CIHM Microfiche Series (IMonographs) ICMH Collection de microfiches (monographies) Canadian Instituta for Historical IMicroroproductiont / Inttitut Canadian da microraproductions hittoriquas M - Technical and Bibliographic Nv^ids / Notes techniques et bibliographiques Th« lnttitut« has att«fnpt«d to obtain th« best original copy available for filnning. Features of this copy which may be bibllogntphically unique, which may alter any of the images in the reproduction, or which may significantly change the usual method of filming are checked below. r~Y Coloured covers / 1-^ Couverture de couieur □ Covers damaged / Couverture endommagte □ Covers restored and/or laminated / Couverture restaur6e et/ou pellicuMe Cover title missing / Le titre de couverture manque I Coloured maps / Cartes g^ographiques en couieur Coloured ink (i.e. other than blue or black) / Encre de couieur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire) V~l( Cotoursd plates and/or iliustrattons / D D D D D Planches et/ou illustrations en couieur Bound with other material / Relld avec d'autres documents Only edition available / Seule Mitton disponible Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin / La reliure serrde peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distorsion le long de la marge intdrieure. Blank leaves added during restorattons may appear within the text. Whenever possible, these have been omitted from filming / Use peut que certaines pages blanches ajoutdes lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans le texte, mais, lorsque cela 6tait possible, ces pages n'ont pas 6t6 fiim^es. Addittonal comments / Commentaires suppi^me.^taires: L'Instltut a rnlcrofilm^ le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a M possible 'de se procurer. Les details de cet exem- plaire qui sont peut-«tre unk|ues du point de vue bibll- ographkiue, qui peuvent modifier une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une nfKXiifk»tk)n dans la mMho- de normale de filmage sont indkiute d-dessous. I I CokNjred pages/ Pages de couieur I I Pages damaged/ Pages endommag^ee D Pages restored and/or laminated / Pages restaurtes et/ou peiitoui^es Pages discotoured, stained or foxed / Pages d^cotortes, tachet^es ou pk^utes I I Pages detached / Pages ddtach^es \y\ Showthrough/ Transparence I I Quality of print varies / D D D Quality inhale de I'impressbn Includes supplementary material / Comprend du materiel suppi^mentaire Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata slips, tissues, etc., have been refilmed to ensure the best possible image / Les pages totaiement ou partiellement ot)scurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une peiure, etc.. ont 6t6 film^es & nouveau de fafon k obtenir la meilleure image possible. Opposing pages with varying colouration or discok)uratk)ns are filmed twne to ensure the best possible image / Les pages s'opposant ayant des colorations variables ou des decolorations sont filmtes deux fois afin d'obtenir la meilleure image possible. This MMn to fNmMi M tlw radueUon ralie ctMetod baktw / C« docmwm — tfWm»«itBaKdT Th« copy «m«d M« hM b««» r-P^-**^ to tlw 9«*«'««*^.^ olataa chart*, ate., nwi bo «llmod at SCJK'rSi^-n rati-. ^^^'^^^^' "^ ontirolv includod In «»"• •«»»;^,r^'"2S to boginmnfl In tho uppar laft hand e»"^' •*" " riaht and too to bottom, aa many frama* a* XiS! SS Ml^^9 di.«ram. Ul-uata th. nwthod: L'oMRiploiro «lm* M roproduit grteo i la g«n«rooit« do: Biblloth^VM nationalo du Canada Ui tonagaa suivantaa ont M roproduito* avac la plua grand aoin. compto tanu da la condition at do la nottotd do I'aBomplaira film*, at w oonformM ovoo loo eonditiona du contrat do fHmago. Loa aaamplalraa orlplnaua dont la eouwartura an oMior aat ImprimOa aont fllmOa an commaiicant par la promlor plot at an tarminant aott par la SlraiaM aaoa oul eomporta una amprainta SSJJiSorou dlMuatratlon. soit por lo .acond plot.\Ialonlo CO*. Toua laa autra. aaamplaira. oriainous aont fllmda an eomman?ant par la aramidvo papa qui eomporto uno omprainta dlmpraaalon ou d'lMuatratlon at an tarminant par la damMra popo qui eomporto uno toUo omprointo. Un doe avmboloa auivanta apparattra aur la i2;5SaTma9a da «*^--r:?;"SS;;pr^^^^^^ eaa: la aymbolo -♦ aignilla A SUIVIIi . la Smbolo ▼ ai9ni«« "nN"- La* eartaa. planehaa. tableau., etc.. pauvant itra f ilmda i daa taua do r*duction d.«1*f •«». Leraouo lo document eet trop 9'«nd pour itre iS^it enun soul cllchd. il eat film* 4 partir STldo^updrlaur gauche, do geueh. * droite. ot do haut en boa. an prenant la nombra yimagl. necaaaalra. Laa diagrammea .uivant. IMuatrant la mOthoda. MKXOoorr msouition tht cha«t (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 IJ lit |£ IM - 23 2.2 2.0 1125 I u 1.6 j4 ••53 Ea«« IMn StrMi C7i«) am-stM-ra, ▼^ m^j kL\ ^*^ 'K6\ /p^y. \^ C^/Uv^ V THE INLANDER The Inlander HARRISON ROBERTSON AUTHOR or *« IF I WIU A aA», • M MB BMOD AND M.WI," tTC % TORONTO WILLIAM BRIGGS 1901 :?S3535 XSif no I Copjrri^t, 1901. by Charles Soilmer't Sons, for the United States of America Printed at The University ftess, John Wilson and Son. Cwabridfe, U.S. A. «»4U33^ CONTENTS I. First Flight of a " Squab "... '*°J II. "When GoodFeixows GET Together" i8 III. Paul Rodman GOES INTO Business . 33 IV. The Bloom from the Blur .... 46 V. A Spoiled Pen instead of a Broken Neck VI. A Rapid Walk and a Closed Gate . 63 VII. The House in the Highlands ... 69 VIII. The House on Gray Street ... 79 IX. « The Brand of a Burnt^ut Star " . 98 X. A Suggestion for a Play .... 102 XI. Across the Years .... XII. Division Valley XIII. "Done Come Home" ..... ^ XIV. The Story of a Blue-Eyed Crow . 156 XV. Manager Joyce disturbs a Summer Holiday ^ XVI. The Whippoorwill _^ 'Tw VI XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. Contents - VAGB COIXAPSE OF A PhILOSOPRT ... 182 A Slump in Fluor-spar .... 191 A^»c= 199 Madge ^^g Fletcher Keith develops a Taste FOR Chopin 229 The Signal 235 Merely to kill a Man or be KILLED 248 Among the Buckwalters ... 257 An Arrival at Twin Mountain . 272 Under the Crags 275 Barney Carruthers has his Say 284 Dr. Ward loses a Patient ... 298 A Race Southward ,0^ "No Longer A Dream" ,,0 The Inlander I The Inlander FIRST FLIGHT OF A " SQUAB " " It was just like you, Polly ! » was the grinning comment of Barney Carruthers afterwards, as Paul Rodman told him of the Glorious Girl on the tram. " I could have sworn that when you started out in the world you would n't have gone twenty miles before putting on your funeral face and holding your breath in long- distance worship of some bolt of calico » Barney Carruthers sometimes called him Pau and sometimes Rod; it was only when Paul was discussiMg Girls, and Woman, and Womanhood that Barney addressed him as Polly. -which after all, was not a remote dimmutive of Paul, considering Barney's pro- pensity to carom over his diphthongs But Barney was wide of the mark in one respect Paul /iooT gone twenty miles before he put on h.s funeral face and held his breath at sight of the Glorious Giri. She did not get i The Inlander on the train until it was pulling out from Nash- ville, and Paul had travelled more than forty miles before he reached Nashville. He was twenty-two, and he was literally as Barney Carruthers expressed it, starting out in the world. The death of his lather. Judge Sevier Rodman, a year before, had left Paul the last of an old family. He had tried run- ning the farm one season, but he longed to be where the tide of life was strong, and the pastoral country around the inland town of Mavistoc, in Middle Tennessee, which had thus far limited his horizon, beautiful as it was and much as he loved it, could not sat- isfy that longing. While his father lived Paul had not been impatient to leave the old homestead. The disparity in their ages did not prevent the closest companionship between the scholarly recluse and his young son, who were the sole white members of the household. The boy entered with zest into the pursuits and studies of the man. They passed the days together, with guns or fishing-rods; the evenings they usually shared, sitti-g on the veranda in sum- mer and around the library table in winter. The education of his son was the chief employ- First Flight of a "Squab" , l^Z !''""'"'» "'"<='•. with the relaxation idle 7° t, 'r*"' '"* «'■*""■•* "«e a«ia were cast on this beni?n soil »nA ;« th„ ge„t,ec,i.ate. Moreover, 1.'^^, ? cahon, Paul subsequenfly found, which he had -nirnTen"'"'-''^'''-''--^'''^-' Having sold the farm, after reserving the booH the piano, and a few of the p"Zi for himself, young Rodman, with «, 7^^" u take' r' 'Zr' '-'' ^"' --- "airhtl' taken the northbound train this mornine on a battLfieW of "ifl •• "^'"'^' °""'^ ""o"'- "«>' ro"^-ra^TChra,:-tr sanguine and imaginative- feeding v-' -rpotrdr:^"^?-^-^^ orareams^hifhreT:^.^ tirT^^tir -he was at last thundering on his wav to »d l?.rl.'°" '" *" "«■' °f the whe^ s "d the throb of the engine that told him" s 4 The Inlander beginning had actually begun. The glistening rails did not reel out behind him as swiftly as he was leaving the old life. His eyes were constantly out of the car window. Every scene along the road had a vivid interest for him, — the little way-sUtions, the straggling spectators, a town, a river, the tree-grown forts, and the well-kept cemetery that told of the great battle fought before he was born; then Nashville, and the Girl! She came into the car as If she had just stepped out of one of Paul's books, and the porter gave her a chair not very far in frc ni of Paul's, in which she settled herself, with her bags and bundles finally stowed to her satisfac- tion. Then she lifted one exquisite hand to her collar, and again to the coil of her hair, sweeping the car with a serene, surveying glance, during which Paul caught the color of her eyes; whereupon his " funeral face " came to him, and he sat very still, and looked through the window no more. Paul knew little about women, though he thought he knew everything about them. Cer- tainly he had his own ideas about Woman; and they were ideas which that fine old South- ern gentleman, Judge Sevier Rodman, would r First Flight of a " Squab " 5 have heartily approved as part of the capital of his son as the boy went forth to make his place as a man. Those ideas of Paul's were deeply rooted, if not very definite, at an early age. He had contemplated the sex with wonder and awe, merging into admiration and reverence. From' whatever sources his boyhood's impressions had been derived, however, it was not from intimate association with women themselves. His mother had died within six months after his birth; he had no sisters; and he never thought of his old black nurse as a woman any more than he thought of her as a butterfly' She was simply his " mammy," as far removed in kind and degree from the beautiful beings he knew as " ladies " as they were removed from all other created things. Indeed, ladies as he conceived them, belonged to a world altogether different from the litUe one in which he lived. It would have been a strange wonder- tale to the child if he had been told that woman is only a sort of man. -or. if pre- ferred. that man is only a sort of woman. And when the revelation did burst upon him that adies have two legs, "just like men," his mental organism underwent some such wrench- 6 The Inlander |ng ajid rearrangement as accompanied the Ignoble transition of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde Up to that time a suspicion of the fact that so supernal a creature as a lady was hampered by the material necessity of walking with legs, hke common men, had never entered his brain. The flowmg folds of a woman's draperies had always been to him as essentially a part of herself as the white robes and feathered wings of the celestial pictures in the family Bible were parts of the angels themselves. If before he had eaten of the tree of knowledge he had been mformed that ladies propel themselves, like men. by poking one prong of themselves out before the other prong of themselves, he would have been as incredulous as the lover of the thoroughbred is when first asked to believe that the grotesquely awkward movements caught by instantaneous photography repre- sent the running action of that graceful animal. Women m motion no more suggested to young Rodman the act of walking than did the float- ing of a swan or the flight of a swallow. And so when his father took him to the circus one day, and something called " Mile. Laromba," clad in conspicuously scant gauze, toddled out into the ring and jumped upon First Flight of a " Squab " 7 the bare back of a spotted horse, and when his father, in response to his inquiries, told hin, that it was a woman, and finally con- vinced him that it did not belong to the me- nagene, and had not been captured in some strange land along with the camels and the kangaroos, but was exactly like other women, except in the merely artificial adjunct of rai- ment, the lad learned the first of those les- sons that make him the subject of this bit of biography. The girl in the car sat with her back turned to Paul, and he had to content himself with a view of the graceful contour of one shoulder and cheek She was reading a book, and after the one glance she had given her fellow-pas- sengers she seemed oblivious of their exist- ence. Paul's desire for a better look at her grew stronger the more it was denied, and he was seriously debating whether he could, with- out attracting her notice, change his seat to one of the revolving chairs in front of her when she closed the book and swinging he Zfr i^'"*""^ '••°""^' ^'^^^ »^- -y- con- templatively on the scenery through the win- dows across the aisle. Paul now had his opportunity, and he studied her face intently 8 The Inlander furtively, as if he feared the very act of hi. Uian of weakncM. ft had . light of it, own wdependen, of the Ugh. of th.wo»derfll .y",! tl.,pur..heart.d.a„d w.™-h.,rt.d J„„*'" .nrt 'f"'- •" *" '"'"' R""""""-' verdict; and who better qualified than Paul, i„ hii yoat.. «,d inexperience, to «cg„i„ '" ^ woman on sight , The dream, of all W, Me i'Vtndrtr"^'""'^-'"'"''"^^---' He continued to gaze at her until, after a few mmute,, she turned her head slightly and caught h,m in the act. His eyes feU pr«ti. flal'r"Ht mT.*^' "" '"« "" ■■-3; aflame. He fe|, |,ke , convicted culprit. She wa, too well bred to display any irriUtion, but Nevertheless he was glowing with the con sc.ousne« that he had seen hef eyes again .1 deep and tender eyes (what was LreSLt he \ First F light of a «« Sqwib " 9 did not knowabout such eyes ?) which confirmed a hundredfold all that her face betokened. That consciou:>ness overwhelmed even his sense of guilt. He must see those eyes again, — cau- tiously, respectfully, — but he must see them. Glancing, after a little, toward her once more, it was with a quickening of his pulse Uiat he ? ^w they were leveUed upon himself. She withdrew them, but hardly before he too had turned away. When next he stealthily looked at her she was engrossed in her book. Of course his insolence had offended her' The thought stirred in him a tumult of com- punction and self-contempt, and it was fuUv five minutes before he allowed his eyes to venture in forbidden territory again. She was still occupied with the book; but It was not long before a swift glance came to him over the top of it, when, closing the vol- ume, she turned with a faint sigh to the win- dow and drummed listlessly on the glass That settled it. She was offended by his persistent ogling; whereupon he sank again to lower depths of abasement. But he did not discontinue his transgression. He could at least look at her openly, now that her back was toward him. 10 The Inlander Presently, as if moved by a sudden caprice, she began fumbling at the window, with the evident purpose of raising it. But perhaps shedid not understand the catch; something seemed to resist her efforts. "I ought to offer my assistance." thought Mr. Paul Rodman. "If I had not already provoked her I But a gentleman can't stand back at such a time. I '11 lift the window for her and then I '11 go into the smoker, and I '11 be hanged if I annoy her with another look while she remains on the -oh, thunder!" K t ^^"^^°'^"t.faced old gentleman, sitting behmd Paul, had walked over and raised the refractory sash. He was rewarded with the sweetest of smiles and the sweetest of" Thank you's; " and as he returned to his seat he cast a quizzical glance at Paul, who, however, did not understand it, if he saw it. The truth is that young voyager into the outer world was now thoroughly dejected, and drawing his coat more closely around him, as if to commune with h^ adversity, as the Spartans communed with their secret foxes, he was about to con- tract mto the gloomy depths of his chair, when his impulse was arrested with almost a jerk by the spectacle of a man with a dyed mustache First Flight of a « Squab " 1 1 who projected himself suddenly into Paul's field of vision. This man might have been any age from forty to sixty, and his figure was not yet too rotund to show that he had once been hand- some, though his face was now the well-marked battleground of the forces of vitality and de- cay. Between the deadness of his dyed mus- tache and dyed hair his eyes still burned with ivmg fire, and though his complexion was the dull red whose dulness is accentuated by dyed hair, the upper part of his visage and head was symmetrical and even imposing It was the deep lines that fell away on either sjde from the base of his nose that etched the jowls of swme. He was well dressed, andThe fl r^'^''" ^'''' °" ^'^ «"en !n n . "^ r °^ ^'"^>^ handkerchief from an outside breast-pocket of his coat. ouroor ''' '" '°^ ^ P"^P°-' ^"d the wS h ''T """" '^"'"^ P^^'"- The chair ImJI r ^"' '^''''''^y '" fr°"t °f the fnf. u '' ^^^>^' ^"^ ^^ ^^""g »t around to face her. starmg at her with bold, and what was evidently intended to be ingraiiating^^ad miration. Soon a smile glinted in his eyes. 12 The Inlander then twitched his mouth, and a httle later the handkerchief was flirted from his pocket and passed significantly over his lips. Paul was inwardly seething. His fingers gripped to be at the fellow's throat, and his teeth were clinched in the restraint he had forced upon himself. He glanced at the girl, but her back was toward him. He thought the cheek which he could see partially was flushed, and he inferred from her attitude that she was looking studiously out of the window. Just then the train slowed to a stop at a station, amid a clamorous din of " Peaches ! peaches ! Here 's your fresh soft peaches, six for a mckel ! " It seemed to bring an inspira- tion to the man with the dyed mustache, who smiled broadly and hurried from the car. with a look on his face which proclaimed loudly that his next move would b^ a fruit-offering to Paul got up and sauntered to the door through which the man had disappeared. Stepping out to the platform of the car. he closed the door behind him and breathed the air of free- dom once more. The man he had followed was on the ground among the boys, who crowded around him. pressing on him their First Flight of a " Squab " 1 3 bargains. In half a minute more the train started and the man was on the steps of the coach, with both hands full of peaches. Paul, standing with his back to the car door, quietly looking at him, made no motion to allow him to pass. " Open the door for me, my young friend ; you see I 've got all I can 'tend to." The man, who was on a level with Paul now, spoke a little hurriedly and in a good-humored tone tha« took compliance for granted. It was a way of Paul's that when he was in communication with one who had aroused his anger he smiled winningly — up to a certain point. He was smiling now as the man with the peaches halted before him. "You have made a mistake," Paul said gently; "your car must be further to the front." "No, I ain't made no mistake," laughing shortly and impatiently; "what do you take me for, bubby?" He started forward, as if to push by Paul, but Paul was not to be pushed aside. " I am quite sure you have, sir; this car is intended for ladies and gentlemen." The man's eyebrows wrinkled nearer together '4 The Inlander as he screwed his sharp gaze on Paul anH k. dropped one of his peach's as he spoke ' '' acr 1 ain t got no time to stand out here and joke with you." ^"° smUed "^^ "r"' °" "" «Planation,» Paul sTrne I.H-^ •"'^^. romernber that there are some ladies m this car, and I have seen The man's face grew a deeper red anH h- opened his mouth to speak but h. T ! cherlf<>H k.. ^ . . *P*^aK, out he seemed cnecked by astonishment. Then h,. k i .n.o a harsh ,a„gh, Which he el'd\tX «uff T T ''"""^ =''"''' y""" he spoke whh Tu cor""'- ""''"' """ of *' "o^W <^d yourToft/T; '"' "^'" "'<' J""- <■»" <"■' of him, s.ned a„/raSr;/:l^-'' """-"^ My place not with ladies, hey? Huh I am't you been out of your nes lo^ enoul ' to find out a man-s place is with any lady ^e damn pleases, if the lady don't objecfi- " Paul was not smiling now. He suddenly r I First Flight of a " Squab *' 1 5 reached up to the rope and signalled the train to stop. The man did not seem to suspect Paul's purpose. •• You young softy I " he said, " are yo'i gom' to get off and walk because you don't like my society?" He understood as the train slackened and Paul took him by the collar. Paul but he was no match for this strong youth Irom the country. Paul quickly lifted him from the car and dumped h.m on the edge of the clay embank- ment. down which he rolled five or six feet midst spluttering profanity, a hat gone astray,' and those peaches that were not mashed in his libert7 '"^ ^"^^^ '" ^^"°"' ''''■^^^'^"^ '<> Paul, turning to the rope to start the train was confronted by the agitated conductor. ' nffl. , '.. «',u^ ""^''^'^ " ^"••"^^'y ^sked that official. "Who pulled that rope?" " I did," Paul answered. " One of t1 oas- sengers had to get off." "What are you talking about? What ,s the trouble?" demanded the conductor The man below had got to his feet and ■^»- i6 The Inlander ^"dtllT* "»''»"j™""t. divided behveen h» desire, to express his indignation and to brush some of the traces of yellow clav «„^ ?o rco-^ntr-'"^ "'•-'»" --P»^' "Yon I here, you I" he panted, "1% make matt Zr^r' '""'"' *»"-' I'll— I 'II _ '» lunatic asylum ? There was a peroration of profanity which It .s not worth while to record, bnt he t^ok thl hand of the conductor and ^as he^ed un he car steps, still glaring at Paul. ^ ^ " I waat to see you about this, young man " ^e conductor said roughly to pL; "thfs Is bad busmess. stopping a train." as he pj«ed the rope overhead. H""ca unence. if ,t becomes necessary to helo a passenger off again, 1 11 „y ,„ Z it „Jthout stopping the train." ""tnout door of the cl^a,r-car, and was smiling again at the man with the dyed mustache fhat First Flight of a « Squab " 1 7 individual seemed to have no further desire to re-enter the car, and Paul's threat was super- fluous. The plight of the gallant's habili- ments was not such as became a lady's man and was sufficient in itself to preclude his return to the field of his proposed conquest. He indicated as much by a disgusted glance at his clothes, and then, swearing his intention to make ,t hot for the lunatic and the railroad, disappeared into the car ahead. After Paul, with some difficulty, had pacified the conductor, he went back to his seat in the chair-car. The girl was deep in her book, and there was no evidence that any of his half- dozen fellow-passengers suspected his part in stopping the train a few minutes before He was particular to note that one sitting any- where near the girl could not have seen him as he helped from the train the man with the dyed mustache. It was not long now till Louisville, Paul's destmation, would be reached, and he spent the intervening time dreaming fine things, of which the Glorious Girl was the heroine and mul Rodman the hero, sometimes unknown and usually unappreciated, but perhaps the more pensively happy for that. II "WHEN GOOD FELLOWS GET TOGETHER" r^J'nvfh'''''''^ ^!^ "^"^ **"" '" Louisville nearly three months. When he left his boy- hood s home and went forth into the world. he had chosen Louisville as that part of it in which to cast his lot simply because Barney by that friendship which begins only in early youth and ends only in death, and which, however many other comrades either party chamber *'^'"''' "° ^"^ '° '^ ^""^^^ Barney Carruthers was three or four years Pauls senior, and was as different from him in temperament as it is possible for one chum to be from another. Big-boned and loose-jointed, he looked, he said himself, as if he had "just been pitchforked together." His face was broad and only thinly covered by a beard thM he called " brindle giggies." and that forS nately refused to grow more than an inch or ♦ I ' t When Good Fellows get Together 19 two; his check-bones were high, his com- plexion a freckled tan, his eyes bright and merry, his mouth wide, and usually at its widest in a laugh. -and where others would only smile Barney Carruthers would laugh He. was ungainly and lazy, except " in action."" which is to say, except in physical sport or It was in a fight that the friendship between him and Paul Rodman began. Paul was about twelve years old when, one day as he sat waiting alone in his father's buggy, across the street from the Academy campus in Mavistoc, he was discovered by Barney Carruthers. Paul had never been allowed to go to school, and saw very little of other boys who naturally regarded him with disapproval Barney Carruthers, having shin- n.ed the ball past the goal, saw Paul in tie bug^. watching the game with that solemn countenance which he usually assumed when intensely interested. ou7!T^7' ^^""y"b°y'" Barney sang out. -Ba-a! Run here, fellers, an' see if ▼ou can ketch it under your hat » " calf atr" ""IT '"""P" ""^^^^^^ B^^^^y's call, and next they were sitting a-row on the 20 The Inlander fence, keeping timt with their heels and chant- ing over and over, under Barney's leader- ship, the shrill sing-song which Barney had "made up": — " Nanny-boy ! Nanny-boy I »rah f 'rah I 'rah I Nanny-boy I Nanny-boy I where 'a its pa I » Pretty soon the solemn-faced Paul began to smile winningly; and then he got out of the buggy and tied the horse to the hitching-post ; whereupon Barney wound up the last line of his couplet witli a crescendo '• It 's goin' to its pal" But Paul was not going anywhere. He took c«r his coat and threw it into the buggy, then stepping forward into the street and looking straight at Barney Carrutbers, struck into the chorus with the mortal insult: — " School-butter ! school-butter / " The fence was cleared as if by a flock of startled blackbirds. "Who-wowf" yelled Barney Carruthers. " Let him alone, you fellers ! He said it to me ! I found him ! He 's mine ! " They obeyed their leader. There was not If boy among them who did not know that to disobey would mean a personal settlement with 1 •1 i When Good Fellows get Together 21 Barney; and the bet of them had had their aetUements with Barney that settled. They were i„ a ring around Paul, and Bar- neys coat was now on the ground He stooped over and slapped his hands in the dust, and then the two went at each other. It was fist and skull, foot and knee, no parrying or s,de-steppi„g. and every bloJt£g well Z "^^ '"u""' '"' ^^ »»*»^ ^- -" - well Jiat soon whenever h- scored a point he w^ cheered as lustily as was Barney. For fully ten mmutes it was give and take, up and down first one on top and then the other. untU labored breathing was about all that either ^^ the"!-" ^"/"^' ^'"'^^ •" ^ --'^ -"-" the pa.r reeled against the fence, and as from sheer necessity they rested for a moment, the^ ^'IJH"' ^"^ ^'■"^"'^^ inquiringly. galoot?" nt?/p" '"^ '"°"S^' y°" «"'« galoot? panted Barney Carruthers. RnAJ^"'^ ,""'^'' y°" ^•"' *°°' " ^^ Paul Kodman's ultimatum. ••'Nough! » agreed Barney Carruthers. Nough!" confirmed Paul Rodman. ^/r'''^^/^''°^odyc^lhd Paul "Nanny-boy" agam. and ,t was not long before he and Bar- ncy were such friends that Barney, o^tg to 22 The Inlander the frequency with which he played hookey in order to be with Paul, was expelled from school; which resulted in the royal arrange- ment for the boys whereby Barney shared with Paul Judge Rodman's tutorship. This intimacy between the two lads was unift- terrupted until Barney grew up and went away to a Louisville law-school, returning to his country home in Tennessee only for his vaca- tions, when he regaled the deeply interested Paul by the hour with narratives of his expe- riences as a man of the world, being especially impressive in his description of the taste of beer the first Ume he had " swallowed a dose of the mixture of tan-bark tea and axle-grease." Notwithstanding the beer, however, Barney on the completion of the law course decided to remain in Louisville to practise his profession, and there he was at least remaining when Paul Rodman joined him. The two young men occupied a flat in the same building in which Drewdie Poteet had his studio. Drewdie Poteet — who signed him- self Templeton Drew Poteet, but who was called by everybody Drewdie Poteet— was the son of a wealthy widow who made him such a liberal allowance that there was no necessity When Good Fellows get Together 23 for his having a studio, but for the fact that Drewdic believed that all men had Vocations in Life. The truth is, that Drewdie had, at various times, conceived that he had as many Vocations in Life. First he had been sure that his Vocation was to be a great tenor singer. Happily for the neighbors he had soon become convinced of his mistake. Then it had been revealed to him that his Vocation was to be a Napoleon of finance, and he had gone to Chicago to enter upon his empire, only to be taken in hand by some incredulous people ih the neighborhood of the wheat pit and again shown his costly error. After that he had known his Vocation was to be a great sculptor; nd when Paul Rodman made his acquaintance as a friend of Barney Carruthers, Drewdie was certain his Vocation was to be a great marine " painter, being the more ce.tain of this be- cause, except for an occasional summer jaunt to New York or Atlantic City, he never saw the sea. Drewdie Poteet was Barney Carruthers' most intimate friend in Louisville until Paul Rodman arrived. It made no difference to Drewdie how much Barney laughed at him and blackguarded him, and it made no differ- 24 The Inlander ence to Barney how much Drewdie lectured him on his neglected obligations to the tailors and haberdashers. The two got on together perfectly, notwithstanding their dissimilarity and Drewdie's grievances against Barney that he would not go into society, and that his Inveterate habit of sitting on his spine, with a pipe in his mouth, utterly frustrated Drew- die's desire to paint him as Farragut Lashed to the Shrouds. When Paul Rodman came, their admiration of him was another bond h ^veen Drewdie and Barney. A new ac- quaintance was never long in liking or dis- liking Paul, and Drewdie surrendered at once to the young Tennessean's unsophisticated enthusiasm, old-fashioned manners, and un- conscious assumption of leadership. Barney laughed at Paul as freely as he laughed at Drewdie, but it was easy to see that behind 'aughter was the greatest respect as well Jection for this hale, fresh-cheeked lad, a..u if Drewdie had not yielded so readily to Paul's own influence it is likely that he would almost as readily have given his al- legiance to Paul through the mere force of Barney's example. One of the first things that tended to es- When Good Fellows get Together 25 tablish Drewdie and Paul on this footing was the latter's amenability to Drewdie's efforts to extend the art of -o...i dressing. At his country home Paul hri been consid;red some- what fastidious as to lis personal appearance, but on reaching Loui&vilic Lc had been quick to see that the cut of his hair, the length of his coat, and the width of his hat brim required some modification to adjust them to the stand- ards which prevailed among Drewdie Poteet's associates. " You pattern after Drewdie Poteet, Rod,' was one of Barney Carruthers' injunctions. " Drewdie is the best-dressed man you know, and I'm the worst; so you see my advice is disinterested. You've come here to make your jack, and I 've always heard that a good way to do that is to dress as if you 'd already made it. I'd try the scheme myself if I didn't have anything else to do." The three had some jolly times together those first months after Paul's migration to town. In the mornings Barney Carruthers assiduously cultivated the habit of going to his law office, but Drewdie Poteet came down to his studio about ten o'clock and lolled with the papers for an hour or two, when he took 26 The Inlander the air "on the avenue" with Paul. The three met at lunch, and again at the tail of the afternoon, when they went for long walks in the suburbs, and with such regularity that in certain portions of the city they became as well known as the 'V ' rags" man, and so friendly with the young barbarians on the com- mons that sometimes it was deemed judicious to change the route when Paul had neglected to stow in his pockets the expected candy or chewing gum. Then followed dinner, and in the evenings a trolley ride, a pull on the river, or loafing in the rooms of one of the two with Barney's guitar, Paul's piano, and Drewdie's tenor; and when Sunday came, knickerbockers and wheels and away over the Kentucky coun- try roads, or perhaps across the bridge and into the Indiana hills, among which they knew an old German who nursed a vineyard, made pure wine, and set a dinner good enough for Drewdie Poteefs fastidious palate and cheap enough for the other two's limited pockets. But all this time Paul Rodman had not dis- covered what he was to do in the world into which he had come to make his way. " You see, fellows, I 'm not like Drewdie," he explained. "If I were, I'd have known I ! When Good Fellows get Together 27 long ago what my vocation was, — maybe I 'd have known it two or three times by this. But I don't. There are dozens of things I 'd just as soon do as dozens of others, and not one that I feel called on to do above every- thing else. I'm sorry it's that way with me, Drewdie, but it is." It was at Barney Carruthers' suggestion that Paul had decided to try the newspaper busi- ness. " I believe you 'd make a go at that," Barney had said. "You know your father was a great writer," — it was well remembered in the Mavistoc neighborhood that Judge Sevier Rodman had contributed to ant( hel- ium " Southern literature " some ornate essays and rhythmic lyrics, through the columns of The Southern Literary Messenger, — "and I don't see why you "shouldn't have inherited his genius. I kn gg, the city editor of the Globe, and I'll . I can't fix it for you, if you say." Stagg agreed to give Paul a trial, and the result was thus reported to Barney and Drew- die by Paul himself: — " I 'm not to be a great journalist, after all. Stagg and I unanimously agreed, in about two minutes, that you were mistaken, Barney. 