University of California Berkeley 
 
j)all0cit jFoote 
 
 THE VALLEY ROAD. 
 
 A PICKED COMPANY. 
 
 THE ROYAL AMERICANS. 
 
 A TOUCH OF SUN AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 THE DESERT AND THE SOWN. 
 
 THE PRODIGAL. Illustrated by the Author. 
 
 THE CHOSEN VALLEY. 
 
 THE LED-HORSE CLAIM. Illustrated. 
 
 JOHN BODEWIN'S TESTIMONY. 
 
 THE LAST ASSEMBLY BALL, and THE FATE 
 
 OF A VOICE. 
 
 IN EXILE, AND OTHER STORIES. 
 COEUR D'ALENE. A Novel. 
 THE CUP OF TREMBLING, AND OTHER 
 
 STORIES. 
 THE LITTLE FIG-TREE STORIES. With two 
 
 illustrations by MRS. FOOTB, and a colored Cover 
 
 Design. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY HALLOCK FOOTE 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 fiiUcrsi&e prestf Cambridge 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY MARY HALLOCK FOOTE 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published Septembe 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE author knows that her readers by now must 
 be chiefly the old friends who read her books when 
 she and they were young. To those few, preoccupied 
 as they are with their individual share in the times 
 we have lived to see, it would be easier to offer a 
 story as belated as this if it could be mentioned that 
 the work on it was done before the war ; it has seemed 
 strange enough to be going on with mere mechani- 
 cal revision seated, as it were, with one's knitting 
 at the spectacle of the world's agony since August of 
 last year. 
 
 GRASS VALLEY, CALIFORNIA 
 July, 1915 
 
 461723 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 PART I 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A MAIL had arrived in camp by means of a man on 
 horseback who yelled from across the river. He was 
 not kept waiting long. A boat shot out from the oppo- 
 site bluff strongly rowed by a young fellow, bare- 
 headed, in his shirt-sleeves, hot from the drawing- 
 tent whence he had rushed to seize the ferryman's 
 job. Horses and whatever pertained to the road 
 were kept on the other side where there was no 
 road, but a few hoof- and wagon-tracks, when travel 
 was brisk, came in touch eventually with a stage- 
 station somewhere in the desert. This was a locat- 
 ing-camp. 
 
 Scarth, the engineer in charge, sat on the side of 
 his cot smoking and smiling to himself : he was read- 
 ing a four-sheet letter from his wife. The lines ran 
 swiftly from edge to edge of the page every inch 
 was covered in her small, nervous, precipitate hand 
 much used and mal-used in this kind of correspon- 
 dence. She was giving him warm her descrip- 
 tion of the christening ceremonies bestowed on their 
 youngest, the infant daughter Scarth had never seen. 
 Caroline was a brave little woman, at least her hus- 
 band called her so ; but she had not been brave enough 
 to "have" her baby anywhere near his present field 
 
 3 
 
:;.;Y:; : : ; THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 of work. Hence these thick letters from her in the 
 home of her New England girlhood, where she 
 abode with her little son and where the baby had come 
 upon the scene, to him in his grimy tent, with the 
 clean nonsense of the boys for society, and, for christ- 
 enings and so on, the silent self-watch of proud father- 
 hood and always the work on his mind. 
 
 His field was a place of such geographical privacy 
 that you reached it by three hundred miles of stage- 
 line and the wagon-tracks at the same time he 
 shared the un-privacy of a camp of men, where your 
 safe-box is a portmanteau which has been in the river 
 and refuses to lock, and your secretary a canvas war- 
 bag that locks with brass eyelets and a piece of rope. 
 A prudent man would have regularly burned those 
 wifely screeds, which spared nothing in their inti- 
 macy, but Scarth was a better "sport" than that: if 
 anything should happen to him, he knew what the 
 boys would do in regard to private letters. But he 
 did not propose that anything should happen or 
 rather he never thought about it. He expected to live 
 and see the kiddies grow up, and the little girl some 
 day would like to read of her own christening in her 
 mother's handwriting. 
 
 But a rose a pale pink, withered rose that drops 
 out of a letter which has spent a week in a Western 
 mail-bag ! what is a man in camp to do with a thing 
 like that? Scarth looked at it and smiled and laid it 
 down gingerly on the cot beside him ; and presently 
 he read that the rose when fresh had come from the 
 wreath around the christening-bowl, the same having 
 
 4 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 been more festively in evidence at his and Caroline's 
 wedding in its normal use as the old Baxter punch- 
 bowl. 
 
 A whirl-blast dervished up the canon, entered the 
 tent without ceremony, left considerable dust and 
 departed with the rose. But its mission, as such things 
 go, was finished in that ghost of fragrance lingering 
 in the paper with its subtle power of quickening latent 
 memories. There were roses in the borders and roses 
 all over the Baxter house, five six summers ago, 
 and the bed-linen and bureau-drawers smelled of rose- 
 leaves dried, when he courted his wife there soberly 
 in the sight of her people downstairs, and went up- 
 stairs to dream of her alone. . . . Well; this christen- 
 ing was a May christening, after the usual storm which 
 "shakes the darling buds" of New England's May. 
 He remembered how at this season the furnace would 
 be shut down punctually and sweet-smelling fires of 
 apple-tree trimmings lighted in the parlor grates. It 
 was one of those 1836 houses, with matched parlors 
 which might have been named " Purity " and " Peace," 
 and of course it was a house immaculate. You looked 
 from room to room when the doors were apart they 
 were as like as two sisters, the front parlor a little 
 more dignified, the back one a trifle cozier, with a 
 modern piano in place of the great sofa in the front 
 room and not so many or so formal tables of shining 
 mahogany veneered. And as the mind of one sister 
 often repeats with a slight difference the impressions 
 of another, the tall, twin mirrors at the top of each 
 room endlessly duplicated and confused each other's 
 
 5 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 reflections upon whatever passed within their lim- 
 ited range of vision. The mirrors would have been 
 crowded that day, when the guests were assembling 
 and the christening-party passed up the handsome 
 old rooms to the place of family solemnities. Old Dr. 
 Wilson, who was with them in all their vital events, 
 never had to be told where to take his stand. 
 
 Caroline wrote of the cherry trees, white with blos- 
 soms, that looked in through the large, clear-paned 
 windows, fairly shedding light on the occasion, and 
 how the robins kept up their shouting all through 
 the hush before the minister's words. The whole 
 communion of saints was there the Baxter saints, 
 as Caroline called the elders of her family gathered 
 to witness one more Baxter baby started on the same 
 good old positive way. Scarth had seen enough of 
 life in other places to know the value of a little nar- 
 rowness when the " greater love " and a great sin- 
 cerity and faithfulness went therewith. He prized it 
 all he dwelt on the scene, in his wife's words, with 
 tender, humorous appreciation. The great-aunts in 
 their best silks and shoulder- wraps seated in draftless 
 corners, the young cousins smiling around in smart 
 spring costumes ; the little bud, whose party it was, 
 borne proudly up the room in a drift of snowy long- 
 clothes and the sweetest of shawls hooded about her 
 silky head ; Caroline and little son in summer white 
 son in short socks for the first time that spring (no 
 sparing of detail here) and his fair curls cropped be- 
 low his ears, going from one to another of the relatives 
 dutifully putting out a shy, brown hand. 
 
 6 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Caroline's parents had both died young leaving her 
 without brother or sister. As to advice, she had been 
 adopted by practically all the aunts and great-aunts, 
 but her home had been always with Uncle Benjamin 
 Baxter, a widower, and in that house her natural ad- 
 viser would have been Cousin Olivia who never 
 gave advice. When the expected baby proved to be 
 a girl, family opinion decided that she ought to be 
 another Olivia Baxter Cousin Olivia saying noth- 
 ing. Caroline taking a deep breath for what she 
 knew must come announced that the name would 
 be Engracia : she said it conclusively, and though not 
 quite strong as yet physically, her Baxter will was in 
 no degree impaired. A stupefied silence followed. 
 As no one was prepared with a good argument, the 
 poor ones came first 
 
 i " You have named one child for the Scarths already, 
 my dear: why go back to that Spanish woman?" 
 
 Caroline dealt once more with this persistent fal- 
 lacy respecting her husband's mother's extraction. 
 "She wasn't Spanish! Judge Ludwell's daughter 
 Engracia was no more Spanish than we are." 
 
 " Then, if you want to name the baby for her, why 
 not call her * Grace,' and have done with it? How do 
 you pronounce * Engracia' ?" 
 
 "I don't pronounce it; but I like it mis-pro- 
 nounced better than Grace proper, so to speak." 
 
 " But how did it come into the family if there is no 
 Spanish blood?" 
 
 " Because " Caroline had told this several times 
 before, but no one remembers the complications of 
 
 7 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 another family's past "Judge Ludwell made his 
 first trip to California long before he went there to 
 stay when everything was Spanish. He did n't 
 marry a Spanish woman he was married already 
 but he liked their names. He came home and named 
 his baby daughter, just born, * Engracia.' Years after, 
 when she was grown, he went back about the time 
 of the gold-rush ; and Hal's father took a holiday and 
 went out there and married her but it was no holi- 
 day to get her! That is the beginning of Engracia 
 in the Scarth family. . . . Hal wrote me to do just 
 as I pleased, but if I wanted to please him, the baby's 
 name, if it should be a girl ..." So the matter was 
 settled, and the family not being unused to little 
 defeats in a good cause accepted the superfluous 
 vowels ; and certainly the Name did not spoil the 
 Day. 
 
 The woman whose memory it honored had blue, 
 dark-lashed eyes, as you see in her miniature by 
 Stuart Newton, one of the few he is known to have 
 done, painted in England and perhaps a labor of 
 friendship. Henry Scarth went over there as Secre- 
 tary of Legation, a post he could hardly afford, but 
 he and his young wife made a great personal success, 
 as in her case this miniature might witness. The fore- 
 head is extremely clever not large but packed. The 
 stiff curls of the period shade it and droop against a 
 cheek of purest oval. The nose is delicate, aquiline, 
 joined to the broad brows with a deep depression. 
 The eyes are far apart and the mouth, with its short 
 upper lip and exquisite corners, would be a valuable 
 
 S 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 possession in any family; there could not be a 
 sweeter woman's mouth than Engracia Ludwell 
 Scarth's who joined her good pride of Southern 
 birth to one of Northern, equally good, and softened 
 both prides with love, and deepened the love by trials 
 in the flesh, and lifted it, through self-denial, almost 
 within reach of certain ideals that governed both 
 pride and love with her. They were lost at sea going 
 around the Horn in response to that invitation so 
 long waited for to them both from the old Judge 
 when his heart began to soften, too late. So there 
 were no grandparents on either side, for these young 
 Scarths. 
 
 Caroline had read and admired (what time she was 
 looking for evidences of talent on " Hal's side " that 
 she might of it boast to her own) the book his father 
 wrote when a young man fresh from taking his degree 
 at Harvard ; it is long since out of print. It was he who 
 crossed the plains on horseback, as we have heard, 
 early in the fifties and wrote engagingly of his jour^ 
 ney and of the excited little city of the sand-hills, just 
 beginning then to send for its wives and sisters, and 
 there would have been a few grown-up daughters ; 
 Judge Ludwell had one, this exquisite Engracia, but 
 of course he could n't expect to keep her in that rout 
 of suitors. What apparently hurt him most was, that 
 among them all she chose the young Bostonian and 
 went back with him to his frigid East just as the West 
 was unfolding glorious banners of prosperity. 
 
 A deeper, unconfessed offense, it was said, lay in the 
 traveler's point of view, revealed with the artlessness of 
 
 9 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 young authorship in his book issued about the time 
 of his wooing. The Judge was a Southerner, and you 
 could not speak of San Francisco in those days and 
 leave out the ruling social element, or that which 
 claimed to rule much the most picturesque " ma- 
 terial " in the new city ; but it certainly did keep alive 
 a sense of personal responsibility which called peace- 
 ful citizens out on the dueling-ground and sometimes 
 dispensed with even that formality, and other habits, 
 strictly " among gentlemen," which may not have ap- 
 pealed to the young New Englander except on his 
 literary and perhaps sarcastic side. There was in fact 
 scarcely anything the North or South could say of each 
 other, in those days, which failed to irritate. 
 
 Outwardly, the Judge became reconciled to his son- 
 in-law, but never to his literary ambitions or to his 
 Northern birth. He was now a man of wealth, and 
 rich men are easily jealous of the great stuff in their 
 possession : it hurts them to give it away to those who 
 pretend to hold it negligible, or show no aptitude 
 for either making or keeping it. Why waste money 
 on that writing-chap? Engracia Scarth asked no 
 favors naturally and was as haughty-minded as her 
 husband. And so there was little to leave this grand- 
 child, besides the dark-lashed eyes and the long- 
 voweled Spanish name, which, the aunts said, did not 
 " go well " with Scarth. It went well with it in mar- 
 riage, however ; for in spite of ups and downs and a 
 trying unworldliness about money, these two left be- 
 hind them the memory of great happiness together. 
 With the money safe in the male line and the old 
 
 10 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Judge long in his grave, it could have been only some 
 sentiment connected with his memory (a kindly and 
 a generous one when all is said) which led the dis- 
 inherited Scarths to call their first-born after him, 
 Thomas Ludwell the only living Thomas Ludwell 
 being Cousin Tom, capitalist, of San Francisco, quite 
 a stranger to the Eastern branch and unaware of a 
 little kinsman who had stepped into his name be- 
 fore he had a son of his own to bear it. 
 
 The Judge in his will passed over his own son 
 a disappointing life, with rather too much of the 
 "ruling element" in it and left the bulk of his for- 
 tune to his son's son, named for him, first cousin to 
 Henry Scarth on his discredited mother's side. It 
 gave the young man an early start in life and a seat 
 at the great game of finance on the West Coast; 
 though there were some bad losers who called it by 
 a ruder name. But the old Judge would have been 
 pleased if he could have lived to see results so far 
 beyond the wildest dreams of his own time, when 
 dreamers, as we know, did not stint themselves. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE Ludwells and the Scarths went their separate 
 ways for a number of years, with the continent be- 
 tween them. Henry Scarth's wedding-cards when he 
 married Caroline Baxter were duly sent to Thomas 
 Ludwell and wife, and Anna the wife asked who they 
 were and was told, and forgot all about them. The 
 baby Engracia was four, perhaps, and little Tom nine, 
 when the Marysville stage set them all down one mid- 
 summer day, with large luggage around them, under 
 an enormous California live-oak that roofed the road 
 and shaded the front of a long, double-verandahed 
 house planted opposite, without fence or any other 
 preliminaries between. And while Scarth " settled " 
 with 'Gene Thompson, driver, and the stage-team 
 drank from the horse-trough platformed against the 
 oak, Caroline, with her offspring around her, stood 
 and took a first shrinking look at her new home. 
 
 Little Tom, whose latest ideas of home included 
 Uncle Benjamin's gateposts and big front lawn, 
 announced, not without satisfaction in the change, 
 "Why, it's right on the road!" and undoubtedly 
 it was. 
 
 That evening, when a strong pink and sallow after- 
 glow pierced the rifted chambers of the oak, and 
 turned the dust-wake of a passing team to pastel- 
 colored haze, Caroline, seated by her man on their own 
 
 12 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 front steps at last, with the children asleep upstairs 
 in their own bedrooms (small and queer and stuffy), 
 regretting- nothing and happy as a girl, began at 
 once with the question closest that moment to her 
 heart: 
 
 " How long do you think we shall stay ? " 
 
 "The Lord knows, girl I" 
 
 " Does n't the company know?" 
 
 " The company says it 's up to me. The ' company ' 
 is chiefly Schuyler Rivington." 
 
 " And what are you most afraid of ? Schuyler Riv- 
 ington?" 
 
 " Him least of all you can talk to him ! But there 
 is always the ignorance of those you can't talk to, and 
 ignorance means impatience quite justifiable. Land 
 schemes are slow, and we all judge things half done 
 unless they happen to be things we have done our- 
 selves." 
 
 She sighed. " When I look about this queer old 
 place only half look I just go wild with its pos- 
 sibilities!" 
 
 " I expect it will be the same outside." 
 
 "Then let's be wild! Let's do something while 
 we are here." 
 
 "We'll abolish the kitchen-porch," said Scarth 
 indulgently. "The company at least can afford to 
 keep us from typhoid. And we'll plough up that 
 chicken-compound which I suppose you have got 
 your eye on for a garden 
 
 " Hal ! " she cried, " what a nice boy you are to go 
 West with ! By the way, what was this place called ? 
 
 13 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Did n't you say it was an old road-house in the 
 fifties ?" 
 
 " Very much so ! Its name was ' Pete Smith's ' 
 and it 's ' Pete Smith's ' still. You '11 find it scrawled 
 on all your parcels from Torres ville." 
 
 Caroline laughed. " That 's realism ! But it is n't 
 going to stay ' Pete Smith's.' What do you think of 
 * Roadside ' for a name ? Did you hear what Tom 
 said? That child gets right down to the facts; he 
 always sees the main point first." 
 
 She was young, and she cared about names and a 
 great many other trifles, when Scarth first took the 
 management of the Torres Tract and shut up the best 
 "bar" on the road. Torres ville had reason to thank 
 him ; but the native must have his little joke at new- 
 comers who arrive after the real work of pioneering 
 is over, and set up confident standards of their own, 
 and look about them in the spirit of that well-known 
 condescension in Easterners. 
 
 "Say, Bill," one old rancher informed another as 
 two teams stopped to water at the public trough be- 
 neath the oak, "this ain't goin' to be * Pete's' any 
 more now the new folks has come. This here 's ' Road- 
 side,' and don't you forgit it." 
 
 " That so ? Well, where '11 ye git a place round 
 here that ain't ' roadside' ?" 
 
 And indeed this part of California is not a country 
 of private parks and long carriage-approaches. 
 
 Scarth found the old road-house central for his 
 duties which took him all over the big, puzzling 
 domain, studying its possibilities and piecing out its 
 
 14 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 revenues in the day of small things. Caroline went 
 with him, through the long waiting weeks of the end- 
 less California autumn which lingers until Christmas, 
 dropping a little snow on late rosebuds as you go up 
 into the foothills. They rode the horses of the country, 
 or they took a child between them in the box-buggy, 
 a lunch, and a novel for mamma, stowed beneath 
 the seat: climbing long hills toward the placer- 
 country and picnicking on the edges of deep, silent, 
 dusty woods. They looked down into dry gulches, 
 deserted, once swarming with men. When he told 
 her the names of the dead little mining-towns they 
 rode through, she laughed because Bret Harte, 
 whom she was re-reading, has located " You Bet " 
 and " Red Dog " immortally in another county. They 
 argued the point he meticulous as to maps, she 
 sticking to her essential truths of fiction. 
 
 But as to their own Marysville road and Marysville 
 stage, 'Gene Thompson was not, of course, Yuba 
 Bill, neither were they "Pete Smiths," but there 
 was no doubt about the road and the old, two-seated 
 jerky. Jack Hamlin might have assisted pretty Mrs. 
 Brown in her green veil up the steps of their own 
 piazza, while Colonel Starbottle, widowed of his gal- 
 lant opportunity, headed gloomily the male contin- 
 gent, making as one throat for the bar. 
 
 "Are your glasses charged, gentlemen ? " sadly 
 the Colonel's ghost would be cheated in these days ! 
 
 She may have feared a little for her children, if this 
 were to be their permanent home. But nothing is 
 permanent in the lives of engineers. It made things 
 
 15 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 beautifully simple for her. Caroline was not too fond 
 of the kind and talkative East when there; though 
 she swore by it and saw nothing, and nobody, half so 
 good, wherever else she went. She had a social con- 
 science all too easily lulled into dangerous repose ; a 
 lonely child, she had grown up a dreamy girl in a 
 house full of books and of time to read them. Cousin 
 Olivia had never tried to give her "good habits." 
 She was unworldly because to her the world was a 
 small, selected circle she had parted from three thou- 
 sand miles away, and she was in no hurry to make 
 a new one. Having few books, meantime, and no 
 one of her own age all day to talk to, she chewed the 
 cud of memory: she was steeped in quotations 
 frequently incorrect rags and tags of poetry ; every- 
 thing she saw reminded her of something else, espe- 
 cially something haunting she had read. After a 
 while a daughter grew up who could understand 
 (and had a better verbal memory for old quotes), and 
 a son was growing up who could understand his 
 father's outdoor dreams as well. 
 
 It was the following April when Caroline, lying 
 awake listening to the birds at sunrise, thought out a 
 new staircase to go up from her husband's office where 
 the old mahogany bar came away, leaving marred 
 woodwork and stains on the floor. By another spring 
 it had gone up, precisely as she planned, with one 
 turn and a ravishing glimpse, through a little high 
 window to light the landing, straight into the green- 
 and-gold chambers of the oak. Often, passing up and 
 down, absorbed in some commonplace housekeeping 
 
 16 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 reverie, her absent eyes would encounter two other 
 pairs of eyes in the faces of her children, startling her 
 in their sweetness against a loophole of blue sky. It 
 was like breaking into heaven unawares, while you 
 are thinking of the toughness of valley beef. 
 
 As for the old staircase (it was merely stairs) that 
 choked an ugly passage between former barroom and 
 former " Ladies' Parlor," they abolished it and took 
 passage into parlor, making a charming, long sitting- 
 room, with a boxed beam across the ceiling where 
 the old partition came away, and French windows 
 opening on what would be the garden now, un- 
 speakable ! But in front ! Listen to this, Cousin 
 Olivia of the roses : a hedge of oleander trees not 
 bushes taller than your head, meeting the veranda- 
 railing at each end, and behind the screen they made 
 on one side, the remains of an old apple orchard. 
 The trees were stooping, crooked, unkempt, the 
 oleanders were ragged and dusty ; but, wait a year 
 or two ! grass, cool and short, with shadows of 
 the low trees upon it, bright garden-beds beyond, 
 a long brick walk on the north side in front of the 
 sitting-room windows Heaven, we are told, lies 
 about us in our infancy, and heaven knows it is not 
 our dreams and the foolishness they lead to we wish 
 to forget when we are old, but the mornings when 
 we woke to the cock-crow of reality, and saw life in 
 its baldness and its risks with a heart full of fear, and 
 spake hard truths, not truth, to those we loved, and 
 quenched their dreams and parted with our own in 
 the name of this world's prudence. 
 
 17 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Another year, they opened an outlook to the west 
 through trees which made their upper rooms dark 
 in winter ; and " lo, the valley hollow" the Sacra- 
 mento Valley, not " lamp-bestarred," for it is a mon- 
 strous, empty valley below little " Roadside " and 
 the other little roadsides with their far-scattered 
 lights. The only signals at night are the great stars, 
 the only boundary by day, in this direction, is the 
 blue, pure line of the Coast Range one hundred and 
 fifty miles away. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 " IT strikes me they do you rather well, your com- 
 pany." Cousin Tom looked about him, gratified if 
 somewhat surprised at the changes. He remembered 
 "Pete Smith's" when it served the public on that 
 road. He and his charming wife were up on their 
 first, experimental, visit to his Eastern relatives : he 
 had not pressed himself this was the Scarths' third 
 year on the Torres Tract. 
 
 Scarth said nothing, but Caroline gayly took up 
 the word : " Company not at all, Cousin Tom ! This 
 is our own private extravagance. The company 
 bought the house and handed it over to us and I 
 wish you could have seen it ! " 
 
 Anna Ludwell laughed, but Cousin Tom looked 
 rather blank. His impression was, and perfectly cor- 
 rect, that Hal Scarth's salary left little margin for 
 this sort of thing and would not be largely increased 
 unless he could make a paying proposition out of 
 the old grant. 
 
 " You don't know, I suppose, how long you are 
 likely to be here ? " he asked his cousin significantly. 
 
 Scarth was the younger, but by nature unfitted to 
 take a suggestion of this sort from a relative and a 
 wealthier man. 
 
 " Oh, no," he answered lightly. 
 
 But Caroline made haste to justify "This is the 
 
 19 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 place our children will remember as home : we are 
 pretty sure to stay as long as that." To Anna Lud- 
 well, sure of sympathy, she added, " There was n't a 
 closet in the house, and you could n't breathe in the 
 same room with those old wall-papers." 
 
 " I should think you would get tired if your di- 
 rectors don't," the men's dialogue continued. 
 
 " I shall not get tired," said Caroline's engineer. 
 
 " Then you must like to work for nothing," said 
 Anna's capitalist. 
 
 The women smiled at each other in mutual reas- 
 surance, doubting how far these cousin-husbands 
 would go. 
 
 " I don't work for nothing," said Scarth, " but I 
 expect to wait awhile for my pay." 
 
 He rose, and they all went out to look at a rich 
 spring sunset that suddenly irradiated the room. It 
 was the morning room upstairs where two windows 
 had been joined by breaking out a third between 
 that came down to the floor. They stepped outside 
 on a balcony open to the sky. 
 
 " That 's a pretty foreground." Cousin Tom con- 
 sidered favorably the effect of the dim little farms 
 overpowered by that mounting splendor. Here a 
 hill-orchard turned its late blossoms to the flame, or 
 a spire of poplars leaped into glory, or a wave of 
 pale young wheat streaked the heather-colored dusk 
 with silver. 
 
 " All very pretty as it lies there " 
 
 " Very practical," said Scarth. " That 's where our 
 infant revenues come from ; but watch and you '11 
 
 20 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 see us grow. We shall climb out of the valley in a 
 few years and take in the lower foothills : it 's bound 
 to be a great fruit country, this Oregon can't show 
 any better apples than Penn Valley and Pet Hill." 
 
 " * Pet Hill ! ' " Caroline echoed ; she wished the 
 others not to miss her joy in California's early no- 
 menclature : but they were only politely amused 
 it was not so new to them. 
 
 " I can perfectly see why you love it here," said 
 Anna Ludwell cordially she could n't of course : 
 a very finished little worldling with a heart of gold ; 
 but that did not rob her of the pleasure of saying so 
 to a woman she wholly pitied and had begun to like. 
 
 Caroline's face lighted up ; she answered in good 
 faith : "It is an ideal life for the children." 
 
 " While they are children," Anna permitted her- 
 self to add. 
 
 " Hal is rather cut off from men of his own class 
 
 though we rather avoid the word." 
 
 " Don't you think we have classes, then ? " 
 " Oh, certainly ; but it does n't matter what we 
 think : he has to get at these people here ; he has to 
 work with them, somehow. It would n't do to begin 
 by setting up to be different and he does n't feel 
 different. In his work "earth" has always meant 
 something to be moved, to be got rid of, or to use in 
 some other shape. Here it means people, and people 
 he must have. He lives in his farmers ! They are a te- 
 dious lot, but he strangely likes the poor fellows. He 
 tolled them in here he fasted and prayed for them 
 
 he sorted them out with sobs and tears, and 
 
 21 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 there were none of the 'largest size' " she ran on 
 gayly behind her husband's unconscious back. 
 " Their little ranches he has just about created with 
 his faith and frantic inducements and their hard work 
 and the company's wasted water ; it all depends on 
 their patience and some things he hopes to beat into 
 their heads (of 'solid ivory'!) before he's done with 
 them what he will be able to do : I mean his dream 
 for the future of the grant " she stopped abruptly, 
 finding herself on too intimate ground. 
 
 Anna listened, wondering if a husband can be 
 altogether delighted to have his business (a sacred 
 word with her husband) made the theme of his wife's 
 raillery, even quite in the family. Self-contained and 
 somewhat literal persons have time for such reflec- 
 tions while the nervous speakers are cracking on 
 before any chance breeze of sympathy. The breeze 
 dropped a little : Caroline became aware of a slight 
 halt in the attention of her listener. Anna had lent 
 half an ear to the men's conversation. She was sure 
 that her husband had inside knowledge, acquainted 
 as he must be with the history of the grant, by which 
 to gauge his cousin's chances of success. It was 
 painful to her kind heart to hear them tilting at each 
 other with all the advantage on the stronger side. 
 
 The men were enjoying themselves, after the 
 marry-come-up style that obtained in their boyhood. 
 They had shared a few terms in preparatory schools 
 before Tom Ludwell entered Yale : his mother his 
 father was a cipher believed in Eastern training 
 for her son of the Golden West. Since that time they 
 
 22 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 had never met, but almost at sight the old relations 
 and almost the same points at issue were resumed. 
 
 The Torres Tract had a history which has been 
 told in several different ways : without being subtle, 
 we may call it an unholy grab. Such land grabs 
 were common as every one knows, and legal in the 
 time of them. It included water rights, ditches and 
 defunct placer mines, and now farmers as a last 
 resort. 
 
 A company of Eastern capitalists had bought it for 
 the value of its mines. If the Californians who sold it 
 knew, they neglected to mention that a certain long- 
 fought battle in the courts had been won by the farm- 
 ers, which would shut those placers down till omelets 
 are made without breaking eggs ; till you can tear out 
 the breast of a mountain and flail it down fine with 
 iron streams of water and send those streams away 
 cleansed of the deed, with no burden of sand to dump 
 upon the farmers' crops or add to the bed of the puz- 
 zled Sacramento. The farmers' word was now the 
 miners' law, and everyone who owned a placer mine 
 was trying to unload. 
 
 They had their bad bargain on their hands and 
 they sent out a man in the strength of his forty 
 years (when a man expects trouble) to see what 
 could be made of it. Scarth must have known that 
 he would be side-tracked on the road to professional 
 reputation he probably did not worry about that. 
 Reputations take care of themselves: his had pro- 
 cured him this work which called for an honest man ; 
 after that, for one with "nerve, patience, initiative, 
 
 23 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 and a varied practical training to draw upon " 
 thus the offer had been flatteringly worded. There 
 was nothing flattering about the salary. But what he 
 and Caroline wanted was a home, founded on a job 
 which might be likened to a serial rather than a 
 short story as with most of their home propositions 
 heretofore. 
 
 They came out, wild as their own children with 
 the ancient joy in the beginnings of things. It is not 
 every day a man is given a free hand and sixty 
 thousand acres of land and told to go make a coun- 
 try 1 Very little money all this while : the man must 
 find his own way out of his troubles. Now, let rich 
 cousins with their fatted securities ask wearily, " Do 
 you like to work for nothing?" 
 
 Scarth vaunted to his wife in their bedroom that 
 night, " Good Lord ! before I 'd be Tom ! He's only 
 four years older than I am and he J s got it all : he 's 
 done. He couldn't make himself poor if he tried, 
 and he 'd sooner die than be poor. How much of the 
 man is left after that ! " 
 
 " Of the boy, perhaps," said Caroline, who felt a 
 weakness for these Ludwells creeping over her. " I 
 think Anna likes him pretty well if he is rich. Most 
 of their friends are in the same parlous state. It 
 gives them what they want for Clare." 
 
 "And by and by there will be something she 
 wants they can't give her : they are n't necessarily 
 making life easy for Clare, if there is anything in 
 her." 
 
 " Well, I should n't worry about Clare. Of course 
 
 24 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 they will have their regrets and they won't be the 
 same as ours ; but I would n't brag " she backed 
 up to him to be set free where a hook had caught in 
 her lace yoke behind " I would n't brag about my 
 abstemiousness as a father. You could n't be trusted 
 one moment with Cousin Tom's income if Engracia 
 were ten years older. You would buy her a pearl 
 necklace the first thing." 
 
 "I'd buy one for you and you'd 'exchange' 
 it for something for Engracia." 
 
 That Cousin Tom became his birthright as Head 
 of the Family goes entirely without saying. He 
 used capitals as his grandfather had before him, and 
 thought the old Judge did excellent well to spell 
 Property with another capital, and to leave his un- 
 mutilated to carry on the name. But gentlemen of 
 that fine old feudal type looked after the junior 
 branches and the female line. When he learned from 
 his wife that the Scarths had come to the question 
 of a school for young Tom, he asked, "What are 
 they going to make of him? " 
 
 "Oh, he's made," Anna replied: "he's cut out 
 for his father's profession. They don't expect to 
 give him a university degree, but they want him to 
 have the same preparation some good classical 
 school." 
 
 Cousin Tom, raised his eyebrows : " Well, good 
 classical schools are expensive; but they may be 
 right. He would meet a set of boys it might be 
 useful for him to know." 
 
 25 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Anna, in behalf of the absent, exclaimed, "They 
 would never think of that at Tom's age." 
 
 " Friendships begin at that age. Engineers should 
 make friends with Capital: they want him to get 
 on, don't they?" 
 
 "In their sense, of course: they don't expect him 
 to be wealthy." 
 
 "What does an engineer want with Greek and 
 Latin?" 
 
 " They have their ideas very good ones. Caro- 
 line says he '11 never touch a classic, even English, 
 out of school : he 's all construction, mechanics ; and 
 the masters at those boy universities in the East are 
 
 men " 
 
 "In the East!" Cousin Tom smiled dryly: 
 " nothing good enough out here, I suppose ? How 
 old is Tom?" 
 
 " About twelve. But he must go to some school. 
 They have been sending him to a district school 
 where he is the only gentleman's son they are 
 very amusing about it so afraid of the word. 
 But I can see Caroline cringe at the accent he is be- 
 ginning to pick up ; that boneless English with a 
 swagger to it " 
 
 " That 's all foolishness : a boy can't go around 
 with his English wrapped in a napkin." 
 
 " He can be sent to a school where the question 
 does n't come up ; it does seem as if our own tongue 
 should come as a matter of course. We don't want 
 to make our children prigs, listening to themselves 
 talk, nor is it nice to have them talk as Tom is 
 
 26 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 beginning to. I sympathize entirely with Caroline. 
 Engracia she gives lessons herself, but a boy must 
 mix with other boys." 
 
 " If they can find any good enough." Cousin 
 Tom's intentions left room for a little sarcasm. As 
 the outcome of this conversation he offered, through 
 his wife, to " stand" young Tom's schooling and 
 mentioned a school in the East which he might have 
 chosen for a boy of his own. His wife adored him 
 openly for his handsome way of doing things : she 
 had had this end in view all the time. 
 
 But the Scarths, it seemed, had decided upon St. 
 Luke's already. They thanked Cousin Tom in Caro- 
 line's best phrases, but the offer was declined ; they 
 were able to manage it themselves. The business 
 man said nothing, wondering meanwhile how in the 
 deuce Hal Scarth did manage it. 
 
 Some swift years passed with increasing friend- 
 ship on the women's part and the familiar contra- 
 dictoriness on the men's, expressed in offhand lan- 
 guage. Engracia's turn had come, and she went 
 East to a school as distinguished for girls as Tom's 
 boy university, and Cousin Tom came out flat with 
 the question, " Has Caroline any money of her own ?" 
 
 " I don't know: she has relatives in the East who 
 are very good to her." 
 
 "I 'ma relative but there is reason in all things." 
 
 " Engracia is not a boarding-pupil at Miss Deane's : 
 she stays with friends of Caroline's not smart per- 
 sons just what you would want for a young girl. 
 It 's the tone and they save in other ways. They 
 
 27 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 keep only their Chinaman in winter ; Caroline spends 
 very little on dress relatives again. There is a 
 * Cousin Olivia' whose gowns she comes in for : it's 
 their little joke that Cousin Olivia buys all her things 
 with strict reference to how they will look on Caro- 
 line. It 's really a great mercy : cheap clothes don't 
 do at all for Caroline." 
 
 " Well, she 's a clever woman : why can't she keep 
 on with Engracia herself? " 
 
 " Teach her altogether, you mean ? " 
 
 "Yes, why not? Caroline is well educated." 
 
 " Not for a teacher ; and she could n't teach music 
 and dancing that sort of thing." 
 
 " Is that sort of thing so necessary in Engracia's 
 case ? If they want to send her East, why don't they 
 do something practical? put her in some school 
 like Pratt's Institute." 
 
 Anna was scandalized by the mere name ; it had 
 not come in her way to know what a Pratt's Insti- 
 tute might be like. 
 
 " Certainly: where they teach all the new arts 
 and crafts and fit out any sort of talent or fraction of 
 a talent, and prepare a girl to earn her living." 
 
 " Some man will earn a living for Engracia," said 
 Anna coldly. " She is going to be a very attractive 
 girl." 
 
 " It is a fallacy, Anna, to suppose, because a girl is 
 attractive, she is sure to marry. How many of our 
 handsomest women in San Francisco have made 
 themselves old maids by their own perseverance." 
 
 "Engracia will marry," Anna nodded: "she may 
 
 28 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 not marry wisely, but she will not persevere in shirk- 
 ing the experiment. She has - " Anna hesitated for 
 an adjective delicate enough to define some trait she 
 discerned in Engracia, corresponding to the slight 
 rift between the life-line and the head-line in her palm. 
 
 " You think she might plunge, eh?" 
 
 " Only for one reason. She has imagination enough 
 to complete the picture if some man can give her a 
 good start on high grounds, you know. She would 
 expect a great deal, but she might think she had got 
 it when she had n't at all." 
 
 " You have rather more opinion of Tom's common 
 sense ? " 
 
 " But I like her. She is going to develop great 
 charm type, that is it : the rarest thing in beauty 
 we have left." 
 
 " Oh, is that so?" said Cousin Tom, amused at his 
 wife's seriousness, and her passion for making a 
 theory to fit each individual case. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IT was March, spring of nineteen hundred and four : 
 Japan and Russia in the lime-light, great impa- 
 tience in the big world for its daily paper ; and the 
 Marysville stage, disgracefully late, plodding up the 
 valley with news of that astonishing war. 
 
 Scarth had closed his desk early. The big room 
 downstairs, besides being the home of drafts (Caro- 
 line's admired staircase landed just opposite the 
 mouth of a chimney built when wood was cheap), 
 harbored presences which make a man restless : yet 
 there was nothing essentially regrettable in the ab- 
 sence of both their grown-up children, which left the 
 house so wistful as the rainy winter twilights came 
 on. Engracia was in New York giving an extra year 
 to music, chaperoned by one of those numerous dear 
 cousins to whom they feared no obligation. She was 
 a year older than Clare Ludwell, who would be a very 
 select bud in San Francisco next season that was 
 another sort of efflorescence. Engracia, in spite of 
 Cousin Anna's prediction, might very conceivably be 
 called on to face a life of high-minded spinsterhood, 
 but she could n't be expected to without the mind, and 
 something to put in it besides dreams. Caroline had 
 begun to admonish herself of dreams now that she no 
 longer knew what her only girl was dreaming about. 
 She felt it wiser to keep the waters moving. 
 
 30 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Tom was where any young man, that year, would 
 have thanked his stars to be : his own father envied 
 him his front seat at the war, and mocked the mother 
 of her fears yet gently. This was the boy's fourth 
 year from home and her face began to show it. 
 
 An aged bull-terrier, victim of the fire habit, rose 
 up stiffly, yawned and followed Scarth upstairs. He 
 entered his mistress's presence with fond, obsequious 
 head, wagged across to her and let himself down on 
 the edge of her skirt: "Ye gods ! another fire !" 
 
 " Has he been out at all to-day ? " she asked guilt- 
 ily : it was her task to exercise Bran being the only 
 known means of making her walk regularly herself. 
 
 " He went with Moon when he carried scraps to 
 the hens ; old gun-fighter feeding hens ! " Scarth 
 poked the obese sinner with his foot and Bran rolled 
 over and lolled at him shamelessly. Caroline put on 
 her raincoat and buttoned it, talking to Bran. 
 
 " Come, you old baby, we must do our piazza-stunt, 
 
 bear up!" 
 
 She had heard the belated stage drive past, having 
 left the mail, but pretended that she had n't; mail- 
 times were a form of torture to her these days. Tom 
 had not been heard from since November. He was in 
 Korea, on his first job, shut up by winter and the war. 
 It was hardly conceivable that he had seen no fighting 
 
 still they could not hear. Her custom was to stir 
 about as the hour approached " any noise, bad or 
 good," to pass off the sickening moments of sus- 
 pense. The up-stage was frightfully irregular this 
 stormy weather. 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 On the stairs she encountered Moon, Chinese cook 
 and high factotum of the household. He held the wet 
 mail-pouch away from her skirt, but would not yield 
 it to any hand but that of " boss." 
 
 " Stage heap late ! No got garden - seed say 
 ' not up to him ' ; big wash - out Wyoming. 
 Can see for 'self in paper." Garden-seeds, nearly the 
 whole of Mrs. Scarth's summer annuals, had gone 
 astray ; 'Gene Thompson, covering his own position 
 in the matter, had asked (but this Moon did not re- 
 peat), " What in thunder she want to send way East 
 for, anyway? Ain't ther' no nurs'ries in California 
 good 'nough for her?" 
 
 Caroline followed the mail-bag, and Bran, much 
 relieved, returned to his fire. There was no thin gray 
 envelope with the blue Korean stamp. She threw off 
 her coat and stood at the window, watching the same 
 prospect, through the same blurring mist, the same 
 intermittent showers of drops from blowing trees 
 though the rain had ceased ; a faint yellowish streak, 
 low in the west, showed where another day was end- 
 ing, precisely like the day before. 
 
 " We shall find," said Scarth, observing his wife's 
 back, " that the boy's letters are held up in Tokio. 
 They are stopping everything out of Korea, now the 
 Japanese army is pushing through." 
 
 " Japan has not been pushing through all winter," 
 she answered wearily. 
 
 "We'll get them all in a bunch after a while. 
 There 's a military censorship, you know. They have 
 piles of stuff to go through." 
 
 32 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 He opened the evening paper, handing her with a 
 smile one of the new April magazines. With a smile 
 she refused it, and came and looked over his shoulder 
 instead. She alone was responsible for the theory 
 that "none of these West Coast dailies appeal to 
 me " ; it was through no meekness on her part that 
 the man always read them first. But these were spe- 
 cial times, and to-night there was a special reason 
 why he would have kept the paper from her if he 
 could, but of course he could n't ; the very item 
 she was filching now over his shoulder would infalli- 
 bly keep her awake till dawn. 
 
 " Danger to Americans in Korea. Our consul wired 
 for a force of marines from U.S. gunboat at Chemulpo 
 to protect life and property on American mining con- 
 cession at Unsan. Ladies sent down with strong 
 guard to Ping Yang." 
 
 If only Tom had been one of that strong guard, 
 but he was a hundred miles away in a separate 
 province. If troops were called for at armed and 
 garrisoned Unsan, how about lonely little Wiju ! 
 
 Some of those newspaper young gentlemen who 
 were not " at the front," disgusted because they 
 could n't get there and tired of the Japanese official 
 lie, had been working up rumors to make copy, 
 which the home papers eagerly spread. And here 
 was another shocker : 
 
 " Three hundred Cossacks encamped on the Peking 
 road. They have looted and occupied the village of 
 Maibong. Native inhabitants all fled to the moun- 
 tains." 
 
 33 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Harry, Wiju is very near the Peking road, and 
 Tom has only one white man ! " 
 
 "The natives, my dear, are absolute sheep: of 
 course they fled to the mountains. Cossacks are not 
 officered by Cossacks and what is a Cossack ? a 
 very good fellow, according to Tolstoy." 
 
 " Oh, Tolstoy 1 That was the Cossack at home ; 
 this is war ! " 
 
 "It's Tom ; that 's what it is." 
 
 "Well, then, it is Tom." Her lips trembled. "I 
 can't help it. Do you pretend that you are not anx- 
 ious too ? " 
 
 " It all sounds like poppy-cock to me," her wrath- 
 ful comforter insisted. "They are not likely to go 
 on scout by hundreds : fifty fellows, perhaps, on for- 
 age duty. If the people run away, they help them- 
 selves. They won't loot Uncle Sam much. As for 
 marines mixing in a nice mess that would kick 
 up in the State Department." 
 
 " Who can tell what may be happening out there? " 
 
 "We know what's happening in Washington. 
 The navy can't do that sort of thing without orders. 
 Come," he said, seeing that she pined just the 
 same and his arguments wearied her, " come, let 's 
 see about Wiju." 
 
 They had seen about Wiju, how often only the 
 atlas knew, since Tom went off there " on his own," 
 and made them so proud of his young responsibilities. 
 Wiju, apparently, had not moved from its corner in 
 the crooked yellow peninsula. While she hovered over 
 the Peking road which appeared to be the only road 
 
 34 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 in Korea, he, on the back of an envelope with a supe- 
 rior-pointed pencil, composed a cablegram to their 
 son. It was getting to be time on several accounts 
 the young man should be heard from. 
 
 He submitted it, and she thanked him rapturously, 
 though it startled her a little to find that he shared 
 her anxiety, after all. 
 
 " Could n't you simply say, * Come home/ and 
 leave out about 'work here if you want it?' I'm 
 afraid he won't want it. You don't cable him about 
 the work." 
 
 " Tom is a man," his father answered dryly ; " I 
 can't order him home." 
 
 Caroline assented with a pang of pride and appre- 
 hension. Yes, Tom was a man. There had been no 
 need to push him out of the nest. The Korean job 
 was his first offer, and he took it, of course, regard- 
 less of pay. He went off glorious on fifty the month, 
 expenses, and passage out and back, if he gave 
 satisfaction and stuck his three years out. He set his 
 teeth on the resolve that he would stick fast enough, 
 if the Lord would let him. 
 
 Nice things were said about his work in course of 
 time, which Cousin Tom heard in the company's 
 office and took pains should reach the young man's 
 parents. Cousin Tom was thoughtful in such ways ; 
 and it cheers the burdened rich to get another poor 
 relation comfortably off their minds, aside from the 
 satisfaction of seeing any young man make good in 
 a world so full of failures. 
 
 But when Tom's contract was up, he did not come 
 
 35 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 home and he did not renew it had been preached 
 to him by his sire that experience is " the road the 
 younger son must tread" in the profession that is 
 never learned and is always working itself out of a job. 
 
 " Experience is an engineer's capital," said Scarth, 
 senior. " Make your foundation broad. You won't 
 stop to broaden once you begin to climb." So Tom 
 broadened on to irrigation, which can give as many 
 falls as narrower things, with no more emoluments 
 noticeably to the square mile of steady worry ; and 
 Cousin Tom disapproved in some alarm. 
 
 " I would n't have him leave that company : they 
 mean to do well by him. What does he want to run 
 off for?" 
 
 " I expect he will do as he likes," said his father, 
 secretly tickled that the boy had done so, and asked 
 advice afterwards in the form of borrowing, by 
 steamer-mail, his father's best books on irrigation. 
 Men with great fortunes in trust may be excused for 
 hovering over the sons they are preparing for the 
 burden: not so the "light-runners" of this world. 
 Tom's opportunity had come from a native syndicate 
 of rich Koreans who were putting a tunnel through 
 a hill to lead water on to extensive rice-lands near 
 Wiju ; one of those broad, treeless valleys between 
 sudden mountains, beautiful in its fertile isolation, 
 floored with fields of rice and millet and beans, flocked 
 over by cloud-shadows and troops of birds. What 
 a country to forage, what a trap for noncombatants 
 between the advancing armies ! voice of Tom's 
 mother in parenthesis. 
 
 36 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Here was the free hand which every builder loves 
 and the ramifications of a work answering to the 
 needs of a populous province powers one could 
 handle like a machine or grow up to like a man. 
 Tom had seen how that was with his father who had 
 to do with the people's bread. Besides, the amusing 
 connection with silk-coated higher-ups of a mysteri- 
 ous race that tugged at your sympathies through its 
 manifest doom to come. Nor was the salary in this 
 case so negligible: the gentlemen in tortoise-shell 
 spectacles invited him to name his price. They had 
 broadened a little themselves, having started their 
 tunnel with faith but no instruments ; the ends lost 
 themselves somewhere in the heart of the hill. A 
 narrow-eyed son of the syndicate employed as clerk 
 of stores at Unsan, observing how Tom's " connec- 
 tions " worked out, imparted these wonders to whom 
 they concerned, and the syndicate, through its dis- 
 cerning son, prostrated itself at the feet of Tom's 
 tripod with the little telescope on top that could see 
 through mountains. 
 
 " But does Tom know anything about irrigation ?" 
 asked Cousin Tom. " I thought he was going to be 
 a mining-engineer." 
 
 " He 's going to be an engineer, I hope," said 
 Tom's father. "If he can't get onto this job he can 
 mighty soon get off it what he has to learn is, 
 Can he handle men? " 
 
 Tom handled his Koreans and he called them 
 men; there seemed no mystery about it. The method, 
 whatever it was, resulted in tolerable efficiency, 
 
 37 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 on their side, honesty as it goes (while they might 
 be' stealing the company's powder and candles), 
 the gentlest manners, and a dog-like trust. On his, 
 a curious growth of feeling where he had thought 
 himself as cold as his own plumb-bob, which none 
 of his native assistants could learn should not rest 
 on the ground in seeking a perpendicular. He did 
 not know why it hurt him, and no one saw that it did, 
 when his interpreter, Pak, quite the gentleman in 
 European clothes, followed him, weeping into his 
 cuffs, down the road between the millet-fields, when 
 Tom turned his back upon his dreams of reputation 
 in that little corner of the world. 
 
 For that had happened which one of his overdue 
 letters might have warned them of at home; how 
 the quiet of its opening sentences would have eased 
 her nerves, if his mother could have read it in time ! 
 
 " The war I 'm afraid is going to shut us down, 
 and for a peculiar reason. We can't get money to 
 pay our men. The Koreans will accept nothing but 
 silver, which the banks refuse to give up. There is 
 no currency in the country, and the people would 
 rather go hungry than take pay in money they don't 
 understand. They are so frightened, many of them 
 will not plant crops, and the men are drawn off by 
 the high pay they get as teamsters and carriers for 
 the Japanese army. You can bet Japan pays for 
 everything now ! She 's not stirring up bad blood 
 behind her with the Ruskies in front. 
 
 " If I have to leave here, I shall go home by way 
 of China, India, Port Said, and a few little side-shows 
 
 38 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 like Singapore and London. It's the chance of a 
 lifetime, what ? Get out your map of the world, folks, 
 and look for my home-pennon about July. Might 
 call it a visit, if there is anything left here to finish, 
 after the war. It does n't look as if it could last long, 
 but poor old Korea in any case will be jolly well 'gilt 
 in de grush ! ' " 
 
 Two sentences in this letter underscored by the 
 censor's pencil gave it to the flames. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE farmers' and ditch-men's rain cleared off cold, 
 with a dash of hail and wind-clouds trooping out of 
 a high, bare sky. Scarth had not been home to lunch, 
 but he " hit it" just as the stage arrived, keeping up 
 its winter habits. He had promised to speak to 'Gene 
 himself about those garden-seeds. 
 
 " Moon will bring up your lunch," Caroline men- 
 tioned as she whisked through the chilly office. " I 
 have a good fire upstairs." 
 
 She had given thought to that lunch. When her 
 man missed a regular meal and came home tired and 
 famished, the flesh must not be trifled with. He had 
 never spared his flesh nor any part of him in the 
 high necessities of his Work, but now he would 
 " never see fifty again " time to take in sail, as 
 wisdom words it. When this means eating less than 
 you want at every meal and avoiding most that you 
 particularly enjoy, the wretch needs what support 
 his family can give him ; at least his path need not 
 be wantonly strewn with temptations. This is a very 
 delicate duty for a wife to attempt ; wives are apt to 
 put too much feeling into it. A cook can help, but 
 good cooks are more often in league with the arch- 
 enemy, appetite. This was the hitch with Moon. 
 They had had him so long ; they liked him so well ; 
 they were bound to him in the fatal chains of habit. 
 
 40 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 And Moon had habits too : he could not change. His 
 cooking was "great" for young adventurers on the 
 high seas of digestion, but for those who creep along 
 the graveyard routes, Moon's accredited list offered 
 dangers worse than icebergs wrapped in fog. 
 
 It was hard for the poor Old Thing, his mistress 
 owned it mournfully. Dishes he had erst been lauded 
 for, and had built up an envied reputation on, were 
 now discouraged or mutely set aside ; or the mistress 
 would come into Moon's kitchen and plead with him 
 not to serve the same again without special orders. 
 
 " ' Special order T ' How many years had the mis- 
 tress gone her ways and Moon his ? she had hardly 
 known what was for dinner in her own house ; and 
 now it was, " * Moon, please not this please not 
 that ? ' Too muchee all time talk : meals plenty 
 good." 
 
 However, there could be no quarrel with that tray. 
 Creamed sweetbreads (a left-over but none the worse 
 for that) on rounds of fresh-made toast pastry 
 being taboo ; cold chicken garnished with Moon's 
 beautiful early lettuce, which he raised himself, and 
 in one leaf nestled a serving of that most innocu- 
 ous salad, apple and spaghetti. Finally, to show her- 
 self wisely human, Caroline had added the last in- 
 significant section of a ripe Sierra cheese ; Scarth 
 treated it as a specimen, and studied it through his 
 curved palm as if to assist the naked eye in locat- 
 ing it on his plate. Caroline smiled, but she did not 
 apologize. And there was tea which she would drink 
 herself, coffee was anathema. The man had drunk 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 gallons of it, black ; sooner than trifle with dilute 
 imitations he let the cup pass from him. Hot water 
 was his ironic beverage in these days. 
 
 Upon all this peace with honor comes Moon bump- 
 ing in importantly without knocking. He set down 
 on the hearth a pair of kitchen-plates carried in a 
 clean dish-towel, whisked off the top plate and looked 
 at " boss." 
 
 " Col' day. Hot saush' heap good." 
 
 Mrs. Scarth gazed in horror : four rich, brown 
 cakes of pork sausage, sparkling with fat the 
 peculiar weakness of man ! This was no common 
 butcher-stall blend : the recipe came down with the 
 sanction of four generations from a Rhode Island 
 great-grandmother of Quaker memory. There was 
 perhaps only one thing better and more deadly in 
 that Quaker cook-book, which was Caroline's 
 great-grandmother's mince pies. These deceits of the 
 flesh were still practiced for hospitality's sake and 
 because Christmas is Christmas, even in California, 
 where Nature's all the year bounty makes ridiculous 
 the huge winter provisioning of our ancestors. 
 
 Moon stood at gaze, completely happy : who could 
 snub him! Caroline smiled feebly. "I hardly think 
 he will care for the sausage, Moon. You eat him 
 you like sausage?" 
 
 "Moon eat that sausage? not much!" shouts 
 boss in the voice of great cheer Moon loved. 
 " Chicken and sausage I guess not ! " 
 
 Moon retired chuckling : " Heap good boss heap 
 hungly. Big man mus' eat!" 
 
 42 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 He had fore-reached on the mistress this time; 
 futile person who messed with cook-books and lis- 
 tened to a fool doctor. Moon knew that if he could 
 but catch one little wood-pussy and send the crea- 
 ture's heart down city to China doctor there, boss 
 might be cured of those devilish pains at night which 
 set the look of death on his handsome features. 
 
 But they were all crazy (clazy), white women and 
 their doctors, and they talk-talk when boss not 
 there " ' not eat this not eat that ' foo ! look at 
 boy, look at girl, look at lady 'self ! Eat same thing 
 no get sick. Big man mus* eat: no can live on 
 je-e-ly!" those pitiful aspics the mistress wasted 
 good meat on, which boss and Moon despised 1 
 
 Moon felt what a greater than many Moons has 
 said, in man's charity for man : " Men of this arterial 
 blood cannot live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies. They 
 are made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, 
 and clearing, huge risks and the joy of adventurous 
 living." 
 
 That was her man : Caroline knew his type and 
 exulted in it out of the heart of her groaning fears. 
 But we may be sure she did not read that passage 
 in her Emerson to her man of arterial blood; she 
 needed it he did not. She must take the boss as 
 God made him. They would have a night of it : mean- 
 while, there he lay in the pride of fresh transgression, 
 feeding chicken-bones to Bran, another arterial sin- 
 ner : "An old dog can eat chicken-bones he knows 
 how." The question came up regularly on chicken- 
 days,' Caroline confident that Bran would die of a 
 
 43 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 sliver crossways, Scarth taking glorious chances, as 
 with himself. 
 
 Having finished his bones, Bran climbed up with 
 them all inside and squeezed down behind Scarth's 
 legs. He turned his warty cheek away like a bashful 
 maid, when offered a sniff of his master's cigar, but 
 swallowed the insult, and presently there was great 
 peace between the three, man, woman, and beast, 
 as in the first paradise. Though we have tasted of 
 temptation, the Lord has not called us yet in the 
 voice of great pains in the middle of the night. 
 
 " Here is a letter from Anna ; I wonder how I came 
 to miss it!" Caroline picked it out eagerly from 
 Scarth's heap of business envelopes. He opened his 
 eyes, having just dropped off. 
 
 " Want me to read it to you? Anna writes such 
 nice letters." 
 
 " Go ahead," said Scarth resignedly. 
 
 The letter began as usual the part most men 
 omit when they write letters ; "I am glad you 
 have cabled Tom to come home. I think you are 
 very wise to do so, both on his account and yours." 
 
 " I never said we had cabled him to come home," 
 Caroline broke off to protest ; she was annoyed be- 
 cause she had so nearly said so and the difference 
 had been lost on her friend. 
 
 "It does n't matter," said Scarth. 
 
