles and Thread] As in hand sewing, needles and thread should be selected with care. A blunt or bent needle should never be used, it should have a fine sharp point and the eye should be sufficiently large to carry the thread easily. The needle and thread should be suitable for the material to be sewed. Glazed thread should never be used in a machine. The best quality of thread and silk should be purchased but only enough for immediate use, as it loses strength with age, chiefly because of the action of the dyes and chemicals. Even white thread may become "tender" from the chemicals used in bleaching it. Sewing silk and cotton should be kept in a closed box to exclude the light and air. For sewing cotton or linen the best cotton thread should be used. Woolen, silk, and velvet should be stitched with the best machine silk. The thread should match the material in color. Cotton thread fades or loses its brightness when exposed to the light, therefore for stitching that will show it is always better to use silk. The thread on the bobbin should be wound evenly and carefully to insure an even stitch and the tension of both threads should be equal, otherwise the stitch will not be perfect. As a lock stitch machine requires two threads while in hand sewing only one is used, the two need not be as coarse as the single thread. For ordinary home sewing, underwear, thin gowns and the like, No. 70 to No. 100 will be found satisfactory. Finer thread may be used when the materials demand it, but no coarser than No. 50 should be used in the machine and this only with the coarsest material. [Sidenote: Fastening Threads] Much time may be saved in fastening the threads at the ends of tucks, hems on sheets, towels, etc., by careful manipulation of the machine. For example, on sheets begin to stitch along the hem at the selvage, or if the end of the hem is over-sewed, begin an inch from the edge and stitch the hem towards the selvage, then lift the presser-foot so as to turn the work, and retrace the bit of stitching, continuing across the whole hem. When the end is reached, release the presser-foot, turn the work, and stitch back for an inch or more in the same line, as was done at the beginning of the hem. By this method the threads are fastened much more easily and quickly than by drawing them through on to the wrong side and tying or sewing them by hand and, of course, it is more satisfactory than the "shop" way of cutting them off short. Tucks or seams may be fastened in the same way. If fine thread is used the double stitching at the ends is hardly noticeable. [Sidenote: Bias Side Next Feed] When stitching a seam having one bias and one straight side, let the bias side come next to the feed, that is, on the underside. This is especially important in thin materials. If the material is very sheer, strips of soft paper--newspaper will answer for ordinary purposes--should be sewed in the seam. This will insure a seam free from puckers and when finished the paper can be pulled away easily. [Sidenote: Stitching Gathers] In sewing gathers on a band they should also come next the "feed," as it takes up the side next to it a little faster than the upper side. When the bias, or cross-way side of the seam, or gathers are next to the "feed" the material runs along smoothly, but if the straight side is towards it there is apt to be a pucker. Stitching can be done more easily on the right of the presser foot with the bulk of the material lying to the left. The tendency of the "feed" or teeth is to crowd the work off the edge as well as forward and the stitching may be guided better on the right side. All straight seams should be stretched to the full extent of their straight edge in stitching, as the work passes under the presser foot. When a large amount of machine sewing is to be done--such as household linen, sheets, pillow cases and underwear--it is a good plan to do all the basting and hand work first and keep the machine stitching for a rainy or a damp day, as the thread is then less apt to break. A current of air or a breeze from an open window on a dry day will often cause the thread to snap. For the same reason the machine should never stand near the fire or radiator. TEXTILES AND CLOTHING PART II READ CAREFULLY. This test consists of two parts,--answers to the questions and the making of models. Both should be sent to the School for inspection and correction. All models should be made about 4 by 6 inches so that they may be put into the envelope provided without being folded. Two series of models are given; either or both may be made. 1. What instruction have you ever had in sewing? (b) Has the subject any educational value? 2. What are the common basting stitches, and for what are they used? 3. Can you make the running stitch properly? How is it done? 4. For what purpose may the cat stitch be used? 5. Hems and Seams: Describe the different kinds for thick and thin materials, including those for flannel and state when they should be used. 6. Describe three kinds of plackets. 7. How are gathers made, and how sewed into a band? 8. What can you say of fastenings? 9. With what sewing machine are you most familiar, and what are its peculiarities? 10. What stitches or methods described in this lesson are new to you? Note: After completing the answers, sign your full name. MODELS, FIRST SERIES I. STITCHES. On a piece of cotton about 4 by 6 inches, make with colored thread (1) a line of even basting stitches, (2) uneven basting stitches, (3) tacking, (4) running, (5) back stitch, (6) running and back, (7) half back. With embroidery silk make a row each of (1) cat stitch, (2) single feather, (3) double feather, (4) chain, (5) rows of French knots with border of outline stitch. Make your initial in one corner, using any stitch preferred. Overcast one long edge of the model, double overcast the opposite side, finish one end with plain loop or blanket stitch, and the other end with some fancy loop stitch. Fasten all threads as described in the text. II. SEAMS AND HEMS. (a) Join two pieces of fine cotton with a French seam at the long edge, about 2 by 5½ inches, with warp running lengthwise. (b) Cut a piece of muslin on a true bias and attach the bias edge to _a_ with a felled seam. (c) Trim the model and hem all sides so that the finished model may measure 4 by 6 inches. III. DARNING AND PATCHING. (a) In gingham or figures cotton, make an underset patch of a square hole, matching the goods. (b) Darn a three-cornered tear. IV. FASTENINGS. The proper distance from the edge of folded goods make (a) button hole, one end rounded and the other finished with a bar tack. (b) Under it make a partly finished, _barred_ buttonhole. (c) Below this make an eyelet hole, (d) below the eyelet hole a loop, and sew on an eye. On a second piece of folded goods opposite the first buttonhole, (a) sew a four-hole button, corresponding in size to the buttonhole. (b) Opposite the second buttonhole sew on a two-hole button; (c) below, sew on two hooks corresponding in position to the loop and eye. Make the two parts of the model so that the corresponding fastenings will join. V. APRON. Using fine muslin, make a doll's apron, gathering into band at top. Above hem at the bottom, make two clusters of tucks of three each. MODELS. SECOND SERIES. FOR EXPERIENCED WORKERS I. ROLLED HEM; HEM STITCHING. Make a doll's apron of fine muslin, attach top to band with rolled, whipped gathers. Make two clusters of tucks of three each at the bottom and hem stitch the bottom hem. II. SLEEVE PLACKET. Make a taped sleeve placket as shown in the illustration. III. MAKE A SLOT SEAM, using dress goods and finish with an arrow head. (b) Make a large cloak buttonhole. IV. MITRE EMBROIDERY and finish as shown in the illustration. (b) Match and join the same. V. EMBROIDERY: Make something small and useful--a doily, stock, collar--illustrating some style of embroidery, or make a model of the first series which will afford you the most new experience. [Illustration: MAKING MEXICAN DRAWN-WORK] TEXTILES AND CLOTHING PART III DRESSMAKING [Sidenote: Good Tools Necessary] The greatest obstacle to home sewing of any kind is the failure to provide suitable materials with which to do the work. To do good work--to make attractive gowns--the simple tools which the work requires must be provided. First, there should be needles and pins of the best quality and make. They should be fine and well pointed. The needle should be suitable to the material to be sewn and sufficiently large to carry the thread easily. A blunt or bent needle should never be used. Long or milliner's needles are preferred by many for basting. [Sidenote: Thread] A good supply of thread should be kept on hand--not too great a quantity, but the stock should be added to as it is used. There should be both silk and colored cotton, also twist for button holes, loops and arrow heads and knitting silk to sew on and finish feather bone. [Sidenote: Scissors] Two pairs of scissors are required--one with long, sharp blades, and a pair of medium sizes for snipping machine stitches. Among the other necessary articles are a tape measure, cake of wax, pencils or tailor's chalk, tracing wheel, emery, lap board. Canvas, scrim, or any like material should be kept in the sewing room, as these are invaluable for facings, linings of collars, cuffs, etc. Hooks, eyes, buttons, tape, linings, featherbone and shields are requisites not to be forgotten. [Sidenote: Tapes] Tape is constantly needed. Linen tape is thinner and makes a neater finish for some purposes than cotton tape. The bias tape or binding now kept by the larger stores is very useful for binding curved edges and for other purposes. [Sidenote: Cutting Table] If a regular cutting table is not available, the dining room table should be used. Skirts, bodices, ruffles, and bias bands should be cut on firm, even, and large surfaces. If cut upon the floor or bed and pressed on a coarse crash towel, the garment will have the undesirable home-made look. [Sidenote: Pressing Board] A good pressing board should be provided and if possible a sleeve board. In the process of garment making of any kind too much stress cannot be laid upon constant and careful pressing. The ironing board should have for its outside cover a _finely_ woven, perfectly smooth cloth, tightly stretched, free from wrinkles, and securely tacked. Where there is gas, a small, portable stove should be kept near the sewing table with a medium-sized flat iron. Lacking gas, one of the single burner oil stoves may be used. An electric flat iron is especially convenient. [Sidenote: Bust Form] A bust form is a great convenience in fitting and almost a necessity for one who does much home dressing. These may be purchased at department stores. Some kinds are adjustable, but it is always best to make a carefully fitted lining for it and pad out to the correct shape and size. The pattern should be one that extends well over the hips and heavy unbleached muslin may be used. After padding firmly, the front opening should be oversewed. Special care should be taken with shoulders and neck and the neck band should be carefully adjusted on the figure. [Illustration: PADDED BUST FORM (From Dressmaking Up-to-Date, Butterick Co.)] A padded sleeve lining is also very useful in making sleeves. Dressmaking never should be begun until each needed article required for the work has been purchased. The sewing room should be in order; the machine well oiled and wiped before any work is undertaken. [Sidenote: Skill and Taste] If the finished garment is to be perfect, careful attention must be given to _every_ detail of the cutting and making up. To possess mechanical skill alone is not sufficient. A successful garment depends not only upon the dexterity with which the worker manipulates the actual tools of her craft, but upon all her faculties and her power of applying them. She must have a comprehension of the laws of beauty in dress, construction, ornament, color, selection, economy. The artisan knows the technical part only, and looks upon each dress--each piece of lace and velvet--as so much material to be snipped and cut and sewed, copying from the fashion plate, making gown after gown alike. The artist, on the other hand, makes the gown to suit the individual wearer, considering each dress no matter how simple--and the simpler, the more artistic--as a creation designed to suit the woman for whom it was planned. People who study economy from principle will never adopt anything extreme in weave, or color, or make. These extreme fashions are never lasting; they are too conspicuous and are vulgarized by bad copies, while a thing which is known to be good and beautiful once will remain so for all time. Those who are beginners in the art of dressmaking should select plain designs until skill is acquired. The making up and finishing of new fabrics and new or untried methods are problems that often dismay even the most experienced dressmaker. PATTERNS [Sidenote: Selection of Patterns] The makers of good and reliable patterns are many. Always buy patterns of firms that make proportion of figure as well as fashion a study. These patterns state length of skirt, waist and hip measure and quantity of material required in all widths. Buy a skirt pattern with correct hip size, as it is much more difficult to change this than to alter the dimensions of a waist. Adjust the pattern to the figure for which the garment is to be cut and see that it is right in all of its proportions. Always follow the notches indicated in the seams of the pattern, and thus avoid putting wrong pieces together. Be sure that the pattern is placed correctly upon the material with the _straight grain_ or warp threads of the goods running directly on a line with the _straight perforations_ indicated in the pattern. Lay the entire pattern upon the cloth. This gives an idea just where every piece is to come out. [Sidenote: What the Pattern Gives] All patterns give one-half of the bodice and the skirt, from center of back to center of front. The plain waist pattern consists of back, curved side piece, under arm piece (sometimes these two pieces are in one) front, upper and under sleeve, collar or neck band. Some patterns allow for seams--others do not. Skirt patterns give only one-half of the front gore. The _seam_ edges of front gore are marked by _one_ notch near the waist line. The front or straight edge of the _first_ side gore has one notch, and two on the back edge of side gore. All the gores may be distinguished from the edges of the back gores by the lesser number of notches. This is true of all skirt patterns. If the patterns are studied carefully, all skirt cutting becomes very easy. The object of goring a garment is to take out unnecessary fullness at the top; reducing the weight, making the garment less clumsy, and giving a nicety of finish which could not be done in heavy material if all the goods were left to fit into a band. Skirts may be lined or unlined, gored or full. SEVEN-GORED SKIRT The style may vary with the fashion, but a well-fitting skirt should hang even around the bottom edge, should fit easily around the hips without being strained or defining the figure too closely, or "ride up" when sitting, should flare slightly from hips to the bottom of the skirt, should not fall in between the feet, the back should fall well behind the figure. For heavy goods, as little material as possible consistent with the prevailing style should be used. PLAN OF SKIRT MAKING Shortening or lengthening of pattern if necessary. Placing of goods. Pinning on of pattern so there is no waste. Cutting. Removing and care of patterns. Pinning, basting, or tacking of skirt to lining. Joining of seams, fitting. Stitching. Pressing. Finishing of seams and placket hole. Making and putting on waist-band. Marking length and finishing the bottom. Fastenings, loops, braids, hooks and eyes. [Sidenote: Lengthening or Shortening Patterns] To lengthen or shorten a skirt pattern, measure the figure and regulate the length of the patterns by making a fold in each gore two-thirds of the way from the top of the pattern if too long. This is for the simplest skirt pattern. The shape of the skirt may require two folds, one two-thirds from the top and a small fold near the bottom to preserve the outline. If too short pin the pattern on the material, cut around the top of gore and on each side two-thirds of the distance from the top of gore. Unpin and draw the pattern down to the bottom and cut the required length. Except for wash material, do not turn a gored skirt up at the bottom to form a wide hem, as the fullness made by turning is hard to dispose of neatly and the right curve at the bottom of the skirt may be lost. Another way to lengthen the pattern is to cut it in two, two-thirds the distance from the top. See that all pleats or tucks are exactly the same width and at the exact distance from the top or bottom of the gore, also that all seams are of the right length. A shorter skirt must be proportionately narrower. [Sidenote: Testing Patterns] It is well to test the skirt and waist patterns by using inexpensive materials, such as calico, gingham, or cheap lining. Cut, baste, fit, and make this as carefully as if it were the best cloth or silk. If the skirt and waist are satisfactory, the pattern will do duty for several seasons. The plain waist pattern is the foundation for _any_ waist and many changes can be made easily with a well-fitting skirt and plain waist pattern as a basis. [Sidenote: Cloth Patterns] As paper patterns soon wear out, after a waist and skirt have been perfectly fitted, it is a good plan to cut an exact pattern of cambric, both skirt and waist, tracing seams and notching the parts. This will enable the home dressmaker to cut and make all ordinary dresses with little trouble and with but one trying on. It is always well to try on once, as materials differ in texture and a slight change may be necessary. [Illustration: PLACING PATTERNS At the left, on plain or symmetrical designs; at the right, on figured or napped goods. _a_--Half of front gore; _b_--Second gore; _c_--Third gore; _d_--Back gore; _e_--Front waist; _f_--Under arm piece; _g_--Side back; _h_--Back; _i_--Outside sleeve; _j_--Under sleeve; _c' d'_--Piecing of gores _c, d_.] [Sidenote: Placing Patterns] If the material is plain, has no nap, or if the design is perfectly symmetrical, the gores may be alternated, the top of one gore coming opposite the bottom of the next. The half pattern of the front gore is always laid on a _lengthwise fold_ of the goods. If the goods is wide, the other gores may be cut double with the cloth folded lengthwise. With narrow goods, the cloth may be folded end to end after the middle gore has been cut out, and the other gores cut double. Care should be taken that the line of holes in the middle of the gores runs exactly in a line with the warp of the material, i. e., parallel to the selvage. If the goods has a figure, the design should run upwards. Any nap should run downward, except with velvet or velveteen, in which it should run upwards. With such goods, the gores if cut double must be placed on a lengthwise fold, with the lengths running the same way. If the goods is narrow, the gores may have to be cut single, reversing the pattern (turning it over) so that both pieces may not be for the same side. [Sidenote: Pinning Patterns] Pin the middle of the pattern to the goods and smooth towards each end, pinning securely at top and bottom. Avoid too many pins and pin carefully, otherwise the pattern will be displaced. [Sidenote: Cutting Out] After the pattern is securely pinned, cut out the gores, using long, sharp shears. Care should be taken not to lift the material from the table, not to have jagged, uneven edges, as both time and material will be wasted in straightening them. Open the shears as wide as possible, taking a long sweep of the material, and do not allow the points of the shears to come together. Mark all notches with basting thread, tailor's chalk, or notch the goods if it does not ravel. The back gores should be cut in the same way. They are usually wider than the front gores and may require piecing, which should be done along the warp threads. Now remove the pattern, pin carefully all pieces together and fold as little as possible. The trinity--_pin_, _baste_, _press_--should be written in large letters in every sewing room, for much of the beauty of the gown depends upon these three. [Sidenote: Joining the Skirt] To join the skirt, pin the side gores to the front gores, beginning at the top, with pins running across the seams, then begin at the top of the skirt and baste downward, allowing all unevenness to come out at the bottom. Baste straight and evenly, taking one stitch at a time. Several stitches should never be taken at once on thick or piled goods, as the side next to the sewer is apt to be fuller in that case. When all seams are basted, try on the skirt and make all changes necessary before stitching. Both the outside skirt and any under or "drop" skirt should be fitted as carefully as a waist. [Sidenote: Lined Skirt] If the skirt is to be lined the lining should be made and fitted first, then ripped and the outside carefully basted on the lining, being well stretched over the lining, care being taken to have the warp of the outside and the lining run the same way. This will prevent the lining from drawing the goods. [Sidenote: Stitching Skirts] A stitch of medium length should be used on all seams whether white goods or cloth. If the stitch is too long, the seam will "gap" and will show the thread; if too short, the seam is apt to draw. The line of stitching must be absolutely parallel inside or outside of the basting or the curve will be ruined. Use silk or the best cotton for stitching skirts and be sure that the needle is not too coarse. [Sidenote: Finishing Seams] After stitching, all bastings along the seams should be taken out by cutting the thread in several places. Never pull a basting the length of the skirt. The seams should be opened and pressed according to directions. The seams may be finished with a taffeta binding, overcast, stitched flat or notched, as the case demands. [Sidenote: Stiffening] If stiffening is used at the bottom of a lined skirt it should be fitted to each lining gore separately and securely stitched. A light weight canvas should be stitched to a heavy cloth skirt at the bottom, if several rows of stitching or braid are to finish the bottom of the skirt. [Sidenote: Placket] The placket may be finished before the two back gores are pinned to the front, if preferred. If done before joining the gores the placket can be pressed better and the front is not so liable to be crushed. On the left side of the skirt sew an underlap of sufficient length to extend well below the end of the opening. Face the right side of the opening with a piece of the goods, or tape not too wide, hem or cat-stitch to the skirt, and finish with hooks and eyes, loops, or any fastening that will secure the placket. [Sidenote: Putting on Band] The skirt is now ready for the band, which should be narrow. Always cut parallel with the selvage and the length of the underlap longer than the waist measure, allowing for turning at the ends. The band should never be thick and clumsy and not too tight. Try on the skirt and fit the band carefully, marking the seam with pins, a line of basting, or chalk. Hold the skirt easy on the band and baste with small stitches, then stitch on the machine. If the skirt is too tight around the hips the plaits will fall apart at the back. If the skirt is stretched on the band the seams will not fall in a straight line. After the band is securely stitched and finished with hooks and eyes adjust the length by turning under at the bottom and pinning, after which baste all around and try on again to make sure that the length is correct. [Sidenote: Finishing the Bottom] A gored outside garment should be finished with a true bias or a fitted facing, carefully stitched on. It is possible to finish the bottom of a simple house dress or thin skirt with a hem if the fullness made by turning is disposed of in gathers or fine pleats. A bias facing, however, is always preferable. If of heavy or lined goods the finish should be velveteen or braid the same color as the skirt. These bindings come in different widths and grades. Braids should always be shrunken by wetting and drying thoroughly; one wetting is not enough. Velveteen should be applied loosely, so as not to shrink or draw after it becomes damp on the skirt. [Sidenote: Applying Velveteen Binding] The right side of the velveteen should be carefully basted with small, even stitches to the edge of the facing. It may be hemmed to the facing or machine stitched just inside the basting, which need not be removed. It is then turned, allowing a very narrow portion to show below the edge, and basted with close stitches, pressed, hemmed down to the facing by hand, or cat stitched without turning the edge. Be careful not to let the stitches show on the right side, nor let the binding twist or pucker. The joining of the velveteen should be near the seam in the back. Another method is to cut off the bottom edge of the skirt a quarter of an inch from the turning line; apply the wrong side of the velveteen to the right side of the skirt, baste carefully close to the edge and stitch on the machine through velveteen, cloth, and lining (or facing) just inside the basting which is left in. The bottom of the raw edge is turned up, basted close to the edge allowing the velveteen to show a very little. The upper edge of the velveteen is secured as before by turning and hemming or catstitched without turning. The illustration shows this method of applying the velveteen which is first stitched to the lining and turned with the edge. This makes a firm, rather stiff finish. [Sidenote: Braid] Braid is stitched on to the bottom of a skirt with a narrow edge showing, or it may be applied like the velveteen, with a doubled edge at the bottom. The doubled edge will wear better. [Sidenote: Finish of Wash Skirts] Skirts that are to be washed and therefore which are very likely to shrink must be finished at the bottom with a wide hem--at least six inches--the fullness made by turning being disposed of carefully in pleats or gathers. [Illustration: APPLYING VELVETEEN BINDING] If desired, the bias seam down the back of the skirt may have a narrow woven tape or selvage of thin goods stitched in with the seam. This strengthens the seam and prevents dragging. The skirt when finished should always be longer in front than in the back. All cloth dresses demand every detail of finish to make them complete and able to stand hard usage, but simple house dresses and thin summer dresses do not require such careful finish. SHIRT WAISTS [Sidenote: Trace Seams] In planning a waist the same rules should be observed in placing patterns, etc., as described for skirts, except that the lines and seams should be traced with a tracing wheel or marked carefully. In making a waist of any kind care must be taken to cut all the pieces the proper way of the material. [Sidenote: Baste Lavishly] The difficulty of putting garments together after they have been cut properly is due to undue haste, lack of care in details and insufficient pressing. The apparently simple act of basting is really of primal importance, particularly in the making of a waist. One need never be afraid of basting too much or too carefully. Economize cloth and time in cutting, but use basting lavishly. [Sidenote: Altering Waist Patterns] The waist pattern may be made shorter by laying folds across both back and front. The fold across the back should be two inches above the waist line and across the front two inches below the arm's eye (in the back). Securely pin or baste the folds in the pattern. If the pattern is of nearly the correct size it may be only necessary to make the waist shorter and smaller. The neck and arm's eye will seldom need altering. The sleeves may be shortened in the same way by laying folds in the pattern, above and below the elbow. PLAN FOR MAKING A SHIRT WAIST After the waist is cut, remove and care for the patterns. Make the sleeves, cuffs and collar band first. Make box plait on right or left side as liked by the wearer and hem on the other side or face. Baste shoulders and under-arm seams. Try on the waist, making all changes necessary by enlarging or taking up seams. Pin for neck band and mark for seams. Fit sleeves and mark places for seams. Arrange fullness and place tape at back of waist line. [Sidenote: Making Plain Sleeve] If the pattern is for a plain, one-seam sleeve with the cuff opening at the end of the seam, hem each side of the opening one or two inches from the bottom, gather the bottom between the notches, lay the gathers, baste the right side of the sleeve band or cuff to the wrong side of the sleeve, stitch and _press_, fold in a hem on all edges of the cuff, fold the cuff over on the wrong side of the sleeve, baste, oversew the ends of the cuff, _press_ and stitch the cuff close to all edges. After thus attaching the cuff, baste and stitch the long seam of the sleeve and gather at the top between notches. The cuff is usually cut in the direction of the warp of the goods. The sleeve described is the simplest that can be made. If the sleeve is to open at the back and finished with a tape, with a placket, strap or fancy lap, the seam in the sleeve is stitched first and the cuff afterward adjusted. [Illustration: PLAIN SLEEVE WITH CUFF, SHOWING GENERAL METHODS OF SEWING ON BANDS] The box plait is made if desired and the under arm and shoulder seams basted when the shirt waist is ready to try on. Make any change in the seams necessary. The neck band is put on in the same way as the cuffs, sleeves sewed in, fullness arranged at the back and a tape placed at the waist line. Three hooks or other fastenings should always be placed at the back to attach to corresponding fastenings in the skirt band. The bottom edge of the waist may be finished by overcasting. [Sidenote: Bottom Finish] If it is desired to have the fullness cut away at the waist line in front, determine the length, allowing sufficient for a blouse, gather the waist at the bottom and sew the fullness on to a band. Sometimes this band is carried entirely around the waist. [Sidenote: Fit of Collar] The fit of the collar or neck band is very important in any kind of a waist. Both the front and the back may be cut higher than the pattern, as it is easy to cut off in adjusting and more goods cannot be added. To the unskilled the simplest garment is sufficiently difficult. It is wiser to make two or three perfectly plain garments before attempting to make an elaborate one. After the pattern has been tested, fitted and all necessary changes made, cut a pattern from the fitted waist of cambric or cheap _new_ muslin and mark or trace all seams. (Never use old, worn-out sheets from which to cut a pattern.) After this permanent pattern has been made, do not change a single line. [Sidenote: Tucked Waist] [Sidenote: Full Busted Waist] If a plaited or tucked waist is to be made, all plaiting and tucking should be done first, after which the same order of making is to be followed for a plain waist. No waist should draw or strain across the bust. This is especially important in tucked or pleated waists. To guard against this tendency, a graduated tuck can be pinned on either side of the front, beginning with nothing at the shoulders and widening at the waist line. This is done before the pattern is cut and will allow for especially full bust. The fold should be _on a thread_ of the goods. LINED WAISTS The plain, closely fitted, lined waist, with the curved back and side forms is the most difficult to make and requires the greatest nicety in handling from beginning to finish. [Illustration: TYPICAL BODICE PATTERNS (_a_) Front. (_b_) Under Arm Piece. (_c_) Side of Back. (_d_) Back. (_e_) Collar. (_f_) Outside Sleeve. (_g_) Inside Sleeve.] The pattern for a bodice of this kind should be of such a shape that in each part the woof threads will go as straight around the waist as possible. This makes the warp threads perpendicular and will give almost a perfect bias on the current seams in the back. Do _not_ cut the side forms out of _any_ piece that is big enough, without regard to the warp and woof threads. If this is done, the threads in each will run differently and all ways but the right one. In a well-designed pattern the back forms should be nearly as wide at the arm's eye as they are at the waist line. The swell of bust and shoulders should be accommodated by the back and front forms. When material is to be cut on the bias be careful to have a _true_ bias (the diagonal of a square) around the waist and up the front and back seams. PLAN FOR MAKING FITTED, LINED WAIST. Pin pattern to lining, cut out trace seams. Baste all seams on traced lines. Try on lining. Make changes. Rip lining, baste on outside and cut by fitted lining. Baste seams and try on. Make changes if necessary. Mark the turn for hem down the front, face and mark for fastenings. Stitch and finish seams. Put on featherbone. Put on collar; sew in sleeves. Finish. [Sidenote: Finish Lining First] In making a lined waist, the lining is cut, basted, and fitted before the outside is cut. After fitting, the lining is ripped apart and the outside cut by it. For all firm, heavy materials the lining should be slightly fuller than the outside, that is, the dress goods should be well stretched over the lining, just as in a lined skirt, and basted closely and evenly, the warp and the woof threads of the outside and lining corresponding. In laying the pattern for cutting the lining, just as much attention should be paid to the direction of the threads as in cutting a striped or figured goods. [Sidenote: Marking Seams] All seams should be traced on the lining with the tracing wheel, with a slow backward and forward movement, making the perforations clear and distinct. Soft spongy goods that cannot be traced may be marked with a line of basting, tailor's chalk or by taking stitches with a pin along the line to be marked and twisting them in the goods. This will make holes that can be seen, but the twisting does not harm the goods. Always trace or mark the waist line, as this is the starting point from which to pin or baste. Bodice seams should never be begun at the top or bottom, but at the marks or notches that show the waist line, working towards the top and bottom. After the lining is cut out, the seams should be basted exactly along the traced lines, with seams out, when it is ready to be tried on. [Sidenote: Making Changes in Straight Seams] If the pattern has been cut or drafted by the correct bust measure, the back seams should never be changed. If possible, make all changes required by letting out or taking in on the straight under-arm seams, leaving the curved ones and the darts untouched. [Sidenote: Pinning and Basting] Pins should be used plentifully while the fitting is being done, but they should be replaced with regular basting as soon as they are removed. Do not be afraid of taking up fullness in the lining by darts crosswise at the top of the corset or where the fullness naturally falls in front or back. Such darts should be basted, stitched and pressed flat. If the lining is too short, it may be lengthened by letting out the shoulder seams. [Sidenote: Outside Cut by Lining] After the lining is fitted, it is ripped apart, the outside cut, basted to it and the seams are basted, beginning at the waist line. Never use a long thread in basting and always use short, even stitches, especially where any curved seams are to be stitched on the machine. This rule must be followed invariably if puckering is to be avoided. [Illustration: WAIST LINING BASTED, SEAMS OUT] [Sidenote: Shoulder Seams] The pattern at the shoulder seams should be shorter in front than at the back. In joining this seam, pin the two portions so that the ends of the seam meet exactly at the neck and arm's eye. In basting, stretch the front piece to fit the back, holding it in or puckering it if need be. Pressing will banish the pucker and give an easy seam that will hug the curve of the shoulder, as in a man's coat. [Sidenote: Fitting] When the waist is on the figure, pull it well down to the waist line, pin the front linings together beginning with the neck, then lift the waist a little in front to give fullness and pin to the waist line. Mark for the hem down the front, finish the edge with a well-fitted facing under which is a thin bias strip of canvas interlining for buttons or hooks and eyes. Marks showing the position of fastenings should be made at this time. [Sidenote: Fitting of Neck and Sleeves] The neck and arm's eye should be fitted by making slashes in the curve--never cut around the curve. For the collar or neck band have a true bias of thin canvas or crinoline and draw it around the neck and pin with the ends _out_, towards the worker. (Never lap any edges of waist, belt or collar when fitting.) Mark on the waist where the lower edge of the neck band touches. Draw the sleeve on the arm, pin and mark where it sets right, seeing that the elbow fullness is in the right place and that it does not twist at the hand. As in the lining, all changes necessary in fitting should, if possible, be made in the straight seams, as it is difficult to preserve the proper lines of the curved ones. The shoulder seams should be the last one to be basted. After all faults are remedied, the seams are carefully stitched along the line or basting, the bastings removed, the seams pressed and finished. The last seam to be stitched securely should be the one at the shoulder. By leaving this open, all fullness can be smoothed upwards and any trimming can be let into the seam. [Illustration: BACK OF WAIST, WELL MATCHED] [Sidenote: Boning] Sew in featherbone by cat stitching to the seam, first finishing the ends by button-holing. All seams should be stretched well when sewing on bones of any kind. Curved seams should be notched every one or two inches at the curve and bound or overcast. This allows them to lie flat. [Sidenote: Draped Waist] In a draped waist the lining is made separate and not stitched into any seam of the outside except at the shoulder. In fitting the outside the back is pinned on to the lining firmly, then the front and finally at the underarm seams. The seams are then basted, the waist tried on again, alterations made, if necessary, seams stitched and the bottom finished with the lining, as desired. Three eyes or other fastenings should always be sewed at the seams in the waist line at the back to secure the skirt to the waist, thus preventing it from sinking below the waist line. [Sidenote: Finish of Bottom of Waist] The finish of the lower edge of the waist is often a problem. If the waist is to be worn under the skirt, just how to finish or whether to finish it at all is a question. The first step is to trim the edges evenly. A line of stitching and simple overcast will show less through a close-fitting skirt of light weight material. When binding is used, it should lie perfectly flat, twice stitched and pressed well. If the waist is to be worn outside the skirt, a narrow bias strip of canvas should be basted on the wrong side, the waist turned up over this as directed for sleeve and collar finish. Over this a bias facing of silk may be hemmed or cat-stitched. [Sidenote: Fitting Irregularity of Figure] In spite of careful measuring and all care in cutting, the waist may not fit, owing to some deformity or peculiarity of the figure. Such figures require especially careful fitting and the hollow place should be filled out with wadding. This needs to be done with the greatest care and nicety. [Illustration: MAKING BIAS STRIPS FOR FACINGS] Avoid too frequent fittings. The bias portions of the bodice are liable to stretch out of shape and too much handling of the waist takes away the freshness. This is one reason why it is advisable to make the sleeves and collar first in order that the whole waist may be fitted at once and all alterations made to fit both sides. A perfect figure is the exception rather than the rule and the side that is not developed should be well fitted, whether sleeve or bodice. COAT OR TIGHT FITTING SLEEVES [Sidenote: Altering Patterns] If it is necessary to lengthen the sleeve, say two inches, cut the pattern at right angles to the lines indicated by the dots, above and below the elbow. The slashing should be done exactly at the same distance apart in the upper and under portions of the sleeve in order to retain the proper shape and size of the top and bottom. Separate the parts, allowing one inch above and one inch below the elbow. To shorten the sleeve, lap the slashed part or lay a fold in the pattern instead of slashing. In either case, care should be taken that the fold or lap is of even width all the way across, so that the original shape of the sleeve will not be lost. [Sidenote: Placing of Patterns] Too much care cannot be taken in arranging the pattern of the sleeve according to the thread of the goods. Especially is this the case in the two-piece or coat sleeve. Generally the top part of the outside seam and the lower part of the same side should be placed at the edge or fold of the goods, so that the two run in the same straight line. In all cases, the foundation sleeve or lining should be cut and fitted before the outer portion is adjusted. Ample time should be given to the fitting and basting of the sleeve. The "set" of the sleeve is very often unsatisfactory because the cutting and original basting was done in a careless manner. Remember that greater care is required in sleeve making than in any part of the garment. Each sleeve is complete in itself and one must not deviate from the other in size, arrangement or ornament, or general appearance. They should be cut, basted and fitted alike and if the arms differ in size or length the sleeves must be so adjusted as to conceal the inequality. The sleeves should be made at the same time and before the cuffs, then the cuffs, puffs, or whatever special trimming is to be applied to them should be put on both sleeves at the same time. If the second sleeve is not made or trimmed until after the first is finished, it will be much more difficult to secure exactly the same effect. If it is impossible to complete both sleeves at one time, make the sleeves one day and the cuffs or trimming the next day. In making the coat sleeves the general methods are the same, but each season brings out new styles which the maker will have to understand before proper making and finishing can be acquired. Always master the simple and standard patterns and the minor changes dictated by fashion--new fancies and effects--will not be difficult to acquire after a little experience has been gained. The lining for both sleeves should be fitted and the outside cut by them. [Sidenote: Joining the Parts] After economical cutting, trace the seams carefully, and baste the outside to the lining, basting both uppers before the under sections. Join the under and upper parts by pinning and basting, the outside seam first, beginning in the middle of the sleeve and working toward each end. The outside seams should be begun at the notch at the elbow, working toward each end. Where the sleeve calls for gathering the fullness should be distributed between the notches and the two portions of the sleeve should be secured at this point, before or after basting the upper or lower portions of each sleeve. [Illustration: FINISHING OF SEAMS Notched at Curves and Bound or Overcast.] Stitch the seams just outside the basting, then remove the line of basting along the seam and press. Trim off all rough edges. The inside seam is opened and notched at the bend of the elbow and an inch or two above and below and bound with silk binding ribbon or evenly overcast with twist or mercerized cotton. [Sidenote: Adding Cuffs] If an elaborate cuff or trimming is to be added to the sleeve, whether full or plain, it should be made separately and blind stitched to the faced sleeve. In case the sleeve is gathered the fullness can be put into a narrow band, the exact size of the cuff, the cuff then sewed on the band. [Sidenote: Putting in Sleeves] In putting the sleeve in the armhole, be sure that both seams are at the same point, that both have the same amount of fullness at the top, and that the plaits or gathers are equally distributed from front to back. The sleeve should be held next to the worker and should lie easy from seam to seam at the under arm. Baste with close, even stitches or back stitch with coarse cotton or twist the same color as the waist. Stitch in the sleeves on this line of basting, keeping the armholes curved while the stitching is being done. Trim off edges and finish with binding or close overcasting. The most careful binding is clumsy compared to the overcast finish. Turn the seam toward the shoulder and hem to the lining over the shoulders. This will do away with the stand-up look that sleeves sometimes have. [Sidenote: Finish at Wrist] For the sleeve finished plainly around the wrist, a piece of bias crinoline should be fitted at the hand. To do this, turn the sleeve _right_ side out and slip the crinoline in the sleeve over the left hand and adjust by moving the fingers until the crinoline shapes itself to the sleeve perfectly, then pin and baste at the top and bottom. In this way the crinoline will be neither too short nor too loose and all wrinkling will be prevented. Turn the sleeve inside out and cut off the crinoline one-fourth of an inch from the edge, keeping a perfectly true edge, turn the sleeve over the crinoline, baste the outside part of the sleeve and cat-stitch to the crinoline, then cat-stitch the crinoline to the lining. Remove the lower basting and press. A bias strip of silk sufficiently wide to cover the crinoline is hemmed at the lower edge and to the sleeve lining just above the interlining. Whenever it is possible to do so use the cat-stitch. It is a neat finish, easily and quickly done, takes less time than hemming, besides being less bulky. If the bottom of a coat sleeve is to be left open at the back or slashed, an interfacing of light weight canvas will be necessary. Turn the outside portion of the sleeve over the canvas, care being taken to turn all corners at the slash, and curves, press and stitch, face after the stitching is done. It may be stitched better if the back seam is left open. [Sidenote: Pressing Sleeves] In the coat sleeve both seams are curved and should be pressed on a curved board. A rocking chair inverted, with the rocker covered with soft cloth, makes a good board on which to press the curved seams of a sleeve. COLLARS The shaped, standing collar is worn with waists of all kinds and is always a popular neck finish. In a close-fitting collar made of heavy material an interlining of canvas or crinoline is necessary. The interlining should be cut one-fourth of an inch smaller all around if the collar is to be blind stitched to the waist. If it is to be sewed to the neck, in a seam, the lining should be the same size as the collar at the neck. Baste this interlining to the collar material, cut out the corners of the material, and hem the extended portion to the interlining. The interlining should always be cut bias, whether the outside is bias or straight. Hem the collar lining to the collar. [Sidenote: Putting on Collars] To sew the collar to the neck of the garment, first pin, beginning at the back seam and baste towards the end. The lining may be left free at the lower edge and felled over the neck edge after the collar has been stitched to the garment, or the lining may be stitched in the seam, the seam pressed open and a bias facing of silk or light weight material hemmed on over the seam. The beauty of collars and cuffs depends largely upon the exact turning of corners and finish of ends. These should never be left bulky or clumsy. If preferred, the lining and outside of collar may be seamed and turned. Place the right sides of outside and lining together, the interlining next to the lining, stitch around both ends and top of collar, then turn and press. These rules may be followed in making sailor or any lined collars. Collars made of all over embroidery should be faced with tape on the wrong side before the trimming is applied to cover the edge of ruffle or lace. The plain or shirt waist pattern will do duty for many garments--corset cover, night dress, dressing jacket, etc. The upper part of the waist will answer for yoke pattern of different shapes. SEAMLESS YOKES [Sidenote: Pattern for Yoke] To make a pattern for a seamless yoke baste together the shoulder seams of the fitted waist pattern, place the upper part of the pattern on cambric or stiff paper, with the front of waist on straight edge or fold of paper, trace the shape of the neck yoke any desired depth below the neck line. The lower edge can be cut in any shape, the neck either high or low, round or square. This perfectly fitted yoke pattern can be used for a foundation for lace, velvet, ribbon, net, or any thin material. The circular yoke made of lace and ribbon or bias strips can be made to open in front or back. The strips of inserting and ribbon should be basted on the paper pattern and joined by fancy stitches or over sewed. The parts next the neck will need to be held fuller than the outside curve of the inserting. All yokes to be worn under the gown should be made on a well-fitted lining. Never trust to pinning, basting, or hooking the yoke to the waist. The finish of collar, cuffs, girdle and placket are hallmarks of good dressmaking. Well finished ends and corners, the careful adjustment of fastenings, shields carefully fitted to the arm's eye and caught smoothly to the lining--all these are little things that count for more than money spent in expensive ornament. PRESSING [Sidenote: Pressing Board] The success of the finish of every garment depends upon the pressing, whether the material be heavy or light, cotton or wool. Garments are always pressed on the wrong side, when being made. The iron used should neither be too hot nor too heavy and the work should be done on a perfectly smooth, well-covered board. For pressing black or dark cloth, the cover of the board should be dark and free from lint, while a perfectly clean light cover should be substituted when white or light goods are to be pressed. [Sidenote: Placing the Iron] The whole face of an iron should never be put down on a seam or any part of a waist, but the side or point should be used, care being taken _not_ to stretch a curved seam. A small rolling pin, a broom stick, a chair rocker, or any rounded stick well covered can be used for pressing curved seams or sleeves. This lessens the danger of marking the seams on the right side. These are only makeshifts; a regular half round sleeve bound should be obtained if much work is to be done. In pressing, the iron should never be shoved or pushed, as in ironing. Only heavy materials require great strength. It is possible to press too much as well as too little. Whatever the material, pressing is work that requires to be done carefully and slowly. Allow the iron to touch only the center of the seam, the edges of the seam will not then be outlined upon the goods. Piled goods require infinite care. Uncut velvet, crape, etc., should _never_ be pressed with the iron flat on the seam. The seam should be opened carefully and over the rounded surface of the board, covered with very soft cotton flannel into which the pile can sink without being flattened. Run the iron with the pile, or the iron may be placed on the side or flat end and the seams drawn slowly along the edge of the iron the same way the pile runs--only the edge of the iron touching the edge of the seam. Corded seams should be pressed in the same way to avoid flattening the cord. [Sidenote: Wet Pressing] Very heavy cloths and chinchilla should have a small stream of water carried along the seam, followed by the iron; or the seam may be dampened by a soft cloth--very wet. This is the "wet pressing" used by tailors, which is adapted to the requirements of materials used by them, such as serge, tweeds, etc. Pressing on the right side under a damp cloth is apt to give marks if the cloth gets too dry or if the iron is too hot, but is necessary on finished wool garments. Silk scorches easily and should be pressed very carefully with a cool iron, light in weight. Some light colors fade or change in pressing. Try a piece of the goods before pressing the garment. If the color does not come back when cold or when exposed to the light, do not use a hot iron on the garment. CONSTRUCTION AND ORNAMENT FOR DRESS [Sidenote: Principles of Ornament] Many of the principles governing architecture and art apply equally as well to art in dress. Both in architecture and dress, construction should be decorated--decoration should never be purposely constructed. It is by the ornament of a building that one can judge more truly of the creative power which the artist has brought to bear upon his work. The general proportion may be good, the mouldings accurate, but the instant ornament is attempted, the architect or the dressmaker reveals how much of an artist he is. To put ornament in the right place--where it serves a purpose--is indeed difficult; to render that ornament at the same time an added beauty and an expression of the desired unity is far more difficult. [Sidenote: Purpose of Ornament] All decoration should be planned to enrich--not to assert. All jewelry or ornament should form a note in the general harmony of color--a decorative touch to add beauty and to be subordinated to the object decorated. It should serve the purpose of seeming to strengthen the whole or to protect the parts receiving most wear. Ornament is everywhere attempted. We see ornament at every turn--good and bad alike--in our homes, on clothes, linen, and kitchen utensils. Carlyle tells us that "The first want of barbarous man is decoration." We have no record of when this need was felt first. Primitive man after supplying his actual needs, seemed to develop a longing for the beautiful, so he ornamented his own body, scratched rude patterns on his tools and weapons and gradually developed the artistic sense. This love of ornament dates back to the beginnings of the human race and there are no records of a race or a period devoid of it. [Sidenote: Errors in Ornamentation] We see gowns totally lacking in good results because too much has been attempted. The wearer has not considered the effect as a whole, but has gratified her liking for a multiplicity of ornaments and color which, perhaps would be good in themselves, if applied separately, but which becomes an incongruous mixture when brought together on one garment. Garments which seem to have required great effort in the making and which appear complex in construction should be avoided, for the effect is not pleasing. The gown should set off the wearer, not the wearer the gown. To avoid committing errors against good taste it is essential first to consider the use of any garment and see if it answers the purpose for which it was designed. If any part appears meaningless, this is a sure indication that it is wanting in grace and beauty. The ornament should harmonize with the materials, use, and construction of the object to which it is applied. The color must be massed with effect and detailed with care. [Sidenote: Embroidery] There can be no ornamentation equal to that which is worked into the material, such as embroidery. The design should be appropriate in form and color and always conventional. Flowers are used most frequently for embroidery and passementerie and the simple, single flowers are the most effective, such as the daisy, the wild rose, and the flowers of the lily family. These simple flowers are the best because they radiate from a central point, have strong forms and decided proportions, can be most fully expressed in a few stitches requiring the fewest shades of color, and are admirably adapted for amateur workers. [Sidenote: Flowers as Ornament] Old Indian stuffs, jewelry, and enamels are rich in suggestions of conventionalized flowers. The simple, single flowers are repeated constantly, the daisy appearing to be the favorite in these beautiful ornaments. The most beautiful of all conventional flower work, jewel studded, is found in samples of work of the fifteenth century. They simply suggest the forms of nature. The repetition of the same flower in all its aspects is more pleasing and less tiresome to the eye than a variety of flowers or figures. [Sidenote: Geometrical Designs] We find upon analysis that the simple forms are the basis of all decorative art work. Geometrical designs and arabesques are the most difficult, requiring the most exacting and careful work. Narrow bands, braided, outlined, or chain-stitched in simple designs are effective, easily done, and wear well. Braids and any of these stitches may be combined, making durable and effective trimming for sleeves and neck. These simple designs are also appropriate for children's frocks. The French knots are ornamental and durable. All embroidery and passementerie should be rich, close, and continuous. It should not be cut up into pieces and sewed on where it does not serve, or appear to serve, a purpose. [Illustration: PASSEMENTERIE OF GOOD DESIGN] [Illustration: POOR DESIGN, WEAK CONNECTION] [Sidenote: Passementerie] There is very little passementerie that is at all suitable for forming edges, as it is not sufficiently substantial, but when it can be found firm and of the right shade it is one of the most beautiful ornaments to edge neck and sleeves. It may be allowed to extend beyond the dress material, so that the flesh tints may show through the design, thus gradually softening the outline. Often a narrow passementerie can be found with one strong edge and a good border can be made by joining the two. This cannot be done where the pattern is united by a band running through the center of the ornament. [Illustration: JOINING NARROW PASSEMENTERIE TO FORM A BORDER] [Sidenote: Bands] A band of velvet or cloth embroidered in outline stitch and French knots of same shade as the garment is a satisfactory edge. Except for yokes, the knots should always be held together with the outline edge. The rich silk braids and passementeries are made of silk wound or woven over cotton and should be used only on dresses which are not intended for hard wear. Such trimmings are, of course, inappropriate on serges and homespuns and soon become shabby if given much rough service. [Sidenote: Use of Laces] Laces, like all trimmings, have defined limits within which they should be used, though they are often worn indiscriminately. Machine made laces, often good in make and design, are now very common, but the best machine-made laces are not cheap in price. [Sidenote: Design of Lace] Handsome lace should be applied rather plainly, as the pattern is often lost in the gathers. Fine laces are out of harmony with heavy or coarse materials. When lace is desired for flounces that with running patterns which neither advance nor retreat, except in the folds which may be made, will be found most pleasing. Distinct objects, such as baskets, crowns, vases, etc., which suggest weight, are unsuitable patterns for so light a fabric as lace. [Sidenote: Placing of Decorations] Attention to details is essential in the placing of these decorations, as in the selection or making of them. The worker should take into consideration the shape and size of the bands or pieces of trimming and should note carefully the chief characteristics of the design and above all the junction of leaves, flowers, arabesques, especially in the finishing of the corners of collars and cuffs. [Sidenote: Simplicity and Harmony] Those at all skillful with the use of the needle can attain the most beautiful and artistic results if right laws in color and design are adhered to, even by the use of the simplest stitches, for the beauty of dress lies not so much in the richness and variety of material used as upon simplicity and harmony--a fact too often disregarded. [Sidenote: The Bow] Perhaps no ornament is more abused than the bow. In order not to appear intrusive, ribbons require the most delicate handling. The only excuse for a ribbon as an ornament is when it makes a pretense of tying. When used as a sash where folds or gathers are confined, the tone of the ribbon should, in general, vary scarcely from that of the dress. [Sidenote: Fitness of Place] Whatever the ornament used, whether embroidered band, a ribbon, a cord that laces, a diamond pin, or a jeweled buckle, though it may possess great intrinsic value and beauty, it cannot be considered of real worth as an ornament unless it fulfills the most important condition--fitness of place. Although the art of dress admits of innumerable variations, like all other arts it is subject to the three rules of beauty--order, proportion and harmony. Ornaments are appropriate on the hems or edges of garments where it serves the purpose of strengthening and protecting the parts most worn, and not simply where fancy or fashion dictates. [Sidenote: Natural Centers] The natural fastenings and fold centers should be along the axis or center of the body. Any jewelry, buckle, brooch, or ornament used to fasten, secure, or strengthen these centers or to hold bands of embroidery, collar, or folds together should be sufficiently strong to serve the purpose. There must be a reason for position and the purpose of its use must be apparent to satisfy the eye. The eye is unconsciously and irresistibly drawn to these natural centers and demands some object there on which to rest--some substance from which the fold emanate--some reason for their detention. If this ornament at the throat or waist fastening collar or holding folds by a girdle or clasp is omitted, the eye is disappointed. This does not mean that the ornament, jewel, passementerie, or embroidery should always be placed in the axis or central line of the figure--this may be carried too far. Slight irregularities often give an effect to hat or gown that is charming. [Illustration: PASSEMENTERIE COVERING FACING] [Sidenote: Trimming] Remember that trimming is not intended to cover up, but to beautify and strengthen. When, for economy's sake, it is used to cover worn places or other defects, it must be selected and applied with great care or it will loudly proclaim its mission. [Sidenote: Unity in Dress] Trimming should mean something--whether jewelry or passementerie. Bands that bind nothing, straps, bows, buckles, or pins that confine nothing offend the taste. A girdle should seem, even if it does not, to belt in fullness; it has no use on a close-fitting, plain waist. No draperies should be invisibly held; supply some apparent means of confining the gathers. To preserve the lines of the figure there should be unity in the dress. A tight-fitting skirt below a gathered waist or a full, gathered skirt below a plain waist gives the appearance of two portions of the body instead of the oneness desired. The figure should never be cut across, either above or below the waist-line with contrasting colors, different shades of the same color, or bands of different texture. Below the waist-line the figure should suggest the elements of strength and these horizontal bands cut the lines of the figure at an angle of opposition, destroying the rhythm and grace of the lines. Much experience is required in placing horizontal lines of ornament on a skirt effectively. In general, rows of tucks or ornament should diminish in width from the bottom towards the top. The plain spaces should be greater than those ornamented. When ornament gives absolute evenness of space division in skirt or waist the effect is apt to be monotonous and unsatisfactory. The natural places of support for garments are the neck, shoulders and waist. Ornamentation which emanates from these centers or when used for borders, if appropriate in design, is usually successful. ORNAMENT OF TEXTILES In addition to ornament added to garment, the ornament in the textile itself must be considered. [Sidenote: Appropriate Designs] Textiles may be beautiful in weave, but spoiled by the design. Quite as important as intrinsic beauty is appropriateness of pattern. How often do we see woven on our curtains, carpets, and garment materials fans, bunches of roses tied with ribbons--bows with long, fluttering ends--landscapes, snow scenes, etc. Nothing is beautiful out of its place. A fan suggests coolness and grace of motion, but woven in our textiles it gives the same impression as a butterfly mounted on a pin--something perverted, imprisoned, or robbed of its natural use. Nothing is or ever can be beautiful without use--without harmony. Decorations on textiles are not to tell stories. There is a difference between landscape painting and using landscapes as a motive for decorating textiles or pottery. In one case the aim is to annihilate surface by producing the impression of distance; in the other, the object is to glorify the surface only. [Sidenote: Advantage of Plain Material] For the woman of limited income it is wiser to select plain material of good texture and weave. Such material is never conspicuous, can be made over, and is always restful and may be interesting. Any good textile must impress itself upon the mind by its suggestiveness and beauty of color. There is a difference between what may be called artistic and decorative embellishment of textiles. Each has its place in the world of beauty, but one is the poetry, the other the prose of the art. [Sidenote: Stripes] There is a dignity and restfulness in plain material which is never obtained by varied patterns. When a stripe is used to vary the material, the style of the textile is changed, elongated if the stripe is vertical, and widening if it is horizontal. If the main stripe is cut at right angles with a second stripe, the textile appears more complicated and repose is lost. The same is true of checks, but no pattern is more distracting than large plaids, especially when used for waists, because the regularity of the design renders very conspicuous any inequalities in the shoulders or bust, and the great variety of colors detracts from the dignity of the dress. With small checks and narrow, self-colored stripes the effect is different, causing the texture to appear only shaded and not destroying the unity. [Sidenote: Conventionalized Designs] On garment fabrics the ornamentation should be flat, without shadow or relief. The pattern must enhance and not mar the figure. If flowers, foliage, or other natural objects are used for the designs, they should be conventionalized--not direct copies of nature. A figured textile requires more careful planning than plain material. It may be beautiful when used properly, but it will appear hideous if distorted in the making. A conventional fleur-de-lis pattern, or a long dash which appears and disappears when used in long, graceful folds, adds to the apparent height. These same figures wrongly used spread out awkwardly or become distorted. [Sidenote: Size of Design] The size of the design should be regulated by the material--small patterns being used for close, thick fabrics and larger designs, with more delicate colors, for thin material of open texture. Thick, heavy fabrics require rich, warm colors and the pattern likewise should be rich and decorative. Velvets, velveteens, and heavy cloths for dresses are beautiful in themselves and should not be marred by patterns or trimmings. Spirals or curved lines running crosswise on textiles distort the natural curves of the figure by making seeming undulations where none should be and accentuating the prominence of hips and bust. Such patterns should not be used in folds. COLOR [Sidenote: Texture and Color] Much is to be considered in choosing colors and it is folly to suggest a particular shade for a person without taking into account texture of the textile. Though the color may be good, the weave may destroy what might otherwise have been a success. Not only must color in itself be studied, but quality of color in textiles as well. A shade of red, for example, in dull silk or lusterless material may be most unbecoming for a woman of a certain type, while it may be worn successfully if made in rich velvet or glossy silk. Some women maintain that they cannot wear green, but nearly all can dress becomingly in this color if the shade and texture is selected carefully. The same may be said of other colors for the many variations should be taken into consideration. The average woman in selecting materials for gowns or house furnishings is apt to be influenced too much by details, as she would judge the merits of a fine piece of needlework, hence the value of good, broad color schemes fails to appeal to her. The chenille curtain, perhaps, suits her because it is full of complex decoration. [Sidenote: Harmony Not Contrast] After having determined the prevailing color of a costume, the details should be in _harmony_, rather than in _contrast_ with it. Different tones of one color are more satisfactory than striking contrasts, and even strong patches of light and shade of the same color should be avoided, as well as patches of crude and vivid color. The pleasing contrasts found in nature cease to be happy when attempted in textiles. Use few colors, avoid bright shades except in small quantities. All bright colors should be placed near the face, rather than on or near the bottom of skirts or the edge of sleeves. Avoid strong contrasts; the brighter the color and the greater the contrast with other colors, the louder and cruder will be the effect. "No color harmony is of a high order unless it involve indescribable tints." CHILDREN'S CLOTHES [Sidenote: Infants' Clothing] Plainness, purity, softness of texture rather than elaborate ornament should be the main consideration for infants' clothes. The finest and softest of French and Scotch flannels, French linen, dimity, nainsook, and India silk are always dainty and they should be made up very simply with little trimming, but that of the finest. Hems and seams should be small and neatly done with, perhaps, the daintiest beading inset by hand and feather stitched. Hemstitching is always beautiful, but makes a weak spot which is apt to give out in the constant laundering necessary for children's clothes. The skirt and shirt made in one piece, with sleeves to slip into the little outside garment, both to open down the back so that all may be slipped on at the same time without worry to either nurse or baby, will be found a great convenience. [Sidenote: Stockinet Undergarments] Stockinet or webbing, all wool, partly wool, or all cotton, is preferred by many to the plain cloth. The cotton is non-shrinkable, easily made, and finished. This garment fabric has reached such a high degree of perfection that for infants and children of larger growth nothing better can be desired for shirts, skirts, drawers, and tights. It may be had in either light or heavy weight, is easily laundered and elastic, having all the qualities desired in undergarments. Garments made of this material in the manner described give perfect freedom for all organs, besides evenness of covering for the body and lightness of weight--all important considerations in infants' and children's clothing. There should be the same simplicity in construction and material in the garments of children of larger growth. The design should be smaller, more realistic and the color brighter than for grown people. [Sidenote: Children's Dresses] For children's dresses, the pretty ginghams in small checks, chambray, dimity, serge, flannels, cashmere are appropriate and serviceable. In making up these simple materials nothing better can be suggested than the plain, straight waist, fitting easily, to which a full skirt is fastened. The sleeves may be of any fashion to add variety. Such a frock is simple and dignified and has a certain archaic beauty and quaintness that the huge, ugly collars and like ornament can never give. With the plain body the grace of the childish form is not lost. The body may be short or long, with the trimming at the bottom or edge of the skirt. The gathers fall in long lines or folds, no element of opposition destroying the rhythm and grace of the figure contour, when the trimming is placed at the bottom of the frock instead of several bands dividing the skirt. The waist should always be wider in front than in the back. The discomfort and injury caused by ill fitting garments, graded according to age instead of according to size, thus restricting the expansion of the chest and the play of the lungs, cannot be estimated. With the proper kind of frock a child can indulge in any game without becoming in the least disordered. Dresses for little girls may have drawers made of the same material, thus permitting them the same freedom as the boys. The life of the child is play. Unfortunate is the child whose clothing is too good to play in. Of course there should be frocks for gala occasions. Children are sensitive to color and receive much innocent enjoyment from being prettily dressed. A child may be made unhappy and timid by ugly clothes, but plainness need not mean ugliness. There are many artistic and simple patterns now being put on the market and many of the ready-made frocks found in the best shops are satisfactory. CARE OF CLOTHING Ruskin says, "Clothes carefully cared for and rightly worn, show a balance of mind and self respect." [Sidenote: Little Attentions] The freshness of gown or wrap may be preserved by the little attentions bestowed upon it each time it is worn, which take but a few minutes and mean so much in all departments of dress. By carefully brushing and shaking into folds, removing all spots, hanging right side out, picking and pulling straight flowers, bows, and ribbons as soon as removed, adding buttons and taking up dropped stitches when needed,--all these little attentions if given promptly will keep a wardrobe fresh and in good order. New braid on the bottom of skirts, sponging and pressing, little alterations and addition of new trimming to collar and cuffs, will help to preserve the original freshness of the gown and cause the wearer to appear well dressed. Waists should be turned wrong side out when removed and allowed to air near a window. Shields should be cleansed with alcohol and water. Ribbons should be rolled up immediately when taken off and if treated in this way will last much longer and look much daintier. Clothing if moist and dusty and tossed into a dark corner of a closet or trunk can never appear fresh again, and will betray the character of the wearer. It is not the wearing of clothes which tells so sadly upon them, but the manner in which they are cared for. A few garments nicely made, well fitted and properly cared for are far preferable to twice the number of inferior quality and make. [Sidenote: Ruffled Skirts] Skirts of thin material having ruffles around the bottom should be hung upside down by loops sewed under the ruffles at the seams. By hanging in the opposite direction from which they fall when worn, ruffles regain their freshness. [Sidenote: Packing Away Clothing] All clothing for the season should be put away in perfect order to be ready for any sudden emergency which may arise. No clothing of any kind should be stored for the season without thorough cleaning and repairing where necessary. Garments that are outgrown should be disposed of, instead of packing them away. Wool garments should be carefully brushed and hung in the sun to remove and destroy any eggs of moths which may be present. They may be hung in tight cotton bags or packed in tight boxes with all openings posted over as a protection against moths. Tailors' boxes which come flat are not expensive and are useful for this. They should be plainly labeled with their contents. [Sidenote: Folding Garments] To fold, lay all articles on the bed or table and fold on the seams if possible. Particular attention should be given to sleeves and collars. Coat lapels should be turned to lie flat, collars turned up, and the coat folded directly through the center seam. Skirts and coats with bias seams are not improved by hanging as the bias parts are apt to stretch out of shape. [Sidenote: Remove Pins] No clothing should be put away for the night, even, without first removing all steel pins, as the least dampness may cause rust spots. [Sidenote: Hangers] Clothes forms and hangers are so inexpensive that every gown and coat should have its own. Skirts should be hung exactly on the form and no part of the band should be allowed to sag. If fancy waists are put in drawers or boxes, they should have the sleeves filled with tissue paper and the collars and bows should be pulled straight. CLEANING Large garments require the greatest care in handling and in order to be done successfully, they should be sent to the professional cleaner. [Sidenote: Fruit and Wine Stains] All stains and spots should be removed as soon as possible. Fruit and wine stains may be removed by stretching the fabric over a vessel and pouring boiling water through the cloth from a height of a foot or two. The water _must_ be boiling. [Sidenote: Ink Stains] Ink stains can be taken out of clothing by dipping the cloth in milk, squeezing the blackened milk into one dish and dipping immediately into clear milk until the stain has disappeared. Then finish by washing the cloth in warm water and in soapy water to remove the fat in the milk. [Sidenote: Iron Rust] Iron rust may be removed from linen and cotton by using lemon juice and salt. Wet the spot with the juice of a lemon, cover with salt and lay in the sun, repeating the operation until the stain is removed, then rinse out the lemon and salt thoroughly. This of course cannot be used on colored fabrics, as it fades the color. [Sidenote: Grease Spots] Grease is one of the worst foes to garments and the greatest care is needed to remove such spots from delicate fabrics. If not done at once, the dust and grease together often prove ruinous. When the color and fabric will not be injured by it, warm water and soap is the best agent, otherwise absorbents may be used. French chalk or magnesia powdered, placed upon the spot, and allowed to remain for a time will often absorb the grease effectually. If the first application is not effective, brush off, and apply again until the spot disappears. Where water can be used without injuring the cloth, the chalk or magnesia can be made into a paste and spread over the spot. When dry, brush off with a soft brush. In removing fresh grease spots, blotting paper with a warm iron may often be used effectively. If the heat changes the color of the cloth, the iron should be held above the goods. [Sidenote: Blood Stains] Blood stains may be removed by making a paste of starch and applying it to the spot. Several applications may be necessary. [Sidenote: Solvents] [Sidenote: Cleaning Garments] [Sidenote: Soap and Ammonia with Gasoline] Only the best and purest benzine, naphtha, gasoline, and turpentine should be used for cleaning garments. For removing paints from coarse cloth, pure turpentine is useful, while for silks, velvets and woolens, benzine, naphtha and gasoline are to be preferred. The secret of success in the use of any of these cleansing agents lies in immersing the garments in _large quantities_ of the liquid. Not less than a gallon should be used for a waist and two gallons will do the work far more satisfactorily. An effort should be made to remove all the worst spots before immersing the whole garment. Those which have not disappeared should then be marked with white thread, colored thread may leave a mark. It is a good plan to enclose the spot with a line of basting. Soak the garment for some time in the liquid, then soap all spots thoroughly and rub gently between the hands until they disappear. Finally wash and rinse the garment in clear liquid and hang in the open air until all odor has passed away. Soap may be used freely with gasoline with good effect. Some professional cleaners use a little of the strongest ammonia in their gasoline tanks. The goods should be shaken well and all folds pulled out straight with the threads of the goods. Velveteen, corduroy, and like piled fabrics can be cleaned successfully if not too much worn, but no amount of cleaning will restore the pile that is worn off. If allowed to stand until the impurities have settled and the clear liquid poured into clean bottles, it may be used for a number of times. This should always be done in the open air. Chloroform may be used for cleaning the most delicate silks, though this is rather expensive. [Sidenote: Absorbing Pad] Whenever any of these liquids are used to remove spots alone, the spots should be placed upon a soft pad of several thicknesses of old cloth or blotting paper to absorb the surplus liquid and the spot should be rubbed from the outside towards the center. A hole may be cut in very soft cloth or blotting paper and placed around the spot to absorb the solvent around the stain and prevent the dark ring being formed. The cloth should be rubbed lightly and briskly until it is dry. If the fabric is light colored, a sponge or a soft piece of light cloth should be used, while for dark fabrics, the cloth used for rubbing the spot should also be dark and free from lint. The rubbing should be done lightly so as not to wear or injure the texture of the fabric. The blotting paper or cloth underneath should be changed frequently until the spot has entirely disappeared. [Sidenote: Cleaning Velvet] Velvet hats and bonnets, after all trimming is removed, may be cleaned by repeated dippings in benzine or gasoline. The vessel used should be large enough to hold a sufficient quantity of the liquid to completely cover the hat. Of course all dust should be carefully brushed off and all folds ripped and loosened before putting the hat into the liquid. The secret of success lies in having the article entirely free from dust and using a large quantity of the benzine or gasoline. [Sidenote: Before Sending to Cleaners] Before sending out garments to be dyed or cleaned, be sure that they are in good condition. All worn places should be mended carefully and all buttons should be removed. Garments that are ripped should have all cut threads pulled out and be free from dust. Dust silk fabrics with a piece of clean flannel and woolen material with a brush or broom. REPAIRING [Sidenote: Economical Mending] Fabrics are so much cheaper and so much easier to obtain that patching has almost become one of the lost arts. The twentieth century woman feels that her time is too valuable to be spent in mending the old clothes and that she can better afford to buy new. However that may be, no one disputes the utility of mending. Like so many other duties, mending is half done when well begun. A well made garment of good material should not be discarded when slightly worn, for a patch well put in or a neat piece of darning detracts in no way from the value of a garment and may even be a work of art. The children's clothes particularly should be kept in good order, for they are made uncomfortable by wearing garments that are out of repair, to say nothing of the demoralizing effect upon their characters. [Sidenote: Laundering and Repairs] Laundering is the great ally to tears and not only doubles the size of the hole, but pulls the threads apart so that it is impossible to make the mended place neat and smooth, therefore all clothing should be mended before washing. Stockings and woven underwear are much worn by the rubbing on the washboard and thin places going into the washing frequently come out as holes, so that it is true economy of effort and time to "run" or darn the thin places before they are worn through. It requires much less time and the garments last longer. It is a good plan, especially in knees of stockings and knitted underwear, to baste a piece of fine net over a worn or broken place and darn over it. (See Darning.) Thread used for darning should be as near as possible the size of the threads in the garment. Darning cotton, linen, wool, and silk of all shades can be bought, so that the problem of matching is no longer a difficult one. [Sidenote: Boys' Trowsers] In mending the knees of boys' trousers a round patch should never be used. The seams should be ripped and the piece set in then, if the seams are pressed well, the patch will scarcely be noticeable. [Sidenote: Sleeves] When bodices are worn under the arm, rip the seams and set in a new "under arm" piece. A good plan for one whose dresses are apt to wear through quickly is to have the under arm pieces and the adjacent parts of the front made of two thicknesses of the goods; then, as the outside wears through, the edges can be hemmed down or taken into the seam. [Sidenote: Table Cloths] When table cloths begin to wear in the middle fold or along the edge of the table, a few inches cut off one end and one side of the cloth will change the fold and the place where it falls over the table and give it a new lease of life. If the hem is turned down once and cat stitched, it will resemble the selvage more than a twice turned hem. [Sidenote: Lengthening Garments] In repairing or lengthening garments that have become too short, much can be done by adding to the bottom of the skirt and sleeves material of different texture. A cloth or serge skirt may be lengthened by facing with velvet of the same shade, covering the line of sewing with cord, braid, or passementerie of the same shade or black. There should be an underfacing of light-weight crinoline to make the bottom of the skirt firm and to give strength. The same facing and passementerie may be used at neck and sleeves. [Sidenote: Extension Hem and Tucks] Thin gowns of lawn, dimity, etc., can be lengthened with a faced or extension hem, the line of sewing to be covered with feather stitch or any of the fancy stitches of white or colored thread. If the lawn or dimity has a colored figure, the embroidery silk or cotton may match this. Under skirts and drawers may be lengthened in the same way or rows of tucks may be added. [Sidenote: Waist Repairing] In waist repairing, the sewing silk should match the material. Set the patch into the seams when possible and trust to careful pressing. If the material begins to wear near the end of the bones, cut off the bones an inch and take in the dart or seam. If the silk wears off around the hooks and eyes, move them along ever so little. Make a virtue of worn out seams by taking them in and covering them with fancy stitching. If the garment is lined, the outside should be carefully basted to the lining before stitching to take in the seam. It has been said that silk waists are serviceable as long as the upper parts of the sleeves remain good. If garments have not been well cared for from the first and beyond a certain point, "making over" is poor economy. Never attempt cleaning and making over old clothes unless the material is good enough to make it worth while to do the work well. [Sidenote: Mending Baskets] The mending basket is an important adjunct of mending and should be well supplied with darning cotton of all colors and sizes, good English tape, black and white, of different widths, linen tape, bias tape, different kinds and sizes of needles,--sewing, darning, shoe, carpet, and tape needles. [Sidenote: Use of Tape] For repairing bands and facings, where buttons have been torn off by wringer or iron, and for strengthening weak places, tape is invaluable. It saves the time required to turn in the edges of the cloth and is less clumsy and bungling. [Sidenote: Use of Judgment in Mending] The mender should use good judgment as to the amount of work to be applied to each garment. She should substitute the machine needle whenever possible and not put tiny stitches by hand into half worn garments or in unseen places. Ripped tucks and bands can be sewed in a few minutes on the machine. Serviceable darning can be done on the machine. Before putting away freshly laundered clothes it is a good plan to take out the clothes already in the drawers and lay the ones washed last on the bottom, thus all garments will wear alike, each article in its regular turn. BIBLIOGRAPHY Home and School Sewing, Frances Patton, ($.60, postage 6c). School Needlework, Olive C. Hapgood, ($.75, postage 6c). Sewing Course for Schools, Mary Schenck Woolman, ($3.50, postage 20c). Progressive Lessons in Needlework, Catherine F. Johnson, ($.90, postage 8c). Sewing and Garment Drafting, Margaret L. Blair, ($1.25, postage 10c). Manual of Exercises in Hand Sewing, Margaret L. Blair, ($1.25, postage 10c). Dressmaking Up to Date, Butterick Pub. Co., ($.25, postage 8c). Note: The above books may be borrowed, one at a time, by members of the School. Send the postage given with request. They may be purchased if desired. TEST QUESTIONS The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the regular members of the A. S. H. E. answer in writing and send in for the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the lesson. TEXTILES AND CLOTHING PART III READ CAREFULLY. To make this test of greatest value to you, write fully from your personal standpoint and experience. Try as many methods given in the text as your time will allow so that you may ask for explanation if the descriptions are not clear to you. Methods are many; if you do not agree with these given, suggest better ones. 1. (a) What are the requisites for good dressmaking? (b) How does dressmaking differ from white sewing in make, finish, and ornamentation? 2. From your point of view what do you consider a successful garment? 3. Give methods of altering patterns. 4. Give briefly the cutting and making of a wool garment from patterns: (a) waist, (b) sleeve, (c) skirt, (d) collar, including methods of stitching, pressing and finish, stating how patterns should be placed on lining and outside materials. 5. How may pressing be done to give the best results? What garments require little or no pressing, and why? 6. (a) State some of the principles and purposes of ornament. (b) What is your idea of ornament applied to garments? (c) Give some errors in ornamentation not named in text. 7. Cut from magazines illustrations showing your idea of good and faulty ornamentation in dress. Give reason for your opinion. 8. Illustrate in some way, either by picture, drawing, embroidery, braid, or stitching, some design appropriate for ornament work on neck or sleeve. 9. Where should ornament be placed, and why? 10. (a) Give your idea of appropriate design on textiles. (b) The advantage and disadvantage of plain materials. 11. Make a color card of silk, wool, paper or raffia showing colors that contrast. (b) Colors that harmonize. 12. What colors do you find satisfactory for your own wear, and why? 13. What materials are best suited for infants' garments? (b) What can you say in regard to children's clothing? 14. What is your opinion of the care of clothing? (b) What experience have you had in cleaning (a) cotton, (b) wool, (c) linen, (d) silk, (e) velvet? 15. Do you consider it economy to repair garments? Can you suggest better methods than those given in the text? 16. If possible make some garment, shirt waist, skirt, or simple dress while studying this lesson and describe in detail how you went about it, the result, time taken, total cost. Tell why you selected the design, the color, the material. 17. Have you found the ready made garments satisfactory in underwear and dresses? 18. Tell of some of your failures in dressmaking and give the reasons for your lack of success. 19. What methods, new to you, have you tried in connection with this lesson? What questions have you to ask? 20. Can you add any suggestions that would be helpful to others in this work? 21. Wherein have the lessons been of practical value to you? 22. _For Teachers._ Draw up an outline for a course in sewing to combine two considerations: (a) adaptability to the child's interests and capacities, (b) orderly sequence in the technical part. Note: After completing the answers, sign your full name. REFERENCES: ORNAMENT AND DESIGN Bachelder--Principles of Design in America. ($3.00.) Brown--History of Decorative Art. ($1.25.) Carter, Mrs. H. J.--Historic Ornament in Color. (15c. a sheet). Prang. Clifford--Period Decoration. ($3.00.) Crane--Claims of Decorative Art. (Out of print.) Crane--Line and Form. ($2.25.) Daniels--Teaching of Ornament. ($1.50.) Day--Application of Ornament. ($1.25.) Day--Nature in Ornament. ($4.00.) Day--Ornamental Design. (Out of print.) Day--Planning of Ornament. (Out of print.) Day--Decorative Design of all Ages. ($0.40.) Day--Ornament and Its Application. ($3.25.) Day--Ornamental Design, Anatomy of Pattern, Planning of Ornament. ($3.00.) Day--Some Principles of Everyday Art. (Out of print.) Glazier--Manual of Historic Ornament. (New edition in press.) Hulme--Birth and Development of Ornament. (Out of print.) Jones--Grammar of Ornament. ($18.00.) Prang--Art and Ornament in Egypt. ($1.50.) _Note_--The books out of print may be found in some public libraries. REFERENCES: HISTORY OF COSTUME Earle--Costume of Colonial Times. ($1.25.) Earle--Two Centuries of Costume in America, 2 vols. ($2.50 each.) Evans--Chapters on Greek Dress. (Out of print.) Fairholt--Costume of England, 2 vols. ($1.50 each.) Hill--History of English Dress. (Out of print.) McClellan--Historic Dress in America. ($10.00.) Planchet--History in British Costume. ($1.50.) Quegly--What Dress Makes of Us. ($1.25.) Racinet--Costume. ($2.00.) Rhead--Chats on Costume. ($1.50.) Schild--Old English Peasant Costume from Boadicea to Queen Victoria. (Out of print.) SUPPLEMENTARY PROGRAM ARRANGED FOR CLASS STUDY ON TEXTILES AND CLOTHING MEETING I (Study pages 1-59) PRIMITIVE METHODS Endeavor to obtain a Colonial spinning-wheel in working order, and get some one to operate it. If possible, obtain samples of weaving done on a hand loom. Examine a hand-loom if possible. They may be seen at the manufacturers of rag and remade carpets. _References:_ Woman's Share in Primitive Culture, Mason, Chapter III, The Weaver. ($1.75, postage 16c.) Colonial Days in Old New England, by Earle. ($1.25, postage 12c.) TEXTILE FIBRES Collect an exhibit of raw fibres and fibres in process of manufacture. Send to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Botany, Washington, D. C., for small samples; to manufacturers of thread; to friends in manufacturing towns. Test the various fibres by burning. Examine under a microscope with a small hand-glass, if greater power cannot be obtained. Try warm acid--sulphuric, hydrochloric, or oxalic--on the fibres; let the fibres dry. Also try a solution of caustic soda on the fibres. _References:_ The Textile Fibres, by Matthews. ($3.50, postage 16c.) Textile Fibres and Cotton Fibre, pamphlets of the American School of Correspondence. (50c. each, postage 4c. each.) Send for all the Government Bulletins mentioned in the Bibliography, page 104. Note that the _free_ bulletins are obtained simply by addressing the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., but _the sale_ bulletins only by sending coin or money order to the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C. MEETING II (Study pages 59-102) MODERN METHODS Visit a textile mill if possible, after studying the text. Practice home dyeing. Read carefully the directions given by the manufacturers of the dyes. See the booklet "Diamond Dyes," to be obtained at many drug stores, or send for it to Wells Richardson, Burlington, Vermont. _References:_ Text-books of the American School of Correspondence--especially Textile Chemistry and Dyeing. (Parts I, II, III, and IV, postage 4c. each.) The Dyeing of Textile Fabrics, by Hummell. ($1.75, postage 12c.) Bleaching and Calico Printing (containing samples), by Duerr. ($4.00, postage 14c.) WEAVES AND FABRICS Show as many different kinds of weaves as possible. Separate the threads and examine under a hand microscope. Get the local dry-goods or department store to co-operate with you in getting up an exhibit of samples of standard goods--cotton, woolen, worsted, linen, and silk. Label each sample with the width and price. Test some of the samples of wash goods for fastness to washing and light, by washing in warm water and soap (or boiling in the soap and water) and expose to sunlight all day for three or four days. _Keep a part of each sample for comparison._ (Select a composite set of answers to the Test Questions on Part I and send to the School, with report on the supplemental work done and Meetings I and II.) MEETING III (Study pages 107-123) SEWING: PLAIN STITCHES Send to manufacturers for samples showing the process of manufacture of pins, needles, etc. Demonstrate different ways of making the same stitches; discuss best methods. EMBROIDERY Show how all the embroidery stitches are made. Get up an exhibit of all kinds of embroidery, including Oriental, Japanese, old samplers, etc. Have members make Model I, First Series. _References:_ Home and School Sewing, by Patton. ($0.60, postage 6c.) School Needlework, by Hapgood. ($0.75, postage 6c.) Manual of Exercise in Hand Sewing, by Blair. ($1.25, postage 10c.) _Topic:_ Educational Value of Sewing in the Public Schools. Methods. See "A Sewing Course," by Mary S. Woolman, Introduction ($3.50, postage 20c.), and "The Teaching of Domestic Science in the United States of America," by Alice Ravenhill, pages 9-10, 43-46. ($0.75, postage 12c.) MEETING IV (Study pages 123-165) HEMS, SEAMS, FASTENINGS, DARNING, PATCHING Have all members make models II, III, IV, and V. Previously assign members to furnish models or examples of all other hems, seams, fastenings, patches, darns, etc., illustrated or described in the text, and as many more as possible. MACHINE SEWING Get the local sewing machine agent to give a demonstration of the workings of the attachments of the machine. (Select models and answers to Test Questions on Part II and send them to the School, with a report of Meetings III and IV.) MEETING V (Study pages 167-200) DRESSMAKING Get the local dry-goods or department store to lend different kinds of dress forms. Show how patterns are altered to suit the figure. (See text and "Dressmaking Up to Date.") As many as possible cut out and begin making a simple shirt-waist or skirt. Show finished garment at next meeting, giving accurate account of cost and time spent. _References:_ Dressmaking Up to Date, The Butterick Co. ($0.25, postage 8c.) Sewing and Garment Drafting, by Margaret L. Blair. ($1.25, postage 12c.) MEETING VI (Study pages 205-228) CONSTRUCTION AND ORNAMENT IN DRESS; COLOR Collect illustrations showing good and faulty ornamentation. Procure samples of fabrics showing good and faulty ornamentation. Make a color card showing contrast and harmony of color. (See Question 11.) _References_: See list on pages 234 and 235. CHILDREN'S CLOTHING Get up an exhibit of simple and satisfactory clothing for children, including color, material, style and make. Discuss children's clothes in reference to laundering. CARE AND REPAIR OF CLOTHES Show examples of successful repairing. Try some of the methods of cleaning. (See, also _Chemistry of the Household_ pages 73-84.) (Select answers to Test Questions on Part III and send them to the School, with report on Meetings V and VI.) INDEX Adulteration of linen, 87 Alpaca, 90 Altering sleeve patterns, 194 Angora wool, 39 Aniline dyes, 79 Arrow heads, 123 Back stitch, 112 Basting, 108 Bibliography, 103, 229 Bleaching, 78 Bobbin, 19 Boning waist, 192 Bow, the, 208 Burling, 83 Bust form, 168 Button holes, 141 large, 145 making, 144 Buttons, sewing on, 145 Carding, 59 Care of clothing, 219 Cassimere twills, 73, 75 Cat stitch, 116 Catch stitch, 116 Chain stitch, 116 Checks, 213 Children's clothes, 216, 217 Cleaning, 59, 221 Collars, 198 putting on, 199 Color in dress, 214 Colors, mordant, 79 Combing, 60 Conventional designs, 213 Costumes, references, 234 Cotton, 29 boles, 32 fibers, 34 Cotton goods, 85 home of, 30 Nankin, 34 sea island, 30 upland, 30 Cross stitch, 120 Cuffs, 196 Cutting table, 168 Darning, 155 on machine, 158 over net, 157 Decorations, placing, 208 Distaff, 12 Double cloth, 77 Draped waist, 192 Drawing tapes, 140 Dressmaking, 167 Dyeing, 78 home, 80 Dyes, aniline, 79 Dyestuffs, natural, 80 Embroidery, 204 as ornament, 204 eyelet, 122 shadow, 123 stitches, 114 Extension hem, 227 Eyelet embroidery, 122 Eyelets, 149 Fabrics, 85 list of, 96-102 names of, 94 primitive, 27 width of, 93 Facing, bias, 141 skirt, 179 Fastening the thread, 109 Fastenings, 141 Feather stitch, 118 Fibers, 29 cotton, 29 flax, 43 silk, 53 wool, 37 Finishes, 139 Finishing skirt, 179 seams, 196 waist, 192 Finishing, woolens, 83 Fitting, 173, 193 sleeves, 190 waists, 190 Flax, 43 fibers, 47 hackling, 44, 47 Flocks, 83 Folding garments, 220 French hem, 127 knots, 119 seam, 131 Fulling, 83 Fur, 40 Gathering, 111, 138 Gathers, whipped, 127 Gauging, 112 Gigging, 83 Gingham, 86 Grease spots, 122 Hand sewing, 107 Harmony in dress, 215 Harness, the, 70 Heddle, 17 Hemp, 50 Hem stitch, 118 Hems, 123 bias, 124 faced, 124 flannel, 127 French, 127 folding, 123 Hems, rolled, 126 Herringbone stitch, 116 Home dyeing, 80 Hook and eyes, 147 Hydroscopic moisture, 42 Jacquard loom, 70 Joining lace, 160 Jute, 50 Knit goods, 72 Lace, design of, 208 Laces, use of, 207 Laundering, 225 Lengthening garments, 226 Linen, 86 adulteration of, 87 characteristics of, 47 Lining, cutting, 188 Loading silk, 56 Looms, 17 Colonial, 19, 21, 22 development of, 19 diagram of, 23 fly shuttle, 26 four harness, hand, 21 Jacquard, 70 Japanese, 20 modern, 25, 69 Navajo, 18 Swedish hand, 24 Loop stitch, 116 Madder bleach, 78 Machine darning, 158 sewing, 162 Mending, 83, 225 Mitering embroidery, 158 Modern methods, 59 Mohair, 90 Mordant colors, 79 Muslin, 85 Nankin cotton, 34 Natural dyestuffs, 80 Olona, 53 Ornament, 203 embroidery as, 204 fitness of, 209 flowers as, 205 of textiles, 212 Ornamental stitches, 108, 114 Ornamentation, errors in, 204 Outline stitch, 114 Overcasting, 114, 142 Oversewing, 113 Packing clothing, 220 Passementerie, 206 Patching, 149 Patterns, 171 altering, 173 cloth, 174 lengthening, 173 pinning, 176 placing, 176 selection of, 171 testing, 174 use of, 172 Picking, 59 Piled fabrics, 91 Plackets, 135 faced, 137 Plaids, 213 Plain material, 212 Plush, 77 Pressing, 201 board, 168, 201 wet, 202 Primitive methods, 3 Printing, 81 block, 81 machine, 81 warps, 82 Ramie, 50 Raw silk, 56 Reed, 19 Reeling silk, 54 Repairing, 225 Retting flax, 45 Roving, 61 Running stitch, 110 Sateen weave, 79 Satin, 91 stitch, 121 Scouring agents, 41 Sea island cotton, 30 Seams, 128 beaded, 131 felled, 128 flannel, 135 French, 131 lapped, 133 slot, 131 Serges, 88 Seven-gored skirt, 172 Sewing, hand, 107 machine, 162 Sewing machines, 162 care of, 162 types of, 162 use of, 164 Shadow embroidery, 123 Sheep, 39 Shirt waists, cutting, 182 plan for making, 183 Shuttle, 19 Silk, 53 artificial, 58 boiling off, 56 fiber, 53 loading, 56, 90 production, 53 raw, 56 twilled, 91 Silk, wash, 91 Silk worm, 54 Silks, 90 Singeing, 78 Skirt, 172 band, 179 Skirt binding, 180 braid, 180 making, 177 placket, 178 plan of making, 173 stiffening, 178 Sleeve making, 183 patterns, 194 Sleeves, cutting, 194, 195 finish of, 197 pressing, 198 putting in, 197 Slip-stitching, 125 Slot seams, 131 Speck dye, 83 Spindle, 6 whorl, 6 Spinning, 3, 59 primitive, 3 wheel, 12 with spindle, 6 Stains, 221 Stitches, 107 ornamental, 108, 114 plain, 107 Stockinet undergarments, 216 Stripes, 213 Stroking gathers, 111 Table linen, 87 Teazels, 83 Textile arts, origin of, 3 Textiles, 85, 212 design of, 212 list of, 96, 102 ornament of, 212 weaves, 72 Texture, 214 Trimming, 210 Tweeds, 88 Harris, 89 Twills, 74 Cassimere, 73, 75 uneven, 75 Tucked waist, 185 Tucking, 108 Tucks, 128 Unity in dress, 211 Upland cotton, 30 Velvet, 92 weave of, 77 Velveteen, 92 Waists, 185 lined, 186 plan for making, 187 repairing, 227 tucked, 185 Wash silk, 91 Warping, 69 Weave, 72 diagrams, 73 plain, 73 basket, 76 double cloth, 77 rib, 76 sateen, 76 twill, 74 velvet, 77 Weaving, 14, 69 Wet Pressing, 202 Wheel spinning, 12 Whipping stitch, 113 Whorl, spindle, 6 Widths of fabrics, 93 Wool, 37 characteristics of, 37 fiber, 36 quality of, 38 scouring, 40 sorting, 40 value for clothing, 37 Woolens, 88 Worsteds, 88 Yokes, 20 
3646	----	THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT By WINSTON CHURCHILL Volume 1. 1917 CHAPTER I In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to boast, a certain glacier-like process may be observed. The bewildered, the helpless--and there are many--are torn from the parent rock, crushed, rolled smooth, and left stranded in strange places. Thus was Edward Bumpus severed and rolled from the ancestral ledge, from the firm granite of seemingly stable and lasting things, into shifting shale; surrounded by fragments of cliffs from distant lands he had never seen. Thus, at five and fifty, he found himself gate-keeper of the leviathan Chippering Mill in the city of Hampton. That the polyglot, smoky settlement sprawling on both sides of an historic river should be a part of his native New England seemed at times to be a hideous dream; nor could he comprehend what had happened to him, and to the world of order and standards and religious sanctions into which he had been born. His had been a life of relinquishments. For a long time he had clung to the institution he had been taught to believe was the rock of ages, the Congregational Church, finally to abandon it; even that assuming a form fantastic and unreal, as embodied in the edifice three blocks distant from Fillmore Street which he had attended for a brief time, some ten years before, after his arrival in Hampton. The building, indeed, was symbolic of a decadent and bewildered Puritanism in its pathetic attempt to keep abreast with the age, to compromise with anarchy, merely achieving a nondescript medley of rounded, knob-like towers covered with mulberry-stained shingles. And the minister was sensational and dramatic. He looked like an actor, he aroused in Edward Bumpus an inherent prejudice that condemned the stage. Half a block from this tabernacle stood a Roman Catholic Church, prosperous, brazen, serene, flaunting an eternal permanence amidst the chaos which had succeeded permanence! There were, to be sure, other Protestant churches where Edward Bumpus and his wife might have gone. One in particular, which he passed on his way to the mill, with its terraced steeple and classic facade, preserved all the outward semblance of the old Order that once had seemed so enduring and secure. He hesitated to join the decorous and dwindling congregation,--the remains of a social stratum from which he had been pried loose; and--more irony--this street, called Warren, of arching elms and white-gabled houses, was now the abiding place of those prosperous Irish who had moved thither from the tenements and ruled the city. On just such a street in the once thriving New England village of Dolton had Edward been born. In Dolton Bumpus was once a name of names, rooted there since the seventeenth century, and if you had cared to listen he would have told you, in a dialect precise but colloquial, the history of a family that by right of priority and service should have been destined to inherit the land, but whose descendants were preserved to see it delivered to the alien. The God of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards had been tried in the balance and found wanting. Edward could never understand this; or why the Universe, so long static and immutable, had suddenly begun to move. He had always been prudent, but in spite of youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a sectarian college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may prosper in a static world, it is a futile virtue in a dynamic one. Experience even had been powerless to impress this upon him. For more than twenty years after leaving college he had clung to a clerkship in a Dolton mercantile establishment before he felt justified in marrying Hannah, the daughter of Elmer Wench, when the mercantile establishment amalgamated with a rival--and Edward's services were no longer required. During the succession of precarious places with decreasing salaries he had subsequently held a terrified sense of economic pressure had gradually crept over him, presently growing strong enough, after two girls had arrived, to compel the abridgment of the family ....It would be painful to record in detail the cracking-off process, the slipping into shale, the rolling, the ending up in Hampton, where Edward had now for some dozen years been keeper of one of the gates in the frowning brick wall bordering the canal,--a position obtained for him by a compassionate but not too prudent childhood friend who had risen in life and knew the agent of the Chippering Mill, Mr. Claude Ditmar. Thus had virtue failed to hold its own. One might have thought in all these years he had sat within the gates staring at the brick row of the company's boarding houses on the opposite bank of the canal that reflection might have brought a certain degree of enlightenment. It was not so. The fog of Edward's bewilderment never cleared, and the unformed question was ever clamouring for an answer--how had it happened? Job's cry. How had it happened to an honest and virtuous man, the days of whose forebears had been long in the land which the Lord their God had given them? Inherently American, though lacking the saving quality of push that had been the making of men like Ditmar, he never ceased to regard with resentment and distrust the hordes of foreigners trooping between the pillars, though he refrained from expressing these sentiments in public; a bent, broad shouldered, silent man of that unmistakable physiognomy which, in the seventeenth century, almost wholly deserted the old England for the new. The ancestral features were there, the lips--covered by a grizzled moustache moulded for the precise formation that emphasizes such syllables as el, the hooked nose and sallow cheeks, the grizzled brows and grey eyes drawn down at the corners. But for all its ancestral strength of feature, it was a face from which will had been extracted, and lacked the fire and fanaticism, the indomitable hardness it should have proclaimed, and which have been so characteristically embodied in Mr. St. Gaudens's statue of the Puritan. His clothes were slightly shabby, but always neat. Little as one might have guessed it, however, what may be called a certain transmuted enthusiasm was alive in him. He had a hobby almost amounting to an obsession, not uncommon amongst Americans who have slipped downward in the social scale. It was the Bumpus Family in America. He collected documents about his ancestors and relations, he wrote letters with a fine, painful penmanship on a ruled block he bought at Hartshorne's drug store to distant Bumpuses in Kansas and Illinois and Michigan, common descendants of Ebenezer, the original immigrant, of Dolton. Many of these western kinsmen answered: not so the magisterial Bumpus who lived in Boston on the water side of Beacon, whom likewise he had ventured to address,--to the indignation and disgust of his elder daughter, Janet. "Why are you so proud of Ebenezer?" she demanded once, scornfully. "Why? Aren't we descended from him?" "How many generations?" "Seven," said Edward, promptly, emphasizing the last syllable. Janet was quick at figures. She made a mental calculation. "Well, you've got one hundred and twenty-seven other ancestors of Ebenezer's time, haven't you?" Edward was a little surprised. He had never thought of this, but his ardour for Ebenezer remained undampened. Genealogy--his own--had become his religion, and instead of going to church he spent his Sunday mornings poring over papers of various degrees of discolouration, making careful notes on the ruled block. This consciousness of his descent from good American stock that had somehow been deprived of its heritage, while a grievance to him, was also a comfort. It had a compensating side, in spite of the lack of sympathy of his daughters and his wife. Hannah Bumpus took the situation more grimly: she was a logical projection in a new environment of the religious fatalism of ancestors whose God was a God of vengeance. She did not concern herself as to what all this vengeance was about; life was a trap into which all mortals walked sooner or later, and her particular trap had a treadmill,--a round of household duties she kept whirling with an energy that might have made their fortunes if she had been the head of the family. It is bad to be a fatalist unless one has an incontrovertible belief in one's destiny,--which Hannah had not. But she kept the little flat with its worn furniture,--which had known so many journeys--as clean as a merchant ship of old Salem, and when it was scoured and dusted to her satisfaction she would sally forth to Bonnaccossi's grocery and provision store on the corner to do her bargaining in competition with the Italian housewives of the neighborhood. She was wont, indeed, to pause outside for a moment, her quick eye encompassing the coloured prints of red and yellow jellies cast in rounded moulds, decked with slices of orange, the gaudy boxes of cereals and buckwheat flour, the "Brookfield" eggs in packages. Significant, this modern package system, of an era of flats with little storage space. She took in at a glance the blue lettered placard announcing the current price of butterine, and walked around to the other side of the store, on Holmes Street, where the beef and bacon hung, where the sidewalk stands were filled, in the autumn, with cranberries, apples, cabbages, and spinach. With little outer complaint she had adapted herself to the constantly lowering levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped that in Fillmore Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so. Her unbetrayed regret was for the loss of what she would have called "respectability"; and the giving up, long ago, in the little city which had been their home, of the servant girl had been the first wrench. Until they came to Hampton they had always lived in houses, and her adaptation to a flat had been hard--a flat without a parlour. Hannah Bumpus regarded a parlour as necessary to a respectable family as a wedding ring to a virtuous woman. Janet and Lise would be growing up, there would be young men, and no place to see them save the sidewalks. The fear that haunted her came true, and she never was reconciled. The two girls went to the public schools, and afterwards, inevitably, to work, and it seemed to be a part of her punishment for the sins of her forefathers that she had no more control over them than if they had been boarders; while she looked on helplessly, they did what they pleased; Janet, whom she never understood, was almost as much a source of apprehension as Lise, who became part and parcel of all Hannah deemed reprehensible in this new America which she refused to recognize and acknowledge as her own country. To send them through the public schools had been a struggle. Hannah used to lie awake nights wondering what would happen if Edward became sick. It worried her that they never saved any money: try as she would to cut the expenses down, there was a limit of decency; New England thrift, hitherto justly celebrated, was put to shame by that which the foreigners displayed, and which would have delighted the souls of gentlemen of the Manchester school. Every once in a while there rose up before her fabulous instances of this thrift, of Italians and Jews who, ignorant emigrants, had entered the mills only a few years before they, the Bumpuses, had come to Hampton, and were now independent property owners. Still rankling in Hannah's memory was a day when Lise had returned from school, dark and mutinous, with a tale of such a family. One of the younger children was a classmate. "They live on Jordan Street in a house, and Laura has roller skates. I don't see why I can't." This was one of the occasions on which Hannah had given vent to her indignation. Lise was fourteen. Her open rebellion was less annoying than Janet's silent reproach, but at least she had something to take hold of. "Well, Lise," she said, shifting the saucepan to another part of the stove, "I guess if your father and I had put both you girls in the mills and crowded into one room and cooked in a corner, and lived on onions and macaroni, and put four boarders each in the other rooms, I guess we could have had a house, too. We can start in right now, if you're willing." But Lise had only looked darker. "I don't see why father can't make money--other men do." "Isn't he working as hard as he can to send you to school, and give you a chance?" "I don't want that kind of a chance. There's Sadie Howard at school--she don't have to work. She liked me before she found out where I lived..." There was an element of selfishness in Hannah's mania for keeping busy, for doing all their housework and cooking herself. She could not bear to have her daughters interfere; perhaps she did not want to give herself time to think. Her affection for Edward, such as it was, her loyalty to him, was the logical result of a conviction ingrained in early youth that marriage was an indissoluble bond; a point of views once having a religious sanction, no less powerful now that--all unconsciously--it had deteriorated into a superstition. Hannah, being a fatalist, was not religious. The beliefs of other days, when she had donned her best dress and gone to church on Sundays, had simply lapsed and left--habits. No new beliefs had taken their place.... Even after Janet and Lise had gone to work the household never seemed to gain that margin of safety for which Hannah yearned. Always, when they were on the verge of putting something by, some untoward need or accident seemed to arise on purpose to swallow it up: Edward, for instance, had been forced to buy a new overcoat, the linoleum on the dining-room floor must be renewed, and Lise had had a spell of sickness, losing her position in a flower shop. Afterwards, when she became a saleslady in the Bagatelle, that flamboyant department store in Faber Street, she earned four dollars and a half a week. Two of these were supposed to go into the common fund, but there were clothes to buy; Lise loved finery, and Hannah had not every week the heart to insist. Even when, on an occasional Saturday night the girl somewhat consciously and defiantly flung down the money on the dining-room table she pretended not to notice it. But Janet, who was earning six dollars as a stenographer in the office of the Chippering Mill, regularly gave half of hers. The girls could have made more money as operatives, but strangely enough in the Bumpus family social hopes were not yet extinct. Sharply, rudely, the cold stillness of the winter mornings was broken by agitating waves of sound, penetrating the souls of sleepers. Janet would stir, her mind still lingering on some dream, soon to fade into the inexpressible, in which she had been near to the fulfilment of a heart's desire. Each morning, as the clamour grew louder, there was an interval of bewilderment, of revulsion, until the realization came of mill bells swinging in high cupolas above the river,--one rousing another. She could even distinguish the bells: the deep-toned, penetrating one belonged to the Patuxent Mill, over on the west side, while the Arundel had a high, ominous reverberation like a fire bell. When at last the clangings had ceased she would lie listening to the overtones throbbing in the air, high and low, high and low; lie shrinking, awaiting the second summons that never failed to terrify, the siren of the Chippering Mill,--to her the cry of an insistent, hungry monster demanding its daily food, the symbol of a stern, ugly, and unrelenting necessity. Beside her in the bed she could feel the soft body of her younger sister cuddling up to her in fright. In such rare moments as this her heart melted towards Lise, and she would fling a protecting arm about her. A sense of Lise's need of protection invaded her, a sharp conviction, like a pang, that Lise was destined to wander: Janet was never so conscious of the feeling as in this dark hour, though it came to her at other times, when they were not quarreling. Quarreling seemed to be the normal reaction between them. It was Janet, presently, who would get up, shivering, close the window, and light the gas, revealing the room which the two girls shared together. Against the middle of one wall was the bed, opposite this a travel-dented walnut bureau with a marble top, with an oval mirror into which were stuck numerous magazine portraits of the masculine and feminine talent adorning the American stage, a preponderance of the music hall variety. There were pictures of other artists whom the recondite would have recognized as "movie" stars, amazing yet veridic stories of whose wealth Lise read in the daily press: all possessed limousines--an infallible proof, to Lise, of the measure of artistic greatness. Between one of these movie millionaires and an ex-legitimate lady who now found vaudeville profitable was wedged the likeness of a popular idol whose connection with the footlights would doubtless be contingent upon a triumphant acquittal at the hands of a jury of her countrymen, and whose trial for murder, in Chicago, was chronicled daily in thousands of newspapers and followed by Lise with breathless interest and sympathy. She was wont to stare at this lady while dressing and exclaim:--"Say, I hope they put it all over that district attorney!" To such sentiments, though deeply felt by her sister, Janet remained cold, though she was, as will be seen, capable of enthusiasms. Lise was a truer daughter of her time and country in that she had the national contempt for law, was imbued with the American hero-worship of criminals that caused the bombardment of Cora Wellman's jail with candy, fruit and flowers and impassioned letters. Janet recalled there had been others before Mrs. Wellman, caught within the meshes of the law, who had incited in her sister a similar partisanship. It was Lise who had given the note of ornamentation to the bedroom. Against the cheap faded lilac and gold wall-paper were tacked photo-engravings that had taken the younger sister's fancy: a young man and woman, clad in scanty bathing suits, seated side by side in a careening sail boat,--the work of a popular illustrator whose manly and womanly "types" had become national ideals. There were other drawings, if not all by the same hand, at least by the same school; one, sketched in bold strokes, of a dinner party in a stately neo-classic dining-room, the table laden with flowers and silver, the bare-throated women with jewels. A more critical eye than Lise's, gazing upon this portrayal of the Valhalla of success, might have detected in the young men, immaculate in evening dress, a certain effort to feel at home, to converse naturally, which their square jaws and square shoulders belied. This was no doubt the fault of the artist's models, who had failed to live up to the part. At any rate, the sight of these young gods of leisure, the contemplation of the stolid butler and plush footmen in the background never failed to make Lise's heart beat faster. On the marble of the bureau amidst a litter of toilet articles, and bought by Lise for a quarter at the Bagatelle bargain counter, was an oval photograph frame from which the silver wash had begun to rub off, and the band of purple velvet inside the metal had whitened. The frame always contained the current object of Lise's affections, though the exhibits--as Janet said--were subject to change without notice. The Adonis who now reigned had black hair cut in the prevailing Hampton fashion, very long in front and hanging down over his eyes like a Scottish terrier's; very long behind, too, but ending suddenly, shaved in a careful curve at the neck and around the ears. It had almost the appearance of a Japanese wig. The manly beauty of Mr. Max Wylie was of the lantern-jawed order, and in his photograph he conveyed the astonished and pained air of one who has been suddenly seized by an invisible officer of the law from behind. This effect, one presently perceived, was due to the high, stiff collar, the "Torture Brand," Janet called it, when she and her sister were engaged in one of their frequent controversies about life in general: the obvious retort to this remark, which Lise never failed to make, was that Janet could boast of no beaux at all. It is only fair to add that the photograph scarcely did Mr. Wylie justice. In real life he did not wear the collar, he was free and easy in his manners, sure of his powers of conquest. As Lise observed, he had made a home-run with her at Slattery's Riverside Park. "Sadie Hartmann was sure sore when I tangoed off with him," she would observe reminiscently.... It was Lise's habit to slight her morning toilet, to linger until the last minute in bed, which she left in reluctant haste to stand before the bureau frantically combing out kinks of the brown hair falling over her shoulders before jamming it down across her forehead in the latest mode. Thus occupied, she revealed a certain petulant beauty. Like the majority of shop-girls, she was small, but her figure was good, her skin white; her discontented mouth gave her the touch of piquancy apt to play havoc with the work of the world. In winter breakfast was eaten by the light of a rococo metal lamp set in the centre of the table. This was to save gas. There was usually a rump steak and potatoes, bread and "creamery" butterine, and the inevitable New England doughnuts. At six thirty the whistles screeched again,--a warning note, the signal for Edward's departure; and presently, after a brief respite, the heavy bells once more began their clamour, not to die down until ten minutes of seven, when the last of the stragglers had hurried through the mill gates. The Bumpus flat included the second floor of a small wooden house whose owner had once been evilly inspired to paint it a livid clay-yellow--as though insisting that ugliness were an essential attribute of domesticity. A bay ran up the two stories, and at the left were two narrow doorways, one for each flat. On the right the house was separated from its neighbour by a narrow interval, giving but a precarious light to the two middle rooms, the diningroom and kitchen. The very unattractiveness of such a home, however, had certain compensations for Janet, after the effort of early rising had been surmounted, felt a real relief in leaving it; a relief, too, in leaving Fillmore Street, every feature of which was indelibly fixed in her mind, opposite was the blind brick face of a warehouse, and next to that the converted dwelling house that held the shop of A. Bauer, with the familiar replica of a green ten-cent trading stamp painted above it and the somewhat ironical announcement--when boar frost whitened the pavement--that ice-cold soda was to be had within, as well as cigars and tobacco, fruit and candy. Then came a tenement, under which two enterprising Greeks by the name of Pappas--spelled Papas lower down--conducted a business called "The Gentleman," a tailoring, pressing, and dyeing establishment. Janet could see the brilliantined black heads of the two proprietors bending over their boards, and sometimes they would be lifted to smile at her as she passed. The Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in this drab environment as they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of Hellas, and Janet sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her education in the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful. She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to dwell in exile, unacquainted with what they love. Desire was incandescent within her breast. Desire for what? It would have been some relief to know. She could not, like Lise, find joy and forgetfulness at dance halls, at the "movies," at Slattery's Riverside Park in summer, in "joy rides" with the Max Wylies of Hampton. And beside, the Max Wylies were afraid of her. If at times she wished for wealth, it was because wealth held the magic of emancipation from surroundings against which her soul revolted. Vividly idealized but unconfided was the memory of a seaside village, the scene of one of the brief sojourns of her childhood, where the air was fragrant with the breath of salt marshes, where she recalled, through the vines of a porch, a shining glimpse of the sea at the end of a little street.... Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners' Hall, that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the store of Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes, sheet iron and cooking utensils. Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was happy, too: unlike the Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he throve. He was very proud of the business in which he had invested his savings, but he seemed to have other affairs lying blithely on his mind, affairs of moment to the community, as the frequent presence of the huge policemen, aldermen, and other important looking persons bore witness. He hailed by name Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Syrians, and "French"; he hailed Janet, too, with respectful cheerfulness, taking off his hat. He possessed the rare, warm vitality that is irresistible. A native of Hampton, still in his thirties, his sharp little nose and twinkling blue eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is born and not made; his stiff hair had a twist like the bristles in the cleaning rod of a gun. He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her. And she did not understand herself! By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red from exertion, had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists. She disliked winter, the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but one day she was moved by a quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the delicate tracery against the sky made by the slender branches of the great elms and maples. She halted on the pavement, her eyes raised, heedless of passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the longing that could be so oddly and unexpectedly aroused. Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip of asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous edifices indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity. There were long stretches of "ten foot" buildings, so called on account of the single story, their height deceptively enhanced by the superimposition of huge and gaudy signs, one on top of another, announcing the merits of "Stewart's Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's Oats, the Digestible Breakfast Food," of graphophones and "spring heeled" shoes, tobacco, and naphtha soaps. "No, We don't give Trading Stamps, Our Products are Worth all You Pay." These "ten foot" stores were the repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and millinery, and interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and an occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner. Here, during those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a scaffolding spanning the window of the store, might be seen a perspiring young man in his shirt sleeves chalking up baseball scores for the benefit of a crowd below. Then came the funereal, liver-coloured, long-windowed Hinckley Block (1872), and on the corner a modern, glorified drugstore thrusting forth plate glass bays--two on Faber Street and three on Stanley--filled with cameras and candy, hot water bags, throat sprays, catarrh and kidney cures, calendars, fountain pens, stationery, and handy alcohol lamps. Flanking the sidewalks, symbolizing and completing the heterogeneous and bewildering effect of the street were long rows of heavy hemlock trunks, unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees bearing webs of wires. Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs, trucks rumbled across the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches behind startled pedestrians. Janet was always galvanized into alertness here, Faber Street being no place to dream. By night an endless procession moved up one sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically at the flash-in and flash-out electric, signs that kept the breakfast foods and ales, the safety razors, soaps, and soups incessantly in the minds of a fickle public. Two blocks from Faber Street was the North Canal, with a granite-paved roadway between it and the monotonous row of company boarding houses. Even in bright weather Janet felt a sense of oppression here; on dark, misty mornings the stern, huge battlements of the mills lining the farther bank were menacing indeed, bristling with projections, towers, and chimneys, flanked by heavy walls. Had her experience included Europe, her imagination might have seized the medieval parallel,--the arched bridges flung at intervals across the water, lacking only chains to raise them in case of siege. The place was always ominously suggestive of impending strife. Janet's soul was a sensitive instrument, but she suffered from an inability to find parallels, and thus to translate her impressions intellectually. Her feeling about the mills was that they were at once fortress and prison, and she a slave driven thither day after day by an all-compelling power; as much a slave as those who trooped in through the gates in the winter dawn, and wore down, four times a day, the oak treads of the circular tower stairs. The sound of the looms was like heavy rain hissing on the waters of the canal. The administrative offices of a giant mill such as the Chippering in Hampton are labyrinthine. Janet did not enter by the great gates her father kept, but walked through an open courtyard into a vestibule where, day and night, a watchman stood; she climbed iron-shod stairs, passed the doorway leading to the paymaster's suite, to catch a glimpse, behind the grill, of numerous young men settling down at those mysterious and complicated machines that kept so unerring a record, in dollars and cents, of the human labour of the operatives. There were other suites for the superintendents, for the purchasing agent; and at the end of the corridor, on the south side of the mill, she entered the outer of the two rooms reserved for Mr. Claude Ditmar, the Agent and general-in-chief himself of this vast establishment. In this outer office, behind the rail that ran the length of it, Janet worked; from the window where her typewriter stood was a sheer drop of eighty feet or so to the river, which ran here swiftly through a wide canon whose sides were formed by miles and miles of mills, built on buttressed stone walls to retain the banks. The prison-like buildings on the farther shore were also of colossal size, casting their shadows far out into the waters; while in the distance, up and down the stream, could be seen the delicate web of the Stanley and Warren Street bridges, with trolley cars like toys gliding over them, with insect pedestrians creeping along the footpaths. Mr. Ditmar's immediate staff consisted of Mr. Price, an elderly bachelor of tried efficiency whose peculiar genius lay in computation, of a young Mr. Caldwell who, during the four years since he had left Harvard, had been learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet. Miss Ottway was the agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable woman with immense reserves seemingly inexhaustible. She had a deep, masculine voice, not unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a masculine manner of taking to any job that came to hand. Nerves were things unknown to her: she was granite, Janet tempered steel. Janet was the second stenographer, and performed, besides, any odd tasks that might be assigned. There were, in the various offices of the superintendents, the paymaster and purchasing agent, other young women stenographers whose companionship Janet, had she been differently organized, might have found congenial, but something in her refused to dissolve to their proffered friendship. She had but one friend,--if Eda Rawle, who worked in a bank, and whom she had met at a lunch counter by accident, may be called so. As has been admirably said in another language, one kisses, the other offers a cheek: Janet offered the cheek. All unconsciously she sought a relationship rarely to be found in banks and business offices; would yield herself to none other. The young women stenographers in the Chippering Mill, respectable, industrious girls, were attracted by a certain indefinable quality, but finding they made no progress in their advances, presently desisted they were somewhat afraid of her; as one of them remarked, "You always knew she was there." Miss Lottie Meyers, who worked in the office of Mr. Orcutt, the superintendent across the hall, experienced a brief infatuation that turned to hate. She chewed gum incessantly, Janet found her cheap perfume insupportable; Miss Meyers, for her part, declared that Janet was "queer" and "stuck up," thought herself better than the rest of them. Lottie Meyers was the leader of a group of four or five which gathered in the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to relate, sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical laughter. Janet detested these conversations. And the sex question, subtly suggested if not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be degraded. Her feelings, concealed under an exterior of self-possession, deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes became molten, and she was frightened by a passion that made her tremble--a passion by no means always consciously identified with men, embodying all the fierce unexpressed and unsatisfied desires of her life. These emotions, often suggested by some hint of beauty, as of the sun glinting on the river on a bright blue day, had a sudden way of possessing her, and the longing they induced was pain. Longing for what? For some unimagined existence where beauty dwelt, and light, where the ecstasy induced by these was neither moiled nor degraded; where shame, as now, might not assail her. Why should she feel her body hot with shame, her cheeks afire? At such moments she would turn to the typewriter, her fingers striking the keys with amazing rapidity, with extraordinary accuracy and force,--force vaguely disturbing to Mr. Claude Ditmar as he entered the office one morning and involuntarily paused to watch her. She was unaware of his gaze, but her colour was like a crimson signal that flashed to him and was gone. Why had he never noticed her before? All these months, for more than a year, perhaps,--she had been in his office, and he had not so much as looked at her twice. The unguessed answer was that he had never surprised her in a vivid moment. He had a flair for women, though he had never encountered any possessing the higher values, and it was characteristic of the plane of his mental processes that this one should remind him now of a dark, lithe panther, tensely strung, capable of fierceness. The pain of having her scratch him would be delectable. When he measured her it was to discover that she was not so little, and the shoulder-curve of her uplifted arms, as her fingers played over the keys, seemed to belie that apparent slimness. And had he not been unacquainted with the subtleties of the French mind and language, he might have classed her as a fausse maigre. Her head was small, her hair like a dark, blurred shadow clinging round it. He wanted to examine her hair, to see whether it would not betray, at closer range, an imperceptible wave,--but not daring to linger he went into his office, closed the door, and sat down with a sensation akin to weakness, somewhat appalled by his discovery, considerably amazed at his previous stupidity. He had thought of Janet--when she had entered his mind at all--as unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this demureness as repression. Her qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude Ditmar, had seen them struck with fire. He wondered whether any other man had been as fortunate. Later in the morning, quite casually, he made inquiries of Miss Ottway, who liked Janet and was willing to do her a good turn. "Why, she's a clever girl, Mr. Ditmar, a good stenographer, and conscientious in her work. She's very quick, too. "Yes, I've noticed that," Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have it thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet's aptitude for business. "She keeps to herself and minds her own affairs. You can see she comes of good stock." Miss Ottway herself was proud of her New England blood. "Her father, you know, is the gatekeeper down there. He's been unfortunate." "You don't say--I didn't connect her with him. Fine looking old man. A friend of mine who recommended him told me he'd seen better days ...." CHAPTER II In spite of the surprising discovery in his office of a young woman of such a disquieting, galvanic quality, it must not be supposed that Mr. Claude Ditmar intended to infringe upon a fixed principle. He had principles. For him, as for the patriarchs and householders of Israel, the seventh commandment was only relative, yet hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity, laying down the sound doctrine that women and business would not mix: or, as he put it to his intimates, no sensible man would fool with a girl in his office. Hence it may be implied that Mr. Ditmar's experiences with the opposite sex had been on a property basis. He was one of those busy and successful persons who had never appreciated or acquired the art of quasi-platonic amenities, whose idea of a good time was limited to discreet excursions with cronies, likewise busy and successful persons who, by reason of having married early and unwisely, are strangers to the delights of that higher social intercourse chronicled in novels and the public prints. If one may conveniently overlook the joys of a companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible to have a taste in women as in champagne or cigars. Mr. Ditmar preferred blondes, and he liked them rather stout, a predilection that had led him into matrimony with a lady of this description: a somewhat sticky, candy-eating lady with a mania for card parties, who undoubtedly would have dyed her hair if she had lived. He was not inconsolable, but he had had enough of marriage to learn that it demands a somewhat exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained. He was left a widower with two children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of twelve, both somewhat large for their ages. Amy attended the only private institution for the instruction of her sex of which Hampton could boast; George continued at a public school. The late Mrs. Ditmar for some years before her demise had begun to give evidence of certain restless aspirations to which American ladies of her type and situation seem peculiarly liable, and with a view to their ultimate realization she had inaugurated a Jericho-like campaign. Death had released Ditmar from its increasing pressure. For his wife had possessed that admirable substitute for character, persistence, had been expert in the use of importunity, often an efficient weapon in the hands of the female economically dependent. The daughter of a defunct cashier of the Hampton National Bank, when she had married Ditmar, then one of the superintendents of the Chippering and already a marked man, she had deemed herself fortunate among women, looking forward to a life of ease and idleness and candy in great abundance,--a dream temporarily shattered by the unforeseen discomfort of bringing two children into the world, with an interval of scarcely a year between them. Her parents from an excess of native modesty having failed to enlighten her on this subject, her feelings were those of outraged astonishment, and she was quite determined not to repeat the experience a third time. Knowledge thus belatedly acquired, for a while she abandoned herself to the satisfaction afforded by the ability to take a commanding position in Hampton society, gradually to become aware of the need of a more commodious residence. In a certain kind of intuition she was rich. Her husband had meanwhile become Agent of the Chippering Mill, and she strongly suspected that his prudent reticence on the state of his finances was the best indication of an increasing prosperity. He had indeed made money, been given many opportunities for profitable investments; but the argument for social pre-eminence did not appeal to him: tears and reproaches, recriminations, when frequently applied, succeeded better; like many married men, what he most desired was to be let alone; but in some unaccountable way she had come to suspect that his preference for blondes was of a more liberal nature than at first, in her innocence, she had realized. She was jealous, too, of his cronies, in spite of the fact that these gentlemen, when they met her, treated her with an elaborate politeness; and she accused him with entire justice of being more intimate with them than with her, with whom he was united in holy bonds. The inevitable result of these tactics was the modern mansion in the upper part of Warren Street, known as the "residential" district. Built on a wide lot, with a garage on one side to the rear, with a cement driveway divided into squares, and a wall of democratic height separating its lawn from the sidewalk, the house may for the present be better imagined than described. A pious chronicler of a more orthodox age would doubtless have deemed it a judgment that Cora Ditmar survived but two years to enjoy the glories of the Warren Street house. For a while her husband indulged in a foolish optimism, only to learn that the habit of matrimonial blackmail, once acquired, is not easily shed. Scarcely had he settled down to the belief that by the gratification of her supreme desire he had achieved comparative peace, than he began to suspect her native self-confidence of cherishing visions of a career contemplating nothing less than the eventual abandonment of Hampton itself as a field too limited for her social talents and his business ability and bank account--at which she was pleased to hint. Hampton suited Ditmar, his passion was the Chippering Mill; and he was in process of steeling himself to resist, whatever the costs, this preposterous plan when he was mercifully released by death. Her intention of sending the children away to acquire a culture and finish Hampton did not afford,--George to Silliston Academy, Amy to a fashionable boarding school,--he had not opposed, yet he did not take the idea with sufficient seriousness to carry it out. The children remained at home, more or less--increasingly less--in the charge of an elderly woman who acted as housekeeper. Ditmar had miraculously regained his freedom. And now, when he made trips to New York and Boston, combining business with pleasure, there were no questions asked, no troublesome fictions to be composed. More frequently he was in Boston, where he belonged to a large and comfortable club, not too exacting in regard to membership, and here he met his cronies and sometimes planned excursions with them, automobile trips in summer to the White Mountains or choice little resorts to spend Sundays and holidays, generally taking with them a case of champagne and several bags of golf sticks. He was fond of shooting, and belonged to a duck club on the Cape, where poker and bridge were not tabooed. To his intimates he was known as "Dit." Nor is it surprising that his attitude toward women had become in general one of resentment; matrimony he now regarded as unmitigated folly. At five and forty he was a vital, dominating, dust-coloured man six feet and half an inch in height, weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, and thus a trifle fleshy. When relaxed, and in congenial company, he looked rather boyish, an aspect characteristic of many American business men of to-day. His head was large, he wore his hair short, his features also proclaimed him as belonging to a modern American type in that they were not clear-cut, but rather indefinable; a bristling, short-cropped moustache gave him a certain efficient, military look which, when introduced to strangers as "Colonel," was apt to deceive them into thinking him an army officer. The title he had once received as a member of the staff of the governor of the state, and was a tribute to a gregariousness and political influence rather than to a genius for the art of war. Ex officio, as the agent of the Chippering Mill and a man of substance to boot, he was "in" politics, hail fellow well met with and an individual to be taken into account by politicians from the governor and member of congress down. He was efficient, of course; he had efficient hands and shrewd, efficient eyes, and the military impression was deepened by his manner of dealing with people, his conversation being yea, yea and nay, nay,--save with his cronies and those of the other sex from whom he had something to gain. His clothes always looked new, of pronounced patterns and light colours set aside for him by an obsequious tailor in Boston. If a human being in such an enviable position as that of agent of the Chippering Mill can be regarded as property, it might be said that Mr. Claude Ditmar belonged to the Chipperings of Boston, a family still owning a controlling interest in the company. His loyalty to them and to the mill he so ably conducted was the great loyalty of his life. For Ditmar, a Chippering could do no wrong. It had been the keen eye of Mr. Stephen Chippering that first had marked him, questioned him, recognized his ability, and from the moment of that encounter his advance had been rapid. When old Stephen had been called to his fathers, Ditmar's allegiance was automatically, as it were, transferred to the two sons, George and Worthington, already members of the board of directors. Sometimes Ditmar called on them at their homes, which stood overlooking the waters of the Charles River Basin. The attitude toward him of the Chipperings and their wives was one of an interesting adjustment of feudalism to democracy. They were fond of him, grateful to him, treating him with a frank camaraderie that had in it not the slightest touch of condescension, but Ditmar would have been the first to recognize that there were limits to the intimacy. They did not, for instance--no doubt out of consideration--invite him to their dinner parties or take him to their club, which was not the same as that to which he himself belonged. He felt no animus. Nor would he, surprising though it may seem, have changed places with the Chipperings. At an early age, and quite unconsciously, he had accepted property as the ruling power of the universe, and when family was added thereto the combination was nothing less than divine. There were times, especially during the long winters, when life became almost unbearable for Janet, and she was seized by a desire to run away from Fillmore Street, from the mills, from Hampton itself. Only she did not know where to go, or how to get away. She was convinced of the existence in the world of delightful spots where might be found congenial people with whom it would be a joy to talk. Fillmore Street, certainly, did not contain any such. The office was not so bad. It is true that in the mornings, as she entered West Street, the sight of the dark facade of the fortress-like structure, emblematic of the captivity in which she passed her days, rarely failed to arouse in her sensations of oppression and revolt; but here, at least, she discovered an outlet for her energies; she was often too busy to reflect, and at odd moments she could find a certain solace and companionship in the river, so intent, so purposeful, so beautiful, so undisturbed by the inconcinnity, the clatter and confusion of Hampton as it flowed serenely under the bridges and between the mills toward the sea. Toward the sea! It was when, at night, she went back to Fillmore Street--when she thought of the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in at the door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew leaden. In spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and prided herself on cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with the smell of cooking, and Janet, from the upper hall, had a glimpse of a thin, angular woman with a scrawny neck, with scant grey hair tightly drawn into a knot, in a gingham apron covering an old dress bending over the kitchen stove. And occasionally, despite a resentment that fate should have dealt thus inconsiderately with the family, Janet felt pity welling within her. After supper, when Lise had departed with her best young man, Hannah would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet to help her with the dishes. "You work all day, you have a right to rest." "But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the harder. With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized. Mother and daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet had a secret contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism. She loved her mother, in a way, especially at certain times,--though she often wondered why she was unable to realize more fully the filial affection of tradition; but in moments of softening, such as these, she was filled with rage at the thought of any woman endowed with energy permitting herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such a fate as Hannah's: divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been better--anything but to be cheated out of life. Feeling the fires of rebellion burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and driving necessity she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether it were possible that Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung by inexpressible desires,--desires in which the undiscovered spiritual was so alarmingly compounded with the undiscovered physical. She would have died rather than speak to Hannah of these unfulfilled experiences, and the mere thought of confiding them to any person appalled her. Even if there existed some wonderful, understanding being to whom she might be able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of that kenosis was too troubling to be dwelt upon. She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no Virgil had as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that realm. Her schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating taste for literature; and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public Library opposite the Common it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of books whose authors and titles offered no clue to their contents. Her few choices had not been happy, they had failed to interest and thrill... Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement in the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims. Lise went out into it, became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,--a tendency Hannah found unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism was not wholly proof. Scarce an evening went by without an expression of uneasiness from Hannah. "She didn't happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?" Hannah would query, when she had finished her work and put on her spectacles to read the Banner. "To the movies, I suppose," Janet would reply. Although well aware that her sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add to Hannah's disquietude. And if she had little patience with Lise, she had less with the helpless attitude of her parents. "Well," Hannah would add, "I never can get used to her going out nights the way she does, and with young men and women I don't know anything about. I wasn't brought up that way. But as long as she's got to work for a living I guess there's no help for it." And she would glance at Edward. It was obviously due to his inability adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced to toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him. If he heard, he acquiesced humbly, and in silence: more often than not he was oblivious, buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his papers spread out on the red cloth of the dining-room table, under the lamp. Sometimes in his simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands listeners he would read aloud to them a letter, recently received from a distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus, let us say, who had migrated to California in search of wealth and fame, and who had found neither. In spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude of these western members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to Edward. "He tells me they're going to give women the ballot,--doesn't appear to be much concerned about his own womenfolks going to the polls." "Why shouldn't they, if they want to?" Janet would exclaim, though she had given little thought to the question. Edward would mildly ignore this challenge. "He has a house on what they call Russian Hill, and he can watch the vessels as they come in from Japan," he would continue in his precise voice, emphasizing admirably the last syllables of the words "Russian," "vessels," and "Japan." "Wouldn't you like to see the letter?" To do Hannah justice, although she was quite incapable of sharing his passion, she frequently feigned an interest, took the letter, presently handing it on to Janet who, in deciphering Alpheus's trembling calligraphy, pondered over his manifold woes. Alpheus's son, who had had a good position in a sporting goods establishment on Market Street, was sick and in danger of losing it, the son's wife expecting an addition to the family, the house on Russian Hill mortgaged. Alpheus, a veteran of the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his reminiscences, but the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters of solid worth, and so far had refused to publish them.... Janet, as she read, reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures, of disappointed hopes; she wondered at her father's perennial interest in failures,--provided they were those of his family; and the next evening, as he wrote painfully on his ruled paper, she knew that he in turn was pouring out his soul to Alpheus, recounting, with an emotion by no means unpleasurable, to this sympathetic but remote relative the story of his own failure! If the city of Hampton was emblematic of our modern world in which haphazardness has replaced order, Fillmore Street may be likened to a back eddy of the muddy and troubled waters, in which all sorts of flotsam and jetsam had collected. Or, to find perhaps an even more striking illustration of the process that made Hampton in general and Fillmore Street in particular, one had only to take the trolley to Glendale, the Italian settlement on the road leading to the old New England village of Shrewsbury. Janet sometimes walked there, alone or with her friend Eda Rawle. Disintegration itself--in a paradoxically pathetic attempt at reconstruction--had built Glendale. Human hands, Italian hands. Nor, surprising though it may seem, were these descendants of the people of the Renaissance in the least offended by their handiwork. When the southern European migration had begun and real estate became valuable, one by one the more decorous edifices of the old American order had been torn down and carried piecemeal by sons of Italy to the bare hills of Glendale, there to enter into new combinations representing, to an eye craving harmony, the last word of a chaos, of a mental indigestion, of a colour scheme crying aloud to heaven for retribution. Standing alone and bare amidst its truck gardens, hideous, extreme, though typical of the entire settlement, composed of fragments ripped from once-appropriate settings, is a house with a tiny body painted strawberry-red, with scroll-work shutters a tender green; surmounting the structure and almost equalling it in size is a sky-blue cupola, once the white crown of the Sutter mansion, the pride of old Hampton. The walls of this dwelling were wrested from the sides of Mackey's Tavern, while the shutters for many years adorned the parsonage of the old First Church. Similarly, in Hampton and in Fillmore Street, lived in enforced neighbourliness human fragments once having their places in crystallized communities where existence had been regarded as solved. Here there was but one order,--if such it may be called,--one relationship, direct, or indirect, one necessity claiming them all--the mills. Like the boards forming the walls of the shacks at Glendale, these human planks torn from an earlier social structure were likewise warped, which is to say they were dominated by obsessions. Edward's was the Bumpus family; and Chris Auermann, who lived in the flat below, was convinced that the history of mankind is a deplorable record of havoc caused by women. Perhaps he was right, but the conviction was none the less an obsession. He came from a little village near Wittenburg that has scarcely changed since Luther's time. Like most residents of Hampton who did not work in the mills, he ministered to those who did, or to those who sold merchandise to the workers, cutting their hair in his barber shop on Faber Street. The Bumpuses, save Lise, clinging to a native individualism and pride, preferred isolation to companionship with the other pieces of driftwood by which they were surrounded, and with which the summer season compelled a certain enforced contact. When the heat in the little dining-room grew unbearable, they were driven to take refuge on the front steps shared in common with the household of the barber. It is true that the barber's wife was a mild hausfrau who had little to say, and that their lodgers, two young Germans who worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings at a bowling club; but Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay rum, would arrive promptly at quarter past eight, take off his coat, and thus, as it were stripped for action, would turn upon the defenceless Edward. "Vill you mention one great man--yoost one--who is not greater if the vimmen leave him alone?" he would demand. "Is it Anthony, the conqueror of Egypt and the East? I vill show you Cleopatra. Und Burns, and Napoleon, the greatest man what ever lived--vimmen again. I tell you there is no Elba, no St. Helena if it is not for the vimmen. Und vat vill you say of Goethe?" Poor Edward could think of nothing to say of Goethe. "He is great, I grant you," Chris would admit, "but vat is he if the vimmen leave him alone? Divine yoost that." And he would proceed to cite endless examples of generals and statesmen whose wives or mistresses had been their bane. Futile Edward's attempts to shift the conversation to the subject of his own obsession; the German was by far the more aggressive, he would have none of it. Perhaps if Edward had been willing to concede that the Bumpuses had been brought to their present lowly estate by the sinister agency of the fair sex Chris might conditionally have accepted the theme. Hannah, contemptuously waving a tattered palm leaf fan, was silent; but on one occasion Janet took away the barber's breath by suddenly observing:--"You never seem to think of the women whose lives are ruined by men, Mr. Auermann." It was unheard-of, this invasion of a man's argument by a woman, and by a young woman at that. He glared at her through his spectacles, took them off, wiped them, replaced them, and glared at her again. He did not like Janet; she was capable of what may be called a speaking silence, and he had never been wholly unaware of her disapproval and ridicule. Perhaps he recognized in her, instinctively, the potential qualities of that emerging modern woman who to him was anathema. "It is somethings I don't think about," he said. He was a wizened little man with faience-blue eyes, and sat habitually hunched up with his hands folded across his shins. "Nam fuit ante Helenam"--as Darwin quotes. Toward all the masculine residents of Fillmore Street, save one, the barber's attitude was one of unconcealed scorn for an inability to recognize female perfidy. With Johnny Tiernan alone he refused to enter the lists. When the popular proprietor of the tin shop came sauntering along the sidewalk with nose uptilted, waving genial greetings to the various groups on the steps, Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly change to one of fatuous playfulness. "What's this I hear about giving the girls the vote, Chris?" Johnny would innocently inquire, winking at Janet, invariably running his hand through the wiry red hair that resumed its corkscrew twist as soon as he released it. And Chris would as invariably reply:--"You have the dandruffs--yes? You come to my shop, I give you somethings...." Sometimes the barber, in search of a more aggressive adversary than Edward, would pay visits, when as likely as not another neighbour with profound convictions and a craving for proselytes would swoop down on the defenceless Bumpuses: Joe Shivers, for instance, who lived in one of the tenements above the cleaning and dyeing establishment kept by the Pappas Bros., and known as "The Gentleman." In the daytime Mr. Shivers was a model of acquiescence in a system he would have designated as one of industrial feudalism, his duty being to examine the rolls of cloth as they came from the looms of the Arundel Mill, in case of imperfections handing them over to the women menders: at night, to borrow a vivid expression from Lise, he was "batty in the belfry" on the subject of socialism. Unlike the barber, whom he could not abide, for him the cleavage of the world was between labour and capital instead of man and woman; his philosophy was stern and naturalistic; the universe--the origin of which he did not discuss--just an accidental assemblage of capricious forces over which human intelligence was one day to triumph. Squatting on the lowest step, his face upturned, by the light of the arc sputtering above the street he looked like a yellow frog, his eager eyes directed toward Janet, whom he suspected of intelligence. "If there was a God, a nice, kind, all-powerful God, would he permit what happened in one of the loom-rooms last week? A Polak girl gets her hair caught in the belt pfff!" He had a marvellously realistic gift when it came to horrors: Janet felt her hair coming out by the roots. Although she never went to church, she did not like to think that no God existed. Of this Mr. Shivers was very positive. Edward, too, listened uneasily, hemmed and hawed, making ineffectual attempts to combat Mr. Shivers's socialism with a deeply-rooted native individualism that Shivers declared as defunct as Christianity. "If it is possible for the workingman to rise under a capitalistic system, why do you not rise, then? Why do I not rise? I'm as good as Ditmar, I'm better educated, but we're all slaves. What right has a man to make you and me work for him just because he has capital?" "Why, the right of capital," Edward would reply. Mr. Shivers, with the manner of one dealing with an incurable romanticism and sentimentality, would lift his hands in despair. And in spite of the fact that Janet detested him, he sometimes exercised over her a paradoxical fascination, suggesting as he did unexplored intellectual realms. She despised her father for not being able to crush the little man. Edward would make pathetic attempts to capture the role Shivers had appropriated, to be the practical party himself, to convict Shivers of idealism. Socialism scandalized him, outraged, even more than atheism, something within him he held sacred, and he was greatly annoyed because he was unable adequately to express this feeling. "You can't change human nature, Mr. Shivers," Edward would insist in his precise but ineffectual manner. "We all want property, you would accept a fortune if it was offered to you, and so should I. Americans will never become socialists." "But look at me, wasn't I born in Meriden, Connecticut? Ain't that Yankee enough for you?" Thus Mr. Shivers sought blandly to confound him. A Yankee Shades of the Pilgrim fathers, of seven, generations of Bumpuses! A Yankee who used his hands in that way, a Yankee with a nose like that, a Yankee with a bald swathe down the middle of his crown and bunches of black, moth-eaten hair on either side! But Edward, too polite to descend to personalities, was silent.... In brief, this very politeness of Edward's, which his ancestors would have scorned, this consideration and lack of self-assertion made him the favourite prey of the many "characters" in Fillmore Street whose sanity had been disturbed by pressure from above, in whose systems had lodged the germs of those exotic social doctrines floating so freely in the air of our modern industrial communities .... Chester Glenn remains for a passing mention. A Yankee of Yankees, this, born on a New Hampshire farm, and to the ordinary traveller on the Wigmore branch of the railroad just a good-natured, round-faced, tobacco-chewing brakeman who would take a seat beside ladies of his acquaintance aid make himself agreeable until it was time to rise and bawl out, in the approved manner of his profession, the name of the next station. Fillmore Street knew that the flat visored cap which his corporation compelled him to wear covered a brain into which had penetrated the maggot of the Single Tax. When he encountered Mr. Shivers or Auermann the talk became coruscating.. Eda Rawle, Janet's solitary friend of these days, must also be mentioned, though the friendship was merely an episode in Janet's life. Their first meeting was at Grady's quick-lunch counter in Faber Street, which they both frequented at one time, and the fact that each had ordered a ham sandwich, a cup of coffee, and a confection--new to Grady's--known as a Napoleon had led to conversation. Eda, of course, was the aggressor; she was irresistibly drawn, she would not be repulsed. A stenographer in the Wessex National Bank, she boarded with a Welsh family in Spruce Street; matter-of-fact, plodding, commonplace, resembling--as Janet thought--a horse, possessing, indeed many of the noble qualities of that animal, she might have been thought the last person in the world to discern and appreciate in Janet the hidden elements of a mysterious fire. In appearance Miss Rawle was of a type not infrequent in Anglo-Saxon lands, strikingly blonde, with high malar bones, white eyelashes, and eyes of a metallic blue, cheeks of an amazing elasticity that worked rather painfully as she talked or smiled, drawing back inadequate lips, revealing long, white teeth and vivid gums. It was the craving in her for romance Janet assuaged; Eda's was the love content to pour out, that demands little. She was capable of immolation. Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to give such a meagre return for the wealth of its offering. In other moments, when the world seemed all disorder and chaos,--as Mr. Shivers described it,--or when she felt within her, like demons, those inexpressible longings and desires, leaping and straining, pulling her, almost irresistibly, she knew not whither, Eda shone forth like a light in the darkness, like the beacon of a refuge and a shelter. Eda had faith in her, even when Janet had lost faith in herself: she went to Eda in the same spirit that Marguerite went to church; though she, Janet, more resembled Faust, being--save in these hours of lowered vitality--of the forth-faring kind .... Unable to confess the need that drove her, she arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's arms. Janet was immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the masculine trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one of those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues come as naturally as sun or air. Passion, when sanctified by matrimony, was her ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it, having read about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never having experienced deeply its discomforts. Sanctified or unsanctified, Janet regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently broached the subject she recoiled. Once Eda exclaimed:--"When you do fall in love, Janet, you must tell me all about it, every word!" Janet blushed hotly, and was silent. In Eda's mind such an affair was a kind of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a volcanic eruption to turn the world red. Such was the difference between them. Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra. Stereotyped on Eda's face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was an expression of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that vertical line in her cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of white teeth and red gums. It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom it appeared as the logical reflection of what was passing on the screen; she averted her glance from both, staring into her lap, filled with shame that the relation between the sexes should be thus exposed to public gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded.... There were, however, marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and ships,--once a fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic tongues of orange flame leaping from tree to tree. The movies brought the world to Hampton, the great world into which she longed to fare, brought the world to her! Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets and muezzins from the Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow resembling gilded beets turned upside down; grey houses of parliament by the Thames, the Tower of London, the Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal. Strange lands indeed, and stranger peoples! booted Russians in blouses, naked Equatorial savages tattooed and amazingly adorned, soldiers and sailors, presidents, princes and emperors brought into such startling proximity one could easily imagine one's self exchanging the time of day! Incredible to Janet how the audiences, how even Eda accepted with American complacency what were to her never-ending miracles; the yearning to see more, to know more, became acute, like a pain, but even as she sought to devour these scenes, to drink in every detail, with tantalizing swiftness they were whisked away. They were peepholes in the walls of her prison; and at night she often charmed herself to sleep with remembered visions of wide, empty, treeshaded terraces reserved for kings. But Eda, however complacent her interest in the scenes themselves, was thrilled to the marrow by their effect on Janet, who was her medium. Emerging from the vestibule of the theatre, Janet seemed not to see the slushy street, her eyes shone with a silver light like that of a mountain lake in a stormy sunset. And they walked in silence until Janet would exclaim: "Oh Eda, wouldn't you love to travel!" Thus Eda Rawle was brought in contact with values she herself was powerless to detect, and which did not become values until they had passed through Janet. One "educative" reel they had seen had begun with scenes in a lumber camp high in the mountains of Galicia, where grow forests of the priceless pine that becomes, after years of drying and seasoning, the sounding board of the Stradivarius and the harp. Even then it must respond to a Player. Eda, though failing to apply this poetic parallel, when alone in her little room in the Welsh boarding-house often indulged in an ecstasy of speculation as to that man, hidden in the mists of the future, whose destiny it would be to awaken her friend. Hampton did not contain him,--of this she was sure; and in her efforts to visualize him she had recourse to the movies, seeking him amongst that brilliant company of personages who stood so haughtily or walked so indifferently across the ephemeral brightness of the screen. By virtue of these marvels of the movies: Hampton ugly and sordid Hampton!--actually began for Janet to take on a romantic tinge. Were not the strange peoples of the earth flocking to Hampton? She saw them arriving at the station, straight from Ellis Island, bewildered, ticketed like dumb animals, the women draped in the soft, exotic colours many of them were presently to exchange for the cheap and gaudy apparel of Faber Street. She sought to summon up in her mind the glimpses she had had of the wonderful lands from which they had come, to imagine their lives in that earlier environment. Sometimes she wandered, alone or with Eda, through the various quarters of the city. Each quarter had a flavour of its own, a synthetic flavour belonging neither to the old nor to the new, yet partaking of both: a difference in atmosphere to which Janet was keenly sensitive. In the German quarter, to the north, one felt a sort of ornamental bleakness--if the expression may be permitted: the tenements here were clean and not too crowded, the scroll-work on their superimposed porches, like that decorating the Turnverein and the stem Lutheran Church, was eloquent of a Teutonic inheritance: The Belgians were to the west, beyond the base-ball park and the car barns, their grey houses scattered among new streets beside the scarred and frowning face of Torrey's hill. Almost under the hill itself, which threatened to roll down on it, and facing a bottomless, muddy street, was the quaint little building giving the note of foreign thrift, of socialism and shrewdness, of joie de vivre to the settlement, the Franco-Belgian co-operative store, with its salle de reunion above and a stage for amateur theatricals. Standing in the mud outside, Janet would gaze through the tiny windows in the stucco wall at the baskets prepared for each household laid in neat rows beside the counter; at the old man with the watery blue eyes and lacing of red in his withered cheeks who spoke no English, whose duty it was to distribute the baskets to the women and children as they called. Turning eastward again, one came to Dey Street, in the heart of Hampton, where Hibernian Hall stood alone and grim, sole testimony of the departed Hibernian glories of a district where the present Irish rulers of the city had once lived and gossiped and fought in the days when the mill bells had roused the boarding-house keepers at half past four of a winter morning. Beside the hall was a corner lot, heaped high with hills of ashes and rubbish like the vomitings of some filthy volcano; the unsightliness of which was half concealed by huge signs announcing the merits of chewing gums, tobaccos, and cereals. But why had the departure of the Irish, the coming of the Syrians made Dey Street dark, narrow, mysterious, oriental? changed the very aspect of its architecture? Was it the coffee-houses? One of these, in front of which Janet liked to linger, was set weirdly into an old New England cottage, and had, apparently, fathomless depths. In summer the whole front of it lay open to the street, and here all day long, beside the table where the charcoal squares were set to dry, could be seen saffron-coloured Armenians absorbed in a Turkish game played on a backgammon board, their gentleness and that of the loiterers looking on in strange contrast with their hawk-like profiles and burning eyes. Behind this group, in the half light of the middle interior, could be discerned an American soda-water fountain of a bygone fashion, on its marble counter oddly shaped bottles containing rose and violet syrups; there was a bottle-shaped stove, and on the walls, in gilt frames, pictures evidently dating from the period in American art that flourished when Franklin Pierce was President; and there was an array of marble topped tables extending far back into the shadows. Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard--suggestive of the Arabian Nights, which Janet had never read--from which, occasionally, the fat proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes. When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby. The street swarmed with babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps. And in this teeming, prolific street one could scarcely move without stepping on a fat, almond eyed child, though some, indeed, were wheeled; wheeled in all sorts of queer contrivances by one another, by fathers with ragged black moustaches and eagle noses who, to the despair of mill superintendents, had decided in the morning that three days' wages would since to support their families for the week .... In the midst of the throng might be seen occasionally the stout and comfortable and not too immaculate figure of a shovel bearded Syrian priest, in a frock coat and square-topped "Derby" hat, sailing along serenely, heedless of the children who scattered out of his path. Nearby was the quarter of the Canadian French, scarcely now to be called foreigners, though still somewhat reminiscent of the cramped little towns in the northern wilderness of water and forest. On one corner stood almost invariably a "Pharmacie Francaise"; the signs were in French, and the elders spoke the patois. These, despite the mill pallor, retained in their faces, in their eyes, a suggestion of the outdoor look of their ancestors, the coureurs des bois, but the children spoke English, and the young men, as they played baseball in the street or in the corner lots might be heard shouting out derisively the cry of the section hands so familiar in mill cities, "Doff, you beggars you, doff!" Occasionally the two girls strayed into that wide thoroughfare not far from the canal, known by the classic name of Hawthorne, which the Italians had appropriated to themselves. This street, too, in spite of the telegraph poles flaunting crude arms in front of its windows, in spite of the trolley running down its middle, had acquired a character, a unity all its own, a warmth and picturesqueness that in the lingering light of summer evenings assumed an indefinable significance. It was not Italy, but it was something--something proclaimed in the ornate, leaning lines of the pillared balconies of the yellow tenement on the second block, in the stone-vaulted entrance of the low house next door, in fantastically coloured walls, in curtained windows out of which leaned swarthy, earringed women. Blocking the end of the street, in stern contrast, was the huge Clarendon Mill with its sinister brick pillars running up the six stories between the glass. Here likewise the sidewalks overflowed with children, large-headed, with great, lustrous eyes, mute, appealing, the eyes of cattle. Unlike American children, they never seemed to be playing. Among the groups of elders gathered for gossip were piratical Calabrians in sombre clothes, descended from Greek ancestors, once the terrors of the Adriatic Sea. The women, lingering in the doorways, hemmed in by more children, were for the most part squat and plump, but once in a while Janet's glance was caught and held by a strange, sharp beauty worthy of a cameo. Opposite the Clarendon Mill on the corner of East Street was a provision store with stands of fruit and vegetables encroaching on the pavement. Janet's eye was attracted by a box of olives. "Oh Eda," she cried, "do you remember, we saw them being picked--in the movies? All those old trees on the side of a hill?" "Why, that's so," said Eda. "You never would have thought anything'd grow on those trees." The young Italian who kept the store gave them a friendly grin. "You lika the olives?" he asked, putting some of the shining black fruit into their hands. Eda bit one dubiously with her long, white teeth, and giggled. "Don't they taste funny!" she exclaimed. "Good--very good," he asserted gravely, and it was to Janet he turned, as though recognizing a discrimination not to be found in her companion. She nodded affirmatively. The strange taste of the fruit enhanced her sense of adventure, she tried to imagine herself among the gatherers in the grove; she glanced at the young man to perceive that he was tall and well formed, with remarkably expressive eyes almost the colour of the olives themselves. It surprised her that she liked him, though he was an Italian and a foreigner: a certain debonnair dignity in him appealed to her--a quality lacking in many of her own countrymen. And she wanted to talk to him about Italy,--only she did not know how to begin,--when a customer appeared, an Italian woman who conversed with him in soft, liquid tones that moved her .... Sometimes on these walks--especially if the day were grey and sombre--Janet's sense of romance and adventure deepened, became more poignant, charged with presage. These feelings, vague and unaccountable, she was utterly unable to confide to Eda, yet the very fear they inspired was fascinating; a fear and a hope that some day, in all this Babel of peoples, something would happen! It was as though the conflicting soul of the city and her own soul were one.... CHAPTER III Lise was the only member of the Bumpus family who did not find uncongenial such distractions and companionships as were offered by the civilization that surrounded them. The Bagatelle she despised; that was slavery--but slavery out of which she might any day be snatched, like Leila Hawtrey, by a prince charming who had made a success in life. Success to Lise meant money. Although what some sentimental sociologists might call a victim of our civilization, Lise would not have changed it, since it produced not only Lise herself, but also those fabulous financiers with yachts and motors and town and country houses she read about in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers. It contained her purgatory, which she regarded in good conventional fashion as a mere temporary place of detention, and likewise the heaven toward which she strained, the dwelling-place of light. In short, her philosophy was that of the modern, orthodox American, tinged by a somewhat commercialized Sunday school tradition of an earlier day, and highly approved by the censors of the movies. The peculiar kind of abstinence once euphemistically known as "virtue," particularly if it were combined with beauty, never failed of its reward. Lise, in this sense, was indeed virtuous, and her mirror told her she was beautiful. Almost anything could happen to such a lady: any day she might be carried up into heaven by that modern chariot of fire, the motor car, driven by a celestial chauffeur. One man's meat being another's poison, Lise absorbed from the movies an element by which her sister Janet was repelled. A popular production known as "Leila of Hawtrey's" contained her creed,--Hawtrey's being a glittering metropolitan restaurant where men of the world are wont to gather and discuss the stock market, and Leila a beautiful, blonde and orphaned waitress upon whom several of the fashionable frequenters had exercised seductive powers in vain. They lay in wait for her at the side entrance, followed her, while one dissipated and desperate person, married, and said to move in the most exclusive circles, sent her an offer of a yearly income in five figures, the note being reproduced on the screen, and Leila pictured reading it in her frigid hall-bedroom. There are complications; she is in debt, and the proprietor of Hawtrey's has threatened to discharge her and in order that the magnitude of the temptation may be most effectively realized the vision appears of Leila herself, wrapped in furs, stepping out of a limousine and into an elevator lifting her to an apartment containing silk curtains, a Canet bed, a French maid, and a Pomeranian. Virtue totters, but triumphs, being reinforced by two more visions the first of these portrays Leila, prematurely old, dragging herself along pavements under the metallic Broadway lights accosting gentlemen in evening dress; and the second reveals her in the country, kneeling beside a dying mother's bed, giving her promise to remain true to the Christian teachings of her childhood. And virtue is rewarded, lavishly, as virtue should be, in dollars and cents, in stocks and bonds, in pearls and diamonds. Popular fancy takes kindly to rough but honest westerners who have begun life in flannel shirts, who have struck gold and come to New York with a fortune but despising effeteness; such a one, tanned by the mountain sun, embarrassed in raiment supplied by a Fifth Avenue tailor, takes a table one evening at Hawtrey's and of course falls desperately in love. He means marriage from the first, and his faith in Leila is great enough to survive what appears to be an almost total eclipse of her virtue. Through the machinations of the influential villain, and lured by the false pretence that one of her girl friends is ill, she is enticed into a mysterious house of a sinister elegance, and apparently irretrievably compromised. The westerner follows, forces his way through the portals, engages the villain, and vanquishes him. Leila becomes a Bride. We behold her, at the end, mistress of one of those magnificent stone mansions with grilled vestibules and negro butlers into whose sacred precincts we are occasionally, in the movies, somewhat breathlessly ushered--a long way from Hawtrey's restaurant and a hall-bedroom. A long way, too, from the Bagatelle and Fillmore Street--but to Lise a way not impossible, nor even improbable. This work of art, conveying the moral that virtue is an economic asset, made a great impression on Lise. Good Old Testament doctrine, set forth in the Book of Job itself. And Leila, pictured as holding out for a higher price and getting it, encouraged Lise to hold out also. Mr. Wiley, in whose company she had seen this play, and whose likeness filled the plush and silver-plated frame on her bureau, remained ironically ignorant of the fact that he had paid out his money to make definite an ambition, an ideal hitherto nebulous in the mind of the lady whom he adored. Nor did Lise enlighten him, being gifted with a certain inscrutableness. As a matter of fact it had never been her intention to accept him, but now that she was able concretely to visualize her Lochinvar of the future, Mr. Whey's lack of qualifications became the more apparent. In the first place, he had been born in Lowell and had never been west of Worcester; in the second, his salary was sixteen dollars a week: it is true she had once fancied the Scottish terrier style of hair-cut abruptly ending in the rounded line of the shaven neck, but Lochinvar had been close-cropped. Mr. Wiley, close-cropped, would have resembled a convict. Mr. Wiley was in love, there could be no doubt about that, and if he had not always meant marriage, he meant it now, having reached a state where no folly seems preposterous. The manner of their meeting had had just the adventurous and romantic touch that Lise liked, one of her favourite amusements in the intervals between "steadies" being to walk up and down Faber Street of an evening after supper, arm in arm with two or three other young ladies, all chewing gum, wheeling into store windows and wheeling out again, pretending the utmost indifference to melting glances cast in their direction. An exciting sport, though incomprehensible to masculine intelligence. It was a principle with Lise to pay no attention to any young man who was not "presented," those venturing to approach her with the ready formula "Haven't we met before?" being instantly congealed. She was strict as to etiquette. But Mr. Wiley, it seemed, could claim acquaintance with Miss Schuler, one of the ladies to whose arm Lise's was linked, and he had the further advantage of appearing in a large and seductive touring car, painted green, with an eagle poised above the hood and its name, Wizard, in a handwriting rounded and bold, written in nickel across the radiator. He greeted Miss Schuler effusively, but his eye was on Lise from the first, and it was she he took with, him in the front seat, indifferent to the giggling behind. Ever since then Lise had had a motor at her disposal, and on Sundays they took long "joy rides" beyond the borders of the state. But it must not be imagined that Mr. Whey was the proprietor of the vehicle; nor was he a chauffeur,--her American pride would not have permitted her to keep company with a chauffeur: he was the demonstrator for the Wizard, something of a wizard himself, as Lise had to admit when they whizzed over the tarvia of the Riverside Boulevard at fifty or sixty miles an hour with the miner cut out--a favourite diversion of Mr. Whey's, who did not feel he was going unless he was accompanied by a noise like that of a mitrailleuse in action. Lise, experiencing a ravishing terror, hung on to her hat with one hand and to Mr. Wiley with the other, her code permitting this; permitting him also, occasionally, when they found themselves in tenebrous portions of Slattery's Riverside Park, to put his arm around her waist and kiss her. So much did Lise's virtue allow, and no more, the result being that he existed in a tantalizing state of hope and excitement most detrimental to the nerves. He never lost, however,--in public at least, or before Lise's family,--the fine careless, jaunty air of the demonstrator, of the free-lance for whom seventy miles an hour has no terrors; the automobile, apparently, like the ship, sets a stamp upon its votaries. No Elizabethan buccaneer swooping down on defenceless coasts ever exceeded in audacity Mr. Wiley's invasion of quiet Fillmore Street. He would draw up with an ear-splitting screaming of brakes in front of the clay-yellow house, and sometimes the muffler, as though unable to repress its approval of the performance, would let out a belated pop that never failed to jar the innermost being of Auermann, who had been shot at, or rather shot past, by an Italian, and knew what it was. He hated automobiles, he hated Mr. Wiley. "Vat you do?" he would demand, glaring. And Mr. Wiley would laugh insolently. "You think I done it, do you, Dutchie--huh!" He would saunter past, up the stairs, and into the Bumpus dining-room, often before the family had finished their evening meal. Lise alone made him welcome, albeit demurely; but Mr. Wiley, not having sensibilities, was proof against Hannah's coldness and Janet's hostility. With unerring instinct he singled out Edward as his victim. "How's Mr. Bumpus this evening?" he would genially inquire. Edward invariably assured Mr. Wiley that he was well, invariably took a drink of coffee to emphasize the fact, as though the act of lifting his cup had in it some magic to ward off the contempt of his wife and elder daughter. "Well, I've got it pretty straight that the Arundel's going to run nights, starting next week," Lise's suitor would continue. And to save his soul Edward could not refrain from answering, "You don't say so!" He feigned interest in the information that the Hampton Ball Team, owing to an unsatisfactory season, was to change managers next year. Mr. Wiley possessed the gift of gathering recondite bits of news, he had confidence in his topics and in his manner of dealing with them; and Edward, pretending to be entertained, went so far in his politeness as to ask Mr. Wiley if he had had supper. "I don't care if I sample one of Mis' Bumpus's doughnuts," Mr. Wiley would reply politely, reaching out a large hand that gave evidence, in spite of Sapolio, of an intimacy with grease cups and splash pans. "I guess there's nobody in this burg can make doughnuts to beat yours, Miss Bumpus." If she had only known which doughnut he would take; Hannah sometimes thought she might have been capable of putting arsenic in it. Her icy silence did not detract from the delights of his gestation. Occasionally, somewhat to Edward's alarm, Hannah demanded: "Where are you taking Lise this evening?" Mr. Wiley's wisdom led him to be vague. "Oh, just for a little spin up the boulevard. Maybe we'll pick up Ella Schuler and one or two other young ladies." Hannah and Janet knew very well he had no intention of doing this, and Hannah did not attempt to conceal her incredulity. As a matter of fact, Lise sometimes did insist on a "party." "I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock. That's late enough for a girl who works to be out. It's late enough for any girl." "Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily. Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley and Lise understood she had no power. Lise went to put on her hat; if she skimped her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening when she came home from the store, and was often late for supper. In the meantime, while Lise was in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward would contemptibly continue the conversation, fingering the Evening Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. Wiley helped himself boldly to another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed--elaborate precautions to spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to be the last creation in male attire. Behind a plate glass window in Faber Street, belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded every important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college" men, only the week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically folded, combined with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and "torture" collar--lures for the discriminating. Owing to certain expenses connected with Lise, he had been unable to acquire the shirt and the tie, but he had bought the suit in the hope and belief that she would find him irresistible therein. It pleased him, too, to be taken for a "college" man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened shoulders and diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been spent in vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite his infatuation for the younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent--would mistake him for an undergraduate of Harvard,--an imposition concerning which he had no scruples. But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated..... When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure, triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval of silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah snatched up. "I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her shoulder once to Edward. "Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously. "Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as you can." Edward would grow warm with a sense of injustice, the inference being that he was to blame for Mr. Wiley; if he had been a different kind of father another sort of suitor would be courting Lise. "I have to be civil," he protested. He pronounced that, word "civil" exquisitely, giving equal value to both syllables. "Civil!" Hannah scoffed, as she left the room; and to Janet, who had followed her into the kitchen, she added: "That's the trouble with your father, he's always be'n a little too civil. Edward Bumpus is just as simple as a child, he's afraid of offending folks' feelings .... Think of being polite to that Whey!" In those two words Hannah announced eloquently her utter condemnation of the demonstrator of the Wizard. It was characteristic of her, however, when she went back for another load of dishes and perceived that Edward was only pretending to read his Banner, to attempt to ease her husband's feelings. She thought it queer because she was still fond of Edward Bumpus, after all he had "brought on her." "It's Lise," she said, as though speaking to Janet, "she attracts 'em. Sometimes I just can't get used to it that she's my daughter. I don't know who she takes after. She's not like any of my kin, nor any of the Bumpuses." "What can you do?" asked Edward. "You can't order him out of the house. It's better for him to come here. And you can't stop Lise from going with him--she's earning her own money...." They had talked over the predicament before, and always came to the same impasse. In the privacy of the kitchen Hannah paused suddenly in her energetic rubbing of a plate and with supreme courage uttered a question. "Janet, do you calculate he means anything wrong?" "I don't know what he means," Janet replied, unwilling to give Mr. Wiley credit for anything, "but I know this, that Lise is too smart to let him take advantage of her." Hannah ruminated. Cleverness as the modern substitute for feminine virtue did not appeal to her, but she let it pass. She was in no mood to quarrel with any quality that would ward off disgrace. "I don't know what to make of Lise--she don't appear to have any principles...." If the Wiley affair lasted longer than those preceding it, this was because former suitors had not commanded automobiles. When Mr. Wiley lost his automobile he lost his luck--if it may be called such. One April evening, after a stroll with Eda, Janet reached home about nine o'clock to find Lise already in their room, to remark upon the absence of Mr. Wiley's picture from the frame. "I'm through with him," Lise declared briefly, tugging at her hair. "Through with him?" Janet repeated. Lise paused in her labours and looked at her sister steadily. "I handed him the mit--do you get me?" "But why?" "Why? I was sick of him--ain't that enough? And then he got mixed up with a Glendale trolley and smashed his radiator, and the Wizard people sacked him. I always told him he was too fly. It's lucky for him I wasn't in the car." "It's lucky for you," said Janet. Presently she inquired curiously: "Aren't you sorry?" "Nix." Lise shook her head, which was now bowed, her face hidden by hair. "Didn't I tell you I was sick of him? But he sure was some spender," she added, as though in justice bound to give him his due. Janet was shocked by the ruthlessness of it, for Lise appeared relieved, almost gay. She handed Janet a box containing five peppermint creams--all that remained of Mr. Wiley's last gift. One morning in the late spring Janet crossed the Warren Street bridge, the upper of the two spider-like structures to be seen from her office window, spanning the river beside the great Hampton dam. The day, dedicated to the memory of heroes fallen in the Civil War, the thirtieth of May, was a legal holiday. Gradually Janet had acquired a dread of holidays as opportunities never realized, as intervals that should have been filled with unmitigated joys, and yet were invariably wasted, usually in walks with Eda Rawle. To-day, feeling an irresistible longing for freedom, for beauty, for adventure, for quest and discovery of she knew not what, she avoided Eda, and after gazing awhile at the sunlight dancing in the white mist below the falls, she walked on, southward, until she had left behind her the last straggling houses of the city and found herself on a wide, tarvia road that led, ultimately, to Boston. So read the sign. Great maples, heavy with leaves, stood out against the soft blue of the sky, and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls, the thatches of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted pine a pungent, reviving perfume. Sometimes she stopped to rest on the pine needles, and walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because it was the easiest way. There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards, masses of lilacs whose purple she drank in eagerly; the air, which had just a tang of New England sharpness, was filled with tender sounds, the clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of birds, the rustling of maple leaves in the fitful breeze. A chipmunk ran down an elm and stood staring at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save for his quivering tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as though he held the secret of life she craved. But he darted away. She looked around her unceasingly, at the sky, at the trees, at the flowers and ferns and fields, at the vireos and thrushes, the robins and tanagers gashing in and out amidst the foliage, and she was filled with a strange yearning to expand and expand until she should become a part of all nature, be absorbed into it, cease to be herself. Never before had she known just that feeling, that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine discontent .... Occasionally, intruding faintly upon the countryside peace, she was aware of a distant humming sound that grew louder and louder until there shot roaring past her an automobile filled with noisy folk, leaving behind it a suffocating cloud of dust. Even these intrusions, reminders of the city she had left, were powerless to destroy her mood, and she began to skip, like a schoolgirl, pausing once in a while to look around her fearfully, lest she was observed; and it pleased her to think that she had escaped forever, that she would never go back: she cried aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back," keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost intoxicated, delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly, on a bank of ferns, burying her face in them. She had really stopped because a pebble had got into her shoe, and as she took it out she looked at her bare heel and remarked ruefully:--"Those twenty-five cent stockings aren't worth buying!" Economic problems, however, were powerless to worry her to-day, when the sun shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running through the culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour reminding her of the flower store where her sister Lise had once been employed. But at length she arose, and after an hour or more of sauntering the farming landscape was left behind, the crumbling stone fences were replaced by a well-kept retaining wall capped by a privet hedge, through which, between stone pillars, a driveway entered and mounted the shaded slope, turning and twisting until lost to view. But afar, standing on the distant crest, through the tree trunks and foliage Janet saw one end of the mansion to which it led, and ventured timidly but eagerly in among the trees in the hope of satisfying her new-born curiosity. Try as she would, she never could get any but disappointing and partial glimpses of a house which, because of the mystery of its setting, fired her imagination, started her to wondering why it was that some were permitted to live in the midst of such beauty while she was condemned to spend her days in Fillmore Street and the prison of the mill. She was not even allowed to look at it! The thought was like a cloud across the sun. However, when she had regained the tarvia road and walked a little way the shadow suddenly passed, and she stood surprised. The sight of a long common with its ancient trees in the fullness of glory, dense maples, sturdy oaks, strong, graceful elms that cast flickering, lacy shadows across the road filled her with satisfaction, with a sense of peace deepened by the awareness, in the background, ranged along the common on either side, of stately, dignified buildings, each in an appropriate frame of foliage. With the essence rather than the detail of all this her consciousness became steeped; she was naturally ignorant of the great good fortune of Silliston Academy of having been spared with one or two exceptions--donations during those artistically lean years of the nineteenth century when American architecture affected the Gothic, the Mansard, and the subsequent hybrid. She knew this must be Silliston, the seat of that famous academy of which she had heard. The older school buildings and instructors' houses, most of them white or creamy yellow, were native Colonial, with tall, graceful chimneys and classic pillars and delicate balustrades, eloquent at once of the racial inheritance of the Republic and of a bygone individuality, dignity, and pride. And the modern architect, of whose work there was an abundance, had graciously and intuitively held this earlier note and developed it. He was an American, but an American who had been trained. The result was harmony, life as it should proceed, the new growing out of the old. And no greater tribute can be paid to Janet Bumpus than that it pleased her, struck and set exquisitely vibrating within her responsive chords. For the first time in her adult life she stood in the presence of tradition, of a tradition inherently if unconsciously the innermost reality of her being a tradition that miraculously was not dead, since after all the years it had begun to put forth these vigorous shoots.... What Janet chiefly realized was the delicious, contented sense of having come, visually at least, to the home for which she had longed. But her humour was that of a child who has strayed, to find its true dwelling place in a region of beauty hitherto unexplored and unexperienced, tinged, therefore, with unreality, with mystery,--an effect enhanced by the chance stillness and emptiness of the place. She wandered up and down the Common, whose vivid green was starred with golden dandelions; and then, spying the arched and shady vista of a lane, entered it, bent on new discoveries. It led past one of the newer buildings, the library--as she read in a carved inscription over the door--plunged into shade again presently to emerge at a square farmhouse, ancient and weathered, with a great square chimney thrust out of the very middle of the ridge-pole,--a landmark left by one of the earliest of Silliston's settlers. Presiding over it, embracing and protecting it, was a splendid tree. The place was evidently in process of reconstruction and repair, the roof had been newly shingled, new frames, with old-fashioned, tiny panes had been put in the windows; a little garden was being laid out under the sheltering branches of the tree, and between the lane and the garden, half finished, was a fence of an original and pleasing design, consisting of pillars placed at intervals with upright pickets between, the pickets sawed in curves, making a line that drooped in the middle. Janet did not perceive the workman engaged in building this fence until the sound of his hammer attracted her attention. His back was bent, he was absorbed in his task. "Are there any stores near here?" she inquired. He straightened up. "Why yes," he replied, "come to think of it, I have seen stores, I'm sure I have." Janet laughed; his expression, his manner of speech were so delightfully whimsical, so in keeping with the spirit of her day, and he seemed to accept her sudden appearance in the precise make-believe humour she could have wished. And yet she stood a little struck with timidity, puzzled by the contradictions he presented of youth and age, of shrewdness, experience and candour, of gentility and manual toil. He must have been about thirty-five; he was hatless, and his hair, uncombed but not unkempt, was greying at the temples; his eyes--which she noticed particularly--were keen yet kindly, the irises delicately stencilled in a remarkable blue; his speech was colloquial yet cultivated, his workman's clothes belied his bearing. "Yes, there are stores, in the village," he went on, "but isn't it a holiday, or Sunday--perhaps--or something of the kind?" "It's Decoration Day," she reminded him, with deepening surprise. "So it is! And all the storekeepers have gone on picnics in their automobiles, or else they're playing golf. Nobody's working today." "But you--aren't you working?" she inquired. "Working?" he repeated. "I suppose some people would call it work. I--I hadn't thought of it in that way." "You mean--you like it," Janet was inspired to say. "Well, yes," he confessed. "I suppose I do." Her cheeks dimpled. If her wonder had increased, her embarrassment had flown, and he seemed suddenly an old acquaintance. She had, however, profound doubts now of his being a carpenter. "Were you thinking of going shopping?" he asked, and at the very ludicrousness of the notion she laughed again. She discovered a keen relish for this kind of humour, but it was new to her experience, and she could not cope with it. "Only to buy some crackers, or a sandwich," she replied, and blushed. "Oh," he said. "Down in the village, on the corner where the cars stop, is a restaurant. It's not as good as the Parker House in Boston, I believe, but they do have sandwiches, yes, and coffee. At least they call it coffee." "Oh, thank you," she said. "You'd better wait till you try it," he warned her. "Oh, I don't mind, I don't want much." And she was impelled to add: "It's such a beautiful day." "It's absurd to get hungry on such a day--absurd," he agreed. "Yes, it is," she laughed. "I'm not really hungry, but I haven't time to get back to Hampton for dinner." Suddenly she grew hot at the thought that he might suspect her of hinting. "You see, I live in Hampton," she went on hurriedly, "I'm a stenographer there, in the Chippering Mill, and I was just out for a walk, and--I came farther than I intended." She had made it worse. But he said, "Oh, you came from Hampton!" with an intonation of surprise, of incredulity even, that soothed and even amused while it did not deceive her. Not that the superior intelligence of which she had begun to suspect him had been put to any real test by the discovery of her home, and she was quite sure her modest suit of blue serge and her $2.99 pongee blouse proclaimed her as a working girl of the mill city. "I've been to Hampton," he declared, just as though it were four thousand miles away instead of four. "But I've never been here before, to Silliston," she responded in the same spirit: and she added wistfully, "it must be nice to live in such a beautiful place as this!" "Yes, it is nice," he agreed. "We have our troubles, too,--but it's nice." She ventured a second, appraising glance. His head, which he carried a little flung back, his voice, his easy and confident bearing--all these contradicted the saw and the hammer, the flannel shirt, open at the neck, the khaki trousers still bearing the price tag. And curiosity beginning to get the better of her, she was emboldened to pay a compliment to the fence. If one had to work, it must be a pleasure to work on things pleasing to the eye--such was her inference. "Why, I'm glad you like it," he said heartily. "I was just hoping some one would come along here and admire it. Now--what colour would you paint it?" "Are you a painter, too?" "After a fashion. I'm a sort of man of all work--I thought of painting it white, with the pillars green." "I think that would be pretty," she answered, judicially, after a moment's thought. "What else can you do?" He appeared to be pondering his accomplishments. "Well, I can doctor trees," he said, pointing an efficient finger at the magnificent maple sheltering, like a guardian deity, the old farmhouse. "I put in those patches." "They're cement," she exclaimed. "I never heard of putting cement in trees." "They don't seem to mind." "Are the holes very deep?" "Pretty deep." "But I should think the tree would be dead." "Well, you see the life of a tree is right under the bark. If you can keep the outer covering intact, the tree will live." "Why did you let the holes get so deep?" "I've just come here. The house was like the tree the shingles all rotten, but the beams were sound. Those beams were hewn out of the forest two hundred and fifty years ago." "Gracious!" said Janet. "And how old is the tree?" "I should say about a hundred. I suppose it wouldn't care to admit it." "How do you know?" she inquired. "Oh, I'm very intimate with trees. I find out their secrets." "It's your house!" she exclaimed, somewhat appalled by the discovery. "Yes--yes it is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an indescribably comical manner down at his clothes. His gesture, his expression implied that her mistake was a most natural one. "Excuse me, I thought--" she began, blushing hotly, yet wanting to laugh again. "I don't blame you--why shouldn't you?" he interrupted her. "I haven't got used to it yet, and there is something amusing about--my owning a house. When the parlour's finished I'll have to wear a stiff collar, I suppose, in order to live up to it." Her laughter broke forth, and she tried to imagine him in a stiff collar.... But she was more perplexed than ever. She stood balancing on one foot, poised for departure. "I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a formal visit. "Don't hurry," he protested cordially. "Why hurry back to Hampton?" "I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, passionate quality which had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar. She stood transformed. "I hate it!" she declared. "It's so ugly, I never want to see it again." "Yes, it is ugly," he confessed. "Since you admit it, I don't mind saying so. But it's interesting, in a way." Though his humorous moods had delighted her, she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more serious. "It is interesting," she agreed. She was almost impelled to tell him why, in her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton interesting, but a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she divined in him restrained her. She was curious to know what this man saw in Hampton. His opinion would be worth something. Unlike her neighbours in Fillmore Street, he was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty"; he had an air of fine sanity, of freedom, of detachment,--though the word did not occur to her; he betrayed no bitter sense of injustice, and his beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession of a single panacea. "Why do you think it's interesting?" she demanded. "Well, I'm always expecting to hear that it's blown up. It reminds me of nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling. She repeated the word. "An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite. They say a man once made it by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never went back." "I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement. "All those foreigners! I've felt it that something would happen, some day, it frightened me, and yet I wished that something would happen. Only, I never would have thought of--nitro-glycerine." She was unaware of the added interest in his regard. But he answered lightly enough:--"Oh, not only the foreigners. Human chemicals--you can't play with human chemicals any more than you can play with real ones--you've got to know something about chemistry." This remark was beyond her depth. "Who is playing with them?" she asked. "Everybody--no one in particular. Nobody seems to know much about them, yet," he replied, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject. A robin with a worm in its bill was hopping across the grass; he whistled softly, the bird stopped, cocking its head and regarding them. Suddenly, in conflict with her desire to remain indefinitely talking with this strange man, Janet felt an intense impulse to leave. She could bear the conversation no longer, she might burst into tears--such was the extraordinary effect he had produced on her. "I must go,--I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said. "Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand .... When she had walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him leaning idly against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in friendly fashion. For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously, keeping time with her racing thoughts. She walked about the Common, seeing nothing, paying no attention to the passers-by, who glanced at her curiously. But at length as she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and vigorous body became imperative, and realizing suddenly that she was tired and hungry, sought and found the little restaurant in the village below. She journeyed back to Hampton pondering what this man had said to her; speculating, rather breathlessly, whether he had been impelled to conversation by a natural kindness and courtesy, or whether he really had discovered something in her worthy of addressing, as he implied. Resentment burned in her breast, she became suddenly blinded by tears: she might never see him again, and if only she were "educated" she might know him, become his friend. Even in this desire she was not conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed rather than transformed what she meant by "education." She thought of it not as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of the freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world open up to one like a flower filled with colour and life. She thought of the robin, of the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range including even that medley of human beings amongst whom she lived. And the fact that something of his meaning had eluded her grasp made her rebel all the more bitterly against the lack of a greater knowledge .... Often during the weeks that followed he dwelt in her mind as she sat at her desk and stared out across the river, and several times that summer she started to walk to Silliston. But always she turned back. Perhaps she feared to break the charm of that memory.... CHAPTER IV Our American climate is notoriously capricious. Even as Janet trudged homeward on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like adventure in Silliston the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming moist and tepid, white clouds with dark edges were piled up in the western sky. The automobiles of the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly over the tarvia. Valiantly as she strove to cling to her dream, remorseless reality was at work dragging her back, reclaiming her; excitement and physical exercise drained her vitality, her feet were sore, sadness invaded her as she came in view of the ragged outline of the city she had left so joyfully in the morning. Summer, that most depressing of seasons in an environment of drab houses and grey pavements, was at hand, listless householders and their families were already, seeking refuge on front steps she passed on her way to Fillmore Street. It was about half past five when she arrived. Lise, her waist removed, was seated in a rocking chair at the window overlooking the littered yards and the backs of the tenements on Rutger Street. And Lise, despite the heaviness of the air, was dreaming. Of such delicate texture was the fabric of Janet's dreams that not only sordid reality, but contact with other dreams of a different nature, such as her sister's, often sufficed to dissolve them. She resented, for instance, the presence in the plush oval of Mr. Eustace Arlington; the movie star whose likeness had replaced Mr. Wiley's, and who had played the part of the western hero in "Leila of Hawtrey's." With his burning eyes and sensual face betraying the puffiness that comes from over-indulgence, he was not Janet's ideal of a hero, western or otherwise. And now Lise was holding a newspaper: not the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a popular Boston sheet to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and labelled "Three O'clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the top of the page:-- "JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY'S FAVOR." As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:--"Say, that Nealy girl's won out!" "Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly. "You are from the country, all right," was her sister's rejoinder. "I would have bet there wasn't a Reub in the state that wasn't wise to the Ferris breach of promise case, and here you blow in after the show's over and want to know who Nelly Nealy is. If that doesn't beat the band!" "This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?" "A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by her sister's ignorance. "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the biggest copper man in Boston. He could buy Hampton, and never feel it, and they say his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars. Nelly Nealy put her damages at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him for seventy five. I wish I'd been in court when that jury came back! There's her picture." To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself that evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and approval of Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent. However, she took the sheet, gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner," the envied of thousands of working girls all over New England. Miss Nealy, in spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up admirably under the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three meals a day and give some thought to her costumes. Her smile under the picture hat was coquettish, if not bold. The special article, signed by a lady reporter whose sympathies were by no means concealed and whose talents were given free rein, related how the white-haired mother had wept tears of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been awhile too overcome to speak, and then had recovered sufficiently to express her gratitude to the twelve gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American womanhood. Mr. Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she lived would she be able to forget how she had loved and believed in him, and how, when at length she unwillingly became convinces of his perfidy, she had been "prostrated," unable to support her old mother. She had not, naturally, yet decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage, that had been suggested, but she had made no plans. "Scores of women sympathizers" had escorted her to a waiting automobile.... Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and flinging the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper. But presently, when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no longer. "I don't see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed. "It's--it's horrible." "Horrible?" Lise repeated. Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping. "Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred and feathered. She's nothing but a blackmailer." Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain't he a millionaire?" "What difference does that make?" Janet retorted. "And you can't tell me she didn't know what she was up to all along--with that face." "I'd have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly. "Then you'd be a blackmailer, too. I'd sooner scrub floors, I'd sooner starve than do such a thing--take money for my affections. In the first place, I'd have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a man, seventy five thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn't help me any. Where do you get such ideas? Decent people don't have them." Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face vigorously--ceasing for an instance to make sure of the identity of a sound reaching her ears despite the splashing of water. Lise was sobbing. Janet dried her face and hands, arranged her hair, and sat down on the windowsill; the scorn and anger, which had been so intense as completely to possess her, melting into a pity and contempt not unmixed with bewilderment. Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious to such reproaches, holding her own in the passionate quarrels that occasionally took place between them yet there were times, such as this, when her resistance broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control. She rocked to and fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in her hands. Janet reached out and touched her. "Don't be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was a disgrace to have such ideas. Well, it is." "I'm not silly," said Lise. "I'm sick of that job at the Bagatelle" --sob--"there's nothing in it--I'm going to quit--I wish to God I was dead! Standing on your feet all day till you're wore out for six dollars a week--what's there in it?"--sob--"With that guy Walters who walks the floor never lettin' up on you. He come up to me yesterday and says, `I didn't know you was near sighted, Miss Bumpus' just because there was a customer Annie Hatch was too lazy to wait on"--sob--"That's his line of dope--thinks he's sarcastic--and he's sweet on Annie. Tomorrow I'm going to tell him to go to hell. I'm through I'm sick of it, I tell you"--sob--"I'd rather be dead than slave like that for six dollars." "Where are you going?" asked Janet. "I don't know--I don't care. What's the difference? any place'd be better than this." For awhile she continued to cry on a ridiculously high, though subdued, whining note, her breath catching at intervals. A feeling of helplessness, of utter desolation crept over Janet; powerless to comfort herself, how could she comfort her sister? She glanced around the familiar, sordid room, at the magazine pages against the faded wall-paper, at the littered bureau and the littered bed, over which Lise's clothes were flung. It was hot and close even now, in summer it would be stifling. Suddenly a flash of sympathy revealed to her a glimpse of the truth that Lise, too, after her own nature, sought beauty and freedom! Never did she come as near comprehending Lise as in such moments as this, and when, on dark winter mornings, her sister clung to her, terrified by the siren. Lise was a child, and the thought that she, Janet, was powerless to change her was a part of the tragic tenderness. What would become of Lise? And what would become of her, Janet?... So she clung, desperately, to her sister's hand until at last Lise roused herself, her hair awry, her face puckered and wet with tears and perspiration. "I can't stand it any more--I've just got to go away anywhere," she said, and the cry found an echo in Janet's heart.... But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the mill.... The fact that Lise's love affairs had not been prospering undoubtedly had something to do with the fit of depression into which she had fallen that evening. A month or so before she had acquired another beau. It was understood by Lise's friends and Lise's family, though not by the gentleman himself, that his position was only temporary or at most probationary; he had not even succeeded to the rights, title, and privileges of the late Mr. Wiley, though occupying a higher position in the social scale--being the agent of a patent lawn sprinkler with an office in Faber Street. "Stick to him and you'll wear diamonds--that's what he tries to put across," was Lise's comment on Mr. Frear's method, and thus Janet gained the impression that her sister's feelings were not deeply involved. "If I thought he'd make good with the sprinkler I might talk business. But say, he's one of those ginks that's always tryin' to beat the bank. He's never done a day's work in his life. Last year he was passing around Foley's magazine, and before that he was with the race track that went out of business because the ministers got nutty over it. Well, he may win out," she added reflectively, "those guys sometimes do put the game on the blink. He sure is a good spender when the orders come in, with a line of talk to make you holler for mercy." Mr. Frear's "line of talk" came wholly, astonishingly, from one side of his mouth--the left side. As a muscular feat it was a triumph. A deaf person on his right side would not have known he was speaking. The effect was secretive, extraordinarily confidential; enabling him to sell sprinklers, it ought to have helped him to make love, so distinctly personal was it, implying as it did that the individual addressed was alone of all the world worthy of consideration. Among his friends it was regarded as an accomplishment, but Lise was critical, especially since he did not look into one's eyes, but gazed off into space, as though he weren't talking at all. She had once inquired if the right side of his face was paralyzed. She permitted him to take her, however, to Gruber's Cafe, to the movies, and one or two select dance halls, and to Slattery's Riverside Park, where one evening she had encountered the rejected Mr. Wiley. "Say, he was sore!" she told Janet the next morning, relating the incident with relish, "for two cents he would have knocked Charlie over the ropes. I guess he could do it, too, all right." Janet found it curious that Lise should display such vindictiveness toward Mr. Wiley, who was more sinned against than sinning. She was moved to inquire after his welfare. "He's got one of them red motorcycles," said Lise. "He was gay with it too--when we was waiting for the boulevard trolley he opened her up and went right between Charlie and me. I had to laugh. He's got a job over in Haverhill you can't hold that guy under water long." Apparently Lise had no regrets. But her premonitions concerning Mr. Frear proved to be justified. He did not "make good." One morning the little office on Faber Street where the sprinklers were displayed was closed, Hampton knew him no more, and the police alone were sincerely regretful. It seemed that of late he had been keeping all the money for the sprinklers, and spending a good deal of it on Lise. At the time she accepted the affair with stoical pessimism, as one who has learned what to expect of the world, though her moral sense was not profoundly disturbed by the reflection that she had indulged in the delights of Slattery's and Gruber's and a Sunday at "the Beach" at the expense of the Cascade Sprinkler Company of Boston. Mr. Frear inconsiderately neglected to prepare her for his departure, the news of which was conveyed to her in a singular manner, and by none other than Mr. Johnny Tiernan of the tin shop,--their conversation throwing some light, not only on Lise's sophistication, but on the admirable and intricate operation of Hampton's city government. About five o'clock Lise was coming home along Fillmore Street after an uneventful, tedious and manless holiday spent in the company of Miss Schuler and other friends when she perceived Mr. Tiernan seated on his steps, grinning and waving a tattered palm-leaf fan. "The mercury is sure on the jump," he observed. "You'd think it was July." And Lise agreed. "I suppose you'll be going to Tim Slattery's place tonight," he went on. "It's the coolest spot this side of the Atlantic Ocean." There was, apparently, nothing cryptic in this remark, yet it is worth noting that Lise instantly became suspicious. "Why would I be going out there?" she inquired innocently, darting at him a dark, coquettish glance. Mr. Tiernan regarded her guilelessly, but there was admiration in his soul; not because of her unquestioned feminine attractions,--he being somewhat amazingly proof against such things,--but because it was conveyed to him in some unaccountable way that her suspicions were aroused. The brain beneath that corkscrew hair was worthy of a Richelieu. Mr. Tiernan's estimate of Miss Lise Bumpus, if he could have been induced to reveal it, would have been worth listening to. "And why wouldn't you?" he replied heartily. "Don't I see all the pretty young ladies out there, including yourself, and you dancing with the Cascade man. Why is it you'll never give me a dance?" "Why is it you never ask me?" demanded Lise. "What chance have I got, against him?" "He don't own me," said Lise. Mr. Tiernan threw back his head, and laughed. "Well, if you're there to-night, tangoin' with him and I come up and says, `Miss Bumpus, the pleasure is mine,' I'm wondering what would happen." "I'm not going to Slattery's to-night," she declared having that instant arrived at this conclusion. "And where then? I'll come along, if there's a chance for me." "Quit your kidding," Lise reproved him. Mr. Tiernan suddenly looked very solemn: "Kidding, is it? Me kiddin' you? Give me a chance, that's all I'm asking. Where will you be, now?" "Is Frear wanted?" she demanded. Mr. Tiernan's expression changed. His nose seemed to become more pointed, his eyes to twinkle more merrily than ever. He didn't take the trouble, now, to conceal his admiration. "Sure, Miss Bumpus," he said, "if you was a man, we'd have you on the force to-morrow." "What's he wanted for?" "Well," said Johnny, "a little matter of sprinklin'. He's been sprinklin' his company's water without a license." She was silent a moment before she exclaimed:--"I ought to have been wise that he was a crook!" "Well," said Johnny consolingly, "there's others that ought to have been wise, too. The Cascade people had no business takin' on a man that couldn't use but half of his mouth." This seemed to Lise a reflection on her judgment. She proceeded to clear herself. "He was nothing to me. He never gave me no rest. He used to come 'round and pester me to go out with him--" "Sure!" interrupted Mr. Tiernan. "Don't I know how it is with the likes of him! A good time's a good time, and no harm in it. But the point is" and here he cocked his nose--"the point is, where is he? Where will he be tonight?" All at once Lise grew vehement, almost tearful. "I don't know--honest to God, I don't. If I did I'd tell you. Last night he said he might be out of town. He didn't say where he was going." She fumbled in her bag, drawing out an imitation lace handkerchief and pressing it to her eyes. "There now!" exclaimed Mr. Tiernan, soothingly. "How would you know? And he deceivin' you like he did the company--" "He didn't deceive me," cried Lise. "Listen," said Mr. Tiernan, who had risen and laid his hand on her arm. "It's not young ladies like you that works and are self-respecting that any one would be troublin', and you the daughter of such a fine man as your father. Run along, now, I won't be detaining you, Miss Bumpus, and you'll accept my apology. I guess we'll never see him in Hampton again...." Some twenty minutes later he sauntered down the street, saluting acquaintances, and threading his way across the Common entered a grimy brick building where a huge policeman with an insignia on his arm was seated behind a desk. Mr. Tiernan leaned on the desk, and reflectively lighted a Thomas-Jefferson-Five-Cent Cigar, Union Label, the excellencies of which were set forth on large signs above the "ten foot" buildings on Faber Street. "She don't know nothing, Mike," he remarked. "I guess he got wise this morning." The sergeant nodded.... CHAPTER V To feel potential within one's self the capacity to live and yet to have no means of realizing this capacity is doubtless one of the least comfortable and agreeable of human experiences. Such, as summer came on, was Janet's case. The memory of that visit to Silliston lingered in her mind, sometimes to flare up so vividly as to make her existence seem unbearable. How wonderful, she thought, to be able to dwell in such a beautiful place, to have as friends and companions such amusing and intelligent people as the stranger with whom she had talked! Were all the inhabitants of Silliston like him? They must be, since it was a seat of learning. Lise's cry, "I've just got to go away, anywhere," found an echo in Janet's soul. Why shouldn't she go away? She was capable of taking care of herself, she was a good stenographer, her salary had been raised twice in two years,--why should she allow consideration for her family to stand in the way of what she felt would be self realization? Unconsciously she was a true modern in that the virtues known as duty and self sacrifice did not appeal to her,--she got from them neither benefit nor satisfaction, she understood instinctively that they were impeding to growth. Unlike Lise, she was able to see life as it is, she did not expect of it miracles, economic or matrimonial. Nothing would happen unless she made it happen. She was twenty-one, earning nine dollars a week, of which she now contributed five to the household,--her father, with characteristic incompetence, having taken out a larger insurance policy than he could reasonably carry. Of the remaining four dollars she spent more than one on lunches, there were dresses and underclothing, shoes and stockings to buy, in spite of darning and mending; little treats with Eda that mounted up; and occasionally the dentist--for Janet would not neglect her teeth as Lise neglected hers. She managed to save something, but it was very little. And she was desperately unhappy when she contemplated the grey and monotonous vista of the years ahead, saw herself growing older and older, driven always by the stern necessity of accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by little drying up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of enjoyment with which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and frightened her. Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution; marriage meant dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in her existence, drab and necessitous though it were, was still a remnant of freedom that marriage would compel her to surrender.... One warm evening, oppressed by such reflections, she had started home when she remembered having left her bag in the office, and retraced her steps. As she turned the corner of West Street, she saw, beside the canal and directly in front of the bridge, a new and smart-looking automobile, painted crimson and black, of the type known as a runabout, which she recognized as belonging to Mr. Ditmar. Indeed, at that moment Mr. Ditmar himself was stepping off the end of the bridge and about to start the engine when, dropping the crank, he walked to the dashboard and apparently became absorbed in some mechanisms there. Was it the glance cast in her direction that had caused him to delay his departure? Janet was seized by a sudden and rather absurd desire to retreat, but Canal Street being empty, such an action would appear eccentric, and she came slowly forward, pretending not to see her employer, ridiculing to herself the idea that he had noticed her. Much to her annoyance, however, her embarrassment persisted, and she knew it was due to the memory of certain incidents, each in itself almost negligible, but cumulatively amounting to a suspicion that for some months he had been aware of her: many times when he had passed through the outer office she had felt his eyes upon her, had been impelled to look up from her work to surprise in them a certain glow to make her bow her head again in warm confusion. Now, as she approached him, she was pleasantly but rather guiltily conscious of the more rapid beating of the blood that precedes an adventure, yet sufficiently self-possessed to note the becoming nature of the light flannel suit axed rather rakish Panama he had pushed back from his forehead. It was not until she had almost passed him that he straightened up, lifted the Panama, tentatively, and not too far, startling her. "Good afternoon, Miss Bumpus," he said. "I thought you had gone." "I left my bag in the office," she replied, with the outward calmness that rarely deserted her--the calmness, indeed, that had piqued him and was leading him on to rashness. "Oh," he said. "Simmons will get it for you." Simmons was the watchman who stood in the vestibule of the office entrance. "Thanks. I can get it myself," she told him, and would have gone on had he not addressed her again. "I was just starting out for a spin. What do you think of the car? It's good looking, isn't it?" He stood off and surveyed it, laughing a little, and in his laugh she detected a note apologetic, at variance with the conception she had formed of his character, though not alien, indeed, to the dust-coloured vigour of the man. She scarcely recognized Ditmar as he stood there, yet he excited her, she felt from him an undercurrent of something that caused her inwardly to tremble. "See how the lines are carried through." He indicated this by a wave of his hand, but his eyes were now on her. "It is pretty," she agreed. In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his acquaintance had adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish nature, this self-collected manner was new and spicy, challenging to powers never as yet fully exerted while beneath her manner he felt throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in women, a temperament, for which men have given their souls. This conviction of her possession of a temperament,--he could not have defined the word, emotional rather than intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to sense. He had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the other sex, and he found the experience delicious. "You like pretty things, I'm sure of that," he hazarded. But she did not ask him how he knew, she simply assented. He raised the hood, revealing the engine. "Isn't that pretty? See how nicely everything is adjusted in that little space to do the particular work for which it is designed." Thus appealed to, she came forward and stopped, still standing off a little way, but near enough to see, gazing at the shining copper caps on the cylinders, at the bright rods and gears. "It looks intricate," said Mr. Ditmar, "but really it's very simple. The gasoline comes in here from the tank behind--this is called the carburetor, it has a jet to vaporize the gasoline, and the vapour is sucked into each of these cylinders in turn when the piston moves--like this." He sought to explain the action of the piston. "That compresses it, and then a tiny electric spark comes just at the right moment to explode it, and the explosion sends the piston down again, and turns the shaft. Well, all four cylinders have an explosion one right after another, and that keeps the shaft going." Whereupon the most important personage in Hampton, the head of the great Chippering Mill proceeded, for the benefit of a humble assistant stenographer, to remove the floor boards behind the dash. "There's the shaft, come here and look at it." She obeyed, standing beside him, almost touching him, his arm, indeed, brushing her sleeve, and into his voice crept a tremor. "The shaft turns the rear wheels by means of a gear at right angles on the axle, and the rear wheels drive the car. Do you see?" "Yes," she answered faintly, honesty compelling her to add: "a little." He was looking, now, not at the machinery, but intently at her, and she could feel the blood flooding into her cheeks and temples. She was even compelled for an instant to return his glance, and from his eyes into hers leaped a flame that ran scorching through her body. Then she knew with conviction that the explanation of the automobile had been an excuse; she had comprehended almost nothing of it, but she had been impressed by the facility with which he described it, by his evident mastery over it. She had noticed his hands, how thick his fingers were and close together; yet how deftly he had used them, without smearing the cuffs of his silk shirt or the sleeves of his coat with the oil that glistened everywhere. "I like machinery," he told her as he replaced the boards. "I like to take care of it myself." "It must be interesting," she assented, aware of the inadequacy of the remark, and resenting in herself an inarticulateness seemingly imposed by inhibition connected with his nearness. Fascination and antagonism were struggling within her. Her desire to get away grew desperate. "Thank you for showing it to me." With an effort of will she moved toward the bridge, but was impelled by a consciousness of the abruptness of her departure to look back at him once--and smile, to experience again the thrill of the current he sped after her. By lifting his hat, a little higher, a little more confidently than in the first instance, he made her leaving seem more gracious, the act somehow conveying an acknowledgment on his part that their relationship had changed. Once across the bridge and in the mill, she fairly ran up the stairs and into the empty office, to perceive her bag lying on the desk where she had left it, and sat down for a few minutes beside the window, her heart pounding in her breast as though she had barely escaped an accident threatening her with physical annihilation. Something had happened to her at last! But what did it mean? Where would it lead? Her fear, her antagonism, of which she was still conscious, her resentment that Ditmar had thus surreptitiously chosen to approach her in a moment when they were unobserved were mingled with a throbbing exultation in that he had noticed her, that there was something in her to attract him in that way, to make his voice thicker and his smile apologetic when he spoke to her. Of that "something-in-her" she had been aware before, but never had it been so unmistakably recognized and beckoned to from without. She was at once terrified, excited--and flattered. At length, growing calmer, she made her way out of the building. When she reached the vestibule she had a moment of sharp apprehension, of paradoxical hope, that Ditmar might still be there, awaiting her. But he had gone.... In spite of her efforts to dismiss the matter from her mind, to persuade herself there had been no significance in the encounter, when she was seated at her typewriter the next morning she experienced a renewal of the palpitation of the evening before, and at the sound of every step in the corridor she started. Of this tendency she was profoundly ashamed. And when at last Ditmar arrived, though the blood rose to her temples, she kept her eyes fixed on the keys. He went quickly into his room: she was convinced he had not so much as glanced at her.... As the days went by, however, she was annoyed by the discovery that his continued ignoring of her presence brought more resentment than relief, she detected in it a deliberation implying between them a guilty secret: she hated secrecy, though secrecy contained a thrill. Then, one morning when she was alone in the office with young Caldwell, who was absorbed in some reports, Ditmar entered unexpectedly and looked her full in the eyes, surprising her into answering his glance before she could turn away, hating herself and hating him. Hate, she determined, was her prevailing sentiment in regard to Mr. Ditmar. The following Monday Miss Ottway overtook her, at noon, on the stairs. "Janet, I wanted to speak to you, to tell you I'm leaving," she said. "Leaving!" repeated Janet, who had regarded Miss Ottway as a fixture. "I'm going to Boston," Miss Ottway explained, in her deep, musical voice. "I've always wanted to go, I have an unmarried sister there of whom I'm very fond, and Mr. Ditmar knows that. He's got me a place with the Treasurer, Mr. Semple." "Oh, I'm sorry you're going, though of course I'm glad for you," Janet said sincerely, for she liked and respected Miss Ottway, and was conscious in the older woman of a certain kindly interest. "Janet, I've recommended you to Mr. Ditmar for my place." "Oh!" cried Janet, faintly. "It was he who asked about you, he thinks you are reliable and quick and clever, and I was very glad to say a good word for you, my dear, since I could honestly do so." Miss Ottway drew Janet's arm through hers and patted it affectionately. "Of course you'll have to expect some jealousy, there are older women in the other offices who will think they ought to have the place, but if you attend to your own affairs, as you always have done, there won't be any trouble." "Oh, I won't take the place, I can't!" Janet cried, so passionately that Miss Ottway looked at her in surprise. "I'm awfully grateful to you," she added, flushing crimson, "I--I'm afraid I'm not equal to it." "Nonsense," said the other with decision. "You'd be very foolish not to try it. You won't get as much as I do, at first, at any rate, but a little more money won't be unwelcome, I guess. Mr. Ditmar will speak to you this afternoon. I leave on Saturday. I'm real glad to do you a good turn, Janet, and I know you'll get along," Miss Ottway added impulsively as they parted at the corner of Faber Street. "I've always thought a good deal of you." For awhile Janet stood still, staring after the sturdy figure of her friend, heedless of the noonday crowd that bumped her. Then she went to Grady's Quick Lunch Counter and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk, which she consumed slowly, profoundly sunk in thought. Presently Eda Rawle arrived, and noticing her preoccupation, inquired what was the matter. "Nothing," said Janet.... At two o'clock, when Ditmar returned to the office, he called Miss Ottway, who presently came out to summon Janet to his presence. Fresh, immaculate, yet virile in his light suit and silk shirt with red stripes, he was seated at his desk engaged in turning over some papers in a drawer. He kept her waiting a moment, and then said, with apparent casualness:--"Is that you, Miss Bumpus? Would you mind closing the door?" Janet obeyed, and again stood before him. He looked up. A suggestion of tenseness in her pose betraying an inner attitude of alertness, of defiance, conveyed to him sharply and deliciously once more the panther-like impression he had received when first, as a woman, she had come to his notice. The renewed and heightened perception of this feral quality in her aroused a sense of danger by no means unpleasurable, though warning him that he was about to take an unprecedented step, being drawn beyond the limits of caution he had previously set for himself in divorcing business and sex. Though he was by no means self-convinced of an intention to push the adventure, preferring to leave its possibilities open, he strove in voice and manner to be business-like; and instinct, perhaps, whispered that she might take alarm. "Sit down, Miss Bumpus," he said pleasantly, as he closed the drawer. She seated herself on an office chair. "Do you like your work here?" he inquired. "No," said Janet. "Why not?" he demanded, staring at her. "Why should I?" she retorted. "Well--what's the trouble with it? It isn't as hard as it would be in some other places, is it?" "I'm not saying anything against the place." "What, then?" "You asked me if I liked my work. I don't." "Then why do you do it?" he demanded. "To live," she replied. He smiled, but his gesture as he stroked his moustache implied a slight annoyance at her composure. He found it difficult with this dark, self-contained young woman to sustain the role of benefactor. "What kind of work would you like to do?" he demanded. "I don't know. I haven't got the choice, anyway," she said. He observed that she did her work well, to which she made no answer. She refused to help him, although Miss Ottway must have warned her. She acted as though she were conferring the favour. And yet, clearing his throat, he was impelled to say:--"Miss Ottway's leaving me, she's going into the Boston office with Mr. Semple, the treasurer of the corporation. I shall miss her, she's an able and reliable woman, and she knows my ways." He paused, fingering his paper knife. "The fact is, Miss Bumpus, she's spoken highly of you, she tells me you're quick and accurate and painstaking--I've noticed that for myself. She seems to think you could do her work, and recommends that I give you a trial. You understand, of course, that the position is in a way confidential, and that you could not expect at first, at any rate, the salary Miss Ottway has had, but I'm willing to offer you fourteen dollars a week to begin with, and afterwards, if we get along together, to give you more. What do you say?" "I'd like to try it, Mr. Ditmar," Janet said, and added nothing, no word of gratitude or of appreciation to that consent. "Very well then," he replied, "that's settled. Miss Ottway will explain things to you, and tell you about my peculiarities. And when she goes you can take her desk, by the window nearest my door." Ditmar sat idle for some minutes after she had gone, staring through the open doorway into the outer office.... To Ditmar she had given no evidence of the storm his offer had created in her breast, and it was characteristic also that she waited until supper was nearly over to inform her family, making the announcement in a matter-of-fact tone, just as though it were not the unique piece of good fortune that had come to the Bumpuses since Edward had been eliminated from the mercantile establishment at Dolton. The news was received with something like consternation. For the moment Hannah was incapable of speech, and her hand trembled as she resumed the cutting of the pie: but hope surged within her despite her effort to keep it down, her determination to remain true to the fatalism from which she had paradoxically derived so much comfort. The effect on Edward, while somewhat less violent, was temporarily to take away his appetite. Hope, to flower in him, needed but little watering. Great was his faith in the Bumpus blood, and secretly he had always regarded his eldest daughter as the chosen vessel for their redemption. "Well, I swan!" he exclaimed, staring at her in admiration and neglecting his pie, "I've always thought you had it in you to get on, Janet. I guess I've told you you've always put me in mind of Eliza Bumpus--the one that held out against the Indians till her husband came back with the neighbours. I was just reading about her again the other night." "Yes, you've told us, Edward," said Hannah. "She had gumption," he went on, undismayed. "And from what I can gather of her looks I calculate you favour her--she was dark and not so very tall--not so tall as you, I guess. So you're goin'" (he pronounced it very slowly) "you're goin' to be Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer! He's a smart man, Mr. Ditmar, he's a good man, too. All you've got to do is to behave right by him. He always speaks to me when he passes by the gate. I was sorry for him when his wife died--a young woman, too. And he's never married again! Well, I swan!" "You'd better quit swanning," exclaimed Hannah. "And what's Mr. Ditmar's goodness got to do with it? He's found-out Janet has sense, she's willing and hard working, he won't" (pronounced want) "he won't be the loser by it, and he's not giving her what he gave Miss Ottway. It's just like you, thinking he's doing her a good turn." "I'm not saying Janet isn't smart," he protested, "but I know it's hard to get work with so many folks after every job." "Maybe it ain't so hard when you've got some get-up and go," Hannah retorted rather cruelly. It was thus characteristically and with unintentional sharpness she expressed her maternal pride by a reflection not only upon Edward, but Lise also. Janet had grown warm at the mention of Ditmar's name. "It was Miss Ottway who recommended me," she said, glancing at her sister, who during this conversation had sat in silence. Lise's expression, normally suggestive of a discontent not unbecoming to her type, had grown almost sullen. Hannah's brisk gathering up of the dishes was suddenly arrested. "Lise, why don't you say something to your sister? Ain't you glad she's got the place?" "Sure, I'm glad," said Lise, and began to unscrew the top of the salt shaker. "I don't see why I couldn't get a raise, too. I work just as hard as she does." Edward, who had never got a "raise" in his life, was smitten with compunction and sympathy. "Give 'em time, Lise," he said consolingly. "You ain't so old as Janet." "Time!" she cried, flaring up and suddenly losing her control. "I've got a picture of Waiters giving me a raise I know the girls that get raises from him." "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Hannah declared. "There--you've spilled the salt!" But Lise, suddenly bursting into tears, got up and left the room. Edward picked up the Banner and pretended to read it, while Janet collected the salt and put it back into the shaker. Hannah, gathering up the rest of the dishes, disappeared into the kitchen, but presently returned, as though she had forgotten something. "Hadn't you better go after her?" she said to Janet. "I'm afraid it won't be any use. She's got sort of queer, lately--she thinks they're down on her." "I'm sorry I spoke so sharp. But then--" Hannah shook her head, and her sentence remained unfinished. Janet sought her sister, but returned after a brief interval, with the news that Lise had gone out. One of the delights of friendship, as is well known, is the exchange of confidences of joy or sorrow, but there was, in Janet's promotion, something intensely personal to increase her natural reserve. Her feelings toward Ditmar were so mingled as to defy analysis, and several days went by before she could bring herself to inform Eda Rawle of the new business relationship in which she stood to the agent of the Chippering Mill. The sky was still bright as they walked out Warren Street after supper, Eda bewailing the trials of the day just ended: Mr. Frye, the cashier of the bank, had had one of his cantankerous fits, had found fault with her punctuation, nothing she had done had pleased him. But presently, when they had come to what the Banner called the "residential district," she was cheered by the sight of the green lawns, the flowerbeds and shrubbery, the mansions of those inhabitants of Hampton unfamiliar with boardinghouses and tenements. Before one of these she paused, retaining Janet by the arm, exclaiming wistfully: "Wouldn't you like to live there? That belongs to your boss." Janet, who had been dreaming as she gazed at the facade of rough stucco that once had sufficed to fill the ambitions of the late Mrs. Ditmar, recognized it as soon as Eda spoke, and dragged her friend hastily, almost roughly along the sidewalk until they had reached the end of the block. Janet was red. "What's the matter?" demanded Eda, as soon as she had recovered from her surprise. "Nothing," said Janet. "Only--I'm in his office." "But what of it? You've got a right to look at his house, haven't you?" "Why yes,--a right," Janet assented. Knowing Eda's ambitions for her were not those of a business career, she was in terror lest her friend should scent a romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the symptoms Ditmar had betrayed. She attempted to convey to Eda the doubtful taste of staring point-blank at the house of one's employer, especially when he might be concealed behind a curtain. "You see," she added, "Miss Ottway's recommended me for her place--she's going away." "Janet!" cried Eda. "Why didn't you tell me?" "Well," said Janet guiltily, "it's only a trial. I don't know whether he'll keep me or not." "Of course he'll keep you," said Eda, warmly. "If that isn't just like you, not saying a word about it. Gee, if I'd had a raise like that I just couldn't wait to tell you. But then, I'm not smart like you." "Don't be silly," said Janet, out of humour with herself, and annoyed because she could not then appreciate Eda's generosity. "We've just got to celebrate!" declared Eda, who had the gift, which Janet lacked, of taking her joys vicariously; and her romantic and somewhat medieval proclivities would permit no such momentous occasion to pass without an appropriate festal symbol. "We'll have a spree on Saturday--the circus is coming then." "It'll be my spree," insisted Janet, her heart warming. "I've got the raise...." On Saturday, accordingly, they met at Grady's for lunch, Eda attired in her best blouse of pale blue, and when they emerged from the restaurant, despite the torrid heat, she beheld Faber Street as in holiday garb as they made their way to the cool recesses of Winterhalter's to complete the feast. That glorified drug-store with the five bays included in its manifold functions a department rivalling Delmonico's, with electric fans and marble-topped tables and white-clad waiters who took one's order and filled it at the soda fountain. It mattered little to Eda that the young man awaiting their commands had pimples and long hair and grinned affectionately as he greeted them. "Hello, girls!" he said. "What strikes you to-day?" "Me for a raspberry nut sundae," announced Eda, and Janet, being unable to imagine any more delectable confection, assented. The penetrating odour peculiar to drugstores, dominated by menthol and some unnamable but ancient remedy for catarrh, was powerless to interfere with their enjoyment. The circus began at two. Rather than cling to the straps of a crowded car they chose to walk, following the familiar route of the trolley past the car barns and the base-ball park to the bare field under the seared face of Torrey's Hill, where circuses were wont to settle. A sirocco-like breeze from the southwest whirled into eddies the clouds of germ-laden dust stirred up by the automobiles, blowing their skirts against their legs, and sometimes they were forced to turn, clinging to their hats, confused and giggling, conscious of male glances. The crowd, increasing as they proceeded, was in holiday mood; young men with a newly-washed aspect, in Faber Street suits, chaffed boisterously groups of girls, who retorted with shrill cries and shrieks of laughter; amorous couples strolled, arm in arm, oblivious, as though the place were as empty as Eden; lady-killers with exaggerated square shoulders, wearing bright neckties, their predatory instincts alert, hovered about in eager search of adventure. There were men-killers, too, usually to be found in pairs, in startling costumes they had been persuaded were the latest Paris models,--imitations of French cocottes in Hampton, proof of the smallness of our modern world. Eda regarded them superciliously. "They'd like you to think they'd never been near a loom or a bobbin!" she exclaimed. In addition to these more conspicuous elements, the crowd contained sober operatives of the skilled sort possessed of sufficient means to bring hither their families, including the baby; there were section-hands and foremen, slashers, mule spinners, beamers, French-Canadians, Irish, Scotch, Welsh and English, Germans, with only an occasional Italian, Lithuanian, or Jew. Peanut and popcorn men, venders of tamales and Chile-con-carne hoarsely shouted their wares, while from afar could be heard the muffled booming of a band. Janet's heart beat faster. She regarded with a tinge of awe the vast expanse of tent that rose before her eyes, the wind sending ripples along the heavy canvas from circumference to tent pole. She bought the tickets; they entered the circular enclosure where the animals were kept; where the strong beams of the sun, in trying to force their way through the canvas roof, created an unnatural, jaundiced twilight, the weirdness of which was somehow enhanced by the hoarse, amazingly penetrating growls of beasts. Suddenly a lion near them raised a shaggy head, emitting a series of undulating, soul-shaking roars. "Ah, what's eatin' you?" demanded a thick-necked youth, pretending not to be awestricken by this demonstration. "Suppose he'd get out!" cried Eda, drawing Janet away. "I wouldn't let him hurt you, dearie," the young man assured her. "You!" she retorted contemptuously, but grinned in spite of herself, showing her gums. The vague feeling of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by the juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying or staring in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes never left these morsels beyond the bars. The two girls wandered about, their arms closely locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the beasts, the ineffable, pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled with the effluvia of animals, had aroused an excitement that was slow in subsiding. Some time elapsed before they were capable of taking a normal interest in the various exhibits. "`Adjutant Bird,'" Janet read presently from a legend on one of the compartments of a cage devoted to birds, and surveying the somewhat dissolute occupant. "Why, he's just like one of those tall mashers who stay at the Wilmot and stand on the sidewalk,--travelling men, you know." "Say-isn't he?" Eda agreed. "Isn't he pleased with himself, and his feet crossed!" "And see this one, Eda--he's a 'Harpy Eagle.' There's somebody we know looks just like that. Wait a minute--I'll tell you--it's the woman who sits in the cashier's cage at Grady's." "If it sure isn't!" said Eda. "She has the same fluffy, light hair--hairpins can't keep it down, and she looks at you in that same sort of surprised way with her head on one side when you hand in your check." "Why, it's true to the life!" cried Eda enthusiastically. "She thinks she's got all the men cinched,--she does and she's forty if she's a day." These comparisons brought them to a pitch of risible enjoyment amply sustained by the spectacle in the monkey cage, to which presently they turned. A chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly searching a friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering and screeching and chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on by their companions. "Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your relations--have ye?" Eda giggled hysterically. An elderly man was standing beside them. He was shabbily dressed, his own features were wizened, almost simian, and by his friendly and fatuous smile Janet recognized one of the harmless obsessed in which Hampton abounded. "Relations!" Eda exclaimed. "You and me, yes, and her," he answered, looking at Janet, though at first he had apparently entertained some doubt as to this inclusion, "we're all descended from them." His gesture triumphantly indicated the denizens of the cage. "What are you giving us?" said Eda. "Ain't you never read Darwin?" he demanded. "If you had, you'd know they're our ancestors, you'd know we came from them instead of Adam and Eve. That there's a fable." "I'll never believe I came from them," cried Eda, vehement in her disgust. But Janet laughed. "What's the difference? Some of us aren't any better than monkeys, anyway." "That's so," said the man approvingly. "That's so." He wanted to continue the conversation, but they left him rather ruthlessly. And when, from the entrance to the performance tent, they glanced back over their shoulders, he was still gazing at his cousins behind the bars, seemingly deriving an acute pleasure from his consciousness of the connection.... CHAPTER VI Modern business, by reason of the mingling of the sexes it involves, for the playwright and the novelist and the sociologist is full of interesting and dramatic situations, and in it may be studied, undoubtedly, one phase of the evolution tending to transform if not disintegrate certain institutions hitherto the corner-stones of society. Our stage is set. A young woman, conscious of ability, owes her promotion primarily to certain dynamic feminine qualities with which she is endowed. And though she may make an elaborate pretense of ignoring the fact, in her heart she knows and resents it, while at the same time, paradoxically, she gets a thrill from it,--a sustaining and inspiring thrill of power! On its face it is a business arrangement; secretly,--attempt to repudiate this as one may,--it is tinged with the colours of high adventure. When Janet entered into the intimate relationship with Mr. Claude Ditmar necessitated by her new duties as his private stenographer her attitude, slightly defiant, was the irreproachable one of a strict attention to duty. All unconsciously she was a true daughter of the twentieth century, and probably a feminist at heart, which is to say that her conduct was determined by no preconceived or handed-down notions of what was proper and lady-like. For feminism, in a sense, is a return to atavism, and sex antagonism and sex attraction are functions of the same thing. There were moments when she believed herself to hate Mr. Ditmar, when she treated him with an aloofness, an impersonality unsurpassed; moments when he paused in his dictation to stare at her in astonishment. He, who flattered himself that he understood women! She would show him!