2S The Inlander When I got to Stagg's office I had to wait While he was sending some reporters to differ- ent parts of town for all sorts of things; and when Stagg turned to me I felt I had the ad- vantage of those chaps, at any rate, for I had come with my piece already written up. You see, I wanted to take time to prepare some- thing carefully, and I had the whole thing composed and copied off before I left my room this morning. There it is now, if you 'd like to see it; for it won't be in the Globe to-morrow." Paul took from his pocket and threw on the table a folded manuscript, which Barney reached for, and, removing his pipe from his mouth, began reading aloud: — '"SOME QUESTIONS OF THE AGE. "'Does Business, the Moloch of our modern Ammonites, in addition to the tribute of man's per- sonality which it exacts, demand the sacrifice of woman's regnancy? Will it be satisfied with nothing short of the obliteration of all distinctions between the sexes? What man for the first time sees with- out a shock women commingling with men in the lobbies of our hotels? Who, without a callousing of his innate manhood, can look with indifference When Good Fellows get Together 29 upon the women in the city, accorded Uttle or none of the deference that is their due, as they are forced into the straggle for existence on a common plane with men in the trade marts, stores, and factories? Wh«»t man whose ideas of woman enshrine her, as they should, as the sacred spuit of home, the one object of his protection and devotion, can look, without an impulse of rebellion, upon the pathetic faces of these women, contesting with men the feverish, stubborn fight for subsistence? And look- ing upon these faces, many of which seem to have lost that feminine fineness which is as subtle yet as positive &3 the fragrance of a flower, may he not recall the Scriptural story of the infliction of toil on the human race as a punishment for the first sin, and wonder if an argument in support of that story may be built on the theory that such punishment falls so much more heavily on woman than on man because hers was deemed the greater part in that sin > In truth — ' " " Oh ! you need n't read any more of it," Paul interrupted; "it's all like that." Barney Carruthers folded up the paper and laughed one of those laughs which sank deep in his throat and stretched his big mouth to its limits. " Polly ! Polly ! " he exclaimed, " you did n't show that to Stagg, did you? " ' % 3° The Inlander M' And he read it. — part of it, any- " I did I way." Drewdie Poteet, who at first seemed in doubt now to take these confessions of Paul's dis- missed his doubts when Barney began to laugh, and Drewdie laughed too. in his little nackmg way. "And what did Stagg say, Paul?" Drewdie asked. "He didn't say much, but he looked lots In fact he looked as if he wanted to do like Barney Carruthers, and swallow himself in a laugh. But he did n't. He just gave me back the paper and said that some time he might get me to write a special article for the Sunday supplement, or woman's page, or something, givmg the first impressions of what he called an old-time Southerner from the interior— I reckon he meant a country Jake from Tennes- see -on the modern metropolitan woman; but for the present I was to make a beginning on the GMe, and that was not the way to begm on the G/ode." "I suppose he told you what was the way " Drewdie commented. "Oh! very explicitly. He said he had saved a njce, easy assignment for me to begin ^ # When Good Fellows get Together 3 1 with. I was simply to go out to Mrs. North- umberland's, on Ormsby Avenue, and git her version of a rumor that she had intercepted her young daughter at the Jeffersonville Ferry one night last week in 'me to prevent an elopement witli a pooI-ioom sheet-writer. That was all." " It was easy enough, was n't it? " Drewdie asked. "I've understood Mrs. Northumber- land has a craze for getting into the papers." "Stagg said something of the same kind. But I told him he 'd have to let me out ; on second thought, I did n't care to begin on the Globe. The fact is, fellows, before I'd go about insulting ladies that way I'd see the Globe in glory. I'll have to find another vocation, Drewdie." " Polly," said Barney Carruthers, " what was it that masher you chucked off the train called you, — a squab ? " "He did, he did, Barney Carruthers! A squab, and not a journalist ! " " Well, he can prove you 're not a journalist by Stagg," said Drewdie Poteet. " And he can prove you 're a squab by me," said Barney Carruthers, rising and going to the tobacco jar, " and what 's more, a squab that ;^ >"*. 32 The Inlander was hatched among the stars, I reckon, which will make it all the harder for you to learn to fly down in these parts. But, Polly," he added, after refilling his pipe, "there are oodles of things at lar^e worse than a squab." Whereupon he brought the palm of his hand down on Paul's head, in affectionate benedic- tion, with a blow that crushed his hat over his eyes; and Paul in return knocked the pipe from Barney's mouth into the hands of Drewdle Poteet, who demanded "judgment" at short-stop. Ill 1 1 PAUL RODMAN GOES INTO BUSINESS A FEW days later, a^ the three were starting on one of their afternoon walks to the outskirts of the city, Paul announced that he had made up his mind not to wait any longer, and actually had " gone into business." "When?" "What?" " Where? " he was bombarded by Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet. " Come on, and I '11 show you." Paul stepped buoyantly along their favorite route to the southern suburbs, the other two by his side. They were familiar figures on these streets at this hour. _ Paul Rodman, iitne-Iimbed, sure-motioned, with either ex- treme gravity or extreme brilliance conspicu- ous in his face, and the bloom of his country boyhood yet upon it; Drewdie Poteet, dap- per, immaculately clothed, marionette-gaited • Barney Carruthers, his freckled, laughter- slashed visage broadening in the joy of the 3 34 The Inlander open air and of good fellowship, and his lurch- in"^ sprawl the despair of his companions when they tried to keep step with him. As they walked on toward Churchill Downs this afternoon, the first gclden leaves of the autumn maples under their feet and the golden mists of the autumn sun softening the purple ridge that walled the river, Drewdie and Barney were chaffing Paul concerning the nature of the business career he had entered upon, and Barney was varying this by humming, to an air of his own, — •* Polly and Barney and Drewdie Poteet — Oh ! haven't you seen 'em parade out the street : Polly all eyes and Drewdie all sweet, And Barney d iithers all mouth and feet ?" It was some doggerel that had appeared not long before in The Runabout, a little sheet published Sundays, on the assumption that everybody likes to read something mean about everybody else. The publication of the rhymes had been followed by a visit of Barney Car- ruthers to the office of The Runabout, with the avowed purpose of taking off his coat and edit- ing the editor. "There won't be any more of that sort of Paul Rodman goes into Business 35 thing in The Runabout," Barney had reported to Drewdie Poteet, after the interview with the editor. — " not if I know anything about human nature when I see it." laughing at the memory about of what he had seen. "Why. Barney," Drewdie had replied. "I didn't suppose you were sensitive about — about those feet and things." "Feet? Oh. go 'long! It was his freshness m the use of 'Polly' that I cautioned him agamst. 'Polly' is a little piece of personal property of my own, and I don't intend to have anybody else infringing on it. Do you catch on, Drewdie Poteet? " Drewdie understood. Not even he. as well as he knew the two. would have dared call Paul Rodman "Polly" in Barney Carruthers' presence. Away out at what was then the end of Third .^?'*'/r"I.''°PP^'^ before a real estate agent's 1" or Sale sign stuck in a flat lot, half covered with water. " Here it is. gentiemen." he announced, rutherr^ ^^^^ *'' '"'''^'^" ^'^ Barney Car- smilf ^ ^"''"*'^'" answered Paul, with a happy 36 The Inlander " Going into the frog business? " asked ijrewdie Poteet. " Maybe you 're thinking of contracting to supply Drewdie scenes for his marines," guessed Barney Carruthers. " The real estate business, gentlemen/' pro- claimed Paul ; " this is my start" " Starting for China, through a hole in the ground?" persisted Barney. " I bought it to-day," explained Paul ; " got it cheap, on account of the hole in the ground. Have n't you all noticed how fast the city is building up in this direction?" " Going to sit down on the banks and wait for the city to build up to you ? Is that what you call the real estate business. Rod? " Barney himself sat down and began throw- ing stones into the water. " It 's a beginning," Paul answered. " It won't be long before there is a cosy little home — maybe a palatial one — where that puddle is now. Is there any finer business in the world than one that helps to make homes?" "Spoken like Polly, dealer in poUywogs. Heave-ho, there, Drewdie Poteet, and help me fill up the pond. We must lend a Paul Rodman goes into Business ^7 fcand to Polly in hU business of buildine homes." * Paul, however, sold his lot at a slight loss before a month had passed. It was the bicycles that led to this, and showed him the way to the business which he was to follow with some success and much delight. They were returning from a country run one evening, and struck the western edge of Louis- ville after dark. Barney's tire had picked up a thorn, and all three stopped while he re- paired the puncture. As Paul waited, his curiosity was awakened by the unusual activity at the nearest of the few scattered cottages in the vicinity. Accurately speaking, it was hardly more than the frame of a cottage, which was evidently in course of construction. A little g.rl was holding a kerosene lamp, a man was sawmg lumber, and a woman was driving nails mto weatherboarding. Paul walked over to the place while Barney was fixing his tire and Drewdie was volunteering all sorts of advice now to do it. pa!f^l^®*"'^^ ^^^ ^"''^^^^ *"d <=*»ed to l-aul, that young man returned with a note of excitement in his voice. 38 The Inlander " What do you suppose they 're doing over there?" he said. "It's a family building a house. They are very poor, and they have never had a house of their own. The man's name is Slade, and he gets a dollar a day at some sort of common labor, when he is able to work, — he is n't in good health, — and they live on that and have saved up enougl) to be- gin a little house. At first they lived in a shanty-boat, which Slade built down on the river, but one day a member of the Boat Club came along and took such a fancy to it that he gave Slade $140 for it, and now uses it as a house-boat. The $140 went into that little dab of ground over there, and a shed was put up, which the family occupy until they can get a room or two of the house ready. They are buildi •▼ the house themselves. They buy the maten J, a little at a time, out of the sav- ings of $1 a day. The man saws the lumber and places the heavy timbers in position be- fore he starts for his job in the morning, and the woman does the lighter work with the hammer, as she can find time, during the day. After supper they work on it till bedtime,— that's what they are doing now. They've been all the spring and summer on it, and I Paul Rodman goes into Business 39 they're anxious to move in before winter. What 's bothering them most now is the roof. They 've set their hearts on a tin roof; it will cost them $10, and they can't possibly save up $10 before winter. I say, boys, it 's fine f it's beautiful! Only it's an infernal shame that the woman should have to do it, and — anyway, we 've got to organize a pool, Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet, to float that tin-roof scheme ! " Barney began to twit Paul derisively, and Drewdie tried to make a pun about tin, but Paul had removed the lamp from his wheel and was off with it to the house-builders. "What's he up to now?" asked Drewdie Poteet. " If I don't believe the cuss is going to give them his bicycle lamp!" responded Barney Carruthers. " Not on your life. Anything but that ! " But it was that, notwithstanding the fact that Paul Rodman, after experimenting with many makes of lamps, had finally found one which, with some alterations of his own, he claimed to be the only bicycle lamp in the world, and which had come to be such a hobby with him that he was rated by his friends as a crank on m 40 The Inlander the subject. He had set it on a pile of lumber, and in the big disk of its brilliant light the skeleton of the house stood out clearly. " That beats all the kerosene lamps in the West End, doesn't she?" Paul exclaimed, as he returned and sprang on his wheel. "And how do you expect to beat the police, riding back without her?" asked Barney Carruthers. " I '11 risk it, and run for it, if it comes to that," was Paul's reply, looking over his shoul- der at the illuminated scene of activity behind him. Next afternoon there was no walk by the trio. "We are to get an early dinner," Paul de- murred; "then into our wheel togs. I've a new excursion on hand, — something better than anything we 've struck yet." There was not much objection to this. There never was to Paul's proposals. Ridicule him as Barney Carruthers might, and cavil as Drewdie Poteet did, Paul invariably had his way, for it invariably ended in their following his unconscious leadership. This evening he led them to the West End again, over the same route they had ridden ^ night before. Paul Rodman goes into Business 41 " Going to stop by Slade's for that precious lamo of yours, Rod ? " Barney Carruthers called out, as they neared the house-builders. " Maybe he 's going to leave them that tin roof," Drewdie Poteet suggested. Paul did stop when they reached the place. "Come on in here, boys," he cried; "you would n't like to miss what I 've got to show you." The others, being on wheels, had to get off or leave Paul, and, as already intimated, they were not in the habit of leaving him. They did as he directed in this instance, and Paul, after a warm but quiet greeting by the little family, presented his friends. "I've brought you some hands," he said to Slade. " We 're green, but we can learn ; and between us we can certainly get the house finished before cold weather. Fall in, fellows." He threw off his coat and took a plank out of the arms of the astonished Mrs. Slade. * Barney Carruthers was dumb for five sec- onds. Then there was a vast chasm in his countenance and a mighty inrushing laugh. Jerking off his coat, and swinging it around his head, he dashed it forcibly on that 42 The Inlander of Paul, and demanded to be shown what to do. . Drewdie Poteet seemed lost in hesitation or amazement. He stood with his mouth half open, staring at everybody. Paul, swinging around the plank he held, struck Drewdie between the shoulder-blades and nearly swept him oif his feet. "Get to work there, Drewdie Poteet," he laughed, "or get out of the way of busy folks." " Be careful with Drewdie Poteet, Paul Rod- man ! " sang out Barney Carruthcrs, who had seized a scantling. " He '11 come in strong when we go to put on the paint" Thus it began, and thus it continued. Boss Rodman took his " gang " to work regularly. For the time the long walks and the long bicycle runs gave way to a different form of exercise. And one night in November, when the early darkness had settled down like the leaclen sky itself, when the first spit of snow was in the air and the first aureoles radiated from the street-lights, the little house was com- pleted, even to the tin roof and the paii.;, the little family had moved in, and as Paul and Barney and Drewdie opened the new gate and Paul Rodinan goes into Business 43 went up the new brick walk, it was toward what Paul then and there proclaimed the cheeriest sight to be seen in the winter darkness, — win- dows glowing and blinking with firelight and lamplight within. Paul had insisted that the completion of their labors and the occupancy of the new house should be celebrated with " a banquet," and he had sent down the things. — oysters 2nd birds, a turkey, ices, a bottle or two of the old Indiana German's wine, — and when the family and the three friends gathered around the table it was under a tension of excitement that made it impossible for the little giri to sit still half a minute, and that even threatened the equipoise of Drewdie Poteet. Paul Rod- man and Barney Carruthers abandoned them- selves to unrestrained jollity, and the husband and wife, though always a little subdued, as if not yet accustomed to their changed circum- stances, seemed as happy in the good spirits of the rollicking boys as in their own good fortune. After a while Paul Rodman stood up and drank a toast in the old German's wine. " To the foundation of our civilization," he said in his solemnest manner, " the inspiration of all 44 The Inlander our efforts, the haven of all our achievements, The Home." Then, in response to the clamorous demands of Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet, he went on and made a speech, all about The Home. And a beautiful speech it was, so everybody thought Near the end of it Bar- ney and Drewdie became very still and grave, while Slade scraped his foot raspingly on the floor and gulped down a great deal of water. A strangely wistful look was on Mrs. Slade as she watched the speaker, and finally, as he tried to turn his head to hide from them a tear that suddenly started down his cheek, she covered her face with her hands; seeing which, the little giri, whose eyes had been growing bigger and bigger, broke into a heart-rending wail, and running around the table buried her sobs in her mother's lap. Which ended Paul's speech and brought back the laughter to the banqueters. A week later Paul had sold his Third Street lot for a hundred dollars less than he had paid for it, and had bought several lots in the West End, near the scene of his eloquent speech. "I'm going to have cottages built on them," he explained to Barney Carruthers and Drew- i Paul Rodman goes into Business 45 die Poteet. "Then I'm going to sell them on easy terms to people who would probably never own homes of their own on any other plan. I think it can be made a paying busi- ness; anyway, it's a good business." IV THE BLOOM FROM THE BLUR The year that followed saw some changes in the affairs of the three friends. It brought Barney Carruthers' books a few small fees, some of which he collected. It satisfied Drewdie Poteet that his Vocation in Life was not to paint, but to write, and he was al- ready devoting half an hour or so a day to the production of a story which should prove this to the world. It confirmed Paul Rod- man's confidence in his plan of buying cheap lots and building on them ; for he had made a fair start during these first twelve months, considering his limited capital, which he suc- ceeded in increasing a little by long-time notes and liens. He had gone into a bank one day to borrow a small sum, before in his inexperience he knew that banks were not the places to nego- tiate loans on such security as he had to offer. I The Bloom from the Blur 47 He was referred to Mr. Oxnard, and on con- fronting that official was unprepared to find in him the man of the dyed mustache and the crushed peaches who had figured so promi- nently in Paul's first journey to Louisville. Oxnard looked up and evidently recognized Paul instantiy. His face mottled and his eyes shone, but he did not speak. Paul for a moment was clearly at a loss for his cue. He took a step backward, as if to beat an unexplained retreat, but he recovered himself and summoned a smile to his aid. "I — beg your pardon," he said. " I came on a little matter of business, but I see that I came to the wrong place." Oxnard stood like stone, his eyes transfix- ing Paul and the perspiration slowly dampen- ing his seaming forehead. "Quite evident," he replied through his closed teeth. Paul did not linger. "Who is this man Oxnard, in the Bear- grass Bank?" he asked Drewdie Poteet that night. "Judd Oxnard? Why, he is the Beargrass Bank. One of the self-made men of the town. Started as elevator boy down on Main Street 1^ iiMii 48 The Inlander somewhere, and is now worth a quarter of a million." "But has never found time to marry yet?" Paul asked. " Or is he a widower? " "There's been a Mrs. Oxnard for about twenty years, I believe." "TTiescounarel!" " Been in business long enough to find that out? " "He's the fellow I had to put off the train that day." "Oh I " said Drewdie Poteet, in a tone that indicated he had hoped for a more sensational disclosure. "Oxnard has the reputation of being quite a ladies' man, you know." Paul had never again seen the girl who had been, without her knowledge, the heroine of his first adventure with Oxnard. He had seen her leave the train at Louisville, and afterwards he had looked for her face in the throngs on the streets and at the theatres. Later as, under the wing of Drewdie Poteet, he began going into society, he half expected to meet her at some of the balls and receptions. It was not until nearly two years after that day on the train that he found her again. It was at a " dinner-dance." Glancing across The Bloom from the Blur 49 the two stretches of banked flowers and the two rows of guests seated at the great horse- shoe table, he saw her, facing him, on the other side of the room. He suspended a sentence which he had begun, and the girl he was talking to tentatively suggested a word which deflected his sentence to a veiy differ- ent idea from that toward which he had started it. "Yes. that is it exactly," he stupidly re- sponded. "Don't you agree with me?" "Thoroughly. But you are the first person I have yet found that I could agree with on that point." And she ever afterwards insisted that Paul Rodman was one of the few really clever men in town. A little later he said,— "I thought I knew every one here; who is the girl opposite, between Fletcher Keith and Tom Lusk?" " Have n't you met her? It 's Lucy Arnan. Been abroad for a year or two, and is just home." When the dinner was over and the dancing began, he made his way toward Lucy Arnan at his first opportunity. But that was not 4 50 The Inlander before he had seen I'letcher Keith dance with her, surrender her to another partner, and almost immediately rjc ri to claim her again. Already, in his apy^ !ien^ on of the rare grace of her dancing— w \ . h ^e med as much a part of his pulses as vu^ t .r i nisic itself— and of the elusive beauty of l.cr *"ace, Mooming out from the blur of the hz'r.j.. m ''^o Mly in the dusk, was the pricl i.t' rev n r: cm against the presumption of Kei-.li. The music had now :^ ?ed, and Keith was taking her intu the iiail and toward the stairway. Looking around for some one to serve his purpose, Paul ran into Drewdie Poteet. "Present me to the girl with Fletcher Keith," he said. "What is her name?" He had heard it half an hour before, but in the commotion which the sight of her had stirred within him he had forgotten it half a minute later. "Who? That? Oh," Drewdie answered, with a mild smile, "that is Luce Arnan." " WAof" There was an emphasis in the word, which plainly implied surprise and protest, and which, could Drewdie have failed to note it, was f The Bloom from the Blur 51 doubly enforced by the almost fierce fixity of the eyes which Paul fastened on him. " Luce — Miss Lucy Arnan," Drewdie quali- fied, with a twitch at the comers of his mouth. " Come along, then, old man, if you wish to meet her. But I don't think she 's the kind of girl you like." " I do wish to meet Miss Arnan," Paul re- sponded a little stiffly. They started to the stairway, where Miss Arnan and Keith had found seats, Paul still smarting at the manner in which Drewdie Poteet had referred to the girl. As they stopped before Miss Arnan, Paul, for an acute moment, felt the qualm of a doubt as to his reception. Would she remember him? Would she recall against him the rude- ness and persistence of his staring at her on the train ? His suspense was quickly ended. As Drewdie spoke Paul's name she looked up at him out of those blue, blue eyes with only a sweet gra- ciousness, and she gave him her gloved hand with a winning cordiality in its gentle pressure that thrilled his memory and his dreams for weeks. That high-bred, sensitive face, aim ^t spirituaUy beautiful in the delicate play ol 5« The Inlander expression and the exquisite fairness of the skin against the blue-blackness of her soft hair, surely bore no shadow of so vulgar a remi- niscence. Paul Rodman was profoundly thank- ful and profoundly happy. He was happy for months afterwards, in the presence or the thought of Lucy Arnan. It is not intended to say that before he met Lucy Arnan he had never been strongly attracted by other women. He was young, ardent, imaginative, and with his idealization of the sex had been more than once on the verge of "falling in love." The fact that, until he loved Lucy Arnan, he had never got beyond the verge, was perhaps due to that very idealization. As richly dowered mentally and physically as other girls were, none had ever fulfilled his requirements until Lucy Arnan came. And when she came he knew at once,, in the blindness of his exaltation, that all his dreams and hopes of Woman were true! He surrendered without reserve to the ecstasy of his passion. He cou ^ not have resisted it if he would. But he had no wish to resist it. It was the one supreme blessing which fate could bestow upon him ; now only The Bloom from the Blur 53 had life really begun and was he worthy to live. When a young man with such notions as these concentrates them on something tangible like Lucy Arnan he does not dally in his woo- ing. Paul lost no time in laying his siege. His attentions were assiduous, and, while marked by the deference of a courtier, were thoroughly unaffected and fervidly direct. No woman would have misunderstood them, and none would have been wholly indifferent to them. He did not seriously doubt the result. His love had been intensified by the conviction that she had been attracted to him, as he had been to her, from the first. While Lucy Arnan never forgot that modest reserve which was so charming to Paul, there were certain delicate indications in her manner toward him, which only he could have detected, showing him plainly that he was not as other men to her. He chafed against the conventionality which forbade an immediate avowal, but he restrained himself resolutely, shrinking from any appear- ance of inconsideration or rashness which could have wounded in the least the most sensitive self-respect of a refined woman, or could have 54 The Inlander warranted the slightest suspicion of the sin- cerity and depth of his devotion. Meanwhile, it was an additional spur to him in his work to know that Lucy Arnan would bring him nothing but herself; that it was to be his part to provide for her comfort, as well as to enfold her with his love. And he would have thought he had been denied one happi- ness of a pfrfect marriage if it had been otherwise. JJ A SPOILED PEN INSTEAD OF A BROKEN NECK From the first Paul's choice had lacked the approval of Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet, though neither had made any out- spoken demurrer in Paul's presence. Barney, indeed, had no reason to demur, except that which he found in Drewdie's objection; but that was sufficient for Barney. He was not acquainted with Miss Arnan, but Drewdie Poteet was; and as between Paul Rodman, who knew all about women theoretically, and Drewdie Poteet, who knew them only practi- cally, he deferred, on this subject, entirely to Drewdie. Barney as not a "ladies' man" himself: he was awkward and ill at ease in their company ; he honestly averred that he would rather do a day's ploughing than "dyke" himself up for an evening call ; and Paul and Drewdie could never induce him to accom- pany them in their social diversions. He was 56 The Inlander ever ready, however, to encourage Paul to go out and " ctit a dash," and found an untir- ing pleasure in listening to reports of the experiences of both Paul and Drewdie "in society," while his fund of amused, semi- cynical comment and counsel was exhaustless. But beneath all his good-natured raillery he was as keenly interested in the doings of his two chums in the gay world as if they were a pair of debutantes and he their mother. The one subject, however, on which Paul had nothing to say to either Barney or Drew- die was Lucy Arnan. Barney understood Paul well enough to realize that this was the most ominous indication of the true state of affairs He knew that Paul held the object of his love too sacred for discussion even with his most intimate friend. Beyond this silence and the ever obvious evidence that Paul was living in the skies. Barney's knowledge of the situation and his attitude to it were traceable wholly to Drewdie Poteet. Drewdie, while he had never dared m Paul's presence to discourage his partiality for Lucy Arnan, was ail the freer m expressing his disapproval to Barney Carruthers. 'Oh! I can't say (h^t there's anything "I A Spoiled Pen 57 particular against her," he would reply to Barney's catechising, " but she 's certainly not one of those way-up girls that Rod thinks her — and doesn't come as near it, by a long sight, as lots of other g^rls he knows." *• She has a pretty face, has n't she? " " Yes. Everybody admits that" " With sort of a quiet, er — superfine look? " " Well, I suppose you might call it that" " With eyes that are a little extra size, and soft, and what you might catalogue as the bottomless kind?" " That seems to hit them off pretty well," Drewdie laughed. "She's slenderish and tallish, I reckon," Barney went on ; " rather slow-gaited and graceful; dresses plainly, and always knows what to wear with her eyes and her hair." "You must have seen her. They say she won't go to a dinner unless the ' color scheme ' suits her style of beauty." " I 've never seen her ; but I have a pretty clear notion what sort of a girl would set Polly's ideal works going." " What 's to be done about it? " " Nothing." "Couldn't I — couldn't we tell him that yi. S8 The Inlander they say she was sent off to boarding-school to keep her out of the way of the celebrated Fletcher Keith? " " It would n't do a bit of good. And, be- sides, Polly would be apt to get smiling-mad and break your neck for your trouble." Barney Carruthers was too wise to believe that anything could be done to bring the lover to his senses except to trust to time. He enjoined upon Drewdie Poteet the virtue of ignoring Paul's infatuation in Paul's presence, and himself scrupulously refrained from mak- ing any reference to it, unless in an indirect manner. " How 's business? " he might ask. " Coming on pretty well," Paul would answer. "So is Polly, ain't he, Drewdie Poteet? You would n't think that Polly was raised down in the country to be an old-fashioned Southern gentleman, suh? Here he is hold- ing his own with the professional hustlers, making the commons to blossom like a green bay-window and causing two houses to grow where but one blade of grass grew before. And the time will yet come — then you'll remember me for a prophet, Drewdie Poteet — when Polly Rodman will also outgrow as A Spoiled Pen 59 i completely his old-fashioned Sootliern ideas about 'the ladies, God bless 'em.'" Or Barney would close a novel and throw it away. " Another escaped angel for a hero- ine," he would scoff. " I reckon you 'd like that book, Polly. Drewdie Poteet, don't you go on making Polly Rodman the hero of that story you are writing. You wait till Polly has had a chance to finish his education by look- ing into a clothes-closet. No high-souled youth who has beautiful ideals about a girl angel is fully educated until he sees inside her clothes-closet." On which occasions Paul would laugh much more heartily than Drewdie Poteet would, and with the generous complacence of one who alone understood what he laughed at, and how little, how less than little, Barney Camithers knew about women. It was Drewdie Poteet's failure to heed Bar- ney's injunction of silence on the subject of Lucy Arnan that precipitated the climax of Paul's wooing. Paul entered Barney's room one warm even- ing in early summer. "Where's Barney?" he asked Drewdie Poteet, who was lolling in the window. ^iSmmm msa^im 6o The Inlander " Does n't seem to have come in yet. Any- thing on hand?" "No. only I thought it would be a good night to row up the river for a swim," Paul suggested, seating himself on the edee of a table. " Not going out among the girls to-night, then?" "No." There was an interlude of silence during which Drewdie idly thumped his heel against the wall, and looked meditatively down on the street, while Paul slowly beat a tattoo on the table with a pen. When Drewdie again spoke, it was with his eyes still fixed on the street and with an occa- sional halt between his words, — "Having a — good time out on Gray Street. Rod?" "The best in the world," Paul replied, with- out looking up. Drewdie waited, while he leaned out and intently inspected a mail-collector who drove up to the letter-box on the comer, took out its contents, and moved on in his cart again. "Ever notice how much sense these mail- A Spoiled Pen 6i cart horses have? I — thought you'd catch on there. She 's — she 's just the girl to have a good time with." Paul looked up suddenly, and spoke a little more rapidly than was his custom. " Here, Drewdie, what are you driving at? " he asked. Drewdie gave one final kick upon the wall before he answered, — "Oh, nothing — in particular. Only, you know, if — well, I've been in Louisville lots longer than you, Rod, and if — if I were going to tie on to a girl for good. Luce Arnan would hardly be just the kind of a — " " Never mind, Drewdie." Paul's tattoo ab- ruptly ceased; he was sitting erect, and he was speaking in a voice which, though no higher than usual, was new to Drewdie, who felt that it was to be heeded. "As you are not going to tie on to a girl for good, we won't discuss the subject further." He went to another window and looked up and down the street. *' Barney is late," he said. " Well," turning to leave, " if you and he have any plan for to- night, better not wait for me. I may not be back for some time." ^=^*^ dtekiiiiMiiHiiMii 62 The Inlander He walked away, and Drewdie caUed after him uncertainly, — " It wmU be a good night for a swim. Rod." •* Yet ; but we ought to have made an earlier ^■tart" Paul was gone; and Drewdie sat motionless in tiic wmdow until Barney Carruthers returned and discovered a pen standing on end, stuck deep into the wood of the table. "How'd you do this, Drewdie Poteet? Must have driven it in with a sledge-ham- mer." " Rod did it," Drewdie replied lugubriously. ** Rod ? " " He got what you call smiling-mad, and he shoved that pen into the table, I suppose in- stead of breaking my neck." \ t VI « A RAnO WALK AND A CLOSED GATE Paul went down the stairs to the street with swift, vigorous steps. As he turned into Fourth Street and up Market a casual observer, whom Paul would not have seen three feet away, would have said that here was a young man hurrying on some mission which engrossed his mind to the exclusion of all else. But Paul was going nowhere, for no purpose, ex- cept to get away from Drewdie Poteet and all other human companionship. He wanted to be in the open air, where he could move and breathe and be alone, and he attained those objects none the less because he was walking through one of the most populous quarters of the city. His first sensation fol- lowing Drewdie's flippant words had been one of shocked amazement, instantly merging into the resentment of a fierce wrath. It is doubt- ful if he would have been so profoundly stirred if some leering tongue had flouted the name of 64 The Inlander his mother, for his mother was an abstraction not even a memory, while Lucy Aman, in' addition to representing the sex which he revered as an abstraction, was an individuality vital with the charms that were strongest to appeal to his masculine sense of chivalric fealty and personal appropriation. As Drew- die spoke. Paul's impulse had been to spring forward and kill -not Drewdie himself, for DrewdiePoteet was only Drewdie Poteet. and merely voiced the sacrilege of a sacrilegious *^IT??."1**'™"^^ ''"'*^'>' comprehending it -but kill because the first and last recourse of the primal man wronged beyond endurance is to kill, and because for the moment all else had been struck aside and Paul was the primal man. But he had been prompt to put the grip of control on his passion, and he had left Drew- die in order to seek in the peopled streets other vent for the stress of his emotion. He walked on for nearly a mile up the broad thoroughfare, lined on either side by retail shops which grew smaller the further east he went. The street was alive with the mild animation of a summer evening. The shop- keepers and their families were all out of A Rapid Walk and a Closed Gate 05 doors, grouped in chain Ofl the sidewalks; the men in shirt sleeves ; many of the women nursing babioi ; children romping everywhere under the passer's feet; the loungers, when they were not dully silent, chattering in broken English and nondescript foreign tongues. Paul steered hit course along the sidewalk automatically, veering around the knots of idlers, avoiding the orbits of juvenile comets, stepping over a crawling infant, with a me- chanical instinct that made no demands upon his mental powers. It was not until the buildings began t>^ stran- gle and the lights to