m 
 
 m 
 
 m
 
 J
 
 ^
 
 DARRYLL GAP; 
 
 OE, 
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 BY 
 
 VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND. 
 
 But who can so forecast the years, 
 Or seek with gain his loss to match, 
 Or reach a hand through time to catch 
 
 The far-off interest of tears ? 
 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WILLIAM V. SPENCER, 
 
 203 WASHINGTON STREET. 
 
 1866.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, .by 
 
 WILLIAM V. SPENCER, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts 
 
 Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
 No. 4 Spring Lane. 
 
 Presswork by John Wilson and Son.
 
 TO 
 
 MY BOOK, AXD WITH IT ALL OUR MEMORIES 
 
 OF TWO SUMMERS AT THE 
 
 MOUNTAINS. 
 
 V. F. T.
 
 DAERYLL GAP; 
 
 OK, 
 
 WHETHER IT 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " AND so we are now really rich folks ! Just to think of it ! " 
 said the first voice, a young, eager, feminine one, pendulous be- 
 twixt wonder and exultation. 
 
 " I tell you, though, boys, won't it be fun to spread ourselves 
 on lunches at the Astor and Delmonico's ? " said the second 
 voice, with a certain gruffness all through it, and a chuckle 
 through the gruffness. 
 
 " Yes, father," subjoined Mrs. Darryll, more from that habit 
 of admonition which is apt to manifest itself in the mother of a 
 large household, than from any lack of appreciation of the good 
 fortune which had fallen so suddenly into the lap of her family. 
 " You'll have to keep a sharp lookout, or your boys and girls '11 
 make the money fly faster than you can bring it in. It's my 
 opinion that they'd use up a mint in a short time, if they were 
 free to get at it." 
 
 Mrs. Darryll's voice, about on a level with its sentiments and 
 general style of expression, was a fair interpretation of the wo- 
 man herself, a well-meaning, tolerably kind-hearted one, bound 
 up in a good many prejudices, with no great force of character, 
 a narrow range of living and feeling, and a good deal of un- 
 conscious selfishness. 
 
 1* (5)
 
 6 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 Whatsoever virtues she possessed flourished iu her domestic 
 atmosphere, for she was a devoted wife and mother ; but she 
 had not sympathies of heart or intellect wide enough to grasp 
 much outside of her family. 
 
 " I've no doubt," said Tom, whose years divided equally the 
 interval betwixt his second sister and third brother, "she'll keep 
 the old bag of coppers in a corner of the cupboard, and expect 
 we'll go to her regularly on training days for our allowance 
 of three cents to invest in gingerbread, molasses candy, and 
 peanuts." 
 
 There was a chorus of laughter among the boys, showing 
 that Tom's wit, at his mother's expense, was highly appreciated. 
 
 Andrew, the eldest of the brothers, slapped the other approv- 
 ingly on the back, and said, " That's jolly ! " which adjective 
 expressed with him a high sense of satisfaction ; and then Tom 
 was universally regarded as the wit of the family. 
 
 " Boys ! boys ! " said the head of the household, standing 
 with his back to the fire, and his hands behind him. Pie was 
 in such an immensely good humor to-night, that it was impos- 
 sible for him to put anything more than a mild flavor of objur- 
 gation in these monosyllables. 
 
 There he stood, in his small back parlor, a well enough 
 looking man, somewhat stout, but alert withal, good strong 
 features, and gray eyes, in which there was a shrewd twinkle, 
 and dark hair glazed with gray, for the owner was a little this 
 side or the other of his half century. 
 
 Ella, the second daughter, and first speaker, had expressed in 
 those words, " To think we are really rich people ! " the feeling 
 that was uppermost in the mind of John Darryll and each 
 member of his family. It carried with it an entirely new sen- 
 sation. No wonder they were a little dizzy and dazzled. 
 
 " It seems, somehow, too sudden and strange to be true, just 
 like a beautiful dream that one loses sight of the first moment 
 one wakes in the morning, or like those old, foolish, delightful 
 ' Arabian Nights,' with Aladdin's lamp shining through them 
 all. I used to draw a long breath, squatted down with my
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 7 
 
 book on my knees, before the fireplace in the old house, and 
 rub my eyes hard, and the beautiful visions would all vanish, 
 and there was nothing but the great black chimney, and the 
 crane with the hooks on it. Won't this grand fortune of ours 
 do the same, pa?" 
 
 I think if " one who was born blind," or any keen interpret- 
 er of the meaning and spirit of voices, had listened to each of 
 the family's, he would have chosen this as the one that suited 
 him best. A young voice, like the first speaker's, and with 
 some general likeness of tone betwixt them, clear, animated, 
 but with a certain steadiness and sweetness, which gave it an 
 individuality of its own amongst the others. 
 
 " I fancy not, my daughter." This expression was the ten- 
 derest in which Mr. Darryll ever indulged, the highest devel- 
 opment in speech, at least, of his paternal feeling. " I should 
 be likely to see that there was something more solid than the 
 lamp of a what-you-call-'em, at the bottom of my enter- 
 prises ! " rubbing his hands with a pleasant accession of self- 
 importance, and a very imperfect comprehension of his daugh- 
 ter's allusion. 
 
 "But Aladdin's lamp wasn't so much out of the way, after 
 all, for your enterprises have a decidedly ' oily ' foundation, 
 father ! " interposed here the wit of the family. 
 
 There was a laugh now, in which every one joined, for they 
 were all in a humor to enjoy any jest on the one topic of 
 interest, and were not disposed to be very critical respecting 
 the quality of the wit. 
 
 As these people are all assembled in family conclave, and 
 with that freedom of speech and manner which best reveals 
 one's individuality, there is no better time than the present 
 to introduce them to you. 
 
 Mr. John Darryll is the generic success of the nineteenth 
 century. He began life as a common chore boy on a farm, 
 coming of poor, but honest, homely stock. His ambition never 
 took kindly to farm work, though he owed to that his stub- 
 bornly healthful constitution. He married his wife, a fresh,
 
 8 DAERTLL GAP, OR 
 
 comely country girl, with no more fortune than himself; but 
 both were industrious and prudent, and John Darryll managed 
 with the toil of his hands to make a little home of his own, 
 and here his six boys and girls were born to him with one or 
 two years ranging betwixt their ages. 
 
 After a while he sold his small farm, invested his little for- 
 tune in a dry goods and grocery store in a neighboring town, 
 and the next ten or twelve years he had a sharp struggle to 
 meet the requirements of his growing family, and gradually 
 enlarge his stock of goods. 
 
 At last he grew sick .of such a " one horse concern," as he 
 inelegantly termed his business, sold out, and came to the city 
 to try his fortunes. It was a dangerous experiment for a man 
 in his forties, and with so many young mouths depending upon 
 him for bread. He tried several sorts of business, agencies, 
 clerkships, and the like, and could only, as Mrs. Darryll was 
 forever assuring her children, " keep his head above water." 
 
 In the luckiest hour of his life, however, as he at least regard- 
 ed it, he was induced to close up a bargain for a tract of land in 
 Pennsylvania, which a business acquaintance let him have " for 
 a mere song," as the former was anxious to go west. The 
 whole property covered a narrow valley, choked in between two 
 high, rugged hills, and was known thenceforward by'the name 
 of " Darryll Gap." When, however, several years more went 
 by, and nobody took the acres, Mr. John Darryll thought that 
 he had made a poor investment, even at the low price at which 
 he obtained them, and fretted over the two or three hundred 
 dollars that were buried in the Gap. 
 
 But one day petroleum oil was discovered on a creek in the 
 very heart of the acres. That discovery sent up the land in a 
 few days a thousand fold. Experiments proved it fine boring 
 territory. A company was organized immediately. The wind 
 of fortune shifted at last, and sent favoring gales towards John 
 Darryll. In less than three weeks after the petroleum was dis- 
 covered on Darryll Gap, he disposed of it for two hundred and 
 fifty thousand dollars. That was several years ago, and the oil
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 9 
 
 speculation had not yet reached its climacteric. If he had 
 waited a couple later, he would probably have realized half a 
 million from the sale of his " piece of land," as he had begun 
 rather contemptuously to term it. And so on the evening of 
 the day in which the sale had transpired, Mr. Darryll, a good 
 deal excited and dizzy with his sudden elevation, stood in the 
 midst of the family, who had been informed, from the begin- 
 ning, of the successive steps of his good fortune. His wife, a 
 blooming matron, sat near him with her knitting lying in her 
 lap, quite too much excited this evening for even such play- 
 work as finishing off a mitten. Her features still retained 
 something of the comely freshness which attracted her husband 
 in the days when he drove the cows every night to her father's 
 barn-yard ; and her dark abundant hair, which was the vanity 
 of her girlhood, did" not necessitate a cap yet, though it was 
 slightly sanded with gray. 
 
 The boys and girls muster in equal force, half a dozen in all ; 
 the former in different periods of adolescence hearty, healthy, 
 with heads that promise well undar the right sort of develop- 
 ment, but with a coarseness of speech and manner, a kind of 
 " Young America " assertion, which, disagreeable as it was, 
 would, one charitably hoped, be outgrown with completed man- 
 hood. There was no doubt that all these were bright and 
 capable youths, and each one promised to share in the general 
 good looks of the family. 
 
 Agnes, the youngest of the girls, was just outside her fifteenth 
 birthday. Jerusha, the eldest, was almost twenty-two ; and 
 Ella was nineteen, with her brother Andrew a year her senior, 
 as Guy was of his sister Agnes, while Thomas was late in his 
 teens ; and the whole family from the father downward had a 
 tendency to look younger than its years. 
 
 Ella was supposed to be rather the beauty of the family. 
 She had more bloom than either the eldest or the youngest sister, 
 with her mother's features and brilliant eyes. She had a good 
 deal of outward brightness aud swift perception, and a certain 
 peremptoriness of manner which always demanded as a right 
 something which others conceded to it.
 
 10 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 Agnes, in some sense the pet of the family, was pretty much 
 her mother over again, with larger opportunities, both social arid 
 educational, and with somewhat more emphasis of character. 
 
 Jerusha, the eldest girl, had been named in memory of her 
 grandmother ; but partly because the first syllable gave it so old- 
 fashioned a sound, and partly because of indolence, it had been 
 elided, and she was universally known in the family, and out of 
 it, as "Rusha," the name at least having the merit of not being 
 common. She had a clear, pale complexion, dark brownish 
 eyes, wonderful at times for their beauty, and the mouth would 
 have been too large had it not been for its vivid color. This 
 girl was not like any of her brothers and sisters. Faults and 
 weaknesses she had, like all the others, and the atmosphere of 
 her home, the daily tone and spirit of the household, was not 
 one to stimulate her finest and best possibilities. But she had 
 deeper enthusiasms, loftier appreciations and ideals, than any of 
 the rest. Her intellect was of a finer, higher order than any 
 other member of the family's, the eldest daughter being regarded 
 as a little of a " blue stocking," or a little romantic, or both. 
 
 " And now, pa," said Ella, in her bright, peremptory way, 
 " what are you going to do with all this money? " 
 
 " O, I presume that I shall find ways to employ it," trying 
 to appear dignified, and succeeding in being important and 
 pompous. 
 
 " But people will expect something of us now, you know, pa, 
 very different from what we have been." 
 
 " Of cotirse they will, pa," chimed in Agnes, who was sway- 
 ing backwards and forwards in her low rocking-chair. " We 
 must make a show with it ! " 
 
 " That's it ; put the thing pat," interposed Guy, the youngest 
 of the brothers. 
 
 " "What sort of a show, then?" asked Mr. Darryll, looking 
 round pleasant and patronizing upon his assembled household. 
 
 Ella undertook to explain. " Agnes is right, pa. It won't do 
 for us to live in this miserable hand-to-mouth way any longer." 
 
 And the speaker looked around the family sitting-room, with
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 11 
 
 its neat and comfortable, but by no means elegant furniture, 
 with eyes that the new fortune had greatly enlightened as to its 
 shabbiness. 
 
 " We must have a new house up town, or on Fifth Avenue, 
 and it must be furnished in the latest style, with velvet carpets, 
 and tall mirrors, and rosewood furniture, and all that sort of 
 thing. In short," waxing energetic as she proceeded, " every- 
 body will hear that you have suddenly become a nabob, and I 
 think we'd better cut a dash at the beginning don't you, 
 Rusha?" 
 
 " Ye-es," answered the eldest sister, her imagination revel- 
 ling, after the fashion of youth, in a dazzling perspective of 
 splendor and luxury, and yet not quite enjoying the way in 
 which Ella had " put" their transition from one life to another. 
 
 " And I'll cut old Holmes and his counter from this hour," 
 stoutly asseverated Guy, who was errand boy in a grocery 
 store, and he rose up and strutted about the room with a great 
 accession of importance, beginning to realize the fact that he 
 was now a rich man's son. 
 
 " And pictures, and a library, and a conservatory 0, pa, 
 will it not be our Aladdin's palace after all ! " It was Rusha 
 who spoke again, the young, eager, delighted soul, just as much 
 rapt up in the dazzling visions that this wealth conjured as any 
 of the others, only seeking its chief enjoyment on somewhat 
 higher levels than they. 
 
 " The sooner we are out of this life the better," continued 
 Ella. " How I shall enjoy seeing some of our neighbors stare ! 
 only, of course, we must drop our old associates. It will never 
 do to carry them into the best society, which, of course, will 
 open its doors to us now." 
 
 "But must I give up Gracie Thorpe too, sister?" interposed 
 Agnes, with a faint little note of regret in her voice, as though 
 this sacrifice of her friendship to her fortunes was a side of the 
 picture that she had not before contemplated. 
 
 " No, indeed," said Rusha, fervently ; " be loyal to your one 
 friendship, even if your father has made a fortune."
 
 12 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Ella will be the one that'll put on airs. Won't she spread 
 it on thick, though, boys?" laughed Andrew. 
 
 His sister was quite equal to defending herself, and begged 
 him to remember that whatever he had been, he was to turn 
 over a new leaf now. 
 
 " And do let a fellow come in for his share," said Guy, the 
 youngest of the brothers. " I move that we keep horses, not 
 merely for the girls to go shopping and making calls with, but 
 to let us fellows show you what horseback riding is ! " 
 
 " I expect," said his father, who enjoyed his children's " non- 
 sense," as he called it to them, because it served in some sense 
 to give tangibility to his wealth, " that Guy will be the fast 
 young man of the family ! " 
 
 Tom insisted that he was going to see something of the world. 
 Everything in New York had got to be an old story to him. 
 
 " Perhaps we'll go to Europe one of these days O, Tom ! " 
 exclaimed Rusha, with that indrawn breath of hers that was 
 her strongest exclamation point of enjoyment ; " what must it 
 be to feast one's self on those treasures of art, to see Mont Blanc, 
 find sail down the Mediterranean, and wander among the ruins 
 of old Rome, and enrich one's whole soul with a sight of that 
 old world (hat would be new to us." 
 
 " And then," interposed Ella, " it's extremely fashionable to 
 go abroad. 'When I was in Paris,' has a distinguished sound ; " 
 and she poised that pretty head of hers in a way that would 
 have been amusing if it had not been sad also. 
 
 " There, boys, didn't I tell you so? Just see the airs now ! " 
 said Andrew, with a chuckle, hitting his brother Tom under 
 the ribs. 
 
 Ella turned on him this time with a good deal of vehemence, 
 and she did not confine her expostulations to himself, but made 
 them include the trio of brothers. 
 
 " I do hope you'll remember, all of you boys, to make some 
 improvement in your manners, and leave your vulgar slang 
 phrases behind you with your poverty. Do, if it's possible, try 
 and be gentlemen."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 13 
 
 " I intend to be my own master," replied Tom, " gentleman 
 or no gentleman. It'll be fun not to have old Jerome scolding 
 and cussing because I haven't got the office fire going in time. 
 Nothing to do now." 
 
 " Boys," said Rusha, " your education has been neglected, 
 you know. Now I think you'd better go to work the first thing 
 and improve yourselves prepare for college, for instating." 
 
 " Time enough to think about that next year," added Andrew. 
 " After a fellow's been a slave all his life, he likes to have a lit- 
 tle taste of laziness and fun." 
 
 " That's so ! " fervently indorsed Tom. 
 
 " And, pa," piped up Agnes, " shall we really have a car- 
 riage and horses to ride up to Stewart's and out to Central 
 Park, and a driver too, with a black band round his hat, and 
 one of those odd cloaks with the funny little capes like deep 
 ruffles?" 
 
 " Of course we shall," said Ella, without waiting for the pa- 
 ternal affirmative. " And, pa,jiow you've got the money, the 
 sooner you get out of this place the better," with a gesture ex- 
 pressive of unutterable contempt at the room and its appoint- 
 ments. " I really want to knol^what it will be to live in a 
 grand house, and keep a carriage, and have servants to wait 
 upon one, and plenty of money to spend." 
 
 " So do I, quite as much as you, Ella," said the elder sister's 
 voice, with a little natural quaver of gravity in it. Rusha was 
 always in earnest about whatever she said. " Only I want we 
 should take our new life upon us with grace and dignity, and 
 not have people to whom riches is no novelty quietly sneer 
 about us as ' mushroom aristocracy.' Don't let us make ourselves 
 ridiculous in any way." 
 
 " Of course not, Rusha. But I've no doubt that there will 
 be plenty of ' sour grapes ' talk about us. However, I think I 
 can stand my ground," looking defiant and self-assertive. 
 
 " But," interposed Mrs. Darryll at last, for the juvenile por- 
 tion of the family had monopolized all the talk during the last 
 hour, while the elders had listened in a kind of half-pleased, 
 2
 
 14 DAERYLL GAP, OE 
 
 half-bewilldered acquiescence to the plans and visions of the fu- 
 ture, " but you know I haven't been used to this sort of style 
 that you talk about, and I shouldn't know how to preside at din- 
 ner parties, and give swarees don't you call them, Rusha? I 
 should make a balk of it." 
 
 " O, ma, those things will come in naturally enough don't 
 be alarmed," said Ella, comforting and patronizing. 
 
 " I saw a book on etiquette down town at a stand ; I'll bring 
 it home for the edification of the family ; and we'll all take 
 turns studying it," laughed Andrew, getting up and stretching 
 his limbs. 
 
 " I say, boys, who'll be the lady of the family? " This ques- 
 tion was from Guy, surveying his trio of sisters critically. 
 
 " Our Ella will carry it off with a high hand. Won't she sail 
 round, though, under diamonds, and feathers, and a rustle of 
 silk ? whew ! " added Andrew, this closing monosyllable giv- 
 ing tenfold emphasis to what went before. 
 
 "But," said Tom, with whom his eldest sister was a favorite, 
 " after all, Rusha '11 be the real, genuine article, boys. She 
 won't have so many airs and flourishes, maybe ; but somehow 
 the big house, and the carriage, and all those things '11 seem to 
 come natural to her, just as if she'd been used to 'em all her 
 life see, now, if I ain't right ! " 
 
 Tom had his reward, although it did not come with any 
 words ; but Rusha turned and smiled on him, with such a grate- 
 ful appreciation of a compliment, whose flattering delicacy he 
 himself only half comprehended, that Tom felt doubly fortified 
 in his opinion. 
 
 Ella looked the least bit aggrieved. " See if I don't do credit 
 to my new home when I get there ! " she said. 
 
 And in a certain and outward sense, she would. There was 
 a great deal of adaptation about the girl, and she had that 
 quick perception and self-reliance which would avail her vastly 
 in her new position and circumstances. 
 
 "When we get there," duplicated Andrew "that's the 
 rub ; the governor hasn't promised to buy the big house yet."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 15 
 
 " 0, but you will, pa ! you won't disgrace your family by 
 keeping us in this horrible hole any longer, now you've got the 
 money to put us in a decent one ? " 
 
 " Why, you said that it was a really charming house when 
 we moved up here last spring from the old place," answered 
 Mr. Darryll, without any definite intention of denying his daugh- 
 ter's request, but only because it gave him a pleasant sense of 
 power, to be appealed to on so large a scale. 
 
 " But we were poor folks then. Don't you see the differ- 
 ence, pa? " 
 
 " I should think he ought to, after the way his boys and girls 
 have gone on to-night," interposed Mrs. Darryll. 
 
 " O, well, mother, let 'em alone. You and I were young 
 folks once, and built our castles, too," rubbing his hands briskly 
 together, as John Darryll never did, except when he was in 
 a mood of extreme good-nature. 
 
 " But, pa, we must have the house, you know ; our hearts 
 are all set upon that." It was Rusha speaking here. 
 
 " Well, I'll see, if I have time, about hunting up some real 
 estate broker to-morrow. One of your big houses up town will 
 make a hole in the money, and your father isn't worth a mint." 
 
 " Yes, but he is worth two hundred and fifty thousand. Just 
 think of it ! " 
 
 Ella's figures sounded very large and extremely pleasant in 
 the ears of all her family, and her father evidently considered 
 them a convincing argument, for he made no reply, and they 
 all knew that the " house up town " was gained. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll drew a long sigh. " I must say, one thing '11 
 seem good to me," she said, in a tone of mild self-gratulation 
 " I shan't have to spend all my Saturdays darnin' stockings. 
 I've dreaded for years to see 'em come in from the wash. 
 Growin' boys are so hard on heels and toes ! " 
 
 There was a chorus of shouts. " If I was in Japan, now," 
 said Ella, " I should know that speech came from ma ! That's 
 her greatest source of delight in our new fortune." 
 
 " And do you remember, ma," said Rusha, " the old silk you
 
 16 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 had turned and dyed for me when I was sixteen ? It was your 
 wedding-dress ; and how proud I was of it, for it was my first 
 silk ! If we could only have looked forward to this time ! But 
 I wonder if I shall ever be prouder and happier, in the new ele- 
 gant dresses I expect to have, than I was in that old one ! " 
 
 It was Rusha's words and sentiments which always struck 
 the highest or tenderest chords in the family heart. A little 
 tremulousness went over the mother's face at this allusion ; 
 then the tears came. " Ah, John ! " she said, with a sort of 
 long sob betwixt all the words " do you remember that night 
 we were married, and how my father surprised and overjoyed 
 us both by putting a ptrse in my hand with a hundred dollars 
 in it, to set us up in housekeeping ; and with what you had 
 to add to it, it made the little home down there by the green 
 look real snug? "We had happy times then. I wonder if they'll 
 be better in the big house we're to have ! " 
 
 They were all touched, more or less, by the mother's words. 
 A new expression came over the father's hard, shrewd face. 
 " Well, Lydia," he said softly and kindly, " we've had a good 
 many years of hard pulling, and we've weathered some pretty 
 tough squalls together ; it's only fair you and I should have a 
 little comfort at last." 
 
 I think any wise, true soul, who estimated life and the things 
 that belong to it at their real value, would have been unspeak- 
 ably saddened at the spirit in which this household received 
 the riches which had so suddenly fallen into its possession a 
 thing to take delight in, to rejoice over, most certainly, but 
 also to make one grateful and humble as before God. 
 
 But here there was no thought of Him in all the new joy and 
 exultation no sense of vastly increased responsibilities of 
 talents given, to be required again no entering into the sol- 
 emn depths and meaning of those words, " Mine own, with 
 usury ! " 
 
 The spirit in which this household received its new gift was 
 utterly of the earth, earthy. The living in a fine house, the 
 " making a show," the new importance which it should give
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 17 
 
 them among men and women, was their chief thought and 
 delight, which was weak and vulgar enough at the best, and at 
 the worst was selfishness and sin. 
 
 Alas for those boys, coming up into manhood alas for 
 those girls, in the blossoming of girl and womanhood, with the 
 new power and the new influences for good thrown suddenly 
 into their unused hands, and with no thought beyond the pleas- 
 ures, and luxuries, and idlenesses in which it should indulge 
 them ! 
 
 If John Darryll, the " oil speculator," the man whom they 
 said on " 'Change " had done a " big thing," had gathei'ed his 
 family about him that night, and thanked God for this new 
 wealth, how different it would all have been ! 
 
 But amid the general rejoicing there was no thought of a 
 thank-offering to the Giver no purpose of doing good with 
 the new power and influence as each " found opportunity." 
 And seeing of how low, and coarse, and material a sort was the 
 spirit in which the Darrylls took their wealth, and the use they 
 intended to make of it, one could not but wonder whether the 
 money would prove a blessing or a curse to them. 
 
 Rusha presented the brightest feature in the picture. In 
 almost every speech of hers that evening was manifested a finer 
 and loftier spirit than in the others. But perhaps she would 
 never find any greater enjoyment in this wealth than in the 
 new conditions of art, the new forms of intellectual and aesthetic 
 cultivation, in which she could now indulge. 
 
 This was vastly more commendable than the mere sensuous 
 gratifications and petty ambitions in which her brothers and 
 sisters took delight. But would Rusha's influence end there? 
 Had she, with all her finer feelings and deeper enthusiasms, 
 convictions strong enough to withstand the general influences 
 of her family, and of the social atmosphere about her? She 
 was young, impulsive, full of faults and weaknesses, and her 
 early training had never stimulated or braced the highest quali- 
 ties of the girl. Was it not probable that, in the pride and 
 glamour of the new life, she too would become a weak, selfish, 
 2*
 
 18 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 fashionable woman ? And for those boys, one trembled for 
 them. It was at just the most dangerous time of their lives 
 that the money had fallen to them ; temptation and allurement 
 of every sort would now open to their youth, and there was in 
 their father's house no safeguard of prayer, no God in all their 
 thoughts. 
 
 And yet John Darryll secretly believed himself full as good, 
 or a little better than most men. In a general way, and after 
 the fashion of the world, he was honest" in all his dealings, and 
 meant to do right ; and alas ! how many of those successful oil 
 speculators, who have reaped harvests of fortunes during the 
 last years, were better or wiser than this man or his household ?
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " WE have had new neighbors during your absence. Fletcher," 
 said the young lady, passing her brother his second cup of 
 coffee, just replenished from a costly but old-fashioned service 
 so much of the latter as to give it a certain sacredness of 
 family tradition and association. 
 
 " Neighbors, Angeline ! What a flavor of the country, and 
 of homely, primitive ways and times that word has ! I thought 
 it had grown obsolete here in New York." 
 
 " I believe you are right ; I used the word for want of a 
 better." 
 
 " And in which house are these new ' neighbors ' of ours 
 domiciled?" 
 
 " In the brown stone one, almost directly opposite." 
 
 " Who and what are they ? " 
 
 " Mushroom aristocracy," answered the other lady, who % sat 
 at the table, and who was both sensible and satirical. 
 
 The lady behind the coffee-urn smiled. " It's true, Fletcher, 
 as Sicily's severest irony always is. The head of the family 
 has made a fortune in some lucky oil speculation, and it's quite 
 apparent from various indications that the first article of their 
 faith in money is to make a display with it. These people do 
 on all occasions. They keep a carriage, and a groom, and a 
 butler, and all that sort of thing; but all this sets on them 
 with an air of freshness." 
 
 " You and Sicily must have observed them narrowly ! " 
 
 " How can one help it," said the last-named sister, " when 
 one lives opposite? And then it's sort of refreshing to see 
 these people, and how they carry the new fortune." 
 
 "It must -take away one's breath a little, this stepping at
 
 20 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 once into riches ; but after all, one can bear it well enough, if 
 the head be sound, and above all, if the heart be good." 
 
 "I'm afraid," said Sicily, without any irony this time, " that 
 there's a little weakness in both, in the case of the people oppo- 
 site. The mother, a good-looking matron on the whole, but a 
 little dowdy and overdressed, gets into her carriage every morn- 
 ing with an air of self-consciousness that would not be possible 
 with a lady who had kept a carriage and a groom all her life. 
 The father is a stout man, a little beyond his prime, with a 
 shrewd, business sort of a face, and a little pompousness of gait, 
 that I fancy is an accessory of his fortune. Then there are 
 several boys, that smoke cigars and swing ornamental canes 
 with a flourish, and I think bid fair to become fast young men." 
 
 " The right sort of experience will take all that out of them. 
 However, it's the most dangerous period of their lives to tide 
 them over," answered the young man, speaking more to himself 
 than to his sisters. 
 
 " In a different way, it is hardly less so for the girls, I think," 
 replied the lady who had last spoken. 
 
 " There are girls, then ? " 
 
 " Yes ; young, blooming, pretty ; I've made out three of 
 them, who usually go out with mamma. The youngest is a 
 little girl still, with a face after her mother's pattern, adding 
 somewhat more of force and refinement, and the others are in 
 the early blossom of womanhood, neither out of their teens, I 
 should think pretty, showy girls, who doubtless will spend 
 papa's money, and be the finest illustration in dress and man- 
 ners of his new wealth." 
 
 " Fletcher," said the elder sister, with a little^ smile, " doesn't 
 this breakfast-talk of ours sound very much like gossip ? " 
 
 " I was about to remark again that you must have established 
 a very persistent espionage from your chamber windows, to be 
 so well enlightened with regard to the characters and habits of 
 your neighbors." 
 
 " Now, Fletcher, who is ironical ? " said the younger sister, 
 with a little pout which sat prettily on the red bloom of her lips. 
 
 "Was it I, or the truth, that made the irony, Sicily? But
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 21 
 
 an interest in others may have its rise in some of the kindliest 
 feelings of our nature, and whether this talk of ours be gossip, 
 depends upon several things the spirit in which it goes on, 
 and to whom it is addressed." 
 
 " And then, how can one live opposite people for five months, 
 as we have, and have daily glimpses of them, without reaching 
 some conclusions regarding their breeding, characters, and so on ? " 
 
 " Quite true, Sicily ; and people who have made fortunes of 
 a sudden, and ascended from comparative poverty into riches, 
 are interesting. One likes to watch the individualities crop 
 out, to observe how they carry their wealth, and in what ways 
 and to what extent their fortunes improve them. And with our 
 peculiar national development, and the new avenues of enter- 
 prise laid open here to all men, our American people are on 
 every hand jumping into fortunes. How will these men who 
 have made their ' pile ' how will their wives, and sons and 
 daughters, use this new power placed in their hands, is a ques- 
 tion which has vast meanings and relations. Will they, as a 
 class, do any good with their wealth ? Will they make a thank- 
 offering to God of any portion of it? Will it make them 
 stronger, nobler, better men and women because their spheres 
 of influence are so much enlarged because they touch life on 
 so many sides? Or will the voice of their soul be the old one 
 ' I will pull down my barns and build greater ' ? " He mur- 
 mured over the last words to himself, as he pushed back his 
 chair from the table. 
 
 These three comprised, with a couple of domestics, the family 
 of Fletcher Rochford. He was at this time, at least, thirty-three 
 years old, a physician, a man of fine talents, of wide and varied 
 cultivation, for he had had large opportunities of study and 
 travel. His father, engaged in commerce, had been regarded 
 as a rich man in his day, although he could hardly have been 
 so in the present one ; but he was a liberal and intelligent 
 man, and spared no expense in the cultivation of his sons and 
 daughters. 
 
 Mrs. Rochford was a woman of unusual graces of mind and 
 heart ; but she died before her sou had graduated, although she
 
 22 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 lived long enough to impart the lasting influences of her fine and 
 forcible character to all her children, and each one would have 
 been different without just such a mother. 
 
 After he had studied his profession, the young physician went 
 abroad, and was summoned home the third year by the sudden 
 death of his father. 
 
 And from that time Fletcher Rochford had, in some sense, 
 taken the place of his parent to his sisters. There had always 
 existed among the members of this family a singularly deep 
 and beautiful tenderness, and as they could not endure the pros- 
 pect of separation, and as the brother's profession made it 
 almost a necessity that he should not locate in the old county 
 town of his birth, the young people removed to New York. 
 
 Dr. Rochford was ardently attached to his profession, espe- 
 cially to certain branches of surgery, and his skill in these 
 afforded him a practice almost unparalleled in the case of so 
 young a man. At the close of his fifth year in New York, he 
 again visited Europe, and was absent somewhat less than a 
 year, engaged in investigations and discoveries more or less 
 intimately connected with his profession, and the talk at the 
 breakfast-table transpired on the third morning after Dr. Roch- 
 ford's return. 
 
 His sisters Angeline and Sicily had only a faint family like- 
 ness to each other. Angeline was seven and Sicily nine years 
 their brother's junior. Both had the fine family features, with 
 the bright eyes and delicate bloom of the lips. Angeline's eyes 
 were, however, like her brother's, of a gray, luminous brown, 
 and Sicily had her father's keen bine ones. 
 
 The sisters differed, too, in character. Nobody would be 
 likely to know either well without loving her. Angeline's was 
 a strong, sweet, womanly nature ; Sicily was bright, impulsive, 
 with a natural gift for satire that her kindly heart tried to dis- 
 cipline, and that played usually harmless as heat lightning about 
 her talk. 
 
 Both of the sisters were eminently fitted to adorn society, for 
 to their cultivation and varied accomplishments they united 
 social gifts of no ordinary kind. But they both had, too, their
 
 T ETHER IT PAID. 23 
 
 mother's home tastes, and found beneath their own roof their 
 highest satisfaction. Books and art in various forms absorbed 
 much of their time. And then they were the dispensers of a 
 large amount of unobtrusive charities charity of that sort 
 which requires personal cognizance of its beneficiaries, and 
 which therefore goes the farthest and is the most helpful. 
 
 So, to a large degree, both of the young ladies abjured fash- 
 ionable society, but they had an inner circle of friends of the 
 best sort men and women earnest, cultivated, of real worth 
 of heart and mind. 
 
 I have not left Fletcher Rochford to the last because I re- 
 garded him as the least important member of the family. Nei- 
 ther inside of it, where his word was law, nor in the world 
 where he moved in varied relations among men and women, 
 was he so estimated. As for his sisters, they both regarded 
 him with a sort of idolatrous affection ; indeed, few brothers 
 have been what this one had in care and tenderness since the 
 day of their father's death. 
 
 In person he was rather tall, slender-limbed, with a strong, 
 manly face, but very far from a hand-some one. Near-sighted, 
 he was in the habit of wearing spectacles, through which one 
 only caught occasionally the flash of those gray, dark eyes. 
 The general habit of Fletcher Rochford' s face was grave ; but 
 his smile, if it once came, entered your heart like sunlight. 
 Naturally of a fiery temper, and, he said, of a domineering 
 and exacting spirit, these qualities had been modified and 
 sweetened by deep Christian convictions and life. 
 
 Fletcher Rochford had certainly some peculiar temptations 
 to intellectual pride and inordinate self-esteem, but his faith, and 
 the daily life he lived " as unto God," kept him in great meas- 
 ure from what would probably otherwise bave been his " beset- 
 ting sins." 
 
 Have I made him clear to you this man of strong, keen, 
 cultivated mind, of broad and generous sympathies, all that was 
 in him harmonized by his simple, vital Christianity? 
 
 In their style of living, the Rochfords were extremely unos- 
 tentatious. The tastes of the whole family were of that simple,
 
 24 DABBYLL GAP, OK 
 
 quiet sort which avoids all display. So far as was possible in 
 a city, they conserved old home habits and style of living ; but 
 there was a fine harmony in the appointments of every room 
 which would have pleased the eyes of an artist. Pictures, 
 bronzes, statuettes, made color and grace everywhere. There 
 was a small conservatory, where birds sang, and which made 
 a bit of summer through every winter, and pretty brackets in 
 corners, and baskets over which vines and mosses trailed, and 
 paintings, gems of color and bloom, feeding the eye and educat- 
 ing the taste into a finer and deeper enjoyment of all the beauty 
 which its Maker's hand has scattered broadcast upon the Avorld. 
 
 " O, Fletcher ! you don't know, you dear old fellow, half how 
 good it seems to get you back here again ! " exclaimed Sicily 
 Rochford, in her pretty, impulsive fashion, as her brother rose 
 up from the table, and turned to the mantel to examine a small 
 box of geological specimens, which he had disinterred from 
 one of his trunks the night before. 
 
 "Does it, my dear girl?" bending down and kissing both 
 cheeks. " I bear you witness that there has not been a morn- 
 ing nor evening in the whole three hundred and sixty-five in 
 which I have been absent from you, that I have not, in spirit, 
 sat down at this table with you and Angeline." 
 
 ,*' And during any one of those three hundred and sixty-five 
 mornings and evenings, if you had walked suddenly in, you 
 would have found plate and napkin laid for you in your old seat 
 as they were this morning," said the elder sister. " We kept 
 that back, though, in all our letters, to tell you on your return." 
 
 The doctor had removed his spectacles, and there was a 
 sudden flash and melting of his eyes. 
 
 " O, Angeline ! " There was a little pause here. " If you 
 had written me that, girls, added to all you did say, and my 
 inexpressible longing to see you, I doubt whether I should not 
 have taken the next steamer for home." 
 
 " And missed your sail on the Nile and your sight of the 
 Pyramids ! " interposed Sicily. 
 
 " Even so, for a sight of your dear faces," drawing both of 
 these close together, and holding them within his two palms
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 25 
 
 until the girls cried out that he was pinching their cheeks 
 unmercifully. 
 
 "But," said Augeliue, "you will never be quite Fletcher 
 again until you get rid of some of that tan which makes you 
 look like an East Indian and O, Sicily, here is a gray hair ! " 
 running up her soft fingers among the thick brown locks. 
 
 " It is not the first one, O, Angeline. You know we come 
 of a race whose locks grow white early." 
 
 " Yes, and I read in Godey's Lady's Book the other day that 
 gray hairs were ornamental," said Sicily. 
 
 "Then I shall cherish mine. Well, girls, what are your 
 plans for this morning?" 
 
 " They are briefly told. You are to have the easy chair by 
 the grate-fire in the sitting-room, and Sicily and I are to sit by 
 you, and hear the rest of your adventures in Rome and your 
 ascent of Mount Vesuvius." 
 
 " And do you know," interpolated Sicily, with her little 
 bright twinkle of a laugh, " that it struck me this morning 
 at breakfast as absurd enough to find, after a whole year's 
 absence, and with so much to hear and tell both on Fletcher's 
 side and on ours, that we could find nothing better to talk of 
 than the people who live opposite, with whom we have never 
 exchanged a syllable whose names even we do not know ! " 
 
 " The fact might suggest some interesting discussion in men- 
 tal philosophy, but we will not enter that field this morning." 
 
 " I hope not," said Sicily, making a wry face out of her fair 
 one. " I want you to carry us into physical, not metaphysical, 
 scenery for the present." 
 
 He laughed, pinched her cheek, and sat down, running his 
 fingers through his hair, as was a habit of his, and recalling his 
 journey through Italy. 
 
 Just then Angeline brought her father's Bible, and laid it on 
 her brother's knee. 
 
 " We have a double reason to read and give thanks now," 
 she said, her hand dwelling a moment fondly on his shoulder. 
 And he knew that it was for his sake she said it. 
 3
 
 26 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 As a general thing, people ascend very smoothly and natu- 
 rally into good fortunes. It is much harder and slower to learn 
 how to bear and use poverty than it is wealth. 
 
 The Darrylls formed no exception to this rule ; and in a very 
 little while that sense of novelty in contemplating their wealth, 
 which incarnated itself in Ella's " To think we are rich people 
 now ! " had quite worn oif. Riches seemed indeed, the natural 
 element of these people, in which they could disport themselves 
 as smoothly as fish in waters, and the memory of the old days 
 of anxiety and comparative poverty grew to each member of 
 the family very much " like a dream when one awaketh." 
 
 Paterfamilias had invested a considerable slice of his for- 
 tune in a five-story brown stone palace, on one of the most 
 fashionable streets up town. The upholstering was of the very 
 latest style damask and velvet, gilt and rosewood a little 
 too showy, perhaps, for people who liked quiet tones, but iu 
 very good taste after all everything of this sort being referred 
 to the decision of the elder sisters, and the whole appointments 
 forming a kind of compromise betwixt the tastes of the two 
 Rusha's inclining always to dark, plain tones in everything, and 
 Ella's to higher and more salient ones. 
 
 For the rest, they kept their fine carriage, their blood horses, 
 their liveried coachman. They had servants, and silver, and 
 whatsoever else they regarded as indispensable to illustrate their 
 new wealth and importance. Mrs. Darryll rustled in brocades 
 and point lace. These seemed to justify the air which she felt 
 it incumbent on her to cultivate in the new home, whose honors 
 she always did with a little inward trepidation. 
 
 It was an easy matter, of course, for the whole family to
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 27 
 
 obtain the " entree " of the best society, as they termed the 
 fashionable people who called in carriages and left cards for 
 soirees. 
 
 Ella affiliated at once with all the gayeties and excitements of 
 fashionable life. She fairly radiated at balls, operas, and grand 
 parties, and always proved herself equal to the occasion. She 
 was of just the material of which belles are made dashing, 
 showy, vivacious. Her dresses gave promise of equalling in 
 number and style Queen Elizabeth's traditional wardrobe, and 
 were always, from bonnet-string to .shoe-tie, of the latest and 
 most expensive sort. 
 
 With the elder sister it was somewhat different. That she 
 enjoyed to the full, as was natural to her age and circumstances, 
 this new life of elegance and luxury, could not be for a moment 
 disputed. Who would not? The riches that enable one to touch 
 life on so many new sides, that open to it so many new ave- 
 nues of beauty and enjoyment, are pleasant and to be desired. 
 Jerusha Darryll had her diamonds, her fine laces, her multiform 
 and costly dresses, like her sister. She joined more or less in 
 the gayeties of the season, and the circle amid which she was 
 thrown ; but after all, there was a difference. Ella was always 
 " raving," as her brother Andrew, somewhat contemptuously, 
 termed her chatter, about the opera. Rusha's highest enjoy- 
 ment was in pictures and sculpture, above all in the little alcove 
 library, with its dark-grained cases of books, and its pearly- 
 tinted walls hung with little gems of color and fine engravings, 
 where she passed with her books several hours of every day. 
 
 Ella dabbled in French because it was fashionable. Rusha 
 had several masters, and devoted herself to varied forms of 
 study, simply for the love of it. 
 
 Agnes aspired to "come out" as soon as they were estab- 
 lished in their new home ; but this was overruled by her sisters, 
 and the eldest daughter represented to her parents in such forci- 
 ble terms the importance to their youngest daughter of strict 
 devotion to study during the next three or four years, that her 
 father resolutely placed Agnes at a day-school, and her mother 
 insisted on a prompt attendance.
 
 28 DAERTLL . GAP, OB 
 
 The best thing about the girl was, that she was loyal, through 
 all their change of fortunes, to the favorite playfellow of humbler 
 days, fortified in this devotion by her elder sister, although Ella 
 more than once insinuated that it was best now to ignore all past 
 and vulgar associations. 
 
 But with the utterance of this sentiment Rusha always came 
 bravely to the rescue. 
 
 " How can you, Ella, put such false notions into the child's 
 head?" with that little indignant throb along her tones that 
 they all knew so well. '.' Agnes' friend is a sweet, ladylike 
 little girl, in every way as worthy of her friendship as she was 
 before our father made his foi'tune." 
 
 " I don't dispute that, Rusha ; neither need you fire up so ; 
 but, of course, one must drop old friends and associations with 
 new habits and styles of living. I fancy even you, with all 
 your high-flown sentiment, would find it rather disagreeable 
 to introduce some of our former acquaintances into our pres- 
 ent set." 
 
 " That may be ; but I would not forsake a friend that I had 
 loved and trusted above all others, solely because my father 
 had made a fortune, and hers had not." 
 
 And Agnes, with that perplexed, girlish face of hers, alter- 
 nating from one sister to the other, would catch the contagion of 
 the higher sentiment of her elder sister, and say, fervently, 
 
 "I know you're right, Rusha, and I won't give up dear little 
 Gracie because I'm rich, anyhow." 
 
 And whatsoever salt of right feeling and true purpose was to 
 be found in this family, it was hidden in the soul of Jerusha 
 Darryll. But was it sufficient to save her or them or among 
 such counteracting influences would it too, " lose its savor"? 
 
 As for John Darryll, the mania of speculation had taken pos- 
 session of him, body and soul. He found ways and means 
 enough to dispose of the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, 
 which at first seemed so vast and inexhaustible to him. Indeed, 
 that sum had dwindled in his thought to greatly smaller propor- 
 tions since the night on which he declared himself its possessor
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 29 
 
 to his family. He had embarked in various speculations since 
 that time, in most of which he had been successful ; but, if the 
 truth must be told, his temper had not improved with his for- 
 tunes. He had really fewer genial moods in his family than 
 when he was a poor man ; he was nervous, irritable, abstracted, 
 and his mind seemed constantly to revolve about " stocks," 
 " shares," and " dividends." He was forever complaining of 
 the expenses and extravagance of his family, but for all this he 
 never absolutely restricted them, and entertained an unac- 
 knowledged conviction that his present style of living was the 
 necessary concomitant of his fortunes. 
 
 He had, of course, very little oversight of his sons, although 
 he had included them all in his business ; but the duties of the 
 young men at the office were merely nominal, and their time 
 was pretty much at their own disposal. 
 
 The dangers that inhered in this new wealth was greatest for 
 them. Andrew aspired to be a " fast young man." He smoked 
 the finest Havanas, rode fast horses, joined a club, was out late 
 at suppers and theatres, affected the slang phrases of his " set," 
 and afforded a mischievous example to his brothers, who were 
 both at the most flexible and imitative age. 
 
 Indeed, Tom and Guy attempted a certain style of*" rowdy- 
 ism " in their talk and manners which made their mother shake 
 her head sometimes, and wonder " what her boys was coming 
 to ; " but she had a vague impression that no serious moral mis- 
 chief could ever befall any of her children ; and their father 
 was now so much engrossed with business that she shrank 
 from calling his attention to any delinquencies of his sons ; so, 
 much that was wrong went unrebuked, for Mrs. Darryll's ob- 
 jurgations lacked character and force, and had a strange facility 
 of " going in at one ear and out at the other." There was 
 therefore very little home restraint upon the young men, who 
 followed pretty much the devices of their own hearts and the 
 desires of their own eyes, regarding themselves as amenable to 
 neither God nor man. 
 
 " Guy," exclaimed Andrew to his youngest brother one even- 
 3*
 
 30 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 ing, as the family rose from the dinner-table, and walked into 
 the drawing-room, " I want your night-key, for I shan't be in 
 before two o'clock off on a bust to-night." 
 
 "What have you done with your own?" asked the youth, 
 evidently in some doubt about granting this request. 
 
 "Lost it last night at the club-supper capital time we fel- 
 lows had there ! " 
 
 " By jingo ! " interpolated Tom, " I mean to join that club 
 next month ; jolly fellows they ! " and he fingered the mustache 
 which he had been assiduously cultivating, and which made 
 now a faint yellow line about his upper lip. 
 
 " You'd better believe that. Sow their wild oats with a ven- 
 geance, sir ! " added the elder brother, taking out a cigar, and 
 lighting a taper at the grate. 
 
 "Well, Andrew, let's make it a bargain. You shall have 
 the night-key if you'll take me to the club some evening ? " pro- 
 posed Guy, who was still in the clumsiness and awkwardness 
 of the transition period from boyhood to youth. 
 
 Andrew surveyed his brother patronizingly. He had himself 
 emerged somewhat suddenly from his chrysalis into a certain 
 sort of dandyism. He had a trim figure, which his fashionable 
 tailor invested with the finest of broadcloth, and the slight 
 swagger which he affected in his gait pervaded more or less 
 his manners and talk ; but there had been, as each of his 
 family could testify, a great deal of kindliness in Andrew's 
 nature at the beginning. He had no lack of smartness and 
 intelligence, either ; the great danger lay for him in his father's 
 wealth. 
 
 " You're a little too fresh for the club yet," he said. " When 
 you're slightly riper, I'll take you out ; " and with this promise 
 Guy had to be content, and handed over the key. 
 
 The large drawing-room, with its handsome appointments, its 
 velvet carpets and lounging chairs, its gilt, and marble, and 
 damask, was a wonderful contrast to the quiet little sitting- 
 room, in which, less than a year before, the family of the Dar- 
 rylls had discussed their new fortunes.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 31 
 
 The father sat in the corner he and his chair had appropri- 
 ated from the beginning, absorbed in the papers which were 
 scattered about him. His wife, fatigued Avith her day's shop- 
 ping, was starting up at intervals out of little dozes that appeared 
 likely to concentrate themselves into a nap. The trio of brothers 
 had settled themselves about the table. Rusha had comfortably 
 bestowed herself on a corner of the lounge, and Avas absorbed 
 in her book. Ella sat a little apart, contemplating a new set of 
 ebony inlaid with pearl, Avhich she had purchased that very day, 
 and Agnes was leaning over her sister's chair, in admiring and 
 slightly covetous contemplation. 
 
 " See here," exclaimed Ella, looking up with sudden anima- 
 tion, " it is high time that AVC gave a party ; I mean a real 
 crush something that Avill create a sensation. Society has 
 claims upon us now, and we've been invited out so frequently, 
 that it Avon't do to let the matter slide any longer. Do you 
 hear Avhat I say, Rusha?" 
 
 " Ye-es," answered that young lady, looking up from her 
 book Avith a pre-occupied manner. 
 
 " Well, you're as much interested in the matter as I am ; I 
 want the thing to go off in grand style." 
 
 "A Number One," interjected Tom. 
 
 " Precisely ; I'm au fait in these things now. "We needn't 
 have any trouble Avith the entertainment, for the confectioner 
 will see to all that. The only thing Avill be to get up cards of 
 invitation and our dresses, and play host and hostess as though 
 we had given parties all our lives." 
 
 " She'll make the governor's money fly won't she, though ! " 
 exclaimed Andrew, shaking the ashes from his cigar. 
 
 "Well, what's the money good for, except to spend?" re- 
 torted his sister. 
 
 " That's it ; go in for a bender when you get a chance ! " 
 pursued Tom. 
 
 "But, Rusha, about the party you know it Avill all fall on 
 your shoulders and mine, and I want you to wake up to the im- 
 portance of it."
 
 32 DABBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 " I suppose I must," closing her book this time with a sort 
 of bored air. 
 
 " Must ! why, I thought you liked parties, and would enter 
 into one of your own with spirit ? " 
 
 " I grew tired of them, to tell the truth, before the season 
 was half over. They're all glitter, display, vapidness ; still, as 
 we are in society, I suppose there's no help for it ; we must 
 fulfil the duties it imposes." 
 
 " I think it's too bad," interposed Agnes, who occasionally 
 waxed restive under school-discipline, "that you all can have a 
 good time, and be in society, and do just as you like, and I have 
 to be bound down to my books and lessons, and can't have a bit 
 of fun." 
 
 " Never mind ; your turn's coming, and you'll spread your- 
 self like the rest of them one of these days," answered Tom. 
 
 " Now stop your talk and come back to the party," said Ella, 
 with that peremptoriness which it required some effort to resist. 
 " When shall it come off, Rusha ? " 
 
 " Whenever you like, only I think the sooner it is over the 
 better." 
 
 "You are funny, Rusha. One would expect, now, you'd 
 enter into the thing with your whole heart. For my part, I 
 expect to enjoy it vastly," getting up and sweeping the carpet 
 with the trail of her purple silk. 
 
 The next half hour was passed in discussion, animated, at 
 least on one sister's part, and in which the other gradually 
 became interested, on the time, numbers, and general details of 
 the anticipated party. 
 
 At last, when these had been in a measure settled, Ella 
 turned to her father, having learned from experience that an 
 unexpected and importunate attack on his purse was the surest 
 method of carrying her point, 
 
 "Do you hear, pa? We are going to have a grand recep- 
 tion, Wednesday night, week after next, and you must let us 
 prepare for it." 
 
 " A regular squelcher fuss and feathers ! " added the eldest 
 son of the family.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 33 
 
 " O, Andrew," said Rusha, with a flash of annoyance in her 
 face, " I do wish you'd be gentleman enough to drop those slang 
 phrases, at least in the presence of your mother and sisters." 
 
 " If you are so very squeamish, you can put your fingers in 
 your ears, I s'pose. What's the use of catching a fellow up 
 every time he opens his mouth ? " retorted Andrew, in a surly 
 tone. 
 
 " Tut, tut, no quarrelling here ! " This was from Mr. Dar- 
 ryll, who had just roused himself from a contemplation of the 
 rise at the Stock Board that day, and on whom the last remarks 
 had made some vague impression. " What's this you're saying 
 about grand parties, Ella?" 
 
 The question somehow penetrated the " nap " into which Mrs. 
 Darryll's intermittent dozes had confirmed themselves. She 
 started up from the depths of her luxurious chair, rubbed her 
 eyes, and looked in a sort of vague perplexity from her husband 
 to her daughter ; but the look settled at last into one of intense 
 interest. 
 
 Ella answered her father's question by going straight to the 
 point, amplifying somewhat on the imperative necessity of the 
 party, and concluding with a general description of the way in 
 which the whole must be carried out, as though it was a thing 
 already settled beyond contravention. 
 
 " Piece of extravagant nonsense ! The fact is, my family 
 have got it into their heads that I'm made of money." 
 
 " No use for the governor to storm ; he'll have to shell out ! " 
 muttered Andrew to his brothers, eliciting from both a laugh 
 and a " That's so ! Ella comes right down on him like a thou- 
 sand of brick ! " 
 
 " Pa ! " John Darryll's second daughter infused into that 
 correlative an emphasis whose meaning was perfectly apparent 
 to those who heard it. " Would you have your family relin- 
 quish society altogether? Or have it said that while you al- 
 lowed your wife and daughters to go to parties you were too 
 stingy to give one in turn ? " 
 
 This was turning a view of the case towards the successful
 
 34 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 speculator which he had never contemplated. He changed his 
 argument, aqd somewhat mollified his tone. 
 
 " Awful bore," he muttered. " Rush and jam. Always set 
 my face against them." 
 
 It was now Rusha's turn to speak. 
 
 " But, pa, you know, as Ella says, we owe something to 
 society. I am sure, for my own part, I heartily wish the thing 
 was over ; but the only way is to get through with it." 
 
 " And a pretty bill of expense you'll make of it among you, 
 before that," added Mr. Darryll. 
 
 " But it w'ill be our only party this season, pa, and we'll have 
 all our friends, and do the thing up at once," said Ella, by way 
 of reducing her father to complacency. 
 
 Here Mrs. Darryll interposed in a voice faintly querulous. 
 " I s'pose the care will all come on me for you girls will have 
 your heads full of nothing but dress, and fol-de-rol, and I never 
 shall be able to get through it in the world." 
 
 "O, ma, now don't go to* fretting," expostulated Ella, 
 in not the most respectful tone in the world, but that was 
 probably less the daughter's than the mother's fault. " The 
 whole thing will be managed without giving you any further 
 trouble than to receive your guests," and she went on for the 
 next half hour, proving how admirably her active observation 
 and perceptive faculties had served her, and how entirely she 
 was at home in all the details of a fashionable party. 
 
 At the end of this time, Andrew, having despatched his sec- 
 ond cigar, rose up, evidently with the intention of going out. 
 He was arrested near the door by his father's inquiry, 
 
 " Off again to-night, Andrew? Where do you spend your 
 evenings ? " 
 
 The young man looked a little surprised, and not over-much 
 pleased, at this instance of paternal solicitude, but he an- 
 swered, 
 
 " I was going over to the club to see some of the fellows." 
 
 " Well, I hope you'll look out sharp what sort of company 
 you keep. I didn't relish the actions of some of those young
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 35 
 
 cronies of yours, who dropped into the office to-day. It was 
 evident that they had more wine than wit aboard." 
 
 " They're a jolly crew, and had just come in from a horse- 
 race on the Bloomingdale road, and their side had won the 
 bets," replied Andrew, half standing on the defensive, half 
 apologetic for his friends, and he went out. 
 
 " Andrew laid a two hundred dollar wager in that race. I 
 overheard them talking it over," muttered Guy to his brother. 
 
 "Hush," said Tom ; " the governor will hear you, and then 
 there will be a storm. But Andrew was a lucky dog, for he 
 won the bet." 
 
 "Yes, and sunk most of it in a treat the same night. It 
 takes him to put things through with a vengeance, and he has 
 a way of making the governor fork over, as none of the rest 
 of us can." 
 
 Rusha had closed her book, for she was naturally of a rest- 
 less habit, never occupying one place or attitude for any length 
 of time, and she walked up to the mirror on one side of the 
 room, and stood a moment in front of it. 
 
 A vast mirror it was, occupying with its heavy gilding the 
 place of honor betwixt twin fleeces of lace curtains, and re- 
 peating to the life the large room and the figures that occupied 
 it. Her father and mother on either side of the mantel, her 
 sisters making a pretty tableau at a side table, the fine, showy 
 figure in contrast with that light, girlish one beside it, while 
 Ella was busily occupied in pencilling down a list of invita- 
 tions foj the projected party. And near where she stood, at 
 another and larger table, were her brothers, in those loose, self- 
 assertive attitudes, which harmonized with their general style 
 of talk. 
 
 Of all these things Rusha had a vague, half-conscious im- 
 pression, as she stood close to the mirror, and of the face look- 
 ing at hers, with a sudden surprise and fear in the bright, dark 
 eyes, that did not end there, but somehow invested every fea- 
 ture, even to the lips, which were slightly dropped apart, as 
 one's are apt to be when intently listening.
 
 36 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Nobody saw this face in the mirror, or the one outside of it. 
 The brothers went on talking, in a low, chuckling sort of tone, 
 quite unconscious indeed that Rusha had changed her position. 
 In a moment, however, Tom rose, throwing a glance in the 
 direction of his father, who was once more deep in the Stock 
 Board, and left the room. 
 
 He was drawing on his overcoat, when a soft hand was laid 
 on his arm, and turning he encountered Rusha, with something 
 in her face he could not tell what, until her words made it 
 clear. 
 
 " O, Tom, that was not true what you said about Andrew, 
 just now?" 
 
 " What business had you to overhear it anyhow?" he an- 
 swered, considerably annoyed. 
 
 " I stood by the glass, and I couldn't help it. But, Tom, 
 this is terrible ! If Andrew is spending his father's money in 
 betting and drinking, surely you ought to tell him ! " 
 
 " I think I see myself doing it ! " his annoyance working into 
 high displeasure. " A pretty storm we should have about our 
 ears. Girls better mind their own affairs, and not poke them- 
 selves into their brothers' business." 
 
 She would not be rebuffed even by such harshness as this. 
 
 " It is my business, Tom," she said, with a little quiver in 
 her voice, " if any of the brothers that I love are in danger of* 
 temptation, or of falling into any habits which I know are 
 wrong, and sin." 
 
 " O, bosh ! " with a petulant movement of the arm on which 
 her hand lay. 
 
 " Tom ! " 
 
 "Well," half angry, half ashamed of himself, and his answer 
 combining defence of himself and accusation of his sister, " I 
 say now, Avhat is a fellow to do when a girl comes round him 
 with the pious and pathetic in this style ! Of course Andrew 
 must sow his wild oats, and have his little sprees like the rest 
 of his set. They're all young fellows in high life." 
 
 " What do you mean by ' sprees,' Tom?"
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 37 
 
 "Yon must be green, Rusha, to ask that question." 
 
 " Perhaps so, but I asked it." 
 
 " Well, then, getting tight more or less, on champagne and 
 claret." 
 
 "Tom," the gravity of her face deepening into a shocked 
 expression, "you do not mean to say that our Andrew gets 
 drunk ? " 
 
 " That's putting it like a -girl. I mean only to say, that he 
 does just the very things that the rest of his set do, whether it's 
 betting on fast horses, playing cards, or drinking champagne. 
 Where's th^harm of it?" 
 
 " O, Tom, has it come to this, and his father and mother not 
 suspecting a word of it !" 
 
 " Rusha Darryll, you are just making a fool of yourself. Do 
 you think your brothers at least Andrew and I are going to 
 ask their marm every time they go out, or have you following, 
 and whining about in this fashion, as though a glass of cham- 
 pagne, or a fast horse, was the highway to ruin? I say, I won't 
 stand it," pushing away her hand with considerable roughness, 
 and settling himself in his overcoat with a good deal of demon- 
 stration. 
 
 " O, Tom, this from you ! " said Rusha, with a little grieved, 
 underdrawn breath ; to which her brother made no reply, draw- 
 ing oil his gloves, and taking his hat and his cane, and going 
 out, not speaking another word. 
 
 Just as he turned to close the door, however, the young man 
 darted a glance back, and saw his sister standing there, at the 
 foot of the wide flight of stairs, her head leaning against the- 
 balustrade, and the tears shining in her eyes. 
 
 The front door swung sharply to,- she heard his feet ring 
 down the front steps, and still she stood there, just as Tom had 
 seen her last, and as his thought carried her down the street, 
 with the troubled, grieved look in her face, which he could not 
 put away. She was standing there still, two or three minutes 
 later, when the key was turned again in the lock, and Tom en- 
 tered, "and found her just as he bad left her. 
 4
 
 38 DAEEYLL GAP, OE 
 
 " Knsha," he said, ' ; I s'pose I was a kind of brute to answer 
 you just as I did, but you know how it is we fellows can't bear 
 to have girls come round, sticking their fingers in our affairs. 
 It springs us right off. But, corne now, you mustn't mind my 
 talk." 
 
 Rusha knew that with his quick temper it had cost Torn some- 
 thing to return and make this concession, and that he was at 
 least two thirds ashamed of an act. that did credit to his better 
 nature. She yielded to her first impulse of forgiveness and 
 affection, and reached up and kissed him. 
 
 " O get out ! " but the words did not go into h,is tone, and 
 her ground was safe now. 
 
 " You will not be angry with me again for loving you too 
 well, Tom ? If any grief should come to you, or Andrew, or 
 Guy, it would break my heart ! " 
 
 " There it goes again ; fretting yourself over a glass of cham- 
 pagne ; silly girl ! " 
 
 But she knew now that her words had touched the tender 
 place in the boy's nature, hidden under many foibles and boyish 
 weaknesses, but when it was found, kindly, loyal, true. 
 
 " Then if you think I am foolish, remember that it is my 
 love for you that makes me so ; but I know, Tom, perhaps bet- 
 ter than you think, some of the dangers that lie in wait on 
 every side to destroy young men, body and soul. 0, Tom, 
 I must be earnest now. You will not go near them you 
 will fly from them as you would from pestilence, or fire, or 
 death ! " 
 
 In her fervor she had clasped both hands on his shoulder. 
 No danger of his shaking them off now. 
 
 " Rusha," said Thomas Darryll, deeply moved in spite of 
 himself, "there is nothing in the whole world that would save 
 me from going wrong so quick as the thought of you ! " 
 
 Her whole face trembled in a smile that was not less bright 
 because one saw that it lay close to tears. 
 
 " Well, Tom, that shall be our bond ; whenever these friends 
 of yours tempt you to do anything wrong to follow them
 
 WHETHER IT PAID, 39 
 
 into any path where you know lurks danger, or sin you will 
 think of me?" 
 
 "Yes, I promise;" he bent down and kissed her a most 
 unusual demonstration on his part, for Tom had the dislike to 
 family caressing which is natural to the transition period. 
 
 That night, somewhere among the small hours, Andrew 
 Darryll returned home, so intoxicated that he could not find his 
 own chamber, and stumbled up another flight of stairs into the 
 butler's, who had to assist him to bed, and whom he bribed not 
 to tell his father. So the skeleton hid itself in the closet of 
 John Darryll's magnificent home, and one day it might come to 
 light, in all its hideousness and terror 1
 
 40 DARBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IN due time the party transpired. This one did not differ 
 widely from those of its class ; at least it had no strong features 
 of individuality, which would have struck any one who viewed 
 it superficially. People who deal in inflated adjectives (and the 
 feminine portion of the guests were largely of this class) called 
 it a " magnificent affair," " a perfect rush." 
 
 There was, of course, the usual amount of glitter and display. 
 The head of the family had borne, with what equanimity he 
 could, the constant drain on his purse which the party involved ; 
 not, however, without frequent objurgations, and signs some- 
 times of absolute rebellion ; but his wife and daughters man- 
 aged to impress him, more or less, with the fact that the ex- 
 pense was one of the necessities of their position, to which he 
 submitted not with a good grace. So the party was as fine 
 and brilliant as money could make it. There was the crowd 
 of ladies, perfumy, radiant in diamonds, rustling in silks, 
 dainty in fine laces, and with that "company expression" 
 which so painfully supersedes all naturalness. 
 
 The rooms were fragrant at midwinter with the sweet, pas- 
 sionate perfumes of tropical summers ; the music was, at least, 
 of the costliest sort, and the supper was the crowning glory of 
 the entertainment. 
 
 The tables were radiant with cut glass and silver, and it 
 seemed as though every country in the world brought some 
 tributary to the board, either in game, or fruit, or choice con- 
 fections, or wines that held the glow of rubies, and the glitter 
 of gold. 
 
 As for the family, Mrs. Darryll had rehearsed her part so 
 frequently, that she got through with it to-night with ample
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 41 
 
 credit to herself; her girls were, each in her own way, fully 
 equal to the occasion, and there were few who outshone, in 
 bloom and grace, the daughters of the host that night. The 
 latter was bland and social, enjoying to a considerable degree 
 these material evidences of his wealth and importance, and his 
 youngest sons circulated among the guests and liked the " show," 
 as Tom expressed it, " immensely." 
 
 The eldest brother was absent. His mother was the first to 
 discover this, late in the evening, and commented on it to her 
 husband when she had an opportunity, with some anxiety. 
 Andrew had evinced as much interest in the preparations for the 
 party as the rest of the family, joking about the whole thing 
 in his slang fashion, and ordering an entire new suit for the 
 occasion. 
 
 The disquietude which Mrs. Darryll expressed at her son's 
 absence was, however, allayed by her husband's 
 
 " O, well, give yourself no concern. He'll be along, sooner 
 or later. Taken up with some affair at the club, I suppose ! " 
 and he turned to address a broker, whose acquaintance he had 
 recently formed at the stock board, a broad-shouldered, rubi- 
 cund-faced man, with a little, thin-visaged, dark-complexioned, 
 over-dressed woman hanging on his arm. 
 
 The dancing formed, of course, the principal feature of the 
 evening, and through every set, the graceful figure of Ella Dar- 
 ryll floated light as a fairy. Kusha, who was never intoxicated 
 with this amusement, joined in it for a while, and then managed 
 to have some excuse for declining all invitations for the rest of 
 the evening. It was a singular fact in this girl's character that 
 an unaccountable sadness was sure to steal over her in a gay 
 crowd. It had come over her spirits to-night, like some faint 
 mists driven of the winds to these bright coasts of her life, and 
 Rusha Darryll stood by one of the side tables, and looked over 
 the dazzling scene before her, with thought and feeling in 
 strange, sharp contrast with it. She had, after the first reluc- 
 tance, thrown herself heart and soul into the preparations for 
 this evening ; she had looked forward to it with the eager antici- 
 4*
 
 42 DABBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 pations of 'youth and hope, for it was a necessity of this girl's 
 nature to do whatsoever she did, heartily, vitally. But now, 
 half as in a dream, she heard the hum of the voices, as one 
 hears the moan of the sea ; she saw the long train of dancers 
 swing to and fro before her. "What did it all mean what 
 was it all worth ? " she asked herself. 
 
 " Whither were all those men and women going? What 
 were they living for ? Had they found out any true worth and 
 meaning in life?" How like a masquerade, or a mere farce, 
 the whole thing seemed to her as she gazed ! How unreal, ho'w 
 hollow ! How everything associated with all this display and 
 splendor seemed, for the moment, pitiful and barren to this 
 girl's thought ! For such things as these, did she and the peo- 
 ple about her live? And what would the end of all this be? 
 And how in the strange, vast, mysterious eternity that lay a 
 little way beyond for all of them, and that held such close and 
 vital relations with this life, would look interests, purposes, 
 pleasure like these ? 
 
 She drew a sigh the hungry, lonely, soul of this girl, articu- 
 lating instinctively its want and bewilderment, its half-born 
 aspirations and needs. There was nothing in her life or asso- 
 ciations, nothing in either the domestic or social atmosphere 
 around her, to stimulate the best and noblest part of her. 
 Everything here was material, earthly, in a sense, coarse. And 
 so her soul, baffled, perplexed, wearied, drew into itself and 
 sighed. 
 
 " Rusha, what are you thinking of? " Ella Darryll fluttered 
 to her sister's side, flushed with her last dance, her face radiant 
 with excitement, as she waved her fan to and fro. 
 
 " I don't know ; " feeling that this was quite the truth, and 
 that, in any case, it would be hopeless to attempt to put her 
 thoughts into words. " How are you enjoying it? " 
 
 " O, splendidly ! Everything is going off in first rate style." 
 
 At this moment a group of gentlemen and ladies approached 
 the sisters, and they were soon absorbed in light talk and bad- 
 inage.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 43 
 
 Among this group was one gentleman who seemed to eclipse 
 the others in various ways. He had an easy, indolent, graceful 
 air, which women of a certain style greatly admired. He had 
 a dark, somewhat thin face, which was called handsome by 
 those who did not penetrate its expression. There was an air 
 of self-assertion, an offensive superciliousness about this man, 
 repugnant to all fine and matured souls of men and women ; 
 and yet, with young, inexperienced, fashionable girls, and some- 
 times with their mammas, he was a great favorite. They 
 called his person and style " distingue* ; " they repeated the 
 pretty nothings which he was such an adept in making on all 
 occasions. 
 
 The man affected, too, a sort of indifference, a half contempt- 
 uous indolence in speech and manner, which, to use his own 
 phrase, *' he found took immensely with the women." He came 
 of an old family, prided himself largely on his blood and breed- 
 ing ; but I think the soul of no good man or woman ever sounded 
 that of Derrick Howe without finding the hollowness and selfish- 
 ness which lay beneath, a man who had no faith in God nor 
 himself, in man nor woman, whose dominant purpose in life 
 was his own comfort and ease. He had an intellect sharp but 
 shallow, luxurious tastes, but indolent and somewhat dissolute 
 habits. And with the last vestige of his fortune drifting away 
 from him, it had of late entered into this man's thought to take 
 to wife some young and pretty woman, who could replenish his 
 exhausted fortunes with her dowry. 
 
 Derrick Howe was in his most brilliant vein to-night, as the 
 perpetual giggle of the gayly-dressed group of young ladies 
 around the table testified for the next fifteen minutes. At the 
 end of that time supper was announced, and Mr. Howe con- 
 ducted Ella Darryll to the table, and that young lady was in 
 consequence the object of the secret envy of several of her fash- 
 ionable friends. 
 
 "Isn't he delightful?" whispered Ella to her sister, when 
 her cavalier had gone off a moment in quest of some jelly for 
 the younger lady.
 
 44 DAEBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 "Who?" the speaker's attention divided betwixt her cream 
 and her sister's question. 
 
 " You are the funniest girl in the world, Rusha ! As if I 
 could mean anybody but Mr. Howe ! " 
 
 " O, yes, I understand now. I don't like him, Ella," with a 
 good deal of emphasis. 
 
 " Why, Rusha Darryll ! He's perfectly splendid the most 
 gentlemanly and agreeable man that is present to-night." 
 
 " That may be, if equal constituents of vanity and coxcombry 
 can make one this ! " 
 
 Rusha could be both satirical and disagreeable when any- 
 thing offended her, which, with her strong feelings and keen 
 intuitions of one sort and another, was frequently the case. 
 
 Ella deigned no reply to this satire, except a glance, which 
 expressed a good deal of suppressed indignation ; but at that 
 moment Mr. Howe presented himself with a quaking stratum" 
 of jelly, and she received this with a smile which must certainly 
 have amply rewarded the gentleman for all the trouble which 
 he had taken, and during the remainder of the evening they 
 danced frequently together. 
 
 It was long after midnight before the party broke up, and 
 the tired family had concentrated itself in one of the large par- 
 lors to discuss the events of the evening. 
 
 They were all in good humor, for on the whole the party had 
 been a success ; so there was a general congratulatory and half- 
 complimentary tone in this summing up of the whole affair. 
 
 " I thought I got along with my part pretty well, father, con- 
 sidering it was a new thing to me," said Mrs. Darryll, address- 
 ing herself to her husband, but in reality looking for her 
 indorsement from her daughters. 
 
 " O, ma, you did splendidly ! " answered Ella. " The whole 
 thing went off capitally, and did us all immense credit." 
 
 " Well, I must say I'm glad it's over with," added Rusha, 
 unclasping the bracelets from her small wrists. 
 
 " I wish we were going to have another to-morrow night," 
 subjoined Agnes.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 45 
 
 " Come, come," interposed Mr. Darryll, " it's almost morning 
 DOW, and high time these lights were out. Get to bed, every 
 one of you, and leave the talking until to-morrow." 
 
 Mrs. Darryll rose up to set an example of obedience to her 
 children, when Tom suddenly spoke up 
 
 " I say, where' s Andrew? He hasn't been in to-night." 
 
 "Sure enough. What does it mean?" Mrs. Darryll' s ma- 
 ternal solicitude suddenly active. " I was asking your father 
 about it." 
 
 At that moment the front-door bell rang violently. Most of 
 those who heard it were not people of particularly fine imagina- 
 tion or sensibilities ; but somehow that late midnight summons, 
 following so soon on the scenes of splendor and hilarity in which 
 they had all been partakers, seemed to come now with a sound 
 of doom to all their ears. Each one leaned forward and lis- 
 tened breathlessly, while into the silence came the sharp click of 
 silver and china from the dining-room beyond, where the ser- 
 vants were despoiling the tables. 
 
 They heard the front door open, and then a quick exclama- 
 tion of surprise and terror, followed by the heavy tread of sev- 
 eral feet in the hall. I am sure every face was pale that the 
 servant confronted when he opened the parlor door. 
 
 " Mr. Darryll," he said, " your son has met with an accident." 
 
 - " What is it what is it O, my boy ! " 
 
 It was the mother's sharp cry that broke out first, and with 
 one impulse they all followed her as she rushed into the hall, 
 and there, bruised, bleeding, unconscious, they found Andrew 
 Darryll in the arms of two men. 
 
 The white face, the limp figure, as it met their gaze, looked 
 like death. There was a sharp cry of pain from half a dozen 
 voices, and the next two or three minutes held a scene one 
 would not like to witness again in a lifetime. 
 
 " Perhaps he is not dead yet somebody run for the nearest 
 doctor ! " 
 
 They were all standing, a pale-faced, horror-stricken group, 
 around the prostrate form of Andrew Darryll, their elegant
 
 46 DABEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 dresses in strange contrast with their attitudes, when Mr. Dar- 
 ryll spoke these words. And then there flashed across Rusha 
 Darryll's thought the plate which she must have unconsciously 
 observed sometime on the door of the house opposite. 
 
 She did not wait for another word, and nobody observed her 
 as she rushed out of the front door, and down the steps, and 
 across the street, and pulled the bell as one would on a sum- 
 mons for life or death. 
 
 Dr. Rochford sat in his library, although it was long after 
 midnight. He had returned from a visit to some distant pa- 
 tients, and not feeling sleepy, had concluded to read for half an 
 hour before retiring, and from reading he had relapsed into a 
 sort of reverie, out of which the loud peal of the bell sharply 
 roused him. 
 
 He hurried to the door, and when he opened it, he saw stand- 
 ing there in the flood of gaslight, which poured down from the 
 street lamp, a vision which Fletcher Rochford will never forget 
 to the latest hour of his life. 
 
 I do not think that Rusha Darryll was beautiful either as girl 
 or woman, after the fashion that most people call beauty ; but 
 somehow, as she stood there in the gaslight, in her dress of 
 white moire-antique, the snowy surf of soft laces around her 
 half-bared arms, the brown hair which had fallen loose around 
 her white face, as she looked up at Fletcher Rochford som'e- 
 how, I think she made at that moment a picture such as per- 
 haps she never had before and never might again. 
 
 " Is Dr. Rochford in?" she gasped. 
 
 " I am he." 
 
 His words few and straight to the point, as he saw her stress, 
 whatever that might be, required. 
 
 " My brother is dead or dying ; come over and try to save 
 him ! " with a quick gesture of head and arm which designated 
 the opposite house. 
 
 " Wait one moment ! " and with professional instinct the 
 young physician started for a little case of instruments and 
 specifics, which, under God, had saved more than one human
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 47 
 
 life, in some sudden peril, when a few minutes' delay was cer- 
 tain death. 
 
 But Rusha, not comprehending his movement, sprang for- 
 ward and caught his hand the soft, cold fingers clutching over 
 his " O, sir, do not wait Andrew may be dying! Come 
 with me ! " 
 
 " My child, I go for something that may save his life ; " and 
 he seated her down in a chair which stood in the hall, and hur- 
 ried into his library. He could not pause to comfort her now. 
 
 When he returned a moment later, she rose up to meet him 
 with something in her face that it pained him to see ; but she 
 did not speak ; she simply rushed on before him across the 
 street, his rapid strides following behind, and so Fletcher Roch- 
 ford entered the house, about whose inmates he and his sister 
 had had their pleasant gossip at the breakfast-table several 
 months before. 
 
 The shivering group, gathered around Andrew Darryll in the 
 parlor, which so lately had been such a scene of life and gayety, 
 awaited in silence the young doctor's verdict whether " for life 
 or death." 
 
 It did not take the skilful surgeon long to reach the facts of 
 the case. Andrew Darryll had broken two of his ribs, and had 
 received some internal injuries of a more or less serious nature ; 
 but he was alive. " O, my boy ! my pretty boy ! " moaned 
 the mother, forgetful in her tenderness, and grief, and joy, that 
 the young man before her was anything but the first-born son 
 she had fondled so often in her lap ; and John Darryll, although 
 he was not naturally a demonstrative man, in his relief, wrung 
 Dr. Rochford's hand, as though with him had rested the power 
 of life or death. 
 
 In a few moments the young man was restored to partial 
 consciousness. Meanwhile Mr. Darryll had penetrated, 1)y a 
 close investigation of the men who brought his son home, the 
 disgraceful causes which had resulted in the latter's present 
 condition. 
 
 Andrew had made an engagement at his club, and gone round
 
 48 . DABETLL GAP, OR 
 
 early in the evening to the rooms, intending to return home in 
 time for the party. The young man had recently joined a soci- 
 ety of what he called " good fellows, though a little fast," the 
 first article of whose constitution, and the last one, for that mat- 
 ter, was " to eat, drink, and take the world easily." 
 
 Some members of a rival club happened to be present on this 
 evening, and a proposition that both sides should " stand treat 
 for a supper " was eagerly accepted by all parties. They ad- 
 journed to a fashionable restaurant, ordered whatever edibles 
 their appetites suggested, the most prominent demand being 
 " champagne and claret," and passed by natural gradations 
 from conviviality to boisterousness, thence to irascibility, and 
 from this last to brutality. 
 
 Both sides, having their natural feeling of rivalry fired by 
 liquor, closed in a fight so fierce that it would certainly have been 
 deadly if weapons of that sort had been at hand. As it was, 
 they pummelled and disfigured each other cruelly, and some of 
 the soberest of the party, with the proprietor of the restaurant, 
 were obliged to summon the police to interfere. 
 
 Andrew was perhaps the severest sufferer of all, though sev- 
 eral young men, belonging to the " first families," had been 
 borne away disfigured and unconscious. 
 
 Some of young Darryll's friends had taken him in charge, 
 thus shielding him from the disgrace of being publicly involved 
 in the riot, had hired a carriage and bribed two of the waiters 
 to accompany him home. 
 
 And this was the closing scene of the night of the Darrylls' 
 grand party 1
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 49 
 
 CHAPTER V. N 
 
 FAMILY affection struck its roots deep in all the race of the 
 Darrylls. It did not manifest itself in the every-day home at- 
 mosphere in its finest and highest development in gentle, 
 thoughtful courtesies of speech and deed ; but the old family 
 love showed itself faithful and strong when any stress of grief 
 or need brought it to the surface. 
 
 Dr. Rochford certainly saw the family on its best side for the 
 next month. He had shown at the beginning so clear a com- 
 prehension of the patient's case, and his skill had been sub- 
 stantiated in such high quarters, that Mr. Darryll had been 
 very glad to secure the young doctor's services in the case of 
 his eldest son. 
 
 There was, at first, room for keen solicitude on the part of 
 Andrew Darryll's family. The ribs, although badly fractured, 
 would be restored with skill and time, and the internal strains 
 and bruises did not prove themselves of so vital a nature as was 
 at first apprehended. But the danger lay in the fever, which 
 set in fiercely before the youth's entire return to consciousness. 
 
 In that sick chamber, where the eldest son lay in a struggle 
 for life or death, the family put off all the weaknesses and affec- 
 tations, which, under other circumstances, would certainly have 
 provoked the pitying contempt of Fletcher Rochford. For there 
 was in this man, naturally, a keen sense of the ridiculous, and 
 a kind of vehement impatience of all sophistries and super- 
 ficialities. He could not affiliate with them. He liked earnest, 
 downright people, to get at the core of things, and one of his 
 dangers lay, at some periods of his life, in a tendency to self- 
 will and domination. x 
 
 But the man who could see down with such an unerring aim
 
 50 DABRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 into the faults and weaknesses of others, had been candid with 
 himself. He knew his own dangers and temptations. He had 
 laid them bare before God, as man never can to the tenderest 
 human love, and in his sore strife with these he had learned 
 slowly a new humility, a new charity for others, a charity that, 
 as his years ripened, grew more all-embracing in scope and 
 depth. He remembered always that it was for just such sinners 
 as these, that the Master whom he served put aside all the glory 
 of heaven and came into the world to save. 
 
 John Darryll's face smoothed out of its hard lines, when he 
 entered the sick room every morning with the doctor, and his 
 wife forgot that she had the part of mistress of her elegant 
 house to sustain, and was only the absorbed, anxious, self-sac- 
 rificing mother, that, let come what would, of good or evil, of 
 prosperity or adversity, lay at the bottom of this woman's na- 
 ture, as strong as life itself. 
 
 Ella, too, put aside the larger half of her airiness and per- 
 emptoriness, and was at Andrew's bedside, at least, the serious, 
 kindly sister ; and Agnes and her brothers, after their own 
 fashion, indicated the fear and hope, which for the time super- 
 seded all others, and drew the whole family together in one 
 close bond of sympathy. 
 
 But there was one face which, in the eyes of Dr. Roch- 
 ford, wore always an intenser strain of anxiety and ten- 
 derness than any of the others. Perhaps it did not to nurse 
 or watcher, but for him, he could not dissociate it from that 
 fair, white face, with the awful, appealing terror which held 
 possession of it on that midnight, when he opened the door and 
 it first lifted itself to him out of the darkness. And for this 
 face, half unconsciously to himself, Dr. Rochford looked often- 
 est, and to it he most frequently addressed himself during those 
 long days, when death hung darkly over the splendid home of 
 the Darrylls, just as it hangs, sooner or later, alike over palace 
 and hovel. 
 
 But the strong youth of Andrew Darryll fought the battle 
 bravely, and came out at last victorious. Dr. Rochford knew
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 51 
 
 this before lie had seeii his patient, when Rusha came out sud- 
 denly one morning from the sick chamber, and met him on the 
 landing. 
 
 There was a bright, warm agitation over all her face. " O, 
 doctor ! " she said, springing towards him, in her irrepressible 
 gladness " he slept three hours last night, and woke up and 
 knew us all ! He will get well now ? " 
 
 " I believe so God willing ! " 
 
 The tears spun into her eyes. He saw her try to shut them 
 back quickly, but they baffled her, dripping through her eyelids, 
 and making a sudden dew on her cheek. She turned away with 
 a little apologetic gesture, but without uttering a single word, 
 and he wondered, as his glance followed her to her own chamber, 
 whether this girl would forget to carry her new joy to the God 
 who had given back to them her brother's life. But somehow 
 he did not wonder this of any of the others, although John 
 Darryll met him at the chamber threshold with that sharp, busi- 
 ness look, half superseded by some other feeling which just now 
 possessed the uppermost room in his heart and thought, and he 
 grasped the young doctor's hand, and said, with fervent grati- 
 tude, " There is no mistaking that he is better. Sir, you 
 have saved my boy's life ! " 
 
 And the weak, anxious mother, who had never left the post 
 by her sou's bedside, looked up and waited in a tumult of hope 
 and fear for the doctor's verdict. 
 
 He did not even touch the invalid's pulse ; he just glanced at 
 the pale face, with the soft, warm glow of slumber all over it, 
 and he said, " The crisis is past, now ; yon must go at once to 
 your own room, Mrs. Darryll, and get the rest that you need." 
 
 Mrs. Darryll tottered to the nearest chair ; the sudden relief 
 from the awful fear Avhich had held her for days was too much 
 for the weak nerves that had borne themselves bravely through 
 the crisis. She sank into hysterics. 
 
 Before the next week was over Andrew Darryll had made 
 rapid marches on the way to recovery, and the household, which 
 had intermitted for a little while its life of ambitions and affec- 
 tations, was settling back into the old grooves again.
 
 52 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Ella was the first to react. As soou as the pressure of im- 
 mediate danger was over, the glamour of that world which made 
 her life resumed its old domination over her. 
 
 Andrew's room became, for several hours of each day, a sort 
 of centre of attraction to the whole household, and as his conva- 
 lescence advanced, animated discussions on all domestic topics 
 ensued about his bedside, with the mother's ever-recurring 
 parenthesis " Hush, there, children ! You shall every one 
 leave the room, if you make such a noise. How can the poor 
 boy ever get well, with such a set of magpies around him ? " 
 
 As for Andrew, this illness brought out the best side of the 
 young man. Whatever lesson this misfortune might have for 
 him, he was obliged to apply it himself, for even his father, who 
 was not usually backward in attributing blame where he fancied 
 it deserved, could not regard Andrew as anything but the victim 
 of others' cruelty, not perceiving, as he would if his son had not 
 met with so summary a punishment, that the young man was 
 equally involved in fault with his companions. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll would have regarded it as barbarous cruelty to 
 charge Andrew with the slightest blame, " after all the poor 
 boy had suffered ; " and, if this was the sentiment of the older 
 members of the family, the younger ones would not be likely to 
 get in advance of it. 
 
 But it was to be hoped that the young man's conscience 
 and Andrew had one, under all his faults and selfishnesses 
 would make itself heard as he lay in the grasp of that weakness 
 and suffering which his own sin had brought down on himself. 
 
 One morning, less than a week after the crisis had passed, 
 Ella came into the chamber, hardly able to restrain her eager- 
 ness sufficiently to close the door softly, as the sufferer's head 
 required. " We've had invitations to a dinner-party at the 
 Leavitts' for to-morrow night ; how I wish we could go 
 don't you, Rusha ! " 
 
 " No, I never want to go to another party, seems to me, 
 when I remember our last one." 
 
 Rusha, with her impatient impulses, always spoke on first
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 53 
 
 thought. Did some twinge of the broken ribs make Andrew 
 wince, or did the swift shadow which crossed his face have its 
 rise in that association of his sister's, for which he could not but 
 hold himself responsible? 
 
 Nobody noticed it at -the moment, and Ella continued, half 
 apologetic, half on the defensive : " But you see, Rusha, this 
 isn't a real party ; only a little dinner company of a dozen or so, 
 and two or three tables of euchre for the evening. I can't see 
 what harm there is in going now. Andrew 's getting well ; but 
 of course I'm ready to stay at home if it will be of the slightest 
 use." 
 
 " Not a bit of it ; you've been kept in the house long enough 
 for me, and it must be an awful bore. Go, and have a good 
 time, girls," here interposed Andrew Darryll, with the authority 
 of convalescence. 
 
 " I'd rather stay at home," said Rusha, with that sort of im- 
 patient decisiveness which indicates a sensitive and forcible 
 nature, whether for good or evil. " Dinner parties are to me 
 always intolerable bores ; and I hate euchre ! " with a little 
 series of shudders, as the name suggested some insufferably 
 stupid evenings. 
 
 " Rusha, you are the oddest girl, now 1 The Leavitts are 
 among the first people in our set. One is sure to meet the best 
 folks there, and their attention is really very flattering to us." 
 
 " Well, I'll cheerfully make over my share in it to you, and 
 I'll stay at home with Andrew," voice and face softening out of 
 their coldness as she glanced in the direction of the couch. 
 
 "Had you really rather, Rusha?" It was an auspicious 
 feature of Andrew's illness that he now displayed an interest in 
 his sister's wishes which he never had in health. 
 
 " Really, I'd rather, Andrew," and she went over to the bed- 
 side now, and laid her little soft, cool hand on his forehead. 
 She never had ventured such a caress but once before. 
 
 Ella, unmindful of this, stood absorbed in thought, drumming 
 softly on the window pane. She turned round at last 
 
 " I shall wear my blue moire-antique, with my point lace set 
 5*
 
 54 DARRYLL OAF, OR 
 
 and the new pearls. The whole will look splendid in the 
 evening," and she hurried out of the room, intent on some minor 
 arrangements for her toilet. 
 
 " It was too bad too bad ! " murmured Andrew, as the door 
 closed on his sister, and he thought Ruslia had followed her. 
 
 "What is too bad, Andrew?" sitting down now in the wide 
 easy-chair by his bedside. 
 
 " I didn't know that you were here, Rusha." 
 
 "No matter tell me, Andrew." 
 
 " That I spoiled the party for you all the other night." 
 
 She put down her soft warm cheek to his on the bed 
 
 "Dear Andrew, we never thought of that only that your 
 life was spared to us." 
 
 " But that does not make it any better for me, you know. I 
 was a great rascal, Rusha." 
 
 " You are a great big darling now, any way ! " 
 
 He laughed at this speech, which gave such inherent evi- 
 dence of coming from a woman's lips. But suddenly her face 
 grew .serious. 
 
 " O, Andrew, you will promise me one thing ; promise me 
 for all the life to come ! " and she clung to him, as he lay there 
 on the sick bed. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " That you will never gamble, never drink at the club again, 
 so long as you live, no matter what temptations beset you, no 
 matter how your friends entreat you, or how they try to break 
 down your promise by argument and ridicule ! " 
 
 The tears entered Andrew DarrylPs eyes. 
 
 " Yes, I promise you, Rusha. There's no safety for a fellow, 
 only to stand up stiff, and stick to his word through thick and 
 thin," half to himself. 
 
 " Put your hands in mine, and promise me then, solemnly, 
 that let come what will, you cannot be moved you will never 
 drink never gamble again ! " 
 
 He laid his hand on hers, and repeated the promise, strong in 
 his own strength, not knowing that that would be like flax before
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 55 
 
 devouring flames. What an easy matter it seemed to make 
 this promise, lying there in the shadowy sick chamber, with all 
 the high, fierce spirit of his youth put to sleep by his long ill- 
 ness ! How small a thing it looked to both brother and sister 
 to keep to the right then ! Ah, how little they either of them 
 guessed through what fire of temptations, through what awful 
 stress and strain of body and soul, he must hold fast, as for life 
 or death, to the pledge he had made ! The noisy, greedy world 
 stood outside, waiting its time, and neither of these young souls 
 had learned by experience, that the only safe anchorage for 
 them, when the trial came down mightily, was the grace of 
 Him who has said, " Ye shall not be tempted above that ye are 
 able to bear."
 
 56 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IT was a pleasant thing to see the Darryll family on that 
 noon, three weeks later, when Andrew came down stairs, by 
 the doctor's permission, to dine. Every one partook of the 
 general joy of seeing him resume his old seat, although the 
 sharp, pale face, and the dark rings around the eyes, presented 
 a sad contrast to the strong, healthy countenance in its opening 
 manhood, which sat there a month and a half before. 
 
 " Old hoss, it's jolly to see you down here again," said 
 Tom, giving his brother so hearty a slap on the shoulder 
 that it sent a twinge through him ; but Andrew was in too 
 pleased and softened a mood to "growl" now, as, in his well 
 days he had, over smaller annoyances. 
 
 "Bless his heart so it is!" said Mrs. Darryll, the face 
 under her elaborate cap in a glow of tenderness, and she looked 
 as though she were half inclined to spring right up from the 
 table, rush round to her son, and give him a real motherly hug. 
 
 But the presence of the waiter, and a lurking feeling that 
 there might be something that savored of low breeding in any 
 strong display of emotion, prevented the maternal demonstra- 
 tion. 
 
 " Have a little of the turkey, Andrew?" asked Mr. Darryll, 
 who was rapidly dismembering a fowl, over whose prepara- 
 tion a scientific cook had presided. " You know the doctor says 
 you may indulge temperately now, in whatever your appetite 
 craves." 
 
 " I'll take some of the breast," said Andrew. " Capital fel- 
 low, that doctor," he continued. "You don't know, Ilusha, 
 what you missed this morning when you were out riding with 
 mamma, for he told Ella and me about his first visit to Pom- 
 peii."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 57 
 
 " I dou't believe she'd have given up ' Central Park,' though, 
 for any story. You ought to have seen the ecstasies she went 
 into over it," remarked. Mrs. Darryll. 
 
 " O, it was beautiful ! " said Rusha, with that indrawn 
 breath which, with her, always expressed her highest sense of 
 enjoyment. " I seemed all the time to be riding through some 
 enchanted land, and I really began to wonder whether there 
 were such things as sorrow, pain, misery, in the world. There 
 were the trees all astir with the new spring life in them, and 
 the little birds singing everywhere for joy, and the sweet, fresh 
 smell of the sprouting grasses, that carried me back to the old 
 field beyond the house at Mystic, and the warm, bright spring 
 sunshine over everything, and the charming pictures one came 
 upon at every new curve of the road. I wanted to stay there 
 forever. Wasn't it enchanting, mamma ? " 
 
 " Well, yes, I must say it was pretty. Take a little of the 
 cranberry sauce, Andrew ? " 
 
 Ella burst into a merry laugh. She had a quick sense of 
 the ridiculous. 
 
 " Mother never will sympathize with your enthusiasms, 
 Rusha. She's hopelessly practical. And for my part I must 
 own that I think Central Park is a sort of bore when you've 
 been over it a few times. I enjoy it, though, on Saturday af- 
 ternoons, when the drive is full of elegant turnouts, and the 
 music O, that is ravishing ! " 
 
 " To me, that is the least agreeable season to visit the Park." 
 
 " O, well, that's because you are funny, Rusha." 
 
 " Funny," and " odd," were the two very inadequate adjec- 
 tives in which Ella habitually concentrated her sense of her 
 elder sister's strong individuality. 
 
 " But I should like to hear what the doctor said about Pom- 
 peii. Can't you repeat it?" asked Rusha, too familiar with 
 Ella's ambiguous expressions respecting her character and con- 
 duct to bestow a second thought on them. 
 
 " O, it would spoil it all, Rusha, to give the story second- 
 hand. You must get him to repeat it. Dr. Rochford is splen-
 
 58 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 did only somehow I never feel quite at my ease with 
 him." 
 
 " I never thought of that, Ella," said Eusha. " There is 
 more thought, sense, cultivation in what he says in five minutes, 
 than there is in a whole evening's chatter with the silly-brained, 
 daintily-gloved puppets one meets at parties. How insufferable 
 they are ! " 
 
 " "Why, Rusha, how severe you are ! " exclaimed Ella, in a 
 tone which seemed to resent this remark, almost *as a personal 
 affront. " J don't think, with all Dr. Rochford's superiority, 
 that he is as agreeable as some gentlemen we have met in so- 
 ciety but perhaps that is because he is not my style." 
 
 "Who is one of those gentlemen, then?" asked Rusha, in a 
 tone which indicated her profound belief that her sister must 
 now beat an ignominious retreat. 
 
 " Well, for instance, Mr. Derrick Howe." 
 
 If a slight reluctance preceded the name, she brought it out 
 full and decisive at last. 
 
 " Derrick Howe ! " repeated Rusha Darryll, settling her 
 knife and fork on her plate, and herself back in her chair. 
 " You don't mean to say that you would compare such a man 
 as Dr. Rochford with Derrick Howe ! The very idea is pre- 
 posterous ! Why, he isn't to be mentioned ia the same day 
 with him ! " her remarks growing in exaggeration as they in- 
 creased in number, after, I am sorry to say, the tendency of 
 her sex. 
 
 " That is because he doesn't happen to be after your style, 
 Rusha," coming to the defence with considerable vehemence. 
 " Mr. Howe is a most accomplished gentleman, I am sure, and 
 is considered a great ornament to society, and any lady may 
 regard herself honored on whom he chooses to bestow his at- 
 tentions/' 
 
 " That's a matter of opinion," with a tone whose meaning 
 was unmistakable. 
 
 "Who's that who's that, girls?" interposed Mr. Darryll, 
 who had leisure now to attend to his daughters' talk, while the 
 waiter was busily putting the table in order for dessert.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 59 
 
 "We were talking about Mr. Derrick Howe you remem- 
 ber, pa, the gentleman that the ladies admired so much at our 
 party?" 
 
 The successful speculator was on the whole a tolerably 
 shrewd judge of men. He had a certain acquired sharpness in 
 gauging their depths, which was the natural result of being 
 constantly thrown amongst them in a variety of business rela- 
 tions. 
 
 " Confounded lazy dog," speaking in his rapid, decided way. 
 " A mere lady's man just fit to dandle round silly girls, make 
 smooth speeches, and pick up their handkerchiefs. No solidity, 
 no depth to him. Miserable spendthrift too takes on airs 
 run through what was left of his father's property, and lives 
 now on his old name." 
 
 Ella's color had brightened perceptibly during this very sweep- 
 ing analysis of the young man's character, and she had played 
 with her napkin ring in a manner that would have indicated to 
 a close observer both disturbance and displeasure ; but she con- 
 tented herself with muttering in an undertone to Agnes, who 
 happened to sit next her 
 
 " Papa generally does people injustice whom he does not 
 understand." 
 
 " I say," said Tom, during the process of amalgamating the 
 sauce with his pudding, " I saw a real lady last night. No 
 airs nor fol-de-rol, but the genuine article Simon pure." 
 
 " AVhere did you come across her at Barnum's Museum?" 
 asked Ella, something having ruffled her humor, which, in 
 justice to her, was generally a good one. 
 
 " Barnum's Museum ! " repeated Tom, indignantly. " If 
 you meant that for a joke, it's a failure. I saw her in her own 
 house and that happened to be just across the street when 
 I called about that last prescription for Andrew. The lady was 
 the doctor's sister ; I knew that as soon as I set my eyes on 
 her, though, you come to search for it close, the family likeness 
 isn't striking." 
 
 " O, do tell me about her, Tom. What did she say ? " asked 
 Itusha, in a voice that betrayed keen interest.
 
 60 DAERJLL GAP, OB 
 
 " There isn't much to tell. We didn't talk more than three 
 minutes before the doctor came in. It was all in the tone, 
 movement, manner ; and that spoke for itself. There are 
 plenty of gentlemen and ladies got up for occasions. On the 
 street, in a call, or at a party, they're all right ; but this one 
 you'd know somehow would be a lady just the same down in 
 the kitchen, with her washerwoman, with her seamstress, or on 
 the loneliest island in the world. It's in her a part of her- 
 self as much as the color of her eyes. And that's the kind I 
 like not those that are off and on help me out with it, 
 Rusha." 
 
 " Intermittent ladies is, I suspect, what you mean." 
 
 " That's it. You always do scent out the right word for a 
 fellow, just as a cat will go straight to the hole where the 
 mouse is." 
 
 " That's a .pretty compliment, Tom, only you might have 
 put it in prettier words." 
 
 " O, bother ! A fellow can't be always mincing after his 
 speech like a pedagogue. So he gets the meaning out, that's 
 the chief thing." 
 
 Here Guy spoke up. " O, father, I saw your name in the 
 paper this morning as one of the directors of the new * Ameri- 
 can Eagle Petroleum Company.' I didn't know as you'd gone 
 in there." 
 
 " They've got my name in ! " dipping a corner of his napkin 
 in the finger-glass. " I didn't know anything about it either, 
 until two or three days ago, when a couple of the stockholders 
 called to see me and said they would like to have my name, 
 and would put me down for a thousand shares." 
 
 "What did that mean, husband?" asked Mrs. Darryll, and 
 the sons and daughters listened attentively. Anything that 
 concerned " pa's " credit or importance was interesting to the 
 whole family. 
 
 So John Darryll sat at the head of his table, with a pleasant 
 sense of increased weight in both his social and financial relations. 
 