--such was her dominating determination. Her promotion assumed the guise of a challenge, of a gauntlet flung down at the feet of her sex. In a certain way, an insult, though incredibly stimulating. If he flattered himself that he had done her a favour, if he entertained the notion that he could presently take advantage of the contact with her now achieved to make unbusinesslike advances--well, he would find out. He had proclaimed his desire for an able assistant in Miss Ottway's place--he would get one, and nothing more. She watched narrowly, a l'affut, as the French say, for any signs of sentiment, and indeed this awareness of her being on guard may have had some influence on Mr. Ditmar's own attitude, likewise irreproachable.... A rather anaemic young woman, a Miss Annie James, was hired for Janet's old place. In spite of this aloofness and alertness, for the first time in her life Janet felt the exuberance of being in touch with affairs of import. Hitherto the mill had been merely a greedy monster claiming her freedom and draining her energies in tasks routine, such as the copying of meaningless documents and rows of figures; now, supplied with stimulus and a motive, the Corporation began to take on significance, and she flung herself into the work with an ardour hitherto unknown, determined to make herself so valuable to Ditmar that the time would come when he could not do without her. She strove to memorize certain names and addresses, lest time be lost in looking them up, to familiarize herself with the ordinary run of his correspondence, to recall what letters were to be marked "personal," to anticipate matters of routine, in order that he might not have the tedium of repeating instructions; she acquired the faculty of keeping his engagements in her head; she came early to the office, remaining after hours, going through the files, becoming familiar with his system; and she learned to sort out his correspondence, sifting the important from the unimportant, to protect him, more and more, from numerous visitors who called only to waste his time. Her instinct for the detection of book-agents, no matter how brisk and businesslike they might appear, was unerring--she remembered faces and the names belonging to them: an individual once observed to be persona non grata never succeeded in passing her twice. On one occasion Ditmar came out of his office to see the back of one of these visitors disappearing into the corridor. "Who was that?" he asked. "His name is McCalla," she said. "I thought you didn't want to be bothered." "But how in thunder did you get rid of him?" he demanded. "Oh, I just wouldn't let him in," she replied demurely. And Ditmar went away, wondering.... Thus she studied him, without permitting him to suspect it, learning his idiosyncrasies, his attitude toward all those with whom daily he came in contact, only to find herself approving. She was forced to admit that he was a judge of men, compelled to admire his adroitness in dealing with them. He could be democratic or autocratic as occasion demanded; he knew when to yield, and when to remain inflexible. One morning, for instance, there arrived from New York a dapper salesman whose jauntily tied bow, whose thin hair--carefully parted to conceal an incipient baldness--whose wary and slightly weary eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan atmosphere of high pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged. He had a machine to sell; an amazing machine, endowed with human intelligence and more than human infallibility; for when it made a mistake it stopped. It was designed for the express purpose of eliminating from the payroll the skilled and sharp-eyed women who are known as "drawers-in," who sit all day long under a north light patiently threading the ends of the warp through the heddles of the loom harness. Janet's imagination was gradually fired as she listened to the visitor's eloquence; and the textile industry, which hitherto had seemed to her uninteresting and sordid, took on the colours of romance. "Now I've made up my mind we'll place one with you, Mr. Ditmar," the salesman concluded. "I don't object to telling you we'd rather have one in the Chippering than in any mill in New England." Janet was surprised, almost shocked to see Ditmar shake his head, yet she felt a certain reluctant admiration because he had not been swayed by blandishments. At such moments, when he was bent on refusing a request, he seemed physically to acquire massiveness,--and he had a dogged way of chewing his cigar. "I don't want it, yet," he replied, "not until you improve it." And she was impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the machine as the salesman himself. In spite of protests, denials, appeals, he remained firm. "When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come back, Mr. Hicks--but don't come back until then." And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited.... Ditmar knew what he wanted. Of the mill he was the absolute master, familiar with every process, carrying constantly in his mind how many spindles, how many looms were at work; and if anything untoward happened, becoming aware of it by what seemed to Janet a subconscious process, sending for the superintendent of the department: for Mr. Orcutt, perhaps, whose office was across the hall--a tall, lean, spectacled man of fifty who looked like a schoolmaster. "Orcutt, what's the matter with the opener in Cooney's room?" "Why, the blower's out of order." "Well, whose fault is it?".... He knew every watchman and foreman in the mill, and many of the second hands. The old workers, men and women who had been in the Chippering employ through good and bad times for years, had a place in his affections, but toward the labour force in general his attitude was impersonal. The mill had to be run, and people to be got to run it. With him, first and last and always it was the mill, and little by little what had been for Janet a heterogeneous mass of machinery and human beings became unified and personified in Claude Ditmar. It was odd how the essence and quality of that great building had changed for her; how the very roaring of the looms, as she drew near the canal in the mornings, had ceased to be sinister and depressing, but bore now a burden like a great battle song to excite and inspire, to remind her that she had been snatched as by a miracle from the commonplace. And all this was a function of Ditmar. Life had become portentous. And she was troubled by no qualms of logic, but gloried, womanlike, in her lack of it. She did not ask herself why she had deliberately enlarged upon Miss Ottway's duties, invaded debatable ground in part inevitably personal, flung herself with such abandon into the enterprise of his life's passion, at the same time maintaining a deceptive attitude of detachment, half deceiving herself that it was zeal for the work by which she was actuated. In her soul she knew better. She was really pouring fuel on the flames. She read him, up to a certain point--as far as was necessary; and beneath his attempts at self-control she was conscious of a dynamic desire that betrayed itself in many acts and signs,--as when he brushed against her; and occasionally when he gave evidence with his subordinates of a certain shortness of temper unusual with him she experienced a vaguely alarming but delicious thrill of power. And this, of all men, was the great Mr. Ditmar! Was she in love with him? That question did not trouble her either. She continued to experience in his presence waves of antagonism and attraction, revealing to her depths and possibilities of her nature that frightened while they fascinated. It never occurred to her to desist. That craving in her for high adventure was not to be denied. On summer evenings it had been Ditmar's habit when in Hampton to stroll about his lawn, from time to time changing the position of the sprinkler, smoking a cigar, and reflecting pleasantly upon his existence. His house, as he gazed at it against the whitening sky, was an eminently satisfactory abode, his wife was dead, his children gave him no trouble; he felt a glow of paternal pride in his son as the boy raced up and down the sidewalk on a bicycle; George was manly, large and strong for his age, and had a domineering way with other boys that gave Ditmar secret pleasure. Of Amy, who was showing a tendency to stoutness, and who had inherited her mother's liking for candy and romances, Ditmar thought scarcely at all: he would glance at her as she lounged, reading, in a chair on the porch, but she did not come within his range of problems. He had, in short, everything to make a reasonable man content, a life nicely compounded of sustenance, pleasure, and business,--business naturally being the greatest of these. He was--though he did not know it--ethically and philosophically right in squaring his morals with his occupation, and his had been the good fortune to live in a world whose codes and conventions had been carefully adjusted to the pursuit of that particular brand of happiness he had made his own. Why, then, in the name of that happiness, of the peace and sanity and pleasurable effort it had brought him, had he allowed and even encouraged the advent of a new element that threatened to destroy the equilibrium achieved? an element refusing to be classified under the head of property, since it involved something he desired and could not buy? A woman who was not property, who resisted the attempt to be turned into property, was an anomaly in Ditmar's universe. He had not, of course, existed for more than forty years without having heard and read of and even encountered in an acquaintance or two the species of sex attraction sentimentally called love that sometimes made fools of men and played havoc with more important affairs, but in his experience it had never interfered with his sanity or his appetite or the Chippering Mill: it had never made his cigars taste bitter; it had never caused a deterioration in the appreciation of what he had achieved and held. But now he was experiencing strange symptoms of an intensity out of all proportion to that of former relations with the other sex. What was most unusual for him, he was alarmed and depressed, at moments irritable. He regretted the capricious and apparently accidental impulse that had made him pretend to tinker with his automobile that day by the canal, that had led him to the incomparable idiocy of getting rid of Miss Ottway and installing the disturber of his peace as his private stenographer. What the devil was it in her that made him so uncomfortable? When in his office he had difficulty in keeping his mind on matters of import; he would watch her furtively as she went about the room with the lithe and noiseless movements that excited him the more because he suspected beneath her outward and restrained demeanour a fierceness he craved yet feared. He thought of her continually as a panther, a panther he had caught and could not tame; he hadn't even caught her, since she might escape at any time. He took precautions not to alarm her. When she brushed against him he trembled. Continually she baffled and puzzled him, and he never could tell of what she was thinking. She represented a whole set of new and undetermined values for which he had no precedents, and unlike every woman he had known--including his wife--she had an integrity of her own, seemingly beyond the reach of all influences economic and social. All the more exasperating, therefore, was a propinquity creating an intimacy without substance, or without the substance he craved for she had magically become for him a sort of enveloping, protecting atmosphere. In an astonishingly brief time he had fallen into the habit of talking things over with her; naturally not affairs of the first importance, but matters such as the economy of his time: when, for instance, it was most convenient for him to go to Boston; and he would find that she had telephoned, without being told, to the office there when to expect him, to his chauffeur to be on hand. He never had to tell her a thing twice, nor did she interrupt--as Miss Ottway sometimes had done--the processes of his thought. Without realizing it he fell into the habit of listening for the inflections of her voice, and though he had never lacked the power of making decisions, she somehow made these easier for him especially if, a human equation were involved. He had, at least, the consolation--if it were one--of reflecting that his reputation was safe, that there would be no scandal, since two are necessary to make the kind of scandal he had always feared, and Miss Bumpus, apparently, had no intention of being the second party. Yet she was not virtuous, as he had hitherto defined the word. Of this he was sure. No woman who moved about as she did, who had such an effect on him, who had on occasions, though inadvertently, returned the lightning of his glances, whose rare laughter resembled grace notes, and in whose hair was that almost imperceptible kink, could be virtuous. This instinctive conviction inflamed him. For the first time in his life he began to doubt the universal conquering quality of his own charms,--and when such a thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of hell-fire. He indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and excursions that hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if his cronies inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed to answer with his usual geniality. "Everything going all right up at the mills, Colonel?" he was asked one day by Mr. Madden, the treasurer of a large shoe company, when they met on the marble tiles of the hall in their Boston club. "All right. Why?" "Well," replied Madden, conciliatingly, "you seem kind of preoccupied, that's all. I didn't know but what the fifty-four hour bill the legislature's just put through might be worrying you." "We'll handle that situation when the time comes," said Ditmar. He accepted a gin rickey, but declined rather curtly the suggestion of a little spree over Sunday to a resort on the Cape which formerly he would have found enticing. On another occasion he encountered in the lobby of the Parker House a more intimate friend, Chester Sprole, sallow, self-made, somewhat corpulent, one of those lawyers hail fellows well met in business circles and looked upon askance by the Brahmins of their profession; more than half politician, he had been in Congress, and from time to time was retained by large business interests because of his persuasive gifts with committees of the legislature--though these had been powerless to avert the recent calamity of the women and children's fifty-four hour bill. Mr. Sprole's hair was prematurely white, and the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes were not the result of legal worries. "Hullo, Dit," he said jovially. "Hullo, Ches," said Ditmar. "Now you're the very chap I wanted to see. Where have you been keeping yourself lately? Come out to the farm to-night,--same of the boys'll be there." Mr. Sprole, like many a self-made man, was proud of his farm, though he did not lead a wholly bucolic existence. "I can't, Ches," answered Ditmar. "I've got to go back to Hampton." This statement Mr. Sprole unwisely accepted as a fiction. He took hold of Ditmar's arm. "A lady--eh--what?" "I've got to go back to Hampton," repeated Ditmar, with a suggestion of truculence that took his friend aback. Not for worlds would Mr. Sprole have offended the agent of the Chippering Mill. "I was only joking, Claude," he hastened to explain. Ditmar, somewhat mollified but still dejected, sought the dining-room when the lawyer had gone. "All alone to-night, Colonel?" asked the coloured head waiter, obsequiously. Ditmar demanded a table in the corner, and consumed a solitary meal. Very naturally Janet was aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the cause of it. Her feelings were complicated. He, the most important man in Hampton, the self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and unattainable head of the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill, of which she was an insignificant unit, at times became for her just a man--a man for whom she had achieved a delicious contempt. And the knowledge that she, if she chose, could sway and dominate him by the mere exercise of that strange feminine force within her was intoxicating and terrifying. She read this in a thousand signs; in his glances; in his movements revealing a desire to touch her; in little things he said, apparently insignificant, yet fraught with meaning; in a constant recurrence of the apologetic attitude--so alien to the Ditmar formerly conceived--of which he had given evidence that day by the canal: and from this attitude emanated, paradoxically, a virile and galvanic current profoundly disturbing. Sometimes when he bent over her she experienced a commingled ecstasy and fear that he would seize her in his arms. Yet the tension was not constant, rising and falling with his moods and struggles, all of which she read--unguessed by him--as easily as a printed page by the gift that dispenses with laborious processes of the intellect. On the other hand, a resentment boiled within her his masculine mind failed to fathom. Stevenson said of John Knox that many women had come to learn from him, but he had never condescended to become a learner in return--a remark more or less applicable to Ditmar. She was, perforce, thrilled that he was virile and wanted her, but because he wanted her clandestinely her pride revolted, divining his fear of scandal and hating him for it like a thoroughbred. To do her justice, marriage never occurred to her. She was not so commonplace. There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax, when some incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise that had absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill. One day in September, for instance, after an absence in New York, he returned to the office late in the afternoon, and she was quick to sense his elation, to recognize in him the restored presence of the quality of elan, of command, of singleness of purpose that had characterized him before she had become his stenographer. At first, as he read his mail, he seemed scarcely conscious of her presence. She stood by the window, awaiting his pleasure, watching the white mist as it rolled over the floor of the river, catching glimpses in vivid, saffron blurs of the lights of the Arundel Mill on the farther shore. Autumn was at hand. Suddenly she heard Ditmar speaking. "Would you mind staying a little while longer this evening, Miss Bumpus?" "Not at all," she replied, turning. On his face was a smile, almost boyish. "The fact is, I think I've got hold of the biggest single order that ever came into any mill in New England," he declared. "Oh, I'm glad," she said quickly. "The cotton cards--?" he demanded. She knew he referred to the schedules, based on the current prices of cotton, made out in the agent's office and sent in duplicate to the selling house, in Boston. She got them from the shelf; and as he went over them she heard him repeating the names of various goods now become familiar, pongees, poplins, percales and voiles, garbardines and galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and Madras shirtings, while he wrote down figures on a sheet of paper. So complete was his absorption in this task that Janet, although she had resented the insinuating pressure of his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical sensation of jealousy. Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up the Boston office and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton buyer; and she learned from the talk over the telephone though it was mostly about "futures"--that Ditmar had lingered for a conference in Boston on his way back from New York. Afterwards, having dictated two telegrams which she wrote out on her machine, he leaned back in his chair; and though the business for the day was ended, showed a desire to detain her. His mood became communicative. "I've been on the trail of that order for a month," he declared. "Of course it isn't my business to get orders, but to manage this mill, and that's enough for one man, God knows. But I heard the Bradlaughs were in the market for these goods, and I told the selling house to lie low, that I'd go after it. I knew I could get away with it, if anybody could. I went to the Bradlaughs and sat down on 'em, I lived with 'em, ate with 'em, brought 'em home at night. I didn't let 'em alone a minute until they handed it over. I wasn't going to give any other mill in New England or any of those southern concerns a chance to walk off with it--not on your life! Why, we have the facilities. There isn't another mill in the country can turn it out in the time they ask, and even we will have to go some to do it. But we'll do it, by George, unless I'm struck by lightning." He leaned forward, hitting the desk with his fist, and Janet, standing beside him, smiled. She had the tempting gift of silence. Forgetting her twinge of jealousy, she was drawn toward him now, and in this mood of boyish exuberance, of self-confidence and pride in his powers and success she liked him better than ever before. She had, for the first time, the curious feeling of being years older than he, yet this did not detract from a new-born admiration. "I made this mill, and I'm proud of it," he went on. "When old Stephen Chippering put me in charge he was losing money, he'd had three agents in four years. The old man knew I had it in me, and I knew it, if I do say it myself. All this union labour talk about shorter hours makes me sick--why, there was a time when I worked ten and twelve hours a day, and I'm man enough to do it yet, if I have to. When the last agent--that was Cort--was sacked I went to Boston on my own hook and tackled the old gentleman--that's the only way to get anywhere. I couldn't bear to see the mill going to scrap, and I told him a thing or two,--I had the facts and the figures. Stephen Chippering was a big man, but he had a streak of obstinacy in him, he was conservative, you bet. I had to get it across to him there was a lot of dead wood in this plant, I had to wake him up to the fact that the twentieth century was here. He had to be shown--he was from Boston, you know--" Ditmar laughed--"but he was all wool and a yard wide, and he liked me and trusted me. "That was in nineteen hundred. I can remember the interview as well as if it had happened last night--we sat up until two o'clock in the morning in that library of his with the marble busts and the leather-bound books and the double windows looking out over the Charles, where the wind was blowing a gale. And at last he said, `All right, Claude, go ahead. I'll put you in as agent, and stand behind you.' And by thunder, he did stand behind me. He was quiet, the finest looking old man I ever saw in my life, straight as a ramrod, with a little white goatee and a red, weathered face full of creases, and a skin that looked as if it had been pricked all over with needles--the old Boston sort. They don't seem to turn 'em out any more. Why, I have a picture of him here." He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a photograph. Janet gazed at it sympathetically. "It doesn't give you any notion of those eyes of his," Ditmar said, reminiscently. "They looked right through a man's skull, no matter how thick it was. If anything went wrong, I never wasted any time in telling him about it, and I guess it was one reason he liked me. Some of the people up here didn't understand him, kow-towed to him, they were scared of him, and if he thought they had something up their sleeves he looked as if he were going to eat 'em alive. Regular fighting eyes, the kind that get inside of a man and turn the light on. And he sat so still--made you ashamed of yourself. Well, he was a born fighter, went from Harvard into the Rebellion and was left for dead at Seven Oaks, where one of the company found him and saved him. He set that may up for life, and never talked about it, either. See what he wrote on the bottom--'To my friend, Claude Ditmar, Stephen Chippering.' And believe me, when he once called a man a friend he never took it back. I know one thing, I'll never get another friend like him." With a gesture that gave her a new insight into Ditmar, reverently he took the picture from her hand and placed it back in the drawer. She was stirred, almost to tears, and moved away from him a little, as though to lessen by distance the sudden attraction he had begun to exert: yet she lingered, half leaning, half sitting on the corner of the big desk, her head bent toward him, her eyes filled with light. She was wondering whether he could ever love a woman as he loved this man of whom he had spoken, whether he could be as true to a woman. His own attitude seemed never to have been more impersonal, but she had ceased to resent it; something within her whispered that she was the conductor, the inspirer.. "I wish Stephen Chippering could have lived to see this order," he exclaimed, "to see the Chippering Mill to-day! I guess he'd be proud of it, I guess he wouldn't regret having put me in as agent." Janet did not reply. She could not. She sat regarding him intently, and when he raised his eyes and caught her luminous glance, his expression changed, she knew Stephen Chippering had passed from his mind. "I hope you like it here," he said. His voice had become vibrant, ingratiating, he had changed from the master to the suppliant--and yet she was not displeased. Power had suddenly flowed back into her, and with it an exhilarating self-command. "I do like it," she answered. "But you said, when I asked you to be my stenographer, that you didn't care for your work." "Oh, this is different." "How?" "I'm interested, the mill means something to me now you see, I'm not just copying things I don't know anything about." "I'm glad you're interested," he said, in the same odd, awkward tone. "I've never had any one in the office who did my work as well. Now Miss Ottway was a good stenographer, she was capable, and a fine woman, but she never got the idea, the spirit of the mill in her as you've got it, and she wasn't able to save me trouble, as you do. It's remarkable how you've come to understand, and in such a short time." Janet coloured. She did not look at him, but had risen and begun to straighten out the papers beside her. "There are lots of other things I'd like to understand," she said. "What?" he demanded. "Well--about the mill. I never thought much about it before, I always hated it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him. "It was just drudgery. But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd like to see the machinery." "I'll take you through myself--to-morrow," he declared. His evident agitation made her pause. They were alone, the outer office deserted, and the Ditmar she saw now, whom she had summoned up with ridiculous ease by virtue of that mysterious power within her, was no longer the agent of the Chippering Mill, a boy filled with enthusiasm by a business achievement, but a man, the incarnation and expression of masculine desire desire for her. She knew she could compel him, if she chose, to throw caution to the winds. "Oh no!" she exclaimed. She was afraid of him, she shrank from such a conspicuous sign of his favour. "Why not?" he asked. "Because I don't want you to," she said, and realized, as soon as she had spoken, that her words might imply the existence of a something between them never before hinted at by her. "I'll get Mr. Caldwell to take me through." She moved toward the door, and turned; though still on fire within, her manner had become demure, repressed. "Did you wish anything more this evening?" she inquired. "That's all," he said, and she saw that he was gripping the arms of his chair.... CHAPTER VII Autumn was at hand. All day it had rained, but now, as night fell and Janet went homeward, the white mist from the river was creeping stealthily over the city, disguising the familiar and sordid landmarks. These had become beautiful, mysterious, somehow appealing. The electric arcs, splotches in the veil, revealed on the Common phantom trees; and in the distance, against the blurred lights from the Warren Street stores skirting the park could be seen phantom vehicles, phantom people moving to and fro. Thus, it seemed to Janet, invaded by a pearly mist was her own soul, in which she walked in wonder,--a mist shot through and through with soft, exhilarating lights half disclosing yet transforming and etherealizing certain landmark's there on which, formerly, she had not cared to gaze. She was thinking of Ditmar as she had left him gripping his chair, as he had dismissed her for the day, curtly, almost savagely. She had wounded and repelled him, and lingering in her was that exquisite touch of fear--a fear now not so much inspired by Ditmar as by the semi-acknowledged recognition of certain tendencies and capacities within herself. Yet she rejoiced in them, she was glad she had hurt Ditmar, she would hurt him again. Still palpitating, she reached the house in Fillmore Street, halting a moment with her hand on the door, knowing her face was flushed, anxious lest her mother or Lise might notice something unusual in her manner. But, when she had slowly mounted the stairs and lighted the gas in the bedroom the sight of her sister's clothes cast over the chairs was proof that Lise had already donned her evening finery and departed. The room was filled with the stale smell of clothes, which Janet detested. She flung open the windows. She took off her hat and swiftly tidied herself, yet the relief she felt at Lise's absence was modified by a sudden, vehement protest against sordidness. Why should she not live by herself amidst clean and tidy surroundings? She had begun to earn enough, and somehow a vista had been opened up--a vista whose end she could not see, alluring, enticing.... In the dining-room, by the cleared table, her father was reading the Banner; her mother appeared in the kitchen door. "What in the world happened to you, Janet?" she exclaimed. "Nothing," said Janet. "Mr. Ditmar asked me to stay--that was all. He'd been away." "I was worried, I was going to make your father go down to the mill. I've saved you some supper." "I don't want much," Janet told her, "I'm not hungry." "I guess you have to work too hard in that new place," said Hannah, as she brought in the filled plate from the oven. "Well, it seems to agree with her, mother," declared Edward, who could always be counted on to say the wrong thing with the best of intentions. "I never saw her looking as well--why, I swan, she's getting real pretty!" Hannah darted at him a glance, but restrained herself, and Janet reddened as she tried to eat the beans placed before her. The pork had browned and hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered the potatoes. When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and her mother went back into the kitchen she began to speculate rather resentfully and yet excitedly why it was that this adventure with a man, with Ditmar, made her look better, feel better,--more alive. She was too honest to disguise from herself that it was an adventure, a high one, fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and delights. Her promotion had been merely incidental. Both her mother and father, did they know the true circumstances,--that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was perhaps in love with her--would be disturbed. Undoubtedly they would have believed that she could "take care" of herself. She knew that matters could not go on as they were, that she would either have to leave Mr. Ditmar or--and here she baulked at being logical. She had no intention of leaving him: to remain, according to the notions of her parents, would be wrong. Why was it that doing wrong agreed with her, energized her, made her more alert, cleverer, keying up her faculties? turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one? To abandon Ditmar would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from which she had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat; by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs with the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing protruded, the tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had bought at a bargain at the Bagatelle.... The wooden clock with the round face and quaint landscape below--the family's most cherished heirloom--though long familiar, was not so bad; but the two yellowed engravings on the wall offended her. They had been wedding presents to Edward's father. One represented a stupid German peasant woman holding a baby, and standing in front of a thatched cottage; its companion was a sylvan scene in which certain wooden rustics were supposed to be enjoying themselves. Between the two, and dotted with flyspecks, hung an insurance calendar on which was a huge head of a lady, florid, fluffy-haired, flirtatious. Lise thought her beautiful. The room was ugly. She had long known that, but tonight the realization came to her that what she chiefly resented in it was the note it proclaimed--the note of a mute acquiescence, without protest or struggle, in what life might send. It reflected accurately the attitude of her parents, particularly of her father. With an odd sense of detachment, of critical remoteness and contempt she glanced at him as he sat stupidly absorbed in his newspaper, his face puckered, his lips pursed, and Ditmar rose before her--Ditmar, the embodiment of an indomitableness that refused to be beaten and crushed. She thought of the story he had told her, how by self-assertion and persistence he had become agent of the Chippering Mill, how he had convinced Mr. Stephen Chippering of his ability. She could not think of the mill as belonging to the Chipperings and the other stockholders, but to Ditmar, who had shaped it into an expression of himself, since it was his ideal. And now it seemed that he had made it hers also. She regretted having repulsed him, pushed her plate away from her, and rose. "You haven't eaten anything," said Hannah, who had come into the room. "Where are you going?" "Out--to Eda's," Janet answered.... "It's late," Hannah objected. But Janet departed. Instead of going to Eda's she walked alone, seeking the quieter streets that her thoughts might flow undisturbed. At ten o'clock, when she returned, the light was out in the diningroom, her sister had not come in, and she began slowly to undress, pausing every now and then to sit on the bed and dream; once she surprised herself gazing into the glass with a rapt expression that was almost a smile. What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar? No other man had ever noticed it. She had never thought herself good looking, and now--it was astonishing!--she seemed to have changed, and she saw with pride that her arms and neck were shapely, that her dark hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to her waist. She caressed it; it was fine. When she looked again, a radiancy seemed to envelop her. She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, looking shyly in the mirror and always seeing that radiancy.... Suddenly it occurred to her with a shock that she was doing exactly what she had despised Lise for doing, and leaving the mirror she hurried her toilet, put out the light, and got into bed. For a long time, however, she remained wakeful, turning first on one side and then on the other, trying to banish from her mind the episode that had excited her. But always it came back again. She saw Ditmar before her, virile, vital, electric with desire. At last she fell asleep. Gradually she was awakened by something penetrating her consciousness, something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she could not define. The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving peculiarly about the room. Janet watched her. She stood in front of the bureau, just as Janet herself had done, her hands at her throat. At last she let them fall, her head turning slowly, as though drawn, by some irresistible, hypnotic power, and their eyes met. Lise's were filmed, like those of a dog whose head is being stroked, expressing a luxuriant dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate. "Say, did I wake you?" she asked. "I did my best not to make any noise--honest to God." "It wasn't the noise that woke me up," said Janet. "It couldn't have been." "You've been drinking!" said Janet, slowly. Lise giggled. "What's it to you, angel face!" she inquired. "Quiet down, now, and go bye-bye." Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her. She was limp. She began to whimper. "Cut it out--leave me go. It ain't nothing to you what I do--I just had a highball." Janet released her and drew back. "I just had a highball--honest to God!" "Don't say that again!" whispered Janet, fiercely. "Oh, very well. For God's sake, go to bed and leave me alone--I can take care of myself, I guess--I ain't nutty enough to hit the booze. But I ain't like you--I've got to have a little fun to keep alive." "A little fun!" Janet exclaimed. The phrase struck her sharply. A little fun to keep alive! With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise approached a chair, and sank into it,--jerking her head in the direction of the room where Hannah and Edward slept. "D'you want to wake 'em up? Is that your game?" she asked, and began to fumble at her belt. Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to nausea, Janet approached her sister again, little by little undressing her, and finally getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into a profound slumber. Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible: the odour lurked like a foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the stagnant, damp air that came in at the open window, fairly saturating her with horror: it seemed the very essence of degradation. But as she lay on the edge of the bed, shrinking from contamination, in the throes of excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she grew hot, she could feel and almost hear the pounding of her heart. She rose, felt around in the clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the door, crept through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit the lamp; darkness had become a terror. A cockroach scurried across the linoleum. The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale food, but at least she found relief from that other odour. She sank down on the sofa. Her sister was drunk. That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was not the drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion of something else. Where had Lise been? In whose company had she become drunk? Of late, in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been singularly secretive as to her companions, and the manner in which her evenings were spent; and she, Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be curious. Lise, with her shopgirl's cynical knowledge of life and its pitfalls and the high valuation at which she held her charms, had seemed secure from danger; but Janet recalled her discouragement, her threat to leave the Bagatelle. Since then there had been something furtive about her. Now, because that odour of alcohol Lise exhaled had destroyed in Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she had begun to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for her sister no strain of pity. A proof, had she recognized it, that immorality is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual emotions. A few hours before she had seen nothing wrong in her relationship with Ditmar: now she beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing her for one end, his own gratification. As a man, he had become an enemy. Ditmar was like all other men who exploited her sex without compunction, but the thought that she was like Lise, asleep in a drunken stupor, that their cases differed only in degree, was insupportable. At last she fell asleep from sheer weariness, to dream she was with Ditmar at some place in the country under spreading trees, Silliston, perhaps--Silliston Common, cleverly disguised: nor was she quite sure, always, that the man was Ditmar; he had a way of changing, of resembling the man she had met in Silliston whom she had mistaken for a carpenter. He was pleading with her, in his voice was the peculiar vibrancy that thrilled her, that summoned some answering thing out of the depths of her, and she felt herself yielding with a strange ecstasy in which were mingled joy and terror. The terror was conquering the joy, and suddenly he stood transformed before her eyes, caricatured, become a shrieking monster from whom she sought in agony to escape.... In this paralysis of fear she awoke, staring with wide eyes at the flickering flame of the lamp, to a world filled with excruciating sound--the siren of the Chippering Mill! She lay trembling with the horror of the dream-spell upon her, still more than half convinced that the siren was Ditmar's voice, his true expression. He was waiting to devour her. Would the sound never end?... Then, remembering where she was, alarmed lest her mother might come in and find her there, she left the sofa, turned out the sputtering lamp, and ran into the bedroom. Rain was splashing on the bricks of the passage-way outside, the shadows of the night still lurked in the corners; by the grey light she gazed at Lise, who breathed loudly and stirred uneasily, her mouth open, her lips parched. Janet touched her. "Lise--get up!" she said. "It's time to get up." She shook her. "Leave me alone--can't you?" "It's time to get up. The whistle has sounded." Lise heavily opened her eyes. They were bloodshot. "I don't want to get up. I won't get up." "But you must," insisted Janet, tightening her hold. "You've got to--you've got to eat breakfast and go to work." "I don't want any breakfast, I ain't going to work any more." A gust of wind blew inward the cheap lace curtains, and the physical effect of it emphasized the chill that struck Janet's heart. She got up and closed the window, lit the gas, and returning to the bed, shook Lise again. "Listen," she said, "if you don't get up I'll tell mother what happened last night." "Say, you wouldn't--!" exclaimed Lise, angrily. "Get up!" Janet commanded, and watched her rather anxiously, uncertain as to the after effects of drunkenness. But Lise got up. She sat on the edge of the bed and yawned, putting her hand to her forehead. "I've sure got a head on me," she remarked. Janet was silent, angrier than ever, shocked that tragedy, degradation, could be accepted thus circumstantially. Lise proceeded to put up her hair. She seemed to be mistress of herself; only tired, gaping frequently. Once she remarked:--"I don't see the good of getting nutty over a highball." Seeing that Janet was not to be led into controversy, she grew morose. Breakfast in Fillmore Street, never a lively meal, was more dismal than usual that morning, eaten to the accompaniment of slopping water from the roofs on the pavement of the passage. The indisposition of Lise passed unobserved by both Hannah and Edward; and at twenty minutes to eight the two girls, with rubbers and umbrellas, left the house together, though it was Janet's custom to depart earlier, since she had farther to go. Lise, suspicious, maintained an obstinate silence, keeping close to the curb. They reached the corner by the provision shop with the pink and orange chromos of jellies in the window. "Lise, has anything happened to you?" demanded Janet suddenly. "I want you to tell me." "Anything happened--what do you mean? Anything happened?" "You know very well what I mean." "Well, suppose something has happened?" Lise's reply was pert, defiant. "What's it to you? If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't it?" Janet approached her. "What are you trying to do?" said Lise. "Push me into the gutter?" "I guess you're there already," said Janet. Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury. She turned on Janet and thrust her back. "Well, if I am who's going to blame me?" she cried. "If you had to work all day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six a week, I guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either. It's easy for you to shoot off your mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar." Janet was outraged. She could not restrain her anger. "How dare you say that?" she demanded. Lise was cowed. "Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything. Just because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of gentlemen--they were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as Ditmar--you come at me and tell me I'm all to the bad." She began to sob. "I'm as straight as you are. How was I to know the highball was stiff? Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on the queer, and everything in the joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came home with me." Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and resentment: relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the truth, anxiety because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because Ditmar had been mentioned. Still, what she had feared most had not come to pass. Lise left her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a back entrance of the Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way. Where, she wondered, would it all end? Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was an ominous sign. And "gentlemen"? What kind of gentlemen had taken her sister to Gruber's? Would Ditmar do that sort of thing if he had a chance? The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was plastered with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving rain in the night. The sky above the mills was sepia. White lights were burning in the loom rooms. When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the watchman, informed her that Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left for Boston. Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointment on learning that Ditmar had gone to Boston. She knew he had had no such intention the night before; an accumulated mail and many matters demanding decisions were awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an act directed personally against her, in the nature of a retaliation, since she had offended and repulsed him. Through Lise's degrading act she had arrived at the conclusion that all adventure and consequent suffering had to do with Man--a conviction peculiarly maddening to such temperaments as Janet's. Therefore she interpreted her suffering in terms of Ditmar, she had looked forward to tormenting him again, and by departing he had deliberately balked and cheated her. The rain fell ceaselessly out of black skies, night seemed ever ready to descend on the river, a darkness--according to young Mr. Caldwell--due not to the clouds alone, but to forest fires many hundreds of miles away, in Canada. As the day wore on, however, her anger gradually gave place to an extreme weariness and depression, and yet she dreaded going home, inventing things for herself to do; arranging and rearranging Ditmar's papers that he might have less trouble in sorting them, putting those uppermost which she thought he would deem the most important. Perhaps he would come in, late! In a world of impending chaos the brilliantly lighted office was a tiny refuge to which she clung. At last she put on her coat and rubbers, faring forth reluctantly into the wet. At first when she entered the bedroom she thought it empty, though the gas was burning, and them she saw Lise lying face downward on the bed. For a moment she stood still, then closed the door softly. "Lise," she said. "What?" Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand. Unconsciously she began to stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own. "Lise," she said, "I understand why you--" she could not bring herself to pronounce the words "got drunk,"--"I understand why you did it. I oughtn't to have talked to you that way. But it was terrible to wake up and see you." For awhile Lise did not reply. Then she raised herself, feeling her hair with an involuntary gesture, regarding her sister with a bewildered look, her face puckered. Her eyes burned, and under them were black shadows. "How do you mean--you understand?" she asked slowly. "You never hit the booze." Even Lise's language, which ordinarily offended her, failed to change her sudden impassioned and repentant mood. She was astonished at herself for this sudden softening, since she did not really love Lise, and all day she had hated her, wished never to see her again. "No, but I can understand how it would be to want to," Janet said. "Lise, I guess we're searching--both of us for something we'll never find." Lise stared at her with a contracted, puzzled expression, as of a person awaking from sleep, all of whose faculties are being strained toward comprehension. "What do you mean?" she demanded. "You and me? You're all right--you've got no kick coming." "Life is hard, it's hard on girls like us--we want things we can't have." Janet was at a loss to express herself. "Well, it ain't any pipe dream," Lise agreed. Her glance turned involuntarily toward the picture of the Olympian dinner party pinned on the wall. "Swells have a good time," she added. "Maybe they pay for it, too," said Janet. "I wouldn't holler about paying--it's paying and not getting the goods," declared Lise. "You'll pay, and you won't get it. That kind of life is--hell," Janet cried. Self-centered as Lise was, absorbed in her own trouble and present physical discomfort, this unaccustomed word from her sister and the vehemence with which it was spoken surprised and frightened her, brought home to her some hint of the terror in Janet's soul. "Me for the water wagon," she said. Janet was not convinced. She had hoped to discover the identity of the man who had taken Lise to Gruber's, but she did not attempt to continue the conversation. She rose and took off her hat. "Why don't you go to bed?" she asked. "I'll tell mother you have a headache and bring in your supper." "Well, I don't care if I do," replied Lise, gratefully. Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the human organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so called, is as sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected by lack of sleep, by smells and sounds, by food, by the weather--whether a day be sapphire or obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood are thwarted by the actions of the next. Janet had observed this phenomenon, and sometimes, when it troubled her, she thought herself the most inconsistent and vacillating of creatures. She had resolved, far instance, before she fell asleep, to leave the Chippering Mill, to banish Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, whence she could send some of her wages home: and in the morning, as she made her way to the office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and unity. But the northwest wind was blowing. It had chased away the mist and the clouds, the smoke from Canada. The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of the Common cast sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when she reached the office and looked out of his window she saw the blue river covered with quicksilver waves chasing one another across the current. Ditmar had not yet returned to Hampton. About ten o'clock, as she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price, young Mr. Caldwell approached her. He had a Boston newspaper in his hand. "Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?" he asked. "About Mr. Ditmar? No." "It's quite a send-off for the Colonel," said Caldwell, who was wont at times to use the title facetiously. "Listen; `One of the most notable figures in the Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar, Agent of the Chippering Mill.'" Caldwell spread out the page and pointed to a picture. "There he is, as large as life." A little larger than life, Janet thought. Ditmar was one of those men who, as the expression goes, "take" well, a valuable asset in semi-public careers; and as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of the building where they had "snap-shotted" him he appeared even more massive, forceful, and preponderant than she had known him. Beholding him thus set forth and praised in a public print, he seemed suddenly to have been distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at a bound the dizzy importance he had possessed for her before she became his stenographer. She found it impossible to realize that this was the Ditmar who had pursued and desired her; at times supplicating, apologetic, abject; and again revealed by the light in his eyes and the trembling of his hand as the sinister and ruthless predatory male from whom--since the revelation in her sister Lise she had determined to flee, and whom she had persuaded herself she despised. He was a bigger man than she had thought, and as she read rapidly down the column the fascination that crept over her was mingled with disquieting doubt of her own powers: it was now difficult to believe she had dominated or could ever dominate this self-sufficient, successful person, the list of whose achievements and qualities was so alluringly set forth by an interviewer who himself had fallen a victim. The article carried the implication that the modern, practical, American business man was the highest type as yet evolved by civilization: and Ditmar, referred to as "a wizard of the textile industry," was emphatically one who had earned the gratitude of the grand old Commonwealth. By the efforts of such sons she continued to maintain her commanding position among her sister states. Prominent among the qualities contributing to his success was open-mindedness, "a willingness to be shown," to scrap machinery when his competitors still clung to older methods. The Chippering Mill had never had a serious strike, --indication of an ability to deal with labour; and Mr. Ditmar's views on labour followed: if his people had a grievance, let them come to him, and settle it between them. No unions. He had consistently refused to recognize them. There was mention of the Bradlaugh order as being the largest commission ever given to a single mill, a reference to the excitement and speculation it had aroused in trade circles. Claude Ditmar's ability to put it through was unquestioned; one had only to look at him,--tenacity, forcefulness, executiveness were written all over him.... In addition, the article contained much material of an autobiographical nature that must--Janet thought--have been supplied by Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder self-eulogy of an interview. But she recognized several characteristic phrases. Caldwell, watching her as she read, was suddenly fascinated. During a trip abroad, while still an undergraduate, he had once seen the face of an actress, a really good Parisian actress, light up in that way; and it had revealed to him, in a flash, the meaning of enthusiasm. Now Janet became vivid for him. There must be something unusual in a person whose feelings could be so intense, whose emotions rang so true. He was not unsophisticated. He had sometimes wondered why Ditmar had promoted her, though acknowledging her ability. He admired Ditmar, but had no illusions about him. Harvard, and birth in a social stratum where emphasis is superfluous, enabled him to smile at the reporter's exuberance; and he was the more drawn toward her to see on Janet's flushed face the hint of a smile as she looked up at him when she had finished. "The Colonel hypnotized that reporter," he said, as he took the paper; and her laugh, despite its little tremor, betrayed in her an unsuspected, humorous sense of proportion. "Well, I'll take off my hat to him," Caldwell went on. "He is a wonder, he's got the mill right up to capacity in a week. He's agreed to deliver those goods to the Bradlaughs by the first of April, you know, and Holster, of the Clarendon, swears it can't be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. Well, I stand to lose twenty-five dollars on him." This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving loyalty in her. She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence. He was a self-contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly hair, cordial and friendly yet never intimate with the other employer; liked by them--but it was tacitly understood his footing differed from theirs. He was a cousin of the Chipperings, and destined for rapid promotion. He went away every Saturday, it was known that he spent Sundays and holidays in delightful places, to return reddened and tanned; and though he never spoke about these excursions, and put on no airs of superiority, there was that in his manner and even in the cut of his well-worn suits proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs, to a category of fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are sustained from above. Even Ditmar was not of these. "I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told Janet. "They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics." And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:--"Will you take me through sometime, Mr. Caldwell?" "You've never been through?" he exclaimed. "Why, we'll go now, if you can spare the time." Her face had become scarlet. "Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged. "You see--he wanted to take me himself." "Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department. The showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but now his curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen stimulation when he glanced at Janet's face. Its illumination perplexed him. The effect was that of a picture obscurely hung and hitherto scarcely noticed on which the light had suddenly been turned. It glowed with a strange and disturbing radiance.... As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a miracle in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before suspected; the miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature. In the brief space of an hour she beheld the dirty bales flung off the freight cars on the sidings transformed into delicate fabrics wound from the looms; cotton that only last summer, perhaps, while she sat typewriting at her window, had been growing in the fields of the South. She had seen it torn by the bale-breakers, blown into the openers, loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed into batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp of white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can. Once more it was flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres, removing with superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short, thrusting it forth again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing frames. Six of these gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six. Then came the Blubbers and the roving frames, twisting and winding, the while maintaining the most delicate of tensions lest the rope break, running the strands together into a thread constantly growing stronger and finer, until it was ready for spinning. Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while she strained to follow them. But she was bewildered and entranced by the marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex machines, fed by human hands, performed its function. These human hands were swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the ring-spinning frames to be twisted into yarn. She saw a woman, in the space of an instant, mend a broken thread. Women and boys were here, doffer boys to lift off the full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on the empty bobbins with the other: while skilled workmen, alert for the first sign of trouble, followed up and down in its travels the long frame of the mule-spinner. After the spinning, the heavy spools of yarn were carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a huge spider's web, where hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and wound evenly, side by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric to be woven on the loom. First, however, this warp must be stiffened or "slashed" in starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally wound around one great beam from which the multitude of threads are taken up, one by one, and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses by women who sit all day under the north windows overlooking the canal--the "drawers-in" of whom Ditmar had spoken. Then the harnesses are put on the loom, the threads attached to the cylinder on which the cloth is to be wound. The looms absorbed and fascinated Janet above all else. It seemed as if she would never tire of watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the harnesses,--each rapid movement making a V in the warp, within the angle of which the tiny shuttles darted to and fro, to and fro, carrying the thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness so great the eye could scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when the angle closed, and flung back, and back again! And in the elaborate patterns not one, but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its turn for the impulse bidding it rise and fall!... Abruptly, as she gazed, one of the machines halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the warp for the broken thread, tied it, and started the loom again. "That's intelligent of it," said Caldwell, in her ear. But she could only nod in reply. The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive. She began to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain all day long. She had never thought much about them before save to compare vaguely their drudgery with that from which now she had been emancipated; but she began to feel a new respect, a new concern, a new curiosity and interest as she watched them passing from place to place with indifference between the whirling belts, up and down the narrow aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering, clattering machinery whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back the light of the electric bulbs on the ceiling. How was it possible to live for hours at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and thrusting hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf? She had never before realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents. But these people--even the children--seemed oblivious to the din and the danger, intent on their tasks, unconscious of the presence of a visitor, save occasionally when she caught a swift glance from a woman or girl a glance, perhaps, of envy or even of hostility. The dark, foreign faces glowed, and instantly grew dull again, and then she was aware of lurking terrors, despite her exaltation, her sense now of belonging to another world, a world somehow associated with Ditmar. Was it not he who had lifted her farther above all this? Was it not by grace of her association with him she was there, a spectator of the toil beneath? Yet the terror persisted. She, presently, would step out of the noise, the oppressive moist heat of the drawing and spinning rooms, the constant, remorseless menace of whirling wheels and cogs and belts. But they?... She drew closer to Caldwell's side. "I never knew--" she said. "It must be hard to work here." He smiled at her, reassuringly. "Oh, they don't mind it," he replied. "It's like a health resort compared to the conditions most of them live in at home. Why, there's plenty of ventilation here, and you've got to have a certain amount of heat and moisture, because when cotton is cold and dry it can't be drawn or spin, and when it's hot and dry the electricity is troublesome. If you think this moisture is bad you ought to see a mill with the old vapour-pot system with the steam shooting out into the room. Look here!" He led Janet to the apparatus in which the pure air is forced through wet cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the ventilation and humidity were regulated automatically, how the temperature of the room was controlled by a thermostat. "There isn't an agent in the country who's more concerned about the welfare of his operatives than Mr. Ditmar. He's made a study of it, he's spent thousands of dollars, and as soon as these machines became practical he put 'em in. The other day when I was going through the room one of these shuttles flew off, as they sometimes do when the looms are running at high speed. A woman was pretty badly hurt. Ditmar came right down." "He really cares about them," said Janet. She liked Caldwell's praise of Ditmar, yet she spoke a little doubtfully. "Of course he cares. But it's common sense to make 'em as comfortable and happy as possible--isn't it? He won't stand for being held up, and he'd be stiff enough if it came to a strike. I don't blame him for that. Do you?" Janet was wondering how ruthless Ditmar could be if his will were crossed.... They had left the room with its noise and heat behind them and were descending the worn, oaken treads of the spiral stairway of a neighbouring tower. Janet shivered a little, and her face seemed almost feverish as she turned to Caldwell and thanked him. "Oh, it was a pleasure, Miss Bumpus," he declared. "And sometime, when you want to see the Print Works or the Worsted Department, let me know--I'm your man. And--I won't mention it." She did not answer. As they made their way back to the office he glanced at her covertly, astonished at the emotional effect in her their tour had produced. Though not of an inflammable temperament, he himself was stirred, and it was she who, unaccountably, had stirred him: suggested, in these processes he saw every day, and in which he was indeed interested, something deeper, more significant and human than he had guessed, and which he was unable to define.... Janet herself did not know why this intimate view of the mills, of the people who worked in them had so greatly moved her. All day she thought of them. And the distant throb of the machinery she felt when her typewriter was silent meant something to her now--she could not say what. When she found herself listening for it, her heart beat faster. She had lived and worked beside it, and it had not existed for her, it had had no meaning, the mills might have been empty. She had, indeed, many, many times seen these men and women, boys and girls trooping away from work, she had strolled through the quarters in which they lived, speculated on the lands from which they had come; but she had never really thought of them as human beings, individuals, with problems and joys and sorrows and hopes and fears like her own. Some such discovery was borne in upon her. And always an essential function of this revelation, looming larger than ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar. It was for Ditmar they toiled, in Ditmar's hands were their very existences, his was the stupendous responsibility and power. As the afternoon wore, desire to see these toilers once more took possession of her. From the white cupola perched above the huge mass of the Clarendon Mill across the water sounded the single stroke of a bell, and suddenly the air was pulsing with sounds flung back and forth by the walls lining the river. Seizing her hat and coat, she ran down the stairs and through the vestibule and along the track by the canal to the great gates, which her father was in the act of unbarring. She took a stand beside him, by the gatehouse. Edward showed a mild surprise. "There ain't anything troubling you--is there, Janet?" he asked. She shook her head. "I wanted to see the hands come out," she said. Sometimes, as at present, he found Janet's whims unaccountable. "Well, I should have presumed you'd know what they look like by this time. You'd better stay right close to me, they're a rough lot, with no respect or consideration for decent folks--these foreigners. I never could see why the government lets 'em all come over here." He put on the word "foreigners" an emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic because of its peculiar note of futility. Janet paid no attention to him. Her ears were strained to catch the rumble of feet descending the tower stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it came from the doorway--the first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled the yard and swept onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge of the gates. Impossible to realize this as the force which, when distributed over the great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and useful task! for it was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of its swollen powers, menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold. It seemed to Janet indeed a torrent as she clung to the side of the gatehouse as one might cling to the steep bank of a mountain brook after a cloud-burst. And suddenly she had plunged into it. The desire was absurd, perhaps, but not to be denied,--the desire to mix with it, feel it, be submerged and swept away by it, losing all sense of identity. She heard her father call after her, faintly--the thought crossed her mind that his appeals were always faint,--and then she was being carried along the canal, eastward, the pressure relaxing somewhat when the draining of the side streets began. She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams met and mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington and the Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations, hurried thither, reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until she had gained the middle, where she stood grasping the rail. The great structure was a-tremble from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway overrun with workers, dodging between trolleys and trucks,--some darting nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along the steel girders. Doffer boys romped and whistled, young girls in jaunty, Faber Street clothes and flowered hats, linked to one another for protection, chewed gum and joked, but for the most part these workers were silent, the apathy of their faces making a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their feet and set intentness of their bodies as they sped homeward to the tenements. And the clothes of these were drab, save when the occasional colour of a hooded peasant's shawl, like the slightly faded tints of an old master, lit up a group of women. Here, going home to their children, were Italian mothers bred through centuries to endurance and patience; sallow Jewesses, gaunt, bearded Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and wrinkled brows, broad-faced Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy Italian men and pale, blond Germans mingled with muddy Syrians and nondescript Canadians. And suddenly the bridge was empty, the army vanished as swiftly as it came! Janet turned. Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball of fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent. The delicate lines of the upper bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant the cupola of the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in the azure a cloud of pink jeweller's cotton. Even as she strove to fix these colours in her mind they vanished, the western sky faded to magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor of the river darkened, on either side pale lights sparkled from the windows of the mills, while down the deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent suds from the washing of the wools. It was given to her to know that which an artist of living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things.... CHAPTER VIII The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily are called "spiritual," though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning of the term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire organism. It left her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness, brought her nearer to high discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice out of the past called upon her to forego, a voice somehow identified with her father! It was faint, ineffectual. In obeying it, would she not lose all life had to give? When she came in to supper her father was concerned about her because, instead of walking home with him she had left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers. Her evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his comprehension. And how could she explain the motives that led to it? She was sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature timorous and less vitalized. After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the spirit of adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already thronging with people. It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered, and she wandered from window to window until she found herself staring at a suit of blue cloth hung on a form, beneath which was a card that read, "Marked down to $20." And suddenly the suggestion flashed into her mind, why shouldn't she buy it? She had the money, she needed a new suit for the winter, the one she possessed was getting shabby...but behind the excuse of necessity was the real reason triumphantly proclaiming itself--she would look pretty in it, she would be transformed, she would be buying a new character to which she would have to live up. The old Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit would announce to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released all those longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become insupportable! This was what the purchase meant, a change of existence as complete as that between the moth and the butterfly; and the realization of this fact, of the audacity she was resolved to commit made her hot as she gazed at the suit. It was modest enough, yet it had a certain distinction of cut, it looked expensive: twenty dollars was not cheap, to be sure, but as the placard announced, it had the air of being much more costly--even more costly than thirty dollars, which seemed fabulous. Though she strove to remain outwardly calm, her heart beat rapidly as she entered the store and asked for the costume, and was somewhat reassured by the comportment of the saleswoman, who did not appear to think the request preposterous, to regard her as a spendthrift and a profligate. She took down the suit from the form and led Janet to a cabinet in the back of the shop, where it was tried on. "It's worth every bit of thirty dollars," she heard the woman say, "but we've had it here for some time, and it's no use for our trade. You can't sell anything like that in Hampton, there's no taste here, it's too good, it ain't showy enough. My, it fits you like it was made for you, and it's just your style--and you can see it wants a lady to wear it. Your old suit is too tight--I guess you've filled out some since you bought it." She turned Janet around and around, patting the skirt here and there, and then stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression almost rapturous. Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror and buttoned up the coat. Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned? this image she beheld an illusion? or did she really look different, distinguished? and if not beautiful--alluring? She had had a momentary apprehension, almost sickening, that she would be too conspicuous, but the saleswoman had anticipated that objection with the magical word "lady." "I'll take it," she announced. "Well, you couldn't have done better if you'd gone to Boston," declared the woman. "It's one chance in a thousand. Will you wear it?" "Yes," said Janet faintly.... "Just put my old suit in a box, and I'll call for it in an hour." The woman's sympathetic smile followed her as she left the shop. She had an instant of hesitation, of an almost panicky desire to go back and repair her folly, ere it was too late. Why had she taken her money with her that evening, if not with some deliberate though undefined purpose? But she was ashamed to face the saleswoman again, and her elation was not to be repressed--an elation optically presented by a huge electric sign on the farther side of the street that flashed through all the colours of the spectrum, surrounded by running fire like the running fire in her soul. Deliciously self-conscious, her gaze fixed ahead, she pressed through the Wednesday night crowds, young mill men and women in their best clothes, housewives and fathers of families with children and bundles. In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read. "Five Millionaire Directors Indicted in New York," "State Treasurer Accused of Graft," "Murdock Fortune Contested by Heirs." The phrases seemed meaningless, and she hurried on again.... She was being noticed! A man looked at her, twice, the first glance accidental, the second arresting, appealing, subtly flattering, agitating--she was sure he had turned and was following her. She hastened her steps. It was wicked, what she was doing, but she gloried in it; and even the sight, in burning red letters, of Gruber's Cafe failed to bring on a revulsion by its association with her sister Lise. The fact that Lise had got drunk there meant nothing to her now. She gazed curiously at the illuminated, orange-coloured panes separated by curving leads, at the design of a harp in green, at the sign "Ladies' Entrance"; listened eagerly to the sounds of voices and laughter that came from within. She looked cautiously over her shoulder, a shadow appeared, she heard a voice, low, insinuating.... Four blocks farther down she stopped. The man was no longer following her. She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to Eda's--not quite. Of late her conscience had reproached her about Eda, Janet had neglected her. She told herself she was afraid of Eda's uncanny and somewhat nauseating flair for romance; and to show Eda the new suit, though she would relish her friend's praise, would be the equivalent of announcing an affair of the heart which she, Janet, would have indignantly to deny. She was not going to Eda's. She knew now where she was going. A prepared but hitherto undisclosed decree of fate had bade her put money in her bag that evening, directed her to the shop to buy the dress, and would presently impel her to go to West Street--nay, was even now so impelling her. Ahead of her were the lights of the Chippering Mill, in her ears was the rhythmic sound of the looms working of nights on the Bradlaugh order. She reached the canal. The white arc above the end of the bridge cast sharp, black shadows of the branches of the trees on the granite, the thousand windows of the mill shone yellow, reflected in the black water. Twice she started to go, twice she paused, held by the presage of a coming event, a presage that robbed her of complete surprise when she heard footsteps on the bridge, saw the figure of a man halting at the crown of the arch to look back at the building he had left, his shoulders squared, his hand firmly clasping the rail. Her heart was throbbing with the looms, and yet she stood motionless, until he turned and came rapidly down the slope of the arch and stopped in front of her. Under the arc lamp it was almost as bright as day. "Miss Bumpus!" he exclaimed. "Mr. Ditmar" she said. "Were you--were you coming to the office?" "I was just out walking," she told him. "I thought you were in Boston." "I came home," he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never leaving her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back again to her face. "I got here on the seven o'clock train, I wanted to see about those new Blubbers." "They finished setting them up this afternoon," she said. "How did you know?" "I asked Mr. Orcutt about it--I thought you might telephone." "You're a wonder," was his comment. "Well, we've got a running start on that order," and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill. "Everything going full speed ahead. When we put it through I guess I'll have to give you some of the credit." "Oh, I haven't done anything," she protested. "More than you think. You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't get along without you." His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices of those who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone. It sounded absurd, yet it did not repel her: something within her responded to it. "Which way were you going?" he inquired. "Home," she said. "Where do you live?" "In Fillmore Street." And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a little street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street." "Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood. "I'll come with you as far as the bridge--along the canal. I've got so much to say to you." "Can't you say it to-morrow?" "No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many interruptions, I mean. And then, you never give me a chance." She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her. He had proposed the route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize them, and her pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the sweet allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come out to seek and by a strange fatality found--since he had appeared on the bridge almost as soon as she reached it. The sense of fate was strong upon her. Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had read of him that day, to the added impression of his power conveyed by the trip through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than ever in her consciousness. "What do you want to say?" she asked. "Oh, lots of things." She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm seemed to burn where he touched her. "Have I done something to offend you?" she heard him say. "Or is it because you don't like me?" "I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him. "I don't like seeing you--this way. And why should you want to know me and see me outside of the office? I'm only your stenographer." "Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met. You don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself." "I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer," she informed him. "For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed. "I've been afraid of that. Don't go--I don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful--I won't get you talked about." "Talked about!" She tore herself away from him. "Why should you get me talked about?" she cried. He was frightened. "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--" "What did you mean?" "Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we shouldn't be friends. I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our friendship the subject of gossip." Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over him. "Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any advantages--and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper about you today--Mr. Caldwell gave it to me--" "Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively. "Well, in some places it was rather funny." "Funny? How?" "Oh, I don't know." She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell. "I liked it, but I thought it praised you too much, it didn't criticize you enough." He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing. From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got anything but flattery. "I want you to criticize me," he said. But she went on relentlessly:--"When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you'd got everything you'd started out to get, and how some day you might be treasurer and president of the Chippering Mill, well--" Despairing of giving adequate expression to her meaning, she added, "I didn't see how we could be friends." "You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly. "I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly. But I didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived--in a little flat that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a tenement. It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking. You couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is? And you wouldn't care to be talked about yourself, either," she added vehemently. This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words. "Listen!" he urged. "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on you. And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I thought of you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to put it over.'" She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to herself, to take her arm again. "How could I help you?" "Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of thinking for me, and you can help me by just being there. I can't explain it, but I feel somehow that things will go right. I've come to depend on you." He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing with the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently abandoned him. He was appalled at the possibility of losing her. "I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent. "You're different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are." His voice was low, caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder pressed against her shoulder. "I've never had a woman friend before, I've never wanted one until now." She wondered about his wife. "You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains." "Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed. "You're beautiful," he whispered. "It's queer, but I didn't know it at first. You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you." They had come almost to Warren Street. Suddenly realizing that they were standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end of the bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently. "Let's walk back a little way," he proposed. "I must go home--it's late." "It's only nine o'clock." "I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me. Good night." "Just one more turn!" he pleaded. But she shook her head, backing away from him. "You'll see me to-morrow," she told him. She didn't know why she said that. She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her shoulder; her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of music was in her ears, the lights sparkled. She had had an adventure, at last, an adventure that magically had transformed her life! She was beautiful! No one had ever told her that before. And he had said that he needed her. She smiled as, with an access of tenderness, in spite of his experience and power she suddenly felt years older than Ditmar. She could help him!... She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said. "Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman. She was seated quietly sewing under the lamp. "I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried this?" Janet asked. The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as she rose, brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face. She felt that her secret had been guessed. The change effected, Janet went homeward swiftly, to encounter, on the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise, whose attention was immediately attracted by the bundle. "What have you got there, angel face?" she demanded. "A new suit," said Janet. "You don't tell me--where'd you get it? at the Paris?" "No, at Dowling's." "Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!" "Well, what if it was?" Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of whistling through her teeth. "Twenty bucks! Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next. Well, as sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when they first knocked it down I said to Sadie, `those are the rags Janet would buy if she had the ready.' Have you got another raise out of Ditmar?" "If I have, it isn't any business of yours," Janet retorted. "I've got a right to do as I please with my own money." "Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you look well." After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when they reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that Janet had bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it. And finally, when they had got to bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against this new expression of the sordidness and lack of privacy in which she was forced to live, made the more intolerable by the close, sultry darkness of the room and the snoring of Lise. In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness during the ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness and alertness. It had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note had somehow become exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life; and Lise's sarcastic comments as to the probable reasons why she did not put on the new suit had host their power of exasperation. Janet compromised, wearing a blouse of china silk hitherto reserved for "best." The day was bright, and she went rapidly toward the mill, glorying in the sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air; and her thoughts were not so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of which he was the medium. She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that. When she reached the office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she took off her hat and jacket and began to sort out the mail. And she had to calm herself with the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar had undergone no change. She had merely met him by the canal, and he had talked to her. That was all. He had, of course, taken her arm: it tingled when she remembered it. But when he suddenly entered the room her heart gave a bound. He closed the door, he took off his hat, and stood gazing at her--while she continued arranging letters. Presently she was forced to glance at him. His bearing, his look, his confident smile all proclaimed that he, at least, believed things to be changed. He glowed with health and vigour, with an aggressiveness from which she shrank, yet found delicious. "How are you this morning?" he said at last--this morning as distinguished from all other mornings. "I'm well, as usual," she answered. She herself was sometimes surprised by her ability to remain outwardly calm. "Why did you run away from me last night?" "I didn't run away, I had to go home," she said, still arranging the letters. "We could have had a little walk. I don't believe you had to go home at all. You just wanted an excuse to get away from me." "I didn't need an excuse," she told him. He moved toward her, but she took a paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room. "I thought we were going to be friends," he said. "Being friends doesn't mean being foolish," she retorted. "And Mr. Orcutt's waiting to see you." "Let him wait." He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the typewritten words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as grasping the meaning of them. From time to time he glanced up at Janet as she flitted about the room. By George, she was more desirable than he had ever dared to imagine! He felt temporarily balked, but hopeful. On his way to the mill he had dwelt with Epicurean indulgence on this sight of her, and he had not been disappointed. He had also thought that he might venture upon more than the mere feasting of his eyes, yet found an inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means absolutely repulsed him. Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle transformation. There could be no doubt of that. She was almost coquettish. His eyes lingered. The china silk blouse was slightly open at the neck, suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the outline of her shoulders. Overcome by an impulse he could not control, he got up and went toward her, but she avoided him. "I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come," she said, rather breathlessly, as she reached the door and opened it. Ditmar halted in his steps at the sight of the tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the threshold. Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other. "I've been waiting for you," he said, after a moment, "the rest of that lot didn't come in this morning. I've telephoned to the freight agent." Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly. Orcutt repeated the information. "Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them." "I'm doing that," replied the conscientious Orcutt. "How's everything else going?" Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for geniality. "You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear yourself out." Mr. Orcutt was relieved. He had expected an outburst of the exasperation that lately had characterized his superior. They began to chat. Janet had escaped. "Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you up," Ditmar informed him. "She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," Orcutt observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her going through the mill with young Caldwell." Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held. "Oh, she went through, did she?" After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk. That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning to confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve. She sat by her window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she was swept by surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were strangely commingled. A voice within her said, "This can't go on, this can't go on! It's too terrible! Everyone in the office will notice it--there will be a scandal. I ought to go away while there is yet time--to-day." Though the instinct of flight was strong within her, she was filled with rebellion at the thought of leaving when Adventure was flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill across the waters was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun. She had made at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was inconceivable without him. Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one hand and what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when, toward the middle of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning her to take his letters; and went palpitating, leaving the door open behind her, seating herself on the far side of the desk, her head bent over her book. Her neck, where her hair grew in wisps behind her ear, seemed to burn: Ditmar's glance was focussed there. Her hands were cold as she wrote.... Then, like a deliverer, she saw young Caldwell coming in from the outer office, holding a card in his hand which he gave to Ditmar, who sat staring at it. "Siddons?" he said. "Who's Siddons?" Janet, who had risen, spoke up. "Why, he's been making the Hampton `survey.' You wrote him you'd see him--don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?" "Don't go!" exclaimed Ditmar. "You can't tell what those confounded reformers will accuse you of if you don't have a witness." Janet sat down again. The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or less to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his manner on such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his dependence, of her own usefulness. Besides, she had been curious about the `survey' at the time it was first mentioned, she wished to hear Ditmar's views concerning it. Mr. Siddons proved to be a small and sallow young man with a pointed nose and bright, bulbous brown eyes like a chipmunk's. Indeed, he reminded one of a chipmunk. As he whisked himself in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused impression of polite self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion; he had the air of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring it, is prepared to deal with it. Janet smiled. She had a sudden impulse to drop the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he would jump. "How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?" he said. "I've been hoping to have this pleasure." "My secretary, Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed. Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his chair, seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened a drawer of his desk and offered the visitor a cigar. "Thanks, I don't smoke," said Mr. Siddons. Ditmar lit one for himself. "Now, what can I do for you?" he asked. "Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the operatives in the city of Hampton. I'm sure you'd be interested in hearing something of the situation we found." "I suppose you've been through our mills," said Ditmar. "No, the fact is--" "You ought to go through. I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a slight emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making things comfortable and healthy for our people." "I've no doubt of it--in fact, I've been so informed. It's because of your concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured to come and talk to you of how most of them live when they're at home," replied Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly. "Perhaps, though living in Hampton, you don't quite realize what the conditions are. I know a man who has lived in Boston ten years and who hasn't ever seen the Bunker Hill monument." "The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair," retorted Ditmar, "anybody can go there who has enough curiosity and interest. But I don't see how you can expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up their garbage and wash their babies. I shouldn't want anybody to interfere with my private affairs." "But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace?" Siddons objected. "Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of tenements ready to crumble. There are no provisions for foundations, thickness of walls, size of timbers and columns, and if these houses had been deliberately erected to make a bonfire they couldn't have answered the purpose better. If it were not for the danger to life and the pity of making thousands of families homeless, a conflagration would be a blessing, although I believe the entire north or south side of the city would go under certain conditions. The best thing you could do would be to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding grounds for disease. In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases with only four-foot courts littered with refuse,--houses without light, without ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking and eating and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to put dogs in. You've got some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the acre, and your average density is considerably over a hundred." "Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?" asked Ditmar. "That isn't the point," said Siddons. "The point is that they're bad, they're dangerous, they're inhuman. If you could go into these tenements as I have done and see the way some of these people live, it would make you sick the Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially. You wouldn't treat cattle that way. In some households of five rooms, including the kitchen, I found as many as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people living. You've got an alarming infant death-rate." "Isn't it because these people want to live that way?" Ditmar inquired. "They actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a pig-sty--they had 'em in Europe. And what do you expect us to do? Buy land and build flats for them? Inside of a month they'd have all the woodwork stripped off for kindling, the drainage stopped up, the bathtubs filled with ashes. I know, because it's been tried." Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and his eyes sought Janet's. She avoided them, resenting a little the assumption of approval she read in them. Her mind, sensitive to new ideas, had been keenly stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began patiently to dwell once more on the ill effect of the conditions he had discovered on the welfare of the entire community. She had never thought of this. She was surprised that Ditmar should seem to belittle it. Siddons was a new type in her experience. She could understand and to a certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him; he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent most of his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off Ditmar's objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as, "Before we come to that, let me say a word just here." Ditmar hated words. His outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not unlike the futile charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a smaller and more agile one. With nimble politeness, with an exasperating air of deference to Ditmar's opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only to return to the charge; yet, despite a manner and method which, when contrasted to Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous, Mr. Siddons had a force and fire of his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he dwelt on the misery he had seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of his feeling, Janet began to be moved. It was odd, considering the struggle for existence of her own family, that these foreigners had remained outside the range of her sympathy. "I guess you'll find," Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, "I guess you'll find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people have got millions tucked away. And they send a lot of it to the other side, they go back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they manage to buy land. Ask the real estate men. Why, I could show you a dozen who worked in the mills a few years ago and are capitalists to-day." "I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar," Siddons gracefully conceded. "But what does it prove? Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on ruthless competition. The great majority who are unable to survive the test pay the price. And the community also pays the price, the state and nation pay it. And we have this misery on our consciences. I've no doubt you could show me some who have grown rich, but if you would let me I could take you to families in desperate want, living in rooms too dark to read in at midday in clear weather, where the husband doesn't get more than seven dollars a week when the mills are running full time, where the woman has to look out for the children and work for the lodgers, and even with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to go into the mills to earn money for winter clothing. I've seen enough instances of this kind to offset the savings bank argument. And even then, when you have a family where the wife and older children work, where the babies are put out to board, where there are three and four lodgers in a room, why do you suppose they live that way? Isn't it in the hope of freeing themselves ultimately from these very conditions? And aren't these conditions a disgrace to Hampton and America?" "Well, what am I to do about it?" Ditmar demanded. "I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings in the mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances. That's more than a good many mills I could mention attempt." "You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than any man in Hampton. You can bring pressure to bear on the city council to enforce and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a campaign of public opinion against certain property owners." "Yes," retorted Ditmar, "and what then? You raise the rents, and you won't get anybody to live in the houses. They'll move out to settlements like Glendale full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're accustomed to. What you reformers are actually driving at is that we should raise wages--isn't it? If we raised wages they'd live like rats anyway. I give you credit for sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want you to think I'm not as much interested in the welfare of these people as you and the men behind you. The trouble is, you only see one side of this question. When you're in my position, you're up against hard facts. We can't pay a dubber or a drawing tender any more than he's worth, whether he has a wife or children in the mills or whether he hasn't. We're in competition with other mills, we're in competition with the South. We can't regulate the cost of living. We do our best to make things right in the mills, and that's all we can do. We can't afford to be sentimental about life. Competition's got to be the rule, the world's made that way. Some are efficient and some aren't. Good God, any man who's had anything to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that drummed into him hard. You talk about ordinances, laws--there are enough laws and ordinances in this city and in this state right now. If we have any more the mills will have to shut down, and these people will starve--all of 'em." Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and he flung his cigar away. "Send me a copy of your survey when it's published. I'll look it over." "Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?" Ditmar exploded, when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out. "Comes in here to advise me that it's my business to look out for the whole city of Hampton. I'd like to see him up against this low-class European labour trying to run a mill with them. They're here one day and there the next, they don't know what loyalty is. You've got to drive 'em--if you give 'em an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite your property. Why, there's nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend on them, I'd build 'em houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home. As it is, I do my best, though they don't deserve it,--in slack seasons I run half time when I oughtn't to be running at all." His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had been increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the sympathy on which he had counted. She sat silent, gazing searchingly at his face. "What's the matter?" he demanded. "You don't mean to say you agree with that kind of talk?" "I was wondering--" she began. "What?" "If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to work in order to keep alive?" "Understand them! Why not?" he asked. "Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're pretty much your own master--and that makes it different. I'm not blaming you--in your place I'd be the same, I'm sure. But this man, Siddons, made me think. I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is, in a way." "Not like these foreigners!" he protested. "Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped suddenly in his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the startled air of the male who has inadvertently touched off one of the many hidden springs in the feminine emotional mechanism. "How do you know what it is to live in a squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms that smell of cooking, and not be able to have any of the finer, beautiful things in life? Unless you'd wanted these things as I've wanted them, you couldn't know. Oh, I can understand what it would feel like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!" "You can!" he exclaimed in amazement. "You!" "Yes, me. You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for them any more than you could feel sorry for me. You want them to run your mills for you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they live, and you just want me--for your pleasure." He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in his experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not the type of man to be shocked by it. On the contrary, it swept away his irritation, and as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a fever heat as he approached and stood over her. "You little--panther!" he whispered. "You want beautiful things, do you? Well, I'll give 'em to you. I'll take care of you." "Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears. "Do you think I want anybody to take care of me? That shows how little you know me. I want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I get." Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings. Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of the red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook her with a wild appeal. "What do I care about any others--I want you!" such was its message. And against this paradoxical wish to be conquered, intensified by the magnetic field of his passion, battled her self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire to be free, to escape now from a domination the thought of which filled her with terror. She felt his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers straying along her arm; for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously powerless. Then the emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and she sprang away, dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she stood swaying. "Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say. "For God's sake, why can't you trust me?" She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to twinkle fantastically in the distant mills. Presently she turned. Ditmar was in his chair. She crossed the room to the electric switch, turning on the flood of light, picked up her tote-book and sat down again. "Don't you intend to answer your letters?" she asked. He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized the topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely. She experienced a certain exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took down his words. 
15416	----	THE SPINNERS BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS Author of "Old Delabole," "Brunel's Tower," etc. 1918 CONTENTS BOOK I I THE FUNERAL II AT 'THE TIGER' III THE HACKLER IV CHAINS FOR RAYMOND V IN THE MILL VI 'THE SEVEN STARS' VII A WALK VIII THE LECTURE IX THE PARTY X WORK XI THE OLD STORE-HOUSE XII CREDIT XIII IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN XIV THE CONCERT XV A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE XVI AT CHILCOMBE XVII CONFUSION XVIII THE LOVERS' GROVE XIX JOB LEGG'S AMBITION XX A CONFERENCE XXI THE WARPING MILL XXII THE TELEGRAM XXIII A LETTER FOR SABINA XXIV MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES XXV THE WOMAN'S DARKNESS XXVI OF HUMAN NATURE XXVII THE MASTER OF THE MILL XXVIII CLASH OF OPINIONS XXIX THE BUNCH OF GRAPES XXX A TRIUMPH OF REASON XXXI THE OFFER DECLINED BOOK II I THE FLYING YEARS II THE SEA GARDEN III A TWIST FRAME IV THE RED HAND V AN ACCIDENT VI THE GATHERING PROBLEM VII THE WALK HOME VIII EPITAPH IX THE FUTURE OF ABEL X THE ADVERTISEMENT XI THE HEMP BREAKER XII THE PICNIC XIII THE RUNAWAY XIV THE MOTOR CAR XV CRITICISM XVI THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE XVII SABINA AND ABEL XVIII SWAN SONG XIX NEW WORK FOR ABEL XX IDEALS XXI ATROPOS XXII THE HIDING-PLACE BOOK I SABINA CHAPTER I THE FUNERAL The people were coming to church and one had thought it Sunday, but for two circumstances. The ring of bells at St. Mary's did not peal, and the women were dressed in black as the men. Through the winding lanes of Bridetown a throng converged, drawn to the grey tower by a tolling bell; and while the sun shone and a riot of many flowers made hedgerows and cottage gardens gay; while the spirit of the hour was inspired by June and a sun at the zenith unclouded, the folk of the hamlet drew their faces to sadness and mothers chid the children, who could not pretend, but echoed the noontide hour in their hearts. All were not attired for a funeral. A small crowd of women, with one or two men among them, stood together where a sycamore threw a patch of shade on a triangular space of grass near the church. There were fifty of these people--ancient women, others in their prime, and many young maidens. Some communion linked them and the few men who stood with them. All wore a black band upon their left arms. Drab or grey was their attire, but sun-bonnets nodded bright as butterflies among them, and even their dull raiment was more cheerful than the gathering company in black who now began to mass their numbers and crane their heads along the highway. Bridetown lies near the sea in a valley under a range of grassy downs. It is the centre of a network of little lanes with cottages dotted upon them, or set back behind small gardens. The dwellings stood under thatch, or weathered tile, and their faces at this season were radiant with roses and honeysuckles, jasmine and clematis. Pinks, lilies, columbines made the garden patches gay, and, as though so many flowers were not enough, the windows, too, shone with geraniums and the scarlet tassels of great cactus, that lifted their exotic, thorny bodies behind the window panes. Not a wall but flaunted red valerian and snapdragon. Indeed Bridetown was decked with blooms. Here and there in the midst stood better houses, with some expanse of lawn before them and flat shrubs that throve in that snug vale. Good walnut trees and mulberries threw their shadows on grass plat and house front, while the murmur of bees came from many bright borders. South the land rose again to the sea cliffs, for the spirits of ocean and the west wind have left their mark upon Bride Vale. The white gulls float aloft; the village elms are moulded by Zephyr with sure and steady breath. Of forestal size and unstunted, yet they turn their backs, as it were, upon the west and, yielding to that unsleeping pressure, incline landward. The trees stray not far. They congregate in an oasis about Bridetown, then wend away through valley meadows, but leave the green hills bare. The high ground rolls upward to a gentle skyline and the hillsides, denuded by water springs, or scratched by man, reveal the silver whiteness of the chalk where they are wounded. Bride river winds in the midst, and her bright waters throw a loop round the eastern frontier of the hamlet, pass under the highway, bring life to the cottage gardens and turn more wheels than one. Bloom of apple and pear are mirrored on her face and fruit falls into her lap at autumn time. Then westward she flows through the water meadows, and so slips uneventfully away to sea, where the cliffs break and there stretches a little strand. To the last she is crowned with flowers, and the meadowsweets and violets that decked her cradle give place to sea poppies, sea hollies, and stones encrusted with lichens of red gold, where Bride flows to one great pool, sinks into the sand and glides unseen to her lover. "They're coming!" said one of the crowd; but it was a false alarm. A flock of breeding lambs of the Dorset horned sheep pattered through the village on their way to pasture. The young, healthy creatures, with amber-coloured horns and yellow eyes, trotted contentedly along together and left an ovine reek in the air. Behind them came the shepherd--a high-coloured, middle-aged man with a sharp nose and mild, grey eyes. He could give news of the funeral, which was on the way behind him. An iron seat stood under the sycamore on the triangular patch of grass, and a big woman sat upon it. She was of vast dimensions, broad and beamy as a Dutch sloop. Her bulk was clad in dun colour, and on her black bonnet appeared a layer of yellow dust. She spoke to others of the little crowd who surrounded her. They came from Bridetown Spinning Mill, for work was suspended because Henry Ironsyde, the mill owner, had died and now approached his grave. "The Ironsydes bury here, but they don't live here," said Sally Groves. "They lived here once, at North Hill House; but that's when I first came to the Mill as a bit of a girl." The big woman fanned herself with a handkerchief, then spoke a grey man with a full beard, small head, and discontented eyes. He was Levi Baggs, the hackler. "We shall have those two blessed boys over us now, no doubt," he said. "But what know they? Things will be as they were, and time and wages the same as before." "They'll be sure to do what their father wished, and there was a murmur of changes before he died," said Sally Groves; but Levi shook his head. "Daniel Ironsyde is built like his father, to let well alone. Raymond Ironsyde don't count. He'll only want his money." "Have you ever seen Mr. Raymond?" asked a girl. She was Nancy Buckler, a spinner--hard-featured, sharp-voiced, and wiry. Nancy might have been any age between twenty-five and forty. She owned to thirty. "He don't come to Bridetown, and if you want to see him, you must go to 'The Tiger,' at Bridport," declared another girl. Her name was Sarah Northover. "My Aunt Nelly keeps 'The Seven Stars,' in Barrack Street," she explained, "and that's just alongside 'The Tiger,' and my Aunt Nelly's very friendly with Mr. Gurd, of 'The Tiger,' and he's told her that Mr. Raymond is there half his time. He's all for sport and such like, and 'The Tiger's' a very sporting house." "He won't be no good to the mills if he's that sort," prophesied Sally Groves. "I saw him once, with another young fellow called Motyer," answered Sarah Northover. "He's very good-looking--fair and curly--quite different from Mr. Daniel." "Light or dark, they're Henry Ironsyde's sons and be brought up in his pattern no doubt," declared Mr. Baggs. People continued to appear, and among them walked an elderly man, a woman and a girl. They were Mr. Ernest Churchouse, of 'The Magnolias,' with his widowed housekeeper, Mary Dinnett, and her daughter, Sabina. The girl was nineteen, dark and handsome, and very skilled in her labour. None disputed her right to be called first spinner at the mills. She was an impulsive, ambitious maiden, and Mr. Best, foreman at the works, claimed for her that she brought genius as well as understanding to her task. Sabina joined her friend, Nancy Buckler; Mrs. Dinnett, who had been a mill hand in her youth, took a seat beside Sally Groves, and Mr. Churchouse paced alone. He was a round-faced, clean-shaven man with mild, grey eyes and iron grey hair. He looked gentle and genial. His shoulders were high, and his legs short. Walking irked him, for a sedentary life and hearty appetite had made him stout. The fall of Henry Ironsyde served somewhat to waken Ernest Churchouse from the placid dream in which he lived, shake him from his normal quietude, and remind him of the flight of time. He and the dead man were of an age and had been boys together. Their fathers founded the Bridetown Spinning Mill, and when the elder men passed away, it was Henry Ironsyde who took over the enterprise and gradually bought out Ernest Churchouse. But while Ironsyde left Bridetown and lived henceforth at Bridport, that he might develop further interests in the spinning trade, Ernest had been well content to remain there, enjoy his regular income and live at 'The Magnolias,' his father's old-world house, beside the river. His tastes were antiquarian and literary. He wrote when in the mood, and sometimes read papers at the Mechanics' Institute of Bridport. But he was constitutionally averse from real work of any sort, lacked ambition, and found all the fame he needed in the village community with which his life had been passed. He was a childless widower. Mr. Churchouse strolled now into the churchyard to look at the grave. It opened beside that of Henry Ironsyde's parents and his wife. She had been dead for fifteen years. A little crowd peered down into the green-clad pit, for the sides, under the direction of John Best, had been lined with cypress and bay. The grass was rank, but it had been mown down for this occasion round the tombs of the Ironsydes, though elsewhere darnel rose knee deep and many venerable stones slanted out of it. Immediately south of the churchyard wall stood the Mill, and Benny Cogle, engineman at the works, who now greeted Mr. Churchouse, dwelt on the fact. "Morning, sir," he said, "a brave day for the funeral, sure enough." "Good morning, Benny," answered the other. His voice was weak and gentle. "When I think how near the church and Mill do lie together, I have thoughts," continued Benny. He was a florid man of thirty, with tow-coloured hair and blue eyes. "Naturally. You work and pray here all inside a space of fifty yards. But for my part, Benny Cogle, I am inclined to think that working is the best form of praying." Mr. Churchouse always praised work for others and, indeed, was under the impression that he did his share. "Same here," replied the engineman, "especially while you're young. Anyway, if I had to choose between 'em, I'd sooner work. 'Tis better for the mind and appetite. And I lay if Mr. Ironsyde, when he lies down there, could tell the truth, he'd rather be hearing the Mill going six days a week and feeling his grave throbbing to my engines, than list to the sound of the church organ on the seventh." "Not so," reproved Mr. Churchouse. "We must not go so far as that. Henry Ironsyde was a God-fearing man and respected the Sabbath as we all should, and most of us do." "The weaker vessels come to church, I grant," said Benny, "but the men be after more manly things than church-going of a Sunday nowadays." "So much the worse for them," declared Mr. Churchouse. "Here," he continued, "there are naturally more women than men. Since my father and Henry Ironsyde's father established these mills, which are now justly famous in the county, the natural result has happened and women have come here in considerable numbers. Women preponderate in spinning places, because the work of spinning yarn has always been in their hands from time immemorial. And they tend our modern machinery as deftly as of old they twirled the distaff and worked the spinning-wheel; and as steadily as they used to trudge the rope walks and spin, like spiders, from the masses of flax or hemp at their waists." "The females want religion without a doubt," said Benny. "I'm tokened to Mercy Gale, for instance; she looks after the warping wheels, and if that girl didn't say her prayers some fine morning, she'd be as useless as if she hadn't eat her breakfast. 'Tis the feminine nature that craves for support." A very old man stood and peered into the grave. He was the father of Levi Baggs, the hackler, and people said he was never seen except on the occasion of a funeral. The ancient had been reduced to a mere wisp by the attrition of time. He put his hand on the arm of Mr. Churchouse and regarded the grave with a nodding head. "Ah, my dear soul," he said. "Life, how short--eternity, how long!" "True, most true, William." "And I ask myself, as each corpse goes in, how many more pits will open afore mine." "'Tis hid with your Maker, William." "Thank God I'm a good old man and ripe and ready," said Mr. Baggs. "Not," he added, "that there's any credit to me; for you can't be anything much but good at ninety-two." "While the brain is spared we can think evil, William." "Not a brain like mine, I do assure 'e." A little girl ran into the churchyard--a pretty, fair child, whose bright hair contrasted with the black she wore. "They have come and father sent me to tell you, Mr. Churchouse," she said. "Thank you, Estelle," he answered, and they returned to the open space together. The child then joined her father, and Mr. Churchouse, saluting the dead, walked to the first mourning coach and opened the door. It was a heavy and solid funeral of Victorian fashion proper to the time. The hearse had been drawn by four black horses with black trappings, and over the invisible coffin nodded a gloomy harvest of black ostrich plumes. There were no flowers, and some children, who crept forward with a little wreath of wild roses, were pushed back. The men from the Mill helped to carry their master into the church; but there were not enough of them to support the massive oak that held a massive man, and John Best, Levi Baggs, Benny Cogle and Nicholas Roberts were assisted by the undertakers. From the first coach descended an elderly woman and a youth. The lady was Miss Jenny Ironsyde, sister of the dead, and with her came her nephew Daniel, the new mill-owner. He was five-and-twenty--a sallow, strong-faced young fellow, broad in the shoulder and straight in the back. His eyes were brown and steady, his mouth and nose indicated decision; the funeral had not changed his cast of countenance, which was always solemn; for, as his father before him, he lacked a sense of humour. Mr. Churchouse shook hands and peered into the coach. "Where's Raymond?" he asked. "Not come," answered Miss Ironsyde. She was a sturdy woman of five-and-fifty, with a pleasant face and kindly eyes. But they were clouded now and she showed agitation. "Not come!" exclaimed Ernest with very genuine consternation. Daniel Ironsyde answered. His voice was slow, but he had a natural instinct for clarity and spoke more to the point than is customary with youth. "My brother has not come because my father has left him out of his will, Mr. Churchouse." "Altogether?" "Absolutely. Will you take my aunt's arm and follow next after me, please?" Two clergymen met the coffin at the lich-gate, and behind the chief mourners came certain servants and dependents, followed by the women of the Mill. Then a dozen business men walked together. A few of his co-workers had sent their carriages; but most came themselves, to do the last honour to one greatly respected. Mr. Churchouse paid little attention to the obsequies. "Not at his father's funeral!" he kept thinking to himself. His simple mind was thrown into a large confusion by such an incident. The fact persisted rather than the reason for it. He longed to learn more, but could not until the funeral was ended. When the coffin came to the grave, Mary Dinnett stole home to look after the midday dinner. It had weighed on her mind since she awoke, for Miss Ironsyde and Daniel were coming to 'The Magnolias' to partake of a meal before returning home. There were no relations from afar to be considered, and no need for funeral baked meats in the dead man's house. When all was ended and only old William Baggs stood by the grave and watched the sextons fill it, a small company walked together up the hill north of Bridetown. Daniel went first with Mr. Churchouse, and behind them followed Miss Jenny Ironsyde with a man and a child. The man rented North Hill House. Arthur Waldron was a widower, who lived now for two things: his little daughter, Estelle, and sport. No other considerations challenged his mind. He was rich and good-hearted. He knew that his little girl had brains, and he dealt fairly with her in the matter of education. Of the Ironsyde brothers, Raymond was his personal friend, and Mr. Waldron now permitted himself some vague expression of regret that the young man should have been absent on such an occasion. "Yes," said Miss Ironsyde, to whom he spoke, "if there's any excuse for convention it's at a funeral. No doubt people will magnify the incident into a scandal--for their own amusement and the amusement of their friends. If Raymond had enjoyed time to reflect, I feel sure he would have come; but there was no time. His father has made no provision for him, and he is rather upset. It is not unnatural that he should be, for dear Henry, while always very impatient of Raymond's sporting tastes and so on, never threatened anything like this." "No doubt Mr. Ironsyde would have made a difference if he had not died so suddenly." "I think so too," she answered. Then Waldron and his daughter went homewards; while the others, turning down a lane to the right, reached 'The Magnolias'--a small, ancient house whose face was covered with green things and whose lawn spread to the river bank. Mrs. Dinnett had prepared a special meal of a sort associated with the mournful business of the day; for a funeral feast has its own character; the dishes should be cold and the wine should be white or brown. Mr. Churchouse was concerned to know what Daniel meant to do for Raymond; but he found the heir by no means inclined to emotional generosity. Daniel spoke in a steady voice, though he showed a spark of feeling presently. The fire, however, was for his dead father, not his living brother. "I'm very sorry that Raymond could have been so small as to keep away from the funeral," he said. "It was petty. But, as Aunt Jenny says, he's built like that, and no doubt the shock of being ignored knocked him off his balance." "He has the defects of his qualities, my dear. The same people can often rise to great heights and sink to great depths. They can do worse things--and better things--than we humdrum folk, who jog along the middle of the road. We must forgive such people for doing things we wouldn't do, and remember their power to do things we couldn't do." The young man was frankly puzzled by this speech, which came from his aunt. He shrugged his shoulders. "I've got to think of father first and Raymond afterwards," he said. "I owe my first duty to my father, who trusted me and honoured me, and knew very well that I should obey his wishes and carry on with my life as he would have liked to see me. He has made a very definite and clear statement, and I should be disloyal to him--dishonest to him--if I did anything contrary to the spirit of it." "Who would wish you to?" asked Ernest Churchouse. "But a brother is a brother," he continued, "and since there is nothing definite about Raymond in the will, you should, I think, argue like this. You should say to yourself, 'my father was disappointed with my brother and did not know what to do about him; but, having a high opinion of me and my good sense and honesty, he left my brother to my care. He regarded me, in fact, as my brother's keeper, and hoped that I would help Raymond to justify his existence.' Don't you feel like that?" "I feel that my father was very long-suffering with Raymond, and his will tells me that he had a great deal more to put up with from Raymond than anybody ever knew, except my brother himself." "You needn't take up the cudgels for your father, Dan," interposed Miss Ironsyde. "Be sure that your dear father, from the peace which now he enjoys, would not like to see you make his quarrel with Raymond your quarrel. I'm not extenuating Raymond's selfish and unthinking conduct as a son. His own conscience will exact the payment for wrong done beyond repair. He'll come to that some day. He won't escape it. He's not built to escape it. But he's your brother, not your son; and you must ask yourself, whether as a brother, you've fairly got any quarrel with him." Daniel considered a moment, then he spoke. "I have not," he said--"except the general quarrel that he's a waster and not justifying his existence. We have had practically nothing to do with each other since we left school." "Well," declared Mr. Churchouse, "now you must have something to do with each other. It is an admirable thought of your Aunt Jenny's that your father has honoured your judgment by leaving the destiny of Raymond more or less in your hands." "I didn't say that; you said it," interrupted the lady. "Raymond's destiny is in his own hands. But I do feel, of course, that Daniel can't ignore him. The moment has come when a strong effort must be made to turn Raymond into a useful member of society." "What allowance did dear Henry make him?" asked Mr. Churchouse. "Father gave him two hundred a year, and father paid all his debts before his twenty-first birthday; but he didn't pay them again. Raymond has told Aunt Jenny that he's owing two hundred pounds at this moment." "And nothing to show for it--we may be sure of that. Well, it might have been worse. Is the allowance to be continued?" "No," said Miss Ironsyde. "That's the point. It is to cease. Henry expressly directs that it is to cease; and to me that is very significant." "Of course, for it shows that he leaves Raymond in his brother's hands." "I have heard Henry say that Raymond beat him," continued Miss Ironsyde. "He was a good father and a forgiving father, but temperamentally he was not built to understand Raymond. Some people develop slowly and remain children much longer than other people. Raymond is one of those. Daniel, like my dear brother before him, has developed quickly and come to man's estate and understanding." "His father could trust his eldest son," declared Mr. Churchouse, "and, as I happen to know, Daniel, you always spoke with patience and reason about Raymond--your father has told me so. It was natural and wise, therefore, that my late dear friend should have left Raymond to you." "I only want to do my duty," said the young man. "By stopping away to-day Raymond hasn't made me feel any kinder to him, and if he were not so stupid in some ways, he must have known it would be so; but I am not going to let that weigh against him. How do you read the fact that my father directs Raymond's allowance to cease, Uncle Ernest?" Mr. Churchouse bore no real connection to the Ironsydes; but his relations had always been close and cordial after he relinquished his share in the business of the mills, and the younger generation was brought up to call him 'uncle.' "I read it like this," answered the elder. "It means that Raymond is to look to you in future, and that henceforth you may justly demand that he should not live in idleness. There is nothing more demoralising for youth than to live upon money it doesn't earn. I should say--subject to your aunt's opinion, to which I attach the greatest importance--that it is your place to give your brother an interest in life and to show him, what you know already, the value and dignity of work." "I entirely agree," said Jenny Ironsyde. "I can go further and declare from personal knowledge that my brother had shadowed the idea in his mind." They both regarded Daniel. "Then leave it there," he bade them, "leave it there and I'll think it out. My father was the fairest man I ever met, and I'll try and be as fair. It's up to Raymond more than me." "You can bring a horse to the water, though you can't make him drink," admitted Mr. Churchouse. "But if you bring your horse to the water, you've done all that reason and sense may ask you to do." Miss Ironsyde, from larger knowledge of the circumstances, felt disposed to carry the question another step. She opened her mouth and drew in her breath to speak--making that little preliminary sound only audible when nothing follows it. But she did not speak. "Come into the garden and see Magnolia grandiflora," said Mr. Churchouse. "There are twelve magnificent blossoms open this morning, and I should have picked every one of them for my dear friend's grave, only the direction was clear, that there were to be no flowers." "Henry disliked any attempt to soften the edges at such a time," explained the dead man's sister. "He held that death was the skeleton at the feast of life--a wholesome and stark reminder to the thoughtless living that the grave is the end of our mortal days. He liked a funeral to be a funeral--black--black. He did not want the skeleton at the feast to be decked in roses and lilies." "An opinion worthy of all respect," declared Mr. Churchouse. Then he asked after the health of his guest and expressed sympathy for her sorrow and great loss. "He'd been so much better lately that it was a shock," she said, "but he died as he wanted to die--as all Ironsydes do die--without an illness. It is a tradition that never seems to fail. That reconciled us in a way. And you--how are you? You seldom come to Bridport nowadays." Mr. Churchouse rarely talked about himself. "True. I have been immersed in literary work and getting on with my _magnum opus_: 'The Church Bells of Dorset.' You see one does not obtain much help here--no encouragement. Not that I expect it. We men of letters have to choose between being hermits, or humbugs." "I always thought a hermit was a humbug," said Jenny, smiling for the first time. "Not always. When I say 'hermit,' I mean 'recluse.' With all the will to be a social success and identify myself with the welfare of the place in which I dwell, my powers are circumscribed. Do not think I put myself above the people, or pretend any intellectual superiority, or any nonsense of that sort. No, it is merely a question of time and energy. My antiquarian work demands both, and so I am deprived by duty from mixing in the social life as much as I wish. This is not, perhaps, understood, and so I get a character for aloofness, which is not wholly deserved." "Don't worry," said Miss Ironsyde. "Everybody cares for you. People don't think about us and our doings half as much as we are prone to fancy. I liked your last article in the _Bridport Gazette_. Only I seemed to have read most of it before." "Probably you have. The facts, of course, were common property. My task is to collect data and retail them in a luminous and illuminating way." "So you do--so you do." He looked away, where Daniel stood by himself with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the river. "A great responsibility for one so young; but he will rise to it." "D'you mean his brother, or the Mill?" "Both," answered Ernest Churchouse. "Both." Mrs. Dinnett came down the garden. "The mourning coach is at the door," she said. "Daniel insisted that we went home in a mourning coach," explained Miss Ironsyde. "He felt the funeral was not ended until we returned home. That shows imagination, so you can't say he hasn't got any." "You can never say anybody hasn't got anything," declared Mr. Churchouse. "Human nature defeats all calculations. The wisest only generalise about it." CHAPTER II AT 'THE TIGER' The municipal borough of Bridport stretches itself luxuriously from east to west beneath a wooded hill. Southward the land slopes to broad water-meadows where rivers meet and Brit and Asker wind to the sea. Evidences of the great local industry are not immediately apparent; but streamers and wisps of steam scattered above the red-tiled roofs tell of work, and westward, where the land falls, there stand shoulder to shoulder the busy mills. From single yarn that a child could break, to hawsers strong enough to hold a battleship, Bridport meets every need. Her twines and cords and nets are famous the world over; her ropes, cables, cablets and canvas rigged the fleet that scattered the Spanish Armada. The broad streets with deep, unusual side-walks are a sign of Bridport's past, for they tell of the days when men and women span yarn before their doors, and rope-walks ran their amber and silver threads of hemp and flax along the pavements. But steel and steam have taken the place of the hand-spinners, though their industry has left its sign-manual upon the township. For the great, open side-walks make for distinction and spaciousness, and there shall be found in all Dorset, no brighter, cheerfuller place than this. Bridport's very workhouse, south-facing and bowered in green, blinks half a hundred windows amiably at the noonday sun and helps to soften the life-failure of those who dwell therein. Off Barrack Street it stands, and at the time of the terror, when Napoleon threatened, soldiers hived here and gave the way its name. Not far from the workhouse two inns face each other in Barrack Street--'The Tiger' upon one side of the way, 'The Seven Stars' upon the other; and at the moment when Henry Ironsyde's dust was reaching the bottom of his grave at Bridetown, a young man of somewhat inane countenance, clad in garments that displayed devotion to sport and indifference to taste, entered 'The Tiger's' private bar. Behind the counter stood Richard Gurd, a middle-aged, broad-shouldered publican with a large and clean-shaven face, heavy-jaw, rather sulky eyes and mighty hands. "The usual," said the visitor. "Ray been here?" Mr. Gurd shook his head. "No, Mr. Ned--nor likely to. They're burying his father this morning." The publican poured out a glass of cherry brandy as he spoke and Mr. Neddy Motyer rolled a cigarette. "Ray ain't going," said the customer. "Not going to his father's funeral!" "For a very good reason, too; he's cut off with a shilling." "Dear, dear," said Mr. Gurd. "That's bad news, though perhaps not much of a surprise to Mr. Raymond." "It's a devil of a lesson to the rising generation," declared the youth. "To think our own fathers can do such blackguard things, just because they don't happen to like our way of life. What would become of England if every man was made in the pattern of his father? Don't education and all that count? If my father was to do such a thing--but he won't; he's too fond of the open air and sport and that." "Young men don't study their fathers enough in this generation, however," argued the innkeeper, "nor yet do young women study their mothers enough." "We've got to go out in the world and play our parts," declared Neddy. "'Tis for them to study us--not us them. You must have progress. The thing for parents to do is to know they're back numbers and act according." "They do--most of them," answered Mr. Gurd. "A back number is a back number and behaves as such. I speak impartial being a bachelor, and I forgive the young men their nonsense and pardon their opinions, because I know I was young myself once, and as big a fool as anybody, and put just the same strain on my parents, no doubt, though they lived to see me a responsible man and done with childish things. The point for parents is not to forget what it feels like to be young. That I never have, and you young gentlemen would very soon remind me if I did. But the late Mr. Henry Ironsyde found no time for all-round wisdom. He poured his brains into hemp and jute and such like. Why, he didn't even make a minute to court and wed till he was forty-five year old. And the result of that was that when his brace of boys was over twenty, he stood in sight of seventy and could only see life at that angle. And what made it worse was, that his eldest, Mister Daniel, was cut just in his own pattern. So the late gentleman never could forgive Mr. Raymond for being cut in another pattern. But if what you say is right and Mister Raymond has been left out in the cold, then I think he's been badly used." "So he has--it's a damned shame," said Mr. Motyer, "and I hope Ray will do something about it." "There's very little we can do against the writing of the dead," answered Mr. Gurd. Then he saluted a man who bustled into the bar. "Morning, Job. What's the trouble?" Job Legg was very tall and thin. He dropped at the middle, but showed vitality and energy in his small face and rodent features. His hair was black, and his thin mouth and chin clean-shaven. His eyes were small and very shrewd; his manner was humble. He had a monotonous inflection and rather chanted in a minor key than spoke. "Mrs. Northover's compliments and might we have the big fish kettle till to-morrow? A party have been sprung on us, and five-and-twenty sit down to lunch in the pleasure gardens at two o'clock." "And welcome, Job. Go round to the kitchen, will 'e?" Job disappeared and Mr. Gurd explained. "My good neighbour at 'The Seven Stars'--her with the fine pleasure gardens and swings and so on. And Job Legg's her potman. Her husband's right hand while he lived, and now hers. I have the use of their stable-yard market days, for their custom is different from mine. A woman's house and famous for her meat teas and luncheons. She does very well and deserves to." "That old lady with the yellow wig?" Mr. Gurd pursed his lips. "To you she might seem old, I suppose. That's the spirit that puts a bit of a strain on the middle-aged and makes such men as me bring home to ourselves what we said and thought when we were young. 'Tis just the natural, thoughtless insolence of youth to say Nelly Northover's an old woman--her being perhaps eight-and-forty. And to call her hair a wig, because she's fortified it with home-grown what's fallen out over a period of twenty years, is again only the insolence of youth. One can only say 'forgive 'em, for they know not what they do.'" "Well, get me another brandy anyway." Then entered Raymond Ironsyde, and Mr. Gurd for once felt genuinely sorry to see his customer. The young man was handsome with large, luminous, grey eyes, curly, brown hair and a beautiful mouth, clean cut, full, firm and finely modelled in the lips. His nose was straight, high in the nostril and sensitive. He resembled his brother, Daniel, but stood three inches taller, and his brow was fuller and loftier. His expression in repose appeared frank and receptive; but to-day his face wore a look half anxious, half ferocious. He was clad in tweed knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, of different pattern but similar material. His tie was light blue and fastened with a gold pin modelled in the shape of a hunting-horn. He bore no mark of mourning whatever. "Whiskey and soda, Gurd. Morning, Neddy." He spoke defiantly, as though knowing his entrance was a challenge. Then he flung himself down on a cushioned seat in the bow window of the bar-room and took a pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket. Mr. Gurd brought the drink round to Raymond. He spoke upon some general subject and pretended to no astonishment that the young man should be here on this day. But the customer cut him short. There was only one subject for discussion in his mind. "I suppose you thought I should go to my father's funeral? No doubt, you'll say, with everybody else, that it's a disgrace I haven't." "I shall mind my own business and say nothing, Mister Raymond. It's your affair, not ours." "I'd have done the same, Ray, if I'd been treated the same," said Neddy Motyer. "It's a protest," explained Raymond Ironsyde. "To have gone, after being publicly outraged like this in my father's will, was impossible to anybody but a cur. He ignored me as his son, and so I ignore him as my father; and who wouldn't?" "I suppose Daniel will come up to the scratch all right?" hazarded Motyer. "He'll make some stuffy suggestion, no doubt. He can't see me in the gutter very well." "You must get to work, Mr. Raymond; and I can tell you, as one who knows, that work's only dreaded by them who have never done any. You'll soon find that there's nothing better for the nerves and temper than steady work." Neddy chaffed Mr. Gurd's sentiments and Raymond said nothing. He was looking in front of him, his mind occupied with personal problems. Neddy Motyer made another encouraging suggestion. "There's your aunt, Miss Ironsyde," he said. "She's got plenty of cash, I've heard people say, and she gives tons away in charity. How do you stand with her?" "Mind your own business, Ned." "Sorry," answered the other promptly. "Only wanted to buck you up." "I'm not in need of any bucking up, thanks. If I've got to work, I'm quite equal to it. I've got more brains than Daniel, anyway. I'm quite conscious of that." "You've got tons more mind than him," declared Neddy. "And if that's the case, I could do more good, if I chose, than ever Daniel will." "Or more harm," warned Mr. Gurd. "Always remember that, Mister Raymond. The bigger the intellects, the more power for wrong as well as right." "He'll ask me to go into the works, I expect. And I may, or I may not." "I should," advised Neddy. "Bridetown is a very sporting place and you'd be alongside your pal, Arthur Waldron." "Don't go to Bridetown with an idea of sport, however--don't do that, Mister Raymond," warned Richard Gurd. "If you go, you put your back into the work and master the business of the Mill." The young men wasted an hour in futile talk and needless drinking while Gurd attended to other customers. Then Raymond Ironsyde accepted an invitation to return home with Motyer, who lived at Eype, a mile away. "I'm going to give my people a rest to-day," said Raymond as he departed. "I shall come in here for dinner, Dick." "Very good, sir," answered Mr. Gurd; but he shook his head when the young men had gone. Others in the bar hummed on the subject of young Ironsyde after his back was turned. A few stood up for him and held that he had been too severely dealt with; but the majority and those who knew most about him thought that his ill-fortune was deserved. "For look at it," said a tradesman, who knew the facts. "If he'd been left money, he'd have only wasted the lot in sporting and been worse off after than before; but now he's up against work, and work may be the saving of him. And if he won't work, let him die the death and get off the earth and make room for a better man." None denied the honourable obligation to work for every responsible human being. CHAPTER III THE HACKLER The warehouse of Bridetown Mill adjoined the churchyard wall and its northern windows looked down upon the burying ground. The store came first and then the foreman's home, a thatched dwelling bowered in red and white roses, with the mill yard in front and a garden behind. From these the works were separated by the river. Bride came by a mill race to do her share, and a water wheel, conserving her strength, took it to the machinery. For Benny Cogle's engine was reinforced by the river. Then, speeding forward, Bride returned to her native bed, which wound through the valley south of the works. A bridge crossed the river from the yard and communicated with the mills--a heterogeneous pile of dim, dun colours and irregular roofs huddled together with silver-bright excrescences of corrugated iron. A steady hum and drone as of some gigantic beehive ascended from the mills, and their combined steam and water power produced a tremor of earth and a steady roar in the air; while a faint dust storm often flickered about the entrance ways. The store-house reeked with that fat, heavy odour peculiar to hemp and flax. It was a lofty building of wide doors and few windows. Here in the gloom lay bales and stacks of raw material. Italy, Russia, India, had sent their scutched hemp and tow to Bridetown. Some was in the rough; the dressed line had already been hackled and waited in bundles of long hemp composed of wisps, or 'stricks' like horses' tails. The silver and amber of the material made flashes of brightness in the dark storerooms and drew the light to their shining surfaces. Tall, brown posts supported the rafters, and in the twilight that reigned here, a man moved among the bales piled roof-high around him. He was gathering rough tow from a broken bale of Russian hemp and had stripped the Archangel matting from the mass. Levi Baggs, the hackler, proceeded presently to weigh his material and was taking it over the bridge to the hackling shop when he met John Best, the foreman. They stopped to speak, and Levi set down the barrow that bore his load. "I see you with him, yesterday. Did you get any ideas out of the man?" Baggs referred to the new master and John Best understood. "In a manner of speaking, yes," he said. "Nothing definite, of course. It's too soon to talk of changes, even if Mister Daniel means them. He'll carry on as before for the present, and think twice and again before he does anything different from his father." "'Tis just Bridetown luck if he's the sort to keep at a dead parent's apron-strings," grumbled the other. "Nowadays, what with education and so on, the rising generation is generally ahead of the last and moves according." "You can move two ways--backward as well as forward," answered Best. "Better he should go on as we've been going, than go back." "He daren't go back--the times won't let him. The welfare of the workers is the first demand on capital nowadays. If it weren't, labour would very soon know the reason why." Mr. Best regarded Levi without admiration. "You are a grumbler born," he said, "and so fond of it that you squeal before you're hurt, just for the pleasure of squealing. One thing I can tell you, for Mister Daniel said it in so many words: he's the same in politics as his father; and that's Liberal; and since the Liberals of yesterday are the Radicals of to-morrow, we have every reason to suppose he'll move with the times." "We all know what that means," answered Mr. Baggs. "It means getting new machinery and increasing the output of the works for the benefit of the owners, not them that run the show. I don't set no store on a man being a Radical nowadays. You can't trust nobody under a Socialist." Mr. Best laughed. "You wait till they've got the power, and you'll find that the whip will fall just as heavy from their hands as the masters of to-day. Better to get small money and be free, than get more and go a slave in state clothes, on state food, in a state house, with a state slave-driver to see you earn your state keep and take your state holidays when the state wills, and work as much or as little as the state pleases. What you chaps call 'liberty' you'll find is something quite different, Baggs, for it means good-bye to privacy in the home and independence outside it." "That's a false and wicked idea of progress, John Best, and well you know it," answered Levi. "You're one of the sort content to work on a chain and bring up your children likewise; but you can't stand between the human race and freedom--no more can Daniel Ironsyde, or any other man." "Well, meantime, till the world's put right by your friends, you get on with your hackling, my old bird, else you'll have the spreaders grumbling," answered Mr. Best. Then he went into his home and Levi trundled the wheelbarrow to a building with a tar-pitched, penthouse roof, which stuck out from the side of the mill, like a fungus on a tree stem. Within, before a long, low window, stood the hand dresser's tools--two upturned boards set with a mass of steel pins. The larger board had tall teeth disposed openly; upon the smaller, the teeth were shorter and as dense as a hair brush. In front of them opened a grating and above ran an endless band. Behind this grille was an exhaust, which sucked away the dust and countless atoms of vegetable matter scattered by Levi's activities, and the running band from above worked it. For the authorities, he despised, considered the operations of Mr. Baggs and ordained that they should be conducted under healthy conditions. He took his seat now before the rougher's hackle, turned up his shirt sleeves over a pair of sinewy arms and powerful wrists and set to work. From the mass of hemp tow he drew hanks and beat the pins with them industriously, wrenched the mass through the steel teeth again and again and separated the short fibre from the long. Presently in his hand emerged a wisp of bright fibre, and now flogging the finer hackling board, he extracted still more short stalks and rubbish till the finished strick came clean and shining as a lock of woman's hair. From the hanks of long tow he seemed to bring out the tresses like magic. In his swift hand each strick flashed out from the rough hank with great rapidity, and every crafty, final touch on the teeth made it brighter. Giving a last flick or two over the small pins, Mr. Baggs set down his strick and soon a pile of these shining locks grew beside him, while the exhaust sucked away the rubbish and fragments, and the mass of short fibre which he had combed out, also accumulated for future treatment. He worked with the swiftness and surety of a master craftsman, scourged his tow and snorted sometimes as he struggled with it. He was exerting a tremendous pressure, regulated and applied with skill, and he always exulted in the thought that he, at least, of all the workers performed hand labour far more perfectly than any machine. But still it was not the least of his many grievances that Government showed too little concern for his comfort. He was always demanding increased precautions for purifying the air he breathed. From first to last, indeed, the hemp and tow are shedding superfluities, and a layman is astonished to see how the broad strips and ribbons running through the machines and torn by innumerable systems of sharp teeth in transit, emerge at the last gasp of attenuation to trickle down the spindles and turn into the glory of yarn. From Mr. Baggs, the long fibre and the short which he had combed out of it, proceeded to the spinning mill; and now a girl came for the stricks he had just created. Their future under the new master was still on every tongue at Bridetown Mill, and the women turned to the few men who worked among them for information on this paramount subject. "No, I ain't heard no more, Sarah," answered the hackler to Miss Northover's question. "You may be sure that those it concerns most will be the last to hear of any changes; and you may also be sure that the changes, when made, will not favour us." "You can't tell that," answered Sarah, gathering the stricks. "Old Mrs. Chick, our spreader minder, says the young have always got bigger hearts than the old, and she'd sooner trust them than--" Mr. Baggs tore a hank through the comb with such vigour that its steel teeth trembled and the dust flew. "Tell Granny Chick not to be a bigger fool than God made her," he said. "The young have got harder hearts than the old, and education, though it may make the head bigger for all I know, makes the heart smaller. He'll be hard--hard--and I lay a week's wages that he'll get out of his responsibilities by shovelling 'em on his dead father." "How can he?" asked Sarah. "By letting things be as they are. By saying his father knew best." "Young men never think that," answered she. "'Tis well known that no young man ever thought his father knew better than himself." "Then he'll pretend to for his own convenience." "What about all that talk of changes for the better before Mister Ironsyde died then?" "Talk of dead men won't go far. We'll hear no more of that." Sarah frowned and went her way. At the door, however, she turned. "I might get to hear something about it next Sunday very like," she said. "I'm going into Bridport to my Aunt Nelly at 'The Seven Stars'; and she's a great friend of Richard Gurd at 'The Tiger'; and 'tis there Mister Raymond spends half his time, they say. So Mr. Gurd may have learned a bit about it." "No doubt he'll hear a lot of words, and as for Raymond Ironsyde, his father knew him for a man with a bit of a heart in him and didn't trust him accordingly. But you can take it from me--" A bell rang and its note struck Mr. Baggs dumb. He ceased both to speak and work, dropped his hank, turned down his shirt sleeves and put on his coat. Sarah at the stroke of the bell also manifested no further interest in Levi's forebodings but left him abruptly. For it was noon and the dinner-hour had come. CHAPTER IV CHAINS FOR RAYMOND Raymond Ironsyde had spent his life thus far in a healthy and selfish manner. He owned no objection to hard work of a physical nature, for as a sportsman and athlete he had achieved fame and was jealous to increase it. He preserved the perspective of a boy into manhood; while his father waited, not without exasperation, for him to reach adult estate in mind as well as body. Henry Ironsyde was still waiting when he died and left Raymond to the mercy of Daniel. Now the brothers had met to thresh out the situation; and a day came when Raymond lunched with his friend and fellow sportsman, Arthur Waldron, of North Hill House, and furnished him with particulars. In time past, Raymond's grandfather had bought a thousand acres of land on the side of North Hill. Here he destroyed one old farmhouse and converted another into the country-seat of his family. He lived and died there; but his son, Henry, cared not for it, and the place had been let to successive tenants for many years. Waldron was the last of these, and Raymond's ambition had always been some day to return to North Hill House and dwell in his grandfather's home. At luncheon the party of three sat at a round table on a polished floor of oak. Estelle played hostess and gazed with frank admiration at the chattering visitor. He brought a proposition that made her feel very excited to learn what her father would think of it. Mr. Waldron was tall and thin. He lived out of doors and appeared to be made of iron, for nothing wearied him as yet. He had high cheek-bones, and a clean-shaved, agreeable face. He took sport most seriously, was jealous for its rights and observant of its rituals even in the smallest matters. Upon the etiquette of all field sports he regarded himself, and was regarded, as an arbiter. "Tell me how it went," he said. "I hope your brother was sporting?" Mr. Waldron used this adjective in the widest possible sense. It embraced all reputable action and covered virtue. If conduct were 'sporting,' he demanded no more from any man; while, conversely, 'unsporting' deeds condemned the doer in all relations of life and rendered him untrustworthy from every standpoint. "Depends what you call 'sporting,'" answered Raymond, whose estimate of the word was not so comprehensive. "You'd think it would have been rather a case for generosity, but Dan didn't seem to see that. It's unlucky for me in a way he's not larger-minded. He's content with justice--what he calls justice. But justice depends on the mind that's got to do it. There's no finality about it, and what Daniel calls justice, I call beastly peddling, if not actual bullying." "And what did he call justice?" "Well, his first idea was to be just to my father, who was wickedly unjust to me. That wasn't too good for a start, for if you are going to punish the living, because the dead wanted them to be punished, what price your justice anyway? But Daniel had a sort of beastly fairness too, for he recognised that my father's very sudden death must be taken into account. My Aunt Jenny supported me there; and she was sure he would have altered his will if he had had time. Daniel granted that, and I began to hope I was going to come well out of it; but I counted my chickens before they were hatched. Some people have a sort of diseased idea of the value of work and seem to think if you don't put ten hours a day into an office, you're not justifying your existence. Unfortunately for me Daniel is one of those people. If you don't work, you oughtn't to eat--he actually thinks that." "The fallacy is that what seems to be play to a mind like Daniel's, is really seen to be work by a larger mind," explained Arthur Waldron. "Sport, for instance, which is the backbone of British character, is a thousand times more important to the nation than spinning yarn; and we, who keep up the great tradition of British sport on the highest possible plane, are doing a great deal more valuable work--unpaid, mark you--than mere merchants and people of that kind who toil after money." "Of course; but I never yet met a merchant who would see it--certainly not Daniel. In fact I've got to work--in his way." "D'you mean he's stopping the allowance?" "Yes. At least he's not renewing it. He's offering me a salary if I'll work. A jolly good salary, I grant. I can be just to him, though he can't to me. But, if I'm going to draw the salary, I've got to learn the business and, in fact, go into it and become a spinner. Then, at the end of five years, if I shine and really get keen about it and help the show, he'll take me into partnership. That's his offer; and first I told him to go to the devil, and then I changed my mind and, after my aunt had sounded Daniel and found that was his ultimatum, I climbed down." "What are you to do? Surely he won't chain an open-air man like you to a wretched desk all your time?" "So I thought; but he didn't worry about that. I wanted to go abroad, and combine business with pleasure, and buy the raw material in Russia and India and Italy and so on. That might have been good enough; but in his rather cold-blooded way, he pointed out that to buy raw material, you wanted to know something about raw material. He asked me if I knew hemp from flax, and of course I had to say I did not. So that put the lid on that. I've got to begin where Daniel began ten years ago--at the beginning--with this difference, that I get three hundred quid a year. In fact there's such a mixture of fairness and unfairness in Daniel's idea that you don't know where to have him." "What shall you do about it?" "I tell you I've agreed. I must live, obviously, and I'd always meant to do something some day. But naturally my ideas were open air, and I thought when I got things going and took a scheme to my father--for horse-breeding or some useful enterprise--he would have seen I meant business and come round and planked down. But Daniel has got no use for horse-breeding, so I must be a spinner--for the time anyway." Estelle ventured to speak. "But only girls spin," she said. "You'd never be able to spin, Ray." Raymond laughed. "Everybody's got to spin, it seems," he answered. "Except the lilies," declared Estelle gravely. "'They toil not, neither do they spin,' you know." Mr. Waldron regarded his daughter with respect. "Just imagine," he said, "at her age. They've made her a member of the Field Botanists' Club. Only eleven years old and invited to join a grown-up club!" Raymond was somewhat impressed. "Fancy a kid like you knowing anything about botany," he said. "I don't," answered the child. "I'm only just beginning. Why, I haven't mastered the grasses yet. The flowers are easy, of course, but the grasses are ever so difficult." They returned to Ironsyde's plans. "And when d'you weigh in?" queried his friend. "That's the point. That's why I invited myself to lunch. Daniel doesn't want me in the office at Bridport; he wants me here--at Bridetown--so that I can mess about in the works and see a lot of John Best, the foreman, and learn all the practical side of the business. It seems rather footling work for a man, but he did it; and he says the first thing is to get a personal understanding of the processes and all that. Of course I've always been keen on machinery." "Good, then we shall see something of each other." "That's what I want--more than you do, very likely. The idea was that I went to Uncle Ernest, who is willing to let me have a room at 'The Magnolias' and live with him for a year, which is the time Daniel wants me to be here; but I couldn't stick Churchouse for a year." "Naturally." "So what do you say? Are you game for a paying guest? You've got tons of room and I shouldn't be in the way." "How lovely!" cried Estelle. "Do come!" Arthur Waldron was quietly gratified. "I'm sure I should be delighted to have a pal in the house--a kindred spirit, who understands sport. By all means come," he said. "You're sure? I should be out most of my time at the blessed works, you know. Could I bring my horse?" "Certainly bring your horse." "That reminds me of one reasonable thing Dan's going to do," ran on the other. "He's going to clear me. I told Aunt Jenny it was no good beginning a new life with a millstone of debts round my neck--in fact we came down to that. I said it was a vital condition. Aunt Jenny had rather a lively time between us. She sympathises with me tremendously, however, and finally got Daniel to promise he would pay off every penny I owed--a paltry two hundred or so." "A very sporting arrangement. Make the coffee, Estelle, then we'll take a walk on the downs." "I'm going to Uncle Ernest to tea," explained Raymond. "I shall tell him then that I'm not coming to him, thanks to your great kindness." "He will be disappointed," declared Estelle. "It seems rather hard of us to take you away from him, I'm afraid." "Don't you worry, kiddy. He'll get over it. In fact he'll be jolly thankful, poor old bird. He only did it because he thought he ought to. It's the old, traditional attitude of the Churchouses to the Ironsydes." "He's very wise about church bells, but he's rather vague about flowers," replied Estelle. "He's only interested in dead things, I think; and things that happened long, long ago." "In a weird sort of way, a hobby is a man's substitute for sport, I believe," said Estelle's father. "Many have no feeling for sport; it's left out of them and they seem to be able to live comfortably without it. Instead they develop an instinct for something else. Generally it's deadly from the sportsman's point of view; but it seems to take the place of sport to the sportless. How old ruins, or church bells, can supersede a vital, living thing, like the sport of a nation, of course you and I can't explain; but so it is with some minds." "It depends how they were brought up," suggested Raymond. "No--take you; you weren't brought up to sport. But your own natural, good instinct took you to it. Same with me. The moment I saw a ball, I'm told that I shrieked till they gave it to me--at the age of one that was. And from that time forward they had no trouble with me. A ball always calmed me. Why? Because a ball, you may say, is the emblem of England's greatness. I was thinking over it not long ago. There is not a single game of the first importance that does not depend on a ball. If one had brains, one could write a book on the inner meaning of that fact. I believe that the ball has a lot to do with the greatness of the Empire." "A jolly good idea. I'll try it on Uncle Ernest," promised Raymond. He was cheerful and depressed in turn. His company made him happy and the thought that he would come to live at North Hill House also pleased him well; but from time to time the drastic change in his life swept his thoughts like a cloud. The picture of regular work--unloved work that would enable him to live--struck distastefully upon his mind. They strolled over North Hill after luncheon and Estelle ran hither and thither, busy with two quests. Her sharp eyes were in the herbage for the flowers and grasses; but she also sought the feathers of the rooks and crows who assembled here in companies. "The wing feathers are the best for father's pipes," she explained; "but the tail feathers are also very good. Sometimes I get splendid luck and find a dozen or two in a morning, and sometimes the birds don't seem to have parted with a single feather. The place to find them is round the furze clumps, because they catch there when the wind blows them." The great hogged ridge of North Hill keeps Bridetown snug in winter time, and bursts the snow clouds on its bosom. To-day the breezes blew and shadows raced above the rolling green expanses. The downs were broken by dry-built walls and spattered with thickets of furze and white-thorn, black-thorn and elder. Blue milkwort, buttercups and daisies adorned them, with eye-bright and the lesser, quaking grass that danced over the green. Rabbits twinkled into the furzes where Waldron's three fox terriers ran before the party; and now and then a brave buck coney would stand upon the nibbled knoll above his burrow and drum danger before he darted in. It was a haunt of the cuckoo and peewit, the bunting and carrion crow. "Here we killed on the seventeenth of January last," said Raymond's host. "A fine finish to a grand run. We rolled him over on this very spot after forty-five minutes of the best. It is always good to remember great moments in the past." On the southern slope of North Hill there stood a ruined lime-kiln whose walls were full of fern and coated with mother o' thyme. A bank of brier and nettles lay before the mouth. They hid the foot of the kiln and made a snug and secluded spot. Bridetown clustered in its elms far below; then the land rose again to protect the hamlet from the south; and beyond stretched the blue line of the Channel. The men sat here and smoked, while Estelle hunted for flowers and feathers. She came back to them presently with a bee orchis. "For you," she said, and gave it to Raymond. "What the dickens is it?" he asked, and she told him. "They're rather rare, but they live happily on the down in some places. I know where." He thanked her very much. "Never seen one before," he said. "A funny little pink and black devil, isn't it?" "It isn't a devil," she assured him; "if anything, it's an angel. But really it's more like a small bumble-bee than anything. Perhaps you've never seen a bumble-bee either?" "Oh, yes, I have--they don't sting." Estelle laughed. "I thought that once. A boy in the village told me that bumble-bees have 'got no spears.' And I believed him and tried to help one out of the window once. And I very soon found that he had got a spear." "That reminds me I must take a wasps' nest to-night," said her father. "I've not decided which way to take it yet. There are seven different ways to take a wasps' nest--all good." They strolled homeward presently and parted at the lodge of North Hill House. "You must come down and choose your room soon," said Estelle. "It must be one that gets the sun in it, and the moon. People always want the sun, but they never seem to want the moon." "Don't they, Estelle! I know lots of people who want the moon," declared Raymond. "Perhaps I do." "You can have your choice of four stalls for the horse," said Arthur Waldron. "I always ride before breakfast myself, wet or fine. Only frost stops me. I hope you will too--before you go to the works." Raymond was soon at 'The Magnolias,' and found Mr. Churchouse expecting him in the garden. They had not met since Henry Ironsyde's death, but the elder, familiar with the situation, did not speak of Raymond's father. He was anxious to learn the young man's decision, and proved too ingenuous to conceal his relief when the visitor explained his plans. "I felt it my duty to offer you a temporary home," he said, "and we should have done our best to make you comfortable, but one gets into one's routine and I won't disguise from you that I am glad you go to North Hill House, Raymond." "You couldn't disguise it if you tried, Uncle Ernest. You're thankful--naturally. You don't want youth in this dignified abode of wisdom. Besides, you've got no place for a horse--you know you haven't." "I've no objection to youth, my dear boy, but I can't pretend that the manners and customs of youth are agreeable to me. Tobacco, for example, causes me the most acute uneasiness. Then the robustness and general exaggeration of the youthful mind and body! It rises beyond fatigue, above the middle-aged desire for calm and comfort. It kicks up its heels for sheer joy of living; it is ever in extremes; it lacks imagination, with the result that it is ruthless. All these characteristics may go with a delightful personality--as in your case, Raymond--but let youth cleave to youth. Youth understands youth. You will in fact be much happier with Waldron." "And you will be happier without me." "It may be selfish to say so, but I certainly shall." "Well, you've had the virtue of making the self-denial and I think it was awfully good of you to do so." "I am always here and always very happy and willing to befriend the grandson of my father's partner," declared Mr. Churchouse. "It is excellent news that you are going into the business." "Remains to be seen." The dining room at 'The Magnolias' was also the master's study. There were innocent little affectations in it and the room was arranged to create an atmosphere of philosophy and art. Books thronged in lofty book-shelves with glass doors. These were surmounted by plaster busts of Homer and Minerva, toned to mellowness by time. In the window was the writing desk of Mr. Churchouse, upon which stood a photograph of Goethe. Tea was laid and a girl brought in the hot water when Mr. Churchouse rang for it. After she had gone Raymond praised her enthusiastically. "By Jove, what a pretty housemaid!" he exclaimed. "Pretty, yes; a housemaid, no," explained Mr. Churchouse. "She is the daughter of my housekeeper, Mrs. Dinnett. Mrs. Dinnett has been called to Chilcombe, to see her old mother who is, I fear, going to die, and so Sabina, with her usual kindness, has spent her half-holiday at home to look after me. Sabina lives here. She is Mrs. Dinnett's daughter and one of the spinners at the mill. In fact, Mr. Best tells me she is his most accomplished spinner and has genius for the work. In her leisure she does braiding at home, as many of the girls do." "She's jolly handsome," declared Raymond. "She's chucked away in a place like this." "D'you mean 'The Magnolias'?" asked the elder mildly. "No, not 'The Magnolias' particularly, but Bridetown in general." "And why should Bridetown be denied the privilege of numbering a beautiful girl amongst its population?" "Oh--why--she's lost, don't you see. Working in a stuffy mill, she's lost. If she was on the stage, then thousands would see her. A beautiful thing oughtn't to be hidden away." "God Almighty hides away a great many beautiful things," answered Mr. Churchouse. "There are many beautiful things in our literature and our flora and fauna that are never admired." "So much the worse. When our fauna blossoms out in the shape of a lovely girl, it ought to be seen and give pleasure to thousands." Ernest smiled. "I don't think Sabina has any ambition to give pleasure to thousands. She is a young woman of very fine temper, with a dignified sense of her own situation and an honest pride in her own dexterity." "Engaged to be married, of course?" "I think not. She and her mother are my very good friends. Had any betrothal taken place, I feel sure I should have heard of it." "Do ring for her, Mr. Churchouse, and let me look at her again. Does she know how good-looking she is?" "Youth! Youth! Yes, not being a fool, she knows she is well-favoured--much as you do, no doubt. I mean that you cannot shave yourself every morning without being conscious that you are in the Greek mould. I could show you the engraving of a statue by Praxiteles which is absurdly like you. But this accident of nature has not made you vain." "Me! Good Lord!" Raymond laughed long. "Do not be puffed up," continued Mr. Churchouse, "for, with charm, you combine to a certain extent the Greek vacuity. There are no lines upon your brow. You don't think enough." "Don't I, by Jove! I've been thinking a great deal too much lately. I've had a headache once." "Lack of practice, my dear boy. Sabina, being a woman of observation and intelligence, is no doubt aware of the fact that she is unusually personable. But she has brains and knows exactly what importance to attach to such an accident. If you want to learn what spinning means, she will be able to teach you." "Every cloud has a silver lining, apparently," said Raymond, and when Sabina returned, Ernest introduced him. The girl was clad in black with a white apron. She wore no cap. "This is Mr. Raymond Ironsyde, Sabina, and he's coming to learn all about the Mill before long." Raymond began to rattle away and Sabina, without self-consciousness, listened to him, laughed at his jests and answered his questions. Mr. Churchouse gazed at them benevolently through his glasses. He came unconsciously under the influence of their joy of life. Their conversation also pleased him, for it struck a right note--the note which he considered was seemly between employer and employed. He did not know that youth always modifies its tone in the presence of age, and that those of ripe years never hear the real truth concerning the opinions of the younger generation. When Raymond left for home and Mr. Churchouse walked out to the gate with him, Sabina peeped out of the kitchen window which commanded the entrance, and her face was lighted with very genuine animation and interest. Mrs. Dinnett returned at midnight tearful, for the ancient woman at Chilcombe had died in her arms--"at five after five," as she said. Mary Dinnett was an excitable and pessimistic person. She always leapt to meet trouble half way and invariably lost her nerve upon the least opportunity to do so. The peace of 'The Magnolias' had long offered her a fitting sanctum, for here life moved with the utmost simplicity and regularity; but, though as old as he was, Mary looked ahead to the time when Mr. Churchouse might fall, and could always win an ample misery from the reflection that she must then be at the mercy of an unfriendly world. Sabina heard the full story of her grandmother's decease with every detail of the passing, but it was the face of a young man, not the countenance of an old woman, that flitted through her thoughts as she went to sleep that night. CHAPTER V IN THE MILL John Best was taking Raymond Ironsyde round the spinning mill, but the foreman had his own theory and proposed to initiate the young man by easy stages. "You've seen the storehouses and the hacklers," he said. "Now if you just look into the works and get a general idea of the scheme of things, that's enough for one day." In the great building two sounds deafened an unfamiliar ear: a steady roar, deep and persistent, and through it, like a staccato pulse, a louder, more painful, more penetrating din. The bass to this harsh treble arose from humming belts and running wheels; the crash that punctuated their deep-mouthed riot broke from the drawing heads of the machines. A lofty, open roof, full of large sky-lights, covered the operating room, and in its uplifted dome supports and struts leapt this way and that, while, at the height of the walls, ran rods supporting rows of silver-bright wheels from which the power descended, through endless bands, to the machinery beneath. The floor was of stone, and upon it were disposed the various machine systems--the Card and Spreader, the Drawing Frames, Roving Frames, Gill Spinners and Spinning Frames. The general blurred effect in Raymond's mind was one of disagreeable sound, which made speech almost impossible. The din drove at him from above and below; and it was accompanied by a thousand unfamiliar movements of flying bands and wheels and squat masses of machinery that convulsed and heaved and palpitated round him. From nearly all the machines there streamed away continuous bright ribbons of hemp or flax, that caught the light and shone. This was the 'sliver,' the wrought, textile material passing through its many changes before it came to the spinners. The amber and lint-white coils of the winding sliver made a brightness among the duns and drabs around them and their colour was caught again aloft where whisps of material hung irregularly--lumps of waste from the ends of the bobbins--and there were also colour notes of warmth in the wooden wheels on many of the machines. These struck a genial tone into the chill greys and flash of polished steel on every side. After the mechanical activity, movement came from the irregular actions of the workers. Forty women and girls laboured here, and while some old people only sat on stools by the spouting sliver and wound it away into the tall cans that received it, other younger folk were more intensively engaged. The massive figure of Sally Groves lumbered at her ministry, where she fed the Carding Machine. She was subdued to the colour of the hemp tow with which she plied it. Elsewhere Sarah Northover flashed the tresses of long lines over her head and seemed to perform a rhythmic dance with her hands, as she tore each strick into three and laid the shining locks on her spread board. Others tended the drawers and rovers, while Sabina Dinnett, Nancy Buckler and Alice Chick, whose high task it was to spin, seemed to twinkle here, there and everywhere in a corybantic measure as they served the shouting and insatiable monsters that turned hemp and flax to yarn. They, indeed, specially attracted Raymond, by the activity of their work and the charm of their swift, supple figures, where, never still, they danced about, with a thousand, strenuous activities of hand and foot and eye. Their work dazed him and he wanted to stop here and ask Sabina many questions. She looked much more beautiful while spinning than in her black dress and white apron--so the young man thought. Her work displayed her neat, slim shape as she twirled round, stooped, leapt up again, twisted and stood on tip-toe in a thousand fascinating attitudes. Never a dancer in the limelight had revealed so much beauty. She was rayed in a brown gown with a short skirt, and on her head she wore a grey woollen cap. But Mr. Best forbade interest in the spinners. "You'll not get to them for a week yet," he said. "I'll ask you to just take in the general hang of it, Mister Raymond, please. Power comes from the water-wheel and the steam engine and it's brought down to each machine. Just throw your eyes round. You ain't here to look at the girls, if you'll excuse my saying so. You're here to learn." "You can learn more from the girls than all these noisy things put together," laughed Raymond; while Mr. Best shook his head and proceeded with his instructions. "Those exhausts above each system suck away the dust and small rubbish," he explained. "We shouldn't be able to breathe without them." The other looked up and saw great leaden-coloured tubes, like organ pipes, above him. Mr. Best droned on and strove to lay a foundation for future knowledge. He was skilled in every branch of the work, and a past master of all spinning mysteries. His lucid and simple exposition had very well served to introduce an attentive stranger to the complex operations going on around him, but Raymond was not attentive. He failed to concentrate and missed fundamental essentials from the desire to examine more advanced and obviously interesting operations. He apologised to John Best before the dinner-hour. "This is only a preliminary canter," he said. "It's all Greek to me and it will take time to get the thing clear. It looks quite different to me from what it must to you. I'll get the general scheme into my head first and then work out the details. A man's mind can't make order out of this chaos in a minute." He stood and tried to appreciate the trend of events. He enjoyed the adventure, but at present made no effort to do more than enjoy it. He would start to work later. He began to like the din and the dusty light and the glitter and shine of polished metal and bright sliver eternally winding into the cans. Round it hovered or sat the women like dull moths. They wound the stream of hemp or flax away and snapped it when a can was full. There was no pause or slackening, nothing but the whirl of living hands and arms and bodies, dead wheels and teeth and pulleys and pins operating on the inert tow. The mediators, animate and inanimate, laboured together for its manufacture; while the masses of mingled wood and steel, leather and brass and iron, moved in controlled obedience to the giant forces liberated from steam and water that drove all. The selfsame power, gleaned from sunshine and moisture and sublimated to human flesh and blood through bread, plied in the fingers and muscles and countless, complex mental directions of the men and women who controlled. From sun-light and air, earth and water had also sprung the fields of hemp and flax in far-off lands and yielded up their loveliness to foreign scutchers. The dried death of countless beautiful herbs now represented the textile fabric on which all this immense energy was applied. Thus far, along an obvious line of thought, Raymond's reflections took him, but there his slight mental effort ended, and even this much tired him. The time for dinner came; Mr. Best now turned certain hand-wheels and moved certain levers. They shut off the power and gradually the din lessened, the pulsing and throbbing slowed until the whole great complexity came to a stand-still. The drone of the overhead wheels ceased, the crash of the draw-heads stopped. A startling silence seemed to grow out of the noise and quell it, while a new activity manifested itself among the workers. As a bell rang they were changed in a twinkling and, amid chatter and laughter, like breaking chrysalids, they flung off their basset aprons and dun overalls, to emerge in brighter colours. Blouses of pink and blue and red flashed out, straw hats and sun-bonnets appeared, and all streamed away like magic to their neighbouring houses. It was as though its soul had passed and left a dead mill behind it. Raymond, released for a moment from the attentions of the foreman, strolled among the machines of the minders and spinners. Then his eyes were held by an intimate and personal circumstance that linked these women to this place. He found that on the whitewashed walls beside their working corners, the girls had impressed themselves--their names, their interests, their hopes. With little picture galleries were the walls brightened, and with sentiments and ideas. The names of the workers were printed up in old stamps--green and pink--and beside them one might read, in verses, or photographs, or pictures taken from the journals, something of the history, taste and personal life of those who set them there. Serious girls had written favourite hymns beside their working places; the flippant scribbled jokes and riddles; the sentimental copied love songs that ran to many verses. Often the photograph of a maiden's lover accompanied them, and there were also portraits of mothers and sisters, babies and brothers. Some of the girls had hung up fashion-plates and decorated their workshop with ugly and mean designs for clothing that they would never wear. Raymond found that picture postcards were a great feature of these galleries, and they contained also, of course, many private jests and allusions lost upon the visitor. Character was revealed in the collections; for the most part they showed desire for joy, and aspiration to deck the working-place with objects and words that should breed happy thoughts and draw the mind where its treasure harboured. Each heart it seemed was holding, or seeking, a romance; each heart was settled about some stalwart figure presented in the picture gallery, or still finding temporary substance for dreams in love poetry, in representations of happy lovers at stiles, in partings of soldier and sailor lads from their sweethearts. Beside some of the old workers the walls were blank. They had nothing left to set down, or hang up. Raymond was arrested by a little rhyme round which a black border had been pasted. It was original: "I am coiling, coiling, coiling Into the can, And thinking, thinking, thinking, Of my dear man. "He is toiling, toiling, toiling Out on the sea, And thinking, thinking, thinking Only of me. "F.H." Mr. Best joined Ironsyde. "These walls!" he said. "It's about time we had a coat of whitewash. Mister Daniel thinks so too." "Why--good lord--this is the most interesting part of the whole show. This is alive! Who's F.H.?" "The girls will keep that. They like it, though I tell them it would be better rubbed out. Poor Flossy Hackett wrote that. She was going to marry a sailor-man, but he changed his mind, and she broke her heart and drowned herself--that's all there is to it." "The damned rascal. I hope he got what he deserved." Mr. Best allowed his mind to peep from the shell that usually concealed it. "If he did, he was one man in a thousand. He married a Weymouth woman and Flossy went into the river--in the deep pool beyond the works. A clever sort of girl, but a dreamer you might say." "I'd like to have had the handling of that devil!" "You never know. She may have had what's better than a wedding ring--in happy dreams. Reality's not the best of life. People do change their minds. He was honest and all that. Only he found somebody else he liked better." At this moment Daniel Ironsyde came into the works, and while John Best hastened to him, Raymond pursued his amusement and studied the wall by the spinning frame where Sabina Dinnett worked. He found a photograph of her mother and a quotation from Shakespeare torn off a calendar for the date of August the third. He guessed that might be Sabina's birthday. The quotation ran:-- "To thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." There was no male in Sabina's picture gallery--indeed, no other picture but that of a girl--her fellow spinner, Nancy Buckler. His brother approached Raymond. "You've made a start, Ray?" "Rather. It's jolly interesting. Best is wonderful, but he can't fathom my ignorance yet." "It's all very simple and straightforward. Do you like your office?" "Yes," declared the younger. "Couldn't beat it. When I want something to do, I can fling a line out of the window and fish in the river." "You have plenty to do besides fish out of the window I should hope. Let us lunch. I'm stopping here this afternoon. Aunt Jenny wanted to know whether you'd come to Bridport to dinner on Sunday." Daniel was entirely friendly now and he designed--if the future should justify the step--to take Raymond into partnership. But only in the event of very material changes in his brother's life would he do so. Their aunt felt sanguine that Raymond must soon recognise his responsibilities, settle to the business of justifying his existence and put away childish things; Daniel was less hopeful, but trusted that she might be right. Her imagination worked for Raymond and warned her nephew not to be too exacting at first. She pointed out that it was very improbable Daniel's brother would become a model in a moment, or settle down to the business of fixed hours and clerical work without a few lapses from the narrow and arduous path. So the elder was prepared to see his brother kick against the pricks and even warned John Best that it might be so. Brief acquaintance with Raymond had already convinced the foreman of this probability, and he found himself liking Daniel's brother from the first. The dangers, however, were not hid from him; but while he perceived the youthful instability of the newcomer and his impatience of detail, he presently discovered an interest in mechanical contrivances, a spark of originality, and a feeling for new things that might lead to results, if only the necessary application were forthcoming and the vital interest aroused. Mr. Best had a simple formula. "The successful spinner," he often remarked, "is the man who can turn out the best yarn from a given sample of the raw. Hand identical stuff to ten manufacturers and you'll soon see where the best yarn comes from." He knew of better yarns than came from the Ironsyde mill, and regretted the fact. That a time might arrive when Raymond would see with him seemed exceedingly improbable; yet he felt the dim possibility by occasional flashes in the young man, and it was a quality of Mr. Best's mind to be hopeful and credit other men with his own aspirations, if any excuse existed for so doing. CHAPTER VI 'THE SEVEN STARS' On a Saturday in August, Sarah Northover, one of those who minded the 'spreader' at Bridetown Mill, came to see her aunt--the mistress of 'The Seven Stars,' in Barrack Street, Bridport. She had walked three miles through the hot and dusty lanes and found the shady streets of Bridport cool by comparison, but there was work for her at 'The Seven Stars,' and Mrs. Northover proved very busy. A holiday party of five-and-twenty guests was arriving at five o'clock for tea, and Sarah, perceiving that her own tea would be a matter for the future, lent her aunt a hand. Her tea gardens and pleasure grounds were the pride of Nelly Northover's heart. Three quarters of an acre extended here behind the inn, and she had erected swings for the children and laid a croquet lawn for those who enjoyed that pastime. Lawn tennis she would not permit, out of respect for her herbaceous border which surrounded the place of entertainment. At one corner was a large summer-house in which her famous teas were generally taken. The charge was one shilling, and being of generous disposition, Mrs. Northover provided for that figure a handsome meal. She was a large, high-bosomed woman, powerfully built, and inclined to stoutness. Her complexion was sanguine, and her prominent eyes were very blue. Of a fair-minded and honest spirit, she suffered from an excitable temper and rather sharp tongue. But her moods were understood by her staff, and if her emotional quality did injustice, an innate sense of what was reasonable ultimately righted the wrong. Sarah helped Job Legg and others to prepare for the coming party, while Mrs. Northover roamed the herbaceous border and cut flowers to decorate the table. While she pursued this work there bustled in Richard Gurd from 'The Tiger.' He was in his shirt-sleeves and evidently pushed for time. "Wonders never cease," said Nelly, smiling upon him. "It's a month of Sundays since you was in my gardens. I'll lay you've come for some flowers for your dining table." Reciprocity was practised between these best of friends, and while Mr. Gurd often sent customers to Mrs. Northover, since tea parties were not a branch of business he cared about, she returned his good service with gifts from the herbaceous border and free permission to use her spacious inn yard and stables. "I'm always coming to have a look round at your wonderful flower-bed," said Richard, "and some Sunday morning, during church hours, I will do so; but you know how busy we all are in August. And I don't want no flowers; but I want the run of your four-stall stable. There's a 'beano' coming over from Lyme and I'm full up already." "Never no need to ask," she answered. "I'll tell Job to set a man on to it." He thanked her very heartily and she gave him a rose. Then he admired the grass, knowing that she prided herself upon it. "Never seen such grass anywhere else in Bridport," he assured her. "There's lots try to grow grass like yours; but none can come near this." "'Tis Job's work," she told him. "He's a Northerner and had the charge of a bowling-green at his uncle's public; and what he don't know about grass ain't worth knowing." "He's a sheet-anchor, that man," confessed Richard; "a sheet-anchor and a tower of strength, as you might say." "I don't deny it," admitted Nelly. "Sometimes, in a calm moment, I run my mind over Job Legg, and I'm almost ashamed to think how much I owe him." "It ain't all one way, however. He's got a snug place, and no potman in Dorset draws more money, though there's some who draws more beer." "There's no potman in Dorset with his head," she answered. "He's got a brain and it's very seldom indeed you find such an honest chap with such a lot of intellects. The clever ones are mostly the downy ones; but Job's single thought is the welfare of the house, and he pushes honesty to extremes." "If you can say that, he must be a wonder, certainly, for none knows what honesty means better than you," said Mr. Gurd. He had put Nelly's rose into his coat. "He's more than a potman, chiefly along of being such a good friend to my late husband. Almost the last sensible thing my poor dear said to me before he died was never to get rid of Job. And no doubt I never shall. I'm going to put up his money at Michaelmas." "Well, don't make the man a god, and don't you spoil him. Job's a very fine chap and can carry corn as well as most of 'em--in fact far better; but a man is terrible quick to trade on the good opinion of his fellow man, and if you let him imagine you can't do without him, you may put false and fantastic ideas into his head." "I'm not at all sure if I could do without him," she answered, "though, even if he knew it, he's far too fine a character to take advantage. A most modest creature and undervalued accordingly." Then a boy ran in for Richard and he hastened away, while Nelly took a sheaf of flowers to the summer-house and made the table bright with them. She praised her niece's activities. "'Tis a shame to ring you in on your half-holiday," she said. "But you're one of the sensible sort, and you won't regret being a good girl to me in the time to come." Then she turned to Job. "Gurd's got a char-a-bank and a party on the way from Lyme, and he's full up and wants the four-horse stable," she told him. It was part of Job's genius never to be put about, or driven from placidity by anything. "Then there's no time to lose," he said. "We're ready here, and now if Sarah will lend a hand at the table over there in the shade for the party of six--" "Lord! I'd forgotten them." "I hadn't," he answered. "They're cutting in the kitchen now and the party's due at four. So you'll have them very near off your hands before the big lot comes. I'll see to the stable and get in a bit of fresh straw and shake down some hay. Then I'll take the bar and let Miss Denman come to help with the tea." He went his way and Sarah sat down a moment while her aunt arranged the flowers. "There's no tea-tables like yours," she said. "I pride myself on 'em. A lot goes to a tea beside the good food, in my opinion. Some human pigs don't notice my touches and only want to stuff; but the bettermost have an eye for everything sweet and clean about 'em. Such nicer characters don't like poultry messing round and common things in sight while they eat and drink. I know what I feel myself about a clean cloth and a bunch of fine flowers on the table, and many people are quite as particular as me. I train the girls up to take a pride in such things, and now and again a visitor will thank me for it." "I could have brought a bunch of flowers from our little garden," said Sarah. "It would be coals to Newcastle, my dear. We make a feature of 'em. Job Legg understands the ways of 'em, and you see the result. You can pick all day from my herbaceous border and not miss what you take." "Nobody grows sweet peas like yours." "Job again. He's mastered the sweet pea in a manner given to few. He'll bring out four on a stalk, and think nothing of it." "Mister Best, our foreman, is wonderful in a garden, too," answered Sarah. "And a great fruit grower also." "That reminds me. I've got a fine dish of greengages for this party. In the season I fling in a bit of fruit sometimes. It always comes as a pleasant surprise to tea people that they ain't called to pay extra for fruit." She went her way and Sarah turned to a lesser entertainment under preparation in a shady corner of the garden. A girl of the house was already busy there, and the guests had arrived. They were hot and thirsty. Some sat on the grass and fanned themselves. A young man did juggling feats with the croquet balls for the amusement of two young women. Not until half-past six came any pause, but after that hour the tea drinkers thinned off; the big party had come and gone; the smaller groups were all attended to and tea was served in Mrs. Northover's private sitting-room behind the bar for herself, Sarah and the barmaid. Being refreshed and rested, Mrs. Northover turned to the affairs of her niece. At the same moment Mr. Legg came in. "Sit down and have some tea," said Mrs. Northover. "I've took a hasty cup," he answered, "but could very well do with another." "And how's Mister Roberts, Sarah?" asked her aunt. "Fine. He's playing in a cricket match to-day--Bridetown against Chilcombe. They've asked him to play for Bridport since Mister Raymond saw him bowl. He's very pleased about it." "Teetotal, isn't he?" asked Mr. Job. "Yes, Mister Legg. Nick have never once touched a drop in all his life and never means to." "A pity there ain't more of the same way of thinking," said Mrs. Northover. "And I say that, though a publican and the wife of a publican; and so do you, don't you, Job?" "Most steadfast," he replied. "When I took on barman as a profession, I never lifted pot or glass again to my own lips, and have stood between many a young man and the last half pint. I tell you this to your face, Missis Northover. Not an hour ago I was at 'The Tiger,' to let Richard Gurd know the stable was ready, and in the private bar there were six young men, all drinking for the pleasure of drinking. If the younger generation only lapped when 'twas thirsty, half the drinking-places would shut, and there wouldn't be no more brewers in the peerage." He shook his head and drank his tea. Mrs. Northover changed the subject. "How's the works?" she asked. "Do the people like the new master?" "Just the same--same hours, same money--everything. And Mister Daniel's brother, Mister Raymond's, come to it to learn the business. He is a cure!" "He's over there now," said Job, waving his hand in the direction of 'The Tiger.' "Drinking port wine he is with that young sport, Motyer, and others like him. I don't like Motyer's face. He's a shifty chap, and a thorn in his family's side by all accounts. But Mister Raymond have a very open countenance and ought to have a good heart." "What do you mean when you say he's a 'cure,' Sarah?" asked her aunt. "He's that friendly with us girls," she answered. "He's supposed to be learning all there is to spinning, but he plays about half his time and you can't help laughing. He's so friendly as if he was one of us; but Sabina Dinnett is his pet. Wants to make her smoke cigarettes! But there's no harm to him if you understand." "There's always harm to a chap that plays about and don't look after his own business," declared Job. "I understand his brother's been very proper about him, and now it's up to him; and he ain't at the Mill to offer the girls cigarettes." "He's got his own room and Mister Best wishes he'd bide in it," explained Sarah, "but he says he must learn, and so he's always wandering around. But everybody likes him, except Levi Baggs. He don't like anybody. He'd like to draw us all over his hackling frames if he could." They chattered awhile, then worked again; but Sarah stayed to supper, and it was not until half-past ten o'clock that she started for home. Another Bridetown girl--Alice Chick, the spinner--had been spending her half holiday in Bridport. Now she met Sarah, by appointment, at the top of South Street and the two returned together. CHAPTER VII A WALK The Carding Machine was a squat and noisy monster. Mr. Best confessed that it had put him in mind of a passage from Holy Writ, for it seemed to be all eyes, behind and before. The eyes were wheels, and beneath, the mass of the carder opened its mouth--a thin and hungry slit into which wound an endless band. Spread upon this leathern roller was the hemp tow--that mass of short material which Levi Baggs, the hackler, pruned away from his long strides. As for the minder, Sally Groves, she seemed built and born to tend a Carding Machine. She moved with dignity despite her great size, and although covered in tow dust from head to foot and powdered with a layer of pale amber fluff, she stood as well as another for the solemnity of toil, laboured steadfastly, was neither elated, nor cast down, and presented to younger women a spectacle of skill, resolution and good sense. The great woman ennobled her work; through the dust and din, with placid and amiable features, she peered, and ceased not hour after hour, to spread the tow truly and evenly upon the rolling board. One of less experience might have needed to weigh her material, but Sally never weighed; by long practice and good judgment, she produced sliver of even texture. The carder panted, crashed and shook with its energies. It glimmered all over with the bright, hairy gossamer of the tow, which wound thinly through systems of fast and slow wheels. Between them the material was lashed and pricked, divided and sub-divided, torn and lacerated by thousands of pins, that separated strand from strand and shook the stuff to its integral fibres before building it up again. Despite the thunder and the suggestion of immense forces exerted upon the frail material, utmost delicacy marked the operations of the card. Any real strain must have torn to atoms the fine amber coils in which it ejected the strips of shining sliver. Enormous waste marked the operation. Beneath the machine rose mounds of dust and dirt, and fluff, light as thistledown; while as much was sucked away into the air by the exhaust above. In a lion-coloured overall and under a hat tied beneath her chin with a yellow handkerchief, Sally Groves pursued her task. Then came to her Sabina Dinnett and, ceasing not to spread her tow the while, Sally spoke serious words. "I asked Nancy Buckler to send you along when your machine stopped a minute. You won't be vexed with me if I say something, will you?" "Vexed with you, Sally? Who ever was vexed with you?" "I'm old enough to be your mother, and 'tis her work if anybody's to speak to you," explained Sally; "but she's not here, and she don't see what I can't help seeing." "What have you seen then?" "I've seen a very good-looking young man by the name of Raymond Ironsyde wasting a deuce of a lot of his time by your spinning frame; and wasting your time, too." Sabina changed colour. "Fancy you saying that!" she exclaimed. "He's got to learn the business--the practical side, Sally. And he wants to master it carefully and grasp the whole thing." Miss Groves smiled. "Ah. He didn't take long mastering the carder," she said. "Just two minutes was all he gave me, and I don't think he was very long at the drawing heads neither; and I ain't heard Sarah Northover say he spent much of his time at the spreader. It all depends on the minder whether Mister Raymond wants to know much about the work!" "But the spinning is the hardest to understand, Sally." "Granted, but he don't ask many questions of Alice Chick or Nancy Buckler, do he? I'm not blaming him, Lord knows, nor yet you, but for friendship I'm whispering to you to be sensible. He's a very kind-hearted young gentleman, and if he had a memory as big as his promises, he'd soon ruin himself. But, like a lot of other nice chaps full of generous ideas, he forgets 'em when the accident that woke 'em is out of his mind. And all I say, Sabina, is to be careful. He may be as good as gold, and I dare say he is, but he's gone on you--head over heels--he can't hide it. He don't even try to. And he's a gentleman and you're a spinner. So don't you be silly, and don't think the worse of me for speaking." Sabina entertained the opinions concerning middle-age common to youth, but she was fond of Sally and set her heart at rest. "You needn't be frightened," she answered. "He's a gentleman, as you say; and you know I'm not the sort to be a fool. I can't help him coming; and I can't be rude to the young man. For that matter I wouldn't. I won't forget what you've said all the same." She hurried away and started her machine; but while her mind concentrated on spinning, some subconscious instincts worked at another matter and she found that Sally had cast a cloud upon a coming event which promised nothing but sunshine. She had agreed to go for a walk with Raymond Ironsyde on the following Sunday, and he had named their meeting-place: a bridge that crossed the Bride in the vale two miles from the village. She meant to go, for the understanding between her and Raymond had advanced far beyond any point dreamed of by Sally Groves. Sabina's mind was in fact exceedingly full of Raymond, and his mind was full of her. Temperament had conspired to this state of things, for while the youth found himself in love for the first time in his life, and pursued the quest with that ardour and enthusiasm until now reserved for sport, Sabina, who had otherwise been much more cautious, was not only in love, but actually felt that shadowy ambitions from the past began to promise realisation. She was not vain, but she knew herself a finer thing in mind and body than most of the girls with whom she worked. She had read a great deal and learned much from Mr. Churchouse, who delighted to teach her, and from Mr. Best, with whom she was a prime favourite. She had refused several offers of marriage and preserved a steady determination not to wed until there came a man who could lift her above work and give her a home that would embrace comfort and leisure. She waited, confident that this would happen, for she knew that she could charm men. As yet none had come who awakened any emotion of love in Sabina; and she told herself that real love might alter her values and send her to a poor man's home after all. If that happened, she was willing; but she thought it improbable; because, in her experience, poor men were ignorant, and she felt very sure no ignorant man would ever make her love him. Then came into her life one very much beyond her dreams, and from an attitude of utmost caution before a physical beauty that fascinated her, she woke into tremendous excitation of mind at the discovery that he, too, was interested. To her it seemed that he had plenty of brains. His ideas were human and beautiful. He declared the conditions of the workers to be not sufficiently considered. He was full of nebulous theories for the amelioration of such conditions. The spectacle of women working for a living caused Raymond both uneasiness and indignation. To Sabina, it seemed that he was a chivalric knight of romance--a being from a fairy story. She had heard of such men, but never met with one outside a novel. She glorified Raymond into something altogether sublime--as soon as she found that he liked her. He filled her head, and while her common-sense vainly tried to talk as Sally Groves had talked, each meeting with the young man threw her back upon the tremendous fact that he was deeply interested in her and did not care who knew it. Common-sense could not modify that; nor would she listen to common-sense, when it suggested that Raymond's record was uninspiring, and pointed to no great difference between him and other young men. She told herself that he was misunderstood; she whispered to herself that she understood him. It must be so, for he had declared it. He had said that he was an idealist. As a matter of fact he did not himself know the meaning of the word half as well as Sabina. He filled her thoughts, and believing him to be honourable, in the everyday acceptation of the word, she knew she was safe and need not fear him. This fact added to the joy and excitement of a situation that was merely thrilling, not difficult. For she had to be receptive only, and that was easy: the vital matter rested with him. She did not do anything to encourage him, or take any step that her friends could call "forward." She just left it to him and knew not how far he meant to go, yet felt, in sanguine moments, that he would go all the way, sooner or later, and offer to marry her. Her friends declared it would be so. They were mightily interested, but not jealous, for the girls recognised Sabina's advantages. When, therefore, he asked her to take a walk on a certain Sunday afternoon, she agreed to do so. There was no plotting or planning about it. He named a familiar place of meeting and proposed to go thence to the cliffs--a ramble that might bring them face to face with a dozen people who knew them. She felt the happier for that. Nor could Sally Groves and her warning cast her down for long. The hint that Raymond was a gentleman and Sabina a spinner touched a point in their friendship long past. The girl knew that well enough; but she also knew what Sally did not, and told herself that Raymond was a great deal more than a gentleman, just as she--Sabina--was something more than a spinner. That, however, was the precious knowledge peculiar to the young people themselves. She could not expect Sally, or anybody else, to know it yet. As for the young man, life had cut away from him most of his former interests and amusements. He was keeping regular hours and working steadily. He regarded himself as a martyr, yet could get none to take that view. To him, then, came his love affair as a very present help in time of trouble. The emotions awakened by Sabina were real, and he fully believed that she was going to be essential to his life's happiness and completion. He knew nothing about women, for his athletic pursuits and ambitions to excel physically produced an indifference to them. But with the change in his existence, and the void thereby created, came love, and he had leisure to welcome it. He magnified Sabina, and since her intellect was as good as his own and her education better, he assured himself that she was in every respect superior to her position and worthy of any man's admiration. He did not analyse his feelings or look ahead very far. He did not bother to ask himself what he wanted. He was only concerned to make Sabina 'a chum,' as he said, to himself. He knew this to be nonsense, even while he said it, but in the excitement of the quest, chose to ignore rational lines of thought. They met by the little bridge over Bride, then walked southerly up a hill to a hamlet, and so on to the heights. Beneath the sponge-coloured cliffs eastward swept the grand scythe of Chesil Bank; but an east wind had brought its garment of grey-blue haze and the extremity of the Bank, with Portland Bill beyond, was hidden. The cliffs gave presently and green slopes sank to the beaches. They reached a place where, separated from the sea by great pebble-ridges, there lay a little mere. Two swans swam together upon it, and round about the grey stone banks were washed with silver pink, where the thrift prospered. Sabina had not talked much, though she proved a good listener; but Raymond spoke fitfully, too, at first. He was new to this sort of thing and told her so. "I don't believe I've ever been for a walk with a girl in my life before," he said. "I can't walk fast enough for you, I'm afraid." "Oh yes, you can; you're a very good walker." At last he began to tell her about himself, in the usual fashion of the male, who knows by instinct that subject is most interesting to both. He dwelt on his sporting triumphs of the past, and explained his trials and tribulations in the present. He represented that he was mewed up like an eagle. He described how the tragic call to work for a living had sounded in his ear when he anticipated no such painful experience. Before this narrative Sabina affected a deeper sympathy than she felt, yet honestly perceived that to such a man, his present life of regular hours must be dreary and desolate. "It's terrible dull for you, I'm sure," she said. "It was," he confessed, "but I'm getting broken in, or perhaps it's because you're so jolly friendly. You're the only person I know in the whole world who has got the mind and imagination to see what a frightful jar it was for an open-air man like me to be dropped into this. People think it is the most unnatural thing on earth that I should suddenly begin to work. But it's just as unnatural really as if my brother suddenly began to play. Even my great friend, Arthur Waldron, talks rubbish about everybody having to work sooner or later--not that he ever did. But you were quick enough to see in a moment. You're tremendously clever, really." "I wish I was; but I saw, of course, that you were rather contemptuous of it all." "So I was at first," he confessed. "At first I felt that it was a woman's show, and that what women can do well is no work for men. But I soon saw I was wrong. It increased my respect for women in a way. To find, for instance, that you could do what you do single-handed and make light of it; that was rather an eye-opener. Whenever any pal of mine talks twaddle about what women can't do, I shall bring him to see you at work." "I could do something better than spin if I got the chance," she said, and he applauded the sentiment highly. "Of course you could, and I'm glad you've got the pluck to say so. I knew that from the first. You're a lot too clever for spinning, really. You'd shine anywhere. Let's sit here under this thorn bush. I must get some rabbiting over this scrub. The place swarms with them. You don't mind if I smoke?" They rested, and he ventured to make a personal remark after Sabina had taken off her gloves to cool her hands. "You've hurt yourself," he said, noting what seemed to be an injury. But she made light of it. "It's only a corn from stopping the spindles. Every spinner's hands are like that. Alice Chick has chilblains in winter, then she gets a cruel, bad hand." The slight deformity made Raymond uncomfortable. He could not bear to think of a woman suffering such a stigma in her tender flesh. "They ought to invent something to prevent you being hurt," he said, and Sabina laughed. "Why, there are very few manual trades don't leave their mark," she answered, "and a woman's lucky to get nothing worse than a scarred hand." "Would it come right," he ventured to ask, "if you gave up spinning?" "Yes, in no time. There are worse things happen to you in the mills than that--and more painful. Sometimes the wind from the reels numbs your fingers till you can't feel 'em and they go red, and then blue. And there's always grumbling about the temperature, because what suits hemp and flax don't suit humans. If some clever man could solve these difficulties, it would be more comfortable for us. Not that I'm grumbling. Our mill is about as perfect as any mill can be, and we've got the blessing of living in the country, too--that's worth a lot." "You're fond of the country." "Couldn't live out of it," she said. "Thanks to Mr. Churchouse, I know more about things than some girls." "I should think you did." "He's very wise and kind and lends me books." "A very nice old bird. I nearly went to live with him when I came to Bridetown. Sorry I didn't, now." She smiled and did not pretend to miss the compliment. "As to the Mill," he went on; "don't think I'm the sort of chap that just drifts and is contented to let things be as they were in the time of his father and grandfather." "Wouldn't you?" "Certainly not. No doubt it's safer and easier and the line of least resistance and all that sort of thing. But when I've once mastered the business, you'll see. I didn't want to come in, but now I'm in, I'm going to the roots of it, and I shall have a pretty big say in things, too, later on." "Fancy!" said Sabina. "Oh yes. You mustn't suppose my brother and I see alike all round. We don't. He wants to be a copy of my father, and I've no ambition to be anything of the kind. My father wasn't at all sporting to me, Sabina, and it doesn't alter the fact because he's dead. The first thing is the workers, and whatever I am, I'm clever enough to know that if we don't do a good many things for the workers pretty soon, they'll do those things for themselves. But it will be a great deal more proper and breed a lot more goodwill between labour and capital, if capital takes the first step and improves the conditions and raises the wages all round. D'you know what I would do if I had my way? I'd go one better than the Trade Unions! I'd cut the ground from under their feet! I'd say to Capital 'instead of whining about the Trades Unions, get to work and make them needless.'" But these gigantic ideas, uttered on the spur of the moment by one who knew less than nothing of his subject, did not interest Sabina as much as he expected. The reason, however, he did not know. It was that he had called her by her name for the first time. It slipped out without intention, though he was conscious of it as he spoke it; but he had no idea that it had greatly startled her and awoke mingled feelings of delight and doubt. She was delighted, because it meant her name must have been often in his thoughts, she was doubtful, because its argued perhaps a measure less of that respect he had always paid her. But, on the whole, she felt glad. He waited for her to speak and did not know that she had heard little, but was wondering at that moment if he would go back to the formal 'Miss Dinnett' again, or always call her 'Sabina' in future. After a pause Raymond spoke. "Now tell me about yourself," he said. "I'm sure you've heard enough about me." "There's nothing to tell." "How did you happen to be a spinner?" "Mother was, so I went into it as a matter of course." "I should have thought old Churchouse would have seen you're a genius, and educated you and adopted you." "Nothing of a genius about me. I'm like most other girls." "I never saw another girl like you," he said. "You'd spoil anybody with your compliments." "Never paid a compliment in my life," he declared. Their conversation became desultory, and presently Sabina said she must be going home. "Mother will be wondering." On the way back they met another familiar pair and Sabina speculated as to what Raymond thought; but he showed no emotion and took off his hat to Sarah Northover and Nicholas Roberts, the lathe worker, as they passed by. Sarah smiled, and Nicholas, a thin, good-looking man, took off his hat also. "I must go and study the lathes," said Raymond after they had passed. "That's a branch of the work I haven't looked at yet. Roberts seems a good chap, and he's a very useful bowler, I find." "He's engaged to Sarah; they're going to be married when he can get a house." "That's another thing that must be looked to. There are scores of cottages that want pulling down here. I shall point that out to the Lord of the Manor when I get a chance." "You're all for changes and improvements, Mister Ironsyde." "Call me Raymond, Sabina." "I couldn't do that." "Why not? I want you to. By the way, may I call you Sabina?" "Yes, if you care to." They parted at the entrance gate of 'The Magnolias,' and Raymond thanked her very heartily for her company. "I've looked forward to this," he said. "And now I shall look forward to the next time. It's very sporting of you to come and I'm tremendously grateful and--good-bye, Sabina--till to-morrow." He went on up the road to North Hill House and felt the evening had grown tasteless without her. He counted the hours to when he would see her again. She went to work at seven o'clock, but he never appeared at the Mill until ten, or later. He began to see that this was the most serious thing within his experience. He supposed that it must be enduring and tend to alter the whole tenor of his life. Marriage was one of the stock jokes in his circle, yet, having regard for Sabina, this meant marriage or nothing. He felt ill at ease, for love had not yet taken the bit and run away with him. Other interests cried out to him--interests that he would have to give up. He tried to treat the matter as a joke with himself, but he could not. He felt melancholy, and that night at supper Waldron asked what was wrong, while Estelle told him he must be ill, because he was so dull. "I don't believe the spinning works are good for you," she said. "Ask for a holiday and distract your mind with other things," suggested Waldron. "If you'd come out in the mornings and ride for a couple of hours before breakfast, as I do, you'd be all right." "I will," promised Raymond. "I want bucking up." He pictured Sabina on horseback. "I wish to God I was rich instead of being a pauper!" he exclaimed. "My advice is that you stick it out for a year or more, till you've convinced your brother you'll never be any good at spinning," said Arthur Waldron. "Then, after he knows you're not frightened of work, but, of course, can't excel at work that isn't congenial, he'll put money into your hands for a higher purpose, and you will go into breeding stock, or some such thing, to help keep up the sporting instincts of the country." With that bright picture still before him Raymond retired. But he was not hopeful and even vague suggestions on Waldron's part that his friend should become his bailiff and study agriculture did not serve to win from the sufferer more than thanks. The truth he did not mention, knowing that neither Waldron, nor anybody else, would offer palatable counsel in connection with that. CHAPTER VIII THE LECTURE Daniel Ironsyde sat with his Aunt Jenny after dinner and voiced discontent. But it was not with himself and his personal progress that he felt out of tune. All went well at the Mill save in one particular, and he found no fault either with the heads of the offices at Bridport, or with John Best, who entirely controlled the manufacture at Bridetown. His brother caused the tribulation of his mind. Miss Ironsyde sympathised, but argued for Raymond. "He has an immense respect for you and would not willingly do anything to annoy you, I'm sure of that. You must remember that Raymond was not schooled to this. It takes a boy of his temperament a long time to find the yoke easy. You were naturally studious, and wise enough to get into harness after you left school; Raymond, with his extraordinary physical powers, found the fascination of sport over-mastering. He has had to give up what to your better understanding is trivial and unimportant, but it really meant something to him." "He hasn't given up as much as you might think," answered Daniel. "He's always taking holidays now for cricket matches, and he rides often with Waldron. It was a mistake his going there. Waldron is a person with one idea, and a foolish idea at that. He only thinks a man is a man when he's tearing about after foxes, or killing something, or playing with a ball of some sort. He's a bad influence for Raymond. But it's not that. It's not so much what Raymond doesn't do as what he does do. He's foolish with the spinners and minders at the Mill." "He might be," said Jenny Ironsyde, "but he's a gentleman." "He's an idiot. I believe he'd wreck the whole business if he had the power. Best tells me he talks to the girls about what he's going to do presently, and tells them he will raise all their wages. He suggests to perfectly satisfied people that they are not getting enough money! Well, it's only human nature for them to agree with him, and you can easily see what the result of that would be. Instead of having the hands willing and contented, they'll grow unsettled and grumble, and then work will suffer and a bad spirit appear in the Mill. It is simply insane." "I quite agree," answered his aunt. "There's no excuse whatever for nonsense of that sort, and if Raymond minded his own business, as he should, it couldn't happen. Surely his own work doesn't throw him into the company of the girls?" "Of course it doesn't. It's simply a silly excuse to waste his time and hear his own voice. He ought to have learned all about the mechanical part weeks ago." "Well, I can only advise patience," said Miss Ironsyde. "I don't suppose a woman would carry much weight with him, an old one I mean--myself in fact. But failing others I will do what I can. You say Mr. Waldron's no good. Then try Uncle Ernest. I think he might touch Raymond. He's gentle, but he's wise. And failing that, you must tackle him yourself, Daniel. It's your duty. I know you hate preaching and all that sort of thing, but there's nobody else." "I suppose there isn't. It can't go on anyway, because he'll do harm. I believe asses like Raymond make more trouble than right down wicked people, Aunt Jenny." "Don't tell him he's an ass. Be patient--you're wonderfully patient always for such a young man, so be patient with your brother. But try Uncle Ernest first. He might ask Raymond to lunch, or tea, and give him a serious talking to. He'll know what to say." "He's too mild and easy. It will go in at one ear and come out of the other," prophesied Daniel. But none the less he called on Mr. Churchouse when next at Bridetown. The old man had just received a parcel by post and was elated. "A most interesting work sent to me from 'A Well Wisher,'" he said. "It is an old perambulation of Dorsetshire, which I have long desired to possess." "People like your writings in the _Bridport Gazette_," declared Daniel. "Can you give me a few minutes, Uncle Ernest? I won't keep you." "My time is always at the service of Henry Ironsyde's boys," answered the other, "and nothing that I can do for you, or Raymond, is a trouble." "Thank you. I'm grateful. It is about Raymond, as a matter of fact." "Ah, I'm not altogether surprised. Come into the study." Mr. Churchouse, carrying his new book, led the way and soon he heard of the younger man's anxieties. But the bookworm increased rather than allayed them. "Do you see anything of Raymond?" began Daniel. "A great deal of him. He often comes to supper. But I will be frank. He does not patronise my simple board for what he can get there, nor does he find my company very exciting. He wouldn't. The attraction, I'm afraid, is my housekeeper's daughter, Sabina. Sabina, I may tell you, is a very attractive girl, Daniel. It has been my pleasure during her youth to assist at her education, and she is well informed and naturally clever. She is inclined to be excitable, as many clever people are, but she is of a charming disposition and has great natural ability. I had thought she would very likely become a schoolmistress; but in this place the call of the mills is paramount and, as you know, the young women generally follow their mothers. So Sabina found the thought of the spinning attractive and is now, Mr. Best tells me, an amazingly clever spinner--his very first in fact. And it cannot be denied that Raymond sees a good deal of her. This is probably not wise, because friendship, at their tender ages, will often run into emotion, and, naturally flattered by his ingenuous attentions, Sabina might permit herself to spin dreams and so lessen her activities as a spinner of yarn. I say she might. These things mean more to a girl than a boy." "What can I do about it? I was going to ask you to talk sense to Raymond." "With all the will, I am not the man, I fear. Sense varies so much from the standpoint of the observer, my dear Daniel. You, for example, having an old head on young shoulders, would find yourself in agreement with my sentiments; Raymond, having a young and rather empty head on his magnificent shoulders, would not. I take the situation to be this. Raymond's life has been suddenly changed and his prodigious physical activities reduced. He bursts with life. He is more alive than any youth I have ever known. Now all this exuberance of nature must have an outlet, and what more natural than that, in the presence of such an attractive young woman, the sex instinct should begin to assert itself?" "You don't mean he is in love, or anything like that?" "That is just exactly what I do mean," answered Mr. Churchouse. "I thought he probably liked to chatter to them all, and hear his own voice, and talk rubbish about what he'll do for them in the future." "He has nebulous ideas about wages and so on; but women are quicker than men, and probably they understand perfectly well that he doesn't know what he's talking about so far as that goes. How would it be if you took him into the office at Bridport, where he would be more under your eye?" "He must learn the business first and nobody can teach him like Best." "Then I advise that you talk to him yourself. Don't let the fact that you are only a year and three months older than Raymond make you too tolerant. You are really ten, or twenty, years older than he is in certain directions, and you must lecture him accordingly. Be firm; be decisive. Explain to him that life is real and that he must approach it with the same degree of earnestness and self-discipline as he devotes to running and playing games and the like. I feel sure you will carry great weight. He is far from being a fool. In fact he is a very intelligent young man with excellent brains, and if he would devote them to the business, you would soon find him your right hand. The machinery does honestly interest him. But you must make it a personal thing. He must study political economy and the value of labour and its relations to capital and the market value of dry spun yarns. These vague ideas to better the lot of the working classes are wholly admirable and speak of a good heart. But you must get him to listen to reason and the laws of supply and demand and so forth." "What shall I say about the girls?" "It is not so much the girls as the girl. If he had manifested a general interest in them, you need have said nothing; but, with the purest good will to Raymond and a great personal affection for Sabina, I do feel that this friendship is not desirable. Don't think I am cynical and worldly and take too low a view of human nature--far from it, my dear boy. Nothing would ever make me take a low view of human nature. But one has not lived for sixty years with one's eyes shut. Unhappy things occur and Nature is especially dangerous when you find her busy with such natural creatures as your brother and Sabina. A word to the wise. I would speak, but you will do so with far greater weight." "I hate preaching and making Raymond think I'm a prig and all that sort of thing. It only hardens him against me." "He knows better. At any rate try persuasion. He has a remarkably good temper and a child could lead him. In fact a child sometimes does. He'd do anything for Waldron's little girl. Just say you admire and share his ambitions for the welfare of the workers. Hint at supply and demand; then explain that all must go according to fixed laws, and amelioration is a question of time and combination, and so on. Then tackle him fearlessly about Sabina and appeal to his highest instincts. I, too, in my diplomatic way will approach him with modern instances. Unfortunately it is only too easy to find modern instances of what romance may end in. And to say that modern instances are exceedingly like ancient ones, is merely to say, that human nature doesn't change." Fired by this advice, Daniel went straight to the works, and it was about eleven o'clock in the day when he entered his brother's office above the Mill--to find it empty. Descending to the main shop, he discovered Raymond showing a visitor round the machines. Little Estelle Waldron was paying her first visit to the spinners and, delighted at the distraction, Raymond, on whose invitation she had come, displayed all the operation of turning flax and hemp into yarn. He aired his knowledge, but it was incomplete and he referred constantly to the operators from stage to stage. Round-eyed and attentive, Estelle poured her whole heart and soul into the business. She showed a quick perception and asked questions that interested the girls. Some, indeed, they could not answer. Estelle's mind approached their work from a new angle and saw in it mysteries and points calling for solution that had never challenged them. Neither had her problems much struck Raymond, but he saw their force when she raised them and pronounced them most important. "Why, that's fundamental, really," he said, "and yet, be shot, if I ever thought of it! Only Best will know and I shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't." They stood at the First Drawing Frame when Daniel appeared. They had followed the flat ribbon of sliver from the Carding Machine. At the Drawing Frame six ribbons from the Carder were all brought together into one ribbon and so gained in quality, while losing more impurities during a second severe process of combing out. "And even now it's not ready for spinning," explained Raymond. "Now it goes on to the Second Drawing Frame, and four of these ribbons from the First Drawer are brought together into one ribbon again. So you see that no less than twenty-four ribbons from the Carder are brought together to make stuff good enough to spin." "What do the Drawing Frames do to it?" asked Estelle; "it looks just the same." "Blessed if I know," confessed Raymond. "What do they do to it, Mrs. Chick?" A venerable old woman, whose simple task was to wind away the flowing sliver into cans, made answer. She was clad in a dun overall and had a dim scarlet cap of worsted drawn over her white hair. The remains of beauty homed in her brown and wrinkled face; her grey eyes were gentle, and her expression wistful and kindly. "The Drawing Heads level the 'sliver,' and true it, and make it good," she said. "All the rubbish is dragged out on the teeth and now, though it seems thinner and weaker, it isn't really. Now it goes to the Roving Frame and that makes it still better and ready for the spinners." Then came Daniel, and Raymond, leaving Estelle with Mrs. Chick, departed at his brother's wish. The younger anticipated trouble and began to excuse himself. "Waldron's so jolly friendly that I thought you wouldn't mind if I showed his little girl round the works. She's tremendously clever and intelligent." "Of course I don't mind. That's nothing, but I want to speak to you on the general question. I do wish, Raymond, you'd be more dignified." "Dignified! Me? Good Lord!" "Well, if you don't like that word, say 'self-respecting.' You might take longer views and look ahead." "You may bet your boots I do that, Dan. This life isn't so delightful that I am content to live in the present hour, I assure you. I look ahead all right." "I mean look ahead for the sake of the business, not for your own sake. I don't want to preach, or any nonsense of that kind; but there's nobody else to speak, so I must. The point is that you don't see in the least what you are doing here. In the future my idea was--and yours, too, I suppose--that you came into the business as joint partner with me in everything." "Jolly sporting of you, Dan." "But that being so, can't you see you ought to support me in everything?" "I do." "No, you don't. You're not taking the right line in the least, and what's more, I believe you know it yourself. Don't think I'm selfish and careless about our people, or indifferent to their needs and rights. I'm quite as keen about their welfare as you are; but one can't do everything in a moment. And you're not helping them and only hindering me by talking a lot of rubbish to them." "It isn't rubbish, Dan. I had all the facts from Levi Baggs, the hackler. He understands the claims of capital and what labour is entitled to, and all the rest of it." "Baggs is a sour, one-sided man and will only give you a biased and wrong view. If you want to know the truth, you can come into Bridport and study it. Then you'll see exactly what things are worth, and what we get paid in open market for our goods. All you do by listening to Levi is to waste your time and waste his. And then you wander about among the women talking nonsense. And remember this: they know it's nonsense. They understand the question very much better than you do, and instead of respecting you, as they ought to respect a future master, they only laugh at you behind your back. And what will the result be? Why, when you come to have a voice in the thing, they'll remind you of all your big talk. And then you've got to climb down and they'll not respect you, or take you seriously." "All right, old chap--enough said. Only you needn't think the people wouldn't respect me. I get on jolly well with them as a matter of fact. And I do look ahead--perhaps further than you do. I certainly wouldn't promise anything I wouldn't try to perform. In fact, I'm very keen about them. And I believe if we scrapped all the machinery and got new--" "When you've mastered the present machinery, it will be time to talk about scrapping it," answered Daniel. "People are always shouting out for new things, and when they get them--and sacrifice a year's profits very likely in doing so--often the first thing they hear from the operatives is, that the old machinery was much better. Our father always liked to see other firms make the experiments." "That's the way to get left, if you ask me." "I don't ask you," answered the master. "I'm telling you, Raymond; and you ought to remember that I very well know what I'm talking about and you don't. You must give me some credit. To question me is to question our father, for I learned everything from him." "But times change. You don't want to be left high and dry in the march of progress, my dear chap." "No--you needn't fear that. If you're young, you're a part of progress; you belong to it. But you must get a general knowledge of the present situation in our trade before you can do anything rational in the shape of progress. I've been left a very fine business with a very honoured name to keep up, and if I begin trying to run before I can walk, I should very soon fall down. You must see