grow irregular that his turbulence of resentment and rebellion against the shallow materialism for which Drewdie Poteet had spoken subsided, before a new pur- pose that confronted him with a finality as becalmingly real as the solid wall of the church suddenly looming before him in the shadow. He stopped as abruptly as if the wall were an impassable barrier ; his eyes held it as though it were a new and strange dis- covery ; he stood in front of it, his face lifted to its dark mass, a long breath, like the first that one inhales when coming out of a close air, distending his nostrils. S * 66 The Inlander A clock struck the half-hour through the deserted silence, and he turned and with the impulse of a new determination began rapidly retracing his steps. When he reached First Street again, he plunged south into that. He had a sensation as if he were walking on a treadwheel. There was motion, but he did not seem to advance. A negro trotted a horse up and down the street for exercise, and the clatter appeared incessant and aimless. On the asphalt before him a youth was hold- ing a girl on a bicycle as she pedalled with the uncertainty of a beginner, and to Paul it was as if he had followed the pair leagues. Away out at Broadway a fire engine dashed across the street, then a second, and a third ; and it seemed the same engine that comes and goes silently and forever among the views of a kinetoscope. At last he reached Gray Street and turned into it with a slight slackening of his steps, as if the tension of his race were suddenly relaxed, or over. Gray is a short street in the old residence quarter of Louisville, from which the tide of fashion has set further outward, leaving it a shady slit of serenity and antiquity in the A Rapid Walk and a Closed Gate 67 heart of the city. With only a few exceptions, its houses are old, ranging from several plain and spacious mansions of the conservative well- to-do, through the two-story brick houses of the less pretentious, to the cottages of the wholly unpretentious. They stand under forest trees in grassy yards, and the old-time brick sidewalks are laid around the boles of two rows of great sycamores and maples, sentinel- ling a quietude that is rarely broken by any commotion more strenuous than the laughter . of children at play. As Paul Rodman entered the sylvan gloom of this street to-night, the stillness was only intensified, not disturbed, by a murmur of fitful talk that drifted to him from a vine-hid veranda, and by the croon, somewhere, of a woman's lullaby. In one darkened doorway were light draperies and the lazy flutter of a fan. Through a window a yellow-shaded lamp shone, and in its mellow glow he saw the lace curtains stirred faintly by a breeze that was too languorous to ripple a leaf nearer him, though it seemed to bring to him the insidious odors that the balm and the dew distilled from the summer night. A square ahead an electric globe suffused the overhanging foliage of June 68 The Inlander M with the tenderest tints of April. Not far be- yond thb Paul opened a little iron gate and stepped into the inclosure in which, under the trees, the modest home of Lucy Aman nestled. As the gate clicked behind him, it closed upon all his past, — his indefinite longings, his tentative stirrings, his self-imposed restraint, all his immature youth ; and he went toward the house with the sure stride of a man in his manhood, who knew his own, and his way to it, steadied by this g^eat new knowledge, quickened by the new call that had come to him, all-submerging in its sweetness, all impel- ling in its might, to stand henceforth by the side of the girl he loved, to encompass her Mrith the protection of his strength and the reverence of his devotion. # Ten minutes after she came down to him in her little parlor that night, he had impetuously swept aside every hesitating quibble which she had opposed to his sudden avowal, had won her promise to be his wife, and before he left, with transfigured countenance, hours later, had forced her consent that the engagement should be announced at once. ■ammm VII THE HOUSE IN THE HIGHLANDS \ They were to be married at the end of a year. Lacy ^man would not consent to an earlier wedding. She was pleased to convince Paul that she was not a mere " society girl," with no conception of the practical side of life. The two put their beads together, and dis- cussed the practical side of life with unreserved confidences, and in all the tender romance and sweet witchery in which the practical side of life can be discussed by two young lovers shut off from it in some cosy corner of their own little world, and shut in with nothing more practical than murmured hopes, meeting glances, and touching hands. These delight- ful confidences disclosed that Lucy had noth- ing, and that Paul had little, — very little, indeed, for two. Lucy was glad to begin with Paul at the bottom, and Paul knew that with her by his side he could make his way upward all the surer and faster. They agreed * ■Mlik 70 The Inlander diat they would not have had it otherwise, for those who did not begin their married lives at the bottom missed that perfection of a true marriage known only to those who work and win with each other, for each other. Nevertheless, Lucy was positive that a year, at least — she at first held out for two years — was as soon as she could go to Paul without being such a burden upon him as to handicap rather than help him, and Paul had to content himself with his victory when he made her cut the two years' waiting to one. It was truly a wonderful year for Paul, — a year in which he realized instead of hoped that the highest estate of man was to be his; in which his buoyant energy was employed in tangible preparations for his entrance upon that estate, while his beatified leisure was spent in the company of the girl to whom he owed the certainty and the completeness of it all. He pushed his business with anior. Before, he had found a zest in his wodc because he liked it, and because it was to enable him to take the place which he meant to take in the world ; now, he felt the elixir of work which was for her who was to share thtt place with him, and which was to make it worthy of her. I f The House in the Highlands 71 But it was not until he bougiit a lot upon which to build their own home, that he proved how much work a man could do in twenty-four hours, and how many hours of the twenty-four he could still spend with Lacy Arnan. He described the lot to Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet as "a bargain in the High- lands, with an acre of real trees on it, a mil- lion acres of real sky above it, and all of Cherokee Park for a back yard." It was to be a little house, — at first jmt big enough for two, with a spare room for a friend now and then, — but it took weeks to decide on the plans ; weeks which were sdl too short, as they necessitated many extra visits to Gray Street, and many extra hours of consultation with Lucy Arnaa. When the house actually began to go up, every detail of it was person- ally supervised by Paul with a concern that prompted many alterations in the original plans and many further conferences with I^cy. Occasionally, when Lucy and he were hope- lessly dubious on some point, Barney Carru- thers and Drewdie Poteet were called into consultation; and Drewdie, who, since the night when he had tried to discourage Paul's preference for Lucy, had sought to assist Paul Mi 7* The Inlander in forgetting that mishap by a greater show of friendliness to both him and Lucy Arnan, usually managed to solve the difficulties by suggestions so happy that he surprised himself and began to ponder whether he had not been intended for an architect instead of an author. Barney Carruthers at first had been some- what shy and constrained in the presence of Lucy Arnan, but after he had once allowed himself to tell her a joke at Paul's expense and found that she relished it as heartily as Paul himself did, he not only began to feel at his ease with her, but he admitted to Drewdie that he had liked her " from the jump." "I tell you, Drewdie Poteet," he said, as soon as the two were out of Paul's hearing, " that girl 's a brick, or I don't know a tenth as much about women as even Polly Rodman knows." "Well, maybe she is," Drewdie conceded. " Let 's hope for the best. I only meant that I did n't think her one of those way-up girls that would suit a way-up fellow like Rod." " Let me tell you a little secret, Drewdie. A way-up fellow, like Polly, usually pulls up the girl he is in love with, if she 's in love witih him. If she finds out that he 's as ignorant t The House in the Highlands 73 about women as Polly is, and that he believes her to be a way-up girl, she 's going to do her best to get up just as near the notch he thinks her in as she can. And as long as they are in love with each other, and she tries to live up to his ignorance, a man like Polly will never discover the difference ; and, anyway, what is the difference?" " Maybe it will come out all right, after all. Girls and men that don't seem like the right thing for happy marriages often turn out the very thing, you know." "Which is lucky enough, as they are the sort that usually marry each other." As the house neared completion the interest which Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet took in it seemed to be less only than that of Paul himself. There were few walks of the three now which did not end with the High- lands, a seat on some part of the unfinished building, and a conference as to progress, with a detailed exhibition by Paul of what had been done <«d an explanation of what was proposed. Nor was it often necessary for Paul to lead the walks in that direction. Drewdie was usually ready to express a desire to see how his own architectural suggestions were being carried 74 The Inlander out, and Baraey as frequently, when the trio set fmth, would relieve Drewdie of the inittatave. " I move that for a change we stroll to the HigMands this time," he would say. " I want to see if that house is still there. Course, I remember that Polly got out of bed last night and went up to see if it was still safe, but that was hours and hours ago." Or : " Gentlemen, I wUl now take you to see the sights of the city. First and foremost, I will show you, what you may possibly have heard of, but can never have seen, a house, — to be specific, a dwelling-house, when constructed. The city of Louisville may not be able to prove that this is the only house in the world, gentlemen, but there is no doubt that it is the only one of its kind known to be in existence." At last it was finished; and then was the even more interesting work of furnishing it, — more interesting to Paul because this required the personal co-operation of Lucy Aman. She hesitated a little when he first proposed it. People would talk so, she objected, blush- ing. But he had his way. People be hanged ! Besides, everybody knew of the coming wed- ding. So it was that Lucy and he went to The House in the Highlands 75 the shops together, and spent days inspect- ing, consulting, deciding, and undeciding, — the most wonderfully happy days that Paul even yet had known ; for in this common and open preparation of the home they were to share, the last barrier between them seemed to have van- ished and the marriage vows remained as only a formality ; while, unconcealed and practical as it all was, the sweetness and sacredness of its meaning, for them alone, were such as to exclude all outward intrusion. Not even Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet had any part in the work of these last days. Then came a time when everything had been done, and the little house stood ready, with the keys in Paul's pocket. The wedding was only four days away now, — a church wedding, which Lucy had determined on because there were so many people she ought to invite ; and Barney Carruthers was is a pitiful stew with the tailors and his responsibilities as best man, though Drewdie Poteet, who was to be a groomsman, had come to the rescue and had taken all the responsibilities on his own ade- quate shoulders. Paul conducted his two cronies to the High- lands the first night after the house was fur- » 76 The Inlander nished, and tiirew it open for their admiration. Not a cranny of it was unexposed, not an electric button unpressed, not an ingenious contrivance for Lucy's comfort in closet or dining-room was left unexploited. Drewdie was critically explicit in his approval, and Barney walked from point to point almost on tiptoe. Upstairs Paul turned on the light in what might have been taken for a smoking-room if it had not also been fitted up as a bedroom. " We started out to have one spare room," Paul explained, " but we ended with two, — this and the one adjoining. That one we call Drewdie Poteet's room ; this one, Barney Car- ruthers*. Whenever you old chaps feel like taking a walk to the Highlands, you will always find your rooms ready for you. It — it," Paul's voice was becoming a little unsteady, " was as much Lucy's idea as mine. We 've had a good time together, podners, and — and — well, I swear it sha'n't end now ! " Paul turned his back on the other two, to raise a window and look hard at his coal- house; Drewdie took a quick step toward Paul and then turned his back, to examine the pipes on the mantel ; while Barney sat down dMm The Houie in the Highlands fj on the nearest chair, with an expression as if he had summoned a laugh that would not come, and seeing two backs, dashed his knuckles across his eyes and roared,—- "You infernal lunkhead, Polly Rodman! Who the tarnation ever said it would end? " Later, as Paul was making sure of the locks on the outer doors, Barney and Drewdie walked down to the gate. "Do you reckon," asked Drewdie, a little dolefully, " there was ever anybody any hap- pier than old Rod is, and has been for a year?" " Never was," Barney replied, " and never will be — except Rod himself, to-morrow. Rod is in a higher heaven every day now than he was the day before. That's the way he was built." "And it is all through Lucy Aman. I'd give a million if I had n't spoken to him about her in that shabby way, that time." " Don't you worry. He has n't ever shown you he remembers it, has he? " " Not once." " Then you may go broke that if he remem- bers it he only pities you for your ignorance, or your inability to appreciate such a fine girl." J fftOHKory MSouinoN tbt cnart (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) ja A APPLIED IN/MGF |„e 1653 Eyhen the servant opened the door to him again, he entered, hardly pausing as he passed her. " Tell Mrs. Arnan I wish to see her a mo- ment," he directed. He walked on toward the little library at the end of the hall, where he knew that Mrs. Arnan was often to be founJ. " Yes, sir. She ain't in there, Mr. Rodman," the servant answered quickly. " Have a seat m the parlor." But Paul was near enough to see a section of a skirt through the library door. "You needn't mind, Betty," hd said to the girl; "I 'II find Mrs. Arnan." Long afterwards Paul recalled that as Betty disappearecl she seemed to be suppressing a He went on into the library. Some one was seated at a table, writing. But it was Lucy, mstead of Mrs. Arnan. She looked up at him as he entered, and the light fell on her face with a strange, opaque effect. ^ If when, a few minutes before, he had been 6 82 The Inlander denied admission Paul's first thought was of himself, his first thought now was of Lucv. He hurried to her, both hands extended. "Oh, it is you!" he wried, in a voice of profound thankfulness and joy. " I was afraid you might be really ill." She rose and let him take her limp hand. Her face was relaxed, almost bloodless, as from weariness, but her eyes deepened and softened as she looked intently at Paul. "What did Betty tell you?" she asked finally, in a tone more in keeping with the face than the eyes. "That you were not feeling well and had retired,'' iie answered gently. " Yes, I ordered her to say that," with a faint, fleeting smile. " I wished to go up early to- night; but I had a letter to write first." Paul drew her to him tenderly and held her, with his arm about her. "You do look tired," he said anxiously; " and you are not yourself this evening. You must put off the letter-writing and get a long night's rest. Come, let me see you start now. Ix will give me an opportunity to accompany you as far as the stairs." His last sentence was spoken with an afFec- •1 The House on Gray Street 83 tation of cheerful lightness to which she did not respond. He felt her form straighten by his side, and for the first time since his coming she returned the clasp of his hand. " No ! no ! " she exclaimed, with a vehemence in marked contrast with her previous manner. " I do not wish you to go yet. I am not ill. Indeed, it is not that. You must stay with me a little while now." "But do you think you ought to let me ?" doubtfully. "Yes, yes! I sha'n't let you go for ten— no, fifteen minutes. You must stay for fifteen minutes; then you must go." She was trying to laugh, but it was plain that she was tremendously in earnest. She led him to the sofa, and, her hand still in his, drew him to a seat on it close by her side. "Now talk to me! talk to me!" she said, her head resting against the wall, her eyes closed. "Tell me the beautiful things you think of me ! Tell them again ! Tell them all ! " Paul answered with a short laugh of delight He had told her those things before, but she had never before invited, ordered him to tell them. 84 The Inlander He began as if t'^ humor her, half playfully at first, but soon continued with a fervor that caused now hb low voice to falter and again his hastening words to overleap each other im- petuously. And they were, indeed, beautiful things he told her, — idyllic, divine, — for he spoke to her out of the fulness of the dreams of his secluded, poetic boyhood, and in her he saw their perfect incarnation. She listened to him silently, only an occasional pressure of her hand, the dawning glow in her pale cheeks, the irregular commotion of the violets on her bosom, attesting that she heard. "And now," he concluded, "my minutes are up," leaning over and touching with his lips her closed lids, is for a sweet sleep. Good-night." He rose to go, but she sprang up at the same time, and catching his arm, cried quickly, as if ."iuddenly wakened in alarm from a shallow sleep, — " No ! no ! Not yet ! Just a little longer ! Just five minutes more ! " If every hour of Paul's life before that had been torture, it would have been worth it all to live for that moment. " Surely," he beamed, " we may allow our- fifteen lightly " That mnmmmmnmmm^mm mmmmmmmmmmm The House on Gray Street 85 selves five minutes more. Really," bending to her as if to whisper a secret, " you are looking quite yourself again: indeed, you are looking more beautiful than I ever saw you." She did not seem to heed, but said rapidly, brokenly, — "There are some things yet — some things that I want to hear you say— that I want to say — that — oh, Paul, look at me ! " She lifted her face, her eyes wide, rapt, searching his. " Tell me again that you love me." He smiled at her mood, at the •:uperfluous- ness of such an assurance. But he answered with vibrant gravity, — "I love you, Lucy, — more than you will ever know, more than I can ever make you understand." " And you will love me always? " " Always." " Not less, whatever happens? " "Nothing could happen to make me love you less." She bowed her head against his arm, which she still held. For several seconds she was silent and motionless, except for one quivering sigh. Then she looked up at him again. 86 The Inlander " And I love you, Paul, — you always, you alone, whatever happens. Never forget that, Paul." " I know that, dear. I am as sure of your love for me as I am of mine for you. That is the glorious perfection of it." He took her hands, and holding them together, lifted them to his lips. •• And now, Paul, kiss me ! " As he kissed her mouth once, twice, with reverent passion, her arms pressed him con- vulsively. "Good-night, Paul," she almost sobbed. " Good-bye. Now you must go. Go I go I " She pushed him toward the door, but when he reached it she flung herself suddenly be- tween it and him. " Wait ! " There was an electric change in tone and manner. '• You shall not go yet. I have something to tell you." " Why, Lucy," all his solicitude for her re- turning, " how excited you are ! I should not have remained at all. Cr>me," ^ lothingly, " you must put lue out, and get > sleep at once." " If I am excited, it is because of «itot I hav* to tell you. I did not expect to 4 v -.u face I The House on Gray Street 87 to face. I intended to write it to you. I had begun the letter when you came. But I am not going to be such a coward now. I will tell you with my own lips. Please light an- other jet of the chandelier. I am not afraid of the light now." Paul, surprised and puzzled, did as he was requested, utterly unable to account for this singular conduct of Lucy's. Outwardly now she was composed. Hrr face was pale and resolute, and if her voice, Arhich had hardened, betrayed any unsteadiness, it was the tremor of a steel rapier. As Paul, after lighting the jet, turned to her again, she had thrown herself on the sofa, where she sat, her burning eyes fixed on him. He went toward her, but stopped before her, studying her in open perplexity. " I should ask you to sit down again," she said in almost even, tense tones ; " but you would refuse, when you know. You will never sit down in — this house again." " Lucy ! " his low exclamation, as he took a quick step forward, was a cry of mingled pro- test and apprehension for her. "What is it that is troubling you, dear? Why are you talking so strangely?" 88 The Inlander She warded him off with > >er hand. •• Don't come nearer! Don't touch me I You will understand in a — in a r-imcnt. Only give me a little time." He waited, speechless, nOw knowing what further to say, never taking his e) es from the rigid figure, the head now turned half aside, the hands clutching each other in her lap. Suddenh ue began speaking, without chang- ing her ,H ure, without looking at him, a spasmod. .^itch of the hands being the only physical reflex of her words. " When I instructed Betty not to admit you to-night, it was not because I was not feeling well, but because I did not intend to see you. I— -there was something you had to know, which I did not think I had the courage to tell you, except by letter. But now, well, you shall not accuse me of that contemptibleness." "Surely, Lucy, there can be nothing that should disturb you — that « lould — " She whirled upon him, and thrusting her hand in her bosom, drew out a letter and ex- tended it to him. "Read it!" she ordered. "That will plain." He took it, his eyes on her rather than on ex- The House on Gray Stieet 89 the letter. He unfolded the sheei, still study- ing her inscrutable face ; then, glancing at the letter, he again looked over it to her. "Why," he said, " this is ti) you." " Read it. Ke would not mind." It was written on the ruled paper of a New York hotel, in a florid hand that might have been acquired in a "business college." It ran: — Tmb Elumokk, New York, Jane 7. MiM Lucy Aknan Louisvillb Ky DiAK Miss Lucy I am sorry I cannot see you in person to talk over this mi.tter but I am booked to sail for London Monday and it is most important 'at I don't Fail to r ''e connection — To come to the point perhaps you have seen that I am now a Free man — The decree was handed down this momiii- so my lawyers wire me — I am the happiest of men for it gives me liberty to follow my heart — My love my darling you must liave know., ♦hat I have long worshipt the very ground you red on and that nothing but circumstances kept me fhjm throwing myself and mine at your Feet Say you will marry me little sweetheart and reward my long waiting - This should reach you by Saturday please wire your answer by Sunday night at latest — I will return from Europe in 3 weeks when all the arrangemente can be Fixed up — The late Mrs. O was allowed a pretty M 90 The Inlander stiff Alimony also the children but there is enough left for Two and love in a cottige — I will setde f 100,000 on you before the not is tied — Wire me yes at once little woman Yours with 1000 K-sses JUDD F OXNARD As Paul read thii^ the veins on his temples began to swell and the muscles of his jaws tautened visibly. By the time he had finished it the nails of his clenched fist were driven into his palm with the force with which at the moment he longed to tear the throat of the writer. Murder was in his plunging heart, in his contracted sinews. For the instant it was almost as if Oxnard himself were in the room, and Paul, on account of Lucy's presence, felt the necessity of temporary self-restraint. Mainly for the purpose of gaining time for that restraint, he re-read the letter slowly, from beginning to end. Then crumpling the sheet in his hand, he threw it to the floor, and turning again to Lucy Arnan, he stepped to her side, his whole countenance suffused with the light of love and compassion that welled from his eyes. " Lucy 1 " his voice at once a throbbing The House on Gray Street 91 caress and proud reassurance, "why should you have feared to show me that letter, dear? Did you think it possible for me to misjudge you? Did you doubt that I should Jkmow you were not in the least responsible for his pre- sumption, — that you had given him no more cause for his insolence than an angel in heaven? Why, there is no angel in heaven that scoun- drel would not insult." He had stooped, one knee on the sofa be- side her, and reached to take her hand ; but she stood up at once, straight and aloof. There was a brief silence between them, — he at a loss to interpret her mood, she gazing at him contemplatively, with eyes that gradually filled. " Oh, Paul ! " she said a little sadly, " why are you not more like other men? It never occurred to me you would take that view of it. Please go now. You make it impossible for me to talk to you about it. I will write you — the rest." He placed his arm around her and spoke soothingly : " Don't think of it any more, Lucy. Come, let us sit down. I want to tell you of a visit to the house last night with Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet." 92 The Inlander She slipped away from him and walked swiftly toward the door. When she reached Oxnard's crumpled letter on the carpet, she stopped, wrung her hands for a second, and then suddenly confronted Paul again, deter- mination crystallized in look and tone. " I have answered Mr. Oxnard's letter," she said defiantly. "That was like you," he returned with a tender smile. " It was treating him with most charitable consideration, though he deserved none at all." " I have answered that I would marry him," she continued in a high monotone. Paul gazed at her curiously, with penetrat- ing concentration. To hear Lucy Arnan jest on such a subject grated on him sensitively, and to see her mask her jest in such a simula- tion of seriousness stirred in him a vague foreboding. But his scrutiny soon relaxed in a smile. " Don't you think you are a little cruel, Lucy Arnan," he said lightly, " to try to joke with me about such things?" Her eyes fell, and her voice was lower as she replied, — " I am not — trying to do that." The House on Gray Street 93 At last he was fully aroused, and he spoke imperatively. "Lucy! What do you mean? What are you telling me?" '•Simply the truth. I shall marry Mr. Ox- nard. I telegraphed him my consent to-day." The words were deliberate ; it was more as if she were soliloquizing than addressing Paul. His compressed lips seemed faintly traced in chalk, but he made no motion except to throw back his head a little as he looked at her with a directness which she would not meet "I do not understand you," he said with the same directness. She made a slight, deprecating gesture, dis- missing the subject. " There is no more to say," she replied with a touch of weariness. "I have spoken as plainly as I know how." The pallor of his stern face was suddenly flooded by a dull red. The swollen veins were knotted purple. His eyes blazed, and he strode up to her and stood over her as though he would grind her beneath his heel. She did not recede from him, but with one glance at his distorted face, bowed her head, mmm 94 The Inlander covering her eyes with her hand, and shudder- ing with an inarticulate exclamation. He grasped her wrist and uncovered her eyes, her pulse, as he retained his grip, striking like a thong against his palm. " Look at me I " he commanded. Her eyes lifted to him as if against her will. " You tell me that you are going to marry this man?" " Yes," faintly, after a moment of waiting. " You who were to marry me in forty-eight hours?" There was no response. " Speak I " " Yes." "And who confessed your love for m'r jiot ten minutes ago?" "Yes." His chest swelled with one great breath ; his eyes left hers, looking beyond her vacantly ; he dropped her wrist and walked silently past her to the door Before he could open it she had rushed to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. " Don't go like this, Paul Rodman ! " she appealed and demanded. " Wait till you have heard -jH I have to say." The House on Gray Street 95 " Is it possible that there is anything more you would say?" he asked with a harsh re- straint of his voice. The suggestion of a smile flickered and died away around her lips, leaving, instead, lines like those which an exhausting vigil sometimes brings to the smoothest face. " Paul," she said more softly, " we ought to be plain with each other now." She leaned forward, and taking the lapel of his coat be- tween her fingers, toyed with it fondly, look- ing up to him as she spoke in a way that would have enslaved him five minutes before. " When you once think about it seriously, you will agree with me that we should not marry — now. I have nothing, and you have your way to make in the world. I should be a burden to you, and in time I fear you would come to feel it. I could not bear that." " Ugh ! " he scoffed roughly. " No more of that ! " " Don't let us be silly, Paul," she went on. " Life is a very different thing from what you have fancied it. I know this seems very-— inconsiderate of me now — so near the wed- ding, and people will talk horribly, but I shall suffer from that more than you, and — " 1 i 96 The Inlander He turned from her in supreme disgust, and opening the door passed on into the hall, but she sprang after him and threw her arms around his neck. " Listen I listen, Paul I " she panted. He stood looking down at her, amazed at the transformation she had undergone in an instant Every trace of weariness or hard- ness had left her. Her face had warmed to a delicate rose. Her eyes were slumberous fire, over which the lids drooped, like petals of a flower wilted by the heat. Her full, red lips were slightly parted, as if shaped to the fervid plea that had just left them. The quick respirations that made a tumult of her bosom seemed to undulate through every line of her sinuous figure. She swayed nearer to him; her breath brushed his cheek like a midday air from a swooning summer garden ; a lan- guorous fragrance ascended from the bruised violets at her breast "Listen, Paul!" <;h'» murmured. " Let us be sensible. I love you! I shall always love you! What is— Judd Oxnard to us? Such men are necessary evils. Besides, he has heart trouble, and it will not be many years before I can be your wife." Paul, for a little, was powerless to move or The House on Gray Street 97 speak. His color was like the swarthy pallor that result, from lead poisoning. The hall was as close as a vault, and his one impulse was to get away, into the air. ^ Mechanically he unclasped her arms from about him, and, without looking toward her agam, went slowly from the house. i IX " THE BRAND OF A BURNT-OUT STAR " He Stepped into the street and walked on automatically. All his mental faculties seemed locked. He had no acute sensation, either of anguish or wrath, regret or despair. He felt merely a numb, inert body, moving, through no exerti« of his own, to no destination. An old dream which had repeated itself in his childhood came back to him, and, as in that, he was walking, freed from the law of gravita- tion, through space, and all other objects were stationary. He never knew that a policeman followed him half a square, and he was hardly conscious that a hack driver, who had come near running over him, pulled up and offered to take him home. He went on and on for hours through this dead space until finally he found himself look- ing at the bronze soldier at the end of Third Street. He revolved idly a memory of having seen the same soldier once before that night. i "The Brand of a Burnt-out Star" 90 «>««. He laughed a litUe a. he took the tte „ld,er eariier in the night and gone Tn into the country for his wallc .lot;' l^rd'wTe'h """' "" "*""""« s *«"ra acreet, he became more irritat mgly observant A bicyclist, speeding inTr^'" the boulevanl. shot by, ladening tl^e^a^ Z an abominable odor of lamp. A watch Jan offiaously whacking a wall ^.h his'tb h'a nothing better to do than to make the night h^eous Tl,e bumpkin half asleep on te gardener's wagon ought to be comVelkd to get down and toke the place of fte hmc W ahead, dick-clicking :„.ermi„ably''ont: was mystified, on remov ng his hat h„ ,u. water which trickled from .he brim Lo^k „! through the window, he noticed for ^Z time a softly falling rain two. three hours until th-T • "* °"^' ^-es«rred,a;d":i'::?;jr„:r;n'''-- Mk^ lOO The Inlander I At last he moved, to lean forward suddenly and curiously; for here in the heart of the city floated to his ears the clear notes of a whippoorwill's call. Then he remembered. Down the street was a jeweller's shop, in the window of which was a large clock that preceded the strokes of the hour with a musical simulation of the whip- poorwill's cry. And he remembered more; for the stupor that had held him so long seemed to lift, leaving him on the old veranda of his boyhood's home, where he had lounged of an evening and dreamed his dreams of woman and love, while the refrain of a whip- poorwill drifted to him from the thicket across the fields. And in one swift, infinity-illumin- ing flash he spanned the distance between the song of the whippoorwill in the Tennessee copse to the song of the whippoorwill in the brazen clock. His head fell on his arms, stretched along the window-sill, and his whoV frame was wrenched and contorted by a worv»- less groan of agony. He shivered vhere he had fallen, for per- haps a minute, though in that time he lived over and over the beauty of his youth, the night's crash of his life, the hell of his future. *'The firand of a Burnt-out Star " lOl He rose to his feet and opened his lungs to the cool air of the nearing dawn. Out from the stars a meteor shot, cleaving the night and dying i. the graying east. He turned away, and as his eyes fell on the wall of his room he saw stencilled upon it, in obedience to a law which sometimes affects the physically exhausted, the track of the meteor. The Mme track, 'n pale rose, glowed in his eyes as he closed theui. " Barney's squab," he &aid aloud, with iwo notes of a self-mocking laugh, " and the brand of a burnt-out star." Then he went up to the portrait of his long- dead mother, a girl whose soft hair, drawn in an old fashion smoothly over hrr ears, framed a face of ethereal delicacy and loveliness. It was the only picture of a woman in the room ; and opening his knife, he cut out the canvas and tore it into strips, which he dropped into a waste-basket ■HH m A SUGGESTION FOR A PLAY A SUPERFICIAL observtr would have said that the next seven years wrought no greater change in Paul Rodman than such a period of time usually works in ont of his age. Everybody remembered, of course, the " sen- sation " in which he had figured, — how heart- lessly, and what was more impressive, how vulgarly, he had been jilted by Lucy Arnan for Judd Oxnard's money. But those less iutimate with him than Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet could not have said that his character had suffered any radical and lasting hurt from that experience. After the first shock had passed he appeared to the world as he had always appeared to it,— straightforward, unobtrusively