 " O, men don't do such things for nothing. I saw through
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 61 
 
 the wire-pulling at once. I've got up a name now for success 
 in ' striking ile,' and the men who are getting up the new com- 
 pany thought it would go down better if ' John Darryll, 
 Esquire,' showed in capitals amongst them ; and the thousand 
 shares was simply a complimentary way of buying the use of 
 it. It's all a fair bargain in business." 
 
 " But do you know whether this new company is likely to 
 succeed they say the market's glutted with bogus ones ? " 
 inquired Tom. 
 
 " That's true enough. This is as likely to turn out a rotten 
 concern as any of the others ; but that's not my business ; I 
 didn't offer to sell my name, but I let them have it when they 
 asked for it, and they gave me what they thought it was worth." 
 
 " Somebody '11 be pretty certain to get their fingers scorched," 
 remarked Guy, oracularly. 
 
 " Somebody's pretty certain to every day," added his father. 
 " The way a large proportion of these petroleum companies is 
 managed is a warning to a man to look sharp on all sides be- 
 fore he goes in, or he will be singed as sure as he's alive. A 
 few men, who understand the ropes, will buy a piece of land 
 somewhere among the oil regions for a mere song, set the 
 people wild about the fortunes it promises to yield the know- 
 ing ones are up to that sort of thing crowd the stock into the 
 market, get a few strong names, and blow the trumpets in the 
 newspapers ; and so the green ones go in, expecting to reap 
 tremendous fortunes in an incredibly short space of time, and 
 ten to one get wofully bit." Proving by his concluding sen- 
 tence, which was, in his own estimation, the sum of all the 
 others, that, however sound John Darryll might be iu petro- 
 leum, he was " shaky" in some of the root principles of gram- 
 mar. 
 
 " What a dishonorable piece of business ! No decent man 
 would have anything to do with it 1 " exclaimed Rusha, in a 
 heat of indignation. 
 
 " Plenty of men who call themselves decent do," answered 
 her father, emphatically. " In war all's fair. And it's pretty 
 6
 
 62 DABETLL GAP, OR 
 
 much so in business. If a man won't look out for himself, no- 
 body is going to trouble himself to do it for him. This world 
 is pretty largely made up of two sorts those that know how 
 to feather their nest and those that allow themselves to be 
 plucked ; and the latter's the larger by a vast odds." 
 
 With which philosophical view of life, Mr. Darryll helped 
 himself to some nuts, complacently reflecting that he belonged 
 to the fortunate minority of his classification. 
 
 " But, pa," continued Rusha,, " you don't suppose that this 
 ' American Eagle Petroleum Company,' which has your name, 
 is one of these abominable impositions you've been talking 
 about?" 
 
 " I don't suppose anything about it. It's not my concern. 
 The stockholders must look out for that. It's just what I said 
 likely to be a rotten thing as any of them." 
 
 " But as your name is there, it seems to me you're respon- 
 sible for the honor of the' company." 
 
 " Not at all ; I didn't ask them to take my name. It was 
 their own offer." 
 
 " Well, but you allowed the company to retain it, and it 
 seems the managers fancied it would have influence in attract- 
 ing others to invest." 
 
 " That's their look out, not mine, child. The concern may 
 be a sound one for all I know, and if it isn't, I haven't the time 
 to poke my head into its affairs ; and the probability is, all would 
 be fair outside, and if the thing was leaky at bottom, I shouldn't 
 be able to discover it. These managers are shrewd folks." 
 
 Rusha was by no means convinced. That stubborn instinct 
 of truth, that going right down to the core of things, which was 
 perhaps her greatest virtue, made her sometimes an uncomfort- 
 able opponent in an argument, at the bottom of which lay any 
 sophistry. 
 
 " But, pa," she continued, raising her voice a little, till its 
 strong, clear earnestness held every ear at the table attentive, 
 " a man's name, wherever he puts it, is his bond, his pledge of 
 honor and integrity ; and yours stands a witness for the sound-
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 63 
 
 ness of this Petroleum Company before the whole world ; and 
 as for that thousand shares, it's a mere bribe, so long as you 
 know nothing about the thing. A mean business, any way it 
 can be shown. If it was my name, I wouldn't have it stand 
 there a single day." 
 
 " Rusha, you talk like a woman, or a foolish, romantic girl," 
 answered her father, in a slightly irritated tone. " What do 
 you know about business ? " 
 
 " It won't do to carry girlish, high-flown notions into that 
 any more than it will into a good many other things I've told 
 you about," sagely, if not very luminously, remarked Mrs. 
 Darryll, probing an English walnut with her nut-picker. 
 
 Rusha never deserted an argument half way. " But, pa, 
 supposing now that some ill-informed, credulous persons 
 some widows or orphans, for instance taking your word for 
 just what it means, a witness for the integrity of this company, 
 should invest their money all, perhaps, they've got in the 
 woi-ld in these shares, and the whole thing should turn out 
 bogus. These people would be ruined, and the influence of 
 your name there would just do it ! " 
 
 " Bravo ! " exclaimed Tom, " Rusha's got the best of the 
 argument now." 
 
 " Rusha just knows nothing at all about it," subjoined her 
 father, in a voice tinctured more strongly than before with 
 annoyance. " It don't do for men in business to go to dealing 
 with ' supposes ' and ' perhapses.' All superfine notions of that 
 sort must be left to people who don't have to make money, and 
 can spend their time hunting up nice moral distinctions." 
 
 A free and easy style of conversation, which, if it lacked rev- 
 erence, had its advantages, always obtained betwixt parents and 
 children in the household of the Darrylls. 
 
 Rusha's face settled down now into that look of still inflexi- 
 bility which they all understood so well, and which was so apt 
 to terminate any family discussions. 
 
 " Well, there's one thing I do know if I do stay at home," 
 she said, " and that is, if there be such a thing as right, honor, 
 truth, they ought to enter into one's business as well as any
 
 64 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 other duty or relation in life ; and if my name stood where 
 yours does, pa, my conscience would give me no rest until I'd 
 had it struck off, and the company could take back their shares 
 until I knew it was an honest one." 
 
 "But supposing it should be and it's as likely as nine 
 tenths of them and the shares should yield me something 
 handsome in the way of dividends what then ? " asked her 
 father, a little triumphantly. 
 
 " I don't think she'd have any scruples about using the money 
 in that case, pa," interposed Mrs. Darryll, who somehow felt it 
 incumbent on her to take up the defence in behalf of her hus- 
 band more anxious that her children should think it would 
 not be possible for their father to do anything which was not 
 strictly just and right, than concerned about the thing itself. 
 " She was teasing me this morning for an India shawl. Just 
 try her with that, and I don't think she'll inquire very closely 
 where the money came from ! " 
 
 There was a loud chorus of laughter, in which all the young 
 voices joined, Rusha's as heartily as any of the others. She 
 could always bear having the laugh turned against her. 
 
 " She's got you this time, Rusha ! " said Guy, nodding his 
 head towards his elder sister. 
 
 " You've made a strong point against me, ma, but I'll be true 
 to my principles ; I'll give up the India shawl if pa will take 
 his name from the ' American Eagle Petroleum Company.' " 
 
 " Good ! Rusha '11 die game ! " said Tom, expressing with 
 more emphasis than elegance his sense of his sister's adherence 
 to her convictions of right. 
 
 " Pa," said Ella, " I don't happen to be troubled with any 
 such high-flown notions. You just hold fast to the shares, and 
 when the first dividends come in, let me have an India shawl, 
 and I won't ask any questions." 
 
 The talk had grown playful now ; and yet how much sober 
 truth underlay it ! 
 
 " Michael," said Mr. Darryll to the waiter, settling in this 
 way the matter under discussion, " let's have up a couple of 
 that new claret. We'll drink to Andrew's recovery this time."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "WELL, who is going to church this morning?" said Mr. 
 Darryll, as the coachman presented himself at the door of the 
 sitting-room one Sunday morning for orders. 
 
 There was a little stir amongst the assembled family. Mrs. 
 Darryll rose up and walked to the window, from which the sky 
 afforded a narrow limit for observations. Hers were not of the 
 most promising kind. A thin gray curtain of haze covered over 
 the sky, with here and there a little seam of azure. It was in 
 early April now, and phases of the sky were not to be depended 
 upon. " Do you think it's going to rain, pa? " asked the lady, 
 unable to reach an independent conclusion. 
 
 Mr. Darryll roused himself from the Sunday Herald, in which 
 he was again deeply buried, smoothed his whiskers, looked out 
 of the window. " Doubtful," was his verdict ; " wind isn't in 
 the right direction." 
 
 " Well, then, we'll have the carriage up, and the whole family 
 had better turn out ; it looks respectable, and your father 's 
 rented one of the best pews." 
 
 " Mother advocates going to church on principles of econ- 
 omy," laughed Tom, who was walking up and down the room 
 with his hands in his pockets. " She'd think the money was 
 wasted if every seat in the pew wasn't filled ! " 
 
 There was a laugh at mother's expense, which she bore with 
 equanimity. And then Ella turned to her sisters and said, 
 "Our new bonnets came last night. Don't you think we'd 
 better go, girls ? " 
 
 Rusha looked up from her book with a sort of yawn. " I 
 don't think that motive would be strong enough to take me out 
 of the house to-day," she said. 
 6*
 
 66 DAEBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Why, isn't that as good as any? " asked Guy, who, having 
 passed his fifteenth birthday, had attained that period when 
 boys hold their opinions with a little more positiveness than 
 they do at any other period of their lives. " I thought girls 
 and ladies never went to church for any better reason than to 
 flourish their fine dresses and bonnets ! " 
 
 Andrew laughed, and called Guy a " trump ; " but Rusha said 
 nothing, only she looked serious. 
 
 " Come, come, this isn't settling the matter about church," 
 iuterposed Mrs. Darryll. " Pa, hadn't you better go, and take 
 all your boys and girls ? " 
 
 " Not this morning, I believe, mother," getting up with a 
 yawn. " But the rest of you'd better muster in strong force. 
 Get out the carriage, Rufus, at half past ten." 
 
 There ensued a quarter of an hour's animated discussion 
 betwixt Ella and Agnes on the dresses they would wear that 
 morning, and on the people who occupied the pews adjoining 
 theirs, while Rusha walked up and down the room, as was a 
 habit with her, her hands locked behind her, her face drooped 
 forwards, with the thoughtful expression that always gave it a 
 touch of sadness. 
 
 The boys had distributed themselves in various lounging atti- 
 tudes. Tom and Guy were comparing bosom-pins, and Andrew, 
 who was now able to accomplish daily the descent of the stairs, 
 was listening to the talk, and laying plans for the next week, 
 when he expected to get out for the first time. 
 
 " Pa," said Ella, suddenly breaking into and stopping the 
 chatter of her brothers, " it's April already, and high time for 
 us to make our plans for the summer. The Lorings were ask- 
 ing me about them yesterday. We shall shut up house, of 
 course, at the commencement of the season, and take the water- 
 ing-places and all those things in order Newport, the White 
 Mountains, Saratoga, and Niagara. We can do them all in one 
 season, and we ought to begin to see about our wardrobes by 
 the very next week." 
 
 " O, won't it be splendid and I shall go too ! " said Agnes, 
 clapping her hands with girlish enthusiasm.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 67 
 
 " Come, come, children it's Sunday ; I'm amazed that 
 you'll talk about such matters to-day ! " said Mrs. Dairy 11, who 
 always had a traditional regard for religion a feeling that it 
 was something proper and necessary without which, in short, 
 no family could be respectable in this world or safe in the next. 
 She had felt it her duty to insist upon all its outward obser- 
 vances with her young household, such as going to church, at- 
 tending the Sunday-school, contributing to the missionary fund, 
 subscribing for a religious paper, and was always ready with 
 pecuniary and personal aid for all societies that had general con- 
 fidence and patronage for good works. 
 
 She had faithfully inducted each one of her children into the 
 catechism and commandments, and devoutly believed that this 
 system, with an occasional interlarding of pious talk, would 
 amply fortify them against all the temptations which the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil could bring to bear. 
 
 As for her husband, he had, in a general way, abetted his 
 wife's practice, believing that religion was a good thing for 
 women and a growing family. It helped to promote general 
 good order in society, as well as in households, and there was 
 no doubt something in it ; but just what or how much, no per- 
 sonal experience here had ever enlightened the soul of John 
 Darryll. 
 
 "We must have the horses at the watering-places," con- 
 tinued Tom, all regard for his mother's reproval absorbed in 
 the interest which he took in the topic under discussion. 
 *' Young Fordham was telling me about the crack horses they 
 always have at the Springs, and the races they had there last 
 year. Finest that ever came off. Zounds ! it must be a capital 
 sight, Andrew, to see such a show of horse-flesh ! " 
 
 Before the elder of the brothers could indorse this sentiment, 
 Ella broke -in with " Of course we shall go in the best style 
 if we go at all. Our carriage, and a maid, and all that, will 
 be quite indispensable." 
 
 " Boys and girls," interposed Mrs. Darryll, this time with 
 decided authority, " I should like to know if you are a set of
 
 68 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 heathen ! What do you s'pose you're all coming to, talking 
 about horse-races and such things Sunday morning?" 
 
 " Well, for my part, I don't see as it's any worse to talk 
 about those things than it is about ' Gold, and Hudson, and 
 Bank Stocks,' as pa does every Sunday, when he can get any- 
 body to listen," answered Ella, with some acerbity, being placed 
 so strongly on the defensive. 
 
 " I've just been wondering," said Rusha, pausing suddenly in 
 her walk, and standing still by the table, " whether there is 
 any such thing in the whole world as religion ? " 
 
 " Why, Rusha ! " exclaimed her mother, lifting up both 
 hands " how you do talk ! " 
 
 " Nevertheless, it's the truth, mother," her voice growing 
 solemn in its earnestness ; " I don't mean a religion of tradi- 
 tions or respectabilities ; nor one of forms ; nor outside ob- 
 servances ; but I mean a religion of the heart and soul ; 
 something that is stronger and more precious than life itself; 
 something genuine to the core, known and lived every day ; 
 something that one can hold fast through all loss and change, 
 through all joy and sorrow, and that one knows can be carried 
 out from this world into the next." 
 
 For a moment nobody spoke. Mrs. Darryll looked a little 
 solemn and perplexed. Perhaps just then each soul in that 
 room had some vague consciousness of inward reproval and 
 need. 
 
 " I s'pose that was the sort of religion the old martyrs had, 
 when they lay down in dungeons and went to the stake wasn't 
 it, ma ? " said Agnes. 
 
 " I s'pose it was, my child," answered the lady ; but somehow 
 she did not seem quite confident. 
 
 " They lived so long ago," continued Rusha, the gravity in 
 her face touching her voice. " If I could only know one man 
 or woman in the world who really lived, or actually tried to, the 
 religion that so many profess ! I know plenty of folks that are 
 kind, well-meaning, good-hearted, and all that ; but I mean 
 something that goes deeper. I read about religion in books ; I
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. (59 
 
 hear the ministers preach it ; and I sometimes long to say boldly 
 to some of them, ' Do you really believe what you say up there 
 in the pulpit? Do you carry it down with you into every-day 
 life ? Is it more to you than your salary, your position, your 
 honors dearer than life itself? ' ' 
 
 " Then there are the missionaries, you know," subjoined 
 Agnes, somewhat timidly. 
 
 " Hypocrites and humbugs, half of 'em ! " muttered Guy ; 
 " have a good time off there, converting the heathen, and mak- 
 ing folks at home support 'em." 
 
 " Guy, don't speak in that way of good folks," said Mrs. 
 Darryll, regarding it incumbent on her to interfere, and yet 
 unable to bring the slightest argument against her son's whole- 
 sale accusations. 
 
 " Of course," continued Rusha, resuming her walk, " nobody 
 doubts that there are good, honest people, who want to do just 
 what is right ; but how far these are in their beliefs and experi- 
 ences the victims of false education and honest mistake, is a 
 question beyond my depth. I wish I knew where truth was ! " 
 speaking half to herself now. 
 
 " The fact is, human nature's pretty much the same every- 
 where ; I've found that out in my dealings with men," remarked 
 Mr. Darryll. " Every one looks out sharp for himself. Reli- 
 gion sounds well in the pulpit and in books, and is all right 
 enough in its way ; but these fine-spun theories don't answer in 
 the hard grip and tussle of life." 
 
 " In short, governor, your creed isn't founded on cant, but 
 on hard dollars and cents," said Andrew, attempting to be 
 humorous. 
 
 " Well, it's my opinion every man's is, in the long run, and 
 get to the bottom of the matter," answered paterfamilias , 
 rumpling his Herald. 
 
 " And when one looks abroad on the people one knows," con- 
 tinued Rusha, " they're no better than we, living on the same 
 plane, influenced by just the same motives, pursuing the very 
 same objects. I wish, as I said, I knew one man or woman in
 
 70 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 the whole world in whose intelligent goodness I should have 
 solid, unquestioning faith." 
 
 " I think, for my part, we're about as good as most folks," 
 said Ella, a little annoyed at the way her sister disposed of her 
 family in this regard. " I'm sure pa pays a tremendous rent 
 for his pew, in the most fashionable church." 
 
 " Yes ; but he pays that to the god of fashion, not to the God 
 of the church." 
 
 " Well, I presume our motives are just as good as our neigh- 
 bors'." 
 
 " That's just what I was saying," answered Rusha, dryly. 
 
 The mother interposed here. " Come, come, girls, you 
 haven't a minute to spare. Go right up stairs and dress, or 
 you won't be ready for church." 
 
 Poor Rusha with her soul groping in the dark, uttering its 
 long plaint for something which the world could not give it ! 
 
 The family atmosphere was dense and material, and the so- 
 ciety amidst which she moved was pretty much of the same 
 quality. She had never been thrown into the company of high- 
 minded Christian men and women, and though all that was 
 aspiring and truest in her thrilled responsive when she heard 
 of the excellence of goodness and the beauty of truth and self- 
 sacrifice, she wondered whether this was ever brought down 
 into the actual and real whether these high-spun, rose-colored 
 theories ever existed outside of sermons and books. Her soul 
 wanted the eternal anchorage, to hide itself in the strong tower 
 of -the blessed promises of God. Unsettled and uncertain, it 
 carried through the days the doubts that would not be silenced, 
 the chill and darkness which only a living faith in Christ Jesus, 
 with religious culture and its slow daily growth in the soul, 
 could warm and illuminate. 
 
 The shallower natures of the others could, in some sense, 
 satisfy themselves with the world and its prosperities ; but for 
 her, though her father had made his great fortune, though lux- 
 uries and splendors surrounded and persuaded her on every 
 side, she was still poor Rusha !
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 71 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " CONFOUND this Administration ! Driving the country, 
 neck and heels, straight into ruin ! " 
 
 Having thus delivered himself, Mr. Darryll dashed down the 
 paper and seized the poker, and commenced a vigorous onslaught 
 on the lowest stratum of coals this exercise proving a sort 
 of safety valve through which his indignation could vent itself. 
 
 " Dear me, John, what is to pay now?" asked Mrs. Dar- 
 ryll, gathering up in her lap, in order to screen it from a shower 
 of ash dust, a long turnpike of white ruffling, over which her 
 needle was laboriously plodding. 
 
 " You better ask me what isn't to pay ! " retorted the lady's 
 spouse, in tones which indicated a strong tendency to use the 
 poker on some more sentient object than the coals. " Block- 
 heads and knaves at the head of our Government. Steered us, 
 with their eyes open, right into this civil war, and all they care 
 for now is to feather their own nests and run everybody straight 
 into bankruptcy. Here they are talking about another draft, 
 and taxing a man now every lime he turns round. We can't 
 stand this much longer. I thought when we commenced this 
 thing we were going to put it through in nine months ; and 
 now, after a year of fighting, the end looks farther off than at 
 the beginning ! " 
 
 Mr. Darryll had commenced his diatribes on civil and mili- 
 tary affairs with only his wife for auditor, she being, on this 
 ground, one of the acquiescent and monosyllabic type, her opin- 
 ions and sentiments on all public matters being a faithful reflex 
 of her husband's. 
 
 This was not precisely the case with the sons and daughters, 
 although there was no doubt that the home-talk colored more 
 or less the political views of most of them.
 
 72 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 And one after another the boys and girls had dropped in, and 
 stood now grouped around in various attitudes of indolence or 
 interest, listeniug to the conversation. 
 
 " But, pa," interposed Rusha, standing on the defensive, 
 " you remember that Washington made a greater mistake than 
 our Government did when he wrote to his wife, at the time of 
 his taking command of the Continental army, that the war 
 would probably be over by the following autumn. What a 
 point the Tories must have made of that false prophecy through 
 all the seven years that followed ! " 
 
 Mr. Darryll cleared his throat in order to gain time. He 
 had that reverence for Washington, and all the great actors of 
 the Revolution, which is inborn with every American. 
 
 " That's another thing," he said, seizing hold of the first 
 point that presented itself. " The questions at issue are en- 
 tirely different. We haven't got any such men now as we 
 had then." 
 
 " I should think not," added Ella, who had a constitutional 
 dislike of radicalism, and a general impression that the "first 
 society " did not indorse the present Administration. " Look 
 at Abraham Lincoln ! " 
 
 " What's the matter with him ? " asked Rusha, tartly. 
 
 Her sister was, of course, ready with the stock objection. 
 
 " O, he isn't a gentleman. Such an awkward, inelegant man 
 at the head of our nation ! It's really dreadful ! " 
 , " I presume that your dancing-master would do the honors 
 of the White House with a much better grace than our Presi- 
 dent, and that is, of course, much more important than sound 
 wisdom or integrity of character, than strength of purpose or 
 love of justice and righteousness, in the man who stands at 
 the nation's helm, now that she is in this awful peril for life 
 or for death ! " 
 
 The voice of Rusha Darryll held now that lingering sarcasm 
 which they all perfectly understood, and, if the truth must be 
 told, secretly dreaded a little. 
 
 Ella was a good deal nettled. Of course her position was
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 73 
 
 totally indefensible, now that moral instead of physical quali- 
 ties formed the grounds of the defence ; but she had one shaft 
 left, tipped with a little venom. She sent it home now. 
 
 "Are you an abolitionist, Rusha, I should like to know? 
 One would imagine it by the way you talk." 
 
 That name had had, during their childhood, an exceedingly 
 bad odor in the Darryll family. Perhaps it still retained some 
 old power of association over Rusha's mind, for her answer 
 hardly met it squarely ; and then it was several years ago, and 
 people have grown in the last three. 
 
 " I hardly know what you mean by abolitionist, Ella ; but 
 of one thing I am certain, that slavery, in any form, is a sin 
 and a curse to a people, and against it, so long as I live, I will 
 set my face, whatever you or anybody else may call me." 
 
 This was certainly throwing down the gauntlet in an atmos- 
 phere where it required some moral courage to do it ; but dur- 
 ing the latter part of Rusha's speech, Guy had entered, thus 
 completing the family circle. The boy had happened during 
 the last week to light on Uncle Tom's Cabin for the first time, 
 he having hitherto religiously avoided it, hearing his father, 
 who had never so much as read the title page, denounce the 
 book as a " miserable incendiary work," this remark being 
 plagiarized from an adverse newspaper criticism. 
 
 Of course with the first chapter Guy was committed to the 
 end. And as a consequence of reading the book, he had accepted 
 an invitation of a young friend* given half in sport, to go and 
 hear Wendell Phillips lecture the preceding evening. 
 
 The transcendent power of the book had wrought strongly on 
 the rough, boyish sympathies of Guy Darryll, and the eloquence 
 of the lecturer completely brought him over. His family was 
 quite ignorant of the sudden revolution which his political con- 
 victions had undergone, and each one was electrified to see him 
 stand up boldly now, the ruddy, immature face glowing with the 
 fervor of his sentiments as he delivered them 
 
 " I say I'm an abolitionist to the core ! Go in for the nigger 
 strong. They've just as good rights as white folks ; and so 
 7
 
 74 DAEETLL GAP, OB 
 
 long as they're human beings, we've no business to buy and 
 sell 'em ; and I'm ready to fight anybody who says we have ! " 
 growing belligerent as he proceeded. 
 
 Guy's avowal was received with shouts of merriment by his 
 brothers, and with various interjections of surprise or dismay 
 from the rest of the family, with the exception of Rusha, who 
 patted her youngest brother on the shoulder, and said, encour- 
 agingly 
 
 " Bravo, Guy ! That's the sort of talk I like ! " 
 
 " Well, it isn't what I do, by a long shot," said her father, 
 vastly surprised and a good deal displeased at this defection of 
 his youngest son. " Where in the world did you get such 
 notions as those, Guy ? " 
 
 The boy had an impression that his authorities would by no 
 means enhance the value of his convictions in his father's esti- 
 mation ; so he wisely kept them to himself, only saying, with an 
 air of profound sagacity, in amusing contrast with his boyish 
 face 
 
 " O, I've thought and read a good deal lately ; and these are 
 my opinions, and I shall hold them as long as I live, without 
 fear or favor." 
 
 " Well, all I've got to say is, you'd better wait until you're a 
 little older and wiser than you are now, before you put forth 
 your sentiments in such a fashion," said his father. 
 
 Guy, secretly primed with Wendell Phillips and Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe, turned suddenly a strong fire from his battery 
 on his father 
 
 "Do you approve of slavery, father? Do you think it's 
 right to sell men and women on the auction block as though 
 they were cattle? Do you think it's right to separate husbands 
 and wives, and tear little children away from their fathers and 
 mothers to hang up women by the wrists and whip their bare 
 backs till they're raw, and send blood-hounds to bring them 
 down when they run away from their masters ? Do you think 
 it's right to do these things because one man has a white skin 
 and the other a black one ? "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 75 
 
 John Darryll hemmed. His old, sound New England train- 
 ing, and at bottom the sturdy sense of right and justice, the 
 common humanity which no political sophistries nor partisan 
 feelings could overcome, rose up in stout condemnation of the 
 facts that young boy of his had put so strongly. 
 
 " Of course I don't," he answered, very crossly, but still very 
 positively. " None of my family ever heard me contend that 
 slavery was right. I've always admitted the thing was a wrong 
 and a shame ; but as we'd got it, and the Constitution admits 
 it, the best way was to let it all alone, and it would be its own 
 remedy in time. You see what all this talk and agitation about 
 the thing has brought the country to ; I've said it would be so 
 for years, and now we've got into a war with no end to it, and 
 nobody to manage it." 
 
 " If slavery carries its own remedy in itself, why doesn't 
 murder, or arson, or any other crime ? " persisted Rusha. 
 
 *' There, you see, pa, I told you so," said Ella, in a tone 
 half deprecatory, half positive. " Your oldest daughter is an 
 out-and-out abolitionist ! " 
 
 " Well, I'm sure, John, she never got it from me," added 
 Mrs. Darryll. 
 
 " No, ma," laughed Rusha, good naturedly " whatever 
 my opinions are, you shan't be responsible for them." 
 
 " But, Rusha," continued Ella, standing by the mantel, and 
 looking at her sister with some perplexity, " I do think you 
 have a tendency toward isms. You have, somehow I can't 
 just explain \vhat I mean the sort of character and enthu- 
 siasm that runs away with folks ! I shouldn't wonder the least 
 if under a certain set of influences you should turn Woman's 
 Rights, or take to lecturing in public, or some such dreadful 
 thing." 
 
 " You are complimentary, Ella. But give yourself no alarm, 
 my dear. The consciousness of my own fatal lack of gifts will 
 keep me always from the Rostrum." 
 
 " I'm not so sure about that," added Tom. " Rusha can 
 talk, when she gets the steam on, better than a good many miu-
 
 76 
 
 isters ; and then she always looks so well when she gets ex- 
 cited ! " 
 
 " Tom, don't ! " interposed Ella again, her imagination tak- 
 ing the alarm at even the playful suggestion of such a prospect. 
 " If the day should ever come when my sister rises up in a 
 public hall to speak, I shall want to hide my head the rest of 
 my life for shame ; I never could show my face in society after 
 such a disgrace ! " 
 
 " You'd better think of something that's likely to happen," 
 suggested Mr. Darryll, who never gave himself much concern 
 about improbabilities of this sort. 
 
 " I see we're going to have another draft, and it's as likely 
 to fall on Torn or Andrew as anybody." 
 
 " O, pa ! " This little interjection fell from Mrs. Darryll ; 
 but it said what the hearts of mothers with goodly sons had 
 been saying for more than two years over all the land. An- 
 drew's fractured ribs were now so far restored as to make an 
 impending draft a source of alarm in his case. 
 
 " And substitutes cost a small fortune now-a-days," said the 
 head of the family, returning to the old ground of offence. 
 
 " But, pa, you know you'd rather pay any amount of money, 
 than have either of your boys go to the war and get shot, or 
 fall into the hands of those dreadful Rebels," expostulated Mrs. 
 Darryll. " We'd better make any sacrifices rather than have 
 that happen." 
 
 " Yes ; I wonder, if worse came to worse, how many gew- 
 gaws your girls would be willing to sacrifice at the watering- 
 places, where they intend to figure this summer ? " retorted Mr. 
 Darryll, who was in the habit of visiting on domestic affairs 
 the ill humor engendered by a contemplation of public ones. 
 
 " I'm sure we'd all be willing to make any sacrifice, rather 
 than see our Andrew or Tom go to the war," answered Mrs. 
 Darryll, meekly ; and Ella, who had meditated a strong attack 
 on her father's pockets that day the summer's wardrobe be- 
 ing now in an advanced state of preparation concluded to 
 defer her appeal to a more favorable occasion.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 77 
 
 One thing was certain. John Darryll was an habitual grum- 
 bler, and his threats always kept far ahead of his deeds, as was 
 a fact well known and acted on at all times in the bosom of his 
 own family. 
 
 And the same rule would, in a measure, apply to his habit 
 of regarding all public affairs. The man was not without a 
 feeling of patriotism. The echo, as it rolled over the land, of 
 the first shot on that lonely fort by the sea, had roused the 
 lu'tirt of John Darryll with the rest of his countrymen. For 
 the time being, a new love of country, a burning desire to avenge 
 her wrong and retrieve her honor, superseded every other feel- 
 ing in the soul of the man. He averred himself ready to take 
 his gun and go. down South, and do his part in putting down 
 the rebellion that had taken him by such surprise ; for he, 
 like the majority of Northern men, had believed in his heart 
 that South Carolina, and the other seceded states, could not 
 be really " in earnest." 
 
 But John Darryll was not a man of abiding faith in things 
 invisible. He had not those strong moral convictions which 
 make a man, no matter how dark and desperate a cause may 
 seem, anchor his hope on the eternal foundations of truth and 
 justice, on which that cause rests. 
 
 And so, when defeat and disaster overtook our armies ; when 
 mistakes, that the very nature of things rendered unavoidable, 
 were committed on every hand, then John Darryll's faith waxed 
 faint. 
 
 Certainly those long four years tried every man, and when 
 Ihe war, with its high prices and heavy taxes, began to touch 
 the pockets of men like Mr. Darryll that was their weak 
 point then they began to grumble at the blunders and tyran> 
 nies of the Government. 
 
 John Darryll had been brought up in a school of the old 
 Jackson and Jefferson type. The names still possessed a strong 
 traditional power over his mind ! 
 
 That both these men were fervent patriots, however strongly 
 partisan, nobody could attempt to deny. But John Darryll had 
 7*
 
 78 DABRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 an impression, based on no intelligent insight into the course 
 of events, and on very insufficient knowledge of the real char- 
 acter of the great men whose names were always on his lips, 
 that if they had only managed affairs, things would have turned 
 out smooth and satisfactory to all parties. 
 
 He had no wide moral outlooks, and present mistake or dis- 
 aster was to him absolute proof of either incapacity or villany. 
 And how many men were there, who felt and talked like this 
 one through all the nation's long four years' baptism of fire 
 and blood, and who only begin to see with clearer vision now 
 that the cloud and fire of the battle are rolling away ! 
 
 Blessed are those who, not seeing, yet have believed !
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 79 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SICILY ROCHFORD had been absent in the country for most 
 of the spring, visiting a sister of her father's. Two or three 
 days after her return she said to her brother " Well, Fletcher, 
 I hear that you have made the acquaintance of the family across 
 the street, under circumstances, too, which are apt to show peo- 
 ple's characters in dishabille, as physicians oftenest see them. 
 Tell me something about them." 
 
 The young doctor put down his paper and leaned his head 
 back on his chair a fine head, both artists and physiognomists 
 had called it, surveying it, however, from somewhat different 
 stand-points. 
 
 It was just at twilight, and the little family of three were 
 gathered in the study, in that indolent, social mood which usu- 
 ally follows a day of bustling activities of one sort and another, 
 and the Rochfords were, every one of them, from constitution, 
 habit, and conscience, full of varied plans and industries, which 
 never allowed time to hang heavy on their hands. 
 
 The day had been warm for it was late in the May. A 
 golden glow of twilight filled the room. All through it were 
 afloat odors of hyacinths and roses, with the luscious sweetness 
 of orange blossoms from a little conservatory, which opened 
 like a green, flowery glade out from one side of the study. 
 
 " Fletcher looks tired, Sicily," said Angeline, as she noticed 
 with the swiftness of intent affection the posture which the head 
 took, half unconsciously. 
 
 " If I am, there is no rest so pleasant and entire as talking 
 with you, girls. Now, what do you want to know about the 
 people opposite, Sicily?" 
 
 " Well, whether our conjectures, when you first came home, 
 about the sort of people they were, turned out to be true."
 
 80 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 " You know the circumstances which first introduced them 
 to me?" 
 
 " Yes ; Angeline related them to me this morning. I think 
 your meeting with the young lady would have been decidedly 
 romantic had the occasion been less serious." 
 
 " It was serious to her then a matter of life and death. 
 Poor girl ! there were no disguises there. That wild, white, 
 frightened face, under its shadow of dark brown hair, contrasted 
 awfully with the rich dress and the quiver of the jewels on her 
 arms and neck. I never saw a sharper agony in any face. I 
 can never get it out of hers, although I have seen it since very 
 luminous with smiles and happiness." 
 
 " She is your favorite of the family, Angeline says." 
 
 Fletcher Rochford turned and smiled on the elder of his sis- 
 ters. " How do you know that ? " he said " did I tell you ? " 
 
 " As though I wasn't acute enough to find that out without 
 your saying so ! " 
 
 " What is her name? " asked Sicily. 
 
 Her brother smiled again this time with a twinkle in his 
 eyes. " Jerusha ! " he said, pronouncing the name with im- 
 mense unction. 
 
 Sicily screwed her face into an expression indescribable, unless 
 her own solitary comment pronounced it " Distressing ! " 
 
 " I don't think it is to the owner thereof, Sicily ; and then 
 they call her ' Rusha,' which I like better than most of your 
 new-fangled pet names." 
 
 " Rusha ! Rusha ! that is a decided improvement ; it has 
 really a pretty sound about it." 
 
 " But really, Sicily, I don't dislike Jerusha," interposed An- 
 geline. " There is a hearty, honest sound to the name, that 
 somehow I fancy/' 
 
 "It is a matter of taste," replied her sister. " However, if 
 one likes the owner of the name, it makes but little difference 
 what the latter is." 
 
 " Yes," said her brother ; and he said no more, only sat still, 
 musing. 
 
 At last Sicily reminded him
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. gj 
 
 "What are you thinking of, Fletcher?" 
 
 " Of this girl, Rusha Darryll. I pitied her that night on 
 which I first saw her, and I pity her still, although any one who 
 knew perhaps even she herself would think the emotion 
 wasted in her case." 
 
 " In what respect do you find that she needs it then? " This 
 was Angeline's question. 
 
 " Because there is a fine, strong, most womanly nature in 
 that girl, shut up and feeding on itself. One sees how it is. 
 The tone of her home, the personal atmospheres of those around 
 her, have all had, more or less, a coarse, materializing influ- 
 ence. The right kind of moral culture and stimulus would have 
 made of that girl a high-souled, deep-hearted, under God, truly 
 Christian woman. The fair, delicate face it is that sort of 
 delicacy which, without physical unsoundness, indicates an ex- 
 tremely sensitive nervous organization, that face, even in its 
 utmost brightness and it has phases of such is haunted to 
 me always with some wistfulness and unrest. I can understand 
 what it all means, too. There is an inward, half-conscious pro- 
 test going on all the while against the sort of influences among 
 which her life has unfolded. The whole spirit of the family is 
 dense gravitates earthward. And yet, as I said, there is the 
 making of a noble woman in that girl, only there is a great deal 
 against her at present." 
 
 " You must have studied her face closely, Fletcher," remarked 
 Sicily, archly. 
 
 " Otherwise I should not be a good physician," answered the 
 doctor, grave as any judge, though he caught the twinkle of a 
 smile, and understood perfectly what it meant. 
 
 " Perhaps she will grope her way out into the light," answered 
 Angeline. 
 
 " Perhaps that is the best one can say. But the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil are three strong forces, and in certain 
 directions this new fortune will bring them to bear strongly on 
 her." 
 
 " Is there nothing to be said of the rest of the family?"
 
 82 DARETLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Of the father, not much. He is simply a successful specu- 
 lator a sharp, bustling man; and the mother is kindly, and 
 fussy, and narrow ; and the sons are of the Young America 
 type, with great danger of making shipwreck on the new for- 
 tune ; and of the daughters, one is pretty, showy, with a cer- 
 tain outward brilliancy, that has little depth, but tells in society ; 
 and the youngest daughter is a nice little school-girl the 
 mother's pattern, a good deal improved." 
 
 What reply the young ladies would have made to this rapid 
 but discriminating analysis of the Darryll household, never 
 transpired, for at that moment the housemaid presented herself 
 at the door, saying " There's an old woman and a young sol- 
 dier down stairs, doctor. I told 'em it was out of your hours ; 
 but they said you'd see 'em, if I'd just say ' Benjamin Stowell 
 and his mother.' " 
 
 It had been the doctor's hospital day, a day always of ex- 
 hausting work, both of mind and body. A look of weariness 
 had hovered over his face, even in the restful home scenes and 
 talk ; but a sudden animation displaced all other expression, 
 as he said " Show them up here at once." 
 
 " Is it a private interview? " asked Sicily, for the name was 
 new to both her and Angeline. 
 
 " No ; stay, both of you, in that corner. It will be worth see- 
 ing, and it will not embarrass them if they do not observe you." 
 
 As he spoke, there entered the room a small, withered old 
 woman, with a dark, thin face, all broken up now with some 
 strong rush of feeling. She wore a new black silk dress and 
 tidy shawl and bonnet. By her side was a sturdy, broad-shoul- 
 dered, sun-browned youth, in army blue. 
 
 The doctor rose and held out his hand, with his best smile on 
 his face, and his heartiest welcome in his tones. " I am glad to 
 see you, my friends." 
 
 The little, withered old woman sprang forward, and griped 
 his hand in both of hers ; her face quivered all over betwixt 
 smiles and sobs. " Benjamin's going, doctor," she said, choking 
 over the words.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 83 
 
 " So I see ; and you're making every man, woman, and child 
 your debtor, by giving him to his country now, my dear friend." 
 
 The words did the poor old mother good. He could see, as 
 he turned to shake hands with Benjamin, that she straightened 
 herself up, the big tears a-twinkle on her cheeks, and the pride 
 and tenderness together making an unutterable pathos in her 
 face " I couldn't let him go, doctor, without first coming round 
 here to say good by to you. There isn't many a mother '11 give 
 a finer-looking boy than that to fight for his country." 
 
 The young man's face flushed through its tan. " You won't 
 mind what the old woman says, doctor, now I'm going off? " 
 apologetically. 
 
 "Ah, Ben, my boy, you'll mind it one of these days, when 
 you get down there in the thick of the fight, and every word of 
 love and praise will come back then, and be the sweetest 
 memory your heart will carry," answered Dr. Kochford. 
 
 " He's your gift as much as mine, doctor," continued the 
 old woman, entirely unobservant in her agitation of the two 
 ladies in the shadow, who sat intently watching the scene "I 
 shouldn't have had my Ben to give to his country, if it hadn't 
 been for you ! " 
 
 " I shall have part and lot in one soldier, then. After your 
 mother, remember me, Ben." 
 
 The private found his voice now. He grasped Dr. Eoch- 
 ford's hand 
 
 " You needn't ask that, doctor. As if I could ever put you 
 anywhere but next to her, when I remember that day you 
 found me in the street, and carried me to the hospital, and 
 nursed me through all that long sickness, and went after the 
 poor old woman, and brought her down your own self to sea 
 her boy that didn't deserve it " 
 
 " Don't say that now, Benny," put in the old woman, with 
 the tears dripping down her withered cheeks. " He was a 
 good boy, al'ays, doctor, and he'll go down to the fight with 
 his poor old mother's blessin' on his head. It mayn't be much, 
 but it's all she's got."
 
 84 DARETLL GAP, OR 
 
 " I think it is more than honors or diadems," said the doc- 
 tor. " May the old mother's blessing and prayer ' cover your 
 head in the day of battle,' Benjamin ! " 
 
 " Ah, doctor, you know jest how to find the right word to 
 take the sore ache out of a body's heart. Mine had it at the 
 thought of giving up my only boy, until I made up my mind to 
 go with him." 
 
 " Going with him! Mrs. Stowell?" repeated the doctor, in 
 amazement. 
 
 " Yes," a new resolution smoothing out the lines of the dark 
 old face. " Benny 's all I've got ; and my post will be close to 
 him, as long as we live. Other mothers have got boys down 
 there that need tender nursing ; and, though I'm an old woman, 
 I've got strength left yet to bind up wounds, and carry cold 
 water, and speak comfortin' words ; and every single boy down 
 in the army will sort of seem as if he was my own, now Ben- 
 ny 's there, and taking care of them other mothers' boys will be 
 kinder doin' it for him." 
 
 " That hospital work down there I'm afraid it will be too 
 much for you, Mrs. Stowell," said the doctor, doubtfully. 
 
 " It won't be half so hard as to stay away and think of what 
 might be happenin' to him ; " she reached up her hand and 
 patted the thick, dark hair in a way that must have drawn 
 tears from colder eyes than any of those who watched her. 
 And the doctor saw that she was wiser than he. 
 
 There was no more time to spare. Benjamin's regiment was 
 to leave the next day, but there was a touch of feminine vanity 
 which drew smiles through the tears of both Angeline and 
 Sicily Rochford, as the old woman drew aside her shawl and 
 pointed to her black silk dress. 
 
 " You see, Benjamin wanted his old mother to look sort o' 
 scrumptious, when he introduced her to the officers. He got 
 all these new things with his bounty money," turning her back 
 in order that he might inspect her new shawl, and the neat 
 black bonnet, for each of which, the doctor, equally amused 
 and touched, had just the appropriate word.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 85 
 
 " Good by, Benjamin. Good by, Mrs. Stowell," wringing 
 the hands of both, and kissing the old woman's cheek. " One 
 of these days I may find you down there, for it seems to me 
 that my work lies in the same direction as yours. And, Ben- 
 jamin, remember your friend's last words. Be worthy of your 
 God, your country, and your old mother." 
 
 The old woman straightened her bent figure as she took her 
 stalwart son's arm, and so they went out the old woman and 
 the young man to the war together. 
 
 For a while not one of those whom they left behind spoke a 
 word. At last Sicily drew up to her brother, laid her hand on 
 his shoulder, and said, 
 
 " Tell us what that meant, Fletcher." 
 
 He did not seem in a hurry to do it then, and Angeline 
 added, after a little, 
 
 " We are waiting, Fletcher." 
 
 " In brief then, girls, some business took me one day last 
 autumn down among the piers by the river. And near one of 
 these I came across a young man in a sailor's garb, lying in a 
 pool of blood. Either my pity or my professional instincts 
 must have been arrested, for I leaned down and removed the 
 tarpaulin which shaded his eyes. The face turned up to me 
 was totally unconscious, and ghastly enough a good, honest 
 face, as I read at the first glance, although there was a strong 
 odor of liquor about it. 
 
 " I saw the whole thing at once. A young sailor, just 
 landed, had been decoyed into some of the dens that infest that 
 part of the city, plied with strong drink, probably been robbed 
 of his money, and thrust out in the end, to live or die, as might 
 be. Some vehicle had evidently gone over him, for on exami- 
 nation I found his arm broken, his collar-bone fractured. 
 
 " To make the story short, I got help, and took the youth up 
 to the hospital, and brought him back to life, though not to his 
 wits for weeks afterwards. 
 
 " The injury and exposure produced inward inflammation, 
 and when we got the better of that, the typhoid set in, and he 
 8
 
 86 DAERTLL GAP, OE 
 
 had a hard pull for life. I learned that my conjectures were 
 correct. The lad was the only son of his mother, and she was 
 a widow down in Maine. He had been smitten with a mania 
 for the sea, but this his first voyage had cured him of it, and 
 he was returning to his mother, with a resolution to go into 
 farm work, as his father had before him, when he was decoyed 
 into a miserable drinking hole, by some of the ship hands, and 
 there was an end of his money, and, if I had not picked him 
 up, of his life. 
 
 " The way that boy used to talk of his mother touched me. 
 I knew she was looking for him night and day, now the 
 vessel had got in, and I finally made up my mind, after get- 
 ting her address, to go for her, as the son hung betwixt life 
 and death, the chances for either seeming, to human vision, 
 about equal. 
 
 " You see it was one of those cases where letters wouldn't 
 do ; besides, the old woman had never been fifty miles from 
 home, and couldn't easily find her way to the city alone. I 
 managed to take a couple of nights for the journey, and so 
 didn't lose much time, brought her to her son, and for the end 
 what you have just seen relates it. My care has been re- 
 warded a thousand fold." 
 
 " And you gave up two nights to find that old woman and 
 bring her to her son, when no day ever allows you an hour for 
 rest ! " said Sicily. 
 
 " People have done greater things than that, without praise 
 or reward," answered Fletcher Rochford. 
 
 " O, knightly heart and eloquent tongue ! " said Angeline, 
 fondly, slipping her arm around her brother's neck. 
 
 " Now stop, girls, stop just where you are," he said, posi- 
 tively. " If there is anything in the world that will spoil a 
 fellow, that will make him vain and self-conceited, it's talk of 
 that sort ! The truth is, as Carlyle says, you women are nat- 
 ural worshippers, and it's your misfortune that your divinities 
 are made of such dreadfully frail stuff." 
 
 The girls laughed merrily, and patted their brother on the
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 87 
 
 shoulder, as they stood on each side of him, but he kept on 
 gravely for all that. 
 
 " I honestly believe that the females of my own household 
 have done more to inflate my besetting sins, than all the rest 
 of the world put together ! " 
 
 " Why, Fletcher ! " was the duet that now saluted his ears. 
 
 " It's the terrible fact. You and mother were always laud- 
 iug me for things that deserved no praise, and if I hadn't 
 guarded against these influences, I should have turned out a 
 veritable coxcomb. I am not the stuff to stand such talk. I 
 think very few of my sex are." 
 
 " I have never perceived any injurious effects, but as you 
 insist on them so positively, Sicily and I will give you some 
 doses of a different kind," laughed Angeline. 
 
 The doctor laughed too, pinching her cheek at this ambig- 
 uous threat ; but then he said, 
 
 " It is a serious matter, girls, and I believe this tendency of 
 worship in your sex is one of the underlying causes of a great 
 deal of marital unhappiness. You women make divinities of 
 your husbands. Your worship inflates their self-love, their 
 pride, and in the end develops them into tyrants. 
 
 " A woman when she marries a man ought not to merge her 
 individuality wholly in his, but to strive with all the power of 
 her affection to brace him where he is weak, to make of him, in 
 short, a stronger, better, nobler man. That is her work and her 
 duty, not to swallow all that he says and does, in a blind adora- 
 tion, which in the end is wholesome for neither of them." 
 
 " I think," said Sicily, her bright face now as thoughtful as 
 her brother's, " that you are right in the cases of many hus- 
 bands and wives ; but how can a woman's admiration harm one 
 who, like yourself, always holds her so far above men ? " 
 
 " It will take too long to go into the philosophy of the thing, 
 my dear. The fact which I draw from my own experience is 
 enough. However, I may have found my grain of leaven in 
 that ; for didn't I always know, in the midst of all your and 
 our mother's praises of me, how far, come to the test, in char-
 
 88 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 ity, in self-sacrifice, in quiet endurance, after the manner of 
 your sex, you'd outshine any of my poor virtues? I always 
 kept that thought before me. Look at that old woman, for in- 
 stance, going down there to the hospitals, to give the remnant 
 of her strength and her days to nursing the soldiers. There is 
 something sublime in sacrifice of that sort. It makes me hum- 
 ble to think of it." 
 
 " And if it comes home to you, how much more to us?" an- 
 swered Angeline. " I felt reproved and ashamed to see that 
 withered old woman go out of the door so strong in her purpose 
 of work and help, and I with my young strength staying behind, 
 living from day to day my life of luxurious ease. My place is 
 down there in the hospitals, too, Fletcher," turning her face 
 anxiously to his. 
 
 " Not yet, my dear girl. There may be a time when I must 
 let you go, if the war, whose end no man now can foresee, shall 
 continue. But you are not wasting your life while you are 
 helping and blessing so many others ; and there is a chance of 
 your breaking down in the hospitals during the heats of the sum- 
 mer, and the need there is hot so imperative that you should 
 run that risk." 
 
 " But you talked of going to the old woman, Fletcher. Surely, 
 if ever a man's did, your work seems to lie at home." 
 
 "It is that thought only which has kept me from going be- 
 fore. But I am not certain about this. When one hears the 
 stories of young, inexperienced, and ignorant surgeons, and the 
 work they make of some of our brave fellows, one's blood goes 
 up to boiling. I might save a few limbs from rough handling 
 if I was down there." 
 
 The girls shuddered. The doctor saw that he had pursued 
 this topic far enough. Before he started another, however, 
 Sicily, who had remained silent during the last part of the con- 
 versation, came around to his chair, and leaning over it, said, 
 
 " We must not be divided in our work. When you and 
 Angeline go, I shall accompany you." 
 
 " It does not seem ready to our hand yet, so far as we can
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 89 
 
 see," he said. " When it is, I trust that none of us will shrink 
 back." So the matter rested. 
 
 As they went out to tea, for Dr. Rochford never sacrificed 
 health to custom, and would not patronize bed-time dinners even 
 in New York, he said to his sisters, 
 
 " I suppose it's time to think something about country quar- 
 ters. Have you any plans for the summer ? " 
 
 " Only in negations," answered Angeline. " I'm not going 
 to any fashionable watering-places this season. If we leave the 
 city at all, let us find some place where we can have freedom 
 and quiet in our own way. Saratoga, for instance, and a civil 
 war would be two vast inconsistencies." 
 
 " There is more harmony in the names than in the things 
 just now," said her brother. " I know of a fine old place by 
 the sea-shore, whose hostess is an aunt of a classmate of mine, 
 where I think I might secure you snug quarters. Your toilets 
 there will not be the supreme object of life, and you'll have 
 delicious air, and glimpses, if you cultivate them, into the lives 
 of the fishermen, both professional and domestic, for their homes 
 are scattered along the shore ; and you'll have, back among the 
 hills, scenery of the wildest and most picturesque, and society, 
 when you want it, of the best." 
 
 " O, Fletcher, that is the very place let us go there ! " 
 cried both the girls ; and Sicily added, " You will run up occa- 
 sionally, and give us a sail, and help us gather seaweed ? " 
 
 " You may depend on me whenever I can wrest out a day 
 from my work." 
 
 And then the girls they were young girls still, and of that 
 sort whose youth is so deep that its springs will never fail 
 utterly went to weaving all sorts of pretty little projects for 
 the summer. What bright little jests flashed and twinkled 
 through the merry talk ! What peals of laughter, what sparkles 
 of repartee, in which each tried to get ahead of the other, 
 and in which Fletcher usually formed the target for his sisters' 
 jokes ; although it must be admitted that the man was fully 
 capable of defending himself. 
 8*
 
 90 
 
 This supper, at the close of the twilight was the happiest hour 
 of the day. Here each showed its brightest self to the other, 
 and whatever perplexed or disturbed was by mutual consent 
 banished from the table. 
 
 Fletcher Rochford's profession necessarily entailed a great 
 deal of care and labor on one who put into it so much of heart and 
 soul as he did, and his patients included all classes, although 
 his beneficiaries formed the largest of these, and the man used 
 to feel, far oftener than he told his sisters, that if it were not for 
 this home warmth, and rest, and brightness, he could hardly 
 bear up under the varied pressure and the multiform duties of 
 each day. With him, however, and with his sisters, in a large 
 sense, the mirthfulness had a background of earnestness and 
 gravity ; perhaps the outward sparkle was all the brighter for 
 the time on that very account. 
 
 And when at last the supper was over, and they had all 
 adjourned to the small study again, he caught a gleam of moon- 
 light on the carpet, and walked to the window. Standing there 
 a moment, watching the stars in the May sky, Dr. Rochford 
 saw a face at the opposite window a finely outlined face, that, 
 having seen once, held his memory always. It was looking 
 up at the stars too. Perhaps it was the man's fancy, but it 
 seemed to him that, even at that distance, he could detect some- 
 thing wistful in the gaze. Below there were brilliant lights, and 
 people moving to and fro. 
 
 "What did that solitary watcher see there?" he wondered. 
 " Had the stars yonder, and the moon, walking amid them in 
 her white glory, any eloquent language of their Maker's power 
 and strength above all, and O, how much better than all, of 
 His eternal love? Did the thought of the young girl, watching 
 there, go up beyond all these, his visible signs set in the sky, to 
 her Father's heart and home, towards which, or away from 
 which, this softly-flowing night was carrying her, as it was all 
 the world?" 
 
 All these questions, and some more, wandered through his 
 mind as he stood there looking at the house opposite and the
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 91 
 
 face at the front chamber window. At last it went away ; so 
 did he, drawing the curtain. 
 
 " Sing something, girls," he said, resuming his easy chair. 
 
 "What shall it be, sacred or sentimental?" asked Angeline, 
 turning over the music sheets. 
 
 " Sing one of our mother's favorites that dear old 
 
 " ' The spacious firmament on high.' " 
 
 Angeline's hands swept the keys, her voice took up the sweet 
 old melody, haunted with tender associations to them, as wild 
 flowers with sweet odors. Sicily joined her in a moment, and 
 afterwards her brother's voice crept in, and the grand old words 
 rolled down on a great wave of melody to the close.
 
 92 DAEBTLL GAP, OB 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THAT John Darryll's fortune was likely to prove a bait to a 
 certain class of suitors for his daughters, was a fact to which 
 the shrewd speculator was sufficiently alive. Had he not been 
 the possessor of a dollar in the world, each one of his girls had 
 personal attractions sufficient to afford a reasonable prospect of 
 eligible husbands, and, in some sense, their chances for future 
 happiness might have been greater. It was certain that Mr. 
 Darryll's acquaintance with men had not impressed him with 
 a high sense of their disinterestedness, either in their social or 
 business relations. Since the sudden acquisition of his riches, 
 his opinion of the motives which dominated his fellow-beings 
 seemed to have undergone an immense change for the worse, 
 and he regarded it as a religious duty to impress his own con- 
 victions upon his family, especially upon his daughters, who 
 needed, in his opinion, some safeguard against fortune-hunters. 
 
 You would have thought, to hear this man talk, that there was 
 no such thing as real integrity, disinterestedness, magnanimity, to 
 be found in the world that all men in their business transac- 
 tions, and in their daily living, followed selfishness, in its varied 
 forms, as the governing law of their lives. 
 
 He did not wholly deny kindly impulses to his race ; he even 
 admitted the existence of occasional benevolent feelings in man- 
 kind ; but come to the real impelling motives of every man's 
 conduct, " get down," as he expressed it, " to the bottom of his 
 life and acts, and you'd find one principle there, and that was 
 self, whether the possessor was aware of it or not." 
 
 Rusha and her father often had warm verbal battles on tnis 
 very topic, for she always stood on the defensive, for human 
 nature at large, and maintained her side with a great deal of
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 93 
 
 zeal, inclining, indeed, rather too far to the romantic and Utopian. 
 Rusha and her father were always diverging in opinion, and yet 
 his eldest daughter was rather the favorite with John Darryll. 
 
 This fact, indeed, was so far acted upon in the family that, if 
 anything particularly disagreeable was to be revealed to him, if 
 any domestic diplomacy was necessary to overcome his preju- 
 dices, or obtain his consent to some plan which would not be 
 likely on first presentation to meet his approval, especially, if an 
 unusual demand on his purse was required, Rusha was always 
 deputed to accomplish the matter. 
 
 However her father might sneer about her " foolish, romantic, 
 highfalutin notions," she had a way of putting home-facts and 
 wants to him, which succeeded better than even that of her 
 'practical mother or less visionary sister. 
 
 Indeed he set a much higher value on his eldest daughter's 
 abilities and information than he did on all Ella's showy accom- 
 plishments and brilliant superficialities. In all those things the 
 latter excelled. She had a fine ear for music, and could sing 
 and play better than most fashionable young ladies, so that her 
 talents were always in requisition in a drawing-room. She 
 could play euchre skilfully, she could dance charmingly, in all 
 these social accomplishments fairly outshining her elder sister, 
 who, in a certain way, was proud of and enjoyed Ella's gifts. 
 
 But Eusha was sure to be a favorite with everybody who 
 knew her well. The fine, earnest face, the rare conversa- 
 tional gifts, the swift enthusiasm, always attracted the best 
 men and women of the fashionable society whose doors John 
 Darryll's wealth had swung open to his family, a society largely 
 made up of what Carlyle calls the " Money-Bag Aristocracy," 
 and whose gods were Wealth, Display, Position, and who wor- 
 shipped this trinity of Divinities quite as devoutly as the ancient 
 Romans did their whole Pantheon. 
 
 One morning, after a breakfast, during the progress of which 
 her father had been particularly severe in his strictures on hu- 
 man nature, and Rusha had stood on the defence with a little 
 more than her ordinary vehemence, she came up stairs to the
 
 94 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 front chamber, which was a kind of general sitting-room, and 
 stood by the mantel idly drumming her fingers on the marble, 
 lost in some thought that made a dreary shadow on her face. 
 
 Ella was practising some new music at the piano, and for the 
 space of half an hour no word was spoken betwixt the sisters. 
 At last Ella laid aside her music, and rose up, turning towards 
 her sister, 
 
 " You know we are to go out this morning, Rusha. It's high 
 time to dress." 
 
 " I suppose it is ; " but there was no interest in her voice, and 
 the shadow on her face had not cleared itself. 
 
 Ella turned and saw it. 
 
 " What put you out of sorts this morning, Rusha?" she asked, 
 as though the fact was not an isolated one. 
 
 For a moment the elder sister did not answer. When she 
 did, her remark hardly seemed to reply to Ella's question. 
 
 " If I thought what papa said this morning was true, that all 
 men were at the core mean, weak, selfish, that human nature 
 was without exception the miserable stuff he makes it, I verily 
 believe I shouldn't want to live another day." 
 
 " O, that's the trouble, is it? I might have known one of 
 your theories lay at the bottom of that dismal face. I thought 
 you believed in the doctrine of total depravity, Rusha ; " her 
 smile just touched with a little not unkindly irony. 
 
 " In a se-nse I do ; but not in the one pa does. You know how 
 he reasons that there is no such thing as real generosity, disin- 
 terestedness, integrity in the world ; that all men, no matter 
 what their professions may be, whether consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, are alike governed by selfishness, and that this is the 
 root-motive of all their actions. It always excites me to hear 
 any man take such ground, and when that man is my father, it 
 makes it a thousand times worse." 
 
 " But why do you trouble yourself about it, one way or the 
 other, Rusha?" asked Ella. "Do let pa hold his opinions, so 
 long as it makes no sort of practical difference with any of us. 
 These controversies always excite and make you unhappy. It's 
 so much better to let them alone."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 95 
 
 The mild, reasonable, hali'-expostulatory tone was of just 
 that sort which would be likely to weigh most with the elder 
 sister. She turned and looked at Ella with some regretful, half 
 perplexed look, on her fair young face. 
 
 " But my opinions are a part of my life, Ella. I can't hold 
 them loosely, indifferently, uor have those whom I love best 
 differ from me on points that are with me matters of life or 
 death. I wasn't made so." 
 
 " Well, I'm thankful I was ! " answered Ella, and there was 
 something almost sympathetic in the way she looked at her 
 sister. " It makes one so dreadfully uncomfortable to feel as 
 you do. So long as people's notions don't come in contact with 
 me, they may hold them, be they ever so absurd, for all I care. 
 My philosophy is to take the world easy as I go along, and get 
 all the pleasure out of it I can." 
 
 There were times when talk of this sort had its influence over 
 Rusha Darryll. How could it be otherwise ! Its sentiment 
 pervaded in some sense the moral atmosphere of her home ; 
 and although in another and higher phase of feeling she would 
 have seen the essential narrowness and selfishness of Ella's rea- 
 soning, if indeed it could be called such, it had force with 
 her now. She was saddened and depressed with that talk with 
 her father. There were moments when her highest convictions 
 were swayed by the influences about her. This was one of 
 them ; and the troubled look held her face still, as she said, 
 
 " Well, Ella, I think you're right as to the comfortableness 
 of the thing, at least. I sometimes wish I was like you." 
 
 " Well, it's easy enough to be," considerably flattered by this 
 concession from a sister for whose real intelligence and abilities, 
 Ella, in common with the rest of her family, entertained a high 
 regard. u What do you care whether mankind in the abstract 
 are selfish, and all that talk of pa's, or not? One can have, for 
 all I see, just as good a time in the world." 
 
 " But don't you see that belief in the reality of goodness 
 somewhere, is one of the great sheet-anchoi-s of hope and faith? 
 If all men are sordid and mean, or, at least, self-seeking at the
 
 96 
 
 bottom, I don't see what is the use of any God, or any religion, 
 or indeed, that there is any. The whole thing is a cheat and 
 a lie." 
 
 " O, Rusha, you always use such strong terms ! " 
 
 " Any weaker would not contain the truth. What I said was 
 the only and legitimate deduction from pa's premises ; and, Ella," 
 her earnestness now chasing away the perplexity or half de- 
 spondent apathy from voice and face, " one's opinions, beliefs, 
 are the real touchstone of character. As a man thinks in his 
 soul, so is he." 
 
 " Well, ' each man ' will probably go on thinking and believ- 
 ing, for all you and I can do to prevent it," said Ella, with a 
 good-humored laugh. " Fret not thyself over it r O, Rusha ! " 
 
 Rusha smiled, but in this case you saw that the mirth did not 
 go very deep. 
 
 "Your philosophy is, as I said, a very comfortable one, 
 Ella." 
 
 " It has two merits, at least. It vexes nobody else, and lets 
 one have a good time in the world." 
 
 " But after all, Ella, such a philosophy never accomplished 
 any good in the earth never overcame a wrong, never righted 
 an abuse under which humanity has groaned. It is a sort of 
 philosophy which no high and noble souls of men or women 
 would approve." 
 
 " Well, they needn't. So long as it satisfies me, that's enough. 
 But come, Rusha, the carriage will be here before either of us 
 are dressed ; and these unprofitable arguments only consume 
 one's time ; " and she darted off, humming some lively notes of 
 a song she was learning. 
 
 Ella Darryll's philosophy was, as she said, a very comfortable 
 one, but it was of just that sort which has wrought mischief 
 and misery, wrong and woe, through all the ages aud genera- 
 tions of time.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 97 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THAT morning down town was a very busy one, for the next 
 week the house was to be closed up for the season, the family 
 exodus to Newport being arranged, not at all after the conven- 
 ience of the household, but at precisely the time ordained by 
 inexorable Fashion ; so there was a great pressure of final shop- 
 ing commissions, and all sorts of small business to be transacted. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll, with her own hands full, found it impossible to 
 wait on her daughters' thousand and one little personal errands, 
 and it was at last settled that the family should disintegrate, the 
 mother and Agnes riding some distance farther up town to com- 
 plete their list of purchases, while the elder girls, after finishing 
 theirs, should join the carriage, this decision involving a walk 
 up Broadway of something less than half a mile, at which Ella 
 demurred at first, she having, of late, become too fine a lady for 
 any pedestrian efforts ; but Mrs. Darryll's limited time made her 
 positive, and Ella was obliged to submit. 
 
 At last the multiform errands had been despatched, and the 
 young ladies were hurrying down Broadway to rejoin their 
 mother, when suddenly there came out from a dry goods store, 
 a little ahead of them, a large, florid-faced, somewhat round- 
 shouldered, elderly man, with a little, plainly-dressed, faded 
 woman leaning on his- arm, and behind them were two plump, 
 rosy-faced country girls. 
 
 A single glance could take this people in, and fix their status, 
 domestic and social. The man was a farmer ; those brown 
 hands of his had helped plough his own fields, and dig his own 
 potatoes ; that small, faded, kindly-faced woman on his arm 
 was his wife, who would probably be much more at home in 
 her dairy than in a drawing-room ; and those buxom girls were 
 9
 
 98 DAREYLL OAF, OR 
 
 their daughters, whose faces certainly did not lack intelligence, 
 if their manners did high social cultivation. 
 
 As Rusha' s glance fell upon these people, she gave a little 
 start and pause, another swift glance dived into each face, then 
 she said, in a rapid, astonished tone, 
 
 " Why, Ella, as true as I live, there are our old friends, the 
 Bacons ! " 
 
 It was Ella's turn now to start. She threw a solitary glance 
 in the direction her sister indicated, a glance which took in the 
 faces, figures, dresses of the whole four, 
 
 " So it is, Rusha," in a low but excited tone. " Do make 
 haste. I should die if they should recognize us." 
 
 There was little cause for apprehension on that score. The 
 two elegantly dressed young ladies who swept past the country 
 people, resembled in style and carriage so little the half-grown 
 girls the Bacons remembered, that they could not be readily 
 identified. Rusha quickened her pace mechanically, to equal 
 her sister's. But it flagged in a moment. 
 
 " Hadn't we better go and speak to them, Ella? It seems 
 mean to pass such good old friends in this way." 
 
 " Rusha, would you be seen on Broadway walking with those 
 coarse, dowdy-looking people ! At this hour, too, when every- 
 body is out ! The very thought makes me shiver ! " 
 
 You must remember that Rusha had her social ambitions as 
 well as her sister ; that she had a large share of approbative- 
 ness which made her sensitive to the opinions of others ; that, 
 notwithstanding her loftier impulses, she was by no means above 
 being influenced by appeals to her lower feelings of pride and 
 vanity, and that she was at times desirous of ignoring family 
 antecedents which an interview with these people would reces- 
 sarily revive. So she kept on with her sister with some reluc- 
 tance or irresolution in her face. 
 
 There was no question but all Ella said was true. The 
 mutual recognition might involve a good many things, that, in 
 their changed circumstances, would be awkward and disagree- 
 able. Then the Bacons had not identified them, so no harm
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 99 
 
 could be done, and nobody's feelings hurt, by saying nothing 
 and avoiding them. But then there flashed up before Rusha 
 Darryll the old pictures of her childhood, the yellow, gambrel- 
 roofed house at Mystic, that stood next to their own, and the 
 smiling-faced little woman who used to come to the side window 
 and reach down to her the small cake, warm from the little scal- 
 loped tin in which it had been baked for her. 
 
 She could remember just the flavor of that cake none had 
 ever been so sweet since ; and she could fancy herself stand- 
 ing there by the side window again, her head just below the 
 sill, and Mrs. Bacon's kind, motherly face smiling down on 
 her, as she reached up her childish hands for the little brown 
 scallop, and Rusha could see her own, little awkward fingers 
 probing for the dried currants and caraway seed, that were cer- 
 tain to be deeply embedded inside. A simple picture enough, 
 but somehow it brought the tears into Rusha's eyes. 
 
 And her old playmates, Lucy and Esther Bacon, the freckle- 
 faced, frolicsome little girls with whom she used to go straw- 
 berrying down there in the fields that lay back of Mystic Pond. 
 What a difference there was betwixt the fortunes of the old 
 playmates now ! Yet she knew by the bright, open faces, that 
 the kindly hearts beat beneath them still, " a good deal better 
 and truer than hers, though they did churn butter, and feed 
 chickens, and milk cows." 
 
 And then there came a later time to the memory of Rusha 
 Darryll, when a darkness that was like the shadow of death 
 gathered over the little home at Mystic. Every child of the 
 household had been attacked by virulent scarlet fever. Guy 
 was an infant then, only a few weeks old, and his mother was 
 feeble, and it was impossible to procure nurses, as the epidemic 
 raged through all the country side. Then little Mrs. Bacon 
 came forward and proved the stuff she was made of. Her own 
 children, happily, escaped the infection, and she devoted her- 
 self day and night to her neighbors. 
 
 Rusha remembered how she had lain in that small crib 
 wrestling with the awful fever and fiery thirst, when suddenly
 
 100 DABBYLL GAP, OB 
 
 a pair of strong, tender arms would lift her up, and she would 
 nestle her poor little tired head down softly on Mrs. Bacon's 
 shoulder, and be rocked to sleep there just as though it was her 
 mother's. 
 
 The doctor said afterwards that " first-rate nursing did 
 more than all his remedies to bring the little Darrylls safely 
 through." 
 
 All this flashed across Rusha's thought in much less time 
 than it must have taken you* to read it. Then the girl's better 
 nature rose up and scornfully rebuked her. 
 
 " Rusha Darryll," it said, " you know in your own soul that 
 it will be ineffably mean and contemptible in you to ignore, 
 simply because your father has made a fortune, those old 
 friends of yours, who have proved themselves so faithful in 
 your need. Don't talk about other people's weaknesses and 
 snobbishness. You'll carry the consciousness down deep in 
 your soul from this hour that you are weaker and meaner than 
 anybody you despise. Sell your self-respect, will you, for fear 
 that somebody may see you walking with honest, plainly- 
 dressed people? That will be a pleasant remembrance to sting 
 you all your life, won't it ? " 
 
 Of a sudden, Rusha Darryll stood still. " I am going back 
 to speak to the Bacons, Ella." 
 
 "Rusha Darryll, are you crazy, or a fool?" 
 
 " A little of both, perhaps ; but I'm going. Tell ma I'll 
 join her in a few minutes ; " and she hurried off. 
 
 Ella sent after her an appealing " Rusha, do come back 
 do be reasonable ! " but she kept on. 
 
 " Mrs. Bacon, don't you know me?" 
 
 The farmer's wife looked up in startled amazement as the 
 elegantly-dressed lady approached her with these words ; but 
 there was something in the eyes and the smile that seemed 
 familiar. 
 
 " I can't recollect, but I'm sure I've seen your face before." 
 
 The four people stood still now watching her face with 
 curious eagerness.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 101 
 
 " If you have forgotten me, you haven't the name of Rusha 
 Darryll." 
 
 " Eusha Darryll ! " four voices, in an agitation of joyful sur- 
 prise, shouted out the name. And right there in Broadway, 
 each one old father and all took turns in giving her a real 
 old-fashioned country hug. 
 
 " It don't seem possible you're the little girl I've held on my 
 knee and told stories to," said Mrs. Bacon, looking at the girl 
 with genuine tears springing in her eyes. " Ah, Rusha, what a 
 fine lady you've grown to be ! " 
 
 " We've heard all about the grand fortune your father's made 
 down there at Darryll Gap, Rusha," here interposed Farmer 
 Bacon, with his hand on the girl's shoulder, and a glow of 
 pleasure all over his florid face. 
 
 " I wonder if it took you as much by surprise as it did us?" 
 she answered, not knowing exactly what to say. 
 
 " I said to the girls when I heard it, ' The money won't 
 spoil Rusha, I'm sure of that,' " added Mrs. Bacon. 
 
 Rusha was by no means certain that she deserved the faith 
 of her old friend, but she was none the less grateful for it ; and 
 then she had a gantlet of questions to run, and not a few to 
 ask herself, as the sight of the familiar faces revived a crowd 
 of smouldering memories. But an interview on Broadway 
 could not last forever. 
 
 "You'll come up and take dinner with us this evening?" 
 she said, when she found that her friends' stay in town was a 
 very brief one, compelling the occupation of almost every mo- 
 ment. " We shall all be so happy to have you." 
 
 Rusha Darryll caught her breath with the last word, thinking 
 of Ella. She was conscientious enough to have put the gen- 
 eral cordiality in a little different form had she given it a second 
 thought. 
 
 But suspecting nothing of this, and a desire to meet their old 
 
 neighbors combining with a very natural curiosity to see a 
 
 style of living altogether beyond any experience of their own, 
 
 the Bacons held a conference among themselves, revised some 
 
 9*
 
 102 DABRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 of their plans, and ended by accepting Rusha's invitation to 
 dinner, the utmost hospitality which their margin of time al- 
 lowed them to receive. 
 
 When Rusha reached the appointed place, she found the car- 
 riage had disappeared. Perfectly certain that Ella was at the 
 bottom of this, she took an omnibus up town, in no very ami- 
 cable attitude of mind towards her sister. She reached home, 
 and burst into the sitting-room, where she found her mother 
 and Agnes, with their hats not yet removed. Her father was 
 there too, having returned home by the middle of the afternoon. 
 
 " Well, I must say I think you treated me very handsomely 
 to ride off and leave me to find my way home as I could ! " 
 
 " Well," returned her mother, evidently mystified with the 
 whole thing, " Ella said you wouldn't be along for some time, 
 and that we were to drive on without you. I couldn't make 
 head or tail to the matter, for Mr. Howe was along, and I saw 
 by her look it was no time to ask questions." 
 
 "That young Derrick Howe?" inquired Mr. Darryll, who 
 had opened his paper, but was evidently listening to the women's 
 talk. 
 
 " Yes, father ; he rode home with us, and is in the parlor 
 now." 
 
 "Might be in better business," growled the head of the 
 family. 
 
 " O, I see and understand it all now ! " exclaimed Rusha, a 
 good deal mollified towards her sister. " She must have met 
 him after we saw the Bacons." 
 
 " The Bacons ! " 
 
 "Why, yes, ma, didn't you know? I came upon them all 
 of a sudden in the street father, mother, Lucy, and Esther I " 
 
 " Well, now, I am beat ! " was Mrs. Darryll's rejoinder, as 
 she resumed the chair from which she had risen. 
 
 Rusha was rapidly sketching the interview to her deeply in- 
 terested audience when Ella came in. 
 
 " Well, Rusha, did you bring the whole family home with 
 you ? " a little sarcasm in her tones.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 103 
 
 "No, but I made them promise to dine with us to-day. 
 Your alarm was altogether unnecessary." 
 
 " Well, I expected they'd come along in force, and just after 
 we parted I met Mr. Howe, and I should certainly have wanted 
 the earth to open and swallow me up if he had come on us in 
 the midst of that gawky country set. There wasn't the slight- 
 est need of your recognizing them." 
 
 The little altercation which ensued brought out the whole 
 transaction. 
 
 " It would have been so contemptible to slight those kind old 
 friends of ours, who have proved themselves such through so 
 many troubles, that I should have felt mean all the rest of my 
 life. I won't make a fool or a coward of myself because my 
 father's made a fortune," was the sum of Rusha's defence. 
 
 " It would have been so mortifying to have had Mr. Howe, 
 or any of our set, come upon us in company with that sort of 
 people," was the pith of Ella's. 
 
 The latter found, on the whole, the sentiment of the family 
 decidedly against her. John Darryll set quite as much value 
 on his fortune as his daughter did, and was by no means in- 
 different to the increased social and business weight which it 
 afforded him ; but he had very little sympathy for Ella's abso- 
 lute deference to the opinions of her set. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll, never quite certain of her own opinions and 
 judgment in anything relating to the new sphere which she 
 had been called so late in life to occupy, and uncomfortably 
 conscious of her lack of early social culture, was easily influ- 
 enced by her daughters on all questions of this sort. She 
 would, no doubt, have been prevailed on to sacrifice a personal 
 friendship to the new position which she somehow felt it a re- 
 ligious duty to sustain ; but in this instance old memories were 
 strong, and Rusha had put the whole thing in a light which 
 strengthened one of the weaknesses of her mother's character, 
 and that was lack of moral courage, and she came out strongly 
 on Rusha's side. 
 
 " I shall be real glad to see Mrs. Bacon and the girls, and
 
 104 DAEETLL GAP, OE 
 
 talk old times over. I used to think more of her than any 
 neighbor I ever had down there in Mystic." 
 
 " "Well, I'm thankful that we're to have no other guests to 
 dinner," said Ella, in a tone of resigned despair, as she unbut- 
 toned her casaque. " I should certainly have invited Mr. 
 Howe to remain had not I trembled at the thought of the com- 
 pany he might have to encounter." 
 
 " Look here, Ella," said her father, with unusual severity ; 
 " I wish you wouldn't quote that young man quite so often, or 
 encourage his sticking round my house. As for his turning 
 up his nose at the Bacons, all I've got to say is, they're a 
 plaguy sight better than he is, with his airs and his laziness. 
 The less you have to say to him, the better it will be for you, 
 in more senses than one." 
 
 And this time, if John Darryll's words were ambiguous, the 
 meaning of his tones was sufficiently apparent. A few minutes 
 afterwards, as the girls were removing their hats, up stairs, 
 Rusha caught a glimpse of her sister's face in the glass, looking 
 gloomy enough. She at once surmised that her recognition of 
 the Bacons was at the bottom of all this, and her remark was 
 founded on the belief. 
 
 "Why, Ella, haven't you got over that yet? I didn't sup- 
 pose you could be so absurd ! " 
 
 " It isn't the Bacons so much ; but it vexes me to hear pa 
 come out as he did to-day on Mr. Howe. It's a shame ; such 
 a perfect gentleman, and so much admired everywhere ! " 
 
 " Well, Ella, I must say that I sympathize with pa there. 
 I could never imagine what you or anybody else found in the 
 fellow to like. He's shallow and conceited ; don't you see it? " 
 
 " No, I don't, Rusha Darryll," her voice almost as indignant 
 as though her sister's speech were a personal affront "I 
 should think you'd be ashamed to slander him so. When one 
 thinks, too, how his society is courted on every side, and that 
 he could marry into the very first families in New York ! " 
 
 A suspicion flashed suddenly across Rusha's thought. " Was 
 her sister interested in this Derrick Howe? He had just those
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. ' 105 
 
 qualities that would attract a girl of Ella's tastes, and there 
 was no doubt that among the people whose opinions would be 
 her sister's law, Derrick Howe was regarded as a " great mat- 
 rimohial bargain." 
 
 Several small circumstances rose up to confirm Rusha's newly 
 aroused suspicions. " The very idea of that man's being my 
 brother-in-law ! " thought Rusha ; but she was discreet enough 
 to keep her fear to herself. This was probably only a passing 
 fancy on Ella's part, she reasoned, and it would be certain to 
 vanish with the new conquests she would make this summer, 
 for Ella was a good deal of a coquette "I am thankful enough 
 she will get out of his way before the matter grows serious," 
 concluded Rusha, dismissing the subject from her thoughts. 
 
 The Bacons certainly had nothing to complain of in the re- 
 ception which they met from their rich friends that afternoon. 
 
 Mr. Darryll, even, wrung the hand of his old neighbor with 
 a genuine heartiness, and the meeting on the side of their wives 
 was as demonstrative as it was sincere. There were tough 
 fibres of old memories of joys and sorrows, running through a 
 long highway of years, which drew the hearts of the women 
 together, despite their changed fortunes. 
 
 I think that little informal dinner company was one of the 
 happiest that had ever gathered around the table of John Dar- 
 ryll. It is true the guest on his right side used his fork for a 
 nut-picker, and was evidently mystified by the finger-bowls. 
 
 But Mr. Bacon was a shrewd, sensible man, for all that, 
 and had a sturdy independence that compelled respect ; and 
 his wife was such a kind-hearted, motherly little body, that it 
 was impossible to criticise her ; and the girls were bright, in- 
 telligent, and with a prompt tact that served them in place of 
 experience. There was so much to talk of, too old scenes to 
 recount, new stories to hear and relate. 
 
 Even Ella gave herself up to the spirit of the occasion, and 
 chatted and laughed merrily with her old schoolmates, when- 
 ever she could make herself heard betwixt Andrew and Tom, 
 who kept up a side fire of jests with Lucy and Esther.
 
 106 
 
 After dinner they all went over the house, with which the 
 guests were fairly dazzled, except Mr. Bacon, who coolly inquired 
 the names and uses of various pieces of furniture, into which 
 Ella, without the shadow of a sneer, attempted to induct Irim. 
 
 After the survey was over, they all came back into the draw- 
 ing-room, and Mrs. Bacon, establishing herself in one of the 
 luxurious easy chairs, made her comments. 
 
 " Well, I declare, it almost takes my breath away ; but yet, 
 I don't know as I envy you, though I'm afraid it will put dread- 
 ful notions into my girls' heads," nodding and laughing towards 
 her daughters. " Such a care as you must find it, Mrs. Dar- 
 ryll ! It would be harder to me than my dairy at Berry Plains ; 
 but then I wasn't cut out for a fine lady." 
 
 " Berry Plains ! Is that the name of the place where you 
 now live? " asked Rusha. " How pretty it sounds ! " 
 
 " I wish you'd come'and see how pretty it looks, Rusha. It 
 would do you a world of good to come out there and breathe 
 the fresh sea air, and you should have a nice time, if it was 
 under a plain old farm-house roof." 
 
 " Yes, do come, Rusha, dear, when the fruits are ripe," 
 cried Lucy and Esther, simultaneously. 
 
 The country always had a charm for Rusha. " Perhaps I 
 will," she added, " when we get through with the watering- 
 places." 
 
 Then the girls went into an enthusiastic description of all the 
 picturesque points in the vicinity of " Berry Plains," and made 
 all sorts of pretty plans, if Rusha could only be induced to visit 
 them. 
 
 " Mayn't I come too, girls?" interposed Tom, who had lis- 
 tened to the vivacious descriptions with a good deal of enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 " Tell him that depends on how he will behave himself," sug- 
 gested Rusha, which advice was at once merrily acted on. 
 
 But Rusha gave two thirds of a promise to visit Berry Plains 
 that summer, the invitation being afterwards enlarged to em- 
 brace the whole family.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 107 
 
 " "Well, one thing I must say," remarked little Mrs. Bacon, 
 as she took her husband's arm after they had left the house 
 " there isn't a word of truth in all we've heard about the Dar- 
 rylls being so set up over their fortune ; they take the comfort 
 of it, and who wouldn't ? but it hasn't changed their hearts and 
 feelings one mite." 
 
 " That's a fact, Jane." 
 
 " But O, pa ma, wasn't it all splendid 1 " chimed in Lucy 
 and Esther.
 
 108 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE season had reached its climacteric when the Darrylls 
 made their advent at Saratoga. Such a gay, bustling, rain- 
 bow-hued summer as they had had, full of changes, sights, and 
 experiences, which had brought them new wisdom, mostly of 
 this world. 
 
 They had led a giddy, butterfly sort of life at Newport, which 
 the girls, especially Ella, had enjoyed vastly, and afterwards 
 they went up to the White Mountains. Here there was a new 
 revelation to Rusha. Brought face to face with the awful pres- 
 ence and glory of the mountains, everything else seemed to sink 
 away from her thought and interest. 
 
 Her soul came up here to worship, and the eternal hills 
 swered this girl. Their glory exalted, their calm strengthened 
 her. The gay life at the hotels, in which Ella disported, could 
 not persuade her away from the majesty and beauty outside. 
 Up amongst the hollows that made dark-green gashes through 
 the heart of the mountains in the deep, cool silences of the 
 wilderness through all rough and rugged paths, searching for 
 new passages and delights of scenery where some mountain 
 spring seemed to make a glittering trail of bloom over the 
 stones on the bank of some small lake that lay, like a great 
 white pearl, in its emerald casket under old, mighty trees, 
 whose life had been one eternal wrestling with storms, wandered 
 Rusha Darryll, her face gathering into it every day some new 
 light and calm ; for the God after whom her soul went groping 
 blindly was nearer to her up here in the awful stillness of the 
 mountains than He was down there in the giddy, feverish, 
 crowded life of the hotels, where the rest of the family were 
 absorbed in their varied aims of fashion and pleasure. Into
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 109 
 
 what paltry and insignificant proportions these used to sink 
 when she looked down on them from her physical and moral 
 heights ! Mrs. Darryll was satisfied with the views from the 
 hotel windows, and an occasional ride with a party of other 
 ladies to the most popular resorts, while Ella was too much 
 occupied with her toilet and flirtations to have time for any- 
 thing beyond little party expeditions, where they all fluttered, 
 and laughed, and sparkled in their gay dresses, and returned, 
 bringing no sheaves with them. What had Nature to give such 
 people as these? 
 
 With her brothers it was somewhat different. Young men 
 are always fond of expeditions, and it was not difficult to 
 impress one of these into Rusha's service for a morning's 
 ramble, provided there was nothing of greater importance on 
 hand. 
 
 The awful glory and burden of Niagara was Rusha's next 
 vision. Perhaps the dissimilarity of their characters never dis- 
 covered itself in sharper contrast than in the incidental remarks 
 of the two sisters on that last night at the Falls. 
 
 " I am so glad that we have ' done ' the White Mountains 
 and Niagara, before we get to the Springs. We shall be able 
 to talk about them now," remarked Ella, folding her laces com- 
 placently. 
 
 " I shan't," answered Rusha, curtly. " The Mountains and 
 the Waters transcend all power of language in my thought." 
 
 So now the Darrylls were at the United States, and it was 
 the second morning of their advent, and the family were gath- 
 ered in the sitting-room after breakfast. 
 
 " Come, Ella," said Rusha, " let's go down and take a glass 
 of Congress, and a stroll in the park. It's charming out there. 
 The boys will go with us, too." 
 
 " This one can't," answered Andrew, twirling his cane, " for 
 I've made an engagement to go over to the race-grounds to-day. 
 Splendid show of horse-flesh there. Going along, Tom?" 
 
 " Can't, sir, this morning. I'm committed for a game of 
 billiards." 
 
 10
 
 HO DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 " Go it while you're young, I say," interposed Guy, whose 
 advice seemed on this occasion entirely superfluous. 
 
 "I should think you were going it," added Mrs. Darryll, 
 with that slightly querulous tone which her improved fortunes 
 had not vanquished. " The way we're making money fly here 
 beats me. I'm actually afraid to meet your father when he 
 comes up, with these bills why, they're awful ! " 
 
 " Of course," interposed Ella ; " one can't come to the Springs 
 for nothing. Pa may as well make up his mind to that first 
 as last, and we haven't had a thing that we could possibly do 
 without." 
 
 " I s'pose," continued the mother, adjusting the elaborate 
 coiffure which became her matronly face, " that he might have 
 stood all the rest, but having the horses at the Springs will 
 make such a horrible bill of expense " 
 
 " Now, see here, old lady," broke in Andrew ; " there's no 
 use in coming the economical dodge here. The governor must 
 make up his mind to shell out on the horse-flesh, for we can't 
 get along without it." 
 
 " That's so," added Guy. " Don't Rufus put our span 
 through at a splendid rate, though ! Ain't afraid to compare 
 those horses with any on the ground, sir ! " 
 
 " Ma," said Ella, with immense decision, " whatever else we 
 give up, the horses aren't to be thought of. There's nothing 
 tells at Saratoga like one's own private turnout." 
 
 " No, ma," subjoined Rusha, " there isn't, really ; we must 
 keep the horses as long as we stay." 
 
 Mrs. Darryll, who, in her own heart, felt a great deal of com- 
 placency over her elegant establishment, gave up the point ; 
 indeed, she had, all this time, no serious intention of relinquishing 
 the carriage, although she thought the suggestion might possibly 
 act as a wholesome restraint upon the tendencies to a very lavish 
 use of money in both her sons and daughters. 
 
 " And now, Rusha, that matter is settled, what are we to 
 wear at the ball this evening ! You know it is to be the most 
 splendid affair of the season, and we haven't so much as our 
 hair-dressers engaged 1 "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. HI 
 
 Rusha sank down into a chair, with her old, annoyed look, 
 which there was danger would perpetuate itself in her face. 
 
 "It's nothing but dress, dress, dress, from morning until 
 night ; I'm sick of the very name ! " 
 
 " Well, what in the world does one come to Saratoga for, I 
 should like to know, except to dress and make a show? You 
 can't expect to go mooning round as you did at the Mountains ; 
 and you know, Rusha, you think just' as much of looking pretty 
 as any of the rest of us." 
 
 " Of course I do ; only I wish the process, for securing such 
 a result, wasn't quite so formidable a one." 
 
 " Well, for my part I think the trouble pays." 
 
 " Well, I'm not certain. There's the diiference." 
 
 " Ella thinks it pays," said Guy, whose personal comments 
 were often a source of annoyance to his second sister, " when 
 there's some smart young men round to be taken down, and 
 there'll be lots of them to-night, you may depend ! " 
 
 " I wonder if they will be cut and dried after the same pattern 
 as those we've met already. If they are, she's welcome to 
 them," said the elder sister, in, it must be confessed, not a very 
 amiable tone. 
 
 " Rusha, how disagreeable you are this morning ! I wonder 
 what sort of man would suit you ! " 
 
 " One, Ella, that a woman could look up to with respect, 
 honor, reverence, if there are any such men in the world, which 
 I very much doubt." 
 
 " I think," said Ella, " that it would be just like our Rusha to 
 fall in love in some romantic, absurd fashion, such as one reads 
 of in a novel, but never expects to find outside of a book ; to 
 get smitten, for instance, with a wandering minstrel, whom she 
 would fancy a grand hero, or something of that sort." 
 
 "If by wandering minstrel you mean a hand-organ player, 
 I must say that I never felt particularly attracted towards those 
 who have thus far crossed my experience," laughing in spite of 
 herself. 
 
 " Well, I used that word merely for want of a better one. It
 
 112 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 would certainly be in keeping with the whole tone and ten- 
 dency of your ideas to marry some singular, visionary, romantic 
 character." 
 
 " I know a man who would suit Rush"a, and he is neither 
 * singular, visionary, nor romantic,' " added Tom, getting up, 
 and lounging towards the door. 
 
 " Who is he, Tom?" asked Rusha, with interest. 
 
 " I'll tell you some other time ; " and the boys went out to- 
 gether, one to the race-course, the other to the billiard-room, 
 the third to use his own expression " in quest of any fun 
 that turned up." 
 
 A most animated discussion ensued betwixt the trio of girls, 
 for even Agnes was to attend the ball, and Rusha was soon as 
 deeply absorbed as her sisters in laces and ribbons, and the 
 varied paraphernalia which the evening festivities demanded. 
 
 In the course of the morning, however, a circumstance trans- 
 pired which gave her a good deal of uneasiness. She was in 
 her own room, searching among her trunks, when there was a 
 tap at the door, and the girl entered. 
 
 " Here is a letter for you, Miss " 
 
 Rusha lifted up her head. 
 
 " O, I thought it was Miss Ella," and the girl would have 
 withdrawn, evidently somewhat disconcerted. 
 
 " She has only gone out to match some ribbons. Give me 
 the letter, please, and I will see that she has it on her return." 
 
 The girl hesitated. 
 
 " But Miss Ella said I must be sure to give it into her own 
 hands." 
 
 " I'll be responsible, if there's any blame. Let me have it." 
 
 The letter was mailed from New York. The handwriting 
 was not familiar ; but all at once it flashed across Rusha, with 
 the force of conviction, that this letter was from Derrick Howe. 
 It dropped from her hands on the table, as though it had burned 
 her. Could it be that Ella was maintaining a surreptitious 
 correspondence with this young man? 
 
 She recalled the suspicions which she had so easily laid to'
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 113 
 
 rest before they left home, and since that time Ella had had 
 some foolish flirtation constantly on hand, which made her sister 
 fancy there was no danger of her concentrating her interest, for 
 the present at least,*on one individual. 
 
 Ella was extremely fond of admiration, and the showy, bril- 
 liant girl certainly had attentions enough from gentlemen to 
 stimulate vanity less active than hers. 
 
 Neither had Rusha been wanting in these, for, in a very dif- 
 ferent way, she was quite as attractive as her sister ; and she 
 was quite as susceptible to admiration, too ; only she was too 
 earnest ever to be a successful coquette. If people interested 
 her, whether men or women, she was certain to show it ; if 
 they did not, she was not good at disguises. 
 
 " But could it be," she asked herself, " that her proud, 
 imperious sister was really attracted towards this Derrick 
 Howe? What a storm there would be if her father sus- 
 pected it ! The man had seemed from the beginning to be 
 one of his aversions, and Rusha thought that of all the silly, 
 conceited coxcombs that followed in Ella's train, this man 
 was to her the most disagreeable. Not that he was ^i fool 
 certainly, but something in him repelled her. Still, other 
 women did not think so women of Ella's style. What should 
 she do?" 
 
 While she was reflecting, Ella suddenly came in, and Rusha 
 spoke perhaps not very discreetly, but on the impulse of the 
 moment 
 
 " Ella, here is a letter which the girl brought in during your 
 absence, and which I made her leave with me, quite reluctantly 
 on her part. I see by the handwriting that it is from Derrick 
 Howe. I am shocked to find that you will allow this when you 
 know how it would vex pa." 
 
 " He asked me if he might write, and what could I tell him ? " 
 answered Ella, her face crimson, and annoyance and apology 
 about equally distributed through her tones. 
 
 " I don't think it would be difficult for me to find an answer," 
 replied her sister, with a great deal of severity. 
 10*
 
 114 DAEEYLL GAP, OB 
 
 " I suppose not ; but you sympathize with pa's unjust dislike 
 of Mr. Howe." 
 
 " Well, Ella, I would not have believed you would have done 
 anything so underhand, for I know that this is not the first 
 letter, and that you must have answered the others." 
 
 Ella did not deny it, as Rusha half hoped she would. 
 
 " O, Ella, Ella ! " 
 
 There was dismay and grief in the elder sister's tone. It 
 troubled or touched the younger. 
 
 " Now don't fret yourself, Rusha, about the matter. I'm not 
 in love with Derrick Howe or any other man ; and I've got 
 plenty of strings to my bow, and mean to have, for some time 
 to come. I'll promise that I'll stop the correspondence at once, 
 if you'll agree to keep silent this time." 
 
 "You will promise solemnly? Otherwise, Ella, it would be 
 my duty to let pa know." 
 
 That prospect was not agreeable. Whatever hold Derrick 
 Howe had obtained on Ella, it was not strong enough, as Rusha 
 saw, to defy her father's anger, and the latter fell back on the 
 old fancy that, with Ella's nature, other interests would absorb 
 this one. 
 
 So each sister gave her promise to the other. Whether Rusha 
 had acted wisely, she lived to question ; but that was when 
 other events threw greater light upon this one.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. H5 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 IF you know what fashionable life is at Saratoga, you will 
 understand what the next three weeks were to the Darrylls. 
 It was their first season there, and each member of the family 
 went, heart and soul, into the whirl of gayeties, dissipations, 
 and amusements which the time and place inspired. 
 
 A large part of the former was necessarily consumed by 
 elaborate toilets, and for the rest, what with late breakfasts, 
 and daily drives, and promenades to the springs, and concerts, 
 and balls, time never hung heavy on the hands of any of them. 
 While this summer's experience had imparted the finishing 
 touches, the Darrylls at least the juvenile and feminine part 
 of the family were now fully fledged butterflies of fashion : 
 each one had fairly profited by her opportunities and experience, 
 and would no longer awaken any suspicion of having climbed 
 suddenly up the social ladder to occupy an unaccustomed height. 
 
 The season was drawing to its close, and people began to 
 talk of leaving, and Mrs. Darryll, on whose health the unceas- 
 ing round of gayeties began to tell somewhat sooner than on 
 her blooming young sons and daughter^, said to them one morn- 
 ing when they had assembled in her room, as was customary, 
 for a half hour's lounge and discussion after breakfast, 
 
 " I must say I'm getting tired out with all this endless whirl, 
 and shall be glad enough to get home again. I wrote to your 
 father he might look for us back next week." 
 
 " I s'pose we've got to go, because one never could think of 
 staying after the season closes," said Ella, with a yawn ; " but 
 really, if it wasn't for that, I should be in no hurry to get home." 
 
 " Nor I," piped in Agnes. " I think Saratoga perfectly 
 splendid."
 
 116 DARRTLL GAP, OB 
 
 " Confounded place for bleeding a fellow, though. Haven't 
 they all learned the ropes here?" rejoined Andrew, with an 
 unction which proved he was speaking from personal experience. 
 
 "O, it's awful perfectly awful to think of!" added Mrs. 
 Darryll, in a tone that was partly pathetic, partly solemn. 
 
 " Now, Andrew, how could you start mother off on that 
 track ? You know what she is when she gets to going there," 
 said Ella, in strong admonition. " Rusha," changing the sub- 
 ject with her prompt tact, " I must say your blue silk looked 
 finely in the ball-room last evening." 
 
 " Don't speak of ball-rooms," was the impatient rejoinder. 
 " I'm sick of the very thought of one." 
 
 "O, something gone wrong again?" asked Ella, as though 
 it was the most natural thing in the world with her sister. 
 
 " Mother," asked Rusha, turning about suddenly, and speak- 
 ing with that straightforward abruptness to which they were all 
 accustomed, " do you believe there really is a Devil? " 
 
 " Why, child, what a question ! Of course I do ; the Bible 
 says so." 
 
 There was an explosion of laughter on all sides, the bright, 
 hearty mirth of the young voices sounding very pleasant, so 
 much so that it persuaded Rusha to join in it ; but her face was 
 grave enough a moment later, when she said, 
 
 " Well, if there is one, I think we must all be going straight 
 to him ! " 
 
 "Why, what have w done?" asked Agnes, her blue eyes 
 wide open with amazement. 
 
 " That's just what I was going to ask," added Ella. 
 
 " I shouldn't suppose it would be necessary to inquire," was 
 the unsatisfactory response. 
 
 " Yes it is ; if you've found out we're booked to that individ- 
 ual, you ought to let a fellow know, so that he can turn about," 
 added Tom, at which Agnes and Guy tittered, and his mother 
 said, reprovingly, 
 
 " Tom ! Tom ! don't make fun of serious things." 
 
 " What have we all done?" said Rusha, taking up her sister's
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. H7 
 
 question. " Haven't we been, -throughout this summer, living 
 a life of selfish enjoyment, of every extravagance, and dissipa- 
 tion, and luxury? Haven't we consumed our days and nights 
 with dress, and frivolity, and gayety of every sort, and all this 
 time that awful darkness of civil war has been hanarinir over 
 
 O O 
 
 our land ? A few hundred miles from here our brothers have 
 been fighting, and bleeding, and dying for us. They have been 
 starving in Southern prisons they have been languishing in 
 crowded hospitals they have been sinking in long, dreary 
 marches by night and day, to buy us liberty. O, how often 
 in the ball-room, when the music and merriment were all 
 at their very highest, have I seemed to see the haggard, re- 
 proachful faces of those sick and dying men, and heard their 
 voices calling to me, ' Is it to buy liberty for such as you that 
 we are laying down our lives ? ' I have envied the women who 
 have left their homes and sacrificed every comfort and pleasure 
 of life to go down as nurses in the hospitals, and day by day 
 the voice of my own soul has said to me, ' You are unworthy, 
 Rusha Darryll, of your sex or your country, to waste your 
 time and thought in miserable ways like these, while your 
 land is in her awful struggle of life or death. Brave men are 
 dying, women are made widows, and little chilren fatherless, 
 for such ungrateful things as you ! ' And I have felt so 
 utterly mean and degraded that I have almost wished the 
 earth would open and swallow me up, and wondered that God 
 did not once more rain down fire, and sweep off from the face 
 of the earth everybody who takes part in gayeties and revels 
 in a time like this ! " 
 
 The earnest voice had held every listener. The words she 
 spoke now had been seething in Rusha Darryll's soul more or 
 less ever since she had left home ; and now, when they could be 
 no longer repressed, they broke out strong and fervid as the 
 nature in which they had so long dwelt. They could hardly 
 fail to impress for the moment her audience. Whatsoever 
 of right or generous instinct was there must respond more 
 or less to the truth that young, eloquent voice put to each
 
 118 DAERTLL GAP, OB 
 
 so strongly. For a moment after she ceased there was silence ; 
 and Guy broke it, drawing a long breath, and expressing in his 
 rough way the impression that his sister's speech had made on 
 his boyish nature : 
 
 " I tell you, though, Rusha's some pumpkins when she gets 
 to talking. She makes one feel small, boys." 
 