that." Raymond nodded. "Yes, that's all right. I'm a learner and I know you can teach me a lot." "If you'd come to me instead of to the mill people." "You don't know their side." "Much better than you do. I've talked with our father often and often about it. He was no tyrant and nobody could ever accuse him of injustice." Raymond flashed; but he kept his mouth shut on that theme. The only bitter quarrels between the brothers had been on the subject of their father, and the younger knew that the ground was dangerous. At this moment the last thing he desired was any difference with Daniel. "I'll keep it all in mind, Dan. I don't want to do anything to annoy you, God knows. Is there any more? I must go and look after young Estelle." "Only one thing; and this is purely personal, and so I hope you'll excuse me. I've just been seeing Uncle Ernest, and nobody wished us better fortune than he does." "He's a good old boy. I've learned a lot about spinning from him." "I know. But--look here, Raymond, I do beg of you--I implore of you not to be too friendly with Sabina Dinnett. You can't think how I should hate anything like that. It isn't fair--it isn't fair to the woman, or to me, or to the family. You must see yourself that sort of thing isn't right. She's a very good girl--our champion spinner Best says; and if you go distracting her and taking her out of her station, you are doing her a very cruel turn and upsetting her peace of mind. And the others will be jealous, of course, and so it will go on. It isn't playing the game--it really isn't. That's all. I know you're a sportsman and all that; so I do beg you'll be a sportsman in business too, and take a proper line and remember your obligations. And if I've said a harsh, or unfair word, I'm sorry for it; but you know I haven't." Seeing that Sabina Dinnett was now in paramount and triumphant possession of Raymond's mind, he felt thankful that his brother, by running on over this subject and concluding upon the whole question, had saved him the necessity for any direct reply. Whether he would have lied or no concerning Sabina, Raymond did not stop to consider. There is little doubt that he would. But the need was escaped; and so thankful did he feel, that he responded to the admonishment in a tone more complete and with promises more comprehensive than Daniel expected. "You're dead right. Of course I know it! I've been a silly fool all round. But I won't open my mouth so wide in future, Dan. And don't think I'm wasting my time. I'm working like the devil, really, and learning everything from the beginning. Best will tell you that's true. He's a splendid teacher and I'll see more of him in future. And I'll read all about yarn and get the hang of the markets, and so on." "Thank you--you can't say more. And you might come into Bridport oftener, I think. Aunt Jenny was saying she never sees you now." "I will," promised Raymond. "I'm going to dine with you both on my birthday. I believe she'll be good for fifty quid this year. Father left her a legacy of a thousand." They parted, and Raymond returned to Estelle, who was now watching the warping, while Daniel went into his foreman's office. Estelle was radiant. She had fallen in love with the works. "The girls are all so kind and clever," she said. "Rather so. I expect you know all about everything now." "Hardly anything yet. But you must let me come again. I do want to know all about it. It is splendidly interesting." "Of course, come and go when you like, kiddy." "And I'm going to ask some of them to tea with me," declared Estelle. "They all love flowers, and I'm going to show them our garden and my pets. I've asked seven of them and two men." "Ask me, too." She brought out a piece of paper and showed him that she had written down nine names. "And if they like it, they'll tell the others and I shall ask them too," she said. "Father is always wanting me to spend money, so now I'll spend some on a beautiful tea." Raymond saw the name of Sabina Dinnett. "I'll be there to help you," he promised. "Nicholas Roberts is the lover of Miss Northover," explained Estelle, "and Benny Cogle is the lover of Miss Gale. That's why I asked them. I very nearly went back and asked Mister Baggs to come, because he seems a silent, sad man; but I was rather frightened of him." "Don't ask him; he's an old bear," declared Raymond. Thus, forgetting his brother as though Daniel had ceased to exist, he threw himself into Estelle's enterprise and planned an entertainment that must at least have rendered the master uneasy. CHAPTER IX THE PARTY Arthur Waldron did more than love his daughter. He bore to her almost a superstitious reverence, as for one made of superior flesh and blood. He held her in some sort a reincarnation of his wife and took no credit for her cleverness himself. Yet he did not spoil her, for her nature was proof against that. Estelle, though old for her age, could not be called a prig. She developed an abstract interest in life as her intellect unfolded to accept its wonders and mysteries, yet she remained young in mind as well as body, and was always very glad to meet others of her own age. The mill girls were indeed older than she, but Mr. Waldron's daughter found their minds as young as her own in such subjects as interested her, though there were many things hidden from her that life had taught them. Her father never doubted Estelle's judgment or crossed her wishes. Therefore he approved of the proposed party and did his best to make it a success. Others also were glad to aid Estelle and, to her delight, Ernest Churchouse, with whom she was in favour, yielded to entreaty and joined the company on the lawn of North Hill House. Tea was served out of doors, and to it there came nine workers from the mill, and two of Mr. Best's own girls, who were friends of Estelle. Nicholas Roberts arrived with his future wife, Sarah Northover; Sabina Dinnett came with Nancy Buckler and Sally Groves from the Carding Machine, while Alice Chick brought old Mrs. Chick; Mercy Gale came too--a fair, florid girl, who warped the yarn when it was spun. Mr. Waldron was not a ladies' man, and after helping with the tea, served under a big mulberry tree in the garden, he turned his attention to Mr. Roberts, already known favourably to him as a cricketer, and Benny Cogle, the engine man. They departed to look at a litter of puppies and the others perambulated the gardens. Estelle had a plot of her own, where grew roses, and here, presently, each with a rose at her breast, the girls sat about on an old stone seat and listened to Mr. Churchouse discourse on the lore of their trade. Some, indeed, were bored by the subject and stole away to play beside a fountain and lily pond, where the gold fish were tame and crowded to their hands for food; but others listened and learned surprising facts that set the thoughtful girls wondering. "You mustn't think, you spinners, that you are the last word in spinning," he said; "no, Alice and Nancy and Sabina, you're not; no more are those at other mills, who spin in choicer materials than flax and hemp--I mean the workers in cotton and silk. For the law of things in general, called evolution, seems to stand still when machinery comes to increase output and confuse our ideas of quality and quantity. Missis Chick here will tell you, when she was a spinner and the old rope walks were not things of the past, that she spun quite as good yarn from the bundle of tow at her waist as you do from the regulation spinners." "And better," said Mrs. Chick. "I believe you," declared Ernest, "and before your time the yarn was better still. For, though some of the best brains in men's heads have been devoted to the subject, we go backwards instead of forwards, and things have been done in spinning that I believe will never be done again. In fact, the further you go back, the better the yarn seems to have been, and I'm sure I don't know how the laws of evolution can explain that. The secret is this: machinery, for all its marvellous improvements, lags far behind the human hand, and the record yarns were spun in the East, while our forefathers still went about in wolf-skins and painted their faces blue. You may laugh, but it is so." "Tell us about them, Mister Churchouse," begged Estelle. "For the moment we needn't go back so far," he said. "I'll remind you what a girl thirteen years old did in Ireland a hundred years ago. Only thirteen was Catherine Woods--mark that, Sabina and Alice--but she was a genius who lived in Dunmore, County Down, and she spun a hank of linen yarn of such tenuity that it would have taken seven hundred such hanks to make a pound of yarn." He turned to Estelle. "Sabina and the other spinners will appreciate this," he said, "but to explain the marvel of such spider-like spinning, Estelle, I may tell you that seventeen and a half pounds of Catherine's yarn would have sufficed to stretch round the equator of the earth. No machine-spun yarn has ever come within measurable distance of this astounding feat, and I have never heard of any spinner in Europe or America equalling it; yet even this has been beaten when we were painting our noses blue." "Where?" asked Estelle breathlessly. "In the land of all wonders: Egypt. Herodotus tells us of a linen corselet, presented to the Lacedemonians by King Amasis, each thread of which commanded admiration, for though very fine, each was twisted of three hundred and sixty others! And if you decline to believe this--" "Oh, Mister Churchouse, we quite believe it I'm sure, sir, if you say so," interrupted Mrs. Chick. "Well, a later authority, Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, tells us of equal wonders. The linen which he unwound from Egyptian mummies has proved as delicate as silk, and equal, if not superior, to our best cambrics. Five hundred and forty threads went to the warp and a hundred and ten to the weft; and I'm sure a modern weaver would wonder how they could produce quills fine enough for weaving such yarn through." "There's nothing new under the sun, seemingly," said old Mrs. Chick. "Indeed there isn't, my dear, and so, perhaps, in the time to come, we shall spin again as well as the Egyptians five or six thousand years ago," declared Ernest. "And even then the spiders will always beat us I expect," said Estelle. "True--true, child; nor has man learned the secret, of the caterpillar's silken spinning. Talking of caterpillars, you may, or may not, have observed--" It was at this point that Raymond, behind the speaker's back, beckoned Sabina, and presently, as Mr. Churchouse began to expatiate on Nature's spinning, she slipped away. The garden was large and held many winding paths and secluded nooks. Thus the lovers were able to hide themselves from other eyes and amuse themselves with their own conversation. Sabina praised Estelle. "She's a dear little lady and ever so clever, I'm sure." "So she is, and yet she loses a lot. Though her father's such a great sportsman, she doesn't care a button about it. Wouldn't ride on a pony even." "I can very well understand that. Nor would I if I had the chance." "You're different, Sabina. You've not been brought up in a sporting family. All the same you'd ride jolly well, because you've got nerve enough for anything and a perfect figure for riding. You'd look fairly lovely on horseback." "Whatever will you say next?" "I often wonder myself," he answered. "This much I'll say any way: it's meat and drink to me to be walking here with you. I only wish I was clever and could really amuse you and make you want to see me, sometimes. But the things I understand, of course, bore you to tears." "You know very well that isn't so," she said. "You've told me heaps of things well worth knowing--things I should never have heard of but for you. And--and I'm sure I'm very proud of your friendship." "Good Lord! It's the other way about. Thanks to Mister Churchouse and your own wits, you are fearfully well read, and your cleverness fairly staggers me. Just to hear you talk is all I want--at least that isn't all. Of course, it is a great score for an everyday sort of chap like me to have interested you." Sabina did not answer and after a silence which drew out into awkwardness, she made some remark on the flowers. But Raymond was not interested about the flowers. He had looked forward to this occasion as an opportunity of exceptional value and now strove to improve the shining hour. "You know I'm a most unlucky beggar really, Sabina. You mightn't think it, but I am. You see me cheerful, and joking and trying to make things pleasant for us all at the works; but sometimes, if you could see me tramping alone over North Hill, or walking on the beach and looking at the seagulls, you'd be sorry for me." "Of course, I'd be sorry for you--if there was anything to be sorry for." "Look at it. An open-air man brought up to think my father would leave me all right, and then cut off with nothing and forced to come here and stew and toil and wear myself out struggling with a most difficult business--difficult to me, any way." "I'm sure you're mastering it as quickly as possible." "But the effort. And my muscles are shrinking and I'm losing weight. But, of course, that's nothing to anybody but myself. And then, another side: I want to think of you people first and raise your salaries and so on--especially yours, for you ought to have pounds where you have shillings. And my wishes to do proper things, in the line of modern progress and all that, are turned down by my brother. Here am I thinking about you and worrying and knowing it's all wrong--and there's nobody on my side--not a damned person. And it makes me fairly mad." "I'm sure it's splendid of you to look at the Mill in such a high-minded way," declared Sabina. "And now you've told me, I shall understand what's in your mind. I'm sure I thank you for the thought at any rate." "If you'd only be my friend," he said. "It would be a great honour for a girl--just a spinner--to be that." "The honour is for me. You've got such tons of mind, Sabina. You understand all the economical side, and so on." "A thing is only worth what it will fetch, I'm afraid." "That's the point. If you would help me, we would go into it and presently, when I'm a partner, we could bring out a scheme; and then you'd know you'd been instrumental in raising the tone of the whole works. And probably, if we set a good example, other works would raise their tone, too, and gradually the workers would find the whole scheme of things changing, to their advantage." Sabina regarded this majestic vision with due reverence. She praised his ideals and honestly believed him a hero. They discussed the subject while the dusk came down and he prophesied great things. "We shall live to see it," he assured her, "and it may be largely thanks to you. And when you have a home of your own and--and--" It was then that she became conscious of his very near presence and the dying light. "They'll all have gone, and so must I," she said, "and I hope you'll thank Miss Waldron dearly for her nice party." "This is only the first; she'll give dozens more now that this has been such a success. She loves the Mill. If you come this way I can let you out by the bottom gate--by the bamboo garden. You've bucked me up like anything--you always do. You're the best thing in my life, Sabina. Oh, if I was anything to you--if--but of course it's all one way." His voice shook a little. He burned to put his arms round her, and Nature shouted so loud in his humming ears that he hardly heard her answer. For she echoed his emotion. "What can I say to that? You're so kind--you don't know how kind. You can't guess what such friendship means to a girl like me. It's something that doesn't come into our lives very often. I'm only wondering what the world will be like when you've gone again." "I shan't go--I'm never going. Never, Sabina. I--I couldn't live without you. Kiss me, for God's sake. I must kiss you--I must--or I shall go mad." His arms were round her and he felt her hot cheek against his. They were young in love and dared not look into each other's eyes. But she kissed him back, and then, as he released her, she ran away, slipped through the wicket, where they stood and hastened off by the lane to Bridetown. He glowed at her touch and panted at his triumph. She had not rebuked him, but let him see that she loved him and kissed him for his kiss. He did not attempt to follow her then but turned full of glory. Here was a thing that dwarfed every interest of life and made life itself a triviality by comparison. She loved him; he had won her; nothing else that would be, or had been, in the whole world mattered beside such a triumph. His head had touched the stars. And he felt amazingly grateful to her. His thoughts for the moment were full of chivalry. Her life must be translated to higher terms and new values. She should have the best that the world could offer, and he would win it for her. Her trust was so pathetic and beautiful. To be trusted by her made him feel a finer thing and more important to the cosmic scheme. In itself this was a notable sensation and an addition of power, for nobody had ever trusted him until now. And here was a radiant creature, the most beautiful in the world, who trusted him with herself. His love brought a sense of splendour; her love brought a sense of strength. He swung back to the house feeling in him such mastery as might bend the whole earth to his purposes, take Leviathan with a hook, and hang the constellations in new signs upon the void of heaven. CHAPTER X WORK Sarah Northover and another young woman were tending the Spread Board. To this came the 'long line' from the hackler--those strides of amber hemp and lint-white flax that Mr. Baggs prepared in the hackler's shop. The Spread Board worked upon the long line as the Carder on the tow. Over its endless leathern platform, or spreading carriage, the long fibre was drawn into the toothed gills of the machine and converted into sliver for the Drawing Frames. With swift and rhythmic flinging apart of her arms over her head, Sarah separated the stricks into three and laid them overlapping on the carriage. The ribbon thus created was never-ending and wound away into the torture chambers of wheels and teeth within, while from the rear of the Spreader trickled out the new-created sliver. Great scales hung beside Sarah and from time to time she weighed fresh loads of long line and recorded the amount. Her arms flashed upwards, the divided stricks came down to be laid in rotation on the running carriage, and ceaselessly she and her fellow worker chattered despite the din around them. "My Aunt Nelly's coming to see me this morning," said Sarah. "She's driving over to talk to Mister Waldron about his apple orchard and have a look round. Last year she bought the whole orchard for cider; and if she thinks well of it, she'll do the same this year." "I wonder you stop here," answered the other girl, "when you might go to your aunt and work in her public-house. I'd a long sight sooner be there than here." "You wouldn't if you was engaged to Mister Roberts," answered Sarah. "Of course seeing him every day makes all the difference. And as to work, there's nothing in it, for everybody's got to work at 'The Seven Stars,' I can tell you, and the work's never done there." "It's the company I should like," declared the other. "I'd give a lot to see new people every day. In a public they come and go, before you've got time to be sick of the sight of 'em. But here, you see the same people and hear the same voices every day of your blessed life; and sometimes it makes me feel right down wicked." "It's narrowing to the mind I dare say, unless you've got a man like Mister Roberts with a lot of general ideas," admitted Sarah. "But you know very well for that matter you could have a man to-morrow. Benny Cogle's mate is daft for you." The other sniffed. "It's very certain he ain't got no general ideas, beyond the steam engine. He can only talk about the water wheel to-day and the boilers to-morrow. When I find a chap, he'll have to know a powerful lot more about life than that chap--and shave himself oftener also." "He'd shave every day if you took him, same as Mister Roberts does," said Sarah. Elsewhere Mr. Best was starting a run of the Gill Spinner, a machine which took sliver straight from the Drawing Frames and spun it into a large coarse yarn. A novice watched him get the great machine to work, make all ready and then, at a touch, connect it with the power and set it crashing and roaring. Its voice was distinctive and might be heard by a practised ear above the prevailing thunder. Then came Mrs. Nelly Northover to this unfamiliar scene, peeped in at a door or two and failed to see Sarah, who laboured at the other end of the Mill. But the hostess of 'The Seven Stars' knew Sabina Dinnett and now shook hands with her and then stood and watched in bewildered admiration before a big frame of a hundred spindles. Sabina was spinning with a heart very full of happiness. On the previous evening she had promised to wed Raymond Ironsyde, and her thoughts to-day were winged with over-mastering joy. For life had turned into a glorious triumph; the man who had asked her to marry him was not only a gentleman, but far above the power of any wrong-doing. She knew in the very secret places of her soul, that he could never act away from his honest and noble character; that he was a knight above reproach, incapable of wronging any living thing. There was an element of risk for most girls who fell in love with those better born than themselves; but none for her. Other men might deceive and abuse, and suffer outer influences to chill their love, when the secret of it became known; but not this man. His rare nature had been revealed to her; he desired the welfare of all people; he was moved with nothing but the purest principles and loftiest feeling. He would not willingly have brought sorrow to a child. And she had won this unique spirit! He loved her with the love that only such a man was great enough to show; and she echoed it and knew that such a passion must be unchanging, everlasting, built not only to make their united lives unspeakably happy and gloriously content, but to run over also into the lives of others, less blessed, and leave the sad world happier for their happiness. There was not a cloud in the sky of her romance and she shared with him for the moment the joy of secrecy. But that would not be long. They had determined to hug their delicious knowledge for a little while and then proclaim the great tidings to the world. So she followed the old road, along which her sisters had tramped from immemorial time, and would still tramp through the generations to come, when her journey was ended and the wonderful country of man's love explored--its oases visited, its antres endured. Now Sabina played priestess to the Spinning Machine--a monster reared above her, stupendous and insatiable. Along the summit of the Spinning Frame, just within reach of tall Sabina's uplifted hand, there perched a row of reels from which the finished material descended through series of rollers. The retaining roller aloft gave it to the steel delivery roller which drew the thin, sad-looking stuff with increased speed downward. And here at its moment of most shivering tenuity, when the perfected and purified material seemed reduced to an extremity of weakness, came the magic change. Unseen in the whirring complexity of the spinner, it received the momentous gift that translates fibre to yarn. In a moment it changed from stuff a baby's finger could break to thread capable of supporting fifteen pounds of pressure. For now came the twist--that word of mighty significance--and the tiny thread of new-born yarn descended to the spindle, vanished in the whirl of the flier and reappeared, an accomplished miracle, winding on the bobbin beneath. Upon the spindle revolved the flier--a fork of steel with guide eye at one leg of the fork--and through the guide eye came the twisted yarn to wind on the bobbin below. There, as the bobbin frame rose and fell, the thread was perfectly delivered to the reel and coiled off layer by layer upon it. Mrs. Northover stared to see the nature of a Spinner's duties and the ease with which she controlled the great, pulsing, roaring frame of a hundred spindles. Sabina's eyes were everywhere; her hands were never still; her feet seemed to dance a measure to the thunder of the Frame. Now she marked a roving reel aloft that was running out, and in a moment she had broken the sliver, swept away the empty reel and hung up a full one. Then she drew the new sliver down to the point of the break and, in a moment, the two merged and the thread ran on. Now her fingers touched the spindles, as a musician touches the keys, and at a moment's pressure the machine obeyed and the yarn flew on its way obedient. Now she cleared a snarl, or catch, where a spindle appeared to have run amuck or created hopeless confusion; now she readjusted the weights that kept a drag on the humming bobbins. Her twinkling hands touched and calmed and fed the monster. She knew its whims, corrected its errors, brought to her insensate machine the complement of brain that made it trustworthy. And when the bobbins were all full, she hastened along the Frame, turned off the driving power and silenced the huge activity in a moment. Then, like lightning, she cut her hundred threads and lifted the bobbins from their spindles until she had a pile upon her shoulder. In a marvellously short time she had doffed the bobbins and set up a hundred empty ones. Then the cut threads were readjusted, the power turned on and all was motion again. Sabina had never calculated her labours, until Raymond took the trouble to do so; then she learned a fact that astonished her. He found that it took a hundred and fifty minutes to spin one thousand and fifty yards; and as each spindle spun two and a half miles in ten hours, her daily accomplishment was two hundred and fifty miles of yarn. "You spin from seventy to eighty thousand miles of single yarn a year," he told her, and the fact expressed in these terms amazed her and her sister spinners. Now Nelly Northover praised the performance. "To think that you slips of girls can do anything so wonderful!" she said. "We talk of the spinners of Bridport as if they were nobodies; but upon my conscience, Sabina, I never will again. I've always thought I was a pretty busy woman; but I'd drop to the earth I'm sure after an hour of your job, let alone ten hours." Sabina laughed. "It's use, Mrs. Northover. Some take to it like a duck to water. I did for one. But some never do. If you come to the Frame frightened, you never make a spinner. They're like humans, the Spinning Frames; if they think you're afraid of them, they'll always bully you, but if you show them you're mistress, it's all right. They have their moods and whims, just as we have. They vary, and you never know how the day will go. Sometimes everything runs smoothly; sometimes nothing does. Some days you're as fresh at the end as the beginning; some days you're dog-tired and worn out after a proper fight." "There's something hungry and cruel and wicked about 'em to my eye," declared Mrs. Northover. "We're oftener in fault than the Frames, however. Sometimes the spinner's to blame herself--she may be out of sorts and heavy-handed and slow on her feet and can't put up her ends right, or do anything right; and often it's the fault of the other girls and the 'rove' comes to the spinner rough; and often, again, it's just luck--good or bad. If the machine always ran perfect, there'd be nothing to do. But you've got to use your wits from the time it starts to the time it stops." "The creature would best me every time," said the visitor, regarding Sabina's machine with suspicion and something akin to dislike. The spinner stopped a fouled spindle and rubbed her hand. "Sometimes the yarn's always snarling and your drag weights are always burning off and the stuff is full of kinks and the sliver's badly pieced up--that's the drawing minder's fault--and a bad drawing minder means work for me. Your niece, Sarah, is a very good drawing minder, Mrs. Northover. Then you'll get ballooning, when the thread flies round above the flier, and that means too little strain on the jamb and the bobbin has got to be tempered. And often it's too hot, or else too cold, for hemp and flax must have their proper temperature. But to-day my machine is as good and kind as a nice child, that only asks to be fed and won't quarrel with anybody." Mrs. Northover, however, saw nothing to praise, for Sabina's speech had been broken a dozen times. "If that's what you call working kindly, I'd like to see the wretch in a nasty mood," she said. "I lay you want to slap it sometimes." Sabina was mending a drag that had burned off. The drags were heavy weights hanging from strings that pressed upon the side of the bobbins and controlled their speed. The friction often burned these cords through and the weights had to be lifted and retied again and again. "We want a clever invention to put this right," she said. "A lot of good time's wasted with the weights. Nobody's thought upon the right thing yet." "I'm properly dazed," confessed Nelly Northover. "You live and learn without a doubt--nothing's so true as that." Her niece had seen her and approached, as the machinery began to still for the dinner-hour. "Morning, Sarah. Can you do such wonders as Miss Dinnett?" she asked. "No, Aunt Nelly. I'm a spreader minder. But I'll be a spinner some day, if Mr. Roberts likes for me to stop, here after I'm married." "Sarah would soon learn to spin," declared Sabina. Then she turned to bid Raymond Ironsyde good morning. His brother was away from Bridport on a tour with one of his travellers, that he might become acquainted with many of his more important customers. Raymond, therefore, felt safe and was wasting a good deal of his time. He had brought a basket of fruit from North Hill House--a present from Estelle--and he began to dispense plums and pears as the women streamed away to dinner. They knew him very well now and treated him with varying degrees of familiarity. Early doubts had vanished, and they took him as a good natured, rather 'soft' young man, who meant well and was friendly and harmless. The ill-educated are always suspicious, and Levi Baggs declared from the first that Raymond was nothing better than his brother's spy, placed here for a time to inquire into the ambitions and ideas of the workers and so help the firm to combat the lawful demands of those whom they employed; but this theory was long exploded save in the mind of Mr. Baggs himself. The people of Bridetown Mill held Raymond on their side, and all were secretly interested to know what would spring of his frank friendship with Sabina. In serious moments Raymond felt uneasy at the relations he had established with the workers, and Mr. Best did not hesitate to warn him again and again that discipline was ill served by such easy terms between employer and employed; but his moments of perspicuity were rare, for now his mind and soul were poured into one thought and one only. He was riotously happy in his love affair and could not pretend to his fellow creatures anything he did not feel. Always amiable and accessible, his romance made him still more so, and he was constitutionally unable at this moment to take a serious view of anything or anybody. One ray of hope, however, Mr. Best recognised: Raymond did show an honest and genuine interest in the machines. He had told the foreman that he believed the great problem lay there, and where machinery was concerned he could be exceedingly intelligent and rational. This trait in him had a bearing on the future and, in time to come, John Best remembered its inception and perceived how it had developed. Now, his fruit dispensed, Raymond talked with Sabina about the Spinning Frame and instructed Mrs. Northover, who was an acquaintance of his, in its mysteries. "These are old-fashioned frames," he declared, "and I shan't rest till I've turned them out of the works and got the latest and best. I'm all for the new things, because they help the workers and give good results. In fact, I tell my brother that he's behind the times. That's the advantage of coming to a subject fresh, with your mind unprejudiced. Daniel's all bound up in the past and, of course, everything my father did must be right; but I know better. You have to move with the times, and if you don't you'll get left." "That's true enough, Mr. Ironsyde, whatever your business may be," answered Mrs. Northover. "Of course--look at 'The Seven Stars.' You're always up to date, and why should my spinners--I call them mine--why should they have to spin on machines that come out of the ark, when, by spending a few thousand, they could have the latest?" "You've got to balance cost against value," answered the innkeeper. "It don't do to dash at things. One likes for the new to be tried on its merits first, and then, if it proves all that's claimed for it, you go in and keep abreast of the times according; but the old will often be found as good as the new; and so Mr. Daniel no doubt looks before he leaps." "That's cowardly in my opinion," replied Raymond. "You must take the chances. Of course if you're frightened to back your judgment, then that shows you're a second class man with a second class sort of mind; but if you believe in yourself, as everybody does who is any good, then you go ahead, and if you come a purler now and again, that's nothing, because you get it back in other ways. I'm not frightened to chance my luck, am I, Sabina?" "Never was such a brave one, I'm sure," she said, conscious of their secret. "If you haven't got nerve, you're no good," summed up the young man; "and if you have got nerve, then use it and break out of the beaten track and welcome your luck and court a few adventures for your soul's sake." "All very well for you men," said Mrs. Northover. "You can have adventures and no great harm done; but us women, if we try for adventures, we come to a bad end." "Nobody's more adventurous than you," answered Raymond. "Look at your gardens and your teas for a bob ahead. Wasn't that an adventure--to give a better tea than anybody in Bridport?" "I believe women have quite as many adventures as men," declared Sarah Northover, who was waiting for her aunt, "only we're quieter about 'em." "We've got to be," answered Mrs. Northover. "Now come on to your mother's, Sarah. There's Mr. Roberts waiting for us outside." In the silent and empty mill Raymond dawdled for a few minutes with Sabina, talked love and won a caress. Then she put on her sunbonnet and he walked with her to the door of her home, left her at 'The Magnolias' and went his way with Estelle's fruit basket. A great expedition had been planned by the lovers for a forthcoming public holiday. They were going to rise in the dawn, before the rest of the world was awake, and tramp out through West Haven to Golden Cap--the supreme eminence of the south coast, that towers with bright, sponge-coloured precipices above the sea, nigh Lyme. CHAPTER XI THE OLD STORE-HOUSE Through a misty morning, made silver bright by the risen sun, Sabina and Raymond started for their August holiday. They left Bridetown, passed through a white fog on the water-meadows and presently climbed to the cliffs and pursued their way westward. Now the sun was over the sea and the Channel gleamed and flashed under a wakening, westerly breeze. To West Haven they came, where the cliffs break and the rivers from Bridport flow through sluices into the little harbour. Among the ancient, weather-worn buildings standing here with their feet in the sand drifts, was one specially picturesque. A long and lofty mass it presented, and a hundred years of storm and salt-laden winds had toned it to rich colour and fretted its roof and walls with countless stains. It was a store, three stories high, used of old time for merchandise, but now sunk to rougher uses. In its great open court, facing north, were piled thousands of tons of winnowed sand; its vaults were barred and empty; its glass windows were shattered; rust had eaten away its metal work and rot reduced its doors and sashes to powder. Rich red and auburn was its face, with worn courses of brickwork like wounds gashed upon it. A staircase of stone rose against one outer wall, and aloft, in the chambers approached thereby, was laid up a load of sweet smelling, deal planks brought by a Norway schooner. Here too, were all manner of strange little chambers, some full of old nettings, others littered with the marine stores of the fishermen, who used the ruin for their gear. The place was rat-haunted and full of strange holes and corners. Even by day, with the frank sunshine breaking through boarded windows and broken roof, it spoke of incident and adventure; by night it was eloquent of the past--of smugglers, of lawless deeds, of Napoleonic spies. Raymond and Sabina stood and admired the old store. To her it was something new, for her activities never brought her to West Haven; but he had been familiar with it from childhood, when, with his brother, he had spent school holidays at West Haven, caught prawns from the pier, gone sailing with the fisher folk, and spent many a wet day in the old store-house. He smiled upon it now, told her of his childish adventures and took her in to see an ancient chamber where he and Daniel had often played their games. "Our nurse used to call it a 'cubby hole,'" he said. "And she was always; jolly thankful when she could pilot us in here from the dangers of the cliffs and the old pier, or the boats in the harbour. The place is just the same--only shrunk. The plaster from the walls is all mouldering away, or you might see the pictures we used to draw upon them with paint from the fishermen's paint pots. Down below they bring the sand and grade it for the builders. They've carted away millions of tons of sand from the foreshore in the last fifty years and will cart away millions more, no doubt, for the sea always renews it." She wandered with him and listened half-dreaming. The air for them was electric with their love and they yearned for each other. "I wish we could spend the whole blessed day in this little den together," he said suddenly putting his arms round her; and that brought her to some sense of reality, but none of danger. Not a tremor of peril in his company had she ever felt, for did not perfect love cast out fear, and why should a woman hesitate to trust herself with one, to her, the most precious in the world? He suggested dawdling awhile; but she would not. "We are to eat our breakfast at Eype Beach," she reminded him, "and that's a mile or two yet." So they went on their way again, breasted the grassy cliffs westward of the haven, admired the fog bank touched with gold that hung over the river flats, praised Bridport wakening under its leafy woods, marked the herons on the river mud in the valley and the sparrow-hawk poised aloft above the downs. She took his arm up the hill and, like birds themselves, they went lightly together, strong, lissome, radiant in health and youth and the joy of a shared worship that made all things sweet. They talked of the great day when the world was to know their secret. The secret itself proved so attractive to both that they agreed to keep it a little longer. Their shared knowledge proved amusing and each told the other of the warnings and advice and fears imparted by careful friends of both sexes, who knew not the splendid truth. How small the wisdom of the wise appeared--how peddling and foolish and mean--contrasted with their superb trust. How sordid were the ways of the world, its fears and suspicions, from the vantage point to which they had climbed. Material things even suggested this thought to Raymond, and when before noon, they stood on the green crown of Golden Cap, with the earth and sea spread out around them in mighty harmonies of blue and green, he told Sabina so. "We ought to be perched on a place like this," he said, "because we are to the rest of the world, in mind and in happiness, as we are here in body too." "Only the sea gulls can go higher, and I always feel they're more like spirits than birds," she answered. "I've got no use for spirits," he told her. "The splendid thing about us is that we're flesh and blood and spirit too. That's the really magnificent combination for happy creatures. A spirit at best can only be an unfinished thing. People make such a fuss about escaping from the flesh. What the deuce do you want to escape from your flesh for, if it's healthy and tough and fine?" "When they get old, they feel like that." "Let the old comfort the old then," he said. "I'm proud of my flesh and bones, and so are you, and so we ought to be; and if I had to give them up and die, I should hate it. And if I found myself in another world, a poor shivering idea and nothing else, without flesh and bones to cover me, or clothes to cover them, I should feel ashamed of myself. And they might call it Paradise as much as they liked, but it would be Hades to me. Of course many of the ghosts would pretend that they liked it; but I bet none would really--so jolly undignified to be nothing but an idea." She laughed. "That's just what I feel too; and of course it's utterly wrong of us," she said. "It shows we have got a lot to learn. We only feel like this because we're young. Perhaps young ghosts begin like that; but I expect they soon get past it." "I should never want to get past it," he said. He rolled over on the grass and played with her hand. "How could you love and cuddle a ghost?" "No doubt you could love it. I don't suppose you could cuddle it. You wouldn't want to." "No--that's true, Sabina. If this cliff carried away this moment, and we were both smashed to pulp and arrived together in another world without any clothes and both horribly down on our luck--but it's too ghastly a picture. I should howl all through eternity--to think what I'd missed." They talked nonsense, played with their thoughts and came nearer and nearer together. One tremendous and masterful impulse drew them on--a raging hunger and thirst on his part and something not widely different on hers. Again and again they caught themselves in each other's arms, then broke off, grew serious and strove to steady the trend of their desires. Golden Cap was a lonely spot and few visited it that day. Once a middle-aged man and woman surprised them where they sat behind a rock near the edge of the great precipices. The man had grown warm and mopped his face and let the wind cool it. He was ugly, clumsily built, and displayed large calves in knickerbockers and a hot, bald head. "How hideous human beings can be," said Raymond after they had gone. "He wasn't hideous in his wife's eyes, I expect." "Middle-age is mercifully blind no doubt to its own horrors," he said. "You can respect and even admire old age, like other ruins, if it's picturesque, but middle-age is deadly always." He smoked and they dawdled the hours away until Sabina declared it was tea time. Then they sought a little inn at Chidcock and spent an hour there. The weather changed as the sun went westerly; the wind sank to a sigh and brought with it rain clouds. But they were unconscious of such accidents. Sabina longed for the cliffs again, so they turned homeward by Seaton and Thorncombe Beacon and Eype Mouth. Their talk ran upon marriage and Raymond swore that he could not wait long, while she urged the importance to him of so doing. "'Twould shake your brother badly if you wed yet awhile, be sure of that," she said. "He would say that you weren't thinking of the work, and it might tempt him to change his mind about making you a partner." "Oh damn him. Don't talk about him--or work either. I shall never want to work again, or think of work, or anything else on earth till--till--What does he matter anyway--or his ideas? It's a free country and a man has the right to plan his life his own way. If he wants to get the best out of me, he'd better give me five hundred a year to-morrow and tell me to marry you." "We don't want five hundred. That's a fortune. I'm a good manager and know very well how far money can go. With your money and mine." "Yours? You won't have any--except mine. You'll stop work then and live--not at Bridetown anyway." "I was forgetting. It will be funny not to spin." "You'll spin my happiness and my life and my fate and my children. You'll have plenty of spinning. I'll spin for you and you'll spin for me." "You darling boy! I know you'll spin for me." "Work! What's the good of working for yourself?" he asked. "Who the devil cares about himself? It's because I don't care a button for myself that I haven't bothered about the Mill. But when it comes to you--! You're worth working for! I haven't begun to work yet. I'll surprise Daniel presently and everybody else, when I fairly get into my stride. I didn't ask for it and I didn't want it; but as I've got to work, I will work--for you. And you'll live to see that my brother and his ways and plans and small outlook are all nothing to the way I shall grasp the business. And he'll see, too, when I get the lead by sheer better understanding. And that won't be my work, Sabina. It will be yours. Nothing's worth too much toil for you. And if you couldn't inspire a man to wonderful things, then no woman could." This fit of exaltation passed and the craving for her dominated him again and took psychological shape. He grew moody and abstracted. His voice had a new note in it to her ear. He was fighting with himself and did not guess what was in her mind, or how unconsciously it echoed to his. At dusk the rain came and they ran before a sudden storm down the green hills back to West Haven. The place already sank into night and a lamp or two twinkled through the grey. It was past eight o'clock and Raymond decided for dinner. "We'll go to the 'Brit Arms,'" he said, "and feed and get dry. The rain won't last." "I told mother I should be home by nine." "Well, you told her wrong. D'you think I'm going to chuck away an hour of this day for a thousand mothers?" When they sauntered out into the night again at ten o'clock, the Haven had nearly gone to sleep and the rain was past. In the silence they heard the river rushing through the sluices to the sea; and then they set their faces homeward. But they had to pass the old store-house. It loomed a black, amorphous pile heaved up against the stars, and the man's footsteps dragged as he came to the gaping gates and silent court. He stopped and she stopped. His voice was gruff and queer and half-choked. "Come," he said, "I'm in hell, and you've got to turn it to heaven." She murmured something, but he put his arm round her and they vanished into the mass of silent darkness. It was past midnight when they parted at the door of Sabina's home and he gave her the cool kiss of afterwards. "Now we are one, body and soul, for ever," she whispered to him. "By God, yes," he said. CHAPTER XII CREDIT The mind of Raymond Ironsyde was now driven and tossed by winds of passion which, blowing against the tides of his own nature, created unrest and storm. A strain of chivalry belonged to him and at first this conquered. He felt the magnitude of Sabina's sacrifice and his obligation to a love so absolute. In this spirit he remained for a time, during which their relations were of the closest. They spoke of marriage; they even appointed the day on which the announcement of their betrothal should be made. And though he had gone thus far at her entreaty, always recognising when with her the reasonableness of her wish, after she was gone, the cross seas of his own character, created a different impression and swept the pattern of Sabina's will away. For a time the intrigue of meeting her, the planning and the plotting amused him. He imagined the world was blind and that none knew, or guessed, the truth. But Bridetown, having eyes as many and sharp as any other hamlet, had long been familiar with the facts. The transparent veil of their imagined secrecy was already rent, though the lovers did not guess it. Then Raymond's chivalry wore thinner. Ruling passions, obscured for a season by the tremendous experience of his first love and its success, began by slow degrees to rise again, solid and challenging, through the rosy clouds. His love, while he shouted to himself that it increased rather than diminished, none the less assumed a change of colour and contour. The bright vapours still shone and Sabina could always kindle ineffable glow to the fabric; but she away, they shrank a little and grew less radiant. The truth of himself and his ambitions showed through. At such times he dinned on the ears of his heart that Sabina was his life. At other times when the fading fire astonished him by waking a shiver, he blamed fate, told himself that but for the lack of means, he would make a perfect home for Sabina; worship and cherish her; fill her life with happiness; pander to her every whim; devote a large portion of his own time to her; do all that wit and love could devise for her pleasure--all but one thing. He did not want to marry her. With that deed demanding to be done, the necessity for it began to be questioned sharply. He was not a marrying man and, in any case, too young to commit himself and his prospects to such a course. He assured himself that he had never contemplated immediate marriage; he had never suggested it to Sabina. She herself had not suggested it; for what advantage could be gained by such a step? While a thousand disasters might spring therefrom, not the least being a quarrel with his brother, there was nothing to be said for it. He began to suspect that he could do little less likely to assure Sabina's future. He clung to his strand of chivalry at this time, like a drowning man to a straw; but other ingredients of his nature dragged him away. Selfishness is the parent of sophistry, and Raymond found himself dismissing old rules of morality and inherited instincts of religion and justice for more practical and worldly values. He told himself it was as much for Sabina's sake as for his own that he must now respect the dictates of common-sense. There came a day in October, when the young man sat in his office at the mills, smoking and absorbed with his own affairs. The river Bride was broken above the works, and while her way ran south of them, the mill-race came north. Its labour on the wheel accomplished, the current turned quickly back to the river bed again. From Raymond's window he could see the main stream, under a clay bank, where the martins built their nests in spring, and where rush and sedge and an over-hanging sallow marked her windings. The sunshine found the stickles, and where Bride skirted the works lay a pool in which trout moved. Water buttercups shone silver white in this back-water at spring-time and the water-voles had their haunts in the bank side. Beyond stretched meadow-lands and over the hill that rose behind them climbed the road to the cliffs. Hounds had ascended this road two hours before and their music came faintly from afar to Raymond's ear, then ceased. Already his relations with Sabina had lessened his will to pleasure in other directions. His money had gone in gifts to her, leaving no spare cash for the old amusements; but the distractions, that for a time had seemed so tame contrasted with the girl, cried louder and reminded how necessary and healthy they were. Life seemed reduced to the naked question of cash. He was sorry for himself. It looked hard, outrageous, wrong, that tastes so sane and simple as his own, could not be gratified. A horseman descended the hill and Raymond recognised him. It was Neddy Motyer. His horse was lame and he walked beside it. Raymond smiled to himself, for Neddy, though a zealous follower of hounds, lacked judgment and often met with disaster. Ten minutes later Neddy himself appeared. "Come to grief," he said. "Horse put his foot into a rabbit hole and cut his knee on a flint. I've just taken him to the vet, here to be bandaged, so I thought I'd look you up. Why weren't you out?" "I've got more important things to think about for the minute." Neddy helped himself to a cigarette. "Growing quite the man of business," he said. "What will power you've got! A few of us bet five to one you wouldn't stick it a month; but here you are. Only I can tell you this, Ray: you're wilting under it. You're not half the man you were. You're getting beastly thin--looking a worm in fact." Raymond laughed. "I'm all right. Plenty of time to make up for lost time." "It's metal more attractive, I believe," hazarded Motyer. "A little bird's been telling us things in Bridport. Keep clear of the petticoats, old chap--the game's never worth the candle. I speak from experience." "Do you? I shouldn't think any girl would have much use for you." "Oh yes, they have--plenty of them. But once bit, twice shy. I had an adventure last year." "I don't want to hear it." Neddy showed concern. "You're all over the shop, Ray. These blessed works are knocking the stuffing out of you and spoiling your temper. Are you coming to the 'smoker' at 'The Tiger' next month?" "No." "Well, do. You want bucking. It'll be a bit out of the common. Jack Buckler's training at 'The Tiger' for his match with Solly Blades. You know--eliminating round for middle-weight championship. And he's going to spar three rounds with our boy from the tannery--Tim Chick." "I heard about it from one of our girls here--a cousin of Tim's. But I'm off that sort of thing." "Since when?" "You can't understand, Ned; but life's too short for everything. Perhaps you'll have to turn to work someday. Then you'll know." "You don't work from eight o'clock at night till eleven anyway. Take my tip and come to the show and make a night of it. Waldron's going to be there. He's hunting this morning." "I know." The dinner bell had rung and now there came a knock at Raymond's door. Then Sabina entered and was departing again, but her lover bade her stay. "Don't go, Sabina. This is my friend, Mr. Motyer--Miss Dinnett." Motyer, remembering Raymond's recent snub, was exceedingly charming to Sabina. He stopped and chatted another five minutes, then mentioned the smoking concert again and so took his departure. Raymond spoke slightingly of him when he had gone. "He's no good, really," he said. "An utter waster and only a hanger-on of sport--can't do anything himself but talk. Now he'll tell everybody in Bridport about you coming up here in the dinner-hour. Come and cheer me up. I'm bothered to death." He kissed her and put his arms round her, but she would not stop. "I can't stay here," she said. "I want to walk up the hill with you. If you're bothered, so am I, my darling." He put on his hat and they went out together. "I've had a nasty jar," she told him. "People are beginning to say things, Raymond--things that you wouldn't like to think are being said." "I thought we rose superior to the rest of the world, and what it said and what it thought." "We do and we always have. We're not moral cowards either of us. But there are some things. You don't want me to be insulted. You don't want either of us to lose the respect of people." "We can't have our cake and eat it too, I suppose," he said rather carelessly. "Personally I don't care a straw whether people respect me, or despise me, as long as I respect myself. The people that matter to me respect me all right." "Well, the people that matter to me, don't," she answered with a flash of colour. "We'll leave you out, Raymond, since you're satisfied; but I'm not satisfied. It isn't right, or fair, that I should begin to get sour looks from the women here, where I used to have smiles; and looks from the men--hateful looks--looks that no decent woman ought to suffer. And my mother has heard a lot of lies and is very miserable. So I think it's high time we let everybody know we're engaged. And you must think so, too, after what I've told you, Ray dear." "Certainly," he answered, "not a shadow of doubt about it. And if I saw any man insult you, I should delight to thrash him on the spot--or a dozen of them. How the devil do people find out about one? I thought we'd been more than clever enough to hoodwink a dead alive place like this." "Will you let me tell mother, to-day? And Sally Groves, and one or two of my best friends at the Mill? Do, Raymond--it's only fair to me now." Had she left unspoken her last sentence, he might have agreed; but it struck a wrong note on his ear. It sounded selfish; it suggested that Sabina was concerned with herself and indifferent to the complications she had brought into his life. For a moment he was minded to answer hastily; but he controlled himself. "It's natural you should feel like that; so do I, of course. We must settle a date for letting it out. I'll think about it. I'd say this minute, and you know I'm looking forward quite as much as you are to letting the world know my luck; but unfortunately you've just raised the question at an impossible moment, Sabina." "Why? Surely nothing can make it impossible to clear my good name, Raymond?" "I've got a good name, too. At least, I imagine so." "Our names are one, or should be." "Not yet, exactly. I wanted to spare you bothers. I do spare you all the bothers I can; but, of course, I've got my own, too, like everybody else. You see it's rather vital to your future, which you're naturally so keen about, Sabina, that I keep in with my brother. You'll admit that much. Well, for the moment I'm having the deuce of a row with him. You know what an exacting beggar he is. He will have his pound of flesh, and he has no sympathy for anything on two legs but himself. I asked him for a fortnight's holiday." "A fortnight's holiday, Raymond!" "Yes--that's not very wonderful, is it? But, of course, you can't understand what this work is to me, because you look at it from a different angle. Anyway I want a holiday--to get right away and consider things; and he won't let me have it. And finding that, I lost my temper. And if, at the present moment, Daniel hears that we're engaged to be married, Sabina, it's about fifty to one that he'd chuck me altogether and stop my dirty little allowance also." They had reached the gate of 'The Magnolias,' and Sabina did a startling thing. She turned from him and went down the path to the back entrance without another word. But this he could not stand. His heart smote him and he called her with such emotion that she also was sorrowful and came back to the gate. "Good God! you frightened me," he said. "This is a quarrel, Sabina--our first and last, I hope. Never, never let anything come between us. That's unthinkable and I won't have it. You must give and take, my precious girl. And so must I. But look at it. What on earth happens to us if Daniel fires me out of the Mill?" "He's a just man," she answered. "Dislike him as we may, he's a just man and you need not fear him, or anybody else, if you do the right thing." "You oppose your will to mine, then, Sabina?" "I don't know your will. I thought I did; I thought I understood you so well by now and was learning better and better how to please you. But now I tell you I am being wronged, and you say nothing can be done." "I never said so. I'm not a blackguard, Sabina, and you ought to know that as well as the rest of the world. I'm poor, unfortunately, and the poor have got to be politic. Daniel may be just, but it's a narrow-minded, hypocritical justice, and if I tell him I'm engaged to you, he'll sack me. That's the plain English of it." "I don't believe he would." "Well, I know he would; and you must at least allow me to know more about him than you do. And so I ask you whether it is common-sense to tell him what's going to happen, for the sake of a few clod-hoppers, who matter to nobody, or--" "But, but, how long is it to go on? Why do you shrink from doing now what you wanted to do at first?" "I don't shrink from it at all. I only intend to choose the proper time and not give the show away at a moment when to do so will be to ruin me." "'Give the show away,'" she quoted bitterly. "You can look me in the face and say a thing like that! It's only 'a show' to you; but it's my life to me." "I'm sorry I used the expression. Words aren't anything. It's my life to me, too. And I've got to think for both of us. In a week, or ten days, I'll eat humble pie and climb down and grovel to Daniel. Then, when I'm pardoned, we'll tell everybody. It won't kill you to wait another fortnight anyway. And in the meantime we'd better see less of each other, since you're getting so worried about what your friends say about us." Now he had said too much. Sabina would have agreed to the suggestion of a fortnight's waiting, but the proposal that they should see less of each other both hurt and angered her. The quarrel culminated. "Caution seems to me rather a cowardly thing, Raymond, from you to me. I tell you that your wife's good name is at stake. For, since you've called me your wife so often, I suppose I may do the same. And if you're so careless for my credit, then I must be jealous for it myself." "And my credit can go to the devil, I suppose?" Then she flamed, struck to the root of the matter and left him. "If the fact that you're engaged to me, by every sacred tie of honour, ruins your credit--then tell yourself what you are," she said, and her voice rose to a note he had never heard before. This time he did not call her back, but went his own way up the hill. CHAPTER XIII IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN Mr. Best was a good gardener and cultivated fruit and flowers to perfection. His rambling patch of ground ran beside the river and some of his apple trees bent over it. Pear trees also he grew, and a medlar and a quince. But flowers he specially loved. His house was bowered in roses to the thatched roof, and in the garden grew lilies and lupins, a hundred roses and many bright tracts of shining, scented blossoms. Now, however, they had vanished and on a Saturday afternoon John Best was tidying up, tending a bonfire and digging potatoes. He was generous of his treasures and the girls never hesitated to ask him for a rose in June. Ancient Mrs. Chick, too, won an annual gift from the foreman. Down one side of his garden ranged great elder bushes, and Mrs. Chick made of the blooth in summer time, a decoction very precious for throat troubles. Now Best stood for a moment and regarded a waste corner where grew nettles. Somebody approached him in this act of contemplation and he spoke. "I often wonder if it would be worth while making an experiment with stinging nettles," he said to Ernest Churchouse, who was the visitor. "They have a spinnable fibre, John, without a doubt." "They have, Mister Churchouse, and they scutch well and can be wrought into textiles. But there's no temptation to make trial. I'm only thinking in a scientific spirit." He swept up the fallen nettles for his bonfire. "I've come for a few balls of the rough twine," said Mr. Churchouse. "And welcome." An unusual air of gloom sat on Mr. Best and the other was quick to observe it. "All well, I hope?" he said. "Not exactly. I'm rather under the weather; but I dare say it's my own fault." "It often is," admitted Ernest; "but in my experience that doesn't make it any better. In fact, the most disagreeable sort of depression is that which we know we are responsible for ourselves. When other people annoy us, we have the tonic effect of righteous indignation; but not when we annoy ourselves and know ourselves to blame." "I wouldn't go so far as to say it's all my own fault, however," answered Mr. Best. "It is and it isn't my fault. To be a father of children is your own fault in a manner of speaking; and yet to be a father is not any wrong, other things being as they should." "On the contrary, it's part of the whole duty of man--other things being equal, as you say." "We look to see ourselves reflected in our offspring, yet how often do we?" asked the foreman. "Perhaps we might oftener, if we didn't suffer from constitutional inability to recognise ourselves, John. I've thought of this problem, let me tell you, for you are one of many who feel the same. So far as I can see, parents worry about what their children look like to them; but never about what they look like to their children." "You speak as a childless widower," answered the other. "Believe me, Mister Churchouse, children nowadays never hesitate to tell us what we look like to them--or what they think of us either. Even my sailor boy will do it." "It's the result of education," said Ernest. "There is no doubt that education has altered the outlook of the child on the parent. The old relation has disappeared and the fifth commandment does not make its old appeal. Children are better educated than their parents." "And what's the result? They'd kill the home goose that lays the golden eggs to-morrow, if they could. In fact, they're doing it. Those that remain reasonable and obedient to their fathers and mothers feel themselves martyrs. That's the best sort; but it ain't much fun having a house full of martyrs whether or no; and it ain't much fun to know that your offspring are merely enduring you, as a necessary affliction. As for the other sort, who can't stick home life and old-fashioned ideas, they just break loose and escape as quick as ever they know how--and no loss either." "A gloomy picture," admitted Mr. Churchouse; "but, like every other picture, it has two sides. I think time may be trusted to put it right. After the young have left the nest, and hopped out into the world, and been sharply pecked now and again, they begin to see home in its true perspective and find that there is nothing like the affection of a mother and father." "They don't want anything of that," declared John. "If you stand for sense and experience and try to learn them, they think you're a fossil and out of sight of reality; and if you attempt to be young and interest yourself in their wretched little affairs and pay the boy with the boys and the girl with the girls, they think you're a fool." "No doubt they see through any effort on the part of the middle-aged to be one with them," admitted Ernest. "And for my part I deprecate such attempts. Let us grow old like gentlemen, John, and if they cannot perceive the rightness and stateliness of age, so much the worse for them. Some of us, however, err very gravely in this matter. There are men who have not the imagination to see themselves growing old; they only feel it. And they try to hide their feelings and think they are also hiding the fact. Such men, of course, become the laughing-stocks of the rising generation and the shame of their own." "All the young are alike, so I needn't grumble at my own family for that matter," confessed Mr. Best. "Their generation is all equally headstrong and opinionated--high and low, the same. If I've hinted to Raymond Ironsyde once, I've hinted a thousand times, that he's not going about his business in a proper spirit." "He is at present obviously in love, John, and must not therefore be judged. But I share your uneasiness." "It's wrong, and he knows it, and she ought to know it, too. Sabina, I mean. I should have given her credit for more sense myself. I thought she had plenty of self-respect and brains too." "Things are coming to a crisis in that quarter," prophesied Ernest. "It is a quality of love that it doesn't stand still, John; and something is going to happen very shortly. Either it will be given out that they are betrothed, or else the thing will fade away. Sabina has very fine instincts; and on his side, he would, I am sure, do nothing unbecoming his family." "He has--plenty," declared Mr. Best. "Nothing about which there would not be two opinions, believe me. The fact that he has let it go so far makes me think they are engaged. The young will go their own way about things." "If it was all right, Sabina Dinnett wouldn't be so miserable," argued John Best. "She was used to be as cheerful as a bird on a bough; and now she is not." "Merely showing that the climax is at hand. I have seen myself lately that Sabina was unhappy and even taxed her with it; but she denied it. Her mother, however, knows that she is a good deal perturbed. We must hope for the best." "And what is the best?" asked John. "There is not the slightest difficulty about that; the best is what will happen," replied Mr. Churchouse. "As a good Christian you know it perfectly well." But the other shook his head. "That won't do," he answered, "that's only evasion, Mister Ernest. There's lots and lots of things happen, and the better the Christian you are, the better you know they ought not to happen. And whether they are engaged to be married, or whether they quarrel, trouble must come of it. If people do wrong, it's no good for Christians to say the issue must be right. That's simply weak-minded. You might as well argue nothing wrong ever does happen, since nothing can happen without the will of God." "In a sense that's true," admitted Ernest. "So true, in fact, that we'd better change the subject, John. We thinking and religious men know there's a good deal of thin ice in Christianity, where we've got to walk with caution and not venture without a guide. One needs professional theologians to skate over these dangerous places safely. But, for my part, I have my reason well under control, as every religious person should. I can perfectly accept the fact that evil happens, and yet that nothing happens without the sanction of an all powerful and all good God." "You'd better come and get your string then," said Mr. Best. "And long may your fine faith flourish. You're a great lesson to us people cursed with too much common-sense, I'm sure." "Where our religion is concerned, we should be too proud to submit it to common-sense," declared Ernest. "Common-sense is all very well in everyday affairs; in fact, this world would not prosper without it; but I strongly deprecate common-sense as applied to the next world, John. The next world, from what one glimpses of it in prophecy and revelation, is outside the category of common-sense altogether." "I stand corrected," said Mr. Best. "But it's a startler--to leave common-sense out of what matters most to thinking men." "We shall be altered in the twinkling of an eye," explained Ernest, "and so, doubtless, will be our humble, earthly intelligence, our reliance on reason and other mundane virtues. From the heavenly standpoint, earth will seem a very sordid business altogether, I suspect, and even our good qualities appear very peddling. In fact, we may find, John, that we were in the habit of putting up statues to the wrong persons, and discover the most unexpected people at the right hand of the Throne." "I dare say we shall," admitted Mr. Best; "for if common-sense is going by the board and the virtues all to be scrapped also, then we that think we stand had better take heed lest we fall--you and me included, Mister Churchouse. However, I'm glad to say I'm not with you there. The Book tells us very clear what's good and what's evil; and whatever else Heaven will do, it won't go back on the Book. I suppose you'll grant that much?" "Most certainly," said the elder. "Most certainly and surely, John. That, at least, we can rely upon. Our stronghold lies in the fact that we know good from evil, and though we don't know what 'infinite' goodness is, we do know that it is still goodness. Therefore, though God is infinitely good, He is still good; the difference between His goodness and ours is one of degree, not kind. So metaphysics and quibbling leave us quite safe, which is all that really matters." "I hope you're right," answered Best. "Life puts sharp questions to religion, and I can't pretend my religion's always clever enough to answer them." Ernest took his twine and departed; but the subject of Raymond and Sabina was not destined to slumber, for now he met Raymond on his way to North Hill House. He asked him to come into tea and, to his surprise, the young man refused. "That means Sabina isn't at home then," said Mr. Churchouse blandly. "I don't know where she is." At this challenge Ernest spoke and struck into the matter very directly. He blamed Raymond and feared that his course of action was not that of a gentleman. "You would be the very first to protest and criticise unfavourably, my dear boy, if you saw anybody else treating a girl in this fashion," he concluded. "I'm going to clear it up," answered the culprit. "Don't you worry. These things can't be done in a minute. This infernal place is always so quick to think evil, apparently, and judges decent people by its own dirty opinions. I've asked Daniel to give me a holiday, so that I may go away and think over life in general. And he won't give me a holiday. It's very clear to me, Uncle Ernest, that no self-respecting man would be able to work under Daniel for long. Things are coming to a climax. I doubt if I shall be able to keep on here." "You evade the subject, which is your friendship with Sabina, Raymond. As to Daniel, there ought to be no difficulty whatever, and you know it very well in your heart and head. Your protest deceives nobody. But Sabina?" Here the conversation ceased abruptly, for Raymond committed an unique offence. He told Mr. Churchouse to go to the devil, and left him, standing transfixed with amazement, at the outer gate of 'The Magnolias.' With the insult to himself Ernest was not much concerned. His regretful astonishment centred in the spectacle of Raymond's downfall. "To what confusion and disorder must his mind have been reduced, before he could permit himself such a lapse," reflected Mr. Churchouse. CHAPTER XIV THE CONCERT The effect of Raymond's attitude on Sabina's mind proved very serious. It awoke in her first anger and then dismay. She was a woman of fine feeling and quick perception. Love and ambition had pointed the same road, and the hero, being, as it seemed, without guile, had convinced her that she might believe every word that he spoke and trust everything that he did. She had never contemplated any sacrifice before marriage, and, indeed, when it came, the consummation of their worship proved no sacrifice to her, but an added joy. Less than many a married woman had she mourned the surrender, for in her eyes it made all things complete between them and bound them inseparably with the golden links of love and honour. When, therefore, upon this perfect union, sinister light from without had broken, she felt it no great thing to ask Raymond that their betrothal should be known. Reason and justice demanded it. She did not for an instant suppose that he would hesitate, but rather expected him to blame his own blindness in delay. But finding he desired further postponement, she was struck with consternation that rose to wrath; and when he persisted, she became alarmed and now only considered what best she might do for her own sake. Her work suffered and her friends perceived that all was not well with her. With the shortening days and bad weather, the meetings with Raymond became more difficult to pursue and she saw less of him. They had patched their quarrel and were friendly enough, but the perfect understanding had departed. They preserved a common ground and she did not mention subjects likely to annoy him. He appeared to be working steadily, seldom came into the shops and was more reserved to everybody in the Mill. Sabina had not yet spoken to her mother, though many times tempted to do so. Her loyalty proved strong in the time of trial; but the greater the strain on herself, the greater the strain on her love for the man. She told herself that no such cruel imposition should have been placed upon her; and she could not fail closely to question the need for it. Why did Raymond demand continued silence even in the face of offences put upon her by her neighbours? How could he endure to hear that people had been rude to her, and uttered coarse jests in her hearing aimed only at her ear? Would a man who loved her, as she deserved to be loved, suffer this? Then fear grew. With her he was always kind--kind and considerate in every matter but the vital matter. Yet there were differences. The future, in which he had delighted to revel, bored him now, and when she spoke of it, he let the matter drop. He was on good terms with his brother for the moment, and appeared to be winning an increasing interest in his business to the exclusion of other affairs. He would become animated on the subject of Sabina's work, rather than the subject of Sabina. He stabbed her unconsciously with many little shafts of speech, yet knew not that he was doing so. He grew more grave and self-controlled in their relations. Her personal touch began to lose power and waken his answering fire less often. It was then that she found herself with child, and knowing that despite much to cause concern, Raymond was still himself, she rejoiced, since this fact must terminate his wavering and establish her future. Here at least was an event beyond his power to evade. He loved her and had promised to wed her. He was a man who might be weak, but had never explicitly behaved in a manner to make her tremble for such a situation as the present. Procrastination ceased to be possible. What now had happened must demand instant recognition of her rights, and that given, she assured herself the future held no terrors. Now he must marry her, or contradict his own record as a gentleman and a man of honour. Yet she told him with a tremor and, until the last moment, could not banish from her heart the shadow of fear. He had never spoken of this possibility, or taken it into account, and she felt, seeing his silence, that it would be a shock. The news came to him as they walked from the Mill on a Saturday when the works closed at noon. He was on his way to Bridport and she went beside him for a mile through the lanes. For a moment he said nothing, then, seeing the road empty, he put his arms round her and kissed her. "You clever girl!" he said. "Don't tell me you're sorry, for God's sake, or I shall go and drown myself," she answered. Her face was anxious and she looked haggard in the cold light of a sunless, winter day. But a genuine, generous emotion had touched him, and with it woke pangs of remorse and contrition. He knew very well what she had been suffering mentally on his account, and he knew that the frightened voice in which she told him the news and the trembling mouth and the tear in her eyes ought not to have been there. Every fine feeling in the man and every honest instinct was aroused. For the moment he felt glad that no further delay was possible. His self-respect had already suffered; but now life offered him swift means to regain it. He did not, however, think of himself while his arms were round her; he thought of her and her only, while they remained together. "'Sorry'?" he said. "Can you think I'm sorry? I'm only sorry that I didn't do something sooner and marry you before this happened, Sabina. Good Lord--it throws a lot of light. I swear it does. I'm glad--I'm honestly glad--and you must be glad and proud and happy and all the rest of it. We'll be married in a month. And you must tell your mother we're engaged to-day; and I'll tell my people. Don't you worry. Damn me, I've been worrying you a lot lately; but it was only because I couldn't see straight. Now I do and I'll soon atone." She wept with thankful heart and begged him to turn with her and tell Mrs. Dinnett himself. But that he would not do. "It will save time if I go on to Bridport and let Aunt Jenny hear about it. Of course the youngster is our affair and nobody need know about that. But we must be married in a jiffey and--you must give notice at the mill to-day. Go back now and tell Best." "How wonderful you are!" she said. "And yet I feared you might be savage about it." "More shame to me that you should have feared it," he answered; "for that means that I haven't been sporting. But you shall never be frightened of me again, Sabina. To see you frightened hurts me like hell. If ever you are again, it will be your fault, not mine." She left him very happy and a great cloud seemed to fall off her life as she returned to the village. She blamed herself for ever doubting him. Her love rose from its smothered fires. She soared to great heights and dreamed of doing mighty things for Raymond. Straight home to her mother she went and told Mrs. Dinnett of her engagement and swiftly approaching marriage. The light had broken on her darkness at last and she welcomed the child as a blessed forerunner of good. The coming life had already made her love it. Meantime Raymond preserved his cheerful spirit for a season. But existence never looked the same out of Sabina's presence and before he had reached Bridport, his mood changed. He recognised very acutely his duty and not a thought stirred in him to escape it; but what for a little while had appeared more than duty and promised to end mean doubts and fears for ever, began now to present itself under other aspects. The joy of a child and a wife and a home faded. For what sort of a home could he establish? He leaned to the hope that Daniel might prove generous under the circumstances and believed that his aunt might throw her weight on his side and urge his brother to make adequate provision; but these reflections galled him unspeakably, for they were sordid. They argued weakness in him. He must come as a beggar and eat humble pie; he must for ever sacrifice his independence and, with it, everything that had made life worth living. The more he thought upon it, the more he began to hate the necessity of taking this story to his relations. Better men than he had lived in poverty and risen from humble beginnings. It struck him that if he went his own way, redoubled his official energies and asked for nothing more on the strength of his marriage, his own self-respect would be preserved as well as the respect of his aunt and brother. He pictured himself as a hero, yet knew that what he contemplated was merely the conduct of an honest man. The thought of approaching anybody with his intentions grew more distasteful, and by the time he reached Bridport, he had determined not to mention the matter, at any rate until the following day. So great a thing demanded more consideration than he could give it for the moment, because his whole future depended on the manner in which he broke it to his people. It was true that the circumstances admitted of no serious delay; Sabina must, of course, be considered before everything; but twenty-four hours would make no difference to her, while it might make all the difference to him. He reduced the courses of action to two. Either he would announce that he was going to be married immediately as a fact accomplished; or he would invite his aunt's sympathies, use diplomacy and win her to his side with a view to approaching Daniel. Daniel appeared the danger, because it was quite certain that he would strongly disapprove of Raymond's marriage. This certainty induced another element of doubt. For suppose, far from seeking to help Raymond with his new responsibilities, Daniel took the opposite course and threatened to punish him for any such stupidity? Suppose that his brother, from a personal standpoint, objected and backed his objection with a definite assurance that Raymond must leave the mill if he took this step? The only way out of that would be to tell Daniel that he was compromised and must wed Sabina for honour. But Raymond felt that he would rather die than make any such confession. His whole soul rose with loathing at the thought of telling the truth to one so frozen and unsympathetic. Moreover there was not only himself to be considered, but Sabina. What chance would she have of ever winning Daniel to acknowledge and respect her if the facts came to his ears? Raymond thought himself into a tangle and found a spirit of great depression settling upon him. But, at last, he decided to sleep on the situation. He did not go home, but turned his steps to 'The Tiger,' ate his luncheon and drank heartily with it. Then he went to see a boxer, who was training with Mr. Gurd, and presently when Neddy Motyer appeared, he turned into the billiard room and there killed some hours before the time of the smoking concert. He imbibed the intensely male atmosphere of 'The Tiger' with a good deal of satisfaction; but surging up into the forefront of his mind came every moment the truth concerning himself and his future. It made him bitter. For some reason he could not guess, he found himself playing billiards very much above his form. Neddy was full of admiration. "By Jove, you've come on thirty in a hundred," he said. "If you only gave a fair amount of time to it, you'd soon beat anybody here but Waldron." "My sporting days are practically over," answered Raymond. "I've got to face real life now, and as soon as you begin to do that, you find sport sinks under the horizon a bit. I thought I should miss it a lot, but I shan't." "If anybody else said that, I should think it was the fox who had lost his brush talking," replied Neddy; "but I suppose you mean it. Only you'll find, if you chuck sport, you'll soon be no good. Even as it is, going into the works has put you back a lot. I doubt if you could do a hundred in eleven seconds now." "There are more important things than doing a hundred in eleven seconds--or even time, either, for that matter." "You won't chuck football, anyway? You'll be fast enough for outside right for year's yet if you watch yourself." "Damned easy to say 'watch yourself.' Yes, I shall play footer a bit longer if they want me, I suppose." Arthur Waldron dropped in a few minutes later. He was glad to see Raymond. "Good," he said. "I thought you were putting in a blameless evening with your people." "No, I'm putting in a blameless evening here." "He's playing enormous billiards, Waldron," declared Motyer. "I suppose you've been keeping him at it. He's come on miles." "He didn't learn with me, anyway. It's not once in a blue moon that he plays at North Hill. But if he's come on, so much the better." They played, but Raymond's form had deserted him. Waldron was much better than the average amateur and now he gave Raymond fifty in two hundred and beat him by as much. They dined together presently, and Job Legg, who often lent a hand at 'The Tiger' on moments of extra pressure, waited upon them. "How's your uncle, Job?" asked Arthur Waldron, who was familiar with Mr. Legg, and not seldom visited 'The Seven Stars,' when Estelle came with him to Bridport. "He's a goner, sir. I'm off to the funeral on Monday." "Hope the will was all right?" "Quite all right, sir, thank you, sir." "Then you'll leave, no doubt, and what will Missis Northover do then?" Legg smiled. "It's hid in the future, sir," he answered. A comedian, who was going to perform at the smoking concert, came in with Mr. Gurd, and the innkeeper introduced him to Neddy and Raymond. He joined them and added an element of great hilarity to the meal. He abounded in good stories, and understood horse-racing as well as Neddy Motyer himself. Neddy now called himself a 'gentleman backer,' but admitted that, so far, it had not proved a lucrative profession. Their talk ranged over sport and athletics. They buzzed one against the other, and not even the humour of the comic man was proof against the seriousness of Arthur Waldron, who demonstrated, as always, that England's greatness had sprung from the pursuit of masculine pastimes. The breed of horses and the breed of men alike depended upon sport. The Empire, in Mr. Waldron's judgment, had arisen from this sublime foundation. "It reaches from the highest to the lowest," he declared. "The puppy that plays most is the one that always turns into the best dog." The smoking concert, held in Mr. Gurd's large dining-room, went the way of such things with complete success. The boxing was of the best, and the local lad, Tim Chick, performed with credit against his experienced antagonist. All the comic man's songs aimed at the folly of marriage and the horrors of domesticity. He seemed to be singing at Raymond, who roared with the rest and hated the humourist all the time. The young man grew uneasy and morose before the finish, drank too much whiskey, and felt glad to get into the cold night air when all was over. And then there happened to him a challenge very unexpected, for Waldron, as they walked back together through the night-hidden lanes, chose the opportunity to speak of Raymond's private affairs. "You can't accuse me of wanting to stick my nose into other people's business, can you, Ray? And you can't fairly say that you've ever found me taking too much upon myself or anything of that sort." "No; you're unique in that respect." "Well, then, you mustn't be savage if I'm personal. You know me jolly well and you know that you're about the closest friend I've got. And if you weren't a friend and a great deal to me, I shouldn't speak." "Go ahead--I can guess. There's only one topic in Bridetown, apparently. No doubt you've seen me in the company of Sabina Dinnett?" "I haven't, I can honestly say. But Estelle is very keen about the mill girls. She wants to do all sorts of fine things for them; and she's specially friendly with Missis Dinnett's daughter. And she's heard things that puzzled her young ears naturally, and she told me that some people say you're being too kind to Sabina and other people say you're treating her hardly. Of course, that puzzled Estelle, clever though she is; but, as a man of the world, I saw what it meant and that kindness may really be cruelty in the long run. You'll forgive me, won't you?" "Of course, my dear chap. If one lives in a hole like Bridetown, one must expect one's affairs to be common property." "And if they are, what does it matter as long as they are all straightforward? I never care a button what anybody says about me, because I know they can't say anything true that is up against me; and as to lies, they don't matter." "And d'you think I care what they say about me?" "Rather not. Only if a girl is involved, then the case is altered. I'm not a saint; but--" "When anybody says they're not a saint, you know they're going to begin to preach, Arthur." Waldron did not answer for a minute. He stopped and lighted his pipe. To Raymond, Sabina appeared unmeasurably distant at this midnight hour. His volatile mind was quick to take colour from the last experience, and in the aura of the smoking concert, woman looked a slight and inferior thing; marriage, a folly; domestic life, a jest. Waldron spoke again. "You won't catch me preaching. I only venture to say that in a little place like this, it's a mistake to be identified with a girl beneath you in every way. It won't hurt you, and if she was a common girl and given to playing about, it wouldn't hurt her; but the Dinnetts are different. However, you know a great deal more about her than I do, and if you tell me she's not all she seems and you're not the first and won't be the last, then, of course I'm wrong and enough said. But if she's all right and all she's thought to be, and all Estelle thinks her--for Estelle's a jolly good student of character--then, frankly, I don't think it's sporting of you to do what you're doing." The word 'sporting' summed the situation from Waldron's point of view and he said no more. Raymond grew milder. "She's all Estelle thinks her. I have a great admiration for her. She's amazingly clever and refined. In fact, I never saw any girl a patch on her in my life." "Well then, what follows? Surely she ought to be respected in every way." "I do respect her." "Then it's up to you to treat her as you'd treat anybody of your own class, and take care that nothing you do throws any shadow on her. And, of course, you know it. I'm not suggesting for a second you don't. I'm only suggesting that what would be quite all right with a girl in your own set, isn't exactly fair to Sabina--her position in the world being what it is." It was on Raymond's tongue to declare his engagement; but he did not. He had banished Sabina for that night and the subject irked him. The justice of Waldron's criticism also irked him; but he acknowledged it. "Thank you," he answered. "It's jolly good of you to say these things, Arthur, because they're not in your line, and I know you hate them. But you're dead right. I dare say I'll tell you something that will astonish you before long. But I'm not doing anything to be ashamed of. I haven't made any mistake; and if I had, I shouldn't shirk the payment." "You can't, my dear chap. A mistake has always got to be paid for in full--often with interest added. As a sportsman you know that, and it holds all through life in my experience." "I shan't make one. But if I do, I'm quite prepared to pay the cost." "We all say that till the bill comes along. Better avoid the mistake, and I'm glad you're going to." Far away from the scrub on North Hill came a sharp, weird sound. "Hark!" said Waldron. "That's a dog fox! I hope the beggar's caught a rabbit." CHAPTER XV A VISIT TO MISS IRONSYDE On the following day Raymond did not appear at breakfast, and Estelle wondered at so strange an event. "He's going for a long walk with me this afternoon," she told her father. "It's a promise; we're going all the way to Chilcombe, for me to show him that dear little chapel and the wonderful curiosity in it." "Not much in his line, but if he said he'll go, he'll go, no doubt," answered her father. They went to church together presently, for Waldron observed Sunday. He held no definite religious opinions; but inclined to a vague idea that it was seemly to go, because it set a good example and increased your authority. He believed that church-going was a source of good to the proletariat, and though he did not himself accept the doctrine of eternal punishment, since it violated all sporting tenets, he was inclined to think that acceptation of the threat kept ignorant people straight and made them better members of society. He held that the parson and squire must combine in this matter and continue to claim and enforce, as far as possible, a beneficent autocracy in thorpe and hamlet; and he perceived that religion was the only remaining force which upheld their sway. That supernatural control was crumbling under the influences of education he also recognised; but did his best to stem the tide, and trusted that the old dispensation would at least last out his time. On returning from worship they found Raymond in the garden, and when Estelle reminded him of his promise, he agreed and declared that he looked forward to the tramp. He was cheerful and apparently welcomed Estelle's programme, but there happened that which threatened to interfere with it. Waldron had retired to his study and a new book on 'The Fox Terrier,' which he reserved for Sabbath reading, and Estelle and Raymond were just setting out for Chilcombe when there came Sabina. She had called to see her lover and entered the garden in time to stop him. She had never openly asked to see him in this manner before, and Raymond was quick to mark the significance of the change. It annoyed him, while inwardly he recognised its reasonableness. He turned and shook hands with her, and Estelle did the same. "We're just starting for Chilcombe," she said. Sabina looked her surprise. She had been expecting Raymond all the morning, to bring the great news to Ernest Churchouse, and was puzzled to know why he had not come. She could not wait longer, and while her mother advised delay, found herself unable to delay. Now she perceived that Raymond had made plans independently of her. "I was coming in this evening," he said, in answer to her eyes. "May I speak to you a moment before you start with Miss Waldron?" she asked, and together they strolled into Estelle's rose garden where still a poor blossom or two crowned naked sprays. "I don't understand," began the girl. "Surely--surely after yesterday?" "I'd promised to go for this walk with her." "What then? Wasn't there all the morning? My mother and I didn't go to church--expecting you every minute." "You must keep your nerve, Sabina--both of us must. You mustn't be hysterical about it." She perceived how mightily his mood had changed since their leave-taking of the day before. "What's the matter?" she asked. "I suppose your people have not taken this well." "They don't know yet--nobody does." "You didn't tell them?" "Things prevented it. We must choose the right moment to spring this. It's bound to knock them over for a minute. I'm thinking it all out. Probably you don't quite realise, Sabina, what this means from their point of view. The first thing is to get my aunt on my side; Daniel's hopeless, of course." She stared at him. "What in God's name has come over you? You talk as though you hadn't a drop of blood in your veins. Were you deaf yesterday? Didn't you hear me tell you I was with child by you? 'Their point of view'! What about my point of view?" "Don't get excited, my dear girl. Do give me credit for some sense. This is a very ticklish business, and the whole of our future--yours, of course, quite as much as mine--will depend on what I do during the next few days. Do try to realise that. If I make a mistake now, we may repent it for fifty years." "What d'you call making a mistake? What choice of action have you got if you're a gentleman? It kills me--kills me to hear you talking about making a mistake; and your hard voice means that you think you've made one. What have I done but love you with all my heart and soul? What have I ever done to make you put other people's points of view before mine?" "I'm not--I'm not, Sabina." "You are. You used to understand me so well and know what was in my mind before I spoke, and now--now before this--the greatest thing in the world for me--you--" "Talk quietly, for goodness' sake. You don't want all Bridetown to hear us." "You can say that? And you go out walking with a child and--" "Look here, Sabina, you must pull yourself together, or else you stand a very good chance of bitching up our show altogether," he answered calmly. "This thing has got to be carried out by me, not you; and if you are not going to let me do it my own way, then so much the worse for both of us. I won't be dictated to by you, or anybody, and if you're not contented to believe in me, then I can only say you're making a big mistake and you'll very soon find it out." "What are you going to do, then?" she asked, "and when are you going to do it? I've a right to know that, I suppose?" "To think you can talk in that tone of voice to me--to me of all people!" "To think you can force me to! And now you'll say you've seen things in me you never thought were there, and turn it over in your mind--and--and oh, it's cowardly--it's cruel. And you call yourself an honourable man and could tell me and swear to me only yesterday that I was more to you than anything else in the world!" "D'you know what you're doing?" he asked. "D'you want to make me--there--I won't speak it--I won't come down to your level and forget myself and say things that I'd break my heart to think of afterwards. I must go now, or that girl will be wondering what the deuce has happened. She's told her father already that you weren't happy or something; so I suppose you must have been talking. I'll come in this evening. You'd better go home now as quick as you can." He left her abruptly and she sat down shaking on a stone seat, to prevent herself from falling. Grief and terror shared her spirit. She watched him hurry away and, after he was gone, arose to find her legs trembling under her. She went home slowly; then thoughts came to her which restored her physical strength. Her anger gave place to fear and her fear beckoned her to confide in somebody with greater power over Raymond than her own. She returned to her mother, described her repulse and then declared her intention of going immediately to see Miss Ironsyde. She concentrated her thoughts on the lady, of whom Raymond had often spoken with admiration and respect. She argued with herself that his aunt would only have to hear her story to take her side; she told herself and her mother that since Raymond had feared to approach his aunt, Sabina might most reasonably do so. She grew calm and convinced herself that not only might she do this, but that when Raymond heard of it, he would very possibly be glad that the necessity of confession was escaped. His Aunt Jenny was very fond of him, and would forgive him and help him to do right. Sabina found herself stronger than Raymond, and that did not astonish her, for she had suspected it before. Her mother, now in tears, agreed with her and she started on foot for Bridport, walked quickly, and within an hour, reached the dwelling of the Ironsydes--a large house standing hidden in the trees above the town. Miss Ironsyde was reading and looking forward to her tea when Sabina arrived. She had heard of the girl through Ernest Churchouse, but she had never met her and did not connect her in any way with Raymond. Jenny received her and was impressed with her beauty, for Sabina, albeit anxious and nervous, looked handsome after her quick walk. "I've heard of you from your mother and Mr. Churchouse," said Miss Ironsyde, shaking hands. "You come from him, I expect. I hope he is well? Sit down by the fire." Her kindly manner and gentle face set the younger at ease. "He's quite well, thank you, miss. But I'm here for myself, not him. I'm in a great deal of terrible anxiety, and you'll excuse me for coming, I do hope, when I explain why I've come. It was understood between me and Mr. Raymond Ironsyde very clearly yesterday that he was going to tell you about it. He left me yesterday to do so. But I've seen him to-day and I find he never came, so I thought I might venture to come even though it was Sunday." "The better the day, the better the deed. Something is troubling you. Why did not my nephew come, if he started to come?" "I don't know. Indeed, he should have come." "I'm afraid he starts to do a great many things he doesn't carry through," said Jenny, and the words, lightly spoken, fell sinister on Sabina's ear. "There are some things a man must carry through if he starts to do them," she said quietly, and her tone threw light for Raymond's aunt. She grew serious. "Tell me," she said. "I know my nephew very well and have his interests greatly at heart. He is somewhat undisciplined still and has had to face certain difficulties and problems, not much in themselves, but much to one with his temperament." Then Sabina, who felt that she might be fighting for her life, set out to tell her story. She proved at her best and spoke well. She kept her temper and chose her words. The things that she had thought to speak, indeed, escaped her, but her artless and direct narrative did not fail to convince the listener. "You're more to him than anybody in the world, but me," she said; "but I'm first, Miss Ironsyde. I must be first now. Even if to-day he had been different--but what seemed so near yesterday is far off to-day. He was harsh to-day. He terrified me, and I felt you'd think no worse of me than you must, if I ventured to come. I don't ask you to believe anything I say until you have seen him; but I'm not going to tell you anything but the sacred truth. Thanks to Mr. Churchouse I was well educated, and he took kind pains to teach me when I was young and helped me to get fond of books. So when Mr. Raymond came to the Mill, he found I was intelligent and well mannered. And he fell in love with me and asked me to marry him. And I loved him very dearly, because I had never seen or known a man with such a beautiful face and mind. And I promised to marry him. He wished it kept secret and we loved in secret and had great joy of each other for a long time. Then people began to talk and I begged him to let it be known we were engaged; but he would not. And then I told him--yesterday--that it must be known and that he must marry me as quickly as he could, for right and honour. And he seemed very glad--almost thankful I thought. He rejoiced about it and said it was splendid news. Then he left me to come straight to you and I was happy and thankful. But to-day I went to see him and he had changed and was rough to me and said he must choose his own time! This to me, who am going to be mother of his child next year! I nearly fainted when he said that. He told me to go; and I went. But I could not sit down under the shock; I had to do something and thought of you. So I came to implore you to be on my side--not only for my sake, but his. It's a very fearful thing--only I know how fearful, because I know all he's said and promised; and well I know he meant every word while he was saying it. And I do humbly beg you, miss, for love of him, to reason with him and hear what he's got to say. And if he says a word that contradicts what I've said, then I'll be content for you to believe him and I'll trouble you no more. But he won't. He'll tell you everything I've told you. He couldn't say different, for he's truthful and straight. And if it was anything less than the whole of my future life I wouldn't have come. But I feel there are things hidden in his mind I can't fathom--else after what I told him yesterday, he never, never could have been cruel to me, or changed his mind about coming to see you. And please forgive me for taking up your time. Only knowing that you cared for him so much made me come to you." Miss Ironsyde did not answer immediately. Her intuition inclined her to believe every word at its face value; but her very readiness to do so made her cautious. The story was one of every day and bore no marks of improbability; yet among Raymond's faults she could not remember any unreasonable relations with the other sex. It had always been one bright spot in his dead father's opinion that the young man did not care about drink or women, and was not intemperate, save in his passion for athletic exercises and his abomination of work. It required no great perception to see that Sabina was not the type that entangles men. She had a beautiful face and a comely figure, but she belonged not to the illusive, distracting type. She was obvious and lacked the quality which attracts men far more than open features, regular modelling and steady eyes. It was, in fact, such a face as Raymond might have admired, and Sabina was such a girl as he might have loved--when he did fall in love. She was apparently his prototype and complement in directness and simplicity of outlook; that Miss Ironsyde perceived, and the more she reflected the less she felt inclined to doubt. Sabina readily guessed the complex thoughts which kept the listener silent after she had finished, and sat quietly without more speech until Jenny chose to answer her. That no direct antagonism appeared was a source of comfort. Unconsciously Sabina felt happier for the presence of the other, though as yet she had heard no consoling word. Miss Ironsyde regarded her thoughtfully; then she rose and rang the bell. Sabina's heart sank for she supposed that she was to be immediately dismissed, and that meant defeat in a quarter very dangerous. But her mind was set at rest, for Jenny saw the fear in her eyes. "I'm ringing for tea," she said. "I will ask you to stop and drink a cup with me. You've had a long walk." Then came tears; but Sabina felt such weakness did not become her and smothered them. "Thank you, gratefully, Miss Ironsyde," she said. Tea was a silent matter, for Jenny had very little to say. Her speech was just and kind, however. It satisfied Sabina, whose only concern was justice now. She had spoken first. "I think--I'm sure it's only some hitch in Mr. Raymond's mind. He's been so wonderful to me--so tender and thoughtful--and he's such a gentleman in all he does and says, that I'm sure he never could dream of going back on his sacred word. He wants to marry me. He'll never tell you different from that. But he cannot realise, perhaps, the need--and yet I won't say that neither, for, of course, he must realise." "Say nothing more at all," answered Jenny. "You have said everything there was to say and I'm glad you have come to me and told me about it. But I'm not going to say anything myself until I've seen my nephew. You are satisfied that he will tell me the truth?" "Yes, I am. Don't think I don't trust him. Only if there's something hidden from me, he might explain to you what it is, and what I've done to anger him." Miss Ironsyde did not lack experience of men and could have thrown light on Sabina's problem; but she had not the heart. She began to suspect it was the girl's own compliance and his easy victory that had made Raymond weary before the reckoning. There is nothing more tasteless than paying after possession, unless the factors combine to make the payment a pleasure and possession an undying delight. Miss Ironsyde indeed guessed at the truth more accurately than she knew; but her sympathies were entirely with Sabina and it was certain that if Raymond, when the time came, could offer no respectable and sufficient excuse for a change of mind, he would find little support from her. Of her intentions, however, she said nothing, nor indeed while Sabina drank a cup of tea had Miss Ironsyde anything to say. She was not unsympathetic, but she was guarded. "I will see Raymond to-morrow without fail," she said when Sabina departed. "I share your belief, Miss Dinnett, that he is a truthful and straightforward man. At least I have always found him so. And I feel very sure that you are truthful and straightforward too. This will come right. I will give you one word of advice, if I may, and ask one question. Does anybody know of your engagement except my nephew and myself?" "Only my mother. Yesterday he told me to go straight home and tell her. And I did. Whether he's told anybody, I don't know." "Be sure he has not. He would tell nobody before me, I think. My advice, then, is to say nothing more until you hear from him, or me." "I shouldn't, of course, Miss Ironsyde." "Good-bye," said the other kindly. "Be of good heart and be patient for a few hours longer. It's hard to ask you to be, but you'll understand the wisdom." When Sabina had gone, Miss Ironsyde nibbled a hot cake and reflected deeply on an interview full of pain. The story--so fresh and terrific to the teller--was older than the hills and presented no novel feature whatever to her who listened. But in theory, Jenny Ironsyde entertained very positive views concerning the trite situation. Whether she would be able to sustain them before her nephew remained to be seen. She already began to fear. She saw the dangers and traversed the arguments. Though free from class prejudice, she recognised its weight in such a situation. A break must mean Sabina's social ruin; but would union mean ruin to Raymond? And if the problem was reduced to that, what became of her theories? She decided that since her theories were based in righteousness and justice, she must prefer his downfall to the woman's. For if, indeed, he fell as the result of a mistaken marriage, he would owe the fall to himself and his attitude after the event. He need not fall. A tendency to judge him hardly, however, drew Jenny up. He had yet to be heard. She went to her writing-desk and wrote him a letter directing him to see her on the following day without fail. "It is exceedingly important, my dear boy," she said, "and I shall expect you not later than ten o'clock to-morrow morning." CHAPTER XVI AT CHILCOMBE Meantime Raymond had kept his promise and devoted some hours to Estelle's pleasure. The girl was proud of such an event, anticipated it for many days and won great delight from it when it came. She perceived, as they started, that her friend was perturbed and wondered dimly a moment as to what Sabina could have said to annoy him; but he appeared to recover quickly and was calm, cheerful and attentive to her chatter after they had gone a mile. "To think you've never been to Chilcombe, Ray," she said. "You and father go galloping after foxes, or shooting the poor pheasants and partridges and don't care a bit for the wonderful tiny church at Chilcombe--the tiniest in England almost, I do believe. And then there's a beautiful thing in it--a splendid treasure; and many people think it was a piece of one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, that was wrecked on the Chesil Bank; and I dare say it is." "You must tell me about it." "I'm going to." "Not walking too fast for you?" "Not yet, but still you might go a little slower, or else I shall get out of breath and shan't be able to tell you about things." He obeyed. "There are no flowers for you to show me now," he said. "No, but there are interesting things. For instance, away there to the right is a wonderful field. And the old story is that everything that is ever planted in it comes up red--red." "What nonsense." "Yes, it is, but it's creepy, nice nonsense. Because of the story. Once there were two murderers at Swire village, and one turned upon the other and told the secret of the murder and got his friend caught and hanged. And the bad murderer was paid a great deal of money for telling the Government about the other murderer; and that was blood-money, you see. Then the bad murderer bought a field, and because he bought it with blood-money, everything he planted came up red. I wish it was true; but, of course, I know it can't be, though a good many things would come up red, like sanfoin and scarlet clover and beetroots." "A jolly good yarn," declared Raymond. They tramped along through a network of winding lanes, and presently Estelle pointed to a lofty hillock that rose above the high lands on which they walked. "That's Shipton Hill," she said, pointing to the domelike mound. "And I believe it's called so, because from one point it looks exactly like a ship upside down." "I'll bet it is, and a very good name for it." The diminutive chapel of Chilcombe stood in a farmyard beside a lofty knoll of trees. It was a stout little place of early English architecture, lifted high above the surrounding country and having a free horizon of sea and land. It consisted of a chancel, nave and south porch. Its bell cote held one bell; and within was a Norman font, a trefoil headed piscina, and sitting room for thirty-four people. "Isn't it a darling little church?" asked Estelle, her voice sunk to a whisper; and Raymond nodded and said that it was 'ripping.' Then they examined the medieval treasure of the reredos--a panel of cedar wood, some ten feet in length, that surmounted the altar. It was set in a deep oaken frame, and displayed two circular drawings with an oblong picture in the midst. In the left circle was the scourging of Christ; in the right, the Redeemer rose from the tomb; while between them the crucifixion had been depicted, with armies of mail-clad soldiers about the cross. The winged symbols of the evangelists appeared in other portions of the panel with various separate figures, and there were indications that the work was unfinished. Estelle, who had often studied every line of it, gave her explanations and ideas to Raymond, while he listened with great attention. Then they went to the ancient manor house now converted into a farm; and there the girl had friends who provided them with tea. She made no attempt to hide her pride at her companion, for she was a lonely little person and the expedition with Raymond had been a great event in her life. Exceedingly happy and contented, she walked beside him homeward in the fading light and ceased not to utter her budding thoughts and reflections. He proved a good listener and encouraged her, for she amused him and really interested him. In common with her father, Raymond was often struck by the fact that a child would consider subjects which had never entered his head; but so it was, since Estelle's mind had been wrought in a larger plan and compassed heights and depths, even in its present immaturity, to which neither Waldron's nor Raymond's had aspired. Yet the things she said were challenging, though often absurd. Facts which he knew, though Estelle as yet did not, served to block her ideals and explain her mysteries, yet he recognised the girl's simple dreams, unvexed by practical considerations, or the 'nay' that real life must make to them, were beautiful. She spoke a good deal about the Mill, where now her chief interest centred; and Raymond spoke about it too. And presently, after brisk interchange of ideas, she pointed out a fact that had not struck him. "It's a funny thing, Ray," she said, "but what you love best about the works is the machinery; and what I love best about them is the people. Yet I don't see how a machine can be as interesting as a girl." "Perhaps you're wrong, Estelle. Perhaps I wish you were right. If I hadn't found a girl more interesting--" He broke off and turned from the road she had innocently opened into his own thoughts. "Of course the people are more interesting, really. But because I'm keen about the machines, you mustn't think I'm not keener still about the people. You see the better the machines, the better time the people will have, and the less hard and difficult and tiring for them will be their work." She considered this and suddenly beamed. "How splendid! Of course I see. You _are_ clever, Ray. And it's really the people you think of all the time." She gave him a look of admiration. "I expect presently they'll all see that; and gradually you'll get them more and more beautiful machines, till their work is just pleasure and nothing else. And do invent something to prevent Sabina and Nancy and Alice hurting their hands. They have to stop the spindles so often, and it wounds them, and Nancy gets chilblains in the winter, so it's simply horrid for her." "That's right. It's one of the problems. I'm not forgetting these things." "And if I think of anything may I tell you?" "I hope you will, Estelle." She talked him into a pleasant humour, and it took a practical form unknown to Estelle, for before they had reached home again, there passed through Raymond's mind a wave of contrition. The contrast between Estelle's steadfast and unconscious altruism and his own irresolution and selfishness struck into him. She made him think more kindly of Sabina, and when he considered the events of that day from Sabina's standpoint, he felt ashamed of himself. For it was not she who had done anything unreasonable. The blame was his. He had practically lied to her the day before, and to-day he had been harsh and cruel. She had a right--the best possible right--to come and see him; she had good reason to be angry on learning that he had not kept his word. He determined to see Sabina as quickly as possible, and about seven o'clock in the evening after the return from the walk, he went down to 'The Magnolias' and rang the bell. Mrs. Dinnett came to the door, and said something that hardened the young man's heart again very rapidly. Sabina's mother was unfriendly. Since her daughter returned, she had learned all there was to know, and for the moment felt very antagonistic. She had already announced the betrothal to certain of her friends, and the facts that day had discovered made her both anxious and angry. She was a woman of intermittent courage, but her paroxysms of pluck soon passed and between them she was craven and easily cast down. For the moment, however, she felt no fear and echoed the mood in which Sabina had returned from Bridport an hour earlier. "Sabina can't be seen to-night," she said. "You wouldn't have anything to do with her this afternoon, Mr. Ironsyde, and treated her like a stranger; and now she won't see you." "Why not, Missis Dinnett?" "She's got her pride, and you've wounded it--and worse. And I may tell you we're not the people to be treated like this. It's a very ill-convenient business altogether, and if you're a gentleman and a man of honour--" He cut her short. "Is she going to see me, or isn't she?" "She is not. She's very much distressed, and every reason to be, God knows; and she's not going to see you to-night." Raymond took it quietly and his restraint instantly alarmed Mrs. Dinnett. "It's not my fault, Mr. Ironsyde. But seeing how things are between you, she was cruel put about this afternoon, and she's got to think of herself if you can do things like that at such a moment." "She must try and keep her nerve better. There was no reason why I should break promises. She ought to have waited for me to come to her." Mary Dinnett flamed again. "You can say that! And didn't she wait all the morning to see if you'd come to her--and me? And as to promises--it don't trouble you to break promises, else you'd have seen your family yesterday, as you told Sabina you were going to do." "Is she going to the mill to-morrow?" he asked, ignoring the attack. "No, she ain't going to the mill. It isn't a right and fitting thing that the woman you're going to marry and the mother of your future child should be working in a spinning mill; and if you don't know it, others do." "She told you then--against my wishes?" "And what are your wishes alongside of your acts? You're behaving very wickedly, Mr. Ironsyde, and driving my daughter frantic; and if she can't tell her mother her sorrows, who should know?" "She has disobeyed me and done a wrong thing," he said quietly. "This may alter the whole situation, and you can tell her so." "For God's sake don't talk like that. Would you ruin the pair of us?" "What am I to do if I can't trust her?" he asked, and then went abruptly away before Mary could answer. She was terribly frightened and soon drowned in tears, for when she returned to Sabina and related the conversation, her daughter became passionate and blamed her with a shower of bitter words. "I only told you, because I thought you had sense enough to keep your mouth shut about it," she cried. "Now he'll think it's common news and hate me--hate me for telling. You've ruined me--that's what you've done, and I may as well go and make a hole in the water as not, for he'll never marry me now." "You told Miss Ironsyde," sobbed the mother. "That was different. She'll keep it to herself, and I had to tell her to show how serious it was for me. For anything less than that, she'd have taken his side against me. And now he'll find I've been to her, and that may--oh, my God, why didn't I keep quiet a little longer, and trust him?" "You had every right to speak, when you found he was telling lies," said Mrs. Dinnett. And while they quarrelled, Raymond returned to North Hill in a mood that could not keep silence. He and Arthur Waldron smoked after supper, and when Estelle had gone to bed, the younger spoke and took up the conversation of the preceding night where he had dropped it. The speech that now passed, however, proceeded on a false foundation, for Raymond only told Arthur what he pleased and garbled the facts by withholding what was paramount. "You were talking of Sabina Dinnett last night," he said. "What would you think if I told you I was going to marry her, Waldron?" "A big 'if.' But you're not going to tell me so. You would surely have told me yesterday if you had meant that." "Why shouldn't I if I want to?" "I always keep out of personal things--even with pals. I strained a point with you last night for friendship, Ray. Is the deed done, or isn't it? If it is, there is nothing left but to congratulate you and wish you both luck." "If it isn't?" Mr. Waldron was cautious. "You're not going to draw me till I know as much as you know, old chap. Either you're engaged, or you're not." "Say it's an open question--then what?" "How can I say it's an open question after this? I'm not going to say a word about it." "Well, I thought we were engaged; but it seems there's a bit of doubt in the air still." "Then you'd better clear that doubt, before you mention the subject again. Until you and she agree about it, naturally it's nobody else's business." "And yet everybody makes it their business, including you. Why did you advise me to look out what I was doing last night?" "Because you're young, boy, and I thought you might make a mistake and do an unsporting thing. That was nothing to do with your marrying her. How was I to know such an idea was in your mind? Naturally nobody supposed any question of that sort had arisen." "Why not?" Waldron felt a little impatient. "You know as well as I do. Men in your position don't as a rule contemplate marriage with women, however charming and clever, who--. But this is nonsense. I'm not going to answer your stupid questions." "Then you'd say--?" "No, I wouldn't. I'll say nothing about it. You're wanting to get something for nothing now, and presently I daresay you'd remind me of something I had said. We can go back to the beginning if you like, but you're not going to play lawyer with me, Ray. It's in a nutshell, I suppose. You're going to marry Miss Dinnett, or else you're not. Of course, you know which. And if you won't tell me which, then don't ask me to talk about it." "I've not decided." "Then drop it till you have." "You're savage now." "I'm never savage--you know that very well. Or, if I am, it's only with men who are unsporting." "Let's generalise, then. I suppose you'd say a man was a fool to marry out of his own class." "As a rule, yes. Because marriage is difficult enough at best without complicating it like that. But there are exceptions. You can't find any rule without exceptions." "I'll tell you the truth then, Arthur. I meant to marry Sabina. I believed that she was the only being in the world worth living for. But things have happened and now I'm doubtful whether it would be the best possible." "And what about her? Is she doubtful too?" "I don't know. Anyway I've just been down to see her and she wouldn't see me." "See her to-morrow then and clear it up. If there's a doubt, give yourselves the benefit of the doubt. She's tremendously clever, Estelle says, and she may be clever enough to believe it wouldn't do. And if she feels like that, you'll be a fool to press it." They talked on and Waldron, despite his caution, was too ingenuous to hide his real opinions. He made it very clear to Raymond that any such match, in his judgment, would be attended by failure. But he spoke in ignorance of the truth. The younger went to bed sick of himself. His instincts of right and honour fought with his desires to be free. His heart sank now at the prospect of matrimony. He assured himself that he loved Sabina as steadfastly as ever he had loved her; but that there might yet be a shared life of happiness for them without the matrimonial chains. He considered whether it would be possible to influence Sabina in that direction; he even went so far as to speculate on what would be his future feelings for her if she insisted upon the sanctity of his promises. CHAPTER XVII CONFUSION Mr. Churchouse was standing in his porch, when a postman brought him a parcel. It was a book, and Ernest displayed mild interest. "What should that be, I wonder?" he said. Then he asked a question. "Have you seen Bert, the newspaper boy? For the second morning he disappoints me." But Bert himself appeared at the same moment and the postman went his way. "No newspaper on Saturday--how was that?" asked Mr. Churchouse. "I was dreadful ill and my mother wouldn't let me go outdoors," explained the boy. "I asked Neddy Prichard to go down to the baker's and get it for you; but he wouldn't." "Then I say no more, except to hope you're better." "It's my froat," explained Bert, a sturdy, flaxen youngster of ten. "One more point I should like to raise while you are here. Have you noticed that garden chair in the porch?" "Yes, I have, and wondered why 'twas left there." "Wonder no more, Bert. It is there that you may put the paper upon it, rather than fling the news on a dirty door-mat." "Fancy!" said Bert. "I never!" "Bear it in mind henceforth, and, if you will delay a moment, I will give you some black currant lozenges for your throat." A big black cat stood by his master listening to this conversation and Bert now referred to him. "Would thicky cat sclow me?" he asked. "No, Bert--have no fear of Peter Grim," answered Mr. Churchouse. "His looks belie him. He has a forbidding face but a friendly heart." "He looks cruel fierce." "He does, but though a great sportsman, he has a most amiable nature." Having ministered to Bert, Mr. Churchouse retired with his book and paper. Then came Mary Dinnett, red-eyed and in some agitation. But for a moment he did not observe her trouble. He had opened his parcel and revealed a volume bound in withered calf and bearing signs of age and harsh treatment. "A work I have long coveted--it is again 'a well-wisher,' Missis Dinnett, who has sent it to me. There is much kindness in the world still." But Mrs. Dinnett was too preoccupied with her own affairs to feel interest in Ernest's pleasant little experience. By nature pessimistic, original doubts, when she heard of Sabina's engagement, were now confirmed and she felt certain that her daughter would never become young Ironsyde's wife. Regardless of the girl's injunction to silence, and feeling that both for herself and Sabina this disaster might alter the course of their lives and bring her own hairs with sorrow to the grave, Mary now took the first opportunity to relate the facts to Mr. Churchouse. They created in him emotions of such deep concern that neither his book nor his newspaper were opened on the day of the announcement. Mrs. Dinnett rambled through her disastrous recital, declared that for her own part, she had already accepted the horror of it and was prepared to face the worst that could happen, and went so far as to predict what Ernest himself would probably do, now that the scandal had reached his ears. She was distraught and for the moment appeared almost to revel in the accumulated horrors of the situation. She told the story of promise and betrayal and summed up with one agonised prophecy. "And now you'll cast her out--you'll turn upon us and throw us out--I know you will." "'Cast her out'? Good God of Mercy! Who am I to cast anybody out, Missis Dinnett? Shall an elderly and faulty fellow creature rise in judgment at the weakness of youth? What have I done in the past to lead you to any such conclusion? I feel very certain, indeed, that you are permitting yourself a debauch of misery--wallowing in it, Mary Dinnett--as misguided wretches often wallow in drink out of an unmanly despair at their own human weakness. Fortify yourself! Approach the question on a higher plane. Remember no sparrow falls to the ground without the cognisance of its Creator! As for Sabina, I love her and have devoted many hours to her education. I also love Raymond Ironsyde--for his own sake as well as his family's. I am perfectly certain that you exaggerate the facts. Such a thing is quite incredible. Shall I quarrel with a gracious flower because a wandering bee has set a seed? He may be an inconsiderate and greedy bee--but--" Mr. Churchouse broke off, conscious that his simile would land him in difficulties. "No," he said, "we must not pursue this subject on a pagan or poetical basis. We are dealing with two young Christians, Missis Dinnett--a man and a woman of good nurture and high principle. I will never believe--not if he said it himself--that Raymond Ironsyde would commit any such unheard-of outrage. You say that he has promised to marry her. That is enough for me. The son of Henry Ironsyde will keep his promise. Be sure of that. For the moment leave the rest in my hands. Exercise discretion, and pray, pray keep silence about it. I do trust that nobody has heard anything. Publicity might complicate the situation seriously." As a matter of fact Mrs. Dinnett had told everything to her bosom friend--a woman who dwelt in a cottage one hundred yards from 'The Magnolias.' She did not mention this, however. "If you say there's hope, I'll try to believe it," she answered. "The man came here last night and Sabina wouldn't see him, and God knows what'll be the next thing." "Leave the next thing to me." "She's given notice at the works. He told her to." "Of course--quite properly. Now calm down and fetch me my walking boots." In half an hour Ernest was on his way to Bridport. As Sabina, before him, his instinct led to Miss Ironsyde and he felt that the facts might best be imparted to her. If anybody had influence with Raymond, it was she. His tone of confidence before Mrs. Dinnett had been partly assumed, however. His sympathies were chiefly with Sabina, for she was no ordinary mill hand; she had enjoyed his tuition and possessed native gifts worthy of admiration. But she was as excitable as her mother, and if this vital matter went awry, there could be no doubt that her life must be spoiled. Mr. Churchouse managed to get a lift on his way from a friendly farmer, and he arrived at Bridport Town Hall soon after ten o'clock. While driving he put the matter from his mind for a time, and his acquaintance started other trains of thought. One of them, more agreeable to a man of his temperament than the matter in hand, still occupied his mind when he stood before Jenny Ironsyde. "You!" she said. "I had an idea you never came into the world till afternoon." "Seldom--seldom. I drove a good part of the way with Farmer Gate, and he made a curious remark. He said that a certain person might as well be dead for all the good he was. Now what constitutes life? I've been asking myself that." "It's certainly difficult to decide about some people, whether they're alive or dead. Some make you doubt if they ever were alive." "A good many certainly don't know they're born; and plenty don't know they're dead," he declared. "To be in your grave is not necessarily to be dead, and to be in your shop, or office, needn't mean that you're alive," admitted the lady. "Quite so. Who doesn't know dead people personally, and go to tea with them, and hear their bones rattle? And whose spirit doesn't meet in their thoughts, or works, the dead who are still living?" "Most true, I'm sure; but you didn't come to tell me that?" "No; yet it has set me wondering whether, perhaps, I am dead--at any rate deader than I need be." "We are probably all deader than we need be." "But to-day there has burst into my life a very wakening thing. It may have been sent. For mystery is everywhere, and what's looking exceedingly bad for those involved, may be good for me. And yet, one can hardly claim to win goodness out of the threatened misfortunes to those who are dear to one." "What's the matter? Something's happened, or you wouldn't come to see me so early." "Something has happened," he answered, "and one turns to you in times of stress, just as one used to turn to your dear brother, Henry. You have character, shrewdness and decision." Miss Ironsyde saw light. "You've come for Raymond," she said. "Now how did you divine that? But, as a matter of fact, I've come for somebody else. A very serious thing has happened and if we older heads--" "Who told you about it?" "This morning, an hour ago, it was broken to me by Sabina's mother." "Tell me just what she told you, Ernest." He obeyed and described the interview exactly. "I cannot understand that, for Sabina saw me last night and explained the situation. I impressed upon her the importance of keeping the matter as secret as possible for the present." "Nevertheless Mary Dinnett told me. She is a very impulsive person--so is Sabina; but in Sabina's case there is brain power to control impulse; in her mother's case there is none." "I'm much annoyed," declared Miss Ironsyde--"not of course, that you should know, but that there should be talking. Please go home and tell them both to be quiet. This chattering is most dangerous and may defeat everything. Last night I wrote to Raymond directing him to come and see me immediately. I did not tell him why; but I told him it was urgent. I made the strongest appeal possible. When you arrived, I thought it was he. He should have been here an hour ago." "If he is coming, I will go," answered Ernest. "I don't wish to meet him at present. He has done very wrongly--wickedly, in fact. The question is whether marriage with Sabina--" "There is no question about that in my opinion," declared the lady. "I am a student of character, and had she been a different sort of girl--. But even as it is I suspend judgment until I have seen Raymond. It is quite impossible, however, after hearing her, to see what excuse he can offer." "She is a very superior girl indeed, and very clever and refined. I always hoped she would marry a schoolmaster, or somebody with cultured tastes. But her great and unusual beauty doubtless attracted Raymond." "I think you'd better go home, Ernest. I'll write to you after I've seen the boy. Do command silence from both of them. I'm very angry and very distressed, but really nothing can be done till we hear him. My sympathy is entirely with Sabina. Let her go on with her life for a day or two and--" "She's changed her life and left the Mill. I understand Raymond told her to do so." "That is a good sign, I suppose. If she's done that, the whole affair must soon be known. But we talk in the dark." Mr. Churchouse departed, forgot his anxieties in a second-hand book shop and presently returned home. But he saw nothing of Raymond on the way; and Miss Ironsyde waited in vain for her nephew's arrival. He did not come, and her letter, instead of bringing him immediately as she expected, led to a very different course of action on his part. For, taken with Sabina's refusal to see him, he guessed correctly at what had inspired it. Sabina had threatened more than once in the past to visit Miss Ironsyde and he had forbidden her to do so. Now he knew from her mother why she had gone, and while not surprised, he clutched at the incident and very quickly worked it into a tremendous grievance against the unlucky girl. His intelligence told him that he could not fairly resent her attempt to win a powerful friend at this crisis in her fortunes; but his own inclinations and growing passion for liberty fastened on it and made him see a possible vantage point. He worked himself up into a false indignation. He knew it was false, yet he persevered in it, as though it were real, and acted as though it were real. He tore up his aunt's letter and ignored it. Instead of going to Bridport, he went to his office and worked as usual. At dinner time he expected Sabina, but she did not come and he heard from Mr. Best that she was not at the works. "She came in here and gave notice on Saturday afternoon," said the foreman, shortly, and turned away from Raymond even as he spoke. Then the young man remembered that he had bade Sabina do this. His anger increased, for now everybody must soon hear of what had happened. In a sort of subconscious way he felt glad, despite his irritation, at the turn of events, for they might reconcile him with his conscience and help to save the situation in the long run. CHAPTER XVIII THE LOVERS' GROVE A little matter now kindled a great fire, and a woman's reasonable irritation, which he had himself created, produced for Raymond Ironsyde a very complete catastrophe. His aunt, indeed, was not prone to irritation. Few women preserved a more level mind, or exhibited that self-control which is a prime product of common-sense; but, for once, it must be confessed that Jenny broke down and did that which she had been the first to censure in another. The spark fell on sufficient fuel and the face of the earth was changed for Raymond before he slept that night. For his failure to answer her urgent appeal, his contemptuous disregard of the strongest letter she had ever written, annoyed her exceedingly. It argued a callous indifference to her own wishes and a spirit of extraordinary unkindness. She had been a generous aunt to him all his life; he had very much for which to thank her; and yet before this pressing petition he could remain dumb. That his mind was disordered she doubted not; but nothing excused silence at such a moment. After lunch on this day Daniel spent some little while with his aunt, and then when a post which might have brought some word from Raymond failed to do so, Jenny's gust of temper spoke. It was the familiar case of a stab at one who has annoyed us; but to point such stabs, the ear of a third person is necessary, and before she had quite realised what she was doing, Miss Ironsyde sharply blamed her nephew to his brother. "The most inconsiderate, selfish person on earth is Raymond," she said as a servant brought her two letters, neither from the sinner. "I asked him--and prayed him--to see me to-day about a subject of the gravest importance to him and to us all; and he neither comes nor takes the least notice of my letter. He is hopeless." "What's he done now?" "I don't know exactly--at least--never mind. Leave it for the minute. Sorry, I was cross. You'll know what there is to know soon enough. If there's trouble in store, we must put a bold face on it and think of him." "I rather hoped things were going smoother. He seems to be getting more steady and industrious." "Perhaps he reserved his industry for the works and leaves none for anything else, then," she answered; "but don't worry before you need." "You'll tell me if there's anything I ought to know, Aunt Jenny." "He'll tell you himself, I should hope. And if he doesn't, no doubt there will be plenty of other people to do so. But don't meet trouble half way. Shall you be back to tea?" "Probably not. I'm going to Bridetown this afternoon. I have an appointment with Best. He was to see some machinery that sounded all right; but he's very conservative and I can always trust him to be on the safe side. One doesn't mean to be left behind, of course." "Always ask yourself what your father would have thought, Daniel. And then you'll not make any mistakes." He nodded. "I ask myself that often enough, you may be sure." * * * * * An hour later the young man had driven his trap to the Mill and listened to John Best on the subject of immediate interest. The foreman decided against any innovation for the present and Daniel was glad. Then he asked for his brother. "Is Mister Raymond here?" "He was this morning; but he's not down this afternoon. At least he wasn't when I went to his office just before you came." "Everything's all right, I suppose?" Mr. Best looked uncomfortable. "I'm afraid not, sir; but I hate talking. You'd better hear it from him." Daniel's heart sank. "Tell me," he said. "You're one of us, John--my father's right hand for twenty years--and our good is your good. If you know of trouble, tell me the truth. It may be better for him in the long run. Miss Ironsyde was bothered about him, to-day." "If it's better for him, then I'll speak," answered Best. "He's a very clever young man and learning fast now. He's buckling to and getting on with it. But--Sabina Dinnett, our first spinner, gave notice on Saturday. She's not here to-day." "What does that mean?" "You'd better ask them that know. I've heard a lot of rumours, and they may be true or not, and I hope they're not. But if they are, I suppose it means the old story where men get mixed up with girls." Daniel was silent, but his face flushed. "Don't jump to the conclusion it's true," urged the foreman. "Hear both sides before you do anything about it." "I know it's true." Mr. Best did not answer. "And you know it's true," continued the younger. "What everybody says nobody should believe," ventured Best. "What happened was this--Sabina came in on Saturday afternoon, when I was working in my garden, and gave notice. Not a month, but to go right away. Of course I asked her why, but she wouldn't tell me. She was as happy as a lark about it, and what she said was that I'd know the reason very soon and be the first to congratulate her. Of course, I thought she was going to be married. And still I hope she is. That's all you can take for truth. The rest is rumour. You can guess how a place like this will roll it over their tongues." "I'll go and see Mister Churchouse." "Do, sir. You can trust him to be charitable." Daniel departed; but he did not see Ernest Churchouse. The antiquary was not at home and, instead, he heard Mrs. Dinnett, who poured the approximate truth into his ears with many tears. His brother had promised to marry Sabina, but on hearing the girl was with child, had apparently refused to keep his engagement. Then it was Daniel Ironsyde's turn to lose his temper. He drove straight to North Hill House, found his brother in the garden with Estelle Waldron, took him aside and discharged him from the Mill. Raymond had been considering the position and growing a little calmer. With a return of more even temper, he had written to Miss Ironsyde and promised to be with her on the following evening without fail. He had begged her to keep an open mind so far as he was concerned and he hoped that when the time came, he might be able to trust to her lifelong friendship. What he was going to say, he did not yet know; but he welcomed the brief respite and was in a good temper when his brother challenged him. The attack was direct, blunt and even brutal. It burst like a thunder-bolt on Raymond's head, staggered him, and then, of course, enraged him. "I won't keep you," said Daniel. "I only want to know one thing. Sabina Dinnett's going to have a baby. Are you the father of it, or aren't you?" "What the devil business is that of yours?" "As one of my mill hands, I consider it is my business. One thinks of them as human beings as well as machines--machines for work, or amusement--according to the point of view. So answer me." "You cold-blooded cur! What are you but a machine?" "Answer my question, please." "Go to hell." "You blackguard! You do a dirty, cowardly thing like this, despite my warnings and entreaties; you foul our name and drag it in the gutter and then aren't man enough to acknowledge it." The younger trembled with passion. "Shut your mouth, or I'll smash your face in!" he cried. His sudden fury calmed his brother. "You refuse to answer, and that can only mean one thing, Raymond. Then I've done with you. You've dragged us all through the mud--made us a shame and a scandal--proud people. You can go--the further off, the better. I dismiss you and I never want to see your face again." "Don't worry--you never shall. God's my judge, I'd sooner sweep a crossing than come to you for anything. I know you well enough. You always meant to do this. You saved your face when my father robbed me from the grave and left me a pauper--you saved your face by putting me into the works; but you never meant me to stop there. You only waited your chance to sack me and keep the lot for yourself. And you've jumped at this and were glad to hear of this--damned glad, I'll bet!" Daniel did not answer, but turned his back on his brother, and a minute or two later was driving away. When he had gone, the panting Raymond went to his room and flung himself on his bed. Under his cooling anger again obtruded the old satisfaction--amorphous, vile, not to be named--that he had felt before. This brought ultimate freedom a step nearer. If ostracism and punishment were to be his portion, then let him earn them. If the world--his world--was to turn against him, let the reversal be for something. Poverty would be a fair price for liberty, and those who now seemed so ready to hound him out of his present life and crush his future prospects, should live to see their error. For a time he felt savagely glad that this had happened. He regretted his letter to his aunt; he thought of packing his portmanteau on the instant and vanishing for ever; yet time and reflection abated his dreams. He began to grow a little alarmed. He even regretted his harsh words to his brother before the twilight fell. Then his mind was occupied with Sabina; but Sabina had wounded him to the quick, for it was clear she and her mother had shamelessly published the truth. Sabina, then, had courted ruin. She deserved it. He soon argued that the disaster of the day was Sabina's work, and he dismissed her with an oath from his thoughts. Then he turned to Miss Ironsyde and found keen curiosity waken to know what she was thinking and feeling about him. Did she know that Daniel had dismissed him? Could she have listened to so grave a determination on Daniel's part and taken no step to prevent it? He found himself deeply concerned at being flung out of his brother's business. The more he weighed all that this must mean and its effect upon his future, the more overwhelmed he began to be. He had worked very hard of late and put all his energy and wits into spinning. He was beginning to understand its infinite possibilities and to see how, Daniel's trust once won, he might have advanced their common welfare. From this point he ceased to regret his letter to Miss Ironsyde, but was glad that he had written it. He now only felt concerned that the communication was not penned with some trace of apology for his past indifference to her wishes. He began to see that his sole hope now lay with his aunt, and the supreme point of interest centred in her attitude to the situation. He despatched a second letter, confirming the first, and expressing some contrition at his behaviour to her. But this rudeness he declared to have been the result of peculiarly distressing circumstances; and he assured her, that when the facts came to her ears, she would find no difficulty in forgiving him. Their meeting was fixed for the following evening, and until it had taken place, Raymond told nobody of what had happened to him. He went to work next morning, to learn indirectly whether Best had heard of his dismissal; but it seemed the foreman had not. The circumstance cheered Raymond; he began to hope that his brother had changed his mind, and the possibility put him into a sanguine mood at once. He found himself full of good resolutions; he believed that this might prove the turning point; he expected that Daniel would arrive at any moment and he was prepared frankly to express deep regret for his conduct if he did so. But Daniel did not come. Sabina constantly crossed Raymond's mind, to be as constantly dismissed from it. He was aware that something definite must be done; but he determined not even to consider the situation until he had seen his aunt. A hopeful mood, for which no cause existed, somehow possessed him upon this day. For no reason and spun of nothing in the least tangible, there grew around him an ambient intuition that he was going to get out of this fix with the help of Jenny Ironsyde. The impression created a wave of generosity to Sabina. He felt a large magnanimity. He was prepared to do everything right and reasonable. He felt that his aunt would approve the line he purposed to take. She was practical, and he assured himself that she would not consent to pronounce the doom of marriage upon him. In this sanguine spirit Raymond went to Bridport and dined at 'The Tiger' before going to see his aunt at the appointed time. And here there happened events to upset the level optimism that had ruled him all day. Raymond had the little back-parlour to himself and Richard Gurd waited upon him. They spoke of general subjects and then the older man became personal. "If you'll excuse me, Mister Raymond," he said, "if you'll excuse me, as one who's known you ever since you went out of knickers, sir, I'd venture to warn you as a good friend, against a lot that's being said in Bridetown and Bridport, too. You know how rumours fly about. But a good deal more's being said behind your back than ought to be said; and you'll do well to clear it up. And by the same token, Mister Motyer's opening his mouth the widest. As for me, I got it from Job Legg over the way at 'The Seven Stars'; and he got it from a young woman at Bridetown Mills, niece of Missis Northover. So these things fly about." Raymond was aware that Richard Gurd held no puritan opinions. He possessed tolerance and charity for all sorts and conditions, and left morals alone. "And what did you do, Dick? I should think you'd learned by this time to let the gossip of a public-house go in at one ear and out of the other." "Yes--for certain. I learned to do that before you were born; but when things are said up against those I value and respect, it's different. I've told three men they were liars, to-day, and I may have to tell thirty so, to-morrow." Raymond felt his heart go slower. "What the deuce is the matter?" "Just this: they say you promised to marry a mill girl at Bridetown and--the usual sort of thing--and, knowing you, I told them it was a lie." The young man uttered a scornful ejaculation. "Tell them to mind their own business," he said. "Good heavens--what a storm in a teacup it is! They couldn't bleat louder if I'd committed a murder." "There's more to it than to most of these stories," explained Richard. "You see it sounds a very disgraceful sort of thing, you being your brother's right hand at the works." "I'm not that, anyway." "Well, you're an Ironsyde, Mister Raymond, and to have a story of this sort told about an Ironsyde is meat and drink for the baser sort. So I hope you'll authorise me to contradict it." "Good God--is there no peace, even here?" burst out Raymond. "Can even a man I thought large-minded and broad-minded and all the rest of it, go on twaddling about this as if he was an old washer-woman? Here--get me my bill--I've finished. And if you're going to begin preaching to people who come here for their food and drink, you'd better chuck a pub and start a chapel." Mr. Gurd was stricken dumb. A thousand ghosts from the grave had not startled him so much as this rebuke. Indeed, in a measure, he felt the rebuke deserved, and it was only because he held the rumour of Raymond's achievements an evil lie, that he had cautioned the young man, and with the best motives, desired to put him on his guard. But that the story should be true--or based on truth--as now appeared from Raymond's anger, had never occurred to Richard. Had he suspected such a thing, he must have deplored it, but he certainly would not have mentioned it. He went out now without a word and held it the wisest policy not to see his angry customer again that night. He sent Raymond's account in by a maid, and the young man paid it and went out to keep his appointment with Miss Ironsyde. But again his mood was changed. Gurd had hit him very hard. Indeed, no such severe blow had been struck as this unconscious thrust of Richard's. For it meant that an incident that Raymond was striving to reconcile with the ways of youth--a sowing of wild oats not destined to damage future crops--had appeared to the easy-going publican as a thing to be stoutly contradicted--an act quite incompatible with Raymond's record and credit. Coming from Gurd this attitude signified a great deal; for if the keeper of a sporting inn took such a line about the situation, what sort of line were others likely to take? Above all, what sort of line would his Aunt Jenny take? His nebulous hopes dwindled. He began to fear that she would find the honour of the family depended not on his freeing himself from Sabina, but the contrary. And he was right. Miss Ironsyde welcomed him kindly, but left no shadow of doubt as to her opinion; and the fact that the situation had been complicated by publicity, which in the last resort he argued, by no means turned her from her ultimatum. "Sit down and smoke and listen to me, Raymond," she began, after kissing him. "I forgive you, once for all, that you could be so rude to me and fail to see me despite my very pressing letter. No doubt some whim or suspicion inspired you to be unkind. But that doesn't matter now. That's a trifle. We've got to thresh out something that isn't a trifle, however, for your honour and good name are both involved--and with yours, ours." "I argue that a great deal too much is being made of this, Aunt Jenny." "I hope so--I hope everything has been exaggerated through a misunderstanding. Delay in these cases is often simply fatal, Raymond, because it gives a lie a start. And if you give a lie a start, it's terribly hard to catch. Sabina Dinnett came to see me on Sunday afternoon and I trust with all my heart she told me what wasn't true." He felt a sudden gleam of hope and she saw it. "Don't let any cheerful feeling betray you; this is far from a cheerful subject for any of us. But again, I say, I hope that Sabina Dinnett has come to wrong conclusions. What she said was this. Trust me to be accurate, and when I have done, correct her statement if it is false. Frankly, I thought her a highly intelligent young woman, with grace of mind and fine feeling. She was fighting for her future and she did it like a gentlewoman." Miss Ironsyde then related her conversation with Sabina and Raymond knew it to be faithful in every particular. "Is that true, or isn't it?" she concluded. "Yes, it's perfectly true, save in her assumption that I had changed my mind," he said. "What I may have done since, doesn't matter; but when I left her, I had not changed my mind in the least; if she had waited for me to act in my own time, and come to see you, and so on, as I meant to do, and broken it to Daniel myself, instead of hearing him break it to me and dismiss me as though I were a drunken groom, then I should have kept my word to her. But these things, and her action, and the fact that she and her fool of a mother have bleated the story all over the county--these things have decided me it would be a terrible mistake to marry Sabina now. She's not what I thought. Her true character is not trustworthy--in fact--well, you must see for yourself that they don't trust me and are holding a pistol to my head. And no man is going to stand that. We could never be married now, because she hates me. There's another reason too--a practical one." "What?" "Why, the best. I'm a pauper. Daniel has chucked me out of the works." Miss Ironsyde showed very great distress. "Do you honestly mean that you could look the world in the face if you ruin this woman?" "Why use words like that? She's not ruined, any more than thousands of other women." "I'm ashamed of you, Raymond. I hope to God you've never said a thing so base as that to anybody but me. And if I thought you meant it, I think it would break my heart. But you don't mean it. You loved the girl and you are an honourable man without a shadow on your good name so far. You loved Sabina, and you do love her, and if you said you didn't a thousand times, I should not believe it. You're chivalrous and generous, and that's the precious point about you. Granted that she made a mistake, is her mistake to wreck her whole life? Just think how she felt--what a shock you gave her. You part with her on Saturday the real Raymond, fully conscious that you must marry her at once--for her own honour and yours. Then on Sunday, you are harsh and cruel--for no visible reason. You frighten her; you raise up horrible fears and dangers in her young, nervous spirit. She is in a condition prone to terrors and doubts, and upon this condition you came in a surly mood and imply that you yourself are changed. What wonder she lost her head? Yet I do not think that it was to lose her head to come to me. She had often heard you speak of me. She knew that I loved you well and faithfully. She felt that if anybody could put this dreadful fear to rest, I should be the one. Don't say she wasn't right." He listened attentively and began to feel something of his aunt's view. "Forgive her first for coming to me. If mistaken, admit at least it was largely your own fault that she came. She has nothing but love and devotion for you. She told nothing but the truth." He asked a question, which seemed far from the point, but none the less indicated a coming change of attitude. At any rate Jenny so regarded it. "What d'you think of her?" "I think she's a woman of naturally fine character. She has brains and plenty of sense and if she had not loved you unspeakably and been very emotional, I do not think this could have happened to her." She talked on quietly, but with the unconscious force of one who feels her subject to the heart. The man began to yield--not for love of Sabina, but for love of himself. For Miss Ironsyde continued to make him see his own position must be unbearable if he persisted, while first she implied and finally declared, that only through marriage with Sabina could his own position be longer retained. But he put forward his dismissal as an argument against marriage. "Whatever I feel, it's too late now," he explained. "Daniel heard some distorted version of the truth in Bridetown, and, of course, believed it, and came to me white with rage and sacked me. Well, you must see that alters the case if nothing else does. Granted, for the sake of argument, that I can overlook the foolish, clumsy way she and her mother have behaved and go on as we were going, how am I to live and keep a wife on nothing?" "That is a small matter," she answered. "You need not worry about it in the least. And you know in your heart, my dear, you need not. I have had plenty of time to think over this, and I have thought over it. And I am very ready and willing to come between you and any temporal trouble of that sort. As to Daniel, when he hears that you are going to marry and always meant to do so, it must entirely change his view of the situation. He is just and reasonable. None can deny that." "You needn't build on Daniel, however. I'd rather break stones than go back to the Mill after what he said to me." "Leave him, then. Leave him out of your calculation and come to me. As I tell you, I've thought about it a great deal, and first I think Sabina is well suited to be a good wife to you. With time and application she will become a woman that any man might be proud to marry. I say that without prejudice, because I honestly think it. She is adaptable, and, I believe, would very quickly develop into a woman in every way worthy of your real self. And I am prepared to give you five hundred a year, Raymond. After all, why not? All that I have is yours and your brother's, some day. And since you need it now, you shall have it now." At another time he had been moved by this generosity; to-night, knowing what it embraced, he was not so grateful as he might have been. His instinct was to protest that he would not marry Sabina; but shame prevented him from speaking, since he could advance no decent reason for such a change of mind. He felt vaguely, dimly at the bottom of his soul that, despite events, he ought not to marry her. He believed, apart from his own intense aversion from so doing now, that marriage with him would not in the long run conduce to Sabina's happiness. But where were the words capable of lending any conviction to such a sentiment? Certainly he could think of none that would change his aunt's opinion. Sullenly he accepted her view with outward acknowledgment and inward resentment. Then she said a thing that nearly made him rebel, since it struck at his pride, indicated that Miss Ironsyde was sure of her ground, showed that she had assumed the outcome of their meeting before the event. First, however, he thanked her. "Of course, it is amazingly good and kind. I don't like to accept it. But I suppose it would hurt you more if I didn't than if I do. It's a condition naturally that I marry Sabina--I quite understand that. Well, I must then. I might have been a better friend to her if I hadn't married; and might love her better and love her longer for that matter. But, of course, I can't expect you to understand that. I only want to be sporting, and a man's idea of being sporting isn't the same--" "Now, now--you're forgetting and talking nonsense, Raymond. You really are forgetting. A man's idea of being 'sporting' does not mean telling stories to a trusting and loving girl, does it? I don't want anybody to judge you but yourself. I am perfectly content to leave it to your own conscience. And very sure I am that if you ask yourself the question, you'll answer it as it should be answered. So sure, indeed, that I have done a definite thing about it, which I will tell you in a moment. For the rest you must find a house where you please and be married as soon as you can. And when Daniel understands what a right and proper thing you're doing, I think you'll very soon find all will be satisfactory again in that quarter." "Thank you, I'm sure. But don't speak to him yet. I won't ask for favours nor let you, Aunt Jenny. If he comes to me, well and good--I certainly won't go to him. As to Sabina, we'll clear out and get married in a day or two." "Not before a Registrar," pleaded Miss Ironsyde. "Before the Devil I should think," he said, preparing to leave her. She chid him and then mentioned certain preparations made for this particular evening. "Don't be cross any more, and let me see you value my good will and love, Ray, by doing what I'm going to ask you to do, now. So sure was I that, when the little details were cleared up, you would feel with me, and welcome your liberty from constraint, and return to Sabina with the good news, that I asked her to meet you to-night--this very night, my dear, so that you might go home with her and make her happy. She had tea with me--I made her come, and then she went to friends, and she will be in the Lovers' Grove waiting for you at ten o'clock--half an hour from now." His impulse was to protest, but he recognised the futility for so doing. He felt baffled and cowed and weary. He hated himself because, weakened by poverty, an old woman had been too much for him. He clutched at a hope. Perhaps by doing as his aunt desired and going through with this thing, he would find his peace of mind return and a consciousness that, after all, to keep his promise was the only thing which would renew his self-respect. It might prove the line of least resistance to take this course. He felt not sorry at the immediate prospect of meeting Sabina. In his present mood that might be a good thing to happen. Annoyance passed, and when he did take leave it was with more expressions of gratitude. "I don't know why you are so extraordinarily good to me," he said. "I certainly don't deserve it. But the least I can do is throw up the sponge and do as you will, and trust your judgment. I don't say I agree with you, but I'm going to do it; and if it's a failure, I shan't blame you, Aunt Jenny." "It won't be a failure. I'm as sure as I'm sure of anything that it will be a splendid success, Raymond. Come again, very soon, and tell me what you decide about a house. And remember one thing--don't fly away and take a house goodness knows where. Always reckon with the possibility--I think certainty--that Daniel will soon be friendly, when he hears you're going to be married." He left her very exhausted, and if her spirits sank a little after his departure, Raymond's tended to rise. The night air and moonlight brisked him up; he felt a reaction towards Sabina and perceived that she must have suffered a good deal. He threw the blame on her mother. Once out of Bridetown things would settle down; and if his brother came to his senses and asked him to return, he would make it a condition that he worked henceforth at Bridport. A feeling of hatred for Bridetown mastered him. He descended West Street until the town lay behind him, then turned to the left through a wicket, crossed some meadows and reached a popular local tryst and sanctity: the Lovers' Grove. A certain crudity in the ideas of Miss Ironsyde struck Raymond. How simple and primitive she was after all. Could such an unworldly and inexperienced woman be right? He doubted it. But he went on through the avenue of lime and sycamore trees which made the traditional grove. Beneath them ran pavement of rough stones, that lifted the pathway above possible inundation, and, to-night, the pattern of the naked boughs above was thrown down upon the stones in a black lace work by the moon. The place was very still, but half a mile distant there dreamed great woods, whence came the hooting of an owl. Raymond stood to listen, and when the bird was silent, he heard a footfall ring on the paving-stones and saw Sabina coming to him. At heart she had been fearful that he would not appear; but this she did not whisper now. Instead she pretended confidence and said, "I knew you'd come!" He responded with fair ardour and tried to banish his grievances against her. He assured her that all her alarm and tribulation were not his fault, but her own; and her responsive agreement and servile tact, by its self-evidence defeated its own object and fretted the man's nerves, despite his kindly feelings. For Sabina, in her unspeakable thankfulness at the turn of events, sank from herself and was obsequious. When they met he kissed her and presently, holding his hand, she kissed it. She heaped blame upon herself and praised his magnanimity; she presented the ordinary phenomena of a happy release from affliction and fear; but her intense humility was far from agreeable to Raymond, since its very accentuation served to show his own recent actions in painful colours. He told her what his aunt was going to do; and where a subtler mind had held its peace, Sabina erred again and praised Miss Ironsyde. In truth, she was not at her best to-night and her excitement acted unfavourably on Raymond. He fought against his own emotions, and listened to her high-strung chatter and plans for the future. A torrent of blame had better suited the contrite mood in which she met him; but she took the blame on her own shoulders, and in her relief said things sycophantic and untrue. He told her almost roughly to stop. "For God's sake don't blackguard yourself any more," he said. "Give me a chance. It's for me to apologise to you, surely. I knew perfectly well you meant nothing, and I ought to have had more imagination and not given you any cause to be nervous. I frightened you, and if a woman's frightened, of course, she's not to be blamed for what she does, any more than a man's to be blamed for what he does when he's drunk." This, however, she would not allow. "If I had trusted you, and known you could not do wrong, and remembered what you said when I told you about the child--then all this would have been escaped. And God knows I did trust you at the bottom of my heart all the time." She talked on and the man tired of it and, looking far ahead, perceived that his life must be shared for ever with a nature only now about to be revealed to him. He had seen the best of her; but he had never seen the whole truth of her. He knew she was excitable and passionate; but the excitation and passion had all been displayed for him till now. How different when she approached other affairs of life than love, and brought her emotional characteristics to bear upon them! A sensation of unutterable flatness overtook Raymond. She began talking of finding a house, and was not aware that his brother had dismissed him. He snatched an evil pleasure from telling her so. It silenced her and made her the more oppressively submissive. But through this announcement he won temporary release. There came a longing to leave her, to go back to Bridport and see other faces, hear other voices and speak of other things. They had walked homeward through the valley of the river and, at West Haven, Raymond announced that she must go the remainder of the way alone. He salved the unexpected shock of this with a cheerful promise. "I sleep at Bridport, to-night," he said, "and I'll leave you here, Sabina; but be quite happy. I dare say Daniel will be all right. He's a pious blade and all that sort of thing and doesn't understand real life. And as some fool broke our bit of real life rather roughly on his ear, it was too much for his weak nerves. I shan't take you very far off anyway. We'll have a look round soon. I'll go to a house agent or somebody in a day or two." "You must choose," she said. "No, no--that's up to you, and you mustn't have small ideas about it either. You're going to live in a jolly good house, I promise you." This sweetened the parting. He kissed her and turned his face to Bridport, while she followed the road homeward. It took her past the old store--black as the night under a roof silvered by the moon. A strange shiver ran through her as she passed it. She could have prayed for time to turn back. "Oh, my God, if I was a maiden again!" she said in a low voice to herself. Then, growing calmer and musing of the past rather than the future, she asked herself whether in that case she would still be caring for Raymond; but she turned from such a thought and smothered the secret indignation still lying red-hot and hidden under the smoke of the things she had said to him that night. On his way to Bridport, the man also reflected, but of the future, not the past. "I must be cruel to be kind," he told himself. What he exactly meant by the assurance, he hardly knew. But, in some way, it assisted self-respect and promised a course of action likely to justify his coming life. CHAPTER XIX JOB LEGG'S AMBITION A disquieting and wholly unexpected event now broke into the strenuous days of the mistress of 'The Seven Stars.' It followed another, which was now a thing of the past; but Mrs. Northover had scarcely finished being thankful that the old order was restored again, when that occurred to prove the old order could never be restored. Job Legg had been called away to the deathbed of an aged uncle. For a fortnight he was absent, and during that time Nelly Northover found herself the victim of a revelation. She perceived, indeed, startling truths until then hidden from her, and found the absence of Job created undreamed-of complications. At every turn she missed the man and discovered, very much to her own surprise, that this most unassuming person appeared vital to the success of her famous house. On every hand she heard the same words; all progress was suspended; nothing could advance until the return of Mr. Legg. 'The Seven Stars' were arrested in their courses while he continued absent. Thus his temporary disappearance affected the system and proved that around the sun of Job Legg, quite as much as his mistress, the galaxy revolved; but something more than this remained to be discovered by Mrs. Northover herself. She found that not only had she undervalued his significance and importance in her scheme of things; but that she entertained a personal regard for the man, unsuspected until he was absent. She missed him at every turn; and when he came back to her, after burying his uncle, Mrs. Northover could have kissed him. This she did not do; but she was honest; she related the suspension of many great affairs for need of Job; she described to him the dislocation that his departure had occasioned and declared her hearty thankfulness that her right hand had returned to her. "You was uppermost in my mind a thousand times a day, Job; and when it came to doing the fifty thousand things you do, I began to see what there is to you," said Nelly Northover. "And this I'll say: you haven't been getting enough money along with me." He was pleased and smiled and thanked her. "I've missed 'The Stars,'" he said, "and am very glad to be back." Then when things were settled down and Mrs. Northover happy and content once more, Mr. Legg cast her into much doubt and uncertainty. Indeed his attitude so unexpected, awoke a measure of dismay. Life, that Nelly hoped was becoming static and comfortable again, suddenly grew highly dynamic. Changes stared her in the face and that was done which nothing could undo. On the night that Raymond Ironsyde left Sabina at West Haven and returned to Bridport, Mr. Legg, the day's work done, drank a glass of sloe gin in Mrs. Northover's little parlour and uttered a startling proposition--the last to have been expected. The landlady herself unconsciously opened the way to it, for she touched the matter of his wages and announced her purpose to increase them by five shillings a week. Then he spoke. "Before we talk about that, hear me," he said. "You were too nice-minded to ask me if I got anything by the death of my old man; but I may tell you, that I got everything. And there was a great deal more than anybody knew. In short he's left me a shade over two hundred pounds per annum, and that with my own savings--for I've saved since I was thirteen years old--brings my income somewhere near the two hundred and fifty mark--not counting wages." "Good powers, Job! But I am glad. Never none on earth deserved a bit better than you do." "And yet," he said, "I only ask myself if all this lifts me high enough to say what I want to say. You know me for a modest man, Mrs. Northover." "None more so, Job." "And therefore I've thought a good deal about it and come to it by the way of reason as well as inclination. In fact I began to think about what I'm going to say now, many years ago after your husband died. And I just let the idea go on till the appointed time, if ever it should come; and when my uncle died and left a bit over four thousand pounds to me, I felt the hour had struck!" Nelly's heart sank. "You're going?" she said. "All this means that you are going into business on your own, Legg." "Let me finish. But be sure of one thing; I'm not going if I can stay with peace and honour. If I can't, then, of course, I must go. To go would be a terrible sad thing for me, for I've grown into this place and feel as much a part of it as the beer engine, or the herbaceous border. But I had to weigh the chances, and I may say my cautious bent of mind showed very clearly what they were. And, so, first, I'll tell what a flight I've took and what a thought I've dared, and then I'll ask you, being a woman with a quick mind and tongue, to answer nothing for the moment, and say no word that you may wish to recall after." "All very wise and proper, I'm sure." "If it ain't, God forgive me, seeing I've been working it out in my mind for very near twenty years. And I say this, that being now a man of capital, and a healthy and respectable man, and well thought of, I believe, and nothing against me to my knowledge, I offer to marry you, Nelly Northover. The idea, of course, comes upon you like a bolt from the blue, as I can see by your face; but before you answer 'No,' I must say I've loved you in a respectful manner for many years, and though I knew my place too well to say so, I let it appear by faithful service and very sharp eyes always on your interests--day and night you may say." "That is true," she said. "I didn't know my luck." "I don't say that. Any honourable man would have done so much, very likely; but perhaps--however, I'm not here to praise myself but to praise you; and I may add I never in a large experience saw the woman--maid, wife or widow--to hold a candle to you for brains and energy and far-reaching fine qualities in general. And therefore I never could be worthy of you, and I don't pretend to it, and the man who did would be a very vain and windy fool; but such is my high opinion and great desire to be your husband that I risk, you may say, everything by offering myself." "This is a very great surprise, Job." "So great that you must do me one good turn and not answer without letting it sink in, if you please. I have a right to beg that. Of course I know on the spur of the moment the really nice-minded woman always turns down the adventurous male. 'Tis their delicate instinct so to do. But you won't do that--for fairness to me. And there's more to it yet, because we've got to think of fairness to you also. I wouldn't have you buy a pig in a poke and take a man of means without knowing where you stood. So I may say that if you presently felt the same as I do about it, I should spend a bit of my capital on 'The Seven Stars,' which, in my judgment, is now crying for capital expenditure." "It is," admitted Mrs. Northover, "I grant you that." "Very well, then. It would be my pride--" He was interrupted, for the bell of the inn rang and a moment later Raymond Ironsyde appeared in the hall. He had come for supper and bed. "Good evening, Mrs. Northover," he said. "I'm belated and starving into the bargain. Have you got a room?" "For that matter, yes," she answered not very enthusiastically. "But surely 'The Tiger's' your house, sir?" "I'm not bound to 'The Tiger,' and very likely shall never go there again. Gurd is getting too big for his shoes and seems to think he's called upon to preach sermons to his customers, besides doing his duty as a publican. If I want sermons I can go to church for them, not to an inn. Give me some supper and a bottle of your best claret. I'm tired and bothered." A customer was a customer and Mrs. Northover had far too much experience to take up the cudgels for her friend over the way. She guessed pretty accurately at the subject of Richard Gurd's discourse, yet wondered that he should have spoken. For her own part, while quite as indignant as others and more sorry than many that this cloud should have darkened a famous local name, she held it no personal business of hers. "I'll see what cold meat we've got. Would you like a chicken, sir?" "No--beef, and plenty of it. And let me have a room." Job Legg, concealing the mighty matters in his own bosom, soon waited upon Raymond and found him in a sulky humour. The claret was not to his liking and he ordered spirits. He began to smoke and drink, and from an unamiable mood soon thawed and became talkative. He bade Job stay and listen to him. "I've got a hell of a lot on my mind," he said, "and it's a relief to talk to a sensible man. There aren't many knocking about so far as I can see." He rambled on touching indirectly, as he imagined, at his own affairs, but making it clear to the listener that a very considerable tumult raged in Raymond's own mind. Then came Mrs. Northover, told the guest that it was nearer two o'clock than one, and hoped he was soon going to bed. He promised to do so and she departed; but the faithful Job, himself not sleepy, kept Raymond company. Unavailingly he urged the desirability of sleep, but young Ironsyde sat on until he was very drunk. Then Mr. Legg helped him upstairs and assisted him to his bed. It was after three o'clock before he retired himself and found his mind at liberty to speculate upon the issue of his own great adventure. CHAPTER XX A CONFERENCE Jenny Ironsyde came to see Ernest Churchouse upon the matter of the marriage. She found him pensive and a little weary. According to his custom he indulged in ideas before approaching the subject just then uppermost in all minds in Bridetown. "I have been suffering from rather a severe dose of the actual," he said; "at present, in the minds of those about me, there is no room for any abstraction. We are confronted with facts--painful facts--a most depressing condition for such a mind as mine. There are three orders of intelligence, Jenny. The lowest never reaches higher than the discussion of persons; the second talks about places, which is certainly better; the third soars into the region of ideas; and when one finds a person indulge in ideas, then court their friendship, for ideas are the only sound basis of intellectual interchanges. It is so strange to see an educated person, who might be discussing the deepest mysteries and noblest problems of life, preferring to relate the errors of a domestic servant, or deplore the price of sprats." "All very well for you," declared Miss Ironsyde; "from your isolated situation, above material cares and anxieties, you can affect this superiority; but what about Mrs. Dinnett? You would very soon be grumbling if Mrs. Dinnett put the deepest mysteries and noblest problems of life before the price of sprats. It is true that man cannot live by bread alone; and it is equally true that he cannot live without it. The highest flights are impossible without cooking, and cooking would be impossible if all aspired to the highest flights." "As a matter of fact, Mrs. Dinnett is my present source of depression," he said. "All is going as it should go, I suppose. The young people are reconciled, and I have arranged that Sabina should be married from here a fortnight hence. Thus, as it were, I shield and protect her and support her against back-biting and evil tongues." "It is splendid of you." "Far from it. I am only doing the obvious. I care much for the girl. But Mary Dinnett, despite the need to be sanguine and expeditious, permits herself an amount of obstinate melancholy which is most ill-judged and quite unjustified by the situation. Nothing will satisfy her. She scorns hope. She declines to take a cheerful view. She even confesses to a premonition they are not going to be married after all. She says that her grandmother had second sight and believes that the doubtful gift has been handed down to her." "This is very bad for Sabina." "Of course it is. I impress that upon her mother. The girl has been through a great deal. She is highly strung at all times, and these affairs have wrought havoc with her intelligence for the moment. Her one thought and feverish longing is to be married, and her mother's fatuous prophecies that she never will be are causing serious nervous trouble to Sabina. I feel sure of it. They may even be doing permanent harm." "You should suppress Mary." "I endeavour to do so. I put much serving upon her; but her frame of mind is such that her energy is equal to anything. You had better see her and caution her. From another woman, words of wisdom would carry more weight than mine. As to Sabina, I have warned her against her mother--a strong thing to do, but I felt it to be my duty." They saw Mary Dinnett then, and Miss Ironsyde quickly realised that there were subtle tribulations and shades of doubt in the mother's mind beyond Mr. Churchouse's power to appreciate. Indeed, Mrs. Dinnett, encouraged so to do by the sympathetic presence of Jenny Ironsyde, strove to give reasons for her continued gloom. "You must be more hopeful and put a brighter face on it, Mary, if only for the sake of the young people," declared the visitor. "You're not approaching the marriage from the right point of view. We must forget the past and keep our minds on the future and proceed with this affair just as though it were an ordinary marriage without any disquieting features. We have to remember that they love each other and really are well suited. The future is chequered by certain differences between my nephews, which have not yet been smoothed out; but I am sure that they will be; and meantime you need feel no fear of any inconvenience for Sabina. I am responsible." "I know all that," said Mrs. Dinnett, "and your name is in my prayers when I rise up and when I go to bed. But while there's a lot other people can do for 'em, there's also a deal they can only do for themselves; and, in my opinion, they are not doing it. It's no good us playacting and forgetting the past and pretending everything is just as it should be, if they won't." "But they have." "Sabina has. I doubt if he has. I don't know how you find him, but when I see him he's not in a nice temper and not taking the situation in the spirit of a happy bridegroom--very far from it. And my second-sight, which I get from my grandmother, points to one thing: that there won't be no wedding." "This is preposterous," declared Miss Ironsyde. "The day is fixed and every preparation far advanced." "That's nought to a wayward mind like his. He's got in a state now when I wouldn't trust him a yard. And I hope to God you'll hold the reins tight, miss, and not slacken till they're man and wife. Once let him see his way clear to bolt, and bolt he will." Mr. Churchouse protested, while Jenny only sighed. Sabina's mother was echoing her own secret uneasiness, but she lamented that others had marked it as well as herself. "He is in a very moody state, but never speaks of any change of mind to me." "Because he well knows you hold the purse," said Mrs. Dinnett. "I don't want to say anything uncharitable against the man, though I might; but I will say that there's danger and that I do well to be a miserable woman till the danger's past. You tell me to cheer up, and I promise to cheer up quick enough when there's reason to do so. Mr. Churchouse here is the best gentleman on God's earth; but he don't understand a mother's heart--how should he? and he don't know what a lot women have got to hide from men--for their own self-respect, and because men as a body are such clumsy-minded fools--speaking generally, of course." To see even Mrs. Dinnett dealing thus in ideas excited Ernest and filled him with interest. He forgot everything but the principle she asserted and would have discussed it for an hour; but Mary, having thus hit back effectively, departed, and Miss Ironsyde brought the master of 'The Magnolias' back to their subject. "There's a lot of truth in what she says and it shows how trouble quickens the wits," she declared; "and I can say to you, what I wouldn't to her, that Raymond is not taking this in a good spirit, or as I hoped and expected. I feel for him, too, while being absolutely firm with him. Stupid things were done and the secret of his folly made public. He has a grudge against them and, of course, that is rather a threatening fact, because a grudge against anybody is a deadly thing to get into one's mind. It poisons character and ruins your steady outlook, if it is deep seated enough." "Would you say that he bore Sabina a grudge?" "I'm afraid so; but I do my best to dispel it by pointing out what she thought herself faced with. And I tell him what is true, that Sabina in her moments of greatest fear and exasperation, always behaved like a lady. But in your ear only, Ernest, I confess to a new sensation--a sickly sensation of doubt. It comes over my religious certainty sometimes, like a fog. It's cold and shivery. Of course from every standpoint of religion and honour and justice, they ought to be married. But--" He stopped her. "Having named religion and honour and justice, there is no room for 'but.' Indeed, Jenny, there is not." "Let me speak, all the same. Other people can have intuitions besides Mrs. Dinnett. It's an intuition--not second sight--but it is alive. Supposing this marriage doesn't really make for the happiness of either of them?" "If they put religion and honour and justice first, it must," he repeated. "You cannot, I venture to say, have happiness without religion and honour and justice; and if Raymond were to go back on his word now, he would be the most miserable man in the country." "I wonder." "Don't wonder. Be sure of it. Granted he finds himself miserable--that is because he has committed a fault. Will it make him less miserable to go on and commit a greater? Sorrow is a fair price to pay for wisdom, Jenny. He is a great deal wiser now than he was six months ago, and to shirk his responsibilities and break his word will not mend matters. Besides, there is another consideration, which you forget. These young people are no longer free. Even if they both desired to remain single, honour, justice and religion actually demand marriage. There was a doubt in my own mind once, too, whether their happiness would be assured by union. Now there is no doubt. A child is coming into the world. Need I say more?" "I stand corrected," she answered. "There is really nothing more to be said. For the child's sake, if for no other reason, marry they must. We know too well the fate of the child born out of wedlock in this country." "It is a shameful and cruel fate; and while the Church of England cowardly suffers the State to impose it, and selfish men care not, we, with some enthusiasm for the unborn and some indignation to see their disabilities, must do what lies in our power for them." He rambled off into generalities inspired by this grave theme. "'Suffer the little children to come unto Me,' said Christ; and we make it almost impossible for fifty thousand little children to come unto Him every year; and those who stand for Him, the ministers of His Church, lift not a finger. The little children of nobody they are. They grow up conscious of their handicap; they come into the world to trust and hope and find themselves pariahs. Is that conducive to a religious trust in God, or a rational trust in man for these outlawed thousands?" She brought him back again to Raymond and Sabina. "Apart from the necessity and justice," she said, "and taking it for granted that the thing must happen, what is your opinion of the future? You know Sabina well and ought to be in a position to say if you think she will have the wit and sense to make it a happy marriage." "I should wish to think so. They are a gracious pair--at least they were. I liked both boy and girl exceedingly and I happened to be the one who introduced them to each other. It was after Henry's death. Sabina came in with our tea and one could almost see an understanding spring up and come to life under one's eyes. They've been wicked, Jenny; but such is my hopelessly open mind in the matter of goodness and wickedness, that I often find it harder to forgive some people for doing their duty than others for being wicked. In fact, some do their duty in a way that is perfectly unforgivable, while others fail in such an affecting and attractive manner that they make you all the fonder of them." "I feel so, too, sometimes," she admitted, "but I never dared to confess it. Once married, I think Raymond would steady down and realise his responsibilities. We must both do what we can to bring the brothers together again. It will take a long time to make Daniel forgive this business." "It is just the Daniel type who would take it most seriously, even if we are able soon to say 'all's well that ends well.' For that reason, one regrets he heard particulars. However, we must trust and believe the future will set all right and reinstate Raymond at the works. For my own part I feel very sure that will happen." "Well, I always like to see hope triumphing over experience," she said, "and one need never look further than you for that." "Thank yourself," he answered. "Your steadfast optimism always awakes an echo in me. If we make up our minds that this is going to be all right, that will at least help on the good cause. We can't do much to make it all right, but we can do something. They are in Bridport house-hunting this morning, I hear." "They are; and that reminds me they come to lunch and, I hope, to report progress. Of course anything Raymond likes, Sabina approves; but he isn't easily satisfied. However, they may have found something. Daniel, rather fortunately, is from home just now, in the North." "If we could get him to the wedding, it would be a great thing." "I'm afraid we mustn't hope for that; but we can both urge him to come. He may." "I will compose a very special letter to him," said Mr. Churchouse. "How's your rheumatism?" "Better, if anything." CHAPTER XXI THE WARPING MILL In the warping shed Mercy Gale plied her work. It was a separate building adjoining the stores at Bridetown Mill and, like them, impregnated with the distinctive, fat smell of flax and hemp. Under dusty rafters and on a floor of stone the huge warping reels stood. They were light, open frameworks that rose from floor to ceiling and turned upon steel rods. Hither came the full bobbins from the spinning machines to be wound off. Two dozen of the bobbins hung together on a flat frame or 'creel' and through eyes and slots the yarn ran through a 'hake,' which deftly crossed the strands so that they ran smoothly and freely. The bake box rose and fell and lapped the yarn in perfect spirals round the warping reels as they revolved. The length of a reel of twine varies in different places and countries; but at Bridetown, a Dorset reel was always measured, and it represented twenty-one thousand, six hundred yards. Mercy Gale was chaining the warp off the reels in great massive coils which would presently depart to be polished and finished at Bridport. All its multiple forms sprang from the simple yarn. It would turn into shop and parcel twines; fishing twines for deep sea lines and nets; and by processes of reduplication, swell to cords and shroud laid ropes, hawsers and mighty cables. A little figure filled the door of the shed and Estelle Waldron appeared. She shook hands and greeted the worker with friendship, for Estelle was now free of the Mill and greatly prided herself on personally knowing everybody within them. "Good morning, Mercy," she said. "I've come to see Nancy Buckler." "Good morning, miss. I know. She's going to run in at dinner time to sing you her song." "It's a wonderful song, I believe," declared Estelle, "and very, very old. Her grandfather taught it to her before he died, and I want to write it down. Do you like poetry, Mercy?" "Can't say as I do," confessed the warper. She was a fair, tall girl. "I like novels," she added. "I love stories, but I haven't got much use for rhymes." "Stories about what?" asked Estelle. "I have a sort of an idea to start a library, if I can persuade my father to let me. I believe I could get some books from friends to make a beginning." "Stories about adventure," declared Mercy. "Most of the girls like love stories; but I don't care so much about them. I like stories where big things happen in history." "So do I; and then you know you're reading about what really did happen and about great people who really lived. I think I can lend you some stories like that." Mercy thanked her and Estelle fell silent considering which book from her limited collection would best meet the other's demand. Herself she did not read many novels, but loved her books about plants and her poets. Poetry was precious food to her, and Mr. Churchouse, who also appreciated it, had led her to his special favourites. For the present, therefore, Estelle was content with Longfellow and Cowper and Wordsworth. The more dazzling light of Keats and Shelley and Swinburne had yet to dawn for her. Nancy Buckler arrived presently to sing her song. Her looks did not belie Nancy. She was sharp of countenance, with thin cheeks and a prominent nose. Her voice, too, had a pinch of asperity about it. By nature she was critical of her fellow creatures. No man had desired her, and the fact soured her a little and led to a general contempt of the sex. She smiled for Estelle, however, because the ingenuous child had won her friendship. "Good morning, miss," she said. "If you've got a pencil and paper, you can take down the words." "But sing them first," begged the listener. "I want to hear you sing them to the old tune, because I expect the tune is as old as the words, Nancy." "It's a funny old tune for certain. I can't sing it like grandfather did, for all his age. He croaked it like a machine running, and that seemed the proper way. But I've not got much of a voice." "'Tis loud enough, anyway," said Mercy, "and that's a virtue." "Yes, you can hear what I'm saying," admitted Miss Buckler, then she sang her song. "When a twister, a twisting, will twist him a twist, With the twisting his twist, he the twine doth entwist; But if one of the twines of the twist doth untwist, The twine that untwisteth, untwisteth the twist, Untwisting the twine that entwineth between, He twists with his twister the two in a twine. Then, twice having twisted the twines of his twine, He twisteth the twine he had twined in twine. The twain, that in twining before in the twine, As twines were entwisted, he now doth untwine, 'Twixt the twain intertwisting a twine more between." Nancy gave her remarkable performance in a clear, thin treble. It was a monotonous melody, but suited the words very well. She sang slowly and her face and voice exhibited neither light nor shade. Yet her method suited the words in their exceedingly unemotional appeal. "It's the most curious song I ever heard," cried Estelle, "and you sing it perfectly, because I heard every word." Then she brought out pencil and paper, sat in the deep alcove of the window and transcribed Nancy's verse. "You must sing that to my father next time you come up," she said. "It's like no other song in the world, I'm sure." Sally Groves came in. She had brought Estelle the seed of a flower from her garden. "I put it by for you, Miss Waldron," said the big woman, "because you said you liked it in the fall." They talked together while Mercy Gale doffed her overall and woollen bonnet. "Tell me," said Estelle, "of a very good sort of wedding present for Mr. Ironsyde, when he marries Sabina next week." "A new temper, I should think," suggested Nancy. "He can't help being rather in a temper," explained Estelle, "because they can't find a house." "Sabina can find plenty," answered the spinner. "It's him that's so hard to please." Sally Groves strove to curb Nancy's tongue. "You mind your own business," she said. "Mr. Ironsyde wants everything just so, and why not?" "Because it ain't a time to be messing about, I should think," retorted Nancy. "And it's for the woman to be considered, not him." Then Estelle, in all innocence, asked a shattering question. "Is it true Sabina is going to have a baby? One or two girls in the mill told me she was, but I asked my father, and he seemed to be annoyed and said, of course not. But I hope it's true--it would be lovely for Sabina to have a baby to play with." "So it would then," declared Sally Groves, "but I shouldn't tell nothing about it for the present, miss." "Least said, soonest mended," said Mercy Gale. "It's like this," explained Sally Groves with clumsy goodness: "they'll want to keep it for a surprise, miss, and I dare say they'd be terrible disappointed if they thought anybody knew anything about it yet." Nancy Buckler laughed. "I reckon they would," she said. "So don't you name it, miss," continued Sally. "Don't you name the word yet awhile." Estelle nodded. "I won't then," she promised. "I know how sad it is, if you've got a great secret, to find other people know it before you want them to." "Beastly sad," said Nancy, as she went her way, and the child looked after her puzzled. "I believe Nancy's jealous of Sabina," she said. Then it was Sally Groves who laughed and her merriment shook the billows of her mighty person. Estelle found herself somewhat depressed as she went home. Not so much the words as the general spirit of these comments chilled her. After luncheon she visited her father's study and talked to him while he smoked. "What perfectly beautiful thing can I get for Ray and Sabina for a wedding present?" He cleaned his pipe with one of the crow's feathers Estelle was used to collect for him. They stood in vases on the mantel-shelf. "It's a puzzler," confessed Arthur Waldron. "D'you think Ray has grown bad-tempered, father?" "Do you?" "No, I'm sure I don't. He is a little different, but that's because he's going to be married. No doubt people do get a little different, then. But Nancy Buckler at the Mill said she thought the best wedding present for him would be a new temper." "That's the sort of insolent things people say, I suppose, behind his back. It's all very unfortunate in my opinion, Estelle." "It's frightfully unfortunate Ray leaving us, because, after he's married, he must have a house of his own; but it isn't unfortunate his marrying Sabina, I'm sure." "I'm not sure at all," confessed her father. His opinion always carried the greatest weight, and she was so much concerned at this announcement that Arthur felt sorry he had spoken. "You see, Estelle--how can I explain? I think Ray in rather too young to marry." "He's well over twenty." "Yes, but he's young for his age, and the things that he is keen about are not the things that a girl is keen about. I doubt if he will make Sabina happy." "He will if he likes, and I'm sure he will like. He can always make me happy, so, of course, he can make Sabina. He's really tremendously clever and knows all sorts of things. Oh, don't think it's going to be sad, father. I'm sure they're both much too wise to do anything that's going to be sad. Because if Ray--" She stopped, for Raymond himself came in. He had left early that morning to seek a house with Sabina. "What luck?" said Waldron. "We've found something that'll do, I think. Two miles out towards Chidcock. A garden and a decent paddock and a stable. But he'll have to spend some money on the stable. There's a doubt if he will--the landlord, I mean. Sabina likes the house, so I hope it will be all right." Waldron nodded. "If it's Thornton, the horse-dealer, he'll do what you want. He's got houses up there." "It isn't. I haven't seen the man yet." "Well," said his friend, "I don't know what the deuce Estelle and I are going to do without you. We shall miss you abominably." "What shall I do without you? That's more to the point. You've got each other for pals--I--" He broke off and Arthur filled the pregnant pause. "Look here--Estelle wants to give you a wedding present, old man; and so do I. And as we haven't the remotest idea what would be the likeliest thing, don't stand on ceremony, but tell us." "I don't want anything--except to know I shall always be welcome when I drop in." "We needn't tell you that." "But you must want thousands of things," declared Estelle, "everybody does when they're married. And if you don't, I'm sure Sabina does--knives and forks and silver tea kettles and pictures for the walls." "Married people don't want pictures, Estelle; they never look at anything but one another." She laughed. "But the poor walls want pictures if you don't. I believe the walls wouldn't feel comfortable without pictures. Besides you and Sabina can't sit and look at each other all day." "What about a nice little handy 'jingle' for her to trundle about in?" asked Waldron. "As I can't pull it, old chap, it wouldn't be much good. I'm keeping the hunter; but I shan't be able to keep anything else--if that." "How would it be if you sold the hunter and got a nice everyday sort of horse that you could ride, or that Sabina could drive?" asked Estelle. "No," said Waldron firmly. "He doesn't sell his hunter or his guns. These things stand for a link with the outer world and represent sport, which is quite as important as marriage in the general scheme." "I thought to chuck all that and take up golf," said Raymond. "There's a lot in golf they tell me." But Waldron shook his head. "Golf's all right," he admitted, "and a great game. I'm going to take it up myself, and I'm glad it's coming in, because it will add to the usefulness of a lot of us men who have to fall out of cricket. There's a great future for golf, I believe. But no golf for you yet. You won't run any more and you'll drop out of football, as only 'pros.' play much after marriage. But you must shoot as much as possible, and hunt a bit, and play cricket still." This comforting programme soothed Raymond. "That's all right, but I've got to find work. I was just beginning to feel keen on work; but now--flit, Estelle, my duck. I want to have a yarn with father." The girl departed. "Do let it be a 'jingle,' Ray," she begged, and then was gone. "It's my damned brother," went on Raymond. "He'll come round and ask you to go back, as soon as you're fixed up and everything's all right." "Everything won't be all right. Everything's confoundedly wrong. Think what it is for a proud man to be at the mercy of an aunt, and to look to her for his keep. If anything could make me sick of the whole show, it's that." "I shouldn't feel it so. She's keen on you, and keen on Sabina; and she knows you can't live upon air. You may be sure also she knows that it won't last. Daniel will come round." "And if he does? It's all the same--taking his money." "You won't be taking it; you'll be earning it." "I hate him, like hell, and I hate the thought of working under him all my life." "You won't be under him. You've often said the time was coming when you'd wipe Daniel's eye and show you were the moving spirit of the Mill. Well now, when you go back, you must work double tides to do it." "He may not take me back, and for many things I'd sooner he didn't. We should never be the same to one another after that row. For two pins, even now, I'd make a bolt, Arthur, and disappear altogether and go abroad and carve out my own way." "Don't talk rot. You can't do that." But Waldron, in spite of his advice and sanguine prophecies, hid a grave doubt at heart whether, so far as Raymond's own future was concerned, such a course might not be the wisest. He felt confident, however, that the younger man would keep his engagements. Raymond had plenty of pluck and did not lack for a heart, so far as Waldron knew. Had Sabina been no more than engaged, he must strongly have urged Raymond to drop her and endure the harsh criticism that would have followed: for an engagement broken appeared a lesser evil than an unhappy mating; but since the position was complicated, he could not feel so and stoutly upheld the marriage on principle, while extremely doubtful of its practical outcome. They talked for two hours to no purpose and then Estelle called them to tea. CHAPTER XXII THE TELEGRAM Raymond and Sabina spent a long afternoon at the house they had taken; and while he was interested with the stables and garden, she occupied herself indoors. She was very tired before they had finished, and presently, returning to Bridport, they called at 'The Seven Stars' and ordered tea. The famous garden was dismantled now and Job Legg spent some daily hours in digging there. To-morrow Job was to hear what Mrs. Northover had to say concerning his proposal, and, meantime, the pending decision neither unsettled him nor interfered with his usual placidity and enterprise. Nelly Northover herself waited upon the engaged couple. She was somewhat abstracted with her own thoughts, but so far banished them that she could show and feel interest in the visitors. Raymond described the house, and Sabina, glad to see Raymond in a cheerful mood, expatiated on the charms of her future home. They delayed somewhat longer than Mrs. Northover expected and she left them presently, for she had an appointment bearing on the supreme subject of her offer of marriage. Mrs. Northover was, in fact, going to take another opinion. Such indecision seemed foreign to her character, which seldom found her in two minds; but it happened that upon one judgment she had often relied since her husband's death and, before the great problem at present challenging Nelly, she believed another view might largely assist her. That she could not decide herself, she felt to be very significant. The fact made her cautious and anxious. She put on her bonnet now, left a maid to settle with the customers and presently stepped across the road to 'The Tiger,' for it was Richard Gurd in whom Mrs. Northover put her trust. She designed to place Job's offer before her friend and invite a candid and unprejudiced criticism. For so doing more reasons than one may have existed; we seldom seek the judgment of a friend without mixed motives; but, at any rate, Nelly believed very thoroughly in her neighbour, and if, in reality, it was as much a wish that he should know what had happened, as a desire to learn his opinion upon it, she none the less felt that opinion would be precious and probably decide her. Richard was waiting in his office--a small apartment off the bar, to which none had access save himself. "Come in here and we shan't be disturbed," he said. "Of course, when you tell me you want my advice on a matter of the greatest importance, all else has to stand by. My old friend's wife has a right to come to me, I should hope, and I'm glad you've done so. Sit here by the fire." It did not take Mrs. Northover long to relate the situation, nor was Mr. Gurd much puzzled to declare his view. In brief words she told him of Job Legg's greatly increased prosperity and his proposal to wed. Having made her statement, she advanced a few words for Job. "In fairness and beyond all this, I must tell you, Richard, that he's a very uncommon sort of man. That you know, of course, as well as I do. But what you don't know is that when he was away, I badly missed him and found out, for the first time, what an all-round, valuable creature he has become at 'The Seven Stars.' When he was along with his dying relation, I missed the man a thousand times in every twelve hours and I felt properly astonished to find how he was the prop and stay of my business. That may seem too much to say, seeing I'm a fairly clever woman and know how to run 'The Seven Stars' in a pretty prosperous way; but there is no doubt Legg is very much more than what he seems. He's a very human man and I'll go so far as to say this: I like him. There's great self-respect to him and you feel, under his level temper and unfailing readiness to work at anything and everything, that he's a power for good--in fact a man with high principles--so high as my own, if not higher." "Stop there, or you'll over-do it," said Richard. "Higher than yours his principles won't take him and I refuse to hear you say so. You ask me in plain words if you shall marry Job Legg, or if you shan't. And before I speak, I may tell you that, as a man of the world, I shan't quarrel with you if you don't take my advice. As a rule I have found that good advice is more often given than taken and, whether or no, the giving of advice nearly always means one thing. And that is that the giver loses a friend. If the advice is bad, it is generally taken, and him that takes it finds out in due course it was bad, and so the giver makes an enemy. And if 'tis good, the same thing happens, for then 'tis not taken and, looking back, the sufferer sees his mistake, and human nature works, and instead of kicking himself, he feels like kicking the wise man that gave him the good advice. But between me and you that won't happen, for there's the ghost of William Northover to come between. You and me are high spirited, and I dare say there are some people who would say we are short tempered; but we know better." "That's all true as gospel; and now you tell me if I ought to marry Job. Or, if 'tis too great a question to decide in a minute, as I find it myself, then leave it till to-morrow and I'll pop in again." "No need to leave it. My mind is used to make itself up swift. First, as to Legg. Legg's a very good man, indeed, and I'd be the first to praise him. He's all you say--or nearly all--and I've often been very much impressed by him. And if he was anybody's servant but yours, I dare say I'd have tempted him to 'The Tiger' before now. But there are some that shine in the lead, like you and me, and some that only show their full worth when they've got to obey. Job can obey to perfection; but I'm not so sure if he's fitted to command." "Remember," she said, "that if I say 'no' to the man, I lose him. He can't be my right hand no more then, because he'd leave. And my heart sinks at the thought of another potman at my age." "When you say 'potman' you come to the root of the matter, and your age has nothing to do with it," answered Richard. "The natural instinct at such times is to advise against, and when man or woman asks a fellow creature as to the wisdom of marrying, they'll always pull a long face and find fifty good reasons why not. But I'm taking this in a larger spirit. There's no reason why you shouldn't marry again, and you'd make another as happy as you did your first, no doubt. But Job Legg is a potman; he's been a potman for a generation; he thinks like a potman, and his outlook in life is naturally the potman outlook. Mind, I'm not saying anything against him as a man when I tell you so; I'm only looking at him now as a husband for you. He's got religion and a good temper, and dollops of sense, and I'll even go so far as to say, seeing that he is now a man of money, that he was within his right to offer, if he did it in a modest manner. But I won't say more than that. He's simple and faithful and a servant worthy of all respect, but that man haven't the parts to rise to mastership. A good stick, but if he was your crutch, he'd fail you. For my part, I'm very sure that people of much greater importance than him would offer for you if they knew you were for a husband." "I wouldn't say I was for a husband, Richard. The idea never came into my mind till Job Legg put it there." "Just your modesty. There's no more reason why you shouldn't wed than why I shouldn't. You're a comely and highly marriageable person still, and nobody knows it better than what I do." "You advise against, then?" "In that quarter, yes. I'm thinking of you, and only you, and I don't believe Job is quite man enough for the part. Leave it, however, for twenty-four hours." "He was to have his answer, to-morrow." "He's used to waiting. Tell him you're coming to it and won't keep him much longer. It's too big a thing to be quite sure about, and you were right when you said so. I'll come across and see you in the morning." "I'm obliged to you, Richard. And if you'll turn it over, I'll thank you. I wouldn't have come to any other than you, bachelor though you are." "I'll weigh it," he promised, "but I warn you I'm very unlikely to see it different. What you've told me have put other side issues into my head. You'll hunt a rabbit and flush a game bird, sometimes. In fact, great things often come out of little ones." "I know you'll be fair and not let anything influence your judgment," she said. He promised, but with secret uneasiness, for already it seemed that his judgment was being influenced. For that reason he had postponed a final decision until the following day. Mrs. Northover departed with grateful thanks and left behind her, though she guessed it not, problems far more tremendous than any she had brought. Meantime Raymond and Sabina, on their way to Miss Ironsyde, were met by Mr. Neddy Motyer. Neddy had not seen his friend for some time and now saluted and stopped. It was nearly dark and they stood under a lamp-post. "Cheero!" said Mr. Motyer. "Haven't cast an eye on you for a month of Sundays, Ironsyde." Raymond introduced Sabina and Neddy was gallant and reminded her they had met before at the Mill. Then, desiring a little masculine society, Sabina's betrothed proposed that she should go on and report that he was coming. "Aunt Jenny will expect us to stop for dinner, so there's no hurry. I'll be up in half an hour." She left them and Neddy suggested drinking. "You might as well be dead and buried for all the boys see of you nowadays," he said, as they entered 'The Bull' Hotel. "I'm busy." "I know, but I hope you'll have a big night off before the deed is done and you take leave of freedom--what?" "I'm not taking leave of freedom. You godless bachelors don't know you're born." "Bluff--bluff!" declared Neddy. "You can't deceive me, old sport." "You wait till you find the right one." "I shall," promised Neddy. "And very well content to wait. Nothing is easier than not to be married." "Nothing is harder, my dear chap, if you're in love with the right girl." Neddy felt the ground delicate. He knew that Raymond had knocked down a man for insulting him a week before, so he changed the subject. "I thought you'd be at the fight," he said. "It was a pretty spar--interesting all through. Jack Buckler won. Blades practically let him. Not because he wanted to, but because Solly Blades has got a streak of softness in his make-up. That's fatal in a fighter. If you've got a gentle heart, it don't matter how clever you are: you can't take full advantage of your skill and use the opening when you've won it. Blades didn't punish Buckler's stupidity, or weakness just when he could have done it. So he lost, because he gave Jack time to get strong again; and when Blades in his turn went weak, Buckler got it over and outed him." "Your heart often robs you of what your head won," said another man in the bar. "Life's like prize-fighting in that respect. If you don't hit other people when you can, the time will probably come when they'll hit you." It was an ugly philosophy and Raymond, looking within, applied to it himself. Then he put his own thoughts away. "And how are the gee-gees?" he asked. "As a 'gentleman backer,' I can't say I'm going very strong," confessed Neddy. "On the whole, I think it's a mug's game. Anyway, I shall chuck it when flat racing comes again. My father's getting restive. I shall have to do something pretty soon." Raymond stayed for an hour and was again urged to give a bachelor-supper before he married; but he declined. "Shan't chuck away a tenner on a lot of wasters," he said. "Got something better to do with it." Several men promised to come to church and see the event, now near at hand, but he told them that they might be disappointed. "I'm not too sure about that," he said. "I may put my foot down on that racket and be married at a registrar's. Anyway church is no certainty. I've got no use for making a show of my private affairs." On the way to Miss Ironsyde's he grew moody and gloom settled upon him. A glimpse of the old free and easy life threw into darker colours the new existence ahead. He remembered the sentiments of the strange man in the bar--how weakness is always punished and the heart often robs the head of victory. His heart was robbing his head of freedom; and that meant victory also; for what sort of success can life offer to those who begin it by flinging liberty to the winds? Yes, he had been "bluffing," as Neddy declared; and to bluff was foreign to his nature. Nobody was deceived, for everybody knew the truth, and though none dared laugh at him in public, secretly all his acquaintance were doubtless doing so. Sabina saw that he was perturbed when presently he joined Miss Ironsyde. He had drunk more than enough and proved irritable. He was, however, silent at first, while his aunt discussed the wedding. She took it for granted that it would be in church and reminded Raymond of necessary steps. "And certain people should be asked," she said. "Have you any friends you particularly wish to be there? Mr. Churchouse is planning a wedding breakfast--" "No--none of my friends will be there if I can help it. They're not that sort." "Have you written to Daniel?" "'Written to Daniel'! Good God, no! What should I write to Daniel, but to tell him he's the biggest cur and hound on earth?" "You've passed all that. You're not going back again, Raymond. You know what you said last time when we talked about it." "If he's ever to be more than a name to me, he must apologise for being a low down brute, first. I've got plenty on my mind without thinking about him. He's going to rue the day he treated me as he has done. I'll bring him and Bridetown Mill to the gutter, yet." "Don't, don't, please. I thought you felt last time we were talking about him--" "Drop him--don't mention his name to me--I won't hear it. If you want me to go on with my life with self-respect, then keep his name out of my life. I've cursed him to hell once and for all, so talk of something else!" Jenny Ironsyde saw that her nephew was in a dark temper, and while at heart she felt indignant and ashamed, more for Sabina's sake than his own, she humoured him, spoke of the future and strove to win him back into a cheerful mind. Then as they were going to dinner, at half-past seven o'clock, the maid who announced the meal, brought with her a telegram. It was directed to 'Ironsyde' only, and, putting on her glasses, Jenny read it. Daniel had been very seriously injured in a railway accident at York. Remorse strikes the young with cruel bitterness. Raymond turned pale and staggered. While he had been cursing his brother, the man lay smitten, perhaps at the door of death. His aunt it was who steadied him and turned to the time-table. Then she went to her store of ready money. In an hour Raymond was on his way. It might be possible for him to catch a midnight train for the North from London and reach York before morning. When he had gone, Jenny turned to Sabina, who had spoken no word during this scene. "Much may come of this," she said. "God works in mysterious ways. I have no fear that Raymond will fail in his duty to dear Daniel at such a time. Come back early to-morrow, Sabina. I shall get a telegram, as soon as Raymond can despatch it, and shall hold myself in readiness to go at once and stop with Daniel. Tell Mister Churchouse what has happened." The lady spent the night in packing. Her sufferings and anxieties were allayed by occupation; but the long hours seemed unending. She was ready to start at dawn, but not until ten o'clock came the news from York. Mr. Churchouse was already with her when the telegram arrived. He had driven from Bridetown with Sabina. Daniel Ironsyde was dead and had passed many hours before Raymond reached him. Sabina went home on hearing this news, and Ernest Churchouse remained with Miss Ironsyde. She was prostrated and, for a time, he could not comfort her. But the practical nature of her mind asserted itself between gusts of grief. She despatched a telegram to Raymond at York, and begged him to bring back his brother's body as soon as it might be done. Concerning the future she also spoke to Ernest. "He has made no will," she said, "That I know, because when last we were speaking of Raymond, he told me he felt it impossible at present to do so." "Then the whole estate belongs to Raymond, now?" he asked. "Yes, everything is his." CHAPTER XXIII A LETTER FOR SABINA A human machine, under stress of personal tribulation and lowered vitality, had erred in a signal box five miles from York, with the result that several of his fellow creatures were killed and many injured. Daniel Ironsyde had only lived long enough to direct the telegram to his home. Three days later Raymond returned with the body, and once more Bridetown crowded to its windows and open spaces, to see the funeral of another master of the Mill. To an onlooker the scene might have appeared a repetition in almost every particular of Henry Ironsyde's obsequies. The spinners crowded on the grassy triangle under the sycamore tree and debated their future. They wondered whether Raymond would come to the funeral; and a new note entered into all voices when they spoke his name, for he was master now. Mr. Churchouse attended the burial, and Arthur Waldron walked down from North Hill House with his daughter. In the churchyard, where Daniel's grave waited for him beside his father, old Mr. Baggs stood and looked down, as he had done when Henry Ironsyde came to his grave. "Life, how short--eternity, how long," he said to John Best. Ernest Churchouse opened the door of the mourning coach as he had done on the previous occasion, and Miss Ironsyde alighted, followed by Raymond. He had come. But he had changed even to the visible eye. The least observing were able to mark differences of voice and manner. Raymond's nature had responded to the stroke of circumstance with lightning swiftness. The pressure of his position, thus suddenly relieved, caused a rebound, a liberation of the grinding tension. It remained to be seen what course he might now pursue; yet those who knew him best anticipated no particular reaction. But when he returned it was quickly apparent that tremendous changes had already taken place in the young man's outlook on life and that, whatever his future line of conduct might be, he realised very keenly his altered position. He was now free of all temporal cares; but against that fact he found himself faced with great new responsibilities. Remorse hit him hard, but he was through the worst of that, and life had become so tremendous, that he could not for very long keep his thoughts on death. At his brother's funeral he allowed his eye to rest on no familiar face and cast no recognising glance at man or woman. He was haggard and pale, but more than that: a new expression had come into his countenance. Already consciousness of possession marked him. He had grasped the fact of the change far quicker than Daniel had grasped it after their father's death. He was returning immediately with his aunt to Bridport; but Mr. Churchouse broke through the barrier and spoke to him as he entered the carriage. "Won't you see Sabina before you go, Raymond? You must realise that, even under these terrible conditions, we cannot delay. I understand she wrote to you when you came back; but that you have not answered her letter. As things are it seems to me you might like to be quietly and privately married away from Bridetown?" Raymond hardly seemed to hear. "I can't talk about that now. A great deal falls upon me at present. I am enormously busy and have to take up the threads of all poor Daniel was doing in the North. There is nobody but myself, in my opinion, who can go through with it. I return to London to-night." "But Sabina?" Raymond answered calmly. "Sabina Dinnett will hear from me during the next twenty-four hours," he said. Ernest gazed aghast. "But, my dear boy, you cannot realise the situation if you talk like that. Surely you--" "I realise the situation perfectly well. Good-bye, Uncle Ernest." The coach drove away. Miss Ironsyde said nothing. She had broken down beside the grave and was still weeping. Then came Mr. Best, where Mr. Churchouse stood at the lich-gate. He was anxious for information. "Did he say anything about his plans?" he asked. "Only that he is proceeding with his late brother's business in the North. I perceive a most definite change in the young man, John." "For the better, we'll hope. What's hid in people! You never would have thought Mister Raymond would have carried himself like that. It wasn't grief at his loss, but a sort of an understanding of the change. He even looked at us differently--even me." "He's overwrought and not himself, probably. I don't think he quite grasps the immediate situation. He seems to be looking far ahead already, whereas the most pressing matter should be a thing of to-morrow." "Is the wedding day fixed?" "It is not. He writes to Sabina." "Writes! Isn't he going to see her to-day!" "He returns to London to-night." Arthur Waldron also asked for news, for Raymond had apparently been unconscious of his existence at the funeral. He, too, noted the change in Ironsyde's demeanour. "What was it?" he asked, as Mr. Churchouse walked beside him homeward. "Something is altered. It's more his manner than his appearance. Of course, he looks played out after his shock, but it's not that. Estelle thinks it's his black clothes." "Stress of mind and anxiety, no doubt. I spoke to him; but he was rather distant. Not unfriendly--he called me 'Uncle Ernest' as usual--but distant. His mind is entirely preoccupied with business." "What about Sabina?" "I asked him. He's writing to her. She wasn't at the funeral. She and her mother kept away at my advice. But I certainly thought he would come and see them afterwards. However, the idea hadn't apparently occurred to him. His mind is full of other things. There was a suggestion of strength--of power--something new." "He must be very strong now," said Estelle. "He will have to be strong, because the Mill is all his and everything depends upon him. Doesn't Sabina feel she must be strong, too, Mr. Churchouse?" "Sabina is naturally excited. But she is also puzzled, because it seems strange that anything should come between her and Raymond at a time like this--even the terrible death of dear Daniel. She has been counting on hearing from him, and to-day she felt quite sure he would see her." "Is the wedding put off then?" "I trust not. She is to hear from him to-morrow." * * * * * Raymond kept his word and before the end of the following day Sabina received a letter. She had alternated, since Daniel's sudden death, between fits of depression and elation. She was cast down, because no communication of any kind had reached her since Raymond hurried off on the day of the accident; and she was elated, because the future must certainly be much more splendid for Raymond now. She explained his silence easily enough, for much work devolved upon him; but when he did not come to see her on the day of the funeral, she was seriously perturbed and grew excited, unstrung and full of forebodings. Her mother heard from those who had seen him that Raymond appeared to be abstracted and 'kept himself to himself' entirely; which led to anxiety on her part also. The letter defined the position. "MY DEAREST SABINA,--A thing like the death of my brother, with all that it means to me, cannot happen without having very far-reaching results. You may have noticed for some time before this occurred that I felt uneasy about the future--not only for your sake, but my own--and I had long felt that we were doing a very doubtful thing to marry. However, as circumstances were such then, that I should have been in the gutter if I did not marry, I was going to do so. There seemed to be no choice, though I felt all the time that I was not doing the fair thing to you, or myself. "Now the case is altered and I can do the fair thing to you and myself, because circumstances make it possible. I have got tons of money now, and it is not too much to say that I want you to share it. But not on the old understanding. I hate and loathe matrimony and everything to do with it, and now that it is possible to avoid the institution, I intend to do so. "What you have got to do is to put a lot of stupid, conventional ideas out of your mind, and not worry about other people, and the drivel they talk, or the idiotic things they say. We weren't conventional last year, so why the dickens should we be this? I'm awfully keen about you, Sabina, and awfully keen about the child too; but let us be sane and be lovers and not a wretched married couple. "If you will come and be my housekeeper, I shall welcome you with rejoicings, and we can go house-hunting again and find something worthier of us and take bigger views. "Don't let this bowl you over and make you savage. It is simply a question of what will keep us the best friends, and wear best. I am perfectly certain that in the long run we shall be happier so, than chained together by a lot of cursed laws, that will put our future relations on a footing that denies freedom of action to us both. Let's be pioneers and set a good example to people and help to knock on the head the imbecile marriage laws. "I am, of course, going to put you all right from a worldly point of view and settle a good income upon you, which you will enjoy independently of me; and I also recognise the responsibility of our child. He or she will be my heir, and nothing will be spared for the youngster. "I do hope, my dearest girl, you will see what a sensible idea this is. It means liberty, and you can't have real love without liberty. If we married, I am certain that in a year or two we should hate each other like the devil, and I believe you know that as well as I do. Marriage is out-grown--it's a barbaric survival and has a most damnable effect on character. If we are to be close chums and preserve our self-respect, we must steer clear of it. "I am very sure I am right. I've thought a lot about it and heard some very shrewd men in London speak about it. We are up against a sort of battle nowadays. The idea of marriage is the welfare of the community, and the idea of freedom is the welfare of the individual; and I, for one, don't see in the least why the individual should go down for the community. What has the community done for us, that we should become slaves for it? "Wealth--at any rate, ample means--does several things for a man. It opens his eyes to the meaning of power. Power is a fine thing if it's coupled with sense. Already I see what a poor creature I was--owing to the accident of poverty. Now you'll find what a huge difference power makes. It changes everything and turns a child into a man. At any rate, I've been a child till now. You've got to be childlike if you're poor. "So I hope you'll take this in the spirit I write, Sabina, and trust me, for I'm straight as a line, and my first thought is to make you a happy woman. That I certainly can do, if you'll let me. "I shall be coming home presently; but, for the moment, I must stop here. There is a gigantic deal of work waiting for me; but working for myself and somebody else are two very different things. I don't grudge the work now, since the result of the work means more power. "I hope this is all clear. If it isn't, we must thresh it out when we meet. All I want you to grasp for the moment is that I love you as well as ever--better than anything in the world--and, because I want us to be the dearest friends always, I'm not going to marry you. "Your mother and Uncle Ernest will of course take the conventional line, and my Aunt Jennie will do the same; but I hope you won't bother about them. Your welfare lies with me. Don't let them talk you into making a martyr of yourself, or any nonsense of that sort. "Always, my dearest Sabina, "Your faithful pal, "RAY." Half an hour later Mrs. Dinnett took the letter in to Mr. Churchouse. "Death," she said. "Death is in the air. Sabina has gone to bed and I'm going for the doctor. He's broke off the engagement and wants her to be his housekeeper. And this is a Christian country, or supposed to be. Says it's going to be quite all right and offers her money and a lifetime of sin!" "Be calm, Mary, be calm. You must have misread the letter. Go and get the doctor by all means if Sabina has succumbed. And leave the letter with me. I will read it carefully. That is if it is not private." "No, it ain't private. He slaps at us all. We're all conventional people, which means, I suppose, that we fear God and keep the laws. But if my gentleman thinks--" "Go and get the doctor, Mary. Two heads are better than one in a case of this sort. I feel sure you and Sabina are making a mistake." "The world shall ring," said Mrs. Dinnett, "and we'll see if he can show his face among honest men again. We that have abided by the law all our days--now we'll see what the law can do for us against this godless wretch." She went off to the village and Ernest cried after her to say nothing at present. He knew, however, as he spoke that it was vain. Then he put away his own work and read the letter very carefully twice through. Profound sorrow came upon him and his innate optimism was over-clouded. This seemed no longer the Raymond Ironsyde he had known from childhood. It was not even the Raymond of a month ago. He perceived how potential qualities of mind had awakened in the new conditions. He was philosophically interested. So deeply indeed did the psychological features of the change occupy his reflections, that for a time he overlooked their immediate and crushing significance in the affairs of another person. Traces of the old Raymond remained in the promises of unbounded generosity and assurances of devotion; but Mr. Churchouse set no store upon them. The word that rang truest was Raymond's acute consciousness of power and appreciation thereof. It had, as he said, opened his eyes. Under any other conditions than those embracing Sabina and right and wrong, as Ernest accepted the meaning of right and wrong, he had won great hope from the letter. It was clear that Raymond had become a man at a bound and might be expected to develop into a useful man; but that his first step from adolescence was to involve the destruction of a woman and child, soon submerged all lesser considerations in the thinker's mind. Righteousness was implicated, and to start his new career with a cold-blooded crime made Mr. Churchouse tremble for the entire future of the criminal. Yet he saw very little hope of changing Ironsyde's decision. Raymond had evidently considered the matter, and though his argument was abominable in Ernest's view, and nothing more than a cowardly evasion of his promises, he suspected that the writer found it satisfy his conscience, since its further education in the consciousness of power. He did not suppose that any whose opinion he respected would alter Raymond. It might even be that he was honest in his theories, and believed himself when he said that marriage would end by destroying his love for Sabina. But Mr. Churchouse did not pursue that line of argument. Had not Mary Dinnett just reminded him that this was a Christian country? It was, of course, an immoral and selfish letter. Ernest knew exactly how it would strike Miss Ironsyde; but he also knew that many people without principle would view it as reasonable. He had to determine what he was going to do, and soon came back to the attitude he had always taken. An unborn, immortal soul must be considered, and it was idle for Raymond to talk about making the coming child his heir. Such undertakings were vain. The young man was volatile and his life lay before him. That he could make this offer argued an indifference to Sabina's honour which no promises of temporal comfort condoned. For that matter he must surely have known while he wrote that it would be rejected. The outlook appeared exceedingly hopeless. Mr. Churchouse rose from his desk and looked out of the window. It was a grey and silent morning. Only a big magnolia leaf tapped at the casement and dripped rain from its point. And overhead, in her chamber, Sabina was lying stricken and speechless. With infinite commiseration Mr. Churchouse considered what this must mean to her. It was as though Mrs. Dinnett's hysterical words had come true. Indeed, the tender-hearted man felt that death was in his house--death of fair hopes, death of a young and trusting spirit. "The rising generation puts a strain on Christianity that I'm sure it was never called to bear in my youth," reflected Mr. Churchouse. CHAPTER XXIV MRS. NORTHOVER DECIDES When Richard Gurd began to consider the case of Nelly Northover, his mind was very curiously affected. To develop the stages by which he arrived at his startling conclusions might be attractive, but the destination is more important than the journey. After twenty-four hours devoted to this subject alone, Richard had not only decided that Nelly Northover must not marry Job Legg; he had pushed the problem of his friend far beyond that point and found it already complicated by a greater than Job. Indeed, the sudden reminder that Nelly was a comely and personable woman had affected Richard Gurd, and the thought that she should contemplate marriage caused him some preliminary uneasiness. He could no more see her married again than he could see himself taking a wife; yet from this attitude, progress was swift, and the longer he thought upon Mrs. Northover, the more steadily did his mind drive him into an opinion that she might reasonably wed again if she desired to do so. And then he proceeded to the personal concession that there was no radical necessity to remain single himself. Because he had reached his present ripe age without a wife, it did not follow he must remain for ever unmarried. He had no objection to marriage, and continued a bachelor merely because he had never found any woman desirable in his eyes. Moreover he disliked children. He had reached this stage of the argument before he slept, and when he woke again, he found his mind considerably advanced along the road to Nelly. He now came to the deliberate conclusion that he wanted her. The discovery amazed him, but he could not escape it; and in the light of such a surprise he became a little dazzled. Sudden soul movements of such force and complexity made Richard Gurd selfish. It is a fact, that before he went at the appointed time to see the mistress of 'The Seven Stars,' he had forgotten all about Job Legg and was entirely concerned with his own tremendous project. Full grown and complete at all vital points it sprang from his energetic brain. He had reached the high personal ambition of wanting to marry Mrs. Northover himself, and their friendship of many years had been so complete, that he felt sanguine from the moment that his great determination dawned. But she spoke and quickly reminded him of what she was expecting. "And how d'you think about it? Shall it be, or shan't it, Richard?" They were in the private parlour. "Leave that," he said. "I can assure you that little affair is already a thing of the past. In fact, my mind has moved such a long way since you came to see me yesterday, that I'd forgot what you came about. But, after all, that was the starting point. Now a very curious thing has fallen out, and looking back, I can only say that the wonder is it didn't fall out long years ago." "It did, so far as he was concerned," explained Mrs. Northover. "Mr. Legg has been hoping for this for years." "The Lord often chooses a fool to light the road of the wise, my dear. Not that Job's a fool, and a more self-respecting man you won't find. In fact I shall always feel kindly to your potman, for, in a manner of speaking, you may say he's helped to show me my own duty." "I dare say he has; he's a lesson to us all." "He is, but, all the same, it's confounding class with class to think of him as a husband for you. Not that I've got any class prejudice myself. You can't keep a hotel year in, year out, and allow yourself the luxury of class prejudice; but be that as it may, Legg, though he adorns his class, wouldn't adorn ours in my opinion. And yet I'll say this: I believe it was put to him by Providence to offer for you, so that you might be lifted to higher things." "Speak English, my dear man. I don't exactly know what you're talking about. But I suppose you mean I'd better not?" Mrs. Northover was a little disappointed and Richard perceived it. "Be calm, and don't let me sweep you off your feet as I've been swept off mine," he answered. "Since I discovered marriage was a possibility in your mind, I am obliged to confess that it's grown up to be a possibility in mine. And why not?" "No reason at all. 'Twas the wonder of Bridport, you might say for years, why you remained single." "Well, this I'll tell you, Nelly; I'm not going to have you marrying any Dick, Tom or Harry that's daring enough to lift his eyes to you and cheeky enough to offer. And when the thought came in my mind, I very soon found that this event rose up ideas that might have slumbered till eternity, but for Job Legg. And that's why I say Providence is in it. I've felt a great admiration for your judgment, and good sense, and fine appearance, ever since the blow fell and your husband was taken. And we know each other pretty close and have got no secrets from each other. And now you may say I've suddenly seen the light; and if you've got half the opinion of me that I have of you, no doubt you'll thank your God to hear what I'm saying and answer according." "Good powers! You want to marry me yourself?" gasped Mrs. Northover. "By all your 'Seven Stars' I do," he said. "In fact, I want for 'The Tiger' to swallow the 'Seven Stars,' in a poetical way of speaking. I'm a downright man and never take ten minutes where five's enough, so there it is. It came over me last night as a thing that must be--like the conversion of Paul. And I'll go further; I won't have you beat about the bush, Nelly. You're the sort of woman that can make up your mind in a big thing as quick as you can in a small thing. I consider there's been a good deal of a delicate and tender nature going on between us, though we were too busy to notice it; but now the bud have burst into flower, and I see amazing clear we were made for each other. In fact, I ain't going to take 'no' for an answer, my dear. I've never asked a female to marry me until this hour; and I have not waited into greyness and ripeness to hear a negative. I'm sure of myself, naturally, and I well know that you'd only be a thought less fortunate than I shall be." "Stop!" she said, "and let me think. I'm terrible flattered at this, and I'll go so far as to say there's rhyme and reason in it, Richard. But you run on so. I feel my will power fairly oozing out of me." "Not at all," he answered. "Your will power's what I rely upon. You're a forceful person yourself and you naturally approve of forcefulness in others. There's no reason why you shouldn't love me as well as I love you; and, for that matter, you do." "Well, I must have time. I must drop Legg civilly and break it to him gradual." "I'll meet you there. You needn't tell him you're going to be married all in a minute. He'll find that out for himself very quick. So will everybody. If a thing's worth doing, try to do it--that's my motto. But, for the moment, you can say that your affections are given in another quarter." "Of course, it's a great thing for me, Richard. I'm very proud of it." "And so am I. And Job Legg was the dumb instrument, so I am the last to quarrel with him. Just tell him, that failing another, you might have thought on him; but that the die is cast; and when he hears his fate, he'll naturally want to know who 'tis. And then the great secret must come out. I should reckon after Easter would be a very good time for us to wed." "I can't believe my senses," she said. "You will in a week," he assured her; "and, meanwhile, I shall do my best to help you. In a week the joyful tidings go out to the people." He kissed her, shook her hand and squeezed it. Then he departed leaving Mrs. Northover in the extremity of bewilderment. But pleasure and great pride formed no small part of her mingled emotions. One paramount necessity darkened all, however. Nelly felt a very sharp pang when she thought upon Mr. Legg, and her sufferings increased as the day advanced until they quite mastered the situation and clouded the brightness of conquest. Other difficulties and doubts also obtruded as she began to estimate the immensity of the thing that Mr. Gurd's ardour had prompted her to do; but Job was the primal problem and she knew that she could not sleep until she had made her peace with him. She determined to leave him in no doubt concerning his successful rival. The confession would indeed make it easier for them both. At least she hoped it might do so. He came for keys after closing time and she bade him sit down in the chair which Richard Gurd had that morning filled. One notes trifles at the supremest moments of life, and the trifles often stick, while the great events which accompany them fade into the past. Mrs. Northover observed that while Richard Gurd had filled the chair--and overflowed, Mr. Legg by no means did so. He occupied but the centre of the spacious seat. There seemed a significance in that. "Sit down, Job, and listen. I've got to say something that will hurt you, my dear man. I've made my choice, after a good bit of deep thought I assure you, and I've--I've chosen the other, Job." He stared and his thin jaws worked. His nostrils also twitched. "I didn't know there was another." "More didn't I," answered she. "I'm nothing if not honest, and I tell you frankly that I didn't know it either till he offered. He was a lifelong friend, and I asked him about what I ought to be doing, and then it came out he had already thought of me as a wife and was biding his time. He had nought but praise for you, as all men have; but there it is--Richard Gurd is very wishful to marry me; and you must understand this clearly, Job. If it had been any lesser man than him, or any other man in the world, for that matter, I wouldn't have taken him. I'm very fond of you, and a finer character I've never known; but when Richard offered--well, you're among the clever ones and I'm sure you'd be the last to put yourself up against a man of his standing and fame. And my first husband's lifelong friend, you must remember. And though, after all these years, it may seem strange to a great many people, it won't seem strange to you, I hope." "It's a very ill-convenient time to hear this," said Mr. Legg mildly. Then he stopped and regarded her with his little, shrewd eyes. He seemed less occupied with the tremendous present than the future. Presently he went on again, while Mrs. Northover stared at him with an expression of genuine sadness. "All I can say is that I wish Gurd had offered sooner, and not led me into this tremendous misfortune. Of course, him and me aren't in the same street and I won't pretend it, for none would be deceived if I did. But I say again it's very unfortunate he hung fire till he heard that I had made my offer. For if he'd spoke first, I should have held my peace and gone on my appointed way and stopped at 'The Seven Stars.' But now, if this happens, all is over and the course of my life is changed. In fact, it is not too much to say I shall leave Bridport, though how any person can live comfortably away from Bridport, I don't know." Mrs. Northover felt relief that he should thus fasten on such a minor issue, and never liked him better than at that moment. "Thank God, he's took it, lying down!" she thought, then spoke. "Don't you leave, my dear man. Bridport won't be Bridport without you, and you've always been a true and valued friend to me, and such a helpful and sensible creature that I shall only know in the next world all I owe you. And between us, I don't see no reason at all why you shouldn't go on as my potman and--more than that--why shouldn't you marry a nice woman yourself and bring her here, if you've got a mind to it!" He expressed no indignation. Again, it seemed that the future was his sole concern and that he designed to waste no warmth on his disappointment. "There never was but one woman for me and never will be; and as to stopping here, I might, or I might not, for I've always had my feelings under very nice control and shouldn't break the rule of a lifetime. But you won't be at 'The Seven Stars' yourself much longer, and I certainly don't serve under any other but you. In fact this house and garden would only be a deserted wilderness to my view, if you wasn't reigning over 'em." He spoke in his usual emotionless voice, but he woke very active phenomena in Mrs. Northover. Her face grew troubled and she looked into his eyes with a frown. "Me gone! What do you mean, Legg? Me leave 'The Seven Stars' after thirty-four years?" "No doubt your first would turn in his grave if you did," he admitted; "but what about it? When you're mistress of 'The Tiger'--well, then you're mistress of 'The Tiger,' and you can't be in two places at once--clever as you are." He had given her something to think about. The possibility of guile in Mr. Legg had never struck the least, or greatest, of his admirers. He was held a simple soul of transparent probity, yet, for a moment, it almost seemed as though his last remark carried an inner meaning. Nelly dismissed the suspicion as unworthy of Job; but none the less, though he had doubtless spoken without any sinister purpose, his opinions gave her pause. Indeed, they shook her. She had been too much excited to look ahead. Now she was called to do so. Mr. Legg removed the bunch of keys from its nail and prepared to go on his way. She felt weak. "To play second fiddle for the rest of your life after playing first for a quarter of a century is a far-reaching thought," she said. "Without a doubt it would be," he admitted. "Of course, with some men you wouldn't be called to do it. With Richard Gurd, you would." "To leave 'The Seven Stars'! Somehow I'd always regarded our place as a higher class establishment than 'The Tiger'--along of the tea-gardens and pleasure ground and the class of company." "And quite right to do so. But that's only your opinion, and mine. It won't be his. Good night." He left her deep in thought, then five minutes afterwards thrust his long nose round the door again. "The English of it is you can't have anything for nothing--not in this weary world," he said. Then he disappeared. A week later Sarah Northover came to see her aunt and congratulate her on the great news. "Now people know it," said Sarah, "they all wonder how ever 'twas you and Mister Gurd didn't marry long ago." "We've been wondering the same, for that matter, and Richard takes the blame--naturally, since I couldn't say the word before he asked the question. But for your ear and only yours, Sarah, I can whisper that this thing didn't go by rule. And in sober honesty I do believe if he hadn't heard another man wanted me, Mister Gurd would never have found out he did. But such are the strange things that happen in human nature, no doubt." "Another!" said Sarah. "They're making up for lost time, seemingly." "Another, and a good man," declared her aunt; "but his name is sacred, and you mustn't ask to know it." Sarah related events at Bridetown. "You've heard, of course, about the goings on? Mister Ironsyde don't marry Sabina, and her mother wants to have the law against him; but though Sabina's in a sad state and got to be watched, she won't have the law. We only hear scraps about it, because Nancy Buckler, her great friend, is under oath of secrecy. But if he shows his face at Bridetown, it's very likely he'll be man-handled. Then, against that, there's rumours in the air he'll make great changes at the Mill, and may put up all our money. In that case, I don't think he'd be treated very rough, because, as my Mister Roberts says, 'Self-preservation is the first law of nature,' and always have been; and if he's going to better us it will mean a lot." "Don't you be too hopeful, however," warned Mrs. Northover. "There's a deal of difference between holding the reins yourself and saying sharp things against them who are. He's hard, and last time he was in this house but one, he got as drunk as a lord and Legg helped him to bed. And he quarrelled very sharp with Mister Gurd for giving him good advice; and Richard says the young man is iron painted to look like wood. And he's rarely mistook." "But he always did tell us we never got enough money for our work," argued Sarah. "And if anything comes of it and Nicholas and me earn five bob more a week between us, it means marriage. So I'm in a twitter." "What does John Best say?" "Nought. We can't get a word out of him. All we know is we're cruel busy and orders flow in like a river. But that was poor Mister Daniel's work, no doubt." "Marriage is in the air, seemingly," reflected Nelly. "It mightn't be altogether a bad thing if you and me went to the altar together, Sarah. 