active, quietly cheerful. He went about his business as before. He was seen as much in society as ever, and he con- tinued to show, in his ma- ler, at least, that deference to women which had been so nota- * It iS A Suggestion for a Play 103 bly a j>art of hb heritage from "the Old South." If this deference had become more superficial than real, 'f its expression was now more the result of breeding than of feeling, no such accusation was put ir words, anr; it could have been based on nothing more tangible, perhaps, than the intuition of the finer natures among those women who knew him both be- fore and after his affair witli Lucy Aman. In all these seven years since that affair Paul Rodman's name, in a city given to much small talk, had never been connected with that of another woman. He had shown no partial- ity for one above others, and had afforded the most watchful no cause for suspicion that he ever thoi^ght of installing another in the place in his life w'lich Lucy Arnan had forfeited. He was not a woman-hater; he was simply no longer a woman-worshipper. The sum of his philosophy regarding women was that, beginning with the utmost faith in them, he had now no faith in himself. He did not doubt that there were women who realized in every respect his youthful ideals, but he had lost all confidence In his ability to distinguish such women from their counterfeits. He had been deceived, completely and terribly, and I04 The Inlander from the night on which he had destroyed his mother's picture he had no thought of risking a second deception. He regretted, often and acutely, the destruction of the picture, as a heartless and insane act. He had committed It in an hour when, in the bitterness of his soul, he had cursed all womankind as a weak and beautiful profanation of a divine idea — an hour whose poignancy passed, leaving him free of the injustice of estimating all women by the one he knew best. He did not assume a woman unworthy fo(- no other reason than that she was a womarf; nor, alas! did he now, as he once did, assume her worthy because she was a woman. H«vwas simply and necessarily an agnostic as to ^esex, and he was resolved never to invite ^e further penalties of dis- regarding bis qpiorance. Thus keeping his place on the lower plane to which he had adjusted himself, and contem- plating society from that plane alone, he saw much that confirmed not only the wisdom, but the necessity of his new philosophy. Men of his intense nature usually view their surround- ings from one extreme or the other, and he was now as ready to suspect as before he had been to trust. And, of course, he often saw '1 iV^ A Suggestion for a Play 105 more than there was to see. The social life of a city like Louisville has much in it to dis- enchant such a man as Paul Rodman had been, but it has more in it to mislead a warped judgment to unjust conclusions. He had no difficulty in living down to this new philosophy concerning women. A win- ning face, a fine sympathy, a magnetic presence, or what seemed through an ex- tended association an admirable and lovable character, had no power to move him from the non-committal course which he had prescribed for himself. All these he had seen, or had thought he saw, in Lucy Arnan. The only security for him was in memory. But he did not obtrude these views even on his closest friends. Only once had he sum- marized them to Barney Carruthers, in this formula, — "I am an ignoramus about women, and shall never try to be anything else." Barney approved, and never again did he call Paul "Polly." Lucy Arnan may not have made a woman- hater of Paul Rodman, but she had made one of Barney Carruthers. " So help me God, Drewdie Poteet," he had r io6 The Inlander sworn the first time the two had talked over Lucy's infidelity to Paul, " I will never speak to another woman as long as I live ! " He had kept the oath in spirit, if not liter- ally; which was not hard to do, for in his shyness he had probably never spoken to more than a dozen women outside his own family since he came into the world, and never to them when he could help it. Though Barney and Drewdie often dis- cussed Lucy Arnan and her influence on Paul Rodman's life, they never referred to her in his hearing, nor did he ever speak of that chapter of his past. It was not necessary that he should do so to reveal to them the ineradi- cable scar it had left. There were times when he revealed this so plainly when talking about other things that it spurred Barney Carruthers to renew and elaborate his oath against women as soon as he and Drewdie were alone to- gether. A crude instance of this will be sufficiently illustrative. The three friends were in a restaurant one night, five or six years after Lucy Arnan's marriage to Judd Oxnard. They had been to the theatre, and Drewdie Poteet was seasoning A Suggestion for a Play 107 his oysters with lemon and lamentations over the mferiority of the play to his own « comedy- drama," Love and Locksmiths, which every manager in the country had declined. Drew- die had some time before decided, owing to the wholly inappreciative attitude of the pub- hshers. that his Vocation was that of a dramatist instead of an author, and Love and Locksmiths was the result of that decision. Now that he had seen the French "rot" xl V. ^t ''^'" ^ '^ °" ^y *^^ ^^--y manager who had been most curt in rejecting Love and Locksmuhs, Drewdie was so wrought up over the rank mcompetence of the whole " nian- agenal tribe" that he was committing the barbarity of supplementing the lemon on his oysters w . tomato catsup and tabasco. Drewdie." remarked Paul. " you say your managers complain there is nothing original ^nLo^e and Locksmiths. I believe fcan'sug gest somethmg original. That play to-nijt was certainly not onVinal in ./^^/°^"S"t fk« * L origmal in its mainspr me. th. treachery of a wife to her husband^ -! a French play without such a mainspring mieht be an originality, - but it was worked o„t"wth ^me new variations. The French are rTght •" agreeing that there can be no stronge io8 The Inlander motive for the human drama. But in France when a wife proves false they make a comedy or a farce, to be laughed at, or if they make a tragedy they pose her as the heroine. Over here, when we treat the situation seriously, we put the faithless wife in a melodrama and let her die in black, to slow music, in an atmos- phere of spring flowers and wet handkerchiefs. Sometimes we let her come very near being killed by the husband, though usually we limit his bloodshedding to her masculine accomplice. In that we are getting pretty close to human nature. There isn't any doubt that when the right sort of a man is thus betrayed by his wife, his impulse is to kill somebody — unless we can find a variation for him —some- thing original for the play. There is where my suggestion comes in." Dr..wdie, who was now becalmed, glanced at Barney Carruthers significantly, while Bar- ney, who had eaten his own oysters and was now attacking the over-seasoned plate which Drewdie had discarded, grunted,— "Oh, shut up, Rod. When it comes to plays, Drewdie may not be able to strike the combination for the managers; but if he 's not a born playwright, he's not going to be a A Suggestion for a Play 1 09 second-hand playwright, and you need n't try to teach him anything. Don't you know Drewdie Poteet and his vocation yet?" " Let 's see," Paul went on ; •' Green is a mar- ried man. He is all that a husband should be. One day, however, he discovers that Black is her favored lover. He gets a shot-gun, double- barrelled, and walks in on them while they are together. Does he shoot them down at once? He does not wish to soil his hands with the slaughter of such creatures, — to say nothing of furnishing Drewdie something original for his play. Black is not armed, or if he is. Green has the drop on him and compels him to sur- render his pistol or knife. Green locks the door and thus passes sentence on the two : " ' I am not going to kill you, unless that is your choice. " ' Here are the alternatives, — " ' First, I will shoot you both down where you stand; or — '"Second, One of you — it is immaterial which — must die here and now by the hands of the other. " ' If neither of you is willing to be killed by the other in order that the other may live, then you may fight it out between you until one of ilO The Inlander you is dead. The survivor, if there be a sur- vivor, goes free of any further molestation bv me. ' "•I will add that when I say one of you must die by the hands of the other I mean that hterally. You will be allowed no weapons ' " table writing m a notebook, looked up sud- " ^°" don't mean one would have to strangle the other?" he asked. ^ " I suppose that would be what would hap- pen, unless they could find some other way to do the work." "But -stop -don't you see that would almost make it certain that the woman would be the one killed?" Paul laughed slightly. " That is the beauty of the plan he answered. " If only one is to oe killed, the woman should be the one " Drewdie swabbed his face with his' hand- kerchief as he replaced the note-book in his pocket. "What do you think of the idea, fellows? " Paul added. ^ "I don't know. Rod." Drewdie ruminated. It strikes me different ways But it strikes A Suggestion for a Play 1 1 1 me hardest that it would be a stunner for a horrible play, or story, or something." Barney Carruthers, who had been medita- tively lighting and watching burn a stand of matches, thus gave his opinion,— "It seems to me that it would depend on how It was worked up whether it turned out a something ' or something else." As they left the restaurant Barney Carruthers and Drewdie Poteet went on outside while Faul lingered to pay the bill. " Ain't seen the cuss look that way for some time, Barney said as they waited. " Did vou notice that old, hell-baked smile of his come back as he spoke of the woman? " " Did it? I was too busy trying to get the thing on paper." ' & s "Say, Drewdie Poteet," and Barney struck his fist viciously against the iron awning-post, I m willing to take a double-and-twisted oath with you that if either one of us ever looks at another woman, he is to be buried alive by the XI ACROSS THE YEARS In the early weeks of the second summer after this incident, Barney Carruthers induced Paul Rodman to go back to Tennessee with him foi a vacation. Barney's father was still living, and the Louisville lawyer, whose business had never engrossed his time, was in the habit of visiting the old gentleman occasionally, when the peaches were ripening and the roasting ears were silking. Paul, having no ties of blood or of close friendship in Tennessee, had never re- turned to the State since he had left it as a youth, now more than ten years ago, and had always declined Barney's invitation to run down with him to a country "where they know how to make real chicken-pie and sure- enough corn-bread." This summer, however, Paul was more amenable to reason. He ad- mitted that he needed just such a rest as Barney urged him to take. Across the Years 1,3 His work for several months had been un- usually arduous. He had been trying to get under way a company to place on the market a deposit of fluor-spar in one of the river coun- ties of Kentucky, and he had gone through a Hard fight. The industry was a comparatively new one in that part of the country, and cap- italists were wary of it. Nevertheless, with an option on the land, he applied himself to rais- ing the money necessary to buy it and to put the enterprise on foot It was her. that the friends he had made in his business of home- buildmg came forward. That business had never proved very profitable to Paul, chieiiy on account of his laxness in holding his ten- ants to their contracts. If they defaulted in the.r payments, it was his way to allow them extensions even indefinitely, rather than en- force his liens on their homes. "You ought to get out of that business, •^You'ifn?'' ?""*'" "°"^^ '^y *o >»'- You 11 never do anything for yourself in it IntZ '" r ''■''"*^'- N° --*-» ™- can To k'" '''^'' ^"^'"^^^ «"d the philan- thropy business together and make money out of the real estate business." But Paul found that his real estate business >i4 The Inlander .-#• ^-^ served him a good turn when he undertook to float the .tock of his new company. Not •M h,s tenanu defaulted in their payment., •nd not all those who defaulted failed ulti' mately to redeem their contracts. Many not formed the habit of saving and laid by snug httle bank accounts. When Paul set about orgamzmg the Ohio River Fluor-spar Com- pany, the small subscriptions which these men were eager to make to its stock, together with his own larger subscription and the still larger subscription of Drewdie Poteet. who had now succeeded to his mother's fortune, constituted the greater part of the capital with which the option was closed and active work on the new enterprise begun. Having done all there was for him to do in person just then, Paul found himself with a few weeks' respite at the time when Barney Carruthers made his annual pilgrimage to Ten- nessee, and he decided, to Barney's hilarious satisfaction, to visit with him the scenes of tneir boyhood. Barney Carruthers was so elated by this decision that he telegraphed it to Drewdie roteet at St. Louis, insisting on his joining Across the Years ,,^ them in Tennessee, although it was a f«« conclusion that Drewdie would^ ! k *^''"* to spare the time to Tit/D Lt ^ f * a ne«r vocation which Lot h "^"^ ^"^ from May to Octoblr »? T ''^'^ ^'"•V shortly after he h.H ^' "'' "«^«'- had died of Pau'l R^^ln't^^^^^^^^ *^7 nc es Drewdie. comine into tl!! * P^*^' *"^ quick to rea^e ,ha° K /^P'^'^^*^^^ »>*«« his true v"ca oV?n lJ: 'r^^'^''^ "" "°' in Life was to encourajl the^' 'T ^°"*'°" by helpin, to ele^r^l^'rtf t^^^^^ •nvested in a racing sUble, he hai now '3 i>t. Louis, on the " ciremf » . u reached to Barney's mLJ ' . ^^'''''' ^^ '^i* reply -"^"ey s telegram amp y indica^i.,! i, active y en?acri>ri ;« "laicated, he was -0««»*i»»>itaha„di„_^™ «*' <»<"™ «K>„g on Coppcrimed. TaZ?'" ^^"ori*'.... •«s temperament nft»- -l w^mcn men ii6 The Inlander I On the contrary, in the lapses of silence between him and Barney Carruthcrs, Paul's thoughts were heavy as they insistentiy recurred to the contrast between the journey he had made over this road more than ten years ago and the journey he was making over it now. Then, an inexperienced lad in his early twenties, life was before him, everything was possible, and the best and most beautiful were to be his. Now, a worldly-wise man, though not yet thirty-five, he knew that nothing th'it was best and most beautiful was possible for him; that his return to the haunts of his boyhood was with the stern realization that the hopes and aspirations which had buoyed him forth and which had been the most wonderful charm of his boyhood, were only mockeries. In truth, what was there of those boyhood hopes and aspirations that were not better buried in the old family graveyard, along with the aged father whose death had marked the beginning of the new life of the son, and with the young mother whose desecrated portrait had marked the ending of all that was worth living for? The miles slipped away; the wooded slopes vanished behind him ; the green " barrens " rolled on either side; then a river winding Across die Yean ,,_ between ™p.yi«g wheat «,d roi.teri„g eom E«rywhere the Iwdn- rk, were r.cog?i„b™ h^J I'lS'h'"" ""^^ "" '""dmarlT which hjd hned h» way on that other journey. Then all were imreited with the maeic the mytery that light the first vi«on Tut^^d bound; now they were but dull clod" d^ . one ,l„gg^.h water, that nu„,bered Ae mS« « he drifted, a, dull a, they, aimlcly bacT reached V"'7 ""o"" """" ^' ""<' B»™«y toe he had .Tr- ""' '■' """ "■" *« M»vi, was familiar, but much of it was aggressively - "whirf"'* ■"■' ™™'^ •" 'b^qu" o^ „W T generation, had hardly varied - -faL'd tSr > Vr*" """'P"" » Paul had hardly stepped from the train he lad st^oT" """' *' ^'"* "ttonwoo^",':; " ««-eless tongue, while Randy, hi. wife, sat ii8 The Inlander under the tree outside and displayed for sale her gingerbread and fried chicken ; the family grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the family dogs and fowls, overrunning the adja- cent territory and wearing it smooth and hard with many bare feet. Old Juniper and Randy had been part of Paul's childhood, and the distance between him and that seemed sud- denly and violently lengthened as he saw a big lumber-yard where the Cottonwood and the cabin had stood. Further along the creek, which in the old days had been given over to the municipality's ducks, geese, cattle, and washerwomen, mills now hummed and coal- banks stretched. The street from the station, which had been dedicated to dog-fennel and an occasional squatter, was now graded and gravelled, and was built up with neat cottages. The old corner gaslights had been replaced with electricity. There were an added story and a tower to the historic court-house. The little ivy-grown church that he had known best had been remodelled into market stalls, and the sleepers in the grass-grown churchyard adjoining had been removed elsewhere, to make room for the thriving innovation known as the "Ten Cent Store." The colonial ■fe-: Across the Years 119 simplicity of the old Hungerford homestead, which was almost coeval with the birth of Mavistoc. and which had never been occupied except by some member of the family that had won distinction for Mavistoc, in the coun- cils of the State and the Nation and in the courts of Europe, had beenwigged and rouged mto the simpering rejuvenation of" The Hotel Hungerford." with a clerk's desk where the hall had been and vociferous runners who had besieged Paul the moment he appeared on the car platform. As he drove along the principal street he saw that many of the houses had been enlarged and modernized; yards he re- membered as wild with old-fashioned flowers were now prim with palms and ferns, and at the sides of two cottages where hollyhocks and tiger-hhes had rioted, glass conservatories had been bu.lt. There were new houses where cultivated fields had been when Paul had last seen the town; most of these structures hav- ing discarded the plainness of their antiquated neighbors many for a combination of all schools of architecture that promised a com- phcated and showy result, and some for the best models of urban dwellings which modern taste and wealth have evolved. I20 The Inlander " Some of these houses along here could hold their own on Third Street in Louisville, could n't they?" Barney Carruthers said as he pointed out the improvements on either hand. " They have become so progressive in Mavistoc since you and I left that they have actually in- troduced coppers into circulation." When they drove from the town over thr smooth turnpike, the changes were hardly less conspicuous. The rail snake-fences had given place to plank, wire, and occasionally to stone. The fields which had been planted in cotton or turned out to broomsedge and blackberries, were now luxuriant in stock-peas, in grain and in blue grass, over which blooded cattle and horses browsed. Only occasionally did a patch of cleanly tilled cotton remind Paul that this was Middle Tennessee instead of Central Kentucky. It was certainly very different from the Ten- nessee he had known; and the change, how- ever for the better it might have been, struck him with a sense of personal loss. Neither his boyhood, nor even the land of his boy- hood, was left him. They passed the mouth of a lane that led away from the pike, and Barney waved his hand toward it. Across the Years 121 " I reckon you recognize ihat," he said. It was the lane that ran to the old Rodman place, the only home Paul had ever known. He coi'id see now, against the afterglow in the western sky, the dark green blur of the great oaks and hickories under which the house stood; he could see, as of old, the swallows wheeling above it; and a commotion in the branches of the b. cedar told him that the turkeys were flying to roost in the same tree they had always chosen ten, twenty years ago. The house was invisible from the turnpike, but Paul's mental image of it. at the moment, was vivid, and especially of the wide veranda on which two dreamers sat ana watched the stars come out, — one. a white-haired old man ; the other, a grave eyed boy. The man had died long ago, gently, contentedly, as becomes the ending of a beautiful old age ; and the boy, too, was gone, but the pathos of his going was far removed from the definiteness of inexorable death; for it was as if the boy had been, and even now was, and yet was not. There was a tightening at his throat as Paul, with a strange, impersonal aloofness, contem- plated the picture of the boy he had been, and his heart welled with a tender yearning, an 122 The Inl&nder infinite compassion, not for himself, but for the boy who for the instant was veiy r;al, and ^et •vho was no more. ^ He turned away from the darkening tree tops w.th a forced conventionality " We '11 have to run over some day and take a look at the old place " " An?r'' u'^^'*' " '^P"*^^ ^""'^y Carruthers And I reckon we '11 both know the way " XII DIVISION VALLEY Stephen Carruthers, Bc-ney's father, was an old man who since the death of his wife had hved alone, in preference to living with his married children, or having them live with him. He was taciturn and active, always pot- tenng at something and rarely accomplishing anything. He devoted his energies to trifles and whimsies, and directed two or three negroes to the same end; the result being that he supplied his physical wants and was content, while his farm went happily to weeds and thickets. He had very little to say to Barney or Paul, but it pleased him to listen to what they had to say, either to himself or to each other, provided they accompanied him on his rounds to the barns or the fields to say It. That was how Barney and Paul spent the greater part of the day following their arrival. The next morning old Stephen took Barney . '24 The Inlander into Mavistoc for a consultation with a lawyer and Paul lounged awav the t;^ « 'awyer, in the old days, he had raTrhuIted t T unsuccessfully. ^ '*° squirrels Division Valley, so called becau-* fU u >t ran the creek which marked the b' 7""^^ between the Carruthers TZ ''°""daries other farms wasIw/M K-f r "^"' ^"^ ^^^*^«' being subject":: rlw°^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the clearer's axe It S k ^^' ^"°^" haunt of Pauf r: . K '"" *^^ '"^^^'''te familiar, as only " 50;^' fA''^ '^' »'-» tree, bowlder, a'^d llhoTe .' "'*' ^^^"^ and shoal and pool oTtltl^st:^^^^^^^^^ with thorn and sassaftlr; ? "^ "' '""'''«' berries. B^ond !t ,.^""' "="'='' »'* dew- cornfield, and then a 1; .""""' ^'^P"™'' and bushes. He lasTtr'!! '"" *° '"'"' Valley no«r ,he de^? 5° "'^' '"' ^'"s'"" Wm. L M^e ofte Zt r"*"' "''"^ of the forest and »v» ^ ^ ''""^ '° "■« g«™ 'ike thistle bitetr "^^ ""'" ""'""g '"".incus bluTa" •,,t~;'r"=''" °' green came the resonant Division Valley 1 25 calls of blackbirds, and behind, in the fields, a solitary meadow-lark answered with a trill vibrant with the pulse of summer. Paul came to the creek where as a boy he had been accustomed to cross on the stones when the water was low. But an uprooted tree bridged it now. He stepped upon its trunk and paused. He ought to know that tree. He took his bearings critically. Yes, it was the sweet-gum, — the biggest sweet-gum in the forest, — and the long breath which he drew across the years was laden with the resinous fragrance of this fallen landmark of his youth. He walked over it slowly, with a half-conscious feeling that he was profaning the dead. Idly he followed the bank of the creek. Here was the swimming-hole, wide and deep, just as he remembered it; then the swift race, spreading with frothy shallows; after which was the long stretch, waist-deep, where he and Barney Carruthers had always come to seine minnows when the elders required bait. This ended in the wonderful loop, where the stream doubled on itself for an eighth of a mile, and here was the sycamore whose roots on one side were washed by the same water which. 126 The Inlander waslrt""^ 'I*' "'^^'^ q^artcr-mile circuit, washed Its roots on the other side then o plunge and brawl down the rockv ,1 u as "the falk" A J . ^ '^°'^'^>' *'«ep known b..H «r. ^""^ ***'■* ^«s the widening whlh tr f "'' '"' '"^^'^ limestone. oTe? tt;y^a%te^:t;e:rtts^ of „* "V-^PPle nsmg above the drifts of other summers' dead leaves Paul threw himself down on ihe curled root .. we^n ef '' r'" ' "■«" <" ""Vadion H corrtTeXret™" "'T °"« ^'«"'^''-<' »«med to Wm Ta L" „ . T ^"'"""y- " !.«« 1 . • ^ "^ "3^ last sat here a *«ppy lad, with his back against ths beech and his gun across his kne^ tk «.e m„„ ,,;„^r:he efX" ^uTg «h p,„k fr„„, and he had waited here thf commg o^ the squirrels for their favorit d* S .J^ ■ '' "'""■ "" J™» breeze lazily bty a'nd r °?'= P°P>" "eside the m^ thTh' K ' ^ °"^'' *^ ^n-rifted foliage of the beech, the dandelions' sprites seemfd to grass. Then, too, there was the balsam „f loam and wood and sun in his brea^Thik Division Valley 127 the drone of the falls, flowing like a distant river into the restiess, restful, infinite sea oi the forest's mysterious undertones, soothed his senses with subtle harmonies. Then a woodpecker had tapped, tapped, on the dead tip of the poplar, and so distinctly was the sound even now a part of his sensation that It was with almost surprise that he looked up to the tip of the poplar and saw no sign of the bird. * And not less distinct was the sudden revivi- fication now of the dream which had come to hrh r- ?." 1^^' ^^'''"°°" ^°"g ^gO' when he had yielded to the spell of the hour and dropped into a doze. -a dream of a brown, witchmg face that peered at him through the leaves, out of eyes that laughed and darkened with mingling gladness and tenderness; a hand that had been held out to him with the joy of one who had been waiting for him for- ever, with the benison of one for whom he had waited forever; to clasp which he had spru;.g triumphantly, to wake and find only the dand^ hons sprites still dancing and the woodpecker still tapping. How well he remembered the quiver and ecstasy of that waking moment; the exalta- 128 The Inlander Won of the thrilling p„«„ce a»t lineered long after the dream had ««), and crownrt A^.TufJiVt"' "'*' '"»»<'™-8S A squirrel had .wung into the mulberrv'. datjd to the other .ide of ti,e mnllir^l trunk, whence it peered around warily TtT creator, who had waited to kill itTut Paul sa..l.ng. had watched it with never a n,S mng th,„g at th.at moment, and it was „o^ long before the squirrel had given a signa of muir "t™ ^■°'"«' •'^ - Pa««e'Tn the mulberiy, where they regaled themselves with! out firrther fear of the wood-nymph's »: ewlo sat at 4he foot of the beech-tree. The wood-nymph's mate had finally drawn h.s kmfe and laughingly cut his initials and the date m the smooth bark of the beech. It wa! a date worth commemorating, and he had underscored it with a deep iL, carv' g o^ pos.te .t a similar line above which he ha^ left space for other initials and another date Some beautiful day, when he had found ht . wood-nymph out in the great world of men he had meant to bring her here and tell he" of h.s dream, when the other initial, Jd a date Division Valley 129 h!!"added' '''"^^^ ""^ <=<>«»" emoration .n.ald He remembered this capri. e of boyish senti- ment now, and turned to see if the tree still bore the traces of it. Yes There were the rude letters. P. p and the date. But over the second line he had cut were letters which he had never seen there before,-^, ^-..^^nd a date five years subsequent to his own. He did not know who J/. C. was. Perhaps she was the girl of h.s dream. He smiled as he reverted to his folly, and turned away with a half-amused. abtLT?"*.^^''""''^"' ^""g'"S ^^''""If 111' V r^^^ "P ^' ^" ^«d looked about h.m for some living target. There were no squirrels in the mulberry, but a crow ::^fh a f^-''^ ''f ^°P °' the'poplar. and! thrt .• "^ f"^ '"^°^^'"S °^ 't« Wing three fmes. cocked its head to one side peenng toward an elm fifty feet away, and emitting a peculiar little call.- . cautious but a w.de crcle of perhaps two hundred yards and returmng to the poplar, to go through 130 The Inlander precisely the same motion of the wings and give the same call. Again it repeated this manoeuvre, and Paul fancied he heard some- where in the air a soft, cooing answer, that might have come, after all, on a stronger breeze from the running water. Then the crow discovered him and with a sharp signal of alarm shot away from its perch. But Paul was too quick for it. His gun rang out. the bird tumbled limply to the ground, and the air was pierced with an " Oh I " of horror and mdignation from a human throat. There was a wild commotion in the branches of the elm; looking up, Paul saw a nondescript flutter of brown and white from the elm to the interlac- ing black-jack beneath it. and two seconds later there flamed down on him, from between the fork in the black-jack tree, a pair of red- brown eyes under a tangle of red-brown hair, framed by a brown and white checked sun- bonnet. "You monster!" was hurled down at him like a veritable brand from the flaming eyes. Paul stood staring up in amazement at the odd apparition. " Why— what —where in the world did you come from? " he laughed lamely. Division Valley 131 •• ^ . murd- oh-h-h f •• She cut her eoi- n' ::':'l^ r * '°"^-^«-". d'-minis'h. ml^"'" ^^^ 7?'^'* '"^"^^y' ^°'' *•« had no re- membrance of having ...n her before; "how do you do?" The wild-strawberry lip, _ he decided at once that was the kind of hp, they were- aS T \'"'^ '"" "« -"•'-"»« bobbed am^bly to h.m between the fork of the blact "Howdoyo-do?" she repeated. she st'udied'h '■" '"P"'" '"'" "" band and snc studied him contemplatively vin'le h«seir/°"'" ''= '"^' '^ " '» «"" « you/' ' " "'™ "^ ' ■>"<' - good look Paul thought if he could seo m„„ ru , might get some sugeeVt"on « , T ?/ " *" "Mavn'f T t I ™°" "'<> her Identity "Or am I to " ''"" ''™"'" *' asked, '^r am 1 to come up?" •'^f.^pn?dltlX^^^^^^^ Paullaughed and laid his gun of the glass. 132 The Inlander « No! no! take it away off ! " she ordered. Go and set it against the beech-tree yonder " "Your commands shall be obeyed, your Highness," picking up the gun; then with mock severity, " Shoulder arms ! " "Forward, march!" rang at him from the black-jack tree. With his back to the black-jack, he marched to the beech and stood the gun against it. Then facmg the black-jack again, he looked up, only to find that the sunbonnet had vanished. "Hello!" he called. ITiere was a ripple of laughter from the foot of the black-jack, and his eyes, following the sound, fell on the owner of the sunbonnet standmg by the tree, while a shaking grape- vine that climbed to the lower branches told him what had happened. " Well! " he exclaimed in his surprise. There was a bewitching play of blushes and dimples under the sunbonnet now, and Paul allowed his eyes to linger on it without divert- ing them by any other exertion, mental or physical. Then he demanded of them that suggestion which was to recall to him where he had seen her. But if there was any clue Division Valley 133 he inferred, it was hidden by the sunbonnet. All that he could be sure of was that she was a mere girl, with the slenderness and grace of a child rather than of a woman; say, fourteen -perhaps fifteen— years old. That much was indicated by the short skirt that barely reached to the shoe-tops, as well as by the exquisite freshness of so much of the face as was revealed by the sunbonnet. He had now decided that there were not only ripe wild strawberries, but the daintiest of wild strawberry blossoms, under the same sunbonnet. It was hardly more than three seconds that they stood confronting each other thus. Then he started toward her, and she met him with outstretched hand and unaffected friendliness in her greeting. Paul -Mr. Rodman." she corrected, as he took her hand. "We got a glimpse of you when you and Mr. Carruthers drove through Mavistoc the other day." Paul was a little annoyed that he did not recognize her. But she seemed to know him so well, and so plainly took it for granted that he knew her as well, that he studiously avoided 1 34 The Inlander any risk of embarrassing her, child though she was, by betraying his ignorance. ^^ "And I'm downright sorry," he replied, "that I displeased you so by shooting the crow." Instantly her face clouded and her voice softened. " Poor Nick ! " she said. " I must find him. Maybe he was only hurt." " He fell over here," Paul answered soberly, leading the way toward the poplar. But the giri's hope was vain. Nick was dead. They found him on the grass, his wings half outstretched, as if in benediction, over the earth which had been his enemy. Paul touched him with his foot, but the giri, shrinking as if a blow had been aimed at herself, gave a little cry of pained protest and sank to her knees beside the bird, stroking it gently. " Dear Nick I " she murmured. " And this would never have happened if he had not believed in me." "Really, I feel dreadfully mean about it, but I did n't know he was your friend." She looked up at Paul steadily, and for a second he was not sure that indignation was Division Valley 13^ not again kindling in her eyes. But it was with an intonation of reproach rather than anger that she said, — "You killed him just to be killing some- thinpr That 's the way of men." Paul could not help smiling at this grave reproof of an unknown child. " I suppose it 's a way that was born with us, my dear," he answered apologetically. A wave of crimson swept over her face, and she gazed at him curiously. Then she rose to her feet, the sunbonnet now concealing her deepened color, and walked slowly from him. Paul, measuring her height again, con eluded that perhaps she was too tall to be addressed as " my dear." " Besides," he called to her, " I was brought up to kill crows as a duty." "Have you a knife?" There was something peculiar about her voice now. He had a suspicion that she was laughmg. She was still walking away from him and she still wore that sunbonnet. " Yes," he replied. " Then sharpen a big, strong stick and come here." She stopped under the elm and waited, '36 The Inlander while he, more than willing to retrieve him,.ir silently obeyed ^^ °' '"" >"»"■ "Nick was bom in this tree." she said when p'-tob^^^^dot-tr^:;?"