 " Why, it does ! you particularly did not wish to 
 order him home." 
 
 " They thought I ought to, so it comes to the same 
 thing," he answered drowsily. 
 
 44 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Mrs. Scarth read on ; her face underwent a series 
 of slight but expressive changes. Cousin Anna's let- 
 ters ordinarily were plain sailing: she answered a 
 letter as she would make a call. There was never 
 anything in them to regret, seldom anything to re- 
 member. In this case some concern on her mind had 
 moved her to speak with unusual force and earnest- 
 ness. The effect, though warm, was somewhat dis- 
 turbing: Caroline immediately asked herself, "What 
 have /been saying?" 
 
 " It is mostly about you," she faltered. 
 
 "Me!" 
 
 "Your health." 
 
 "What does she know about my health ? " 
 
 " I'm sorry I ever said anything. Naturally she 
 exaggerates what little I did say." 
 
 Scarth smiled. His wife was much too sincere, and 
 often too excited a talker to be able to hear herself 
 talk, or to measure the force of her own expressions. 
 A double distillation of the truth appeared to be re- 
 acting now upon its author. 
 
 " Everything we do seems to them so ill-advised " 
 
 " As we state it, perhaps. Come, I have heard you 
 talk to Anna. Don't tell me she does all the exagger- 
 ating." 
 
 "I cannot make Anna see that I could no more 
 live her life than she could live mine." 
 
 " But you could, you know ; and Anna would make 
 a first-class poor man's wife." 
 
 " You are mistaken about me ; but that is n't the 
 question." 
 
 45 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "What's Anna been doing? " asked Scarth, who 
 was very fond of Mrs. Cousin Tom. 
 
 "I'm not talking of Anna Anna is perfectly 
 sweet and dear, but she is almost too well-bred. She 
 keeps her gilded side too carefully out of my sight. 
 She has got outside things to talk about ; it would 
 amuse me very much to hear about her life, and not 
 dazzle me beyond endurance ; but she makes me do 
 the first person, and it 's a bad plan. I 've only inside 
 things to talk of ; and when I laugh over our scram' s, 
 she thinks it is my wonderful pluck and endurance, 
 carrying it off. And sometimes she misunderstands 
 so completely that I am confounded. So I sit up and 
 explain, and then we get in deeper." 
 
 Scarth treated all this as introductory and withheld 
 comment ; he was not in fact wholly awake. 
 
 " She cannot understand my life because it 's your 
 life, and you she never will understand, for she knows 
 you only through Cousin Tom." 
 
 " Who expects to be understood ? Trying to explain 
 only makes matters worse." 
 
 " But it 's inhuman not to want your friends to 
 understand ; and when you feel yourself partly re- 
 sponsible, you want to take back something " 
 Caroline ended weakly. 
 
 " You can take back your husband : leave the old 
 man out of your tales." 
 
 " But he 's the beginning and the end of my tales. 
 I'd like to know if I ever do anything that isn't 
 founded in some way on you?" 
 
 "Well, what's the row about?" 
 
 46 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " No row at all. I ' ve been describing to Anna some 
 of our queer trips together. I was too realistic, it 
 seems. She doesn't see, to begin with, why I go 
 with you at all to such places, when it 's only busi- 
 ness and I 've been over the roads so many times be- 
 fore." 
 
 " Well, why should she see ? " 
 
 " Because I am thin and nervous, and she sees 
 that I 'm anxious sometimes, she thinks I am all run 
 down ; and because I told her once about the room 
 we slept in at Brandy City " Caroline broke off 
 to laugh " she imagines my life is all one Brandy 
 City. She asks herself why I do it, and she asks 
 me!" 
 
 " Then it 's you she is worrying about ? " 
 
 "Yes till I really had to explain." 
 
 " Explain?" 
 
 "Yes, dear; women do explain to those they 
 care for, whom they know they can trust. No woman 
 likes to be thought a nuisance, tagging after her 
 husband, afraid to let him go anywhere alone. It 
 looks, don't you see, like a want of confidence in the 
 man himself." 
 
 "Come, now, Carrie! Anna is a lady." 
 
 "I assure you things transpire without a word, 
 between two who understand each other." 
 
 " You 've just said she never could understand " 
 
 " I said she overshot the mark. She is surrounded 
 with it they are surprised at nothing. I really 
 could not bear the inference I saw shaping itself in 
 her mind. Not that they would n't condone it but 
 
 47 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 I will not be pitied for that! So I told her there was 
 a constant fear those turns we dread so. And the 
 wretched food at those places which is poison to 
 you. Even if I can't help, I must know " 
 
 They were past laughter now, though Caroline's 
 halting confession had been attended with sufficient 
 mirth to prove them still friends. 
 
 " I don't fancy your telling her that." Scarth sat 
 up rather hard-eyed, but his voice had not changed. 
 
 " I knew you would hate it," she mourned, " and 
 I hated most awfully to tell you. But how could I 
 stand her sympathy, and her admiration for the way 
 I bear it ! " 
 
 " Bear what ? Come, out with it ! " 
 
 " That you drink too much, in short, if I'm not 
 with you. That's what she pities me for; that's why 
 they are so relieved to hear we have cabled to 
 Tom!" 
 
 "I see," said Scarth grimly. "Old man breaking 
 up ; strain of looking after him getting too much 
 for the little mother all alone." 
 
 " But read the letter," Caroline grieved. " She is 
 a dear friend. She 's the only woman I ever talk to 
 she 's the only woman I 've had, absolutely, since 
 the spring they came up here and I fell in love with 
 her on the spot ! She keeps things separate ; she is 
 loyal she never speaks of what she would n't have 
 spoken of " 
 
 " Well, well ; I believe you," said Scarth. " You 
 need n't apologize for either of you, desperate char- 
 acters as you are." 
 
 48 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 But there was a point still left to make, perhaps 
 the most difficult of all. " Anna is constantly think- 
 ing of others. She is tired this spring, and yet she 
 is planning to have us there when we go down to 
 meet Tom." 
 
 " Did any one say we were going down to meet 
 Tom?" 
 
 " But we are, and we shall stay with them, of course. 
 I love it when we are both there ; you and Cousin 
 Tom are so funny together ! But what does it matter 
 when people have such kind hearts and are so inter- 
 ested ? Anna begs me to persuade you to see one of 
 the big surgeons, when you are down ; have a 
 thorough examination I " 
 
 "That, of course, we can't discuss," said Scarth, 
 rising, a clark color in his face. He stood back to 
 the fire and looked beyond her sternly. Outsiders 
 who saw him seldom had begun to observe changes 
 in his countenance, lines and lapses, pallor with dis- 
 coloration ; signs a physician reads at a glance. 
 
 He had smiled over that other form of condolence 
 which she found unbearable, but now he did not smile. 
 
 " I shall see a surgeon, after Tom comes back 
 after I have seen him ; not before." 
 
 " But the risks" she released a deep breath and 
 looked at him timidly " going on so, in the dark ! " 
 
 " There are risks the other way." 
 
 " Yes," she murmured. 
 
 " If I put myself in Symington's hands I shall ex- 
 pect to go through with it. I must see the boy first." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IT was the 2 9th of March, and you would have 
 known that spring had come in Wiju by the troops 
 of babies, mostly naked, playing in its mud-walled 
 streets little brown babies who creep out of sight 
 like flies in winter and are not seen again till the 
 sun warms their bare bellies, and ice on glazed 
 puddles can be broken by a baby toe. 
 
 Tom might have mentioned, but for some reason 
 he did not, in one of those letters which never got 
 past Tokio, that so far from being alone in Wiju 
 with one white man, he had had the company since 
 January of two agreeable ladies, the wife and pretty 
 daughter of one of our missionaries in Korea. 
 
 It is probably known that most of them are labor- 
 ers in the cheerful vineyards around Seoul, yet there 
 is no idealistic calling that does not attract a few 
 genuine idealists to its lonelier paths, and our Mr. 
 Gladwyn was one of these. He may have been a 
 provoking saint in many ways, still he was a saint, 
 and his was the faith for which men die to the sense 
 of meaner obligations. He sacrificed others as cheer- 
 fully as himself, and honored his wife with her full 
 share in the hardships of his wildest pilgrimages, 
 where she added her medical to his evangelical 
 help. It was in some isolated hamlet, a day or two's 
 travel from Wiju, that they were caught at the 
 
 50 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ing of winter ; rumors of Russian soldiery scattered 
 his little flock ; he brought down his women to the 
 engineers' cantonment, and went back himself to 
 round them up among the graves of their kindred in 
 the high places. So, although in no danger from 
 Cossacks as Cossacks, it was due to those parties of 
 the broad-faced fellows roaming about that Tom was 
 finally exposed to a much more serious peril, all 
 that winter of war's alarms. 
 
 If his mother could have looked in upon them in 
 Wiju and have seen him photographing Korean 
 babies, with Mary Gladwyn laughing and helping 
 to keep them still ; or that utter stranger, Mrs. Glad- 
 wyn, domiciled with her knitting in her son's quar- 
 ters, his only spare chair drawn up to the lamp with 
 Mary in it reading aloud in a voice as sweet as an 
 English girl's and with something of an English ac- 
 cent to prove her a cosmopolitan, the lamplight fall- 
 ing on her remarkable head of hair, I think there 
 might have been restless nights just the same for a 
 mother who was looking for an angel to mate with 
 her son, and saw no particular hurry even for her. 
 
 Though Mary might be related to saints and their 
 works, she was not in training for sainthood herself, 
 nor was the wonderful hair angelic in color, if we may 
 trust the ancient popular prejudice. As to the ar- 
 rangement which looked so intimate, Mrs. Gladwyn 
 had settled all that on a strict business basis as the 
 first condition of accepting (or perhaps one should say 
 claiming) Tom's hospitality. As we have said, she 
 was a medical missionary in Tom's secular opinion 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 much the best sort. Mary, whose mission had not 
 announced itself, kept busy and gay in the charac- 
 ter of a pretty girl fond of one's mother, and helping 
 that wise woman nurse the sick and unsanitated vil- 
 lagers and coax a few gifts of clothing upon their 
 babies at the hands of the gentle, apathetic mothers. 
 The fourth member of this beleaguered little family 
 could hardly be admitted to the social proposition so 
 far as the younger lady was concerned, and need not 
 be dwelt upon. Tom's one white man, Kelsey, had 
 his uses ; he was cheap, but his habits were not war- 
 ranted to keep in an Oriental climate. 
 
 Miss Mary did not quite fathom her young host. 
 He looked like a boy, and to her experience of alien 
 folk and fashions, he seemed as ingenuous as one 
 just out of a nice old country home, yet his position 
 implied several forms of capacity not common in 
 boys ; he had a certain freezing look and a grim, sig- 
 nificant silence that acted like a charm upon Kelsey's 
 occasional bursts of " freshness," and the natives (the 
 Gladwyns spoke Korean) swore by his brief adminis- 
 tration as by their very gods, and doubtless under- 
 stood about as much of its mysterious workings. 
 
 " I never see or find that who is so kind like Mr. 
 Scarth since I have known the foreigners," Pak 
 would gossip, airing his punctilious English to Mrs. 
 Gladwyn. " I am sure I cannot forget him my grati- 
 tude before I die." 
 
 Tom's four years had been that steady grind, work- 
 ing always at his top efficiency, which a man is equal 
 to when he is young. It is a good grind and he will 
 
 52 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 remember it ever afterwards with satisfaction, espe- 
 cially if he gets little credit for it at the time. He had 
 got into the general swing of the work at Unsan, mak- 
 ing the rounds of the concession monthly to measure 
 up, give levels whatever it is the man with the 
 transit generally does traversing the valley pony- 
 back, his house-boy riding on top of his master's 
 stuff: hard work, but a great many amusing per- 
 sonal luxuries for a tall young American supposed 
 to be able to lace his own boots and put in his own 
 studs and get wet if he forgets his mackintosh. Very 
 spoiled he will be, with a house-boy to pack his 
 clothes, fetch his tea before he knows that he wants 
 it, and watch that no other unprincipled house-boy 
 steals from his own master's stock of neckties and 
 small change. He had hoped to leave things at Wiju 
 in a shape that might praise the work long after the 
 worker was forgotten. That dream the war broke up 
 remained, the journey home around the rest of the 
 world, to compensate. It fairly stung in his blood, 
 thoughts of a ship's deck once more, even a little 
 Japanese coaster to Shanghai ; the boat service was 
 at sixes and sevens owing to the war ; but after Shang- 
 hai, the P. & O., the cities of the sandaled feet, the 
 procession of humanity in living gestures and colors 
 of all the types since creation's dawn. 
 
 The river was open now as far as Ping Yang, but 
 our party was a journey of six days inland. The date 
 had been set for starting, and Mr. Gladwyn had come 
 in to bid his family farewell. On this second visit he 
 
 53 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 struck Tom as even more vague and inapplicable to 
 general uses than memory had recorded him. How- 
 ever, Mr. Gladwyn could well afford to spare his 
 young compatriot's approval ; some other things he 
 seemed to set aside among the non-essentials with 
 equal unconcern, and far be it from us to say he was 
 not right ; still it may have been embarrassing 
 for Mrs. Gladwyn. Tom imagined from certain evi- 
 dences that she suffered chagrin, when the hour of 
 parting came and her good man simply thanked 
 him for his hospitality and pocketed the rest of the 
 obligation as a matter of course between gentlemen 
 and countrymen. Tom naturally would have pre- 
 ferred it so, but he remembered the lady's insistence 
 and knew she was depressed. 
 
 The size of an average Korean pony makes a six- 
 foot American bestriding him appear as a monster to 
 many Tom's center-board, as it were, was within 
 three inches of grounding. Kelsey shortened his stir- 
 rups and rode with knees drawn up like a jockey. The 
 ladies were carried in stuffy curtained chairs Mrs. 
 Gladwyn' s soft heart insisting on four bearers apiece 
 for a journey of that length. The nature of Korean 
 inns being known to them, they took their own bed- 
 ding and their own chow, which necessitated a cook. 
 With all this retinue and baggage, white men armed, 
 house-boys and chair-coolies in numbers to indicate 
 deceptively travelers of wealth, they could not fail to 
 attract much unsought notice on the road of war. 
 For sixty miles they were coasting along the Japanese 
 advance, held up at intervals by polite little officers 
 
 54 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 who asked them prettily, "Where did you going?" 
 Sometimes they spoke French, and Tom labored 
 through amazing idioms sooner than annex Miss 
 Mary's help ; though nothing in sedan chairs could 
 have escaped that very thorough military envisage- 
 ment. 
 
 There was no style about their march, to match the 
 work cut out for these little soldiers going up against 
 white regulars for the first time in history. Their cav- 
 alry was a " sight." Large bodies of sappers and 
 miners gave themselves frankly the appearance of an 
 army of truck-peddlers pushing their two-wheeled 
 carts ; following them came a sort of flying commis- 
 sariat in place of the enormous baggage-train that 
 forms the tail of a European advance. But if you 
 asked one of those little cart-pushers, " Where are you 
 going?" he answered, fatalistically, "To Mukden" 
 ironic laughter of Circassians in the background. 
 
 Who would not have prophesied an old-fashioned 
 romance on a journey such as this? Tom did wisely, 
 perhaps, to give his parents no room for speculation : 
 it is doubtful if he could have convinced his mother, 
 at least, how far his thoughts were from marriage, as 
 he rode by the side of Miss Mary's litter like a knight 
 of old (neither did knights necessarily marry the 
 ladies they protected on those mediaeval wanderings). 
 It had struck him, however, that fate would be remark- 
 ably kind if these ladies should happen to be aboard 
 ship on that first lap of his long voyage home. Inci- 
 dentally, he would say to himself : " What a shame ! 
 What a thousand pities ! " 
 
 55 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 This, no doubt, referred to his one confidential 
 talk with Miss Mary. She had had her own plans, it 
 appeared, right along, and had been pursuing them 
 under her parents' very noses. And now she sprung 
 the secret upon them, since the war had disarranged 
 their own plans. It was her ambition to train for a 
 nurse under English doctors or in an English hos- 
 pital in Hongkong. Hence, we suppose, the silent 
 outcry in Tom's mind when he looked at that glori- 
 ous head of red-gold hair and thought of the " plain 
 distinguishing cap." Those caps are frequently be- 
 coming, but that is not why they are worn, and at 
 Miss Mary's age to be pretty seems a right and nat- 
 ural end in itself. He saw the admirable carriage of 
 her short and supple back, and thought of it bending 
 for hours over the beds of pain. Are such young 
 spines made only for the saddle, the music-bench, the 
 ball-room ? Why did he grudge those grimmer exer- 
 cises only to youth and beauty? Ask the patients 
 if pretty looks and graceful forms are wasted in a 
 sick-room. Ask any one who has had the training of 
 girls, if the stooping, plain-featured, charmless ones 
 are those only who keep their minds on their work. 
 It looked as if Tom were not quite unbiased in his 
 protest, but, as to any personal influence he might 
 bring to bear to save this bright and bonny girl 
 from the mill which grinds all flesh alike, no such 
 thought occurred to him. 
 
 Naturally, on such a journey, there could be few 
 opportunities for confidential talk, supposing any 
 young person had desired to acquaint himself with 
 
 56 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 another's state of mind in view of the world-end part- 
 ing before them. Finality, in this case, might have 
 been guarded against, but not in any guarded manner 
 not in Miss Mary's present mood. Her wicked, 
 worldly pride was a hard lump to swallow. 
 
 "Has father his address?" she asked her mother, 
 significantly. 
 
 " I don't know," said Mrs. Gladwyn tersely. " I 
 wish you had not dragged it out of me, Mary ; you 
 don't have to know these things." 
 
 " I do if you do." 
 
 " I made the arrangement myself and I shall keep 
 it, give me time. I was foolish to expect father would 
 have anything to spare when he came down. In fact, 
 I had to divide with him. He sees so much hopeless 
 suffering ; if a little money here and there can help, 
 how can he hold his hand?" 
 
 " Oh, mother, he 's a lamb, but does n't he fill you 
 with despair, sometimes?" 
 
 " Not at all," said Mrs. Gladwyn. " You are the 
 one who has most upset my plans. I shall not let you 
 goto Hongkong alone don't think it! We can't 
 live there for what we could in Ping Yang. At least 
 we can't take the risks " 
 
 " I see," said Mary. " And now I revile you for 
 not paying your bills ! But why can't we get the 
 money in Ping Yang?" 
 
 " I have my reasons why." Possibly Mary under- 
 stood : her father's disposition did not fit him for 
 "team-work," and he was unpopular with the ac- 
 credited heads of departments because he liked 
 
 57 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 not too many orders and seldom obeyed them 
 exactly. 
 
 " Then at Seoul ? Mrs. Bruce would let you have 
 it in a second." 
 
 " I don't propose to borrow of my hostess and my 
 friend." 
 
 " There are all sorts of pride ! " said Mary bitterly. 
 
 " Leave me alone till we get to Hongkong. I will 
 borrow it there in a businesslike manner." 
 
 " Are you sure he is going with us to Hongkong? " 
 
 " I think so. Poor boy 1 how he would blush to be 
 taxed with his bread and butter at this rate." 
 
 " We could swallow his bread and butter, but paying 
 for house-boys and chair-coolies that 's too much ! " 
 
 "It shall all be settled before we part." 
 
 "But wont you just mention it meanwhile to 
 show we have n't forgotten?" 
 
 " I don't see the necessity." 
 
 " Oh, well ! he '11 lay it to our being * missionaries ' 
 it won't surprise him any." 
 
 " Why do you speak in that way ? " 
 
 " Because Mr. T. L. Scarth does n't think very much 
 of evangelical work among the heathen, I fancy." 
 
 "How did you get that idea?" 
 
 " He did n't force it on me, naturally: I gathered it 
 from one or two playful little tilts we've had." 
 
 " He should n't be blamed too much for his preju- 
 dices : he has very likely listened to tales about us 
 in the treaty ports and many of them are only too 
 true." 
 
 "Oh, he believes in the likes of you! anything 
 
 58 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 for their bodies and minds ; and he can't see why 
 Confucian Analects are not perfectly good moral 
 guides for the average heathen." 
 
 " And they end with this world. If you ask a Con- 
 fucian about immortality, he will say : ' When the 
 master was questioned on that, he answered, " If you 
 do not understand life, how can you understand 
 death ? " ' " 
 
 " The worst he ever said to me was that our con- 
 verts were the weak and the hypocritical and the self- 
 seeking ! " 
 
 " Did you remind him of those ten thousand Prot- 
 estant and thirty thousand Catholic converts massa- 
 cred in the Boxer revolution who could have saved 
 their lives, most of them, by stamping on a piece of 
 paper with Jesus written on it?" 
 
 " Oh, mother dear, I did not argue with him : he 's 
 too modern for us." 
 
 " There is my despair ! When men like this boy, 
 the best they can send out here, stainless, up- 
 right, clever, honorable in every way, think they can 
 afford to disdain our teaching, what can we hope 
 of the heathen ? The East will never accept a cast- 
 off faith the West has outgrown ! " 
 
 Mary was silent. 
 
 " Was that the reason why you are so bitter about 
 our indebtedness?" 
 
 " Possibly," she said. " You have always accused 
 me of sordid pride." 
 
 " It would be pleasanter, certainly, if he were one 
 of ourselves and not a scoffer." 
 
 59 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " He is n't as bad as that. I tell you, he makes an 
 exception of us of you ; the way our English friends 
 do when they say, ' We never should have taken you 
 for Americans.' J1 
 
 Mrs. Gladwyn barely smiled. " I have wondered, 
 sometimes, whether I did do right : two mission- 
 aries in one family ! Keeping my own practice might 
 have made things easier; it might even have given 
 us more to help with. But it would have separated 
 us from your father ; and I 'm not more than an aver- 
 age safe doctor safe for Koreans who pull through 
 anything. You must be a better nurse than I am a 
 doctor, Mary. I ought to have been a nurse ; that is 
 about my measure." 
 
 "Hear her!" said Mary: "as if she had n't taught 
 me a lot. I expect to be taking cases inside of two 
 years consequence of your teachments right along 
 and the things you have made me do. Do you hear 
 that, old lady ? I shall be earning money myself, and 
 don't you worry any more about Miss Hardinge : that 
 debt shall be paid ! As it was for me, anyhow, what 
 more proper?" 
 
 " I want you to remember, Miss Hardinge was 
 always beautiful about it. She said the girls whose 
 fathers like yours were in better business than money- 
 making were the girls she wanted in the school, and 
 she would have had you stay as an honor-pupil 
 that was her nice way of putting it but the school 
 has no foundation for scholarships ; it would have 
 been simply a gift from her. No ; it all came of my 
 own worldliness, choosing that school." 
 
 60 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " I thought it was grandma's little legacy." 
 
 " Of course, we could not have dreamed of it with- 
 out and then came the panic year, and stocks went 
 down ' 
 
 "Yes, I know," said Mary, shrinking from this 
 oft-told tale of humiliation and mistaken expense. 
 Mrs. Gladwyn had seldom made a mistake of this 
 kind, and it went hard with her to forgive herself. 
 
 " Miss Hardinge owned I was probably right : 
 poor men's daughters may be useful companions for 
 rich men's, but the conjunction bears rather hard on 
 the girls who have to support the character of virtu- 
 ous poverty. ... I never could understand, though, 
 about the girl who told it all over the school after 
 she wormed it out of you !" 
 
 "Oh, mother! you've got that all wrong. She 
 did n't worm it in the least. She was a child almost, 
 and I was very fond of her. She found me crying 
 and I was just upset enough to tell her why. She 
 was thunderstruck : a girl, one of themselves as it 
 were, suddenly having to leave school because 
 well ; it was all perfectly natural, anyhow, and I don't 
 know how you ever got the idea that I was hurt by 
 that! And she didn't 'tell it all over the school': 
 she told just one girl who happened to particu- 
 larly hate that kind of gossip and, poor kid, they 
 made it hard enough for her ! " 
 
 " Well, no matter : I thought it a miserable inci- 
 dent, and I supposed she must have been one of the 
 rich Jews they would naturally have a scorn of 
 insolvency." 
 
 61 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Her people belong to the High Tong in San 
 Francisco ; and, moreover, she confessed to her 
 mother, and that good lady went to Miss Hardinge 
 and offered to pay my school bills past and to come : 
 she was one who did believe in missionaries! 
 Surely I told you all that ?" 
 
 " Perhaps you did," said Mrs. Gladwyn. " I don't 
 care about any of it, if when Miss Hardinge is 
 paid ! Then we '11 agree to forget it." 
 
 A deep color overspread Mary's face. " Mother, 
 why were you so proud about accepting help from 
 her if you can take it so calmly from a perfect 
 stranger when we practically asked for it?" 
 
 " What would you have me do, for mercy's sake?" 
 
 " Pay him at Seoul borrow it of Mrs. Bruce, on 
 your personal note, if necessary." 
 
 " Mrs. Bruce would laugh at my note ! I will bor- 
 row it of a bank in the only proper way." 
 
 " I 'm glad to hear," said Mary, "that we 've got 
 money at interest in Hongkong ! " 
 
 " Leave that to me, if you please ! . . . Child, what 
 is the matter with you ? " 
 
 Mary sat up closer to her mother and grasped one 
 of her hands ; their backs hid the gesture. " Now 
 you know why I can't can't follow in the footsteps 
 of my blessed parents. I 've just got to be sordid 
 and take my pay !" 
 
 " I have guessed it for a long time, dear ; that 's 
 why I wanted you to see just what a nurse's life de- 
 mands. And I wanted to test your strength under 
 my own eyes. But now I am not sorry I dragged 
 
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 you through the operating-room drill, and made you 
 cook for my sick, and change their bandages. You 
 won't stop long in the first stage of your work. 
 But don't sit that way, please! " 
 
 They were resting after a wayside meal ; Mary, 
 cramped from long hours in a swaying chair, had 
 stretched her feet out comfortably before her. Mrs. 
 Gladwyn, who performed surgical operations, could 
 not accustom herself (these things being all a matter 
 of early training) to the casual exhibition of a young 
 woman's ankles ; Mary laughed at her and she 
 laughed at herself in Mary's eyes. Her smile re- 
 mained when Tom strolled up, smiling too, the 
 guilty grin of one who turns a camera upon a friend. 
 
 Mary buried her nose in her teacup and defied 
 him, not that her nose was a perilous feature ; but 
 Mrs. Gladwyn, who had a nose if you like, faced 
 him with middle-aged hardihood, smile and all, and 
 Tom incontinently took her. He repented the deed 
 long after, when his mother, inspecting the print, 
 remarked dryly, " I thought you said Mrs. Gladwyn 
 was a lady ! " 
 
 Certainly it looked as if they had buried the ghosts 
 of past humiliations or drowned them in those gypsy 
 cups of tea. Mrs. Gladwyn packed her teapot in its 
 wadded wicker basket, Mary washed the handleless 
 Korean bowls. Eating out of brass sounds unappetiz- 
 ing, but they were used to it ; the country held no sur- 
 prises for them. They had worn off its shocks and its 
 fascination as well : even the extraordinary pageant, 
 which accompanied them hour after hour, of the 
 
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 Japanese army in extended profile draping the mid- 
 dle distance, drew but an occasional over-shoulder 
 glance while they reckoned journey expenses and 
 discussed their own teasing personalities ; nor would 
 they be more excited at nightfall when by main 
 strength of their combined escort they were pushed 
 through the crowded gateway of some little old 
 walled town swarming with chattering natives ra- 
 cially clad, or Japanese soldiers, looking more racial 
 still in French fatigue caps and American shoes. 
 
 That which had first struck Tom about these ladies 
 was their homely likeness to all the nicest women he 
 had known ; not the smartest, yet Mary was smart. 
 To those who have an eye and an ear, a bird of the air 
 may carry the matter. The obvious thing about Miss 
 Mary was not her speaking acquaintance with three 
 Chinese dialects, but the charming way she did her 
 hair. Because life for her was real and earnest, she 
 travailed for dainty lingerie, and while fitting herself 
 to walk the chambers of life and death, she preferred 
 to do it agreeably shod. You cannot make your own 
 shoes as you can your some other things ; occasion- 
 ally she spent money on her pretty pettitoes which 
 should have gone, we fear, into the treasury of the 
 Lord, saying she would save it somewhere else, 
 which, no doubt, she did, for she had a head quite 
 equal to it. 
 
 There were so many things about her which tan- 
 talized Tom on his home-making side, that more 
 than once he asked himself, as the journey drew to- 
 ward a close, were there not opportunities here a 
 
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 man might think of and regret when it was too 
 late? 
 
 " If I were to come back," his thoughts ran ahead 
 into one of many futures on the different roads a 
 man may choose, while his choice is still his own, 
 " what a life we could make of it together ! " A girl 
 so home-like, so home-trained, yet a rover with gypsy 
 eyes and wide horizons in her ken. " She knows the 
 East the ' monstrous, shambling ' East and she 
 is the West. We 'd get on grandly at Wiju." Poor 
 little Wiju ! How that place haunts a boy which has 
 owned his first authority, taken the impress, however 
 transitory, of his young creative hand. 
 
 He did not swear to his pillow nightly that not 
 another sun should set ere she had listened to his 
 tale. He was not sure that he had any tale to tell. 
 But, if it should " work out that way," it were more 
 likely to " come off " on shipboard. Three days to 
 Shanghai and a day more to wait in that city of dev- 
 ildom, as seen from the Bubbling-Well Road. He 
 gazed at the cold young April moon and cast up her 
 changes : she would be in her third quarter at Seoul 
 and sailing at the full over the Yellow Sea. 
 
 Did he wish to go home an engaged man? At 
 least he was ready to toy with the possibility : 
 whether it would ever be anything more might de- 
 pend at this stage on how Miss Mary looked at it. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 " MUST it be a black dress for your mother? Is she 
 wearing black?" 
 
 "No," said Tom; "but if it's black, you know, 
 she can't give it to Engracia." 
 
 " I see." Mary grasped the idea, beaming ; she was 
 by way of knowing that kind of mother herself. They 
 were walking the windy streets of Seoul in and out 
 of native shops, choosing Tom's gifts for home. He 
 had asked her assistance in this errand, but it was 
 not that only which gave them a sudden sense of 
 intimacy fraught with the delicate pain of parting. 
 
 " Is your mother an out-of-doorsy mother?" Mary 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, very. She goes about everywhere with the 
 old man." 
 
 " The ' pater ' ? " She played her English against 
 his colloquial American. 
 
 " Yes ; he and the * mater ' ride all over the shop." 
 
 " Does she take great care of her complexion ? " 
 
 Tom stared and laughed : " Oh, dear, no ! I never 
 saw any signs of it." 
 
 " Then it cannot be black," said Mary, " if I know 
 the sun of California. Now, let us think a bit." They 
 were looking at embroidered crepes and chiffons, and 
 Mary held up one of the latter lovingly, but Tom in- 
 clined to the richer, more substantial stuffs. 
 
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 " Suppose we don't get a white for your sister ? 
 What is the color of her eyes ? " 
 
 " Blue," said Tom. 
 
 " But what do you call blue like yours, for in- 
 stance?" The little Korean salesman who watched 
 them suddenly lowered his own eyes. 
 
 " Has she much color ? is she fair ? " Mary gained 
 in color herself as she passed on hurriedly. 
 
 " She comes home fair after a winter in New York, 
 but she gets bravely over it before she goes back 
 again." 
 
 " Here is a blue : would n't that go with your 
 sister's eyes?" 
 
 " Would you call that blue? " 
 
 "It's the blue that makes blue eyes what you 
 call blue eyes look really blue. These people know." 
 
 " Not much about blue eyes." Tom smiled at her 
 subtleties. 
 
 " Well, if you think that fixes your sister, it must 
 be made with just a touch of red perhaps a dark red 
 rose tucked in somewhere, but she will know all about 
 that, then we can choose a white for your mother." 
 
 " White ! " Tom echoed helplessly. 
 
 " She does wear white ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes at home ; but I can't remember her in 
 a white dress in San Francisco. I 'm sure she 'd give 
 it to Engracia." 
 
 Mary turned over the crepes again in silence. 
 " Look ; here is a white like old churned foam ; my 
 own mother could wear that, and she 's no swan. It 
 will go in a suitcase and shake out without a mark ; 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 and for less than you could dream you might get her 
 the most adorable scarf to soften those dressmaker 
 lines " 
 
 Tom stood bewildered, smiling, and Mary waived 
 the decision with a word to the shopman : the two 
 dress-patterns were laid aside. 
 
 " Now, if you want to be reckless, get your mother 
 one of these black embroidered chiffons ; she can put 
 mauve or white under it, and if she is anything like 
 my mother she won't want another dinner-dress for 
 six years." 
 
 Tom agreed that sounded very like his mother ; 
 but, he added, " I want that for Cousin Anna." 
 
 ''Cousin Anna?" Mary put one finger to her 
 brow : " How many more ladies are we shopping 
 for? I mustn't get them mixed." 
 
 Tom laughed, and the gentle little salesman smiled 
 in sympathy, though he was much depressed by 
 Mary's acquaintance with all things Korean, espe- 
 cially prices. 
 
 " Cousin Anna Ludwell," Tom explained simply. 
 
 "Of San Francisco?" 
 
 "Very much so. Father's cousins. Great people 
 for doing things." 
 
 " Yes," said Mary, after another silence ; " I should 
 think that might do for" she paused "look at 
 this embroidery, all by hand, and yards and yards 
 of flouncing hemstitched; of course, no one uses 
 flouncing, but there are ways of working it in." 
 
 " Cousin Anna would n't look very closely at the 
 flouncing : she gets the idea " 
 
 68 
 
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 " Which sounds," said Mary with a peculiar little 
 tired drawl, "as if your cousin must be very nice and 
 very fond of you." 
 
 " You are certainly right about her : at least, I 've 
 never seen anything nicer than Cousin Anna." 
 
 " Have they a daughter who used to go to Miss 
 Hardinge's?" 
 
 " They have a daughter, Clare. I don't know where 
 she went to school." 
 
 " There was a Clare Ludwell one of the younger 
 girls a day-pupil at Miss Hardinge's when I was 
 there four years ago." 
 
 " Were you ? " Tom passed over the negligible 
 clause. " I had no idea you knew San Francisco." 
 
 " Oh, I did n't : I only knew the school, and I saw 
 a few San Francisco girls." 
 
 " How long were you there?" 
 
 Mary colored. "It's absurd for me to talk to you 
 about your San Francisco : any one can see how you 
 love it." 
 
 " I did n't love it when I left there ; it rather grows 
 on you." 
 
 " Well ; San Francisco has never grown on me 
 much." 
 
 " Then I should say you did not know it. It is a 
 haunting city when you have once hit the spell ; it 
 ' calls ' you, as they say of the East." 
 
 " Goodness ! " said Mary with open scorn for his 
 comparison; "you must have 'hit' some spell very 
 hard, in that hardest city I have ever known ! " 
 
 It was Tom who colored this time : " I see we must 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 agree to differ about San Francisco, for the present 
 I 'd like most awfully to meet you there some day, 
 and convert you." 
 
 " I 'm in no hurry for that day ! " said Mary tartly. 
 " It would be too absurd," she spoke up again, con- 
 trolling her flash of temper, " for us to quarrel about 
 a city neither of us belongs to, and one of us will 
 never see again, it is n't likely." 
 
 "Two negatives? you will see it again that is 
 my prophecy." 
 
 " Any old prophecy will do in my case," said Mary 
 languidly. 
 
 The little brown salesman took in the foreign situa- 
 tion discreetly, and busied his slender hands refold- 
 ing his stuffs. Mary checked him. 
 
 " Shall it be the sea -foam white, then, for your 
 mother or must we agree to disagree in every- 
 thing?" 
 
 " Anything you say goes," Tom answered simply. 
 
 She had thought that she could not get over the 
 choke of his bread-and-butter in her throat, but as 
 they walked homeward in silence, she was sensible 
 of a harder lump to swallow. What horrid behavior 
 she had shown ; how incredibly silly and bad-tem- 
 pered he must think her. Was she actually jealous 
 of this, boy's home past with its attachments and 
 preferences made before he ever saw her? An old 
 homesickness of her own awoke for which there was 
 no cure. She might call herself an American as a 
 fact she had no country and no home. This young 
 man had kept himself remarkably to himself, which 
 
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 did not mean necessarily that he had been a blank 
 page before he came to quaint, outlandish Korea and 
 met these missionary Gladwyns. As to his favors, 
 thank goodness, they were able to make some return : 
 first, through the hospitality of old friends who had 
 snatched them on their far-heralded arrival at Seoul, 
 a charming English couple who made them free of 
 their house, which was a house well worth visiting 
 for its own sake. 
 
 It stood in the old quarter, close to the city wall. 
 A garden, exotic England, cast its wonderful ivies 
 over a section of this wall and draped the carved- 
 stone seat beneath ; masses were cut away yearly 
 because of dampness, but new sprays were always 
 fingering the ancient carvings ; monstrous symbolic 
 heads thrust forth and peered down the long, espa- 
 liered walk that divided the garden. Inside, there 
 were no traveler's poses : you sat on cushions on the 
 matted floors if you preferred, but there were chairs 
 and lounges ; you could smoke " Egyptian Deities " or 
 "Bull Durham" or a slender Korean pipe holding a 
 thimbleful, and preciously inlaid with silver, and you 
 had your tub at any hour and plenty of hot water. 
 There were no young people. Mr. and Mrs. Bruce 
 adored Mary. The mothers exchanged one look and 
 the tall, silent young American, with a boyish absence 
 of manner but a look of power, was asked to dinner, 
 and to tiffin next day, previous to an afternoon's 
 shopping. 
 
 It gratified Mary, on their speechless homeward 
 stroll, to reflect on the bargains she had secured for 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 her trusting companion. I am not sure but she may 
 have saved him the better part of that wretched board- 
 bill outright, for he would have been an easy mark. 
 Her few words in fluent Korean caused prices to 
 tumble in a manner mournful for little brown sales- 
 men, who had seen them enter with high hopes. 
 
 How fondly it adds to the value of an experience 
 when we think of it as past and gone. Home affairs 
 absorbed Tom immediately upon his return, and those 
 who would have been his delighted listeners and 
 have drawn him out, were deep with him in matters 
 closer to the family life than this alien chapter; it 
 remained peculiarly his own and gained a touch of 
 melancholy from that sense of lost values imperfectly 
 felt at the time. Thousands of miles from Seoul and 
 its chill April sunsets, he would see that English gar- 
 den inside the Mongol wall ; smell the damp of its 
 winter ivies mingled with the scent of sprouting box 
 and the night incense of humanity in an old Asiatic 
 town. 
 
 There was no one to tea but themselves, and they 
 had it in the garden. When the smart house-boy, in 
 long blue coat and trousers reefed at the ankles, had 
 taken his tray and left them, they stood up on the 
 seat to see out over the wall toward the Peking road 
 where it runs straight into the north : the old ambas- 
 sadors' highway when Korea paid tribute to China's 
 emperors hundreds of dark decades before the Manchu 
 dynasties. A memorial arch spans the road at this 
 entrance, commemorating the virtues of some good 
 
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 and learned man who remembered the poor, several 
 dozen centuries before the restless race arose which 
 sent these young barbarians hither. 
 
 They planted their elbows in the ivy and gazed 
 before them long in silence. Tom took a paper from 
 his notebook and spread it under Mary's eyes. 
 
 " A cable from ? " 
 
 " Home," said Tom. " I found it at the consul's 
 delayed, of course." 
 
 His manner was singularly quiet, but Mary was 
 not deceived. " He must have had this on his mind 
 all the while we were spatting about San Francisco ; 
 and I thought he was annoyed I" 
 
 " Position here if you want it come soon," the mes- 
 sage read. 
 
 " * Position ' ? Does that mean anything official ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ; plain job," said Tom. " ' If you want 
 it, come soon,' or, ' Position here if you want it. 
 Come soon ! ' There are two ways of reading it, 
 don't you think?" 
 
 " Quite so. The last sounds more imperative. 
 That is what you meant, is n't it?" 
 
 " It is like my father to say, * If you want it, come 
 soon' ; it is more like mother to say, 'Come soon !" 
 
 Neither spoke again for some seconds while they 
 studied the paper together. 
 
 " Could there be any reason that you do not know 
 of for saying, ' Come soon ' ? any other reason 
 than ' plain job ' ?" Mary was smiling at him, but 
 with effort. The wind doubled up the paper between 
 them and she spread it down and kept a finger on it. 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Yes, two reasons," Tom answered. "Allen says 
 our papers at home have been faking up dispatches 
 on a hectic key : that would worry mother." 
 
 The second reason, Mary noticed, he withheld. It 
 rested on one sentence in his mother's last letter, to 
 which he would have attached more importance had 
 he not perceived by its general tone that the letter 
 had been written under high nerve-pressure. The 
 words referred to his father's health. 
 
 "Don't you want to spare me a little advice? 
 Where would you put the period in that dispatch, 
 if you were in my place?" 
 
 " But I know so very little what I should be talk- 
 ing about not knowing your place," said Mary. 
 " Our places, I fancy, are very different." 
 
 "That's an evasion, not an answer. You see, I 
 want this journey to go on just as it began and 
 here comes this message which may be meant to 
 stop me and yet it may not. I want my own way 
 so much, honestly, I 'm afraid to decide." 
 
 " If you are afraid, what should I be ! " He waited 
 persistently. " Would it make so much difference 
 in time you aren't going to stop anywhere?" 
 
 " No ; but it would mean two months' delay. My 
 impression is they don't wish to urge me, either 
 way." 
 
 " Still, there might be those reasons why you 
 should lose no time?" Again a pause: Mary drew 
 up her neck-piece of monkey-fur ; he noticed the 
 whiteness of her cheek against it, and the glistening 
 edges of her hair where it was swept up into a bronze 
 
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 knot under her hat-brim. " If you went back the 
 shortest way, how would you go? There is hardly 
 ever a boat now, to anywhere you want to go 
 quickly." 
 
 " The first little hooker to Nagasaki, and the first 
 Pacific Mail anything to San Francisco." 
 
 " Don't you want to start at once doesn't it 
 'call' you?" 
 
 " My people call me," he answered. " Other things 
 call the other way." 
 
 " Those other things can wait, can't they?" 
 
 " Nothing waits ; or if it does, it is n't the same." 
 
 "I am sure the real things are always worth 
 waiting for and they do not change ; but we may 
 change " 
 
 " I don't see but it conies to the same thing," said 
 Tom. 
 
 " So ; you think you may not come back ? " 
 
 " Well, you see, it 's time I settled to something, 
 here or there." 
 
 " It does n't look as if anything could be settled 
 here very soon: * plain job' may mean more than it 
 sounds." 
 
 " It is n't the job," said Tom. Again she had an in- 
 tuition of something held back which depressed him 
 and vaguely shadowed their counsels. " From what 
 you say, and don't say, I infer you think I ought to 
 go do you, Mary?" 
 
 He gave her name its full value, in his altered 
 tones. She gasped and steadied her voice to answer. 
 Something seemed to blind her, but she took the 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 pencil from him and placed her periods firmly : 
 " ' Come soon? " she underscored. 
 
 He straightened up slowly and took his elbows 
 from the ivy, and looked off where the road runs into 
 the cold, gray north. 
 
 " I don't know; indeed, I don't know," he heard 
 her relenting murmur. 
 
 " Will you let me write to you?" 
 "Yes, if you don't promise to write." 
 " I wish you would promise to answer." 
 " Had n't we better leave something to the way 
 we may happen to feel ? I have lived long enough 
 in the East to be a fatalist in some things." As if to 
 give point to the statement, lo, footsteps were upon 
 them : Mary's mother and her hostess in street attire, 
 followed by the house-boy with more tea. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MR. BRUCE and Mary were playing mild billiards in 
 a room off the court, chiefly screens : a stout gentle- 
 man in white and a slim, bright-headed girl in sal- 
 low pink ; the Orient knows a pink which red-haired 
 girls can wear. A white camellia in the bosom of her 
 dress threatened to fall as she poised her cue. 
 
 Upstairs, Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Gladwyn had the 
 drawing-room to themselves. 
 
 " I want to ask you an intimate question," said 
 the former. She had some knitting in her hands and 
 laid it down. " Are Mary's affections engaged at the 
 present time, do you know ? " 
 
 Mrs. Gladwyn laughed aloud without pretending 
 to answer. 
 
 " Do you find my question too intimate?" asked 
 Mrs. Bruce imperturbably. 
 
 " Not for you and me, but I should hardly expect 
 to be as intimate as that with Mary." 
 
 " I see you are not prepared to say * no,' " her friend 
 persisted. " That is precisely my own conclusion." 
 
 " What in the world do you mean, my dear Elinor? 
 Have you concluded she is in love with that young 
 engineer ? " 
 
 " The question may be, what will Mary conclude. 
 To me it looked as if matters had reached a very 
 pretty crisis this evening in the garden." 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Well, my dear, what would you propose to have 
 me do about it ? " 
 
 " Tell me, seriously, woman, what do you think? 
 If I am a reader of situations, I should say we inter- 
 rupted a declaration in the garden." 
 
 " If we did," Mrs. Gladwyn rejoined, "it will prob- 
 ably come on again unless it was an accident ; in 
 that case our interruption may have been very well 
 timed." 
 
 " That is more philosophy than should be required 
 of a mother the mother of a Mary who is going to 
 be a nurse. I don't think at all well of that plan, 
 Susan Gladwyn. Mary should marry. You know how 
 youth goes when they take up that life : ten years 
 will age our Mary sadly." 
 
 " Mary does not look upon the life as you do ; she 
 feels, on the other hand, quite selfish, preparing to 
 nurse people as a * gainful occupation.' The poor 
 child wants to pay her debts. She is scorched very 
 deep with that iron." 
 
 Mrs. Bruce smiled understandingly and patted her 
 friend's hand. She sat awhile, making tracings with 
 an ivory needle on her satin-flowered lap. 
 
 " I have something to tell you, Susan. It will em- 
 barrass us both a little, but we should be able to 
 bear it for Mary's sake. I want her to know there is 
 no such pressure about this ' living.' Her name stands 
 in my will for something like two hundred pounds a 
 year." 
 
 " Elinor Bruce, what made you ! " 
 
 " Come ; you need n't blush so : it 's no great sum. 
 
 78 
 
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 But to know it is there might save this hunted feel- 
 ing ; and I don't think you ought to be separated, 
 unless by something more in keeping with a woman's 
 personal destiny than spending her life in sick-rooms. 
 - Now, of course you will say, Mary can't spend 
 her life waiting for dead people's shoes either. I 'm 
 aot afraid that you 'd wish to hurry me off the scene 
 in fact, I have a better plan than dying. Do let 
 me fund this little sum in her name now, while it 
 might substantially influence her whole future I Young 
 men just starting in a profession can't ask penniless 
 girls to marry them ; a modest boy, as this one seems, 
 would not ask a girl to take his promise and wait for 
 him indefinite years. What little I am giving her I 
 should never miss, and it might mean thrice as much 
 to her now as twenty years from now ; I am liable 
 to move on very slowly." 
 
 " You should not have done this, Elinor : we are 
 such a very side-issue I can't see what we should 
 be doing in your will." 
 
 " I think you must allow me to make my own will. 
 Mary is only a very small-sized legatee. My money 
 is not family money either ; I do not blush to say, it 
 was made in trade. You may remember an old joke 
 in ' Punch ' of our beloved Du Maurier's : A lady 
 (whom I trust I do not too much resemble) explains 
 to Mr. Grigsby that her husband, although in busi- 
 ness, is in the coffee business, and ' they are all gen- 
 tlemen in the coffee business.' My coffee money did 
 not come by the road of the generations and I am 
 not bound to pass it on that way. I was not granted 
 
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 children I may pluck a flower from any genera- 
 tion I choose. Mary is my flower. Now, let me please 
 myself, you proud woman. Give up this wild Hong- 
 kong scheme and go back to California, both of you, 
 and rest in your Golden Gates, and let this nursing 
 wait." 
 
 " Till we see what may happen on the boat 
 going home ! You, of course, have decided that Mr. 
 Scarth shall go with us? I can imagine you going 
 still further, Elinor.' ' 
 
 " Quite so," her friend replied calmly. " I certainly 
 should not fail to have the young man undeceived 
 as to Mary's circumstances, in the proper manner, 
 by the right person, naturally." 
 
 " I wonder what you mean by * naturally ' ? You 
 are a very dangerous good fairy : keep away from 
 the cradle of my daughter's affections. I don't be- 
 lieve they are born still less named. If they are, it 
 is Mary's own private christening. You and I have 
 not been asked. But when it is I speaking to you, 
 about what you have done for my child can you 
 doubt what I must feel ? If we have not witched it 
 out of you somehow ? " 
 
 "Mary has, but you have no spells for me ex- 
 cept once : now I shall tease you, my doctor-lady ! 
 you know that was black magic ! " 
 
 " It was your constitution ; and you paid your 
 docj:or-lady, so don't thrust a case of natural recov- 
 ery into our otherwise uncorrupted friendship." 
 
 " While you thrust everything back on me I 
 Won't you even let Mary know that she need not 
 
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 waste the flower of her youth providing for old 
 age?" 
 
 "It is not mine to say what shall or shall not be 
 told and yet, last wills and testaments of those we 
 love are sacred things. Mary would shrink from 
 peeping into yours for the sake of seeing her own 
 name there." 
 
 " Life is a sacred thing, and the hopes of youth, 
 and happiness. . . . So," said the cheated benefac- 
 tor, " I have paraded in my grave-clothes for nothing. 
 I shall hang on forever and see my flower fade all 
 because of a ruthless mother. Well, you two have 
 less common sense in proportion to your alleged 
 brains than any Americans I ever have heard of." 
 
 " And why Americans ? " 
 
 " I speak of the only type of American I consider 
 genuine " 
 
 " Because repulsive ? Oh, narrow, narrow ! " 
 
 Mary at that moment rejoined them, strolling into 
 the room. The older women were drawn up in front 
 of a miserly fire in an English grate. Mary took the 
 fender-stool and leaned against her mother's knee. 
 Mrs. Bruce plucked one of the numerous scarfs she 
 had a way of leaving on the backs of chairs, and cast 
 it in a wad at Mary, who shook out its spangled 
 length and wound herself in it. 
 
 " How adorable young arms are through that 
 Egyptian gauze," sighed Mrs. Bruce with fond eyes 
 fixed on Mary mournfully. " And to think of con- 
 signing her for life to starched uniforms ! " 
 
 " How paltry we are, dear Lady Brucey," Mary 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 smiled back at her. "What were you and mamma so 
 heated about when I came in just now ? " 
 
 " As usual, your countrywomen." 
 
 " The kind who shake your insular prejudices ? " 
 
 " The kind who explain them. I am very sure I 
 could manage better with the true type who jump at 
 all they can get without any bones about it." 
 
 " Have you seen any Americans around here 
 lately who don't?" asked Mary suspiciously. The 
 answer was a double laugh and a glance from Mrs. 
 Gladwyn at her friend, who waived the warning 
 cheerfully. 
 
 " Mary, I hope you are not as proud as your 
 mother, my dear." 
 
 " My mother proud ?" said Mary. " Mamma is not 
 proud ; she admits it. That part of her, she claims, 
 was crucified in a good cause, years ago." 
 
 " Give me some proof any proof that your 
 mother is not the most obstinately proud woman 
 who ever sacrificed a child to that vanity of vanities 
 in mothers." 
 
 " I take you up on that, Lady Brucey," Mary said, 
 while the others laughed with an air of mutual under- 
 standing. She squared around on her stool and ex- 
 hibited her parent with a fine wave of her arm. 
 " There she is, ma'am ; the whole world could tread 
 on her. I dare mamma this moment to prove she has 
 a particle of pride about her ! If she had, she 'd ask 
 Lady Brucey for the loan of thirty guineas." 
 
 "Mary!" screamed Mrs. Gladwyn. 
 
 " Mamma, Mr. Scarth does not go with us to Hong- 
 
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 kong. He starts for home to-morrow. Shall he go ? 
 You know what I mean ! " 
 
 " Mary means," said Mrs. Gladwyn, throwing away 
 everything in defence of Mary's sanity at the moment, 
 " that we have not discharged a debt we owe him, on 
 an arrangement proposed by me. It 's an awkward 
 fact which I think we might have kept to our- 
 selves." 
 
 " It may not interest dear Lady Brucey, but I think 
 it ought to begin to interest us." 
 
 " I told you I should attend to it." 
 
 " Well, dear ; have you the money by you ? He 
 goes to-morrow." 
 
 " The money will be sent him before the summer 
 is over." 
 
 " Does n't it occur to you he may want it now ?" 
 Mary sighed desperately " Mrs. Bruce, she is n't 
 proud, or she would n't keep a young man out of his 
 money who can't ask it of women and mission- 
 aries ! There ; I 've insulted both my parents and now 
 I think I 'd better go to bed ! " 
 
 The women exchanged looks when Mary's back 
 was turned. She stood listening to some sound from 
 the court. " I have the money by me if you will take 
 it," Mrs. Bruce whispered. 
 
 " I will take anything to stop Mary's mouth. I told 
 you she was scorched very deep " 
 
 "Don't you see what this means? when a girl 
 like Mary loses all her sense of humor and bullies 
 her mother that 's not pride." 
 
 " You see, perhaps, then, why I don't propose to 
 
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 encourage your practical designs on that poor boy 
 who has n't seen his family in four years ! " 
 
 " Designs, you blind woman I He is in love with 
 Mary, or all ready to be." 
 
 "Then let him take his time; I shan't help him, 
 and you shall not either 1 " 
 
 " Do you consider that you may be spoiling his 
 future, too ? " 
 
 "What do we know about his future what does 
 he know himself ! He has not seen a white woman 
 except Mary " 
 
 " Mamma, here is your chance," Mary interrupted, 
 coming down the room. " Your absconding creditor 
 is below." Tom's cards were presented as she was 
 speaking. 
 
 " Dear me, what a waste of cards ! we know quite 
 well whom it is he wishes to see." 
 
 " Mamma, you wish to see him ! " said the tiresome 
 girl. "I 'm not going down, of course." 
 
 " You have got a headache?" Mrs. Bruce asked 
 ironically. 
 
 " I have all that 's needful to going straight to 
 bed, if any one should inquire?" 
 
 " Is that pride ? " Mrs. Bruce nodded as Mary closed 
 the door on her exasperating behavior. 
 
 Mrs. Gladwyn had her private altercation with her 
 creditor from which he retired with a hot face and 
 Mrs. Bruce's money, or as much as he would con- 
 sent to take, in his pocket, but he felt sorely cheated 
 of some other things. A boat had been reported at 
 Chemulpo to leave the following noon : there was no 
 
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 more than time next morning to get himself and his 
 stuff on board. 
 
 " I have never felt so vexed with Mary in my life," 
 said Mrs. Bruce. 
 
PART II 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE Ludwell house, before the fire, stood near the 
 summit of California Street obstructing about a hun- 
 dred feet of that most wonderful view. There are 
 many who remember it as one of the kindest, as it 
 was one of the ugliest, of those early nabob mansions 
 which the fire swept away : peace to its hospitable 
 ashes ! All that remained of it when I saw it, two 
 years after the catastrophe, was a cracked and 
 blackened lintel open to the sky and some broken 
 stone steps that buried themselves in dead grass. But 
 the ground and the view are still there, and the Lud- 
 wells are not buried in dead grass. 
 
 No one who knew Mrs. Ludwell could have pre- 
 dicted her drawing-room unless they knew, as well, 
 her almost fanatical scrupulousness in little ways 
 touching the feelings of her friends. As the Ludwells 
 grew richer, most of their friends grew richer, too : 
 there was no stemming the tide of gifts and giving 
 to show unfailing appreciation of such a conglom- 
 erate stream of tribute, year by year, would have 
 ruined any interior-artist's design. Cousin Tom also 
 became more assured of his own connoisseurship as 
 time went on, and everything he touched seemed 
 turned to Gold. His greatest happiness, aside from 
 the Game, was spending money on the women he 
 loved. They writhed and counterfeited, but his gifts 
 
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 were loyally honored in the sight of all ; he noticed, 
 and it hurt him if one were guiltily withdrawn. 
 
 But flowers, always flowers and sunshine 
 athwart the long carpets, and that noble view of the 
 Bay, as far as three sets of curtains allowed you to 
 see it, and the daughter of the house coming into 
 the room in the heyday loveliness of eighteen with 
 the step of a flying joy that were enough for most 
 of us ; it was quite enough, apparently, for Mr. Dalby 
 Morton who had come to ride with Clare. 
 
 They met swiftly in the middle of the room and 
 executed a high hand-shake and both immediately 
 began to laugh. Clare composed her features quickly 
 and lifted pathetic eyebrows exhibiting one little foot 
 still in a house-slipper. 
 
 " So sorry I can't go. I 've been trying to get you 
 all the morning. Sorry you came for nothing." 
 
 " Why can't you go? Suddenly don't want to?" 
 