 Ella was the first to rally. " Well, I always said this war 
 was an awful thing, and I pity the men who have been dragged 
 into it. But then what good will it do for us to sit at home in 
 sackcloth ai*d ashes, and not take a moment's comfort of our 
 lives because the people are at war with each other? As for 
 hospital nurses," and she gave a little shudder, " you know we 
 could never come to that, Rusha." 
 
 " I'm not so certain, Ella. But granting that we have not 
 the years and experience indispensable for these, we could give 
 our time and means to our country, instead of expending them 
 on ourselves and our dresses." 
 
 " Well, if you will set the example, perhaps I shall be stimu- 
 lated to join you in good works, only," a little afraid that Rusha 
 might take up her proposition, " you know that you and I do 
 not agree as to the necessity of this war. I think, for my part, 
 it's the duty of those who brought such a dreadful state of 
 things upon the country to see us out of it, and in my opinion 
 the only way to do that is to make terms with the South." 
 
 " And who are the men who, as you say, Ella, brought this 
 war on us?" 
 
 "You know well enough the Abolitionists and Agitators, 
 with all that eternal harping on slavery." 
 
 Rusha opened her lips to speak, and Ella saw that she had 
 imprudently thrown down the gauntlet to an antagonist who 
 generally got the better of her in all discussions of this sort, 
 when her mother came authoritatively to the rescue : 
 
 " Now, girls, stop just where you are. You know to what 
 this talk always leads, and you'll get straight into a wrangle 
 about politics, which, in my opinion, the less women have to do 
 with, the better."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 119 
 
 " I haven't any opinions to-day," replied Ella, very willing to 
 be let off so easily, and getting off the lounge with a yawn. 
 " The truth is, I was out so late last night that I'm completely 
 used up this morning." 
 
 " O, Rusha, I forgot, here's a letter for you," said Tom. " It 
 came yesterday." 
 
 She seized it eagerly, as all young girls do letters, opened 
 and read it, looking up at the close : 
 
 " It's from Esther and Lucy Bacon dear girls ! with a 
 most pressing invitation for me to come on and pass a week or 
 two with them before I return to New York. Such delightful 
 rides and rambles and all sorts of good times as they prophesy ! 
 Now, how pleasant it would be to drop down there in that old 
 farm-house, and have a little rest and careless freedom before 
 one goes back to the city ! " 
 
 " Shut up away off there in that old country farm-house," 
 remarked Ella, " I should think it would be an intolerable 
 bore," shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 " I'm sure I should enjoy it immensely, if one of you boys 
 would only go with me." 
 
 " Excuse me," said Andrew, " I've other fish to fry." 
 
 " How long is the journey? " asked Tom, reflectively. 
 
 " Less than a day, Lucy says. O, Tom, if you would only 
 go now. How delighted they would be ! " 
 
 " And, Tom, I say, you could help those pretty country 
 girls churn the butter and milk the cows capital sport ! " ral- 
 lied Andrew, who now affected fashion and foppery in every 
 form. 
 
 " Don't mind what he says, Tom ; " and Rusha's hand dropped 
 coaxingly on the shoulder of her favorite brother. " You 
 know we could have a glorious time there ; " and she went on, 
 dilating in glowing terms on the varied delights which the pros- 
 pect of a visit to Berry Plains afforded, until Tom was fairly 
 won over into a promise of accompanying her. 
 
 " I'm not going to be bullied by Andrew," he said, stoutly 
 enough, but with an inward consciousness that he would have
 
 120 DABETLL GAP, OR 
 
 to stand a merciless fire of running jests from his brother about 
 " blooming country milkmaids," and all that sort of thing. 
 " If you go, Rusha, I will, hang me if I won't." 
 
 " O, ma, do say I may go, just for a week or two it will 
 do me so much good, and Mrs. Bacon will take nice care of 
 me," appealed Rusha. 
 
 "Well, I'll see what your father says when he comes up 
 Saturday night." 
 
 Rusha knew her point was gained then. 
 
 But on what very small hinges turn the great destinies of 
 life ! Rusha Darryll little suspected that interview on Broad- 
 way with the Bacons would in some sense shape and color all 
 her future.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 121 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " MRS. BACON Lucy Esther we've come ! " 
 
 The clear, glad tones rang like a bell through the stillness of 
 the old farm-house, and there ensued a sudden rush of females 
 from kitchen and dairy to the front hall, where the mysterious 
 announcement disclosed itself in the shape of Rusha and Tom 
 Darryll. 
 
 There was no doubt of the welcome that followed noisy, 
 hearty, gleeful, with old-fashioned hugs and shaking of hands 
 that were pleasant to see, and in the midst of it Tom declared 
 that he " must come in for his share," and was actually kissing 
 Lucy and Esther on either cheek before they comprehended 
 what he was about, when it was, of course, too late to prevent 
 his audacity. 
 
 " Girls," laughed Rusha, " you know that he was to come 
 only on condition that he behaved himself, and I assure you 
 that he will have to be constantly reminded of his precarious 
 foothold here." 
 
 " Yes, Tom, we shan't allow you to forget it, if you go on in 
 this way," answered Lucy, glancing archly over her shoulder 
 as she led the way into the pleasant, old-fashioned parlor, where 
 her mother was already unclosing the blinds. 
 
 " Why didn't you write and let us know you were coming, 
 in time, Rusha dear, so that pa could meet you at the depot?" 
 asked Mrs. Bacon. 
 
 " Because Tom and I made a plot to take you quite by sur- 
 prise ; and such a jolting as we have had over the hills for the 
 last hour in that lumbering old stage ! I enjoyed it immensely, 
 though, and whenever we came on a particularly rough sec- 
 tion, I told Tom, for his consolation, that it was only a faint 
 11
 
 122 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 reminder of the sort of travel our grandfathers and grandmothers 
 had to undergo." 
 
 " Yes, girls," laughed Tom, " Rusha took it like a heroine, 
 and the harder the jolt the better she seemed to like it ; but I 
 must say, without intending any disrespect to my grandfathers 
 and grandmothers, that my bones were decidedly in favor of 
 modern travel." 
 
 There was a general laugh here, and when Mrs. Bacon 
 could be heard, she inquired about the health of the universal 
 Darryll family. 
 
 " All well and flourishing, thank you, after the Saratoga 
 siege, which isn't a light one. We disintegrated at the steam- 
 boat yesterday morning, Andrew and Guy undertaking to see 
 ma and the girls comfortably down the Hudson, while Tom and 
 I beat a retreat to you. Are we too late for the berries? " 
 
 " O, no, indeed," put in Lucy and Esther, simultaneously. 
 " The berries are just in their prime, and the peaches and the 
 pears " Here one voice drowned the other, and in the midst 
 of it all Mrs. Bacon bustled off to the dairy, on hospitable 
 deeds intent, and left the young folks to make their plans for 
 future picnics and exploits, which they did, chatting away like 
 so many magpies, with peals of laughter at the droll remarks 
 of Tom, who really outshone himself on this occasion. 
 
 And at last Mr. Bacon, who had no suspicion of all which 
 had transpired, having been engaged since dawn in clearing out 
 some woodland, returned home, and was despatched by his 
 wife, without any previous enlightenment, to the parlor, which 
 he entered in his shirt sleeves ; and if his welcome to his guests 
 was not quite as demonstrative as his wife's, it was equally 
 hearty. 
 
 What a transition was this life at the farm-house, this hearty, 
 rioting, careless home-life, to that gay, luxurious, artificial one 
 out of which she had just passed ! Rusha entered into it with 
 an intense relish, which proved there was something sound at 
 the core of her nature. She put those little, soft, white hands 
 of hers into all sorts of dairy work, with that pretty, half child-
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 123 
 
 ish earnestness that was so characteristic of her. She was 
 now energetically turning the cheese-press with Mrs. Bacon, 
 and now she was assisting Lucy in the revolutions of the churn, 
 and then, with her little sun-hat aslant on her hair, she was 
 eagerly searching among the hay, with Tom and Esther, for 
 freshly-laid eggs. 
 
 Saratoga set no such roses in her cheeks as those mornings 
 among the hills mornings whose dewy freshness was stung 
 through with all fragrant wood-scents, and with the fine salt 
 savor of the sea, for the old Bacon homestead stood only 
 about three miles back from the shore, down near the south- 
 eastern curve of the Massachusetts coast. 
 
 Rusha's enthusiasm was of a contagious nature, and her 
 companions were bright, merry, responsive, " with not quite so 
 many airs," as Tom privately expressed it to his sister, " but 
 every bit as intelligent as any of your Newport and Saratoga 
 belles," to which Rusha heartily assented. 
 
 So the young folks passed most of their time out of doors in j 
 all sorts of berrying exploits, and improvised picnics, and 
 searches for picturesque points, while Mrs. Daggett remained 
 at home absorbed in the preparation of meals, whose sight 
 would have tempted an epicure, and to which the tired and 
 hungry party were certain to bring ample appetites at last. 
 
 Rusha's face came out now of all the weariness and dissatis- 
 faction which it so frequently carried. Bright, fresh, eager, it 
 had never looked so pretty as in these days, when there was 
 nobody to admire it except farmer Bacon and his family. 
 
 It seemed as though everything conspired to make this visit 
 complete. It was in the early September, and the days wore 
 their garments of autumn sunshine, the air swung through its 
 vast censer all sweet perfumes, and every hour seemed to have 
 been let right down out of heaven, with the joy and glory lin- 
 gering yet upon its face. And in this merry, simple, whole- 
 some life, in this beauty and glory of the year, Rusha's soul 
 came out of the doubts and bewilderments which made so much 
 of her life a perplexity and a discord.
 
 124 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 In a way that she knew not of, the human heart of His child 
 drew nearer her Father as she went out day by day into the 
 great tabernacle of nature which He had set as a witness for 
 Himself in the earth. In a blind, uncertain way it is true, 
 she went up to her worship, but mind and heart were both 
 soothed, gladdened, strengthened, a,nd somehow she found her- 
 self dreading a return to the world she had left behind her ; 
 and this feeling discovered itself in some plans they were lay- 
 ing, one evening after tea, for the next day's expedition. 
 
 " Lucy," said Esther, " we haven't taken Rusha and Tom 
 over to the cave yet. It's a real natural curiosity, and, indeed, 
 the chief attraction to strangers in this vicinity. Suppose we 
 go over there to-morrow. The berries will keep until next 
 day." 
 
 "Where is this cave, Esther?" inquired Tom. 
 
 " Not more than four miles from here, down among the rocks 
 by the shore. The scenery is wild and, interesting all the way, 
 "so much so that there are several private boarding-houses in the 
 vicinity always filled with people from the city." 
 
 " Then that's all I want to know of the cave ! " supplemented 
 Rusha. 
 
 " What does all that mean? " asked Tom, for his sister had 
 enforced her words by a grimace that drew a laugh from her 
 friends. 
 
 " It means that I abhor and detest people from the city in 
 all shapes and ways that I'll run away from them as I would 
 from snakes and bears. I've had enough of them this summer." 
 
 Lucy patted her friend on the shoulder, thinking this was. 
 another of Rusha's pretty whims, which the whole family was 
 ready to indulge to any extent. 
 
 " There's very little probability of our meeting anybody on 
 the 'rocks, and if we should chance to come upon a party it 
 would not be difficult to avoid them." 
 
 " But what sort of a cave is it? " pursued Rusha. " Has it 
 a history, or a witch with burning eyes and wild hair, or a tra- 
 dition of a bear, or any pleasant savor of dark mystery and 
 tragedy clinging to it ? "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 125 
 
 " Nothing of the kind," laughed Lucy. " It's the most in- 
 nocent cave imaginable just a little, dark, square room, made 
 by the overhanging rocks ; and at the entrance there is a mag- 
 nificent view of the sea and the long line of coast, and you can 
 see the fishermen's nets laid out to dry, and their little houses 
 scattered all along among the rocks, and their wives netting 
 seine in the doorways." 
 
 This picture attracted Rusha. " It would all be new to us, 
 Tom," she said. " But the cave would be so much more inter- 
 esting if it only had some dark mystery or tragedy associated 
 with it." 
 
 " Let us go there and make one," said Tom ; and so it was 
 settled, half in jest, that they should visit the rocks next day. 
 
 The hearty, out-door life necessitated early bed-time, and 
 such sound, sweet sleep as Rusha had been a stranger to since 
 her childhood ; but that night, before she reached her chamber, 
 she turned back, rubbing her sleepy eyes wide open enough to 
 find her way down stairs. 
 
 " Mrs. Bacon," she said, startling that energetic house- 
 keeper as she was putting out the lights, " you know I am to be 
 called up in time to take my first lesson in milking to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 " So she is bless her heart ! " said the warm-hearted little 
 woman, as she turned round and caught a vision of a very fair 
 face, in the wide old doorway, with the fingers rubbing the 
 sleepy brown eyes, just like a tired little child's ; and while she 
 looked the vision was gone. 
 11*
 
 126 DAHBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE next day seemed another living glory and joy let down 
 out of heaven. Only the autumn holds such. The earth was 
 entranced with it. Such radiance of sunshine ; such joy of winds 
 in leaves and grasses ; such sail of purple and silver mists along 
 the heights of the mountains ; such a vast praise and worship 
 of sky and earth as is sometimes sent us as a witness and 
 prophesy of the glory that shall be. 
 
 The little party started off after an early lunch, in farmer 
 Bacon's country wagon, this having superseded, for the excur- 
 sion, the family buggy, which, though more respectable, was less 
 capacious. Tom managed to whisper his sister, as he handed 
 her into the wagon, " What would Ella say to see us now ? She 
 and mother must be taking their airing down Broadway about 
 this time." 
 
 A vision of the elegant "turnout," with its liveried coach- 
 man, rose before Rusha, and she glanced at the old wagon and 
 ancient mare, which had done veteran service betwixt the farm- 
 house and the mill, and the contrast forced a laugh from her, 
 in which Tom, guessing his sister's thought, joined heartily. 
 
 " Never mind, Tom ; I think we're the happiest at least I 
 wouldn't exchange." 
 
 " That's so," said Torn, gathering up the reins. 
 
 Rusha stood there, all alone, looking out to sea, for while 
 Tom had gone off with the girls to gather sea-weed among the 
 rocks, she had returned, drawn by some irresistible spell to this 
 point. Behind her was the dark, narrow entrance to the cave 
 around her the bare, gray headlands, and beyond, the long, 
 brown curve of beach, and the green glitter of the waves, as they 
 ran up the sands. The pleasant laughter of the others came up to
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 127 
 
 Rusha Darryll, as she stood there among the rocks, looking off 
 at the wide, blue flooring of ocean, and thinking, with some new 
 thrill of gladness and reverence, of Him who had laid those 
 vast timbers of its waters, and shut the doors, and set the bars 
 and bolts of the mighty sea that strove and wrestled vainly 
 beneath her. Do you see her as she stands there against the 
 bare, gray background of rocks, all aglow in the sunshine, her 
 small hat drooping on one side of her head, her lips and cheeks 
 full of a new, bright bloom, with a warm glitter of sunlight in 
 her fine brown hair, and her dress, some soft fabric of delicate 
 brown tints floating about her, making altogether a striking 
 picture against the gray of the rocks ? 
 
 Suddenly the wind brought round to her a most unwelcome 
 sound of human voices close at hand merry voices, one of 
 which rose above the rest, with a kind of laughing impatience. 
 " I wonder if there is anything to see worth such a rocky pil- 
 grimage as this ! " 
 
 " Look there, and tell us," answered another voice, and then 
 Rusha had no time to run away several figures came around 
 the sharp angle of the rocks there was a sudden start and 
 recoil on their part she looked up, and met a brown-bearded 
 face, without any suspicion of the singular impression she was 
 making there, alone, in that attitude on the rocks a pair of 
 dark eyes searched her a moment through their glasses. 
 
 " Is it possible have you dropped from the clouds, Miss 
 Darryll?" 
 
 "Dr. Rochford?" surprise and pleasure just balancing them- 
 selves in her glance and smile, as he gave her his hand. 
 
 " Of all places in the world, this is the last one in which I 
 should have expected to find you." 
 
 She evidently relished the young man's surprise so much that 
 she was in no hurry to enlighten him, and in a moment he had 
 sufficiently recovered to turn and present his sisters to her. 
 
 It was natural the ladies should regard each other with some 
 curiosity. Rusha thought that the doctor's sisters fully sus- 
 tained Tom's definition of what a real lady was, and they were
 
 128 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 prepared to feel an interest in her derived from their brother's 
 estimate of the girl. 
 
 " Now, Miss Rusha, am I to be illuminated or not, as to 
 when and how you got here ? " inquired the doctor, as soon as 
 the presentations were over. 
 
 " Not quite yet," with a little playful defiance in her smile. 
 *' The ocean should have your first regard." 
 
 They were the sort of people to understand the fine appreci- 
 ation of the scene before them, which this remark indicated, 
 and for a few minutes that followed, there were no words spo- 
 ken that went outside of the picture of sea, and sky, and line 
 of coast, but standing still, and silent for the most part, each 
 drank in the power and beauty of the view. Then at last Sicily 
 turned, and with that bright playfulness which was, in its way, 
 as attractive as the sweet gravity of her elder sister, she said, 
 " I suspect our brother is consuming with curiosity, and I con- 
 fess to sharing it, Miss Darryll." 
 
 " Then, dearly as I love a mystery, I will not keep mine any 
 longer. Instead of dropping from the clouds, I came here in 
 the most prosaic, old-fashioned country wagon." 
 
 The ladies glanced around them at the jagged headlands. 
 
 " O, I mean as far as the little grove of pines at your right. 
 I scrambled up the rocks with the rest of our little party, and 
 tried to go down with them when they set off on a search for 
 shells and sea-weed, but the view here compelled me back again, 
 and there it stands, my defence and apology." 
 
 Her hearers evidently regarded it as an ample one, but the 
 doctor still pursued, 
 
 " You are visiting in this vicinity, then ? " 
 
 " O, yes I beg pardon my account must seem very inco- 
 herent. When the time came for our family to return to New 
 York, after a summer crowded with all sorts of gayety and 
 sight-seeing, I took a fancy to run oif to Berry Plains, to which 
 some old friends and former neighbors of ours had removed. 
 I wanted a taste of real, old-fashioned, homely country life, 
 which I was certain to find here, and I persuaded Tom into 
 accompanying me."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 129 
 
 " Thank you. I am sure Fletcher feels relieved now," added 
 Sicily, archly. 
 
 " And now, won't you catechise me in turn, Miss Rusha, else 
 I shall have an uncomfortable feeling of having been intrusive ? " 
 
 " If you put it in that light, certainly ; not admitting for a 
 moment that I share your feeling of curiosity." 
 
 The doctor then proceeded briefly to inform Rusha that he 
 had established his sisters for a month in a quiet boarding- 
 house, less than two miles off, where they had found plenty of 
 sea-bathing and country air, and quiet, they not taking kindly 
 to fashionable haunts, or gayeties of any sort that summer, 
 while he himself managed to run away to them every moment 
 that he could spare, and a good many that he could not." 
 
 After these mutual explanations, a talk informal on all 
 sides ensued. Under different circumstances the Rochfords 
 and Rusha could not have become so well acquainted for months ; 
 but mere conventionalities were of course out of place, on those 
 lonely headlands, with that vast illuminated missal of sky and 
 earth spread out before them. 
 
 Talk it was of a sort that Rusha relished keenly, and that 
 brought out the brightest mood of the girl ; talk that played 
 and sparkled mostly, and yet that every now and then was 
 shaded with some seriousness, as is always the case with people 
 who have thought and felt deeply and conscientiously, and that 
 was full of pleasant allusion, association, suggestion. 
 
 At last there was a shout from voices below, and in a mo- 
 ment Tom and his companions panted up the rocks. 
 
 " Rusha Darryll, such a search as we have had after you ! 
 You are the most provoking why why, doctor ! " as he 
 caught sight of the physician, and the ladies beyond.. 
 
 Great was Tom's amazement, shared by Lucy and Esther ; 
 but a few explanations despatched the whole matter, and the 
 party thus reenforced made a descent to the beach, as hilarious 
 a little company as you can imagine. 
 
 Two or three hours later, Rusha said, looking off at the west 
 where the clouds burned like one vast mountain on fire, " O,
 
 130 
 
 dear, to think there must come a sunset to the very brightest 
 days of one's life ! " 
 
 " And a sunrise to the darkest night ! " added the doctor, 
 who happened to be standing near her at the moment. 
 
 She turned upon him the brightness of her face. " O, thank 
 you ! I shall try and remember that some time some time 
 when I have need of it." 
 
 " I have been thinking," said Angeline Rochford, looking up 
 from a little collection of shells and sea-plants which she had been 
 assorting with Lucy and Esther Bacon, " that it was not pos- 
 sible you could ever have any need of that sort." 
 
 Some feeling slipped like a shadow over the light in the girl's 
 face. " If you knew," she said, with a faint ring of sadness 
 through her voice, " you would never think so again." Then 
 she turned, with that bright, swift earnestness which always 
 startled people until they came to know her well. " Are you 
 always happy content, Dr. Rochford?" 
 
 "I? O, no, certainly not." 
 
 " But in an hour like this, when one gets away from all the 
 bewilderments and confusions above all, the dreadful affecta- 
 tions, of life, and comes face to face with the peace of Nature, 
 one cannot help wishing that such a day and such a mood would 
 last forever. That is why I wished there could be no sunset to 
 this one." 
 
 " But you remember what our poet says in that psalm of his, 
 that it seems to me must ring down through all the ages, Avhat- 
 ever other voices are lost that enjoyment is not the great pur- 
 pose and aim of life ; and, certainly, if we go seeking that 
 alone, we shall never find it." 
 
 " But I do," answered Rusha, turning and sending her gaze 
 far out to the sea. " Yes, I am sure that is, get to the bot- 
 tom of it, the real dominant purpose and aim of my life, 
 Enjoyment." 
 
 Here Tom, who happened to be standing near? broke in with 
 "What an odd little freak that is, Rusha, to be always slan- 
 dering yourself! I don't think it looked very much like living
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 for ' enjoyment ' when you gave us all such a lecture at Saratoga 
 for having a good time generally this summer, while the coun- 
 try was in the midst of this war. You ought to. have heard her, 
 doctor ; I haven't got the thunder out of my ears yet." 
 
 Dr. Rochford had a smile of rare and beautiful expressive- 
 ness. He bent it down now on Rusha's face, in a silent ap- 
 proval, that gratified her in the midst of her embarrassment. 
 
 " Tom, that talk was intended solely for family ears, which 
 you ought to have remembered before alluding to it here." 
 
 " Well, it was a great shame that the world should lose the 
 benefit of it, anyhow." 
 
 Here Tom was interrupted by a call from the ladies, who 
 wanted his assistance in securing some aquatic plants that had 
 drifted in with the tide close to the shore, and so the doctor and 
 Rusha were left alone there on the sands, with the narrow white 
 broidery of surf rolling up close to their feet. 
 
 After a moment the doctor spoke to his companion as he 
 would not probably have spoken to many young women. " I 
 thought I was familiar with the sea with its language, its 
 moods, its silences ; but this summer it has some new voices and 
 meaning for me ; I think we shall read many things, even in 
 Nature, clearer by the red glare of this civil war." 
 
 Her gaze went far out over the waters, until it touched the 
 distant horizon. Her face wore that wistful, half-childish look, 
 which was, perhaps, its sweetest, " I do not know," she said, 
 half communing with herself, " that the war has brought me any 
 new revelations ; I have not come near enough to it, either my- 
 self or through any one that I love." 
 
 " But your country?" he said. 
 
 " O, yes ; I forgot that. I remember, the day papa came 
 home and told us how our flag had been fired on at Fort Sum- 
 ter, that latent love of country which suddenly fired my whole 
 soul was a new revelation to me." 
 
 " I suppose it was to all our countrymen and women worthy 
 of the name. And then that time served to show us, too, what 
 mysteries we are to ourselves and to one another."
 
 132 DARBYLL GAP, OB 
 
 " Everything is a mystery to me," with some doubt haunting 
 her face and voice. u The longer I live, the less I find of that 
 which I love most." 
 
 " What is tha't?" asked Dr. Rochford. 
 
 " Realities" 
 
 " I understand, Miss Darryll, because I have been in that 
 same mood of doubt and unrest. It is a dreary one enough." 
 
 " And you are out of it now ? " 
 
 " Yes ; thank God yes." 
 
 " In what way by what means? " her questions going, as 
 Rusha Darryll's always did, straight to the bottom of the thing. 
 
 " It would take a long while to tell you ; only, there are a 
 few grand, central truths, in which, if one's soul be thoroughly 
 anchored, whatsoever else is dark, mysterious, vague in this 
 world, ceases, in a great measure, to harass and perplex one. 
 Do you believe this ? " 
 
 She brought her gaze in from the sea. " I don't know what 
 I believe, or whether I believe anything at all," she said, in a 
 dry, hard tone, that might have deceived one who did not know 
 what lay back of it. " I am all afloat in creed and faith, which 
 are the deepest things of every human life." 
 
 " I have been through all that," said the doctor ; "I wish I 
 could help you." 
 
 She looked up at him, touched by the sympathy in his voice, 
 with some doubt and beseeching pathos in her face, and the sun- 
 set threw down a sudden glory upon the delicate features and 
 flushed lips, and upon the fine dark hair, in which the sea winds 
 were at play ; and something in the doctor's words, and in the 
 scene where they stood, with the solemn pomp arid glory of the 
 sea, and laud, and sunset, drew Rusha out, as in other circum- 
 stances would not have been possible. 
 
 " My belief, if I have any," she said, " depends upon my 
 moods ; and that is not the sort of religion I want, but some- 
 thing strong, steadfast, mightier than life something that will 
 abide with me in my happiest hours or my saddest something 
 that will strengthen and uphold me through every grief, and
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 133 
 
 loss, and change of life, and that will stay with me when life 
 itself goes out." 
 
 " You are right there, Miss Darryll. Religion must be all 
 that to each one of us, or nothing." 
 
 "But is there any such religion?" she asked, with a vehe- 
 ment earnestness which told how vital a thing the question was 
 to her. " I hate cant, hypocrisy, superficiality ; but above all 
 things I loathe and abhor them most in religion, or what people 
 call this, and here, it seems, more than anywhere else, I find 
 them." 
 
 "But all the wrong, and ' weakness, and imperfection, does 
 not affect the vital question of the reality of truth, and of 
 our need of it," he said. 
 
 Again she sent her wistful eyes far out to sea. " But it 
 shakes my faith in it. It is easy and pleasant to believe to-day, 
 with all the strong joy and grandeur of this scene about me, 
 that there is a Father, all-wise, tender, and loving, watching 
 over and caring for us every moment, and it seems easy and 
 pleasant, too, to trust and love Him now. But I know from ex- 
 perience that this will not last that there will come times 
 when all faith and belief will forsake me ; when doubts and 
 fears will roll in upon me like cold, dulling mists, and I shall 
 go drifting about in the dark, with no hope, no anchor for my 
 soul." 
 
 She was repeating here so completely a phase of his own 
 experience, that if Fletcher Rochford had been describing it 
 himself, he would not have found need to alter a single word. 
 
 " You will perceive that I am better prepared to comprehend 
 your feeling, Miss Darryll, when I tell you that it seems to me 
 there is no chill and gloomy abyss of doubt and scepticism which 
 I have not sounded. I know all the unutterable anguish of that 
 plaint of the soul when it wanders through the thick darkness, 
 'asking Is there a God, and where is He?" 
 
 She sent her startled look up into his face. She felt that in 
 some sense his struggle had gone into depths where hers could 
 not follow him. 
 
 12
 
 134 DARRTLL OAF, OR 
 
 " But these things of which you speak what removed 
 them ? " she asked, softly. 
 
 " They passed away when I learned what His love was 
 what it meant. That is the one only sufficient answer to all 
 our doubts and fears, to all wrong, mistake, and grief," his 
 smile strong, joyful, beautiful. 
 
 There came a sweet solemnity over the face of Rusha Dar- 
 ryll, as she listened ; then her voice broke out again, in a kind 
 of passionateness " But if He is this great, tender, discerning 
 Love that you say, why does He not take pity upon all the 
 wrong, and grief, and anguish, that go on under His eyes? At 
 times the sense of it, and the pity I feel for others, almost drive 
 me frantic. Think of the wickedness, the oppression, the suf- 
 fering, and misery there are in the world ! What does it mean ? 
 Why does He not help it, if He has the power and the will ? " 
 
 " You are asking the questions which have tried sorest the 
 faith, in all ages, of those who have believed in Him. We 
 cannot fathom all the counsels of our God. But it will all be 
 made right and clear at last. The clouds lie dark betwixt us 
 and Him, but beyond, He will justify himself. And we need 
 not doubt that the Love which has done and suffered so much 
 for us, would save us from all unhappiness, if it might be. Into 
 that sublime, central, precious truth, that He loved us and gave 
 Himself for us, all doubts, questioning, fears must be absorbed." 
 
 Again Rusha Darryll's gaze went, mournfully, far out to sea. 
 " I wish I had this religion," she murmured ; " I wish I knew 
 what it was. But I only see that it is the one great question of 
 life the only thing that gives it purpose or meaning, and 
 without which it is at best a vague, empty shadow, at worst a 
 burden and a misery." And looking at her, Dr. Rochford saw 
 the tears aslant on her lashes. A feeling of ineffable pity for 
 the struggling, thirsty, perplexed soul by his side, came over 
 him, a great longing to help and comfort her ; but after all, One 
 only could do that perfectly. 
 
 " I think this longing and this knowledge of your need are 
 the best prophecy that you shall find the truth ; but it is likely
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 135 
 
 to be slowly, through frequent paths of mistake, and uncer- 
 tainty, and fear. Life is a system of development, and you 
 cannot expect in yourself or look to others for perfect individual 
 illustrations of the power and beauty of religion. Cant, hy- 
 pocrisy, inconsistency, that terrible trio of stumbling-blocks, 
 you must always encounter. Neither can you look for complete 
 results in a world where everything is so limited and fragment- 
 ary ; but take broad outlooks ; see what Christianity has ac- 
 complished for the world ; see what, it has wrought for the 
 nations Avhere it is more or less a living, vitalizing force, and 
 what it has done for your own sex. And then I know that one 
 soul enters far into the spacious roominess of one message ia 
 the Bible, and that another passes it by, entering at some other 
 door, where are food and shelter ; but there was a time when 
 these words came to me with a wonderful force and depth of 
 meaning ' If any man will do His will, he shall know of the 
 doctrine.' " 
 
 He saw how she hung upon his words. No danger of her 
 thinking this man was not sincere to the core that he had not 
 lived what he said. 
 
 At that moment voices among the rocks came down to them, 
 the rest of the party having been absorbed in inspecting and 
 assorting their varied plunder of land and sea. As they were 
 making their way to the others, Rusha turned back with that 
 child-like abruptness of hers, 
 
 "What have I been saying to you, Dr. Eochford? I shall 
 be frightened when I remember it." 
 
 " If you knew me better you would never have said that ; " 
 and again that smile of his, entering her eyes like light. 
 
 They found the party in a frolicsome mood, which, though a 
 strong, was not a jarring contrast to their late talk. 
 
 " Fletcher," said Sicily, shaking her parasol at her brother 
 as he approached, " we have entered into a plot against your 
 liberties so you may as well resign yourself to fate." 
 
 " At least let me know what that is to be? " 
 
 " You are not going home until next week."
 
 136 DAERTLL GAP, OR 
 
 "What will become of my patients?" 
 
 " What will become of you if you take neither rest nor rec- 
 reation ? " retorted Angeline. " You know you will break 
 down if you go on at this rate. I put it to your conscience." 
 
 " When you have, as Sicily says, plotted to deprive that of 
 all liberty in the premises. Ah, Angeline, such talk does not 
 come with a good grace from you ! " 
 
 The laugh was against her this time ; but the young lady 
 seemed to enjoy it quite as much as though it had been some- 
 body else. 
 
 Further investigation developed various small aquatic and 
 forest excursions, which had been projected by the ladies and 
 gentlemen of the house where the Rochfords were stopping, 
 and also an invitation from Lucy and Esther Bacon to Berry 
 Plains, of that hearty, informal character which had pervaded 
 the whole afternoon, and which, under other circumstances, 
 would have been impossible on either side. 
 
 The doctor was fairly forced into acquiescence, insisting, 
 however, that he had been deprived of the dearest right of an 
 American citizen his personal liberty and that his sisters 
 had, without due process of law, constituted themselves his 
 keepers, an office which they merrily affirmed they were willing 
 to hold the rest of their days. 
 
 The invitation to Berry Plains, backed by the Darrylls, was 
 at last accepted, although other engagements precluded the 
 specification of any afternoon for the visit ; but Mrs. Bacon's 
 active hospitality was never disconcerted by any advent of 
 guests, either day or night. 
 
 When these things had been satisfactorily arranged, the fad- 
 ing light warned all parties that it was time to set about return- 
 ing. That a mutually agreeable impression had been created, 
 was proved by the comments of either party as it drove home. 
 
 "Well, Rusha," said Tom, urging along Farmer Bacon's 
 placid old mare, " don't you think I was right about a real, 
 genuine, through and through lady ? " 
 
 "Yes, I do, Tom," with a great deal of unction. "She 
 did credit to your perceptions."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 137 
 
 " I think Dr. Rochford and his sisters are perfectly delightful 
 people," added Lucy and Esther. 
 
 " Eeally, Miss Darryll is extremely interesting. I must ad- 
 mit that I was not prepared, even after what you said, Fletcher, 
 to find so much in the girl a lady, too, without a particle of 
 ' mushroom ' about her." 
 
 "Girls," said the doctor, thoughtfully, as their carnage 
 entered the shadow of the wood, " I think here may be a prov- 
 idential indication to you. Certainly your society might be 
 wholesome in many ways to Miss Darryll." 
 
 " What did you and she find to talk about so long, down 
 there on the sands ? " asked Angeline, a little archly. 
 
 " Nothing to jest about, girls. But, as I said, your society 
 and influence is of the sort that she needs. She has reached a 
 point now, when higher social and moral forces, when people 
 who occupy a different plane, and are influenced by another set 
 of motives than those which she sees habitually in the persons 
 around her, will be likely to have a strong and lasting effect." 
 
 " Don't you think Fletcher takes an unusual interest in Miss 
 Darryll?" whispered Sicily, putting her lips under her sis- 
 ter's hat. 
 
 " He always does, you know, in anybody that he thinks he 
 can benefit." 
 
 " No, he doesn't, by any means, I'm sorry to say," leaning 
 back until his head lay a moment in Angeline's lap. 
 
 After the laugh which followed, Sicily said, pulling his hair, 
 
 " We might have known you would overhear us. You al- 
 ways had the ears of an Indian." 
 
 " They are the equivalent of my short-sightedness, I suppose," 
 he answered, lifting himself up again. 
 12*
 
 138 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE vicinity of Berry Plains to the transient home of the 
 Rochfords afforded every facility to any missionary projects 
 which they might entertain for the behoof of the Darrylls. It 
 is hardly probable, however, notwithstanding Fletcher's sugges- 
 tion, that benevolence was the controlling purpose \p. the minds 
 of any of the party on the afternoon in which they rode over to 
 the Bacon homestead. 
 
 As they drove into the wide lane that bounded the orchard 
 and the rambling garden beyond, voices rang through the still 
 summer air, young, eager, bright, with little gleeful interludes 
 and shouts of laughter, which sounded so pleasant that they 
 stopped and listened for a moment. 
 
 It was easy enough, even from, that distance, to distinguish 
 tones and words, and to define the general position of the 
 speakers. They were evidently having a high frolic over some 
 fruit gathering, one of the number being mounted in a tree, 
 where he was bent on fun of some sort, regardless of the merry 
 expostulations of the others. And amid all the rest they could 
 hear one voice, one laugh, clear, full, and yet with a sweet 
 under-gurgle in it, like a child's, or like some little brook, half 
 of whose waters have tripped up among stones, and found their 
 way out again a laugh that told its own story of sweet, sunny 
 deeps of nature, which nothing had soured and darkened yet ; 
 there might be other sides, not so fair nor lovely, but there was 
 this one also. 
 
 The gentlemen and the ladies smiled, listening to the mirth. 
 " I think," suggested Angeline, " it would be as well to drive 
 on, Fletcher. It seems too bad to interfere with their frolic." 
 
 " We need not, my dear ; only let them see that we know 
 what fun is, too."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 139 
 
 " For my part, I feel just like joining in it," added Sicily ; and 
 probably the doctor did, as he drove on. 
 
 There they were Tom Darryll mounted in the highest 
 branches of a gnarled old peach-tree, while on the grass be- 
 neath were scattered Rusha and the Bacon girls, gathering 
 the fruit which that mischievous youth, who had them en- 
 tirely at his mercy, evidently enjoyed dashing down at inter- 
 vals in a way that was hardly agreeable to unprotected heads. 
 A picturesque little trio even Rusha had her sun-hat off, and 
 the sleeves of her light muslin tucked up, so that wind and 
 sun could do their best with her complexion, which in truth 
 was considerably browned since her advent at Berry Plains ; 
 but this was more than compensated for, by the rich glow of 
 cheek and lip, across which the fine brown hair was blown. 
 
 " There, Tom ! " as another shower rattled down through the 
 leaves " I do believe it was your intention to break all our 
 heads, when you proposed getting up into that tree ! " laughed 
 Rusha ; and one of the hardest peaches thumped her forehead. 
 
 " When he comes down, Rusha, which he will have to do 
 some time, we'll take our revenge," said Esther. 
 
 Rusha made a threatening pantomime, with her doubled fists, 
 to the figure, rocking in provoking indifference up there among 
 the branches, and then caught sight of the carriage and its 
 occupants. 
 
 Her position was certainly anything but dignified ; but she 
 seemed fated to come upon the Rochfords in unexpected ways 
 it was too late to hide herself she must make the best of 
 circumstances. 
 
 " Good afternoon, ladies ! " saluted the doctor, as he re- 
 moved his hat, and announced himself to the party. 
 
 Lucy and Esther were dismayed into a moment's silence, and 
 so Rusha recovered herself first. 
 
 " Good afternoon ! " brushing the hair away from her eyes ; 
 and before she could say more, their guest was amongst them, 
 shaking hands with each in that cordial way which was sure to 
 set them at their ease. "Hullo, Darryll! want any help up 
 there?"
 
 140 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " I want some down there, for the girls have been threatening 
 my life when I descend ! " laughed Tom, as he hurried down 
 the tree. 
 
 By this time Rusha had made her way to the carriage, a 
 little confusion and apology in her face, which the ladies' greet- 
 ing put to flight even before the others joined her. 
 
 " If you'll drive around to the house, we'll meet you by the 
 time you reach the front door," proposed one of the girls. 
 
 To this the doctor would by no means consent. He affirmed 
 that he should immediately return with his sisters, unless they 
 were allowed to join in finishing the peaches and the fun, and 
 the Misses Rochford made a point of it before they alighted. 
 
 Thus reenforced, the whole party returned, and the new 
 guests entered thoroughly into the spirit of the occasion. If the 
 Bacon girls were disposed to a little shyness at first, the man- 
 ner of the Rochfords soon dispelled it, and the merriment suffered 
 no abatement. 
 
 The doctor ascended the tree with Tom, and there was a 
 double pelting of fruit, until the girls actually cried for mercy, 
 and throughout all, lively jests, laughter, raillery, gave a new 
 zest to the work and play. 
 
 " I haven't seen you turn boy like this for a long time, 
 Fletcher," laughed Angeline, when the young men descended 
 the tree, and they commenced a general assault on the great 
 pile of peaches, whose ripe gold was streaked with the hot crim- 
 son, which the summer's long passion of kisses had left there. 
 
 " When a man forgets how to go back into his boyhood, 
 beware of him, Angeline ! You may be sure something hard, 
 and dry, and selfish has crusted over his manhood," replied the 
 doctor, selecting the choicest of the fruit, and distributing it 
 among the ladies. 
 
 " And how is it with woman ? " asked Sicily, in her bright, 
 pert way. 
 
 " Of course, the rule works both ways. A woman that has 
 forgotten her girlhood, with its freshness, its hopes, its dreams, 
 its aspirations it were better for that woman if she had 
 died."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 141 
 
 " And its romps ! " laughed Sicily, and she darted off like a 
 deer, sending back a little defiant laugh to her brother, for she 
 had a family renoAvn for fleetness. 
 
 The doctor could not fail to accept this challenge, and started 
 after her. The race was very amusing to those who watched 
 it with shouts and clapping of hands, for Sicily had so far the 
 advantage at the start that she managed to elude her brother 
 for some time, darting in and out among the apple-trees of 
 the old orchard ; but at last he caught and brought her back, 
 flushed and panting. 
 
 After this, matters progressed swimmingly. The whole party 
 was in an exceptional mood of hilariousness, such as the day 
 and the circumstances inspired ; and when each was regaled 
 to the full, they all had a ramble, with plenty of side issues of 
 romps through the orchard, which wore its century of summers 
 in a bounty of verdure and gnarled, mossy trunks, bounded by 
 a little blue band of a stream, suggestive of rod and line to the 
 young men. They discovered that they had one enthusiasm iu 
 common, and the talk converged in a mutual agreement on a 
 fishing sail the next day. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Bacon sisters had slipped off to the house, 
 to acquaint its hospitable hostess with the new reenforcemeut 
 of guests ; and so Rusha and the young ladies were thrown upon 
 each other's society an opportunity which all parties seemed 
 inclined to improve. The natures of the three women were too 
 earnest for a continual sparkle. The talk soon touched on 
 books, art, and a variety of kindred topics. 
 
 How Rusha enjoyed it ! They seemed to have many tastes 
 in common here. And then she contrasted their fresh, earnest, 
 suggestive thoughts with the silly gossip and barren chatter of 
 the young girls who formed their set at home. It was Rusha's 
 misfortune that she had not been thrown into the society of 
 thoughtful, cultivated men and women ; and the Rochfords were 
 quite a new revelation to her. Their thoughts entered hers like 
 light and perfume ; she felt their finer atmosphere. 
 
 She fancied that this was the sort of life after which, through
 
 142 DARR7LL GAP, OB 
 
 all its mistakes and defeats, her soul was constantly reaching 
 the ideal of grace, culture, earnestness, which her nature in its 
 best moments discerned. 
 
 At last the two young men, having settled piscatory themes 
 and projects, joined them, and they went up to the homestead, 
 where a beaming welcome awaited them from the hostess. 
 
 They would only give real pain by declining her cordial invi- 
 tation to supper, and having the tact to perceive this, the Roch- 
 fords accepted the hospitality in the spirit in which it was 
 offered. 
 
 The dark, old-fashioned parlor, with its cool curtains of 
 clambering vines, brought a soberer mood to them all. Some- 
 thing suggested the war a topic that always brought a shadow 
 to Rusha's face. 
 
 " It seems to me," she said, " that I am haunted everywhere 
 by the far-off echo of cannon, the rattle of musketry, and all the 
 dreadful sounds of the battle-field, and if they are drowned, for 
 a little while, in some mood of fun and frolic, they come back 
 again and seem to reproach me." 
 
 " That is what I was telling you this morning, Fletcher," 
 added Angeline. 
 
 "And I must tell Miss Darryll what I did you that no 
 battle-field ever reproaches us for the innocent enjoyment that 
 makes us love our country more and serve her better when the 
 time comes." 
 
 "Good!" exclaimed Tom. "I wish I'd thought of that 
 when Rush a came down on us at Saratoga." 
 
 " But that was not ' innocent enjoyment,' but expensive dis- 
 sipation, Tom," said his sister. 
 
 ' And there lies the whole difference," added the doctor. 
 " The poor fellows down there will not fight any the worse 
 for their innocent songs, and jokes, and home stories in 
 camp." 
 
 " Then you really think, doctor, that a man may laugh, or 
 crack a joke occasionally, and be a Christian ? " 
 
 This question, coming from Torn, surprised Rusha, for
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 143 
 
 though the tones were light, something in the manner showed 
 that he was interested. 
 
 " Of course I do. I believe that religion is something that 
 dwelling in a man's heart shall make it sing with gladness and 
 gratitude. Why, the very winds play the grass under our 
 feet the flowers that smile amongst it the leaves of the 
 trees the streams that go singing to the sea the stars over- 
 head, shine, and bloom, and leap with the joy of life. And 
 God's voice speaks to us by day and by night through these, 
 His messengers, if we will only listen, understand, and believe.' 
 
 " But," said Tom, surprising Rusha yet more as he pursued 
 the subject, " you know what a dreary, doleful, long-faced af- 
 fair most folks make of religion. The very name's enough to, 
 drive a fellow off." 
 
 " And it is a shameful libel on the thing, Tom. I do nu* 
 deny, I most confidently assert, that as true religion must softeu 
 and ripen any character, so it must make one serious, eai-iiest, 
 thoughtful; but gloomy, stern, ascetic never; and I cannot 
 sufficiently deplore or condemn the custom which invents Love 
 and Faith with such unattractive features. How many of the 
 young this false doctrine drives into wrong ways of belief and 
 practice, God only knows." 
 
 " I remember when I was a small chap, and went to the 
 infant school, my teacher required me to learn, as a punishment 
 for every little negligence or misdemeanor, certain texts froia 
 the Bible. To this day, and probably for all my life to conn;, 
 I cannot entirely get over the old, repulsive sensation with which 
 I used to sit on the low, hard bench, and try to hammer those 
 verses into my memory." 
 
 " The old association wraps their beauty and tenderness 
 partly away from me in a cloud. I shall never enter into their 
 sweet meaning as I otherwise should. I have been defrauded 
 of their wisdom and comfort by that mistake of the man who 
 no doubt meant the very best thing." 
 
 Of an almost painfully susceptible temperament, Rusha had, 
 from a child, been either terrified or depressed when her mother
 
 144 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 talked of religion. Mrs. Darryll had, what Andrew very irrev- 
 erently called a " pious face ; " and she always assumed it 
 when she talked " good " to her children a face which there 
 was no mistaking a long-drawn, solemn, dreary countenance, 
 which was certain to drive them from the room, if they could 
 invent any excuse for getting away. But was not this other, 
 the religion that Rusha wanted, she asked herself something 
 strengthening and sweetening life something that could enter 
 into its playfulness even, and give that a fairer innocence 
 something real and vital, imparting some deeper joy to her 
 gladdest hours, touching her darkest ones with its illuminating 
 beam something constant, changeless, eternal, that should 
 stand her through all loss, and bitterness, and grief some- 
 thing that should give meaning and sanctity to the life that even 
 now lay sometimes so heavy and weary a burden upon her 
 youth something that should touch with a beam of eternal 
 glory all the duties and relations of life, and soothe, if it might 
 not utterly banish, the dreary sickness of that feeling with which 
 her soul often echoed the cry, wailing down through all the 
 long centuries of human life, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity " ? 
 
 Such thoughts as these thronged through Rusha's soul, and 
 the doctor half divined them, as she sat there with her silent, 
 absorbed face. 
 
 But at this moment, the entrance of Mrs. Bacon, flushed, 
 from her kitchen, with her spouse arrayed for the occasion in 
 his Sunday broadcloth, gave a new direction to the conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 The host at once fell into a talk with the doctor, which took 
 the conversational highways, from the weather to the crops, 
 and from that to the war, and the two men were deep in this 
 when supper was announced. 
 
 The long table laid in the cool, old sitting-room, with its 
 snowy linen and ancient blue china, certainly did credit to Mrs. 
 Bacon's remarkable domestic faculty. On this occasion she had 
 almost surpassed herself. 
 
 Such a bill of fare as that table presented ! And the people
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 145 
 
 who gathered around it brought to light biscuit, and daintily 
 browned chicken, to golden cake, to honey, and fruits, and 
 cream, such appetites as mountain and sea air impart. 
 
 And when the pleasant, home-like meal was over at last, 
 Sicily laughingly averred that her brother had set an example 
 of breaking his own dietetic rules a fact which the gentleman 
 admitted, but laid the responsibility at Mrs. Bacon's door. And 
 in this mood they returned to the parlor, and had what Rusha 
 called an " evening without a flaw." 
 
 The doctor discussed politics for a portion of it with the 
 farmer, and then gave the company some interesting passages 
 from a month's voyage which he had once made on the Nile ; 
 and Angeline Rochford, who had unconsciously deepened the 
 impression that their first interview had made upon Tom, 
 chatted with that youth, and Sicily and Rusha had their own 
 little quiet talk, in which the Bacon girls mingled, although it 
 had a tendency to get beyond their depth. 
 
 Some time during the evening, Mr. Bacon, recalling some 
 reminiscence of the past, turned suddenly to Rusha, saying, 
 " That happened the year your father took that little grocery 
 down by the pond, Rushy." 
 
 Tom's eyes met hers a little amused smile flashed betwixt 
 them. There were times when such an expose of family ante- 
 cedents would certainly have embarrassed Rusha, but this even- 
 ing she was in her highest mood, and she was certain, more- 
 over, that this disclosure would not weigh one feather with the 
 people to whom it was made. 
 
 With a quiet simplicity, which had in it no shadow of dis- 
 turbance, she turned now to Sicily Rochford, remarking, in 
 explanation, " When we were children, papa kept a small grocery 
 store in Mystic, and the Bacons were at that time our nearest 
 neighbors and friends." 
 
 " Brought up as she had been," said Sicily, afterwards, in com- 
 menting on this circumstance to her brother and sister, " there 
 was something morally sublime in that speech. I wanted to 
 turn round and kiss her the moment after she made it ! " 
 13
 
 146 DASBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 After the guests had departed that evening, Rusha and Tom 
 sat alone a little while. 
 
 " Tom," said Rusha, breaking a little silence, " these people 
 are not like those that make our society at home ! " 
 
 "That's a fact. I told you so the first time I saw Miss 
 Rochford. I know the real article when I meet it." 
 
 " Their whole life, thought, aims, are so different," pursued 
 Rusha. " They are not absorbed in dress nor display, nor 
 running after position, nor any of those petty things which are 
 the idols of our set. It is refreshing to know such people. I 
 have had a glimpse into a higher, truer life, and it makes me 
 sick of mine." 
 
 Tom's silence was a kind of acquiescence. Men and boys do 
 not analyze their feelings and sentiments as women do. Sud- 
 denly he broke into a laugh 
 
 " What do you 'spose Ella would have done, Rusha, when 
 the ' country grocery store ' leaked out ? " 
 
 Rusha joined in merrily. 
 
 " What would she, Tom ! I can imagine her look of horror ! 
 But, somehow, I didn't mind the least I might, though, under 
 some circumstances." 
 
 " The Rochfords wouldn't think the less of us for any- 
 thing of that sort," proving that Tom had read them wisely. 
 " There are people of real good sense for you." 
 
 " Yes ; but, Tom, it isn't their good sense, nor their breed- 
 ing, nor their cultivation that makes them just the sort of* 
 people they are. It's something that underlies all these." 
 
 " It's what the doctor meant this afternoon when he called it 
 Religion, I suppose, but I must say it's a different article from 
 any I ever met with before under that name." 
 
 " I must say it is, Tom." 
 
 " Now, this kind of religion," continued the young man, 
 " seems something that needn't make one sour, or gloomy, or 
 wretched, but better and happier every way. I hate cant or 
 superstition, but I believe these Rochfords have got the genuine 
 stuff."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 147 
 
 " Tom, you mustn't speak so irreverently." 
 
 " I don't mean to be irreverent. It's only a fellow's way of 
 talking, you know." 
 
 There was again a little silence. 
 
 "But, Tom," resumed Rusha, "it is not a slight thing to 
 attempt to improve one's character one must be in earnest to 
 the very death, and then won't succeed without God's help ; 
 but I think, after all, a genuine religion, as you call it, is the 
 only thing worth living for." 
 
 A conversation of this nature had never before transpired 
 betwixt the brother and sister. 
 
 If the Rochfords had at heart the moral welfare of the Dar- 
 ryll family, they surely had in Rusha and Tom its best and 
 most susceptible elements brought at this time within their in- 
 fluence. 
 
 " I've been thinking," said Tom, after a little pause, " that 
 a fellow of my years ought to have some object in life ; but 
 you know there's so much always going on in the city, and it's 
 hard to swim against the tide." 
 
 " I know," certain from his manner that something was 
 coming. 
 
 " But I've made up my mind that when I go back I'll cut 
 loose somehow, and set about preparing for college in down- 
 right earnest." 
 
 " O, Tom, that is glorious ! I am so glad to hear you say 
 it," suiting the words with a kiss, which, though not returned, 
 was evidently acceptable. 
 
 And this decision to which the youth had come, though owing 
 in a large sense to Rusha, might still be traced more or less to 
 the indirect influence of the Rochfords, although Tom was quite 
 unconscious of this. 
 
 The conversation was terminated here by the entrance of 
 some of the Bacon family. 
 
 During the remainder of Rusha's stay at Berry Plains, she 
 only met the Rochfords briefly; once at a little out-of-the- 
 way meeting-house, where she had insisted on going because
 
 148 DAHSYLL GAP, OR 
 
 there was a stone wall that intervened, and she had said 
 to Tom. with her usual enthusiasm " O, it will be so 
 delightful, Tom, to climb a stone wall in going to church ! " 
 a remark which elicited peals of mirth from Lucy and Esther 
 Bacon. 
 
 Tom and the doctor had their sail together, which, so far as 
 the fishing went, proved a decided success. Perhaps the doc- 
 tor availed himself of the occasion to throw some other less 
 tangible bait into the sea of his young companion's soul, deeper 
 than that vast one around them which one day should give up 
 its dead. 
 
 However that might be, Tom reported to Ruslia that he had 
 had capital sport, and that the doctor was a glorious fellow ; 
 but when, on further inquiry, he repeated a part of the talk 
 that had occupied them, she found that it did not all relate to 
 their sport. 
 
 The Rochfords and Darrylls had only time afterwards for an 
 exchange of brief calls, in which the young ladies pledged them- 
 selves to renew the acquaintance which had had so informal a 
 commencement, Angeline laughingly remarking that remote- 
 ness of residence interposed no obstacle to their meeting. 
 
 A day later there came a letter from Ella, urging and de- 
 manding Rusha's immediate return. "The season promised 
 to be unusually gay, if it was war times, and she wanted to 
 consult Rusha about their wardrobes, and a variety of other 
 collateral matters." 
 
 " What in the world keeps you in that dull, dreary, out-of- 
 the-way corner of the world, shut up in an old farm-house, 
 passes my comprehension ! " wrote the younger sister ; and she 
 supplemented the burden of her letter with various urgent mes- 
 sages from her mother, which, being transmitted through Ella's 
 medium, doubtless lost nothing- in emphasis ; and to set the 
 matter beyond all discussion, fortified the whole with a post- 
 script, which at the last moment she obtained from her father 
 " "What are you up to, Rusha and Tom, off there in Berry 
 Plains? Come home, children, come home." A rapid, half-
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 149 
 
 legible scrawl at the best, but it was honored at sight on 'Change 
 now-a-days. 
 
 And it was evident enough that, however they might laugh 
 about Rusha's fine-spun fancies and vagaries, the family always 
 felt the loss of its strongest element in her absence. 
 
 Rusha looked sad as she folded up the letter. It almost 
 seemed to her that she would like to stay at Berry Plains for- 
 ever. But she was mistaken here. When Nature should put 
 off the pomp and glory of her present mood, and she should be 
 thrown more upon herself and her companions, that eager, 
 active soul of Rusha's would have hungered for larger life and 
 wider horizons than the old farm-house and its kindly inmates 
 afforded. 
 
 Two days after this, the old carryall stood at the gate ready 
 to convey the Darrylls to the depot. When the time of leave- 
 taking came, Rusha stood at the door with her wistful face and 
 the tears in her eyes. 
 
 " I've been so happy here," she said, " that I dread to go 
 out of this sweet calm into the tumult, and jar, and fever of 
 the great city ; but there is no help for it." 
 
 And the Bacons mother and daughters stood in the door 
 and watched the old carryall over the hills, and as long as they 
 watched they saw the wistful face looking back. 
 
 And so Rusha went out from Berry Plains, and there was 
 mercifully hidden from her sight the great fires of trial through 
 which she would have to pass in the home that awaited her. 
 13*
 
 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 " WELL, girls, I must say this is a little too much. Just 
 look at that clock ! " 
 
 One morning, some five months after Rusha's return from 
 Berry Plains, Mrs. Darryll saluted her daughters in this fashion 
 as they entered the dining-room. The little bronze clock on 
 the mantel afforded point and emphasis to the mother's objur- 
 gatory tones. 
 
 Both of the girls had a tired, listless air, and Rusha ex- 
 claimed, meanwhile rubbing her eyes, 
 
 " Goodness ! I had no idea it was so late." 
 
 " Well, what can you expect when one is out until three 
 o'clock? Just give me a cup of coffee, and I'll be as good as 
 new ; " and Ella seated herself at the table and touched the bell. 
 
 " I wish I could say as much," replied Rusha, taking the 
 next seat, " but I always feel wretchedly enough for the whole 
 day after such a grand party. The truth is, I'm not made of 
 stuff to stand dissipation." 
 
 Rusha put the truth exactly. Ella could stand a whole cam- 
 paign of late hours and fashionable dissipations, while Rusha, 
 though apparently in as good health as her sister, had that finer 
 nervous organization which could not admit of heavy drafts of 
 excitement. 
 
 " Your father was dreadfully put out," continued Mrs. Dar- 
 ryll, as her daughters settled themselves to the late breakfast, 
 which, despite her reproofs, she had given orders should be 
 kept warm for them, " because you wasn't down this morning. 
 You know he always likes to see you at breakfast." 
 
 " Well, pa's turned into a regular bear now-a-clays," remarked 
 the younger of the sisters, breaking a fresh roll of bread.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 151 
 
 " Ella, don't speak so of your father, child," responded her 
 mother. 
 
 " Well, ma, you know it's true, now, so there's no use deny- 
 ing it. It's as much as one's life is worth to make the slightest 
 demand on his pocket." 
 
 John Darryll's temper had not improved with his fortunes ; 
 but simple justice to the man must allow that he had by no 
 means reached the sanguinary frame of mind which his daugh- 
 ter's statement implied. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll, who always took her husband's part to his 
 children, and reversed this habit when they were the subject of 
 complaint on his part, came now to the defence with, 
 
 " Well, you ought to consider that your father has a great 
 deal on his mind just now. His business worries him, and gold 
 is going up awfully, and I s'pose the poor man don't really 
 know how to make both ends meet." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said Ella, with a toss of her head. " He 
 can't make that go down with me. He's making money all the 
 time, and the richer he gets the stingier he grows. Hasn't he 
 had, with all the rest, a Government contract lately? And 
 don't everybody grow rich who has Government contracts, I'd 
 like to know ? " 
 
 " More shame to them, then ! " interposed Rusha, who thus 
 far had brought no forces to the discussion. 
 
 " Well, now don't, Rusha. for pity's sake, go into the morale 
 of the thing. The fact is all that concerns me ; and I say it's 
 a perfect shame for pa to be such a miser when he's making 
 money, hand over fist." 
 
 Whether Mrs. Darryll had a little secret sympathy with her 
 daughter, or thought that she could set up a plea that would be 
 more likely to avail in the father's behalf, she now changed her 
 grounds of defence. 
 
 " He's fretted a good deal about Andrew, too. They don't 
 seem to get on well together, and I'm afraid matters will come 
 to an open rupture betwixt them yet." 
 
 " What has gone wrong now?" asked Rusha.
 
 152 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 " O, dear, I don't know. Everything, seems to me. Your 
 father complains that Andrew's lazy, reckless, extravagant, 
 always off, throwing away his time and money with a set of 
 fast friends, when he ought to be attending to his business, and 
 that he can't place the least dependence upon him." 
 
 " Pa always makes matters out a great deal worse than they 
 are, you know," commented Ella. 
 
 " I can't make out, for my part, who is to blame," continued 
 Mrs. Darryll. " Your father comes down so hard on Andrew, 
 and if I speak to the boy he gets so excited, that I'm glad to let 
 both alone." 
 
 " I'm afraid that there's a great deal of truth in what pa 
 says," added Rusha, looking serious. " I'm not satisfied with 
 Andrew's looks and ways. What is the reason, I should like 
 to know, that he is never at home now-a-days ? And where 
 does he spend his time when he's off? " 
 
 " Boys must sow their wild oats, you know," pleaded the 
 mother, with her habit of smoothing over everything that was 
 wrong in her own family. " I can't really believe Andrew 
 would do any harm, but he's got in with those wild young fel- 
 lows, and they lead him off to clubs and suppers, and one 
 thing and another. I do wish he'd make up his mind to settle 
 down and grow steady." 
 
 " But you know a great city like this is the last place to lead 
 a young man like Andrew to do that. I suppose, from hints 
 that Tom has dropped me, that we women have no idea of the 
 temptations which beset youth of his age on every side, and 
 home is their best safeguard, and Andrew seems to get away 
 from that more and more." 
 
 " Pshaw ! I don't believe Andrew is going into anything 
 worse than having a good time, like other young men of his 
 age. Don't you croak, Rusha. Ma, I want to tell you about 
 our party." This was from Ella, whose habit was to make an 
 abrupt plunge from disagreeable subjects into pleasant ones. 
 
 "Did you have a good time, girls?" asked the mother, not 
 sorry to have a topic supplanted which enhanced a secret feeling
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 153 
 
 of uneasiness, the more it was discussed, while she was always 
 alive to her daughters' social enjoyments and triumphs. 
 
 This was a theme to kindle Ella's eloquence. " O, mother, 
 you have no idea. It was a perfect rush ; and such a splendid 
 affair ! " and she went on, dilating with great fervor on the mag- 
 nificence of the dresses, the costliness of the banquet, the flat- 
 tering attentions which had overwhelmed her and her sister ; 
 and the mother listened with her pleased smile to the rhapsody, 
 when in the midst of it all the front door was banged sharply 
 to, and a moment after Andrew burst into the dining-room. 
 
 " Why, you here, girls? " in a tone that indicated no pleasant 
 surprise. " I thought you'd be out riding this morning." 
 
 " If you had condescended to remember where we were last 
 night, you probably would not have been so confident in that 
 agreeable expectation," replied Ella, with a little asperity, not 
 exactly liking her brother's tone. 
 
 I think any keen reader of countenances would have found 
 some change for the worse in that of Andrew Darryll during 
 these last six months. It was a change not likely to be appar- 
 ent to his family, for it had not become the fixed habit of his 
 face. But something of the clear, open look was gone. There 
 was some restlessness in the eyes, and something half-defiant, 
 half-reckless, in his dominant expression, which his whole man- 
 ner carried out. He always sported a cane, always dressed in 
 the height of the fashion, and affected a " dandified " air, which 
 did not improve him. 
 
 " Well, ' fast young man,' " commenced Ella, playfully, a 
 moment later, " what's brought you home at this time of the 
 day ? Some secret, I know, that you didn't intend Rusha and I 
 should share ; but you're too late now, so there's no help, but 
 to out with it." 
 
 Andrew had taken a chair, and was restlessly balancing his 
 cane on his forefinger. He was evidently in no mood for jokes. 
 
 " That's a fact," he said ; " I meant to get the old lady when 
 you girls weren't round ; but you'd pump it out of her now 
 so here goes. I want some money, mother."
 
 154 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Why, Andrew ! " Mrs. Darryll was taken completely by 
 surprise at this request, as her daughters were also. 
 
 Andrew rose up, striking his cane hard on the floor. 
 
 " It's a fact. I must have it right off, and there's no use 
 mincing matters." 
 
 " But why don't you go to your father for it?" 
 
 " Because I haven't time to go through with a storm before 
 I can get it, and because it is my own affair, and I don't choose 
 to have him know anything about it." 
 
 " What shall I do, girls?" appealed the bewildered mother 
 to her daughters. 
 
 "Look here, old lady; it's none of their business I must 
 have the money without delay." 
 
 " I think you might at least have the decency to tell ma what 
 you intend to do with it, before you demand her money quite so 
 much in the style of a highwayman," spoke up Rusha, her quick 
 temper roused at Andrew's manner. 
 
 " You interfere if you dare, now, Rusha Darryll ! " 
 
 There was a threat in his eyes that, for the moment, daunted 
 her and Rusha Darryll was no coward. 
 
 "How much money have you got to the last dollar?" 
 This question was addressed to his mother. 
 
 " I've only got two hundred dollars in the world, and your 
 father gave me that for family expenses," in a piteous way. 
 
 " Two hundred dollars ! Confound the old miser for cutting 
 so close ! I want at least double that. But fork over what 
 you've got." 
 
 " Seems to me you are carrying things with a pretty high 
 hand, Andrew ! " said Mrs. Darryll, partially recovering herself, 
 and not moving from her chair. 
 
 " I say, old woman, where's that money? I'll have it out of 
 you by fair means or foul, and if you know what's good for 
 yourself you'll hand it over ! " 
 
 His look frightened his mpther. Language like this had 
 never been addressed to her before. A sort of coarse freedom 
 obtained in the manner of the young Darrylls towards their
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 155 
 
 parents, which, to finer natures, might savor of disrespect, but 
 of defiance and insolence never. 
 
 " I believe the fellow's gone crazy ! " said Ella, really pale, 
 she was so shocked. 
 
 But the poor mother was frightened now past all self-control. 
 
 " The money is in the box on the table there. O, what does 
 it mean that my child should talk to me like that ! " and she 
 burst into tears. 
 
 Andrew seized the box and tore out the " greenbacks," and 
 was hurrying out of the room. But just as he reached the door, 
 Rusha sprang before him, her whole face hot with indignation. 
 
 " Andrew Darryll, the man who will insult his mother and 
 frighten her into giving him money in the way you have done, 
 is a coward and a brute ! " 
 
 He looked, for the moment, as she stood there in her courage 
 and scorn, as though he could have knocked her down ; but there 
 was something in her eyes that quelled him, and partly brought 
 him to his senses. 
 
 " A man that's desperate can't use soft words," he muttered, 
 and dashed by her. 
 
 When Rusha returned, she found her mother sobbing, and 
 Ella trying to soothe her. 
 
 "I don't understand it. What does it mean?" asked the 
 younger of the elder sister. 
 
 " It means, Ella, that it's no use to shut our eyes. I've 
 feared for a long time that Andrew was going wrong, and now, 
 after what we have witnessed, there's no doubt of it. This 
 comes of his clubs and carousals, and being away from home 
 day and night with a set of fast young men, who will drag him 
 down to ruin." 
 
 " But did you see and hear how he looked and spoke to me 
 his mother ? " sobbed Mrs. Darryll. 
 
 " Yes," penetrating to the core of the matter much quicker 
 than her more practical parent and sister, " I saw it all, mother, 
 and I saw, too, that he had been drinking some, and was des- 
 perate. Probably he has borrowed the money, or " She
 
 156 DAREYLL GAP, OB 
 
 stopped here, though she was strongly excited ; and words were 
 not apt to frighten her. 
 
 "Or what?" said Ella. 
 
 " Or has been gambling." 
 
 " My boy, my Andrew, a drunkard and a gambler ! " ex- 
 claimed Mrs. Darryll, with a fresh burst of tears. 
 
 " There have been sons whose mothers loved and trusted them 
 as you do yours, who have turned out to be a disgrace and a 
 shame to them. I don't want to. make you feel worse, mother, 
 but we ought to see the danger that is closing round Andrew." 
 
 "But what can we do?" said Ella, who was now really 
 alarmed. 
 
 " I don't know as anything, for he seems beyond the reach 
 of our influence. Father ought to know this at once." 
 
 " Dear me, Rusha, think what an awful storm there would 
 be ! " pleaded the shrinking mother. 
 
 " I know it, ma ; but better a storm than to have Andrew 
 lost, soul and body." 
 
 It was a singular fact that whatever they might think of her 
 " romance," they always deferred to her penetration, decision, 
 and good sense, in any crisis which demanded the exercise of 
 these qualities. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll, with her usual lack of moral courage, depre- 
 cated so strongly a resort to her husband regarding Andrew's 
 conduct, that Rusha, knowing her father's rashness and growing 
 infirmities of temper, felt there was a good deal of force in her 
 mother's reasoning. His harshness might only drive Andrew 
 into worse courses, she reflected ; and she finally yielded so far 
 as to promise that she would not immediately acquaint her 
 father with what had transpired. 
 
 " But I still persist that I very much,doubt whether this is 
 the wisest course. Andrew needs some stronger force than we 
 can bring to bear, to change the whole tendency of his present 
 life. These late suppers these fast companions this absence 
 from home these carousals, and dissipations, and general 
 recklessness mother, where will they all lead to ? " asked the 
 eldest daughter, solemnly.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 157 
 
 And Mrs. Dairy 11, tearful and distressed, hoped " Andrew- 
 was only sowing his wild oats, and would come out right at 
 last," and avowed her intention of giving that delinquent youth 
 " such a talking to as he had never had in all his life ; " and at 
 this moment, some calls that could not be refused ended the 
 painful family conference. 
 
 Andrew Dairy 11 next presented himself at home, somewhat 
 sobered a little ashamed, with a very confused memory of all 
 that had transpired, and a general determination to " bully it out." 
 
 Rusha, however, had not such absolute faith in the power of 
 her mother's " talk," that she did not lay hold of that young 
 man with her usual impetuosity, and administer to him such 
 a verbal scathing as he had never received from the tongue of 
 any living woman. 
 
 As for his preconceived notion of " bullying it out," Andrew 
 found, as he afterwards expressed himself, that Rusha proved 
 " too much " for him. 
 
 She cut him right off when he commenced, with, 
 
 " That sort of talk may serve you with your poor, shocked, 
 frightened mother, when you burst into the house, and in ways 
 a burglar would scorn, scare her into giving you money, but it 
 won't do with me. When I think, Andrew Darryll, what lan- 
 guage you used to her this clay, it makes my blood boil. O, I 
 wish I was a man, to horsewhip you as you deserve ! " 
 
 She looked as though she could almost do it, small, delicate 
 woman as she was, standing there with eyes and cheeks on fire. 
 
 Andrew quailed before the spirit he had roused. She was a 
 girl, it is true, but then she had an immense moral advantage 
 on her side. 
 
 " Take a fellow's head off, will you, for what he said when 
 when he wasn't himself. Don't believe it was half as bad as 
 you tell for, either." 
 
 " Drunk, were you?" The tone was calmer now, but the 
 emphasis on the first monosyllable made him wince. " I'm glad 
 to know, on your own confession, that you were not sober when 
 you so outraged your mother and sisters." 
 14
 
 158 DAEEYLL GAP, OE 
 
 " Making it out ten times worse than it was ! " muttered An- 
 drew. " Twon't go down me." 
 
 He wished he had taken some other line of defence, when 
 Rusha went over the whole scene, compelling him to listen until 
 he was really humbled and ashamed. 
 
 " I'd no idea it was so bad, Rusha. The truth is, if you 
 must have the whole, I'd got in debt, and I didn't dare go to 
 the governor, and and the matter was pressing, and drove 
 me into getting tight, and doing all the rest. On my honor, I 
 didn't know what I was about." 
 
 The first sign of repentance melted her anger. 
 
 " O, Andrew, I guessed as much. "What are you coming 
 to ? " her lips quivering. 
 
 He seemed a good deal touched, and went about searching 
 for this excuse and that ; but they were of the sort that all wrong 
 doers make, who have not strength to resist evil, and could not 
 satisfy her. 
 
 " Do you remember, Andrew, the promise you made me less 
 than a year ago, on your sick bed? And here you are now." 
 
 The memory seemed to touch him with remorse, but it must 
 have been of a transitory sort, for he still went seeking excuses 
 for himself, and affirmed that he was no worse than the rest of 
 the fellows, and through all, his brow did not once wear the 
 clear, open look that it used to. 
 
 " O, Andrew, if I knew what to do if I could only save 
 you ! " she cried, half to herself, the tears dropping on her 
 cheeks. 
 
 He started a little, and looked at her. 
 
 " Save me from what?" 
 
 " From all the wrong and ruin into which I see these late 
 nights, these boon companions, and this general recklessness, 
 will surely plunge you." 
 
 " I guess I shall come out as well as other men. I'm no 
 worse than the rest of them, and mean to look out. There, 
 don't cry, Rusha. I'll go and make my peace with the old lady. 
 I s'pose I was a brute, but, hang it, I didn't know what I was 
 about ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 159 
 
 She drew a long sigh. His manner did not half satisfy her ; 
 but after all, he had yielded so much that she was afraid to pur- 
 sue the matter further then, and weaken the force of what she 
 had already said. But she would " bide her time," feeling that 
 anything she might say would fail in her brother's present mood 
 to reach deeper than the shallows of his nature. 
 
 And he went out on his errand of conciliation with his mother, 
 feeling that this would be an easier matter with her than with 
 Rusha ; but almost as the door closed, it opened again, and 
 Andrew Darryll's general impression of the part Rusha had 
 borne in the affair concentrated itself in his "I say, Rusha, 
 you're a brick ! " 
 
 She was too pained to appreciate this coarse flattery, and 
 only answered, with a little flicker of a smile. 
 
 The young man did not, however, find it quite so light a mat- 
 ter as he had fancied, to get over his transgression with his 
 mother. Pain at the indignities which her son had heaped upon 
 her, and alarm at her daughter's representations, made Mrs. 
 Darryll unusually severe. 
 
 Whether the constantly recurring " I couldn't believe that a 
 child of mine would ever dare to address me in that way ! " was 
 likely to have any lasting influence, might be questioned. But 
 Andrew insisted that she ought to pay no more regard to what 
 he had said than to the wind's blowing, when it had no more 
 meaning. As for the drinking and the borrowed money, he 
 treated that lightly, affirming that a great many good men had 
 done both, once in their lives, and it was hard to treat him as 
 though he was *' the greatest sinner out," for a single offence 
 arguments which had weight with the fond, weak mother. 
 
 Afterwards, the young man took with exemplary patience a 
 long lecture, which made up in length what it lacked in force, 
 and in the end, Mrs. Darryll forgave her son in her heart, if 
 not in words.
 
 160 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ** I'VE about made up my mind that I shall take a trip to Oil 
 City, the last of this week," said Mr. Darryll, settling himself 
 back in his easy chair, after dinner, the hour following that 
 meal being usually his most complacent one, although that gen- 
 tleman's humor had grown to be a sensitive index of the con- 
 dition of the stock board. 
 
 " Why, father, what can have put such a notion into your 
 head?" interrogated Mrs. Darryll, who was never quite easy 
 at suggestions of leaving home on the part of any member of 
 the family. 
 
 " Well, the fact is, they want me to go into a new company 
 that is just being started, and which promises to be a good 
 thing. But I don't like to come down in a large way, unless 
 I'm certain of the ground I stand on ; and after thinking it all 
 over, I've about concluded that the best thing is to go on and 
 see for myself." 
 
 " O, pa, I wish you'd take me along with you. Do now," 
 spoke up Rusha's eager voice. 
 
 " Go to Oil City ! " put in Ella, before her father had time 
 to reply. " Well, I must say, Rusha, if any fancy of yours could 
 surprise me, this last one certainly would. What in the world 
 can attract you there ? " 
 
 " O, I should like the new experience, and to see real, gen- 
 uine human nature with the polish off. The whole thing would 
 be full of fresh adventure and delight to me such a contrast 
 to our dead level, city life. O, pa, if you only will say I may 
 go!" 
 
 " I hope your father hasn't quite lost his senses yet," inter- 
 posed Mrs. Darryll, in that tone of sensible practicality which
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 had so often dashed its cold water on Rusha's pretty enthu- 
 siasms. 
 
 " No, my daughter," said her father, in the softened voice 
 of which his eldest child certainly had the largest benefit ; and 
 it might be that this desire to accompany him on a journey which 
 promised so much of fatigue and discomfort, touched the father 
 beneath the shrewd, hard business man, for he treated Rusha's 
 suggestion with neither the rebuke nor the ridicule that her 
 mother and sister had done. 
 
 "You have no idea what you'd have to encounter on the 
 way ; and then, when we got there, what would you do sweep- 
 ing round with your fine dresses in the dirt, and grease, and 
 mud, without so much as a sidewalk in the whole town ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't wear fine dresses, pa. I'd put on bloomer when 
 we got beyond civilization," added Rusha, more for talk sake 
 than anything else, for she saw the case was hopeless. 
 
 " I've no doubt she would," added Ella, with a pantomime 
 that said unutterable things. " Our Rusha would be just up to 
 that very deed ! " 
 
 "What a mercy it is, then," laughed the elder sister, oil 
 whom the pantomime had not been lost, " that you and mother 
 are always around to keep me in the orbit of a proper young 
 lady ; else I might fly off on a tangent at any time ! " 
 
 " I realize that fully," laughing too ; but after all, there was 
 more truth than jest in her remark. 
 
 Guy and Agnes brought some new forces to the badinage on 
 Rusha, and Mr. Darryll settled himself to his paper, from 
 which he was roused half an hour later by the entrance of An- 
 drew and Tom. 
 
 " Any letters after I left the office, boys? " 
 
 " I looked over the last batch that came in," answered An- 
 drew, lighting a fresh cigar. " Nothing important, except that 
 Crawford has been taken sick, and won't be up before next 
 week." 
 
 "And just the time when he can't be spared, for I've made 
 my plans to go day after to-morrow." 
 14*
 
 162 DABBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Can't the journey wait ? " inquired Andrew, puffing at his 
 cigar. 
 
 " No, sir. I've got other irons in the fire. You'll have to 
 take his place, Andrew, and keep books, safe, and keys, while 
 I'm gone." 
 
 " Confounded dull for a fellow," muttered Andrew. " Keep 
 him tied tight from morning to night at the office." 
 
 u No help for it, sir," said the young man's father, decidedly. 
 " Besides, a little taste of hard work wouldn't hurt any of you 
 boys, and I can't trust such responsibilities out of our own 
 hands, now Crawford's gone." 
 
 Andrew did not demur further. He only asked, 
 
 " Going into some fresh speculations, governor?" 
 
 Something in the name or the tone did not seem to please 
 John Darryll. He always, in his talk, both in his family and 
 on 'Change, pronounced himself " down " on most of the great 
 speculating manias which have been of late like evil spirits en- 
 tering into men's souls, and making their last state worse than 
 their first. 
 
 Naturally cautious in all his financial enterprises, he had 
 been particularly severe on the desperate risks which many of 
 the men with whom he was thrown in business relations con- 
 stantly incurred. The losses and failures never escaped him ; 
 and he was constantly holding these up to view in the hope 
 that they would prove beacon lights to the young men when 
 they should enter the field for themselves. 
 
 There had of late been a good deal of sharp discussion on 
 these very matters betwixt the father and the eldest son. An- 
 drew was always quoting instances against his parent of men 
 who had made, to use his words, a " big thing out of a small 
 pile," and affirming that " a fellow, if he only understood the 
 ropes, could turn his hundreds into thousands as easy as you 
 could toss your hand up, sir ; and what was the use of delving 
 and slaving all your life, when a little sharpness would turn a 
 man out a snug little sum any time, so that he could lie back 
 on his oars the rest of his days, and have smooth sailing as he 
 went along ? "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 163 
 
 Talk of this sort always irritated John Darryll to the highest 
 degree. He denounced in the strongest possible terms all such 
 financial operations as " gambling, fraud, and embezzlement," 
 and insisted that nine hundred and ninety-nine speculations of 
 the kind Andrew quoted were sure to burst up, and involve 
 those concerned in failure and ruin ; indeed, he had evinced so 
 much excitability when this topic was discussed, that Ella, with 
 her usual love of peace, had said to her eldest brother, 
 
 " Why can't you let pa alone on these speculations? Let 
 him think what he pleases, and you do the same, only keep still 
 about it, for he'll be sure to go off like a bombshell every time 
 the subject is touched on. If folks only could learn to let disa- 
 greeable topics alone ! " 
 
 And it never occurred to Ella at that time, any more than 
 to the rest of her family, that any personal interest might lie at 
 the bottom of Andrew's advocacy of these easy methods of 
 making money, or that when he did not talk, he might act on 
 his own views of the matter. 
 
 " I'm going to see the thing for myself before I put my hands 
 in," replied John Darryll to his son's question about the object 
 of his journey to Oil City. " If the thing promises well, I may 
 do something with it ; but they needn't throw out any bait, for 
 I shan't nibble ; I'm too old for that." 
 
 " Eames has just made a good thing out of his last specula- 
 tion in Erie. He put up a margin stock went up, and he 
 just drew in a haul of fifty thousand dollars. Snug little sum 
 that ! " 
 
 " I'd like to do that thing," said Guy. ' " Cracky ! " 
 
 " You would, would you?" turning sharply upon the boy. 
 " And the chances would all be that you'd lose every dollar, 
 and go to the devil yourself before you got through ! " 
 
 " O, pa now ! " interrupted Mrs. Darryll, warningly. 
 
 " It's a fact," stoutly maintained her husband. " I tell you, 
 more young men have been driven by speculation, than by any 
 one thing in the world, into all sorts of desperate crimes, and 
 ended up at last in a felon's cell. I know all about the way
 
 164 DAEBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 these things are managed, and how easy it is to draw a young 
 fellow in who thinks he knows more and sees farther than his 
 betters. If one of my boys, after all I've said, should ever dis- 
 regard my advice, and run his neck into some hap-hazard spec- 
 ulation, he might go to ruin for all I'd see him out that's all." 
 
 " Now, boys, take your father's advice, and keep clear of all 
 these dangerous places, if you want to turn out well in the 
 world," said Mrs. Darryll to her sons, in very much the same 
 tone that she used to promise them " a stick of candy if they 
 would be good children, and not make a noise." 
 
 " But I say," continued Andrew, " all business is specula- 
 tion, get to the bottom of it. It's the same thing, only one man 
 is more cautious and shrewd than another ; but it's a race for 
 money all the same, and devil take the hindmost. Each one is 
 trying to get ahead of his neighbor, whether it's on the sly, or 
 all above board ; whether it's in a government contract, or a 
 petroleum company, or a banking house, it's all the same thing 
 
 make the most you can out of your man, whether he happens 
 to be one individual or the public in general." 
 
 " Is it true, pa, what Andrew says? " asked Rusha. 
 " Well, yes, I suppose it is pretty much. Of course 
 every man must look out to feather his own nest in the world 
 
 I'm not talking against that ; but business is one thing, and 
 reckless diving into all sorts of wild speculations is another. 
 The market is full of these just now, and people are rushing in, 
 neck and heels ; but there will be an awful bursting up one of 
 these days." 
 
 " But, pa," said Rusha, at the bottom of whose thought lay 
 always the right and wrong of any question, " that way of 
 doing business which you speak of seems to me so utterly 
 selfish a one. Surely Christianity, or the highest morality 
 ' even, requires some regard to the interests of one's fellow-man, 
 even in business." 
 
 Andrew burst into a loud, disagreeable laugh. 
 
 " Now that is too good, Rusha. A pious and moral busi- 
 ness ! Tell that to your grandmarm ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 165 
 
 Guy joined in his brother's rather poor attempt at wit. 
 
 " Yes, Rusha, you are green ! " said the boy of sixteen ; but 
 he was extinguished for that time by his sister's remarking, in 
 her most frigid tones, that doubtless his years and experience 
 would protect her from any of the ill effects of her verdancy! 
 
 This was as unkind a cut as Guy, who, on occasions, affected 
 the disagreeable smartness of boys of his age, could well have 
 received, and was another of the lessons which all Rusha's 
 family were so slow in learning, that, notwithstanding the 
 amount of badinage which she would take good-naturedly, 
 there was a point beyond which it was not safe to drive her ; 
 and when this was passed she could always turn upon the 
 offender in a way that effectually silenced him. 
 
 That Mr. Darryll's warnings had very little effect upon his 
 eldest son, was proved by his remarking to Tom, as they went 
 out together, that the " governor was an old fogy, any way, 
 and that he wasn't up so early in the morning but there was a 
 thing or two in business that he didn't know yet, and that some 
 folks had cut their eye teeth in this world besides John Dar- 
 ryll." 
 
 This conversation transpired about three weeks after An- 
 drew's rupture with his mother and sister. Since that had 
 been healed thanks to Rusha's courage and spirit nothing 
 unusual had occurred on the part of the elder son and brother 
 to awaken the anxiety of his family. Rusha, who now observed 
 him pretty narrowly, did not feel at ease regarding the young 
 man ; yet she could find no fresh cause to justify her solicitude. 
 He was still absent from home much of the time, and when 
 there, seemed absorbed and reticent, with occasional rough ex- 
 plosions of mirth, which, it struck his sister, did not have quite 
 a natural ring about them. Sometimes, too, it seemed to her 
 that she caught a glimpse of some half-dogged, half-desperate 
 expression on his face, which came back and haunted her after- 
 wards, and yet was not tangible enough to prevent her from 
 wondering whether the whole thing was not a mere chimera of 
 the imagination that was always troubling her.
 
 1G6 DAERTLL GAP, OR 
 
 It is true that her father grumbled away in the old fashion 
 about Andrew's laziness and frequent absence from business ; 
 but John Darryll's fault-finding had become chronic in his 
 family, and was accepted as a matter of course, the only result 
 being a sort of tacit understanding betwixt all the members 
 that " pa " must be kept in as good humor as possible, provided 
 this did not cost too much a party, a new bonnet, or any- 
 thing of that sort, being always regarded as sufficient motive, 
 by anybody but Rusha, to brave his displeasure. " 
 
 During these weeks, too, the season was unusually gay, and 
 the family much absorbed in social excitements, so that the 
 sisters saw comparatively little of their bi'Others. 
 
 A feeling of deeper confidence had, however, been growing 
 up betwixt Rusha and Tom, since their return from Berry 
 Plains. Constantly encouraged and stimulated by his sister, 
 the young man had actually set about preparing for college, to 
 which his father gave a willing assent ; and Tom, being a rich 
 man's son, with plenty of time on his hands, and all the temp- 
 tations of a great city to beguile him into indolence and pleas- 
 ure-taking, deserved a great deal of credit for resisting these 
 as well as he did. 
 
 Naturally bright and intelligent, as were all the Darryll sons 
 and daughters, Tom had still habits of study to establish ; and 
 this was a great eifort to one who had no aid from the daily 
 regimen of school or college, but whose hours were entirely at 
 his own disposal. 
 
 Rusha opened her sanctum to him, and if it had not been for 
 her constant example and encouragement, Tom's ambition to- 
 wards scholarship would long ago have failed him before indo- 
 lence and pleasure, those two lions that lie in wait along all 
 paths of human endeavor. Poor Tom battled with them sin- 
 gle-handed sometimes, but they never totally overcame him 
 thanks to that sister of his, to whom, though he or she might 
 never know it, he would, in a large sense, owe whatsoever his 
 future might bear of strong, worthy, successful manhood. 
 
 Tom's awakening interest in the new world of study, the
 
 WHETHER IT PAW. 167 
 
 kindling of all the activities of his intellect before that vast field 
 of knowledge which opened its mysteries and beauties before 
 him, were fostered by Rusha in a thousand ways. They read 
 the same books and discussed the same themes together in the 
 little retired sanctum, that was to her the dearest spot on earth. 
 
 And the change that was being gradually wrought in Tom 
 Darryll did not end here, else its work would have been most 
 partial and imperfect. It went deeper than that, and slowly 
 assimilated with his whole character. His moral nature, was 
 quickened ; new questions stirred themselves in his soul ; things 
 that once never awakened a thought within him began now to 
 assume new relations to his deepening susceptibilities ; and 
 little by little, and here and there, his conscience grew more 
 sensitive, and life began, with much of obscurity and vagueness, 
 to open out before him with some new, vast meanings and 
 responsibilities. 
 
 And it was pleasant and touching to see the young, eager 
 minds grappling with the great questions which underlie all 
 human life, and which, once lost sight of, as Paul said, " Let us 
 eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
 
 Of course Rusha was leader here, and Tom followed the 
 deeper nature, the finer conscience, and forgot, for the time, "all 
 the little weaknesses and absurdities that were so natural to his 
 age and experience, and became simple and earnest. And in 
 these brother-and-sister talks how much seed was dropped in 
 the clefts and deep places of his soul, that should spring up 
 afterwards in noble aspiration, and steadfast faith, and higher 
 loyalty, only G-od and the good angels of Tom Darryll knew. 
 
 Rusha, too, was growing, without much outward help and 
 with many drawbacks growing so slowly that neither she nor 
 those around her suspected it, among the constant chafings and 
 irritations of the sensitive, finely-strung soul, across whose 
 chords the winds of life swept, making deep voices, sometimes 
 of sweetest harmonies, but, alas ! oftener of saddest discords. 
 
 The acquaintance with the Rochfords, which had opened so 
 auspiciously, had been doomed to sudden disappointment. The
 
 168 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 doctor had gone to the war, and Angeline had accompanied 
 him as hospital nurse. The house was still kept open, for 
 Sicily, who had gone, meanwhile, to reside with some relatives 
 in the country, came down frequently to the city, as she had 
 a general charge of her brother's and sister's beneficiaries. 
 
 But her visits were always crowded with business, so that 
 Rusha never saw her ; and whatsoever wholesome influences 
 their society might have exerted, at this time, on her ardent, 
 impressible nature, was entirely lost to her, and she had to 
 make her own way as best she might out of the mistakes and 
 mischiefs of her early training, out of false and ignoble views 
 of life, out of all sorts of social sophistries ; and she went on 
 blindly, "stumbling often, but never content to lie there" 
 went on, not seeing the Hand that was leading her.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 169 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " WHAT in thunder does this mean?" 
 
 Adam Crawford sat before the iron safe in John Darryll's 
 private office one morning, somewhat less than a week after 
 that gentleman's departure for Oil City, when this expletive 
 dropped from his lips the strongest that any possible amaze- 
 ment or horror could have drawn from the man. For Adam 
 Crawford was at that moment in a state of such blank amaze- 
 ment and terror as he had never experienced before in his life. 
 
 He sat there alone in Mr. Darryll's small, private office, 
 behind the desk, where the great iron safe always stood, and to 
 which nobody ever had access, except the owner and the book- 
 keeper, unless the keys, in some unusual contingency, were 
 placed, for a short period, in Andrew's charge. A set of these 
 lay upon the top of the chest ; the heavy door was swung open, 
 revealing the great ledgers and piles of papers on one side, while 
 on the other was the vault, which now was uncovered, contain- 
 ing many thousands in gold and greenbacks. 
 
 Some small debts falling due on this morning, the book- 
 keeper, in whom Mr. Darryll reposed absolute confidence, had 
 opened the vault, when his eyes ^vere arrested by the sight of 
 several empty bags, which he had seen Mr. Darryll place there 
 just before his departure for Oil City, remarking that he should 
 probably use them in a new investment on his return. 
 
 Each one of the bags had contained five thousand dollars in 
 gold. Adam Crawford lifted up one and then another of these 
 it was empty, and dropped away from his nerveless hands, 
 for the strong man was weak as a little child. 
 
 Mr. Darryll had selected his book-keeper -from a host of ap- 
 plicants on account of his " honest face," and the man was a 
 15
 
 170 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 shrewd reader of countenances. Adam's would have borne wit- 
 ness for him anywhere an honest, open, manly face, whose 
 character compensated for its rather marked homeliness, but to 
 be trusted, his employer averred, to the antipodes with un- 
 counted gold. 
 
 Andrew Darryll sat at the desk that morning, writing, with 
 somewhat unusual diligence ; for, as he told one of his friends, 
 who stopped in to invite him to a ride on the Bloomingdale 
 Road, "the old man was expected back in a day or two, and 
 there'd be a regular blow up, if he didn't put matters through 
 before that time." 
 
 So, although he had not seen the inside of the office for two 
 previous days, he was apparently absorbed in his work when 
 the book-keeper came to the outside door and spoke with a 
 white face, 
 
 " Darryll, I say, we've been robbed ! " 
 
 The voice was not loud. Andrew kept on at his writing. 
 You could hear the rapid scratch of his pen in the stillness. 
 It seemed strange that the tones did not reach him. 
 
 "Darryll," the key a little raised, " see here we've been 
 robbed ! " 
 
 Andrew turned round sharply. 
 
 " "What's that you say, Crawford?" 
 
 " The gold in the safe vault has gone ! " 
 
 What Andrew said here, or whether he said anything at all, 
 Adam Crawford could never recollect, although he afterwards 
 tried many times. But he "remembered that they both re- 
 turned to the safe, and Adam pointed to the empty bags, and 
 they two counted them over. There were four whose entire 
 contents had been abstracted. The others lay undisturbed. 
 Then the two young men looked at each other, face to face, 
 eye to eye. 
 
 " There were five thousand dollars in each of those bags. I 
 heard your father say so the day that he placed them there," 
 said Crawford. 
 
 "Yes, here is the mark," replied Andrew, turning the side
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 171 
 
 of the bag towards him. Then the young men looked at each 
 other again, face to face, eye to eye. 
 
 " Who do you suspect is at the bottom of this business, 
 Crawford?" asked Andrew. 
 
 " I can think of no man God is my witness of no living 
 man ! Can you ? " watching young Darryll's face in a kind 
 of vague hope of some clew. 
 
 " Not one." 
 
 " But we must ferret out the villain who has done this." 
 
 " Yes, Crawford," said Andrew, " that is the first step we 
 must ferret him out ; " then, after a little pause, " You've had 
 the keys about you ever since you got back ? " 
 
 " Night and day; except the one that I gave them to you, 
 when I went out of town you remember?" 
 
 "Yes, the money was all safe then, for I came here in the 
 morning, and placed this package of greenbacks in the vault. 
 The safe must have been broken into after that." 
 
 " But how was it done, Darryll? if we could only get on the 
 scoundrel's track ! " 
 
 And Adam Crawford remembered afterwards how many 
 improbabilities they started how they discussed one person 
 and then another, but never found a single individual or cir- 
 cumstance on which there was the slightest ground for basing a 
 suspicion of the crime. 
 
 Andrew, however, maintained the opinion that some ex- 
 perienced burglar had watched the building, and broken into 
 that and the. safe at night; indeed, it was impossible that any 
 but a most skilful robber could have opened the vault, whose 
 lock, like that of the outer safe door, it seemed must havs 
 baffled any degree of ingenuity on the part of one who attempted 
 to pick it. 
 
 Then the young men examined all the doors and window 
 fastenings ; but there was not the faintest trace of disturbance 
 among all these. Then they came back again, and sat down 
 before the open safe, and decided that the only thing to do was 
 to put the matter into the hands of some shrewd detectives, and 
 await Mr. Darryll's return.
 
 172 DARBTLL OAF, OB 
 
 "But I dread to see the man's face," said Adam Crawford. 
 
 " So do I. Won't there be a storm, though ! " and the book- 
 keeper remembered that as Andrew said this, he shuddered ; 
 but that did not surprise him at the time, for he was half be- 
 wildered himself with the shock which the sudden discovery of 
 the crime had occasioned him, and just as Andrew Darryll 
 ceased speaking, his father walked in. Something in the faces 
 of both the young men struck him at once. 
 
 "What has happened?" he asked, stopping short. 
 
 The son and the book-keeper each waited a moment for the 
 other to reply. Then Andrew spoke : 
 
 " Father, the safe has been opened, and you've been robbed 
 of twenty thousand dollars ! " 
 
 For the next week the robbery, whose consummate skill and 
 secrecy seemed to set all discovery at defiance, was the engross- 
 ing topic in the Darryll family. 
 
 Of course it got into the papers, and a large reward was 
 offered for the perpetrators. All the people who called, talked 
 over the details, with that relish for the secret and horrible 
 which seems to inhere in our common human nature. Mr. 
 Darryll never returned home without being assailed by the fem- 
 inine portion of the family with inquiries as to whether they had 
 yet got any clew to the criminals. Indeed, betwixt their indig- 
 nation and curiosity, the Darrylls, especially the younger ones, 
 could never let the subject rest ; and all the circumstances con- 
 nected with the robbery, which, beyond the fact itself, were of 
 the most bai'ren character, were discussed at every meal, as 
 though the whole thing was entirely new to each person. 
 
 The loss of twenty thousand dollars did not in reality affect 
 John Darryll, although one might have thought, to hear the 
 man talk, that it came very near ruining him an insinuation 
 that Andrew always repelled with contempt, affirming that the 
 governor often made more than that in a single day's operation. 
 
 Still, beyond the loss of the money, the manner of its disap- 
 pearance was one that gave the prosperous broker a good many
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 173 
 
 sleepless nights. He racked his brain trying to find some 
 individual on whom he could fasten a suspicion ; but the more 
 he contemplated the matter, the more inexplicable it became. 
 
 The best detectives in the city had been on the scent a week, 
 without starting the slightest trail of the thief it seemed im- 
 possible that any one unacquainted with the rooms could have 
 broken into them and the safe, and left no trace of their en- 
 trance in door, or window, or lock ; and during the three days 
 in which it had been satisfactorily determined that the crime 
 had been committed, the keys of safe and vault had been alter- 
 nately in the possession of Andrew and the book-keeper. 
 
 At one time, for want of some better subject, a strong sus- 
 picion had attached to the office-boy, who swept the rooms and 
 kept the fires a little, dark, open-faced lad, whose mother was 
 a widow, an honest, hard-toiling woman, driven nearly to frenzy 
 by the suggestion that her son was concerned in the crime. 
 But after the boy had borne the rigid examination to which he 
 was subjected by the detectives, they both, at the close, acquitted 
 him of the slightest complicity in, or knowledge of, the crime. 
 
 " The fellow that got into that vault must have been a con- 
 founded sharp rascal ! Beats everything hollow that I ever 
 heard of in that line," said Mr. Darryll, as he stood one morn- 
 ing by the grate-fire after breakfast, with his hat in his hand, 
 ready to start down town. " There's Thorp, now, one of the 
 smartest hands in the city to run a thief down I was talking 
 with him last night, and he says he never knew a job done up 
 quite so smooth as this one was. How the rascal- got into the 
 office and picked that safe, as well as I could have done it my- 
 self, locked up everything just as he found it, and went off, baffles 
 me. Thieves don't usually work in that way." 
 
 " The rogue was probably used to it," remarked Andrew, 
 drawing on his gloves. 
 
 "But burglars don't usually take all that pains. Thorp in- 
 sists that the scoundrel was thoroughly versed in the premises." 
 
 " Pa, now," said Ella, more for the sake of saying something 
 than because she entertained any real suspicions of him, for 
 15*
 
 174 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 the whole family indulged in all sorts of chimerical fancies, and 
 some of their absurd suggestions would have done credit to the 
 wildest flights of a sensation novelist, " you don't really sup- 
 pose Crawford could have done it, do you ? " 
 
 " Nonsense ! " muttered Andrew. 
 
 " No, child, no. I'd stake my life on that fellow's honesty. 
 Why, I'd sooner believe I got up myself in a nightmare, and 
 took the money out and threw it in the sea. That's a comfort- 
 able way of accounting for it at least." 
 
 " I guess you must have taken it, Andrew ! " said Agnes, 
 with her girlish titter, turning on her brother. " You had all 
 the keys, you know, so it would have been very easy ; and if 
 Crawford didn't steal the money, why, of course you did ! " 
 
 " I never thought of that," said Ella, who always was ready 
 for a jest. " Come, now, old fellow, just own up that you 
 did it ! " 
 
 " Not quite ready for that yet ! " answered Andrew, and he 
 laughed out loudly. Afterwards they all remembered that 
 laugh, though at the time nobody thought anything of it." 
 
 " I never thought much about a thief before," it was 
 Uiislia speaking now, " but somehow I cannot help feeling a 
 perpetual curiosity about this one. I suppose it is because no 
 crime ever came quite so near home to me before." 
 