- un ^ uin -yes. why, of course." •• S „r t ""^ "'■'*'^'" •" «""<'' «'«««ng. ^^n, no I It must be twiei. «,,•• •• ' deep as that." ' *'" *""" »> It was warm, and before he made :, .1. toes as deep he wished that he m^fct '! *"' h.s coat. But he decided not to risk "t for he seemed taller than ever as she s^o^ L so seriously and watched his labors ^ She brought Nick and laid him in the grave, then she covered him with Mav-aoni! eaves and replaced the earth o«r him e^ re was his turn now to stand by and watch He determined that to the end'^of fte^et' Division Valley 137 mony he, too, would be serious. Once she looked up at him quickly, he thought a little defiantly, as if she divined his effort to main- tain a straight face, and the glimpse he had of her eyes left an impression of unshed tears. It was a capricious little creature, he decided. One minute he was not sure she was not laughing; the next he was not sure she was not crying. When she had finished she rose and turned calmly to Paul. " I must go now," she said. " Of course you will come over soon." " Of course ! " He did not know why " of course," but he would make an effort at once to find out who she was. " I 'm going your way now, if you don't object," he added, pick- ing up his gun. Was she blushing again? And why that swiftly stolen glance at her shoes? But she did not say she objected, and the two started off together. Before they had walked fifty yards she stopped m front of a little bluff, "The dariings!" she cried, looking up at the wild roses growing on its ledges. " Are n't they beautiful?" '38 The Inlander I Indeed they were I Paul, turning his eyes from the bluff to the sunbonnet, decided that he had been wrong about the strawberry blossoms. They were wild roses. " Wait and let me get you some," he told her. "Do you think you could?" she asked in delight. " I 've climbed that bluff many a time," he assured her confidently. He scrambled up it. though it was much more difficult now, and he carefully chose the freshest and daintiest roses to be found. Then he scrambled down to the bushes where he had left the girl and his gun. " Here they are." he panted. There was no answer. The gun remained, but the girl was invisible. " Hello ! " he called out. She did not reply. The undergrowth was thick, and he could see only a few feet ahead of him. Beyond the bluff a path followed the creek and another crossed the stream. He took the latter, toward the Carruthers' farm, but he did not come upon the girl again. "The little rascal!" he laughed. "She went as suddenly as she came." XIII "DONE COME HOME" When Paul tried to describe her at the supper- table that night neither Barney nor Stephen Carruthers could identify her from the de- scription. " There are flocks of children like that liv- ing around Division Valley, Rod," Barney declared. "Maybe it was one of Nelse Quigley's daughters," Stephen ventured, "though I don't reckon any of his is fourteen years old. He 's got a yard full, and most of them seem to be about ten. Nelse's favorite complaint is that all his young Quigleys are girls and all his young Jerseys are boys." More than a week later Paul walked over to the farm that had once been his home. He had deferred this visit because the old place, as he remembered it, was the one remaining link with his youth, and he shrank a little from returning to it, to find, perhaps, that even that. 140 The Inlander after the changing years, existed only in his memory. When he came to the lane by which the house was reached from the turnpike he stopped to read a sign painted on a board: *' Private. Peddlers, Tramps, and Politicians Keep Out." He might call this, he thought, the first of the innovations he was to see. Barney Car- ruthers had told Paul of this board; he had also told him of certain queer hieroglyphics on the board which had been contributed by nomads, and which informed all other nomads that the warning was a good one to disregard. " Cousin Jo," the present owner of the Rod- man place, insisted that he was "cousin of the county," and the peddlers, tramps, and politicians, according to Barney, were not to be barred from the cousinship, but only laughed when they read the sign, as they followed the lane directly to Cousin Jo's. Proceeding over the familiar path at the side of the dirt road, Paul soon saw that the " spirit of progress," whose evidences were so conspicuous along the turnpike, had not pene- trated the lane. Here was the group of wal- V- " Done Come Home " 141 nut-trees, five of them now as in the days when his father so often threatened to cut them down to make more room ; here was the same wild cherry in the fence corner, and here the undisturbed ranks of dock and pokeweed. He caught a glimpse of the house through the trees, and for a moment a haze hung before his eyes. Whatever Cousin Jo had or had not done, he had not " improved " the old mansion after the fashion in Mavistoc. As Paul turned an elbow of the lane into full view of the premises, his face lit with surprise and pleasure. In his first sweeping survey he did not notice a single change. Everything seemed just as he had last seen it, as if that had been days instead of years ago. He stopped at the gate, and before entering scanned every point of the dear old picture. There was the gravelled way, winding over the rolling lawn up to the long, low steps of the veranda, that extended the width of the house, the big fluted columns wreathed, as of old, with climbing roses. There, at each end of the veranda, were the luxuriant ellipsoids of trel- lised honeysuckle, flaunting many-hued trum- pets that summoned from far the winged idfa 142 The Inlander seekers of sweets. And there, into the heart of the sheltering vines, was a flash of dun and white, and Paul knew that the mocking4)irds still built their nests where they had built them year after year during all his boyhood. Not a spreading oak or towering hickory was miss- ing; and stiU overhanging a gable of the house was the great maple whose branches at his own window had tapped him to sleep many a night. In the rear the kitchen was partially visible, and he saw that the doorway was framed in Aunt Viny's growing gourds, as It had been when she was the presiding genius of that establishment. Further back was the rustic sweep of the well, beyond which was the moss-covered spring-house, just as he had last seen them. He opened the gate and walked toward the wide hall-doors, which stood invitingly ?iar. But before he reached the steps there was a burst of girlish laughter from some one who was not in sight, and in another second a mis- .chievous puppy, shaking a checked cotton apron in his mouth, darted around the corner of the house and scampered across the lawn, pursued laboriously by an old negro woman, who almost ran against Paul before she saw him. « " Done Come Home ** 143 My Ian'!" she panted, "I didn't know dey wuz vis'tore. Walk right in, suh, en I '11 go fine Mahs Jo." "Howdy, Aunt Viny," Paul smiled; "don't you know me?" " Who dat call me Aunt Viny lak dat? I ain't heerd dat voice sence — lemme git a good look at you, chile I " She came nearer, batting her eyes. •' 'Tain't — 'fo* Gawd ! da 's who 't is ! " She turned toward the house and cried out joyously: " Mahs Jo ! Miss Madge ! run yere quick I Yere 's Mr. Paul done come home ! " Then, wrinkled with delight, she faced Paul again. "Bless de Lawd, Mr. Paul, I gwine shake yo' han' wunst mo' 'f I draps dead de nex' href!" wiping her hand on her skirt. " Gwawn 'way f 'm yere, dawg ! " The puppy, having dropped the apron in order to return and inspect the new-comer, was now making frantic overtures to establish friendly relations with him, but Aunt Viny pushed the dog aside and grasped Paul's outstretched hand. "My Ian', Mr. Paul," she exclaimed, "Ize powerful glad to set eyes on you wunst mo' ! I sutny is ! " H4 The Inlander " And I 'm just u glad to see you again. Aunt Viny," Paul replied heartily. " But I did n't expect it I did n't know you were livw ing here now." *• Who, me? Whah you 'low I wuz livin' at, Mr. Paul? You done sole yo' sheer er de ole place, but I ain't nuwer sole mine. No, suh I Yere I wuz bawned, en yere I gwine die, bless de Lawd I " Paul smiled. " I might have known that. I remember you always owned the biggest share of the place, anyway, Aunt Viny." " Go 'long now, Mr. Paul ! " the old woman laughed in a high key, swaying over till her hand rested ot her thigh. "You ain't changed a bit You des lak you wuz when you useter joke en carry on scan'lous wid ole Viny." "Aunt Viny! Oh, it 's Mr. Rodman ! How do yon do? " The speaker was a young woman who stood at the corner of the house around which the puppy had first appeared. Paul lifted his hat and almost stammered, " Good-morning," although it was nve o'clock in the afternoon. It was certainly the little girl he had met in Division Valley, but, .vith- " Done Come Home " 145 .out the sunbonnet and the short skirts, a very different, and, coming upon him so suddenly, a somewhat disconcerting, person. Instead of fourteen, she was fully twenty— perhaps a year or two older. She started, smiling, toward him, while he in his astonishment stood staring at her like a veritable gawk. She went up to him and gave him her hand. " I 'ra so glad you have come," she said ; •• and Cousin Jo and Aunt Mildred will be de- lighted. They were wondering to-day why you had n't been over." " Thank you," he managed to say. " You're very kind. I — er - intended caUing before this, but somehow — " Aunt Viny unconsciously came to his relief: " He ain't changed a bit, is he, Miss Madge, cep'n he 's growed some en des natchully im- proved?" They both laughed, and Aunt Viny started away. "You tek keer uv him. Miss Madge; I reckon I better go git my ap'on. ef dat Piff lef any uv it to git. Say. Mr. Paul," pausing and turning toward him again, "do you still love dem same kinder biscuits you useter eat so many uv?" 10 riUh 146 The Inlander "Yes, Aunt Viny; but I don't get any up where I live." "I lay you don't! Dem folks gotter be Dawned ag'in 'fo' dey kin mek dem biscuits. Ne'mine, Mr. Paul, I gwiner cook you eniough fer supper t'night to mek you feel sho you done got home ag'in." "Thank you, Aunt.- Viny, but I shall not have time to stay to supper to-night," Paul laughed. " Everybody has time at Cousin Jo's," the girl interposed. "You do the cooking, Aunt Viny, and I '11 answer for Mr. Rodman." " Yes, honey, I boun' you will ! Dey ain't no gittin' roun' her, Mr. Paul. Whut she done said she done said. Come on yere, Piff, you outdacious varmint ! " she called to the dog. "Dey gotter be chickens ketched fer supper." Paul gave the girl a frankly puzzled look. "This is an unexpected pleasure," he said. " I did n't know you lived here." "Didn't you?" she answered, with a sug- gestion of airy protest in her tone. " I came here soon after you went away. Perhaps you never heard of it." " No, I — had n't heard of it.' " Done Come Home " 1 47 They were walking toward the house, and the hopelessly blank expression that settled a°br!;Sy! """''""" ''""' ""' ^'^^ *° »^ ^" I-don't-believe-you -know- who i — am! she said solemnly, eyine him with amazement. " I -don't- believe iy^™ — remember — me — at all ! " He laughed weakly. " I certainly remember "But you don't remember me before that? " There was smiling confession in his eyes. It would have been useless now for him to try to dissemble further. "Oh! oh-h-h!" laughing faintly in mock dismay, though the blush which she failed to hide by pressing her hands to her cheeks affected. "You didn't know me at all that day in the Valley! And I never suspected you did n t. and treated you all the time in the friendliest way I But you did know that I .hTtT' **i^"'* y°''' ^"^ y°^ did know . that I thought you knew me?" "Oh, yes; I knew that. But there is one excuse for my ignorance: you see you had n't 148 The Inlander been pointed out to me shortly before in Mavistoc, as I had been pointed out to you." " That 's so ! " dwelling on the newness of the idea. "And it never even occurred to me before." They were walking again toward the house, and she tripped a few yards to one side to pull a pink from a bunch over which a humming- bird was poised. The bird flitted away, hardly more than an arm's length, suspending itself in the air until she left the flowers, when it flew back to its spoil. To Paul it seemed that the bird and the girl not only understood each other, but that each suggested the other. With the same aerial grace with which she had left his side she returned, fluttering the pink to her lips. Like the bird, she seemed almost to suspend herself in the air as she aiddenly paused before she reached him. " The horror of it ! " she exclaimed, with a recurrence of the tone of only partially aflected concern. " To think of being in the woods all the afternoon with a man who didn't know me! Why, we haven't been introduced at this moment ! " "Won't you perform that ceremony?" She made him a slight courtesy. " Done Come Home " 1 49 "Mr. Rjdman, let me present you — oh bother Paul Rodman, don't you remembei^ Ma(i£:eCabanis?" " Madge Cabanis? " rubbing his chin reflec- tively •* The little girl you used to call Chuckle- head I " His face brightened instantly. "Oh!" he cried. "Doctor Cabanis' little daiighter?" w "Yes." "The little girl I used to see so often when 1 rode by to and from Mavistoc? " "Of course." "And the last time I saw her was the day I passed on my way to take the train for Louis- ville and she was hanging on the gate to say good-bye to me I " "She would never do it again, Mr. Pa»l Kodman ! He came toward her impulsively, his hand outstretched. "We must shake hands on this." She barely brushed his hand with the tips of her fingers, and on the failure of his effort to grasp them was away, toward the house again, with a laugh- ^ ' ISO The Inlander " A bird in the bush 1 " he caUed after her. " I '11 wait till I see if you remember me next time, before I shake hands with you." They went into the hall, where they found Mrs. Cabanis — "Aunt Mildred," as Madge had called her — placidly sewing, and where they sat and chatted for half an hour, during which Paul learned that Madge Cabanis had made her home here since the death of her father, ten years before. It was # pleasant half-hour to Paul, with the gentle voice of Mrs. Cabanis and the laughter of Madge making musical the fitful breezes that played from the honey- suckles and roses through the hall. After that, guided by Madge, dancing now in front of him and now walking at his side, he strolled about the grounds, — stoprsing by the well to lower the creaking sweep, and asking permission to drink from the bucket, " just for the taste of it once more ; " stooping at the spring and breaking off a sprig of the aromatic mint, which he stuck in his button- hole; passing through the orchard, where the first p ches were ripening, and insisting on climbing, one of the trees, to see if he had " forgotten how," and to pluck from the top- most boughs an offering of the fruit; then i " Done Come Home *' 151 idling down the elder-bordered path to the old Rodn-an graveyard; and returning to the house through the woodland pasture, along t -• creek where in season the snipe and the silver-sides had never failed him. Long before they were in speaking distance of the house they saw Cousin Jo Cabanis standing on the back porch, waving a saluta- tion to them with his hand. Cousin Jo Ca- banis was Madge's uncle, but he insisted that she, in common with all others who knew him, should call him Cousin Jo. He was not old enough to be anybody's uncle, he protested, though he was nearer seventy than sixty; he proclaimed himself everybody's Cousin Jo and everybody fell readily into accepting him' at his own valuation. Even his own children and grandchildren spoke to and of him as Cousin Jo. He advanced to meet Paul Rodman and Madge Cabanis, his gray head bare, his florid face beaming, his buoyant voice ringing out to them while they were yet a furlong away: "Hello, Cousin Paul! Well, well! I thought it was high time you were turnin' up at the old stampin'-ground." When they met he greeted Paul in the same 152 The Inlander strain and with a hand-grip which was not soon forgotten. As the three went on to the house Cousin Jo's words rollicked ahead continuously : " I hear you ain't a preacher to this good day, Cousin Paul ! Well, well, young man, do you know how nigh you come to bankruptin' Cousin Jo Cabanis? Why, off and on when you were a shaver, I reckon I offered to bet half the folks in the county anything from a farm to a fiddle-string you would be a preacher, you had such a quiet way and such a long face. And all that saved me was that the noggin-heads would n't bet" On tlie porch he suddenly bent toward the lapel of Paul's coat, which he drew first to his eyes and then to his nose. "Look here, young man," he exclaimed, throwing his head back and directing his spectacles upon Paul 3 amused face, "is that what you do with mint in Kentucky?" " Merely a fancy. Cousin Jo, for this after- noon only." "Fancy, hey? Well, there's plenty of pi- onies and such truck 'round in the front yard for that sort of fancy. But uiint I - Madge, run and fetch me the other things." f " Done Come Home " 153 The other things were brought, compounded, and disposed of. " And now if you don't say that beats mint in your buttonhole," Cousin Jo observed as he drew his bandana across his lips, "I '11 -I ganny! I'll agree never to touch another drop of it as long as I live I " Supper soon followed, and Aunt Viny ran in herself two or three times to see that it was properly served and to make sure that Paul did fuU justice to each product of her art which she remembered he had been par- tial to as a boy. Afterward they sat on the veranda, Mrs. Cabanis in the big rocking-chair, Cousin Jo as loquacious as he could be while he kept his long cob pipe going, and Madge perched on the steps or flitting among the flowers with her waterpot. The saffron and rose had faded from the sky and the dusk had darkened to starlight when Paul left the old people and joined Madge among the geraniums. "Walk with me to the gate," he said. "You haven't told me about Nick yet." " No. Do you think you deserve it? May- be I '11 tell you next time I see you." At the gate he held out his hand. " Good- - -^-"^^ ■ 1 54 The Inlander night. Mi«t- 1 used to call you Chucklehead but I know you better now and have a better name for you." " Miss Cabanis? " she asked archly. "Avice." ' " Why Avicc ? Is it a name, or what ? " There was a poise of her head as she looked up at Paul which was in itself suffi- cient answer, for him, of her first question. He rephed.— "'I hate watched you long, Avice,— Watched you ao I have found your secret out ; And I know That the restless ribboned things. Where your slope of shoulder springs. Are but undeveloped wings That will grow.' " "Oh!" she exclaimed gayly, "then Avice IS poetry I" "Yes; Avice is poetry. " • When you enter in a room. It is stirred With the wayward, flashing Ught Of abhtl; And you speak, and bring with yoq Leaf and sun-ray, bud and blue, And the wind-breath and the dew. At a word.' " ** Done Come Home *» ^55 She clapped her hands. " How pretty I Was Avice a bird ? " "Yes. Avice was a bird. Every gesture, every motion and posture, were the volant graces of the birds ; her voice had all their ittle ' shakes ' and ' stills/ and from the tips of her wayward toes to the crown of her coquettish head she was an incarnation of their tricks and turns — " * Just their eager, quick All their flush and fever-heat When elate ; Every bird-like nod and beck, And a bird's own carve of neck When she gives a little peck To her mate.' " " What an exquisite creature Avice was ! " she cried, with a childish wringing of her hands. " But " — abruptly changing her tone to one of simple dignity — "you are not to give me such a name." " Not the new one nor the old, either?" he laughed gently. Her eyes shone with a sweet gravity in the starlight. " Just Miss Cabanis — to-night" ^' XIV THE STORY OF A BLUE-EYED CROW He returned one afternoon the foUowing week, and they went for a walk with Piff. As they passed through the gate Piff, frohck- mg in advance, turned into the path that de- scended to the creek and Division VaUey " Wise Piff I " Paul remarked. " He takes it as a matter of course that we are going to the Valley." * "Piff knows that there is no other walk to compare with it." Miss Cabanis replied: "he has been there before." ; Division Valley and this farm are the only thmgs around here which seem just as they were when I went away. I feel like thanking Cousm Jo Cabanis for keeping the old place unchanged, though I suppose it would have been better for him if he had caught the fever tor improvement." T 1 ^^^^y^ *^*t ^^at was good enough for Judge Sevier Rodman is good enough for The Story of a Blue-eyed Crow i ^y Cousin Jo Cabanit. Besides, I 've heard him tell Aunt Viny that even if he wanted to make any changes he did n't believe she 'd let him." They chatted on till they came to the creek, spanned here by the trunk of an ash so slender that Paul resolved he would be very careful in leading Madge over. "Oh, look I" she suddenly cried; and be- fore he knew what she meant to do she had darted by him and was skimming lightly over the narrow log. By the time he had worked his own footing across, she had run to a little copse twenty yards away and was back by the side of the creek, holding up for his inspec- tion a sprig of something most wonderfully blue. "Isn't it lovely?" she exclaimed, her cheeks coloring and her eyes shining. " It 's the very first I 've seen this summer ! " "Ah I it 's — why, it 's closed gentian, is n't it? " he said as he came up to her. " It 's the first I've seen since I left Tennessee." When they reached the beech-tree under which Paul had awaited the squirrels and shot the crow, Madge sat down on the twisted root and he threw himself on th« grass in front of her. 158 The Inlander " You prefer a seat at the foot of the beech this afternoon," he twitted her, " instead of in the branches of the black-jack — or was it higher still, in the elm?" She blushed so beautifully that he could hardly be sorry, though he felt he ought to fjc, that he had spoken. " I thank you, Mr. Paul Rodman," she an swercd in the little half-mocking, half-serious way which he thought became her so well; " but I don't usually sit in the branches of trees, and never except when I choose my company especially for the occasion." " Nick, for instance," he laughed. "Always Nick— and only Nick." " I know I was very much uninvited on the last occasion; but are n't you going to tell me about Nick?" "How can I help it after — after the way you found n here the other afternoon? Oh ! you or- ,1 j.^gp ^^ j-j.^^ telling you about Nick now?" Paul liked to laugh at her; but it was a laugh so full of boyish comradeship and so genuinely keyed with tribute to her own charm that she did not seem to mind it. He laughed now, and, his elbow on the grass and The Story of a Blue-eyed Crow 1 59 his hand supporting his head, he looked up to her and & ad : — •' Once upon a time — " " Once opon a time," the took it up, her hands clasped around her knees, and her eyes now falling on Paul and now far overlooking him, "ever so long ago— ^ix, seven, maybe eight years - when I was a little girl, I found a cr* w's nest in the elm-tree there, and I wanted, more than anything eke in the world, to see inside it. I could n't climb the elm-tree,' but you can get into that from the black-jack,' and the grape-vine made it easy to get into the black-jack. That's hour I saw inside the nest" She was gazing beyond him now, and the light, sifting down on her through the beech leaves, made as delicate a play as Paul could wish *o look upon. " They were the ugliest, queerest little crea- tures," she said, smiling, as her eyes met his again, «« and the hungriest. I came every day and brought all sorts of nice things to feed them with. The old crows made a great fuss about it at first, and never were really recon- ciled to it, but I would always leave part of the lunch where they would find it, and they i6o The Inlander got so that sometimes they would not fly farther away than the poplar over there when I went up to visit the family. The young birds were always glad to see me until they grew big enough to leave the nest; then they became wild and followed their parents,— all but Nick. Nick was not so suspicious as the others; he was the last to fly, and his eyes were the last to turn from blue to brown." "Blue? A crow with blue eyes?" She surveyed him with amused astonishment " Of course ! Did n't you know that young crows, until they get worldly-wise and old enough to take care of themselves, have blue eyes?" " Not until this minute. But I believe what- ever you say about crows." "When Nick left the nest he would not avoid me entirely, like the others, but would return and eat what I brought him, whenever he saw me in the'tree — You, PifT! " She ran swiftly after PifT, who had found a young catbird, uncertain of its wings, and was chasing it from bush to bush. She came back with the dog following meekly. "Make him lie down by you, and keep him out of mischief," she ordered Paul. The Story of a Blue-eyed Crow i6i •• Come here, Pifferaro, and be quiet, and you may hear about Nick." "There isn't much more to tell," Madge continued. " Nick and I used to meet in the elm once or twice a week every summer until two years ago, when I went away. This summer I was trying to coax him back, and had got him to come as near as the poplar, when you shot him." "Poor Nick! He was not as wise as the other members of the family, after all, it seems." " I was dressed as I was when you saw me here the other afternoon," she added a little self-consciously, "because I wanted Nick to recognize me. That was the way I used to dress when he was not afraid of me." "I see now — when you were a 'little girl'?" T r Y**' ^ ***^ "°' ^'^P**^* ^"y °"« to see me. I .tT.f' ""** ^y ^^^'^ •" *^^ Valley before but Nick." She rose, and Paul again noticed the initials beside his own on the beech-tree. "i^. C./" he said, with sudden animation, pomting to the letters. "They are yours! Did you cut them there?" "Of course," she laughed; "a long time II l62 The Inlander ago, — the first year after I came to live with Cousin Jo." "Why?" "Because you had left such a good place for them." " I cut mine there," he laughed, " to com- memorate a beautiftil dream I had here once." "What was it? Oh, tell me!" she cried eagerly. " It is n't worth telling now. I have grown worldly-wise, like your crows, and know how to value dreams." On the way back, when they saw the bluff where tiK wild roses grew they looked at each other and broke into simultaneous laughter that caused Piff to bark up at them with ener- getic interest. " Why did you do it? " he asked. " You know very well ! " " ladeed, I don't know at all ! " "Really?" " Really ! " " How stupid ! when I have just told you I was dressed only for Nick and the Valley." He left her at the gate, but not before Cousin Jo Cabanis had walked down from the house and urged him to remain to supper. The Story of a Blue-eyed Crow 1 63 That invitation declined, Cousin Jo promptly extended another. " Come over and go fishin' with me tp-morrow. If you 're half as fond of It as your father was, I '11 warrantee you some good spote. There 's a fine chance of trout in the river this year,— more than there has been since the spring of '59. Go along with me, and if you don't ketch as many as you want to tote home I'll agree to live on Job's turkey the rest of my time." .1 . XV MANAGER JOYCE DISTURBS A SUMMER HOLIDAY Days came and went, and many of them found Paul Rodman at Cousin Jo Cabanis's. The old place was so home-like; Mrs. Cabanis was so restful; Cousin Jo was so jolly; Aunt Viny was so palatably resourceful; PifT was so genuinely hospitable; while Madge, whether she appeared to him as child or woman, was so divertingly companionable that he was well satisfied to spend his vacation thus. In truth, it was more a vacation than he had ever known since he had left the country for the town. It was rest, — not only from work and friction and social shams, but rest from thought and self. There was for him no more reason why he should think or worry than there was for PifT in the sun, for the butterflies among the honeysuckles, or for Madge among the rose-bushes, and he yielded to the tranquil- Joyce Disturbs a Holiday 165 IWng influences of the hour with a passivity tiiat was in itself, for the time, an "^UnlZ bon from h,s mmd of everything foreign to those influences. And those influences meant vacuity, serenity, content Perhaps he saw more of Cousin Jo Cabanis than he saw of the others^with the exception of Piff. He was amused by Cousin Jo's yams whjch,owmg chiefly to the fact that hif ^S and mece had heard them often before, were usually reserved for opportunities whek tte ladies were not present. Moreover, there was a strong bond of fellowship between the two men ,„ their fondness for fishing; and prob- ably what most confirmed Cousin Jo'! HI,. which he stuck by the old angler during the long hours when the fish would not bite and e^ JLT"' "'^" "'^^^^ -^ '-« became entengied among roots or rocks, or when other trymg incidents of a fisherman's luck were encountered, to let Cousin Jo do all the fTm! >ng and swearing. "The fun of fishin'." explained Cousin To on a day that he and Paul left the river w.thout having had even a nibble "Jn't always in what you ketch; it's a go'oddea 1 66 The Inlander in what you 're expectin* to ketch. You 'd soon get tired of it if you pulled out fish as fast as you could throw your line in the water. The good of it is that you never know what 's goin' to happen and when it 's goin' to happen, or if it ain't goin' to happen at all Even after you 've hooked your fish you don't know for certain whether you 're goin' to land him, or just how big he is, or frequently what he is. If you could see everything that was takin' place under the water, fishin' would n't be half the spote it is. All you ought to see is a flash of your trout now and then as he flirts up out of the water. It 's somethin' like seein' just a flash of a likely ankle." That was a hard season on the bass in the river near by. Few were the mornings which Cousin Jo and Paul did not devote to their reels. Sometimes Barney Carruthers joined them, and less frequently Madge Cabanis, when her earnest but erratic eflbrts to manage a rod and line always provoked from Cousin Jo lectures on the piscatorial art and the inad- equacy of the female mind to comprehend its rudimentary principles. "There are three things in the world a good deal alike," he would say, after he had i 'W. Joyce Disturbs a Holiday 1 67 straightened out Madge's tackle and returned to his own poles, — " fish and women and razors. You never loiow what they are goin' to do or what thej- ain't goin' to do. And a fish would be as handy with a r»or as a wonaan is with a fish. There are some things a woman just can't natchully do ; and one of them is fishin' and another is throwin' a rock. If she could do the last any better than she can the first, I 'd advise you, Madge, to give up hooks and lines and try throwin' rocks at the fish. Maybe you might some time or other fetch one that way. There you go, now, slashin' your pole like you were fightin' off yellow-jackets, and larrupin' your line as if you had to lasso a fish like a buffalo. Stop ! What are you tryin' to do ? If you can't learn to cast a line any better than that, it would save wear and tear and danger to surroundin' life and limb if you'd put your hook and line into your apron and just spill them into the water. Whenever you ketch a fish by any such didos as yours, I '11 agree to dip the river dry so you can pick up the others with a pair of tongs." Nevertheless Madge did succeed eventually in catching a fish, which she landed in the i68 The Inlander branches of a sycamore, dropping her rod in a panic, and scudding precipitateJy from beneath the tree. This was bad enough in the eyes of Cousin Jo, but when she insisted that the fish should be put back into the river, and when Paul Rodman actually complied with her appeals on that point, the old gentleman gave It up and lectured her no more. Paul drifted on in this way more than a month before anything happened to disturb the smooth current of his course. He had gone over to the Cabanis's rather early one morning and found Madge on the ^cruid&mth a letter in her lap. ^^ •• 0\ " she cried, as he sat down beside her, I nut teU you my good news. Mr. Joyce offere me an increase of salary for next season." " Salary ! " in astonishment. « What Joyce ? " " Why, Mr. Archibald Joyce ! " " Not— you don't mean Joyce, the theatri- cal manager?" .k"P^ ''''""*'" ^^^ i^^gli^. "Did you think I could mean any one else? " "But — I don't understand. Why is he presuming to offer you a salary? Surely the fellow ,s not trying to get you to go on the stage?" Joyce Disturbs a Holiday 169 •njere was a look on Paul's face suggestive of the one which had settled on it when h! threw Judd Oxnard from the c^. ^" thll m"! '^'^~" amusement and .un,rise that Madge answered,— '"^prwe Tillu^ ' ^'P^ ^ ^^ "* *o «t»y on the stage. Really you don't dare tell me, Mr. Paul rS^ man that you did n't know I was already a celebrated actress?" «reaay a '• You - Madge - an actress! Good - again'r '' "''''' ^^'^ "" ""^'"« «^<^ *>f ™« "You didn't know it?" she laughed in feigned despair. " And I have been on tl^e n Ph,ladelph,a gave me three fuU lines; and l^ilTa? i"^^""f^°' "'^" Florence Falk was 111 a week, Mr. Joyce let me play Badeff, much measuring on her finger. It h!d h''' ^^'"^ "^"^y *^"' °^«r *« lawn. L.I? •" ^'*" ''""^ ^^^ h«d '■^"ived such a ^^ Finally he turned to her and forced himself "Do you like it?" 170 The Inlander "The stage?" " Yet." She was very serious now as she looked at him. •• I hate it." Paul did not know how his drawn face relaxed. "Then why did you undertake it?" " Because," she replied, with a grave candor that was new to him, " I wanted to do some- thing—to be independent A friend of my father's got Mr. Joyce to give me a chance, and I was very glad to try it." " And— with what success?" he asked, in a shghtly constrained manner. " Not dazzling," she smiled. " I had only very small p?rts except the week when I took Miss Falk's place. I seemed to please Mr. Joyce as Babette ; but that was because Babette suits me so weU. It is not likely I shall ever amount to anything as an actress, unless in something like Babette." Paul, too, was smiling now. " I don't think you would have to act much to make a perfect Babeite. You would only have to be yourself. But how do you expect to do much on the stage if, as you say, you hate it?" ^ Joyce Disturbs a Holiday 171 ** I don't expect to do much ; but I suppose I can do as well as I could at anything rise. It is not really that I hate the work itself,— only the disagreeable things that go with it" " Yes, I can believe it I " Patil said as he rose. The thought of such a girl being subjected to those things stirred in him a deep and sullen spirit of revolt. " Am I to ask you whether you intend to accept Joyce's offer? " " I cannot decide for a month or two yet. I shall remain with Aunt Mildred for the present, unless one of her married daughters comes to live with her. Her health has not been very good lately." Paul found Cousin Jo Cabanis sitting in his shirt-sleeves, under the trees, strapping a razor and issuing loud orders to various little negroes to bring him hot water, paper, and towels. "Hello, Cousin Paul!" he said heartily. " You see I'm a little behind with my shavin* this mornin' — You, Ulysses! fetch another chair out here right away ! — It only goes to prove what I 've told you about razors. They are all of the feminine gender. Now, that one with the tortoise handle there was as sweet as a song yesterday mornin', and to-day she pulls I ***«ocorr mouiriON tbt chait (ANSI and KO TEST CHART No. 2) la 12.8 1^ ■ 2.2 Sf us ■■■ :■» 1 ■ 20 L ' i^ 1 11.8 125 iu 1.6 ^ ;«53Eo»t Morn Slrwt ~ 172 The Inlander and scratches like a wild-cat. This one I 'm at work on is a love when she don't sulk, but when she does you may grind her and hone Se.',^!'*''^^-^"' ^^ '^^ *»°"^ ^d she only gets sulkier. Then if you throw her away in mTbl' T^ ^^1 ^" "P ^ ^-y °r two later, maybe she will have changed her mind alto- gether and behave so beautifully that you '11 wish there was nothin' else to do but shave. Maybe she will and maybe she won't. You never know till you try her. I reckon a man that shaves right spends enough time coaxin' and humorin' his razors to run most any ordi- nary business. I s'pose I 'd 'a' made many a better crop if I 'd put the time on it that I 've put on these razors. But a man who shaves has got to get along with razors somehow, and what 's more, he 's got to do it every day. I may have let the weeds grow in my fields. Cousin Paul, and I may have done many other things that a grood farmer ought n't 'a' done but I can say that nevertheless and notwith- standin' the contrariness of razors, there have been mighty few days since I married that I didnt manage to begin and finish shavin' somewhere between sun-up and sun-down. When It comes to lettin' the grass grow under Joyce Disturbs a Holiday 1 73 your feet or lettin' the beard grow on your face, Cousin Jo Cabanis will put up with the grass every time." He ran on in this strain until Paul, getting up to go, found an opportunity to say, — "I have been talking to Miss Madge this morning about the stage. Do you encourage that notion of hers?" " Encourage ? " Cousin Jo's emission of the word was so cheerfully explosive that it caused Piff to awaken from a doze with a sharp bark. " Young man, you ought to know me better ! I put my foot down on the whole project at the start J but what good did it do? Madge was of age and I could n't stop her. Would you know how to stop her if she had made up her mind to do a thing. Cousin Paul? She took it into her head that she must support herself; pay her board and all that— the idea of your own kinfolks payin' you board! — and there was no doin' anything with her. She was as contrary as any razor in the lot. See here, you ain't goin' already. You ain't more 'n got here. Sit down and wait till I get through this job, and we '11 slip down to the river and try Sanborn's Bend." "Thank you, Cousin Jo; but I 'm not in the f '74 The Inlander humor for fishing to-day. I 'U come over again soon and we '11 give the Bend a trial." He walked back slowly through the lane into the Carruthers fields, his ryes thought- fully at his feet. Something — his lazy holi- day, the summer itself— seemed to have ended suddenly. Ke had been abrupUy jolted back into his world. He had not been dreaming again during these idle weeks, as in his boyhood, but here, in these haunts of his boyhood, he had been resting in the sun- light, away from the shadow of his shattered dreams. He had belonged to this peaceful summer, as Piff and Cousin Jo and Madge Cabanis belonged to it. And now the best of it was -one in an hour. No; not that; Madge Cabanis was not gone. Was it not worse than that; for had he not merely dis- covered that she had not existed? Had she not been another figment of his fancy, of his Ignorance? He had believed her a simp!