 " Oh, no. Things have been happening. It was 
 noon before I got mamma's message and I tried to 
 call you up, but I suppose you were lunching. She 
 can't be home till late and one of us must be here 
 when my cousin Tom arrives. His boat gets in to-day, 
 and there is such bad news for him ! " 
 
 Dalby did not recall the cousin's name, but paid his 
 respects to the bad news in sobered silence. She left 
 the subject hastily: "How's your new horse? 
 Think you are going to like him?" 
 
 Dalby said prudently, as one expecting to sell, that 
 he thought so ; it was only in the last five minutes, 
 while waiting for Clare, that he had made up his 
 
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 mind to part with the beast, having more than a sus- 
 picion of cocked ankles in the future of his fore 
 feet. The horse was not outside : even young persons 
 of fashion at that time were frequently seen in a ple- 
 beian street-car on their way out to the riding-club 
 where their mounts awaited them. The talk went 
 back to the family topic, and Clare's eyes grew big 
 with sympathy. She had known Dalby longer than 
 she had the cousins at Roadside and much more inti- 
 mately; it was natural she should speak to him of 
 their present trouble. 
 
 Cousin Caroline, she said, was staying with them, 
 but spent every moment, of course, with Cousin 
 Henry at the Adler ; and she explained how they had 
 rushed him down, his wife and a local doctor, over 
 terrible country roads, afraid he might not live to get 
 there. He had been taken dangerously ill in some 
 wretched little mining-town up in the foothills, far 
 from the skilled help he required at once. And the 
 doctors would operate early to-morrow morning. 
 This was the ambush of fate prepared for Tom. 
 " He can't have heard anything, you think?" 
 " Impossible ! " said Clare ; " he 's been traveling 
 a month. You know this is the cousin who went to 
 Korea." 
 
 ''He's quite a bit older than you, isn't he?" 
 "Oh, yes. I was a * flapper' when he went away. 
 He sent me wonderful post-stamps for my collection 
 - he has kept on sending ; I suppose he thinks I 'm 
 a ' flapper ' still. But you must remember him ? " 
 Dalby remembered him, coolly. " Did n't we all go 
 
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 to some show together once ? He took in all stage- 
 machinery business as if it was his trade." 
 
 " That 's Tom ! He always wanted to know how 
 everything * worked ' and he generally found out. He 
 mended my doll's eyes once took off her hair to 
 do it and I cried and almost fought him. He just 
 went ahead and said nothing, but it came out all 
 right." 
 
 The talk continued to jump from one thing to 
 another : the waste of Dalby's afternoon sitting there, 
 with a new horse waiting and the tide just right for 
 the sands ; the pity it was to take these things too 
 hard (Dalby's turn), since people came through them 
 every day. Who were they going to have? Clare 
 named the surgeon, and Dalby nodded : then it was 
 a sure thing. And how about the dinner to-night? 
 to a cluster of sub-debutantes, followed by a box- 
 party at the first appearance of a great Diva on that 
 coast. 
 
 Clare owned with proper reluctance that a dinner 
 engagement must hold. Cousin Caroline and Tom 
 would be at the Adler as late as possible, this last 
 night: it could make no difference to them! Her 
 charming eyes, arched like a cherub's, shone with 
 tears ; she looked very hard at Dalby and could 
 scarcely see him. He saw her and he never had liked 
 her so well ; he wanted to kiss her on the spot. She 
 seemed to him suddenly a woman. 
 
 Dalby was light, but he appreciated depth in 
 others, and he had a very kind heart for sorrow as 
 well as a respect for it, never having had any that he 
 
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 fully recognized of his own. Everybody but her hus- 
 band and son knew that Mrs. Morton's life was a 
 tragedy. 
 
 The butler, having answered the door, entered with 
 a florist's box and submitted the address on it to his 
 young mistress. " I think there is some mistake, miss : 
 I told the boy to wait." 
 
 " How stupid," said Clare. " This should have gone 
 to the Adler. Anything with a Ludwell on it always 
 comes straight here." 
 
 She chose a pen from an ornate little desk that 
 stood open at her elbow, underscored the "Scarth" 
 after " Henry Ludwell," and crossed out the house- 
 address. " Do you spell it sanatorium or sana- 
 torium ? " 
 
 Dalby said either would do for his part, and James, 
 begging pardon, murmured, " I think, miss, the Adler 
 spells it with an a" 
 
 "Well, I 've just written an o" said Clare cheerily, 
 "but I guess it will get there this time." 
 
 So that was disposed of, and Mr. Dalby Morton 
 said he must be going, and Clare did nothing to hin- 
 der him rather wishing he would: it was time for 
 her father any minute with poor Tom. How stupidly 
 Dalby spoke of him ; he had n't seen the point at all. 
 It did not reflect upon Dalby in her eyes that Tom 
 had seemed to him just a common mechanical sort 
 of chap ; rather she fell to wondering about Tom. 
 How would he look after four years in darkest Korea 
 what would his manners be? They were good and 
 clever, the cousins at Roadside ; still, they were a little 
 
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 odd ; you could n't combine them with your other 
 friends. There was always that just too much of in- 
 dividuality in speech and dress which marked them 
 in society. 
 
 Dalby ran down the steps and gravely raised his 
 hat to Clare in the window. She was yet such a 
 child that all forms of grown-up homage from young 
 men thrilled her ; and Dalby's nice upward look was 
 a trifle more than conventional. She watched his well- 
 tailored back as he swung lightly aboard his car. 
 
 San Francisco is still young enough to rejoice in 
 turning out such boys as Dalby Morton. They do 
 nothing in particular, but they do it in good form ; 
 and their fathers in many cases did more than was 
 necessary. They were the men of force, but they were 
 not the men of refinement. Dalby's father told 
 coarse stories, and was not over-careful of his neigh- 
 bor's landmarks. At Dalby's age he had half-built 
 and wholly financed a main line and feeders, Web- 
 ster's " substantive and six," fighting his right of 
 way by hook or by crook, begging subsidies, and lay- 
 ing hands on all the collateral mines and lands and 
 industries he could suck into his powerful grasp. 
 Dalby had a sporting sense of honor : he would not, 
 for instance, have sold his new horse with the future 
 cocked ankles to Mr. Ludwell for Clare, not though 
 Mr. LudwelPs head-groom should close one eye to 
 the transaction ; but he did propose to work him off 
 on any friend with eyes of his own who took the 
 risk of believing them. 
 
 Clare walked to the mantel-mirror and smiled at 
 
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 herself dreamily ; then she looked at herself sober, as 
 Dalby had last seen her ; the reflection was still more 
 fair. The carriage drove up and stopped ; no one was 
 getting out. The coachman left a message from her 
 father to say that he had an appointment downtown, 
 and that her cousin had gone straight from the steamer 
 dock to the hospital. So everybody's afternoon was 
 disposed of and she had sacrificed her own, this 
 divine day, perfect for the beach-course or the downs. 
 
 She gave orders where the carriage was to meet 
 her mother, and, catching her breath with a little 
 laugh, she ran to the telephone and called up the 
 riding-club. She had experienced another quick turn, 
 and now she saw only Dalby's grave, upraised look, 
 and a vision of the sands in evening light, and two 
 young figures on horseback racing above the long 
 lines of surf, and the dark, fresh, glittering ocean 
 rolling out to where the Farralones crown themselves 
 with sunset. 
 
 They might have missed each other they did not, 
 and one charmed hour was saved out of a whole 
 wasted day. Coming home, Clare motioned her com- 
 panion to stop their car at the corner of Van Ness 
 Avenue. 
 
 " We will walk down past the Adler ; I want to in- 
 quire about Cousin Henry." 
 
 She waited on one of the seats amidst flowering 
 shrubs, as you enter through a little court, now in 
 deep shade. It seemed a long colloquy between Dalby 
 and some one to whom he spoke just inside the ves- 
 tibule. He came down the steps soberly, and would 
 
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 not meet her eyes ; she fancied even he looked pale. 
 He stood by her without speaking while some noise 
 in the street went by a heavy express wagon piled 
 with trunks on its way uptown from the ferry. Still- 
 ness settled on them again ; they heard the distant 
 clangor of a cable-car bearing down upon the avenue 
 from a cross-street. Lights began to prick through 
 the gathering fog in the lower city, and doleful sirens 
 answered one another out on the vanished Bay. 
 
 "What do they say? Is he any worse ?" 
 
 " They sent a messenger for your cousin to lose 
 no time. There had been a change : it was decided 
 to operate at once. That was three hours ago." 
 
 " While we were riding," Clare murmured in an 
 awed tone. 
 
 "It hasn't gone well, I'm afraid. In fact they 
 say he is sinking." 
 
 "You don't mean he is dying!" Clare sprang 
 up " Cousin Henry, in there now ? " She saw the 
 truth in Dalby's eyes. "Is mamma there? Oh, some 
 one ought to be with Cousin Caroline 1 " 
 
 Dalby reminded her that Mrs. Scarth had her son 
 with her, although he had not been in time to be 
 recognized by his father, who was under the ether 
 when he arrived. 
 
 How unthinkable this reality seemed after one's 
 foolish dreams. She was to wear a new dress that 
 night almost full evening dress. Tom, of course, 
 still thought of her as a child ; she was to have burst 
 upon him in her completed loveliness she knew 
 just how she would look in that dress. Then off we go 
 
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 to our other life that claims us with music and lights 
 and laughter and flowers from young men, whose 
 suffrages were not so much worth in themselves, but 
 were highly necessary to a forthcoming bud's success ; 
 and our hearts at home with the mothers sitting up 
 together listening to their young traveler's tales. A 
 few words with Tom by himself, then kind good- 
 nights and Cousin Henry's name in our prayers and 
 his life saved in the morning. He would get well : 
 every one did who had Dr. Symington ; and she and 
 Tom would celebrate his convalescence with some 
 nice cousinly times of their own. Tom, she had de- 
 cided, must be her first lover : he was not eligible, 
 but he was not contemptible ; and she needed a run- 
 ner-up to make Dalby Morton ask himself how he 
 stood. Dalby had " rushed " girl after girl : he should 
 not exhibit her as one of his favorites of a season. 
 
 But Clare's worldly precocity was very much on the 
 surface ; she had a warm heart, and it sank in self- 
 disgust at the awful sobriety of the truth in contrast 
 to this silly tissue of vanities woven about one's own 
 image as we long to impress others. 
 
 Dalby was respectfully puzzled by her wretched- 
 ness. Had she cared for these cousins so much more 
 than he had allowed for ? as far as he could remem- 
 ber they had had but the slightest part in her life. 
 What he did recognize, and it raised her in his eyes, 
 was her quick and self-forgetful sympathy. Tt touched 
 him with a new and sweeter vision of the girl's real 
 nature, of which he had seen only the lightness and 
 hardness and excitability of youth. 
 
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 She scarcely spoke on the way home, except to 
 thank him, as they parted, for some little attention 
 to her cousin asking if he could do anything for 
 him while he remained in the city. 
 
 Tea was brought and she drank hers fast, not wait- 
 ing for her mother, who came in, flushed and anxious, 
 from a conversation at the telephone. She quite up- 
 braided Clare for being so late. 
 
 " Late, mamma ! Must I go to that dinner now? " 
 
 Mrs. Ludwell answered impatiently ; she had not 
 followed the girl's spiritual reactions, and her sudden 
 absorption in this vicarious grief struck her as dis- 
 proportionate and uncalled for. Extremes were what 
 she had always combated in Clare. 
 
 With another outburst came the cry : " Mamma, 
 think of Engracia ! not to even know ! What is she 
 doing now, I wonder ? laughing and talking, per- 
 haps." Mrs. Ludwell rose with lips shut hard and left 
 the room. But Clare wept while her hair was being 
 done because the maid could not refrain from speak- 
 ing of what her mistress had purposely withheld 
 the last message from the Adler. When the dress had 
 gone over her head and the carriage was waiting be- 
 low, her mother came in quietly and kissed her. 
 
 " It is all over, dear. They, will be here now in a 
 few minutes : I don't think you need see them to- 
 night." Her sweet brows were raised in pain, but 
 behind them the mind of a practiced hostess worked 
 clear. Another carriage drove up ; a soft bustle fol- 
 lowed the shutting of the hall door but no voices. 
 With a low order to one of the maids, she went down 
 
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 to meet her guests. Clare did not go back into her 
 room and hide her inappropriate splendor ; she re- 
 mained outside listening, with chills running over 
 her. They came straight upstairs, Cousin Caroline's 
 small, bowed figure with her mother's arm around 
 her ; no one spoke, but Clare flew to meet them, took 
 the tearless woman in her arms and pressed her cool 
 lips to the hot, thin, stricken face that buried itself 
 on her young breast in silence. But after the bedroom 
 door closed upon the two wives, low sounds were 
 heard, unknown in that house since Clare's own child- 
 ish griefs monopolized its woes. 
 
 The butler passed her with Tom's bags and turned 
 a corner of the hall. Tom was just behind, walking 
 as if he had forgotten his way around the house. She 
 stepped in front of him in her startling festal white- 
 ness and held out both hands, calling him by name. 
 He hardly seemed to know her. Grief was a new ex- 
 perience to him, too; the texture of his mind gave 
 way slowly to the force of this first great blow. He 
 had been four years among strangers under the in- 
 fluence of outside impressions, unused to appeals, to 
 little words and looks of sympathy such as Clare gave 
 him, appearing like a bright angel in the hall. She 
 repeated his name softly, with exquisite pity. 
 
 "Tom, dear Tom! Don't you know me? This is 
 Clare." Breaking through the unnatural chill between 
 them, she lifted her wonderful little face impulsively 
 to his. A silence followed his kiss. "That way," she 
 pointed. " Good-night." He did not stir. " I am going 
 to an awful little dinner to-night. Kiss your dear 
 
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 mother for me. I have to go ! " He kissed her instead 
 with, this time, more consciousness of what he was 
 doing. 
 
 She felt exactly the same sober difference in their 
 ages as she remembered him. He seemed to her older 
 even than Dalby Morton, though with none of Dalby's 
 gay sophistication of manner. His eyes were not cold, 
 but they had the ingenuous, innocuous abstraction 
 of a boy's. She had dramatized his grief, but she 
 could not dramatize him. He was just Tom the 
 same as if he had never been away. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ENGRACIA could not be at her father's funeral, 
 though Cousin Tom lavished money and used all 
 his railroad influence to get her across the continent 
 in time. To have waited, as Caroline was urged, 
 would only have prolonged the infliction of their 
 private grief upon the generous Ludwell household. 
 Had it been "just Anna," the case, Caroline felt, 
 might have been different. But between her husband 
 living and his cousin there had been a mental and 
 temperamental antagonism forgotten on her host's 
 side now in a great rush of kindness : still, for her, 
 there was the irony of that silence of the guest up- 
 stairs, recking nothing of the profound stir his last 
 answer had made the answer to all criticism, the 
 end of all argument that impenetrable peace. 
 
 "Others abide our question. Thou art free. 
 We ask and ask : Thou smilest and art still " 
 
 A telegram reached Engracia at Colfax, checking 
 her through journey, and Tom met her at Marys- 
 ville. They had a long, sweet drive home, resting in 
 the mere happiness of being together again, speak- 
 ing of everything but the dread fact awaiting them 
 in a common shyness of expression. But now the 
 women were shut up alone in the summer heat at 
 Roadside, and the mother's retrospect began the 
 
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 long, broken recital of what had been done or could 
 'not 1 t')e tiqne, die mistakes, the infinite despair of all 
 those " too lates," when the last " too late" is said. 
 
 Engracia would have spared her mother these 
 spasms of wrenched, tearless talk, but that it must 
 come she knew ; only speech at last to the one suf- 
 ficient listener could soften those hard knots of grief. 
 She was not old enough, or she was not so made 
 that she could share the restlessness that followed, 
 but she was forced to witness it in her mother, who 
 paced the house, rearranging rooms, emptying bureau 
 drawers, putting out of sight old things grown ter- 
 rible ; or repenting and saying wildly, " These should 
 be used ; they can do good to somebody ! " She wrote 
 impossible letters to the friends at home who won- 
 dered how she could write. When implored to let 
 the letters and the closets wait, she asked, " Wait for 
 what? You don't suppose it will ever be any easier? 
 I am dead now after a while everything will hurt." 
 
 Death is such a strong revolt from nature, so 
 scornful of what we may mean by our preparedness 
 no wonder, if it be our fate to meet it first in mid- 
 dle-life, full of material cares, unable physically to 
 break down, that it should breed irregular excite- 
 ments and distortions of the nerves that estrange us 
 to the knowledge of those who love us best. It is 
 not uncommon to criticize the way our friends " take" 
 their grief grief is a thing we have to learn to 
 take, and different temperaments show suffering in 
 different ways. Engracia had matured early in wis- 
 
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 dom of the affections or she could not have under- 
 stood her mother at this time. 
 
 At length came the reaction : they could read 
 they drugged themselves with books. New books 
 were not so common in that house, but old ones are 
 best; beloved poems they thought they had known 
 took new and piercing meanings. Caroline plunged 
 into all the metaphysical speculations overhauling 
 our ancient certainties, and through such brain-sick 
 followings one line from some pure lyric matchless 
 in its beauty would sob through her heart, or a grand 
 sentence from the Bible more convincing than all the 
 arguments " about it and about " 
 
 And Bran but how shall we speak of Bran ? 
 Who is there has escaped the sight of a dog taking 
 his share in human grief with only his dog-soul to 
 help him? Bran could almost speak, but he could 
 not understand and he could remember. He trav- 
 ersed the house from room to room ; he lay outside 
 a certain door for hours ; he listened while he slept 
 but on that couch where he was wont to climb 
 and crowd into the space allotted him by one he 
 missed, he was never seen again. He would stand 
 there and quiver with his nose and whimper to him- 
 self and go patting softly away, and often, as if 
 brain-weary with the question, he would drop down 
 sighing and go suddenly to sleep. Neither could 
 Bran believe there is such a thing as Death. But his 
 world was not ended while he had the young boss 
 and the women, who were but women, still, one 
 loved them in their place. 
 
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 Tom was out in the heat all day learning his 
 father's job. He thought more of it now that he had 
 taken it on his own shoulders. At noon he came in 
 and hurried through a large lunch in silence; he 
 joined them at dinner, fresh-shaven, thin, tall, in 
 spotless black and white, he was as neat as a sol- 
 dier in his dress ; this about comprised their knowl- 
 edge of him after four years. To the intensity and 
 passion of their grief he seemed a stranger. But 
 what would love be worth if they could not under- 
 stand this as well ? They were not experienced read- 
 ers of mankind, but their own type of men they 
 knew, and loved them rather more that allowance 
 must be made for their inherent lack of expression. 
 
 They, poor things, were come to the woman's 
 eternal question of clothes. Yet almost all which that 
 dread just now implied had been spared them by 
 Cousin Anna's beautiful thoughtfulness and exhaus- 
 tive care. Boxes arrived containing their new mourn- 
 ing, entirely chosen and purchased by her. Granting 
 that we still do " go into mourning," that reason has 
 nothing to offer at such times, and we crave ashes, 
 veils, or any equivalent that custom dictates, on our 
 heads what is there one woman can do for an- 
 other in the woman's world of tragic futilities to 
 match the relief of this ? Anna had done justice to 
 her friend's good-breeding while she remembered 
 her circumstances; not for twice the money and 
 ten times the effort could Caroline have approached 
 such results. And withal a letter explaining certain 
 retrenchments and omissions which only Cousin 
 
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 Anna's scrupulousness could have deemed neces- 
 sary. 
 
 " I have tried to remember your great heat up 
 there, my dears. Do wear anything white you have, 
 no matter how it is made. Let your loneliness be at 
 least a protection and dress as you please. So you 
 see I have sent only two gowns apiece and very few 
 sets of bands. Engracia will find it an occupation to 
 hemstitch them herself." A gentle hint : Cousin 
 Anna had remarked and privately disapproved of 
 Engracia' s absorption in books to the exclusion of 
 her needle ; there were girls she knew with fathers 
 worth many thousands who saved themselves yearly, 
 doing fine sewing, more than would suffice to dress 
 a daughter of " the indigent poor." " Gloves can 
 be ordered as you want them ; you won't want them 
 unless you come to the city. Engracia's hat is my 
 gift. It is one of the newest shapes and the trimming 
 can be changed when she leaves off a veil and it 
 will still make her a useful hat. 
 
 " As to Clare's visit, I hardly know what to say. 
 Her father thinks you can't really want her ; still, it 
 is best at these times, we are told, to be taken out of 
 ourselves as much as possible. It is such happiness 
 to me to do things for those I love, and I feel so sure 
 it is the same with you, dear Caroline, that I shall 
 give you, regardless of your feelings in other ways, 
 an opportunity to help me out in one of my mother 
 problems. If you could have Clare for a little visit, 
 much as you may dread it just now, it will certainly 
 make the summer easier for me. I think it was her 
 
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 own proposal at first ; now the impulse has yielded a 
 little to other things, but a letter from Engracia, fix- 
 ing a time, with an assurance from you that it is 
 all right, would bring it to pass. I am sure her 
 feeling in the matter was very genuine ; and she 
 wants to become acquainted with Engracia. 
 
 '* I know how little you can desire any change, any 
 mental movement or effort you are so hurt all 
 through ! but we must not give way to this apathy. 
 It certainly will not do for Engracia, and I know how 
 little you mind for yourself, if it were best for her. 
 For my own girl this summer, speaking selfishly, I 
 desire two things in both of which you can help me. 
 A few weeks of country quiet with such occupations 
 as she would have with you, and in some place where 
 she does not meet all the time the same young set 
 she will go out with next winter. I don't disapprove 
 of them, not all of them, but she will see quite 
 enough of them as it is. Meanwhile I want some- 
 thing different, a brief disconnection of ideas." 
 
 " That means, I suppose, some young man Clare 
 is seeing too much of/' Caroline speculated. 
 
 " It means Dalby Morton," said Engracia. 
 
 " Is n't he rather old for Clare ? " 
 
 " Dalby Morton ? He '11 never be old ; he has n't 
 half her brains at any age." 
 
 " Well ; a letter like that makes it easy to do any- 
 thing. You will write to Clare at once ? " 
 
 " Of course, mother ; but what will the poor child 
 do up here? She can't read and practice all day 
 long." 
 
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 " She can disconnect her ideas." 
 
 " She can exercise Nipper. Tom must get him up 
 and have him shod." 
 
 " But are you never going to ride again ? You are 
 always too pale " 
 
 " If there were only some other roads " 
 
 " Ah," groaned Caroline " but can't you go 
 sometimes with Tom ? " 
 
 " That is worse, mother dear. Not one man but 
 every man he meets, if he has nothing else to say, 
 will stop him and ask questions and eye him stead- 
 ily with that cold curiosity " 
 
 " No ; they mean it as a tribute ; they all loved 
 him." 
 
 "Well Tom can bear it, alone." 
 
 " He bears everything ; he does it by hardening 
 himself deliberately, as you ride down your saddle- 
 galls. And all his work is haunted the same way. I 
 shudder to see him at that desk evenings, going over 
 the papers ; and the letters come addressed the 
 same. I wonder if it will ever stop?" 
 
 "Don't let's try too hard to be reasonable; it's 
 not to be expected. People like us must be allowed 
 to go out of our minds harmlessly for a while." 
 
 " Well ; the summer can't last forever ; then we 
 shall have to begin to think." 
 
 They could fill in each other's breaks : this think- 
 ing which loomed ahead had reference to an event 
 of fundamental consequence to the future of the 
 Torres Tract as well as their own family fortunes. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 ON the day of Henry Scarth's funeral in San Fran- 
 cisco, on the other ocean-side, a four-year-old boy 
 ran out of his home gates with his hand in the collar 
 of a big dog. The collie rushed across the road ; the 
 child would not let go. A touring-car taking Mr, 
 Schuyler Rivington to his train he was driving 
 himself that morning swung round one of those 
 sharp curves hid in shrubbery which are a peculiar 
 menace of the North Shore roads. When he saw the 
 child, it was too late to do anything but ditch his 
 car. The little boy was dragged home screaming by 
 a frightened nurse : but two other little boys, at school 
 in Switzerland, in that moment became fatherless; 
 their mother, a widow, at thirty-one ; a chair stood 
 empty at a dozen directorial tables in New York and 
 Boston ; and the Torres Tract so little known to 
 persons implicated in these other facts had lost 
 its president. Had Henry Scarth lived a few days 
 longer he would have known that he had lost his 
 own best friend, whose confidence while it lasted (it 
 had never been broken) secured his position and 
 supported his policy in the plans they had made and 
 fostered together. The preponderance of stock in 
 Rivington's name passed into a trusteeship pending 
 the settlement of his estate. 
 
 Soon after the official announcement reached Road- 
 
 108 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 side, Tom, on business in the city, learned from 
 Cousin Tom these particulars, which filled the East- 
 ern papers, but had not been given much space on 
 the Coast. He heard also for the first time, intimately 
 as it concerned them at home, the name of Mr. Riv- 
 ington's financial representative who held the future 
 of the Tract in his hands. 
 
 " When Cornish comes out to report on you, there 
 will be no sentiment about it : he is a very strict bus- 
 iness man." 
 
 " Mr. Rivington, I always supposed, was a good 
 business man ? " Tom suggested. 
 
 "He was, and he was not of late years ; the pa- 
 pers called him a millionaire philanthropist. Most of 
 his shrewd investments were made earlier. Cornish 
 carried out for him latterly a good many policies he 
 did not himself agree with : that I am pretty sure of. 
 Reclamation with private capital was one of them. 
 Rivington believed in it as a benefit to humanity. 
 What he and your father expected to do on the 
 Torres Tract, he knew would never pay in his life- 
 time Cornish, of course, can't act for the widow 
 and heirs on any idealistic theory like that. He can't 
 be a philanthropist with trust moneys. I would ad- 
 vise you to be looking around for something else, 
 Tom. They may want you to stay in your father's 
 place, but they won't give you his salary; it was 
 hardly a living salary, I 'm afraid. These capital op- 
 erations draw blood. If your load is bigger than you 
 can carry, my boy, I hope you '11 come to me." 
 
 "Thanks, very much," said Tom; his breath had 
 109 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 checked for an instant. " But I 'd awfully hate to 
 borrow of a relative." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " On a basis of sentiment." 
 
 " Well, my boy ; have you any other basis? " 
 
 " I don't happen to need to borrow, thanks again. 
 In fact, an uncle of mother's she used to live with 
 sent her a check as soon as they heard the news. 
 They don't forget ever neither do others who are 
 nearer." Tom smiled gamely in his cousin's face. 
 "It's good to have 'folks' even if you don't borrow 
 of them. I have my savings, too, from Korea." 
 
 " Good Lord ! what did you save on?" 
 
 " They raised me twice, you know and at Wiju 
 I was rich ! " 
 
 Cousin Tom laughed at this wealthy youngster; 
 but he liked him well, on various showings, as their 
 elders measure boys. "I believe you will be the 
 money-maker of your family, Tom." Tom did not 
 look so highly complimented "You certainly don't 
 squander. You'll have the stuff to lend, yourself, 
 some day." 
 
 " Then I hope I shall remember one or two things 
 like to-day and profit by it." 
 
 " You know, Tom, there are engineers good 
 ones who make their pile and get up a reputation, 
 too?" 
 
 " I believe there are some who have a reputation 
 for advertising," said Tom. 
 
 "That's another matter but why not let one's 
 self be known ? " 
 
 no 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "There are, of course, business men in every pro- 
 fession," said Tom. 
 
 (" That 's his father all over again," thought the 
 elder.) " You are not a trader ? " he brought out 
 the touch of hauteur in Tom's words. 
 
 " I 'm afraid not, sir. I 'd hate to economize, for 
 instance, if it hurt the work ; and I 'm not very keen 
 on deals contracts." 
 
 " I will remember your limitations " Cousin Tom 
 smiled " in case anything should turn up. Only, 
 if you choose a line, you must stick to it, you know, 
 and not butt into the game you don't understand. 
 Where are you staying ? " 
 
 Tom mentioned his hotel. 
 
 " Send up your grip to us like to have you very 
 much." 
 
 " Thanks, sir; I 'd like to come I don't believe I 
 will though." Tom's face showed increasing warmth. 
 
 " What 's the trouble now ? Don't want to make a 
 convenience of your friends?" 
 
 " Not that altogether," said Tom quite truthfully. 
 He did not argue the question in metaphors but he 
 had read of the siren's isle ; perhaps he thought he 
 heard singing that sounded like the voice of his cousin 
 Clare. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THOSE listless women, meanwhile, ignorantly pray- 
 ing the summer were past, made their effort for sweet 
 Cousin Anna's sake and were rewarded one day by the 
 sight of Clare breaking out of that grimy chrysalis, the 
 Marysville stage, like a delicate yellow butterfly. She 
 was covered by a tussah silk ulster, and a Liberty 
 scarf tied in an inspirational knot (price of that in- 
 spiration, twenty dollars) relieved the severity of her 
 traveling-hat. There is refreshment in new styles 
 and new touches of style they excite amusement if 
 not pleasure ; but anything Clare put on became a 
 pleasure in its relation to herself, and Cousin Anna 
 was an expert in choosing what is most recondite 
 in every fashion. 
 
 Her gay cordiality melted into tenderness as she 
 gave Cousin Caroline a vigorous girlish hug. Of 
 Engracia she was a trifle more wary. How had she 
 taken this experience? Her face gave no sign. Its 
 smoothness of outline had gained in spirituality as 
 in subtlety by an almost mediaeval thinness. Clare 
 liked her no less, however, for not being able to see 
 that rare "type," better than beauty, which her 
 mother had spoken of. Cousin Anna was not a stu- 
 dent of types, but she had watched a good many 
 children's faces as they developed, and she had a 
 delicate sense of harmony in expression. Engracia 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 thought Clare the sweetest thing she had ever seen 
 and the prettiest. 
 
 " We improve, we kids, as we get older, don't we, 
 mamsy ? " she hinted later. " I am taking back things 
 very fast." 
 
 " What things?" her mother asked idly. 
 
 "No matter ; I take them back, and I take off my 
 hat to Clare. She 's a downright dear." 
 
 " I told you so." 
 
 " And I did n't believe you I thought I knew her, 
 but I did n't, it seems." 
 
 "Well," said her mother, as if the matter might 
 not be quite settled after all. 
 
 Clare was perfectly sure she had come for Engra- 
 cia's sake, just to keep her company. If not altogether 
 true, she was prepared to make it true, but circum- 
 stances were against this well-bred resolution. There 
 was only one Nipper for both girls, and Engracia 
 stayed at home by preference to be with her mother, 
 she said. 
 
 It was amusing at first, those rides all over the work 
 with Tom. She had never been so frankly taken as a 
 matter of course by any young man since she grew 
 up ; there were no apologies when he kept her wait- 
 ing in the sun at farmyard gates while he went inside 
 and waded his horse through pig-litter and cow-litter 
 to have speech with the rancher coming slowly forth 
 in shirt-sleeves accompanied by dogs and fowls and 
 children ; and after, he appeared to be thinking what 
 the man had said as they rode along ; or if he did talk, 
 there was no return in his words or manner of that 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 fascinating shy hint of unspoken passion that had 
 been the under-note of their intercourse, and made 
 him interesting in those tragic days in the city. He 
 had lost that fixed paleness of shock, under his strong 
 coat of sea-tan that so became him then : he was more 
 red than brown. His face perspired ; sometimes he 
 wore hats that were carelessly unbecoming. In the 
 evening he looked well he was restored in one way, 
 but his manner was no more seductive than in broad 
 day, and never helpless. Instead of sitting out in the 
 moonlight on the steps or strolling by her side down 
 the queer, silent little garden, he was chiefly absorbed 
 in endless accounts or letters to go by next day's 
 stage. 
 
 She flattered him sometimes by bringing out his 
 foreign tales and that roused him a trifle, but even 
 here she felt his deep reserve. Disappointment with 
 her visit occupied her thoughts even more than the 
 light dreams had done, when it seemed fit that Tom 
 should be her first rejected suitor. She gave up 
 the rides and slept late, and did not see him at break- 
 fast. By afternoon she had become infected with the 
 family habit of waiting for Tom there was nothing 
 else to wait for. He was always late for tea. Engra- 
 cia, who could dress in twenty minutes, waited to 
 give it to him ; she would see them from her window 
 Tom stretched on the grass under the apple trees 
 smoking, with Bran across his chest, Engracia sitting 
 Turk-fashion, rocking herself while she talked. They 
 had no end of what seemed perfectly good talk inter- 
 spersed with restful silences, when Bran would fur x 
 
 114 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 lively lick Tom's ear and have smoke blown in his 
 face. 
 
 There had come a letter for Clare one day con- 
 spicuous by its envelope of a new shape and color 
 in passing favor with adventurous girlhood. Clare 
 glanced at both with disdain. She was her mother's 
 own daughter in taste. Her singing went badly that 
 afternoon, and she found fault with Engracia at the 
 keyboard. Afterwards the girls argued long and 
 testily over the ethics of a new novel which Engracia 
 had merely read reviews of, and Cousin Caroline re- 
 quested them to " stop wrangling, silly things, and 
 do some more Schumann." 
 
 But of Schumann as of other estimable things, in- 
 cluding estimable cousins, there may come satiety, 
 on a midsummer afternoon, when the heat has in- 
 vaded the house, and at night when the moon is 
 growing old and a dreamy little garden lies steeped 
 in her light, with no stricken male soul to share it 
 with. Such restlessness was felt (and watched and 
 guarded) in Venice balconies, "when the nights were 
 warm in May," and paces the corridors of old 
 Spanish- American houses, where youth and sex are 
 still a woman's only power. Clare was not thinking 
 of any particular male soul, but what are summer 
 moons and summer dresses for? It was the game 
 all the girls were playing what girl but likes to 
 hold her own and come off with her share of the 
 honors ? 
 
 But was it such good fun, after all ? Some of the 
 boys were men ; some of the girls began to feel like 
 
 US 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 women and there was her letter! She went up- 
 stairs, not to bed, but to read it over again ; and 
 again it gave her a little sick pang of fury. It was a 
 very idle sort of letter from a very idle Edna, one of 
 those young persons possibly whom Clare's mother 
 thought her opening bud might easily see too much 
 of. She was a guest at Overleap, Roberta Sands' s 
 big house, where she, an orphan heiress, entertained 
 with the sufficiency of her own great-grandmother, 
 an embassy lady in Tyler's administration or was 
 it Folk's? a daring, original girl, looked up to with 
 a slight fear by the other girls. She had more back- 
 ground socially than many of them, though it was 
 little in evidence beyond the presence as chaperon of 
 a modest, elderly kinswoman of the type it takes time 
 and selection to produce. Roberta had a certain high 
 sense of fairness, a satiric unconcern about men, a 
 scorn of mere wealth, and a command of language 
 when she chose, that was quite terrific. 
 
 " Dalby Morton is here," the letter ran, " distinctly 
 peeved because you are not. Can't say he wears any 
 willows, though. He spends his entire time with his 
 hostess ; she makes him her end-man, and between 
 them they keep us in screams ! Roberta's clothes are 
 more wonderful than ever. I 've made up my mind 
 that she isn't plain. She is fascinatingly ugly as 
 ugly as some of those old portraits of women we are 
 told were beauties in their day. She dresses, of course, 
 like a winner, she moves and speaks like one, and 
 she wins ! It 's ten to one the great Dalby strikes his 
 colors before this visit is over though what she '11 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 do with him nobody knows. No, my dear ; we kids 
 are not in it with the Lady of Overleap." 
 
 Poor little Clare ! she was " out of it " on all sides ; 
 her city playfellow forgetting her, her nice, ineli- 
 gible country cousin not working up the part she 
 had honored him with. That night she wrote to her 
 mother setting a date for the visit's close. " They 
 must be getting tired of me here and I am just a lit- 
 tle tired not of them ; they have been lovely to me, 
 but of the heat, which is terrible. Have had a letter 
 from Edna at Overleap sounds so cool and deli- 
 cious up there. I don't believe Roberta will ever ask 
 me again if she hears I am home, when I refused 
 because I was going away. Suppose I write and 
 reconsider? all the others are there it's a sub- 
 debutante's party. I could go up for Friday to Monday, 
 anyhow. Marie had better send my white coat to the 
 cleaners." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 LETTERS to go by mail were left on a certain table 
 by the office door. Adding- hers to the heap next 
 morning, Clare saw a name on an envelope in Tom's 
 handwriting which so surprised her that she invol- 
 untarily read the address. 
 
 She was seated on the veranda steps that evening, 
 and Tom against the opposite post as usual was 
 smoking. Girls did not very generally smoke in 
 1904 and they had skirts as much as six yards wide 
 at the hem, where they ended in a sort of mermaid 
 sweep " sheath-skirts " perhaps we mean. Clare was 
 so sheathed as she sat with a huddle of little lacy 
 frills about her silken ankles. We Ve forgotten 
 how pretty it all was and how feminine. (The date 
 of this writing was 1913.) 
 
 " Excuse my looking at your letters," she said ; 
 " I really did n't mean to, but I saw a name I used 
 to know." 
 
 " I don't hide my letters," Tom smiled, lifting his 
 chin to blow away smoke. 
 
 " You seem to hide your friends. Why in the world, 
 if you knew those Gladwyns in Korea, could n't you 
 have said so ? " 
 
 " I don't think you ever asked me ; and I did n't 
 know them very well." 
 
 " You write letters to girls you don't know very 
 well? I should take that to be your custom 1" 
 
 118 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " I wrote a special letter, if you care to know, in a 
 case where almost strangers were very kind to me." 
 
 " Do you mind telling me, just for fun, how much 
 you did know them I suppose it was in Korea 
 and what you thought of them ? " 
 
 Tom gave a short laugh : " I should n't speak of 
 them collectively. They are not in the least alike." 
 
 " Begin with Mary, then ; what do you think of 
 her?" 
 
 " Mr. Gladwyn," Tom took his pipe from his mouth 
 to say composedly, " brought his family down to Wiju, 
 when the Cossacks were running about not that 
 there was any danger." 
 
 " Tom, you don't know how to tell a story ! There 
 should be danger ! Let there be danger 1 " 
 
 " Very well. Suppose you tell it." 
 
 " Go on. How many white people were there in 
 Wiju?" 
 
 " Ourselves two men and the ladies, most of 
 the winter." 
 
 " Most of the winter, and you hardly knew them ; 
 although you write to them, of course ! Really, there 
 must be a method in these mysteries." 
 
 "There is very little method in anything when 
 you run up against a war. They came down to Seoul 
 with us in the spring when we were closed out, you 
 know." 
 
 "/know! how should I know? The last thing 
 you would talk about would be two ladies in your 
 care on a journey like that. Any one else would have 
 had an interview in the ' Chronicle.' " 
 
 119 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Tom said nothing. 
 
 "Didn't you find it interesting ?" 
 
 " I did at the time : other things were waiting 
 for me here." 
 
 Clare held out her hand impulsively. He kept it a 
 moment and their eyes met in a long look of kindness. 
 
 " Begin, now, and tell " she settled her elbows 
 in her lap "and don't skip." 
 
 " I saw very little of them on the road we being 
 only the escort." 
 
 " How did they ride what did they ride ? " 
 
 "They were carried, as all ladies are, in sedan 
 chairs and men too " 
 
 " You were carried too ? " 
 
 " No ; we rode things they call horses." 
 
 " Go on," said Clare. 
 
 " Well, we left them at Seoul where I got my 
 cable to come home." 
 
 " Where do American ladies stay at Seoul ? " 
 
 " They stayed with some English friends who are 
 living there. It was quite a change dining at a 
 civilized table." 
 
 " So ; you stayed there too ? This gets better and 
 better. Oh, Tom, you fraud ! " 
 
 "They naturally took me in for a meal or two. 
 The Gladwyns did n't shake me off like the dust on 
 their feet." 
 
 " I quite believe you. And now that my eyes are 
 opened, tell me did you buy those lovely dresses 
 all by your lonest ? I wondered how you came to 
 know so much about women's shopping." 
 
 120 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "You liked them?" 
 
 " Exquisite ! Engracia has given me hers ; she 
 can't wear it for so long and her mother has given 
 her hers. Not that she could n't wear white after a 
 while, if she would only think so." 
 
 Tom thought it particularly sweet in Clare to ac- 
 cept the dress from Engracia she that could have 
 had a new dress for every day in the year. It takes 
 generosity to remember that it hurts a little, even 
 between friends, when the giving is all on one side. 
 " Yes, I had some help there," he admitted with a 
 very good grace. 
 
 " Mrs. Gladwyn, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No ; Mrs. Gladwyn is a doctor ; she does n't 
 bother much about clothes." 
 
 " Her friend who lives in Seoul ? " 
 
 " No : Miss Gladwyn and I took an afternoon to 
 it. She 's amazingly clever about those things." 
 
 " How do you know whether she is clever about 
 * those things ' ? I suspect she is clever about every- 
 thing, in your eyes. . . . The streets of Seoul ! a 
 parting close at hand nothing like foreign soil to 
 draw the hearts of Americans together. . . . And 
 why is she in Hongkong?" 
 
 " Training for a nurse." Tom, on the whole, rather 
 enjoyed his cross-examination ; Clare's interest was 
 complimentary ; also it gave him an opportunity pri- 
 vately to investigate himself a little on that subtly 
 remembered past. 
 
 " Why does she want to be a nurse ? " 
 
 " Because," said Tom, staring into his pipe-bowl, 
 
 121 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " her parents are working for the heathen and she 
 has her own living" to earn." 
 
 Clare dropped her eyes ; presently she said in a 
 different voice, " I ought to know that ! I knew her 
 at Miss Hardinge's." 
 
 " Yes, she remembered you," said Tom innocently. 
 
 He wondered why Clare blushed she felt her 
 face flame ; and the militant honesty that never hid 
 a slip nor shirked a confession goaded her on to say 
 with passionate exaggeration, " I liked her awfully 
 well, and she liked me, but I was such a little beast 
 that when she went away between terms, and I coaxed 
 the reason out of her, I went and told some one else 
 
 it was just plain, wretched poverty 1 The some 
 one else was Roberta Sands, unlucky for me. She 
 gave me a piece of her mind * with the chill off ' and I 
 
 I slapped her face I She never could bear me, any- 
 how. Miss Hardinge got hold of it through another 
 teacher, a snob of a woman who saw the whole 
 thing. 'A fine scene for the daughters of the first 
 families,' she called it ; that was her style ! But Miss 
 Hardinge was all the * family' I needed when she 
 took me apart for a short conversation." 
 
 Tom looked away and smoked in silence. 
 
 " Of course," Clare continued, " Mary might have 
 told me she 'd been asked to stay as an honor-pupil, 
 but she did n't. I had to apologize, and she hugged 
 me and said it was her own fault for not keeping her 
 family matters where they belonged. I can see now 
 it was pride made her blurt it out and they were 
 proud ; for I told mamma the whole story and she 
 
 122 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 went to Miss Hardinge and wanted to pay Mary's 
 school-bills, for the sake of her father's work, but that 
 was n't accepted either." 
 
 And still Tom smoked in silence. 
 
 "How does Mary look?" 
 
 " Pretty well, I should say, considering ; she and 
 her mother are pretty good travelers." 
 
 " I don't mean how is she ; I meant her looks. She 
 used to have wonderful hair she could sit on and a 
 big mouth full of splendid teeth." 
 
 " Her teeth seemed to be all there." 
 
 " It 's perfectly plain what 's the matter with you, 
 Tom ! Well, I won't tease you." 
 
 " You can't tease me about Miss Gladwyn ; but 
 I don't much fancy this style of joking, if you ask 
 me." 
 
 "The very saying you aren't teased shows you 
 are. Never mind : it 's good for you. You are taken 
 too seriously in your own family, Tom ; and you all 
 take jokes well, of this kind too awfully to 
 heart. That 's my frank opinion, though it may be a 
 fault on the right side. For my part, I don't see how 
 you could help being in love with any girl not an 
 absolute monster, cooped up all winter with her in a 
 place like Wiju and such a journey ! I should 
 think you were made out of wood if you were n't. 
 
 "Admit that I might have been, though I did n't 
 know it I certainly am not in love with her now." 
 
 "If you did n't know it then, how can you be sure 
 you are n't now ? " 
 
 " For the simple reason " said Tom, his eyes 
 123 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 changing "If I tell you why, will you promise not 
 to ask me another question ? " 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 " You know what about ! " 
 
 " Is that necessary?" 
 
 " It 's the condition." 
 
 " I promise," said Clare softly. 
 
 " I am not in love with her now, because I 'm 
 in love with some one else and this time I do 
 know it." 
 
 Clare broke her promise in the next sentence and 
 Tom got up and walked away. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CLARE'S trunk had gone by stage. Tom was to drive 
 her down to Marysville, starting in about an hour. 
 Consuming a whole day was an effort and an honor 
 not bestowed on every guest, and Tom's mother 
 took it in this case for evidence conclusive that he 
 was personally affected by his cousin's departure. 
 
 A conversation of extreme and sudden intimacy 
 had sprung up between her and Clare in the sitting- 
 room alone. Its' animation marked the relief that is 
 sometimes felt at the close of a visit, in the main suc- 
 cessful, yet which has proved to be something of a 
 strain on both sides. Caroline was delighted with 
 Clare, but as a mother she studied her in the light of 
 what mischief she might do. 
 
 "What Tom needs is to play with girls more," 
 said Clare, reckless of the tender theme. 
 
 "Then play with him," said Tom's mother, dis- 
 sembling. 
 
 " I mean, he needs to be flirted with." 
 
 " Then flirt with him." Caroline's effort would not 
 have deceived a child, but Clare saw nothing artificial 
 in her bravado. "Only be careful " she added. 
 
 " Oh, I 'm not serious, cousin ; though I think, for 
 that matter, Tom could take care of himself : he 's 
 a great discourager of flirtation," she laughed tc 
 herself. 
 
 125 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " The only flirtation that is fair between you young- 
 things is the kind that might be serious if it wanted 
 to. Unless my boy is flirted with on that plan, I 
 hope he '11 be left alone." 
 
 " I don't see why any girl should n't be serious 
 with Tom, if she felt like it." 
 
 " To the extent of marrying him, for instance?" 
 
 " Certainly, if she cared enough." 
 
 " Enough for him, or also enough to share his life 
 of small means in stupid, lonely places?" 
 
 " But why should n't he be one of the successful 
 engineers who don't stay in stupid places?" 
 
 Caroline laughed at the ingenuous definition. "Be- 
 cause if you are going to change the face of nature 
 you have to go where nature is, if you call nature 
 stupid. And an engineer's success doesn't always 
 mean a choice of where to live; a girl who insisted 
 on that should never flirt with a boy like Tom. She 
 might spoil his work or only just spoil him for 
 any other girl." 
 
 " How tragic we are ! All because I said he ought 
 to play with girls." 
 
 " Girls can make tragedy for men who are capable 
 of tragedy which means the power to feel in excess 
 of the power to reason, doesn't it?" 
 
 "That doesn't sound much like Tom," said Clare 
 with a little pout of sarcasm. 
 
 " I think it does ; but perhaps his mother does n't 
 know him." 
 
 " Cousin, I assure you and I speak for the other 
 girls too we like the men of Tom's kind, only they 
 
 126 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 must let themselves go ! They must make us ' feel 
 beyond our power to reason.' " 
 
 " You mean, that a girl brought up in your circum- 
 stances could marry a man in Tom's, with a fair 
 chance of happiness?" 
 
 " I mean that circumstances would have nothing 
 to do with it." 
 
 " I can scarcely believe you ; but if it 's true, it looks 
 as if we had not lost our American girls the kind 
 who helped to * subdue the continent.' They did not 
 have easy lives, but they knew something about the 
 True Romance that you and Engracia were quar- 
 reling about." 
 
 " Oh, I understood her little jeer " (an allusion to 
 one of those hot-weather arguments in which each 
 side said more than it meant, and East and West 
 were personified in the light of conventional preju- 
 dice). " We girls get tired out here of being called 
 materialistic, and spoiled children. We do believe in 
 the real things, if we could ever get at them." 
 
 " If they could get at you ! Well, we '11 forgive each 
 other ; and I need forgiveness for dragging in my 
 son only as a type, though. The boys will have to 
 take their lives in their own hands when it comes to 
 you wretched girls in reality. Mothers can't help nor 
 hinder." 
 
 " But, cousin," Clare blushed beautifully, " Tom 
 will never risk his life on me. You don't know what 
 a glacier he is! I might confess, if it was worth 
 while " 
 
 Engracia entered just then upon what looked to 
 
 127 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 that astute observer like a most injudicious ex- 
 change of confidences: her mother's blush, repeating 
 Claret, confirmed her worst suspicions. 
 
 It was the first sign of returning mental health with 
 Caroline that she could dream once more of happi- 
 ness, her children's, even though she dreamed 
 preposterously. She grew proud in her folly and 
 sought sympathy of Engracia, who had suspected 
 what was going on in those lonely piazza pacings, 
 from which her mother came in to the light with a 
 new expression on her face. She saw her duty in the 
 case and did it without flinching. 
 
 " Leaving out Cousin Anna and Cousin Tom, 
 though I think you would find him quite an obstacle, 
 Clare can have any man she wants if she is firm 
 about it ; but she does n't want Tom. Only his mother 
 and sister could imagine such a thing." 
 
 "Who knows!" the obsessed one retorted. "She 
 gave me the impression that Tom could have any 
 girl he wanted if he were 'firm about it,' and that he 
 had n't, moreover, even tried, in her case." 
 
 " Mother, mother ! She was talking to you 1 She 's 
 not refusing Tom to his own mother before he has 
 asked her. His refusal is ready for him just the 
 same." 
 
 " It would work out beautifully," Caroline sighed, 
 hugging her folly. " She would light up his life of 
 plain dig, and he would give her ' the stars and the 
 stillness,' and that single-hearted devotion all her 
 life that's not so common these days, let me tell 
 you." 
 
 128 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Yes, if she wanted his single heart, but she does n't 
 Tom could n't win a girl like Clare, and he may 
 thank his stars and his stillness that he can't. Of 
 course she is terribly pretty." 
 
 " I see higher things in her than you do." 
 
 " You see her as she is not now. She isn't ready 
 for the stars and the stillness (forgive me, mamsy), 
 and who blames her for it ! Not I ! you have got to 
 love a man awfully well before you dare to live Tom's 
 life with him our life, that you lived " 
 
 "My dear, I don't brag of it. I should call it a 
 much greater 'dare' to venture on a life of arrant 
 luxury with one of those spoiled boys of rich men's 
 sons who have never wanted a thing they did not 
 get!" 
 
 " That 's the venture Clare will make, however, 
 and it will teach her all she needs to know and all 
 he needs to know, unless it ends in shipwreck for 
 them both." 
 
 "Ah, well; in these days it is the children who are 
 wise " 
 
 " But, mammy dear, can't you see what a wild ex- 
 periment it would be for them both supposing 
 everything true that isn't true? I don't believe Tom 
 himself would ever dream of it." 
 
 " And I believe his heart is hers, in a smothered 
 way, already." 
 
 " He had better keep it smothered, then. He may 
 be having a few aches, but he '11 get over it. Thank 
 Heaven, he 's busy ! " 
 
 " As I say, it is the young who have all the pru- 
 129 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 dence nowadays : fathers and mothers are generally 
 mistaken, are n't they ? " 
 
 " Always, when they try to marry off their chil- 
 dren." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 A FEW more weeks and then came the dreaded ex- 
 ecutor's visit, and matters of the heart were put by 
 for a more immediate crisis. The women hid their 
 nervousness under a specious levity. Engracia wanted 
 to know where Himself, as she called Mr. Gifford 
 Cornish, in view of his looming largeness in their 
 affairs, could be least unworthily lodged. The guest- 
 room proper at this season had the affliction of an 
 afternoon sun weltering in, but it had its own bath- 
 room; it also had two closets. The bathroom set- 
 tled it. 
 
 " There is one thing you must see to : I know I 
 shall forget," said Mrs. Scarth exhaustedly. " Find 
 the key to that second closet and lock it ! or take 
 your things out." 
 
 " Himself can't want two closets he's, not going 
 to stay all winter, let us hope." 
 
 Engracia had but one, and since leaving off colors, 
 she had a banished collection of pinks and blues and 
 hats with roses to quarter somewhere. It struck her 
 as the last straw to have to find another place for 
 them in such weather ! 
 
 Cornish flanked their preparations, after all, by 
 arriving ahead of his telegram, which was not his 
 fault, country telegrams having that coy way with 
 them; but he came at a desolate hour, too late for 
 
 131 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 luncheon and too early for tea. Mrs. Scarth received 
 him, not looking her best certainly looking much 
 older than he had expected. All the Scarths had 
 stood still as to ages in his mind since it first came 
 in his way to know about them personally. 
 
 Shown to his room, he opened the wrong closet first 
 and was fairly staggered by the result of Engracia's 
 neglect. What dignified bachelor expects to see in his 
 bedroom closet, awaiting him, a collection of girlish 
 finery ! Poor Engracia's frocks were innocent enough, 
 all but one little piece of Paris coquetry passed down 
 from Clare the petted member of the lot. Its blan- 
 dishments were spread on the only silk-padded hanger 
 right in front, and it looked like a court beauty in 
 banishment probably deserved amidst the hum- 
 bler ladies of her suite. The low bosom, the no-sleeves, 
 the one great rose, were frivolity itself to a man of 
 imagination. Cornish decidedly had imagination if 
 he chose to use it, but this was the last form of ap- 
 peal to it he had expected to encounter here. His 
 ideas of the Torres Tract centered in hard times, 
 death, and retrenchment and lo, a Paris ball-gown! 
 A man may not know how he knows, but any man of 
 Cornish's experience generally does know when Paris 
 is writ all over a piece of feminine dry goods. 
 
 It was another surprise that there should be a 
 grown-up daughter in the house but for that, at 
 least, Engracia was not to blame. He smiled grimly 
 while his bath-water roared, and took out a more 
 eveningish suit which he had brought for use in 
 San Francisco. 
 
 132 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 It was years ago, one winter, the Rivingtons were 
 sailing for the Bahamas, that Mr. Rivington had 
 said, " I wish you would pick out some books for 
 those Scarth children and get them out there about 
 Christmas." Cornish asked their number and ages, 
 feeling much bored. . . . " And while you are about 
 it, some for the mother, too, novels, you know : I 
 know you do know 1 Don't be condescending; choose 
 the best." 
 
 Letters of thanks duly followed and were forwarded. 
 Mr. Rivington had a habit of keeping letters. Subse- 
 quently he came across one in a childish hand from 
 the little girl reader on the Torres Tract. He showed 
 it to Cornish as his reward, and Cornish felt dis- 
 tinctly rewarded : he thought it a very unusual letter 
 from a child of that age, and said so. 
 
 "Well, I wondered if I were mistaken!" Mr. Riving- 
 ton added. The following year he said, " You suc- 
 ceeded so well last time, suppose you try again ; and 
 remember the kiddies are a year older." This time 
 Cornish was indebted partly to his own interest for his 
 marked success, and thereafter the commission was 
 fixed upon him. He did remember that kiddies grew 
 older, yet he continued to see always a little girl of 
 about twelve watching the mails at Christmas time 
 for that parcel from New York. Perhaps he had not 
 tried to see her otherwise. 
 
 " I think I shall have to explain, some day," Mr. Riv- 
 ington smiled, over one of those rewarding little let- 
 ters which so pleased his fancy. " I 'm beginning to 
 feel too much of a fraud in this business." 
 
 133 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Oh never ! " said Cornish. "That would be an anti- 
 climax and mix them all up. Leave it simple for their 
 sakes." 
 
 Down under the apple trees, the women were dis- 
 cussing him, as a matter of course. 
 
 " Dear, dear! " said Engracia ; " he must be mak- 
 ing a toilet. I am perished for my tea." 
 
 " He looked quite capable of it." 
 
 " What does he look like ? " 
 
 " Like a New Yorker in English clothes just off 
 the Marysville stage." Mrs. Scarth laughed softly at 
 some recollection not worth putting into words. 
 
 "Now, how much of that did he actually thrust upon 
 you ?" Engracia knew her mother's unconscientious 
 adjectives. 
 
 " Not any of it, in fact. He is very nice, but he won't 
 be any less deadly on that account." 
 
 "Why is he deadly if he is nice?" Engracia pre- 
 tended to plead for the outcast in English clothes. 
 
 " Well, dear, as I told you, the * worm's-eye view. 1 
 Once it was off in New York at a desk ; he was just 
 a secretary; now it's here and it's the whole thing. 
 Valuation is Mr. Cornish's strong point " 
 
 Engracia frowned. " Are n't we valuable ? " 
 
 "Scarcely at present. We are an 'asset' now." 
 
 " But is n't he going to have any imagination about 
 us, as Mr. Rivington had?" 
 
 " My dear child, men of imagination are not picked 
 out for executors and trustees." 
 
 " But there is another trustee? " 
 
 " A woman : she will be guided by his report." 
 