 " It's come home to my pocket," interrupted her father. 
 " Zounds ! I wish I could get hold of the scoundrel ! " 
 
 " And it's come home to my wardrobe, too, for ma says, now 
 you've met with such a loss, I must go without the new velvet 
 cloak she promised me this winter. But, indignant as I am, 
 I can't help wondering what sort of a man this thief was ! 
 "Was he old and hardened in sin, or was he young, and was 
 this his first crime, committed under some dreadful stress of 
 temptation? Had he a pleasant home, and a father and mother, 
 and brothers and sisters, who loved and trusted him, and who 
 have not to this day the slightest suspicion of his crime, and to 
 whom the knowledge of it would come down with just that 
 awful, crushing blow that it would on all of us, if one of our
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 175 
 
 boys had done such a thing? It's singular, but I wake up 
 sometimes in the night, and these questions rise up and haunt 
 me until it's hard to go to sleep again." 
 
 Rusha's speech was addressed to no one in particular, but 
 looking up suddenly at its close, her eyes encountered Andrew's. 
 His dropped in a moment, but not until she had seen something 
 in them was it remorse, or shame, or anguish? something 
 which she unconsciously felt at the time, but did not understand 
 until afterwards. 
 
 " That's all moonshine, Rusha," said her father, a little 
 roughly. " The rascal doesn't deserve any pity, and won't get 
 any if he falls into my hands that's settled. If we can once 
 get hold of him, he's booked for the penitentiary for pretty much 
 all the rest of his days. That's the way to serve these fellows." 
 
 " I don't dispute it, pa ; only those words keep coming into my 
 thoughts, ' No man liveth to himself; ' and it is a law of all hu- 
 man life that the innocent shall suffer for the guilty. It is likely 
 that this wretch, too, has somebody that loves him somebody to 
 be crushed and heart-broken for his crime ! " and again looking 
 up, Rusha's eyes encountered Andrew's, and again his dropped. 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense," said her father. " The upshot of it 
 is, if the villain 's got any family, they're probably hardened 
 cases, and leagued with him in his crimes ; so all that pity is 
 wasted. The only way is to put these fellows right straight 
 through, which I shall, in this case, only let me have a chance 
 at him. But this won't do for me ! " glancing at his watch, 
 and starting off, followed a little later by his eldest and youngest 
 sons. 
 
 It happened, that very morning, that Thorp, the detective, who 
 had thus far been unsuccessful in getting hold of any clew to the 
 robbery, was on Wall Street, and came suddenly upon an old 
 friend, a former chief of police, and a man who seemed to have 
 an almost miraculous gift of tracing a crime up to its source. 
 A long experience in the service had made him a singularly 
 acute reader of men, and once given the smallest clew of char- 
 acter or circumstance, he would follow up and uncover the 
 most complicated and thoroughly devised plot of villany.
 
 176 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Possessed of consummate self-coiitrol of countenance and 
 manner, capable of assuming, for the occasion, any character 
 that he chose, understanding the forms of temptation which 
 appealed strongest to the weaknesses of different classes of men, 
 and combining all these qualities with a silent, but alert obser- 
 vation that seemed almost supernatural, it was not singular 
 that the criminal seldom escaped on whose path officer Hatch 
 was started. 
 
 The policeman had just returned from the West, where he had 
 succeeded in unravelling a peculiarly adroit and successful piece 
 of villany, in the discovery of which all his predecessors had failed. 
 
 As the two detectives stood talking together on Wall Street, 
 Mr. Darryll happened to pass by, and he paused to inquire of 
 Thorp whether he had struck any trail yet, and, receiving a 
 reply in the negative, hurried away. 
 
 The sight of the broker suggested Thorp's next remark 
 " That's a troublesome piece of business I've got on hand just 
 now, and thus far it's completely baffled me. I wonder what 
 you'd make of it, Hatch ? " 
 
 " What kind of work was it? " asked the other. 
 
 " A twenty thousand dollar business. Office entered, iron 
 safe broken open, and money abstracted, all in the neatest, 
 completest way, sir not a pane broken or a lock disturbed." 
 
 " And you haven't got on the scent yet? " 
 
 " Not after a week's hanging round. A singularly 'cute 
 piece of work ; " and the detective briefly sketched the facts of 
 the burglary. 
 
 " Burglars don't do up business in that smooth fashion," re- 
 marked Hatch, when the other was through. " And why not 
 help himself to the whole pile, when he had such a chance ? " 
 
 " That's precisely the point I don't understand. Altogether 
 a singular affair," replied Thorp. 
 
 His companion went over rapidly in his mind the principal 
 points of the case. "Broker absent two sets of keys, in 
 possession of son and book-keeper office-boy." 
 
 " Look here, Hatch," said Thorp, as a bright idea struck him,
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 177 
 
 " if you've no special business on hand, s'pose you step into the 
 office a moment, and see if you can find an end to the rope ? " 
 
 The policeman assented, and they walked into the office, 
 where the safe was shown, and the circumstances of the rob- 
 bery related again by John Darryll himself. 
 
 A few glances of Hatch, apparently careless ones, took in the 
 book-keeper, from the hair of his head to the toe of his boot, 
 and in these the detective had settled in his own mind that who- 
 ever had robbed that safe, Adam Crawford Avas not the man. 
 The office-boy underwent the same silent interrogation, with a 
 like result ; and while the three men stood talking together by 
 the safe, in the inner room, Andrew Darryll walked in. He 
 nodded pleasantly to Thorp, with whom he had frequently talked 
 over all the details of the robbery, and after some slight busi- 
 ness with the book-keeper, joined the men a moment, and Hatch 
 stood quietly watching the young man, conversing, meanwhile, 
 in a way that would not have attracted anybody's attention, but 
 with a keen scrutiny that took in every line and shade of expres- 
 sion on young Darryll's face. 
 
 " The thing was well done we'll have to concede that," 
 said detective Thorp. "But that safe was not picked by a 
 common house-thief, for one of that sort would have helped him- 
 self to the whole pile, and not been so careful to smooth over 
 all his tracks. A new hand at the trade, probably." 
 
 " I took it for an old one ; the thing was done so nicely," said 
 Andrew, with a light laugh ; but detective Hatch caught some- 
 thing in it nobody else did. He spoke now : 
 
 " Perhaps the fellow had got into a fix, and made some spec- 
 ulation, or something of that sort, and wahted twenty thousand 
 to help him out of it." 
 
 He was apparently speaking to the elder Darryll, but the 
 whole power of his covert gaze was bent on the younger's face. 
 He saw a light start, a little shadow of pallor there, and the 
 whole thing lay bare to Morgan Hatch ! 
 
 "Well," said Thorp to his companion, as they went out, 
 " struck the track in there ? " 
 
 " Yes."
 
 178 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 Thorp darted an amazed glance into his companion's face ; 
 but that countenance was used to reticence. " Not that book- 
 keeper ? " he said. 
 
 " No." 
 
 Then in a moment it flashed across Thorp whom his compan- 
 ion meant. The surprise was so sudden that he stood still a 
 moment; but as soon as he had leaped to this conclusion, the 
 detective saw, with the quick discernment of one used to these 
 things, how all the parts fitted into one another, and explained 
 the unusual circumstances which had puzzled him whenever 
 he turned the crime over in his thought. " Hatch, you're a 
 stunner ! " hitting his companion a smart blow on the shoulder. 
 Then, after a moment's pause, " But to find out the motive 
 that's the next step, you know." 
 
 " Clear enough," said Hatch. " This one was just the sort 
 of material to get his neck into trouble. Rich man's son 'round 
 town fast keeps horses gets into bad company of men 
 and women all sorts of extravagance and dissipation falls 
 into debt runs into speculation to help him out of it prom- 
 ises large, but don't pay at first goes into the gambling deeper 
 needs more money, and at last gets desperate keys in his 
 possession easy enough to abstract the money hopes to pay 
 it before it's missed ; and there you have the whole thing. I've 
 had so many such cases to deal with, that I can read them like 
 a book." 
 
 " I've dealt with scores of 'em," said Thorp, " but somehow 
 this one threw dust in my eyes. I've got the end of the rope 
 now, thanks to you, Hatch, be a thunderbolt to the old 
 man, though !" 
 
 "Serves these rich men right!" said Hatch, decidedly 
 " ought to keep a sharp look out for their sons, and not leave 
 them to run into the fire." 
 
 " Well, I shall see this job through now," said Thorp. " My 
 young gentleman little thinks what a storm is brewing for him ! " 
 and the two men parted at the corner of Broadway. 
 
 Less than a week after this, Mr. Darryll met the detective on
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 179 
 
 the street. " I've been expecting news from you before this 
 time, Thorp," he said. 
 
 '* The job was clone up smoother than such matters usually 
 are," answered the wary policeman. 
 
 " The more I think of it," said the gentleman, " the more 
 I am convinced that the party concerned was of the better sort 
 a gentleman robber. But whoever he proves to be, when 
 you get your grapples on him, fix him tight, sir." 
 
 " You don't want him treated gently on account of reputation, 
 or previous good character, or anything of that sort ? " asked 
 Thorp with a motive, perhaps. 
 
 " No, sir ! " growing excited " I've no weak sympathy for 
 that kind of scoundrels. Deal with him just as the law pro- 
 vides, without fear or favor. If it was my own son, sir, who 
 had been guilty of such a high-handed rascality, I should want 
 him chucked right into the Tombs." 
 
 John Darryll turned on his heel ; but the next time he saw 
 the detective, he remembered what he had said. 
 
 Of course, you must have already forestalled who was the 
 perpetrator of the crime, and it is not necessary that I should 
 dwell on it, or on the series of evil doings which culminated at 
 last in this sin. Alas, that it is so common a one that the 
 columns of oxir daily papers are blackened with the headings 
 of these, and that at the time I write this, there is such an ap- 
 palling activity in crime in high places ; and alas for the broken 
 hearts and blighted households upon which this horror falls, a 
 thousand times darker than death ! 
 
 The policeman, with his long experience in these matters, had 
 touched on the main points of Andrew Darryll's downwai'd ca- 
 reer. At each of them the young man had paused a moment ; 
 but he had no moral barriers strong enough to withstand the 
 flood-tide of temptation which set toward him, and he, too, went 
 down. 
 
 Gambling overwhelmed him with debts, and he could see no 
 way through them except by rushing into speculations which 
 seemed to promise an easy path out of his present straits.
 
 180 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Of course, he was usually made the dupe of others ; and driven 
 19 desperation, he borrowed money, and put up one margin after 
 another. 
 
 These dehts became due at the time when an unusually large 
 venture seemed to promise immense profits. He said to himself, 
 with that sophistry which "has beguiled so many souls to death, 
 that he would borrow the money of his father ; and he meant, 
 or thought he did, to repay all that he had stolen. And so, 
 desperate, maddened, he played and lost. 
 
 And yet Andrew Darryll was not alone to blame in this mat- 
 ter. At the door of his father and his mother lay a part of the 
 guilt, little as either suspected it. Had not John Darryll, by 
 his daily life and example, taught his son that the making haste 
 to be rich the getting and holding of money was, after all, 
 the great dominant object of life, instead of laying broad and 
 deep as life itself those principles of honest integrity, upright- 
 ness, beating against which no worldly temptation shall prevail ? 
 Had not the weak mother taken for granted that which no 
 mother has any right to do that her Sou could not go very far 
 out of the way? Had she not the flexible soul under her 
 moulding influences from its birth ? Had she sought to make 
 the young conscience sensitive in all directions during these for- 
 mative years the love of right, the loyalty to truth and honor 
 deeper than life itself? 
 
 Andrew Darryll's mother would have laid down her life for 
 him ; and yet she was " found wanting " here ! 
 
 She had placed no high ideal of living before his eyes ; she 
 had not watched his besetting sins, and fortified him where he 
 was weakest ; but the paramount tendency of her teaching and 
 example, the spirit of the household, had been such as to make 
 him regard the world, its opinions, its standards, its honors, as 
 the greatest and best thing in life, and an occasional solemn 
 shake of the head and a small seasoning of " pious talk " could 
 not counteract the effect of general example and daily life, and 
 out of the world that she had served so faithfully for her own 
 and her children's sake, was Mrs. Darryll to reap her reward.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE Darryll family was in an unusual mood of excitement 
 and hilarity that afternoon. The ladies were preparing for a 
 grand fancy ball, which was to come off that evening at the 
 residence of one of their fashionable friends. The affair was 
 intended to outshine all others of the kind for the season, and 
 the feminine Darrylls, even to Rusha, had been quite carried 
 away with the prospect in store for them. 
 
 Agnes had found it a comparatively easy matter to persuade 
 her mother into excusing her from school on the day of the ball, 
 and they were all assembled in Mrs. Darryll's room in a bustle 
 of eager preparation. 
 
 Elegant dresses were scattered over bed, chairs, and table, 
 and diamonds flashed, and rubies blazed on the dressing cabinet, 
 and the eager discussion and the pleasant hum of chatter went 
 on over everything else. 
 
 " It's too bad," said Agnes, with a natural, girlish longing 
 for display, " that all my jewelry should be tabooed, because 
 I've got to be a flower-girl. I think you might have selected 
 some more important character for me, Ella." 
 
 " Now don't pout, child, or it will spoil your expression for 
 the evening. Your part just fits your years and your face. 
 When both get a little older, your turn will come for more de- 
 cided characters." 
 
 "And what character is Rusha to take?" inquired Guy, 
 who, with Tom, had just lounged into the room. 
 
 " O, of course, it is something nobody but Rusha would have 
 thought of. She's to be Ruth gleaning among sheaves a char- 
 acter which doesn't afford the slightest opportunity for elegant 
 costume. I'm not certain, however, but it will suit her style," 
 16
 
 182 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 glancing doubtfully at her sister, who stood before the mirror, 
 in a cloud of dark floating hair. 
 
 " That's a capital hit," asserted Tom. " Just the thing for 
 Rusha." 
 
 And in the midst of all this hum and flutter, the front door 
 opened and shut so heavily that they heard it above their chat- 
 ter, and a moment after footsteps ascending the stairs. 
 
 " Why, is that your father home so early ! " exclaimed Mrs. 
 Darryll, as she caught the sound. 
 
 The next moment the door opened, and John Darryll stood 
 there, looking on his family, but with such a look as none of 
 them had ever seen on his face before. It was ashen gray, as 
 though some sudden shame or terror had shocked all the life 
 out of it. His lips were set and white. 
 
 He stood there, several moments, looking at his wife and his 
 children without speaking one word, but with that awful some- 
 thing in his face ; and then he turned and went down stairs with 
 slow, heavy steps, that had a terrible sound to the listeners he, 
 the brisk, alert man ! 
 
 They looked at each other with scared faces. " What does 
 it mean ? " one asked, and then another. 
 
 " Something dreadful has happened, children ! I never saw 
 your father look like that," said Mrs. Darryll. " I'm all of a 
 tremble ! " 
 
 " O, dear how pa did glare at us all ! I never was so 
 frightened in my life," exclaimed Agnes, beginning to cry. 
 
 " I can't conceive for my life what it all means," added Tom. 
 " You don't think he's burst up, and lost the last dollar, do 
 you?" 
 
 " No," said Rusha, shaking her head, and her face looking 
 paler from out its cloud of loose floating hair, " I don't think 
 it could be that, but it was something he had not the heart or 
 the courage to tell us." 
 
 " He's gone down into the sitting-room, and I heard him 
 lock the door," said Guy, who stood nearest the hall. 
 
 " He didn't expect to find us up here in his room, I s'pose,"
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 added Ella, standing still in the middle of the floor with a heap 
 of fine draperies across her arm. She was intending to per- 
 sonate Cleopatra that evening. 
 
 " We must not waste words standing here. Something ter- 
 rible has happened to pa, and we must find out what it is," 
 said Rusha, decidedly. 
 
 "It makes me shudder to think of facing that look of his ! " 
 replied Mrs. Darryll, in a piteous tone. 
 
 Rusha went over to her mother, and laid her hand entreat- 
 ingly on the latter's shoulder. 
 
 " There is nobody else to whom he will be so likely to tell 
 the truth as to you, ma ; and now that some dreadful trouble 
 has come upon pa, you will want to help him bear it." 
 
 Rusha had touched the right chord. Wifely and motherly 
 affection would have roused the timid woman into defiance of 
 the whole world ; and when her sons and daughters united their 
 entreaties to Rusha's, she yielded, and went down stairs, trem- 
 bling in every limb, to meet her husband. 
 
 The young people huddled together about the door, listening 
 for every sound, and the gay finery, heaped all around the cham- 
 ber, made a strange contrast with their serious faces. 
 
 They heard their mother vainly turn the door knob, and then 
 her piteous voice came up to them, 
 
 " John John, do let me come in ! " 
 
 " Go away. I can't see you know. Leave me to myself; " 
 and there was some suppressed anguish in the voice which 
 chilled the breathless listeners. 
 
 Then again they heard the mother's supplicating cry, 
 
 " John, what is the matter? I must come in. Do open the 
 door." 
 
 Then John Darryll spoke out roughly, as he had never spoken 
 to the wife of his youth, 
 
 " Woman, I tell you to go away, and leave me to myself. 
 It's of no use to stand calling there. I want to be* alone 
 that's enough." 
 
 Mrs. Durryll came up stairs, and if her face was white, so 
 also were those that awaited her.
 
 184 DAERYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Something awful has happened to your father, children 
 O, what is it ! " and then the poor frightened woman burst into 
 a passion of tears. 
 
 " It can't be that lie's gone suddenly crazy ! " said Tom, a 
 little under his breath. 
 
 " No, it isn't that, ails pa," answered Rusha, promptly. 
 " Some terrible blow has come upon him. If we could only 
 find out what it is." 
 
 " There's nobody in the world can do so much with pa as 
 Rusha," interposed Ella. " Perhaps, if she was to go down, he 
 would let her in." 
 
 "O, I cannot I cannot," with a little deprecatory move- 
 ment and shudder. But they all beset her now, insisting that 
 she was the only one who could succeed with their father, and 
 entreating her to go down and see what she could do with him. 
 And at last they all prevailed, and Rusha said she would go. 
 
 But it was a touching sight that face of hers, with its 
 anxiety and fear, as it went down the long, winding stairs to 
 meet the unknown dread that awaited her there. As she 
 drew near the sitting-room door, she heard her father's steps 
 going restlessly back and forth back and forth. 
 
 " Pa, it is I Rusha. Do not send me away too ! " 
 
 " How dare you persist in coming here, when I tell you I 
 will not see one of you ? " 
 
 " Because, pa, we know that some terrible thing has happened 
 to you, and we don't want you to bear it all alone. Surely 
 your wife and your children should share the trouble with you, 
 whatever it is. Don't send me away, pa, for I cannot go. I 
 must stand here pleading, until you let me come in." 
 
 " Child," said her father, with a slight softening of his voice, 
 " you don't know what you are asking. Go away, Rusha, for 
 I cannot face any one of you with the truth." 
 
 " But we must meet it sooner or later. I will be brave, 
 pa, onlylet me come in, and put my arms about your neck, 
 and have you tell me so " her sudden tears surprising her 
 here.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 185 
 
 After a moment or two, John Darryll went to the door, un- 
 locked it, and drew his daughter in. It seemed as though his 
 face had aged a score of years in the last few hours. So they 
 stood looking at each other. 
 
 " O, how can I tell you ! " Out of his lips like a sharp groan 
 the words slid. 
 
 "I can bear it; only be quick, pa!" she answered, in such 
 a voice as a wounded man might say it, waiting for the sur- 
 geon's knife. 
 
 He took her hands in his. 
 
 " Can't you read it in your father's face, Rusha?" 
 
 " I only see something terrible there. Has all the property 
 gone ? " her thoughts naturally pointing this way as the only 
 misfortune which could thus overwhelm her father. 
 
 " No. I could have borne that better." 
 
 "What trouble could take deeper hold of John Darryll than 
 that ! 
 
 " O, father, it isn't anything about Andrew ! " She knew 
 then she had reached the truth. 
 
 " Tell me, father ! " her cold fingers clutching his tightly. 
 
 And his own anguish making him, for the moment, forgetful 
 of hers, John Darryll thrust the truth fiercely at his daughter. 
 
 " It ivas Andrew stole the money from the safe, and he's gone 
 to the Tombs this afternoon for his crime ! " 
 
 Rusha's shriek was not loud, but the family, huddled together 
 up stairs, heard it, and they knew that the iron had entered her 
 soul. She staggered back against the wall, and covered her 
 face with her hands. So the truth broke upon her in a mo- 
 ment ! All Andrew's conduct for the last two or three months 
 rose up in dreadful confirmation of what her father had de- 
 clared. Yet it was natural that her heart should struggle 
 fiercely against the truth, and she shrieked out now, 
 
 " I don't believe it, father ! There is some foul wrong here." 
 
 " It's too true, my poor child ! The proof is clear as day- 
 light, and the villain has confessed the crime himself. O, 
 what a fool I have been not to see and yet he was my own 
 16*
 
 186 DARBYLL GAP, OB 
 
 son how could I suspect it of him ! " groaned the father, as 
 he paced the floor. 
 
 " Have you seen him? " 
 
 " No, not since the arrest that happened when I was out ; 
 at my own office, too, before all the clerks ! " 
 
 Rusha grasped the chair and steadied herself, for everything 
 grew dark and dizzy as the awful sin and shame that had fallen 
 on their house rushed upon her. "What happened for the next 
 quarter of an hour she nor her father ever seemed able to 
 recollect. 
 
 At last she said to him, lifting up the pale, drooping face 
 over which, during the last hour, a storm of grief and agony 
 had swept, 
 
 " Father, they will have to be told ! " 
 
 " I can't do it. Think of your mother, Rusha ! " groaned the 
 strong man. 
 
 Then the father and daughter looked at each other again, 
 silently ; but each knew what was in the thought of the other. 
 At last she said "I think I could do it, father, if you will 
 walk with me to the stairs. O, dear God ! dear God ! help 
 me ! help us all ! " 
 
 And, in a blind way, John Darryll's heart echoed this prayer 
 as, poor man ! it had never echoed one in all his life before. 
 
 At last she rose up, and said she was ready. He led her to 
 the stairs, blaming himself all the time for laying on her slight 
 shoulders the burdens that his man's strength could not carry, 
 but yet unable to gird his courage for the task. When they 
 reached the stairs, however, he said, looking in her face 
 " It is too bad, my daughter, to put this on you ; I will do it 
 myself." 
 
 But she saw that he hoped she would refuse his offer, and 
 she shook her head, and went up stairs in a blind, groping way. 
 
 It was hard to face them all when she opened the door, and 
 to meet the anxious, wondering gaze, that asked what nobody 
 had courage to ; for each saw with the first glance that she 
 brought no comfort.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 187 
 
 Rusha went straight over to Mrs. Darryll. " Dear mother, 
 we will all help you to bear it," she said, in a tone whose very- 
 pity made all their hearts stand still. 
 
 "Bat what is it, Rusha? Has John lost his last dollar?" 
 cried the pale, trembling mother. 
 
 " No ; it is worse than that ; it is about Andrew." 
 
 " About Andrew ! " Every voice in the room took up the 
 chorus. 
 
 "What has happened? Is my boy killed?" the mother 
 cried out, sharply. 
 
 " It is worse O, a thousand times worse than that ! " 
 
 They were all thunderstruck into a moment's silence, and 
 Rusha knew that it must come now. " Andrew is in the 
 Tombs ! It was he who robbed the safe I " 
 
 For a moment not one of her audience could comprehend 
 the awful truth. The first sound they heard was an hysterical 
 laugh from Ella, as her nerves gave way under the shock. 
 
 Then Mrs. Darryll sprang up, with a fierce light in her eyes. 
 " It is a lie a foul, shameful lie ! " she shrieked. " My boy 
 never was a thief! " and she sank down in strong convulsions 
 on the floor. 
 
 And with the sound of that heavy fall, John Darryll knew 
 that the truth was out at last, and forgetting everything else, 
 he rushed up to the help of his wife. 
 
 What that night was to the Darryll family, you can imagine 
 better than I can write imagine all the excitement, and 
 agony, and shame that filled it. 
 
 The heaps of splendid finery, scattered on all sides, formed a 
 strange background to the white faces which moved amongst 
 them, utterly unmindful of the things, which, a few hours ago, 
 had completely held possession of their souls. Sometimes one 
 would break out in passionate sobs, sometimes another ; then 
 they would all huddle together in a strange quiet, completely 
 paralyzed by the dreadful tidings. 
 
 They insisted that they did not believe Andrew was guilty 
 long after they did; for somehow a thousand circumstances
 
 188 DABEYLL GAP,' OR 
 
 they would never have thought of, rose up iu this new light to 
 corroborate his crime. They remembered how loud he had 
 been in his denunciations of the guilty party, and yet how fre- 
 quently he had left the house when the robbery had been the 
 subject of conversation ; above all, they recalled that little jest 
 of Ella's, which had touched the core of the truth ; and Rusha 
 remembered, with a sick pang, the look which had dropped so 
 guiltily away from hers on the morning when she had that talk 
 about the unknown criminal and his family. No wonder it was 
 more than he could bear ! As for Mrs. Darryll, she lay iu a 
 heavy stupor all that night, for they were obliged to administer 
 opiates to keep her quiet ; but she moaned restlessly, and would 
 frequently start up and cry out for her boy in a way that was 
 pitiful to hear. 
 
 And while the truth had fallen with the crash of a thunder- 
 bolt upon the souls of his brothers and sisters, they could not 
 help dwelling with mingled feelings of pity and horror upon the 
 wretched youth, locked up in his lonely cell at the Tombs. 
 
 It is not necessary to follow the successive steps which led 
 detective Thorp to the arrest of Andrew Darryll. To use the 
 figure of the policeman, " after he had once struck the trail of 
 the fox, it was an easy matter to hunt him down." 
 
 The young man had gambled deeply, and his fast habits of 
 life had involved him heavily in debt. In order to escape from 
 the pressure of his creditors, he had plunged into numerous 
 speculations, which promised to quadruple his money. One by 
 one the fair bubbles had broken, and at last, goaded to des- 
 peration, he was enticed into putting up a margin of twenty 
 thousand dollars a sum which he could only obtain by rob- 
 bing his father. 
 
 Andrew Darryll was the victim of sharper villains than him- 
 self, and from day to day he was beguiled into the belief that a 
 " sudden turn in the tide would land him triumphantly on the 
 shores," at which time he always promised his conscience to 
 return the money which he had " borrowed " of his father. 
 
 But the toils were all the time closing around the miserable 
 
 i
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 189 
 
 youth. The one creditor to whom he had been obliged to con- 
 fide his guilt, in order to secure a brief respite from his perse- 
 cutions, was at last frightened into betraying him, and the facts 
 were so clear at the time of young Darryll's arrest, that he saw 
 there was no use in attempting to deny his crime, and on his 
 own confession he was committed to the Tombs. 
 
 All these things Andrew's horrified brothers and sisters 
 learned that night, as they could gather it from their father. 
 What a different evening from the gay, brilliant scene on which 
 all their imaginations had been regaling that day that day, 
 that had such a different and terrible ending ! There was the 
 guilt of Andrew's crime, which, of course, shocked every one of 
 them ; and then there was added to it all the shame, the pub- 
 licity, and the disgrace of the thing. 
 
 " And it will all be in the papers to-morrow," sobbed poor 
 Ella, in a corner of the sofa, off from which she had been 
 obliged to toss a heap of elegant laces and draperies in order to 
 bestow herself there. " I wish we could all run off, and hide 
 ourselves in a cave for the rest of our days ! " 
 
 As for John Darryll, all parental affection seemed turned to 
 bitterness in the case of his son ; and when Rusha, who carried 
 herself with more steadiness and courage than any of the others, 
 through all this awful scene, inquired what he intended to do, 
 he answered, fiercely "I intend to make that young rascal 
 taste a little of the suffering he has brought down on all our 
 heads. He shall find how good it is to lie in prison for a while. 
 I presume he expects that I'll get him out to-morrow morning ; 
 but he'll learn the old man 's made of tougher stuff than he's 
 thought of. To rob me and then throw dust in my eyes, as he 
 has done ! the young rascal ; but he shall smart for it before he 
 gets through ! " 
 
 " O, pa," pleaded Rusha, " you'll withdraw the prosecution, 
 for all our sakes ; you won't let Andrew go to prison ? " 
 
 And so pleaded, for the culprit, every son and daughter of 
 John Darryll. But the father was inexorable ; he would 
 promise nothing; indeed, it almost seemed as though in his
 
 190 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 grief and rage he took a stern delight in the thought of the 
 punishment that was to come down on the head of the son who 
 had so dishonored him. " That's what he's counted on all the 
 time that family pride would step in and save him ; but he'll 
 find it won't go down with me," John Darryll would only answer 
 to the tears and entreaties of all his children ; and at last he 
 ended by peremptorily ordering them all to their rooms. 
 
 "There's one thing," sobbed Agnes, as she placed her arm 
 around Ella, for this common grief seemed to draw the whole 
 family closer together " when ma comes back to herself, she 
 won't let poor Andrew go to prison." 
 
 " I don't know, Agnes ; if Rusha can't do anything with pa, 
 there's little hope for anybody else." 
 
 What a miserable time it was under the stately roof that 
 night ! How the thought of the dark, low cell, where the eldest 
 son and brother lay in dishonor and crime, drove sleep from the 
 eyes of every one of them. 
 
 In the morning Mrs. Darryll awoke to a full realization of 
 the position of her son. The poor mother was almost frantic ; 
 but her husband, although he tried to soothe her in every possi- 
 ble way, could not be prevailed upon to make any promises for 
 taking active measures to release Andrew immediately from the 
 consequences of his crime. 
 
 " The punishment that he has brought down upon his own 
 head is the only thing that will bring that wretched boy to his 
 senses," was all that John Darryll could be induced to say. 
 
 So the breakfast, at which Mrs. Darryll was unable to be 
 present, passed off silent, and almost untasted, while the family 
 underwent a fresh humiliation in seeing from the faces of the 
 servants that they already knew what had transpired. 
 
 Mr. Darryll stood before the grate-fire, drawing on his gloves, 
 and shrinking, for the first time in his life, from the ordeal of 
 going out and facing his fellow-men on every side, knowing that 
 they would look at him and whisper among themselves that he 
 was the father of a thief. 
 
 And while he thought of this, the fires of his wrath burned
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 191 
 
 fierce against his son, and drank up for a while all the springs 
 of parental love that still lay strong and deep in his soul. 
 
 Suddenly Rusha broke out into a fit of passionate crying. 
 Nobody spoke for a few moments, understanding too well the 
 cause of her grief, and at last she sobbed out " O, pa, I was 
 thinking of the time when Andrew and I were little things, and 
 you used to give us a ride every morning in the wheelbarrow 
 from the wood-shed to the old barn-door. What a merry time 
 we used to have, and what a pretty little fellow he was, with 
 his dimpled, laughing face, and the yellow curls shaking all 
 around it ! O, if we had looked forward to this day, and seen 
 where he is now where he is now ! " her sobs choking her. 
 
 John Darryll walked to the table, and there rose before him, 
 as in a vision, the sweet face of his eldest son, as it laughed up 
 to him from the old wheelbarrow, in the days when he was a 
 proud and happy father. All his sternness, all his hot anger 
 vanished before that picture, and he leaned down his head on 
 the table, and the strong man cried like a child, and one by one 
 his children went out, as though by some instinct, and left him 
 and Rusha alone together, and she stole up to him, and put her 
 arm around his neck. 
 
 At last, he drew her down to him. " Rusha, my daughter, 
 you are the greatest comfort your father has in the world," he 
 said, and the words that grew out of his great anguish were the 
 sweetest he had ever spoken to her, and then he leaned down 
 and kissed her cheek, and went out without speaking another 
 word ; but Rusha knew for all that, that her father Avould with- 
 draw the prosecution, and that Andrew was saved from prison. 
 
 L
 
 192 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 DURING the three days which followed that night, which would 
 never cease to come back -sometimes and haunt, with its awful 
 horror, the memory of the Darrylls, nothing was heard from 
 Andrew. The prosecution was withdrawn, and the young man 
 was, of course, set at liberty ; but no one of his family wondered 
 that he had not the courage to show his face in the home he had 
 so disgraced, while his brothers and sisters still regarded him 
 with feelings that alternated betwixt indignation and shame, 
 pity and horror. 
 
 During this time the story became public, and was a prolific 
 theme of discussion in all quarters where the Darryll family 
 was known. The facts were paraded in the papers, and al- 
 though the name was suppressed, everybody knew who was 
 the guilty party. 
 
 Of course the comments which the crime elicited were as 
 varied as the natures who made them ; but there was a pervad- 
 ing lack of charity in most of these. Somehow, people never 
 seemed to realize that they each stood in the slippery places 
 of the world, and that the sudden storm might come down and 
 overwhelm them in all their fancied ease and security, just as it 
 had the Darrylls. And then all that great class of envious and 
 jealous persons all those who half unconsciously feel that the 
 prosperities and successes of others are a wrong done to them- 
 selves, experienced a secret complacency in the humiliation 
 which had overtaken the Darrylls. 
 
 What a very small leaven of sympathy there was in the buzz 
 of talk that went to- and fro how much unacknowledged sat- 
 isfaction in the virtuous horror with which the fashionable 
 friends of the Darrylls commented on Andrew's crime, and on
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 193 
 
 the confusion and shame which he had brought down on his 
 family how many of them seemed to delight to hold the whole 
 responsible for the guilt of one, and how many " hoped that 
 now the Darrylls had had such a lesson they would take warn- 
 ing, and not carry themselves in future with so many airs ; or 
 hold their heads quite so high above people who, if they hadn't 
 quite so much money, had, at least, the virtue of honesty ! " 
 
 And in all this indignant talk one could easily see that the 
 head and front of the Darrylls' offence was in enjoying and mak- 
 ing a display of the wealth, which, had the others possessed it, 
 they would certainly have done to an equal extent. 
 
 But all this time the family was, happily, unconscious of the 
 animadversions heaped upon it. Mrs. Darryll had been con- 
 fined to her room since the terrible shock, and none of her 
 daughters had been outside the door, shrinking from the curious 
 gaze of people, and speaking to each other in low voices, and 
 walking about the house in that intangible shadow of disgrace 
 which is worse than the shadow of death ! 
 
 As the days went by, however, and Andrew did not present 
 himself, the question what had become of him began to be up- 
 permost in the thoughts of all his family. Mr. Darryll once 
 hoped that " the young rascal would never darken his doors 
 again ; " but his wife cried out, in a voice of sharp entreaty, 
 
 " Don't, John, don't ever say that again, unless you want to 
 break my heart outright ! " and he never was heard to repeat 
 this remark ; indeed, Rusha did not believe her father really 
 meant it at the time, and suspected that he felt a secret anxiety 
 about his recreant son which would have been relieved by see- 
 ing him return to his home. 
 
 As- for Rusha, her solicitude regarding her brother increased 
 with every day of his absence. She felt that he had reached a 
 great crisis of his life, and that if he did not turn now, suddenly 
 and absolutely, from his evil courses, Andrew Darryll was lost. 
 She understood, and, to a degree, sympathized with the feelings 
 which kept him away from his home, and she knew, too, that 
 in his humiliation and misery he would be likely to turn and 
 17
 
 194 LABBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 drown these in the wine-cup, and the society of boon compan- 
 ions ; and so, following the " fearful logic of evil," he would 
 sink lower and lower until he was utterly wrecked. She saw, 
 too, how much, at this time, the young, weak soul required the 
 bracing influences of family love and forgiveness how he 
 needed its strength and shelter around him when he went out 
 into the world once more, with his soiled youth and blighted 
 name, to live down both, if it might be. 
 
 How her heart yearned over him, until she forgot the grief he 
 had brought upon them all, in pity for him ; and over and over 
 she said to herself, " We must save him ! O, we must save him ! " 
 
 And one night, when she lay awake revolving all these things 
 in her mind, and wondering whether Andrew might not leave 
 the city at once, and seek to bury himself away from the 
 knowledge of them all, a suggestion of his going to Europe, sud- 
 denly flashed across her with the force of conviction. The more 
 she turned the matter over in her thoughts, the more probable it 
 seemed to her. 
 
 She remembered that he had often of late talked about a " fel- 
 low's seeing a little of the world," and dropped hints of going 
 to Paris, and things of that sort, which, at the time, nobody 
 minded, but which now recurred to her with new meaning. 
 Rusha reflected that Andrew would thus escape from much that 
 would be gall and bitterness to his soul if he remained at home 
 that he had friends abroad, who, as he was esteemed "a good 
 fellow " among them, would regard his crime as a venial one, 
 and be likely to use their influence to get him into some com- 
 mercial house among themselves. Perhaps he had already 
 started, Rusha thought, and then it flashed across her again, 
 that the steamer sailed on the next day. 
 
 If she could only ascertain only see him once before he 
 left ; but there seemed no way of doing this. If she suggested 
 the matter to any of her family, they would probably regard it 
 as visionary, and in case her father was sufficiently impressed to 
 visit the steamer, Rusha feared that an interview betwixt parent 
 and child would be prolific of more mischief than good, for
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 195 
 
 though the father in John Darryll had triumphed over his wrath 
 sufficiently to spare his son from the consequences of his crime, 
 he still manifested great bitterness when he alluded to him. 
 
 The young girl lay tossing on her bed thinking over all these 
 things, and unable to see a path out of any of the difficulties. 
 But Rusha Darryll was not one to easily abandon a desire when 
 it had once taken possession of her, especially when affection 
 and duty brought' their impelling forces to its achievement ; and 
 she at last resolved to confide her suspicions to nobody, but take 
 matters entirely into her own hands. 
 
 She laid her plans to take the cars that very morning, and go 
 down to the pier whence the steamer sailed, and ascertain 
 whether Andrew's name was amongst the list of passengers ; if 
 it was, he should not leave without seeing her ; and so at last, 
 exhausted in mind and body with all this harrowing thought, 
 Rusha fell into a heavy sleep. 
 
 The next morning there came out of the front door and stood 
 a few moments on the steps, the figure of a woman with her 
 face hidden behind a thick veil. Some doubt must have seized 
 her there, for she stood irresolute a few moments, one gloved 
 hand, unconsciously, at play with the railing. 
 
 At last she turned away, and entered the house, and went 
 straight to Mrs. Darryll's room, startling the lady by her singu- 
 lar disguise. 
 
 " Mother," said Rusha, throwing aside her veil, " I did not 
 expect to tell you what I am about to do, because I feared, in 
 the first place, that you would disapprove of it, or, in the second, 
 if my plan should fail, that you would be disappointed. But at the 
 last moment my heart misgave me. If I should succeed, you 
 might have sent some message by me ; so I have come back to 
 tell you what nobody else in the world suspects. Mother, I am 
 going in search of Andrew ! " 
 
 Poor Mrs. Darryll ! These last days had made sad ravages 
 with her face, bearing witness how heavily the blow had fallen on 
 her heart. She lifted her head up from the cushions of her easy 
 chair, her eyes full of eagerness, her hands trembling :
 
 196 DAERYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " O, Rusha, where is he what have you heard ? " 
 
 " Nothing as yet. Do try and be calm, mother ; " and 
 Rusha sat down by Mrs. Darryll, and told her of the strong im- 
 pression which had seized her during the night, and how she 
 had resolved that the next steamer should not go out without 
 ascertaining whether Andrew was on board. 
 
 Perhaps Rusha's earnestness and conviction infected her 
 mother ; at all events, contrary to the former's expectation, 
 Mrs. Darryll entered eagerly into the project. 
 
 " And O, if you see Andrew," she sobbed, " tell him his 
 mother loves him still that she'll stand by him if all the rest 
 of the world deserts him that he's her dear, darling boy, 
 no matter what he's done, nor what trouble comes to him, and 
 that all the world can't turn her away from him, and that he 
 may be certain, wherever he goes, and whatever comes, that 
 there's one place in the world that will never change, and that 
 will always be ready and waiting for him, and that is his 
 mother's heart. You'll tell him, Rusha?" 
 
 And through it all there was not one reproach for the sin and 
 woe he had wroilght ! 
 
 " Yes," said Rusha, trying to command herself amid her 
 tears ; but she thought if those words did not heap coals of fire 
 hotter than any reproaches on Andrew Darryll's soul, then he 
 must be dead to all love and all shame. 
 
 "And look here, Rusha," as the daughter rose up, and her 
 mother pressed a purse into her hand ; " you must give this to 
 Andrew, for he's going off there among strangers, and he'll want 
 it. Your father gave it to me, that very day, to get a new watch, 
 that I fancied down town ; but I don't want it now, and Andrew 
 shall have it. Tell him mother sent her forgiveness and bless- 
 ing with it." 
 
 Rusha held the purse doubtfully a moment, but she looked at 
 her mother, and could not remonstrate. As she reached the 
 door, Mrs. Darryll called her back and kissed her. " It's for 
 Andrew ! " she said. 
 
 An hour later, Rusha Darryll stood on the deck of the 
 
 I
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 197 
 
 steamer, which was to start that noon for Liverpool. The small, 
 lonely, veiled figure had made its way, as best it could, through 
 the crowd of cabmen, through the piles of goods, through all 
 the noise, and bustle, and confusion which always attend the 
 departure of a steamer for Europe. But these once passed, and, 
 trembling and exhausted, her feet landed on the steamer, poor 
 Rusha' s heart failed her. The whole purpose which had brought 
 her here seemed now to grow visionary as a myth, and she really 
 had not the courage to go up to the office and put the question 
 on which everything depended. 
 
 So she wandered among the elegant saloons, glancing through 
 the folds of her veil at strange faces, aud at groups of people, 
 all of whom were too much absorbed to notice her, while her 
 heart sank lower every moment, as the figure for which she- 
 searched seemed to vanish farther away. 
 
 But as she reached the end of the large saloon, and was about 
 retracing her steps, a voice struck her which made her start, a 
 voice just outside the door. There was a low, murmured reply, 
 and then again those familiar tones coming through the half- 
 opened door. Rusha burst through it, and sprang out on the 
 guards. There stood Andrew by the railing, with his back to- 
 wards her, talking with some young girl, whose head was 
 bowed down as though she was weeping. 
 
 "0, Andrew ! " not a loud cry, but one full of hungry pain 
 and joy as it broke from her lips. The young man sprang up 
 as oue suddenly shot ; so did his companion, and faced Rusha a 
 moment with her bewildered gaze a young, rather pretty girl, 
 in a somewhat showy dress and bonnet. 
 
 " Rusha ! " the name dropped from Andrew's lips mechan- 
 ically, and his whole face was white as though sudden death 
 had blanched it. At that word his companion hurriedly dis- 
 appeared ; and, in the strong joy and bitterness of the moment, 
 Rusha did not think of her. She sprang forward and clung to 
 her brother, trying to speak, but all the while her sobs chok- 
 ing her. 
 
 As for him, there was no doubt he was strongly affected as 
 17* 

 
 198 DAEBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 the sobbing, trembling figure clung to his side. Which spoke 
 first, nobody knew, but Andrew's earliest inquiry was in a 
 whisper : 
 
 " Who told you ? how did you find me out here, Rusha ? " 
 
 " Nobody ; it must have been my own heart, Andrew ! " 
 
 "Who came with you?" glancing around in a hurried, 
 frightened way the way, alas, of guilt ! 
 
 " I came alone. O, Andrew, did you think I could let you 
 go off so without comiag to find you ! " 
 
 He did not speak for a moment. She felt the strong young 
 frame shake to and fro by her side ; then, anybody, whose eyes 
 were not dimmed as hers by thick weeping, might have seen 
 the blood blaze up suddenly into the pallor of his face. 
 
 " You know, Rusha, what I have done what I am? " whis- 
 pered Andrew Darryll. 
 
 " Yes, I know all, Andrew." Her tones keyed to his. She 
 felt him lean heavily against her, as though there were some 
 strength and comfort for him in her very presence. 
 
 " I supposed you would never want to see me afterwards." 
 
 " O, Andrew, did you think that I that we all loved you 
 so little as that? " 
 
 I think that Andrew Darryll never realized the extent of his 
 crime until that moment nor realized, too, what this family 
 love was, against which he had so sinned, and which was yet, 
 out of its great fulness, so ready to shelter and forgive all. It 
 completely overcame him. He burst into a fit of miserable 
 crying : 
 
 " O, Rusha, I wish I was dead ! " but through all, his grasp 
 never let her go, as though she was the one anchor to which his 
 weak soul could cling in all the world. 
 
 Perhaps it was as well that no words came to Rusha just 
 then. She only cried with him. 
 
 At last he whispered "How did they bear it at home? 
 Tell me the whole." 
 
 And she did, every word seeing he asked her, and it was 
 in her very nature to be truthful every word from the 
 
 !
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 199 
 
 moment that her father came up stairs and looked in, with that 
 awful face of his, upon their bustle and gayety ; and although 
 she saw what torture it cost him to hear of the wretchedness 
 he had brought upon them all, something in her brother's face 
 told her to go on. 
 
 When she was through, he asked hurriedly "But the 
 prosecution was withdrawn next day?" 
 
 He was completely broken down when she came to tell him 
 of that little, homely scene in his childhood, which she had 
 recalled, of his sitting by her side in the old wheelbarrow, and 
 riding back and forth in childish glee from the great barn-door 
 to the wood-shed ; and in a great stress of shame and remorse 
 the words were sobbed out, 
 
 " If I had only died then, Rusha 1 " 
 
 But after all, she was not sure that the thing which struck 
 deepest into Andrew Darryll's soul were not those last messages 
 of his mother's. How she got through with them she never 
 could remember. 
 
 " O, Rusha," the young man groaned out at last, " if I had 
 only known how you all loved me, I should not have been what 
 I am to-day ! " 
 
 " Perhaps AVC never any of us knew until now. Come home 
 and try us ! " 
 
 Every nerve in his frame quivered as from a sudden shock. 
 " Rusha, do you think I am so lost to all feeling for you, to say 
 nothing of myself, as to go back and encounter what I must in 
 my own land, among my own people, whom I have so dis- 
 honored ? " 
 
 In his whole life, Rusha Darryll had never heard her brother 
 speak with so much force and dignity. There was weight, too, 
 in his reasoning. Rusha felt that, looked at from almost any 
 point of view, this going abroad seemed almost the best thing 
 that Andrew could do. 
 
 A few questions drew out all his plans. He was going, as 
 she suspected, to Paris, where he said he had some friends, and 
 could get into some business.
 
 200 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " But it is a dreadful wicked city no Sabbaths, no God. 
 O, Andrew, my poor brother, what will become of you ? " 
 
 " They haven't all saved me here," he answered, bitterly 
 enough. 
 
 " But, Andrew, you will remember us at home you will 
 think at least of your poor broken-hearted mother ; and you 
 will remember, too, that one of your sisters will never rise up 
 in the morning, never go to her sleep at night, without praying 
 God to keep you through all the fiery temptations in which I 
 know your daily life will lie. Do say you will not forget it, 
 Andrew, or it seems to me I shall die." 
 
 He bent down his head on the railing " Rusha, if anything 
 in this world can save me, it will be the thought of you." 
 
 And it argued well for 'the depth of Andrew's repentance 
 that in all this he did not seek to excuse himself. He told 
 Rusha the whole story, insisting throughout that he had in- 
 tended to refund the money, before its withdrawal should 
 have transpired, and making her shudder in every limb when 
 she found how close to suicide his despair and desperation had 
 goaded him. 
 
 His eyes glared even now with a fierce light, and his whole 
 frame shook, as the memory of that awful temptation rushed 
 over him. 
 
 At last the bell rang. There was little time remaining. 
 " You will give my love to them all at home, and ask them all 
 to forgive me especially mother ! " his lips quivering over the 
 name, and all the old smartness and swagger gone from Andrew 
 Darryll. 
 
 " Yes, dear boy. Now take good care of yourself. O, here 
 is ma's purse, and a little change of mine that I happened to 
 have by me. You'll need it all over there, Andrew." 
 
 " I don't feel as though I ought to take it, Rusha. I mean 
 to carve out my own way now." 
 
 But she pressed it on him. 
 
 " And you'll be sure and write ? " trying to keep her voice 
 brave and cheerful, although it was one of those finely-toned
 
 WHETHER IT PAID, 201 
 
 instruments, in too close harmony with her feelings not to be- 
 tray her. "And you'll remember O, Andrew, you know 
 what I mean ? " 
 
 " Rusha, after the solemn promise that I made you long ago 
 on my sick bed, can you have any faith in me when I tell you 
 now that I mean to try ? " 
 
 She stroked his hair without speaking one word. 
 
 " Rusha little Rusha, you are the best sister a brother 
 ever had ! " 
 
 " I wish I had been a great deal better one." 
 
 As Rusha said these words, she caught a glimpse of the 
 strange face that she remembered now to have seen in conver- 
 sation with her brother, and this time it looked anxiously out 
 of the saloon door and then vanished. 
 
 "Andrew, who is that girl you were talking with?" 
 
 He looked at her and was dumb. How could Andrew Dar- 
 ryll let his delicate, pure-hearted sister glance down any deeper 
 into the black gulf of his sin and shame ! But his look told 
 her all. This last shock seemed more than she could bear. A 
 sick faintness went over her, and she dropped her face into her 
 hands and groaned aloud. 
 
 And Andrew Darryll felt in that hour that all his sins had 
 found not only him out, but those who loved him best, to over- 
 whelm them with shame and agony. 
 
 " Rusha," he faltered, " she is not so bad as many of them, 
 and she only came down here to say good by to me. We shall 
 never see each other again." 
 
 Rusha wrung her hands. " Her house is the way to hell ! " 
 speaking the first words that came to her. " And you are going 
 off to that wicked laud where these things are not looked upon 
 as sin. O, what will become of you, Andrew ! " 
 
 The last bell was ringing. The people were all hurrying off; 
 and in the great shock and bewilderment of her anguish, Rusha 
 turned to go without another word. 
 
 A beseeching voice followed her. " Rusha, will you leave 
 me so?"
 
 202 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Then she turned. The love, stronger than life, deeper than 
 all her loathing and horror, triumphed still. She sprang upon 
 her brother's neck, and covered his face betwixt her hot tears 
 with kisses. Then there was no more time to spare she 
 turned and went away. 
 
 But after she had gained the pier, she came suddenly face to 
 face with the girl the girl with the rather pretty features and 
 the showy dress who was just stepping off the plank, and 
 had probably found time for a last parting word with Andrew 
 Darryll. 
 
 Rusha stood still, and in the wrath, and loathing, and horror 
 of that moment, she longed to fly at the girl and stamp her in 
 the dust, or tear her in pieces. Such emotions had never be- 
 fore raged through the soul of Rusha Darryll ; but you must 
 remember she was thinking of her brother, and laying his sin 
 at this girl's door. 
 
 She was fairly frightened when she came to herself, and she 
 stood on the pier and watched the steamer sweep out into the 
 river, and thought with a sinking heart of him who was carry- 
 ing far away, to a strange land, the name he had left soiled and 
 dishonored among his own people ; and so, with her blinding 
 tears choking her, she turned and went home. 
 
 Poor Rusha ! It had been one of those mornings which never 
 leaves as it found us which takes some of the freshness and 
 joy out of life, and sobers and saddens us for all the years that 
 are to come. 
 
 That Rusha's whole family "was electrified with the tidings 
 which she carried home that day, is saying very little. They 
 were all deeply impressed and affected with her last interview 
 with Andrew, and from that hour Rusha's judgment and pre- 
 science had new weight with the whole household. 
 
 Her father did not, in so many words, approve or disapprove 
 of her visit to the steamer ; still, when she had finished her 
 relation, and he drew her to him, while her mother and most of 
 the others were sobbing or crying silently, and said, in a voice 
 not just steady, " My daughter, you have been a good girl ! " 
 everybody knew what he thought and felt.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 203 
 
 Perhaps Andrew Darryll had chosen the best course that he 
 could, in going abroad and seeking to build up a new name. 
 While his crime was still fresh in the thought of all men, he 
 must have had to encounter much that would have stung and 
 galled him on every side, and from which all his father's 
 Avealth and the position it afforded could not save him ; and 
 to his own family his pi-esence could have been nothing else 
 than a constant shame and reproach, for, as Rusha had said, 
 " No man liveth to himself." And though in the new life to 
 which he went, the young, weak soul must walk the paths of 
 fiery temptations, still these could hardly be more dangerous 
 than the old associations which he had left behind. 
 
 " Sometimes," said Rusha, after she had told all she had to 
 tell, and they had talked it over for hours, " sometimes I've 
 almost wished that pa had never made this fortune, and that we 
 were just poor folks, living on in the old way, in the little home, 
 a happy, unbroken family, just as we were before any of this 
 grief and misery came upon us. It was the money, after all, 
 that was at the bottom of poor Andrew's going wrong, and 
 when I've thought of that, I've asked myself, Whether it Paid 
 after all, WHETHER IT PAID." 
 
 Her words had, in their present softened mood, a weight 
 with father and mother, brothers and sisters, that they could 
 not possibly have carried in any other. For a little while 
 nobody answered her, and at last Agnes spoke up in a half 
 timid way, 
 
 " But you know, Rusha, the money's got us a great many 
 nice things." 
 
 At any other time they would certainly have laughed ; but 
 nobody saw the joke now. 
 
 " I know it has, Aggie, child," answered the elder sister. 
 " I am not undervaluing the uses of money. I love the new 
 beauty, grace and elegance, with which it has surrounded 
 us. I see how it has enlarged our lives on every hand, 
 opening to us new avenues of being and enjoyment, and for 
 all this I do not think God blames us ; but we didn't take the
 
 204 DARRTLL GAP, OB 
 
 new fortune right at the beginning at the beginning," she 
 repeated to herself. 
 
 "What did we do, or fail to do?" asked Tom, very seri- 
 ously. 
 
 " The riches were God's gift, and we never acknowledged 
 this. We never thought that a great power for good had 
 fallen into our hands, nor sought to do any in the world 
 with it. We only thought of what it would get for us in 
 all directions thought of ease and display, of splendor and 
 luxury, and where our fortune would place us in the regard of 
 others; but if one of us ever remembered to thank God for the 
 new wealth, or to say, * What wilt thou have me to do with all 
 this?' I have never heard of it, and during all these dreadful 
 days my eyes have seemed slowly to open, and the question has 
 risen up, and followed, and haunted me everywhere, and my 
 soul could not answer what it asked Whether Darryll Gap 
 Paid? WHETHER IT PAID?" 
 
 They were all silent, and in that tender, solemn moment, as 
 never before, and as perhaps it never Avould again, this question 
 of Rusha's waited at the gates of the souls of every member of 
 the family Whether Darryll Gap Paid f WHETHER IT PAID ? 
 
 A
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 205 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " I'VE come to the conclusion," said Ella Darryll, one day, 
 addressing whatever members of her family happened to be 
 present at the time, " that the best thing we can do about this 
 matter of Andrew's is just to brave it right out. Of course it 
 was a dreadful thing ; nobody can feel the disgrace of having a 
 brother in the Tombs, and his name in every one's mouth as a 
 thief, more than I do. But we can't shut ourselves up in the 
 house the rest of our lives, for all that, and we've got to put a 
 bold face on the whole thing, and go right out into the world as 
 though nothing had happened ; and the sooner we do it the better. 
 It isn't the first time, by any means, that folks have had to live 
 down disgrace ; and we owe it to ourselves to let the world see 
 we're not crushed yet." 
 
 " I think there is a good deal of truth in what you say, 
 Ella," said Rusha, thoughtfully. 
 
 There undoubtedly was. The world, especially that sort of 
 one in which the Darrylls moved, is always more or less influ- 
 enced by appearances, and the very people who might condemn 
 most loudly their want of a proper appreciation of Andrew's 
 guilt, would, very likely, be those who would court their society 
 most assiduously. 
 
 Ella, too, had that kind of imperiousness of character, which, 
 though it does not usually assimilate with a fine and sensitive 
 nature, has a good deal of power among men and women, as it 
 requires a certain sort of courage to set one's self in opposition 
 to it. 
 
 " It's the only thing that's left us to do," continued the latter ; 
 " and for my part, I think four weeks are quite long enough to 
 seclude ourselves from all mankind. I'm tired of it, too ; and 
 18
 
 206 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 all we have to do is to act as though nothing had happened, and 
 of course nobody will allude to the thing in our presence. 
 
 " We will order the carriage and go out this very morning, 
 Rusha ; won't you go, too, ma? " 
 
 " I don't feel much like it," replied Mrs. Darryll, in a sort 
 of languid, undecided way. 
 
 " O, now come, ma; you'd better go with us," added 
 Rusha. " The fresh air will do you good ; and besides, you 
 know the best way to make other people forget what Andrew 
 has done, is not, by secluding ourselves, to constantly remind 
 them of it." 
 
 The daughter felt that her mother's thoughts needed, if 
 possible, to be diverted into some other channel ; and she knew 
 that the argument which would be most likely to have weight 
 with Mrs. Darryll, at this time, would be one that afforded a 
 prospect of some benefit to her eldest son. 
 
 " I s'pose likely it would be the best thing we could do for 
 that poor, dear, foolish boy ! " answered the mother, with a 
 good deal more animation than her previous answer had 
 displayed. 
 
 " And I'm not certain," continued Ella, still further strength- 
 ened in her opinion by the readiness with which her family had 
 acted on it, " but the best thing we can do now is to go the 
 whole figure, and give a great party have a real smash, you 
 know, which will be a sort of tacit proclamation to the world, 
 that we don't intend to let Andrew's affair take us down a par- 
 ticle. It strikes me that this will be just doing the thing up 
 brown. What do you say, Rusha ? " 
 
 " I do think a good deal of the world's respect, but on the 
 whole I think more of my own, and if one is to be retained at 
 such a sacrifice of the other, as giving a great party at this 
 crisis, why, the world must go." 
 
 " I can't see, for the life of me, what connection giving a 
 party has with your self-respect, or the loss of it," added Ella, 
 a little crest-fallen. 
 
 " How can you help ' seeing,' Ella, the ill taste and vulgarity,
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 207 
 
 to put it on no higher grounds, of giving a grand party just at 
 this juncture ! It would be outraging the moral sense of every 
 really worthy and honest person in the community. For my 
 part, I had rather the world should know that I felt too deeply 
 my brother's guilt and shame to indulge in anything of that sort 
 at this time." 
 
 " Well, I didn't expect to enjoy the thing ; I only suggested 
 it as a matter of policy," rejoined Ella, half in self-defence, for 
 Rusha had put the matter in a light that left it no longer open 
 to discussion. 
 
 As she was descending the stairs an hour later, dressed for 
 her ride, Rusha met Tom, who had just come in. 
 
 " What does all this mean ? " asked the young man, a good 
 deal startled at her appearance, as he had not been present at 
 the family decision that morning. 
 
 " It means, Tom, that we've resolved to seclude ourselves no 
 no longer on account of Andrew. We've the ordeal of braving 
 the world to go through, and the longer we put it off, the 
 harder, of course, it will be. People will make their comments 
 either way, and it is as well, perhaps, to let them see at once we 
 shall not be influenced by them." 
 
 " That's so." 
 
 " But I dread going out, for all that." 
 
 " I understand it, Rusha. You feel just as I did that first 
 day about going down town. It seemed to me that I never 
 could look anybody in the face ; but it passed off after a while. 
 Never you mind, only be brave." 
 
 She smiled her thanks on him for the kindly advice, and 
 went on down stairs without speaking a word. But before she 
 reached the landing, she turned back and called her brother, 
 for he was not yet out of hearing. Tom came at once. 
 
 " O, Tom," in a swift, agitated voice, " I want to say to you 
 that you stand in poor Andrew's place now ; that you are the 
 eldest son ; that the birthright which he has in a sense betrayed 
 has fallen on you. You will be faithful to it? You will not 
 wring our hearts some day as he has done? It would kill me
 
 208 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 if you slioulcr I could never go through another scene like 
 that on the steamer. I know I should die ! " clinging to him 
 and crying as the awful memory came back on her. 
 
 Tom was visibly affected. The tears were thick in his eyes 
 too. " Rusha," he said, " I will try to stand to you all in poor 
 Andrew's place ; but you do not believe that I shall turn out 
 like him you have more faith in me than that ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have, Tom ; only, after such a terrible thing, it is 
 natural we should all tremble for each other ; but you know 
 how it was in ancient times when the eldest brother lost his 
 birthright by death, or worse, the next took his place. And 
 now Andrew's mantle has fallen on you. 0, Tom, wear it 
 more worthily ! " 
 
 Just then she heard the carriage wheels on the curbstones, 
 and Ella's voice calling her. She put her wet cheek to Tom's a 
 moment, and then went down, and her brother went to his room, 
 with Rusha' s words deep in his soul ; and he sat down and 
 thought for the next hour just as he had never, in his loud, care- 
 less youth, done before the thoughts that, at his age, are the 
 seed which, ripening along the slopes of the years, bear, in the 
 summer of manhood their harvests of brave, true words and 
 deeds. 
 
 The trial through which they had passed had not been with- 
 out its influence upon the Darryll family, in various ways, and, 
 on the whole, for the better. Even Guy, who had formerly 
 made Andrew his model, no longer affected the fast young man 
 in his manners ; and when he was tempted to grumble at the new 
 interest which his father manifested in all his habits and resorts, 
 and his stern interdiction of all late hours even Guy remem- 
 bered his eldest brother, and was silent. 
 
 This common grief had drawn them all closer together, and 
 indicated itself in a new gentleness and thoughtfuluess of man- 
 ner, each towards the other ; but the leaven was working in 
 Rusha's heart and soul as it could not in any of her family. 
 Every moment of that.terrible interview on board the steamer 
 had made a vital impression on her ; but one memory had taken 
 
 I
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 209 
 
 a deeper hold than all the others. It was one that she could 
 share with none of her people. How could she tell her young 
 brothers and sisters, how could she tell her father and mother, of 
 that deep mire of guilt with which Andrew Darryll had slimed 
 his soul ? Heart and tongue would fail her to speak of it. 
 
 But Rusha Darryll could not thrust away from her the 
 thought of those last moments with Andrew, though she verily 
 believed it defiled her memory to recall them. And the old 
 shuddering and recoil always came back upon her when she 
 remembered the face of the young girl who had followed her 
 off the vessel. 
 
 And at last, through all the inevitable pain and horror with 
 which this scene returned to her, there grew in Rusha's thoughts, 
 so slowly that she was unconscious of it herself, a kind of shud- 
 dering interest and pity for this girl, as young as herself, linked 
 with her in the needs of a common womanhood, with one God 
 and one eternity waiting at the end for them both. 
 
 And this girl, carrying all that dreadful burden of sin and 
 guilt on her young soul, had been once an innocent, pure-hearted, 
 happy little child like herself. Rusha wondered if she had ever 
 had a chance in the world a father, or mother, or any friend 
 to tell her what was right or wrong. Perhaps, after all, she 
 was not so much sinning as sinned against. She knew that she 
 could still love her brother, with a love mighty as life itself, 
 through all her knowledge of his share in the guilt ; and why 
 should she visit so much heavier condemnation on this girl, who 
 was not, perhaps, in the Eye whose gaze sounds the depths of 
 all human souls, the guiltier of the two ? 
 
 Rusha used to awake from thoughts like these. She was 
 afraid poor child! that their existence proved something 
 wrong in herself the common verdict of society, the conven- 
 tionalisms amid which she had been brought up, so utterly 
 ignored these lost souls among her sex, that it almost seemed a 
 sin even to pity them. But one day Rusha remembered Who 
 had not forgotten even these when He came with His glad 
 tidings for "the uttermost" of men and women the glad 
 18*
 
 210 DAERYLL GAP, OR 
 
 tidings which have rung down ever since their silver sweetness 
 through all the tumult and travail of the ages ! 
 
 And with that thought some new feeling struggled up into life 
 beneath all the associations and conventional opinions which 
 overlaid her sentiments on this subject. The old, revolting hor- 
 ror with which she had shrank on board the steamer from the 
 thought of that young, lost thing, was superseded by a kind of 
 yearning pity a wish that she could do something for her help 
 and succor, and a sort of hope that she might, so, in a meas- 
 ure, atone for her brother's guilt. 
 
 Other thoughts followed, in the train of this one. What right 
 had she to visit on the head of this girl a condemnation so much 
 heavier than she did on her brother? What an awful sin lay at 
 the door of her own sex in all matters of this kind ! How 
 would gentle, pure-hearted girls marry men whose victims they 
 held in such utter abhorrence as to regard it a shame to so 
 much as speak of them ! Did not woman owe something to 
 womanhood here, bruised, fallen, defiled though it was? 
 
 And so the fire burned secretly in the soul of Rusha Darryll, 
 and the questions laid bare betwixt her own soul and God had 
 no answer, until suddenly there came a time to prove what fibre 
 was in them whether they were of the sort that would only 
 infloresce in beautiful fancies and dreams, or whether they 
 would ripen into strong, noble deeds.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 211 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 RUSHA was down town one day on some shopping expedition, 
 and, quite unusually, alone ; some trifling engagement of one 
 sort and another having prevented any of her family from ac- 
 companying her. 
 
 Having despatched her errands, she had just resumed her seat 
 in the carriage for the drive home, and the coachman was 
 closing the door, when she caught a glimpse on the sidewalk of 
 two young girls in showy bonnets, who the next moment had 
 disappeared among the crowd ; but in that swift glance Rusha 
 had identified the girl with the " rather pretty features," whom 
 she had seen on board the steamer. 
 
 With that swift impulsiveness which, whether for good or 
 evil, you have seen was a part of her nature, she burst open the 
 door, and bounded out from the carriage, calling back to the 
 bewildered coachman " Stay there until I return ; " and she 
 hurried up Broadway. 
 
 She was quite breathless when she overtook the girls at last, 
 and too excited to consider her form of address. She laid her 
 hand on the shoulder of the younger, saying "Won't you 
 come with me a moment? I have something of importance to 
 say to you." 
 
 The girl thus addressed started in amazement, and glanced 
 up at Rusha's face. It was evident that she, too, recognized 
 her, by her scared look, as she shrank back, and faltered out, in 
 a frightened way " You must excuse me from going with you ; 
 I haven't time this morning." 
 
 " O, but I beg that you will not refuse me ; it is something, 
 as I said, very important to us both, and I may never have 
 another chance to see you. Do come ! You will not be sorry, 
 I think."
 
 212 DAERYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Rusha's eagerness gave a force to her manner which it was 
 hard to resist. It fairly compelled the girl against her own 
 will, for there was certainly reason enough why she should 
 shrink from an interview with the sister of Andrew Darryll. 
 
 But with Rusha's hand on her arm, the girl was constrained 
 to yield ; and she did without uttering another word, leaving 
 her companion standing on the sidewalk, watching them both, 
 in blank amazement. 
 
 The first thing was to secure some place for a private inter- 
 view ; but where was this to be found? Not at her own home, 
 certainly, where there would be no security from observation. 
 Rusha turned the matter rapidly over in her thoughts. It certain- 
 ly seemed at first to present a formidable difficulty ; but now, 
 when she had gained the chief point, she would not be daunted 
 by a lesser one. At last she remembered a quiet restaurant, 
 not far off, where she, with her mother and sister, often ordered 
 lunch when they were down town. It was easy to secure a room 
 here, wholly to themselves. 
 
 Her mind made up, Rusha led the way rapidly, and her com- 
 panion followed, not speaking a word. What would Rusha's 
 family have done if they could have seen and understood ! 
 
 So they were alone together, in the quiet little alcove cham- 
 ber this girl and the sister of Andrew Darryll ! There was 
 no doubt the former was a good deal alarmed, for her cheeks 
 looked pale through their delicate rouge. Each took a seat 
 mechanically, and turned and looked at the other. When she 
 had wanted words, these had never failed Rusha Darryll ; but 
 now they seemed to forsake, her, as she turned and looked at 
 that girl, and realized the dreadful gulf betwixt them a gulf 
 across which she feared at the moment her hands would reach 
 no succor nor deliverance that girl, sitting there, with no 
 more years than her own ; but with that dreadful burden of 
 guilt and shame on her soul. Every other feeling merged itself 
 in the great tide of pity which surged over Rusha Darryll. 
 
 She opened her lips to speak, and instead she broke down 
 and burst into tears, crying as though her heart would break.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 213 
 
 "What has happened what is the matter?" asked her 
 companion, fairly trembling all over with alarm. 
 
 " Nothing," answered Rusha, as soon as she could command 
 her voice ; " only I was thinking that you were once a pure, 
 innocent, happy little child, just as I was, and then I thought 
 of what you are now O, of what you are now ! " and lean- 
 ing her head on the table, she sobbed again passionately. 
 
 Something went over the girl's face a quick flash not 
 exactly pain, nor terror, nor remorse, but all these together, 
 and then Rusha heard a cry a wail a sound such as she 
 had never heard in all her life before, and that she felt she must 
 hear some time again through all her life that was to be, for she 
 knew it was that girl's lost womanhood wailing out its remorse, 
 and anguish, and despair. 
 
 She would have been less than woman if she could have lis- 
 tened unmoved ; but having the heart of Rusha Darryll, that cry 
 went down to the very quick of its pity. She forgot what the 
 girl before her was forgot the wrong she had done to her 
 and hers, and only felt as, after all, woman should feel for 
 woman, however lost and Denied ; and when she heard that 
 dreadful weeping such a wild, awful misery in every sob 
 Rusha could not speak a word, but cried too. At last the other 
 shrieked out, 
 
 " O, I wish I was dead I wish I was dead ! " 
 
 It was awful, the way she wrung her hands. 
 
 " No, you don't ; no, you don't," said Rusha, turning towards 
 her, her face all adrip with tears. " You want to live to re- 
 pent." 
 
 " Repent ! " said the girl, and her voice seemed to echo far 
 down the dreary depths of her soul. " As if there was any 
 repentance for such as / am ! " 
 
 " Yes, there is," the trembling eagerness of her voice sur- 
 mounting her tears. " I tell you there is and yet not I, but 
 He who came into the world to speak forgiveness and welcome 
 to just such as you are and all the world cannot take that 
 away from you."
 
 214 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " But they do take it away from us ! " she said, turning 
 fiercely upon Rusha. " You know there isn't a decent woman 
 in the world that would be seen speaking to me to-day there 
 isn't one who, knowing what I am, would take me into her 
 kitchen and let me work from morning until night for bread 
 and shelter, and so give me a chance for a better life ! " 
 
 " Yes, there is. Don't say that. There is nothing that I 
 would not do nothing I possess in the world which I would 
 not give to save you." 
 
 The girl saw it in Rusha's face, for in that fine exaltation of 
 pity to which she had been carried, Rusha Darryll meant every 
 word that she said. 
 
 " Do you know who I am?" asked the girl, her voice shaded 
 with shame or fear. 
 
 " Yes, Andrew told me ; and and it is the thought of him, 
 too, that has made me long to find you and help you out of this 
 dreadful life." 
 
 The girl was moved now. She leaned her face down on her 
 hand, and a groan slid out of her lips such a slow, wretched 
 groan ! 
 
 Then Rusha went over and sat down by her side, and took 
 her hand as friend and equal might take another's. 
 
 " Tell me, what is your name? " 
 
 " Jane Maxwell." 
 
 " You must be very young yet not so old as I, perhaps?" 
 
 " Not yet twenty-two." 
 
 And so Rusha drew out of the girl the story of her life. I 
 suppose it was not an uncommon one. She had been left 
 orphaned at an early age, and the distant relatives into whose 
 hands she had fallen had not been kind to her. There was but 
 one person in the world whom she had loved, and that was a 
 widowed aunt, whom poverty alone prevented from taking the 
 child to her home, and being in all respects a mother to her. 
 
 At last she went to learn a trade you must remember what 
 her training had been ; and she was a foolish, giddy, light-hearted 
 thing at the best, and with a face just pretty enough to be a 
 snare to her.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 215 
 
 She was thrown among circumstances which stimulated all 
 her vanity and love of admiration, active enough at any time, 
 and there was no one to warn her of dangers lying in wait all 
 about her youth. At last the rather pretty face and coquettish 
 ways attracted a man younger in years than he was in vice, 
 and you have the whole story. 
 
 Wise, after his master, the devil, in all the arts which could 
 win the faith of a simple, country girl, this villain succeeded 
 in inducing the girl, under solemn promises of matrimony, to 
 elope with him. 
 
 His object gained, in a few weeks he tired of his victim, and 
 Jane Maxwell awoke to a sense of the height from which she 
 had fallen. Maddened, desperate, alone in a great city, the 
 feeling of lost self-respect eating with its slow fire into brain 
 and heart, no friends to take in the poor bruised soul, bind up 
 its wounds, and save it from plunging into lower deeps. There 
 is no need that the rest should be told if it were only as I 
 said, a less common one. 
 
 For the man who had wrought this girl's ruin his charac- 
 ter and position in the world were in no wise affected by it. 
 Fair women good women, as the world goes smiled on him, 
 showered on him flattering attentions, and at last he took to 
 wife, with bridal feast and splendid ceremonial of marriage 
 rites, the daughter of a retired banker on Fifth Avenue. If 
 that, too, were only less " common " ! 
 
 And yet, so surely as there is a God sitting in Heaven, and 
 keeping His long watch over the wronged and the lonely, that 
 girl's lost womanhood shall rise up in awful condemnation 
 against the black crime which went unrebuked among men and 
 
 O * 
 
 women ! 
 
 Rusha Darryll listened to the poor thing in silence, her whole 
 soul torn within her betwixt pity, indignation, and horror. 
 
 When Jane Maxwell was done, Rusha rose up, and in the 
 great passion of her pity, with the tears flowing over her cheeks, 
 she seized both of the girl's hands. " What can I do for you, 
 my poor child? I am ready for anything. O, I must I 
 will save you ! "
 
 21 G DARRYLL GAP, Oil 
 
 Jane Maxwell looked at her a moment a look that Rusha 
 never forgot ; then she cried out " Are you a woman or an 
 angel, sent of God to help me ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Rusha, with another burst of tears, " but a 
 poor sinner like yourself. I dare not think that in your case I 
 should have been any wiser any better. But O, believe me, 
 as though I was that angel sent of God direct from Heaven, to 
 tell you that there is a way of escape out of this horrible life. 
 You would be glad to leave it, wouldn't you ? " voice and face 
 full of beseeching, as though for her own life. 
 
 " Yes, I would God knows I would," sobbed Jane Max- 
 well. " But I haven't a friend in this whole city, and you don't 
 know the snares that lie all around such as I am ; and when 
 
 one's self-respect is lost when that is all lost " She did 
 
 not get any farther. 
 
 " See here ! " interposed Rusha, her faculties all alert, her 
 thoughts clear, bright, active " you must get straight out of 
 this city. Fly from it, I beseech you, as you would from fire 
 and from death close upon you. I entreat you, for the sake of 
 the lost womanhood you may yet regain, for the sake of your 
 immortal soul, leave this city before the day is over. Is there 
 nobody in the world to whom you can go ? " 
 
 A ray of hope, the first Rusha had seen there, struggled into 
 the face, all broken up with tears. " Yes, if I could go back 
 to aunt Hetty, and lay my head in her lap, and tell her all that 
 I'd been, I know she wouldn't send me away ; she'd help me to 
 become a good woman again ; but then she's a poor widow, 
 you see, and I couldn't throw myself a burden on her, when she 
 has to work for her own living. I used to think I should make 
 money enough at my trade some day, to pay off the mortgage 
 on the little house, which would set aunt Hetty up like a queen, 
 for it's been the nightmare of her life since uncle died ; but 
 that can never be now ; never never ! " the old despair coming 
 into her face again, and its wail mounting into her voice. 
 
 " How much was the mortgage?" asked Rusha, quickly. 
 
 " Just fifteen hundred dollars. I had a letter from her tfo
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 217 
 
 other day, for she don't know what I've become, and she said 
 she'd paid up the interest so far, but it was the last year that 
 she could strain soul and body to do it, and the house would 
 have to go, and she should have no shelter for her old age. It 
 almost broke my heart to read that ! " crying drearily again. 
 
 Rusha turned and walked quickly up and down the room, not 
 speaking. Fifteen hundred dollars was a sum that she could 
 never command at one time. What she did must be done 
 quickly, and how was she to raise this money on the instant? 
 But the girl sitting there MUST be saved. Suddenly it flashed 
 across her that the diamond set she wore that morning her 
 father's Christmas gift cost just that sum. She knew a jewel- 
 ler to whom she could dispose of the diamonds at their value, 
 and who would keep her secret. She turned back to the girl in 
 a moment. " Jane Maxwell," she said, standing still before 
 her, " will you promise me, as before God, that if I will raise 
 this money for your aunt, you will not linger another day 
 not another hour, in this city that you will not so much as 
 return to the place whence you came, nor see one of your old com- 
 panions that you will break away from them now and forever, 
 and take the very next train to your aunt?" 
 
 And Jane Maxwell made her promise. I think no one who 
 saw her face at that moment ivould have doubted that she meant 
 to keep it. 
 
 " Stay here ; I shall not be gone long." Rusha went out, 
 pausing in the hall a moment to tear the diamonds from her 
 ears, and feeling that the flame of the jewels would burn, as it 
 were fire, into her own soul, whenever she looked at them, 
 remembering that they might have saved that girl from death. 
 
 Rusha was hardly absent ten minutes ; when she returned, 
 she walked straight up to Jane Maxwell. "There is the 
 money," she said, " to pay your aunt's mortgage. You see I 
 have trusted you, Jane fully, absolutely in spite of all 
 which you know they say of women once lost that they can 
 lever be believed ; that, as they can have no faith in their own 
 
 amises, so neither can others. It is not likely that we shall 
 19
 
 218 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 ever meet again ; but remember this : I call God to witness be- 
 twixt you and me, standing here this hour together, that because 
 of my brother's sin, and for your own sake also, I opened the 
 door to you'for escape I showed you the way to take up your 
 soiled womanhood, and make it pure, and good, and noble again, 
 and that if you turn back to the ways which He has told you 
 take hold on death and hell, the sin will lie at your own door ; 
 I have done all that lies in my power to save you." 
 
 She spoke solemnly, as an angel might, standing there, made 
 calm by the very heat and glow of her emotions. 
 
 And as though an angel was speaking as Jane Maxwell list- 
 ened, and when she answered she spoke as solemnly as Rusha. 
 
 " You will trust me you do believe me ! " her face ashy 
 pale, but looking straight at her companion. 
 
 " Yes, I do, Jane I believe you will do what you say ; " 
 and forgetting who she was, she bent down and kissed the girl. 
 
 Then Jane Maxwell sank down at Eusha's feet in a great, 
 passionate fit of weeping. 
 
 " Will you kiss me me, the poor, vile, degraded thing that 
 I am knowing, too, what I have been to your brother? Now 
 I know that you are an angel, for no mere woman would have 
 done that ! " and she clung sobbing to her feet. 
 
 A few moments later, Rusha went out. The coachman had 
 been chafing with impatience for more than an hour ; but when 
 he looked in his young mistress's face, he saw she had been cry- 
 ing, and said nothing, although he pondered the matter through 
 all the drive home, without getting any new light. I do not 
 know, reader, what you may think of all this, but I do know 
 that Rusha Darryll will not be ashamed of that morning's work 
 when she stands before God and His angels !
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 219 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE Darrylls had braved the world and come out victorious, 
 the inward conflict being known only to themselves ; so results 
 had proved the wisdom of the course which Ella had advised 
 for the family. 
 
 There was a fresh buzz of gossip and animadversion when the 
 Darrylls first reappeared among people, and their ten thousand 
 friends wondered " how they could have the face to show them- 
 selves outside of their own door ; " but it often chanced that 
 those who were loudest in their denunciations were the first to 
 affect the society of the Darrylls ; and those who could not, 
 shook their heads lugubriously, and remai'ked that " the old 
 man's money would carry them through. What a burning 
 shame it was that riches would sustain one in any crime in this 
 world ! " and all the old stock talk of that sort, in which, no 
 doubt, was considerable truth, with an admixture of other ele- 
 ments. 
 
 The family gravitated back into the former channels of think- 
 ing, feeling, living. The old forces and habits resumed their 
 attractions over each, and, to a superficial observer, Andrew's 
 crime and its effects had wrought no change in the character of 
 the household. It is true that the mother-heart of Mrs. Darryll 
 never ceased to yearn after the eldest of her sons, and indeed 
 he was held in a kind of pitying, shuddering remembrance 
 by all. 
 
 Mr. Darryll was absorbed in making money, as before, and 
 everything seemed to prosper to which he set his hand. Ella 
 \vas once more deep in a whirl of fashionable gayeties, and 
 Agnes restive under school discipline, with the example of her 
 elder sister constantly before her eyes. Tom was shooting up
 
 220 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 into slender young manhood, holding diligently by his studies in 
 spite of the strong tide of circumstances which set against them. 
 
 Rusha's favorite brother was certainly the most promising of 
 John Darryll's sons, and he grew day by day in some new 
 thoughtfulness and manliness, which justified his sister's pride 
 in him. 
 
 Guy grumbled inwardly at the " sharp eye the governor kept 
 on all his movements ; " but he confined the expression of his 
 sentiments to Tom, who did not manifest any active sympathy 
 with them. 
 
 As for Rusha, you will not suppose, for a moment, that she 
 held herself in that fine exaltation of feeling and deed, to whose 
 height we have seen she had risen for one hour of her life. 
 
 Alas ! she had one of those natures that have a fatal tendency 
 to sink into moods and depressions. She was by no means a 
 symmetrical, well-balanced character. She did not understand 
 the laws of her own being. She was chafed, restless, dis- 
 gusted with herself and everybody about her, groping her 
 slow way out of illusions of all sorts, dragged down by the 
 gravitation of her family, and in a dim way conscious of all this, 
 and yet not knowing how to resist the attraction ; sensitive to all 
 atmospheres, whether physical or personal ; her mood taking its 
 tone from the color of the day, or the state of the weather ; 
 lacking internal harmony, full of swift irritations and little petu- 
 lances ; and so, though she was of a vastly profounder and more 
 lovable nature than Ella, she was at times a much less com- 
 fortable home companion, for the things which overcame the 
 elder sister did not have a feather's weight with the younger ; 
 and Ella's health and spirits were always of that strong, buoy- 
 ant sort, which inheres in temperaments like hers ; and there 
 was often some ground afforded by Rusha's conduct for the 
 comment, which, nevertheless, partook of the younger sister's 
 usual extravagance of remark, 
 
 " I declare, Rusha, you are such a bear to-day, there is no 
 living ! " 
 
 " Am I as cross as Ella says, Tom?" asked the young
 
 WUETIIEli IT PAID. 221 
 
 turning to her brother, as her sister left the room, after the de- 
 livery of one of these unflattering opinions. 
 
 He looked at her a flash of covert amusement in his eyes 
 at her downright way of getting at the matter. 
 
 " Pretty cross that's a fact ; but somehow I never mind it." 
 
 Eusha sat down, rested her cheek on her hand, her face in a 
 shadow partly thoughtfulness, partly self-reproach. 
 
 " It isn't right, Tom, and I know it, to be the fretful thing I 
 am. But you see it's the living that tries me. I suppose it 
 does everybody, more or less ; but my sympathies, ideas, tastes, 
 are so goaded and outraged, and these dark, dreadful moods 
 come upon me like an armed man, and I seem to have no 
 power to resist them, and I sink down, down where there is 
 neither warmth nor light, into damp, crawling mists, whose chill 
 strikes to the very marrow of all my hopes and aspirations ; and 
 I am so dreary, so wretched at such times, without any faith in 
 God or hope in man, that it almost seems as though the best 
 thing I could do was to lie right down and die ! " 
 
 " O, Rusha, I tell you," said Tom, a good deal impressed 
 with the suffering of a temperament which, with his widely dif- 
 ferent mental constitution, he could only dimly comprehend ; 
 " it's the blue devils got hold of you. That lies at the bottom 
 of the whole thing, depend on it. Awful fellows they are 
 too ; had a touch of 'em sometimes myself. Don't they make 
 the world look black, though?" 
 
 " No, Tom," shaking her head sadly, and realizing how far 
 this kindly but bungling attempt at comforting her was from 
 reaching the core of the grief; " it isn't what you say, nor it 
 isn't so much in the world, as it is in myself that the trouble lies. 
 I know it all the time, and sometimes I think I should really be 
 better if I had no high ideals for myself or anybody else, but was 
 just satisfied with things as they are, like mother and Ella. 
 Sometimes I really envy them, and wish I was like them." 
 
 " I don't, though Jehoshaphat ! " said Tom. 
 
 His tone and glance were unmistakable. They brought out 
 Kusha's laugh, in all its native merriment, the swift changes 
 19*
 
 222 DAREYLL GAP, OR 
 
 of her moods indicating the fine, intense, but undisciplined 
 nature that through all these things was still coming into 
 the light into the light, as one might have seen by her next 
 remark. 
 
 " And then, Ton>, when I think of all the blessings that sur- 
 round me how I have wealth, leisure, luxury of every sort 
 how many there are in the world who really envy me, it seems 
 so ungrateful to go around mood}', cross, disgusted generally. 
 You know who it is that says to us, ' Be ye thanlcful ; ' and I am 
 sure that means a cheerful, grateful spirit." 
 
 " I never thought of it before yes, I see it must, Rusha." 
 
 " O, dear ! " drawing the monosyllables out on a long sigh. 
 Tom partially understood what it meant, and his next remark 
 showed that some new leaven had been working in him too. 
 
 " I suppose, Rusha, people who really want to be good are 
 generally less satisfied than those who don't trouble themselves 
 about it at all." 
 
 " It's very consoling to my self-love to have you put it in 
 that light, Tom, you dear fellow, only," an arch smile flashing 
 again out of the gravity of her face, "I don't believe it Avould 
 be easy to convert Ella to that theory ! But, Tom, the truth 
 must stand against me that is no sufficient excuse for my 
 moods and tempers. If I had only found the key to them ! " 
 
 Still, as you see, " poor Rusha " so many of her life's 
 
 " Sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh," 
 
 and she not comprehending the laws of her own being, nor 
 knowing that deeper love and faith which would have soothed 
 into harmony so many of the grating discords. 
 
 Less than a week after the above conversation the Darryll 
 family mustered in strong force one evening at the opera, in 
 order to hear some new prima-donna that Ella insisted their 
 " whole set was raving about." 
 
 The next morning, at breakfast, while the whole affair was 
 under discussion, Ella suddenly broke out with, 
 
 " What in the world is the reason, Rusha, that you always
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 223 
 
 wear your mosaics now-a-days? I noticed last night that you 
 didn't have your diamonds on, when it was, of all places, the 
 one to show them off; and it was just so at the bridal recep- 
 tion we attended together. People who own diamonds are 
 expected to show them." 
 
 " "Well, you wear yours enough for both of us." 
 
 In her embarrassment Rusha had spoken the first words that 
 suggested themselves to her. They were no sooner out than 
 she saw the weakness of her defence. Ella naturally availed 
 herself of it. 
 
 " Well, that is smart ! The argument would apply equally 
 well, to everything I do wear. Now, that is not the reason, 
 Rusha, that you have left off your diamonds ! " 
 
 She saw that everybody at the table, attracted by the imper- 
 ativeness of Ella's tone, was listening. She was not good at 
 disguises, and the truth might as well come out now as ever. 
 
 "I I've disposed of them ! " 
 
 Surprise held everybody at the table silent for a moment or 
 two. 
 
 " Disposed of your diamonds, Rusha pa's Christmas gift ! " 
 rejoined Ella. 
 
 " Well, I never ! " ejaculated Mrs. Darryll ; and she laid 
 down her knife and fork. 
 
 " Eusha," said her father, sternly, " what have you done 
 with your diamonds ? " 
 
 She burst out suddenly into passionate weeping. 
 
 " I cannot tell you, pa," she sobbed ; " only something came 
 to my knowledge which compelled me to let them go, when it 
 would have been an awful sin to keep them ; and I shall be 
 glad I did just what I did all my life, and when I come to 
 lie on my death bed, it will be the sweetest memory I have, 
 although I can never tell you what it is never that lies 
 betwixt God, and one other, and me ! " 
 
 There fell a great silence around the breakfast-table. Each 
 Stared at the other in a kind of blank amaze, and then the 
 whole family looked towards Mr. Darryll to speak. He was
 
 224 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 evidently, like the others, perplexed and impressed. Rusha's act 
 was so unprecedented a one that he did not know how to deal 
 with it. It was on too vast a scale to be treated as a folly or a 
 rashness, and her way of setting the act in the light of a solemn 
 duty prevented him from coming down on her with a storm of 
 indignation, as on some unparalleled disobedience. But she 
 ought to have consulted him ; she had clearly no right to part 
 with her diamonds without asking his permission. 
 
 On the impulse of this thought, Mr. Darryll opened his lips 
 to address her sternly, but then Rusha was his favorite child, 
 and the part she had acted in Andrew's affair had not only 
 increased his affection, but vastly enhanced his respect for the 
 judgment of the eldest daughter. And as all this suddenly 
 swept across the father, he answered, half against his will, 
 
 " Well, Rusha, I always supposed you were a girl of sense 
 until this morning. I don't know what to make of all this. 
 Have you gone suddenly crazy, my child ? " for he heard her 
 sobs again, and they touched some tenderness down deep in the 
 heart of John Darryll. 
 
 " O, no, pa ; letting those diamonds go was the sauest thing 
 that ever I did ! " 
 
 And then, because she could not bear that they should all 
 witness her agitation, she rose up and left the room. 
 
 *' John, what does it all mean?" ejaculated Mrs. Darryll, 
 turning to her husband. 
 
 " I don't know what that girl is corning to giving away 
 her diamonds ! " exclaimed Ella, the momentary impression 
 which her sister's speech and manner had made vanishing be- 
 fore this appalling fact. 
 
 " Now, I say," said Tom, " I think you'd better not plague 
 her about it. Rusha isn't anybody's fool I should think we'd 
 all had proof enough of that not long ago ; and what she's done 
 she's had a good reason for, strange as it looks, I'll be bound." 
 
 Nobody volunteered any reply to this remark ; but it must 
 have coincided with some secret feeling of the father, for ii 
 few moments he added,
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 225 
 
 " Well, the thing's done, and it can't be helped. You'd better 
 not bother her any way about it. Mind what I say, now." 
 
 John Darryll's fiat was by no means absolute in his own 
 household, but thereafter none of her family alluded to the dia- 
 monds. Something in Rusha's manner that morning at the 
 breakfast-table made each feel that any attempt to draw from 
 her her secret would be useless. 
 
 At last, after long waiting, there came letters from Andrew. 
 He had succeeded in obtaining a situation in a banking house in 
 Paris, where English was required, and his position, he affirmed, 
 was, in every respect, quite as pleasant as he had dared to hope. 
 
 On the whole, the tone of the letters was encouraging, even 
 to Rusha, who knew Andrew's inherent moral weaknesses, and 
 where his perils lay, better than any of the rest of the family. 
 Still his repentance seemed genuine. Nothing but that, it 
 seemed, could have wrung such confessions from the youth, 
 boastful, arrogant, conceited, which went to make up so much 
 of all their memories of Andrew. 
 
 No one of the family was forgotten in these letters ; and it 
 was evident that, in this land of strangers, Andrew was- learn- 
 ing something of the worth of the home by whose love and 
 care he had set so lightly, until his own act had debarred him 
 from them. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll considered Andrew's reformation an absolute 
 certainty, and Rusha could not bear to insinuate a single fear 
 into the mother-love that poured itself out in the letter which 
 she wrote by the return steamer. 
 
 Indeed, that steamer carried letters from every member of 
 the family, even to Agnes, who gave up a school sleighing- 
 party, on which she had set her heart, in order that she might 
 write to " poor Andrew." 
 
 Mr. Darryll, who found it harder than any of the others to 
 forgive his son's crime, affirmed, when his wife suggested his 
 writing, " that it wouldn't do Andrew any harm to chew his 
 
 d of remorse a little longer." But he thought better of it at 
 last moment, for, as his wife was closing her letter, he came
 
 226 DAEEYLL GAP, OE 
 
 suddenly to her side, and, taking up the pen, said "I think 
 I'll add a postscript to that." And its conclusion was " Now, 
 Andrew, keep out of the way of temptation ; and be a good 
 boy, my son, the rest of your life, if not for your own, for 
 father's sake." 
 
 When the letters were all finished, the young people read 
 theirs to each other, and Rusha's was unanimously pronounced 
 the best of the whole. 
 
 But there was an enclosure that no eyes must see, saving 
 Andrew Darryll's. Rusha had decided that it was her duty to 
 relate to her brother all which had transpired in her interview 
 with Jane Maxwell. In no other way could his sin in its 
 heinousness be brought home to his soul. And if that story, 
 which had cost his sister so much shame and agony, did not 
 probe to its depths the heart of Andrew Darryll, then his sis- 
 ter felt there was no more for her to do, and for him there was 
 little hope.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ALL this time the war was going on. Afar off" there came 
 up to the North, alike through the pleasant summer air and the 
 fierce riot of winter storms, that long under-wail of agony and 
 death. It rose above all the greed and din of marts where men 
 were making new "haste to be rich" above all the mirth 
 with which the people held carousal during the nation's sweat 
 and travail for life a cry that smote with fear the heart of the 
 hardest and most sordid of men, and pierced with terror through 
 the vanities and ambitions of the weakest and most selfish of 
 women ; and all this time the awful cloud of fire and death 
 moved slowly along its appointed path of four years, and in all 
 our Northern homes the death-knell was rung of the bravest 
 and dearest. It was one of those times of great perplexity and 
 gloom, into whose dark cloud we passed so often the Army 
 of the Potomac had disappointed the fondest hopes of the peo- 
 ple, and instead of returning home laurelled heroes, amid the 
 pomp and rejoicing of victory, lay wasting away the slow 
 months, and their own souls together, among the marshes of 
 Northern Virginia. 
 
 Mistake, mismanagement, and corruption were working their 
 mischiefs in all our affairs, and it seemed worse than vain that 
 the nation had poured out the treasure from its coffers, the best 
 blood from its veins, like rain. 
 
 Of course the disaffected, and all those who judge of a cause 
 by its present and visible prosperity, had their day then. How 
 they heaped contempt on the government, and on the man with 
 the strong soul, and simple, child-like heart, at its head the 
 ^i who bore the great burdens of his country through that 
 long uight of her grief and shame, and laid them down just as
 
 228 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 the day he had watched for so long came up in the east, filling 
 all the earth with its new light ! 
 
 When every family in the land talked of the war, of course 
 the Darrylls came in for their share ; and even Ella discussed 
 militai-y affairs and politics with as much fervor as though this 
 was not " something a woman had no business to meddle with." 
 
 The elegant breakfast-table used to witness some warm alter- 
 cations betwixt the various members of the family, Rusha 
 having no reliable support, unless it was Tom, who, in every 
 discussion, manifested a growing tendency towards his elder 
 sister's view of the subject. 
 
 At the close of one of these discussions, which had been un- 
 usually animated and prolonged, all parties having taken some 
 part in it, Ella said, pushing away her coffee cup, 
 
 " Well, now, come to the real point, Rusha, you are not fool 
 enough to expect that the North ever can conquer the South ? " 
 
 Rusha had arisen from the breakfast-table, and leaning one 
 arm on the mantel, rested her head upon it. Her cheeks wore 
 the bright bloom which any excitement always quickened in 
 them ; her brown eyes, their fine, strong fire ; yet the voice 
 which had trembled a moment before, was quiet enough now, as 
 she answered, steadily, 
 
 " Yes, Ella, I am fool enough to believe that, in my soul, just 
 as firmly as I believe that yonder sun will set to-night." 
 
 " Well, such infatuation surpasses my comprehension. I 
 can only say it is amazing ! " answered Ella, with emphatic 
 solemnity. 
 
 " That is simply because you do not see the forces that are 
 on our side 1 " 
 
 " What forces, I should like to know ! I see great armies, 
 that can't, or won't, or don't fight, but lie down there on the 
 banks of the Potomac, inactive through whole seasons. I hear 
 plenty of talk about the inexhaustible resources of the North 
 but you know well enough that 'our men have been beaten mo, 
 than once in fair fight with the enemy." 
 
 " I freely concede it, Ella ; more than once or twice. 
 that does not shake my faith."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 " That's because it's of the same fanatic sort that's driven us 
 into this war faith in our forces, indeed ! " 
 
 " Yes, in the invisible forces of Truth, and Right, and Jus- 
 tice in the eternal God Himself, who rules among the armies 
 of men/' 
 
 " But how do you know He is on our side ; the South think 
 He's on theirs ! " pursued Ella. 
 
 " Simply because He is the God that He is that's how I 
 know." 
 
 Ella did not seem to find any reply to this remark, and after 
 a moment Busha exclaimed, with that quick, passionate transi- 
 tion of tone and manner which inhered in her temperament, 
 
 " It's got to be more than I can bear. I've half a mind to 
 run away ! " 
 
 " What's that now, Busha ? " asked her father. 
 
 " Pa," turning suddenly upon him, " would you like to hear 
 the friend you loved best on earth held up constantly to ridicule, 
 reproach, condemnation, every time his name was spoken ? " 
 
 " Well, no ; I can't say it would be especially agreeable," 
 opening his paper. 
 
 " And I love my Country better than any friend, better than 
 my own life even. I'd go out now and lay that down gladly to 
 help her in this bitter need, and it hurts and harrows my very 
 soul to hear you talk as you do every day. I can't stand it any 
 longer, and I won't ! " 
 
 " I suppose you mean by that, that I shan't have liberty to 
 express my opinions in my own house ! " said Mr. Darryll. 
 
 " No, pa, not that. The house is yours, and of course I can't 
 bridle your tongue ; but, as I said, I can't stand this sort of talk 
 any longer. I can run off, for I'm of age." 
 
 " Where will you go? " laughed Guy. 
 
 " I'll go down to the hospitals, and turn nurse. That will be 
 the best thing I ever did in my life." 
 
 " O, my dear child ! " said her mother, in an alarmed tone. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " muttered her father. Yet he, in common with 
 jst of her family, had a feeling that it would not do to goad 
 20
 
 230 DAHRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 Busha too far, else there was no knowing she might make 
 her threat good. 
 
 " "What is the use of feeling everything you say, Rusha of 
 entering into it heart and soul, as you always do? Now, for 
 my part, I can talk all day without getting excited ; but the 
 most abstract matter seems to you a thing of life and death." 
 
 " That's because she's a finer strung instrument than you, 
 Ella." 
 
 " O, dear ! " a little nettled at this remark of Tom's. " Well, 
 if this ' fine stringing ' throws one into such qualms over a little 
 breakfast-table discussion, I'm devoutly thankful I'm not so deli- 
 cately tuned ! " 
 
 They all laughed at this speech ; but Tom continued, 
 
 " O, Ella, you're bright and witty, and all that, but you can't 
 see through a mill-stone ! " 
 
 No great speech on the surface ; but, after all, it would take a 
 fathom line to sound it. 
 
 On the very same day, as Rusha was returning home from a 
 drive with her mother and Ella, she suddenly caught sight of 
 Dr. Rochford and his sisters, standing on the front steps, and 
 evidently taking leave of a party of friends. Rusha was off the 
 seat with her usual impetuosity. 
 
 " Do stop the carriage ! " she cried out, to the amazement of 
 both ladies. " There are the Rochfords. I would not fail to 
 see them for the world." 
 
 " O, is that it ! " exclaimed Ella, settling herself back resign- 
 edly among the luxurious cushions. " If you can possibly wait 
 for the space of half a minute, we shall' be at home, and avoid 
 the awkwardness of stopping right in the middle of the street." 
 
 Rusha was too much absorbed to care for the irony that 
 lurked in her sister's tones. 
 
 The carriage had hardly drawn up at her own door before 
 she bounded out of it, and sprang across the street, stopping the 
 Rochfords just as they were re-entering the house. The charj 
 acter of her reception afforded ample proof that the physic 
 and his sisters shared Rusha's pleasure at this unexpe 
 meeting.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 231 
 
 Angeliue Rochford's face, to which the young girl's gaze went 
 first, with a thrill of anxious and half-awed interest, looked 
 pale and thin, coming from its long service at the hospitals, but 
 serener and happier than she had ever seen it before, Rusha 
 thought. 
 