'Twas always understood you'd be married from 'The Seven Stars,' and the sight of a young bride and bridegroom would soften the ceremony a bit and distract the eye from me and Richard." "Good Lord!" answered the girl. "There won't be no eyes for small folks like us on the day you take Mister Gurd. 'Twould be one expense without a doubt; but I'm certain positive he wouldn't like for us little people to be mixed up with it. 'Twould lessen the blaze from his point of view, and a man such as him wouldn't approve of that." "Perhaps you're right," admitted her aunt, with a massive sigh. "He's a masterful piece, and the affair will be carried out as he wills." "I can't see you away from 'The Seven Stars,' somehow, Aunt Nelly." "That's what everybody says. More can't I see myself away for that matter. But Richard said 'The Tiger' would swallow 'The Seven Stars,' and I know what he meant now." CHAPTER XXV THE WOMAN'S DARKNESS The blood of Sabina Dinnett was poisoned through an ordeal of her life when it should have run at its purest and sweetest. That the man who had promised to marry her, had exhausted the vocabulary of love for her, should thus cast her off, struck her into a frantic calenture which, for a season, threatened her existence. The surprise of his decision was not absolute and utter, otherwise such a shock might indeed have killed her; but there lacked not many previous signs to show that Raymond Ironsyde had strayed from his old enthusiasm and found the approach of marriage finally quench love. The wronged girl could look back and see a thousand such warnings, while she remembered also a dark dread in her heart as to what might possibly overtake her on the death of Daniel. True the shadow had lasted but a moment; she banished it, as unworthy, and preferred to dwell on the increased happiness and prosperity that must accrue to Raymond; but the passing fear had touched her first, and she could look back now and mark how deeply doubt tinctured all her waking hours since the necessity arose for Raymond to wed. For a few days she raged and was only comforted with difficulty. Mr. Churchouse and Jenny Ironsyde both visited Sabina and bade her control herself and keep calm, lest worst things should happen to her. Ernest was still sanguine that the young man would regret his suggestions; but Jenny quenched this hope. "It is all of a piece," she said, "and, looking back, I see it. His instinct and will are against any such binding thing as marriage. He wants to make her happy; but if to do so is to make himself miserable, then she must go unhappy. Some bad girls might accept his offer; but Sabina, of course, cannot. She is not made of the stuff to sink to this, and it was only because he always insisted on the vital need for her to complete his life, that she forgot her wisdom in the past and believed they were really the complement of each other. As if a woman ever was, or ever will be, the real complement of a man, or a man, the complement of a woman! They are only complementary as meat and drink to the hungry." After some days Sabina read Raymond's letter again and it now awoke a new passion. At first she had hated herself and talked of doing herself an injury; but this was hysteria bred of suffering, since she had not the temperament to commit self-destruction. Now her rage burned against the child that she was doomed to bring into the world, and she brooded secretly on how its end might be accomplished. She knew the peril to herself of any such attempt; but while she could not have committed suicide, she faced the thought of the necessary risks. If the child lived, the hateful link must exist forever, if it perished, she would be free. So she argued. Full of this idea, she rose from her bed, went about and found some little consolation in the sympathy of her friends. They cursed the man until they heard what he had written to her. Then a change came over their criticism, for they were not tuned to Sabina's pitch, and it seemed to them, from their more modest standards of education, combined with the diminished self-respect where ignorance obtains, that Raymond's offer was fair--even handsome. Some, indeed, still mourned with her and shared her fierce indignation; some simulated anger to please her; but most confessed to themselves that she had not much to grumble at. A wise woman warned her against any attempt to tamper with the child. It was too late and the danger far too serious. So she passed through the second phase of her sufferings and went from hatred of herself and loathing of her load, to acute detestation of the man who had destroyed her. His offer seemed to her more villainous than his desertion. His ignorance of her true self, the insolence and contempt that prompted such a proposal, the view of her--these thoughts lashed her into fury. She longed for some one to help her against him and treat him as he deserved to be treated. She felt equal to making any sacrifice, if only he might be debased and scorned and pointed at as he deserved to be. She felt that her emotions must be shared by every honourable woman and decent man. Her spirit hungered for a great revenge. At first she dreamed of a personal action. She longed to tear him with her nails, outrage him in people's eyes and make him suffer in his flesh; but that passed: she knew she could not do it. A man was needed to extort punishment from Raymond. But no man existed who would undertake the task. She must then find such a man. She even sought him. But she did not find him. The search led to bitter discoveries. If women could forgive her betrayer; if women could say, as presently they said, that she did not know her luck, men were still more indifferent. The attitude of the world to her sufferings horrified Sabina. She had none to love her--none, at least, to show his love by assaulting and injuring her enemy. Only a certain number even took up the cudgels for her in speech. Of these Levi Baggs, the hackler, was the strongest. But his misanthropy embraced her also. He had said harsh things of his new master; but neither had he spared the victim. Upon these three great periods, of rage, futile passion, and hate, there followed a lethargy from which Ernest Churchouse tried in vain to rouse Sabina. He apprehended worse results from this coma of mind and body than from the flux of her natural indignation. He spent much time with her and bade her hope that Raymond might still reconsider his future. None had yet seen him since his brother's funeral, and his aunt received no answer to a very strenuous plea. He wrote to her, indeed, about affairs, and even asked her for advice upon certain matters; but they affected the past and Daniel rather than the future and himself. She could not fail to notice the supreme change that power had brought with it; his very handwriting seemed to have acquired a firmer line; while his diction certainly showed more strength of purpose. Could power modify character? It seemed impossible. She supposed, rather, that character, latent till this sudden change of fortune, had been revealed by power. Her first fears for the future of the business abated; but with increasing respect for Raymond, the former affection perished. She was firm in her moral standards, and to find his first use of power an evasion of solemn and sacred promises, made Miss Ironsyde Raymond's enemy. That he ignored her appeals to his manhood and honesty did not modify her changed attitude. She found herself much wounded by his callous conduct, and while his past weakness had been forgiven, his new strength proved unforgivable. Her appeal was, however, indirectly acknowledged, for Sabina received another letter from Raymond in which he mentioned Miss Ironsyde's communication. "My aunt," he wrote, "does not realise the situation, or appreciate the fact that love may remain a much more enduring and lively emotion outside marriage than inside it. There are, of course, people who find chains bearable enough, and even grow to like them, as convicts were said to do; but you are not such a craven, no more am I. We must think of the future, not the past, and I feel very sure that if we married, the result would be death to our friendship. We had a splendid time, and we might still have a splendid time, if you could be unconventional and realise how many other women are also. But probably you have decided against my suggestions, or I should have heard from you. So I suppose you hate me, and I'm awfully sorry to think it. You won't come to me, then. But that doesn't lessen my obligations, and I'm going to take every possible care of you and your child, Sabina, whether you come or not. He is my child, too, and I shan't forget it. If you would like to see me you shall when I return to Bridport, pretty soon now; but if you would rather not do so, then let me know who represents you, and I will hear what you and your mother would wish." She wrote several answers to this and destroyed them. They were bitter and contemptuous, and as each was finished she realised its futility. She could but sting; she could not seriously hurt. Even her sting would not trouble him much, for a man who had done what he had done, was proof against the scorn and hate of a woman. Only greater power than his own could make him feel. Her powerlessness maddened her--her powerlessness contrasted with his remorseless strength. But he used his strength like a coward. Some of her friends urged her to take legal action against Raymond Ironsyde and demand mighty damages. "You can hurt him there, if you can't anywhere else," said Nancy Buckler. "You say you're too weak to hurt him, but you're not. Knock his money out of him; you ought to get thousands." Her mother, for a time, was of the same opinion. It seemed a right and reasonable thing that Sabina should not be called upon to face her ruined life without some compensation, but she found herself averse from this. The thought of touching his money, or availing herself of it in any way, was horrible to her. She knew, moreover, that such an arrangement would go far to soothe Raymond's conscience; and the more he paid, probably the happier he would feel. For other causes also she declined to take any legal steps against him, and in this decision Ernest Churchouse supported her. He had been her prime consolation indeed, and though, at first, his line of argument only left Sabina impatient, by degrees--by very slow degrees--she inclined to him and suffered herself to hope he might not be mistaken. He urged patience and silence. He held that Raymond Ironsyde would presently return to that better and worthier self, which could not be denied him. His own abounding charity, where humanity was concerned, honestly induced Ernest to hope and almost believe that the son of Henry Ironsyde had made these proposals under excitation of mind; that he was thrown off his balance by the pressure of events; and that, presently, when he had time to remember the facts concerning Sabina, he would be heartily ashamed of himself and make the only adequate amends. It was not unnatural that the girl should find in this theory her highest consolation. She clung to it desperately, though few but Mr. Churchouse himself accounted it of any consequence. Him, however, she had been accustomed to consider the fountain of wisdom, and though, with womanhood, she had lived to see his opinions mistaken and his trust often abused, yet disappointments did not change a sanguine belief in his fellow creatures. So, thankful to repose her mind on another, Sabina for a while came to standing-ground in her storm-stricken journey. Each day was an eternity, but she strove to be patient. And, meantime, she wrote and posted a letter to her old lover. It was not angry, or even petulant. Indeed, she made her appeal with dignity and good choice of words. Before all she insisted on the welfare of the child, and reminded him of the cruelty inflicted from birth on any baby unlawfully born in England. Mr. Churchouse had instructed her in this matter, and she asked Raymond if he could find it in his heart to allow the child of their common love and worship to come into the world unrecognised by the world, deprived of recognition and human rights. He answered the letter vaguely and Mr. Churchouse read a gleam of hope into his words, but neither Sabina nor her mother were able to do so. For he spoke only of recognising his responsibilities and paternal duty. He bade her fear nothing for the child, or herself, and assured her that her future would be his care and first obligation as long as he lived. In these assertions Mr. Churchouse saw a wakening dawn, but Mary Dinnett declared otherwise. The man was widening the gap; his original idea, that Sabina should live with him, had dearly been abandoned. Then the contradictions of human nature appeared, and Mary, who had been the first to declare her deep indignation at Raymond's cynical proposal, began to weaken and even wonder if Sabina had done wisely not to discuss that matter. "Not that ever you should have done it," she hastened to add; "but if you'd been a bit crafty and not ruled it out altogether, you might have built on it and got friendly again and gradually worked him back to his duty." Then Mr. Churchouse protested, in the name of righteousness, while she argued that God helps those that help themselves, and that wickedness should be opposed with craft. Sabina listened to them helplessly and her last hope died out. CHAPTER XXVI OF HUMAN NATURE Nicholas Roberts drove his lathes in a lofty chamber separated by wooden walls from the great central activities of the spinning mill. Despite the flying sparks from his emery wheels, he always kept a portrait of Sarah Northover before him; and certain pictures of notable sportsmen also hung with Sarah above the benches whereon Nicholas pursued his task. His work was to put a fresh face on the wooden reels and rollers that formed a part of the machines; for running hemp or flax will groove the toughest wood in time, and so ruin the control of the rollers and spoil the thread. The wood curled away like paper before the teeth of the lathes, and the chisels of these, in their turn, had often to be set upon spinning stones. It was noisy work, and Nicholas now stopped his grindstone that he might hear his own voice and that of Mr. Best, who came suddenly into the shop. The foreman spoke of some new wood for roller turning. "It should be here this week," he said. "I told them we were running short. You may expect a good batch of plane and beech by Thursday." They discussed the work of Roberts and presently turned to the paramount question in every mind at the Mill. All naturally desired to know when Raymond Ironsyde would make his appearance and what would happen when he did so; but while some, having regard for his conduct, felt he would not dare to appear again himself, others believed that one so insensible to honesty and decency would be indifferent to all opinions entertained of him. Such suspected that the criticisms of Bridetown would be too unimportant to trouble the new master. And it seemed that they were right, for now came Ernest Churchouse seeking Mr. Best. He looked into the turning-shop, saw John and entered. "He's coming next week, but perhaps you know it," he began. "And if you haven't heard, be sure you will at any moment." "Then our fate is in store," declared Nicholas. "Some hope nothing, but, seeing that with all his faults he's a sportsman, I do hope a bit. There's plenty beside me who remember his words very well, and they pointed to an all-around rise for men and women alike." "There was a rumour of violence against him. You don't apprehend anything of that sort, I hope?" asked Ernest of Best. "A few--more women than men--had a plot, I believe, but I haven't heard any more about it. Baggs is the ringleader; but if there was any talk of raising the money, he'd find himself deserted. He's very bitter just now, however, and as he's got the pleasant experience of being right for once, you may be sure he's making the most of it." "I'll see him," said Mr. Churchouse. "I always find him the most difficult character possible; but he must know that to answer violence with violence is vain. Patience may yet find the solution. I have by no means given up hope that right will be done." "Come and tell Levi, then. Him and me are out for the moment, because I won't join him in calling down evil on Mister Ironsyde's head. But what's the sense of losing your temper in other people's quarrels? Better keep it for your own, I say." They found Levi Baggs grumbling to himself over a mass of badly scutched flax; but when he heard that Raymond Ironsyde was coming, he grew philosophic. "If we could only learn from what we work in," he said, "we'd have the lawless young dog at our mercy. But, of course, we shall not. Why don't the yarn teach us a lesson? Why don't it show us that, though the thread is nought, and you can break it, same as Raymond Ironsyde can break me or you, yet when you get to the twist, and the doubling and the trebling, then it's strong enough to defy anything. And if we combined as we ought, we shouldn't be waiting here to listen to what he's got to say; we should be waiting here to tell him what we've got to say. If we had the wit and understanding to twist our threads into one rope against the wickedness of the world, then we should have it all our own way." "Yes--all your own way to do your own wickedness," declared Best. "We know very well what your idea of fairness is. You look upon capital as a natural enemy, and if Raymond Ironsyde was an angel with wings, you'd still feel to him that he was a foe and not a friend." "The tradition is in the blood," declared Levi. "Capital is our natural enemy, as you say. Our fathers knew it, and we know it, and our children will know it." "Your fathers had a great deal more sense than you have, Baggs," declared Mr. Churchouse. "And if you only remember the past a little, you wouldn't grumble quite so loudly at the present. But labour has a short memory and no gratitude, unfortunately. You're always shouting out what must be done for you; you never spare a thought on what has been done. You never look back at the working-class drudgery of bygone days--to the 'forties' of last century, when your fathers went to work at the curfew bell and earned eighteen-pence a week as apprentices, and two shillings a week and a penny for themselves after they had learned their business. A good spinner in those days might earn five shillings a week, Levi--and that out of doors in fair weather. In foul, he, or she, wouldn't do so well. If you had told your fathers seventy years ago that all the spinning walks would be done away with and the population better off notwithstanding, they would never have believed it." "That's the way to look at the subject, Levi," declared John Best. "Think what the men of the past would have said to our luck--and our education." "Machinery brought the spinning indoors," continued Ernest. "I can remember forty spinning walks in St. Michael's Lane alone. And with small wages and long hours, remember the price of things, Levi; remember the fearful price of bare necessities. Clothes were so dear that many a labourer went to church in his smock frock all his life. Many never donned broadcloth from their cradle to their grave. And tea five shillings a pound, Levi Baggs! They used to buy it by the ounce and brew it over and over again. Think of the little children, too, and how they were made to work. Think of them and feel your heart ache." "My heart aches for myself," answered the hackler, "because I very well remember what my own childhood was. And I'm not saying the times don't better. I'm saying we must keep at 'em, or they'll soon slip back again into the old, bad ways. Capital's always pulling against labour and would get back its evil mastery to-morrow if it could. So we need to keep awake, to see we don't lose what we've won, but add to it. Now here's a man that's a servant by instinct, and it's in his blood to knuckle under." He pointed to Best. "I'm for no man more than another," answered John. "I stand not for man or woman in particular. I'm for the Mill first and last and always. I think of what is best for the Mill and put it above the welfare of the individual, whatever he represents--capital or labour." "That's where you're wrong. The people are the Mill and only the people," declared Baggs. "The rest is iron and steel and flax and hemp and steam--dead things all. We are the Mill, not the stuff in it, or the man that happens to be the new master." "Mr. Raymond has expressed admirable sentiments in my hearing," declared Ernest Churchouse. "For so young a man, he has a considerable grasp of the situation and progressive ideas. You might be in worse hands." "Might we? How worse? What can be worse than a man that lies to women and seduces an innocent girl under promise of marriage? What can be worse than a coward and traitor, who does a thing like that, and when he finds he's strong enough to escape the consequences, escapes them?" "Heaven knows I'm not condoning his conduct, Levi. He has behaved as badly as a young man could, and not a word of extenuation will you hear from me. I'm not speaking of him as a part of the social order; I'm speaking of him as master of the Mill. As master here he may be a successful man and you'll do well to bear in mind that he must be judged by results. Morally, he's a failure, and you are right to condemn him; but don't let that make you an enemy to him as owner of the works. Be just, and don't be prejudiced against him in one capacity because he's failed in another." "A bad man is a bad man," answered Baggs stoutly, "and a blackguard's a blackguard. And if you are equal to doing one dirty trick, your fellow man has a right to distrust you all through. You've got to look at a question through your own spectacles, and I won't hear no nonsense about the welfare of the Mill, because the welfare of the Mill means to me--Levi Baggs--my welfare--and, no doubt, it means to that godless rip, his welfare. You mark me--a man that can ruin one girl won't be very tender about fifty girls and women. And if you think Raymond Ironsyde will take any steps to better the workers at the expense of the master, you're wrong, and don't know nothing about human nature." John Best looked at Mr. Churchouse doubtfully. "There's sense in that, I'm fearing," he said. "When you say 'human nature,' Levi, you sum the whole situation," answered Ernest mildly. "Because human nature is like the sea--you never know when you put a net into it what you'll drag up to the light of day. Human nature is never exhausted, and it abounds in contradictions. You cannot make hard and fast laws for it, and you cannot, if you are philosophically inclined, presume to argue about it as though it were a consistent and unchanging factor. History is full of examples of men defeating their own characters, of falling away from their own ideals, yet struggling back to them. Careers have dawned in beauty and promise and set in blood and failure; and, again, you find people who make a bad start, yet manage to retrieve the situation. In a word, you cannot argue from the past to the future, where human nature is concerned. It is a series of surprises, some gratifying and some very much the reverse. There's always room for hope with the worst and fear with the best of us." "It's easy for you to talk," growled Mr. Baggs. "But talk don't take the place of facts. I say a blackguard's always a blackguard and defy any man to disprove it." "If you want facts, you can have them," replied Ernest. "My researches into history have made me sanguine in this respect. Many have been vicious in youth and proved stout enemies to vice at a later time. Themistocles did much evil. His father disowned him--and he drove his mother to take her own life for grief at his sins. Yet, presently, the ugly bud put forth a noble flower. Nicholas West was utterly wicked in his youth and committed such crimes that he was driven from college after burning his master's dwelling-house. Yet light dawned for this young man and he ended his days as Bishop of Ely. Titus Vespasianus emulated Nero in his early rascalities; but having donned the imperial purple, he cast away his evil companions and was accounted good as well as great. Henry V. of England was another such man, who reformed himself to admiration. Augustine began badly, and declared as a jest that he would rather have his lust satisfied than extinguished. Yet this man ended as a Saint of Christ. I could give you many other examples, Levi." "Then we'll hope for the best," said John. But Mr. Baggs only sneered. "We hear of the converted sinners," he said; "but we don't hear of the victims that suffered their wickedness before they turned into saints. Let Raymond Ironsyde be twenty saints rolled into one, that won't make Sabina Dinnett an honest woman, or her child a lawful child." "Never jump to conclusions," advised Ernest. "Even that may come right. Nothing is impossible." "That's a great thought--that nothing's impossible," declared Mr. Best. They argued, each according to his character and bent of mind, and, while the meliorists cheered each other, Mr. Baggs laughed at them and held their aspirations vain. CHAPTER XXVII THE MASTER OF THE MILL Raymond Ironsyde came to Bridetown. He rode in from Bridport, and met John Best by appointment early on a March morning. With the words of Ernest Churchouse still in his ears, the foreman felt profound interest to learn what might be learned considering the changes in his master's character. He found a new Raymond, yet as the older writing of a parchment palimpsest will sometimes make itself apparent behind the new, glimpses of his earlier self did not lack. The things many remembered and hoped that Ironsyde would remember were not forgotten by him. But instead of the old, vague generalities and misty assurance of goodwill, he now declared definite plans based on knowledge. He came armed with figures and facts, and his method of expression had changed from ideas to intentions. His very manner chimed with his new power. He was decisive, and quite devoid of sentimentality. He feared none, but his attitude to all had changed. They spoke in Mr. Best's office and he marked how the works came first in Raymond's regard. "I've been putting in a lot of time on the machine question," he said. "As you know, that always interested me most before I thought I should have much say in the matter. Well, there's no manner of doubt we're badly behind the times. You can't deny it, John. You know better than anybody what we want, and it must be your work to go on with what you began to do for my brother. I don't want to rush at changes and then find I've wasted capital without fair results; but it's clear to me that a good many of our earlier operations are not done as well and swiftly as they might be." "That's true. The Carder is out of date and the Spreader certainly is." "The thing is to get the best substitutes in the market. You'll have to go round again in a larger spirit. I'm not frightened of risks. Is there anybody here who can take your place for a month or six weeks?" Mr. Best shook his head. "There certainly is not," he said. "Then we must look round Bridport for a man. I'm prepared to put money into the changes, provided I have you behind me. I can trust you absolutely to know; but I advocate a more sporting policy than my poor brother did. After that we come to the people. I've got my business at my fingers' ends now and I found I was better at figures than I thought. There must be some changes. There are two problems: time and money. Either one or other; or probably both must be bettered--that's what I am faced with." "It wants careful thinking out, sir." "Well, you are a great deal more to me than my foreman, and you know it. I look to you and only you to help me run the show at Bridetown, henceforth. And, before everything, I want my people to be keen and feel my good is their good and their good is mine. Anyway, I have based changes on a fair calculation of future profits, plus necessary losses and need to make up wear and tear." "And remember, raw products tend to rise in price all the time." "As to that, I'm none too sure we've been buying in the best market. When I know more about it, I may travel a bit myself. Meantime, I'm changing two of our travellers." Mr. Best nodded. "That's to the good," he said. "I know which. Poor Mr. Daniel would keep them, because his father had told him they were all they ought to be. But least said, soonest mended." "As to the staff, it's summed up in a word. I mean for them a little less time and a little more money. Some would like longer hours and much higher wages; some would be content with a little more money; some only talked about shorter time. I heard them all air their opinions in the past. But I've concluded for somewhat shorter hours and somewhat better money. You must rub it into them that new machinery will indirectly help them, too, and make the work lighter and the results better." "That's undoubtedly true, but it's no good saying so. You'll never make them feel that new machinery helps them. But they'll be very glad of a little more money." "We must enlarge their minds and make them understand that the better the machinery, the better their prospects. As I go up--and I mean to--so they shall go up. But our hope of success lies in the mechanical means we employ. They must grasp that intelligently, and be patient, and not expect me to put them before the Mill. If the works succeed, then they succeed and I succeed. If the works hang fire and get behindhand, then they will suffer. We're all the servants of the machinery. I want them to grasp that." "It's difficult for them; but no doubt they'll get to see it," answered John. "They must. That's the way to success in my opinion. It's a very interesting subject--the most interesting to me--always was. The machinery, I mean. I may go to America, presently. Of course, they can give us a start and a beating at machinery there." "We must remember the driving power," said Best. "The driving power can be raised, like everything else. If we haven't got enough power, we must increase it. I've thought of that, too, as a matter of fact." "You can't increase what the river will do; but, of course, you can get a stronger steam engine." "Not so sure about the river. There's a new thing--American, of course--called a turbine. But no hurry for that. We've got all the power we want for the minute. That's one virtue of some of the new machinery: it doesn't demand so much power in some cases." But Best was very sceptical on this point. They discussed other matters and Raymond detailed his ideas as to the alteration of hours and wages. For the most part his foreman had no objections to offer, and when he did question the figures, he was overruled. But he felt constrained to praise. "It's wonderful how you've gone into it," he said. "I never should have thought you'd have had such a head for detail, Mister Raymond." "No more should I, John. I surprised myself. But when you are working for another person--that's one thing; when you are working for yourself--that's another thing. Not much virtue in what I've done, as it is for myself in the long run. When you tell them, explain that I'm not a philanthropist--only a man of business in future. But before all things fair and straight. I mean to be fair to them and to the machinery, too. And to the machinery I look to make all our fortunes. I should have done a little more to start with--for the people I mean; but the death duties are the devil. In fact, I start crippled by them. Tell them that and make them understand what they mean on an enterprise of this sort." They went through the works together presently and it was clear that the new owner fixed a gulf between the past and the future. His old easy manner had vanished--and, while friendly enough, he made it quite clear that a vast alteration had come into his mind and manners. It seemed incredible that six months before Raymond was chaffing the girls and bringing them fruit. He called them by their names as of yore; but they knew in a moment he had moved with his fortunes and their own manner instinctively altered. He was kind and pleasant, but far more interested in their work than them; and they drew conclusions from the fact. They judged his attitude with gloom and were the more agreeably surprised when they learned what advantages had been planned for them. Levi Baggs and Benny Cogle, the engineman, grumbled that more was not done; but the women, who judged Raymond from his treatment of Sabina and hoped nothing from his old promises, were gratified and astonished at what they heard. An improved sentiment towards the new master was manifest. The instinct to judge people at your own tribunal awoke, and while Sally Groves and old Mrs. Chick held out for morals, the other women did not. Already they had realised that the idle youth they could answer was gone. And with him had gone the young man who amused himself with a spinner. Of course, he could not be expected to marry Sabina. Such things did not happen out of story books; and if you tried to be too clever for your situation, this was the sort of thing that befell you. So argued Nancy Buckler and Mercy Gale; nor did Sarah Northover much differ from them. None had been fiercer for Sabina than Nancy, yet her opinion, before the spectacle of Raymond himself and after she heard his intentions, was modified. To see him so alert, so aloof from the girls, translated to a higher interest, had altered Nancy. Despite her asperity and apparent independence of thought, her mind was servile, as the ignorant mind is bound to be. She paid the unconscious deference of weakness to power. Raymond lunched at North Hill House--now his property. He had not seen Waldron since the great change in his fortunes and Arthur, with the rest, was quick to perceive the difference. They met in friendship and Estelle kissed Raymond as she was accustomed to do; but the alteration in him, while missed by her, was soon apparent to her father. It took the shape of a more direct and definite method of thinking. Raymond no longer uttered his opinions inconsiderately, as though confessing they were worthless even while he spoke them. He weighed his words, jested far less often, and did not turn serious subjects into laughter. Waldron suggested certain things to his new landlord that he desired should be done; but he was amused in secret that some work Raymond had blamed Daniel for not doing, he now refused to do himself. "I've no objection, old chap--none at all. The other points you raise I shall carry out at my own expense; but the French window in the drawing-room, while an excellent addition to the room, is not a necessity. So you must do that yourself." Thus he spoke and Arthur agreed. Estelle only found him unchanged. Before her he was always jovial and happy. He liked to hear her talk and listen to her budding theories of life and pretty dreams of what the world ought to be, if people would only take a little more trouble for other people. But Estelle was painfully direct. She thought for herself and had not yet learned to hide her ideas, modify their shapes, or muffle their outlines when presenting them to another person. Mr. Churchouse and her father were responsible for this. They encouraged her directness and, while knowing that she outraged opinion sometimes, could not bring themselves to warn her, or stain the frankness of her views, with the caution that good manners require thought should not go nude. Now the peril of Estelle's principles appeared when lunch was finished and the servants had withdrawn. "I didn't speak before Lucy and Agnes," she said, "because they might talk about it afterwards." "Bless me! How cunning she's getting!" laughed Raymond. But he did not laugh long. Estelle handed him his coffee and lit a match for his cigar; while Arthur, guessing what was coming, resigned himself helplessly to the storm. "Sabina is fearfully unhappy, Ray. She loves you so much, and I hope you will change your mind and marry her after all, because if you do, she'll love her baby, too, and look forward to it very much. But if you don't, she'll hate her baby. And it would be a dreadful thing for the poor little baby to come into the world hated." To Waldron's intense relief Raymond showed no annoyance whatever. He was gentle and smiled at Estelle. "So it would, Chicky--it would be a dreadful thing for a baby to come into the world hated. But don't you worry. Nobody's going to hate it." "I'll tell Sabina that. Sabina's sure to have a nice baby, because she's so nice herself." "Sure to. And I shall be a very good friend to the baby without marrying Sabina." "If she knows that, it ought to comfort her," declared Estelle. "And I shall be a great friend to it, too." Her father bade the child be off on an errand presently and expressed his regrets to the guest when she was gone. "Awfully sorry, old chap, but she's so unearthly and simple; and though I've often told myself to preach to her, I never can quite do it." "Never do. She'll learn to hide her thoughts soon enough. Nothing she can say would annoy me. For that matter she's only saying what a great many other people are thinking and haven't the pluck to say. The truth is this, Arthur; when I was a poor man I was a weak man, and I should have married Sabina and we should both have had a hell of a life, no doubt. Now the death of Daniel has made me a strong man, and I'm not doing wrong as the result; I'm doing right. I can afford to do right and not mind the consequences. And the truth about life is that half the people who do wrong, only do it because they can't afford to do right." "That's a comforting doctrine--for the poor." "It's like this. Sabina is a very dear girl, and I loved her tremendously, and if she'd gone on being the same afterwards, I should have married her. But she changed, and I saw that we could never be really happy together as man and wife. There are things in her that would have ruined my temper, and there are things in me she would have got to hate more and more. As a matter of brutal fact, Arthur, she got to dislike me long before things came to a climax. She had to hide it, because, from her standpoint and her silly mother's, marriage is the only sort of salvation. Whereas for us it would have been damnation. It's very simple; she's got to think as I think and then she'll be all right." "You can't make people think your way, if they prefer to think their own." "It's merely the line of least resistance and what will pay her best. I want you to grasp the fact that she had ceased to like me before there was any reason why she should cease to like me. I'll swear she had. My first thought and intention, when I heard what had happened, was to marry her right away. And what changed my feeling about it, and showed me devilish clear it would be a mistake, was Sabina herself. We needn't go over that. But I'm not going to marry her now under any circumstances whatever, while recognising very clearly my duty to her and the child. And though you may say it's humbug, I'm thinking quite as much for her as myself when I say this." "I don't presume to judge. You're not a humbug--no good sportsman is in my experience. If you do everything right for the child, I suppose the world has no reason to criticise." "As long as I'm right with myself, I don't care one button what the world says, Arthur. There's nothing quicker opens your eyes, or helps you to take larger views, than independence." "I see that." "All the same, it's a steadying thing if you're honest and have got brains in your head. People thought I was a shallow, easy, good-natured and good-for-nothing fool six months ago. Well, they thought wrong. But don't think I'm pleased with myself, or any nonsense of that sort. Only a fool is pleased with himself. I've wasted my life till now, because I had no ambition. Now I'm beginning it and trying to get things into their proper perspective. When I had no responsibilities, I was irresponsible. Now they've come, I'm stringing myself up to meet them." "Life's given you your chance." "Exactly; and I hope to show I can take it. But I'm not going to start by making an ass of myself to please a few old women." "Where shall you live?" "Nowhere in particular for the minute. I shall roam and see all that's being done in my business and take John Best with me for a while. Then it depends. Perhaps, if things go as I expect about machinery, I shall ask you for a corner again in the autumn." Mr. Waldron nodded; but he was not finding himself in complete agreement with Raymond. "Always welcome," he said. "Perhaps you'd rather not? Well--see how things go. Estelle may bar me. I'm at Bridport to-night and return to London to-morrow. But I shall be back again in a week." "Shall you play any cricket this summer?" "I should like to if I have time; but it's very improbable. I'm not going to chuck sport though. Next year I may have more leisure." "You're at 'The Seven Stars,' I hear--haven't forgiven Dick Gurd he tells me." "Did we quarrel? I forget. Seems funny to think I had enough time on my hands to wrangle with an innkeeper. But I like Missis Northover's. It's quiet." "Shall I come in and dine this evening?" "Wait till I'm back again. I've got to talk to my Aunt Jenny to-night. She's one of the old brigade, but I'm hoping to make her see sense." "When sense clashes with religion, old man, nobody sees sense. I'm afraid your opinions won't entirely commend themselves to Miss Ironsyde." "Probably not. I quite realise that I shall have to exercise the virtue of patience at Bridport and Bridetown for a year or two. But while I've got you for a friend, Arthur, I'm not going to bother." Waldron marked the imperious changes and felt somewhat bewildered. Raymond left him not a little to think about, and when the younger had ridden off, Arthur strolled afield with his thoughts and strove to bring order into them. He felt in a vague sort of way that he had been talking to a stranger, and his hope, if he experienced a hope, was that the new master of the Mill might not take himself too seriously. "People who do that are invariably one-sided," thought Waldron. Upon Ironsyde's attitude and intentions with regard to Sabina, he also reflected uneasily. What Raymond had declared sounded all right, yet Arthur could not break with old rooted opinions and the general view of conduct embodied in his favourite word. Was it "sporting"? And more important still, was it true? Had Ironsyde arrived at his determination from honest conviction, or thanks to the force of changed circumstances? Mr. Waldron gave his friend the benefit of the doubt. "One must remember that he is a good sportsman," he reflected, "and he can't have enough brains to make him a bad sportsman." For the thinker had found within his experience, that those who despised sport, too often despised also the simple ethics that he associated with sportsmanship. In fact, Arthur, after one or two painful experiences, had explicitly declared that big brains often went hand in hand with a doubtful sense of honour. He had also, of course, known numerous examples of another sort of dangerous people who assumed the name and distinction of "sportsman" as a garment to hide their true activities and unworthy selves. CHAPTER XXVIII CLASH OF OPINIONS Mr. Job Legg, with a persistence inspired by private purpose, continued to impress upon Nelly Northover the radical truth that in this world you cannot have anything for nothing. He varied the precept sometimes, and reminded her that we must not hope to have our cake and eat it too; and closer relations with Richard Gurd served to impress upon Mrs. Northover the value of these verities. Nor did she resent them from Mr. Legg. He had preserved an attitude of manly resignation under his supreme disappointment. He was patient, uncomplaining and self-controlled. He did not immediately give notice of departure, but, for the present, continued to do his duty with customary thoroughness. He showed himself a most tactful man. New virtues were manifested in the light of the misfortune that had overtaken him. Affliction and reverse seemed to make him shine the brighter. Nelly could hardly understand it. Had she not regarded his character as one of obvious simplicity and incapable of guile, she might have felt suspicious of any male who behaved with such exemplary distinction under the circumstances. It was, of course, clear that the mistress of 'The Seven Stars' could not become Mr. Gurd's partner and continue to reign over her own constellation as of old. Yet Nelly did not readily accept a fact so obvious, even under Mr. Legg's reiterated admonitions. She felt wayward--almost wilful about it: and there came an evening when Richard dropped in for his usual half hour of courting to find her in such a frame of mind. Humour on his part had saved the situation; but he lacked humour, and while Nelly, even as she spoke, knew she was talking nonsense and only waited his reminder of the inevitable in a friendly spirit, yet, when the reminder came, it was couched in words so forcible and so direct, that for a parlous moment her own sense of humour broke down. The initial error was Mr. Gurd's. The elasticity of youth, both mental and physical, had departed from him, and he took her remarks, uttered more in mischief than in earnest, with too much gravity, not perceiving that Nelly herself was in a woman's mood and merely uttering absurdities that he might contradict her. She was ready enough to climb down from her impossible attitude; but Richard abruptly threw her down; which unchivalrous action wounded Mrs. Northover to the quick and begat in her an obstinate and rebellious determination to climb up again. "I'm looking on ahead," she began, while they sat in her parlour together. "This is a great upheaval, Richard, and I'm just beginning to feel how great. I'm wondering all manner of things. Will you be so happy and comfortable along with me, at 'The Seven Stars,' as you are at 'The Tiger'? You must put that to yourself, you know." It was so absurd an assumption, that she expected his laughter; and if he had laughed and answered with inspiration, no harm could have come of it. But Richard felt annoyed rather than amused. The suggestion seemed to show that Mrs. Northover was a fool--the last thing he bargained for. He exhibited contempt. Indeed, he snorted in a manner almost insulting. "Woman comes to man, I believe, not man to woman," he said. "That is so," she admitted with a touch of colour in her cheeks at his attitude, "but you must think all round it--which you haven't done yet, seemingly." Then Richard laughed--too late; for a laugh may lose all its value if the right moment be missed. "Where's the fun?" she asked. "I thought, of course, that you'd be business-like as well as lover-like and would see 'The Seven Stars' had got more to it than 'The Tiger.'" Even now the situation might have been saved. The very immensity of her claim rendered it ridiculous; but Richard was too astonished to guess an utterance so hyperbolic had been made to offer him an easy victory. "You thought that, Nelly? 'The Seven Stars' more to it than 'The Tiger'?" "Surely!" "Because you get a few tea-parties and old women at nine-pence a head on your little bit of grass?" A counter so terrific destroyed the last glimmering hope of a peaceful situation, and Mrs. Northover perceived this first. "It's war then?" she said. "So perhaps you'll tell me what you mean by my little bit of grass. Not the finest pleasure gardens in Bridport, I suppose?" "Be damned if this ain't the funniest thing I've ever heard," he answered. "You never was one to see a joke, we all know; and if that's the funniest thing you ever heard, you ain't heard many. And you'll forgive me, please, if I tell you there's nothing funny in my speaking about my pleasure gardens, though it does sound a bit funny to hear 'em called 'a bit of grass' by a man that's got nothing but a few apple trees, past bearing, and a strip of potatoes and weeds, and a fowl-run. But, as you've got no use for a garden, perhaps you'll remember the inn yard, and how many hosses you can put up, and how many I can." "It's the number of hosses that comes--not the number you put up," he answered; "and if you want to tell me you've often obliged with a spare space in your yard, perhaps I may remind you that you generally got quite as good as you gave. But be that as it will, the point lies in one simple question, and I ask you if you really thought, as a woman nearer sixty than fifty and with credit for sense, that I was going to chuck 'The Tiger' and coming over to your shop. Did you really think that?" Not for an instant had she thought it; but the time was inappropriate for saying so. She might have confessed the truth in the past; she might confess the truth in the future; she was not going to do so at present. He should have a stab for his stab. "You've often told me I was the sensiblest woman in Dorset, Richard, and being that, I naturally thought you'd drop your bar-loafers' place and come over to me--and glad to come." "Good God!" he said, and stared at her with open nostrils, from which indignant air exploded in gusts. She began to make peace from that moment, feeling that the limit had been reached. Indeed she was rather anxious. The thrust appeared to be mortal. Mr. Gurd rolled in his chair, and after his oath, could find no further words. She declared sorrow. "There--forgive me--I didn't mean to say that. 'Tis a crying shame to see two old people dressing one another down this way. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, but don't forget you've properly trampled on mine. My pleasure grounds are my lifeblood you might say; and you knew it." "You needn't apologise now. 'The Tiger' a bar-loafers' place! The centre of all high-class sport in the district a bar-loafers' place! Well, well! No wonder you thought I'd be glad to come and live at 'The Seven Stars'!" "I didn't really," she confessed. "I knew very well you wouldn't; but I had to say it. The words just flashed out. And if I'd remembered a joke was nothing to you, I might have thought twice." "I laughed, however." "Yes, you laughed, I grant--what you can do in that direction, which ain't much." Mr. Gurd rose to his full height. "Well, that lets me out," he said. "We'd better turn this over in a forgiving spirit; and since you say you're sorry, I won't be behind you, though my words was whips to your scorpions and you can't deny it." "We'll meet again in a week," said Mrs. Northover. "Make it a fortnight," he suggested. "No--say a month," she answered--"or six weeks." Then it was Richard's turn to feel the future in danger. But he had no intention to eat humble pie that evening. "A month then. But one point I wish to make bitter clear, Nelly. If you marry me, you come to 'The Tiger.'" "So it seems." "Yes--bar-loafers, or no bar-loafers." "I'll bear it in mind, Richard." The leave-taking lacked affection and they parted with full hearts. Each was smarting under consciousness of the other's failure in nice feeling; each was amazed as at a revelation. Richard kept his mouth shut concerning this interview, for he was proud and did not like to confess even to himself that he stood on the verge of disaster; but Mrs. Northover held a familiar within her gates, and she did not hesitate to lay the course of the adventure before Job Legg. "The world is full of surprises," said Nelly, "and you never know, when you begin talking, where the gift of speech will land you. And if you're dealing with a man who can't take a bit of fun and can't keep his eyes on his tongue and his temper at the same time, trouble will often happen." She told the story with honesty and did not exaggerate; but Mr. Legg supported her and held that such a self-respecting woman could have done and said no less. He declared that Richard Gurd had brought the misfortune on himself, and feared that the innkeeper's display revealed a poor understanding of female nature. "It isn't as if you was a difficult and notorious sort of woman," explained Job; "for then the man might have reason on his side; but to misunderstand you and overlook your playful touch--that shows he's got a low order of brain; because you always speak clearly. Your word is as good as your bond and none can question your judgment." He proceeded to examine the argument earnestly and had just proved that Mrs. Northover was well within her right to set 'The Seven Stars' above 'The Tiger,' when Raymond Ironsyde entered. He returned from dining with his aunt, and an interview now concluded was of very painful and far-reaching significance. For they had not agreed, and Miss Ironsyde proved no more able to convince her nephew than was he, to make her see his purpose combined truest wisdom and humanity. They talked after dinner and she invited him to justify his conduct if he could, before hearing her opinions and intentions. He replied at once and she found his arguments and reasons all arrayed and ready to his tongue. He spoke clearly and stated his case in very lucid language; but he irritated her by showing that his mind was entirely closed to argument and that he was not prepared to be influenced in any sort of way. Her power had vanished now and she saw how only her power, not her persuasion, had won Raymond before his brother's death. He spoke with utmost plainness and did not spare himself in the least. "I've been wrong," he said, "but I'm going to try and be right in the future. I did a foolish thing and fell in love with a good and clever girl. Once in love, of course, everything was bent and deflected to be seen through that medium and I believed that nothing else mattered or ever would. Then came the sequel, and being powerless to resist, I was going to marry. For some cowardly reason I funked poverty, and the thought of escaping it made me agree to marry Sabina, knowing all the time it must prove a failure. That was my second big mistake, and the third was asking her to come and live with me without marrying her. I suggested that, because I wanted her and felt very keen about the child. I ought not to have thought of such a thing. It wasn't fair to her--I quite see that." "Can anything be fair to her short of marriage?" "Not from her point of view, Aunt Jenny." "And what other point of view, in keeping with honour and religion, exists?" "As to religion, I'm without it and so much the freer. I don't want to pretend anything I don't feel. I shall always be very sorry, indeed, for what I did; but I'm not going to wreck my life by marrying Sabina." "What about her life?" "If she will trust her life to me, I shall do all in my power to make it a happy and easy life. I want the child to be a success. I know it will grow up a reproach to me and all that sort of thing in the opinion of many people; but that won't trouble me half as much as my own regrets. I've not done anything that puts me beyond the, pale of humanity--nor has Sabina; and if she can keep her nerve and go on with her life, it ought to be all right for her, presently." "A very cynical attitude and I wish I could change it, Raymond. You've lost your self-respect and you know you've done a wrong thing. Can't you see that you'll always suffer it if you take no steps to right it? You are a man of feeling, and power can't lessen your feeling. Every time you see that child, you will know that you have brought a living soul into the world cruelly handicapped by your deliberate will." "That's not a fair argument," he answered. "If our rotten laws handicap the baby, it will be my object to nullify the handicap to the best of my ability. The laws won't come between me and my child, any more than they came between me and my passion. I'm not the sort to hide behind the mean English law of the natural child. But I'm not going to let that law bully me into marriage with Sabina. I've got to think of myself as well as other people. I won't say, what's true--that if Sabina married me she wouldn't be happy in the long run; but I will say that I know I shouldn't be, and I'm not prepared to pay any penalty whatever for what I did, beyond the penalty of my own regrets." "If you rule religion out and think you can escape and keep your honour, I don't know what to say," she answered. "For my part I believe Sabina would make you a very good and loving wife. And don't fancy, if you refuse her what faithfully you promised her, she will be content with less." "That's her look out. You won't be wise, Aunt Jenny, to influence her against a fair and generous offer. I want her to live a good life, and I don't want our past love-making to ruin that life, or our child to ruin that life. If she's going to pose as a martyr, I can't help it. That's the side of her that wrecked the show, as a matter of fact, and made it very clear to me that we shouldn't be a happy married couple." "Self-preservation is a law of nature. She only did what any girl would have done in trying to find friends to save her from threatened disaster." "Well, I dare say it was natural to her to take that line, and it was equally natural to me to resent it. At any rate we know where we stand now. Tell me if there's anything else." "I only warn you that she will accept no benefits of any kind from you, Raymond. And who shall blame her?" "That's entirely her affair, of course. I can't do more than admit my responsibilities and declare my interest in her future." "She will throw your interest back in your face and teach her child to despise you, as she does." "How d'you know that, Aunt Jenny?" "Because she's a proud woman. And because she would lose the friendship of all proud women and clean thinking men if she condoned what you intend to do. It's horrible to see you turned from a simple, stupid, but honourable boy, into a hard, selfish, irreligious man--and all the result of being rich. I should never have thought it could have made such a dreadful difference so quickly. But I have not changed, Raymond. And I tell you this: if you don't marry Sabina; if you don't see that only so can you hold up your head as an honest man and a respectable member of society, worthy of your class and your family, then, I, for one, can have no more to do with you. I mean it." "I'm sorry you say that. You've been my guardian angel in a way and I've a million things to thank you for from my childhood. It would be a great grief to me, Aunt Jenny, if you allowed a difference of opinion to make you take such a line. I hope you'll think differently." "I shall not," she said. "I have not told you this on the spur of the moment, or before I had thought it out very fully and very painfully. But if you do this outrageous thing, I will never be your aunt any more, Raymond, and never wish to see you again as long as I live. You know me; I'm not hysterical, or silly, or even sentimental; but I'm jealous for your father's name--and your brother's. You know where duty and honour and solemn obligation point. There is no reason whatever why you should shirk your duty, or sully your honour; but if you do, I decline to have any further dealings with you." He rose to go. "That's definite and clear. Good-bye, Aunt Jenny." "Good-bye," she said. "And may God guide you to recall that 'good-bye,' nephew." Then he went back to 'The Seven Stars,' and wondered as he walked, how the new outlook had shrunk up this old woman too, and made one, who bulked so largely in his life of old, now appear as of no account whatever. He was heartily sorry she should have taken so unreasonable a course; but he grieved more for her sake than his own. She was growing old. She would lack his company in the time to come, and her heart was too warm to endure this alienation without much pain. He suspected that if Sabina's future course of action satisfied Miss Ironsyde, she would be friendly to her and the child and, in time, possibly win some pleasure from them. CHAPTER XXIX THE BUNCH OF GRAPES Raymond proceeded with his business at Bridetown oblivious of persons and personalities. He puzzled those who were prepared to be his enemies, for it seemed he was becoming as impersonal as the spinning machines, and one cannot quarrel with a machine. It appeared that he was to be numbered with those who begin badly and retrieve the situation afterwards. So, at least, hoped Ernest Churchouse, yet, since the old man was called to witness and endure a part of the sorrows of Sabina and her mother, it demanded large faith on his part to anticipate brighter times. He clung to it that Raymond would yet marry Sabina, and he regretted that when the young man actually offered to see Sabina, she refused to see him. For this happened. He came to stop at North Hill House for two months, while certain experts were inspecting the works, and during this time he wished to visit 'The Magnolias' and talk with Sabina, but she declined. The very active hate that he had awakened sank gradually to smouldering fires of bitter resentment and contempt. She spoke openly of destroying their babe when it should be born. Then the event happened and Sabina became the mother of a man child. Raymond was still with Arthur Waldron when Estelle brought the news, and the men discussed it. "I hope she'll be reasonable now," said Ironsyde. "It bothered me when she refused to see me, because you can't oppose reason to stupidity of that sort. If she's going to take my aunt's line, of course, I'm done, and shall be powerless to help her. I spoke to Uncle Ernest about it two days ago. He says that it will have to be marriage, or nothing, and seemed to think that would move me to marriage! Some people can't understand plain English. But why should she cut off her nose to spite her face and refuse my friendship and help because I won't marry her?" "She's that sort, I suppose. Of course, plenty of women would do the same." "I'm not convinced it's Sabina really who is doing this. That's why I wanted to see her. Very likely Aunt Jenny is inspiring such a silly attitude, or her mother. They may think if she's firm I may yield. They don't seem to realise that love's as dead as a doornail now. But my duty is clear enough and they can't prevent me from doing it, I imagine." "You want to be sporting to the child, of course." "And to the mother of the child. Damn it all, I'm made of flesh and blood. I'm not a fiend. But with women, if you have a grain of common-sense and reasoning power, you become a fiend the moment there's a row. I want Sabina and my child to have a good show in the world, Arthur." "Well, you must let her know it." "I'll see her, presently. I'll take no denial about that. It may be a pious plot really, for religious people don't care how they intrigue, if they can bring off what they want to happen. It was very strange she refused to see me. Perhaps they never told her that I offered to come." "Yes, they did, because Estelle heard Churchouse tell her. Estelle was with her at the time, and she said she was so sorry when Sabina refused. It may have been because she was ill, of course." "I must see her before I go away, anyway. If they've been poisoning her mind against me, I must put it right." "You're a rum 'un! Can't you see what this means to her? You talk as if she'd no grievance, and as though it was all a matter of course and an everyday thing." "So it is, for that matter. However, there's no reason for you to bother about it. I quite recognise what it is to be a father, and the obligations. But because I happen to be a father, is no reason why I should be asked to do impossibilities. Because you've made a fool of yourself once is no reason why you should again. By good chance I've had unexpected luck in life and things have fallen out amazingly well--and I'm very willing indeed that other people should share my good luck and good fortune. I mean that they shall. But I'm not going to negative my good fortune by doing an imbecile thing." "As long as you're sporting I've got no quarrel with you," declared Waldron. "I'm not very clever myself, but I can see that if they won't let you do what you want to do, it's not your fault. If they refuse to let you play the game--but, of course, you must grant the game looks different from their point of view. No doubt they think you're not playing the game. A woman's naturally not such a sporting animal as a man, and what we think is straight, she often doesn't appreciate, and what she thinks is straight we often know is crooked. Women, in fact, are more like the other nations which, with all their excellent qualities, don't know what 'sporting' means." "I mean to do right," answered Raymond, "and probably I'm strong enough to make them see it and wear them down, presently. I'm really only concerned about Sabina and her child. The rest, and what they think and what they don't think, matter nothing. She may listen to reason when she's well again." Two days later Raymond received a box from London and showed Estelle an amazing bunch of Muscat grapes, destined for Sabina. "She always liked grapes," he said, "and these are as good as any in the world at this moment." On his way to the Mill he left the grapes at 'The Magnolias,' and spoke a moment with Mr. Churchouse. "She is making an excellent recovery," said Ernest, "and I am hoping that, presently, the maternal instinct will assert itself. I do everything to encourage it. But, of course, when conditions are abnormal, results must be abnormal. She's a very fine and brave woman and worthy of supreme admiration. And worthy of far better and more manly treatment than she has received from you. But you know that very well, Raymond. Owing to the complexities created by civilisation clashing with nature, we get much needless pain in the world. But a reasonable being should have recognised the situation, as you did not, and realise that we have no right to obey nature if we know at the same time we are flouting civilisation. You think you're doing right by considering Sabina's future. You are a gross materialist, Raymond, and the end of that is always dust and ashes and defeated hopes. I won't bring religion into it, because that wouldn't carry weight with you; but I bring justice into it and your debt to the social order, that has made you what you are and to which you owe everything. You have done a grave and wicked wrong to the new-born atom of life in this house, and though it is now too late wholly to right that wrong, much might yet be done. I blame you, but I hope for you--I still hope for you." He took the grapes, and Raymond, somewhat staggered by this challenge, found himself not ready to answer it. "We'll have a talk some evening, Uncle Ernest," he answered. "I don't expect your generation to see this thing from my point of view. It's reasonable you shouldn't, because you can't change; and it's also reasonable that I shouldn't see it from your point of view. If I'm material, I'm built so; and that won't prevent me from doing my duty." "I would talk the hands round the clock if I thought I could help you to see your duty with other eyes than your own," replied the old man. "I am quite ready to speak when you are to listen. And I shall begin by reminding you that you are a father. You expect Sabina to be a mother in the full meaning of that beautiful word; but a child must have a father also." "I am willing to be a father." "Yes, on your own values, which ignore the welfare of the community, justice to the next generation, and the respect you should entertain for yourself." "Well, we'll thresh it out another time. You know I respect you very much, Uncle Ernest; and I'm sure you'll weigh my point of view and not let Aunt Jenny influence you." "I have a series of duties before me," answered Mr. Churchouse; "and not least among them is to reconcile you and your aunt. That you should have broken with your sole remaining relative is heart-breaking." "I'd be friends to-morrow; but you know her." He went away to the works and Ernest took the grapes to Mrs. Dinnett. "You'd better not let her have them, however, unless the doctor permits it," said Mr. Churchouse, whereupon, Mary, not trusting herself to speak, took the grapes and departed. The affront embodied in the fruit affected a mind much overwrought of late. She took the present to Sabina's room. "There," she said. "He's sunk to sending that. I'd like to fling them in his face." "Take them away. I can't touch them." "Touch them! And poisoned as likely as not. A man that's committed his crimes would stick at nothing." "He uses poison enough," said the young mother; "but only the poison he can use safely. It matters nothing to him if I live or die. No doubt he'd will me dead, and this child too, if he could; but seeing he can't, he cares nothing. He'll heap insult on injury, no doubt. He's made of clay coarse enough to do it. But when I'm well, I'll see him and make it clear, once for all." "You say that now. But I hope you'll never see him, or breathe the same air with him." "Once--when I'm strong. I don't want him to go on living his life without knowing what I'm thinking of him. I don't want him to think he can pose as a decent man again. I want him to know that the road-menders and road-sweepers are high above him." "Don't you get in a passion. He knows all that well enough. He isn't deceiving himself any more than anybody else. All honest people know what he is--foul wretch. Yes, he's poisoned three lives, if no more, and they are yours and mine and that sleeping child's." "He's ruined his aunt's life, too. She's thrown him over." "That won't trouble him. War against women is what you'd expect. But please God, he'll be up against a man some day--then we shall see a different result. May the Almighty let me live long enough to see him in the gutter, where he belongs. I ask no more." They poured their bitterness upon Raymond Ironsyde; then a thought came into Mary Dinnett's mind and she left Sabina. Judging the time, she put on her bonnet presently and walked out to the road whence Raymond would return from his work at the luncheon hour. She stood beside the road at a stile that led into the fields, and as Raymond, deep in thought, passed her without looking up, he saw something cast at his feet and for a moment stood still. With a soft thud his bunch of grapes fell ruined in the dust before him and, starting back, he looked at the stile and saw Sabina's mother gazing at him red-faced and furious. Neither spoke. The woman's countenance told her hatred and loathing; the man shrugged his shoulders and, after one swift glance at her, proceeded on his way without quickening or slackening his stride. He heard her spit behind him and found time to regret that a woman of Mary's calibre should be at Sabina's side. Such concentrated hate astonished him a little. There was no reason in it; nothing could be gained by it. This senseless act of a fool merely made him impatient. But he smiled before he reached North Hill House to think that but for the interposition of chance and fortune, this brainless old woman might have become his mother-in-law. CHAPTER XXX A TRIUMPH OF REASON Mrs. Northover took care that her interrupted conversation with Job Legg should be completed; and he, too, was anxious, that she should know his position. But he realised the danger very fully and was circumspect in his criticism of Richard Gurd's attitude toward 'The Seven Stars.' "For my part," said Job on the evening that preceded a very important event, "I still repeat that you have a right to consider we're higher class than 'The Tiger'; and to speak of the renowned garden as a 'bit of grass' was going much too far. It shows a wrong disposition, and it wasn't a gentlemanly thing, and if it weren't such a wicked falsehood, you might laugh at it for jealousy." "Who ever would have thought the man jealous?" she asked. "These failings will out," declared Mr. Legg. "And seeing you mean to take him, it is as well you know it." She nodded rather gloomily. "Your choice of words is above praise, I'm sure, Job," she said. "For such a simple and straightforward man, you've a wonderful knowledge of the human heart." "Through tribulation I've come to it," he answered. "However, I'm here to help you, not talk about my own bitter disappointments. And very willing I am to help you when it can be done." "D'you think you could speak to Richard for me, and put out the truth concerning 'The Seven Stars'?" she asked. But Mr. Legg, simple though he might be, was not as simple as that. "No," he replied. "There's few things I wouldn't do for you, on the earth or in the waters under the earth, and I say that, even though you've turned me down after lifting the light of hope. But for me to see Gurd on this subject is impossible. It's far too delicate. Another man might, but not me, because he knows that I stand in the unfortunate position of the cast out. So if there's one man that can't go to Gurd and demand reparation on your account, I'm that man. In a calmer moment, you'll be the first to see it." "I suppose that is so. He'd think, if you talked sense to him, you had an axe to grind and treat you according. You've suffered enough." "I have without a doubt, and shall continue to do so," he answered her. "I think just as much of you as ever I did notwithstanding," said Mrs. Northover. "And I'll go so far as to say that your simple goodness and calm sense under all circumstances might wear better in the long run than Richard's overbearing way and cruel conceit. Be honest, Job. Do you yourself think 'The Tiger' is a finer house and more famous than my place?" Mr. Legg perceived very accurately where Nelly suffered most. "This house," he declared, "have got the natural advantages and Gurd have got the pull in the matter of capital. My candid opinion, what I've come to after many years of careful thought on the subject, is that if we--I say 'we' from force of habit, though I'm in the outer darkness now--if we had a few hundred pounds spending on us and an advertisement to holiday people in the papers sometimes, then in six months we shouldn't hear any more about 'The Tiger.' Cash, spent by the hand of a master on 'The Seven Stars,' would lift us into a different house and we should soon be known to cater for a class that wouldn't recognise 'The Tiger.' What we want is a bit of gold and white paint before next summer and all those delicate marks about the place that women understand and value. I've often thought that a new sign for example, with seven golden stars on a sky blue background, and perhaps even a flagstaff in the pleasure grounds, with our own flag flying upon it, would, as it were, widen the gulf between him and you. But, of course, that was before these things happened, and when I was thinking, day and night you may say, how to catch the custom." Mrs. Northover sighed. "In another man, it would be craft to say such clever things," she answered; "but, in you, I know it's just simple goodness of heart and Christian fellowship. 'Tis amazing how we think alike." "Not now," he corrected her. "Too late now. I wish to God we had thought alike; for then, instead of looking at my money as I'd look at a pile of road scrapings, I should see it with very different eyes. My windfall would have been poured out here in such a fashion that the people would have wondered. This place is my life, in a manner of speaking. My earthly life, I mean; which you may say is ended now. I was, in my own opinion, as much a part of 'The Seven Stars,' as the beer engine. And when uncle died this was my first thought. Or I should say my second, because in the natural course of events, you were the first." She sighed again and Mr. Legg left this delicate ground. "If the man can only be brought to see he's wrong about his fanciful opinion of 'The Tiger,' all may go right for you," he continued. "I don't care for his feelings over-much, but your peace of mind I do consider. At present he dares to think you're a silly woman whose goose is a swan. That's very disorderly coming from the man who's going to marry you. Therefore you must get some clear-sighted person to open his eyes, and make it bitter clear to him that 'The Tiger' never was and never will be a place to draw nice minds and the female element like us." "There's nobody could put it to him better than you," she said. "At another time, perhaps--not now. I'm not clever, Nelly; but I'm too clever to edge in between a man like Gurd and his future wife. If we stood different, then nobody would open his mouth quicker than me." "We may stand different yet," she answered. "There was a good deal of passion when we met, and not the sort of passion you expect between lovers, either." "If that is so," he answered, "then we can only leave it for the future. But this I'll certainly say: if you tell me presently that you're free to the nation once more and have changed your mind about Richard, then I'd very soon let him know there's a gulf fixed between 'The Tiger' and 'The Seven Stars'; and if you said the word, he'd see that gulf getting broader and broader under his living eyes." "I'd have overlooked most anything but what he actually said," she declared. "But to strike at the garden--However, I'll see him, and if I find he's feeling like what I am, it's quite in human reason that we may undo the past before it's too late." "And always remember it's his own will you shall live at 'The Tiger,'" warned Job. "Excuse my bluntness in reminding you of his words; which, no doubt, you committed to memory long before you told me about 'em; but the point lies there. You can't be in two places at once, and so sure as you sign yourself 'Gurd,' you'll sell, or sublet 'The Seven Stars.' In fact, even a simple brain like mine can see you'll sell, for Richard will never be content to let you serve two masters; and where the treasure is, there will the heart be also. And to one of your delicate feelings, to know strange hands are in this house, and strange things being done, and liberties taken with the edifice and the garden, very likely. But I don't want to paint any such dreadful picture as that, and, of course, if you honestly love Richard, though you're the first woman that ever could--then enough said." "The question is whether he loves me. However, I'll turn it over; and no doubt he will," she answered. "I see him to-morrow." "And don't leave anything uncertain, if I may advise," concluded Mr. Legg. "I speak as a child in these matters; but, if he's looking at this thing same as you are, and if you both feel you'd be finer ornaments of society apart, than married, all I say is don't let any false manhood on his part, or modesty on yours, keep you to it. Better be good neighbours than bad partners. And if I've said too much, God forgive me." Fired by these opinions Nelly went to her meeting with Richard and the first words uttered by Mr. Gurd sent a ray of warmth to her heart, for it seemed he also had reviewed the situation in a manner worthy of his high intelligence. But he approached the subject uneasily and Mrs. Northover was too much a woman to rescue him at once. She had been through a good deal and felt it fair that the master of 'The Tiger' should also suffer. "It's borne in upon me," he said, after some generalities and vague hopes that Nelly was well, "that, perhaps, there's no smoke without fire, as the saying is." "Meaning what?" asked she. "Meaning, that though we flared up a bit and forgot what we owe to ourselves, there must have been a reason for so much feeling." "There certainly was." "We needn't go back over the details; but you may be sure there must have lurked more behind our row than just a difference of opinion. People don't get properly hot with each other unless there's a reason, Nelly, and I'm beginning to fear that the reason lies deeper than we thought." He waited for her to speak; but she did not. "You mustn't think me shifty, or anything of that kind; but I do feel, where there was such a lot of smoke and us separated all these weeks, and none the worse for separation apparently, that, if we was to take the step--in a word, it's come over me stronger and stronger that we might do well to weigh what we're going to do in the balance before we do it." Her delight knew no bounds. But still she did not reply, and Mr. Gurd began to grow red. "If, by your silence, you mean that I'm cutting a poor figure before you, and you think I want to be off our bargain, you're wrong," he said. "Your mind ought to move quicker and I don't mind telling you so. I'm not off my bargain, because I'm a man of honour, and my word, given to man, woman or child, is kept. And if you don't know that, you're the only party in Bridport that don't. But I say again, there's two sides to it, and look before you leap, though not a maxim women are very addicted to following, is a good rule for all that. So I'll ask you how the land lies, if you please. You've turned this over same as me; and I'll be obliged if you'll tell me how you're viewing it." "In other words you've changed your mind?" "My mind can wait. I may have done so, or I may not; but to change my mind ain't to change my word, so you need have no anxiety on that account." "Far from being anxious," answered Mrs. Northover, "I never felt so light-hearted since I was a girl, Richard. For why? My name for honest dealing is as high as yours, I believe, and if you'd come back to me and asked for bygones to be bygones, I should have struggled with it, same as you meant to do. But, seeing you're shaken, I'm pleased to tell, that I'm shaken also. In fact, 'shaken' isn't a strong enough word. I'm thankful to Heaven you don't want to go on with it, because, more don't I." "If anything could make me still wish to take you, it's to hear such wisdom," declared Mr. Gurd, after a noisy expiration of thanksgiving. "I might have known you wasn't behind me in brain power, and I might have felt you'd be bound to see this quite as quick as me, if not quicker. And I'm sure nothing could make me think higher of you than to hear these comforting words." Mrs. Northover used an aphorism from Mr. Legg. "Our only fault was not to see each other's cleverness," she said, "or to think for a moment, after what passed between us, we could marry without loss of self-respect. It's a lot better, Richard, to be good neighbours than bad partners. And good neighbours we always have been and shall be; and whether we'd be good partners or not is no matter; we won't run the risk." "God bless you!" he answered. "Then we part true friends, and if anything could make me feel more friendly than I always have felt, it is your high-mindedness, Nelly. For high-mindedness there never was your equal. And if many and many a young couple, that flies together and then feels the call to fly apart again, could only approach the tender subject with your fair sight and high reasoning powers, it would be a happier world." "There's only one thing left," concluded Mrs. Northover, "and that's to let the public know we've changed our minds. With small people, that wouldn't matter; but with us, we can't forget we've been on the centre of the stage lately; and it would never do to let the people suppose that we had quarrelled, or sunk to anything vulgar." "Leave it to me," he answered. "It only calls for a light hand. I shall pass it off with one of my jokes, and then people will treat it in a laughing spirit and not brood over it. Folk are quick to take a man's own view on everything concerning himself if he's got the art to convince." "We'll say that more marriages are made on the tongues of outsiders than ever come to be celebrated in church," suggested Mrs. Northover, "and then people will begin to doubt if it wasn't all nonsense from the first." "And they won't be far wrong if they do. It was nonsense; and if we say so in the public ear, none will dare to doubt it." CHAPTER XXXI THE OFFER DECLINED Estelle talked to Raymond and endeavoured to interest him in Sabina's child. "Everybody who understands babies says that he's a lovely and perfect one," declared Estelle. "I hope you're going to look at him before you go away, because he's yours. And I believe he will be like you, some day. Do the colours of babies' eyes change, like kittens' eyes, Ray?" "Haven't the slightest idea," he answered. "You may be quite sure I shall take care of it, Estelle, and see that it has everything it wants." "Somehow they're not pleased with you all the same," she answered. "I don't understand about it, but they evidently feel that you ought to have married Sabina. I suppose you're not properly his father if you don't marry her?" "That's nonsense, Estelle. I'm quite properly his father, and I'm going to be a jolly good father too. But I don't want to be married. I don't believe in it." "If Sabina knew you were going to love him and be good to him, she would be happier, I hope." "I'm going to see her presently," he said. "And see the baby?" "Plenty of time for that." "There's time, of course, Ray. But he's changing. He's five weeks old to-morrow, and I can see great changes. He can just begin to laugh now. Things amuse him we don't know. I expect babies are like dogs and can see what we can't." "I'll look at him if Sabina likes." "Of course she'll like. It's rather horrid of you, in a way, being able to go on with your work for so many weeks without looking at him. It's really rather a slight on Sabina, Ray. If I'd had a baby, and his father wouldn't look at him for week after week, I should be vexed. And so is Sabina." "Next time you see her, ask her to name a day and I'll go whenever she likes." Estelle was delighted. "That's lovely of you and it will cheer her up very much, for certain," she answered. Then she ran away, for to arrange such a meeting seemed the most desirable thing in the world to her at that moment. To Sabina she went as fast as her legs could take her, and appreciating that he had sent this guileless messenger to ensure a meeting without preliminaries and without prejudice, Sabina hid her feelings and specified a time on the following day. "If he'll come to see me to-morrow in the dinner-hour, that will be best. I'll be alone after twelve o'clock." "You'll show him the baby, won't you, Sabina?" "He won't want to see it." "Why not?" "Does he want to?" "Honestly he doesn't seem to understand how wonderful the baby is," explained the child. "Ray's going to be a splendid father to him, Sabina. He's quite interested; only men are different from us. Perhaps they never feel much interest till babies can talk to them. My father says he wasn't much interested in me till I could talk, so it may be a general thing. But when Ray sees him, he'll be tremendously proud of him." Sabina said no more, and when Raymond arrived to see her at the time she appointed, he found her waiting near the entrance of 'The Magnolias.' She wore a black dress and was looking very well and very handsome. But the expression in her eyes had changed. He put out his hand, but she did not take it. "Mister Churchouse has kindly said we can talk in the study, Mister Ironsyde." He followed her, and when they had come to the room, hoped that she was quite well again. Then he sat in a chair by the table and she took a seat opposite him. She did not reply to his wish for her good health, but waited for him to speak. She was not sulky, but apparently indifferent. Her fret and fume were smothered of late. Now that the supreme injury was inflicted and she had borne a child out of wedlock, Sabina's frenzies were over. The battle was lost. Life held no further promises, and the denial of the great promise that it had offered and taken back again, numbed her. She was weary of the subject of herself and the child. She could even ask Mr. Churchouse for books to occupy her mind during convalescence. Yet the slumbering storm in her soul awoke in full fury before the man had spoken a dozen words. She looked at Raymond with tired eyes, and he felt that, like himself, she was older, wiser, different. He measured the extent of her experiences and felt sorry for her. "Sabina," he said. "I must apologise for one mistake. When I asked you to come back to me and live with me, I did a caddish thing. It wasn't worthy of me, or you. I'm awfully sorry. I forgot myself there." She flushed. "Can that worry you?" she asked. "I should have thought, after what you'd already done, such an added trifle wouldn't have made you think twice. To ruin a woman body and soul--to lie to her and steal all she's got to give under pretence of marriage--that wasn't caddish, I suppose--that wasn't anything to make you less pleased with yourself. That was what we may expect from men of honour and right bringing up?" "Don't take this line, or we shan't get on. If, after certain things happened, I had still felt we--" "Stop," she said, "and hear me. You're making my blood burn and my fingers itch to do something. My hands are strong and quick--they're trained to be quick. I thought I could come to this meeting calm and patient enough. I didn't know I'd got any hate left in me--for you, or the world. But I have--you've mighty soon woke it again; and I'm not going to hear you maul the past into your pattern and explain everything away and tell me how you came gradually to see we shouldn't be happy together and all the usual dirty, little lies. Tell yourself falsehoods if you like--you needn't waste time telling them to me. I'll tell you the truth; and that is that you're a low, mean coward and bully--a creature to sicken the air for any honest man or woman. And you know it behind your big talk. What did you do? You seduced me under promise of marriage, and when your brother heard what you'd done and flung you out of the Mill, you ran to your aunt. And she said, 'Choose between ruin and no money, and Sabina and money from me.' And so you agreed to marry me--to keep yourself in cash. And then, when all was changed and you found yourself a rich man, you lied again and deserted me, and wronged your child--ruined us both. That's what you did, and what you are." "If you really believe that's the one and only version, I'm afraid we shan't come to an understanding," he said quietly. "You mustn't think so badly of me as that, Sabina." "Your aunt does. That's how she sees it, being an honest woman." "I must try to show you you're wrong--in time. For the moment I'm only concerned to do everything in my power to make your future secure and calm your mind." "Are you? Then marry me. That's the only way you can make my future secure, and you well know it." "I can't marry you. I shall never marry. I am very firmly convinced that to marry a woman is to do her a great injury nine times out of ten." "Worse than seducing her and leaving her alone in the world with a bastard child, I suppose?" "You're not alone in the world, and your child is my child, and I recognise the fullest obligations to you both." "Liar! If you'd recognised your obligations, you wouldn't have let it come into the world nameless and fatherless." She rose. "You want everything your own way, and you think you can bend everything to your own way. But you'll not bend me no more. You've broke me, and you've broke your child. We're rubbish--rubbish on the world's rubbish heap--flung there by you. I, that was so proud of myself! We'll go to the grave shamed and outcast--failures for people to laugh at or preach over. Your child's doomed now. The State and the Church both turn their backs on such as him. You can't make him your lawful son now." "I can do for him all any father can do for a son." "You shall do nought for him! He's part of me--not you. If you hold back from me, you hold back from him. God's my judge he shan't receive a crust from your hands. You've given him enough. He's got you to thank for a ruined life. He shan't have anything more from you while I can stand between. Don't you trouble for him. You go on from strength to strength and the people will praise your hard work and your goodness to the workers--such a pattern master as you'll be." "May time make you feel differently, Sabina," he answered. "I've deserved this--all of it. I'm quite ready to grant I've done wrong. But I'm not going to do more if I can help it. I want to be your friend in the highest and worthiest sense possible. I want to atone to you for the past, and I want to stand up for your child through thick and thin, and bear the reproach that he must be to me as long as I live. I've weighed all that. But power can challenge the indifference of the State and the cowardice of the Church. The dirty laws will be blotted out by public opinion some day. The child can grow up to be my son and heir, as he will be my first care and thought. Everything that is mine can be his and yours--" "That's all one now," she said. "He touches nothing of yours while I touch nothing of yours. There's only one way to bring me and the child into your life, Raymond Ironsyde, and that's by marrying me. Without that we'll not acknowledge you. I'd rather go on the streets than do it. I'd rather tie a brick round your child's neck and drown him like an unwanted dog than let him have comfort from you. And God judge me if I'll depart from that if I live to be a hundred." "You're being badly advised, Sabina. I never thought to hear you talk like this. Perhaps it's the fact that I'm here myself annoys you. Will you let my lawyer see you?" "Marry me--marry me--you that loved me. All less than that is insult." "We must leave it, then. Would you like me to see my child?" "See him! Why? You'll never see him if I can help it. You'd blast his little, trusting eyes. But I won't drown him--you needn't fear that. I'll fight for him, and find friends for him. There's a few clean people left who won't make him suffer for your sins. He'll live to spit on your grave yet." Then she left the room, and he got up and went from the house. BOOK II ESTELLE CHAPTER I THE FLYING YEARS But little can even the most complete biography furnish of a man's days. It is argued that essentials are all that matter, and that since one year is often like another, and life merely a matter of occasional mountain peaks in flat country, the outstanding events alone need be chronicled with any excuse. But who knows the essential, since biographists must perforce omit the spade work of life on character, the gradual attrition or upbuilding of principles under experience, and the strain and stress, that, sooner or later, bear fruit in action? Even autobiography, as all other history, needs must be incomplete, since no man himself exactly appreciated the vital experiences that made him what he is, or turns him from what he was; while even if the secret belongs to the protagonist, and intellect and understanding have enabled him to grasp the reality of his progress, or retrogression, he will be jealous to guard such truths and, for pride, or modesty, conceal the real fountains of inspiration that were responsible for progress, or the temptations to error that found his weakest spots, blocked his advance, and rendered futile his highest hopes. The man who knows his inner defeats will not declare them honestly, even if egotism induces an autobiography; while the biographist, being ignorant of his hero's real, psychological existence, secret life, and those thousand hidden influences that have touched him and caused him to react, cannot, with all the will in the world to be true, relate more than superficial truths concerning him. Ten years may only be recorded as lengthening the lives of Raymond Ironsyde, Sabina Dinnett and their son, together with those interested in them. Time, the supreme solvent, flows over existence, submerging here, lifting there, altering the relative attitudes of husband and wife, parent and child, friend and enemy. For no human relation is static. The ebb and flow forget not the closest or remotest connection between members of the human family; not a friendship or interest stands still, and not a love or a hate. Time operates upon every human emotion as it operates upon physical life; and ten years left no single situation at Bridetown or Bridport unchallenged. Death cut few knots; since accident willed that one alone fell among those with whom we are concerned. For the rest, years brought their palliatives and corrosives, soothed here, fretted there; here buried old griefs and healed old sores; here calloused troubles, so that they only throbbed intermittently; here built up new enthusiasms, awakened new loves, barbed new enmities. Things that looked impossible on the day that Ironsyde heard Sabina scorn him, happened. Threats evaporated, danger signals disappeared; but, in other cases, while the jagged edges and peaks of bitterness and contempt were worn away by a decade of years, the solid rocks from which they sprang persisted and the massive reasons for emotion were not moved, albeit their sharpest expressions vanished. Some loves faded into likings, and their raptures to a placid contentment, built as much on the convenience of habit as the memories of a passionate past; other affections, less fortunate, perished and left nothing but remains unlovely. Hates also, with their sharpest bristles rubbed down, were modified to bluntness, and left a mere lumpish aversion of mind. Some dislikes altogether perished and gave place to indifference; some persisted as the shadow of their former selves; some were kept alive by absurd pride in those who pretended, for their credit's sake, a steadfastness they were not really built to feel. Sabina, for example, was constitutionally unequal to any supreme and all-controlling passion unless it had been love; yet still she preserved that inimical attitude to Raymond Ironsyde she had promised to entertain; though in reality the fire was gone and the ashes cold. She knew it, but was willing to rekindle the flame if material offered, as now it threatened to do. Ernest Churchouse had published his book upon 'The Bells of Dorset' and, feeling that it represented his life work, declared himself content. He had grown still less active, but found abundant interests in literature and friendship. He undertook the instruction of Sabina's son and, from time to time, reported upon the child. His first friend was now Estelle Waldron, who, at this stage of her development, found the old and childlike man chime with her hopes and aspirations. Estelle was passing through the phase not uncommon to one of her nature. For a time her early womanhood found food in poetry, and her mind, apparently fashioned to advance the world's welfare and add to human happiness, reposed as it seemed on an interlude of reading and the pursuit of beauty. She developed fast to a point--the point whereat she had established a library and common room for the Mill hands; the point at which the girls called her 'Our Lady,' and very honestly loved her for herself as well as for the good she brought them. Now, however, her activities were turned inward and she sought to atone for an education incomplete. She had never gone to school, and her governesses, while able and sufficient, could not do for her what only school life can do. This experience, though held needless and doubtful in many opinions, Estelle felt to miss and her conscience prompted her to go to London and mix with other people, while her inclination tempted her to stop with her father. She went to London for two years and worked upon a woman's newspaper. Then she fell ill and came home and spent her time with Arthur Waldron, with Raymond Ironsyde, and with Ernest Churchouse. A girl friend or two from London also came to visit her. She recovered perfect health, and having contracted a great new worship for poetry in her convalescence, retained it afterwards. Ernest was her ally, for he loved poetry--an understanding denied to her other friends. So Estelle passed through a period of dreaming, while her intellect grew larger and her human sympathy no less. She had developed into a handsome woman with regular features, a large and almost stately presence and a direct, undraped manner not shadowed as yet by any ray of sex instinct. Nature, with her many endowments, chose to withhold the feminine challenge. She was as stark and pure as the moon. Young men, drawn by her smile, fled from her self. Her father's friends regarded her much as he did: with a sort of uneasy admiration. The people were fond of her, and older women declared that she would never marry. Of such was Miss Jenny Ironsyde. "Estelle's children will be good works," she told Raymond. For she and her nephew were friends again. The steady tides of time had washed away her prophecy of eternal enmity, and increasing infirmity made her seek companionship where she could find it. Moreover, she remembered a word that she had spoken to Raymond in the past, when she told him how a grudge entertained by one human being against another poisons character and ruins the steadfast outlook upon life. She escaped that danger. It is a quality of small minds rather than of great to remain unchanged. They fossilise more quickly, are more concentrated, have a power to freeze into a mould and preserve it against the teeth of time, or the wit and wisdom of the world. The result is ugly or beautiful, according to the emotion thus for ever embalmed. The loves of such people are intuitive--shared with instinct and above, or below, reason; their hate is similarly impenetrable--preserved in a vacuum. For only a vacuum can hold the sweet for ever untainted, or the bitter for ever unalloyed. Mary Dinnett belonged to this order. She was now dead, and concerning the legacy of her unchanging attitude more will presently appear. As for Nelly Northover, she had long been the wife of Mr. Job Legg. That pertinacious man achieved his end at last, and what his few enemies declared was guile, and his many friends held to be tact, won Nelly to him a year after her adventure with Mr. Gurd. None congratulated them more heartily than the master of 'The Tiger.' Indeed, when 'The Seven Stars' blazed out anew on an azure firmament--the least of many changes that refreshed and invigorated that famous house--'The Tiger' also shone forth in savage splendour and his black and orange stripes blazed again from a mass of tropical vegetation. And beneath the inn signs prosperity continued to obtain. Mr. Gurd grew less energetic than of yore, while Mrs. Legg put on much flesh and daily perceived her wisdom in linking Job for ever to the enterprise for which she lived. He became thinner, if anything, and Time toiled after him in vain. Immense success rewarded his innovations, and the tea-gardens of 'The Seven Stars' had long become a feature of Bridport's social life. People hinted that Mr. Legg was not the meek and mild spirit of ancient opinion and that Nelly knew it; but this suggestion may be held no more than the penalty of fame--an activity of the baser sort, who ever drop vinegar of detraction into the oil of content. John Best still reigned at the Mill, though he had himself already chosen the young man destined to wear his mantle in process of time. To leave the works meant to leave his garden; and that he was unprepared to do until failing energies made it necessary. A decade saw changes among the workers, but not many. Sally Groves had retired to braid for the firm at home, and old Mrs. Chick was also gone; but the other hands remained and the staff had slightly increased. Nancy Buckler was chief spinner now; Sarah Roberts still minded the spreader, and Nicholas continued at the lathes. Benny Cogle had a new Otto gas engine to look after, and Mercy Gale, now married to him, still worked in the warping chamber. Levi Baggs would not retire, and since he hackled with his old master, the untameable man, now more than sixty years old, still kept his place, still flouted the accepted order, still read sinister motives into every human activity. New machinery had increased the prosperity of the enterprise, but to no considerable extent. Competition continued keen as ever, and each year saw the workers winning slightly increased power through the advance of labour interests. Raymond Ironsyde was satisfied and remained largely unchanged. He had hardened in opinion and increased in knowledge. He lacked imagination and, as of old, trusted to the machine; but he was rational and proved a capable, second class man of sound judgment and trustworthy in all his undertakings. Sport continued to be a living interest of his life, and since he had no ties that involved an establishment, he gladly accepted Arthur Waldron's offer of a permanent home. It came to him after he had travelled largely and been for three years master of the works. Arthur was delighted when Raymond accepted his suggestion and made his abode at North Hill. They hunted and shot together; and Waldron, who now judged that the time for golf had come in his case, devoted the moiety of his life to that pastime. Ironsyde worked hard and was held in respect. The circumstance of his child had long been accepted and understood. He exhausted his energy and patience in endeavours to maintain and advance the boy; and those justified in so doing lost no opportunity to urge on Sabina Dinnett the justice of his demand; but here nothing could change her. She refused to recognise Raymond, or receive from him any assistance in the education and nurture of his son. She had called him Abel, and as Abel Dinnett the lad was known. He resembled her in that he was dark and of an excitable and uneven temperament. He might be easily elated and as easily cast down. Raymond, who kept a secret eye upon the child, trusted that in a few years his turn would come, though at present denied. At first he resented the resolution that shut him out of his son's life; but the matter had long since sunk to unimportance and he believed that when Abel came to years of understanding, he would recognise his own interests and blame those responsible for ignoring them in his childhood. Upon this opinion hinged the future of not a few persons. It developed into a conviction permanently established at the back of his mind; but since Sabina and others came between, he was content to let them do so and relied upon his son's intelligence in time to come. For years he did not again seek the child's acquaintance after a rebuff, and made no attempt to interfere with the operations of Abel's grandmother and mother--to keep them wholly apart. Thus, after all, the gratification of their purpose was devoid of savour and Ironsyde's indifferent acquiescence robbed their will of its triumph. He had told Mary Dinnett, through Ernest Churchouse, that she and her daughter must proceed as they thought fit and that, in any case, the last word would be with him. Here, however, he misvalued the strength of the forces arrayed against him, and only the future proved whether the seed sowed in Abel Dinnett's youthful heart was fertile or barren--whether, by the blood in his own veins, he would offer soil of character to develop enmity to the man who got him, or reveal a nature slow to anger and impatient of wrath. For Ernest Churchouse these problems offered occupation and he stood as an intermediary between the interests that clashed in the child. He made himself responsible for a measure of the boy's education and, sometimes, reported to Estelle such development of character as he perceived. In secret, inspired by the rival claims of heredity and environment, Ernest strove to cast a scientific horoscope of little Abel's probable future. But to-day contradicted yesterday, and to-morrow proved both untrustworthy. The child was always changing, developing new ideas, indicating new possibilities. It appeared too soon yet to say what he would be, or predict his character and force of purpose. Thus he grew, and when he was eight years old, his first friend and ally--his grandmother--died. Mr. Churchouse, who had long deplored her influence for Abel's sake, was hopeful that this departure might prove a blessing. Now Sabina had taken her mother's place and she looked after Ernest well enough. He always hoped that she would marry, and she had been asked to do so more than once, but felt tempted to no such step. Thus, then, things stood, and any change of focus and altered outlook in these people, that may serve to suggest discontinuity with their past, must be explained by the passage of ten years. Such a period had renewed all physically--a fact full of subtle connotations. It had sharpened the youthful and matured the adult mind; it had dimmed the senses sinking upon nature's night time and strengthened the dawning will and opening intellect. For as a ship furls her spread of sail on entering harbour, so age reduces the scope of the mind and its energies to catch every fresh ripple of the breeze that blows out of progress and change. The centre of the stage, too, gradually reveals new performers; the gaze of manhood is turned on new figures; the limelight of human interest throws up the coming forces of activity and intellect; while those who yesterday shone supreme, slowly pass into the penumbra that heralds eclipse. And who bulk big enough to arrest the eternal march, delay their own progress from light to darkness, or stay the eager young feet tramping outward of the dayspring to take their places in the day? Life moves so fast that many a man lives to see the dust thick on his own name in the scroll of merit and taste a regret that only reason can allay. Fate had denied Sabina Dinnett her brief apotheosis. From dark to dark she had gone; yet time had purged her mind of any large bitterness. She looked on and watched Raymond's sojourn in the light from a standpoint negative and indifferent. The future for her held interest, for she could not cease to be interested in him, though she knew that he had long since ceased to be interested in her. From the cool cloisters of her obscurity she watched and was only strong in opinion at one point. She dreamed of her son making his way and succeeding in the world; she welcomed Mr. Churchouse's assurance as to the lad's mental progress and promise; but she was determined as ever that not, if she could help it, should Abel enter terms of friendship with his father. Thus the relations subsisted, while, strange to record, in practice they had long been accepted as part of the order of things at Bridetown. They ceased even to form matter for gossip. For Raymond Ironsyde was greater here than the lord of the manor, or any other force. The Mill continued to be the heart of the village. Through the Mill the lifeblood circulated; by the Mill the prosperity of the people was regulated; and since the master saw that on his own prosperity reposed the prosperity of those whom he employed, there was none to decry him, or echo a disordered past in the ear of the well-ordered present. CHAPTER II THE SEA GARDEN Bride river still flowed her old way to her work and came, by goldilocks and grasses, by reedmace and angelica, to the mill-race and water-wheel. But now, where the old wheel thundered, there yawned a gap, for the river's power was about to be conserved to better purpose than of old, and as the new machines now demanded greater forces to drive them, so human skill found a way to increase the applied strength of a streamlet. Against the outer wall of the Mill now hung a turbine and Raymond, Estelle and others had assembled to see it in operation for the first time. Bride was bottled here, and instead of flashing and foaming over the water wheel as of yore, now vanished into the turbine and presently appeared again below it. Raymond explained the machine with gusto, and Estelle mourned the wheel, yet as one who knew its departure was inevitable. It was summer time, and after John Best had displayed the significance of the turbine and the increased powers generated thereby, Raymond strolled down the valley beside the river at Estelle's invitation. She had something to show him at the mouth of the stream--a sea garden, now in all its beauty and precious to her. For though her mind had winged far beyond the joys of childhood and was occupied with greater matters than field botany, still she loved the wild flowers and welcomed them again in their seasons. Their speech drifted to the people, and he told how some welcomed the new appliance and some doubted. Then Raymond spoke of Sabina Dinnett in sympathetic ears. For now Estelle understood the past; but she had never wavered in her friendship with Sabina, any more than had diminished her sister-like attachment to Raymond. Now, as often, he regretted the attitude his child preserved towards him and expressed sorrow that he could not break down Abel's distrust. "More than distrust, in fact, for the kid dislikes me," he said. "You know he does, Chicky. But I never can understand why, because he's always with his mother and Uncle Ernest, and Sabina doesn't bear me any malice now, to my knowledge. Surely the child must come round sooner or later?" "When he's old enough to understand, I expect he will," she said. "But you'll have to be patient, Ray." "Oh, yes--that's my strong suit nowadays." "He's a clever little chap, so Sabina says; but he's difficult and wayward. He won't be friends with me." Raymond changed the subject and praised the valley as it opened to the sea. "What a jolly place! I believe there are scores of delightful spots at Bridetown within a walk, and I'm always too busy to see them." "That's certain. I could show you scores." "I ought to know the place I live in, better. I don't even know the soil I walk on--awful ignorance." "The soil is oolite and clay, and the subsoil, which you see in the cliffs, is yellow sandstone--the loveliest, goldenest soil in the world," declared Estelle. "The colour of a bath sponge," he said, and she pretended despair. "Oh dear! And I really thought I had seen the dawning of poetry in you, Ray." "Merely reflected from yourself, Chicky. Still I'm improving. The turbine has a poetic side, don't you think?" "I suppose it has. Science is poetic--at any rate, the history of science is full of poetry--if you know what poetry means." "I wish I had more time for such things," he said. "Perhaps I shall have some day. To be in trade is rather deadening though. There seems so little to show for all my activities--only hundreds of thousands of miles of string. In weak moments I sometimes ask myself if, after all, it is good enough." "They must be very weak moments, indeed," said Estelle. "Perhaps you'll tell me how the world could get on without string?" "I don't know. But you, with all your love of beautiful things, ought to understand me instead of jumping on me. What is beauty? No two people feel the same about it, surely? You'd say a poem was beautiful; I'd say a square cut for four, just out of reach of cover point, was beautiful. Your father would say, a book on shooting high pheasants was beautiful, if he agreed with it; John Best would say a good sample of shop twine was beautiful." "We should all be right, beauty is in all those things. I can see that. I can even see that shooting birds with great skill, as father does, is beautiful--not the slaughter of the bird, which can't be beautiful, but the way it's done. But those are small things. With the workers you want to begin at the beginning and show them--what Mister Best knows--that the beauty of the thing they make depends on it being well and truly made." "They're restless." "Yes; they're reaching out for more happiness, like everybody else." "I wouldn't back the next generation of capitalists to hold the fort against labour." "Perhaps the next generation won't want to," she said. "Perhaps by that time we shall be educated up to the idea that rich people are quite as anti-social as poor people. Then we shall do away with both poverty and riches. To us, educated on the old values, it would come as a shock, but the generation that is born into such a world would accept it as a matter of course and not grumble." He laughed. "Don't believe it, Chicky. Every generation has its own hawks and eagles as well as its sheep. The strong will always want the fulness of the earth and always try to inspire the weak to help them get it. With great leadership you must have equivalent rewards." "Why? Cannot you imagine men big enough to work for humanity without reward? Have there not been plenty of such men--before Christ, as well as since?" "Power is reward," he answered. "No man is so great that he is indifferent to power, for his greatness depends upon it; and if power was dissipated to-morrow and diluted until none could call himself a leader, we should have a reaction at once and the sheep would grow frightened and bleat for a shepherd. And the shepherd would very soon appear." They stood where the cliffs broke and Bride ended her journey at the sea. She came gently without any splendid nuptials to the lover of rivers. Her brief course run, her last silver loop wound through the meadows, she ended in a placid pool amid the sand ridges above high-water mark. The yellow cliffs climbed up again on either side, and near the chalice in the grey beach whence, invisible, the river sank away to win the sea by stealth, spread Estelle's sea garden--an expanse of stone and sand enriched by many flowers that seemed to crown the river pool with a garland, or weave a wreath for Bride's grave in the sand. Here were pale gold of poppies, red gold of lotus and rich lichens that made the sea-worn pebbles shine. Sea thistle spread glaucous foliage and lifted its blue blossoms; stone-crops and thrifts, tiny trefoils and couch grasses were woven into the sand, and pink storks-bill and silvery convolvulus brought cool colour to this harmony spread beside the purple sea. The day was one of shadow and sunshine mingled, and from time to time, through passages of grey that lowered the glory of Estelle's sea garden, a sunburst came to set all glittering once more, to flash upon the river, lighten the masses of distant elm, and throw up the red roofs and grey church tower of Bridetown and her encircling hills. "What a jolly place it is," he said taking out his cigar case. Then they sat in the shadow of a fishing boat, drawn up here, and Raymond lamented the unlovely end of the river. While he did so, the girl regarded him with affection and a secret interest and entertainment. For it amused her often to hear him echo thoughts that had come to her in the past. In a lesser degree her father did the like; but he belonged to a still older generation, and it was with Raymond that she found herself chiefly concerned, when he announced, as original, ideas and discoveries that reflected her own dreams in the past. Sometimes she thought he was catching up; sometimes, again, she distanced him and felt herself grown up and Raymond still a boy. Then, sometimes, he would flush a covey of ideas outside her reflections, and so remind her of the things that interested men, in which, as yet, women took no interest. When he spoke of such things, she strove to learn all that he could teach concerning them. But soon she found that was not much. He did not think deeply and she quickly caught him up, if she desired to do so. Now he uttered just the same, trivial lament that she had uttered when she was a child. She was pleased, for she rather loved to feel herself older in mind than Raymond. It added a lustre to friendship and made her happy--why, she knew not. "What a wretched end--to be choked up in the shingle like that," he said, "instead of dashing out gloriously and losing yourself in the sea!" She smiled gently to herself. "I thought that once, then I was ever so sorry for poor little Bride." "A bride without a wedding," he said. "No. She steals to him; she wins his salt kisses and finds them sweet enough. They mate down deep out of sight of all eyes. So you needn't be sorry for her really." "It's like watching people try ever so hard to do something and never bring it off." "Yes--even more like than you think, Ray; because we feel sad at such apparent failures, and yet what we are looking at may be a victory really, only our dull eyes miss it." "I daresay many people are succeeding who don't appear to be," he admitted. "Goodness can't be wasted. It may be poured into the sand all unseen and unsung; but it conquers somehow and does something worth doing, even though no eye can see what. Plenty of good things happen in the world--good and helpful things--that are never recorded, or even recognised." "Like a stonewaller in a cricket match. The people cuss him, but he may determine who is going to win." She laughed at the simile. They went homeward presently, Estelle quietly content to have shown Raymond the flower-sprinkled strand, and he well pleased to have pleasured her. CHAPTER III A TWIST FRAME Raymond Ironsyde grumbled sometimes at the Factory Act and protested against grandmotherly legislation. Yet in some directions he anticipated it. He went, for example, beyond the Flax Mill Ventilation Regulations. He loved fresh air himself, and took vast pains to make his works sweet and wholesome for those who breathed therein. Even Levi Baggs could not grumble, for the exhaust draught in his hackling shop was stronger than the law demanded, and the new cyclone separators in the main buildings served to keep the air far purer than of old. Ironsyde had established also the Kestner System of atomising water, to regulate temperature and counteract the electrical effects of east wind, or frost, on the light slivers. He was always on the lookout for new automatic means to regulate the drags on the bobbins. He had installed an automatic doffing apparatus, and made a departure from the usual dry spinning in a demi-sec, or half-dry, spinning frame, which was new at that time, and had offered excellent results and spun a beautifully smooth yarn. These things all served to assist and relieve the workers in varying degree, but, as Raymond often pointed out, they were taken for granted and, sometimes, in his gloomier moments, he accused his people of lacking gratitude. They, for their part, were being gradually caught up in the growing movements of labour. The unintelligent forgot to credit the master with his consideration; while those who could think, were often soured by suspicion. These ignorant spirits doubted not that he was seeking to win their friendship against the rainy days in store for capital. Ironsyde came to the works one morning to watch a new Twist Frame and a new operator. The single strand yarn for material from the spinners was coming to the Twist Frame to be turned into twines and fishing lines. Four full bobbins from the spinning machine went to each spindle of the Twist Frame, and from it emerged a strong 'four-ply.' It was a machine more complicated than the spinner; and, as only a good billiard player can appreciate the cleverness of a great player, so only a spinner might have admired the rare technical skill of the woman who controlled the Twist Frame. The soul of the works persisted, though the people and the machines were changed. The old photographs and old verses had gone, but new pictures and poems took their places in the workers' corners; and new fashion-plates hung where the old ones used to hang. The drawers, and the rovers, the spreaders and the spinners still, like bower-birds, adorned the scenes of their toil. A valentine or two and the portrait of a gamekeeper and his dog hung beside the carding machine; for Sally Groves had retired and a younger woman was in her place. She, too, fed the Card by hand, but not so perfectly as Sally was wont to do. Estelle had come to see the Twist Frame. She cared much for the Mill women and spent a good portion of her hours with them. A very genuine friendship, little tainted with time-serving, or self-interest, obtained for her in the works. On her side, she valued the goodwill of the workers as her best possession, and found among them a field for study in human nature and, in their work, matter for poetry and art. For were not all three Fates to be seen at their eternal business here? Clotho attended the Spread Board; the can-minders coiling away the sliver, stood for Lachesis; while in the spinners, who cut the thread when the bobbin was full, Estelle found Atropos, the goddess of the shears. Mr. Best, grown grizzled, but active still and with no immediate thoughts of retirement, observed the operations of the new spinner at the Twist Frame. She was a woman from Bridport, lured to Bridetown by increase of wages. John, who was a man of enthusiasms, turned to Estelle. "The best spinner that ever came to Bridetown," he whispered. "Better than Sabina Dinnett?" she asked; and Best declared that she was. So passage of time soon deadens the outline of all achievement, and living events that happen under our eyes, offer a statement of the quick and real with which beautiful dead things, embalmed in the amber of memory, cannot cope. "Sabina, at her best, never touched her, Miss Waldron." "Sabina braids still in her spare time. Nobody makes better nets." "This is a cousin of Sarah Roberts," explained the foreman. "Spinning runs in the Northover family, and though Sarah is a spreader and never will be anything else, there have been wondrous good spinners in the clan. This girl is called Milly Morton, and her mother and grandmother spun before her. Her father was Jack Morton, one of the last of the old hand spinners. To see him walking backwards from his wheel, and paying out fibre from his waist with one hand and holding up the yarn with the other, was a very good sight. He'd spin very nearly a hundred pounds of hemp in a ten hours' day, and turn out seven or eight miles of yarn, and walk every yard of it, of course. The rope makers swore by him." "I'm sure spinning runs in the blood!" agreed Estelle. "Both Sarah's little girls are longing for the time when they can come into the Mill and mind cans; and, of course, the boy wants to do his father's work and be a lathe hand." Best nodded. "You've hit it," he declared. "It runs in the blood in a very strange fashion. Take Sabina's child. By all accounts, his old grandmother did everything in her power to poison his mind against the Mill as well as the master. She was a lot bitterer than Sabina herself, as the years went on; and if you could look back and uncover the past, you'd find it was her secret work to make that child what he is. But the Mill draws him like cheese draws a mouse. I'll find him here a dozen times in a month--just popping in when my back's turned. Why he comes I couldn't say; but I think it is because his mother was a spinner and the feeling for the craft is in him." "His father is a spinner, too, for that matter," suggested Estelle. "In the larger sense of ownership, yes; but it isn't that that draws him. His father's got no great part in him by all accounts. It's the mother in him that brings him here. Not that she knows he comes so often, and I dare say she'd be a good deal put about if she did." "Why shouldn't he come, John?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I see no reason against. One gets so used to the situation that its strangeness passes off, but it's very awkward, so to say, that nothing can be done for Abel by his father. Sabina's wrong to hold out there, and so I've told her." "She doesn't influence Abel one way or the other. The child seems to hate Mister Ironsyde." "Well, he loves the Mill, though you'd think he might hate that for his father's sake." "He's hard for a little creature of ten years old," said Estelle. "He won't make friends with me, but holds off and regards me--just as rabbits and things regard one, before they finally run away. I pretend I don't notice it. He'll listen and even talk if I meet him with his mother; but if I meet him alone, he flies. He generally bolts through a hole in the hedge, or somewhere." "He links you up with Mister Raymond," explained Mr. Best. "He knows you live at North Hill House, and so he's suspicious. You can disarm him, however, for he's got reasoning parts quite up to the average if not above. He's the sort of boy that if you don't want him to steal your apples, you've only got to give him a few now and then; and then he rises to the situation and feels in honour bound to be straight, because you've lifted him to be your equal." "I call that a very good character." "It might be a lot worse, no doubt." "I wanted him to come to our outing, but he won't do that, though his mother asked him to go." The outing, an annual whole holiday, was won for the Mill by Estelle, and for the past four years she had taken all who cared to come for a long day by the sea. They always went to Weymouth, where amusement offered to suit every taste. "More than ever are coming this year," John told her. "In fact, I believe pretty well everybody's going but Levi Baggs." "I'm glad. We'll have the two wagonettes from 'The Seven Stars' as usual. If you are going into Bridport you might tell Missis Legg." "The two big ones we shall want, and they must be here sharp at six o'clock," declared Mr. Best. "There's nothing like getting off early. I'll speak to Job Legg about it and tell him to start 'em off earlier. You can trust it to Job as to the wagonettes being opened or covered. He's a very weather-wise person and always smells rain twelve hours in advance." CHAPTER IV THE RED HAND The Mill had a fascination for all Bridetown children and they would trespass boldly and brave all perils to get a glimpse of the machinery. The thunder of the engines drew them, and there were all manner of interesting fragments to be picked up round and about. That they were not permitted within the radius of the works was also a sound reason for being there, and many boys could tell of great adventures and hairbreadth escapes from Mr. Best, Mr. Benny Cogle and, above all, Mr. Baggs. For Mr. Baggs, to the mind of youth, exhibited ogre-like qualities. They knew him as a deadly enemy, for which reason there was no part of the works that possessed a greater or more horrid fascination than the hackling shop. To have entered the den of Mr. Baggs marked a Bridetown lad as worthy of highest respect in his circle. But proofs were always demanded of such a high achievement. When Levi caught the adventurer, as sometimes happened, proofs were invariably apparent and a posterior evidence never lacked of a reverse for the offensive; but youth will be served, even though age sometimes serves it rather harshly, and the boys were untiring. Unless Levi locked the shop, when he went home at noon to dinner, there was always the chance of a raid with a strick or two possibly missing as proof of success. Sabina had told Abel that he must keep away from the works, but he ignored her direction and often revolved about them at moments of liberty. He was a past master in the art of scouting and evading danger, yet loved danger, and the Mill offered him daily possibilities of both courting and escaping peril. Together with other little boys nourished on a penny journal, Abel had joined the 'Band of the Red Hand.' They did no harm, but hoped some day, when they grew older, to make a more' painful impression on Bridetown. At present their modest ambition was to leave the mark of their secret society in every unexpected spot possible. On private walls, in church and chapel, or the house-places of the farms, it was their joy to write with chalk, 'The Red Hand has been here.' Then followed a circle and a cross--the dark symbol of the brotherhood. Once a former chief of the gang had left his mark in the hackling shop and more than one member had similarly adorned the interior of the Mill; but the old chief had gone to sea at the age of thirteen, and, though younger than some of the present members, Abel was now appointed leader and always felt the demand to attempt things that should be worthy of so high a state. They were not the everyday boys who thus combined, but a sort of child less common, yet not uncommon. Such lads scent one another out by parity of taste and care less for gregarious games than isolated or lonely adventures. They would rather go trespassing than play cricket; they would organise a secret raid before a public pastime. Intuitively they desire romance, and feeling that law and order is opposed to romance, find the need to flout law and order in measure of their strength, and, of course, applaud the successful companion who does so with most complete results. Now 'the old Adam'--a comprehensive term for independence of view and unpreparedness to accept the tried values of pastors and masters--was strong in Abel Dinnett. He loved life, but hated discipline, and for him the Mill possessed far more significance than it could offer to any lesser member of the band, since his father owned it. For that much Abel apprehended, though the meaning of paternity was as yet hidden from him. That Raymond Ironsyde was his father he understood, and that he must hate him heartily he also understood: his dead grandmother had poured this precept into his young mind at its most receptive period. For the present he was still too youthful to rise beyond this general principle, and he was far too busy with his own adventures to find leisure to hate any one more than fitfully. He told the Red Handers that some day he designed a terrific attack on Raymond Ironsyde; and they promised to assist and support him; but they all recognised their greater manifestations must be left until they attained more weight in the cosmic and social schemes, and, for the moment, their endeavour rose little higher than to set their fatal sign where least it might be expected. To this end came dark-eyed Abel to the Mill at an hour when he should have been at his dinner. Ere long his activities might be curtailed, for he was threatened with a preparatory school in the autumn; but before that happened, the Red Hand must be set in certain high places, and the hackling shop of Levi Baggs was first among them. Abel wore knickerbockers and his feet and legs were bare, for he had just waded across the river beyond the Mill, and meant to retreat by the same road. He had hidden in a may bush till the people were all gone to their meal, and then crossed the stream into the works. That the door of the hackler's would be open he did not expect, for Levi locked it when he went home; but there was a little window, and Abel, who had a theory that where his head could go, his body could follow, believed that by the window it would be possible to make his entrance. The contrary of what he expected happened, however, for the window was shut and the door on the latch. Fate willed that on the very day of Abel's attack, Mr. Baggs should be spending the dinner-hour in his shop. His sister, who looked after him, was from home until the evening, and Levi had brought his dinner to the works. He was eating it when the boy very cautiously opened the door, and since Mr. Baggs sat exactly behind the door, this action served to conceal him. The intruder therefore thought the place empty, and proceeded with his operations while Levi made no sound, but watched him. Taking a piece of chalk from his pocket Abel wrote the words of terror, 'The Red Hand has been here,' and set down the circle and cross. Then he picked up one of the bright stricks, that lay beside the hackling board, and was just about to depart in triumph, when Mr. Baggs banged the door and revealed himself. Thus discomfited, Abel grew pale and then flushed. Mr. Baggs was a very big and strong man and the culprit knew that he must now prepare for the pangs that attended failure. But he bore pain well. He had been operated upon for faulty tendons when he was five and proved a Spartan patient. He stood now waiting for Mr. Baggs. Other victims had reported that it was Levi's custom to use a strap from his own waist when he beat a boy, and Abel, even at this tense moment, wondered whether he would now do so. "It's you, is it?" said Mr. Baggs. "And the Red Hand has been here, has it? And perhaps the red something else will go away from here. You're a darned young thief--that's what you are." "I ain't yet," argued Abel. His voice fluttered, for his heart was beating very fast. "You're as good, however, for you was going to take my strick. The will was there, though I prevented the deed." "I had to show the Band as I'd been here." "Why did you come? What sense is there to it?" Abel regarded Mr. Baggs doubtfully and did not reply. "Just to show you're a bit out of the common, perhaps?" Abel clutched at the suggestion. His eyes looked sideways slyly at Mr. Baggs. The ogre seemed inclined to talk, and through speech might come salvation, for he had acted rather than talked on previous occasions. "We want to be different from common boys," said the marauder. "Well, you are, for one, and there's no need to trouble in your case. You was born different, and different you've got to be. I suppose you've been told often enough who your father is?" "Yes, I have." "Small wonder then that you've got your knife into the world at large, I reckon. What thinking man, or boy, has not for that matter? So you're up against the laws and out for the liberties? Well, I don't quarrel with that. Only you're too young yet to understand what a lot you've got to grumble at. Some day you will." Abel said nothing. He hardly listened, and thought far less of what Mr. Baggs was saying than of what he himself would say to his companions after this great adventure. To make friends with the ogre was no mean feat, even for a member of the Red Hand. What motiveless malignity actuated Levi Baggs meanwhile, who can say? He was now a man in sight of seventy, yet his crabbed soul would exude gall under pressure as of yore. None was ever cheered or heartened by anything he might say; but to cast a neighbour down, or make a confident and contented man doubtful and discontented, affected Mr. Baggs favourably and rendered him as cheerful as his chronic pessimism ever permitted him to be. He bade the child sit and gave him his portion of currant dumpling. "Put that down your neck," he said, "and don't you think so bad of me in future. I treat other people same as they treat me, and that's a rule that works out pretty fair in practice, if you've got the power to follow it. But some folks are too weak to treat other people as they are treated--you, for example. You're one of the unlucky ones, you are, Abel Dinnett." Abel enjoyed the pudding; and still his mind dwelt more on future narration of this great incident than on the incident itself. With unconscious art, he felt that the moment when this tale was told, would be far greater for him than the moment when it happened. "I ain't unlucky, Mister Baggs. I would have been unlucky if you'd beat me; but you've give me your pudding, and I'm on your side till death now." "Well, that's something. I ain't got many my side, I believe. The fearless thinker never has. You can come and see me when you mind to, because I'm sorry for you, owing to your bad fortune. You've been handicapped out of winning the race, Abel. You know what a handicap is in a race? Well, you won't have no chance of winning now, because your father won't own you." "I won't own him," said the boy. "Granny always told me he was my bitterest enemy, and she knew, and I won't trust him--never." "I should think not--nor any other wise chap wouldn't trust him. He's a bad lot. He only believes in machines, not humans." The boy began to be receptive. "He wants to be friends, but I won't be his friend, because I hate him. Only I don't tell mother, because she don't hate him so much as me." "More fool her, then. She ought to hate him. She's got first cause. Do you know who ought to own these works when your father dies?" "No, Mister Baggs." "You. Yes, they did ought to belong to you in justice, because you are his eldest son. Everything ought to be yours, if the world were run by right and fairness and honour. But it's all took from you and you can't lift a finger to better yourself, because you're only his natural son, and Nature may go to hell every time for all the Law and the Church care. Church and Law both hate Nature. So that's why I say you're an unlucky boy; and that's why I say that, despite your father's money and fame and being popular and well thought on and all that, he's a cruel rogue." Abel was puzzled but interested. "If I'm his boy, why ain't my mother his wife, like all the other chaps' fathers have got wives?" "Why ain't your mother his wife? Yes, why? After ten years he'll find that question as hard to answer as it was before you were born, I reckon. And the answer to the question is the same as the answer to many questions about Raymond Ironsyde. And that is, that he is a crooked man who pretends to be a straight one; in a word, a hypocrite. And you'll grow up to understand these things and see what should be yours taken from you and given to other people." "When I grow up, I'll have it out with him," said Abel. "No, you won't. Because he's strong and you're weak. You're weak and poor and nobody, with no father to fight for you and give you a show in the world. And you'll always be the same, so you'll never stand any chance against him." The boy flushed and showed anger. "I won't be weak and poor always." "Against him you will. Suppose you went so far as to let him befriend you, could he ever make up for not marrying your mother? Can he ever make you anything but a bastard and an outcast? No, he can't; and he only wants to educate you and give you a bit of money and decent clothes for the sake of his own conscience. He'll come to you hat in hand some day--not because he cares a damn for you, but that he may stand well in the eyes of the world." Abel now panted with anger, and Mr. Baggs was mildly amused to see how easily the child could be played upon. "I'll grow up and then--" "Don't you worry. You must take life as you find it, and as you haven't found it a very kind thing, you must put up with it. Most people draw blanks, and that's why it's better to stop out of the world than in it. And if we could see into the bottom of every heart, we should very likely find that all draw blanks, and even what looks like prizes are not." Levi laughed after this sweeping announcement. It appeared to put him in a good temper. He even relaxed in the gravity of his prophecies. "However, life is on the side of youth," he said, "and you may come to the front some day, if you've got enough brains. Brains is the only thing that'll save you. Your mother's clever and your father's crafty, so perhaps you'll go one better than either. Perhaps, some day, if you wait long enough, you'll get back on your father, after all." "I will wait long enough," declared Abel. "I don't care how long I wait, but I'll best him, Mister Baggs." "You keep in that righteous spirit and you'll breed a bit of trouble for him some day, I daresay. And now be off, and if you want to come and see me at work and learn about hackling and the business that ought to be yours but won't be, then you can drop in again when you mind to." "Thank you, sir," said Abel. "I will come, and if I say you let me, nobody can stop me." "That's right. I like brave boys that ain't frightened of their betters--so called." Then Abel went off, crossed Bride among the sedges and put on his shoes and stockings again. He had a great deal to think about, and this brief conversation played its part in his growing brain to alter old opinions and waken new ideas. That he had successfully stormed the hackling shop and found the ogre friendly was, of course, good; but already, and long before he could retail the incident, it began to lose its rare savour. He perceived this himself dimly, and it made him uncomfortable and troubled. Something had happened to him; he knew not what, but it dwarfed the operations of the Red Hand, and it even made his personal triumph look smaller than it appeared a little while before. Abel stared at the Mill while he pulled on his stockings and listened to the bell calling the people back to work. By right, then, all these wonders should be his some day; but his father would never give them to him now. He vaguely remembered that his grandmother had said something like this; but it remained for Mr. Baggs to rekindle the impression until Abel became oppressed with its greatness. He considered the problem gloomily for a long time and decided to talk to his mother about it. But he did not. It was characteristic of him that he seldom went to Sabina for any light on his difficulties. Indeed he attached more importance to Mr. Churchouse's opinions than his mother's. He determined to see Levi Baggs again and, meantime, he let a sense of wrong sink into him. Here the Band of the Red Hand offered comfort. It seemed proper to his dawning intelligence that one who had been so badly treated as he, should become the head of the Red Hand. Yet, as the possible development of the movement occurred to Abel, the child began to share the uneasiness of all conspiracy and feel a weakness inherent in the Band. Seen from that modest standard of evil-doing which belonged to Tommy and Billy Keep, Amos Whittle and Jacky Gale, the Red Handers appeared a futile organisation even in Abel's eyes. He felt, as greater than he have felt, that an ideal society should embrace one member only: himself. There were far too many brothers of the Red Hand, and before he reached home he even contemplated resignation. He liked better the thought of playing his own hand, and keeping both its colour and its purpose secret from everybody else in the world. His head was, for the moment, full of unsocial thoughts; but whether the impressions created by Mr. Baggs were likely to persist in a mind so young, looked doubtful. He told his mother nothing, as usual. Indeed, had she guessed half that went on in Abel's brains, she might have sooner undertaken what presently was indicated, and removed herself and her son to a district far beyond their native village. But the necessity did not exist in her thoughts, and when she recognised it, since the inspiration came from without, she was moved to resent rather than accept it. CHAPTER V AN ACCIDENT There was a cricket luncheon at 'The Tiger' when Bridport played its last match for the season against Axminster. The western township had won the first encounter, and Bridport much desired to cry quits over the second. Raymond played on this occasion, and though he failed, the credit of Bridetown was worthily upheld by Nicholas Roberts, the lathe-worker. He did not bowl as fast as of yore, but he bowled better, and since Axminster was out for one hundred and thirty in their first innings, while Bridport had made seventy for two wickets before luncheon, the issue promised well. Job Legg still helped Richard Gurd at great moments as he was wont to do, for prosperity had not modified Job's activity, or diminished his native goodwill. Gurd carved, while Job looked after the bottles. Arthur Waldron, who umpired for Bridport, sat beside Raymond at lunch and condoled with him, because the younger, who had gone in second wicket down, had played himself in very carefully before the interval. "Now you'll have to begin all over again," said Waldron. "I always say luncheon may be worth anything to the bowlers. It rests them, but it puts the batsman's eye out." "Seeing how short of practice you are this year, you were jolly steady, Ray," declared Neddy Motyer, who sat on the other side of Ironsyde. "You stopped some very hot ones." Neddy preserved his old interest in sport, but was now a responsible member of society. He had married and joined his father, a harness-maker, in a prosperous business. "I can't time 'em, like I could. That fast chap will get me, I expect." And Raymond proved a true prophet. Indeed far worse happened than he anticipated. Estelle came to watch the cricket after luncheon. She had driven into Bridport with her father and Raymond in the morning and gone on to Jenny Ironsyde for the midday meal. Now she arrived in time to witness a catastrophe. A very fast bowler went on immediately after lunch. He was a tall and powerful youth with a sinister reputation for bowling at the man rather than the wicket. At any rate he pitched them short and with his lofty delivery bumped them very steeply on a lively pitch. Now, in his second over, he sent down a short one at tremendous speed, and the batsman, failing to get out of the way, was hit on the point of the jaw. He fell as though shot and proved to be quite unconscious when picked up. They carried him to the pavilion, and it was not until twenty minutes had passed that Raymond came round and the game went on. But Ironsyde could take no further part. There was concussion of doubtful severity and he found himself half blind and suffering great pain in the neck and head. Estelle came to him and advised that he should go to his aunt's house, which was close at hand. He could not speak, but signified agreement, and they took him there in an ambulance, while the girl ran on to advise his aunt of the accident. A doctor came with him and helped to get him to bed. His mind seemed affected and he wandered in his speech. But he recognised Estelle and begged her not to leave him. She sat near him, therefore, in a darkened room and Miss Ironsyde also came. Waldron dropped in before dusk with the news that Bridport had won, by a smaller margin than promised, on the first innings. But he found Raymond sleeping and did not waken him. Estelle believed the injured man would want her when he woke again. The doctor could say nothing till some hours had passed, so she went home, but returned a few hours later to stop the night and help, if need be, to nurse the patient. A professional nurse shared the vigil; but their duties amounted to nothing, for Raymond slept through the greater part of the night and declared himself better in the morning. He had to stop with his aunt, however, for two or three days, and while Estelle, her ministration ended, was going away after the doctor pronounced Raymond on the road to recovery, the patient begged her to remain. He appeared in a sentimental vein, and the experience of being nursed was so novel that Ironsyde endured it without a murmur. To Estelle, who did not guess he was rather enjoying it, the spectacle of his patience under pain awoke admiration. Indeed, she thought him most heroic and he made no effort to undeceive her. Incidentally, during his brief convalescence the man saw more of his aunt than he had seen for many days. She also must needs nurse him and exhaust her ingenuity to pass the time. The room was kept dark for eight-and-forty hours, so her method of entertaining her nephew consisted chiefly in conversation. Of late years Raymond seldom let a week elapse without seeing Miss Ironsyde if only for half an hour. Her waning health occupied him on these occasions and, at his suggestion, she had gone to Bath to fight the arthritis that slowly gained upon her. But during his present sojourn at Bridport as her guest, Raymond let her lead their talk as she would, indeed, he himself sometimes led it into channels of the past, where she would not have ventured to go. Life had made an immense difference to the man and he was old for his age now, even as until his brother's death he had been young for his age. She could not fail to note the steadfastness of his mind, despite its limitations. As Estelle had often done, she perceived how he set his faith on material things--the steel and steam--to bring about a new order and advance the happiness of mankind; but he was interested in social questions far more than of old time, and she felt no little surprise to hear him talk about the future. "The air is full of change," she said, on one occasion. "It always is," he answered. "There is always movement, although the breath of advance and progress seems to sink to nothing, sometimes. Now it's blowing a stiff breeze and may rise to a hurricane in a few years." "It is for the stable, solid backbone of the nation--we of the middle-class--to withstand such storms," she declared, and he agreed. "If you've got a stake in the world, you must certainly see its foundations are driven deep and look to the stake itself, that it's not rotting. Some stakes are certainly not made of stuff stout enough to stand against the storms ahead. Education is the great, vital thing. I often feel mad to think how I wasted my own time at school, and came to man's work a raw, ignorant fool. We talk of the education of the masses and what I see is this: they will soon be better educated than we ourselves; for we bring any amount of sense and modern ideas to work on their teaching, while our own prehistorical methods are left severely alone. I believe the boys who come to working age now are better taught than I was at my grammar school. I wish I knew more." "Yet we see education may run us into great dangers," said Jenny Ironsyde. "It can be pushed to a perilous point. One even hears a murmur against the Bible in the schools. It makes my blood run cold. And we need not look farther than dear Estelle to see the peril." "What do you think of Estelle?" he asked. "I almost welcome this stupid collapse, nuisance though it is, because it's made a sort of resting-place and brought me nearer to you and Estelle. You've both been so kind. A man such as I am, is so busy and absorbed that he forgets all about women; then suddenly lying on his back--done for and useless--he finds they don't forget all about him." "You ask what I think about Estelle?" she said. "I never think about Estelle--no more than I do about the sunshine, or my comfortable bed, or my tea. She's just one of the precious things I take for granted. I love her. She is a great deal to me, and the hours she spends with a rather old-fashioned and cross-grained woman are the happiest hours I know." "I'm like her father," he said. "I give Estelle best. Nothing can spoil her, because she's so utterly uninterested in herself. Another thing: she's so fair--almost morbidly fair. The only thing that makes her savage is injustice. If she sees an injustice, she won't leave it alone if it's in her power to alter it. That's her father in her. What he calls 'sporting,' she calls 'justice.' And, of course, the essence of sport is justice, if you think it out." "I don't know anything about sport, but I suppose I have to thank cricket for your company at present. As for Estelle. I think she has a great idea of your judgment and opinion." He laughed. "If she does, it's probably because I generally agree with her. Besides--" He broke off and lighted a cigarette. "'Besides' what?" asked the lady. "Well--oh I hardly know. I'm tremendously fond of her. Perhaps I've taken her too much as you say we take the sun and our meat and drink--as a matter of course. Yes, like the sun, and as unapproachable." Miss Ironsyde considered. "I suppose you're right. I can well imagine that to the average man a 'Una,' such as Estelle, may seem rather unapproachable." "We're very good friends, though how good I never quite guessed till this catastrophe. She seemed to come and help look after me as a matter of course. Didn't think it a bit strange." "She's simple, but in a very noble way. I've only one quarrel with her--the faith of her fathers--" "Leave it. You'll only put your foot into it, Aunt Jenny." "Never," she said. "I shall never put my foot into it where right and wrong are concerned--with Estelle or you, or anybody else. I'm nearly seventy, remember, Raymond, and one knows what is imperishable and to be trusted at that age." Thus she negatived Mr. Churchouse's dictum--that mere age demanded no particular reverence, since many years are as liable to error as few. Her nephew was doubtful. "Right and wrong are a never-ending puzzle," he said. "They vary so from the point of view. And if you once grant there are more view points than one, where are you?" "Right and wrong are not doubtful," she assured him, "and all the science in the world can't turn one into the other--any more than light can turn into darkness." "Light can turn into darkness easily enough. I've learned that during the last three days," he answered. "If you fill this room with light, I can't see. If you keep it dark, I can." Estelle came to tea and read some notes that Mr. Best had prepared for Raymond. They satisfied him, and the meal was merry, for he found himself free of pain and in the best spirits. Estelle, too, had some gossip that amused him. Her father was already practising at clay pigeons to get his eye in for the first of September; and he wished to inform Raymond that he was shooting well and hoped for a better season than the last. He had also seen a vixen and three cubs on North Hill at five o'clock in the morning of the preceding day. "In fact, it's the best of all possible worlds so far as father is concerned," said Estelle, "and now he hears you're coming home early next week, he will go to church on Sunday with a thankful heart. He said yesterday that Raymond's accident had a bright side. D'you know what it is? Ray meant to give up cricket altogether after this year; but father points out that he cannot do so now. Because it is morally impossible for Ray to stop playing until he stands up again to that bowler who hurt him so badly. 'Morally impossible,' is what father said." "He's quite right too," declared the patient. "Till I've knocked that beggar out of his own ground for six, I certainly shan't chuck cricket. We must meet again next season, if we're both alive. Everybody can see that." CHAPTER VI THE GATHERING PROBLEM Sabina Dinnett found that her mind was not so indifferent to her fortunes as she supposed. Upon examining it, with respect to the problem of leaving Bridetown for Abel's sake, which Ernest had now raised, she discovered a very keen disinclination to depart. Here was the only home that she, or her child, had ever known, and though that mattered nothing, she shrank from beginning a new life away from 'The Magnolias' under the increased responsibility of sole control where Abel was concerned. Moreover, Mr. Churchouse had more power with Abel than anybody. The boy liked him and must surely win sense and knowledge from him, as Sabina herself had won them in the past. She knew that these considerations were superficial and the vital point in reason was to separate the son from the father; so that Abel's existing animus might perish. Both Estelle and Ernest Churchouse had impressed the view upon her; but here crept in the personal factor, and Sabina found that she had no real desire to mend the relationship. Considerations of her child's future pointed to more self-denial, but only that Abel might in time come to be reconciled to Raymond and accept good at his hands. And when Sabina thought upon this, she soon saw that her own indifference, where Ironsyde was concerned, did not extend to the future of the boy. She could still feel, and still suffer, and still resent certain possibilities. She trusted that in time to come, when Mr. Churchouse and Miss Ironsyde were gone, the measure of her son's welfare would be hers. She was content to see herself depending upon him; but not if his own prosperity came from his father. She preferred to picture Abel as making his way without obligations to that source. She might have married and made her own home, but that alternative never tempted her, since it would have thrust her off the pedestal which she occupied, as one faithful to the faithless, one bitterly wronged, a reproach to the good name--perhaps, even a threat to the sustained prosperity of Raymond Ironsyde. She could feel all this at some moments. She determined now to let the matter rest, and when Ernest Churchouse ventured to remind her of the subject and to repeat the opinion that it might be wise for Sabina to take the boy away from Bridetown, she postponed decision. "I've thought upon it," she said, "and I feel it can very well be left to the spring, if you see nothing against. I've promised to do some braiding in my spare time this winter for a firm at Bridport that wants netting in large quantities. They are giving it out to those who can do it; and as for Abel, he'll go to his day-school through the winter. And it means a great deal to me, Mister Churchouse, that you are as good and helpful to him as you were to me when I was young. I don't want to lose that." "I wish I'd been more helpful, my dear." "You taught me a great many things valuable to know. I should have been in my grave years ago, but for you, I reckon. And the child's only a child still. If you work upon him, you'll make him meek and mild in time." "He'll never be meek and mild, Sabina--any more than you were. He has plenty of character; he's good material--excellent stuff to be moulded into a fine pattern, I hope. But a little leaven leavens the whole lump of a child, and what I can do is not enough to outweigh other influences." "I don't fear for him. He's got to face facts, and as he grows he must use his own wits and get his own living." "The fear is that he may be spoiled and come to settled, rooted prejudices, too hard to break down afterwards. He is a very interesting boy, just as you were a very interesting girl, Sabina. He often reminds me of you. There are the possibilities of beauty in his character. He is sentimental about some things and strangely indifferent about others. He is a mixture of exaggerated kindness in some directions and utter callousness in others. Sentimental people often are. He will pick a caterpillar out of the road to save it from death, and he will stone a dog if he has a grudge against it. His attitude to Peter Grim is one of devotion. He actually told me that it was very sad that Peter had now grown too old to catch mice. Again, he always brings me the first primrose and spares no pains to find it. Such little acts argue a kindly nature. But against them, you have to set his unreasoning dislike of human beings and a certain--shall I say buccaneering spirit." "He feels, and so he'll suffer--as I did. The more you feel, the more you suffer." "And it is therefore our duty to prevent him from feeling mistakenly and wanting to make others suffer. He may sometimes catch allusions in his quick ears that cause him doubt and even pain. And it is certain that the sight of his father does wake wrong thoughts. Removed from here, the best part of him would develop, and when the larger questions of his future begin to be considered in a few years time, he might then approach them with an open mind." "There can be no harm in leaving it till the spring. He'd hate going away from here." "I don't think so. The young welcome a change of environment. There is nothing more healthy for their minds as a rule than to travel about. However, we will get him used to the idea of going and think about it again in the spring." So the subject was left, and when the suggestion of departing from Bridetown came to Abel, he belied the prophecy of Mr. Churchouse and declared a strong objection to the thought of going. His mother influenced him in this. During the autumn he had a misfortune, for, with two other members of the 'Red Hand,' he was caught stealing apples at the time of cider-making. Three strokes of a birch rod fell on each revolutionary, and not Ernest Churchouse nor his mother could console Abel for this reverse. He gleaned his sole comfort at a dangerous source, and while the kindly ignored the event and the unkindly dwelt upon it, only Levi Baggs applauded Abel and preached privi-conspiracy and rebellion. Raymond Ironsyde was much perturbed at the adventure, but his friend Waldron held the event desirable. As a Justice of the Peace, it was Arthur who prescribed the punishment and trusted in it. Thus he, too, incurred Abel's enmity. The company of the 'Red Hand' was disbanded to meet no more, and if his fellow sufferers gained by their chastisement, it was certain that Sabina's son did not. Insensate law fits the punishment to the crime rather than to the criminal, as though a doctor should only treat disease, without thought of the patient enduring it. Neither did Abel's mother take the reverse with philosophy. She resented it as cruel cowardice; but it reminded her of the advantages to be gained by leaving her old home. Then fell an unexpected disaster and Mr. Churchouse was called to suffer a dangerous attack of bronchitis. The illness seemed to banish all other considerations from Sabina's mind and, while the issue remained in doubt, she planned various courses of action. Incidentally, she saw more of Estelle and Miss Ironsyde than of late, for Mr. Churchouse, whose first pleasure on earth was now Estelle, craved her presence during convalescence, as Raymond in like case had done; and Miss Ironsyde also drove to see him on several occasions. The event filled all with concern, for Ernest had a trick to make friends and, what is more rare, an art to keep them. Many beyond his own circle were relieved and thankful when he weathered danger and began to build up again with the lengthening days of the new year. Abel had been very solicitous on his behalf, and he praised the child to Jenny and Estelle, when they came to drink tea with him on a day in early spring. "I believe there are great possibilities in him and, when I am stronger, I shall resume my attack on Sabina to go away," he said. "The boy's mind is being poisoned and we might prevent it." "It's a most unfortunate state of affairs," declared Miss Ironsyde. "Yet it was bound to happen in a little place like this. Raymond is not sensitive, or he would feel it far more than he does." "He can't do more and he does feel it a great deal," declared Estelle. "I think Sabina sees it clearly enough, but it's very hard on her too, to have to go from Mister Churchouse and her home." "Nothing is more mysterious than the sowing and germination of spiritual seed," said the old man. "The enemy sowed tares by night, and what can be more devilish than sowing the tares of evil on virgin soil? It was done long ago. One hesitates to censure the dead, though I daresay, if we could hear them talking in another world, we should find they didn't feel nearly so nice about us and speak their minds quite plainly. We know plenty of people who must be criticising. But truth will out, and the truth is that Mary Dinnett planted evil thoughts and prejudices in Abel. He was not too young, unfortunately, to give them room. A very curious woman--obstinate and almost malignant if vexed and quite incapable of keeping silence even when it was most demanded. If you are going to give people confidences, you must have a good memory. Mary would confide all sorts of secrets to me and then, perhaps six months afterwards, be quite furious to find I knew them! She came to me for advice on one occasion and I reminded her of certain circumstances she had confided to me in the past, and she lost her temper entirely. Yet a woman of most excellent qualities and most charitable in other people's affairs." "The question is Abel, and I have told Sabina she must decide about him," said Jenny. "We are all of one mind, and Raymond himself thinks it would be most desirable. As soon as you are well again, Sabina must go." "I shall miss her very much. To find anybody who will fall into my ways may be difficult. When I was younger, I used to like training a domestic. I found it was better to rule by love than fear. You may lose here and there, but you gain more than you lose. Human character is really not so profoundly difficult, if you resolutely try to see life from the other person's standpoint. That done, you can help them--and yourself through them." "People who show you their edges, instead of their rounds, are not at all agreeable," said Miss Ironsyde. "To conquer the salients of character is often a very formidable task." "It is," he admitted, "yet I have found the comfortable, convex and concave characters often really more difficult in the long run. You must have some hard and durable rock on which to found understanding and security. The soft, crumbling people may be lovable; but they are useless as sand at a crisis. They are always slipping away and threatening to smother their best friends with the debris." He chattered on until a fit of coughing stopped him. "You mustn't talk so much," warned Estelle. "It's lovely to hear you talking again; but it isn't good for you, yet." Then she turned to Miss Ironsyde. "The first time I came in and found him reading a book catalogue, I knew he was going to be all right." "By the same token another gift has reached me," he answered; "a book on the bells of Devon, which I have long wanted to possess." "I'm sure it is not such a perfect book as yours." "Indeed it is--very excellently done. The bell mottoes in Devonshire are worthy of all admiration. But a great many of the bells in ancient bell-chambers are crazed--a grave number. People don't think as much of a ring of bells in a parish as they used to do." Miss Ironsyde brought the conversation back to Abel; but Ernest was tired of this. He viewed Sabina's departure with great personal regret. "Things will be as they will, my dears," he told them, "and I have such respect for Sabina's good sense that I shall be quite content to leave decision with her. It would not become me to dictate or command in such a delicate matter. To return to the bells, I have received a rather encouraging statement from the publishers. Four copies of my book have been sold during the last six months." CHAPTER VII THE WALK HOME Upon a Bank Holiday Sabina took Abel to West Haven for a long day on the beach and pier. He enjoyed himself very thoroughly, ate, drank and played to his heart's content. But his amusements brought more pleasure to the child than his mother, for he found the wonderful old stores and discovered therein far more entertaining occupation than either sea or shore could offer. The place was deserted to-day, and while Sabina sat outside in a corner of the courtyard and occupied herself with the future, Abel explored the mysteries of the ancient building and found all manner of strange nooks and mysterious passages. He wove dreams and magnified the least incident into an adventure. He inhabited the dark corners and sombre, subterranean places with enemies that wanted to catch him; he most potently believed that hidden treasures awaited him under the hollow-echoing floors. Once he had a rare fright, for a bat hanging asleep in its folded wings, was wakened by him and suddenly flew into his face. He climbed and crawled and crept about, stole a lump of putty and rejoiced at the discovery of some paint pots and a brush. The 'Red Hand' no longer existed; but the opportunity once more to set up its sinister symbol was too good to resist. He painted it on the walls in several places and then called his mother to look at the achievement. She climbed up a long flight of stone steps that led to the lofts, and suffered a strange experience presently, for the child was playing in the chamber sacred to her surrender. She stood where twelve years before she had come with Raymond Ironsyde after their day at Golden Cap. Light fell through a window let into the roof. It was broken and fringed with cobwebs. The pile of fishermen's nets had vanished and a carpenter's bench had taken its place. On the walls and timbers were scrawled names and initials of holiday folk, who had explored the old stores through many years. Sabina, perceiving where she stood, closed her eyes and took an involuntary step backward. Abel called attention to his sign upon the walls. "The carpenter will shiver when he sees that," he said. Then he rambled off, whistling, and she sat down and stared round her. She told herself that deep thoughts must surely wake under this sudden experience and the fountains of long sealed emotion bubble upwards, to drown her before them. Instead she merely found herself incapable of thinking. A dull, stale, almost stagnant mood crept over her. Her mind could neither walk nor fly. After the first thrill of recognition, the light went out and she found herself absolutely indifferent. Not anger touched her, nor pain. That the child of that perished passion should play here, and laugh and be merry was poignant, but it did not move her and she felt a sort of surprise that it should not. There was a time when such an experience must have shaken her to the depths, plunged her into some deep pang of soul and left indelible wounds; now, no such thing happened. She gazed mildly about her and almost smiled. Then she rose from her seat on the carpenter's bench, went out and descended the staircase again. When she called him to a promised tea at an inn, Abel came at once. He was weary and well content. "I shall often come here," he said. "It's the best place I know--better than the old kiln on North Hill. I could hide there and nobody find me, and you could bring me food at night." "What do you want to hide for, pretty?" she asked. "I might," he answered and looked at her cautiously For a moment he seemed inclined to say more, but did not. After tea they set out for home, and the fate, which, through the incident of the old store, had subtly prepared and paved a way to something of greater import, sent Raymond Ironsyde. They had passed the point at which the road from West Haven converges into that from Bridport, and a man on horseback overtook them. They were all going in the same direction and Abel, as soon as he saw who approached, left his mother, went over a convenient gate upon their right and hastened up a hedge. Thus he always avoided his father, and when blamed for so doing, would silently endure the blame without explanation or any offer of excuse. Raymond had seen him thus escape on more than one occasion, and the incident, clashing at this moment upon his own thoughts, prompted him to a definite and unusual thing. The opportunity was good; Sabina walked alone, and if she rebuffed him, he could endure the rebuff. He determined to speak to her and break a silence of many years. The result he could not guess, but since he was actuated by friendly motives alone, he hoped the sudden inspiration might prove fertile of good. At worse she could only decline his advance and refuse to speak with him. Their thoughts that day, unknown to each, had been upon the other and there was some emotion in the man's voice when he spoke, though none in hers when she answered. For to him that chance meeting came as a surprise and prompted him to a sudden approach he might not have ventured on maturer consideration; to her it seemed to carry on the experience of the day and, unguessed by Raymond, brought less amazement than he imagined. She was a fatalist--perhaps, had always been so, as her mother before her; yet she knew it not. They had passed and repassed many times during the vanished years; but since the moment that she had dismissed him with scorn and hoped her child would live to insult his grave, they had never spoken. He inquired now if he might address her. "May I say a few words to you?" he asked. Not knowing what was in her mind, he felt surprised at her conventional reply. "I suppose so, if you wish to do so." Her voice seemed to roll back time. Yet he guessed her to be less indifferent than her words implied. He dismounted and walked beside her. "I dare say you can understand a little what I feel, when I see that child run away whenever he sets eyes on me," he began; but she did not help him. His voice to her ear was changed. It had grown deeper and hardened. It was more monotonous and did not rise and fall as swiftly as of old. "I don't know at all what you feel about him. I didn't know that you felt anything about him." This was a false note and he felt pained. "Indeed, Sabina, you know very well I want his friendship--I need it even. Before anything I wish to befriend him." "You can't help him. He's a very affectionate child and loves me dearly. You wouldn't understand him. He's all heart." He marked now the great change in Sabina. Her voice was cold and indifferent. But a cynic fate willed this mood. Had she not spent the day at West Haven and stood in the old store, it is possible she might have listened to him in another spirit. "I know he's a clever boy, with plenty of charm about him. And I do think, whatever you may feel, Sabina, it is doubtfully wise of you to stand between him and me." "If you fancy that, it is a good thing you spoke," she answered. "Because nothing further from the truth could be. I don't stand between him and you. I've never influenced him against you. He's heard nothing but the fact that you're his father from me. I've been careful to leave it at that, and I've never answered more than the truth to his many questions." "It is a very great sorrow to me, and it will largely ruin my life if I cannot win his friendship and plan his future." "A child's friendship is easily won. If he denies it, you may be sure it is for a natural instinct." "Such an instinct is most unnatural. He has had nothing but friendly words and friendly challenges from me." She felt herself growing impatient. It was clear that he had spoken out of interest for the child alone, and any shadowy suspicion that he designed to declare interest in herself departed from Sabina's mind. "Well, what's that to me? I can't alter him. I can't make him regard you as a hero and a father to be proud of. He's not hard-hearted or anything of that. He's pretty much like other boys of his age--more sensitive, that's all. He can suffer very sharply and bitterly and he did when that cruel, blundering fool at North Hill House had him whipped. He gets the cursed power to suffer from his mother. And, such is his position in the world, that his power to suffer no doubt will be proved to the utmost." "I don't want him to suffer. At least it is in my reach to save him a great deal of needless suffering." "That's just what it isn't--not with his nature. He'd rather suffer than be beholden to you for anything. Young as he is, he's told me so in so many words. He knows he's different from other boys--already he knows it--and that breeds bitterness. He's like a dog that's been ill-treated and finds it hard to trust anybody in consequence. Unfortunately for you, he's got brains enough to judge; and the older he grows, the harder he'll judge." "That's what I want to break down, Sabina. It's awfully sad to feel, that for a prejudice against things that can't be altered, he should stand in his own light and be a needless martyr and make me a greater villain than I am." "Are you a villain? If you are, it isn't my child that made you one--nor me, either. No doubt it's awkward to see him running about and breathing the same air with you." He felt an impulse of anger, but easily checked it. "You're rather hard on me, I think. It's a great deal more than awkward to have my child take this line. It's desperately sad. And you must know--thinking purely and only of him--that nothing can be gained and much lost by it. You say he'll hate me more as he grows older. But isn't that a thing to avoid? What good comes into the world with hate? Can't you see that it's your place, Sabina, to use your influence on my side?" "My God!" she said, "was there ever such a selfish man as you! Out of your own mouth you condemn yourself, for it's your inconvenience and discomfort that's troubling you--not his fate. He's a living witness against you--a running sore in your side--and that's why you want his friendship, to ease yourself and heal your conscience. Anybody could see that." He did not answer; but this indictment astonished him. Could she still be so stern after the years that had swept over their quarrel? "You wrong me there, Sabina. Indeed, it's not for my own comfort only, but much more largely for his that I am so much concerned. Surely we can meet on the common ground of his welfare and leave the rest?" "What common ground is there? Why must I think your friendship and your money are the best possible things for him? Why should I advise him to take what I refused for myself twelve years and more ago? You offered me your friendship and your money--as a substitute for being your wife. You were so stark ignorant of the girl you'd promised to marry, that you offered her cash and the privilege of your company after your child was born. And now you offer your child cash and the privilege of your company--that's all. You deny him your name, as you denied his mother your name; and why should he pick up the crumbs from your table that his mother would have starved rather than eaten? I've never spoken against you to him and never shall, but I'm not a fool now--whatever I was--and I'm not going to urge my son to seek you and put his little heart into your keeping; because well I know what you do with hearts. I'm outside your life and so is he; and if he likes to come into your life, I shan't prevent it. I couldn't prevent it. He'll do about it as he chooses, when he's old enough to measure it up. But I'm not for you, or against you. I'm only the suffering sort, not the fighting sort. You know whether you deserve the love and worship of that little, nameless boy." He was struck into silence, not at her bitter words, but at his own thoughts. For he had often speculated on future speech with her and wondered when it would happen and what it would concern. He had hoped that she would let the past go and be his friend again on another plane. He had pictured some sort of amity based on the old romance. He had desired nothing so much in life as a friendly understanding and the permission to contribute to the ease and comfort of Sabina and the prosperity of his son. He hoped that in course of time and faced with the rights of the child, she would come round. He had pictured her coming round. But now it seemed that he was not to plan their future on his own terms. What he offered had not grown sweeter to her senses. No gifts that he could devise would be anything but poor in the light of the unkind past. And that light burned steadfastly still. She was not changed. As he listened to her, it seemed that she was merely picking up the threads where they were dropped. He feared that if he stopped much longer beside her, she would come back to the old anger and wake into the old wrath. "I'd dearly hoped that you didn't feel like that, any more. You've got right on your side up to a point, though human differences are so involved that it very seldom happens you can get a clean cut between right and wrong. However, the time is past for arguing about that, Sabina. Granted you are right in your personal attitude, don't carry it on into the next generation and assume I cannot even yet, after all these years, be trusted to befriend my own child." "He's only your child in nature. He's only your child because your blood's in his veins. He's my child, not yours." "But if I want to make him mine? If I want to lift him up and assure his future? If I want to assume paternity--claim it, adopt him as my son--to succeed me some day?" "He must decide for himself whether that's the high-water mark for his future life--to be your adopted son. We can't have it all our own way in this world--not even you, I suppose. A child has to have a mother as well as a father, and a mother's got her rights in her child. Even the law allows that." "Who'd deny them, Sabina? You're possessed, as you always were, with the significance of legal marriage. You don't know that marriage is merely a human contrivance and, nine times out of ten, an infernally clumsy makeshift and a long-drawn pretence. Like every other human shift, it is a thing that gets out-grown by the advance of humanity towards higher ideals and cleaner liberties. We are approaching a time when the edifice will be shaken to its mouldering foundations, and presently, while the Church and the State are wrangling and quibbling, as they soon must be, over the loathsome divorce laws, these mandarins will wake up to find the marriage laws themselves are being threatened by a new generation sick of the archaic tomfoolery that controls them. If you could only take a larger view and not let yourself be bound down by your own experience--" "You'd better go," she said. "If you'd spoken, so twelve years ago on Golden Cap, and not hid your heart and lied to me and promised what you never meant to perform, I'd not be walking the world a lonely, despised woman to-day. And law, or no law, the law of the natural child is the law of the land--cruel and vile though it may be." "I'll go, Sabina; but I must say what I want to say, first. I must stand up for Abel--even against you. Childish impressions and dislikes can be rooted out if taken in time; if left to grow, they get beyond reach. So I ask you to think of him. And don't pretend to yourself that my friendship is dangerous, or can do him anything but good. I'm very different from what I was. Life hasn't gone over me for nothing. I know what's right well enough, and I know what I owe your son and my son, and I want to make up to him and more than make up to him for his disadvantages. Don't prevent me from doing that. Give me a chance, Sabina. Give me a chance to be a good father to him. Your word is law with him, and if you left Bridetown and took him away from all the rumours and unkind things he may hear here, it would let his mind grow empty of me for a few years; and then, when he's older and more sensible, I think I could win him." "You want us away from this place." "I do. I never should have spoken to you until I knew you wished it, but for this complication; but since the boy is growing up prejudiced against me, I do feel that some strong effort should be taken to nip his young hatred in the bud--for his sake, Sabina." "Are you sure it's all for his sake? Because I'm not. They say you think of nothing on God's earth but machinery nowadays, and look to machines to do the work of hands, and speak of 'hands' when you ought to speak of 'souls.' They say if you could, you'd turn out all the people and let everything be done by steam and steel. There's not much humanity in you, I reckon. And why should you care for one little, unwanted boy? Perhaps, if you looked deeper into yourself, you'd find it was your own peace, rather than his, that's making you wish us away from Bridetown. At any rate, that's how one or two have seen and said it, when they heard how everybody was at me to go. I've had to live down the past for long, slow, heart-breaking years and seen the fingers pointed at me; and now, with the child growing up, it's your turn I daresay, and you--so strong and masterful--have had enough of pointing fingers and mean to pack us out of our home--for your comfort." He stared at her in the gathering dusk and stood and uttered a great sigh from deep in his lungs. "I'm sorry for you, Sabina--sorrier than I am for myself. This is cruel. I didn't know, or dream, that time had stood still for you like this." "Time ended for me--then." "For me it had to go on. I must think about this. I didn't guess it was like this with you. Don't think I want you away; don't think you're the only thorn in my pillow and that I'm not used to pain and anxiety, or impatient of all the implicit meaning of your lonely life. Stop, if you want to stop. I'll see you again, Sabina, please. Now I'll be gone." When he had mounted his horse and ridden away without more words from her, Abel, who had been lurking along on the other side of the hedge, crept through it and rejoined his mother. They walked on in silence for some time. Then the child spoke. "Fancy your talking to Mister Ironsyde, mother!" "He talked to me." "I lay you dressed him down then?" "I told him the truth, Abel. He wants everything for nothing, Mister Ironsyde does. He wants you--for nothing." "He's a beast, and I hate him, and he'll know I hate him some day." "Don't hate him. He's not worth hating." "I will hate him, I tell you. But for him I'd be the great man in Bridetown when he dies. Mister Baggs told me that." "You mustn't give heed to what people say. You've got mother to look after you." The boy was tired and spoke no more. He padded silently along beside her and presently she heard him laugh to himself. His thoughts had wandered back to the joy of the old store. And she was thinking of what had happened. She, too, even as Raymond, had imagined what speech would fall out between them after the long years and wondered concerning the form it would take. She had imagined no such conversation as this. Half of her regretted it; but the other half was glad. He had gone on, but it was well that he should know she had stood still. Could there be any more terrible news for him than to hear that she had stood still--to feel that he had turned a living woman into a pillar of stone? CHAPTER VIII EPITAPH It cannot be determined by what train of reasoning Abel proceeded from one unfortunate experience to create another, or why the grief incidental on a loss should now have nerved him to an evil project long hidden in his thoughts. But so it was; he suffered a sorrow and, under the influence of it, found himself strong enough to attempt a crime. There was no sort of connection between the two, for nothing could bear less upon his evil project than the death of Mr. Churchouse's old cat; yet thus it fell out and the spirit of Abel reacted to his own tears. He came home one day from school to learn how the sick cat prospered and was told to go into the study. His mother knew the child to be much wrapped up in Peter Grim, and dreading to break the news, begged Mr. Churchouse to do so. "Your old playfellow has left us, daddy," said Ernest. "I am glad to say he died peacefully while you were at school. I think he only had a very little bit of his ninth and last life left, for he was fifteen years old and had suffered some harsh shocks." "Dead?" asked Abel with a quivering mouth. "And I think that we ought to give him a nice grave and put up a little stone to his memory." Thus he tried to distract the boy from his loss. "We will go at once," he said, "and choose a beautiful spot in the garden for his grave. You can take one of those pears and eat it while we search." But Abel shook his head. "Couldn't eat and him lying dead," he answered. He was crying. They went through the French window from the study. "Do you know any particular place that he liked?" Slowly the child's sorrow lessened in the passing interest of finding the grave. "You must dig it, please, when you come back from afternoon school." Abel suggested spots not practical in the other's opinion. "A more secluded site would be better," he declared. "He was very fond of shade. In fact, rather a shady customer himself in his young days. But not a word against the dead. His old age was dignified and blameless. You don't remember the time when he used to steal chickens, do you?" "He never did anything wrong that I know of," said Abel. "And he always came and padded on my bed of a morning, like as if he was riding a bicycle--and--and--" He wept again. "If I thought anybody had poisoned him, I'd poison them," he said. "Think no such thing. He simply died because he couldn't go on living. You shall have another cat, and it shall be your own." "I don't want another cat. I hate all other cats but him." They found a spot in a side walk, where lily of the valley grew, and later in the day Abel dug a grave. Estelle happened to visit Mr. Churchouse and he explained the tragedy. "If you attend the funeral, the boy might tolerate you," he said. "Once break down his suspicion and get to his wayward heart, good would come of it He is feeling this very much and in a melting mood." "I'll stop, if he won't be vexed." Mr. Churchouse went into the garden and praised Abel's energies. "A beautiful grave; and it is right and proper that Peter Grim should lie here, because he often hunted here." "He caught the mice that live in holes at the bottom of the wall," said Abel. "If you are ready, we will now bury him. Mother must come to the funeral, and Estelle must come, because she was very, very fond of poor Peter and she would think it most unkind of us if we buried him while she was not there. She will bring some flowers for the grave, and you must get some flowers, too, Abel. We must, in fact, each put a flower on him." The boy frowned at mention of Estelle, but forgot her in considering the further problem. "He liked the mint bed. I'll put mint on him," he said. "An excellent thought. And I shall pluck one of the big magnolias myself." Returning, Ernest informed Estelle that she must be at the funeral and she went home for a bunch of blossoms to grace the tomb. She picked hot-house flowers, hoping to propitiate Abel. There woke a great hope in her to win him. But she failed. He glowered at her when she appeared walking beside his mother, while before them marched Mr. Churchouse carrying the departed. When the funeral was ended and Abel left alone, he sat down by the grave, cried, worked himself into a very mournful mood and finally exhibited anger. Why he was angry he did not know, or against whom his temper grew; but his great loss woke resentment. When he felt miserable, somebody was always blamed by him for making him feel so. No immediate cause for quarrel with anything smaller than fate challenged his unsettled mind; then his eyes fixed upon Estelle's flowers, and since Estelle was always linked in his thoughts with his father, and his father represented an enemy, he began to hate the flowers and wish them away. He heard his mother calling him, but hid from her and when she was silent, came back to the grave again. Meantime Estelle and Ernest drank tea and spoke of Abel. "When grief has relaxed the emotions, we may often get in a kindly word and give an enemy something to think about afterwards," he said. "But the boy was obdurate. He is the victim of confused thinking--precocious to a degree in some directions, but very childish in others. At times he alarms me. Poor boy. You must try again to win him. The general sentiment is that the young should be patient with the old; but for my part I think it is quite as difficult sometimes for the old to be patient with the young." He turned to his desk. "When I found my dear cat was not, I composed an epitaph for him, Estelle. I design to have it scratched on a stone and set above his sleeping place." "Do let me hear it," she said, and Ernest, fired with the joy of composition, read his memorial verse. "Criticise freely," he said. "I value your criticism and you understand poetry. Not that this is a poem--merely an epitaph; but it may easily be improved, I doubt not." He put on his glasses and read: "'Ended his mingled joy and strife, Here lies the dust of Peter Grim. Though life was very kind to him, He proved not very kind to life.'" Estelle applauded. "Perfect," she said. "You must have it carved on his tombstone." "I think it meets the case. I may have been prejudiced in my affection for him, owing to his affection for me. He came to me at the age of five weeks, and his attitude to me from the first was devoted." "Cats have such cajoling ways." "He was not himself honest, yet, I think, saw the value of honesty in others. Plain dealers are a temptation to rogues and none, as a rule, is a better judge of an honest man than a dishonest cat." "He wasn't quite a rogue, was he?" "He knew that I am respected, and he traded on my reputation. His life has been spared on more than one occasion for my sake." "On the whole he was not a very model cat, I'm afraid," said Estelle. "Yes, that is just what he was: a model--cat." They went out to look at the grave again, and something hurried away through the bushes as they did so. "Friends, or possibly enemies," suggested Mr. Churchouse, but Estelle, sharper-eyed, saw Abel disappear. She also noted that her bouquet of flowers had gone from Peter's mound. "Oh dear, he's taken away my offering," she said. "What a hard-hearted boy! Are there no means of winning him?" They spoke of Abel and his mother. "We all regretted her decision to stop. It would have been better if she had gone away." "Raymond saw her some time ago." "So she told me; and so did he. Misfortune seems to dog the situation, for I believe Sabina was half in a mind to take our advice until that meeting. Then she changed. Apparently she misunderstood him." "Ray was very troubled. Somehow he made Sabina angry--the last thing he meant to do. He's sorry now that he spoke. She thought he was considering himself, and he really was thinking for Abel." "We must go on being patient. Next year I shall urge her to let Abel be sent to a boarding-school. That will be a great advantage every way." So they talked and meantime Abel's sorrow ran into the channels of evil. It may be that the presence of Estelle had determined this misfortune; but he was ripe for it and his feeling prompted him to let his misery run over, that others might drink of the cup. He had long contemplated a definite deed and planned a stroke against Raymond Ironsyde; but he had postponed the act, partly from fear, partly because the thought of it was a pleasure. Inverted instincts and a mind fouled by promptings from without, led him to understand that Ironsyde was his mother's enemy and therefore his own. Baggs had told him so in a malignant moment and Abel believed it. To injure his enemy was to honour his mother. And the time had come to do so. He was ripe for it to-night. He told himself that Peter Grim would have approved the blow, and with his mind a chaos of mistaken opinions, at once ludicrous and mournful, he set himself to his task. He ate his supper as usual and went to bed; but when the house was silent in sleep, he rose, put on his clothes and hastened out of doors. He departed by a window on the ground floor and slipped into a night of light and shade, for the moon was full and rode through flying clouds. The boy felt a youthful malefactor's desire to get his task done as swiftly as possible. He was impatient to feel the deed behind him. He ran through the deserted village, crossed a little bridge over the river, and then approached the Mill by a meadow below them. Thus he always came to see Mr. Baggs, or anybody who was friendly. The roof of the works shone in answer to fitful moonlight, and they presented to his imagination a strange and unfamiliar appearance. Under the sleight of the hour they were changed and towered majestically above him. The Mill slept and in the creepy stillness, the river's voice, which he had hardly heard till now, was magnified to a considerable murmur. From far away down the valley came the song of the sea, where a brisk, westerly wind threw the waves on the shingle. A feeling of awe numbed him, but it was not powerful enough to arrest his purpose. His plans had been matured for many days. He meant to burn down the Mill. Nothing was easier and a match in the inflammable material, of which the hackler's shop was usually full, must quickly involve the mass of the buildings. It was fitting that where he had been impregnated by Mr. Baggs with much lawless opinion, Abel should give expression to his evil purpose. From the tar-pitched work-room of the hackler, fire would very quickly leap to the main building against which it stood, and might, indeed, under the strong wind, involve the stores also and John Best's dwelling between them. But it was fated otherwise. A very small incident served to prevent a considerable catastrophe, and when Abel broke the window of the hackling room, turned the hasp, raised it, and got in, a man lay awake in pain not thirty yards distant. The lad lighted a candle, which he had brought with him, and it was then, while he collected a heap of long hemp and prepared to set it on fire, that John Best, in torture from toothache, went downstairs for a mouthful of brandy. Upon the staircase he passed a window and, glancing through it, he saw a light in the hackling shop. It was not the moon and meant a presence there that needed instant explanation. Mr. Best forgot his toothache, called his sailor son, who happened to be holiday-making at home, and hastened as swiftly and silently as possible over the bridge to the Mill. John Best the younger, an agile man of thirty, may be said to have saved the situation, for he was far quicker than his father could be and managed to anticipate the disaster by moments. Half a minute more might have made all the difference, for the heap of loose hemp and stricks once ignited, no power on earth could have saved a considerable conflagration; but the culprit had his back turned to the window and was still busily piling the tow when Best and his son looked in upon him, and the sailor was already half through the window before Abel perceived him. The youngster dashed for his candle, but he was too late, a pair of strong hands gripped his neck roughly enough, and he fainted from the shock. They took him out as he had gone in, for the door was locked and Levi Baggs had the key. Then the sailor went back to his home, dressed himself and started for a policeman, while Mr. Best kept guard over Abel. When he came to his senses, the boy found himself in the moonlight with a dozen turns of stout fisherman's twine round his hands and ankles The foreman stood over him, and now that the house was roused, his wife had brought John a pair of trousers and a great coat, for he was in his night shirt. "You'll catch your death," she said. "It's only by God's mercy we didn't all catch our death," he answered. "Here's Sabina Dinnett's boy plotted to destroy the works, and we've yet to find whether he's the tool of others, or has done the deed on his own." "On my own I did it," declared Abel; "and I'll do it yet." "You shut your mouth, you imp of Satan!" cried the exasperated man. "Not a word, you scamp. You've done for yourself now, and everybody knew you'd come to it, sooner or later." In half an hour Abel was locked up, and when Mr. Baggs heard next morning concerning the events of the night, he expressed the utmost surprise and indignation. "Young dog! And after the friend I've been to him. Blood will tell. That's his lawless father coming out in the wretch," he said. CHAPTER IX THE FUTURE OF ABEL Issues beyond human sight or calculation lay involved in the thing that Abel Dinnett had done. He had cast down a challenge to society, and everything depended on how society answered that challenge. Not only did the child's own future turn on what must follow, but vital matters for those who were called to act hung on their line of action. That, however, they could not know. The tremendous significance of the sinner's future training and the result of what must now happen to him lay far beyond their prescience. It became an immediate question whether Abel might, or might not, be saved from the punishment he had deserved. Beyond that rose another problem, not less important, and his father doubted whether, for the child's own sake, it would be well to intervene. Waldron strongly agreed with him; but Estelle did not, and she used her great influence on the side of intervention. Miss Ironsyde and Ernest Churchouse were also of her opinion. Indeed, all concerned, save his mother and Arthur Waldron, begged Raymond to interfere, if possible. He did not decide immediately. "The boy will be sent to a reformatory for five years if I do nothing," he told Estelle, "and that's probably the very best thing on earth that can happen to him. It will put the fear of God into him and possibly obliterate his hate of me. He's bad all through, I'm afraid." "No he isn't--far from it. That's the point," she argued. "These things are a legacy--a hateful legacy from his grandmother. Mister Churchouse knows him far better than anybody else, and he says there is great sensibility and power of feeling in him. He's tender to animals." "That's not much good if he's going to be tough to me. Tell me why his mother doesn't come to me about him." "Mister Churchouse says she's in a strange state and doesn't seem to care. She told him the sins of the fathers were being visited on the children." "The sins of the fathers are being visited on the fathers, I should think." "That's fair at any rate," she said. "I know just how you must feel. You've been so patient, Ray, and taken such a lot of trouble. But I believe it's all part of the fate that links you to the child. His future is made your business now, whether you will or no. It is thrust upon you. Nobody but you would be listened to by the law; but you can give an undertaking and do something to save him from the horror of a reformatory." Estelle and Raymond were having tea together at 'The Seven Stars' during this conversation. Her father was returning home to Bridport by an evening train and she had driven to meet him. Nelly Legg waited upon them, and knowing the matter occupied many tongues, Raymond spoke to her. "You can guess this is a puzzler, Nelly," he said. "What would you do? Miss Waldron says it's up to me to try and get the boy off; but the question is shall I be serving him best that way?" "My husband and me have gone over it," she confessed; "of course, everybody has done so. You can't pretend the people aren't interested, and if one has asked Job his opinion, a hundred have. People bring him their puzzles and troubles as a sort of habit. From a finger ache to the loss of a fortune they pour their difficulties into his wise head, and for patience he's a very good second to the first of the name. And I may tell you a curious thing, Mister Raymond, for I've seen it happen. As the folks talk and talk to Legg, they get more and more cheerful and he gets more and more depressed. Then, after they've let off all their woes on the man, sometimes they'll have the grace to apologise and say it's too bad to give him such a dose. And they always wind up by assuring him he's done them a world of good; but they never stop to think what they have done to him." "Vampires of sympathy--blood-suckers," declared Raymond. "Such kindly men as your husband must pay for their virtues, Nelly." "Sympathetic people have to work hard," added Estelle. "Not that he wants the lesser people's gratitude, so long as he has my admiration," explained Mrs. Legg. "And that he always will have, for he's more than human in some particulars. And only I know the full extent of his wonders. A master of stratagems too--the iron hand in the velvet glove--though if you was to tell half the people in Bridport he's got an iron hand, they never would believe it. And as to this sad affair, he's given his opinion and won't change it. You may think him right or wrong, but so it is." "And what does he say, Nelly?" "He says the child may be saved as a brand from the burning if the law takes its course. He thinks that if you, or anybody, was to go bail for the child and save him from the consequences of his wicked deed, that a great mistake would be made. In justice to you I should say that they don't all agree. Some hope you'll interfere--mostly women." "What do you think?" asked Raymond. "As Missis Legg, I think the same as him; and I'll tell you another thing you may not know. The young boy's mother is by no means sure if she don't feel the same. My married niece is her friend, and last time she saw her, Sabina spoke about it. From what Sarah says I think she feels it might be better for the boy to put him away. I can't say as to her motives. Naturally she's only concerned as to the welfare of the child and knows he'll never be trained to any good where he is." That Sabina had expressed so strong an opinion interested Raymond. But Estelle refused to believe it. "I'm sure Sarah misunderstood," she said. "Sabina couldn't mean that." They went to the station presently, met Arthur Waldron and drove him home. Estelle urged Raymond to see Sabina before he decided what to do; and since little time was left before he must act, he went to 'The Magnolias' that evening and begged for an interview. Sabina had a small sitting-room of her own in which evidence of Abel did not lack. Drawings that he had made at school were hung on the walls, and a steam-engine--a present from Mr. Churchouse on his twelfth birthday--stood upon the mantel-shelf. "It's just this, Sabina," he said; "I won't keep you; but I feel the future of the boy is in the balance and I can't do anything without hearing your opinion. And first I want you to understand I have quite forgiven him. He's not all to blame. Certain fixed, false ideas he has got. They were driven into him at his most impressionable age; and until his reason asserts itself no doubt he'll go on hating me. But that'll all come right. I don't blame you for it." "You should blame me all the same," she said. "It's as much me in his blood as his grandmother at his ear, that turned him to hate you. I don't hate you now--or anybody, or anything. I've not got strength and fight in me now to hate, or love either. But I did hate you and I was full of hate before he was born, and the milk was curdled with hate that fed him. Now I don't care what happens. I can't prevent the future of my child from shaping itself. The time for preventing things and doing things and fixing character and getting self-respect is over and past. What he's done is the natural result of what was done to him. And who'll blame him? Who'll blame me for being bad and indifferent--wicked if you like? Life's made me so--hard--cold to others. But I should have been different if I'd had love and common justice. So would he. It's natural in him to hate you; and now the poor little wretch will get what he deserves--same as his mother did before him, and so all's said. What we deserved, that's all." "I don't think so. I'm very willing to fight for him if I can do him good by fighting. The situation is unusual. You probably do not realise what this means to me. Is there to be no finality in your resentment? Honestly I get rather tired of it." "I got rather tired of it twelve years ago." "You're not prepared to help me, then, or make any suggestion--for the child's sake?" "I'll not help, or hinder. I've been looking on so long now that I'm only fit to look on. My child has everything against him, and he knows it; and you can't save him from his fate any more than I can. So what's the good of wasting time talking as though you could? Fate's fate--beyond us." "We make our own fate. I may tell you that I should have been largely influenced by you, Sabina. The question admits of different answers and I recognise my responsibility. Some say that I must intervene now and some say that I should not." "And the only one not asked to give an opinion is Abel himself. A child is never asked about his own hopes and fears." "We know what his hopes were--to burn down the Mill. So we may take it for the present he's not the best judge of what's good for him." "I've done my duty to him," she said, "and that's all I could do. I'm very sorry for him, and what love I've got for him is the sort that's akin to pity. It's contrary to reason that I should take any deep joy in him, or worship the ground he walks on, like other mothers do towards their children. For he stands there before me for ever as the sign and mark of my own failure in life. But I don't think any less of him for trying to destroy the works. I'd decided about him long ago." Raymond found nothing to the purpose in this illusive talk. It argued curious impassivity in Sabina he thought, and he felt jarred to find the conventional attitude of mother to son was not acknowledged by her. Estelle had showed far more feeling, had taken a much more active part in the troubles of Abel. Estelle had spared no pains in arguing for the child and imploring Ironsyde to exhaust his credit on Abel's behalf. He told Sabina this and she explained it. "I dare say she has. A woman can see why, though doubtless you cannot. It isn't because he's himself that she's active for him; and it isn't because he's my child, either. It's because he's your child. Your blood's sacred in her eyes you may be sure. She was a child herself when you ruined me; she forgets all that. Why? Because ever since she's grown to womanhood and intelligence to note what happens, you have been a saint of virtue and the friend of the weak and the champion of the poor. So, of course, she feels that such a great and good man's son only wants his father's care to make him great and good too." "To think you can talk so after all these years, Sabina," he said. "How should I talk? What are the years to me? You never knew, or understood, or respected the stuff I was made of; and you'll never understand your child, either, or the stuff he's made of; and you can tell the young woman that loves you so much, that she's wrong--as wrong as can be. Nothing's gained by your having any hand in Abel's future. You won't win him with sugarplums now, any more than you will with money later on. He's made of different stuff from you--and better stuff and rarer stuff. There's very little of you in him and very little of me, either. He's himself, and the fineness that might have made him a useful man under fair conditions, is turned to foulness now. Your child was ruined in the making--not by me, but by you yourself. And such is his mind that he knows it already. So be warned and let him alone." "If anything could make me agree with Miss Waldron, Sabina, it would be what you tell me," he answered. "And if I can live to show you that you are terribly wrong I shall be glad." "That you never will." "At least you'll do nothing to come between us?" "I never have. I was very careful not to do that. If he can look at you as a friend presently, I shan't prevent it. I shan't warn him against you--though I've warned you against him. The weak use poisonous weapons, because they haven't got the strength to use weapons of might. That's why he tried to burn down the Mill. He'll be stronger some day." "He's clever, I'm told, and if we can only interest him in some intelligent business and find what his bent is, we may fill his mind to good purpose. At any rate, I thank you for leaving me free to act. Now I can decide what course to take. It was impossible until I heard what you felt." She said no more and he left her to make up his mind. Doubt persisted there, for he still suspected, that five years in a reformatory might be better for Abel than anything else. Such an experience he felt would develop his character, crush his malignant instincts and leave him only too ready to accept his father as his friend; but against such a fate for Abel, was his own relationship to the culprit, and the question whether Raymond would not suffer very far-reaching censure if he made no effort to come to the boy's rescue. Truest wisdom might hold a severe course of correction very desirable; but sentiment and public opinion would be likely to condemn him if he did nothing. People would say that he had taken a harsh revenge on his own, erring child. He fumed at a situation intolerable and was finally moved to accept Estelle's advice. From no considerations for Bridport, or Bridetown, did she urge his active intervention. For Abel's sake she begged it and was more insistent than before, when she heard of Sabina's indifference. "He's yours," she said. "You've been so splendidly patient. So do go on being patient, and the result will be a fine character and a reward for you. It isn't what people would say; but if he goes to a reformatory, far from wanting you and your help when he comes out again, he'll know in the future that you might have saved him from it and given him a first-rate education among good, upright boys. But if he went to a reformatory, he must meet all sorts of difficult boys, like himself, and they wouldn't help him, and he'd come out harder than he went in." His heart yielded to her at last, even though his head still doubted, for Raymond's attitude to Estelle had begun insensibly to change since his accident in the cricket field. From that time he won a glimpse of things that apparently others already knew. Sabina, in their recorded conversation, had bluntly told him that Estelle loved him; and while the man dismissed the idea as an absurdity, it was certain that from this period he began to grow somewhat more sentimentally interested in her. The interest developed very slowly, but this business of Abel brought them closer together, for she haunted him during the days before the child came to his trial, and when, perhaps for her sake as much as any other reason, Raymond decided to undertake his son's defence, her gratitude was great. He made it clear to her that she was responsible for his determination. "I've let you over-rule me, Estelle," he told her. "Don't forget it, Chicky. And now that the boy will, I hope, be in my hands, you must strengthen my hands all you can and help me to make him my friend." She promised thankfully. "Be sure I shall never, never forget," she said, "and I shall never be happy till he knows what you really are, and what you wish him. You must win him now. It's surely contrary to all natural instinct if you can't. The mere fact that you can forgive him for what he tried to do, ought to soften his heart." "I trust more to you than myself," he answered. CHAPTER X THE ADVERTISEMENT Raymond Ironsyde had his way, and local justices, familiar with the situation, were content not to commit Abel, but leave the boy in his father's hands. He took all responsibility and, when the time came, sent his son to a good boarding-school at Yeovil. Sabina so far met him that the operation was conducted in her name, and since the case of Abel had been kept out of local papers, his fellow scholars knew nothing of his errors. But his difficulties of character were explained to those now set over him, and they were warned that his moral education, while attempted, had not so far been successful. Perhaps only one of those concerned much sympathised with Ironsyde in his painful ordeal. Those who did not openly assert that he was reaping what he had sown, were indifferent. Some, like Mr. Motyer, held the incident a joke; one only possessed imagination sufficient to guess what these public events must mean to the father of Abel. Indeed, Estelle certainly suffered more for Raymond than he suffered for himself. She pictured poignantly his secret thoughts and sorrows at this challenge, and she could guess what it must be to have a child who hated you. In her maiden mind, however, the man's emotions were exaggerated, and she made the mistake of supposing that this grievous thing must be dominating Raymond's existence, instead of merely vexing it. In truth he suffered, but he was juster than Estelle, and, looking back, measured his liabilities pretty accurately. He had none but himself to thank for these inconveniences, and when he weighed them against the alternative of marriage with Sabina, he counted them as bearable. Abel tried him sorely, but he did not try him as permanent union with Abel's mother must have tried him. Since he had renewed speech with her, his conviction was increased that supreme disaster must have followed marriage. Moreover, there began to rise a first glimmer of the new situation already indicated. It had grown gradually and developed more intensely during his days of enforced idleness in his aunt's house. From that time, at any rate, he marked the change and saw his old regard and respect for Estelle wakening into something greater. Her sympathy quickened the new sentiments. He thought she was saner over Abel than anybody, for she never became sentimental, or pretended that nothing had happened which might not have been predicted. Her support was both human and practical. It satisfied him and showed him her good sense. Miss Ironsyde had often reminded her nephew that he was the last of his line, and urged him to take a wife and found a family. That Raymond should marry seemed desirable to her; but she had not considered Estelle as a wife for him. Had she done so, Jenny must have feared the girl too young and too doubtful in opinions to promise complete success and safety for the master of the Mill. He would marry a mature woman and a steadfast Christian--so hoped Miss Ironsyde then. There came a day when Raymond called on Mr. Churchouse. Business brought him and first he discussed the matter of an advertisement. "In these days," he said, "the competition grows keener than ever. And I rather revel in it--as I do in the east wind. It's not pleasant at the time, but, if you're healthy, it's a tonic." "And if you're not, it finds the weak places," added Mr. Churchouse. "No man over sixty has much good to say of the east wind." "Well, the works are healthy enough and competition is merely a tonic to us. We hold our own from year to year, and I've reached a conviction that my policy of ruthlessly scrapping machinery the moment it's even on the down grade, is the only sound principle and pays in the long run. And now I want something new in the advertisement line--something not mechanical at all, but human and interesting--calculated to attract, not middlemen and retailers, but the person who buys our string and rope to use it. In fact I want a little book about the romance of spinning, so that people may look at a ball of string, or shoe-thread, or fishing-line, intelligently, and realise about one hundredth part of all that goes to its creation. Now you could do a thing like that to perfection, Uncle Ernest, because you know the business inside out." Mr. Churchouse was much pleased. "An excellent idea--a brilliant idea, Raymond! We must insist on the romance of spinning--the poetry." "I don't want it to be too flowery, but just interesting and direct. A glimpse of the raw material growing, then the history of its manufacture." Ernest's eyes sparkled. "From the beginning--from the very beginning," he said. "Pliny tells us how the Romans used hemp for their sails at the end of the first century. Is not the English word 'canvas' only 'cannabis' over again? Herodotus speaks of the hempen robes of the Thracians as equal to linen in fineness. And as for cordage, the ships of Syracuse in 200 B.C.--" He was interrupted. "That's all right, but what I rather fancy is the development of the modern industry--here in Dorset." "Good--that would follow with all manner of modern instances." Mr. Churchouse drew a book from one of his shelves. "In Tudor times it was ordered by Act of Parliament that ropes should be twisted and made nowhere else than here. Leland, that industrious chronicler, came to grief in this matter, for he calls Bridport 'a fair, large town,' where 'be made good daggers.' He shows the danger of taking words too literally, since a 'Bridport dagger' is only another name for the hangman's rope." "That's the sort of thing," said Raymond. "An article we can illustrate, showing the hemp and flax growing in Russia and Italy, then all the business of pulling, steeping and retting, drying and scutching. That would be one chapter." "It shall be done. I see it--I see the whole thing--an elegant brochure and well within my power. I am fired with the thought. There is only one objection, however." "None in the world. I see you know just what I'm after--a little pamphlet well illustrated." "The objection is that Estelle Waldron would do it a thousand times better than I can. She has a more modern outlook and a more modern touch. I feel confident that with me to supply the matter, she would produce a much more attractive and readable work." Raymond considered. "I suppose she would. I hadn't thought of her." "Believe me, she would succeed to admiration. For your sake as well as mine, she would produce a little masterpiece." "She'd do anything to please you, we all know; but I've no right to bother her with details of business. Of course, if you do it, it is a commission and you would name your honorarium, Uncle Ernest." The old man laughed. "We'll see--we'll see. Perhaps I should ask too high a price. But Estelle will not be so grasping. And as to your right to bother her with the details of business, anything she can do for you is a very great privilege to her." "I believe I owe her more than a man can ever pay a woman, already." "Most men are insolvent to the other sex. Woman's noble tradition is to give more than she gets, and let us off the reckoning, quite well knowing it beyond our feeble powers to cry quits with her." Raymond was moved at this challenge, for in the light that Estelle threw upon them, women interested him more to-day than they had for ten years. "One takes old Arthur's daughter for granted rather too much," he said; "we always take good women for granted too much, I suppose. It's the other sort who look out we shan't take them for granted, but at their own valuation. Estelle--she's so many-sided--difficult, too, in some things." "She is," admitted Ernest. "And just for this reason. She always argues on her own basis of perfect ingenuous honesty. She assumes certain rational foundations for all human relations; and if such bases really existed, then it would be the best possible world, no doubt, and we should all do to our neighbour as we would have him do to us. But the Golden Rule doesn't actuate the bulk of mankind, unfortunately. Men and women are not as good as Estelle thinks them." Raymond agreed eagerly. "You've hit it," he said. "It is just that. She's right in theory every time; and if people were all as straight and altruistic and high-principled as she is, there'd really be no more bother about morals in the world. Native good sense would decide. Even as it is, the native good sense of mankind is deciding certain questions and will presently push the lawyers into codifying their mouldy laws, and then give reason a chance to cleanse the whole archaic lump of them; but as it is, Estelle--Take Marriage, for example. I agree with her all the way--in theory. But when you come to view the situation in practice--you're up against things as they are, and you never want people you love to be martyrs, however noble the cause. Estelle says the law of sex relationships is barbaric, and that marriage is being submitted to increasing rational criticism, which the law and the Church both conspire to ignore. She thinks that these barriers to progress ought to be swept away, because they have a vicious effect on the institution and degrade men and women. She's always got her eye on the future, and the result is sometimes that she doesn't focus the present too exactly. It's noble, but not practical." "The institution of marriage will last Estelle's time, I think," declared Mr. Churchouse. "One hopes so heartily--for her own sake. One knows very well it's an obsolescent sort of state, and can't bear the light of reason, and must be reformed, so that intelligent people can enter it in a self-respecting spirit; but if there is one institution that defies the pioneers, it is marriage. The law's far too strong for us there. And I don't want to see her misunderstood." They parted soon after this speech, and the older man, who had long suspected the fact, now perceived that Raymond was beginning to think of Estelle in new terms and elevating her to another place in his thoughts. It was the personal standpoint that challenged Ironsyde's mind. His old sentiments and opinions respecting the marriage bond took a very different colour before the vision of an Estelle united to himself. Thus circumstances alter opinions, and the theories he had preached to Sabina went down the wind when he thought of Estelle. The touchstone of love vitiates as well as purifies thinking. CHAPTER XI THE HEMP BREAKER Ironsyde attached increasing importance to the fullest possible treatment of the raw material before actual spinning, and was not only always on the lookout for the best hemps and flaxes grown, but spared no pains to bring them to the Card and Spread Board as perfect as possible. To this end he established a Hemp Break, a Hemp Breaker and a Hemp Softener. The first was a wooden press used to crush the stalks of retted hemp straw, so that the harl came away and left the fibre clean. The second shortened long hemp, that it might be more conveniently hackled and drawn. The third served greatly to improve the spinning quality of soft hemps by passing them through a system of callender rollers. There were no hands available for the breakers and softeners, so Raymond increased his staff. He also took over ten acres of the North Hill House estate, ploughed up permanent grass, cleaned the ground with a root crop, and then started to renew the vanishing industry of flax growing. He visited Belgium for the purpose of mastering the modern methods, found the soil of North Hill well suited to the crop, and was soon deeply interested in the enterprise. He first hoped to ret his flax in the Bride river, as he had seen it retted on the Lys, but was dissuaded from making this trial and, instead, built a hot water rettery. His experiments did not go unchallenged, and while the women always applauded any change that took strain off their muscles and improved the possibility of rest, the men were indifferent to this advantage. Mr. Baggs even condemned it. He came to see the working of the Hemp Breaker, and perceived without difficulty that its operations must directly tend to diminish his own labour. "You'll pull tons less of solid weight in a day, Levi," said Best, "when this gets going." "And why should I be asked to pull tons less of solid weight? What's the matter with this?" He thrust out his right arm with hypertrophied muscles hard as steel. "It seems to me that a time's coming when the people won't want muscles any more," he said. "Steam has lowered our strength standards as it is, and presently labour will be called to do no more than press buttons in the midst of a roaring hell of machines. The people won't want no more strength than a daddy-long-legs; they that do the work will shrink away till they're gristle and bones, like grasshoppers. And the next thing will be that they'll not be wanted either, but all will be done by just a handful of skilled creatures, that can work the machines from their desks, as easy as the organist plays the organ in church. God help the human frame then!" "We shall never arrive at that, be sure," answered Best; "for that's to exalt the dumb material above the worker, and if things were reduced to such a pitch of perfection all round, there would be no need of large populations. But we're told to increase and multiply at the command of God, so you needn't fear machines will ever lower our power to do so. If that happened, it would be as much as to say God allowed us to produce something to our own undoing." "He allows us to produce a fat lot of things to our own undoing," answered the hackler. "Ain't Nature under God's direction?" "Without doubt, Levi." "And don't Nature tickle us to our own undoing morning, noon, and night? Ain't she always at it--always tempting us to go too far along the road of our particular weakness? And ain't laziness the particular weakness of all women and most men? 