 134 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Are n't we anything at all? " 
 
 "We always were, I suppose, a sublime sort of spec- 
 ulation. The prophets like your father have usually 
 been without honor in their own generation. Mr. Riv- 
 ington had great ideas about the use of money, when 
 he was alive to make more. It 's different when it 
 comes to leaving all you have to some one else's dis- 
 cretion. And he died so suddenly no doubt he ex- 
 pected to have seen the end of this scheme before his 
 own end came. But even when he was living, he left 
 the mean part to this man." 
 
 "What part?" 
 
 " The part he did n't like : for instance, saying, 
 ' You are spending money like water out there. You 
 have had five thousand for every one you have sent 
 back ' and so forth. Those may have been his very 
 own words; they were his secretary's words when 
 they reached us, 'per G. C." ! 
 
 " 'G. C.' was not mean for himself, then?" 
 
 "Hardly any of us are mean for ourselves; but 
 meanness is meanness, and that side of business usu- 
 ally goes to those who are fitted for it. And so I say 
 ' the worm's-eye view.' ' 
 
 " In New York, it seemed pitiful the numbers of 
 young men confined to nothing but clerk's stools all 
 day and horrid boarding-houses at night. Some of 
 them might have had ' dauntless breasts ' ; hardly 
 any of them could have been meant for nothing else 
 but the ' worm's-eye view.' I wish you had not 
 started that phrase, mamma." 
 
 " I borrowed it." 
 
 135 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Please borrow another, then : * valuation ' is bet- 
 ter comparative values ; that 's the whole question, 
 is n't it?" 
 
 " I think the question is, what standard do you go 
 by?" 
 
 "If a man's work keeps him down to the com- 
 mercial standard, there is your tragedy. To be sure, 
 he might take a day off now and then and see things 
 for himself." 
 
 " When you have lost the power? that 's your 
 tragedy : never to have a day off. He has those 
 dense, sad eyes ; you see such eyes in disappointed 
 men." 
 
 "Then you did see something else besides his 
 English clothes?" 
 
 " Mr. Rivington wore English clothes," the widow 
 mused on the good past. " He was a beautiful old 
 dandy ; he used to come speckless off the stage. 
 You must remember his nice fat handshake." 
 
 "I remember his nice fat kiss. He liked little 
 girls." Engracia leaned back in her creaking gar- 
 den chair and put her finger-tips together : it will be 
 seen that conversation was livelier already for the 
 stimulus of a stranger in the house. "I wonder if 
 he really could have bought all those books he used 
 to send us ? " (Was this mental suggestion ?) " Some- 
 how I can't fancy his choosing just those books. His 
 might have been more costly, but 
 
 "Yes," the mother understood "still he was a 
 very wonderful person ; you could n't tell what he 
 would do, or what side-fancies he kept to himself. 
 
 136 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 That was our day-spring* of hope out here. They 
 were a wonderful pair ! The strange thing was, they 
 were not men you would call young : as I say, it is 
 youth nowadays that is * old and suspicious and 
 wise.' I like the men of my own generation, I con- 
 fess. They knew, at least, what they wanted to do." 
 
 11 1 remember Mr. Rivington a little : he was a fas- 
 cinating person and so was papa. Men like those 
 must be rare in any generation." 
 
 " Yes, yes ! it was a feast to be with them. The 
 old dining-room heard some brave talk in those 
 days. I never knew one pay the other a compli- 
 ment. It used to alarm me, their after-dinner bouts, 
 contradicting each other till I saw them go off like 
 two boys in the morning. Mr. Rivington used to say 
 he came out here to grow young. I think he loved 
 it almost as we did, but he mourned over his dead 
 mines up in the hills. He wanted to see their ' bones 
 washed with water,' as he said. Well, he was a genius. 
 It takes genius to make a man rich without making 
 him mean." 
 
 " Hard, again, on the men who have no genius ! 
 It takes character to look after the works of genius. 
 Anyhow, if we are to be weighed in dollars and 
 cents, we ought to remember they are n't his dollars 
 and cents." 
 
 " I shall remember," said Mrs. Scarth. It is doubt- 
 ful if she could remember anything but the long 
 strain of " per G. C." at her back. All costs of main- 
 tenance, their little water-system, which made the 
 garden of her joy barns and fences, painting, 
 
 137 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 plumbing many little details much more intimate, 
 had to her knowledge passed under his inspection 
 for years, in the shape of vouchers labeled " Torres 
 Tract." Scarth never worried about G. C. It was 
 department work, each man in his place, and Riv- 
 ington smiled on both. He knew that Scarth knew 
 his own job too well to be thrown out of his stride 
 by the twitch of the rein. When needful he took his 
 head and ploughed along. 
 
 " I am glad his first meal is tea. We are always 
 presentable at tea," Engracia remarked incautiously. 
 
 " You are not. Look at your skirt 1 " Mrs. Scarth 
 pointed to the wreck of a clean pique with marks of 
 dog-paws evident to the most casual eye. 
 
 " I did n't allude to clothes," said Engracia meekly. 
 
 " I did. I wish you 'd go and change that skirt." 
 
 "I did change it before luncheon. Dog-paws, 
 dear mother, are liable to occur at any time." 
 
 "You are so weak about him." 
 
 " He was burying a bone in the cosmos-bed. Had 
 to apologize ! " 
 
 " You should n't let him do it that way. Step on 
 his hind paws when he jumps up on you." 
 
 " His front ones get there first. It was such a good 
 sign ; he has n't been bad for so long." 
 
 " Please do as I ask you ! " 
 
 " This is my next to last I must keep one for 
 Sunday morning." 
 
 " Dress for dinner, then." 
 
 " At five o'clock in black voile ? " 
 
 " Have n't you anything left that 's white ? " 
 138 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Mamsy, it's such devastating weather. Don't 
 let 's talk of clothes ! Come, Bran : laziest man in 
 the world 1 Nobody loves us ; we go." 
 
 Cornish saw them romping down to the vegetable 
 garden where a bed of zinnias rustled and drank sun- 
 shine. He had just stepped out looking for signs of 
 life. The white dog and white girl mingled with the 
 colors of the zinnias and passed out of sight. 
 
 When the question of clothes got upon the girl's 
 nerves it brought out all the temper she possessed. 
 She could have borne the doctrine of their necessity 
 preached by any one but her mother who could 
 preach in a so much better way. But her own side 
 did not suffer by any means, in the argument that 
 invariably ensued. " The first thing any ordinary 
 American climber learns is how to dress : ergo, 
 dress is cheap. Leave it to the cheap * lest we lose 
 our Edens, thou and I,' " Armed with a lucky quo- 
 tation, she would come off victor for the moment; 
 but mothers have the weight of custom at their backs. 
 This mother feared that her child's precocious phi- 
 losophy might degenerate into slackness or mark 
 her as queer fatal word. 
 
 " Between those who are smart in this world and 
 those who are not smart, a great gulf is fixed " was 
 another way of begging the question. " We are not 
 born smart and we can't afford the experts who thrust 
 it on you. As a sheer personal achievement for you 
 and me, mamma, it would kill all the rest. Can't you 
 believe in the things that really matter, for your child, 
 as you did for yourself ? " 
 
 139 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " There are no more men nowadays who can see 
 the soul of a girl if she does n't know how to dress." 
 
 "Ah, I thought it was that," came the bitter reply. 
 " You are afraid I may never be married. If that 's 
 true, what you say, I don't want to be. I should think, 
 mamsy, you 'd begin to look at these things from 
 your own son's side clothes and what they lead to. 
 Tom has got the heart-ache of his young life, I 
 should n't wonder, seeing Clare on our steps dressed 
 out in all that witchery. Dressed as I am mostly, I 
 think he could have borne up." 
 
 "I don't care how it's done, but when the right 
 man comes, I want him to succumb." 
 
 "Well, for frankness I 've seldom seen the equal 
 of this mother of mine 1 " 
 
 " I believe in frankness between a mother of my 
 sense and a daughter of yours. I believe in marriage 
 too." 
 
 "You'll never see me married to a man who 
 looks at my clothes. I won't look at him, that 's cer- 
 tain." 
 
 Himself, seated in Scarth's chair at Scarth's desk 
 in the office a few moments before dinner, heard a 
 scuffle on the stairs. Bran, more or less head-over- 
 heels, burst through the curtain smiling broadly on 
 the company, and presented, as it were, Engracia, 
 my best girl. Everybody smiled. Engracia behind 
 him, missing the joke, came in with her part rather 
 stiffly. She saw no occasion for so much smiling. 
 
 The black voile with its half-sleeves and transpar- 
 
 140 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ent yoke conveyed as much of youth and future 
 summers as a dress of that character might : Cousin 
 Anna had clothed her tender pity for the girl's first 
 sorrow in this appealing little frock. It appealed to 
 Cornish in a different and grimmer fashion. 
 
 Valuation, Caroline had said well, perhaps 
 undervaluation, was his errand there. He knew this 
 family's circumstances too intimately to miss a single 
 point in their outlook, sordidly speaking. He had 
 thought often of their isolation, he had fed their grow- 
 ing children's minds with books after his own bookish 
 fancy ; he understood the ambition for good schools, 
 the separations, the expensive journeys it entailed, 
 but there must have been sacrifices dress, he sup- 
 posed would have been the first one ; it did not look 
 like it. His city-bred eye could not miss the style, the 
 " class," expressed in that admirable little dinner- 
 frock in which Cousin Anna had succeeded but too 
 well. Here was this girl in a house on the Marysville 
 road a house builded on sand on silt, to be exact 
 dressed as Mrs. Rivington herself might have been 
 dressed on such an occasion with no discredit to her 
 fortunes. 
 
 Extraordinary creatures of one idea women were! 
 They cling to dress as the last plank in poverty to 
 save their self-respect. In a way, it was heroic, but 
 was it honest? He was come to break up this child's 
 home or to reduce its incomes to the breaking heart- 
 breaking-point. Who was to pay the difference ? A 
 young brother, perhaps, with his life, liberty, and per- 
 sonal happiness. He had known in his own youth 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 the cost of such sacrifices. Or must she turn out and 
 earn her own frocks? She was of the old type the 
 protected product of special conditions and highly 
 wrought influences, interesting but infinitely tragic 
 as he saw her as undoubtedly she did not see her- 
 self. Her eyes, dark-lashed, deeply intelligent, thought- 
 ful, and doubtless gentle eyes, met his with a caustic, 
 measuring, perfectly realized hostility. "We have 
 nothing for each other : let us pass with civility and 
 a wide berth." 
 
 Not Bran, however. He conned the stranger with 
 careful sniffings, approved the bouquet, and sat down 
 against his well-clad leg and left white hairs on his 
 trousers. The women chid him, and they all went out 
 to dinner. 
 
 Dangerously carrying are clear young tones in a 
 silent summer night. He had asked for his candle 
 early (a figure of speech, for candles at Roadside 
 were kept on bedroom tables), and Tom had gone up 
 with him and advised leaving his door open for cool- 
 ness. He did not go to bed, but sat and smoked by 
 the window. Moon had just turned off the lawn-sprin- 
 klers a silence falling on the garden brought voices 
 to his ear speaking on the piazza, steps below. 
 
 "I'm so thankful he J s gone ! How many evenings, 
 I wonder, are we to go through like this?" Cornish 
 stepped to his door and softly closed it. Engracia 
 went on chattering to her mother, silly with the sense 
 of pressure removed. " It was suttenly hateful of me 
 to cut and run this afternoon, but I has my fits ! Now, 
 
 142 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 if I had n't on my very best, I 'd whip into the laun- 
 dry and wash out dog-spots, just to please the mis- 
 tress of this house and the mamsy of my heart 1" 
 followed a hasty caress. 
 
 " Leave it in there, anyhow ; you can't wear it 
 again, and if Moon is n't too busy he may see it and 
 take the hint." 
 
 Moon was busy in his kitchen till late, baking fruit- 
 cake in a slow oven. (Nobody wanted fruit-cake, but 
 he considered it the proper thing to have.) Half an 
 hour later he hung it immaculate (not the fruit-cake) 
 on the knob of Engracia's door. The Chinese voice, 
 that can screech and cackle like a wild animal, has 
 inflections also that speak of tender feelings we know 
 they never can convey in English words. 
 
 " Good girl," he crooned to himself, going down 
 the passage; "heap, heap good all same boss! 
 Nobody come to marry." Passing another door, he 
 grinned meaningly : " Plenty lich too ol', too ol' 1" 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 " THEY," as the men were conveniently styled by the 
 women of the house, went off early after breakfast 
 talking of affairs. 
 
 "You will surely be home to tea?" Mrs. Scarth 
 detained her son to ask. " Do be ! Moon is making " 
 
 " Not likely," Tom interrupted ; he was in a hurry. 
 " Don't wait for us." Whereupon the mistress has- 
 tened to the kitchen to save Moon the trouble of 
 making fresh apple-cake with nuts on top. He made 
 it just the same 1 
 
 About four, Engracia went upstairs to take her 
 robes out of the borrowed closet, and fell into the 
 snare of a precious old Meredith novel lying in plain 
 sight on G. C.'s table. There were several reasons 
 why she had missed reading it before. She stood one 
 hour entranced, thinking each moment would be the 
 last. Buggy-wheels drove up she heard no more 
 than the dead. " They " were indoors and he was 
 coming up in new Putmon boots that massacred 
 the redwood stairs before her position dawned 
 upon her. She shut the book on a button a loose 
 one she had been fingering in the excitement of grap- 
 pling at high speed those subtle, packed first chap- 
 ters of " Richard Feverel." Whipping up her muslins 
 from the bed and with Clare's little Paris rag borne 
 high before her on its hanger, she sailed out of the 
 
 144 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 door and almost into Cornish's arms. He made way 
 for her and her load of frippery, sarcastically; her 
 face was one high blush. Clothes again, plague on 
 them ! she did not say, " Books again ! " she for- 
 gave herself cribbing out of other people's private 
 mangers. Her head was still full of the opening, rich 
 with promise, she had left, and half her fine color 
 was pure thrill from its bitter, matchless workmanship. 
 
 " Excuse me ! I was just taking my things out of 
 your other closet : awfully stupid of me to leave them 
 there." 
 
 " Sorry ! I have plenty of room more than I have 
 at home." 
 
 " Well, I 've got them now, thanks." She hurried 
 down the passage. 
 
 He emptied his pockets of letters, and piled them 
 neatly on the table. His favorite of all Meredith's lay 
 where he had left it, yet it had been shut lately at a 
 new place. Between the leaves some hurried reader 
 had dropped a small, smoked-pearl button which did 
 not otherwise define itself in his mind except as a 
 mate for those on a certain young lady's morning 
 gingham. So much for circumstantial evidence. 
 
 Subsequently he went downstairs to dinner, with 
 his case complete. Engracia met him all unconscious, 
 dressed as usual for the evening in her one and only. 
 He smiled sadly and offered her his book : " You will 
 find," he said, " your book-mark in its place." 
 
 She had blushed at sight of the volume, and as she 
 took it the guilty button dropped to the floor between 
 them. He restored it ceremoniously : "A vous ? " 
 
 H5 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 She blushed deeper, but rallied enough to say, 
 "Thanks, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Very clever! But 
 could n't you have sup-pressed the button?" 
 
 " But don't we need our buttons? I need all mine." 
 
 " Personally, I don't care to be tracked about the 
 house like Peggoty by a trail of buttons. One crime 
 at once is enough." 
 
 "Who wouldn't rather read Meredith than sew 
 on his buttons ? " 
 
 " Her buttons ? " 
 
 "Where is the difference?" 
 
 " You must have got some new ideas about us, if 
 you don't see any us, I mean ! " 
 
 " I mean you, certainly." 
 
 "Well!" she cried. "Then you don't think our 
 lives depend on our buttons ? " 
 
 " No ; nor what you sew them on though I grant" 
 (he glanced at the invidious black voile) "they are 
 very charming ! " 
 
 " You really think a woman's salvation does not 
 depend on clothes nor even her 'hopes of hap- 
 piness'?" 
 
 " Happiness ! clothes are the destruction of your 
 happiness American women. You have n't the 
 hardihood that supports an Englishwoman under 
 any old thing she chooses to put on if she knows 
 she 's a lady. You never know you ask your clothes. 
 You pin your confidence on a thing like that you were 
 carrying out of my room this afternoon I thought 
 to myself, * There goes the banner of the Faith ! ' ' 
 
 " What thing ? " cried Engracia, with triumph in 
 146 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 her eye. She warmed toward him suddenly as an un- 
 expected ally. 
 
 " I suppose it was French, that ensign you carried 
 before you ? I saw your utter prostration in the very 
 way you held it." 
 
 " That belonged to my debutante cousin ! Don't 
 suspect me of that ! You don't suppose we wear Doucet 
 gowns in this house unless they are flung us by 
 our rich relations ! Clare has * banners ' like that to 
 burn. And I assure you she does n't worship them 
 blind ! I forget what was the matter with this ! But, 
 oh," she continued, " do say these things sometime 
 when mamma can hear you ! I have a point to make. 
 I shall overcome her in those very words." 
 
 He was flattered by the greater ease of speech 
 between them. " Do you differ on the question of 
 buttons?" 
 
 " I can't explain ; but do just let her hear you ! 
 That is, if you really mean it ? " 
 
 "You can't imagine how much I mean it," he an- 
 swered seriously. " But about this book ? " 
 
 " Oh, you must n't! it's coals of fire, you know " 
 
 "That isn't what I mean ! But it's much too old 
 for you and it has" he hastened to say as she 
 tried to interrupt "a mistaken, a wanton ending. 
 Have you ever read what Stevenson said about 
 it?" 
 
 " Yes ; and I was in the midst of that scene he calls 
 the most exquisite prose in the language, when you 
 caught me ' with the goods.' " 
 
 " You must finish it now, of course. But it will make 
 
 H7 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 you wretched ; it 's wisdom of a sort you might have 
 waited for." 
 
 " Mamma talks about it, too, the same way, but 
 I know she would let me read it now : we did n't 
 happen to possess the book. You haven't finished 
 it yourself, I J m afraid." 
 
 " Long ago I read it periodically " " when I 
 am blue," he might have added, "and slightly dis- 
 couraged." Failure loves to muse on the great trage- 
 dies of failure. 
 
 "Do you enjoy being wretched, too?" 
 " I enjoy truth which is much the same thing." 
 She bore away her treasure, to find, on opening it, 
 her own name over his on the fly-leaf with "Miss" 
 before it and " from " beneath. There were also two 
 lines which he had tried to erase presumably writ- 
 ten sometime before : 
 
 "Life is not beauty it is found in vain, 
 But beauty is the broken heart of life." 
 
 A strange person who might be strangely com- 
 panionable would he but let himself be so. How had 
 she let herself go so recklessly, she wondered prob- 
 ably the bad effects of " Richard Feverel." 
 
 It was the same evening, a clammy heat in the air. 
 The men were in the office smoking and perspiring 
 over that old question, how to stop leaks in expen- 
 diture without making the process cost more than the 
 leaks. 
 
 " I don't understand this road account for 1903. 
 Have we such a mileage as that to keep up?" 
 
 148 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Most of that work was done on a county road 
 that crosses us," Tom replied. 
 
 "Don't your counties repair their own roads?" 
 
 " Generally speaking, they should, if they knew 
 how. We cut up that road ourselves, hauling in win- 
 ter on narrow tires. My father thought we ought to 
 leave it at least as good as we found it." 
 
 " Does the company do its own teaming?" 
 
 " We hire the farmers in winter. You can't persuade 
 'em narrow tires are harder on their horses as well as 
 on the roads." 
 
 " Can't you make it compulsory to use broad tires ? " 
 
 " We do, and they kick, although we buy the tires." 
 
 " I noticed that item," said Cornish dryly. " I sup- 
 posed there was an answer." 
 
 " That 's the answer." 
 
 " I wish," said Mrs. Scarth on the front porch, 
 speaking low to Engracia, " Tom could cure himself 
 of that habit of wagging one foot when he talks." 
 
 " I should think," Engracia murmured from the 
 steps, " when a boy is being sweated like that, he 
 might be allowed to wag both feet if it helped any." 
 
 " I could see him so clearly, all those years while 
 he was gone, and when he came home the first look 
 told me he was all right: now I see his little blem- 
 ishes again." 
 
 " We saw him, when he was n't here. Now we 
 watch his feet." 
 
 " Not you only his mother, with the eye of a 
 groundling. Why should n't I hate it in others ; I 'm 
 so tired of it in myself 1 " 
 
 149 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " You don't have it always ; and boys had manners 
 in your time. Mothers are the drill-sergeants ; they 
 have to nag raw troops." 
 
 " No, no ; Tom is n't raw. I J m always wrong about 
 Tom. When you get a boy of that type, sane and 
 clever and austere, and yet gentle and charitable, 
 maintaining himself through all pressure absolutely, 
 
 you can't expect the attitudes of body to match 
 his soul. But I don't demand it so much for myself 
 
 it 's for ' when thou goest a-wooing, Philip, my 
 king!'" 
 
 " If he woos the right girl, she '11 know what he is, 
 or she '11 deserve to lose him." 
 
 " My dear, there is nothing so heart-rending as to 
 see a perfectly splendid man fail to win the woman 
 he loves just because of the lack of charm. The * little 
 less' or the * little more.'" 
 
 "Well, mamsy, we can't lick it into him nor into 
 her, to make her feel what some other girl might feel 
 without so much worry. It's on the lap of the gods." 
 
 Again the voice of Cornish from inside. " What 
 about this Dixie Canon flume ? That 's a new one on 
 me. I don't recall any Dixie Canon flume account?" 
 
 " There has n't been any up to now. Father made 
 a deal with those fellows who live up there: they 
 were stealing water right along. He gave them a 
 little more and the line to keep up. We keep one 
 ditch-tender, but one is not near enough." 
 
 "What is your greatest trouble up there?" 
 
 " Winter twenty feet of snow ; ditches clogged ; 
 flumes loaded with ice ; trees blown across our wires. 
 
 150 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 The men who live there have nothing to do all winter 
 but watch for trouble. What they do is done on the 
 spot at the right time." 
 
 "Why can't this arrangement go on?" 
 
 "There have always been objections to it. We 
 don't sell them water, but it comes to the same thing, 
 and they use it to break the law." 
 
 "Washing gold?" 
 
 " In a small way, of course : poor men who spent 
 all they had on their placers which the law has 
 shut down ; we know how it is ourselves. They have 
 never admitted the justice of it. No one admits it up 
 there, or they couldn't stayl Every house on those 
 roads holds a friend and almost every house holds a 
 spy. If you can't give a satisfactory account of your- 
 self, word flies like touching the button. Before you 
 get where anything could be seen, water 's off all 
 quiet in the gulches." 
 
 " If they steal water anyhow, and we can't afford 
 to keep up that line with men of our own, I don't see 
 but they have us on the hip." 
 
 " They certainly have ! We need n't take any equiv- 
 alent for what they steal, though. It has been brought 
 down to facts quite lately that they don't confine 
 themselves to their own ground. They poach on the 
 owners next door in Plumas County. Mr. Ludwell, 
 president of a big power company in the city, called 
 my attention to it when I was down. He sees our 
 difficulty, but he thinks we are a bit too neighborly 
 with our friends up there. It looks so." 
 
 " It seems to have been a tacit kind of friendship ?" 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Yes, rather too tacit. It's bad to have friends 
 you don't care to own ; good fellows enough, but 
 we are n't in that business. My father never liked it. 
 But, as you say, they had us cinched. If we cut 'em 
 off and make our own repairs, they will take the hint 
 fast enough. We are very exposed up there a long, 
 weak line." 
 
 "What would your father have done about it 
 finally, do you know ? " 
 
 " Cut off that line entirely." 
 
 " Are n't there damage suits against water-sellers 
 for non-delivery?" 
 
 " We use that water ourselves irrigation. If the 
 placers should be worked again, I mean our own 
 placers, we 'd need it there first ; use it all, then 
 send it down with the silt it carries onto our company 
 lands. My father laid out those linked areas I showed 
 you to-day, for his silt exhibit. He was just getting 
 to it basin irrigation on the Egyptian plan : the ap- 
 plication would differ here in detail, of course, but the 
 value of the silt is the same. It was that he wanted to 
 prove to his kindergartners." 
 
 "Who were they?" 
 
 " Oh, his farmers." 
 
 " I know the general scheme," said Cornish, speak- 
 ing carefully. 
 
 " He wanted to handle it himself first, and show 
 them." 
 
 " And if we find that we can't afford to show them, 
 what do we do with that ditch-line?" 
 
 "Keep on dickering with our illicit neighbors, or 
 152 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 fix it ourselves and cut off their water and risk repris- 
 als, or abandon our ten years' work on those lands 
 we have now under cultivation. The nut orchards are 
 a prime investment ; hay is always high ; hops just 
 beginning : hops look good to me." 
 
 " Your hop-ovens cost enough." 
 
 " I suppose so. I was in Korea." 
 
 "You learned a good bit about irrigation out 
 there?" 
 
 " Yes, on this same system flooding." 
 
 " You would hardly undertake to fill your father's 
 place in this scheme?" 
 
 " On the contrary, I believe I might : the work is 
 all laid out and I am rather confident I could carry it 
 through." 
 
 " To be frank with you, Scarth, I have not talked 
 with a single engineer and I talked to a good many 
 before I came out here who did not say basin irri- 
 gation for this valley full of farmers is a dream. There 
 are too many conflicting interests and people's par- 
 ties and crank legislation and voters who don't know 
 what it means nobody knows ; and everybody would 
 be afraid of it. You would need a monarchy to do it, 
 and men as cheap as silt." 
 
 " I had supposed that Mr. Rivington talked with 
 engineers others than my father." 
 
 " Mr. Rivington was a monarchy, so far as this 
 tract is concerned ; there was no one to limit him but 
 himself, and he did not look at the scheme commer- 
 cially alone. It was one of his humanitarian hobbies 
 monarchs have them. But in his will these lands 
 
 153 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 are classed with other investments which are expected 
 to give an account of themselves in dividends. I am 
 frank with you. There is a beautiful directness about 
 your father's scheme which would appeal to any one 
 who knows what your fight out here means, between 
 the two great interests. Our placers did not come 
 cheap, and there they lie the real wealth of the 
 grant." 
 
 " Nothing comes cheap. My father thought it would 
 pay to teach the miners and the farmers how to work 
 together the waste of one should be the wealth of 
 the other. The saying is, * as rich as mud.' Volumes 
 have been written by the great irrigation men on the 
 value of mud." 
 
 "It was a cosmic idea, of course, and no wonder it 
 captured a man like Rivington. He had read on the 
 subject largely himself. He saw it in the light of his- 
 tory which misleads, you know. We are not a 
 British Protectorate and men were cheap in Egypt 
 of the Ptolemys. For this tract alone, I 've no doubt 
 the money could be raised, but I have small hope 
 that the State would ever help us any, on a general 
 scheme for the whole valley. San Francisco would 
 kick, to begin with. She does n't put money into the 
 valley she wants the valley to put money into her. 
 But we need go no further than the fact that it is 
 speculating on a heroic scale with the fortune of heirs 
 who are minors, though I dare say Mrs. Rivington 
 could be talked over : that's what I meant with regard 
 to this tract alone." 
 
 "I don't think my father would have believed in 
 154 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 booming it he believed in it commercially, grant- 
 ing time." 
 
 " Shall we have another go at Dixie Canon, or have 
 we done enough for to-night?" 
 
 " Just as you say it's not late, though." 
 
 "You could not do much this year, could you?" 
 
 "I can't answer that question till I've been up 
 there again. I should like to take you up with me." 
 
 " I should like to go." 
 
 "And there is a bridge on the Rough-and-Ready 
 Road : it 's been boarded up a year, waiting for repairs. 
 The county ought to fix it, but the county is slow and 
 poor. And it 's a fact, we use it more than any of our 
 neighbors. I 'd like to see it in commission again 
 if only to save some one else, perhaps, what that 
 barricade cost us." 
 
 Cornish raised his eyes gravely. " Six hours," said 
 Tom, "racing against time, when they brought my 
 father down. That delay, they said, was fatal. Still," 
 he added proudly, "that was not a company affair." 
 
 "The company could not afford to lose your father," 
 said Cornish, speaking with the effort it costs one 
 man to enter upon questions of feeling with another, 
 but the intention was as deliberate as the words were 
 formal. " His death was a personal blow to Mr. Riv- 
 ington. Your telegram with the announcement was 
 found in his private diary the morning he was killed. 
 There was no entry for the day only the words in 
 pencil : 
 
 " ' Death closes all : but something ere the end, 
 Some work of noble note may still be done.' " 
 
 155 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Cornish had not expected any answer from Tom 
 he merely wished him to know how his father's friend 
 and co-worker had regarded the task they left un- 
 done, both removed within a day of each other. He 
 looked out through the open door onto the verandah. 
 The lawn-sprinklers were softly misting in the dark. 
 No wind stirred in the great oak's leafy chambers 
 where its tenants were nested for the night. The 
 women's voices came in low regular murmurs from 
 the steps. 
 
 " Delicious, those oleander blossoms on this damp 
 air ! Your mother's little garden smells like a court 
 in Sicily. What luxury that would mean in New Eng- 
 land oleanders, like lilacs, along a dooryard fence." 
 
 "As a matter of fact, lilacs would mean more 
 luxury here." 
 
 " I think we must fix that bridge," said Cornish, 
 rising. " I suppose the county will do something to- 
 ward it? Is that a job you would feel equal to boss- 
 ing?" 
 
 " If the county will have me. It has its own engi- 
 neer." 
 
 " Did we help to elect him ? " 
 
 " We helped the other man ! " 
 
 Cornish laughed at this new hitch in the narrow 
 little local game. "Is that why the bridge wasn't 
 fixed in a hurry?" 
 
 " I could n't say but if we do it ourselves, we can 
 do it as we like and when we like." 
 
 " Go ahead, then, and do it. It does n't mean a new 
 bridge, does it?" 
 
 156 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Oh, not as bad as that. Fifteen hundred or so will 
 make it safe for another twenty years." 
 
 " Think of a bridge in Europe built to last twenty 
 years 1 " 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 "How does it go, boy dear?" Mrs. Scarth detained 
 her son for a hasty word at bedtime. " Does n't he say 
 anything definite ? " 
 
 " He asks questions, mostly," Tom answered. 
 
 " Does he seem at all pleased with the way things 
 look?" 
 
 " He has n't said so : don't worry, mother," he 
 added as her face fell. " Good-night." 
 
 She ignored his dismissal. "You don't even know 
 if they will want you to stay?" 
 
 " It 's only the first day, remember. He 's not at all 
 hard to get on with." 
 
 She made him stoop for her good-night kiss and 
 released him ; well she knew that vague look in 
 his young tired eyes which showed that he did not 
 hear. 
 
 Upstairs she and Engracia talked long in the girl's 
 room. The couch at the bed's foot was heaped with 
 those wretched little muslins Clare's pink creation 
 trailed from its hanger on the lamp-bracket. " I did n't 
 put them away," she apologized. " We must think 
 of some one to give them to." 
 
 "You may be very glad of them yourself some 
 day," her mother answered significantly. 
 
 " Not those clothes ! " 
 
 "They can be made over " 
 158 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Ah, I did not mean the fashions!" Engracia 
 murmured. Caroline did not misunderstand. 
 
 " Neither did I. Luxuries of feeling are not for us, 
 dear. We must learn to save, at the cost of everything 
 but decency." 
 
 Engracia hesitated a second : " Are we so exces- 
 sively poor, mamma?" 
 
 " That depends. Would you like to go back East 
 with me and live with Uncle Benjamin?" 
 
 "And accept our living from him?" 
 
 " I have about enough for us to dress on. It would 
 be a gracious and a kindly living, and I don't sup- 
 pose he would ever feel it." 
 
 " But you would feel it?" 
 
 " I should like death better ; that 's not the question. 
 Tom will be where his work is ; it 's only my girl, my 
 sensitive girl, I worry about." 
 
 " * McCarthy r'ared them very peevish/ " Engracia 
 quoted as one way of looking at this boasted sensi- 
 tiveness. Hesitating, she asked, " Was there nothing 
 at all left for you, mamma ? It is a question of you." 
 
 " My dear, we could n't live on papa's salary from 
 the company, and educate our children." 
 
 " How did we live, then? Are we in debt?" 
 
 Caroline shook her head. "I will tell you some- 
 time : it 's a long story and I must tell it right, now that 
 I 'm the only one left to tell it. It was the one hitch 
 between us the only time we ever failed to see an 
 important question the same way." 
 
 "We mustn't postpone things," said Engracia. 
 "You have always said I saw things as he did." 
 
 159 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Yes, you do ; but you ought to go to bed, dear." 
 
 " I don't want to go to bed : it J s exciting to have 
 one 's executioner in the house at meals, and sit- 
 ting around so friendly-like, just as if he weren't 
 going to sell us up to-morrow." 
 
 " Tom says he is easy to get on with." 
 
 " Tom gets on with anybody ; we 're exacting." 
 
 " What do you miss in him?" 
 
 " I don't miss anything : he is all too much there. 
 I was downright sassy to him this afternoon : he drives 
 you to it, looking at you so." 
 
 " Looking at you how ? he does n't look at me," 
 said Caroline innocently and rather alarmed, Engra- 
 cia being, like her father, strong in her likes and dis- 
 likes which she took little pains to hide. 
 
 " Never mind him ; he 's the future let him wait. 
 I want to know all about ourselves if you are not 
 too tired?" 
 
 "I am never tired when there is any talking to 
 be done." Caroline did not go on at once after this 
 glance at her familiar weakness sign in itself that 
 she found her story difficult, even to tell Engracia, 
 that born listener which Providence sometimes grants 
 a talkative woman in the bosom of her family. En- 
 gracia sat forward in her low chair and clasped her 
 elbows to keep her hands still (they had tricks that 
 bothered her when she did not watch them). 
 
 "Well, dear; it was ten or twelve years ago 
 when we had come to the question of schools, and 
 we could n't make up our minds to be humble about 
 our children. Suddenly, your father learned what he 
 
 160 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 might be making somewhere else. An offer came to 
 him from one of his best old friends, a great engineer 
 
 Allerton Voorhees. He is dead now ; and he never 
 quite forgave, I think, the slight to his offer that he 
 had waited so long to make. It was to go out to South 
 Africa for a famous London company with invest- 
 ments all over the world. It meant a great professional 
 future, to be the right hand of such a man. With his 
 backing it would have made our fortune. The golden 
 chance that comes once and once only and I 'm 
 afraid that I was the stumbling-block. 
 
 " I understood all the arguments : those were his 
 best years what he failed to do then for his chil- 
 dren could never be made up ; and though money 
 does not mean reputation to an engineer with other 
 engineers, it does with outsiders. Pride came into it : 
 he knew this work here would never show results in 
 his lifetime to justify all his prophecies. Gold is there 
 
 any one can see that kind of success. But my rea- 
 sons were feelings vague dread, and that inertia 
 which grows upon women in a life like this. I think 
 it 's good for us, you know, but it makes us hate 
 changes. And how I loved it here ! Can any one 
 imagine why ! I grew to love the very smell of the 
 summer dust the silence of our heats ; the rooms 
 we made ourselves and filled with our own dreams. 
 Papa loved it too, but he turned it all down. He sent 
 in his resignation with regrets, almost with apolo- 
 gies. He had worked so hard for Mr. Rivington's 
 confidence in what he wanted to do here then to 
 back out himself on a question of salary ! 
 
 161 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Mr. Rivington met him in his own handsome 
 fashion. 'The Board can't raise you,' he wrote, * but 
 I can. Let me know the least you can afford to stay 
 for. I am not, of course, the Rand ! ' 
 
 " Well, I may say the flesh dropped off me while 
 this thing was in the air. It meant to leave Tom, his 
 first years away from home ; or if I stayed with you 
 children, the separations again ! There had been so 
 many only this one home ! Two months by letter 
 and back, and if anything should happen to papa 
 he was never well those turns that we did not un- 
 derstand. ... I begged him to be modest. I wanted 
 his figures to be met. The one thing I believe he 
 wanted most he never spoke of : that association 
 with a big work-brother, a man of his own cast of 
 mind, his leader and his friend. He cared greatly for 
 Mr. Rivington, but not as one 'artificer' cares for 
 another the man who understands." 
 
 " Blessed mother, you need not apologize to us for 
 sticking to the home." 
 
 " I 'm apologizing to him. It is one of those uncon- 
 querable regrets. . . . Well, he was moderate for 
 my sake ; he was almost humble. He asked about 
 half his earning capacity, according to that offer, and 
 Mr. Rivington met him out of his own pocket. He 
 was practically the company, but he would n't force 
 the small stockholders into risks outside of strict 
 business I don't know how to put these things. 
 Then, Uncle Benjamin began to think about those 
 school-bills too he has always been like an own 
 father to me. For my part, it would have hurt less 
 
 162 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 to take that family money for you children, to make 
 you a credit to the family, than Mr. Rivington's pri- 
 vate check but that would have been help. Papa 
 wanted what he was worth, in the open market. I 
 must n't forget Cousin Tom offered, too, most hand- 
 somely, but that was different again : there were 
 personal reasons no need to explain. It simply 
 could n't be, in that case. It was the one sore subject 
 between us no, no ! not Cousin Tom ! we were 
 perfectly agreed there Mr. Rivington's subsidy, I 
 mean. Papa would not see it that way it was part 
 of his rightful salary, he felt. He would n't even call 
 it a loan. And if it were a loan, he said, ' my life and 
 time are security : I sacrifice a good deal more than 
 Rivington to the future of this work.' Still, we never 
 liked to talk of it, though I know it has puzzled some 
 very good friends of ours how we have got on. And 
 now it 's Tom's life and work we are living on, and 
 no pride or delicacy, or anything must stand between 
 us and niggardly economy." 
 
 Engracia rose and walked about the room seeking 
 things to do with her hands. 
 
 This aspect of the family circumstances had never 
 been presented to her young mind before, though 
 the necessity of doing so had been discussed often 
 by her parents. 
 
 " If I can't take care of one wife and one daugh- 
 ter, what in heaven's name am I good for ! We don't 
 want her off somewhere earning her living we 
 want her here with us." Scarth, of course, did not 
 share the modern theory that an incomeless wife and 
 
 163 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 daughter are " parasites." So, now, it was a ques- 
 tion for Engracia to solve for herself. 
 
 "I must do something, mamma. I wonder what I 
 am good for." 
 
 " An old lady's companion," her mother answered 
 promptly. "Will you be mine? You can have a 
 position with me, right here on the spot, without a 
 single reference." 
 
 " You can't afford me, dear. I should expect more 
 than my board and clothes." 
 
 " Not while you are in training. Think how I 
 shall exercise you in all the necessary virtues ! I '11 
 promise to be as trying as I can." 
 
 " I believe I could be such a thing as a ' social 
 secretary,' if I were not too social. Is my handwriting 
 stylish enough?" 
 
 " Your writing may be, but you are not. Smart- 
 ness may have its uses, you see." 
 
 " I shall look for a lady, you understand a real 
 lady." 
 
 " I hope you won't look for her in San Francisco ! 
 don't interrupt on Cousin Anna's account. She 
 would have you on her mind continually. You are 
 not serious, dear ? " 
 
 " Serious enough to wonder what the poor things 
 are paid." 
 
 " Rather more than a governess and not near as 
 much as a cook," the mother jeered, knowing noth- 
 ing about it, naturally. 
 
 " I don't class myself with chefs in any depart- 
 ment, but I may surprise you yet. It seems to be one 
 
 164 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 of those things you can leave largely to Providence 
 the hope of the incompetent ! " 
 
 " Your friends will be your hope. We have no one 
 here but the Ludwells. I should so hate to ask them 
 for references it would call down checks upon 
 our heads from Cousin Tom I can't take help from 
 him, because papa " 
 
 " Of course not. He 's our kindest kin, but not our 
 kind. Nobody is criticizing ; I don't believe papa 
 did not much." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WITHIN a few days Engracia took the first steps 
 toward carrying out her plans, her mother consenting 
 despondently. Tom was not advised of the matter ; 
 time enough to deal with him when there should be 
 something definite to talk of. The women clung to 
 these last precious hours together. They were rather 
 more irritable with each other, and passionately re- 
 pentant, feeling how time flew by. Engracia no longer 
 practiced she could not concentrate upon anything. 
 She played over the old things her mother loved, 
 which brought soft tears along with piercing memo- 
 ries. What are homes, after all, but " deserted nurs- 
 eries," or they break up before summer is done and 
 cast their fledglings out helpless on the winds of 
 fate. 
 
 And since the world is largely made up of misun- 
 derstandings, Cornish meanwhile was thinking that 
 never had he seen a young woman who spent her 
 time more profitlessly than this daughter of unsuccess, 
 who in a home like that might, at least, have learned 
 to put her hand to something practical. He was 
 deeply concerned about her future, as he had no right 
 to be. He had understood that several winters in 
 New York (an exaggeration) had been given to the 
 study of music yet she never touched the piano in 
 his hearing. She did not confide to him her custom 
 
 1 66 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 of making the family beds, including his own : Moon 
 could have shaken down a bed for a horse further 
 his skill in that line did not go. She followed him 
 about on his sweeping rounds, dusting after him with 
 a woman's touch. There were fresh flowers all over 
 the house cut with strict justice to the garden; no 
 man knows what a chore this is in hot weather ; but 
 Cornish never saw her at the graceful task. He con- 
 cluded, in short, that here was another fatal instance 
 of the American father who thinks his own life and 
 little means will never give out, and if they should 
 it is the good God and not the Evil One who takes 
 the hindmost. 
 
 Meanwhile, they jested and argued superficially ; 
 if they explored deeper, it was with a significant cau- 
 tion in testing each other's fundamental faiths and 
 ideals of living. Books they generally agreed about, or 
 they subtly pretended to disagree. Caroline thought 
 very little about them except to notice a certain in- 
 consistency between Engracia's occasional bursts of 
 destructive criticism of their guest and her long con- 
 versations alone with him on the steps, now the cooler 
 nights drove mothers indoors. 
 
 " Did Mr. Cornish know, do you suppose, about 
 father's arrangement with Mr. Rivington?" Engracia 
 asked once, after another plunge into that past which 
 ceaselessly haunted Caroline. 
 
 " Of course his secretary knew." 
 
 " About those private checks?" 
 
 "They were personal, not ' private' there was 
 no secrecy about it in Mr. Rivington's office." 
 
 167 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Had he anything to do with it when they 
 stopped?" 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean - who stopped it? did G. C.?" 
 
 " Death stopped it," said Caroline quietly. " Tom, 
 of course, wrote what was necessary from us, to make 
 it easy. He wrote to Mr. Cornish to spare him 
 writing." 
 
 " He seems to have been firmly mixed in with all 
 our most private hurts. Shall we ever see his report 
 on us, do you suppose?" 
 
 " Hardly, but it won't be difficult to know what it 
 is. We shall know when it is time to move out." 
 
 On three successive market-days an old Italian 
 rancher named Morandi, with his little grandson to 
 interpret for him, stopped to see Mr. Scarth on their 
 way down the valley. They caught him at last one 
 lunch-time and Tom went out to speak to them, the 
 family at table inside listening, much amused. 
 
 A child's high treble sing-songed in English of the 
 district-school, " He wants to know kin he have them 
 bricks what 's layin' out where the house was burnt, 
 down our way quite a piece?" 
 
 "As far as I know, he can," Tom's voice replied. 
 
 This was conveyed by little Morandi to his grand- 
 sire in their own tongue. " He wants to know, kin 
 we take 'em to-day when we're goin' down along?" 
 
 The answer again seemed satisfactory. Thanks 
 followed in an old man's husky tones. Heavy feet 
 went trampling down the gravel followed by stump- 
 
 168 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ing of small new boots. A rush was made to collar 
 Bran who resented these familiarities and had charged 
 forth swearing. Cornish remained outside, discussing 
 bricks with Tom. 
 
 " How much a thousand are bricks, counting freight 
 and hauling?" 
 
 Bricks, it seemed, were unreasonably high consider- 
 ing they are made down the valley at Folsom 
 machinations of the " S. P." 
 
 " Think you could n't have made use of those bricks 
 in your hop-ovens, for instance ?" 
 
 "They are not good bricks," said Tom "been 
 too long out on the ground." 
 
 "They wouldn't have been worth stacking under 
 cover, you think ? Labor is worth more than bricks ? " 
 
 " They were n't our bricks." (Here the women 
 chuckled shamelessly.) " They belonged to the squat- 
 ter who built the house, long before our time ; he went 
 off and did n't take his chimney." 
 
 "If Tom had held onto those bricks!" Engracia 
 whispered fiercely. 
 
 "Strictly speaking, they were not his to give 
 away." 
 
 " They were his still less to keep, like a dog in the 
 manger." 
 
 " Oh, well ; he did n't know they were n't ours." 
 
 "Was the old policy as small as that?" 
 
 " Any policy that saves the company's money is 
 not small : your father looked after the little things." 
 
 " Did he waste the good-will of our poor neigh- 
 bors and set them against us for utter meanness? 
 
 169 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 speaking as selfishly as you like, I should think that 
 would hardly pay!" 
 
 "Why so excited, child? It was a very small tale 
 of bricks." 
 
 " It is n't the bricks, good Heavens ! It 's what it 
 must make of a man's mind to be thinking of every 
 brick." 
 
 1 ' It 's his own mind, dear, and his own business. It 
 is what makes men rich." 
 
 " You did n't say that of Mr. Rivington." 
 
 "I said he left this part to the man he finally 
 trusted with all he had." 
 
 Outside, the men's voices were heard chatting 
 pleasantly : " What do the Italians do with damaged 
 bricks?" Cornish inquired. 
 
 "Build bake-ovens for their wives; good cooks 
 they are, too. We must go down to Morandi's some 
 night and get his women to give us a raviola supper. 
 If we let them have a day's notice they '11 lay them- 
 selves out." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CORNISH overstayed the dry season and no one 
 wished him gone. He was there through the first 
 September rain, and sat by the first autumn fire and 
 thought it the sweetest evening of many years, 
 though nothing marked it but a silence of sober folk 
 who listened to the steady downpour outside, know- 
 ing what it meant " for the country." 
 
 In the night he heard the clear-up wind tumbling 
 through the chambers of the oak, clashing its million 
 little hard-finished leaves against the groaning house- 
 roof. Half waking he wished for another blanket and 
 instantly fell asleep again drugged by the change of 
 air. Next morning it was as if one whole layer of at- 
 mosphere had been removed ; he saw the great val- 
 ley unveiled at last " our alleged Buttes and our 
 conjectural Coast Range " were no longer a fable for 
 strangers. 
 
 Engracia was in the pantry, after breakfast, put- 
 ting up lunch for two. There were fine points about 
 a riding-lunch by no means to be entrusted to Moon. 
 His part was slicing ham and passing it in on a 
 kitchen plate through the serving-window. Cornish 
 and Engracia were expected to eat this lunch some- 
 where on the way to Dixie Canon neither having 
 had the least hand in the arrangement. Engracia was 
 protesting her own innocence to Cornish, who had 
 
 171 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 wandered in for a drink of water fresh from the filter. 
 He loomed large in these domestic precincts and his 
 spurs seemed inappropriate. 
 
 " Tom is the quick-decision board of this family," 
 she explained elaborately. " As soon as he found you 
 were not going to be ready on the moment, he went 
 off alone in the buggy and left word for me to be 
 your guide. He has a weird faith in my knowing 
 these roads I don't think I do, but if you are will- 
 ing to trust me, I '11 try to get you there." 
 
 " I should think we might risk it with all that ham 
 along ham and chicken too ! such good eats 1 " 
 He stood over her and watched like a small boy 
 while she matched her slices and trimmed her crusts. 
 
 " It would n't be proper, I suppose, to leave them 
 on?" 
 
 "We leave ours on, but I had the fear of New 
 York before me." 
 
 " And New York grudging every crust you have 
 thrown away ! " 
 
 "I '11 put them all up in paper, specially for you." 
 
 " Thanks. What an extraordinary nice place a 
 pantry is," he murmured wistfully. " I could n't be 
 allowed to stay, I suppose? You may be wasting 
 something else if nobody 's here to watch you. 
 There 's a slice of breast and two chicken-wings you 
 have n't put in." 
 
 " Poor mamma's lunch ! The wing is her choice 
 part." 
 
 " I retreat in confusion. Now you might be gener- 
 ous, I think, to the fallen 1 " 
 
 172 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Could I trust you to fill a thermos-bottle without 
 breaking it? the coffee is there at your elbow, 
 boiling hot." 
 
 "In my experience of thermos-bottles, nothing 
 comes out of them either as hot or as cold as we 're 
 led to expect," said Cornish, arguing from limited 
 experience. 
 
 " And they are the dickens to clean." 
 
 "Why do we take the blamed thing?" 
 
 " What will New York drink?" 
 
 " Is there no water on the road ?" 
 
 " Perfect water, anywhere." 
 
 "Good Heavens; then why a thermos-bottle? 
 how this world fairly reeks with misunderstandings! 
 Now, what are you privately so amused about ? 
 Can't you pass it on? passing things on is the 
 very spirit of a pantry." 
 
 She passed on the smile without any tag to ex- 
 plain it thinking : " New York is a different being 
 this morning ; is it the air or what ?" But the wind 
 went out of his sails, and he backed out of the pan- 
 try rather foolishly as her mother entered, preoccu- 
 pied showed tactless surprise at seeing them both 
 there and asked Engracia if she had remembered the 
 paper napkins. 
 
 An hour later they were following the trail along 
 a land-drop some hundreds of feet sheer down to a 
 gulch, bone-dry save where a few lost-looking man- 
 zanita sprouts seemed as if stuck by hand in the 
 drifted sand. This was the lower part of the wash- 
 ings, but as they rode on, stones in wild heaps and 
 
 173 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 tumbled boulders took its place work of hydraulic 
 mining before the anti-debris law. Tops of dead pines 
 leaned on a level with their eyes, others clung half- 
 uprooted to the disemboweled hill. The sluiced-out 
 gulch, a hundred feet across to its opposite wall, lay 
 quiet as death. The rain had done nothing here 
 beyond filling a few pot-holes so far below they could 
 hardly see them shine. But up the face of the cliff- 
 side, thirty summers had done their work. A tide of 
 young green life rushed upwards, catching hold, 
 climbing on : hardly a raw spot of earth remained. 
 Ceanothus, bear-weed, juniper, every species of 
 thorn and native briar, running-oak and squaw' s- 
 mat and bracken turning gold, with what color- 
 patches of wild flowers in spring fancy could supply. 
 They sat their horses in silence, looking down. 
 
 " Have you ever read but, of course, you have 
 n't," Engracia paused : " it's not a man's book." 
 
 " Even so I might have read it," Cornish smiled. 
 "I'm afraid I 'm only half a man in some of my 
 reading." 
 
 " The hundredth man," Engracia corrected po- 
 litely. " Well ; does this place remind you of any- 
 thing you have read any description ?" 
 
 " Now you speak of it the first chapter in 'Arne' : 
 * How the cliff was clad.' " 
 
 "Isn't it odd, we both should see it! But it's 
 the same idea the old scars that heal in spite of 
 themselves?" 
 
 "And the other old scars," he added, "that are 
 never going to heal, but they take their load of sand 
 
 174 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 and even grow things on it. ... You were pretty 
 young for allegory, weren't you, when you read 
 'Arne'?" 
 
 " I did n't read 'Arne' till quite lately. ' The Happy 
 Boy' and 'Synove,' mamma gave us first. Do you 
 know, " she questioned, pursuing her own thoughts, 
 "if those books were ever the 'best-seller' kind?" 
 
 " Hardly, I think, the kind a bookseller pokes at 
 you." 
 
 " So I supposed. " They rode on at an easy pace, 
 the trail descending. " You see, it was Mr. Riving- 
 ton we owe Bjornson to and he sent us a perfect 
 wonder of a ' Folk and Fairy Tales ' Scandinavian ! 
 I 've never seen it in any other house. It was the loss 
 of our youth 1 We lent it to one of those borrowers 
 who don't take books seriously as they would the loan 
 of a Butterick pattern. . . . Now, how could he have 
 spent time to pick out such books for us ? We had 
 other books at Christmas, but none like his : they 
 were a special brand of choice ours, and mamma's, 
 too. We read hers as fast as we grew up to them. 
 It was the best part of our education of mine ! " 
 Cornish listened with persuasive interest. " I remem- 
 ber, when we talked to him about them after they 
 were a part of us, you know he seemed a little 
 vague ; he was pleased, but he did n't quite under- 
 stand. He would, you know, if he had read them." 
 
 " Is an elderly gentleman expected to educate him- 
 self along with the little girls he gives books to?" 
 
 Engracia laughed. " I did n't see it that way ex- 
 actly, but perhaps that is the way. Anyhow, I do wish 
 
 175 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 we knew who it was dealt with us so large-minded 
 like, had such faith in a family of readers they had 
 never seen and such great ideas about reading gen- 
 erally. We did n't bother our ungrateful heads about 
 it then, but I've wondered since it's an immense 
 debt to somebody." 
 
 "Why not him?" 
 
 " Of course him but some one else, too ; but I 
 don't suppose I shall ever know." 
 
 "Such keen young detectives must have come 
 pretty close to the heart of the mystery. You had your 
 theories, no doubt?" 
 
 " / had a theory. It was rather presumptuous to 
 drag in the beautiful Mrs. Rivington, but you've 
 seen her, of course? she is young, and she looks at 
 you " 
 
 Cornish looked at her, in sharp surprise. " Where 
 did you ever see her ? " 
 
 " Only her picture. It stood on his table always 
 when he was with us. It was one of my chores to dust 
 his august room " Engracia paused to laugh, pa- 
 renthesizing "I shall get into difficulties if I go 
 on. But you need n't think I spend my life browsing 
 on guest-room tables ! I did hang over that picture 
 sometimes, when I should have been doing my work ; 
 and I dreamed that she was our beautiful gift-fairy 
 who thought of us every Christmas and knew exactly 
 what we loved. Somehow the books were like her ; 
 and when I wrote my proper thanks to him, it was 
 always her face, in the picture, I saw." 
 
 Cornish was silent ; his smile of ironic amusement 
 176 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 wiped out that dream at once and forever. "They 
 were uncommonly good letters for a little girl to write, 
 whoever may have inspired them," he answered 
 guardedly. 
 
 " Where did you ever see my letters?" Engracia 
 stared. Riding at her side middle-aged, as she 
 called him, passing grim a beard, close-trimmed 
 but yet a beard, covering his stiff half-smile how 
 could he have had anything to do with this cherished 
 romance of her childhood ! 
 
 " Must the gift-fairies always be young and beauti- 
 ful ? They were n't in my time. They were rather 
 nasty customers with tempers you had to get on 
 the right side of or they played you tricks. Came 
 when they were n't asked and gave you what you 
 did n't want : Prince Giglio, you know, and his gift 
 of ' a little misfortune.' " 
 
 She scrutinized him and he winced ; he was visibly 
 embarrassed and talking at random to hide it. " Mr. 
 Cornish," she cried, almost woundedly " It was n't 
 it could n't have been you 1" 
 
 No more was said ; no more needed to be said. She 
 saw what she had done. He made an effort to smile 
 naturally it was a failure. She knew that he had 
 witnessed and fully comprehended her flat disap- 
 pointment. 
 
 " Well, let me thank you now, for all the years when 
 we thanked everybody else. It was a debt, and there is 
 such a thing as interest, is n't there, added to the prin- 
 cipal?" 
 
 "You must n't forget Mr. Rivington always 
 177 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 divided his thanks. That is how I came to read your 
 letters." 
 
 " Then you have read my letters ? " 
 
 "Some of them they were among his papers, 
 from the time you were twelve to I believe I 
 could tell your age precisely, but I was n't expecting 
 to find you really grown up. And at first it was a 
 disappointment. I used to think little girls ought 
 never to be guilty of such a thing. Afterwards I for- 
 gave you you did it so well." He gave a sudden 
 strong sigh. They jogged along peacefully as if noth- 
 ing were going to happen. " It came to be one of 
 the nicest things at Christmas," he continued, " pick- 
 ing out those books for a little girl on the Marysville 
 road, who read so straight to the mark. You were 
 my little ' traveler in the realms of gold.' " 
 
 She questioned him with a look : " Yes ; I wrote 
 those words intrusively, on the fly-leaf of your ' Iphi- 
 genia.' Do you remember?" 
 
 " Do I remember my first Greek tragedy ! " Her 
 eyes softened almost with tears. " What an amazing, 
 willful goose I was running all around Robin 
 Hood's barn to find some one who was there all 
 the time. The writing was so nice and strange I 
 thought it must be hers : I knew it was n't his." 
 
 " What does it matter? He got your letters and he 
 cared for them. Now, if you still want to thank me 
 for nothing let me keep them, will you? I want 
 them." 
 
 " Mr. Cornish ! what perfect nonsense ! Nobody ever 
 kept my letters except my mother." 
 