- child of the woods, untouched by the outer world; a boy in comradeship and innocent freedom; a maid in delicacy, caprice, and elusiveness. Now he knew her to have opent two years on the stage, that most trying school of sophist' -ion, which seeks out the dross in Joyce Disturbs a Holiday 175 every woman's heart, and even if that heart be all gold, yet dims its lustre with calumny. He threw out his hands with a deep exclamiUon of revukion from the thought of this young girl being subjected to such an orueal; and for several days afterward the wave of revulsion returned at intervals as the thought recurred. For, after all,— after all his prejuc^ices against the influences of the stage as a vocation, after all his reawakened distrust of his attitude tow- ard woman, — the thought of Madge Cabanis as an actress was only an occasional recur- rence; his ordinary and involuntary thought of her being of the girl he and Nick had known in Division Valley, who provoked the mirth and the reprobation of Cousin Jo the fisherman, who teased Aunt Viny to proud " 'straction," mothered Mrs. Cabanis, romped with Piff, and nursed her flowers in the twilight. But with the recurrent thought of the actress there sometimes came the stinging self-reproach of a fleeting consciousness that he caught him- self studying her, now and then, with the object of noting whether there were in the country girl any trace of the actress. XVI THE WHIPPOORWILL These self-reproachful moments, which did more than anything else, except his first knowl- edge of Madge's connection with the stage, to disturb the tranquillity of his summer, grew rarer as the weeks passed ; for it was impossible to be with this gi^ day after day at her own home and escape the conviction that she was as genuine as the life of the woods and fields of which she was a part. Thus it was that at the close of an August day Madge Cabanis, the actress, whom he had never known, had faded for the time into the vagueness of a past illusion, and only Madge Cabanis, the girl he knew, was a vital presence. They were sitting on the veranda, he on a step below her, and she leaning against one of the pillars. Their talk had been fitful, neither seemmg to think it worth while to break the intervening silences. As he had come to know her better he had found that, among all her vari- The Whippoorwill ^77 w™ '^' "^ "" ""•' "<"* interesting to him, and never quite so paradoxical, as she ™s when, ne«Ied i„ ,„„e qui., corner, t to her chatter and an unwonted calm rested Z^l'^u . ^* "'"' ""^ P">' "">W"8 into *e soft shadows that darkened her eye!, felt *at th«e sunny months of his holiday iad not ^vealedt^h™ all that Madge CabLisw«: But he would quickly brush aside such re- flections and speculations. He preferred ,n regard Madge simply as a harmon'C: part f this pastoral summer. He liked her L she appeared to him; he did not wish to think of her as she might be or would be. In fact he did not w«h to think of her at all. ThaT;! MMge Even a man who professed to have accorflwl'^'" '"' "'■° ^ Wmselftte according to ,ts canons, need not trouble him- Mfdg^-Cabf- ^^^^Z iviaage Cabanis with the <>vAr4-;^> e O..K' ...• exertion of no mor«» the blowing of the breeze or the shining of Z 12 178 The Inlander ' sun. With these, she had helped to make idyllic these summer days which had been to him so much like a brief renewal of his boyhood These days would not last long, and while he could he would blot out all his past that had not been spent on this old farm and all his future that was to be spent elsewhere. But — fatal fatuity of a mind which arro- gates to itself a philosophy — it did not occur to Paul that in this very approach to a re- newal of his early youth lay the chief danger to that precious philosophy which he had con- structed for himself on the wreck of his youthful air-castles. And if that philosophy was what he needed for his self-protection, never did he need it more than at this hour when the tide that bore him back to his boyhoo : 'trongest. Madge was so ex- quisitel ^ in this rare, gentle mood; there \ .? thing about her which com- pelled a..^ confined his consentience to her; the very silence between them seemed elo- quent of her, not merely as she had been, but as she might be and as she would be. Surely it is not through the eyes of his boy- hood that he should look upon her, unless The Whippoorwi]] 17^ he would surrender the "wisdom" of his manhood. And at this moment all his environments tended but to strengthen this tide. They impressed him with a vague conviction, as he turned from Madge to the scene before him, that this was only one of the many even- ings, exactly like aU the others except for her presence, when he had lounged on these steps and watched the day die out The sun had just sunk from sight, leaving, as of old. the western sky aglow and the eastern hills dim, purplmg billows. Nearer and south- c3t ^^1 ^'^•.*' ""*' '■~" *« binding o-eek hfted slowly and hung above Division Valley. Now, as then, the forest trees on the ir^Jn't/V""'"^ stillness, the shadows of tf^e twilight drawn into the deepening g. .en of the.rfol.age. while in the sky b^^ond A, m remained a paler green, luminously pure, mev - •ng above to yet paler blue, against which swallows skimmed swiftly and 7 night hawk sTfi^H K ^' ^^-P^^^^^S silence was inten- s^fied by the rasp and drone of the summer ;rnkS !'-Z ^'5 '"^ ^^^- Up the lane tmkled faintly the chains of the plough-h.rses i8o The Inlander returning home; while beyond the barn, as she called the cows, rose and sank the musi- cal voice of a negro as softly ai 1 rhythmically as a distance-subdued yodel. The insidious odors which the flowers exhaled seemed min- gled with evanescent aromas from far, ploughed fields ; the moon rested like a crescent crown above the great maple-tree, and the fire-flies, one by one, drifted up from the sward and donned her golden colors in the dusk. The tide was full ; Paul Rodman was a boy again, sitting on the old veranda in the even- ing and dreaming his dreams of love and woman. And here at his side were both love and woman — and a woman sweet and spotless as any bom of dreams. Almost without realiz- ing what he was doing, except that he was obeying the dictates of all that was in him worthy of obedienc; "e reached out and took her hand. He felt it tremble in his clasp, and saw the long lashes quiver sensitively over the startled questioning of her eyes. *' Madge," he said with infinite tenderness, " Madge — " Just then across the fields floated to hin; the clear, reed notes of a whippoorwiU. The Whippoorwill igj "I—" Paul continued, his voice abruptly hardening and his eyes fixed on the dim thicket whence those notes were sounding — "I am — going away to-morrow, and must say good-bye." Both rose as he spoke. "Good-bye," low and precarious, was all that she trusted herself to answer; and after a few awkward commonplaces which he forced himself to utter, he went to find Mrs. Cabani- and Cousin Jo, leaving Madge standing on the porch, as white and unreal as if she were a wraith of the mists that hung above Division Valley. For the call of the whippoorwill that had broken in on Paul had come to him. not from the thicket across the fields, but from a brazen clock that had stood one night in a Louisville shop-window. I XVII COLLAPSE OF A PHILOSOPHY He retnraed to Loubville next day, feeling that he was a coward, and that it was impos- sible that he should not be a toward. It was himself, not Madge Cabanis, that he doubted : he would have staked his life on her — if he had not long before staked and lost all that could be in a man's life worth offering to a woman. He had nothing left but cowardice. When he reached the city to which he had journeyed with so much hope years before, it was with a sentiment akin to loathing that he stepped into its streets, if the spirit of sel- fishness which is always so apparent to the superficial observer of urban conditions had been a source of disillusion on his first arrival in Louisville, it was now a source of --If-dis- gtist; for he was now a part of the life of this city, and, what was worse, he was fit for no other life. And yet he was not even fit for that, he told himself. He could not shut his Collapse of a Philosophy 1 83 eyes and a. xpt ^< 5 he found it; while, keep- ing them open, .ic co-^Id not escape seeing, in his own untrustworOiy perspectives, abnormal proportiona of that side of it which repeUed him. He decided, after remaining in Louisville a -veek, that for a time at least he would aban- don aU effort to resume his customary business and social relations. If he had not gone mooning off to his old home in Tennessee. It would have been practicable enough, he thought, to continue, as he had done for years holding himself free from all temptations to forget his past or to deviate from the path which he had marked out for his future. But now he chafed with resticssness and a new discontent. He left town and went to his prospective ' jor-spar mines. He was not needed there; yet he remained a fortnight, m sheer determination to occupy himself. Suddenly he started North, stopping for a day or two in Chicago, which had usually been a divertisement to him. But now the jostling streets jarred on him; the beautiful parks and boulevards were meretricious n.^ckeries; while the great lake, which in his eyes was the one honest and pure thing about the city, seemed 184 The Inlander to fret in ceaseless unrest, as if against some mighty leash that restrained it from leaping forward and blotting out the magnificent dese- cration which impious greed had erected on its shores. Late one night, as he was on the point of going on to Canada, he was caught by a let- ter from Barney Carruthers in LouisviUe, which closed with this paragraph : "Father sends me some bad news about our friends across the pike. He writes, «I have just heard that Miss Cabanis is so iU there is no chance for her to live another twenty-four hours.' Awful, ain't it? She was such a jolly Uttie thing, and so' full of life." Never before had Paul known what crushing anguish a human being could sustain. Once he had passed through a terrible crisis, which had affected him more profoundly than it would have affected most men; but in that case he had suffered through no fault of his own, from a wrong inflicted on him; not for another, from a wrong inflicted by himself. Not until now had he fully realized the depth of his love for Madge Cabanis; and in the light of such realization all the barriers '■r^— -«*.y/---- Collapse of a Philosophy 1 85 which he had erected against that love ap- peared absurdly trivial and inexpressibly mean. If Madge was dead, then not only had he spurned, by his pusiUanimous con- duct, the best thing which a man's heart could crave and which the world could give him, but he feared that he was guilty of her murder. Was she dead? Barney Carruthers* letter was five days old, having been forwarded from the mines. Stephen Carruthers* letter must be at least a day older than Barney's, and Stephen Carruthers had written that she could not live twenty-four hours. Paul took out his watch and stared at it blankly; he could not start South for hours yet He moved across the lobby of the hotel toward the telegraph office, but stopped before he reached it. A message could not be delivered in the country and be answered before he left Chicago, even if the telegraph office at Mavistoc were not, as he knew, closed until morning. All he could do was to telegraph Barney Carruthers. Then he went to his room like a bewildered animal to its hole, and tried to think, — to reason the possibility of Madge's recovery mto a probability. But it was futUe. His ^■iaii 1 86 The Inlander agony and remorse benumbed his brain to all else. He descended to the lobby again, pacing the tiles until Barney Carruthers' answer came. He sat down, crushing the envelope in his hand before he brought himself to open it. But Barney had no later news than he had written. He had heard nothing from Tennessee since the arrival of his father's letter. A sleepless night; a long ride to Louisville next day; another interminable night, and Paul Rodman was at last in Nashville. He reached Mavistoc in the afternoon, going di- rectly from the train to a livery stable, where he ordered a horse. He did not inquire of any one concerning Madge Cabanis. He dreaded definite infor- mation, now that he was where he might per- haps obtain it. Besides, he shrank from even mentioning the name of Madge now to a stranger or to a casual acquaintance. While he waited for his horse to be saddled, a trim drummer drove up and as he alighted asked the proprietor of the stable the state of business. ^^ "Mighty slow." was the jocular response. Am t much goin' on here lately 'cep' fun'als. -^ Collapse of a Philosophy 1 87 If 't wan't for fun'als and drummers I might as well shut up shop for a while, I reckon." " Flush times in the mortuary industry, eh? " inquired the drummer. "Heh?" "Folks kickin' the bucket around here, are they?" " Everybody dyin', 'pears like, — specially if they ain't able to pay their fun'al hack bills. Been mo' sickness in this part of the country the las' mont' than there has been the las' twenty year befo'." Paul mounted his horse and turned out the familiar pike once more, every step of the animal being cumulative torture to him as it bore him to the certainty he longed yet feared to know. As he passed the house where Madge Cabanis had lived as a little girl, with the sagging gate on which she had swung to say good-bye to him when he had first left Tennes- see, Paul drew his hat over his eyes and shook his horse into a brisker canter. Halfway along the lane he pulled up the horse sharply at sight of Aunt Viny and Piff a hundred yards ahead of him. The certainty now was nearer than he had 1 88 The Inlander expected, and for «i> instant he was impelled otf buihe^'' °"* **^ ^'^^^ ^^^^^ * ^^""P But he was not so weak as that. Instead, nis face grim and his heart pounding, he urged tne horse rapidly onward. Piff soon discovered him and rushed up with joyous contortions and yelpings to greet Aunt Viny stood in the road, with jaw dropped and eyes whitening, as she waited his coming. on" ^n ^"'i ""^ "^' ' " '^' '"^'^ ^ h<^ rode up. Is dish-yere you, Mr. Paul, er is you des stepped down offn a tombstone ? " "Howdy, Aunt Viny?" he said quickly, as he stopped. " How are you all ? " Miss Mildred. She been mighty nigh dead, but she peartmn' up ev'y day now, en dis mawnm she set up a li'l' spell. " He pressed the horse between his knees in such a vice that it sprang forward, only to be puHed back on its haunches as suddenly. Miss Mildred?" he asked, his breath stop- ping and his voice constricted. " Has Mrs. Cabanis been ill?" Collapse of a Philosophy 189 " Lawd, yes, Mr. Paul ; ain't you done heerd datbefo'?" "And nobody else — Mr. Cabonis and Miss Madge — they have been well ? " "Dey sutny has, bless Gawd! Ef dey hadn' 'a' been we nuwer could 'a' kep' Miss Mildred's bref in her body." Paul was leaning low over his horse now, gently stroking Piff, who stood on his hind feet to reach him. The warm blood was surg- ing into his face once more, and there was a moisture in his eyes which only Piff might have seen. " Well, I must get on. Aunt Viny ! " he ex- claimed as he galloped off with an abruptness that caused her to call out a warning to " be keerful wid dat fool hawss." When he dismounted before the house, it was dusk. The mists hung over Division Val- ley, the moon rested over the maple-tree, and a whippoorwill was whistling across the fields. He passed rapidly through the gate and up the walk. In the gathering twilight he could see a filmy figure in white standing -t the top of the veranda steps. Another ioment, and his straining eyes flashed with a sudden joy. He held out his arms to her as, "^iff '90 The Inlander uTu,f,t!r:'^'^-^-P*^^^-, he strode "Madge I" he exclaimed, and she wa« ^P«i^t.h^^h.as..hneh.,wi?\i-: '!^ XVIII A SLUMP IN FLUOR-SPAR They were married within a month. In Louisville they lived, that fall and the following winter, at a hotel. Just before the wedding Paul had bought a house, the one house m the city he longed for, but he could not get possession until the first of the year. He had not mentioned it to Madge, and thinking to surprise her, he asked her, early in January, !.«.r" ? "°' ^° house.hunting with him. Why? shft inquired, without much inter- est. You are not tired of the hotel already? It IS so convenient and comfortable, and we see so many nice people here." mIaI'' f^' **= ™°™ent. rather upset him. Madge m the flush of excitement in which she had been since she left Tennessee, had not questioned him pointedly concerning his plans and be had avoided reference to them. ZZf'l "°* '° ^"^'*" ^"y «"<=h questioning before he was ready with his surprise. But 192 The Inlander the thought had never entered his mind that Madge expected or cared to live pern^nently ma hotel. He had looked fomarT^o ht and he had become so accustomed to the idea of quitting hotels as one of the happy results of mamage ^at it had not occu^^ to him ^int S«"f * ^-! ^«f--t views on tha" point. So It was with an effort to repress any evidence of disappointment due to Madge^ recepfaon of his proposition that he replied .o!l?l' r^u*^"'* ^°" ^^"^ » convenient and comfortable house better ? " " Rh^ y°" «n"st n't think of going to aU that ''Ht%r "^: P-^-S b«fo- ^e mirror "Your hair is always beautiful. But- 1 know of a house that might please you. Sud- pose we go and look at it to-morrow? " I 'l^Lu '''''' ^°'^'' ^^°"* ^^"«*«' dear! .n. I,- !' ^"°"^^ *° y*=*" already!" airily touchmg her cheek to his for a second, then itrf 1 "^ "°^' ^*"^' ^^^ «^« «haU be late for the opera." A Slump in FIuor.«par 193 ■me, of his domwtic plans. He knei thai ■f he .old Madge of tbc hoose he hjl^ug^' .he wojdd re««ly «japt h„ own p«fc,en«s* t.m that he, preference was the hotel at pre" en , and against that dMosure hi, own fndi- leteT.h"!.*''"' "°*'"« '"■* "■■«• S,^ he Tw« t h°""r'^'* "">' •" J"'' Fordham. It was a busy faU and winter for Paul. His new company h«l been o,g«,ised and the fl»or^P« mines were under way, but the pi hminao- work had all devolved o'n him.'^Th^ was of course, a board of directors, but, like most directors, they were httle more ftw dummies. Paul was t« president of the company, but he was the manager »mt Tm'"'"'- ^" ■""""' '■" «>« W hid It' ""^ °"**' '•'"'"■ "■><">• Paul had made secretary. Drewdie's career as a, encourager of the breeding interestftr'ugh the ,„,^„mentality of a racing stable, at "£ ^ of wh,ch was the redoubtable slult that which he had tavMted Tm '""P' -«k.andhewa,now'ra:"w:;r™r »3 '94 The Inlander Pkul trying to master the myiteries of book* keeping. With Paul's persistent promotion and ener- getic management the Ohio River Fluor-spar Company had, in the public estimation, now passed beyond the stage of a doubtful experi- ment to that of " a good thing." It was al- ready on a paying basis. The stock, which had been issued at par, was a favorite in the local market, and had gone up as high as 130. In one week, however, early in April it had sagged steadily until it reached 117. This worried Paul no little, as there was no apparent cause for the decline, and other active local stocks were either holding their own, or ad- vancing. He was worried all the more when, after diligent investigation, he concluded that the decline was due to what seemed to be systematic efforts to misrepresent the credit and condition of his company. But at the end of a particularly busy day, as he sat alone in his office, he felt that he had solved the mystery of the slump in Fluor- spar stock. He had traced two of the slander- ous rumors against the company to Judd Oxnard, and he knew that Oxnard's brokers that day had orders to buy the stock at 115. A Slump in Fluorspar ,yj Farfteraore, ne«ly , y^ before, Paul hri #ected -lient •• fifty, or Ineady ^sed tht had bought the whole lot. Paul h to renew this note, but recenUy he would insist on payment in full at », proceed to collect by foreclost^ one of the rumors which had dcp^ ,«< .k. stock was that the Fluorspar ComLTl y deuu^<>ni^ note and b/soldo^ nammer. Paul now understood this rum.* n order to buy Fluorspar stock ^l^":^:^ Xt^dtrar^::^-::!^^ «»e methods that a,^;:::^^^^:^:: Walltetr '''''' '-^-^^'^ "^-' 2 holders, most orwirtirrmTlnTt and wfirf>^ f}i>.^r small amot.' its home^'hl -I '"^ <^specially uneasy. " Go S-TcaiTer .ir'a?w:e"f:7- '""• a«»«o„.othe«,„o.atio„rn^i^U° 196 The Inlander by men who './ant to frighten 3rou out of your stock. It U worth more than it ever waa." Only that day he had got the money together to pay Oxnard's note, but as it would not be due until six weeks later he had put the funt* into United States unregistered bonds, which, in additici to the item of interest, promised a profit in advancing market value. Ihese had been entered on Drewdie Poteef s books, but, though received after banking hours, had not been placed in the little safe in which Drewdie locked his books at night. That safe was open most of the day, and Paul had taken the bends and deposited them in his personal box in a vault, having just returned from the mission as he sat in his office and pondered his plans for checkmating Oxnard's game against the Fluor- spar stockholders. He remained at his office later than usual. In response to a telegram, he expected to lake a night train for New York ; there was soiue writing to do, and Drewdie Poteet's books were to be looked over. He '^ished to get all the work out of the way, that he might spend the ho, rs before train time with Madge. At last when he closed his desk and left the office it was eight o'clock. He walked swiftly. fi A Slump in Fluor-spar 197 not wishing to lose anoiher minute more of his evening with Madge than was necessaiy As sttndTn?" *^^'*! ^°**'^ -^-'-^ ^-"c standing near the cigar counter, and among them he recognued Judd Oxnard's loud voice Pauul!^ ^°K '^ ^^L""'** ^** proclaiming as Paul approached. " Fluor-spar is on its way to 50. — It IS on Its way to the dump-pile." One of the group, discovering Paul, sooke a word of warning in an undertone, but Snard reddenmg a little, stared at Paul for a second o^Itratd^ ^" ''' ^"-" ^^^^ ,f '»/'•'". added m even a louder tone. - talkm about. I w.ll sell him a hundred share" of Fluor-spar at par. deliverable May ,5 » Ox?arH ^"' '"'"'' *^*^^°«<^. including Uxnard. was now ookine at Pa,.i u ^ passing by. within a few feet ' "'° ^^ At this he paused. " Gentlemen." he said if none of you wishes to accent th.! position. I '11 take it." ^' *^*' P'^" "Done!" xclaimed Oxnard. "And now" ••LreTan'.?' ^^ '^^^'^ ^^^^ Pall tnere s another hundred «am- ♦• ' " nk u I , """"rea, same time, at oo " Oh, here I'd like ft,,* t ' 7 y"- 198 The Inlander " Certainly," Paul assented and walked on, turning to Oxnard with the remark,— " Gaynor & Clay will be authorized to attend to this for me to-morrow." " Done ag'in I " laughed Oxnard, viciously. \] XIX AVICE Madge was upstairs, dressing and wondering why Paul was so late. She was very happy as Mrs. Paul Rodman. The social life of a city was something new to her, and she entered it with a zest that was characteristic. She was acknowledged to be a decided " success." Her artless enthusiasm, her innocent coquetry, her engaging freshness and delicate beauty, together with her exquisite dressing, united in investing her with a charm of novelty, and made an undeniable impres- sion. Mrs. MacQuarrie, who, having married MacQuarrie, as she freely avowed, to secure the MacQuarrie tartan, and having secured it, together with a divorce, now had time to devote herself, unencumbered by conjugal cares, to society leadership, taxed her vocal powers, as hardy as they were, in expatiating on the attractions of " that dear child, young Mrs. Rodman," whom she took under her Mlto 200 The Inlander patronage, notwithstanding the lack of encour- agement with which Paul himself met her advances. Even the most austere leader of the intellectual set, Miss Shaw, — who since her contributions to Tke Woman's Windlass in- sisted on identifying herself as Hester Grother- ingcote Shaw, — admitted that Paul Rodman's wife was "quite a type," and classifed the type a" " just the sort of woman the so-called stronger sex would be most likely to go daft about." As for that other society leader, Drewdie Poteet, Madge was one woman whom he was known to praise invariably without qualification. Paul Rodman, busy as he was, " went out " a great deal more that winter than he had ever done before his marriage. He had de- termined to gratify as far as he could Madge's desire for social pleasures, hoping that the edge of her eagerness for a life of which she had seen so little would in time wear away. If she had been any other woman of his acquaintance, he might have allowed himself to grow doubtful over the outcome. But he felt that such activity and gayetj' were as natural and as harmless to Madge in the city as the flowers and Piff had been in the coun- Avicc 20 1 try. It would all turn out best in the end, he thought, and if h*; craved a somewhat different life, he must be content, for the present, to wait for it. To-night he found Madge posing and preen- ing before her full-length mirror, eying criti- cally and approvingly, from every point of view which she could gain by a twist of the head or a turn of the body, the toilet which, she had just completed. Paul paused in the doorway between her room and the small par- lor, and smilingly watched the pantomime. She discovered his reflection in the glass and made a little courtesy to it. " Ah, Mr. Paul Rodman I " she said. " So you have come at last! And you have the audacity to stand there laughing instead of begging forgiveness for being so late I " Paul went toward her with extended hands, and she ran to meet him. She caught his hands in hers, but as he drew her to him and was about to throw his arm around her, she quickly sli*^ ped aside. " No, no, no I " she laughed. " Not in this dress ! " She receded a step, and giving the skirt a little smoothing car'iss added, " How do you like it, Paul? Isn't it pretty?" 202 The Inlander " Yes, it's pretty," he replied; " but I don't like it." Her face fell, and it was a surprised and hurt look that she fixed on him. " You — don't — like — my — dress ! Oh, Paul! And I thought it was your color." " I don't like any dress which makes you say ' No, no, no 1 ' " The blush and the pleased laugh should have recompensed him for any loss he had suffered. She threw him a kiss from the tips of her fingers, following it with— " But you, Paul — you have not even begun to get ready! And I am lo receive with Mrs. Garnett to-night, and promised to come early!" " I was kept at the office longer than usual. But I was about to ask you, Madge, if you have your heart set on going to Mi-s. Garnett's this evening? " "Why, what a question! Has — h s any- thing serious happened?" her eyes -ning in apprehension. " No, dear," he smiled ; " only I can't very well take you to-night." "Again?" her face clouding. "How un- fortunate ! Let me see," counting her fingers. Avicc 203 ** this is the third time since Lent I 've had to go out with some one else, Paul." " I 'm sorry ; but I 'm called to New York on business, and as my train leaves shortly after midnight and I have several little things to look after in the mean time, I could not very well dress twice and take in Mrs. Garnetfs." " Oh, I 'm so sorry ! What a hateful thing business is! And you would have had such a good time at Mrs. Garnett's, too. She en- tertains so delightfully. But, oh, Paul," the thought seeming just to have dawned on her, " of course you will manage to go somehow, for we shall want to see as much as possible of each other before your train leaves." " I 'm sure it would hardly be worth while to make the effort. I should barely have time to do more than get to Mrs. Garnett's and get away again." He turned from her and picked up a book lying on the table, not wishing her to see the disappointment which he was afraid showed too plainly on his face. But Madge was centred in her own disap- pointment. She dropped into a chair with a sigh. 204 The Inlander " Then I shall not go either," she said. " Of course I shall not." Paul glanced at her eagerly, but she was such a picture of childish depression that his eyes instantly fell to the book. "I can take you, dear," he suggested, "and you can return with some one else in the hotel, — Mrs. Hurd, for instance." " Oh, but I shall not go, Paul — how could you think it? — if you are to leave to-night," hopelessly. " Madge," he said, as he turned the leaves of the little volume, " have you looked over the Vignettes in Rhyme I brought you yesterday? " "Not yet," she replied absently; "I have been so busy ever since." " Do you remember some verses I quoted to you that day when I made my first call at Cousin Jo Cabanis's?" " Yes, about the bird girl," in the same pre- occupied manner. " Here is the whole poem in this book." " Is it? I will read it to-morrow." " It closes thus," lightly,— " ' When you left me, only now. In that furred, Puffed, and feathered Polish dr-ss, I was spurred Avicc 205 Just to catch you, O my Sweet, By the bodice, trim and neat, — Just to feel your heart a-beat, Like a bird. ** * Yet, alas I Love's light you deign But to wear As the dew upon your plumes. And you care Not a whit for rest or hush ; But the leaves, the lyric gush. And the wing-power, and the rush Of the air. ** ' So I diui aot woo you, Sweet, For a day, Lest I lose you in a flash. As I may ; Did I tell you tender things, You would shake your sudden wings ; You would start from him who sings. And away.' " " Oh, I know what we can do, Paul ! " she cried gayly, springing to her feet. "I will remain with you until you get ready to go to the train ; then you can take me to Mrs. Gar- nett's on your way to the station, and I can return with Mrs. Kurd. Why did n't we think of it before?" catching one hand in the other in a way she had when she wa^ cited. " Yes, why did n't we? " I ui smiled. " It 's very simple, is n't it ? " ■■iUli io6 The Inlander J'f^t ' V^l." ^ ^"^ "*** *^'"& *o having you go to the ball and enjoy it with me " Paul did not answer. There would have been nothing for him to say even if there had not been a quick rapping at the parlor door. instajjtly followed by the entrance of Mrl MacQuarrie in a whirlwind of crinkling skirts, ct^D^rJi'^P^C^t^"'^^'^^^^ nof'^rStr""^^^'*'^™'-^^-^-^ "Ah, here you are!" Mrs. MacQuarrie rubicund and plump, exclaimed, kissing Madge.' How are you, Mr. Rodman? We are just m bme, Mr. Poteet! You see." turning to Madge agam and running on in a round, bounding voice that might have been devel^ oped m high winds, " Mr. Poteet said he wanted to see your husband before he left for New York to-night, and I said. 