'Tis pandering to laziness, these machines, and for my part I wish Ironsyde would get a machine to hackle once and for all. Then I'd leave him and go where they still put muscles above machinery." "Funny you should say that," answered the foreman. "He's had the thought of your retirement in his mind for a good bit now. Only consideration for your feelings has prevented him dropping a hint. He always likes it to come from us, rather than him, when anybody falls out." Mr. Baggs took this with tolerable calm. "I'll think of it next year," he said. "If I could get at him by a side wind as to the size of the pension--" "That's hid with him. He'll follow his father's rule, you may be sure, and reward you according to your deserts." "I don't expect that," said Mr. Baggs. "He don't know my deserts." "Well, I shouldn't be in any great hurry for your own sake," advised Best. "You're well and hard, and can do your work as it should be done; but you must remember you've got no resources outside your hackling shop. Take you away from it and you're a blank. You never read a book, or go out for a walk, or even till your allotment ground. All you do is to sit at home and criticise other people. In fact, you're a very ignorant old man, Baggs, and if you retired, you'd find life hang that heavy on your hands you'd hardly know how to kill time between meals. Then you'd get fat and eat too much and shorten your days. I've known it to happen, where a man who uses his muscles gives up work before his flesh fails him." Raymond Ironsyde joined them at this juncture and presently, when Levi went back to his shop and the Hemp Breaker had been duly applauded, the master took John Best aside and discussed a private matter. "The boy has come back for his holidays," he said; and Best, who knew that when Raymond spoke of 'the boy' he meant Sabina's son, nodded. "I hope all goes well with him and that you hear good accounts," he answered. "The reports are all much the same, term after term. He's said to have plenty of ability, but no perseverance." "Think nothing of that," advised the foreman. "Schoolmasters expect boys to persevere all round, which is more than you can ask of human nature. The thing is to find out what gets hold of a boy and what he does persevere at--then a sensible schoolmaster wouldn't make him waste half his working hours at other things, for which the boy's mind has got no place. Mechanics will be that boy's strong point, if I know anything about boys. And I believe all the fearful wickedness that prompted him to burn the place down is pretty well gone out of him by now." "I've left him severely alone," said Raymond. "I've said to myself that not for three whole years will I approach him again. Meantime I don't feel any too satisfied with the school. I fancy they are a bit soft there. Private schools are like that. They daren't be too strict for fear the children will complain and be taken away. But there are others. I can move him if need be. And I'll ask you, Best, to keep your eye on him these holidays, as far as you reasonably can, when he comes here. It is understood he may. Try and get him to talk and see if he's got any ideas." "He puts me a good bit in mind of what poor Mister Daniel was at that age. He's keen about spinning, and if I was to let him mind a can now and again he'd be very proud of himself." "Rum that he should like the works and hate me. Yes, he hates me all right still, for Mister Churchouse has sounded him and finds that it is so. It's in the young beggar's blood and there seems to be no operation that will get it out." Best considered. "He'll come round. No doubt his schooling is making his mind larger, and, presently, he'll feel the force of Christianity also; and that should conquer the old Adam in him. By the same token the less he sees of Levi, the better. Baggs is no teacher for youth, but puts his own wrong and rebellious ideas into their heads, and they think it's fine to be up against law and order. I'll always say 'twas half the fault of Baggs the boy thought to burn us down; yet, of course, nobody was more shocked and scandalised than Levi when he heard about it. And until the boy's come over to your side, he'll do well not to listen to the seditious old dog." "Keep him out of the hackling shop, then. Tell him he's not to go there." Best shook his head. "The very thing to send him. He's like that. He'd smell a rat very quick if he was ordered not to see Baggs. And then he'd haunt Baggs. I shan't trust the boy a yard, you understand. You mustn't ask me to do that after the past. But I'm hopeful that his feeling for the craft will lift him up and make him straight. To a craftsman, his work is often more powerful for salvation than his faith. In fact, his work is his faith; and from the way things run in the blood, I reckon that Sabina's son might rise into a spinner." "I don't want anything of that sort to happen, and I'm sure she doesn't." "There's a hang-dog look in his eyes I'd like to see away," confessed John. "He's been mismanaged, I reckon, and hasn't any sense of righteousness yet. All for justice he is, so I hear he tells Mister Churchouse. Many are who don't know the meaning of the word. I'll do what I can when he comes here." "He's old for his age in some ways and young in others," explained Raymond. "I feel nothing much can be done till he gets friendly with me." "You're doing all any man could do." "At some cost too, John. You, at any rate, can understand what a ghastly situation this is. There seems no end to it." "Consequences often bulk much bigger than causes," said Best. "In fact, to our eyes, consequences do generally look a most unfair result of causes; as a very small seed will often grow up into a very big tree. You'll never find any man, or woman, satisfied with the price they're called to pay for the privilege of being alive. And in this lad's case, him being built contrary and not turned true--warped no doubt by the accident of his career--you've got to pay a far heavier price than you would have been called to pay if you'd been his lawful begetter. But seeing the difficulty lies in the boy's nature alone, we'll hope that time will cure it, when he's old enough to look ahead and see which side his bread's buttered, if for no higher reason." Ironsyde left the Mill depressed; indeed, Abel's recurring holidays always did depress him. As yet no hoped-for sign of reconciliation could be chronicled. To-day, however, a gleam appeared to dawn, for on calling at 'The Magnolias' to see Ernest Churchouse, Raymond was cheered by a promised event which might contain possibilities. Estelle had scored a point and got Abel to promise to come for a picnic. "He made a hard bargain though," she said. "He's to light a fire and boil the kettle. And we are to stop at the old store in West Haven for one good hour on the road home. I've agreed to the terms and shall give him the happiest time I know how." "Is his mother going?" "Yes--he insists on that. And Sabina will come." "But don't hope too much of it," said Ernest. "I regard this as the thin end of the wedge--no more than that. If Estelle can win his confidence, then she may do great things; but she won't win it at one picnic. I know him too well. He's a mass of contradictions. Some days most communicative, other days not a syllable. Some days he seems to trust you with his secrets, other days he is suspicious if you ask him the simplest question. He's still a wild animal, who occasionally, for his own convenience, pretends to be tame." "I shan't try to tame him," said Estelle. "I respect wild things a great deal too much to show them the charms of being tame. But it's something that he's coming, and if once he will let me be his chum in holidays, I might bring him round to Ray." She planned the details of the picnic and invited Raymond to imagine himself a boy again. This he did and suggested various additions to the entertainment. "Did Sabina agree easily?" he asked, still returning to the event as something very great and gratifying. "Not willingly, but gradually and cautiously." "She's softer and gentler than she was, however. I can assure you of that," said Mr. Churchouse. "She thought it might be a trap at first," confessed Estelle. "A trap, Chicky! You to set a trap?" "No, you, Ray. She fancied you might mean to surprise the boy and bully him." "How could she think so?" "I assured her that you'd never dream of any such thing. Of course I promised, as she wished me to do so, that you wouldn't turn up at the picnic. I reminded her how very particular you were, and how entirely you leave it to Abel to come round and take the first step." "Be jolly careful what you say to him. He's a mass of prejudice, where I'm concerned, and doesn't even know I'm educating him." "I'll keep off you," she promised. "In fact, I only intend to give him as good a day as I can. I'm not going to bother about you, Ray; I'm going to think of myself and do everything I can to get his friendship on my own account. If I can do that for a start, I shall be satisfied." "And so shall I," declared Ernest. "Because it wouldn't stop at that. If you succeed, then much may come of it. In my case, I can't lift his guarded friendship for me into enthusiasm. He associates me with learning to read and other painful preliminaries to life. Moreover, I have tried to awaken his moral qualities and am regarded with the gravest suspicion in consequence. But you come to him freshly and won't try to teach him anything. Join him in his pleasure and add to it all you can. There is nothing that wins young creatures quicker than sharing their pleasures, if you can do so reasonably and are not removed so far from them by age that any attempt would be ridiculous. Fifteen and twenty-seven may quite well have a good deal in common still, if twenty-seven is not too proud to confess it." CHAPTER XII THE PICNIC For a long day Estelle devoted herself whole-heartedly to winning the friendship of Abel Dinnett. Her chances of success were increased by an accident, though it appeared at first that the misadventure would ruin all. For when Estelle arrived at 'The Magnolias' in her pony carriage, Sabina proved to be sick and quite unequal to the proposed day in the air. Abel declined to go without his mother, but, after considerable persuasion, allowed the prospect of pleasure to outweigh his distrust. Estelle promised to let him drive, and that privilege in itself proved a temptation too great to resist. His mother's word finally convinced him, and he drove an elderly pony so considerately that his hostess praised him. "I see you are kind to dumb things," she said. "I am glad of that, for they are very understanding and soon know who are their friends and who are not." "If beasts treat me well," he answered, "then I treat them well. And if they treated me badly, then I'd treat them badly." She did not argue about this; indeed, all that day her care was to amuse him and hear his opinions without boring him if she could avoid doing so. He remained shy at first and quiet. From time to time she was in a fair way to break down his reserve; but he seemed to catch himself becoming more friendly and, once or twice, after laughing at something, he relapsed into long silence and looked at her from under his eyelids suspiciously when he thought she was not looking at him. Thus she won, only to lose what she had won, and when they reached the breezy cliffs of Eype, Estelle reckoned that she stood towards him pretty much as she stood at starting. But slowly, surely, inevitably, before such good temper and tact he thawed a little. They tethered the pony, gave it a nosebag and then spread their meal. Abel was quick and neat. She noticed that his hands were like his mother's--finely tapered, suggestive of art. But on that subject he seemed to have no ideas, and she found, after trying various themes, that he cared not in the least for music, or pictures, but certainly shared his father's interest in mechanics. Abel talked of the Mill--self-consciously at first; yet when he found that Estelle ignored the past, and understood spinning, he forgot himself entirely for a time under the spell of the subject. They compared notes, and she saw he was more familiar than she with detail. Then, while still forgetting his listener, Abel remembered himself and his talk of the Mill turned into a personal channel. There is no more confidential thing, by fits and starts, than a shy child; and just as Estelle felt the boy would never come any closer, or give her a chance to help him, suddenly he startled her with the most unexpected utterance. "You mightn't know it," he said, "but by justice and right I should have the whole works for my very own when Mister Ironsyde died. Because he's my father, though I daresay he pretends to everybody he isn't." "I'm very sure Mister Ironsyde doesn't feel anything but jolly kind and friendly to you, Abel. He doesn't pretend he isn't your father. Why should he? You know he's often offered to be friends, and he even forgave you for trying to burn down the Mill. Surely that was a pretty good sign he means to be friendly?" "I don't want his friendship, because he's not good to mother. He served her very badly. I understand things a lot better than you might think." "Well, don't spoil your lunch," she said. "We'll talk afterwards. Are you ready for another bottle of gingerbeer? I don't like this gingerbeer out of glass bottles. I like it out of stone bottles." "So do I," he answered, instantly dropping his own wrongs. "But the glass bottles have glass marbles in them, which you can use; and so it's better to have them, because it doesn't matter so much about the taste after it's drunk." She asked him concerning his work and he told her that he best liked history. She asked why, and he gave a curious reason. "Because it tells you the truth, and you don't find good men always scoring and bad men always coming to grief. In history, good men come to grief sometimes and bad men score." "But you can't always be sure what is good and what is bad," she argued. "The people who write the histories don't worry you about that," he answered, "but just tell you what happened. And sometimes you are jolly glad when a beast gets murdered, or his throne is taken away from him; and sometimes you are sorry when a brave chap comes to grief, even though he may be bad." "Some historians are not fair, though," she said. "Some happen to feel like you. They hate some people and some ideas, and always show them in an unfriendly light. If you write history, you must be tremendously fair and keep your own little whims out of it." After their meal Estelle smoked a cigarette, much to Abel's interest. "I never knew a girl could smoke," he said. "Why not? Would you like one? I don't suppose a cigarette once in a way can hurt you." "I've smoked thousands," he told her. "And a pipe, too, for that matter. I smoked a cigar once. I found it and smoked it right through." "Didn't it make you ill?" "Yes--fearfully; but I hid till I was all right again." He smoked a cigarette, and Estelle told him that his father was a great smoker and very fond of a pipe. "But he wouldn't let you smoke, except now and again in holiday times--not yet. Nobody ought to smoke till he's done growing." "What about you, then?" asked Abel. "I've done growing ages ago. I'm nearly twenty-eight." He looked at her and his eyes clouded. He entered a phase of reserve. Then she, guessing how to enchant him, suggested the next step. "If you help me pack up now, we'll harness the pony and go down to West Haven for a bit. I want to see the old stores I've heard such a lot about. You must show them to me." "Yes--part. I know every inch of them, but I can't show you my own secret den, though." "Do. I should love to see it." He shook his head. "No good asking," he said. "That's my greatest secret. You can't expect me to tell you. Even mother doesn't know." "I won't ask, then. I've got a den, too, for that matter--in fact, two. One on North Hill and one in our garden." "D'you know the lime-kiln on North Hill?" "Rather. The bee orchis grows thereabout." He thought for a moment. "If I showed you my den in the store, would you swear to God never to tell?" "Yes, I'd swear faithfully not to." "Perhaps I will, then." But when presently they reached his haunt, he had changed his mood. She did not remind him, left him to his devices and sat patiently outside while he was hidden within. Occasionally his head popped out of unexpected places aloft, then disappeared again. Once she heard a great noise, followed by silence. She called to him and, after a pause, he shouted down that he was all right. When an hour had passed she called out again to tell him to come back to her. "We're going to Bridport to tea," she said. He came immediately and revealed a badly torn trouser leg. "I fell," he explained. "I fell through a rotten ceiling, and I've cut my leg. When I was young the sight of blood made me go fainty, but I laugh at it now." He pulled up his trousers and showed a badly barked shin. "We'll go to a chemist and get him to wash it, and I'll get a needle and thread and sew it up," said Estelle. She condoled with him as they drove to Bridport, but he was impatient of sympathy. "I don't mind pain," he said. "I've tried the Red Indian tests on myself before to-day. Once I had to see a doctor after; but I didn't flinch when I was doing it." A chemist dressed the wounded leg and presently they arrived at 'The Seven Stars,' where the pony was stabled and tea taken in the garden. Mrs. Legg provided a needle and thread and produced a very excellent tea. Abel enjoyed the swing for some time, but would not let Estelle help him. "I can swing myself," he said, "but I'll swing you afterwards." He did so until they were tired. Then he walked round the flower borders and presently picked Estelle a rose. She thanked him very heartily and told him the names of the blossoms which he did not know. Job came and talked to them for a time, and Estelle praised the garden, while Abel listened. Then Mr. Legg turned to the boy. "Holidays round again, young man? I dare say we shall see you sometimes, and, if you like flowers, you can always come in and have a look." "I don't like flowers," said the boy. "I like fruit." He went back to the swing and Job asked after Mr. Waldron. Estelle reminded him that he had promised to come and see her garden some day. "Be sure I shall, miss," he answered, "but, for the minute, work fastens on me from my rising up to my going down." "However do you get through it all?" "Thanks to method. It's summed up in that. Without method, I should be a lost man." "You ought to slack off," she said. "I'm sure that Nelly doesn't like to see you work so hard." "She'd work hard too, but Nature and not her will shortens her great powers. She grows into a mountain of flesh and her substance prevents activity; but the mind is there unclouded. In my case the flesh doesn't gain on me and work agrees with my system." "You're a very wonderful man," declared Estelle; "but no doubt plenty of people tell you that." "Only by comparison," he explained. "The wonder is all summed up in the one word 'method,' coupled with a good digestion and no strong drink. I'd like to talk more on the subject, but I must be going." "And tell them to put in the pony. We must be going, too." On the way home Estelle tried to interest Abel in sport. She had been very careful all day to keep Raymond off her lips, but now intentionally she spoke of him. It was done with care and she only named him casually in the course of general remarks. Thus she hoped that, in time, he would allow her to mention his father without opposition. "I think you ought to play some games with your old friends at Bridetown these holidays," she said. "I haven't any old friends there. I don't want friends. I never made that fire you promised." "You shall make it next time we come out; and everybody wants friends. You can't get on without friends. And the good of games is that you make friends. I'm very keen on golf now, though I never thought I should like sport. Did you play any cricket at school?" "Yes, but I don't care about it." "How did you play? You ought to be rather a dab at it." "I played very well and was in the second eleven. But I don't care about it. It's all right at school, but there are better things to do in the holidays." "If you're a good cricketer, you might get some matches. Your father is a very good cricketer, and would have played for the county if he'd been able to practise enough. And Mister Roberts at the mill is a splendid player." His nervous face twitched and his instant passion ran into his whip hand. He gave the astonished pony a lash and made it start across the road, so that Estelle was nearly thrown from her seat. "Don't! Don't!" she said. "What's the matter?" But she knew. He showed his teeth. "I won't hear his name--I won't hear it. I hate him, I hate him. Take the reins--I'll walk. You've spoilt everything now. I always wish he was dead when I hear his name, and I wish he was dead this minute." "My dear Abel, I'm sorry. I didn't think you felt so bad as that about him. He doesn't feel at all like that about you." "I hate him, I tell you, and I'm not the only one that hates him. And I don't care what he feels about me. He's my greatest enemy on earth, and people who understand have told me so, and I won't be beholden to him for anything--and--and you can stick up for him till you're black in the face for all I care. I know he's bad and I'll be his enemy always." "You're a little fool," she said calmly. "Let me drive and you can listen to me now. If you listen to stupid, wicked people talking of your father, then listen to me for a change. You don't know anything whatever about him, because you won't give him a chance to talk to you himself. If you once let him, you'd very soon stop all this nonsense." "You're bluffing," he said. "You think you'll get round me like that, but you won't. You're only a girl. You don't know anything. It's men tell me about my father. You think he's good, because you love him; but he's bad, really--as bad as hell--as bad as hell." "What's he done then? I'm not bluffing, Abel. There's nothing to bluff about. What's your father done to you? You must have some reason for hating him?" "Yes, I have." "What is it, then?" "It's because the Mill ought to be mine when he dies--there!" She did not answer immediately. She had often thought the same thing. Instinct told her that frankness must be the only course. Through frankness he might still be won. He did not speak again after his last assertion, and presently she answered in a manner to surprise him. Directness was natural to Estelle and both her father and her friend, Mr. Churchouse, had fostered it. People either deprecated or admired this quality of her talk, for directness of speech is so rare that it never fails to appear surprising. "I think you're right there, Abel. Perhaps the Mill ought to be yours some day. Perhaps it will be. The things that ought to happen really do sometimes." Then he surprised her in his turn. "I wouldn't take the Mill--not now. I'll never take anything from him. It's too late now." She realised the futility of argument. "You're tired," she said, "and so am I. We'll talk about important things again some day. Only don't--don't imagine people aren't your friends. If you'd only think, you'd see how jolly kind people have been to you over and over again. Didn't you ever wonder how you got off so well after trying to burn down the works? You must have. Anyway, it showed you'd got plenty of good friends, surely?" "It didn't matter to me. I'd have gone to prison. I don't care what they do to me. They can't make me feel different." "Well, leave it. We've had a good day and you needn't quarrel with me, at any rate." "I don't know that. You're his friend." "You surely don't want to quarrel with all his friends as well as him? We are going to be friends, anyway, and have some more good times together. I like you." "I thought I liked you," he said, "but you called me a little fool." "That's nothing. You were a little fool just now. We're all fools sometimes. I've been a fool to-day, myself. You're a little fool to hate anybody. What good does it do you to hate?" "It does do me good; and if I didn't hate him, I should hate myself," the boy declared. "Well, it's better to hate yourself than somebody else. It's a good sign I should think if we hate ourselves. We ought to hate ourselves more than we do, because we know better than anybody else how hateful we can be. Instead of that, we waste tons of energy hating other people, and think there's nobody so fine and nice and interesting as we are ourselves." "Mister Churchouse says the less we think about ourselves the better. But you've got to if you've been ill-used." In the dusk twinkled out a glow-worm beside the hedge, and they stopped while Abel picked it up. Gradually he grew calmer, and when they parted he thanked her for her goodness to him. "It's been a proper day, all but the end," he said, "and I will like you and be your friend. But I won't like my father and be his friend, because he's bad and served mother and me badly. You may think I don't understand such things, but I do. And I never will be beholden to him as long as I live--never." He left her at the outer gate of his home and she drove on and considered him rather hopelessly. He had some feeling for beauty on which she had trusted to work, but it was slight. He was vain, very sensitive, and disposed to be malignant. As yet reason had not come to his rescue and his emotions, ill-directed, ran awry. He was evidently unaware that his father had so far saved the situation for him. What would he do when he knew it? Estelle felt the picnic not altogether a failure, yet saw little signs of a situation more hopeful at present. "I can win him," she decided; "but it looks as though his father never would." CHAPTER XIII THE RUNAWAY Estelle was as good as her word and devoted not a few of his holidays to the pleasure of Sabina's son. Unconsciously she hastened the progress of other matters, for her resolute attempt to win Abel, at any cost of patience and trouble, brought her still deeper into the hidden life and ambitions of the boy's father. She was frank with Raymond, and when Abel had gone back to school and made no sign, Estelle related her experiences. "He's sworn eternal friendship with me," she said, "but it's not a friendship that extends to you, or anybody else. He's very narrow. He concentrates in a terrifying way and wants everything. He told me that he hated me to have any other friends but him. It took him a long time to decide about me; but now he has decided. He extracts terrific oaths of secrecy and then imparts his secrets. Before giving the oaths, I always tell him I shan't keep them if he's going to confide anything wicked; but his secrets are harmless enough. The last was a wonderful hiding-place. He spends many hours in it. I nearly broke my neck getting there. That's how far we've reached these holidays; and after next term I shall try again." "He's got a heart, if one could only reach it, I suppose." "A very hot heart. I shall try to extend his sympathies when he comes back." Her intention added further fuel to the fire burning in Raymond's own thoughts. He saw both danger and hope in the situation, as it might develop from this point. The time was drawing nearer when he meant to ask Estelle to marry him, and since he looked now at life and all its relations from this standpoint, he began to consider his son therefrom. On the whole he was cheered by Estelle's achievements and argued well of them. The danger he set aside, and chose rather to reflect on the hope. With Abel back at school again and his mother in a more placid temper, there came a moment of peace. Ironsyde was able to forget them and did so thankfully, while he concentrated on the task before him. He felt very doubtful, both of Estelle's response and her father's view. The girl herself, however, was all that mattered, for Waldron would most surely approve her choice whatever it might be. Arthur had of late, however, been giving it as his opinion that his daughter would not marry. He had decided that she was not the marrying sort, and told Raymond as much. "The married state's too limited for her: her energies are too tremendous to leave any time for being a wife. To bottle Estelle down to a husband and children is impossible. They wouldn't be enough for her intellect." This had been said some time before, when unconscious of Ironsyde's growing emotions; but of late he had suspected them and was, therefore, more guarded in his prophecies. Then came a shock, which delayed progress, for Abel thrust himself to the front of his mind again. Estelle corresponded with her new friend, and the boy had heard from her that in future he must thank his father for his education. She felt that it was time he knew this, and hoped that he would now be sane enough to let the fact influence him. It did, but not as she had expected. Instead there came the news that Abel had been expelled. He deliberately refused to proceed with his work, and, when challenged, explained that he would learn no more at his father's expense. Nothing moved him, and Estelle's well-meant but ill-judged action merely served to terminate Abel's education for good and all. The boy was rapidly becoming a curse to his father. Puritans, who knew the story, welcomed its development and greeted each phase with religious enthusiasm; but others felt the situation to be growing absurd. Raymond himself so regarded it, and when Abel returned home again he insisted on seeing him. "You can be present if you wish to be," he told Sabina, but she expressed no such desire. Her attitude was modified of late, and, largely under the influence of Estelle, she began to see the futility of this life-enmity declared against Raymond by her son. Of old she had thought it natural, and while not supporting it had made no effort to crush it out of him. Now she perceived that it could come to nothing and only breed bitterness. She had, therefore, begun to tone her indifference and withhold the little bitter speeches that only fortified Abel's hate. She had even argued with him--lamely enough--and advised him not to persist in a dislike of his father that could not serve him in after life. But he had continued to rejoice in his hatred. While Estelle hoped with Sabina to break down his obstinacy, he actually looked forward to the time when Estelle would hate his enemy also. He had been sorry to see his mother weakening and even blaming him for his opinions. But now he was faced with his father under conditions from which there was no escape. The meeting took place in Mr. Churchouse's study and Abel was called to listen, whether he would or no. Raymond knew that the child understood the situation and he did not mince words. He kept his temper and exhausted his arguments. "Abel," he said, "you've got to heed me now, and whatever you may feel, you must use your self-control and your brains. I'm speaking entirely for your sake and I'm only concerned for your future. If you would use your reason, it would show you that the things you have done and are doing can't hurt me; they can only hurt yourself; and what is the good of hurting yourself, because you don't like me? If you had burned down the works, the insurance offices would have paid me back all the money they were worth, and the only people to suffer would have been the men and women you threw out of work. So, when you tried to hurt me, you were only hurting other people and yourself. Boys who do that sort of thing are called embryo criminals, and that's what they are. But for me and the great kindness and humanity of other men--my friends on the magistrates' bench--you would have been sent to a reformatory after that affair; but your fellow creatures forgave you and were very good to me also, and let you go free on consideration that I would be responsible for you. Then I sent you to a good school, where nothing was known against you. Now you have been expelled from that school, because you won't work, or go on with your education. And your reason is that I am paying for your education and you won't accept anything at my hands. "But think what precisely this means. It doesn't hurt me in the least. As far as I am concerned, it makes not a shadow of difference. I have no secrets about things. Everybody knows the situation, and everybody knows I recognise my obligations where you are concerned and wish to be a good father to you. Therefore, if you refuse to let me be, nobody is hurt but yourself, because none can take my place. You don't injure my credit; you only lose your own. The past was past, and people had begun to forget what you did two years ago. Now you've reminded them by this folly, and I tell you that you are too old to be so foolish. There is no reason why you should not lead a dignified, honourable and useful life. You have far better opportunities than thousands and thousands of boys, and far better and more powerful friends than ninety-nine boys out of a hundred. "Then why fling away your chances and be impossible and useless and an enemy to society, when society only wants to be your friend? What is the good? What do you gain? And what do I lose? You're not hurting me; but you're hurting and distressing your mother. You're old enough to understand all this, and if your mother can feel as I know she feels and ask you to consider your own future and look forward in a sensible spirit, instead of looking back in a senseless one, then surely, for her sake alone, you ought to be prepared to meet me and turn over a new leaf. "For you won't tire out my patience, or break my heart. I never know when I'm beat, and since my wish is only your good, neither you, nor anybody, will choke me off it. I ask you now to promise that, if I send you to another school, you'll work hard and complete your education and qualify yourself for a useful place in the world afterwards. That's what you've got to do, and I hope you see it. Then your future will be my affair, for, as my son, I shall be glad and willing to help you on in whatever course of life you may choose. "So that's the position. You see I've given you the credit of being a sane and reasonable being, and I want you to decide as a sane and reasonable being. You can go on hating me as much as you please; but don't go on queering your own pitch and distressing your mother and making your future dark and difficult, when it should be bright and easy. Promise me that you'll go back to a new school and work your hardest to atone for this nonsense and I'll take your word for it. And I don't ask for my own sake--always remember that. I ask you for your own sake and your mother's." With bent head the boy scowled up under his eyebrows during this harangue. He answered immediately Raymond had finished and revealed passion. "And what, if I say 'no'?" "I hope you won't be so foolish." "I do say 'no' then--a thousand times I say it. Because if you bring me up, you get all the credit. You shan't get credit from me. And I'll bring myself up without any help from you. I know I'm different from other boys, because you didn't marry my mother. And that's a fearful wrong to her, and you're not going to get out of that by anything I can do. You're wicked and cowardly to my mother, and she's Mister Churchouse's servant, instead of being your wife and having servants of her own, and I'm a poor woman's son instead of being a rich man's son, as I ought to be. All that's been told me by them who know it. And you're a bad man, and I hate you, and I shall always hate you as long as you live. And I'll never be beholden to you for anything, because my life is no good now, and my mother's life is no good neither. And if I thought she was taking a penny of your money, I'd--" His temper upset him and he burst into tears. The emotion only served to increase his anger. "I'm crying for hate," he said. "Hate, hate, hate!" Raymond looked at the boy curiously. "Poor little chap, I wish to God I could make you see sense. You've got the substance and are shouting for the shadow, which you can never have. You talk like a man, so I'll answer you like a man and advise you not to listen to the evil tongue of those who bear no kindly thought to me, or you either. What is the sense of all this hate? Granted wrong things happened, how are you helping to right the wrong? Where is the sense of this blind enmity against me? I can't call back the past, any more than you can call back the tears you have just shed. Then why waste nervous energy and strength on all this silly hate?" "Because it makes me better and stronger to hate you. It makes me a man quicker to hate you. You say I talk like a man--that's because I hate like a man." "You talk like a very silly man, and if you grow up into a man hating me, you'll grow up a bitter, twisted sort of man--no good to anybody. A man with a grievance is only a nuisance to his neighbours; and seeing what your grievance is, and that I am ready and willing to do everything in a father's power to lessen that grievance and retrieve the mistakes of the past--remembering, too, that everybody knows my good intentions--you'll really get none to care for your troubles. Instead, all sensible people will tell you that they are largely of your own making." "The more you talk, the more I hate you," said the boy. "If I never heard your voice again and never saw your face again, still I'd always hate you. I don't hate anything else in the world but you. I wouldn't spare a bit of hate for anything but you. I won't be your son now--never." "Well, run away then. You'll live to be sorry for feeling and speaking so, Abel. I won't trouble you again. Next time we meet, I hope you will come to me." The boy departed and the man considered. It seemed that harm irreparable was wrought, and a reconciliation, that might have been easy in Abel's childhood, when he was too young to appreciate their connection, had now become impossible, since he had grown old enough to understand it. He would not be Raymond's son. He declined the filial relationship--doubtless prompted thereto from his earliest days, first on one admonition, then at another. The leaven had been mixed with his blood by his mother, in his infant mind by his grandmother, in his soul by fellow men as he grew towards adolescence. Yet from Sabina herself the poison had almost passed away. In the light of these new difficulties she grew anxious, and began to realise how fatally Abel's possession was standing in his own light. She loved him, but not passionately. He would soon be sixteen and her point of view changed. She had listened long to Estelle and began to understand that, whatever dark memories and errors belonged to Raymond Ironsyde's past, he designed nothing but generous goodness for their son in the future. After the meeting with Abel, Raymond saw Sabina and described what had occurred; but she could only express her regrets. She declared herself more hopeful than he and promised to reason with the boy to the best of her power. "I've never stood against you with him, and I've never stood for you with him. I've kept out of it and not influenced for or against," she said. "But now I'll do more than that; I'll try and influence him for you." Raymond was obliged. "I shall be very grateful to you if you can. If there's any human being who carries weight with him, you do. Such blistering frankness--such crooked, lightning looks of hate--fairly frighten me. I had no idea any young creature could feel so much." "He's going through what I went through, I suppose," she said. "I don't want to hurt you, or vex you any more. I'm changed now and tired of quarrelling with things that can't be altered. When we find the world's sympathy for us is dead, then it's wiser to accept the situation and cease to run about trying to wake it up again. So I'll try to show him what the world will be for the likes of him if he hasn't got you behind him." "Do--and don't do it bitterly. You can't talk for two minutes about the past without getting bitter--unconsciously, quite unconsciously, Sabina. And your unconscious bitterness hurts me far more than it hurts you. But don't be bitter with him, or show there's another side of your feelings about it. Keep that for me, if you must. My shoulders are broad enough to bear it. He is brimming with acid as it is. Sweeten his mind if it is in your power. That's the only way of salvation, and the only chance of bringing him and me together." She promised to attempt it. "And if I'm bitter still," she said, "it is largely unconscious, as you say. You can't get the taste of trouble out of your mouth very easily after you've been deluged with it and nigh drowned in it, as I have. It's only an echo and won't reach his ear, though it may reach yours." "Thank you, Sabina. Do what you can," he said, and left her, glad to get away from the subject and back to his own greater interests. He heard nothing more for a few days, then came the news that Abel had disappeared. By night he had vanished and search failed to find him. Sabina could only state what had gone before his departure. She had spoken with him on Raymond's behalf and urged him to reconsider his attitude and behave sensibly and worthily. And he, answering nothing, had gone to bed as usual; but when she called him next morning, no reply came and she found that he had ridden away on his bicycle in the night. The country was hunted, but without result, and not for three days did his mother learn what had become of Abel. Then, in reply to police notices of his disappearance, there came a letter from a Devonshire dairy farm, twenty miles to the west of Bridport. The boy had appeared there early in the morning and begged for some breakfast. Then he asked for something to do. He was now working on trial for a week, but whether giving satisfaction or no they did not learn. His mother went to see him and found him well pleased with himself and proud of what he had accomplished. He explained to her that he had now taken his life into his own hands and was not going to look to anybody in future but himself. The farmer reported him civil spoken, willing to learn, and quick to please. Indeed, Abel had never before won such a good character. She left him there happy and content, and took no immediate steps to bring the boy home. It was decided that a conference should presently be held of those interested in Abel. "Since he is safe and cheerful and doing honest work, you need not be in distress about him at present, Sabina," said Ernest Churchouse; "but Raymond Ironsyde has no intention that the boy should miss an adequate education, and wishes him to be at school for a couple of years yet, if possible. It is decided that we knock our heads together on the subject presently. We'll meet and try to hit upon a sensible course. Meantime this glimpse of reality and hard work at Knapp Farm will do him good. He may show talent in an agricultural direction. In any case, you can feel sure that whatever tastes he develops, short of buccaneering, or highway robbery, will be gratified." CHAPTER XIV THE MOTOR CAR Raymond Ironsyde felt somewhat impatient of the conference to consider the situation of his son. But since he had no authority and Sabina was anxious to do something, he agreed to consult Mr. Churchouse. They met at 'The Magnolias,' where Miss Ironsyde joined them; but her old energy and forcible opinions had faded. She did little more than listen. Ironsyde came first and spoke to Ernest in a mood somewhat despondent. They were alone at the time, for Sabina did not join them until Estelle came. "Is there nothing in paternity?" asked Raymond. "Isn't nature all powerful and blood thicker than water? What is it that over-rides the natural relationship and poisons him against me? Isn't a good father a good father?" "So much is implied in this case," answered the elder. "He's old enough now to understand what it means to be a natural child. Doubtless the disabilities they labour under have been explained to him. That fact is what poisons his mind, as you say, and makes him hate the blood in his veins. We've got to get over that and find antidotes for the poison, if we can." "I'm beginning to doubt if we ever shall, Uncle Ernest." Sabina and Estelle entered at this moment and heard Mr. Churchouse make answer. "Be sure it can be done. Every year makes it more certain, because with increase of reasoning power he'll see the absurdity of this attitude. It is no good to him to continue your enemy." "Increase of reason cuts both ways. It shows him his grievances, as well as what will pay him best in the future. He's faced with a clash of reason." "Reason I grant springs from different inspirations," admitted Ernest. "There's the reason of the heart and the reason of the head--yes, the heart has its reasons, too. And though the head may not appreciate them, they exercise their weight and often conquer." Soon there came a carriage from Bridport and Miss Ironsyde joined them. "Oh! I'm glad to see a fire," she said, and sat close beside it in an easy chair. Then Raymond spoke. "It is good of you all to come and lend a hand over this difficult matter. I appreciate it, and specially I thank Sabina for letting us consider her son's welfare. She knows that we all want to befriend him and that we all are his friends. It's rather difficult for me to say much; but if you can show me how to do anything practical and establish Abel's position and win his goodwill, at any cost to myself, I shall thank you. I've done what I could, but I confess this finds me beaten for the moment. You'd better say what you all think, and see if you agree." The talk that followed was inconsequent and rambling. For a considerable time it led nowhere. Miss Ironsyde was taciturn. It occupied all her energies to conceal the fact that she was suffering a good deal of physical pain. She made no original suggestions. Churchouse, according to his wont, generalised; but it was through a generalisation that they approached something definite. "He has yet to learn that we cannot live to ourselves, or design life's pattern single-handed," declared Ernest. "Life, in fact, is rather like a blind man weaving a basket: we never see our work, and we have to trust others for the material. And if we better realised how blind we were, we should welcome and invite criticism more freely than we do." "No man makes his own life--I've come to see that," admitted Raymond. "The design seems to depend much on your fellow creatures; your triumph or failure is largely the work of others. But it depends on your own judgment to the extent that you can choose what fellow creatures shall help you." Estelle approved this. "And if we could only show Abel that, and make him feel this determination to be independent of everybody is a mistake. But he told me once, most reasonably, that he didn't mind depending on those who were good to him. He said he would trust them." "Trust's everything. It centres on that. Can I get his trust, or can't I?" "Not for the present, Ray. I expect his mind is in a turmoil over this running away. It's all my fault and I take the blame. Until he can think calmly you'll never get any power over him. The thing is to fill his mind full with something else." "Find out if you can what's in his thoughts," advised Sabina. "We say this and that and the other, and plan what must be done, but I judge the first person to ask for an opinion is Abel himself. When people are talking about the young, the last thought in their minds is what the young are thinking themselves. They never get asked what's in their minds, yet, if we knew, it might make all the difference." "Very sound, Sabina," admitted Mr. Churchouse; "and you should know what's in his mind if anybody does." "I should no doubt, but I don't. I've never been in the boy's secrets, or I might have been more to him. But that's not to say nobody could win them. Any clever boy getting on for sixteen years should have plenty of ideas, and if you could find them, it might save a lot of trouble." She turned to Estelle as she spoke. "He's often told me things," said Estelle, "and he's often been going to tell me others and stopped--not because he thought I'd laugh at him; but because he was doubtful of me. But he knows I can keep secrets now." "He must be treated as an adult," decided Ernest. "Sabina is perfectly right. We must give him credit for more sense than he has yet discovered, and appeal directly to his pride. I think there are great possibilities about him if he can only be brought to face them. His ruling passion must be discovered. One has marked a love of mystery in him and a wonderful power of make-believe. These are precious promises, rightly guided. They point to imagination and originality. He may have the makings of an artist. Without exaggeration, I should say he had an artist's temperament without being an artist; but art is an elastic term. It must mean creative instinct, however, and he has shown that. It has so far taken the shape of a will to create disaster; but why should we not lead his will into another channel and help it to create something worthy?" "He's fond of machinery," said Sabina, "and very clever with his hands." "Could your child be anything but clever with his hands, Sabina?" said Estelle. "Or mine be anything but fond of machinery?" asked Raymond. He meant no harm, but this blunt and rather brutal claim to fatherhood made Sabina flinch. It was natural that she never could school herself to accept the situation in open conversation without reserve, and all but Ironsyde himself appreciated the silence which fell upon her. His speech, indeed, showed lack of sensibility, yet it could hardly be blamed, since only through acceptation of realities might any hopeful action be taken. But the harm was done and the delicate poise of the situation between Abel's parents upset. Sabina said no more, and in the momentary silence that followed she rose and left them. "What clumsy fools even nice men can be," sighed Miss Ironsyde, and Churchouse spoke. "Leave Sabina to me," he said. "I'll comfort her when you've gone. There is a certain ingrained stupidity from which no man escapes in the presence of women. They may, or may not, conceal their feelings; but we all unconsciously bruise and wound them. Sabina did not conceal hers. She is quick in mind as well as body. What matters is that she knows exceedingly well we are all on her side and all valuable friends for the lad. Now let us return to the point. I think with Estelle that Abel may have something of the artist in him. He drew exceedingly well as a child. You can see his pictures in Sabina's room. Such a gift if developed might waken a sense of power." "If he knew great things were within his reach, he would not disdain the means to reach them," said Miss Ironsyde. "I do think if the boy felt his own possibilities more--if we could waken ambition--he would grow larger-minded. Hate always runs counter to our interests in the long run, because it wastes our energy and, if people only knew it, revenge is really not sweet, but exceedingly bitter." "I suggest this," said Ironsyde: "that Uncle Ernest and Estelle visit the boy--not in any spirit of weakness, or with any concessions, or attempts to change his mind; but simply to learn his mind. Sabina was right there. We'll approach him as we should any other intelligent being, and invite his opinion, and see if it be reasonable, or unreasonable. And if it is reasonable, then I ought to be able to serve him, if he'll let me do so." "I shall certainly do what you wish," agreed Ernest. "Estelle and I will form a deputation to this difficult customer and endeavour to find out what his lordship really proposes and desires. Then, if we can prove to him that he must look to his fellow creatures to advance his welfare; if we can succeed in showing him that not even the youngest of us can stand alone, perhaps we shall achieve something." "And if he won't let me help, perhaps he'll let you, or Estelle, or Aunt Jenny. Agree if he makes any possible stipulation. It doesn't matter a button where he supposes help is coming from: the thing is that he should not know it is really coming from me." "I hope we may succeed without craft of that sort, Raymond," declared Mr. Churchouse; "but I shall not hesitate to employ the wisdom of the serpent--if the olive branch of the dove fails to meet the situation. I trust, however, more to Estelle than myself. She is nearer Abel in point of time, and it is very difficult to bridge a great gulf of years. We old men talk in another language than the young use, and the scenery that fills their eyes--why, it has already vanished beneath our horizons. Narrowing vision too often begets narrowing sympathies and we depress youth as much as youth puzzles us." "True, Ernest," said Miss Ironsyde. "Have you noticed how a natural instinct makes the young long to escape from the presence of age? The young breathe more freely out of sight of grey heads." "And the grey heads survive their absence without difficulty," confessed Mr. Churchouse. "But we are a tonic to each other. They help us to see, Jenny, and we must help them to feel." "Abel shall help us to see his point of view, and we'll help him to feel who his best friends are," promised Estelle. Raymond had astonished Bridport and staggered Bridetown with a wondrous invention. The automobile was born, and since it appealed very directly to him, he had acquired one of the first of the new vehicles at some cost, and not only did he engage a skilled mechanic to drive it, but himself devoted time and pains to mastering the machine. He believed in it very stoutly, and held that in time to come it must bulk as a most important industrial factor. Already he predicted motor traction on a large scale, while yet the invention was little more than a new toy for the wealthy. And now this car served a useful purpose and Mr. Churchouse, in some fear and trembling, ventured a first ride. Estelle accompanied him and together they drove through the pleasant lands where Dorset meets Devon, to Knapp Farm under Knapp Copse, midway between Colyton and Ottery St. Mary, on a streamlet tributary of the Sid. Mr. Churchouse was amazed and bewildered at this new experience; Estelle, who had already enjoyed some long rides, supported him, lulled his anxieties and saw that he kept warm. Soon they sighted the ridge which gave Knapp its name, and presently met Abel, who knew that they were coming. He stood on the tumuli at the top of the knoll and awaited them with interest. His master, from first enthusiasms, now spoke indifferently of him, declared him an average boy, and cared not whether they took him, or left him. As for Abel himself, he slighted both Estelle and Mr. Churchouse at first, and appeared for a time quite oblivious to their approaches. He was only interested in the car, which stood drawn up in an open shed at the side of the farmyard. He concentrated here, desired the company of the driver alone, and could with difficulty be drawn away to listen to the travellers and declare his own ambitions. He was, however, not sorry to see Estelle, and when, presently, they lured him away from the motor, he talked to them. He bragged about his achievement in running away and finding work; but he was not satisfied with the work itself. "It was only to see if I could live in the world on my own," he said, "and now I know I can. Nobody's got any hold on me now, because if you can earn your food and clothes, you're free of everybody. I don't tell them here, but I could work twice as hard and do twice as much if it was worth while; only it isn't." "If you get wages, you ought to earn them," said Estelle. "I do," he explained. "I get a shilling a day and my grub, and I earn all that. But, of course, I'm not going to be a farmer. I'm just learning about the land--then I'm going. Nobody's clever here. But I like taking it easy and being my own master." "You oughtn't to take it easy at your time of life, Abel," declared Estelle. "You oughtn't to leave school yet, and I very much hope you'll go back." "Never," he said. "I couldn't stop there after I knew he was paying for it. Or anywhere else. I'm not going to thank him for anything." "But you stand in the light of your own usefulness," she explained. "The thing is for a boy to do all in his power to make himself a useful man, and by coming here and doing ploughboy's work, when you might be learning and increasing your own value in the world, you are being an idiot, Abel. If you let your father educate you, then, in the future, you can pay him back splendidly and with interest for all he has done for you. There's no obligation then--simply a fair bargain." His face hardened and he frowned. "I may pay him for all he's done for me, whether or no," he answered. "Anyway, I don't want any more book learning. I'm a man very nearly, and a lot cleverer, as it is, than the other men here. I shall stop here for a bit. I want to be let alone and I will be let alone." "Not at all," declared Mr. Churchouse. "You're going back on yourself, Abel, and if you stop here, hoeing turnips and what not, you'll soon find a great disaster happening to you. You will indeed--just the very thing you don't want to happen. You pride yourself on being clever. Well, cleverness can't stand still, you know. You go back, or forward. Here, you'll go back and get as slow-witted as other ploughboys. You think you won't, but you will. The mud on your boots will work up into your mind, and instead of being full of great ideas for the future, you'll gradually forget all about them. And that would be a disgrace to you." Abel showed himself rather impressed with this peril. "I shall read books," he said. "Where will you get them?" asked Estelle. "Besides, after long days working out of doors, you'll be much too tired to read books, or go on with your studies. I know, because I've tried it." "Quies was the god of rest in ancient Rome," proceeded Mr. Churchouse, "but he was no god for youth. The elderly turned their weary bodies to his shrine and decorated his altars--not the young. But for you, Abel, there are radiant goddesses, and their names are Stimula and Strenua. To them you must pay suit and service, and your motto should be 'Able and Willing.'" "Of course," cried Estelle; "but instead of that, you ask to be let alone, to turn slowly and surely into a ploughboy! Why, the harm is already beginning! And you may be quite sure that nobody who cares for you is going to see you turn into a ploughboy." They produced some lunch presently and Abel enjoyed the good fare. For a time they pressed him no more, but when the meal was taken, let him show them places of interest. While Estelle visited the farm with him and heard all about his work, Mr. Churchouse discussed the boy with his master. Nothing could then be settled, and it was understood that Abel should stop at Knapp until the farmer heard more concerning him. Estelle advanced the good cause very substantially, however, and felt sanguine of the future; for alone with her, Abel confessed that farming gave him no pleasure and that his ambition was set on higher things. "I shall be an engineer some day," he said. "Presently I shall go where there is machinery, and begin at the bottom and work up to the top. I know a lot more about it than you might think, as it is." "I know you do," she said. "And there's nothing your mother would like better than engineering for you. Besides, a boy begins that when he's young, and I believe you ought to be in the shops soon." "I shall be soon. Very likely the next thing you hear about me will be that I have disappeared again. Then I shall turn up in a works somewhere. Because you needn't think I'm going to be a ploughboy. I shouldn't get level with my father by being a ploughboy." "Your father would be delighted for you to get level with him and know as much as he does," she answered, pretending to mistake his meaning. "If you said you wanted to know as much about machinery and machines in general as he does, then he would very soon set to work to help you on." Abel considered. "I won't take any help from him; but I'll do this--to suit myself, not him. I'd do it so as I could be near mother and could look after her. Because, when Mister Churchouse dies, I'll have to look after her." "You needn't be anxious about your mother, Abel. She's got plenty of friends." "Her friends don't count if they're his friends, because you can't be my mother's friend and his friend, too. But I'll go into the spinning Mill, and be like anybody else, and work for wages--just the same wages as any other boy going in. That won't be thanking him for anything." Estelle could hardly hide her satisfaction at this unexpected concession. She dared not show her pleasure for fear that Abel would see it and draw back. "Then you could live with mother and Mister Churchouse," she said. "It would be tremendously interesting for you. I wonder if you would begin with Roberts at the lathes, or Cogle at the engines?" "I don't know. Before I ran away, Nicholas Roberts wanted somebody to help him turning. I've turned sometimes. I'd begin like that and rise to better things." She was careful not to mention his father again. "I believe Mister Roberts would like to have you in his shop very much. Sarah, his wife, hopes that her son will be a lathe-worker some day, but he's too young to go yet." "He'll never be any good at machinery," declared Abel. "I know him. He's all for the sea." They took their leave presently, after Ernest had heard the boy's offer. He, too, was careful, but applauded the suggestion and assured Abel he would be very welcome at his old home. "I like you, you know; in fact, as a rule, we have got on very well together. I believe you'll make an engineer some day if you remember the Roman goddesses. To be ambitious is the most hopeful thing we can wish for youth. Always be ambitious--that's the first essential for success." But the old man surprised Estelle by failing to share her delight at Abel's decision. She for her part felt that the grand difficulty was passed, and that once in his father's Mill, the boy must sooner or later come to reason, if only by the round of self-interest; but Mr. Churchouse reminded her that another had to be reckoned with. "A most delicate situation would be created in that case," he said. "Of course I can't pretend to say how Raymond will regard it. He may see it with your eyes. He sees so many things with your eyes--more and more, in fact--that I hope he will; but you mustn't be very disappointed if he does not. This cannot look to him as it does to you, or even to me. His point of view may reject Abel's suggestion altogether for various reasons; and Sabina, too, will very likely feel it couldn't happen without awakening a great many painful memories." "She advised us to consult Abel and hear what he thought." "We have. We return with the great man's ultimatum. But I'm afraid it doesn't follow that his ultimatum will be accepted. Even if Sabina felt she could endure such an arrangement, it is doubtful in the extreme whether Raymond will. Indeed I'll go so far as to prophesy that he won't." Estelle saw that she had been over-sanguine. "There's one bright side, however," he continued. "We have got something definite out of the boy and should now be able to help him largely in spite of himself. Every day he lives, he'll become more impressed with the necessity for knowledge, and if, for the moment, he declines any alternative, he'll soon come round to one. He knows already that he can't stop at Knapp, so this great and perilous adventure of the automobile has been successful--though how successful we cannot tell yet." He knew, however, before the day was done, for Sabina felt very definitely on the subject. Yet her attitude was curious: she held it not necessary to express an opinion. Mr. Churchouse came home very cold, and while she attended to his needs, brought him hot drink and lighted a fire, Sabina listened. "The boy is exceedingly well," he said. "I never saw his eye so bright, or his skin so clear and brown. But a farmer he won't be for anybody. Of course, one never thought he would." When she had heard Abel's idea, she answered without delay. "It's a thousand pities he's set his heart on that, because it won't happen. What I think doesn't matter, of course, but for once you'll find his father is of a mind with me. He'll not suffer such an arrangement for a moment. It's bringing the trouble too near. He doesn't want his skeleton walking out of the cupboard into the Mill, and whatever happens, that won't." She was right enough, for when Raymond heard all that Estelle could tell him, he decided instantly against any such arrangement. "Impossible," he said. "One needn't trouble even to argue about it. But that he would like to be an engineer is quite healthy. He shall be; and he shall begin at the beginning and have every advantage possible--not his way, but mine. I argue ultimate success from this. It eases my mind." "All the same, if you don't do anything, he'll only run away again," said Estelle, who was disappointed. "He won't run far. Let him stop where he is for a few months, till he's heartily sick of it and ready to listen to sense. Then perhaps I'll go over and see him myself. You've done great things, Estelle. I feel more sanguine than I have ever felt about him. I wish I could do what he wants; but that's impossible his way. However, I'll do it in my own. Sense is beginning in him, and that is the great and hopeful discovery you've made." "I'm ever so glad you're pleased about it," she said. "He loved the motor car much better than the sight of us. Yet he was glad to see us too. He's really a very human boy, you know, Ray." CHAPTER XV CRITICISM Upon a Sunday afternoon, Sarah Roberts and her husband were drinking tea at 'The Seven Stars.' They sat in Nelly Legg's private room, and by some accident all took rather a gloomy view of life. As for Nelly, she had been recently weighed, and despite drastic new treatment, was found to have put on two pounds in a month. "Lord knows where it'll end," she said. "You can't go on getting heavier and heavier for ever more. Even a vegetable marrow, and such like things, reach their limit; and if they can it's hard that a creature with an immortal soul have got to go growing larger and larger, to her own misery and her husband's grief. To be smothered with your own fat is a proper cruel end I call it; and I haven't deserved it; and it shakes my faith in an all-wise God, to feel myself turning into a useless mountain of flesh. Worse than useless in fact, because them that can't work themselves are certain sure to make work for others. Which I do." "I never knew anything so aggravating, I'm sure," assented Nicholas; "but so far as I can see, if life don't fret you from within, it frets you from without. It can't leave you alone to go on your way in a dignified manner. It's always intruding, so to speak. In fact, life comes between us and our living, if you understand me, and sometimes for my part I can look on to the end of it with a lot of resignation." Sentiments so unusual from her husband startled Mrs. Roberts as well as her aunt. "Lor, Nicholas! What's the matter with you?" asked Sarah. "It ain't often I grumble," he answered, "and if anybody's better at taking the rough with the smooth than me, I'd like to see him; but there are times when nature craves for a bit of pudding, and gets sick to death of its daily meal of bread and cheese. I speak in a parable, however, because I don't mean the body but the mind. Your body bothers you, Missis Legg, as well it may; but your mind, thanks to your husband, is pretty peaceful year in year out. In my case, my body calls for no attention. Thin as a rake I am and so shall continue. But the tissue is good, and no man is made of better quality stuff. It's my mind that turns in upon itself and gives me a pang now and again. And the higher the nature of the mind, the worse its troubles. In fact the more you can feel, the more you are made to feel; and what the mind is built to endure, that, seemingly, it will be called to endure." But Nelly had no patience with the philosophy of Mr. Roberts. "You're so windy when you've got anything on your chest," she said. "You keep talking and don't get any forwarder. What's the fuss about now?" "You've been listening to Baggs, I expect," suggested the wife of Nicholas. "Baggs has got the boot at last and leaves at Christmas, and his pension don't please him, so he's fairly bubbling over with verjuice. I should hope you'd got too much sense to listen to him, Nick." "So should I. He's no more than the winter wind in a hedge at any time," answered Mr. Roberts. "Baggs gets attended to same as a wasp gets attended to--because of his sting. All bad-tempered people win a lot more attention and have their way far quicker than us easy and amiable ones. Why, we know, of course. Human nature's awful cowardly at bottom and will always choose the easiest way to escape the threatened wrath of a bad temper. In fact, fear makes the world go round, not love, as silly people pretend. In my case I feel much like Sabina Dinnett, who was talking about life not a week ago in the triangle under the sycamore tree. And she said, 'Those who do understand don't care, and those who don't understand, don't matter'--so there you are--one's left all alone." "I'm sure you ain't--more's Sabina. She's got lots of friends, and you've got your dear wife and children," said Nelly. "I have; but the mind sometimes takes a flight above one's family. It's summed up in a word: there's nothing so damned unpleasant as being took for granted, and that's what's the matter with me." "Not in your home, you ain't," declared Sarah. "No good, sensible wife takes her husband for granted. He's always made a bit of a fuss over under his own roof." "That's true; but in my business I am. To see people--I'll name no names--to see other people purred over, and then to find your own craft treated as just a commonplace of Nature, no more wonderful than the leaves on a bush--beastly, I call it." Mr. Legg had joined them and he admitted the force of the argument. "We're very inclined to put our own job higher in the order of the universe than will other people," he said; "and better men than you have hungered for a bit of notice and a pat on the back and never won it. But time covers that trouble. I grant, all the same, that it's a bit galling when we find the world turns a cold shoulder to our best." "It's a human weakness, Nicholas, to want to be patted," said Nelly, and her husband agreed. "It is. We share it with dogs," he declared. "But the world in general is too busy to pat us. I remember in my green youth being very proud of myself once and pointing to a lot of pewter in a tub, that I'd worked up till it looked like silver; and I took some credit, and an old man in the bar said that scouring pots was nothing more than scouring pots, and that any other honest fool could have done them just as well as me." "That's all right and I don't pretend my work on the lathe is a national asset, and I don't pretend I ought to have a statue for doing it," answered Nicholas; "but what I do say is that I am greater than my lathe and ought to get more attention according. I am a man and not a cog-wheel, and when Ironsyde puts cog-wheels above men and gives a dumb machine greater praise than the mechanic who works it--then it's wrong and I don't like it." "He can't make any such mistake as that," argued Job. "It's rumoured he's going to stand for Parliament at the next General Election, so his business is with men, not machines, and he'll very soon find all about the human side of politics." "He'll be human enough till he gets in. They always are. They'll stoop to anything till they're elected," said Mrs. Legg, "but once there, the case is often altered with 'em." "I want to be recognised as a man," continued Roberts, "and Ironsyde don't do it. He isn't the only human being with a soul and a future. And now, if he's for Parliament, I dare say he'll become more indifferent than ever. He may be a machine himself, with no feelings beyond work; but other people are built different." "A man like him ought to try and do the things himself," suggested Sarah. "If employers had to put in a day laying the stricks on the spreadboard, or turning the rollers on the lathe, or hackling, or spinning, they'd very soon get a respect for what the workers do. In fact, if labour had its way, it ought to make capital taste what labour means, and get out of bed when labour gets out, and do what labour does, and eat what labour eats. Then capital would begin to know it's born." "It never will happen," persisted Nicholas. "Nothing opens the eyes of the blind, or makes the man who can buy oysters, eat winkles. The gulf is fixed between us and it won't be crossed. If he goes into Parliament, or stops out, he'll be himself still, and look on us doubtfully and wish in his soul that we were made of copper and filled with steam." "A master must follow his people out of the works into their homes if he's worth a rap," declared Job. "Your aunt always did so with her maidens, and I do so with the men. And it's our place to remember that men and women are far different from metal and steam. You can't turn the power off the workers and think they're going to be all right till you turn it on again. They go on all the time--same as the masters and mistresses do. They sleep and eat and rest; they want their bit of human interest, and bit of fun, and pinch of hope to salt the working day. And as for Raymond Ironsyde, I've seen his career unfolding since he was a boy and marked him in bad moments and seen his weakness; which secrets were safe enough with me, for I'd always a great feeling for the young. And I say that he's good as gold at heart and his faults only come from a lack of power to put himself in another man's place. He could never look very much farther than his own place in the world and the road that led to it. He did wrong, like all of us, and his faults found him out; which they don't always do. But he's the sort that takes years and years to ripen. He's not yet at his best you'll find; but he's a learner, and he may learn a great many useful things if he goes into Parliament--if it's only what to avoid." "There's one thing that will do him a darned sight more good than going into Parliament, and that's getting married," said Sarah. "In fact, a few of us, that can see further through a milestone than some people, believe it's in sight." "Miss Waldron, of course?" asked Nelly. "Yes--her. And when that happens, she'll make of Mister Ironsyde a much more understanding man than going into Parliament will. He's fair and just--not one of us, bar Levi Baggs, ever said he wasn't that--but she's more--she's just our lady, and our good is her good, and what she's done for us would fill a book; and if she could work on him to look at us through her eyes, then none of us, that deserved it, as we all do, would lose our good word." "What do you say to that, Job?" asked Mrs. Legg. "I say nothing better could happen," he answered. "But don't feel too hopeful. The things that promise best to the human eye ain't the things that Providence very often performs. To speak in a religious spirit and without feeling, there's no doubt that Providence does take a delight in turning down the obvious things and bringing us up against the doubtful and difficult and unexpected ones. That's why there's such a gulf between story books and real life. The story books that I used to read in my youth, always turned out just as a man of good will and good heart and kindly spirit would wish them to do; but you'd be straining civility to Providence and telling a lie if you pretended real life does. Therefore I say, hope it may happen; but don't bet on it." Job finished his tea and bustled away. "The wisdom of the man!" said Nicholas. "He's the most comforting person I know, because he don't pretend. There's some think that everything that happens to us is our own fault, and they drive you silly with their bleating. Job knows it ain't so." "A far-seeing man," admitted Nelly, "and a great reader of the signs of the times. People used to think he was a simple sort--God forgive me, I did myself; but I know better now. All through that business with poor Richard Gurd, Job understood our characters and bided his time and knew that the crash must come between us. He's told me since that he never really feared Gurd, because he looked ahead and felt that two such natures as mine and Richard's were never meant to join in matrimony. Looking back, I see Job's every move and the brain behind it. Talk about Parliament! If Bridport was to send Legg there, they'd be sending one that's ten times wiser than Raymond Ironsyde--and ten times deeper. In fact, the nation's very ill served by most that go there. They are the showy, rich, noisy sort, who want to bulk in the public eye without working for it--ciphers who do what they're told, and don't understand the inner nature of what they're doing more than a hoss in a plough. But men like Job, though not so noisy, would get to the root, and use their own judgment, and rise superior to party politics and the pitiful need to shout with your side, right or wrong." "Miss Waldron is very wishful for him to get in, and she says he's got good ideas," replied Nicholas. "If so, he has to thank her for them," added Sarah. "And I hope," continued Nicholas, "that if he does get in, he'll be suffered to make a speech, and his words will fall stone dead on the ears of the members, and his schemes will fail. Then he'll know what it is to be flouted and to see his best feats win not a friendly sign." "Electors are a lot too easy going in my opinion," said Nelly. "I'm old enough to have seen their foolish ways in my time, and find, over and over again, that they are mostly gulls to be took with words. They never ask what a man's record is and turn over the pages of his past. They never trouble about what he's done, or how he's made his money, or where he stands in public report. It isn't what he has done, but what he's going to do. Yet you can better judge of a man from his past than his promises, and measure, in the light of his record, whether he's going to the House of Commons for patriotic, decent reasons, or for mean ones. And never you vote for a lawyer, Nicholas Roberts. 'Tis a golden rule with Job that never, under any manner of circumstances, will he help to get a lawyer into Parliament. They stand in the way of all progress but their own; they suck our blood in every affair of life; they baffle all honest thinking with their cunning, and look at right and wrong only from the point of expediency. Job says there ought to be a law against lawyers going in at all. But catch them making it! In fact, we're in their clutches more than the fly in the web, because they make the laws; and they'll never make any laws to limit their own powers over us, though always quick enough to increase them. Job says that the only bright side to a revolution would be that the law and the lawyers would be swept into the street orderly bin together. Then we'd start clean and free, and try to keep clean and free." Upon this subject Mrs. Legg always found plenty to say. Indeed she continued to open her mind till they grew weary. "We must be moving if we're going to church," said Sarah. "I think we'd better go and pick up a bit of charity to our neighbour--Sunday and all." CHAPTER XVI THE OFFER OF MARRIAGE Raymond met Estelle on his way from the works and together they walked home. Here and there in the cottage doorways sat women braiding. Among them was Sally Groves--now grown too old and slow to tend the 'Card'--and accident willed that she should make an opening for thoughts that now filled Ironsyde's mind. They stopped, for Sally was an old acquaintance of both, and Estelle valued the big woman for her resolute character and shrewd sense. Now Sally, on strength of long-standing friendship, grew personal. It was an ancient joke to chaff Miss Groves about marriage, but to-day, when Raymond asked if the net she made was to catch a husband, Sally retorted with spirit. "All very fine for you two to be poking fun at me," she said. "But what about you? It's time you made up your minds I'm sure, for everybody knows you're in love with each other--though you don't yourselves seemingly." "Give us a lead, Sally," suggested Raymond; but she shook her head. "You're old enough to know your own business," she answered; "but don't you go lecturing other people about matrimony while you're a bachelor yourself--else you'll get the worst of it--as you have now." They left her and laughed together. "Yet I've heard you say she was the most sensible woman that ever worked in the mills," argued Raymond. Estelle made no direct reply, but spoke of Sally in the past at one of her parties, when the staff took holiday and spent a day at Weymouth. Their conversation faded before they reached North Hill House, and then, as they entered the drive, Raymond reminded Estelle of a time long vanished and an expedition taken when she was a child. "Talking of good things, d'you remember our walk to Chilcombe in the year one? Or, to be more exact, when you were in short frocks." "I remember well enough. How my chatter must have bored you." "You never bored me in your life, Chicky. In fact, you always seem to have been a part of my life since I began to live. That event happened soon after our walk, if I remember rightly. You really seem as much a part of my life as my right hand, Estelle." "Well, your right hand can't bore you, certainly." "Some of the things that it has done have bored me. But let's go to Chilcombe again--not in the car--but just tramp it as we did before. How often have you been there since we went?" She considered. "Twice, I think. My friends there left ten years ago and my girl friend died. I haven't been there since I grew up." "Well, come this afternoon." "It's going to rain, Ray." "Since when did rain frighten you?" "I'd love to come." "A walk will do me good," he said. "I'm getting jolly lazy." "So father thinks. He hates motors--says they are going to make the next generation flabby and good-for-nothing." They started presently under low grey clouds, but the sky was not grey for them and the weather of their minds made them forget the poor light and sad south-west wind laden with rain. It held off until they had reached Chilcombe chapel, entered the little place of prayer and stood together before the ancient reredos. The golden-brown wood made a patch of brightness in the little building. They were looking at it and recalling Estelle's description of it in the past, when the storm broke and the rain beat on the white glass in the windows above them. "How tiny it's all grown," said Estelle. "Surely everything has shrunk?" They had the chapel to themselves and, sitting beside her in a pew, Raymond asked her to marry him. Thunder had wakened in the sky, and the glare of lightning touched their faces now and then. But they only remembered that afterwards. "Sally Groves was no more than half right," he said, "so her fame for wisdom is shaken. She told us we didn't know we loved one another, Estelle. But I know I love you well enough, and I've been shaking in my shoes to tell you so for months and months. I knew I was getting too old every minute and yet couldn't say the word. But I must say it now at any cost. Chicky, I love you--dearly, dearly I love you--because I'm calm and steady, that doesn't mean I'm not in a blaze inside. I never thought of it even while you were growing up. But a time came when I did begin to think of it like the deuce; and when once I did, the thought towered up like the effreet let out of the bottle--that story you loved when you were small. But my only fear and dread is that you've always been accustomed to think of me as so much older than you are. If you once get an idea into your head about a person's age, you can't get it out again. At least, I can't; so I'm afraid you'll regard me as quite out of the question for a husband. If that's so, I'll begin over again." Her eyes were round and her mouth a little open. She did not blink when the lightning flashed. "But--but--" she said. "If I'm not too old, there are no 'buts' left," he declared firmly. "Ten years is no great matter after all, and from the point of view of brains, I'm an infant beside you. Then say 'yes,' my darling--say 'yes' to me." "I wonder--I wonder, Ray?" "Haven't you ever guessed what I felt?" "Yes, in a vague way. At least I knew there was something growing up between us." "It was love, my beautiful dear." She smiled at him doubtfully. The colour had come back to her face, but she did not respond when he lifted his arms to her. "Are you sure--can you be sure, Ray? It's so different,--so shattering. It seems to smash up all the past into little bits and begin the world all over again--for you and me. It's such a near thing. I've seen the married people and wondered about it. You might get so weary of always having me so close." "I want you close--closer and closer. I want you as the best part of myself--to make me happier first and, because happier, more useful in the world. I want you at the helm of my life--to steer me, Chicky. What couldn't we do together! It's selfish--? it's one-sided, I know that. I get everything--you only get me. But I'll try and rise to the occasion. I worship you, and no woman ever had a more devout worshipper. I feel that your father wouldn't be very mad with me. But it's for you to decide, nothing else matters either way." "I love to think you care for me so much," she said. "And I care for you, Ray, and have cared for you--more than either of us know. Yes, I have. Sally Groves knew somehow. I should like to say 'yes' this moment; but I can't. I know I shall say it presently; but I'm not going to say it till I've thought a great many thoughts and looked into the future and considered all this means--for you as well as for me. It's life or death really, for both of us, and the more certain sure we are before, the happier we should be afterwards, I expect." "I'm sure enough, Estelle. I've been sure enough for many a long day. I know the very hour I began to be sure." "I think I am too; but I can't say 'yes' and mean 'yes' for the present. I've got to thresh out a lot of things. I dare say they'd be absurd to you; but they're not to me." "Can I help you?" "I don't know. You can, I expect. I shall come to you again to throw light on the difficult points." "How long are you going to take?" "How can I tell? But I _can_ all the same, I'm not going to take long." "Say you love me--do say that." "I should have told you if I didn't." "That's all right, but not so blessed as hearing you say with your own lips you do. Say it--say it, Chicky. I won't take advantage of it. I only want to hear it. Then I'll leave you in peace to think your thoughts." "I do love you," she said gently and steadily. "It can be nothing smaller than that. You are a very great part of my life--the greatest. I know that, because when you go away life is at evening, and when you come back again life is at morning. Let me have a little time, Ray--only a very little. Then I'll decide." "I hope your wisdom will let you follow your will, then, and not forbid the banns." "You mustn't think it cold and horrid of me." "You couldn't be cold and horrid, my sweet Estelle. We're neither of us capable of being cold, or horrid. We are not babies. I don't blame you a bit for wanting to think about it. I only blame myself. If I was all I might have been, you wouldn't want to think about it." This challenge shook her, but did not change her. "Nobody's all they might be, Ray; but many people are a great deal more than they might be. That's what makes you love people best, I think--to see how brave and patient and splendid men and women can be. Life's so difficult even for the luckiest of us; but it isn't the luckiest who are the pluckiest generally--is it? I've had such a lot more than my share of luck already. So have you--at least people think so. But nobody knows one's luck really except oneself." "It's the things that are going to happen will make our good luck," he said. "You'll find men are seldom satisfied with the past, whatever women may be. God knows I'm not." "You were always one of my two heroes when I was a child; and father was the other. He is still my hero--and so are you, Ray." "A pretty poor hero. I wouldn't pretend that to my dog. I only claim to have something worth while in me that you might bring out--raw material for you to turn into the finished article." She laughed to hear this. "Come--come--you're not as modest as all that. You're much too clever even to pretend any such thing. Women don't turn strong men into finished articles. At best, perhaps, they can only decorate a little of the outside." "You laugh," he answered, "but you know better. If you love me, be ambitious for me. That's the most helpful love a woman can give a man--to see his capabilities better than he can, and fire him on the best and biggest he can do, and help him to grasp his opportunities." "So it is." "You've got to decide whether it's worth while marrying me, Chicky. You do love me, as I love you--because you can't help it. But you can help marrying me. You've got to think of your own show as well as mine. I quite understand that. You must be yourself and make your own mark, and take advantage of all the big new chances offered to the rising generation of women. I love you a great deal too much to want to lessen you, or drift you into a back-water. It's just a question whether my work, and the Mill, and so on, give you the chance you want--if, working together, we can each help on the other. You could certainly help me hugely and you know it; but whether I could help you--that's what you've got to think about I suppose." "Yes, I suppose it is, Ray." "Your eyes say 'yes' already, and they're terrible true eyes." But she only lowered them and neither spoke any more for a little while. The worst of the storm had passed, and its riot and splash gave place to a fine drizzle as the night began to close in. They started for home and, both content to think their own thoughts, trudged side by side. For Raymond's part, he knew the woman too well to suffer any doubt of the issue and he was happy. For he felt that she was quietly happy too, and if instincts had brought grave doubts, or prompted her to deny him, she would not have been happy. Estelle did not miss the romance from his offer of marriage. She had dreamed of man's love in her poetry-reading days, but under the new phase and the practical bent, developed by a general enthusiasm for her kind, personal emotions were not paramount. There could be but little sex in her affection for Raymond: she had lived too near him for that. Indeed, she had grown up beside him, and the days before he came to dwell at North Hill seemed vague and misty. Thus his challenge came as an experience both less and greater than love. It was less, in that no such challenge can be so urgent and so mighty as the call of hungry hearts to each other; it was greater, because the interests involved were built on abiding principles. They arrested her intellectual ambitions and pointed to a sphere of usefulness beyond her unaided power. What must have made his prosaic offer flat in the ear of an amorous woman, edged it for her. He had dwelt on the aspect of their union that was likely most to attract her. There was a pure personal side where love came in and made her heart beat warmly enough; but, higher than that, she saw herself of living value to Raymond and helping him just where he stood most in need of help. She believed that they might well prove the complement of each other in those duties, disciplines, and obligations to which life had called them. That night she went closely, searchingly over old ground again from the new point of vision. What had always been interesting to her, became now vital, since these characteristics belonged to the man who wanted to wed her. She tried to be remorseless and cruel that she might be kind. But the palette of thought was only set with pleasant colours. She had been intellectually in love with him for a long time, and he had offered problems which made her love him for the immense interest they gave her. Now came additional stimulus in the knowledge that he loved her well enough to share his life, his hopes, and his ambitions with her. She believed they might be wedded in very earnest. He was masterful and possessed self-assurance; but what man can lead and control without these qualities? His self-assurance was less than his self-control, and his instinct for self-assertion had nearly always been counted by a kind heart. It seemed to her that she had never known a man who balanced reason and feeling more judicially, or better preserved a mean between them. She had found that men could differentiate in a way beyond woman's power and be unsociable if their duty demanded it. But to be unsociable is not to be unsocial. Raymond took long views, and if his old, genial and jolly attitude to life was a thing of the past, there had been substituted for it a wiser understanding and saner recognition of the useful and useless. Men did take longer views than women--so Estelle decided: and there Raymond would help her; but the all-important matter that night was to satisfy herself how much she could help him. In this reverie she found such warmth and light as set her glowing before dawn, for she built up the spiritual picture of Raymond, came very close to its ultimate realities, quickened by the new inspiration, and found that it should be well within her power to serve him generously. She took no credit to herself, but recognized a happy accident of character. There were weak spots in all masculine armour, that only a woman could make strong, and by a good chance she felt that her particular womanhood might serve this essential turn for Raymond's manhood. To strengthen her own man's weak spots--surely that was the crown and completion of any wedded life for a woman. To check, to supplement, to enrich: that he would surely do for her; and she hoped to deal as faithfully with him. She was not clear-sighted here, for love, if it be love at all, must bring the rosy veil with it and dim the seeing of the brightest eyes. While the fact that she had grown up with Raymond made her view clear enough in some directions, in others it served, of course, to dim judgment. She credited him with greater intellect than he possessed, and dreamed that higher achievements were in his power than was the truth. But there existed a mean, below her dream yet above his present ambition, that it was certainly possible with her incentive he might attain. She might make him more sympathetic and so more synthetic also, and show him how his own industry embraced industrial problems at large--how it could not be taken by itself, but must hold its place only by favour of its progress, and command respect only as it represented the worthiest relation between capital and labour. Thus, from the personal interest of his work, she would lift him to measure the world-wide needs of all workers. And then, in time to come, he would forget the personal before the more splendid demands of the universal. The trend of machinery was towards tyranny; he must never lose sight of that, or let the material threaten the spiritual. Private life, as well as public life, was open to the tyranny of the machine; and there, too, it would be her joyful privilege to fight beside him for added beauty, added liberty, not only in their own home, but all homes wherein they had power to increase comfort and therefore happiness. The sensitiveness of women should be linked to the driving force of men, as the safety valve to the engine. Thus, in a simile surely destined to delight him, she summed her intentions and desires. She had often wondered what must be essential to the fullest employment of her energies and the best and purest use of her thinking; and now she saw that marriage answered the question--not marriage in the abstract, but just marriage with this man. He, of all she had known, was the one with whom she felt best endowed to mingle and merge, so that their united forces should be poured to help the world and water with increase the modest territory through which they must flow. She turned to go to sleep at last, yet dearly longed to tell Raymond and amaze her father with the great tidings. An impulse prompted her to leave her lover not a moment more in doubt. She rose, therefore, and descended to his room, which opened beside his private study on the ground floor. The hour was nearly four on an autumn morning. She listened, heard him move restlessly and knew that he did not sleep. He struck a match and lighted a cigarette, for he often smoked at night. Then she knocked at the door. "Who the devil's that?" he shouted. "I," she said, opening the door an inch and talking softly. "Stop where you are and stop worrying and go to sleep. I'm going to marry you, Ray, and I'm happier than ever I was before in all my life." Then she shut the door and fled away. CHAPTER XVII SABINA AND ABEL Now was Raymond Ironsyde too busy to think any thought but one, and though distractions crowded down on the hour, he set them aside so far as it was possible. His betrothal very completely dominated his life and the new relation banished the old attitude between him and Estelle. The commonplace existence, as of sister and brother, seemed to perish suddenly, and in its place, as a butterfly from a chrysalis, there reigned the emotional days of prelude to marriage. The mere force of the situation inspired them and they grew as loverly as any boy and girl. It was no make-believe that led them to follow the immemorial way and glory only in the companionship of each other; they felt the desire, and love that had awakened so tardily and moved in a manner so desultory, seemed concerned to make up for lost time. Arthur Waldron was not so greatly astonished as they expected, and whatever may have been his private hopes and desires for his daughter, he never uttered them, but seeing her happiness, echoed it. "No better thing could have happened from my point of view," he declared, "for if she'd married anybody else in the world, I should have been called to say 'good-bye' to her. Since she's chosen you, there's no necessity for me to do so. I hope you're going on living at North Hill, and I trust you're going to let me do the same. Of course, it would be an impossible arrangement if you were dealing with anybody but me; but since we are what we are in spirit and temper and understanding, I claim that I may stop. The only difference I can see is this: that whereas at present, when we dine, you sit between Estelle and me, in future I shall sit between Estelle and you." "Not even that," vowed the lover. "Why shouldn't I go on sitting between you?" "No--you'll be the head of the house in future." "The charm of this house is that there's no head to it," said Estelle, "and Raymond isn't going to usurp any such position just because he means to marry me." But distractions broke in upon their happiness. Ernest Churchouse fell grievously ill and lacked strength to fight disease; while there came news from Knapp that the farmer was tired of Abel and wished him away. For their old friend none could prolong his life; in the case of the boy, Raymond decided that Sabina had better see him and go primed with a definite offer. Abel's father did not anticipate much more trouble in that quarter. He guessed that the lad, now in his seventeenth year, was sufficiently weary of the land and would be glad to take up engineering. He felt confident that Sabina must find him changed for the better, prepared for his career and willing to enter upon it without greater waste of time. He invited the boy's mother to learn if he felt more friendly to him, and hoped that Abel had now revealed a frame of mind and a power of reasoning, that would serve to solve the problem of his career, and finally abolish his animosity to his father. Sabina went to see her son and heard the farmer first. He was not unfriendly, but declared Abel a responsibility he no longer desired to incur. "He's just at a tricky age--and he's shifty and secret--unlike other lads. You never know what's going on in his mind, and he never laughs, or takes pleasure in things. He's too difficult for me, and my wife says she's frightened of him. As to work, he does it, but you always feel he's got no love for it. And I know he means to bolt any day. I've marked signs; so it will be better for you people to take the first step." The farmer's wife spoke to similar purpose and added information that made Sabina more than uneasy. "It's about this friend of his, Miss Waldron, that came to see him backalong," she explained. "He'd talk pretty free about her sometimes and was very proud of it when he got a letter now and again. But since she's wrote and told him she's going to be married, he's turned a gloomier character than ever. He don't like the thought of it and it makes him dark. 'Tis almost as if he'd been in love with the lady. You do hear of young boys falling in love before their time like that." Sabina was on the point of explaining, but did not do so. Her first care was to see Abel and learn the truth of this report. Perhaps she felt not wholly sorry that he resented this conclusion. Not a few had spoken of Ironsyde's marriage before her: it was the gossip of Bridetown; but none appeared to consider how it must affect her, or sympathise with her emotions on the subject. What these emotions were, or whither they tended, she hardly knew herself. Unowned even to her innermost heart, a sort of dim hope had not quite died, that he might, after all, come back to her. She blushed at the absurdity of the idea now, but it had struck in her subconsciously and never wholly vanished. Before the engagement was announced she had altered her attitude to Raymond and used him civilly and shared his desire that Abel should be won over by his father. The old hatred at receiving anything from Ironsyde's hands no longer existed. She felt indifferent and, before her own approaching problems, was not prepared to decline the offers of help that she knew would quickly come when Ernest Churchouse died. She intended to preach patience and reason in the ears of Abel, and she hoped he would not make her task difficult; but now it was clear that Estelle's betrothal had troubled the boy. She saw him and they spoke together for a long time; but already his force of character began to increase beyond his mother's. Despite her purpose and sense of the gravity of the situation, he had more effect upon her than she had upon him. Yet her arguments were rational and his were not. But the old, fatal, personal element of temper crept in and, during her speech with him, Sabina found fires that she believed long quenched, were still smouldering in the depths of memory. The boy could not indeed fan them to flame again; but the result of his attitude served to weaken hers. She did not argue with conviction after finding his temper. By some evil chance, that seemed more like art than accident, he struck old wounds, and she was interested and agitated to find that now he knew all there was to be known of the past and its exact significance. The dream hidden so closely in her heart: that there might yet be a reconciliation--the dream finally killed when she perceived that Ironsyde had fallen in love with Estelle Waldron--was no dream in her son's mind. What she knew was impossible, till now represented no impossibility to him. He actually declared it as a thing which, in his moral outlook, ought to be. Only so could the past be retrieved, or the future made endurable. But to that matter they did not immediately come. She dined at the farmer's table with Abel and three men. Then he was told that he might make holiday and spend the afternoon with his mother where he pleased. He took her therefore to the old barrows nigh Knapp, and there on a stone they sat, watched the sun sink over distant woodlands and talked together till the dusk was down. "I ought never to have trusted her," he said. "But I did. And, if I'd thought she would ever have married him, I wouldn't have trusted her. I thought she was the right sort; but if she was, she would never have married a man who had sworn to marry you." "Good gracious, Abel! Whatever are you talking about?" she asked, concerned to find the matter in his mind. "I'm talking about things that happened," he answered. "I'm not a child now. I'm nearly seventeen and older than that, for I overheard two of the men say so. You needn't tell me these things; I found them out for myself, and I hated Raymond Ironsyde from the time I could hate anybody, because the honest feeling to hate him was in me. And nobody has the right to marry him but you, and he's got no right to marry anybody but you. But he doesn't know the meaning of justice, and she is not fine, or brave, or clever, or any of the things I thought she was, because she wants to marry him." His mother considered this speech. "It's no good vexing yourself about the past," she said. "You and me have got to look to the future, Abel, and not to dwell on all that don't make the future any easier. It's difficult enough, but, for us, the luxury of pride and hate isn't possible. I know very well what you feel. It all went through me like fire before you were born--and after; but we've got to go on living, and things are going to change, and we must cut our coats according to our cloth--you and me." "What does that mean?" he asked. "It means we're not independent. There's not enough for your education and my keep. So it's got to be him, or one other, and the other is an old woman--his aunt. But it's all the same really, and he'll see that it comes out of his pocket in the end. He's all powerful and we must do according. Christianity's a very convenient thing for the likes of us. It teaches that the meek are blessed and the weak the worthy ones. You must look to your father if you want to succeed in the world." "Never," he said. "He's got everything else in the world, but he shan't have me. I don't care much about being alive at best, seeing I must be different from other people all my life; but I'd rather die twenty times than owe anything to him. He knew before I was born that he was going to wreck my life, and he did it, and he wrecked yours, and his marriage with any other woman but you is a lie and a sham, and Estelle knows it very well. Now I hate her as much as him, and I hate those who let her marry him, and I hate the clergyman that will do it; and if I could ruin them by killing myself on their doorstep, I would. But he wouldn't care for that. If I was to do that, it would just suit the devil, because he'd know I'd gone and could never rise up against him any more." She made a half-hearted attempt to distract his thoughts. She began to argue and, as usual, ended in bitterness. "You mustn't talk nonsense, like that. He means well by you, and you mustn't cut off your nose to spite your face. You'll find plenty of people to take his side and you mustn't only listen to his enemies. There's always wise people to stand up for young men and excuse them, though not many to stand up for young women." "Let them stand up for me and excuse me, then," he answered. "Let them explain me and tell me why I should think different, and why I should take his filthy money just to set his mind at rest. What has he done for me that I should ease him and do as he pleases? Is it out of any care for me he'd lift me up? Not likely. It's all to deceive the people and make them say he's a good man. And until he puts you right, he's not a good man, and soon or late I'll have it out with him. God blast me if I don't. But I'll revenge myself clean on him. He shan't make out to the world that he's done what a father should do for a son. He's my natural father and no more, and he never wanted or meant to be more. And no right will take away that wrong. And I'll treat him as other natural creatures treat their fathers." "You can't do that," she said. "You're a human, and you've got a conscience and must answer to it." "I will--some day. I know what my conscience says to me. My conscience tells me the truth, not a lot of lies like yours tells you. I know what's right and I know what's justice. I gave the man one chance. I offered to go in his works--my works that ought to be some day. But that didn't suit him. I must always knuckle under and bend to his will. But never--never. I'd starve first, or throw myself into the sea. He don't want me near him for people to point to, so I must be drove out of Bridetown to the ends of the earth if he chooses. And if the damned world was straight and honest and looked after the women and innocent children, 'tis him, not me, would have been drove out of Bridetown." He spoke with amazing bitterness for youth, and echoed much that he had heard, as well as what he had thought. His mother felt some astonishment to find how his mind had enlarged, and some fear, also, to see the hopelessness of the position. Already she considered in secret what craft might be necessary to bring him to a more reasonable mind. "You'll have to think of me as well as yourself," she said. "Life's hard enough without you making it so much harder. Two things will happen in a few weeks from now and nothing can stop them. First you've got to leave here, because farmer don't want you any more, and then poor Mister Churchouse is going to pass away. He's just fading out like a night-light--flickering up and down and bound to be called. And the best man and the truest friend to sorrow that ever trod the earth." "I was going from here," he answered. "And you can look to me for making a pound a week, and you can have it all if you'll take nothing from any of my enemies. If you take money from my enemies, then I won't help you." "You're a man in your opinions seemingly, though I wish to God you hadn't grown out of childhood so quick, if you were going to grow to this. It'll drive you mad if you're not careful. Then where shall I be?" "I'll drive other people mad--not you. I'll come back home, and then I'll find work at Bridport." "Where's home going to be--that's the question?" Sabina answered. "There's only one choice for you--between letting him finish your education and going out to work." "We'll live in Bridport, then," he told her, "and I'll go into something with machinery. I'll soon rise, and I might rise high enough to ruin him yet, some day. And never you forget he had my offer and turned it down. He didn't know what he was doing when he did that." "He couldn't trust you. How was he to know you wouldn't try to burn the works again--and succeed next time?" Abel laughed. "That was a fool's trick. If they'd gone, he'd only have built 'em again, better. But there are some things he can't insure." "I know a good few spinners at Bridport. Shall I have a look round for you?" she asked, as they rose to return. He considered and agreed. "Yes, if it's only through you. I trust you not to go to him about it. If you did and I found you had--" "No, no. I'll not go to him." He came and looked again at the motor car that had brought her. It interested him as keenly as before. "That's for him to go about the country in, because he's standing for Parliament," explained Sabina. But his anger was spent. He heeded her no more, and even the fact that his father owned the car did not modify his deep interest. He rode a mile or two with her when she started to return and remained silent and rapt for the few minutes of the experience. His mother tried to use the incident. "If you was to be good and patient and let the right thing be done, I daresay in a few years you'd rise to having a motor of your own," she said, when they stopped and he started to trudge back. "If ever I do, I'll get it for myself," he answered. "And when you're old, I'll drive you about, very likely." He left her placidly, and it was understood that in a month he would return to her as soon as she had determined on their immediate future. For herself she knew that it would be necessary to deceive him, yet feared to attempt it after the recent conversation. She felt uneasily proud of him. CHAPTER XVIII SWAN SONG The doctor said Mr. Churchouse was dying because he didn't wish to go on living, and when Estelle taxed the old man with his indifference, he would not deny it. "I have lived long enough," he said. "The machine is worn out. My thinking is become a painful effort. I forget the simplest matters, and before you are a nuisance to yourself, you may feel very certain you have long been a nuisance to other people." He had for some months grown physically weaker, and both Raymond and others had noticed an inconsequence of utterance and an inability to concentrate the mind. He liked friends to come and see him and would listen with obvious effort to follow any argument, or grasp any fresh item of news. But he spoke less and less. Nor could Sabina tempt him to eat adequate food. He ignored the doctor's drugs and seemed to shrink physically as well as mentally. "I'm turning into my chrysalis," he said once to Estelle. "One has to go through that phase before one can be a butterfly. Remember, my pretty girl, you are only burying an empty chrysalis when this broken thing is put into the ground." "You're very unkind to talk so," she declared. "You might go on living if you liked, and you ought to try--for the sake of those who love you." But he shook his head. "One doesn't control these things. You know I've always told you that the length of the thread is no part of our business, but only the spinning. I should have liked to see you married; yet, after all, why not? I may be there. I shall hope to beg a holiday on that occasion and be in church." He always spoke thus quite seriously. Death he regarded as no discontinuity, or destruction, of life, but merely an alteration of environment. At some personal cost Miss Ironsyde came to take leave of him, when it seemed that his end was near. He kept his bed now, and by conserving his strength gained a little activity of mind. He was troubled for Jenny's physical sufferings; while she, for her part, endeavoured to discuss Sabina's problems, but she could not interest the old man in them. "Abel is safe with his father," said Mr. Churchouse. "As for Sabina, I have left her a competency, and so have you. One has been very heartily sorry for her. She will have no anxiety when my will is read. I am leaving you three books, Jenny. I will leave you more if you like. My library as a whole is bequeathed to Estelle Waldron, since I know nobody who values and respects books so well." "But Abel," she said. "I have tried to establish his character and we may find, after all, I did more than we think. Providence is ever ready to water and tend the good seed that we sow. But he must be made to abandon this fatal attitude to his father. It is uncomfortable and inconvenient and helps nobody. I shall talk to him, I hope, before I die. He is coming home in a day or two." But Abel delayed a week, at his master's request, that he might help pull a field of mangels, and Mr. Churchouse never saw him again. During his last days Estelle spent much time with him. He seldom mentioned any other person but himself. He wandered in a disjointed fashion over the past and mixed his recollections with his dreams. He remembered jests and sometimes uttered them, then laughed; but often he laughed to himself without giving any reason for his amusement. He was thoughtful and apologetic. Indeed, when he looked up into any face, he always said, "I mourn to give you so much trouble." Latterly he confused his visitors, but kept Estelle and Sabina clear in his mind. He fancied that they had quarrelled and was always seeking to reconcile them. Every morning he appeared anxious and distressed until they stood by him together and declared that they were the best of friends. Then he became tranquil. "That being so," he said, "I shall depart in peace." Estelle relieved the professional nurse and would read, talk, or listen, as he wished. He spoke disjointedly one day and wove reality and imagination together. "Much good marble is wasted on graves," he declared. "But it doesn't bring the dead to life. Do you believe in the resurrection of the body, Estelle? I hope you find it easy. That is one of the things I never was honestly able to say I had grasped. Reason will fight against the nobler tyranny of faith. The old soul in a glorified body--yet the same body, you understand. We shan't all be in one pattern in heaven. We shall preserve our individuality; and yet I deprecate passing eternity in this tabernacle. Improvements may be counted upon, I think. The art of the Divine Potter can doubtless make beautiful the humblest and the most homely vessel." "Nobody who loves you would have you changed," she assured him. Then his mind wandered away and he smiled. "I listened to a street preacher once--long, long ago when I was young--and he said that the road to everlasting destruction was lined with women and gin shops. Upon which a sailor-man, who listened to him, shouted out, 'Oh death, where is thy sting?' The meeting dissolved in a very tornado of laughter. Sailors have a great sense of humour. It can take the place of a fire on a cold day. One touch of humour makes the whole world kin. If you have a baby, teach it to laugh as well as to walk. But I think your baby will do that readily enough." On another occasion he laughed suddenly to himself and explained his amusement to Sabina, who sat by him. "Eunominus, the heretic, boasted that he knew the nature of God; whereupon St. Basil instantly puzzled him with twenty-one questions about the body of the ant!" Estelle also tried to make Mr. Churchouse discuss Abel Dinnett. She told him of an interesting fact. "I have got Ray to promise a big thing," she said. "He hesitated, but he loved me too well to deny me. Besides, feeling as I do, I couldn't take any denial. You see Nature is so much greater than all else to me, and contrasted with her, our little man-made laws, often so mean and hateful in their cowardly caution and cruel injustice, look pitiful and beneath contempt. And I don't want to come between Raymond and his eldest son. I won't--I won't do it. Abel is his first-born, and it may be cold-blooded of me--Ray said it was at first--but I insist on that. I've made him see, and I've made father see. I feel so much about it, that I wouldn't marry him if he didn't recognize Abel first and treat him as the first-born ought to be treated." "Abel--Abel Dinnett," said the other, who had not followed her speech. "A good-looking boy, but lawless. He wants the world to bend to him; and yet, if you'll believe me, there is a vein of fine sentiment in his nature. With tears in his eyes he once told me that he had seen a fellow pupil at school cruelly killing insects with a burning glass; and he had beaten the cruel lad and broken his glass. That is all to the good. The difficulty for him is that he was born out of wedlock. This great disability could have been surmounted in America, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, or, in fact, anywhere but in England. The law of the natural child in this country would bring a blush to the cheek of a gorilla. But neither Church nor State will lift a finger to right the infamy." "We are always wanting to pluck the mote out of our neighbour's eyes, and never see the beam in our own," she answered. "Women will alter that some day--and the disgusting divorce laws, too. Perhaps these are the first things they will alter, when they have the power." "Who is going into Parliament?" he asked. "Somebody told me, but I forget. He was a friend of mine. I remember that much." "Ray hopes to get in. I am going to help him, if I can." "It is a great responsibility. Tell him, if he is elected, to fight for the natural child. It would well become him to do so. Let him rise to it. Our Saviour said, 'Suffer the little children to come unto Me.' The State, on the contrary, says, 'Suffer the little children to be done to death and put out of the way.'" "Yes," she answered, "suffer fifty thousand little children to be lost every year, because it is kinder to let them perish, than help them to live under the wicked laws we have planned to govern them." But his mind collapsed and when she strove to bring it back again, she could not. Two days before he died, Estelle found him in deep distress. He begged to see her alone, and explained that he had to confess a great sin. "I ought to tell a priest," he said, "but I dare think that you will do as well. If you absolve me, I shall know I may hope to be forgiven. I have lived a double life, Estelle. I have pretended what was not true--not merely once or twice, but systematically, deliberately, callously." "I don't believe it, dear Mister Churchouse. You couldn't." "I should never have believed it myself. But even the old can surprise themselves, painfully sometimes. I have lived with this perfidy for many years; but I can't die with it. There's always an inclination to confess our sins to a fellow creature. To confess them to our Maker is quite needless, because He knows them; but it's a quality of human nature to feel better after imparting its errors to another ear." He broke off. "What was I saying? I forget." "That you'd done something ever so wicked and nobody knew it." "Yes, yes. The books--the books I used to receive from unknown admirers by post. My child, there were no unknown admirers! Nobody ever admired me, either secretly or openly. Why should they? I used to send the books to myself--God forgive me." "If I'd only known, I'd have sent you hundreds of books," she said. "I did send you one or two." "I know it--they are my most precious possessions. They served in some mysterious way to soothe my bad conscience. It would be interesting to examine and find out how they did. But my brain can't look into anything subtle now. I knew you sent the books. My good angel has recorded my thanks. You always increased my vitality, Estelle. You are keeping me alive at present. You have risen in the autumn of my life as a gracious dawn; you have been the sun of my Indian summer. You will be a good wife to Raymond. It seems only yesterday that he was a little thing in short frocks, and Henry so proud of him. Now Henry is dead, and Raymond wife-old and in Parliament. A sound Liberal, like his father before him." "The election isn't till next year. But I hope he'll get in. They say at Bridport he has a very good chance." The day before he died, Mr. Churchouse seemed better and talked to Estelle of another visit from her father. "I always esteem his great good humour and fine British instinct to live and let live. That is where our secret lies. We ride Empire with such a loose rein, Estelle--the only way. You cannot dare to put a curb on proud people. A paradox that--that those who fast bind don't fast find. The instinct of England's greatness is in your father; he is an epitome of our virtues. He has no imagination, however. Nor has England. If she had, doubtless she would not do the great deeds that beggar imagination. That reminds me. There is one little gift that you must have from my own hand. A work of imagination--a work of art. Nobody in the world would care about it but you. A poem, in fact. I have written one or two others, but I tore them up. I sent them to newspapers, hoping to astonish you with them; but when they were rejected I destroyed them. This poem I did not send. Nobody has seen it but myself. Now I give it to you, and I want you to read it aloud to me, that I may hear how it sounds." "How clever of you! There's nothing you can't do. I know I shall love it." He pointed to a sheaf of papers on a table. "The top one. It is a mournful subject, yet I hope treated cheerfully. I wrote it before death was in sight; but I feel no more alarmed or concerned about death now than I did then. You may think it is too simple. But simplicity, though boring to the complex mind, is really quite worth while. The childlike spirit--there is much to be said for it. No doubt I have missed a great deal by limiting my interests; but I have gained too--in directness." "There is a greatness about simplicity," she said. "To be simple in my life and subtle in my thought was my ambition at one time; but I never could rise to subtlety. The native bent was against it. The poem--I do not err in calling it a poem--is called 'Afterwards'--unless you can think of a better title. If any obvious and glaring faults strike you, tell me. No doubt there are many." She read the two pages written in his little, careful and almost feminine hand. "When I am dead, the storm and stress Of many-coloured consciousness Like blossom petals fall away And drops the calyx back to clay; A man, not woman, makes the bed When our night comes and we are dead. "When I am dead, the ebb and flow Of folk where I was wont to go, Will never stay a moment's pace, Or miss along the street my face. Yet thoughts may wake and things be said By one or two when I am dead. "When I am dead, the sunset light Will fill the gap upon the height In summer time, but on the plain Sink down as winter comes again And none who sees the evening red Will know I loved it, who am dead. "When I am dead, upon my mound Exotic flow'rs may first be found, And not until they've blown away Will other blossoms come to stay. A daisy growing overhead Brings gentle pleasure to the dead. "When I am dead, I'd love to see An amber thrush hop over me And bend his ear, as he would know What I am whispering down below. May many a song-bird find his bread Upon my grave when I am dead. "When I am dead, and years shall pass, The scythe will cut the darnel grass Now and again for decency, Where we forgotten people lie. O'er ancient graves the living tread With great impertinence on the dead. "When I am dead, all I have done Must vanish, like the evening sun. My book about the bells may stay Behind me for a fleeting day; But will not very oft be read By anybody when I'm dead." She stopped and smiled with her eyes full of tears. "I had meant to write another verse," he explained, "but I put it off and it's too late now. Such as it is, it is yours. Does it seem to you to be interesting?" "It's very interesting indeed, and very beautiful. I shall always value it as my greatest treasure." "Read it to your children," he said, "and if the opportunity occurs, take them sometimes to see my grave. The spot is long chosen. Let there be no gardening upon it out of good heart but bad taste. I should wish it left largely to Nature. There will be daisies for your babies to pick. I forget the text I selected. It's in my will." He bade her good-bye more tenderly than usual, as though he knew that he would never see her again, and the next morning Bridetown heard that the old man had died in his sleep. The people felt sorry, for he left no enemies, and his many kindly thoughts and deeds were remembered for a little while. CHAPTER XIX NEW WORK FOR ABEL With a swift weaver's knot John Best mended the flying yarn. Then he turned from a novice at the Gill Spinner and listened, not very patiently, to one who interrupted his lesson. "It's rather a doubtful thing that you should always be about the place now you've left it, Levi," he said to Mr. Baggs. "It would be better judgment and more decent on your part if you kept away." "You may think so," answered the hackler, "but I do not. And until the figure of my pension is settled, I shall come and go and take no denial." "It is settled. He don't change. He's said you shall have ten shillings a week and no more, so that it will be." "And what if I decline to take ten shillings a week, after fifty years of work in his beastly Mill?" "Then you can do the other thing and go without. You want it both ways, you do." "I want justice--no more. Common justice, I suppose, can be got in Dorset as elsewhere. I ought to have had a high testimonial when I left this blasted place--a proper presentation for all to see, and a public feed and a purse of sovereigns at the least." "That's what I mean when I say you can't have it both ways," answered Mr. Best. "To be nice and pick words and consider your feelings is waste of time, so I tell you that you can't grizzle and grumble and find fault with everything and everybody for fifty years, and then expect people to bow down and worship you and collect a purse of gold when you retire. If we flew any flags about you, it would be because we'd got rid of you. Mister Ironsyde don't like you, and why should he? You've always been up against the employer and you've never lost a chance to poison the minds of the employed. There's no good will in you and never was, and where you could hang us up in the Mill and make difficulties without getting yourself into trouble, you've always took great pleasure in so doing. Did you ever pull with me, or anybody, if you could help it? Never. You pulled against. You'd often have liked to treat us like the hemp and tear us to pieces on your rougher's hackle. And how does such a man expect anybody to care about him? There was no reason why you should have had a pension at all, in my opinion. You've been blessed with good health and no family, and you've never spent a shilling on another fellow creature in your life. Therefore, it's more than justice that you get ten shillings, and not less as you seem to think." Mr. Baggs glowered at John during this harangue. His was the steadfast attitude of the egoist, who sees all life in terms of his own interest alone. "We've got to fight for ourselves in this world since there's none other to fight for us," he said, "and, of course, you take his side. You've licked Ironsyde boots all your life, and nothing an Ironsyde can do is wrong. But I might have known the man that's done the wickedness he's done, and deserts his child and let his only son work on the land, wouldn't meet me fair. There's no honour or honesty in the creature, but if he thinks I'm going to take this slight without lifting my voice against it, he's wrong. To leave the works and sneak out of 'em unmourned and without a bit of talk and a testimonial was shameful enough; but ten shilling a week--no! The country shall ring about that and he'll find his credit shaken. 'Tis enough to lose him his election to Parliament, and I hope it will do so." Best stared. "You're a cracked old fool, and not a spark of proper pride or gratitude in you. Feeling like that, I wonder you dare touch his money; but you're the sort who would take gifts with one hand and stab the giver with the other. I hope he'll change his mind yet and give you no pension at all." Levi, rather impressed with this unusual display of feeling from the foreman, growled a little longer, then went his way; while in John there arose a determination to prevent Mr. Baggs from visiting the scene of his old activities. At present force of habit drew the old man to spend half his time here; and now, when Best had returned to the Gill Spinner, Levi prowled off to his old theatre of work, entered the hackling shop and criticised the new hackler. His successor was young and stood in awe of him at first; but awe was not a quality the veteran inspired for long. Already Joe Ash began to grow restive under Levi's criticisms, and dimly to feel that the old hackler was better away. To-day Mr. Baggs allowed the resentment awakened by Best's criticisms to take shape in offensive comments at the expense of his young successor. He was of that order of beings who, when kicked, rests not until he has kicked somebody again. But to-day the evil star of Mr. Baggs was in ascendant, and when he told the youth that he wasted half his strength and had evidently been taught his business by a fool, Levi was called to suffer a spirited retort. Joe Ash came from the Midlands; his vocabulary was wider than that of Mr. Baggs, and he soon had the old man gasping. Finally he ordered him out of the shop, and told him that if he did not go he would be put out. "Strength or no strength," he said, "I've got enough for you, so hop out of this and don't come back. If you're to be free of my shop, I leave; and that's all there is to it." Mr. Baggs departed, having hoped that he might live to see the young man hung with his own long line. He then pursued his way by the river, labouring under acute emotions, and half a mile down stream met a lad engaged in angling. Abel Dinnett had returned home and was making holiday until his mother should discover work for him, or he himself be able to get occupation. For the moment Sabina found herself sufficiently busy packing up her possessions and preparing for the forthcoming sale at 'The Magnolias.' She was waiting to find a new home until Abel's future labour appeared; but, in secret, Raymond Ironsyde had undertaken to obtain it, and she knew that henceforth she would live at Bridport. Mr. Baggs poured out his wrongs, but he did not begin immediately. Failing adult ears, Abel's served him, and he proceeded to declare that the new hackler was a worthless rogue, who did not know his business and would never earn his money. Abel, however, had reached a standard of intelligence that no longer respected Mr. Baggs. "I don't go to the works now," he said, "and never shall again. I don't care nothing about them. My mother and me are going to leave Bridetown when I get a job." "No doubt--no doubt. Though I dare say your talk is sour grapes--seeing as you'll never come by your rights." Abel lifted his eyes to the iron-roofed buildings up the valley. "Oh yes, I could," he said. "That man wants to win me now. He's going to be married, and she--her he's going to marry--told my mother that he's wishful for me to be his proper son and be treated according. But I won't have his damned friendship now. It's too late now. You can't drive hate out of a man with gifts." "They ain't gifts--they're your right and due. 'Tis done to save his face before the people, so they'll forgive his past and help send him into Parliament. Look at me--fifty years of service and ten shillings a week pension! It shall be known and 'twill lose him countless votes, please God. A dog like that in Parliament! 'Twould be a disgrace to the nation. And you go on hating him if you're a brave boy. Every honest man hates him, same as I do. Twenty shillings I ought to have had, if a penny." "Fling his money back in his face," said Abel. "Nobody did ought to touch his money, or work for it. And if every man and woman refused to go in his works, then he'd be ruined." "The wicked flourish like the green bay tree in this country, because there's such a cruel lot of 'em, and they back each other up against the righteous," declared Levi. "But a time's coming, and you'll live to see it, when the world will rise against their iniquity." "Don't take his money, then." "It ain't his money. It's my money. He's keeping back my money. When that John Best drops out, as he ought to do, for he's long past his work, will he get ten shillings a week? Two pound, more like; and all because he cringes and lies and lets the powers of darkness trample on him! And may the money turn to poison in his mouth when he does get it." "Everything about Ironsyde is poison," added Abel. "And that girl that was a friend to me--he's poisoned her now, and I won't know her no more. I won't neighbour with anybody that has a good word for him, and I won't breathe the same air with him much longer; and I told my mother if she took a penny from him, I'd throw her over, too." "Quite right. I wish you was strong enough to punish him; but if you was, he'd come whining to you and pray you not to. Men like him only make war on women and the weak." Abel listened. "I'll punish him if he lives long enough," he said. "That's what I'm after. I'll bide my time." "And for him to dare to get up and ask the people to send him to Parliament. But they won't. He's too well known in these parts for that. Who's he that he should be lifted up to represent honest, God-fearing men?" "If there was anything to stop him getting in, I'd do it," declared Abel. "'Tis for us, with weight of years and experience, to keep him out. All sensible people will vote against him, and the more that know the truth of him the fewer will support him. And Republican though I am, I'd rather vote for the Tory than him. And as for you, if you stood up at his meetings when the time comes, while they were all cheering the wretch, and cried out that you was his son--that would be sure to lose him a good few God-fearing votes. You think of it; you might hinder him and even work him a mint of harm that way." The old man left Abel to consider his advice and the angler sat watching his float for another hour. But his thoughts were on what he had heard; and he felt no more interest in his sport. Presently he wound up his line and went home. He was attracted by Levi's suggestion and guessed that he might create great feeling against his father in that way. Himself, he did not shrink from the ordeal in imagination; indeed his inherent vanity rather courted it. But when he told his mother what he might do, she urged him to attempt no such thing. Indeed she criticised him sharply for such a foolish thought. "You'll lose all sympathy from the people," she said, "and be flung out; and none will care twopence for you. When you tried to burn the place down and he forgave you, that made a feeling for him, and since then 'tis well known by those that matter, that he's done all he could for you under the circumstances." "That's what he hasn't." "That's what he would if you'd let him. So it's silly to think you've got any more grievances, and if you get up and make a row at one of his meetings, you'll only be chucked into the street. You're nobody now, through your own fault, and you've made people sorry for your father instead of sorry for you, because you're such a pig-headed fool about him and won't see sense." The boy flushed and glared at his mother, who seldom spoke in this vein. "If you wasn't my mother, I'd hit you down for that," he said, clenching his fists. "What do you know about things to talk to me like that? Who are you to take his side and cringe to him? If you can't judge him, there's plenty that can, and it's you who are pig-headed, not me, because you don't see I'm fighting your battle for you. It may seem too late to fight for you; but it's never too late to hate a wicked beast, and if I can help to keep him from getting what he wants I will, and I don't care how I do it, either." She looked at him with little love in her eyes. "You're only being a scourge to me--not to him," she answered. "You can't hurt him, however much you want to, and you can't hurt his name or reputation, because time heals all and he's done much to others that will make them forget what he did to me. I forget myself sometimes, so 'tis certain enough the people do. And if I can, surely to God you can, if only for my sake. You're punishing me for being your mother, not him for being your father--just contrary to what you want." "That's all I get, then, for standing up for you against him, and keeping it before him and the people what he's done against you. Didn't you tell me years and years ago I'd fight your battles some day? And now, when I'm got clever enough to set about it, you curse me." "I don't curse you, Abel. But time is past for fighting battles. There's nothing to fight about now." "We're punishing him cruel by not taking his money; but there's more to do yet," he said. "And I'll do it if I can. And you mind that I'm fighting against him for your sake, and if you're grown too old and too tired to hate the man any more, I haven't. I can hate him for you as well as myself." "And the hate comes back on you," she said. "It's long past the time for all that. You've got plenty of brains and you know that this passion against him is only harming yourself. For God's sake drop it. You say you're a man now. Then be a man and take man's views and look on ahead and think of your future life. Far from helping me, you're only hindering me. We've come to a time when life's altered and the old life here is done. We're going to begin life together--you and me--and you're going to make our fortunes; but it's a mad lookout if you mean to put all your strength into hating them that have no hate for you. It will make you bitter and useless, and you'll grow up a sour, friendless creature, like Levi Baggs. What's he got out of all his hate and unkindness to the world?" Abel considered. "He hates everybody," he said. "It's no use to hate everybody, because then everybody will hate you. I don't hate everybody. I only hate him." She argued, but knew that she had not changed her son. And then, when he was gone again, fearing that he might do what he threatened, she went to see Estelle Waldron. They met on the way to see each other, for Estelle had heard from Raymond that work was found for Abel and, as next step in the plot, it was necessary for Sabina to go to a small spinning mill in Bridport herself. Ironsyde's name was not to transpire. Gladly enough the mother undertook her task. "He's out of hand," she said, "and away from home half his time. He roams about and listens to bad counsellors. He's worse than ever since he's idle. He's got another evil thought now, for his thoughts foul his reason, as well I know thoughts can." She told Estelle what Abel had declared he would do. "You'd best let Mister Ironsyde know," she said, "and he'll take steps according. If the boy can be kept out from any meeting it would be wisest. But I'm powerless. I've wearied my tongue begging and blaming and praying to him to use his sense; but it's beyond my power to make him understand. There's a devil in him and nobody can cast it out." "He won't speak to me now. Poor Abel--yes, it's something like a devil. I'll tell his father. We were very hopeful about the future until--But if he gets to work, it may sweeten him. He'll have good wages and meet nice people." "I wish it had been farther off." "So did I," answered Estelle; "but his father wants him under his own eye and will put him into something better the moment he can. You won't mention this to Abel, and he won't hear it there, because the workers don't know it; but Raymond has a large interest in the Mill really." "I'll not mention it. I'll go to-morrow, and the boy will know nothing save that I've got him a good job." "He can begin next month; and that will help him every way, I hope." So things fell out, and within a month Abel was at work. He believed his mother solely responsible for this occupation. She had yet to find a home at Bridport, so he came and went from Bridetown. He was soon deeply interested and only talked about his labours with a steam engine. Of his troubles he ceased to speak, and for many days never mentioned his father's name. CHAPTER XX IDEALS An event which seemed more or less remote, came suddenly to the forefront of Raymond Ironsyde's life, for ill-health hastened the retirement of the sitting member and a parliamentary bye-election was called for. Having undertaken the constituency he could not turn back, though the sudden demand had not been expected. But he found plenty of enthusiastic helpers and his own personality had made him many friends. It was indeed upon the significance of personality that much turned, and incidentally the experiences into which he now entered served to show him all that personality may mean. Estelle rejoiced that he should now so swiftly learn what had so long been apparent to her. She always declared an enthusiasm for personality; to her it seemed the force behind everything and the mainspring of all movement. Lack of personality meant stagnation; but granted personality, then advance was possible--almost inevitable. He caught her meaning and appreciated what followed from it. But he saw that personality demands freedom before its fullest expression and highest altitude are attainable. That altitude had never been reached as yet even by the most liberty-loving people. "There's no record in all the world of what man might do under conditions of real liberty," said Estelle. "It has never been possible so far; but I do believe history shows that the nearer we approach to it, the more beautiful life becomes for everybody." Raymond admitted so much and agreed that the world had yet to learn what it might achieve under a nobler dispensation of freedom. "Think of the art, the thought, the leisure for good things, if the ceaseless fight against bad things were only ended; think of the inspirations that personality will be free to express some day," she said. But he shattered her dreams sometimes. She would never suffer him to declare any advance impossible; yet she had to listen, when he explained that countless things she cried for were impracticable under existing circumstances. "You want to get to the goal without running the race, sweetheart," he told her once. "Before this and this can possibly happen, that and that must happen. House-building begins at the cellars, not the roof." She wrestled with political economy and its bearings on all that was meant by democracy. She was patient and strove to master detail and keep within the domain of reality. But, after all, she taught him more than he could teach her; because her thoughts sprung from an imagination touched with genius, while he was contented to take things as he found them and distrust emotion and intuition. She exploded ideas in the ordered chambers of his mind. The proposition that labour was not a commodity quite took him off his balance. Yet he proved too logical to deny it when Estelle convinced his reason. "That fact belongs to the root of all the future, I believe," she said. "From it all the flowers and seed we hope for ought to come, and the interpretation of everything vital. Labour and the labourer aren't two different things; they're one and the same thing. His labour is part of every man, and it can no more be measured and calculated away from him than his body and soul can. But it is the body and soul that must regulate labour, not labour the body and soul. So you've got to regard labour and the rights of labour as part of the rights of man, and not a thing to be bought and sold like a pound of tea. You see that? Labour, in fact, is as sacred as humanity and its rights are sacred too." "So are the rights of property," he answered, but doubtfully, for he knew at heart that the one proposition did not by any means embrace the other. Indeed Estelle contradicted him very forcibly. "Not the least bit in the world," she declared. "They are as far apart as the poles. There's nothing the least sacred about property. The rights of property are casual. They generally depend on all sorts of things that don't matter. They happen through the changes and chances of life, and human whims and fads and the pure accident of heredity and descent. They are all on a lower level; they are all suspect, whereas the rights of labour are a part of humanity." But he followed her parry with a sharp _riposte_. "Remember what happened when somebody promised to marry me," he said. "Remember that, as a principle of rectitude, I have recognised my son and accepted your very 'accident of descent' as chief reason for according him all a first-born's rights. That was your instinct towards right--his rights of property." "It was righteousness, not rights of property that made you decide," she assured him. "Abel has no rights of property. The law ignores his rights to be alive at all, I believe. The law calls him 'the son of none,' and if you have no parents, you can't really exist. But the rights of labour are above human law and founded in humanity. They are Abel's, yours, everybody's. The man who works, by that fact commands the rights of labour. Besides, circumstances alter cases." "Yes, and may again," he replied. "We can't deny the difficulties in this personal experience of mine. But I'm beginning to think the boy's not normal. I very much fear there's a screw loose." "Don't think that. He's a very clever boy." "And yet Sabina tells me frankly that his bitterness against me keeps pace with his growing intelligence. Instead of his wits defeating his bad temper, as they do sooner or later with most sane people, the older he gets, the more his dislike increases and the less trouble he takes to control it." "If that were so, of course circumstances might alter the case again," she admitted. "But I don't believe there's a weak spot like that. There's something retarded--some confusion of thought, some kind of knot in his mind that isn't smoothed out yet. You've been infinitely patient and we'll go on being infinitely patient--together." This difficult matter she dropped for the present; but finding him some days later in a recipient mood, followed up her cherished argument, that labour must be counted a commodity no more. "Listen to me, Ray," she said. "Very soon you'll be too busy to listen to me at all--these are the last chances for me before your meetings begin. But really what I'm saying will be splendidly useful in speeches." "All very well if getting in was all that mattered," he told her. "I can't echo all your ideas, Chicky, and speeches have a way of rising up against one at awkward moments afterwards." "At any rate, you grant the main point," she said, "and so you must grant what follows from it; and if you grant that, and put it in your manifesto, you'll lose a few votes, but you'll gain hundreds. If labour's not a commodity, but to be regulated by body and soul, then wages must be regulated by body and soul too. Or, if you want to put it in a way for a crowd to understand, you can say that we give even a steam-engine the oil it must have before it begins to work, so how can we deny a man the oil he wants before he begins to work?" "That means a minimum of wages." "Yes, a minimum consistent with human needs, below which wages cannot and must not fail. That minimum should be just as much taken for granted as the air a man breathes, or the water he drinks, or the free education he gets as a boy. It isn't wages really; it's recognition of a man's right to live and share the privileges of life, and be self-respecting, just because he is a man. Everybody who is born, Ray, ought to have the unquestioned right to live, and the amplest opportunity to become a good and useful citizen. After that is granted, then wages should begin, and each man, or woman, should have full freedom and opportunity to earn what he, or she, was worth. That does away with the absurd idea of equality, which can only be created artificially and would breed disaster if we did create it." "There's no such thing as equality in human nature, any more than in any other nature, Estelle. Seeds from the same pod are different--some weak, some strong. But I grant the main petition. The idea's first rate--a firm basis of right to reasonable life, and security for every human being as our low-water mark; while, on that foundation, each may lift an edifice according to their power. So that none who has the power to rise above the minimum would be prevented from doing so, and no Trades Union tyranny should interfere to prevent the strong man working eight hours a day if he desires to do so, because the weaker one can only work seven." "I think the Trades Unions only want to prevent men being handicapped out of the race at the start," she answered. "They know as well as we do, that men are not born equal in mind or body; but rightly and reasonably, they want them all to start equal as far as conditions go. The race is to the strong and the prize is to the strong; but all, at least, should have power to train for the race and start with equal opportunities to win. There's such a lot to be done." "There is," he admitted. "The handicap you talk of is created for thousands and thousands before they are born at all." "Think of being handicapped out of the race before you are born!" she cried. "What could be more unjust and cruel and wicked than that?" "Very few will put the unborn before the living, or think of a potential child rather than the desires of the parents--selfish though they may be. It's a free country, and we don't know enough to start stopping people from having a hand in the next generation if they decide to do so." But her enthusiasm was not quenched by difficulties. "We want science and politics and good will to work together," she said. He returned to the smaller argument. "It's a far cry to what you want, yet I for one don't shrink from it. The better a man is, the larger share he should have of the profits of any enterprise he helps to advance. Then wages would take the shape of his share in the profits, and you might easily find a head workman of genius drawing more out of a business than--say, a junior partner, who is a fool and not nearly so vital to the enterprise as he. But, you see, if we say that, we argue in a circle, for the junior partner, ass though he is, represents oil and fuel, which are just as important as the clever workman's brains--in fact, his brains can't work without them. Capital and labour are two halves of a whole and depend upon each other, as much as men depend on women and women on men. Capital does a great deal more than pay labour wages, remember. It educates his children, builds his houses and doctors his ailments. Soon--so they tell me--capital will be appropriated to look after labour's old age also, and cheer his manhood with the knowledge that his age is safe." "You don't grudge any of these things, Ray?" "Not one. Every man should have security. But, after all, capital cannot be denied its rights. It has got rights of some sort, surely? Socialists would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; but though they lack power yet to kill the goose, they possess plenty of power to frighten it away to foreign shores, where it can build its nest a bit more hopefully than here. Many, who scent repudiation and appropriation, are flying already. Capital is diminishing, and there seems a fair chance of labour being over-coddled, at the expense of capital, when the Liberals come in again. If that happens, labour is weakened as well as capital. But both are essential to the power and well-being of the State. If we ever had another war, which God forbid, labour and capital would have to sink all differences and go to battle together unless we meant to be defeated. Both are vital to our salvation." "Then give labour an interest in the blessing of capital," she said. "Open labour's eyes to the vital values of capital--its strength as well as weakness. Let the units of labour share the interests of their employers and each become a capitalist in their own right. What does it matter where the capital is as long as the nation has got it safe? You might make England a thousand times richer if all those in the country, who want to save money, had the power to save." "How can we? There's not enough to go round," he told her. But she declared that no argument. "Then create conditions under which there might be much more. Let the workers be owners, too. If the owners only took their ownership in a different spirit and felt no man is more than a trustee for all--if they were like you, Ray, who are a worker and an owner both, what great things might happen! Make all industry co-operation, in reality as well as theory, and a real democracy must come out of it. It's bound to come." "Well, I suppose nothing can help it coming. We are great on free institutions in this country and they get freer every year." So they argued, much at one in heart, and an impartial listener had felt that it was within the power of the woman's intelligence and the man's energy and common sense, to help the world as far as individuals can, did chance and the outcome of their union afford them opportunity. But Estelle knew that good ideas were of little value in themselves. Seed is of no account if the earth on which it falls be poisoned, and a good idea above all, needs good will to welcome it. Good will to the inspirations of man is as sunshine, rain, sweet soil to the seed; without good will all thinking must perish, or at best lie dormant. She wondered how much of good seed had perished under the bad weather of human weakness, prejudice and jealousy. But she was young, and hope her rightful heritage. The blessed word 'reconstruction' seemed to her as musical as a ring of bells. "There are some things you never will be able to express in political terms, and life is one of them," Ernest Churchouse had assured her; but she was not convinced of it. She still reverenced politics and looked to it to play husbandman, triumph over party and presently shine out, like a universal sun, whose sole warmth was good will to man. And as she felt personally to Raymond's work, so did she want the world of women to feel to all men's work. She would not have them claim their rights in the argument of parity of intellect, for that she felt to be vain. It was by the virtue of disparity that their equality should appear. Their virtue and essential aid depended on the difference. The world wanted women, not to do what men had done, but to bring to the task the special qualities and distinctive genius of womanhood to complement and crown the labour of manhood. The mighty structure was growing; but it would never be finished without the saving grace of woman's thought and the touch of woman's hand. The world's work needed them--not for the qualities they shared with men, but for the qualities men lacked and they possessed. If Raymond represented the masculine worker, she hoped that she might presently stand in the ranks of the women, and doubted not that great women would arise to lead her. She remembered that the Roman element of humanity was described as representing the male spirit, while the Greek stood for the female; and she could easily dream a blend of the two destined to produce a spirit greater than either. Love quickened her visions and added the glow of life to her hopes. So together she and her future husband prepared for their wedded days, and if ever a man and woman faced the future with steadfast determination to do justly and serve their kind with the best of their united powers, this man and woman did. They were to be married after the election, and that would take place early in the coming year. CHAPTER XXI ATROPOS Ironsyde for once found himself part of a machine, and by no means the most important part. He fought the election resolutely and spared no energy. The attraction of the contest grew upon him, and since he contended against a personal acquaintance, one who rated sportsmanship as highly as Arthur Waldron himself, the encounter proceeded on rational lines. It became exceedingly strenuous in the later stages and Raymond's agent, from an attitude of certainty, grew more doubtful. But the personal factor told for the Liberal. He was popular in the constituency and Waldron, himself a strong Conservative, whose vote must necessarily be cast against his future son-in-law, preached the moral. "If you beat us, Ray, it will be entirely owing to the fact that you played cricket and football in the public eye for twenty years," he asserted and believed. The Liberal Committee room was at 'The Seven Stars,' for Mr. Legg supported the cause of democracy and pinned his highest hopes thereto. He worked hard for Ironsyde and, on the sole occasion when painful incidents threatened to spoil a public meeting, Job exercised tact and saved the situation. At one of the last of his gatherings, in the great, new public room of 'The Seven Stars,' Ironsyde had been suddenly confronted with his son. Abel attended this meeting of his father's supporters and attempted to interrupt it. He had arrived primed with words and meant to declare himself before the people; but when the time came, he was nervous and lost his head. Sitting and listening grew to an agony. He could not wait till question time and felt a force within him crying to him, to get upon his feet and finish the thing he had planned to do. But Job, who was among the stewards, kept watchful eyes upon the benches, and Abel had hardly stood up, when he recognised him. Before the boy had shouted half a dozen incoherent words, Mr. Legg and a policeman were at his side. He sat far down the hall and the little disturbance he had been able to create was hardly appreciated. For Raymond now neared the end of his speech and it had contained matter which aroused attention from all who listened to it, awakened disquiet in some, but enthusiasm among the greater number. He was telling of such hopes and desires as he and Estelle shared, and though an indifferent speaker, the purity of his ambitions and their far-reaching significance challenged intelligent listeners. In less than half a minute Abel was removed. He did not struggle, but his first instinct was great relief to be outside. Not until later did his reverse breed wrath. His father had not seen him and when Ironsyde inquired afterwards, what the trouble was, Mr. Legg evaded the facts. But he looked to it that Abel should be powerless to renew disturbances. He warned those who controlled the remaining meetings not to admit him, and henceforth kept at the doors a man who knew Abel. Mr. Legg also saw Sabina, who was now much in Bridport concerned with a little house that she had taken, and the boy's mother implored him to do no more evil. To her surprise he admitted that he had been wrong. But he was dark and stormy. She saw but little of him and did not know how he occupied his leisure, or spent his wages. There is no doubt that, at this time, Abel sank out of mind with those most interested in him. Estelle was entirely preoccupied with the election, and when once the lad's new work had been determined and he went to do it, Raymond dismissed him for the present from his thoughts. He felt grateful to Sabina for falling in with his wishes and hoped that, since she was now definitely on his side, a time might soon come when she would be able to influence her son. Indeed Sabina herself was more hopeful, and when Estelle came to see her in Bridport, declared that Abel kept regular hours and appeared to be interested in his work. Neither she nor anybody belonging to him heard of the boy's escapade at the meeting, for upon that subject Job Legg felt it wisest to be silent. And when the penultimate meeting passed, the spirit of it was such that those best able to judge again felt very sanguine for Ironsyde. He had created a good impression and won a wide measure of support. He had worked hard, traversed all the ground and left the people under no shadow of doubt as to his opinions. Bridetown was for him; West Haven and Bridport were said to be largely in his favour, but the outlying agricultural district inclined towards his rival. Raymond had, however, been at great pains to win the suffrage of the farmers, and his last meeting was on their account. Before him now lay the promise of two days' rest, and he accepted them very thankfully, for he began to grow weary in mind and body. He had poured his vitality into the struggle which, started more or less as a sporting event, gradually waxed into a serious and all-important matter. And as his knowledge increased and his physical energy waned, a cloud dulled his enthusiasm at times and more than once he asked himself if it was all worth while--if this infinite trouble and high tension were expended to the wisest purpose on these ambitions. He had heard things from politicians, who came to speak for him, that discouraged him. He had found that single-mindedness was not the dominant quality of those who followed politics as a profession. The loaves and fishes bulked largely in their calculations, and he heard a distinguished man say things at one of his meetings which Raymond knew that it was impossible he could believe. For example, it was clearly a popular catchword that party politics had become archaic, and that a time was near when party would be forgotten in a larger and nobler spirit. Speakers openly declared that great changes were in sight, and the constitution must be modified; but, privately, they professed no such opinions. All looked to their party and their party alone for personal advance. It seemed to Ironsyde that their spirits were mean spirits; that they concealed behind their profession a practice of shrewd calculation and a policy of cynical self-advance. The talk behind the scenes was not of national welfare, but individual success, or failure. The men who talked the loudest on the platform of altruism and the greatest good to the greatest number, were most alive in private conversation to the wire-pulling and intrigue which proceeded unseen; and it was in the machinery they found their prime interest and excitement, rather than in the great operations the machine was ostensibly created to achieve. The whole business on their lips in private appeared to have no more real significance than a county cricket match, or any other game. Thanks largely to the woman he was to wed, Ironsyde took now a statesman-like rather than a political view as far as his inexperience could do so. He had no axe to grind, and from the standpoint of his ignorance, progress looked easy and demanded no more than that good will of which Estelle so often spoke. But in practice he began to perceive the gulf between ideal legislation and practical politics and, in moments of physical depression, as the election approached, his heart failed him. He grew despondent at night. Then, after refreshing sleep, the spirit of hope reawakened. He felt very certain now that he was going to get in; and still with morning light he hailed the victory; while, after a heavy day, he doubted of its fruits and mistrusted himself. His powers seemed puny contrasted with the gigantic difficulties that the machine set up between a private member and any effective or independent activity in the House. He was cast down as he rode home after his last meeting but one, and his reflections were again most deeply tinged with doubt as to the value of these heroic exertions. Looked at here, in winter moonlight under a sky of stars, this fevered strife seemed vain, and the particular ambition to which he had devoted such tremendous application appeared thin and doubtful--almost unworthy. He traversed the enterprise, dwelt on outstanding features of it and comforted himself, as often he had done of late, by reflecting that Estelle would be at his right hand. If, after practical experience and fair trial, he found himself powerless to serve their common interests, or advance their ideals, then he could leave the field of Parliament and seek elsewhere for a hearing. His ingenuous hope was to interest his leaders; for he believed that many who possessed power, thought and felt as he did. He had grown placid by the time he left South Street and turned into the road for home. The night was keen and frosty. It braced him and he began to feel cheerful and hungry for the supper that waited him at North Hill. Then, where the road forked from Bridetown and an arm left it for West Haven, at a point two hundred yards from outlying farm-houses, a young, slight figure leapt from the hedge, stood firmly in the road and stopped Raymond's horse. The moonlight was clear and showed Ironsyde his son. Abel leapt at the bridle rein, and when the rider bade him loose it, he lifted a revolver and fired twice pointblank. Ten minutes later, on their way back from the meeting and full of politics, there drove that way John Best, Nicholas Roberts and a Bridetown farmer. They found a man on his back in the middle of the road and a horse standing quietly beside him. None doubted but that Raymond Ironsyde was dead, yet it was not possible for them to be sure. They lifted him into the farmer's cart therefore, and while Best and Roberts returned with him to Bridport Hospital, the farmer mounted Ironsyde's horse and galloped to North Hill with his news. Arthur Waldron was from home, but Estelle left the house as quickly as a motor car could be made ready, and in a quarter of an hour stood at Raymond's side. He was dead and had, indeed, died instantly when fired upon. He had been shot through the lung and heart, and must have perished before he fell from his horse to the ground. They knew Estelle at the hospital and left her with Raymond for a little while. He looked ten years younger than when she had seen him last. All care was gone and an expression of content rested upon his beautiful face. The doctor feared to leave her, judging of the shock; but when he returned she was calm and controlled. She sat by the dead man and held his hand. "A little longer," she said, and he went out again. CHAPTER XXII THE HIDING-PLACE No doubt existed as to the murderer of Raymond Ironsyde, for on the night of his death, Abel Dinnett did not return home. He had left work at the usual time, but had not taken his bicycle; and from that day he was seen no more. It appeared impossible that he could evade the hue and cry, but twenty-four hours passed and there came no report of his capture. Little mystery marked the matter, save that of Abel's disappearance. His animosity towards his father was known and it had culminated thus. None imagined that capture would be long delayed; but forty-eight hours passed and still there came no news of him. Estelle Waldron fled from all thought of him at first; then she reflected upon him--driven to do so by a conviction concerning him that commanded action from her. On the day after the coroner's inquest, for the first time she sought Sabina. The meeting was of an affecting character, for each very fully realised the situation from the standpoint of the other. Sabina was the more distressed, yet she entertained definite convictions and declared herself positive concerning certain facts. Estelle questioned her conclusions and, indeed, refused to believe them. "I hope you'll understand my coming, Sabina," she said. She was clad, as usual, in a grey Harris tweed, and the elder wondered why she did not wear black. Estelle's face was haggard and worn, with much suffering. But it seemed that the last dregs of her own cup were not yet drunk, for an excruciating problem faced her. There was none to help her solve it, yet she took it to Sabina. "I thought you'd come, sooner or later. This is a thing beyond any human power to make better. God knows I mourn for you far more than I mourn for myself. I don't mourn for myself. Long ago I saw that the living can't be happy, though the dead may be. The dead may be--we'll hope it for them." "It's death to me as well as to him," said Estelle simply. "As far as I'm concerned, I feel that I'm dead from now and shall live on as somebody different--somebody I don't know yet. All that we were and had and hoped--everything is gone with him. The future was to be spent in trying to do good things. We shared the same ideas about it. But that's all over. I'm left--single-handed, Sabina." "Yes, I know how you feel." "I can't bear to think of it yet. I didn't come to talk about him, or myself. I came to talk about Abel." "I can't tell you anything about him." "I know you know nothing. I think I know more than you do." "Know more of him than I do?" asked the mother. There was almost a flash of jealousy in her voice. But it faded and she sighed. "No, no. You needn't fret for him. They may find him, or they may not; but they'll not find him alive." Estelle started. She believed most steadfastly that Abel was alive, and felt very certain that she knew his hiding-place. "Why do you think that?" she asked. "You might hope it; but why do you think it? Have you any good reason for thinking it?" "There are some things you know," answered the mother. "You know them without being told and without any reason. You neither hope nor fear--you know. I might ask you how you know where he is. But I don't want to ask you. I've taken my good-bye of him, poor, wasted life. How had God got the heart to let him live for this? People will say it was fitting, and happened by the plan of his Maker. No man's child--not even God's. It's all hidden, all dark to me. It's worked itself out to the bitter end. Men would have been too kind to work it out like this. Only God could. I can't say much to you. I'm very sorry for you. You were caught up into the thing and didn't know, or guess, what you were thrusting yourself into. But now it's your turn, and you'll have to wait long years, as I did, before you can look at life again without passion or sorrow." "It doesn't matter about me. But, if you feel Abel is dead, I feel just as strongly that he is alive, and that this isn't the end of him." Sabina considered. "I know him better than you, and I know Providence better than you do," she answered. "It's like the wonder you are--to think on him without hate. But you're wasting your time and showing pity for nothing. He's beyond pity. Why, I don't pity him--his mother." "I'm only doing what Raymond tried to do so often and failed--what he would have me do now if he'd lived. And if I know something that nobody else does, I must use that knowledge. I'm sorry I do know, Sabina, but I do." "You waste your time, I expect. If the hunt that's going on doesn't find him, how shall you do it? He's at the bottom of the sea, I hope." They parted and the same night Estelle set out to satisfy her will. She told nobody of her purpose, for she knew that her father would not have allowed her to pursue it. Waldron was utterly crushed by the death of his friend and could not as yet realise the loss. Nor did Estelle realise it, save in fitful and fleeting agonies. As yet the full significance of the event was by no means weighed by her. It meant far more than she could measure and receive and accept in so brief a space of time. Seen from the standpoint of this death, every plan of her life, every undertaking for the future, was dislocated. She left that complete ruin for the present. There was no hurry to restore, or set about rebuilding the fabric of her future. She would have all her life to do it in. The thought of Abel came as a demand to her justice. Her knowledge, amounting to a conviction, required action. The nature of the action she did not know, but something urged her to reach him if she could. For she believed him mad. Great torture of spirit had overtaken her under her loss; but upon this extreme grief, ugly and incessant, obtruded the thought of Abel, the secret of his present refuge and the impulse to approach him. Her personal suffering established rather than shook her own high standards. She had promised the boy never to tell anybody of the haunt he had shown her under the roof in the old store at West Haven; and if most women might now have forgotten such a promise, Estelle did not. But she very strenuously argued against the spiritual impulse to seek him, for every physical instinct rose against doing so. To do this was surely not required of her, for whereunto would it lead? What must be the result of any such meeting? It might be dreadful; it could not fail to be futile. Yet all mental effort to escape the task proved vain. Her very grief edged her old, austere, chivalrous acceptance of duty. She felt that justice called her to this ordeal, and she went--with no fixed purpose save to see him and urge him to surrender himself for his own peace if he could understand. No personal fear touched her reflections. She might have welcomed fear in these unspeakable moments of her life, for she was little enamoured of living after Raymond Ironsyde died. The thought of death for herself had not been distasteful at that time. She went fearlessly, when all slept and her going and coming would not be observed. She left her home at a moonless midnight, took candle and matches, dressed in her stoutest clothes and walked over North Hill towards Bridport. But at the eastern shoulder of the downs she descended through a field and struck the road again just at the fork where Raymond had perished. Then she struck into the West Haven way and soon slipped under the black mass of the old store. The night was cloudy and still. No wind blew and the sigh of the sea beneath the shelving beaches close at hand, had sunk to a murmur. West Haven lay lost in darkness. The old store had been searched, as many other empty buildings, for the fugitive; but he was not specially associated with this place, save in the mind of Estelle. The police had hunted it carefully, no more, and she guessed that his eerie under the roof, only reached by a somewhat perilous climb through a broken window, would not be discovered. She remembered also that there were some students of Raymond's murder who did not associate Abel with it. Such held that only accident and coincidence had made him run away on the night of Ironsyde's end. They argued that in these cases the obvious always proved erroneous, and the theory most transparently rational seldom led the way to the truth. But she had never doubted about that. It seemed already a commonplace of knowledge, a lifetime old, that Abel had destroyed his father, and that he must be insane to have ruined his own life in this manner. She ascended cautiously through the darkness, reached a gap--once a window--from which her ascent must be made, and listened for a few moments to hear if anything stirred above her. It seemed as though the old store was full of noises, for the fingers of decay never cease from picking and, in the silence of night, one can best hear their stealthy activities. Little falls of fragments sounded loudly, even echoed, in this great silence. There was almost a perpetual rustle and whisper; and once a thud and skurry, when a rat displaced a piece of mortar which fell from the rotting plaster. Dark though the heaven was and black the outer night, it had the quality that air never loses and she saw the sky as possessed of illumination in contrast with its setting of the broken window. Within all was blankly black; from above there came no sound. She climbed to the window ledge, felt for the nails that Abel had hammered in to hold his feet and soon ascended through a large gap under the eaves of the store. Some shock had thrown out a piece of brickwork here. Seen from the ground the aperture looked trifling and had indeed challenged no attention; but it was large enough to admit a man. For a moment Estelle stood in this aperture before entering the den within. She raised her voice, which fluttered after her climb, and called to him. "Abel! Abel! It's Estelle." There came the thought, even as she spoke, that he might answer with a bullet; but he answered not at all. She felt thankful for the silence and hoped that he might have deserted his retreat. Perhaps, indeed, he had never come to it; and yet it seemed impossible that he had for two days escaped capture unless here concealed. It occurred to her that he might wander out by night and return before day. He might even now be behind her, to intercept her return. Still no shadow of fear shook her mind or body. She felt not a tremor. All that concerned her conscience was now completed and she hoped that it would be possible to dismiss from her thoughts the fellow creature who had destroyed her joy of life and worked evil so far reaching. She could leave him now to his destiny and feel under no compulsion to relate the incidents of her nocturnal search. Had he been there, she would have risked the meeting, urged him to surrender and then left him if he allowed her to do so. She would never have given him up, or broken her promise to keep his secret. But the chamber under the roof was large and she did not leave it without making sure that he was neither hiding nor sleeping within it. She entered, lighted her candle and examined a triangular recess formed by the converging beams of the roof above her and the joists under her feet. The boy had been busy here. There were evidences of him--evidences of a child rather than a man. Boyish forethought stared her in the face and staggered her by its ghastly incongruities with the things this premeditating youth had done. Here were provisions, not such as a man would have selected to stand a siege, but the taste of a schoolboy. She looked at the supplies spread here--tins of preserved food, packets of chocolate, bottles of ginger beer, bananas, biscuits. But it seemed that the hoard had not been touched. One tin of potted salmon had been opened, but no part of the contents was consumed. Either accident had changed his purpose and frightened him elsewhere at the last moment, or the energies and activities that had gone to pile this accumulation were all spent in the process and now he did not need them. Then she looked further, to the extremity of the den he had made, and there, lying comfortably on a pile of shavings, Estelle found him. She guessed that the storm and stress of his crime had exhausted him and thrown him into heaviest possible physical slumber after great mental tribulation. She shuddered as she looked down on him and a revulsion, a loathing tempted her to creep away again before he awakened. She did not think of him as a patricide, nor did her own loss entirely inspire the emotion; she never associated him with that, but kept him outside it, as she would have kept some insensible or inanimate object had such been responsible for Ironsyde's end. It was the sudden thought of all Raymond's death might mean--not to her but the world--that turned her heart to stone for a fearful second as she looked down upon the unconscious figure. Her own sorrow was sealed at its fountains for the time. But her sorrow for the world could not be sealed. And then came the thought that the insensible boy at her feet, escaping for a little while through sleep's primeval sanctity, was part of the robbed world also. Who had lost more than he by his unreason? If her heart did not melt then, it grew softer. But there was more to learn before she left him and the truth can be recorded. Abel had killed his father and hastened to his lair exultant. He had provided for what should follow and vaguely hoped that presently, before his stores were spent, the way would be clearer for escape. He assured himself safe from discovery and guessed that when a fortnight was passed, he might safely creep out, reach a port, find work in a ship and turn his back upon England for ever. That was his general plan before the deed. Afterwards all changed for him. He then found himself a being racked and over-mastered by new sensations. The desirable thing that he had done changed its features, even as death changes the features of life; the ideal, so noble and seemly before, when attained assumed such a shape as, in one of Abel's heredity, it was bound to assume. Not at once did the change appear, but as a cloud no bigger than a man's hand in the clear, triumphant sky of his achievement. Even so an apple, that once he had stolen and hidden, was bruised unknown to him and thus contained the seed of death, that made it rot before it was ripe. The decay spread and the fruit turned to filth before he could win any enjoyment from it. He shook off the beginnings of doubt impatiently. He retraced his grievances and dwelt on the glory of his revenge as he reached his secret place after the crime. But the stain darkened in the heart of his mind; and before dawn crept through cracks in the roof above his lair, dissolution had begun. Through the hours of that first day he lay there with his thoughts for company and a process, deepening, as dusk deepened, into remorse began to horrify him. He fought with all his might against it. He resented it with indignation. His gorge rose against it; he would have strangled it, had it been a ponderable thing within his power to destroy; but as time passed he began to know it was stronger than he. It gripped his spirit with unconquerable fingers and slowly stifled him. Time crept on interminable. When the second night came, he was faint and turned to his food. He struggled with himself and opened a tin of salmon. But he could not eat. He believed that he would never eat again. He slept for an hour, then woke from terrifying dreams. His mind wandered and he longed to be gone and tear off his clothes and dip into the sea. At dawn of the second day men were hunting the old stores, from its cellars to the attics below him. He heard them speaking under his feet and listened to two men who cursed him. They speculated whether he was too young to hang and hoped he might not be. Yet he could take pride in their failure to find him. There was, as he remembered, only one person in the world who knew of his eerie; but terror did not accompany this recollection. His exultation at the defeat of the searchers soon vanished, and he found himself indifferent to the thought that Estelle might remember. He knew that his plans could not be fulfilled now: it was impossible for him to live a fortnight here. And then he began stealthily, fearfully, to doubt of life itself. It had changed in its aspect and invitation. Its promises were dead. It could hold nothing for him as he had been told by Levi Baggs. The emotions now threatening his mind were such that he believed no length of days would ever dim them; from what he suffered now, it seemed that time's self could promise no escape. Life would be hell and not worth living. At this point in his struggles his mind failed him and became disordered. It worked fitfully, and its processes were broken with blanks and breaks. Chaos marked his mental steps from this point; his feet were caught and he fell down and down, yet tried hard for a while to stay his fall. His consciousness began to decide, while his natural instincts struggled against the decision. Not one, but rival spirits tore him. Reason formed no part in the encounter; no arbiter arose between the conflicting forces, between a gathering will to die and escape further torment, and the brute will to live, that must belong to every young creature, happy or wretched. The trial was long drawn out; but it had ended some hours before Estelle stood beside him. She considered whether she should waken Abel and determined that she must do so, since to speak with him, if possible, she held her duty now. He was safe if he wished to be, for she would never tell his secret. So she bent down with her light--to find him dead. He had shot himself through the right temple after sunset time of the second day. Estelle stood and looked at him for a little while, then climbed back to earth and went away through the darkness to tell his mother that she was right. THE END The Human Boy and the War BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS In this book of stories Mr. Phillpotts uses his genial gift of characterization to picture the effect of the European War on the impressionable minds of boys--English school-boys far away from anything but the mysterious echo of the strange terrors and blood-stirring heroisms of battle, who live close only to the martial invitation of a recruiting station. There are stories of a boy who runs away to go to the front, teachers who go--perhaps without running; the school's contest for a prize poem about the war, and snow battles, fiercely belligerent, mimicking the strategies of Flanders and the Champagne. They are deeply moving sketches revealing the heart and mind of English youth in war-time. "The book is extraordinary in the skill with which it gets into that world of the boy so shut away from the adult world. It is entirely unlike anything else by Phillpotts, equal as it is to his other volumes in charm, character study, humor and interest. It is one of those books that every reader will want to recommend to his friends, and which he will only lend with the express proviso that it must be returned."--_New York Times_. "In this book Mr. Phillpotts pictures a boy, a real human boy. The boy's way of thinking, his outlook upon life, his ambitions, his ideals, his moods, his peculiarities, these are all here touched with a kindly sympathy and humor."--_New York Sun_. "Mr. Phillpotts writes from a real knowledge of the schoolboy's habit of thought. He writes with much humor and the result is as delightful and entertaining a volume as has come from his pen for some time."--_Buffalo Evening News_. CHRONICLES OF ST. TID BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS "The gifts of the short-story writer are wholly Mr. Phillpotts'. Here, as elsewhere in his works, we have the place painted with the pen of an artist, and the person depicted with the skill of the writer who is inspired by all types of humanity."--_Boston Evening Transcript_. "No one rivals Phillpotts in this peculiar domain of presenting an ancient landscape, with its homes and their inmates as survivals of a past century. There is nothing vague about his characters. They are undeniable personalities, and are possessed of a psychology all their own."--_The Chicago Tribune_. THE BANKS OF COLNE BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS "Absorbing, written with sure power and a constant flow of humor.... Has the warm human glow of sympathy and understanding, and it is written with real mastery."--_New York Times_. "A tale of absorbing interest from its start to the altogether unusual and dramatic climax with which it closes."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger_. "Stands in the foremost rank of current fiction."--_New York Tribune_. "His acute faculties of sympathetic observation, his felicitous skill in characterization, and his power to present the life of a community in all its multiple aspects are here combined in the most mature and absorbing novel of his entire career."--_Philadelphia Press_. THE GREEN ALLEYS BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS "As long as we have such novels as _The Green Alleys_ and such novelists as Mr. Phillpotts, we need have no fears for the future of English fiction. Mr. Phillpotts' latest novel is a representative example of him at his best, of his skill as a literary creator and of his ability as an interpreter of life."--_Boston Transcript_. "A drama of fascinating interest, lightened by touches of delicious comedy ... one of the best of the many remarkable books from the pen of this clever author."--_Boston Globe_. BRUNEL'S TOWER BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS The regeneration of a faulty character through association with dignified honest work and simple, sincere people is the theme which Mr. Phillpotts has chosen for this novel. The scene is largely laid in a pottery, where a lad, having escaped from a reform school, has sought shelter and work. Under the influence of the gentle, kindly folk of the community he comes in a measure to realize himself. OLD DELABOLE BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS "Besides being a good story, richly peopled, and brimful of human nature in its finer aspects, the book is seasoned with quiet humor and a deal of mellow wisdom."--_New York Times_. 
2153	----	and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. Editorial note: _Mary Barton_, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell's first novel, was published (anonymously) in 1848 by Chapman and Hall. MARY BARTON A Tale of Manchester Life by ELIZABETH GASKELL "'How knowest thou,' may the distressed Novel-wright exclaim, 'that I, here where I sit, am the Foolishest of existing mortals; that this my Long-ear of a fictitious Biography shall not find one and the other, into whose still longer ears it may be the means, under Providence, of instilling somewhat?' We answer, 'None knows, none can certainly know: therefore, write on, worthy Brother, even as thou canst, even as it is given thee.'" CARLYLE. CONTENTS PREFACE. I. A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. II. A MANCHESTER TEA-PARTY. III. JOHN BARTON'S GREAT TROUBLE. IV. OLD ALICE'S HISTORY. V. THE MILL ON FIRE--JEM WILSON TO THE RESCUE. VI. POVERTY AND DEATH. VII. JEM WILSON'S REPULSE. VIII. MARGARET'S DEBUT AS A PUBLIC SINGER. IX. BARTON'S LONDON EXPERIENCES. X. RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. XI. MR. CARSON'S INTENTIONS REVEALED. XII. OLD ALICE'S BAIRN. XIII. A TRAVELLER'S TALES. XIV. JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH POOR ESTHER. XV. A VIOLENT MEETING BETWEEN THE RIVALS. XVI. MEETING BETWEEN MASTERS AND WORKMEN. XVII. BARTON'S NIGHT-ERRAND. XVIII. MURDER. XIX. JEM WILSON ARRESTED ON SUSPICION. XX. MARY'S DREAM--AND THE AWAKENING. XXI. ESTHER'S MOTIVE IN SEEKING MARY. XXII. MARY'S EFFORTS TO PROVE AN ALIBI. XXIII. THE SUB-POENA. XXIV. WITH THE DYING. XXV. MRS. WILSON'S DETERMINATION. XXVI. THE JOURNEY TO LIVERPOOL. XXVII. IN THE LIVERPOOL DOCKS. XXVIII. "JOHN CROPPER, AHOY!" XXIX. A TRUE BILL AGAINST JEM. XXX. JOB LEGH'S DECEPTION. XXXI. HOW MARY PASSED THE NIGHT. XXXII. THE TRIAL AND VERDICT--"NOT GUILTY." XXXIII. REQUIESCAT IN PACE. XXXIV. THE RETURN HOME. XXXV. "FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES." XXXVI. JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH MR. DUNCOMBE. XXXVII. DETAILS CONNECTED WITH THE MURDER. XXXVIII. CONCLUSION. PREFACE. Three years ago I became anxious (from circumstances that need not be more fully alluded to) to employ myself in writing a work of fiction. Living in Manchester, but with a deep relish and fond admiration for the country, my first thought was to find a frame-work for my story in some rural scene; and I had already made a little progress in a tale, the period of which was more than a century ago, and the place on the borders of Yorkshire, when I bethought me how deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided. I had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want; tossed to and fro by circumstances, apparently in even a greater degree than other men. A little manifestation of this sympathy, and a little attention to the expression of feelings on the part of some of the work-people with whom I was acquainted, had laid open to me the hearts of one or two of the more thoughtful among them; I saw that they were sore and irritable against the rich, the even tenor of whose seemingly happy lives appeared to increase the anguish caused by the lottery-like nature of their own. Whether the bitter complaints made by them, of the neglect which they experienced from the prosperous--especially from the masters whose fortunes they had helped to build up--were well-founded or no, it is not for me to judge. It is enough to say, that this belief of the injustice and unkindness which they endure from their fellow-creatures, taints what might be resignation to God's will, and turns it to revenge in too many of the poor uneducated factory-workers of Manchester. The more I reflected on this unhappy state of things between those so bound to each other by common interests, as the employers and the employed must ever be, the more anxious I became to give some utterance to the agony which, from time to time, convulses this dumb people; the agony of suffering without the sympathy of the happy, or of erroneously believing that such is the case. If it be an error, that the woes, which come with ever-returning tide-like flood to overwhelm the workmen in our manufacturing towns, pass unregarded by all but the sufferers, it is at any rate an error so bitter in its consequences to all parties, that whatever public effort can do in the way of legislation, or private effort in the way of merciful deeds, or helpless love in the way of "widow's mites," should be done, and that speedily, to disabuse the work-people of so miserable a misapprehension. At present they seem to me to be left in a state, wherein lamentations and tears are thrown aside as useless, but in which the lips are compressed for curses, and the hands clenched and ready to smite. I know nothing of Political Economy, or the theories of trade. I have tried to write truthfully; and if my accounts agree or clash with any system, the agreement or disagreement is unintentional. To myself the idea which I have formed of the state of feeling among too many of the factory-people in Manchester, and which I endeavoured to represent in this tale (completed above a year ago), has received some confirmation from the events which have so recently occurred among a similar class on the Continent. OCTOBER, 1848. CHAPTER I. A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE. Oh! 'tis hard, 'tis hard to be working The whole of the live-long day, When all the neighbours about one Are off to their jaunts and play. There's Richard he carries his baby, And Mary takes little Jane, And lovingly they'll be wandering Through field and briery lane. MANCHESTER SONG. There are some fields near Manchester, well known to the inhabitants as "Green Heys Fields," through which runs a public footpath to a little village about two miles distant. In spite of these fields being flat and low, nay, in spite of the want of wood (the great and usual recommendation of level tracts of land), there is a charm about them which strikes even the inhabitant of a mountainous district, who sees and feels the effect of contrast in these common-place but thoroughly rural fields, with the busy, bustling manufacturing town he left but half-an-hour ago. Here and there an old black and white farm-house, with its rambling outbuildings, speaks of other times and other occupations than those which now absorb the population of the neighbourhood. Here in their seasons may be seen the country business of hay-making, ploughing, &c., which are such pleasant mysteries for townspeople to watch; and here the artisan, deafened with noise of tongues and engines, may come to listen awhile to the delicious sounds of rural life: the lowing of cattle, the milk-maids' call, the clatter and cackle of poultry in the old farm-yards. You cannot wonder, then, that these fields are popular places of resort at every holiday time; and you would not wonder, if you could see, or I properly describe, the charm of one particular stile, that it should be, on such occasions, a crowded halting-place. Close by it is a deep, clear pond, reflecting in its dark green depths the shadowy trees that bend over it to exclude the sun. The only place where its banks are shelving is on the side next to a rambling farm-yard, belonging to one of those old-world, gabled, black and white houses I named above, overlooking the field through which the public footpath leads. The porch of this farm-house is covered by a rose-tree; and the little garden surrounding it is crowded with a medley of old-fashioned herbs and flowers, planted long ago, when the garden was the only druggist's shop within reach, and allowed to grow in scrambling and wild luxuriance--roses, lavender, sage, balm (for tea), rosemary, pinks and wallflowers, onions and jessamine, in most republican and indiscriminate order. This farm-house and garden are within a hundred yards of the stile of which I spoke, leading from the large pasture field into a smaller one, divided by a hedge of hawthorn and black-thorn; and near this stile, on the further side, there runs a tale that primroses may often be found, and occasionally the blue sweet violet on the grassy hedge bank. I do not know whether it was on a holiday granted by the masters, or a holiday seized in right of Nature and her beautiful spring time by the workmen, but one afternoon (now ten or a dozen years ago) these fields were much thronged. It was an early May evening--the April of the poets; for heavy showers had fallen all the morning, and the round, soft, white clouds which were blown by a west wind over the dark blue sky, were sometimes varied by one blacker and more threatening. The softness of the day tempted forth the young green leaves, which almost visibly fluttered into life; and the willows, which that morning had had only a brown reflection in the water below, were now of that tender gray-green which blends so delicately with the spring harmony of colours. Groups of merry and somewhat loud-talking girls, whose ages might range from twelve to twenty, came by with a buoyant step. They were most of them factory girls, and wore the usual out-of-doors dress of that particular class of maidens; namely, a shawl, which at mid-day or in fine weather was allowed to be merely a shawl, but towards evening, or if the day were chilly, became a sort of Spanish mantilla or Scotch plaid, and was brought over the head and hung loosely down, or was pinned under the chin in no unpicturesque fashion. Their faces were not remarkable for beauty; indeed, they were below the average, with one or two exceptions; they had dark hair, neatly and classically arranged, dark eyes, but sallow complexions and irregular features. The only thing to strike a passer-by was an acuteness and intelligence of countenance, which has often been noticed in a manufacturing population. There were also numbers of boys, or rather young men, rambling among these fields, ready to bandy jokes with any one, and particularly ready to enter into conversation with the girls, who, however, held themselves aloof, not in a shy, but rather in an independent way, assuming an indifferent manner to the noisy wit or obstreperous compliments of the lads. Here and there came a sober quiet couple, either whispering lovers, or husband and wife, as the case might be; and if the latter, they were seldom unencumbered by an infant, carried for the most part by the father, while occasionally even three or four little toddlers had been carried or dragged thus far, in order that the whole family might enjoy the delicious May afternoon together. Sometime in the course of that afternoon, two working men met with friendly greeting at the stile so often named. One was a thorough specimen of a Manchester man; born of factory workers, and himself bred up in youth, and living in manhood, among the mills. He was below the middle size and slightly made; there was almost a stunted look about him; and his wan, colourless face gave you the idea, that in his childhood he had suffered from the scanty living consequent upon bad times and improvident habits. His features were strongly marked, though not irregular, and their expression was extreme earnestness; resolute either for good or evil; a sort of latent, stern enthusiasm. At the time of which I write, the good predominated over the bad in the countenance, and he was one from whom a stranger would have asked a favour with tolerable faith that it would be granted. He was accompanied by his wife, who might, without exaggeration, have been called a lovely woman, although now her face was swollen with crying, and often hidden behind her apron. She had the fresh beauty of the agricultural districts; and somewhat of the deficiency of sense in her countenance, which is likewise characteristic of the rural inhabitants in comparison with the natives of the manufacturing towns. She was far advanced in pregnancy, which perhaps occasioned the overpowering and hysterical nature of her grief. The friend whom they met was more handsome and less sensible-looking than the man I have just described; he seemed hearty and hopeful, and although his age was greater, yet there was far more of youth's buoyancy in his appearance. He was tenderly carrying a baby in arms, while his wife, a delicate, fragile-looking woman, limping in her gait, bore another of the same age; little, feeble twins, inheriting the frail appearance of their mother. The last-mentioned man was the first to speak, while a sudden look of sympathy dimmed his gladsome face. "Well, John, how goes it with you?" and, in a lower voice, he added, "Any news of Esther, yet?" Meanwhile the wives greeted each other like old friends, the soft and plaintive voice of the mother of the twins seeming to call forth only fresh sobs from Mrs. Barton. "Come, women," said John Barton, "you've both walked far enough. My Mary expects to have her bed in three weeks; and as for you, Mrs. Wilson, you know you're but a cranky sort of a body at the best of times." This was said so kindly, that no offence could be taken. "Sit you down here; the grass is well nigh dry by this time; and you're neither of you nesh [1] folk about taking cold. Stay," he added, with some tenderness, "here's my pocket-handkerchief to spread under you, to save the gowns women always think so much of; and now, Mrs. Wilson, give me the baby, I may as well carry him, while you talk and comfort my wife; poor thing, she takes on sadly about Esther." [Footnote 1: "Nesh;" Anglo-Saxon, nesc, tender.] These arrangements were soon completed: the two women sat down on the blue cotton handkerchiefs of their husbands, and the latter, each carrying a baby, set off for a further walk; but as soon as Barton had turned his back upon his wife, his countenance fell back into an expression of gloom. "Then you've heard nothing of Esther, poor lass?" asked Wilson. "No, nor shan't, as I take it. My mind is, she's gone off with somebody. My wife frets, and thinks she's drowned herself, but I tell her, folks don't care to put on their best clothes to drown themselves; and Mrs. Bradshaw (where she lodged, you know) says the last time she set eyes on her was last Tuesday, when she came down stairs, dressed in her Sunday gown, and with a new ribbon in her bonnet, and gloves on her hands, like the lady she was so fond of thinking herself." "She was as pretty a creature as ever the sun shone on." "Ay, she was a farrantly [2] lass; more's the pity now," added Barton, with a sigh. "You see them Buckinghamshire people as comes to work in Manchester, has quite a different look with them to us Manchester folk. You'll not see among the Manchester wenches such fresh rosy cheeks, or such black lashes to gray eyes (making them look like black), as my wife and Esther had. I never seed two such pretty women for sisters; never. Not but what beauty is a sad snare. Here was Esther so puffed up, that there was no holding her in. Her spirit was always up, if I spoke ever so little in the way of advice to her; my wife spoiled her, it is true, for you see she was so much older than Esther she was more like a mother to her, doing every thing for her." [Footnote 2: "Farrantly," comely, pleasant-looking.] "I wonder she ever left you," observed his friend. "That's the worst of factory work, for girls. They can earn so much when work is plenty, that they can maintain themselves any how. My Mary shall never work in a factory, that I'm determined on. You see Esther spent her money in dress, thinking to set off her pretty face; and got to come home so late at night, that at last I told her my mind: my missis thinks I spoke crossly, but I meant right, for I loved Esther, if it was only for Mary's sake. Says I, 'Esther, I see what you'll end at with your artificials, and your fly-away veils, and stopping out when honest women are in their beds; you'll be a street-walker, Esther, and then, don't you go to think I'll have you darken my door, though my wife is your sister.' So says she, 'Don't trouble yourself, John. I'll pack up and be off now, for I'll never stay to hear myself called as you call me.' She flushed up like a turkey-cock, and I thought fire would come out of her eyes; but when she saw Mary cry (for Mary can't abide words in a house), she went and kissed her, and said she was not so bad as I thought her. So we talked more friendly, for, as I said, I liked the lass well enough, and her pretty looks, and her cheery ways. But she said (and at the time I thought there was sense in what she said) we should be much better friends if she went into lodgings, and only came to see us now and then." "Then you still were friendly. Folks said you'd cast her off, and said you'd never speak to her again." "Folks always make one a deal worse than one is," said John Barton, testily. "She came many a time to our house after she left off living with us. Last Sunday se'nnight--no! it was this very last Sunday, she came to drink a cup of tea with Mary; and that was the last time we set eyes on her." "Was she any ways different in her manner?" asked Wilson. "Well, I don't know. I have thought several times since, that she was a bit quieter, and more womanly-like; more gentle, and more blushing, and not so riotous and noisy. She comes in, toward four o'clock, when afternoon church was loosing, and she goes and hangs her bonnet up on the old nail we used to call hers, while she lived with us. I remember thinking what a pretty lass she was, as she sat on a low stool by Mary, who was rocking herself, and in rather a poor way. She laughed and cried by turns, but all so softly and gently, like a child, that I couldn't find in my heart to scold her, especially as Mary was fretting already. One thing I do remember I did say, and pretty sharply too. She took our little Mary by the waist, and--" "Thou must leave off calling her 'little' Mary, she's growing up into as fine a lass as one can see on a summer's day; more of her mother's stock than thine," interrupted Wilson. "Well, well, I call her 'little,' because her mother's name is Mary. But, as I was saying, she takes Mary in a coaxing sort of way, and, 'Mary,' says she, 'what should you think if I sent for you some day and made a lady of you?' So I could not stand such talk as that to my girl, and I said, 'Thou'd best not put that nonsense i' the girl's head I can tell thee; I'd rather see her earning her bread by the sweat of her brow, as the Bible tells her she should do, ay, though she never got butter to her bread, than be like a do-nothing lady, worrying shopmen all morning, and screeching at her pianny all afternoon, and going to bed without having done a good turn to any one of God's creatures but herself.'" "Thou never could abide the gentlefolk," said Wilson, half amused at his friend's vehemence. "And what good have they ever done me that I should like them?" asked Barton, the latent fire lighting up his eye: and bursting forth, he continued, "If I am sick, do they come and nurse me? If my child lies dying (as poor Tom lay, with his white wan lips quivering, for want of better food than I could give him), does the rich man bring the wine or broth that might save his life? If I am out of work for weeks in the bad times, and winter comes, with black frost, and keen east wind, and there is no coal for the grate, and no clothes for the bed, and the thin bones are seen through the ragged clothes, does the rich man share his plenty with me, as he ought to do, if his religion wasn't a humbug? When I lie on my death-bed, and Mary (bless her) stands fretting, as I know she will fret," and here his voice faltered a little, "will a rich lady come and take her to her own home if need be, till she can look round, and see what best to do? No, I tell you, it's the poor, and the poor only, as does such things for the poor. Don't think to come over me with th' old tale, that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor. I say, if they don't know, they ought to know. We're their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows; and yet we are to live as separate as if we were in two worlds; ay, as separate as Dives and Lazarus, with a great gulf betwixt us: but I know who was best off then," and he wound up his speech with a low chuckle that had no mirth in it. "Well, neighbour," said Wilson, "all that may be very true, but what I want to know now is about Esther--when did you last hear of her?" "Why, she took leave of us that Sunday night in a very loving way, kissing both wife Mary, and daughter Mary (if I must not call her little), and shaking hands with me; but all in a cheerful sort of manner, so we thought nothing about her kisses and shakes. But on Wednesday night comes Mrs. Bradshaw's son with Esther's box, and presently Mrs. Bradshaw follows with the key; and when we began to talk, we found Esther told her she was coming back to live with us, and would pay her week's money for not giving notice; and on Tuesday night she carried off a little bundle (her best clothes were on her back, as I said before), and told Mrs. Bradshaw not to hurry herself about the big box, but bring it when she had time. So of course she thought she should find Esther with us; and when she told her story, my missis set up such a screech, and fell down in a dead swoon. Mary ran up with water for her mother, and I thought so much about my wife, I did not seem to care at all for Esther. But the next day I asked all the neighbours (both our own and Bradshaw's), and they'd none of 'em heard or seen nothing of her. I even went to a policeman, a good enough sort of man, but a fellow I'd never spoke to before because of his livery, and I asks him if his 'cuteness could find any thing out for us. So I believe he asks other policemen; and one on 'em had seen a wench, like our Esther, walking very quickly, with a bundle under her arm, on Tuesday night, toward eight o'clock, and get into a hackney coach, near Hulme Church, and we don't know th' number, and can't trace it no further. I'm sorry enough for the girl, for bad's come over her, one way or another, but I'm sorrier for my wife. She loved her next to me and Mary, and she's never been the same body since poor Tom's death. However, let's go back to them; your old woman may have done her good." As they walked homewards with a brisker pace, Wilson expressed a wish that they still were the near neighbours they once had been. "Still our Alice lives in the cellar under No. 14, in Barber Street, and if you'd only speak the word she'd be with you in five minutes, to keep your wife company when she's lonesome. Though I'm Alice's brother, and perhaps ought not to say it, I will say there's none more ready to help with heart or hand than she is. Though she may have done a hard day's wash, there's not a child ill within the street but Alice goes to offer to sit up, and does sit up too, though may be she's to be at her work by six next morning." "She's a poor woman, and can feel for the poor, Wilson," was Barton's reply; and then he added, "Thank you kindly for your offer, and mayhap I may trouble her to be a bit with my wife, for while I'm at work, and Mary's at school, I know she frets above a bit. See, there's Mary!" and the father's eye brightened, as in the distance, among a group of girls, he spied his only daughter, a bonny lassie of thirteen or so, who came bounding along to meet and to greet her father, in a manner which showed that the stern-looking man had a tender nature within. The two men had crossed the last stile while Mary loitered behind to gather some buds of the coming hawthorn, when an over-grown lad came past her, and snatched a kiss, exclaiming, "For old acquaintance sake, Mary." "Take that for old acquaintance sake, then," said the girl, blushing rosy red, more with anger than shame, as she slapped his face. The tones of her voice called back her father and his friend, and the aggressor proved to be the eldest son of the latter, the senior by eighteen years of his little brothers. "Here, children, instead o' kissing and quarrelling, do ye each take a baby, for if Wilson's arms be like mine they are heartily tired." Mary sprang forward to take her father's charge, with a girl's fondness for infants, and with some little foresight of the event soon to happen at home; while young Wilson seemed to lose his rough, cubbish nature as he crowed and cooed to his little brother. "Twins is a great trial to a poor man, bless 'em," said the half-proud, half-weary father, as he bestowed a smacking kiss on the babe ere he parted with it. CHAPTER II. A MANCHESTER TEA-PARTY. Polly, put the kettle on, And let's have tea! Polly, put the kettle on, And we'll all have tea. "Here we are, wife; didst thou think thou'd lost us?" quoth hearty-voiced Wilson, as the two women rose and shook themselves in preparation for their homeward walk. Mrs. Barton was evidently soothed, if not cheered, by the unburdening of her fears and thoughts to her friend; and her approving look went far to second her husband's invitation that the whole party should adjourn from Green Heys Fields to tea, at the Bartons' house. The only faint opposition was raised by Mrs. Wilson, on account of the lateness of the hour at which they would probably return, which she feared on her babies' account. "Now, hold your tongue, missis, will you," said her husband, good-temperedly. "Don't you know them brats never goes to sleep till long past ten? and haven't you a shawl, under which you can tuck one lad's head, as safe as a bird's under its wing? And as for t'other one, I'll put it in my pocket rather than not stay, now we are this far away from Ancoats." "Or I can lend you another shawl," suggested Mrs. Barton. "Ay, any thing rather than not stay." The matter being decided, the party proceeded home, through many half-finished streets, all so like one another that you might have easily been bewildered and lost your way. Not a step, however, did our friends lose; down this entry, cutting off that corner, until they turned out of one of these innumerable streets into a little paved court, having the backs of houses at the end opposite to the opening, and a gutter running through the middle to carry off household slops, washing suds, &c. The women who lived in the court were busy taking in strings of caps, frocks, and various articles of linen, which hung from side to side, dangling so low, that if our friends had been a few minutes sooner, they would have had to stoop very much, or else the half-wet clothes would have flapped in their faces; but although the evening seemed yet early when they were in the open fields--among the pent-up houses, night, with its mists, and its darkness, had already begun to fall. Many greetings were given and exchanged between the Wilsons and these women, for not long ago they had also dwelt in this court. Two rude lads, standing at a disorderly looking house-door, exclaimed, as Mary Barton (the daughter) passed, "Eh, look! Polly Barton's gotten a sweetheart." Of course this referred to young Wilson, who stole a look to see how Mary took the idea. He saw her assume the air of a young fury, and to his next speech she answered not a word. Mrs. Barton produced the key of the door from her pocket; and on entering the house-place it seemed as if they were in total darkness, except one bright spot, which might be a cat's eye, or might be, what it was, a red-hot fire, smouldering under a large piece of coal, which John Barton immediately applied himself to break up, and the effect instantly produced was warm and glowing light in every corner of the room. To add to this (although the coarse yellow glare seemed lost in the ruddy glow from the fire), Mrs. Barton lighted a dip by sticking it in the fire, and having placed it satisfactorily in a tin candlestick, began to look further about her, on hospitable thoughts intent. The room was tolerably large, and possessed many conveniences. On the right of the door, as you entered, was a longish window, with a broad ledge. On each side of this, hung blue-and-white check curtains, which were now drawn, to shut in the friends met to enjoy themselves. Two geraniums, unpruned and leafy, which stood on the sill, formed a further defence from out-door pryers. In the corner between the window and the fire-side was a cupboard, apparently full of plates and dishes, cups and saucers, and some more nondescript articles, for which one would have fancied their possessors could find no use--such as triangular pieces of glass to save carving knives and forks from dirtying table-cloths. However, it was evident Mrs. Barton was proud of her crockery and glass, for she left her cupboard door open, with a glance round of satisfaction and pleasure. On the opposite side to the door and window was the staircase, and two doors; one of which (the nearest to the fire) led into a sort of little back kitchen, where dirty work, such as washing up dishes, might be done, and whose shelves served as larder, and pantry, and storeroom, and all. The other door, which was considerably lower, opened into the coal-hole--the slanting closet under the stairs; from which, to the fire-place, there was a gay-coloured piece of oil-cloth laid. The place seemed almost crammed with furniture (sure sign of good times among the mills). Beneath the window was a dresser with three deep drawers. Opposite the fire-place was a table, which I should call a Pembroke, only that it was made of deal, and I cannot tell how far such a name may be applied to such humble material. On it, resting against the wall, was a bright green japanned tea-tray, having a couple of scarlet lovers embracing in the middle. The fire-light danced merrily on this, and really (setting all taste but that of a child's aside) it gave a richness of colouring to that side of the room. It was in some measure propped up by a crimson tea-caddy, also of japan ware. A round table on one branching leg really for use, stood in the corresponding corner to the cupboard; and, if you can picture all this with a washy, but clean stencilled pattern on the walls, you can form some idea of John Barton's home. The tray was soon hoisted down, and before the merry chatter of cups and saucers began, the women disburdened themselves of their out-of-door things, and sent Mary up stairs with them. Then came a long whispering, and chinking of money, to which Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were too polite to attend; knowing, as they did full well, that it all related to the preparations for hospitality; hospitality that, in their turn, they should have such pleasure in offering. So they tried to be busily occupied with the children, and not to hear Mrs. Barton's directions to Mary. "Run, Mary dear, just round the corner, and get some fresh eggs at Tipping's (you may get one a-piece, that will be five-pence), and see if he has any nice ham cut, that he would let us have a pound of." "Say two pounds, missis, and don't be stingy," chimed in the husband. "Well, a pound and a half, Mary. And get it Cumberland ham, for Wilson comes from there-away, and it will have a sort of relish of home with it he'll like,--and Mary" (seeing the lassie fain to be off), "you must get a pennyworth of milk and a loaf of bread--mind you get it fresh and new--and, and--that's all, Mary." "No, it's not all," said her husband. "Thou must get sixpennyworth of rum, to warm the tea; thou'll get it at the 'Grapes.' And thou just go to Alice Wilson; he says she lives just right round the corner, under 14, Barber Street" (this was addressed to his wife), "and tell her to come and take her tea with us; she'll like to see her brother, I'll be bound, let alone Jane and the twins." "If she comes she must bring a tea-cup and saucer, for we have but half-a-dozen, and here's six of us," said Mrs. Barton. "Pooh! pooh! Jem and Mary can drink out of one, surely." But Mary secretly determined to take care that Alice brought her tea-cup and saucer, if the alternative was to be her sharing any thing with Jem. Alice Wilson had but just come in. She had been out all day in the fields, gathering wild herbs for drinks and medicine, for in addition to her invaluable qualities as a sick nurse and her worldly occupation as a washerwoman, she added a considerable knowledge of hedge and field simples; and on fine days, when no more profitable occupation offered itself, she used to ramble off into the lanes and meadows as far as her legs could carry her. This evening she had returned loaded with nettles, and her first object was to light a candle and see to hang them up in bunches in every available place in her cellar room. It was the perfection of cleanliness: in one corner stood the modest-looking bed, with a check curtain at the head, the whitewashed wall filling up the place where the corresponding one should have been. The floor was bricked, and scrupulously clean, although so damp that it seemed as if the last washing would never dry up. As the cellar window looked into an area in the street, down which boys might throw stones, it was protected by an outside shelter, and was oddly festooned with all manner of hedge-row, ditch, and field plants, which we are accustomed to call valueless, but which have a powerful effect either for good or for evil, and are consequently much used among the poor. The room was strewed, hung, and darkened with these bunches, which emitted no very fragrant odour in their process of drying. In one corner was a sort of broad hanging shelf, made of old planks, where some old hoards of Alice's were kept. Her little bit of crockery ware was ranged on the mantelpiece, where also stood her candlestick and box of matches. A small cupboard contained at the bottom coals, and at the top her bread and basin of oatmeal, her frying pan, tea-pot, and a small tin saucepan, which served as a kettle, as well as for cooking the delicate little messes of broth which Alice sometimes was able to manufacture for a sick neighbour. After her walk she felt chilly and weary, and was busy trying to light her fire with the damp coals, and half green sticks, when Mary knocked. "Come in," said Alice, remembering, however, that she had barred the door for the night, and hastening to make it possible for any one to come in. "Is that you, Mary Barton?" exclaimed she, as the light from her candle streamed on the girl's face. "How you are grown since I used to see you at my brother's! Come in, lass, come in." "Please," said Mary, almost breathless, "mother says you're to come to tea, and bring your cup and saucer, for George and Jane Wilson is with us, and the twins, and Jem. And you're to make haste, please." "I'm sure it's very neighbourly and kind in your mother, and I'll come, with many thanks. Stay, Mary, has your mother got any nettles for spring drink? If she hasn't I'll take her some." "No, I don't think she has." Mary ran off like a hare to fulfil what, to a girl of thirteen, fond of power, was the more interesting part of her errand--the money-spending part. And well and ably did she perform her business, returning home with a little bottle of rum, and the eggs in one hand, while her other was filled with some excellent red-and-white smoke-flavoured Cumberland ham, wrapped up in paper. She was at home, and frying ham, before Alice had chosen her nettles, put out her candle, locked her door, and walked in a very foot-sore manner as far as John Barton's. What an aspect of comfort did his houseplace present, after her humble cellar. She did not think of comparing; but for all that she felt the delicious glow of the fire, the bright light that revelled in every corner of the room, the savoury smells, the comfortable sounds of a boiling kettle, and the hissing, frizzling ham. With a little old-fashioned curtsey she shut the door, and replied with a loving heart to the boisterous and surprised greeting of her brother. And now all preparations being made, the party sat down; Mrs. Wilson in the post of honour, the rocking chair on the right hand side of the fire, nursing her baby, while its father, in an opposite arm-chair, tried vainly to quieten the other with bread soaked in milk. Mrs. Barton knew manners too well to do any thing but sit at the tea-table and make tea, though in her heart she longed to be able to superintend the frying of the ham, and cast many an anxious look at Mary as she broke the eggs and turned the ham, with a very comfortable portion of confidence in her own culinary powers. Jem stood awkwardly leaning against the dresser, replying rather gruffly to his aunt's speeches, which gave him, he thought, the air of being a little boy; whereas he considered himself as a young man, and not so very young neither, as in two months he would be eighteen. Barton vibrated between the fire and the tea-table, his only drawback being a fancy that every now and then his wife's face flushed and contracted as if in pain. At length the business actually began. Knives and forks, cups and saucers made a noise, but human voices were still, for human beings were hungry, and had no time to speak. Alice first broke silence; holding her tea-cup with the manner of one proposing a toast, she said, "Here's to absent friends. Friends may meet, but mountains never." It was an unlucky toast or sentiment, as she instantly felt. Every one thought of Esther, the absent Esther; and Mrs. Barton put down her food, and could not hide the fast dropping tears. Alice could have bitten her tongue out. It was a wet blanket to the evening; for though all had been said and suggested in the fields that could be said or suggested, every one had a wish to say something in the way of comfort to poor Mrs. Barton, and a dislike to talk about any thing else while her tears fell fast and scalding. So George Wilson, his wife and children, set off early home, not before (in spite of _mal-à-propos_ speeches) they had expressed a wish that such meetings might often take place, and not before John Barton had given his hearty consent; and declared that as soon as ever his wife was well again they would have just such another evening. "I will take care not to come and spoil it," thought poor Alice; and going up to Mrs. Barton she took her hand almost humbly, and said, "You don't know how sorry I am I said it." To her surprise, a surprise that brought tears of joy into her eyes, Mary Barton put her arms round her neck, and kissed the self-reproaching Alice. "You didn't mean any harm, and it was me as was so foolish; only this work about Esther, and not knowing where she is, lies so heavy on my heart. Good night, and never think no more about it. God bless you, Alice." Many and many a time, as Alice reviewed that evening in her after life, did she bless Mary Barton for these kind and thoughtful words. But just then all she could say was, "Good night, Mary, and may God bless _you_." CHAPTER III. JOHN BARTON'S GREAT TROUBLE. But when the morn came dim and sad, And chill with early showers, Her quiet eyelids closed--she had Another morn than ours! HOOD. In the middle of that same night a neighbour of the Bartons was roused from her sound, well-earned sleep, by a knocking, which had at first made part of her dream; but starting up, as soon as she became convinced of its reality, she opened the window, and asked who was there? "Me, John Barton," answered he, in a voice tremulous with agitation. "My missis is in labour, and, for the love of God, step in while I run for th' doctor, for she's fearful bad." While the woman hastily dressed herself, leaving the window still open, she heard cries of agony, which resounded in the little court in the stillness of the night. In less than five minutes she was standing by Mrs. Barton's bed-side, relieving the terrified Mary, who went about, where she was told, like an automaton; her eyes tearless, her face calm, though deadly pale, and uttering no sound, except when her teeth chattered for very nervousness. The cries grew worse. The doctor was very long in hearing the repeated rings at his night-bell, and still longer in understanding who it was that made this sudden call upon his services; and then he begged Barton just to wait while he dressed himself, in order that no time might be lost in finding the court and house. Barton absolutely stamped with impatience, outside the doctor's door, before he came down; and walked so fast homewards, that the medical man several times asked him to go slower. "Is she so very bad?" asked he. "Worse, much worser than ever I saw her before," replied John. No! she was not--she was at peace. The cries were still for ever. John had no time for listening. He opened the latched door, stayed not to light a candle for the mere ceremony of showing his companion up the stairs, so well known to himself; but, in two minutes was in the room, where lay the dead wife, whom he had loved with all the power of his strong heart. The doctor stumbled up stairs by the fire-light, and met the awe-struck look of the neighbour, which at once told him the state of things. The room was still, as he, with habitual tip-toe step, approached the poor frail body, whom nothing now could more disturb. Her daughter knelt by the bed-side, her face buried in the clothes, which were almost crammed into her mouth, to keep down the choking sobs. The husband stood like one stupified. The doctor questioned the neighbour in whispers, and then approaching Barton, said, "You must go down stairs. This is a great shock, but bear it like a man. Go down." He went mechanically and sat down on the first chair. He had no hope. The look of death was too clear upon her face. Still, when he heard one or two unusual noises, the thought burst on him that it might only be a trance, a fit, a--he did not well know what,--but not death! Oh, not death! And he was starting up to go up stairs again, when the doctor's heavy cautious creaking footstep was heard on the stairs. Then he knew what it really was in the chamber above. "Nothing could have saved her--there has been some shock to the system--" and so he went on; but, to unheeding ears, which yet retained his words to ponder on; words not for immediate use in conveying sense, but to be laid by, in the store-house of memory, for a more convenient season. The doctor seeing the state of the case, grieved for the man; and, very sleepy, thought it best to go, and accordingly wished him good-night--but there was no answer, so he let himself out; and Barton sat on, like a stock or a stone, so rigid, so still. He heard the sounds above too, and knew what they meant. He heard the stiff, unseasoned drawer, in which his wife kept her clothes, pulled open. He saw the neighbour come down, and blunder about in search of soap and water. He knew well what she wanted, and _why_ she wanted them, but he did not speak, nor offer to help. At last she went, with some kindly-meant words (a text of comfort, which fell upon a deafened ear), and something about "Mary," but which Mary, in his bewildered state, he could not tell. He tried to realise it, to think it possible. And then his mind wandered off to other days, to far different times. He thought of their courtship; of his first seeing her, an awkward, beautiful rustic, far too shiftless for the delicate factory work to which she was apprenticed; of his first gift to her, a bead necklace, which had long ago been put by, in one of the deep drawers of the dresser, to be kept for Mary. He wondered if it was there yet, and with a strange curiosity he got up to feel for it; for the fire by this time was well-nigh out, and candle he had none. His groping hand fell on the piled-up tea things, which at his desire she had left unwashed till morning--they were all so tired. He was reminded of one of the daily little actions, which acquire such power when they have been performed for the last time, by one we love. He began to think over his wife's daily round of duties; and something in the remembrance that these would never more be done by her, touched the source of tears, and he cried aloud. Poor Mary, meanwhile, had mechanically helped the neighbour in all the last attentions to the dead; and when she was kissed, and spoken to soothingly, tears stole quietly down her cheeks: but she reserved the luxury of a full burst of grief till she should be alone. She shut the chamber-door softly, after the neighbour had gone, and then shook the bed by which she knelt, with her agony of sorrow. She repeated, over and over again, the same words; the same vain, unanswered address to her who was no more. "Oh, mother! mother, are you really dead! Oh, mother, mother!" At last she stopped, because it flashed across her mind that her violence of grief might disturb her father. All was still below. She looked on the face so changed, and yet so strangely like. She bent down to kiss it. The cold, unyielding flesh struck a shudder to her heart, and, hastily obeying her impulse, she grasped the candle, and opened the door. Then she heard the sobs of her father's grief; and quickly, quietly, stealing down the steps, she knelt by him, and kissed his hand. He took no notice at first, for his burst of grief would not be controlled. But when her shriller sobs, her terrified cries (which she could not repress), rose upon his ear, he checked himself. "Child, we must be all to one another, now _she_ is gone," whispered he. "Oh, father, what can I do for you? Do tell me! I'll do any thing." "I know thou wilt. Thou must not fret thyself ill, that's the first thing I ask. Thou must leave me, and go to bed now, like a good girl as thou art." "Leave you, father! oh, don't say so." "Ay, but thou must! thou must go to bed, and try and sleep; thou'lt have enough to do and to bear, poor wench, to-morrow." Mary got up, kissed her father, and sadly went up stairs to the little closet, where she slept. She thought it was of no use undressing, for that she could never, never sleep, so threw herself on her bed in her clothes, and before ten minutes had passed away, the passionate grief of youth had subsided into sleep. Barton had been roused by his daughter's entrance, both from his stupor and from his uncontrollable sorrow. He could think on what was to be done, could plan for the funeral, could calculate the necessity of soon returning to his work, as the extravagance of the past night would leave them short of money, if he long remained away from the mill. He was in a club, so that money was provided for the burial. These things settled in his own mind, he recalled the doctor's words, and bitterly thought of the shock his poor wife had so recently had, in the mysterious disappearance of her cherished sister. His feelings towards Esther almost amounted to curses. It was she who had brought on all this sorrow. Her giddiness, her lightness of conduct, had wrought this woe. His previous thoughts about her had been tinged with wonder and pity, but now he hardened his heart against her for ever. One of the good influences over John Barton's life had departed that night. One of the ties which bound him down to the gentle humanities of earth was loosened, and henceforward the neighbours all remarked he was a changed man. His gloom and his sternness became habitual instead of occasional. He was more obstinate. But never to Mary. Between the father and the daughter there existed in full force that mysterious bond which unites those who have been loved by one who is now dead and gone. While he was harsh and silent to others, he humoured Mary with tender love; she had more of her own way than is common in any rank with girls of her age. Part of this was the necessity of the case; for, of course, all the money went through her hands, and the household arrangements were guided by her will and pleasure. But part was her father's indulgence, for he left her, with full trust in her unusual sense and spirit, to choose her own associates, and her own times for seeing them. With all this, Mary had not her father's confidence in the matters which now began to occupy him, heart and soul; she was aware that he had joined clubs, and become an active member of a trades' union, but it was hardly likely that a girl of Mary's age (even when two or three years had elapsed since her mother's death) should care much for the differences between the employers and the employed,--an eternal subject for agitation in the manufacturing districts, which, however it may be lulled for a time, is sure to break forth again with fresh violence at any depression of trade, showing that in its apparent quiet, the ashes had still smouldered in the breasts of a few. Among these few was John Barton. At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for their children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, &c. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the mill-owners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once occupied them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food, of the sinking health, of the dying life of those near and dear to him. The contrast is too great. Why should he alone suffer from bad times? I know that this is not really the case; and I know what is the truth in such matters: but what I wish to impress is what the workman feels and thinks. True, that with child-like improvidence, good times will often dissipate his grumbling, and make him forget all prudence and foresight. But there are earnest men among these people, men who have endured wrongs without complaining, but without ever forgetting or forgiving those whom (they believe) have caused all this woe. Among these was John Barton. His parents had suffered, his mother had died from absolute want of the necessaries of life. He himself was a good, steady workman, and, as such, pretty certain of steady employment. But he spent all he got with the confidence (you may also call it improvidence) of one who was willing, and believed himself able, to supply all his wants by his own exertions. And when his master suddenly failed, and all hands in that mill were turned back, one Tuesday morning, with the news that Mr. Hunter had stopped, Barton had only a few shillings to rely on; but he had good heart of being employed at some other mill, and accordingly, before returning home, he spent some hours in going from factory to factory, asking for work. But at every mill was some sign of depression of trade; some were working short hours, some were turning off hands, and for weeks Barton was out of work, living on credit. It was during this time his little son, the apple of his eye, the cynosure of all his strong power of love, fell ill of the scarlet fever. They dragged him through the crisis, but his life hung on a gossamer thread. Every thing, the doctor said, depended on good nourishment, on generous living, to keep up the little fellow's strength, in the prostration in which the fever had left him. Mocking words! when the commonest food in the house would not furnish one little meal. Barton tried credit; but it was worn out at the little provision shops, which were now suffering in their turn. He thought it would be no sin to steal, and would have stolen; but he could not get the opportunity in the few days the child lingered. Hungry himself, almost to an animal pitch of ravenousness, but with the bodily pain swallowed up in anxiety for his little sinking lad, he stood at one of the shop windows where all edible luxuries are displayed; haunches of venison, Stilton cheeses, moulds of jelly--all appetising sights to the common passer by. And out of this shop came Mrs. Hunter! She crossed to her carriage, followed by the shopman loaded with purchases for a party. The door was quickly slammed to, and she drove away; and Barton returned home with a bitter spirit of wrath in his heart, to see his only boy a corpse! You can fancy, now, the hoards of vengeance in his heart against the employers. For there are never wanting those who, either in speech or in print, find it their interest to cherish such feelings in the working classes; who know how and when to rouse the dangerous power at their command; and who use their knowledge with unrelenting purpose to either party. So while Mary took her own way, growing more spirited every day, and growing in her beauty too, her father was chairman at many a trades' union meeting; a friend of delegates, and ambitious of being a delegate himself; a Chartist, and ready to do any thing for his order. But now times were good; and all these feelings were theoretical, not practical. His most practical thought was getting Mary apprenticed to a dressmaker; for he had never left off disliking a factory life for a girl, on more accounts than one. Mary must do something. The factories being, as I said, out of the question, there were two things open--going out to service, and the dressmaking business; and against the first of these, Mary set herself with all the force of her strong will. What that will might have been able to achieve had her father been against her, I cannot tell; but he disliked the idea of parting with her, who was the light of his hearth, the voice of his otherwise silent home. Besides, with his ideas and feelings towards the higher classes, he considered domestic servitude as a species of slavery; a pampering of artificial wants on the one side, a giving-up of every right of leisure by day and quiet rest by night on the other. How far his strong exaggerated feelings had any foundation in truth, it is for you to judge. I am afraid that Mary's determination not to go to service arose from far less sensible thoughts on the subject than her father's. Three years of independence of action (since her mother's death such a time had now elapsed) had little inclined her to submit to rules as to hours and associates, to regulate her dress by a mistress's ideas of propriety, to lose the dear feminine privileges of gossiping with a merry neighbour, and working night and day to help one who was sorrowful. Besides all this, the sayings of her absent, her mysterious aunt, Esther, had an unacknowledged influence over Mary. She knew she was very pretty; the factory people as they poured from the mills, and in their freedom told the truth (whatever it might be) to every passer-by, had early let Mary into the secret of her beauty. If their remarks had fallen on an unheeding ear, there were always young men enough, in a different rank from her own, who were willing to compliment the pretty weaver's daughter as they met her in the streets. Besides, trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant. So with this consciousness she had early determined that her beauty should make her a lady; the rank she coveted the more for her father's abuse; the rank to which she firmly believed her lost aunt Esther had arrived. Now, while a servant must often drudge and be dirty, must be known as a servant by all who visited at her master's house, a dressmaker's apprentice must (or so Mary thought) be always dressed with a certain regard to appearance; must never soil her hands, and need never redden or dirty her face with hard labour. Before my telling you so truly what folly Mary felt or thought, injures her without redemption in your opinion, think what are the silly fancies of sixteen years of age in every class, and under all circumstances. The end of all the thoughts of father and daughter was, as I said before, Mary was to be a dressmaker; and her ambition prompted her unwilling father to apply at all the first establishments, to know on what terms of painstaking and zeal his daughter might be admitted into ever so humble a workwoman's situation. But high premiums were asked at all; poor man! he might have known that without giving up a day's work to ascertain the fact. He would have been indignant, indeed, had he known that if Mary had accompanied him, the case might have been rather different, as her beauty would have made her desirable as a show-woman. Then he tried second-rate places; at all the payment of a sum of money was necessary, and money he had none. Disheartened and angry he went home at night, declaring it was time lost; that dressmaking was at all events a toilsome business, and not worth learning. Mary saw that the grapes were sour, and the next day set out herself, as her father could not afford to lose another day's work; and before night (as yesterday's experience had considerably lowered her ideas) she had engaged herself as apprentice (so called, though there were no deeds or indentures to the bond) to a certain Miss Simmonds, milliner and dressmaker, in a respectable little street leading off Ardwick Green, where her business was duly announced in gold letters on a black ground, enclosed in a bird's-eye maple frame, and stuck in the front parlour window; where the workwomen were called "her young ladies;" and where Mary was to work for two years without any remuneration, on consideration of being taught the business; and where afterwards she was to dine and have tea, with a small quarterly salary (paid quarterly, because so much more genteel than by the week), a _very_ small one, divisible into a minute weekly pittance. In summer she was to be there by six, bringing her day's meals during the first two years; in winter she was not to come till after breakfast. Her time for returning home at night must always depend upon the quantity of work Miss Simmonds had to do. And Mary was satisfied; and seeing this, her father was contented too, although his words were grumbling and morose; but Mary knew his ways, and coaxed and planned for the future so cheerily, that both went to bed with easy if not happy hearts. CHAPTER IV. OLD ALICE'S HISTORY. To envy nought beneath the ample sky; To mourn no evil deed, no hour mis-spent; And, like a living violet, silently Return in sweets to Heaven what goodness lent, Then bend beneath the chastening shower content. ELLIOTT. Another year passed on. The waves of time seemed long since to have swept away all trace of poor Mary Barton. But her husband still thought of her, although with a calm and quiet grief, in the silent watches of the night: and Mary would start from her hard-earned sleep, and think in her half-dreamy, half-awakened state, she saw her mother stand by her bed-side, as she used to do "in the days of long-ago;" with a shaded candle and an expression of ineffable tenderness, while she looked on her sleeping child. But Mary rubbed her eyes and sank back on her pillow, awake, and knowing it was a dream; and still, in all her troubles and perplexities, her heart called on her mother for aid, and she thought, "If mother had but lived, she would have helped me." Forgetting that the woman's sorrows are far more difficult to mitigate than a child's, even by the mighty power of a mother's love; and unconscious of the fact, that she was far superior in sense and spirit to the mother she mourned. Aunt Esther was still mysteriously absent, and people had grown weary of wondering and began to forget. Barton still attended his club, and was an active member of a trades' union; indeed, more frequently than ever, since the time of Mary's return in the evening was so uncertain; and, as she occasionally, in very busy times, remained all night. His chiefest friend was still George Wilson, although he had no great sympathy on the questions that agitated Barton's mind. Still their hearts were bound by old ties to one another, and the remembrance of former times gave an unspoken charm to their meetings. Our old friend, the cub-like lad, Jem Wilson, had shot up into the powerful, well-made young man, with a sensible face enough; nay, a face that might have been handsome, had it not been here and there marked by the small-pox. He worked with one of the great firms of engineers, who send from out their towns of workshops engines and machinery to the dominions of the Czar and the Sultan. His father and mother were never weary of praising Jem, at all which commendation pretty Mary Barton would toss her head, seeing clearly enough that they wished her to understand what a good husband he would make, and to favour his love, about which he never dared to speak, whatever eyes and looks revealed. One day, in the early winter time, when people were provided with warm substantial gowns, not likely soon to wear out, and when, accordingly, business was rather slack at Miss Simmonds', Mary met Alice Wilson, coming home from her half-day's work at some tradesman's house. Mary and Alice had always liked each other; indeed, Alice looked with particular interest on the motherless girl, the daughter of her whose forgiving kiss had so comforted her in many sleepless hours. So there was a warm greeting between the tidy old woman and the blooming young work-girl; and then Alice ventured to ask if she would come in and take her tea with her that very evening. "You'll think it dull enough to come just to sit with an old woman like me, but there's a tidy young lass as lives in the floor above, who does plain work, and now and then a bit in your own line, Mary; she's grand-daughter to old Job Legh, a spinner, and a good girl she is. Do come, Mary! I've a terrible wish to make you known to each other. She's a genteel-looking lass, too." At the beginning of this speech Mary had feared the intended visitor was to be no other than Alice's nephew; but Alice was too delicate-minded to plan a meeting, even for her dear Jem, when one would have been an unwilling party; and Mary, relieved from her apprehension by the conclusion, gladly agreed to come. How busy Alice felt! it was not often she had any one to tea; and now her sense of the duties of a hostess were almost too much for her. She made haste home, and lighted the unwilling fire, borrowing a pair of bellows to make it burn the faster. For herself she was always patient; she let the coals take their time. Then she put on her pattens, and went to fill her kettle at the pump in the next court, and on the way she borrowed a cup; of odd saucers she had plenty, serving as plates when occasion required. Half an ounce of tea and a quarter of a pound of butter went far to absorb her morning's wages; but this was an unusual occasion. In general, she used herb-tea for herself, when at home, unless some thoughtful mistress made her a present of tea-leaves from her more abundant household. The two chairs drawn out for visitors, and duly swept and dusted; an old board arranged with some skill upon two old candle-boxes set on end (rather ricketty to be sure, but she knew the seat of old, and when to sit lightly; indeed the whole affair was more for apparent dignity of position than for any real ease); a little, very little round table put just before the fire, which by this time was blazing merrily; her unlackered, ancient, third-hand tea-tray arranged with a black tea-pot, two cups with a red and white pattern, and one with the old friendly willow pattern, and saucers, not to match (on one of the extra supply, the lump of butter flourished away); all these preparations complete, Alice began to look about her with satisfaction, and a sort of wonder what more could be done to add to the comfort of the evening. She took one of the chairs away from its appropriate place by the table, and putting it close to the broad large hanging shelf I told you about when I first described her cellar-dwelling, and mounting on it, she pulled towards her an old deal box, and took thence a quantity of the oat bread of the north, the clap-bread of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and descending carefully with the thin cakes threatening to break to pieces in her hand, she placed them on the bare table, with the belief that her visitors would have an unusual treat in eating the bread of her childhood. She brought out a good piece of a four-pound loaf of common household bread as well, and then sat down to rest, really to rest, and not to pretend, on one of the rush-bottomed chairs. The candle was ready to be lighted, the kettle boiled, the tea was awaiting its doom in its paper parcel; all was ready. A knock at the door! It was Margaret, the young workwoman who lived in the rooms above, who having heard the bustle, and the subsequent quiet, began to think it was time to pay her visit below. She was a sallow, unhealthy, sweet-looking young woman, with a careworn look; her dress was humble and very simple, consisting of some kind of dark stuff gown, her neck being covered by a drab shawl or large handkerchief, pinned down behind and at the sides in front. The old woman gave her a hearty greeting, and made her sit down on the chair she had just left, while she balanced herself on the board seat, in order that Margaret might think it was quite her free and independent choice to sit there. "I cannot think what keeps Mary Barton. She's quite grand with her late hours," said Alice, as Mary still delayed. The truth was, Mary was dressing herself; yes, to come to poor old Alice's--she thought it worth while to consider what gown she should put on. It was not for Alice, however, you may be pretty sure; no, they knew each other too well. But Mary liked making an impression, and in this it must be owned she was pretty often gratified--and there was this strange girl to consider just now. So she put on her pretty new blue merino, made tight to her throat, her little linen collar and linen cuffs, and sallied forth to impress poor gentle Margaret. She certainly succeeded. Alice, who never thought much about beauty, had never told Margaret how pretty Mary was; and, as she came in half-blushing at her own self-consciousness, Margaret could hardly take her eyes off her, and Mary put down her long black lashes with a sort of dislike of the very observation she had taken such pains to secure. Can you fancy the bustle of Alice to make the tea, to pour it out, and sweeten it to their liking, to help and help again to clap-bread and bread-and-butter? Can you fancy the delight with which she watched her piled-up clap-bread disappear before the hungry girls, and listened to the praises of her home-remembered dainty? "My mother used to send me some clap-bread by any north-country person--bless her! She knew how good such things taste when far away from home. Not but what every one likes it. When I was in service my fellow-servants were always glad to share with me. Eh, it's a long time ago, yon." "Do tell us about it, Alice," said Margaret. "Why, lass, there's nothing to tell. There was more mouths at home than could be fed. Tom, that's Will's father (you don't know Will, but he's a sailor to foreign parts), had come to Manchester, and sent word what terrible lots of work was to be had, both for lads and lasses. So father sent George first (you know George, well enough, Mary), and then work was scarce out toward Burton, where we lived, and father said I maun try and get a place. And George wrote as how wages were far higher in Manchester than Milnthorpe or Lancaster; and, lasses, I was young and thoughtless, and thought it was a fine thing to go so far from home. So, one day, th' butcher he brings us a letter fra George, to say he'd heard on a place--and I was all agog to go, and father was pleased, like; but mother said little, and that little was very quiet. I've often thought she was a bit hurt to see me so ready to go--God forgive me! But she packed up my clothes, and some o' the better end of her own as would fit me, in yon little paper box up there--it's good for nought now, but I would liefer live without fire than break it up to be burnt; and yet it's going on for eighty years old, for she had it when she was a girl, and brought all her clothes in it to father's, when they were married. But, as I was saying, she did not cry, though the tears was often in her eyes; and I seen her looking after me down the lane as long as I were in sight, with her hand shading her eyes--and that were the last look I ever had on her." Alice knew that before long she should go to that mother; and, besides, the griefs and bitter woes of youth have worn themselves out before we grow old; but she looked so sorrowful that the girls caught her sadness, and mourned for the poor woman who had been dead and gone so many years ago. "Did you never see her again, Alice? Did you never go home while she was alive?" asked Mary. "No, nor since. Many a time and oft have I planned to go. I plan it yet, and hope to go home again before it please God to take me. I used to try and save money enough to go for a week when I was in service; but first one thing came, and then another. First, missis's children fell ill of the measles, just when th' week I'd ask'd for came, and I couldn't leave them, for one and all cried for me to nurse them. Then missis herself fell sick, and I could go less than ever. For, you see, they kept a little shop, and he drank, and missis and me was all there was to mind children, and shop, and all, and cook and wash besides." Mary was glad she had not gone into service, and said so. "Eh, lass! thou little knows the pleasure o' helping others; I was as happy there as could be; almost as happy as I was at home. Well, but next year I thought I could go at a leisure time, and missis telled me I should have a fortnight then, and I used to sit up all that winter working hard at patchwork, to have a quilt of my own making to take to my mother. But master died, and missis went away fra Manchester, and I'd to look out for a place again." "Well, but," interrupted Mary, "I should have thought that was the best time to go home." "No, I thought not. You see it was a different thing going home for a week on a visit, may be with money in my pocket to give father a lift, to going home to be a burden to him. Besides, how could I hear o' a place there? Anyways I thought it best to stay, though perhaps it might have been better to ha' gone, for then I should ha' seen mother again;" and the poor old woman looked puzzled. "I'm sure you did what you thought right," said Margaret, gently. "Ay, lass, that's it," said Alice, raising her head and speaking more cheerfully. "That's the thing, and then let the Lord send what He sees fit; not but that I grieved sore, oh, sore and sad, when toward spring next year, when my quilt were all done to th' lining, George came in one evening to tell me mother was dead. I cried many a night at after; [3] I'd no time for crying by day, for that missis was terrible strict; she would not hearken to my going to th' funeral; and indeed I would have been too late, for George set off that very night by th' coach, and th' letter had been kept or summut (posts were not like th' posts now-a-days), and he found the burial all over, and father talking o' flitting; for he couldn't abide the cottage after mother was gone." [Footnote 3: A common Lancashire phrase. "Come to me, Tyrrel, soon, _at after_ supper." SHAKSPEARE, Richard III.] "Was it a pretty place?" asked Mary. "Pretty, lass! I never seed such a bonny bit anywhere. You see there are hills there as seem to go up into th' skies, not near may be, but that makes them all the bonnier. I used to think they were the golden hills of heaven, about which my mother sang when I was a child, 'Yon are the golden hills o' heaven, Where ye sall never win.' Something about a ship and a lover that should hae been na lover, the ballad was. Well, and near our cottage were rocks. Eh, lasses! ye don't know what rocks are in Manchester! Gray pieces o' stone as large as a house, all covered over wi' moss of different colours, some yellow, some brown; and the ground beneath them knee-deep in purple heather, smelling sae sweet and fragrant, and the low music of the humming-bee for ever sounding among it. Mother used to send Sally and me out to gather ling and heather for besoms, and it was such pleasant work! We used to come home of an evening loaded so as you could not see us, for all that it was so light to carry. And then mother would make us sit down under the old hawthorn tree (where we used to make our house among the great roots as stood above th' ground), to pick and tie up the heather. It seems all like yesterday, and yet it's a long long time agone. Poor sister Sally has been in her grave this forty year and more. But I often wonder if the hawthorn is standing yet, and if the lasses still go to gather heather, as we did many and many a year past and gone. I sicken at heart to see the old spot once again. May be next summer I may set off, if God spares me to see next summer." "Why have you never been in all these many years?" asked Mary. "Why, lass! first one wanted me and then another; and I couldn't go without money either, and I got very poor at times. Tom was a scapegrace, poor fellow, and always wanted help of one kind or another; and his wife (for I think scapegraces are always married long before steady folk) was but a helpless kind of body. She were always ailing, and he were always in trouble; so I had enough to do with my hands and my money too, for that matter. They died within twelvemonth of each other, leaving one lad (they had had seven, but the Lord had taken six to Himself), Will, as I was telling you on; and I took him myself, and left service to make a bit on a home-place for him, and a fine lad he was, the very spit of his father as to looks, only steadier. For he was steady, although nought would serve him but going to sea. I tried all I could to set him again a sailor's life. Says I, 'Folks is as sick as dogs all the time they're at sea. Your own mother telled me (for she came from foreign parts, being a Manx woman) that she'd ha thanked any one for throwing her into the water.' Nay, I sent him a' the way to Runcorn by th' Duke's canal, that he might know what th' sea were; and I looked to see him come back as white as a sheet wi' vomiting. But the lad went on to Liverpool and saw real ships, and came back more set than ever on being a sailor, and he said as how he had never been sick at all, and thought he could stand the sea pretty well. So I telled him he mun do as he liked; and he thanked me and kissed me, for all I was very frabbit [4] with him; and now he's gone to South America, at t'other side of the sun, they tell me." [Footnote 4: "Frabbit," peevish.] Mary stole a glance at Margaret to see what she thought of Alice's geography; but Margaret looked so quiet and demure, that Mary was in doubt if she were not really ignorant. Not that Mary's knowledge was very profound, but she had seen a terrestrial globe, and knew where to find France and the continents on a map. After this long talking Alice seemed lost for a time in reverie; and the girls, respecting her thoughts, which they suspected had wandered to the home and scenes of her childhood, were silent. All at once she recalled her duties as hostess, and by an effort brought back her mind to the present time. "Margaret, thou must let Mary hear thee sing. I don't know about fine music myself, but folks say Margaret is a rare singer, and I know she can make me cry at any time by singing 'Th' Owdham Weaver.' Do sing that, Margaret, there's a good lass." With a faint smile, as if amused at Alice's choice of a song, Margaret began. Do you know "The Oldham Weaver?" Not unless you are Lancashire born and bred, for it is a complete Lancashire ditty. I will copy it for you. THE OLDHAM WEAVER. I. Oi'm a poor cotton-weyver, as mony a one knoowas, Oi've nowt for t' yeat, an' oi've woorn eawt my clooas, Yo'ad hardly gi' tuppence for aw as oi've on, My clogs are boath brosten, an' stuckins oi've none, Yo'd think it wur hard, To be browt into th' warld, To be--clemmed, [5] an' do th' best as yo con. II. Owd Dicky o' Billy's kept telling me lung, Wee s'd ha' better toimes if I'd but howd my tung, Oi've howden my tung, till oi've near stopped my breath, Oi think i' my heeart oi'se soon clem to deeath, Owd Dicky's weel crammed, He never wur clemmed, An' he ne'er picked ower i' his loife. [6] III. We tow'rt on six week--thinking aitch day wur th' last, We shifted, an' shifted, till neaw we're quoite fast; We lived upo' nettles, whoile nettles wur good, An' Waterloo porridge the best o' eawr food, Oi'm tellin' yo' true, Oi can find folk enow, As wur livin' na better nor me. IV. Owd Billy o' Dans sent th' baileys one day, Fur a shop deebt oi eawd him, as oi could na pay, But he wur too lat, fur owd Billy o' th' Bent, Had sowd th' tit an' cart, an' ta'en goods fur th' rent, We'd neawt left bo' th' owd stoo', That wur seeats fur two, An' on it ceawred Marget an' me. V. Then t' baileys leuked reawnd as sloy as a meawse, When they seed as aw t' goods were ta'en eawt o' t' heawse, Says one chap to th' tother, "Aws gone, theaw may see;" Says oi, "Ne'er freet, mon, yeaur welcome ta' me." They made no moor ado But whopped up th' eawd stoo', An' we booath leet, whack--upo' t' flags! VI. Then oi said to eawr Marget, as we lay upo' t' floor, "We's never be lower i' this warld, oi'm sure, If ever things awtern, oi'm sure they mun mend, For oi think i' my heart we're booath at t' far eend; For meeat we ha' none; Nor looms t' weyve on,-- Edad! they're as good lost as fund." VII. Eawr Marget declares had hoo cloo'as to put on, Hoo'd goo up to Lunnon an' talk to th' greet mon; An' if things were na awtered when there hoo had been, Hoo's fully resolved t' sew up meawth an' eend; Hoo's neawt to say again t' king, But hoo loikes a fair thing, An' hoo says hoo can tell when hoo's hurt. [Footnote 5: "Clem," to starve with hunger. "Hard is the choice, when the valiant must eat their arms or _clem_."--_Ben Jonson._] [Footnote 6: To "pick ower," means to throw the shuttle in hand-loom weaving.] The air to which this is sung is a kind of droning recitative, depending much on expression and feeling. To read it, it may, perhaps, seem humorous; but it is that humour which is near akin to pathos, and to those who have seen the distress it describes, it is a powerfully pathetic song. Margaret had both witnessed the destitution, and had the heart to feel it; and withal, her voice was of that rich and rare order, which does not require any great compass of notes to make itself appreciated. Alice had her quiet enjoyment of tears. But Margaret, with fixed eye, and earnest, dreamy look, seemed to become more and more absorbed in realising to herself the woe she had been describing, and which she felt might at that very moment be suffering and hopeless within a short distance of their comparative comfort. Suddenly she burst forth with all the power of her magnificent voice, as if a prayer from her very heart for all who were in distress, in the grand supplication, "Lord, remember David." Mary held her breath, unwilling to lose a note, it was so clear, so perfect, so imploring. A far more correct musician than Mary might have paused with equal admiration of the really scientific knowledge, with which the poor depressed-looking young needle-woman used her superb and flexile voice. Deborah Travers herself (once an Oldham factory girl, and afterwards the darling of fashionable crowds as Mrs. Knyvett) might have owned a sister in her art. She stopped; and with tears of holy sympathy in her eyes, Alice thanked the songstress, who resumed her calm, demure manner, much to Mary's wonder, for she looked at her unweariedly, as if surprised that the hidden power should not be perceived in the outward appearance. When Alice's little speech of thanks was over, there was quiet enough to hear a fine, though rather quavering, male voice, going over again one or two strains of Margaret's song. "That's grandfather!" exclaimed she. "I must be going, for he said he should not be at home till past nine." "Well, I'll not say nay, for I've to be up by four for a very heavy wash at Mrs. Simpson's; but I shall be terrible glad to see you again at any time, lasses; and I hope you'll take to one another." As the girls ran up the cellar steps together, Margaret said: "Just step in and see grandfather. I should like him to see you." And Mary consented. CHAPTER V. THE MILL ON FIRE--JEM WILSON TO THE RESCUE. Learned he was; nor bird, nor insect flew, But he its leafy home and history knew; Nor wild-flower decked the rock, nor moss the well, But he its name and qualities could tell. ELLIOTT. There is a class of men in Manchester, unknown even to many of the inhabitants, and whose existence will probably be doubted by many, who yet may claim kindred with all the noble names that science recognises. I said "in Manchester," but they are scattered all over the manufacturing districts of Lancashire. In the neighbourhood of Oldham there are weavers, common hand-loom weavers, who throw the shuttle with unceasing sound, though Newton's "Principia" lie open on the loom, to be snatched at in work hours, but revelled over in meal times, or at night. Mathematical problems are received with interest, and studied with absorbing attention by many a broad-spoken, common-looking, factory-hand. It is perhaps less astonishing that the more popularly interesting branches of natural history have their warm and devoted followers among this class. There are botanists among them, equally familiar with either the Linnæan or the Natural system, who know the name and habitat of every plant within a day's walk from their dwellings; who steal the holiday of a day or two when any particular plant should be in flower, and tying up their simple food in their pocket-handkerchiefs, set off with single purpose to fetch home the humble-looking weed. There are entomologists, who may be seen with a rude-looking net, ready to catch any winged insect, or a kind of dredge, with which they rake the green and slimy pools; practical, shrewd, hard-working men, who pore over every new specimen with real scientific delight. Nor is it the common and more obvious divisions of Entomology and Botany that alone attract these earnest seekers after knowledge. Perhaps it may be owing to the great annual town-holiday of Whitsun-week so often falling in May or June that the two great, beautiful families of Ephemeridæ and Phryganidæ have been so much and so closely studied by Manchester workmen, while they have in a great measure escaped general observation. If you will refer to the preface to Sir J. E. Smith's Life (I have it not by me, or I would copy you the exact passage), you will find that he names a little circumstance corroborative of what I have said. Sir J. E. Smith, being on a visit to Roscoe, of Liverpool, made some inquiries from him as to the habitat of a very rare plant, said to be found in certain places in Lancashire. Mr. Roscoe knew nothing of the plant; but stated, that if any one could give him the desired information, it would be a hand-loom weaver in Manchester, whom he named. Sir J. E. Smith proceeded by coach to Manchester, and on arriving at that town, he inquired of the porter who was carrying his luggage if he could direct him to So and So. "Oh, yes," replied the man. "He does a bit in my way;" and, on further investigation, it turned out, that both the porter, and his friend the weaver, were skilful botanists, and able to give Sir J. E. Smith the very information which he wanted. Such are the tastes and pursuits of some of the thoughtful, little understood, working men of Manchester. And Margaret's grandfather was one of these. He was a little wiry-looking old man, who moved with a jerking motion, as if his limbs were worked by a string like a child's toy, with dun coloured hair lying thin and soft at the back and sides of his head; his forehead was so large it seemed to overbalance the rest of his face, which had indeed lost its natural contour by the absence of all the teeth. The eyes absolutely gleamed with intelligence; so keen, so observant, you felt as if they were almost wizard-like. Indeed, the whole room looked not unlike a wizard's dwelling. Instead of pictures were hung rude wooden frames of impaled insects; the little table was covered with cabalistic books; and a case of mysterious instruments lay beside, one of which Job Legh was using when his grand-daughter entered. On her appearance he pushed his spectacles up so as to rest midway on his forehead, and gave Mary a short, kind welcome. But Margaret he caressed as a mother caresses her first-born; stroking her with tenderness, and almost altering his voice as he spoke to her. Mary looked round on the odd, strange things she had never seen at home, and which seemed to her to have a very uncanny look. "Is your grandfather a fortune-teller?" whispered she to her new friend. "No," replied Margaret, in the same voice; "but you're not the first as has taken him for such. He is only fond of such things as most folks know nothing about." "And do you know aught about them, too?" "I know a bit about some of the things grandfather is fond on; just because he's fond on 'em I tried to learn about them." "What things are these?" said Mary, struck with the weird looking creatures that sprawled around the room in their roughly-made glass cases. But she was not prepared for the technical names which Job Legh pattered down on her ear, on which they fell like hail on a skylight; and the strange language only bewildered her more than ever. Margaret saw the state of the case, and came to the rescue. "Look, Mary, at this horrid scorpion. He gave me such a fright: I'm all of a twitter yet when I think of it. Grandfather went to Liverpool one Whitsun-week to go strolling about the docks and pick up what he could from the sailors, who often bring some queer thing or another from the hot countries they go to; and so he sees a chap with a bottle in his hand, like a druggist's physic-bottle; and says grandfather, 'What have ye gotten there?' So the sailor holds it up, and grandfather knew it was a rare kind o' scorpion, not common even in the East Indies where the man came from; and says he, 'How did ye catch this fine fellow, for he wouldn't be taken for nothing I'm thinking?' And the man said as how when they were unloading the ship he'd found him lying behind a bag of rice, and he thought the cold had killed him, for he was not squashed nor injured a bit. He did not like to part with any of the spirit out of his grog to put the scorpion in, but slipped him into the bottle, knowing there were folks enow who would give him something for him. So grandfather gives him a shilling." "Two shilling," interrupted Job Legh, "and a good bargain it was." "Well! grandfather came home as proud as Punch, and pulled the bottle out of his pocket. But you see th' scorpion were doubled up, and grandfather thought I couldn't fairly see how big he was. So he shakes him out right before the fire; and a good warm one it was, for I was ironing, I remember. I left off ironing, and stooped down over him, to look at him better, and grandfather got a book, and began to read how this very kind were the most poisonous and vicious species, how their bite were often fatal, and then went on to read how people who were bitten got swelled, and screamed with pain. I was listening hard, but as it fell out, I never took my eyes off the creature, though I could not ha' told I was watching it. Suddenly it seemed to give a jerk, and before I could speak, it gave another, and in a minute it was as wild as could be, running at me just like a mad dog." "What did you do?" asked Mary. "Me! why, I jumped first on a chair, and then on all the things I'd been ironing on the dresser, and I screamed for grandfather to come up by me, but he did not hearken to me." "Why, if I'd come up by thee, who'd ha' caught the creature, I should like to know?" "Well, I begged grandfather to crush it, and I had the iron right over it once, ready to drop, but grandfather begged me not to hurt it in that way. So I couldn't think what he'd have, for he hopped round the room as if he were sore afraid, for all he begged me not to injure it. At last he goes to th' kettle, and lifts up the lid, and peeps in. What on earth is he doing that for, thinks I; he'll never drink his tea with a scorpion running free and easy about the room. Then he takes the tongs, and he settles his spectacles on his nose, and in a minute he had lifted the creature up by th' leg, and dropped him into the boiling water." "And did that kill him?" said Mary. "Ay, sure enough; he boiled for longer time than grandfather liked though. But I was so afeard of his coming round again. I ran to the public-house for some gin, and grandfather filled the bottle, and then we poured off the water, and picked him out of the kettle, and dropped him into the bottle, and he were there above a twelvemonth." "What brought him to life at first?" asked Mary. "Why, you see, he were never really dead, only torpid--that is, dead asleep with the cold, and our good fire brought him round." "I'm glad father does not care for such things," said Mary. "Are you! Well, I'm often downright glad grandfather is so fond of his books, and his creatures, and his plants. It does my heart good to see him so happy, sorting them all at home, and so ready to go in search of more, whenever he's a spare day. Look at him now! he's gone back to his books, and he'll be as happy as a king, working away till I make him go to bed. It keeps him silent, to be sure; but so long as I see him earnest, and pleased, and eager, what does that matter? Then, when he has his talking bouts, you can't think how much he has to say. Dear grandfather! you don't know how happy we are!" Mary wondered if the dear grandfather heard all this, for Margaret did not speak in an under tone; but no! he was far too deep and eager in solving a problem. He did not even notice Mary's leave-taking, and she went home with the feeling that she had that night made the acquaintance of two of the strangest people she ever saw in her life. Margaret, so quiet, so common place, until her singing powers were called forth; so silent from home, so cheerful and agreeable at home; and her grandfather so very different to any one Mary had ever seen. Margaret had said he was not a fortune-teller, but she did not know whether to believe her. To resolve her doubts, she told the history of the evening to her father, who was interested by her account, and curious to see and judge for himself. Opportunities are not often wanting where inclination goes before, and ere the end of that winter Mary looked upon Margaret almost as an old friend. The latter would bring her work when Mary was likely to be at home in the evenings and sit with her; and Job Legh would put a book and his pipe in his pocket and just step round the corner to fetch his grand-child, ready for a talk if he found Barton in; ready to pull out pipe and book if the girls wanted him to wait, and John was still at his club. In short, ready to do whatever would give pleasure to his darling Margaret. I do not know what points of resemblance (or dissimilitude, for the one joins people as often as the other) attracted the two girls to each other. Margaret had the great charm of possessing good strong common sense, and do you not perceive how involuntarily this is valued? It is so pleasant to have a friend who possesses the power of setting a difficult question in a clear light; whose judgment can tell what is best to be done; and who is so convinced of what is "wisest, best," that in consideration of the end, all difficulties in the way diminish. People admire talent, and talk about their admiration. But they value common sense without talking about it, and often without knowing it. So Mary and Margaret grew in love one toward the other; and Mary told many of her feelings in a way she had never done before to any one. Most of her foibles also were made known to Margaret, but not all. There was one cherished weakness still concealed from every one. It concerned a lover, not beloved, but favoured by fancy. A gallant, handsome young man; but--not beloved. Yet Mary hoped to meet him every day in her walks, blushed when she heard his name, and tried to think of him as her future husband, and above all, tried to think of herself as his future wife. Alas! poor Mary! Bitter woe did thy weakness work thee. She had other lovers. One or two would gladly have kept her company, but she held herself too high, they said. Jem Wilson said nothing, but loved on and on, ever more fondly; he hoped against hope; he would not give up, for it seemed like giving up life to give up thought of Mary. He did not dare to look to any end of all this; the present, so that he saw her, touched the hem of her garment, was enough. Surely, in time, such deep love would beget love. He would not relinquish hope, and yet her coldness of manner was enough to daunt any man; and it made Jem more despairing than he would acknowledge for a long time even to himself. But one evening he came round by Barton's house, a willing messenger for his father, and opening the door saw Margaret sitting asleep before the fire. She had come in to speak to Mary; and worn out by a long working, watching night, she fell asleep in the genial warmth. An old-fashioned saying about a pair of gloves came into Jem's mind, and stepping gently up he kissed Margaret with a friendly kiss. She awoke, and perfectly understanding the thing, she said, "For shame of yourself, Jem! What would Mary say?" Lightly said, lightly answered. "She'd nobbut say, practice makes perfect." And they both laughed. But the words Margaret had said rankled in Jem's mind. Would Mary care? Would she care in the very least? They seemed to call for an answer by night, and by day; and Jem felt that his heart told him Mary was quite indifferent to any action of his. Still he loved on, and on, ever more fondly. Mary's father was well aware of the nature of Jem Wilson's feelings for his daughter, but he took no notice of them to any one, thinking Mary full young yet for the cares of married life, and unwilling, too, to entertain the idea of parting with her at any time, however distant. But he welcomed Jem at his house, as he would have done his father's son, whatever were his motives for coming; and now and then admitted the thought, that Mary might do worse when her time came, than marry Jem Wilson, a steady workman at a good trade, a good son to his parents, and a fine manly spirited chap--at least when Mary was not by: for when she was present he watched her too closely, and too anxiously, to have much of what John Barton called "spunk" in him. It was towards the end of February, in that year, and a bitter black frost had lasted for many weeks. The keen east wind had long since swept the streets clean, though on a gusty day the dust would rise like pounded ice, and make people's faces quite smart with the cold force with which it blew against them. Houses, sky, people, and every thing looked as if a gigantic brush had washed them all over with a dark shade of Indian ink. There was some reason for this grimy appearance on human beings, whatever there might be for the dun looks of the landscape; for soft water had become an article not even to be purchased; and the poor washerwomen might be seen vainly trying to procure a little by breaking the thick gray ice that coated the ditches and ponds in the neighbourhood. People prophesied a long continuance to this already lengthened frost; said the spring would be very late; no spring fashions required; no summer clothing purchased for a short uncertain summer. Indeed there was no end to the evil prophesied during the continuance of that bleak east wind. Mary hurried home one evening, just as daylight was fading, from Miss Simmonds', with her shawl held up to her mouth, and her head bent as if in deprecation of the meeting wind. So she did not perceive Margaret till, she was close upon her at the very turning into the court. "Bless me, Margaret! is that you? Where are you bound to?" "To nowhere but your own house (that is, if you'll take me in). I've a job of work to finish to-night; mourning, as must be in time for the funeral to-morrow; and grandfather has been out moss-hunting, and will not be home till late." "Oh, how charming it will be. I'll help you if you're backward. Have you much to do?" "Yes, I only got the order yesterday at noon; and there's three girls beside the mother; and what with trying on and matching the stuff (for there was not enough in the piece they chose first), I'm above a bit behindhand. I've the skirts all to make. I kept that work till candlelight; and the sleeves, to say nothing of little bits to the bodies; for the missis is very particular, and I could scarce keep from smiling while they were crying so, really taking on sadly I'm sure, to hear first one and then t'other clear up to notice the sit of her gown. They weren't to be misfits I promise you, though they were in such trouble." "Well, Margaret, you're right welcome as you know, and I'll sit down and help you with pleasure, though I was tired enough of sewing to-night at Miss Simmonds'." By this time Mary had broken up the raking coal, and lighted her candle; and Margaret settled herself to her work on one side of the table, while her friend hurried over her tea at the other. The things were then lifted _en masse_ to the dresser; and dusting her side of the table with the apron she always wore at home, Mary took up some breadths and began to run them together. "Who's it all for, for if you told me I've forgotten?" "Why for Mrs. Ogden as keeps the greengrocer's shop in Oxford Road. Her husband drank himself to death, and though she cried over him and his ways all the time he was alive, she's fretted sadly for him now he's dead." "Has he left her much to go upon?" asked Mary, examining the texture of the dress. "This is beautifully fine soft bombazine." "No, I'm much afeared there's but little, and there's several young children, besides the three Miss Ogdens." "I should have thought girls like them would ha' made their own gowns," observed Mary. "So I dare say they do, many a one, but now they seem all so busy getting ready for the funeral; for it's to be quite a grand affair, well-nigh twenty people to breakfast, as one of the little ones told me; the little thing seemed to like the fuss, and I do believe it comforted poor Mrs. Ogden to make all the piece o' work. Such a smell of ham boiling and fowls roasting while I waited in the kitchen; it seemed more like a wedding nor [7] a funeral. They said she'd spend a matter o' sixty pound on th' burial." [Footnote 7: "Nor," generally used in Lancashire for "than." "They had lever sleep _nor_ be in laundery."