 178 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Somebody wants to keep them now. May I tell 
 you why ? I want every part of you past and future 
 
 all to myself. My dear, my little girl ! Can't it be 
 so?" 
 
 She was shocked as well as startled : he had grown 
 completely pale and he struggled for breath to go on. 
 Must she give him this needless pain, just as she was 
 beginning to learn what it would mean to have had 
 him for a friend ? 
 
 "Those letters make them the letters my wife 
 
 wrote when she was a child before we dreamed 
 of this. Don't think I was educating you to be my 
 wife. Heaven forbid ! This is as great a shock to me 
 as it is to you, my dear child. Come," he ended, see- 
 ing her blank dismay, realizing that he must give 
 her time "let me always buy your books. Come 
 to me and read mine 1 This is no fatherly business 
 
 I'm in love with you helplessly, ridiculously. 
 What do you suppose has kept me out here so long ? 
 I could n't get up courage to speak and I could n't 
 go away without speaking." 
 
 " Oh," she said, " I wish I could be that little girl 
 again. I might have loved you, I think, if I had only 
 known who you were. I can't believe the things I 
 have thought and said about you, even since you 
 came ! " 
 
 " I can," said Cornish, who had heard some of them. 
 " But no matter : begin back with me now and grow 
 up to the idea. I can't tell you how patient I shall be. 
 I am used to waiting." 
 
 She recalled that statement afterwards, when it 
 
 179 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 seemed to have gained another significance ; but now 
 she answered, " It would be the meanest selfishness 
 in me to let you wait no ; truly, I don't want to feel 
 that way at all." 
 
 " Less toward me than others you could think of?" 
 
 " There are no others." 
 
 " Then I must wait." She looked at him in despair. 
 But he could not save her now, all that his silence had 
 held back. " I thought my first question would have 
 been, 'Am I too old?' and we haven't even got to 
 that, it seems." 
 
 " You are too old too everything for an ignorant 
 girl like me. That would not discourage me, though. 
 Oh 1 the trouble is, you offer me something I dare 
 not take, and we both lose what we had before and 
 did n't even know that we had it if you can un- 
 derstand me." 
 
 " Of course, I understand. I can't let you refuse to 
 go on with this. You must give me leave to write 
 to you. Remember, I did n't know that you were 
 here you, as you are. And I did n't understand you 
 at first. I was gone, just the same from the very first 
 night " 
 
 " Excuse me ! " Engracia looked about her. " This 
 must be Blue Tent we are coming to. We 've noth- 
 ing to do with Blue Tent ! Our road turns off three 
 miles back. I 've made you lose it." 
 
 " I have made you lose it." 
 
 " That 's no way for me to get out of it. Six miles 
 nearly an hour and a half out of our way. Please 
 forgive me 1 " 
 
 180 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " What is an hour to me when I have waited for 
 you all my life and you give me nothing that I 
 ask for?" 
 
 " I will give you something to eat, if you '11 let 
 me." 
 
 "Are we to picnic in Blue Tent? That will be 
 cheerful 1 " 
 
 " We can fill our canteens there." 
 
 They rode on in silence and came into the one 
 street of Blue Tent which has five saloons open and 
 one schoolhouse shut. It has a pump also in front of 
 its main hotel. A gaunt, cold-looking woman dressed 
 in calico, her bare arms rolled in her kitchen apron, 
 watched them from the stoop while the horses drank 
 and Cornish filled the canvas-covered canteens. 
 
 " Ask her," Engracia leaned from her saddle to say, 
 " if we may use their telephone. I must send word 
 to mamma we shall be late. We can call up the saw- 
 mill, too, and they will tell Tom we are coming. He 's 
 so unconcerned about disappointments, he may not 
 wait after what he would call a suitable time." 
 
 A crowd had gathered in the person of one old 
 man, who left his woodpile and came and sat on the 
 steps to observe them more at leisure. He chewed 
 and spat and studied Cornish in particular his 
 horse, his riding-clothes, his speech as he and the girl 
 consulted in low voices. He had recognized Engracia, 
 by her pony, as one of the Scarths from Torresville 
 way. 
 
 " They ain't got no telephone in there," he vol- 
 unteered ; the woman assented with a nod. " Where 
 
 181 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 you want to connect? " She turned an unfriendly eye 
 upon Cornish. 
 
 " Could you tell me where there is a public tele- 
 phone?" he retorted in kind. 
 
 She glanced at the old man : "Ther' ain't no tele- 
 phone in Blue Tent," he answered. " Ef you want to 
 talk to somebody, you '11 have to go on to Grizzly " 
 (Grizzly Flat). 
 
 " But we can't, this afternoon," Engracia struck in, 
 smiling. She had heard the stories about these placer- 
 towns, their well-founded suspicions of strangers, and 
 thought it time to be more diplomatic. " We are go- 
 ing to meet my brother, Mr. Scarth, and we 're off 
 our road. We want to send him word that we shall 
 be late " 
 
 "Whereabouts you aimin' to meet him?" the an- 
 cient inquired. 
 
 " Dixie Canon where the flume crosses from this 
 side." 
 
 " Sho, you don't have to go back them three mile! 
 I kin put ye onto a trail take ye there in no time. 
 The ditch-trail: Jim Perrin uses it steady goin' to 
 town." 
 
 Engracia mentioned, aside, that Perrin was the 
 company's ditch-tender, and no doubt the trail would 
 be all right. But she knew enough to ask, " Is there 
 a bridge? how do we cross the creek?" 
 
 " Ford it, far as I know. 'T ain't much of a crick. 
 Jim will give you your bearin's you 're right there, 
 might say, soon as you strike his cabin." 
 
 They took the trail, Cornish indifferent, Engracia 
 
 182 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 eager to repair her previous carelessness. The way 
 was beautiful but steep. The voice of the north wind 
 rose out of the gulch, making music in the tops of 
 the tall, thin young pines into whose gray perspec- 
 tive of trunks they rapidly descended. Half a mile 
 brought them to their first landmark, the ditch, and 
 all seemed well. They stopped in a little glade clothed 
 with sunny deer-grass to dispose of a five-minute 
 lunch. Engracia admired her companion's gallantly 
 forced appetite to match her own frank cravings, but 
 he made no pretense to conversation. They rode on 
 along the trodden ditch-bank, and very soon talking 
 would have meant shouting against a sudden out- 
 cry of waters that burst upon them as if a flood barred 
 the way. 
 
 The ditch ended suddenly at the head of the flume 
 where it strides out on its forty-foot trestle. There 
 was no bridge and no ford a sane rider would attempt. 
 The creek boiled along swollen by heavy rains in 
 the mountains. They might have heard the tumult 
 sooner but for that glorious north wind rioting in the 
 gulch. 
 
 " He said it was n't * much of a crick,' " Cornish 
 shouted : " I think Jockey of Norfolk is bought and 
 sold !" She could hear only "sold." 
 
 " Who did you buy that horse from hire, I mean ? " 
 
 " Ryder, his name was." 
 
 " Of course we 're sold ! He 's the sheriff of Plu- 
 mas County, where they are watching these men." 
 
 "So that's why there was no telephone in Blue 
 Tent?" 
 
 183 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 She pointed ahead : " You see how Jim crosses " 
 a man's footprints in mud were plain on the eight- 
 inch board laid along the cleats of the flume. " Now, 
 if you could make him hear us ! " 
 
 Cornish amazed her with a remarkable screech 
 through his thumbs resurrected from a boyhood not 
 misspent. She complimented him on it, but it failed 
 to produce Jim. " I know he has a telephone," she 
 urged. He remained calm. She waited a decent in- 
 terval nothing whatever occurred. 
 
 Her face flushed crimson : she slipped out of her 
 saddle to the ground and began taking off her spurs. 
 In an instant he was beside her. " What are you go- 
 ing to do ? " He picked up one of the spurs and held 
 it toward her, pointing up the trail. Nicety of speech 
 was denied them in that uproar. It added to their 
 mutual irritation, being obliged to explain differences 
 on a forced key. 
 
 " We shall be hours late. Tom won't wait unless 
 he knows we are coming. If he gets home without 
 us, mamma will be sick ! " 
 
 "We can go straight back, then, and get home first." 
 
 "And not meet Tom? Give up the whole day! 
 / lost the road please let me fix it." 
 
 " Anything you say, short of walking that flume." 
 
 "I don't ask you " 
 
 " And I don't offer." 
 
 " I saw that ! If you like to be beaten, I don't. I 
 should feel very silly " 
 
 " But this is more than silly to walk that flume 
 to tell your brother " 
 
 184 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " I have n't asked you to walk it. Why will you 
 make me insult you ! " His color rose " You see 
 Jim's tracks walking flumes is no more than cross- 
 ing Broadway " 
 
 " If you are used to it." He had unsnapped 
 his spurs and kicked them off ; backing Nipper out 
 of his own way and square in hers, he was off upon 
 the errand required of him. He had attacked it in 
 hot blood and the high cup of his wrath upheld him 
 for the first half of the way. He reached the highest 
 spot and she watched him frozen. A full head of 
 water shot beneath his feet ; the creek tore and tum- 
 bled far below very far, it seemed to him. Sun 
 flashing on both currents confused his sight, and he 
 had not a head for high places. She guessed that 
 now, and could have pounded her own head upon the 
 rocks in shame for what she had forced upon him, 
 in a cheap demand for "gallantry," about as civi- 
 lized as the laughter of squaws. It seemed to her that 
 he stayed on that high spot forever, hesitating 
 then he recovered and almost strode into the bosom 
 of the opposite shore. He did not once turn to look 
 at her, but climbed the bank and vanished in the wil- 
 lows around Jim's cabin. Again it seemed hours 
 that she waited for another sign. 
 
 He had known that he was right before, and now 
 he had proof of it. In regard to Tom, there was no re- 
 sponse from the sawmill, though he tried obstinately 
 over and over. The little girl who had " dared " him 
 to this job might wait now ! As to her mother it 
 took time for Central to "get" Mrs. Scarth on the 
 
 185 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 local line ; it took more time for his answers to sat- 
 isfy the questions he had aroused. She knew more 
 about this region than her daughter allowed for. 
 
 " But where are you talking from ? " 
 
 "Jim Perrin's cabin, I believe." 
 
 "How did you get across ? you did n't try to 
 ford ! " 
 
 " Oh, no," said Cornish easily ; " just walked the 
 flume." 
 
 " That flume ! not Engracia ? " 
 
 " She 's on the other side with the horses " 
 
 "And you crossed to speak to me! I hope my 
 foolish girl did not send you ! " 
 
 " Oh, no," lied Cornish. " I crossed to send a mes- 
 sage to your son. We '11 all be back about nine or 
 half past." 
 
 " Well ! " said Mrs. Scarth's voice expressively ; 
 " I shall be glad to see you ! I wish I knew you were 
 safe back across that flume." 
 
 Cornish wished so, too. 
 
 He was on the bank his second ordeal before 
 him. Doing a thing once does not necessarily make 
 it easier to do it again. Cold sweat broke out upon 
 him ; the foundations of his being literally revolted 
 in face of the attempt. Engracia knew his peril al- 
 most better than he, as he took his first steps along 
 the plank in no such form as he had exhibited before 
 it was cold blood now. He walked with fatal rigid- 
 ity and he was looking down. She saw him falter mis- 
 erably, creep on a few steps, then slowly lower himself 
 and cling on all fours to the plank. Her soul was 
 
 1 86 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 sick for the humiliation, and the shock of the danger 
 before her eyes drove her out upon the flume to meet 
 him. 
 
 How she got there she did not know, but they 
 were together and he rose, deathly white, with the 
 help of her hands, and so they stood confronted. 
 
 " Hold on to me while I turn/' she said, trembling. 
 It was an inspiration. He forgot himself, he sup- 
 ported her. She changed feet on the narrow board 
 and faced the other way. " Now, put your hands on 
 my shoulders and don't look down f" 
 
 " Break step ? " he asked faintishly, thinking of 
 wire bridges in the air. 
 
 " Keep step, and don't look down ! " 
 
 The tranquil shore came nearer above her little 
 head, and when they stood on the good ground once 
 more, she sank a dead weight suddenly on his breast. 
 How long he held her or how she came to be seated 
 on the ground with him beside her, he did not know. 
 
 " Please go away," she said, " I want to cry." 
 
 "Then cry here." He wanted to cry, too, if truth 
 were known. Decidedly he wanted to do other things 
 equally preposterous, if not equally unmanly. 
 
PART III 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 CORNISH left them in three days and no more was 
 heard from him officially, but letters to Engracia 
 began to come, which necessitated explanations to 
 one's mother. Caroline was astounded at the size, 
 vulgarly speaking, of her little daughter's first "bag." 
 It silenced one side the cheaper of the old con- 
 tention, and it disposed of that other fear lest her odd 
 child, sweet as she seemed in a mother's eyes, might 
 miss that human form of appreciation prized by the 
 human mother as being " respectit like the lave." 
 
 Cousin Anna came up just then on a short visit, 
 thinking how sad it would be at Roadside, and 
 showing that she expected it to be sad. It was merely 
 common consideration, in the long talks between the 
 friends, to speak of something besides dolor and the 
 episode of one's daughter's perfectly up-to-date con- 
 quest slipped from Caroline's keeping (perhaps she 
 did n't try very hard to keep it) strictly in confi- 
 dence, of course. Her punishment held off for a 
 while. Meantime it was novel and pleasant to taste 
 that triumph over again in her friend's astonishment 
 and frank regrets. 
 
 " I hope she has n't put an end to it finally : no 
 girl, at her age, can possibly know what she wants in 
 a husband." 
 
 " She expects to be convinced, however. He seems 
 191 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 to have failed to convince her that he is what she 
 wants." 
 
 " For the present : he won't give it up, of course. 
 But she must n't keep him waiting too long. I am 
 sure there 's many a charming woman in New York 
 would take him quick enough ; and he has no time 
 to throw away." 
 
 The steady rains came on. The oak kept his leaves 
 and darkened the downstairs rooms as of old when 
 it was the children who were missed as the autumn 
 days grew shorter. The women sat by the fire up- 
 stairs and said, in their patchwork language of 
 quotes, " * Now for retrospection and the fall sew- 
 ing.' " Caroline had dug this up out of a past when 
 women did have "fall sewing" and spent happy 
 hours over it with long talks, or reading aloud there- 
 with : reading aloud being the best part of educa- 
 tion in those days, and a better guide to thought, in 
 most cases, than club meetings, for you don't usually 
 meet and talk intimately with the greatest minds 
 and souls of the ages at modern club gatherings. 
 And, of course, whole afternoons given to bridge 
 or tea-dances, to women of Caroline's bringing-up, 
 would have appeared "an occupation for bedlam." 
 
 They did not pride themselves upon their resources, 
 nor even upon the singular blessedness of being forced 
 to discover and depend on them. Caroline said hon- 
 estly, " It is very dangerous to be so happy when we 
 are all by ourselves. You must n't give way to it if I 
 do ; you ought to need people and you ought to get 
 used to more people." 
 
 192 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Don't bother me. I 'm going away to get used 
 to people ; I shall need one person and she won't be 
 there. And oh, mamsy, I'm such a baby about it 
 all this place and all of it!" 
 
 " But there is nothing special about this place. We 
 have our sunsets ; there are better ones down at 
 the Bay." 
 
 " And houses in front of them ! hideous houses ! " 
 
 " Yes ; it 's very bad to stick to one place or one set 
 of associations too long. It makes one narrow and 
 sensitive and afraid and even suspicious that there 
 must be something wrong about every other place. 
 You can see it in me ! " 
 
 " If you were like your own theories, mamma, 
 the ones you try to work off on your children, no- 
 body could live with you. Thank Heaven, you're 
 not ; and you know it as well as I do." 
 
 There had been a letter from Cousin Anna apro- 
 pos of changes asking Engracia to " come down " 
 and taste their life and society in town for a while. 
 Unquestionably the thing to do ; but Engracia, in 
 proof of her mother's words, arose with groans and 
 looked over her clothes with reference to worldly eyes 
 upon her. However, a mother can sometimes be 
 lenient. " Cousin Anna will see to you perhaps, when 
 you get down there ; and you won't be going out." 
 
 Engracia had been at the Ludwells' some days. 
 Dressed as usual rather early one evening, she stopped 
 in Clare's room for a few last fastenings. Clare fixed 
 a lively eye upon her. 
 
 193 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Guess who 's coming to dinner to-night?" 
 
 " Dalby Morton generally is coming to dinner : is 
 to-night an exception ? " Engracia countered, suspect- 
 ing a trap of some kind. 
 
 "Dalby won't be in the picture with this man. 
 He 's an authority of some kind upon something 
 I don't know what ! But you know him : you had 
 him up there weeks examining you. Now, can't you 
 guess?" 
 
 There was no difficulty in seeing that Engracia 
 guessed. Seldom had she risen to a clumsy cast like 
 this. A slow, stubborn blush took command of her 
 countenance, refuting any possible pretense of in- 
 difference. The subject dropped like something hot 
 between them, Clare as much amazed as Engracia 
 was furious. 
 
 Clare, be it said, did not sleep that night till she had 
 wormed out of her mother the secret confided by her 
 friend with such artless satisfaction. It was out of 
 Mrs. LudwelPs power to lie directly, which her daugh- 
 ter knew, and framed her questions accordingly. And 
 what she had won by her own ingenuity, Clare made 
 use of as she pleased: and what harm in letting it 
 be known that one's little country cousin was not 
 quite so negligible socially as she might appear. Men, 
 Clare considered, were fair game, especially men on 
 the confines of forty; if they have not learned by 
 that time to take care of their tender feelings, who 
 do they expect will save them? 
 
 At dinner neither candles nor flowers obstructed 
 Engracia' s view of the evening's guest at his hostess's 
 
 194 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 right, nor the occasional disconcerting glances she 
 could not avoid from his direction. Disconcerting, 
 because Clare was merrily on the watch ; and he had 
 shaved his Edward the Seventh beard, which took 
 at least ten years from his age and restored to the 
 uses of expression a mouth and chin not ill adapted 
 for the purpose. She saw him for the first time in soci- 
 ety, guarded and ready as a diplomat, clever in his 
 talk, but not artificial. It was also their own first 
 formal meeting under other than family eyes ; it held 
 the consciousness of justifiable secrecy shared with 
 dignity on both sides, but as Engracia was unused to 
 such implications it disturbed her poise. 
 
 Other guests enlarged the party after dinner. Quite 
 in the end of the evening, he came deliberately to 
 speak to her where she had settled herself with a book 
 in an excellent window-seat. He wheeled his chair so 
 that seated he could screen her from the room. It was 
 half a minute before he broke a silence interesting 
 but anxious for both. 
 
 " Reading in company? Were n't little girls spoken 
 to for that? little boys were, in my time." 
 
 Engracia put down her book, smiling. " I stop with 
 pleasure." 
 
 He glanced at the title and disposed of it with a 
 shrug : " Unwholesome, decadent." 
 
 "Ah,' but a poet!" 
 
 " We don't need them that school. They are sick 
 or insane ; their work will not last." 
 
 " I should think this might last as long as it was 
 meant to. It doesn't believe that anything lasts." 
 
 195 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 She passed him the book open He read, with an 
 unsympathetic eye : 
 
 "They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, 
 
 Love and desire and hate : 
 I think they have no portion in us after 
 We pass the gate." 
 
 "Not for me ! I 'm too near the 'gate.' Only chil- 
 dren like you can abide that stuff. But I came to talk 
 business, not poetry." 
 ? " Business ? with me ! " 
 
 " Your business, mistaken child," he looked at her 
 gloomily. " Earning your living." 
 
 "How did you know?" 
 
 " Your mother was kind enough to tell me." 
 (" Mamma must be losing her mind," thought En- 
 gracia. " She certainly is a little warped this summer 
 of our woes.") " I hope she did n't see how it dis- 
 tressed me," Cornish added : " I fancied she was not 
 any too happy in it herself." 
 
 " Mamma is away behind the times in some things ; 
 and she can't believe I am grown up. She thinks 
 bears will eat me." 
 
 ." They will but, of course, you won't listen to 
 me ; though I was a brother once and might speak 
 for brothers a little." He paused, but she remained 
 silent. " I seem to have lost ground in * the treach- 
 erous air of absence' ? " 
 
 "No, indeed, only to be frank and personal 
 I scarcely know you. You are changed. I should 
 n't say it was * absence' alone " 
 
 He touched his shaven cheek and looked at her 
 
 196 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 unsmiling". " Would you prefer, on the whole, to see 
 less of me? We try these experiments on our wretched 
 countenances as you do your hair suddenly in some 
 new way. Be thankful it does n't grow on your faces." 
 
 There was no occasion for immoderate laughter at 
 this speech, nor even at his quaint depression as he 
 watched her. She was liable to such nervous mani- 
 festations under his hypnotic gaze. " Oh, come," he 
 said with a sudden deep inspiration, " you strike me 
 as a child sporting on the edge of a precipice ; I am 
 afraid to speak for fear I shall make you fall. And I 
 am commissioned to offer you precisely what I most 
 dread you should have." 
 
 " Something to do ? a position ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Rivington wants you for her secretary." 
 
 Engracia gasped. 
 
 " Was it your most kind " 
 
 " It was n't, rest assured. Why should I be kind ? 
 But I am much more than kind, remember. You 
 and your character and your qualifications were in 
 my hands : I might have shut you off with a word ! 
 . . . She knows who you are and all that, but let 
 me say in parenthesis don't be too sure she under- 
 stands. She is preoccupied." 
 
 "I should say so ! I 'm the one to understand 
 I hope you accepted at once if you think, that is, 
 that I'll do?" 
 
 " I wish once more you would accept some- 
 thing so much simpler, more natural, safer " 
 
 " Not safer ! Please, let us spare ourselves : it is 
 useless." 
 
 197 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 She saw him breathe deep : she had put a period 
 to that side of their discourse, but she half wished 
 she could have added, " useless now." 
 
 "You will want to write to your mother first? " 
 
 " I can take her consent for granted. She has had 
 the direst doubts, but this will lift a load off her poor 
 mind. Will it be in the East?" 
 
 " No ; Mrs. Rivington is coming to Southern Califor- 
 nia, to be near a school where she has placed her 
 sons." Cornish paused and smiled to himself. " Her 
 doctors have ordered complete rest for her nerves ; 
 they always believe there is such a thing ! " 
 
 "As nerves?" 
 
 " Rest ! So, she has set up a Ouija-board, and now 
 she wants a companion." 
 
 " What is that other thing ? ' Wee ' ? " 
 
 "Merely a device for wasting time and better 
 than solitaire, for it wastes time for two. You will sit 
 for hours on the other side of the little demon and 
 listen to banal questions about things that you've no 
 business to know, and to driveling answers from a 
 wooden peg which points to the letters of the alpha- 
 bet, on some dark principle that we are not expected 
 to fathom." 
 
 " How you must have suffered from it the little 
 demon ! " 
 
 " I have : but let that pass. You will be paid for 
 your time. Could you exist, independent of brothers 
 you despise, on a thousand a year ? " 
 
 " Mr. Cornish ! Does she want to buy me ? " 
 
 " What a pathetic child you are," he laughed un- 
 198 
 
THE ^VALLEY ROAD 
 
 mirthfully. "I shall not mortify you by a rough 
 guess at what Mrs. Rivington pays her cook ! " 
 
 " A fig for your cooks ! I shall live with the lady 
 of my dreams and prize every hour in her company 
 and to be paid, beside 1 " 
 
 " I am to accept for you, then, without any condi- 
 tions?" 
 
 " If you think she won't be disappointed. Did you 
 tell her I have had no training to amount to any- 
 thing?" 
 
 " I should not tell her that because you have she 
 did not ask me, however." 
 
 " I wish I might know what she did ask you ? " 
 
 "She asked, first, if you were good-looking or 
 perhaps she said pretty ; and if you had a pleasant 
 voice, and if you dressed ' like a lady.' ' 
 
 " I wonder what you said to that ! " 
 
 " I think I said that I no longer professed to know 
 how a lady should dress." 
 
 " She must have thought you were mocking her 
 or me, or the whole arrangement." 
 
 " I mock myself of my wasted magnanimity. You 
 don't give me the least credit for it ; she naturally 
 knows nothing about it, and if it should turn out 
 badly, the dregs will be mine to swallow knowing 
 I might have kept the cup from you with a word. " 
 
 " But what ' cup ' ? What is in it, do you imagine?" 
 
 " Heaven knows ! Ask Ouija." 
 
 "What is l Wee' how do you spell it?" 
 
 " Mrs. Rivington will write you all these important 
 particulars. One thing I must warn you : your lady 
 
 199 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 is not athletic ; she never walks : she steps in the 
 highest heels from her rugs to her limousine. She 
 will ignore your active habits." 
 
 " You know you thought me the laziest girl in the 
 world ! " 
 
 " How did you know that ? Well, I found out about 
 you. Mrs. Rivington will not find out unless you tell 
 her. Promise me you won't forget your walks?" 
 
 " I shall leave my walks to her. Why do you try 
 to warn me against my lady before I have even seen 
 her! I like high-heeled ladies in limousines." 
 
 " I am trying to prepare you for reality where you 
 are looking for a dream. Limousines have their 
 price, like other things. It is not necessary to say 
 Mrs. Rivington is a brilliant, fascinating woman : 
 that you will find out for yourself. But it won't 
 help you to walk." 
 
 " I will remember orders ; but you know I have no 
 nerves." 
 
 "You will develop some when you become a com- 
 panion, especially if you don't walk. Now, I must say 
 good-night to your very charming cousins." Yet he 
 seemed unable to take leave. " By the way, do you 
 read Wordsworth's ' Sonnets'?" 
 
 Engracia smiled : " Not much." 
 
 " Read them more. And when you come to a line 
 in one of them, beginning * Dear Child, dear Girl,' 
 I wish you'd think of another old fellow you don't 
 care for much who is thinking of you : ' God being 
 with you when we know it not.' I hope so!" 
 
 " Are you quoting or talking?" 
 200 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Both. You know, I had got over that habit of 
 quoting, but staying in your delightful family brought 
 it on again. " They smiled at each other apprecia- 
 tively : " Farewell," he said. 
 
 " But why not good-bye ? Shall I don't you 
 ever come to see Mrs. Rivington?" 
 
 " If I came to ' see ' any one at Mrs. Rivington's, 
 who would it be?" 
 
 Engracia gave him her hand in silence. He looked 
 deeply, warningly she thought, into her eyes. " Not 
 Mrs. Rivington's secretary," she said. 
 
 " The world being with us, perhaps not. But Mrs. 
 Rivington's secretary will hear from me as often as 
 she is good enough to allow. Farewell, Engracia, 
 mi alma" he added gently. 
 
 She sat by herself awhile, puzzled, excited, half afraid 
 but eager for this " cup " which he offered her with 
 such dark previsionings. Was his fear for the lady, or 
 for herself, or himself, as he pretended ? Certainly he 
 had seemed very tender of her in his pensive raillery. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 DALBY MORTON, it has been hinted, was a frequent 
 if not a constant guest at the Ludwell house. We 
 cannot better explain why so frequent than by quot- 
 ing a dialogue between him and his father, meeting 
 one afternoon at one of their mutual clubs. 
 
 "Ha! How do! Long time since I saw you, 
 somehow," said the latter. " Where do you keep your- 
 self nowadays?" 
 
 "The usual places," said Dalby, waiting for his 
 father to be seated at the table from which he had 
 risen. 
 
 " Sit down, son. Want to talk to you for a change. 
 What have you been doing lately ? Dancing attend- 
 ance on some girl?" 
 
 "The usual girl." 
 
 "Which one is it now?" 
 
 Dalby laughed softly. "You seem pretty happy," 
 his father observed. " Anything special to make you 
 so? I suppose you are going to settle on one, some 
 day?" 
 
 "One ?" 
 
 " One girl. I don't expect you to pick out a wife to 
 please me, but when you do make up your mind, see 
 here : I want you to do this much as I say ! Call it 
 a promise, if you like." 
 
 "Well, sir?" 
 
 202 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " I wish you would give me your word never to 
 propose to one of them after dark in evening dress. 
 If you wake up in the morning wanting her, that 's 
 another story ; but not the gas-light nonsense. Un- 
 derstand?" 
 
 "Well, hardly!" said Dalby, frowning. 
 
 " I guess you do," said his father. " After dinner is 
 part of it. You drink too much; don't say you 
 don't, for I know you do." 
 . " Have you ever seen me when I showed it?" 
 
 " Do I show it? I drink too much all the time, but 
 I did n't at your age. . . . That 's how the girls make 
 fools of you, when they look good enough to eat." 
 
 " We were n't discussing the girls," Dalby inti- 
 mated, turning his eyes away. 
 
 " I am," said his father. "I 've been waiting to say 
 something about a matter seem to hear things now 
 and then ; may be something in it. No use speaking 
 when it 's too late. How about that Ludwell girl 
 Tom Ludwell's daughter?" 
 
 " It is too late to speak of her to me in that way, 
 father : Clare and I are engaged." 
 
 Mr. Morton received the news with a few words 
 of such energy that his son leaned across the table 
 and said very low, with his eyes on the wrathful 
 visage opposite, " Would you like me to leave you, 
 father? If my happiness affects you in this way, I 'd 
 better be off out of your sight, hadn't I?" 
 
 " Sit still ! What do the Ludwells say about it ? 
 Are they happy?" 
 
 " Mr. Ludwell does n't call it an engagement, yet : 
 203 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 that was one reason why I have n't spoken to you. 
 In fact he expects us to wait a year or so, under 
 his own conditions " 
 
 "Sensible old boy, Tom. Sound as a dollar! And 
 what does how do the women take it ? How do 
 they like the idea of waiting ? " 
 
 " Clare has her mother with her : they are rather 
 more on my side." 
 
 " Always are, the mothers ! Can't rest till they see 
 their girls as miserable as they say they are them- 
 selves." 
 
 " Clare and I are not miserable." 
 
 " Marry her and see ! I side with Ludwell, tinder- 
 stand." 
 
 " Is that all you have to say to me, father ? I am 
 positively the happiest man in the city, and she is 
 the finest girl, in any cityl" 
 
 "Too fine, too fine. Girls like that always think 
 they must have the earth. Don't I know Tom Lud- 
 well' s pride ! She '11 make you trouble, son. A year 
 from now you '11 know." 
 
 The dinners and dances went on without pause 
 while Engracia's visit lasted : she had her long beauti- 
 ful hours in the library and evenings often alone. But 
 on a certain grand opera night, Cousin Anna would 
 not permit her to miss the music. There was supper 
 after the opera, which was long, and the hall-clock 
 struck two as the party returned. The girls could not 
 compose their minds for bed at once; Mrs. Ludwell 
 left them talking by the drawing-room fire and joined 
 
 204 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 her husband in his study. They were soon in the 
 midst of a family argument most unexpectedly to 
 both. If Ludwell had had the faintest suspicion how 
 his wife would take it he would not have sprung the 
 matter on her just at bedtime, in that casual fashion. 
 He had merely wished her to know that Cornish, one 
 of the strongest of the younger men in Eastern finance, 
 had asked her husband's opinion before trusting his 
 own as to the future of the Torres Tract developed 
 on Scarth's plans. 
 
 " As a friend of both sides, I found it a rather deli- 
 cate question." 
 
 " I should think so," said his wife in a tone that 
 might have warned him. 
 
 " There was no getting around it ; and in fact why 
 should I hesitate ? Hal Scarth never asked odds of 
 any one's opinion he wanted the scheme judged 
 on its merits." 
 
 " And he is dead ! You told him you did n't be- 
 lieve in it?" 
 
 "I was obliged to tell him what I think " 
 
 "One can do that, of course, without being en- 
 tirely fair. Can two men, so different, judge each 
 other's work?" 
 
 " Cornish came to me for that very reason ; he 
 wanted a different angle of vision. He knows Scarth's 
 side has watched it for years ; and, I may add, he 
 trusted my fairness." 
 
 " I trust your intention to be fair, Tom ; only it 
 seems to me unfortunate that you said anything at 
 all." 
 
 205 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " For family reasons." 
 
 " There was no business or family confidence be- 
 trayed : why did Cornish come to me ? He does n't 
 do awkward things in private, any more than I do." 
 
 " He came to you to give the poor things a last 
 chance : if you, a relative and an old friend, had not 
 a word to say for them of course that ends it." 
 
 "Them 1 we are talking of the property " 
 
 "You know what I mean." 
 
 " Hanged if I do ! you look at the personal 
 side." 
 
 " I should think there might have been a personal 
 side for you enough, at least, to keep you silent." 
 
 " I was passive. He put it to me as an old Cali- 
 fornian, acquainted with the interlocking interests a 
 scheme like this would have to fight " 
 
 " Including some of your own ? " 
 
 "Well, Anna, if you take that tone we simply can't 
 talk of it accusation is n't argument. At least, let 
 me assure you, Cornish had about reached his own 
 decision on the evidence he has gathered for him- 
 self, right on the spot before his eyes." 
 
 "Tom, did he say so?" 
 
 "Naturally not. He says nothing, outside of his 
 report : he won't report to me. But you can read a 
 man's mind he would have liked to have his judg- 
 ment shaken, I grant you that for the same rea- 
 son it went hard with me to confirm it." 
 
 " So you did ! You will have helped to turn 
 them out of their home ? " 
 
 206 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " There you are again a woman's justice 1 Would 
 you want a home founded on dead capital of investors 
 waiting for their money ? I should call it a sad kind 
 of a home." 
 
 "And now, what will happen?" Anna persisted, 
 mollified without being quite ready to own it, and 
 glad, as a wife, to hear her husband's defense. 
 
 " Nothing very soon. If Cornish reports unfavor- 
 ably, the stock will be gotten rid of probably in 
 one lump. The other stockholders will hardly hold 
 on after that. The Tract will be on the market 
 cheap for a song." 
 
 " It is very painful, and I wish you had kept out 
 of it." 
 
 " No one but you, my dear, will ever know it was 
 put up to me. And I am willing to give my opinion 
 because capital has been exploited out here enough : 
 it hurts us with Eastern investors. Hal Scarth, if he 
 could have heard every word I said, would have 
 called it " 
 
 "Who is that?" cried Mrs. Ludwell, stepping to 
 the door. " Is n't that Dalby Morton's voice? " 
 
 A cab had driven up and left a late caller, who was 
 being shown into the drawing-room after what seemed 
 some inexplicable delay and with considerable talk- 
 ing in one voice, a man's. 
 
 Mr. Ludwell glanced at the clock. " Dalby is at a 
 stag-dinner ; they would n't break up at this hour." 
 
 " He 's broken up ; and he ought n't to come here 
 listen ! " Dalby's voice, in a high wavering fal- 
 setto, went on and on ; the girls were silent. Husband 
 
 207 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 and wife exchanged glances. " Tom, you 'd better go 
 out there." 
 
 " You go and send the girls to bed ; I '11 take care 
 of Dalby." 
 
 Engracia came out into the hall and saw Cousin 
 Anna in the study door, her evening wrap falling 
 from her shoulders. The girl looked rather confused 
 and smiled oddly. 
 
 " I 'm going to bed after all, cousin ; it was a 
 beautiful time. Thank you so much." 
 
 Hardly had she reached the stair-head when Clare 
 flew out, wildly explicit in her anger. " Papa, I wish 
 you would tell Dalby Morton to go home and make 
 him understand, if you can, that I don't want to see 
 him here again ever ! " 
 
 Mrs. Ludwell, who knew exactly what had hap- 
 pened, asked mechanically, " What is the matter with 
 Dalby?" 
 
 " Go and look at him," said Clare. " Engracia 
 went to bed to spare me ; do you think I can stand 
 that 1 " 
 
 "You go to bed yourself; the world has n't come 
 to an end," said her father. 
 
 " Dalby Morton has come to an end, for me," said 
 the furious girl. " I sat there and listened to his maud- 
 lin speeches before Engracia : he is a fool ! " 
 
 Clare and her mother talked it over more quietly 
 in Clare's room. Anna Ludwell thought of the other 
 mother, her son cast off for such a reason. Poor Mrs. 
 Morton, a most unhappy woman, would hold Clare 
 
 208 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 deeply to blame if she threw him over now ; it was 
 the first slip in a long period of distinct effort and 
 gain in every way for Dalby, under the present stim- 
 ulus of joy and triumph : little Clare had not been 
 easy to win. Who were all these boys to marry, 
 brought up to the same habits ? " If we had had a 
 son," thought Anna, "he might have been like 
 Dalby " and some proud and hasty girl might 
 have lost patience with him just at the turning- 
 point. 
 
 "You must not write to-night, Clare; sleep on it, 
 my child. It may look differently in the morning." 
 
 " I will not write, mother, but I shall not sleep. 
 Not that I care so dreadfully. If he is like that, I 
 don't want him." 
 
 " You knew he was like that ; your father warned 
 you. Yesterday you cared for him, knowing it ; the 
 only difference is, you have seen it. I don't defend 
 it; I defend him, because he would have a right to 
 say you knew the fact before you loved him." 
 
 "I don't love him; I am ashamed of him that 
 finishes love." 
 
 Mrs. Ludwell sighed. " He 's no different from the 
 others in this respect ; a good deal better in some 
 others." 
 
 " I don't want any of them ! " 
 
 " The very same thing if I must say it might 
 have parted me from your father once. But we cared 
 for each other and I had faith." 
 
 " Father is a strong man ; he is all kinds of a man. 
 Dalby is nothing, so far as I make him out. And he 
 
 209 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 is ten years older than me. Does he never expect to 
 grow up ? " 
 
 " He was growing when this folly tripped him." 
 
 "Why can't he have done with his folly? How 
 would he like it if I kept on having proposals ? 
 they are just as exciting to me. Mother, you must be 
 mad if you ask me to take him back ! " 
 
 " I ask ! Do you think I wanted Dalby Morton for 
 you ? It was the bitterest disappointment of my life 
 when I found that you cared for him. His mother 
 and I cried over you both ; I did n't tell her why I 
 cried, but she knew. She owned he was not worthy ; 
 I said, ' We '11 make him worthy.' Discard him if you 
 must, but be sure it is not your own pride that does 
 it. If any other girl but Engracia had seen him 
 any girl who knows the men of that set ! You saw 
 him with her eyes the eyes of a Puritan." 
 
 " You are a Puritan, mamma at heart?" 
 
 " I have had to be something broader, darling, and 
 it has n't hurt me. But this is your own decision; I 
 must leave you to think it out for yourself." 
 
 "Good-night, mother dear what a bad time 
 mothers do have ! I will show you my letter ; it 
 will be as gentle as I can make it, but it must be 
 final." 
 
 "You stake your life on pride, then?" ("I know 
 she loves him," the mother thought.) 
 
 " Before I am married, yes," said Clare. 
 
 "... Of course she 's right," said Clare's father. 
 " I should have given Dalby a year's rope to hang 
 himself. He's done it sooner than I thought so 
 
 210 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 much the better. Every day of this silly affair was 
 a day wasted for her." 
 
 " And yet I know that she cares for him. The world 
 is very cruel to our girls. We give them ideals, but 
 how can they keep them ? You should have heard me 
 falsifying my own ideals for the sake of a little mercy 
 to another woman's son and because I am afraid 
 she won't forget him. It 's such a dreadful puzzle. 
 Dalby is what he has to be. Look at his weak, 
 sweet mother and his coarse-grained father, who 
 roots everything out of his path and then grovels 
 in it." 
 
 " Anna, my dear ; you are not yourself to-night." 
 
 " Do you wonder ? I was not proud of Dalby, but 
 I am fond of him, and I would not have hurt his 
 mother so for worlds. We must give her, I suppose, 
 the first real light she has ever had upon her son. 
 Mothers deceive themselves as long as they can." 
 
 " Not wise mothers." 
 
 " It 's wretched and it's grotesque. I shall have to 
 listen to his excuses to-morrow, poor boy " 
 
 " Excuses ! Accidents of that kind are not dis- 
 cussed with ladies. Simply mark him off your list of 
 men you invite except on formal occasions I '11 see 
 that he does n't come." 
 
 Anna, knowing something of her husband's bache- 
 lor past and aware of the indulgent joking that goes 
 on among men, marveled at his hardness now. She 
 took it as one of nature's safeguards. A man no 
 longer jests when his own grandchildren may be heirs 
 to the pity that follows a few generations of such 
 
 211 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 mirth. Old Judge Ludwell carried his cups and rilled 
 them high in his youth, which was the city's youth 
 he carried them gallantly to his grave. Thomas Lud- 
 well always skipping his father, who carried noth- 
 ing, either in weight or balance, that was noteworthy 
 filled his glass not so high nor quite so often : he was 
 still lord of his inclinations. His daughter and well, 
 perhaps, that she was a daughter took her fine 
 nervous organization from her mother, and her ex- 
 citements in a different way. She had gone through 
 her first season with that vigor and elasticity which 
 is the marvel of strong men in these light-clad slips 
 of girls. But turn the screw once more in the next 
 generation, add the risks on the Ludwell side to the 
 certainties on the Morton side what father who knew 
 the world would tamper with that equation ? 
 
 Dalby's card was sent up next day, an appeal which 
 Clare hotly ignored. He walked about the bright, still 
 room trying to realize that this might be his last wait- 
 ing there, watching the door for a sight of Clare's 
 particularly lovely and buoyant way of entering to 
 greet a guest. Near him stood the piano, and open 
 on the rack where she had left it yesterday was the 
 last song she would ever sing with him beside her 
 on the music-bench : only yesterday at this hour 
 they sat so and at the song's close she had let her 
 head sink back for his rapturous kiss. It was a song 
 called " Youth " from Harold Simpson's " Cycle of 
 Life." (" Oh, love, oh, love, we will wait no more ! ") 
 He heard the soaring crescendo in Clare's entranc- 
 ing tones. They thought that they knew all there is 
 
 212 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 to know of youth and love and the triumph which 
 disdains waiting. And here came Clare's mother 
 entering, alone. 
 
 His practiced manner was gone ; his face flushed 
 and his eyes sank under her cold, gentle look. He 
 raised her hand to his lips, quaintly but with genuine 
 feeling that she could not slight. She smiled as usual, 
 but there was no hope for him in her smile. 
 
 "You will plead for me, Mrs. Ludwell? Ask her 
 to give me one more chance. It was not an acci- 
 dent ; I should call that inexcusable ! It was a trick 
 
 played on me by the man I took a taxi home with 
 
 an asinine joke. We were both pretty much the 
 same, but I was dozing when he got out, and he gave 
 the driver this address he's written his apologies. 
 It looked funny to him last night. I thought I was 
 at the club, on my word, I did, when I blundered in 
 here." 
 
 Mrs. Ludwell grew more patient and more frozen. 
 " Well, Dalby, you broke your word last night for 
 the sake of a custom you poor boys can't seem to 
 get rid of : it 's time the girls began to help you. I 
 don't suppose it is often an engagement has been 
 broken in this city on account of a bachelor supper, 
 but I am glad that Clare has had the courage to set 
 an example." 
 
 " But to end it all overnight throw me off with 
 that for the last word ! What becomes of all that was 
 true here yesterday ? in this room? A man's slips 
 are not the man." 
 
 " His want of self-control is the man or the boy. 
 213 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Clare is too much of a child herself to marry another 
 child." She rose : " I shall not take her your apology, 
 Dalby : it 's as unpresentable as you were, yourself, 
 last night. We women live by our power of seeing 
 the souls of the men we love, but we can't keep that 
 power if you insist on destroying it. You and Clare 
 know nothing about that as yet. There is a want of 
 seriousness on both sides. Dalby 1 for your own sake, 
 show us that you can be a good loser: it's been 
 nothing but a game so far. Say that we are unfair, if 
 you like, I don't expect to let you come here any 
 more, but do let us see that this humiliation has 
 cut deep enough to do some good." 
 
 Dalby kissed her hand again very gently and took 
 his dismissal. 
 
 " It is," she owned, " a wretched reason for parting 
 two happy young persons, but, remember, I am 
 afraid for Clare, too. She was too angry last night 
 to be just, and I think there was hurt vanity mixed 
 with her tears. I shall not spare her ! You neither of 
 you know in the least what love is, and it would be 
 unsafe for you to learn on each other. I am rather 
 sorry for the one you will learn on if you under- 
 stand me?" 
 
 Clare's winter went off in a round of triumphs. If 
 she had a trouble, she danced it down under her 
 slender, tireless feet; she was said to have had a 
 wonderful success. Nothing actually was known, 
 though much was repeated and taken for granted, 
 as to the breach between her and Dalby. He went 
 
 214 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 South, on business, it was said, for his father. The 
 Ludwell servants began to ask their friends about 
 situations that might be open after Lent. The family 
 were closing up the house and going abroad for 
 the summer. Mrs. Ludwell made interest in behalf 
 of her deserving ones; in this way, a young housemaid 
 from Canada, who longed for the country, was placed 
 at Roadside where there was a huge vacancy now. 
 Moon had gone back to China to do a son's duty by 
 an aged mother who was blind. "She die pretty 
 soon," he said calmly. " I come back then." 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 SCARTH had never for a moment entertained the 
 idea of presenting his great mining and agricultural 
 project to Tom Ludwell for sympathy. He had known 
 to a humorous certainty how the capitalist cousin 
 would see it. He would praise the engineer's imagina- 
 tion, admire his historical precedents, scoff at his cost- 
 sheets, and treat the whole as oratory, about as valu- 
 able as a graduating thesis. 
 
 But while Cornish had been laying it out before 
 him in terse business language, doing his best with 
 the dream of the dead who die with their work un- 
 finished (Cornish had imagination too), a point here 
 and there lodged in the brain of that other dreamer 
 who dreamed in high-per-cents tending toward the 
 pockets of Thomas Ludwell and his friends. 
 
 For a number of years he had been matching the 
 pieces of a combine never consciously casting 
 eyes on his cousin's scheme ; yet the Torres Tract 
 would fit beautifully into his own puzzle waiting to 
 be closed up. He could have sworn on his conscience 
 that when Cornish asked him, man to man, for his 
 counsel, he had been as honest with the dead as with 
 the living. An investor, he spoke for other investors, 
 fora woman, the guardian of her children's rights 
 left as his own girls might be. That was all about that: 
 Anna could say what she liked ! But a touch of sore- 
 
 216 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ness as to what she had said made him careful not to 
 mention a later step which he had taken in reference 
 to that old stale bait for capital, the Torres Tract. 
 
 Hopeless as it looked now, when it became wreck- 
 age, flat on the market, it might well be worth his 
 while to pick it up. Not every one could do with it 
 what he could. His own purpose would rather steam- 
 roller the Scarth and Rivington epoch, but only as 
 a commercial follows the romantic period in the life 
 of a community or a nation or a man. We all come 
 to it at last, he argued the question, Will it pay 
 and when and whom ? What " show " are we to have 
 in the prophetic future? 
 
 In due time it seeped out, through one of those 
 untrustworthy channels which all schemes are pro- 
 vided with, that Ludwell and his friends were lying in 
 wait for the Rivington stock in valley lands called 
 the Torres Tract not buying in their own names. 
 That was common enough ; when Cornish learned 
 it, he may have smiled (not being so close to Mr. Lud- 
 well's conscience as its owner) recalling the disinter- 
 ested cousin's advice that day when it had seemed 
 to hurt him to give it. As to the information, he was 
 neither excited nor surprised. He made prompt use 
 of it, however. In one of those long thick letters 
 which went up on Mrs. Rivington's tray at her 
 breakfast-hour (which she answered herself), he ap- 
 prised her of this powerful purchaser in ambush. " I 
 recommend that we hold off awhile ; we '11 try a 
 policy of inactivity. In regard to young Scarth's sal- 
 ary a waiting salary is not supposed to rank as a 
 
 217 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 working- one. Suppose we split the difference and call 
 it " But it is hardly fair to betray what Tom was 
 asked to stay on. It was a just salary enough in pro- 
 portion to the poor old tract's revenues. Cornish had 
 his own conscience of a trustee, and his first duty was 
 to those who constituted his chief responsibility. 
 
 Cousin Tom made ready his affairs for the journey 
 abroad in the best of spirits ; thankful to be rid of 
 Clare's foolish entanglement with Dalby ; seeing his 
 way clear at last to the finish of his old and waiting 
 scheme up-country among the water-rights that 
 would mean millions one day ; proud of the girls he 
 was taking with him in all the public places of the 
 world. He thought there were no two like them. 
 Anna, though he deceived her a little when it was 
 best for her comfort, he loved for that quality which 
 made it necessary to deceive her: her woman's 
 weakness for the losing side endeared her to his 
 imagination and his heart ; but in business the loser 
 must go to the wall. He did not make this world's 
 laws. His aim was to make it a fair and goodly 
 heritage to those whom he loved, a kind world to 
 his friends and a proud world for himself in the eyes 
 of other men his peers. Those who noted his suc- 
 cess, and especially those who compared it with their 
 own un-success, usually called it " LudwelPs Luck." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 MRS. RlVINGTON had not suited herself with a house 
 in close proximity to her sons' school ; the headmas- 
 ter, moreover, hinted polite doubts as to the advis- 
 ability in some cases of a mother's hovering so near. 
 She heard of Roberta Sands's big house in a lovely 
 region, open to tenants (of sorts) for three months, 
 and took it after the briefest consideration which 
 was the lady's way. 
 
 Roberta had no sentiment about houses, especially 
 ugly ones, nor had she any objection to turning a 
 penny in rents while she spent thousands for any ca- 
 price that crossed her on her wanderings. It was a 
 big penny Mrs. Rivington paid, but she knew about 
 heiresses. 
 
 " Overleap " has the perfect altitude, on this coast, 
 of two thousand feet above the sea ; the fogs are below 
 it and the snows on its distant mountain-tops never 
 come down. Softness and chill sweeten the long 
 months of sunshine. It is cool enough for roses and 
 rhododendrons and hollies, and its banks and beds and 
 hedges of these are the head gardener's pride. But 
 too many seasons their glory passed unseen : the 
 young mistress would be away, dreaming of epics in 
 gardens, among Old- World vistas and fountained ter- 
 races and water-stairs and century-old avenues. She 
 knew that such gardens as these are not made even 
 
 219 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 with money on a rush order as Americans love to do 
 things. She had high and vain imaginings in many 
 directions : it was Roberta's disillusionment and mock- 
 ing satiety which made her fascinating. She was 
 weary of most things that were hers and not yet pre- 
 pared for some of the compromises which are the price 
 of what she really did want a home and children of 
 her own. 
 
 The house faces a deep valley and is backed by 
 noble, wooded hills " the old red hills " covered with 
 immense trees fed by sea-fogs which sweep inland 
 in winter. Of its architecture the less said the better. 
 The hearts were glad that built it; they had not 
 learned the pride of discontent. Listening to Roberta's 
 bored apologies for its general mistakenness, Anna 
 Ludwell keenly remarked to her spouse, " Let us be 
 wise in time : we will wait till Clare grows up before 
 we build our country-house, or she may be apologiz- 
 ing for us." 
 
 But the grounds are laid out with breadth and some 
 lovely features, like the lily-pool at the end of a long 
 walk between ranks of cypresses, where the afternoon 
 shadows lie as still as on the pavement of a church. 
 A mass of flickering bamboo catches the sunlight 
 again beyond this dark pearl of water relieved 
 upon a rich tapestry of oaks and pines and firs, and 
 glistening madronos to lighten the splendid wall. 
 
 On the hills, mushrooms grow in the month of 
 February Engracia's second month of luxurious 
 slavery. We are most of us slaves to one thing or 
 another : Engracia had the satisfaction that she had 
 
 220 
 
! THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 chosen her own form of bondage tasks without 
 regularity or system done at the impulse of a lady 
 whose moods she did not understand, but whose per- 
 son she admired and whose company excited and tired 
 her. The walks she had promised to take she literally 
 stole, or she rose early with the excuse of mushrooms 
 and came home breakfastless and quite weak with 
 hunger. It was necessary to rise early, because small 
 and some large neighbors got up and had the fairy 
 crop all picked before a servant was awake in the big 
 house, and sold Overleap its own mushrooms at its 
 own kitchen door. 
 
 This morning she had sent her basket in to the cook, 
 gently hinting to the pleasant young waitress who 
 took it that breakfast would be welcome when it came. 
 Feeling very gaunt, she sat down to sort last night's 
 mail just fetched from the village. Laying aside Mrs. 
 Rivington's personal letters to go up on her tray, she 
 stacked the business ones, and, with a breath of 
 quickened interest, took up her own ewe lamb, an 
 envelope in that hand which she had once mistaken 
 for Mrs. Rivington's how different ! Breakfast called 
 her and she read as she ate, satisfying a double 
 hunger. 
 
 At home she had been the center of her mother's 
 existence; she had been "faulted" sometimes, but 
 only in trifles and because she was so watched and 
 standardized. Tom, with his silent smile, had been 
 ever reassuring, in a general way. She missed these 
 dear presences constantly. But there was another 
 hunger that she had lately, to her uneasiness, begun 
 
 221 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 to develop which fed upon letters in this peculiar 
 hand. It was a hand that satisfied the eye, to start 
 with : close-knit, muscular ; it looked illegible till 
 you were used to its decided mannerisms. Cornish 
 had that stripped, lucid style which men in the higher 
 walks of business acquire that seems somehow the 
 language of a necessary integrity. What he said you 
 felt that he meant and probably more than he said. 
 And though seldom directly personal (except always 
 in one sentence to show he had not changed), his 
 argument and contents centered wholly on herself. 
 A dangerous diet for a homesick girl losing sight of 
 her own identity and swamped in another's not yet 
 so dear as to pay for the exchange. 
 
 She rushed through her letter tremulously, read it 
 again, and sat down with a beating heart to answer 
 it in this mood. To understand her frame of mind one 
 must go a little deeper into Engracia's relations with 
 her dream-lady. Nothing, of course, is so significant in 
 the talk of two women who do not wish to quarrel as 
 the subjects they avoid. Engracia now no longer al- 
 lowed herself to be drawn into any discussion of the 
 past, where history or memory of recent events aims 
 to bring out some great moral purpose working out 
 its ends through a period of suffering and national 
 regeneration : our own Civil War being an acute in- 
 stance. Mrs. Rivington, she said, held no brief for the 
 South : she merely asserted that all wars alike sprang 
 from prejudice, ignorance, and self-interest on both 
 sides, whooped on by catch-words in the mouths of 
 propagandists more or less sincere ; and our great and 
 
 222 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 hallowed conflict (though it resulted in emancipation) 
 was no exception. Our poets might have read the 
 Lord's righteous sentence in the waste of a whole gen- 
 eration of the nation's youth, might see the face of 
 Christ in the bivouac-smoke of a " hundred circling 
 camps," and call it dying to make men free when they 
 walked between rows of Northern soldiers' graves 
 but had Engracia seen the later school histories? Such 
 arrogant and profane injustice was not taught in these 
 days. Engracia had small acquaintance with school 
 histories : she had her family traditions, though, and 
 her reading, which evidently had been along very dif- 
 ferent lines from Mrs. Rivington's, and naturally she 
 did not renew that or any similar discussion. This 
 was the serious side of the growing antagonism be- 
 tween her and the lady whom she had expected to 
 revere. There was another side to it which made rev- 
 erence, admiration, even less possible, and abolished 
 all feminine confidences of a delicately venturesome 
 kind. It would be easy to make too much of what 
 led up to it, but Engracia had resolved never to be 
 drawn into any discussion of " men " or of any particu- 
 lar man, or any phase of the man and maid question, 
 with Mrs. Rivington. Her touch on that subject con- 
 veyed something which to Engracia was wholly new, 
 indescribable, and revolting. It spoiled for her the 
 sight of that graceful woman in her deep and most 
 becoming weeds, dwelling, as she claimed, night 
 and day, in thoughts of her absent little sons. 
 
 Because of this deliberate reticence, Engracia had 
 now a confession to make involving a request, and both 
 
 223 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 were too difficult to be postponed. Her pen traveled 
 as fast as she could set the words down. 
 