'I wonder if that poor child has any one to take her to Ellen Gamett's. if her husband is going to New York? We might be in time to get her Rod^^ ^'* :f A"*^ Mr. Poteet sail Mr. Rodman would probably go to Ellen Garnett's didnt believe Paul Rodman was as fond of Avice 207 society as he used to be, and all he did go out for was to feast his eyes on his pretty wife. And I — •» " Oh, come now, Mrs. MacQuarrie," Drewdie Poteet laughed; "you forget. That wasn't what I said." "Shut up, Drewdie Poteet! And I said, 'Pshaw! Paul Rodman likes society well enough, only he has seen more of it than she has, and he 'd be a wretch if he did n't want to feast his eyes on a wife like that, — every- body else does, I 'm sure.' And I 'm awfully glad you haven't gone yet — " to Madge. "And I don't see how you can make up your mind to leave her at all, Mr. Rodman." " It is n't a matter of inclination, Mrs. Mac- Quarrie," smiled Paul. "But it ought to be some consolation to know that I leave her for to-night in such appreciative hands." " Would n't anybody take better care of her — you make yourself easy on that point. And oh!" — to Madge again — " how beauti- , ful you are looking! Who made it?" There were a few moments in which Madge and Mrs. MacQuarrie were lost to all else ex- cept the dress, while Drewdie Poteet and Paul talked Fluor-spar. ^^0ii: '%..: 208 The Inlander Then there was a tap, from the corridor, on the partially open door, accompanied by a rich voice, — "May I come in and see your gown, Mrs. Kodman? And Lucy Oxnard, handsomer than ever and thoroughly at ease, was in the room. •• Oh, you are ravishing I " she said to Madge. "Do you really like it, Mrs. Oxnard?" Madge asked, with unaffected pleasure, ad- vancing to meet her. "Dear me, if it ain't Lucy Oxnard!" ex- claimed Mrs. MacQuarrie. "How are you, Lucy? I did n't know you 'd got back from Florida. "I 've only been here for two or three days I m really just passing through, on my way to Europe." ' "Europe in summer and Cathay in winter. It s always only just passing through Louis- ville with you, ain't it, Lucy? Poor Judd Oxnard ! He never gets off of Fifth Street does he?" Mrs. Oxnard laughed mildly. "Here are some flowers I came by to leave with you. dear," she said to Madge; "but nothing could make you look lovelier. Vou Avice 209 must run up to 527 to-morrow and My good- bye. Remember, I leave to-morrow afternoon." And Mrs. Oxnard, serene and graceful, dis- appeared into the corridor while Madge was yet effervescing over the roses. When Lucy Oxnard had entered, Drewdie Poteet grew red and looked uncomfortably at Paul, but he saw nothing that he was certain of except that Paul's bow, which was slight and perfunctory, seemed more indicative of surprise than welcome. Whatever else he may have felt, Paul was certainly surprised by the visit of Lucy Oxnard and her assumption of interest in Madge. Beyond, perhaps, a casual meeting at some public gathering he was not aware that Madge knew her. "My! Drewdie Poteet," Mrs. MacQuarrie marvelled, "you and Lucy Oxnard are as formal as if you did n't know each other like old shoes. Madge, is she stopping at this hotel?" Madge answered that Mrs. Oxnard had been at the hotel two or three days, adding,— " She was in to see me this afternoon, and helped me ever so kindly with my hair." " Off to Europe to-morrow, is she? That's like her. I don't suppose she has spent 14 2IO The Inlander more than a month or two a year with Judd Oxnard since her honeymoon. But you can't blame her for that Well, shall we start, dear? " " It 's so good of you, Mrs. MacQuarrie," Madge replied, a little agitated ; " but I 'm not going, you know— that is, not till Paul — " "I suppose you might as well go on with Mrs. MacQuarrie and Drewdie now, Madge," Paul said, coming over to her and once more sinking what, under the circumsUnces, he regarded as his own selfishness in order to further her pleas ire. " It is getting late and I could not see very much of you, anyway." " Oh, no, Paul ! I could n't possibly, — do you really think I ought to go?" Paul could not heln smiling at her. " I think it would be outright rudeness to Mrs. MacQuarrie and Drewdie if you refused to go, with no better excuse. I will get your wrap." "So say we all!" exclaimed Mrs. Mac- Quarrie. " Well, come on, Mr. Poteet. We 'II wait for you at the elevator, Madge." And she marched out, with Drewdie Poteet, thus giving Paul an opportunity for a last 'vord with Madge, — an act of consideration wnich Avicc 211 he would hardly have expected of Mrs. Mac- Quarrie. Paul returned and fastened the wrap around Madge. "Oh, Paul! "she grieved meanwhile, "it's a shame you must go away to-night, isn't It? And you are sure you wiU be back soon ? " "Saturday, with luck. Good-bye, Madge." He stooped and kissed her lightly. She did not move, but stood as if waiting. while the rose hue of her hood's lining seemed reflected on her face. " But may I? " Paul smiled. " That dress, you know." ' " I don't care for the dress — now." He took her in his arms and kissed her agam. She picked up the roses and started to the door. "You must go with me as far as the carriage, at any rate," she said "Don't take those. Madge," he requested her, holding out his hand for the roses. " Why? " she paused in wonder. " I ihink they are beautiful." I "n*'^ '„''"' ^ don't want you to carry them. I will tell you why some time." mm 212 The Inlander " But, Paul, tb' y niatcii my dress perfectly. And,, besides, it would not bi nice to Mrs. Oxnard." " It is becaust; ilic> ire hers that I want you to throw them away," taking the roses and tossing them on the table. " How strangely you act, Paul ! Mrs. Ox- nard seems to be a very sweet woman." "Mrs. Oxnard has a way of seeming, Madge; I don't wish you to have anything to do with her." " Dear me ! " in bewilderment. " And she said you and she were such old friends. Well, you must tell me all about it when you get back." Paul accompanied her to the carriage, re- turning more disappointed than he cared to admit to himself, that Madge, after all, had not remained. "What a light-hearted girl she is," he thought, " and I 'd be a brute to do anything to make her less so. But — " He was interrupted by the voice of Lucy Oxnard, as she appeared in the doorway: " Mrs. Rodman ! Oh, I beg pardon — has Madge gone? I think I must have dropped a letter in here a few moments ago." Avice 213 Paul had seen no letter, and it was evident, on looking around, that it was not in the room.' Lucy Oxnard, however, continued to search for it in a languid way, and Paul made a similar pretence. " I wonder you are not at the Garnetts' to- night," she murmured. " By the way, I have never really had an opportunity to congratu- late you since you married. I hope you are very happy? " her voice falling into the old dulcet key which he remembered so well. "Thank you," he answered, peering under the piano in quest of the letter. ''Madge is such a simple, aiTectionate child," purred Lucy Oxnard, taking a book from the table and studying the title, " and we are already good friends. Indeed, I am quite charmed with her. But I hear that she goes out a great deal without you. I wonder that you allow that. She is so young and inexpe- rienced, and so fond of admiration; while, as you know, people talk so much — " " Mrs. Oxnard," facing her and addressing her with a directness that could not be mis- understood, " I hope you will not forget that it IS my wife you are speaking of." "Indeed, I do notl And neither do other 214 The Inlander people. Why, society is already sympathizing with you, Paul, on account of the way the foolish child's head has been turned." " Mrs. Oxnard, you did not leave your letter in here ! " Neither the words nor the emphasis with which they were spoken could have left a doubt as to his meaning, but Lucy Oxnard continued, apparently unruffled, — " I consider it only the duty of a real friend — the person most concerned is usually the last to discover such things, you '"»t I refused to permit Mrs. Rodman to -. he flowers you brought her this evening u a pretext of friendship. I regret that you have forced me to be thus explicit, and I hope it is unnecessary for me to say more." " Perfectly unnecessary," she answered coolly. "And I hope it is unnecessary for me to say more to open your eyes to the — the indiscretion of your wife.". " Madame," Paul spoke imperatively, with colorless lips and flashing eyes, laying his Avice 215 hand on the door and swinging it wide, " I must wish you good-evening." " Thank you for reminding me of my obli- gations as a guest ; but you have made your- self so agreeable that I hav: stayed much longer than I intended," she smiled over her shoulder as she slowly left the room. " Au revoir. Please send up the letter if you should find it, and — don't forget my advice about Madge." Paul closed the door after her as if he were shutting it against a storm-gust; after which he threw some things vigorously into a travel- ling-bag, tried to read a paper, looked at his watch, and went down to the cafd. XX MADGE A FEW minutes later Madge returned from the Garnetts', followed by Mrs. MacQuarrie, who was glowing with impatiently restrained excitement and out of breath from her efforts to keep pace with her younger companion. Madge, too, was much agitated. Her step as she entered the room was quick and ner- vous; her cheeks were burning; her eyes were abnormally brilliant and set in what might have been read as an express;: n of startled fright and anger. She flung off her wraps, reckless of where they fell, and threw herself on the sofa with no longer the least considera- tion of the dainty dress; while the fragile fan which she held was already an irreparable ruin. Mrs. MacQuarrie, with a sigh of relief, dropped into a chair. "Goodness me!" she puffed. "What a chase you have led me up those stairs I I can n Madge 217 hardly breathe. And now, child, that we are here and alone, tell me what in the world is the matter?" " Oh, don't ask me, please ! " pleaded Madge, in a low tone, in which there was a slightly stridulous strain wholly foreign to her naturally limpid voice. " Don't ask you ! " fanning herself despei^ ately. ' Do you think I 'm going to sit here and expire with curiosity? And you carrying on in this way I " " Oh, it 's nothing, — nothing that you can help me in," Madge answered, as if she were beyond all help. " I won't believe that till you tell me. See here, child, do you know how long you stayed at Ellen Garnett's? Just twenty-five minutes, — - twenty-five minutes ! I looked at the clock myself in the dressing-room. And when you came rushing over to me all flustered and white, as if you had seen a — a cannibal, and vowed and declared you must go immediately, and wouldn't stay a second longer; and sat there in the carriage so awfully stiff all the way back; and when you got to the hotel and could n't even wait for the elevator, and forgot to say so much as good-night to poor Drewdie 2l8 The Inlander Foteet, but just swished up the stairs like all possessed, with me running the risk of apos- trophe of the heart trying to keep up with you,— do you suppose I'm going to sit here and believe there's nothing the matter with you, and that I'm going to leave this room until I know what it is?" "It — oh! Mrs. MacQuarrie, it was those terrible people," Madge said, with a spasmodic effort " Goodness me ! what terrible people? " "I don't know — I don't know! I didn't look at them." " Well, I never ! What about them ? Where were they ? What did they do ? " "I— was standing in the reception room talking to that Mr. Keith, when all at once I heard two ladies near me say — such horrible things ! " " You did? " bending forward with alert in- terest. " What did they say, Madge ? " "They were talking about me; and one of them," halting with a slight shudder, " one of them said, ' There is that Mrs. Rodman with Fletcher Keith again.' And the other one — oh, Mrs. MacQuarrie, she said, ♦ It 's simply shameful the way she carries on with every Madge 219 man except her husband.' Then the first one said, 'Yes, and her flirtation with such a creature as Fletcher Keith is positively scandalous.' Thtn — then — " bowing her head in shame, " I hurried away and came to you." "Pshaw! was that all?" And Mrs. Mac- Quarrie leaned back in her chair and folded up her fan in unconcealed disappointment. "Why, you little goose," with an amused laugh, "that was nothing! Women are al- ways talking that way about other women when the other women are popular and have a better time than they do. Madge Rodman, if it was n't for the looks of it, I 'd take you right back this minute ! " "No! no! no! I could never face those people again. And I thought them all so pleasant," regretfully ; " and everybody seemed so kind to me, and I tried to treat everybody the same way, because I was so happy. And now for them to say such cruel things about— about Paul and me, — oh, I can't understand u, and I can't bear it I " "Come, you foolish child! There isn't anybody worth crying about. There never is ! Besides, those women did n't mean any harm 220 The Inlander Th^ only envy you. They 'd be only too glad to hear somebody say the same things about themselves." "Surely you can't think that. Mrs. Mac- Quarrie I " " Surely, what can I think. Mrs. Rodman ? Am I to believe you are sitting there and telling me that you have n't heard such remarks made about other women in Louisville? " " Do you mean that such remarks are com- mon among nice people?" •• Common ? They are as common as colds " "And they still receive a woman they sav such things about ? " "Well," Mrs. MacQuarrie laughed, " I never would have dreamed that a girl could have been six months in Louisville society and be such a delightful ignoramus. Receive her ? They run after her. My stars! Your expe- rience to-night simply proves that you are a success." "Then I don't want to be a success!" Madge replied emphatically. "Pooh! you need a good night's sleep. Come, let me put you to bed, and you '11 get up to-morrow all right for the Lindsay wedding." ^ Madge 221 "Oh, nol I'm not going. I don't feel as if I should ever care to go anywhere again." "Fiddlesticks! You talk as if you were plumb out of your senses, child." " I 'm afraid I 've just come to my senses, Mrs. MacQuarrie," Madge replied, with a pensive seriousness. "After to-night, and what they said about me, and what you've said, I don't see how I could help detesting so many things which I have liked before, even if I cared to keep on liking them." " Madge, you '11 positively make me ashamed of you. You are certainly not intending all of a sudden to settle down into a stay-at-home nobody, a humdrum drudge, are you? If you are, let rae tell you right now that 's the very worst policy you could follow with a husband like yours." "Why, what are you talking about. Mrs. MacQuarrie?" Madge asked, with some evi- dence of alarm. " It's plain enough what I 'm talking about. It's as certain as anything that if you do as you threaten to do it will be the ruination of your husband as a husband." " I don't think it necessary to discuss Paul, 222 The Inlander Mrs. MacQuarrie," straightening up to a very pretty dignity. "Well, I suppose I'd better speak right out. If you'll take my advice, you'U keep right on just as you've been doing. You have aU the admiration, aU the attention, all the envy, and all the clothes you could wish, and you have a husband who lets you do as you please. I 'd like to know what more a woman could want? But if you change your tactics and go in for playing the humble domestic rdle, you not only lose your free- dom, but you make an unendurable tyrant of your husband besides." " Indeed." with spirit, « I don't see that that follows at all ! " •' I do. i know more about husbands than you do. Madge. I've had two of them. And I know Paul Rodman like a book. He 's just the kind of a man to want to make a slave of a woman if he is in love with her. and I never saw one's husband more ridiculously m love with her than he is with you " Madge's face lit up with a sudden smile. Oh-hl she said, "and why shouldn't he be m love with me?" "When you know is much about men as Madge 223 I do," explained Mrs. MacQuarrie, now in excellent breath, "you'll understand that if they are too much in love with their wives they are almost sure to become jealous and exacting, and regular nuisances generally. Oh! I ve known Paul Rodman for a long ti.-ie, and I Ve watched him ever since you were married, and I tell you. Madge, he's just the sort of man who wants his wife all to himself; who 'd like to setUe down at home m his slippers at night and have her play for him, or read to him, or perch on the arm of his chair and pet the bald spot com- ing on his head, or sit on a footstool and lean against his knee and look moon-eyed things — and all that kind of sentimental folderol." "Mrs. MacQuarrie," Madge asked gently, and with some hesitation, "do you really think that of Paul ? " "Think it? I know it! The man gazes on you as if he were absolutely hungry for you and were afr.- d you 'd fly away from him. Oh I know that kind! He's just like one of them I married, who wanted me to give up everything for him and mope around the house, and all that." 224 The Inlander "And didn't that make you happy?" Madge asked, with wondering eyes. "Make me happy? Perhaps it did; it made me get a divorce. I thought you knew that." "You got a divorce because — because he loved you so much?" " Pooh ! I got a divorce because he wanted to monopolize me, — incompatibility, my law- yers called it. You can find plenty of men to love you, child, but what's the good of love if you're incompatible?" There was a new charm of sweetness and seriousness on Madge's face as it drooped un- til her eyes were covered by the handkerchief which she held, and there was a quiver in her voice as she moaned, seemingly oblivious of Mrs. MacQuarrie's presence,— "Oh, how foolish I have been, and how cold and heartless he must think me I " "Who? What are you going on about. Madge Rodman? Who must think you so cold ? " Paul." "Gracious! you have to be cold — tem- perately cold - in that way. I tell you if you dont be, there's no saying how soon he'll Madge 225 become the most unbridled Bluebeard. I Wieve he s capable of almost any absurdity about a woman, if she is his wife. Now l7t me tell you something Jack promised he wouldn't say anything about Since things have come to such a pass as this, you ough to be put on your guard." ^ "No; not if it is anything about Paul, and he doesn't wish me to know it." ml?^^ ^°" f "°^ ' '^^^^ '' ^h^t a woman was nothmg more than a man's rib. You 've called on my niece. Annie Fordham. haven't " Yes." "Did you notice the stuffy little box of a hous^^she and Jack Fordham are living in? " te^d^^lrtu'' ''' '-'' ^°- '-'-' ^n- "For me?" suddenly emerging from the :::tr;'^- ""- »«-«"-'' »^« t "I mean that Paul Rodman boueht that out there on the commons, and make you go *•■ 226 The Inlander 1 to drudging right from the start. A man's love never is anything but unadulterated sel- fishness, anyhow." "Paul bought that house for — for us?" a rare softness in her voice. "But he found, thanks to your good sense, that you had some spirit of your own and objected to becoming a mere domestic, and so he leased the cottage to Jack and Annie, poor things I But, my word for it, he has n't given up the idea of getting you into it yet The only way to manage a man is never to yield the first inch to him. If you do, you might as well put on his collar and chain and be done with it." " Mrs. MacQuarrie," Madge spoke eagerly, " the house is still ours, is n't it? When does the Fordhams' lease end?" " Oh, I don't know; probably next January." " You must tell them that we shall want the house then." "What? "explosively. Madge, beaming now, jumped up suddenly, wringing one hand impetuously in the other. " And, oh," she cried, " if they could only get another place this week and let me move in before Paul returns froqd New York I Don't Madge 227 you think they could, Mm. MacQuarrie?" springing to that worthy soul's side and wind- ing an arm about her neck. " Madge Rodman, what on earth are you driving at?" "Oh, it would be such a surprise for Paul to find me housekeeping when he comes back! » enthusiastically. " My stars alive ! are you stark, stone crazy ? You don t mean to stand here before my very eyes and tell me you are going to housekeep- mg, after a^I-and before your honeymoon is fairly over." " I 'm wild to do it," Madge laughed. " And after having held out against him this long too f It -s - it 's downright suicide ! " I dIH n"! ? ^°"'*/^"* '° *»°»d out against him I I did n t know I was holding out against him f th^nt ."" ^°'"^ *° '"^ '^" Fordhams the first mTLTnT"""' "^^^'^ ^°" P^^-^ SO with me and help arrange it, Mrs. MacQuarrie?" I m going to bed, and you do the same claimed, bouncing up. " I sha'n't talk to you any more until you've had a good niit's sleep and are yourself again" ^ "Dear Mrs. MacQuarrie." Madge answered 928 The Inlander gentiy, taking the other's hand, " I am myself again." "Foolish girl!" Mrs. MacQuarrie said, with a kiss; but there was more tenderness in the kiss and in the tone than she had ever before shown for Madge. f^ XXI FLETCHER KEITH DEVELOPS A TASTE ^R CHOPIN MRS MacQuarrie's departure left Madge in a turmoil of varying emotions. She was Wind heartlessness to Paul, but she was in ended to make. Precipitately sweeping aside the practical difficulties in the way, she was impatient to begin her amends at onci by takingpossessionof the house he had provided cause the disclosure of the existence of such careTr T ' ''"'^f *°" °^ * ^^^ ^^ P^'^'^ tions, which smote her with a morbid sense of frivolity and guilt She recalled, with a pang that made her eyes misty, how fl ppamly « her giddy inapprehension, sue had'^^ar" JS h« suggestion^onths before, that she go with him to look at a house which he thou^ would suit her. How delicate and consideiate 230 The Inlander it was f And yet she felt a spark of resent- ment because he had not been less delicate. And all this gay season she had rarely spent an evening alone with him, when, as she now saw, such evenings would have meant so much to him, and, in this new light that had broken upon her, so much also to her. But it would be very different in the future. With her hands lying clasped in her lap, and her eyes resting dreamily on them, she thought oat the details of her little plot, by which, with the help of the Fordhams, she hoped to sur- prise Paul on his return from New York. Suddenly her lips parted with a happy smile, and she almost ran across the room to a writ- ing-desk. Although Paul could not be more than a few miles out of Louisville, she was eager to write to him. She laid out the paper with tremulous haste. There was so much that she wished to say, which she could not wait till his return to say, and which she had never thought of saying before to-night. She would write him a long, long letter, such as she had never written before, and he should hardly reach New York before it should follow him. She had impulsively begun the letter when : III 'I A Taste for Chopin 231 she paused abruptly and, with her dhow rest- ing on the desk, held the pen suspended above the paper for a second; then she dropped the pen and covered her face with her hands. She did not know— in her excitement about the ball she had not thought to ask Paul's address in New York. She sat thus for several minutes, tormet.- ing herself with accusations and confessions of shaUowness and selfishness and with thoughts of Paul's loving forbearance. Then she took from the desk an old photograph of Paul and gazed at it long through tears; rising, she went abstractedly from object to object in the room, at last picking up Vignettes in Rhyme and turning to the poem from which he had read to her. She ran over it breathlessly, every line having now a personal and exag- gerated meaning. She read it again, more slowly, and still again; and the next quarter of an hour passed with her face buried among the sofa pillows. A prolonged locomotive whistle sounded through the stillness; and she went to a window and stood listening deso- lately to the faint roll of a train until it died away. She left the window and sat down hstiessly at the piano. She turned over the 232 The Inlander music with aimless hands, pausing as she came to a copy of Chopin's Berceuu in D flat. It was a favorite of Paul's, and she opened it and set it before her. As she began playing it softly, the corridor door, which she had not noticed had been left slightly ajar on Mrs. McQuarrie's exit, was pushed open and a man entered the room! He was in evening dress; he carried his hat and his gloves in his hand, and the fever of wine was on his handsome face. Madge saw him as he advanced toward her, and springing from her seat she turned upon him in a pitiable flutter of anger and terror " Mr. Keitl- ! " she said in a low voice, tremulously uncertain, " what does this mean ? "' "Nothing in particular," he answered cheer- fully. " Only I heard you playing as I passed by on my way to my room, and thought I 'd look in on you for a moment. Just got in from the Gametts'," sauntering nearer. "Surely," coldly and with more control, receding a step as she spoke, "you must know I do not receive callers at such an hour as this!" "I beg pardon; but it is not at all late, — hardly more than eleven yet. Besides, I only A Taste for Chopin 233 stopped to inquire why you deserted the Gar- netts' so soon this evening. Nothing wrong. I hope?" * "Mr. Keith, I must ask you to leave at once! And please remember you have not my permission to call on me at all." "Certainly," with an equanimity which was unshaken except for the wine he had drunk; " but I beg to assure Mrs. Rodman that I ani always at her command. You were playing Chopin, I believe, when I came in," bending over the music on the piano. "If, at any time, I can be of any service whatever, you can easily summon me by striking a few notes of the Berceuse, and I shall be only too happy to respond at once. My room is but a few doors down the corridor." Madge, white and quivering, crossed swiftly to the electric button in the wall. "If you do not leave at once," she said in intense wrath, from which all fear had been pelled.""*' "' '^'" ""^ ""^ ^"^* y°" «- " Mrs. Rodman is unduly and, I must say, .nexphcably, excited by an offer of mere neighborly civility," moving easily toward the door. " I trust she will be her own charming "■°*"- 234 The Inlander and gracious self once more by to-morrow. Meanwhile, till we meet again." He bowed deferentially, and turning drew back the partiaUy open door. As he did so he recoiled slightly, for there was a sudden stir within three feet of him as Lucy Oxnard glided away rapidly down the corridor. Keith, recovering instantly from his sur- prise, passed out with a smUe, gently closine the door after him. Madge, who, standing near the wall, had seen nothing of this pantomime, rushed for- ward as the door was closed, and shot the bolt Then reeling to a chair, she sank on her knees beside it, and bowing her head on her folded arms, shook with a repressed storm of impassioned sobs. XXli THE SIGNAL Paul Rodman had left the caK. chatted a while with some acquaintances in the lobby, walked to his office, and returned to the hotel for his bag. Stepping from the elevator, he came upon Lucy Oxnard. who was just start- ing up the stairs to the floor above. He was passing on. but she called to him almost in a whisper, and with imperative sharpness, — " Mr. Rodman I " He stopped, with an ill-concealed look of impatience. She was standing above him. at ttie curve of the stairway, holding her skirts with one hand, while with the other she clung to the balustrade as she leaned hthely over it toward him. Her color was unusually high, and her eyes were lit tri- umphantly as she spoke, "Paul Rodman, you insulted me to-nieht because I dared to hint that your wife is 236 The Inlander not the gufleless baby you pretend to believe her. If you had been a minute earlier, you would have seen the proof with your own eyes. But you can see it yet Go to her and ask her to play Chopin's Berceuse: that IS the signal by which she caUs Fletcher Keith to her." Paul took an Involuntary step forward, as if to crush her in his clenched hand, as she vanished up the stairs with a mellow laugh It was not the import of her words which affected him; it was the saying of them. That any one should dare to speak thus of Madge, and to him. astounded him, while It mfuriated him all the more because he was impotent, on account of the speaker's sex, to resent the outrage in the way in which every muscle of his body and every mstinct of his manhood impelled him to xL sent it. He started up the corridor toward his rooms with a quickened stride, moved by a vague impulse to shield Madge, as if from some threatening danger, but his impetus re- !^, ^Jt occurred to him that Madge was still at the Garnetts'. Reaching his door and turning the key in I The Signal 237 the lock, he was surprised to find that the bolt nad been sprung. ;• Who's there?" came in a faint, terrified voice from within. "It IS I, — Paul," he answered reassuringly. There was a rush of rustling skirts, the door was quickly flung open, and as Paul stepped and pathetically wrought since he had last broken cry of joy. ,1^^' .^'lee. what is the matter?" he asked anxiously. "And you will not leave me? Not to-nieht Not If you need me, Madge. There I win portpone my trip altogether." She clung to him closely, her chokine sobs 'oothed her, finally drawing her t^ a sea^ calm rest, ng against him in contented silenc" wh-J. was broken only by an occasional short 238 The Inlander •igh. a faint echo of the gust of emotion which had passed. Paul was thoroughly perplexed, for evi- dently Madge had been profoundly affected. As he had just met Lucy Oxnard, he sur- tniscd that perhaps she had been with Madge agam and had wounded her in some vicious way of which Lucy was fuily capable. If, he said lightly, as he stroked the hand he held, "it is anything Mrs. Oxnard has been domg, you must not mind it at all. dear. A world of women like her is not worth one of your tears." Madge raised her eyes gratefully, but there was a deprecating look of pain in them that caused him to draw her closer to him as she answered,— "No, no! I have not seen Mrs. Oxnard again. It is — oh, something has happened, I'aul to show me how -how d sperately wicked I have been." Paul smiled in spite of himself " And did this something — this awful some- thing—happen to-night? " he asked. "Yes; at Mrs. Garnett's," dr pping her lashes as if to hide the sham • v- hich began stealmg mto her cheeks. The Siiraal 239 Then with timorous words that halted and tripped over her sensitive mortification, she told him what the gossips had said of her at Mrs. Garnetfs. And when, hearing from him no response of reproof or condemna- whether he looked the reproach he did not speak, and saw in his ey-s nly the soft radi- Tn7i^ ru' 'u' ^'^ ^*'' ^*" °" ^^ «ho"Wer and lifted his hand to her lips. " ^^'^!^ ' " ***= •*•''' ^ '^ *« h'^self, " they would rob her of even youth itself." And then as she rested in his arms as a child might have nestled, he comforted iZ T '' m'"'"^ ^'' "^ °"^y <>"^ ^ho at d^L understood her could have sai7^th 'Tf^^^i'^ happened, after all," she said, with a face l.ke a wild rose after a rain heart. And after a short pause she added : I learned something else to-night, too. Paul, why did you never tell m'- about the house you bought for us?" tou'ch oTh'?'^^" ^*^*'^^ '^''''" he asked, a touch of displeasure in his tonr "Nevern.--' ^ut it wa^ ,k. ou. And 240 The Inlander it made me so unhappy, and then it made me so happy." "W!iat a paradoxical wiseacre you have grown to be ! You are really getting beyond my depth." " Oh, you need not laugh ! I was never so miserable before as I was to-night when I came to realize how good you have been and how frivolous I have been. No, you sha'n't say anything now I You may believe it was n't heartlessness, if you can, — only thoughtless- ness. It must have been that. I was just so happy I never had any room for thought. But I never did think much — only when I was unhappy — only when you left us so suddenly that evening in Tennessee. Why, if I had only just thought how much nicer it would be to live in our own home, I shouldn't have wanted to stay here a day longer; and I almost feel like quarrelling with you because you did n't make me think of it. Perhaps you imagine,'*^ with a coquettish air of reproach, " that I can't think. I really believe you do, from the way you have treated me, and from the way you are laughing." " No," said Paul, with a new note of glad content ; " but you were happy as you were. The Signal 241 and thinking does not always bring happi- ness." " But," she answered gravely, " I have come to understand that it brings the truest and deepest happiness." Was it, indeed, another Madge, or was it only the Madge that from the first he had felt she could be, some day? Paul was in no doubt on that point; and drawing her to him again, he kissed her as he had never kissed her before. After which she disclosed to him her house- keeping plot "And there are so many other things I want to tell you about," she said " Only wait till I change this hateful dress, and then we'll have a good, long talk." She rose and ran into the next room, the truth being that she was in doubt whether she ought to inform him about Keith's call that evening, at the risk of the violence that might result between the two men; her object in leaving Paul being as much to gairf time to consider more calmly the best course for her to follow as it was to change her dress. Poor Madge I she was right when she said she had never done much thinking, and now that she was confronted with a problem that seemed to 16 242 The Inlander her to require deliberation she felt sorely the need of time and composure. Paul sat as she had left him, his trip to New York and all else, except Madge and his own happiness, forgotten. The hour that he had lived for had come. Despite the blasting ex- perience of his past, the most sanguine dreams of his youth and the deepest longings of his maturer years had at last found realization. Henceforth life for him was, indeed, complete. He rose, after a little, and began walking to and fro across the room. In the absence of Madge he was impelled to some sort of bodily motion as an accompaniment to the glorious unrest of his brain and heart. Once, as he walked, his foot struck against something lying on the floor. He paid no attentior j it at first, but his eyes falling on it repeatetiiy as he passed it, he finally stooped and picked it up. It was a glove, a man's glove, and he turned it desultorily in his hand, wondering idly how it came there. He crossed over to the piano ; and as he was about to drop the glove on the 'nstrument his extended arm grew suddenly rigid and his grasp on the glove tightened. A piece of music stood open on the piano before him. The Signal 243 "Ask her to play Chopin's Bereeuse; that is the signal by which she calls Fletcher Keith to 'oKi^' were the words he had heard not an hour ago. Whose glove was that? Why was the Bercmseo^n and in place on the piano? A "signal"? It was verily a signal that summoned out of his past all the demons of memory to lash him in one mad moment into an insane frenzy of doubt and fear. Doubt and fear of what? Who can say? What does the madman doubt and fear? Did he not know that Madge was above all suspicion, as surely as he knew that somewhere, on earth or beyond, truth lived? But once before he had stood on the brink of happiness with a supreme faith, and with what result it appalled him to remember. There was the glove, and there was the Berceuse — zsid, angels of innocence! there was Madge, coming slowly toward him in a soft, white wrapper, her beautiful hair falling over her shoulders, her face delicately aglow with a tender joy, her eyes duskiiy lumi- nous with an infinite love. If there is a tutelary deity for such as Paul, and it could have made itself heard by him at this moment, it must have been in words something like these, — 244 The Inlander "Quick and sure; for now is the crisis of your life, and it is in your hands. Whatever you have been, whatever you have hoped to be, this moment must decide what you are to be through all your future." It was over. " Madge," Paul asked, with a forced precision and calm, " will you not play for me?" Then it was that this deity must have added, — "Farewell, once lofty-souled youth. The fiends that beset such as you have won. For as you spoke you uttered the one blasphemy against woman, wife, and, most of all, against your own manhood ; and even as you spoke, you knew it." Madge glided up to him with a faint smile on her lips and fondly took his hand. "Yes, if you wish me," she answered softly. "What shall I play?" seating herself at the piano and placing his hand, which she held in her own, caressingly upon her shoulder. "This," replied Paul, in a low voice, and with a white face which she did not see. Madge withdrew her hand from his and dropped it to the keys, at the same time The Signal 245 turnins^ her eyes to the music whieh he had indicated. " No I no i not that ! " rising suddenly and tremulously, her face as white as his own. "Why not that?" " Oh ! I — I think it detestable. Would n't you like something else?" abruptly beginning to search through the music on the piano with nervous, hurrying hands. "Since when have you thought it detest- able? Madge, I prefer you should play this." There was that in his voice which she had never heard before, and which caused her to discontinue at o» ce her aimless rummage of the music and to turn her troubled, wondering eyes full upon him. "I — can't," she said, almost in a whisper. " Play it." There was no mistaking the command now, and it struck Madge dumb. She could not have answered him if she would. With dilated eyes and half-parted lips, she could only stand and gaze at him in helpless silence. "Then I will," he said, stepping to the piano. "Oh, not no!" She found speech in a liliiriMlillM uMmtimaiiiitaSmL. 246 The Inlander beseeching, terrified wail, and graaped his arm to stay it. " Wait ! I will tell you why, Paul ! " He pushed her away and began playing the Berceuse. As he did so, Madge quailed and shrank from him, sinking weakly for a second against a chair; then recovering and drawing herself to her height, she stood mute and pale, her eyes fastened on Paul, as if under a spell of horror, while he gently touched the ke3rs. A moment more, and the door was opened from the corridor, and Fletcher Keith, with a light, rapid step, entered the room. Paul was on his feet in an instant, but Madge never stirred nor took her staring eyes from him as he turned and, deathly calm, confronted the intruder. Keith, suddenly sobered, bowed. "I beg pardon; I — " " You have come for your glove, perhaps," Paul said with preternatural quietness; "you will find it on the piano." Keith hesitated a moment, then went to the piano and picked up the glove. " Mr. Rodman," he began, facing Paul again, "I certainly owe both Mrs. Rodman and yourself an apol — " The Signal 247 Paul checked him with a gesture. ** I will see you downstairs in five minutes, if you please," he said. "Very well, sir," Keith assented, and with a slight bow left the room. Paul, not once looking at Madge where she stood, motionless and silent, went into the next room, placed a pistol in his pocket, and got his overcoat, hat, and travelling-bag. As he passed through the parlor again, he knew that Madge was now seated, and he felt that her eyes followed him ; but he walked on into the corridor and closed the door behind him without a word and without turning his head toward her. ■Miiiilii utaiiUiii. XXIII MERELY TO KILL A MAN OR BE KILLED '• Mr. Keith just lett word that he would be in the biUiard-room, Mr. Rodman," a beU boy informed Paul as he reached the lobby. Keith, who was seated in one of the big leather chairs, smoking a cigar, rose and stood wajbng as Paul entered the otherwise deserted billiard-room. Paul' went up to him, and the two men faced each other for a moment in sUence. "I think," Paul said grimly, "that there is no occasion for any publicity in the settlement that is to be between us." Keith nodded. " That must be as you pre- fer he replied. " But first you must let me tell you that you have made a terrible mistake If you believe that anybody but myself is to be blamed for what happened to-night; that M«. Kodman had anything to do with — " "Stop!" Paul ordered peremptorily. "This >s an affair between you and myself alone. Merely to Kill or be Killed 249 No one else it to be biought into it. And don't ^tt Ih ■ 2.2 u 1^ ■■■ S 1^ 1 12.0 1.25 iu lli 1.6 A /APPLIED Ify/HGE Inc 1«M East Main StrMi (7ia) 2M - S9M - Fn 266 The Inlander " How much stock have you, Pritchard ? " Barney asked. "Oh, well, maybe not so much as more, and not so little as less." " Drewdie, turn to the books there and find out how much stock Mr. Pritchard owns." *'Ohl never mind, Poteet," Pritchard inter- posed. "If Carruthers means business, I reckon I can refresh my memory. I believe I 'm the owner of two sheers." " All right. If you want to sell at par, say SO. "Well, I '11 let you know to-morrow." " To-morrow will be too late — for you. " "Oh, well, I reckon I'll resk it a while longer. " "Then understand one thing, Pritchard. You are a director of this company. If you know anything wrong or suspect anything wrong, it 's your duty to say so, and say how and why. But you must say it only to the board. Loose talk outside is the trouble already, and bear in mind that the loose talkers are going to be run down, and that when they are, something unpleasant is going to happen to them. Is there any other gentle- man who will come in on my proposition, or is Among the Buckwalters 267 there anybody who has any other proposition to make ? " Nobody spoke until finally Slade got up from his chair. "Mr. Carruthers," he said, though he was looking at Pritchard, " I ain't got but a little, but you can put me down for my last cent. I 'm not afraid that anything Paul Rodman's behind ain't worth par. And when them loose talkers are caught, I know two or three boys down in my neighborhood who want to have a hand in what happens to them." "There's another p'int," resumed Pritch- ard, contemptuously ignoring Slade. "The books shows there 's a big note due putty soon. " "Yes," replied Barney, "secured by a mortgage and now held by Judd Oxnard, who declines to renew." " What provision has been made to pay it ? " " You may have noticed a pretty consider- able item of United States bonds. They have been set aside for that purpose." " And where is them bonds ? " " Have you looked in that old cigar-box on the mantel there? I belijve that is where Paul keeps the stray bonds and things, espe- cially on Sunday." 