 They had entered the parlor now, all in a busy hum of chat- 
 ter, when suddenly the thought of their last parting, and the old, 
 careless, happy life at Berry Plains, swept over Rusha, with the 
 thought, too, of all the shame and agony through which she had 
 passed since that time. The swift rush of memories overcame 
 her. She broke down in the midst of some allusion to that time, 
 and, surprised and ashamed, found herself bursting into tears. 
 
 Of course the Rochfords were acquainted with Andrew's 
 crime, and they understood at once the secret of Rusha's grief; 
 but it was of too delicate a nature to admit of any sympathy, 
 although each one would have given much to be allowed to offer 
 it. In a moment she recovered herself. 
 
 " Do forgive me. It is very weak ; but I was thinking of 
 those beautiful days at Berry Plains, and how happy we all 
 were ; and and what has happened since ! " the husky voice, 
 the refilling eyes, showing the danger of going farther. 
 
 " But I have always found," said the doctor, coming as near 
 to her sorrow as he felt he had any right to do, " that enjoy- 
 ment always failed with me of its highest purpose, if it did 
 not make me stronger to endure." 
 
 She flashed up to him the sudden brightness of her smile. 
 
 " I know what that means. I have never forgotten what 
 you said to me that day by the sea-shore, and afterwards it 
 grew to have a new meaning to me." 
 
 Then she changed the theme from herself, and was full of 
 eager curiosity about the hospitals, and the life there, which 
 her friends were quite? ready to indulge to any extent. 
 
 " I have thought of you sometimes with real envy," she said 
 
 Angeline, " and contrasted my own aimless, selfish life with 
 
 >ur heroic, self-sacrificing one, until I have felt almost ready 
 with shame. I have longed to join you in your work
 
 232 DAEBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 down there ; I'm not very strong, but perhaps I .could be of 
 some use." 
 
 Angeline Rochford looked at the young, fair, delicate girl, 
 and thought of her splendid home, and remembered the awful 
 scenes amid which, as hospital nurse, she was daily called to 
 pass of work which taxed every resource of body and soul 
 to the uttermost. She recalled the ghastly faces, the awful 
 wounds, the writhing forms, the fierce shrieks. What could 
 the dainty girl, sitting there in her costly wrappings of fur and 
 velvet, do among scenes like these? 
 
 " O, child, you don't comprehend you could never stand 
 it ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " You don't know the spirit I am of, Miss Rochford ; " and 
 there flashed up something in Rusha's face, as she said these 
 words, which made the doctor think that " she had the hero- 
 ism in her the heroism that would not fail, though it were 
 called to pass through the dreadful ordeal of the hospitals." 
 
 Afterward they talked far into the day. Angeline Rochford 
 had a world of new experiences to relate, and Rusha was never 
 tired of listening and asking questions. 
 
 It appeared that she was only home on the briefest of visits. 
 Business had summoned the doctor north, and he had insisted 
 on his sister's accompanying him, feeling that her nerves needed 
 a respite from the constant strain which was brought to bear 
 on them, and he was meanwhile making the most of his short 
 visit by earnest appeals among his friends in behalf of the 
 sick and wounded soldiers. 
 
 " O, if pa could only hear you ! " Dr. Rochford, when this 
 fact had somehow leaked out during the conversation. " He 
 grows terribly excited when he gets started off on politics and 
 the general management of the war ; but for all that he has 
 sympathy for the soldiers that I am sure you could reach, if 
 you will come over and talk with him awhile this evening." 
 
 The doctor's engagements were numerous and pressing, bul 
 Rusha's earnestness prevailed, and she went away with hjfl 
 promise to give them half an hour that evening.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 233 
 
 " Fletcher," said Sicily, after Rusha had disappeared, " her 
 father's wealth isn't going to spoil that girl." 
 
 " I think not. This last sharp grief has wrought a great 
 change in her. I see it in her face I feel it in the tones of 
 her voice even." 
 
 " Poor girl ! " added Angeline, " how my heart did ache for 
 her when she burst into those tears ! I understood what lay at 
 the bottom of them. It must be a terrible thing to have a 
 brother disgrace one ! " throwing a glance of fond pride in the 
 direction of Fletcher. 
 
 " There are no griefs which strike down to the quick of one's 
 love and pride like these family disgraces. It seems hard that 
 our growth should be attained through these bitter trials. God 
 help us all," answered Dr. Rochford, thinking how our common 
 humanity needed just that prayer. 
 
 He was faithful to his promise ; and it happened that he met 
 the whole Darryll family in his call that evening. Fletcher 
 Rochford's soul was fired with one purpose during his visit 
 home, and this was to rouse his countrymen into a sym- 
 pathy which should take some form of practical benevolence 
 for the wounded and dying soldiers in the Washington hos- 
 pitals. 
 
 Possessing naturally rare graces of speech, the man's whole 
 soul was now stirred into an eloquence and pathos which, it 
 seemed, must move stones themselves, as he depicted the har- 
 rowing and melting, the sublime and touching scenes through 
 which he had so lately passed. 
 
 During that call he held every one of the Dairy 11s spell- 
 bound. Agnes leaned her head on her mother's shoulder, and 
 sobbed like a child, as she listened to the heart-rending stories, 
 and each of her brothers coughed suspiciously behind^ their 
 pocket-handkerchiefs. 
 
 Even Ella was lifted quite out of herself into the grand swell 
 ' new emotions of awe and pity ; and John Darryll forgot the 
 government and his grumbling, and felt something akin to the 
 stern joy of sacrifice and heroism. 
 20*
 
 234 [ DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 When the doctor ceased, Mrs. Darryll spoke with unusual 
 decision, 
 
 " Father, you must do something for those men. What if it 
 was one of our boys now ! " and she thought of Andrew. 
 
 "Yes, pa," said the children's voices, one and all. "You 
 must do something right off for those men." 
 
 John Darryll made no answer, but he went to the light, took 
 out his pen, and wrote a moment ; then he handed Dr. Rochford 
 a slip of paper. 
 
 " There is my check for a thousand dollars." 
 
 This substantial tribute to the doctor's eloquence was the 
 strongest possible proof of the power which it had exercised 
 over John Darryll. 
 
 When the doctor was gone, Rusha walked over to her father, 
 and put her soft cheek down on his hair, 
 
 " O, you are a dear, good father !" she said, " the best father 
 in all the world ! " 
 
 " Yes, John, I must say that was generous in you," added 
 her mother ; " but I'm glad over every cent of it." 
 
 " So am I," subjoined Ella, forgetful for once of the dresses 
 and jewels about which her thoughts and imaginations did so 
 delight to flower. 
 
 Such sort of praise, in the bosom of his own family, was 
 something quite new to John Darryll, and it must be confessed, 
 very pleasant, and, added to the novel satisfaction he experi- 
 enced in a really generous act, he was in an unusually affable 
 mood for that evening. 
 
 Tom and Rusha, by some secret law of affinity, soon found 
 themselves a little apart from the others. 
 
 " What a wonderful talker the doctor is ! " exclaimed the 
 former. " I never had anything fire me up so in my whole 
 life." * 
 
 " And when one thinks of that fair, sweet, delicate Angeline 
 Rochford passing her days among such awful scenes ! Anc 
 yet, Tom, I envied her the serene peace of her face the face, 
 it seemed to me, that had grown like an angel's ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 235 
 
 Tom mused a moment without speaking. Then he looked up, 
 
 " Rusha, when one hears of a woman like that going out 
 from her home, and sacrificing every ease and comfort of life, 
 it puts a fellow like me to shame." 
 
 " It puts me to shame," added Rusha. 
 
 " Did you hear, too, about that young fellow that lost his 
 arm ? He was not so old as I, either ! " 
 
 Suddenly she comprehended the drift of his remark. She 
 caught him by the arm, 
 
 " O, Tom, you must not think of that I They want older 
 and stronger men than you." 
 
 It was natural so very natural that it should seem to her 
 that he was the last one to go ; and yet it must have seemed 
 very much like this to every woman who gave her husband, her 
 son, her brother to the war. 
 
 Tom did not answer, but stood there, with an unusually se- 
 rious expression on his young face. 
 
 With a quick instinct that it was wisest to change the sub- 
 ject, Rusha said to him the first thing which entered her mind. 
 
 " So you think Dr. Rochford a wonderful man, do you?" 
 
 Tom roused himself. 
 
 " Yes ; what do you think of him, Rusha?" 
 
 " O, a great many things all of them good." 
 
 Tom looked at her with a little smile growing on his lip, and 
 a thought behind the smile. 
 
 " Do you remember, Rusha, what I said to you last summer 
 at Saratoga that I knew one man in the world whom you 
 would like?" 
 
 " Yes, I do, Tom, and how the remark surprised me. You 
 promised to tell me who that man was some time ! " 
 
 " I should think you would be good enough Yankee to guess, 
 after this evening ! " 
 
 She did ; he saw that, the next moment, by the sudden thrill 
 of color in her face. 
 
 " What can have put that idea into your head, Tom ? " she 
 asked, with a laugh.
 
 236 DAREYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Well, wasn't it true, now? Come, own up ! " 
 
 Her answer went a long ways aside from the question, and 
 was delivered with an oracular solemnity that was amusing. 
 
 " Tom, I have pretty much made up my mind that I shall 
 never be married." 
 
 " O, that's because the right fellow hasn't come along. Girls 
 always talk so," his tone slightly unsympathetic. 
 
 "And I don't think he will be very likely to. Looking 
 abroad in the world, I see the women who have the loftiest and 
 finest ideals of your sex, of manly nobleness, and gentleness, 
 and loyalty, find them where most beautiful things are found 
 in poems and stories." 
 
 " But, after all, that isn't an answer to my question ! " perti- 
 naciously returning to the first charge. 
 
 But he did not succeed in getting any more definite one from 
 Rush a that night.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 237 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 SOME weeks after Dr. Rochford's brief visit to New York, 
 Rusha and Ella Darryll attended a large party. The lat- 
 ter was, of course, in her element dancing, playing, flirting 
 with her various admirers, and always having a train of these 
 wherever she moved. She was looking uncommonly well that 
 evening, too. The excitement of a party always gave that 
 peculiar sparkle and brilliancy to eyes and cheek which brought 
 out her beauty to the finest advantage. 
 
 With Rusha it was entirely different. She did not keep her 
 best face for parties ; indeed, it was quite apt to wear there its 
 dreariest, coldest look, and in consequence, Ella often passed 
 for far the handsomer of the two sisters, which in reality she 
 was not. 
 
 Something, made up of all the influences of the place, the 
 music, the crowd, the flashing of lights, the hum of voices, the 
 glare of splendor, grated harshly on Rusha's mood that even- 
 ing. That gloom, and dreariness, that general sinking of soul, 
 which she had so pathetically described to Tom, swept its cold 
 tide over her now. 
 
 Wearied and disgusted with the frivolous chatter of a group 
 of young gentlemen and ladies among which she had been 
 thrown, Rusha managed to detach herself from her company 
 and ensconce herself on an ottoman, where, with her face locked 
 up in a strange stillness, and a little paler than usual, she looked 
 out on the scene. 
 
 " What a miserable farce life was ! " she said to herself. 
 " Just as pitiable as the scene before her, where the faces were 
 all masks, hiding heartaches and burnings underneath ; hiding 
 worse than that petty ambitions, and. small jealousies, aud 
 envies, and hatreds.
 
 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " What did all these people make of life ; what heroisms 
 exalted, what purposes sanctified it ; what outlooks did they 
 ever take into that eternity that was closing them in on every 
 side, and that so surely as there was a God in heaven who 
 could not lie, held such close and long relations with time? 
 What right had they to be in the world wasting their time on 
 such miserable frivolities what right had she, indeed, to be 
 here, who was no better than they, only a mere discontented 
 dreamer ? 
 
 " After all, she didn't see that she could make anything better 
 out of life than these people whom she despised. What was 
 the use of struggling against her fate? Perhaps the best thing 
 was to get up and return to her party, and join in the pretty, 
 shallow talk that really went no deeper than a parrot's." 
 
 Then she wished that she knew some true, noble souls of 
 men or women that she could sit and listen to some stimula- 
 tive, inspiring talk from warm, earnest, helpful natures. Then 
 she thought of the Rochfords ; of Angeline, with the hair 
 tucked smoothly behind her ears, and that sweet, delicate face 
 of hers underneath. It was probably bending over some sick 
 man's couch at that moment. She saw the long room with the 
 ghastly lights, and the rows of hospital beds, just as Angeline 
 Rochford had described them to her. 
 
 " And sometimes," she had said, " they will lift up their 
 heads and look at me, an indescribable look, as my dress brushes 
 past, and murmur, ' God bless you,' and the words seem the 
 sweetest I ever heard in my life." 
 
 There was a strange little quiver about Rusha's mouth as 
 she remembered this. If anybody that she had soothed or 
 helped would only look up in her face and say just those 
 words ! 
 
 Then again she thought of Andrew, and the old hot pain of 
 that awful night when they first learned his crime, came back 
 to her, making her wince with a sudden stricture about her 
 heart. What was he doing that night, she wondered, in the 
 strange, far-off", wicked city to which his sin had driven him ! 
 Perhaps it was as well that she did not know.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 239 
 
 The cloud, the lights, the press of her thoughts, gave her a 
 sudden sense of suffocation. Leaning back, with a little gasp 
 for breath, her eyes fell upon a painting opposite a painting 
 with some strong, weird life, and joy of freedom in it that ap- 
 pealed strangely to her mood just then, although at any time 
 the fierce power of the whole scene must have thrilled her. 
 
 It was night, on a kind of wild, barren plain, or moor. 
 Overhead, great, desolate, wrathful clouds rushed to and fro. 
 Over all the wide moor, with its matting of grayish-green grass, 
 there was a fierce riot of winds.* What a strong joy there was 
 in the spirit of the whole picture, as the winds trampled and 
 beat the gray tresses of grass ! On one side of the plain stood 
 a solitary tree. The storm tore into it, clutching at the boughs, 
 tearing away its handful of leaves in awful wrath. Just beyond 
 was an emigrant wagon. The wind had caught up a single 
 fold of the white canvas, and fluttered it triumphantly in the air. 
 
 A woman, with a baby in her arms, looked out of one side 
 of the wagon on the night, with a chill of terror in her face. 
 On the other side a man sat, trying to guide the horse in the 
 teeth of the wind, his whole expression concentrated in one of 
 grim resolution ; evidently he was just that sort of stuff of 
 which pioneers are made. 
 
 The sight of that picture was like a rush of strong, fresh 
 breeze into Rusha's thought. It seemed to carry her out on 
 the wild swell of its dark and stormy spirit away from all 
 the glare, and vanity, and hollow falseness of the scene around 
 her, into its own wild, riotous freedom. She envied the man 
 and woman out there alone on the stormy moor, with no roof 
 but that canvas one. 
 
 In the midst of all this Ella's laugh broke close at hand 
 Ella's light, pleasant laugh, with some feeling in it Rusha 
 could not determine just what. 
 
 A voice followed it " Now, really, Miss Darryll, will you 
 refuse me so small a favor, Avhen your doing so will spoil the 
 evening's pleasure for me ? " 
 
 |f***O, dear! that miserable Derrick Howe again!" thought 
 Rusha.
 
 240 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Mr. Howe, you certainly have the most wonderful art of 
 saying what you do not mean one who did not know better 
 might really think you were in earnest," answered Ella, with 
 pretty coquetries of fan and bouquet. 
 
 " Think I was in earnest ! Do you really suggest that I am 
 otherwise ? " asked the young man, as though his life depended 
 upon Ella's opinion. 
 
 Again that light, pleasant giggle of laughter. 
 
 " Of course I do, Mr. Howe ; else you might possibly induce 
 me to break my word and grant your petition it being one 
 of my weaknesses never to know how to refuse people." 
 
 "What does that fool want of Ella?" thought Rusha, sur- 
 prised and annoyed at the whole spirit of the interview, and 
 feeling certain that if Ella knew who was sitting close behind 
 her, speech and manner towards her companion would undergo 
 a sudden transition. 
 
 " Then, Miss Darryll, let me make one appeal to that tender 
 corner of your nature, and if you believe that I was ever in 
 earnest that I ever spoke a truthful word in my life, or that 
 I hold my honor dearer than that life, believe me now." 
 
 Young ladies said that Derrick Howe had an " irresistible 
 way " with him. Whatever power or graces he possessed, he 
 brought them all to bear now in tone and glance. 
 
 Both evidently had an effect on Ella. There was more talk 
 of this sort, more coquettish dallying with glove, and fan, and 
 bouquet, and at last it transpired that all this sentimental non- 
 sense turned upon a rose-bud which Derrick Howe had besought 
 of Ella, and that young lady had refused to grant him. 
 
 But he gained his point at last. Ella's vanity and love of 
 admiration were too strongly flattered not to yield in the end, 
 these being the weaknesses of her sex, on which Derrick Howe 
 had learned to play so skilfully. She reached over her bouquet 
 to him, saying, 
 
 " I can't break my word, Mr. Howe ; but if you take th 
 flower, why, of course, you are responsible." 
 
 He selected the half-blossomed rose, and transferred it tc
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 241 
 
 button-hole of his coat with arTair that plainly said the flower 
 was to him the most important thing in all the world. Then 
 he drew a little nearer to his companion, and dropped his tone 
 slightly, w*ith a kiud of tender earnestness in it. 
 
 " Miss Darryll," he said, " I have been waiting, for months, 
 for an opportunity which circumstances have not afforded me 
 until now." 
 
 " An opportunity for what, Mr. Howe ? " inquired the lady, 
 with an interest that was not simulated this time. 
 
 " Simply to inquire whether I had been so unfortunate as to 
 offend you inadvertently ? " 
 
 " O, no, certainly not," said Ella, with an emphasis which 
 added fuel to several emotions that were battling in the soul of 
 her sister at that time. 
 
 " And yet pardon me if it had proceeded from any 
 other source, I should not probably have given it a second 
 thought but I cannot be deceived here. There has been for 
 a loug time some slight constraint in your manner, and it seemed 
 to me a reluctance to accept any small attentions from me, 
 though your kindness of heart might not allow you absolutely 
 to decline them. I have, indeed, of late, refrained from calling 
 at your house, lest my visits should be an intrusion." 
 
 Ella's fingers fluttered irresolutely among her flowers, the light 
 of her diamond rings flashing and wavering along the motion. 
 
 " O, Ella, Ella, be careful ! " murmured Rusha away down 
 in her heart. 
 
 " Mr. Howe," said the soft voice at last, " I wish you would 
 be content with my assurance that I am not offended with you, 
 and for anything you may have observed in my conduct I am 
 not responsible for it." 
 
 But forgive me again ; it is a matter of too much impor- 
 tance on my part to be let go so easily what is this shadow 
 that has come betwixt us this something that stopped our 
 friendly correspondence so suddenly, and that has been to me a 
 subject of serious thought for more hours than you will be like- 
 ly to suspect ? " 
 
 21
 
 242 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Ella's fair face drooped irresolutely behind her fan. 
 
 " Do be frank with me now, Miss Darryll," pleaded Derrick 
 Howe, in his most beguiling tones. " It is my right to know." 
 
 There was a little hesitancy. Ella evidently was seeking for 
 the smoothest way in which to put a disagreeable fact. Rusha 
 was on the very point of springing up and hurling the truth at 
 him without any mollification, but the time and place held her 
 back. 
 
 " Papa is a man of very strong and sometimes unreasonable 
 prejudices and and Mr. Howe, do excuse me from the 
 rest," her embarrassment partly feigned, partly real, but certain- 
 ly very pretty. 
 
 " I see," answered Derrick Howe. " I have incurred Mr. 
 Darryll's dislike. Whatever may be his grounds for it, I trust 
 they exist neither in my name nor my family," a little shade of 
 pompousness in his manner, for these were Derrick Howe's 
 strong or weak points, as they are apt to be with men or women 
 whose capital in life is the wealth or the influence of their 
 progenitors. 
 
 " O, the coxcomb ! " thought Rusha. But he did not ap- 
 pear to strike her sister in this light. 
 
 " O, nothing of that sort, Mr. Howe ! That, of course, in 
 your case, would be quite impossible. But papa's prejudices 
 are, as I said, as unreasonable as they are strong, and his 
 family have no choice but to submit." 
 
 And Ella looked the submissive, and amiable, and oppressed 
 daughter, to a degree that her sister, familiar with her imperi- 
 ous style at home, would hardly have conceived possible. 
 
 " Deeply as I regret the fact of Mr. Darryll's dislike, and ab- 
 solutely certain as I am that nothing in my own life or character 
 can afford him the slightest ground for this, still, if I can once 
 be .assured that his daughter in no wise shares her father's feel- 
 ing, the keenest pang of all will have been spared me." 
 
 " O, then you maybe absolutely assured, so far as that goes,'* 
 voice, smile, and glance of Ella Darryll adding their threefold 
 weight to this remark.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 243 
 
 At that moment supper was announced. Derrick Howe gave 
 his arm to Ella, and the two rnoved towards the dining-room, a 
 handsome pair certainly. 
 
 The numb, dreary feeling which had held possession of Rusha 
 a shoi*t time before, was succeeded now by some strong emotion, 
 with a live nerve of pain smiting all through it. 
 
 Amazement, alarm, indignation, were forces about equally 
 balanced in her thoughts. As for Derrick Howe, she did not 
 give him credit for a particle of sincerity in the whole interview. 
 She believed that he was merely testing his power over Ella 
 Darryll, and that he would hug his self-love at this fresh proof 
 of his influence over another young and fascinating woman. 
 
 But when it came to Ella, her emotion was a compound one. 
 She believed here, too, that love of admiration had been the un- 
 derlying motive of all her sister's coquetries with Derrick Howe ; 
 still she could not have gone so far unless she had taken some 
 especial interest in the gentleman. And here the pang smote 
 swift and sharp, for Rusha, with her strong, clear, native truth- 
 fulness, could not help seeing that Ella had deceived her. She 
 had most positively avowed to her an indifference towards Der- 
 rick Howe, which, unless she was a downright liar, you know 
 Rusha was not of that sort of material that minces and smooths 
 over the truth, she was far from feeling. 
 
 Flirtations, coquetries, all sorts of little arts, Rusha expected 
 of Ella ; indeed, as the world went, she was not disposed to be 
 hard on her for these, thinking nobody would be very much 
 harmed by them ; but the whole sentiment of the conversation 
 
 which she luul just listened, implied a great deal on both 
 jides that the words did not. 
 
 |She was angered, too, for her father's sake. Not that John 
 Darryll would have been unwilling that Derrick Howe should 
 know just the place he occupied in the former's opinion, but Ella 
 $bad implied that her father was severe and tyrannical, and that 
 ^he was under mortal restraint, which latter was as far as pos- 
 sible from the truth. So jealousy for her father's honor nddi-<l 
 new fuel to the flame of Rusha's indignation an indignation 

 
 244 DABRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 that was only biding its time to come down heavily on Ella's 
 head, while beyond this, and deeper than Rusha was conscious 
 at the time, the hurt went. For Ella had turned a 'new side to 
 her sister that night. Rusha could never trust her as she had 
 done. Hereafter there must lurk a doubt and a fear of Ella's 
 truthfulness, whether of deed or word, in her sister's mind. ^ 
 
 All these thoughts were at work within her as the crowds 
 swept by towards the supper-room. She sat there all the 
 light and glow of her face quenched, a still face, wearing a pale, 
 sort of locked-up look ! What a contrast from the radiant 
 gayety of Ella's at that moment ! 
 
 A gentleman, passing at the time, observed her ; a mar- 
 ried man, almost her father's age, and one of his business 
 acquaintances. 
 
 Some gentleman had appropriated the other's wife for the sup- 
 per, and seeing Rusha unattended, he paused, and offered her 
 his arm. She took it mechanically, and strove to bring her 
 thoughts back to the time and occasion, playing with some 
 thrums and ends of thoughts in order to entertain her companion , 
 a bald-headed, rubicund-faced man, a kindly soul enough, but of 
 the hard, practical sort just one to make Rusha's mood grim-f 
 mer than ever. 
 
 The truth was, she was half desperate when she got amongst 
 that buzzing crowd again, and listened to the commonplaces 
 which her cavalier dealt out to her with cream and cake. 
 He was not particularly graceful in this new office, and managed 
 to jostle her cup of coffee, so that a few drops fell on her divs.s, 
 at which the poor man was evidently distressed. 
 
 " No matter," said Rusha ; " there are darker stains here, and 
 on finer stuff, too, to-night." 
 
 " To what do you allude, Miss Darryll I have noH 
 them?" asked the rubicund-faced gentleman, glancing around 
 on the company, with an expression compounded of blank ness 
 and amazement. 
 
 " They are on all our souls," answered Rusha, with a grim 
 look about her mouth, " black and deep, and not all the pei 
 fumes of Araby can wash them out ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 245 
 
 ^^^ stare of amazement and alarm with which her cavalier 
 greeted this speech of Rusha's, struck her so ludicrously that 
 she laughed outright a laugh keyed half to amusement, half to 
 bitterness, and in no wise calculated to lessen the gentleman's 
 bewilderment. 
 
 KI beg your pardon, sir," she said, beginning to realize 
 ^K impression she was creating. " A hidden thought of mine 
 slipped out then. I suppose we should all startle each other if 
 ^Kwere to bring, at this moment, our secret feelings to the 
 0t." 
 
 gentleman made some conventional reply. He evidently 
 
 not sound Rusha's thought, and she went on, seeking to 
 
 ^eem herself by talking of ordinary matters. That she did 
 K( wholly succeed, was apparent by the gentleman's remark, a 
 Kile later, to a friend of his, a gorgeously attired matron, who 
 Ks sipping coffee, and chatting with his wife. 
 
 ^Isn't that eldest daughter of Mr. Darryll somewhat pe- 
 Kar?" 
 
 ft Well, it does strike me," answered the lady, conspicuous in 
 old laces, " that I have heard she was something of a blue- 
 stocking." 
 
 " Ah, that explains it ! " exclaimed the gentleman, with a 
 tone of satisfied conviction. 
 
 " What a shocking affair that matter of Andrew's was ! " con- 
 tinued the lady, in a complacent undertone the Darrylls' name 
 having struck a new key-note of gossip. " I never supposed they 
 could bear up under it so well." i 
 
 Poor Rusha it was her fate to be misunderstood. 
 
 Some time after midnight the Darrylls' carriage arrived, and 
 Ella came to her sister in the dressing-room, all in a flutter. 
 
 " Who accompanies you home to-night?" 
 
 Rusha mentioned the name of the gentleman who, a few mo- 
 ments ago, had " solicited that honor." 
 
 Had Ella been less preoccupied she would have observed that 
 ister's manner indicated, to use the former's metaphor, " a 
 storm brewing." 
 
 21*
 
 246 DAERTLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Well, you just go on without me. I have agreed to drive 
 home with some friends." 
 
 Ordinarily, Rusha would not have given this intelligen^^H 
 second thought, but her suspicions were alert now, and it st rlH 
 her, as Ella lightly vanished, that the latter had made a surS 
 titious engagement to drive home with Derrick Howe. E 
 pulse seemed on fire at the suggestion. 
 
 " I will frustrate that plan, at any cost," she said, setting* 
 teeth hard ; and, with her determination taken on this point,J 
 descended the stairs. 
 
 When she arrived at the carriage door, she declined enterj 
 it, saying to the gentleman who offered to assist her, 
 
 " Thank you. I shall wait here for my sister." 
 
 He wondered that she had not done so in the dressing-rooM 
 but begged her pardon, adding, " I supposed she was not to riijfl 
 with us ; " and so they stood there on the pavement, chattiB 
 gayly for the next five minutes. 
 
 At last Ella, supposing that their own carriage had disj 
 peared, and the way was clear, came out. Rusha was rim 
 Derrick Howe was by her side. She sprang forward, and 1 
 the amazed couple on the lowest step. 
 
 " Ella," she said, quietly, laying her hand on her sis 
 arm, " we have been waiting for you. You had better return 
 in our own carriage to-night." 
 
 Derrick Howe flattered himself on his thorough self-posses- 
 sion ; but, for once, he was confounded. 
 
 Ella stood irresolute, too thoroughly taken by surpris' 
 speak a word. Of course it would not do to desert the 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Miss Darryll, but your sister has t 
 me the pleasure of accompanying her home," an.swerec' 
 blandest tones, the voice of Derrick Howe. 
 
 " Then I am compelled to tell you, Mr. Howe, that si 
 at the risk of her father's displeasure, and that, with Ids- 
 edge, she would not have dared give you this promise^ 
 Ella." 
 
 Derrick Howe was dumfounded. There was not another
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 247 
 
 woman in the world who would have presumed to defy him to 
 in that fashion. He who fancied that the house and 
 of John Darryll ought to regard themselves as im- 
 honored by his attention he, Derrick Howe, with his 
 ition, and his ancestry ! What could he do ? He could not 
 knock down the fair, brave girl standing there ! It was a los- 
 ^K game. As for Ella, she was so overwhelmed betwixt dis- 
 ^wery and her sister's courage, that the imperious girl was, for 
 once, utterly subdued. 
 
 Mfeusha, too, had an immense force on her side, for Derrick 
 was one of those matters on which even Ella dared not 
 her father's anger. 
 W" I think I had better return with my sister. Good night, 
 Hr. Howe ; " and she turned towards the carriage more crest- 
 Kllen than Ella Darryll had ever been in her life.
 
 248 DAEBYLL GAP, OB 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 BY the time the carriage reached home, Ella DarrylPs raS 
 was at white heat. For the first time in her life she had beejpE 
 cowed into submission, and that, too, by her sister. 
 
 This reflection was a most galling one to her pride, and thj 
 latter was greatly exasperated by the fact that Derrick IIowJ 
 had been a witness of her discomfiture. Indeed, she was for t 
 moment so stung with shame and wrath at the whole thing as 
 to lose all thought of her father, who was a force that Rush 
 could at any moment summon to her aid. The truth was, t 
 imperious girl was amazed at herself, and at the power bef< 
 which her spirit had for once quailed. 
 
 The sisters ascended the stairs without speaking a word, 
 there was a storm seething in Ella's soul, which broke out 
 moment Rusha and herself were inside the chamber. 
 
 " Rusha Darryll, how dare you insult me as you did t 
 night?" 
 
 " Ella Darryll, how dare you say what you know you have 
 this night?" The voice not without agitation, but still, hearing 
 it, you would somehow have felt that the moral force was on the 
 side of this speaker. 
 
 " Will you explain what you mean and then I'm read} 
 answer you ? " 
 
 " Simply that I heard every word you and Derrick HOT 
 to each other in the drawing-room before supper. If you hud 
 just taken the trouble to look around, you would have found me 
 close by you on a corner of the sofa ! " 
 
 Had a bombshell burst at Ella's ears, she could hardly have 
 been more amazed. It gave Rusha an immense adva^B 
 the outset ; but passion for the moment swept downH 

 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 249 
 
 , current every other feeling with Ella Darryll. It made her 
 
 |despei*ate. 
 
 I " I don't care if you did. What business of yours was it?" 
 I " I think it was decidedly business of mine, when I heard his 
 own child turn against my father, and this, too, before that mis- 
 erable man, Derrick Howe," her voice reaching its climax of 
 
 Bscorn in that name. 
 [ " Rusha Darryll, that is a base lie ! " 
 . " We will leave others to decide that question, Ella. I can 
 
 [repeat the conversation word for word, and I think there will be 
 no doubt in the mind of any unprejudiced auditor that it is I 
 who speak the truth," her voice growing steadfast as the other's 
 grew fierce. 
 
 Ella's next speech leaped away from this point, as blind pas- 
 
 fBion is apt to do, to the one which was prominent in her own 
 thoughts : 
 
 I *' One thing is certain ; I shall hate you, Rusha Darryll, to 
 the last day of my life, for what you did to-night ! " 
 [. " I cannot help it, Ella. I should do the very same thing 
 again under the same circumstances." 
 
 Of course, talk of this sort could not go on forever. Ella's 
 accusations and anathemas, dashing themselves fiercely as they 
 might, against Rusha's determination, could not move her. She 
 knew where she stood, and it was evident that she had the best 
 of the argument. 
 
 With each reply Ella felt her ground giving way ; and when 
 Rusha said at last, 
 
 r; - " Well, there is no use in degrading both of ourselves by 
 going on in this way any longer. The question comes straight 
 down to this ' What do you intend to do in the future with 
 regard to Derrick Howe ? ' ' 
 
 "Just what I please. I shall not certainly submit to any 
 dictation from you iu respect to my conduct," the tone still del 
 anUenough, but it was that of one who felt the props swaying 
 beneath her. 
 
 "Very well, then, there is no more to be said. My c 
 
 is clear enough."
 
 250 DABRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 " I suppose I am to receive that as a threat. You do take A 
 high airs on yourself, Rusha Darryll ! " 
 
 Ella sneered through this speech ; but, after all, the sneeringjl 
 was a failure. 
 
 " You are simply to take it as I mean that to-morrow 1 ^ 
 morning I shall put the whole thing out of my hands by telling I 
 pa everything that has occurred to-night everything, Ella." 
 
 Ella Darryll was a proud girl, and her temper had flamed* 
 into such passion that night, as it had never done before. In-1 
 deed, her provocation had been great, and perhaps her sister's 
 conduct in the matter had not been altogether judicious. But ^ 
 as her anger cooled, the girl began to realize her position, and 
 it was certainly an unpleasant one. 
 
 John Darryll could be managed and defied in a good many J 
 ways ; but when it came to possible husbands for his daughters, 
 he was inflexible, and there was no one of the " hangers ou,"l 
 as he contemptuously termed most of the daintily-gloved gentl&B 
 men who aspired to be Ella's lovers, for whom he had conceiveoH 
 so hearty an aversion as for Derrick Howe. 
 
 Rusha's story would, of course, only make the man furious^ 
 and there would not be one of her family who would not side with 
 him ; so Ella would have to take the brunt of his anger alone. 
 
 Whatever influence Derrick Howe might have acquired over | 
 Ella, Rusha saw that it was not, at this time, strong enough toJ 
 inspire her to any great sacrifice for his sake, and that woundedfl 
 pride and self-love, not regard for him, had been at the bo 
 torn of her anger. This preception caused at once a revul- 
 sion in her feelings ; so, without waiting for Ella's reply, sha" 
 burst out, affording her sister the first advantage she had done 
 that night. 
 
 " O, Ella, has that miserable, conceited, worthless creature 
 made all this trouble betwixt us ? Do you can you care for 
 him?" 
 
 "You are all so prejudiced against him nobody else dis- 
 likes him nobody else sees him in the light that you do ; " and 
 here she broke out into a fit of sullen sobbing.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 251 
 
 You know how quick Rusha's feelings were touched they 
 were a harp on which a, cunning hand could always play skil- 
 fully ; though, to do Ella justice, there was no thought of that 
 in her tears : they were the natural reaction of overstrained feel- 
 ing ; but the sight of them moved Rusha. 
 
 " If I could only know," she said, in a doubtful, distressed 
 tone, " that you did not really care for the man. And yet how 
 can I believe it after what I heard to-night ? " 
 
 " You make a great matter out of a little flirting, Rusha." 
 
 " No, Ella," her voice gaining steadiness, " it was not flirting. 
 J know the difference. The spirit of the whole interview im- 
 plied something beyond that something on which any man 
 would have a right to found any hopes he pleased. You know, 
 as well as I, that all your tones and looks to-night afforded Der- 
 rick HoAve reason to believe that you O, I can't think of the 
 whole thing. It's too galling ! " her voice breaking out into an- 
 gry impetuosity again, as was very likely to be the case with 
 Rusha Darryll. 
 
 Ella said nothing, but sobbed and sobbed on drearily, sitting 
 there in her elegant dress, and neither the sight nor the sound 
 was pleasant to her sister. 
 
 At last Rusha rose, and paced up and down the chamber. It 
 was her old habit in any excitement, whether of joy or distress. 
 Now her face had the perplexed, anxious look which blurred 
 out half its youth. 
 
 " I wish I knew what to do in this matter." 
 
 She did not know she had spoken out her thoughts, thus giv- 
 ing Ella the key to her new frame of mind, for Rusha was 
 doubting within herself now, whether it was her duty to carry 
 ;the whole matter to her father; and the prospect of this grew 
 appalling to Ella in just the proportion that her passion abated. 
 
 At last Rusha turned suddenly, and stood still before her 
 sister. 
 
 >, Ella, is there to be any new trouble in our family after 
 have gone through so lately after all that !' 
 sure I don't want to make any," sobbed Ella, dread of
 
 252 DAERYLL GAP, OB 
 
 consequences and the knowledge of the decision that was pend- 
 ing in Rusha's mind quite subduing her replies. 
 
 There came another pause, during which Rusha stood still, 
 looking at her sister ; and the looking helped Ella's cause. 
 
 " Ella," she said at last, the steadiness in her voice a little 
 broken up with some lingering tenderness, " you cannot tell how 
 my whole soul shrinks from making any fresh division in our 
 family, or having any new root of bitterness springing up to 
 trouble us. But for all that, if I see my duty plain before me, 
 I shall not shrink from doing it." 
 
 " What duty ? " asked Ella, although she understood perfectly 
 what her sister meant. 
 
 " The duty of laying the whole matter before pa to-morrow 
 morning, and arresting the consequences of your own folly be- 
 fore it is too late." 
 
 " You talk as though I was engaged, or ready to elope with 
 Derrick Howe any moment ! " added Ella, growing indignant. 
 
 " No, I don't ; but I am afraid of the man, and one dreadful 
 lesson has taught me to sift things to the bottom, with those I 
 love and would save. And much as I dislike Derrick Howe, I 
 must admit that he has some ' witchcraft of art,' some personal 
 magnetism, which gives him a certain power over my sex. I 
 tremble when I see you are drawn into it, and long to drag 
 you away as I would from fire or death." 
 
 " Fire or death ! O, Rusha ! " 
 
 " Yes, I repeat it. I would rather see you in your grave 
 than that man's wife ! " 
 
 " Why, you talk as though he were the prince of villains ! " 
 
 " I do not mean that, but I do mean that I regard Derrick 
 Howe as a man without honor" or principle of any sort. I be- 
 lieve him selfish to the core that he never knew the thrill of ; 
 one generous feeling, or was ever governed in his life by a sin- 
 gle worthy motive. I know that to tickle his miserable self- 
 love, he would not hesitate a moment to win the heart of any 
 woman, and then break it without a pang of remorse. He hi9 
 no respect for womanhood no idol but himself. He is iuca-
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 253 
 
 pable of any other affection, and as for truth, honor, goodness, 
 I know that in his secret soul he sneers at all these things as 
 at some old wives' fable." 
 
 " I think you are hard on him, Rusha ; but, whether you are 
 or not, I heartily wish I'd never seen the fellow ! " and a little 
 impressed by all her sister had said, and indignant with him 
 for all the trouble he had made her, for she was of an ease- 
 loving nature in all respects, Ella really meant what she said 
 at the moment. 
 
 There was a flash of joy on Rusha's face. 
 
 " O, Ella, if I knew you would always feel like that, then 
 the matter need never be spoken of betwixt us again." 
 
 Each was in a temper of mind now to reason calmly with 
 the other, which could not have been the case without the pre- 
 vious explosion. 
 
 " What is it that you are so afraid of with regard to me and 
 Derrick Howe ? Do you think he is flirting with me, and seek- 
 ing to draw me on to love him, simply to show his power, or 
 that the fellow really has serious intentions?" 
 
 " I don't feel assured," answered Rusha, reflectively. " I 
 know that he has assumed just that air, and smiled just that 
 way, upon a thousand women," quite losing sight of the bitter 
 pill this must be to her haughty sister's self-love. " But your 
 father's money would throw a heavy weight into the scales in 
 your favor." 
 
 " There are many rich fathers who would be glad to have 
 Derrick Howe their son-in-law," said Ella. 
 
 That there was truth in this, Rusha could not deny, but Ella's 
 cause was not served by her sister's partial admission of the 
 fact. 
 
 " Well, if it be as you say, then Derrick Howe will certainly 
 marry the lady who can bring him the largest fortune, or the 
 best position. You may be settled on that point." 
 
 Ella said nothing, unless her looks made a faint protest. 
 
 " But, Ella, we are wasting words. I have a final proposi- 
 tion to make." 
 
 22
 
 254 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Well, say on." 
 
 " You must solemnly promise me that from this hour you 
 will utterly renounce all acquaintance with Derrick Howe, be- 
 yond the most formal recognition, Avhen this is unavoidable 
 that you will, under no circumstances, accept any courtesies, or 
 enter into any conversation with him you must pledge your- 
 self to all this, or " She paused a little, almost startled at 
 the authoritativeness of her tones. 
 
 It must have been humiliating enough to her haughty sister 
 to hear them, but beyond loomed her father's wrath. 
 
 " Go on," and Ella set her teeth. 
 
 " Or I shall go at once to pa with the whole. If my terms 
 seem hard, what I have witnessed this evening justifies them. 
 There must be no tampering with danger in a matter where all 
 your future may be at stake. So, Ella, this is my ultimatum ! " 
 
 Ella waited a moment. " When Mr. Howe sees me, he will 
 certainly insist on an explanation of your conduct to-night, and 
 as a lady I ought not to refuse to give it." 
 
 " Send him to me : I will take all the responsibility. O, 
 Ella, you do not care for you are not in love with this man ! " 
 a quick fear alive in her voice again. 
 
 " No ; and never shall be," answered the young lady with an 
 emphasis which was half anger ; but it must be admitted in 
 her defence, that Ella had had a good deal to try her that night. 
 
 " Then, Ella, give me your promise, and I will never mention 
 Derrick Howe's name to you again so long as we both live." 
 
 What could Ella do ? It was not the thought of Derrick 
 Howe, for he had never sounded any deep feeling in the girl's 
 nature, but it was sorely wounded pride, which made her chafe 
 against giving this promise. Still, there Rusha stood, immova- 
 ble as fate, and the small bronze clock on the mantel was mur- 
 muring away the few hours which remained of the night. 
 
 " Yes, I promise all that you have asked," replied Ella, at 
 last, feeling that delay might alarm Rusha, and her moment of 
 grace expire. 
 
 " Then let this be the seal of all which has passed betwixt 
 
 4
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 255 
 
 us to-night ; " and Rusha bent down, kissed her sister's cheek 
 tenderly, and went out. 
 
 Whether she had done wisely or not, the future was to test. 
 It was in her nature to reach conclusions swiftly, and to act 
 promptly on them ; and in any question of right or wrong, she 
 was sure to see, with clear vision, where the truth lay. But 
 she was swift and impetuous, and the fiery blood of her youth 
 had not been calmed by slow years of experience. If she had 
 erred in this matter, the fault was rather in her youth than in 
 herself. 
 
 Derrick Howe paced up and down the room at his hotel that 
 night, puffing his cigar, and pausing occasionally to turn out a 
 glass of wine from the choice old " dozen " on the table. His 
 tastes were epicurean in cigars and wine, as they were in 
 women, or horses, or anything else ; and Derrick Howe had so 
 far managed to support all his luxurious habits, although the 
 capital of the small fortune which he had inherited, dwindled 
 frightfully every year ; but he had a sort of feeling that the 
 world owed Derrick Howe a living, for condescending to exist 
 in it at all ; and as for husbanding his fortune, or seeking to 
 enhance it by his own energy and industry, that belonged to 
 those vulgar, plodding people who had the misfortune to be 
 born without the traditional honor of such a family as the 
 Howes to maintain. 
 
 But it must be admitted that the choicest cigars and the cost- 
 liest wines failed, on this night, to afford their usual solace to 
 Derrick Howe. The truth was, that young man's self-love and 
 vanity had suffered a rebuff such as they had never done before 
 in his whole life. He really began to doubt his own identity 
 whether he were the all-potent Derrick Howe that he had 
 always regarded himself. 
 
 His cogitations went on something after this manner, though 
 he occasionally relieved himself with .audible exclamations, 
 which, I regret to say, were pretty freely seasoned with oaths ; 
 but then there could be worse things than that said of Derrick 
 Howe, without losing him the favor of the fashionable young
 
 256 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 ladies who dropped beaming smiles upon him whenever he 
 approached them. 
 
 " By George ! I wouldn't have believed that girl would have 
 had the courage to defy me in that way ! As though it wasn't 
 an honor and a condescension for me, Derrick Howe, to wait 
 on one of that Darryll tribe home, anyhow ! She'd better think 
 where they sprung from, and that ten years ago her father was 
 selling soap and tallow candles in some one-horse village gro- 
 cery. And to put on airs in that way ! She carried it through 
 splendidly, though no fuss about it, but cool and self-pos- 
 sessed as a roused princess. By Jupiter ! it took you down, 
 Derrick Howe ! You may as well own up sold for that 
 time ! " 
 
 The more he thought the matter over, the more it rankled, 
 and the bitter sting in the whole thing was the clear fact of the 
 case that Rusha Darryll considered him beneath her sister 
 him, Derrick Howe ! 
 
 He might sneer as much as he liked about the airs that 
 " Mushroom" always took on, and the newly-fledged Petroleum 
 dynasty ; but for all that, the hard, undisguised fact stood there 
 before him, forcing him to most unwilling and unflattering con- 
 clusions. 
 
 It somehow weakened the man's self-confidence, and in the 
 same degree advanced the Darryll family in his regard. That 
 very day he would have felt that he conferred an everlasting 
 honor upon John Darryll by taking his daughter to wife, and 
 bestowing his name upon her ; but it appeared that her sister 
 did not regard it in this light at all. 
 
 He really began to feel a little uncertain of that which had 
 seemed to him as secure as the sun in the heavens his own 
 position ! And Derrick Howe had been so feted and flattered 
 by silly girls and women, that he always conceived every one 
 elated by triumph who received the honor of any special atten- 
 tion on his part. A rejection of this was a wholly new experi- 
 ence to him, and, it must be confessed, gave Ella Darryll a new 1 
 interest and value in the eyes of the man. During the last .
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 257 
 
 year he had begun to realize that his rapidly diminishing cof- 
 fers must be replenished from some source, and the way to this, 
 which presented itself as the easiest and most feasible, was to 
 marry a fortune. 
 
 His wife's money would, of course, enable him to lead the 
 life of gentleman-like, luxurious indolence, to which his antece- 
 dents and his tastes entitled him, while, of course, any woman 
 who had the good luck to secure Derrick Howe for her hus- 
 band would be glad enough to pay the price of a fortune for the 
 honor. Perhaps even Derrick Howe would not have put the 
 facts to himself in just their bare ignobleness, but they would 
 not the less control his whole conduct. He simply intended to 
 make a good matrimonial speculation, and, as he coarsely 
 termed it, he kept now in all society " a general eye to the main 
 chance ; " for Derrick Howe, in spite of all his graces of manner 
 and gallant airs, was inherently coarse fibred, as I suppose 
 every man or woman is, who is deficient in moral quality. 
 
 But Derrick Howe had fastidious tastes to gratify ; and, indis- 
 pensable as money was, there were other accessories which he 
 strongly desired in a wife. He admired wit, style, beauty. He 
 wanted these to grace the elegant home which his wife should 
 bring him ; and, when indolently canvassing the matrimonial 
 qualifications of the young ladies whom he met in society for 
 Derrick Howe did everything, even his thinking, indolently 
 he had always numbered Ella Darryll as among that small, 
 eligible company of maidens whom he might yet condescend to 
 honor with the offer of himself. Indeed, Ella Darryll was the 
 sort of woman after Derrick Howe's own heart stylish, bril- 
 liant, attractive ; although this would all have gone for nothing 
 more than to serve an agreeable flirtation, had not the father's 
 gold backed the daughter's accomplishments. 
 
 This regard to future possibilities had always been at the bot- 
 tom of the young man's attentions to Ella Darryll ; but the rebuff 
 which he had experienced that night satisfied him that, however 
 le might regard the honor which he conferred on the rich specu- 
 itor's daughter, her family would be strenuously opposed to his 
 22*
 
 258 DAEBTLL GAP, OB 
 
 suit. An obstacle here was something he had never counted 
 on ; indeed, it was an unprecedented fact in Derrick Howe's ac- 
 quaintance with women, and at once invested this one with a new 
 value in his eyes. Any opposition would only give a new flavor 
 to a wooing he had hitherto regarded as problematical. 
 
 " I suppose the old miser keeps a tight grip on his money- 
 bags," he muttered, and he felt a stronger hankering after them 
 than he had ever experienced before. " He probably intends to 
 keep his daughters out of the reach of all fortune-hunters, and 
 that Kusha has had her lesson, and will carry it out, too, by 
 Jove ! But two can play at that game ; and Ella Darryll 's 
 worth a fellow's making some effort for, and, in case the thing's 
 put through, my precious father-in-law will have to come down 
 with his forgiveness, and his figures, too ! I swear, Derrick 
 Howe, you may never have a luckier chance, and you'd better 
 go in for that ! " and he brought his hand down so hard on the 
 table that the cut glass rung again. 
 
 So, Rusha's act that night seemed to have stimulated the very 
 evil she had intended to avert ; but, of course, she could not 
 have foreseen that. At the best, we all go stumbling along in 
 the mirk and mists of this life, and cannot see the consequences 
 of our own acts to ourselves or others, but through all mischief 
 and mistake it is sure to come right at last with those who trust 
 God ; else were life a failure, and annihilation a grace.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 259 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 RUSHA heard Tom's quick step on the stairs, and her heart 
 sprang. She had been listening for it for the last hour, for she 
 was certain, whatever tidings he came to bring, he would come 
 to her with them first. 
 
 So Rusha Darryll had been sitting in her own room, dream- 
 ing pleasant dreams of Tom's future, such as love and pride 
 always delight in, and not allowing herself to indulge a moment's 
 doubt as to the success of his examination. Still, the smiling 
 eagerness of her face was shaded with a little anxiety as she 
 turned it towards him when he bounded into the room, .but his 
 first look answered all doubts. 
 
 " O, Tom, I have no need to ask you ! I see it's all gone 
 right. Take my congratulations." 
 
 " How do you know it's all gone right?" seizing her by the 
 waist, and whirling her round two or three times, a sort of ebulli- 
 tion for his triumphant excitement. " How do you know but 
 I made a dead failure ? " 
 
 " Dead failure, with that face ! Old fellow, you can't de- 
 ceive me ! Now don't keep me waiting, Tom." 
 
 " Well, then, here goes. I pulled through strong ; didn't fail 
 on a single question. Tutor said if I kept on as I had done, 
 I could be booked for ' Sophomore ' either at Yale or Harvard 
 by next fall." 
 
 " O, Tom, isn't that splendid? How proud I am ! " and she 
 clapped her hands. 
 
 And then the two young things sat down and talked as youth 
 is apt to, standing on the threshold of man and womanhood, and 
 looking off to the pleasant landscapes of the future, not seeing 
 the steep ways that lie among the soft slopes of the hills, and
 
 260 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 not dreaming that the mists which hang there, transfigured by 
 the sunlight, will prove, on entering them, dark and boding 
 clouds in which dwell mighty storms. All this the brother and 
 sister, sitting there and launching out their argosies of high 
 hopes on the hour, never dreamed of, nor that wreck and drown- 
 ing awaited theirs, as it has all who have gone before. 
 
 " Which shall it be, Harvard or Yale? " inquired Rusha. 
 
 " I haven't decided yet. I've talked with plenty of fellows 
 on both sides, and of course they cry up their own ship. But 
 there's no use being in a hurry." 
 
 " Not the least, Tom ; and then there's the profession, you 
 know 1 " 
 
 " Time enough for that, too," he answered. And after this 
 he grew thoughtful, listening to his sister, who went on winding 
 the festoons of pretty fancies about his future in a love and 
 pride that were quite touching. 
 
 She remembered afterwards, although it did not strike her at 
 the time, because her enthusiasm was at such fever heat, that he 
 listened with a serious, half absent smile ; and at last he said 
 suddenly, looking at her, 
 
 " It would be a dreadful disappointment to you, Rusha, if 
 anything should turn, up, after all, that should keep me from en- 
 tering college ? " 
 
 This speech at once arrested the swift-flowing stream of her 
 visions. 
 
 " Why, Tom Darryll, what can have put that idea into your 
 head ? As though anything could turn up now to prevent it ! " 
 
 " I don't suppose there will. I shall never give up now, un- 
 less it is for so good a reason that you will admit its force too ; 
 for, Rusha, I do not forget that I owe all this day's success to 
 you that I should never have reached it without your constant 
 aid and stimulus. I don't believe many brothers can say so 
 much of their sisters." 
 
 She was not usually prodigal of embraces, but she had pretty 
 feminine caresses for those whom she carried in her inmost 
 heart. She laid her soft cheek down against Tom's slightly 
 bearded lip.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 2G1 
 
 " 0, Tom, you don't know how sweet that praise is ! " 
 
 After a Avhile they heard their father and Guy come in, and 
 Rusha went down stairs and announced Tom's success with a 
 little flourish of trumpets. 
 
 " Here comes our student, pa, with his laurels fresh upon 
 him ! " 
 
 "Is that so, Tom ? " said Mr. Darryll, lo'oking pleased enough, 
 as did all the others ; for, though the father had originally de- 
 voted all his sons to a business career, Andrew's failure had 
 been a severe check to his ambition on that score, and he was 
 quite ready to allow his other boys to indulge their own pro- 
 clivities, and not insensible to the honor of having some " schol- 
 ars in the family." 
 
 " Tom, do come over here, and let me take a good look ; I'm 
 really proud of you," said his mother. 
 
 " O, come now, I don't want a fuss over it all. 'Twon't pay, 
 this trip," said Tom, trying to look a little bored ; but for all 
 that, he went and stood by Mrs. Darryll, a slender, goodly youth, 
 that any mother's heart might be proud of. 
 
 " Wasn't it tough, coming up to the scratch on that examina- 
 tion?" asked Guy, surveying his brother with a little addi- 
 tional respect. 
 
 " Well, it would lay a fellow flat, unless he was sound on the 
 goose." 
 
 Tom's scholarship had not yet surmounted his vernacular in 
 his own home. 
 
 At this point they all went out to dinner in an unusually affa- 
 ble mood, for every one of the family felt that Tom's success 
 reflected some credit on the others ; but in the general pleasure 
 more than one glance went to a seat that had long been vacant 
 at the table the seat that had been Andrew's ! So this 
 pleasure must have its skeleton at the feast too ! 
 
 " Tom," said Eusha, some two weeks after the examination, 
 *' something has been on your mind of late. What is it?" 
 
 " O, pshaw ! don't bother a fellow," the tone having just 
 that irritation which confirmed her remark.
 
 262 DAREYLL GAP, OR 
 
 But she was too persistent to be daunted so easily, and Tom 
 had of late grown, almost unconsciously to herself, to be the 
 darling of Rusha's heart ; her affection made her keenly alive to 
 any change in his feeling or manner, though nothing of this sort 
 had been apparent to the rest of the family. She had been con- 
 stantly watching him for the last five minutes, as he stood by the 
 window in the little alcove-study up stairs, which was the favor- 
 ite resort of both, while he absently twirled his cap round the 
 head of his cane, and such a strange seriousness settled on his 
 face as made him look several years older. 
 
 Her question had drawn him out of his absorption with a start, 
 and he was about to leave the room in order to avoid any further 
 inquisition, when his sister sprang before him : 
 
 " O, Tom, you are not going to put me off this way ! " 
 
 " Of course I am. When a fellow can't look sober a moment 
 without a girl's prying into his affairs, he'd better take him- 
 self off!" 
 
 She looked a little hurt. " I might have expected Andrew or 
 Guy would answer me in that way, but not you, Tom." 
 
 Tom looked half convicted, half provoked. 
 
 " I don't want to fret you, Rusha, but <- hang it, why didn't 
 you keep still ? " 
 
 " Because I have done that, Tom, as long as I could, for I've 
 seen clearly, during the last week, that something was on your 
 mind, and that it was always uppermost too, no matter what 
 you were saying or doing. I can't be deceived easily. You 
 haven't been yourself of late, and whatever the trouble is, I 
 thought you would share it with me." 
 
 u We can't always share our troubles, you know," said Tom 
 Darryll, admitting by this general remark all that Rusha's per- 
 sonal one had claimed. 
 
 " But, Tom," a flash of fear in her face, " this trouble is 
 nothing wrong nothing you would be ashamed or afraid to 
 tell me?" 
 
 Tom Darryll drew himself up with something of manly dig- 
 nity and force in his look and manner that Rusha had never
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 263 
 
 seen there before. " Rusha," he said, " whatever the trouble 
 is, it is one that I am not ashamed of before God be assured 
 of that ! " 
 
 " O, Tom, forgive me what a relief that is ! and now do 
 let me help you bear this ! " She had drawn close to him, her 
 pleading eyes on his face. 
 
 " It would do no good, Rusha. Even you cannot help me 
 here," voice and manner quite softened now. 
 
 " I wish you would try me, though." 
 
 He looked at her a moment, with something in his thought 
 which she could not probe. " Not yet," he said ; " I know you 
 are made of the real stuff, Rusha of the sort that holds good 
 through the hardest strain. One of these days, it may be I 
 shall give it a trial. 0, Rusha, if it comes to that, you will 
 not fail me ? " 
 
 " If it comes to what, Tom ? " her face full of perplexed 
 alarm. 
 
 " No matter. Perhaps it will never amount to anything ; " 
 and with this ambiguous answer, he hurried away. 
 
 All day long Rusha turned over his words in her thought, 
 but their ambiguity baffled her. She was sure that something 
 which had vital issues was at work in Tom's soul ; but though 
 she must content herself to rest in ignorance of the nature of 
 his secret, she could brace all doubts and fears against that look 
 of his, when he said, " Rusha, I ana not ashamed of it before 
 God ! " 
 
 A week went by without any allusion on either side to the 
 matter, and one evening Rusha met Tom in the front hall, on 
 his return home. " O, come up stairs. Don't wait a moment," 
 she said, in a little flurry of excitement. " I've something to 
 show you." He followed her up stairs, hardly speaking a word ; 
 and when they reached the little study, she pointed him trium- 
 phantly to a marble statuette on the mantel, which must have 
 been, to any artist's eyes, the central grace and charm of the 
 little studio, although, as Rusha had had the sole arrangement 
 of this room, there were choice bits of painting a rare Hush
 
 264 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 of sunset facing a long glitter of sea waves, and fine engrav- 
 ings, and delicate bronzes, and quaint brackets scattered about ; 
 but after all, the artistic life of the room centred itself, as I 
 said, in the statuette on the mantel. 
 
 A woman's face in its early youth, with such fine delicacy 
 of moulding in every feature, such tender, womanly sweetness 
 in every lineament, and instinct with so much grace of heart 
 and character, that it fairly thrilled one's eyes with tears to 
 look upon it. 
 
 " O, isn't it beautiful, Tom ! " said Rusha, tossing aside the 
 curtain, so that the sunset flashed a stream of gold over the 
 whole, and she gazed with hungry eyes on the tender glory of 
 the face whose spirit her own heart gave her the key to inter- 
 pret. " Do you know who it is, Tom?" 
 
 " Of course I do Shakspeare's Ophelia." 
 
 " The marble there," she continued, half addressing herself, 
 " grasps and holds my very conception of her. How often, 
 when I read Hamlet, the tender radiance of that face has 
 seemed to shine up to me from the page until I have won- 
 dered whether Ophelia was dearer to Shakspeare's soul than 
 to mine ; and still, if one looks long and deep enough, there 
 will be found, through all the haunting sweetness of the face, 
 some lingering hint of sadness a faint foreshadowing of the 
 awful tragedy of the fate beyond; and that makes me think 
 how exquisitely those words suit it. 
 
 ' Nature is fine in love : and -where 'tis fine 
 It Bends some precious instance of itself 
 After the thing it loves ! ' 
 
 O, morning sunrise, and joy of Hamlet's life, in what awful 
 gloom you went down at last ! " 
 
 " But I always think of Ophelia, not as Hamlet's love, but 
 as Laertes's sister," said Tom. " That is the reason I like her 
 best of all Shakspeare's women ! " 
 
 She saw at once the association that was in his own mind, 
 and the grateful glance which beamed on him was eloquent in 
 thanks beyond all reach of words.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 265 
 
 "Yes," said Tom, drawing a little closer to her side, "I 
 think, Rusha, you would be just such a sister as Ophelia. Do 
 you remember that parting with Laertes, when he went to 
 France?" 
 
 "Do I remember my alphabet? But why do you ask that 
 question, Tom?" 
 
 " Ophelia was brave to the last. And yet, Rusha, France 
 was farther from Denmark, and the journey was more danger- 
 ous in that day, than it is now to " 
 
 " To what, Tom?'' for he stopped suddenly. 
 
 " To the Southern battle-fields, Rusha ! " 
 
 " O, Tom, what does that mean?" a quick terror leaping 
 into face and voice. 
 
 He drew her close to him. " Don't you know, Rusha, that I 
 said the time might come to test you ? " 
 
 She wrenched herself away, her white face testifying for her 
 that there was one trial she could not bear. 
 
 " What is it, Tom ? Be quick ! " 
 
 " I have enlisted in the army to-day, Rusha ! " 
 
 She sank down into a chair, too weak to stand, but seeing 
 with her quick comprehension the whole thing. 
 
 " You are not going to the war, Tom ! It isn't to be so much 
 as named. I never will consent ! " her words fighting wildly 
 against the thought. 
 
 It was a long time before Tom could compel her to listen to 
 him ; but he did at last, sufficiently to convince her that this 
 was no mere fit of boyish enthusiasm with him, but a steady 
 purpose, which had been maturing for weeks in his mind, and 
 to which he had at last brought all the forces of his will. But 
 if she listened, it was only to oppose him. 
 
 " You are not fit for the service. You know you never could 
 stand the marches, the hardships, the life of a soldier. It is 
 absurd to think of it, at your age. Let others go who are able 
 to bear it." 
 
 So Rusha's love, and perhaps her selfishness, pleaded against his 
 resolve, and Tom could not move her, not even when hu suid, 
 23
 
 266 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Where would our country be the country you said you 
 were ready to die for, Rusha if all women had talked as 
 you do ? " 
 
 " And I will stand by my words. I am ready to die for my 
 country, but not to give you up a useless and unnecessary sac- 
 rifice. But one thing is certain pa will never give his consent, 
 aiid you are not of age. You cannot go without that." 
 
 " Rusha," said Tom, with a kind of sorrowful reproach she 
 had never heard in his voice before, " I had expected something 
 better of you than this. I thought you would be brave, aud 
 stand by me to the last, and, though I knew just what I'd got 
 to face from the rest of the family, I felt sure of you ; and now 
 you, too, have failed me ! " 
 
 His words smote her to the quick, but she clung still to the 
 old defence, making herself believe that it was the only right 
 one. The talk ended at last with Tom's saying, 
 
 " Well, Rusha, it was your own words that kindled the first 
 feeling of patriotism in me, and made me conscious that I had 
 a country to love and serve. I thought you'd be on my side 
 when I told father ; but I see I've got to weather that gale all 
 alone, and the sooner it's over the better ; " and he went down, 
 leaving Rusha sitting there alone with the tears on her cheeks. 
 
 She listened for his footsteps all the way down, and hoped he 
 would turn back, and felt somehow that it was not right to leave 
 Tom to brave her father alone ; but then, as she told herself 
 over and over, she never could help him to go to the war, and 
 just kill himself without doing anybody any good " her own 
 dear, noble, darling Tom ! " and so she sat there, shivering in 
 the warm room, until the night came and shut her up in its 
 darkness, and then she, too, went down stairs. 
 
 She found her mother protesting and crying, and her father 
 just where she had expected. 
 
 "Do you know what Tom's been and done?" screamed 
 Agnes, as soon as her eldest sister entered the room. 
 
 " Yes, I know it all." 
 
 "I hope you haven't encouraged this nonsense?" said hejs 
 father, turning angrily upon her.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 267 
 
 " No, father ; though I houor Tom's motives from my heart, 
 I have strenuously opposed his joining the army, because of his 
 youth. He never could endure the life there." 
 
 Tom stood alone by the mantel. His face was pale, but it 
 had some force and character which impressed his family in 
 spite of themselves. He spoke up now : 
 
 " Rusha has had nothing to do with the matter. I never 
 consulted her until to-night, and she was down on me like all 
 the rest of you." 
 
 " A pretty piece of business, sir," broke out his father, wrath- 
 fully enough. " I'd like to know how long you think you could 
 stand being out in all sorts of weather, and the long marches, 
 and sleeping in the mud, and starvation to boot? I fancy 
 twenty-four hours would take the romance out of you pretty 
 thoroughly." 
 
 " O, pa, don't be hard on poor Tom," broke in Rusha. 
 " His desire to serve his country is a most noble one, although 
 I think he has made a mistake." 
 
 " Well," paying no attention to his daughter's remark, " the 
 upshot of the matter is, that I shall go down to-morrow and 
 swear that you're unfit for service. Next time, sir, you'll 
 remember to consult me before you put your neck in such a 
 scrape." 
 
 " I did think, Tom, you had more sense," added Ella. 
 
 "And I should never have another moment's peace of my 
 life, Tom," sobbed his mother. " I should see you shot dead 
 before my eyes, or starving to death in those dreadful Southern 
 prisons, or having your legs sawed off in a hospital " Poor 
 Mrs. Darryll's imagination quite overcame her here, and she 
 sobbed harder than ever. 
 
 " Other mothers have been patriotic enough to give up sons 
 as young and as dear as I," persisted Tom, in a most unsympa- 
 thetic tone, it must be admitted. " If everybody thought ami 
 felt as you do here, there wouldn't be a country to fight lor 
 long ; that's a dead certainty." 
 
 Tom, you're nothing but a boy, and you've got the war
 
 268 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 fever," said his father, angrily. " It generally attacks one 
 about your age ; but it's a comfort that it doesn't last long." 
 
 " And to think," interposed Ella again, who numbered among 
 her favored admirers several graduates of West Point, " that 
 the foolish fellow was going in as a mere private, taking all the 
 hardship and misery without a particle of honor or glory ! If 
 he was an officer, now, it would be quite a different matter." 
 
 Tom took this family fire bravely, for the most part silently, 
 standing by the mantel, his face in a dark shadow, that might 
 be sullenness, but which Rusha felt was something nobler than 
 that, and her brother was never quite so handsome in her eyes 
 as at that moment. She waited for him to speak, but he did 
 not seem inclined to self-defence ; so she came to the rescue. 
 
 " I think that was Tom's greatest ' honor and glory,' that he 
 was ready to go in as a mere private. I never was quite so 
 proud of him as I am this hour." 
 
 " There, pa, didn't I tell you so ? " said Ella, with trium- 
 phant significance. " I knew Rusha would take Tom's part." 
 
 " Yon are mistaken for once, Ella. I think Tom has acted 
 hastily, rashly, in this matter. As he was not of age, it was 
 certainly his duty to consult father before he enlisted. But the 
 great sacrifice of home and comfort, of health and life, that he 
 was ready to make for his country's sake, is a greater glory to 
 him than all the honors and commissions in the world." 
 
 Perhaps this reasoning had some force with John Darryll, 
 for his tones were certainly mollified as he said, 
 
 " Well, the long and short of it is, Tom won't be his own 
 master until he's twenty-one, and by that time he'll thank me 
 for doing just what I shall in this matter." 
 
 " See if I do ! " said Tom, bringing down his hand on the 
 mantel in a way that spoke the hard defiance he had too much 
 respect for his father to utter in any other way. So Tom's 
 dream of going to the war ended. 
 
 When Rusha went up stairs that evening, she found her 
 brother sitting there alone in a brown study, his forehead propped 
 up on his hand.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 269 
 
 " Come," she said, " let's have a little feast of Hamlet, Tom, 
 with Ophelia smiling down on us from the mantel there." 
 
 " If you like, Rusha," the tone not unkindly, but only a 
 dreary acquiescence in it. 
 
 " O, Tom, you are not going to take it so? It is really for 
 the best." 
 
 " It may seem so to you, Rusha, but I cannot see it in that 
 light." 
 
 " Don't discuss it now," with a little deprecatory gesture. 
 " But, Tom, you will take the disappointment bravely, and go 
 back to your studies just as though you had never had this pur- 
 pose ? " 
 
 " I shall go back to them, Rusha, and do my best ; but for 
 all that my heart will not be there remember that ; my heart 
 will not be there." 
 
 Something in his face, as he said these words, made her feel 
 that the purpose was vital with him, that it held in it all the 
 strength and fire of his youth, and that it was one of those 
 abiding things which no denial could change. 
 
 And from that time, although the matter was seldom, if ever, 
 alluded to betwixt the brother and sister, Rusha was haunted 
 by a feeling of secret uneasiness and dissatisfaction. She had 
 a conviction that Tom felt she had not been true to her highest 
 self, and, although she believed, as she had from the beginning, 
 that he had neither the age nor the strength for any real service 
 to his country, still, now that the sacrifice had come right home 
 to her, she put away the thought with a quick terror, realizing, 
 as she never could before, what the suffering must be to other 
 women who had given to the war gifts precious to their souls, 
 as Tom was to hers. 
 
 And though in her case reason and judgment indorsed in a 
 large sense the verdict of her feelings, she felt, had it been dif- 
 ferent, how awful the surrender must be. Was she equal to 
 it? Was all her love of country, all that exaltation of sacrifice, 
 to which, in their fervor of patriotism, her feelings had some- 
 times seemed to mount, a mere poetic enthusiasm, which would 
 23*
 
 270 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 not face the ordeal through which thousands of her country- 
 women had passed ? 
 
 Rusha's shuddering soul used to ask these questions, whose 
 plummet line sounded the great deeps of her life. She had 
 often thought if she were a man she would go to the war, but 
 if Tom Tom, with all the promise of his young manhood 
 with the boy-look hardly yet vanishing from the face that was 
 moulding itself into lines of strength and maturity if Tom 
 were to go to the war, what would become of her ! 
 
 Poor Rusha ! The thunder of battle-fields, the black, swirl- 
 ing banners of smoke, the dying faces of men lying low on 
 trampled grasses, haunted her always ; and that awful question 
 of duty-that-might-be stalked through all her days and nights 
 a question that Rusha Darryll was not of the sort to push 
 aside or lay to sleep. And meanwhile she clung to Tom with 
 some new yearning fondness, which touched his young sensibili- 
 ties, and developed in him also some new tenderness of nature 
 and manner.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 271 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 TIME moved on with the Darryll household, as it does with 
 all of us, and each assimilated nourishment, after its own kind, 
 and developed and matured its own moral individuality, " for 
 good or for evil." 
 
 Among other things, of more or less interest, that happened 
 to the family, Tom made choice of his future Alma Mater. 
 
 To use his own words to Rusha, " several of the best fellows 
 in his class ' talked Yale to the skies,' " while its comparative 
 proximity to his home made a balance decidedly in its favor 
 with all his family. So, in due time, Tom entered college, his 
 absence making a great blank in Rusha's life, although frequent 
 letters and flying visits went far to keep up the old bond betwixt 
 the two, for the feeling which united the brother and sister 
 struck its infinitesimal rootlets into deeper soil than that of 
 relationship. 
 
 As the spring advanced, the plan for the summer's campaign 
 had become a prominent topic of conversation, especially with 
 Ella and Agnes, but all this was suddenly cut short by a serious 
 and protracted illness of Mrs. Darryll. 
 
 The danger passed ; a long, slow convalescence followed, so 
 that it was midsummer before any of the family left home, Tom 
 for it was vacation now at Yale assuming with Guy the 
 charge of the girls at the Springs, whither it was arranged Mr. 
 and Mrs. Darryll should shortly follow with Rusha. The eldest 
 sister was the subject of a good many sincere condolences on the 
 part of her brothers and sisters for this sacrifice of herself, as 
 each one regarded it, to her mother. 
 
 " How strange it is," she answered, on one of these occasions, 
 with a little perplexed smile at the kindly buzz of young voices
 
 272 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 which went on around her, " that people oftenest get praise in 
 this life when they merit it least ! Here is a case in point. 
 You all think I deserve a great deal of credit, and look upon 
 me as a sort of martyr, when I don't merit the least particle of 
 your sympathy. My decision to stay at home with ma hasn't 
 cost me a pang. I wouldn't exchange the next two weeks with 
 you in that hot, tiresome, fashion-ridden Saratoga. Ugh ! " 
 
 " Do hear the girl now ! " said Guy, with whom this place 
 had agreeable associations of horse-racing, and a good time in 
 general. " As though Saratoga wouldn't be head and shoulders 
 above every other place in this country for the next six weeks ! " 
 
 Rusha looked at her brother a moment, with that half per- 
 plexed, half absorbed expression which was one of the phases of 
 her face. 
 
 " I thank the Lord, Guy," she said, in a tone which left no 
 doubt either of the reverence or fervor of her feeling, " that He 
 made us to differ ! " 
 
 A general explosion of laughter followed this speech. 
 
 " You've got it this time, Guy ! " said Agnes, merrily. 
 
 " That's like nobody in the world but you, Rusha ! " Tom 
 gave her a pretty sharp blow on the shoulder, but there was 
 some hidden approval in it. 
 
 " As for being like Guy," added Ella, "I must say that youth 
 doesn't, at present, embody my ideal of the virtues or the 
 graces ! " Here there was a compound snicker at Guy's expense. 
 " But I don't think I should see any particular cause for thank- 
 ing the Lord if He made me to differ from everybody else in the 
 world, and you do that, Rusha ! " 
 
 " You mean He has made her of a little extra stuff that's 
 all," answered Tom, who of late always took up the gauntlet in 
 his sister's defence. 
 
 So the household talk would go ; with a good deal of blunt- 
 ness and more or less of sparring, it is true, but at bottom, the 
 old family love that held them all so close in its strong bond, 
 and that would make these days like lamps shedding down on 
 all the manhood and womanhood to come the tender, sacred 
 light of youth and home.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 273 
 
 In due time, the young people took their flight to Saratoga, 
 leaving a strange silence in the house that was always so full of 
 life and bustle of one sort and another a silence not ungrateful 
 to Rusha, as it fell with singularly soothing effect upon spirits 
 too apt to be haunted by a vague restlessness. She enjoyed 
 too, at this period, the society of her father and mother, just as 
 she had never done before. 
 
 - As it was midsummer, Mr. Darryll was less harassed with 
 business cares, and passed more time than usual at home ; and 
 as their fashionable friends had all left the city, Rusha was 
 troubled with no outside friction. At the end of two weeks, 
 Mrs. Darryll's physician considered her sufficiently recovered to 
 take the journey for that change of air which, now the dead 
 summer heats wei*e coming on, she greatly needed. 
 
 The day before they left, Mr. Darryll returned home a little 
 after midday, surprising Rusha on the stairs, who was busy as 
 a bee with those ten thousand things that one finds to do in the 
 last hours that precede a journey. 
 
 "Where is your mother?" was his first question. 
 
 " She's just returned from a little ride, and is now lying down." 
 
 " How did she bear it? " 
 
 " O, bravely. I could see it did her good, and she will be 
 better prepared for the journey to-morrow." 
 
 " Come in here, Rusha. I want to see you alone a few min- 
 utes ; " and he turned towards the sitting-room. 
 
 She darted up a quick glance of apprehension into his face. 
 One's fears are apt to take the alarm easily after they have 
 passed through a terrible shock ; but there was nothing wrong 
 in her father's look now. She went and sat down by him, 
 leaning forward and looking up to him with a little smile on 
 her face a young, fair face, of which any father might have 
 been fond and proud. 
 
 Perhaps some thought of this kind was in John Darryll's 
 mind, for he smiled a little and patted it. 
 
 " I think you must have had a dreary time, daughter," he said, 
 " with two such prosy old people as your mother and myse 
 
 " O, no, pa ; I think you arc a great deal more agreeable than
 
 274 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 most young folks I happen to know that is, when you are in 
 a good humor," her native truthfulness not letting her color the 
 real fact, even for love's sake. 
 
 Mr. Darryll laughed pleasantly. Then he put his hand in 
 his vest pocket, and drew out something in very dainty wrap- 
 pings of silver paper. 
 
 " Can you guess what this is, Husha? " 
 
 " No, pa, I'm sure I can't," those sweet, bright eyes of hers- 
 full of amazed curiosity, for John Darryll was not much in the 
 habit of doing such things. " A present for me?" 
 
 " Yes, it's just that. I suppose I've been making a fool of 
 myself to get it." 
 
 " O, no, you haven't either, anything of that sort. But I'm 
 just crazy to see it." 
 
 He untied the wrappings with a deliberation that was tanta- 
 lizing. I think he enjoyed enough the sight of her eager, pleased 
 face to be willing to prolong it. First a small white box dis- 
 closed itself; inside of this was an oblong jewel case. 
 
 Rusha held her breath ; her father touched the spring ; there 
 was a sudden leap and flash in her eyes, and then she saw the 
 whole ; on a leaf of velvet, white as a heap of fresh snow- 
 flakes, lay the clusters of diamonds, with a fiery beat and quiver 
 of light at the heart of each the set altogether finer than the 
 one she had given away. 
 
 " O, pa, are those for me?" her face all broken up. 
 
 " For you, my child. You didn't deserve them, I know, after 
 the trick you served me about those others ; but as you were 
 going to Saratoga, and women are all silly enough to want to 
 show off their gimcracks there, I concluded to throw away a 
 little more of my money on these." 
 
 " O, pa, pa ! " and she was clinging to him and sobbing. 
 
 He had hardly suspected that she would take it in this way, 
 but he could not know what memories the sight of those dia- 
 monds had suddenly quickened in his daughter's thoughts. 
 
 " Come, come," he said, a little troubled by the continued 
 sobbing ; "I was prepared for a very different kind of thanks 
 from these." 
 
 I
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 275 
 
 " O, pa, you don't know how I thank you," she managed to 
 say at last ; but even then her thanks were not so much for the 
 diamonds, as for this proof of his confidence in her a proof 
 which touched her to the quick. 
 
 " Well, then ; dry up your tears, and make yourself look as nice 
 as you can in them, only don't get rid of these in such a foolish, 
 mysterious way as you did of the others mind what I say, 
 now." 
 
 There flashed suddenly across Rusha an impulse to tell her 
 father where the diamonds had gone. She was apt to do vital 
 things swiftly, as you have seen ; the only wonder being that 
 her impulses so seldom, in any great emergency, led her wrong. 
 It seemed to her that this gift deserved to purchase her confi- 
 dence, and that she owed it to her father now to tell him how 
 she had disposed of her jewels. 
 
 John Darryll was not, as you know, a man of a fine and sym- 
 pathetic nature. The best side of him was his family one, and 
 Rusha usually found the truest part of that. His wife honestly 
 believed herself a Christian woman, and would have been hor- 
 rified at anybody's doubting it. The sons and daughters she 
 had borne were growing up into manhood and womanhood about 
 her ; and all this, one would suppose, must have softened her 
 nature must have tended to make it broad, tender, pitiful 
 for all sins, especially those of the young and fallen of her own 
 sex, and yet I hate to write it of her, but it is the truth 
 her eldest daughter felt somehow that it would be easier to go 
 to the hard, bustling, business man and tell the story of Jane 
 Maxwell ; that somehow she would be likely to find with him 
 a deeper appreciation of what she herself had done for the girl 
 than she would meet with her mother. On this feeling 
 Rusha spoke : 
 
 " Pa, I want to tell you where my diamonds went." 
 
 " I have always thought it my right to know, child." 
 
 The diamonds lay in her lap, pouring out from fountains 
 which never failed, the burning joy of their life. Rusha laid 
 her clasped hands on her father's shoulder, and leaned her face 
 on that, so she could not see his while she talked. And in this
 
 276 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 way she told him the whole story, faltering sometimes, but 
 never quite losing control of her voice. 
 
 That morning Kusha would not have believed that all the 
 world could have hired her to confide Andrew's sin, and her 
 interview with Jane Maxwell, to her father ; now she almost 
 forgot to whom she was talking, losing all thought of herself in 
 the strong feeling which her story inspired. 
 
 Her father interrupted her but once, and that was with a start 
 and a half smothered curse on Andrew, when he first compre- 
 hended who the girl was that Rusha had met on the steamer ; 
 then he sat quite silent, drinking in every word that followed. 
 
 " That was where my diamonds went, pa ! " 
 
 When he spoke, which was not for several moments, it was 
 in a voice unlike any she had ever heard from him before. 
 
 "Well, my child, I shall not blame you. The chances are, 
 that your diamonds were lost, so far as doing the girl any good, 
 went." 
 
 " But, pa, had not Andrew wronged her, and did I not owe 
 her some reparation ? " 
 
 " That is not the way the world has of looking at these 
 things." 
 
 " The world has always had a way of looking at things from 
 a wrong stand-point, pa." 
 
 He did not seek to carry the argument any further. I think 
 just then, however his future talk and life might deny it, John 
 Darryll was convinced of the truth of Rusha's words. 
 
 " Well, you meant right, child ; only, if you were as old 
 as your father, you wouldn't be quite so ready to trust human 
 nature. I've but little doubt your diamonds were thrown away." 
 
 " I have, pa. You didn't see that girl's face when she 
 thanked me. But in either case I am not responsible. I did 
 what I could." 
 
 Just then Mrs. Darryll walked into the room, and Rusha 
 held up her diamonds. 
 
 " See, ma, what a present I've had from pa ! " But Rusha 
 did not tell her mother then nor thereafter where the others had 
 gone.
 
 WEE THEE IT PAID. 277 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 THIS year's season at the Springs was not just like the last 
 to any of the Darryll family, although its younger portion, 
 throwing themselves into the general tide of gayeties, perhaps 
 scarcely realized the change. But the mother's health rendered 
 a certain degree of quiet indispensable, in her own apartments 
 at least, and the first glamour was worn off, and all the old 
 haunts were somehow associated, more or less, with Andrew. 
 
 We all know, or shall have to, some time, each for his own 
 soul, how the memory of a secret, abiding sorrow clings to 
 one everywhere ; its live nerve of pain is always exposed, 
 always quivering. It seems sometimes as though everything in 
 earth and air conspired to add some fresh pang to that one sore 
 hurt in our souls to hold it up always before our thought 
 to haunt us at all times a living grief, sadder and sharper, O, 
 my reader, than any dead one ! 
 
 For Rusha Darryll nothing in this world could be just what 
 it had been a year ago. In their secret and silent ways the 
 forces of grief had nourished and strengthened the best part of 
 her nature. Wealth and luxury had not, with their slow but 
 certain paralysis, warped and deadened her finer self, and from 
 the outset the danger to her had lain in this direction. 
 
 One morning Tom and his sister stood at the window watch- 
 ing the crowds that nocked down to the Springs for an early 
 draught of the waters. On the outside it was a pleasant sight ; 
 the groups of figures, in slow, graceful motion ; the elegant 
 dresses, the strong, bright, picturesque life of the scene. 
 
 The brother and sister had been discussing all this in a desul- 
 tory sort of way, when the latter, after a moment's pause, 
 drew her head in. 
 
 24
 
 278 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 " What are you thinking of? " said Tom, catching the pass- 
 ing look on her face. 
 
 " It just struck .me that it must have 'been over some such 
 scene as the one yonder, that Solomon's soul broke out in that 
 mournful 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. All is 
 vanity ! ' " 
 
 " Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?" 
 answered Tom, with a kind of suspicious gravity. 
 
 A little out-tinkle of her merriest laugh, a half-surprised 
 glance, flashed up to his face. 
 
 " What are you laughing at? " 
 
 " Why, Tom, the idea of your repeating Scripture ! I didn't 
 know that you read your Bible so much." 
 
 " I have, enough to find that in it." 
 
 At that moment Guy burst into the room, accompanied by 
 his two sisters, and they all established themselves at the other 
 window. Then ensued a very Babel of voices. The trio went 
 into an animated discussion over the dress, accomplishments, 
 and personal attractions of one and another in the crowd be- 
 neath them. 
 
 Ella was in raptures over one lady's jewels, and another's 
 laces, and somebody else's robe, and seemed to have a marvel- 
 lous intuition of the value of each, so that Rusha whispered, in 
 an undertone, to Tom, 
 
 " I think one might say to Ella what Jaques does to Orlando, 
 ' Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives ? ' ' 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 *' Capital, Rusha ! What a set of magpies they are, though ! " 
 and then they kept still, listening to the chatter. 
 
 But the share that Guy bore in it was what amazed Rusha. 
 He seemed to be perfectly posted up in regard to all the belles, 
 and discussed the merits of each in a way that, considering his 
 youth, grated on his sister's ears. 
 
 Outspoken as usual, she turned on him : 
 
 " Guy, what right has a little whipper-snapper like you to go 
 on in that way? One would think, to hear you talk, you had 
 played the gallant for the last ten years 1 "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 279 
 
 " He has played the gallant up here pretty thoroughly for the 
 last two weeks," laughed Ella, before her brother could defend 
 himself. 
 
 "I believe," he spoke up now, "that girls, after they get 
 pretty well along into their twenties, think that a fellow ought to 
 wear a bib until he's eighteen ! " 
 
 " Good for you, Guy ! " laughed Tom. " That's to pay you, 
 Eusha, for calling him a ' little whipper-snapper ' ! " 
 
 liusha took it good-naturedly. 
 
 " It was a fair hit, Guy, but I shan't subside under it. What 
 does Ella mean by your playing the gallant ? " 
 
 Ella undertook to explain. 
 
 " Why, you see, Rusha, there's a fearful dearth of beaus 
 here this summer. Of course, there isn't a Southerner to be 
 seen, and so many young men are off to the war, that it's really 
 hard to raise enough for an agreeable dance ; so men are at a 
 great premium at all the balls." 
 
 " You've no idea, Rusha," put in Agnes, " how well Guy 
 can play the agreeable. He can hold a lady's fan and bouquet, 
 and take her out to supper, after the most approved fashion. 
 Tom and he are in immense demand here." 
 
 I suppose most sisters would have laughed over all this. 
 Probably Rusha would in most moods ; now, with a little im- 
 patient stamp of her foot, she exclaimed, 
 
 " I am disgusted with I am ashamed of my sex ! " 
 
 " Why, because some of them happen to fancy your broth- 
 ers?" asked Guy, rather indignantly. 
 
 " If you choose to put it in that light. But when one thinks 
 of the little appreciation of the true worth and dignity of wo- 
 manhood which exists among Avomen, as we see them here, for 
 instance when one feels what woman's aims and life should 
 be, and looks at what they are, why, it's just sickening ! " 
 
 " Now, Rusha," struck in Ella, " what do you want to be 
 down on your sex like that for? If it was on the men I 
 wouldn't say a word, for you can't make them out worse- than 
 they are ; but with us, poor women, it's altogether different."
 
 280 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Is that true, Ella? Are men likely to be any better until 
 woman makes them so? Who is it, after all, that makes so- 
 ciety? who is it that creates all its decrees, controls all its ver- 
 dicts? who is it that has her hand on all the great, hidden 
 springs which govern human life and actions, and looking at 
 women here, for a specimen, who is so faithless to her trust?" 
 
 " I don't understand what you mean. You know I never 
 could go into your heroics, Rusha." 
 
 " I mean," nothing daunted by the satire in Ella's term, " this 
 living merely on the surface of things, for dress, display, admi- 
 ration, a buzzing butterfly existence, whose chief aim is to 
 catch a beau, or a husband ! " 
 
 " Now, that is too bad, I do say, Rusha ! " put in Agnes, with 
 a little girlish show of spirit. 
 
 " Go on, I say," said Tom. " I like it." 
 
 She was in the mood for obeying him. 
 
 " We all know it's so, and why not call things by their right 
 names ? How many women honestly believe that they are in 
 the world for any other purpose than to get a husband, by fair 
 means or foul ? " 
 
 " Well, now, Rusha, isn't it natural enough to expect to get 
 married ? You don't intend to start out on a raid against mat- 
 rimony, with all the rest ? " 
 
 " You know I mean nothing of the sort, Ella. But I do 
 mean that no woman is really worthy to enter into the relation 
 who is not capable of living, and with true use and dignity, 
 her own life outside of it." 
 
 " Then it just comes straight down to this, and it's all you 
 can make of it. A woman isn't worthy to be a wife until she's 
 first learned how to be an old maid ! " 
 
 Such a clapping of hands as ensued from Guy and Agnes, 
 when Ella made this point ! It was impossible for Rusha not to 
 join in the laugh, though it did turn against her ; but when the 
 noise had subsided, she took up the subject again, seriously 
 enough. 
 
 " If you like that epithet better than any other, keep it. No 
 
 A
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 281 
 
 opprobrium of that sort ever killed a truth yet, and I know 
 mine is one of those stubborn things. No woman, I say, is fit, 
 in this age at least, to be either wife or mother, who has not so 
 high an ideal of the marriage relation that she will not enter it 
 solely and entirely for the name and the position which it will 
 bestow on her, but will have the moral courage to go on her 
 own way alone, self-poised, living a life to some true and noble 
 end, for some sweet and generous use, and, for all she does not 
 find in this world, ' waiting God's good time ' ! " 
 
 " Now, just answer that, Ella Darryll, if you can ! " said 
 Tom, with some exultance in his voice. 
 
 " Well, granting, for argument's sake, that it's all true, it 
 is a settled fact that women never will attain to this exalted, 
 angelic state in this world. They'll just be human to the end of 
 the chapter, and love to dress, to dance and to flirt, to marry 
 and to be given in marriage ; so what's the use of fretting one's 
 self over it ? Will you ever learn, Rusha, not to carry the world 
 on your shoulders ? " 
 
 It always came out in every talk, the hard, selfish, material 
 philosophy of the one sister, in strong, sharp contradistinction to 
 the loftier sentiment, the deeper insight and broader aspiration 
 of the other. 
 
 " Well, Tom, what do you think of it all?" for Ella had 
 vanished with this last remark, to put in practice, in some of its 
 various forms, the faith which she professed, while Tom stood 
 looking out thoughtfully, but evidently not seeing the landscape. 
 
 " I was thinking, Rusha, that if women have got to become 
 all you say they must, before men are improved, there's a 
 mighty small chance for us, poor fellows ! " 
 
 " Well, Tom, the world is advancing all the time into light 
 and truth ; you believe that ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And no doubt there are a great many just such noble women 
 in the world." 
 
 " I wonder where they keep themselves ! " with a little 
 quizzical glance. 
 
 24*
 
 282 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 She answered it. 
 
 " You may have been particularly unfortunate in your 
 knowledge of the sex, you see ! " 
 
 " I do know one who I think has in her the elements of just 
 such a woman, only she failed me once ! " 
 
 Her face showed in its quick flash of pain that she took in his 
 whole meaning. 
 
 " O, Tom, I thought you had given up all that long ago," 
 she stammered. 
 
 His face wore the look which she remembered that night, 
 when he stood by the mantel, under the avalanche of opposition 
 which his family poured down on him. 
 
 " llusha, did you think it took no deeper hold of me than that 
 after what I said, too ? " 
 
 " And and, Torn," her soft fingers at work nervously with 
 the ruffles of her morning dress, " if pa should give his consent 
 now, you would still go?" 
 
 The answer came promptly, and with a strong ring in it, 
 
 " Yes, to-morrow ! " 
 
 For a while she did not speak ; at last she looked up, those 
 sweet eyes of hers shining through their tears. 
 
 " Tom," she said, " it has been in my thought ever since, and 
 -T I cannot tell how but I have grown to feel of late, that if 
 I could once come to know it was my duty, I could bear to see 
 you go ! " 
 
 She was almost repaid, at that moment, for all the pangs it had 
 cost her to reach these words, by the rare smile which he bent 
 down on her face. 
 
 " That is like my own brave sister ! " 
 
 " But, Tom, you know it's useless to think of this," clinging 
 to that last plank. " Pa will never be brought to give his 
 consent." 
 
 " Not as a private, certainly. But what if I went as an officer ? 
 That would put the whole matter in a different light with all of 
 them." 
 
 Rusha saw it at a glance. Even Ella had a girl's romantic 
 
 I
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 283 
 
 admiration for military " shoulder straps." She began to see 
 that this test might be awaiting her also. She did not answer 
 him, because the thought, coming nearer, overwhelmed her. 
 
 He went on in that rapid, earnest way, which showed how 
 deeply his heart was in it all. 
 
 " There may come a time when I shall want you to stand by 
 me, to help me through, Rusha." 
 
 She shut her eyes, a sudden sickness creeping over her, and 
 her answer was low, as though some heavy feeling lay upon and 
 crushed it down. 
 
 " I hope, Tom, the Lord will give me strength to do what He 
 shall show me is my duty." 
 
 A very different answer from that one she had made him six 
 months before, showing how the hidden leaven had been work- 
 ing in her soul also, " till the whole was leavened." 
 
 I do not think there was much comfort then in Tom's fervent 
 "I felt you would come out all right at last." 
 
 Afterwards he went on to talk, with all the ardor of his quick, 
 impatient youth, of his great longing to enter the army, of his 
 eagerness to do some service for his country, of his solemn con- 
 viction that his duty lay there, and, through it all, it was plain 
 enough that he relied on her sympathy and assistance in over- 
 coming his father's prejudices and. constraining his consent into 
 what Tom called " the one hope and ambition of his life." 
 
 Rusha listened silently, all ardor of patriotic feeling, all de- 
 light of sacrifice, gone now, only that cold sinking about her 
 heart ! 
 
 At last Tom waited for her to speak ; it was after he had 
 concluded with " You know, Rusha, money will do anything 
 in this world. Father could easily get me a lieutenancy, or 
 captaincy, or some office of that sort." 
 
 " But, Tom, there is no need of being in a hurry, you know ! " 
 catching at any straw. 
 
 " But there is, though ! If a fellow once makes up his mind, 
 heart and soul, what's the use of hanging round, I say ? He'd 
 better be at work."
 
 284 DAERTLL GAP, OB 
 
 " There will be no use in attempting anything, though, until 
 mother gets strong again. The very suggestion might throw 
 her back into the fever, and there would be an end of the whole 
 thing." 
 
 Tom saw the force of Rusha's argument. 
 
 " Well, I shall wait in hope in faith, too that the good 
 time's coming." 
 
 At that very moment they both caught sight of a trio of army 
 officers emerging from the park. Tom gave them one keen 
 glance, and then cried out " Those are fellows from Yale ! " 
 and he was off in a trice. And Rusha stood at the window, 
 and the fair summer landscape lifted up its smile of still peace 
 into her face. Hers would have answered it sometimes, but she 
 did not see it now she only saw the dread and anguish that 
 were coming 1
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 285 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE advent of Tom Darryll's college friends proved particu- 
 larly opportune for that young man at this juncture. They were 
 a trio of brave young officers, who had entered the army, as so 
 many of our youth did, solely for their country's sake ; and this 
 heroism seemed to have transformed at once their idle, self- 
 indulgent youth into strong, stalwart manhood. They had seen 
 some hard service, too, and their patriotism had gained that deep, 
 steady glow which comes from the test of camp and battle-field. 
 
 Ella's and Agnes' fancies, after the manner of young girls, 
 took fire at once over Tom's friends. And far less attractive 
 society than that of their young classmate's sisters would have 
 possessed an agreeable zest to the young officers, who had 
 been so long beyond sound of a woman's voice that they had 
 found some new sweetness in it. So all parties were disposed 
 to make the most of the brief furlough. 
 
 Even Rusha found at last " some men at the Springs worth 
 talking to," and was never tired of asking questions about army 
 life, with an eagerness whose secret motive nobody could probe. 
 There is, after all, a great power in words ; and it seemed to 
 diminish the chances and dangers of war when the young cap- 
 tains talked of a bullet wound as a " little scratch," and marching 
 up under a heavy fire " a walking up bravely to the music, sir." 
 
 Then, sun-browned and worn with the life of camp, and 
 march, and the hot fight of the field, as were these saldiers, they 
 had escaped unharmed, every one of them sound in limb and 
 stronger in soul. 
 
 " Why might-not Tom be all this? " Ruslm reasoned, striving 
 to brace up her heart to the surrender that must come. 
 
 John Darryll flattered himself that he was above being influ-
 
 286 DAERTLL GAP, OB 
 
 enced by appearances in any serious matter ; but of course the 
 man was greatly mistaken, as most people are in their estimation 
 of themselves. It was one thing_to enter the army a mere pri- 
 vate, without any name, or position, or honors of any sort, and 
 quite another to be an officer, with the prestige, and power, and 
 all that, 
 
 I suppose none of us are above being influenced more or less 
 by such considerations. Certainly John Darryll would have 
 set his face strongly against his boy's entering the army in any 
 position ; but in case it should come to that, he would have an 
 immense choice of place. 
 
 At all events, Tom read his father shrewdly enough to manage 
 that he and the young soldiers should be thrown frequently to- 
 gether, and when they were, the army was certain to be the 
 topic of conversation a subject in which Mr. Darryll, like all 
 his countrymen, took an absorbing interest of one sort or another ; 
 and nobody could hear the young soldiers talk without being 
 more or less infected with their enthusiasm. Guy manifested 
 this fact in his remark after the officers had taken leave one day, 
 each having appropriated one of his sisters for a walk in the park. 
 
 " I say, those are all-fired plucky fellows. It makes one 
 feel it's a fine thing to go to the war, and wear shoulder straps, 
 and all that Jupiter ! " 
 
 " Come, now, don't you go to getting the fever too," added his 
 father. " Tom's only got well over his." 
 
 " O, it's one thing to go to the war and turn in with the 
 rank and file, and pretty much of another to be an officer, and 
 ride a fine horse, and have a lot of men under your command, 
 and all that. I say, 'twould be sort of jolly ! " 
 
 " Foolish boy ! " said his father. " You might find some day 
 that all the glitter and tinsel wouldn't save your head from being 
 shot off. What then ? " 
 
 But after all, the tone was very different from the one which 
 had answered Tom when he talked about going to the war as a 
 private. 
 
 " Well, there wouldn't be much fun in that ; but then a fellow
 
 - to 
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 287 
 
 may not get a scratch. Plenty of 'em come back safe and 
 sound," was the reply of John Darryll's youngest son. 
 
 No more was said at that time, only Tom muttered to him- 
 self, as he went out " There went in the entering wedge ! " 
 . After this there was some secret betwixt Rusha and Tom, 
 which made them, perhaps unconsciously, cling to each other 
 with some new habit of tenderness. Rusha could not but dis- 
 cern how the young soul beside her panted with suppressed 
 eagerness to be at its work ; and there were times when her 
 brother's enthusiasm would fairly carry her out of herself, and 
 she would lose sight of the peril and the dreadful possibilities 
 that lay in wait, in the joy and glory of the struggle. 
 
 But this was only at times. She was a woman, and, above 
 all ambitions and exaltations, the heart which was the deepest 
 part of her, would make itself felt. Sometimes the thought of 
 what Tom was to do, of where he might be in a little while, 
 would come over her with such a pang as fairly to take away 
 her breath. Indeed, whether she was conscious of it or not, 
 she carried with her always now the dread of some trial to come. 
 Its shadow haunted her gayest moments and you know she 
 could be gay, with a bright, hearty, child-like abandon, which 
 infected everybody who was brought within her sphere more 
 than all Ella's high spirits. 
 
 Nobody suspected the secret pain she carried about with her 
 not even Tom, except partially, for it only manifested itself 
 in a restlessness if he was long out of her sight, and a liking to 
 be always at his side. And through all this appointed way the 
 character of Rusha Darryll was gaining self-poise, and bracing 
 itself for the hour of surrender that she saw waited for her in 
 the future the hour which she had not yet courage to open 
 her eyes and look in the face. 
 
 In due time the season was over, and the family returned 
 home Mrs. Darryll with recovered health. Tom's purpose 
 had not transpired, but Rusha gave a prophetic start when 
 she heard her father say one evening, 
 
 " Well, Tom, I s'pose you'll be off next week college comes 
 together then, I see."
 
 288 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 There was a moment's silence ; then Tom spoke up with a 
 ring in his voice which cut sharp as steel through Rusha's soul, 
 
 " You and I must have a private talk before that." 
 
 " What sort of a talk? " said the father, looking a little sur- 
 prised. 
 
 " One of the kind that must speak for itself." 
 
 " I believe you're trying to get up a sensation, Tom," 
 laughed Agnes. " What possible secret can you and pa have 
 together?" 
 