 " I think you know that I have told mamma what 
 happened on the road to Dixie Canon ; I don't mean 
 the flume that I never have told any one 1 Parts 
 of your letters, I confess I used to share with her ; 
 they were too good to keep to one's self. It was every 
 way delightful to get them, at home, and to hear her 
 praise them (mamma and I practically inhabit the 
 same body) and expatiate on the men she used to 
 know. She was even willing to admit there are men 
 still who can write letters. We both agreed that I 
 was greatly honored in yours and you know I en- 
 joyed answering them there: but here it is differ- 
 ent. I seem to have Most countenance.' I cannot 
 speak of you or hear you spoken of without self- 
 consciousness, for the simple reason that I am con- 
 scious of a side of my life in this house which I am 
 keeping from its mistress whom I had hoped to have 
 felt toward as a friend. It would astonish her into 
 very natural curiosity (which I should not care to 
 satisfy) if she came to know that I receive letters from 
 you quite frequently, read them without mentioning 
 them to any one and post my answers with a certain 
 caution about their being seen. I can't accuse myself 
 of anything more than a desire to keep my affairs to 
 myself, especially when they include you and your 
 affairs. On the other hand, you are more her friend 
 in a hundred ways than you are mine, and have been 
 for years I realize that now. It is impossible I should 
 go on with this practically underhand correspondence 
 
 224 
 
with her friend, in her house. And still I cannot bring 
 myself to be frank about it : it would end in having 
 to be frank about you. I simply can't, and as it is 
 probably a fault in me, I must pay the penalty and 
 give up your delightful letters. I thought it all over 
 this morning on the hills wondered what I was 
 about that I could not be happy ! It 's the false posi- 
 tion, don't you see? Here's a letter from you this 
 morning in the same mail with one to Mrs. Rivington, 
 and they do not recognize each other, those letters 
 That means something wrong, you see ; and since it 
 must stop, it cannot stop too soon. Will you, then, 
 let this be the last letter, on both sides? Your silence 
 will be the most generous answer you can make me. 
 No one was ever more generous in everything. 
 "Your most grateful 
 
 "ENGRACIA SCARTH." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 ENGRACIA had learned now the meaning of a Ouija 
 board and the amount of time it could waste. She had 
 also learned to expect no concentration from her mis- 
 tress : it was this that tired her more than anything 
 else and she was very tired. So many things were 
 started and put aside books begun, talked about 
 cleverly, but never finished ; bills even from humble 
 creditors were not promptly paid ; reminders of all 
 sorts pursued her that her own work was in arrears. 
 Mrs. Rivington required a certain amount of bullying 
 instead she caressingly bullied Engracia. 
 
 Spring work on the Torres Tract had begun, and 
 her home letters filled the luxurious exile with pas- 
 sionate restlessness. Cornish was out there now, but 
 no message came from him in her mother's hand 
 if there had been the least thing to say of him in her 
 direction, that mother, she knew, would have done 
 it ample justice. He had taken her at her word : she 
 must consequently forget him and live up to her own 
 decision ; only she longed for some proof that he had 
 not quite forgotten her, that he had not misunder- 
 stood had not found her letter crude, wanting in 
 delicacy and poise. It began to seem, at times even 
 to herself, that she had made a situation out of noth- 
 ing. Would he go back to New York without visit- 
 ing Overleap? As his letters on business never 
 
 226 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 passed through her hands, she had no clue to his 
 movements, and of late, she noticed, Mrs. Rivington 
 had ceased to speak of him half soliloquizing, as 
 her habit had been, as if she meditated upon him 
 as an influence in her life ; which had not struck En- 
 gracia as at all strange considering the very promi- 
 nent part her husband had given him in her and her 
 children's temporal affairs. 
 
 They were putting Ouija's occult powers, one day, 
 to the test of mental questions. 
 
 " We can't possibly work it in collusion," said Mrs. 
 Rivington seriously, "if we don't collude, even in 
 thought. Now, it 's your turn, Engracia : make a 
 silent wish, or ask a question we '11 see if there is 
 anything in it." 
 
 Engracia seated opposite, rested her finger-tips 
 lightly on the board, but not touching Mrs. Riving- 
 ton's. In the waiting silence she asked herself : " Will 
 he go back without coming to see us?" 
 
 Ouija did not move for a long and patient pause ; 
 at last, with a series of odd jerks, the point of the 
 heart-shaped board pushed its peg toward the letters, 
 " N o." 
 
 " Is that what you expected ?" 
 
 "I simply wanted to know what to expect," 
 said Engracia. 
 
 " About what ? May one be curious ? " 
 
 " Does n't it seem as if the questions we ask might 
 have more real significance than Ouija's answers ? " 
 
 " Which means, you don't want to tell me ? I shall 
 follow your example then ! " 
 
 227 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Ouija appeared to have warmed to the work : Mrs. 
 Rivington had scarcely to wait a moment for her 
 answers. She grew interested, absorbed, and took 
 turn after turn, holding a conversation exactly con- 
 trary to one at a telephone the voice, so to speak, 
 at the other end alone being heard. 
 
 " Yes," was the answer to her first silent question ; 
 to the second, " Yes"; to the third, "Ten years." 
 
 "How many years? Say that again, Ouija?" 
 "Ten years" the little wooden peg spelled out 
 laboriously. Mrs. Rivington became excited : " Ex- 
 traordinary ! " she cried. To her fourth and last ques- 
 tion the answer came, " In love." 
 
 " Well ! " she gasped " that J s plain enough ! " 
 
 "Too plain, I should think," said Engracia, 
 haughtily, " if it 's supposed to mean anything." 
 
 That it meant much to her companion was evident. 
 She rose from the board and began walking about 
 the room aimlessly : " Now I must think 1 " 
 
 Engracia asked, to change a subject which grew 
 oppressive, " Would n't it be nice to take some 
 dictating out of doors ? I could make my copies 
 early to-morrow morning gain a lot of time." 
 
 Mrs. Rivington looked at her with vacant eyes. 
 " Go out yourself if you want to, child. You can't 
 imagine what has happened to me ! " 
 
 Engracia had witnessed before in her mistress 
 these fits of highly dramatized feeling about the 
 merest trifles : they came as the climax to restless- 
 ness alternating with torpid brooding. She endeav- 
 ored to attribute such moods to grief working out- 
 
 228 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ward as she had seen in her mother's case, through 
 pains of adjustment often difficult for another to 
 follow. It was so difficult here that she doubted this 
 was grief, or all of it grief. Her mistress was open 
 and friendly, and always she meant to be kind, but 
 like other ladies of acknowledged charm she relied 
 on her gracious days to make up for days when it was 
 easier to be irritable and a trifle inconsiderate, even 
 cross. This again might be another symptom of the 
 nervous disarrangement she was in retreat to cure. 
 But her curiosity about the future not the future 
 life, but her own life puzzled Engracia. Her eager 
 questions might have concerned her little sons the 
 answers scarcely bore out that conjecture. 
 
 Engracia went out and took a hurried walk before 
 tea. She was very warm, and as she rushed along 
 she arraigned herself still more hotly for these and 
 other sins of thought against her lady. " I came like 
 a fool expecting to adore her she does not pay me 
 for that. She pays me well a great deal more than 
 I am worth. She treats me superbly : my room is 
 sweet ! her servants are my servants ; she never con- 
 descends except when she calls me * child ': she 
 is n't a motherly person ; but I ought to take her 
 more simply. She makes me her friend though she 
 takes liberties without waiting till we are friends." 
 
 The particular liberty that rankled was playful 
 cross-examinations on the subject of lovers : " Don't 
 tell me you J ve never been made love to ! It always 
 shows in a girl's manner if she has refused her man. 
 A certain satisfied, knowing air when the poor things 
 
 229 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 are mentioned, even if she is wise enough to say noth- 
 ing. Perhaps you refused him before you were quite 
 aware of your own mind?" whereupon Engracia 
 had blushed maddeningly, repeating the exasperat- 
 ing scene with Clare. But Mrs. Rivington was not 
 one's Cousin Clare, nor a girl, herself 1 Nor had she 
 the right to assail even in jest the privacy of a depen- 
 dent under her roof. On days like the present, when 
 some fresh irritation had come up, all former charges 
 broke into the accusation. 
 
 Her own case, Engracia took in hand without 
 mercy. " I am a child on a woman's errand. She 
 needs a business woman to look after her : I am as 
 unsystematic as she is. My typing is atrocious : I left 
 out a whole page of that important letter I copied 
 last week for him ; he had to write for it. (There had 
 not been one word to show that he had realized it 
 was to her he was writing !) As for Ouija, if she is 
 obsessed, what about me ? Did n't I put up my prayer 
 like another fool? (But I am not a widow and a 
 mother.) And who am I to judge her ! If I were a 
 nice old lady in a cap, with no wishes of my own, 
 I 'd feel pity for her. I am too used to being the cen- 
 ter of everything myself. And here I am keeping 
 her waiting for her tea ! A nice nurse I 'd make 1 " 
 
 " My dear child, I forgot all about you," Mrs. Riv- 
 ington exclaimed as Engracia entered. " I must have 
 drunk my tea in a trance. Ring for Parker there 
 were piles of things to eat. What will you have?" 
 
 " I '11 just get a glass of water," said Engracia. " I 
 230 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 truly never think of tea unless it happens to be 
 around." She took a sandwich from the tray left for 
 her in the dining-room, ate it in haste and returned 
 to find Mrs. Rivington in the same unconscious atti- 
 tude seated' in a deep, low chair, her white arms in 
 thin black sleeves stretched straight before her, ex- 
 pressionless eyes fixed on the Sands' ancestors, agree- 
 ably blackened by age, paneled on the walls. 
 
 " Did I ever tell you what my age was when I 
 married?" 
 
 " I suppose you must have been almost a child," 
 Engracia answered as expected. She patted her warm 
 hands with her handkerchief Parker had not left 
 napkins. 
 
 " I should have been a child, to any man : to Mr. 
 Rivington I was a child unborn ! Such a difference 
 in age, you know, is fatal." She shook her head ; a 
 silence followed. " The result, with me, was arrested 
 development : motherhood took the place of wife- 
 hood, in the fullest sense." Her audience meditated 
 on the little absent boys whose mother occasionally 
 forgot to write them her weekly letter of obligation 
 forgot that she had forgotten till their own artless 
 letters reminded her. " There is a new doctrine nowa- 
 days that children should be the whole thing in mar- 
 riage : it 's blasphemy. Yet piles of women tell you it 
 is so with them. I simply set them down as liars, or 
 parts of women, or unfortunates like myself: I made 
 one of those sexless marriages and I put it through 
 upheld by my children. Mr. Rivington married me 
 for what I could be to him, not what he could be to 
 
 231 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 me. He wanted children his first wife was child- 
 less, did you know ? I gave him beautiful strong 
 sons. I lived up to my side of the contract It is 
 ended, but what next ! As a woman I am as young 
 as you are, Engracia." Engracia had taken a chair, 
 restraining the impulse to flight, to unsympathetic 
 interruptions, being fresh from that hour of penitent 
 self-reckoning. Many women she supposed were like 
 this ; it was what her mother meant by getting used 
 to people " more people." 
 
 "Something is taking hold of me these days," Mrs. 
 Rivington went on, eagerly self absorbed. " Oh, 
 I have much to think about ! You must have seen 
 how my mind wanders ? I am two women all the time. 
 I want you to let me talk to you : I want your narrow, 
 ingkmie point of view, for I am tempted to do a dan- 
 gerous thing. If you, with your fresh eye, see it as I 
 do brooding over it hours and hours, then perhaps 
 it is not impossible." 
 
 " I would so much rather " Engracia began ; she 
 was motioned to silence. 
 
 " Ouija's answers this afternoon were simply hair- 
 raising ! I asked exactly what my heart is bursting 
 to know. Well ; I am answered ! You could n't have 
 guessed my questions you could n't have answered 
 them if you had. As for my mind doing it uncon- 
 sciously, you would have felt my fingers on the board. 
 I swear I did not use a muscle 1" 
 
 "Don't you think it might be dangerous to take a 
 toy like that in earnest?" 
 
 "If we toy with dangerous things, they may take 
 232 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 us in earnest : it is too late for that question. What I 
 am proposing to do might succeed at first, and after- 
 wards lead to fatal reactions. On the other hand, I 
 am in the power of a nature fed up with every sort 
 of energy hampered by tremendous self-control. 
 A man who has been fixed for years in an iron 
 groove ; he has grown hard and stiff ; any hope he 
 indulged would be a bitter hope he would call it 
 delusion. It might die for want of a breath of air. And 
 if nothing came to save it, he he and I might 
 lose what we have waited for long, wretched years ! 
 I am speaking of Gifford Cornish." 
 
 There was no break in the mad recital ; but had 
 there been, Engracia could not have spoken she 
 must sit still and continue to hear about this sexless 
 marriage. The words went on and on, smothering 
 her with a sense of unaired passion, tainted friend- 
 ship, and morbidness, where he, at least, had seemed 
 so clean and sad and sane. Fragments of his remem- 
 bered speeches came back to sicken her : " Engracia, 
 my soul " " ' God being with you when we know 
 it not'" could he be that monstrous hypocrite? 
 It was unbelievable, yet she believed, because the 
 woman who talked believed and she sat there, and 
 they were not mad. 
 
 " I tell you his name I have to : a story like this 
 sinks or swims according to the persons who are in 
 it. You don't know him, but you can't have mistaken 
 the sort he is. 
 
 " This afternoon, my first question was, ' Is he think- 
 ing of marriage? ' you heard the answer ! 'To one 
 
 233 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 he has known long?' 'Yes' again. 'How long? 1 
 This time the answer was curiously equivocal yet true 
 to a hair. It is just thirteen years since I promised to 
 marry him ten since I broke the engagement, 
 which is when, I suppose he would say he began to 
 know me. I didn't break it really I hadn't the 
 strength: he released me. He saw I was tired of 
 trouble and poverty, and there was no hope of 
 change ahead. He was not anywhere near, finan- 
 cially, where he is now, thanks to my husband. He 
 had a mother who was an invalid, and a sister who 
 had married as we proposed to on love and 
 nothing and came home with nothing and a child 
 to support. He never discussed his family, but I 
 knew that he was the only unselfish one among 
 them ; and people call him hard I 
 
 " What I did with the freedom he gave me, you 
 see the remains of it ! When I married his chief, 
 there were just two choices for him to resign his 
 position with my husband and never see my face 
 again, or and he could n't afford to lose a day, with 
 those women depending on him submit to the 
 ordeal I had put him to. Heavens, how he bore it ! 
 Except for Ouija's talk this afternoon, I know no 
 more than you do never have known if it even 
 was an ordeal ! whether he stopped caring for me 
 years ago, or is eating his heart out now in silence, 
 stubborn as he is, sooner than give me a chance to 
 break him again. . . . The strange thing is he un- 
 doubtedly loved my husband 1 So did Launcelot love 
 his king!" 
 
 234 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Engracia started, but did not speak. 
 
 " They say," the other went on with her passionate 
 soliloquy, " that you can't love any one whom you 
 have even your thoughts have wronged. He 
 would wrong no one now, if he came and took what 
 is his. But will he come? Is it my turn to speak and 
 let him break me 1 Would that be generous, or mad, 
 or indecent?" 
 
 There was no sound from the stunned and blighted 
 girl. 
 
 " Do say something, Engracia. How does all this 
 strike you? I don't want made-up answers your 
 thoughts, just as they come 1 " 
 
 " I cannot have anything to do with it : you don't 
 know what you ask ! " 
 
 " Don't be afraid : experience isn't what I want 
 intuition. Come, answer up and answer wrong, if you 
 must." 
 
 " If you believe Ouija, is n't that enough?" 
 
 " I suppose this is sarcasm ; seriously I do believe 
 Ouija 1 She gave me a fact, but what am I to do with 
 it? Act upon it or wait for him to act? while we 
 both grow old ; and I know so well his bruised, secre- 
 tive pride." 
 
 "That was long ago," Engracia uttered slowly, 
 feeling her way ; " are you quite sure that you have 
 followed his life since? Men may have * spiritual ad- 
 ventures,' I have heard it called." 
 
 " Adventures with women, you mean? I know 
 every woman he knows or has known. He is not 
 a woman's man : a woman he needs, but he is difficile. 
 
 235 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 They angle for him he is not pleased. No one ex- 
 actly satisfies him. I did not, but I charmed him 
 once. Am I so changed ? How do I look, candidly, 
 to a young thing like you ? " 
 
 Engracia turned away her eyes. " May I ask one 
 question ? " 
 
 " Ask anything ! " 
 
 "Did Mr. Rivington know was it part of the 
 ' contract ' that you married him, loving some one 
 else?" 
 
 " I did not love Cornish, then, or I should not 
 have forsaken him." 
 
 "You learned to love him afterwards?" 
 
 " Do you know that you hurt me, child ? Are you 
 trying to ? " 
 
 "You hurt me! I believed that your husband 
 we all adored him was the happiest man on earth. 
 You have spoiled a marriage I thought was as per- 
 fect as my own mother's." 
 
 "There are no perfect marriages, and your own 
 mother could tell you so. In her time they did not 
 speak they lived their little lies just the same." 
 
 " That is a lie ! and it is n't even original." 
 
 Mrs. Rivington laughed. "Now we are getting 
 down to it 1 Talk to me like that and I shall know 
 what you mean." 
 
 " You will know more than I do, then. Please leave 
 me out of this ! I have no business to hear any 
 of it." 
 
 " That is my business ! If all my most intimate 
 friends were here, do you suppose I would ask them ? 
 
 236 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Take it simply, you conscientious child. We are two 
 persons in a book, say : what should that woman do ? 
 
 There is another thing I forgot to speak of: it 
 would n't appeal to you, though. He is ambitious, 
 and he has never worked out his own schemes with 
 his own money in any strength. I could give him 
 the 'sinews' and the free hand he has never had." 
 
 " Then, if you have everything to give and noth- 
 ing to lose that you seem to care about, why do you 
 talk to me?" 
 
 " Because there is something tantalizing in your 
 silence. What scruple are you keeping back ? I see 
 that you feel this somehow ! What is it you do 
 feel ? You make me uneasy." 
 
 " Perhaps what I think is not what you really 
 want, after all." 
 
 " Well at least, you have seen him later than 
 I have : tell me how he seemed ? Was he restless 
 as I am ? " 
 
 " Not at all ! " 
 
 " No ; he would n't be ! Have you ever seen a 
 man of his age in love ? " 
 
 " I have seen one man of his age when he 
 said he was." 
 
 Mrs. Rivington barely heard. " He writes to me as 
 if I were a woman of sixty. That 's not natural ! It 's 
 a pose necessary in our present absurd relation. 
 
 I must speak and end this or I shall go mad. 
 
 " Well, my dear" Engracia had risen deter- 
 minedly : heavy heartbeats of excitement choked 
 her speech " you shall go. You have helped me, 
 
 237 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 though you tried not to as hard as you could. Just 
 putting my case in words has cleared the doubts any 
 woman, I suppose, would have, no matter how she 
 trusted or what reason she had to believe that she 
 was right. I can afford to be generous and I will 
 be, to the last degree : I shall write him to come 
 if he wants what I am ready to give him. He 
 won't come to mock me on my knees 1 Oh, these 
 five days 1 He is at Roadside he may be here even 
 sooner, if he telegraphs." As she advanced toward 
 Engracia, she held out her arms, apparently in for- 
 giveness of the girl's unresponsiveness. Engracia 
 evaded the histrionic embrace. 
 
 In her own room she bathed and dressed in cool 
 white and sought the spot she loved best at this tran- 
 quil hour. It was a hill facing the east ; long shadows 
 from its wooded crest and sharp lights streamed 
 across the fresh green meadow at her feet. She sat 
 there till dusk fell (she meant to be late to dinner) 
 and the birds ceased their bedtime twittering. The 
 choreman came back driving his milked cows and left 
 them in the night-pasture. At Roadside, they would 
 be sitting down to dinner, Tom and Cornish and her 
 unsuspecting mother. This made her choke. At last 
 she could cry. The dreamy, book-fed girl had en- 
 countered life : she had not supposed it would offer, so 
 soon, enigmatical situations to one with so little past, 
 who had barely opened an account with the world 
 in her own name. These were not her complications, 
 yet they had swept her into a network of deceit 
 forced upon her injurious doubts and inferences in- 
 
 238 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 suiting to the friend she had once rejoiced to own 
 and to dream of. To see him now so altered in an- 
 other's words seemed less like life than like the plot 
 of a sterile modern drama. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 "How is one to understand that girl ?" Tones and 
 looks, which Mrs. Rivington had not fully measured 
 in their last remarkable conversation, began to react 
 upon her calmer mood. The only theory that seemed 
 to cover the girl's disturbance of mind (combined 
 with unnatural reticence) was one in keeping with 
 her own persistent thought. 
 
 " The poor child must be in love with him herself. 
 What a fool I am ! Of course shut up in the 
 same house with him a place where they never see 
 any one ! He must have been the first clever man she 
 had ever talked with." She had long thought of her- 
 self, in the hid places of imagination, as Guinevere 
 her Launcelot had met his Elaine, the "simple 
 heart and sweet." These being different times, that 
 heart had not broken her " But I was certainly un- 
 merciful 1 I must spare her now. She must be given 
 some excuse for absence when he comes." 
 
 He did telegraph : he did not keep her waiting. 
 She mastered her quick breath and stated to Engra- 
 cia quietly : " He is coming ; he will be here to-mor- 
 row." 
 
 When, a little later, Engracia awkwardly broached 
 a plan for spending a few days in the city, Mrs. 
 Rivington instantly met her and all was arranged 
 somewhat to Engracia's bewilderment. As they 
 
 240 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 talked, it became clear to her that without any ex- 
 cuse or delay she and her lady must part : there was 
 duplicity on both sides now. Mrs. Rivington's man- 
 ner had altered within the hour. She was careful, 
 solicitous she was altogether incomprehensible. 
 Engracia was frankly afraid of this new attitude. It 
 doubled her own feeling of trapping and being en- 
 trapped. 
 
 " I shall take more than a suitcase," she said. 
 " When I get as near home as San Francisco, I may 
 go the whole way. Would it inconvenience you, if 
 I did not if I should decide not to come back?" 
 
 Mrs. Rivington was singularly ready to under- 
 stand. " Nothing inconveniences me. I am on the 
 rack I feel nothing but what I have done and what 
 is to come of it ; I am honestly better alone. You di- 
 vine everything, my dear, grave, gentle Engracia." 
 
 "Dear, grave, gentle Engracia" flew with her re- 
 covered freedom to her room and began packing for 
 home. It is not a long task to pack a wardrobe like 
 Engracia's she made it as long as possible ; hours 
 were before her. Luncheon waited for the mistress, 
 who had gone on a catering quest : among other 
 plans for her guest's welcome, she proposed to feed 
 him. Clothes her own entered also into these 
 dreams. Her maid was told to lay out everything she 
 had with her that was " white " in her dressing-room, 
 at four. 
 
 At half after four, Engracia went for a walk, and 
 was scarcely out of the grounds when callers drove 
 up to the house early birds from the city. Mrs. 
 
 241 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Rivington received them with impatience, inter- 
 rupted in the important consultation with her maid. 
 
 " And how have you stood it all alone, up here, all 
 winter?" the young lady of the visiting party in- 
 quired briskly. 
 
 Her mother gave her an amused, cautioning look : 
 widows in retreat are not asked if they are bored. 
 Her own manner conveyed a just appreciation of the 
 circumstances, including Mr. Rivington' s extra years 
 and the fortune he had left. She had known all about 
 this marriage at the time. His first wife was a lady. 
 Every one knew what this woman had married him 
 for : even her jilting of Cornish revived in her mem- 
 ory, and added a certain interest to her daughter's 
 artless but decided " break " which followed later on. 
 
 " I Ve not been quite alone, you know : a niece of 
 Mrs. Ludwell's has been with me Miss Scarth." 
 
 " Oh, Engracia Scarth ! She J s a cousin awfully 
 nice girl. Have you known her long ? " 
 
 Mrs. Rivington, ignoring the question, addressed 
 the young girl's mother, stating the nature of her ar- 
 rangement with Miss Scarth and its enviable results. 
 
 " How lucky it turned out so," she replied with- 
 out enthusiasm. " I should have been afraid. So 
 awkward when it does n't turn out, if it 's any one 
 you know." 
 
 The lively daughter thrust in again :" That 's very 
 sad, I'm afraid, for poor Mr. Cornish! You must n't 
 make too good a secretary of Engracia, Mrs. Riving- 
 ton everybody says she ought to marry him." 
 
 "Are you speaking," said Mrs. Rivington, her 
 242 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 voice regulated while her face grew slowly white, " of 
 Gifford Cornish who was out here last fall ? He 's a 
 friend of mine, too." 
 
 "Oh, then perhaps you can help it on! But it's 
 rather fatal when girls do something and like it ! I 
 should be afraid of you, in his place." 
 
 " I would n't repeat all that talk, dear," the mother 
 warned. " Such a lot of things are said." 
 
 " But I had it straight from Clare, mamma. And 1 
 saw them together myself at the Ludwells' one night 
 last winter it was a clear enough case then." 
 
 "On which side?" Mrs. Rivington asked blandly 
 with flashing eyes. 
 
 "Oh, on his, decidedly it's all off, though: she 
 won't take him. Quite a score for her; but she's 
 very clever, they say." 
 
 " Mamma, you seem to be thinking " a fact 
 that apparently called for explanation. The visitors 
 had driven a mile or so in silence, on their way 
 home. 
 
 "I was thinking Mrs. Rivington certainly needs 
 a ' cure' of some kind : she was so nervous she could 
 hardly handle the tea-things. I 'm sure she dropped 
 the sugar-tongs three times." 
 
 " Don't you think she is wonderfully handsome ? " 
 
 " Well, she used to be. I thought, to-day, she looked 
 like a ghost a furious ghost. You said all the wrong 
 things you could possibly think of ; why could n't 
 you leave Gifford Cornish alone ! She was engaged 
 to him once before she met Mr. Rivington." 
 
 243 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " But she did n't marry him ! If she got over it, 
 why should n't he ? " 
 
 " She had her reasons for not marrying him then. 
 There is an old saying about some girls: * she '11 
 never dance with the mate if she can dance with the 
 captain/ Could n't you see how disturbed she was 
 when you talked of his attentions to Engracia?" 
 
 "Well, I don't care if she was! She's had her 
 'captain' ; it seems rather soon to be thinking about 
 another one." 
 
 " It 's queer how you stumble upon things in peo- 
 ple's lives you 've no business to know. Now remem- 
 ber not to speak of this : it 's only my impression that 
 she was hurt by what we said. I may be quite wrong." 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE ordeal was over. Mrs. Rivington watched her 
 guests depart; she turned and walked the corridor 
 rapidly, her long dress sweeping the shadows from 
 column to column as she passed. At the end she saw 
 Engracia standing by the cypress pool, motionless, her 
 head bent, gazing at the water. Suddenly, as if warned 
 that she was watched, she raised her head and looked 
 straight into the eyes of her antagonist. A leveled 
 pistol could not have delivered its message more 
 frankly. She came forward not so frightened as 
 numbed by the sensation of seeing hate for the first 
 time in the eyes of a human being directed at herself ; 
 she had never encountered such a look from even a 
 dog. 
 
 " Now, will you tell me what you mean by this 
 abominable treachery ? I have just heard it as a piece 
 of common gossip that he is your rejected lover ! 
 And you encouraged me to send for him 1 " 
 
 Engracia went past her into the house and was 
 followed and again confronted. She sat down, con- 
 fused and dizzy, while a wave of throbbing weakness 
 darkened the room before her eyes. 
 
 " First, I want it from your lips, Engracia : is it true 
 that you refused him?" 
 
 " Yes ; but I did not know it was known." 
 
 " My God ! What can I say to you ? " 
 245 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " I see how it must look to you You took me by 
 surprise. I could not seem to stop your saying those 
 things Afterwards, I could only keep still. If you 
 knew each other so intimately, how could / pretend 
 to know him ? As for gossip if you think that I 
 started it, then you will have to think so : it is a 
 question of what you think of me. That is all I can 
 say." 
 
 The woman leaning on the piano where they 
 had practiced duets together amicably, for hours to- 
 gether stared at the girl lying back white and 
 shivering in her chair. " There is one thing you can 
 say. If you refuse to speak, I shall know this time what 
 your silence means. Was everything at an end be- 
 tween you when you came here to me?" 
 
 " I had refused him ; we were still friends." 
 
 " What does that mean ? Did you write to each 
 other?" 
 
 " For a time. The letters stopped after I came 
 not at first " 
 
 "Who stopped them?" 
 
 " I asked him not to write I have n't heard from 
 him since." 
 
 " And all this went on here in this house ! You 
 never breathed his name you must have been sly 
 about mailing your letters, and hidden his. My God, 
 my God 1 I could easily kill you. Murder does not 
 seem strange to me now. . . . Do you remember my 
 saying ? But what haven't I said! I opened my 
 whole heart to you, and you ' fooled me to the top 
 of my bent.' . . . That you should have the power 1 
 
 246 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Why, I took you for pity's sake almost : I knew your 
 mother's poverty." 
 
 "At least you can spare my mother and my 
 father 1 But if you could listen there is one ex- 
 planation that seems possible. A man might think he 
 would never be able to get what he wanted in this 
 world and take up with some simple remedy for 
 pain he was tired of bearing. He may have tried me 
 as a sort of anodyne. I am more bewildered than you 
 can be : it is easy for you to believe me a traitor, but 
 it 's very hard for me to think of him as a fool a 
 false fool, a low-minded man not too proud to take 
 advancement from a friend whose wife he was loving 
 in secret all the time. If you care to know how you 
 have hurt me that is how." 
 
 Mrs. Rivington had seated herself, working her 
 fingers nervously on the chair-arms. "That might 
 be possible," she said, " if he had not asked you after 
 I was free. He never had seen you before this sum- 
 mer, had he ? " 
 
 " ' Free ' ! you called it that when your husband 
 gave his life to save a little child 1 If that is * love ' 
 you you may have it ! I would rather die " 
 Tears came at last, wild, ruinous sobs that tore all 
 disguise from the young heart agonizing at the ex- 
 posure. 
 
 " Ah, now we are equals ! " the other sighed. "You 
 love him too. Now you begin to seem human. Was 
 it some crazy notion of self-sacrifice made you hide 
 all this ? was it for his sake a richer woman 
 that sort of thing ? I could be generous to anything 
 
 247 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 short of a cool, deliberate traitor who had played 
 with me. If you are hurt, too, I might try to for- 
 give you." 
 
 " Don't ! I don't want your forgiveness, or your 
 pity. I will not be persecuted for a man I never 
 wanted to marry, don't want, and would not take 
 now if he were the last man on earth." 
 
 " Well, that is sufficient," said Mrs. Rivington rising 
 with an ominous smile. " Now we understand each 
 other." 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 AN hour had passed since Cornish arrived, punctual 
 to his telegram, and nothing but maddening com- 
 monplaces had been exchanged between him and his 
 guarded hostess. This was a fight for life. She was 
 thinking : " He would be slow to open the subject, in 
 any case; he would find it hard to begin " After 
 a while, suspense growing unbearable, she made a 
 bold thrust in the dark. 
 
 " Were you able to understand my letter, Gifford, 
 or did you simply think me mad?" 
 
 " Have you written me lately?" He smiled at her 
 familiar extravagance in putting a matter which he 
 took to be merely one of her states-of-mind. Her 
 moods were so many and her concealments (from 
 him) so few, hardly anything she could have said, 
 short of asking him to marry her, would have sur- 
 prised him much. 
 
 "You did not get a letter from me this week? 
 yesterday, it should have been directed to Road- 
 side?" 
 
 " Yesterday I was in San Francisco on my way here. 
 I shall probably get it in New York. Was it impor- 
 tant?" 
 
 She executed a swift curve, as a diver reverses who 
 sees the bottom too near. " Important that you 
 should not get it ! It was quite the Grossest letter I 
 
 249 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ever wrote you. I will thank you very much to send 
 it back to me, unread. The place for bitter words 
 between friends is where this shall go in the 
 fire." 
 
 Cornish still smiled. "You may find on second 
 thoughts, or third that I deserve it yet. Why were 
 you cross with me ? " 
 
 "Why am I anything! You know how the least 
 little thing, where I trust people, sets me back. Why, 
 when you had put that girl under my care, could n't 
 you have trusted me, Gifford ? You were in love with 
 her hoping to win her and you were afraid to 
 tell your oldest friend." 
 
 He looked at her hard and steadily through the dark 
 distressed color that burned in his face. " In the first 
 place I did not put her here. I was strongly opposed 
 to her coming ; but as I was not altogether satisfied 
 with my reasons for not wishing it, I gave way 
 knowing that trouble would come of it." 
 
 " How could you know that ? " 
 
 " Because I know you, Lisa. Where is she?" 
 
 Escape looked so sure and so sweet, she could 
 afford, while pride took breath, to elaborate her 
 scheme a little. She gave a gesture expressive of 
 things unspeakable. " Any one might know how it 
 would end ! two women shut up in the country 
 alone all winter 1 We became astonishing friends 
 then we grew confidential ; the inevitable topic I 
 hate to flatter you, but you were our only mutual 
 man the only one we could discuss. What can you 
 expect, Gifford, if you will go wooing these children? 
 
 250 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 It made your old friend wroth to hear this proper 
 little maiden weighing her feelings how highly she 
 esteemed you, yet how still more highly she valued 
 her own conscience in refusing you. I took care to 
 let her know in a general way what you stood for in 
 the world." 
 
 Cornish set his teeth. " Could you tell me just what 
 happened here, and why she has left you?" 
 
 " But nothing did happen except, as I say, we 
 talked about you. We had * words,' if you must know. 
 She resented my scolding her a little for what she 
 seemed to me to be throwing away in ignorance 
 of its worth ; suddenly she wanted to go to town 
 that was when she heard you were coming. Then 
 she asked if it would inconvenience me if she made 
 it home instead, and stayed there. I could only sup- 
 pose she was too homesick to bear the place any 
 longer or was running away from you. This is what 
 is called a ' business relation ' between two women. 
 You don't seem amused?" 
 
 Cornish studied her : he was baffled. Something 
 serious lay beneath all this hurried emphasis on trifles : 
 neither was she amused. Her face was ghastly 
 pale with purple patches, her hands trembled, her 
 laugh was shocking. He smashed through every- 
 thing : 
 
 " Lisa, I came here to take you into my confidence 
 formally, before making Miss Scarth a second offer 
 of marriage in your house. It was late, I own, if I 
 had been bound, as you seem to feel I should be, 
 to ask your sympathy as a friend. I could not have 
 
 251 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 assumed that my private affairs were of such interest 
 to you." 
 
 " You were very good to consider me even as a 
 chaperon ; employers are not as a rule so honored. 
 Thank you ! I am sorry the child has gone." 
 
 " May I ask for a cup of coffee early to-morrow 
 morning about seven ? I must catch the Overland 
 going East." 
 
 " Why don't you wait for your own train in the 
 evening? so much more comfortable; and we have 
 n't half finished our talk." 
 
 " I am going back to Roadside." 
 
 She was startled, but only for an instant. " Why 
 in the world; Gifford, don't you pick out some one 
 there is some little chance of your winning ? you 
 have no time to lose, my friend. Disappointments cost 
 at our age." 
 
 Cornish said nothing : he merely watched her. 
 
 " You will hate me if I repeat her words ! " 
 
 "Then, why do you?" 
 
 " Because I care more for my friends than I do for 
 their praise, or even their good opinion as long as 
 I know I deserve it in their behalf. Her telling me 
 was no special compliment, as it is all over San 
 Francisco. But why permit her to wipe up the whole 
 Coast with you ! ' Quite a score for her ! ' that was 
 one little remark I had to listen to, with other com- 
 ments on your defeat at the hands of youth and in- 
 experience." 
 
 She watched him swallow the draught she had 
 mixed: in spite of all those flavors of reckless imag- 
 
 252 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ination for which he was prepared, he tasted truth at 
 the bottom. These were the dregs at last 1 Unwise 
 confidences may be captured in the case of an expert 
 like Lisa, with a young girl under her roof, but for 
 chatter there is no hope. That which his little girl, 
 as he called her, had said in her last letter about 
 telling "mamma" (it had sounded as if she were 
 twelve years old), he refused to think of. 
 
 Lisa could go on coolly now : she saw his purpose 
 sicken and die before her eyes. The great Cornish, 
 whose mind for years she had sought in vain to pene- 
 trate, sat helpless, hoodwinked, sick at heart; she 
 had him ensnared and she tied the knot which made 
 it safe to leave him. 
 
 " Come ; I may as well be hanged for an old sheep 
 as a lamb ! And if I 'm to be punished, you shall take 
 your share. These were her last words when we 
 parted: *I will not be persecuted "persecuted"! 
 about a man I never wanted to marry, don't want, 
 and would n't take if he were the last man on 
 earth.' We have heard that statement before, but 
 in this case I think there was a good deal of truth in 
 it. She is a girl who certainly understands herself, if 
 she does n't always do justice to some other people." 
 
 In the triumph of her inventive powers, she had 
 exploited him to her heart's desire. Who was humil- 
 iated now ! It was a finished piece of work. There 
 would be no visit to Roadside with revealing talks 
 to Engracia which might have ruined all her web of 
 fearful fancy. Cornish admitted to himself that this, 
 too, had the unmistakable sound of a back-handed 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 truth about as pleasant as those which " listeners " 
 are supposed to hear concerning themselves. For the 
 present it was enough : much might happen before 
 he crossed the continent again. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 TOM asked no questions and smiled content to see En- 
 gracia at home again ; but nothing less than the whole 
 truth extracted by degrees would satisfy her mother. 
 She went over everything, even to Engracia's last 
 and strange conversation with Cornish at the Lud- 
 wells'. " What was that speech of his ? a child play- 
 ing on the edge of a precipice? But there lies the 
 whole explanation ! He was afraid to trust you with 
 the woman : he suspected her good faith. She had a 
 bit of his life at her mercy which he had no reason 
 to be ashamed of and he knew her way of thinking 
 and her habit of ' unstanched speech.' No, no ; you 
 can't persuade me that a man cares for a woman or 
 even respects her much if he can speak of her if 
 he can warn a young girl against her in that way. 
 Remember the caution about your walks ! What 
 man who loves a woman would not be confident of 
 any one's comfort and happiness in her house. You 
 have got this all twisted, my daughter." 
 
 " Mother please don't get me twisted ! It is no 
 concern of mine But the facts are, she wrote him 
 to come ; her letter, she said, would tell him why 
 And he came, or was coming : I heard his telegram 
 They are absolutely different persons to me, now, 
 both of them." 
 
 "Time will show," said Caroline. " If anything is 
 255 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 to happen it will happen soon and we shall hear 
 of it." 
 
 They heard nothing. In November a letter came 
 from Cousin Anna in Italy. She spoke of Roberta 
 Sands's engagement to Dalby Morton, as one men- 
 tions a piece of old news, the marriage to be in Lon- 
 don in the spring. But about Christmas, death inter- 
 posed Mrs. Morton's " troubles were over," as her 
 friends put it. Dalby gave up a trip to Egypt with 
 Roberta and a gay party, and came home to be with 
 his father in the big gloomy house where the poor 
 lady ended her days as she had spent them, sur- 
 rounded with finished care, yet spiritually alone. 
 Old Mr. Morton missed her in his fashion : he was 
 restless, irascible, ill of a complication of complaints ; 
 his doctors finally sent him away to Mannheim, and 
 Dalby kept bachelor's hall and busied himself look- 
 ing after his father's affairs, not unsuccessfully it was 
 observed. He wrote often to Roberta, letters which 
 that clever young woman smiled at fondly as at the 
 painstaking efforts of a child : his intellect was not 
 the side of Dalby that appealed to her. She had quite 
 a man's broad way of seeing some of the things 
 young men of his type do ; but on certain points she 
 was vigilant and scornful. Dalby's own fortune in 
 prospect put him out of the class of suitors with half 
 an eye or more than half to her possessions, but with- 
 out it, no one would ever have questioned his disin- 
 terestedness in friendship or in love. 
 
 All winter, it was remarked, he stayed faithfully 
 " on the water-wagon " whether for Roberta's sake 
 
 256 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 or because of his recent chastisement, or as a tribute 
 to the gentle shade that in those empty rooms and 
 corridors seemed to be waiting, speechless, wherever 
 he did not look. Sometimes he actually did look sud- 
 denly, half expecting to see his mother's face. Plainly 
 he had settled down : he was no longer so gay and 
 "fascinating," but he steadily won respect in quar- 
 ters where he had never been taken seriously before. 
 
 Cornish spent a peculiarly busy winter. He did not 
 write to Engracia, nor did he burn her letters ; he 
 did nothing impulsive, but he thought of her con- 
 stantly thinking of other things meanwhile. It was 
 at night he argued the situation over and over with 
 a baffled sense of missing evidence. He maintained 
 a dream companionship with her and this at times 
 was worse than a total breach he talked to her 
 alone in the lighted streets when he took his walk 
 after dinner on which sleep depended. He thought 
 of her when he read books they would have liked to 
 discuss. He learned, too, what it means to have one's 
 trouble leap at one out of chance verses of poetry, 
 to have the writers know about it, to meet it in the 
 essays and stories in the magazines. He read more 
 novels than ever in his life before and more foolish 
 ones This lasted all winter. 
 
 One evening of the following spring, a friend called 
 early to ask him to join him at a new play. He was 
 told that Mr. Cornish had just stepped out for a bit 
 of a walk would surely be back directly. He waited 
 in Cornish's library, the back parlor of a narrow 
 
 257 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 old New York house modestly refitted for his bache- 
 lor use. A big, male volume lay open on the book- 
 covered table. Cornish read much on irrigation, now 
 that he could study the subject free from financial re- 
 sponsibilities connected with its works. That they 
 were seductive in the extreme he could not deny. He 
 read with curious haltings and comparisons and occa- 
 sional twinges of doubt as to a late decision of his 
 own. The spirit of Scarth's dead dream seemed to 
 hover over his perusal of that absorbing book. But 
 a man has more than one side to his musings 
 
 The visitor seated himself in Cornish's chair, back 
 to the light and feet to the fire ; th'us, in the owner's 
 very attitude, he took up the book he had been read- 
 ing, Willcox's " Egypt," and out of it into his lap fell 
 a newspaper cutting. It appeared to be a reviewer's 
 extract from some volume of recent verse. As he read, 
 he smiled to himself : it struck him, from his scant 
 knowledge of Cornish's taste, as a somewhat fervid 
 selection, and he wondered if it might be treated as 
 symptomatic. 
 
 "Hurt me! For your dear sake I could be driven 
 With whips of scorpions and smile at fate. 
 Hurt me! It greatens me it greatens even 
 The love I have that is already great. 
 If you were always dear and sweet and true, 
 And came to me with kisses and delight, 
 How could I show the love I have for you ? 
 
 " How could that love attain its highest height ? 
 
 Hurt me and spare not! I am yours for joy 
 
 And yours a hundred-fold, then, for despair; 
 
 I would not change my love for any toy " 
 
 258 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Steps came down the front room and the friends 
 greeted each other jovially ; the book fell shut by its 
 own weight. And as there is nothing in this world 
 which can be hidden altogether nor is ever quite un- 
 derstood, the visitor said to himself : " That means 
 Lisa Rivington ! " adding, " She is n't worth it 
 she was n't even at first-hand." 
 
PART IV 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE 1 8th of April dawned at Roadside singularly close 
 and still. At five o'clock and some seconds, every 
 sleeper woke to feel a strong shudder seize the upper 
 floors as if a heavy wind had struck the house. Doors 
 closed the night before sprung their latches and swung 
 wide. Engracia sat up in bed and looked through her 
 own open door into the passage her mother stood 
 there listening. They waited for sounds of a sudden 
 spring gale. Nothing more occurred : it was merely a 
 sigh that reached them from the great earth-agony 
 down at the Bay. 
 
 Oakland and Berkeley had had their shock and were 
 still there, though most of their chimneys were unusa- 
 ble. They looked across to wonder what was happen- 
 ing behind the flame-laced cloud that covered San 
 Francisco. Hundreds rushed over the ferries bringing 
 the first news which spread from the trans-bay side, 
 and soon continental wires were clicking and every 
 State in the Union and every city and home, with a 
 human interest or a heart-stake on the Pacific Coast, 
 replied in a storm of return messages, faster than the 
 tragedy developed : questions, demands for " copy," 
 offers of help, prayers from individuals for some 
 answer to frantic inquiries for sons, daughters, hus- 
 bands in the danger zone. No one knew just what 
 had happened (there were rumors of a tidal wave 
 
 263 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 submerging the remains of the city) or how far it 
 had spread. But from San Francisco, the center a few 
 hours ago of all that forest of converging lines, 
 whose steep streets last night illumined the Bay far 
 out to the warships in the harbor ; whose ladies were 
 listening to Caruso in "Carmen"; whose men in 
 clubs and hotel lobbies were talking to all the world, 
 not a word ! A modern city had dropped back into 
 the Middle Ages : no telephones, no traction, no 
 plumbing, no water-pipes, no banks, no public mes- 
 sengers, no municipal help, and to-morrow no food. 
 Her people were in the streets with their clothes on 
 their backs and their possessions in their hands ; and 
 that sound began which, it is said, still haunts the 
 memory of those who heard it, the shuffle of human 
 footsteps along streets that yesterday roared with 
 traffic on wheels, the walking and talking, for days and 
 nights, of a houseless city watching the burning of 
 its homes. 
 
 As the fires advanced block after block was emptied, 
 great buildings fell in the path of destruction, blown 
 up by dynamite ; all being done by martial law, which 
 worked curious hardship in some cases. A man in a 
 threatened district might remove his family and come 
 back with a wagon, for which he had paid his last dol- 
 lar in cash, to save his stuff, and find a sentry ready to 
 shoot if he attempted to enter his own door ; he left 
 what he had, and his household swelled the proces- 
 sion pushing down to the ferries or out toward the 
 parks and the windy Presidio. The city learned 
 another sound, in place of its familiar roar of traffic 
 
 264 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 beginning before dawn ; this sound went on all night 
 the scraping of trunks towed by ropes, of tables 
 turned upside down and used as trunks, or even 
 bedsteads on castors hand-hauled along the miles 
 of littered sidewalks. There were stoppages and 
 loads abandoned by pale and red-eyed wanderers, 
 who sat down to rest on gilded sofas dumped on 
 the sidewalk ; or some joker farcically struck up a 
 tune on a houseless piano covered with brick-lime. 
 Some say there was silence those first two days 
 others remember a sort of Greek chorus all along the 
 march ; but all agree there was no chorus of lamenta- 
 tion. An awed composure, abnormal nerve support 
 due to the excitement of the spectacle. Life for a num- 
 ber of ordinary folk had suddenly risen to a great 
 world incident of which they were a part ; they were 
 conscious of that human brotherhood which is shared 
 only on life's highest or lowest terms. To-morrow we 
 shall be standing in the bread-line and so will our 
 wash-lady and Mr. Dives, who yesterday had any- 
 thing you please a year and a house worth half a 
 million 
 
 But the world is not so lonely as it was in the Mid- 
 dle Ages : there were cities of refuge across the Bay, 
 and ferries to empty the ruins of their fleeing popu- 
 lation, and a nation's hands to feed the friendless who 
 had nowhere else to flee ; and back of the nation 
 soon were all the nations of the world. 
 
 Engraciahad just mentioned, as her own discovery, 
 that when a city has taken possession of your imagi- 
 nation, you see it in the likeness of a woman one 
 
 265 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 of its beautiful women whom you have known. " We 
 know the dear Ludwells are safe in London, but when 
 I think of San Francisco, I see Clare smiling just as 
 she would smile if something impossible like this 
 should happen : for how could she believe it ! Of course 
 she is only a girl, but San Francisco is a girl-city." 
 
 " That 's because you only know a girl's side of it. 
 Did you ever read Bret Harte's * San Francisco' ?" 
 
 Engracia never had and was confident she would 
 not like it. " His San Francisco, I suppose, would be 
 a city of boy pirates 1 " Her mother smiled they 
 were absolutely demoralized and idle, waiting for 
 whatever news should come next. Engracia clasped 
 her hands behind her head, then hastily detached 
 one hand to hide a yawn: early rising and subse- 
 quent excitement were beginning to have their effect. 
 " What will it do to them as a family ? " she asked, still 
 harping on the Ludwells, their representative San 
 Franciscans. 
 
 " If California Street is gone, they have lost their 
 home. They can build a handsomer house, but that 
 one held all the little things they loved " 
 
 " And piles of things they '11 gladly never see again 
 to speak the truth about that dear house. It might 
 almost be worth a moderate fire to get rid of some of 
 those Friendship's Offerings!" 
 
 Caroline did not answer : what she saw in that 
 house was one room silently burning alone as if the 
 whole city were its pyre. The room where she kept 
 her first vigil with grief, where she left her youth and 
 the last of her dreams of personal happiness: she 
 
 266 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 saw the mob of flames peer in, climb in, lick their way 
 across the carpets to the still white bed empty, 
 quiet, no outcry, no resistance the house gives up 
 its ghost with not one of all who loved it and cherished 
 its memories to stand by and watch its fall. What is 
 one house ? But let it stand for the city that could 
 never be the same again not the highest culture 
 nor the latest word in art nor the subtlest intellectual 
 atmosphere, perhaps, but such kind hearts and such 
 gay, sweet hospitality and pleasure, like a city of 
 children, of young girls. It was typical, too, in a 
 way, that San Francisco on her last night should 
 have been listening to " Carmen'' : for she had her 
 blood of the Latins strong in her maddest hours. But 
 if there was never a night in the year when theater 
 entrances did not blaze and carriages line her resi- 
 dence blocks and lights and music go on till dawn, 
 the kitchen-doors had their story too. Annie, at 
 Roadside, broke into tears when she heard that her 
 first "place" in the city was gone. "Sure, if that 
 house was to have a funeral, you J d see the long string 
 of poor bodies would be walking miles to pay their 
 respects them' that had their hands filled and their 
 hearts fed from its doors, and nobody the wiser ! 
 Their right hand wouldn't know what their left'd 
 be after doing, and they not a care in the world I And 
 that 's the kind that mostly does forget." 
 
 Mrs. Scarth had been repeating these words and 
 trying to copy Annie's rich and mournful accent when 
 the house-call rang through the office. Engracia flew 
 to the telephone. 
 
 267 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " From New York, dated eleven to-day, signed 
 1 Gifford Cornish,' " Central recited. 
 
 " Then it 's for my brother." 
 
 "'Mrs. Henry Scarth,' it's addressed answer 
 prepaid." Engracia laughed to herself " He would 
 n't forget that if the whole world were burning ! " 
 
 "Are you all safe at Roadside?" was the message 
 nothing more : he had not asked, " Is the Tract 
 still there?" Whom else had he thought of on that 
 coast ? Mrs. Rivington had given up Overleap months 
 ago. Strange they had heard nothing 1 An engage- 
 ment like that could not have been kept out of the 
 papers. 
 
 Engracia's smile sank into her heart, and the words, 
 " Are you all safe at Roadside," remained a scan- 
 dalous comfort all that day and next day, while the 
 great disaster spread. Everything below Post and 
 Sutter Streets had gone ; they went and Van Ness 
 Avenue was the city's last stand, with ranks of fine 
 houses blown up as a barricade many of them, in 
 the zeal of ignorance, sacrificed for nothing. 
 
 On the second day, or third, every hour of 
 crowded rumor seeming half a day, it was Tom's 
 turn to be sucked into the calamity. Out of that back 
 chapter of his own which he had called finished, came 
 a cablegram dated Seoul : " Can't hear from Mary 
 last address Adler San Francisco can you help?" 
 signed "S. Gladwyn." 
 
 His women fell upon him : " Why did you never 
 tell us Mary Gladwyn was in San Francisco, you 
 weird child?" 
 
 268 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " I did n't know it myself," said Tom. The state- 
 ment sounded odd, yet his astonishment was conclu- 
 sive. 
 
 "Would she have been a patient? how dread- 
 ful!" said his mother. 
 
 " More likely a nurse ; either way, it 's not a 
 good place to be : I must go down to-night, from 
 Marysville. The stage would mean another day." 
 
 " Can you get into the city?" 
 
 " There must be some way. If I find her, mother, 
 what about her coming up here ? " 
 
 " Of course," said Caroline with suspicious haste. 
 " While we have a bed to spare we are open to refu- 
 gees." 
 
 " These are my friends," said Tom dryly. 
 
 "You won't forget, Tom, the check Uncle Benja- 
 min sent us for cases at first-hand? Suppose Miss 
 Gladwyn should not care to come up here, with her 
 family so far away ? " 
 
 "You mean, if I find her, it might go toward 
 helping her home ? I don't think she would take a 
 cent of it, in the first place " 
 
 "And perhaps deporting Mary Gladwyn might 
 not be such a very good use for it, after all," Engracia 
 added slyly. " If she 's a nurse, I should think she 
 might be needed right where she is." 
 
 Tom looked at his women-folk, mute, badgered, 
 but unresisting. Engracia flew at him suddenly with 
 a wild hug, the assault incidentally hiding that he 
 blushed. All day at intervals, while the rummage 
 went on for old clothes or spare ones to send to the 
 
 269 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 refugees, she continued to smile to herself ; but the 
 mother's heart contracted at this threatened revival 
 of an alien past which held so much, apparently, that 
 Tom had never touched upon with his family. 
 
 Tom was off, with a hack, for Marysville " and 
 Mary " ! Engracia laughed in secret. Often she had 
 speculated about those ladies he had escorted on that 
 great war-time journey he had made so little of. She 
 had been much more worried than it was good for 
 one's mother to know over the pretty-cousin episode, 
 and she hailed the advent of a Mary as a timely 
 diversion if, indeed, the earthquake had not been 
 planned on purpose to bring those two fateful lives 
 together. 
 
 " But why did n't she let him know she was there? 
 busy, I guess ; and perhaps he 's not the only boy 
 in the world for her." 
 
 Tom and another man, in search of his wife, miss- 
 ing since the disaster, hired a launch to take them 
 across the Bay from Oakland. They were landed 
 somewhere up near the Presidio, in the midst of a 
 transportation depot, an improvised repair shop, 
 and a collection of damaged automobiles comman- 
 deered for the city's use. Automobiles do not last 
 long when driven over brick-piles. 
 
 While he was getting his bearings in the confusion, 
 Tom looked on enviously at a youth dressed like 
 one of the cognoscenti in sport clothes, covered with 
 grease and soot, who alternately cranked a sick car 
 and ran back to observe its progressive symptoms 
 
 270 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 but nothing progressed. Tom made some recondite 
 suggestion as to electric connections. 
 
 "Here!" said the perplexed amateur. "If you 
 know all that you 'd better get down here and take 
 ofl your coat. Talent like that is just what we are 
 looking for." 
 
 Tom took his turn crouching and cranking, but 
 chiefly studying the uncovered thing with pain for 
 the way it had been handled. A part here and an- 
 other there he touched went in front to crank once 
 more and listened watchfully : it hardly seemed that 
 he had done anything. 
 
 " I think she '11 go," he said. The other stepped 
 aboard and Tom made as if to join him. " Leave me 
 at " 
 
 " My dear fellow, I shall leave you here. There 's 
 a junk-pile of these impenitents and the city needs 
 > eirL Sorry I can't have the pleasure of your com- 
 pany." 
 
 Tom made his bluff for freedom : he stated that 
 important business had brought him into the trouble 
 zone and not idle curiosity nor a desire to set up a 
 city repair shop. But his captor called out in lively 
 language to another youth of expensive past, equally 
 covered with machine grease, 
 
 " Here 's a gink who knows more about machines 
 than all of us. Annex him for the squad." 
 
 Tom temporized : " If I can get two of your inva- 
 lids out of the yard by noon, will you let me have 
 one for a few hours case of necessity?" 
 
 " No man's necessity holds over these machines," 
 271 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 he was informed. " Their owners would like to use 
 them if they could. This one we 've been working 
 over was new from the East it belongs to Dalby 
 Morton : he needed her bad enough when they carted 
 him out of the Adler, after his operation last week." 
 
 " The Adler interests me," said Tom. "I 'm trying 
 to locate a young lady for her family abroad, whose 
 last address was the Adler." 
 
 " Patient or nurse ? " 
 
 " Nurse, I think." 
 
 " I guess they all stuck by their cases. Have you 
 tried Mrs. Adler ? " 
 
 " I can't get her." 
 
 " Symington any of those big men would have 
 a string of nurses on file. Symington took out Mor- 
 ton's appendix two or three days before the fire." 
 
 "She may not be a surgical nurse: I'm not even 
 sure she has graduated only I know that she is a 
 stranger in the city." 
 
 " Might try Langley: he assisted Symington, 
 and he 'd get you Mrs. Adler's address." 
 
 It was agreed, Tom's case being in the nature of 
 general relief work, that he should have the use of 
 a wheezy little roadster till night dark was not a 
 word one could use in burning San Francisco. " But 
 you'll turn her in to-morrow early and report for 
 work? Dunton" (chief of the motor-brigade com- 
 posed of some of the fanciest youths in the city) " will 
 require you at our hands." 
 
 Tom, in pursuit of Dr. Langley's supposed address, 
 drove slowly up the long hills toward Presidio Ave- 
 
 272 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 nue ; he passed a great gray house commanding from 
 its blank windows it was a corner house a vast 
 and awful view of the city's destruction. The stately 
 front porch was gone ; the front steps were a stone- 
 heap leading to the dust-whitened panels of the closed 
 front door. But from the rear, where tradesmen had 
 carried in their bundles and baskets with turkeys' legs 
 and celery tops sticking out, blissful odors of hospi- 
 tality greeted him ghost-like one might fancy, in 
 that dinnerless, kitchenless town! He was not de- 
 ceived, though, steak was broiling, coffee, just com- 
 ing to the boil, spread its invitation on the hungry air 
 of night ; but the back of a fat old Chinaman was the 
 only sign of a host on the premises. With a black 
 felt hat crowded down over his large spectacles, a 
 wadded tunic and kitchen apron, one above the other, 
 baggy black trousers turned up at the heels of a pair 
 of thick-soled Chinese slippers, he squatted in front 
 of a small oil-stove backed by strips of galvanized- 
 iron roofing. A pile of boxes screened his outdoor 
 kitchen from eddies of wind and dust. 
 