268 The Inlander " I see the bonds was took in on April lo. Poteet tells me that Rodman left town on that very night. Now, gentlemen, as a director of this company, I demand to know where is them bonds and where is Paul Rodman?" Slade, hot-fsced, sprang to his feet again, but Barney Carruthers laid a detaining hand on him and stepped between him and Pritchard. "As a director of this company," he said, "I tell you that the note will be paid promptly when due. If you have a personal curiosity to know the exact whereabouts of the bonds and Paul Rodman, you might sell a few shares of your stock, and organize a search expedition. Gentlemen, I move that we appoint Pritchard a committee of one to find those bonds and Rodman, at his own expense, even if he has to go to the North Pole or to the end of his stock to do it." There was a general laugh, and Pritchard surrendered. "Well," he concluded, "if you s: he mortgage will be paid promptly, I reckon that's enough." The meeting adjourned soon afterward, the w Among the Buckwalters 269 majority of the directors agreeing that noth- ing could be done except to trace the libels against the company to their source and take such action then as might be expedient. "We 'd better not have got them together," Barney Carruthers said, as he and Drewdie Poteet sat gloomily in the office after the others had left. "It's done no good and probably some harm." "Yes, it started that row of Pritchard's about the mortgage and the bonds. Where do you suppose those bonds are, Barney?" "I pass," meditatively. "And Rod?" "Ditto." " And how is that mortgage to be paid ? " "Ditto." "What did you mean when you said it would be paid promptly ? " "A cold bluff." Drewdie laughed slightly. "I thought so; but you did it so veil I almost believed you. " " I don't know any more than you do how it is to be paid," Barney added. "But there's one thing certain : it 's got to be paid, Drewdie Poteet, if you and I have to go out and hold up a train to get the money." - 270 The Inlander "It will be worse than The Runabout stuff if it becomes known that we default on that note, as it will when suit is brought to fore- close the mortgage." "Worse! Of course. But we've got two weeks or more to raise that money, and we 've got only until to-morrow morning to prevent this panic in Fluor-spar, and the slander of Rod that would go with it." "What wouldn't I give," Drewdie sighed, " if I only had what I paid for that old skate, Doublequick I " Barney laughed. " I reckon he was worth the money to you in experience. " "I've still got a little Fluor-spar stock. Maybe I could sell it, or borrow something on it." "To throw it on the market now is just what you must n't do, and you can't borrow on it unless we can hold the market steady, and to hold the market steady is v/hat we want with the money. It 's like the dog try- ing to stop himself from whirling around by catching his tail, which he can't reach." "What's to be done?" " I 'm going to try again," Barney answered, slapping on his hat. "I know two or three Among the Buckwalters 271 more men with money who ought to be will- ing to do something for Rod." "It won't work. Old Buckwalter v/as right; it is not business." Barney spent the rest of the afternoon see- ing those two or three men, and yet others. He left the last and walked slowly away with his hands in his pockets and his head bent, tired and disgusted. "It's no good," he grunted. "They are all Buckwalters. They are all business men. Poor old Rod!" XXV AN ARRIVAL AT TWIN MOUNTAIN Fletcher Keith and Paul Rodman prob* ably owed their lives to the length of their struggle on the car platform. When it ended with both of them going over, the train had passed the worst of the perilous stretch of track. The ravine where they fell had be- come shallow, and its rim was thick with mountain laurel, which broke their fall. Keith, badly jolted, picked himself up after a little and took his bearings. He ^. the mouth of the ravine, which exten long splotch of darkness, in the moo ii; Winding up to its entrance, and then - ing its far side, was a rough wagon road, a bare patch of which he could see here and there down the mountain slope. Fifteen feet above him, apparently resting on the tops of the laurel, the ends of the cross-ties marked the course of the railway. A few steps below him^he still form of Paul Rodman was lying. An Arrival at Twin Mountain 273 Keith went down to him, and kneeling ex- amined the body. The heart was still beating. " Here 's luck I " Keith said, rising. " Oflf here in the mountains, with the whole night be- fore me, and a half-dead lunatic on my hands." Keith stood and looked down at Paul doubtfully. It would be easy enough to leave him if he were dead. Ten minutes before, Keith had done his utmost to kill him; but that was a diflferent thing from abandoning him here in his present condition. Keith went over to the wagon road at the edge of the ravine and scanned the mountain side. It was not so bad as he had feared. There was a light plainly visible not more than half a mile down the road, and he imme- diately set out toward it. He fourd it burning in the window of a long building with a balcony running around it. A negro was sitting on a horse-block, yelling at a dog that had been barking furi- ously since Keith had got within a hundred yards of the gate. "What place is this?" Keith asked the negro. "Dis Twin Mountain Springs, boss." " Is there a doctor in the neighborhood? " 18 274 The Inlander ^ •• Dr. Ward, he here. He live here. " Dr. Ward proved to be the lessee of the Twin Mountain Springs. The first thing that Keith learned from him was that he was not ready for guests yet, his season not open- ing till June; but when Keith explained that his friend was disabled from a fall among the rocks, the whole of Twin Mountain Springs was at his service; the negro was ordered to get out the wagon; and the three soon had Paul lying in one of the rooms of the long building. Dr. Ward reported that it was not necessa- rily a dangerous case, unless "complications" should follow, —a few broken ribs and an ugly knock on the head. Paul was unconscious or under the influence " opiates through the night, and early next morning Keith left for the nearest railroad station, after telling the doctor who his patient was. "I don't think he would want you to let his people know about this business. Doctor," Keith said in parting; "and my advice is that you don't do it until he wishes you to, unless, of course, his condition should become very serious." XXVI UNDER THE CRAGS The fourth week of his stay at Twin Moun- tain Springs had begun before Paul, on a sunny afternoon in early May, left his room and hobbled out to a bench on the wide lawn. Dr. Ward and his family had taken good care of their solitary guest; and though the case had been more stubborn than the docior had expected at first, he did not think it necessary to write to the address that Keith had left him. He mentioned the matter ^o Paul once, and so emphatic was his patien's interdiction of any communication with Louis- ville that the doctor never brought up the question again. " I will write all that is to be written, » Paul had added. " I do not wish to be bothered by any business or friends." "Now I'm mighty doubtful," the doctor said afterward, in talking of this to his wife. If the poor fellow has any friends. Cer- tainly that one that brought him here wasn't wmmmBKimiKmm ■P "■9 276 The Inlander any great shakes of a friend And the worst of it is that he don't seem to want any friends. I 'm sure he don't care a rap whether he gets well or dies. I never see a man as far be- yond interest in anything, or so cut off to himself by himself. He 's just gettin' well in spite of himself, simply because he's goi a ij;uv.a constitution and good blood. It's a funny case, all around." "I suppose he must 'a' been unfortunate in love, don't you reckon?" suggested Mrs. Ward. " Well, maybe so, though I 'm treatin' him for broken ribs instead of broken heart. If I was supposin', I 'd say it was somethin' worse than love. I don't see how love could account for them two wanderin' around here in the mountains, without any baggage, goin' no- where and comin' from nowhere, as far as I 've been able to make out." "At any rate," the good lady insisted, "you can see he is a bom gentleman." " Oh, yes, he 's a gentleman. That makes it all the harder to understand. If he were a highwayman or a hobo, it would n't seem so unnatural like." "I still believe it's love, David; and I Under the Crags 277 would n't be surprised if the other gentleman has gone oflF to tell Mr. Rodman's sweet- heart, so that she will be sony and come and nurse him." "And you'll have it wi -< - up with a weddin', hey?" laughed the doctor. "But you don't shake my opinion that it 's some- thin' a long way worse than any love. I 'd say that when he fell on them rocks out there he tumbled off of Mars, at least. He don't seem to belong to this world." Paul, sunning himself on the bench this afternoon, — which was the Saturday following the Su.iday of the Fluor-spar directors' meet- ing, — was wondering listlessly why Drewdie Poteet had r written to him about Fluor- spar affriirs. rely he had written Drewdie long dgo. He remembered just what vas in the shc-^ letter, what an eternity it had taken mm to wnte it, and how he had marvelled at the peculiar phosphorescent glow of the ink as it left his pen. He remembered also, when he had handed the letter to Dr. Ward to mail what on uncanny leer had been on the man's face. Of course he had written to Drewdie Poteet, unless — was it, or was it not.> — the letter was one of those products of 278 The Inlander his delirium which seemed so real long after his mind was clear. Dr. Ward rode up, and dismounting came across the lawn toward Paul. "Here! here! my hearty, "he said cheerily but authoritatively; "this won't do. It 's too early for you to be out here on this grass. You 're just in condition to pick up a case of pneumonia now." He took the arm of Paul, who, without objecting, walked back into the house with him. "Doctor," he said, "I was just trying to think whether I wrote and gave you a letter soon after I came here." " Never a letter; not a line to anybody." Paul felt that he would have smiled at this if he had not been too tired. "No matter," he answered; "I will write to-day." "Here's a New York paper," the doctor said, as he left Paul in his room. "Got it from the train a little while ago. It 's two or three days old, but that 's fresh to us up here." Paul wrote a brief letter to Drewdie Poteet, giving him some directions about Fluor-spar Under the Crags 279 matters and ending with the assurance that he would be in Louisville the following week, in ample time to pay off Oxnard's note. Then he took up the newspaper, and open- ing it absently, saw flaring across the top of one of the columns, in heavy Gothic capitals, "MADGE CABANIS." He did not start or shrink. But he was suddenly very still, and his face whitened and hardened as the insolently bold letters held his eyes. He stared at the characters until they were merged with each other in a formless blotch, and the paper became unsteady from the very tightness with which he was clutching it. He turned and spread the sheet on the table by his side, and leaning over, read the "pyramid " that followed. It was : — "This Charming Young Actress Gives Up Society to Return to the Stage." Paul rose slowly, rigidly, from his chair, his fist knotted, his eyes blazing. "By — God I" A great rage surged over him, distorting and blackening his face. 28o The Inlander he said, in a voice savage "She shall not! in its harshness. He jammed on his hat and went to the door, fierce determination in his stride, as if it were but a short walk between him and Madge. In the doorway he stopped, confronted by the wall of the mountains and the twin crags looming grimly down on him. As grim as the mountains themselves, the prepos- terousness of his passion also confronted him suddenly, and on the swift reaction, he leaned against the door-jamb in physical weakness. What was Madge Cabanis to him? What did it matter now what she did ? What right had he — what right did he wish — to inter- fere with her? He stood there for minutes, watching the shadows deepen on the slopes of the moun- tains. On the surface now he was as calm as they, though a little before he had passed through some such paroxysm as that which once may have upheaved their monumental chaos. When he went back to his seat by the table it was with firm steps. He took up the paper, and moving his chair in order to get Under the Crags 281 the best light deliberately read the item which had inspired the startling head-lines. It was this, — one of several paragraphs in a column of stage news and gossip: — "That Madge Cabanis will return to the boards the coming season wiU be welcome news to those who watched the work of this pretty and promising young actress during the two years she was with Manager Joyce. Manager Joyce is just back from the South and authorizes the announcement that h- has engaged her to star in a second Babette company which he contemplates putting on the road in Sep- tember. He is much elated at securing Miss Ca. bams for the tide r61e. He says she was bom to play BabetU, and he predicts that her success in it will be second only to that of Florence Falk herself. Mr. Joyce > not without some practical basis for his confidence. About a year ago Miss Cabanis played Babette for a week during Miss Falk's illness m Buffalo, and she undoubtedly scored a hit in that city. So pleased with her performance was Mr. Joyce that he tried to sign her last summer for a second company, but she decUned in order to marry a young business and society man of LouisviUe. It was freely prophesied at the time that she was too much attached to the stage to remain away from it permanently. The usual result of such marriages has foUowed quickly, and Miss Cabanis returns to the profession of her choice with the added iclatoi 282 The Inlander a yax of brilliant leadership in the most select circles of Southern society." Paul laid the paper on his knee, from which it slipped, without his noting it, to the floor. He sat, motionless, looking through the open door upon the solemnity of the circling moun- tains. He sat, hopeless, looking quietly at the end. A.nd this was t le end, — the end of every- thing that should have ended forever with him years before; the end between Madge Cabanis and himself; part of it there in the ■ garish types of the public press, part of it here in the perpetual silence of his own undy- ing death. But why was not that end complete on the night he had turned from her and walked away ? Why should her doings or not-doings, her goings or comings, affect him one way or another? Why should this last step of hers back into the world from which it had been his happiness to think he had delivered her, have power now to cause him another pang.? It was but the public sundering of their lives, which nothing could sunder wider than the chasm that had opened between them on the night he had left her. Was he so base, so Under the Crags 283 weak, so grovelling, as to cling to her yet with a single tendril of passion or sentiment? A great wave of rebellious tenderness and longing for her swept over him, ebbing almost instantly in stem self-resentment and self- contempt. His compressed lips parted in one stifled moan, and bending his forehead to the table he shuddered as with cold. XXVII BARNEV CARRUTHERS HAS HIS SAV He did not lift his head until heavy foot- steps on the balcony outside stopped at his room. Looking up, he saw the red face of Barney Carruthers puckering at him from the doorway. "You old hippopotamus you!" Barnev gnnned. ' "Hullo, Barney, old man!" Paul said as he rose, lighting up for the first time in all these weeks. They met halfway between the table and the door. If they had been women, they might have fallen on each other and wept. As It was, they clumsily locked hands for a second and looked into each other's eyes CaZthers.' '' '^^^^^^^^led ! " said Barney "You ought to be, for coming where you are not asked!" answered Paul Rodman. Barney Carruthcrs has his Say 285 They dropped into chairs and smiled at each other like sheep. Then Barney put his feet on the table, and took out his pipe. "Got any decent tobacco up here?" he asked. "I'm out." "Not a bit in the house. But Dr. Ward smokes cubebs, I believe." "Then the first train awa} from these parts catches me ! " "Better try the cubebs. You 've smoked everything else." "Thank you, I 've plenty. I was in the same room once with a cubeb smoker, and I reckon I can manage to worry along now on what I got of that smoke." There was a pause, during which Barney hopelessly replaced his pipe in his pocket. " What 's going on ? " Paul asked. " How 's Drewdie?" "Spending his substance in hair restora- tives now. Drewdie is growing gray from the responsibility of running the Fluor-spar business. " "Why, I left everything in good shape. There was nothing but routine in sight." " It was the things that were out of sight that have been bothering Drewdie and the rest of 286 The Inlander ^.J^^ """^^ ^""^ ^~° *' ^°'fc to under- name Fluor-spar since you left '* "J«dd Oxnard," said Paul. . "Judd Oxnard!" bellowed Barney, pound- ing h,. thigh with his fist. "Imigh?hrve kno^ he was the man! I did half suspect It. It s not the first time he has used that Xunabout muds ;ow in his schemes " ^Wey Carruthers began rummaging in his "Say, how are you, anyway >» he sud- denly asked. "About all right again, ain't "No fool necks broken, hey?" " None, more 's the pity. " n.wJ"^" ' '^''^*'" y°" ^^" '**"'* disagreeable Paul looked the indifference he felt Dis agreeable news was of small concern to him now. " Barney gave him a copy of The Runabout paragraph that had caused the meeting of the Fluor-spar directors the preceding Sunday Barney Carruthcrs has his Say 287 Paul read it, and as he refolded it his face was cast inflexibly. " I see now that I ought to have put myself in communication with Drewdie or you. The truth is, I was not quite capable of intelligent communication with anybody the first week after I got here; and since then I frankly own that the thought of Fluor-r • has hardly ertered my brain. But there's one thing certam: if people have been scared into sell- ing their stock below par while I 've been away, I '11 make up every cent of the differ- ence to them out of my own pocket, if I live long enough. " "Oh, dry up, Rodl You don't know what you re talking about." "How low has the stock gone? " "Well, last Saturday, a week ago to-day. it touched 105." ^' "And since then?" "Monday there were a few small lots that went at par. Tuesday there were no sales reported. Wednesday one sale was made at 107. Thursday it struck no. Yesterday, after the publication of a two-line item in a morning paper reporting that Mr. Paul Rod- man was taking a short rest at Twin Moun- 288 The Inlander tain Springs, they were bidding 120^ with none on the market for less than 125. Oxnard himself was rushing around trying to buy two hundred shares at 120, but he had to pay the top notch for it" " I think I know how Oxnard will use that stock. One hundred shares of it he has con- tracted to deliver next week at par; the other hundred at 9a Tell me how you stopped his raid on va." " That 's what I You must n't think you 're the only person in Louisville that can take care of Fluor-spar in a tight squeeze." Barney then told of his failure to find the editor of TAe Runabout. "And I haven't found him yet, " he added. " The fellow heard that I was hunting him, and has been hiding out all the week. I had one interview with him years ago, and he has never liked me since." Paul heard a full account of the directors' meeting Sunday afternoon, and of Barney's persevering and futile efforts to enlist men in his unbusiness-like scheme to guarantee the stock. "I gave it up about six o'clock Sunday evening, convinced that there was nobody in Louisville who would and could Barney Carruthers has his Say 289 take care of your interests while you were ?1Tt ^- ^" JT *^"" *" ^<>"' '""^ that iimebld^^''^ ' ''*• "~"«- ^«"^" "TomLusk?" Paul asked "Tom Lusk was the first man I called on Sunday morning." "Preston Talcott?" "Preston Talcott not only refused, but was one of the few that took advantage of our pro- position the next day to unload their stock on us at par. " " Then I could never guess." "You oughtn't to have to guess. You ought to know who has saved Paul Rodman's good name when he couldn't do it himself." vnn " P^'T °^ "° °"* ^^'^^^^P* ^"-^^^'e and you, Paul answered, smiling at Barney's growing excitement. "I tell you you do!" Barney was on his feet now and glaring down fiercely at Paul. " What do you mean, Barney? " . Barney raised his arm, and with his most impassioned jury gesture brought his fist down with a blow upon the palm of his hand. "I mean Paul Rodman's wife!" »9 290 The Inlander It WM as if the blow, instead of falling on Barney's palm, had fallen on Paul's face. Every tinge of blood fled from it "Stopl" he said, making a quick motion to rise. "You stopl" Barney's command instantly followed Paul's, and his hand was on Paul's shoulder, pushing him firmly back into the chair. "I 've got the floor now, Rod," he added, lapsing at once from 'is jury manner into his customary grinning cha£F. "Let me finish; then you can have your turn and throw as many fits as you feel like. You see," taking a seat on the table, and getting a purchase on his raised knee with his clasped hands, " I was just back from New York last Sunday, where I 'd gone looking for you. She had sent for me a wrak before and told me enough about a quarrel between you two to show me that she was frightened out of her wits about you, — seemed to fear you could n't come back, or wouldn't if you coulc". I knew you well enough to be pretty sure that you had gone off to make a fool of yourself; so I started after you, to try to trail you, or some remnant of yoiL Sunday, after I had Barney Carruthcrs has his Say 291 got back to Louisville, and after I had failed at everything else that day, I went to the hoi si to let her know what progreu I had made in my hunt for you." Paul was now sitting with his elbow on the arm of his chair, his head resting against the hand that covered his eyes. He made no comment or sign as Barney rambled on. "That first time I saw her- when she sent for me — she was looking so worn out and broken up and so pitifully proud, too. that I felt if I could only lay my hands on you. / wouldn't leave a remnant of you; but when I Mw her Sunday evening she was different She was even more worn out. but she was stirred up .bout that Runabout stuff. Some- body-so.ue kind lady in the hotel -had taken pains to show her the sheet; and, after all, I believe it was the best thing for her. It woke her up and gave her something to do. bhe was set on stopping such attacks on you and your business and when I told her what Drewdie and I had been trying to do all day to stop them, she said that my plan, if I thought It was the best plan, had to go through. She would put it through herself. And she did, before I could make up my 292 The Inlander mind whether I was dreaming or drunk. Oh, I tell you, she 's fine; she 's a — she 's a rose of Sharon, Rod!" Barney shifted his hands to his other knee, and after giving Paul time to show some sign of life, went on : — "You never would guess how she did it, though. You see, it was this way. That theatre man, Joyce, was in town with one of his shows, and it seems had tried to get her to go back on the stage. She had refused outright, but when she understood what I wanted to do about Fluor-spar she sent at once for Joyce and told him that if he would stand by me she would accept his offer." "You didn't consent to any such folly?" asked Paul, with repressed ferocity, at last looking up. " Did n't I ? Did the hungry duck you 've read about consent to the June-bug? And talk about business men ! Well, as Drewdie Poteet says, that Joyce could get left at the post and lose your Louisville business friends in the first quarter. By twelve o'clock that night he had gone over the books with an expert, had decided that he would put up for Barney Carruthers has his Say 293 all the stock ofiFered next day at par, and was ofif to Uke a look at the mines. Monday morning I had a small advertisement in the papers bidding, in the name of Gaynor & Clay, par for Fluor-spar stock. A few drib- lets, as I told you, were turned in on us, but the beauty of it was that Oxnard himself sus- pected that we were bluffing and tried to make us run by letting loose on us all he held, —which explains his buying it back yesterday at 125. "Joyce showed up again Monday night, and was so well satisfied that he not only was willing to let the advertisement run on, but almost as good as agreed, before he left for New York, to pay that note of Oxnard's and take over the mortgage, unless other arrange- ments were made by the time it fell due. But no more stock came in at par; and after Thursday night, when I learned where you were and had that little 'personal ' about you put in the paper, there was none to be had under 125. So you see it ain't your busi- ness men that know all there is to be known about business. We outsiders can give them pointers sometimes." Paul got up, and laying his hand on 294 The Inlander Barney's shoulder, said in a voice uneven with deep feeling: — "Barney, no man ever had a better friend than I have in you, and I 'm not going to try to thank you, because words are poor and use- less between you and me. But I am sorry that the matter could not have been arranged without bringing — Mrs. Rodman into it." "I'm not ; and neither would you be if you could have seen the good it did her to be able to save the day for you. Besides, she won't have to carry 6ut her bargain to go back to play-acting. I made it a condition with Joyce that he was to release her if you re- turned and didn't approve, and paid him back what he had put up for Fluor-spar. But you won't have to bother about that. He 's got a plump profit on the stock we took in Monday. Drewdie and I were in the pool also ; but as we didn't amount to anything without Joyce, we are going to leave him all the winnings." "Barney," Paul said, with an evidently des- perately determined effort, " I owe you some- thing more than the silence I shall maintain with every one else. I don't know how much she told you of what you called our quarrel ; but I must say to you now — I shall never Barney Carruthers has his Say 295 speak of it after this — that there is no one I shall ever again call wife." Barney Carruthers slid slowly off the table, and taking Paul by the arm led him to the lounge, with a slight roughness which might have been misunderstood by one who did not know the two men well. "You come here and lie down, Rod," he ordered. *' You are tired out; you 'vc been up too long." Paul did not resist. He half sat, half lay on the lounge, his eyes partially closed in weariness. Barney Carruthers drew up one of the split-bottomed chairs, and setting his foot on it rested his elbow on his knee. "Now look here, Rod, it's my say this time. And I do say that considering how long and closely you 've been hobnobbing with me, there 's no excuse for your knowing so little about women; there's no excuse for your not knowing that good women are the best things going, and that good women are the rule, and the other kind the exception. And you know perfectly well — you know ii this minute, down to your very marrow — that there ain't a better woman on earth or in heaven than your wife. You know that if 296 The Inlander you have thought for an instant that she ever did you a conscious wrong, it was you that wronged her, and \ ronged her outrageously. And now, Mr. Paul Rodman, I want to give you fair warning, that hereafter if it ever gets into my head that you have a ghost of a doubt that Mrs. Paul Rodman is a thousand times too good for any man who ever lived, then I '11 break you into so many pieces that your Dr. Ward and all his cribe couldn't tell whether you had been a man or a monkey." Paul opened his eyes with an indulgent smile. "All right, Barney," he said; "we '11 never talk of women." "Yes, we will talk of women. We won't talk of anything else, if I choose. I 've got to make up a lot of lost opportunity if I teach you anything about women in time to do you any good in this life." Barney Carruthers shoved the chair aside and took an envelope from his pocket. "Here, you can read this while I look around and try a drink out of the Twin Mountain Springs. It 's from a man who put me on the track of you. " Barney tossed him the letter and left the Barney Carruthcrs has his Say 297 room. Paul glanced at the unfamiliar super- scription, and opened the envelope. "Say," said Barney Carruthers, returning along the balcony, and poking his head through the door, "where could a f fellow corral that doctor of yours? I reckon I'll have to go up against his cubebs." XXVIII DR. WARD LOSES A PATIENT Paul found that the envelope contained a note, and within that, another envelope. He read the note slowly : — Louisville, May 9. Paul Rodman, Esq., Twin Mountain Springs. Sr, — Mr. Carruthers has consented to be the bearer of the enclosed letter to you, which other- wise I should have dehvered in person. In the short interview you had with me, just before we left for the mountains last month, I attempted to tell you that Mrs. Rodman was in no way involved to her discredit in the affair which provoked that inter- view; but you would not listen to me. That was your privilege. You proposed to hold me to ac- count, not for the misdoings of others, but of myself. But as soon as I had the chance I resolved — not because I owed it to you, but to Mrs. Rodman — to show you that I alone was to blame. On the night of your wretched mistake, as I was passing Mrs. Rodman's apartments, hearing her at the piano, I was bold enough, with the help of the champagne I had drunk, to enter. I was immediately and in- Dr. Ward Loses a Patient 299 dignantly ordeicd out, and in obeying that order I was again bold enoagh to announce that I would be happy to return at any time I should hear Mrs. Rod- man playing that particular selection. As I went out I saw Mis. Oznard leaving the door. The part that she took a few seconds later is fiilly within your knowledge. This is the whole truth, and you know it, — not because I tell it, or Mrs. Oxnard confirms it, but because you know that any construction of that night's occunences that reflects on Mrs. Rodman is bound to be false. Very truly yours, Fletcher Ketth. Paul seemed no longer to breathe as he held the letter in his hand, staring with dead eyes at nothingness. Finally, as a breeze stirred through the door and whipped the sheet of paper from his relaxed fingers, he turned mechanically to the other envelope and read : — LoNIX)N, April 27. Dr4» Paul, — So you really did ask Madge to play the Berceuse! Do you know, I waited at the head of the stairs for fully ten minutes that night and finaDy left dreadfully disappointed because you did not appear to have thought enough of my word to act on my warning. But it seems to have resulted 300 The Inlander mort SQccessfolty. after aOj and Fletcher Keith has foUowed me across the Atlantic to get me to teU you !S^ *™t "?7 1!** 7"" ^"^^^ *^ ~ «"«8«™t« tnfles, Paull When I met you on the stairs I had just heard your Madge ordering Fletcher from the «)om, and Fletcher inviting himself to return when- ever she played the Btruuse- so like Fletch, was n't It? That was the bald fact; the venion I gave you irsa the flower of an artistic imagination and of an old and peculiar friendship. I am perfectiy willing now to give you the bald fact ; for knowing you as I do, you dear old silly-billy, I icnow that it wiU go a tiiousand tiroes harder witii you when it breaks on you that you have so horribly insulted Madge Inno- cent than it would if you should continue to believe tiMt you had only resented the wickedness of Madge Ind«creet And I fear it will go harder still when you jeahze that it remained for such a man as Fletcher to convince you Uiat you had thus insulted ner. And now, my dear Paul, let us play quits, and when we meet again let it be with a clean score on either side, that we may make a new begimiing to a new friendship. «"i"uig lo Faithfully yours, Lucy Arnan Oxnard. Science says that probably the greatest physical agony one can suffer is that which results from the spasmodic clutch of the heart Dr. Ward Loses a Patient 301 by a certain disease of that organ, and surely this is credible to those who have seen the face of such a sufferer even long after the pain itself has passed. Such was Paul's face as he raised himself stiffly, and sitting on the side of the lounge, slowly and methodically tore the two letters into small bits. Then he got up, put on his hat, and glanc- ing around the room, as a preoccupied man starting on a journey sometimes glances in a sightless precaution against overlooking any- thing he would take with him, went out and closed the door after him. Barney Carruthers and Dr. Ward were in "the office," laughing and smoking cubebs; but it was with suddenly serious countenances that they sprang from their chairs as Paul entered. "When does the first train pass for Louis- ville?" Paul asked authoritatively. "What are you doin' here, Rodman?" sharply demanded the doctor. "You ought to be in bed ! " "I am going to Louisville. Please order me a conveyance." " You are foolish. You are in no condition to travel, and you won't be for a week yet. 302 The Inlander Besides, the train goes by in less than an hour, and it would take dangerously hard drivin' to make it." "It must be done. Please don't lose any time." Paul passed out to the front platform. " Her^ is a buckboard now. This will do." " It 's foolhardy I " the doctor noiid to Barney Carruthers; "we must not allow him to do it. It may kill him." "We'd ha^'e to kill him to keep him here now, Doctor. I know him." The buckboard had brought Barney from the station, and the driver was hanging around the kitchen, waiting for the supper hour. Paul was already