 Tom did not answer the jest. He looked grave enough as 
 he said, 
 
 " There's no time better than the present, father. I'd like to 
 talk it all over with you this evening." 
 
 So it was coming ! After tea Rusha went up stairs, and sat 
 down in a dark corner of the little alcove, trying to realize the 
 truth, and what life would be to her when Tom was gone to 
 the war. 
 
 In a few minutes he ran up and found her here, his whole 
 face on fire with eagerness : 
 
 " We're to have the talk right off," he said, " in father's 
 room. O, Rusha, I must, I will carry it this time ! " 
 
 Her heart leaped up then, and caught at a hope that her 
 father would prove inflexible ; but Tom was too excited to notice 
 her looks now. 
 
 " There he comes ! " he exclaimed, catching the sound of a 
 mounting footstep. " I must be off now ; " but, with his hand 
 on the door-knob, he turned, and came back to her " Rusha, 
 you believe that there is a God who hears prayer, and answers 
 it? "he said. 
 
 " Of course I do, Tom." 
 
 " Well, then, I want you to ask Him to turn father's heart to 
 this matter, while I go in there ! " and he went away. 
 
 Could she do this thing that he had asked her ? 
 
 Huddled up there in a heap on a corner of the lounge, while 
 the soft darkness grew about her, Rusha Darryll put to herself 
 this question, battled with this great hour of surrender that had 
 
 ^
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 289 
 
 come to her too, at last that, in one shape or another, comes 
 some time to all of us ! 
 
 Could she pray the prayer Tom had asked, when that meant 
 that he should go out of her sight, it might be forever go out 
 to peril, to certain suffering, perhaps to death? It seemed to 
 her in that moment that all the wives, and sisters, and mothers 
 who had ever given up the beloved to the war could not have 
 felt and suffered as she did. 
 
 She tried to think of God, to brace up her soul with thoughts 
 of right and duty ; but the light and the props all flmed her 
 now, and she sat there, waiting, a cold heap, on a corner of the 
 lounge, just as Tom had left her, when he came back. 
 
 She knew her first glance would settle the question of his 
 success or failure ; but it had grown so dark by this time that 
 she could not see his face. He came right up to her, manner 
 and voice full of excitement that was close on triumph. 
 
 " Eusha, you must go to father this very minute ! " 
 
 "I, Tom?" 
 
 " Yes ; strike while the iron's hot, and you'll bring him over. 
 Nobody else can do it. He was hard as flint at first, but I 
 stood it out boldly, and I can see he's come down a good many 
 pegs." 
 
 Her voice found its life again. 
 
 " You don't mean, Tom, that I must go in and intercede with 
 pa to let you go to the war ? " 
 
 " That's just it. If you'll help me now, Eusha, we'll bring 
 the matter through betwixt us. I'm sure of it ! ' 
 
 " O, Tom, I can't ! " she shrieked out. " I had rather give 
 up my life than do this thing that you ask me ! " 
 
 Tom sat down. 
 
 " I shall lose all, Eusha, if you fail me now," he said, with 
 a kind of solemn sternness. " My fate is in your hands. Ask 
 your own soul whether you have a right to betray it." 
 
 Whether Tom was right or wrong in putting her to this hard 
 stress I do not know whether she was right or wrong in feel- 
 as she did, that if she failed him now, her deepest hold oa 
 25
 
 290 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 him would be gone forever, I cannot tell ; but it certainly did 
 strike home to her with a singular force of conviction that it 
 was her duty to do what Tom asked ; and there was some fibre 
 knit up in the soul of Rusha Darryll which always made her 
 look a duty straight in the face. 
 
 For a little while she neither stirred nor spoke. At last she 
 rose up. 
 
 " Are you going?" asked Tom, catching eagerly at the folds 
 of her dress. 
 
 " Yes," in a little hard, dry whisper. 
 
 He put his arm around her, and walked with her to the door. 
 If he could have seen her face then, I think he would have called 
 her back ; but he never knew the look it carried out of that door ! 
 
 John Darryll was pacing up and down the room, with his 
 hands behind him, a pretty sure indication that his mood was 
 ruffled. 
 
 " What the deuce has got into that boy's head about going to 
 the war ? He seems resolved to run his head into the cannon's 
 mouth ! " 
 
 " It doesn't seem to be in his head merely, but in his very 
 life and soul," the quiet tone contrasting with her father's ex- 
 cited one. 
 
 " You don't mean that you've come here to tell me I'd better 
 give in, and let him go ? " a little more wrathful than ever. 
 
 " I've come in to tell you, pa, that it seems to me the only 
 thing you can do. You know I opposed it at the first, but I see 
 Tom's whole soul is set on this thing that it isn't a mere boy- 
 ish fancy for the parade and show of war, but something that 
 has taken possession of his whole nature, and there's no use 
 going against it." 
 
 " But do you know what going to the war means, you foolish 
 child? It means getting one's head blown off, or one's limbs 
 shot away, and a good many other things as bad, or worse ! " 
 hurling the dreadful words at her in that sort of blind anger that 
 vents itself on the first object ; and yet there lay something, at 
 that moment, at the bottom of John Darryll's temper that 
 largely excused it. 
 
 j
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 291 
 
 If the man had known how deeply each word hurt his child, 
 he certainly would not have spoken so. It took a moment or 
 two to steady her voice. 
 
 " I know all that, pa, and I am not certain but I would find 
 it a great deal easier to give up my life than to let Tom go ; but 
 he is so bent on it, that, if he is forcibly kept away, I tremble 
 lest something wrong should come of it. If Andrew now had 
 taken a notion for the army, it might have saved him from all 
 that followed." 
 
 " Likely enough ; but there isn't the same danger in Tom's 
 case : " still his tone showed that the last argument had weight 
 with him. 
 
 " No, thank God ! still it's always dangerous to go against a 
 young man's settled convictions of duty, and Tom believes in 
 his soul that his work lies that way. I wish he did not ; but if, 
 in consequence of our opposition, he should lose all ambition, 
 or come to any harm, we should always blame ourselves." 
 
 " The fellow don't know what he's about ; pretty place to put 
 me in ! " muttered John Darryll, pacing the room harder than 
 ever. 
 
 " But other fathers let their sons go to the war," pursued the 
 girl. " And I am certain that Tom will enlist the day he is 
 twenty-one ; and your influence might do something for him 
 now. You know the rank a man holds in the army makes a 
 vast difference in the way of comfort." 
 
 That was a part of the matter which John Darryll would be 
 certain to see in its strongest light. 
 
 " There's your mother ! Do you s'pose she can ever be 
 brought over into letting Tom go to the war?" 
 
 " I suppose so ; because people generally do what they can't 
 help," the grieved, hopeless tone striking her father now. In- 
 deed, Rusha had, all this time, been talking one thing while her 
 heart was pleading another. 
 
 A great deal more was said on both sides. John Darryll 
 was not a man easily moved from his opinions, but the thought 
 of Andrew, and a lurking fear that it might turn out with Tom
 
 292 DARETLL GAP, OB 
 
 as Rusha had said, if he brought all the forces of his opposition 
 to bear against him, had its weight now. 
 
 That last talk, too, had impressed Mr. Darryll with the vital 
 earnestness of his son in the matter at stake. 
 
 At last Rusha returned to Tom. He sprang up. 
 
 "Well, Rusha?" 
 
 " You will go, Tom ! " 
 
 " Has he really consented?" 
 
 " Not in so many words ; but I see it will come to that ! " 
 
 " O, Rusha, I amjtae happiest fellow alive ! " catching her up 
 and twirling her round his old habit in any exuberance of joy. 
 
 Still dark, so that he could not see her face ! 
 
 " Let me sit down, Tom. I can't bear that now," the burden 
 of weariness and pain in her voice striking him even in that 
 moment. 
 
 "Poor Rusha, I shall not forget what you have done not 
 forget that in the whole world there is no sister like you ! " 
 
 Her heart was too sick, then, to find any sweetness in the 
 praise. It was striving to steady itself against those old words 
 which have been a plank let down into the deep waters where 
 many souls have begun to sink, " What time I am afraid I will 
 trust in Thee ! " 
 
 But she could not bear the strain of his triumphant mood. 
 
 " I will tell you about it to-morrow, Tom ; leave me a little 
 while I am so tired there's a good fellow ! " 
 
 He kissed her, and went away. Tom Darryll thought he 
 knew all that it had cost his sister to do what she had done that 
 night ; but he did not know then, nor ever afterwards.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 293 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 EVENTS proved the truth of Rusha's prediction. It is useless 
 to enter into the varied family discussions which followed, or 
 the varied forms of disapprobation which Tom's going to the 
 war encountered. Mr. Darryll did not withdraw his verbal op- 
 position to his son's " war fever," as he continued to designate 
 Tom's purpose to enter the army ; and the mother made all 
 sorts of protestations and dismal prophecies, ended usually by a 
 fit of weeping ; but for all this Tom did not return to college 
 when his term opened. 
 
 Then, too, there was no recurrence of that hail-storm of 
 reproach which had poured itself on Tom's head when he 
 announced his intention of entering the army as a private. Let- 
 ting alone all prospects of comparative ease and comfort, which 
 could not fail to have their weight with affection, there was 
 nothing to revolt one's pride in any sort of official rank ; on the 
 contrary, an ample area for the indulgence of that feeling might 
 be afforded by Tom's military position. 
 
 Ella had, as I said, a girl's admiration for military " shoul- 
 der straps," and a large proportion of the young men who en- 
 joyed her favor wore these, " and," as she privately expressed it 
 to her mother, " though Tom was a great fool to get that war 
 crotchet into his head, still, if he was bent on carrying it out, 
 there was something in being an officer ; and the fellow would 
 look handsome in officer's dress no question of that." 
 
 As for Rusha, after the thing was once settled for from 
 that night of her talk with her father, it had been with her a 
 foregone conclusion that Tom would go to the war there had 
 come a reaction as there usually does after some awful strain 
 of feeling, else we could not exist at all. A quieter mood 
 25*
 
 294 DAERTLL GAP, OB 
 
 superseded ; the awful possibilities of war seemed to fall into the 
 background of her thoughts, ceasing to haunt her with their 
 terrors. She caught, to a degree, the contagion of Tom's en- 
 thusiasm, for he made her, as before, the recipient of all his 
 ambitious and purposes, as well as of his prospects of success in 
 the one thing which had taken such possession of his whole 
 being, while every day his hopes seemed to find some fresh 
 evidence of their near fulfilment. 
 
 Long before he would admit it, even to himself, John Darryll 
 had made up his mind that Tom would enter the army. 
 
 The man had more faith in the power of money than in any- 
 thing else in the world, and he resolved that its influence should 
 be brought to bear, in securing some official appointment for 
 his son. 
 
 In the first place, Tom had in himself all the pre-requisites 
 for a good officer ; the bright, prompt, native energy ; the swift 
 perception, with a great deal of latent executive force ; and 
 there was little doubt that, with his whole soul in the work, had 
 he entered the army as a private, and opportunity been afforded 
 him, he would have risen by force of his own merit. 
 
 But parental pride and affection impelled John Darryll to 
 forestall all that. A man of his wealth could have influence in 
 a thousand indirect ways that would reach high quarters, and 
 this without doing, as the world goes, anything reprehensible. 
 
 To go into all the moral relations of the course which the 
 broker took to secure his son's advancement would require a 
 good deal of subtle analysis, to which John Darryll certainly 
 was not given suffice it, whether right or wrong, the end was 
 attained, while nobody, in the domestic circle or out of it, 
 dreamed of questioning the legitimacy of the means employed ; 
 and there came a day when Tom Darryll went home to his fam- 
 ily wearing the " army blue " mounted with captain's bars. 
 
 Ella's prophecy was verified. The young officer wore his 
 uniform with such manly freedom and grace, with such a joyful 
 consciousness too, of new purpose and responsibility, as though 
 he had at last found his own place, and knew it, that none of
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 295 
 
 his family could look at him without a certain feeling of pride 
 and pleasure, which, for the time, obscured all fear for his future. 
 
 Ella and Agnes went into raptures over their brother's dress, 
 and Guy expressed, in his coarse fashion, his sense of his 
 father's general managing ability. 
 
 " I tell you the governor knows how to pull the wires ! He's 
 fixed that captaincy up snug for you, Tom ; " and the youth 
 looked with a decided hankering on his brother's " straps," and 
 wondered if they would not be equally becoming to him also. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll and Rusha took the whole in a less voluble 
 way ; but mother and sister pride had its rights that would not 
 be denied, and that, for the hour, seemed to push far into the 
 background the perils that lay in wait. They looked at the 
 slim, lithe -figure at the strong, alert step at the face full of 
 the joy and fire of youth, and thank God ! it is not in human 
 nature to be always sad, and it did not seem possible that all 
 this strong, quick young life could be brought low in a little 
 while by that devouring death which waited in ten thousand 
 forms down yonder on the battle-fields. 
 
 And the hours which followed were, in a large sense, peaceful 
 ones to all the family no terrible, haunting fears stalking 
 through the days and nights, and yet a kind of vague forecast 
 of separation which might fall any time, smoothing that fam- 
 ily friction which inhered in the Darryll household. As for 
 Rusha, she could hardly let Tom go out of her sight in these 
 days. There were times when the consciousness that he panted 
 so ardently to be away, came over her with a terrible pang ; still, 
 with a nature so susceptible as was hers to all generous enthusi- 
 asms, she could not but imbibe something of the spirit she had 
 first awakened, and looked at army life through the coukur de 
 rose atmosphere with which Tom always invested it. 
 
 Among several brigades which were ordered to reenforce at 
 once the depleted Army of the Potomac, Tom's regiment was 
 included. So the day came at last to the Darrylls, which, keep- 
 ing its appointed time in the years of God, came to so many 
 households throughout the land a day which held for loving
 
 296 DAREYLL GAP, OE 
 
 hearts that farewell and parting whose bitterness had some 
 taste of the bitterness of death. 
 
 Rusha had tried sometimes to look forward to this day, and 
 to brace her soul to go through it bravely, as a soldier's sister 
 should ; but when the time came, her nice little programme all 
 failed her. She was just the fond, tearful sister, clinging to 
 Tom with a love and fear which, it seemed, could never relin- 
 quish him, and unable to support her mother through the try- 
 ing crisis. 
 
 It is a great mercy that last moments are always hurried ones 
 that the great griefs of life darken down suddenly and take 
 us unawares, and we go through them often in a sort of maze, 
 like one in a dream. 
 
 In the midst of all the last things which were to be done, they 
 had time only for a hurried parting, and Rusha left unsaid many 
 things she had kept for the last moments. One thing, however, 
 she did find time for. A few days previous, all his sisters had, 
 at Tom's request, sat for their photographs, and Rusha slipped 
 hers in betwixt the leaves of her Bible, and watched her chance 
 for a few private words, which happened at last when her 
 mother had left the room a moment to supervise the close be- 
 stowal of some small jars of fruit among Tom's clothes, and each 
 of the girls was off on some little pet scheme which involved 
 the young captain's pleasure or comfort. 
 
 Rusha went to him now, putting her cheek down to his, a wet 
 cheek, a voice all broken up with grief. 
 
 " Tom, there is one thing I want you to promise me ! " 
 
 " Anything in the world, Rusha." 
 
 " Here is my Bible, and the little picture always to be kept 
 inside where I have laid it, so you cannot come at the one with- 
 out the other. And I want you to carry this book always around 
 with you, and promise me that no day shall ever come and go 
 no matter what the hurry, and confusion, and care may be no 
 matter whether you are in the camp, or on the march, or in the 
 midst of the dreadful battle-field, that you will not look inside 
 this Bible, and read at least a single passage, if it is no more."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID, 297 
 
 " Yes, I'll promise you all that," said Tom, taking the little 
 Bible ; and I think just then he could say no more. 
 
 " It will be a help to you, Tom, as you will sooner or later 
 find. The verse will come back to you some time when you 
 least expect it, and you will see some new meaning, and com- 
 fort, and sweetness in it, and wonder you never felt it before. 
 I used to think the Bible was dreadful dull reading, and stuck 
 to it as a matter of duty, going through with a chapter every day 
 as a sort of penance, but lately I can't tell how, I've found 
 something new in it, and passages and verses here and there 
 start up to me with a wonderful new life, and strength, and 
 beauty passages that I'd read a thousand times before with- 
 out finding anything in them ; it's like touching some secret 
 spring, and lo ! a great treasure starts into view. And so it 
 will be with you in some hour of loneliness, or hardship, or 
 trouble ; the words will come back and enter right into your 
 secret pain or grief the very comfort of God ! ' 
 
 " Where are some of these verses, Rusha?" asked Tom, 
 regarding the little book with a mixed sort of look, half perplex- 
 ity, half wistful reverence. 
 
 " I've marked a few, Tom, that have done me good ; but 
 after all, I suppose you'll find them .out best for yourself. No- 
 body has the same experience in these things, I fancy, and I 
 might pass, unheeding, right by the words that would unlock 
 their hidden riches to you ; only it's true what I say, and some 
 time you'll prove it so." 
 
 Tom put the volume away in his breast pocket, a small brown 
 volume, in antique binding, his own name flashing a line of light 
 across the cover. 
 
 " I shall read the verse and look at the face there once every 
 
 day, Rusha ! " 
 
 At that moment the girls returned. This was her last chance 
 for any private talk with Tom. 
 
 The young captain bore himself with a show of couraj 
 through what followed. It had been previously arranged 
 his father and brother should accompany him to the cars 
 see him off; but this the women could not do.
 
 298 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 It was the cruelest hour of Tom Dtvrryll's life when his mother 
 and those three sobbing girls gathered about him for the last 
 kisses. All the excitement and glory of war, all the fierce rush 
 of battle and the joy of victory, vanished away then. If he 
 could only have sat down among them and cried too, he thought ! 
 but Tom felt that to do this would be to disgrace forever, not 
 only his manhood, but his profession ; and at that moment there 
 floated across his thought those grand old words in which is the 
 essence of the old knightly chivalry, that " doublet and hose 
 ought to show itself courageous to petticoat." 
 
 Tom's mother had her right the last kiss but Rusha's 
 words were the last his memory carried away, " God go with 
 you, Tom. The day that sees any harm come to you will never 
 see me lift up my head again ! " And he went out, carrying 
 his strong, brave youth to the chances of war, as our noblest 
 and dearest went through all those dreadful four years, not 
 knowing whether it was for life or death. 
 
 And afterwards there came to the splendid home, as there 
 came to the lowliest roofs throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land, holding them all in one common bond, the eager, 
 breathless waiting the watching day by day for tidings from 
 the war the searching of the paper for any mention of that 
 one regiment among the hosts lying darkling down there on the 
 Potomac the one regiment in which Tom was captain, and 
 which was all the world to them ! 
 
 But however the others might miss him however the ma- 
 ternal heart of Mrs Darryll might carry its yearning for her boy 
 by night and by day, his absence could come home to nobody 
 else in just the same sense that it did to Rusha. The moral 
 affinities betwixt her nature and Tom's made her feel the wrench 
 of the parting, and the absence that followed, in a way that 
 none of the others could. She never realized until he had gone, 
 what this brother of hers had been to her ; how close were the 
 intimacies of their thought and feeling, and how much com- 
 fort and inspiration their interviews had given her. The lit- 
 tle alcove-library, so closely associated as it was with Tom,
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 oppressed her with a feeling of almost intolerable solitude, and 
 she used to cast about in a vague, perplexed way to get rid of 
 the ache and loneliness which at times nearly overwhelmed her. 
 Rusha Darryll had, like all young girls, her ideal of a lover. 
 That this -would be fashioned somewhat after the idiosyncrasies 
 of her own temperament, was a matter of course ; but he was 
 something fine and grand and loyal an incarnation, in short, 
 of every manly virtue and every shining grace of mind and 
 person. 
 
 The men whom she met in society in no wise realized this 
 ideal. They gave her a general sense of chagrin and disap- 
 pointment which sometimes developed itself in sweeping denun- 
 ciations of the whole sex. 
 
 Yet Rusha Darryll's ideals and fancies had a stubborn tenacity 
 of life, and the sweet perfumy dreams of youth still clung 
 around her heart, filling it at times with those vague, indescri- 
 bable hopes and yearnings which always belong to a girlhood 
 like hers a girlhood whose dew and bloom linger late in their 
 budding, but round out at last into a riper and completer rose 
 of womanhood. 
 
 After Tom's departure, that vague sense of something want- 
 ing to perfect her life, an inward craving for some finer and 
 deeper sympathy, made themselves felt as they had never done 
 before. Sometimes visions of a new life which was to complete 
 and sanctify her own, trailed in shining draperies of gold and 
 purple before her, and seemed to wait, with all sweet witcheries 
 of youth and hope, along the enchanted coasts of her future. 
 
 But here, as everywhere, the old doubts and gravitations 
 assailed the soul of Rusha Darryll. Her mother, with her 
 eminently practical habit, regarded all romance as an absurd 
 impossibility, and treated the loves of poets and books as some- 
 thing fit only to dazzle the brains of silly girls, and lead them 
 into all sorts of fatal mistakes. 
 
 Deep as was Mrs. Darryll's affection for her husband, it was 
 totally devoid of sentiment, and she spared no pains to instil 
 into the minds of her daughters her favorite theory that an
 
 300 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 engagement should be entered into with the same common sense, 
 and in fact " with the same eye to the main chance," that one 
 should exercise respecting any other of the relations of life. 
 
 It cannot be denied that Mrs. Darryll made a good many 
 sensible arguments on this point, and that want of judgment 
 and of wise discernment are at the bottom of a large proportion 
 of the unhappy marriages in the world. But it was Mrs. Dar- 
 ryll's habit of treating the whole thing just as she would any 
 other bargain, of viewing it simply as an arrangement to be 
 entered into on account of its social respectability, and for its 
 mere extraneous advantages of wealth and position which always 
 made the finer instincts of her eldest daughter recoil. 
 
 Yet for all that, it had its influence, especially when Rusha 
 looked abroad in the world, and saw with that clear pene- 
 trative gaze of hers, that always went straight to the core of 
 things, what matrimony was to most of the men and women 
 around her. 
 
 You have seen that it was the girl's misfortune that she had 
 always been thrown among people whose characters and aims 
 were of the most worldly sort mere fashionable people no 
 better no worse, than others of their class ; and this, added to the 
 materializing influences of her home, was enough to shake her 
 faith in her own intuitions and ideals of love, as in every- 
 thing else. 
 
 " Was there not, after all," she would ask herself, " a great 
 deal of truth in what her mother said about the sort of men 
 that existed only in novels and in the brains of love-sick girls 
 was not her own ideal of brave, generous, lofty manhood, 
 of knightly strength and tenderness, ' without fear and without 
 reproach,' another of the beautiful impossibilities and sorceries 
 of the imagination that had played her false so often some- 
 thing that her heart and fancy might always crave, but would 
 never find ? If there were any such men in the world, where 
 did they keep themselves ? not iu their set, at least ; and did not 
 that pride itself on its exclusiveness, on its riding the topmost 
 wave of metropolitan wealth and fashion ? "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 301 
 
 Eusha counted over her admirers she had a good many 
 
 she might have had a good many more, had not the native 
 transparency of her character prevented her from taking delight 
 in conquests for their own sake. Still, her own attractions, 
 combined with her father's wealth, always procured her plenty 
 of lovers, or those she knew only required a slight degree of 
 encouragement to become so, and some of these had awakened 
 a passing interest or fancy in the girl. 
 
 Not one, however, had wrought more than a transient im- 
 pression ; but in the new yearning for sympathy, in the void and 
 ache which Tom's absence made, Rusha was fain to turn some- 
 where for the sympathy her soul craved. 
 
 It was a dangerous time with her a time which has 
 wrecked the life of many a young girl, making a burden and a 
 bitterness of all the years which remained before she could lay 
 them down in the grave, that waits to hold at last all our sor- 
 rows and joys, our loves and griefs. 
 
 It is true that Rusha's meditations used to close, generally, with 
 a little shudder, as she drew a picture of her future with some 
 of her admirers. Who amongst them could give her soul the 
 fin,e sympathy that it craved ? who could comprehend, out of the 
 fulness of his own nature, her perplexities and needs, her en- 
 thusiasms and aspirations, her longings and her struggles? 
 Who could steady her faith, and inspire her courage, and 
 strengthen her weakness ? who be to her at once a rest and a 
 stimulation, a trust that would never falter, and a tenderness 
 that would never fail ? 
 
 Asking these questions, and a great many others, she would 
 shake her head, that dreary, hopeless look on her face which 
 showed the want and pain beneath. 
 
 It is true that there often flashed across those meditations a 
 thought of Fletcher Rochford, and of that afternoon when they 
 had stood together on the sea shore, with the strong tides of 
 the ocean coming in at their feet, and the glory of the sunset 
 in the west. She would never forget that hour, nor what Dr. 
 Rochford had said to her there. 
 26
 
 302 DAERTLL GAP, OR 
 
 Always, too, with a little smile, or just a hint of a blush, she 
 recalled what Tom, the dear fellow ! had said. There, certainly, 
 was a man with lofty aims and true purposes consecrating his 
 whole life. She could never forget his look that day, nor the 
 warm, joyful tenderness that thrilled his smile when he spoke 
 of God, and the love which underlaid, redeemed, and glorified all 
 human life all its perplexities, and mysteries, and sorrows. 
 The harp of this man's affections might lie deep in his nature ; 
 but liusha Darryll never doubted it was there, nor that the 
 right touch, sweeping over its chords, would waken voices of deep 
 immortal music music whose richness might fill a whole life 
 with courage, and faith, and joy. 
 
 But if she thought of the possibility, she certainly never did 
 of the probability, that this would ever fall to her lot. With all 
 her approbativeness, Rusha Darryll was not vain, and self-conceit 
 was not in the texture of her character. She held, indeed, a 
 doubtful estimate of herself in all respects, and a real inward 
 humility which one might not always have suspected, for despite 
 all her transparency of mood and impulse, " something in the 
 girl and her manner were a little at variance."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 303 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 MATRIMONY is always a theme of interest to young girls, 
 and of course the various gentlemen of their especial circle, 
 particularly those whose calls and attentions afforded good evi- 
 dence of some ulterior purpose, were frequently the subjects of 
 domestic discussion. 
 
 It was amusing to hear the sprightly talk the buzz of young 
 bright voices, although the unsuspecting victims of this merci- 
 less verbal dissection would have been utterly confounded, could 
 they have once been enlightened as to the manner in which they 
 were disposed of. For the talk went on after the manner of 
 young women on such a theme, with all its extravagance, ridi- 
 cule, hyperbole saying, of course, a great deal more thau was 
 meant, talk that would have made the inflated self-conceit of 
 some of its subjects undergo a terrible collapse. 
 
 One was disposed of as " an insufferable bore ; " another was 
 extinguished as that " horrid old thing ; " and each had his sep- 
 arate and unflattering cognomen, while, waxing merry over 
 their chatter, the sisters would relate all sorts of amusing little 
 side scenes, placing their admirers in all kinds of ridiculous jux- 
 tapositions and relations which they themselves have not the 
 remotest suspicion of having occupied. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll used to sit and smile over all this breezy talk. 
 What mother is ever insensible to the admiration which her 
 daughters inspire ! This one used sometimes, however, when the 
 merriment waxed too explosive, and the execution too whole- 
 sale, to come to the rescue, with a little deprecating, " Girls, 
 how you do go on ! It's dreadful to pull people to pieces in this 
 
 way." 
 
 " O, well, ma," Rusha would answer, with a little prick of
 
 304 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 that sensitive conscience of hers, " you know we always put 
 them together again in the end." 
 
 On the occasion of one of these talks, Ella suddenly turned 
 to her sister, with, 
 
 " Rusha. don't you think it would be nice to have a wedding 
 in the family?" 
 
 " That depends on circumstances," was the rather non-com- 
 mittal response. 
 
 " Well, I think it would now," continued the younger sister 
 in an animated voice, dropping into her lap some graceful trifle 
 of embroidery with which she was making a pretence of sewing. 
 " There is always so much excitement and sensation in a wed- 
 ding, and of course ours would come off in splendid style. 
 There would be the bride's trousseau, and all the elegant gifts, 
 and the receptions, and afterwards the bridal tour to Europe, 
 for that is the fashion now really, the whole thing would be 
 delightful ! " 
 
 " No doubt it would," said Rusha, with only a qualified de- 
 gree of sympathy. " But matrimony doesn't end with the hon- 
 eymoon if it only did, I agree with you that it would all be 
 very charming." 
 
 " Well, whether it does or not, of course we've all got to 
 plunge into it, sooner or later ; and you are the oldest you 
 must set the example ! " 
 
 " But what if I haven't settled in my own mind, as you seem 
 to have done, that matrimony is an absolutely compulsory duty 
 with any woman ! " 
 
 "Why, of course it is, one time or another," added Ella, 
 decidedly. " You don't expect to be an old maid, do you, 
 Rusha?" 
 
 " I shouldn't wonder. I certainly had far rather be one, than 
 rush into matrimony, simply to have a new handle to my name, 
 or because it is a time-honored custom, ' a measure full of state 
 and anxiety,' as Beatrice calls it ; and I believe half woman-kind 
 are wooed and won for no better reasons than these." 
 
 " Well, you'll do as you please," answered Ella, decidedly ;
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 305 
 
 " but for my part I shall get married one of these days. If a 
 woman isn't, everybody is sure to think it's because she hasn't 
 had a chance, no matter if she's had scores of offers." 
 
 " I think it would be very little to any woman's credit to 
 have a ' score of offers,' but still less so to accept one for no 
 better reason than to let the world know she'd had it." 
 
 " Well, then," changing a little the grounds of her argument, 
 " I think it's dismal, anyhow, to be an old maid. It's more re- 
 spectable and dignified to get married, and have a husband and 
 an establishment of one's own now isn't it, ma?" for during 
 the latter part of this conversation Mrs. Darryll had entered the 
 room. 
 
 " "Well, I suppose it's natural for girls to expect to get mar- 
 ried some time, and it's all proper and right, certainly," was 
 the guarded rejoinder. " But there's one thing your father 
 isn't in any hurry to marry his girls off his hands. He'll be 
 glad to keep you in the home nest as long as you want to stay." 
 
 This was the greatest flight of metaphor which Mrs. Darryll's 
 fancy ever attempted. 
 
 " Of course he would dear pa ! " said Rusha. " And I go 
 farther than Ella, and think that matrimony is not only the 
 pleasantest, but that it is the dearest, sweetest, and most sacred 
 relation of womanhood, only it must be of the right sort of 
 the right sort." 
 
 " Of course," answered Mrs. Darryll. " But then young 
 girls are apt to look at the whole thing in a wrong way 
 through pretty romantic notions and fancies that are never to be 
 found in this world never! I went through all that in my 
 youth, and I know." 
 
 Rusha looked up at her mother with one of those wistful, 
 perplexed glances that were always haunting her face. She 
 wondered if the dreams and visions were like her own, and if 
 she, too, should ever get to be such a commonplace, practical 
 woman as her mother, and talk in just that way of her own 
 youth ! 
 
 " I, for one, mean to look out and make the best bargain I 
 
 26*
 
 306 DARBTLL GAP, OB 
 
 can," continued Ella, " and I set my mark pretty high, too ; 
 but then, of course, I know it's useless to expect impossibilities. 
 But I must have a man who is good-looking and fascinating, 
 and has money and position. I won't take less than that." 
 
 " That's combining a good many desirable qualities, though," 
 answered her sister, " and not very easy to concentrate in one 
 person." 
 
 " Well, I don't know. I think you might find them all in 
 one of your lovers." 
 
 " Which one?" with a great show of interest. 
 
 " Mr. Apthorp. I'm sure he has money and position, and 
 he's fine-looking, and certainly he's agreeable. Any girl would 
 think he was a catch. I should really like him, now, for a 
 brother-in-law." 
 
 " But I don't suppose the thought of such a relation ever en- 
 tered the fellow's mind at least," correcting herself, "I am 
 not certain of it." 
 
 " Now you know better, Rusha Darryll ! " said Ella, turning 
 squarely upon her sister. " The fellow Is certainly smitten with 
 you. I've watched him, and I can tell. No man can deceive 
 me on that score. All he needs is proper encouragement on 
 your part ; and I don't believe that you'll ever have a better 
 chance." 
 
 Of course these remarks at once stimulated the maternal 
 interest and anxiety of Mrs. Darryll. A list of interrogations 
 ensued respecting the young man's antecedents, position, and 
 wealth, to which Ella responded in a satisfactory manner, while 
 Rusha sat still and listened with an unusual quiet in her face. 
 
 " I wonder what your father would think of the young man ! " 
 murmured Mrs. Darryll, reflectively, arranging the books on 
 the table. 
 
 " I think pa would like him," answered the younger sister, 
 who had borne the principal share in the talk. " He's in every 
 respect a desirable son-in-law. Mrs. Cyril Apthorp, too, sounds 
 very nicely. You'd better think twice, Rusha." 
 
 " O, Ella, do hush ! " laughing and blushing.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 307 
 
 But the elder sister obeyed the younger's advice, not only 
 thinking twice, but an infinite number of times. You have seen 
 in just what a mood Tom's absence had left her. She wanted 
 something stronger than herself to lean against, to cliug to, after 
 the nature of woman. 
 
 Young Apthorp was certainly unexceptionable in all tangible 
 respects, and her natural love of admiration was stimulated, and 
 she did feel a certain thrill of gratitude towards him for his 
 preference. 
 
 Rusha Darryll would never gauge a man's attentions to her- 
 self for any more than they were worth ; but young Apthorp 
 had certainly indicated his preference for her society, above all 
 others, in ways that any woman could but interpret as pointing 
 to one result. 
 
 Rusha liked to chat with him, preferred him certainly to any 
 man in their set, going over the list in her mind. Still, he 
 never wakened anything more than a passing emotion ; never 
 inspired her thoughts ; never roused her feelings ; all the great 
 gamut of her emotions lay dumb and unresponsive beneath his 
 touch. He was good, and nice, and intelligent, and all that 
 she could not place her finger on a flaw, only her face set- 
 tling into a great doubt. 
 
 But, after all, was not her mother right ? Was she not look- 
 ing at the world, and at manhood, through the prisms of that 
 troublesome imagination that would transfigure everything, giv- 
 ing it " a glory and " a radiance not its own? " 
 
 If she could only make up her mind to like young Apthorp ! 
 She might never have so good a chance again, as Ella said, and 
 it would be a very delightful thing to have a lover, and be the 
 dearest, sweetest, most precious thing in all the world to him. 
 The tears came into her eyes as she thought of that. 
 
 Rusha Darryll was no coquette ; but I think, for the month 
 that followed, she did flirt with young Apthorp, there being 
 at the bottom of this one grain of salt that redeemed the flirt- 
 ing from all heartlessness or deceit. She was trying to like 
 her lover. For the man was really this, and Rusha sometimes
 
 308 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 thought she had succeeded. "When he was away she did manage 
 to invest him with some grace and ideal charm that always 
 vanished on his appearance, for he was sure to resolve himself 
 straight into the kind, gentlemanly, agreeable Cyril Ap thorp, 
 just what any woman ought to love, only she didn't that was 
 all. How many times she chided herself in her own room for 
 this ! And yet the bare fact remained, and she could not help 
 herself. 
 
 Cyril Apthorp brought her flowers, gave her beautiful books, 
 and Rusha watered and cherished the one, and enjoyed the 
 other, but really it was for their own sake not for the giver's. 
 His attentions were so marked as to become a matter of com- 
 ment in their own set, and a target for all sorts of pretty family 
 jests. 
 
 In all this there was a great deal that was pleasant. Rusha' s 
 vanity I dislike to give it so harsh a name certainly en- 
 joyed the incense that her lover's devotion offered to it ; but 
 beneath all this the heart of the woman lay silent, giving back 
 no sound, no throb of passionate tenderness stirring its calm 
 no touch revealing one strain of all its vast harp of eternal 
 melodies ! 
 
 There came an evening when Rusha went out of the parlor, 
 her face unbent with tremulousness and doubt, that empha- 
 sized itself about the lips into something like grief. 
 
 The faces of her sisters, as they met her at the sitting-room 
 door, were in marked contrast with her own, their eyes and 
 lips in a twinkle of mirth. 
 
 "Has he proposed O, has he proposed?" they cried out 
 simultaneously, with voices that aimed at tragedy, but somehow 
 fell short of it ; and they danced back and forth before her. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Darryll sat by the table, looking on, and evi- 
 dently enjoying the whole scene. 
 
 " Girls, be still. Aren't you ashamed to go on so ! " the 
 faintest little smile, in which was no element of triumph, just 
 articulating itself about her mouth. 
 
 " I know he did, now ! " persisted Ella, with immense unc-
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 309 
 
 tion. I just left the parlor to give you a good chance, and 
 I'm dying to hear all about it ! " 
 
 " So am I," added Agnes, with a girlish curiosity that be- 
 came her years. " Do tell us, Rusha ! " 
 
 She sat down by the fire. "It's altogether too sacred a 
 thing to treat in this way ; '' the trouble in her face still. " Such 
 a matter belongs only to him and me." 
 
 " Rusha Darryll ! you are the oddest girl alive. As though 
 it wasn't all in the family, and we hadn't a right to know ! 
 But then, of course, it isn't to be expected you'd take an offer 
 like any other born woman ! " said Ella, with some asperity, 
 which had its rise in baffled curiosity. 
 
 " Of course you'll tell your own family." Mrs. Darryll 
 came to the rescue. " I'm sure it would not be to the young 
 man's credit to desire you should keep it from us." 
 
 Her mother's remark set the matter in a different light. In 
 a sense it was certainly true, and Rusha was not then in a 
 mood to balance matters nicely ; for she had that high sense 
 of honor which her family was always disposed to regard as 
 slightly hypercritical. So the facts transpired, and they 
 amounted to this Cyril Apthorp had paid Rusba the high- 
 est compliment a man can pay a woman ; and she had not 
 accepted him. 
 
 " I couldn't love him, pa ; I tried to, hard as ever a woman 
 did, but there was no use ! " and she turned to Mr. Darryll, 
 with such an earnest apology in her tones, while these and her 
 face showed that both were on the point of breaking up into 
 tears. 
 
 " Nobody wanted you to, child. I'm not ready to give up 
 any of my girls," said her father in his very kindest manner. 
 But for all that, Rusha knew that no one of his daughter's 
 suitors would have been so acceptable in her father's eyes, as 
 the one she had just declined. 
 
 " It was all my own fault ; " the grieved tone still uppermost 
 in her voice : " but though I liked him better than any of the 
 others, I never could get beyond a friendly regard for him."
 
 310 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " It's my opinion," said Ella, oracularly, " you'll live to see 
 the day you'll regret it. You've got some foolish crotchet in 
 your head about love and romance, and all that, but I miss my 
 guess if you haven't let good luck slip to-night." 
 
 " That may be, Ella, but I shall never regret doing what my 
 heart and conscience told me was the only right thing. It's 
 something else that troubles me ! " 
 
 " What is that?" Spite of its mirthful beginning, the con- 
 versation had settled down into gravity enough now, on all sides. 
 
 " I can't rid myself of the feeling that all this time I've been 
 encouraging Cyril Apthorp. I was trying to like him, of 
 course, or I should never have done this ; but the fact remains, 
 and I do not feel comfortable over it." 
 
 " Encourage a man ! That is an awful crime ! No doubt 
 you are the first woman who ever did that, Rusha ! " said Ella, 
 with her careless laugh, just touched with a little contempt. 
 
 " And that is not all," continued Rusha, half to herself. " I 
 am sure that my refusal was a real blow to him. It struck 
 deep, I saw, and he will not be likely to get over it very soon." 
 This time there were tears in her eyes. 
 
 " Don't you trouble yourself on that score, my dear," said 
 her mother, consolingly. " There never was a man who broke 
 his heart for a woman ! " 
 
 '.' Don't you remember what your favorite Rosalind says ? " 
 added Ella : " ' Men have died from time to time, and worms 
 eaten them, but not for love ! ' Shakspeare gauged the affec- 
 tions of his own sex at their precise value." 
 
 "I suppose it's so," said Rusha, drawing a long sigh of 
 relief. " I'm sure I hope Mr. Apthorp will forget all about it 
 in a little while." 
 
 She had her feminine love of admiration she took the nat- 
 ural pleasure of her sex and her girlhood in the conquest she 
 had made, but she was perfectly sincere in what she said to- 
 night. Sink your line and plummet into the depths of her 
 nature, and you would always find the tender, pitiful heart the 
 deepest and truest part of it.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 Still, I think that Cyril Apthorp would have felt a certain 
 gratification could he have known just what a vacuum the loss 
 of his society made in Rusha's life at this juncture. There had 
 been a certain excitement in it, and the knowledge that she was 
 loved with a true aud loyal love that she was the dearest and 
 most precious thing in the whole world in the eyes of an hon- 
 orable man could not but be pleasant to her, a perpetual offer- 
 ing to her approbativeness, a perfumy incense to her self-love, 
 which has won the hand, at least, of many a woman. 
 
 The result of all this was, that at last Rusha sat down and 
 confided the whole to Tom a curious little episode for him 
 to read down there in camp on the Potomac; but then life 
 is always springing strange episodes and unexpected events 
 upon us. 
 
 Tom wrote back in unqualified commendation of the part 
 Rusha had acted, and, with the valor of a newly-fledged officer, 
 affirmed himself ready to shoot the next man who dared solicit 
 any part or lot in Rusha Darryll. She belonged to him abso- 
 lutely, and he was not going to yield an inch of his right to any 
 living man. 
 
 As for love, Tom affirmed he had long ago made up his mind 
 that it was nine-tenths a humbug, and he had dedicated himself to 
 old bachelorhood. When the war was over, aud he had finished 
 his studies, Tom had forestalled a house of his own, over which 
 Rusha was to preside. What happy times they would have in 
 some little Arcadian retreat among hills and waterfalls, where 
 Tom was to set his cottage, hung with verandas, and draped 
 with flowering vines ! All sweet persuasions of music, all in- 
 spirations of paintings, all the life and joy of books, should be 
 theirs ; and Tom drew such pictures of their perfect happiness 
 together, that Rusha's eyes thrilled with happy tears. What a 
 dear, enchanted life it would be, with the noisy, harassing world 
 left far behind, as one leaves " the memory of storms that die 
 below the horizon ! " 
 
 She looked off through the future years, and saw the fair pic- 
 ture shining through them, and did not know that it was only
 
 312 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 another mirage, hanging fair and beautiful along the slopes of 
 her youth, but that it would fade and fade, and that in its stead 
 would come the heat and the burden of the noonday. 
 
 At the very time that Rusha was up stairs, devouring Tom's 
 letter, Ella happened to be down town with a party of friends, 
 on some shopping expedition, such as ladies delight in ; for it 
 was one of those days of early spring in which the prophetic 
 soul of the year seems suddenly to flash up through cloud and 
 storm, in golden smile and softly-brooding air, " trying a chord 
 here and there, before she commences the grand harmony of 
 the seasons." 
 
 The little party was all in high glee, with nothing heavier on 
 their minds just then than a buzzing commentary on the spring 
 fashions ; for gossamer fabrics, and flowers, and laces made a 
 gorgeous display in the store windows that morning. Suddenly 
 one of the company proposed that they should visit a picture 
 gallery near at hand ; some gems of oil paintings were on 
 exhibition, which were talked about in their set. 
 
 " O, yes ; I remember," said Ella, " Rusha was raving about 
 them this morning, and I promised her I'd go down town with 
 her after lunch. But the paintings will bear a second visit." 
 
 Did Ella Darryll's fate await her that morning in the picture 
 gallery? It is best for us all to go softly through life, not know- 
 ing what any hour may bring forth to us. 
 
 Certainly, Ella Darryll would not have mounted the stairs 
 with that light laugh and that gossipy hum of talk, if she could 
 have known what was inside. Yet it was no more than Der- 
 rick Howe. He was idling away an hour among the pictures, 
 with a party of gentlemen, his graceful lounging attitude making 
 him conspicuous among the others. 
 
 Ella Darryll and he had not met since that memorable even- 
 ing, which rankled still in his thought, and which had given to 
 Derrick Howe's self-love the severest blow it had ever received. 
 He had never felt quite so assured of himself since that time, 
 and though he had often debated the matter in his thoughts, he 
 could never, as he phrased it, quite " screw his courage up to
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 313 
 
 the point of calling on Ella and demanding an explanation of her 
 sister's conduct." The prospect of being " snubbed by that 
 purse-proud speculator " was not pleasant. 
 
 The twp met squarely this morning. There was a little flash 
 of confused annoyance on Ella's face, but she was a fashionable 
 young lady, and had her expression under tolerably good control. 
 
 It was her nature to dislike whatever gave her trouble. Cer- 
 tainly Derrick Howe had his full share of this feeling as the 
 young lady drew herself up and responded with a distant hauteur 
 to his greeting, wishing at that moment that he was in " Jericho." 
 
 For Ella had made her promise in good faith, and she swept 
 past the young man now with the air of a princess, with her 
 graceful figure, with the rustle of her rich dress, all of which 
 Derrick Howe was just the man to appreciate and admire. 
 
 " I'll speak to that girl before she leaves the gallery hang 
 me to the next lamp-post if I don't ! " he muttered, saunter- 
 ing after the party. 
 
 Circumstances were certainly in his favor. The gentlemen 
 of his company were acquaintances of Ella's friends, and soon 
 bestowed themselves among the young ladies. 
 
 Ella Darryll devoted herself to the pictures, a little fluttered 
 internally, notwithstanding. A little way off" Derrick Howe 
 watched his opportunity. 
 
 " Whose is that?" asked Ella of one of the gentlemen, point- 
 ing with her parasol to a little gem on the walls, a bit of sea 
 colst, and a mass of broken rock, and great waves storming 
 against it in a white frenzy of wrath. 
 
 Somebody passed her at that moment and jostled the parasol 
 from her hand. It was picked up and restored to her in a 
 moment. Derrick Howe could do these things with an air. 
 
 Ella had received the parasol and bowed her thanks graciously 
 before looking up. She recognized the gentleman. It was 
 certainly an embarrassing position for the lady. Derrick H 
 went on perfectly at his ease, criticising the pictures and I 
 as though nothing in the world had happened. 
 
 The others joined in the conversation, and Mr. Howe < 
 27
 
 314 DAERYLL GAP, OR 
 
 tinued to address occasional questions and remarks to Ella, to 
 which she must respond, or else, by her silence, attract the 
 attention of the others. 
 
 He exerted himself to the utmost that morning, with success, 
 one might suppose, from the peals of laughter which followed 
 his sallies of wit wit that had just that glitter about it which 
 tickles light, foolish girls, but that has no real depth or sparkle, 
 after all. 
 
 Ella found herself laughing, too. Then there stole across her 
 Rusha' s authoritative ultimatum, and her own promise, " That 
 you will in no case accept any courtesies or hold any conversa- 
 tion with him." 
 
 Just then, however, her indignation pointed at Rusha instead 
 of Derrick Howe. 
 
 "What can I do?" she questioned herself. "There is no 
 help for it. Of course I can't run away and make myself a 
 fool ! " and so she staid on, and Derrick Howe talked at her 
 and to her, and when her lady friends were in raptures over 
 him, her vanity could not but take a certain pleasure in the 
 marked deference which he paid before them all to her lightest 
 word, always replying to any general remarks of hers, even 
 when they were not addressed to himself. 
 
 When at last the time came to leave, Mr. Howe shook hands 
 with each of the ladies ; and when it came Ella's turn, she could 
 not refuse hers. His time had come now. He held the gloved 
 fingers a moment. 
 
 " This morning has been the first happy one which I have 
 had since the most unaccountable termination of our last inter- 
 view, my dear Miss Darryll," his softest tones, his blandest 
 manner. How could Ella Darryll resent them ? 
 
 " Of course Rusha would say I had broken my word, and 
 that it was my duty to tell her the whole thing," reflected Ella, 
 as she rode home that day. " But where's the use? It would 
 only bring down a storm on my head ; and I'd like to know 
 what business she had to force such a promise from me ! Of 
 course, having given, I intended to keep it ; but I couldn't fore-
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 315 
 
 see what happened this morning. In future I shall avoid Der- 
 rick Howe for the sake of peace. I think it's too bad I should 
 be tyrannized over in this fashion ; and it's all pa's and Rusha's 
 absurd prejudice. Nobody else thinks him a fool or a villain. 
 What would my elder sister say if she could have seen that look 
 at parting?" a little shiver here, then a little smile of gratified 
 vanity. " Any of the girls there would have gone home in rap- 
 tures over it ; but it must never happen again never. There's 
 my promise." 
 
 Derrick Howe paced up and down the picture gallery. 
 
 " All I want is time and opportunity time and opportunity, 
 by George ! " he murmured ; and his voice had a hard trium- 
 phant chuckle in it.
 
 316 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 , 
 
 As the spring advanced, the usual topic of the summer's mi- 
 gration came up, in due form, for family discussion. 
 
 Ella, of course, took it for granted that they would adhere to 
 the prescribed forms, commencing with Newport, then flitting 
 briefly to the mountains, and culminating at last among the 
 gayeties and glories of Saratoga. This was the only course 
 ordained by fashion and display, and these were the only divini- 
 ties which the soul of this girl worshipped the scales never 
 having fallen from her eyes, so that she could look up and see 
 the Juggernaut's car, nor the grinning idol that sat thereon, 
 with the great wheels grinding beneath them something finer 
 and better than the quivering flesh and bones of men and women. 
 " I say unto you, my friends, be not afraid of them that have 
 power to kill the body, and after that have no more that they 
 can do." 
 
 Ella was going on swimmingly, dilating on all the prospects 
 of the summer's campaign, the talk divided in about equal pro- 
 portions betwixt her wardrobe and her plans, when Rusha sud- 
 denly broke into these glowing visions with her decided, " Of 
 course, Ella, you'll do as you have a mind, but one thing I'm 
 settled on I shall keep clear of all fashionable watering- 
 places, and of gayety and dissipation in general, for the next 
 summer." 
 
 " Rusha Darryll, you always do manage to throw a wet 
 blanket on one's plans. "What new tack have you taken now ? " 
 
 Irritation was apt to develop itself in Ella, in the use of 
 somewhat mixed and coarse metaphors. 
 
 " I can't forget," with a little restless tap of her foot on the 
 rug, " that I have a brother, a few hundred miles off, who is
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 317 
 
 liable to be shot dead any hour : and while that is the case, I 
 will never disgrace myself by rushing into a round of dissipa- 
 tion and revelry, such as we've had for the last two summers. 
 I've a little self-respect left, and a little conscience too, though 
 both have gone through some toughening processes ; but, at 
 least,- they'll keep me clear of Newport and Saratoga this 
 summer." 
 
 " Well, you know I never did approve of Tom's going to the 
 Avar ; but as he was bent on it, I can't see why we should make 
 martyrs of ourselves in consequence. It wouldn't do him any 
 good, certainly." 
 
 Mr. Darryll laid down his paper, and the rest of the family 
 disposed themselves in various listening attitudes, bringing, thus 
 far, no forces to the debate which was going on, rather sharply, 
 betwixt the sisters. 
 
 " Of course, Ella, our going or staying will, as you say, do 
 the poor fellow no good ; but there is a ghastly discrepancy in 
 our wasting the summer in all sorts of frivolities while that 
 death-bolt hangs over Tom's head." 
 
 " O, Rusha, don't ! " groaned Mrs. Darryll. 
 
 " Well, if we follow your advice, and shut ourselves up here 
 to boil and roast through the dog-days, there won't be much of 
 us left by next fall ; we may settle on that," replied Ella, in a 
 dismally resigned tone, which meant, however, anything but 
 acquiescence in her sister's views. 
 
 " But all the world does not chance to be included in New- 
 port and Saratoga, as your remark implies ; and in case we do 
 not go there, we are not shut up to your alternative of boiling 
 and roasting in town." 
 
 " O, I see now ! " a tone pendulous betwixt triumph and 
 contempt. " You want to go off and shut yourself up again, 
 with the rest of the family, in that dreary, forsaken old corner 
 of creation, Berry Plains. It's strange I didn't perceive what 
 you were driving at. But you won't catch this child ! Why, 
 I should go distracted with ennui, and throw myself off from 
 the first rock into the sea, before the week was over ! ' 
 27*
 
 318 DARRTLL GAP, OB 
 
 " No," said Rusha, in no wise affected by the tragical fate 
 which her sister predicted, " I should not want to go to Berry 
 Plains. Tom and I were there together," her voice faltering 
 a little, " and it was before Andrew " dropping the burden 
 of her sentence here, and taking up a new one, with a repeated, 
 " No ; I should not want to go to Berry Plains ! " 
 
 Ella waited a moment. 
 
 "Well, what is your plan, Rusha?" her voice softened a 
 good deal. 
 
 " Really, I have none formed. It strikes me that it would 
 be the nicest thing to go off to some quiet place, where we could 
 combine delightful scenery, and fresh air, and freedom of every 
 sort." 
 
 " I think I should like that now, of all things," added Mrs. 
 Darryll, whose nerves had never quite reacted from several 
 shocks which they had sustained during the past year. " I 
 must say I never can stand again those little boxes of rooms, 
 and all the tiresome dress and parade of your fashionable water- 
 ing places." 
 
 " As for country farm-houses, they're a humbug," put in Guy, 
 to whose youth, quiet and retirement were only synonymes for 
 dulness. " We shall be taken in by some old skinflint, who'll 
 give us feather beds to sleep on, and boiled pork aud cabbage 
 for dinner ! Go to bed, too, and get up, with the chickens ! 
 That trip won't pay." 
 
 Rusha laughed. 
 
 " The whole country outside of New York is not in quite so 
 benighted a condition as you and Ella seem to take for granted. 
 If it were, I should suggest that we all start out as missionaries 
 at once. But I admit there are difficulties in the way of com- 
 bining all we want in a private boarding-house." 
 
 " And who is going to scour the country round to hunt it 
 up?" pursued Guy, very glad to invoke any spectres in the 
 way of a plan which met his cordial disapprobation. " The 
 governor, I reckon, has got other business on hand, and it 
 wouldn't be safe to put it on me ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 319 
 
 " If we only owned a country-seat now ! " spoke up Agnes. 
 " How nice it would be to go there about three months out of 
 the year so distingue, too ! " 
 
 She had a little school-girl affectation of spicing her talk with 
 French phrases and synonymes. 
 
 " Yes, I must say, I should like that of all things," added 
 Ella, complacently. 
 
 Suddenly Rusha bounded off her seat, her face all in a fresh 
 light. 
 
 " O, pa, I've thought of the very thing ! " 
 " What is it, child ? " and again everybody listened. 
 " We can take some house of our own, a pretty little cot- 
 tage, furnished or unfurnished, as the case may be, and have 
 our own home and our own servants all the summer, without 
 anybody to molest us." 
 
 This proposition did not meet with universal favor. Various 
 objections were started, which Rusha disposed of, while Mrs. 
 Darryll openly, and her husband secretly, inclined to the elder 
 daughter's suggestion. 
 
 " A good many of the first people do rent cottages by the 
 sea shore for the summer, and with our carriage and servants, 
 and everything in the best style, I don't know as the plan would 
 be bad," condescended Ella, at last. 
 
 " I think now it would be nicer than the hotels," subjoined 
 Agnes. " But where in the world should we go? That's the 
 question." 
 
 Then Rusha found her voice again. 
 
 " There isn't but one place in the world to be thought of, 
 and that is the mountains. Just think of living amongst them, 
 of standing face to face with all their beauty and glory, for a 
 whole summer. O, pa, it must be the mountains ! " 
 
 " Too far off," said Guy. " Be a real bore, too, before the 
 season's over. Want to go to the sea shore, where we can find 
 folks, and have a good time." 
 
 " We can have the sea all the year round." persisted Rusha ; 
 " and as for ' folks,' my greatest trouble most of the time is to
 
 320 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 get out of their way. We must go to the mountains," her 
 whole soul on fire with the prospect ; and when Rusha Darryll 
 set her heart on anything, she generally carried her own point, 
 though in the first place it might encounter the opposition of 
 her whole family. 
 
 Ella's suggestions all leaned in favor of the sea shore, her 
 strongest objection to the mountains being founded on a gen- 
 eral vague impression of the loneliness and ruggedness of the 
 country in their vicinity ; but Rusha put that to flight by citing 
 the names of several families who had rented houses under the 
 shadow of the White Hills names which had immense weight 
 with her sister. 
 
 So all serious opposition narrowed itself down to one point, 
 and this was the remoteness of the mountains. Rusha admitted 
 the force of this objection, losing nothing by it in the end, for, 
 when her mother said, 
 
 " If it was on the Hudson, for instance, your father could 
 run up every Saturday night, and have the change and the 
 fresh air, " 
 
 The daughter answered, 
 
 " Yes ; but you know the doctor said last summer that he 
 wished he could put the city a thousand miles off from pa for 
 at least three months." 
 
 " I'd like to see the man who could get my business out of 
 the knot it would be in by that time," said her father, in a tone 
 of rather unusual pleasantry. 
 
 Of course the decision was not made that night, nor for a 
 good many to come ; but it became, thereafter, a theme of con- 
 stant discussion at breakfast and dinner, indeed, whenever the 
 family met together. Rusha's enthusiasm fairly infected the 
 others. Such pictures as she drew of life up there among the 
 New Hampshire hills pictures with the very dew and fresh- 
 ness of the mountains upon them of a life bewitched with its 
 own freedom and rioting, intoxicated amid scenes of beauty 
 and grandeur ! 
 
 They were practical people who listened to her talk, but
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 321 
 
 somehow, despite themselves, the gold and glow of Rusha's 
 roused imagination wrought a kind of transfiguration in the 
 minds of all who heard her. The fiery intenseness and vitality 
 of her nature fairly seized others against their own wijl ; and 
 the mountains were the mightiest joy and glory of Rusha's life. 
 They had stirred and lifted her soul to their own heights, as 
 even the vast, restless, solemn sea had never <lone. 
 
 In their presence all pettiness, weariness, disgust, even all 
 those yearnings that haunted and made so much of the bitter- 
 ness of her fine, aspiring youth, were swallowed up, and a 
 solemn exultation and joy filled her whole being, as the rivers 
 fill the sea. 
 
 She could never forget that first week in New Hampshire. 
 It lifted itself out from the other memories of her life, as the 
 mountains lifted themselves up in kingly majesty from the plains 
 at their feet. She was not conscious, herself, until she had left 
 them, of that great tidal swell of feeling, which, going down, 
 had left the days, for a while, like bare flats of sand, reaching 
 away into dreary weeks. 
 
 Long before anybody had admitted in words that the moun- 
 tain house was a settled plan, Rusha had the details all arranged, 
 and she managed to weave the fine bloom of her fancy over 
 the most prosaic of these, while she was too thoroughly in ear- 
 nest to be in any wise conscious of the glamour her imagination 
 poured over everything. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll, too, found a certain pleasure in makmj 
 ran-ements for "the cottage," excusing herself for anything 
 thatlooked like a flight into the field of fancy, by always com- 
 mencing with, "Of course it is very^ doubtful whether 
 ever come to anything more than talk." 
 
 The youn-er sisters began to invest the whole thing witl 
 certain romance, and to find all sorts of material for spor 
 adventure in the prospect of the change. 
 
 . Guy talked, with a slightly swaggering an*, about brmg.n 
 down a bear occasionally in that unexplored reg.on, 
 iTes dwelt with rapture on the life and duties of a da.rv.na,, 
 and the becoming picturesqueness of white- aprons, hopelessly
 
 322 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 confounding the character with that of a gypsy and a hama- 
 dryad ; for neither her history nor her mythology had attained 
 much limpidness at this period. 
 
 Even Ella fell into the current of partiality which set so 
 strongly towards the White Mountains, and allowed that, as all 
 the world went there, if a place could be found on the stage 
 route of the grand hotels, the experiment might not prove so 
 bad, after all. 
 
 While the matter was pending, Mr. Darryll had a sudden 
 business call to Boston, and there chance threw in his way 
 some gentlemen from Concord who were familiar with the 
 mountain region. A few inquiries developed just the sort of 
 information that he desired. One of the gentlemen knew of a 
 small cottage-villa that had been put up for a summer residence 
 by an Englishman, a little outside of the main route from Lit- 
 tleton to the Willey Notch, and about midway between the two. 
 
 The house was a little summer nest, containing about half a 
 dozen rooms, with a general physiognomical resemblance to the 
 little cottages one finds sprinkled along the Canada side of the 
 Falls, and which are so suggestive of cosyness and home. 
 They had attracted Mr. Darryll more than anything else in his 
 visit to Niagara. The owner was about to return to England, 
 and the cottage could be leased for a term of years. Such a 
 chance, however, would be likely to be " snapped up," to use 
 the vernacular of Mr. Darryll's informant, " in a few days ; for 
 everything of that sort went at a high premium near the moun- 
 tains." 
 
 John Darryll turned over the whole thing in his mind for a 
 single night, and the result was, that the next morning found 
 him on the train for Littleton, accompanied by his New Hamp- 
 shire friend. 
 
 A little two-story nest, with green verandas closing it on 
 every side, hung in a very wilderness of beauty on the slope of 
 a hill, less than half a mile from the main road. Such a rev- 
 elry of green life and beauty as there was all about this dainty 
 cage such fresh, dewy stillness and coolness and wildness ; 
 on one side, a little waterfall pouring over a gray lap of rock,
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 323 
 
 and always haunting the air with its sweet chord of falling 
 waters ; such cool glooms and rich green on the side of the 
 savage forests, while far beyond the sweep of the fair valleys 
 and reaches of pasture rose the Mount Washington range 
 peak after peak lifting itself towards the sky, wearing the splen- 
 dors of sunlight or the terror of storms ; while along those gray 
 stairways of crags the gaze climbed and climbed, and the soul, 
 entranced, followed after, until both rested at last on that height 
 where Mount Washington unveils the awful sadness of its fore- 
 head. On the other side stood that royal mountain, Lafayette, 
 with its princely hills clustered in homage about it the grand 
 old face scarred with the path of its streams, now looming spec- 
 tral and terrible through its swathing clouds of mist, and now 
 standing out in all its rugged, solemn strength and majesty in 
 dazzling pomps and effects of sunlight. 
 
 John Darryll walked from angle to angle of the piazza, taking 
 in from one point and another all the ravishing glory of this 
 picture. Even to his world-hardened soul, the scene had some- 
 thing to utter. 
 
 , " What would Rusha say to all that? " he muttered once to 
 himself. 
 
 At last he went over the house, and coming out of the front 
 door, as the result of all his investigations, he said to his com- 
 panion, 
 
 " If money will fix it, I'll have my family up here in three 
 
 weeks." 
 
 There was no time to be lost. Mr. Darryll thought " luck 
 was on his side that day," for on his return to Concord he found 
 the owner of the mountain cottage, stopping over night iu the 
 city. A bargain between the two men was soon completed. 
 Mr. Darryll obtained a lease for a term of years, and, this 
 business having been completed, the very next morning found 
 him on his way home. 
 
 Of course the news he carried took his whole family by s 
 prise. Nothing else was talked of thereafter ; and the man h; 
 to sustain an amount of interrogations that was appalling to one 
 so little given to description of any sort as was John Darryll.
 
 324 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 The comment of each was characteristic ; but when her father 
 concluded with, 
 
 " You'll all think I did a capital thing ; but as for Rusha, 
 when she comes to see the mountains round, I expect she'll be 
 carried right out of herself," 
 
 " The mountains, pa, are they really in sight, though? " cried 
 the voice, full of an ecstasy of delight. 
 
 " Well, I should think they were, as many as you can take in 
 
 wait and see that's all." 
 
 She got right up then, went over to his side, and though she 
 was the oldest of his children, she gave him what none of the 
 rest ever did a real hearty hug. 
 
 " Nonsense, child, nonsense ! " said the man ; but the words 
 and the little attempt at gruffuess were transparent enough. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll's questions all took, of course, the most practical 
 drift ; but when she came to learn the actual capacities of the 
 " country-seat," as her daughters ambitiously termed the English 
 cottage, she was thoroughly dismayed. 
 
 " No matter, ma ; we are to live in a bird's nest, and we must 
 stow as thick as the robins." 
 
 Rusha' s clause was rather poetical than practicable, and the 
 lady shook her head despondently. 
 
 " The robins have all out doors besides," she said. 
 
 " And so will you, when you get up there," rejoined her hus- 
 band, promptly ; and there being no help for it, Mrs. Darryll set 
 herself to solving the problem of the utmost economy of space 
 
 a perplexing one, it must be admitted, when there are six of 
 one's own family, and at least three servants, to bestow in a 
 house whose utmost capacity did not exceed seven rooms. 
 
 " It is out of the question ; it never can be done, ma," said 
 Ella, in tones of doleful decision. 
 
 But necessity will surmount apparent impossibilities ; and 
 when, after turning the material which they had on every side, 
 the largest chamber was assigned to the three girls, and a closet 
 opening out of it to Guy, and the barn-loft pressed into a lodg- 
 ing for the man servant, the matter was settled. 
 
 " It'll be awful tight squeezing, ma," said Agnes, looking
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 325 
 
 half pathetically around the spacious drawing-room, in which 
 they might almost have set the mountain cottage. 
 
 " It won't be worse, anyhow, than the cells we've had to put 
 up with at the watering-places'," said Guy, consolingly. 
 
 Busy times ensued. The Darrylls were eager to get out of 
 town as soon as possible, as it was now approaching June. 
 
 There was all the cottage furniture to be bought and sent 
 away, and the task of selection devolved on the girls. They 
 went into it heartily. There was a novel pleasure, and a sort 
 of romantic adventure, in the whole thing that appealed strongly 
 to their youth. Both the young ladies had good taste enough to 
 see the essential vulgarity of any attempt at display in the 
 present ca?e, and their choice of cottage appointments did them 
 credit. Soft, cool mattings, with pretty light sets of furniture to 
 match in browns and greens, and easy, portable chairs, and pearl- 
 colored hangings, with just a touch of warmth in the borders, 
 and linen curtains with dark green margins, and brackets for 
 angles, and a moderate supply of choice engravings, with three 
 or four of Rusha's pet pictures, made up the prominent belong- 
 ings of the mountain nest. 
 
 These were despatched under the charge of a man and woman 
 servant, who were to have the cottage in complete readiness for 
 the advent of the family. Rusha was busy as a bee all this 
 time, her face in a bright warmth of activity, which made it a 
 pleasant thing to look at. 
 
 " O, ma ! " she said, coming home thoroughly tired out with 
 a day among furniture warehouses, " you don't know how I 
 enjoy it all. I expect to be happier this summer than I have 
 ever been in my life before." 
 
 "There's one thing we shan't want to take any elegant 
 dresses, living up there in the woods," said Agues. " I'm going 
 to wear nothing but white aprons, and delicate lawns, and just 
 the dearest little gypsy hat with a golden brown plume. It will 
 be so picturesque only I don't suppose the people around there 
 will be capable of appreciating anything of that sort; still, it 
 must create a sensation ! ' 
 28
 
 326 DARRTLL QAP, OR 
 
 "Aggie," added Rusha, with a pleasant little laugh, "your 
 vanity is so transparent one can't find the heart to ridicule it." 
 
 " As for elegant dresses," added Ella, " I shall take the very 
 best I have. With the Crawford on one side and the Profile 
 on the other, there's no danger of our being buried up all sum- 
 mer. Whenever it gets dull at home, we shall have the hotels 
 in reserve, and we shall be sure to meet hosts of friends there 
 during the season. Otherwise my consent never could have 
 been obtained to this mountain plan." 
 
 The very day before the Darrylls left the city, Ella, being 
 down town, chanced upon a party of friends, Avho were also 
 just on the point of their summer flight. She was dilating on 
 the mountain project, when who should come along but Derrick 
 Howe " the very one man in all the world," Ella thought, 
 " whom she did not wish to see at that moment." Graceful 
 and self-possessed as usual, he paused, lifted his hat, and joined 
 the ladies, with whom he was on familiar terms. 
 
 Ella's talk had stimulated the curiosity of the young girls, and 
 she was just launching out on a full tide of sparkling description 
 of their home and their life to be, when the young man appeared. 
 She was compelled to proceed by the entreaties of the others, 
 and Derrick Howe, with the profoundest regrets at his intrusion 
 on their talk, offered at once to withdraw. 
 
 But he was besieged by the ladies in a chorus of " O, do 
 remain and hear, Mr. Howe. You will be so interested ! " And 
 of course he staid. 
 
 What could Ella do but go on with her talk? The mountain 
 project had a dash of originality and romance in it which 
 would be certain to attract young, pleasure-loving people, and 
 Ella enjoyed the theme, and Derrick Howe listened, and asked 
 questions with the others, and looked very handsome toying with 
 his gloves. 
 
 " O, it must be perfectly charming ! " exclaimed one of the 
 young ladies. " Such a glimpse of gypsy life makes the pros- 
 pect of watering-places dull enough ; only, what will you do for 
 society ? "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 327 
 
 " O, the cottage is within a few hours' ride of both the hotels. 
 Whenever it gets dull, I shall go there." 
 
 Derrick Howe spoke up now : I have been promising my- 
 self the tour of the mountains this summer." (He haduntil 
 that moment entertained no remotest thought of this kind.) " It 
 is possible I shall have the pleasure of meeting you at one of 
 the hotels during the season." 
 
 " O, how nice that will be I " put in one of the girls, who ad- 
 mired Mr. Howe. 
 
 " O, yes. very," replied Ella, feeling that she must say some- 
 thing, and those words coming first. 
 
 When her friends took leave, Derrick' Howe loitered a 
 moment behind the others, and taking Ella's hand, lifted it to his 
 lips before she could prevent the movement. 
 
 " Miss Darryll," he said, and the man knew precisely how to 
 say and do this in the most effective manner, " the thought of 
 meeting you will be all I shall live on this summer ! " 
 
 He bowed over the tightly-clasped hand, and was gone. 
 
 " I'm sure I wasn't to blame ; I couldn't help it ; I shouldn't 
 have allowed it had I known," muttered Ella, her conscience, 
 which was not apt to be troublesome, giving her a twinge as 
 she thought of Rusha. " I shall look out and keep clear of him 
 at the mountains. And there's no use in telling anybody what 
 has passed. How handsome the fellow did look, though ! " 
 
 And Derrick Howe went on revolving in his mind all 
 that had transpired, and hugging himself with the thought, 
 " Luck's on your side this time, old fellow. Just get that girl 
 away from her family up there at the mountains, and your 
 chance will come. Now look out sharp for it." 
 
 And the opposition he had met trebled the value of the prize 
 in the eyes of Derrick Howe. 
 
 At that very moment, Rusha, at home in her chamber, was 
 packing her trunks for the day following, her lips in an unbent 
 smile of sweet content, not dreaming that the skeleton would 
 follow them also to that fair home that waited in its still peace 
 for them among God's everlasting hills.
 
 328 DARBYLL GAP, OB 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXV. 
 
 IN a morning of early June the carryall which had conveyed 
 the Darryll household from Littleton, where they had passed 
 the night, drew up before the front gate of the cottage. A 
 morning in early June, " then, if ever, a perfect morning." 
 
 All the joy of sunshine, all the rarest beauty of sky and earth, 
 seemed to have formed a conjunction at this hour to welcome 
 them to their new home. That vast panorama of mountain 
 grandeur stood up in all its solemn strength and majesty before 
 them, the very temples and courts of the Eternal God. Pinnacle 
 after pinnacle rose serene and clear in that June light, while a 
 few mists clung in silver dimples down among the ravines and 
 jagged places of the hills, or ran in a fine, tender bloom of peach 
 and gold along the slopes. A sudden solemnity came upon the 
 face of each one who tumbled eagerly out of the carriage and 
 turned for a first look. Each mountain stood there a strong, 
 vital personality ; and though the Darrylls had driven all the way 
 out from Littleton in voluble merriment, they went all around 
 the piazzas, taking in one view and then another in a hush of 
 silence, so impressed with the power and mystery of glory about 
 them that words did not come to these people until they had 
 gotten inside the house. 
 
 Here everything was in the perfection of order to receive 
 them. Each article had been bestowed in its appointed place 
 by thoroughly trained domestics, and every room, in its bright 
 purity and perfect harmony of cool color, made a picture in 
 itself. 
 
 Then the tongues were loosened. They went from room to 
 room in a kind of voluble rapture, exhausting their breaths 
 and their adjectives over each one ; for in all respects, whether
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 329 
 
 in itself or its royal panorama of landscapes, the cottage utterly 
 surpassed the limits of their imaginations. 
 
 Rusha took the whole, as was to be expected, somewhat dif- 
 ferently from any of the others. 
 
 She went about from angle to angle of the upper and lower 
 piazzas, feeding her entranced gaze on some new, rich surprise 
 of landscape ; now marking the winds toss the gray hairs of 
 mist across the dark splendor of the forehead of Lafayette, and 
 now steadying her glance on the far-off dome of Mount Wash- 
 ington, as it stood towering alone over all that power and 
 glory of hills. 
 
 Voices called her inside. " O, do come and see this, Rusha ! " 
 " Make haste and look here ; " and to each she answered, 
 " Yes, I'm coming. I'll be there in a moment," and staid on, 
 finding it impossible to tear her enchanted gaze away. At last 
 her father came to the door and called her, and she went in, her 
 face transfigured with a rapture nobody had ever seen there 
 before. 
 
 " O, pa," she said, speaking out her first thought, " I believe 
 we've all made a mistake and got into heaven ! " 
 
 Everybody laughed, and Guy answered, 
 
 " I've always heard ' Jordan was a hard road to travel ; ' 
 but I must say, if this is heaven, we've got along here by pretty 
 comfortable stages ! " 
 
 Everybody laughed again, even Mrs. Darryll, though she 
 tried to look sober, thinking Guy's wit was a little wicked. 
 
 Then Rusha went about the house, surveying the rooms, 
 peering into every nook and cranny with the others, enjoying it 
 all, and yet mostly like one in a dream, the glory of the vision 
 outside calling to her soul all the while. 
 
 They could not hold her amongst them long. She was out 
 on the piazzas again, her face going in a trance of silent rapture, 
 from one landscape to another, until the ecstasy became a real 
 
 could bear no more ; she must get away by herself from 
 all human sight ; and impelled by this longing, she darted 
 
 28*
 
 330 DABRYLL OAP, OB 
 
 the steps into a narrow lane on one side of the house ; 'following 
 this for a short distance, she struck into a little wood-path, which 
 led her up into a green thicket just on the edge of the forest. 
 Here, in the cool darkness, sweet fragrances of the woods clung 
 to the air, the morning winds frayed out the edges of the ma- 
 ples and birches overhead, making a soft lisp of sound which 
 one would not be likely to hear for the singing of the birds and 
 the dripping of water from some small stream near at hand. 
 Rusha threw herself down here on the grass, and sobbed like a 
 baby for the next half hour. It seemed that her heart must 
 break out of its great burden of joy, if it were not for this 
 relief of tears ; and when, at lasf, she rose up and turned home- 
 ward, it was with a heart, like her face, quieted and peaceful as 
 a little child's. 
 
 In the weeks that followed, the Darrylls settled down to their 
 new life among the mountains a life in utter contrast with all 
 their previous experience. No doubt its novelty lent some fresh 
 charm to everything about them ; but it did seem as though they 
 had left the loud, restless world far behind, and were locked up 
 in some enchanted valley, whose gates were those eternal moun- 
 tains which shut them in on every side. 
 
 The strong tonics of mountain air gave fresh vigor to every 
 pulse, while the absolute seclusion and rest fell like balin upon 
 each tired sense, and went deeper than that into every tired 
 soul that would open its doors wide enough to let the blessing 
 enter in and abide there. 
 
 The young people lived mostly out of doors ; fairly bewitched 
 with the wildness and roughness of the region ; hunting into 
 all its recesses, finding new secrets and rich surprises of scenery 
 with every hour now it was a spring, with a little trickle of 
 tune under some green wall of thicket, now a blasted trunk, 
 across which some vine had flung its fiery scarf of wild bloom ; 
 now it was some heap of rare mosses clinging to broken rocks ; 
 and now it was some unexpected nook or dell on which they 
 would chance in the woods, a very forest lyric of peace and 
 beauty. They would come home every day, their fair young
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 331 
 
 cheeks dive with fresh bloom, bringing spoils of wood and 
 thicket and forest, like conquerors. Indeed, the little house 
 fairly rioted and ran over with wood blooms, and sprays of 
 vines, and wild berries, and clumps and tufts of forest growths, 
 among which were daintily hung birds' nests, and eggs streaked, 
 and mottled, and all sorts of curious things. 
 
 Guy was knight errant for his sisters, and always carried 
 his gun, and was on the lookout for the traditional bear of 
 that region, whose history had as reliable a basis as some 
 delightful old legend of mythology. It was a pleasant sight to 
 stand on the piazza, as Mrs. Darryll did in the summer morn- 
 ings, and see the little party start off on some search for a new 
 wood-path, or some exploration into the wild recesses of the for- 
 ests the girls in their pretty sun-hats, with long plumes that 
 fluttered triumphantly in every breath of wind, the soft, crisp 
 folds of fine-hued cambric brushing away the dew that still 
 sanded the grasses ; and the mother would stand there on the 
 piazza, shading her pleased eyes from the sun, and watch 
 them, believing that in all the world there were no daughters 
 so fair or lovely as her own. I suppose, however, all mothers 
 think that. 
 
 Guy generally brought up the rear, well provided with 
 knives, and small hoes, and various-sized baskets to contain the 
 forest trophies. He was indispensable on these occasions ; and 
 Guy was at heart a " good fellow," when the conceits and 
 smartnesses of his stripling youth dropped off from him. 
 
 The absence of his elder brothers seemed to have brought 
 to the surface whatever was best in him of manliness and self- 
 reliance, and given him some new sense of responsibility and 
 dignity ; while during his father's absences in the city, the 
 duties of " head of the family " devolved, in some sense, upon 
 the youngest son. 
 
 But if those first weeks at the mountain cottage were happy 
 ones to the collective Darryll household, if never a sigh or a 
 longing went back to the great city they had left far away with 
 all its whirr of exciting pleasures, you can think something of
 
 332 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 what this life was to the oldest daughter. Her soul drank in its 
 new freedom with a strange sense of liberty and exultation, 
 like that of some bird, caged from its birth, which has suddenly 
 burst its bars, and found the green woods, and its native air. 
 
 The care or doubt which had haunted her expression passed 
 out of it now, and in its stead there came an illumination of 
 child-like brightness and absolute content, which filled her face 
 with a new beauty. 
 
 Her family recognized this in their homely fashion by re- 
 marking, 
 
 " Rusha, you've been growing good-looking every day since 
 we came to the mountains that's a fact ! " 
 
 And those mountains were a perpetual feast to the long-fast- 
 ing soul of Rusha Darryll. In that grand vestibule of majesty 
 and beauty in which their home was planted, she could lift her 
 eyes on every side to the mighty temples which her Father had 
 built, and worship Him with a new love and joy. Her eyes 
 had the anointing which the others had not, and could " see 
 beyond the land into the landscape." 
 
 The mountains and the girl knew each other. She grew into 
 a loving intimacy with all their moods. When the swift wing 
 of the tempest swept in awful darkness along the crags 
 when the vast seas of vapor* moved down and gathered in the 
 hills, until their pinnacles loomed up fair and spectral, like the 
 turrets and spires of some city in the heavens when the 
 mists hung in play their silver fleeces along the slopes, and, 
 touched with sunlight, flickered into a foam of fine gold when 
 the noontide glory hung upon the hills, or sunrise and sunset 
 poured their fiery splendors upon every cliflf, the soul of Rusha 
 Darryll watched and waited, and received its blessing. 
 
 And though her rambles with her sisters were many, she had 
 more by herself. She would plunge off into the silent woods, 
 and, in some cool depth of shade and savage wildness, throw 
 herself down on a mat of mottled gray and green mosses, and 
 read and dream away the hours. Sometimes her book would 
 be a volume of Ruskin, transmuting all the world into a new
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 333 
 
 mystery and harmony of light and grace and color. Some- 
 times she would lose herself among Starr King's " White Hills," 
 until the very pages seemed to heave and glow under her with 
 the forms and splendors of mountain and cataract. And some- 
 times oftenest, perhaps the reading would be fragmentary 
 enough passages here and there of her favorite poems pas- 
 sages that held in them some immortal essence of truth and 
 beauty, while she read alternately from the two volumes opened 
 before her, and each interpreted the other to her soul ; and she 
 found that the volume of man and the volume of nature had 
 alike their end and best meaning in God. 
 
 Yet the rumors from the world outside, which reached the 
 Darrylls in their happy sequestration, were painful enough. 
 We all know what a miserable summer was that latest one of 
 the war men's hearts everywhere failing them for dread. 
 The terrible battles of the Wilderness, which shook all our 
 homes, while the birds sang in the sprouting May boughs, had 
 come and passed, dropping its shadow of death upon many a 
 threshold ; and still Richmond stood, bristling and defiant, be- 
 fore the armies of Grant. 
 
 Then followed that terrible drought which drank up the 
 springs, and the earth lay panting and shrivelled under the fierce 
 heats, until famine loomed up in the distance, gaunt and awful, 
 following on the heels of war. 
 
 Of course the Darrylls had their days and nights of 
 agonizing suspense, when the Union armies were knocking 
 vainly at the gates of Richmond, amid that awful hail of death 
 which brought low so much of the land's brave young life. 
 
 But Tom Darryll had escaped, though he had been in the 
 thickest of the battle, and came out to use his own words to 
 Rusha " without a singed hair, but not the same man that 
 he went in. He could never be that again." 
 
 Letters went back and forth constantly betwixt the brother 
 and sister. How strange it seemed to Tom to read down there, 
 amidst all that din and havoc of war, about the blissful quiet 
 the home among the silent New Hampshire hills ! He entered
 
 334 DAERYLL GAP, OR 
 
 into every detail with the greatest eagerness, and seemed to 
 find almost as much delight in the dear little " mountain nest," 
 as he called it, as any of the rest. 
 
 Early in July, when the tide of fashionable travel set stronger 
 than ever towards the White Hills, Ella learned that a party of 
 her city friends were passing a week at the Crawford, and were 
 importunate that she should join them at the hotel. 
 
 The old instincts resumed their sway, making this a tempta- 
 tion which the girl could not resist ; and, to tell the truth, as the 
 novelty wore off, their seclusion and quiet had become a little 
 monotonous to Ella, and she hailed the prospect of a brief 
 return to her old life. It is true, as she was packing her finery 
 for the trip, a thought of Derrick Howe flashed across her, and 
 the not very remote probability of their meeting at the hotel. 
 
 To do her justice, she had scarcely thought of him since their 
 parting. " If he should turn up," mused Ella, " how provok- 
 ing it would be ! But I can't bury myself up here all summer 
 because of that possibility, and in case I should come across the 
 fellow, there's nothing left to do but to keep him at a proper 
 distance." 
 
 But Ella did not consider that the signal manner in which 
 she had failed in this already, afforded small hope of 'her being 
 able to do it in circumstances where Derrick Howe would have 
 everything so greatly to his own advantage. So she sprang 
 lightly into the carriage that afternoon, for Guy was to drive 
 her over to the hotel, and she rode away by his side smiling and 
 confident, not dreaming that she was going to meet her fate. 
 
 And that afternoon Rusha sat at the window and looked out 
 ou Mount Lafayette, its top swathed in a cloud of radiant 
 vapors, while " beneath, it stood out sharp and clear, full of 
 strength, passion, and expression." 
 
 A soft light filled the eyes of the girl as she gazed. " Maybe 
 I've thought too hardly of it," she murmured, forgetting her- 
 self in voluble thought, as was somewhat her habit when alone. 
 " It's a beautiful world, after all. I didn't suppose anybody 
 could be so happy in it as I've been for the last month ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 335 
 
 Then her thoughts went to Tom. " O, iny brave young 
 knight," with a quiver of joy and tenderness all through her 
 words, " how nohly you buckled on your armor and went out 
 to the battle, which in some shape is appointed to us all, 
 whether we be men or women ! But O, Tom, Tom, my heart 
 is sick to see you ! If you were only here now, the measure 
 would be full, and I could only say, ' Dear God, it is enough. 
 Give me no more, lest I die ! ' ' 
 
 " Should you indeed say that, Eusha?" asked a voice at the 
 door behind her. 
 
 She turned around with a little smothered cry, and there 
 stood Tom, in his " army blue," smiling, in the doorway I
 
 336 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 TOM'S brief furlough allowed him only five days at home ; 
 but what cannot be lived in five days? Whatever lost oppor- 
 tunities the Darrylls might have to regret, they certainly could 
 never reproach themselves for not making the most of the pres- 
 ent time. Tom, of course, was the hero of the occasion ; and 
 Rusha and he were inseparable, though they had little oppor- 
 tunity for their old and intimate talks, for whatever locality the 
 young soldier happened transiently to occupy, that was sure to 
 be the point of concentration for his whole family. 
 
 He was looking finely. That hard, out-door life down there 
 on the Potomac had bronzed his cheek and broadened his shoul- 
 ders, and given to face and bearing a new vigor and manliness. 
 He had crossed the Rapidan with Grant in those pleasant May 
 days, and been through that awful storm of fire and death which 
 followed, and which, though it had spared him, not so much as 
 singeing his garments, had yet made him feel, when he came 
 out of it, as though he had left all his youth behind. Certainly 
 each one of those lurid days and nights had burned away some 
 dross from his soul ; but out of their fires would come a steadier 
 and stronger fibred manhood. 
 
 They used to sit far into the night listening to his stories with 
 a shuddering eagerness, and wondering they had him back 
 among them alive and well. " As for sleep," Rusha, who had 
 a family reputation for wakefulness, averred, " that could afford 
 to wait. They'd nothing in the world to do but make up losses 
 on that side when Tom was gone." 
 
 Then, of course, there was all the ground to explore, for Tom 
 must not let a single fine point go unvisited. Fortunately, the 
 best views were within easy riding or walking distances, and the
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 337 
 
 young officer was as eager to go as Guy and the girls were to 
 be his pioneers. 
 
 He was as charmed with the mountain retreat as it was pos- 
 sible to be, and drank in all its delights and marvels of landscape 
 with a spirit which satisfied even Rusha. 
 
 " Isn't this better than Saratoga, Tom? " she said to him one 
 day, coming out and taking his arm as he was pacing up and 
 down the veranda for a few moments alone. 
 
 " Better ! " He lifted up his face to the hills, whose fore- 
 heads were covered by purple gauzes of mist, shaking back and 
 forth in the soft afternoon wind. " The mountains answer 
 more eloquently than I." 
 
 She clasped her other hand upon his arm, and looked up into 
 his face with her sweetest smile. 
 
 " It was all my doings : their coming up here. t You see I 
 like to take the credit to myself." 
 
 " Do you s'pose I shouldn't have known, whether you did so 
 or not, that it all originated with you ? I wonder, dear girl, if 
 anything good or beautiful ever happened to us that you didn't 
 manage to be at the bottom of it all ! " 
 
 Her face, in a quiver of delight and fondness, looked up to his. 
 
 " O, Tom, Tom ! " She could not get any farther just then, 
 leaning her head against his shoulder, and for a little while they 
 continued their walk in silence around the veranda. 
 
 She cleared her voice to speak at last "After you were 
 gone away, I remembered, Tom, and the memory cost me a 
 good many sharp pangs, that I'd been impatient and fretful, and 
 said things to you I ought not, more than once. It seemed to 
 me I could never forgive myself for it then." 
 
 " Don't you fret that dear, little, sensitive soul of yours over 
 it again as long as you live." Tom had grown affectionate, 
 in speech at least, since he went to the war. *" Mind what I 
 say, now. You've never been anything but the greatest comfort 
 and blessing to me in the world." 
 
 Her face, looking up, thanked him again with such thanks as 
 few faces have in this world. 
 29
 
 338 DASRYLL GAP, OS 
 
 Then Tom drew out of his bosom the small Bible, a good deal 
 faded with use, and held it up before her. 
 
 " It went through all the fights with me ! " he said. 
 
 " Did you find time to do what I asked? " 
 
 " Every day ; and I found," dropping his voice, a slrange 
 solemnity creeping over his young face, " that what you said 
 was true about the strength and comfort. Sometimes in those 
 awful days, when a fellow couldn't see for the thick storm of 
 shells whizzing round him, and the men were dropping dead 
 every minute where they stood, and the next breath his turn 
 might come, some of the words in here would come back to me 
 and cling to my thoughts, and I'd find it was as you said, there 
 was some life in them that it took the hot breath of the battle to 
 kindle. I tell you it makes a fellow think, to stand next door to 
 another world, if he never did before." 
 
 " O, Tom, how can I ever thank God enough for sparing 
 you to me to us all ! " 
 
 " I s'pose the best way to thank Him, after all, is to serve Him 
 to please Him," he answered. 
 
 What a great leap that was what a school the battle-field 
 had been for his soul, as it has for the souls of so many of our 
 young men during the past year so many in this world or the 
 next ! 
 
 "That's the only way, and we must all find it out for our- 
 selves." Then in a moment " Were you much afraid, Tom ? " 
 a woman's question always. 
 
 " Well, you see, a fellow 's completely carried out of himself* 
 A hot excitement gets possession of him, and he only knows 
 that he's got to turn in and fight, come life or death. He can't 
 feel much beyond that, not even when a man stands at his side 
 one moment and drops dead the next, and he himself is likely 
 to be in another world with a breath more. But in the marches, 
 and before the battle began, I had time to think, and to feel, too ; 
 and life seemed a very small thing just then, beyond what use a 
 fellow made of it to serve him in his dying hour. I hadn't got 
 the sort of record I'd have liked by a long ways, and it didn't
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 339 
 
 make me feel any more comfortable to look back ; and then 
 
 yon know a man can't say much about these things some of 
 those passages I read in here came back to me, as though God's 
 voice had spoken them directly to my soul. I went into the 
 battle on their strength and comfort, and if I'd never come out 
 of it, I think I should have gone into the other world on some 
 hope and rest I'd found inside of this ! " laying his other hand 
 over the book. 
 
 " O, Tom, I am so glad so glad ! " her eyes swimming in 
 tears, her whole face alive with a tremulous gladness which told 
 how deep Tom's words had gone. 
 
 At that moment Agnes came out on the veranda " You're 
 not going to be Rusha's special property this time, you needn't 
 flatter yourself!" with a laugh. "Some other folks have 
 rights, too." 
 
 " Take some of them now, then," offering her his other arm ; 
 and they continued their walk. 
 
 " I tell you now, it's pleasant," said Tom, " for a fellow to 
 have such a good-looking girl on each side of him, and nothing 
 to do but to take his ease. He'll never appreciate it, though, 
 until he's had a little of just such peppering and salting as I've 
 undergone for the last six months." 
 
 " O," said Agnes, suddenly, " it's almost time for Guy to be 
 back with Ella. He only rode over to intercept the stage. 
 Suppose we go down and meet them?" 
 
 Her proposition was acted on without delay. They sauntered 
 down the road, waiting only to get their fiats, and were reward- 
 ed by a sight of the carryall before they had proceeded half a 
 mile from the house. A waving of handkerchiefs and hats at 
 once saluted it, but as it drew nearer it proved to have only a 
 solitary^ occupant. 
 
 The surprise and disappointment were audible enough, es- 
 pecially on the girls' part, and Guy was assailed when he drove 
 up to them, as though he was responsible for not bringing his 
 sister. 
 
 He was quite equal to his own defence, however, which
 
 340 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 amounted to just this Ella was not in the stage, neither was 
 there any message from her. 
 
 " It is too provoking," said Agnes, with her girlish impetuos- 
 ity ; " and she won't get here until to-morrow now, and then 
 have only two days more for Tom." 
 
 " She couldn't have got your telegram, Guy," said the young 
 officer rather inclined to solve difficulties than to waste time in 
 lamentations over them. 
 
 " That's it, you may depend ; and yet I can't see how it's 
 happened. I telegraphed from Littleton yesterday morning, and 
 it don't seem as though there could have been any mistake in 
 the thing. We must try it again ; that's all. Rufus will drive in 
 town to-morrow morning " commenced Guy. 
 
 " We won't trust to telegrams at all in a case like this," inter- 
 posed Rusha. " We'll just send Rufus over to the Crawford to- 
 morrow. But then I can't help thinking how sorry Ella will 
 be when she comes to find these lost three days of your visit, 
 Tom." 
 
 Tom was sorry, too. Ella was his sister, and because of 
 that he loved her dearly ; indeed, his brief army life had afforded 
 him same new knowledge of his own capacities in family 
 affection. 
 
 Still the loss and disappointment would have been a far dif- 
 ferent thing if Rusha, instead of her sister, had been absent at 
 this time ; and only then, perhaps, could Tom have realized how 
 much of the blessedness of this coming home he owed to this 
 sister of his. 
 
 No love or longing, however, could hold back those long, 
 golden days of midsummer, gladly as each would have detained 
 them. Mr. Darryll arrived on the following day ; so that, with 
 Ella % the family circle would have been as complete as possible. 
 
 Rufus did not make the journey from Littleton in his usual 
 good time ; hence the family resolved themselves into a commit- 
 tee, in order to decide whether he had better ride over to the 
 Crawford House and bring Ella back that night. But more 
 than half Tom's furlough was now expired. She had not
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 arrived, as had been hoped, in that day's stage, and her absence 
 was now laid solely to the charge of the telegraph, which was 
 anathematized by the family in general. 
 
 The domestic conclave resulted in the despatch of Rufus for 
 the Crawford a little before sundown. The ride of twenty-four 
 miles, which included the journey both ways, must occupy at 
 least five hours. 
 
 Rufus accomplished the trip in this time, but returned without 
 Ella. She had that morning ascended Mount Washington with 
 a party of friends, and the whole company had, while at the 
 Summit House, taken a fancy to descend on the other side and 
 pass the day at the Glen ; so they could not possibly return 
 before the next evening. 
 
 O 
 
 Rufus could not make certain about the telegram. There 
 was a vague impression that one of the nature he described had 
 been transmitted ; and if so, there was no doubt that the young 
 lady had received it. 
 
 At all events, to clinch the matter this time, Rufus had tele- 
 graphed both to the Summit House and to the Glen, and there 
 was no help for it. Ella's part in Tom's furlough must now be 
 limited to a single day. 
 
 In the midst of the disappointment, each fell back on the old 
 solution the telegram, through some inadvertency, had failed 
 to reach the girl. 
 
 That last day of Tom's furlough went as though its hours 
 were hurried off by some remorseless fate. Everybody of 
 course gravitated to his orbit, letting all other interests wait 
 on him. 
 
 The evening came, and again the stage did not bring Ella. 
 Once -more the carryall was despatched in all haste to the Craw- 
 ford House. The party had not yet returned, and it appeared 
 that they must have altered their plans, as the telegram to Ella 
 had been answered at the Glen, with the information that no 
 such party were stopping at the hotel. 
 
 Perplexity and disappointment took about equal possession of 
 the Darrylls. Ella's last chance for seeing Tom was gone now, 
 29*
 
 342 DAEEYLL GAP, OS 
 
 and the possibility of its being a last chance, in the profoundest 
 and deepest sense, could not but flash across all their thoughts, 
 and then be dismissed with a shudder. The father was irritated, 
 and that always made him unreasonable. His blame must fall 
 on something more sent.ient than telegraph wires this time. 
 
 " Tljat girl never knows what she's about when she gets off 
 on a frolic with her fashionable friends. Of course there'd be 
 no telling where to find her, or what she was about. Pretty scrape 
 this ! You ought to have had more sense than to let her go," 
 turning upon his wife, as though it was the easiest matter iu the 
 world for that pliant mother to dominate her grown-up daughters. 
 
 " Now, pa, don't be hard on anybody," put in Rusha, who 
 was walking up and down the room. " I'm sure it will be bad 
 enough for the poor child when she comes home and finds what 
 she's lost, without our adding reproaches for what she couldn't 
 help." 
 
 "Yes," subjoined Tom, feeling that the circumstances would 
 give his request a weight, just now, that it would not have at 
 any other time, " don't blame Ella when she gets back. Tell her, 
 next time she won't get rid of me so easily. When beaus are round, 
 brothers are always a nuisance," turning oif whatever disap- 
 pointment he might feel with a jest.. " Come here to the win- 
 dow, Rusha, and see the effect of the moonlight on that bank of 
 mist up there in the hollow of the mountain." 
 
 Of course she went. " How beautiful it is ! " she murmured. 
 " Soft and glistening as the white veil of a bride ; and a little 
 farther up, on that jutting crag, the vapor lies, a heap of orange 
 blossoms to complete the figure. Don't you see them ? " 
 
 " Yes, with a long pull of my imagination ! " laughed Tom. 
 Then Rusha grew grave again. " O, Tom, before that moon 
 has waxed and waned, where will it find you ? " 
 
 " Down there in camp, I suppose, watching the long rows of 
 tents that have a wonderfully picturesque effect in moonlight, 
 and remind me of nothing in the world but siiovr-drifts piled on 
 midsummer grass. It will find me, too, thiukingof you all here 
 at home, and fancying just what you are about. What a com-
 
 Ill 
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 343 
 
 fort it is that I shall be able to locate you all now to sec 
 
 my fancy the rooms, and the verandas where you are sittin o 
 and walking, as I never could have seen them even through 
 your letters. Our little cottage will cling to me everywhere 
 now." 
 
 Her eyes smiled upon him with their sweetest fondness. 
 Then in a moment he went over and threw himself down on an 
 ottoman at his mother's feet, and laid his head iu her lap. 
 
 "You must spoil me for this one night, just as you used to 
 when I was a little shaver." 
 
 She was ready enough to do it, smoothing the thick brown 
 hair with her hand, while the family gathered around in its 
 softest mood, as the shadow of parting, hanging over loving 
 hearts always brings to the surface their finest and deepest 
 feelings. 
 
 They had all realized in this visit of Tom a new gentle- 
 ness and thoughtfulness that seemed to twine their graceful 
 wreaths about some column of strength in his character. 
 
 " I declare he seems to grow beautiful every hour ! " said 
 Agnes to Rusha, as the sisters retired late that night. Cer- 
 tainly he grew dearer to them every hour. 
 
 The parting came early next morning, for Tom must be in 
 time for the train at Littleton. The wrench, however, was not 
 so hard as the previous one. We get used to almost everything 
 in life ; and then Tom had really been to the war, and como 
 back sounder and heartier in every respect than he went. 
 
 They could not think that it might be otherwise a second 
 time. Then his hopefulness infected them all. Tom fervently 
 believed that Grant would be in Richmond before the full elec- 
 tion, which was then filling all men's minds. You could not 
 listen to the high, confident hopes of his young soul, without iu 
 some degree catching his spirit. 
 
 There had been some talk of accompanying the gentlemen as 
 far as Littleton, Mr. Darryll returning to New York with his 
 son. But Rusha vetoed all that. She could not bear to have 
 their leave-taking transpire in the midst of a curious crowd.
 
 344 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 So they went no farther than the gate, and took their cling- 
 ing farewells with only God's solemn mountains looking down 
 on them. 
 
 They watched him as long as they could, his face turned back 
 and smiling on them ; and so it passed, in the pleasant summer 
 morning, smiling out of their sight. 
 
 It seemed a dreadfully barren house to which they turned 
 back ; but Rusha said, with a smile which her lips held through 
 a little treachery of voice, " Now we're not going to give it up, 
 and carry long faces all day, because Tom's gone. I think that 
 would be ungrateful to God, who has given him back to us safe 
 and sound for such a precious surprise and delight as this visit 
 has been to us all." 
 
 Her words had their effect, and I think those who watched 
 wisely would have found that, more and more, God was in the 
 thought and life of Rusha Darryll.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 THERE was but one man in the world who could have fully 
 explained the mystery of Ella's absence and silence all this 
 time, and that man was Derrick Howe. 
 
 He had come to the mountains, this summer, resolved, to use 
 his own figure, on playing a desperate game if he won the 
 cards, the prize would be a heavy one, and he was not likely 
 to be punctilious about the means, when an end he so greatly 
 desired was in view. 
 