 Tom sprang up the walk to beg supper, as the emer- 
 gency custom was. Seated on a box inside the wind- 
 break, he saw a girl with a veil tied over her head, 
 her elbow on her knee, her cheek on her hand, he 
 looked again, and please God, it was Mary ! At his 
 step she turned a gust of wind drove smoke, which 
 was the city's atmosphere, into their faces ; they 
 groped for each other's hands, laughing Tom, glad 
 as a boy that his search was over. His eyes may have 
 been the least bit moist with smoke or happiness. 
 
 273 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Where the gracious sake did you come from?" 
 she gave him her broad, splendid smile, a little 
 broader and more wan for a certain look of strain 
 under the fire-flush fixed upon her cheek. Her lashes 
 were gold by nature now they were black with 
 soot, which changed her expression theatrically. But 
 when she continued to smile, and looked at him 
 straight in her old way, humorous and trustful, she 
 seemed just herself, and all that any man could ask 
 in a town like that at nightfall, with a corner out of 
 the wind, supper and warmth and welcome taken 
 for granted. 
 
 The impassive old cook neither saw nor heard : 
 the stranger's arrival meant simply more steak and 
 more coffee. " You please get up." Tom rose ; in the 
 box he had sat on were loaves of fresh bread the 
 lid was restored, and Tom took another box closer to 
 Mary. 
 
 "Now, where did you come from? Are you a 
 refugee ?" 
 
 "I came to find a refugee I have found her." 
 Explanations followed. 
 
 " My poor family ! and I spent my last cent to 
 cable them. Well, somebody has got the cent.'* 
 
 "The Western Union," said Tom bitterly, "has 
 passed away as to messages, but it still feebly takes 
 in the cents." 
 
 " I don't believe you are quite fair about that, and 
 that^s not what I meant." 
 
 "Oh, I know it: it makes no difference." They 
 twaddled about nothings, watching each other's faces 
 
 274 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 timidly, on the road to fresh acquaintance till Tom, 
 casually looking up, asked, " Whose house is this, I 
 wonder ?" 
 
 The old Chinaman was prepared to answer: "Mist* 
 Mort'n house. Mist' Dalb' Mort' upstairs. I go take 
 up supper " This was Mr. Morton's chef, nineteen 
 years in the family, where he had seen and heard and 
 said nothing ; he had helped the young master up- 
 stairs on his gay nights where he lay now, alone 
 in the dismantled chamber, everything packed for 
 the event of flight. This was the accepted arrange- 
 ment that Wing should take up the supper tray 
 and entertain the young boss with news of the city 
 which he had gathered on his daily tramps for water. 
 Thus Dalby knew that his friends were having the 
 time of their young lives commandeering other peo- 
 ple's machines and delivering stuff all over the city : 
 heroes they were, while he lay on his back and gos- 
 siped with women and cooks. He heard that the Lud- 
 well house was gone and the Ludwells were expected 
 back at once ; and wondered in sick dreams what the 
 plan would be for Clare, and if the cousins at Road- 
 side would shelter her. To-night, he was told, a young 
 stranger had blown in whom the girl from Hongkong 
 had welcomed like a brother. But these things, ac- 
 cording to Wing, were as life sends. 
 
 Downstairs they had grown more personal 
 "They remember you at the Adler," said Mary 
 " How you came too late I was so sorry to hear that." 
 
 " It was not too late for mother: I owe that to you, 
 Mary, that I was not playing around India when 
 
 275 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 she walked into the house at Roadside alone. My 
 sister could not get there." 
 
 " Not to me ! Your mind was set on home be- 
 fore you spoke to me." 
 
 " My mind was on other things, too." 
 " Well, here we are in your San Francisco that 
 you said you would convert me to, some day. We 
 did n't think it would take an earthquake to do it. 
 
 And where are your nice cousins?" 
 
 "In London," said Tom. He blushed slightly, 
 having feared that he might. 
 
 Mary's smile became rather set. " So is Mr. Mor- 
 ton's father and his fiancee. Everybody who 's Who 
 in San Francisco seems to be somewhere else : is 
 that why it's called cosmopolitan?" 
 
 " But you have n't told me a word about yourself 
 
 not even why you never let us know you were 
 here. That was not friendly, Mary." 
 
 Calling her by her name, with a certain hesita- 
 tion, was the only change in his manner to her, but 
 in his whole aspect and address there was a firmer 
 note : " He seems to have arrived," thought Mary, 
 bracing herself with a sigh. 
 
 She gave him a sketchy account of her arrival in 
 her native land, in charge of an invalid American 
 lady whom she had nursed in the hospital in Hong- 
 kong. Her patient had had a relapse for which she 
 did not hold Mary's care on the voyage responsible 
 
 in fact she had kept her " on the case," and they 
 had both gone to the Adler together. By the time the 
 lady was discharged and able to go East alone, Mary 
 
 276 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 had won friends at the Adler and favorable notice 
 from the doctors. Mr. Morton's night-nurse had been 
 drafted off suddenly on another case and, by a stroke 
 of fate, Mary was on duty after her first night's watch 
 on the morning of the earthquake. "So, here we 
 are," she concluded. "Dr. Langley said he would 
 look after us if he knows where to find us ; I don't 
 know where to find him ; but everything seems to be 
 all right, if the fire does n't reach us." 
 
 " I am here to look after you now," said Tom con- 
 tentedly. " Speaking of last cents, won't you let me 
 be your banker, Mary ? I am bursting with money 
 sent us from the East to spend on worthy cases 
 if we meet any. Won't you be my first 'worthy 
 case'?" 
 
 Mary shook her head. " We have a house stuffed 
 full of luxuries and Wing to stand in line for neces- 
 saries, and now a friend to watch the fires don't cut 
 us off. There are lots of things you can capture and 
 drag in for us. I need surgeons' gauze more than 
 I need money." 
 
 To those who have few words, the time for deeds 
 comes with peculiar satisfaction. Tom had often felt, 
 with his mother and Engracia, the loneliness of one 
 who cannot talk : he was happy now, as in the days 
 at Wiju, when two bright and confiding country- 
 women, out of the nowhere of that strange land, had 
 sought his roof and shield. He opened his own plans 
 with great cheer. How soon would Mary's patient 
 be able to make another move ? They wanted her at 
 Roadside, and they could not have her he saw 
 
 277 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 that without her patient. He sympathized with 
 Morton's hard luck, but he did not exactly yearn for 
 him as a house-guest. 
 
 " If I were Mr. Morton," said Mary, " I would n't 
 give much for my share of your invitation as an in- 
 vitation." 
 
 " That 's nothing to him, one way or another. 
 But you are coming to us ! " 
 
 " My plan is to go home," said Mary dryly. "Plenty 
 of volunteers are pouring in regular tip-top nurses 
 who don't take a cent for what they do. I came for 
 wool, and it 's proper I should go home shorn." 
 
 " You look to me awfully tired. Come and rest, 
 Mary ! I want you to know them, and I want them 
 to know you." 
 
 " It 's very good of you all," Mary guessed at 
 the probable share his family had had in this invita- 
 tion, " but there is nothing to say now. I shall see 
 you again sometime if the fire reaches us?" 
 
 " You will see me every night : I '11 come and drag 
 in things." 
 
 " Time 's up for me : I don't think you need any 
 one to feed you 'Eat hearty, mate.' " 
 
 "But you must come back! there are lots of 
 things you have n't explained yet." 
 
 " By the way where shall I send if I should need 
 you?" 
 
 " The Presidio." 
 
 " Did you walk ? " 
 
 " I came in a ramshackle little Ford the city loaned 
 
 278 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " You and the city seem to be on great terms ! " 
 she laughed. 
 
 " Temporarily : I am annexed, they tell me, to the 
 transportation squad my department is the scrap- 
 heap." 
 
 " I see," said Mary she glanced smiling at his 
 hands. 
 
 He showed his handkerchief " It has had to do 
 duty all day for cotton- waste ! " 
 
 " We have oceans of towels, but I shall not offer 
 you any of Wing's water he tramps miles for it in 
 pails." 
 
 Tom lingered : " Why did n't you let us know ? It 
 was not kind." 
 
 " I was busy ; but that does n't matter : nurses 
 don't visit." 
 
 " Don't they write letters? I wrote to you about 
 father, and you made your mother answer. One takes 
 a hint like that." 
 
 She looked at him subtly : something in that letter 
 she had missed was he accounting to himself for 
 it, or to her ? " It was a family letter," she parried 
 serenely. " Mother was the one to answer it." 
 
 " It was to you." 
 
 " Well, it does n't matter now." 
 
 " Not if you understand now 1 " 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE fires abated, or they seemed to, by day ; at night, 
 watching from their hill, they saw fresh fires advance 
 or old ones flare up formidably and storm the blank, 
 black night. A dry, wind-driven pall shut out the 
 stars, the friendly lights across the Bay, the mountains 
 where Tamalpais and his brethren held aloof guard- 
 ing a useless waste of ocean. The city panted on its 
 hills of hot ashes a thousand homes, stored with 
 the blessings of rich years, gave up their all in one 
 vast, smoking urn of sacrifice. 
 
 Mary and Tom sat on their packing-boxes, in the 
 lee of the big house in its staring emptiness, Mary in 
 a coat whose folds, even after a sea-voyage, kept the 
 subtle odor inseparable from the East. Over her head, 
 tied under her chin, she wore the "calamity veil" 
 which had brought San Francisco's dames to a com- 
 mon level from the pride of French millinery to the 
 humblest head-covering under the sun. Whether 
 bent over cooking-pots and cradles and camp-fires 
 of the West, or brightening the fields of Europe's 
 corn, the woman's kerchief has been the badge of 
 her ancient lot of service, bond or free ; and whenever 
 she returns to it, the effect is somehow appealing, as 
 if we saw her in her immemorial tasks since the foun- 
 dation of the race. 
 
 Often they were too tired to talk always they 
 280 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 were wary of the past. Each must have felt this to be 
 the one chance of a new beginning, with a fear to have 
 it hurt and for each the day's work was sufficient 
 for the day. There were campers of the city's poor 
 in a little park not many blocks distant, and at night 
 young people singing. No one hesitated to be senti- 
 mental, or even religious ; it was the tune of " Frank- 
 scot" they listened to one night, and the familiar 
 words came in snatches on the wind : 
 
 "I need thee, blessed Jesus." 
 
 Suddenly, Mary broke down and gave one hard 
 sob, and Tom had nearly spoiled all and kissed her. 
 But she did not know it or dream it who would with 
 Tom 1 She recovered herself and they sat awhile 
 longer staring with strained, sleep-laden eyes at the 
 spectacle they were so horribly weary of, yet could 
 not cease to watch. 
 
 When Dr. Langley said his patient could be moved 
 and that the country was the best place for him, Tom 
 was pleased, although somewhat surprised, at Dalby's 
 ready acquiescence. Dalby had abundant time for 
 speculating upon various consequences of the disaster 
 that were most likely to affect himself. He counted 
 upon the postponement of his marriage as one of 
 them. Mr. Morton and Roberta had not heard of his 
 operation : on his father's account the news had been 
 delayed till the assurance could be added that his son 
 was out of danger ; and on the third day came the 
 Disaster. San Francisco's capital operation covered 
 the rest so these two he had not heard from, but 
 
 281 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 time pressed. The latest plan had been for them to 
 cross together late in May for the June wedding. 
 Presents he knew had been arriving at Overleap ; his 
 soul stifled for a respite. From actual heroism on the 
 day of the fire, he had relapsed, through confinement 
 and reaction from nerve-strain, into a very primitive 
 state of selfishness, and his thoughts hovered insanely 
 upon the vision of Clare Ludwell at Roadside, where 
 she had stayed once before when he fancied himself 
 rather jealous of that good-looking Cousin Tom. 
 
 The journey accomplished itself wonderfully by 
 boat to Vallejo Junction and up the valley by train, 
 every official at their service ; from Sacramento an 
 automobile to save change of cars for Marysville. 
 Their amusingly small luggage was carried into the 
 low, dark rooms at Roadside in their deep summer 
 shade, and the guest-room with two closets received 
 that " ' distinguished club-man,' Mr. Dalby Morton," 
 as Engracia put it to her appreciative mamma. 
 
 The two girls made friends without any delay, while 
 one showed the other where " things are kept." 
 
 " Servants hate to be bothered : you will let me 
 wait on myself ? " said Mary. 
 
 " Proud to have you ! but you 've nothing to do with 
 brooms and dustpans." 
 
 " I 'm his nurse I expect to take care of his room." 
 
 " You '11 not sweep rooms in this house, if I can help 
 it ! Don't you suppose we know all about you, Mary 
 Gladwyn ? " 
 
 Mary chilled imperceptibly : Engracia wondered if 
 she could have caught the meaning of her mother's 
 
 282 
 
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 care-worn cordiality and the shy and fearful look she 
 cast at Mary's large, brave smile and somewhat dis- 
 ordered mass of copper-gold hair which blazed up the 
 walk in the afternoon sunlight. Tom went about the 
 house, silent, looking happy, ordered about by Mary 
 quite as if he were used to it. " This is something 
 like !" Engracia remarked to herself, seeing it all and 
 very much pleased with Mary. (We don't know what 
 she had expected and it never was known.) " It 's a 
 poor earthquake that can't shake up something good 
 for somebody 1 " 
 
 " Did you know, Tom, that Clare is coming to us 
 in about a week?" said Mrs. Scarth when there was 
 quiet in the house. 
 
 " I thought it quite possible," said Tom. 
 
 "Well?" said his mother suggestively. 
 
 " He may be gone by that time. I don't see how I 
 could have got out of asking him." 
 
 " No ; certainly not ; but had we better let Cousin 
 Anna know?" 
 
 " They will know probably before they get here : 
 they '11 hear from friends in New York." 
 
 " No, not now : everybody 's lost. I think I ought 
 to tell Cousin Anna he is here." 
 
 " You can't do it except with a telegram to meet 
 them on the train. Why fuss about it? They will have 
 to see each other more or less for the rest of their 
 lives." 
 
 "But staying in the same house and so close to 
 his marriage?" 
 
 " We are not supposed to know about his marriage ; 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 we can't help it, and he can't ; it J s the way it happens 
 in earthquakes." 
 
 Engracia had her word also with her mother, when 
 their turn came for comments on the situation. 
 
 " I think we are going to have a * remarkably hectic' 
 time of it here for the next few weeks : we must be 
 as quiet as mice." 
 
 " I understand, child," said Caroline, fully aware to 
 whom the insinuation pointed. 
 
 " You will remember Tom is out of it absolutely, 
 as far as Clare is concerned ? He does n't even feel 
 anything in that quarter; and don't you see what 
 a nice refugee he has brought us?" 
 
 "Why Miss Gladwyn is a nice girl, but " 
 
 " No ' buts ' at all : she 's a frightfully nice girl. She 
 can have me ! " 
 
 " I hope Tom is not as precipitate as you are." 
 
 " All I ask is please put Clare out of your blessed 
 mind. It is dangerous even to think a thing one 
 must n't speak of. Mothers do have an awful time of 
 it with their children's goings-on ; * to stand and be 
 still ' " Engracia rose and threw her arms around 
 her mother. " What else have you got on your poor 
 mind ? I can read you ! What are you keeping back?" 
 
 "Something that may make the situation more 
 'hectic' for you, my dear; but as you say, I '11 'be 
 still.' " 
 
 "Don't you be still with me! That's different 
 again." 
 
 Caroline smiled while she hunted up the last 
 "Chronicle," and, folding it at a certain item, offered 
 
 284 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 it to her daughter: her heart sank as she watched 
 the effect. The Chamber of Commerce, or some other 
 body in New York of equal strength financially, had 
 subscribed a huge sum for San Francisco, but were 
 not proposing to throw it into the Bay, which would 
 have been much the same as handing it over to the 
 supervisors. They were sending out Mr. Gifford 
 Cornish to fix upon a proper plan for its administra- 
 tion it ran above half a million ; and, as Mrs. Scarth 
 observed, " it will be quite a chore for him. But I 
 don't believe he will go back without paying us a 
 visit." 
 
 " Mother, if you ask him up here, I will never for- 
 give you 1 " 
 
 Caroline replied, unmoved, " I should not dream 
 of asking him, but if he should ask to come or comes 
 without asking he will find me, at least, precisely 
 the same." 
 
 "As what?" 
 
 " As before that wretched episode which has noth- 
 ing to do with us or with him. How is he responsible 
 for a silly woman ? She deceived herself, and her folly 
 has been its own punishment. I think he came off 
 with flying colors." 
 
 "Yes; if you like those colors," said Engracia. 
 
 Looking for the paper afterwards, to show the same 
 item to Tom, his mother discovered only half of it 
 the significant sheet was gone. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 A MARKED change took place about this time in the 
 disposition of Mary's patient. As a convalescent she 
 had not found him easy to manage. He obeyed her 
 now implicitly; he hoarded his strength, avoided 
 strain and ate as if training for a sporting event. 
 With Tom he discussed the merits of the high-power 
 car which had brought them up from Sacramento 
 and was said to be for sale at a bargain. Tom de- 
 murred at the bargain. But why did Morton want 
 a car before he was fit to drive one? He took it as a 
 symptom of the sick man's restlessness and boredom. 
 Meanwhile the Ludwells were crossing the conti- 
 nent to take the share awaiting them in the present 
 developments. Silent beside his wife in their drawing- 
 room, or talking with men in the smoker, Thomas 
 Ludwell pondered the financial situation on the West 
 Coast since the fire had swept so many pieces from 
 the board. His sympathies were active equally was 
 his mind of an inveterate combiner, and never had 
 he felt so profoundly, awesomely inspired. He worked 
 with gods, not men. Here was San Francisco crushed 
 by a blow no man could foresee, and, lo, a harvest of 
 opportunity for a few commanders of free capital 
 with faith in the city's resurgence. He had faith and 
 capital and the nerve to stake much, if not all, with the 
 courage to lose if his prophecies should fail. Nor did 
 
 286 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 sentiment interfere with the prospect of gains built 
 on the public misfortune. Sentiment was the music he 
 marched to, but opportunism was his sword and armor. 
 His charity and his good nature were boundless: he 
 paid out of hand without stint, he worked on com- 
 mittees (and incidentally had many valuable moments 
 in private with Gifford Cornish), he shook everybody 
 by the hand in a glow of thankfulness at his own in- 
 considerable share in the general prostration, and, 
 hearing incidentally of Tom's enforced labors on the 
 scrap-heap, sent him up a little roadster to play with, 
 and mentioned that he might be a passenger in it 
 himself before the summer was over. There may have 
 been some other hints as to the future of the Tract, 
 but these Tom was expected to keep to himself. While 
 we need not attempt to lay out plans the financier had 
 not himself studied in detail, it is safe to suppose that 
 he was ready to raise his bid for the Rivington stock, 
 seeing the Torres Tract now as a pawn well on its 
 way to the king-row. 
 
 Tom kept his forecastings to himself necessarily, 
 only still more unyieldingly did he combat Engracia's 
 efforts toward a second venture into the market 
 this time the Eastern market for young and inex- 
 perienced secretaries. " Wait till the summer is over ; 
 then we '11 know more than we do now," was his cry. 
 Engracia called it the Valley of Indecision. 
 
 Tom took the girls out one by one in his little two- 
 passenger car, but his invitations to Mary never 
 seemed to fit her hours off duty though what duties 
 could so seriously absorb her now, he failed to under- 
 
 287 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 stand. Dalby could not motor, yet he did not require 
 watching like a child. Mary without watching 
 had observed that he was uneasy whenever from his 
 sick-room window he saw Tom spin down the road 
 with Clare at his side. 
 
 Clare's coming had rilled the house she had been 
 there a week with singing and laughter and visions 
 of distracting new clothes. What a sensation she 
 would have made amid the brick-piles of her native 
 city ! San Francisco's proud dames had shortened 
 their skirts and wore stout boots, and chiefly the 
 primitive head-gear named for the occasion. This is 
 not to deny that the whole house rejoiced in her as 
 a sight and still more as a sound. She came home 
 with a voice half an octave greater in range, rich with 
 health and buoyant with excess of temperament. Its 
 fresh tones woke the darkened rooms in their hot still- 
 ness in gushes of delicious sound; the maid went 
 softly about her work to listen, and the stout refugee 
 cook paused in her egg-beating, for she too had tem- 
 perament, and a waist like a flour-sack. 
 
 Upstairs, Dalby's nurse observed that with the first 
 waking of that voice the convalescent would lie back 
 and close his eyes and a light moisture would break 
 out on his white face. Nurses may see they do not 
 speak. Dalby took no more heed of Miss Gladwyn 
 as a witness to his moods than of the duster she 
 used faithfully to save work for others. 
 
 It was the hottest day of an exhausting week. 
 There was no one in the parlor but Clare, at the piano, 
 and Dalby stretched in his long chair near the door 
 
 288 
 
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 into the garden. Outside, listening to the singing, 
 Mrs. Scarth sat with her sewing, placidly unconscious 
 of being in the way. Such, at least, was Dalby's opin- 
 ion : it was the first moment he had had with Clare 
 alone since the excitement of her arrival had gone like 
 wine through his veins. She had been trying over 
 songs of the new composers, the " tone-poets" dar- 
 ing, suggestive, but not restful to the untrained ear. 
 
 " Now something old, please ; something you have 
 outgrown," Cousin Caroline pleaded. 
 
 "All my old music is burned up, cousin. How 
 will this do?" Clare could not see that " cousin" had 
 been called away. Dalby was her only audience ; he 
 leaned from his chair and softly closed the door ; a 
 breeze might have done it. Notes of the prelude rip- 
 pled forth, hushed, rapid, checked as a runner 
 breathes while listening. He knew the words that 
 followed spring and early dawn in the forest, and 
 a- recitative which brings in the first note of a waking 
 bird then the girl-soprano, in an impassioned cre- 
 scendo ; he lay back and breathed heavily. 
 
 "Now in the morning of life I stand, 
 And I long for the touch of your hand: 
 I am here, I am here at your door, 
 Oh, love oh, love we will wait no more." 
 
 Everything even the house was gone ! The room 
 was dust and ashes where she sang it last, with him 
 beside her on the music-bench the blissful old room 
 in the afternoon light, that last day before they quar- 
 reled ; and she dared to sing it now. It was an invita- 
 tion or it was cold-blooded mockery. 
 
 289 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " For God's sake ! could n't you wait till I am out 
 of the house?" 
 
 He had closed his eyes. After a silence she said, 
 " When are you going ? " 
 
 " Come come here, please ! " 
 
 Clare came and took the hassock at his feet. They 
 looked in each other's eyes long without speaking. 
 
 "Why did you sing that song? or don't you 
 care?" 
 
 " You ought to be proof against my songs by this 
 time." 
 
 "You know I am tortured with the sight of you. 
 I can't go on with this marriage ; it 's hell ! " 
 
 " Do you intend to behave like a scoundrel?" she 
 whispered. 
 
 "Do I intend to marry her and say nothing? 
 that kind of a scoundrel nothing shall make me." 
 
 "Why do you say that to me? if it 's true." 
 
 " The right one to say it to is not here ; when she 
 comes it will be too late. If she wanted to keep in 
 touch with me, she should not have gone to Egypt 
 after my mother died." 
 
 "You did not ask her not to, did you?" 
 
 " Of course not 1 if people care, they understand." 
 
 "Why did you go in for it in the first place?" 
 
 " That is a question for you to ask ! We were great 
 friends we've never been anything else. She was 
 straight with me like a man and I was straight with 
 her about you." 
 
 " Do you call this straight ? Keep your word like 
 a gentleman." 
 
 290 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "How did you keep yours?" Dalby leaned and 
 took her hands. 
 
 " I kept it to you ! not to that whatever it 
 was that came to our house " 
 
 " I have never been so since I swear it." 
 
 "Swear it to Roberta, then: I am glad she has 
 done more for you than I could." 
 
 " I did it for you you know I am mad about you. 
 I dream of you at night. It 's torment to be in the 
 house with you here like a stranger " 
 
 " We must be strangers ! Are n't you well enough 
 to go away?" 
 
 He was quick to seize the note of pleading : " Clare 
 dearest we must go together. There is no other 
 honest way. Nobody needs us as we need each other. 
 You are not happy are you ? You laugh, but are 
 you happy ? " 
 
 She rose " You can't say those things to me ; you 
 are mad ! " As she swept past him with a look, he 
 sprang to hold her ; she tore herself away, and he fell 
 back with a low groan. The sight of his weakness 
 conquered. 
 
 " Oh, my poor boy ! I have hurt you ! " They were 
 in each other's arms; she was left to make the fight 
 alone and she was not strong enough. They loved 
 each other in a fashion which is too old to be tampered 
 with, even in modern clothes and in houses of the just. 
 
 Thereafter he sat much in silence, smoking hard, 
 or with eyes closed, feigning sleep. And he had 
 bought the six-and-sixty. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE two machines stood side by side in the old tavern 
 coach-house : Morton's long, formidable car shining 
 with brass and varnish, upholstered for passengers 
 like a liner, Tom's able little craft painted service- 
 gray, clean as a cruiser going into action. They were 
 not near enough equals to be rivals. Between the two 
 owners there was the greatest amicability. 
 
 Dalby had taken out his car first with Tom at the 
 wheel they came back with parts reversed ; Dalby 
 white about the mouth and fresh-cheeked, but ghastly 
 tired. He slept badly that night, driving on a road 
 that dropped off high places slowly, or Clare stood 
 square in the track and held up her hand too late ; 
 or she sang and he was on the bench beside her 
 "Oh, love oh, love, we will wait no more." But that 
 was no dream ; it was a treacherous vision between 
 dark and dawn birds in the oak's high chambers 
 peeping drowsily and the garden silent, dusk, and 
 cool awaiting the scorching day. 
 
 Finally he could ask ladies he took them all one 
 day, all except Mary, who pined for one afternoon 
 alone in the empty house to think her own thoughts 
 perchance to think about herself, lost as a nurse 
 must be ordinarily to her own identity. Mary thought 
 about herself and one other person on whose habit 
 of being late she had counted. She sat under the ap- 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 pie trees where the fruit was large and green, and 
 slow teams crawled past with loads of hay on the road 
 hid by the oleanders. 
 
 Tom's coming home early surprised her, but after 
 the first look she did not shirk the truth : he had 
 come on purpose she must give him his chance at 
 last. He sat on the grass at her side, his strong hands 
 locked about his knees and his brown throat loosely 
 collared ; he had brought a coat and thrown it down 
 where Bran, seeing nothing amusing in prospect, took 
 it for his own use and went to sleep on it. Then Tom 
 made himself understood as men of his type always 
 have, though not in words to be recorded. 
 
 Mary gave him frankly to know that it was neither 
 small means nor long waiting that stood between 
 them, were marriage possible on other the true 
 grounds. 
 
 " Is this wisdom, or don't you care for me?" She 
 saw again the pain in his long, gray eyes ; he had 
 looked at her so in the Bruces' garden when she 
 denied him that imagined journey home. She had 
 never regretted doing so ; the same instinct warned 
 her now. 
 
 " It is more wisdom than the other," she owned, 
 frankly, yielding as far as she dared ; " though I don't 
 think I do care for you enough, or I could n't be so 
 wise could I?" He did not answer her. " I don't 
 ask you," she went on hurriedly "I just want to tell 
 you it is one of my intuitions that there has been 
 something very naturally in your mind toward 
 your cousin Clare. Not now, of course : I know you 
 
 293 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 are honest but Now I'll tell you all there is of 
 it ! I overheard her one evening say to you under my 
 window, ' How nice our Mary looks ! Don't you think 
 she is pretty happy, these days ? ' That was all, but it 
 sounded what I should call intimate as regards you 
 
 which is all right, of course ; but as regards me 
 
 I got up and walked away, not because it was 
 proper, but I was too mad to sit still ! " 
 
 " I should think so ! " said Tom, wincing. " But if 
 you had waited a moment you would have heard me 
 give her the only answer I could give. I have never 
 spoken of you to her intimately, or any other way, 
 except when I was compelled to ; and yet you are 
 partly right Clare took that liberty because she 
 knows that for a few weeks last year I was a fool 
 about her. As I never spoke of it while it lasted, I was 
 not bound to tell her when it was over. Don't you 
 know this moment, Mary, who it is that can hurt 
 me ? If you had made such a speech to me about 
 Clare, that would have hurt that you could have 
 made it ! Clare is nothing to me but a pretty cousin 
 whom I shall always be fond of " 
 
 " You won't say these things if it hurts you 
 please ?" 
 
 " It does n't hurt me. If there had been more to it, 
 I should have told you in the first place, but there 
 was n't. She was the first person I saw after I got 
 home I saw her first just after my father died. 
 She was holding mother in her arms." 
 
 "Don't please don't!" said Mary. "I feel so 
 cheap to have spoken as I did as if you weren't 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 you, beyond a doubt. And yet, your letter, that I 
 could n't answer, showed me you were thinking hard 
 about something else underneath the words ; I 
 can't quite believe you were a fool then were 
 you?" 
 
 "Clare was here in the house at the time," said 
 Tom. " Yes, you were right then, but you are not 
 right now. It 's too bad to waste time on it ! Is 
 this all that stands between us?" 
 
 " Oh, no there are other things ; serious things 
 one need n't be ashamed to speak of. There are my 
 parents, with their work so far away. I 'm about all 
 they have, except the work. My poor doctor-mother 
 didn't like Hongkong, but it's nearer than Cali- 
 fornia." 
 
 " Is this all absolutely all ? because a mother 
 as unselfish as yours would n't be against me in this, 
 I 'm certain she would not if you were willing to 
 show her that you cared for me." 
 
 It was not quite all, but the rest was difficult. 
 Mary was too wise to say, in so many words, " I 
 cannot feel at home with your mother; I should 
 not be happy as the third woman in this house, 
 even as your wife." She kept these thoughts to 
 herself. 
 
 " But won't you be engaged to me, dear ? " 
 
 " No ; long engagements are wearing and weak- 
 ening. When we are able to think of it at all, there 
 need n't be any engagement." 
 
 He laid his head on her knees, his boyish head 
 of sun-warmed, rumpled hair, and she stroked it, but 
 
 295 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 not in the matter-of-fact way in which she had com- 
 forted many a man in pain. 
 
 " I hear them coming," she said. "And I ought to 
 be in the pantry this minute making my patient a 
 peach-cobbler." 
 
 Tom went with her, ostensibly to crack ice, and, 
 a pantry being a place devoted to realities, Mary 
 changed the key at once. 
 
 " I must get away from here soon, you know : it 's 
 a farce my staying, as it is. When a patient asks his 
 nurse to go motoring " 
 
 "But you are staying with us: you are our 
 refugee." 
 
 "I am a nurse without a case, and hardly any 
 aprons. I must earn some money, and then I must 
 go home. I suppose " she went on glibly, in spite 
 of his reproachful look, "I suppose the San 
 Francisco millionaires are doing their banking in hot 
 ashes about now? we ought to know having 
 seen the ashes ! Mr. Morton does n't discharge his 
 nurse could it be because he cannot pay her till 
 his father comes home ? That would be more em- 
 barrassing for me than for him." 
 
 "Mary, Mary!" 
 
 " It 's no new thing for these Gladwyns to sponge 
 on you, Tom; I '11 take you up on that offer you 
 made me in the city when we were so proud to be 
 simply alive. I want my fare down, and a trifle over 
 for aprons." 
 
 ; ' They parted with the gloomy assurance on Tom's 
 part that his pockets would not suffer for her fares 
 
 296 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 or her aprons he was still the banker for large 
 sums and the motorists came up the path. Mrs. 
 Scarth had not quite mastered the hat-and-veil ques- 
 tion, and was somewhat disheveled in appearance 
 as well as shaken in nerve by Dal by' s unexpected 
 style of driving. Engracia had not wanted to go, 
 and Clare had something on her mind that made 
 her cheeks blaze even more than facing the sun on 
 the front seat coming home. Dalby alone looked bet- 
 ter for the ride. He mounted the stairs slowly and 
 was overtaken by Clare, who turned in the upper hall 
 and asked, " How did it go this time?" 
 
 "You and I, next time!" He caught her hand 
 and kissed it 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 A REFUGEE cook had been added to the household 
 at Roadside much reduced in her own eyes by her 
 present humble situation. I forget what great lady 
 of the late metropolis she boasted she had lived with 
 and had had a kitchen-maid and a Japanese to do her 
 bidding. Annie, Mrs. Lud well's ex-chambermaid, now 
 did the upstairs work in addition to waiting, with a 
 few volunteer attentions to Miss Clare for the sake 
 of being near her and exchanging a mournful word 
 now and then about when " we lived on California 
 Street" 
 
 Annie had written to a friend at Overleap (where 
 they were very busy getting ready for the June 
 bride's return) that, " We have got your bridegroom 
 here with us, and any one with half an eye could see 
 he 's in no hurry to get well." Maggie Wittle, the 
 friend, might make what she liked of the remark; 
 she was one that kept a still tongue in her head. 
 Further tax was laid on that still tongue a few days 
 later : Annie Galway, sitting up late for reasons, in 
 the Roadside kitchen, wrote out the day's events to 
 her friend, with a warning not to let a word escape 
 her as to these developments which would " all be in 
 the papers soon enough, let them hush it all they 
 could." Maggie might depend on what followed as 
 the truth. 
 
 298 
 
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 The day was a Saturday and the cook's day out, 
 but too hot to go walking in the afternoon. She had 
 asked Annie to go out with her as soon as her dishes 
 were done, and that was how she turned her beds 
 down at five instead of half past eight, and found 
 the note a good three hours sooner than Miss Clare, 
 the poor thing, intended when she pinned it on the 
 sheet where the bedspread would hide it. It was 
 sealed, and it had Mrs. Scarth's name on it, which 
 looked queer enough and they both in the same 
 house. And only for Mr. Scarth coming in to tea on 
 time, which he seldom did, his mother could not 
 have caught him and the two got away so soon. It 
 was n't while you 'd peel a potato after she read the 
 note, when they was off in his little car flying down 
 the road and the dust swallowed them. And Miss 
 Scarth and the trained nurse that 's in it sitting and 
 saying nothing at their dinner like there was a death 
 in the house. And the table to stand waiting here 
 it is going on for ten o'clock, and set for four to 
 make out like they would all be coming back to- 
 gether when who would n't know the two was 
 chasing after the other two ! 
 
 That very afternoon it was, Miss Clare had gone 
 off with Mr. Morton, him driving his own car, and 
 nobody seen them go ; but when it come on late and 
 everything so queer-like, Annie, to satisfy herself, had 
 looked through Miss Clare's things and her jewel- 
 box was gone and clothes she 'd never need on a bit 
 of a ride, and Mr. Morton's heavy coat which he 
 never wore it since he come, and his bag and the 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 dressing-things off his bureau ; " and if the papers 
 is n't full of them two before you '11 be reading this 
 my name 's not Annie Galway. But don't you believe 
 anything only what I 'm after telling you ; for if 
 they're catched, things will be hushed up, but it 
 wouldn't be me that would be in your mistress's 
 shoes, not for all she's got in the world " 
 
 The little four-cylinder fleeted down the road, not 
 later, as Annie had said, than half after five, giving 
 the pair of mad children barely two hours' start. 
 They were on a long, descending grade with the 
 open valley country below them, Caroline's head 
 describing sharp parabolas in time to the water- 
 breaks which occur on that road conscientiously 
 every quarter-mile. The sun shone in their faces 
 and flashed in Tom's eyes from the brass-bound 
 wind-shield ; he asked if it might go down be- 
 ing also a slight impediment to speed. Caroline 
 nodded assent, and thereafter for the next mile 
 struggled with a blowing veil catching on all her 
 hatpins. They settled down to work, and she saw 
 no more of the road than a flying panorama. Her 
 mind ran on what she should say to Clare if the pair 
 were caught, weakly foreseeing failure to say the 
 right thing : they would not be easy to impress with 
 any point of view but their own. 
 
 Suddenly, Tom spoke out of his share of the si- 
 lence: "Why are we doing this, mother? Do you 
 expect to stop their getting married?" 
 
 " I expect to stop their getting married this way. 
 Clare must see her father and mother first." 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "They have never refused her anything, have 
 they?" 
 
 " They will refuse her now 1 " Passing to the next 
 question, though half ashamed of it, she asked, 
 " Where could they get a license?" 
 
 Tom answered with incredible coolness (it was 
 astonishing how little all this seemed to move him), 
 " Marysville or Sacramento hardly Marysville 
 too near home." 
 
 "They would have to have witnesses " 
 
 "That's easy." 
 
 " Tom," his mother ventured, " does n't this nearly 
 destroy you this errand we are on?" 
 
 "Why should it, mother? It 's not as hard for me 
 as for you /shan't have to talk." 
 
 " Bless me ! " she cried to herself. 
 
 " Had you got that idea, too? " Tom asked pres- 
 ently. 
 
 "What idea?" 
 
 " That I was " he lightly swung the car aside to 
 avoid ruts deep, dry ruts of last spring's teaming 
 " in love with Clare?" 
 
 " Why, of course I had ! " 
 
 "Then get rid of it as quick as you can, please. 
 Mine is a very different trouble." 
 
 "Have you got another trouble, Tom?" Caroline 
 quaked before the confidence brought on by her own 
 mistake, which Tom naturally found unbearable. 
 
 He thought she might have put it a little differently, 
 but he merely said : " Mary was my first trouble she 
 will be the last." 
 
 301 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 So that was settled in one word the question a 
 mother spends hours of anxious speculation and com- 
 parison over ; and both Tom's hands were busy 
 she could not even squeeze one in silence. 
 
 " Is it to be soon ? " she asked timidly. " It was so 
 dear of you to tell me.*' 
 
 "I've nothing to tell," said Tom "that's the 
 trouble ! She does n't discourage me, quite ; she keeps 
 me waiting." 
 
 " You have always been waiting, dear boy." 
 
 "I expect it's my time to wait," he jerked out. 
 " See what narrow tires do ! " He had struck a rut 
 this time and tossed his mother clean up from the 
 seat. It was careless and he talked no more. The 
 road swam past. Broken lines of trees following the 
 fences, a house in a small front yard, grassless, swept 
 by the housewife's broom, bareheaded children 
 running out to stare at the new sight on those lonely 
 valley roads, a cattle-yard and yearlings bucketing 
 away with high tails. No more trees the country 
 dryer and poorer lines of fence-wire, lines and lines 
 reeling in beneath their tires as fast as the distance 
 fed them. Crops again green and gold, green and 
 tan belts of solid color and the long straight road, 
 a gray-yellow band between. He put on speed : the 
 gauge flicks round past the forty-mile mark, but 
 it does not last. She had scarcely begun to feel that 
 pride of speed, sharing Tom's silent ecstasy, when 
 the road breaks up into hills and hollows and sharp 
 turns. This looks more like California splendid 
 sunlit oaks in a great meadow casting eastward their 
 
 302 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 black velvet mantles of shade. The days are long, 
 but it must be near six o'clock. A bunch of woods 
 darkening an intervale ; they splash through undried 
 mu d Tire-tracks fresh " Tom mentions. 
 
 "When does the Limited reach Sacramento?" 
 Caroline inquired. He gave the hour. "We shall be 
 too late," she said. 
 
 " Lots may happen between here and Sacramento. 
 He 's a wild driver, and he was cheated on that car." 
 
 They entered Marysville. Marysville had seen 
 and heard the big red car thundering across D 
 Street Bridge, where the legal limit is five miles. 
 Marysville would like to see it come back that way 
 she would be ready for it next time. D Street Bridge 
 leads to the highroad to Sacramento no boulevard 
 then ! Soft, broad tire-tracks were still ahead in the deep 
 dust unstirred at this hour of little traffic. The long May 
 afternoon drew toward sunset and the country was too 
 beautiful to miss with unregardful eyes. Caroline sat 
 up refreshed by the change to coolness. Low, sharp 
 lights illumined the black cattle in home-fields gath- 
 ered after milking. Darker shadows climbed the 
 smooth slopes, and a group of lone pines stood out 
 on one promontory bluff where the cultivator's axe 
 had left them black against the clear gold west. 
 And now the ineffable coast line lifted its pure blue, 
 and they were on the last lap of their seaward course. 
 They make up time thirty, forty, forty-five, fifty 
 Caroline exults that the little car can bear it. Tom's 
 hand never rested playing the shuddering wheel ; 
 she forgot why they were doing this ; she was in high, 
 
 303 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 hard spirits was this in every one of us the pas- 
 sion for quick decision and any excuse to chase some- 
 thing ahead of us with a fair chance or not im- 
 material so we beat? 
 
 "I don't see how he can stand it," she said in a 
 shaken voice. 
 
 " I expect he and his car will both be in trouble 
 before they reach Sacr " 
 
 " Stop 1" shrieked Caroline ; " there they are ! " 
 
 Tom had stopped because he was obliged to to 
 avoid a big red car half in the road, half over the 
 soft bank, but empty. Caroline trembled at sight of 
 the disordered wraps and cushions thrown down 
 
 "It J s not an accident," Tom assured her. "They 
 did n't go over, but they could n't get her back They 
 must have tried to pass some one in a hurry." 
 
 Investigation showed they would not have had 
 help to get away the wagon-tracks all led north. 
 They had walked, the hapless pair ; footprints were 
 plain on the dusty side-path. The pursuers drove on 
 slowly till they came to a house not far from the road 
 and Tom stopped to make inquiries. A girl ran out 
 from the porch, reconnoitered, and ran as swiftly back 
 again it was Clare. 
 
 The car was brought up to the gate and Tom 
 opened the door for his mother. 
 
 Caroline staggered to the ground. " She 's prob- 
 ably there alone if I only knew what it means ! 
 Tom, I 'm an awful coward." 
 
 " Well, mother, you don't have to say much : it 's 
 up to them ! " 
 
 304 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 As a last surprise, it was Clare herself who opened 
 the door, exclaiming, 
 
 " Cousin! oh, it is good to see you but we did 
 hate to have you beat us ! " 
 
 Caroline's prepared speeches left her : she kissed 
 the girl's cheek mechanically, and they went inside 
 and seated themselves face to face on a tawdry little 
 sofa under a photograph, life-size probably the 
 respectable citizen whose house the runaways had 
 appropriated. Caroline speculated upon nothing ex- 
 cept the fact that, while the place and circumstances 
 were so distorted as to be almost unbelievable, Clare 
 herself seemed just the same, only nervous and 
 sweeter. She had been crying but her words told 
 nothing at first : they came haphazard. 
 
 " Did you ever see anything so awful as this room ! 
 I didn't know there were such rooms. Oh, 
 cousin, what do you think of us, anyhow ! Well, it 
 does n't matter now what anybody thinks. We are 
 in such a frightful fix. I thought at first you were the 
 doctor ; I ran out to tell him this was the house. We 
 telephoned from nowhere we don't know these 
 people's names nor their number Then I saw it 
 was you, and it seemed so senseless to stand there 
 and be caught but I am glad you have come 1" 
 
 " Are you here alone ? Was this part of your plan ? " 
 asked Caroline dazed. 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! Did n't you pass our machine ? 
 Dalby worked over it till he was almost dead. We 
 came here to find a telephone and the house was 
 locked, but we looked through a window and saw 
 
 305 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 they had one and Dalby forced the hook of a screen 
 door and that finished him! Don't mind if I cry 
 I've a great deal to answer for ! " Clare swept 
 her handkerchief over her face. Her eyes had looked 
 into Caroline's like a child's, woeful and appealing : 
 the woman would have been a stone who did not em- 
 brace and comfort her shocked by her first trouble 
 on the road to easy joy. " Oh, cousin, he has hurt 
 himself. He was not fit in the first place and he had 
 a horrid time with the car, trying to get it up the bank. 
 He cranked and cranked ! and, of course, he would- 
 n't let me help. I've been very thoughtless How 
 Mary Gladwyn would despise me : all her work un- 
 done ! " 
 
 " He is most to blame on all accounts," said Caro- 
 line, " but that 's no comfort to you. I shall have to 
 say, though you must not take too much for 
 granted : we will help you all we can, but not to carry 
 out this wretched plan you started on. Come," she 
 rose taking Clare's hand; "let me see your sick 
 
 man." 
 
 " You won't scold him, will you ? he 's very sick !" 
 Caroline smiled. "Tom is down at the gate; 
 would n't you like him to come in ? We shall need 
 him he won't scold ! " 
 
 Dalby lay on a strange bed in a room of pathetic 
 adornments which had never known a fire. Many 
 covers of a cheap and cottony description were over 
 him ; he was shaking with a chill, but he was silent 
 and courteous and uncomplaining. Such first aids as 
 the house supplied, after Tom had lighted the kitchen 
 
 306 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 fire, were administered, a distress signal hung out at 
 the gate, and they sat around waiting for the doctor. 
 Dalby did everything he was told, swallowed every- 
 thing presented to his lips including the cup of 
 bitter fate, all with equal grace. Having lost, he re- 
 mained winner still in his own incontestable field of 
 charm and sweetness and sportsmanlike behavior. 
 Caroline endeavored to keep a sense of justice and 
 recall the thing he had done, while watching beside 
 him with looks of motherly kindness, and feeling her 
 hand clasped now and again by Clare stealing in to 
 gaze at the poor boy, white and smiling through his 
 agony. Those two simply spoke with their eyes 
 with instinctive delicacy Clare gave no other sign of 
 emotion, nor did he seek it. 
 
 The young woman who answers the Farmers' Line 
 at Sacramento's central office became interested 
 toward nightfall in a series of calls which rang up in 
 quick succession from a mysterious house on the 
 Marysville road "north," and "within ten miles 
 of the city." This was the sole description First, a 
 man's voice which broke off and left the message 
 unfinished ; then a girl's, and a second man's. None 
 of the three knew exactly where they spoke from 
 in whose house nor the telephone number, and only 
 the last voice gave names. 
 
 They wanted a city garage, and next a doctor; 
 finally and here Central pricked her ears, being a 
 faithful reader of the Society Column in San Fran- 
 cisco's dailies Mrs. Thomas Ludwell was asked to 
 meet " Clare " at the Sacramento Hotel as early as 
 
 307 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 possible to-morrow (Sunday!) morning. "Clare is 
 well," the message finished ; signed " C. Scarth." 
 Followed a long-distance call via Torresville for a 
 Miss Gladwyn addressed as "Mary " : "This is Tom. 
 Please be in Sacramento by the morning train to- 
 morrow. Yes ; we will meet you. Your patient has 
 had a relapse." 
 
 So there you are ! said Central : two men and a girl 
 
 probably Mrs. LudwelTs daughter in an un- 
 known house on the Marysville road, wanting a 
 doctor, a mother, a Mary who was a nurse and an 
 ambulance-car for a sick man. 
 
 But Central's puzzle was nothing to the mystifica- 
 tion of the worthy owners of the borrowed house 
 when they returned, after a theater-night and a visit 
 to friends in town, to find automobile-tracks scoring 
 the road before their gate, the house entered, food 
 taken, a fire burned out, and ten dollars on the 
 kitchen-table, with " Thanks " on a blank card. Evi- 
 dently they had entertained high-class burglars mak- 
 ing their escape and behaving like angels unawares 
 
 for not a thing of value had been taken not 
 even the best teaspoons they had used and washed ! 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 THE two girls at Roadside were seated opposite each 
 other at Mary's early breakfast. It was next morning 
 Sunday, and no stage ; a carriage had been ordered 
 from Torresville. They had finished speculating over 
 Tom's telegram the whole subject being one which 
 had its obvious limitations. 
 
 " Now, Mary, don't say you are not coming back ! 
 Don't go and do anything rash because San Fran- 
 cisco is burned there are other places. If it 's nurs- 
 ing you want, I expect to be a nervous prostrate 
 myself before the summer is over." 
 
 " Don't joke ! " said Mary, " or I '11 tell you how 
 you look. You are not always so thin, are you?" 
 
 " I should despise myself if I were n't thin ! How 
 about you ! " 
 
 " Me ! I 'm as hard as nails ! " 
 
 " Yes, you look like nails I can just feel you ! " 
 There was some idle laughter while Engracia sorted 
 over last night's mail, arrived per carriage for Mary. 
 
 " How sickening ! " she exclaimed " here is this 
 pile of stuff for Clare and Dalby Morton foreign 
 letters for him. You will have to take these with 
 you, Mary. Why, look here ! What has Korea got 
 to say to our old Tom at this late day ? Does n't that 
 postmark spell Seoul? " Engracia held up a thin, gray 
 envelope, male size " Nice distinguished-looking 
 band English, should n't you say ? " 
 
 309 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Mary looked at it with an odd expression "I 
 should as I happen to know the hand." 
 
 " Well ! in that case, would Tom mind, I wonder, 
 if I pumped you a little ? " 
 
 "Pump away!" said Mary; "he'll not risk much 
 that you can get out of me. That letter, I should say, 
 was from Mr. Bruce " she stopped with parted lips 
 and took breath "husband of a great friend of my 
 mother's. I 've the more reason to think so, that he 
 asked for your brother's address and several other 
 questions about him, the last time I stayed with them 
 at Seoul." 
 
 " How remarkable ! " 
 
 "Is it?" said Mary. Her face turned slowly red. 
 " Mr. Bruce handles I think they call it various 
 investments all over the East for English and Scotch 
 clients;" her matter-of-fact manner appeared a little 
 forced. "He may want some information in your 
 brother's ' line.' He left a name for saying what was 
 ' so,' as far as he knew it, and they seemed to think 
 he knew a good deal." 
 
 " That 's very nice to hear, but I hope his name 
 won't arise and haul him suddenly over there. 
 Could that be possible, I wonder?" 
 
 Both had endeavored to speak lightly, avoiding 
 each other's eyes. After a moment Mary said, "Is it 
 the Yellow countries only you dread, or exile in a 
 general way?" 
 
 "I dread dividing three by two which is par- 
 ticularly weak in one supposed to have been brought 
 up to that kind of thing. Papa and mamma were 
 
 310 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 always dividing till they came here and we were 
 buried all together comfortably out of harm's way." 
 
 Mary smiled faintly. " But you would go together 
 now, would n't you ? As you say of San Francisco 
 there are other places even burial-places." 
 
 " Mary dear ! " Engracia paused. How could 
 she talk to this exiled girl about the spell of conti- 
 nuity one home, one place, one set of associations? 
 How express that other faithless fear known only to 
 herself! 
 
 " You look so frightened," said Mary. 
 
 " What geese we are discussing the outside of 
 a letter! There really is something in it, though. 
 Don't you feel clairvoyant this morning? How did 
 you sleep last night ? Come, be a wizard I simply 
 can't wait till Tom comes ! Take hold of this now and 
 tell me shut your eyes tell me what's in it for 
 him and for us in consequence." 
 
 " I can tell you, without shutting my eyes ; it 's a 
 list of questions about Korean mines or Korean irri- 
 gation, and it asks the favor of * an early reply.' And 
 I assure you, any young man may call himself lucky 
 who is able to oblige Mr. Reginald Bruce." 
 
 " Worldly, worldly ! But I am talking you out of 
 your breakfast : that egg is stiff and cold. Do'ee take 
 another " 
 
 " I wish sometimes everything else was stiff and 
 cold ! " Mary rose quickly. " It was hard to come 
 here it's harder now to go ! I must get off at once 
 Oh, how good you have been to me ! " They em- 
 braced and said little things to each other, not disguis- 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ing the probability of a long if not a last good-bye. 
 Mary had a strong suspicion about Tom's letter which 
 made her feel a traitor in Engracia' s arms. She an- 
 swered her plea of " Don't forget us, Mary ! " with a 
 silent kiss. 
 
 " But why don't I give you this ? " Engracia pro- 
 duced the letter. " You will see Tom to-night." 
 
 " Oh, no," Mary resisted : " I might up and lose 
 it, or forget to give it to him." 
 
 " Not you ! Take it along we don't know when 
 he will be back. It 's curious how little we do know 
 what's going on down there." 
 
 " Verdicts," said Mary : " family and doctors' It 
 will mean another operation for him, poor wretch, 
 when his other goings-over are through with." 
 
 Engracia thought about the letter, alone in the 
 house all day. That a gentleman with foreign capital 
 to invest should ask long-distance questions of a 
 young American whom he had never seen as she 
 supposed appeared, to even her unbusiness mind, 
 improbable. Much more likely he had a favor to con- 
 fer, on a friend of his friends who had assisted them 
 in war's extremity. Yet it was possible Mr. Bruce had 
 written to inquire about Mary, without Mrs. Glad- 
 wyn's knowledge, to spare her mother the suspense. 
 She was startled to find how she clung to this solution. 
 
 What was the antidote that had killed the germ of 
 adventure in her blood? an engineer's daughter 
 shrinking at her time of life from the first breath of 
 change ! A year ago not six months ago visions 
 of that voyage Tom had taken sinking down the 
 
 312 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 west and outward to the purple isles would have 
 raised a wild rabble of dreams, and glorious spirits 
 equal to any alteration of circumstances. What was 
 the counter-spell? And why should it load her with 
 despair to see her life ending suddenly in exile ? What 
 would be left when they came back and why, if they 
 all went together, should she care ? 
 
 It was the first of three days of record-breaking heat. 
 By noon she had darkened all the downstairs rooms 
 in front ; the maids with little to do were up in their 
 own rooms on the shaded side above the garden. She 
 picked up Saturday's paper and read (and there was 
 no disguising that stab of pain) the name of Gifford 
 Cornish, the city's distinguished guest, the late 
 city, who would leave for the East on Monday, his 
 mission accomplished in a manner worthy of its gen- 
 erous object. Some details followed about relief work ; 
 then the names of his host and hostess over Sunday, 
 fashionable persons with a magnificent country-house 
 near town and not in ruins. He would not stop, go- 
 ing past them, without writing first : so the fading 
 chance was gone. 
 
 A telephone-call rang through the office sending the 
 blood to her heart. Long Distance, in Tom's voice, 
 said, as nearly as she could hear through muffled 
 drummings over the wire, " Can't get back to-night. 
 Coming to-morrow late. Yes; very hot. Mother 
 well. Good-bye." 
 
 All to-day, then, and to-morrow, not counting night 
 when it is too hot to sleep "Yes; I shall need 
 Korea or something, if this goes on." 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 It was eighty in her bedroom when she rose next 
 morning, which meant over a hundred at noon dry 
 heat; otherwise one would collapse. She dressed in 
 whatever was coolest, allowing for no one around. 
 Tom and mamma, we were thankful to say, would not 
 need to start till late ; days were at their longest and 
 there was a fine big moon. You made your own 
 breeze with Tom's driving, so they would not suffer 
 but fancy Sacramento on such a day ! " My poor 
 people what a gruesome errand 1 " And dear Cousin 
 Anna and all her pride in Clare and Clare, trapped 
 between two, or three, sets of betrayals ; Clare so 
 honest at heart, and Dalby so kind ! What was the 
 right and wrong in these things, once you had started 
 wrong? . . . Life is like flume-walking: keep off of 
 high places if your head is not strong and don't 
 look down. She endeavored to stop thinking if one 
 could only stop remembering! ("Put your hands on 
 my shoulders, and don't look down ! ") 
 
 Out under the apple trees the nearest sprinkler 
 spread a slight breath of coolness ; her poor plants 
 were limp, but no watering in this merciless sun 
 they must pine till evening. No flowers in the house 
 either ; they would only die. Books were the last re- 
 sort. She sat on the grass and pored over that " other 
 old fellow you don't care much about" It was not 
 the voice of youth, but most modern voices were 
 cheap in comparison with its " mightier movements." 
 It gave you starry thoughts, and poured peace and 
 coolness through one's mood. Had Cornish foreseen 
 a time to come when she would have need of that 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 pure well? She turned to the sonnet she called 
 "his": 
 
 " Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, 
 If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, 
 Thy nature is not therefore less divine: 
 Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; 
 And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, 
 God being with thee when we know it not." 
 
 Her heart cried out : " At least he is not a hypo- 
 crite 1 " such cant as this from him to her, were 
 he what his false friend had described him impos- 
 sible ! He might never speak of love again, but when 
 he had spoken he was he had been true ! Genius 
 has this power over those susceptible to its messages : 
 it goes beneath argument and speaks to the last wit- 
 ness, the soul. 
 