--_Dunbar_.] "I thought you said she was but badly off," said Mary. "Ay, I know she's asked for credit at several places, saying her husband laid hands on every farthing he could get for drink. But th' undertakers urge her on you see, and tell her this thing's usual, and that thing's only a common mark of respect, and that every body has t'other thing, till the poor woman has no will o' her own. I dare say, too, her heart strikes her (it always does when a person's gone) for many a word and many a slighting deed to him, who's stiff and cold; and she thinks to make up matters, as it were, by a grand funeral, though she and all her children, too, may have to pinch many a year to pay the expenses, if ever they pay them at all." "This mourning, too, will cost a pretty penny," said Mary. "I often wonder why folks wear mourning; it's not pretty or becoming; and it costs a deal of money just when people can spare it least; and if what the Bible tells us be true, we ought not to be sorry when a friend, who's been good, goes to his rest; and as for a bad man, one's glad enough to get shut [8] on him. I cannot see what good comes out o' wearing mourning." [Footnote 8: "Shut," quit.] "I'll tell you what I think th' fancy was sent for (Old Alice calls every thing 'sent for,' and I believe she's right). It does do good, though not as much as it costs, that I do believe, in setting people (as is cast down by sorrow and feels themselves unable to settle to any thing but crying) something to do. Why now I told you how they were grieving; for, perhaps, he was a kind husband and father, in his thoughtless way, when he wasn't in liquor. But they cheered up wonderful while I was there, and I asked 'em for more directions than usual, that they might have something to talk over and fix about; and I left 'em my fashion-book (though it were two months old) just a purpose." "I don't think every one would grieve a that way. Old Alice wouldn't." "Old Alice is one in a thousand. I doubt, too, if she would fret much, however sorry she might be. She would say it were sent, and fall to trying to find out what good it were to do. Every sorrow in her mind is sent for good. Did I ever tell you, Mary, what she said one day when she found me taking on about something?" "No; do tell me. What were you fretting about, first place?" "I can't tell you just now; perhaps I may sometime." "When?" "Perhaps this very evening, if it rises in my heart; perhaps never. It's a fear that sometimes I can't abide to think about, and sometimes I don't like to think on any thing else. Well, I was fretting about this fear, and Alice comes in for something, and finds me crying. I would not tell her no more than I would you, Mary; so she says, 'Well, dear, you must mind this, when you're going to fret and be low about any thing, "An anxious mind is never a holy mind."' Oh, Mary, I have so often checked my grumbling sin' [9] she said that." [Footnote 9: "Sin'," since. "_Sin_ that his lord was twenty yere of age." _Prologue to Canterbury Tales._] The weary sound of stitching was the only sound heard for a little while, till Mary inquired, "Do you expect to get paid for this mourning?" "Why I do not much think I shall. I've thought it over once or twice, and I mean to bring myself to think I shan't, and to like to do it as my bit towards comforting them. I don't think they can pay, and yet they're just the sort of folk to have their minds easier for wearing mourning. There's only one thing I dislike making black for, it does so hurt the eyes." Margaret put down her work with a sigh, and shaded her eyes. Then she assumed a cheerful tone, and said, "You'll not have to wait long, Mary, for my secret's on the tip of my tongue. Mary! do you know I sometimes think I'm growing a little blind, and then what would become of grandfather and me? Oh, God help me, Lord help me!" She fell into an agony of tears, while Mary knelt by her, striving to soothe and to comfort her; but, like an inexperienced person, striving rather to deny the correctness of Margaret's fear, than helping her to meet and overcome the evil. "No," said Margaret, quietly fixing her tearful eyes on Mary; "I know I'm not mistaken. I have felt one going some time, long before I ever thought what it would lead to; and last autumn I went to a doctor; and he did not mince the matter, but said unless I sat in a darkened room, with my hands before me, my sight would not last me many years longer. But how could I do that, Mary? For one thing, grandfather would have known there was somewhat the matter; and, oh! it will grieve him sore whenever he's told, so the later the better; and besides, Mary, we've sometimes little enough to go upon, and what I earn is a great help. For grandfather takes a day here, and a day there, for botanising or going after insects, and he'll think little enough of four or five shillings for a specimen; dear grandfather! and I'm so loath to think he should be stinted of what gives him such pleasure. So I went to another doctor to try and get him to say something different, and he said, 'Oh, it was only weakness,' and gived me a bottle of lotion; but I've used three bottles (and each of 'em cost two shillings), and my eye is so much worse, not hurting so much, but I can't see a bit with it. There now, Mary," continued she, shutting one eye, "now you only look like a great black shadow, with the edges dancing and sparkling." "And can you see pretty well with th' other?" "Yes, pretty near as well as ever. Th' only difference is, that if I sew a long time together, a bright spot like th' sun comes right where I'm looking; all the rest is quite clear but just where I want to see. I've been to both doctors again, and now they're both o' the same story; and I suppose I'm going dark as fast as may be. Plain work pays so bad, and mourning has been so plentiful this winter, I were tempted to take in any black work I could; and now I'm suffering from it." "And yet, Margaret, you're going on taking it in; that's what you'd call foolish in another." "It is, Mary! and yet what can I do? Folk mun live; and I think I should go blind any way, and I darn't tell grandfather, else I would leave it off, but he will so fret." Margaret rocked herself backward and forward to still her emotion. "Oh Mary!" she said, "I try to get his face off by heart, and I stare at him so when he's not looking, and then shut my eyes to see if I can remember his dear face. There's one thing, Mary, that serves a bit to comfort me. You'll have heard of old Jacob Butterworth, the singing weaver? Well, I know'd him a bit, so I went to him, and said how I wished he'd teach me the right way o' singing; and he says I've a rare fine voice, and I go once a week, and take a lesson fra' him. He's been a grand singer in his day. He's led th' chorusses at the Festivals, and got thanked many a time by London folk; and one foreign singer, Madame Catalani, turned round and shook him by th' hand before the Oud Church [10] full o' people. He says I may gain ever so much money by singing; but I don't know. Any rate it's sad work, being blind." [Footnote 10: "Old Church;" now the Cathedral of Manchester.] She took up her sewing, saying her eyes were rested now, and for some time they sewed on in silence. Suddenly there were steps heard in the little paved court; person after person ran past the curtained window. "Something's up," said Mary. She went to the door and stopping the first person she saw, inquired the cause of the commotion. "Eh, wench! donna ye see the fire-light? Carsons' mill is blazing away like fun;" and away her informant ran. "Come, Margaret, on wi' your bonnet, and let's go to see Carsons' mill; it's afire, and they say a burning mill is such a grand sight. I never saw one." "Well, I think it's a fearful sight. Besides I've all this work to do." But Mary coaxed in her sweet manner, and with her gentle caresses, promising to help with the gowns all night long if necessary, nay, saying she should quite enjoy it. The truth was, Margaret's secret weighed heavily and painfully on her mind, and she felt her inability to comfort; besides, she wanted to change the current of Margaret's thoughts; and in addition to these unselfish feelings, came the desire she had honestly expressed, of seeing a factory on fire. So in two minutes they were ready. At the threshold of the house they met John Barton, to whom they told their errand. "Carsons' mill! Ay, there is a mill on fire somewhere, sure enough, by the light, and it will be a rare blaze, for there's not a drop o' water to be got. And much Carsons will care, for they're well insured, and the machines are a' th' oud-fashioned kind. See if they don't think it a fine thing for themselves. They'll not thank them as tries to put it out." He gave way for the impatient girls to pass. Guided by the ruddy light more than by any exact knowledge of the streets that led to the mill, they scampered along with bent heads, facing the terrible east wind as best they might. Carsons' mill ran lengthways from east to west. Along it went one of the oldest thoroughfares in Manchester. Indeed all that part of the town was comparatively old; it was there that the first cotton mills were built, and the crowded alleys and back streets of the neighbourhood made a fire there particularly to be dreaded. The staircase of the mill ascended from the entrance at the western end, which faced into a wide dingy-looking street, consisting principally of public-houses, pawn-brokers' shops, rag and bone warehouses, and dirty provision shops. The other, the east end of the factory, fronted into a very narrow back street, not twenty feet wide, and miserably lighted and paved. Right against this end of the factory were the gable ends of the last house in the principal street--a house which from its size, its handsome stone facings, and the attempt at ornament in the front, had probably been once a gentleman's house; but now the light which streamed from its enlarged front windows made clear the interior of the splendidly fitted up room, with its painted walls, its pillared recesses, its gilded and gorgeous fittings up, its miserable, squalid inmates. It was a gin palace. Mary almost wished herself away, so fearful (as Margaret had said) was the sight when they joined the crowd assembled to witness the fire. There was a murmur of many voices whenever the roaring of the flames ceased for an instant. It was easy to perceive the mass were deeply interested. "What do they say?" asked Margaret, of a neighbour in the crowd, as she caught a few words, clear and distinct, from the general murmur. "There never is anyone in the mill, surely!" exclaimed Mary, as the sea of upward-turned faces moved with one accord to the eastern end, looking into Dunham Street, the narrow back lane already mentioned. The western end of the mill, whither the raging flames were driven by the wind, was crowned and turreted with triumphant fire. It sent forth its infernal tongues from every window hole, licking the black walls with amorous fierceness; it was swayed or fell before the mighty gale, only to rise higher and yet higher, to ravage and roar yet more wildly. This part of the roof fell in with an astounding crash, while the crowd struggled more and more to press into Dunham Street, for what were magnificent terrible flames, what were falling timbers or tottering walls, in comparison with human life? There, where the devouring flames had been repelled by the yet more powerful wind, but where yet black smoke gushed out from every aperture, there, at one of the windows on the fourth story, or rather a doorway where a crane was fixed to hoist up goods, might occasionally be seen, when the thick gusts of smoke cleared partially away for an instant, the imploring figures of two men. They had remained after the rest of the workmen for some reason or other, and, owing to the wind having driven the fire in the opposite direction, had perceived no sight or sound of alarm, till long after (if any thing could be called long in that throng of terrors which passed by in less time than half an hour) the fire had consumed the old wooden staircase at the other end of the building. I am not sure whether it was not the first sound of the rushing crowd below that made them fully aware of their awful position. "Where are the engines?" asked Margaret of her neighbour. "They're coming, no doubt; but, bless you, I think it's bare ten minutes since we first found out th' fire; it rages so wi' this wind, and all so dry-like." "Is no one gone for a ladder?" gasped Mary, as the men were perceptibly, though not audibly, praying the great multitude below for help. "Ay, Wilson's son and another man were off like a shot, well nigh five minute agone. But th' masons, and slaters, and such like, have left their work, and locked up the yards." Wilson! then, was that man whose figure loomed out against the ever increasing dull hot light behind, whenever the smoke was clear,--was that George Wilson? Mary sickened with terror. She knew he worked for Carsons; but at first she had had no idea any lives were in danger; and since she had become aware of this, the heated air, the roaring flames, the dizzy light, and the agitated and murmuring crowd, had bewildered her thoughts. "Oh! let us go home, Margaret; I cannot stay." "We cannot go! See how we are wedged in by folks. Poor Mary! ye won't hanker after a fire again. Hark! listen!" For through the hushed crowd, pressing round the angle of the mill, and filling up Dunham Street, might be heard the rattle of the engine, the heavy, quick tread of loaded horses. "Thank God!" said Margaret's neighbour, "the engine's come." Another pause; the plugs were stiff, and water could not be got. Then there was a pressure through the crowd, the front rows bearing back on those behind, till the girls were sick with the close ramming confinement. Then a relaxation, and a breathing freely once more. "'Twas young Wilson and a fireman wi' a ladder," said Margaret's neighbour, a tall man who could overlook the crowd. "Oh, tell us what you see?" begged Mary. "They've gotten it fixed again the gin-shop wall. One o' the men i' th' factory has fell back; dazed wi' the smoke, I'll warrant. The floor's not given way there. God!" said he, bringing his eye lower down, "th' ladder's too short! It's a' over wi' them, poor chaps. Th' fire's coming slow and sure to that end, and afore they've either gotten water, or another ladder, they'll be dead out and out. Lord have mercy on them!" A sob, as if of excited women, was heard in the hush of the crowd. Another pressure like the former! Mary clung to Margaret's arm with a pinching grasp, and longed to faint, and be insensible, to escape from the oppressing misery of her sensations. A minute or two. "They've taken th' ladder into th' Temple of Apollor. Can't press back with it to the yard it came from." A mighty shout arose; a sound to wake the dead. Up on high, quivering in the air, was seen the end of the ladder, protruding out of a garret window, in the gable end of the gin palace, nearly opposite to the doorway where the men had been seen. Those in the crowd nearest the factory, and consequently best able to see up to the garret window, said that several men were holding one end, and guiding by their weight its passage to the door-way. The garret window-frame had been taken out before the crowd below were aware of the attempt. At length--for it seemed long, measured by beating hearts, though scarce two minutes had elapsed--the ladder was fixed, an aerial bridge at a dizzy height, across the narrow street. Every eye was fixed in unwinking anxiety, and people's very breathing seemed stilled in suspense. The men were nowhere to be seen, but the wind appeared, for the moment, higher than ever, and drove back the invading flames to the other end. Mary and Margaret could see now; right above them danced the ladder in the wind. The crowd pressed back from under; firemen's helmets appeared at the window, holding the ladder firm, when a man, with quick, steady tread, and unmoving head, passed from one side to the other. The multitude did not even whisper while he crossed the perilous bridge, which quivered under him; but when he was across, safe comparatively in the factory, a cheer arose for an instant, checked, however, almost immediately, by the uncertainty of the result, and the desire not in any way to shake the nerves of the brave fellow who had cast his life on such a die. "There he is again!" sprung to the lips of many, as they saw him at the doorway, standing as if for an instant to breathe a mouthful of the fresher air, before he trusted himself to cross. On his shoulders he bore an insensible body. "It's Jem Wilson and his father," whispered Margaret; but Mary knew it before. The people were sick with anxious terror. He could no longer balance himself with his arms; every thing must depend on nerve and eye. They saw the latter was fixed, by the position of the head, which never wavered; the ladder shook under the double weight; but still he never moved his head--he dared not look below. It seemed an age before the crossing was accomplished. At last the window was gained; the bearer relieved from his burden; both had disappeared. Then the multitude might shout; and above the roaring flames, louder than the blowing of the mighty wind, arose that tremendous burst of applause at the success of the daring enterprise. Then a shrill cry was heard, asking "Is the oud man alive, and likely to do?" "Ay," answered one of the firemen to the hushed crowd below. "He's coming round finely, now he's had a dash of cowd water." He drew back his head; and the eager inquiries, the shouts, the sea-like murmurs of the moving rolling mass began again to be heard--but for an instant though. In far less time than even that in which I have endeavoured briefly to describe the pause of events, the same bold hero stepped again upon the ladder, with evident purpose to rescue the man yet remaining in the burning mill. He went across in the same quick steady manner as before, and the people below, made less acutely anxious by his previous success, were talking to each other, shouting out intelligence of the progress of the fire at the other end of the factory, telling of the endeavours of the firemen at that part to obtain water, while the closely packed body of men heaved and rolled from side to side. It was different from the former silent breathless hush. I do not know if it were from this cause, or from the recollection of peril past, or that he looked below, in the breathing moment before returning with the remaining person (a slight little man) slung across his shoulders, but Jem Wilson's step was less steady, his tread more uncertain; he seemed to feel with his foot for the next round of the ladder, to waver, and finally to stop half-way. By this time the crowd was still enough; in the awful instant that intervened no one durst speak, even to encourage. Many turned sick with terror, and shut their eyes to avoid seeing the catastrophe they dreaded. It came. The brave man swayed from side to side, at first as slightly as if only balancing himself; but he was evidently losing nerve, and even sense: it was only wonderful how the animal instinct of self-preservation did not overcome every generous feeling, and impel him at once to drop the helpless, inanimate body he carried; perhaps the same instinct told him, that the sudden loss of so heavy a weight would of itself be a great and imminent danger. "Help me! she's fainted," cried Margaret. But no one heeded. All eyes were directed upwards. At this point of time a rope, with a running noose, was dexterously thrown by one of the firemen, after the manner of a lasso, over the head and round the bodies of the two men. True, it was with rude and slight adjustment: but, slight as it was, it served as a steadying guide; it encouraged the sinking heart, the dizzy head. Once more Jem stepped onwards. He was not hurried by any jerk or pull. Slowly and gradually the rope was hauled in, slowly and gradually did he make the four or five paces between him and safety. The window was gained, and all were saved. The multitude in the street absolutely danced with triumph, and huzzaed and yelled till you would have fancied their very throats would crack; and then with all the fickleness of interest characteristic of a large body of people, pressed and stumbled, and cursed and swore in the hurry to get out of Dunham Street, and back to the immediate scene of the fire, the mighty diapason of whose roaring flames formed an awful accompaniment to the screams, and yells, and imprecations, of the struggling crowd. As they pressed away, Margaret was left, pale and almost sinking under the weight of Mary's body, which she had preserved in an upright position by keeping her arms tight round Mary's waist, dreading, with reason, the trampling of unheeding feet. Now, however, she gently let her down on the cold clean pavement; and the change of posture, and the difference in temperature, now that the people had withdrawn from their close neighbourhood, speedily restored her to consciousness. Her first glance was bewildered and uncertain. She had forgotten where she was. Her cold, hard bed felt strange; the murky glare in the sky affrighted her. She shut her eyes to think, to recollect. Her next look was upwards. The fearful bridge had been withdrawn; the window was unoccupied. "They are safe," said Margaret. "All? Are all safe, Margaret?" asked Mary. "Ask yon fireman, and he'll tell you more about it than I can. But I know they're all safe." The fireman hastily corroborated Margaret's words. "Why did you let Jem Wilson go twice?" asked Margaret. "Let!--why we could not hinder him. As soon as ever he'd heard his father speak (which he was na long a doing), Jem were off like a shot; only saying he knowed better nor us where to find t'other man. We'd all ha' gone, if he had na been in such a hurry, for no one can say as Manchester firemen is ever backward when there's danger." So saying, he ran off; and the two girls, without remark or discussion, turned homewards. They were overtaken by the elder Wilson, pale, grimy, and blear-eyed, but apparently as strong and well as ever. He loitered a minute or two alongside of them, giving an account of his detention in the mill; he then hastily wished good-night, saying he must go home and tell his missis he was all safe and well: but after he had gone a few steps, he turned back, came on Mary's side of the pavement, and in an earnest whisper, which Margaret could not avoid hearing, he said, "Mary, if my boy comes across you to-night, give him a kind word or two for my sake. Do! bless you, there's a good wench." Mary hung her head and answered not a word, and in an instant he was gone. When they arrived at home, they found John Barton smoking his pipe, unwilling to question, yet very willing to hear all the details they could give him. Margaret went over the whole story, and it was amusing to watch his gradually increasing interest and excitement. First, the regular puffing abated, then ceased. Then the pipe was fairly taken out of his mouth, and held suspended. Then he rose, and at every further point he came a step nearer to the narrator. When it was ended, he swore (an unusual thing for him) that if Jem Wilson wanted Mary he should have her to-morrow, if he had not a penny to keep her. Margaret laughed, but Mary, who was now recovered from her agitation, pouted, and looked angry. The work which they had left was resumed: but with full hearts, fingers never go very quickly; and I am sorry to say, that owing to the fire, the two younger Miss Ogdens were in such grief for the loss of their excellent father, that they were unable to appear before the little circle of sympathising friends gathered together to comfort the widow, and see the funeral set off. CHAPTER VI. POVERTY AND DEATH. "How little can the rich man know Of what the poor man feels, When Want, like some dark dæmon foe, Nearer and nearer steals! _He_ never tramp'd the weary round, A stroke of work to gain, And sicken'd at the dreaded sound Telling him 'twas in vain. Foot-sore, heart-sore, _he_ never came Back through the winter's wind, To a dark cellar, there no flame, No light, no food, to find. _He_ never saw his darlings lie Shivering, the flags their bed; _He_ never heard that maddening cry, 'Daddy, a bit of bread!'" MANCHESTER SONG. John Barton was not far wrong in his idea that the Messrs. Carson would not be over much grieved for the consequences of the fire in their mill. They were well insured; the machinery lacked the improvements of late years, and worked but poorly in comparison with that which might now be procured. Above all, trade was very slack; cottons could find no market, and goods lay packed and piled in many a warehouse. The mills were merely worked to keep the machinery, human and metal, in some kind of order and readiness for better times. So this was an excellent opportunity, Messrs. Carson thought, for refitting their factory with first-rate improvements, for which the insurance money would amply pay. They were in no hurry about the business, however. The weekly drain of wages given for labour, useless in the present state of the market, was stopped. The partners had more leisure than they had known for years; and promised wives and daughters all manner of pleasant excursions, as soon as the weather should become more genial. It was a pleasant thing to be able to lounge over breakfast with a review or newspaper in hand; to have time for becoming acquainted with agreeable and accomplished daughters, on whose education no money had been spared, but whose fathers, shut up during a long day with calicoes and accounts, had so seldom had leisure to enjoy their daughters' talents. There were happy family evenings, now that the men of business had time for domestic enjoyments. There is another side to the picture. There were homes over which Carsons' fire threw a deep, terrible gloom; the homes of those who would fain work, and no man gave unto them--the homes of those to whom leisure was a curse. There, the family music was hungry wails, when week after week passed by, and there was no work to be had, and consequently no wages to pay for the bread the children cried aloud for in their young impatience of suffering. There was no breakfast to lounge over; their lounge was taken in bed, to try and keep warmth in them that bitter March weather, and, by being quiet, to deaden the gnawing wolf within. Many a penny that would have gone little way enough in oatmeal or potatoes, bought opium to still the hungry little ones, and make them forget their uneasiness in heavy troubled sleep. It was mother's mercy. The evil and the good of our nature came out strongly then. There were desperate fathers; there were bitter-tongued mothers (O God! what wonder!); there were reckless children; the very closest bonds of nature were snapt in that time of trial and distress. There was Faith such as the rich can never imagine on earth; there was "Love strong as death;" and self-denial, among rude, coarse men, akin to that of Sir Philip Sidney's most glorious deed. The vices of the poor sometimes astound us _here_; but when the secrets of all hearts shall be made known, their virtues will astound us in far greater degree. Of this I am certain. As the cold bleak spring came on (spring, in name alone), and consequently as trade continued dead, other mills shortened hours, turned off hands, and finally stopped work altogether. Barton worked short hours; Wilson, of course, being a hand in Carsons' factory, had no work at all. But his son, working at an engineer's, and a steady man, obtained wages enough to maintain all the family in a careful way. Still it preyed on Wilson's mind to be so long indebted to his son. He was out of spirits and depressed. Barton was morose, and soured towards mankind as a body, and the rich in particular. One evening, when the clear light at six o'clock contrasted strangely with the Christmas cold, and when the bitter wind piped down every entry, and through every cranny, Barton sat brooding over his stinted fire, and listening for Mary's step, in unacknowledged trust that her presence would cheer him. The door was opened, and Wilson came breathless in. "You've not got a bit o' money by you, Barton?" asked he. "Not I; who has now, I'd like to know. Whatten you want it for?" "I donnot [11] want it for mysel, tho' we've none to spare. But don ye know Ben Davenport as worked at Carsons'? He's down wi' the fever, and ne'er a stick o' fire, nor a cowd [12] potato in the house." [Footnote 11: "Don" is constantly used in Lancashire for "do;" as it was by our older writers. "And that may non Hors _don_."--_Sir J. Mondeville._ "But for th' entent to _don_ this sinne."--_Chaucer._] [Footnote 12: "Cowd," cold. Teut., _kaud_. Dutch, _koud_.] "I han got no money, I tell ye," said Barton. Wilson looked disappointed. Barton tried not to be interested, but he could not help it in spite of his gruffness. He rose, and went to the cupboard (his wife's pride long ago). There lay the remains of his dinner, hastily put by ready for supper. Bread, and a slice of cold fat boiled bacon. He wrapped them in his handkerchief, put them in the crown of his hat, and said--"Come, let's be going." "Going--art thou going to work this time o' day?" "No, stupid, to be sure not. Going to see the fellow thou spoke on." So they put on their hats and set out. On the way Wilson said Davenport was a good fellow, though too much of the Methodee; that his children were too young to work, but not too young to be cold and hungry; that they had sunk lower and lower, and pawned thing after thing, and that now they lived in a cellar in Berry Street, off Store Street. Barton growled inarticulate words of no benevolent import to a large class of mankind, and so they went along till they arrived in Berry Street. It was unpaved; and down the middle a gutter forced its way, every now and then forming pools in the holes with which the street abounded. Never was the Old Edinburgh cry of "Gardez l'eau" more necessary than in this street. As they passed, women from their doors tossed household slops of _every_ description into the gutter; they ran into the next pool, which overflowed and stagnated. Heaps of ashes were the stepping-stones, on which the passer-by, who cared in the least for cleanliness, took care not to put his foot. Our friends were not dainty, but even they picked their way till they got to some steps leading down into a small area, where a person standing would have his head about one foot below the level of the street, and might at the same time, without the least motion of his body, touch the window of the cellar and the damp muddy wall right opposite. You went down one step even from the foul area into the cellar in which a family of human beings lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes were, many of them, broken and stuffed with rags, which was reason enough for the dusky light that pervaded the place even at mid-day. After the account I have given of the state of the street, no one can be surprised that on going into the cellar inhabited by Davenport, the smell was so foetid as almost to knock the two men down. Quickly recovering themselves, as those inured to such things do, they began to penetrate the thick darkness of the place, and to see three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay wet, brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up; the fire-place was empty and black; the wife sat on her husband's lair, and cried in the dank loneliness. "See, missis, I'm back again.--Hold your noise, children, and don't mither [13] your mammy for bread; here's a chap as has got some for you." [Footnote 13: "Mither," to trouble and perplex. "I'm welly mithered"--I'm well nigh crazed.] In that dim light, which was darkness to strangers, they clustered round Barton, and tore from him the food he had brought with him. It was a large hunch of bread, but it vanished in an instant. "We mun do summut for 'em," said he to Wilson. "Yo stop here, and I'll be back in half-an-hour." So he strode, and ran, and hurried home. He emptied into the ever-useful pocket-handkerchief the little meal remaining in the mug. Mary would have her tea at Miss Simmonds'; her food for the day was safe. Then he went up-stairs for his better coat, and his one, gay, red-and-yellow silk pocket-handkerchief--his jewels, his plate, his valuables, these were. He went to the pawn-shop; he pawned them for five shillings; he stopped not, nor stayed, till he was once more in London Road, within five minutes' walk of Berry Street--then he loitered in his gait, in order to discover the shops he wanted. He bought meat, and a loaf of bread, candles, chips, and from a little retail yard he purchased a couple of hundredweights of coals. Some money yet remained--all destined for them, but he did not yet know how best to spend it. Food, light, and warmth, he had instantly seen were necessary; for luxuries he would wait. Wilson's eyes filled with tears when he saw Barton enter with his purchases. He understood it all, and longed to be once more in work, that he might help in some of these material ways, without feeling that he was using his son's money. But though "silver and gold he had none," he gave heart-service and love works of far more value. Nor was John Barton behind in these. "The fever" was (as it usually is in Manchester) of a low, putrid, typhoid kind; brought on by miserable living, filthy neighbourhood, and great depression of mind and body. It is virulent, malignant, and highly infectious. But the poor are fatalists with regard to infection; and well for them it is so, for in their crowded dwellings no invalid can be isolated. Wilson asked Barton if he thought he should catch it, and was laughed at for his idea. The two men, rough, tender nurses as they were, lighted the fire, which smoked and puffed into the room as if it did not know the way up the damp, unused chimney. The very smoke seemed purifying and healthy in the thick clammy air. The children clamoured again for bread; but this time Barton took a piece first to the poor, helpless, hopeless woman, who still sat by the side of her husband, listening to his anxious miserable mutterings. She took the bread, when it was put into her hand, and broke a bit, but could not eat. She was past hunger. She fell down on the floor with a heavy unresisting bang. The men looked puzzled. "She's well-nigh clemmed," said Barton. "Folk do say one mustn't give clemmed people much to eat; but, bless us, she'll eat nought." "I'll tell yo what I'll do," said Wilson. "I'll take these two big lads, as does nought but fight, home to my missis's for to-night, and I'll get a jug o' tea. Them women always does best with tea and such-like slop." So Barton was now left alone with a little child, crying (when it had done eating) for mammy; with a fainting, dead-like woman; and with the sick man, whose mutterings were rising up to screams and shrieks of agonised anxiety. He carried the woman to the fire, and chafed her hands. He looked around for something to raise her head. There was literally nothing but some loose bricks. However, those he got; and taking off his coat he covered them with it as well as he could. He pulled her feet to the fire, which now began to emit some faint heat. He looked round for water, but the poor woman had been too weak to drag herself out to the distant pump, and water there was none. He snatched the child, and ran up the area-steps to the room above, and borrowed their only saucepan with some water in it. Then he began, with the useful skill of a working-man, to make some gruel; and when it was hastily made he seized a battered iron table-spoon (kept when many other little things had been sold in a lot), in order to feed baby, and with it he forced one or two drops between her clenched teeth. The mouth opened mechanically to receive more, and gradually she revived. She sat up and looked round; and recollecting all, fell down again in weak and passive despair. Her little child crawled to her, and wiped with its fingers the thick-coming tears which she now had strength to weep. It was now high time to attend to the man. He lay on straw, so damp and mouldy no dog would have chosen it in preference to flags; over it was a piece of sacking, coming next to his worn skeleton of a body; above him was mustered every article of clothing that could be spared by mother or children this bitter weather; and in addition to his own, these might have given as much warmth as one blanket, could they have been kept on him; but as he restlessly tossed to and fro, they fell off and left him shivering in spite of the burning heat of his skin. Every now and then he started up in his naked madness, looking like the prophet of woe in the fearful plague-picture; but he soon fell again in exhaustion, and Barton found he must be closely watched, lest in these falls he should injure himself against the hard brick floor. He was thankful when Wilson re-appeared, carrying in both hands a jug of steaming tea, intended for the poor wife; but when the delirious husband saw drink, he snatched at it with animal instinct, with a selfishness he had never shown in health. Then the two men consulted together. It seemed decided, without a word being spoken on the subject, that both should spend the night with the forlorn couple; that was settled. But could no doctor be had? In all probability, no; the next day an infirmary order might be begged, but meanwhile the only medical advice they could have must be from a druggist's. So Barton (being the moneyed man) set out to find a shop in London Road. It is a pretty sight to walk through a street with lighted shops; the gas is so brilliant, the display of goods so much more vividly shown than by day, and of all shops a druggist's looks the most like the tales of our childhood, from Aladdin's garden of enchanted fruits to the charming Rosamond with her purple jar. No such associations had Barton; yet he felt the contrast between the well-filled, well-lighted shops and the dim gloomy cellar, and it made him moody that such contrasts should exist. They are the mysterious problem of life to more than him. He wondered if any in all the hurrying crowd had come from such a house of mourning. He thought they all looked joyous, and he was angry with them. But he could not, you cannot, read the lot of those who daily pass you by in the street. How do you know the wild romances of their lives; the trials, the temptations they are even now enduring, resisting, sinking under? You may be elbowed one instant by the girl desperate in her abandonment, laughing in mad merriment with her outward gesture, while her soul is longing for the rest of the dead, and bringing itself to think of the cold-flowing river as the only mercy of God remaining to her here. You may pass the criminal, meditating crimes at which you will to-morrow shudder with horror as you read them. You may push against one, humble and unnoticed, the last upon earth, who in Heaven will for ever be in the immediate light of God's countenance. Errands of mercy--errands of sin--did you ever think where all the thousands of people you daily meet are bound? Barton's was an errand of mercy; but the thoughts of his heart were touched by sin, by bitter hatred of the happy, whom he, for the time, confounded with the selfish. He reached a druggist's shop, and entered. The druggist (whose smooth manners seemed to have been salved over with his own spermaceti) listened attentively to Barton's description of Davenport's illness; concluded it was typhus fever, very prevalent in that neighbourhood; and proceeded to make up a bottle of medicine, sweet spirits of nitre, or some such innocent potion, very good for slight colds, but utterly powerless to stop, for an instant, the raging fever of the poor man it was intended to relieve. He recommended the same course they had previously determined to adopt, applying the next morning for an infirmary order; and Barton left the shop with comfortable faith in the physic given him; for men of his class, if they believe in physic at all, believe that every description is equally efficacious. Meanwhile, Wilson had done what he could at Davenport's home. He had soothed, and covered the man many a time; he had fed and hushed the little child, and spoken tenderly to the woman, who lay still in her weakness and her weariness. He had opened a door, but only for an instant; it led into a back cellar, with a grating instead of a window, down which dropped the moisture from pigsties, and worse abominations. It was not paved; the floor was one mass of bad smelling mud. It had never been used, for there was not an article of furniture in it; nor could a human being, much less a pig, have lived there many days. Yet the "back apartment" made a difference in the rent. The Davenports paid threepence more for having two rooms. When he turned round again, he saw the woman suckling the child from her dry, withered breast. "Surely the lad is weaned!" exclaimed he, in surprise. "Why, how old is he?" "Going on two year," she faintly answered. "But, oh! it keeps him quiet when I've nought else to gi' him, and he'll get a bit of sleep lying there, if he's getten [14] nought beside. We han done our best to gi' the childer [15] food, howe'er we pinched ourselves." [Footnote 14: "For he had _geten_ him yet no benefice."--_Prologue to Canterbury Tales._] [Footnote 15: Wicklife uses "_childre_" in his Apology, page 26.] "Han [16] ye had no money fra th' town?" [Footnote 16: "What concord _han_ light and dark."--_Spenser._] "No; my master is Buckinghamshire born; and he's feared the town would send him back to his parish, if he went to th' board; so we've just borne on in hope o' better times. But I think they'll never come in my day;" and the poor woman began her weak high-pitched cry again. "Here, sup [17] this drop o' gruel, and then try and get a bit o' sleep. John and I'll watch by your master to-night." [Footnote 17: "And thay _soupe_ the brothe thereof."--_Sir J. Mandeville._] "God's blessing be on you!" She finished the gruel, and fell into a deep sleep. Wilson covered her with his coat as well as he could, and tried to move lightly for fear of disturbing her; but there need have been no such dread, for her sleep was profound and heavy with exhaustion. Once only she roused to pull the coat round her little child. And now all Wilson's care, and Barton's to boot, was wanted to restrain the wild mad agony of the fevered man. He started up, he yelled, he seemed infuriated by overwhelming anxiety. He cursed and swore, which surprised Wilson, who knew his piety in health, and who did not know the unbridled tongue of delirium. At length he seemed exhausted, and fell asleep; and Barton and Wilson drew near the fire, and talked together in whispers. They sat on the floor, for chairs there were none; the sole table was an old tub turned upside-down. They put out the candle and conversed by the flickering fire-light. "Han yo known this chap long?" asked Barton. "Better nor three year. He's worked wi' Carsons that long, and were alway a steady, civil-spoken fellow, though, as I said afore, somewhat of a Methodee. I wish I'd gotten a letter he sent his missis, a week or two agone, when he were on tramp for work. It did my heart good to read it; for, yo see, I were a bit grumbling mysel; it seemed hard to be spunging on Jem, and taking a' his flesh-meat money to buy bread for me and them as I ought to be keeping. But, yo know, though I can earn nought, I mun eat summut. Well, as I telled ye, I were grumbling, when she (indicating the sleeping woman by a nod) brought me Ben's letter, for she could na read hersel. It were as good as Bible-words; ne'er a word o' repining; a' about God being our Father, and that we mun bear patiently whate'er He sends." "Don ye think He's th' masters' Father, too? I'd be loath to have 'em for brothers." "Eh, John! donna talk so; sure there's many and many a master as good or better nor us." "If you think so, tell me this. How comes it they're rich, and we're poor? I'd like to know that. Han they done as they'd be done by for us?" But Wilson was no arguer; no speechifier as he would have called it. So Barton, seeing he was likely to have it his own way, went on. "You'll say (at least many a one does), they'n [18] getten capital an' we'n getten none. I say, our labour's our capital and we ought to draw interest on that. They get interest on their capital somehow a' this time, while ourn is lying idle, else how could they all live as they do? Besides, there's many on 'em as had nought to begin wi'; there's Carsons, and Duncombes, and Mengies, and many another, as comed into Manchester with clothes to their back, and that were all, and now they're worth their tens of thousands, a' getten out of our labour; why the very land as fetched but sixty pound twenty year agone is now worth six hundred, and that, too, is owing to our labour: but look at yo, and see me, and poor Davenport yonder; whatten better are we? They'n screwed us down to th' lowest peg, in order to make their great big fortunes, and build their great big houses, and we, why we're just clemming, many and many of us. Can you say there's nought wrong in this?" [Footnote 18: "They'n," contraction of "they han," they have.] "Well, Barton, I'll not gainsay ye. But Mr. Carson spoke to me after th' fire, and says he, 'I shall ha' to retrench, and be very careful in my expenditure during these bad times, I assure ye;' so yo see th' masters suffer too." "Han they ever seen a child o' their'n die for want o' food?" asked Barton, in a low, deep voice. "I donnot mean," continued he, "to say as I'm so badly off. I'd scorn to speak for mysel; but when I see such men as Davenport there dying away, for very clemming, I cannot stand it. I've but gotten Mary, and she keeps hersel pretty much. I think we'll ha' to give up house-keeping; but that I donnot mind." And in this kind of talk the night, the long heavy night of watching, wore away. As far as they could judge, Davenport continued in the same state, although the symptoms varied occasionally. The wife slept on, only roused by a cry of her child now and then, which seemed to have power over her, when far louder noises failed to disturb her. The watchers agreed, that as soon as it was likely Mr. Carson would be up and visible, Wilson should go to his house, and beg for an Infirmary order. At length the gray dawn penetrated even into the dark cellar. Davenport slept, and Barton was to remain there until Wilson's return; so stepping out into the fresh air, brisk and reviving, even in that street of abominations, Wilson took his way to Mr. Carson's. Wilson had about two miles to walk before he reached Mr. Carson's house, which was almost in the country. The streets were not yet bustling and busy. The shopmen were lazily taking down the shutters, although it was near eight o'clock; for the day was long enough for the purchases people made in that quarter of the town, while trade was so flat. One or two miserable-looking women were setting off on their day's begging expedition. But there were few people abroad. Mr. Carson's was a good house, and furnished with disregard to expense. But in addition to lavish expenditure, there was much taste shown, and many articles chosen for their beauty and elegance adorned his rooms. As Wilson passed a window which a housemaid had thrown open, he saw pictures and gilding, at which he was tempted to stop and look; but then he thought it would not be respectful. So he hastened on to the kitchen door. The servants seemed very busy with preparations for breakfast; but good-naturedly, though hastily, told him to step in, and they could soon let Mr. Carson know he was there. So he was ushered into a kitchen hung round with glittering tins, where a roaring fire burnt merrily, and where numbers of utensils hung round, at whose nature and use Wilson amused himself by guessing. Meanwhile, the servants bustled to and fro; an out-door man-servant came in for orders, and sat down near Wilson; the cook broiled steaks, and the kitchen-maid toasted bread, and boiled eggs. The coffee steamed upon the fire, and altogether the odours were so mixed and appetising, that Wilson began to yearn for food to break his fast, which had lasted since dinner the day before. If the servants had known this, they would have willingly given him meat and bread in abundance; but they were like the rest of us, and not feeling hunger themselves, forgot it was possible another might. So Wilson's craving turned to sickness, while they chattered on, making the kitchen's free and keen remarks upon the parlour. "How late you were last night, Thomas!" "Yes, I was right weary of waiting; they told me to be at the rooms by twelve; and there I was. But it was two o'clock before they called me." "And did you wait all that time in the street?" asked the housemaid, who had done her work for the present, and come into the kitchen for a bit of gossip. "My eye as like! you don't think I'm such a fool as to catch my death of cold, and let the horses catch their death too, as we should ha' done if we'd stopped there. No! I put th' horses up in th' stables at th' Spread Eagle, and went mysel, and got a glass or two by th' fire. They're driving a good custom, them, wi' coachmen. There were five on us, and we'd many a quart o' ale, and gin wi' it, to keep out cold." "Mercy on us, Thomas; you'll get a drunkard at last!" "If I do, I know whose blame it will be. It will be missis's, and not mine. Flesh and blood can't sit to be starved to death on a coach-box, waiting for folks as don't know their own mind." A servant, semi-upper-housemaid, semi-lady's-maid, now came down with orders from her mistress. "Thomas, you must ride to the fishmonger's, and say missis can't give above half-a-crown a pound for salmon for Tuesday; she's grumbling because trade's so bad. And she'll want the carriage at three to go to the lecture, Thomas; at the Royal Execution, you know." "Ay, ay, I know." "And you'd better all of you mind your P's and Q's, for she's very black this morning. She's got a bad headache." "It's a pity Miss Jenkins is not here to match her. Lord! how she and missis did quarrel which had got the worst headaches; it was that Miss Jenkins left for; she would not give up having bad headaches, and missis could not abide any one to have 'em but herself." "Missis will have her breakfast up-stairs, cook, and the cold partridge as was left yesterday, and put plenty of cream in her coffee, and she thinks there's a roll left, and she would like it well buttered." So saying, the maid left the kitchen to be ready to attend to the young ladies' bell when they chose to ring, after their late assembly the night before. In the luxurious library, at the well-spread breakfast-table, sat the two Mr. Carsons, father and son. Both were reading; the father a newspaper, the son a review, while they lazily enjoyed their nicely prepared food. The father was a prepossessing-looking old man; perhaps self-indulgent you might guess. The son was strikingly handsome, and knew it. His dress was neat and well appointed, and his manners far more gentlemanly than his father's. He was the only son, and his sisters were proud of him; his father and mother were proud of him: he could not set up his judgment against theirs; he was proud of himself. The door opened and in bounded Amy, the sweet youngest daughter of the house, a lovely girl of sixteen, fresh and glowing, and bright as a rosebud. She was too young to go to assemblies, at which her father rejoiced, for he had little Amy with her pretty jokes, and her bird-like songs, and her playful caresses all the evening to amuse him in his loneliness; and she was not too much tired, like Sophy and Helen, to give him her sweet company at breakfast the next morning. He submitted willingly while she blinded him with her hands, and kissed his rough red face all over. She took his newspaper away after a little pretended resistance, and would not allow her brother Harry to go on with his review. "I'm the only lady this morning, papa, so you know you must make a great deal of me." "My darling, I think you have your own way always, whether you're the only lady or not." "Yes, papa, you're pretty good and obedient, I must say that; but I'm sorry to say Harry is very naughty, and does not do what I tell him; do you, Harry?" "I'm sure I don't know what you mean to accuse me of, Amy; I expected praise and not blame; for did not I get you that eau de Portugal from town, that you could not meet with at Hughes', you little ungrateful puss?" "Did you! Oh, sweet Harry; you're as sweet as eau de Portugal yourself; you're almost as good as papa; but still you know you did go and forget to ask Bigland for that rose, that new rose they say he has got." "No, Amy, I did not forget. I asked him, and he has got the Rose, _sans reproche_; but do you know, little Miss Extravagance, a very small one is half-a-guinea?" "Oh, I don't mind. Papa will give it me, won't you, dear father? He knows his little daughter can't live without flowers and scents." Mr. Carson tried to refuse his darling, but she coaxed him into acquiescence, saying she must have it, it was one of her necessaries. Life was not worth having without flowers. "Then, Amy," said her brother, "try and be content with peonies and dandelions." "Oh, you wretch! I don't call them flowers. Besides, you're every bit as extravagant. Who gave half-a-crown for a bunch of lilies of the valley at Yates', a month ago, and then would not let his poor little sister have them, though she went on her knees to beg them? Answer me that, Master Hal." "Not on compulsion," replied her brother, smiling with his mouth, while his eyes had an irritated expression, and he went first red, then pale, with vexed embarrassment. "If you please, sir," said a servant, entering the room, "here's one of the mill people wanting to see you; his name is Wilson, he says." "I'll come to him directly; stay, tell him to come in here." Amy danced off into the conservatory which opened out of the room, before the gaunt, pale, unwashed, unshaven weaver was ushered in. There he stood at the door, sleeking his hair with old country habit, and every now and then stealing a glance round at the splendour of the apartment. "Well, Wilson, and what do you want to-day, man?" "Please, sir, Davenport's ill of the fever, and I'm come to know if you've got an Infirmary order for him?" "Davenport--Davenport; who is the fellow? I don't know the name." "He's worked in your factory better nor three year, sir." "Very likely; I don't pretend to know the names of the men I employ; that I leave to the overlooker. So he's ill, eh?" "Ay, sir, he's very bad; we want to get him in at the fever wards. "I doubt if I have an in-patient's order to spare; they're always wanted for accidents, you know. But I'll give you an out-patient's, and welcome." So saying, he rose up, unlocked a drawer, pondered a minute, and then gave Wilson an out-patient's order to be presented the following Monday. Monday! How many days there were before Monday! Meanwhile, the younger Mr. Carson had ended his review, and began to listen to what was going on. He finished his breakfast, got up, and pulled five shillings out of his pocket, which he gave to Wilson as he passed him, for the "poor fellow." He went past quickly, and calling for his horse, mounted gaily, and rode away. He was anxious to be in time to have a look and a smile from lovely Mary Barton, as she went to Miss Simmonds'. But to-day he was to be disappointed. Wilson left the house, not knowing whether to be pleased or grieved. It was long to Monday, but they had all spoken kindly to him, and who could tell if they might not remember this, and do something before Monday. Besides, the cook, who, when she had had time to think, after breakfast was sent in, had noticed his paleness, had had meat and bread ready to put in his hand when he came out of the parlour; and a full stomach makes every one of us more hopeful. When he reached Berry Street, he had persuaded himself he bore good news, and felt almost elated in his heart. But it fell when he opened the cellar-door, and saw Barton and the wife both bending over the sick man's couch with awe-struck, saddened look. "Come here," said Barton. "There's a change comed over him sin' yo left, is there not?" Wilson looked. The flesh was sunk, the features prominent, bony, and rigid. The fearful clay-colour of death was over all. But the eyes were open and sensible, though the films of the grave were settling upon them. "He wakened fra his sleep, as yo left him in, and began to mutter and moan; but he soon went off again, and we never knew he were awake till he called his wife, but now she's here he's gotten nought to say to her." Most probably, as they all felt, he could not speak, for his strength was fast ebbing. They stood round him still and silent; even the wife checked her sobs, though her heart was like to break. She held her child to her breast, to try and keep him quiet. Their eyes were all fixed on the yet living one, whose moments of life were passing so rapidly away. At length he brought (with jerking, convulsive effort) his two hands into the attitude of prayer. They saw his lips move, and bent to catch the words, which came in gasps, and not in tones. "Oh Lord God! I thank thee, that the hard struggle of living is over." "Oh, Ben! Ben!" wailed forth his wife, "have you no thought for me? Oh, Ben! Ben! do say one word to help me through life." He could not speak again. The trump of the archangel would set his tongue free; but not a word more would it utter till then. Yet he heard, he understood, and though sight failed, he moved his hand gropingly over the covering. They knew what he meant, and guided it to her head, bowed and hidden in her hands, when she had sunk in her woe. It rested there, with a feeble pressure of endearment. The face grew beautiful, as the soul neared God. A peace beyond understanding came over it. The hand was a heavy, stiff weight on the wife's head. No more grief or sorrow for him. They reverently laid out the corpse--Wilson fetching his only spare shirt to array it in. The wife still lay hidden in the clothes, in a stupor of agony. There was a knock at the door, and Barton went to open it. It was Mary, who had received a message from her father, through a neighbour, telling her where he was; and she had set out early to come and have a word with him before her day's work; but some errands she had to do for Miss Simmonds had detained her until now. "Come in, wench!" said her father. "Try if thou canst comfort yon poor, poor woman, kneeling down there. God help her." Mary did not know what to say, or how to comfort; but she knelt down by her, and put her arm round her neck, and in a little while fell to crying herself so bitterly, that the source of tears was opened by sympathy in the widow, and her full heart was, for a time, relieved. And Mary forgot all purposed meeting with her gay lover, Harry Carson; forgot Miss Simmonds' errands, and her anger, in the anxious desire to comfort the poor lone woman. Never had her sweet face looked more angelic, never had her gentle voice seemed so musical as when she murmured her broken sentences of comfort. "Oh, don't cry so, dear Mrs. Davenport, pray don't take on so. Sure he's gone where he'll never know care again. Yes, I know how lonesome you must feel; but think of your children. Oh! we'll all help to earn food for 'em. Think how sorry _he'd_ be, if he sees you fretting so. Don't cry so, please don't." And she ended by crying herself, as passionately as the poor widow. It was agreed that the town must bury him; he had paid to a burial club as long as he could; but by a few weeks' omission, he had forfeited his claim to a sum of money now. Would Mrs. Davenport and the little child go home with Mary? The latter brightened up as she urged this plan; but no! where the poor, fondly loved remains were, there would the mourner be; and all that they could do was to make her as comfortable as their funds would allow, and to beg a neighbour to look in and say a word at times. So she was left alone with her dead, and they went to work that had work, and he who had none, took upon him the arrangements for the funeral. Mary had many a scolding from Miss Simmonds that day for her absence of mind. To be sure Miss Simmonds was much put out by Mary's non-appearance in the morning with certain bits of muslin, and shades of silk which were wanted to complete a dress to be worn that night; but it was true enough that Mary did not mind what she was about; she was too busy planning how her old black gown (her best when her mother died) might be spunged, and turned, and lengthened into something like decent mourning for the widow. And when she went home at night (though it was very late, as a sort of retribution for her morning's negligence), she set to work at once, and was so busy, and so glad over her task, that she had, every now and then, to check herself in singing merry ditties, that she felt little accorded with the sewing on which she was engaged. So when the funeral day came, Mrs. Davenport was neatly arrayed in black, a satisfaction to her poor heart in the midst of her sorrow. Barton and Wilson both accompanied her, as she led her two elder boys, and followed the coffin. It was a simple walking funeral, with nothing to grate on the feelings of any; far more in accordance with its purpose, to my mind, than the gorgeous hearses, and nodding plumes, which form the grotesque funeral pomp of respectable people. There was no "rattling the bones over the stones," of the pauper's funeral. Decently and quietly was he followed to the grave by one determined to endure her woe meekly for his sake. The only mark of pauperism attendant on the burial concerned the living and joyous, far more than the dead, or the sorrowful. When they arrived in the churchyard, they halted before a raised and handsome tombstone; in reality a wooden mockery of stone respectabilities which adorned the burial-ground. It was easily raised in a very few minutes, and below was the grave in which pauper bodies were piled until within a foot or two of the surface; when the soil was shovelled over, and stamped down, and the wooden cover went to do temporary duty over another hole. [19] But little they recked of this who now gave up their dead. [Footnote 19: The case, to my certain knowledge, in one churchyard in Manchester. There may be more.] CHAPTER VII. JEM WILSON'S REPULSE. "How infinite the wealth of love and hope Garnered in these same tiny treasure-houses! And oh! what bankrupts in the world we feel, When Death, like some remorseless creditor, Seizes on all we fondly thought our own!" "THE TWINS." The ghoul-like fever was not to be braved with impunity, and baulked of its prey. The widow had reclaimed her children; her neighbours, in the good Samaritan sense of the word, had paid her little arrears of rent, and made her a few shillings beforehand with the world. She determined to flit from that cellar to another less full of painful associations, less haunted by mournful memories. The board, not so formidable as she had imagined, had inquired into her case; and, instead of sending her to Stoke Claypole, her husband's Buckinghamshire parish, as she had dreaded, had agreed to pay her rent. So food for four mouths was all she was now required to find; only for three she would have said; for herself and the unweaned child were but reckoned as one in her calculation. She had a strong heart, now her bodily strength had been recruited by a week or two of food, and she would not despair. So she took in some little children to nurse, who brought their daily food with them, which she cooked for them, without wronging their helplessness of a crumb; and when she had restored them to their mothers at night, she set to work at plain sewing, "seam, and gusset, and band," and sat thinking how she might best cheat the factory inspector, and persuade him that her strong, big, hungry Ben was above thirteen. Her plan of living was so far arranged, when she heard, with keen sorrow, that Wilson's twin lads were ill of the fever. They had never been strong. They were like many a pair of twins, and seemed to have but one life divided between them. One life, one strength, and in this instance, I might almost say, one brain; for they were helpless, gentle, silly children, but not the less dear to their parents and to their strong, active, manly, elder brother. They were late on their feet, late in talking, late every way; had to be nursed and cared for when other lads of their age were tumbling about in the street, and losing themselves, and being taken to the police-office miles away from home. Still want had never yet come in at the door to make love for these innocents fly out at the window. Nor was this the case even now, when Jem Wilson's earnings, and his mother's occasional charrings were barely sufficient to give all the family their fill of food. But when the twins, after ailing many days, and caring little for their meat, fell sick on the same afternoon, with the same heavy stupor of suffering, the three hearts that loved them so, each felt, though none acknowledged to the other, that they had little chance for life. It was nearly a week before the tale of their illness spread as far as the court where the Wilsons had once dwelt, and the Bartons yet lived. Alice had heard of the illness of her little nephews several days before, and had locked her cellar door, and gone off straight to her brother's house, in Ancoats; but she was often absent for days, sent for, as her neighbours knew, to help in some sudden emergency of illness or distress, so that occasioned no surprise. Margaret met Jem Wilson several days after his brothers were seriously ill, and heard from him the state of things at his home. She told Mary of it as she entered the court late that evening; and Mary listened with saddened heart to the strange contrast which such woeful tidings presented to the gay and loving words she had been hearing on her walk home. She blamed herself for being so much taken up with visions of the golden future, that she had lately gone but seldom on Sunday afternoons, or other leisure time, to see Mrs. Wilson, her mother's friend; and with hasty purpose of amendment she only stayed to leave a message for her father with the next-door neighbour, and then went off at a brisk pace on her way to the house of mourning. She stopped with her hand on the latch of the Wilsons' door, to still her beating heart, and listened to the hushed quiet within. She opened the door softly: there sat Mrs. Wilson in the old rocking-chair, with one sick, death-like boy lying on her knee, crying without let or pause, but softly, gently, as fearing to disturb the troubled, gasping child; while behind her, old Alice let her fast-dropping tears fall down on the dead body of the other twin, which she was laying out on a board, placed on a sort of sofa-settee in a corner of the room. Over the child, which yet breathed, the father bent, watching anxiously for some ground of hope, where hope there was none. Mary stepped slowly and lightly across to Alice. "Ay, poor lad! God has taken him early, Mary." Mary could not speak; she did not know what to say; it was so much worse than she expected. At last she ventured to whisper, "Is there any chance for the other one, think you?" Alice shook her head, and told with a look that she believed there was none. She next endeavoured to lift the little body, and carry it to its old accustomed bed in its parents' room. But earnest as the father was in watching the yet-living, he had eyes and ears for all that concerned the dead, and sprang gently up, and took his dead son on his hard couch in his arms with tender strength, and carried him upstairs as if afraid of wakening him. The other child gasped longer, louder, with more of effort. "We mun get him away from his mother. He cannot die while she's wishing him." "Wishing him?" said Mary, in a tone of inquiry. "Ay; donno ye know what wishing means? There's none can die in the arms of those who are wishing them sore to stay on earth. The soul o' them as holds them won't let the dying soul go free; so it has a hard struggle for the quiet of death. We mun get him away fra' his mother, or he'll have a hard death, poor lile [20] fellow." [Footnote 20: "Lile," a north-country word for "little." "Wit _leil_ labour to live."--_Piers Ploughman._] So without circumlocution she went and offered to take the sinking child. But the mother would not let him go, and looking in Alice's face with brimming and imploring eyes, declared in earnest whispers, that she was not wishing him, that she would fain have him released from his suffering. Alice and Mary stood by with eyes fixed on the poor child, whose struggles seemed to increase, till at last his mother said with a choking voice, "May happen [21] yo'd better take him, Alice; I believe my heart's wishing him a' this while, for I cannot, no, I cannot bring mysel to let my two childer go in one day; I cannot help longing to keep him, and yet he sha'not suffer longer for me." [Footnote 21: "May happen," perhaps.] She bent down, and fondly, oh! with what passionate fondness, kissed her child, and then gave him up to Alice, who took him with tender care. Nature's struggles were soon exhausted, and he breathed his little life away in peace. Then the mother lifted up her voice and wept. Her cries brought her husband down to try with his aching heart to comfort hers. Again Alice laid out the dead, Mary helping with reverent fear. The father and mother carried him up-stairs to the bed, where his little brother lay in calm repose. Mary and Alice drew near the fire, and stood in quiet sorrow for some time. Then Alice broke the silence by saying, "It will be bad news for Jem, poor fellow, when he comes home." "Where is he?" asked Mary. "Working over-hours at th' shop. They'n getten a large order fra' forrin parts; and yo' know, Jem mun work, though his heart's well-nigh breaking for these poor laddies." Again they were silent in thought, and again Alice spoke first. "I sometimes think the Lord is against planning. Whene'er I plan over-much, He is sure to send and mar all my plans, as if He would ha' me put the future into His hands. Afore Christmas-time I was as full as full could be, of going home for good and all; yo' han heard how I've wished it this terrible long time. And a young lass from behind Burton came into place in Manchester last Martinmas; so after awhile, she had a Sunday out, and she comes to me, and tells me some cousins o' mine bid her find me out, and say how glad they should be to ha' me to bide wi' 'em, and look after th' childer, for they'n getten a big farm, and she's a deal to do among th' cows. So many a winter's night did I lie awake and think, that please God, come summer, I'd bid George and his wife good bye, and go home at last. Little did I think how God Almighty would baulk me, for not leaving my days in His hands, who had led me through the wilderness hitherto. Here's George out o' work, and more cast down than ever I seed him; wanting every chip o' comfort he can get, e'en afore this last heavy stroke; and now I'm thinking the Lord's finger points very clear to my fit abiding place; and I'm sure if George and Jane can say 'His will be done,' it's no more than what I'm beholden to do." So saying, she fell to tidying the room, removing as much as she could every vestige of sickness; making up the fire, and setting on the kettle for a cup of tea for her sister-in-law, whose low moans and sobs were occasionally heard in the room below. Mary helped her in all these little offices. They were busy in this way when the door was softly opened, and Jem came in, all grimed and dirty from his night-work, his soiled apron wrapped round his middle, in guise and apparel in which he would have been sorry at another time to have been seen by Mary. But just now he hardly saw her; he went straight up to Alice, and asked how the little chaps were. They had been a shade better at dinner-time, and he had been working away through the long afternoon, and far into the night, in the belief that they had taken the turn. He had stolen out during the half-hour allowed at the works for tea, to buy them an orange or two, which now puffed out his jacket-pocket. He would make his aunt speak; he would not understand her shakes of the head and fast coursing tears. "They're both gone," said she. "Dead!" "Ay! poor fellows. They took worse about two o'clock. Joe went first, as easy as a lamb, and Will died harder like." "Both!" "Ay, lad! both. The Lord has ta'en them from some evil to come, or He would na ha' made choice o' them. Ye may rest sure o' that." Jem went to the cupboard, and quietly extricated from his pocket the oranges he had bought. But he stayed long there, and at last his sturdy frame shook with his strong agony. The two women were frightened, as women always are, on witnessing a man's overpowering grief. They cried afresh in company. Mary's heart melted within her as she witnessed Jem's sorrow, and she stepped gently up to the corner where he stood, with his back turned to them, and putting her hand softly on his arm, said, "Oh, Jem, don't give way so; I cannot bear to see you." Jem felt a strange leap of joy in his heart, and knew the power she had of comforting him. He did not speak, as though fearing to destroy by sound or motion the happiness of that moment, when her soft hand's touch thrilled through his frame, and her silvery voice was whispering tenderness in his ear. Yes! it might be very wrong; he could almost hate himself for it; with death and woe so surrounding him, it yet was happiness, was bliss, to be so spoken to by Mary. "Don't, Jem, please don't," whispered she again, believing that his silence was only another form of grief. He could not contain himself. He took her hand in his firm yet trembling grasp, and said, in tones that instantly produced a revulsion in her mood, "Mary, I almost loathe myself when I feel I would not give up this minute, when my brothers lie dead, and father and mother are in such trouble, for all my life that's past and gone. And, Mary (as she tried to release her hand), you know what makes me feel so blessed." She did know--he was right there. But as he turned to catch a look at her sweet face, he saw that it expressed unfeigned distress, almost amounting to vexation; a dread of him, that he thought was almost repugnance. He let her hand go, and she quickly went away to Alice's side. "Fool that I was--nay, wretch that I was--to let myself take this time of trouble to tell her how I loved her; no wonder that she turns away from such a selfish beast." Partly to relieve her from his presence, and partly from natural desire, and partly, perhaps, from a penitent wish to share to the utmost his parents' sorrow, he soon went up-stairs to the chamber of death. Mary mechanically helped Alice in all the duties she performed through the remainder of that long night, but she did not see Jem again. He remained up-stairs until after the early dawn showed Mary that she need have no fear of going home through the deserted and quiet streets, to try and get a little sleep before work hour. So leaving kind messages to George and Jane Wilson, and hesitating whether she might dare to send a few kind words to Jem, and deciding that she had better not, she stepped out into the bright morning light, so fresh a contrast to the darkened room where death had been. "They had Another morn than ours." Mary lay down on her bed in her clothes; and whether it was this, or the broad daylight that poured in through the sky-window, or whether it was over-excitement, it was long before she could catch a wink of sleep. Her thoughts ran on Jem's manner and words; not but what she had known the tale they told for many a day; but still she wished he had not put it so plainly. "Oh dear," said she to herself, "I wish he would not mistake me so; I never dare to speak a common word o' kindness, but his eye brightens and his cheek flushes. It's very hard on me; for father and George Wilson are old friends; and Jem and I ha' known each other since we were quite children. I cannot think what possesses me, that I must always be wanting to comfort him when he's downcast, and that I must go meddling wi' him to-night, when sure enough it was his aunt's place to speak to him. I don't care for him, and yet, unless I'm always watching myself, I'm speaking to him in a loving voice. I think I cannot go right, for I either check myself till I'm downright cross to him, or else I speak just natural, and that's too kind and tender by half. And I'm as good as engaged to be married to another; and another far handsomer than Jem; only I think I like Jem's face best for all that; liking's liking, and there's no help for it. Well, when I'm Mrs. Harry Carson, may happen I can put some good fortune in Jem's way. But will he thank me for it? He's rather savage at times, that I can see, and perhaps kindness from me, when I'm another's, will only go against the grain. I'll not plague myself wi' thinking any more about him, that I won't." So she turned on her pillow, and fell asleep, and dreamt of what was often in her waking thoughts; of the day when she should ride from church in her carriage, with wedding-bells ringing, and take up her astonished father, and drive away from the old dim work-a-day court for ever, to live in a grand house, where her father should have newspapers, and pamphlets, and pipes, and meat dinners every day,--and all day long if he liked. Such thoughts mingled in her predilection for the handsome young Mr. Carson, who, unfettered by work-hours, let scarcely a day pass without contriving a meeting with the beautiful little milliner he had first seen while lounging in a shop where his sisters were making some purchases, and afterwards never rested till he had freely, though respectfully, made her acquaintance in her daily walks. He was, to use his own expression to himself, quite infatuated by her, and was restless each day till the time came when he had a chance, and, of late, more than a chance of meeting her. There was something of keen practical shrewdness about her, which contrasted very bewitchingly with the simple, foolish, unworldly ideas she had picked up from the romances which Miss Simmonds' young ladies were in the habit of recommending to each other. Yes! Mary was ambitious, and did not favour Mr. Carson the less because he was rich and a gentleman. The old leaven, infused years ago by her aunt Esther, fermented in her little bosom, and perhaps all the more, for her father's aversion to the rich and the gentle. Such is the contrariness of the human heart, from Eve downwards, that we all, in our old-Adam state, fancy things forbidden sweetest. So Mary dwelt upon and enjoyed the idea of some day becoming a lady, and doing all the elegant nothings appertaining to ladyhood. It was a comfort to her, when scolded by Miss Simmonds, to think of the day when she would drive up to the door in her own carriage, to order her gowns from the hasty tempered yet kind dressmaker. It was a pleasure to her to hear the general admiration of the two elder Miss Carsons, acknowledged beauties in ball-room and street, on horseback and on foot, and to think of the time when she should ride and walk with them in loving sisterhood. But the best of her plans, the holiest, that which in some measure redeemed the vanity of the rest, were those relating to her father; her dear father, now oppressed with care, and always a disheartened, gloomy person. How she would surround him with every comfort she could devise (of course, he was to live with them), till he should acknowledge riches to be very pleasant things, and bless his lady-daughter! Every one who had shown her kindness in her low estate should then be repaid a hundred-fold. Such were the castles in air, the Alnaschar-visions in which Mary indulged, and which she was doomed in after days to expiate with many tears. Meanwhile, her words--or, even more, her tones--would maintain their hold on Jem Wilson's memory. A thrill would yet come over him when he remembered how her hand had rested on his arm. The thought of her mingled with all his grief, and it was profound, for the loss of his brothers. CHAPTER VIII. MARGARET'S DEBUT AS A PUBLIC SINGER. "Deal gently with them, they have much endured. Scoff not at their fond hopes and earnest plans, Though they may seem to thee wild dreams and fancies. Perchance, in the rough school of stern experience, They've something learned which Theory does not teach; Or if they greatly err, deal gently still, And let their error but the stronger plead 'Give us the light and guidance that we need!'" LOVE THOUGHTS. One Sunday afternoon, about three weeks after that mournful night, Jem Wilson set out with the ostensible purpose of calling on John Barton. He was dressed in his best, his Sunday suit of course; while his face glittered with the scrubbing he had bestowed on it. His dark black hair had been arranged and re-arranged before the household looking-glass, and in his button-hole he stuck a narcissus (a sweet Nancy is its pretty Lancashire name), hoping it would attract Mary's notice, so that he might have the delight of giving it her. It was a bad beginning of his visit of happiness that Mary saw him some minutes before he came into her father's house. She was sitting at the end of the dresser, with the little window-blind drawn on one side, in order that she might see the passers-by, in the intervals of reading her Bible, which lay open before her. So she watched all the greeting a friend gave Jem; she saw the face of condolence, the sympathetic shake of the hand, and had time to arrange her own face and manner before Jem came in, which he did, as if he had eyes for no one but her father, who sat smoking his pipe by the fire, while he read an old "Northern Star," borrowed from a neighbouring public-house. Then he turned to Mary, who, he felt by the sure instinct of love, by which almost his body thought, was present. Her hands were busy adjusting her dress; a forced and unnecessary movement Jem could not help thinking. Her accost was quiet and friendly, if grave; she felt that she reddened like a rose, and wished she could prevent it, while Jem wondered if her blushes arose from fear, or anger, or love. She was very cunning, I am afraid. She pretended to read diligently, and not to listen to a word that was said, while, in fact, she heard all sounds, even to Jem's long, deep sighs, which wrung her heart. At last she took up her Bible, and as if their conversation disturbed her, went up-stairs to her little room. And she had scarcely spoken a word to Jem; scarcely looked at him; never noticed his beautiful sweet Nancy, which only awaited her least word of praise to be hers! He did not know--that pang was spared--that in her little dingy bed-room, stood a white jug, filled with a luxuriant bunch of early spring roses, making the whole room fragrant and bright. They were the gift of her richer lover. So Jem had to go on sitting with John Barton, fairly caught in his own trap, and had to listen to his talk, and answer him as best he might. "There's the right stuff in this here 'Star,' and no mistake. Such a right-down piece for short hours." "At the same rate of wages as now?" asked Jem. "Ay, ay! else where's the use? It's only taking out o' the masters' pocket what they can well afford. Did I ever tell yo what th' Infirmary chap let me into, many a year agone?" "No," said Jem, listlessly. "Well! yo must know I were in th' Infirmary for a fever, and times were rare and bad; and there be good chaps there to a man, while he's wick, [22] whate'er they may be about cutting him up at after. [23] So when I were better o' th' fever, but weak as water, they says to me, says they, 'If yo can write, yo may stay in a week longer, and help our surgeon wi' sorting his papers; and we'll take care yo've your belly full o' meat and drink. Yo'll be twice as strong in a week.' So there wanted but one word to that bargain. So I were set to writing and copying; th' writing I could do well enough, but they'd such queer ways o' spelling that I'd ne'er been used to, that I'd to look first at th' copy and then at my letters, for all the world like a cock picking up grains o' corn. But one thing startled me e'en then, and I thought I'd make bold to ask the surgeon the meaning o't. I've gotten no head for numbers, but this I know, that by _far th' greater part o' th' accidents as comed in, happened in th' last two hours o' work_, when folk getten tired and careless. Th' surgeon said it were all true, and that he were going to bring that fact to light." [Footnote 22: "Wick," alive. Anglo-Saxon, cwic. "The _quick_ and the dead."--_Book of Common Prayer._] [Footnote 23: "At after." "_At after souper goth this noble king._" _Chaucer; The Squire's Tale._] Jem was pondering Mary's conduct; but the pause made him aware he ought to utter some civil listening noise; so he said "Very true." "Ay, it's true enough, my lad, that we're sadly over-borne, and worse will come of it afore long. Block-printers is going to strike; they'n getten a bang-up union, as won't let 'em be put upon. But there's many a thing will happen afore long, as folk don't expect. Yo may take my word for that, Jem." Jem was very willing to take it, but did not express the curiosity he should have done. So John Barton thought he'd try another hint or two. "Working folk won't be ground to the dust much longer. We'n a' had as much to bear as human nature can bear. So, if th' masters can't do us no good, and they say they can't, we mun try higher folk." Still Jem was not curious. He gave up hope of seeing Mary again by her own good free will; and the next best thing would be, to be alone to think of her. So, muttering something which he meant to serve as an excuse for his sudden departure, he hastily wished John good afternoon, and left him to resume his pipe and his politics. For three years past, trade had been getting worse and worse, and the price of provisions higher and higher. This disparity between the amount of the earnings of the working classes and the price of their food, occasioned, in more cases than could well be imagined, disease and death. Whole families went through a gradual starvation. They only wanted a Dante to record their sufferings. And yet even his words would fall short of the awful truth; they could only present an outline of the tremendous facts of the destitution that surrounded thousands upon thousands in the terrible years 1839, 1840, and 1841. Even philanthropists who had studied the subject, were forced to own themselves perplexed in their endeavour to ascertain the real causes of the misery; the whole matter was of so complicated a nature, that it became next to impossible to understand it thoroughly. It need excite no surprise then to learn that a bad feeling between working-men and the upper classes became very strong in this season of privation. The indigence and sufferings of the operatives induced a suspicion in the minds of many of them, that their legislators, their magistrates, their employers, and even the ministers of religion, were, in general, their oppressors and enemies; and were in league for their prostration and enthralment. The most deplorable and enduring evil that arose out of the period of commercial depression to which I refer, was this feeling of alienation between the different classes of society. It is so impossible to describe, or even faintly to picture, the state of distress which prevailed in the town at that time, that I will not attempt it; and yet I think again that surely, in a Christian land, it was not known even so feebly as words could tell it, or the more happy and fortunate would have thronged with their sympathy and their aid. In many instances the sufferers wept first, and then they cursed. Their vindictive feelings exhibited themselves in rabid politics. And when I hear, as I have heard, of the sufferings and privations of the poor, of provision shops where ha'porths of tea, sugar, butter, and even flour, were sold to accommodate the indigent,--of parents sitting in their clothes by the fire-side during the whole night for seven weeks together, in order that their only bed and bedding might be reserved for the use of their large family,--of others sleeping upon the cold hearth-stone for weeks in succession, without adequate means of providing themselves with food or fuel (and this in the depth of winter),--of others being compelled to fast for days together, uncheered by any hope of better fortune, living, moreover, or rather starving, in a crowded garret, or damp cellar, and gradually sinking under the pressure of want and despair into a premature grave; and when this has been confirmed by the evidence of their care-worn looks, their excited feelings, and their desolate homes,--can I wonder that many of them, in such times of misery and destitution, spoke and acted with ferocious precipitation? An idea was now springing up among the operatives, that originated with the Chartists, but which came at last to be cherished as a darling child by many and many a one. They could not believe that government knew of their misery; they rather chose to think it possible that men could voluntarily assume the office of legislators for a nation, ignorant of its real state; as who should make domestic rules for the pretty behaviour of children, without caring to know that those children had been kept for days without food. Besides, the starving multitudes had heard, that the very existence of their distress had been denied in Parliament; and though they felt this strange and inexplicable, yet the idea that their misery had still to be revealed in all its depths, and that then some remedy would be found, soothed their aching hearts, and kept down their rising fury. So a petition was framed, and signed by thousands in the bright spring days of 1839, imploring Parliament to hear witnesses who could testify to the unparalleled destitution of the manufacturing districts. Nottingham, Sheffield, Glasgow, Manchester, and many other towns, were busy appointing delegates to convey this petition, who might speak, not merely of what they had seen, and had heard, but from what they had borne and suffered. Life-worn, gaunt, anxious, hunger-stamped men, were those delegates. One of them was John Barton. He would have been ashamed to own the flutter of spirits his appointment gave him. There was the childish delight of seeing London--that went a little way, and but a little way. There was the vain idea of speaking out his notions before so many grand folk--that went a little further; and last, there was the really pure gladness of heart, arising from the idea that he was one of those chosen to be instruments in making known the distresses of the people, and consequently in procuring them some grand relief, by means of which they should never suffer want or care any more. He hoped largely, but vaguely, of the results of his expedition. An argosy of the precious hopes of many otherwise despairing creatures, was that petition to be heard concerning their sufferings. The night before the morning on which the Manchester delegates were to leave for London, Barton might be said to hold a levée, so many neighbours came dropping in. Job Legh had early established himself and his pipe by John Barton's fire, not saying much, but puffing away, and imagining himself of use in adjusting the smoothing-irons that hung before the fire, ready for Mary when she should want them. As for Mary, her employment was the same as that of Beau Tibbs' wife, "just washing her father's two shirts," in the pantry back-kitchen; for she was anxious about his appearance in London. (The coat had been redeemed, though the silk handkerchief was forfeited.) The door stood open, as usual, between the houseplace and back-kitchen, so she gave her greeting to their friends as they entered. "So, John, yo're bound for London, are yo?" said one. "Ay, I suppose I mun go," answered John, yielding to necessity as it were. "Well, there's many a thing I'd like yo to speak on to the Parliament people. Thou'lt not spare 'em, John, I hope. Tell 'em our minds; how we're thinking we've been clemmed long enough, and we donnot see whatten good they'n been doing, if they can't give us what we're all crying for sin' the day we were born." "Ay, ay! I'll tell 'em that, and much more to it, when it gets to my turn; but thou knows there's many will have their word afore me." "Well, thou'lt speak at last. Bless thee, lad, do ask 'em to make th' masters break th' machines. There's never been good times sin' spinning-jennies came up." "Machines is th' ruin of poor folk," chimed in several voices. "For my part," said a shivering, half-clad man, who crept near the fire, as if ague-stricken, "I would like thee to tell 'em to pass th' Short-hours Bill. Flesh and blood gets wearied wi' so much work; why should factory hands work so much longer nor other trades? Just ask 'em that, Barton, will ye?" Barton was saved the necessity of answering, by the entrance of Mrs. Davenport, the poor widow he had been so kind to; she looked half-fed, and eager, but was decently clad. In her hand she brought a little newspaper parcel, which she took to Mary, who opened it, and then called out, dangling a shirt collar from her soapy fingers: "See, father, what a dandy you'll be in London! Mrs. Davenport has brought you this; made new cut, all after the fashion.--Thank you for thinking on him." "Eh, Mary!" said Mrs. Davenport, in a low voice. "Whatten's all I can do, to what he's done for me and mine? But, Mary, sure I can help ye, for you'll be busy wi' this journey." "Just help me wring these out, and then I'll take 'em to th' mangle." So Mrs. Davenport became a listener to the conversation; and after a while joined in. "I'm sure, John Barton, if yo are taking messages to the Parliament folk, yo'll not object to telling 'em what a sore trial it is, this law o' theirs, keeping childer fra' factory work, whether they be weakly or strong. There's our Ben; why, porridge seems to go no way wi' him, he eats so much; and I han gotten no money to send him t' school, as I would like; and there he is, rampaging about th' streets a' day, getting hungrier and hungrier, and picking up a' manner o' bad ways; and th' inspector won't let him in to work in th' factory, because he's not right age; though he's twice as strong as Sankey's little ritling [24] of a lad, as works till he cries for his legs aching so, though he is right age, and better." [Footnote 24: "Ritling," probably a corruption of "ricketling," a child that suffers from the rickets--a weakling.] "I've one plan I wish to tell John Barton," said a pompous, careful-speaking man, "and I should like him for to lay it afore the Honourable House. My mother comed out o' Oxfordshire, and were under-laundry-maid in Sir Francis Dashwood's family; and when we were little ones, she'd tell us stories of their grandeur; and one thing she named were, that Sir Francis wore two shirts a day. Now he were all as one as a Parliament man; and many on 'em, I han no doubt, are like extravagant. Just tell 'em, John, do, that they'd be doing th' Lancashire weavers a great kindness, if they'd ha' their shirts a' made o' calico; 'twould make trade brisk, that would, wi' the power o' shirts they wear." Job Legh now put in his word. Taking the pipe out of his mouth, and addressing the last speaker, he said: "I'll tell ye what, Bill, and no offence, mind ye; there's but hundreds of them Parliament folk as wear so many shirts to their back; but there's thousands and thousands o' poor weavers as han only gotten one shirt i' th' world; ay, and don't know where t' get another when that rag's done, though they're turning out miles o' calico every day; and many a mile o't is lying in warehouses, stopping up trade for want o' purchasers. Yo take my advice, John Barton, and ask Parliament to set trade free, so as workmen can earn a decent wage, and buy their two, ay and three, shirts a-year; that would make weaving brisk." He put his pipe in his mouth again, and redoubled his puffing to make up for lost time. "I'm afeard, neighbours," said John Barton, "I've not much chance o' telling 'em all yo say; what I think on, is just speaking out about the distress that they say is nought. When they hear o' children born on wet flags, without a rag t' cover 'em, or a bit o' food for th' mother; when they hear of folk lying down to die i' th' streets, or hiding their want i' some hole o' a cellar till death come to set 'em free; and when they hear o' all this plague, pestilence, and famine, they'll surely do somewhat wiser for us than we can guess at now. Howe'er, I han no objection, if so be there's an opening, to speak up for what yo say; anyhow, I'll do my best, and yo see now, if better times don't come after Parliament knows all." Some shook their heads, but more looked cheery; and then one by one dropped off, leaving John and his daughter alone. "Didst thou mark how poorly Jane Wilson looked?" asked he, as they wound up their hard day's work by a supper eaten over the fire, which glowed and glimmered through the room, and formed their only light. "No, I can't say as I did. But she's never rightly held up her head since the twins died; and all along she has never been a strong woman." "Never sin' her accident. Afore that I mind her looking as fresh and likely a girl as e'er a one in Manchester." "What accident, father?" "She cotched [25] her side again a wheel. It were afore wheels were boxed up. It were just when she were to have been married, and many a one thought George would ha' been off his bargain; but I knew he wern't the chap for that trick. Pretty near the first place she went to when she were able to go about again, was th' Oud Church; poor wench, all pale and limping she went up the aisle, George holding her up as tender as a mother, and walking as slow as e'er he could, not to hurry her, though there were plenty enow of rude lads to cast their jests at him and her. Her face were white like a sheet when she came in church, but afore she got to th' altar she were all one flush. But for a' that it's been a happy marriage, and George has stuck by me through life like a brother. He'll never hold up his head again if he loses Jane. I didn't like her looks to-night." [Footnote 25: "Cotched," caught.] And so he went to bed, the fear of forthcoming sorrow to his friend mingling with his thoughts of to-morrow, and his hopes for the future. Mary watched him set off, with her hands over her eyes to shade them from the bright slanting rays of the morning sun, and then she turned into the house to arrange its disorder before going to her work. She wondered if she should like or dislike the evening and morning solitude; for several hours when the clock struck she thought of her father, and wondered where he was; she made good resolutions according to her lights; and by-and-bye came the distractions and events of the broad full day to occupy her with the present, and to deaden the memory of the absent. One of Mary's resolutions was, that she would not be persuaded or induced to see Mr. Harry Carson during her father's absence. There was something crooked in her conscience after all; for this very resolution seemed an acknowledgment that it was wrong to meet him at any time; and yet she had brought herself to think her conduct quite innocent and proper, for although unknown to her father, and certain, even did he know it, to fail of obtaining his sanction, she esteemed her love-meetings with Mr. Carson as sure to end in her father's good and happiness. But now that he was away, she would do nothing that he would disapprove of; no, not even though it was for his own good in the end. Now, amongst Miss Simmonds' young ladies was one who had been from the beginning a confidant in Mary's love affair, made so by Mr. Carson himself. He had felt the necessity of some third person to carry letters and messages, and to plead his cause when he was absent. In a girl named Sally Leadbitter he had found a willing advocate. She would have been willing to have embarked in a love-affair herself (especially a clandestine one), for the mere excitement of the thing; but her willingness was strengthened by sundry half-sovereigns, which from time to time Mr. Carson bestowed upon her. Sally Leadbitter was vulgar-minded to the last degree; never easy unless her talk was of love and lovers; in her eyes it was an honour to have had a long list of wooers. So constituted, it was a pity that Sally herself was but a plain, red-haired, freckled girl; never likely, one would have thought, to become a heroine on her own account. But what she lacked in beauty she tried to make up for by a kind of witty boldness, which gave her what her betters would have called piquancy. Considerations of modesty or propriety never checked her utterance of a good thing. She had just talent enough to corrupt others. Her very good-nature was an evil influence. They could not hate one who was so kind; they could not avoid one who was so willing to shield them from scrapes by any exertion of her own; whose ready fingers would at any time make up for their deficiencies, and whose still more convenient tongue would at any time invent for them. The Jews, or Mohammedans (I forget which), believe that there is one little bone of our body, one of the vertebræ, if I remember rightly, which will never decay and turn to dust, but will lie incorrupt and indestructible in the ground until the Last Day: this is the Seed of the Soul. The most depraved have also their Seed of the Holiness that shall one day overcome their evil, their one good quality, lurking hidden, but safe, among all the corrupt and bad. Sally's seed of the future soul was her love for her mother, an aged bedridden woman. For her she had self-denial; for her, her good-nature rose into tenderness; to cheer her lonely bed, her spirits, in the evenings when her body was often woefully tired, never flagged, but were ready to recount the events of the day, to turn them into ridicule, and to mimic, with admirable fidelity, any person gifted with an absurdity who had fallen under her keen eye. But the mother was lightly principled like Sally herself; nor was there need to conceal from her the reason why Mr. Carson gave her so much money. She chuckled with pleasure, and only hoped that the wooing would be long a-doing. Still neither she, nor her daughter, nor Harry Carson liked this resolution of Mary, not to see him during her father's absence. One evening (and the early summer evenings were long and bright now), Sally met Mr. Carson by appointment, to be charged with a letter for Mary, imploring her to see him, which Sally was to back with all her powers of persuasion. After parting from him she determined, as it was not so very late, to go at once to Mary's, and deliver the message and letter. She found Mary in great sorrow. She had just heard of George Wilson's sudden death: her old friend, her father's friend, Jem's father--all his claims came rushing upon her. Though not guarded from unnecessary sight or sound of death, as the children of the rich are, yet it had so often been brought home to her this last three or four months. It was so terrible thus to see friend after friend depart. Her father, too, who had dreaded Jane Wilson's death the evening before he set off. And she, the weakly, was left behind while the strong man was taken. At any rate the sorrow her father had so feared for him was spared. Such were the thoughts which came over her. She could not go to comfort the bereaved, even if comfort were in her power to give; for she had resolved to avoid Jem; and she felt that this of all others was not the occasion on which she could keep up a studiously cold manner. And in this shock of grief, Sally Leadbitter was the last person she wished to see. However, she rose to welcome her, betraying her tear-swollen face. "Well, I shall tell Mr. Carson to-morrow how you're fretting for him; it's no more nor he's doing for you, I can tell you." "For him, indeed!" said Mary, with a toss of her pretty head. "Ay, miss, for him! You've been sighing as if your heart would break now for several days, over your work; now arn't you a little goose not to go and see one who I am sure loves you as his life, and whom you love; 'How much, Mary?' 'This much,' as the children say" (opening her arms very wide). "Nonsense," said Mary, pouting; "I often think I don't love him at all." "And I'm to tell him that, am I, next time I see him?" asked Sally. "If you like," replied Mary. "I'm sure I don't care for that or any thing else now;" weeping afresh. But Sally did not like to be the bearer of any such news. She saw she had gone on the wrong tack, and that Mary's heart was too full to value either message or letter as she ought. So she wisely paused in their delivery, and said in a more sympathetic tone than she had heretofore used, "Do tell me, Mary, what's fretting you so? You know I never could abide to see you cry." "George Wilson's dropped down dead this afternoon," said Mary, fixing her eyes for one minute on Sally, and the next hiding her face in her apron as she sobbed anew. "Dear, dear! All flesh is grass; here to-day and gone to-morrow, as the Bible says. Still he was an old man, and not good for much; there's better folk than him left behind. Is th' canting old maid as was his sister alive yet?" "I don't know who you mean," said Mary, sharply; for she did know, and did not like to have her dear, simple Alice so spoken of. "Come, Mary, don't be so innocent. Is Miss Alice Wilson alive, then; will that please you? I haven't seen her hereabouts lately." "No, she's left living here. When the twins died she thought she could, may be, be of use to her sister, who was sadly cast down, and Alice thought she could cheer her up; at any rate she could listen to her when her heart grew overburdened; so she gave up her cellar and went to live with them." "Well, good go with her. I'd no fancy for her, and I'd no fancy for her making my pretty Mary into a Methodee." "She wasn't a Methodee, she was Church o' England." "Well, well, Mary, you're very particular. You know what I meant. Look, who is this letter from?" holding up Henry Carson's letter. "I don't know, and don't care," said Mary, turning very red. "My eye! as if I didn't know you did know and did care." "Well, give it me," said Mary, impatiently, and anxious in her present mood for her visitor's departure. Sally relinquished it unwillingly. She had, however, the pleasure of seeing Mary dimple and blush as she read the letter, which seemed to say the writer was not indifferent to her. "You must tell him I can't come," said Mary, raising her eyes at last. "I have said I won't meet him while father is away, and I won't." "But, Mary, he does so look for you. You'd be quite sorry for him, he's so put out about not seeing you. Besides you go when your father's at home, without letting on [26] to him, and what harm would there be in going now?" [Footnote 26: "Letting on," informing. In Anglo-Saxon, one meaning of "lætan" was "to admit;" and we say, to _let_ out a secret.] "Well, Sally! you know my answer, I won't; and I won't." "I'll tell him to come and see you himself some evening, instead o' sending me; he'd may be find you not so hard to deal with." Mary flashed up. "If he dares to come here while father's away, I'll call the neighbours in to turn him out, so don't be putting him up to that." "Mercy on us! one would think you were the first girl that ever had a lover; have you never heard what other girls do and think no shame of?" "Hush, Sally! that's Margaret Jennings at the door." And in an instant Margaret was in the room. Mary had begged Job Legh to let her come and sleep with her. In the uncertain fire-light you could not help noticing that she had the groping walk of a blind person. "Well, I must go, Mary," said Sally. "And that's your last word?" "Yes, yes; good-night." She shut the door gladly on her unwelcome visitor--unwelcome at that time at least. "Oh Margaret, have ye heard this sad news about George Wilson?" "Yes, that I have. Poor creatures, they've been sore tried lately. Not that I think sudden death so bad a thing; it's easy, and there's no terrors for him as dies. For them as survives it's very hard. Poor George! he were such a hearty looking man." "Margaret," said Mary, who had been closely observing her friend, "thou'rt very blind to-night, arn't thou? Is it wi' crying? Your eyes are so swollen and red." "Yes, dear! but not crying for sorrow. Han ye heard where I was last night?" "No; where?" "Look here." She held up a bright golden sovereign. Mary opened her large gray eyes with astonishment. "I'll tell you all how and about it. You see there's a gentleman lecturing on music at th' Mechanics', and he wants folk to sing his songs. Well, last night th' counter got a sore throat and couldn't make a note. So they sent for me. Jacob Butterworth had said a good word for me, and they asked me would I sing? You may think I was frightened, but I thought now or never, and said I'd do my best. So I tried o'er the songs wi' th' lecturer, and then th' managers told me I were to make myself decent and be there by seven." "And what did you put on?" asked Mary. "Oh, why didn't you come in for my pretty pink gingham?" "I did think on't; but you had na come home then. No! I put on my merino, as was turned last winter, and my white shawl, and did my hair pretty tidy; it did well enough. Well, but as I was saying, I went at seven. I couldn't see to read my music, but I took th' paper in wi' me, to ha' somewhat to do wi' my fingers. Th' folks' heads danced, as I stood as right afore 'em all as if I'd been going to play at ball wi' 'em. You may guess I felt squeamish, but mine weren't the first song, and th' music sounded like a friend's voice, telling me to take courage. So to make a long story short, when it were all o'er th' lecturer thanked me, and th' managers said as how there never was a new singer so applauded (for they'd clapped and stamped after I'd done, till I began to wonder how many pair o' shoes they'd get through a week at that rate, let alone their hands). So I'm to sing again o' Thursday; and I got a sovereign last night, and am to have half-a-sovereign every night th' lecturer is at th' Mechanics'." "Well, Margaret, I'm right glad to hear it." "And I don't think you've heard the best bit yet. Now that a way seemed opened to me, of not being a burden to any one, though it did please God to make me blind, I thought I'd tell grandfather. I only telled him about the singing and the sovereign last night, for I thought I'd not send him to bed wi' a heavy heart; but this morning I telled him all." "And how did he take it?" "He's not a man of many words; and it took him by surprise like." "I wonder at that; I've noticed it in your ways ever since you telled me." "Ay, that's it! If I'd not telled you, and you'd seen me every day, you'd not ha' noticed the little mite o' difference fra' day to day." "Well, but what did your grandfather say?" "Why, Mary," said Margaret, half smiling, "I'm a bit loath to tell yo, for unless yo knew grandfather's ways like me, yo'd think it strange. He were taken by surprise, and he said: 'Damn yo!' Then he began looking at his book as it were, and were very quiet, while I telled him all about it; how I'd feared, and how downcast I'd been; and how I were now reconciled to it, if it were th' Lord's will; and how I hoped to earn money by singing; and while I were talking, I saw great big tears come dropping on th' book; but in course I never let on that I saw 'em. Dear grandfather! and all day long he's been quietly moving things out o' my way, as he thought might trip me up, and putting things in my way, as he thought I might want; never knowing I saw and felt what he were doing; for, yo see, he thinks I'm out and out blind, I guess--as I shall be soon." Margaret sighed, in spite of her cheerful and relieved tone. Though Mary caught the sigh, she felt it was better to let it pass without notice, and began, with the tact which true sympathy rarely fails to supply, to ask a variety of questions respecting her friend's musical debut, which tended to bring out more distinctly how successful it had been. "Why, Margaret," at length she exclaimed, "thou'lt become as famous, may be, as that grand lady fra' London, as we seed one night driving up to th' concert room door in her carriage." "It looks very like it," said Margaret, with a smile. "And be sure, Mary, I'll not forget to give thee a lift now an' then when that comes about. Nay, who knows, if thou'rt a good girl, but mayhappen I may make thee my lady's maid! Wouldn't that be nice? So I'll e'en sing to mysel' th' beginning o' one o' my songs, 'An' ye shall walk in silk attire, An' siller hae to spare.'" "Nay, don't stop; or else give me something a bit more new, for somehow I never quite liked that part about thinking o' Donald mair." "Well, though I'm a bit tir'd, I don't care if I do. Before I come, I were practising well nigh upon two hours this one which I'm to sing o' Thursday. Th' lecturer said he were sure it would just suit me, and I should do justice to it; and I should be right sorry to disappoint him, he were so nice and encouraging like to me. Eh! Mary, what a pity there isn't more o' that way, and less scolding and rating i' th' world! It would go a vast deal further. Beside, some o' th' singers said they were a'most certain it were a song o' his own, because he were so fidgetty and particular about it, and so anxious I should give it th' proper expression. And that makes me care still more. Th' first verse, he said, were to be sung 'tenderly, but joyously!' I'm afraid I don't quite hit that, but I'll try. 'What a single word can do! Thrilling all the heart-strings through, Calling forth fond memories, Raining round hope's melodies, Steeping all in one bright hue-- What a single word can do!' Now it falls into th' minor key, and must be very sad like. I feel as if I could do that better than t'other. 'What a single word can do! Making life seem all untrue, Driving joy and hope away, Leaving not one cheering ray Blighting every flower that grew-- What a single word can do!'" Margaret certainly made the most of this little song. As a factory worker, listening outside, observed, "She spun it reet [27] fine!" And if she only sang it at the Mechanics' with half the feeling she put into it that night, the lecturer must have been hard to please, if he did not admit that his expectations were more than fulfilled. [Footnote 27: "Reet," right; often used for "very."] When it was ended, Mary's looks told more than words could have done what she thought of it; and partly to keep in a tear which would fain have rolled out, she brightened into a laugh, and said, "For certain, th' carriage is coming. So let us go and dream on it." CHAPTER IX. BARTON'S LONDON EXPERIENCES. "A life of self-indulgence is for us, A life of self-denial is for them; For us the streets, broad-built and populous, For them unhealthy corners, garrets dim, And cellars where the water-rat may swim! For us green paths refreshed by frequent rain, For them dark alleys where the dust lies grim! Not doomed by us to this appointed pain-- God made us rich and poor--of what do these complain?" MRS. NORTON'S "CHILD OF THE ISLANDS." The next evening it was a warm, pattering, incessant rain, just the rain to waken up the flowers. But in Manchester, where, alas! there are no flowers, the rain had only a disheartening and gloomy effect; the streets were wet and dirty, the drippings from the houses were wet and dirty, and the people were wet and dirty. Indeed, most kept within-doors; and there was an unusual silence of footsteps in the little paved courts. Mary had to change her clothes after her walk home; and had hardly settled herself before she heard some one fumbling at the door. The noise continued long enough to allow her to get up, and go and open it. There stood--could it be? yes it was, her father! Drenched and way-worn, there he stood! He came in with no word to Mary in return for her cheery and astonished greeting. He sat down by the fire in his wet things, unheeding. But Mary would not let him so rest. She ran up and brought down his working-day clothes, and went into the pantry to rummage up their little bit of provision while he changed by the fire, talking all the while as gaily as she could, though her father's depression hung like lead on her heart. For Mary, in her seclusion at Miss Simmonds',--where the chief talk was of fashions, and dress, and parties to be given, for which such and such gowns would be wanted, varied with a slight whispered interlude occasionally about love and lovers,--had not heard the political news of the day: that Parliament had refused to listen to the working-men, when they petitioned with all the force of their rough, untutored words to be heard concerning the distress which was riding, like the Conqueror on his Pale Horse, among the people; which was crushing their lives out of them, and stamping woe-marks over the land. When he had eaten and was refreshed, they sat in silence for some time; for Mary wished him to tell her what oppressed him so, yet durst not ask. In this she was wise; for when we are heavy laden in our hearts, it falls in better with our humour to reveal our case in our own way, and our own time. Mary sat on a stool at her father's feet in old childish guise, and stole her hand into his, while his sadness infected her, and she "caught the trick of grief, and sighed," she knew not why. "Mary, we mun speak to our God to hear us, for man will not hearken; no, not now, when we weep tears o' blood." In an instant Mary understood the fact, if not the details, that so weighed down her father's heart. She pressed his hand with silent sympathy. She did not know what to say, and was so afraid of speaking wrongly, that she was silent. But when his attitude had remained unchanged for more than half-an-hour, his eyes gazing vacantly and fixedly at the fire, no sound but now and then a deep drawn sigh to break the weary ticking of the clock, and the drip-drop from the roof without, Mary could bear it no longer. Any thing to rouse her father. Even bad news. "Father, do you know George Wilson's dead?" (Her hand was suddenly and almost violently compressed.) "He dropped down dead in Oxford Road yester morning. It's very sad, isn't it, father?" Her tears were ready to flow as she looked up in her father's face for sympathy. Still the same fixed look of despair, not varied by grief for the dead. "Best for him to die," he said, in a low voice. This was unbearable. Mary got up under pretence of going to tell Margaret that she need not come to sleep with her to-night, but really to ask Job Legh to come and cheer her father. She stopped outside their door. Margaret was practising her singing, and through the still night air her voice rang out like that of an angel. "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God." The old Hebrew prophetic words fell like dew on Mary's heart. She could not interrupt. She stood listening and "comforted," till the little buzz of conversation again began, and then entered and told her errand. Both grandfather and grand-daughter rose instantly to fulfil her request. "He's just tired out, Mary," said old Job. "He'll be a different man to-morrow." There is no describing the looks and tones that have power over an aching, heavy laden heart; but in an hour or so John Barton was talking away as freely as ever, though all his talk ran, as was natural, on the disappointment of his fond hope, of the forlorn hope of many. "Ay, London's a fine place," said he, "and finer folk live in it than I ever thought on, or ever heerd tell on except in th' story-books. They are having their good things now, that afterwards they may be tormented." Still at the old parable of Dives and Lazarus! Does it haunt the minds of the rich as it does those of the poor? "Do tell us all about London, dear father," asked Mary, who was sitting at her old post by her father's knee. "How can I tell yo a' about it, when I never seed one-tenth of it. It's as big as six Manchesters, they telled me. One-sixth may be made up o' grand palaces, and three-sixths o' middling kind, and th' rest o' holes o' iniquity and filth, such as Manchester knows nought on, I'm glad to say." "Well, father, but did you see th' Queen?" "I believe I didn't, though one day I thought I'd seen her many a time. You see," said he, turning to Job Legh, "there were a day appointed for us to go to Parliament House. We were most on us biding at a public-house in Holborn, where they did very well for us. Th' morning of taking our petition we'd such a spread for breakfast as th' Queen hersel might ha' sitten down to. I suppose they thought we wanted putting in heart. There were mutton kidneys, and sausages, and broiled ham, and fried beef and onions; more like a dinner nor a breakfast. Many on our chaps though, I could see, could eat but little. Th' food stuck in their throats when they thought o' them at home, wives and little ones, as had, may be at that very time, nought to eat. Well, after breakfast, we were all set to walk in procession, and a time it took to put us in order, two and two, and the petition as was yards long, carried by th' foremost pairs. The men looked grave enough, yo may be sure; and such a set of thin, wan, wretched-looking chaps as they were!" "Yourself is none to boast on." "Ay, but I were fat and rosy to many a one. Well, we walked on and on through many a street, much the same as Deansgate. We had to walk slowly, slowly, for th' carriages an' cabs as thronged th' streets. I thought by-and-bye we should may be get clear on 'em, but as th' streets grew wider they grew worse, and at last we were fairly blocked up at Oxford Street. We getten across at last though, and my eyes! the grand streets we were in then! They're sadly puzzled how to build houses though in London; there'd be an opening for a good steady master-builder there, as know'd his business. For yo see the houses are many on 'em built without any proper shape for a body to live in; some on 'em they've after thought would fall down, so they've stuck great ugly pillars out before 'em. And some on 'em (we thought they must be th' tailor's sign) had getten stone men and women as wanted clothes stuck on 'em. I were like a child, I forgot a' my errand in looking about me. By this it were dinner-time, or better, as we could tell by th' sun, right above our heads, and we were dusty and tired, going a step now and a step then. Well, at last we getten into a street grander nor all, leading to th' Queen's palace, and there it were I thought I saw th' Queen. Yo've seen th' hearses wi' white plumes, Job?" Job assented. "Well, them undertaker folk are driving a pretty trade in London. Wellnigh every lady we saw in a carriage had hired one o' them plumes for the day, and had it niddle noddling on her head. It were th' Queen's Drawing-room, they said, and th' carriages went bowling along toward her house, some wi' dressed up gentlemen like circus folk in 'em, and rucks [28] o' ladies in others. Carriages themselves were great shakes too. Some o' th' gentlemen as couldn't get inside hung on behind, wi' nosegays to smell at, and sticks to keep off folk as might splash their silk stockings. I wondered why they didn't hire a cab rather than hang on like a whip-behind boy; but I suppose they wished to keep wi' their wives, Darby and Joan like. Coachmen were little squat men, wi' wigs like th' oud fashioned parsons. Well, we could na get on for these carriages, though we waited and waited. Th' horses were too fat to move quick; they'n never known want o' food, one might tell by their sleek coats; and police pushed us back when we tried to cross. One or two on 'em struck wi' their sticks, and coachmen laughed, and some officers as stood nigh put their spy-glasses in their eye, and left 'em sticking there like mountebanks. One o' th' police struck me. 'Whatten business have yo to do that?' said I. [Footnote 28: "Rucks," a great quantity.] "'You're frightening them horses,' says he, in his mincing way (for Londoners are mostly all tongue-tied, and can't say their a's and i's properly), 'and it's our business to keep you from molesting the ladies and gentlemen going to her Majesty's Drawing-room.' "'And why are we to be molested?' asked I, 'going decently about our business, which is life and death to us, and many a little one clemming at home in Lancashire? Which business is of most consequence i' the sight o' God, think yo, our'n or them gran ladies and gentlemen as yo think so much on?' "But I might as well ha' held my peace, for he only laughed." John ceased. After waiting a little to see if he would go on of himself, Job said, "Well, but that's not a' your story, man. Tell us what happened when yo got to th' Parliament House." After a little pause John answered, "If yo please, neighbour, I'd rather say nought about that. It's not to be forgotten or forgiven either by me or many another; but I canna tell of our down-casting just as a piece of London news. As long as I live, our rejection that day will bide in my heart; and as long as I live I shall curse them as so cruelly refused to hear us; but I'll not speak of it no [29] more." [Footnote 29: A similar use of a double negative is not unfrequent in Chaucer; as in the "Miller's Tale": "That of no wife toke he non offering For curtesie, he sayd, he n'old non."] So, daunted in their inquiries, they sat silent for a few minutes. Old Job, however, felt that some one must speak, else all the good they had done in dispelling John Barton's gloom was lost. So after awhile he thought of a subject, neither sufficiently dissonant from the last to jar on the full heart, nor too much the same to cherish the continuance of the gloomy train of thought. "Did you ever hear tell," said he to Mary, "that I were in London once?" "No!" said she, with surprise, and looking at Job with increased respect. "Ay, but I were though, and Peg there too, though she minds nought about it, poor wench! You must know I had but one child, and she were Margaret's mother. I loved her above a bit, and one day when she came (standing behind me for that I should not see her blushes, and stroking my cheeks in her own coaxing way), and told me she and Frank Jennings (as was a joiner lodging near us) should be so happy if they were married, I could not find in my heart t' say her nay, though I went sick at the thought of losing her away from my home. Howe'er, she were my only child, and I never said nought of what I felt, for fear o' grieving her young heart. But I tried to think o' the time when I'd been young mysel, and had loved her blessed mother, and how we'd left father and mother and gone out into th' world together, and I'm now right thankful I held my peace, and didna fret her wi' telling her how sore I was at parting wi' her that were the light o' my eyes." "But," said Mary, "you said the young man were a neighbour." "Ay, so he were; and his father afore him. But work were rather slack in Manchester, and Frank's uncle sent him word o' London work and London wages, so he were to go there; and it were there Margaret was to follow him. Well, my heart aches yet at thought of those days. She so happy, and he so happy; only the poor father as fretted sadly behind their backs. They were married, and stayed some days wi' me afore setting off; and I've often thought sin' Margaret's heart failed her many a time those few days, and she would fain ha' spoken; but I knew fra' mysel it were better to keep it pent up, and I never let on what I were feeling. I knew what she meant when she came kissing, and holding my hand, and all her old childish ways o' loving me. Well, they went at last. You know them two letters, Margaret?" "Yes, sure," replied his grand-daughter. "Well, them two were the only letters I ever had fra' her, poor lass. She said in them she were very happy, and I believe she were. And Frank's family heard he were in good work. In one o' her letters, poor thing, she ends wi' saying, 'Farewell, Grandad!' wi' a line drawn under grandad, and fra' that an' other hints I knew she were in th' family way; and I said nought, but I screwed up a little money, thinking come Whitsuntide I'd take a holiday and go and see her an' th' little one. But one day towards Whitsuntide comed Jennings wi' a grave face, and says he, 'I hear our Frank and your Margaret's both getten the fever.' You might ha' knocked me down wi' a straw, for it seemed as if God told me what th' upshot would be. Old Jennings had gotten a letter, yo see, fra' the landlady they lodged wi'; a well-penned letter, asking if they'd no friends to come and nurse them. She'd caught it first, and Frank, who was as tender o' her as her own mother could ha' been, had nursed her till he'd caught it himsel; and she expecting her down-lying [30] every day. Well, t' make a long story short, Old Jennings and I went up by that night's coach. So you see, Mary, that was the way I got to London." [Footnote 30: "Down-lying," lying-in.] "But how was your daughter when you got there?" asked Mary, anxiously. "She were at rest, poor wench, and so were Frank. I guessed as much when I see'd th' landlady's face, all swelled wi' crying, when she opened th' door to us. We said, 'Where are they?' and I knew they were dead, fra' her look; but Jennings didn't, as I take it; for when she showed us into a room wi' a white sheet on th' bed, and underneath it, plain to be seen, two still figures, he screeched out as if he'd been a woman. "Yet he'd other childer and I'd none. There lay my darling, my only one. She were dead, and there were no one to love me, no, not one. I disremember [31] rightly what I did; but I know I were very quiet, while my heart were crushed within me. [Footnote 31: "Disremember," forget.] "Jennings could na' stand being in th' room at all, so th' landlady took him down, and I were glad to be alone. It grew dark while I sat there; and at last th' landlady come up again, and said, 'Come here.' So I got up and walked into th' light, but I had to hold by th' stair-rails, I were so weak and dizzy. She led me into a room, where Jennings lay on a sofa fast asleep, wi' his pocket handkercher over his head for a night-cap. She said he'd cried himself fairly off to sleep. There were tea on th' table all ready; for she were a kind-hearted body. But she still said, 'Come here,' and took hold o' my arm. So I went round the table, and there were a clothes-basket by th' fire, wi' a shawl put o'er it. 'Lift that up,' says she, and I did; and there lay a little wee babby fast asleep. My heart gave a leap, and th' tears comed rushing into my eyes first time that day. 'Is it hers?' said I, though I knew it were. 'Yes,' said she. 'She were getting a bit better o' the fever, and th' babby were born; and then the poor young man took worse and died, and she were not many hours behind.' "Little mite of a thing! and yet it seemed her angel come back to comfort me. I were quite jealous o' Jennings whenever he went near the babby. I thought it were more my flesh and blood than his'n, and yet I were afeared he would claim it. However, that were far enough fra' his thoughts; he'd plenty other childer, and as I found out at after he'd all along been wishing me to take it. Well, we buried Margaret and her husband in a big, crowded, lonely churchyard in London. I were loath to leave them there, as I thought, when they rose again, they'd feel so strange at first away fra Manchester, and all old friends; but it couldna be helped. Well, God watches o'er their grave there as well as here. That funeral cost a mint o' money, but Jennings and I wished to do th' thing decent. Then we'd the stout little babby to bring home. We'd not overmuch money left; but it were fine weather, and we thought we'd take th' coach to Brummagem, and walk on. It were a bright May morning when last I saw London town, looking back from a big hill a mile or two off. And in that big mass o' a place I were leaving my blessed child asleep--in her last sleep. Well, God's will be done! She's gotten to heaven afore me; but I shall get there at last, please God, though it's a long while first. "The babby had been fed afore we set out, and th' coach moving kept it asleep, bless its little heart. But when th' coach stopped for dinner it were awake, and crying for its pobbies. [32] So we asked for some bread and milk, and Jennings took it first for to feed it; but it made its mouth like a square, and let it run out at each o' th' four corners. 'Shake it, Jennings,' says I; 'that's the way they make water run through a funnel, when it's o'er full; and a child's mouth is broad end o' th' funnel, and th' gullet the narrow one.' So he shook it, but it only cried th' more. 'Let me have it,' says I, thinking he were an awkward oud chap. But it were just as bad wi' me. By shaking th' babby we got better nor a gill into its mouth, but more nor that came up again, wetting a' th' nice dry clothes landlady had put on. Well, just as we'd gotten to th' dinner-table, and helped oursels, and eaten two mouthful, came in th' guard, and a fine chap wi' a sample o' calico flourishing in his hand. 'Coach is ready!' says one; 'Half-a-crown your dinner!' says th' other. Well, we thought it a deal for both our dinners, when we'd hardly tasted 'em; but, bless your life, it were half-a-crown apiece, and a shilling for th' bread and milk as were possetted all over babby's clothes. We spoke up again [33] it; but every body said it were the rule, so what could two poor oud chaps like us do again it? Well, poor babby cried without stopping to take breath, fra' that time till we got to Brummagem for the night. My heart ached for th' little thing. It caught wi' its wee mouth at our coat sleeves and at our mouths, when we tried t' comfort it by talking to it. Poor little wench! It wanted its mammy, as were lying cold in th' grave. 'Well,' says I, 'it'll be clemmed to death, if it lets out its supper as it did its dinner. Let's get some woman to feed it; it comes natural to women to do for babbies.' So we asked th' chamber-maid at the inn, and she took quite kindly to it; and we got a good supper, and grew rare and sleepy, what wi' th' warmth, and wi' our long ride i' th' open air. Th' chamber-maid said she would like t' have it t' sleep wi' her, only missis would scold so; but it looked so quiet and smiling like, as it lay in her arms, that we thought 'twould be no trouble to have it wi' us. I says: 'See, Jennings, how women-folk do quieten babbies; it's just as I said.' He looked grave; he were always thoughtful-looking, though I never heard him say any thing very deep. At last says he-- [Footnote 32: "Pobbies," or "pobs," child's porridge.] [Footnote 33: "Again," for against. "He that is not with me, he is ageyn me."--_Wickliffe's Version._] "'Young woman! have you gotten a spare night-cap?' "'Missis always keeps night-caps for gentlemen as does not like to unpack,' says she, rather quick. "'Ay, but young woman, it's one of your night-caps I want. Th' babby seems to have taken a mind to yo; and may be in th' dark it might take me for yo if I'd getten your night-cap on.' "The chambermaid smirked and went for a cap, but I laughed outright at th' oud bearded chap thinking he'd make hissel like a woman just by putting on a woman's cap. Howe'er he'd not be laughed out on't, so I held th' babby till he were in bed. Such a night as we had on it! Babby began to scream o' th' oud fashion, and we took it turn and turn about to sit up and rock it. My heart were very sore for th' little one, as it groped about wi' its mouth; but for a' that I could scarce keep fra' smiling at th' thought o' us two oud chaps, th' one wi' a woman's night-cap on, sitting on our hinder ends for half th' night, hushabying a babby as wouldn't be hushabied. Toward morning, poor little wench! it fell asleep, fairly tired out wi' crying, but even in its sleep it gave such pitiful sobs, quivering up fra' the very bottom of its little heart, that once or twice I almost wished it lay on its mother's breast, at peace for ever. Jennings fell asleep too; but I began for to reckon up our money. It were little enough we had left, our dinner the day afore had ta'en so much. I didn't know what our reckoning would be for that night lodging, and supper, and breakfast. Doing a sum alway sent me asleep ever sin' I were a lad; so I fell sound in a short time, and were only wakened by chambermaid tapping at th' door, to say she'd dress the babby afore her missis were up if we liked. But bless yo', we'd never thought o' undressing it th' night afore, and now it were sleeping so sound, and we were so glad o' the peace and quietness, that we thought it were no good to waken it up to screech again. "Well! (there's Mary asleep for a good listener!) I suppose you're getting weary of my tale, so I'll not be long over ending it. Th' reckoning left us very bare, and we thought we'd best walk home, for it were only sixty mile, they telled us, and not stop again for nought, save victuals. So we left Brummagem, (which is as black a place as Manchester, without looking so like home), and walked a' that day, carrying babby turn and turn about. It were well fed by chambermaid afore we left, and th' day were fine, and folk began to have some knowledge o' th' proper way o' speaking, and we were more cheery at thoughts o' home (though mine, God knows, were lonesome enough). We stopped none for dinner, but at baggin-time [34] we getten a good meal at a public-house, an' fed th' babby as well as we could, but that were but poorly. We got a crust too, for it to suck--chambermaid put us up to that. That night, whether we were tired or whatten, I don't know, but it were dree [35] work, and poor wench had slept out her sleep, and began th' cry as wore my heart out again. Says Jennings, says he, [Footnote 34: "Baggin-time," time of the evening meal.] [Footnote 35: "Dree," long and tedious. Anglo-Saxon, "dreogan," to suffer, to endure.] "'We should na ha' set out so like gentlefolk a top o' the coach yesterday.' "'Nay, lad! We should ha' had more to walk, if we had na ridden, and I'm sure both you and I'se [36] weary o' tramping.' [Footnote 36: "I have not been, nor _is_, nor never schal."--_Wickliffe's "Apology," p. 1._] "So he were quiet a bit. But he were one o' them as were sure to find out somewhat had been done amiss, when there were no going back to undo it. So presently he coughs, as if he were going to speak, and I says to mysel, 'At it again, my lad.' Says he, "'I ax pardon, neighbour, but it strikes me it would ha' been better for my son if he had never begun to keep company wi' your daughter.' "Well! that put me up, and my heart got very full, and but that I were carrying _her_ babby, I think I should ha' struck him. At last I could hold in no longer, and says I, "'Better say at once it would ha' been better for God never to ha' made th' world, for then we'd never ha' been in it, to have had th' heavy hearts we have now.' "Well! he said that were rank blasphemy; but I thought his way of casting up again th' events God had pleased to send, were worse blasphemy. Howe'er, I said nought more angry, for th' little babby's sake, as were th' child o' his dead son, as well as o' my dead daughter. "Th' longest lane will have a turning, and that night came to an end at last; and we were foot-sore and tired enough, and to my mind th' babby were getting weaker and weaker, and it wrung my heart to hear its little wail; I'd ha' given my right hand for one of yesterday's hearty cries. We were wanting our breakfasts, and so were it too, motherless babby! We could see no public-house, so about six o'clock (only we thought it were later) we stopped at a cottage where a woman were moving about near th' open door. Says I, 'Good woman, may we rest us a bit?' 'Come in,' says she, wiping a chair, as looked bright enough afore, wi' her apron. It were a cheery, clean room; and we were glad to sit down again, though I thought my legs would never bend at th' knees. In a minute she fell a noticing th' babby, and took it in her arms, and kissed it again and again. 'Missis,' says I, 'we're not without money, and if yo'd give us somewhat for breakfast, we'd pay yo honest, and if yo would wash and dress that poor babby, and get some pobbies down its throat, for it's well-nigh clemmed, I'd pray for yo' till my dying day.' So she said nought, but gived me th' babby back, and afore yo' could say Jack Robinson, she'd a pan on th' fire, and bread and cheese on th' table. When she turned round, her face looked red, and her lips were tight pressed together. Well! we were right down glad on our breakfast, and God bless and reward that woman for her kindness that day; she fed th' poor babby as gently and softly, and spoke to it as tenderly as its own poor mother could ha' done. It seemed as if that stranger and it had known each other afore, maybe in Heaven, where folk's spirits come from they say; th' babby looked up so lovingly in her eyes, and made little noises more like a dove than aught else. Then she undressed it (poor darling! it were time), touching it so softly; and washed it from head to foot, and as many on its things were dirty; and what bits o' things its mother had gotten ready for it had been sent by th' carrier fra London, she put 'em aside; and wrapping little naked babby in her apron, she pulled out a key, as were fastened to a black ribbon, and hung down her breast, and unlocked a drawer in th' dresser. I were sorry to be prying, but I could na' help seeing in that drawer some little child's clothes, all strewed wi' lavendar, and lying by 'em a little whip an' a broken rattle. I began to have an insight into that woman's heart then. She took out a thing or two; and locked the drawer, and went on dressing babby. Just about then come her husband down, a great big fellow as didn't look half awake, though it were getting late; but he'd heard all as had been said down-stairs, as were plain to be seen; but he were a gruff chap. We'd finished our breakfast, and Jennings were looking hard at th' woman as she were getting the babby to sleep wi' a sort of rocking way. At length says he, 'I ha learnt th' way now; it's two jiggits and a shake, two jiggits and a shake. I can get that babby asleep now mysel.' "The man had nodded cross enough to us, and had gone to th' door, and stood there whistling wi' his hands in his breeches-pockets, looking abroad. But at last he turns and says, quite sharp, "'I say, missis, I'm to have no breakfast to-day, I s'pose.' "So wi' that she kissed th' child, a long, soft kiss; and looking in my face to see if I could take her meaning, gave me th' babby without a word. I were loath to stir, but I saw it were better to go. So giving Jennings a sharp nudge (for he'd fallen asleep), I says, 'Missis, what's to pay?' pulling out my money wi' a jingle that she might na guess we were at all bare o' cash. So she looks at her husband, who said ne'er a word, but were listening wi' all his ears nevertheless; and when she saw he would na say, she said, hesitating, as if pulled two ways, by her fear o' him, 'Should you think sixpence over much?' It were so different to public-house reckoning, for we'd eaten a main deal afore the chap came down. So says I, 'And, missis, what should we gie you for the babby's bread and milk?' (I had it once in my mind to say 'and for a' your trouble with it,' but my heart would na let me say it, for I could read in her ways how it had been a work o' love.) So says she, quite quick, and stealing a look at her husband's back, as looked all ear, if ever a back did, 'Oh, we could take nought for the little babby's food, if it had eaten twice as much, bless it.' Wi' that he looked at her; such a scowling look! She knew what he meant, and stepped softly across the floor to him, and put her hand on his arm. He seem'd as though he'd shake it off by a jerk on his elbow, but she said quite low, 'For poor little Johnnie's sake, Richard.' He did not move or speak again, and after looking in his face for a minute, she turned away, swallowing deep in her throat. She kissed th' sleeping babby as she passed, when I paid her. To quieten th' gruff husband, and stop him if he rated her, I could na help slipping another sixpence under th' loaf, and then we set off again. Last look I had o' that woman she were quietly wiping her eyes wi' the corner of her apron, as she went about her husband's breakfast. But I shall know her in heaven." He stopped to think of that long-ago May morning, when he had carried his grand-daughter under the distant hedge-rows and beneath the flowering sycamores. "There's nought more to say, wench," said he to Margaret, as she begged him to go on. "That night we reached Manchester, and I'd found out that Jennings would be glad enough to give up babby to me, so I took her home at once, and a blessing she's been to me." They were all silent for a few minutes; each following out the current of their thoughts. Then, almost simultaneously, their attention fell upon Mary. Sitting on her little stool, her head resting on her father's knee, and sleeping as soundly as any infant, her breath (still like an infant's) came and went as softly as a bird steals to her leafy nest. Her half-open mouth was as scarlet as the winter-berries, and contrasted finely with the clear paleness of her complexion, where the eloquent blood flushed carnation at each motion. Her black eye-lashes lay on the delicate cheek, which was still more shaded by the masses of her golden hair, that seemed to form a nest-like pillow for her as she lay. Her father in fond pride straightened one glossy curl, for an instant, as if to display its length and silkiness. The little action awoke her, and, like nine out of ten people in similar circumstances, she exclaimed, opening her eyes to their fullest extent, "I'm not asleep. I've been awake all the time." Even her father could not keep from smiling, and Job Legh and Margaret laughed outright. "Come, wench," said Job, "don't look so gloppened [37] because thou'st fallen asleep while an oud chap like me was talking on oud times. It were like enough to send thee to sleep. Try if thou canst keep thine eyes open while I read thy father a bit on a poem as is written by a weaver like oursel. A rare chap I'll be bound is he who could weave verse like this." [Footnote 37: "Gloppened," amazed, frightened.] So adjusting his spectacles on nose, cocking his chin, crossing his legs, and coughing to clear his voice, he read aloud a little poem of Samuel Bamford's [38] he had picked up somewhere. [Footnote 38: The fine-spirited author of "Passages in the Life of a Radical"--a man who illustrates his order, and shows what nobility may be in a cottage.] God help the poor, who, on this wintry morn, Come forth from alleys dim and courts obscure. God help yon poor pale girl, who droops forlorn, And meekly her affliction doth endure; God help her, outcast lamb; she trembling stands, All wan her lips, and frozen red her hands; Her sunken eyes are modestly down-cast, Her night-black hair streams on the fitful blast; Her bosom, passing fair, is half revealed, And oh! so cold, the snow lies there congealed; Her feet benumbed, her shoes all rent and worn, God help thee, outcast lamb, who standst forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor! An infant's feeble wail Comes from yon narrow gateway, and behold! A female crouching there, so deathly pale, Huddling her child, to screen it from the cold; Her vesture scant, her bonnet crushed and torn; A thin shawl doth her baby dear enfold: And so she 'bides the ruthless gale of morn, Which almost to her heart hath sent its cold. And now she, sudden, darts a ravening look, As one, with new hot bread, goes past the nook; And, as the tempting load is onward borne, She weeps. God help thee, helpless one, forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor! Behold yon famished lad, No shoes, nor hose, his wounded feet protect; With limping gait, and looks so dreamy sad, He wanders onward, stopping to inspect Each window, stored with articles of food. He yearns but to enjoy one cheering meal; Oh! to the hungry palate, viands rude, Would yield a zest the famished only feel! He now devours a crust of mouldy bread; With teeth and hands the precious boon is torn; Unmindful of the storm that round his head Impetuous sweeps. God help thee, child forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor! Another have I found-- A bowed and venerable man is he; His slouched hat with faded crape is bound; His coat is gray, and threadbare too, I see. "The rude winds" seem "to mock his hoary hair;" His shirtless bosom to the blast is bare. Anon he turns and casts a wistful eye, And with scant napkin wipes the blinding spray; And looks around, as if he fain would spy Friends he had feasted in his better day: Ah! some are dead; and some have long forborne To know the poor; and he is left forlorn! God help the poor! God help the poor, who in lone valleys dwell, Or by far hills, where whin and heather grow; Theirs is a story sad indeed to tell, Yet little cares the world, and less 't would know About the toil and want men undergo. The wearying loom doth call them up at morn, They work till worn-out nature sinks to sleep, They taste, but are not fed. The snow drifts deep Around the fireless cot, and blocks the door; The night-storm howls a dirge across the moor; And shall they perish thus--oppressed and lorn? Shall toil and famine, hopeless, still be borne? No! God will yet arise, and help the poor. "Amen!" said Barton, solemnly, and sorrowfully. "Mary! wench, couldst thou copy me them lines, dost think?--that's to say, if Job there has no objection." "Not I. More they're heard and read and the better, say I." So Mary took the paper. And the next day, on the blank half sheet of a valentine, all bordered with hearts and darts--a valentine she had once suspected to come from Jem Wilson--she copied Bamford's beautiful little poem. CHAPTER X. RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL. "My heart, once soft as woman's tear, is gnarled With gloating on the ills I cannot cure." ELLIOTT. "Then guard and shield her innocence, Let her not fall like me; 'Twere better, Oh! a thousand times, She in her grave should be." "THE OUTCAST." Despair settled down like a heavy cloud; and now and then, through the dead calm of sufferings, came pipings of stormy winds, foretelling the end of these dark prognostics. In times of sorrowful or fierce endurance, we are often soothed by the mere repetition of old proverbs which tell the experience of our forefathers; but now, "it's a long lane that has no turning," "the weariest day draws to an end," &c., seemed false and vain sayings, so long and so weary was the pressure of the terrible times. Deeper and deeper still sank the poor; it showed how much lingering suffering it takes to kill men, that so few (in comparison) died during those times. But remember! we only miss those who do men's work in their humble sphere; the aged, the feeble, the children, when they die, are hardly noted by the world; and yet to many hearts, their deaths make a blank which long years will never fill up. Remember, too, that though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does _not_ take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies. The people had thought the poverty of the preceding years hard to bear, and had found its yoke heavy; but this year added sorely to its weight. Former times had chastised them with whips, but this chastised them with scorpions. Of course, Barton had his share of mere bodily sufferings. Before he had gone up to London on his vain errand, he had been working short time. But in the hopes of speedy redress by means of the interference of Parliament, he had thrown up his place; and now, when he asked leave to resume work, he was told they were diminishing their number of hands every week, and he was made aware by the remarks of fellow workmen, that a Chartist delegate, and a leading member of a Trades' Union, was not likely to be favoured in his search after employment. Still he tried to keep up a brave heart concerning himself. He knew he could bear hunger; for that power of endurance had been called forth when he was a little child, and had seen his mother hide her daily morsel to share it among her children, and when he, being the eldest, had told the noble lie, that "he was not hungry, could not eat a bit more," in order to imitate his mother's bravery, and still the sharp wail of the younger infants. Mary, too, was secure of two meals a day at Miss Simmonds'; though, by the way, the dress-maker, too, feeling the effect of bad times, had left off giving tea to her apprentices, setting them the example of long abstinence by putting off her own meal until work was done for the night, however late that might be. But the rent! It was half-a-crown a week--nearly all Mary's earnings--and much less room might do for them, only two.--(Now came the time to be thankful that the early dead were saved from the evil to come.)--The agricultural labourer generally has strong local attachments; but they are far less common, almost obliterated, among the inhabitants of a town. Still there are exceptions, and Barton formed one. He had removed to his present house just after the last bad times, when little Tom had sickened and died. He had then thought the bustle of a removal would give his poor stunned wife something to do, and he had taken more interest in the details of the proceeding than he otherwise would have done, in the hope of calling her forth to action again. So he seemed to know every brass-headed nail driven up for her convenience. One only had been displaced. It was Esther's bonnet nail, which, in his deep revengeful anger against her, after his wife's death, he had torn out of the wall, and cast into the street. It would be hard work to leave that house, which yet seemed hallowed by his wife's presence in the happy days of old. But he was a law unto himself, though sometimes a bad, fierce law; and he resolved to give the rent-collector notice, and look out for a cheaper abode, and tell Mary they must flit. Poor Mary! she loved the house, too. It was wrenching up her natural feelings of home, for it would be long before the fibres of her heart would gather themselves about another place. This trial was spared. The collector (of himself), on the very Monday when Barton planned to give him notice of his intention to leave, lowered the rent threepence a week, just enough to make Barton compromise and agree to stay on a little longer. But by degrees the house was stripped of its little ornaments. Some were broken; and the odd twopences and threepences wanted to pay for their repairs, were required for the far sterner necessity of food. And by-and-bye Mary began to part with other superfluities at the pawn-shop. The smart tea-tray and tea-caddy, long and carefully kept, went for bread for her father. He did not ask for it, or complain, but she saw hunger in his shrunk, fierce, animal look. Then the blankets went, for it was summer time, and they could spare them; and their sale made a fund, which Mary fancied would last till better times came. But it was soon all gone; and then she looked around the room to crib it of its few remaining ornaments. To all these proceedings her father said never a word. If he fasted, or feasted (after the sale of some article), on an unusual meal of bread and cheese, he took all with a sullen indifference, which depressed Mary's heart. She often wished he would apply for relief from the Guardian's relieving office; often wondered the Trades' Union did nothing for him. Once when she asked him as he sat, grimed, unshaven, and gaunt, after a day's fasting over the fire, why he did not get relief from the town, he turned round, with grim wrath, and said, "I don't want money, child! D----n their charity and their money! I want work, and it is my right. I want work." He would bear it all, he said to himself. And he did bear it, but not meekly; that was too much to expect. Real meekness of character is called out by experience of kindness. And few had been kind to him. Yet through it all, with stern determination he refused the assistance his Trades' Union would have given him. It had not much to give, but with worldly wisdom, thought it better to propitiate an active, useful member, than to help those who were unenergetic, though they had large families to provide for. Not so thought John Barton. With him need was right. "Give it to Tom Darbyshire," he said. "He's more claim on it than me, for he's more need of it, with his seven children." Now Tom Darbyshire was, in his listless, grumbling way, a backbiting enemy of John Barton's. And he knew it; but he was not to be influenced by that in a matter like this. Mary went early to her work; but her cheery laugh over it was now missed by the other girls. Her mind wandered over the present distress, and then settled, as she stitched, on the visions of the future, where yet her thoughts dwelt more on the circumstances of ease, and the pomps and vanities awaiting her, than on the lover with whom she was to share them. Still she was not insensible to the pride of having attracted one so far above herself in station; not insensible to the secret pleasure of knowing that he, whom so many admired, had often said he would give any thing for one of her sweet smiles. Her love for him was a bubble, blown out of vanity; but it looked very real and very bright. Sally Leadbitter, meanwhile, keenly observed the signs of the times; she found out that Mary had begun to affix a stern value to money as the "Purchaser of Life," and many girls had been dazzled and lured by gold, even without the betraying love which she believed to exist in Mary's heart. So she urged young Mr. Carson, by representations of the want she was sure surrounded Mary, to bring matters more to a point. But he had a kind of instinctive dread of hurting Mary's pride of spirit, and durst not hint his knowledge in any way of the distress that many must be enduring. He felt that for the present he must still be content with stolen meetings and summer evening strolls, and the delight of pouring sweet honeyed words into her ear, while she listened with a blush and a smile that made her look radiant with beauty. No, he would be cautious in order to be certain; for Mary, one way or another, he must make his. He had no doubt of the effect of his own personal charms in the long run; for he knew he was handsome, and believed himself fascinating. If he had known what Mary's home was, he would not have been so much convinced of his increasing influence over her, by her being more and more ready to linger with him in the sweet summer air. For when she returned for the night her father was often out, and the house wanted the cheerful look it had had in the days when money was never wanted to purchase soap and brushes, black-lead and pipe-clay. It was dingy and comfortless; for, of course, there was not even the dumb familiar home-friend, a fire. And Margaret, too, was now so often from home, singing at some of those grand places. And Alice; oh, Mary wished she had never left her cellar to go and live at Ancoats with her sister-in-law. For in that matter Mary felt very guilty; she had put off and put off going to see the widow after George Wilson's death from dread of meeting Jem, or giving him reason to think she wished to be as intimate with him as formerly; and now she was so much ashamed of her delay that she was likely never to go at all. If her father was at home it was no better; indeed it was worse. He seldom spoke, less than ever; and often when he did speak they were sharp angry words, such as he had never given her formerly. Her temper was high, too, and her answers not over-mild; and once in his passion he had even beaten her. If Sally Leadbitter or Mr. Carson had been at hand at that moment, Mary would have been ready to leave home for ever. She sat alone, after her father had flung out of the house, bitterly thinking on the days that were gone; angry with her own hastiness, and believing that her father did not love her; striving to heap up one painful thought on another. Who cared for her? Mr. Carson might, but in this grief that seemed no comfort. Mother dead! Father so often angry, so lately cruel (for it was a hard blow, and blistered and reddened Mary's soft white skin with pain): and then her heart turned round, and she remembered with self-reproach how provokingly she had looked and spoken, and how much her father had to bear; and oh, what a kind and loving parent he had been, till these days of trial. The remembrance of one little instance of his fatherly love thronged after another into her mind, and she began to wonder how she could have behaved to him as she had done. Then he came home; and but for very shame she would have confessed her penitence in words. But she looked sullen, from her effort to keep down emotion; and for some time her father did not know how to begin to speak. At length he gulped down pride, and said: "Mary, I'm not above saying I'm very sorry I beat thee. Thou wert a bit aggravating, and I'm not the man I was. But it were wrong, and I'll try never to lay hands on thee again." So he held out his arms, and in many tears she told him her repentance for her fault. He never struck her again. Still, he often was angry. But that was almost better than being silent. Then he sat near the fire-place (from habit), smoking, or chewing opium. Oh, how Mary loathed that smell! And in the dusk, just before it merged into the short summer night, she had learned to look with dread towards the window, which now her father would have kept uncurtained; for there were not seldom seen sights which haunted her in her dreams. Strange faces of pale men, with dark glaring eyes, peered into the inner darkness, and seemed desirous to ascertain if her father were at home. Or a hand and arm (the body hidden) was put within the door, and beckoned him away. He always went. And once or twice, when Mary was in bed, she heard men's voices below, in earnest, whispered talk. They were all desperate members of Trades' Unions, ready for any thing; made ready by want. While all this change for gloom yet struck fresh and heavy on Mary's heart, her father startled her out of a reverie one evening, by asking her when she had been to see Jane Wilson. From his manner of speaking, she was made aware that he had been; but at the time of his visit he had never mentioned any thing about it. Now, however, he gruffly told her to go next day without fail, and added some abuse of her for not having been before. The little outward impulse of her father's speech gave Mary the push which she, in this instance, required; and, accordingly, timing her visit so as to avoid Jem's hours at home, she went the following afternoon to Ancoats. The outside of the well-known house struck her as different; for the door was closed, instead of open, as it once had always stood. The window-plants, George Wilson's pride and especial care, looked withering and drooping. They had been without water for a long time, and now, when the widow had reproached herself severely for neglect, in her ignorant anxiety, she gave them too much. On opening the door, Alice was seen, not stirring about in her habitual way, but knitting by the fire-side. The room felt hot, although the fire burnt gray and dim, under the bright rays of the afternoon sun. Mrs. Wilson was "siding" [39] the dinner things, and talking all the time, in a kind of whining, shouting voice, which Mary did not at first understand. She understood at once, however, that her absence had been noted, and talked over; she saw a constrained look on Mrs. Wilson's sorrow-stricken face, which told her a scolding was to come. [Footnote 39: To "side," to put aside, or in order.] "Dear Mary, is that you?" she began. "Why, who would ha' dreamt of seeing you! We thought you'd clean forgotten us; and Jem has often wondered if he should know you, if he met you in the street." Now, poor Jane Wilson had been sorely tried; and at present her trials had had no outward effect, but that of increased acerbity of temper. She wished to show Mary how much she was offended, and meant to strengthen her cause, by putting some of her own sharp speeches into Jem's mouth. Mary felt guilty, and had no good reason to give as an apology; so for a minute she stood silent, looking very much ashamed, and then turned to speak to aunt Alice, who, in her surprised, hearty greeting to Mary, had dropped her ball of worsted, and was busy trying to set the thread to rights, before the kitten had entangled it past redemption, once round every chair, and twice round the table. "You mun speak louder than that, if you mean her to hear; she become as deaf as a post this last few weeks. I'd ha' told you, if I'd remembered how long it were sin' you'd seen her." "Yes, my dear, I'm getting very hard o' hearing of late," said Alice, catching the state of the case, with her quick-glancing eyes. "I suppose it's the beginning of th' end." "Don't talk o' that way," screamed her sister-in-law. "We've had enow of ends and deaths without forecasting more." She covered her face with her apron, and sat down to cry. "He was such a good husband," said she, in a less excited tone, to Mary, as she looked up with tear-streaming eyes from behind her apron. "No one can tell what I've lost in him, for no one knew his worth like me." Mary's listening sympathy softened her, and she went on to unburden her heavy laden heart. "Eh, dear, dear! No one knows what I've lost. When my poor boys went, I thought th' Almighty had crushed me to th' ground, but I never thought o' losing George; I did na think I could ha' borne to ha' lived without him. And yet I'm here, and he's--" A fresh burst of crying interrupted her speech. "Mary,"--beginning to speak again,--"did you ever hear what a poor creature I were when he married me? And he such a handsome fellow! Jem's nothing to what his father were at his age." Yes! Mary had heard, and so she said. But the poor woman's thoughts had gone back to those days, and her little recollections came out, with many interruptions of sighs, and tears, and shakes of the head. "There were nought about me for him to choose me. I were just well enough afore that accident, but at after I were downright plain. And there was Bessy Witter as would ha' given her eyes for him; she as is Mrs. Carson now, for she were a handsome lass, although I never could see her beauty then; and Carson warn't so much above her, as they're both above us all now." Mary went very red, and wished she could help doing so, and wished also that Mrs. Wilson would tell her more about the father and mother of her lover; but she durst not ask, and Mrs. Wilson's thoughts soon returned to her husband, and their early married days. "If you'll believe me, Mary, there never was such a born goose at house-keeping as I were; and yet he married me! I had been in a factory sin' five years old a'most, and I knew nought about cleaning, or cooking, let alone washing and such-like work. The day after we were married he goes to his work at after breakfast, and says he, 'Jenny, we'll ha' th' cold beef, and potatoes, and that's a dinner fit for a prince.' I were anxious to make him comfortable, God knows how anxious. And yet I'd no notion how to cook a potato. I know'd they were boiled, and I know'd their skins were taken off, and that were all. So I tidyed my house in a rough kind o' way, and then I looked at that very clock up yonder," pointing at one that hung against the wall, "and I seed it were nine o'clock, so, thinks I, th' potatoes shall be well boiled at any rate, and I gets 'em on th' fire in a jiffy (that's to say, as soon as I could peel 'em, which were a tough job at first), and then I fell to unpacking my boxes! and at twenty minutes past twelve he comes home, and I had th' beef ready on th' table, and I went to take the potatoes out o' th' pot; but oh! Mary, th' water had boiled away, and they were all a nasty brown mass, as smelt through all the house. He said nought, and were very gentle; but, oh, Mary, I cried so that afternoon. I shall ne'er forget it; no, never. I made many a blunder at after, but none that fretted me like that." "Father does not like girls to work in factories," said Mary. "No, I know he doesn't; and reason good. They oughtn't to go at after they're married, that I'm very clear about. I could reckon up" (counting with her fingers) "ay, nine men I know, as has been driven to th' public-house by having wives as worked in factories; good folk, too, as thought there was no harm in putting their little ones out at nurse, and letting their house go all dirty, and their fires all out; and that was a place as was tempting for a husband to stay in, was it? He soon finds out gin-shops, where all is clean and bright, and where th' fire blazes cheerily, and gives a man a welcome as it were." Alice, who was standing near for the convenience of hearing, had caught much of this speech, and it was evident the subject had previously been discussed by the women, for she chimed in. "I wish our Jem could speak a word to th' Queen about factory work for married women. Eh! but he comes it strong, when once yo get him to speak about it. Wife o' his'n will never work away fra' home." "I say it's Prince Albert as ought to be asked how he'd like his missis to be from home when he comes in, tired and worn, and wanting some one to cheer him; and may be, her to come in by-and-bye, just as tired and down in th' mouth; and how he'd like for her never to be at home to see to th' cleaning of his house, or to keep a bright fire in his grate. Let alone his meals being all hugger-mugger and comfortless. I'd be bound, prince as he is, if his missis served him so, he'd be off to a gin-palace, or summut o' that kind. So why can't he make a law again poor folks' wives working in factories?" Mary ventured to say that she thought the Queen and Prince Albert could not make laws, but the answer was, "Pooh! don't tell me it's not the Queen as makes laws; and isn't she bound to obey Prince Albert? And if he said they mustn't, why she'd say they mustn't, and then all folk would say, oh no, we never shall do any such thing no more." "Jem's getten on rarely," said Alice, who had not heard her sister's last burst of eloquence, and whose thoughts were still running on her nephew, and his various talents. "He's found out summut about a crank or a tank, I forget rightly which it is, but th' master's made him foreman, and he all the while turning off hands; but he said he could na part wi' Jem, nohow. He's good wage now: I tell him he'll be thinking of marrying soon, and he deserves a right down good wife, that he does." Mary went very red, and looked annoyed, although there was a secret spring of joy deep down in her heart, at hearing Jem so spoken of. But his mother only saw the annoyed look, and was piqued accordingly. She was not over and above desirous that her son should marry. His presence in the house seemed a relic of happier times, and she had some little jealousy of his future wife, whoever she might be. Still she could not bear any one not to feel gratified and flattered by Jem's preference, and full well she knew how above all others he preferred Mary. Now she had never thought Mary good enough for Jem, and her late neglect in coming to see her still rankled a little in her breast. So she determined to invent a little, in order to do away with any idea Mary might have that Jem would choose her for "his right down good wife," as aunt Alice called it. "Ay, he'll be for taking a wife soon," and then, in a lower voice, as if confidentially, but really to prevent any contradiction or explanation from her simple sister-in-law, she added, "It'll not be long afore Molly Gibson (that's her at th' provision-shop round the corner) will hear a secret as will not displease her, I'm thinking. She's been casting sheep's eyes at our Jem this many a day, but he thought her father would not give her to a common working man; but now he's as good as her, every bit. I thought once he'd a fancy for thee, Mary, but I donnot think yo'd ever ha' suited, so it's best as it is." By an effort Mary managed to keep down her vexation, and to say, "She hoped he'd be happy with Molly Gibson. She was very handsome, for certain." "Ay, and a notable body, too. I'll just step up stairs and show you the patchwork quilt she gave me but last Saturday." Mary was glad she was going out of the room. Her words irritated her; perhaps not the less because she did not fully believe them. Besides she wanted to speak to Alice, and Mrs. Wilson seemed to think that she, as the widow, ought to absorb all the attention. "Dear Alice," began Mary, "I'm so grieved to find you so deaf; it must have come on very rapid." "Yes, dear, it's a trial; I'll not deny it. Pray God give me strength to find out its teaching. I felt it sore one fine day when I thought I'd go gather some meadow-sweet to make tea for Jane's cough; and the fields seemed so dree and still, and at first I could na make out what was wanting; and then it struck me it were th' song o' the birds, and that I never should hear their sweet music no more, and I could na help crying a bit. But I've much to be thankful for. I think I'm a comfort to Jane, if I'm only some one to scold now and then; poor body! It takes off her thoughts from her sore losses when she can scold a bit. If my eyes are left I can do well enough; I can guess at what folk are saying." The splendid red and yellow patch quilt now made its appearance, and Jane Wilson would not be satisfied unless Mary praised it all over, border, centre, and ground-work, right side and wrong; and Mary did her duty, saying all the more, because she could not work herself up to any very hearty admiration of her rival's present. She made haste, however, with her commendations, in order to avoid encountering Jem. As soon as she was fairly away from the house and street, she slackened her pace, and began to think. Did Jem really care for Molly Gibson? Well, if he did, let him. People seemed all to think he was much too good for her (Mary's own self). Perhaps some one else, far more handsome, and far more grand, would show him one day that she was good enough to be Mrs. Henry Carson. So temper, or what Mary called "spirit," led her to encourage Mr. Carson more than ever she had done before. Some weeks after this, there was a meeting of the Trades' Union to which John Barton belonged. The morning of the day on which it was to take place he had lain late in bed, for what was the use of getting up? He had hesitated between the purchase of meal or opium, and had chosen the latter, for its use had become a necessity with him. He wanted it to relieve him from the terrible depression its absence occasioned. A large lump seemed only to bring him into a natural state, or what had been his natural state formerly. Eight o'clock was the hour fixed for the meeting; and at it were read letters, filled with details of woe, from all parts of the country. Fierce, heavy gloom brooded over the assembly; and fiercely and heavily did the men separate, towards eleven o'clock, some irritated by the opposition of others to their desperate plans. It was not a night to cheer them, as they quitted the glare of the gas-lighted room, and came out into the street. Unceasing, soaking rain was falling; the very lamps seemed obscured by the damp upon the glass, and their light reached but to a little distance from the posts. The streets were cleared of passers-by; not a creature seemed stirring, except here and there a drenched policeman in his oil-skin cape. Barton wished the others good night, and set off home. He had gone through a street or two, when he heard a step behind him; but he did not care to look and see who it was. A little further, and the person quickened step, and touched his arm very lightly. He turned, and saw, even by the darkness visible of that badly-lighted street, that the woman who stood by him was of no doubtful profession. It was told by her faded finery, all unfit to meet the pelting of that pitiless storm; the gauze bonnet, once pink, now dirty white; the muslin gown, all draggled, and soaking wet up to the very knees; the gay-coloured barège shawl, closely wrapped round the form, which yet shivered and shook, as the woman whispered: "I want to speak to you." He swore an oath, and bade her begone. "I really do. Don't send me away. I'm so out of breath, I cannot say what I would all at once." She put her hand to her side, and caught her breath with evident pain. "I tell thee I'm not the man for thee," adding an opprobrious name. "Stay," said he, as a thought suggested by her voice flashed across him. He gripped her arm--the arm he had just before shaken off, and dragged her, faintly resisting, to the nearest lamp-post. He pushed her bonnet back, and roughly held the face she would fain have averted, to the light, and in her large, unnaturally bright gray eyes, her lovely mouth, half open, as if imploring the forbearance she could not ask for in words, he saw at once the long-lost Esther; she who had caused his wife's death. Much was like the gay creature of former years; but the glaring paint, the sharp features, the changed expression of the whole! But most of all, he loathed the dress; and yet the poor thing, out of her little choice of attire, had put on the plainest she had, to come on that night's errand. "So it's thee, is it! It's thee!" exclaimed John, as he ground his teeth, and shook her with passion. "I've looked for thee long at corners o' streets, and such like places. I knew I should find thee at last. Thee'll may be bethink thee o' some words I spoke, which put thee up at th' time; summut about street-walkers; but oh no! thou art none o' them naughts; no one thinks thou art, who sees thy fine draggle-tailed dress, and thy pretty pink cheeks!" stopping for very want of breath. "Oh, mercy! John, mercy! listen to me for Mary's sake!" She meant his daughter, but the name only fell on his ear as belonging to his wife; and it was adding fuel to the fire. In vain did her face grow deadly pale round the vivid circle of paint, in vain did she gasp for mercy,--he burst forth again. "And thou names that name to me! and thou thinks the thought of her will bring thee mercy! Dost thou know it was thee who killed her, as sure as ever Cain killed Abel. She'd loved thee as her own, and she trusted thee as her own, and when thou wert gone she never held up head again, but died in less than a three week; and at the judgment day she'll rise, and point to thee as her murderer; or if she don't, I will." He flung her, trembling, sickening, fainting, from him, and strode away. She fell with a feeble scream against the lamp-post, and lay there in her weakness, unable to rise. A policeman came up in time to see the close of these occurrences, and concluding from Esther's unsteady, reeling fall, that she was tipsy, he took her in her half-unconscious state to the lock-ups for the night. The superintendent of that abode of vice and misery was roused from his dozing watch through the dark hours, by half-delirious wails and moanings, which he reported as arising from intoxication. If he had listened, he would have heard these words, repeated in various forms, but always in the same anxious, muttering way. "He would not listen to me; what can I do? He would not listen to me, and I wanted to warn him! Oh, what shall I do to save Mary's child? What shall I do? How can I keep her from being such a one as I am; such a wretched, loathsome creature! She was listening just as I listened, and loving just as I loved, and the end will be just like my end. How shall I save her? She won't hearken to warning, or heed it more than I did; and who loves her well enough to watch over her as she should be watched? God keep her from harm! And yet I won't pray for her; sinner that I am! Can my prayers be heard? No! they'll only do harm. How shall I save her? He would not listen to me." So the night wore away. The next morning she was taken up to the New Bailey. It was a clear case of disorderly vagrancy, and she was committed to prison for a month. How much might happen in that time! CHAPTER XI. MR. CARSON'S INTENTIONS REVEALED. "O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Wha for thy sake wad gladly die? Or canst thou break that heart of his, Whase only faut is loving thee?" BURNS. "I can like of the wealth, I must confess, Yet more I prize the man, though moneyless; I am not of their humour yet that can For title or estate affect a man; Or of myself one body deign to make With him I loathe, for his possessions' sake." WITHER'S "FIDELIA." Barton returned home after his encounter with Esther, uneasy and dissatisfied. He had said no more than he had been planning to say for years, in case she was ever thrown in his way, in the character in which he felt certain he should meet her. He believed she deserved it all, and yet he now wished he had not said it. Her look, as she asked for mercy, haunted him through his broken and disordered sleep; her form, as he last saw her, lying prostrate in helplessness, would not be banished from his dreams. He sat up in bed to try and dispel the vision. Now, too late, his conscience smote him for his harshness. It would have been all very well, he thought, to have said what he did, if he had added some kind words, at last. He wondered if his dead wife was conscious of that night's occurrence; and he hoped not, for with her love for Esther he believed it would embitter Heaven to have seen her so degraded and repulsed. For he now recalled her humility, her tacit acknowledgment of her lost character; and he began to marvel if there was power in the religion he had often heard of, to turn her from her ways. He felt that no earthly power that he knew of could do it, but there glimmered on his darkness the idea that religion might save her. Still, where to find her again? In the wilderness of a large town, where to meet with an individual of so little value or note to any? And evening after evening he paced those streets in which he had heard her footsteps following him, peering under every fantastic, discreditable bonnet, in the hopes of once more meeting Esther, and addressing her in a far different manner from what he had done before. But he returned, night after night, disappointed in his search, and at last gave it up in despair, and tried to recall his angry feelings towards her, in order to find relief from his present self-reproach. He often looked at Mary, and wished she were not so like her aunt, for the very bodily likeness seemed to suggest the possibility of a similar likeness in their fate; and then this idea enraged his irritable mind, and he became suspicious and anxious about Mary's conduct. Now hitherto she had been so remarkably free from all control, and almost from all inquiry concerning her actions, that she did not brook this change in her father's behaviour very well. Just when she was yielding more than ever to Mr. Carson's desire of frequent meetings, it was hard to be so questioned concerning her hours of leaving off work, whether she had come straight home, &c. She could not tell lies; though she could conceal much if she were not questioned. So she took refuge in obstinate silence, alleging as a reason for it her indignation at being so cross-examined. This did not add to the good feeling between father and daughter, and yet they dearly loved each other; and in the minds of each, one principal reason for maintaining such behaviour as displeased the other, was the believing that this conduct would insure that person's happiness. Her father now began to wish Mary were married. Then this terrible superstitious fear suggested by her likeness to Esther would be done away with. He felt that he could not resume the reins he had once slackened. But with a husband it would be different. If Jem Wilson would but marry her! With his character for steadiness and talent! But he was afraid Mary had slighted him, he came so seldom now to the house. He would ask her. "Mary, what's come o'er thee and Jem Wilson? Yo were great friends at one time." "Oh, folk say he's going to be married to Molly Gibson, and of course courting takes up a deal o' time," answered Mary, as indifferently as she could. "Thou'st played thy cards badly, then," replied her father, in a surly tone. "At one time he were desperate fond o' thee, or I'm much mistaken. Much fonder of thee than thou deservedst." "That's as people think," said Mary, pertly, for she remembered that the very morning before she had met Mr. Carson, who had sighed, and swore, and protested all manner of tender vows that she was the loveliest, sweetest, best, &c. And when she had seen him afterwards riding with one of his beautiful sisters, had he not evidently pointed her out as in some way or other an object worthy of attention and interest, and then lingered behind his sister's horse for a moment to kiss his hand repeatedly. So, as for Jem Wilson, she could whistle him down the wind. But her father was not in the mood to put up with pertness, and he upbraided her with the loss of Jem Wilson till she had to bite her lips till the blood came, in order to keep down the angry words that would rise in her heart. At last her father left the house, and then she might give way to her passionate tears. It so happened that Jem, after much anxious thought, had determined that day to "put his fate to the touch, to win or lose it all." He was in a condition to maintain a wife in comfort. It was true his mother and aunt must form part of the household; but such is not an uncommon case among the poor, and if there were the advantage of previous friendship between the parties, it was not, he thought, an obstacle to matrimony. Both mother and aunt he believed would welcome Mary. And oh! what a certainty of happiness the idea of that welcome implied. He had been absent and abstracted all day long with the thought of the coming event of the evening. He almost smiled at himself for his care in washing and dressing in preparation for his visit to Mary. As if one waistcoat or another could decide his fate in so passionately momentous a thing. He believed he only delayed before his little looking-glass for cowardice, for absolute fear of a girl. He would try not to think so much about the affair, and he thought the more. Poor Jem! it is not an auspicious moment for thee! "Come in," said Mary, as some one knocked at the door, while she sat sadly at her sewing, trying to earn a few pence by working over hours at some mourning. Jem entered, looking more awkward and abashed than he had ever done before. Yet here was Mary all alone, just as he had hoped to find her. She did not ask him to take a chair, but after standing a minute or two he sat down near her. "Is your father at home, Mary?" said he, by way of making an opening, for she seemed determined to keep silence, and went on stitching away. "No, he's gone to his Union, I suppose." Another silence. It was no use waiting, thought Jem. The subject would never be led to by any talk he could think of in his anxious fluttered state. He had better begin at once. "Mary!" said he, and the unusual tone of his voice made her look up for an instant, but in that time she understood from his countenance what was coming, and her heart beat so suddenly and violently she could hardly sit still. Yet one thing she was sure of; nothing he could say should make her have him. She would show them all _who_ would be glad to have her. She was not yet calm after her father's irritating speeches. Yet her eyes fell veiled before that passionate look fixed upon her. "Dear Mary! (for how dear you are, I cannot rightly tell you in words). It's no new story I'm going to speak about. You must ha' seen and known it long; for since we were boy and girl, I ha' loved you above father and mother and all; and all I've thought on by day and dreamt on by night, has been something in which you've had a share. I'd no way of keeping you for long, and I scorned to try and tie you down; and I lived in terror lest some one else should take you to himself. But now, Mary, I'm foreman in th' works, and, dear Mary! listen," as she, in her unbearable agitation, stood up and turned away from him. He rose, too, and came nearer, trying to take hold of her hand; but this she would not allow. She was bracing herself up to refuse him, for once and for all. "And now, Mary, I've a home to offer you, and a heart as true as ever man had to love you and cherish you; we shall never be rich folk, I dare say; but if a loving heart and a strong right arm can shield you from sorrow, or from want, mine shall do it. I cannot speak as I would like; my love won't let itself be put in words. But oh! darling, say you believe me, and that you'll be mine." She could not speak at once; her words would not come. "Mary, they say silence gives consent; is it so?" he whispered. Now or never the effort must be made. "No! it does not with me." Her voice was calm, although she trembled from head to foot. "I will always be your friend, Jem, but I can never be your wife." "Not my wife!" said he, mournfully. "Oh Mary, think awhile! you cannot be my friend if you will not be my wife. At least I can never be content to be only your friend. Do think awhile! If you say No you will make me hopeless, desperate. It's no love of yesterday. It has made the very groundwork of all that people call good in me. I don't know what I shall be if you won't have me. And, Mary! think how glad your father would be! it may sound vain, but he's told me more than once how much he should like to see us two married!" Jem intended this for a powerful argument, but in Mary's present mood it told against him more than any thing; for it suggested the false and foolish idea, that her father, in his evident anxiety to promote her marriage with Jem, had been speaking to him on the subject with some degree of solicitation. "I tell you, Jem, it cannot be. Once for all, I will never marry you." "And is this the end of all my hopes and fears? the end of my life, I may say, for it is the end of all worth living for!" His agitation rose and carried him into passion. "Mary! you'll hear, may be, of me as a drunkard, and may be as a thief, and may be as a murderer. Remember! when all are speaking ill of me, you will have no right to blame me, for it's your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become. You won't even say you'll try and like me; will you, Mary?" said he, suddenly changing his tone from threatening despair to fond passionate entreaty, as he took her hand and held it forcibly between both of his, while he tried to catch a glimpse of her averted face. She was silent, but it was from deep and violent emotion. He could not bear to wait; he would not hope, to be dashed away again; he rather in his bitterness of heart chose the certainty of despair, and before she could resolve what to answer, he flung away her hand and rushed out of the house. "Jem! Jem!" cried she, with faint and choking voice. It was too late; he left street after street behind him with his almost winged speed, as he sought the fields, where he might give way unobserved to all the deep despair he felt. It was scarcely ten minutes since he had entered the house, and found Mary at comparative peace, and now she lay half across the dresser, her head hidden in her hands, and every part of her body shaking with the violence of her sobs. She could not have told at first (if you had asked her, and she could have commanded voice enough to answer) why she was in such agonised grief. It was too sudden for her to analyse, or think upon it. She only felt that by her own doing her life would be hereafter dreary and blank. By-and-bye her sorrow exhausted her body by its power, and she seemed to have no strength left for crying. She sat down; and now thoughts crowded on her mind. One little hour ago, and all was still unsaid, and she had her fate in her own power. And yet, how long ago had she determined to say pretty much what she did, if the occasion ever offered. It was as if two people were arguing the matter; that mournful, desponding communion between her former self and her present self. Herself, a day, an hour ago; and herself now. For we have every one of us felt how a very few minutes of the months and years called life, will sometimes suffice to place all time past and future in an entirely new light; will make us see the vanity or the criminality of the bye-gone, and so change the aspect of the coming time, that we look with loathing on the very thing we have most desired. A few moments may change our character for life, by giving a totally different direction to our aims and energies. To return to Mary. Her plan had been, as we well know, to marry Mr. Carson, and the occurrence an hour ago was only a preliminary step. True; but it had unveiled her heart to her; it had convinced her she loved Jem above all persons or things. But Jem was a poor mechanic, with a mother and aunt to keep; a mother, too, who had shown her pretty clearly she did not desire her for a daughter-in-law: while Mr. Carson was rich, and prosperous, and gay, and (she believed) would place her in all circumstances of ease and luxury, where want could never come. What were these hollow vanities to her, now she had discovered the passionate secret of her soul? She felt as if she almost hated Mr. Carson, who had decoyed her with his baubles. She now saw how vain, how nothing to her, would be all gaieties and pomps, all joys and pleasures, unless she might share them with Jem; yes, with him she harshly rejected so short a time ago. If he were poor, she loved him all the better. If his mother did think her unworthy of him, what was it but the truth, as she now owned with bitter penitence. She had hitherto been walking in grope-light towards a precipice; but in the clear revelation of that past hour, she saw her danger, and turned away resolutely and for ever. That was some comfort: I mean her clear perception of what she ought not to do; of what no luring temptation should ever again induce her to hearken to. How she could best undo the wrong she had done to Jem and herself by refusing his love, was another anxious question. She wearied herself with proposing plans, and rejecting them. She was roused to a consciousness of time by hearing the neighbouring church clock strike twelve. Her father she knew might be expected home any minute, and she was in no mood for a meeting with him. So she hastily gathered up her work, and went to her own little bed-room, leaving him to let himself in. She put out her candle, that her father might not see its light under the door; and sat down on her bed to think. But after turning things over in her mind again and again, she could only determine at once to put an end to all further communication with Mr. Carson, in the most decided way she could. Maidenly modesty (and true love is ever modest) seemed to oppose every plan she could think of, for showing Jem how much she repented her decision against him, and how dearly she had now discovered that she loved him. She came to the unusual wisdom of resolving to do nothing, but try and be patient, and improve circumstances as they might turn up. Surely, if Jem knew of her remaining unmarried, he would try his fortune again. He would never be content with one rejection; she believed she could not in his place. She had been very wrong, but now she would try and do right, and have womanly patience, until he saw her changed and repentant mind in her natural actions. Even if she had to wait for years, it was no more than now it was easy to look forward to, as a penance for her giddy flirting on the one hand, and her cruel mistake concerning her feelings on the other. So anticipating a happy ending to the course of her love, however distant it might be, she fell asleep just as the earliest factory bells were ringing. She had sunk down in her clothes, and her sleep was unrefreshing. She wakened up shivery and chill in body, and sorrow-stricken in mind, though she could not at first rightly tell the cause of her depression. She recalled the events of the night before, and still resolved to adhere to those determinations she had then formed. But patience seemed a far more difficult virtue this morning. She hastened down-stairs, and in her earnest sad desire to do right, now took much pains to secure a comfortable though scanty breakfast for her father; and when he dawdled into the room, in an evidently irritable temper, she bore all with the gentleness of penitence, till at last her mild answers turned away wrath. She loathed the idea of meeting Sally Leadbitter at her daily work; yet it must be done, and she tried to nerve herself for the encounter, and to make it at once understood, that having determined to give up having any thing further to do with Mr. Carson, she considered the bond of intimacy broken between them. But Sally was not the person to let these resolutions be carried into effect too easily. She soon became aware of the present state of Mary's feelings, but she thought they merely arose from the changeableness of girlhood, and that the time would come when Mary would thank her for almost forcing her to keep up her meetings and communications with her rich lover. So, when two days had passed over in rather too marked avoidance of Sally on Mary's part, and when the former was made aware by Mr. Carson's complaints that Mary was not keeping her appointments with him, and that unless he detained her by force, he had no chance of obtaining a word as she passed him in the street on her rapid walk home, she resolved to compel Mary to what she called her own good. She took no notice during the third day of Mary's avoidance as they sat at work; she rather seemed to acquiesce in the coolness of their intercourse. She put away her sewing early, and went home to her mother, who, she said, was more ailing than usual. The other girls soon followed her example, and Mary, casting a rapid glance up and down the street, as she stood last on Miss Simmonds' door-step, darted homewards, in hopes of avoiding the person whom she was fast learning to dread. That night she was safe from any encounter on her road, and she arrived at home, which she found as she expected, empty; for she knew it was a club night, which her father would not miss. She sat down to recover breath, and to still her heart, which panted more from nervousness than from over-exertion, although she had walked so quickly. Then she rose, and taking off her bonnet, her eye caught the form of Sally Leadbitter passing the window with a lingering step, and looking into the darkness with all her might, as if to ascertain if Mary were returned. In an instant she re-passed and knocked at the house-door, but without awaiting an answer, she entered. "Well, Mary, dear" (knowing well how little "dear" Mary considered her just then); "i's so difficult to get any comfortable talk at Miss Simmonds', I thought I'd just step up and see you at home." "I understood from what you said your mother was ailing, and that you wanted to be with her," replied Mary, in no welcoming tone. "Ay, but mother's better now," said the unabashed Sally. "Your father's out I suppose?" looking round as well as she could; for Mary made no haste to perform the hospitable offices of striking a match, and lighting a candle. "Yes, he's out," said Mary, shortly, and busying herself at last about the candle, without ever asking her visitor to sit down. "So much the better," answered Sally, "for to tell you the truth, Mary, I've a friend at th' end of the street, as is anxious to come and see you at home, since you're grown so particular as not to like to speak to him in the street. He'll be here directly." "Oh, Sally, don't let him," said Mary, speaking at last heartily; and running to the door she would have fastened it, but Sally held her hands, laughing meanwhile at her distress. "Oh, please, Sally," struggling, "dear Sally! don't let him come here, the neighbours will so talk, and father'll go mad if he hears; he'll kill me, Sally, he will. Besides, I don't love him--I never did. Oh, let me go," as footsteps approached; and then, as they passed the house, and seemed to give her a respite, she continued, "Do, Sally, dear Sally, go and tell him I don't love him, and that I don't want to have any thing more to do with him. It was very wrong, I dare say, keeping company with him at all, but I'm very sorry, if I've led him to think too much of me; and I don't want him to think any more. Will you tell him this, Sally? and I'll do any thing for you if you will." "I'll tell you what I'll do," said Sally, in a more relenting mood, "I'll go back with you to where he's waiting for us; or rather, I should say, where I told him to wait for a quarter of an hour, till I seed if your father was at home; and if I didn't come back in that time, he said he'd come here, and break the door open but he'd see you." "Oh, let us go, let us go," said Mary, feeling that the interview must be, and had better be anywhere than at home, where her father might return at any minute. She snatched up her bonnet, and was at the end of the court in an instant; but then, not knowing whether to turn to the right or to the left, she was obliged to wait for Sally, who came leisurely up, and put her arm through Mary's, with a kind of decided hold, intended to prevent the possibility of her changing her mind, and turning back. But this, under the circumstances, was quite different to Mary's plan. She had wondered more than once if she must not have another interview with Mr. Carson; and had then determined, while she expressed her resolution that it should be the final one, to tell him how sorry she was if she had thoughtlessly given him false hopes. For be it remembered, she had the innocence, or the ignorance, to believe his intentions honourable; and he, feeling that at any price he must have her, only that he would obtain her as cheaply as he could, had never undeceived her; while Sally Leadbitter laughed in her sleeve at them both, and wondered how it would all end,--whether Mary would gain her point of marriage, with her sly affectation of believing such to be Mr. Carson's intention in courting her. Not very far from the end of the street, into which the court where Mary lived opened, they met Mr. Carson, his hat a good deal slouched over his face as if afraid of being recognised. He turned when he saw them coming, and led the way without uttering a word (although they were close behind) to a street of half-finished houses. The length of the walk gave Mary time to recoil from the interview which was to follow; but even if her own resolve to go through with it had failed, there was the steady grasp of Sally Leadbitter, which she could not evade without an absolute struggle. At last he stopped in the shelter and concealment of a wooden fence, put up to keep the building rubbish from intruding on the foot-pavement. Inside this fence, a minute afterwards, the girls were standing by him; Mary now returning Sally's detaining grasp with interest, for she had determined on the way to make her a witness, willing or unwilling, to the ensuing conversation. But Sally's curiosity led her to be a very passive prisoner in Mary's hold. With more freedom than he had ever used before, Mr. Carson put his arm firmly round Mary's waist, in spite of her indignant resistance. "Nay, nay! you little witch! Now I have caught you, I shall keep you prisoner. Tell me now what has made you run away from me so fast these few days--tell me, you sweet little coquette!" Mary ceased struggling, but turned so as to be almost opposite to him, while she spoke out calmly and boldly, "Mr. Carson! I want to speak to you for once and for all. Since I met you last Monday evening, I have made up my mind to have nothing more to do with you. I know I've been wrong in leading you to think I liked you; but I believe I didn't rightly know my own mind; and I humbly beg your pardon, sir, if I've led you to think too much of me." For an instant he was surprised; the next, vanity came to his aid, and convinced him that she could only be joking. He, young, agreeable, rich, handsome! No! she was only showing a little womanly fondness for coquetting. "You're a darling little rascal to go on in this way! 'Humbly begging my pardon if you've made me think too much of you.' As if you didn't know I think of you from morning to night. But you want to be told it again and again, do you?" "No, indeed, sir, I don't. I would far liefer [40] that you should say you will never think of me again, than that you should speak of me in this way. For indeed, sir, I never was more in earnest than I am, when I say to-night is the last night I will ever speak to you." [Footnote 40: "Liefer," rather. "Yet had I _levre_ unwist for sorrow die." _Chaucer; "Troilus and Creseide."_] "Last night, you sweet little equivocator, but not last day. Ha, Mary! I've caught you, have I?" as she, puzzled by his perseverance in thinking her joking, hesitated in what form she could now put her meaning. "I mean, sir," she said, sharply, "that I will never speak to you again at any time, after to-night." "And what's made this change, Mary?" said he, seriously enough now. "Have I done any thing to offend you?" added he, earnestly. "No, sir," she answered gently, but yet firmly. "I cannot tell you exactly why I've changed my mind; but I shall not alter it again; and as I said before, I beg your pardon if I've done wrong by you. And now, sir, if you please, good night." "But I do not please. You shall not go. What have I done, Mary? Tell me. You must not go without telling me how I have vexed you. What would you have me do?" "Nothing, sir! but (in an agitated tone) oh! let me go! You cannot change my mind; it's quite made up. Oh, sir! why do you hold me so tight? If you _will_ know why I won't have any thing more to do with you, it is that I cannot love you. I have tried, and I really cannot." This naive and candid avowal served her but little. He could not understand how it could be true. Some reason lurked behind. He was passionately in love. What should he do to tempt her? A thought struck him. "Listen! Mary. Nay, I cannot let you go till you have heard me. I do love you dearly; and I won't believe but what you love me a very little, just a very little. Well, if you don't like to own it, never mind! I only want now to tell you how much I love you, by what I am ready to give up for you. You know (or perhaps you are not fully aware) how little my father and mother would like me to marry you. So angry would they be, and so much ridicule should I have to brave, that of course I have never thought of it till now. I thought we could be happy enough without marriage." (Deep sank those words into Mary's heart.) "But now, if you like, I'll get a licence to-morrow morning--nay, to-night, and I'll marry you in defiance of all the world, rather than give you up. In a year or two my father will forgive me, and meanwhile you shall have every luxury money can purchase, and every charm that love can devise to make your life happy. After all, my mother was but a factory girl." (This was said half to himself, as if to reconcile himself to this bold step.) "Now, Mary, you see how willing I am to--to sacrifice a good deal for you; I even offer you marriage, to satisfy your little ambitious heart; so, now, won't you say you can love me a little, little bit?" He pulled her towards him. To his surprise, she still resisted. Yes! though all she had pictured to herself for so many months in being the wife of Mr. Carson was now within her grasp, she resisted. His speech had given her but one feeling, that of exceeding great relief. For she had dreaded, now she knew what true love was, to think of the attachment she might have created; the deep feeling her flirting conduct might have called out. She had loaded herself with reproaches for the misery she might have caused. It was a relief to gather that the attachment was of that low, despicable kind, which can plan to seduce the object of its affection; that the feeling she had caused was shallow enough, for it only pretended to embrace self, at the expense of the misery, the ruin, of one falsely termed beloved. She need not be penitent to such a plotter! That was the relief. "I am obliged to you, sir, for telling me what you have. You may think I am a fool; but I did think you meant to marry me all along; and yet, thinking so, I felt I could not love you. Still I felt sorry I had gone so far in keeping company with you. Now, sir, I tell you, if I had loved you before, I don't think I should have loved you now you have told me you meant to ruin me; for that's the plain English of not meaning to marry me till just this minute. I said I was sorry, and humbly begged your pardon; that was before I knew what you were. Now I scorn you, sir, for plotting to ruin a poor girl. Good night." And with a wrench, for which she had reserved all her strength, she was off like a bolt. They heard her flying footsteps echo down the quiet street. The next sound was Sally's laugh, which grated on Mr. Carson's ears, and keenly irritated him. "And what do you find so amusing, Sally?" asked he. "Oh, sir, I beg your pardon. I humbly beg your pardon, as Mary says, but I can't help laughing, to think how she's outwitted us." (She was going to have said, "outwitted you," but changed the pronoun.) "Why, Sally, had you any idea she was going to fly out in this style?" "No, I hadn't, to be sure. But if you did think of marrying her, why (if I may be so bold as to ask) did you go and tell her you had no thought of doing otherwise by her? That was what put her up at last!" "Why I had repeatedly before led her to infer that marriage was not my object. I never dreamed she could have been so foolish as to have mistaken me, little provoking romancer though she be! So I naturally wished her to know what a sacrifice of prejudice, of--of myself, in short, I was willing to make for her sake; yet I don't think she was aware of it after all. I believe I might have any lady in Manchester if I liked, and yet I was willing and ready to marry a poor dress-maker. Don't you understand me now? and don't you see what a sacrifice I was making to humour her? and all to no avail." Sally was silent, so he went on: "My father would have forgiven any temporary connexion, far sooner than my marrying one so far beneath me in rank." "I thought you said, sir, your mother was a factory girl," reminded Sally, rather maliciously. "Yes, yes!--but then my father was in much such a station; at any rate, there was not the disparity there is between Mary and me." Another pause. "Then you mean to give her up, sir? She made no bones of saying she gave you up." "No, I do not mean to give her up, whatever you and she may please to think. I am more in love with her than ever; even for this charming capricious ebullition of hers. She'll come round, you may depend upon it. Women always do. They always have second thoughts, and find out that they are best in casting off a lover. Mind! I don't say I shall offer her the same terms again." With a few more words of no importance, the allies parted. CHAPTER XII. OLD ALICE'S BAIRN. "I lov'd him not; and yet, now he is gone, I feel I am alone. I check'd him while he spoke; yet, could he speak, Alas! I would not check. For reasons not to love him once I sought, And wearied all my thought." W. S. LANDOR. And now Mary had, as she thought, dismissed both her lovers. But they looked on their dismissals with very different eyes. He who loved her with all his heart and with all his soul, considered his rejection final. He did not comfort himself with the idea, which would have proved so well founded in his case, that women have second thoughts about casting off their lovers. He had too much respect for his own heartiness of love to believe himself unworthy of Mary; that mock humble conceit did not enter his head. He thought he did not "hit Mary's fancy;" and though that may sound a trivial every-day expression, yet the reality of it cut him to the heart. Wild visions of enlistment, of drinking himself into forgetfulness, of becoming desperate in some way or another, entered his mind; but then the thought of his mother stood like an angel with a drawn sword in the way to sin. For, you know, "he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow;" dependent on him for daily bread. So he could not squander away health and time, which were to him money wherewith to support her failing years. He went to his work, accordingly, to all outward semblance just as usual; but with a heavy, heavy heart within. Mr. Carson, as we have seen, persevered in considering Mary's rejection of him as merely a "charming caprice." If she were at work, Sally Leadbitter was sure to slip a passionately loving note into her hand, and then so skilfully move away from her side, that Mary could not all at once return it, without making some sensation among the work-women. She was even forced to take several home with her. But after reading one, she determined on her plan. She made no great resistance to receiving them from Sally, but kept them unopened, and occasionally returned them in a blank half-sheet of paper. But far worse than this, was the being so constantly waylaid as she went home by her persevering lover; who had been so long acquainted with all her habits, that she found it difficult to evade him. Late or early, she was never certain of being free from him. Go this way or that, he might come up some cross street when she had just congratulated herself on evading him for that day. He could not have taken a surer mode of making himself odious to her. And all this time Jem Wilson never came! Not to see her--that she did not expect--but to see her father; to--she did not know what, but she had hoped he would have come on some excuse, just to see if she hadn't changed her mind. He never came. Then she grew weary and impatient, and her spirits sank. The persecution of the one lover, and the neglect of the other, oppressed her sorely. She could not now sit quietly through the evening at her work; or, if she kept, by a strong effort, from pacing up and down the room, she felt as if she must sing to keep off thought while she sewed. And her songs were the maddest, merriest, she could think of. "Barbara Allen," and such sorrowful ditties, did well enough for happy times; but now she required all the aid that could be derived from external excitement to keep down the impulse of grief. And her father, too--he was a great anxiety to her, he looked so changed and so ill. Yet he would not acknowledge to any ailment. She knew, that be it as late as it would, she never left off work until (if the poor servants paid her pretty regularly for the odd jobs of mending she did for them) she had earned a few pence, enough for one good meal for her father on the next day. But very frequently all she could do in the morning, after her late sitting up at night, was to run with the work home, and receive the money from the person for whom it was done. She could not stay often to make purchases of food, but gave up the money at once to her father's eager clutch; sometimes prompted by savage hunger it is true, but more frequently by a craving for opium. On the whole he was not so hungry as his daughter. For it was a long fast from the one o'clock dinner-hour at Miss Simmonds' to the close of Mary's vigil, which was often extended to midnight. She was young, and had not yet learned to bear "clemming." One evening, as she sang a merry song over her work, stopping occasionally to sigh, the blind Margaret came groping in. It had been one of Mary's additional sorrows that her friend had been absent from home, accompanying the lecturer on music in his round among the manufacturing towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Her grandfather, too, had seen this a good time for going his expeditions in search of specimens; so that the house had been shut up for several weeks. "Oh! Margaret, Margaret! how glad I am to see you. Take care. There, now, you're all right, that's father's chair. Sit down."--She kissed her over and over again. "It seems like the beginning o' brighter times, to see you again, Margaret. Bless you! And how well you look!" "Doctors always send ailing folk for change of air! and you know I've had plenty o' that same lately." "You've been quite a traveller for sure! Tell us all about it, do, Margaret. Where have you been to, first place?" "Eh, lass, that would take a long time to tell. Half o'er the world I sometimes think. Bolton, and Bury, and Owdham, and Halifax, and--but Mary, guess who I saw there! May be you know though, so it's not fair guessing." "No, I donnot. Tell me, Margaret, for I cannot abide waiting and guessing." "Well, one night as I were going fra' my lodgings wi' the help on a lad as belonged to th' landlady, to find the room where I were to sing, I heard a cough before me, walking along. Thinks I, that's Jem Wilson's cough, or I'm much mistaken. Next time came a sneeze and a cough, and then I were certain. First I hesitated whether I should speak, thinking if it were a stranger he'd may be think me forrard. [41] But I knew blind folks must not be nesh about using their tongues, so says I, 'Jem Wilson, is that you?' And sure enough it was, and nobody else. Did you know he were in Halifax, Mary?" [Footnote 41: "Forrard," forward.] "No;" she answered, faintly and sadly; for Halifax was all the same to her heart as the Antipodes; equally inaccessible by humble penitent looks and maidenly tokens of love. "Well, he's there, however; he's putting up an engine for some folks there, for his master. He's doing well, for he's getten four or five men under him; we'd two or three meetings, and he telled me all about his invention for doing away wi' the crank, or somewhat. His master's bought it from him, and ta'en out a patent, and Jem's a gentleman for life wi' the money his master gied him. But you'll ha' heard all this, Mary?" No! she had not. "Well, I thought it all happened afore he left Manchester, and then in course you'd ha' known. But may be it were all settled after he got to Halifax; however, he's gotten two or three hunder pounds for his invention. But what's up with you, Mary? you're sadly out o' sorts. You've never been quarrelling wi' Jem, surely?" Now Mary cried outright; she was weak in body, and unhappy in mind, and the time was come when she might have the relief of telling her grief. She could not bring herself to confess how much of her sorrow was caused by her having been vain and foolish; she hoped that need never be known, and she could not bear to think of it. "Oh, Margaret; do you know Jem came here one night when I were put out, and cross. Oh, dear! dear! I could bite my tongue out when I think on it. And he told me how he loved me, and I thought I did not love him, and I told him I didn't; and, Margaret,--he believed me, and went away so sad, and so angry; and now I'd do any thing,--I would, indeed," her sobs choked the end of her sentence. Margaret looked at her with sorrow, but with hope; for she had no doubt in her own mind, that it was only a temporary estrangement. "Tell me, Margaret," said Mary, taking her apron down from her eyes, and looking at Margaret with eager anxiety, "what can I do to bring him back to me? Should I write to him?" "No," replied her friend, "that would not do. Men are so queer, they like to have a' the courting to themselves." "But I did not mean to write him a courting letter," said Mary, somewhat indignantly. "If you wrote at all, it would be to give him a hint you'd taken the rue, and would be very glad to have him now. I believe now he'd rather find that out himself." "But he won't try," said Mary, sighing. "How can he find it out when he's at Halifax?" "If he's a will he's a way, depend upon it. And you would not have him if he's not a will to you, Mary! No, dear!" changing her tone from the somewhat hard way in which sensible people too often speak, to the soft accents of tenderness which come with such peculiar grace from them; "you must just wait and be patient. You may depend upon it, all will end well, and better than if you meddled in it now." "But it's so hard to be patient," pleaded Mary. "Ay, dear; being patient is the hardest work we, any on us, have to do through life, I take it. Waiting is far more difficult than doing. I've known that about my sight, and many a one has known it in watching the sick; but it's one of God's lessons we all must learn, one way or another." After a pause. "Have ye been to see his mother of late?" "No; not for some weeks. When last I went she was so frabbit [42] with me, that I really thought she wished I'd keep away." [Footnote 42: "Frabbit," ill-tempered.] "Well! if I were you I'd go. Jem will hear on't, and it will do you far more good in his mind than writing a letter, which, after all, you would find a tough piece of work when you came to settle to it. 'Twould be hard to say neither too much nor too little. But I must be going, grandfather is at home, and it's our first night together, and he must not be sitting wanting me any longer." She rose up from her seat, but still delayed going. "Mary! I've somewhat else I want to say to you, and I don't rightly know how to begin. You see, grandfather and I know what bad times is, and we know your father is out o' work, and I'm getting more money than I can well manage; and, dear, would you just take this bit o' gold, and pay me back in good times?" The tears stood in Margaret's eyes as she spoke. "Dear Margaret, we're not so bad pressed as that." (The thought of her father, and his ill looks, and his one meal a day, rushed upon Mary.) "And yet, dear, if it would not put you out o' your way,--I would work hard to make it up to you;--but would not your grandfather be vexed?" "Not he, wench! It were more his thought than mine, and we have gotten ever so many more at home, so don't hurry yoursel about paying. It's hard to be blind, to be sure, else money comes in so easily now to what it used to do; and it's downright pleasure to earn it, for I do so like singing." "I wish I could sing," said Mary, looking at the sovereign. "Some has one kind o' gifts, and some another. Many's the time when I could see, that I longed for your beauty, Mary! We're like childer, ever wanting what we han not got. But now I must say just one more word. Remember, if you're sore pressed for money, we shall take it very unkind if you donnot let us know. Good bye to ye." In spite of her blindness she hurried away, anxious to rejoin her grandfather, and desirous also to escape from Mary's expressions of gratitude. Her visit had done Mary good in many ways. It had strengthened her patience and her hope. It had given her confidence in Margaret's sympathy; and last, and really least in comforting power (of so little value are silver and gold in comparison to love, that gift in every one's power to bestow), came the consciousness of the money-value of the sovereign she held in her hand. The many things it might purchase! First of all came the thought of a comfortable supper for her father that very night; and acting instantly upon the idea, she set off in hopes that all the provision-shops might not yet be closed, although it was so late. That night the cottage shone with unusual light, and fire-gleam; and the father and daughter sat down to a meal they thought almost extravagant. It was so long since they had had enough to eat. "Food gives heart," say the Lancashire people; and the next day Mary made time to go and call on Mrs. Wilson, according to Margaret's advice. She found her quite alone, and more gracious than she had been the last time Mary had visited her. Alice was gone out, she said. "She would just step to the post-office, all for no earthly use. For it were to ask if they hadn't a letter lying there for her from her foster-son Will Wilson, the sailor-lad." "What made her think there were a letter?" asked Mary. "Why, yo see, a neighbour as has been in Liverpool, telled us Will's ship were come in. Now he said last time he were in Liverpool he'd ha' come to ha' seen Alice, but his ship had but a week holiday, and hard work for the men in that time too. So Alice makes sure he'll come this, and has had her hand behind her ear at every noise in th' street, thinking it were him. And to-day she were neither to have nor to hold, but off she would go to th' post, and see if he had na sent her a line to th' old house near yo. I tried to get her to give up going, for let alone her deafness she's getten so dark, she cannot see five yards afore her; but no, she would go, poor old body." "I did not know her sight had failed her; she used to have good eyes enough when she lived near us." "Ay, but it's gone lately a good deal. But you never ask after Jem--" anxious to get in a word on the subject nearest her heart. "No," replied Mary, blushing scarlet. "How is he?" "I cannot justly say how he is, seeing he's at Halifax; but he were very well when he wrote last Tuesday. Han ye heard o' his good luck?" Rather to her disappointment, Mary owned she had heard of the sum his master had paid him for his invention. "Well! and did not Margaret tell yo what he'd done wi' it? It's just like him though, ne'er to say a word about it. Why, when it were paid what does he do, but get his master to help him to buy an income for me and Alice. He had her name put down for her life; but, poor thing, she'll not be long to the fore, I'm thinking. She's sadly failed of late. And so, Mary, yo see, we're two ladies o' property. It's a matter o' twenty pound a year they tell me. I wish the twins had lived, bless 'em," said she, dropping a few tears. "They should ha' had the best o' schooling, and their belly-fulls o' food. I suppose they're better off in heaven, only I should so like to see 'em." Mary's heart filled with love at this new proof of Jem's goodness; but she could not talk about it. She took Jane Wilson's hand, and pressed it with affection; and then turned the subject to Will, her sailor nephew. Jane was a little bit sorry, but her prosperity had made her gentler, and she did not resent what she felt as Mary's indifference to Jem and his merits. "He's been in Africa and that neighbourhood, I believe. He's a fine chap, but he's not gotten Jem's hair. His has too much o' the red in it. He sent Alice (but, maybe, she telled you) a matter o' five pound when he were over before; but that were nought to an income, yo know." "It's not every one that can get a hundred or two at a time," said Mary. "No! no! that's true enough. There's not many a one like Jem. That's Alice's step," said she, hastening to open the door to her sister-in-law. Alice looked weary, and sad, and dusty. The weariness and the dust would not have been noticed either by her, or the others, if it had not been for the sadness. "No letters!" said Mrs. Wilson. "No, none! I must just wait another day to hear fra my lad. It's very dree work, waiting!" said Alice. Margaret's words came into Mary's mind. Every one has their time and kind of waiting. "If I but knew he were safe, and not drowned!" spoke Alice. "If I but knew he _were_ drowned, I would ask grace to say, Thy will be done. It's the waiting." "It's hard work to be patient to all of us," said Mary; "I know I find it so, but I did not know one so good as you did, Alice; I shall not think so badly of myself for being a bit impatient, now I've heard you say you find it difficult." The idea of reproach to Alice was the last in Mary's mind; and Alice knew it was. Nevertheless, she said, "Then, my dear, I ask your pardon, and God's pardon, too, if I've weakened your faith, by showing you how feeble mine was. Half our life's spent in waiting, and it ill becomes one like me, wi' so many mercies, to grumble. I'll try and put a bridle o'er my tongue, and my thoughts too." She spoke in a humble and gentle voice, like one asking forgiveness. "Come, Alice," interposed Mrs. Wilson, "don't fret yoursel for e'er a trifle wrong said here or there. See! I've put th' kettle on, and you and Mary shall ha' a dish o' tea in no time." So she bustled about, and brought out a comfortable-looking substantial loaf, and set Mary to cut bread and butter, while she rattled out the tea-cups--always a cheerful sound. Just as they were sitting down, there was a knock heard at the door, and without waiting for it to be opened from the inside, some one lifted the latch, and in a man's voice asked, if one George Wilson lived there? Mrs. Wilson was entering on a long and sorrowful explanation of his having once lived there, but of his having dropped down dead; when Alice, with the instinct of love (for in all usual and common instances, sight and hearing failed to convey impressions to her until long after other people had received them), arose, and tottered to the door. "My bairn!--my own dear bairn!" she exclaimed, falling on Will Wilson's neck. You may fancy the hospitable and welcoming commotion that ensued; how Mrs. Wilson laughed, and talked, and cried, altogether, if such a thing can be done; and how Mary gazed with wondering pleasure at her old playmate; now a dashing, bronzed-looking, ringletted sailor, frank, and hearty, and affectionate. But it was something different from common to see Alice's joy at once more having her foster-child with her. She did not speak, for she really could not; but the tears came coursing down her old withered cheeks, and dimmed the horn spectacles she had put on, in order to pry lovingly into his face. So what with her failing sight, and her tear-blinded eyes, she gave up the attempt of learning his face by heart through the medium of that sense, and tried another. She passed her sodden, shrivelled hands, all trembling with eagerness, over his manly face, bent meekly down in order that she might more easily make her strange inspection. At last, her soul was satisfied. After tea, Mary, feeling sure there was much to be said on both sides, at which it would be better no one should be present, not even an intimate friend like herself, got up to go away. This seemed to arouse Alice from her dreamy consciousness of exceeding happiness, and she hastily followed Mary to the door. There, standing outside, with the latch in her hand, she took hold of Mary's arm, and spoke nearly the first words she had uttered since her nephew's return. "My dear! I shall never forgive mysel, if my wicked words to-night are any stumbling-block in your path. See how the Lord has put coals of fire on my head! Oh! Mary, don't let my being an unbelieving Thomas weaken your faith. Wait patiently on the Lord, whatever your trouble may be." CHAPTER XIII. A TRAVELLER'S TALES. "The mermaid sat upon the rocks All day long, Admiring her beauty and combing her locks, And singing a mermaid song. "And hear the mermaid's song you may, As sure as sure can be, If you will but follow the sun all day, And souse with him into the sea." W. S. LANDOR. It was perhaps four or five days after the events mentioned in the last chapter, that one evening, as Mary stood lost in reverie at the window, she saw Will Wilson enter the court, and come quickly up to her door. She was glad to see him, for he had always been a friend of hers, perhaps too much like her in character ever to become any thing nearer or dearer. She opened the door in readiness to receive his frank greeting, which she as frankly returned. "Come, Mary! on with bonnet and shawl, or whatever rigging you women require before leaving the house. I'm sent to fetch you, and I can't lose time when I'm under orders." "Where am I to go to?" asked Mary, as her heart leaped up at the thought of who might be waiting for her. "Not very far," replied he. "Only to old Job Legh's round the corner here. Aunt would have me come and see these new friends of hers, and then we meant to ha' come on here to see you and your father, but the old gentleman seems inclined to make a night of it, and have you all there. Where's your father? I want to see him. He must come too." "He's out, but I'll leave word next door for him to follow me; that's to say, if he comes home afore long." She added, hesitatingly, "Is any one else at Job's?" "No! My aunt Jane would not come for some maggot or other; and as for Jem! I don't know what you've all been doing to him, but he's as down-hearted a chap as I'd wish to see. He's had his sorrows sure enough, poor lad! But it's time for him to be shaking off his dull looks, and not go moping like a girl." "Then he's come fra Halifax, is he?" asked Mary. "Yes! his body's come, but I think he's left his heart behind him. His tongue I'm sure he has, as we used to say to childer, when they would not speak. I try to rouse him up a bit, and I think he likes having me with him, but still he's as gloomy and as dull as can be. 'Twas only yesterday he took me to the works, and you'd ha' thought us two Quakers as the spirit hadn't moved, all the way down we were so mum. It's a place to craze a man, certainly; such a noisy black hole! There were one or two things worth looking at, the bellows for instance, or the gale they called a bellows. I could ha' stood near it a whole day; and if I'd a berth in that place, I should like to be bellows-man, if there is such a one. But Jem weren't diverted even with that; he stood as grave as a judge while it blew my hat out o' my hand. He's lost all relish for his food, too, which frets my aunt sadly. Come! Mary, ar'n't you ready?" She had not been able to gather if she were to see Jem at Job Legh's; but when the door was opened, she at once saw and felt he was not there. The evening then would be a blank; at least so she thought for the first five minutes; but she soon forgot her disappointment in the cheerful meeting of old friends, all, except herself, with some cause for rejoicing at that very time. Margaret, who could not be idle, was knitting away, with her face looking full into the room, away from her work. Alice sat meek and patient with her dimmed eyes and gentle look, trying to see and to hear, but never complaining; indeed, in her inner self she was blessing God for her happiness; for the joy of having her nephew, her child, near her, was far more present to her mind, than her deprivations of sight and hearing. Job was in the full glory of host and hostess too, for by a tacit agreement he had roused himself from his habitual abstraction, and had assumed many of Margaret's little household duties. While he moved about he was deep in conversation with the young sailor, trying to extract from him any circumstances connected with the natural history of the different countries he had visited. "Oh! if you are fond of grubs, and flies, and beetles, there's no place for 'em like Sierra Leone. I wish you'd had some of ours; we had rather too much of a good thing; we drank them with our drink, and could scarcely keep from eating them with our food. I never thought any folk could care for such fat green beasts as those, or I would ha' brought you them by the thousand. A plate full o' peas-soup would ha' been full enough for you, I dare say; it were often too full for us." "I would ha' given a good deal for some on 'em," said Job. "Well, I knew folk at home liked some o' the queer things one meets with abroad; but I never thought they'd care for them nasty slimy things. I were always on the look-out for a mermaid, for that I knew were a curiosity." "You might ha' looked long enough," said Job, in an under-tone of contempt, which, however, the quick ears of the sailor caught. "Not so long, master, in some latitudes, as you think. It stands to reason th' sea hereabouts is too cold for mermaids; for women here don't go half-naked on account o' climate. But I've been in lands where muslin were too hot to wear on land, and where the sea were more than milk-warm; and though I'd never the good luck to see a mermaid in that latitude, I know them that has." "Do tell us about it," cried Mary. "Pooh, pooh!" said Job the naturalist. Both speeches determined Will to go on with his story. What could a fellow who had never been many miles from home know about the wonders of the deep, that he should put him down in that way? "Well, it were Jack Harris, our third mate last voyage, as many and many a time telled us all about it. You see he were becalmed off Chatham Island (that's in the Great Pacific, and a warm enough latitude for mermaids, and sharks, and such like perils). So some of the men took the long boat, and pulled for the island to see what it were like; and when they got near, they heard a puffing, like a creature come up to take breath; you've never heard a diver? No! Well! you've heard folks in th' asthma, and it were for all the world like that. So they looked around, and what should they see but a mermaid, sitting on a rock, and sunning herself. The water is always warmer when it's rough, you know, so I suppose in the calm she felt it rather chilly, and had come up to warm herself." "What was she like?" asked Mary, breathlessly. Job took his pipe off the chimney-piece and began to smoke with very audible puffs, as if the story were not worth listening to. "Oh! Jack used to say she was for all the world as beautiful as any of the wax ladies in the barbers' shops; only, Mary, there were one little difference: her hair was bright grass green." "I should not think that was pretty," said Mary, hesitatingly; as if not liking to doubt the perfection of any thing belonging to such an acknowledged beauty. "Oh! but it is when you're used to it. I always think when first we get sight of land, there's no colour so lovely as grass green. However, she had green hair sure enough; and were proud enough of it, too; for she were combing it out full-length when first they saw her. They all thought she were a fair prize, and may be as good as a whale in ready money (they were whale-fishers you know). For some folk think a deal of mermaids, whatever other folk do." This was a hit at Job, who retaliated in a series of sonorous spittings and puffs. "So, as I were saying, they pulled towards her, thinking to catch her. She were all the while combing her beautiful hair, and beckoning to them, while with the other hand she held a looking-glass." "How many hands had she?" asked Job. "Two, to be sure, just like any other woman," answered Will, indignantly. "Oh! I thought you said she beckoned with one hand, and combed her hair with another, and held a looking-glass with a third," said Job, with provoking quietness. "No! I didn't! at least if I did, I meant she did one thing after another, as any one but" (here he mumbled a word or two) "could understand. Well, Mary," turning very decidedly towards her, "when she saw them coming near, whether it were she grew frightened at their fowling-pieces, as they had on board, for a bit o' shooting on the island, or whether it were she were just a fickle jade as did not rightly know her own mind (which, seeing one half of her was woman, I think myself was most probable), but when they were only about two oars' length from the rock where she sat, down she plopped into the water, leaving nothing but her hinder end of a fish tail sticking up for a minute, and then that disappeared too." "And did they never see her again?" asked Mary. "Never so plain; the man who had the second watch one night declared he saw her swimming round the ship, and holding up her glass for him to look in; and then he saw the little cottage near Aber in Wales (where his wife lived) as plain as ever he saw it in life, and his wife standing outside, shading her eyes as if she were looking for him. But Jack Harris gave him no credit, for he said he were always a bit of a romancer, and beside that, were a home-sick, down-hearted chap." "I wish they had caught her," said Mary, musing. "They got one thing as belonged to her," replied Will, "and that I've often seen with my own eyes, and I reckon it's a sure proof of the truth of their story; for them that wants proof." "What was it?" asked Margaret, almost anxious her grandfather should be convinced. "Why, in her hurry she left her comb on the rock, and one o' the men spied it; so they thought that were better than nothing, and they rowed there and took it, and Jack Harris had it on board the _John Cropper_, and I saw him comb his hair with it every Sunday morning." "What was it like?" asked Mary, eagerly; her imagination running on coral combs, studded with pearls. "Why, if it had not had such a strange yarn belonging to it, you'd never ha' noticed it from any other small-tooth comb." "I should rather think not," sneered Job Legh. The sailor bit his lips to keep down his anger against an old man. Margaret felt very uneasy, knowing her grandfather so well, and not daring to guess what caustic remark might come next to irritate the young sailor guest. Mary, however, was too much interested by the wonders of the deep to perceive the incredulity with which Job Legh received Wilson's account of the mermaid; and when he left off, half offended, and very much inclined not to open his lips again through the evening, she eagerly said, "Oh do tell us something more of what you hear and see on board ship. Do, Will!" "What's the use, Mary, if folk won't believe one. There are things I saw with my own eyes, that some people would pish and pshaw at, as if I were a baby to be put down by cross noises. But I'll tell you, Mary," with an emphasis on _you_, "some more of the wonders of the sea, sin' you're not too wise to believe me. I have seen a fish fly." This did stagger Mary. She had heard of mermaids as signs of inns, and as sea-wonders, but never of flying fish. Not so Job. He put down his pipe, and nodding his head as a token of approbation, he said "Ay, ay! young man. Now you're speaking truth." "Well now! you'll swallow that, old gentleman. You'll credit me when I say I've seen a crittur half fish, half bird, and you won't credit me when I say there be such beasts as mermaids, half fish, half woman. To me, one's just as strange as t'other." "You never saw the mermaid yoursel," interposed Margaret, gently. But "love me, love my dog," was Will Wilson's motto, only his version was "believe me, believe Jack Harris;" and the remark was not so soothing to him as it was intended to have been. "It's the Exocetus; one of the Malacopterygii Abdominales," said Job, much interested. "Ay, there you go! You're one o' them folks as never knows beasts unless they're called out o' their names. Put 'em in Sunday clothes and you know 'em, but in their work-a-day English you never know nought about 'em. I've met wi' many o' your kidney; and if I'd ha' known it, I'd ha' christened poor Jack's mermaid wi' some grand gibberish of a name. Mermaidicus Jack Harrisensis; that's just like their new-fangled words. D'ye believe there's such a thing as the Mermaidicus, master?" asked Will, enjoying his own joke uncommonly, as most people do. "Not I! Tell me about the--" "Well!" said Will, pleased at having excited the old gentleman's faith and credit at last. "It were on this last voyage, about a day's sail from Madeira, that one of our men--" "Not Jack Harris, I hope," murmured Job. "Called me," continued Will, not noticing the interruption, "to see the what d'ye call it--flying fish I say it is. It were twenty feet out o' water, and it flew near on to a hundred yards. But I say, old gentleman, I ha' gotten one dried, and if you'll take it, why, I'll give it you; only," he added, in a lower tone, "I wish you'd just gie me credit for the Mermaidicus." I really believe if the assuming faith in the story of the mermaid had been made the condition of receiving the flying fish, Job Legh, sincere man as he was, would have pretended belief; he was so much delighted at the idea of possessing this specimen. He won the sailor's heart by getting up to shake both his hands in his vehement gratitude, puzzling poor old Alice, who yet smiled through her wonder; for she understood the action to indicate some kindly feeling towards her nephew. Job wanted to prove his gratitude, and was puzzled how to do it. He feared the young man would not appreciate any of his duplicate Araneides; not even the great American Mygale, one of his most precious treasures; or else he would gladly have bestowed any duplicate on the donor of a real dried Exocetus. What could he do for him? He could ask Margaret to sing. Other folks beside her old doating grandfather thought a deal of her songs. So Margaret began some of her noble old-fashioned songs. She knew no modern music (for which her auditors might have been thankful), but she poured her rich voice out in some of the old canzonets she had lately learnt while accompanying the musical lecturer on his tour. Mary was amused to see how the young sailor sat entranced; mouth, eyes, all open, in order to catch every breath of sound. His very lids refused to wink, as if afraid in that brief proverbial interval to lose a particle of the rich music that floated through the room. For the first time the idea crossed Mary's mind that it was possible the plain little sensible Margaret, so prim and demure, might have power over the heart of the handsome, dashing, spirited Will Wilson. Job, too, was rapidly changing his opinion of his new guest. The flying fish went a great way, and his undisguised admiration for Margaret's singing carried him still further. It was amusing enough to see these two, within the hour so barely civil to each other, endeavouring now to be ultra-agreeable. Will, as soon as he had taken breath (a long, deep gasp of admiration) after Margaret's song, sidled up to Job, and asked him in a sort of doubting tone, "You wouldn't like a live Manx cat, would ye, master?" "A what?" exclaimed Job. "I don't know its best name," said Will, humbly. "But we call 'em just Manx cats. They're cats without tails." Now Job, in all his natural history, had never heard of such animals; so Will continued, "Because I'm going, afore joining my ship, to see mother's friends in the island, and would gladly bring you one, if so be you'd like to have it. They look as queer and out o' nature as flying fish, or"--he gulped the words down that should have followed. "Especially when you see 'em walking a roof-top, right again the sky, when a cat, as is a proper cat, is sure to stick her tail stiff out behind, like a slack-rope dancer a-balancing; but these cats having no tail, cannot stick it out, which captivates some people uncommonly. If yo'll allow me, I'll bring one for Miss there," jerking his head at Margaret. Job assented with grateful curiosity, wishing much to see the tail-less phenomenon. "When are you going to sail?" asked Mary. "I cannot justly say; our ship's bound for America next voyage, they tell me. A mess-mate will let me know when her sailing-day is fixed; but I've got to go to th' Isle o' Man first. I promised uncle last time I were in England to go this next time. I may have to hoist the blue Peter any day; so, make much of me while you have me, Mary." Job asked him if he had ever been in America. "Haven't I? North and South both! This time we're bound to North. Yankee-Land, as we call it, where Uncle Sam lives." "Uncle who?" said Mary. "Oh, it's a way sailors have of speaking. I only mean I'm going to Boston, U. S., that's Uncle Sam." Mary did not understand, so she left him and went to sit by Alice, who could not hear conversation unless expressly addressed to her. She had sat patiently silent the greater part of the night, and now greeted Mary with a quiet smile. "Where's yo'r father?" asked she. "I guess he's at his Union; he's there most evenings." Alice shook her head; but whether it were that she did not hear, or that she did not quite approve of what she heard, Mary could not make out. She sat silently watching Alice, and regretting over her dimmed and veiled eyes, formerly so bright and speaking; as if Alice understood by some other sense what was passing in Mary's mind, she turned suddenly round, and answered Mary's thought. "Yo're mourning for me, my dear; and there's no need, Mary. I'm as happy as a child. I sometimes think I am a child, whom the Lord is hushabying to my long sleep. For when I were a nurse-girl, my missis alway telled me to speak very soft and low, and to darken the room that her little one might go to sleep; and now all noises are hushed and still to me, and the bonny earth seems dim and dark, and I know it's my Father lulling me away to my long sleep. I'm very well content, and yo mustn't fret for me. I've had well nigh every blessing in life I could desire." Mary thought of Alice's long-cherished, fond wish to revisit the home of her childhood, so often and often deferred, and now probably never to take place. Or if it did, how changed from the fond anticipation of what it was to have been! It would be a mockery to the blind and deaf Alice. The evening came quickly to an end. There was the humble cheerful meal, and then the bustling merry farewell, and Mary was once more in the quietness and solitude of her own dingy, dreary-looking home; her father still out, the fire extinguished, and her evening's task of work lying all undone upon the dresser. But it had been a pleasant little interlude to think upon. It had distracted her attention for a few hours from the pressure of many uneasy thoughts, of the dark, heavy, oppressive times, when sorrow and want seemed to surround her on every side; of her father, his changed and altered looks, telling so plainly of broken health, and an embittered heart; of the morrow, and the morrow beyond that, to be spent in that close monotonous work-room, with Sally Leadbitter's odious whispers hissing in her ear; and of the hunted look, so full of dread, from Miss Simmonds' door-step up and down the street, lest her persecuting lover should be near: for he lay in wait for her with wonderful perseverance, and of late had made himself almost hateful, by the unmanly force which he had used to detain her to listen to him, and the indifference with which he exposed her to the remarks of the passers-by, any one of whom might circulate reports which it would be terrible for her father to hear--and worse than death should they reach Jem Wilson. And all this she had drawn upon herself by her giddy flirting. Oh! how she loathed the recollection of the hot summer evening, when, worn out by stitching and sewing, she had loitered homewards with weary languor, and first listened to the voice of the tempter. And Jem Wilson! Oh, Jem, Jem, why did you not come to receive some of the modest looks and words of love which Mary longed to give you, to try and make up for the hasty rejection which you as hastily took to be final, though both mourned over it with many tears. But day after day passed away, and patience seemed of no avail; and Mary's cry was ever the old moan of the Moated Grange, "Why comes he not," she said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead." CHAPTER XIV. JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH POOR ESTHER. "Know the temptation ere you judge the crime! Look on this tree--'twas green, and fair, and graceful; Yet now, save these few shoots, how dry and rotten! Thou canst not tell the cause. Not long ago, A neighbour oak, with which its roots were twined, In falling wrenched them with such cruel force, That though we covered them again with care, Its beauty withered, and it pined away. So, could we look into the human breast, How oft the fatal blight that meets our view, Should we trace down to the torn, bleeding fibres Of a too trusting heart--where it were shame, For pitying tears, to give contempt or blame." "STREET WALKS." The month was over;--the honeymoon to the newly-married; the exquisite convalescence to the "living mother of a living child;" the "first dark days of nothingness" to the widow and the child bereaved; the term of penance, of hard labour, and solitary confinement, to the shrinking, shivering, hopeless prisoner. "Sick, and in prison, and ye visited me." Shall you, or I, receive such blessing? I know one who will. An overseer of a foundry, an aged man, with hoary hair, has spent his Sabbaths, for many years, in visiting the prisoners and the afflicted in Manchester New Bailey; not merely advising and comforting, but putting means into their power of regaining the virtue and the peace they had lost; becoming himself their guarantee in obtaining employment, and never deserting those who have once asked help from him. [43] [Footnote 43: Vide _Manchester Guardian_, of Wednesday, March 18, 1846; and also the Reports of Captain Williams, prison inspector.] Esther's term of imprisonment was ended. She received a good character in the governor's books; she had picked her daily quantity of oakum, had never deserved the extra punishment of the tread-mill, and had been civil and decorous in her language. And once more she was out of prison. The door closed behind her with a ponderous clang, and in her desolation she felt as if shut out of home--from the only shelter she could meet with, houseless and pennyless as she was, on that dreary day. But it was but for an instant that she stood there doubting. One thought had haunted her both by night and by day, with monomaniacal incessancy; and that thought was how to save Mary (her dead sister's only child, her own little pet in the days of her innocence) from following in the same downward path to vice. To whom could she speak and ask for aid? She shrank from the idea of addressing John Barton again; her heart sank within her, at the remembrance of his fierce repulsing action, and far fiercer words. It seemed worse than death to reveal her condition to Mary, else she sometimes thought that this course would be the most terrible, the most efficient warning. She must speak; to that she was soul-compelled; but to whom? She dreaded addressing any of her former female acquaintance, even supposing they had sense, or spirit, or interest enough to undertake her mission. To whom shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale? Who will give her help in her day of need? Hers is the leper-sin, and all stand aloof dreading to be counted unclean. In her wild night wanderings, she had noted the haunts and habits of many a one who little thought of a watcher in the poor forsaken woman. You may easily imagine that a double interest was attached by her to the ways and companionships of those with whom she had been acquainted in the days which, when present, she had considered hardly-worked and monotonous, but which now in retrospection seemed so happy and unclouded. Accordingly, she had, as we have seen, known where to meet with John Barton on that unfortunate night, which had only produced irritation in him, and a month's imprisonment to her. She had also observed that he was still intimate with the Wilsons. She had seen him walking and talking with both father and son; her old friends too; and she had shed unregarded, unvalued tears, when some one had casually told her of George Wilson's sudden death. It now flashed across her mind, that to the son, to Mary's play-fellow, her elder brother in the days of childhood, her tale might be told, and listened to with interest, and some mode of action suggested by him by which Mary might be guarded and saved. All these thoughts had passed through her mind while yet she was in prison; so when she was turned out, her purpose was clear, and she did not feel her desolation of freedom as she would otherwise have done. That night she stationed herself early near the foundry where she knew Jem worked; he stayed later than usual, being detained by some arrangements for the morrow. She grew tired and impatient; many workmen had come out of the door in the long, dead, brick wall, and eagerly had she peered into their faces, deaf to all insult or curse. He must have gone home early; one more turn in the street, and she would go. During that turn he came out, and in the quiet of that street of workshops and warehouses, she directly heard his steps. Now her heart failed her for an instant; but still she was not daunted from her purpose, painful as its fulfilment was sure to be. She laid her hand on his arm. As she expected, after a momentary glance at the person who thus endeavoured to detain him, he made an effort to shake it off, and pass on. But trembling as she was, she had provided against this by a firm and unusual grasp. "You must listen to me, Jem Wilson," she said, with almost an accent of command. "Go away, missis; I've nought to do with you, either in hearkening, or talking." He made another struggle. "You must listen," she said again, authoritatively, "for Mary Barton's sake." The spell of her name was as potent as that of the mariner's glittering eye. "He listened like a three-year child." "I know you care enough for her to wish to save her from harm." He interrupted his earnest gaze into her face, with the exclamation-- "And who can yo be to know Mary Barton, or to know that she's ought to me?" There was a little strife in Esther's mind for an instant, between the shame of acknowledging herself, and the additional weight to her revelation which such acknowledgment would give. Then she spoke. "Do you remember Esther, the sister of John Barton's wife? the aunt to Mary? And the Valentine I sent you last February ten years?" "Yes, I mind her well! But yo are not Esther, are you?" He looked again into her face, and seeing that indeed it was his boyhood's friend, he took her hand, and shook it with a cordiality that forgot the present in the past. "Why, Esther! Where han ye been this many a year? Where han ye been wandering that we none of us could find you out?" The question was asked thoughtlessly, but answered with fierce earnestness. "Where have I been? What have I been doing? Why do you torment me with questions like these? Can you not guess? But the story of my life is wanted to give force to my speech, afterwards I will tell it you. Nay! don't change your fickle mind now, and say you don't want to hear it. You must hear it, and I must tell it; and then see after Mary, and take care she does not become like me. As she is loving now, so did I love once; one above me far." She remarked not, in her own absorption, the change in Jem's breathing, the sudden clutch at the wall which told the fearfully vivid interest he took in what she said. "He was so handsome, so kind! Well, the regiment was ordered to Chester (did I tell you he was an officer?), and he could not bear to part from me, nor I from him, so he took me with him. I never thought poor Mary would have taken it so to heart! I always meant to send for her to pay me a visit when I was married; for, mark you! he promised me marriage. They all do. Then came three years of happiness. I suppose I ought not to have been happy, but I was. I had a little girl, too. Oh! the sweetest darling that ever was seen! But I must not think of her," putting her hand wildly up to her forehead, "or I shall go mad; I shall." "Don't tell me any more about yoursel," said Jem, soothingly. "What! you're tired already, are you? but I'll tell you; as you've asked for it, you shall hear it. I won't recall the agony of the past for nothing. I will have the relief of telling it. Oh, how happy I was!"--sinking her voice into a plaintive child-like manner. "It came like a shot on me when one day he came to me and told me he was ordered to Ireland, and must leave me behind; at Bristol we then were." Jem muttered some words; she caught their meaning, and in a pleading voice continued, "Oh, don't abuse him; don't speak a word against him! You don't know how I love him yet; yet, when I am sunk so low. You don't guess how kind he was. He gave me fifty pound before we parted, and I knew he could ill spare it. Don't, Jem, please," as his muttered indignation rose again. For her sake he ceased. "I might have done better with the money; I see now. But I did not know the value of money. Formerly I had earned it easily enough at the factory, and as I had no more sensible wants, I spent it on dress and on eating. While I lived with him, I had it for asking; and fifty pounds would, I thought, go a long way. So I went back to Chester, where I'd been so happy, and set up a small-ware shop, and hired a room near. We should have done well, but alas! alas! my little girl fell ill, and I could not mind my shop and her too; and things grew worse and worse. I sold my goods any how to get money to buy her food and medicine; I wrote over and over again to her father for help, but he must have changed his quarters, for I never got an answer. The landlord seized the few bobbins and tapes I had left, for shop-rent; and the person to whom the mean little room, to which we had been forced to remove, belonged, threatened to turn us out unless his rent was paid; it had run on many weeks, and it was winter, cold bleak winter; and my child was so ill, so ill, and I was starving. And I could not bear to see her suffer, and forgot how much better it would be for us to die together;--oh her moans, her moans, which money would give me the means of relieving! So I went out into the street, one January night--Do you think God will punish me for that?" she asked with wild vehemence, almost amounting to insanity, and shaking Jem's arm in order to force an answer from him. But before he could shape his heart's sympathy into words, her voice had lost its wildness, and she spoke with the quiet of despair. "But it's no matter! I've done that since, which separates us as far asunder as heaven and hell can be." Her voice rose again to the sharp pitch of agony. "My darling! my darling! even after death I may not see thee, my own sweet one! She was so good--like a little angel. What is that text, I don't remember,--that text mother used to teach me when I sat on her knee long ago; it begins, 'Blessed are the pure'"-- "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "Ay, that's it! It would break mother's heart if she knew what I am now--it did break Mary's heart, you see. And now I recollect it was about her child I wanted so to see you, Jem. You know Mary Barton, don't you?" said she, trying to collect her thoughts. Yes, Jem knew her. How well, his beating heart could testify! "Well, there's something to do for her; I forget what; wait a minute! She is so like my little girl;" said she, raising her eyes, glistening with unshed tears, in search of the sympathy of Jem's countenance. He deeply pitied her; but oh! how he longed to recall her mind to the subject of Mary, and the lover above her in rank, and the service to be done for her sake. But he controlled himself to silence. After awhile, she spoke again, and in a calmer voice. "When I came to Manchester (for I could not stay in Chester after her death), I found you all out very soon. And yet I never thought my poor sister was dead. I suppose I would not think so. I used to watch about the court where John lived, for many and many a night, and gather all I could about them from the neighbours' talk; for I never asked a question. I put this and that together, and followed one, and listened to the other; many's the time I've watched the policeman off his beat, and peeped through the chink of the window-shutter to see the old room, and sometimes Mary or her father sitting up late for some reason or another. I found out Mary went to learn dress-making, and I began to be frightened for her; for it's a bad life for a girl to be out late at night in the streets, and after many an hour of weary work, they're ready to follow after any novelty that makes a little change. But I made up my mind, that bad as I was, I could watch over Mary and perhaps keep her from harm. So I used to wait for her at nights, and follow her home, often when she little knew any one was near her. There was one of her companions I never could abide, and I'm sure that girl is at the bottom of some mischief. By-and-bye, Mary's walks homewards were not alone. She was joined soon after she came out, by a man; a gentleman. I began to fear for her, for I saw she was light-hearted, and pleased with his attentions; and I thought worse of him for having such long talks with that bold girl I told you of. But I was laid up for a long time with spitting of blood; and could do nothing. I'm sure it made me worse, thinking about what might be happening to Mary. And when I came out, all was going on as before, only she seemed fonder of him than ever; and oh Jem! her father won't listen to me, and it's you must save Mary! You're like a brother to her, and maybe could give her advice and watch over her, and at any rate John will hearken to you; only he's so stern and so cruel." She began to cry a little at the remembrance of his harsh words; but Jem cut her short by his hoarse, stern inquiry, "Who is this spark that Mary loves? Tell me his name!" "It's young Carson, old Carson's son, that your father worked for." There was a pause. She broke the silence. "Oh! Jem, I charge you with the care of her! I suppose it would be murder to kill her, but it would be better for her to die than to live to lead such a life as I do. Do you hear me, Jem?" "Yes! I hear you. It would be better. Better we were all dead." This was said as if thinking aloud; but he immediately changed his tone, and continued, "Esther, you may trust to my doing all I can for Mary. That I have determined on. And now listen to me! you loathe the life you lead, else you would not speak of it as you do. Come home with me. Come to my mother. She and my aunt Alice live together. I will see that they give you a welcome. And to-morrow I will see if some honest way of living cannot be found for you. Come home with me." She was silent for a minute, and he hoped he had gained his point. Then she said, "God bless you, Jem, for the words you have just spoken. Some years ago you might have saved me, as I hope and trust you will yet save Mary. But it is too late now;--too late," she added, with accents of deep despair. Still he did not relax his hold. "Come home," he said. "I tell you, I cannot. I could not lead a virtuous life if I would. I should only disgrace you. If you will know all," said she, as he still seemed inclined to urge her, "I must have drink. Such as live like me could not bear life if they did not drink. It's the only thing to keep us from suicide. If we did not drink, we could not stand the memory of what we have been, and the thought of what we are, for a day. If I go without food, and without shelter, I must have my dram. Oh! you don't know the awful nights I have had in prison for want of it!" said she, shuddering, and glaring round with terrified eyes, as if dreading to see some spiritual creature, with dim form, near her. "It is so frightful to see them," whispering in tones of wildness, although so low spoken. "There they go round and round my bed the whole night through. My mother, carrying little Annie (I wonder how they got together) and Mary--and all looking at me with their sad, stony eyes; oh Jem! it is so terrible! They don't turn back either, but pass behind the head of the bed, and I feel their eyes on me everywhere. If I creep under the clothes I still see them; and what is worse," hissing out her words with fright, "they see me. Don't speak to me of leading a better life--I must have drink. I cannot pass to-night without a dram; I dare not." Jem was silent from deep sympathy. Oh! could he, then, do nothing for her! She spoke again, but in a less excited tone, although it was thrillingly earnest. "You are grieved for me! I know it better than if you told me in words. But you can do nothing for me. I am past hope. You can yet save Mary. You must. She is innocent, except for the great error of loving one above her in station. Jem! you _will_ save her?" With heart and soul, though in few words, Jem promised that if aught earthly could keep her from falling, he would do it. Then she blessed him, and bade him good-night. "Stay a minute," said he, as she was on the point of departure. "I may want to speak to you again. I mun know where to find you--where do you live?" She laughed strangely. "And do you think one sunk so low as I am has a home? Decent, good people have homes. We have none. No, if you want me, come at night, and look at the corners of the streets about here. The colder, the bleaker, the more stormy the night, the more certain you will be to find me. For then," she added, with a plaintive fall in her voice, "it is so cold sleeping in entries, and on door-steps, and I want a dram more than ever." Again she rapidly turned off, and Jem also went on his way. But before he reached the end of the street, even in the midst of the jealous anguish that filled his heart, his conscience smote him. He had not done enough to save her. One more effort, and she might have come. Nay, twenty efforts would have been well rewarded by her yielding. He turned back, but she was gone. In the tumult of his other feelings, his self-reproach was deadened for the time. But many and many a day afterwards he bitterly regretted his omission of duty; his weariness of well-doing. Now, the great thing was to reach home, and solitude. Mary loved another! Oh! how should he bear it? He had thought her rejection of him a hard trial, but that was nothing now. He only remembered it, to be thankful he had not yielded to the temptation of trying his fate again, not in actual words, but in a meeting, where her manner should tell far more than words, that her sweeter smiles, her dainty movements, her pretty household ways, were all to be reserved to gladden another's eyes and heart. And he must live on; that seemed the strangest. That a long life (and he knew men did live long, even with deep, biting sorrow corroding at their hearts) must be spent without Mary; nay, with the consciousness she was another's! That hell of thought he would reserve for the quiet of his own room, the dead stillness of night. He was on the threshold of home now. He entered. There were the usual faces, the usual sights. He loathed them, and then he cursed himself because he loathed them. His mother's love had taken a cross turn, because he had kept the tempting supper she had prepared for him waiting until it was nearly spoilt. Alice, her dulled senses deadening day by day, sat mutely near the fire; her happiness, bounded by the circle of the consciousness of the presence of her foster child, knowing that his voice repeated what was passing to her deafened ear, that his arm removed each little obstacle to her tottering steps. And Will, out of the very kindness of his heart, talked more and more merrily than ever. He saw Jem was downcast, and fancied his rattling might cheer him; at any rate, it drowned his aunt's muttered grumblings, and in some measure concealed the blank of the evening. At last, bed-time came; and Will withdrew to his neighbouring lodging; and Jane and Alice Wilson had raked the fire, and fastened doors and shutters, and pattered up stairs, with their tottering foot-steps, and shrill voices. Jem, too, went to the closet termed his bed-room. There was no bolt to the door; but by one strong effort of his right arm, a heavy chest was moved against it, and he could sit down on the side of his bed, and think. Mary loved another! That idea would rise uppermost in his mind, and had to be combated in all its forms of pain. It was, perhaps, no great wonder that she should prefer one so much above Jem in the external things of life. But the gentleman; why did he, with his range of choice among the ladies of the land, why did he stoop down to carry off the poor man's darling? With all the glories of the garden at his hand, why did he prefer to cull the wild-rose,--Jem's own fragrant wild-rose? His _own!_ Oh! never now his own!--Gone for evermore! Then uprose the guilty longing for blood!--The frenzy of jealousy!--Some one should die. He would rather Mary were dead, cold in her grave, than that she were another's. A vision of her pale, sweet face, with her bright hair all bedabbled with gore, seemed to float constantly before his aching eyes. But hers were ever open, and contained, in their soft, deathly look, such mute reproach! What had she done to deserve such cruel treatment from him? She had been wooed by one whom Jem knew to be handsome, gay, and bright, and she had given him her love. That was all! It was the wooer who should die. Yes, die, knowing the cause of his death. Jem pictured him (and gloated on the picture), lying smitten, yet conscious; and listening to the upbraiding accusation of his murderer. How he had left his own rank, and dared to love a maiden of low degree; and--oh! stinging agony of all--how she, in return, had loved him! Then the other nature spoke up, and bade him remember the anguish he should so prepare for Mary! At first he refused to listen to that better voice; or listened only to pervert. He would glory in her wailing grief! he would take pleasure in her desolation of heart! No! he could not, said the still small voice. It would be worse, far worse, to have caused such woe, than it was now to bear his present heavy burden. But it was too heavy, too grievous to be borne, and live. He would slay himself, and the lovers should love on, and the sun shine bright, and he with his burning, woeful heart would be at rest. "Rest that is reserved for the people of God." Had he not promised with such earnest purpose of soul, as makes words more solemn than oaths, to save Mary from becoming such as Esther? Should he shrink from the duties of life, into the cowardliness of death? Who would then guard Mary, with her love and her innocence? Would it not be a goodly thing to serve her, although she loved him not; to be her preserving angel, through the perils of life; and she, unconscious all the while? He braced up his soul, and said to himself, that with God's help he would be that earthly keeper. And now the mists and the storms seemed clearing away from his path, though it still was full of stinging thorns. Having done the duty nearest to him (of reducing the tumult of his own heart to something like order), the second became more plain before him. Poor Esther's experience had led her, perhaps, too hastily to the conclusion, that Mr. Carson's intentions were evil towards Mary; at least she had given no just ground for the fears she entertained that such was the case. It was possible, nay, to Jem's heart, very probable, that he might only be too happy to marry her. She was a lady by right of nature, Jem thought; in movement, grace, and spirit. what was birth to a Manchester manufacturer, many of whom glory, and justly too, in being the architects of their own fortunes? And, as far as wealth was concerned, judging another by himself, Jem could only imagine it a great privilege to lay it at the feet of the loved one. Harry Carson's mother had been a factory girl; so, after all, what was the great reason for doubting his intentions towards Mary? There might probably be some little awkwardness about the affair at first: Mary's father having such strong prejudices on the one hand; and something of the same kind being likely to exist on the part of Mr. Carson's family. But Jem knew he had power over John Barton's mind; and it would be something to exert that power in promoting Mary's happiness, and to relinquish all thought of self in so doing. Oh! why had Esther chosen him for this office? It was beyond his strength to act rightly! Why had she singled him out? The answer came when he was calm enough to listen for it. Because Mary had no other friend capable of the duty required of him; the duty of a brother, as Esther imagined him to be in feeling, from his long friendship. He would be unto her as a brother. As such, he ought to ascertain Harry Carson's intentions towards her in winning her affections. He would ask him, straightforwardly, as became man speaking to man, not concealing, if need were, the interest he felt in Mary. Then, with the resolve to do his duty to the best of his power, peace came into his soul; he had left the windy storm and tempest behind. Two hours before day-dawn he fell asleep. CHAPTER XV. A VIOLENT MEETING BETWEEN THE RIVALS. "What thoughtful heart can look into this gulf That darkly yawns 'twixt rich and poor, And not find food for saddest meditation! Can see, without a pang of keenest grief, Them fiercely battling (like some natural foes) Whom God had made, with help and sympathy, To stand as brothers, side by side, united! Where is the wisdom that shall bridge this gulf, And bind them once again in trust and love?" "LOVE-TRUTHS." We must return to John Barton. Poor John! He never got over his disappointing journey to London. The deep mortification he then experienced (with, perhaps, as little selfishness for its cause as mortification ever had) was of no temporary nature; indeed, few of his feelings were. Then came a long period of bodily privation; of daily hunger after food; and though he tried to persuade himself he could bear want himself with stoical indifference, and did care about it as little as most men, yet the body took its revenge for its uneasy feelings. The mind became soured and morose, and lost much of its equipoise. It was no longer elastic, as in the days of youth, or in times of comparative happiness; it ceased to hope. And it is hard to live on when one can no longer hope. The same state of feeling which John Barton entertained, if belonging to one who had had leisure to think of such things, and physicians to give names to them, would have been called monomania; so haunting, so incessant, were the thoughts that pressed upon him. I have somewhere read a forcibly described punishment among the Italians, worthy of a Borgia. The supposed or real criminal was shut up in a room, supplied with every convenience and luxury; and at first mourned little over his imprisonment. But day by day he became aware that the space between the walls of his apartment was narrowing, and then he understood the end. Those painted walls would come into hideous nearness, and at last crush the life out of him. And so day by day, nearer and nearer, came the diseased thoughts of John Barton. They excluded the light of heaven, the cheering sounds of earth. They were preparing his death. It is true, much of their morbid power might be ascribed to the use of opium. But before you blame too harshly this use, or rather abuse, try a hopeless life, with daily cravings of the body for food. Try, not alone being without hope yourself, but seeing all around you reduced to the same despair, arising from the same circumstances; all around you telling (though they use no words or language), by their looks and feeble actions, that they are suffering and sinking under the pressure of want. Would you not be glad to forget life, and its burdens? And opium gives forgetfulness for a time. It is true they who thus purchase it pay dearly for their oblivion; but can you expect the uneducated to count the cost of their whistle? Poor wretches! They pay a heavy price. Days of oppressive weariness and languor, whose realities have the feeble sickliness of dreams; nights, whose dreams are fierce realities of agony; sinking health, tottering frames, incipient madness, and worse, the _consciousness_ of incipient madness; this is the price of their whistle. But have you taught them the science of consequences? John Barton's overpowering thought, which was to work out his fate on earth, was rich and poor; why are they so separate, so distinct, when God has made them all? It is not His will, that their interests are so far apart. Whose doing is it? And so on into the problems and mysteries of life, until, bewildered and lost, unhappy and suffering, the only feeling that remained clear and undisturbed in the tumult of his heart, was hatred to the one class and keen sympathy with the other. But what availed his sympathy? No education had given him wisdom; and without wisdom, even love, with all its effects, too often works but harm. He acted to the best of his judgment, but it was a widely-erring judgment. The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified in those of Frankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a soul, a knowledge of the difference between good and evil. The people rise up to life; they irritate us, they terrify us, and we become their enemies. Then, in the sorrowful moment of our triumphant power, their eyes gaze on us with a mute reproach. Why have we made them what they are; a powerful monster, yet without the inner means for peace and happiness? John Barton became a Chartist, a Communist, all that is commonly called wild and visionary. Ay! but being visionary is something. It shows a soul, a being not altogether sensual; a creature who looks forward for others, if not for himself. And with all his weakness he had a sort of practical power, which made him useful to the bodies of men to whom he belonged. He had a ready kind of rough Lancashire eloquence, arising out of the fulness of his heart, which was very stirring to men similarly circumstanced, who liked to hear their feelings put into words. He had a pretty clear head at times, for method and arrangement; a necessary talent to large combinations of men. And what perhaps more than all made him relied upon and valued, was the consciousness which every one who came in contact with him felt, that he was actuated by no selfish motives; that his class, his order, was what he stood by, not the rights of his own paltry self. For even in great and noble men, as soon as self comes into prominent existence, it becomes a mean and paltry thing. A little time before this, there had come one of those occasions for deliberation among the employed, which deeply interested John Barton; and the discussions concerning which had caused his frequent absence from home of late. I am not sure if I can express myself in the technical terms of either masters or workmen, but I will try simply to state the case on which the latter deliberated. An order for coarse goods came in from a new foreign market. It was a large order, giving employment to all the mills engaged in that species of manufacture: but it was necessary to execute it speedily, and at as low prices as possible, as the masters had reason to believe a duplicate order had been sent to one of the continental manufacturing towns, where there were no restrictions on food, no taxes on building or machinery, and where consequently they dreaded that the goods could be made at a much lower price than they could afford them for; and that, by so acting and charging, the rival manufacturers would obtain undivided possession of the market. It was clearly their interest to buy cotton as cheaply, and to beat down wages as low as possible. And in the long run the interests of the workmen would have been thereby benefited. Distrust each other as they may, the employers and the employed must rise or fall together. There may be some difference as to chronology, none as to fact. But the masters did not choose to make all these facts known. They stood upon being the masters, and that they had a right to order work at their own prices, and they believed that in the present depression of trade, and unemployment of hands, there would be no great difficulty in getting it done. Now let us turn to the workmen's view of the question. The masters (of the tottering foundation of whose prosperity they were ignorant) seemed doing well, and like gentlemen, "lived at home in ease," while they were starving, gasping on from day to day; and there was a foreign order to be executed, the extent of which, large as it was, was greatly exaggerated; and it was to be done speedily. Why were the masters offering such low wages under these circumstances? Shame upon them! It was taking advantage of their work-people being almost starved; but they would starve entirely rather than come into such terms. It was bad enough to be poor, while by the labour of their thin hands, the sweat of their brows, the masters were made rich; but they would not be utterly ground down to dust. No! they would fold their hands, and sit idle, and smile at the masters, whom even in death they could baffle. With Spartan endurance they determined to let the employers know their power, by refusing to work. So class distrusted class, and their want of mutual confidence wrought sorrow to both. The masters would not be bullied, and compelled to reveal why they felt it wisest and best to offer only such low wages; they would not be made to tell that they were even sacrificing capital to obtain a decisive victory over the continental manufacturers. And the workmen sat silent and stern with folded hands, refusing to work for such pay. There was a strike in Manchester. Of course it was succeeded by the usual consequences. Many other Trades' Unions, connected with different branches of business, supported with money, countenance, and encouragement of every kind, the stand which the Manchester power-loom weavers were making against their masters. Delegates from Glasgow, from Nottingham, and other towns, were sent to Manchester, to keep up the spirit of resistance; a committee was formed, and all the requisite officers elected; chairman, treasurer, honorary secretary:--among them was John Barton. The masters, meanwhile, took their measures. They placarded the walls with advertisements for power-loom weavers. The workmen replied by a placard in still larger letters, stating their grievances. The masters met daily in town, to mourn over the time (so fast slipping away) for the fulfilment of the foreign orders; and to strengthen each other in their resolution not to yield. If they gave up now, they might give up always. It would never do. And amongst the most energetic of the masters, the Carsons, father and son, took their places. It is well known, that there is no religionist so zealous as a convert; no masters so stern, and regardless of the interests of their work-people, as those who have risen from such a station themselves. This would account for the elder Mr. Carson's determination not to be bullied into yielding; not even to be bullied into giving reasons for acting as the masters did. It was the employer's will, and that should be enough for the employed. Harry Carson did not trouble himself much about the grounds for his conduct. He liked the excitement of the affair. He liked the attitude of resistance. He was brave, and he liked the idea of personal danger, with which some of the more cautious tried to intimidate the violent among the masters. Meanwhile, the power-loom weavers living in the more remote parts of Lancashire, and the neighbouring counties, heard of the masters' advertisements for workmen; and in their solitary dwellings grew weary of starvation, and resolved to come to Manchester. Foot-sore, way-worn, half-starved looking men they were, as they tried to steal into town in the early dawn, before people were astir, or late in the dusk of evening. And now began the real wrong-doing of the Trades' Unions. As to their decision to work, or not, at such a particular rate of wages, that was either wise or unwise; all error of judgment at the worst. But they had no right to tyrannise over others, and tie them down to their own procrustean bed. Abhorring what they considered oppression in the masters, why did they oppress others? Because, when men get excited, they know not what they do. Judge, then, with something of the mercy of the Holy One, whom we all love. In spite of policemen set to watch over the safety of the poor country weavers,--in spite of magistrates, and prisons, and severe punishments,--the poor depressed men tramping in from Burnley, Padiham, and other places, to work at the condemned "Starvation Prices," were waylaid, and beaten, and left almost for dead by the road-side. The police broke up every lounging knot of men:--they separated quietly, to reunite half-a-mile further out of town. Of course the feeling between the masters and workmen did not improve under these circumstances. Combination is an awful power. It is like the equally mighty agency of steam; capable of almost unlimited good or evil. But to obtain a blessing on its labours, it must work under the direction of a high and intelligent will; incapable of being misled by passion, or excitement. The will of the operatives had not been guided to the calmness of wisdom. So much for generalities. Let us now return to individuals. A note, respectfully worded, although its tone of determination was strong, had been sent from the power-loom weavers, requesting that a "deputation" of them might have a meeting with the masters, to state the conditions they must have fulfilled before they would end the turn-out. They thought they had attained a sufficiently commanding position to dictate. John Barton was appointed one of the deputation. The masters agreed to this meeting, being anxious to end the strife, although undetermined among themselves how far they should yield, or whether they should yield at all. Some of the old, whose experience had taught them sympathy, were for concession. Others, white-headed men too, had only learnt hardness and obstinacy from the days of the years of their lives, and sneered at the more gentle and yielding. The younger men were one and all for an unflinching resistance to claims urged with so much violence. Of this party Harry Carson was the leader. But like all energetic people, the more he had to do the more time he seemed to find. With all his letter-writing, his calling, his being present at the New Bailey, when investigations of any case of violence against knob-sticks [44] were going on, he beset Mary more than ever. She was weary of her life for him. From blandishments he had even gone to threats--threats that whether she would or not she should be his; he showed an indifference that was almost insulting to every thing that might attract attention and injure her character. [Footnote 44: "Knob-sticks," those who consent to work at lower wages.] And still she never saw Jem. She knew he had returned home. She heard of him occasionally through his cousin, who roved gaily from house to house, finding and making friends everywhere. But she never saw him. What was she to think? Had he given her up? Were a few hasty words, spoken in a moment of irritation, to stamp her lot through life? At times she thought that she could bear this meekly, happy in her own constant power of loving. For of change or of forgetfulness she did not dream. Then at other times her state of impatience was such, that it required all her self-restraint to prevent her from going and seeking him out, and (as man would do to man, or woman to woman) begging him to forgive her hasty words, and allow her to retract them, and bidding him accept of the love that was filling her whole heart. She wished Margaret had not advised her against such a manner of proceeding; she believed it was her friend's words that seemed to make such a simple action impossible, in spite of all the internal urgings. But a friend's advice is only thus powerful, when it puts into language the secret oracle of our souls. It was the whisperings of her womanly nature that caused her to shrink from any unmaidenly action, not Margaret's counsel. All this time, this ten days or so, of Will's visit to Manchester, there was something going on which interested Mary even now, and which, in former times, would have exceedingly amused and excited her. She saw as clearly as if told in words, that the merry, random, boisterous sailor had fallen deeply in love with the quiet, prim, somewhat plain Margaret: she doubted if Margaret was aware of it, and yet, as she watched more closely, she began to think some instinct made the blind girl feel whose eyes were so often fixed upon her pale face; that some inner feeling made the delicate and becoming rose-flush steal over her countenance. She did not speak so decidedly as before; there was a hesitation in her manner, that seemed to make her very attractive; as if something softer, more loveable than excellent sense, were coming in as a motive for speech; her eyes had always been soft, and were in no ways disfigured by her blindness, and now seemed to have a new charm, as they quivered under their white down-cast lids. She must be conscious, thought Mary,--heart answering heart. Will's love had no blushings, no downcast eyes, no weighing of words; it was as open and undisguised as his nature; yet he seemed afraid of the answer its acknowledgment might meet with. It was Margaret's angelic voice that had entranced him, and which made him think of her as a being of some other sphere, that he feared to woo. So he tried to propitiate Job in all manner of ways. He went over to Liverpool to rummage in his great sea-chest for the flying-fish (no very odorous present by the way). He hesitated over a child's caul for some time, which was, in his eyes, a far greater treasure than any Exocetus. What use could it be of to a landsman? Then Margaret's voice rang in his ears; and he determined to sacrifice it, his most precious possession, to one whom she loved, as she did her grandfather. It was rather a relief to him, when, having put it and the flying-fish together in a brown paper parcel, and sat upon them for security all the way in the railroad, he found that Job was so indifferent to the precious caul, that he might easily claim it again. He hung about Margaret, till he had received many warnings and reproaches from his conscience in behalf of his dear aunt Alice's claims upon his time. He went away, and then he bethought him of some other little word with Job. And he turned back, and stood talking once more in Margaret's presence, door in hand, only waiting for some little speech of encouragement to come in and sit down again. But as the invitation was not given, he was forced to leave at last, and go and do his duty. Four days had Jem Wilson watched for Mr. Harry Carson without success; his hours of going and returning to his home were so irregular, owing to the meetings and consultations among the masters, which were rendered necessary by the turn-out. On the fifth, without any purpose on Jem's part, they met. It was the workmen's dinner-hour, the interval between twelve and one; when the streets of Manchester are comparatively quiet, for a few shopping ladies and lounging gentlemen count for nothing in that busy, bustling, living place. Jem had been on an errand for his master, instead of returning to his dinner; and in passing along a lane, a road (called, in compliment to the intentions of some future builder, a street), he encountered Harry Carson, the only person, as far as he saw beside himself, treading the unfrequented path. Along one side ran a high broad fence, blackened over by coal-tar, and spiked and stuck with pointed nails at the top, to prevent any one from climbing over into the garden beyond. By this fence was the foot-path. The carriage road was such as no carriage, no, not even a cart, could possibly have passed along, without Hercules to assist in lifting it out of the deep clay ruts. On the other side of the way was a dead brick wall; and a field after that, where there was a sawpit, and joiner's shed. Jem's heart beat violently when he saw the gay, handsome young man approaching, with a light, buoyant step. This, then, was he whom Mary loved. It was, perhaps, no wonder; for he seemed to the poor smith so elegant, so well-appointed, that he felt his superiority in externals, strangely and painfully, for an instant. Then something uprose within him, and told him, that "a man's a man for a' that, for a' that, and twice as much as a' that." And he no longer felt troubled by the outward appearance of his rival. Harry Carson came on, lightly bounding over the dirty places with almost a lad's buoyancy. To his surprise the dark, sturdy-looking artisan stopped him by saying respectfully, "May I speak a word wi' you, sir?" "Certainly, my good man," looking his astonishment; then finding that the promised speech did not come very quickly, he added, "But make haste, for I'm in a hurry." Jem had cast about for some less abrupt way of broaching the subject uppermost in his mind than he now found himself obliged to use. With a husky voice that trembled as he spoke, he said, "I think, sir, yo're keeping company wi' a young woman called Mary Barton?" A light broke in upon Harry Carson's mind, and he paused before he gave the answer for which the other waited. Could this man be a lover of Mary's? And (strange, stinging thought) could he be beloved by her, and so have caused her obstinate rejection of himself? He looked at Jem from head to foot, a black, grimy mechanic, in dirty fustian clothes, strongly built, and awkward (according to the dancing-master); then he glanced at himself, and recalled the reflection he had so lately quitted in his bed-room. It was impossible. No woman with eyes could choose the one when the other wooed. It was Hyperion to a Satyr. That quotation came aptly; he forgot "That a man's a man for a' that." And yet here was a clue, which he had often wanted, to her changed conduct towards him. If she loved this man. If-- he hated the fellow, and longed to strike him. He would know all. "Mary Barton! let me see. Ay, that is the name of the girl. An arrant flirt, the little hussy is; but very pretty. Ay, Mary Barton is her name." Jem bit his lips. Was it then so; that Mary was a flirt, the giddy creature of whom he spoke? He would not believe it, and yet how he wished the suggestive words unspoken. That thought must keep now, though. Even if she were, the more reason for there being some one to protect her; poor, faulty darling. "She's a good girl, sir, though may be a bit set up with her beauty; but she's her father's only child, sir, and--" he stopped; he did not like to express suspicion, and yet he was determined he would be certain there was ground for none. What should he say? "Well, my fine fellow, and what have I to do with that? It's but loss of my time, and yours, too, if you've only stopped me to tell me Mary Barton is very pretty; I know that well enough." He seemed as though he would have gone on, but Jem put his black, working, right hand upon his arm to detain him. The haughty young man shook it off, and with his glove pretended to brush away the sooty contamination that might be left upon his light great-coat sleeve. The little action aroused Jem. "I will tell you in plain words what I have got to say to you, young man. It's been telled me by one as knows, and has seen, that you walk with this same Mary Barton, and are known to be courting her; and her as spoke to me about it, thinks as how Mary loves you. That may be, or may not. But I'm an old friend of hers, and her father's; and I just wished to know if you mean to marry the girl. Spite of what you said of her lightness, I ha' known her long enough to be sure she'll make a noble wife for any one, let him be what he may; and I mean to stand by her like a brother; and if you mean rightly, you'll not think the worse on me for what I've now said; and if--but no, I'll not say what I'll do to the man who wrongs a hair of her head. He shall rue it the longest day he lives, that's all. Now, sir, what I ask of you is this. If you mean fair and honourable by her, well and good; but if not, for your own sake as well as hers, leave her alone, and never speak to her more." Jem's voice quivered with the earnestness with which he spoke, and he eagerly waited for some answer. Harry Carson, meanwhile, instead of attending very particularly to the purpose the man had in addressing him, was trying to gather from his speech what was the real state of the case. He succeeded so far as to comprehend that Jem inclined to believe that Mary loved his rival; and consequently, that if the speaker were attached to her himself, he was not a favoured admirer. The idea came into Mr. Carson's mind, that perhaps, after all, Mary loved him in spite of her frequent and obstinate rejections; and that she had employed this person (whoever he was) to bully him into marrying her. He resolved to try and ascertain more correctly the man's relation to her. Either he was a lover, and if so, not a favoured one (in which case Mr. Carson could not at all understand the man's motives for interesting himself in securing her marriage); or he was a friend, an accomplice, whom she had employed to bully him. So little faith in goodness have the mean and selfish! "Before I make you into my confidant, my good man," said Mr. Carson, in a contemptuous tone, "I think it might be as well to inquire your right to meddle with our affairs. Neither Mary nor I, as I conceive, called you in as a mediator." He paused; he wanted a distinct answer to this last supposition. None came; so he began to imagine he was to be threatened into some engagement, and his angry spirit rose. "And so, my fine fellow, you will have the kindness to leave us to ourselves, and not meddle with what does not concern you. If you were a brother, or father of hers, the case might have been different. As it is, I can only consider you an impertinent meddler." Again he would have passed on, but Jem stood in a determined way before him, saying, "You say if I had been her brother, or her father, you'd have answered me what I ask. Now, neither father nor brother could love her as I have loved her, ay, and as I love her still; if love gives a right to satisfaction, it's next to impossible any one breathing can come up to my right. Now, sir, tell me! do you mean fair by Mary or not? I've proved my claim to know, and, by G----, I will know." "Come, come, no impudence," replied Mr. Carson, who, having discovered what he wanted to know (namely, that Jem was a lover of Mary's, and that she was not encouraging his suit), wished to pass on. "Father, brother, or rejected lover" (with an emphasis on the word rejected), "no one has a right to interfere between my little girl and me. No one shall. Confound you, man! get out of my way, or I'll make you," as Jem still obstructed his path with dogged determination. "I won't, then, till you've given me your word about Mary," replied the mechanic, grinding his words out between his teeth, and the livid paleness of the anger he could no longer keep down covering his face till he looked ghastly. "Won't you?" (with a taunting laugh), "then I'll make you." The young man raised his slight cane, and smote the artisan across the face with a stinging stroke. An instant afterwards he lay stretched in the muddy road, Jem standing over him, panting with rage. What he would have done next in his moment of ungovernable passion, no one knows; but a policeman from the main street, into which this road led, had been sauntering about for some time, unobserved by either of the parties, and expecting some kind of conclusion like the present to the violent discussion going on between the two young men. In a minute he had pinioned Jem, who sullenly yielded to the surprise. Mr. Carson was on his feet directly, his face glowing with rage or shame. "Shall I take him to the lock-ups for assault, sir?" said the policeman. "No, no," exclaimed Mr. Carson; "I struck him first. It was no assault on his side; though," he continued, hissing out his words to Jem, who even hated freedom procured for him, however justly, at the intervention of his rival, "I will never forgive or forget your insult. Trust me," he gasped the words in excess of passion, "Mary shall fare no better for your insolent interference." He laughed, as if with the consciousness of power. Jem replied with equal excitement--"And if you dare to injure her in the least, I will await you where no policeman can step in between. And God shall judge between us two." The policeman now interfered with persuasions and warnings. He locked his arm in Jem's to lead him away in an opposite direction to that in which he saw Mr. Carson was going. Jem submitted gloomily, for a few steps, then wrenched himself free. The policeman shouted after him, "Take care, my man! there's no girl on earth worth what you'll be bringing on yourself if you don't mind." But Jem was out of hearing. CHAPTER XVI. MEETING BETWEEN MASTERS AND WORKMEN. "Not for a moment take the scorner's chair; While seated there, thou know'st not how a word, A tone, a look, may gall thy brother's heart, And make him turn in bitterness against thee." "LOVE-TRUTHS." The day arrived on which the masters were to have an interview with a deputation of the work-people. The meeting was to take place in a public room, at an hotel; and there, about eleven o'clock, the mill-owners, who had received the foreign orders, began to collect. Of course, the first subject, however full their minds might be of another, was the weather. Having done their duty by all the showers and sunshine which had occurred during the past week, they fell to talking about the business which brought them together. There might be about twenty gentlemen in the room, including some by courtesy, who were not immediately concerned in the settlement of the present question; but who, nevertheless, were sufficiently interested to attend. These were divided into little groups, who did not seem unanimous by any means. Some were for a slight concession, just a sugar-plum to quieten the naughty child, a sacrifice to peace and quietness. Some were steadily and vehemently opposed to the dangerous precedent of yielding one jot or one tittle to the outward force of a turn-out. It was teaching the work-people how to become masters, said they. Did they want the wildest thing heareafter, they would know that the way to obtain their wishes would be to strike work. Besides, one or two of those present had only just returned from the New Bailey, where one of the turn-outs had been tried for a cruel assault on a poor north-country weaver, who had attempted to work at the low price. They were indignant, and justly so, at the merciless manner in which the poor fellow had been treated; and their indignation at wrong, took (as it so often does) the extreme form of revenge. They felt as if, rather than yield to the body of men who were resorting to such cruel measures towards their fellow-workmen, they, the masters, would sooner relinquish all the benefits to be derived from the fulfilment of the commission, in order that the workmen might suffer keenly. They forgot that the strike was in this instance the consequence of want and need, suffered unjustly, as the endurers believed; for, however insane, and without ground of reason, such was their belief, and such was the cause of their violence. It is a great truth, that you cannot extinguish violence by violence. You may put it down for a time; but while you are crowing over your imaginary success, see if it does not return with seven devils worse than its former self! No one thought of treating the workmen as brethren and friends, and openly, clearly, as appealing to reasonable men, stating the exact and full circumstances which led the masters to think it was the wise policy of the time to make sacrifices themselves, and to hope for them from the operatives. In going from group to group in the room, you caught such a medley of sentences as the following: "Poor devils! they're near enough to starving, I'm afraid. Mrs. Aldred makes two cows' heads into soup every week, and people come several miles to fetch it; and if these times last we must try and do more. But we must not be bullied into any thing!" "A rise of a shilling or so won't make much difference, and they will go away thinking they've gained their point." "That's the very thing I object to. They'll think so, and whenever they've a point to gain, no matter how unreasonable, they'll strike work." "It really injures them more than us." "I don't see how our interests can be separated." "The d----d brute had thrown vitriol on the poor fellow's ankles, and you know what a bad part that is to heal. He had to stand still with the pain, and that left him at the mercy of the cruel wretch, who beat him about the head till you'd hardly have known he was a man. They doubt if he'll live." "If it were only for that, I'll stand out against them, even if it were the cause of my ruin." "Ay, I for one won't yield one farthing to the cruel brutes; they're more like wild beasts than human beings." (Well! who might have made them different?) "I say, Carson, just go and tell Duncombe of this fresh instance of their abominable conduct. He's wavering, but I think this will decide him." The door was now opened, and a waiter announced that the men were below, and asked if it were the pleasure of the gentlemen that they should be shown up. They assented, and rapidly took their places round the official table; looking, as like as they could, to the Roman senators who awaited the irruption of Brennus and his Gauls. Tramp, tramp, came the heavy clogged feet up the stairs; and in a minute five wild, earnest-looking men stood in the room. John Barton, from some mistake as to time, was not among them. Had they been larger boned men, you would have called them gaunt; as it was, they were little of stature, and their fustian clothes hung loosely upon their shrunk limbs. In choosing their delegates, too, the operatives had had more regard to their brains, and power of speech, than to their wardrobes; they might have read the opinions of that worthy Professor Teufelsdruch, in Sartor Resartus, to judge from the dilapidated coats and trousers, which yet clothed men of parts and of power. It was long since many of them had known the luxury of a new article of dress; and air-gaps were to be seen in their garments. Some of the masters were rather affronted at such a ragged detachment coming between the wind and their nobility; but what cared they? At the request of a gentleman hastily chosen to officiate as chairman, the leader of the delegates read, in a high-pitched, psalm-singing voice, a paper, containing the operatives' statement of the case at issue, their complaints, and their demands, which last were not remarkable for moderation. He was then desired to withdraw for a few minutes, with his fellow delegates, to another room, while the masters considered what should be their definitive answer. When the men had left the room, a whispered earnest consultation took place, every one re-urging his former arguments. The conceders carried the day, but only by a majority of one. The minority haughtily and audibly expressed their dissent from the measures to be adopted, even after the delegates re-entered the room; their words and looks did not pass unheeded by the quick-eyed operatives; their names were registered in bitter hearts. The masters could not consent to the advance demanded by the workmen. They would agree to give one shilling per week more than they had previously offered. Were the delegates empowered to accept such offer? They were empowered to accept or decline any offer made that day by the masters. Then it might be as well for them to consult among themselves as to what should be their decision. They again withdrew. It was not for long. They came back, and positively declined any compromise of their demands. Then up sprang Mr. Henry Carson, the head and voice of the violent party among the masters, and addressing the chairman, even before the scowling operatives, he proposed some resolutions, which he, and those who agreed with him, had been concocting during this last absence of the deputation. They were, firstly, withdrawing the proposal just made, and declaring all communication between the masters and that particular Trades' Union at an end; secondly, declaring that no master would employ any workman in future, unless he signed a declaration that he did not belong to any Trades' Union, and pledged himself not to assist or subscribe to any society, having for its object interference with the masters' powers; and, thirdly, that the masters should pledge themselves to protect and encourage all workmen willing to accept employment on those conditions, and at the rate of wages first offered. Considering that the men who now stood listening with lowering brows of defiance were all of them leading members of the Union, such resolutions were in themselves sufficiently provocative of animosity: but not content with simply stating them, Harry Carson went on to characterise the conduct of the workmen in no measured terms; every word he spoke rendering their looks more livid, their glaring eyes more fierce. One among them would have spoken, but checked himself in obedience to the stern glance and pressure on his arm, received from the leader. Mr. Carson sat down, and a friend instantly got up to second the motion. It was carried, but far from unanimously. The chairman announced it to the delegates (who had been once more turned out of the room for a division). They received it with deep brooding silence, but spake never a word, and left the room without even a bow. Now there had been some by-play at this meeting, not recorded in the Manchester newspapers, which gave an account of the more regular part of the transaction. While the men had stood grouped near the door, on their first entrance, Mr. Harry Carson had taken out his silver pencil, and had drawn an admirable caricature of them--lank, ragged, dispirited, and famine-stricken. Underneath he wrote a hasty quotation from the fat knight's well-known speech in Henry IV. He passed it to one of his neighbours, who acknowledged the likeness instantly, and by him it was sent round to others, who all smiled and nodded their heads. When it came back to its owner he tore the back of the letter on which it was drawn, in two; twisted them up, and flung them into the fire-place; but, careless whether they reached their aim or not, he did not look to see that they fell just short of any consuming cinders. This proceeding was closely observed by one of the men. He watched the masters as they left the hotel (laughing, some of them were, at passing jokes), and when all had gone, he re-entered. He went to the waiter, who recognised him. "There's a bit on a picture up yonder, as one o' the gentlemen threw away; I've a little lad at home as dearly loves a picture; by your leave I'll go up for it." The waiter, good-natured and sympathetic, accompanied him up-stairs; saw the paper picked up and untwisted, and then being convinced, by a hasty glance at its contents, that it was only what the man had called it, "a bit of a picture," he allowed him to bear away his prize. Towards seven o'clock that evening many operatives began to assemble in a room in the Weavers' Arms public-house, a room appropriated for "festive occasions," as the landlord, in his circular, on opening the premises, had described it. But, alas! it was on no festive occasion that they met there on this night. Starved, irritated, despairing men, they were assembling to hear the answer that morning given by the masters to their delegates; after which, as was stated in the notice, a gentleman from London would have the honour of addressing the meeting on the present state of affairs between the employers and the employed, or (as he chose to term them) the idle and the industrious classes. The room was not large, but its bareness of furniture made it appear so. Unshaded gas flared down upon the lean and unwashed artisans as they entered, their eyes blinking at the excess of light. They took their seats on benches, and awaited the deputation. The latter, gloomily and ferociously, delivered the masters' ultimatum, adding thereunto not one word of their own; and it sank all the deeper into the sore hearts of the listeners for their forbearance. Then the "gentleman from London" (who had been previously informed of the masters' decision) entered. You would have been puzzled to define his exact position, or what was the state of his mind as regarded education. He looked so self-conscious, so far from earnest, among the group of eager, fierce, absorbed men, among whom he now stood. He might have been a disgraced medical student of the Bob Sawyer class, or an unsuccessful actor, or a flashy shopman. The impression he would have given you would have been unfavourable, and yet there was much about him that could only be characterised as doubtful. He smirked in acknowledgment of their uncouth greetings, and sat down; then glancing round, he inquired whether it would not be agreeable to the gentlemen present to have pipes and liquor handed round; adding, that he would stand treat. As the man who has had his taste educated to love reading, falls devouringly upon books after a long abstinence, so these poor fellows, whose tastes had been left to educate themselves into a liking for tobacco, beer, and similar gratifications, gleamed up at the proposal of the London delegate. Tobacco and drink deaden the pangs of hunger, and make one forget the miserable home, the desolate future. They were now ready to listen to him with approbation. He felt it; and rising like a great orator, with his right arm outstretched, his left in the breast of his waistcoat, he began to declaim, with a forced theatrical voice. After a burst of eloquence, in which he blended the deeds of the elder and the younger Brutus, and magnified the resistless might of the "millions of Manchester," the Londoner descended to matter-of-fact business, and in his capacity this way he did not belie the good judgment of those who had sent him as delegate. Masses of people, when left to their own free choice, seem to have discretion in distinguishing men of natural talent; it is a pity they so little regard temper and principles. He rapidly dictated resolutions, and suggested measures. He wrote out a stirring placard for the walls. He proposed sending delegates to entreat the assistance of other Trades' Unions in other towns. He headed the list of subscribing Unions, by a liberal donation from that with which he was especially connected in London; and what was more, and more uncommon, he paid down the money in real, clinking, blinking, golden sovereigns! The money, alas, was cravingly required; but before alleviating any private necessities on the morrow, small sums were handed to each of the delegates, who were in a day or two to set out on their expeditions to Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, &c. These men were most of them members of the deputation who had that morning waited upon the masters. After he had drawn up some letters, and spoken a few more stirring words, the gentleman from London withdrew, previously shaking hands all round; and many speedily followed him out of the room, and out of the house. The newly-appointed delegates, and one or two others, remained behind to talk over their respective missions, and to give and exchange opinions in more homely and natural language than they dared to use before the London orator. "He's a rare chap, yon," began one, indicating the departed delegate by a jerk of his thumb towards the door. "He's gotten the gift of the gab, anyhow!" "Ay! ay! he knows what he's about. See how he poured it into us about that there Brutus. He were pretty hard, too, to kill his own son!" "I could kill mine if he took part wi' the masters; to be sure, he's but a step-son, but that makes no odds," said another. But now tongues were hushed, and all eyes were directed towards the member of the deputation who had that morning returned to the hotel to obtain possession of Harry Carson's clever caricature of the operatives. The heads clustered together, to gaze at and detect the likenesses. "That's John Slater! I'd ha' known him anywhere, by his big nose. Lord! how like; that's me, by G----, it's the very way I'm obligated to pin my waistcoat up, to hide that I've gotten no shirt. That _is_ a shame, and I'll not stand it." "Well!" said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his likeness; "I could laugh at a jest as well as e'er the best on 'em, though it did tell again mysel, if I were not clemming" (his eyes filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), "and if I could keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear 'em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th' bottom o' th' canal, there,--why, man, I cannot laugh at ought. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they've never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within 'em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God help us." John Barton began to speak; they turned to him with great attention. "It makes me more than sad, it makes my heart burn within me, to see that folk can make a jest of earnest men; of chaps who comed to ask for a bit o' fire for th' old granny, as shivers in th' cold; for a bit o' bedding, and some warm clothing to the poor wife as lies in labour on th' damp flags; and for victuals for the childer, whose little voices are getting too faint and weak to cry aloud wi' hunger. For, brothers, is not them the things we ask for when we ask for more wage? We donnot want dainties, we want bellyfuls; we donnot want gimcrack coats and waistcoats, we want warm clothes, and so that we get 'em we'd not quarrel wi' what they're made on. We donnot want their grand houses, we want a roof to cover us from the rain, and the snow, and the storm; ay, and not alone to cover us, but the helpless ones that cling to us in the keen wind, and ask us with their eyes why we brought 'em into th' world to suffer?" He lowered his deep voice almost to a whisper. "I've seen a father who had killed his child rather than let it clem before his eyes; and he were a tender-hearted man." He began again in his usual tone. "We come to th' masters wi' full hearts, to ask for them things I named afore. We know that they've gotten money, as we've earned for 'em; we know trade is mending, and that they've large orders, for which they'll be well paid; we ask for our share o' th' payment; for, say we, if th' masters get our share of payment it will only go to keep servants and horses, to more dress and pomp. Well and good, if yo choose to be fools we'll not hinder you, so long as you're just; but our share we must and will have; we'll not be cheated. _We_ want it for daily bread, for life itself; and not for our own lives neither (for there's many a one here, I know by mysel, as would be glad and thankful to lie down and die out o' this weary world), but for the lives of them little ones, who don't yet know what life is, and are afeard of death. Well, we come before th' masters to state what we want, and what we must have, afore we'll set shoulder to their work; and they say, 'No.' One would think that would be enough of hard-heartedness, but it isn't. They go and make jesting pictures of us! I could laugh at mysel, as well as poor John Slater there; but then I must be easy in my mind to laugh. Now I only know that I would give the last drop o' my blood to avenge us on yon chap, who had so little feeling in him as to make game on earnest, suffering men!" A low angry murmur was heard among the men, but it did not yet take form or words. John continued-- "You'll wonder, chaps, how I came to miss the time this morning; I'll just tell you what I was a-doing. Th' chaplain at the New Bailey sent and gived me an order to see Jonas Higginbotham; him as was taken up last week for throwing vitriol in a knob-stick's face. Well, I couldn't help but go; and I didn't reckon it would ha' kept me so late. Jonas were like one crazy when I got to him; he said he could na get rest night or day for th' face of the poor fellow he had damaged; then he thought on his weak, clemmed look, as he tramped, foot-sore, into town; and Jonas thought, may be, he had left them at home as would look for news, and hope and get none, but, haply, tidings of his death. Well, Jonas had thought on these things till he could not rest, but walked up and down continually like a wild beast in his cage. At last he bethought him on a way to help a bit, and he got th' chaplain to send for me; and he telled me this; and that th' man were lying in th' Infirmary, and he bade me go (to-day's the day as folk may be admitted into th' Infirmary) and get his silver watch, as was his mother's, and sell it as well as I could, and take the money, and bid the poor knob-stick send it to his friends beyond Burnley; and I were to take him Jonas's kind regards, and he humbly axed him to forgive him. So I did what Jonas wished. But bless your life, none on us would ever throw vitriol again (at least at a knob-stick) if they could see the sight I saw to-day. The man lay, his face all wrapped in cloths, so I didn't see _that_; but not a limb, nor a bit of a limb, could keep from quivering with pain. He would ha' bitten his hand to keep down his moans, but couldn't, his face hurt him so if he moved it e'er so little. He could scarce mind me when I telled him about Jonas; he did squeeze my hand when I jingled the money, but when I axed his wife's name he shrieked out, 'Mary, Mary, shall I never see you again? Mary, my darling, they've made me blind because I wanted to work for you and our own baby; oh, Mary, Mary!' Then the nurse came, and said he were raving, and that I had made him worse. And I'm afeard it was true; yet I were loth to go without knowing where to send the money. . . . So that kept me beyond my time, chaps." "Did yo hear where the wife lived at last?" asked many anxious voices. "No! he went on talking to her, till his words cut my heart like a knife. I axed th' nurse to find out who she was, and where she lived. But what I'm more especial naming it now for is this,--for one thing I wanted yo all to know why I weren't at my post this morning; for another, I wish to say, that I, for one, ha' seen enough of what comes of attacking knob-sticks, and I'll ha nought to do with it no more." There were some expressions of disapprobation, but John did not mind them. "Nay! I'm no coward," he replied, "and I'm true to th' backbone. What I would like, and what I would do, would be to fight the masters. There's one among yo called me a coward. Well! every man has a right to his opinion; but since I've thought on th' matter to-day, I've thought we han all on us been more like cowards in attacking the poor like ourselves; them as has none to help, but mun choose between vitriol and starvation. I say we're more cowardly in doing that than in leaving them alone. No! what I would do is this. Have at the masters!" Again he shouted, "Have at the masters!" He spoke lower; all listened with hushed breath. "It's the masters as has wrought this woe; it's the masters as should pay for it. Him as called me coward just now, may try if I am one or not. Set me to serve out the masters, and see if there's ought I'll stick at." "It would give th' masters a bit on a fright if one on them were beaten within an inch of his life," said one. "Ay! or beaten till no life were left in him," growled another. And so with words, or looks that told more than words, they built up a deadly plan. Deeper and darker grew the import of their speeches, as they stood hoarsely muttering their meaning out, and glaring, with eyes that told the terror their own thoughts were to them, upon their neighbours. Their clenched fists, their set teeth, their livid looks, all told the suffering their minds were voluntarily undergoing in the contemplation of crime, and in familiarising themselves with its details. Then came one of those fierce terrible oaths which bind members of Trades' Unions to any given purpose. Then, under the flaring gaslight, they met together to consult further. With the distrust of guilt, each was suspicious of his neighbour; each dreaded the treachery of another. A number of pieces of paper (the identical letter on which the caricature had been drawn that very morning) were torn up, and _one was marked_. Then all were folded up again, looking exactly alike. They were shuffled together in a hat. The gas was extinguished; each drew out a paper. The gas was re-lighted. Then each went as far as he could from his fellows, and examined the paper he had drawn without saying a word, and with a countenance as stony and immovable as he could make it. Then, still rigidly silent, they each took up their hats and went every one his own way. He who had drawn the marked paper had drawn the lot of the assassin! and he had sworn to act according to his drawing! But no one save God and his own conscience knew who was the appointed murderer! CHAPTER XVII. BARTON'S NIGHT-ERRAND. "Mournful is't to say Farewell, Though for few brief hours we part; In that absence, who can tell What may come to wring the heart!" ANONYMOUS. The events recorded in the last chapter took place on a Tuesday. On Thursday afternoon Mary was surprised, in the midst of some little bustle in which she was engaged, by the entrance of Will Wilson. He looked strange, at least it was strange to see any different expression on his face to his usual joyous beaming appearance. He had a paper parcel in his hand. He came in, and sat down, more quietly than usual. "Why, Will! what's the matter with you? You seem quite cut up about something!" "And I am, Mary! I'm come to say good-bye; and few folk like to say good-bye to them they love." "Good-bye! Bless me, Will, that's sudden, isn't it?" Mary left off ironing, and came and stood near the fire-place. She had always liked Will; but now it seemed as if a sudden spring of sisterly love had gushed up in her heart, so sorry did she feel to hear of his approaching departure. "It's very sudden, isn't it?" said she, repeating her question. "Yes! it's very sudden," said he, dreamily. "No, it isn't;" rousing himself, to think of what he was saying. "The captain told me in a fortnight he would be ready to sail again; but it comes very sudden on me, I had got so fond of you all." Mary understood the particular fondness that was thus generalised. She spoke again. "But it's not a fortnight since you came. Not a fortnight since you knocked at Jane Wilson's door, and I was there, you remember. Nothing like a fortnight!" "No; I know it's not. But, you see, I got a letter this afternoon from Jack Harris, to tell me our ship sails on Tuesday next; and it's long since I promised my uncle (my mother's brother, him that lives at Kirk-Christ, beyond Ramsay, in the Isle of Man) that I'd go and see him and his, this time of coming ashore. I must go. I'm sorry enough; but I mustn't slight poor mother's friends. I must go. Don't try to keep me," said he, evidently fearing the strength of his own resolution, if hard pressed by entreaty. "I'm not a-going, Will. I dare say you're right; only I can't help feeling sorry you're going away. It seems so flat to be left behind. When do you go?" "To-night. I shan't see you again." "To-night! and you go to Liverpool! May be you and father will go together. He's going to Glasgow, by way of Liverpool." "No! I'm walking; and I don't think your father will be up to walking." "Well! and why on earth are you walking? You can get by railway for three-and-sixpence." "Ay, but Mary! (thou mustn't let out what I'm going to tell thee) I haven't got three shillings, no, nor even a sixpence left, at least not here; before I came here I gave my landlady enough to carry me to the island and back, and may be a trifle for presents, and I brought all the rest here; and it's all gone but this," jingling a few coppers in his hand. "Nay, never fret over my walking a matter of thirty mile," added he, as he saw she looked grave and sorry. "It's a fine clear night, and I shall set off betimes, and get in afore the Manx packet sails. Where's your father going? To Glasgow, did you say? Perhaps he and I may have a bit of a trip together then, for, if the Manx boat has sailed when I get into Liverpool, I shall go by a Scotch packet. What's he going to do in Glasgow?--Seek for work? Trade is as bad there as here, folk say." "No; he knows that," answered Mary, sadly. "I sometimes think he'll never get work again, and that trade will never mend. It's very hard to keep up one's heart. I wish I were a boy, I'd go to sea with you. It would be getting away from bad news at any rate; and now, there's hardly a creature that crosses the door-step, but has something sad and unhappy to tell one. Father is going as a delegate from his Union, to ask help from the Glasgow folk. He's starting this evening." Mary sighed, for the feeling again came over her that it was very flat to be left alone. "You say no one crosses the threshold but has something sad to say; you don't mean that Margaret Jennings has any trouble?" asked the young sailor, anxiously. "No!" replied Mary, smiling a little, "she's the only one I know, I believe, who seems free from care. Her blindness almost appears a blessing sometimes; she was so downhearted when she dreaded it, and now she seems so calm and happy when it's downright come. No! Margaret's happy, I do think." "I could almost wish it had been otherwise," said Will, thoughtfully. "I could have been so glad to comfort her, and cherish her, if she had been in trouble." "And why can't you cherish her, even though she is happy?" asked Mary. "Oh! I don't know. She seems so much better than I am! And her voice! When I hear it, and think of the wishes that are in my heart, it seems as much out of place to ask her to be my wife, as it would be to ask an angel from heaven." Mary could not help laughing outright, in spite of her depression, at the idea of Margaret as an angel; it was so difficult (even to her dress-making imagination) to fancy where, and how, the wings would be fastened to the brown stuff gown, or the blue and yellow print. Will laughed, too, a little, out of sympathy with Mary's pretty merry laugh. Then he said-- "Ay, you may laugh, Mary; it only shows you've never been in love." In an instant Mary was carnation colour, and the tears sprang to her soft gray eyes; she was suffering so much from the doubts arising from love! It was unkind of him. He did not notice her change of look and of complexion. He only noticed that she was silent, so he continued: "I thought--I think, that when I come back from this voyage, I will speak. It's my fourth voyage in the same ship, and with the same captain, and he's promised he'll make me second mate after this trip; then I shall have something to offer Margaret; and her grandfather, and aunt Alice, shall live with her, to keep her from being lonesome while I'm at sea. I'm speaking as if she cared for me, and would marry me; d'ye think she does care at all for me, Mary?" asked he, anxiously. Mary had a very decided opinion of her own on the subject, but she did not feel as if she had any right to give it. So she said-- "You must ask Margaret, not me, Will; she's never named your name to me." His countenance fell. "But I should say that was a good sign from a girl like her. I've no right to say what I think; but, if I was you, I would not leave her now without speaking." "No! I cannot speak! I have tried. I've been in to wish them good-bye, and my voice stuck in my throat. I could say nought of what I'd planned to say; and I never thought of being so bold as to offer her marriage till I'd been my next trip, and been made mate. I could not even offer her this box," said he, undoing his paper parcel and displaying a gaudily ornamented accordion; "I longed to buy her something, and I thought, if it were something in the music line, she would may-be fancy it more. So, will you give it to her, Mary, when I'm gone? and, if you can slip in something tender,--something, you know, of what I feel,--may-be she would listen to you, Mary." Mary promised that she would do all that he asked. "I shall be thinking on her many and many a night, when I'm keeping my watch in mid-sea; I wonder if she will ever think on me when the wind is whistling, and the gale rising. You'll often speak of me to her, Mary? And if I should meet with any mischance, tell her how dear, how very dear, she was to me, and bid her, for the sake of one who loved her well, try and comfort my poor aunt Alice. Dear old aunt! you and Margaret will often go and see her, won't you? She's sadly failed since I was last ashore. And so good as she has been! When I lived with her, a little wee chap, I used to be wakened by the neighbours knocking her up; this one was ill, or that body's child was restless; and, for as tired as ever she might be, she would be up and dressed in a twinkling, never thinking of the hard day's wash afore her next morning. Them were happy times! How pleased I used to be when she would take me into the fields with her to gather herbs! I've tasted tea in China since then, but it wasn't half so good as the herb tea she used to make for me o' Sunday nights. And she knew such a deal about plants and birds, and their ways! She used to tell me long stories about her childhood, and we used to plan how we would go sometime, please God (that was always her word), and live near her old home beyond Lancaster; in the very cottage where she was born if we could get it. Dear! and how different it is! Here is she still in a back street o' Manchester, never likely to see her own home again; and I, a sailor, off for America next week. I wish she had been able to go to Burton once afore she died." "She would may be have found all sadly changed," said Mary, though her heart echoed Will's feeling. "Ay! ay! I dare say it's best. One thing I do wish though, and I have often wished it when out alone on the deep sea, when even the most thoughtless can't choose but think on th' past and th' future; and that is, that I'd never grieved her. Oh Mary! many a hasty word comes sorely back on the heart, when one thinks one shall never see the person whom one has grieved again!" They both stood thinking. Suddenly Mary started. "That's father's step. And his shirt's not ready!" She hurried to her irons, and tried to make up for lost time. John Barton came in. Such a haggard and wildly anxious looking man, Will thought he had never seen. He looked at Will, but spoke no word of greeting or welcome. "I'm come to bid you good bye," said the sailor, and would in his sociable friendly humour have gone on speaking. But John answered abruptly, "Good bye to ye, then." There was that in his manner which left no doubt of his desire to get rid of the visitor, and Will accordingly shook hands with Mary, and looked at John, as if doubting how far to offer to shake hands with him. But he met with no answering glance or gesture, so he went his way, stopping for an instant at the door to say, "You'll think on me on Tuesday, Mary. That's the day we shall hoist our blue Peter, Jack Harris says." Mary was heartily sorry when the door closed; it seemed like shutting out a friendly sunbeam. And her father! what could be the matter with him? He was so restless; not speaking (she wished he would), but starting up and then sitting down, and meddling with her irons; he seemed so fierce, too, to judge from his face. She wondered if he disliked Will being there; or if he were vexed to find that she had not got further on with her work. At last she could bear his nervous way no longer, it made her equally nervous and fidgetty. She would speak. "When are you going, father? I don't know the time o' the trains." "And why shouldst thou know?" replied he, gruffly. "Meddle with thy ironing, but donnot be asking questions about what doesn't concern thee." "I wanted to get you something to eat first," answered she, gently. "Thou dost not know that I'm larning to do without food," said he. Mary looked at him to see if he spoke jestingly. No! he looked savagely grave. She finished her bit of ironing, and began preparing the food she was sure her father needed; for by this time her experience in the degrees of hunger had taught her that his present irritability was increased, if not caused, by want of food. He had had a sovereign given him to pay his expenses as delegate to Glasgow, and out of this he had given Mary a few shillings in the morning; so she had been able to buy a sufficient meal, and now her care was to cook it so as most to tempt him. "If thou'rt doing that for me, Mary, thou may'st spare thy labour. I telled thee I were not for eating." "Just a little bit, father, before starting," coaxed Mary, perseveringly. At that instant, who should come in but Job Legh. It was not often he came, but when he did pay visits, Mary knew from past experience they were any thing but short. Her father's countenance fell back into the deep gloom from which it was but just emerging at the sound of Mary's sweet voice, and pretty pleading. He became again restless and fidgetty, scarcely giving Job Legh the greeting necessary for a host in his own house. Job, however, did not stand upon ceremony. He had come to pay a visit, and was not to be daunted from his purpose. He was interested in John Barton's mission to Glasgow, and wanted to hear all about it; so he sat down, and made himself comfortable, in a manner that Mary saw was meant to be stationary. "So thou'rt off to Glasgow, art thou?" he began his catechism. "Ay." "When art starting?" "To-night." "That I knowed. But by what train?" That was just what Mary wanted to know; but what apparently her father was in no mood to tell. He got up without speaking, and went up-stairs. Mary knew from his step, and his way, how much he was put out, and feared Job would see it, too. But no! Job seemed imperturbable. So much the better, and perhaps she could cover her father's rudeness by her own civility to so kind a friend. So half listening to her father's movements up-stairs, (passionate, violent, restless motions they were) and half attending to Job Legh, she tried to pay him all due regard. "When does thy father start, Mary?" That plaguing question again. "Oh! very soon. I'm just getting him a bit of supper. Is Margaret very well?" "Yes, she's well enough. She's meaning to go and keep Alice Wilson company for an hour or so this evening; as soon as she thinks her nephew will have started for Liverpool; for she fancies the old woman will feel a bit lonesome. Th' Union is paying for your father, I suppose?" "Yes, they've given him a sovereign. You're one of th' Union, Job?" "Ay! I'm one, sure enough; but I'm but a sleeping partner in the concern. I were obliged to become a member for peace, else I don't go along with 'em. Yo see they think themselves wise, and me silly, for differing with them; well! there's no harm in that. But then they won't let me be silly in peace and quietness, but will force me to be as wise as they are; now that's not British liberty, I say. I'm forced to be wise according to their notions, else they parsecute me, and sarve me out." What could her father be doing up-stairs? Tramping and banging about. Why did he not come down? Or why did not Job go? The supper would be spoilt. But Job had no notion of going. "You see my folly is this, Mary. I would take what I could get; I think half a loaf is better than no bread. I would work for low wages rather than sit idle and starve. But, comes the Trades' Union, and says, 'Well, if you take the half-loaf, we'll worry you out of your life. Will you be clemmed, or will you be worried?' Now clemming is a quiet death, and worrying isn't, so I choose clemming, and come into th' Union. But I wish they'd leave me free, if I am a fool." Creak, creak, went the stairs. Her father was coming down at last. Yes, he came down, but more doggedly fierce than before, and made up for his journey, too; with his little bundle on his arm. He went up to Job, and, more civilly than Mary expected, wished him good-bye. He then turned to her, and in a short cold manner, bade her farewell. "Oh! father, don't go yet. Your supper is all ready. Stay one moment!" But he pushed her away, and was gone. She followed him to the door, her eyes blinded by sudden tears; she stood there looking after him. He was so strange, so cold, so hard. Suddenly, at the end of the court, he turned, and saw her standing there; he came back quickly, and took her in his arms. "God bless thee, Mary!--God in heaven bless thee, poor child!" She threw her arms round his neck. "Don't go yet, father; I can't bear you to go yet. Come in, and eat some supper; you look so ghastly; dear father, do!" "No," he said, faintly and mournfully. "It's best as it is. I couldn't eat, and it's best to be off. I cannot be still at home. I must be moving." So saying, he unlaced her soft twining arms, and kissing her once more, set off on his fierce errand. And he was out of sight! She did not know why, but she had never before felt so depressed, so desolate. She turned in to Job, who sat there still. Her father, as soon as he was out of sight, slackened his pace, and fell into that heavy listless step, which told as well as words could do, of hopelessness and weakness. It was getting dark, but he loitered on, returning no greeting to any one. A child's cry caught his ear. His thoughts were running on little Tom; on the dead and buried child of happier years. He followed the sound of the wail, that might have been _his_, and found a poor little mortal, who had lost his way, and whose grief had choked up his thoughts to the single want, "Mammy, mammy." With tender address, John Barton soothed the little laddie, and with beautiful patience he gathered fragments of meaning from the half spoken words which came mingled with sobs from the terrified little heart. So, aided by inquiries here and there from a passer-by, he led and carried the little fellow home, where his mother had been too busy to miss him, but now received him with thankfulness, and with an eloquent Irish blessing. When John heard the words of blessing, he shook his head mournfully, and turned away to retrace his steps. Let us leave him. Mary took her sewing after he had gone, and sat on, and sat on, trying to listen to Job, who was more inclined to talk than usual. She had conquered her feeling of impatience towards him so far as to be able to offer him her father's rejected supper; and she even tried to eat herself. But her heart failed her. A leaden weight seemed to hang over her; a sort of presentiment of evil, or perhaps only an excess of low-spirited feeling in consequence of the two departures which had taken place that afternoon. She wondered how long Job Legh would sit. She did not like putting down her work, and crying before him, and yet she had never in her life longed so much to be alone in order to indulge in a good hearty burst of tears. "Well, Mary," she suddenly caught him saying, "I thought you'd be a bit lonely to-night; and as Margaret were going to cheer th' old woman, I said I'd go and keep th' young un company; and a very pleasant, chatty evening we've had; very. Only I wonder as Margaret is not come back." "But perhaps she is," suggested Mary. "No, no, I took care o' that. Look ye here!" and he pulled out the great house-key. "She'll have to stand waiting i' th' street, and that I'm sure she wouldn't do, when she knew where to find me." "Will she come back by hersel?" asked Mary. "Ay. At first I were afraid o' trusting her, and I used to follow her a bit behind; never letting on, of course. But, bless you! she goes along as steadily as can be; rather slow, to be sure, and her head a bit on one side as if she were listening. And it's real beautiful to see her cross the road. She'll wait above a bit to hear that all is still; not that she's so dark as not to see a coach or a cart like a big black thing, but she can't rightly judge how far off it is by sight, so she listens. Hark! that's her!" Yes; in she came with her usually calm face all tear-stained and sorrow-marked. "What's the matter, my wench?" said Job, hastily. "Oh! grandfather! Alice Wilson's so bad!" She could say no more, for her breathless agitation. The afternoon, and the parting with Will, had weakened her nerves for any after-shock. "What is it? Do tell us, Margaret!" said Mary, placing her in a chair, and loosening her bonnet-strings. "I think it's a stroke o' the palsy. Any rate she has lost the use of one side." "Was it afore Will had set off?" asked Mary. "No; he were gone before I got there," said Margaret; "and she were much about as well as she has been this many a day. She spoke a bit, but not much; but that were only natural, for Mrs. Wilson likes to have the talk to hersel, you know. She got up to go across the room, and then I heard a drag wi' her leg, and presently a fall, and Mrs. Wilson came running, and set up such a cry! I stopped wi' Alice, while she fetched a doctor; but she could not speak, to answer me, though she tried, I think." "Where was Jem? Why didn't he go for the doctor?" "He were out when I got there, and he never came home while I stopped." "Thou'st never left Mrs. Wilson alone wi' poor Alice?" asked Job, hastily. "No, no," said Margaret. "But, oh! grandfather; it's now I feel how hard it is to have lost my sight. I should have so loved to nurse her; and I did try, until I found I did more harm than good. Oh! grandfather; if I could but see!" She sobbed a little; and they let her give that ease to her heart. Then she went on-- "No! I went round by Mrs. Davenport's, and she were hard at work; but, the minute I told my errand, she were ready and willing to go to Jane Wilson, and stop up all night with Alice." "And what does the doctor say?" asked Mary. "Oh! much what all doctors say: he puts a fence on this side, and a fence on that, for fear he should be caught tripping in his judgment. One moment he does not think there's much hope--but while there is life there is hope; th' next he says he should think she might recover partial, but her age is again her. He's ordered her leeches to her head." Margaret, having told her tale, leant back with weariness, both of body and mind. Mary hastened to make her a cup of tea; while Job, lately so talkative, sat quiet and mournfully silent. "I'll go first thing to-morrow morning, and learn how she is; and I'll bring word back before I go to work," said Mary. "It's a bad job Will's gone," said Job. "Jane does not think she knows any one," replied Margaret. "It's perhaps as well he shouldn't see her now, for they say her face is sadly drawn. He'll remember her with her own face better, if he does not see her again." With a few more sorrowful remarks they separated for the night, and Mary was left alone in her house, to meditate on the heavy day that had passed over her head. Everything seemed going wrong. Will gone; her father gone--and so strangely too! And to a place so mysteriously distant as Glasgow seemed to be to her! She had felt his presence as a protection against Harry Carson and his threats; and now she dreaded lest he should learn she was alone. Her heart began to despair, too, about Jem. She feared he had ceased to love her; and she--she only loved him more and more for his seeming neglect. And, as if all this aggregate of sorrowful thoughts was not enough, here was this new woe, of poor Alice's paralytic stroke. CHAPTER XVIII. MURDER. "But in his pulse there was no throb, Nor on his lips one dying sob; Sigh, nor word, nor struggling breath Heralded his way to death." SIEGE OF CORINTH. "My brain runs this way and that way; 'twill not fix On aught but vengeance." DUKE OF GUISE. I must now go back to an hour or two before Mary and her friends parted for the night. It might be about eight o'clock that evening, and the three Miss Carsons were sitting in their father's drawing-room. He was asleep in the dining-room, in his own comfortable chair. Mrs. Carson was (as was usual with her, when no particular excitement was going on) very poorly, and sitting up-stairs in her dressing-room, indulging in the luxury of a head-ache. She was not well, certainly. "Wind in the head," the servants called it. But it was but the natural consequence of the state of mental and bodily idleness in which she was placed. Without education enough to value the resources of wealth and leisure, she was so circumstanced as to command both. It would have done her more good than all the æther and sal-volatile she was daily in the habit of swallowing, if she might have taken the work of one of her own housemaids for a week; made beds, rubbed tables, shaken carpets, and gone out into the fresh morning air, without all the paraphernalia of shawl, cloak, boa, fur boots, bonnet, and veil, in which she was equipped before setting out for an "airing," in the closely shut-up carriage. So the three girls were by themselves in the comfortable, elegant, well-lighted drawing-room; and, like many similarly-situated young ladies, they did not exactly know what to do to while away the time until the tea-hour. The elder two had been at a dancing-party the night before, and were listless and sleepy in consequence. One tried to read "Emerson's Essays," and fell asleep in the attempt; the other was turning over a parcel of new music, in order to select what she liked. Amy, the youngest, was copying some manuscript music. The air was heavy with the fragrance of strongly-scented flowers, which sent out their night odours from an adjoining conservatory. The clock on the chimney-piece chimed eight. Sophy (the sleeping sister) started up at the sound. "What o'clock is that?" she asked. "Eight," said Amy. "Oh dear! how tired I am! Is Harry come in? Tea would rouse one up a little. Are not you worn out, Helen?" "Yes; I am tired enough. One is good for nothing the day after a dance. Yet I don't feel weary at the time; I suppose it is the lateness of the hours." "And yet, how could it be managed otherwise? So many don't dine till five or six, that one cannot begin before eight or nine; and then it takes a long time to get into the spirit of the evening. It is always more pleasant after supper than before." "Well, I'm too tired to-night to reform the world in the matter of dances or balls. What are you copying, Amy?" "Only that little Spanish air you sing--'Quien quiera.'" "What are you copying it for?" asked Helen. "Harry asked me to do it for him this morning at breakfast-time,--for Miss Richardson, he said." "For Jane Richardson!" said Sophy, as if a new idea were receiving strength in her mind. "Do you think Harry means any thing by his attention to her?" asked Helen. "Nay, I do not know any thing more than you do; I can only observe and conjecture. What do you think, Helen?" "Harry always likes to be of consequence to the belle of the room. If one girl is more admired than another, he likes to flutter about her, and seem to be on intimate terms with her. That is his way, and I have not noticed any thing beyond that in his manner to Jane Richardson." "But I don't think she knows it's only his way. Just watch her the next time we meet her when Harry is there, and see how she crimsons, and looks another way when she feels he is coming up to her. I think he sees it, too, and I think he is pleased with it." "I dare say Harry would like well enough to turn the head of such a lovely girl as Jane Richardson. But I'm not convinced that he is in love, whatever she may be." "Well, then!" said Sophy, indignantly, "though it is our own brother, I do think he is behaving very wrongly. The more I think of it the more sure I am that she thinks he means something, and that he intends her to think so. And then, when he leaves off paying her attention--" "Which will be as soon as a prettier girl makes her appearance," interrupted Helen. "As soon as he leaves off paying her attention," resumed Sophy, "she will have many and many a heart-ache, and then she will harden herself into being a flirt, a feminine flirt, as he is a masculine flirt. Poor girl!" "I don't like to hear you speak so of Harry," said Amy, looking up at Sophy. "And I don't like to have to speak so, Amy, for I love him dearly. He is a good, kind brother, but I do think him vain, and I think he hardly knows the misery, the crimes, to which indulged vanity may lead him." Helen yawned. "Oh! do you think we may ring for tea? Sleeping after dinner always makes me so feverish." "Yes, surely. Why should not we?" said the more energetic Sophy, pulling the bell with some determination. "Tea directly, Parker," said she, authoritatively, as the man entered the room. She was too little in the habit of reading expressions on the faces of others to notice Parker's countenance. Yet it was striking. It was blanched to a dead whiteness; the lips compressed as if to keep within some tale of horror; the eyes distended and unnatural. It was a terror-stricken face. The girls began to put away their music and books, in preparation for tea. The door slowly opened again, and this time it was the nurse who entered. I call her nurse, for such had been her office in by-gone days, though now she held rather an anomalous situation in the family. Seamstress, attendant on the young ladies, keeper of the stores; only "Nurse" was still her name. She had lived longer with them than any other servant, and to her their manner was far less haughty than to the other domestics. She occasionally came into the drawing-room to look for things belonging to their father or mother, so it did not excite any surprise when she advanced into the room. They went on arranging their various articles of employment. She wanted them to look up. She wanted them to read something in her face--her face so full of woe, of horror. But they went on without taking any notice. She coughed; not a natural cough; but one of those coughs which ask so plainly for remark. "Dear nurse, what is the matter?" asked Amy. "Are not you well?" "Is mamma ill?" asked Sophy, quickly. "Speak, speak, nurse!" said they all, as they saw her efforts to articulate, choked by the convulsive rising in her throat. They clustered round her with eager faces, catching a glimpse of some terrible truth to be revealed. "My dear young ladies! my dear girls," she gasped out at length, and then she burst into tears. "Oh! do tell us what it is, nurse," said one. "Any thing is better than this. Speak!" "My children! I don't know how to break it to you. My dears, poor Mr. Harry is brought home--" "Brought home--_brought_ home--how?" Instinctively they sank their voices to a whisper; but a fearful whisper it was. In the same low tone, as if afraid lest the walls, the furniture, the inanimate things which told of preparation for life and comfort, should hear, she answered, "Dead!" Amy clutched her nurse's arm, and fixed her eyes on her as if to know if such a tale could be true; and when she read its confirmation in those sad, mournful, unflinching eyes, she sank, without word or sound, down in a faint upon the floor. One sister sat down on an ottoman, and covered her face, to try and realise it. That was Sophy. Helen threw herself on the sofa, and burying her head in the pillows, tried to stifle the screams and moans which shook her frame. The nurse stood silent. She had not told _all_. "Tell me," said Sophy, looking up, and speaking in a hoarse voice, which told of the inward pain, "tell me, nurse! Is he _dead_, did you say? Have you sent for a doctor? Oh! send for one, send for one," continued she, her voice rising to shrillness, and starting to her feet. Helen lifted herself up, and looked, with breathless waiting, towards nurse. "My dears, he is dead! But I have sent for a doctor. I have done all I could." "When did he--when did they bring him home?" asked Sophy. "Perhaps ten minutes ago. Before you rang for Parker." "How did he die? Where did they find him? He looked so well. He always seemed so strong. Oh! are you sure he is dead?" She went towards the door. Nurse laid her hand on her arm. "Miss Sophy, I have not told you all. Can you bear to hear it? Remember, master is in the next room, and he knows nothing yet. Come, you must help me to tell him. Now be quiet, dear! It was no common death he died!" She looked in her face as if trying to convey her meaning by her eyes. Sophy's lips moved, but nurse could hear no sound. "He has been shot as he was coming home along Turner Street, to-night." Sophy went on with the motion of her lips, twitching them almost convulsively. "My dear, you must rouse yourself, and remember your father and mother have yet to be told. Speak! Miss Sophy!" But she could not; her whole face worked involuntarily. The nurse left the room, and almost immediately brought back some sal-volatile and water. Sophy drank it eagerly, and gave one or two deep gasps. Then she spoke in a calm unnatural voice. "What do you want me to do, nurse? Go to Helen and poor Amy. See, they want help." "Poor creatures! we must let them alone for a bit. You must go to master; that's what I want you to do, Miss Sophy. You must break it to him, poor old gentleman. Come, he's asleep in the dining-room, and the men are waiting to speak to him." Sophy went mechanically to the dining-room door. "Oh! I cannot go in. I cannot tell him. What must I say?" "I'll come with you, Miss Sophy. Break it to him by degrees." "I can't, nurse. My head throbs so, I shall be sure to say the wrong thing." However, she opened the door. There sat her father, the shaded light of the candle-lamp falling upon, and softening his marked features, while his snowy hair contrasted well with the deep crimson morocco of the chair. The newspaper he had been reading had dropped on the carpet by his side. He breathed regularly and deeply. At that instant the words of Mrs. Hemans's song came full into Sophy's mind. "Ye know not what ye do, That call the slumberer back From the realms unseen by you, To life's dim, weary track." But this life's track would be to the bereaved father something more than dim and weary, hereafter. "Papa," said she, softly. He did not stir. "Papa!" she exclaimed, somewhat louder. He started up, half awake. "Tea is ready, is it?" and he yawned. "No! papa, but something very dreadful--very sad, has happened!" He was gaping so loud that he did not catch the words she uttered, and did not see the expression of her face. "Master Henry is not come back," said nurse. Her voice, heard in unusual speech to him, arrested his attention, and rubbing his eyes, he looked at the servant. "Harry! oh no! he had to attend a meeting of the masters about these cursed turn-outs. I don't expect him yet. What are you looking at me so strangely for, Sophy?" "Oh, papa, Harry is come back," said she, bursting into tears. "What do you mean?" said he, startled into an impatient consciousness that something was wrong. "One of you says he is not come home, and the other says he is. Now that's nonsense! Tell me at once what's the matter. Did he go on horseback to town? Is he thrown? Speak, child, can't you?" "No! he's not been thrown, papa," said Sophy, sadly. "But he's badly hurt," put in the nurse, desirous to be drawing his anxiety to a point. "Hurt? Where? How? Have you sent for a doctor?" said he, hastily rising, as if to leave the room. "Yes, papa, we've sent for a doctor--but I'm afraid--I believe it's of no use." He looked at her for a moment, and in her face he read the truth. His son, his only son, was dead. He sank back in his chair, and hid his face in his hands, and bowed his head upon the table. The strong mahogany dining-table shook and rattled under his agony. Sophy went and put her arms round his bowed neck. "Go! you are not Harry," said he; but the action roused him. "Where is he? where is the--" said he, with his strong face set into the lines of anguish, by two minutes of such intense woe. "In the servants' hall," said nurse. "Two policemen and another man brought him home. They would be glad to speak to you when you are able, sir." "I am able now," replied he. At first when he stood up, he tottered. But steadying himself, he walked, as firmly as a soldier on drill, to the door. Then he turned back and poured out a glass of wine from the decanter which yet remained on the table. His eye caught the wine-glass which Harry had used but two or three hours before. He sighed a long quivering sigh. And then mastering himself again, he left the room. "You had better go back to your sisters, Miss Sophy," said nurse. Miss Carson went. She could not face death yet. The nurse followed Mr. Carson to the servants' hall. There, on their dinner-table, lay the poor dead body. The men who had brought it were sitting near the fire, while several of the servants stood round the table, gazing at the remains. _The remains!_ One or two were crying; one or two were whispering; awed into a strange stillness of voice and action by the presence of the dead. When Mr. Carson came in they all drew back and looked at him with the reverence due to sorrow. He went forward and gazed long and fondly on the calm, dead face; then he bent down and kissed the lips yet crimson with life. The policemen had advanced and stood ready to be questioned. But at first the old man's mind could only take in the idea of death; slowly, slowly came the conception of violence, of murder. "How did he die?" he groaned forth. The policemen looked at each other. Then one began, and stated that having heard the report of a gun in Turner Street, he had turned down that way (a lonely, unfrequented way Mr. Carson knew, but a short cut to his garden-door, of which Harry had a key); that as he (the policeman) came nearer, he had heard footsteps as of a man running away; but the evening was so dark (the moon not having yet risen) that he could see no one twenty yards off. That he had even been startled when close to the body by seeing it lying across the path at his feet. That he had sprung his rattle; and when another policeman came up, by the light of the lantern they had discovered who it was that had been killed. That they believed him to be dead when they first took him up, as he had never moved, spoken, or breathed. That intelligence of the murder had been sent to the superintendent, who would probably soon be here. That two or three policemen were still about the place where the murder was committed, seeking out for some trace of the murderer. Having said this, they stopped speaking. Mr. Carson had listened attentively, never taking his eyes off the dead body. When they had ended, he said, "Where was he shot?" They lifted up some of the thick chestnut curls, and showed a blue spot (you could hardly call it a hole, the flesh had closed so much over it) in the left temple. A deadly aim! And yet it was so dark a night! "He must have been close upon him," said one policeman. "And have had him between him and the sky," added the other. There was a little commotion at the door of the room, and there stood poor Mrs. Carson, the mother. She had heard unusual noises in the house, and had sent down her maid (much more a companion to her than her highly-educated daughters) to discover what was going on. But the maid either forgot, or dreaded, to return; and with nervous impatience Mrs. Carson came down herself, and had traced the hum and buzz of voices to the servants' hall. Mr. Carson turned round. But he could not leave the dead for any one living. "Take her away, nurse. It is no sight for her. Tell Miss Sophy to go to her mother." His eyes were again fixed on the dead face of his son. Presently Mrs. Carson's hysterical cries were heard all over the house. Her husband shuddered at the outward expression of the agony which was rending his heart. Then the police superintendent came, and after him the doctor. The latter went through all the forms of ascertaining death, without uttering a word, and when at the conclusion of the operation of opening a vein, from which no blood flowed, he shook his head, all present understood the confirmation of their previous belief. The superintendent asked to speak to Mr. Carson in private. "It was just what I was going to request of you," answered he; so he led the way into the dining-room, with the wine-glass still on the table. The door was carefully shut, and both sat down, each apparently waiting for the other to begin. At last Mr. Carson spoke. "You probably have heard that I am a rich man." The superintendent bowed in assent. "Well, sir, half--nay, if necessary, the whole of my fortune I will give to have the murderer brought to the gallows." "Every exertion, you may be sure, sir, shall be used on our part; but probably offering a handsome reward might accelerate the discovery of the murderer. But what I wanted particularly to tell you, sir, is that one of my men has already got some clue, and that another (who accompanied me here) has within this quarter of an hour found a gun in the field which the murderer crossed, and which he probably threw away when pursued, as encumbering his flight. I have not the smallest doubt of discovering the murderer." "What do you call a handsome reward?" said Mr. Carson. "Well, sir, three, or five hundred pounds is a munificent reward: more than will probably be required as a temptation to any accomplice." "Make it a thousand," said Mr. Carson, decisively. "It's the doing of those damned turn-outs." "I imagine not," said the superintendent. "Some days ago the man I was naming to you before, reported to the inspector when he came on his beat, that he had had to separate your son from a young man, who by his dress he believed to be employed in a foundry; that the man had thrown Mr. Carson down, and seemed inclined to proceed to more violence, when the policeman came up and interfered. Indeed, my man wished to give him in charge for an assault, but Mr. Carson would not allow that to be done." "Just like him!--noble fellow!" murmured the father. "But after your son had left, the man made use of some pretty strong threats. And it's rather a curious coincidence that this scuffle took place in the very same spot where the murder was committed; in Turner Street." There was some one knocking at the door of the room. It was Sophy, who beckoned her father out, and then asked him, in an awe-struck whisper, to come up-stairs and speak to her mother. "She will not leave Harry, and talks so strangely. Indeed--indeed--papa, I think she has lost her senses." And the poor girl sobbed bitterly. "Where is she?" asked Mr. Carson. "In his room." They went up stairs rapidly and silently. It was a large, comfortable bedroom; too large to be well lighted by the flaring, flickering kitchen-candle which had been hastily snatched up, and now stood on the dressing-table. On the bed, surrounded by its heavy, pall-like green curtains, lay the dead son. They had carried him up, and laid him down, as tenderly as though they feared to waken him; and, indeed, it looked more like sleep than death, so very calm and full of repose was the face. You saw, too, the chiselled beauty of the features much more perfectly than when the brilliant colouring of life had distracted your attention. There was a peace about him which told that death had come too instantaneously to give any previous pain. In a chair, at the head of the bed, sat the mother,--smiling. She held one of the hands (rapidly stiffening, even in her warm grasp), and gently stroked the back of it, with the endearing caress she had used to all her children when young. "I am glad you are come," said she, looking up at her husband, and still smiling. "Harry is so full of fun, he always has something new to amuse us with; and now he pretends he is asleep, and that we can't waken him. Look! he is smiling now; he hears I have found him out. Look!" And, in truth, the lips, in the rest of death, did look as though they wore a smile, and the waving light of the unsnuffed candle almost made them seem to move. "Look, Amy," said she to her youngest child, who knelt at her feet, trying to soothe her, by kissing her garments. "Oh, he was always a rogue! You remember, don't you, love? how full of play he was as a baby; hiding his face under my arm, when you wanted to play with him. Always a rogue, Harry!" "We must get her away, sir," said nurse; "you know there is much to be done before--" "I understand, nurse," said the father, hastily interrupting her in dread of the distinct words which would tell of the changes of mortality. "Come, love," said he to his wife. "I want you to come with me. I want to speak to you down-stairs." "I'm coming," said she, rising; "perhaps, after all, nurse, he's really tired, and would be glad to sleep. Don't let him get cold, though,--he feels rather chilly," continued she, after she had bent down, and kissed the pale lips. Her husband put his arm round her waist, and they left the room. Then the three sisters burst into unrestrained wailings. They were startled into the reality of life and death. And yet, in the midst of shrieks and moans, of shivering, and chattering of teeth, Sophy's eye caught the calm beauty of the dead; so calm amidst such violence, and she hushed her emotion. "Come," said she to her sisters, "nurse wants us to go; and besides, we ought to be with mamma. Papa told the man he was talking to, when I went for him, to wait, and she must not be left." Meanwhile, the superintendent had taken a candle, and was examining the engravings that hung round the dining-room. It was so common to him to be acquainted with crime, that he was far from feeling all his interest absorbed in the present case of violence, although he could not help having much anxiety to detect the murderer. He was busy looking at the only oil-painting in the room (a youth of eighteen or so, in a fancy dress), and conjecturing its identity with the young man so mysteriously dead, when the door opened, and Mr. Carson returned. Stern as he had looked before leaving the room, he looked far sterner now. His face was hardened into deep-purposed wrath. "I beg your pardon, sir, for leaving you." The superintendent bowed. They sat down, and spoke long together. One by one the policemen were called in, and questioned. All through the night there was bustle and commotion in the house. Nobody thought of going to bed. It seemed strange to Sophy to hear nurse summoned from her mother's side to supper, in the middle of the night, and still stranger that she could go. The necessity of eating and drinking seemed out of place in the house of death. When night was passing into morning, the dining-room door opened, and two persons' steps were heard along the hall. The superintendent was leaving at last. Mr. Carson stood on the front door-step, feeling the refreshment of the cooler morning air, and seeing the starlight fade away into dawn. "You will not forget," said he. "I trust to you." The policeman bowed. "Spare no money. The only purpose for which I now value wealth is to have the murderer arrested, and brought to justice. My hope in life now is to see him sentenced to death. Offer any rewards. Name a thousand pounds in the placards. Come to me at any hour, night or day, if that be required. All I ask of you is, to get the murderer hanged. Next week, if possible--to-day is Friday. Surely, with the clues you already possess, you can muster up evidence sufficient to have him tried next week." "He may easily request an adjournment of his trial, on the ground of the shortness of the notice," said the superintendent. "Oppose it, if possible. I will see that the first lawyers are employed. I shall know no rest while he lives." "Every thing shall be done, sir." "You will arrange with the coroner. Ten o'clock, if convenient." The superintendent took leave. Mr. Carson stood on the step, dreading to shut out the light and air, and return into the haunted, gloomy house. "My son! my son!" he said, at last. "But you shall be avenged, my poor murdered boy." Ay! to avenge his wrongs the murderer had singled out his victim, and with one fell action had taken away the life that God had given. To avenge his child's death, the old man lived on; with the single purpose in his heart of vengeance on the murderer. True, his vengeance was sanctioned by law, but was it the less revenge? Are we worshippers of Christ? or of Alecto? Oh! Orestes! you would have made a very tolerable Christian of the nineteenth century! CHAPTER XIX. JEM WILSON ARRESTED ON SUSPICION. "Deeds to be hid which were not hid, Which, all confused, I could not know, Whether I suffered or I did, For all seemed guilt, remorse, or woe." COLERIDGE. I left Mary, on that same Thursday night which left its burden of woe at Mr. Carson's threshold, haunted with depressing thoughts. All through the night she tossed restlessly about, trying to get quit of the ideas that harassed her, and longing for the light when she could rise, and find some employment. But just as dawn began to appear, she became more quiet, and fell into a sound heavy sleep, which lasted till she was sure it was late in the morning by the full light that shone in. She dressed hastily, and heard the neighbouring church-clock strike eight. It was far too late to do as she had planned (after inquiring how Alice was, to return and tell Margaret), and she accordingly went in to inform the latter of her change of purpose, and the cause of it; but on entering the house she found Job sitting alone, looking sad enough. She told him what she came for. "Margaret, wench! why she's been gone to Wilson's these two hours. Ay! sure, you did say last night you would go; but she could na rest in her bed, so was off betimes this morning." Mary could do nothing but feel guilty of her long morning nap, and hasten to follow Margaret's steps; for late as it was, she felt she could not settle well to her work, unless she learnt how kind good Alice Wilson was going on. So, eating her crust-of-bread breakfast, she passed rapidly along the streets. She remembered afterwards the little groups of people she had seen, eagerly hearing, and imparting news; but at the time her only care was to hasten on her way, in dread of a reprimand from Miss Simmonds. She went into the house at Jane Wilson's, her heart at the instant giving a strange knock, and sending the rosy flush into her face, at the thought that Jem might possibly be inside the door. But I do assure you, she had not thought of it before. Impatient and loving as she was, her solicitude about Alice on that hurried morning had not been mingled with any thought of him. Her heart need not have leaped, her colour need not have rushed so painfully to her cheeks, for he was not there. There was the round table, with a cup and saucer, which had evidently been used, and there was Jane Wilson sitting on the other side, crying quietly, while she ate her breakfast with a sort of unconscious appetite. And there was Mrs. Davenport washing away at a night-cap or so, which, by their simple, old-world make, Mary knew at a glance were Alice's. But nothing--no one else. Alice was much the same, or rather better of the two, they told her; at any rate she could speak, though it was sad rambling talk. Would Mary like to see her? Of course she would. Many are interested by seeing their friends under the new aspect of illness; and among the poor there is no wholesome fear of injury or excitement to restrain this wish. So Mary went up-stairs, accompanied by Mrs. Davenport, wringing the suds off her hands, and speaking in a loud whisper far more audible than her usual voice. "I mun be hastening home, but I'll come again to-night, time enough to iron her cap; 'twould be a sin and a shame if we let her go dirty now she's ill, when she's been so rare and clean all her life-long. But she's sadly forsaken, poor thing! She'll not know you, Mary; she knows none on us." The room up-stairs held two beds, one superior in the grandeur of four posts and checked curtains to the other, which had been occupied by the twins in their brief life-time. The smaller had been Alice's bed since she had lived there; but with the natural reverence to one "stricken of God and afflicted," she had been installed since her paralytic stroke the evening before in the larger and grander bed, while Jane Wilson had taken her short broken rest on the little pallet. Margaret came forwards to meet her friend, whom she half expected, and whose step she knew. Mrs. Davenport returned to her washing. The two girls did not speak; the presence of Alice awed them into silence. There she lay with the rosy colour, absent from her face since the days of childhood, flushed once more into it by her sickness nigh unto death. She lay on the affected side, and with her other arm she was constantly sawing the air, not exactly in a restless manner, but in a monotonous, incessant way, very trying to a watcher. She was talking away, too, almost as constantly, in a low, indistinct tone. But her face, her profiled countenance, looked calm and smiling, even interested by the ideas that were passing through her clouded mind. "Listen!" said Margaret, as she stooped her head down to catch the muttered words more distinctly. "What will mother say? The bees are turning homeward for th' last time, and we've a terrible long bit to go yet. See! here's a linnet's nest in this gorse-bush. Th' hen-bird is on it. Look at her bright eyes, she won't stir! Ay! we mun hurry home. Won't mother be pleased with the bonny lot of heather we've got! Make haste, Sally, may be we shall have cockles for supper. I saw th' cockle-man's donkey turn up our way fra' Arnside." Margaret touched Mary's hand, and the pressure in return told her that they understood each other; that they knew how in this illness to the old, world-weary woman, God had sent her a veiled blessing: she was once more in the scenes of her childhood, unchanged and bright as in those long departed days; once more with the sister of her youth, the playmate of fifty years ago, who had for nearly as many years slept in a grassy grave in the little church-yard beyond Burton. Alice's face changed; she looked sorrowful, almost penitent. "Oh, Sally! I wish we'd told her. She thinks we were in church all morning, and we've gone on deceiving her. If we'd told her at first how it was--how sweet th' hawthorn smelt through the open church-door, and how we were on th' last bench in the aisle, and how it were the first butterfly we'd seen this spring, and how it flew into th' very church itself; oh! mother is so gentle, I wish we'd told her. I'll go to her next time she comes in sight, and say, 'Mother, we were naughty last Sabbath.'" She stopped, and a few tears came stealing down the old withered cheek, at the thought of the temptation and deceit of her childhood. Surely, many sins could not have darkened that innocent child-like spirit since. Mary found a red-spotted pocket-handkerchief, and put it into the hand which sought about for something to wipe away the trickling tears. She took it with a gentle murmur. "Thank you, mother." Mary pulled Margaret away from the bed. "Don't you think she's happy, Margaret?" "Ay! that I do, bless her. She feels no pain, and knows nought of her present state. Oh! that I could see, Mary! I try and be patient with her afore me, but I'd give aught I have to see her, and see what she wants. I am so useless! I mean to stay here as long as Jane Wilson is alone; and I would fain be here all to-night, but--" "I'll come," said Mary, decidedly. "Mrs. Davenport said she'd come again, but she's hard-worked all day--" "I'll come," repeated Mary. "Do!" said Margaret, "and I'll be here till you come. May be, Jem and you could take th' night between you, and Jane Wilson might get a bit of sound sleep in his bed; for she were up and down the better part of last night, and just when she were in a sound sleep this morning, between two and three, Jem came home, and th' sound o' his voice roused her in a minute." "Where had he been till that time o' night?" asked Mary. "Nay! it were none of my business; and, indeed, I never saw him till he came in here to see Alice. He were in again this morning, and seemed sadly downcast. But you'll, may be, manage to comfort him to-night, Mary," said Margaret, smiling, while a ray of hope glimmered in Mary's heart, and she almost felt glad, for an instant, of the occasion which would at last bring them together. Oh! happy night! when would it come? Many hours had yet to pass. Then she saw Alice, and repented, with a bitter self-reproach. But she could not help having gladness in the depths of her heart, blame herself as she would. So she tried not to think, as she hurried along to Miss Simmonds', with a dancing step of lightness. She was late--that she knew she should be. Miss Simmonds was vexed and cross. That also she had anticipated, but she had intended to smooth her raven down by extraordinary diligence and attention. But there was something about the girls she did not understand--had not anticipated. They stopped talking when she came in; or rather, I should say, stopped listening, for Sally Leadbitter was the talker to whom they were hearkening with intense attention. At first they eyed Mary, as if she had acquired some new interest to them, since the day before. Then they began to whisper; and, absorbed as Mary had been in her own thoughts, she could not help becoming aware that it was of her they spoke. At last Sally Leadbitter asked Mary if she had heard the news? "No! What news?" answered she. The girls looked at each other with gloomy mystery. Sally went on. "Have you not heard that young Mr. Carson was murdered last night?" Mary's lips could not utter a negative, but no one who looked at her pale and terror-stricken face could have doubted that she had not heard before of the fearful occurrence. Oh, it is terrible, that sudden information, that one you have known has met with a bloody death! You seem to shrink from the world where such deeds can be committed, and to grow sick with the idea of the violent and wicked men of earth. Much as Mary had learned to dread him lately, now he was dead (and dead in such a manner) her feeling was that of oppressive sorrow for him. The room went round and round, and she felt as though she should faint; but Miss Simmonds came in, bringing a waft of fresher air as she opened the door, to refresh the body, and the certainty of a scolding for inattention to brace the sinking mind. She, too, was full of the morning's news. "Have you heard any more of this horrid affair, Miss Barton?" asked she, as she settled to her work. Mary tried to speak; at first she could not, and when she succeeded in uttering a sentence, it seemed as though it were not her own voice that spoke. "No, ma'am, I never heard of it till this minute." "Dear! that's strange, for every one is up about it. I hope the murderer will be found out, that I do. Such a handsome young man to be killed as he was. I hope the wretch that did it may be hanged as high as Haman." One of the girls reminded them that the assizes came on next week. "Ay," replied Miss Simmonds, "and the milk-man told me they will catch the wretch, and have him tried and hung in less than a week. Serve him right, whoever he is. Such a handsome young man as he was." Then each began to communicate to Miss Simmonds the various reports they had heard. Suddenly she burst out-- "Miss Barton! as I live, dropping tears on that new silk gown of Mrs. Hawkes'! Don't you know they will stain, and make it shabby for ever? Crying like a baby, because a handsome young man meets with an untimely end. For shame of yourself, miss. Mind your character and your work if you please. Or, if you must cry" (seeing her scolding rather increased the flow of Mary's tears, than otherwise), "take this print to cry over. That won't be marked like this beautiful silk," rubbing it, as if she loved it, with a clean pocket-handkerchief, in order to soften the edges of the hard round drops. Mary took the print, and naturally enough, having had leave given her to cry over it, rather checked the inclination to weep. Every body was full of the one subject. The girl sent out to match silk, came back with the account gathered at the shop, of the coroner's inquest then sitting; the ladies who called to speak about gowns first began about the murder, and mingled details of that, with directions for their dresses. Mary felt as though the haunting horror were a nightmare, a fearful dream, from which awakening would relieve her. The picture of the murdered body, far more ghastly than the reality, seemed to swim in the air before her eyes. Sally Leadbitter looked and spoke of her, almost accusingly, and made no secret now of Mary's conduct, more blameable to her fellow-workwomen for its latter changeableness, than for its former giddy flirting. "Poor young gentleman," said one, as Sally recounted Mary's last interview with Mr. Carson. "What a shame!" exclaimed another, looking indignantly at Mary. "That's what I call regular jilting," said a third. "And he lying cold and bloody in his coffin now!" Mary was more thankful than she could express, when Miss Simmonds returned, to put a stop to Sally's communications, and to check the remarks of the girls. She longed for the peace of Alice's sick room. No more thinking with infinite delight of her anticipated meeting with Jem, she felt too much shocked for that now; but longing for peace and kindness, for the images of rest and beauty, and sinless times long ago, which the poor old woman's rambling presented, she wished to be as near death as Alice; and to have struggled through this world, whose sufferings she had early learnt, and whose crimes now seemed pressing close upon her. Old texts from the Bible that her mother used to read (or rather spell out) aloud, in the days of childhood, came up to her memory. "Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." "The tears shall be wiped away from all eyes," &c. And it was to that world Alice was hastening! Oh! that she were Alice! I must return to the Wilsons' house, which was far from being the abode of peace that Mary was picturing it to herself. You remember the reward Mr. Carson offered for the apprehension of the murderer of his son? It was in itself a temptation, and to aid its efficacy came the natural sympathy for the aged parents mourning for their child, for the young man cut off in the flower of his days; and besides this, there is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty. This feeling, I am sure, gives much impetus to the police. Their senses are ever and always on the qui-vive, and they enjoy the collecting and collating evidence, and the life of adventure they experience: a continual unwinding of Jack Sheppard romances, always interesting to the vulgar and uneducated mind, to which the outward signs and tokens of crime are ever exciting. There was no lack of clue or evidence at the coroner's inquest that morning. The shot, the finding of the body, the subsequent discovery of the gun, were rapidly deposed to; and then the policeman who had interrupted the quarrel between Jem Wilson and the murdered young man was brought forward, and gave his evidence, clear, simple, and straightforward. The coroner had no hesitation, the jury had none, but the verdict was cautiously worded. "Wilful murder against some person unknown." This very cautiousness, when he deemed the thing so sure as to require no caution, irritated Mr. Carson. It did not soothe him that the superintendent called the verdict a mere form,--exhibited a warrant empowering him to seize the body of Jem Wilson, committed on suspicion,--declared his intention of employing a well-known officer in the Detective Service to ascertain the ownership of the gun, and to collect other evidence, especially as regarded the young woman, about whom the policeman deposed that the quarrel had taken place: Mr. Carson was still excited and irritable; restless in body and mind. He made every preparation for the accusation of Jem the following morning before the magistrates: he engaged attorneys skilled in criminal practice to watch the case and prepare briefs; he wrote to celebrated barristers coming the Northern Circuit, to bespeak their services. A speedy conviction, a speedy execution, seemed to be the only things that would satisfy his craving thirst for blood. He would have fain been policeman, magistrate, accusing speaker, all; but most of all, the judge, rising with full sentence of death on his lips. That afternoon, as Jane Wilson had begun to feel the effect of a night's disturbed rest, evinced in frequent droppings off to sleep while she sat by her sister-in-law's bed-side, lulled by the incessant crooning of the invalid's feeble voice, she was startled by a man speaking in the house-place below, who, wearied of knocking at the door, without obtaining any answer, had entered and was calling lustily for "Missis! missis!" When Mrs. Wilson caught a glimpse of the intruder through the stair-rails, she at once saw he was a stranger, a working-man, it might be a fellow-labourer with her son, for his dress was grimy enough for the supposition. He held a gun in his hand. "May I make bold to ask if this gun belongs to your son?" She first looked at the man, and then, weary and half asleep, not seeing any reason for refusing to answer the inquiry, she moved forward to examine it, talking while she looked for certain old-fashioned ornaments on the stock. "It looks like his; ay, it's his, sure enough. I could speak to it anywhere by these marks. You see it were his grandfather's, as were gamekeeper to some one up in th' north; and they don't make guns so smart now-a-days. But, how comed you by it? He sets great store on it. Is he bound for th' shooting gallery? He is not, for sure, now his aunt is so ill, and me left all alone;" and the immediate cause for her anxiety being thus recalled to her mind, she entered on a long story of Alice's illness, interspersed with recollections of her husband's and her children's deaths. The disguised policeman listened for a minute or two, to glean any further information he could; and then, saying he was in a hurry, he turned to go away. She followed him to the door, still telling him her troubles, and was never struck, until it was too late to ask the reason, with the unaccountableness of his conduct, in carrying the gun away with him. Then, as she heavily climbed the stairs, she put away the wonder and the thought about his conduct, by determining to believe he was some workman with whom her son had made some arrangement about shooting at the gallery; or mending the old weapon; or something or other. She had enough to fret her, without moidering herself about old guns. Jem had given it him to bring to her; so it was safe enough; or, if it was not, why she should be glad never to set eyes on it again, for she could not abide fire-arms, they were so apt to shoot people. So, comforting herself for her want of thought in not making further inquiry, she fell off into another doze, feverish, dream-haunted, and unrefreshing. Meanwhile, the policeman walked off with his prize, with an odd mixture of feelings; a little contempt, a little disappointment, and a good deal of pity. The contempt and the disappointment were caused by the widow's easy admission of the gun being her son's property, and her manner of identifying it by the ornaments. He liked an attempt to baffle him; he was accustomed to it; it gave some exercise to his wits and his shrewdness. There would be no fun in fox-hunting, if Reynard yielded himself up without any effort to escape. Then, again, his mother's milk was yet in him, policeman, officer of the Detective Service though he was; and he felt sorry for the old woman, whose "softness" had given such material assistance in identifying her son as the murderer. However, he conveyed the gun, and the intelligence he had gained, to the superintendent; and the result was, that, in a short time afterwards, three policemen went to the works at which Jem was foreman, and announced their errand to the astonished overseer, who directed them to the part of the foundry where Jem was then superintending a casting. Dark, black were the walls, the ground, the faces around them, as they crossed the yard. But, in the furnace-house a deep and lurid red glared over all; the furnace roared with mighty flame. The men, like demons, in their fire-and-soot colouring, stood swart around, awaiting the moment when the tons of solid iron should have melted down into fiery liquid, fit to be poured, with still, heavy sound, into the delicate moulding of fine black sand, prepared to receive it. The heat was intense, and the red glare grew every instant more fierce; the policemen stood awed with the novel sight. Then, black figures, holding strange-shaped bucket shovels, came athwart the deep-red furnace light, and clear and brilliant flowed forth the iron into the appropriate mould. The buzz of voices rose again; there was time to speak, and gasp, and wipe the brows; and then, one by one, the men dispersed to some other branch of their employment. No. B. 72 pointed out Jem as the man he had seen engaged in a scuffle with Mr. Carson, and then the other two stepped forward and arrested him, stating of what he was accused, and the grounds of the accusation. He offered no resistance, though he seemed surprised; but calling a fellow-workman to him, he briefly requested him to tell his mother he had got into trouble, and could not return home at present. He did not wish her to hear more at first. So Mrs. Wilson's sleep was next interrupted in almost an exactly similar way to the last, like a recurring nightmare. "Missis! missis!" some one called out from below. Again it was a workman, but this time a blacker-looking one than before. "What don ye want?" said she, peevishly. "Only nothing but--" stammered the man, a kind-hearted matter-of-fact person, with no invention, but a great deal of sympathy. "Well! speak out, can't ye, and ha' done with it?" "Jem's in trouble," said he, repeating Jem's very words, as he could think of no others. "Trouble!" said the mother, in a high-pitched voice of distress. "Trouble! God help me, trouble will never end, I think. What d'ye mean by trouble? Speak out, man, can't ye? Is he ill? My boy! tell me, is he ill?" in a hurried voice of terror. "Na, na, that's not it. He's well enough. All he bade me say was, 'Tell mother I'm in trouble, and can't come home to-night.'" "Not come home to-night! And what am I to do with Alice? I can't go on, wearing my life out wi' watching. He might come and help me." "I tell you he can't," said the man. "Can't; and he is well, you say? Stuff! It's just that he's getten like other young men, and wants to go a-larking. But I'll give it him when he comes back." The man turned to go; he durst not trust himself to speak in Jem's justification. But she would not let him off. She stood between him and the door, as she said, "Yo shall not go, till yo've told me what he's after. I can see plain enough you know, and I'll know too, before I've done." "You'll know soon enough, missis!" "I'll know now, I tell ye. What's up that he can't come home and help me nurse? Me, as never got a wink o' sleep last night wi' watching." "Well, if you will have it out," said the poor badgered man, "the police have got hold on him." "On my Jem!" said the enraged mother. "You're a downright liar, and that's what you are. My Jem, as never did harm to any one in his life. You're a liar, that's what you are." "He's done harm enough now," said the man, angry in his turn, "for there's good evidence he murdered young Carson, as was shot last night." She staggered forward to strike the man for telling the terrible truth; but the weakness of old age, of motherly agony, overcame her, and she sank down on a chair, and covered her face. He could not leave her. When next she spoke, it was in an imploring, feeble, child-like voice. "Oh, master, say you're only joking. I ax your pardon if I have vexed ye, but please say you're only joking. You don't know what Jem is to me." She looked humbly, anxiously up at him. "I wish I were only joking, missis; but it's true as I say. They've taken him up on charge o' murder. It were his gun as were found near th' place; and one o' the police heard him quarrelling with Mr. Carson a few days back, about a girl." "About a girl!" broke in the mother, once more indignant, though too feeble to show it as before. "My Jem was as steady as--" she hesitated for a comparison wherewith to finish, and then repeated, "as steady as Lucifer, and he were an angel, you know. My Jem was not one to quarrel about a girl." "Ay, but it was that, though. They'd got her name quite pat. The man had heard all they said. Mary Barton was her name, whoever she may be." "Mary Barton! the dirty hussey! to bring my Jem into trouble of this kind. I'll give it her well when I see her: that I will. Oh! my poor Jem!" rocking herself to and fro. "And what about the gun? What did ye say about that?" "His gun were found on th' spot where the murder were done." "That's a lie for one, then. A man has got the gun now, safe and sound; I saw it not an hour ago." The man shook his head. "Yes, he has indeed. A friend o' Jem's, as he'd lent it to." "Did you know the chap?" asked the man, who was really anxious for Jem's exculpation, and caught a gleam of hope from her last speech. "No! I can't say as I did. But he were put on as a workman." "It's may be only one of them policemen, disguised." "Nay; they'd never go for to do that, and trick me into telling on my own son. It would be like seething a kid in its mother's milk; and that th' Bible forbids." "I don't know," replied the man. Soon afterwards he went away, feeling unable to comfort, yet distressed at the sight of sorrow; she would fain have detained him, but go he would. And she was alone. She never for an instant believed Jem guilty; she would have doubted if the sun were fire, first: but sorrow, desolation, and, at times, anger took possession of her mind. She told the unconscious Alice, hoping to rouse her to sympathy; and then was disappointed, because, still smiling and calm, she murmured of her mother, and the happy days of infancy. CHAPTER XX. MARY'S DREAM--AND THE AWAKENING. "I saw where stark and cold he lay, Beneath the gallows-tree, And every one did point and say, ''Twas there he died for thee!' * * * * * * "Oh! weeping heart! Oh, bleeding heart! What boots thy pity now? Bid from his eyes that shade depart, That death-damp from his brow!" "THE BIRTLE TRAGEDY." So there was no more peace in the house of sickness, except to Alice, the dying Alice. But Mary knew nothing of the afternoon's occurrences; and gladly did she breathe in the fresh air, as she left Miss Simmonds' house, to hasten to the Wilsons'. The very change, from the in-door to the out-door atmosphere, seemed to alter the current of her thoughts. She thought less of the dreadful subject which had so haunted her all day; she cared less for the upbraiding speeches of her fellow work-women; the old association of comfort and sympathy received from Alice gave her the idea that, even now, her bodily presence would soothe and compose those who were in trouble, changed, unconscious, and absent though her spirit might be. Then, again, she reproached herself a little for the feeling of pleasure she experienced, in thinking that he whom she dreaded could never more beset her path; in the security with which she could pass each street corner--each shop, where he used to lie in ambush. Oh! beating heart! was there no other little thought of joy lurking within, to gladden the very air without? Was she not going to meet, to see, to hear Jem; and could they fail at last to understand each other's loving hearts! She softly lifted the latch, with the privilege of friendship. _He_ was not there, but his mother was standing by the fire, stirring some little mess or other. Never mind! he would come soon: and with an unmixed desire to do her grateful duty to all belonging to him, she stepped lightly forwards, unheard by the old lady, who was partly occupied by the simmering, bubbling sound of her bit of cookery; but more with her own sad thoughts, and wailing, half-uttered murmurings. Mary took off bonnet and shawl with speed, and advancing, made Mrs. Wilson conscious of her presence, by saying, "Let me do that for you. I'm sure you mun be tired." Mrs. Wilson slowly turned round, and her eyes gleamed like those of a pent-up wild beast, as she recognised her visitor. "And is it thee that dares set foot in this house, after what has come to pass? Is it not enough to have robbed me of my boy with thy arts and thy profligacy, but thou must come here to crow over me--me--his mother? Dost thou know where he is, thou bad hussy, with thy great blue eyes and yellow hair, to lead men on to ruin? Out upon thee, with thy angel's face, thou whited sepulchre! Dost thou know where Jem is, all through thee?" "No!" quivered out poor Mary, scarcely conscious that she spoke, so daunted, so terrified was she by the indignant mother's greeting. "He's lying in th' New Bailey," slowly and distinctly spoke the mother, watching the effect of her words, as if believing in their infinite power to pain. "There he lies, waiting to take his trial for murdering young Mr. Carson." There was no answer; but such a blanched face, such wild, distended eyes, such trembling limbs, instinctively seeking support! "Did you know Mr. Carson as now lies dead?" continued the merciless woman. "Folk say you did, and knew him but too well. And that for the sake of such as you, my precious child shot yon chap. But he did not. I know he did not. They may hang him, but his mother will speak to his innocence with her last dying breath." She stopped more from exhaustion than want of words. Mary spoke, but in so changed and choked a voice that the old woman almost started. It seemed as if some third person must be in the room, the voice was so hoarse and strange. "Please, say it again. I don't quite understand you. What has Jem done? Please to tell me." "I never said he had done it. I said, and I'll swear that he never did do it. I don't care who heard 'em quarrel, or if it is his gun as were found near the body. It's not my own Jem as would go for to kill any man, choose how a girl had jilted him. My own good Jem, as was a blessing sent upon the house where he was born." Tears came into the mother's burning eyes as her heart recurred to the days when she had rocked the cradle of her "first-born;" and then, rapidly passing over events, till the full consciousness of his present situation came upon her, and perhaps annoyed at having shown any softness of character in the presence of the Dalilah who had lured him to his danger, she spoke again, and in a sharper tone. "I told him, and told him to leave off thinking on thee; but he wouldn't be led by me. Thee! wench! thou were not good enough to wipe the dust off his feet. A vile, flirting quean as thou art. It's well thy mother does not know (poor body) what a good-for-nothing thou art." "Mother! oh mother!" said Mary, as if appealing to the merciful dead. "But I was not good enough for him! I know I was not," added she, in a voice of touching humility. For through her heart went tolling the ominous, prophetic words he had used when he had last spoken to her-- "Mary! you'll may be hear of me as a drunkard, and may be as a thief, and may be as a murderer. Remember! when all are speaking ill of me, yo will have no right to blame me, for it's your cruelty that will have made me what I feel I shall become." And she did not blame him, though she doubted not his guilt; she felt how madly she might act if once jealous of him, and how much cause had she not given him for jealousy, miserable guilty wretch that she was! Speak on, desolate mother! Abuse her as you will. Her broken spirit feels to have merited all. But her last humble, self-abased words had touched Mrs. Wilson's heart, sore as it was; and she looked at the snow-pale girl with those piteous eyes, so hopeless of comfort, and she relented in spite of herself. "Thou seest what comes of light conduct, Mary! It's thy doing that suspicion has lighted on him, who is as innocent as the babe unborn. Thou'lt have much to answer for if he's hung. Thou'lt have my death too at thy door!" Harsh as these words seem, she spoke them in a milder tone of voice than she had yet used. But the idea of Jem on the gallows, Jem dead, took possession of Mary, and she covered her eyes with her wan hands, as if indeed to shut out the fearful sight. She murmured some words, which, though spoken low, as if choked up from the depths of agony, Jane Wilson caught. "My heart is breaking," said she, feebly. "My heart is breaking." "Nonsense!" said Mrs. Wilson. "Don't talk in that silly way. My heart has a better right to break than yours, and yet I hold up, you see. But, oh dear! oh dear!" with a sudden revulsion of feeling, as the reality of the danger in which her son was placed pressed upon her. "What am I saying? How could I hold up if thou wert gone, Jem? Though I'm as sure as I stand here of thy innocence, if they hang thee, my lad, I will lie down and die!" She sobbed aloud with bitter consciousness of the fearful chance awaiting her child. She cried more passionately still. Mary roused herself up. "Oh, let me stay with you, at any rate, till we know the end. Dearest Mrs. Wilson, mayn't I stay?" The more obstinately and upbraidingly Mrs. Wilson refused, the more Mary pleaded, with ever the same soft, entreating cry, "Let me stay with you." Her stunned soul seemed to bound its wishes, for the hour at least, to remaining with one who loved and sorrowed for the same human being that she did. But no. Mrs. Wilson was inflexible. "I've may be been a bit hard on you, Mary, I'll own that. But I cannot abide you yet with me. I cannot but remember it's your giddiness as has wrought this woe. I'll stay wi' Alice, and perhaps Mrs. Davenport may come help a bit. I cannot put up with you about me. Good-night. To-morrow I may look on you different, may be. Good-night." And Mary turned out of the house, which had been _his_ home, where _he_ was loved, and mourned for, into the busy, desolate, crowded street, where they were crying halfpenny broadsides, giving an account of the bloody murder, the coroner's inquest, and a raw-head-and-bloody-bones picture of the suspected murderer, James Wilson. But Mary heard not, she heeded not. She staggered on like one in a dream. With hung head and tottering steps, she instinctively chose the shortest cut to that home, which was to her, in her present state of mind, only the hiding place of four walls, where she might vent her agony, unseen and unnoticed by the keen, unkind world without, but where no welcome, no love, no sympathising tears awaited her. As she neared that home, within two minutes' walk of it, her impetuous course was arrested by a light touch on her arm, and turning hastily, she saw a little Italian boy with his humble show-box,--a white mouse, or some such thing. The setting sun cast its red glow on his face, otherwise the olive complexion would have been very pale; and the glittering tear-drops hung on the long curled eye-lashes. With his soft voice and pleading looks, he uttered, in his pretty broken English, the words "Hungry! so hungry." And, as if to aid by gesture the effect of the solitary word, he pointed to his mouth, with its white quivering lips. Mary answered him impatiently, "Oh, lad, hunger is nothing--nothing!" And she rapidly passed on. But her heart upbraided her the next minute with her unrelenting speech, and she hastily entered her door and seized the scanty remnant of food which the cupboard contained, and retraced her steps to the place where the little hopeless stranger had sunk down by his mute companion in loneliness and starvation, and was raining down tears as he spoke in some foreign tongue, with low cries for the far distant "Mamma mia!" With the elasticity of heart belonging to childhood he sprang up as he saw the food the girl brought; she whose face, lovely in its woe, had tempted him first to address her; and, with the graceful courtesy of his country, he looked up and smiled while he kissed her hand, and then poured forth his thanks, and shared her bounty with his little pet companion. She stood an instant, diverted from the thought of her own grief by the sight of his infantine gladness; and then bending down and kissing his smooth forehead, she left him, and sought to be alone with her agony once more. She re-entered the house, locked the door, and tore off her bonnet, as if greedy of every moment which took her from the full indulgence of painful, despairing thought. Then she threw herself on the ground, yes, on the hard flags she threw her soft limbs down; and the comb fell out of her hair, and those bright tresses swept the dusty floor, while she pillowed and hid her face on her arms, and burst forth into hard, suffocating sobs. Oh, earth! thou didst seem but a dreary dwelling-place for thy poor child that night. None to comfort, none to pity! And self-reproach gnawing at her heart. Oh, why did she ever listen to the tempter? Why did she ever give ear to her own suggestions, and cravings after wealth and grandeur? Why had she thought it a fine thing to have a rich lover? She--she had deserved it all; but he was the victim,--he, the beloved. She could not conjecture, she could not even pause to think who had revealed, or how he had discovered her acquaintance with Harry Carson. It was but too clear, some way or another, he had learnt all; and what would he think of her? No hope of his love,--oh, that she would give up, and be content; it was his life, his precious life, that was threatened. Then she tried to recall the particulars, which, when Mrs. Wilson had given them, had fallen but upon a deafened ear,--something about a gun, a quarrel, which she could not remember clearly. Oh, how terrible to think of his crime, his blood-guiltiness; he who had hitherto been so good, so noble, and now an assassin! And then she shrank from him in thought; and then, with bitter remorse, clung more closely to his image with passionate self-upbraiding. Was it not she who had led him to the pit into which he had fallen? Was she to blame him? She to judge him? Who could tell how maddened he might have been by jealousy; how one moment's uncontrollable passion might have led him to become a murderer? And she had blamed him in her heart after his last deprecating, imploring, prophetic speech! Then she burst out crying afresh; and when weary of crying, fell to thinking again. The gallows! The gallows! Black it stood against the burning light which dazzled her shut eyes, press on them as she would. Oh! she was going mad; and for awhile she lay outwardly still, but with the pulses careering through her head with wild vehemence. And then came a strange forgetfulness of the present, in thought of the long-past times;--of those days when she hid her face on her mother's pitying, loving bosom, and heard tender words of comfort, be her grief or her error what it might;--of those days when she had felt as if her mother's love was too mighty not to last for ever;--of those days when hunger had been to her (as to the little stranger she had that evening relieved) something to be thought about, and mourned over;--when Jem and she had played together; he, with the condescension of an older child, and she, with unconscious earnestness, believing that he was as much gratified with important trifles as she was;--when her father was a cheery-hearted man, rich in the love of his wife, and the companionship of his friend;--when (for it still worked round to that), when mother was alive, and _he_ was not a murderer. And then Heaven blessed her unaware, and she sank from remembering, to wandering, unconnected thought, and thence to sleep. Yes! it was sleep, though in that strange posture, on that hard cold bed; and she dreamt of the happy times of long ago, and her mother came to her, and kissed her as she lay, and once more the dead were alive again in that happy world of dreams. All was restored to the gladness of childhood, even to the little kitten which had been her playmate and bosom friend then, and which had been long forgotten in her waking hours. All the loved ones were there! She suddenly wakened! Clear and wide awake! Some noise had startled her from sleep. She sat up, and put her hair (still wet with tears) back from her flushed cheeks, and listened. At first she could only hear her beating heart. All was still without, for it was after midnight, such hours of agony had passed away; but the moon shone clearly in at the unshuttered window, making the room almost as light as day, in its cold ghastly radiance. There was a low knock at the door! A strange feeling crept over Mary's heart, as if something spiritual were near; as if the dead, so lately present in her dreams, were yet gliding and hovering round her, with their dim, dread forms. And yet, why dread? Had they not loved her?--and who loved her now? Was she not lonely enough to welcome the spirits of the dead, who had loved her while here? If her mother had conscious being, her love for her child endured. So she quieted her fears, and listened--listened still. "Mary! Mary! open the door!" as a little movement on her part seemed to tell the being outside of her wakeful, watchful state. They were the accents of her mother's voice; the very south-country pronunciation, that Mary so well remembered; and which she had sometimes tried to imitate when alone, with the fond mimicry of affection. So, without fear, without hesitation, she rose and unbarred the door. There, against the moonlight, stood a form, so closely resembling her dead mother, that Mary never doubted the identity, but exclaiming (as if she were a terrified child, secure of safety when near the protecting care of its parent)-- "Oh! mother! mother! You are come at last!" She threw herself, or rather fell, into the trembling arms of her long-lost, unrecognised aunt Esther. CHAPTER XXI. ESTHER'S MOTIVE IN SEEKING MARY. "My rest is gone, My heart is sore, Peace find I never, And never more." MARGARET'S SONG IN "FAUST." I must go back a little to explain the motives which caused Esther to seek an interview with her niece. The murder had been committed early on Thursday night, and between then and the dawn of the following day there was ample time for the news to spread far and wide among all those whose duty, or whose want, or whose errors, caused them to be abroad in the streets of Manchester. Among those who listened to the tale of violence was Esther. A craving desire to know more took possession of her mind. Far away as she was from Turner Street, she immediately set off to the scene of the murder, which was faintly lighted by the gray dawn as she reached the spot. It was so quiet and still that she could hardly believe it to be the place. The only vestige of any scuffle or violence was a trail on the dust, as if somebody had been lying there, and then been raised by extraneous force. The little birds were beginning to hop and twitter in the leafless hedge, making the only sound that was near and distinct. She crossed into the field where she guessed the murderer to have stood; it was easy of access, for the worn, stunted hawthorn-hedge had many gaps in it. The night-smell of bruised grass came up from under her feet, as she went towards the saw-pit and carpenter's shed, which, as I have said before, were in a corner of the field near the road, and where one of her informants had told her it was supposed by the police that the murderer had lurked while waiting for his victim. There was no sign, however, that any one had been about the place. If the grass had been bruised or bent where he had trod, it had had enough of the elasticity of life to raise itself under the dewy influences of night. She hushed her breath with involuntary awe, but nothing else told of the violent deed by which a fellow-creature had passed away. She stood still for a minute, imagining to herself the position of the parties, guided by the only circumstance which afforded any evidence, the trailing mark on the dust in the road. Suddenly (it was before the sun had risen above the horizon) she became aware of something white in the hedge. All other colours wore the same murky hue, though the forms of objects were perfectly distinct. What was it? It could not be a flower;--that, the time of year made clear. A frozen lump of snow, lingering late in one of the gnarled tufts of the hedge? She stepped forward to examine. It proved to be a little piece of stiff writing-paper compressed into a round shape. She understood it instantly; it was the paper that had served as wadding for the murderer's gun. Then she had been standing just where the murderer must have been but a few hours before; probably (as the rumour had spread through the town, reaching her ears) one of the poor maddened turn-outs, who hung about everywhere, with black, fierce looks, as if contemplating some deed of violence. Her sympathy was all with them, for she had known what they suffered; and besides this there was her own individual dislike of Mr. Carson, and dread of him for Mary's sake. Yet, poor Mary! Death was a terrible, though sure, remedy for the evil Esther had dreaded for her; and how would she stand the shock, loving as her aunt believed her to do? Poor Mary! who would comfort her? Esther's thoughts began to picture her sorrow, her despair, when the news of her lover's death should reach her; and she longed to tell her there might have been a keener grief yet had he lived. Bright, beautiful came the slanting rays of the morning sun. It was time for such as she to hide themselves, with the other obscene things of night, from the glorious light of day, which was only for the happy. So she turned her steps towards town, still holding the paper. But in getting over the hedge it encumbered her to hold it in her clasped hand, and she threw it down. She passed on a few steps, her thoughts still of Mary, till the idea crossed her mind, could it (blank as it appeared to be) give any clue to the murderer? As I said before, her sympathies were all on that side, so she turned back and picked it up; and then feeling as if in some measure an accessory, she hid it unexamined in her hand, and hastily passed out of the street at the opposite end to that by which she had entered it. And what do you think she felt, when, having walked some distance from the spot, she dared to open the crushed paper, and saw written on it Mary Barton's name, and not only that, but the street in which she lived! True, a letter or two was torn off, but, nevertheless, there was the name clear to be recognised. And oh! what terrible thought flashed into her mind; or was it only fancy? But it looked very like the writing which she had once known well--the writing of Jem Wilson, who, when she lived at her brother-in-law's, and he was a near neighbour, had often been employed by her to write her letters to people, to whom she was ashamed of sending her own misspelt scrawl. She remembered the wonderful flourishes she had so much admired in those days, while she sat by dictating, and Jem, in all the pride of newly-acquired penmanship, used to dazzle her eyes by extraordinary graces and twirls. If it were his! Oh! perhaps it was merely that her head was running so on Mary, that she was associating every trifle with her. As if only one person wrote in that flourishing, meandering style! It was enough to fill her mind to think from what she might have saved Mary by securing the paper. She would look at it just once more, and see if some very dense and stupid policeman could have mistaken the name, or if Mary would certainly have been dragged into notice in the affair. No! no one could have mistaken the "ry Barton," and it _was_ Jem's handwriting! Oh! if it was so, she understood it all, and she had been the cause! With her violent and unregulated nature, rendered morbid by the course of life she led, and her consciousness of her degradation, she cursed herself for the interference which she believed had led to this; for the information and the warning she had given to Jem, which had roused him to this murderous action. How could she, the abandoned and polluted outcast, ever have dared to hope for a blessing, even on her efforts to do good? The black curse of Heaven rested on all her doings, were they for good or for evil. Poor, diseased mind! and there were none to minister to thee! So she wandered about, too restless to take her usual heavy morning's sleep, up and down the streets, greedily listening to every word of the passers by, and loitering near each group of talkers, anxious to scrape together every morsel of information, or conjecture, or suspicion, though without possessing any definite purpose in all this. And ever and always she clenched the scrap of paper which might betray so much, until her nails had deeply indented the palm of her hand; so fearful was she in her nervous dread, lest unawares she should let it drop. Towards the middle of the day she could no longer evade the body's craving want of rest and refreshment; but the rest was taken in a spirit vault, and the refreshment was a glass of gin. Then she started up from the stupor she had taken for repose; and suddenly driven before the gusty impulses of her mind, she pushed her way to the place where at that very time the police were bringing the information they had gathered with regard to the all-engrossing murder. She listened with painful acuteness of comprehension to dropped words and unconnected sentences, the meaning of which became clearer, and yet more clear to her. Jem was suspected. Jem was ascertained to be the murderer. She saw him (although he, absorbed in deep sad thought, saw her not), she saw him brought hand-cuffed and guarded out of the coach. She saw him enter the station,--she gasped for breath till he came out, still hand-cuffed, and still guarded, to be conveyed to the New Bailey. He was the only one who had spoken to her with hope, that she might yet win her way back to virtue. His words had lingered in her heart with a sort of call to Heaven, like distant Sabbath bells, although in her despair she had turned away from his voice. He was the only one who had spoken to her kindly. The murder, shocking though it was, was an absent, abstract thing, on which her thoughts could not, and would not dwell; all that was present in her mind was Jem's danger, and his kindness. Then Mary came to remembrance. Esther wondered till she was sick of wondering, in what way she was taking the affair. In some manner it would be a terrible blow for the poor, motherless girl; with her dreadful father, too, who was to Esther a sort of accusing angel. She set off towards the court where Mary lived, to pick up what she could there of information. But she was ashamed to enter in where once she had been innocent, and hung about the neighbouring streets, not daring to question, so she learnt but little; nothing in fact but the knowledge of John Barton's absence from home. She went up a dark entry to rest her weary limbs on a door-step and think. Her elbows on her knees, her face hidden in her hands, she tried to gather together and arrange her thoughts. But still every now and then she opened her hand to see if the paper were yet there. She got up at last. She had formed a plan, and had a course of action to look forward to that would satisfy one craving desire at least. The time was long gone by when there was much wisdom or consistency in her projects. It was getting late, and that was so much the better. She went to a pawn-shop, and took off her finery in a back room. She was known by the people, and had a character for honesty, so she had no very great difficulty in inducing them to let her have a suit of outer clothes, befitting the wife of a working-man, a black silk bonnet, a printed gown, a plaid shawl, dirty and rather worn to be sure, but which had a sort of sanctity to the eyes of the street-walker as being the appropriate garb of that happy class to which she could never, never more belong. She looked at herself in the little glass which hung against the wall, and sadly shaking her head, thought how easy were the duties of that Eden of innocence from which she was shut out; how she would work, and toil, and starve, and die, if necessary, for a husband, a home,--for children,--but that thought she could not bear; a little form rose up, stern in its innocence, from the witches' cauldron of her imagination, and she rushed into action again. You know now how she came to stand by the threshold of Mary's door, waiting, trembling, until the latch was lifted, and her niece, with words that spoke of such desolation among the living, fell into her arms. She had felt as if some holy spell would prevent her (even as the unholy Lady Geraldine was prevented, in the abode of Christabel) from crossing the threshold of that home of her early innocence; and she had meant to wait for an invitation. But Mary's helpless action did away with all reluctant feeling, and she bore or dragged her to a seat, and looked on her bewildered eyes, as, puzzled with the likeness, which was not identity, she gazed on her aunt's features. In pursuance of her plan, Esther meant to assume the manners and character, as she had done the dress, of a mechanic's wife; but then, to account for her long absence, and her long silence towards all that ought to have been dear to her, it was necessary that she should put on an indifference far distant from her heart, which was loving and yearning, in spite of all its faults. And, perhaps, she overacted her part, for certainly Mary felt a kind of repugnance to the changed and altered aunt, who so suddenly re-appeared on the scene; and it would have cut Esther to the very core, could she have known how her little darling of former days was feeling towards her. "You don't remember me I see, Mary!" she began. "It's a long while since I left you all, to be sure; and I, many a time, thought of coming to see you, and--and your father. But I live so far off, and am always so busy, I cannot do just what I wish. You recollect aunt Esther, don't you, Mary?" "Are you aunt Hetty?" asked Mary, faintly, still looking at the face which was so different from the old recollections of her aunt's fresh dazzling beauty. "Yes! I am aunt Hetty. Oh! it's so long since I heard that name," sighing forth the thoughts it suggested; then recovering herself, and striving after the hard character she wished to assume, she continued: "And to-day I heard a friend of yours, and of mine too, long ago, was in trouble, and I guessed you would be in sorrow, so I thought I would just step this far and see you." Mary's tears flowed afresh, but she had no desire to open her heart to her strangely-found aunt, who had, by her own confession, kept aloof from and neglected them for so many years. Yet she tried to feel grateful for kindness (however late) from any one, and wished to be civil. Moreover, she had a strong disinclination to speak on the terrible subject uppermost in her mind. So, after a pause she said, "Thank you. I dare say you mean very kind. Have you had a long walk? I'm so sorry," said she, rising, with a sudden thought, which was as suddenly checked by recollection, "but I've nothing to eat in the house, and I'm sure you must be hungry, after your walk." For Mary concluded that certainly her aunt's residence must be far away on the other side of the town, out of sight or hearing. But, after all, she did not think much about her; her heart was so aching-full of other things, that all besides seemed like a dream. She received feelings and impressions from her conversation with her aunt, but did not, could not, put them together, or think or argue about them. And Esther! How scanty had been her food for days and weeks, her thinly-covered bones and pale lips might tell, but her words should never reveal! So, with a little unreal laugh, she replied, "Oh! Mary, my dear! don't talk about eating. We've the best of every thing, and plenty of it, for my husband is in good work. I'd such a supper before I came out. I couldn't touch a morsel if you had it." Her words shot a strange pang through Mary's heart. She had always remembered her aunt's loving and unselfish disposition; how was it changed, if, living in plenty, she had never thought it worth while to ask after her relations, who were all but starving! She shut up her heart instinctively against her aunt. And all the time poor Esther was swallowing her sobs, and over-acting her part, and controlling herself more than she had done for many a long day, in order that her niece might not be shocked and revolted, by the knowledge of what her aunt had become:--a prostitute; an outcast. For she longed to open her wretched, wretched heart, so hopeless, so abandoned by all living things, to one who had loved her once; and yet she refrained, from dread of the averted eye, the altered voice, the internal loathing, which she feared such disclosure might create. She would go straight to the subject of the day. She could not tarry long, for she felt unable to support the character she had assumed for any length of time. They sat by the little round table, facing each other. The candle was placed right between them, and Esther moved it in order to have a clearer view of Mary's face, so that she might read her emotions, and ascertain her interests. Then she began: "It's a bad business, I'm afraid, this of Mr. Carson's murder." Mary winced a little. "I hear Jem Wilson is taken up for it." Mary covered her eyes with her hands, as if to shade them from the light, and Esther herself, less accustomed to self-command, was getting too much agitated for calm observation of another. "I was taking a walk near Turner Street, and I went to see the spot," continued Esther, "and, as luck would have it, I spied this bit of paper in the hedge," producing the precious piece still folded in her hand. "It has been used as wadding for the gun, I reckon; indeed, that's clear enough, from the shape it's crammed into. I was sorry for the murderer, whoever he might be (I didn't then know of Jem's being suspected), and I thought I would never leave a thing about as might help, if ever so little, to convict him; the police are so 'cute about straws. So I carried it a little way, and then I opened it and saw your name, Mary." Mary took her hands away from her eyes, and looked with surprise at her aunt's face, as she uttered these words. She _was_ kind after all, for was she not saving her from being summoned, and from being questioned and examined; a thing to be dreaded above all others: as she felt sure that her unwilling answers, frame them how she might, would add to the suspicions against Jem; her aunt was indeed kind, to think of what would spare her this. Esther went on, without noticing Mary's look. The very action of speaking was so painful to her, and so much interrupted by the hard, raking little cough, which had been her constant annoyance for months, that she was too much engrossed by the physical difficulty of utterance, to be a very close observer. "There could be no mistake if they had found it. Look at your name, together with the very name of this court! And in Jem's hand-writing too, or I'm much mistaken. Look, Mary!" And now she did watch her. Mary took the paper and flattened it; then suddenly stood stiff up, with irrepressible movement, as if petrified by some horror abruptly disclosed; her face, strung and rigid; her lips compressed tight, to keep down some rising exclamation. She dropped on her seat, as suddenly as if the braced muscles had in an instant given way. But she spoke no word. "It is his hand-writing--isn't it?" asked Esther, though Mary's manner was almost confirmation enough. "You will not tell. You never will tell," demanded Mary, in a tone so sternly earnest, as almost to be threatening. "Nay, Mary," said Esther, rather reproachfully, "I am not so bad as that. Oh! Mary, you cannot think I would do that, whatever I may be." The tears sprang to her eyes at the idea that she was suspected of being one who would help to inform against an old friend. Mary caught her sad and upbraiding look. "No! I know you would not tell, aunt. I don't know what I say, I am so shocked. But say you will not tell. Do." "No, indeed I will not tell, come what may." Mary sat still, looking at the writing, and turning the paper round with careful examination, trying to hope, but her very fears belying her hopes. "I thought you cared for the young man that's murdered," observed Esther, half aloud; but feeling that she could not mistake this strange interest in the suspected murderer, implied by Mary's eagerness to screen him from any thing which might strengthen suspicion against him. She had come, desirous to know the extent of Mary's grief for Mr. Carson, and glad of the excuse afforded her by the important scrap of paper. Her remark about its being Jem's hand-writing, she had, with this view of ascertaining Mary's state of feeling, felt to be most imprudent the instant after she uttered it; but Mary's anxiety that she should not tell was too great, and too decided, to leave a doubt as to her interest for Jem. She grew more and more bewildered, and her dizzy head refused to reason. Mary never spoke. She held the bit of paper firmly, determined to retain possession of it, come what might; and anxious, and impatient, for her aunt to go. As she sat, her face bore a likeness to Esther's dead child. "You are so like my little girl, Mary!" said Esther, weary of the one subject on which she could get no satisfaction, and recurring, with full heart, to the thought of the dead. Mary looked up. Her aunt had children, then. That was all the idea she received. No faint imagination of the love and the woe of that poor creature crossed her mind, or she would have taken her, all guilty and erring, to her bosom, and tried to bind up the broken heart. No! it was not to be. Her aunt had children, then; and she was on the point of putting some question about them, but before it could be spoken another thought turned it aside, and she went back to her task of unravelling the mystery of the paper, and the hand-writing. Oh! how she wished her aunt would go. As if, according to the believers in mesmerism, the intenseness of her wish gave her power over another, although the wish was unexpressed, Esther felt herself unwelcome, and that her absence was desired. She felt this some time before she could summon up resolution to go. She was so much disappointed in this longed-for, dreaded interview with Mary; she had wished to impose upon her with her tale of married respectability, and yet she had yearned and craved for sympathy in her real lot. And she had imposed upon her well. She should perhaps be glad of it afterwards; but her desolation of hope seemed for the time redoubled. And she must leave the old dwelling-place, whose very walls, and flags, dingy and sordid as they were, had a charm for her. Must leave the abode of poverty, for the more terrible abodes of vice. She must--she would go. "Well, good-night, Mary. That bit of paper is safe enough with you, I see. But you made me promise I would not tell about it, and you must promise me to destroy it before you sleep." "I promise," said Mary, hoarsely, but firmly. "Then you are going?" "Yes. Not if you wish me to stay. Not if I could be of any comfort to you, Mary;" catching at some glimmering hope. "Oh, no," said Mary, anxious to be alone. "Your husband will be wondering where you are. Some day you must tell me all about yourself. I forget what your name is?" "Fergusson," said Esther, sadly. "Mrs. Fergusson," repeated Mary, half unconsciously. "And where did you say you lived?" "I never did say," muttered Esther; then aloud, "In Angel's Meadow, 145, Nicholas Street." "145, Nicholas Street, Angel Meadow. I shall remember." As Esther drew her shawl around her, and prepared to depart, a thought crossed Mary's mind that she had been cold and hard in her manner towards one, who had certainly meant to act kindly in bringing her the paper (that dread, terrible piece of paper) and thus saving her from--she could not rightly think how much, or how little she was spared. So, desirous of making up for her previous indifferent manner, she advanced to kiss her aunt before her departure. But, to her surprise, her aunt pushed her off with a frantic kind of gesture, and saying the words, "Not me. You must never kiss me. You!" She rushed into the outer darkness of the street, and there wept long and bitterly. CHAPTER XXII. MARY'S EFFORTS TO PROVE AN ALIBI. "There was a listening fear in her regard, As if calamity had but begun; As if the vanward clouds of evil days Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear Was, with its stored thunder, labouring up." KEATS' "HYPERION." No sooner was Mary alone than she fastened the door, and put the shutters up against the window, which had all this time remained shaded only by the curtains hastily drawn together on Esther's entrance, and the lighting of the candle. She did all this with the same compressed lips, and the same stony look that her face had assumed on the first examination of the paper. Then she sat down for an instant to think; and rising directly, went, with a step rendered firm by inward resolution of purpose, up the stairs;--passed her own door, two steps, into her father's room. What did she want there? I must tell you; I must put into words the dreadful secret which she believed that bit of paper had revealed to her. Her father was the murderer! That corner of stiff, shining, thick writing-paper, she recognised as part of the sheet on which she had copied Samuel Bamford's beautiful lines so many months ago--copied (as you perhaps remember) on the blank part of a valentine sent to her by Jem Wilson, in those days when she did not treasure and hoard up every thing he had touched, as she would do now. That copy had been given to her father, for whom it was made, and she had occasionally seen him reading it over, not a fortnight ago she was sure. But she resolved to ascertain if the other part still remained in his possession. He might, it was just possible he _might_, have given it away to some friend; and if so, that person was the guilty one, for she could swear to the paper anywhere. First of all she pulled out every article from the little old chest of drawers. Amongst them were some things which had belonged to her mother, but she had no time now to examine and try and remember them. All the reverence she could pay them was to carry them and lay them on the bed carefully, while the other things were tossed impatiently out upon the floor. The copy of Bamford's lines was not there. Oh! perhaps he might have given it away; but then must it not have been to Jem? It was his gun. And she set to with redoubled vigour to examine the deal-box which served as chair, and which had once contained her father's Sunday clothes, in the days when he could afford to have Sunday clothes. He had redeemed his better coat from the pawn-shop before he left, that she had noticed. Here was his old one. What rustled under her hand in the pocket? The paper! "Oh! Father!" Yes, it fitted; jagged end to jagged end, letter to letter; and even the part which Esther had considered blank had its tallying mark with the larger piece, its tails of _y_s and _g_s. And then, as if that were not damning evidence enough, she felt again, and found some bullets or shot (I don't know which you would call them) in that same pocket, along with a small paper parcel of gunpowder. As she was going to replace the jacket, having abstracted the paper, and bullets, &c., she saw a woollen gun-case made of that sort of striped horse-cloth you must have seen a thousand times appropriated to such a purpose. The sight of it made her examine still further, but there was nothing else that could afford any evidence, so she locked the box, and sat down on the floor to contemplate the articles; now with a sickening despair, now with a kind of wondering curiosity, how her father had managed to evade observation. After all it was easy enough. He had evidently got possession of some gun (was it really Jem's; was he an accomplice? No! she did not believe it; he never, never would deliberately plan a murder with another, however he might be wrought up to it by passionate feeling at the time. Least of all would he accuse her to her father, without previously warning her; it was out of his nature). Then having obtained possession of the gun, her father had loaded it at home, and might have carried it away with him some time when the neighbours were not noticing, and she was out, or asleep; and then he might have hidden it somewhere to be in readiness when he should want it. She was sure he had no such thing with him when he went away the last time. She felt it was of no use to conjecture his motives. His actions had become so wild and irregular of late, that she could not reason upon them. Besides, was it not enough to know that he was guilty of this terrible offence? Her love for her father seemed to return with painful force, mixed up as it was with horror at his crime. That dear father, who was once so kind, so warm-hearted, so ready to help either man or beast in distress, to murder! But, in the desert of misery with which these thoughts surrounded her, the arid depths of whose gloom she dared not venture to contemplate, a little spring of comfort was gushing up at her feet, unnoticed at first, but soon to give her strength and hope. And _that_ was the necessity for exertion on her part which this discovery enforced. Oh! I do think that the necessity for exertion, for some kind of action (bodily or mental) in time of distress, is a most infinite blessing, although the first efforts at such seasons are painful. Something to be done implies that there is yet hope of some good thing to be accomplished, or some additional evil that may be avoided; and by degrees the hope absorbs much of the sorrow. It is the woes that cannot in any earthly way be escaped that admit least earthly comforting. Of all trite, worn-out, hollow mockeries of comfort that were ever uttered by people who will not take the trouble of sympathising with others, the one I dislike the most is the exhortation not to grieve over an event, "for it cannot be helped." Do you think if I could help it, I would sit still with folded hands, content to mourn? Do you not believe that as long as hope remained I would be up and doing? I mourn because what has occurred cannot be helped. The reason you give me for not grieving, is the very and sole reason of my grief. Give me nobler and higher reasons for enduring meekly what my Father sees fit to send, and I will try earnestly and faithfully to be patient; but mock me not, or any other mourner, with the speech, "Do not grieve, for it cannot be helped. It is past remedy." But some remedy to Mary's sorrow came with thinking. If her father was guilty, Jem was innocent. If innocent, there was a possibility of saving him. He must be saved. And she must do it; for was not she the sole depository of the terrible secret? Her father was not suspected; and never should be, if by any foresight or any exertions of her own she could prevent it. She did not yet know how Jem was to be saved, while her father was also to be considered innocent. It would require much thought and much prudence. But with the call upon her exertions, and her various qualities of judgment and discretion, came the answering consciousness of innate power to meet the emergency. Every step now, nay, the employment of every minute, was of consequence; for you must remember she had learnt at Miss Simmonds' the probability that the murderer would be brought to trial the next week. And you must remember, too, that never was so young a girl so friendless, or so penniless, as Mary was at this time. But the lion accompanied Una through the wilderness and the danger; and so will a high, resolved purpose of right-doing ever guard and accompany the helpless. It struck two; deep, mirk, night. It was of no use bewildering herself with plans this weary, endless night. Nothing could be done before morning: and, at first in her impatience, she began to long for day; but then she felt in how unfit a state her body was for any plan of exertion, and she resolutely made up her mind to husband her physical strength. First of all she must burn the tell-tale paper. The powder, bullets, and gun-case, she tied into a bundle, and hid in the sacking of the bed for the present, although there was no likelihood of their affording evidence against any one. Then she carried the paper down stairs, and burnt it on the hearth, powdering the very ashes with her fingers, and dispersing the fragments of fluttering black films among the cinders of the grate. Then she breathed again. Her head ached with dizzying violence; she must get quit of the pain or it would incapacitate her for thinking and planning. She looked for food, but there was nothing but a little raw oatmeal in the house: still, although it almost choked her, she ate some of this, knowing from experience, how often headaches were caused by long fasting. Then she sought for some water to bathe her throbbing temples, and quench her feverish thirst. There was none in the house, so she took the jug and went out to the pump at the other end of the court, whose echoes resounded her light footsteps in the quiet stillness of the night. The hard, square outlines of the houses cut sharply against the cold bright sky, from which myriads of stars were shining down in eternal repose. There was little sympathy in the outward scene, with the internal trouble. All was so still, so motionless, so hard! Very different to this lovely night in the country in which I am now writing, where the distant horizon is soft and undulating in the moonlight, and the nearer trees sway gently to and fro in the night-wind with something of almost human motion; and the rustling air makes music among their branches, as if speaking soothingly to the weary ones who lie awake in heaviness of heart. The sights and sounds of such a night lull pain and grief to rest. But Mary re-entered her home after she had filled her pitcher, with a still stronger sense of anxiety, and a still clearer conviction of how much rested upon her unassisted and friendless self, alone with her terrible knowledge, in the hard, cold, populous world. She bathed her forehead, and quenched her thirst, and then, with wise deliberation of purpose, went upstairs, and undressed herself, as if for a long night's slumber, although so few hours intervened before day-dawn. She believed she never could sleep, but she lay down, and shut her eyes; and before many minutes she was in as deep and sound a slumber as if there was no sin nor sorrow in the world. She awakened, as it was natural, much refreshed in body; but with a consciousness of some great impending calamity. She sat up in bed to recollect, and when she did remember, she sank down again with all the helplessness of despair. But it was only the weakness of an instant; for were not the very minutes precious, for deliberation if not for action? Before she had finished the necessary morning business of dressing, and setting her house in some kind of order, she had disentangled her ravelled ideas, and arranged some kind of a plan for action. If Jem was innocent (and now, of his guilt, even his slightest participation in, or knowledge of, the murder, she acquitted him with all her heart and soul), he must have been somewhere else when the crime was committed; probably with some others, who might bear witness to the fact, if she only knew where to find them. Every thing rested on her. She had heard of an alibi, and believed it might mean the deliverance she wished to accomplish; but she was not quite sure, and determined to apply to Job, as one of the few among her acquaintance gifted with the knowledge of hard words, for to her, all terms of law, or natural history, were alike many-syllabled mysteries. No time was to be lost. She went straight to Job Legh's house, and found the old man and his grand-daughter sitting at breakfast; as she opened the door she heard their voices speaking in a grave, hushed, subdued tone, as if something grieved their hearts. They stopped talking on her entrance, and then she knew they had been conversing about the murder; about Jem's probable guilt; and (it flashed upon her for the first time) on the new light they would have obtained regarding herself: for until now they had never heard of her giddy flirting with Mr. Carson; not in all her confidential talk with Margaret had she ever spoken of him. And now Margaret would hear her conduct talked of by all, as that of a bold, bad girl; and even if she did not believe every thing that was said, she could hardly help feeling wounded, and disappointed in Mary. So it was in a timid voice that Mary wished her usual good-morrow, and her heart sank within her a little, when Job, with a form of civility, bade her welcome in that dwelling, where, until now, she had been too well assured to require to be asked to sit down. She took a chair. Margaret continued silent. "I'm come to speak to you about this--about Jem Wilson." "It's a bad business, I'm afeared," replied Job, sadly. "Ay, it's bad enough anyhow. But Jem's innocent. Indeed he is; I'm as sure as sure can be." "How can you know, wench? Facts bear strong again him, poor fellow, though he'd a deal to put him up, and aggravate him, they say. Ay, poor lad, he's done for himself, I'm afeared." "Job!" said Mary, rising from her chair in her eagerness, "you must not say he did it. He didn't; I'm sure and certain he didn't. Oh! why do you shake your head? Who is to believe me,--who is to think him innocent, if you, who know'd him so well, stick to it he's guilty?" "I'm loth enough to do it, lass," replied Job; "but I think he's been ill used, and--jilted (that's plain truth, Mary, hard as it may seem), and his blood has been up--many a man has done the like afore, from like causes." "Oh, God! Then you won't help me, Job, to prove him innocent? Oh! Job, Job; believe me, Jem never did harm to no one." "Not afore;--and mind, wench! I don't over-blame him for this." Job relapsed into silence. Mary thought a moment. "Well, Job, you'll not refuse me this, I know. I won't mind what you think, if you'll help me as if he was innocent. Now suppose I know--I knew he was innocent,--it's only supposing, Job,--what must I do to prove it? Tell me, Job! Isn't it called an _alibi_, the getting folk to swear to where he really was at the time?" "Best way, if you know'd him innocent, would be to find out the real murderer. Some one did it, that's clear enough. If it wasn't Jem, who was it?" "How can I tell?" answered Mary, in an agony of terror, lest Job's question was prompted by any suspicion of the truth. But he was far enough from any such thought. Indeed, he had no doubt in his own mind that Jem had, in some passionate moment, urged on by slighted love and jealousy, been the murderer. And he was strongly inclined to believe, that Mary was aware of this, only that, too late repentant of her light conduct which had led to such fatal consequences, she was now most anxious to save her old play-fellow, her early friend, from the doom awaiting the shedder of blood. "If Jem's not done it, I don't see as any on us can tell who did. We might find out something if we'd time; but they say he's to be tried on Tuesday. It's no use hiding it, Mary; things looks strong against him." "I know they do! I know they do! But, oh! Job! isn't an _alibi_ a proving where he really was at th' time of the murder; and how must I set about an _alibi_?" "An _alibi_ is that, sure enough." He thought a little. "You mun ask his mother his doings, and his whereabouts that night; the knowledge of that will guide you a bit." For he was anxious that on another should fall the task of enlightening Mary on the hopelessness of the case, and he felt that her own sense would be more convinced by inquiry and examination than any mere assertion of his. Margaret had sat silent and grave all this time. To tell the truth, she was surprised and disappointed by the disclosure of Mary's conduct, with regard to Mr. Henry Carson. Gentle, reserved, and prudent herself, never exposed to the trial of being admired for her personal appearance, and unsusceptible enough to be in doubt even yet, whether the fluttering, tender, infinitely-joyous feeling she was for the first time experiencing, at sight, or sound, or thought of Will Wilson, was love or not,--Margaret had no sympathy with the temptations to which loveliness, vanity, ambition, or the desire of being admired, exposes so many; no sympathy with flirting girls, in short. Then, she had no idea of the strength of the conflict between will and principle in some who were differently constituted from herself. With her, to be convinced that an action was wrong, was tantamount to a determination not to do so again; and she had little or no difficulty in carrying out her determination. So she could not understand how it was that Mary had acted wrongly, and had felt too much ashamed, in spite of all internal sophistry, to speak of her actions. Margaret considered herself deceived; felt aggrieved; and, at the time of which I am now telling you, was strongly inclined to give Mary up altogether, as a girl devoid of the modest proprieties of her sex, and capable of gross duplicity, in speaking of one lover as she had done of Jem, while she was encouraging another in attentions, at best of a very doubtful character. But now Margaret was drawn into the conversation. Suddenly it flashed across Mary's mind, that the night of the murder was the very night, or rather the same early morning, that Margaret had been with Alice. She turned sharp round, with-- "Oh! Margaret, you can tell me; you were there when he came back that night; were you not? No! you were not; but you were there not many hours after. Did not you hear where he'd been? He was away the night before, too, when Alice was first taken; when you were there for your tea. Oh! where was he, Margaret?" "I don't know," she answered. "Stay! I do remember something about his keeping Will company, in his walk to Liverpool. I can't justly say what it was, so much happened that night." "I'll go to his mother's," said Mary, resolutely. They neither of them spoke, either to advise or dissuade. Mary felt she had no sympathy from them, and braced up her soul to act without such loving aid of friendship. She knew that their advice would be willingly given at her demand, and that was all she really required for Jem's sake. Still her courage failed a little as she walked to Jane Wilson's, alone in the world with her secret. Jane Wilson's eyes were swelled with crying; and it was sad to see the ravages which intense anxiety and sorrow had made on her appearance in four-and-twenty hours. All night long she and Mrs. Davenport had crooned over their sorrows, always recurring, like the burden of an old song, to the dreadest sorrow of all, which was now impending over Mrs. Wilson. She had grown--I hardly know what word to use--but, something like proud of her martyrdom; she had grown to hug her grief; to feel an excitement in her agony of anxiety about her boy. "So, Mary, you're here! Oh! Mary, lass! He's to be tried on Tuesday." She fell to sobbing, in the convulsive breath-catching manner which tells so of much previous weeping. "Oh! Mrs. Wilson, don't take on so! We'll get him off, you'll see. Don't fret; they can't prove him guilty!" "But I tell thee they will," interrupted Mrs. Wilson, half-irritated at the light way, as she considered it, in which Mary spoke; and a little displeased that another could hope when she had almost brought herself to find pleasure in despair. "It may suit thee well," continued she, "to make light o' the misery thou hast caused; but I shall lay his death at thy door, as long as I live, and die I know he will; and all for what he never did--no, he never did; my own blessed boy!" She was too weak to be angry long; her wrath sank away to feeble sobbing and worn-out moans. Mary was most anxious to soothe her from any violence of either grief or anger; she did so want her to be clear in her recollection; and, besides, her tenderness was great towards Jem's mother. So she spoke in a low gentle tone the loving sentences, which sound so broken and powerless in repetition, and which yet have so much power when accompanied with caressing looks and actions, fresh from the heart; and the old woman insensibly gave herself up to the influence of those sweet, loving blue eyes, those tears of sympathy, those words of love and hope, and was lulled into a less morbid state of mind. "And now, dear Mrs. Wilson, can you remember where he said he was going on Thursday night? He was out when Alice was taken ill; and he did not come home till early in the morning, or, to speak true, in the night: did he?" "Ay! he went out near upon five; he went out with Will; he said he were going to set [45] him a part of the way, for Will were hot upon walking to Liverpool, and wouldn't hearken to Jem's offer of lending him five shilling for his fare. So the two lads set off together. I mind it all now; but, thou seest, Alice's illness, and this business of poor Jem's, drove it out of my head; they went off together, to walk to Liverpool; that's to say, Jem were to go a part o' th' way. But, who knows" (falling back into the old desponding tone) "if he really went? He might be led off on the road. Oh! Mary, wench! they'll hang him for what he's never done." [Footnote 45: "To set," to accompany.] "No, they won't--they shan't! I see my way a bit now. We mun get Will to help; there'll be time. He can swear that Jem were with him. Where is Jem?" "Folk said he were taken to Kirkdale, i' th' prison-van, this morning; without my seeing him, poor chap! Oh! wench! but they've hurried on the business at a cruel rate." "Ay! they've not let grass grow under their feet, in hunting out the man that did it," said Mary, sorrowfully and bitterly. "But keep up your heart. They got on the wrong scent when they took to suspecting Jem. Don't be afeard. You'll see it will end right for Jem." "I should mind it less if I could do aught," said Jane Wilson; "but I'm such a poor weak old body, and my head's so gone, and I'm so dazed-like, what with Alice and all, that I think and think, and can do nought to help my child. I might ha' gone and seen him last night, they tell me now, and then I missed it. Oh! Mary, I missed it; and I may never see the lad again." She looked so piteously in Mary's face with her miserable eyes, that Mary felt her heart giving way, and, dreading the weakening of her powers, which the burst of crying she longed for would occasion, hastily changed the subject to Alice; and Jane, in her heart, feeling that there was no sorrow like a mother's sorrow, replied, "She keeps on much the same, thank you. She's happy, for she knows nought of what's going on; but th' doctor says she grows weaker and weaker. Thou'lt may be like to see her?" Mary went up-stairs: partly because it is the etiquette in humble life to offer to friends a last opportunity of seeing the dying or the dead, while the same etiquette forbids a refusal of the invitation; and partly because she longed to breathe, for an instant, the atmosphere of holy calm, which seemed ever to surround the pious good old woman. Alice lay, as before, without pain, or at least any outward expression of it; but totally unconscious of all present circumstances, and absorbed in recollections of the days of her girlhood, which were vivid enough to take the place of realities to her. Still she talked of green fields, and still she spoke to the long-dead mother and sister, low-lying in their graves this many a year, as if they were with her and about her, in the pleasant places where her youth had passed. But the voice was fainter, the motions were more languid; she was evidently passing away; but _how_ happily! Mary stood for a time in silence, watching and listening. Then she bent down and reverently kissed Alice's cheek; and drawing Jane Wilson away from the bed, as if the spirit of her who lay there were yet cognisant of present realities, she whispered a few words of hope to the poor mother, and kissing her over and over again in a warm, loving manner, she bade her good-bye, went a few steps, and then once more came back to bid her keep up her heart. And when she had fairly left the house, Jane Wilson felt as if a sun-beam had ceased shining into the room. Yet oh! how sorely Mary's heart ached; for more and more the fell certainty came on her that her father was the murderer! She struggled hard not to dwell on this conviction; to think alone on the means of proving Jem's innocence; that was her first duty, and that should be done. CHAPTER XXIII. THE SUB-POENA. "And must it then depend on this poor eye And this unsteady hand, whether the bark, That bears my all of treasured hope and love, Shall find a passage through these frowning rocks To some fair port where peace and safety smile,-- Or whether it shall blindly dash against them, And miserably sink? Heaven be my help; And clear my eye, and nerve my trembling hand!" "THE CONSTANT WOMAN." Her heart beating, her head full of ideas, which required time and solitude to be reduced into order, Mary hurried home. She was like one who finds a jewel of which he cannot all at once ascertain the value, but who hides his treasure until some quiet hour when he may ponder over the capabilities its possession unfolds. She was like one who discovers the silken clue which guides to some bower of bliss, and secure of the power within his grasp, has to wait for a time before he may tread the labyrinth. But no jewel, no bower of bliss was ever so precious to miser or lover as was the belief which now pervaded Mary's mind, that Jem's innocence might be proved, without involving any suspicion of that other--that dear one, so dear, although so criminal--on whose part in this cruel business she dared not dwell even in thought. For if she did, there arose the awful question,--if all went against Jem the innocent, if judge and jury gave the verdict forth which had the looming gallows in the rear, what ought she to do, possessed of her terrible knowledge? Surely not to inculpate her father--and yet--and yet--she almost prayed for the blessed unconsciousness of death or madness, rather than that awful question should have to be answered by her. But now a way seemed opening, opening yet more clear. She was thankful she had thought of the _alibi_, and yet more thankful to have so easily obtained the clue to Jem's whereabouts that miserable night. The bright light that her new hope threw over all seemed also to make her thankful for the early time appointed for the trial. It would be easy to catch Will Wilson on his return from the Isle of Man, which he had planned should be on the Monday; and on the Tuesday all would be made clear--all that she dared to wish to be made clear. She had still to collect her thoughts and freshen her memory enough to arrange how to meet with Will--for to the chances of a letter she would not trust; to find out his lodgings when in Liverpool; to try and remember the name of the ship in which he was to sail: and the more she considered these points the more difficulty she found there would be in ascertaining these minor but important facts. For you are aware that Alice, whose memory was clear and strong on all points in which her heart was interested, was lying in a manner senseless: that Jane Wilson was (to use her own word, so expressive to a Lancashire ear) "dazed," that is to say, bewildered, lost in the confusion of terrifying and distressing thoughts; incapable of concentrating her mind; and at the best of times Will's proceedings were a matter of little importance to her (or so she pretended), she was so jealous of aught which distracted attention from her pearl of price, her only son Jem. So Mary felt hopeless of obtaining any intelligence of the sailor's arrangements from her. Then, should she apply to Jem himself? No! she knew him too well. She felt how thoroughly he must ere now have had it in his power to exculpate himself at another's expense. And his tacit refusal so to do had assured her of what she had never doubted, that the murderer was safe from any impeachment of his. But then neither would he consent, she feared, to any steps which might tend to prove himself innocent. At any rate, she could not consult him. He was removed to Kirkdale, and time pressed. Already it was Saturday at noon. And even if she could have gone to him, I believe she would not. She longed to do all herself; to be his liberator, his deliverer; to win him life, though she might never regain his lost love, by her own exertions. And oh! how could she see him to discuss a subject in which both knew who was the blood-stained man; and yet whose name might not be breathed by either, so dearly with all his faults, his sins, was he loved by both. All at once, when she had ceased to try and remember, the name of Will's ship flashed across her mind. The _John Cropper_. He had named it, she had been sure, all along. He had named it in his conversation with her that last, that fatal Thursday evening. She repeated it over and over again, through a nervous dread of again forgetting it. The _John Cropper_. And then, as if she were rousing herself out of some strange stupor, she bethought her of Margaret. Who so likely as Margaret to treasure every little particular respecting Will, now Alice was dead to all the stirring purposes of life? She had gone thus far in her process of thought, when a neighbour stepped in; she with whom they had usually deposited the house-key, when both Mary and her father were absent from home, and who consequently took upon herself to answer all inquiries, and receive all messages which any friends might make, or leave, on finding the house shut up. "Here's somewhat for you, Mary! A policeman left it." A bit of parchment. Many people have a dread of those mysterious pieces of parchment. I am one. Mary was another. Her heart misgave her as she took it, and looked at the unusual appearance of the writing, which, though legible enough, conveyed no idea to her, or rather her mind shut itself up against receiving any idea, which after all was rather a proof she had some suspicion of the meaning that awaited her. "What is it?" asked she, in a voice from which all the pith and marrow of strength seemed extracted. "Nay! how should I know? Policeman said he'd call again towards evening, and see if you'd getten it. He were loth to leave it, though I telled him who I was, and all about my keeping th' key, and taking messages." "What is it about?" asked Mary again, in the same hoarse, feeble voice, and turning it over in her fingers, as if she dreaded to inform herself of its meaning. "Well! yo can read word of writing and I cannot, so it's queer I should have to tell you. But my master says it's a summons for yo to bear witness again Jem Wilson, at th' trial at Liverpool Assize." "God pity me!" said Mary, faintly, as white as a sheet. "Nay, wench, never take on so. What yo can say will go little way either to help or to hinder, for folk say he's certain to be hung; and sure enough it was t'other one as was your sweetheart." But Mary was beyond any pang this speech would have given at another time. Her thoughts were all busy picturing to herself the terrible occasion of their next meeting--not as lovers meet should they meet! "Well!" said the neighbour, seeing no use in remaining with one who noticed her words or her presence so little; "thou'lt tell policeman thou'st getten his precious bit of paper. He seemed to think I should be keeping it for mysel; he's th' first as has ever misdoubted me about giving messages, or notes. Good day." She left the house, but Mary did not know it. She sat still with the parchment in her hand. All at once she started up. She would take it to Job Legh and ask him to tell her the true meaning, for it could not be _that_. So she went, and choked out her words of inquiry. "It's a sub-poena," he replied, turning the parchment over with the air of a connoisseur; for Job loved hard words, and lawyer-like forms, and even esteemed himself slightly qualified for a lawyer, from the smattering of knowledge he had picked up from an odd volume of Blackstone that he had once purchased at a book-stall. "A sub-poena--what is that?" gasped Mary, still in suspense. Job was struck with her voice, her changed, miserable voice, and peered at her countenance from over his spectacles. "A sub-poena is neither more nor less than this, my dear. It's a summonsing you to attend, and answer such questions as may be asked of you regarding the trial of James Wilson, for the murder of Henry Carson; that's the long and short of it, only more elegantly put, for the benefit of them who knows how to value the gift of language. I've been a witness before-time myself; there's nothing much to be afeared on; if they are impudent, why, just you be impudent, and give 'em tit for tat." "Nothing much to be afeared on!" echoed Mary, but in such a different tone. "Ay, poor wench, I see how it is. It'll go hard with thee a bit, I dare say; but keep up thy heart. Yo cannot have much to tell 'em, that can go either one way or th' other. Nay! may be thou may do him a bit o' good, for when they set eyes on thee, they'll see fast enough how he came to be so led away by jealousy; for thou'rt a pretty creature, Mary, and one look at thy face will let 'em into th' secret of a young man's madness, and make 'em more ready to pass it over." "Oh! Job, and won't you ever believe me when I tell you he's innocent? Indeed, and indeed I can prove it; he was with Will all that night; he was, indeed, Job!" "My wench! whose word hast thou for that?" said Job, pityingly. "Why! his mother told me, and I'll get Will to bear witness to it. But, oh! Job" (bursting into tears), "it is hard if you won't believe me. How shall I clear him to strangers, when those who know him, and ought to love him, are so set against his being innocent?" "God knows, I'm not against his being innocent," said Job, solemnly. "I'd give half my remaining days on earth,--I'd give them all, Mary (and but for the love I bear to my poor blind girl, they'd be no great gift), if I could save him. You've thought me hard, Mary, but I'm not hard at bottom, and I'll help you if I can; that I will, right or wrong," he added; but in a low voice, and coughed the uncertain words away the moment afterwards. "Oh, Job! if you will help me," exclaimed Mary, brightening up (though it was but a wintry gleam after all), "tell me what to say, when they question me; I shall be so gloppened, [46] I shan't know what to answer." [Footnote 46: "Gloppened," terrified.] "Thou canst do nought better than tell the truth. Truth's best at all times, they say; and for sure it is when folk have to do with lawyers; for they're 'cute and cunning enough to get it out sooner or later, and it makes folk look like Tom Noddies, when truth follows falsehood, against their will." "But I don't know the truth; I mean--I can't say rightly what I mean; but I'm sure, if I were pent up, and stared at by hundreds of folk, and asked ever so simple a question, I should be for answering it wrong; if they asked me if I had seen you on a Saturday, or a Tuesday, or any day, I should have clean forgotten all about it, and say the very thing I should not." "Well, well, don't go for to get such notions into your head; they're what they call 'narvous,' and talking on 'em does no good. Here's Margaret! bless the wench! Look, Mary, how well she guides hersel." Job fell to watching his grand-daughter, as with balancing, measured steps, timed almost as if to music, she made her way across the street. Mary shrank as if from a cold blast--shrank from Margaret! The blind girl, with her reserve, her silence, seemed to be a severe judge; she, listening, would be such a check to the trusting earnestness of confidence, which was beginning to unlock the sympathy of Job. Mary knew herself to blame; felt her errors in every fibre of her heart; but yet she would rather have had them spoken about, even in terms of severest censure, than have been treated in the icy manner in which Margaret had received her that morning. "Here's Mary," said Job, almost as if he wished to propitiate his grand-daughter, "come to take a bit of dinner with us, for I'll warrant she's never thought of cooking any for herself to-day; and she looks as wan and pale as a ghost." It was calling out the feeling of hospitality, so strong and warm in most of those who have little to offer, but whose heart goes eagerly and kindly with that little. Margaret came towards Mary with a welcoming gesture, and a kinder manner by far than she had used in the morning. "Nay, Mary, thou know'st thou'st getten nought at home," urged Job. And Mary, faint and weary, and with a heart too aching-full of other matters to be pertinacious in this, withdrew her refusal. They ate their dinner quietly; for to all it was an effort to speak, and after one or two attempts they had subsided into silence. When the meal was ended Job began again on the subject they all had at heart. "Yon poor lad at Kirkdale will want a lawyer to see they don't put on him, but do him justice. Hast thought of that?" Mary had not, and felt sure his mother had not. Margaret confirmed this last supposition. "I've but just been there, and poor Jane is like one dateless; so many griefs come on her at once. One time she seems to make sure he'll be hung; and if I took her in that way, she flew out (poor body!) and said, that in spite of what folk said, there were them as could, and would prove him guiltless. So I never knew where to have her. The only thing she was constant in, was declaring him innocent." "Mother-like!" said Job. "She meant Will, when she spoke of them that could prove him innocent. He was with Will on Thursday night, walking a part of the way with him to Liverpool; now the thing is to lay hold on Will and get him to prove this." So spoke Mary, calm, from the earnestness of her purpose. "Don't build too much on it, my dear," said Job. "I do build on it," replied Mary, "because I know it's the truth, and I mean to try and prove it, come what may. Nothing you can say will daunt me, Job, so don't you go and try. You may help, but you cannot hinder me doing what I'm resolved on." They respected her firmness of determination, and Job almost gave in to her belief, when he saw how steadfastly she was acting upon it. Oh! surest way of conversion to our faith, whatever it may be,--regarding either small things, or great,--when it is beheld as the actuating principle, from which we never swerve! When it is seen that, instead of over-much profession, it is worked into the life, and moves every action! Mary gained courage as she instinctively felt she had made way with one at least of her companions. "Now I'm clear about this much," she continued, "he was with Will when the--shot was fired (she could not bring herself to say, when the murder was committed, when she remembered _who_ it was that, she had every reason to believe, was the taker-away of life). Will can prove this. I must find Will. He wasn't to sail till Tuesday. There's time enough. He was to come back from his uncle's, in the Isle of Man, on Monday. I must meet him in Liverpool, on that day, and tell him what has happened, and how poor Jem is in trouble, and that he must prove an _alibi_, come Tuesday. All this I can and will do, though perhaps I don't clearly know how, just at present. But surely God will help me. When I know I'm doing right, I will have no fear, but put my trust in Him; for I'm acting for the innocent and good, and not for my own self, who have done so wrong. I have no fear when I think of Jem, who is so good." She stopped, oppressed with the fulness of her heart. Margaret began to love her again; to see in her the same sweet, faulty, impulsive, lovable creature she had known in the former Mary Barton, but with more of dignity, self-reliance, and purpose. Mary spoke again. "Now I know the name of Will's vessel--the _John Cropper_; and I know that she is bound to America. That is something to know. But I forget, if I ever heard, where he lodges in Liverpool. He spoke of his landlady, as a good, trustworthy woman; but if he named her name, it has slipped my memory. Can you help me, Margaret?" She appealed to her friend calmly and openly, as if perfectly aware of, and recognising the unspoken tie which bound her and Will together; she asked her in the same manner in which she would have asked a wife where her husband dwelt. And Margaret replied in the like calm tone, two spots of crimson on her cheeks alone bearing witness to any internal agitation. "He lodges at a Mrs. Jones's, Milk-House Yard, out of Nicholas Street. He has lodged there ever since he began to go to sea; she is a very decent kind of woman, I believe." "Well, Mary! I'll give you my prayers," said Job. "It's not often I pray regular, though I often speak a word to God, when I'm either very happy or very sorry; I've catched myself thanking Him at odd hours when I've found a rare insect, or had a fine day for an out; but I cannot help it, no more than I can talking to a friend. But this time I'll pray regular for Jem, and for you. And so will Margaret, I'll be bound. Still, wench! what think yo of a lawyer? I know one, Mr. Cheshire, who's rather given to th' insect line--and a good kind o' chap. He and I have swopped specimens many's the time, when either of us had a duplicate. He'll do me a kind turn, I'm sure. I'll just take my hat, and pay him a visit." No sooner said, than done. Margaret and Mary were left alone. And this seemed to bring back the feeling of awkwardness, not to say estrangement. But Mary, excited to an unusual pitch of courage, was the first to break silence. "Oh, Margaret!" said she, "I see--I feel how wrong you think I have acted; you cannot think me worse than I think myself, now my eyes are opened." Here her sobs came choking up her voice. "Nay," Margaret began, "I have no right to--" "Yes, Margaret, you have a right to judge; you cannot help it; only in your judgment remember mercy, as the Bible says. You, who have been always good, cannot tell how easy it is at first to go a little wrong, and then how hard it is to go back. Oh! I little thought when I was first pleased with Mr. Carson's speeches, how it would all end; perhaps in the death of him I love better than life." She burst into a passion of tears. The feelings pent up through the day would have vent. But checking herself with a strong effort, and looking up at Margaret as piteously as if those calm, stony eyes could see her imploring face, she added, "I must not cry; I must not give way; there will be time enough for that hereafter, if--I only wanted you to speak kindly to me, Margaret, for I am very, very wretched; more wretched than any one can ever know; more wretched, I sometimes fancy, than I have deserved,--but that's wrong, isn't it, Margaret? Oh! I have done wrong, and I am punished; you cannot tell how much." Who could resist her voice, her tones of misery, of humility? Who would refuse the kindness for which she begged so penitently? Not Margaret. The old friendly manner came back. With it, may be, more of tenderness. "Oh! Margaret, do you think he can be saved; do you think they can find him guilty if Will comes forward as a witness? Won't that be a good _alibi_?" Margaret did not answer for a moment. "Oh, speak! Margaret," said Mary, with anxious impatience. "I know nought about law, or _alibis_," replied Margaret, meekly; "but, Mary, as grandfather says, aren't you building too much on what Jane Wilson has told you about his going with Will? Poor soul, she's gone dateless, I think, with care, and watching, and over-much trouble; and who can wonder? Or Jem may have told her he was going, by way of a blind." "You don't know Jem," said Mary, starting from her seat in a hurried manner, "or you would not say so." "I hope I may be wrong; but think, Mary, how much there is against him. The shot was fired with his gun; he it was as threatened Mr. Carson not many days before; he was absent from home at that very time, as we know, and, as I'm much afeared, some one will be called on to prove; and there's no one else to share suspicion with him." Mary heaved a deep sigh. "But, Margaret, he did not do it," Mary again asserted. Margaret looked unconvinced. "I can do no good, I see, by saying so, for none on you believe me, and I won't say so again till I can prove it. Monday morning I'll go to Liverpool. I shall be at hand for the trial. Oh dear! dear! And I will find Will; and then, Margaret, I think you'll be sorry for being so stubborn about Jem." "Don't fly off, dear Mary; I'd give a deal to be wrong. And now I'm going to be plain spoken. You'll want money. Them lawyers is no better than a spunge for sucking up money; let alone your hunting out Will, and your keep in Liverpool, and what not. You must take some of the mint I've got laid by in the old tea-pot. You have no right to refuse, for I offer it to Jem, not to you; it's for his purposes you're to use it." "I know--I see. Thank you, Margaret; you're a kind one, at any rate. I take it for Jem; and I'll do my very best with it for him. Not all, though; don't think I'll take all. They'll pay me for my keep. I'll take this," accepting a sovereign from the hoard which Margaret produced out of its accustomed place in the cupboard. "Your grandfather will pay the lawyer. I'll have nought to do with him," shuddering as she remembered Job's words, about lawyers' skill in always discovering the truth, sooner or later; and knowing what was the secret she had to hide. "Bless you! don't make such ado about it," said Margaret, cutting short Mary's thanks. "I sometimes think there's two sides to the commandment; and that we may say, 'Let others do unto you, as you would do unto them,' for pride often prevents our giving others a great deal of pleasure, in not letting them be kind, when their hearts are longing to help; and when we ourselves should wish to do just the same, if we were in their place. Oh! how often I've been hurt, by being coldly told by persons not to trouble myself about their care, or sorrow, when I saw them in great grief, and wanted to be of comfort. Our Lord Jesus was not above letting folk minister to Him, for He knew how happy it makes one to do aught for another. It's the happiest work on earth." Mary had been too much engrossed by watching what was passing in the street to attend very closely to that which Margaret was saying. From her seat she could see out of the window pretty plainly, and she caught sight of a gentleman walking alongside of Job, evidently in earnest conversation with him, and looking keen and penetrating enough to be a lawyer. Job was laying down something to be attended to she could see, by his up-lifted fore-finger, and his whole gesture; then he pointed and nodded across the street to his own house, as if inducing his companion to come in. Mary dreaded lest he should, and she be subjected to a closer cross-examination than she had hitherto undergone, as to why she was so certain that Jem was innocent. She feared he was coming; he stepped a little towards the spot. No! it was only to make way for a child, tottering along, whom Mary had overlooked. Now Job took him by the button, so earnestly familiar had he grown. The gentleman looked "fidging fain" to be gone, but submitted in a manner that made Mary like him in spite of his profession. Then came a volley of last words, answered by briefest nods, and monosyllables; and then the stranger went off with redoubled quickness of pace, and Job crossed the street with a little satisfied air of importance on his kindly face. "Well! Mary," said he on entering, "I've seen the lawyer, not Mr. Cheshire though; trials for murder, it seems, are not his line o' business. But he gived me a note to another 'torney; a fine fellow enough, only too much of a talker; I could hardly get a word in, he cut me so short. However, I've just been going over the principal points again to him; may be you saw us? I wanted him just to come over and speak to you himsel, Mary, but he was pressed for time; and he said your evidence would not be much either here or there. He's going to the 'sizes first train on Monday morning, and will see Jem, and hear the ins and outs from him, and he's gived me his address, Mary, and you and Will are to call on him (Will 'special) on Monday at two o'clock. Thou'rt taking it in, Mary; thou'rt to call on him in Liverpool at two, Monday afternoon?" Job had reason to doubt if she fully understood him; for all this minuteness of detail, these satisfactory arrangements, as he considered them, only seemed to bring the circumstances in which she was placed more vividly home to Mary. They convinced her that it was real, and not all a dream, as she had sunk into fancying it for a few minutes, while sitting in the old accustomed place, her body enjoying the rest, and her frame sustained by food, and listening to Margaret's calm voice. The gentleman she had just beheld would see and question Jem in a few hours, and what would be the result? Monday: that was the day after to-morrow, and on Tuesday, life and death would be tremendous realities to her lover; or else death would be an awful certainty to her father. No wonder Job went over his main points again:-- "Monday; at two o'clock, mind; and here's his card. 'Mr. Bridgenorth, 41, Renshaw Street, Liverpool.' He'll be lodging there." Job ceased talking, and the silence roused Mary up to thank him. "You're very kind, Job; very. You and Margaret won't desert me, come what will." "Pooh! pooh! wench; don't lose heart, just as I'm beginning to get it. He seems to think a deal on Will's evidence. You're sure, girls, you're under no mistake about Will?" "I'm sure," said Mary, "he went straight from here, purposing to go see his uncle at the Isle of Man, and be back Sunday night, ready for the ship sailing on Tuesday." "So am I," said Margaret. "And the ship's name was the _John Cropper_, and he lodged where I told Mary before. Have you got it down, Mary?" Mary wrote it on the back of Mr. Bridgenorth's card. "He was not over-willing to go," said she, as she wrote, "for he knew little about his uncle, and said he didn't care if he never knowed more. But he said kinsfolk was kinsfolk, and promises was promises, so he'd go for a day or so, and then it would be over." Margaret had to go and practise some singing in town; so, though loth to depart and be alone, Mary bade her friends good-bye. CHAPTER XXIV. WITH THE DYING. "O sad and solemn is the trembling watch Of those who sit and count the heavy hours, Beside the fevered sleep of one they love! O awful is it in the hushed mid night, While gazing on the pallid, moveless form, To start and ask, 'Is it now sleep--or death?'" ANONYMOUS. Mary could not be patient in her loneliness; so much painful thought weighed on her mind; the very house was haunted with memories and foreshadowings. Having performed all duties to Jem, as far as her weak powers, yet loving heart could act; and a black veil being drawn over her father's past, present, and future life, beyond which she could not penetrate to judge of any filial service she ought to render; her mind unconsciously sought after some course of action in which she might engage. Any thing, any thing, rather than leisure for reflection. And then came up the old feeling which first bound Ruth to Naomi; the love they both held towards one object; and Mary felt that her cares would be most lightened by being of use, or of comfort to his mother. So she once more locked up the house, and set off towards Ancoats; rushing along with down-cast head, for fear lest any one should recognise her and arrest her progress. Jane Wilson sat quietly in her chair as Mary entered; so quietly, as to strike one by the contrast it presented to her usual bustling and nervous manner. She looked very pale and wan; but the quietness was the thing that struck Mary most. She did not rise as Mary came in, but sat still and said something in so gentle, so feeble a voice, that Mary did not catch it. Mrs. Davenport, who was there, plucked Mary by the gown, and whispered, "Never heed her; she's worn out, and best let alone. I'll tell you all about it, up-stairs." But Mary, touched by the anxious look with which Mrs. Wilson gazed at her, as if awaiting the answer to some question, went forward to listen to the speech she was again repeating. "What is this? will you tell me?" Then Mary looked and saw another ominous slip of parchment in the mother's hand, which she was rolling up and down in a tremulous manner between her fingers. Mary's heart sickened within her, and she could not speak. "What is it?" she repeated. "Will you tell me?" She still looked at Mary, with the same child-like gaze of wonder and patient entreaty. What could she answer? "I telled ye not to heed her," said Mrs. Davenport, a little angrily. "She knows well enough what it is,--too well, belike. I was not in when they sarved it; but Mrs. Heming (her as lives next door) was, and she spelled out the meaning, and made it all clear to Mrs. Wilson. It's a summons to be a witness on Jem's trial--Mrs. Heming thinks, to swear to the gun; for, yo see, there's nobbut [47] her as can testify to its being his, and she let on so easily to the policeman that it was his, that there's no getting off her word now. Poor body; she takes it very hard, I dare say!" [Footnote 47: "Nobbut," none-but. "No man sigh evere God _no but_ the oon bigetun sone."--_Wiclif's Version._] Mrs. Wilson had waited patiently while this whispered speech was being uttered, imagining, perhaps, that it would end in some explanation addressed to her. But when both were silent, though their eyes, without speech or language, told their hearts' pity, she spoke again in the same unaltered gentle voice (so different from the irritable impatience she had been ever apt to show to every one except her husband,--he who had wedded her, broken-down and injured)--in a voice so different, I say, from the old, hasty manner, she spoke now the same anxious words, "What is this? Will you tell me?" "Yo'd better give it me at once, Mrs. Wilson, and let me put it out of your sight.--Speak to her, Mary, wench, and ask for a sight on it; I've tried, and better-tried to get it from her, and she takes no heed of words, and I'm loth to pull it by force out of her hands." Mary drew the little "cricket" [48] out from under the dresser, and sat down at Mrs. Wilson's knee, and, coaxing one of her tremulous, ever-moving hands into hers, began to rub it soothingly; there was a little resistance--a very little, but that was all; and presently, in the nervous movement of the imprisoned hand, the parchment fell to the ground. [Footnote 48 "Cricket," a stool.] Mary calmly and openly picked it up without any attempt at concealment, and quietly placing it in sight of the anxious eyes that followed it with a kind of spell-bound dread, went on with her soothing caresses. "She has had no sleep for many nights," said the girl to Mrs. Davenport, "and all this woe and sorrow,--it's no wonder." "No, indeed!" Mrs. Davenport answered. "We must get her fairly to bed; we must get her undressed, and all; and trust to God, in His mercy, to send her to sleep, or else,--" For, you see, they spoke before her as if she were not there; her heart was so far away. Accordingly they almost lifted her from the chair in which she sat motionless, and taking her up as gently as a mother carries her sleeping baby, they undressed her poor, worn form, and laid her in the little bed up-stairs. They had once thought of placing her in Jem's bed, to be out of sight or sound of any disturbance of Alice's, but then again they remembered the shock she might receive in awakening in so unusual a place, and also that Mary, who intended to keep vigil that night in the house of mourning, would find it difficult to divide her attention in the possible cases that might ensue. So they laid her, as I said before, on that little pallet-bed; and, as they were slowly withdrawing from the bed-side, hoping and praying that she might sleep, and forget for a time her heavy burden, she looked wistfully after Mary, and whispered, "You haven't told me what it is. What is it?" And gazing in her face for the expected answer, her eye-lids slowly closed, and she fell into a deep, heavy sleep, almost as profound a rest as death. Mrs. Davenport went her way, and Mary was alone,--for I cannot call those who sleep allies against the agony of thought which solitude sometimes brings up. She dreaded the night before her. Alice might die; the doctor had that day declared her case hopeless, and not far from death; and at times the terror, so natural to the young, not of death, but of the remains of the dead, came over Mary; and she bent and listened anxiously for the long-drawn, pausing breath of the sleeping Alice. Or Mrs. Wilson might awake in a state which Mary dreaded to anticipate, and anticipated while she dreaded;--in a state of complete delirium. Already her senses had been severely stunned by the full explanation of what was required of her,--of what she had to prove against her son, her Jem, her only child,--which Mary could not doubt the officious Mrs. Heming had given; and what if in dreams (that land into which no sympathy or love can penetrate with another, either to share its bliss or its agony,--that land whose scenes are unspeakable terrors, are hidden mysteries, are priceless treasures to one alone,--that land where alone I may see, while yet I tarry here, the sweet looks of my dead child),--what if, in the horrors of her dreams, her brain should go still more astray, and she should waken crazy with her visions, and the terrible reality that begot them? How much worse is anticipation sometimes than reality! How Mary dreaded that night, and how calmly it passed by! Even more so than if Mary had not had such claims upon her care! Anxiety about them deadened her own peculiar anxieties. She thought of the sleepers whom she was watching, till overpowered herself by the want of rest, she fell off into short slumbers in which the night wore imperceptibly away. To be sure Alice spoke, and sang, during her waking moments, like the child she deemed herself; but so happily with the dearly-loved ones around her, with the scent of the heather, and the song of the wild bird hovering about her in imagination--with old scraps of ballads, or old snatches of primitive versions of the Psalms (such as are sung in country churches half draperied over with ivy, and where the running brook, or the murmuring wind among the trees makes fit accompaniment to the chorus of human voices uttering praise and thanksgiving to their God)--that the speech and the song gave comfort and good cheer to the listener's heart, and the gray dawn began to dim the light of the rush-candle, before Mary thought it possible that day was already trembling on the horizon. Then she got up from the chair where she had been dozing, and went, half-asleep, to the window to assure herself that morning was at hand. The streets were unusually quiet with a Sabbath stillness. No factory bells that morning; no early workmen going to their labours; no slip-shod girls cleaning the windows of the little shops which broke the monotony of the street; instead, you might see here and there some operative sallying forth for a breath of country air, or some father leading out his wee toddling bairns for the unwonted pleasure of a walk with "Daddy," in the clear frosty morning. Men with more leisure on week-days would perhaps have walked quicker than they did through the fresh sharp air of this Sunday morning; but to them there was a pleasure, an absolute refreshment in the dawdling gait they, one and all of them, had. To be sure, there were one or two passengers on that morning whose objects were less innocent and less praiseworthy than those of the people I have already mentioned, and whose animal state of mind and body clashed jarringly on the peacefulness of the day; but upon them I will not dwell: as you and I, and almost every one, I think, may send up our individual cry of self-reproach that we have not done all that we could for the stray and wandering ones of our brethren. When Mary turned from the window, she went to the bed of each sleeper, to look and listen. Alice looked perfectly quiet and happy in her slumber, and her face seemed to have become much more youthful during her painless approach to death. Mrs. Wilson's countenance was stamped with the anxiety of the last few days, although she, too, appeared sleeping soundly; but as Mary gazed on her, trying to trace a likeness to her son in her face, she awoke and looked up into Mary's eyes, while the expression of consciousness came back into her own. Both were silent for a minute or two. Mary's eyes had fallen beneath that penetrating gaze, in which the agony of memory seemed every moment to find fuller vent. "Is it a dream?" the mother asked at last in a low voice. "No!" replied Mary, in the same tone. Mrs. Wilson hid her face in the pillow. She was fully conscious of every thing this morning; it was evident that the stunning effect of the subpoena, which had affected her so much last night in her weak, worn-out state, had passed away. Mary offered no opposition when she indicated by languid gesture and action that she wished to rise. A sleepless bed is a haunted place. When she was dressed with Mary's help, she stood by Alice for a minute or two, looking at the slumberer. "How happy she is!" said she, quietly and sadly. All the time that Mary was getting breakfast ready, and performing every other little domestic office she could think of, to add to the comfort of Jem's mother, Mrs. Wilson sat still in the arm-chair, watching her silently. Her old irritation of temper and manner seemed to have suddenly disappeared, or perhaps she was too depressed in body and mind to show it. Mary told her all that had been done with regard to Mr. Bridgenorth; all her own plans for seeking out Will; all her hopes; and concealed as well as she could all the doubts and fears that would arise unbidden. To this Mrs. Wilson listened without much remark, but with deep interest and perfect comprehension. When Mary ceased she sighed and said, "Oh wench! I am his mother, and yet I do so little, I can do so little! That's what frets me! I seem like a child as sees its mammy ill, and moans and cries its little heart out, yet does nought to help. I think my sense has left me all at once, and I can't even find strength to cry like the little child." Hereupon she broke into a feeble wail of self-reproach, that her outward show of misery was not greater; as if any cries, or tears, or loud-spoken words could have told of such pangs at the heart as that look, and that thin, piping, altered voice! But think of Mary and what she was enduring! Picture to yourself (for I cannot tell you) the armies of thoughts that met and clashed in her brain; and then imagine the effort it cost her to be calm, and quiet, and even, in a faint way, cheerful and smiling at times. After a while she began to stir about in her own mind for some means of sparing the poor mother the trial of appearing as a witness in the matter of the gun. She had made no allusion to her summons this morning, and Mary almost thought she must have forgotten it; and surely some means might be found to prevent that additional sorrow. She must see Job about it; nay, if necessary, she must see Mr. Bridgenorth, with all his truth-compelling powers; for, indeed, she had so struggled and triumphed (though a sadly-bleeding victor at heart) over herself these two last days, had so concealed agony, and hidden her inward woe and bewilderment, that she began to take confidence, and to have faith in her own powers of meeting any one with a passably fair show, whatever might be rending her life beneath the cloak of her deception. Accordingly, as soon as Mrs. Davenport came in after morning church, to ask after the two lone women, and she had heard the report Mary had to give (so much better as regarded Mrs. Wilson than what they had feared the night before it would have been)--as soon as this kind-hearted, grateful woman came in, Mary, telling her her purpose, went off to fetch the doctor who attended Alice. He was shaking himself after his morning's round, and happy in the anticipation of his Sunday's dinner; but he was a good-tempered man, who found it difficult to keep down his jovial easiness even by the bed of sickness or death. He had mischosen his profession; for it was his delight to see every one around him in full enjoyment of life. However, he subdued his face to the proper expression of sympathy, befitting a doctor listening to a patient, or a patient's friend (and Mary's sad, pale, anxious face might be taken for either the one or the other). "Well, my girl! and what brings you here?" said he, as he entered his surgery. "Not on your own account, I hope." "I wanted you to come and see Alice Wilson,--and then I thought you would may be take a look at Mrs. Wilson." He bustled on his hat and coat, and followed Mary instantly. After shaking his head over Alice (as if it was a mournful thing for one so pure and good, so true, although so humble a Christian, to be nearing her desired haven), and muttering the accustomed words intended to destroy hope, and prepare anticipation, he went in compliance with Mary's look to ask the usual questions of Mrs. Wilson, who sat passively in her arm-chair. She answered his questions, and submitted to his examination. "How do you think her?" asked Mary, eagerly. "Why--a," began he, perceiving that he was desired to take one side in his answer, and unable to find out whether his listener was anxious for a favourable verdict or otherwise; but thinking it most probable that she would desire the former, he continued, "She is weak, certainly; the natural result of such a shock as the arrest of her son would be,--for I understand this James Wilson, who murdered Mr. Carson, was her son. Sad thing to have such a reprobate in the family." "You say '_who murdered_,' sir!" said Mary, indignantly. "He is only taken up on suspicion, and many have no doubt of his innocence--those who know him, sir." "Ah, well, well! doctors have seldom time to read newspapers, and I dare say I'm not very correct in my story. I dare say he's innocent; I'm sure I had no right to say otherwise,--only words slip out.--No! indeed, young woman, I see no cause for apprehension about this poor creature in the next room;--weak--certainly; but a day or two's good nursing will set her up, and I'm sure you're a good nurse, my dear, from your pretty, kind-hearted face,--I'll send a couple of pills and a draught, but don't alarm yourself,--there's no occasion, I assure you." "But you don't think her fit to go to Liverpool?" asked Mary, still in the anxious tone of one who wishes earnestly for some particular decision. "To Liverpool--yes," replied he. "A short journey like that could not fatigue, and might distract her thoughts. Let her go by all means,--it would be the very thing for her." "Oh, sir!" burst out Mary, almost sobbing; "I did so hope you would say she was too ill to go." "Whew--" said he, with a prolonged whistle, trying to understand the case, but being, as he said, no reader of newspapers, utterly unaware of the peculiar reasons there might be for so apparently unfeeling a wish,--"Why did you not tell me so sooner? It might certainly do her harm in her weak state; there is always some risk attending journeys--draughts, and what not. To her, they might prove very injurious,--very. I disapprove of journeys, or excitement, in all cases where the patient is in the low, fluttered state in which Mrs. Wilson is. If you take _my_ advice, you will certainly put a stop to all thoughts of going to Liverpool." He really had completely changed his opinion, though quite unconsciously; so desirous was he to comply with the wishes of others. "Oh, sir, thank you! And will you give me a certificate of her being unable to go, if the lawyer says we must have one? The lawyer, you know," continued she, seeing him look puzzled, "who is to defend Jem,--it was as a witness against him--" "My dear girl!" said he, almost angrily, "why did you not state the case fully at first? one minute would have done it,--and my dinner waiting all this time. To be sure she can't go,--it would be madness to think of it; if her evidence could have done good, it would have been a different thing. Come to me for the certificate any time; that is to say, if the lawyer advises you. I second the lawyer; take counsel with both the learned professions--ha, ha, ha,--" And laughing at his own joke, he departed, leaving Mary accusing herself of stupidity in having imagined that every one was as well acquainted with the facts concerning the trial as she was herself; for indeed she had never doubted that the doctor would have been aware of the purpose of poor Mrs. Wilson's journey to Liverpool. Presently she went to Job (the ever-ready Mrs. Davenport keeping watch over the two old women), and told him her fears, her plans, and her proceedings. To her surprise he shook his head doubtfully. "It may have an awkward look, if we keep her back. Lawyers is up to tricks." "But it's no trick," said Mary. "She is so poorly, she was last night, at least; and to-day she's so faded and weak." "Poor soul! I dare say. I only mean for Jem's sake; as so much is known, it won't do now to hang back. But I'll ask Mr. Bridgenorth. I'll e'en take your doctor's advice. Yo tarry at home, and I'll come to yo in an hour's time. Go thy ways, wench." CHAPTER XXV. MRS. WILSON'S DETERMINATION. "Something there was, what, none presumed to say, Clouds lightly passing on a smiling day,-- Whispers and hints which went from ear to ear, And mixed reports no judge on earth could clear." CRABBE. "Curious conjectures he may always make, And either side of dubious questions take." IB. Mary went home. Oh! how her head did ache, and how dizzy her brain was growing! But there would be time enough she felt for giving way, hereafter. So she sat quiet and still by an effort; sitting near the window, and looking out of it, but seeing nothing, when all at once she caught sight of something which roused her up, and made her draw back. But it was too late. She had been seen. Sally Leadbitter flaunted into the little dingy room, making it gaudy with the Sunday excess of colouring in her dress. She was really curious to see Mary; her connexion with a murderer seemed to have made her into a sort of _lusus naturæ_, and was almost, by some, expected to have made a change in her personal appearance, so earnestly did they stare at her. But Mary had been too much absorbed this last day or two to notice this. Now Sally had a grand view, and looked her over and over (a very different thing from looking her through and through), and almost learnt her off by heart;--"her every-day gown (Hoyle's print you know, that lilac thing with the high body) she was so fond of; a little black silk handkerchief just knotted round her neck, like a boy; her hair all taken back from her face, as if she wanted to keep her head cool--she would always keep that hair of hers so long; and her hands twitching continually about." Such particulars would make Sally into a Gazette Extraordinary the next morning at the work-room, and were worth coming for, even if little else could be extracted from Mary. "Why, Mary!" she began. "Where have you hidden yourself? You never showed your face all yesterday at Miss Simmonds'. You don't fancy we think any the worse of you for what's come and gone. Some on us, indeed, were a bit sorry for the poor young man, as lies stiff and cold for your sake, Mary; but we shall ne'er cast it up against you. Miss Simmonds, too, will be mighty put out if you don't come, for there's a deal of mourning, agait." "I can't," Mary said, in a low voice. "I don't mean ever to come again." "Why, Mary!" said Sally, in unfeigned surprise. "To be sure you'll have to be in Liverpool, Tuesday, and may be Wednesday; but after that you'll surely come, and tell us all about it. Miss Simmonds knows you'll have to be off those two days. But between you and me, she's a bit of a gossip, and will like hearing all how and about the trial, well enough to let you off very easy for your being absent a day or two. Besides, Betsy Morgan was saying yesterday, she shouldn't wonder but you'd prove quite an attraction to customers. Many a one would come and have their gowns made by Miss Simmonds just to catch a glimpse at you, at after the trial's over. Really, Mary, you'll turn out quite a heroine." The little fingers twitched worse than ever; the large soft eyes looked up pleadingly into Sally's face; but she went on in the same strain, not from any unkind or cruel feeling towards Mary, but solely because she was incapable of comprehending her suffering. She had been shocked, of course, at Mr. Carson's death, though at the same time the excitement was rather pleasant than otherwise; and dearly now would she have enjoyed the conspicuous notice which Mary was sure to receive. "How shall you like being cross-examined, Mary?" "Not at all," answered Mary, when she found she must answer. "La! what impudent fellows those lawyers are! And their clerks, too, not a bit better. I shouldn't wonder" (in a comforting tone, and really believing she was giving comfort) "if you picked up a new sweetheart in Liverpool. What gown are you going in, Mary?" "Oh, I don't know and don't care," exclaimed Mary, sick and weary of her visitor. "Well, then! take my advice, and go in that blue merino. It's old to be sure, and a bit worn at elbows, but folk won't notice that, and th' colour suits you. Now mind, Mary. And I'll lend you my black watered scarf," added she, really good-naturedly, according to her sense of things, and withal, a little bit pleased at the idea of her pet article of dress figuring away on the person of a witness at a trial for murder. "I'll bring it to-morrow before you start." "No, don't!" said Mary; "thank you, but I don't want it." "Why, what can you wear? I know all your clothes as well as I do my own, and what is there you can wear? Not your old plaid shawl, I do hope? You would not fancy this I have on, more nor the scarf, would you?" said she, brightening up at the thought, and willing to lend it, or any thing else. "Oh Sally! don't go on talking a-that-ns; how can I think on dress at such a time? When it's a matter of life and death to Jem?" "Bless the girl! It's Jem, is it? Well now, I thought there was some sweetheart in the back-ground, when you flew off so with Mr. Carson. Then what in the name of goodness made him shoot Mr. Harry? After you had given up going with him, I mean? Was he afraid you'd be on again?" "How dare you say he shot Mr. Harry?" asked Mary, firing up from the state of languid indifference into which she had sunk while Sally had been settling about her dress. "But it's no matter what you think as did not know him. What grieves me is, that people should go on thinking him guilty as did know him," she said, sinking back into her former depressed tone and manner. "And don't you think he did it?" asked Sally. Mary paused; she was going on too fast with one so curious and so unscrupulous. Besides she remembered how even she herself had, at first, believed him guilty; and she felt it was not for her to cast stones at those who, on similar evidence, inclined to the same belief. None had given him much benefit of a doubt. None had faith in his innocence. None but his mother; and there the heart loved more than the head reasoned, and her yearning affection had never for an instant entertained the idea that her Jem was a murderer. But Mary disliked the whole conversation; the subject, the manner in which it was treated, were all painful, and she had a repugnance to the person with whom she spoke. She was thankful, therefore, when Job Legh's voice was heard at the door, as he stood with the latch in his hand, talking to a neighbour, and when Sally jumped up in vexation and said, "There's that old fogey coming in here, as I'm alive! Did your father set him to look after you while he was away? or what brings the old chap here? However, I'm off; I never could abide either him or his prim grand-daughter. Goodbye, Mary." So far in a whisper, then louder, "If you think better of my offer about the scarf, Mary, just step in to-morrow before nine, and you're quite welcome to it." She and Job passed each other at the door, with mutual looks of dislike, which neither took any pains to conceal. "Yon's a bold, bad girl," said Job to Mary. "She's very good-natured," replied Mary, too honourable to abuse a visitor who had only that instant crossed her threshold, and gladly dwelling on the good quality most apparent in Sally's character. "Ay, ay! good-natured, generous, jolly, full of fun; there are a number of other names for the good qualities the devil leaves his childer, as baits to catch gudgeons with. D'ye think folk could be led astray by one who was every way bad? Howe'er, that's not what I came to talk about. I've seen Mr. Bridgenorth, and he is in a manner of the same mind as me; he thinks it would have an awkward look, and might tell against the poor lad on his trial; still if she's ill she's ill, and it can't be helped." "I don't know if she's so bad as all that," said Mary, who began to dread her part in doing any thing which might tell against her poor lover. "Will you come and see her, Job? The doctor seemed to say as I liked, not as he thought." "That's because he had no great thought on the subject, either one way or t'other," replied Job, whose contempt for medical men pretty nearly equalled his respect for lawyers. "But I'll go and welcome. I han not seen th' oud ladies since their sorrows, and it's but manners to go and ax after them. Come along." The room at Mrs. Wilson's had that still, changeless look you must have often observed in the house of sickness or mourning. No particular employment going on; people watching and waiting rather than acting, unless in the more sudden and violent attacks; what little movement is going on, so noiseless and hushed; the furniture all arranged and stationary, with a view to the comfort of the afflicted; the window-blinds drawn down to keep out the disturbing variety of a sun-beam; the same saddened, serious look on the faces of the in-dwellers; you fall back into the same train of thought with all these associations, and forget the street, the outer world, in the contemplation of the one stationary, absorbing interest within. Mrs. Wilson sat quietly in her chair, with just the same look Mary had left on her face; Mrs. Davenport went about with creaking shoes, which made all the more noise from her careful and lengthened tread, annoying the ears of those who were well, in this instance, far more than the dulled senses of the sick and the sorrowful. Alice's voice still was going on cheerfully in the upper room with incessant talking and little laughs to herself, or perhaps in sympathy with her unseen companions; "unseen," I say, in preference to "fancied," for who knows whether God does not permit the forms of those who were dearest when living, to hover round the bed of the dying? Job spoke, and Mrs. Wilson answered. So quietly, that it was unnatural under the circumstances. It made a deeper impression on the old man than any token of mere bodily illness could have done. If she had raved in delirium, or moaned in fever, he could have spoken after his wont, and given his opinion, his advice, and his consolation; now he was awed into silence. At length he pulled Mary aside into a corner of the house-place where Mrs. Wilson was sitting, and began to talk to her. "Yo're right, Mary! She's no ways fit to go to Liverpool, poor soul. Now I've seen her, I only wonder the doctor could ha' been unsettled in his mind at th' first. Choose how it goes wi' poor Jem, she cannot go. One way or another it will soon be over, and best to leave her in the state she is till then." "I was sure you would think so," said Mary. But they were reckoning without their host. They esteemed her senses gone, while, in fact, they were only inert, and could not convey impressions rapidly to the over-burdened, troubled brain. They had not noticed that her eyes had followed them (mechanically it seemed at first) as they had moved away to the corner of the room; that her face, hitherto so changeless, had begun to work with one or two of the old symptoms of impatience. But when they were silent she stood up, and startled them almost as if a dead person had spoken, by saying clearly and decidedly--"I go to Liverpool. I hear you and your plans; and I tell you I shall go to Liverpool. If my words are to kill my son, they have already gone forth out of my mouth, and nought can bring them back. But I will have faith. Alice (up above) has often telled me I wanted faith, and now I will have it. They cannot--they will not kill my child, my only child. I will not be afeared. Yet, oh! I am so sick with terror. But if he is to die, think ye not that I will see him again; ay! see him at his trial? When all are hating him, he shall have his poor mother near him, to give him all the comfort, eyes, and looks, and tears, and a heart that is dead to all but him, can give; his poor old mother, who knows how free he is from sin--in the sight of man at least. They'll let me go to him, maybe, the very minute it's over; and I know many Scripture texts (though you would not think it), that may keep up his heart. I missed seeing him ere he went to yon prison, but nought shall keep me away again one minute when I can see his face; for maybe the minutes are numbered, and the count but small. I know I can be a comfort to him, poor lad. You would not think it, now, but he'd alway speak as kind and soft to me as if he were courting me, like. He loved me above a bit; and am I to leave him now to dree all the cruel slander they'll put upon him? I can pray for him at each hard word they say against him, if I can do nought else; and he'll know what his mother is doing for him, poor lad, by the look on my face." Still they made some look, or gesture of opposition to her wishes. She turned sharp round on Mary, the old object of her pettish attacks, and said, "Now, wench! once for all! I tell yo this. _He_ could never guide me; and he'd sense enough not to try. What he could na do, don't you try. I shall go to Liverpool to-morrow, and find my lad, and stay with him through thick and thin; and if he dies, why, perhaps, God of His mercy will take me too. The grave is a sure cure for an aching heart." She sank back in her chair, quite exhausted by the sudden effort she had made; but if they even offered to speak, she cut them short (whatever the subject might be), with the repetition of the same words, "I shall go to Liverpool." No more could be said, the doctor's opinion had been so undecided; Mr. Bridgenorth had given his legal voice in favour of her going, and Mary was obliged to relinquish the idea of persuading her to remain at home, if indeed under all the circumstances it could be thought desirable. "Best way will be," said Job, "for me to hunt out Will, early to-morrow morning, and yo, Mary, come at after with Jane Wilson. I know a decent woman where yo two can have a bed, and where we may meet together when I've found Will, afore going to Mr. Bridgenorth's at two o'clock; for, I can tell him, I'll not trust none of his clerks for hunting up Will, if Jem's life is to depend on it." Now Mary disliked this plan inexpressibly; her dislike was partly grounded on reason, and partly on feeling. She could not bear the idea of deputing to any one the active measures necessary to be taken in order to save Jem. She felt as if they were her duty, her right. She durst not trust to any one the completion of her plan; they might not have energy, or perseverance, or desperation enough to follow out the slightest chance; and her love would endow her with all these qualities, independently of the terrible alternative which awaited her in case all failed and Jem was condemned. No one could have her motives; and consequently no one could have her sharpened brain, her despairing determination. Besides (only that was purely selfish), she could not endure the suspense of remaining quiet, and only knowing the result when all was accomplished. So with vehemence and impatience she rebutted every reason Job adduced for his plan; and of course, thus opposed, by what appeared to him wilfulness, he became more resolute, and angry words were exchanged, and a feeling of estrangement rose up between them, for a time, as they walked homewards. But then came in Margaret with her gentleness, like an angel of peace, so calm and reasonable, that both felt ashamed of their irritation, and tacitly left the decision to her (only, by the way, I think Mary could never have submitted if it had gone against her, penitent and tearful as was her manner now to Job, the good old man who was helping her to work for Jem, although they differed as to the manner). "Mary had better go," said Margaret to her grandfather, in a low tone, "I know what she's feeling, and it will be a comfort to her soon, may be, to think she did all she could herself. She would perhaps fancy it might have been different; do, grandfather, let her." Margaret had still, you see, little or no belief in Jem's innocence; and besides, she thought if Mary saw Will, and heard herself from him that Jem had not been with him that Thursday night, it would in a measure break the force of the blow which was impending. "Let me lock up house, grandfather, for a couple of days, and go and stay with Alice. It's but little one like me can do, I know" (she added softly); "but, by the blessing o' God, I'll do it and welcome; and here comes one kindly use o' money, I can hire them as will do for her what I cannot. Mrs. Davenport is a willing body, and one who knows sorrow and sickness, and I can pay her for her time, and keep her there pretty near altogether. So let that be settled. And you take Mrs. Wilson, dear grandad, and let Mary go find Will, and you can all meet together at after, and I'm sure I wish you luck." Job consented with only a few dissenting grunts; but on the whole, with a very good grace for an old man who had been so positive only a few minutes before. Mary was thankful for Margaret's interference. She did not speak, but threw her arms round Margaret's neck, and put up her rosy-red mouth to be kissed; and even Job was attracted by the pretty, child-like gesture; and when she drew near him, afterwards, like a little creature sidling up to some person whom it feels to have offended, he bent down and blessed her, as if she had been a child of his own. To Mary the old man's blessing came like words of power. CHAPTER XXVI. THE JOURNEY TO LIVERPOOL. "Like a bark upon the sea, Life is floating over death; Above, below, encircling thee, Danger lurks in every breath. Parted art thou from the grave Only by a plank most frail; Tossed upon the restless wave, Sport of every fickle gale. Let the skies be e'er so clear, And so calm and still the sea, Shipwreck yet has he to fear, Who life's voyager will be." R�CKERT. The early trains for Liverpool, on Monday morning, were crowded by attorneys, attorneys' clerks, plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses, all going to the Assizes. They were a motley assembly, each with some cause for anxiety stirring at his heart; though, after all, that is saying little or nothing, for we are all of us in the same predicament through life; each with a fear and a hope from childhood to death. Among the passengers there was Mary Barton, dressed in the blue gown and obnoxious plaid shawl. Common as railroads are now in all places as a means of transit, and especially in Manchester, Mary had never been on one before; and she felt bewildered by the hurry, the noise of people, and bells, and horns; the whiz and the scream of the arriving trains. The very journey itself seemed to her a matter of wonder. She had a back seat, and looked towards the factory-chimneys, and the cloud of smoke which hovers over Manchester, with a feeling akin to the "Heimweh." She was losing sight of the familiar objects of her childhood for the first time; and unpleasant as those objects are to most, she yearned after them with some of the same sentiment which gives pathos to the thoughts of the emigrant. The cloud-shadows which give beauty to Chat-Moss, the picturesque old houses of Newton, what were they to Mary, whose heart was full of many things? Yet she seemed to look at them earnestly as they glided past; but she neither saw nor heard. She neither saw nor heard till some well-known names fell upon her ear. Two lawyers' clerks were discussing the cases to come on that Assizes; of course, "the murder-case," as it had come to be termed, held a conspicuous place in their conversation. They had no doubt of the result. "Juries are always very unwilling to convict on circumstantial evidence, it is true," said one, "but here there can hardly be any doubt." "If it had not been so clear a case," replied the other, "I should have said they were injudicious in hurrying on the trial so much. Still, more evidence might have been collected." "They tell me," said the first speaker,--"the people in Gardener's office I mean,--that it was really feared the old gentleman would have gone out of his mind, if the trial had been delayed. He was with Mr. Gardener as many as seven times on Saturday, and called him up at night to suggest that some letter should be written, or something done to secure the verdict." "Poor old man," answered his companion, "who can wonder?--an only son,--such a death,--the disagreeable circumstances attending it; I had not time to read the _Guardian_ on Saturday, but I understand it was some dispute about a factory girl." "Yes, some such person. Of course she'll be examined, and Williams will do it in style. I shall slip out from our court to hear him if I can hit the nick of time." "And if you can get a place, you mean, for depend upon it the court will be crowded." "Ay, ay, the ladies (sweet souls) will come in shoals to hear a trial for murder, and see the murderer, and watch the judge put on his black cap." "And then go home and groan over the Spanish ladies who take delight in bull-fights--'such unfeminine creatures!'" Then they went on to other subjects. It was but another drop to Mary's cup; but she was nearly in that state which Crabbe describes, "For when so full the cup of sorrows flows Add but a drop, it instantly o'erflows." And now they were in the tunnel!--and now they were in Liverpool; and she must rouse herself from the torpor of mind and body which was creeping over her; the result of much anxiety and fatigue, and several sleepless nights. She asked a policeman the way to Milk House Yard, and following his directions with the _savoir faire_ of a town-bred girl, she reached a little court leading out of a busy, thronged street, not far from the Docks. When she entered the quiet little yard she stopped to regain her breath, and to gather strength, for her limbs trembled, and her heart beat violently. All the unfavourable contingencies she had, until now, forbidden herself to dwell upon, came forward to her mind. The possibility, the bare possibility, of Jem being an accomplice in the murder; the still greater possibility that he had not fulfilled his intention of going part of the way with Will, but had been led off by some little accidental occurrence from his original intention; and that he had spent the evening with those, whom it was now too late to bring forward as witnesses. But sooner or later she must know the truth; so taking courage she knocked at the door of a house. "Is this Mrs. Jones's?" she inquired. "Next door but one," was the curt answer. And even this extra minute was a reprieve. Mrs. Jones was busy washing, and would have spoken angrily to the person who knocked so gently at the door, if anger had been in her nature; but she was a soft, helpless kind of woman, and only sighed over the many interruptions she had had to her business that unlucky Monday morning. But the feeling which would have been anger in a more impatient temper, took the form of prejudice against the disturber, whoever he or she might be. Mary's fluttered and excited appearance strengthened this prejudice in Mrs. Jones's mind, as she stood, stripping the soap-suds off her arms, while she eyed her visitor, and waited to be told what her business was. But no words would come. Mary's voice seemed choked up in her throat. "Pray what do you want, young woman?" coldly asked Mrs. Jones at last. "I want--Oh! is Will Wilson here?" "No, he is not," replied Mrs. Jones, inclining to shut the door in her face. "Is he not come back from the Isle of Man?" asked Mary, sickening. "He never went; he stayed in Manchester too long; as perhaps you know, already." And again the door seemed closing. But Mary bent forwards with suppliant action (as some young tree bends, when blown by the rough, autumnal wind), and gasped out, "Tell me--tell me--where is he?" Mrs. Jones suspected some love affair, and, perhaps, one of not the most creditable kind; but the distress of the pale young creature before her was so obvious and so pitiable, that were she ever so sinful, Mrs. Jones could no longer uphold her short, reserved manner. "He's gone this very morning, my poor girl. Step in, and I'll tell you about it." "Gone!" cried Mary. "How gone? I must see him,--it's a matter of life and death: he can save the innocent from being hanged,--he cannot be gone,--how gone?" "Sailed, my dear! sailed in the _John Cropper_ this very blessed morning." "Sailed!" CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE LIVERPOOL DOCKS. "Yon is our quay! Hark to the clamour in that miry road, Bounded and narrowed by yon vessel's load; The lumbering wealth she empties round the place, Package and parcel, hogshead, chest and case: While the loud seaman and the angry hind, Mingling in business, bellow to the wind." CRABBE. Mary staggered into the house. Mrs. Jones placed her tenderly in a chair, and there stood bewildered by her side. "Oh, father! father!" muttered she, "what have you done?--What must I do? must the innocent die?--or he--whom I fear--I fear--oh! what am I saying?" said she, looking round affrighted, and seemingly reassured by Mrs. Jones's countenance, "I am so helpless, so weak,--but a poor girl after all. How can I tell what is right? Father! you have always been so kind to me,--and you to be--never mind--never mind, all will come right in the grave." "Save us, and bless us!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones, "if I don't think she's gone out of her wits!" "No, I'm not!" said Mary, catching at the words, and with a strong effort controlling the mind she felt to be wandering, while the red blood flushed to scarlet the heretofore white cheek, "I'm not out of my senses; there is so much to be done--so much--and no one but me to do it, you know,--though I can't rightly tell what it is," looking up with bewilderment into Mrs. Jones's face. "I must not go mad whatever comes--at least not yet. No!" (bracing herself up) "something may yet be done, and I must do it. Sailed! did you say? The _John Cropper_? Sailed?" "Ay! she went out of dock last night, to be ready for the morning's tide." "I thought she was not to sail till to-morrow," murmured Mary. "So did Will (he's lodged here long, so we all call him 'Will')," replied Mrs. Jones. "The mate had told him so, I believe, and he never knew different till he got to Liverpool on Friday morning; but as soon as he heard, he gave up going to the Isle o' Man, and just ran over to Rhyl with the mate, one John Harris, as has friends a bit beyond Abergele; you may have heard him speak on him, for they are great chums, though I've my own opinion of Harris." "And he's sailed?" repeated Mary, trying by repetition to realise the fact to herself. "Ay, he went on board last night to be ready for the morning's tide, as I said afore, and my boy went to see the ship go down the river, and came back all agog with the sight. Here, Charley, Charley!" She called out loudly for her son: but Charley was one of those boys who are never "far to seek," as the Lancashire people say, when any thing is going on; a mysterious conversation, an unusual event, a fire, or a riot, any thing, in short; such boys are the little omnipresent people of this world. Charley had, in fact, been spectator and auditor all this time; though for a little while he had been engaged in "dollying" and a few other mischievous feats in the washing line, which had prevented his attention from being fully given to his mother's conversation with the strange girl who had entered. "Oh, Charley! there you are! Did you not see the _John Cropper_ sail down the river this morning? Tell the young woman about it, for I think she hardly credits me." "I saw her tugged down the river by a steam-boat, which comes to same thing," replied he. "Oh! if I had but come last night!" moaned Mary. "But I never thought of it. I never thought but what he knew right when he said he would be back from the Isle of Man on Monday morning, and not afore--and now some one must die for my negligence!" "Die!" exclaimed the lad. "How?" "Oh! Will would have proved an _alibi_,--but he's gone,--and what am I to do?" "Don't give it up yet," cried the energetic boy, interested at once in the case; "let's have a try for him. We are but where we were if we fail." Mary roused herself. The sympathetic "we" gave her heart and hope. "But what can be done? You say he's sailed; what can be done?" But she spoke louder, and in a more life-like tone. "No! I did not say he'd sailed; mother said that, and women know nought about such matters. You see" (proud of his office of instructor, and insensibly influenced, as all about her were, by Mary's sweet, earnest, lovely countenance) "there's sand-banks at the mouth of the river, and ships can't get over them but at high-water; especially ships of heavy burden, like the _John Cropper_. Now, she was tugged down the river at low water, or pretty near, and will have to lie some time before the water will be high enough to float her over the banks. So hold up your head,--you've a chance yet, though may be but a poor one." "But what must I do?" asked Mary, to whom all this explanation had been a vague mystery. "Do!" said the boy, impatiently, "why, have not I told you? Only women (begging your pardon) are so stupid at understanding about any thing belonging to the sea;--you must get a boat, and make all haste, and sail after him,--after the _John Cropper_. You may overtake her, or you may not. It's just a chance; but she's heavy laden, and that's in your favour. She'll draw many feet of water." Mary had humbly and eagerly (oh, how eagerly!) listened to this young Sir Oracle's speech; but try as she would, she could only understand that she must make haste, and sail--somewhere-- "I beg your pardon," (and her little acknowledgment of inferiority in this speech pleased the lad, and made him her still more zealous friend). "I beg your pardon," said she, "but I don't know where to get a boat. Are there boat-stands?" The lad laughed outright. "You're not long in Liverpool, I guess. Boat-stands! No; go down to the pier,--any pier will do, and hire a boat,--you'll be at no loss when once you are there. Only make haste." "Oh, you need not tell me that, if I but knew how," said Mary, trembling with eagerness. "But you say right,--I never was here before, and I don't know my way to the place you speak on; only tell me, and I'll not lose a minute." "Mother!" said the wilful lad, "I'm going to show her the way to the pier; I'll be back in an hour,--or so,--" he added in a lower tone. And before the gentle Mrs. Jones could collect her scattered wits sufficiently to understand half of the hastily formed plan, her son was scudding down the street, closely followed by Mary's half-running steps. Presently he slackened his pace sufficiently to enable him to enter into conversation with Mary, for once escaped from the reach of his mother's recalling voice, he thought he might venture to indulge his curiosity. "Ahem!--What's your name? It's so awkward to be calling you young woman." "My name is Mary,--Mary Barton," answered she, anxious to propitiate one who seemed so willing to exert himself in her behalf, or else she grudged every word which caused the slightest relaxation in her speed, although her chest seemed tightened, and her head throbbing, from the rate at which they were walking. "And you want Will Wilson to prove an _alibi_--is that it?" "Yes--oh, yes--can we not cross now?" "No, wait a minute; it's the teagle hoisting above your head I'm afraid of;--and who is it that's to be tried?" "Jem; oh, lad! can't we get past?" They rushed under the great bales quivering in the air above their heads and pressed onwards for a few minutes, till Master Charley again saw fit to walk a little slower, and ask a few more questions. "Mary, is Jem your brother, or your sweetheart, that you're so set upon saving him?" "No--no," replied she, but with something of hesitation, that made the shrewd boy yet more anxious to clear up the mystery. "Perhaps he's your cousin, then? Many a girl has a cousin who has not a sweetheart." "No, he's neither kith nor kin to me. What's the matter? What are you stopping for?" said she, with nervous terror, as Charley turned back a few steps, and peered up a side street. "Oh, nothing to flurry you so, Mary. I heard you say to mother you had never been in Liverpool before, and if you'll only look up this street you may see the back windows of our Exchange. Such a building as yon is! with 'natomy hiding under a blanket, and Lord Admiral Nelson, and a few more people in the middle of the court! No! come here," as Mary, in her eagerness, was looking at any window that caught her eye first, to satisfy the boy. "Here, then, now you can see it. You can say, now, you've seen Liverpool Exchange." "Yes, to be sure--it's a beautiful window, I'm sure. But are we near the boats? I'll stop as I come back, you know; only I think we'd better get on now." "Oh! if the wind's in your favour, you'll be down the river in no time, and catch Will, I'll be bound; and if it's not, why, you know, the minute it took you to look at the Exchange will be neither here nor there." Another rush onwards, till one of the long crossings near the docks caused a stoppage, and gave Mary time for breathing, and Charley leisure to ask another question. "You've never said where you come from?" "Manchester," replied she. "Eh, then! you've a power of things to see. Liverpool beats Manchester hollow, they say. A nasty, smoky hole, bean't it? Are you bound to live there?" "Oh, yes! it's my home." "Well, I don't think I could abide a home in the middle of smoke. Look there! now you see the river! That's something now you'd give a deal for in Manchester. Look!" And Mary did look, and saw down an opening made in the forest of masts belonging to the vessels in dock, the glorious river, along which white-sailed ships were gliding with the ensigns of all nations, not "braving the battle," but telling of the distant lands, spicy or frozen, that sent to that mighty mart for their comforts or their luxuries; she saw small boats passing to and fro on that glittering highway, but she also saw such puffs and clouds of smoke from the countless steamers, that she wondered at Charley's intolerance of the smoke of Manchester. Across the swing-bridge, along the pier,--and they stood breathless by a magnificent dock, where hundreds of ships lay motionless during the process of loading and unloading. The cries of the sailors, the variety of languages used by the passers-by, and the entire novelty of the sight compared with any thing which Mary had ever seen, made her feel most helpless and forlorn; and she clung to her young guide as to one who alone by his superior knowledge could interpret between her and the new race of men by whom she was surrounded,--for a new race sailors might reasonably be considered, to a girl who had hitherto seen none but inland dwellers, and those for the greater part factory people. In that new world of sight and sound, she still bore one prevailing thought, and though her eye glanced over the ships and the wide-spreading river, her mind was full of the thought of reaching Will. "Why are we here?" asked she of Charley. "There are no little boats about, and I thought I was to go in a little boat; those ships are never meant for short distances, are they?" "To be sure not," replied he, rather contemptuously. "But the _John Cropper_ lay in this dock, and I know many of the sailors; and if I could see one I knew, I'd ask him to run up the mast, and see if he could catch a sight of her in the offing. If she's weighed her anchor no use for your going, you know." Mary assented quietly to this speech, as if she were as careless as Charley seemed now to be about her overtaking Will; but in truth her heart was sinking within her, and she no longer felt the energy which had hitherto upheld her. Her bodily strength was giving way, and she stood cold and shivering, although the noon-day sun beat down with considerable power on the shadeless spot where she was standing. "Here's Tom Bourne!" said Charley; and altering his manner from the patronising key in which he had spoken to Mary, he addressed a weather-beaten old sailor who came rolling along the pathway where they stood, his hands in his pockets, and his quid in his mouth, with very much the air of one who had nothing to do but look about him, and spit right and left; addressing this old tar, Charley made known to him his wish in slang, which to Mary was almost inaudible, and quite unintelligible, and which I am too much of a land-lubber to repeat correctly. Mary watched looks and actions with a renovated keenness of perception. She saw the old man listen attentively to Charley; she saw him eye her over from head to foot, and wind up his inspection with a little nod of approbation (for her very shabbiness and poverty of dress were creditable signs to the experienced old sailor); and then she watched him leisurely swing himself on to a ship in the basin, and, borrowing a glass, run up the mast with the speed of a monkey. "He'll fall!" said she, in affright, clutching at Charley's arm, and judging the sailor, from his storm-marked face and unsteady walk on land, to be much older than he really was. "Not he!" said Charley. "He's at the mast-head now. See! he's looking through his glass, and using his arms as steady as if he were on dry land. Why, I've been up the mast, many and many a time; only don't tell mother. She thinks I'm to be a shoemaker, but I've made up my mind to be a sailor; only there's no good arguing with a woman. You'll not tell her, Mary?" "Oh, see!" exclaimed she (his secret was very safe with her, for, in fact, she had not heard it). "See! he's coming down; he's down. Speak to him, Charley." But unable to wait another instant she called out herself, "Can you see the _John Cropper_? Is she there yet?" "Ay, ay," he answered, and coming quickly up to them, he hurried them away to seek for a boat, saying the bar was already covered, and in an hour the ship would hoist her sails and be off. "You've the wind right against you, and must use oars. No time to lose." They ran to some steps leading down to the water. They beckoned to some watermen, who, suspecting the real state of the case, appeared in no hurry for a fare, but leisurely brought their boat alongside the stairs, as if it were a matter of indifference to them whether they were engaged or not, while they conversed together in few words, and in an under-tone, respecting the charge they should make. "Oh, pray make haste," called Mary. "I want you to take me to the _John Cropper_. Where is she, Charley? Tell them--I don't rightly know the words,--only make haste!" "In the offing she is, sure enough, miss," answered one of the men, shoving Charley on one side, regarding him as too young to be a principal in the bargain. "I don't think we can go, Dick," said he, with a wink to his companion; "there's the gentleman over at New Brighton as wants us." "But, mayhap, the young woman will pay us handsome for giving her a last look at her sweetheart," interposed the other. "Oh, how much do you want? Only make haste--I've enough to pay you, but every moment is precious," said Mary. "Ay, that it is. Less than an hour won't take us to the mouth of the river, and she'll be off by two o'clock!" Poor Mary's ideas of "plenty of money," however, were different to those entertained by the boatmen. Only fourteen or fifteen shillings remained out of the sovereign Margaret had lent her, and the boatmen, imagining "plenty" to mean no less than several pounds, insisted upon receiving a sovereign (an exorbitant fare, by the bye, although reduced from their first demand of thirty shillings). While Charley, with a boy's impatience of delay, and disregard of money, kept urging, "Give it 'em, Mary; they'll none of them take you for less. It's your only chance. There's St. Nicholas ringing one!" "I've only got fourteen and ninepence," cried she, in despair, after counting over her money; "but I'll give you my shawl, and you can sell it for four or five shillings,--oh! won't that much do?" asked she, in such a tone of voice, that they must indeed have had hard hearts who could refuse such agonised entreaty. They took her on board. And in less than five minutes she was rocking and tossing in a boat for the first time in her life, alone with two rough, hard-looking men. CHAPTER XXVIII. "JOHN CROPPER, AHOY!" "A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast And fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast! And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While, like the eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee." ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. Mary had not understood that Charley was not coming with her. In fact, she had not thought about it, till she perceived his absence, as they pushed off from the landing-place, and remembered that she had never thanked him for all his kind interest in her behalf; and now his absence made her feel most lonely--even his, the little mushroom friend of an hour's growth. The boat threaded her way through the maze of larger vessels which surrounded the shore, bumping against one, kept off by the oars from going right against another, overshadowed by a third, until at length they were fairly out on the broad river, away from either shore; the sights and sounds of land being lost in the distance. And then came a sort of pause. Both wind and tide were against the two men, and labour as they would they made but little way. Once Mary in her impatience had risen up to obtain a better view of the progress they had made, but the men had roughly told her to sit down immediately, and she had dropped on her seat like a chidden child, although the impatience was still at her heart. But now she grew sure they were turning off from the straight course which they had hitherto kept on the Cheshire side of the river, whither they had gone to avoid the force of the current, and after a short time she could not help naming her conviction, as a kind of nightmare dread and belief came over her, that every thing animate and inanimate was in league against her one sole aim and object of overtaking Will. They answered gruffly. They saw a boatman whom they knew, and were desirous of obtaining his services as steersman, so that both might row with greater effect. They knew what they were about. So she sat silent with clenched hands while the parley went on, the explanation was given, the favour asked and granted. But she was sickening all the time with nervous fear. They had been rowing a long, long time--half a day it seemed, at least--yet Liverpool appeared still close at hand, and Mary began almost to wonder that the men were not as much disheartened as she was, when the wind, which had been hitherto against them, dropped, and thin clouds began to gather over the sky, shutting out the sun, and casting a chilly gloom over every thing. There was not a breath of air, and yet it was colder than when the soft violence of the westerly wind had been felt. The men renewed their efforts. The boat gave a bound forwards at every pull of the oars. The water was glassy and motionless, reflecting tint by tint of the Indian-ink sky above. Mary shivered, and her heart sank within her. Still now they evidently were making progress. Then the steersman pointed to a rippling line in the river only a little way off, and the men disturbed Mary, who was watching the ships that lay in what appeared to her the open sea, to get at their sails. She gave a little start, and rose. Her patience, her grief, and perhaps her silence, had begun to win upon the men. "Yon second to the norrard is the _John Cropper_. Wind's right now, and sails will soon carry us alongside of her." He had forgotten (or perhaps he did not like to remind Mary) that the same wind which now bore their little craft along with easy, rapid motion, would also be favourable to the _John Cropper_. But as they looked with straining eyes, as if to measure the decreasing distance that separated them from her, they saw her sails unfurled and flap in the breeze, till, catching the right point, they bellied forth into white roundness, and the ship began to plunge and heave, as if she were a living creature, impatient to be off. "They're heaving anchor!" said one of the boatmen to the others, as the faint musical cry of the sailors came floating over the waters that still separated them. Full of the spirit of the chase, though as yet ignorant of Mary's motives, the men sprang to hoist another sail. It was fully as much as the boat could bear, in the keen, gusty east wind which was now blowing, and she bent, and laboured, and ploughed, and creaked upbraidingly as if tasked beyond her strength; but she sped along with a gallant swiftness. They drew nearer, and they heard the distant "ahoy" more clearly. It ceased. The anchor was up, and the ship was away. Mary stood up, steadying herself by the mast, and stretched out her arms, imploring the flying vessel to stay its course by that mute action, while the tears streamed down her cheeks. The men caught up their oars and hoisted them in the air, and shouted to arrest attention. They were seen by the men aboard the larger craft; but they were too busy with all the confusion prevalent in an outward-bound vessel to pay much attention. There were coils of ropes and seamen's chests to be stumbled over at every turn; there were animals, not properly secured, roaming bewildered about the deck, adding their pitiful lowings and bleatings to the aggregate of noises. There were carcases not cut up, looking like corpses of sheep and pigs rather than like mutton and pork; there were sailors running here and there and everywhere, having had no time to fall into method, and with their minds divided between thoughts of the land and the people they had left, and the present duties on board ship; while the captain strove hard to procure some kind of order by hasty commands given in a loud, impatient voice, to right and left, starboard and larboard, cabin and steerage. As he paced the deck with a chafed step, vexed at one or two little mistakes on the part of the mate, and suffering himself from the pain of separation from wife and children, but showing his suffering only by his outward irritation, he heard a hail from the shabby little river-boat that was striving to overtake his winged ship. For the men fearing that, as the ship was now fairly over the bar, they should only increase the distance between them, and being now within shouting range, had asked of Mary her more particular desire. Her throat was dry; all musical sound had gone out of her voice; but in a loud harsh whisper she told the men her errand of life and death, and they hailed the ship. "We're come for one William Wilson, who is wanted to prove an _alibi_ in Liverpool Assize Courts to-morrow. James Wilson is to be tried for a murder, done on Thursday night, when he was with William Wilson. Any thing more, missis?" asked the boat-man of Mary, in a lower voice, and taking his hands down from his mouth. "Say I'm Mary Barton. Oh, the ship is going on! Oh, for the love of Heaven, ask them to stop." The boatman was angry at the little regard paid to his summons, and called out again; repeating the message with the name of the young woman who sent it, and interlarding it with sailors' oaths. The ship flew along--away,--the boat struggled after. They could see the captain take his speaking-trumpet. And oh! and alas! they heard his words. He swore a dreadful oath; he called Mary a disgraceful name; and he said he would not stop his ship for any one, nor could he part with a single hand, whoever swung for it. The words came in unpitying clearness with their trumpet-sound. Mary sat down, looking like one who prays in the death-agony. For her eyes were turned up to that Heaven, where mercy dwelleth, while her blue lips quivered, though no sound came. Then she bowed her head and hid it in her hands. "Hark! yon sailor hails us." She looked up. And her heart stopped its beating to listen. William Wilson stood as near the stern of the vessel as he could get; and unable to obtain the trumpet from the angry captain, made a tube of his own hands. "So help me God, Mary Barton, I'll come back in the pilot-boat, time enough to save the life of the innocent." "What does he say?" asked Mary wildly, as the voice died away in the increasing distance, while the boatmen cheered, in their kindled sympathy with their passenger. "What does he say?" repeated she. "Tell me. I could not hear." She had heard with her ears, but her brain refused to recognise the sense. They repeated his speech, all three speaking at once, with many comments; while Mary looked at them and then at the vessel now far away. "I don't rightly know about it," said she, sorrowfully. "What is the pilot-boat?" They told her, and she gathered the meaning out of the sailors' slang which enveloped it. There was a hope still, although so slight and faint. "How far does the pilot go with the ship?" To different distances they said. Some pilots would go as far as Holyhead for the chance of the homeward-bound vessels; others only took the ships over the Banks. Some captains were more cautious than others, and the pilots had different ways. The wind was against the homeward bound vessels, so perhaps the pilot aboard the _John Cropper_ would not care to go far out. "How soon would he come back?" There were three boatmen, and three opinions, varying from twelve hours to two days. Nay, the man who gave his vote for the longest time, on having his judgment disputed, grew stubborn, and doubled the time, and thought it might be the end of the week before the pilot-boat came home. They began disputing, and urging reasons; and Mary tried to understand them; but independently of their nautical language, a veil seemed drawn over her mind, and she had no clear perception of any thing that passed. Her very words seemed not her own, and beyond her power of control, for she found herself speaking quite differently to what she meant. One by one her hopes had fallen away, and left her desolate; and though a chance yet remained, she could no longer hope. She felt certain it, too, would fade and vanish. She sank into a kind of stupor. All outward objects harmonised with her despair. The gloomy leaden sky,--the deep, dark waters below, of a still heavier shade of colour,--the cold, flat yellow shore in the distance, which no ray lightened up,--the nipping, cutting wind. She shivered with her depression of mind and body. The sails were taken down, of course, on the return to Liverpool, and the progress they made, rowing and tacking, was very slow. The men talked together, disputing about the pilots at first, and then about matters of local importance, in which Mary would have taken no interest at any time, and she gradually became drowsy; irrepressibly so, indeed, for in spite of her jerking efforts to keep awake she sank away to the bottom of the boat, and there lay couched on a rough heap of sails, rope, and tackle of various kinds. The measured beat of the waters against the sides of the boat, and the musical boom of the more distant waves, were more lulling than silence, and she slept sound. Once she opened her eyes heavily, and dimly saw the old gray, rough boatman (who had stood out the most obstinately for the full fare) covering her with his thick pea-jacket. He had taken it off on purpose, and was doing it tenderly in his way, but before she could rouse herself up to thank him she had dropped off to sleep again. At last, in the dusk of evening, they arrived at the landing-place from which they had started some hours before. The men spoke to Mary, but though she mechanically replied, she did not stir; so, at length, they were obliged to shake her. She stood up, shivering and puzzled as to her whereabouts. "Now tell me where you are bound to, missis," said the gray old man, "and maybe I can put you in the way." She slowly comprehended what he said, and went through the process of recollection; but very dimly, and with much labour. She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out her purse, and shook its contents into the man's hand; and then began meekly to unpin her shawl, although they had turned away without asking for it. "No, no!" said the older man, who lingered on the step before springing into the boat, and to whom she mutely offered the shawl. "Keep it! we donnot want it. It were only for to try you,--some folks say they've no more blunt, when all the while they've getten a mint." "Thank you," said she, in a dull, low tone. "Where are you bound to? I axed that question afore," said the gruff old fellow. "I don't know. I'm a stranger," replied she, quietly, with a strange absence of anxiety under the circumstances. "But you mun find out then," said he, sharply, "pier-head's no place for a young woman to be standing on, gape-saying." "I've a card somewhere as will tell me," she answered, and the man, partly relieved, jumped into the boat, which was now pushing off to make way for the arrivals from some steamer. Mary felt in her pocket for the card, on which was written the name of the street where she was to have met Mr. Bridgenorth at two o'clock; where Job and Mrs. Wilson were to have been, and where she was to have learnt from the former the particulars of some respectable lodging. It was not to be found. She tried to brighten her perceptions, and felt again, and took out the little articles her pocket contained, her empty purse, her pocket-handkerchief, and such little things, but it was not there. In fact she had dropped it when, so eager to embark, she had pulled out her purse to reckon up her money. She did not know this, of course. She only knew it was gone. It added but little to the despair that was creeping over her. But she tried a little more to help herself, though every minute her mind became more cloudy. She strove to remember where Will had lodged, but she could not; name, street, every thing had passed away, and it did not signify; better she were lost than found. She sat down quietly on the top step of the landing, and gazed down into the dark, dank water below. Once or twice a spectral thought loomed among the shadows of her brain; a wonder whether beneath that cold dismal surface there would not be rest from the troubles of earth. But she could not hold an idea before her for two consecutive moments; and she forgot what she thought about before she could act upon it. So she continued sitting motionless, without looking up, or regarding in any way the insults to which she was subjected. Through the darkening light the old boatman had watched her: interested in her in spite of himself, and his scoldings of himself. When the landing-place was once more comparatively clear, he made his way towards it, across boats, and along planks, swearing at himself while he did so, for an old fool. He shook Mary's shoulder violently. "D---- you, I ask you again where you're bound to? Don't sit there, stupid. Where are you going to?" "I don't know," sighed Mary. "Come, come; avast with that story. You said a bit ago you'd a card, which was to tell you where to go." "I had, but I've lost it. Never mind." She looked again down upon the black mirror below. He stood by her, striving to put down his better self; but he could not. He shook her again. She looked up, as if she had forgotten him. "What do you want?" asked she, wearily. "Come with me, and be d----d to you!" replied he, clutching her arm to pull her up. She arose and followed him, with the unquestioning docility of a little child. CHAPTER XXIX. A TRUE BILL AGAINST JEM. "There are who, living by the legal pen, Are held in honour--honourable men." CRABBE. At five minutes before two, Job Legh stood upon the door-step of the house where Mr. Bridgenorth lodged at Assize time. He had left Mrs. Wilson at the dwelling of a friend of his, who had offered him a room for the old woman and Mary: a room which had frequently been his, on his occasional visits to Liverpool, but which he was thankful now to have obtained for them, as his own sleeping-place was a matter of indifference to him, and the town appeared crowded and disorderly on the eve of the Assizes. He was shown in to Mr. Bridgenorth, who was writing. Mary and Will Wilson had not yet arrived, being, as you know, far away on the broad sea; but of this Job of course knew nothing, and he did not as yet feel much anxiety about their non-appearance; he was more curious to know the result of Mr. Bridgenorth's interview that morning with Jem. "Why, yes," said Mr. Bridgenorth, putting down his pen, "I have seen him, but to little purpose, I'm afraid. He's very impracticable--very. I told him, of course, that he must be perfectly open with me, or else I could not be prepared for the weak points. I named your name with the view of unlocking his confidence, but--" "What did he say?" asked Job, breathlessly. "Why, very little. He barely answered me. Indeed, he refused to answer some questions--positively refused. I don't know what I can do for him." "Then you think him guilty, sir?" said Job, despondingly. "No, I don't," replied Mr. Bridgenorth, quickly and decisively. "Much less than I did before I saw him. The impression (mind, 'tis only impression; I rely upon your caution, not to take it for fact)--the impression," with an emphasis on the word, "he gave me is, that he knows something about the affair, but what, he will not say; and so the chances are, if he persists in his obstinacy, he'll be hung. That's all." He began to write again, for he had no time to lose. "But he must not be hung," said Job, with vehemence. Mr. Bridgenorth looked up, smiled a little, but shook his head. "What did he say, sir, if I may be so bold as to ask?" continued Job. "His words were few enough, and he was so reserved and short, that as I said before, I can only give you the impression they conveyed to me. I told him of course who I was, and for what I was sent. He looked pleased, I thought,--at least his face (sad enough when I went in, I assure ye) brightened a little; but he said he had nothing to say, no defence to make. I asked him if he was guilty, then; and by way of opening his heart I said I understood he had had provocation enough, inasmuch as I heard that the girl was very lovely, and had jilted him to fall desperately in love with that handsome young Carson (poor fellow!). But James Wilson did not speak one way or another. I then went to particulars. I asked him if the gun was his, as his mother had declared. He had not heard of her admission it was evident, from his quick way of looking up, and the glance of his eye; but when he saw I was observing him, he hung down his head again, and merely said she was right; it was his gun." "Well!" said Job, impatiently, as Mr. Bridgenorth paused. "Nay! I have little more to tell you," continued that gentleman. "I asked him to inform me in all confidence, how it came to be found there. He was silent for a time, and then refused. Not only refused to answer that question, but candidly told me he would not say another word on the subject, and, thanking me for my trouble and interest in his behalf, he all but dismissed me. Ungracious enough on the whole, was it not, Mr. Legh? And yet, I assure ye, I am twenty times more inclined to think him innocent than before I had the interview." "I wish Mary Barton would come," said Job, anxiously. "She and Will are a long time about it." "Ay, that's our only chance, I believe," answered Mr. Bridgenorth, who was writing again. "I sent Johnson off before twelve to serve him with his sub-poena, and to say I wanted to speak with him; he'll be here soon, I've no doubt." There was a pause. Mr. Bridgenorth looked up again, and spoke. "Mr. Duncombe promised to be here to speak to his character. I sent him a subpoena on Saturday night. Though after all, juries go very little by such general and vague testimony as that to character. It is very right that they should not often; but in this instance unfortunate for us, as we must rest our case on the _alibi_." The pen went again, scratch, scratch over the paper. Job grew very fidgetty. He sat on the edge of his chair, the more readily to start up when Will and Mary should appear. He listened intently to every noise and every step on the stair. Once he heard a man's footstep, and his old heart gave a leap of delight. But it was only Mr. Bridgenorth's clerk, bringing him a list of those cases in which the grand jury had found true bills. He glanced it over and pushed it to Job, merely saying, "Of course we expected this," and went on with his writing. There was a true bill against James Wilson. Of course. And yet Job felt now doubly anxious and sad. It seemed the beginning of the end. He had got, by imperceptible degrees, to think Jem innocent. Little by little this persuasion had come upon him. Mary (tossing about in the little boat on the broad river) did not come, nor did Will. Job grew very restless. He longed to go and watch for them out of the window, but feared to interrupt Mr. Bridgenorth. At length his desire to look out was irresistible, and he got up and walked carefully and gently across the room, his boots creaking at every cautious step. The gloom which had overspread the sky, and the influence of which had been felt by Mary on the open water, was yet more perceptible in the dark, dull street. Job grew more and more fidgetty. He was obliged to walk about the room, for he could not keep still; and he did so, regardless of Mr. Bridgenorth's impatient little motions and noises, as the slow, stealthy, creaking movements were heard, backwards and forwards, behind his chair. He really liked Job, and was interested for Jem, else his nervousness would have overcome his sympathy long before it did. But he could hold out no longer against the monotonous, grating sound; so at last he threw down his pen, locked his portfolio, and taking up his hat and gloves, he told Job he must go to the courts. "But Will Wilson is not come," said Job, in dismay. "Just wait while I run to his lodgings. I would have done it before, but I thought they'd be here every minute, and I were afraid of missing them. I'll be back in no time." "No, my good fellow, I really must go. Besides, I begin to think Johnson must have made a mistake, and have fixed with this William Wilson to meet me at the courts. If you like to wait for him here, pray make use of my room; but I've a notion I shall find him there: in which case, I'll send him to your lodgings; shall I? You know where to find me. I shall be here again by eight o'clock, and with the evidence of this witness that's to prove the _alibi_, I'll have the brief drawn out, and in the hands of counsel to-night." So saying he shook hands with Job, and went his way. The old man considered for a minute as he lingered at the door, and then bent his steps towards Mrs. Jones's, where he knew (from reference to queer, odd, heterogeneous memoranda, in an ancient black-leather pocket-book) that Will lodged, and where he doubted not he should hear both of him and of Mary. He went there, and gathered what intelligence he could out of Mrs. Jones's slow replies. He asked if a young woman had been there that morning, and if she had seen Will Wilson. "No!" "Why not?" "Why, bless you, 'cause he had sailed some hours before she came asking for him." There was a dead silence, broken only by the even, heavy sound of Mrs. Jones's ironing. "Where is the young woman now?" asked Job. "Somewhere down at the docks," she thought. "Charley would know, if he was in, but he wasn't. He was in mischief, somewhere or other, she had no doubt. Boys always were. He would break his neck some day, she knew;" so saying, she quietly spat upon her fresh iron, to test its heat, and then went on with her business. Job could have boxed her, he was in such a state of irritation. But he did not, and he had his reward. Charley came in, whistling with an air of indifference, assumed to carry off his knowledge of the lateness of the hour to which he had lingered about the docks. "Here's an old man come to know where the young woman is who went out with thee this morning," said his mother, after she had bestowed on him a little motherly scolding. "Where she is now, I don't know. I saw her last sailing down the river after the _John Cropper_. I'm afeared she won't reach her; wind changed and she would be under weigh, and over the bar in no time. She should have been back by now." It took Job some little time to understand this, from the confused use of the feminine pronoun. Then he inquired how he could best find Mary. "I'll run down again to the pier," said the boy; "I'll warrant I'll find her." "Thou shalt do no such a thing," said his mother, setting her back against the door. The lad made a comical face at Job, which met with no responsive look from the old man, whose sympathies were naturally in favour of the parent; although he would thankfully have availed himself of Charley's offer, for he was weary, and anxious to return to poor Mrs. Wilson, who would be wondering what had become of him. "How can I best find her? Who did she go with, lad?" But Charley was sullen at his mother's exercise of authority before a stranger, and at that stranger's grave looks when he meant to have made him laugh. "They were river boatmen;--that's all I know," said he. "But what was the name of their boat?" persevered Job. "I never took no notice;--the Anne, or William,--or some of them common names, I'll be bound." "What pier did she start from?" asked Job, despairingly. "Oh, as for that matter, it were the stairs on the Prince's Pier she started from; but she'll not come back to the same, for the American steamer came up with the tide, and anchored close to it, blocking up the way for all the smaller craft. It's a rough evening too, to be out on," he maliciously added. "Well, God's will be done! I did hope we could have saved the lad," said Job, sorrowfully; "but I'm getten very doubtful again. I'm uneasy about Mary, too,--very. She's a stranger in Liverpool." "So she told me," said Charley. "There's traps about for young women at every corner. It's a pity she's no one to meet her when she lands." "As for that," replied Job, "I don't see how any one could meet her when we can't tell where she would come to. I must trust to her coming right. She's getten spirit and sense. She'll most likely be for coming here again. Indeed, I don't know what else she can do, for she knows no other place in Liverpool. Missus, if she comes, will you give your son leave to bring her to No. 8, Back Garden Court, where there's friends waiting for her? I'll give him sixpence for his trouble." Mrs. Jones, pleased with the reference to her, gladly promised. And even Charley, indignant as he was at first at the idea of his motions being under the control of his mother, was mollified at the prospect of the sixpence, and at the probability of getting nearer to the heart of the mystery. But Mary never came. CHAPTER XXX. JOB LEGH'S DECEPTION. "Poor Susan moans, poor Susan groans; The clock gives warning for eleven; 'Tis on the stroke--'He must be near,' Quoth Betty, 'and will soon be here, As sure as there's a moon in heaven.' The clock is on the stroke of twelve, And Johnny is not yet in sight, --The moon's in heaven, as Betty sees, But Betty is not quite at ease; And Susan has a dreadful night." WORDSWORTH. Job found Mrs. Wilson pacing about in a restless way; not speaking to the woman at whose house she was staying, but occasionally heaving such deep oppressive sighs as quite startled those around her. "Well!" said she, turning sharp round in her tottering walk up and down, as Job came in. "Well, speak!" repeated she, before he could make up his mind what to say; for, to tell the truth, he was studying for some kind-hearted lie which might soothe her for a time. But now the real state of the case came blurting forth in answer to her impatient questioning. "Will's not to the fore. But he'll may be turn up yet, time enough." She looked at him steadily for a minute, as if almost doubting if such despair could be in store for her as his words seemed to imply. Then she slowly shook her head, and said, more quietly than might have been expected from her previous excited manner, "Don't go for to say that! Thou dost not think it. Thou'rt well-nigh hopeless, like me. I seed all along my lad would be hung for what he never did. And better he were, and were shut [49] of this weary world, where there's neither justice nor mercy left." [Footnote 49: "Shut," quit.] She looked up with tranced eyes as if praying to that throne where mercy ever abideth, and then sat down. "Nay, now thou'rt off at a gallop," said Job. "Will has sailed this morning for sure, but that brave wench, Mary Barton, is after him, and will bring him back, I'll be bound, if she can but get speech on him. She's not back yet. Come, come, hold up thy head. It will all end right." "It will all end right," echoed she; "but not as thou tak'st it. Jem will be hung, and will go to his father and the little lads, where the Lord God wipes away all tears, and where the Lord Jesus speaks kindly to the little ones, who look about for the mothers they left upon earth. Eh, Job, yon's a blessed land, and I long to go to it, and yet I fret because Jem is hastening there. I would not fret if he and I could lie down to-night to sleep our last sleep; not a bit would I fret if folk would but know him to be innocent--as I do." "They'll know it sooner or later, and repent sore if they've hanged him for what he never did," replied Job. "Ay, that they will. Poor souls! May God have mercy on them when they find out their mistake." Presently Job grew tired of sitting waiting, and got up, and hung about the door and window, like some animal wanting to go out. It was pitch dark, for the moon had not yet risen. "You just go to bed," said he to the widow. "You'll want your strength for to-morrow. Jem will be sadly off, if he sees you so cut up as you look to-night. I'll step down again and find Mary. She'll be back by this time. I'll come and tell you every thing, never fear. But, now, you go to bed." "Thou'rt a kind friend, Job Legh, and I'll go, as thou wishest me. But, oh! mind thou com'st straight off to me, and bring Mary as soon as thou'st lit on her." She spoke low, but very calmly. "Ay, ay!" replied Job, slipping out of the house. He went first to Mr. Bridgenorth's, where it had struck him that Will and Mary might be all this time waiting for him. They were not there, however. Mr. Bridgenorth had just come in, and Job went breathlessly up-stairs to consult with him as to the state of the case. "It's a bad job," said the lawyer, looking very grave, while he arranged his papers. "Johnson told me how it was; the woman that Wilson lodged with told him. I doubt it's but a wild-goose chase of the girl Barton. Our case must rest on the uncertainty of circumstantial evidence, and the goodness of the prisoner's previous character. A very vague and weak defence. However, I've engaged Mr. Clinton as counsel, and he'll make the best of it. And now, my good fellow, I must wish you good-night, and turn you out of doors. As it is, I shall have to sit up into the small hours. Did you see my clerk as you came up-stairs? You did! Then may I trouble you to ask him to step up immediately?" After this Job could not stay, and, making his humble bow, he left the room. Then he went to Mrs. Jones's. She was in, but Charley had slipped off again. There was no holding that boy. Nothing kept him but lock and key, and they did not always; for once she had him locked up in the garret, and he had got off through the skylight. Perhaps now he was gone to see after the young woman down at the docks. He never wanted an excuse to be there. Unasked, Job took a chair, resolved to await Charley's re-appearance. Mrs. Jones ironed and folded her clothes, talking all the time of Charley and her husband, who was a sailor in some ship bound for India, and who, in leaving her their boy, had evidently left her rather more than she could manage. She moaned and croaked over sailors, and sea-port towns, and stormy weather, and sleepless nights, and trousers all over tar and pitch, long after Job had left off attending to her, and was only trying to hearken to every step and every voice in the street. At last Charley came in, but he came alone. "Yon Mary Barton has getten into some scrape or another," said he, addressing himself to Job. "She's not to be heard of at any of the piers; and Bourne says it were a boat from the Cheshire side as she went aboard of. So there's no hearing of her till to-morrow morning." "To-morrow morning she'll have to be in court at nine o'clock, to bear witness on a trial," said Job, sorrowfully. "So she said; at least somewhat of the kind," said Charley, looking desirous to hear more. But Job was silent. He could not think of any thing further that could be done; so he rose up, and, thanking Mrs. Jones for the shelter she had given him, he went out into the street; and there he stood still, to ponder over probabilities and chances. After some little time he slowly turned towards the lodging where he had left Mrs. Wilson. There was nothing else to be done; but he loitered on the way, fervently hoping that her weariness and her woes might have sent her to sleep before his return, that he might be spared her questionings. He went very gently into the house-place where the sleepy landlady awaited his coming and his bringing the girl, who, she had been told, was to share the old woman's bed. But in her sleepy blindness she knocked things so about in lighting the candle (she could see to have a nap by fire-light, she said), that the voice of Mrs. Wilson was heard from the little back-room, where she was to pass the night. "Who's there?" Job gave no answer, and kept down his breath, that she might think herself mistaken. The landlady, having no such care, dropped the snuffers with a sharp metallic sound, and then, by her endless apologies, convinced the listening woman that Job had returned. "Job! Job Legh!" she cried out, nervously. "Eh, dear!" said Job to himself, going reluctantly to her bed-room door. "I wonder if one little lie would be a sin as things stand? It would happen give her sleep, and she won't have sleep for many and many a night (not to call sleep), if things goes wrong to-morrow. I'll chance it, any way." "Job! art thou there?" asked she again with a trembling impatience that told in every tone of her voice. "Ay! sure! I thought thou'd ha' been asleep by this time." "Asleep! How could I sleep till I knowed if Will were found?" "Now for it," muttered Job to himself. Then in a louder voice, "Never fear! he's found, and safe, ready for to-morrow." "And he'll prove that thing for my poor lad, will he? He'll bear witness that Jem were with him? Oh, Job, speak! tell me all!" "In for a penny, in for a pound," thought Job. "Happen one prayer will do for the sum total. Any rate, I must go on now.--Ay, ay," shouted he, through the door. "He can prove all; and Jem will come off as clear as a new-born babe." He could hear Mrs. Wilson's rustling movements, and in an instant guessed she was on her knees, for he heard her trembling voice uplifted in thanksgiving and praise to God, stopped at times by sobs of gladness and relief. And when he heard this, his heart misgave him; for he thought of the awful enlightening, the terrible revulsion of feeling that awaited her in the morning. He saw the short-sightedness of falsehood; but what could he do now? While he listened, she ended her grateful prayers. "And Mary? Thou'st found her at Mrs. Jones's, Job?" said she, continuing her inquiries. He gave a great sigh. "Yes, she was there, safe enough, second time of going.--God forgive me!" muttered he, "who'd ha' thought of my turning out such an arrant liar in my old days?" "Bless the wench! Is she here? Why does she not come to bed? I'm sure she's need." Job coughed away his remains of conscience, and made answer, "She was a bit weary, and o'er done with her sail; and Mrs. Jones axed her to stay there all night. It was nigh at hand to the courts, where she will have to be in the morning." "It comes easy enough after a while," groaned out Job. "The father of lies helps one, I suppose, for now my speech comes as natural as truth. She's done questioning now, that's one good thing. I'll be off before Satan and she are at me again." He went to the house-place, where the landlady stood wearily waiting. Her husband was in bed, and asleep long ago. But Job had not yet made up his mind what to do. He could not go to sleep, with all his anxieties, if he were put into the best bed in Liverpool. "Thou'lt let me sit up in this arm-chair," said he at length to the woman, who stood, expecting his departure. He was an old friend, so she let him do as he wished. But, indeed, she was too sleepy to have opposed him. She was too glad to be released and go to bed. CHAPTER XXXI. HOW MARY PASSED THE NIGHT. "To think That all this long interminable night, Which I have passed in thinking on two words-- 'Guilty'--'Not Guilty!'--like one happy moment O'er many a head hath flown unheeded by; O'er happy sleepers dreaming in their bliss Of bright to-morrows--or far happier still, With deep breath buried in forgetfulness. O all the dismallest images of death Did swim before my eyes!" WILSON. And now, where was Mary? How Job's heart would have been relieved of one of its cares if he could have seen her: for he was in a miserable state of anxiety about her; and many and many a time through that long night he scolded her and himself; her for her obstinacy, and himself for his weakness in yielding to her obstinacy, when she insisted on being the one to follow and find out Will. She did not pass that night in bed any more than Job; but she was under a respectable roof, and among kind, though rough people. She had offered no resistance to the old boatman, when he had clutched her arm, in order to insure her following him, as he threaded the crowded dock-ways, and dived up strange bye-streets. She came on meekly after him, scarcely thinking in her stupor where she was going, and glad (in a dead, heavy way) that some one was deciding things for her. He led her to an old-fashioned house, almost as small as house could be, which had been built long ago, before all the other part of the street, and had a country-town look about it in the middle of that bustling back street. He pulled her into the house-place; and relieved to a certain degree of his fear of losing her on the way, he exclaimed, "There!" giving a great slap of one hand on her back. The room was light and bright, and roused Mary (perhaps the slap on her back might help a little, too), and she felt the awkwardness of accounting for her presence to a little bustling old woman who had been moving about the fire-place on her entrance. The boatman took it very quietly, never deigning to give any explanation, but sitting down in his own particular chair, and chewing tobacco, while he looked at Mary with the most satisfied air imaginable, half triumphantly, as if she were the captive of his bow and spear, and half defyingly, as if daring her to escape. The old woman, his wife, stood still, poker in hand, waiting to be told who it was that her husband had brought home so unceremoniously; but, as she looked in amazement the girl's cheek flushed, and then blanched to a dead whiteness; a film came over her eyes, and catching at the dresser for support in that hot whirling room, she fell in a heap on the floor. Both man and wife came quickly to her assistance. They raised her up, still insensible, and he supported her on one knee, while his wife pattered away for some cold fresh water. She threw it straight over Mary; but though it caused a great sob, the eyes still remained closed, and the face as pale as ashes. "Who is she, Ben?" asked the woman, as she rubbed her unresisting, powerless hands. "How should I know?" answered her husband gruffly. "Well-a-well!" (in a soothing tone, such as you use to irritated children), and as if half to herself, "I only thought you might, you know, as you brought her home. Poor thing! we must not ask aught about her, but that she needs help. I wish I'd my salts at home, but I lent 'em to Mrs. Burton, last Sunday in church, for she could not keep awake through the sermon. Dear-a-me, how white she is!" "Here! you hold her up a bit," said her husband. She did as he desired, still crooning to herself, not caring for his short, sharp interruptions as she went on; and, indeed, to her old, loving heart, his crossest words fell like pearls and diamonds, for he had been the husband of her youth; and even he, rough and crabbed as he was, was secretly soothed by the sound of her voice, although not for worlds, if he could have helped it, would he have shown any of the love that was hidden beneath his rough outside. "What's the old fellow after?" said she, bending over Mary, so as to accommodate the drooping head. "Taking my pen, as I've had better nor five year. Bless us, and save us! he's burning it! Ay, I see now, he's his wits about him; burnt feathers is always good for a faint. But they don't bring her round, poor wench! Now what's he after next? Well! he is a bright one, my old man! That I never thought of that, to be sure!" exclaimed she, as he produced a square bottle of smuggled spirits, labelled "Golden Wasser," from a corner cupboard in their little room. "That'll do!" said she, as the dose he poured into Mary's open mouth made her start and cough. "Bless the man! It's just like him to be so tender and thoughtful!" "Not a bit!" snarled he, as he was relieved by Mary's returning colour, and opened eyes, and wondering, sensible gaze; "not a bit! I never was such a fool afore." His wife helped Mary to rise, and placed her in a chair. "All's right now, young woman?" asked the boatman, anxiously. "Yes, sir, and thank you. I'm sure, sir, I don't know rightly how to thank you," faltered Mary, softly forth. "Be hanged to you and your thanks." And he shook himself, took his pipe, and went out without deigning another word; leaving his wife sorely puzzled as to the character and history of the stranger within her doors. Mary watched the boatman leave the house, and then, turning her sorrowful eyes to the face of her hostess, she attempted feebly to rise, with the intention of going away,--where she knew not. "Nay! nay! who e'er thou be'st, thou'rt not fit to go out into the street. Perhaps" (sinking her voice a little) "thou'rt a bad one; I almost misdoubt thee, thou'rt so pretty. Well-a-well! it's the bad ones as have the broken hearts, sure enough; good folk never get utterly cast down, they've always getten hope in the Lord: it's the sinful as bear the bitter, bitter grief in their crushed hearts, poor souls; it's them we ought, most of all, to pity and to help. She shanna leave the house to-night, choose who she is,--worst woman in Liverpool, she shanna. I wished I knew where th' old man picked her up, that I do." Mary had listened feebly to this soliloquy, and now tried to satisfy her hostess in weak, broken sentences. "I'm not a bad one, missis, indeed. Your master took me out to sea after a ship as had sailed. There was a man in it as might save a life at the trial to-morrow. The captain would not let him come, but he says he'll come back in the pilot-boat." She fell to sobbing at the thought of her waning hopes, and the old woman tried to comfort her, beginning with her accustomed, "Well-a-well! and he'll come back, I'm sure. I know he will; so keep up your heart. Don't fret about it. He's sure to be back." "Oh! I'm afraid! I'm sore afraid he won't," cried Mary, consoled, nevertheless, by the woman's assertions, all groundless as she knew them to be. Still talking half to herself and half to Mary, the old woman prepared tea, and urged her visitor to eat and refresh herself. But Mary shook her head at the proffered food, and only drank a cup of tea with thirsty eagerness. For the spirits had thrown her into a burning heat, and rendered each impression received through her senses of the most painful distinctness and intensity, while her head ached in a terrible manner. She disliked speaking, her power over her words seemed so utterly gone. She used quite different expressions to those she intended. So she kept silent, while Mrs. Sturgis (for that was the name of her hostess) talked away, and put her tea-things by, and moved about incessantly, in a manner that increased the dizziness in Mary's head. She felt as if she ought to take leave for the night and go. But where? Presently the old man came back, crosser and gruffer than when he went away. He kicked aside the dry shoes his wife had prepared for him, and snarled at all she said. Mary attributed this to his finding her still there, and gathered up her strength for an effort to leave the house. But she was mistaken. By-and-bye, he said (looking right into the fire, as if addressing it), "Wind's right against them!" "Ay, ay, and is it so?" said his wife, who, knowing him well, knew that his surliness proceeded from some repressed sympathy. "Well-a-well, wind changes often at night. Time enough before morning. I'd bet a penny it has changed sin' thou looked." She looked out of their little window at a weather-cock, near, glittering in the moonlight; and as she was a sailor's wife, she instantly recognised the unfavourable point at which the indicator seemed stationary, and giving a heavy sigh, turned into the room, and began to beat about in her own mind for some other mode of comfort. "There's no one else who can prove what you want at the trial to-morrow, is there?" asked she. "No one!" answered Mary. "And you've no clue to the one as is really guilty, if t'other is not?" Mary did not answer, but trembled all over. Sturgis saw it. "Don't bother her with thy questions," said he to his wife. "She mun go to bed, for she's all in a shiver with the sea air. I'll see after the wind, hang it, and the weather-cock, too. Tide will help 'em when it turns." Mary went up-stairs murmuring thanks and blessings on those who took the stranger in. Mrs. Sturgis led her into a little room redolent of the sea and foreign lands. There was a small bed for one son, bound for China; and a hammock slung above for another, who was now tossing in the Baltic. The sheets looked made out of sail-cloth, but were fresh and clean in spite of their brownness. Against the wall were wafered two rough drawings of vessels with their names written underneath, on which the mother's eyes caught, and gazed until they filled with tears. But she brushed the drops away with the back of her hand, and in a cheerful tone went on to assure Mary the bed was well aired. "I cannot sleep, thank you. I will sit here, if you please," said Mary, sinking down on the window-seat. "Come, now," said Mrs. Sturgis, "my master told me to see you to bed, and I mun. What's the use of watching? A watched pot never boils, and I see you are after watching that weather-cock. Why now, I try never to look at it, else I could do nought else. My heart many a time goes sick when the wind rises, but I turn away and work away, and try never to think on the wind, but on what I ha' getten to do." "Let me stay up a little," pleaded Mary, as her hostess seemed so resolute about seeing her to bed. Her looks won her suit. "Well, I suppose I mun. I shall catch it down stairs, I know. He'll be in a fidget till you're getten to bed, I know; so you mun be quiet if you are so bent upon staying up." And quietly, noiselessly, Mary watched the unchanging weather-cock through the night. She sat on the little window-seat, her hand holding back the curtain which shaded the room from the bright moonlight without; her head resting its weariness against the corner of the window-frame; her eyes burning and stiff with the intensity of her gaze. The ruddy morning stole up the horizon, casting a crimson glow into the watcher's room. It was the morning of the day of trial! CHAPTER XXXII. THE TRIAL AND VERDICT--"NOT GUILTY." "Thou stand'st here arraign'd, That, with presumption impious and accursed, Thou hast usurp'd God's high prerogative, Making thy fellow mortal's life and death Wait on thy moody and diseased passions; That with a violent and untimely steel Hast set abroach the blood that should have ebbed In calm and natural current: to sum all In one wild name--a name the pale air freezes at, And every cheek of man sinks in with horror-- Thou art a cold and midnight murderer." MILMAN'S "FAZIO." Of all the restless people who found that night's hours agonising from excess of anxiety, the poor father of the murdered man was perhaps the most restless. He had slept but little since the blow had fallen; his waking hours had been too full of agitated thought, which seemed to haunt and pursue him through his unquiet slumbers. And this night of all others was the most sleepless. He turned over and over again in his mind the wonder if every thing had been done that could be done, to insure the conviction of Jem Wilson. He almost regretted the haste with which he had urged forward the proceedings, and yet until he had obtained vengeance, he felt as if there was no peace on earth for him (I don't know that he exactly used the term vengeance in his thoughts; he spoke of justice, and probably thought of his desired end as such); no peace either bodily or mental, for he moved up and down his bedroom with the restless incessant tramp of a wild beast in a cage, and if he compelled his aching limbs to cease for an instant, the twitchings which ensued almost amounted to convulsions, and he re-commenced his walk as the lesser evil, and the more bearable fatigue. With daylight increased power of action came; and he drove off to arouse his attorney, and worry him with further directions and inquiries; and when that was ended, he sat, watch in hand, until the courts should be opened, and the trial begin. What were all the living,--wife or daughters,--what were they in comparison with the dead,--the murdered son who lay unburied still, in compliance with his father's earnest wish, and almost vowed purpose of having the slayer of his child sentenced to death, before he committed the body to the rest of the grave? At nine o'clock they all met at their awful place of _rendezvous_. The judge, the jury, the avenger of blood, the prisoner, the witnesses--all were gathered together within one building. And besides these were many others, personally interested in some part of the proceedings, in which, however, they took no part; Job Legh, Ben Sturgis, and several others were there, amongst whom was Charley Jones. Job Legh had carefully avoided any questioning from Mrs. Wilson that morning. Indeed he had not been much in her company, for he had risen up early to go out once more to make inquiry for Mary; and when he could hear nothing of her, he had desperately resolved not to undeceive Mrs. Wilson, as sorrow never came too late; and if the blow were inevitable, it would be better to leave her in ignorance of the impending evil as long as possible. She took her place in the witness-room, worn and dispirited, but not anxious. As Job struggled through the crowd into the body of the court, Mr. Bridgenorth's clerk beckoned to him. "Here's a letter for you from our client!" Job sickened as he took it. He did not know why, but he dreaded a confession of guilt, which would be an overthrow of all hope. The letter ran as follows. DEAR FRIEND,--I thank you heartily for your goodness in finding me a lawyer, but lawyers can do no good to me, whatever they may do to other people. But I am not the less obliged to you, dear friend. I foresee things will go against me--and no wonder. If I was a jury-man, I should say the man was guilty as had as much evidence brought against him as may be brought against me to-morrow. So it's no blame to them if they do. But, Job Legh, I think I need not tell you I am as guiltless in this matter as the babe unborn, although it is not in my power to prove it. If I did not believe that you thought me innocent, I could not write as I do now to tell you my wishes. You'll not forget they are the wishes of a man shortly to die. Dear friend, you must take care of my mother. Not in the money way, for she will have enough for her and Aunt Alice; but you must let her talk to you of me; and show her that (whatever others may do) you think I died innocent. I don't reckon she will stay long behind when we are all gone. Be tender with her, Job, for my sake; and if she is a bit fractious at times, remember what she has gone through. I know mother will never doubt me, God bless her. There is one other whom I fear I have loved too dearly; and yet, the loving her has made the happiness of my life. She will think I have murdered her lover; she will think I have caused the grief she must be feeling. And she must go on thinking so. It is hard upon me to say this; but she _must_. It will be best for her, and that's all I ought to think on. But, dear Job, you are a hearty fellow for your time of life, and may live a many years to come; and perhaps you could tell her, when you felt sure you were drawing near your end, that I solemnly told you (as I do now) that I was innocent of this thing. You must not tell her for many years to come; but I cannot well bear to think on her living through a long life, and hating the thought of me as the murderer of him she loved, and dying with that hatred to me in her heart. It would hurt me sore in the other world to see the look of it in her face, as it would be, till she was told. I must not let myself think on how she must be viewing me now. So God bless you, Job Legh; and no more from Yours to command, JAMES WILSON. Job turned the letter over and over when he had read it; sighed deeply; and then wrapping it carefully up in a bit of newspaper he had about him, he put it in his waistcoat pocket, and went off to the door of the witness-room to ask if Mary Barton were there. As the door opened he saw her sitting within, against a table on which her folded arms were resting, and her head was hidden within them. It was an attitude of hopelessness, and would have served to strike Job dumb in sickness of heart, even without the sound of Mrs. Wilson's voice in passionate sobbing, and sore lamentations, which told him as well as words could do (for she was not within view of the door, and he did not care to go in), that she was at any rate partially undeceived as to the hopes he had given her last night. Sorrowfully did Job return into the body of the court; neither Mrs. Wilson nor Mary having seen him as he had stood at the witness-room door. As soon as he could bring his distracted thoughts to bear upon the present scene, he perceived that the trial of James Wilson for the murder of Henry Carson was just commencing. The clerk was gabbling over the indictment, and in a minute or two there was the accustomed question, "How say you, Guilty, or Not Guilty?" Although but one answer was expected,--was customary in all cases,--there was a pause of dead silence, an interval of solemnity even in this hackneyed part of the proceeding; while the prisoner at the bar stood with compressed lips, looking at the judge with his outward eyes, but with far other and different scenes presented to his mental vision;--a sort of rapid recapitulation of his life,--remembrances of his childhood,--his father (so proud of him, his first-born child),--his sweet little playfellow, Mary,--his hopes, his love,--his despair, yet still, yet ever and ever, his love,--the blank, wide world it had been without her love,--his mother,--his childless mother,--but not long to be so,--not long to be away from all she loved,--nor during that time to be oppressed with doubt as to his innocence, sure and secure of her darling's heart;--he started from his instant's pause, and said in a low firm voice, "Not guilty, my lord." The circumstances of the murder, the discovery of the body, the causes of suspicion against Jem, were as well known to most of the audience as they are to you, so there was some little buzz of conversation going on among the people while the leading counsel for the prosecution made his very effective speech. "That's Mr. Carson, the father, sitting behind Serjeant Wilkinson!" "What a noble-looking old man he is! so stern and inflexible, with such classical features! Does he not remind you of some of the busts of Jupiter?" "I am more interested by watching the prisoner. Criminals always interest me. I try to trace in the features common to humanity some expression of the crimes by which they have distinguished themselves from their kind. I have seen a good number of murderers in my day, but I have seldom seen one with such marks of Cain on his countenance as the man at the bar." "Well, I am no physiognomist, but I don't think his face strikes me as bad. It certainly is gloomy and depressed, and not unnaturally so, considering his situation." "Only look at his low, resolute brow, his downcast eye, his white compressed lips. He never looks up,--just watch him." "His forehead is not so low if he had that mass of black hair removed, and is very square, which some people say is a good sign. If others are to be influenced by such trifles as you are, it would have been much better if the prison barber had cut his hair a little previous to the trial; and as for down-cast eye, and compressed lip, it is all part and parcel of his inward agitation just now; nothing to do with character, my good fellow." Poor Jem! His raven hair (his mother's pride, and so often fondly caressed by her fingers), was that too to have its influence against him? The witnesses were called. At first they consisted principally of policemen; who, being much accustomed to giving evidence, knew what were the material points they were called on to prove, and did not lose the time of the court in listening to any thing unnecessary. "Clear as day against the prisoner," whispered one attorney's clerk to another. "Black as night, you mean," replied his friend; and they both smiled. "Jane Wilson! who's she? some relation, I suppose, from the name." "The mother,--she that is to prove the gun part of the case." "Oh, ay--I remember! Rather hard on her, too, I think." Then both were silent, as one of the officers of the court ushered Mrs. Wilson into the witness-box. I have often called her "the old woman," and "an old woman," because, in truth, her appearance was so much beyond her years, which might not be many above fifty. But partly owing to her accident in early life, which left a stamp of pain upon her face, partly owing to her anxious temper, partly to her sorrows, and partly to her limping gait, she always gave me the idea of age. But now she might have seemed more than seventy; her lines were so set and deep, her features so sharpened, and her walk so feeble. She was trying to check her sobs into composure, and (unconsciously) was striving to behave as she thought would best please her poor boy, whom she knew she had often grieved by her uncontrolled impatience. He had buried his face in his arms, which rested on the front of the dock (an attitude he retained during the greater part of his trial, and which prejudiced many against him). The counsel began the examination. "Your name is Jane Wilson, I believe." "Yes, sir." "The mother of the prisoner at the bar?" "Yes, sir;" with quivering voice, ready to break out into weeping, but earning respect by the strong effort at self-control, prompted, as I have said before, by her earnest wish to please her son by her behaviour. The barrister now proceeded to the important part of the examination, tending to prove that the gun found on the scene of the murder was the prisoner's. She had committed herself so fully to the policeman, that she could not well retract; so without much delay in bringing the question round to the desired point, the gun was produced in court, and the inquiry made-- "That gun belongs to your son, does it not?" She clenched the sides of the witness-box in her efforts to make her parched tongue utter words. At last she moaned forth, "Oh! Jem, Jem! what mun I say?" Every one bent forward to hear the prisoner's answer; although, in fact, it was of little importance to the issue of the trial. He lifted up his head; and with a face brimming full of pity for his mother, yet resolved into endurance, said, "Tell the truth, mother!" And so she did, with the fidelity of a little child. Every one felt that she did; and the little colloquy between mother and son did them some slight service in the opinion of the audience. But the awful judge sat unmoved; and the jurymen changed not a muscle of their countenances; while the counsel for the prosecution went triumphantly through this part of the case, including the fact of Jem's absence from home on the night of the murder, and bringing every admission to bear right against the prisoner. It was over. She was told to go down. But she could no longer compel her mother's heart to keep silence, and suddenly turning towards the judge (with whom she imagined the verdict to rest), she thus addressed him with her choking voice. "And now, sir, I've telled you the truth, and the whole truth, as _he_ bid me; but don't ye let what I have said go for to hang him; oh, my lord judge, take my word for it, he's as innocent as the child as has yet to be born. For sure, I, who am his mother, and have nursed him on my knee, and been gladdened by the sight of him every day since, ought to know him better than yon pack of fellows" (indicating the jury, while she strove against her heart to render her words distinct and clear for her dear son's sake) "who, I'll go bail, never saw him before this morning in all their born days. My lord judge, he's so good I often wondered what harm there was in him; many is the time when I've been fretted (for I'm frabbit enough at times), when I've scold't myself, and said, 'You ungrateful thing, the Lord God has given you Jem, and isn't that blessing enough for you?' But He has seen fit to punish me. If Jem is--if Jem is--taken from me, I shall be a childless woman; and very poor, having nought left to love on earth, and I cannot say 'His will be done.' I cannot, my lord judge, oh, I cannot." While sobbing out these words she was led away by the officers of the court, but tenderly, and reverently, with the respect which great sorrow commands. The stream of evidence went on and on, gathering fresh force from every witness who was examined, and threatening to overwhelm poor Jem. Already they had proved that the gun was his, that he had been heard not many days before the commission of the deed to threaten the deceased; indeed, that the police had, at that time, been obliged to interfere to prevent some probable act of violence. It only remained to bring forward a sufficient motive for the threat and the murder. The clue to this had been furnished by the policeman, who had overheard Jem's angry language to Mr. Carson; and his report in the first instance had occasioned the subpoena to Mary. And now she was to be called on to bear witness. The court was by this time almost as full as it could hold; but fresh attempts were being made to squeeze in at all the entrances, for many were anxious to see and hear this part of the trial. Old Mr. Carson felt an additional beat at his heart at the thought of seeing the fatal Helen, the cause of all--a kind of interest and yet repugnance, for was not she beloved by the dead; nay, perhaps in her way, loving and mourning for the same being that he himself was so bitterly grieving over? And yet he felt as if he abhorred her and her rumoured loveliness, as if she were the curse against him; and he grew jealous of the love with which she had inspired his son, and would fain have deprived her of even her natural right of sorrowing over her lover's untimely end: for you see it was a fixed idea in the minds of all, that the handsome, bright, gay, rich young gentleman must have been beloved in preference to the serious, almost stern-looking smith, who had to toil for his daily bread. Hitherto the effect of the trial had equalled Mr. Carson's most sanguine hopes, and a severe look of satisfaction came over the face of the avenger,--over that countenance whence the smile had departed, never more to return. All eyes were directed to the door through which the witnesses entered. Even Jem looked up to catch one glimpse before he hid his face from her look of aversion. The officer had gone to fetch her. She was in exactly the same attitude as when Job Legh had seen her two hours before through the half-open door. Not a finger had moved. The officer summoned her, but she did not stir. She was so still he thought she had fallen asleep, and he stepped forward and touched her. She started up in an instant, and followed him with a kind of rushing rapid motion into the court, into the witness-box. And amid all that sea of faces, misty and swimming before her eyes, she saw but two clear bright spots, distinct and fixed: the judge, who might have to condemn; and the prisoner, who might have to die. The mellow sunlight streamed down that high window on her head, and fell on the rich treasure of her golden hair, stuffed away in masses under her little bonnet-cap; and in those warm beams the motes kept dancing up and down. The wind had changed--had changed almost as soon as she had given up her watching; the wind had changed, and she heeded it not. Many who were looking for mere flesh and blood beauty, mere colouring, were disappointed; for her face was deadly white, and almost set in its expression, while a mournful bewildered soul looked out of the depths of those soft, deep, gray eyes. But others recognised a higher and stranger kind of beauty; one that would keep its hold on the memory for many after years. I was not there myself; but one who was, told me that her look, and indeed her whole face, was more like the well-known engraving from Guido's picture of "Beatrice Cenci" than any thing else he could give me an idea of. He added, that her countenance haunted him, like the remembrance of some wild sad melody, heard in childhood; that it would perpetually recur with its mute imploring agony. With all the court reeling before her (always save and except those awful two), she heard a voice speak, and answered the simple inquiry (something about her name) mechanically, as if in a dream. So she went on for two or three more questions, with a strange wonder in her brain, as to the reality of the terrible circumstances in which she was placed. Suddenly she was roused, she knew not how or by what. She was conscious that all was real, that hundreds were looking at her, that true-sounding words were being extracted from her; that that figure, so bowed down, with the face concealed by both hands, was really Jem. Her face flushed scarlet, and then paler than before. But in her dread of herself, with the tremendous secret imprisoned within her, she exerted every power she had to keep in the full understanding of what was going on, of what she was asked, and of what she answered. With all her faculties preternaturally alive and sensitive, she heard the next question from the pert young barrister, who was delighted to have the examination of this witness. "And pray, may I ask, which was the favoured lover? You say you knew both these young men. Which was the favoured lover? Which did you prefer?" And who was he, the questioner, that he should dare so lightly to ask of her heart's secrets? That he should dare to ask her to tell, before that multitude assembled there, what woman usually whispers with blushes and tears, and many hesitations, to one ear alone? So, for an instant, a look of indignation contracted Mary's brow, as she steadily met the eyes of the impertinent counsellor. But, in that instant, she saw the hands removed from a face beyond, behind; and a countenance revealed of such intense love and woe,--such a deprecating dread of her answer; and suddenly her resolution was taken. The present was everything; the future, that vast shroud, it was maddening to think upon; but _now_ she might own her fault, but _now_ she might even own her love. Now, when the beloved stood thus, abhorred of men, there would be no feminine shame to stand between her and her avowal. So she also turned towards the judge, partly to mark that her answer was not given to the monkeyfied man who questioned her, and likewise that her face might be averted from, and her eyes not gaze upon, the form that contracted with the dread of the words he anticipated. "He asks me which of them two I liked the best. Perhaps I liked Mr. Harry Carson once--I don't know--I've forgotten; but I loved James Wilson, that's now on trial, above what tongue can tell--above all else on earth put together; and I love him now better than ever, though he has never known a word of it till this minute. For you see, sir, mother died before I was thirteen, before I could know right from wrong about some things; and I was giddy and vain, and ready to listen to any praise of my good looks; and this poor young Mr. Carson fell in with me, and told me he loved me; and I was foolish enough to think he meant me marriage: a mother is a pitiful loss to a girl, sir; and so I used to fancy I could like to be a lady, and rich, and never know want any more. I never found out how dearly I loved another till one day, when James Wilson asked me to marry him, and I was very hard and sharp in my answer (for indeed, sir, I'd a deal to bear just then), and he took me at my word and left me; and from that day to this I've never spoken a word to him, or set eyes on him; though I'd fain have done so, to try and show him we had both been too hasty; for he'd not been gone out of my sight above a minute before I knew I loved--far above my life," said she, dropping her voice as she came to this second confession of the strength of her attachment. "But, if the gentleman asks me which I loved the best, I make answer, I was flattered by Mr. Carson, and pleased with his flattery; but James Wilson I--" She covered her face with her hands, to hide the burning scarlet blushes, which even dyed her fingers. There was a little pause; still, though her speech might inspire pity for the prisoner, it only strengthened the supposition of his guilt. Presently the counsellor went on with his examination. "But you have seen young Mr. Carson since your rejection of the prisoner?" "Yes, often." "You have spoken to him, I conclude, at these times." "Only once to call speaking." "And what was the substance of your conversation? Did you tell him you found you preferred his rival?" "No, sir. I don't think as I've done wrong in saying, now as things stand, what my feelings are; but I never would be so bold as to tell one young man I cared for another. I never named Jem's name to Mr. Carson. Never." "Then what did you say when you had this final conversation with Mr. Carson? You can give me the substance of it, if you don't remember the words." "I'll try, sir; but I'm not very clear. I told him I could not love him, and wished to have nothing more to do with him. He did his best to over-persuade me, but I kept steady, and at last I ran off." "And you never spoke to him again?" "Never!" "Now, young woman, remember you are upon your oath. Did you ever tell the prisoner at the bar of Mr. Henry Carson's attentions to you? of your acquaintance, in short? Did you ever try to excite his jealousy by boasting of a lover so far above you in station?" "Never. I never did," said she, in so firm and distinct a manner as to leave no doubt. "Were you aware that he knew of Mr. Henry Carson's regard for you? Remember you are on your oath!" "Never, sir. I was not aware until I heard of the quarrel between them, and what Jem had said to the policeman, and that was after the murder. To this day I can't make out who told Jem. Oh, sir, may not I go down?" For she felt the sense, the composure, the very bodily strength which she had compelled to her aid for a time, suddenly giving way, and was conscious that she was losing all command over herself. There was no occasion to detain her longer; she had done her part. She might go down. The evidence was still stronger against the prisoner; but now he stood erect and firm, with self-respect in his attitude, and a look of determination on his face, which almost made it appear noble. Yet he seemed lost in thought. Job Legh had all this time been trying to soothe and comfort Mrs. Wilson, who would first be in the court, in order to see her darling, and then, when her sobs became irrepressible, had to be led out into the open air, and sat there weeping, on the steps of the court-house. Who would have taken charge of Mary on her release from the witness-box I do not know, if Mrs. Sturgis, the boatman's wife, had not been there, brought by her interest in Mary, towards whom she now pressed, in order to urge her to leave the scene of the trial. "No! no!" said Mary, to this proposition. "I must be here, I must watch that they don't hang him, you know I must." "Oh! they'll not hang him! never fear! Besides the wind has changed, and that's in his favour. Come away. You're so hot, and first white and then red; I'm sure you're ill. Just come away." "Oh! I don't know about any thing but that I must stay," replied Mary, in a strange hurried manner, catching hold of some rails as if she feared some bodily force would be employed to remove her. So Mrs. Sturgis just waited patiently by her, every now and then peeping among the congregation of heads in the body of the court, to see if her husband were still there. And there he always was to be seen, looking and listening with all his might. His wife felt easy that he would not be wanting her at home until the trial was ended. Mary never let go her clutched hold on the rails. She wanted them to steady her, in that heaving, whirling court. She thought the feeling of something hard compressed within her hand would help her to listen, for it was such pain, such weary pain in her head, to strive to attend to what was being said. They were all at sea, sailing away on billowy waves, and every one speaking at once, and no one heeding her father, who was calling on them to be silent, and listen to him. Then again, for a brief second, the court stood still, and she could see the judge, sitting up there like an idol, with his trappings, so rigid and stiff; and Jem, opposite, looking at her, as if to say, Am I to die for what you know your ----. Then she checked herself, and by a great struggle brought herself round to an instant's sanity. But the round of thought never stood still; and off she went again; and every time her power of struggling against the growing delirium grew fainter and fainter. She muttered low to herself, but no one heard her except her neighbour, Mrs. Sturgis; all were too closely attending to the case for the prosecution, which was now being wound up. The counsel for the prisoner had avoided much cross-examination, reserving to himself the right of calling the witnesses forward again; for he had received so little, and such vague instructions, and understood that so much depended on the evidence of one who was not forthcoming, that in fact he had little hope of establishing any thing like a show of a defence, and contented himself with watching the case, and lying in wait for any legal objections that might offer themselves. He lay back on the seat, occasionally taking a pinch of snuff in a manner intended to be contemptuous; now and then elevating his eyebrows, and sometimes exchanging a little note with Mr. Bridgenorth behind him. The attorney had far more interest in the case than the barrister, to which he was perhaps excited by his poor old friend Job Legh; who had edged and wedged himself through the crowd close to Mr. Bridgenorth's elbow, sent thither by Ben Sturgis, to whom he had been "introduced" by Charley Jones, and who had accounted for Mary's disappearance on the preceding day, and spoken of their chase, their fears, their hopes. All this was told in a few words to Mr. Bridgenorth--so few, that they gave him but a confused idea, that time was of value; and this he named to his counsel, who now rose to speak for the defence. Job Legh looked about for Mary, now he had gained, and given, some idea of the position of things. At last he saw her, standing by a decent-looking woman, looking flushed and anxious, and moving her lips incessantly, as if eagerly talking; her eyes never resting on any object, but wandering about as if in search of something. Job thought it was for him she was seeking, and he struggled to get round to her. When he had succeeded, she took no notice of him, although he spoke to her, but still kept looking round and round in the same wild, restless manner. He tried to hear the low quick mutterings of her voice, as he caught the repetition of the same words over and over again. "I must not go mad. I must not, indeed. They say people tell the truth when they're mad; but I don't. I was always a liar. I was, indeed; but I'm not mad. I must not go mad. I must not, indeed." Suddenly she seemed to become aware how earnestly Job was listening (with mournful attention) to her words, and turning sharp round upon him, with upbraiding for his eaves-dropping on her lips, she caught sight of something,--or some one,--who, even in that state, had power to arrest her attention, and throwing up her arms with wild energy, she shrieked aloud, "Oh, Jem! Jem! you're saved; and I _am_ mad--" and was instantly seized with convulsions. With much commiseration she was taken out of court, while the attention of many was diverted from her, by the fierce energy with which a sailor forced his way over rails and seats, against turnkeys and policemen. The officers of the court opposed this forcible manner of entrance, but they could hardly induce the offender to adopt any quieter way of attaining his object, and telling his tale in the witness-box, the legitimate place. For Will had dwelt so impatiently on the danger in which his absence would place his cousin, that even yet he seemed to fear that he might see the prisoner carried off, and hung, before he could pour out the narrative which would exculpate him. As for Job Legh, his feelings were all but uncontrollable; as you may judge by the indifference with which he saw Mary borne, stiff and convulsed, out of the court, in the charge of the kind Mrs. Sturgis, who, you will remember, was an utter stranger to him. "She'll keep! I'll not trouble myself about her," said he to himself, as he wrote with trembling hands a little note of information to Mr. Bridgenorth, who had conjectured, when Will had first disturbed the awful tranquillity of the life-and-death court, that the witness had arrived (better late than never) on whose evidence rested all the slight chance yet remaining to Jem Wilson of escaping death. During the commotion in the court, among all the cries and commands, the dismay and the directions, consequent upon Will's entrance, and poor Mary's fearful attack of illness, Mr. Bridgenorth had kept his lawyer-like presence of mind; and long before Job Legh's almost illegible note was poked at him, he had recapitulated the facts on which Will had to give evidence, and the manner in which he had been pursued, after his ship had taken her leave of the land. The barrister who defended Jem took new heart when he was put in possession of these striking points to be adduced, not so much out of earnestness to save the prisoner, of whose innocence he was still doubtful, as because he saw the opportunities for the display of forensic eloquence which were presented by the facts; "a gallant tar brought back from the pathless ocean by a girl's noble daring," "the dangers of too hastily judging from circumstantial evidence," &c., &c.; while the counsellor for the prosecution prepared himself by folding his arms, elevating his eyebrows, and putting his lips in the form in which they might best whistle down the wind such evidence as might be produced by a suborned witness, who dared to perjure himself. For, of course, it is etiquette to suppose that such evidence as may be given against the opinion which lawyers are paid to uphold, is any thing but based on truth; and "perjury," "conspiracy," and "peril of your immortal soul," are light expressions to throw at the heads of those who may prove (not the speaker, there would then be some excuse for the hasty words of personal anger, but) the hirer of the speaker to be wrong, or mistaken. But when once Will had attained his end, and felt that his tale, or part of a tale, would be heard by judge and jury; when once he saw Jem standing safe and well before him (even though he saw him pale and care-worn at the felon's bar); his courage took the shape of presence of mind, and he awaited the examination with a calm, unflinching intelligence, which dictated the clearest and most pertinent answers. He told the story you know so well: how his leave of absence being nearly expired, he had resolved to fulfil his promise, and go to see an uncle residing in the Isle of Man; how his money (sailor-like) was all expended in Manchester, and how, consequently, it had been necessary for him to walk to Liverpool, which he had accordingly done on the very night of the murder, accompanied as far as Hollins Greeb by his friend and cousin, the prisoner at the bar. He was clear and distinct in every corroborative circumstance, and gave a short account of the singular way in which he had been recalled from his outward-bound voyage, and the terrible anxiety he had felt, as the pilot-boat had struggled home against the wind. The jury felt that their opinion (so nearly decided half an hour ago) was shaken and disturbed in a very uncomfortable and perplexing way, and were almost grateful to the counsel for the prosecution, when he got up, with a brow of thunder, to demolish the evidence, which was so bewildering when taken in connexion with every thing previously adduced. But if such, without looking to the consequences, was the first impulsive feeling of some among the jury, how shall I describe the vehemence of passion which possessed the mind of poor Mr. Carson, as he saw the effect of the young sailor's statement? It never shook his belief in Jem's guilt in the least, that attempt at an alibi; his hatred, his longing for vengeance, having once defined an object to itself, could no more bear to be frustrated and disappointed than the beast of prey can submit to have his victim taken from his hungry jaws. No more likeness to the calm stern power of Jupiter was there in that white eager face, almost distorted by its fell anxiety of expression. The counsel to whom etiquette assigned the cross-examination of Will, caught the look on Mr. Carson's face, and in his desire to further the intense wish there manifested, he over-shot his mark even in his first insulting question: "And now, my man, you've told the court a very good and very convincing story; no reasonable man ought to doubt the unstained innocence of your relation at the bar. Still there is one circumstance you have forgotten to name; and I feel that without it your evidence is rather incomplete. Will you have the kindness to inform the gentlemen of the jury what has been your charge for repeating this very plausible story? How much good coin of Her Majesty's realm have you received, or are you to receive, for walking up from the docks, or some less creditable place, and uttering the tale you have just now repeated,--very much to the credit of your instructor, I must say? Remember, sir, you are upon oath." It took Will a minute to extract the meaning from the garb of unaccustomed words in which it was invested, and during this time he looked a little confused. But the instant the truth flashed upon him, he fixed his bright clear eyes, flaming with indignation, upon the counsellor, whose look fell at last before that stern unflinching gaze. Then, and not till then, Will made answer. "Will you tell the judge and jury how much money you've been paid for your impudence towards one who has told God's blessed truth, and who would scorn to tell a lie, or blackguard any one, for the biggest fee as ever lawyer got for doing dirty work? Will you tell, sir?-- But I'm ready, my lord judge, to take my oath as many times as your lordship or the jury would like, to testify to things having happened just as I said. There's O'Brien, the pilot, in court now. Would somebody with a wig on please to ask him how much he can say for me?" It was a good idea, and caught at by the counsel for the defence. O'Brien gave just such testimony as was required to clear Will from all suspicion. He had witnessed the pursuit, he had heard the conversation which took place between the boat and the ship; he had given Will a homeward passage in his boat. And the character of an accredited pilot, appointed by Trinity House, was known to be above suspicion. Mr. Carson sank back on his seat in sickening despair. He knew enough of courts to be aware of the extreme unwillingness of juries to convict, even where the evidence is most clear, when the penalty of such conviction is death. At the period of the trial most condemnatory to the prisoner, he had repeated this fact to himself in order to damp his too certain expectation of a conviction. Now it needed not repetition, for it forced itself upon his consciousness, and he seemed to _know_, even before the jury retired to consult, that by some trick, some negligence, some miserable hocus-pocus, the murderer of his child, his darling, his Absalom, who had never rebelled,--the slayer of his unburied boy would slip through the fangs of justice, and walk free and unscathed over that earth where his son would never more be seen. It was even so. The prisoner hid his face once more to shield the expression of an emotion he could not control, from the notice of the over-curious; Job Legh ceased his eager talking to Mr. Bridgenorth; Charley looked grave and earnest; for the jury filed one by one back into their box, and the question was asked to which such an awful answer might be given. The verdict they had come to was unsatisfactory to themselves at last; neither being convinced of his innocence, nor yet quite willing to believe him guilty in the teeth of the alibi. But the punishment that awaited him, if guilty, was so terrible, and so unnatural a sentence for man to pronounce on man, that the knowledge of it had weighed down the scale on the side of innocence, and "Not Guilty" was the verdict that thrilled through the breathless court. One moment of silence, and then the murmurs rose, as the verdict was discussed by all with lowered voice. Jem stood motionless, his head bowed; poor fellow, he was stunned with the rapid career of events during the last few hours. He had assumed his place at the bar with little or no expectation of an acquittal; and with scarcely any desire for life, in the complication of occurrences tending to strengthen the idea of Mary's more than indifference to him; she had loved another, and in her mind Jem believed that he himself must be regarded as the murderer of him she loved. And suddenly, athwart this gloom which made life seem such a blank expanse of desolation, there flashed the exquisite delight of hearing Mary's avowal of love, making the future all glorious, if a future in this world he might hope to have. He could not dwell on any thing but her words, telling of her passionate love; all else was indistinct, nor could he strive to make it otherwise. She loved him. And Life, now full of tender images, suddenly bright with all exquisite promises, hung on a breath, the slenderest gossamer chance. He tried to think that the knowledge of her love would soothe him even in his dying hours; but the phantoms of what life with her might be, would obtrude, and made him almost gasp and reel under the uncertainty he was enduring. Will's appearance had only added to the intensity of this suspense. The full meaning of the verdict could not at once penetrate his brain. He stood dizzy and motionless. Some one pulled his coat. He turned, and saw Job Legh, the tears stealing down his brown furrowed cheeks, while he tried in vain to command voice enough to speak. He kept shaking Jem by the hand as the best and necessary expression of his feeling. "Here! make yourself scarce! I should think you'd be glad to get out of that!" exclaimed the gaoler, as he brought up another livid prisoner, from out whose eyes came the anxiety which he would not allow any other feature to display. Job Legh pressed out of court, and Jem followed unreasoningly. The crowd made way, and kept their garments tight about them, as Jem passed, for about him there still hung the taint of the murderer. He was in the open air, and free once more! Although many looked on him with suspicion, faithful friends closed round him; his arm was unresistingly pumped up and down by his cousin and Job; when one was tired, the other took up the wholesome exercise, while Ben Sturgis was working off his interest in the scene by scolding Charley for walking on his head round and round Mary's sweetheart, for a sweetheart he was now satisfactorily ascertained to be, in spite of her assertion to the contrary. And all this time Jem himself felt bewildered and dazzled; he would have given any thing for an hour's uninterrupted thought on the occurrences of the past week, and the new visions raised up during the morning; aye, even though that tranquil hour were to be passed in the hermitage of his quiet prison cell. The first question sobbed out by his choking voice, oppressed with emotion, was, "Where is she?" They led him to the room where his mother sat. They had told her of her son's acquittal, and now she was laughing, and crying, and talking, and giving way to all those feelings which she had restrained with such effort during the last few days. They brought her son to her, and she threw herself upon his neck, weeping there. He returned her embrace, but looked around, beyond. Excepting his mother there was no one in the room but the friends who had entered with him. "Eh, lad!" said she, when she found voice to speak. "See what it is to have behaved thysel! I could put in a good word for thee, and the jury could na go and hang thee in the face of th' character I gave thee. Was na it a good thing they did na keep me from Liverpool? But I would come; I knew I could do thee good, bless thee, my lad. But thou'rt very white, and all of a tremble." He kissed her again and again, but looking round as if searching for some one he could not find, the first words he uttered were still, "Where is she?" CHAPTER XXXIII. REQUIESCAT IN PACE. "Fear no more the heat o' th' sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages." CYMBELINE. "While day and night can bring delight, Or nature aught of pleasure give; While joys above my mind can move For thee, and thee alone I live: "When that grim foe of joy below Comes in between to make us part, The iron hand that breaks our band, It breaks my bliss--it breaks my heart." BURNS. She was where no words of peace, no soothing hopeful tidings could reach her; in the ghastly spectral world of delirium. Hour after hour, day after day, she started up with passionate cries on her father to save Jem; or rose wildly, imploring the winds and waves, the pitiless winds and waves, to have mercy; and over and over again she exhausted her feverish fitful strength in these agonised entreaties, and fell back powerless, uttering only the wailing moans of despair. They told her Jem was safe, they brought him before her eyes; but sight and hearing were no longer channels of information to that poor distracted brain, nor could human voice penetrate to her understanding. Jem alone gathered the full meaning of some of her strange sentences, and perceived that by some means or other she, like himself, had divined the truth of her father being the murderer. Long ago (reckoning time by events and thoughts, and not by clock or dial-plate), Jem had felt certain that Mary's father was Harry Carson's murderer; and although the motive was in some measure a mystery, yet a whole train of circumstances (the principal of which was that John Barton had borrowed the fatal gun only two days before) had left no doubt in Jem's mind. Sometimes he thought that John had discovered, and thus bloodily resented, the attentions which Mr. Carson had paid to his daughter; at others, he believed the motive to exist in the bitter feuds between the masters and their work-people, in which Barton was known to take so keen an interest. But if he had felt himself pledged to preserve this secret, even when his own life was the probable penalty, and he believed he should fall, execrated by Mary as the guilty destroyer of her lover, how much more was he bound now to labour to prevent any word of hers from inculpating her father, now that she was his own; now that she had braved so much to rescue him; and now that her poor brain had lost all guiding and controlling power over her words. All that night long Jem wandered up and down the narrow precincts of Ben Sturgis's house. In the little bed-room where Mrs. Sturgis alternately tended Mary, and wept over the violence of her illness, he listened to her ravings; each sentence of which had its own peculiar meaning and reference, intelligible to his mind, till her words rose to the wild pitch of agony, that no one could alleviate, and he could bear it no longer, and stole, sick and miserable down stairs, where Ben Sturgis thought it his duty to snore away in an arm-chair instead of his bed, under the idea that he should thus be more ready for active service, such as fetching the doctor to revisit his patient. Before it was fairly light, Jem (wide-awake, and listening with an earnest attention he could not deaden, however painful its results proved) heard a gentle subdued knock at the house door; it was no business of his, to be sure, to open it, but as Ben slept on, he thought he would see who the early visitor might be, and ascertain if there was any occasion for disturbing either host or hostess. It was Job Legh who stood there, distinct against the outer light of the street. "How is she? Eh! poor soul! is that her! no need to ask! How strange her voice sounds! Screech! screech! and she so low, sweet-spoken, when she's well! Thou must keep up heart, old boy, and not look so dismal, thysel." "I can't help it, Job; it's past a man's bearing to hear such a one as she is, going on as she is doing; even if I did not care for her, it would cut me sore to see one so young, and--I can't speak of it, Job, as a man should do," said Jem, his sobs choking him. "Let me in, will you?" said Job, pushing past him, for all this time Jem had stood holding the door, unwilling to admit Job where he might hear so much that would be suggestive to one acquainted with the parties that Mary named. "I'd more than one reason for coming betimes. I wanted to hear how yon poor wench was;--that stood first. Late last night I got a letter from Margaret, very anxious-like. The doctor says the old lady yonder can't last many days longer, and it seems so lonesome for her to die with no one but Margaret and Mrs. Davenport about her. So I thought I'd just come and stay with Mary Barton, and see as she's well done to, and you and your mother and Will go and take leave of old Alice." Jem's countenance, sad at best just now, fell lower and lower. But Job went on with his speech. "She still wanders, Margaret says, and thinks she's with her mother at home; but for all that, she should have some kith and kin near her to close her eyes, to my thinking." "Could not you and Will take mother home? I'd follow when--" Jem faltered out thus far, when Job interrupted, "Lad! if thou knew what thy mother has suffered for thee, thou'd not speak of leaving her just when she's got thee from the grave as it were. Why, this very night she roused me up, and 'Job,' says she, 'I ask your pardon for wakening you, but tell me, am I awake or dreaming? Is Jem proved innocent? Oh, Job Legh! God send I've not been only dreaming it!' For thou see'st she can't rightly understand why thou'rt with Mary, and not with her. Ay, ay! I know why; but a mother only gives up her son's heart inch by inch to his wife, and then she gives it up with a grudge. No, Jem! thou must go with thy mother just now, if ever thou hopest for God's blessing. She's a widow, and has none but thee. Never fear for Mary! She's young and will struggle through. They are decent people, these folk she is with, and I'll watch o'er her as though she was my own poor girl, that lies cold enough in London-town. I grant ye, it's hard enough for her to be left among strangers. To my mind John Barton would be more in the way of his duty, looking after his daughter, than delegating it up and down the country, looking after every one's business but his own." A new idea and a new fear came into Jem's mind. What if Mary should implicate her father? "She raves terribly," said he. "All night long she's been speaking of her father, and mixing up thoughts of him with the trial she saw yesterday. I should not wonder if she'll speak of him as being in court next thing." "I should na wonder, either," answered Job. "Folk in her way say many and many a strange thing; and th' best way is never to mind them. Now you take your mother home, Jem, and stay by her till old Alice is gone, and trust me for seeing after Mary." Jem felt how right Job was, and could not resist what he knew to be his duty, but I cannot tell you how heavy and sick at heart he was as he stood at the door to take a last fond, lingering look at Mary. He saw her sitting up in bed, her golden hair, dimmed with her one day's illness, floating behind her, her head bound round with wetted cloths, her features all agitated, even to distortion, with the pangs of her anxiety. Her lover's eyes filled with tears. He could not hope. The elasticity of his heart had been crushed out of him by early sorrows; and now, especially, the dark side of every thing seemed to be presented to him. What if she died, just when he knew the treasure, the untold treasure he possessed in her love! What if (worse than death) she remained a poor gibbering maniac all her life long (and mad people do live to be old sometimes, even under all the pressure of their burden), terror-distracted as she was now, and no one able to comfort her! "Jem!" said Job, partly guessing the other's feelings by his own. "Jem!" repeated he, arresting his attention before he spoke. Jem turned round, the little motion causing the tears to overflow and trickle down his cheeks. "Thou must trust in God, and leave her in His hands." He spoke hushed, and low; but the words sank all the more into Jem's heart, and gave him strength to tear himself away. He found his mother (notwithstanding that she had but just regained her child through Mary's instrumentality) half inclined to resent his having passed the night in anxious devotion to the poor invalid. She dwelt on the duties of children to their parents (above all others), till Jem could hardly believe the relative positions they had held only yesterday, when she was struggling with and controlling every instinct of her nature, only because _he_ wished it. However, the recollection of that yesterday, with its hair's breadth between him and a felon's death, and the love that had lightened the dark shadow, made him bear with the meekness and patience of a true-hearted man all the worrying little acerbities of to-day; and he had no small merit in so doing; for in him, as in his mother, the re-action after intense excitement had produced its usual effect in increased irritability of the nervous system. They found Alice alive, and without pain. And that was all. A child of a few weeks old would have had more bodily strength; a child of a very few months old, more consciousness of what was passing before her. But even in this state she diffused an atmosphere of peace around her. True, Will, at first, wept passionate tears at the sight of her, who had been as a mother to him, so standing on the confines of life. But even now, as always, loud passionate feeling could not long endure in the calm of her presence. The firm faith which her mind had no longer power to grasp, had left its trail of glory; for by no other word can I call the bright happy look which illumined the old earth-worn face. Her talk, it is true, bore no more that constant earnest reference to God and His holy Word which it had done in health, and there were no death-bed words of exhortation from the lips of one so habitually pious. For still she imagined herself once again in the happy, happy realms of childhood; and again dwelling in the lovely northern haunts where she had so often longed to be. Though earthly sight was gone away, she beheld again the scenes she had loved from long years ago! she saw them without a change to dim the old radiant hues. The long dead were with her, fresh and blooming as in those bygone days. And death came to her as a welcome blessing, like as evening comes to the weary child. Her work here was finished, and faithfully done. What better sentence can an emperor wish to have said over his bier? In second childhood (that blessing clouded by a name), she said her "Nunc Dimittis,"--the sweetest canticle to the holy. "Mother, good night! Dear mother! bless me once more! I'm very tired, and would fain go to sleep." She never spoke again on this side Heaven. She died the day after their return from Liverpool. From that time, Jem became aware that his mother was jealously watching for some word or sign which should betoken his wish to return to Mary. And yet go to Liverpool he must and would, as soon as the funeral was over, if but for a single glimpse of his darling. For Job had never written; indeed, any necessity for his so doing had never entered his head. If Mary died, he would announce it personally; if she recovered, he meant to bring her home with him. Writing was to him little more than an auxiliary to natural history; a way of ticketing specimens, not of expressing thoughts. The consequence of this want of intelligence as to Mary's state was, that Jem was constantly anticipating that every person and every scrap of paper was to convey to him the news of her death. He could not endure this state long; but he resolved not to disturb the house by announcing to his mother his purposed intention of returning to Liverpool, until the dead had been carried forth. On Sunday afternoon they laid her low with many tears. Will wept as one who would not be comforted. The old childish feeling came over him, the feeling of loneliness at being left among strangers. By and bye, Margaret timidly stole near him, as if waiting to console; and soon his passion sank down to grief, and grief gave way to melancholy, and though he felt as if he never could be joyful again, he was all the while unconsciously approaching nearer to the full happiness of calling Margaret his own, and a golden thread was interwoven even now with the darkness of his sorrow. Yet it was on his arm that Jane Wilson leant on her return homewards. Jem took charge of Margaret. "Margaret, I'm bound for Liverpool by the first train to-morrow; I must set your grandfather at liberty." "I'm sure he likes nothing better than watching over poor Mary; he loves her nearly as well as me. But let me go! I have been so full of poor Alice, I've never thought of it before; I can't do so much as many a one, but Mary will like to have a woman about her that she knows. I'm sorry I waited to be reminded, Jem." replied Margaret, with some little self-reproach. But Margaret's proposition did not at all agree with her companion's wishes. He found he had better speak out, and put his intention at once to the right motive; the subterfuge about setting Job Legh at liberty had done him harm instead of good. "To tell truth, Margaret, it's I that must go, and that for my own sake, not your grandfather's. I can rest neither by night nor day for thinking on Mary. Whether she lives or dies I look on her as my wife before God, as surely and solemnly as if we were married. So being, I have the greatest right to look after her, and I cannot yield it even to--" "Her father," said Margaret, finishing his interrupted sentence. "It seems strange that a girl like her should be thrown on the bare world to struggle through so bad an illness. No one seems to know where John Barton is, else I thought of getting Morris to write him a letter telling him about Mary. I wish he was home, that I do!" Jem could not echo this wish. "Mary's not bad off for friends where she is," said he. "I call them friends, though a week ago we none of us knew there were such folks in the world. But being anxious and sorrowful about the same thing makes people friends quicker than any thing, I think. She's like a mother to Mary in her ways; and he bears a good character, as far as I could learn just in that hurry. We're drawing near home, and I've not said my say, Margaret. I want you to look after mother a bit. She'll not like my going, and I've got to break it to her yet. If she takes it very badly, I'll come back to-morrow night; but if she's not against it very much, I mean to stay till it's settled about Mary, one way or the other. Will, you know, will be there, Margaret, to help a bit in doing for mother." Will's being there made the only objection Margaret saw to this plan. She disliked the idea of seeming to throw herself in his way; and yet she did not like to say any thing of this feeling to Jem, who had all along seemed perfectly unconscious of any love-affair, besides his own, in progress. So Margaret gave a reluctant consent. "If you can just step up to our house to-night, Jem, I'll put up a few things as may be useful to Mary, and then you can say when you'll likely be back. If you come home to-morrow night, and Will's there, perhaps I need not step up?" "Yes, Margaret, do! I shan't leave easy unless you go some time in the day to see mother. I'll come to-night, though; and now good-bye. Stay! do you think you could just coax poor Will to walk a bit home with you, that I might speak to mother by myself?" No! that Margaret could not do. That was expecting too great a sacrifice of bashful feeling. But the object was accomplished by Will's going up-stairs immediately on their return to the house, to indulge his mournful thoughts alone. As soon as Jem and his mother were left by themselves, he began on the subject uppermost in his mind. "Mother!" She put her handkerchief from her eyes, and turned quickly round so as to face him where he stood, thinking what best to say. The little action annoyed him, and he rushed at once into the subject. "Mother! I am going back to Liverpool to-morrow morning to see how Mary Barton is." "And what's Mary Barton to thee, that thou shouldst be running after her in that-a-way?" "If she lives, she shall be my wedded wife. If she dies--mother, I can't speak of what I shall feel if she dies." His voice was choked in his throat. For an instant his mother was interested by his words; and then came back the old jealousy of being supplanted in the affections of that son, who had been, as it were, newly born to her, by the escape he had so lately experienced from danger. So she hardened her heart against entertaining any feeling of sympathy; and turned away from the face, which recalled the earnest look of his childhood, when he had come to her in some trouble, sure of help and comfort. And coldly she spoke, in those tones which Jem knew and dreaded, even before the meaning they expressed was fully shaped. "Thou'rt old enough to please thysel. Old mothers are cast aside, and what they've borne forgotten, as soon as a pretty face comes across. I might have thought of that last Tuesday, when I felt as if thou wert all my own, and the judge were some wild animal trying to rend thee from me. I spoke up for thee then; but it's all forgotten now, I suppose." "Mother! you know all this while, _you know_ I can never forget any kindness you've ever done for me; and they've been many. Why should you think I've only room for one love in my heart? I can love you as dearly as ever, and Mary too, as much as man ever loved woman." He awaited a reply. None was vouchsafed. "Mother, answer me!" said he, at last. "What mun I answer? You asked me no question." "Well! I ask you this now. To-morrow morning I go to Liverpool to see her, who is as my wife. Dear mother! will you bless me on my errand? If it please God she recovers, will you take her to you as you would a daughter?" She could neither refuse nor assent. "Why need you go?" said she querulously, at length. "You'll be getting in some mischief or another again. Can't you stop at home quiet with me?" Jem got up, and walked about the room in despairing impatience. She would not understand his feelings. At last he stopped right before the place where she was sitting, with an air of injured meekness on her face. "Mother! I often think what a good man father was! I've often heard you tell of your courting days; and of the accident that befell you, and how ill you were. How long is it ago?" "Near upon five-and-twenty years," said she, with a sigh. "You little thought when you were so ill you should live to have such a fine strapping son as I am, did you now?" She smiled a little, and looked up at him, which was just what he wanted. "Thou'rt not so fine a man as thy father was, by a deal!" said she, looking at him with much fondness, notwithstanding her depreciatory words. He took another turn or two up and down the room. He wanted to bend the subject round to his own case. "Those were happy days when father was alive!" "You may say so, lad! Such days as will never come again to me, at any rate." She sighed sorrowfully. "Mother!" said he at last, stopping short, and taking her hand in his with tender affection, "you'd like me to be as happy a man as my father was before me, would not you? You'd like me to have some one to make me as happy as you made father? Now, would you not, dear mother?" "I did not make him as happy as I might ha' done," murmured she, in a low, sad voice of self-reproach. "Th' accident gave a jar to my temper it's never got the better of; and now he's gone where he can never know how I grieve for having frabbed him as I did." "Nay, mother, we don't know that!" said Jem, with gentle soothing. "Any how, you and father got along with as few rubs as most people. But for _his_ sake, dear mother, don't say me nay, now that I come to you to ask your blessing before setting out to see her, who is to be my wife, if ever woman is; for _his_ sake, if not for mine, love her who I shall bring home to be to me all you were to him: and mother! I do not ask for a truer or a tenderer heart than yours is, in the long run." The hard look left her face; though her eyes were still averted from Jem's gaze, it was more because they were brimming over with tears, called forth by his words, than because any angry feeling yet remained. And when his manly voice died away in low pleadings, she lifted up her hands, and bent down her son's head below the level of her own; and then she solemnly uttered a blessing. "God bless thee, Jem, my own dear lad. And may He bless Mary Barton for thy sake." Jem's heart leaped up, and from this time hope took the place of fear in his anticipations with regard to Mary. "Mother! you show your own true self to Mary, and she'll love you as dearly as I do." So with some few smiles, and some few tears, and much earnest talking, the evening wore away. "I must be off to see Margaret. Why, it's near ten o'clock! Could you have thought it? Now don't you stop up for me, mother. You and Will go to bed, for you've both need of it. I shall be home in an hour." Margaret had felt the evening long and lonely; and was all but giving up the thoughts of Jem's coming that night, when she heard his step at the door. He told her of his progress with his mother; he told her his hopes, and was silent on the subject of his fears. "To think how sorrow and joy are mixed up together. You'll date your start in life as Mary's acknowledged lover from poor Alice Wilson's burial day. Well! the dead are soon forgotten!" "Dear Margaret!--But you're worn out with your long evening waiting for me. I don't wonder. But never you, nor any one else, think because God sees fit to call up new interests, perhaps right out of the grave, that therefore the dead are forgotten. Margaret, you yourself can remember our looks, and fancy what we're like." "Yes! but what has that to do with remembering Alice?" "Why, just this. You're not always trying to think on our faces, and making a labour of remembering; but often, I'll be bound, when you're sinking off to sleep, or when you're very quiet and still, the faces you knew so well when you could see, come smiling before you with loving looks. Or you remember them, without striving after it, and without thinking it's your duty to keep recalling them. And so it is with them that are hidden from our sight. If they've been worthy to be heartily loved while alive, they'll not be forgotten when dead; it's against nature. And we need no more be upbraiding ourselves for letting in God's rays of light upon our sorrow, and no more be fearful of forgetting them, because their memory is not always haunting and taking up our minds, than you need to trouble yourself about remembering your grandfather's face, or what the stars were like,--you can't forget if you would, what it's such a pleasure to think about. Don't fear my forgetting Aunt Alice." "I'm not, Jem; not now, at least; only you seemed so full about Mary." "I've kept it down so long, remember. How glad Aunt Alice would have been to know that I might hope to have her for my wife! that's to say, if God spares her!" "She would not have known it, even if you could have told her this last fortnight,--ever since you went away she's been thinking always that she was a little child at her mother's apron-string. She must have been a happy little thing; it was such a pleasure to her to think about those early days, when she lay old and gray on her death-bed." "I never knew any one seem more happy all her life long." "Ay! and how gentle and easy her death was! She thought her mother was near her." They fell into calm thought about those last peaceful happy hours. It struck eleven. Jem started up. "I should have been gone long ago. Give me the bundle. You'll not forget my mother. Good night, Margaret." She let him out and bolted the door behind him. He stood on the steps to adjust some fastening about the bundle. The court, the street, was deeply still. Long ago had all retired to rest on that quiet Sabbath evening. The stars shone down on the silent deserted streets, and the soft clear moonlight fell in bright masses, leaving the steps on which Jem stood in shadow. A foot-fall was heard along the pavement; slow and heavy was the sound. Before Jem had ended his little piece of business, a form had glided into sight; a wan, feeble figure, bearing, with evident and painful labour, a jug of water from the neighbouring pump. It went before Jem, turned up the court at the corner of which he was standing, passed into the broad, calm light; and there, with bowed head, sinking and shrunk body, Jem recognised John Barton. No haunting ghost could have had less of the energy of life in its involuntary motions than he, who, nevertheless, went on with the same measured clock-work tread until the door of his own house was reached. And then he disappeared, and the latch fell feebly to, and made a faint and wavering sound, breaking the solemn silence of the night. Then all again was still. For a minute or two Jem stood motionless, stunned by the thoughts which the sight of Mary's father had called up. Margaret did not know he was at home: had he stolen like a thief by dead of night into his own dwelling? Depressed as Jem had often and long seen him, this night there was something different about him still; beaten down by some inward storm, he seemed to grovel along, all self-respect lost and gone. Must he be told of Mary's state? Jem felt he must not; and this for many reasons. He could not be informed of her illness without many other particulars being communicated at the same time, of which it were better he should be kept in ignorance; indeed, of which Mary herself could alone give the full explanation. No suspicion that he was the criminal seemed hitherto to have been excited in the mind of any one. Added to these reasons was Jem's extreme unwillingness to face him, with the belief in his breast that he, and none other, had done the fearful deed. It was true that he was Mary's father, and as such had every right to be told of all concerning her; but supposing he were, and that he followed the impulse so natural to a father, and wished to go to her, what might be the consequences? Among the mingled feelings she had revealed in her delirium, ay, mingled even with the most tender expressions of love for her father, was a sort of horror of him; a dread of him as a blood-shedder, which seemed to separate him into two persons,--one, the father who had dandled her on his knee, and loved her all her life long; the other, the assassin, the cause of all her trouble and woe. If he presented himself before her while this idea of his character was uppermost, who might tell the consequence? Jem could not, and would not, expose her to any such fearful chance: and to tell the truth, I believe he looked upon her as more his own, to guard from all shadow of injury with most loving care, than as belonging to any one else in this world, though girt with the reverend name of Father, and guiltless of aught that might have lessened such reverence. If you think this account of mine confused, of the half-feelings, half-reasons, which passed through Jem's mind, as he stood gazing at the empty space, where that crushed form had so lately been seen,--if you are perplexed to disentangle the real motives, I do assure you it was from just such an involved set of thoughts that Jem drew the resolution to act as if he had not seen that phantom likeness of John Barton; himself, yet not himself. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE RETURN HOME. "_Dixwell._ Forgiveness! Oh, forgiveness, and a grave! _Mary._ God knows thy heart, my father! and I shudder To think what thou perchance hast acted. _Dixwell._ Oh! _Mary._ No common load of woe is thine, my father." ELLIOTT'S "KERHONAH." Mary still hovered between life and death when Jem arrived at the house where she lay; and the doctors were as yet unwilling to compromise their wisdom by allowing too much hope to be entertained. But the state of things, if not less anxious, was less distressing than when Jem had quitted her. She lay now in a stupor, which was partly disease, and partly exhaustion after the previous excitement. And now Jem found the difficulty which every one who has watched by a sick bed knows full well; and which is perhaps more insurmountable to men than it is to women,--the difficulty of being patient, and trying not to expect any visible change for long, long hours of sad monotony. But after awhile the reward came. The laboured breathing became lower and softer, the heavy look of oppressive pain melted away from the face, and a languor that was almost peace took the place of suffering. She slept a natural sleep; and they stole about on tip-toe, and spoke low, and softly, and hardly dared to breathe, however much they longed to sigh out their thankful relief. She opened her eyes. Her mind was in the tender state of a lately-born infant's. She was pleased with the gay but not dazzling colours of the paper; soothed by the subdued light; and quite sufficiently amused by looking at all the objects in the room,--the drawing of the ships, the festoons of the curtain, the bright flowers on the painted backs of the chairs,--to care for any stronger excitement. She wondered at the ball of glass, containing various coloured sands from the Isle of Wight, or some such place, which hung suspended from the middle of the little valance over the window. But she did not care to exert herself to ask any questions, although she saw Mrs. Sturgis standing at the bed-side with some tea, ready to drop it into her mouth by spoonfuls. She did not see the face of honest joy, of earnest thankfulness,--the clasped hands,--the beaming eyes,--the trembling eagerness of gesture, of one who had long awaited her awakening, and who now stood behind the curtains watching through some little chink her every faint motion; or if she had caught a glimpse of that loving, peeping face, she was in too exhausted a state to have taken much notice, or have long retained the impression that he she loved so well was hanging about her, and blessing God for every conscious look which stole over her countenance. She fell softly into slumber, without a word having been spoken by any one during that half hour of inexpressible joy. And again the stillness was enforced by sign and whispered word, but with eyes that beamed out their bright thoughts of hope. Jem sat by the side of the bed, holding back the little curtain, and gazing as if he could never gaze his fill at the pale, wasted face, so marbled and so chiselled in its wan outline. She wakened once more; her soft eyes opened, and met his over-bending look. She smiled gently, as a baby does when it sees its mother tending its little cot; and continued her innocent, infantine gaze into his face, as if the sight gave her much unconscious pleasure. But by-and-by a different expression came into her sweet eyes; a look of memory and intelligence; her white face flushed the brightest rosy red, and with feeble motion she tried to hide her head in the pillow. It required all Jem's self-control to do what he knew and felt to be necessary, to call Mrs. Sturgis, who was quietly dozing by the fireside; and that done, he felt almost obliged to leave the room to keep down the happy agitation which would gush out in every feature, every gesture, and every tone. From that time forward Mary's progress towards health was rapid. There was every reason, but one, in favour of her speedy removal home. All Jem's duties lay in Manchester. It was his mother's dwelling-place, and there his plans for life had been to be worked out; plans, which the suspicion and imprisonment he had fallen into, had thrown for a time into a chaos, which his presence was required to arrange into form. For he might find, in spite of a jury's verdict, that too strong a taint was on his character for him ever to labour in Manchester again. He remembered the manner in which some one suspected of having been a convict was shunned by masters and men, when he had accidentally met with work in their foundry; the recollection smote him now, how he himself had thought that it did not become an honest upright man to associate with one who had been a prisoner. He could not choose but think on that poor humble being, with his downcast conscious look; hunted out of the work-shop, where he had sought to earn an honest livelihood, by the looks, and half-spoken words, and the black silence of repugnance (worse than words to bear), that met him on all sides. Jem felt that his own character had been attainted; and that to many it might still appear suspicious. He knew that he could convince the world, by a future as blameless as his past had been, that he was innocent. But at the same time he saw that he must have patience, and nerve himself for some trials; and the sooner these were undergone, the sooner he was aware of the place he held in men's estimation, the better. He longed to have presented himself once more at the foundry; and then the reality would drive away the pictures that would (unbidden) come of a shunned man, eyed askance by all, and driven forth to shape out some new career. I said every reason "but one" inclined Jem to hasten Mary's return as soon as she was sufficiently convalescent. That one was the meeting which awaited her at home. Turn it over as Jem would, he could not decide what was the best course to pursue. He could compel himself to any line of conduct that his reason and his sense of right told him to be desirable; but they did not tell him it was desirable to speak to Mary, in her tender state of mind and body, of her father. How much would be implied by the mere mention of his name! Speak it as calmly, and as indifferently as he might, he could not avoid expressing some consciousness of the terrible knowledge she possessed. She, for her part, was softer and gentler than she had ever been in her gentlest mood; since her illness, her motions, her glances, her voice were all tender in their languor. It seemed almost a trouble to her to break the silence with the low sounds of her own sweet voice, and her words fell sparingly on Jem's greedy, listening ear. Her face was, however, so full of love and confidence, that Jem felt no uneasiness at the state of silent abstraction into which she often fell. If she did but love him, all would yet go right; and it was better not to press for confidence on that one subject which must be painful to both. There came a fine, bright, balmy day. And Mary tottered once more out into the open air, leaning on Jem's arm, and close to his beating heart. And Mrs. Sturgis watched them from her door, with a blessing on her lips, as they went slowly up the street. They came in sight of the river. Mary shuddered. "Oh, Jem! take me home. Yon river seems all made of glittering, heaving, dazzling metal, just as it did when I began to be ill." Jem led her homewards. She dropped her head as searching for something on the ground. "Jem!" He was all attention. She paused for an instant. "When may I go home? To Manchester, I mean. I am so weary of this place; and I would fain be at home." She spoke in a feeble voice; not at all impatiently, as the words themselves would seem to intimate, but in a mournful way, as if anticipating sorrow even in the very fulfilment of her wishes. "Darling! we will go whenever you wish; whenever you feel strong enough. I asked Job to tell Margaret to get all in readiness for you to go there at first. She'll tend you and nurse you. You must not go home. Job proffered for you to go there." "Ah! but I must go home, Jem. I'll try and not fail now in what's right. There are things we must not speak on" (lowering her voice), "but you'll be really kind if you'll not speak against my going home. Let us say no more about it, dear Jem. I must go home, and I must go alone." "Not alone, Mary!" "Yes, alone! I cannot tell you why I ask it. And if you guess, I know you well enough to be sure you'll understand why I ask you never to speak on that again to me, till I begin. Promise, dear Jem, promise!" He promised; to gratify that beseeching face he promised. And then he repented, and felt as if he had done ill. Then again he felt as if she were the best judge, and knowing all (perhaps more than even he did) might be forming plans which his interference would mar. One thing was certain! it was a miserable thing to have this awful forbidden ground of discourse; to guess at each other's thoughts, when eyes were averted, and cheeks blanched, and words stood still, arrested in their flow by some casual allusion. At last a day, fine enough for Mary to travel on, arrived. She had wished to go, but now her courage failed her. How could she have said she was weary of that quiet house, where even Ben Sturgis' grumblings only made a kind of harmonious bass in the concord between him and his wife, so thoroughly did they know each other with the knowledge of many years! How could she have longed to quit that little peaceful room where she had experienced such loving tendence! Even the very check bed-curtains became dear to her under the idea of seeing them no more. If it was so with inanimate objects, if they had such power of exciting regret, what were her feelings with regard to the kind old couple, who had taken the stranger in, and cared for her, and nursed her, as though she had been a daughter? Each wilful sentence spoken in the half unconscious irritation of feebleness came now with avenging self-reproach to her memory, as she hung about Mrs. Sturgis, with many tears, which served instead of words to express her gratitude and love. Ben bustled about with the square bottle of Goldenwasser in one of his hands, and a small tumbler in the other; he went to Mary, Jem, and his wife in succession, pouring out a glass for each and bidding them drink it to keep their spirits up: but as each severally refused, he drank it himself; and passed on to offer the same hospitality to another with the like refusal, and the like result. When he had swallowed the last of the three draughts, he condescended to give his reasons for having done so. "I cannot abide waste. What's poured out mun be drunk. That's my maxim." So saying, he replaced the bottle in the cupboard. It was he who in a firm commanding voice at last told Jem and Mary to be off, or they would be too late. Mrs. Sturgis had kept up till then; but as they left her house, she could no longer restrain her tears, and cried aloud in spite of her husband's upbraiding. "Perhaps they'll be too late for th' train!" exclaimed she, with a degree of hope, as the clock struck two. "What! and come back again! No! no! that would never do. We've done our part, and cried our cry; it's no use going o'er the same ground again. I should ha' to give 'em more out of yon bottle when next parting time came, and them three glasses they had made a hole in the stuff, I can tell you. Time Jack was back from Hamburg with some more." When they reached Manchester, Mary looked very white, and the expression on her face was almost stern. She was in fact summoning up her resolution to meet her father if he were at home. Jem had never named his midnight glimpse of John Barton to human being; but Mary had a sort of presentiment that wander where he would, he would seek his home at last. But in what mood she dreaded to think. For the knowledge of her father's capability of guilt seemed to have opened a dark gulf in his character, into the depths of which she trembled to look. At one moment she would fain have claimed protection against the life she must lead, for some time at least, alone with a murderer! She thought of his gloom, before his mind was haunted by the memory of so terrible a crime; his moody, irritable ways. She imagined the evenings as of old: she, toiling at some work, long after houses were shut, and folks abed; he, more savage than he had ever been before with the inward gnawing of his remorse. At such times she could have cried aloud with terror, at the scenes her fancy conjured up. But her filial duty, nay, her love and gratitude for many deeds of kindness done to her as a little child, conquered all fear. She would endure all imaginable terrors, although of daily occurrence. And she would patiently bear all wayward violence of temper; more than patiently would she bear it--pitifully, as one who knew of some awful curse awaiting the blood-shedder. She would watch over him tenderly, as the Innocent should watch over the Guilty; awaiting the gracious seasons, wherein to pour oil and balm into the bitter wounds. With the untroubled peace which the resolve to endure to the end gives, she approached the house that from habit she still called home, but which possessed the holiness of home no longer. "Jem!" said she, as they stood at the entrance to the court, close by Job Legh's door, "you must go in there and wait half-an-hour. Not less. If in that time I don't come back, you go your ways to your mother. Give her my dear love. I will send by Margaret when I want to see you." She sighed heavily. "Mary! Mary! I cannot leave you. You speak as coldly as if we were to be nought to each other. And my heart's bound up in you. I know why you bid me keep away, but--" She put her hand on his arm, as he spoke in a loud agitated tone; she looked into his face with upbraiding love in her eyes, and then she said, while her lips quivered, and he felt her whole frame trembling: "Dear Jem! I often could have told you more of love, if I had not once spoken out so free. Remember that time, Jem, if ever you think me cold. Then, the love that's in my heart would out in words; but now, though I'm silent on the pain I'm feeling in quitting you, the love is in my heart all the same. But this is not the time to speak on such things. If I do not do what I feel to be right now, I may blame myself all my life long! Jem, you promised--" And so saying she left him. She went quicker than she would otherwise have passed over those few yards of ground, for fear he should still try to accompany her. Her hand was on the latch, and in a breath the door was opened. There sat her father, still and motionless--not even turning his head to see who had entered; but perhaps he recognised the foot-step,--the trick of action. He sat by the fire; the grate I should say, for fire there was none. Some dull, gray ashes, negligently left, long days ago, coldly choked up the bars. He had taken the accustomed seat from mere force of habit, which ruled his automaton-body. For all energy, both physical and mental, seemed to have retreated inwards to some of the great citadels of life, there to do battle against the Destroyer, Conscience. His hands were crossed, his fingers interlaced; usually a position implying some degree of resolution, or strength; but in him it was so faintly maintained, that it appeared more the result of chance; an attitude requiring some application of outward force to alter,--and a blow with a straw seemed as though it would be sufficient. And as for his face, it was sunk and worn,--like a skull, with yet a suffering expression that skulls have not! Your heart would have ached to have seen the man, however hardly you might have judged his crime. But crime and all was forgotten by his daughter, as she saw his abashed look, his smitten helplessness. All along she had felt it difficult (as I may have said before) to reconcile the two ideas, of her father and a blood-shedder. But now it was impossible. He was her father! her own dear father! and in his sufferings, whatever their cause, more dearly loved than ever before. His crime was a thing apart, never more to be considered by her. And tenderly did she treat him, and fondly did she serve him in every way that heart could devise, or hand execute. She had some money about her, the price of her strange services as a witness; and when the lingering dusk drew on, she stole out to effect some purchases necessary for her father's comfort. For how body and soul had been kept together, even as much as they were, during the days he had dwelt alone, no one can say. The house was bare as when Mary had left it, of coal, or of candle, of food, or of blessing in any shape. She came quickly home; but as she passed Job Legh's door, she stopped. Doubtless Jem had long since gone; and doubtless, too, he had given Margaret some good reason for not intruding upon her friend for this night at least, otherwise Mary would have seen her before now. But to-morrow,--would she not come in to-morrow? And who so quick as blind Margaret in noticing tones, and sighs, and even silence? She did not give herself time for further thought, her desire to be once more with her father was too pressing; but she opened the door, before she well knew what to say. "It's Mary Barton! I know her by her breathing! Grandfather, it's Mary Barton!" Margaret's joy at meeting her, the open demonstration of her love, affected Mary much; she could not keep from crying, and sat down weak and agitated on the first chair she could find. "Ay, ay, Mary! thou'rt looking a bit different to when I saw thee last. Thou'lt give Jem and me good characters for sick nurses, I trust. If all trades fail, I'll turn to that. Jem's place is for life, I reckon. Nay, never redden so, lass. You and he know each other's minds by this time!" Margaret held her hand, and gently smiled into her face. Job Legh took the candle up, and began a leisurely inspection. "Thou hast getten a bit of pink in thy cheeks,--not much; but when last I saw thee, thy lips were as white as a sheet. Thy nose is sharpish at th' end; thou'rt more like thy father than ever thou wert before. Lord! child, what's the matter? Art thou going to faint?" For Mary had sickened at the mention of that name; yet she felt that now or never was the time to speak. "Father's come home!" she said, "but he's very poorly; I never saw him as he is now, before. I asked Jem not to come near him for fear it might fidget him." She spoke hastily, and (to her own idea) in an unnatural manner. But they did not seem to notice it, nor to take the hint she had thrown out of company being unacceptable; for Job Legh directly put down some insect, which he was impaling on a corking-pin, and exclaimed, "Thy father come home! Why, Jem never said a word of it! And ailing too! I'll go in, and cheer him with a bit of talk. I ne'er knew any good come of delegating it." "Oh, Job! father cannot stand--father is too ill. Don't come; not but that you're very kind and good; but to-night--indeed," said she at last, in despair, seeing Job still persevere in putting away his things; "you must not come till I send or come for you. Father's in that strange way, I can't answer for it if he sees strangers. Please don't come. I'll come and tell you every day how he goes on. I must be off now to see after him. Dear Job! kind Job! don't be angry with me. If you knew all you'd pity me." For Job was muttering away in high dudgeon, and even Margaret's tone was altered as she wished Mary good night. Just then she could ill brook coldness from any one, and least of all bear the idea of being considered ungrateful by so kind and zealous a friend as Job had been; so she turned round suddenly, even when her hand was on the latch of the door, and ran back, and threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him first, and then Margaret. And then, the tears fast-falling down her cheeks, but no word spoken, she hastily left the house, and went back to her home. There was no change in her father's position, or in his spectral look. He had answered her questions (but few in number, for so many subjects were unapproachable) by monosyllables, and in a weak, high, childish voice; but he had not lifted his eyes; he could not meet his daughter's look. And she, when she spoke, or as she moved about, avoided letting her eyes rest upon him. She wished to be her usual self; but while every thing was done with a consciousness of purpose, she felt it was impossible. In this manner things went on for some days. At night he feebly clambered up stairs to bed; and during those long dark hours Mary heard those groans of agony which never escaped his lips by day, when they were compressed in silence over his inward woe. Many a time she sat up listening, and wondering if it would ease his miserable heart if she went to him, and told him she knew all, and loved and pitied him more than words could tell. By day the monotonous hours wore on in the same heavy, hushed manner as on that first dreary afternoon. He ate,--but without relish; and food seemed no longer to nourish him, for each morning his face had caught more of the ghastly fore-shadowing of Death. The neighbours kept strangely aloof. Of late years John Barton had had a repellent power about him, felt by all, except to the few who had either known him in his better and happier days, or those to whom he had given his sympathy and his confidence. People did not care to enter the doors of one whose very depth of thoughtfulness rendered him moody and stern. And now they contented themselves with a kind inquiry when they saw Mary in her goings-out or in her comings-in. With her oppressing knowledge, she imagined their reserved conduct stranger than it was in reality. She missed Job and Margaret too; who, in all former times of sorrow or anxiety since their acquaintance first began, had been ready with their sympathy. But most of all she missed the delicious luxury she had lately enjoyed in having Jem's tender love at hand every hour of the day, to ward off every wind of heaven, and every disturbing thought. She knew he was often hovering about the house; though the knowledge seemed to come more by intuition, than by any positive sight or sound for the first day or two. On the third day she met him at Job Legh's. They received her with every effort of cordiality; but still there was a cobweb-veil of separation between them, to which Mary was morbidly acute; while in Jem's voice, and eyes, and manner, there was every evidence of most passionate, most admiring, and most trusting love. The trust was shown by his respectful silence on that one point of reserve on which she had interdicted conversation. He left Job Legh's house when she did. They lingered on the step, he holding her hand between both of his, as loth to let her go; he questioned her as to when he should see her again. "Mother does so want to see you," whispered he. "Can you come to see her to-morrow? or when?" "I cannot tell," replied she, softly. "Not yet. Wait awhile; perhaps only a little while. Dear Jem, I must go to him,--dearest Jem." The next day, the fourth from Mary's return home, as she was sitting near the window, sadly dreaming over some work, she caught a glimpse of the last person she wished to see--of Sally Leadbitter! She was evidently coming to their house; another moment, and she tapped at the door. John Barton gave an anxious, uneasy side-glance. Mary knew that if she delayed answering the knock, Sally would not scruple to enter; so as hastily as if the visit had been desired, she opened the door, and stood there with the latch in her hand, barring up all entrance, and as much as possible obstructing all curious glances into the interior. "Well, Mary Barton! You're home at last! I heard you'd getten home; so I thought I'd just step over and hear the news." She was bent on coming in, and saw Mary's preventive design. So she stood on tip-toe, looking over Mary's shoulders into the room where she suspected a lover to be lurking; but instead, she saw only the figure of the stern, gloomy father she had always been in the habit of avoiding; and she dropped down again, content to carry on the conversation where Mary chose, and as Mary chose, in whispers. "So the old governor is back again, eh? And what does he say to all your fine doings at Liverpool, and before?--you and I know where. You can't hide it now, Mary, for it's all in print." Mary gave a low moan,--and then implored Sally to change the subject; for unpleasant as it always was, it was doubly unpleasant in the manner in which she was treating it. If they had been alone, Mary would have borne it patiently,--or so she thought,--but now she felt almost certain her father was listening; there was a subdued breathing, a slight bracing-up of the listless attitude. But there was no arresting Sally's curiosity to hear all she could respecting the adventures Mary had experienced. She, in common with the rest of Miss Simmonds' young ladies, was almost jealous of the fame that Mary had obtained; to herself, such miserable notoriety. "Nay! there's no use shunning talking it over. Why! it was in the _Guardian_,--and the _Courier_,--and some one told Jane Hodson it was even copied into a London paper. You've set up heroine on your own account, Mary Barton. How did you like standing witness? Ar'n't them lawyers impudent things? staring at one so. I'll be bound you wished you'd taken my offer, and borrowed my black watered scarf! Now didn't you, Mary? Speak truth!" "To tell truth, I never thought about it then, Sally. How could I?" asked she, reproachfully. "Oh--I forgot. You were all for that stupid James Wilson. Well! if I've ever the luck to go witness on a trial, see if I don't pick up a better beau than the prisoner. I'll aim at a lawyer's clerk, but I'll not take less than a turnkey." Cast down as Mary was, she could hardly keep from smiling at the idea, so wildly incongruous with the scene she had really undergone, of looking out for admirers during a trial for murder. "I'd no thought to be looking out for beaux, I can assure you, Sally.--But don't let us talk any more about it; I can't bear to think on it. How is Miss Simmonds? and everybody?" "Oh, very well; and by the way she gave me a bit of a message for you. You may come back to work if you'll behave yourself, she says. I told you she'd be glad to have you back, after all this piece of business, by way of tempting people to come to her shop. They'd come from Salford to have a peep at you, for six months at least." "Don't talk so; I cannot come, I can never face Miss Simmonds again. And even if I could--" she stopped, and blushed. "Ay! I know what you're thinking on. But that will not be this some time, as he's turned off from the foundry,--you'd better think twice afore refusing Miss Simmonds' offer." "Turned off from the foundry! Jem?" cried Mary. "To be sure! didn't you know it? Decent men were not going to work with a--no! I suppose I mustn't say it, seeing you went to such trouble to get up an _alibi_; not that I should think much the worse of a spirited young fellow for falling foul of a rival,--they always do at the theatre." But Mary's thoughts were with Jem. How good he had been never to name his dismissal to her. How much he had had to endure for her sake! "Tell me all about it," she gasped out. "Why, you see, they've always swords quite handy at them plays," began Sally; but Mary, with an impatient shake of her head, interrupted, "About Jem,--about Jem, I want to know." "Oh! I don't pretend to know more than is in every one's mouth: he's turned away from the foundry, because folks don't think you've cleared him outright of the murder; though perhaps the jury were loth to hang him. Old Mr. Carson is savage against judge and jury, and lawyers and all, as I heard." "I must go to him, I must go to him," repeated Mary, in a hurried manner. "He'll tell you all I've said is true, and not a word of lie," replied Sally. "So I'll not give your answer to Miss Simmonds, but leave you to think twice about it. Good afternoon!" Mary shut the door, and turned into the house. Her father sat in the same attitude; the old unchanging attitude. Only his head was more bowed towards the ground. She put on her bonnet to go to Ancoats; for see, and question, and comfort, and worship Jem, she must. As she hung about her father for an instant before leaving him, he spoke--voluntarily spoke for the first time since her return; but his head was drooping so low she could not hear what he said, so she stooped down; and after a moment's pause, he repeated the words, "Tell Jem Wilson to come here at eight o'clock to-night." Could he have overheard her conversation with Sally Leadbitter? They had whispered low, she thought. Pondering on this, and many other things, she reached Ancoats. CHAPTER XXXV. "FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES." "Oh, had he lived, Replied Rusilla, never penitence Had equalled his! full well I know his heart, Vehement in all things. He would on himself Have wreaked such penance as had reached the height Of fleshly suffering,--yea, which being told, With its portentous rigour should have made The memory of his fault, o'erpowered and lost In shuddering pity and astonishment, Fade like a feeble horror." SOUTHEY'S "RODERICK." As Mary was turning into the street where the Wilsons lived, Jem overtook her. He came upon her suddenly, and she started. "You're going to see mother?" he asked tenderly, placing her arm within his, and slackening his pace. "Yes, and you too. Oh, Jem, is it true? tell me." She felt rightly that he would guess the meaning of her only half expressed inquiry. He hesitated a moment before he answered her. "Darling, it is; it's no use hiding it--if you mean that I'm no longer to work at Duncombe's foundry. It's no time (to my mind) to have secrets from each other, though I did not name it yesterday, thinking you might fret. I shall soon get work again, never fear." "But why did they turn you off, when the jury had said you were innocent?" "It was not just to say turned off, though I don't think I could have well stayed on. A good number of the men managed to let out they should not like to work under me again; there were some few who knew me well enough to feel I could not have done it, but more were doubtful; and one spoke to young Mr. Duncombe, hinting at what they thought." "Oh Jem! what a shame!" said Mary, with mournful indignation. "Nay, darling! I'm not for blaming them. Poor fellows like them have nought to stand upon and be proud of but their character, and it's fitting they should take care of that, and keep that free from soil and taint." "But you,--what could they get but good from you? They might have known you by this time." "So some do; the overlooker, I'm sure, would know I'm innocent. Indeed, he said as much to-day; and he said he had had some talk with old Mr. Duncombe, and they thought it might be better if I left Manchester for a bit; they'd recommend me to some other place." But Mary could only shake her head in a mournful way, and repeat her words, "They might have known thee better, Jem." Jem pressed the little hand he held between his own work-hardened ones. After a minute or two, he asked, "Mary, art thou much bound to Manchester? Would it grieve thee sore to quit the old smoke-jack?" "With thee?" she asked, in a quiet, glancing way. "Ay, lass! Trust me, I'll ne'er ask thee to leave Manchester while I'm in it. Because I've heard fine things of Canada; and our overlooker has a cousin in the foundry line there.--Thou knowest where Canada is, Mary?" "Not rightly--not now, at any rate;--but with thee, Jem," her voice sunk to a soft, low whisper, "anywhere--" What was the use of a geographical description? "But father!" said Mary, suddenly breaking that delicious silence with the one sharp discord in her present life. She looked up at her lover's grave face; and then the message her father had sent flashed across her memory. "Oh, Jem, did I tell you?--Father sent word he wished to speak with you. I was to bid you come to him at eight to-night. What can he want, Jem?" "I cannot tell," replied he. "At any rate I'll go. It's no use troubling ourselves to guess," he continued, after a pause of a few minutes, during which they slowly and silently paced up and down the by-street, into which he had led her when their conversation began. "Come and see mother, and then I'll take thee home, Mary. Thou wert all in a tremble when first I came up with thee; thou'rt not fit to be trusted home by thyself," said he, with fond exaggeration of her helplessness. Yet a little more lovers' loitering; a few more words, in themselves nothing--to you nothing, but to those two what tender passionate language can I use to express the feelings which thrilled through that young man and maiden, as they listened to the syllables made dear and lovely through life by that hour's low-whispered talk. It struck the half hour past seven. "Come and speak to mother; she knows you're to be her daughter, Mary, darling." So they went in. Jane Wilson was rather chafed at her son's delay in returning home, for as yet he had managed to keep her in ignorance of his dismissal from the foundry; and it was her way to prepare some little pleasure, some little comfort for those she loved; and if they, unwittingly, did not appear at the proper time to enjoy her preparation, she worked herself up into a state of fretfulness which found vent in upbraidings as soon as ever the objects of her care appeared, thereby marring the peace which should ever be the atmosphere of a home, however humble; and causing a feeling almost amounting to loathing to arise at the sight of the "stalled ox," which, though an effect and proof of careful love, has been the cause of so much disturbance. Mrs. Wilson had first sighed, and then grumbled to herself, over the increasing toughness of the potato-cakes she had made for her son's tea. The door opened, and he came in; his face brightening into proud smiles, Mary Barton hanging on his arm, blushing and dimpling, with eye-lids veiling the happy light of her eyes,--there was around the young couple a radiant atmosphere--a glory of happiness. Could his mother mar it? Could she break into it with her Martha-like cares? Only for one moment did she remember her sense of injury,--her wasted trouble,--and then, her whole woman's heart heaving with motherly love and sympathy, she opened her arms, and received Mary into them, as, shedding tears of agitated joy, she murmured in her ear, "Bless thee, Mary, bless thee! Only make him happy, and God bless thee for ever!" It took some of Jem's self-command to separate those whom he so much loved, and who were beginning, for his sake, to love one another so dearly. But the time for his meeting John Barton drew on: and it was a long way to his house. As they walked briskly thither they hardly spoke; though many thoughts were in their minds. The sun had not long set, but the first faint shade of twilight was over all; and when they opened the door, Jem could hardly perceive the objects within by the waning light of day, and the flickering fire-blaze. But Mary saw all at a glance! Her eye, accustomed to what was usual in the aspect of the room, saw instantly what was unusual,--saw, and understood it all. Her father was standing behind his habitual chair, holding by the back of it as if for support. And opposite to him there stood Mr. Carson; the dark out-line of his stern figure looming large against the light of the fire in that little room. Behind her father sat Job Legh, his head in his hands, and resting his elbows on the little family table,--listening evidently; but as evidently deeply affected by what he heard. There seemed to be some pause in the conversation. Mary and Jem stood at the half-open door, not daring to stir; hardly to breathe. "And have I heard you aright?" began Mr. Carson, with his deep quivering voice. "Man! have I heard you aright? Was it you, then, that killed my boy? my only son?"--(he said these last few words almost as if appealing for pity, and then he changed his tone to one more vehement and fierce). "Don't dare to think that I shall be merciful, and spare you, because you have come forward to accuse yourself. I tell you I will not spare you the least pang the law can inflict,--you, who did not show pity on my boy, shall have none from me." "I did not ask for any," said John Barton, in a low voice. "Ask, or not ask, what care I? You shall be hanged--hanged--man!" said he, advancing his face, and repeating the word with slow, grinding emphasis, as if to infuse some of the bitterness of his soul into it. John Barton gasped, but not with fear. It was only that he felt it terrible to have inspired such hatred, as was concentrated into every word, every gesture of Mr. Carson's. "As for being hanged, sir, I know it's all right and proper. I dare say it's bad enough; but I tell you what, sir," speaking with an out-burst, "if you'd hanged me the day after I'd done the deed, I would have gone down on my knees and blessed you. Death! Lord, what is it to Life? To such a life as I've been leading this fortnight past. Life at best is no great thing; but such a life as I have dragged through since that night," he shuddered at the thought. "Why, sir, I've been on the point of killing myself this many a time to get away from my own thoughts. I didn't! and I'll tell you why. I didn't know but that I should be more haunted than ever with the recollection of my sin. Oh! God above only can tell the agony with which I've repented me of it, and part perhaps because I feared He would think I were impatient of the misery He sent as punishment--far, far worse misery than any hanging, sir." He ceased from excess of emotion. Then he began again. "Sin' that day (it may be very wicked, sir, but it's the truth) I've kept thinking and thinking if I were but in that world where they say God is, He would, may be, teach me right from wrong, even if it were with many stripes. I've been sore puzzled here. I would go through Hell-fire if I could but get free from sin at last, it's such an awful thing. As for hanging, that's just nought at all." His exhaustion compelled him to sit down. Mary rushed to him. It seemed as if till then he had been unaware of her presence. "Ay, ay, wench!" said he feebly, "is it thee? Where's Jem Wilson?" Jem came forward. John Barton spoke again, with many a break and gasping pause, "Lad! thou hast borne a deal for me. It's the meanest thing I ever did to leave thee to bear the brunt. Thou, who wert as innocent of any knowledge of it as the babe unborn. I'll not bless thee for it. Blessing from such as me would not bring thee any good. Thou'lt love Mary, though she is my child." He ceased, and there was a pause of a few seconds. Then Mr. Carson turned to go. When his hand was on the latch of the door, he hesitated for an instant. "You can have no doubt for what purpose I go. Straight to the police-office, to send men to take care of you, wretched man, and your accomplice. To-morrow morning your tale shall be repeated to those who can commit you to gaol, and before long you shall have the opportunity of trying how desirable hanging is." "Oh, sir!" said Mary, springing forward, and catching hold of Mr. Carson's arm, "my father is dying. Look at him, sir. If you want Death for Death, you have it. Don't take him away from me these last hours. He must go alone through Death, but let me be with him as long as I can. Oh, sir! if you have any mercy in you, leave him here to die." John himself stood up, stiff and rigid, and replied, "Mary, wench! I owe him summut. I will go die, where, and as he wishes me. Thou hast said true, I am standing side by side with Death; and it matters little where I spend the bit of time left of Life. That time I must pass in wrestling with my soul for a character to take into the other world. I'll go where you see fit, sir. He's innocent," faintly indicating Jem, as he fell back in his chair. "Never fear! They cannot touch him," said Job Legh, in a low voice. But as Mr. Carson was on the point of leaving the house with no sign of relenting about him, he was again stopped by John Barton, who had risen once more from his chair, and stood supporting himself on Jem, while he spoke. "Sir, one word! My hairs are gray with suffering, and yours with years--" "And have I had no suffering?" asked Mr. Carson, as if appealing for sympathy, even to the murderer of his child. And the murderer of his child answered to the appeal, and groaned in spirit over the anguish he had caused. "Have I had no inward suffering to blanch these hairs? Have not I toiled and struggled even to these years with hopes in my heart that all centered in my boy? I did not speak of them, but were they not there? I seemed hard and cold; and so I might be to others, but not to him!--who shall ever imagine the love I bore to him? Even he never dreamed how my heart leapt up at the sound of his footstep, and how precious he was to his poor old father.--And he is gone--killed--out of the hearing of all loving words--out of my sight for ever. He was my sunshine, and now it is night! Oh, my God! comfort me, comfort me!" cried the old man aloud. The eyes of John Barton grew dim with tears. Rich and poor, masters and men, were then brothers in the deep suffering of the heart; for was not this the very anguish he had felt for little Tom, in years so long gone by that they seemed like another life! The mourner before him was no longer the employer; a being of another race, eternally placed in antagonistic attitude; going through the world glittering like gold, with a stony heart within, which knew no sorrow but through the accidents of Trade; no longer the enemy, the oppressor, but a very poor and desolate old man. The sympathy for suffering, formerly so prevalent a feeling with him, again filled John Barton's heart, and almost impelled him to speak (as best he could) some earnest, tender words to the stern man, shaking in his agony. But who was he, that he should utter sympathy or consolation? The cause of all this woe. Oh blasting thought! Oh miserable remembrance! He had forfeited all right to bind up his brother's wounds. Stunned by the thought, he sank upon the seat, almost crushed with the knowledge of the consequences of his own action; for he had no more imagined to himself the blighted home, and the miserable parents, than does the soldier, who discharges his musket, picture to himself the desolation of the wife, and the pitiful cries of the helpless little ones, who are in an instant to be made widowed and fatherless. To intimidate a class of men, known only to those below them as desirous to obtain the greatest quantity of work for the lowest wages,--at most to remove an overbearing partner from an obnoxious firm, who stood in the way of those who struggled as well as they were able to obtain their rights,--this was the light in which John Barton had viewed his deed; and even so viewing it, after the excitement had passed away, the Avenger, the sure Avenger, had found him out. But now he knew that he had killed a man, and a brother,--now he knew that no good thing could come out of this evil, even to the sufferers whose cause he had so blindly espoused. He lay across the table, broken-hearted. Every fresh quivering sob of Mr. Carson's stabbed him to his soul. He felt execrated by all; and as if he could never lay bare the perverted reasonings which had made the performance of undoubted sin appear a duty. The longing to plead some faint excuse grew stronger and stronger. He feebly raised his head, and looking at Job Legh, he whispered out, "I did not know what I was doing, Job Legh; God knows I didn't! Oh, sir!" said he wildly, almost throwing himself at Mr. Carson's feet, "say you forgive me the anguish I now see I have caused you. I care not for pain, or death, you know I don't; but oh, man! forgive me the trespass I have done!" "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us," said Job, solemnly and low, as if in prayer; as if the words were suggested by those John Barton had used. Mr. Carson took his hands away from his face. I would rather see death than the ghastly gloom which darkened that countenance. "Let my trespasses be unforgiven, so that I may have vengeance for my son's murder." There are blasphemous actions as well as blasphemous words: all unloving, cruel deeds are acted blasphemy. Mr. Carson left the house. And John Barton lay on the ground as one dead. They lifted him up, and almost hoping that that deep trance might be to him the end of all earthly things, they bore him to his bed. For a time they listened with divided attention to his faint breathings; for in each hasty hurried step that echoed in the street outside, they thought they heard the approach of the officers of justice. When Mr. Carson left the house he was dizzy with agitation; the hot blood went careering through his frame. He could not see the deep blue of the night-heavens for the fierce pulses which throbbed in his head. And partly to steady and calm himself, he leaned against a railing, and looked up into those calm majestic depths with all their thousand stars. And by-and-by his own voice returned upon him, as if the last words he had spoken were being uttered through all that infinite space; but in their echoes there was a tone of unutterable sorrow. "Let my trespasses be unforgiven, so that I may have vengeance for my son's murder." He tried to shake off the spiritual impression made by this imagination. He was feverish and ill,--and no wonder. So he turned to go homewards; not, as he had threatened, to the police-office. After all (he told himself), that would do in the morning. No fear of the man's escaping, unless he escaped to the grave. So he tried to banish the phantom voices and shapes which came unbidden to his brain, and to recall his balance of mind by walking calmly and slowly, and noticing every thing which struck his senses. It was a warm soft evening in spring, and there were many persons in the streets. Among others, a nurse with a little girl in her charge, conveying her home from some children's gaiety; a dance most likely, for the lovely little creature was daintily decked out in soft, snowy muslin; and her fairy feet tripped along by her nurse's side as if to the measure of some tune she had lately kept time to. Suddenly up behind her there came a rough, rude errand-boy, nine or ten years of age; a giant he looked by the fairy-child, as she fluttered along. I don't know how it was, but in some awkward way he knocked the poor little girl down upon the hard pavement as he brushed rudely past, not much caring whom he hurt, so that he got along. The child arose sobbing with pain; and not without cause, for blood was dropping down from the face, but a minute before so fair and bright--dropping down on the pretty frock, making those scarlet marks so terrible to little children. The nurse, a powerful woman, had seized the boy, just as Mr. Carson (who had seen the whole transaction) came up. "You naughty little rascal! I'll give you to a policeman, that I will! Do you see how you've hurt the little girl? Do you?" accompanying every sentence with a violent jerk of passionate anger. The lad looked hard and defying; but withal terrified at the threat of the policeman, those ogres of our streets to all unlucky urchins. The nurse saw it, and began to drag him along, with a view of making what she called "a wholesome impression." His terror increased, and with it his irritation; when the little sweet face, choking away its sobs, pulled down nurse's head and said, "Please, dear nurse, I'm not much hurt; it was very silly to cry, you know. He did not mean to do it. _He did not know what he was doing_, did you, little boy? Nurse won't call a policeman, so don't be frightened." And she put up her little mouth to be kissed by her injurer, just as she had been taught to do at home to "make peace." "That lad will mind, and be more gentle for the time to come, I'll be bound, thanks to that little lady," said a passer-by, half to himself, and half to Mr. Carson, whom he had observed to notice the scene. The latter took no apparent heed of the remark, but passed on. But the child's pleading reminded him of the low, broken voice he had so lately heard, penitently and humbly urging the same extenuation of his great guilt. "I did not know what I was doing." He had some association with those words; he had heard, or read of that plea somewhere before. Where was it? Could it be--? He would look when he got home. So when he entered his house he went straight and silently up-stairs to his library, and took down the great large handsome Bible, all grand and golden, with its leaves adhering together from the bookbinder's press, so little had it been used. On the first page (which fell open to Mr. Carson's view) were written the names of his children, and his own. "Henry John, son of the above John and Elizabeth Carson. Born, Sept. 29th, 1815." To make the entry complete, his death should now be added. But the page became hidden by the gathering mist of tears. Thought upon thought, and recollection upon recollection came crowding in, from the remembrance of the proud day when he had purchased the costly book, in order to write down the birth of the little babe of a day old. He laid his head down on the open page, and let the tears fall slowly on the spotless leaves. His son's murderer was discovered; had confessed his guilt; and yet (strange to say) he could not hate him with the vehemence of hatred he had felt, when he had imagined him a young man, full of lusty life, defying all laws, human and divine. In spite of his desire to retain the revengeful feeling he considered as a duty to his dead son, something of pity would steal in for the poor, wasted skeleton of a man, the smitten creature, who had told him of his sin, and implored his pardon that night. In the days of his childhood and youth, Mr. Carson had been accustomed to poverty; but it was honest, decent poverty; not the grinding squalid misery he had remarked in every part of John Barton's house, and which contrasted strangely with the pompous sumptuousness of the room in which he now sat. Unaccustomed wonder filled his mind at the reflection of the different lots of the brethren of mankind. Then he roused himself from his reverie, and turned to the object of his search--the Gospel, where he half expected to find the tender pleading: "They know not what they do." It was murk midnight by this time, and the house was still and quiet. There was nothing to interrupt the old man in his unwonted study. Years ago, the Gospel had been his task-book in learning to read. So many years ago, that he had become familiar with the events before he could comprehend the Spirit that made the Life. He fell to the narrative now afresh, with all the interest of a little child. He began at the beginning, and read on almost greedily, understanding for the first time the full meaning of the story. He came to the end; the awful End. And there were the haunting words of pleading. He shut the book, and thought deeply. All night long, the Archangel combated with the Demon. All night long, others watched by the bed of Death. John Barton had revived to fitful intelligence. He spoke at times with even something of his former energy; and in the racy Lancashire dialect he had always used when speaking freely. "You see I've so often been hankering after the right way; and it's a hard one for a poor man to find. At least it's been so to me. No one learned me, and no one telled me. When I was a little chap they taught me to read, and then they ne'er gave me no books; only I heard say the Bible was a good book. So when I grew thoughtful, and puzzled, I took to it. But you'd never believe black was black, or night was night, when you saw all about you acting as if black was white, and night was day. It's not much I can say for myself in t'other world, God forgive me; but I can say this, I would fain have gone after the Bible rules if I'd seen folk credit it; they all spoke up for it, and went and did clean contrary. In those days I would ha' gone about wi' my Bible, like a little child, my finger in th' place, and asking the meaning of this or that text, and no one told me. Then I took out two or three texts as clear as glass, and I tried to do what they bid me do. But I don't know how it was; masters and men, all alike cared no more for minding those texts, than I did for th' Lord Mayor of London; so I grew to think it must be a sham put upon poor ignorant folk, women, and such-like. "It was not long I tried to live Gospel-wise, but it was liker heaven than any other bit of earth has been. I'd old Alice to strengthen me; but every one else said, 'Stand up for thy rights, or thou'lt never get 'em;' and wife and children never spoke, but their helplessness cried aloud, and I was driven to do as others did,--and then Tom died. You know all about that--I'm getting scant o' breath, and blind-like." Then again he spoke, after some minutes of hushed silence. "All along it came natural to love folk, though now I am what I am. I think one time I could e'en have loved the masters if they'd ha' letten me; that was in my Gospel-days, afore my child died o' hunger. I was tore in two often-times, between my sorrow for poor suffering folk, and my trying to love them as caused their sufferings (to my mind). "At last I gave it up in despair, trying to make folks' actions square wi' th' Bible; and I thought I'd no longer labour at following th' Bible mysel. I've said all this afore, may be. But from that time I've dropped down, down,--down." After that he only spoke in broken sentences. "I did not think he'd been such an old man,--Oh! that he had but forgiven me,"--and then came earnest, passionate, broken words of prayer. Job Legh had gone home like one struck down with the unexpected shock. Mary and Jem together waited the approach of death; but as the final struggle drew on, and morning dawned, Jem suggested some alleviation to the gasping breath, to purchase which he left the house in search of a druggist's shop, which should be open at that early hour. During his absence, Barton grew worse; he had fallen across the bed, and his breathing seemed almost stopped; in vain did Mary strive to raise him, her sorrow and exhaustion had rendered her too weak. So, on hearing some one enter the house-place below, she cried out for Jem to come to her assistance. A step, which was not Jem's, came up the stairs. Mr. Carson stood in the door-way. In one instant he comprehended the case. He raised up the powerless frame; and the departing soul looked out of the eyes with gratitude. He held the dying man propped in his arms. John Barton folded his hands as if in prayer. "Pray for us," said Mary, sinking on her knees, and forgetting in that solemn hour all that had divided her father and Mr. Carson. No other words could suggest themselves than some of those he had read only a few hours before. "God be merciful to us sinners.--Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." And when the words were said, John Barton lay a corpse in Mr. Carson's arms. So ended the tragedy of a poor man's life. Mary knew nothing more for many minutes. When she recovered consciousness, she found herself supported by Jem on the "settle" in the house-place. Job and Mr. Carson were there, talking together lowly and solemnly. Then Mr. Carson bade farewell and left the house; and Job said aloud, but as if speaking to himself, "God has heard that man's prayer. He has comforted him." CHAPTER XXXVI. JEM'S INTERVIEW WITH MR. DUNCOMBE. "The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress." BYRON. Although Mary had hardly been conscious of her thoughts, and it had been more like a secret instinct informing her soul, than the result of any process of reasoning, she had felt for some time (ever since her return from Liverpool, in fact), that for her father there was but one thing to be desired and anticipated, and that was death! She had seen that Conscience had given the mortal wound to his earthly frame; she did not dare to question of the infinite mercy of God, what the Future Life would be to him. Though at first desolate and stunned by the blow which had fallen on herself, she was resigned and submissive as soon as she recovered strength enough to ponder and consider a little; and you may be sure that no tenderness or love was wanting on Jem's part, and no consideration and sympathy on that of Job and Margaret, to soothe and comfort the girl who now stood alone in the world as far as blood-relations were concerned. She did not ask or care to know what arrangements they were making in whispered tones with regard to the funeral. She put herself into their hands with the trust of a little child; glad to be undisturbed in the reveries and remembrances which filled her eyes with tears, and caused them to fall quietly down her pale cheeks. It was the longest day she had ever known in her life; every charge and every occupation was taken away from her: but perhaps the length of quiet time thus afforded was really good, although its duration weighed upon her; for by this means she contemplated her situation in every light, and fully understood that the morning's event had left her an orphan; and thus she was spared the pangs caused to us by the occurrence of death in the evening, just before we should naturally, in the usual course of events, lie down to slumber. For in such case, worn out by anxiety, and it may be by much watching, our very excess of grief rocks itself to sleep, before we have had time to realise its cause; and we waken, with a start of agony like a fresh stab, to the consciousness of the one awful vacancy, which shall never, while the world endures, be filled again. The day brought its burden of duty to Mrs. Wilson. She felt bound by regard, as well as by etiquette, to go and see her future daughter-in-law. And by an old association of ideas (perhaps of death with church-yards, and churches with Sunday) she thought it necessary to put on her best, and latterly unused clothes, the airing of which on a little clothes-horse before the fire seemed to give her a not unpleasing occupation. When Jem returned home late in the evening succeeding John Barton's death, weary and oppressed with the occurrences and excitements of the day, he found his mother busy about her mourning, and much inclined to talk. Although he longed for quiet, he could not avoid sitting down and answering her questions. "Well, Jem, he's gone at last, is he?" "Yes. How did you hear, mother?" "Oh, Job came over here and telled me, on his way to the undertaker's. Did he make a fine end?" It struck Jem that she had not heard of the confession which had been made by John Barton on his death-bed; he remembered Job Legh's discretion, and he determined that if it could be avoided his mother should never hear of it. Many of the difficulties to be anticipated in preserving the secret would be obviated, if he could induce his mother to fall into the plan he had named to Mary of emigrating to Canada. The reasons which rendered this secrecy desirable related to the domestic happiness he hoped for. With his mother's irritable temper he could hardly expect that all allusion to the crime of John Barton would be for ever restrained from passing her lips, and he knew the deep trial such references would be to Mary. Accordingly he resolved as soon as possible in the morning to go to Job and beseech his silence; he trusted that secrecy in that quarter, even if the knowledge had been extended to Margaret, might be easily secured. But what would be Mr. Carson's course? Were there any means by which he might be persuaded to spare John Barton's memory? He was roused up from this train of thought by his mother's more irritated tone of voice. "Jem!" she was saying, "thou might'st just as well never be at a death-bed again, if thou cannot bring off more news about it; here have I been by mysel all day (except when oud Job came in), but thinks I, when Jem comes he'll be sure to be good company, seeing he was in the house at the very time of the death; and here thou art, without a word to throw at a dog, much less thy mother: it's no use thy going to a death-bed if thou cannot carry away any of the sayings!" "He did not make any, mother," replied Jem. "Well, to be sure! So fond as he used to be of holding forth, to miss such a fine opportunity that will never come again! Did he die easy?" "He was very restless all night long," said Jem, reluctantly returning to the thoughts of that time. "And in course thou plucked the pillow away? Thou didst not! Well! with thy bringing up, and thy learning, thou might'st have known that were the only help in such a case. There were pigeons' feathers in the pillow, depend on't. To think of two grown-up folk like you and Mary, not knowing death could never come easy to a person lying on a pillow with pigeons' feathers in!" Jem was glad to escape from all this talking to the solitude and quiet of his own room, where he could lie and think uninterruptedly of what had happened and remained to be done. The first thing was to seek an interview with Mr. Duncombe, his former master. Accordingly, early the next morning Jem set off on his walk to the works, where for so many years his days had been spent; where for so long a time his thoughts had been thought, his hopes and fears experienced. It was not a cheering feeling to remember that henceforward he was to be severed from all these familiar places; nor were his spirits enlivened by the evident feelings of the majority of those who had been his fellow-workmen. As he stood in the entrance to the foundry, awaiting Mr. Duncombe's leisure, many of those employed in the works passed him on their return from breakfast; and with one or two exceptions, without any acknowledgment of former acquaintance beyond a distant nod at the utmost. "It is hard," said Jem to himself, with a bitter and indignant feeling rising in his throat, "that let a man's life be what it may, folk are so ready to credit the first word against him. I could live it down if I stayed in England; but then what would not Mary have to bear? Sooner or later the truth would out; and then she would be a show to folk for many a day as John Barton's daughter. Well! God does not judge as hardly as man, that's one comfort for all of us!" Mr. Duncombe did not believe in Jem's guilt, in spite of the silence in which he again this day heard the imputation of it; but he agreed that under the circumstances it was better he should leave the country. "We have been written to by government, as I think I told you before, to recommend an intelligent man, well acquainted with mechanics, as instrument-maker to the Agricultural College they are establishing at Toronto, in Canada. It is a comfortable appointment,--house,--land,--and a good per-centage on the instruments made. I will show you the particulars if I can lay my hand on the letter, which I believe I must have left at home." "Thank you, sir. No need for seeing the letter to say I'll accept it. I must leave Manchester; and I'd as lief quit England at once when I'm about it." "Of course government will give you your passage; indeed, I believe an allowance would be made for a family if you had one; but you are not a married man, I believe?" "No, sir, but--" Jem hung back from a confession with the awkwardness of a girl. "But--" said Mr. Duncombe, smiling, "you would like to be a married man before you go, I suppose; eh, Wilson?" "If you please, sir. And there's my mother, too. I hope she'll go with us. But I can pay her passage; no need to trouble government." "Nay, nay! I'll write to-day and recommend you; and say that you have a family of two. They'll never ask if the family goes upwards or downwards. I shall see you again before you sail, I hope, Wilson; though I believe they'll not allow you long to wait. Come to my house next time; you'll find it pleasanter, I daresay. These men are so wrong-headed. Keep up your heart!" Jem felt that it was a relief to have this point settled; and that he need no longer weigh reasons for and against his emigration. And with his path growing clearer and clearer before him the longer he contemplated it, he went to see Mary, and if he judged it fit, to tell her what he had decided upon. Margaret was sitting with her. "Grandfather wants to see you!" said she to Jem on his entrance. "And I want to see him," replied Jem, suddenly remembering his last night's determination to enjoin secrecy on Job Legh. So he hardly stayed to kiss poor Mary's sweet woe-begone face, but tore himself away from his darling to go to the old man, who awaited him impatiently. "I've getten a note from Mr. Carson," exclaimed Job the moment he saw Jem; "and man-alive, he wants to see thee and me! For sure, there's no more mischief up, is there?" said he, looking at Jem with an expression of wonder. But if any suspicion mingled for an instant with the thoughts that crossed Job's mind, it was immediately dispelled by Jem's honest, fearless, open countenance. "I can't guess what he's wanting, poor old chap," answered he. "May be there's some point he's not yet satisfied on; may be--but it's no use guessing; let's be off." "It wouldn't be better for thee to be scarce a bit, would it, and leave me to go and find out what's up? He has, perhaps, getten some crotchet into his head thou'rt an accomplice, and is laying a trap for thee." "I'm not afeared!" said Jem; "I've done nought wrong, and know nought wrong, about yon poor dead lad; though I'll own I had evil thoughts once on a time. Folk can't mistake long if once they'll search into the truth. I'll go and give the old gentleman all the satisfaction in my power, now it can injure no one. I'd my own reasons for wanting to see him besides, and it all falls in right enough for me." Job was a little reassured by Jem's boldness; but still, if the truth must be told, he wished the young man would follow his advice, and leave him to sound Mr. Carson's intentions. Meanwhile Jane Wilson had donned her Sunday suit of black, and set off on her errand of condolence. She felt nervous and uneasy at the idea of the moral sayings and texts which she fancied were expected from visitors on occasions like the present; and prepared many a good set speech as she walked towards the house of mourning. As she gently opened the door, Mary, sitting idly by the fire, caught a glimpse of her,--of Jem's mother,--of the early friend of her dead parents,--of the kind minister to many a little want in days of childhood,--and rose and came and fell about her neck, with many a sob and moan, saying, "Oh, he's gone--he's dead--all gone--all dead, and I am left alone!" "Poor wench! poor, poor wench!" said Jane Wilson, tenderly kissing her. "Thou'rt not alone, so donnot take on so. I'll say nought of Him who's above, for thou know'st He is ever the orphan's friend; but think on Jem! nay, Mary, dear, think on me! I'm but a frabbit woman at times, but I've a heart within me through all my temper, and thou shalt be as a daughter henceforward,--as mine own ewe-lamb. Jem shall not love thee better in his way, than I will in mine; and thou'lt bear with my turns, Mary, knowing that in my soul God sees the love that shall ever be thine, if thou'lt take me for thy mother, and speak no more of being alone." Mrs. Wilson was weeping herself long before she had ended this speech, which was so different to all she had planned to say, and from all the formal piety she had laid in store for the visit; for this was heart's piety, and needed no garnish of texts to make it true religion, pure and undefiled. They sat together on the same chair, their arms encircling each other; they wept for the same dead; they had the same hope, and trust, and overflowing love in the living. From that time forward, hardly a passing cloud dimmed the happy confidence of their intercourse; even by Jem would his mother's temper sooner be irritated than by Mary; before the latter she repressed her occasional nervous ill-humour till the habit of indulging it was perceptibly decreased. Years afterwards in conversation with Jem, he was startled by a chance expression which dropped from his mother's lips; it implied a knowledge of John Barton's crime. It was many a long day since they had seen any Manchester people who could have revealed the secret (if indeed it was known in Manchester, against which Jem had guarded in every possible way). And he was led to inquire first as to the extent, and then as to the source of her knowledge. It was Mary herself who had told all. For on the morning to which this chapter principally relates, as Mary sat weeping, and as Mrs. Wilson comforted her by every tenderest word and caress, she revealed to the dismayed and astonished Jane, the sting of her deep sorrow; the crime which stained her dead father's memory. She was quite unconscious that Jem had kept it secret from his mother; she had imagined it bruited abroad as the suspicion against her lover had been; so word after word (dropped from her lips in the supposition that Mrs. Wilson knew all) had told the tale and revealed the cause of her deep anguish; deeper than is ever caused by Death alone. On large occasions like the present, Mrs. Wilson's innate generosity came out. Her weak and ailing frame imparted its irritation to her conduct in small things, and daily trifles; but she had deep and noble sympathy with great sorrows, and even at the time that Mary spoke she allowed no expression of surprise or horror to escape her lips. She gave way to no curiosity as to the untold details; she was as secret and trustworthy as her son himself; and if in years to come her anger was occasionally excited against Mary, and she, on rare occasions, yielded to ill-temper against her daughter-in-law, she would upbraid her for extravagance, or stinginess, or over-dressing, or under-dressing, or too much mirth or too much gloom, but never, never in her most uncontrolled moments did she allude to any one of the circumstances relating to Mary's flirtation with Harry Carson, or his murderer; and always when she spoke of John Barton, named him with the respect due to his conduct before the last, miserable, guilty month of his life. Therefore it came like a blow to Jem when, after years had passed away, he gathered his mother's knowledge of the whole affair. From the day when he learnt (not without remorse) what hidden depths of self-restraint she had in her soul, his manner to her, always tender and respectful, became reverential; and it was more than ever a loving strife between him and Mary which should most contribute towards the happiness of the declining years of their mother. But I am speaking of the events which have occurred only lately, while I have yet many things to tell you that happened six or seven years ago. CHAPTER XXXVII. DETAILS CONNECTED WITH THE MURDER. "The rich man dines, while the poor man pines, And eats his heart away; 'They teach us lies,' he sternly cries, 'Would _brothers_ do as they?'" "THE DREAM." Mr. Carson stood at one of the breathing-moments of life. The object of the toils, the fears, and the wishes of his past years, was suddenly hidden from his sight,--vanished into the deep mystery which circumscribes existence. Nay, even the vengeance which he had proposed to himself as an aim for exertion, had been taken away from before his eyes, as by the hand of God. Events like these would have startled the most thoughtless into reflection, much more such a man as Mr. Carson, whose mind, if not enlarged, was energetic; indeed, whose very energy, having been hitherto the cause of the employment of his powers in only one direction, had prevented him from becoming largely and philosophically comprehensive in his views. But now the foundations of his past life were razed to the ground, and the place they had once occupied was sown with salt, to be for ever rebuilt no more. It was like the change from this Life to that other hidden one, when so many of the motives which have actuated all our earthly existence, will have become more fleeting than the shadows of a dream. With a wrench of his soul from the past, so much of which was as nothing, and worse than nothing to him now, Mr. Carson took some hours, after he had witnessed the death of his son's murderer, to consider his situation. But suddenly, while he was deliberating, and searching for motives which should be effective to compel him to exertion and action once more; while he contemplated the desire after riches, social distinction, a name among the merchant-princes amidst whom he moved, and saw these false substances fade away into the shadows they truly are, and one by one disappear into the grave of his son,--suddenly, I say, the thought arose within him that more yet remained to be learned about the circumstances and feelings which had prompted John Barton's crime; and when once this mournful curiosity was excited, it seemed to gather strength in every moment that its gratification was delayed. Accordingly he sent a message to summon Job Legh and Jem Wilson, from whom he promised himself some elucidation of what was as yet unexplained; while he himself set forth to call on Mr. Bridgenorth, whom he knew to have been Jem's attorney, with a glimmering suspicion intruding on his mind, which he strove to repel, that Jem might have had some share in his son's death. He had returned before his summoned visitors arrived; and had time enough to recur to the evening on which John Barton had made his confession. He remembered with mortification how he had forgotten his proud reserve, and his habitual concealment of his feelings, and had laid bare his agony of grief in the presence of these two men who were coming to see him by his desire; and he entrenched himself behind stiff barriers of self-control, through which he hoped no appearance of emotion would force its way in the conversation he anticipated. Nevertheless, when the servant announced that two men were there by appointment to speak to him, and he had desired that they might be shown into the library where he sat, any watcher might have perceived by the trembling hands, and shaking head, not only how much he was aged by the occurrences of the last few weeks, but also how much he was agitated at the thought of the impending interview. But he so far succeeded in commanding himself at first, as to appear to Jem Wilson and Job Legh one of the hardest and most haughty men they had ever spoken to, and to forfeit all the interest which he had previously excited in their minds by his unreserved display of deep and genuine feeling. When he had desired them to be seated, he shaded his face with his hand for an instant before speaking. "I have been calling on Mr. Bridgenorth this morning," said he, at last; "as I expected, he can give me but little satisfaction on some points respecting the occurrence on the 18th of last month which I desire to have cleared up. Perhaps you two can tell me what I want to know. As intimate friends of Barton's you probably know, or can conjecture a good deal. Have no scruple as to speaking the truth. What you say in this room shall never be named again by me. Besides, you are aware that the law allows no one to be tried twice for the same offence." He stopped for a minute, for the mere act of speaking was fatiguing to him after the excitement of the last few weeks. Job Legh took the opportunity of speaking. "I'm not going to be affronted either for myself or Jem at what you've just now been saying about the truth. You don't know us, and there's an end on't; only it's as well for folk to think others good and true until they're proved contrary. Ask what you like, sir, I'll answer for it we'll either tell truth or hold our tongues." "I beg your pardon," said Mr. Carson, slightly bowing his head. "What I wished to know was," referring to a slip of paper he held in his hand, and shaking so much he could hardly adjust his glasses to his eyes, "whether you, Wilson, can explain how Barton came possessed of your gun. I believe you refused this explanation to Mr. Bridgenorth." "I did, sir! If I had said what I knew then, I saw it would criminate Barton, and so I refused telling aught. To you, sir, now I will tell every thing and any thing; only it is but little. The gun was my father's before it was mine, and long ago he and John Barton had a fancy for shooting at the gallery; and they used always to take this gun, and brag that though it was old-fashioned it was sure." Jem saw with self-upbraiding pain how Mr. Carson winced at these last words, but at each irrepressible and involuntary evidence of feeling, the hearts of the two men warmed towards him. Jem went on speaking. "One day in the week--I think it was on the Wednesday,--yes, it was,--it was on St. Patrick's day, I met John just coming out of our house, as I were going to my dinner. Mother was out, and he'd found no one in. He said he'd come to borrow the old gun, and that he'd have made bold, and taken it, but it was not to be seen. Mother was afraid of it, so after father's death (for while he were alive, she seemed to think he could manage it) I had carried it to my own room. I went up and fetched it for John, who stood outside the door all the time." "What did he say he wanted it for?" asked Mr. Carson, hastily. "I don't think he spoke when I gave it him. At first he muttered something about the shooting-gallery, and I never doubted but that it were for practice there, as I knew he had done years before." Mr. Carson had strung up his frame to an attitude of upright attention while Jem was speaking; now the tension relaxed, and he sank back in his chair, weak and powerless. He rose up again, however, as Jem went on, anxious to give every particular which could satisfy the bereaved father. "I never knew for what he wanted the gun till I was taken up,--I do not know yet why he wanted it. No one would have had me get out of the scrape by implicating an old friend,--my father's old friend, and the father of the girl I loved. So I refused to tell Mr. Bridgenorth aught about it, and would not have named it now to any one but you." Jem's face became very red at the allusion he made to Mary, but his honest, fearless eyes had met Mr. Carson's penetrating gaze unflinchingly, and had carried conviction of his innocence and truthfulness. Mr. Carson felt certain that he had heard all that Jem could tell. Accordingly he turned to Job Legh. "You were in the room the whole time while Barton was speaking to me, I think?" "Yes, sir," answered Job. "You'll excuse my asking plain and direct questions; the information I am gaining is really a relief to my mind, I don't know how, but it is,--will you tell me if you had any idea of Barton's guilt in this matter before?" "None whatever, so help me God!" said Job, solemnly. "To tell truth (and axing your forgiveness, Jem), I had never got quite shut of the notion that Jem here had done it. At times I was as clear of his innocence as I was of my own; and whenever I took to reasoning about it, I saw he could not have been the man that did it. Still I never thought of Barton." "And yet by his confession he must have been absent at the time," said Mr. Carson, referring to his slip of paper. "Ay, and for many a day after,--I can't rightly say how long. But still, you see, one's often blind to many a thing that lies right under one's nose, till it's pointed out. And till I heard what John Barton had to say yon night, I could not have seen what reason he had for doing it; while in the case of Jem, any one who looked at Mary Barton might have seen a cause for jealousy, clear enough." "Then you believe that Barton had no knowledge of my son's unfortunate,--" he looked at Jem, "of his attentions to Mary Barton. This young man, Wilson, had heard of them, you see." "The person who told me said clearly she neither had, nor would tell Mary's father," interposed Jem. "I don't believe he'd ever heard of it; he weren't a man to keep still in such a matter, if he had." "Besides," said Job, "the reason he gave on his death-bed, so to speak, was enough; 'specially to those who knew him." "You mean his feelings regarding the treatment of the workmen by the masters; you think he acted from motives of revenge, in consequence of the part my son had taken in putting down the strike?" "Well, sir," replied Job, "it's hard to say: John Barton was not a man to take counsel with people; nor did he make many words about his doings. So I can only judge from his way of thinking and talking in general, never having heard him breathe a syllable concerning this matter in particular. You see he were sadly put about to make great riches and great poverty square with Christ's Gospel"--Job paused, in order to try and express what was clear enough in his own mind, as to the effect produced on John Barton by the great and mocking contrasts presented by the varieties of human condition. Before he could find suitable words to explain his meaning, Mr. Carson spoke. "You mean he was an Owenite; all for equality and community of goods, and that kind of absurdity." "No, no! John Barton was no fool. No need to tell him that were all men equal to-night, some would get the start by rising an hour earlier to-morrow. Nor yet did he care for goods, nor wealth--no man less, so that he could get daily bread for him and his; but what hurt him sore, and rankled in him as long as I knew him (and, sir, it rankles in many a poor man's heart far more than the want of any creature-comforts, and puts a sting into starvation itself), was that those who wore finer clothes, and eat better food, and had more money in their pockets, kept him at arm's length, and cared not whether his heart was sorry or glad; whether he lived or died,--whether he was bound for heaven or hell. It seemed hard to him that a heap of gold should part him and his brother so far asunder. For he was a loving man before he grew mad with seeing such as he was slighted, as if Christ Himself had not been poor. At one time, I've heard him say, he felt kindly towards every man, rich or poor, because he thought they were all men alike. But latterly he grew aggravated with the sorrows and suffering that he saw, and which he thought the masters might help if they would." "That's the notion you've all of you got," said Mr. Carson. "Now, how in the world can we help it? We cannot regulate the demand for labour. No man or set of men can do it. It depends on events which God alone can control. When there is no market for our goods, we suffer just as much as you can do." "Not as much, I'm sure, sir; though I'm not given to Political Economy, I know that much. I'm wanting in learning, I'm aware; but I can use my eyes. I never see the masters getting thin and haggard for want of food; I hardly ever see them making much change in their way of living, though I don't doubt they've got to do it in bad times. But it's in things for show they cut short; while for such as me, it's in things for life we've to stint. For sure, sir, you'll own it's come to a hard pass when a man would give aught in the world for work to keep his children from starving, and can't get a bit, if he's ever so willing to labour. I'm not up to talking as John Barton would have done, but that's clear to me at any rate." "My good man, just listen to me. Two men live in solitude; one produces loaves of bread, the other coats,--or what you will. Now, would it not be hard if the bread-producer were forced to give bread for the coats, whether he wanted them or not, in order to furnish employment to the other? That is the simple form of the case; you've only to multiply the numbers. There will come times of great changes in the occupation of thousands, when improvements in manufactures and machinery are made.--It's all nonsense talking,--it must be so!" Job Legh pondered a few moments. "It's true it was a sore time for the hand-loom weavers when power-looms came in: them new-fangled things make a man's life like a lottery; and yet I'll never misdoubt that power-looms, and railways, and all such-like inventions, are the gifts of God. I have lived long enough, too, to see that it is part of His plan to send suffering to bring out a higher good; but surely it's also part of His plan that as much of the burden of the suffering as can be, should be lightened by those whom it is His pleasure to make happy, and content in their own circumstances. Of course it would take a deal more thought and wisdom than me, or any other man has, to settle out of hand how this should be done. But I'm clear about this, when God gives a blessing to be enjoyed, He gives it with a duty to be done; and the duty of the happy is to help the suffering to bear their woe." "Still, facts have proved and are daily proving how much better it is for every man to be independent of help, and self-reliant," said Mr. Carson, thoughtfully. "You can never work facts as you would fixed quantities, and say, given two facts, and the product is so and so. God has given men feelings and passions which cannot be worked into the problem, because they are for ever changing and uncertain. God has also made some weak; not in any one way, but in all. One is weak in body, another in mind, another in steadiness of purpose, a fourth can't tell right from wrong, and so on; or if he can tell the right, he wants strength to hold by it. Now to my thinking, them that is strong in any of God's gifts is meant to help the weak,--be hanged to the facts! I ask your pardon, sir; I can't rightly explain the meaning that is in me. I'm like a tap as won't run, but keeps letting it out drop by drop, so that you've no notion of the force of what's within." Job looked and felt very sorrowful at the want of power in his words, while the feeling within him was so strong and clear. "What you say is very true, no doubt," replied Mr. Carson; "but how would you bring it to bear upon the masters' conduct,--on my particular case?" added he, gravely. "I'm not learned enough to argue. Thoughts come into my head that I'm sure are as true as Gospel, though may be they don't follow each other like the Q. E. D. of a Proposition. The masters has it on their own conscience,--you have it on yours, sir, to answer for to God whether you've done, and are doing all in your power to lighten the evils that seem always to hang on the trades by which you make your fortunes. It's no business of mine, thank God. John Barton took the question in hand, and his answer to it was NO! Then he grew bitter, and angry, and mad; and in his madness he did a great sin, and wrought a great woe; and repented him with tears as of blood; and will go through his penance humbly and meekly in t'other place, I'll be bound. I never seed such bitter repentance as his that last night." There was a silence of many minutes. Mr. Carson had covered his face, and seemed utterly forgetful of their presence; and yet they did not like to disturb him by rising to leave the room. At last he said, without meeting their sympathetic eyes, "Thank you both for coming,--and for speaking candidly to me. I fear, Legh, neither you nor I have convinced each other, as to the power, or want of power, in the masters to remedy the evils the men complain of." "I'm loth to vex you, sir, just now; but it was not the want of power I was talking on; what we all feel sharpest is the want of inclination to try and help the evils which come like blights at times over the manufacturing places, while we see the masters can stop work and not suffer. If we saw the masters try for our sakes to find a remedy,--even if they were long about it,--even if they could find no help, and at the end of all could only say, 'Poor fellows, our hearts are sore for ye; we've done all we could, and can't find a cure,'--we'd bear up like men through bad times. No one knows till they've tried, what power of bearing lies in them, if once they believe that men are caring for their sorrows and will help if they can. If fellow-creatures can give nought but tears and brave words, we take our trials straight from God, and we know enough of His love to put ourselves blind into His hands. You say our talk has done no good. I say it has. I see the view you take of things from the place where you stand. I can remember that, when the time comes for judging you; I sha'n't think any longer, does he act right on my views of a thing, but does he act right on his own. It has done me good in that way. I'm an old man, and may never see you again; but I'll pray for you, and think on you and your trials, both of your great wealth, and of your son's cruel death, many and many a day to come; and I'll ask God to bless both to you now and for evermore. Amen. Farewell!" Jem had maintained a manly and dignified reserve ever since he had made his open statement of all he knew. Now both the men rose and bowed low, looking at Mr. Carson with the deep human interest they could not fail to take in one who had endured and forgiven a deep injury; and who struggled hard, as it was evident he did, to bear up like a man under his affliction. He bowed low in return to them. Then he suddenly came forward and shook them by the hand; and thus, without a word more, they parted. There are stages in the contemplation and endurance of great sorrow, which endow men with the same earnestness and clearness of thought that in some of old took the form of Prophecy. To those who have large capability of loving and suffering, united with great power of firm endurance, there comes a time in their woe, when they are lifted out of the contemplation of their individual case into a searching inquiry into the nature of their calamity, and the remedy (if remedy there be) which may prevent its recurrence to others as well as to themselves. Hence the beautiful, noble efforts which are from time to time brought to light, as being continuously made by those who have once hung on the cross of agony, in order that others may not suffer as they have done; one of the grandest ends which sorrow can accomplish; the sufferer wrestling with God's messenger until a blessing is left behind, not for one alone but for generations. It took time before the stern nature of Mr. Carson was compelled to the recognition of this secret of comfort, and that same sternness prevented his reaping any benefit in public estimation from the actions he performed; for the character is more easily changed than the habits and manners originally formed by that character, and to his dying day Mr. Carson was considered hard and cold by those who only casually saw him, or superficially knew him. But those who were admitted into his confidence were aware, that the wish which lay nearest to his heart was that none might suffer from the cause from which he had suffered; that a perfect understanding, and complete confidence and love, might exist between masters and men; that the truth might be recognised that the interests of one were the interests of all, and as such, required the consideration and deliberation of all; that hence it was most desirable to have educated workers, capable of judging, not mere machines of ignorant men; and to have them bound to their employers by the ties of respect and affection, not by mere money bargains alone; in short, to acknowledge the Spirit of Christ as the regulating law between both parties. Many of the improvements now in practice in the system of employment in Manchester, owe their origin to short, earnest sentences spoken by Mr. Carson. Many and many yet to be carried into execution, take their birth from that stern, thoughtful mind, which submitted to be taught by suffering. CHAPTER XXXVIII. CONCLUSION. "Touch us gently, gentle Time! We've not proud nor soaring wings, Our ambition, our content, Lies in simple things; Humble voyagers are we O'er life's dim unsounded sea; Touch us gently, gentle Time!" BARRY CORNWALL. Not many days after John Barton's funeral was over, all was arranged respecting Jem's appointment at Toronto; and the time was fixed for his sailing. It was to take place almost immediately: yet much remained to be done; many domestic preparations were to be made; and one great obstacle, anticipated by both Jem and Mary, to be removed. This was the opposition they expected from Mrs. Wilson, to whom the plan had never yet been named. They were most anxious that their home should continue ever to be hers, yet they feared that her dislike to a new country might be an insuperable objection to this. At last Jem took advantage of an evening of unusual placidity, as he sat alone with his mother just before going to bed, to broach the subject; and to his surprise she acceded willingly to his proposition of her accompanying himself and his wife. "To be sure 'Merica is a long way to flit to; beyond London a good bit I reckon; and quite in foreign parts; but I've never had no opinion of England, ever since they could be such fools as take up a quiet chap like thee, and clap thee in prison. Where you go, I'll go. Perhaps in them Indian countries they'll know a well-behaved lad when they see him; ne'er speak a word more, lad, I'll go." Their path became daily more smooth and easy; the present was clear and practicable, the future was hopeful; they had leisure of mind enough to turn to the past. "Jem!" said Mary to him, one evening as they sat in the twilight, talking together in low happy voices till Margaret should come to keep Mary company through the night, "Jem! you've never yet told me how you came to know about my naughty ways with poor young Mr. Carson." She blushed for shame at the remembrance of her folly, and hid her head on his shoulder while he made answer. "Darling, I'm almost loth to tell you; your aunt Esther told me." "Ah, I remember! but how did she know? I was so put about that night I did not think of asking her. Where did you see her? I've forgotten where she lives." Mary said all this in so open and innocent a manner, that Jem felt sure she knew not the truth respecting Esther, and he half hesitated to tell her. At length he replied, "Where did you see Esther lately? When? Tell me, love, for you've never named it before, and I can't make it out." "Oh! it was that horrible night which is like a dream." And she told him of Esther's midnight visit, concluding with, "We must go and see her before we leave, though I don't rightly know where to find her." "Dearest Mary,--" "What, Jem?" exclaimed she, alarmed by his hesitation. "Your poor aunt Esther has no home:--she's one of them miserable creatures that walk the streets." And he in his turn told of his encounter with Esther, with so many details that Mary was forced to be convinced, although her heart rebelled against the belief. "Jem, lad!" said she, vehemently, "we must find her out,--we must hunt her up!" She rose as if she was going on the search there and then. "What could we do, darling?" asked he, fondly restraining her. "Do! Why! what could we _not_ do, if we could but find her? She's none so happy in her ways, think ye, but what she'd turn from them, if any one would lend her a helping hand. Don't hold me, Jem; this is just the time for such as her to be out, and who knows but what I might find her close at hand." "Stay, Mary, for a minute; I'll go out now and search for her if you wish, though it's but a wild chase. You must not go. It would be better to ask the police to-morrow. But if I should find her, how can I make her come with me? Once before she refused, and said she could not break off her drinking ways, come what might?" "You never will persuade her if you fear and doubt," said Mary, in tears. "Hope yourself, and trust to the good that must be in her. Speak to that,--she has it in her yet,--oh, bring her home, and we will love her so, we'll make her good." "Yes!" said Jem, catching Mary's sanguine spirit; "she shall go to America with us; and we'll help her to get rid of her sins. I'll go now, my precious darling, and if I can't find her, it's but trying the police to-morrow. Take care of your own sweet self, Mary," said he, fondly kissing her before he went out. It was not to be. Jem wandered far and wide that night, but never met Esther. The next day he applied to the police; and at last they recognised under his description of her, a woman known to them under the name of the "Butterfly," from the gaiety of her dress a year or two ago. By their help he traced out one of her haunts, a low lodging-house behind Peter Street. He and his companion, a kind-hearted policeman, were admitted, suspiciously enough, by the landlady, who ushered them into a large garret where twenty or thirty people of all ages and both sexes lay and dozed away the day, choosing the evening and night for their trades of beggary, thieving, or prostitution. "I know the Butterfly was here," said she, looking round. "She came in, the night before last, and said she had not a penny to get a place for shelter; and that if she was far away in the country she could steal aside and die in a copse, or a clough, like the wild animals; but here the police would let no one alone in the streets, and she wanted a spot to die in, in peace. It's a queer sort of peace we have here, but that night the room was uncommon empty, and I'm not a hard-hearted woman (I wish I were, I could ha' made a good thing out of it afore this if I were harder), so I sent her up,--but she's not here now, I think." "Was she very bad?" asked Jem. "Ay! nought but skin and bone, with a cough to tear her in two." They made some inquiries, and found that in the restlessness of approaching death, she had longed to be once more in the open air, and had gone forth,--where, no one seemed to be able to tell. Leaving many messages for her, and directions that he was to be sent for if either the policeman or the landlady obtained any clue to her where-abouts, Jem bent his steps towards Mary's house; for he had not seen her all that long day of search. He told her of his proceedings and want of success; and both were saddened at the recital, and sat silent for some time. After a while they began talking over their plans. In a day or two, Mary was to give up house, and go and live for a week or so with Job Legh, until the time of her marriage, which would take place immediately before sailing; they talked themselves back into silence and delicious reverie. Mary sat by Jem, his arm round her waist, her head on his shoulder; and thought over the scenes which had passed in that home she was so soon to leave for ever. Suddenly she felt Jem start, and started too without knowing why; she tried to see his countenance, but the shades of evening had deepened so much she could read no expression there. It was turned to the window; she looked and saw a white face pressed against the panes on the outside, gazing intently into the dusky chamber. While they watched, as if fascinated by the appearance, and unable to think or stir, a film came over the bright, feverish, glittering eyes outside, and the form sank down to the ground without a struggle of instinctive resistance. "It is Esther!" exclaimed they, both at once. They rushed outside; and, fallen into what appeared simply a heap of white or light-coloured clothes, fainting or dead, lay the poor crushed Butterfly--the once innocent Esther. She had come (as a wounded deer drags its heavy limbs once more to the green coolness of the lair in which it was born, there to die) to see the place familiar to her innocence, yet once again before her death. Whether she was indeed alive or dead, they knew not now. Job came in with Margaret, for it was bed-time. He said Esther's pulse beat a little yet. They carried her upstairs and laid her on Mary's bed, not daring to undress her, lest any motion should frighten the trembling life away; but it was all in vain. Towards midnight, she opened wide her eyes and looked around on the once familiar room; Job Legh knelt by the bed praying aloud and fervently for her, but he stopped as he saw her roused look. She sat up in bed with a sudden convulsive motion. "Has it been a dream then?" asked she wildly. Then with a habit, which came like instinct even in that awful dying hour, her hand sought for a locket which hung concealed in her bosom, and, finding that, she knew all was true which had befallen her since last she lay an innocent girl on that bed. She fell back, and spoke word never more. She held the locket containing her child's hair still in her hand, and once or twice she kissed it with a long soft kiss. She cried feebly and sadly as long as she had any strength to cry, and then she died. They laid her in one grave with John Barton. And there they lie without name, or initial, or date. Only this verse is inscribed upon the stone which covers the remains of these two wanderers. Psalm ciii. v. 9.--"For He will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger for ever." I see a long, low, wooden house, with room enough and to spare. The old primeval trees are felled and gone for many a mile around; one alone remains to overshadow the gable-end of the cottage. There is a garden around the dwelling, and far beyond that stretches an orchard. The glory of an Indian summer is over all, making the heart leap at the sight of its gorgeous beauty. At the door of the house, looking towards the town, stands Mary, watching for the return of her husband from his daily work; and while she watches, she listens, smiling; "Clap hands, daddy comes, With his pocket full of plums, And a cake for Johnnie." Then comes a crow of delight from Johnnie. Then his grandmother carries him to the door, and glories in seeing him resist his mother's blandishments to cling to her. "English letters! 'Twas that made me so late!" "Oh, Jem, Jem! don't hold them so tight! What do they say?" "Why, some good news. Come, give a guess what it is." "Oh, tell me! I cannot guess," said Mary. "Then you give it up, do you? What do you say, mother?" Jane Wilson thought a moment. "Will and Margaret are married?" asked she. "Not exactly,--but very near. The old woman has twice the spirit of the young one. Come, Mary, give a guess!" He covered his little boy's eyes with his hands for an instant, significantly, till the baby pushed them down, saying in his imperfect way, "Tan't see." "There now! Johnnie can see. Do you guess, Mary?" "They've done something to Margaret to give her back her sight!" exclaimed she. "They have. She has been couched, and can see as well as ever. She and Will are to be married on the twenty-fifth of this month, and he's bringing her out here next voyage; and Job Legh talks of coming too,--not to see you, Mary,--nor you, mother,--nor you, my little hero" (kissing him), "but to try and pick up a few specimens of Canadian insects, Will says. All the compliment is to the earwigs, you see, mother!" "Dear Job Legh!" said Mary, softly and seriously.