 Yet you must not think that Derrick Howe was consciously 
 a villain. He honestly believed himself a good fellow better, 
 in fact, than the most of men. In his relations with Ella Dar- 
 ryll he certainly regarded himself as the aggrieved party, and 
 he believed that he had just as good a right to the hand and 
 fortune of that girl as any other man. That any of her family 
 should oppose his suit appeared simply in the light of a mon. 
 strous injustice to himself one which it was his right by any 
 means in his power to circumvent. 
 
 With this purpose, as' I said, he had come to the mountains 
 with a large party, among which were several of Ella's friends. 
 They did not know it, but he was really at the bottom of the 
 invitation which brought Ella to the Crawford House, where 
 she was received with voluble rapture by a company of dashing 
 girls, who thought they greatly honored the mountains by air- 
 ing their graces and importing here their city manners. 
 
 In order to forestall all emergencies, Derrick Howe had pre- 
 vailed upon the young ladies of his set to keep his presence, 
 with several other gentlemen of the parly, a profound secret. 
 The girls readily entered into the joke, and he persuaded the 
 young men to go off with him on an expedition into the woods,
 
 346 DASEYLL GAP, OB 
 
 the real object of all this precaution being to keep the entire 
 Darryll family in ignorance of Mr. Howe's whereabouts, as he 
 had foreseen the strong probability of some of its members 
 accompanying Ella to the Crawford. His plan succeeded admi- 
 rably. Guy would have encountered Derrick Howe without a 
 suspicion of any sort, he having, at the most, only a vague sort 
 of an impression that the young gentleman was " one of the 
 strings of Ella's bow that the governor was down on ; " but he 
 would have been certain to mention his name among the party 
 at the Crawford, and " the train would have been fired at once," 
 to borrow Derrick Howe's rhetoric again. But Guy rode home, 
 after his dinner at the Crawford, in blissful ignorance, carrying 
 no tidings to the elder sister, that could arouse her out of the 
 sweet security into which the mountains had lulled her thought 
 and feeling. 
 
 Derrick Howe did not discover himself to Ella Darryll until 
 he had ascertained that the field was quite clear. The girl was 
 utterly confounded when that gentleman walked into the parlor 
 with his friends, and greeted her in his most cordial manner, 
 while the young ladies who were in the secret, grouped them- 
 selves in a picturesque tableau around her, to enjoy a surprise 
 which they fancied must be of a most agreeable character. 
 
 But it seemed as though, at that moment, some good angel 
 must have rung a warning in Ella Darryll's soul, for the girl 
 actually shivered and turned pale, acknowledged Derrick Howe's 
 greeting with a chilling bow, and in a few moments made her 
 escape to her chamber with the young lady who shared the 
 apartment with her. 
 
 "I wish I had never come here ! I really must go home to- 
 morrow morning ! " she exclaimed, passionately, throwing her- 
 self down on the bed. 
 
 Her companion was quite appalled at this announcement, and 
 Ella felt she had now gone too far to retreat, and, in her per- 
 plexity, she needed some confidante, into whose sympathizing 
 ear she could pour the tale of her griefs. So, under a promise 
 of inviolable secrecy, she told her story, which was truthful in
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 347 
 
 so far that the speaker had no idea that it was not a faithful 
 mirror of facts. 
 
 How far it was intrinsically so, could, perhaps, be best ascer- 
 tained from the impression which it made on the listener, though 
 something must be allowed for her predilections in favor of 
 Derrick Howe. 
 
 The girl received a general impression that the Darryll fam- 
 ily, individually and collectively, had conceived an absolute 
 and altogether unreasonable aversion towards Mr. Howe 
 that the bare suggestion of his name was a signal for the most 
 violent domestic explosion that Ella had undergone much 
 persecution on account of a variety of harmless attentions from 
 that irresistible young gentleman ; and while she acknowledged 
 his graces of mind and manner, his presence filled her with an 
 indefinable terror and dread ; and that, moreover, she had been 
 compelled, for fear of her father and sister, to enter into bonds 
 to keep the family peace by avoiding Derrick Howe as though 
 his very presence carried with it some blasting moral plague. 
 
 Whether this was, or was not, exactly the impression which 
 Ella intended to convey, as she went over the story in a breath- 
 less, excited manner, this was the general idea which her friend 
 received. 
 
 Ella finished by bursting into tears. She really felt fright- 
 ened at the thought of being under the same roof with Derrick 
 Howe. She remembered his words on their last meeting in 
 New York, and had a conviction that he had come to the moun- 
 tains solely on her account. She remembered her promise to 
 llusha, and her conscience convicted her of breaking it. She 
 could not easily have analyzed her own feelings, but she had a 
 vague fear of something connected with Derrick Howe she 
 could not tell what. 
 
 Her companion, a well-meaning girl enough, acted her part 
 as sympathizer and counsellor, in accordance with the hasty 
 conclusions to which she had jumped. She insisted that Ella's 
 return would reduce the whole party to a state of indescribable 
 misery, and besought her, in pity to her friends, to spare them
 
 348 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 such an infliction. She treated the Darryll prejudice regarding 
 Derrick Howe as one of those unaccountable delusions to which 
 the paternal and maternal rnind have had an inherent proclivity 
 from time immemorial. 
 
 She was eloquent in the praises of that victim of the fatal 
 blindness of others she sympathized, after the fashion of a 
 romantic young girl, with the sufferings which Ella had under- 
 gone from family tyranny, but agreed that a promise, which 
 amounted to a vow, could only be adhered to by an absolute 
 avoidance of Derrick Howe on all occasions ; indeed, Ella her- 
 self made so strong a point of this, that she could not be induced 
 to dress for supper, until her companion had satisfied her that 
 she should be established betwixt her brother and her friend, 
 and that it would be the easiest matter in the world for Ella to 
 keep the young man at the utmost limit of social recognition. 
 
 So Ella went down that night in her own strength, primed 
 with a determination never to give Derrick Howe the slightest 
 favor, or accept a courtesy of any sort from him. He did not 
 invade her sphere. The truth was, he had been a good deal 
 surprised and chagrined at her reception ; but the repulse only 
 inspired him with a stronger determination to leave no stone un- 
 turned in the achievement of his purpose. He exerted himself 
 to be agreeable to the rest of the party with even a little more 
 than his usual success, and the most attractive elements were 
 soon clustered about himself. 
 
 This could not be altogether agreeable to Ella. "With her 
 brilliant spirits and her good looks, she was used to bearing 
 the palm among a small clique of girls, and she found herself 
 compelled to gravitate a little with the others, or form the 
 nucleus of a party in her own corner. 
 
 She tried this, and found it bored her. From the other side 
 of the room there came peals of laughter and the merry click 
 of tongues. "What a good time they were having over there ! " 
 Ella thought. " And how provoking it was that she must be 
 kept out in the cold with the fag end of the party." 
 
 Some of the girls strayed over to her side.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 349 
 
 " What makes you stay here? Mr. Howe is so funny. I've 
 really lost my breath laughing over his comic adventures." So 
 the changes rung. 
 
 It was certainly a hard case for Ella. So she compromised ; 
 allowing herself to be led over to the others with an inward res- 
 ervation that she would not be drawn into Derrick Howe's talk. 
 That young man was, meanwhile, watching every movement of 
 hers, and secretly congratulated himself on the small concession 
 she made in joining his group. 
 
 He still avoided directly addressing her, but exerted his 
 utmost possibilities in showing off himself to the others. For 
 it was, in reality, doing no more nor less than this. He had 
 that superficial wit which is at a premium in light, fashionable 
 society, and all the gifts of small talk, added to certain graces 
 of manner, which the young always gauge far above their 
 worth. Ella did listen and sometimes laughed, in spite of her 
 resolutions. 
 
 Music struck up at last, and dancing commenced. Ella did 
 her part here ; so did Derrick Howe, who was regarded by the 
 young ladies as the greatest prize among their partners. 
 
 Ella had plenty of engagements but nobody went through 
 the figures with such a grace as the man whom she was under 
 bonds to avoid. She began to wish it were otherwise, to hope 
 that Derrick Howe would invite her for the next set on purpose 
 to let the others hear her refusal. 
 
 Governed at all times by the opinions of her own world, never 
 gauging persons by their intrinsic value, but holding them at 
 precisely the estimate of a certain class of people, Ella could 
 not resist the influence which Derrick Howe's social popularity 
 carried with it. 
 
 " All the other girls are crazy to dance with him," thought 
 Ella, " and though I certainly don't wish to do that, I should 
 like to have them know that I could." 
 
 During the early part of the evening, however, Derrick Howe 
 assiduously avoided her. Ella's vanity had no opportunity to 
 triumph by declining any courtesies on his part. 
 30
 
 350 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 He was shrewd enough to discern that he could most easily 
 overcome her coldness by making himself of chief consequence 
 in the eyes of those around her. 
 
 Already a reaction was taking place in Ella's mind, and the 
 repugnance with which she had first encountered Derrick Howe, 
 was superseded by one of anger towards her father and Rusha. 
 
 Meanwhile the young man was biding his time. He could 
 not, of course, discern the process of Ella's thoughts, but he was 
 certain, as the evening wore on, that she was inwardly less 
 crustaceous towards him. 
 
 Several times, as he stood near her in the pauses of the dance, 
 Ella expected that he would address her. But he did nothing 
 of the kind, only devoted himself to the lady by his side. She 
 began to be angry with herself for repelling him in the begin- 
 ning to feel, too, that he was the only man in the party whose 
 attentions were really worth having. 
 
 The evening had nearly closed, when Mr. Howe suddenly 
 turned towards Ella as though nothing had transpired betwixt 
 them, and asked her opinion on some trifling matter at that 
 moment under discussion. The smile with which she answered 
 was in marked contrast with her manner when they first met. 
 It encouraged him to ask her hand for the next set, which was 
 forming at that moment. 
 
 Ella hesitated. Derrick Howe cursed himself for his precip- 
 itancy ; but vanity triumphed over conscience. He was the most 
 desirable partner for the dance, and Ella was eager to show him 
 in her train, and he led her off in triumph. 
 
 Outside, the moonlight lay folding the earth and the mountains 
 in its white, solemn trance of beauty. A few miles off Rusha 
 Darryll had put aside the curtains, so that the light might fill the 
 room like a very blessing of God ; and so she had gone to her 
 sleep. If she could only have known what was going on that 
 hour not far away if she could only have known ! 
 
 Ella Darryll felt that she had done wrong, and the feeling 
 made her uneasy, defiant, desperate. She grew angry with Ru- 
 sha. What business, she asked herself, had her sister to extort 
 a promise from her that she would never speak to Derrick
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 35 j 
 
 Howe ! It was a perfect outrage, to begin with. And then it 
 was an absolute impossibility to keep it under the present cir- 
 cumstances. She had not asked him to come to the mountains, 
 but here he was, and she must be civil to him, despite her 
 father's and sister's prejudices. 
 
 She really worked herself up into the belief that she had been 
 abused, and that, having broken the ice once, there was no use 
 of trying to keep up any further coldness towards Derrick 
 Howe, in speech or manner. She had come to the Crawford 
 to have a good time, and she would let matters take their own 
 course, in spite of anything. 
 
 This conclusion was all Derrick Howe desired. He had now 
 the " time and opportunity " he had coveted, and he made the 
 most of them. Of course they had all sorts of out-door excur- 
 sions, amid which Mr. Howe was conspicuous in short, the 
 very life and centre of the party. 
 
 You have seen that he was just the sort of man to please the 
 fancy of a girl like Ella Darryll ; and he soon regained, or rather 
 redoubled the old impression he had made on her. 
 
 Intimacies develop rapidly in the careless freedom of out-door 
 life and excursions ; and it seemed as though some fate, which 
 she did not long struggle against, were constantly bringing Der- 
 rick Howe and Ella in juxtaposition. He was at her side 'when 
 the party rode up Mount Willard in the morning, and in the 
 afternoon when they went down into the Notch ; and he was so 
 agreeable that Ella could not have wished it otherwise. 
 
 If her conscience offered a reproof, she silenced it with, " I 
 can't help myself now. If pa and Rusha ever find it out there'll 
 be an awful storm, but a little more or less talk won't make any 
 difference, and now, I'm in for it ! " 
 
 Her room-mate, to whom she confided all this, was sympa- 
 thetic to the last degree, enjoyed the progress of affairs, and 
 firmly believed thafElla Darryll was the victim of family 
 prejudice and cruelty. 
 
 The former certainly intended to keep her promise inviolate, 
 but she was no match for Derrick Howe ; and he managed to 
 extract from her an admission that Ella's coldness at their first
 
 352 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 meeting proceeded from flo fault of hers it was all owing to 
 her family. 
 
 In short, before two days were over, Derrick Howe and Ella 
 Darryll had walked and rode, had laughed, chatted, flirted 
 together, and were really on a more intimate footing that they 
 had ever been in their lives before. 
 
 But the man's nicely laid plan came very near miscarrying. 
 One morning, as Mr. Howe was sauntering up and down the 
 parlor, waiting for Ella and her friend to present themselves for 
 a stroll through the gate of the Notch to a little fall which hung 
 its white staircase of waters between gray banks of rock, the 
 brother of Ella's room-mate hurried in, 
 
 "Where are the girls, Howe? Here's a telegram for Ella 
 Darryll." 
 
 " What is it about?" his suspicions taking the alarm at once. 
 
 " I happened to be at the desk and took it. It's from her 
 home. That's all I know about it, of course," with the enve- 
 lope in his hand. 
 
 " It may be a case of life or death, though something, in 
 short, that should be broken carefully to her. As Miss Darryll 
 is my friend, I beg that you will do for her what I should ask 
 you to, under the same circumstances, for my own sister read 
 the telegram before you deliver it." 
 
 It was putting the matter in a very plausible way. The 
 young man was not very likely to probe beneath the surface. 
 
 " You read it, Howe," placing the telegram in the other's hand. 
 
 The message simply announced Tom's arrival, and, in conse- 
 quence, urged Ella's return by the next stage. Derrick Howe 
 saw in a moment all his schemes frustrated. " How was he to 
 head this off?" 
 
 His friend waited. 
 
 "Bad news, Howe?" 
 
 " No ; only another plot to separate us*, and break her heart, 
 and blast my life ! " 
 
 His friend stared. Derrick Howe had gone too far to retreat 
 now ; and in an instant helped of the devil the plan shaped 
 itself in his mind.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 353 
 
 " I want a few minutes' private talk with you," taking the 
 arm of the youug man, and they sauntered off into a little wood- 
 path together. 
 
 Derrick Howe's companion was a good-hearted, jovial fellow, 
 without any great mental acumen of any sort. The two young 
 men sat down on the rocks, and there Mr. Howe confided to 
 his friend the story of his passion for Ella Darryll, and of the 
 cruel persecution of her family from the commencement of his 
 suit. He averred that " the telegram was of a piece with the 
 rest of their conduct, being nothing less than a peremptory 
 summons home, because they had got wind of his presence at 
 the Crawford." Ella was represented as the suffering victim 
 of her father's despotism, secretly responding to her lover's 
 regard, but in mortal terror of her family. 
 
 This was the only opportunity that Mr. Howe could find, 
 during the season, to see his idol ; and he actually worked him- 
 . self up into a passion, and declared himself ready to blow his 
 brains out, if Ella was dragged away from him at this time, as 
 she would inevitably be, unless he had a friend able and willing 
 to help him. 
 
 The young man had taken in all the bearings of this story 
 with the profoundest interest. At its close, shaking off a crust 
 of ashes from his cigar, he delivered himself thus : 
 
 " Burning shame, Howe ! Splendid girl, that Ella Darryll ! 
 Like to step in myself if it wasn't too late. But I'm ready to 
 help a fellow, heart and hand, out of such a fix, if you'll just 
 say how it is to be done." 
 
 Derrick rose up and shook his friend's hand. His "My 
 dear fellow, you have bound me to you for the rest of your 
 life ! " was certainly dramatic. 
 
 But, when it came to details, the only test of this friendship 
 which Derrick demanded, was, that his companion should sup- 
 press all information respecting the telegram. The latter was 
 to leave for New York on the following day, and if anything 
 further transpired regarding the despatch, there could be but 
 one conclusion he had forgotten to deliver it. 
 30*
 
 354 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 There was a faint demur in the young man's tone, as he said, 
 
 " I'm ready to go any lengths for you, Howe, and I suppose 
 the circumstances justify the proceeding, but hang it! it 
 doesn't look like doing just the honorable thing on my part." 
 
 A little more talk on the other side, setting the father's cruelty 
 and the lover's despair in an iutenser light, succeeded in banish- 
 ing all scruples from the young man's mind. It was his duty 
 to stand by his friend, he thought, and he agreed to say nothing 
 about the telegram. 
 
 Derrick Howe passed that day in the sole effort to make 
 himself agreeable to Ella Darryll. The young man was playing 
 a desperate game, and he knew that it involved heavy risks. 
 
 So he laid his plans. Of course the next day would bring 
 some further summons, either by telegraph, or through a direct 
 messenger from the cottage, and Derrick Howe accordingly 
 proposed that they should the following morning make the 
 ascent of Mount Washington. Of course everybody agreed to 
 this, and the party started off on the adventure in high glee. 
 
 Time was now all that Derrick Howe wanted. He was 
 Ella's cavalier on every occasion, and he saw that every hour 
 gave him new influence over the girl. 
 
 " If he could only keep her three or four days more from her 
 family ! " setting his teeth hard as he concocted his plans. 
 
 At the Summit House he proposed, what had been his origi- 
 nal intention, that the party should descend the mountain on 
 the other side. The whole company were now wrought up to 
 that excited, hilarious state when they were ready for any ad- 
 venture which promised novelty and merriment. 
 
 So it was settled, Derrick Howe purposely giving a wrong 
 address for the whole party, so that any fresh telegrams for 
 Ella should miscarry. 
 
 He succeeded in keeping the party for two days on the other 
 side of the mountain, and then made a divergence in favor of 
 the Profile. 
 
 So he had found, or rather stolen, his " time and opportuni- 
 ty." With " witchcrafts of his wit," with whatever powers and
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 355 
 
 arts, nature or the devil had possessed him, he had succeeded ia 
 making Ella Darryll believe herself thoroughly in love with him. 
 
 I am not certain that he had won her heart, but it really 
 amounted, for present purposes, to the same thing, if she thought 
 he had. She had persuaded herself that both she and Derrick 
 Howe were the innocent victims of family injustice ; and with- 
 out actually committing himself, he had, by all his words and 
 acts, tended to confirm her in this opinion. He was as adroit 
 in declaring his love as he had been in managing his whole 
 plot, which certainly required a good deal of skill to consum- 
 mate successfully. 
 
 The party had been out, just at sunset, for a sail on Profile 
 Lake, that " embodied sympathy " of the mountains, as Starr 
 King poetically calls it. The lake was in its tenderest, most 
 pensive mood at that hour, " taking into its own being, and 
 holding there still and perfect, all the colors and forms which 
 wrought the miracle of the landscape around." 
 
 The scene and hour wrought their spell on even the light, 
 gay party that had drifted down in search of some fresh novelty 
 and merriment. 
 
 Whatsoever of fancy or sentiment Ella Darryll's youth held, 
 it had been awakened in these last days ; and her company 
 lauded from their sail on the lake in a singularly sobered mood, 
 and moved up to the point which commanded the clear, strong 
 Profile keeping its watch on the mountain top, " with a sugges- 
 tion partly of fatigue, partly of melancholy." 
 
 The sunset -filled the solemn Stone Face with a light that 
 made it almost awful, giving it that rapt radiance of expression 
 " which seems to belong only to the noblest human countenances 
 in their sublimest moods." 
 
 Ella Darryll stood leaning on Derrick Howe's arm, and 
 gazed and gazed. He watched her face, thinking, if not in so 
 many words, yet in spirit, that perhaps this hour had brought 
 the time and tide which would lead him on to a large slice of 
 the fortune of John Darryll. 
 
 "Ella," the melodious voice deepened into a tender melan- 
 choly, " I wish this hour could last forever ! '
 
 356 DAERTLL GAP, OB 
 
 She glanced up into his face a face that women generally 
 called handsome. It certainly looked its best at that hour. 
 The girl's eyes were full of tears. 
 
 " Do you wish so, Ella?" 
 
 She drew a sigh. 
 
 " What is the use, Mr. Howe, of wishing in vain?" 
 
 The rest of the party had sauntered on. When could Der- 
 rick Howe have a better time? If he could only manage to 
 make Ella commit herself by some sort of promise that should 
 give him a hold on her before that home telegram should reach 
 her, which he had been running away from all these days ! 
 
 He cursed the Fates inwardly that he had not a little longer 
 time, but he made a " virtue of necessity," and told his love. 
 Of course Derrick Howe did that well. If ever man made 
 woman believe that life without her must be to him a dreary 
 blank, an intolerable misery, that in his eyes she was the em- 
 bodiment of all superlative grace, and sweetness, and beauty, 
 then of a certainty Derrick Howe did that thing. 
 
 And Ella listened, her self-love flattered, her fancy fired, her 
 woman's heart, for, despite all her faults and superficialities, 
 she had more or less of one, deeply touched. 
 
 And when her lover pleaded in those eloquent tones of his 
 for some word or sign on which he might hang a faint hope for 
 the lonely future, she murmured that " if it were not for the 
 hopeless opposition of her family," and broke down into pas- 
 sionate sobs. 
 
 This was enough. The man took the rest for granted. All 
 that he said afterwards, was artfully calculated to stimulate the 
 girl's indignation against her family, while he represented her 
 and himself as the innocent and suffering victims of the most 
 cruel injustice and prejudice. 
 
 Poor Ella ! When Derrick Howe besought her, after all this, 
 not to blast the rest of that long summer by taking herself away 
 from him. and refusing to join the party which were next week 
 to start for a tour up Lake George, what could the girl do? 
 
 She reflected that it would never do for her to extend her
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 35 7 
 
 journey without first returning home and gaining the consent 
 of the powers that reigned there. 
 
 A little finesse would probably succeed in obtaining full per- 
 mission for the lengthened trip, if none of her family knew 
 who was to form the principal feature of the party. 
 
 She shrank at the thought of this wholesale deception, but 
 Derrick Howe was at her side with his eloquent pleading, and 
 at last she said she would go. 
 
 When they reached the Profile she found the telegram an- 
 nouncing Tom's arrival. Of course she must return home the 
 next morning. 
 
 Derrick Howe made the most of what time remained, imply- 
 ing by the tender devotion of his look and speech that Ella and 
 he consciously belonged to each other. 
 
 Ella's manner tearful, bewildered, and half reciprocal 
 allowed him to put the interpretation that he chose on the 
 relation, though she neither denied nor accepted the one he 
 claimed. 
 
 Do you think Derrick Howe was a villain in all this ? He by 
 no means regarded himself as one. I am not certain but the 
 man had a code of honor of his own. 
 
 " Why," he would have asked, with a show of plausibility, 
 " had he not as good a right as any other living man to woo 
 and win Ella Darryll ? It was a bargain in which she certainly 
 would be as much the gainer as himself." 
 
 He had as good a right, too, to a son-in-law's share of her 
 father's money as anybody else, and a fellow was a deuced fool 
 who wouldn't go in for the girl he wanted, and win her, too, if 
 he was smart enough, because her family happened to oppose it ! " 
 
 He had a general intention, if, indeed, he ever thought of the 
 matter at all, of making Ella Darryll a good husband, and be- 
 lieved himself in love with her, at least more so than with any 
 other woman. 
 
 What was there dishonorable in all this? He Derrick 
 Howe a villain !
 
 358 DAERYLL OAF, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 ELLA'S welcome home partook of the somewhat mixed nature 
 of the emotions which had agitated the bosom of her family for 
 the last few days. 
 
 Her arrival was, of course, a relief to the general solicitude 
 felt in view of her mysterious absence, but this was hardly made 
 prominent in the Babel of tongues which ensued from the 
 assembled household. 
 
 " Where have you kept yourself? " " What have you been 
 about?" " Do you know that Tom has come and gone without 
 your seeing him?" were the inquiries thrust at her on all sides, 
 in partly amazed and partly reproachful tones. 
 
 Still, it was the keenness of disappointment, rather than any 
 conviction that Ella was to blame, which wrought the indigna- 
 tion in feeling or manner. 
 
 Ella's defence was, of course, a true one, so far as it went, and 
 when she had made it, her family could find nothing on her part 
 to which they could attach any blame, though there was, some- 
 how, an undefined inclination in the domestic jury not to wholly 
 acquit her. The most they could do w&s to convict her of in- 
 judiciousness in leaving the Crawford House without first writ- 
 ing home ; but Ella's reply completely pulverized that objection. 
 She had expected to return to the hotel before a letter could 
 reach her family, and, of course, when she had once left, it was 
 impossible to return without her party. 
 
 Somebody faintly insinuated that " she had no business to go 
 at all ; " but her prompt " Who of you wouldn't have done it 
 under the same circumstances ? " met a silent affirmative in each 
 consciousness that prevented any further pursuit of that point. 
 In the end, as at the beginning, the telegraph wires and their 
 irresponsible operators had to bear the brunt of the offence.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 359 
 
 "Such a play at 'hide and seek' with half a dozen tele- 
 grams would be hard to match ; I'm ready to bet a round 
 sum on that." 
 
 Thus Guy delivered himself at last ; and though nobody was 
 ready to take him up, perhaps each one felt that, on the whole, 
 it was about as sensible a way as any other of disposing of so 
 vexatious a matter. 
 
 Still, however slight the causes, the result remained, and to a 
 family like the Darrylls was one not easily overlooked. Tom 
 had come and gone, and Ella had not seen him ! 
 
 The girl felt this keenly, and altogether her emotions were not 
 of a nature to be envied. 
 
 It is true she had succeeded in putting It out of the power of 
 her family to fasten upon any tangible point for blame in her 
 conduct ; but that did not lessen her secret knowledge that they 
 were ignorant of the real facts of the case, or of what must be 
 their horrified amazement did they but have a suspicion that 
 Derrick Howe was at the bottom of her absence. 
 
 Ella had, of course, no suspicion of the real part he had played 
 in the matter, or that he had not been, during this whole time, 
 as ignorant of Tom's furlough as herself; but her own con- 
 science would make itself heard now ; she could not get rid of a 
 feeling of guilt in the presence of her family, and the result was, 
 that she broke out suddenly into a fit of passionate crying 
 something very unusual with the careless, high-spirited girl. 
 
 " If I'd only seen Tom," she sobbed. " If I'd only staid at 
 home ! I'm as wretched as I can be ! " 
 
 Tears were something which Rusha Darryll could never stand. 
 The sight of them always wrought a revulsion in that soft little 
 heart of hers, and the sobs now brought the elder sister round 
 squarely on the younger's side. 
 
 " I think we're all very hard on Ella," she said. " I'm sure, 
 from her own showing, she wasn't at all to blame ; and we should 
 any of us have done just the same under the circumstances. 
 It's hard enough for her to feel that she's missed Tom, without 
 our adding to the grief by any reproaches. Poor child ! '
 
 360 DARRYLL OAP, OR 
 
 I think Ella must have secretly winced under this kindness, 
 knowing what she did ; but it effected a diversion in her favor. 
 
 The sound of her weeping, and a doubt whether, after all, 
 they had not been unjust towards her, made each follow Rusha's 
 example, and seek to excuse and comfort Ella. 
 
 But all the kind words fell short of the real cause of her grief 
 a cause which, proud and imperious as she was, she shivered 
 at the thought of her family's suspecting. She was frightened 
 whenever she remembered Derrick Howe, and how far she had 
 gone with him. She told herself over and over again, when she 
 reflected on it, that it was nothing more than a flirtation that, 
 of course, no engagement existed betwixt them. 
 
 But after all she found her thoughts constantly recurring to 
 him, dwelling on the tenderness of his looks and words and 
 manner. She was restless, and filled with an uneasy longing to 
 be again in his society. 
 
 Then, Derrick Howe was a man after Ella Darryll's own 
 heart. If I only repeat here what I have said before, it is be- 
 cause I wish to make of it a strong point, in order that you may 
 be able to judge of her fairly in what follows. 
 
 Every woman has some heart, I suppose ; and although it may 
 be shallow, and largely absorbed in self, or what affection it has to 
 give bestowed on an unworthy object, still, it is only simple 
 justice to take into account that affection, and what it is to her. 
 
 Ella could not make her home seem anything but dull and 
 distasteful. She dreaded, yet longed to get away from it agaiu 
 among her gay friends, and the fascination of Derrick Howe's 
 society, which latter seemed to her the only thing in the world 
 that could make her happy. The knowledge, too, that she had 
 done wrong, and the secret which she carried hidden from all 
 her family, made her uneasy in their presence, and gave her a 
 lurking feeling that resembled somewhat in kind the timidity of 
 conscious guilt. 
 
 This was altogether a new experience to her, and Ella Darryll 
 was not herself at this time. She was absent, restless, depressed. 
 Her family were conscious of all this, but attributed it in a gen-
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 361 
 
 eral way to her regret at missing Tom, and to her not feeling 
 quite well the result, as everybody supposed, of all the gay 
 excitement she had just gone through. 
 
 So they were all kinder than ever towards her ; and perhaps 
 that very thing only made her the more miserable, as one is apt 
 to be who trembles at the thought of discovery before one's 
 dearest friends. 
 
 There came a time when the meaning of Ella's conduct 
 revealed itself to her family, and they wondered, as we all do, 
 when it is too late, at their own obtuseness ; but now nothing 
 transpired to awaken a suspicion on any side. 
 
 For several days Ella did not allude to the contemplated trip 
 to Lake George. If she put the question to her own soul, 
 whether she was most anxious to go or to remain at home, I 
 doubt whether the girl, in the state of mind which then possessed 
 her, could have answered it. 
 
 Her emotions were of a composite character. She panted at 
 times to get away, and yet she shrank instinctively from placing 
 herself again under the influence of Derrick Howe. I think she 
 had become timid of late, or rather, her courage had never be- 
 fore been put to so strong a test. Some dread of coming evil 
 oppressed her. Certainly she was to be pitied. 
 
 Meanwhile, Derrick Howe was not idle. He feared constantly 
 the revulsion of feeling which Ella would be likely to undergo 
 when removed from his influence to that of her own family, and 
 in order to neutralize the latter before it should have gained the 
 ascendency, he persuaded her young friend at the Crawford to 
 write her at once, and permit him to enclose a letter. 
 
 It was a lover's letter, of course, full of honeyed and passion- 
 ate phrases, asserting, in varied forms of intenseuess, that the 
 writer was only dragging a miserable existence through the days, 
 and counting the hours that intervened before his idol should 
 redeem her promise by joining them for the trip to Lake George. 
 You may smile over all this, but sensible women have been 
 wooed and won by " drinking in the honey " of less musical 
 vows than those of Derrick Howe. 
 31
 
 362 DAERTLL GAP, OB 
 
 At any rate, after the almost sleepless night which followed 
 the reception of his letter, Ella surprised her family by an- 
 nouncing her promise to accompany the party at the Crawford 
 on their contemplated trip to Lake George. 
 
 This did not meet with much approval at first. Mrs. Dar- 
 ryll always entered a little demur when any of her family talked 
 of leaving home, and averred that Ella's mountain trip had done 
 her more harm than good, and Lake George would only be 
 farther off, and the same excitement and wear and tear over 
 again. 
 
 " I think it's funny," said Agnes, " that you haven't spoken 
 of this Lake George plan before. Now, how did you know but 
 Rusha and I might like to go too ? " 
 
 Something came and went in Ella's face that nobody saw, but 
 she said, quietly enough, 
 
 " I didn't suppose it was necessary to speak of it, as neither 
 of you was there to receive invitations ; besides, I was not cer- 
 tain I wanted to go until my letter came. They will all be so 
 disappointed if I refuse now." 
 
 " I count myself happy in not having the trouble of declining 
 the invitation. Money wouldn't hire me to leave the moun- 
 tains this summer," was Rusha' s characteristic rejoinder. 
 
 But nobody had any objections of a positive kind to urge, 
 and, for want of these, it was at last settled that Ella should go. 
 She was to be absent only a week. The anxious mother made 
 this a condition of her consent, and added thereto all sorts of 
 injunctions regarding health and prudence during the journey. 
 
 Only two days remained before Ella should join her party, 
 and during this time, as they afterwards remembered, she 
 seemed in a feverish absorption with her preparations for the 
 journey. But the night preceding Ella's departure, Rusha was 
 suddenly awakened out of a sound sleep by a figure in white 
 standing by the bedside. 
 
 " Ella, is that you?" a good deal startled the faint moon- 
 light in the room making her partially discern the figure. 
 
 " I feel badly, Rusha. Something is troubling me. Let me
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 3(53 
 
 get into bed with you," speaking in an excited, half-coherent 
 way, so unlike Ella Darryll. 
 
 Rusha made room on the couch, and her sister sank down 
 beside her in a strange, frightened sort of shiver. 
 
 "Why, what is the matter? Have you been dreaming, or 
 are you sick, Ella?" 
 
 " No, it is neither of these. But I feel as though I didn't 
 want to go on this journey to-morrow. It seems as though 
 something terrible will be sure to happen if I do." 
 
 " Why, Ella, how strange ! " a little impressed herself. 
 " But it's all because you are nervous still, about that matter of 
 the telegrams. Don't you see ? " 
 
 But Ella did not answer. She was crying. 
 It was in Rusha's nature to put her arms around her sister, 
 saying all kind and loving words that would be most likely to 
 comfort her. Ella clung to her as she never had done before 
 in her life. At last she said, 
 
 " Don't you think, Rusha, I had better stay at home, after 
 all?" 
 
 Rusha hesitated a moment. She was half inclined to urge 
 her sister to give up the trip ; indeed, she had never regarded 
 her going very cordially. But Ella's spirits seemed to need a 
 change, and it would be lonesome for her all summer at the 
 cottage. The mountains would never be the company to her 
 sister that they were to herself. Then, as Ella was pivotal in 
 this matter, it seemed hardly like treating the party fairly to 
 decline accompanying it at the last moment. 
 
 All these considerations gave their coloring to Rusha's reply, 
 and no angel leaning down in the uiidni^ht whispered to her 
 soul that great issues of all their future lives hung upon her 
 answer. 
 
 " Well, really, Ella, I hardly know what to say. It seems 
 superstitious to regard the feeling seriously, or as a presentiment 
 of evil. Turn over now and go to sleep, and leave tin- whole 
 thing for the morning to settle. Light always clears the <,.!.- 
 webs from one's brain. If you prefer to give up Lake George 
 then, do so by all means."
 
 364 DARBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 This seemed to satisfy Ella, and in a little while both the 
 sisters fell asleep. 
 
 In the morning Ella's spirits returned, and she seemed, on 
 the whole, inclined to the trip, though Rusha fancied her sister 
 still felt some internal reluctance to really getting off. 
 
 The impression which Ella's conduct had made the night 
 before on the elder sister induced the latter to confide the whole 
 to her mother, adding a doubt as to the wisdom of Ella's leaving 
 home at this juncture a doubt which Mrs. Darryll shared, 
 although both ladies agreed that there seemed no sufficient 
 grounds for changing her mind at the last moment, and that 
 her friends would regard themselves as very unfairly treated. 
 
 But when, in this indecision, the mother and sister sought 
 Ella, they found that a letter from her friends at the hotel, 
 full of hilarious anticipation at the prospect of the journey, had 
 infected her again, and that whatever her doubts might have 
 been, she was now quite eager for the trip. 
 
 They little suspected that the note which Derrick Howe had 
 enclosed was at the bottom of the sudden transition in her 
 feelings. 
 
 She started off when the time came in eager spirits. At the 
 very last moment, Rusha rushed down to the gate and called 
 out to her, 
 
 " Now have a good time, Ella, and enjoy yourself all you 
 can for the next week." 
 
 Rusha thought some expression gathered in Ella's eyes. Was 
 it doubt or pain ? She could not tell, for the carriage drove off . 
 at that moment. 
 
 The week of Ella's absence had worn itself into two, and 
 still the party from the mountains lingered at Lake George. 
 Not that the whole time had been passed here. They had made 
 various excursions in the vicinity, and flitted down to Saratoga 
 every day or two, but this had been their rallying point. 
 
 For two weeks Ella Darryll had been completely under 
 Derrick Howe's influence. It seemed impossible for the 
 girl to resist this. He had obtained almost absolute ascen-
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 3(55 
 
 dency over her will. He was careful always to assume in 
 their talk that they belonged to each other by the sacredness 
 of a betrothal which none had the right to interfere with or 
 deny. 
 
 If Ella at first shrank from all the consequences which this 
 assumption involved, she soon virtually accepted it ; indeed she 
 had sunk into a state of comparative passivity, letting the rapids 
 of these two weeks bear her whither they would, and managin" 
 to exclude pretty thoroughly all disagreeable thoughts from her 
 mind, while Derrick Howe had contrived to give her very little 
 time for reflection. 
 
 But of course things could not go on in this way forever, 
 much as Ella might desire it. 
 
 The party had already, through his influence, doubled the 
 period allotted for the Lake, and Derrick Howe saw that what 
 he did must be done quickly, or all his deeply-laid plot, which 
 had carried nicely so far, must go for nothing. 
 
 If Ella was allowed to slip from his hands at that time, the 
 probability was, he should never have another good chance, 
 " and he was not going to be such a fool as to let his prize 
 go, if he could snap it up by one desperate effort," reasoned 
 Derrick Howe. 
 
 In the gathering of the summer evening, he walked on the 
 shores of the Lake with Ella Darryll leaning on his arm. They 
 were to leave late on the morrow. 
 
 Derrick Howe's manner had never been quite so tender in 
 voice and look there had never been just that insinuating sad- 
 ness which filled them to-night. 
 
 His talk went out to the separation close at hand to the 
 dreary future which lay before them both, apart from each other 
 to the cruel prejudices which were to blight the lives of 
 both and Ella listened, her emotions all wrought up to a 
 pitch of intense feeling, until she believed herself and her lover 
 the most wronged and outraged of mortals. 
 
 She could only sob on his arm, and he could only entreat her, 
 with soft caresses, to spare him the agony of seeing her tears, 
 31*
 
 366 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 when, of a sudden, he spoke as though impelled by some new 
 idea, which, until that moment, had never entered his thoughts. 
 
 " Why should we, who so love and belong to each other, 
 inflict this long wretchedness on ourselves ? Have we a right 
 to do it, Ella, when the remedy lies open to us? Or do we owe 
 everything to others, nothing to ourselves? " 
 
 "What remedy do you mean, Derrick?" and for a moment 
 she ceased to sob, lifting up her flushed face in the moonlight, 
 looking so fair that I think Derrick Howe kissed it, that time, 
 at least, solely for itself. 
 
 Then he leaned down and whispered something in Ella's ear. 
 
 She started back with a look of fright, and dropped his arm. 
 " O, Derrick, don't, don't ! Think of my family," she broke 
 out in passionate denial. 
 
 Derrick Howe had foreseen what fears and scruples, on Ella's 
 part, he would have to surmount ; but everything was staked on 
 the success or failure of this night, and he was sworn " to come 
 out winner if man could do it." 
 
 It was a long time before he could get Ella to listen to him. 
 I think most men would have given up the point, whatever that 
 might be, as hopeless, she insisted so absolutely on the impos- 
 sibility of considering it for one moment. 
 
 An elopement and a surreptitious marriage for Derrick 
 Howe's talk had come to that at last was something that 
 shocked all Ella's ingrained tastes and natural conventionality, 
 and deeper than all these was the thought of her family. 
 
 But her resistance only added fuel to the flame of Derrick 
 Howe's purpose. He made the most of all the circumstances 
 that he saw would weigh in his favor the separation to-mor- 
 row, his own misery, and the probability that, despite all their 
 efforts, this parting would be a final one. 
 
 He drew such a picture of the rage of Ella's family when the 
 fact should transpire, as it inevitably must, that he had been 
 of the party, both at the mountains and the Lake, that the girl 
 fairly shuddered at the prospect of returning home. And then 
 there was the engagement. Would she have the courage to
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 3(57 
 
 avow it to her family, and encounter the wrath and persecution 
 which must be the result? or must she wear out her sweet youth 
 and break her heart, and his own too, with the burden of its 
 secret love ? 
 
 She owed much to her family, he granted ; but was not her 
 lover's the prior claim now now that they had given them- 
 selves to each other? 
 
 How eloquently the man pleaded, believing himself in earnest 
 too, and for the time, perhaps, never once thinking of the broker's 
 money-bags. 
 
 Then he turned the other side of the picture towards her a 
 glowing one enough to poor Ella's fevered imagination of 
 their happiness together, with no one to interfere betwixt them ; 
 of his life-long tenderness and devotion ; and how, the step once 
 taken, her parents must inevitably accept the fact, and be recon- 
 ciled to it. That was always the way with people who indulged 
 unreasonable prejudices ; and then, too, Ella would have his 
 strength to lean all her fears on ; he would have the right to 
 defend her ; while, if she left hind now, she must encounter her 
 family's cruelty alone : he could not stand between his idol and 
 any wrong she might suffer a thought that would add tenfold 
 to his own anguish. 
 
 Hour after hour the man went on, weaving all the eloquence 
 and sophistry of which, he was master, into his talk, with artful 
 appeals to whatever was best or weakest in his listener's head 
 or heart. 
 
 The midnight came and went as they walked by the banks of 
 the Lake, and the stars of God kept their appointed watch over 
 the man and woman there. 
 
 And though Ella continued, amid her sobs, to resist, passion- 
 ately as ever, all Derrick Howe's entreaties and arguments, the 
 man felt at last that he was gaining ground. 
 
 Harrowed and excited, the poor, foolish girl was brought face 
 to face with her own fate, to make her choice, when she was 
 least capable of doing it ; and at last her feelings, as was natural, 
 wound themselves up to a pitch of desperation. She dreaded to
 
 368 DAEEYLL GAP, OB 
 
 return home. She shuddered at the storm which, sooner or 
 later, she knew, must fall upon her there. How could she resist 
 the combined domestic forces ? and would they not compel her 
 to give up her lover? 
 
 She remembered what Rusha, single-handed, had once ac- 
 complished ; and how would it be possible for her to remain at 
 at home with the whole family arrayed against her ? 
 
 And then, on the other hand, if she really had courage to 
 take the final step, would it not all be comparatively easy ? Her 
 husband could stand between her and the rage of her family, 
 and after the first shock was over, they would, of course, have 
 to accept the facts. 
 
 And there all the time was Derrick Howe, pouring his sweet 
 flatteries, and persuasions, and sophistical arguments into her 
 ear. She grew desperate ; yet it was long before she virtually 
 yielded longer still before she could be brought to speak that 
 final word which should seal her destiny to-morrow. 
 
 If Derrick Howe had had the ground a little less completely 
 to himself if there had beec anybody at hand to break, by a 
 single word, the chain of influences he had woven around her, 
 Ella Darryll would have been saved ! 
 
 But after parting with her at the door of the hotel, there 
 came a flash of triumph over the man's face, and something 
 behind that hard and defiant. 
 
 " You've gained the battle, Derrick Howe," he muttered, 
 " but it's been the hardest night's work you ever did ! " 
 
 Then he looked up to the sky, and far off in the east he saw 
 the dawn of that new day that was to work " for weal or for 
 woe " the future of Ella Darryll !
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 " DON'T you think, ma, Ella is too bad? She promised to be 
 home in a week, and here it is more than two since she left. 
 It's so lonely without her ! " 
 
 Agnes Darryll threw down the book she had been reading, 
 and raised herself from the lounge as she thus addressed her 
 mother. 
 
 The day was a sultry one, even among the mountains, and 
 Mrs. Darryll had been dozing in her easy-chair by the opeu 
 windows. Her daughter's talk, however, roused her, and she 
 answered in a half querulous, half languid fashion, plying a 
 huge palm leaf, 
 
 " Yes ; that child had no business to stay so long. But when 
 she gets off on a frolic she never knows where to stop. Your 
 father's blaming me because I gave my consent to her going at 
 all, and I can't much wonder. After all the trouble and expense 
 he's been at to get such a home for the summer, it seems a 
 shame for his children not to stay and enjoy it." 
 
 Whether Agnes would have stood on her sister's defence did 
 not transpire, for at that moment the carriage rolled up to the 
 gate, with Mr. Darryll and Guy, who had just returned from 
 Littleton. 
 
 They came in tired, heated and dusty. 
 
 " Well, this is a roaster, I tell you ! " was Guy's comment, 
 as he disgorged his pockets of sundry papers and pamphlets he 
 had collected at the p^ost-office. 
 
 "Any news from the world outside, Guy?" asked Agnes. 
 
 " Not much. Rusha has letters from Tom and Ella," pro- 
 ducing these from another pocket. 
 
 " Pretty work this," said his father, in a sort of growl, for
 
 370 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 he had reached that time of life when a long, hot, dusty ride 5s 
 not just the thing to improve a man's spirits "I shall write 
 to her this very night, to send herself home, instead of any more 
 letters. I thought I got this house with the express understand- 
 ing that my family should remain in it this summer ; " and he 
 left the room, and everybody knew he would resume his good 
 humor with his slippers and his supper. 
 
 Meanwhile, Guy marched up stairs, and found Rusha buried 
 among " Friends in Council," those delightful books whose 
 honey-dew she was fond of gathering in quiet, idle moods, such 
 as a day like this was likely, with her, to superinduce. 
 
 Guy held up the letters with a roguish feint of not giving them 
 to her. She was off her seat in a moment : 
 
 " O, Guy, please, now 1 " Letters had the attraction for her 
 that somehow they seem to hold for all her sex. 
 
 " Guess first," playfully keeping the addresses too far out of 
 her sight for her to distinguish them. 
 
 "Let's see. Tom and Ella? It's time I heard from both 
 of them." 
 
 " You've earned them ; " and Guy placed the letters in her 
 hands. " Give us the news at supper," he added, as he left the 
 room. 
 
 Rusha hesitated a moment, but Tom's letter carried the point 
 and was opened first. It was in one of his brightest moods, 
 playful and tender, yet here and there spoke out same grave 
 thought, some earnest feeling, which, intertwining its life with 
 Tom's youth, was nourishing that up into the strong and noble 
 manhood that he prophesied. 
 
 A tender light was on Rusha's face, a faint smile, in which 
 was a little hint of sadness, lingered on the bloom of that rare 
 and beautiful mouth, when she turned to Ella's letter. 
 
 As she opened this, another, enclosed, fell into her lap ; but 
 she did not pause even to read the address, presuming that her 
 sister's would explain the contents of the other. 
 
 The very first line of Ella's, however, blurred out the smile 
 from Rusha's face ; a strange, amazed stare superseded. Yet
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 371 
 
 all the while she kept reading on on like one held aud fasci- 
 nated by some horror. 
 
 When she had finished she took up the other letter, gazed at 
 it in a bewildered way, as one is apt to, all of whose faculties 
 have been, for the moment, stunned by some sudden shock. 
 The letter was addressed to her father in a man's hand. 
 
 Rusha rose up and went to the mirror. What an ashy face 
 looked out to her there ! " Ella married to Derrick Howe ? '' 
 she murmured to herself. " I think I must be dreaming ; " and 
 she put her hand to her forehead, with an expression of doubt 
 and helplessness that was touching. 
 
 The ringing of the supper-bell, a moment later, roused her, 
 and she went down stairs, groping her way carefully along the 
 banisters like one in a dream. 
 
 They were just going out into the dining-room. " Pa," said 
 Rusha, in a voice not loud, but somehow it made them all puuse 
 and look at the speaker, "Ella is married married to Der- 
 rick Howe ! " 
 
 It was the crashing of a thunderbolt in their midst. The 
 whole group stood riveted in their places, staring at her. 
 
 Her mother spoke first, in a low, frightened tone. " Rusha 
 has certainly gone crazy I " This seemed a more probable ver- 
 sion of the truth than the statement her daughter had made. 
 
 " No," she said, in a slow, doubtful way, as though she was 
 not certain her mother might not be right, " I don't think it can 
 be that. But here are the letters," instinctively turning towards 
 her father. 
 
 " Let me have them," and he strode towards her. 
 
 John Darryll was a nervous man. He fairly tore the letters 
 out of his daughter's hands. He went to the window, and every 
 eye watched him, and every voice was silent, while he ran over 
 the letters, not only Ella's, but the one addressed to him by his 
 new son-in-law, Derrick Howe. Then he looked up. 
 
 " It's a fact," he said. " She is married to Derrick Howe ! " 
 
 Aud then he laid the letters on the table, and struck his 
 clinched hand upon them, and cursed the newly wedded pair
 
 372 DABRTLL O^P, OB 
 
 with an oath that was terrible to hear. No sheet-anchor, you 
 see, when troubles thickened upon him. 
 
 It would, of course, be impossible to tell what happened after 
 this, or how each one took the blow. If you have ever been 
 deceived, circumvented, your pride and affection outraged by 
 anybody that was a part of yourself and that you trusted as im- 
 plicitly as you loved, you will understand something of their 
 feelings at this sudden revelation of Ella's duplicity. If you 
 have never had any such experience, thank God ! And yet, to 
 quote Milverton, " All sorrow is a possession," and I am not 
 certain that we can any of us enter far into a grief which we 
 h#ve not, in some sense, lived. 
 
 Amazement, horror, indignation, held possession of each of 
 them, as they slowly realized the truth, and, for a time, these 
 feelings held the mastery over any grief which, after all, would 
 have its day. For the deed went down to the very quick of 
 their pride and affection. That Ella could do her family this 
 wrong and shame was the uppermost thought with all of them. 
 
 Viewed from the stand-point of the world, there was, of course, 
 no disgrace attached to Ella's marriage, outside of the irregur 
 larity of an elopement, which would make its nine days' buzz of 
 gossip in the fashionable world. Socially Ella Darryll had not 
 lowered herself by wedding Derrick Howe. There was, prob- 
 ably, in her own set, hardly a girl who would not envy her the 
 matrimonial prize she had drawn. But if there Avas any com- 
 fort in that fact, the Darrylls were not conscious of it at thfe 
 time. 
 
 Easily biased in any direction, Mrs. Darryll had partaken of 
 her husband's and Rusha's strong prejudice in the young man's 
 disfavor, although she had seen very little of him herself ; and 
 this feeling was shared by every member of the family. 
 
 It was a sad sight to see the little group discussing, with 
 closed doors, lest the servants should overhear, the bitter trouble 
 that had fallen into their midst the mother, almost frantic, 
 calling for her child, the sisters in tears, and the father and son 
 trying to control themselves for the womens' sake, but white 
 with rage all the time.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID, 
 
 373 
 
 " To think of her running off from such a home, and such a 
 father as she's had, to marry that inhuman wretch ! 0, my 
 poor, miserable, wicked child ! I'd rather have laid you in the 
 grave ! " sobbed her mother. 
 
 " And I've lost my sister, and got him for a brother-in-law 
 that old, awful, horrid thing ! " and -with this climax Agnes 
 went into another passion of tears. 
 
 "I wish I could get my hands on the villain!" blazed up 
 Guy, with the quick heat of his years. " There wouldn't be 
 much of him left. I'll do it, sir, hang me if I don't ! I'll 
 take the next train, and when I come up with him there won't 
 be a sound boue left in his body." 
 
 " O, Guy, what good would that do? It wouldn't bring Ella 
 back," said Rusha, from the corner where she too was crying. 
 
 And his father's curt, " Yes, Guy, don't make a fool of your- 
 self," considerably dampened the youth's belligerent ardor. 
 
 Of course everything in Ella's past conduct which could 
 throw any light on the present conjunction of affairs, was 
 gone over now. Rusha remembered and related all that had 
 transpired at the party, when she had so boldly confronted 
 Derrick Howe and compelled Ella to return home without 
 him. But, with a morbid consciousness, the girl now bit- 
 terly condemned herself for not laying the whole matter at once 
 before her father. Nobody, however, hearing the courage and 
 promptness with which she had acted, was disposed t<5 blame 
 her. 
 
 They all conjectured at once, what Ella's letter did not state, 
 that Derrick Howe had been with her at the mountains, and 
 her loss of spirits and reluctance at leaving home the second 
 time were now explained. That, as her letter affirmed, she had, 
 at the time of her departure, no idea of the consummation into 
 which Derrick Howe had persuaded her, they were all con- 
 vinced, as also that the young man had beeu at the bottom of 
 her absence during Tom's visit ; which thought only added fresh 
 fuel to their rage against him. 
 
 Yet Ella's letter to her sister had, under the circumstances, 
 32
 
 374 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 been a model one. The only justification which she attempt- 
 ed for the step she had so reluctantly taken, was her love for 
 Derrick Howe, and the utter hopelessness of ever reconciling 
 her family to him, so long as there was a possibility of sep- 
 arating them. 
 
 The haughty girl humbly implored her family's pardon, and 
 entreated her sister, in language that plainly indicated her feel- 
 ings must have dictated it, to make her peace with her father. 
 
 No fault, either, could be found with Derrick Howe's letter 
 to his new father-in-law. He pleaded his own cause with dig- 
 nity and eloquence. Indeed, it did not tally at all with his plans, 
 not to have the breach with his wife's family healed as early as 
 possible. 
 
 His love for Ella, and the misery of a future for them both, 
 apart from each other, were put in their strongest light, and he 
 avowed himself ready, by a life of devotion to his bride, and by 
 every regard to the new relations with her family which his 
 marriage involved, to atone for the one wrong which he had 
 done them. 
 
 Derrick Howe did not believe all those fine speeches would^ 
 be wasted ; but they were, or worse only served to increase 
 the family indignation against him. 
 
 John Darryll's prejudices were obstinate things, and Rusha's 
 likes and dislikes were vital, though they usually were fouuded 
 in reasons that justified them ; and her clear intuitions had 
 sounded Derrick Howe as deeply as her father's shrewdness. 
 
 " What a miserable time she will have with that wretch ! " 
 she broke out again from the corner where she was crouched, 
 with her pale face settled drearily on her hand, sharing in the 
 family sentiment that hanging and quartering were too good for 
 her sister's husband. 
 
 " Serve her just right," growled the father ; and there was 
 not a deprecating voice in the room. 
 
 And again Rusha spoke. " But, pa, we may as well look facts 
 in the face. "What are we to do? Who is to answer that 
 letter?"
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 375 
 
 "I shall take that business on myself, end finish it up, too, 
 in a few lines. That precious rascal will find that he hasn't got 
 into clover quite as smoothly as^he expected ;" and the rich man 
 laughed bitterly. 
 
 " Yes ; I see all that plainly enough. It was the money that 
 bought Ella her husband and us this fresh misery ! " She spoke 
 under her breath, but for all that everybody in the room heard 
 her. 
 
 " O, dear ! It always scares me when you say that, Rusha," 
 broke in Agnes. " It makes me feel as though pa ought to give 
 all his money to the missionaries ! " 
 
 It was a proof that the grief which had fallen on the Dar- 
 rylls was an overwhelming one, that even this suggestion of 
 Agnes elicited no smile from any quarter. 
 
 It was a proof, too, how deeply Ella had outraged the feel- 
 ings of her whole family, that during that miserable night 
 not one of them entered a plea in her behalf. 
 
 Even Mrs. Darryll shared strongly the indignation of her 
 husband, and was willing that her daughter should reap some 
 of the bitter fruits of her folly. 
 
 No doubt that in the end mother-love would assert itself, and 
 that if a day ever came when Ella should return to her home 
 the victim of her husband's neglect and wrong, she would find, 
 of all the world, her mother's heart ready to welcome and shel- 
 ter her. 
 
 But this feeling was, for the time, latent ia Mrs. DarrylPs 
 bosom ; and when her husband took all the responsibility off 
 their hands, and sternly forbade Rusha's replying to her sister's 
 letter, the lady never entered one demur ; still, it was touching 
 enough, when, of a sudden, the truth seemed to come home with 
 all its terrible force to the mother's inmost soul. 
 
 " He has stolen my daughter ! I shall never have my child 
 again ! O ! how can I live without my Ella ! " she sobbed 
 pkeously. 
 
 It was touching, too, the way the eldest and youngest daugh- 
 ter tried to comfort her.
 
 376 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Ma, I'll never marry the best man in the world. I'll stay 
 at home with you and pa always," averred Agnes, with solemn 
 emphasis. 
 
 So there was another grief for the family to carry, another 
 loss to draw into closer union what remained together. 
 
 Yet the world, meddling with all this, as it is certain to do 
 with what it knows nothing about, would have little sympathy 
 for the Darrylls. 
 
 Why should they keep up a pretence of anger, it would be 
 sure to ask, and not receive Ella and her husband without any 
 further show of opposition? She had married well, certainly, 
 and although an elopement was not justifiable, of course, still, 
 after it was done, the only thing that remained was to make the 
 best of it. Indeed, what right had the family, from the begin- 
 ning, to oppose the marriage of the young people, and make the 
 elopement necessary at all? 
 
 That this would be the common talk of their acquaintance, 
 the family clearly discerned, and of course, like all family 
 troubles, this one could never be explained, and the cause and 
 justice of their indignation shown to the world the world 
 always springing to hasty conclusions, always judging from its 
 own prejudices and superficial knowledges. 
 
 Yet, I wonder if there does not come a time to all of us, 
 men and women, no matter how cowardly and conventional we 
 are, when we, in a sense, burst our chains, and put this great, 
 dreaded world beneath our feet, feeling how little, after all, its 
 verdict is worth, and how it can never reach down where our 
 life really is ! 
 
 Mrs. Darryll was a strong illustration in point. Her own 
 rights her outraged feelings would assert themselves in 
 spite of all the buzz and condemnation of Mrs. Grundy. 
 
 Ella and that husband of hers, whom she could only think of 
 with horror and loathing, should find the doors of their home 
 closed against them. 
 
 Yet there was a terrible blank in the household. Andrew, 
 Tom, and Ella took away so much from the bright, noisy young
 
 WEE TEE E IT PAID. 377 
 
 life of the family, and there was plenty of sadness and heartache 
 in the little nest among the mountains, which looked as though 
 it must be as free from'all care and human grief as those other 
 nests which the singing birds hung in the trees around it. 
 
 Then there came the hard task of writing the truth to Tom, 
 a task which devolved on Rusha, and every page of the long 
 letter was blistered with her tears. 
 
 His reply was just what a young man's would be, shocked 
 with amazement and indignation, with grief, too, at the imposi- 
 tion which Ella had practised on her family. 
 
 " After Andrew, too ! " condensing in those mournful words 
 the crudest thought of all. 
 
 But it was a comfort to the family, whether acknowledged or 
 not, that Tom fully approved of his father's course in the mat- 
 ter. Ella had brought down her punishment on her own head. 
 
 And so the stately summer, " filling the circuit of its pomp 
 and glory," moved on among the hills. Outside, men's minds 
 and talks were full of the impending nominations for the I'IVM- 
 dency, and the very air seemed hurtling with excitement ; and 
 so the great drama of the century moved on its appointed 
 path, bearing with it all those unwritten dramas of love and 
 grief in the households of a great nation, as well as the one of 
 which I am trying to tell you. 
 82*
 
 378 DAEBTLL GAP, OB 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 DOWN there in the hospitals the day was drawing to a close 
 at last. Surgeons and nurses had their hands full, and hearts 
 too, if they dared let these latter gain, for a moment, the mas- 
 tery. The men were busy bringing in the wounded and dying, 
 and depositing these, with a sort of bungling tenderness, on the 
 mattresses, whose long, narrow rows occupied both sides of the 
 room. 
 
 The day had fainted down under the dry, dead heats, unusual 
 even for the latitude of Washington ; the rays blazing through 
 the hot air, and fairly blistering the earth : if a wind stirred 
 outside, it was like a breath from the desert, bringing neither 
 life nor coolness with it. 
 
 Inside, the spectacle was ghastly enough ; one shrinks from 
 pausing before it the mutilated limbs, the groans and cries, 
 and the faces with the awful shadow of death upon them, and 
 yet there were brave, pitying souls of men who bore the sight 
 without flinching, and tender women in their midst, who, for 
 " four years rested the stricken nation upon their hearts." 
 
 To all the agony of that time was added the stinging con- 
 sciousness of defeat. At the very moment of victory, delay of 
 some sort in the support of Burnside had changed the crowning 
 success into a triumph for the enemy. 
 
 Nobody could tell, in the amazement and horror of the 
 time, where the blame lay ; perhaps nobody can now ; but the 
 result was clear enough. Though the immense army-train, 
 which Grant had despatched across the James, had completely 
 deceived Lee regarding the point of intended attack, the purpose 
 of the ruse had not been accomplished, for the Union army had 
 gained nothing, and lost nearly five thousand men.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 379 
 
 Dr. Rochford had just finished dressing a wound, upon whose 
 immediate care hung a human life as upon a thread, and he was 
 turning to another bad case close at hand, when his glance 
 dropped upon the couch opposite him. They had laid some one 
 there during his last operation ; his glance went with that swift 
 promptness to which long experience had trained it, from the 
 officer's uniform to the face turned up to the light in white un- 
 consciousness ; then the doctor started ; another look flashed 
 down, and he knew who lay there. 
 
 A little quiver which nobody saw under the bearded lip, 
 then, with that swift professional instinct of his to help and to 
 save, the doctor sprang forward, and tore away the garments 
 from the breast, for he had already divined where the hurt 
 was ; a wound large and ragged and ugly, the long tearing of 
 a miuie ball into the smooth, white flesh, on the left side, so 
 very near the heart ! 
 
 The doctor took it all in with a glance, and then he knew all 
 there was to know. His hand dropped down with a kind of 
 hopeless gesture on the coverlet, and he stood still, looking at 
 the young, silent, white face of the officer there : this held now 
 some wonderful likeness, which he had never felt before, to 
 another wild, appealing face, lifted to him out of the darkness 
 of the night, and that had, somehow, held his memory ever since 
 with some sweet, secret mystery of magnetism. 
 
 " Poor boy ! poor boy ! " he said. There were tears in his 
 voice, there were tears in his eyes also ; all around him lay the 
 wounded and dying, needing his help ; but for once, Fletcher 
 Rochford forgot them. Suddenly Angeline grasped his arm in 
 a breathless hurry. 
 
 " There are some terrible cases in the next row. O, Fletcher, 
 make haste, or the men will die ! " 
 
 He looked down on the face moved out of all its sweet seren- 
 ity by the grand demands of the occasion, then, without speak- 
 ing one word, he pointed to the face on the pillow. 
 
 Angeline Rochford's eyes followed her brother's gesture. In 
 a glance she discerned who lay there. She covered her face
 
 380 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 with her hands a moment ; the next it looked up in a great hope 
 and fear. 
 
 " Is there a chance for his life ? " 
 
 " Not one, not one ! " the words dry and stifled in his throat. 
 
 She leaned over and smoothed the bright brown hair from the 
 young, white face, that looked younger than ever, lying there 
 in that, awful whiteness that is the image of death. 
 
 Her hot tears dropped fast on his cheeks. " O, Tom," she 
 murmured, " Tom, what would they say at home to see you 
 lying here ! " 
 
 The doctor was feeling the pulse. 
 
 *' Must he go out like this, without any word or sign for us 
 to take back to them ? " appealed his sister. 
 
 " I hope he may revive for a few moments, but I feared the 
 result too strongly to attempt forcing down any cordials," bath- 
 ing the blue temples with ice-water. 
 
 Suddenly there came a change, and a gasp for breath. Tom 
 Darryll opened his eyes, and looked with bright intelligence 
 into the faces of the brother and sister. 
 
 " Do you know me, Tom? " asked the doctor, bending over 
 him. 
 
 " Dr. Rochford and Miss Angeline. Am I hurt? O, yes, 
 I remember now. A bad wound, is it, doctor?" 
 
 " A very bad one, Tom ! " In the presence of the death 
 standing beside them there, he would not hold back one jot or 
 tittle of the truth. 
 
 The quick, bright glance went from one face to the other. 
 The grief in both answered the question in his eyes. 
 
 " Has it come to this? " asked Tom Darryll ; then his whole 
 face quickened, and he cried out, " O, my father, and mother, 
 and Rusha, Rusha " He got no farther than that dearest 
 name of all. 
 
 " Tom," said the doctor, mastering his voice as he best could, 
 for his profession had not hardened the native softness of the 
 man's heart, " Tom, it is the Lord only who can comfort you 
 and them now ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 33 j 
 
 The young officer looked up eagerly, and as the thought pen- 
 etrated his soul, a new, solemn calmness gathered over his face. 
 His eyes closed a moment. When he opened them, there was 
 a smile on his lips more beautiful than any smile which, in their 
 flush of youth and health, they had ever worn. 
 
 " Yes," he said, "He comforts me now He can comfort 
 them also ! " 
 
 Angeline bent over him, straining back her sobs to catch 
 every word. 
 
 " And, Tom, you are ready to go, seeing He calls you?" 
 
 " Yes, ready. It came sudden, you know, and it comes hard, 
 too, for a young fellow like me to give up life like this ; but it 
 isn't the first time I've looked it in the face." 
 
 And now Dr. Rochford leaned over and spoke, with that sol- 
 emn radiance upon his face which only visited it at the rarest 
 and greatest heights of his life. 
 
 " Tom, I look forward to the time when I shall lie where 
 you do, as the fairest, sweetest, as the happiest and joyfulest, 
 as the one triumphant moment of my life ! There are times 
 when I count the years that are past, and thank God that by so 
 many that are gone I am nearer Him ; and now I can almost 
 find it in my heart to envy you ! " 
 
 The eyes, bright with their last brightness, looked up in the 
 doctor's face, and again that smile of marvellous beauty upon 
 the dying lips. Tom understood. In a moment he roused once 
 more. 
 
 " TV ill you find my Bible, on my right side, and the picture 
 in it ? I should like to see that the last thing." 
 
 The doctor searched and found it. They set it before him, 
 with the picture inside, smiling down on him in the sweet glad- 
 ness of its youth. Tom gazed on it with unutterable tender- 
 ness in his look. 
 
 " Poor Rusha ! " he said. " The book was her gift, and I 
 owe all that's good in me, all the blessedness of this hour, under 
 God, to her alone. Tell her I said so ; and tell her I charged 
 her never to fret herself with a thought that she sent me to the
 
 382 DAEEYLL GAP, OE 
 
 war, or that it was through her means I carne to this. You'll 
 tell her, doctor?" 
 
 " Every word ; God is my witness every word, Tom." 
 
 " Tell the boys, too, I left 'em good by, and a charge to take 
 Tom's place to father and mother. They mustn't be too hard 
 on Ella " And again the faintness of the death drawing near 
 overcame speech and consciousness. 
 
 Contrary almost to the expectation of those who watched by 
 the bedside, Tom rallied again. 
 
 " Give my love to each one at home. It'll come hardest on 
 mother and Rusha. Poor Rusha, she'll have nobody to talk to 
 and comfort her after I'm gone ! " his last thought and anxi- 
 ety going after her., the dearest love, you could see now, of 
 his life. 
 
 " Tom," said the doctor, solemnly, " I'll do all I can to take 
 your place to Rusha." 
 
 Tom's smile thanked him ; and then a messenger from the 
 surgeons pressed up. 
 
 " There are fresh cases coming in all the time, and the doc- 
 tors have more than they can do, and the men will die if their 
 wounds are not dressed." 
 
 And Dr. Rochford answered "I'll be there in a mo- 
 ment." 
 
 "Don't wait for me, doctor. You may save some poor fel- 
 low's life, and it's too late to do mine any good." 
 
 Under the circumstances, this was a command that Fletcher 
 Rochford could not disobey. He leaned down and kissed the 
 cold lips. 
 
 " Good by, Tom ; we shall meet and know each other in a 
 little while at the farthest, a very little while." 
 
 " Good by !" It was the final one, but the voice rang out 
 clear and exultant. 
 
 So Dr. Rochford turned away, and left his sister watching 
 alone with death by the bedside. It was the hardest moment of 
 his life, but the dying sent and the living called him. 
 
 Tom's eyes closed, and Angeline thought he was lapsing into
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 383 
 
 unconsciousness, until she saw bis lips move in a secret prayer. 
 When he looked at her again, the last dimness was gathering in 
 them. His hand groped for hers. 
 
 " How good God was to Bring you both to me at this time ! 
 I shall thank Him for it again when I get home." And a little 
 while afterwards he murmured, " ' There is no other name given 
 under heaven whereby man can be saved.' Rusha said I should 
 find some new meaning and sweetness in these passages, but 
 they open widest and sweetest at such a moment as this." 
 
 " And, Tom," said Angeline, anxious to lay up in her memory 
 every dying word to carry far away to the north, and drop their 
 clew and balm into the broken hearts there, " He is all your trust 
 and peace now ? " 
 
 "All. I have been trying to follow Him during these last 
 months, and so He has come to me now." 
 
 The death-shadow gathered its awful darkness over his face. 
 Angeline had watched by too many dying bedsides not to 
 know it. 
 
 Tom's voice grew fainter. " Put the book and the picture a 
 little closer, so I can see it to the very last," he said. 
 
 She moved them nearer. She put her wet cheek down to his, 
 and prayed softly, and he listened with his eyes still clinging to 
 the picture, and his hand clasped in hers. 
 
 "When she paused at last, he whispered, faintly, " Go on," 
 and a calm came upon her. She paused again ; " and he did 
 not speak. She called him, and he did not awaken ! " 
 
 In a few minutes the doctor returned. Angeline looked up, 
 a smile struggling through her tears. 
 
 " It does not look like death," she said, and then he knew ! 
 
 Truly it did not, the doctor thought, as he gazed on the still 
 peace of the young, dead face ; fhe faint smile clinging still to 
 the bearded lip, while just over it shone down that other pictured 
 face in its radiance of youth and hope. What awful darkness 
 of grief was waiting to settle down upon it ! and then, as Dr. 
 Eochford thought of this, the memory of Tom's words came 
 back to him " She will have nobody to comfort her ! " 

 
 384 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 She had loved the dead boy lying there better than all the world 
 beside the doctor, knew that, and there was no one of the 
 stricken household to help the desolate girl through the hour 
 of her great anguish. 
 
 " Angeline," said the doctor, suddenly, " you heard me say 
 I was going north next week. I shall start to-morrow morn- 
 ing." 
 
 She understood what that meant. Then the brother and sis- 
 ter leaned over and closed the eyes softly, as Tom's own mother 
 and sister could have done, and left the young soldier lying 
 there, and went to their work again. 
 
 The Darryll household was but one among the many whose 
 flower of youth and pride dropped suddenly. Everywhere it 
 was the bravest and the best beloved who went down as the 
 ploughshare drove along the soil of those awful four years. 
 
 " How long, O God, how long ! " Dr. Rochford's soul had 
 asked, as all our souls did, travailing through the years with that 
 cry, and beyond another winter, among the blossoms and singing 
 birds of another spring waited His answer of victory and peace !
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 385 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 MR. DAERYLL hurried into his office that morning with his 
 sharpest business face and air. A large amount of work must 
 be settled up that day, as, in the evening, he was to start for the 
 mountains for a long vacation, all his previous ones having been 
 of the intermittent sort. 
 
 A telegram, which had been brought in a few moments before, 
 lay among the letters on his desk. He tore this open first, 
 throwing a glance, meanwhile, along the others, and his office 
 clerk waited at his elbow for orders. Suddenly the rnau's hand 
 dropped down on the table as though a swift paralysis had smit- 
 ten it. His face turned to an ashen pallor ; the clerk sprang 
 forward, fearing the man would fall, and met the stare of the 
 first shock, and heard the groan " My boy is killed ! " 
 
 Three days later, Rusba Darryll opened the front door of the 
 cottage, and came out on the veranda. She walked with a slow, 
 faint step, like that of an old woman, and there was something 
 in her face, as she lifted it up and looked at the mountains, which 
 would have brought tears into any eyes. Yet there was no 
 suggestion of these in hers. White, drawn, rigid, with some- 
 thing almost defiant in its look, it faced the mountains a moment, 
 and then she went down the gravelled walk, still with that slow, 
 faint step, all the spring of its youth gone, as though age had 
 suddenly come down and palsied it. 
 
 Two days before, her father had brought the tidings. They 
 seemed to have stunned, frozen the life within her. In all this 
 time she had not shed one tear. A hard, silent, unutterable 
 agony of despair had taken possession of her. She had heard 
 Guy and Agnes sob like one in a dream. Even her father's 
 ashen face, and her mother going from one fainting fit into 
 33
 
 386 DABBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 another, had failed to move her. All power of emotion seemed 
 paralyzed within her. All the springs of her hope and trust 
 failed now. God seemed no more the kind and loving Father 
 on whose tender care she could lean the deepest sorrows and 
 darkest mysteries of her life, but a Fate dark and pitiless as the 
 Greeks'. In its anguish her soul did not call on Him, and 
 through the darkness she did not hear His voice. 
 
 She sat still, in a sort of death in life, one consciousness only, 
 ever present with her. Tom, her joy, her love, her dear delight, 
 was dead. She should never see him more never hear his 
 voice speak to her again ! Yet, thinking over all this, she did 
 not shed one tear. 
 
 At last the stricture of heart and brain became intolerable. 
 It would probably have killed her in a little while. And so, 
 with a sort of blind instinct, she had groped her way out of the 
 darkened house into the light. and warmth of the summer day. 
 
 Nature and the soul of this girl were, as you have seen, in 
 finest sympathy. Her dumbest gi'ief, her sharpest pang, had 
 always found here the mystery of comfort and healing. 
 
 But now all these failed her. The mountains, to which she 
 lifted those eyes, dry and aching with their burden of unshed 
 tears, stood there in their strength and silence, with no help for 
 her. The sunlight, filling the day with its light and gladness, 
 only mocked her. She went on, like one half awake, the slow, 
 heavy steps taking the way, from mere force of habit, down 
 to the thicket in the edge of the woods, where she had come 
 in that first blissful hour of her summer at the mountains the 
 summer that had fallen into this thick darkness ! 
 
 She heard the birds singing just as they did that day, and the 
 happy humming of the water in the crevices of the rock. She 
 laid her head down on the cool grass, the hard, despairing agony 
 still holding brain and heart. Who should loosen it? She 
 looked up to the peaceful sky, and found no answer there. 
 
 " O God," prayed the dry, unquivering lips, " you have taken 
 away my life, my love, my darling ! I want nothing more in 
 your world here. Smite me, too, and let me die now, and be 
 buried by his side ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAW. 337 
 
 No cry for mercy, no love, no resignation in her prayer, 
 only desperation and a longing for the forgetfuluess of 
 death ! 
 
 And she sat there, with her hands folded, and her drawn, 
 rigid face above them, waiting for the answer ; and the stream 
 trilled on, and the winds laughed among the leaves overhead, 
 and that was all ; and swayiug up and down, her thoughts went 
 with the lines of a song she had seen somewhere, 
 
 " Through heart wreck and home wreck 
 Thy happy swallows sing." 
 
 It might have been half an hour after Rusha had passed out 
 of it that the cottage gate was opened softly again, and Dr. 
 Rochford stood still a moment, regarding the house with a kind 
 of sorrowful earnestness. The darkened windows, the utter 
 silence, told him that the news had preceded him. His glance 
 swept the glory of the landscape around, one of those glances 
 that did it recognition and reverence, and then he went up to 
 the house. 
 
 It was a long time before his summons was answered. The 
 servant seemed disposed to guard the house vigilantly from all 
 intrusion. " There was nobody at home to receive company," 
 she said, evidently supposing he was some guest who had ram- 
 bled off from the hotels. " Two days before they had had news 
 of Master Tom's death, and they were in very deep grief." 
 
 The maid's manner would have been inhospitable, if a quiver- 
 ing of her lip over the last words had not excused all that. 
 
 Dr. Rochford hesitated a moment. II felt a strong desire 
 to communicate Tom's messages first to the dearest of his sis- 
 ters ; and if he announced himself and his errand, that would, 
 of course, be impossible. On the impulse of this feeling he 
 spoke : 
 
 " I think, if you will give this to Miss Rusha, she will grant 
 me an interview." 
 
 The girl did not so much as glance at the card. 
 
 " Miss Rusha is not at home. I saw her go off into the woods
 
 388 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 yonder, half an hour ago. She is quite too cut up to be able to 
 see anybody, sir." 
 
 This was virtually a dismissal. The doctor turned away 
 without further parley, and the door closed. He had observed 
 the direction in which the girl's gesture pointed, and in a mo- 
 ment he had made up his mind to go in search of her young 
 mistress. So he followed the road, and struck up into the lit- 
 tle wood-path, praying it was his habit to do this in the little 
 things as well as the great ones of life that he might not 
 lose her. 
 
 Rusha Darryll, sitting there motionless, with her dry, glitter- 
 ing eyes on the hands clasped in her lap, heard a footfall near 
 her. She turned slowly, and the absence of all the swift, ner- 
 vous gesture, so natural to her, indicated to a keen observer, 
 like the doctor, how deep the hurt had gone. She saw him 
 looking down on her with a great solicitude in his eyes. A 
 little surprise stole into the blank of her face. There was a 
 movement of the muscles about the set lips. She tried to say 
 something, but there was a dry, husky sound, without any audi- 
 ble articulation. 
 
 " Rusha ! " exclaimed the doctor, startled out of all formali- 
 ties of salutation by the look in her face. 
 
 The bright, dry eyes kept themselves on his still. 
 
 " Do you know ? " she managed to ask now. 
 
 " Yes. I knew before you did. I was with him ! " 
 
 A little tremor then ran over the death-like calm of her face. 
 He must do something to break that up at once. He wondered, 
 with her fine, nervous fibre, that she had borne the strain as long 
 I as she had. It must end soon in madness or death ; and as he 
 looked and realized all the agony she must have undergone, to 
 set that starkness in the swift mobility of her face, there came 
 a dew of tears into the strong man's eyes. 
 
 She looked at him. There was a faint quiver on her lip he 
 thought. 
 
 " How came you here?" she said; but there was no active 
 curiosity, such as one would look for under the circumstances.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 389 
 
 No matter if his answers seemed cruel, if they only roused 
 her out of this. 
 
 Tom left me some last messages for you. I thought that 
 I could bring them better than I could write them. SoI have 
 come," sitting down beside her on the grass. 
 ^ Her face moved a little out of its blank then. It was the 
 first real sign of life he had seen there. 
 
 " It was very kind. It was more than that. I wish I could 
 thank you," she said. 
 He took her hand. 
 
 " How long have you been like this, my child?" 
 She put her hand to her head, in a doubtful way. 
 " I don't know, but it is ever since I heard that seems a 
 whole lifetime ago." 
 
 It was likely to prove a " whole lifetime " in its effects on a 
 temperament like hers. She must have read his anxiety in his 
 eyes, for she said, pushing away her hair from her forehead 
 the old habit, only a little slower, 
 
 " I wish I could cry ; but I can't shed a single tear. I don't 
 think I ever shall again." 
 
 " Rusha," asked the doctor, " have you carried this greatest 
 grief to God?" 
 
 She shook her head, the dreary despair darkening all over 
 her countenance. 
 
 " I can't find Him ! " Then she looked up again suddenly. 
 " Sometimes those words that you said to me down there on 
 the sea shore have come back, and ring through my thoughts 
 ' O God, if there be a God ! ' They made me shudder then, 
 but I have been asking myself that question all these days and 
 nights ! " 
 
 She evidently thought them many more than they were. 
 " Tom did not ask that when death came and stood face to 
 face with him. He only smiled like a conqueror, and said, 
 ' God comforted him, and would comfort you also ! ' ' 
 
 Her face moved now. Better see it torn up into any wild 
 passion of grief than in that dead rigidness. 
 33*
 
 390 DARETLL GAP, OR 
 
 " 0, did Tom say that? " she gasped, and there was a change 
 in her voice. 
 
 " Yes ; and went to rest in that thought, in peace and tri- 
 umph, surer of God's love than he was of yours even of 
 yours ! " 
 
 " O, if I could only believe, only know that that God 
 loved him, that Tom was really happy with Him now that I 
 should go and see him one of these days ! But it is all so dark, 
 and cold, and hard. Help me, Dr. Rochford, if you can ! " 
 
 Her face, in its struggle and agony of appeal, was pitiful to 
 behold. It moved some deep in the soul of Fletcher Rochford 
 that had never been stirred before. He judged wisely of the 
 best way to answer her. He took the soft, small hands in his, 
 as if they had been the hands of a little child, and he went over 
 that whole last hour of Tom's life, and she hung breathless 
 upon every word, as though it was for her own life, her face 
 starting more and more out of its frozen look, until the doctor 
 knew that the springs would break up in a little while, and 
 thanked God for the knowledge. 
 
 The moment that he paused, the long strain gave way. The 
 reaction was terrible. It would have frightened a man less 
 prepared for it than was Dr. Rochford. Such a wild -pas- 
 sion of tears and sobs as shook the delicate body, the tender 
 soul ! He did not try to check, hardly to soothe them. He 
 knew that it was the great physician Nature's way of healing 
 for her ; but his utter impotence of help, in that dreadful hour, 
 left him only more time for pity for the poor, anguish-riven soul 
 before him a pity which held some element of yearning ten- 
 derness such as he had never felt for all those suffering souls 
 and bodies of men and women by whom Dr. Rochford had 
 watched and waited. 
 
 It took a whole hour for the storm to expend itself. During 
 this time he had hardly spoken to her, except sometimes in a 
 low whisper, much like a mother's ' Hush,' with his hand touch- 
 ing her hair, or arm, and the words did not go farther than 
 " My child my poor child ; " and past all her utter loss of
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 391 
 
 self-control, the inevitable consequence of the unnatural calm 
 which had held her so long, Rusha felt the pity of the doctor's 
 voice, even though she could not have repeated his words. 
 
 As the passionate grief quieted, it left her weak as an infant. 
 He had been on too many battle-fields for the last year and a 
 half not to be familiar with all sorts of expedients for emer- 
 gencies, and he had that swift promptness of eye and hand to 
 which life is always affording occasion. He laid Rusha Dar- 
 ryll down on the grass, and improvised a cup out of two mullein 
 leaves, filled this with cool water from the spring, and bathed 
 her temples. 
 
 She was too exhausted to observe or wonder much to be 
 anything, in short, but obedient as a child, and the old child-like 
 lines had come back to her face now the hardness and immo- 
 bility all gone. 
 
 Once she looked up in his face, and said, 
 
 " I thought I should die just now ! " 
 
 " O, no, Rusha. This has saved you from a brain fever. It 
 was a cruel remedy, my child, but I knew it. was the only one." 
 
 Then he bent down, smoothing the rumpled hair with a 
 touch that many a poor, crippled man had affirmed was soft as 
 his own mother's. 
 
 " Rusha," he said, " do you remember what I told you of a 
 promise I made Tom, just before he left us?" 
 
 She looked up ; no dry glitter in her eyes, only a soft mist of 
 tears. The lip struggled with a softness, too, sweeter than even 
 its smile. 
 
 " I remember," she said. 
 
 " But I cannot keep it, unless you grant me the right, not 
 even though dying, he gave me his ! " 
 
 There was a silent moment, not only as regarded words, but 
 any movement on her part. Then she turned her face away, 
 but she put her hand in his. 
 
 " Some time I shall try to thank you," she said. 
 
 There was no need of further speech on either side. He tool 
 her act for just what it meant, and quietly, but at once, set
 
 392 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 about fulfilling the conditions which his covenant with the liv- 
 ing and the dead involved. 
 
 The first article in Dr. Rochford's medical creed was to 
 give nature, as far as possible, the charge of his patients ; and 
 he used often to aver that he wore his professional laurels un- 
 worthily ; that the " wonderful cures " for which men gave him 
 credit were due mostly to the great Mother to whose hands he 
 had committed them. 
 
 He saw now that Rusha Darryll, in her present exhaustion 
 of body and mind, needed perfect rest. For three days and 
 nights she had not slept at all. The only wonder was, that life 
 and reason had borne what had been laid on them so long ; but, 
 for all its sensitiveness, a good deal of endurance inhered in a 
 nervous enfibrement like hers. The first thing now was to get her 
 home not an easy matter in her present condition, and half a 
 mile to get over. The doctor considered a moment, then brought 
 from the spring a fresh draught of water, into which he poured 
 some drops from a bottle of the case he always carried with him. 
 
 It seemed cruel to disturb the white, tired face on the grass ; 
 but like a great many other apparently cruel things in life, it 
 would be mercy in the end, and the doctor spoke the voice 
 gentle as possible, but firm for all that. 
 
 " Now, Rusha, you will listen to what I say? " 
 
 " Yes," the monosyllable weak and weary enough. 
 
 " It is important that you should get home at once, and have 
 the rest that you need. I do not like to leave you long enough 
 to go for a carriage, and there is no one within call. This 
 draught will give you strength for a few minutes, and you must 
 try to get home on it. If you cannot, I must carry you." 
 
 He knew that this ultimatum would be likely to impel her to 
 the utmost exertion, and that there were also, as she had proved 
 in more than one trying crisis of her life, great latent forces in 
 her will. A moment before, it had seemed to Rusha Darryll 
 as though, if her life depended on it, she could not have lifted 
 her head from the bed of dried grasses where it lay, so utter 
 was the exhaustion that followed that long weeping ; but as the
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 393 
 
 draught began to take effect, she made the effort, and with the 
 doctor's help tottered to her feet. 
 
 Too exhausted now, for any will or purpose of her own, she 
 was obliged to let him think for her, and followed his sugges- 
 tions implicitly. It was a long walk home for both of them. 
 The doctor expected every moment that her strength would 
 utterly fail her. Indeed, she could not have stood a moment 
 without his support. 
 
 At last they reached the house, and at the door they met Mr. 
 Darryll, who, having learned of his daughter's absence, had 
 become seriously alarmed, and was just starting out in search 
 of her. 
 
 The strongest proof of the grief which had overwhelmed the 
 family was afforded by the fact that Rusha's condition for the 
 last three days had not awakened their apprehension. 
 
 Dr. Rochford was shocked to see how the brisk, bustling 
 man had aged. His look of amazement on recognizing the 
 physician changed to one of alarm as he saw his daughter. 
 Dr. Rochford explained and prescribed in a few words. 
 They must get her to bed without delay ; he trusted no serious 
 consequences would follow if she could have plenty of rest, but 
 that was imperative. 
 
 Then Rusha spoke, clinging to her father " He was with 
 Tom at the last, and he has come away here to tell us all 
 about it ! " 
 
 The strong man's face worked as he turned and fairly clutched 
 the other's hand ; but Rusha was clinging to her father with a 
 sort of drowning grasp. So he pointed the doctor to the open 
 parlor door, and then, lifting his daughter, carried her up stairs, 
 while the physician found a glass and prepared her a sleeping 
 draught, which he gave to the servant whom he summoned. 
 
 In a few minutes Mr. Darryll returned and closed the door. 
 The doctor's orders had been implicitly obeyed, but that had 
 not quieted the father's newly-aroused anxiety. 
 
 Rusha and Tom were the dearest of my children," he said 
 hoarsely, as he grasped the doctor's hand again, 
 lose both of them ? "
 
 394 DABRJLL GAP, OB 
 
 The doctor's reply allayed the father's worst fears, and then 
 the two men sat down together, and Fletcher Rochford told Mr. 
 Darryll all there was to tell of that last hour of his son's life 
 a harrowing story for any father to hear ; and yet what peace 
 lighted all its darkness, and took the worst sting from its bit- 
 terness ! 
 
 It was, indeed, a " house of mourning" to which the doctor 
 had come. There were others all over the land shrouded in 
 just that same darkness of death, but that did not make the 
 anguish of this one less bitter. 
 
 The doctor had to go over the scene again by poor Mrs. Dar- 
 ryll's bedside, with Guy and Agnes listening this time, the two 
 young things quite broken-hearted with grief. Death was 
 something new to both of them. It had never entered their 
 household before ; and though it had touched others all around 
 them, still each of us knows how different that is from the 
 death that comes to our own homes and hearts. 
 
 Some delicate insight, or some rare gift of speech, gave Dr. 
 Rochford a wonderful power over the hearts and minds of 
 those who went mourning and would not be comforted. 
 
 Those whom he had helped to lift up from a great deep of 
 sorrow, frequently embodied, in a homely way, their sense of his 
 power, by remarking that " he somehow knew just the right 
 word to say, and when to say it." But there was that in the 
 man's personality which must have made itself felt anywhere. 
 
 Grief had brought the Darryll household into a state of moral 
 susceptibility such as nothing else could have done. The pride, 
 and shows, and pomp, all the material things in which their 
 souls had found delight, must, at this hour, take somewhat 
 of their true value in the eyes of the mourners. 
 
 The doctor did not preach any sermon, nor go into any long 
 moral dissertations ; but each one felt, as never before, that there 
 was some secret in life and death which they had not taken 
 account of, and that it had made Tom's dying hour what they 
 would have their own. 
 
 Dr. Rochford had intended to leave the next morning ; but
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 395 
 
 Rusha was not yet awakened, and her father, though she had 
 passed a comfortable night, feared some serious result from all 
 she had undergone, and the doctor, on his part, was not without 
 apprehensions. 
 
 Then Mrs. Darryll's condition required medical attendance, 
 and everybody clung to the doctor, and he could not resist the 
 united entreaties of the family ; so he engaged, at last, to remain 
 for a day or two, not suspecting how much he, too, needed the 
 change and rest, nor how his naturally fine constitution had 
 been taxed to its utmost capacity of endurance. 
 
 During the morning of the next day, the doctor went out on 
 the verandas for an interview with the landscape. Half an 
 hour later, Agnes came to him. 
 
 " She is awake," she said, with some doubt in her face. 
 " But when I found her eyes wide open, looking at me, and 
 asked ' Have you just waked up, Rusha?' she answered, ' O, 
 no ; I've been awake for two hours.' It seemed strange, but I 
 didn't go to pa with it, lest it should alarm him. He's been up 
 stairs every few minutes this morning, looking at her." 
 
 " I will see her at once," answered the doctor, withholding 
 any expression of his opinion, if, indeed, Agnes' remarks had 
 afforded him sufficient data for forming one. 
 
 He followed the young girl up stairs into her sister's cham- 
 ber. There he found Rusha lying white and still, looking 
 strangely like the dead young face he had left down there in 
 the hospital, and with something of the same calm about it, the 
 doctor thought. Her pulse was faint, but regular, and she 
 smiled a little as she looked up and gave him her hand. 
 
 Agnes hovered over her anxiously a few moments, and then, 
 reassured by the doctor's look, went out. 
 
 " You are feeling better? " he asked. 
 
 " O, yes ; I have been lying here this morning, and seeing 
 farther and farther into those words of Tom that God would 
 comfort me. I think that awful darkness and despair will neve 
 come upon me again. Nobody knows how I loved him," her 
 lip quivering here, "how my heart will ache for him ; how
 
 396 DARRTLL GAP, OR 
 
 lonely and desolate at times life will seem without him ; but I 
 shall always feel now that God loves us both, and that some- 
 time it will all be made plain ! " soft tears shining in her eyes. 
 
 " And, Rusha," said Fletcher Rochford, deeply moved, " you 
 must think of him still, as living in a far finer, completer exist- 
 ence than this, and nobler and happier than he could ever be 
 here, even with you ; and how, if he could speak to you now,'he 
 would urge you not to grieve for him." 
 
 A long sigh fluttered out of her lips. She pushed back her 
 hair from her forehead in a way that, as I said, was a habit 
 with her, and that would always, to those who had grown into 
 loving intimacy with her ways, come to have some sweet asso- 
 ciation with herself. 
 
 How lovely she looked lying there with her sweet, pale, tran- 
 quil face, the face of one who has loved and learned, under 
 the shadow of its dark, fine hair ! 
 
 The doctor gazed, and as he gazed there came over him 
 something which in all his life he had never felt before a 
 thrill of such exceeding tenderness for the girl lying there that 
 he longed to take up the pale, sweet face, aud kiss away all the 
 sorrow that haunted it. 
 
 In that moment the face lying there grew beautiful and pre- 
 cious and sacred beyond everything else in the world ; and his 
 heart yearned, and thrilled, and longed for it, to have always in 
 the secret places of its tenderness a tenderness that out of its 
 abundance would never be satisfied with giving ! 
 
 If he could only put his cheek down to hers, and tell her this, 
 and they could thank God together that it was so, the man 
 thought, as that great, mysterious tidal of new emotion rose, 
 and swelled, and swayed over his whole being ! He knew then 
 what his soul had gone seeking so long, and that here he had 
 found it. 
 
 But he did not move nor speak to tell her. I do not think 
 he could at that moment. The soft, supple hand lay in his 
 without a closer clasp to teach her what it had become to him. 
 And so in a moment the door opened, and Mr. Darryll came in.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 397 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 To use Mr. Darryll's own words to Dr. Rochford, he felt, 
 on seeing her that morning, " as though his daughter had been 
 returned to him from the dead." Indeed, there was no doubt 
 but, for the latter's arrival at that time, Rusha's condition must 
 have resulted fatally to her reason or her life ; while, contrary 
 to the fears of all those who partially understood her case, she 
 suffered no relapse. 
 
 To most persons, the rapidity of her recovery would have 
 been a sort of miracle ; but she had a physician who under- 
 stood, as few men could, the mystery of her fine, nervous 
 organization, and its action on her physique. So he left to 
 nature the work of healing which lay beyond his utmost skill. 
 He insisted upon his patient's keeping out doors as much as 
 possible, both for the stimulus of the fresh air, and even the 
 ground scente. 
 
 So they carried her out on the veranda, and laid her down on 
 a lounge in one corner, amid the cool shadows of the rose vines, 
 where there was an outlook on Lafayette. 
 
 The days were at their very finest now. Everybody who can 
 feel it, knows that no year goes over the earth without having its 
 flood-tide of inspiration ; a time certain to come in the late sum- 
 mer or autumn, when the days move past in a very trance of 
 splendor when the whole earth is suffused and idealized with 
 a new radiance and beauty still, serene, brooding days that 
 seem touched with the very peace and splendor of heaven, and 
 to touch our hearts also with their own peace and blessedness. 
 This time had fallen now to the year ; and Rusha Darryll lay 
 out there in the joy and beauty and stillness, her pale face 
 34
 
 398 . DAERTLL GAP, OB 
 
 filled with such a peace that her family used to come and look 
 at it with a kind of wondering amazement. 
 
 I think, however, nobody wondered more than Rusha at this 
 time. She could not understand the change that had come over 
 her soul the quiet, the blessedness, after all that anguish. It 
 was as though she had come into another state of existence, as 
 though the voice of God Himself had spoken its eternal " Be 
 still" to her soul. 
 
 She told herself over and over again that Tom was dead ; but 
 somehow the words seemed afar off, and did not hurt her any 
 more. She could only feel that he had gone away for a little 
 while, where everything was well with him where he was more 
 blessed and happy than he had ever been before, and that he 
 was coming back to her again, and there was afterwards to be 
 no more separation forever. 
 
 No doubt that the reaction from that awful strain of body and 
 mind had much to do with her present calm ; but something 
 underlay it all, deeper than that something given of God. 
 She would lie there, her eyes on the grand old mountain, hiding 
 its face away in masses of smoky cloud, and then uncovering 
 the glories of its presence, as in a vision, to her gaze. 
 
 And here Fletcher Rochford came often to look upon the 
 sweet face lying there^ and wonder if it was not the face of an 
 angel. Strong, self-possessed man as he was, this new love 
 had come with a might and taken possession of him with a 
 power and suddenness which was a new revelation to himself. 
 
 Dr. Rochford wondered sometimes if he was the same man 
 he had been. All the poetry and ideality that his stirring, 
 executive life had held in leash, asserted themselves mightily 
 now. 
 
 Love must always take its character from the nature which 
 gives birth to it. It had been the doctor's habit from his boy- 
 hood to idealize woman. There was something at the core of 
 this man's nature which affiliated with all that was best and 
 finest in the old medieval devotion to women. I think the 
 humblest and weakest of these felt something of this in any
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 399 
 
 casual intercourse with the doctor, and was unconsciously ele- 
 vated bj the feeling ; indeed, he was always certain to bring 
 out the best possibilities of any one brought strongly under his 
 influence. 
 
 The women of history, the women of Shakspeare, were 
 living personalities to him. They incarnated his own lofty 
 ideals of purity, sweetness, and nobleness, and his thoughts and 
 imagination dwelt among them, familiar, almost, as he dwelt 
 among his own sisters, blessed in both, blessed above all in the 
 mother of his boyhood, and the memory she had left behind her. 
 
 And she who had wrought all this magic in the soul and 
 heart of the strong, tender nature, lay there on the veranda, with 
 her pale, silent face turned oftenest to the mountains, waiting 
 for the healing of sky and earth. 
 
 Here one and another would come, hanging anxiously over 
 her lounge ; and here, oftener, perhaps, than any of the others, 
 impelled by a sweet magnetism too mighty for his will to resist, 
 came also Fletcher Rochford, gazing down on the pale face until 
 its power and loveliness grew upon him more than he could 
 bear, and he would go away, carrying it with him, into the deep 
 silence of the woods, as to an altar. 
 
 So one day went by, and then another. It seemed cruel and 
 useless to talk of leaving just at present ; and had the case been 
 different had the family clung less tenaciously to him even 
 the strong will of Fletcher Rochford would have found it hard to 
 resist the power that held him still under the shadow of the 
 White Mountains. 
 
 To everybody who questioned her Rusha had much the same 
 answer during these days. " Better, thank you, only very tired," 
 her voice touched with weariness, and the faint smile on her lips 
 fading into sleep, light as an infant's, even while she spoke. 
 
 For she slept much during these days. The tired brain, the 
 strained nerves, the heart that had ached out its pain, needed 
 all that slumber to come back into newness of life. 
 
 One afternoon, when Dr. Rochford came out from Mrs. 
 Darryll's sick room, he found Guy sitting by the lounge fanning
 
 400 DAEETLL GAP, OB 
 
 his sister, for the heat had fallen suddenly, as it is apt to among 
 the valleys of the New Hampshire hills. 
 
 " She's been asleep for the last hour," whispered Guy, not 
 the old, careless, self-assertive Guy of a week ago. 
 
 " Every moment of such sleep is a new lease of life to her. 
 But I'll take your place a while, if you please, Guy. I heard 
 your father say there were replies to some business letters which 
 could not be put off any longer, and it will do your mother good 
 to have you with her just now." 
 
 Guy rose without a word, and placed the palm-leaf in the 
 doctor's hand. So he sat there, waving it softly over the cheek 
 turned towards him, and watching the faint flush that had begun 
 to gather into its paleness, and thinking that he would like to sit 
 so forever, and smiling to himself as he thought what a brave, 
 manly wish that was for a fellow who had any purpose or any 
 work to do in the world a very lover, after all, you see ! 
 
 Suddenly she stirred and opened her eyes. They looked at 
 him, startled and wistful, a moment ; then a faint smile about the 
 lips answered his. 
 
 " You are looking better, Rusha," he said. 
 
 " And I am feeling so. Quite like my old self, indeed." 
 
 " That last sleep has done this for you. I was certain you 
 would M 7 ake up quite renewed." 
 
 The little hand going up and brushing back the hair again 
 not the late listless gesture, but all the old swift life in it. 
 
 " I'm tired of lying here," she said. " I think I should like to 
 sit up a little while ; " and he thought a child might have said it 
 with just such pretty simplicity ; but then, you must remember, 
 he was in love. 
 
 " You may, certainly." He lifted her up, and arranged the 
 pillows carefully. He was used to work of that sort. 
 
 " Is that comfortable ? " 
 
 " O, delightfully so ! " settling her head amongst the pillows. 
 " How nicely it does feel ! " 
 
 A few moments' silence, her consciousness strong and clear, 
 taking in all that had happened he saw by her face.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 " How is mother? Can I go to her?" 
 
 "As well as we could reasonably hope. You shall see her 
 to-morrow." 
 
 She was ready to talk now, and he satisfied all her natural 
 anxieties about her family, and then directed her gaze to the 
 mountains, which were in one of their tender moods. It was 
 pleasant to watch her face deepen and brighten as she gazed. 
 
 He spoke in a moment : 
 
 " Those words have been ringing up and down my thoughts 
 ever since I came here ' As the mountains are round about 
 Jerusalem, so the Lord encampeth round about those who 
 love him.' " 
 
 " O, yes. I have remembered that, too. It is wonderful how 
 all those Bible passages come back and fit into all one's phases 
 and experiences, never wearing out, through all these thousands 
 of years." 
 
 " Never ! Gaining rather, I think, in depth and meaning, as 
 the heart of man gains in depth also and wisdom." 
 
 She was silent a moment over that. Then she looked up 
 quickly. 
 
 " How good you have been to me to us all. What should 
 I have done without you, Dr. Rochford ? " 
 
 " Found somebody better in my stead, I hope." 
 
 She looked incredulous. Aud then, thinking it best she 
 should not talk much yet, and understanding the natural rest- 
 lessness of her active temperament, he said, 
 
 " Let me be a little better still, and read to you a while." 
 
 " 0, yes ; thank you. I shall like it of all things." 
 
 There was a book-case in the sitting-room. The doctor went 
 in here, and returned in a moment, bringing several volumes with 
 him. He deposited these on the lounge. 
 
 " Won't you take your choice ? " he asked. 
 
 But she preferred him to do that. So he took up one volume 
 after another, watching her face occasionally. There was a 
 copy of Tennyson's " Idyls." He paused there. 
 
 " A book above all price or naming ! " he said. 
 34*
 
 402 DAEEYLL GAP, OB 
 
 She did not answer, but he saw that he had touched the right 
 chord. He ran over the leaves of the book. 
 
 "Which is your favorite?" she asked; and he held up the 
 open volume for answer, and the page read, " GUINEVERE." 
 
 She looked up now, her eyes rained over with tears. " It 
 was Tom's favorite, too. He will never read that to me again, 
 Dr. Rochford never never ! " 
 
 " Rusha, you know what he said. Shall I read it in his 
 stead?" 
 
 She put her hand over her eyes a moment. When she drew 
 it away, her face was all in a tremble, but it was not all of 
 sorrow. 
 
 " In his stead," she answered. 
 
 Dr. Rochford was a fine reader. Indeed, his sisters used to 
 say he had a marvellous gift in that direction ; but then, they 
 thought he had this in many others. ' 
 
 Be that as it may, his voice entered now into the very heart 
 of the Idyl, and brought out the fine life and individuality of 
 every line. The remorse of Lancelot, the awful despair of 
 Guinevere in the lonely convent, and the love and agony that 
 wrenched the heart of King Arthur in that last interview, when 
 his soul rose from its suffering into its sublime exaltation of for- 
 giveness, wrought themselves by turns into the magic of the 
 doctor's voice as he read read as no man could who had not 
 the soul and heart to enter with living sympathies into all the 
 sin, and suffering, and divine victory of the poem. 
 
 Rusha listened to the close, her very breath held on her parted 
 lips, her eyes, with all their radiant depths alive now, on the 
 doctor's face, her thought and imagination losing themselves in 
 a conception of sorrow that went so far beyond her own. 
 
 And at last, like the sweet ringing of distant bells, like the 
 swinging to and fro of the last notes of some " benedicite," fall- 
 ing with its very dew of blessing upon the rapt soul, the doctor's 
 tones shut in upon that last line that closes the last Idyl into the 
 very flowing of God's eternal calm and completeness, 
 " To where, beyond these voices, there is peace."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 403 
 
 Then they looked at each other this man, so loving this 
 woman, with all the mystery of beauty in her face shining upon 
 him now. He spoke first : 
 
 ." No drum-beat of victory in that last line, and yet it is the 
 immortal triumph of the soul. And then one remembers that 
 all the raging and tumult, all the sorrow and agony, of life may 
 be swallowed up in a little while in this eternal peace of God ! " 
 
 " A blessed thought a sweet and most blessed thought," 
 she murmured, covering away her eyes from his face a moment. 
 I think he was glad to have her then. 
 
 In a little while she turned towards him again. 
 
 " King Arthur," she said, " was, from the hour I read the 
 Idyl, my ideal hero. No poet, it seems to me, whether ancient 
 or modern, has risen into the conception of so lofty and yet so 
 tender a character, merely human. One may say, without 
 irreverence, ' It is God-like ' both in its purity and pity." 
 
 " And how far it transcends all the old gods and heroes of the 
 Greeks ! Through all the grace and beauty of their mythology, 
 there does not shine down upon us a conception of a character 
 like this. It could not enter into their thoughts. Christ had to 
 come and live and die before man could fashion an ideal like 
 King Arthur, the self-sacrifice and tenderness crowning all the 
 strength." 
 
 In the silence that followed these words, but that did not lack 
 its own language, Mr. Darryll came out on the veranda. Rusha 
 stretched out her hands towards him. 
 
 " O, pa, do come here ! " her face full of light up there among 
 the pillows. 
 
 " Why, my child, how well you look ! No, doctor, thank 
 you ; keep your seat ; " and he took one on the corner of the 
 
 lounge. 
 
 " The doctor has promised I shall have my freedom to-mor- 
 row," she said, almost joyfully. 
 
 Rusha's father looked at her with a feeling that did not expres 
 itself in many words, great as his delight was over her manifest 
 improvement.
 
 404 DABETLL GAP, OR 
 
 Nobody had ever seen John Darryll with so old and broken- 
 down a look and air as he had worn for the last week. The 
 death of his noblest boy had gone down to the roots of his love 
 and ambition. It had taken hold of his life. Rusha saw it all 
 with a great pang. 
 
 " What have you been doing, pa? " she said. 
 
 " Writing some business letters, my child. They had to be 
 done," in a weary tone, showing how little interest the brisk, 
 alert man had in his work. The old habit might constrain 
 him still, but he must feel now through it all, that the pride of 
 his sons was gone ; that there was no Tom to make money and 
 heap together riches for any more. 
 
 Rusha, with her true instinct, saw the feeling, and answered 
 it, taking his hand and chafing it in her soft ones. 
 
 " You have a good many left to live for, pa. You know 
 there's mother and me and all the rest of us ! " not adding the 
 other two names, because of the two living ones beyond that 
 must be left out. 
 
 " I know it, my child, and I shall try to bear it for your 
 sakes," a spasm of paiu working across his face. 
 
 How Rusha pitied him ! What covenants she made with 
 herself to be always thoughtful and tender towards her father, 
 not only for her brother's sake, but because of that other brother 
 and sister who had helped to bring the age into his face that had 
 come there within the last year. And with that thought came 
 another, that brought a sudden trouble into her eyes. 
 
 " What is it, my child?" asked her father. 
 
 How kind and watchful he had grown of late ! 
 
 " There are Andrew and Ella, pa. They must both be writ- 
 ten to now. You know what Tom said ! " 
 
 " I can't do it I can't do it," with all his old hasty movement, 
 and yet something in his voice that was like an appeal for pity. 
 
 " I will take all that on myself, pa, in a day or two," her 
 voice fairly choked with sympathy for him. 
 
 But the doctor knew that her nerves would not bear such a 
 strain for weeks. Why could he not spare her that, too he
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 405 
 
 who could tell, as nobody else could, just how those last messages 
 had been spoken? So Dr. Rochford said to the father and 
 daughter, 
 
 " I brought his last words to you ; let me send them also to 
 his brother and sister." 
 
 And again John Darryll thanked him with no words, only a 
 grasp of his hand ; and again Rusha turned upon him the 
 gratitude of those eloquent brown eyes. 
 
 That night Dr. Rochford related in his letters to Andrew Dar- 
 ryll and Ella Howe all that he had witnessed by their brother's 
 death-bed.
 
 406 DARBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 I HAVE said that Fletcher Rochford had something in him of 
 all that which we most honor and love in the old knights and 
 heroes of chivalry. From his boyhood there had been something 
 in that long service of Jacob for Rachel which enchanted his 
 imagination, and the tales of loyal devotion to their ladies, which 
 make the poetry of the old chronicles, had always a charm for him. 
 
 His dreams of wooing and winning a woman for his wife had 
 always taken their coloring from his heart and fancy always 
 had in them something of the poetry and romance whose 
 springs lay in his inmost nature. 
 
 But the hour that held the best gift of his life had waited for 
 him long, and it came when he least looked for it, opening wide 
 to him in a moment that great mystery of love which had 
 brooded long in the silence of his soul. 
 
 Yet the very might of this man's tenderness made him humble, 
 doubtful of himself and of his power to win the woman of his 
 heart's choosing. He used to look at the sweet, delicate, face, 
 sweeter than ever now in the shadow of its sorrow, and wonder 
 whether he should ever be so blessed as to call it his very own, 
 to gaze at it, cherish it, caress it at his will, to have it smile up 
 to him in absolute trust and abiding love, and to read at some 
 time, in its own eloquent and radiant language, that he, of all the 
 world, was its crowning blessedness and joy. But he looked 
 forward to months or years before that could be given him. He 
 would have thought it sacrilege to her womanhood to have told 
 Rusha Darryll at this time of the new revelation that had come 
 to him, and would have regarded it as simple justice, that, stung 
 and outraged by the man who could talk to her of love in the 
 very presence of death, she denied his suit. 
 
 Still, with instincts that went so straight as Rusha Darryll's 
 did to the truth, I think that, at any other time, some suspicion 
 of the doctor's real feeling must have haunted her, unconsciously, 
 perhaps, for she was not vain, and would be much more likely
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 497 
 
 to fancy a man like Dr. Rochford in love with some other 
 woman than herself. But with all his habit of self-control, 
 there was som'ethiug in his manner and voice with her not just 
 like that which he carried towards friend or patient. His sis- 
 ters. Avould have discerned the difference. 
 
 His presence was an unutterable comfort to Rusha, his kind- 
 ness and interest giving her a constant sense of rest and grati- 
 tude ; but she thought it all sprang from the promise that the 
 doctor had given Tom this, and nothing more. So she was 
 not surprised or embarrassed in any way, taking all his care 
 and attentions much as she would have taken Tom's. Had not 
 Dr. Rochford come to her in his stead ? 
 
 But human plans, though laid with the wisest skill and fore- 
 sight, seldom transpire according to our programme. Life is 
 full of surprises, of events that change our purposes, and beyond 
 that, we are such mysteries to ourselves ; we can never count on 
 our feelings ; some great tidal of emotion will rush over our 
 souls, bearing out upon them, as upon the rush of a mighty river, 
 our most sacred feelings, our longest hoarded secrets and our 
 wills are as weak to hold them back as our voices are to hold the 
 winds in their might. 
 
 During the three or four days that followed, Rusha's strength 
 waxed so rapidly that from drives she became equal to short 
 walks into the woods, and among the still old country roads, 
 where, in case of fatigue, it was always easy enough to impro- 
 vise seats out of the stone walls, or mossy boulders, or at worst 
 the wreck of some old tree struck down by the lightnings, or 
 wrenched up from its roots by the storm. 
 
 Nobody thought it strange that Dr. Rochford always accom- 
 panied her in these walks, for she was not strong enough to go 
 alone, and neither her father nor brother was a physician. 
 
 Quiet, peaceful, blessed hours they were, touched, but not 
 gloomed, with the shadow of death ; hours that seemed to take 
 her soul into their calm and peace. The faint color came back 
 to her cheeks, and the bright, playful changes to her face ; and 
 still it seemed to her that Tom was only gone away, and that 
 dreadful word death was robbed of its sting and terror.
 
 408 DAHBYLL OAF, OR 
 
 In these daily walks the soul of the man and woman opened 
 to each other. How fairly they were chorded together ! Na- 
 ture, art, books seemed to have so many like meanings and utter- 
 ances for both ! Dr. Rochford was more and more struck with the 
 grasp of Rusha's mind, and the range of her bright, alert thought. 
 
 He wondered how, with a life so little calculated to discipline 
 her faculties, or develop the best possibilities of her intellect, 
 she had assimilated so much of the finest and best thoughts of 
 others, whether it was of the past or present. 
 
 What a rare, fine, clear mind it was ! how greedy for all 
 forms of cultivation ! what a joy it would be to watch its de- 
 velopment, to stimulate its activities in all high and worthy direc- 
 tions ! All this and a great deal more, the doctor thought, in those 
 days out of whose grief had grown the new gladness of his life. 
 
 In the household everything had gravitated back into its old 
 way. The days come and go, and we take up, we know not 
 how, the little interests and duties of life, when we felt that all 
 these had slipped away from us forever. The Darryll family 
 was no exception to this rule. It was not possible to the youth 
 of Guy and Agnes to be always sad, and though, of all the 
 brothers and sons that went down under the red hail-storm of 
 our war, none was mourned with a bitterer grief than Tom Dar- 
 ryll, still it can be said of these, as it was of all the other house- 
 holds, " The grief did not kill them." 
 
 Even the poor, broken-hearted mother could not forget that 
 her husband lived, that other children remained to her ; and in a 
 thousand undiscerned ways the living loves asserted their claims 
 beside the dead. 
 
 Dr. Rochford had made up his mind to leave the next day. 
 It must be confessed the idea had seemed to him as much like 
 leaving heaven as anything he could conceive of in this world ; 
 but the man had a will, and he brought it to a focus on this 
 resolution, " If the folks would only stop urging him to stay ; 
 that was the hardest of all, as though there were not other sur- 
 geons down in the hospitals that needed a vacation ; in love, 
 too, very likely poor fellows ! " 
 
 That last day, however, Rusha was so much improved that
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 409 
 
 he suggested a new walk to her one he had hunted up the day 
 before, when a great tumult of thought and feeling carried him 
 out into the sympathy and silence of nature. 
 
 But Fletcher Rochford did not add this when he described to 
 Miss Darryll the walk through the back pastures to a hill which 
 crowned them, from the summit of which they could get a view 
 of the whole White Mountain range, not finer than that from 
 the veranda, perhaps, but bringing out new features and profiles. 
 
 He should like to show it to her ; but though the walk was not 
 more than a third of a mile from their own door, still it was 
 steep clambering ; he doubted her strength for the enterprise. 
 
 She felt strong enough to climb Mont Blanc that very morn- 
 ing, she answered. With the help of the doctor's arm over theJ 
 steep places, it was the very exercise she needed. 
 
 Mr. Darryll was present at this conversation ; but the man 
 had such unquestioning faith in Dr. Rochford's judgment, that, 
 had the latter proposed for Rusha's benefit a ten-miles' walk, 
 it is doubtful whether her father would have demurred. 
 
 Se they started off, the doctor's pockets and arms provided 
 with shawls, overshoes, and umbrella, all of which preliminaries 
 Rusha's memory had a fatal tendency to let slip at such a time. 
 
 They went up through the pastures in the still, dreamy Sep- 
 tember air, that made a luxury of every breath, her little sun- 
 hat, as usual, a-tilt on her head, her fingers tying and untying 
 the ribbons, for she had a thousand absent habits of that sort, 
 little graceful, individual ways and movements which were a 
 part of herself, and would become so in the knowledge and 
 memory of one who loved her. 
 
 There were hidden streams and treacherous, miry places 
 among the long grass, over which he had to lift the girl, and 
 steep places, where she needed his arm for a moment; but for 
 the most part she kept her way bravely, the heightening color of 
 cheek and lip making manifest that each breath of the mountain 
 air was to her the very elixir of life. As they gained the sum- 
 mit of the hill the doctor asked, for the twentieth time, perhaps, 
 " Are you tired, Miss Rusha ? Ought not you to rest a while ? 
 35
 
 410 DARRYLL GAP, OB 
 
 " Not yet, thank you, doctor. We are so near the summit 
 now, and I am impatient for the view." 
 
 " Keep your eyes on the ground, then, until I give you per- 
 mission to lift them." 
 
 " Mayn't I even look at you, doctor?" all the old playfulness 
 of her manner restored for a moment, as she darted a half 
 arch, half defiant glance up to his face. 
 
 His smile answered hers. " O, yes ; you may look at me or 
 the ground, whichever shall be the more agreeable ; but that is 
 your limit of choice." 
 
 In a moment more they gained the summit of the hill. 
 Everything combined to make this a delicious haunt in which to 
 dream away hours that would not seem, in such air and sunlight, 
 to belong to this world. A wide opening betwixt the trees let 
 them into a vast aisle of coolness and shadow. There was a 
 great gray boulder which the storms had gnawed, and which 
 served for a chair of state. 
 
 At the foot of this Dr. Rochford spread the blanket-shawls, 
 and seated the young lady, and disposed himself beside her. 
 
 They listened a moment to the birds singing overhead, and 
 the slow swinging of the winds through the mysterious tides of 
 air. She drew a long breath, and looked at him. 
 
 " O, this is beautiful, Dr. Rochford." 
 
 " Then look all around you, and tell me what that is ! " 
 
 She lifted her eyes now, and gazed over the landscape. The 
 view was one which men go thousands of miles, by sea and 
 land, to behold, and carry the hour in which the vision is given 
 them, " a thing of beauty, and a joy forever." 
 
 There, making a semicircle around the horizon, was the 
 whole range of the White Mountains, in one view ; every peak 
 and slope standing with its own strong, individual character in 
 the clear, delicious air. And yet, not mere mountains, as they 
 sometimes are when you see them most strongly defined. They 
 were in one of their ideal moods, soft, radiant, poetical, a ten- 
 der glory enchanting them. 
 
 With her indrawn breath Rusha's eyes went round and round the 
 horizon, and the doctor's eyes went from the mountains to her face.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 41 1 
 
 At last she spoke. " I think we are in the very court-room 
 of the kings." 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " we are in the presence of the monarchs 
 of the earth. It is good to be here, and pay them loving homage." 
 
 So they talked, the inborn poetry of both their natures stirred 
 within them by this scene, and the hours slipped away, and the 
 landscape took on new variations of mood ; and, as they grew 
 intimate with it, they found new magical effects in light and 
 shadow, new mysteries of expression in the mountains, and the 
 clouds went and came overhead, and I think that morning was 
 to Fletcher Rochford and Rusha Darryll the happiest of their 
 lives. And they had sat there for hours then, and yet the scene 
 was still fresh to them. He asked, 
 
 " Which is your favorite mountain, Miss Rusha?" 
 
 Her gaze went over to the right, straight to Lafayette. 
 
 " That is the finest, if not the grandest, of the group," she 
 said. " No other looks to me, speaks to me, just like that one, 
 my mountain above all the others. O, see there ! " a quick 
 change in her voice and face. 
 
 The doctor looked, and saw a gray, smoky cloud, around 
 which hung suowy gauzes of mist, drifting just upon the summit 
 of Lafayette. There it clung, heaving to and fro a sight that 
 one would not be likely to find more than once in a lifetime. 
 
 " I thiuk the mountain is at its worship," she said, " and 
 that is the smoke of its incense going up into heaven." Her 
 figures on the mountains always took the form of personifica- 
 tion. They were real, vital presences to her. 
 
 After a while she drew away her gaze with a long breath. 
 
 " I suppose we must leave this some time, though I can't bear 
 to think of that now." 
 
 "Have you any idea how long we have been here? 
 
 the doctor. 
 
 Xot the slightest ; an hour, perhaps." 
 
 He took out his watch and showed her. Instead of one 1 
 it was four. Her look of amazement was comical. 
 
 It can't be possible, doctor. There must be sometl 
 wrong about your time."
 
 4H 
 
 " I wish I could think so," replacing his repeater. " But for 
 three years my watch hasn't failed me by the space of one minute." 
 
 He added soon after, a new train of ideas being now started 
 for both of them, 
 
 " I always like to have last days the pleasantest ones, and 
 this at the mountains has been a crowning one for me." 
 
 " I am so sorry that you must go," speaking out her first 
 thought, " that I try not to think of it ; I do not know how we 
 could have lived through the last week without you. You will 
 never know what you have been to us at this time. I shall tell 
 Tom of it some day ; " the feeling that he was living somewhere 
 had taken such hold of her that instinctively she always spoke 
 of him in that way. 
 
 Certainly her words could not be otherwise than pleasant to 
 him ; and yet, after their first sweetness, they left a great bitter- 
 ness in his thought, and the bitterness grew aud grew until it 
 became an intense pain. 
 
 She would not speak to him with this perfect freedom of 
 thought and feeling if it had not been for his promise to Tom 
 a promise to which all his heart and soul rose up in passionate 
 denial at that moment. 
 
 He never could be a brother to Rusha Darryll. He must 
 have her in a finer and closer bond than that, or none at all 
 have her as a portion of himself, set apart and belonging to him 
 as she could to no other human love, chiefly aud supremely his 
 own, or else a longing and a memory of anguish through all his 
 life to come. And the man looked at her as she sat there in 
 the sweetness and beauty of her maidenhood, and his soul was 
 at flood-tide, and the waves beat and beat against the strong 
 man's will, as the ocean rolls and rolls against the rocks at high 
 tide ; and as they bear these down at last, so the might of his 
 love bore down the strong mastery of his will, and because he 
 could not help it ; and wondering as though it were another 
 man, and not himself, speaking, Fletcher Rochford said, 
 
 " Rusha, you must give me back the promise that I made to 
 Tom, and that he died believing. I cannot stand to you in his 
 stead I cannot be your brother ! "
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 413 
 
 She started and stared at him, ber face fairly frightened with 
 her shock of surprise. 
 
 " What do you say what do you mean, Dr. Rochford?" 
 
 And looking straight in her face, and holding her eyes by 
 some mysterious magnetism of his own, the doctor answered, 
 
 " Because, Rusha, I find that I cannot act the hypocrite any 
 longer because I love you with a love so far exceeding that 
 of any brother's, that it is a love which I can have for but one 
 woman in all the world ! " 
 
 Her listening face grew white under his. Without uttering 
 one word, she dropped it into her hands, while the truth that had 
 come so strangely, so against Dr. Rochford's will, entered into 
 and took possession of her soul. And he sat by her side, silently 
 waiting waiting less, I think, in hope than in fear. His face was 
 white, too. Was not more than his life at stake in that hour? 
 
 At last it seemed a long time to her what must it have 
 been to him she heard his whisper, 
 
 " Rusha, are you glad, or sorry? " 
 
 Then she took down her hands, and turned her face towards 
 him ; no blushes on it, but crowned with such a solemn triumph 
 and joy as no mortal eyes had ever seen on it before. 
 
 " I am glad ! God alone knows how absolutely, unspeak- 
 ably glad ! " she said. 
 
 .He put his arms around her ; he drew her to him with the 
 new right which her words gave him ; he turned up the sweet 
 face to his, and kissed its lips and eyes for the first time. 
 
 " O, my God, I thank Thee ! " he said, and he held her close, 
 and she leaned her head down on his shoulder, and it seemed 
 that there was no speech in language, the silence was so elo- 
 quent between them. 
 
 At last she spoke. " How long have you known this ? " 
 
 " Since the morning after I came here. I was in your room, 
 standing by your bedside, just after you woke up, and in a mo- 
 ment the truth came to me. I wonder now how I carried it so 
 long ; and yet I expected to go away without telling you. 
 came up the hill this morning without faith enough or courage 
 35*
 
 414 DARR7LL GAP, OR 
 
 enough to face my destiny ; but my love was mightier than I, 
 and mastered me." 
 
 Again she sat still in the shelter of his arms, trying to think 
 it all over. At last she said, in a half-awed tone, 
 
 " It is wonderful ; and yet it does not seem altogether strange, 
 as I should have fancied it must." 
 
 " That is the way with all God's best gifts," he answered. 
 " The soul takes them naturally amid all the wonder and grati- 
 tude. Should it not be so with this dearest, best gift of all?" 
 
 So, betwixt many lapses of sweet silence, the talk grew in this 
 first betrothal hour. Once her breath came quickly as she sat 
 there, while his hand smoothed softly her beautiful brown hair. 
 
 " What is it, dear love?" he asked. 
 
 " I was wondering whether Tom knew this, and thinking he 
 must be glad over it even in heaven." 
 
 "If he does not know it now, he will in God's own good 
 time. We are willing to leave all that with His love and wis- 
 dom, knowing that He will judge and do best." 
 
 " Just as He wills ; " voice and face in that perfect security of 
 trust which is given to some hours of our weak human lives. 
 
 Of a sudden she leaned over, and folding her hands on his 
 knee, looked up in his face, soft blushes all alive in hers now, 
 making it, if possible, lovelier in his sight than ever. 
 
 " To think that I never suspected until this morning I 
 must have been blind and a fool ! " 
 
 " Don't slander yourself in that way, my child." And then 
 he took her face between his hands. " Little face," he said, 
 " beautiful face, above all faces of women or of pictures in the 
 world mine own, to belong to me. always God be my wit- 
 ness, that I will deal tenderly and lovingly by it that so far 
 as in me lies, I will never bring a shadow or a grief into it so 
 long as we both live ! " 
 
 The tears were in her eyes at the solemn tones in which he 
 made his covenant ; but she looked up the next moment with 
 that child-like simplicity which was one side of her character, 
 
 " Do you really think I am beautiful ? I never supposed I 
 was."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 415 
 
 Dr. Rochford had taken off his glasses long ago ; so Rusha 
 had the full benefit of his eyes wonderful eyes they were, too, 
 when his soul was alive in them. lie gave her a glance now 
 which, I think, would have answered her question to the satis- 
 faction of any living woman, as to what she was in the eyes of 
 the man who gave her that look. 
 
 " When I think," he spoke, a little later, " that this blessed 
 hour is only a promise and foretaste of all the blessed hours 
 that are to come that from henceforth we are never to be 
 divided that in all our joys and sorrows, we are to be one, 
 it seems as though my whole life henceforth must be a contin- 
 ual Te Deum." 
 
 And for answer she said, clinging to him a little shyly, 
 
 " I can't think we shall ever have anymore sorrows, or that, 
 if they come, they will seem such, now." 
 
 Her next speech broke out suddenly : 
 
 " I want you to promise me one thing. It is the first I 
 have asked since " 
 
 "Our betrothal. Don't stop, dear child, before the right 
 word. Well, you shall have the promise, if it is in the power 
 of mortal man to keep it." 
 
 " That you will not go away to-morrow." 
 
 What could the man do ? Nobody would suffer now at the 
 hospitals. He made himself believe that the duty here was the 
 higher of the two. 
 
 " And now I have my first petition to make," after he had 
 had granted hers. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " That you will drop that everlasting doctor,' and put in its 
 stead ' Fletcher.' " 
 
 Her face demure and doubtful. " It will come hard at first, 
 but I'll try Fletcher ; " her lips taking the name with a dainty 
 awkwardnesses though the sound of her own voice frightened h.-r. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon when they looked off again to the 
 mountains. The sun had touched the cloud of gray smoke on 
 the forehead of Mount Lafayette, and it burned now as though 
 it were a fire kindled on that vast altar height.
 
 416 ' DAEETLL GAP, OE 
 
 " Look ! " she cried. " See what the cloud has become since 
 we saw it last ! " 
 
 " Just what our lives have, irradiated by this new love," he 
 answered. 
 
 But the day began to wane at last, and the dews fall early 
 and heavy among the mo'untains, and they must go down. 
 
 " O, dear ! " she sighed as they rose up, " I wish this day 
 would last forever." 
 
 " No, my darling,". he made answer ; " think of all the days 
 that are to come as dear and blessed as this one ! " 
 
 So they went down the hill as they were to go down that 
 other longer hill of life together. When they reached home 
 they found the windows open, and the family concentrated in 
 the parlor, for the first time since the doctor's arrival. Even 
 Mrs. Darryll had been persuaded to leave her room for an hour. 
 
 " Well," said Agnes, looking up as they entered, " I thought 
 impending starvation would drive you home. I begin to find 
 that you, doctor, are just as much mountain-struck as Rusha." 
 
 It was the first jest she had attempted since they had learned 
 of Tom's death. 
 
 Dr. Rochford did not answer ; he led Rusha right up to her 
 father, who was sitting by his wife's side. 
 
 " Tom gave me his dying charge to be a brother to her ; but 
 she has to-day granted me a dearer right and name. Will you 
 also, Mr. Darryll, give your daughter to me, and I will take 
 Tom's place, and be to you a son in name and in deed ? " 
 
 Amazement fairly took the man's breath away, as it did 
 everybody's else in the room. Certainly no one of them had 
 expected this ; but at last the father comprehended the meaning 
 of the doctor's speech, and his amazement became joy. John 
 Darryll rose up ; he took his daughter's hand. 
 
 " She is the best daughter, the dearest child, that ever a 
 father had," he said, and the tears shook in his voice. " In the 
 whole world, you are the only man to whom I could say gladly, 
 ' I give you my daughter ; ' " and he placed Rusha's hand in the 
 doctor's.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 IT would seem little less than sacrilege to open wide the gates 
 and enter into the sacred joy of those days that followed the be- 
 trothal of Fletcher Rochford and Rusha Darryll. 
 
 The old life had passed away, in a large sense, to the souls of 
 this man and woman. The union betwixt these two fine, broad 
 natures grew deeper and closer in its mysterious oneness as they 
 came into closer knowledge and intimacy. 
 
 Most friendships and loves are so one-sided in this world ! 
 They only embrace a narrow area of thoughts, tastes, and sym- 
 pathies in common. Outside of that, the two are strangers to 
 each other. There are wide realms of eternal silence and mys- 
 tery, where the two souls can never meet, where one never hears 
 the voice of the other calling to it. 
 
 But the affinity betwixt the man and woman of whom I am 
 telling you, was not of this partial and limited character. It 
 seemed to reach and hold in its immortal bond, intellect and 
 heart, thought, sympathies, aspirations, making of the twain 
 that eternal oneness, which, given to man and woman, is the 
 crowning blessedness of life the one precious gift " whose 
 value is above rubies, which cannot be gotten for gold, neither 
 shall silver be weighed for the price thereof." 
 
 So each day was a kiud of renewal, or rather intensification 
 of the first surprise and blessedness of the betrothal. The old 
 mythology, that gave blind eyes to Love, discerned only a partial 
 truth, for no eyes but Love's ever behold the angel side that is 
 in us, dimmed, blurred, defaced by the weakness and sin of our 
 humanity. 
 
 It was something to be in the atmosphere of a love like this 
 something of its exaltation of calm and joy communicated itself
 
 4X3 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 to the household in those days days such as Rusha verily be- 
 lieved had never smiled out of heaven with such lavish glory 
 of life since Adam and Eve walked together in the still beauty 
 of Eden. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll, though she stood in some awe of her prospec- 
 tive son-in-law, could not but take a mother's pride and delight 
 in the thought that Rusha was " to make such a match," the old 
 natural feelings stirring a moment, but mostly smothered in a 
 sigh, an aching sigh for the dead, a bitterer one for the living. 
 
 Guy and Agnes had, of course, their young curiosity alert, 
 and their little jokes over the lovers, sometimes forgetting them- 
 selves and growing loud and gay among these, and then, with a 
 sudden remembrance, settling back into silence, as though the 
 right of their youth had been a wrong to the dead. 
 
 On one of these days, which idealized and transfigured all 
 nature, Guy and Agnes watched, from one of the side windows, 
 the lovers, as they went down the road to some new landscape 
 picture which the doctor had chanced on the day before. 
 
 He was always finding pretexts of one sort and another to 
 keep Rusha out of doors. 
 
 Agnes drew in her head with a little long-drawn breath, and 
 the feeling that had been at work, as she gazed, found expres- 
 sion in, 
 
 " After all, I think it must be real nice to be in love and have 
 a beau ! " 
 
 " That depends upon who is the beau, I should say. Capital 
 one the doctor must be ! " 
 
 " O, he's perfectly splendid ! " put in Agnes, with immense 
 emphasis. " I should be in love with him myself, if he wasn't 
 to be my brother-in-law." 
 
 That name seemed somehow to touch both of the young souls 
 with a stab of pain. 
 
 " Last night," continued Agnes, her blue eyes blurring with 
 tears, " when you were gone into Littleton, and I was sitting 
 there by the window, feeling so lonely, and thinking of poor, dear 
 Tom, the doctor came to me, and put his arm around me. ' My
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 41 g 
 
 little sister that is to be,' he said, < I can't wait any longer be- 
 fore I take my rights ; ' and then he sat down, and we had such a 
 nice long talk together. O, it was beautiful ! I thought I should 
 always stand in fear of him, he seems so good and grand just 
 like some hero in a novel, that one wouldn't like to have round 
 in common, every-day life, though." 
 
 " But the doctor isn't one of your dressed-up, pattern heroes. 
 He's made of the real stuff that '11 stand every-day wear and 
 tear, and they're the only heroes worth having, by George ! " 
 
 Agnes Darryll was a girl still, but these sorrows had left her 
 with some new thoughtfulness and womanhood. 
 
 " Guy," she said, in her kindest way, " I wish you'd try to 
 leave off some of that slang talk. Don't you know Tom did 
 before he went to the war ? and the doctor never uses it, either " 
 
 " Well, it comes to a fellow like second nature, hang it 
 there it goes again. I never shall be Tom to any of you, 
 Aggie," a little tremor on his lip, where there was a little furze 
 of brown beard already. 
 
 " You'll be a good old Guy, anyhow," answered Agnes, with 
 a sudden rush of affection, " and we sort of seem all that's left 
 to each other now ! " the bright eyes blurring over again with 
 tears. 
 
 " That's so ! " something struggling in his face that brought 
 it out in a new character. " I mean to try to be a better son 
 and brother than I should ever have turned out if Tom wasn't 
 where he is, and if Andrew hadn't " that last sentence, as 
 usual, left for silence to point. 
 
 While this talk was going on in the house, talk which told 
 what training the summer's sorrow had done for the two young 
 lives there, the doctor and Rusha had turned aside from the 
 main road, and wandered down a steep foot-path to the bank of 
 a small river, with a soft whisper and titter of its waters among 
 the stones, while it hurried with some pleasant secret to the dis- 
 tant sea. 
 
 Here the roots of some mighty tree had been torn up years 
 ago, and left to disfigure the landscape ; but a wild clematis vine
 
 420 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 had taken pity on it, and smothered it in green caresses, and 
 showered over it the white glory of its blossoms, until it sat, a 
 very crown of beauty on the bank. 
 
 The doctor commenced laying away carefully the vines from 
 one side of the stump. 
 
 " "What are you going to do?" asked Eusha, standing by and 
 gazing with her smiling eyes. 
 
 " Only putting away the draperies so that my Queen can sit 
 on her throne," he said. 
 
 " But you'll spoil the throne, and besides, it's sacrilege to sit 
 there ! " 
 
 He answered, by placing her, with that strong, gentle touch of 
 his, on the smooth place he had cleared from the top of the 
 stump, without breaking so much as a single tendril. Then he 
 sat down on the grass beside her, in the cool splendor of the 
 September morning, and a very trance of silence came upon 
 them both ; yet her face was alive all over, and quickened with 
 the thought and feeling that were throbbing underneath it. 
 
 So Fletcher Rochford gazed up into the face of his Queen, 
 the great tenderness in his eyes just touched with reverence that 
 reverence which the nature of a lofty as well as loving man 
 gives to the woman of his heart. 
 
 The river lisped and tittered along on its way to the sea, and 
 Rusha still sat silent, her unconscious fingers at play with the 
 spray of clematis, and her face in a trance of happiness on which 
 tremulous shadows came and went, and Dr. Rochford gazed and 
 gazed, and felt he could have gazed forever at the rare, delicate, 
 dreaming face above him. At last she stirred suddenly, and 
 her eyes met the love and worship in his. Her own answered 
 that with a fine flush gathering in her cheeks. 
 
 " What have you been thinking of, my Queen ? " he asked. 
 
 " O, a good many things, doctor ! " 
 
 The Christian name always had a second thought. Out of 
 old habit the professional title came first ; but the other could 
 afford to wait in its time it would have precedence forever. 
 
 " I saw that in your face, but I did not find the key-note."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 421 
 
 One of those long-drawn, fluttering breaths that always pre- 
 ceded some inmost revelation of herself. 
 
 " I remember, for one thing, I was wondering why God had 
 given me this great, unutterable happiness of love, and denied 
 it to so many other women, so much better than I am." 
 
 He lifted his eyebrows in a way that implied absolute scepti- 
 cism over that last clause, but his remark answered hers in a 
 general way. 
 
 " I believe that the denial of which you speak, hard as it is 
 for our own sex, is still harder and sadder for yours ! " 
 
 " I have often thought," she contiutted, the shadow growing 
 in her face, which still retained its inherent peace and brightness, 
 " that of all the dreadful mysteries of human life, this one of 
 love is the strangest and saddest. Look at marriage as it is in 
 the world. How many seem united for no other purpose than 
 their mutual misery ! How the natures that could make each 
 other blessed and happy, seem never to be brought together, to 
 be held apart by some cruel destiny ! How many of the fine 
 and noblest hearts of my own sex go through life starved 
 and aching, whether they be married or not, for a love that is 
 given to the weakest and the shallowest of women women 
 who have not souls deep enough to receive the tide, and the love 
 is turned back on itself, and the great fountains grow dry or 
 turn to bitterness! Think of all the women, too, to whose 
 starved and shrunken souls a true love would come like dew and 
 bloom, expanding and exalting their whole natures ! 
 
 " When I think of all the possibilities' that lie in so many souls 
 of my sex, like music asleep in sweet harps that no master hand 
 ever touches, when I think of the loneliness, and heartache, 
 and desolation, that, for lack of the tenderness that stimulates 
 and idealizes^ fall to the lot of most women, I feel like saying, 
 Dear God, what does it all mean that Thou hast bestowed this 
 
 upon me ? " 
 
 "Dear Rusha," he said, finding and stilling the han 
 kept its nervous toying with the clematis spray, " I have been 
 asking myself just such a question all these last days ! ' 
 36
 
 422 DAERTLL GAP, OR 
 
 " It does not fit you so well as me but for those others 
 how did you answer it?" 
 
 "As I have learned to all the other mysteries of life even 
 this saddest one by trusting that God will make it all right at 
 last. ' If we do not believe Him, yet He abideth faithful He 
 cannot deny Himself' " 
 
 How her eyes thanked him for those words then, though she 
 did not speak one herself! 
 
 He went on. "And then we are always forgetting it is 
 natural enough how small a part of existence time is to any 
 of us ; how soon these merely finite circumstances and relations 
 are all to be broken up ; and how very small and incomplete 
 they must look to Him who has eternity in which to work out 
 His own purposes towards each soul of us. He has given to 
 me, O dearly beloved, a happiness whose fulness and complete- 
 ness I should never have dared to ask of Him, or to dream of, 
 in this world. Shall I doubt that He will give as much in some 
 way, and in some finer, future life, to the souls of men and 
 women around me ? " 
 
 Her faith sprang up to meet the stature of his. 
 
 " I will leave the doubt and the fear for others with Him, and 
 take mine own gift, as He tells us, thankfully," she said ; and 
 here the thread of the conversation was broken a while. 
 
 She took it up again in her swift, abrupt way, " coming 
 always out of her silences with some new treasure of fancy or 
 feeling," the man at her feet thought. 
 
 "Fletcher, I am afraid," she said her voice paused there, 
 as though it, too, was half afraid of itself. 
 
 "Of what, dear child?" 
 
 " That this happiness of ours is too complete and blessed to 
 last in a world like this." 
 
 She paused here ; but, without answering, he signed to her to 
 go on. 
 
 " Looking abroad upon human life, I see how dreams fade 
 and promises fail, and hearts once bound up in each other fall 
 apart, until the life narrows and darkens, and settles away at
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. . 423 
 
 last into every-day wear and tear, and petty details, and chafing 
 on every side all the warmth and brightness faded out of it 
 nothing left but' the bare sands and the black, oozing mud, after 
 the tides are gone out. And though our future together wears 
 to my gaze, now, the very peace and joy of Paradise, I some- 
 times wonder whether that, too, is only a mirage whether the 
 daily gravitation will not bear us down also, as it seems to the 
 souls who have gone before us whether there is any possibility 
 of carrying beyond the honeymoon the poetry and idealization 
 of love ! " 
 
 Solemn questions, which the future could alone fully answer ; 
 but Rusha Darryll's soul was always asking solemn questions. 
 
 " Dear child," said the doctor, getting up, and smoothing the 
 fine, brown hair, " our faith must come to help us out here 
 again. Let us take the present good without darkening it by 
 fears for our future. God can take care of that also. Then, 
 too, my observation, which you know has not been a narrow 
 one, has satisfied me that people start out on their married life 
 with too little capital of common sense ; the love that exalts, 
 the poetry that idealizes, must, after all, have its foundation in 
 that. If one side of our lives has a tendency, as it certainly 
 does, to gravitate downwards, we must guard ourselves the 
 more carefully, letting no grace of our betrothal, no courtesies 
 of bridal or honeymoon, be forgotten- or lost in the daily house 
 life that lies beyond. Married people are so apt to let these slip, 
 and first grow common and then cross to each other ! But, little 
 soul, don't fret yourself in any wise. We'll try and keep cleat 
 of those rocks on which so many a stately craft has gone 
 wreck ; and then, too, we shall not have a wide range of , 
 ests apart, as too many husbands and wives have. We mee 
 common ground, in our love of all forms of artist* culture, ol 
 nature, of books, of human life evtm. We shall study and grow 
 and I hope do some good together ; and for the rest I 
 have something tough enough to stand all the test and s nun .of 
 daily life. I think the face beneath this hair," and he t 
 up to his gaze, "will never grow less fair or precious to
 
 424 DAEEYLL GAP, OR 
 
 but whatever the world may say of it, I shall see there some 
 new beauty and sweetness every day for all the days to come." 
 
 A little laugh, sweet as the song of a brown-throated swallow. 
 
 " When it grows old and gathers wrinkles, and the hair round 
 it is gray ? " she said. 
 
 ""When it is all that, for to me it will wear an eternal 
 youth ! " he answered. 
 
 A lover's talk, you see. 
 
 She was silent so long, that he came round and settled himself 
 on the grass again to see her face. She took up the talk once 
 more, very near where he had left it off. 
 
 " But it was not of myself, doc Fletcher, so much as of 
 you, that I was speaking. I see all the time that you are think- 
 ing of me as something better and nobler, a thousand times, 
 than I am. I cannot deny that this is very sweet ; and yet I 
 tremble when I think how different is this real Rusha from the 
 Rusha of your loving. There are my dark moods, my miserable 
 selfishnesses, my quick temper, my fretfulnesses " 
 
 " There, that's enough ; you've done full duty at the con- 
 fessional," he interrupted, playfully. 
 
 " But the half hasn't been told you," she insisted ; and if 
 there was a little surface of jest, it played upon solid founda- 
 tions of earnestness. " I fear these fatal faults of mine will 
 drag me down to their lower depths, and that I have not strength 
 and persistency enough to keep by your side in that finer atmos- 
 phere and those higher levels to which I at least aspire." 
 
 "Rusha," said the doctor, gravely enough this time, "do 
 you suppose I have no faults?" 
 
 She looked at him a moment doubtfully. 
 
 " I suppose you must have, for you are human, like the rest 
 of us ; but I have yet to make a discovery of the first one." 
 
 " Well, then, take my word for it, Rusha, the faults are ter- 
 rible facts, and I look to you to help me to make me, by your 
 life, example, affection, a better, nobler man." 
 
 Her look of amazed helplessness struck him so comically that 
 the man had to make an effort not to laugh.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 425 
 
 " I see," he said, " it will be the old discipline over again 
 just the sort of atmosphere and companionship to foster the worst 
 faults in me ! " 
 
 "What do you mean, doctor?" He was evidently beyond 
 her depth now. 
 
 " I mean that, take me at the best, I'm a selfish fellow, Rusha, 
 naturally dominant, exacting, self-assertive, loving to possess 
 power, preeminence in all things. Sore tussles, and long and 
 many, have I had with these besetting sins of mine. And you 
 will not see, little blind worshipper, how my temptations lie in 
 that direction, nor help me to overcome them. It has always 
 been my misfortune that the women I loved best have been those 
 who could not or would not see my failings, and whose whole 
 influence has been of just the sort to foster my pride and vanity, 
 and all the dangers that lie in their wake." 
 
 " I don't believe one word of all this, Fletcher," with a little 
 decided shake of her head. " You never could blind me, nor 
 those other women of whom you speak. You deal hardly with 
 yourself because your ideal is so lofty." 
 
 His smile brightened down upon her, interfused with exceed- 
 ing tenderness, the most beautiful thing, Rusha thought, she had 
 ever seen in her life. Others had thought so, weary, desolate, 
 hardened souls of men and women, old and young, looking up 
 from sick and dying beds, oftenest surrounded with squalor and 
 misery, when the warmth and light of that smile had entered 
 their poor, dark, frozen hearts, to them, too, the " most beauti- 
 ful thing they had ever seen." But the smile now was different 
 from all these only Dr. Rochford's sisters had had glimpses 
 of such a one. 
 
 " Setting up idols and worshipping them ! It is the way of 
 your sex from our first mother downwards. But, my little girl, 
 there is one Ideal, only, set for us all, men and women alike, 
 and you know what He said and what He thought of seeking 
 after mere personal distinction, eminence, aggrandizement 
 any sort ! ' Meek and lowly of heart,' that was what He was - 
 what He bade those be who loved Him." 
 36*
 
 426 DAERYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Her face grew still and solemn a moment with that thought ; 
 then it flashed up into one of its most inspired moods. 
 - " Yes," she said, " that Christ Ideal is the only one ; and yet, 
 how dim and blurred are the outlines, when we seek for them 
 in this world ! Many bear the name so few copy in daily 
 living the original. Look at the churches, with their pride, 
 their coldness, their petty ambitions and rivalries. Professing 
 to reveal Christ to the world, and to share His spirit, how little 
 good they do, how much they leave undone ! If they did their 
 duty these churches, who call themselves Christ's would the 
 poor be neglected and forgotten as they are ? Would the little 
 children be left to come up in vice and wretchedness to manhood 
 and womanhood, cursing themselves and others? Would poor, 
 lost girls go homeless, haunting the streets of the great cities, 
 with none to pity or to rescue them ? Would there be all this 
 aching, and grief, and sin in the world if the men and women 
 who profess Christ believed in the brotherhood of humanity, and 
 acknowledging the tie, followed His example of doing good, for- 
 getting their social ambitions, their selfishnesses of every sort, 
 and living, as far as they could, the life that He did among 
 men ! " 
 
 And the doctor answered her : 
 
 " Great is the faithlessness great is the sin of the churches. 
 Sometimes, through the lapse of all these ages, *E seem to hear 
 the thunder of the awful curse rolling down its long path of cen- 
 turies to our own day and generation, ' Woe unto you, Scribes 
 and Pharisees ! ' ' 
 
 She shivered a little, even in the soft warmth of the Septem- 
 ber noon. 
 
 " Yet," she said, " despite all they fail to do, we will not 
 deny the salt that has not lost its savor, nor the good for God 
 and man which the churches have wrought in the world. 
 Sweep them away, and what would become of our land? Our 
 school-houses and our civilization would not save us, any more 
 than their art and their culture did the Greeks, nor their juris- 
 prudence and philosophy the Romans."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 437 
 
 And again the doctor answered her. " When I have been 
 most impatient and disgusted with myself, I have found a real 
 comfort in the thought that God had faith in me, patience with 
 me, and I must therefore have both for myself. He, too, has 
 His long patience with the world His hope for it as it goes 
 stumbling on through the ages before Him, with its burden of 
 wrong and misery. Poor old world ! God is over it. Let us 
 take courage, and be of good heart, my Rusha." 
 
 So the talk that went into these deep places of time and eter- 
 nity, drifted back to themselves at last, and went out to a future 
 that seemed to the lovers " fair as the garden of the Lord." 
 What lights shone along the mornings of that future, what 
 stars smiled along those evenings, what plans they laid for study 
 and growth in all directions, how both souls thirsted for that 
 blessed time when they should have their own home and their 
 own lives together, closing all, as we closed everything through 
 those four awful, glorious years, with " When the war is over." 
 
 And her .face did not lose its brightness even when he told 
 her that two more days must be the outermost limit of the fur- 
 lough which he had granted himself. , 
 
 " I shall be lonely after you are gone, Fletcher," she said ; 
 " but yet I do not think it can ever be the loneliness and deso- 
 lation of those old days before I knew you, and went aching 
 and athirst, not knowing what either meant. It seems as 
 though, if we were at different ends of the earth, I should still 
 feel and know your presence, as if something of yourself would 
 interfuse the very air about me. O, Fletcher, how rich and 
 complete your love has made my life ! ' 
 
 This time he did not answer with any words. He turned up 
 softly and reverently the sweet face, thrilled all over with the 
 feeling which she had just put into speech for him, and the kiss 
 he pressed on the quivering lips was like the sign and seal c 
 new betrothal to them both.
 
 428 DARETLL GAP, OR 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 RTTSHA was right. The old loneliness and depression did not 
 overcome her even when Dr. Rochford went away. Not that 
 I want to claim too much for her here. There were times 
 when the thought of Tom brought back the sharp and bitter 
 ache which the living bear for the dead ; there were times when 
 a fear for him, loved with a different, in some sense a dearer 
 love than that she had given Tom for him who might be at 
 that moment in the hot carnage of battle seemed to tear her 
 heart with its sudden pang. But it steadied the moment after 
 in the courage and the calm that God gives more or less to 
 those who love and trust Him. 
 
 Meanwhile, the glory of the year was departing. The color 
 and warmth of the days passed into chills and glooms of sky 
 and earth. The mountains sank away, and were buried over 
 with gray clods of cloud, and the cold, white mists crept along 
 the land. 
 
 Still the family lingered at the mountains, dreading somehow 
 to go back into the great clamoring world, and into the splendid 
 home where everything would remind them of all the young 
 lives gone out of it. 
 
 " Half of the children ! " Mrs. Darryll would moan some- 
 times to herself, in a way that was pitiful enough ; but Rusha 
 would always come round to her mother's side with a little 
 caress, and a, 
 
 " Now, mother, don't say that, when you know you have 
 another son in dear Tom's place ! " 
 
 And the mother, clinging to her they all clung to Rusha 
 now-a-days would smile a little, sad, fond smile, and mur- 
 mur,
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 429 
 
 " Dear child, I should have died if it hadn't been for you." 
 
 Days with blinding rains and fierce winds shut down upon 
 them, and they built fires on the cottage hearths, and sat in 
 their warm glow, and Rusha dreamed by their light, the old 
 dreams of her childhood, shaded and brightened with something 
 she had lived of sorrow and joy ; for somehow our experiences 
 always work themselves into the texture of our dreams. 
 
 So the Darrylls lingered at the mountains until late in Octo- 
 ber ; and then, business rendering it impossible for the head of 
 the family to make any further journeys northward, they pre- 
 pared to return to the city. 
 
 Rusha watched the dismantling of the walls and the general 
 preparations for departure with a feeling of almost keen regret. 
 If among these mountains the greatest sorrow of her life had 
 come to her, so had also its greatest joy ; and they were invested 
 with a mysterious sacredness in her eyes. Thoughts of this 
 sort thoughts which took in the past and the future were 
 crowding heavily upon her one day, when she had darted out 
 of the gate in a lull of the high wind to gather some leaves on 
 a steep bank opposite the house a cluster of ferns with a 
 crimson heat curling along their edges, and golden maples with 
 tawny freckles, and green ones veined with scarlet, and a handful 
 of huckleberry boughs, a very heap of radiant color. 
 
 " I shall carry back something of you, my mountains ! " she 
 said, surveying her handkerchief of frost-bitten leaves, much as 
 somebody else might a heap of jewels. 
 
 " Rusha ! " Did the wind moaning like some wild thing 
 amon* the valleys, pawing up and down the mountains like 
 some monster in wrath, pause suddenly, and take up into 
 tones that tremulous whisper? 
 
 " Rusha ! " This time the voice was closer, but no voi 
 winds ever held that human sound with such burdens of unut- 
 terable feeling; she turned, staring all about, and there 
 stood the handkerchief dropped from her hands, and the i 
 
 seized it. 
 
 " O, Andrew ! Andrew ! "
 
 430 DAEBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 They hung upon each other's necks, and they kissed each 
 other over and over she fairly moaning out her delight arnid 
 her sobbing ; and he, if he cried more softly, the tears were 
 hardly less. 
 
 " How did you get here? " she said, at last. 
 
 " The letter came that told me about Tom, and I was on my 
 way home with the next steamer." 
 
 " You dear boy ! " and then, again, only tears and kisses. 
 " How good how good it seems ! " 
 
 " Have they seen you at the house? " her very next question. 
 
 " No. I got out of the stage half a mile off, and walked up, 
 thinking I would take my own time and way to show myself. 
 I caught sight of you wheu I was on top of the hill over there 
 in the road. O, Rusha, it made my heart leap ! " 
 
 " Sit right down here. You musn't go in yet. We must 
 have a talk together first." 
 
 It was more than two years since Andrew had seen the face 
 of one of his household, and the thoughts of both could not but 
 go back to that dreadful parting on the steamer. How much 
 had happened since then ! Tom had gone, and Ella, too, 
 another way, and Rusha had taken up another life into her 
 own ; but this last Andrew learned first from other lips than 
 hers. 
 
 She looked him over and over with her hungry eyes, as he 
 did her. The two years had made a wonderful change in him ; 
 but, after all, the change was less in looks than in manner ; the 
 old braggart air was all gone ! It was true he was Andrew 
 still, with the slang cropping out here and there ; but he was in 
 every wise developed and improved some new power had been 
 at work with him. 
 
 " You did just the best thing in the world ! " she said, some- 
 where, in the eager, breathless talk that did not pause for hours. 
 " We shall all be so glad to welcome you home, Andrew ! " 
 
 " I was the oldest of the boys. I saw that my place was 
 here, now Tom was gone here, to live down the past, and do 
 some credit to the future. I do not come back as I went, 
 Rusha."
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 43} 
 
 " I knew you would not, Andrew. Tom aud I always had 
 faith in you." 
 
 " I hadn't much in myself sometimes ; but " he rose and 
 Stood before her, his voice and eyes settling into solemn ear- 
 nestness '" look me in the face, Rusha." She looked up. " Do 
 you believe that I am going to tell you the truth ? " 
 
 " Every word, Andrew." 
 
 " During these two years I have been in the midst of fiery 
 temptations ; but the thought of you and what you did once have 
 saved me. Eusha, in all this time I have done no deed, I have 
 entered no place, which I should blush to acknowledge to you ! " 
 
 Her happy tears flowed like rain. 
 
 A month ago she thought that the storm had passed over her 
 life, leaving in its track only desolation and death ; and this was 
 what God had kept for her a little beyond ! 
 
 Andrew was not disposed to talk much of himself. It seemed 
 as though he would never get through with questions about each 
 of his family. There was all Ella's marriage to go over with 
 again, for Andrew knew little beyond the bare fact ; and in the 
 midst of these domestic recitals there came down, suddenly, one 
 of those swift, thick squalls of wind and rain which are so fre- 
 quent among the mountains, and which drove them both into 
 the house before they knew exactly what they were about. 
 
 Andrew Darryll stood in the front hall, actually trembling, 
 and white as a scared child, at the thought of seeing his mother. 
 
 Rusha, agitated quite as much as himself, in a little different 
 way. paused with her hand on the door-knob, turned back, and 
 whispered, 
 
 " You must expect to find mother a good deal changed, Andrew. 
 All these troubles have told on her ; " she did not think how he 
 must wince under those words, " and any shock of surprise 
 might overcome her at present. I'll go in first and smooth the 
 way a little for you ; " and she went in, leaving the young, strong 
 man standing there. 
 
 " Where have you been, my child?" asked the lady, a; 
 daughter entered. " The dinner bell has rung twice already."
 
 432 D ARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 Mrs. Darryll was sitting before the bright wood-fire, wrapped 
 in a heavy shawl. The mountain chills began already to try 
 her severely. 
 
 " Mother," said Rusha, going up softly and laying her hand 
 on the lady's shoulder, " something has happened which will 
 surprise you very much, and make you and all the rest of us so 
 glad ! O, dear ! what a fool I am ! " for she found herself 
 crying. 
 
 " O, Rusha, what is the matter?" cried the poor lady, 
 the tears alarming her beyond all assurance of words. 
 
 " Only be quiet, mother, and you shall know. The very best 
 thing in the world has happened to us all ! " 
 
 " But what makes you cry, then? " staring at her daughter. 
 
 The door stood ajar, so Andrew had heard every word that 
 passed betwixt his mother atid sister. He could bear it no 
 longer. Impetuous, as were all the Darryll sons and daughters, 
 he burst open the door now, and rushed in. 
 
 " Mother, don't you know your boy? " he cried. 
 
 She looked up, doubting a moment whether Tom had risen 
 from the dead and stood beside her ; then, as she gazed, the 
 truth overcame her mightily her cry brought Guy and Agnes 
 into the room, and with the blessedness of that hour who 
 shall dare to intermeddle? 
 
 " I say, Andrew, old boy, it's bully to have you back here 
 again ! " 
 
 Guy concentrated, after his own fashion, in this expression, 
 the general feeling of the family, as they all sat around the 
 wood-fire that evening. It was to be their last at the moun- 
 tains, and their hearts were all softened with one of those moods 
 that only great experiences of life, sorrowful and joyful, can 
 bring to us. Their memories went back and forward, gathering 
 up the bitterness and the sweetness of these months ; and mean- 
 while, the wind raved outside like some wild, homeless thing let 
 loose in the darkness, and the swift clouds, going back and forth, 
 shook down, every few' minutes, wild storms of rain. 
 
 "And I tell you, it seems bully to be back here among
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 433 
 
 you all once more the very happiest hour of my life, I do 
 believe ! " 
 
 Andrew sat next to his mother. She could never grow tired 
 of feasting her eyes on the tall, manly figure of the son that had 
 come back to her from a grave darker and colder than the one 
 where we lay our beloved, with that last farewell, not of words, 
 but of tears and kisses. Agnes sat on the other side her 
 head on her brother's knee, only lifting it every few minutes to 
 look in his face, a kind of half-awed wonder in her own, as 
 though she could not get used to him yet, or the fact that he 
 was really there ! 
 
 " It does seem splendid to have another brother here ; but, 
 somehow, you don't seem just like the Andrew you did when 
 you went away." 
 
 " I trust not, Aggie," with a quick flush of memory all over 
 his face, that made the brown head go down quickly on his 
 knee. "I should hope I haven't brought 'back quite the old 
 Andrew to you." 
 
 This was the first allusion he had made to the past a mem- 
 ory that, like Enceladus, could never be utterly laid asleep, but 
 that must stir uneasily sometimes, and turn in sharp pain under 
 the mountain that the years should gather upon it. 
 
 " O, dear," thought poor Agnes, " how could I say that now ! 
 I'm always running my neck into a noose ! " 
 
 Guy, who comprehended the state of things, came to the res- 
 cue with, 
 
 "What'll the governor say, Andrew, when he finds we've 
 brought you down among us ? Whew ! it will be worth some- 
 thing to see his first stare ! " 
 
 " I went up to the house straight from the steamer, and found 
 you were all here at the mountains. There was only just time 
 for me to take the train going north, and if I'd gone down to 
 the office, I must have waited another day ; so I just put for the 
 depot. I thought father could wait better than you." 
 
 " And it will be so nice to have you go back with us !" dart- 
 ing upward her brown head again. " Why, I begin to feel that 
 37
 
 434 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 the dear old times have come round once more, and everything 
 is just as it used to be." 
 
 Agnes' words seemed fated this evening to touch live, quiv- 
 ering nerves of pain. They thought of the lonely grave by the 
 restless Potomac, where the brave, alert young life had gone 
 down to its sleep they thought of the girlish face and the 
 graceful step that had moved in their midst, and the places were 
 empty now ! 
 
 " No, Aggie," said her mother, softly, " it can never be as 
 it used to ! " 
 
 Andrew leaned forward. He saw his mother's tears falling 
 quietly into her lap. 
 
 " But, mother," he said, " you've got two boys left, you know, 
 and one means to be as good as two of the old ones." 
 
 " She's got more than two," interposed Agnes, after a most 
 emphatic self-admonition. "You didn't know that, did you, 
 Andrew ? " 
 
 " O, yes, I knew ; Rusha told me all about that ; but I didn't 
 s'pose you'd be quite ready to count Derrick Howe as one 
 of us." 
 
 " O, you're altogether at sea ! Of course I shouldn't think 
 of ever calling him one of ma's boys ! " an indignant repudia- 
 tion of any such possibility in her tones. " Ask Rusha whom 
 I mean." 
 
 Andrew turned towards his eldest sister. There was a little 
 lurking color in her cheeks, but for all that, her face was a study 
 in its glow of happiness at that moment. 
 
 " What is she driving at, Rusha? " 
 
 And Agnes and Guy laughed, and even Mrs. Darryll seemed 
 to enjoy it. 
 
 " Somebody else must tell him ; I can't ; " and the suspicion 
 of color in her cheeks became a certainty. 
 
 " Yes, Andrew," said Mrs. Darryll, " I have another boy, 
 and we have come already to feel that he is one of us, and to 
 love him very much ; and Rusha has given him to us." 
 
 "Who the old Harry is he? Out with it, so I can shoot
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 435 
 
 him ! " beginning to see light at last, and not relishing the sight 
 at all. 
 
 " Bend down here, so I can whisper his name to you," said 
 Agnes, with a little wicked look of triumph towards her sister. 
 
 " Now I say I object to any privacy. Trot him out plump 
 and square," put in Guy. 
 
 " Well, then, the name of your future brother-in-law, An- 
 drew Darryll, is Dr. Fletcher Rochford!" 
 
 Andrew sprang right up on his feet. 
 
 "Knock me down" with a feather!" he cried. "Is lie the 
 fellow?" 
 
 " ' Tain't anybody else," answered Guy, while Rusha, quietly 
 enjoying the scene, thought that it must be in the masculine 
 nature to take to slang as ducks do to water ; and then she 
 thought of Dr. Rochford, and concluded that he was here, as in 
 everything else, " an exception to all rules." 
 
 " Well, Rusha," said Andrew, surveying his sister with a 
 variety of feelings, difficult to analyze ; but I think pride and 
 pleasure were uppermost, " I must say you've won a trump. I 
 won't admit there's a fellow in the world quite good enough for 
 you ; but if there is, Dr. Rochford is the man. How in the 
 world did it come about?" 
 
 Nobody could answer this question very well. 
 
 " Come, don't keep a fellow waiting ! " cried Andrew. "Just 
 show up the facts." 
 
 " Andrew," said Agnes, in a little grave undertone, " it don't 
 do to joke about it like that. This engagement isn't just like 
 others. It all came around through dear Tom, you know." 
 
 He was sobered in an instant, and there was little more said 
 on the subject then ; but Rusha met her eldest brother's eyes a 
 good many times that evening, and there was in them a look 
 half curious, half awed. 
 
 They lingered around the fire, loath to leave it that last night ; 
 the sorrow and the joy of that summer had sanctified the cot- 
 tage among the mountains to them all. 
 
 " How strange it will seem," said Agnes, with her eyes on
 
 436 DAEBYLL GAP, OR 
 
 the burning logs, and a great seriousness on her young face, 
 " to go back to our city home once more, and to all that noise 
 and gay life ! But there's one thing we shan't go into society 
 this winter, of course. You see, Andrew, we haven't got on 
 our mourning yet. Pa couldn't bear to see it, and we concluded 
 to leave all that until we got back to the city." 
 
 A long silence here. At last Mrs. Darryll reminded her 
 children that they must be up early to-morrow morning in order 
 to reach Littleton in time for the down train, and there was a 
 long two days' journey before them. 
 
 " Rusha," said Andrew, meeting her at the head of the stairs, 
 "you'll tell me all about this to-morrow, won't you?" 
 
 " All I can, Andrew." 
 
 " He don't know, though he may think he does, what a wife 
 he is going to get. O, Rusha, was there ever a sister in the 
 world like you? How often I said that to myself over the 
 water, after I got that first letter ! " 
 
 She knew then what he was thinking of; but her eyes and her 
 throat were too full of tears for her to answer with either then. 
 
 He saw that, and put down his cheek to hers softly with a 
 " Good night," and left her. Was this the old, careless, bluster- 
 ing Andrew? 
 
 " It was just like a conversion ; " Agnes told her sister when 
 they were alone that night. 
 
 " It is one, Aggie 1 " answered Rusha, with solemn joyfulness.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 437 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 THE winter which followed was, perhaps, on the whole, the 
 happiest which the Darrylls had ever enjoyed under the roof of 
 their splendid home. One might almost have fancied that dying 
 blessing of Tom's lingered with its still peace in the family at- 
 mosphere, so softened had this become. 
 
 It is true that two places were silent at table and hearthstone, 
 that Andrew carried in their midst a name tarnished with the 
 sin of his youth and this the world took care, in its own way, 
 that neither he nor his family should forget. 
 
 Through it all, Andrew had, of course, the hardest part to 
 bear in the consciousness that he had brought the disgrace on 
 himself and his household. There was hardly a day through 
 that winter in which he was not sorely tempted to throw up the 
 life here and go abroad again where the shadow of his crime did 
 not pursue him. The thought of his family alone prevented his 
 doing this ; but, no doubt, the bitter lesson was needed, and perhaps 
 out of it alone could come, at last, a worthy and stalwart manhood. 
 
 No one suspected what it cost Andrew to endure the rude or 
 covert stare, the whisperings, the nudges, and significant looks 
 that betrayed among strangers and acquaintances a conscious- 
 ness of his guilt, and that made him wince with the thought 
 that he was marked among men. 
 
 John Darryll tried to make everything as easy for his son as 
 possible. The reconciliation had been complete between the two, 
 from the hour in which Andrew had stepped forth from the midst of 
 the family group, newly arrived from the mountains, and said, 
 
 " Father, I have come home for Tom's sake, to be a son to you." 
 
 Mr. Darryll had taken Andrew again into business, making 
 a show, even, of trusting him, before the clerks, with the chesl 
 keys and piles of gold and bank notes ; but though all this 
 touched Andrew deeply, the necessity for such display was a 
 humiliation that galled him to the quick. 
 37*
 
 438 DARRYLL OAF, OR 
 
 At home there was never any allusion to the past, some added 
 delicacy of speech and manner alone proving that the memory 
 existed ; but then the family bearing had softened a good deal 
 towards each other since sorrow and death had visited the house- 
 hold, and whatever bitterness and chafing Andrew's soul brought 
 from the world outside, the doors of his own home shut him in 
 to an atmosphere of entire forgiveness and love. Had it been 
 otherwise, he never could have gone through the dreadful ordeal 
 of living down his bad name and building up a new one no 
 light thing under the most favorable circumstances. 
 
 No question but he was greatly improved, thpugh he was far 
 enough from perfect still. The old nature and habits lay in wait 
 always, to spring up and gain the mastery at some unguarded 
 moment ; but Rusha, who watched her brother with ceaseless 
 though unobtrusive anxiety, never failed to discern the change 
 that had been wrought in him never for a moment lost faith 
 in its permanency. 
 
 Though, as Agnes said, " the family wore mourning, and did 
 not go into society that winter," there was plenty of life inside. 
 There would have to be all this wherever Rusha Darryll abode, 
 and Guy and Agnes were brimming over with the natural vital- 
 ity of youth ; so the gap in the household did not make gloom 
 and silence there. 
 
 Mrs. Darryll roused herself into an active interest for the 
 soldiers that winter. Indeed, Agnes told Rusha that " Ma 
 never seemed so happy now-a-days, as when she was making up 
 a box for the hospitals." 
 
 It was true, sorrow had widened the nature of Mrs. Darryll 
 as nothing else could have done. It was ready now to take in 
 " other mothers' boys," where before there had been small room 
 for anything outside of her own family. 
 
 Rusha's best happiness all this time was in Dr. Rochford's 
 letters, which came with wonderful promptness and regularity, 
 considering what a burden of care and work was on the man's 
 hands every day. 
 
 Dr. Rochford had shared the general surprise and disappoint- 
 ment at the strength and resources of the South ; but he saw
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 439 
 
 that both now were well nigh exhausted, and that the vast fabric 
 built on the lust of 'power and oppression, must fall to its 
 foundations. It seemed as though he heard a little way off the 
 glad bells of victory ringing in th^e new peace better than the 
 old ; and j.ust beyond these, and haunting them as with an im- 
 mortal sweetness, he heard other bells, ringing in a new day of 
 such blessedness that even his steadfast heart grew almost sick 
 with impatience. 
 
 And over this, and over much more, dear and sacred in those 
 letters that came from the secret places of the man's deep, tender 
 heart to the maiden of his love, bent the face of Rusha Darryll 
 through all that winter, the last of our war. 
 
 One day, about the middle of the season, Rusha had run 
 down stairs on some errand. It was growing dark in the front 
 hall already, for the days were just beyond their shortest, and 
 there was a heavy fall of snow outside. Rusha's dress had 
 swept round the lowest column of the balustrade, when some- 
 thing a figure in black sprang out of the twilight in one 
 corner, and rushed upon her, fairly griping hold of her arm. 
 
 Calmer nerves than Rusha Darryll's would have been severe- 
 ly startled by such an occurrence in that semi-darkness. She 
 cried out sharply, a faint terror going over her from head to foot. 
 
 u Sh sh," said the figure, evidently alarmed, too. " Don't 
 you know me, Rusha? " 
 
 The tones were strangely familiar. Had the fright been bss, 
 she would have recognized them at once. Though she did not, 
 they quieted her, so that she stood still, gasping out, 
 
 No, I'm sure I don't. Who are you ? " 
 
 "Look and see!" the long veil, that had evidently 1 
 used to disguise the face, thrown back with a swift moven 
 
 "O, Ella Ella!" 
 
 "I couldn't bear it any longer, Rusha," the swif 
 trembling out of unsteady lips. " Nobody else must 
 h ere a t least not at present." 
 
 The sisters looked in each other's faees, in , ha, a,ung 
 light. The tears were in their eyes- the old 
 mighty in the hearts of both.
 
 440 DAREYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " I have so much to hear and say ! I must see you all alone, 
 Rusha," said Mrs. Derrick Howe, still keeping that cautious 
 undertone, in strange contrast with her old imperious manner. 
 
 " Come into the parlor, then. We shall be safe there on 
 such a night ; " and she led her into the great rooms, amidst 
 whose splendor, Ella in her pride and beauty had reigned queen 
 so many times. 
 
 There seemed some awful Nemesis in her coming back in that 
 secret way on that stormy night. Rusha wondered if she thought 
 of it! 
 
 They went into a corner and settled themselves on a divan 
 there, their hands in each other's. 
 
 " How did you get in here? " was Rusha's first question. 
 
 " There was an old night-key in one of my trunks. I never 
 knew how it came there, but it answered my purpose. O, 
 Rusha, how good it does seem to be at home again ! " 
 
 Then she laid her head down in her sister's lap, and sobbed 
 passionately. Of course the sobs shook Rusha's very soul, but 
 she never was so utterly at a loss for any words of comfort, as 
 she found herself now. She could only cry too, and mutely 
 caress her sister, thinking all the time, bitterly enough, of Der- 
 rick Howe, and wondering whether he had driven her sister out 
 to find shelter in her own home on that stormy nig^ht. Rusha's 
 strong prejudices hardly did the young man justice. 
 
 Ella's first remark dissipated all suspicion of that sort. Her 
 husband had left the city for a few days, and she could no longer 
 restrain her hunger to hear and see something of her family. 
 They had been visiting some cousins of Mr. Howe since their 
 return to town, a mouth before, and Ella had managed to elude 
 everybody's observation and slip out of the house and get into 
 an omnibus. She had had no settled plan about disclosing herself 
 to her family, and had stood frightened and shivering in the hall 
 for ten minutes before Rusha appeared and decided her course. 
 
 How unlike the gay, careless Ella of six months ago, seemed 
 all this ! But after the necessary explanations which her coming 
 involved, Mrs. Howe did not appear to be inclined to dwell on 
 her own estate. Her eager interest seemed to centre on her
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 441 
 
 family. She was full of solicitation about each, her questions 
 fairly running ahead of Rusha's answers, and hurrying from 
 one to the other. 
 
 She was quite overwhelmed with surprise and manifest 
 delight when she came to hear of Andrew's return, and the 
 change that had been wrought in him. Then, and not until 
 then, she spoke of Tom's death, which, all that time, had been 
 uppermost in the thoughts of both. 
 
 " O, Rusha, I shall never forget the night that Dr. Roch- 
 ford's letter came ! I believe that my husband feared I should 
 go mad, for several days that followed." 
 
 And Rusha knew, well enough, that the sharpest pang of that 
 time must have been the remembrance of Tom's last visit home, 
 and the consciousness that, afterwards, he had lived just long 
 enough to learn the wrong that Ella had done him and all her 
 family. 
 
 At last the servant came in to light the parlors. It was quite 
 dark now, and Ella sprang into a little alcove, where she was 
 secure from observation* 
 
 "The gentlemen have all got home, Miss Rusha," said the man 
 as he went out, " and your father has been asking for you." 
 
 She felt Ella's start, even where she sat. The moment the 
 man disappeared Mrs. Howe sprang up. 
 
 "I can't see any of the others. I must go now, Rusha," 
 in a wild, half-coherent way. 
 
 Rusha put her arm around the trembling figure, forgetting 
 everything else in pity for Ella. 
 
 " You shall not leave this house to-night," she said, in calm, 
 resolute tones. " You will have to see them some time, Ella. The 
 sooner it is over, the better for all. Go up stairs with me now/' 
 
 " I can't, Rusha ! My courage has all failed me ! If it wasn't 
 for pa ! " the usual bright color all gone from her cheeks. 
 
 " He will not be harsh to you after what Tom said." 
 
 This was all that Rusha dared promise. She knew her father's 
 inveterate prejudices so well ; ami Ella had roused all these. 
 
 With those words, something of the old spirit seemed t 
 back to her sister. She lifted her head and said she would go
 
 442 DAEBTLL GAP, OR 
 
 up, with a little of the haughtiness that reminded Rusha of the 
 Ella of old. But this disappeared as they reached the sitting- 
 room door. All the family were inside ; and it must be confessed 
 that it was a humiliating ordeal to meet their first start and stare 
 of amazement. She drew back. 
 
 O, Rusha, I can't I can't meet them all!" and she fairly 
 wrung her hands. 
 
 " Well, you needn't. Step right in here to ma's room, and 
 I'll send somebody to you." Rusha felt that, under the like cir- 
 cumstances, her courage also must have failed her. 
 
 A minute later she went into the sitting-room. The gentle- 
 men were established in various lounging positions around the 
 fire, looking at the papers, and waiting for the dinner bell. The 
 mother and Agnes sat on one side. Altogether it was a bright 
 vision of home comfort and luxury on that stormy night. 
 
 Rusha took it all in before she spoke, thinking of Ella, waiting 
 out there in the dark. 
 
 " You must all prepare yourselves for a great suprise. I 
 hope it will not be a painful one." 
 
 She stopped, her heart was beating so fast. All the faces 
 were turned on her in curious amazement. Then she spoke : 
 
 " Ella is in the other room ! I have been with her for the 
 last hour." The words were an electric shock to everybody. 
 Each exclaimed or questioned. Rusha answered her father's 
 " Is she alone?" . 
 
 " All alone." And she went on to explain, as briefly as possible, 
 how Ella had come. Then she went over to her father and laid 
 her hand on his. "You will go and bring her in, father for 
 Tom's sake, you know ? " 
 
 It was so dark now that he could not discern any figure in 
 the chamber, but his voice sounded very kindly. 
 
 " Are you there, my child?" 
 
 The next moment Ella was sobbing on her father's neck. 
 And while they watched and* waited in the sitting-room, the 
 door opened, and John Darryll entered, leading his daughter. 
 
 At the desire of her family, Ella remained with them several 
 days. That it was delightful enough to be back in her own
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 443 
 
 home, none of them could doubt. That some uneasiness or 
 anxiety was hidden under every other feeling, they all perceived, 
 though she never acknowledged this. She was not very much 
 changed, after all, they thought, with the exception of somewhat 
 less high spirits, and a less imperious manner than formerly. 
 
 Mrs. Howe discerned plainly that her husband was an un- 
 welcome topic in the household, and that he would only be 
 tolerated there for her sake. 
 
 It must have been galling enough to a pride like Ella's to feel 
 this ; and the wonder was, that with her spirit, she bore it as 
 well as she did. She spoke of Derrick Howe as a wife would 
 of her husband, and tried to make a point of his affection and 
 care ; but for all this, the reconciliation was not perfect, as it 
 had been in Andrew's case ; and though every one was glad to 
 have the absent daughter in their midst once more, still each 
 felt that she could never be one of their own, as formerly that 
 Derrick Howe stood between them. 
 
 The Darryll nature was persistent its likes or dislikes ob- 
 stinate things always ; and Derrick Howe counted without his 
 host when he fancied that his family, his position, and his irre- 
 sistible self would secure for him, in a little while, a cordial 
 welcome into the bosom of his wife's family. Ella knew its 
 temper better ; and the care with which each side avoided any 
 allusion to her marriage, proved the strength of the feeliug 
 
 regarding it. 
 
 Only once, when she was alone with Rusha, did Mrs. E 
 approach the matter; and that was the day after her return, 
 when she had learned through Mrs. Darryll of Rusha's engage- 
 ment, the matter not having been alluded to the precedmg 
 evening, probably out of regard to Ella's feelings 
 
 She came up to Rusha's room a good deal netted by all 
 had heard ; and her mother's, and the whole family's pn- 
 delight in the betrothal, must have afforded a contract 
 own, certain to chafe sorely the haughty spirit of Ella E 
 and it was hardly in human nature that her congra Canons 
 would not take some color from these feelings. Rusha c 
 understand and forgive all that.
 
 444 DABRYLL GAP, OE 
 
 " I'm so taken by surprise that it still seems as though I must 
 have dreamed the whole thing ! " looking curiously at her sister. 
 " Yet, I believe, after all, that Dr. Rochford is the only man in 
 the world who would suit you." 
 
 " I think he is," said Rusha, a very joy of gladness in her 
 face and voice. 
 
 Ella saw this with a good many feelings. If they were not 
 wholly glad ones, she herself would not have analyzed them ; so 
 we will not, remembering that a nobler nature than hers might 
 have found it hard to bear just what she was now doing. 
 
 "You love him, then, Rusha? I never expected you would 
 admit that, of any man." 
 
 " I do, of this one." 
 
 " Well, then," said Ella, " now you have come to understand 
 what love is, you may, perhaps, regard my own conduct with 
 less severity, and, feeling what you would bear and sacrifice for 
 Dr. Rochford, wonder less at what I did for Derrick Howe." 
 
 Ella had gone too far. Despite herself, there had been a 
 little indignant reproach in her voice, as though she still re- 
 garded herself as injured by her family. 
 
 It is possible Rusha might have borne this, but the compari- 
 son betwixt Dr. Rochford and Derrick Howe seemed little less 
 than an insult to the former. It made the old wrath at Ella's 
 conduct leap into hot life. She turned upon her, as Rusha 
 Darryll, when roused, could turn. 
 
 " No, Ella, never ! " she said. " My love for Dr. Rochford 
 has never taught me that I could bring shame and grief upon 
 iny family, and break the heart of the mother who would have 
 died for me, and outrage the care and tenderness of all the years 
 of my life. The love of Fletcher Rochford has taught me some- 
 thing better than that thank God ! " 
 
 It was hard on Ella, I grant. If Rusha had thought twice, 
 she would not have said so much ; but the words could not be 
 recalled, and perhaps Ella needed them all. 
 
 At any rate, Rusha pitied her the next moment, when she 
 saw her sister growing red and white by turns, partly with
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 445 
 
 anger, no doubt, for she made a bitter retort, which, in words 
 and spirit, were quite the old Ella. 
 
 " I've no doubt that your love is something superfine, such 
 as ordinary women could never feel or understand. I should 
 fancy only that sort would suit Dr. Rochford ! " 
 
 She was frightened after the words were out remembering 
 
 O * 
 
 too, some facts which she had learned, and some hints which 
 her husband had dropped about the importance to their own in- 
 terests of a reconciliation being brought about with her family 
 though, to do Ella justice, her seeking them the day before had 
 been prompted by other and less selfish motives. With all her 
 faults, she had the strong family love of her race. The fright 
 caused a revulsion in her feelings she did the one thing which 
 was sure to appease Rusha's wrath burst into tears. 
 
 A moment later there was a soft hand on Mrs. Howe's shoul- 
 der, and a tremulous voice was saying, 
 
 " Ella, for Tom's sake, let there be peace betwixt us ! " 
 
 So Ella understood, at last, that a voice from those dead lips 
 made a plea for her that the living ones could never have 
 done, and that it would not do to count too far on that, even 
 with her mother, for Mrs. DarrylPs manner showed plainly 
 that she had not forgotten, though she had warmly received her 
 daughter. 
 
 And now the question, what was to be done with the unwel- 
 come son and brother-in-law came up in family conclave to be 
 disposed of ; one of those stubborn facts that could neither be 
 ignored nor got around it must be met face to face. 
 
 It went sorely enough against the Darryll grain to think of 
 welcoming Derrick Howe in their midst, as one of them, when 
 each felt *that he had done the family, personally and collec- 
 tively, an unatonable wrong ; and there was no doubt that Agues 
 expressed one side of the general feeling when she said,- 
 
 " Of course we'd receive our sister back when she came to 
 us ; but I don't see as that's any reason why we should make up 
 with that mean Derrick Howe, who stole her away. / never 
 can speak to him, anyhow." 
 38
 
 446 DAREYLL GAP, OR 
 
 " Bravo, Agnes ! That's the way to face the music ! " heart- 
 ily indorsed Guy. " Let the fellow slide, I say." 
 
 But, though these sentiments met with secret sympathy in the 
 feelings of all to whom, they were addressed, the others had 
 sense enough to perceive that it would not do to take counsel 
 of their prejudices. 
 
 It cost Rusha an effort to speak, but when she did, she spoke 
 wisely. 
 
 " However we may feel, though, it only remains to us to 
 make the best of this matter, and have, at least, a surface recon- 
 ciliation betwixt all parties. I dislike Derrick Howe as much 
 as ever ; but disagreeable as the fact is, it remains one still, that 
 he is Ella's husband, and now we have received her, we must 
 accept the relation ; and the sooner it's done, the better." 
 
 Everybody had listened attentively while Rusha spoke. At 
 last, with a face of most unqualified annoyance, her father 
 said, 
 
 . " It's a mighty bitter pill to swallow, but I think Rusha has 
 the best of the argument." 
 
 Mrs. Darryll's acquiescence was of the same sort. 
 
 " I suppose it will have to be so, father ; but there is one 
 thing, that Derrick Howe will never seem like a son to me, 
 never ! " 
 
 And Andrew, sharing the family repugnance towards his 
 brother-in-law, remembered his own past, and kept silence. 
 
 In accordance with this reluctant decision, Ella, when she 
 returned to her home, took an invitation to dine, with her hus- 
 band, at her father's, on the following day. 
 
 Derrick Howe came with his wife at the time appointed. He 
 certainly never took more pains to make himself agreeable than 
 on that memorable occasion ; but I think he felt, at the close, 
 that his success had been indifferent. There was, of course, no 
 allusion to the past, and there was an effort at cordiality on the 
 part of his wife's relatives, but it got no farther than a formal 
 politeness. 
 
 " Hang it ! " he muttered to himself, as he handed his wife
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 447 
 
 into her father's carriage on their return home, "what airs 
 they do take on ! I've a good mind to cut the whole concern ! " 
 
 If Mrs. Howe overheard this remark, she was wisely obliv- 
 ious to it. She had learned that the elegant and fascinating 
 being for whose sake she had forsaken and outraged her family 
 was somewhat another person in his marital relations from the 
 one he had been in his courting days. 
 
 Derrick Howe had never been, perhaps he never would be, 
 positively unkind to her, but she had discerned already that his 
 own ease and comfort were the paramount considerations of his 
 life. 
 
 Imperious as she was, her natural love of peace, which was 
 only one form of selfishness, impelled her now to always avoid 
 a rupture Avith her husband. And the honeymoon was hardly 
 yet over, and the glamour with which she had invested her lover 
 had not wholly worn off. But when her eyes should be opened, 
 she would be shrewd enough to discern where her power lay, 
 and that was in her father's wealth. 
 
 So long as there was a chance there, whatever he might liave 
 done under other circumstances, Derrick Howe would never 
 push his wife to any extremities, or give her any cause to return 
 to her family ; and, on the other hand, Ella would have borne 
 considerable before she would have humiliated herself to accept 
 this alternative ; so that, although time was likely to develop 
 plenty of friction between the two, it would not probably end iu 
 open disruption. 
 
 Notwithstanding his chagrin at the close of his first dinner 
 at the Darrylls, Derrick Howe made a point of presenting 
 himself at his father-in-law's office quite frequently during the 
 month that followed. 
 
 The truth is, his own resources were exhausted, and i 
 not do to make the honeymoon interminable which he had been 
 invited to pass among his own relatives. 
 
 Derrick Howe was at considerable pains to inform his 
 in-law that he was desirous of entering into some 1 ;M, 
 before John Darryll could be made cognizant of the fact, and, 
 of course, this state of things did not permit any assumption on
 
 448 DARRYLL GAP, OR 
 
 the part of the young man. The broker was, at first, little dis- 
 posed to render him any aid, either of money or influence ; but 
 then, there was Ella, and it must come to that sooner or later. 
 
 Mr. Darryll talked over the matter with his family. His 
 house was about to establish a branch in Paris, and wanted a 
 business agent there. The situation would not involve any 
 large responsibility, and Derrick Howe had a smattering of the 
 continental languages. 
 
 So the situation was offered to him, accompanied with a 
 salary which, though it would enable the young pair to live in 
 moderate gentility abroad, was not at all in accordance with 
 Derrick Howe's luxurious habits and ideas. But, for want of 
 anything better, he was obliged to accede to his father-in-law's 
 proposition. 
 
 Ella's fancy caught eagerly at the prospect of going abroad, 
 and though they were obliged to start suddenly, she made a 
 point of displaying herself in the family carriage, at church and 
 on Broadway, to prove to her thousand friends that the recon- 
 ciliation betwixt herself and her relatives was complete. 
 
 With that impending separation, the old affection was cer- 
 tain, in a great degree, to gain the mastery over every other 
 feeling. 
 
 They were all as kind to her as possible, and it must have 
 seemed to the eyes of strangers that the family breach was 
 quite healed. 
 
 The day before she started, Mrs. Darryll said to her daugh- 
 ter, 
 
 " Ella, my child, if you should ever get unhappy over there, 
 or if anything ever happens, come back the heart and home 
 of your mother are always open to you." 
 
 Ella was deeply touched the parting was so near now ; but 
 she knew what her mother meant, and her secret thought was 
 significant of her relations with her husband. 
 
 "That may serve me in good stead, some time, to tell Der- 
 rick ! " 
 
 Had she discerned already .that her chief power over him lay 
 in her father's " money-bags " ?
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 449 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 THE summer had come again, and the great drama of the 
 century had been brought to its close in a way that no man had 
 looked for. 
 
 The four years the " awful years, the glorious years " had 
 passed, the years of a great nation's sweat and agony for life. 
 
 The bells had rung at last their " lo triumphe " of peace over 
 all the land ; and in the pleasant spring days, the North had 
 held its long jubilee, and fairly gone wild with the sacred joy 
 of victory. But suddenly down in the midst of all the vast 
 rejoicing, fell the darkness and crashed the thunderbolt. The 
 morning hymn of the nation's baptismal into a new life, was 
 changed, in a moment, to the mighty death-wail which shook it 
 from sea to sea ; its white, floating robes of victory turned sud- 
 denly to sackcloth and ashes ; for the brave, simple, heroic 
 heart had been smitten down and the evil had filled up the 
 measure of its wrath. 
 
 But all that had passed now, and the nation, shaken for a 
 moment with its storm of grief, had steadied itself again. It 
 is not my work to write of that time nor how these people lived 
 through it. I hope I have made each one clear enough for you 
 to conjecture how the different natures would be likely to carry 
 themselves through the joy and the grief of that crisis. 
 
 So June had come again to the mountains, and with it the 
 Darrylls had come also. 
 
 A playful, frolicsome spirit had come to the surface in these 
 days. They seemed to break loose from their city life and 
 customs with the joy of wild animals. 
 
 We can never count on our moods, and this was a passing 
 one ; and the fun of the young people, and the chasing each 
 38*
 
 450 DAREYLL GAP, OB 
 
 other about the verandas, amid shouts and laughter, did not 
 last long. 
 
 There was graver if happier business on hand, for the wed- 
 ding had been appointed up here late in the June, Rusha having 
 settled all this according to her own taste, and everybody else 
 finding it suited theirs. 
 
 A quiet wedding it was to be, in every respect only the two 
 families present, and a few friends who were to ride over in the 
 morning, from the hotels, to witness the ceremony. 
 
 So the last evening of Rusha Darryll's girlhood had fallen. 
 Angeline and Sicily Rochford had arrived the day before, the 
 doctor having been enabled to accompany them as far as Boston, 
 where Guy had gone to meet and bring the ladies on without 
 delay, as business detained their brother in the city. 
 
 The meeting between the ladies of both families, so soon to 
 be united in the best beloved of their members, was one of the 
 things which can never be written. 
 
 The fair face of Augeline Rochford, coming out thin and 
 worn from its long hospital service, was invested with a sacred 
 beauty to the whole Darryll family. That was the last face 
 which had hung over Tom's dying bed, and, gazing on it, his 
 eyes had grown dim in the shadow of death. 
 
 That evening the doctor and Andrew had arrived together. 
 Supper had waited for them, but this was served in an informal 
 fashion, for the very atmosphere of the cottage was breezy 
 with the stir and bustle which precedes a wedding. Rusha had 
 stolen out from all this, trusting that, in the general absorption, 
 nobody would miss her, for her thoughts wanted a little silence 
 in which to steady themselves ; the old life she was leaving, 
 and the new life that was coming, bearing heavily upon her 
 heart that night. So she came out on the veranda, and stood 
 there with her face turned up to the sky and mountains. 
 
 The day had been unusually warm for those latitudes, and 
 even now, the air had a soft moistness in it, and the winds 
 which rioted among the thick leaves, made a pleasant sound, 
 like that of waves on the beach.
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 451 
 
 Overhead, the stars shone betwixt the clouds, which spread 
 out gray and silver fleeces along the blue ; and while Rusha 
 stood still and gazed, a soft, crystal light began to pervade the 
 sky, and touch with its mystery of glory the crest of pines on 
 the top of the opposite mountain. Just over this rested a 
 black cloud, with a white radiance growing along the outer 
 edges, bringing out in sharper contrast that black gulf at the 
 centre. 
 
 And so the light grew and grew, as one might fancy it would 
 in a vision, spreading down the mountain till it reached the hem 
 of its garment ; and the girl stood there by one of the pillars, 
 watching behind and below in the darkness, as those who love 
 God watch and wait in the darkness and griefs of this world 
 for the joy and rest that are to come. 
 
 And at last, over the summit, came the moon, with a slow, 
 royal, serene movement, while the clouds wrapped their silver 
 banners around her, and trailed their pennons along the moun- 
 tains, and caught in drooping folds among the trees. 
 
 Slowly and royally the moon swept on, the clouds closed 
 their white-plumed forces around her path, and she looked down 
 on the awful mountains, and on the valley asleep at their feet, 
 and on the girl, more and greater than all these, who stood on 
 the veranda with her face upturned, and a solemn brightness 
 pervading it, almost as though God had spoken to her. 
 
 Her thoughts had gone far away into the years to that 
 ni^ht when her father came home, and told them he had sold 
 
 O ' 
 
 Darryll Gap, and they began to realize, for the first time, that 
 they were rich people. How the old scenes and the faces there 
 crowded down upon her ! 
 
 And then, the new life came up the splendor, the pride, 
 the gayety her memory leaping along scene after scene, until 
 it paused before another night that dreadful one, when they 
 first learned of Andrew's crimes. Her heart grew sick for a 
 moment, thinking of it and of all that followed. 
 
 And then, later, how the days flashed before her ! There was 
 Ella's marriage, with all its pains and bitterness ; and a little
 
 452 DAER7LL GAP, OR 
 
 beyond that awful darkness, when the news came of Tom's 
 death, and her life stood still ; and she went down into the 
 blackness of the night, not knowing what a morning lay close 
 beyond. How God had changed all that horror and agony into 
 such blessedness and joy as she had never dared to dream of! 
 
 She saw now how His hand had been leading her, alike 
 through the serene days, and the dreadful eclipses to the crown- 
 ing gladness of this night, and a verse from that sweet old 
 psalm of Whittier's sang itself through her thought : 
 
 " That more and more a Providence 
 
 Of love is understood, 
 Making the springs of time and sense 
 Sweet with eternal good." 
 
 And while she stood there, Dr. Rochford came out softly on 
 the veranda, and, leaning over, caught, before she saw him, 
 the light on her face. 
 
 " I thought I should find you here," he said, his hand on her 
 shoulder. 
 
 " You must forgive me for running off, Fletcher, but there 
 was so much on my heart to-night, that I had to come out here 
 for strength and steadfastness." 
 
 " I understood all that. But what have you been thinking, 
 feeling, while you have been out here ? " 
 
 " Many things ; perhaps the chief, a thank-offering to God 
 that He had made the last night of my girlhood such a one 
 as this." 
 
 " It is a very ' Laus Deo,' " he answered. 
 
 They stood still, looking at the moon and the clouds, and the 
 stars among them, and then he drew her arm in his, and walked 
 up and down the piazza, and the hum of voices and the stream 
 of lights inside did not disturb them. 
 
 " Do you suspect, my little girl, how very good it seems to 
 see you, now that it is more than four months since we parted ? " 
 
 " I think I know something about it ! " a little quiver of a 
 smile around her lips, losing itself in something grave a mo- 
 ment afterwards. " How much has happened since those stormy
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 
 
 453 
 
 March days when you brought up to us all the war had left of 
 dear Tom, and we laid him away to his pleasant sleep at Green- 
 wood ! " 
 
 " How much ! The nation has added its sublimest chapters 
 to its history during these last four months," he said. 
 
 u And the war is over, and you have come again, and you 
 will never more have to hurry back as you did that last time." 
 
 " Nevermore, Rusha, nevermore ! " 
 
 They walked up and down the veranda, silently, a while, and 
 the moon shone on them, and the stars. At last the doctor said, 
 looking on her with something in his eyes which she did not 
 quite understand, 
 
 " Andrew and I have grown better acquainted in our ride to- 
 day." 
 
 " I thought that illness of his made a strong bond betwixt you 
 and him long ago ! " 
 
 " It did, of one sort ; but this is of a finer and stronger 
 kind. O, Rusha, I have been learning to-day just what a dear, 
 noble little girl is to be mine own to-morrow." 
 
 " What has Andrew been telling you ? " with her quick 
 glance up in his face, bent on her with some tenderness and 
 reverence, which even she had never seen there before. 
 
 " He has been telling me that you saved him once, and how ! 
 O, my darling, even I should not have dreamed that heroism of 
 you ! " 
 
 She knew, then, what he meant, and that Andrew had been 
 confiding to his elect brother-in-law the story of Jane Maxwell, 
 and all about that miserable time. The blushes fairly scorched 
 her face. She buried them in her hands. 
 
 " O, how could he do it ! how could he do it ! " she murmured. 
 
 The doctor drew her away. 
 
 " Rusha, should it shame or distress you to find that I know 
 the proudest, noblest deed of your life, and knowing it, love you 
 
 en better than before ? " 
 
 " Anybody would have done the same for that poor girl at 
 least anybody ought to. Do not praise me, Fletcher."
 
 454 DAEETLL GAP, OR 
 
 " I could not if I tried, dear child." 
 
 He said no more, then, walking in silence to give her fluttered 
 spirits time to calm themselves. 
 
 At last she spoke. " Fletcher," a little doubt or reluctance 
 in her voice. 
 
 " Go on." 
 
 " You can never understand what a comfort it has been to me 
 to know that your sisters accepted what is to be, so heartily, 
 and have given me such a welcome into their hearts and home ! " 
 
 " Did you doubt that for one moment? " 
 
 " I doubted whether they would be willing to lose such a 
 brother as you." 
 
 " That is a graceful bit of compliment, Rusha, but, if it be as 
 you say, my sisters have had wisdom to discern that the wife I 
 am to take is the one woman in all the world for me. When 
 Angeline and Sicily first learned of our betrothal, their answers, 
 though far apart, were alike. ' She is the only woman in the 
 world, Fletcher, of whom I could be glad to know this.' " 
 
 Her face flashed out in sudden light, 
 
 "O, did they say that?" 
 
 " Those very words." 
 
 Afterwards he went on to talk of their future, and of his 
 plans. 
 
 The home, in New York, where the Rochfords had lived so 
 long, and to which the doctor would take his bride, was to be 
 arranged for their reception under the joint auspices of Angeline 
 and Sicily, whose taste in matters of this kind was universally 
 allowed to be exquisite. 
 
 Angeline Rochford had promised a brother surgeon, and old 
 classmate of the doctor's, that she would not delay longer than 
 the late fall the wedding-day which she had promised him at 
 the hospital where they had worked and sorrowed and loved 
 together. 
 
 The bridal pair were to sail for Europe immediately after thq 
 wedding, making the Continental tour, on which it had been 
 arranged Sicily should accompany them. All this was entirely
 
 WHETHER IT PAID. 455 
 
 new to Rusha. You can imagiiie with what greedy interest she 
 drank in every word. 
 
 " Then we shall be left in the dear old home together, unless " 
 the doctor paused here. 
 
 "Unless what, Fletcher?" the eager, half peremptory way 
 that always amused him, and that he had purposely waited for 
 now. 
 
 -'Unless I conclude that our wedding will not he complete 
 without a bridal tour abroad, also. You and I will not enjoy 
 it less because the honeymoon is over?" 
 
 Her face was worth going far to see. 
 
 " O, Fletcher, do you really think of that ! " 
 
 " I do, my dear child. I want to give some further attention 
 to my profession at Paris ; and when we are once across, there 
 will be Rome to talk of, and Germany and the Rhine, but for 
 the present we must be content with Canada and the Adiron- 
 dacks." 
 
 And Rusha listened, clinging to her lover, and in the still 
 summer night, her thoughts went afar off, and walked in won- 
 derful visions of that world across the sea. The doctor's voice 
 recalled her at last. 
 
 " Rusha, there is something I want to ask you ! " 
 
 " Then by all means do it." 
 
 " This Jane Maxwell was she a girl with a light figure, a 
 pretty face, and brownish hair?" 
 
 " She was just that, Fletcher," her cheeks aflame again. 
 
 " Then I have seen her ! " 
 
 She stood still. 
 
 " Where when how ? " 
 
 " In the hospitals. She was down there last winter, and 
 worked for the poor fellows with her whole soul. Many a one 
 will remember her, with blessings, to his dying hour. I had a 
 cion one is not certain how he comes by these things 
 I suppose my long experience among sicknesses of body 
 _._d soul has something to do with the matter I had a sus- 
 picion that this girl's history had some secret in it of sorrow and 
 struggle." 

 
 456 DABRYLL GAP. 
 
 " O, Fletcher, this is the best of all. Thank God ! thank 
 God ! on this night of all others, too ! " she could get no 
 farther. 
 
 He drew her a little closer. 
 
 " Yes, dear girl, it is a wonderful reward. Under God, you 
 saved her. It seems a very dew of blessing, breathed from 
 heaven, upon our bridal ! " 
 
 At that moment her father came to the front door. 
 
 " Come, children, you've been out here long enough," he said. 
 " Doctor, as you're to have her for all the evenings to come, 
 you must spare her to us this one." 
 
 They must have heard him inside, for in the stream of light, 
 and the buzz of merry talk, one or two playful voices lifted 
 themselves " Don't you lovers stay out there sentimentalizing 
 in the moonlight any longer. We just want you inside." 
 
 " We're coming," answered the doctor. 
 
 Just as they reached the door, they turned a moment and 
 gazed on the night. The moon looked down upon them from 
 thin clouds that floated like silver hair about her face, and the 
 stars made the sky holy with their beauty ; underneath, like a 
 bride adorned for the altar, the June night lay in garments 
 of white moonbeams. 
 
 " Laus Deo" said the doctor again, and they went in together. 
 
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