 Bran hauled himself from one spot on the grass 
 which his body had warmed to a fresh one, or he stood 
 and lolled at her, dribbling from a pink and panting 
 tongue. About four o'clock he tore down to the hedge 
 and raced barking with an automobile outside. A 
 car that sounded like a big one purred hotly up the 
 road and stopped. This was the maids' resting-time ; 
 in a house of so few callers no one was kept on duty 
 for the door. Engracia rose and shook out her skirt. 
 Bran came back brazenly, courting applause for a 
 well-known misdemeanor. The new arrival had gone 
 inside this would never have been permitted had 
 not Bran recognized a friend. She went slowly back to 
 the house gathering nerve, sighing from excitement. 
 There was no one in the office, but she heard steps 
 
 315 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 In the darkened sitting-room, by the one knife-blade 
 of light from the garden door ajar, stood Gifford Cor- 
 nish. He turned with a slight "Ah 1" as he saw her. 
 
 Neither spoke at first, but she had no more doubts, 
 nor could there be any question of why he had come. 
 It seemed more natural than ever to see him there, to 
 meet his quaint, depressed smile, to have him release 
 her hand properly and then improperly take it again 
 and look deeply, gravely into her eyes. He may have 
 seen there a promise of what he came for ; at least 
 he could speak unhindered. 
 
 "So it wasn't you! I caught a glimpse of your 
 mother in the depot at Sacramento ; she was seeing 
 two ladies off by the Westbound. They were veiled, 
 but one was about your height and in tears ! Your 
 mother kissed her twice very tenderly. I thought 
 she was bidding you good-bye. Then my train 
 pulled out. I found the house empty 1 Are you 
 alone?" 
 
 " Tom and mother will be home to-night." 
 
 " Can you keep me till to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 " Then I will send my car away " He hesitated : 
 "You won't be lost when I come back?" But when 
 he did come, she had vanished to advise Annie 
 of a guest and to regulate her own dress a little. He 
 awaited her with a worried air : his impatience of 
 trifles told her he was very tired. There had been a 
 long strain of some kind a multiplied strain. 
 
 " Let us get out of the house where I can see you. 
 And don't let 's have any interruptions." 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Not for something cool to drink, and a room to 
 put your bags?" 
 
 " I had those things in Marysville. Come, come 1 " 
 
 " Tea a little later ? We have an Annie.' " 
 
 " I wish you would n't bother me with your Annies. 
 It is a whole year and I 've been sick: no, only 
 sick in mind chiefly about you. At any time, if I 
 had had the courage but I was paralyzed. Out 
 here, since I came, I have been busy. I was afraid to 
 come up till my work was done, and perhaps be 
 paralyzed again How should I know how you 
 would treat me ? Where shall we begin ? " 
 
 " Oh not where we left off ! Does it really mat- 
 ter?" 
 
 " One or two little things matter, because we both 
 have a passion for the perfect thing If this were 
 true ! How can we make sure ? " 
 
 Engracia did not speak, but their eyes met, and he 
 seemed satisfied. It was not to question nor extenu- 
 ate merely to restore a lost and blackened year 
 that he went on. " I had an extraordinary visit at 
 Overleap last spring when I went there to see 
 you " 
 
 She interrupted him with a look. 
 
 " To see you," he repeated : " to ask you again 
 to marry me, openly and above board, as I thought 
 it quite time I should. You knew that I was com- 
 ing, didn't you?" 
 
 "Yes," Engracia uttered pale and shivering. 
 
 He was struck by the evident shock this memory 
 gave her. "And is there nothing you can tell me 
 
 317 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 why you went so suddenly? Because I have never 
 understood what happened." 
 
 "You must not ask me!" cried Engracia. "I 
 hardly know myself only if we touch it, it will 
 ruin us somehow 1 " 
 
 " Oh, no ; that is past. But listen : I found that she 
 already knew of my first proposal and was hurt as a 
 friend that I had not confided in her so hurt that 
 she had written to reproach me, a letter that she 
 wished to recall. She asked me, when I received it, 
 to return it unread, which I did, of course Now, 
 dear, what is the matter?" Looking down at Engra- 
 cia searchingly he met the shocked amazement in 
 her startled eyes. 
 
 " How did she say she came to know of your 
 proposal to me ? " 
 
 " Did n't you, quite naturally, speak of it in the 
 course of your winter's intimacy?" 
 
 "Intimacy! Did you read my last letter? I told 
 you distinctly the one person I had told my mother. 
 If you thought that, you must have believed I had 
 lied to you sneakingly, pretending to keep faith. 
 Oh, this is impossible!" She tore her hands away 
 from his that had taken them protectingly. 
 
 "There was lying without doubt. Darling, I only 
 thought it when I was wild with wretchedness at los- 
 ing you. I went with hopes I did n't know how 
 strong they were until I heard your words " 
 
 "My words ? what words ? " 
 
 " I was told they were yours : did you not say- 
 when driven to it that you never had, never should 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 care for me, never could if I were * the last man on 
 earth ' ? Poor Lisa, her hour has come ! " 
 
 " My hour has come. Yes, they were my words 
 but there was one word more : now, I said ; I did not 
 want you now Should you think I would have 
 wanted you, or any part of you, after that past 
 your past with her which she told me of?" 
 
 " Don't you see, dear child, if she could alter the 
 truth so about one of us, she might about the other? 
 There was a past long past. And she knew I had 
 never sought by a word or a look to revive it. But 
 her mind is not a good medium for the truth at 
 best, and we know that she was in a morbid state. 
 A mind that appears to be sane and yet is ungov- 
 ernable is very dangerous to itself and to others. 
 Now you know why I dreaded your going there 
 Well, have we come through it ? have I come 
 through it?" 
 
 "She made me feel rather ill," said Engracia. "I 
 lost interest in you and I rather doubted everything 
 connected with you, for a while." 
 
 "We have lost a whole year. I expected trou- 
 ble I should have been ready for it especially I 
 should have known you better. . . . But I 've never 
 had a little friend so proud so foolish as this! 
 Now, will you put your hands on my shoulders and 
 don't look down?" 
 
 They smiled at each other with the old amused 
 comradeship, in the peace of a faith renewed through 
 this first trial of its strength. " I was saying those 
 very words to myself this afternoon while you 
 
 319 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 were coming as fast as you could and I never 
 dreamed it!" 
 
 "And I was saying them coming as fast as I 
 could and afraid it was too late. Thank God for 
 one misunderstanding less in this blind world ! You 
 will, now, won't you be my little girl forever and 
 ever as long as anything lasts ? " 
 
 "And if things shouldn't last, would you be sick 
 of me again ? " 
 
 "Was I ever sick of you? I was hope-sick 
 homesick : you could easily cure me of that. It is 
 only necessary to see each other every day ; it 
 must be very soon, the beginning of the cure ; I 'm 
 a chronic, you know. " He knew that she had taken 
 his case in hand for life, the child mind he had fed 
 and helped to train, the beliefs of the budding woman 
 he had found, and feared to trust the reckless vision. 
 Now, to explore all the divinity within, if God would 
 but spare them time. . . . 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 MR. AND MRS. LUDWELL did not delay for any 
 morning train they were in Sacramento themselves 
 by morning. An ambiguous telegram stating that 
 Clare was " well," yet imperative as to meeting 
 her ! They came, prepared for trouble ; and Mrs. 
 Lu dwell had a sure premonition as to its direction. 
 She had been vaguely uneasy about the combination 
 at Roadside, but absorbing matters awaited them on 
 their arrival in the desolated city, and her labors with 
 the ladies of Berkeley in behalf of others in trouble 
 left no time for anxieties of her own. Her husband's 
 wrath was such that she prevented his seeing Dalby, 
 and conveyed his state of mind, or parts of it, to that 
 unhappy young man, expressed in her own words. 
 She sat at his bedside in a private room of the best 
 hospital in the city, and Mary Gladwyn, after a few 
 moments, left them to themselves. 
 
 Mrs. Ludwell had known Dalby from a boy ; she 
 had coached him in children's theatricals, and had 
 "laughed herself sick" when as Prince Giglio in long 
 curls he had used the warming-pan with such un- 
 bridled effect on King Valoroso in a papier-mache 
 nose. Why should she think of such silly things 
 now, while he lay there who had spoiled her child's 
 girlhood, and pierced her to the heart of her own 
 mother-pride. 
 
 321 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Dalby," she began, "what are we to call this?" 
 
 He turned his sick eyes upon her question in 
 silence. 
 
 " Mr. Ludwell has had it put in the papers as an 
 automobile accident. You will remember that ? " 
 
 " I am I am going to Overleap, you know Do 
 you mean I am to call it that to Roberta? " 
 
 " Certainly 1 That is our demand my hus- 
 band's " 
 
 "It strikes me as a pretty stiff demand," said 
 Dalby. She waited for him to finish "I may have 
 lied now and then when it seemed necessary, but I 
 am not in the habit of lying this way with an end 
 in view that I should be ashamed of." 
 
 " I don't know what makes lying * necessary.' As 
 for what young men are ashamed of ! But here 
 are two girls to be protected. One can be touched 
 only in her pride if all this were known; the other 
 I ask you to consider what Clare's position would 
 have been if the cousins had not followed you I 
 not to speak of making her betray her friend. This 
 is what comes of involving another girl before you 
 were free." 
 
 " I am free now by an act that is done and can't 
 be undone " 
 
 "It is undone, and it must be forgotten. Because 
 if it is acknowledged Clare's name will come into it." 
 
 " I 've given Roberta a blow in the face but that 
 is n't marrying her on a lie." 
 
 "Your blow in the face was not so brave as it 
 sounds : I should call it a blow in the back. The pun- 
 
 322 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ishment of cowardice is more cowardice Forgive 
 me, Dalby," she softened her tones which had 
 climbed in the excitement of such unwonted speech, 
 " but Mr. Ludwell expects you to give us your 
 promise : otherwise the alternative I should be 
 sorry to speak of." 
 
 " Is it any worse than this?" Dalby smiled faintly. 
 
 "It would be more public. I have never seen 
 him so but once since I have known him it is a 
 touch of inheritance. I cannot deal with it." 
 
 Dalby remained silent, thinking. A flush had risen 
 in his face, and his hands on the bedclothes twitched. 
 Without intending to, Mrs. Ludwell saw Roberta's 
 ring still on his left hand. He saw that she saw it and 
 slipped the hand out of sight, then tossed it forth 
 again. 
 
 "Would you have married Clare in that ring?" 
 she asked, merciless in trifles. 
 
 " I should n't have thought it important if I had," 
 he replied sullenly. 
 
 " Dalby, what is important to you ? What do you 
 believe in ? " 
 
 " I believe it's important to marry the girl you love 
 if you can." 
 
 " Not if you have to steal her and break your word 
 to another woman who is helpless because she is a 
 lady ! No ; you can never have Clare now, with her 
 father's consent and she will never do this again." 
 
 " I give you my promise to lie to the best of my 
 ability and I hope the doctors will finish me the 
 next time." 
 
 323 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Mrs. Ludwell sat a moment feeling unreasonably 
 in the wrong. Then she said, rising and softly rest- 
 ing one hand on his pillow : " Your promise will save 
 a young girl whom you led into wrongdoing nei- 
 ther of you knowing how wrong you were. Now, 
 may I say one thing more though it is none of my 
 business ? Roberta is a lonely girl : she has no ad- 
 visers she doesn't need them. You have saved 
 Clare trust her to save you, and herself." 
 
 " Trust her while I deceive her ! " 
 
 " That, you see, is your punishment don't you 
 see?" 
 
 " I see it 's punishment," said Dalby. 
 
 Mrs. Ludwell went away, having accomplished 
 what she came for primarily, but dissatisfied with the 
 manner in which it had been done. Teasing thoughts 
 of points she might have made pursued her ; for in- 
 stance, she might have answered Dalby's "while I 
 deceive her " with the simple reminder that a young 
 man can free himself from an engagement which he 
 considers dishonorable without going into details of 
 his conduct involving another that of course he 
 would see for himself, when he was ready to. On the 
 whole, she discharged her conscience of Dalby's re- 
 sponsibilities ; but as between Clare, whose name had 
 escaped public comment, and her own mother in pri- 
 vate, there remained a few words to be said, and Mrs. 
 Ludwell made them very plain. Clare must be in- 
 formed, in the first place, of Dalby's promise, which 
 she regarded as a shameful backdown: it was not 
 his fault they were beaten, but to stay beaten to 
 
 324 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 be driven into a corner and consent to an unmanly 
 deceit like that ! She listened with scarlet cheeks and 
 distant, angry eyes fixed on the wall-paper of their 
 hotel sitting-room. 
 
 " If I were Roberta I would kill Dalby if he dared 
 to marry me now and say nothing 1 But I suppose / 
 can't speak and save her as she ought to be saved ! " 
 
 " There are certain plain obligations in life," said her 
 mother coldly : " if Dalby had not been thinking like 
 a scoundrel, his conduct would not have broken 
 down all at once. He thought of nothing but his own 
 happiness which he threw away in the first place 
 for a wretched dinner. And there is his father: 
 such news as this in his state of health might kill him 
 outright. To cap the climax" Mrs. Ludwell aban- 
 doned argument for certain details which she well 
 knew would sting "I happen to know that he has 
 not paid his nurse who borrows money to come down 
 here to nurse him again 1 the girl who stood by him 
 and lost even her clothes." 
 
 Clare was cut to the quick. " What has he got to 
 pay with except borrowed money or checks on banks 
 that are burned ? Who was so mean as to tell you 
 that?" 
 
 " Nobody is mean, but older people may comment 
 on the little ironies of youthful romance a young 
 man who cannot pay his nurse, buying five-thousand- 
 dollar cars to run off with, and able to finance this 
 trip with you." 
 
 " It was only second-hand, and it was n't paid for ! " 
 Clare retorted wildly. Every point in these horrid 
 
 325 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 accusations bewildered her the more, and she dashed 
 herself against one after another like a trapped bird. 
 
 " Charged to his father, I suppose or to your 
 father?" 
 
 " Mother, how can you be so small 1 We had n't a 
 hundred dollars between us. We were only going to 
 Emigrant Gap." Clare scored now by sheer simplic- 
 ity and childish lack of humor. 
 
 " Emigrant Gap ! " 
 
 " Dalby has a log cabin down on the Lake with 
 a stone fireplace. We were to cook for ourselves and 
 eat off tin plates and wear old hunting-togs. He did 
 think of his father. He knows how arguments and 
 talk excite him ; he thought the quickest way was 
 best for him and everybody. If he is a scoundrel 
 and a cad I don't see why everybody adores him ! 
 The men up there would do anything for him they 
 would have helped us with horses, anything they 
 had. . . . Mother, you asked me once to be gentle 
 with him do you want me to throw him down now, 
 when he is down ? If it 's a crime to love me, he is 
 guilty, of course, he says he never would have got 
 engaged if I had n't been so hard to him ; and he has 
 changed all his habits for my sake." 
 
 " He tells you so perhaps he believes it himself." 
 
 " Roberta does not love him I do. I know it now. 
 You and father can part us he can be a coward 
 and marry Roberta ; but he is the only one for me 
 and I am the only one for him, if you think that 
 means anything. You did when it was you and 
 father." 
 
 326 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " And your father/' said Anna solemnly, " thinks 
 he deserves to be shot ! He thinks the crowning 
 shame is Roberta's loneliness : not a man of her 
 blood who could take this up when Dalby is strong 
 enough to give an account of himself." 
 
 " Mother, do you dare call Dalby that kind of cow- 
 ard ? You are perfectly mad about this. Who fights 
 duels over a broken engagement ?" 
 
 " Who, indeed ! Is there anything you don't break 
 with the most flippant impunity ? anything under 
 heaven you call an obligation if it goes against your 
 wishes? If the two are married, divorce settles it; 
 if it's breach of promise, money in private or a 
 lawsuit. Women like Roberta have to sit and bear 
 the insult ; and if they are rich, no one even pities 
 them." 
 
 " Roberta knew perfectly well what she was doing. 
 Dalby never denied to her he told me so that he 
 loved me still. Dalby does not lie." 
 
 " There will be lying now, and whoever does it, he 
 will be responsible. This performance is an automo- 
 bile accident remember ; that is all his father and 
 Roberta will ever know about it. They came home 
 yesterday, and she expects him at Overleap to get 
 strong for his next operation." 
 
 " I thought they were not coming till next week ? " 
 
 " They heard of his illness in New York and hur- 
 ried out here. Papa talked with them a few minutes 
 yesterday. Mr. Morton, of course, thinks everything 
 is all the same ; he was in great spirits about the 
 wedding. Squalid, all of it! To think that our 
 
 327 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 daughter, our little Clare, should be dragged into 
 anything like this ! " 
 
 There was weeping now and a mother's forgiveness 
 ready at the first sign of softening. Dalby's mother 
 could not reach him with her tears. Yet she may have 
 helped him when he did not know Mary Gladwyn, 
 looking at her patient after he slept that night, 
 thought how pure and peaceful a man's face it was, 
 and how young he looked. Nothing wrong with him 
 at all, she would have said, but so badly brought up. 
 
 It was more than hot it was stifling that Mon- 
 day in Sacramento. Hurrying down to the hospital 
 after four o'clock, Tom saw women with pale faces 
 wheeling slightly clad babies on the shady side of 
 the cooler streets, young girls hatless, in high-heeled 
 pumps, with large structures of ribbon on their 
 heads, urchins sucking ice-cream cornucopias, horses 
 in straw hats, spray from jogging water-carts all 
 the sights of midsummer in the State Capital, here 
 in May. 
 
 In the hospital, nurses with aching feet fanned 
 their patients by the hour. Mary stood near the ele- 
 vator-shaft waiting for a pail of ice. Suddenly, as the 
 cage stopped, out stepped Tom. She looked at him 
 with a pucker in her forehead ; he had never seen 
 her when she was quite to the same extent on duty. 
 He picked up her pail and they walked down the 
 corridor together. 
 
 " Can you see me a few minutes ? " 
 
 "Well not just this minute: after the doctors 
 328 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 are gone. They have n't finished their examina- 
 tion." 
 
 " We are starting home in about an hour." 
 
 She remained unmoved. " I am sorry I could not 
 see your mother again. Engracia must give her my 
 real good-byes. Too bad it's such a day, but you 
 won't feel it when you get in motion." 
 
 " Mother will be sorry, too, but of course she un- 
 derstands. I did not ask her to come I had to see 
 you alone. Will it bother to have me talk to you ? " 
 
 " No ; because I can't let you After the doctors 
 have gone. This is the door thanks 1 " 
 
 "Where shall I wait?" Tom persisted. 
 
 " Here, if you have time ; I may be twenty min- 
 utes." 
 
 The doctors came at length and talked a few mo- 
 ments to Mary outside the patient's door. She did 
 not appear to see Tom till they were shut into the 
 elevator. Tom stepped forward and this time she 
 smiled and her forehead cleared: "They are quite 
 positive he will get through all right," she said. A 
 window was open at the end of the corridor noisy 
 with sounds from the street ; they went there, and 
 Mary perched on the sill every moment off your 
 feet counted in the day's work. 
 
 " I came to tell you what was in that letter you 
 brought me : it is the greatest letter I 've ever had 
 in my life. I am going back with you, Mary." 
 
 "How does that happen?" asked Mary, trying 
 not to look conscious. She slipped down off the sill 
 and stood gazing steadily into the street below. 
 
 329 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Wiju is starting up again with English capital. 
 Mr. Bruce is managing director. He offers me the 
 whole thing resident superintendent and chief 
 engineer. I know, of course, where it comes from, 
 but I shall take it ; and you will help me to make 
 good ? " 
 
 " I dare say ! " said Mary ; " am I to nurse your 
 young rice plants or " 
 
 " You will give a man his home. There is a little 
 valley up between the hills we'll build a house 
 there " 
 
 Mary stood in silence ; she sought for a handker- 
 chief and wiped her pale, unpowdered forehead. 
 " Have you told your mother ? " 
 
 " Not yet ; she has enough on her mind." 
 
 Mary thought of Engracia's stricken look and her 
 dreaded sum in division 
 
 "How will this be for them your family, Tom? 
 Mothers and sisters can't be left out." 
 
 " It will be the saving of everything for them. I 
 happen to know of changes coming; it can't be 
 spoken of, but it would hurt my mother to see me 
 undoing father's work. All that he did will go for 
 nothing, so far as it was done in preparation for 
 something bigger. That can never be in our time. 
 I could stay on and do pretty well as to salary, but 
 all the fun is out of it And I may say it now 
 Wiju was my dream. It hurt to go and leave it. 
 But to go back with you ! " 
 
 " And them," said Mary. 
 
 " Not necessarily. Them if they will come, but I 
 330 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 don't see it that way. I know my mother pretty well. 
 Are n't you homesick ? the Bruces' garden do 
 you remember that night when you sent me home ? 
 You owe me this journey, you do ! " 
 
 " Please stop now, Tom ; you confuse me. This is 
 a hospital for the sick, not the insane." 
 
 " But we '11 build that house together " 
 
 " We won't do anything till we see about them. 
 So few families have that intense home-life that yours 
 has. It will cost oh, it will cost like everything." 
 
 " You don't know my mother : she has drilled her- 
 self to face partings. If it means my work, and good 
 work, she will be proud to have me go. But she may 
 not go herself ; a son is not a husband. But whether 
 we make one family or two, I can take far better 
 care of them. Your English pay their engineers." 
 
 " I shall not know what I am doing the rest of this 
 day "Mary sighed distractedly. "I knew there 
 was a stroke of fate in that letter, but this is absurd I 
 Nothing can be done as soon as this." 
 
 " * Long engagements are wearing and weaken- 
 ing-'" 
 
 " Yes ; but go now my patient is alone." 
 
 "Will he need you at Overleap?" 
 
 " Not after he gets there ; it is a house of servants, 
 and a good local doctor. They are going to hush 
 this all up," she whispered. "I am very sorry for 
 him : there are so many ways of being a fool " 
 
 " There are ways of being wise as bad as any folly 
 I know. Would it be a very great shock to your 
 mother if " 
 
 331 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " It would ; and I shall not shock her that way 
 by cable." 
 
 " I could take so much better care of you on the 
 boat, you know. And some people might think it 
 looked better" 
 
 Mary smiled at him pityingly : " Nurses, of course, 
 are chaperoned everywhere they go! As for looks, 
 there won't be anything the matter with my be- 
 havior." 
 
 "That is what I am afraid of," said Tom. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 MR. MORTON had come to that stage in the chronic 
 disorder he called life when old friends shook their 
 heads in speaking of him, and old foes no longer 
 feared him enough to abuse him behind his back. 
 His rages hurt no one now ; in business his mind was 
 asleep or woke to tragic folly. He arrived with Ro- 
 berta, carefully watched by a man-nurse whom he 
 treated as a child and who treated him like another 
 more difficult child. Except to go up to Overleap 
 where his son was now installed, he refused to leave 
 the city even for a day. The conditions since the fire 
 excited him, and for a time he seemed actually better ; 
 less pale and shrunken and anxious-eyed. He gave 
 orders that his table should be spread from morning 
 to night and gathered as many of the Pacific Union 
 and other good fellows with no club-roof over their 
 heads as he could persuade to sit down with him. 
 They listened daily to the story of his son's behavior 
 in the fire, and to his brag that the boy had been run- 
 ning his own six-cylinder over country roads before 
 the stitches were out of his wound. They believed 
 what they chose and humored the rest with the char- 
 ity of guests at a well-found table. 
 
 "Where has he kept himself all this time?" asked 
 an old friend of the family. "I tried to find him 
 we wanted him up at our place." 
 
 333 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Mr. Morton rapidly and with some accidents con- 
 sumed his soup. " Place up the valley can't think 
 of the name cousins of Tom LudwelPs worst 
 roads you ever saw ; knocking forty miles an hour 
 out of a new machine chip of the old block ; I was 
 just such another at his age. Now he goes under the 
 doctors' hands again. Wedding put off : saying is, 
 bad luck put off a wedding-day. Don't you believe 
 it ! Boy who gets Bobbie Sands has got luck to burn. 
 
 Old Bob Sands's daughter, eh ? Know what that 
 girl is worth?" 
 
 Bobbie Sands was thinking pretty hard about her 
 own luck these days. The servants' table heard it 
 from the butler, who had it straight from talk in the 
 dining-room, that the wedding was all off again, Mr. 
 Dalby Morton having been in an auto accident, and 
 to be operated on soon and coming down there to get 
 strong for it. " So all your fine fixin's go for nothin' " 
 
 to Katy the cook. " You 'd better be getting mar- 
 ried yourself, the way the whole of it would n't be 
 goin' back on you." 
 
 Maggie Wittle, of the still tongue, preserved her 
 character before "all that crowd," but she went to 
 the housekeeper, who had been nursemaid to the little 
 Roberta and had seen her young lady grow up far 
 from handsome, but so kind and comical-like, and 
 to her Maggie told her tale, having some ideas of her 
 own as to personal accountability. Mrs. Duffy praised 
 both her discretion and her frankness and asked to 
 keep for a few days the two letters from Roadside 
 which Maggie had brought in evidence. Next morn- 
 
 334 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 ing- she stayed unusually long upstairs consulting her 
 mistress, who looked slightly heated when her maid 
 came in to do her hair. But she sat as usual with a 
 book before her mirror, taking no interest, as her way 
 was to be sure, it was nothing very pleasant she 
 would see there, poor thing, and she going to marry 
 such a handsome young gentleman and the greatest 
 flirt in the city. 
 
 Dalby, never clever at a pose, had a good excuse 
 now for languor which he did not hide, and for silence 
 amidst devoted attention, with the entire household 
 at his feet. Not Roberta, however, that had never 
 been her way with him. She had always read him 
 like a book, and the context which her inside knowl- 
 edge supplied was hardly needed now ; only it made 
 her a little more sure. He lay one afternoon stretched 
 on a couch in the sun-striped corridor, and saw her 
 coming glowering at him kindly from under her big 
 white hat. She was all in white of delicate fabrics and 
 costly needlework, and her sea-browned face looked 
 dark and harsh by contrast. There was another con- 
 trast in the sick and faithless mind of her listener. 
 She had brought a new magazine and sat down to 
 share it reading aloud often took the place of words 
 between them. Presently she put it down. 
 
 "Do I tease you, Dalby? Your mind seems to 
 wander. Feeling pretty rotten most of the time?" 
 
 "Rather," said Dalby. 
 
 "Any special spot the doctors haven't reached 
 yet?" 
 
 " I fancy they will have some trouble to reach it" 
 335 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "Well, don't despond : we are n't going 1 to be in a 
 hurry. You couldn't trust your old Bobbie ? I know 
 you don't fuss about your health much ; your father 
 hasn't lost his all in the fire it wouldn't hurt you 
 if he had. Is it putting off the wedding that plunges 
 you in gloom?" 
 
 Dalby racked around on his couch in silence, while 
 she studied him. " There was no rush order on that 
 contract," he began huskily; "you took it coolly I 
 shall try to do the same. You know, Bobbie, I 'm not 
 going to be up to much for a good while, after the 
 doctors are done with me this time : you don't want a 
 sick bridegroom on your hands, unless he 's bright 
 enough to make up " 
 
 "But you used to be bright! We used to have 
 good, straight talks now no more ! Can't you trust 
 me, son?" 
 
 Dalby 's miserable face grew fiery red under her 
 smile of intelligent sarcasm. 
 
 " ' Son P " he repeated. " I know I am not in your 
 class, Bobbie, as to books and.all that and you don't 
 feel that I am : honest to God, are n't you taking me 
 half out of pity?" 
 
 " Marrying is a desperate business, any way you 
 look at it," said Bobbie. " Might do worse than marry 
 out of pity only, it 's just as well to know what we 
 pity each other for. Blundering pity might be as ob- 
 noxious as blundering friendship trying to pose as 
 love. How is that?" 
 
 Here was his opening if he would but take it. Her 
 last wish for Dalby in this fading proposition centered 
 
 336 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 solely on the manhood she hoped to see in him be- 
 fore they said good-bye. She had kept back her own 
 knowledge of what those Roadside letters told, that 
 he might have every chance to tell her himself, as 
 she fully believed he would when the strength for it 
 came to him. Was it coming now? 
 
 " Bobbie," he sighed hoarsely ; " we 've known each 
 other ever since we both of us were knee-high, and I 
 never saw a streak of yellow in you. You would n't 
 fool me now fool me for life? If you really want 
 me say so, so a man can believe it. The pride has 
 gone out of me : God knows why any woman should 
 want me!" 
 
 Roberta's face became crimson (it was not becom- 
 ing ; alas 1 that Dalby should see even that, at such a 
 cruel moment). " We have never talked about love, 
 if you remember; but is there any reason other than 
 your health why I should not want you on our first 
 understanding ? You know what it was ? " 
 
 Dalby fingered the rope of the awning. No ; it 
 was n't coming, after all : the truth had crept out only 
 to slink back again. He was playing the old trick 
 making her break her word to him to save confess- 
 ing that his had already been broken. " It 's up to 
 you, Bobbie : take me or leave me. You know I 'd 
 shoot myself sooner than smear your pride." 
 
 " Is that how you look at it ? " said Roberta sitting 
 up and speaking in a hard voice. " I had no idea you 
 were taking care of my pride. Just how would you 
 go to work now, to * smear ' it, as you say ? " 
 
 Dalby looked at her, flushed, harassed longing 
 337 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 to appeal to that mother-strength in her nature, which 
 at times he had found almost enough for peace of 
 mind, if not happiness. But wild excesses of fancy 
 had of late shaken his hold on even that slight root 
 of self-respect. 
 
 " You might, just as a case in point," Roberta went 
 on coolly, " hypothecate your vows to me and run off 
 with a handsomer girl : that is supposed to * smear* 
 a woman's pride till people are good enough to 
 forget it. But, you see, I look at it differently. As 
 a brutal fact, a wretch with my alleged millions sel- 
 dom gets told the truth, which she might possibly 
 be trusted to know. I 'm a bitter person and you've 
 nothing to do with thaf side of me. Only, look out 
 when you try to save my pride: I 've a notion I can 
 take care of that myself. There is no occasion, you 
 see, for sacrifices between us never was, you know." 
 
 "You are a wonderful brick, Bobbie: I should 
 rather enjoy being miserable in your company." 
 
 " Oh, you are all right, when you don't try to pay 
 compliments. But why be miserable why even stick 
 to each other's company ? Don't you begin to catch 
 the drift of my remarks ? It was understood at the 
 start that you could n't marry the girl you wanted, 
 and I 'd never seen the man I wanted, and time was 
 passing for us both. We thought we might make up 
 to each other for some of the things we were likely 
 to miss if we sulked along single Now, if one of us 
 should find that he, or she, had given up the greater 
 thing too soon, ought n't there to be a fresh report 
 on the project? 
 
 338 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Listen, now : Clare Ludwell has come home, after 
 all her triumphs, not even engaged. Is there nothing 
 in that to your advantage? Why don't you take heart 
 and try again ? Clare gave you a lesson, and I can 
 vouch it did you good ; but the treatment can be 
 carried too far. And personally I object to being 
 taken as medicine beyond a certain point. I think 
 we've reached that point/' Roberta rose and ex- 
 tracted her fingers from Dalby's rather hysterical 
 clasp. "Now, lie still and think about it! As to that 
 Red Wine I 'm not metaphorical : you can't fight 
 that nonsense with Clare ; so don't you fall back ! She 
 would never stand your nerve-racking failures." 
 " How often have I failed, with you ? " 
 "Not often in that way." She left him to 
 think about it. He did not spend much thought over 
 her last words for he seldom expected to read all her 
 odd quirks and meanings. She straightened her big 
 hat over her eyes and went away smiling. 
 
 Mary did not prove as obdurate as she had fully 
 intended to be. Her happiness, though sudden, could 
 only mean happiness to her mother, who, like most 
 mothers, strange to say, believed in marriage, and 
 who had always believed in Mr. T. L. Scarth. And 
 so there was a brief but weighty exchange of cable- 
 grams, followed by a quiet wedding at Roadside, and 
 Tom and Mary pass out of this tale down the Marys- 
 ville road in Tom's little car, not even repainted for the 
 occasion. Tom left it at Sacramento to be sent back 
 for his successor, Cousin Tom's next nominee ; and 
 
 339 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Cousin Tom did ride in it, probably, all over the Tract, 
 when he came up there to lay out his future plans. 
 
 For the sake of local color, I wish it could be said 
 that Mary went away in a " refugee suit " from Ra- 
 phael WeilPs (whose generosity at this time the city 
 will never forget), but it was not so, for Dalby did not 
 leave his pecuniary obligations to his father to settle. 
 
 What poor Mr. Morton would or would not do in 
 business now it was increasingly difficult to count 
 on except that it was sure to be wrong. Friends of 
 the family warned Dalby that the sharpers were get- 
 ting hold of the old man. With a very little trouble, he 
 was told, the necessary steps could be taken to prove 
 his father's " mental incompetence." Dalby took no 
 steps. He said, as long as he was the only one to 
 be considered, his father should do as he pleased 
 with the fortune he had made. Every one called this 
 quixotic ; but Dalby seemed indifferent to the sym- 
 pathy bestowed on his fading patrimony. He declined 
 to remind his father that he was dead while he was 
 still alive to hear news of it. The old man had be- 
 come very gentle and wistful, and enjoyed his son's 
 visits to the rooms where he lived chiefly in the com- 
 pany of nurses though he did not always know who 
 the nice young fellow was who paid him so much 
 attention. He had a great many brave stories to tell 
 Dalby of himself, the son who was always present in 
 some dream of that vague twilight in which he was 
 passing away; as we may pass ourselves, leaving 
 time to restore the best of us in the memories of 
 those we leave behind. 
 
PART V 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 TOM'S successor was on the ground to close up the 
 " romantic " and open the " commercial" period, in 
 the affairs of the Torres Tract. The women saw him 
 plying up and down in Tom's little car and wondered 
 why they had no pangs. It is to be feared their hearts 
 were in the fate of the Tract chiefly through the men 
 of their hearts. Personally, their interest in the new 
 manager centered in the question, Would he be a good 
 master to Bran ? The two were introduced at a din- 
 ner largely planned for the purpose. Bran had been 
 washed and brushed for the occasion until he looked 
 and felt like white silk plush, but his conduct left much 
 to be desired. He was far too restless and suspicious 
 of a change, which his dumb intuition warned him of, 
 to make the best impression on a stranger. The new 
 master of Roadside, however, was a dog-man : none 
 of Bran's points, not even his fore-knowledge, were 
 wasted. So the last pang, a very keen one, was at 
 least assuaged. 
 
 Their guest showed himself a genial person ; he 
 took all things into consideration in the self-satisfied, 
 moderate fashion of a successful business man. He 
 took them into consideration, too, by special orders 
 from Mr. Ludwell, but it came more gracefully as if 
 at first-hand. Torresville would be his headquarters 
 for the present, he said ; very little doing just now, 
 they understood. He begged them to remain in resi- 
 
 343 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 dence at the company house for as long as it suited 
 their convenience. 
 
 So the packing went forward without haste, yet 
 not without exhaustion, spiritual as well as physical. 
 They were two worn and weary women though one 
 was very happy when they turned their faces east- 
 ward near the close of September. 
 
 Olivia, sensitive and worn herself, trembled like a 
 leaf when she saw Caroline (who she had thought 
 was young !) come up the front steps. She arrived 
 without husband or son the men for whose sake 
 women go West and stay for years and return with 
 signs of wear and tear upon them, or fine and flour- 
 ishing, to be comforted by their relatives or silently 
 measured by them ; and the slender girl at her side, 
 a little taller and straighter than her mother, would 
 be leaving her very soon. The older women embraced 
 with that understanding which passeth words. Olivia 
 had lost her young lover in 1864. He had left Har- 
 vard to volunteer and had been in fifty battles before 
 he gave his life to his country in the last battle of the 
 war. She was scarcely nineteen, but she accepted no 
 substitute for what counted with her for the summit 
 of experience though many were offered her before 
 youth and beauty waned. Therefore she was entitled 
 to be keen-sighted and critical of all makeshifts and 
 travesties which passed for happiness in the lives of 
 her young kinsfolk growing up around her, espe- 
 cially the girls. 
 
 In their first free talk about the engagement, Caro- 
 line mentioned the age of Engracia's lover. Cousin 
 
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 Olivia (who was past sixty) gasped in dismay. " A 
 man of forty! and Engracia twenty-one. My 
 dear Caroline I " 
 
 Caroline said little in defense of her daughter's 
 choice : they would all " see " at the wedding. She 
 had a subtle confidence that Cornish on that occasion 
 would bear himself in a manner to satisfy the most 
 hypercritical ; even Olivia who was so exacting about 
 the family bridegrooms. 
 
 Olivia was more exacting in the case of Engracia 
 than any of the daughters the new generation had 
 reared. It is difficult to say why, unless in this girl, 
 so hard to describe, with her sub-beauty, sub-genius, 
 half-definitions in every way, she perceived the germ 
 of that capacity for the greater love (which means the 
 greater power to suffer) which was Olivia's own gift 
 of God that had left her life so poor outwardly and 
 kept it so rich within. She studied the girl's face with 
 increasing fear and tenderness. Thin, thin, and 
 oh, so sweet 1 But why so thin ? Fatherless, sensi- 
 tive, high-minded, unpractical, and poor dependent 
 on a young brother just married. To what fatal com- 
 promise might she have lent herself, in this long, 
 drifting summer of suspense? Caroline had said there 
 had been trouble the child had been unable to make 
 up her mind ; she herself had wished it very much 
 and almost given up hoping it could ever be. Olivia 
 knew these mothers. They were practical enough ! 
 She was scarcely able to bear her thoughts without 
 speaking ; but in that house they did not speak, un- 
 less invited, on subjects as delicate as this. 
 
 345 
 
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 Cornish had met his travelers at Albany for a few 
 moments as they changed to the Boston and Albany ; 
 that was all the time he could spare just then to his 
 private affairs. He was expected at Chelmsford on 
 the following Saturday. 
 
 The Baxter house had once stood half a mile from 
 the edge of the village, with large grounds around 
 it and a high brick wall sheltering its garden and 
 hiding from passers the beauty within, in the old, ex- 
 clusive English manner. The grounds were less by 
 many acres, though still large for a house that was 
 now within the city limits. There was a new boule- 
 vard in front, car-lines east, west, and south, and a 
 German grocery on a neighboring corner. Corner 
 groceries are convenient, but Olivia held to the prac- 
 tice of sticking by her old tradespeople, however far 
 downtown they kept themselves. Other habits she 
 stuck by, too, including six o'clock dinner on Satur- 
 day nights; old servants were considered as well 
 as old tradesfolk. But a guest arriving by the new 
 dinner-train would be late. 
 
 Engracia herself was a trifle late. She had yielded 
 to the desire to be pretty, and repented of being 
 too pretty after a glance in her mirror. Mamma 
 and Cousin Olivia would be in high dresses. She 
 feebly compromised, and came down, appealing with 
 downcast eyes from her mother's look of disappoint- 
 ment. Who loves to see her child pretty even too 
 pretty as well as one of these human mothers ! But 
 so far as Cornish was concerned, Engracia, no doubt, 
 had the nicer instinct. 
 
 346 
 
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 Uncle Benjamin, at whose left she sat, saw and 
 approved of all. He placed his dry, thin hand upon 
 hers, giving her an old man's smile full of memories. 
 There came a sound of rapid wheels outside the 
 hall door shut upon the quiet entrance of the guest. 
 A soft color flooded her cheek, then died out, leaving 
 her snow-pale. 
 
 "Go out, dear," said Uncle Benjamin. "We will 
 excuse you." 
 
 As the door closed upon her, he turned to Caro- 
 line ; he very seldom made personal remarks. 
 
 "Can that child be as lovely as she looks?" 
 
 Caroline was speechless ; her breast swelled, her 
 throat strained with emotion. Olivia had seen the 
 little desperate smile, the sudden blanching of that 
 young, startled face : she misunderstood both the 
 daughter's and the mother's agitation. ..." What 
 a moment, if she does not love him ! " 
 
 Brief, low tones were heard at intervals in the hall, 
 then silence. The maid had gone up with his bags to 
 light lamps in the guest-chamber. 
 
 " A nice voice," sighed Olivia ; " a nice step." He 
 mounted the stairs not doubtfully, not too free ; 
 just as a man ought to go, a new guest in the house 
 from which he is soon to take his bride. 
 
 Waves of memories crushed through her heart. 
 She heard the footsteps of all the feet on those stairs 
 of welcome and farewell, and along that gallery where 
 the strange step went past the chambers, hushed, 
 immaculate, of her own long lifetime of guests : 
 the girls of her own youth, deep dreamers after 
 
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 nights of dancing ; the children who slept so sound 
 on snowy Christmas-eves ; watchers with the sick 
 silence of the chambers where they do not waken ; 
 pale brides, and young mothers, and new babies 
 carried up the attic stairs a few steps before they 
 were carried down to insure that they would rise in 
 life ; and here, bringing a lover, was the last of those 
 babies now ! 
 
 Engracia entered, and no one looked at her for a 
 moment ; then all looked at once, and there could be 
 no more doubt. The light of joy seemed to play 
 about her loveliness and fan her like invisible Psyche 
 wings and hedge her in like the spirit-flames that 
 guarded the sleeping Brunnhilda. 
 
 In the guest-room lamps were shaded and one of 
 autumn's low fires cast a mild gleam on the hearth. 
 Cornish stood before it with head bent, motionless, 
 his hands behind his back. It was hardly the attitude 
 of prayer, nor was he a believer in many of the mys- 
 teries we pray to, but to whatever he did believe in, 
 he prayed then in silence, till calmness came to him 
 and self-command to go down and see her face again 
 before them all ; he was as shy of his own emotion 
 as any man is who has conquered that side of him- 
 self with iron mastery for years. 
 
 He knew there is nothing in life but the meanings 
 we put into it, and he prayed for a long life of 
 blessed meanings with this exquisite woman he had 
 won ; so fearful in her innocence, so keen as death 
 in her discernment. It would be the death of love 
 such love as he desired of her that moment she 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 recognized the first spot on his soul. He prayed they 
 might keep holy all their days that gift of God, the 
 love born of her soul in its short knowledge of his. 
 Two years and a little over it had seemed another 
 life ; but now comes life itself. Heaven, if it could 
 but last ! 
 
 The wedding took place in October, and none of 
 the solemn fuss of the beautiful old ceremony was 
 lacking in honor of the new pair. Who should know 
 about home-weddings if not the Baxters ? They were 
 a family of feast-givers : their annals were thick- 
 starred with memorial days birthdays of young 
 and old, wedding-days and christenings flower- 
 crowned ; and other days when the flowers were white 
 and pale faces assembled in farewell to the dead ; 
 others again when flags were mingled with the flow- 
 ers and they dressed the graves of the sons they had 
 given to the nation. They were so numerous still 
 that such gatherings as the present seldom included 
 more than the family and intimate friends, and they 
 were so generally blest as to means that they made 
 a goodly appearance in their gala-gowns and frock- 
 coats. The smart young cousins were particularly 
 smart in the new fall styles, which were very charm- 
 ing that year ; the elders were fewer and older, but 
 the old lace and best satins came forth as fresh 
 and symbolic as ever. No curious, only loving, eyes 
 watched the bride as she " paced into the hall," and 
 if there were tears they were tears of happiness too 
 keen for hearts to bear that had their own old store 
 of griefs and memories. 
 
 349 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 Uncle Benjamin had just passed his eighty-ninth 
 birthday, a perilous age, and a dangerous season of 
 the year for old gentlemen who think of no one so 
 little as themselves. Doors were open, the house 
 was full of drafts. His silver head shone tall on the 
 front steps at the going away of the bridal pair 
 uncovered, alas ! in the strong west wind, that 
 " drove the dead leaves slanting from the tree" ; 
 swept them across the bride's pathway as she came 
 down the walk on her husband's arm, between the 
 ranks of relatives. She turned for one more look at 
 them all, and something told her that one dear and 
 honored head would be missing when that group 
 assembled again she ran back and kissed him, last 
 of all. 
 
 In a little more than a week, she was reading with 
 tears on her cheeks that he had gone to join that 
 other so numerous group in the family plot. The 
 leaves were off the trees that stood bare in a still, 
 soft rain above the group of mourners at his grave. 
 
 "Ah, I 'm so glad you saw him ! " she sighed, lift- 
 ing her face to be kissed, " and so glad he saw you. 
 He knew why we were happy. He was happy al- 
 ways, I think. Oh, the beautiful old home it was ! 
 Could we ever, if we lived long enough, make a 
 home like that?" 
 
 " Different, but just as good, I hope." 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 THERE had been much brave talk about homes, 
 when Tom and Mary were to be married, and be- 
 fore they went away : how, soon, very soon, when 
 the new house was built, up that little Korean val- 
 ley that Tom remembered with a keen, delicious 
 pang, place of the house of his dream, mother 
 would come then and make her home with them. 
 She would be fascinated with the strangeness of the 
 country, she would adopt all Mary's native mothers 
 and their little brown babies with fat tummies and no 
 clothes to speak of ; she would ride in sedan-chairs 
 and learn not to think of the bearers. There would be 
 visits to Seoul to know the dear Bruces, winters in 
 Japan where it is cold but not so cold ; or, when Wiju 
 was flourishing, they might take the grand tour all 
 together, the journey Tom had waited for, and 
 mother might see something of the big world at last. 
 Mother heard and smiled as a mother should, but 
 that this plan of true young hearts, unforgetful of 
 the ties that bind, would ever bind her, as inmate of 
 a home complete without her, she wisely doubted. 
 
 On the train again, going East, it was Engracia 
 who took up the tale and developed her dream, show- 
 ing how beautifully it would work out for mother to 
 live with " them "; she read sentences from Cornish's 
 letters, perfectly worded to say all a man says for the 
 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 sake of the girl he loves, as to her mother making one 
 of his household permanently. Engracia sat up close 
 and enlarged in flowing fashion, and the child meant 
 all she said. Mamma would renew her youth amidst 
 music and art and talk of new books with old friends: 
 
 had n't she always said no one was clever any 
 more as "they" were the friends of her young 
 days ? Now, as many as were left, she would see 
 them all ; and wear her best gowns every day and 
 have new ones, " bester still ": " You know, mamma, 
 you always did love clothes. Now you'll be where 
 they grow, and instead of thinking about my clothes 
 you can think about your own." And Engracia 
 would sit up closer and call her mother little names 
 
 for she knew, as a daughter knows, that these 
 things would never be. The shadow of a long part- 
 ing was over them. 
 
 To Caroline it sounded very sweet, and to half of 
 her, perhaps, it may have sounded true, but with much 
 the wiser half she put this dream also from her. Who 
 gives a daughter in marriage cannot afford to keep 
 back anything for herself, or she may lose all even 
 that which she had. 
 
 And it cost her no great pang in one way, for she 
 wanted silence and peace; and if there should be 
 problems in these young lives they were not her 
 problems ; and she could not at her time of life 
 bring to a new set of problems the courage she had 
 brought to her own. Nor does the understanding of 
 one generation fit the needs of the next. No ; she 
 wanted to lie at anchor in some quiet haven and 
 
 352 
 
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 dream her own dreams and think over her life 
 with him. And more than art or clothes or clever 
 talk, though she had loved these things in her youth, 
 did she love her personal life apart, the solitude she 
 had grown used to and learned to need ; room for 
 the lonely soul which each of us must bring to our 
 last account with life, in preparation for what we trust 
 will come after. 
 
 It was to the home she knew first, the shelter of 
 her orphaned youth, that she owed at last this final 
 gift with a beloved soul beside her that needed 
 nothing for her last change to God. 
 
 On the evening of the day after the wedding, she 
 went up to say good-night to Uncle Benjamin. He 
 had been a little ailing there was as yet no alarm. 
 After his tray-supper, he sat reading by his fire. His 
 bedroom was the large corner room with the state- 
 liest mahogany furniture and a four-poster in full 
 panoply in its shadowy alcove. 
 
 " Caroline," he said, keeping her hand, " sit down 
 a moment more. . . . When the time comes for me to 
 leave Olivia here alone, would you be willing to make 
 your home with her?" Uncle Benjamin said things 
 simply and plainly. 
 
 " Uncle, I think Olivia must choose her own house- 
 mates, but if she should wish it, nothing could be 
 sweeter or more restful to me." 
 
 " That is all I wanted. I have never spoken to 
 Olivia ; but if she should wish it, will you remember, 
 dear, I wished it too?" 
 
 " Ah, don't say ' wished.' " 
 353 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 "It is immaterial," he answered gently. "The 
 tenses draw close together." 
 
 It took but a few words, on the evening after 
 the funeral, hardly a week later, to settle what Caro- 
 line should do with the remnant of her life. Friend- 
 ship is the last of our passions on earth, or should be : 
 unhappy are those who maintain the high emotional 
 temperatures to the end. 
 
 "You will not leave me now, Caroline? I see no 
 reason why we should ever part again if you are 
 content to stay here and fold your wings. You must 
 be very tired." 
 
 " My wings are broken, if I ever had any," said 
 Caroline, speaking with difficulty. " I shall be con- 
 tent as long as you are satisfied to have me. But I 
 am not very good company." 
 
 " Nor I," Olivia answered. " We are both used to 
 our own poor company that is something." 
 
 Four days later, Caroline said : " It is very soon for 
 me to bring my friends in upon you, but I have had 
 a telegram from a very dear friend who passes us on 
 Thursday : she asks if she may call ? It is Anna Lud- 
 well ; you know who she is ? She understands how 
 it is with us you would not have to see her." 
 
 " I should love to see her ! I know, of course, who 
 she is. We have a number of mutual friends, though 
 I never happen to have met her." 
 
 " She is a very charming woman." 
 
 " I know that, too : ask her to dinner and for over- 
 night." 
 
 " That would hardly be possible for her, I think. 
 354 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 She only stops over one train. I wish she had her 
 daughter with her. Clare is one of the prettiest girls 
 you have ever seen, a perfect flower of the West 
 Coast : they have them there as sumptuous and deli- 
 cate as hothouse roses, but they grow them in the 
 open." 
 
 On Thursday afternoon, Olivia said, while they 
 were waiting for their guest, " You two Californians 
 will have a great deal to talk over : you must let me 
 slip out after a while and leave you to yourselves." 
 
 Caroline laughed a little : " Well, I don't know that 
 Anna Ludwell is a Californian any more than she is 
 some other things. She is remarkably like you, in one 
 thing: she is one type of the ' vanishing lady.' " 
 
 Anna arrived, as usual very perfect in dress and 
 very sweet and simple in manner with her light, 
 cool kiss on Caroline's cheek, her sensitive meeting 
 of the eyes. Nothing in the least was lost upon her 
 as to the beautiful old room they sat in, or that other 
 type of the vanishing lady pouring tea at her great- 
 grandmother's tea-table out of the Georgian silver 
 into white-and-gold cups of the Empire. It was not 
 the table or the silver or the room ; it was the soul 
 of the house that she felt, born of four generations of 
 gentle memories hearts that asked but a few things, 
 not for themselves alone, and were faithful to those 
 few. 
 
 Olivia went away and the two sat closer and looked 
 deeper and less shyly into each other's eyes. It seemed 
 to Caroline as if some slight, intangible veil or barrier 
 were gone. They met more nearly on a common and 
 
 355 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 personal plane. This need not be explained, although 
 it affected Caroline with a mild spiritual amazement 
 to realize that at last, now that all she had lived for 
 was ended, and she was no more than an empty seed- 
 pod sunning itself in a withered garden in the latter 
 days of November because it was a beautiful, 
 stately, sheltered garden and not the open, sun-dried 
 plain Anna no longer pitied her did not shrink 
 from contemplating her circumstances. No, it was 
 not worldliness; it was a feeling for backgrounds. 
 Our backgrounds that we are so unconscious of 
 how they matter to our friends, especially those who 
 have had a free choice of backgrounds for themselves ! 
 But the slight pause of wonder passed quickly in 
 mutual questions about the children. 
 
 "Tell me about Clare! if there is anything to 
 tell, except that she is prettier than ever and just as 
 joyous and natural." 
 
 "Clare is not joyous," Anna said, musing, with 
 averted eyes ; " and she is not as natural as she used 
 to be. We cannot always fathom our child in these 
 days : I think she has suffered." 
 
 "I have seen her suffer," said Caroline. "And 
 there was one other who suffered. I shall never for- 
 get his face as he lay there in that chance bedroom 
 beaten, ashamed, his happiness gone ; but no ex- 
 cuses, no levity, no sullenness, no defiance, no com- 
 plaints. All that was literally true of him, though I 
 did not think of it at the time." 
 
 " Oh, Dalby was always a ' good losing sport/ " 
 said Anna impatiently. 
 
 356 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " Ah, no ; it was more than that or why should 
 that impression of him haunt me ? I cannot stop think- 
 ing of him, though he has gone so completely out of 
 my life." 
 
 " He haunts us," said Anna. " Unfortunately he 
 has not gone out of our lives we cannot get him 
 out." 
 
 "That means, I suppose, that Clare has not for- 
 gotten?" 
 
 " She is silent, but she has not forgotten ; at least, 
 she refuses to think of any one else. Tom has given 
 them two years, to test their attachment to each 
 other." 
 
 " Do you think, at their age, young love requires 
 that sort of handling ? There might not be much left 
 to test after two years, and yet a beautiful thing have 
 perished." 
 
 " It was not beautiful at first you know that. If 
 it is real, it can bear chastening, even chastising." 
 
 "But not long, slow crushing! . . . Have you 
 anything against him now, or is it the past that can- 
 not be forgiven ? " 
 
 " Oh, we forgive, but what is he ? Clare is all we 
 have in the world : she is a representative child." 
 
 " But she is herself, too, and a very real self. Is it 
 that you compare him with others ? " 
 
 " Certainly we do. Clare might be the wife, to- 
 morrow, of a man whose life would be well worth liv- 
 ing mistress of large opportunities, and incidentally 
 of one or two of the old, great mansions of England." 
 
 (" Backgrounds again," thought Caroline.) 
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THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 " But if she does n't love this personage and does 
 love the poor boy she humbled so?" 
 
 " If it 's that, of course there is nothing to be done ; 
 but we must find if it is that." 
 
 " You speak like a good American mother. So, if 
 at the end of two years, we hear that they are en- 
 gaged?" 
 
 " You may assume it is that, and we have stepped 
 aside." 
 
 " I think you are so wise." 
 
 " To wait, you mean ? " 
 
 " To step aside." 
 
 " That is very well for you to say : both your 
 children married to suit your wishes." 
 
 Caroline smiled : "Not entirely. Don't you sup- 
 pose I had my dreams for my ' representative ' boy ? 
 But I can say already, it is better as it is. I think, 
 before those two years are up, you will be saying 
 the same yourself." 
 
 Whereupon the hostess entered, and soon after 
 Anna rose to take leave. 
 
 "May I always come when we are going back and 
 forth ? " 
 
 " They take us on the way to something better," 
 Caroline explained, smiling. 
 
 "Not better," her friend corrected, "only bigger 
 and more various." 
 
 " Well, the love of variousness passes and the 
 East is big enough for remnants of families. It is 
 very comfortable for old ladies." 
 
 "It's quite the right place for her " Anna ad- 
 358 
 
THE VALLEY ROAD 
 
 dressed her hostess, holding Caroline's hand : " she 
 never was at heart a pioneer. Adventures were 
 thrust upon her the most conservative woman that 
 ever lived." 
 
 " I don't know what adventures you mean ! Do 
 you call it adventurous, living fifteen years at Road- 
 side?" 
 
 " A desperate adventure ! " Anna confessed her 
 true sentiments at last. 
 
 The two women laughed like girls they hardly 
 knew why and embraced till next time. Naturally 
 they were more at ease together, for pride on one 
 side was gone, the vigilant pride of a wife in defense 
 of the life her husband is able to give her ; and on the 
 other, careful hesitations of all kinds not to wound 
 that pride or suggest comparisons. 
 
 Olivia and Caroline lived on in the peace of an un- 
 exacting companionship, which at times held no more 
 speech than if they had been two men ; again they 
 had long, satisfying orgies of talk ; they never knew 
 when to go to bed, and each felt a guilty relief if the 
 other went first and left her alone with a book for a 
 last luxurious hour before locking up and putting out 
 the lights. 
 
 Caroline had found a quite unlooked-for pleasure 
 in Mrs. Gladwyn's letters, supplementing Mary's 
 cheerful, safe, matter-of-fact reports on domestic af- 
 fairs Tom, of course, never wrote. Mrs. Gladwyn, 
 under Providence, was tenderly grateful to Tom who 
 had brought her child back to her and lodged her 
 safe under a good man's roof ; correspondingly she 
 
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 was grieved to think of Mrs. Scarth who had lost her 
 son. Her letters told exactly the little things Mary 
 was still too self-conscious with Tom's mother to 
 write. Mrs. Gladwyn had the courage of middle-age 
 and of her own period of expansive letter- writers; she 
 had no shyness about singing Tom's praises to his 
 mother across the seas. The correspondence became 
 a great bond between two women who might never 
 see each other, but whose lives were interlocked for- 
 ever through their children. Incidentally, it gave 
 Caroline a truer knowledge of the woman her son 
 had chosen. 
 
 THE END 
 
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A 
 
' 
 
461725 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY