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 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
SHE FELT SQDDENLf QUITE HAPPY 
 
 (page 249) 
 
THE 
 
 STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 BY 
 
 ALICE BKOWN 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY 
 ALICE BARBER STEPHENS 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY ALICE BROWN 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published March TQOQ 
 
 FIFTH IMPRESSION 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE SACRIFICE . 1 
 
 II. THE KIVAL HOUSES . . . . 29 
 
 III. THE GOLDEN APPLE . . . .55 
 
 IV. THE KNIGHT OF ELD . . . . 83 
 V. THE LETTERS 109 
 
 VI. TROY TAVERN 134 
 
 VII. THE KETURN 163 
 
 VIII. THE DISCOVERY 193 
 
 IX. THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE . . . .217 
 
 X. THE GIRL 245 
 
 XI. A KNIGHT PEERLESS .... 272 
 
 XII. THE SISTERS . 300 
 
 228608 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 i 
 
 THE SACKIFICE 
 
 XT was a warm afternoon in the spring of the year. 
 Thyrza Tennant, aged nine, walking beside the 
 teacher and multiplying steps to keep up, was con 
 scious of excitement in the wind, and, for those who 
 were more fortunately placed than she had found her 
 self, a sense of things to be. She was shaken in her 
 feelings, too, because the tragically unexpected had 
 come to pass. She who never " missed " had been 
 wrecked on the present subjunctive of the verb "to 
 have," and the teacher had told her that, if it were 
 not so near Last Day and eleven pieces to be re 
 hearsed, she would have had to stay after school and 
 recite the entire conjugation. As it was, she might 
 be excused, only she must be sure to prepare the les 
 son at home and be ready with it in the morning. 
 
 Thyrza was very little, and as her mother dressed 
 her "bare neck and short sleeves," as the saying was, 
 all the delicate bones of her brown throat were visi 
 ble. She looked, Andy McAdam had said, in a brutal 
 repetition of a phrase applied to her at his house, 
 " like a picked chicken." 
 
 1 
 
;T S T OK Y OF THYRZA 
 
 Andy had dismissed the qualification as soon as he 
 had made it, and went joyously about his own partic 
 ular boy affairs ; but Thyrza never forgot. When she 
 heard it, she ran into the darkened parlor where she 
 could spend a long time unregarded before the glass, 
 and stared at herself in a sickened questioning. Her 
 dark eyes were very large and her face was thin. 
 When she looked at it in the parlor glass it took on 
 a livid pallor from the green slats of the inner blinds. 
 It seemed to her unspeakably horrible to look like a 
 picked chicken, and now, on her walk home from 
 school, seeing the sturdy back of Andy as he trudged 
 in front of her in a care-free intimacy with her sister 
 Laura, banging Laura with his strap of books when 
 it pleased him to do so, and accepting a kindred blow 
 with a fraternal cheerfulness, the hot blood ran up to 
 her face again, as she thought that if he were called 
 upon to define fat and pleasant Laura s sister, he need 
 only say, " Oh, she looks like a picked chicken!" 
 
 Rosie May Pelton had the teacher s hand on that 
 homeward walk. She strutted a little, and occasionally 
 peered round at Thyrza to note whether she minded 
 renouncing a similar distinction on the other side, be 
 cause, with that hand, teacher carried her parasol. 
 But Thyrza had not expected such advancement, even 
 if she had been able to give her present subjunctive 
 parts with honor. She adored the teacher, and every 
 day brought her nosegays with a stiff back of cedar ; 
 but she had no spirit for seizing upon power and 
 place in homeward walks. That night the teacher 
 
 2 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 was absent-minded. She thought of a letter she had 
 had, and of an approaching marriage-day, and Thyrza, 
 waiting upon her moods, felt her remoteness and 
 chilled under it. This being of her affections seemed 
 often mysteriously removed to some peak where little 
 girls could never climb. Rosie May, who also saw 
 they were not to be talked to that night, and perhaps 
 not even listened to, began a soft undertone to 
 Thyrza. 
 
 " There s goin to be a concert over to the Cor 
 
 ners." 
 
 " I know it," said Thyrza. She was venturing to 
 avow an equal knowledge, though Rosie May, she was 
 aware, expected her to take the news as news and show 
 herself courteously attentive. 
 
 Rosie May had all the prettiness Thyrza lacked ; 
 her looks were a strange reversal of Thyrza s own, 
 and she seemed to know it. Thyrza s black hair was 
 straight and Rosie May s curled up into little rings that 
 looked all alive like vine-tendrils in the wind. Her lips 
 were full, and Thyrza s were thin, and she had no 
 freckles on her nose. Once she had looked at Thyrza 
 a long time, in a way she had, and then said with the 
 meditative brutality of a woman grown to age but 
 not to kindliness, 
 
 " You and I look some alike, Thyrza, only we re 
 different." 
 
 And Thyrza hated her, not for being different but 
 for knowing she was. 
 
 " It s an Old Folks Concert," said Rosie May. 
 
 3 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Yes, I know it," countered Thyrza. She was over 
 stepping, she knew, and Rosie May would pay her 
 out for it next day, but the desperate unhappiness 
 of the afternoon had warped her patience. 
 
 "Aunt Hattie Ann s goin to sing," said Rosie May. 
 " Any your folks goin to sing ?" 
 
 Thyrza longed to say that she had heard the doc 
 tor and the minister together lament over the voice 
 
 o 
 
 and the ear of aunt Hattie Ann, and wonder how 
 they could get her out of the seats. She had been 
 lying in a bed of roadside brake and playing dead, 
 and they had paused there, in the heat of their dis 
 cussion, for a view of the mountain, and the minis 
 ter himself, though he had laughed after he said it, 
 had told the doctor that Hattie Ann Pelton was to 
 his mind no better than a bull of Bashan. Thyrza 
 had never repeated that saying, even to Laura, but 
 she remembered it sometimes when she was afraid at 
 night, and put it away with the picked chicken as too 
 terrible to think about even by daylight. What would 
 Rosie May say now, if she should return in a loud, 
 bold voice so that the teacher herself might hear, " The 
 minister says your aunt Hattie Ann sings like a bull 
 of Bashan"? But she did not venture, though she 
 thought so hard of the glorious possibility that she 
 failed to answer, and Rosie May put another question. 
 "Any your folks goin to the concert?" 
 The tone of her voice was her hateful one. Thyrza 
 knew it quite well, what it recalled and what it por 
 tended. At that moment she loathed it so much that 
 
 4 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 she answered back in a voice loud enough for even 
 Andy and Laura to hear, 
 
 " Yes, we re all going." 
 
 Rosie May was shocked out of her wonted calm. 
 
 " No, you re not either," she declared involuntarily. 
 
 "Yes, we are too," said Thyrza. Every trace of color 
 had left her face. She set her lips tightly together and 
 her throat was dry. "I m going, and mother s going, 
 and Laura s going." 
 
 " Goin where ? " Laura called back over her 
 shoulder ; but Andy smote her so skillfully with his 
 arithmetic, for no reason, that with every argument 
 on her side, she fell upon him and required no an 
 swer. 
 
 "The tickets are fifty cents," Rosie May insinuated 
 doubtingly. 
 
 This Thyrza scorned to notice. And circumstances 
 seemed to intend her rescue. A light wagon whirled 
 by and the youth in it took off his hat with a courteous 
 bend. 
 
 "Ain t he just elegant!" breathed Rosie May, al 
 most unctuously. 
 
 "Who is he?" asked the teacher, coming out of 
 her dream. 
 
 Rosie May answered with a prim correctness, as if 
 she were in class. 
 
 "Barton Gorse. His grandfather s died and he s 
 spendin the summer in the big house. All alone he 
 is, too." 
 
 Now they were turning the corner by the great 
 
 5 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 elder-bush, and when the vista of the coming road lay 
 before them Rosie May tittered. 
 
 "Why, Thyrza," said she, "there s your aunt." 
 
 The teacher wakened to a kindly attention. This 
 was her first term, and she was scrupulous in the 
 courtesy due to relatives. 
 
 "Thyrza s aunt?" she said. "Why, let me speak 
 to her." 
 
 " There she is ahead," said Rosie May piously. 
 " That s Thyrza s aunt." 
 
 "Why, no," said the teacher, with an innocent 
 candor. " No, that s some little girl." 
 
 " No m," repeated Rosie May, " it s Thyrza s aunt. 
 Thyrza, ain t that your aunt? " 
 
 Thyrza could not answer. She looked straight be 
 fore her, not definitely at the figure hurrying down 
 the road, though it was included in her field of 
 sight. She knew quite well what she should see, a 
 little woman not much larger than a child because she 
 was grotesquely bent, and wearing a child s hat with 
 long blue streamers, behind. It was a hat of an old 
 fashion, rescued from the attic and loved by aunt 
 Ellie with a sudden ardor not to be accounted for. 
 More than once Mrs. Tennant had hidden it, and 
 given her a respectable sunbonnet instead ; but Aunt 
 Ellie "had wept silently and made herself sick with 
 grief until they gave it back again. 
 
 " Well, there ! " Mrs. Tennant had said then to 
 the children, " I don t know s it does anybody any 
 hurt. She might as well wear it, far s I know." 
 
 6 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 And the hat again in her grasp, aunt Ellie had 
 settled down delightedly to her childish occupations. 
 Now, as Thyrza walked along, her sick fancy outran 
 her feet, and she seemed to see exactly how it would 
 be when they overtook aunt Ellie. The teacher 
 would put out her pretty hand and say, " Is this 
 Thyrza s aunt?" It would be impossible to think 
 what aunt Ellie would do then. She might break 
 into a low giggle and hide her face in her apron-. 
 She might gravely show her empty pail, and say, in 
 her childish voice,, " Want to buy any plums?" 
 
 But Rosie May was speaking. 
 
 "Ain t that a little pail she s got ? " She was ask 
 ing it still out of that specious innocence. 
 
 Thyrza s heart rose again in her throat, beating out 
 a hotter hatred. Rosie May knew quite well that 
 aunt Ellie carried the little pail summer and winter, 
 whether she went into the woods for berries, or poked 
 off down the road when trees were bare and came home 
 wondering because her pail was empty. They were 
 very near her now, and to Thyrza the world was a 
 black blur ; though she heard Rosie May speaking 
 again, she had no strength to hate her. 
 
 " Yes," her enemy was saying, " it must be Thyrza s 
 aunt. I can see her little curls." 
 
 At that Thyrza remembered, with a new misery, 
 how she had prayed to God, over and over again, that 
 He would move aunt Ellie to do up her hair. The 
 ring of stiff grayish curls went round her head, one 
 row of them. They were tied back from her face by 
 
 7 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 a velvet snood, the little pinched face with the vague 
 appealing eyes. The foremost children were almost on 
 her now, and Thyrza was sure the teacher had begun 
 to stretch out her hand. But God had not forgotten 
 her. Aunt Ellie turned. She gave one look at them, 
 and then, after an instant s halt, like a creature too 
 frightened to act, made a little dash at the stone- wall, 
 fled over it like running water and sped along the 
 field toward home. 
 
 "Why!" said the teacher. "Why!" Then she 
 cast a sudden glance at Thyrza, stumbling along now, 
 her head bent low, and said at once, " Never mind 
 about the conjugation to-night, Thyrza. You 11 have 
 time enough to-morrow." 
 
 " Yes m," said Thyrza. "Good-night." 
 She too turned aside and climbed the stone-wall 
 to follow wanly home after aunt Ellie. She did not 
 understand why, but it seemed to her that if Rosie 
 May was laughing inside, and the teacher might laugh 
 out in a minute, when Rosie May had said more 
 things, it was best to follow aunt Ellie. Perhaps they 
 wouldn t laugh so hard then. She was angry with 
 aunt Ellie, her curls and her little pail, but somehow, 
 too, she was sorry for her, sorry, sorry. She came out 
 of the field and into the lane just as aunt Ellie was 
 going in at the back door of the dark house under the 
 elm. The garden lay in front of the house, and in that 
 Laura and Thyrza had each a bed. The rest was all 
 a sweet tangle, and had been since their father died. 
 He had loved flowers with a devotion the neighbors 
 
 8 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 smiled at ; but since his death his wife had been too 
 busy, tailoring, to nurture what he had sown. 
 
 Thyrza ran to her little bed now, and stooped over 
 it before going into the house. It gave her a mute 
 comfort. It was something of her own, and Rosie May 
 had never seen it. Thyrza spent hours over the flowery 
 bed, sometimes mourning its misfortunes and then try 
 ing to amend them with all her scanty wisdom ; and 
 because she was untiring, the plants responded to her. 
 Now the pain in her heart went down a little, and she 
 bent and plucked out a lush weed. She glanced all 
 about to see that nobody was near, and said under her 
 breath, " Darlings ! " Thyrza felt her cheek hot then. 
 She never heard that word used, but she had seen it 
 in books, and it was beautiful to her. She looked over 
 at Laura s bed. That was all zinnias and nasturtiums, 
 already, though the spring was young, growing up to 
 weeds. In a month, she knew, it would be choked and 
 riotous, and Laura would be saying, in a careless imita 
 tion of their mother s phrasing, that it had got ahead 
 of her after all and might as well go now. Then 
 Thyrza came back to her own treasured plot : five or 
 six perennials rescued from the wilderness down by 
 the fence, some careful lines of coreopsis and mignon 
 ette just out of the ground. "Darlings!" she said 
 again. 
 
 " That you, Thyrza ? " came her mother s voice from 
 the side window where she sat sewing. " Where s 
 Laura?" 
 
 Thyrza went up the path, and in through the 
 
 9 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 kitchen. Aunt Ellie sat there, singing something 
 about " Mary across the wild moor," a tune she re 
 membered from her youth, though she had no words 
 now to fit to it but Mary s name over and over, and 
 " across the wild moor." Thyrza, hearing her, always 
 thought that was Mary s name, and the changeless 
 repetition of it was like the call of ghosts for a lost 
 companion. Now she could not look at aunt Ellie. 
 She was afraid of hating her as she did Rosie 
 May. 
 
 Mrs. Tennant was a little woman with black eyes 
 and a look of tense anxiety and over-keen apprehen 
 sion, which were all for the possibility of not being 
 able to buy the next barrel of flour. She sat with a 
 table at her right, where she could put her hand on 
 all sorts of knowing and necessary things, now a but 
 ton, now a piece of canvas, and again a spool of 
 thread. She was working, as she always seemed to be 
 doing, on a pair of thick stubby trousers, and Thyrza 
 knew they were later to encase the legs of Andy 
 Me Adam. All the boys in the township had their 
 clothes made at Mrs. Tennant s. Thyrza, with a sort 
 of fascinated proprietary interest, used to watch the 
 trousers her mother had wrought walking into school 
 or church, and from day to day keep track of their for 
 tunes. Sometimes she would announce indifferently 
 that Tommy Fiske would need a new jacket soon. 
 "How d you know?" her mother would inquire 
 sharply, thrift gleaming in her eye. "He got his 
 sleeve burnt on the stove," Thyrza would say. Or, 
 
 10 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 "Andy tore his collar. I don t believe they can mend 
 it. He 11 have to have a velvet one." 
 
 "Where s Laura?" repeated Mrs. Tennant, look 
 ing up from her work. 
 
 " She s coming. She came round the road." 
 
 "Did n t you come by the road ? " 
 
 " No/ said Thyrza. " I crossed the lot." 
 
 " What made you do that ? " 
 
 "I don t know." She was sure that was quite true. 
 It would have been impossible to tell what strand of 
 power, twisted of sorrow for aunt Ellie and of hide 
 ous shame, had dragged her out of the accustomed 
 way and home across the field. She sat down on the 
 foot of the cloth-covered sofa where Trot, the maltee, 
 was curled into a cushion from which she had just 
 stretched one paw, the claws luxuriously curved. 
 Thyrza watched her mother s hand guiding the short 
 thread and snapping sharply back and forth. She 
 spoke suddenly, irresistibly constrained. 
 
 " Mother, should n t you like to go to the Old 
 Folks Concert?" 
 
 Mrs. Tennant paused an instant to run her needle 
 cruelly through an emery bag. At the same moment, 
 she glanced up over her spectacles at Thyrza. 
 
 "Mercy, no!" she said. "What s got that into 
 your head?" 
 
 Thyrza put out a hand to the cat, who immediately 
 turned on her side in purring welcome. 
 
 "I don t know," she said. "Somebody was talk 
 ing about it." 
 
 11 
 
THE STORY or THYRZA 
 
 "I ve got other things to do besides go to Old 
 Folks Concerts/ said Mrs. Tennant. She held up 
 the little square thick trousers before her and frowned 
 at them. Then, in an onslaught of haste, she began 
 to sew again. 
 
 Laura came in at the back door and stood looking 
 placidly about, her dinner-pail in hand. She was a 
 pretty, solid little girl, with brown eyes un visited by 
 Thyrza s sparks and tremors, and a neat foot and 
 hand. There was something complete about Laura. 
 It was a physical perfection and fullness that, with 
 out beauty, made her extremely pleasing to the eye 
 and mind. Thyrza looked at her sharply. She was 
 thinking how she had missed on the present sub 
 junctive, and of her own certainty that, tragic as it 
 was, Laura had quite forgotten it. Laura had these 
 strange ideas of values. Then Thyrza turned to her 
 mother and offered explosively, 
 
 "I missed." 
 
 "You hand me that bastin thread," said Mrs. 
 Tennant absorbedly, pointing out a spool that seemed 
 to have strayed to the edge of the table to escape 
 depletion. But she remembered that an intellectual 
 exigency had been presented to her, and answered 
 with the requisite feeling, " You must both be good 
 girls at school. I don t know how long you 11 be 
 able to go." 
 
 This was a bogie held up to affright them from of 
 old. To Thyrza, who cherished dreams of advanced 
 courses in some remote academic spot, it was a fore- 
 
 12 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 taste of agony ; to Laura it meant nothing in particu 
 lar. Of course, Laura thought, no one knew how 
 long they would be able to go. People stopped going 
 to school at all sorts of ages. Andy McAdam said 
 he meant to stop next year, and get a job on the 
 railroad. But at this moment even Thyrza had no 
 outcry for that familiar spectre. Her mind was on 
 the concert. It was not only that she knew her mother 
 ought to go ; she felt committed now to sending her. 
 The lie to Rosie May had done it. Thyrza had these 
 dreadful moments of longing to give people what they 
 never desired for themselves. She would sit in church 
 coveting for her mother an ceileted collar, with such 
 intensity that it was amazing that the wearer had not 
 writhed in her seat. It had seemed for days now that 
 this brilliant and beautiful occasion of the concert 
 must not slip by unless her mother had a part in it. 
 
 " Mother," she said, " don t you s pose you could 
 go to the concert?" 
 
 "Mercy sakes, Thyrza," returned her mother, 
 " what s set you out on that concert ? I should think 
 you was Hattie Ann, for all the world. They say she 
 ain t left off runnin up an down her scales half a 
 day sence t was thought of." 
 
 Thyrza persisted. 
 
 " Don t you s pose you could walk so far ? " 
 
 " You run out in the shed, one o you, an pick me 
 up an apronful o chips," said Mrs. Tennant. " I 11 
 blaze a fire an we 11 have supper early an get it out 
 o the way." 
 
 13 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Thyrza sped first, to get there before Laura. She 
 had times of leading what she called a consecrated 
 life, and the consecration consisted in hurrying to do 
 the tasks that others might effect. Just now she 
 thought of her consecration with a pang. It had been 
 absent from her the entire day. 
 
 ii 
 
 That night Laura and Thyrza sat on the front door 
 step, eating the crackers and milk they always had at 
 bedtime. Thyrza was happy. She had fitted together 
 a scheme so wonderful that it made all the rough 
 places of the day quite plain. Her mother had gone 
 over to gossip with grandma McAdam, and Thyrza 
 knew this was the one chance to prepare Laura for 
 what was on the way. Aunt Ellie came flitting round 
 the side of the house, and seated herself on a step 
 below them. She was uneasy in the dark without com 
 panionship, though now she had it she took no notice 
 of the children, but sat crooning her little song to 
 herself. Thyrza s splendid secret gave her a sense of 
 daring and power. She ventured into a forbidden 
 road. 
 
 "Aunt Ellie," she said, "I want you to do some 
 thing." 
 
 Aunt Ellie stopped singing, and put her head 
 sharply round, though she did not speak. Laura was 
 listening, too. She was surprised, and almost, in her 
 calm fashion, awed. It was an accepted rule of the 
 house that aunt Ellie, who was afflicted, should be 
 
 14 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 allowed, in all practical ways, to take a path of her 
 own. 
 
 " I want you/ said Thyrza, in a voice that trembled 
 at itself, "not to have any curls." 
 
 Aunt Ellie s hand went up to the row of ringlets 
 round her head. Thyrza knew, with an intuition like 
 a pang, just what look of startled inquiry was on her 
 face. Yet she felt she had done right. In that new 
 mood, warmed by her sense of power, she was sure 
 the strength had been given her to a take a stand. 
 
 " Why ! " said Laura. She seemed to be breathing 
 all sorts of emotions out into the darkness. " Why, 
 Thyrza Tennant!" 
 
 "That s it, aunt Ellie," pursued Thyrza. "Not 
 any curls. Mother hasn t any curls. See how nice she 
 looks." 
 
 "Not any curls! " repeated aunt Ellie. She had a 
 way of echoing phrases in a wondering tone. " Not 
 any curls." 
 
 " No," said Thyrza, with finality, " not any curls." 
 Her mind was crowded by her other scheme. She 
 could hardly wait to tell Laura what it was. She leaned 
 toward her in the dark. "Laura," she said, "I m 
 going to make mother go to the concert." 
 
 " What for ? " asked Laura, with a hideous direct 
 ness. Laura understood that mother did not care to 
 go, but she might have used all the arguments her 
 certainty could have brought to bear before Thyrza 
 would, in this hottest of moods, have heard her. And 
 when the arguments were concluded, some ecstatic 
 
 15 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 vision of the concert would have flamed before Thyrza 
 and she would have known anew that their mother 
 ought to go. 
 
 " I ve got it all planned/ said Thyrza rapidly. "It s 
 too far for her to walk." 
 
 " Why, mother walks a lot ! " 
 
 " She s too used up after her tailoring " 
 
 " Why, it s nothin to clip it over to the Corners ! " 
 
 " I m going to get Me Adam s dingle-cart and she 
 can climb into it, and you and I can haul her." 
 
 Laura used a phrase that had often been accorded 
 Thyrza in her soaring moods. 
 
 " Why, Thyrza, I should think you was crazy ! I 
 guess you never d hear the last of it." 
 
 "I should n t tell anybody." 
 
 " Well, would n t they see us ? Everybody s goin to 
 the Corners that night, an I guess they d pass us, 
 wouldn t they? folks in their horse and wagon, an 
 you an me haulm a dingle-cart ! " 
 
 " I should start as soon as t was dusk, and when 
 we got to the pinewood grove, I d haul the dingle- 
 cart in there, and let it stand round till we wanted to 
 go home." 
 
 Laura had a gleam of grim humor. 
 
 "I guess twould n t run away," she offered. 
 
 " And I shan t tell mother beforehand," said 
 Thyrza. She saw a form through the dusk and heard 
 the fall of hurried feet. This was their mother coming 
 nome. " If we told her, she d say she wouldn t let us. 
 So I m just going to have the dingle-cart ready at the 
 
 16 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 gate, and you ve got to carry her bonnet to her and 
 say, Now, mother, come along. Thyrza s ready and 
 there s the cart/ She ll do it for you." 
 
 "Maybe the tickets 11 be gone," ventured Laura 
 feebly. 
 
 " No, they won t. I m going to walk over to-mor 
 row after school and get two." 
 
 " We can t go in on two." 
 
 " Yes, we can." Her sense of consecration came 
 upon her, and she added with an exalted fervor, "You 
 and mother 11 go in. I shall wait for you outside. I 
 don t care much about singing." 
 
 " Why, Thyrza Tennant ! yes, you do. You most 
 cry sometimes when they sing When I m about to 
 die. An anyways," she planted her foot triumphantly 
 on fact, "where you goin to get the money?" 
 
 Thyrza turned upon her in the dusk. Her voice 
 trembled from a solemn recognition of what she had 
 to say. 
 
 " I m going to take it out of my missionary box." 
 
 "Why, Thyrza Tennant! I never heard such a 
 thing in my life. But you ve only got sixty cents." 
 
 Thyrza answered sweetly in the tone of the Chris 
 tian martyr, assured of after-recompense, 
 
 "I m going to take forty out of yours." 
 
 "Thyrza Tennant, that s stealin ! " 
 
 "No, it isn t," said Thyrza firmly. " I ve told you 
 beforehand, so now it isn t. Hush ! there s mother." 
 
 The next events followed as Thyrza had decreed. 
 After school she slipped away while Andy McAdam 
 
 17 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 was putting gravel in Laura s waterproof-hood, and 
 Kosie May stood by, in a gentle interest, enjoying 
 Laura s emotions, and started on a race for the Cor 
 ners. She ran until the blood beat in her ears and her 
 throat was dry, all in a passion, partly of joy over the 
 greatness of her enterprise, and partly of fear. Thyrza 
 was afraid of nearly everything not within her familiar 
 bounds of life. Her mind held dim corners of appre 
 hension. One favorite fear that beset her on lonely 
 roads, and that she accepted as part of her unchanging 
 lot, was that some day, out of the stillness and the 
 dusk, an elephant would chase her. The world beyond 
 the neighborhood was all an ecstasy of newness and 
 its terrors. Now she was afraid of the pinewood grove 
 as she ran through, and afraid of good old Mr. Mer 
 rill driving in his long-reach and never even guessing 
 there might be a little girl in the track to be bowed 
 to. Thyrza sat behind him in church, and knew every 
 line in the map of his wrinkled red neck; but now, 
 meeting him out of her accustomed paths, she cast one 
 awed glance at him and fled by on hurried feet. 
 
 When she got home that night, the two tickets 
 were tucked into her apron pocket, and her handker 
 chief was on top of them, and her little fist over that. 
 Laura gave her one hurried glance. Laura could 
 scarcely believe in such dash and abandon. As for 
 Thyrza, she felt the fearful joy of youth tasting for 
 the first time an unchartered liberty. She nodded tri 
 umphantly at Laura. Supper was over, and hers had 
 been saved for her on the end of the kitchen table. 
 
 18 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 Still keeping her hand in her apron pocket, she ran 
 to the table and took a large bite of johnny-cake 
 made with molasses, as she liked it. Her mother was 
 washing dishes at the sink; but now she turned in a 
 deferred anxiety. 
 
 " For mercy sake, Thyrza," she inquired, " where 
 you been?" 
 
 Thyrza choked upon her johnny-cake. Lying was 
 afar from her. She could not answer. 
 
 "You got your feet wet?" pursued Mrs. Tennant 
 anxiously. " You ain t been into the swamp anywheres 
 after flag, have you ? " 
 
 Thyrza s mind cleared now that it was apparent 
 she had to account only for damage done herself. 
 
 "No, mother, I ain t, truly I ain t," she averred, 
 lapsing, in the extremity of her candor, into an ab 
 horred verb. " I m just as dry see if I ain t." 
 
 But Mrs. Tennant had some buttonholes to finish 
 that night, and the pressing to do, and so long as her 
 two hostages were before her unimpaired, she had no 
 mind to spend on past occurrences. 
 
 Thyrza ate a greedy supper, exhilarated as she was 
 by her run in the moist, cool air, and the reaction 
 from her passing fear. It was beautiful to have had 
 the fears, since nothing had happened after all. When 
 she went into the pantry to carry away the bread, 
 Laura, waiting for the chance, fled after her. 
 
 " Let me see em," she besought, in an awed 
 w r hisper. 
 
 Thyrza brought out the two wonderful green slips 
 
 19 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 from her apron pocket and, incredulous herself of 
 their existence, flashed them, in one brief gesture, be 
 fore her sister s eyes. Laura caught her breath. 
 
 " Thyrza Tennant," she said, " if you ain t the 
 greatest ! " 
 
 This was two days before the concert, and the 
 sisters went about in that fevered interval almost 
 choked with the sense of their undertaking. The day 
 itself came with a lowering sky, and the night was 
 dark. When they rose from the- supper- table, Thyrza 
 could scarcely speak. Her eyes glittered and her 
 cheeks were a vivid red. Once her mother paused in 
 her goings to and fro between pantry and table to 
 lay a hand on her forehead and ask, 
 
 " You ain t feverish, be you ? " 
 
 Thyrza escaped the kindly touch, and clutched at 
 the tickets, now in the bottom of her dress pocket. She 
 had been very careful, but they were crumpled from 
 much handling. 
 
 " Are we goin to wear our best ? " Laura asked 
 her, in a whisper, when Mrs. Tennant had disappeared 
 again, to carry away the bread. 
 
 "We can t," Thyrza choked. "She d notice. It 
 don t make any difference, that don t." 
 
 It seemed to her that the grandeur of their mission 
 had lifted them even above considerations of cashmere 
 frocks trimmed with velvet ribbon. Thyrza felt that, 
 in some way, in spite of the happiness she foresaw in 
 giving her mother pleasure, she was now on the road 
 to sacrifice. 
 
 20 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 "I guess I ll go over to Mis Me Adam s a spell 
 an set with gran ma," came their mother s voice. 
 "Folks 11 be goin to the concert, an she s kinder 
 nervous when the neighborhood s away." 
 
 Thyrza made a mad rush from the kitchen and fell 
 upon her mother s aproned skirt. 
 
 " Don t you do it," she besought. " Don t you do 
 it. You 11 spoil it all." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant looked down at her in wonder. 
 
 "You re all beat out," said she. "No, mother 
 won t go if you don t feel well. You run right up, 
 Thyrza, an slip yourself into bed." 
 
 Thyrza, with a little sigh, seemed setting out to 
 obey. But in the entry she put on her school hat and 
 slipped the elastic under her chin. Laura had followed 
 her. 
 
 " In just a quarter of an hour," said Thyrza, in her 
 choking voice, "you tell her. You get her bonnet 
 for her, and the dingle-cart 11 be at the gate." 
 
 " You tell her yourself," said Laura, overcome 
 with the responsibilities of her position. " Tell her 
 
 now." 
 
 " No," said Thyrza sadly, her wretched past rising 
 like a nemesis before her. " She never d believe me. 
 She d say t was some of my folderol." She tugged 
 the front door softly open and stepped out. " Shut 
 it to easy," she whispered. " She 11 think I ve gone 
 to bed." 4 
 
 It was a very plain and pleasant way by daylight 
 to the McAdams shed, the walls bulging out from 
 
 21 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 age and the imminence of falling ; but in this misty 
 dusk all the long- familiar objects by the way took on 
 uncouth shapes like the ghosts of normal life. When 
 she crossed the orchard, even the gnarly apple trees 
 seemed to stretch out unfriendly arms to her, and she 
 stumbled in her fright over the wall where Andy had 
 put the flat stone that was so commodious by day. 
 The entrance to the shed was a way of terror. The 
 sleigh where she had played by the hour not a week 
 before seemed the dark cage of unruly spirits, and 
 the old chaise Parson McAdam had driven long ago, 
 and that would take the road no more, was a monster 
 of evil shape. There was the little cart on the outskirts 
 of these horrors. She knew where to put her hands on 
 it ; but when she had drawn it out, she felt at once 
 that this was the utmost she could do. The blood was 
 in her face and a sob rose in her throat. When some 
 one spoke at her side, she screamed piercingly. 
 
 " Aw," said Andy, " what ye doin of ? Give me 
 hold o that, won t ye ? " 
 
 And immediately she was walking away with Andy, 
 each of them tugging at a shaft. 
 
 " T ain t goin to rain," said Andy presently, on a 
 smoother level. " You need n t pick it up." 
 
 "Pick what up?" 
 
 " That brush you ve got piled up in the pines. 
 Wa n t that what you took the cart for ? " 
 
 Thyrza stopped and threw her weight on the shafts. 
 
 " Aw, come," said Andy, " don t go to draggin 
 back that way. I can t haul you n the cart, too." 
 
 22 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 " Andy," said Thyrza, " promise me you 11 leave 
 me alone the minute you get the cart to our 
 
 gate." 
 
 " I was goin along to the pines an help pick up," 
 said Andy, aggrieved. " F you don t want me to, I 
 need n t." 
 
 " Andy, I m going to have me a bunch o snap- 
 crackers Fourth o July. If you 11 leave me at the 
 gate and run home and never look back I 11 give em 
 to you. I ll give you every one." 
 
 " F I want snap-crackers, I guess I can git em 
 thout comin to a girl," said Andy manfully. " You 
 can haul your brush yourself, f you want to. S no- 
 thin to me." He vanished into the darkness and left 
 her trembling in an unfriendly world. 
 
 She put all her strength into the work and tugged 
 first on one shaft and then on the other, and so, in its 
 zigzag way, the car of sacrifice rolled on. Another 
 little figure sped forward to her out of the dark. 
 
 " Thyrza," cried Laura, in the tone of high ex 
 citement, " she says it s all foolishness. She won t 
 believe you re here, nor about the cart nor the concert 
 nor anything." 
 
 " Did you get her bonnet for her ? " asked Thyrza, 
 in an agony. 
 
 "I laid it out on the entry table an I told her 
 twas there. But all she d do was to hang up the 
 dish-cloth and say, i I believe I 11 run over to gran ma 
 McAdam s a minute, after all. 
 
 There came a sound of wheels and a beating of 
 
 23 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 hoofs. A buggy rolled by, some one craning a neck 
 to discern the children in the darkness. 
 
 " She s got to come ! " cried Thyrza. " She s got 
 to come now. We 11 be late as it is. Laura ! there she 
 is coming." 
 
 The slight figure in the familiar shawl and bonnet 
 was speeding down the path. All in a hurried moment 
 Thyrza s trouble turned to joy. 
 
 " mother, get in ! " she cried. "Oh, ain t it splen 
 did ! I m so glad." 
 
 While she spoke the ascent was made, and she, who 
 had tested the weight of the chariot, knew there was 
 no time to lose. 
 
 " Ketch hold, Laura," she cried. " You take one 
 shaft. I 11 take t other." 
 
 Laura plunged to her post, and down the little incline 
 beyond the house they went whirling. Then came a 
 rise of ground, the wheels were stayed and they threw 
 themselves forward and tugged and strained. What 
 sound was it that rose behind them? A low and 
 happy crooning of a desolate air: "Mary across the 
 wild moor." Laura felt only a stolid and rather un 
 pleasant surprise. To Thyrza the world turned cruel. 
 She heard herself crying aloud, " T is n t mother ! 
 T is n t mother! It s aunt Ellie." There they stood, 
 the ruins of their little dream about them, and aunt 
 Ellie sat in the cart and sang. Laura recovered 
 healthily, almost at once. 
 
 "We ain t gone far," she said. "Let s go back 
 an get mother now. T ain t too late." 
 
 24 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 " It is too late/ cried Thyrza. Her voice sounded 
 like the wailing of the lost. "It s too late ! " 
 
 " No, t ain t either," persisted Laura. 
 
 Thyrza clutched her in the dark. 
 
 " Laura," she said, " God meant it." 
 
 "You mustn t swear," said Laura. The darkness 
 was beginning to tell on her. 
 
 Thyrza had soared from the abyss to another height 
 of sacrifice. 
 
 "God didn t mean mother should have it," she 
 announced. "He meant aunt Ellie should. But she s 
 got to walk. We couldn t any more pull this to the 
 Corners " 
 
 "No, course we couldn t," said Laura. Her hard 
 little hands felt strained and torn. She rubbed them 
 ruefully. 
 
 " You get out, aunt Ellie," Thyrza called, in the 
 blithe tone of one who has learned a higher will. 
 "We aren t going to ride, aunt Ellie. We re going 
 to walk." 
 
 Aunt Ellie stepped lightly down, and slipped her 
 hand into Thyrza s, and the three went on. Thyrza 
 was absorbed in her certainty that this was sacrifice; 
 but presently she heard a little sulky whisper at her 
 side. 
 
 "Thyrza! Thyrza! You goin to let her go ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Thyrza. 
 
 Aunt Ellie, flying along with her odd little trot, 
 heard nothing. She was crooning " Mary across the 
 wild moor." 
 
 25 
 
THE STORY OF THYEZA 
 
 "Thyrza," came the whisper again. It seemed now 
 to be not Laura but the devil. " She 11 look awful 
 funny." 
 
 Thyrza saw at once that Laura s life was not to be 
 enriched by the adventure. This was her quest and 
 hers alone. 
 
 "You needn t go in," she said gloriously. "I m 
 going myself." 
 
 The little figure melted away. Thyrza heard its 
 pattering steps lighter and lighter on the homeward 
 track. Laura had deserted her, and she and aunt 
 Ellie were going on and on, hand in hand, along a 
 path that would never end. Wagons passed them. 
 Once somebody called out, "Ride?" but she could 
 not answer. She only held aunt Ellie s little hand the 
 tighter. Then it began to rain. 
 
 "Oh ! " cried Thyrza sharply, "you ve got on mo 
 ther s bonnet. Take it off, aunt Ellie. Take it off." 
 
 On the instant, aunt Ellie obeyed. 
 
 " Give it to me," said Thyrza. " I 11 put my skirt 
 over it." So they continued, and the rain fell on 
 them. Once Thyrza realized that a bonnet string had 
 got under her feet, and that she was treading on 
 it, but she kept saying to herself, agonized and yet 
 exalted, "It s the best I can do. It s the best I 
 can do." 
 
 And then they came into the square in front of the 
 hall, and there were lanterns and groups of shawled 
 and dripping people, and Thyrza knew this was the 
 mount of sacrifice. Still holding aunt Ellie s hand, 
 
 26 
 
THE SACRIFICE 
 
 she passed into the vestibule of the hall, and there 
 unloosed the clinging grasp, to find the tickets in her 
 pocket. But in that instant she saw other people 
 staring familiar faces now, though in this crisis they 
 seemed to be the masks of enemies and turned 
 herself to look. There stood aunt Ellie, a picture of 
 vague delight. The rain had washed her face into a 
 moist rosiness, and her hair no longer kept its ring of 
 curls. It was cut in uneven jags close to her poll. 
 The rain had sleeked it into little threads, and tiny 
 lines of it fringed her forehead. Thyrza forgot that 
 the neighbors were looking on, and that the gentry 
 of the Corners was also there to see. 
 
 " Aunt Ellie," she breathed, " you Ve cut off your 
 hair." 
 
 Aunt Ellie, with a satisfied and knowing smile, put 
 up a hand to her sleek crown. 
 
 " Not wear curls ! " she murmured, as one demand 
 ing praise. "Not wear curls ! " 
 
 Thyrza paused for one blind instant. Then she put 
 out her hand and took that other waiting one, thrust 
 her tickets vaguely at the door-keeper and went into 
 the lighted hall. She knew that some one led them 
 to seats near the front, that there was a semicircular 
 crowd of people on the platform, with Hattie Ann 
 among them, and that the bass-viol and fiddles were 
 tuning with a call that sickened and excited her. 
 There was a great deal of talking and rustling here 
 and there, and by and by it was quiet and a chorus 
 of voices began, 
 
 27 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " my beloved ! " 
 
 Thyrza had never felt anything like the joy and 
 pain of it, the joy of riding on the waves of sound, 
 and the sharp pang of human misery. And suddenly, 
 as she was thinking how strange it was and how queer 
 everybody looked and how large Hattie Ann s head 
 was, and how it kept growing larger and larger, the 
 hall began to darken. Then Barton Gorse, the young 
 man who had come to spend the summer in his 
 grandfather s house, left his seat across the way, and 
 picked her up in his arms. Thyrza dropped her head 
 on his shoulder with a sense that, although she could 
 neither breathe nor see, things were going to be dif 
 ferent now he had come ; and so he carried her away. 
 
II 
 
 THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 J_T was a habit among the children of Leafy Road 
 to make play-houses in the highway along by the 
 fence. They outlined their habitations with stones or 
 sticks, and moved in beautiful furniture of the carved 
 bark of trees. Sometimes there were chairs resembling 
 convenient flat stones tumbled off the walls at great 
 risk to little toes, or tugged thither by hot and pant 
 ing house-holders. Under the two great maples that 
 were all gold every autumn, and never by any chance 
 varied by a red leaf, were three play-houses. The first, 
 after leaving the schoolhouse on the road to the Cor- 
 
 o 
 
 ners, belonged to Thyrza, the second to Rosie May, 
 and the third to Laura. Rosie May had chosen the 
 second because it backed upon an upright stone that 
 was nice to lean against ; and though Thyrza had dis 
 covered the stone the moment it had been put there 
 by Judge Gorse, who was very particular about the 
 look of his fields and had found the boys were always 
 toppling off the round stones from the wall at this one 
 point, she had borne without question to see it taken 
 away from her. Thyrza had still no way of telling how 
 Rosie May made her feel. None of her thoughts were 
 ever known to her little blond enemy, because Rosie 
 May was the last living creature before whom she 
 could be her simple self. Yet she always had a feeling 
 
 29 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 as if she were standing bare and shivering for Rosie 
 May to stick pins in. Her feet seemed to be unshod 
 for Rosie May to stamp on, her hair seemed to be fly 
 ing over to Rosie May to be pulled ; and yet the little 
 blond girl never did more than look at her critically 
 and make her feel how thin she was, how dark and 
 ugly, and that her nose had freckles. Thyrza had a 
 feeling that sometime there would come a day when 
 Rosie May would say all she thought, and it would 
 be terrible. She was afraid of rousing that hitherto 
 mute something which should cause her adversary to 
 do her worst. So her schooldays were bitter to her and 
 playtime an anguish of apprehension. 
 
 She could remember one day in winter when several 
 of the mothers went to pass the afternoon with Mrs. 
 Me Adam, taking their little girls with them. The 
 mothers settled in the best room to their knitting and 
 seaming, and the children were sent out into the 
 kitchen, with the kindly injunction to play. Thyrza 
 went with a sick heart, a remembered misery she 
 tasted all her life, to think how sure Rosie May was 
 to make her miserable or funny before the afternoon s 
 ordeal was over. She remembered looking back as she 
 left the room, a maiden led to sacrifice, and thinking 
 with passionate envy of the happy fate allotted to all 
 old ladies who may sit and sew and even be silent by 
 the hour without incurring the ridicule of their kind. 
 What did happen that afternoon she never remem 
 bered. Rosie May was not more hateful than usual, 
 though the path that led beside hers had been more than 
 
 30 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 ordinarily thorny. At that time Thyrza had recognized 
 what Rosie May was in her life. All these alarms and 
 miseries were hidden from Laura, who had a general 
 idea that Kosie May was inclined to be hateful, and 
 that Thyrza liked to keep away from her; but if she 
 had realized the warfare in her sister s breast, she 
 would no doubt, with the utmost simplicity, have put 
 out her stout little fist and smitten Rosie May full 
 sore. 
 
 One warm sweet day in vacation, Thyrza suddenly 
 felt like playing hard. She wanted to go very far and 
 find new things, or to accept the old ones with a dif 
 ference. The schoolhouse seemed a long distance away, 
 as it always did in summer, and the thought of the 
 deserted play-houses, their walls knocked about by 
 wandering horses and marauding boys, appealed to her. 
 
 Laura, with the sense of the sleepy day working a 
 different alchemy in her, was sitting on the pigpen 
 fence with Andy. They had each a shingle, and each 
 was scratching the back of a pig, to the great increase 
 of porcine content. When Thyrza came round the 
 corner, Andy was chanting his own prowess and the 
 derelictions of gran ther s gun, preserved by grandma, 
 a terrifying heritage. 
 
 " Kick ! " he was interjecting with scorn. " Why, 
 last time Sammy Fiske an me went out pa tridge- 
 shootin " Here he caught sight of Thyrza and 
 paused, not from embarrassment, but for lack of 
 matter and the realization that she gave convenient 
 pretext for a halt. Thyrza threw herself at the fence, 
 
 31 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 and selecting a shingle from the supply kept ever at 
 hand, began using it absently, yet with vigor, on an 
 unfriended pig. 
 
 66 Say," she began, including Andy within the sweep 
 of her eye, " le s go someYs." 
 
 Thyrza had a correct vocabulary, devoted to the 
 moments when she wished to lead an intellectual life 
 or abase herself in moral sacrifice ; but when she 
 sought to beguile Laura and Andy into expeditions 
 she felicitously used their language. Andy looked 
 up at her briefly. He never seemed to see Thyrza, 
 perhaps because she was the youngest and had given 
 him and Laura many uncertain moments, in the course 
 of their lives, by offer of her company. 
 
 " Nowher s to go," he replied as briefly. 
 
 Thyrza had caught the trail of the talk on her 
 arrival. 
 
 " You could take your gran ther s gun," she sug 
 gested, " and we could go over n the pines and shoot 
 at a mark." 
 
 " Mark be jiggered ! " said Andy, who could hardly 
 own to poor feminine things that grandma kept the 
 gun " up attic," after having caused a neighbor to 
 make it impotent by divorcing stock and barrel. " I 
 guess if you d once drawed bead on a moose or an elk 
 you would n t talk about shootin at no marks." 
 
 " There ain t any moose round here," said Laura 
 quietly. 
 
 " Ain t there ? " inquired Andy, with gloom. 
 " Well, I d like to know why there ain t ? " 
 
 32 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 Nobody could tell him, and Thyrza, who was ready 
 to believe where she admired as she did Andy, imme 
 diately felt that there were no moose because of his 
 personal valor. But she put the question by. 
 
 " Well," she ventured, " we could go someVs any 
 ways. We could go down to the play-houses." 
 
 "Huh!" said Andy. "I can see through that. 
 Kosie May s gone by to the Corners, an you know 
 she won t be there to make you stan round." 
 
 Thyrza was too entirely delighted to repel the 
 charge. 
 
 " Has she gone, Andy? " she cried. "Honest and 
 true ? Laura, come on down ! " 
 
 Laura obediently left the fence and dropped her 
 shingle on the pile. She was placidly ready to play 
 wherever she should be called. The pigs, after one 
 expectant moment, gave a grunt and sauntered to a 
 cooler slough. The spell of the morning was broken 
 for them all, and even Andy lounged away from his 
 perch, condescending to wait for them with an indif 
 ference which was lordly and, Thyrza felt, very be 
 coming to him. She made haste to follow, and while 
 Laura walked at her side kept urging in an under 
 tone, "You ask him. You ask him." 
 
 Andy was whistling with a piercing bravery, and 
 he seemed not to hear. All their confidences, he im 
 plied, were of the things girls were likely to say, 
 which are of no importance whatever. But Laura 
 had come up with him and was obediently reciting, 
 " Come on down, Andy." 
 
 33 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 He reflected rapidly. It was vacation, and he knew 
 where every boy was likely to be at this time of day. 
 Nobody would see him playing with girls, and if he 
 went home grandmother was sure to set him to bring 
 ing in wood. 
 
 "All right," said he graciously. "I ll go for half 
 an hour or so." 
 
 They set off down the road together, but not until 
 Thyrza had scurried into the house and returned with 
 something knobby, veiled obscurely by a paper bag. 
 
 "What s that?" asked Laura, though without 
 much interest. 
 
 " Oh, you 11 see," said Thyrza, and they went on, 
 Laura dismissing the mystery from her mind because 
 it seemed natural that she could find out when the 
 time came, and Andy, against reason, hoping it meant 
 cake. 
 
 Two hours of the forenoon went very fast. Andy, 
 in spite of himself, got interested in play-houses. 
 The girls had been such fools as builders. They had 
 put the stone arm-chair and sofa in the sun, where 
 all their leaf-dressed dolls would wither. They had 
 laid their foundations catacornered when they might 
 as well have had them straight. Of all things Andy 
 liked to take a stick for measurement and pretend 
 it was a foot-rule, and he loved to carry a twig in 
 his mouth in the certainty that it was really a nail 
 and that he should presently drive it somewhere, 
 straight and swift. It was his own particular game. 
 The girls, he was sure, never suspected that private 
 
 34 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 pastime. They thought he was simply sauntering 
 about, rebuking their foolishness; whereas he was 
 really having a remarkably good time. 
 
 When the houses were decently in order, the girls 
 breathed hard as they knew their mother would do, 
 and said, " There ! " Then Andy looked at the forlorn 
 little plot that lay between their reconstructed habi 
 tations. 
 
 "Goin to straighten that up?" he asked. It was 
 the tone of the carpenter, but they did not know it. 
 He had almost said, "jack it up," because that was 
 what had been done to the old house his gran ther 
 bought once and prepared for summer boarders, only 
 to lose thirty-seven dollars on it. 
 
 Thyrza blanched as at mention of a ghost. 
 
 "Oh, no!" said she. "That s Rosie May s." 
 
 "Rosie May ain t here," leered Andy. He looked 
 like the carpenter wanting a job, or the carpenter on 
 strike. Thyrza gazed at him in the earnest beseeching 
 of one who hears sacrilege and hopes she may never 
 be called upon to listen to it again. 
 
 "Andy Me Adam," said she, "you mustn t any 
 more touch anything in that play-house, you must n t 
 even set your foot inside of it." She paused, all 
 her apprehension before Rosie May and her sense of 
 play-house honor ranged together against him. 
 
 Andy took one step toward the forbidden terri 
 tory. 
 
 "Who s afraid of Rosie May?" he inquired. 
 
 But at that moment Laura, who had been looking 
 
 35 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 on and judging from her own sense of play-house 
 rights, cut in with an instinctive feminine wile. 
 
 "Come over here, Andy. Come into my house. I 
 got a sopsavine." 
 
 It was nearly noon and Andy was hungry. He 
 knew something of Laura, her calm, slow justice and 
 her way of doing exactly what she said. If he defied 
 her now, she was capable of withholding largess. So 
 he went slowly into her compound, with the air of 
 finding it a tiresome thing to do, and looked, yet as 
 if he were not looking, for the apple. There it was, 
 divided into quarters, on the stone dining-table. Laura 
 had borrowed his knife, after he had whittled out his 
 two-foot rule, and quietly prepared her banquet for 
 Mm. There was no thought of herself, or of Thyrza. 
 
 "You set down," said she, in a grave imitation of 
 her mother s manner. "There! I ain t a mite hun 
 gry. I ve had a kind of a headache all day." 
 
 So Andy sat down, knowing he should not receive 
 the apple unless he took it in the way she bade, and 
 Laura, walking back and forth from her stone cook- 
 stove to the table, on imaginary errands, tasted of 
 happiness. Andy was thinking of the apple, but she 
 was thinking of him. Thyrza, alone in her play-house, 
 looked over and saw them. At once she understood. 
 She knew what Laura was playing, whether Laura 
 knew it or not. Andy was Laura s husband, and they 
 were having dinner after his work. At first Thyrza 
 smiled, because it was pleasant to her to see Laura 
 so cosy. She felt quite grown up herself, and as a 
 
 36 
 If- 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 mother might whose children are content. But in a 
 moment a wind seemed to come up in her and sweep 
 her acquiescence away, leaving a bare house of life for 
 evil desires to riot in. She was angry with Laura for 
 painting that little picture of happiness, and furious 
 with Andy for making part of it. She felt bereft, 
 with a rage of loneliness that was new to her. 
 
 " Andy ! " she called. Andy ! " 
 
 But Andy ate with wily fastidiousness, because 
 that would please Laura best and ensure him the last 
 morsel ; he did not hear. 
 
 " Andy ! " she called again. 
 
 Even Laura failed to hear. She was standing near 
 the cook-stove, with a happy, absent look on her face, 
 really thinking it was time to dish up the beet-greens. 
 But to Thyrza the look seemed to be saying, "Andy 
 is here in my house. It s his house and mine." 
 
 The fruit was eaten now, and the recipient of tribute 
 lolled into an easier attitude, having nothing more to 
 gain. Not for him were symbolic beet-greens on an im 
 aginary platter, and when Laura somewhat timidly of 
 fered them, knowing their value in his eyes, he only said, 
 " Huh ! " and thinking by implication of dinner, rose 
 to saunter off. But Thyrza was calling him. The cover 
 was off the mysterious parcel she had brought, and 
 now she stood holding it in plain view, not looking at 
 it herself, not even offering it to him, but like a guar 
 dian of a bribe whose value is incalculable. 
 
 " Andy," she was calling. " See what I got here." 
 
 Laura, too, saw it, and with the dismay of one who 
 
 37 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 beholds household gods reft from their place and on 
 the way to desecration. 
 
 " Thyrza Tennant ! " she cried. " You ve been an 
 got the stere scope off the parlor table. Why, Thyrza 
 Tennant ! " 
 
 "I don t care f I have," responded Thyrza, now 
 entirely reckless. She was exhilarated by her own dash 
 and daring in having abstracted the stereoscope and 
 its dozen pictures for this purpose, though the need 
 had not visualized itself to her when she did it. She 
 only remembered then that the McAdams had no ster 
 eoscope, and that this, in some moment of dearth, 
 would serve as bait for Andy. " Andy, come on over." 
 
 Andy came. In a moment he was sitting, not on 
 the sofa, as conventionality would have proposed, but 
 on the din ing-table, with his legs stretched out, re 
 garding the picture of Niagara Falls. The balance of 
 pleasure had shifted. Thyrza was happy now, and she 
 did not think of Laura. She stood at his side radi 
 antly, taking views after he had done with them and 
 furnishing him with fresh ones. This modesty of 
 handmaidenship was mostly imitative. She had seen 
 Laura exercise it to the life, and swift feminine in 
 stincts had assembled to show her what she also might 
 enjoy. Laura, in her own house, was meekly sitting 
 down to mend a balm-of-Gilead-leaf apron. 
 
 A little way down the road a wagon had stopped. 
 It was the Peltons , halting at Mrs. Daniel Simpson s 
 gate to leave her molasses- jug which they had taken 
 to town to be filled. Thence Rosie May had spied the 
 
 38 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 three figures alarmingly near her play-house and had 
 at once speciously besought permission to go and play 
 with Thyrza and Laura. 
 
 " Mercy sakes, child ! " said her mother, a blond 
 lady whose ankles seemed to be growing small as she 
 enlarged, and who regarded life querulously from her 
 inability to " get round/ " what you want to go an 
 green up your best dress for ? You set right still 
 an it 11 be dinner-time fore you know it." 
 
 But Rosie May had climbed dextrously over the 
 wheel, and was speeding down the road to her threat 
 ened homestead. Her mother gave one despairing 
 glance after her. and her father said, " Well ! well ! " 
 Then they turned into the cross-road and went slowly 
 on to their own house, not far away. 
 
 The family in the play-house had been unaware 
 of this, and so it was with entire surprise that they 
 heard Rosie May s most plaguing tone breaking on 
 the air. 
 
 " Playin with the girls ! Andy Me Adam playin 
 with the girls ! 
 
 " Andy, Andy, so they say, 
 Goes a-courtin night an day, 
 Sword an pistol by his side. 
 Thyrza Tennant shall be his bride. " 
 
 Andy heard it, and grew deeply, miserably red. He 
 saw with a prophetic vision how that chant would echo 
 down his coming years. When school began, Rosie 
 May would assemble the girls about her, and tell the 
 story of finding Andy "playin house" with Thyrza 
 
 39 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Tennant. The girls would never forget, and at such 
 times as he, in a wholesome assertion of his free man 
 hood, was neither giving them lozenges nor haul 
 ing them uphill, they would raise the strident chorus 
 of " Andy McAdam and the play-house." But he 
 sat still and looked at views with a fine indifference. 
 Thyrza stood beside him for one moment, all flaming 
 wrath. She, too, foresaw the future. More, she saw 
 Rosie May, and at last she was not afraid of her. 
 As an avenging messenger, as one in a dream, she 
 laid the views down on the grass and stepped over 
 into Rosie May s house, and there she fell upon walls 
 and furniture and wrecked them. Thyrza did her 
 wrecking, not in heat, but slowly and with a terrible 
 precision. She gathered up the sticks that were the 
 wall, and laid them in a neat pile at her play-house 
 door. Rosie May shrieked aloud. 
 
 " You re spoilin my house ! you re spoilin my 
 house! Laura, she s spoilin my house." 
 
 Laura, white with earnestness and horror over this 
 breaking of the play-house law, left her own domain 
 and took a little run to Thyrza s side. 
 
 " You must n t," she kept saying, as if she recalled 
 her sister to a better self. " Why, Thyrza, only see 
 what you re doin ! " 
 
 Thyrza, white and calm, kept on doing. She col 
 lected the stones that were the tables and chairs, and 
 with great difficulty replaced them on the top of the 
 wall. They did not seem to her heavy. The call of a 
 great task subdued all lesser pains. One small, square 
 
 40 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 stone, much prized by Rosie May as a footstool, she 
 cast deftly over the wall into the field, and only felt 
 a little surprise that, being square, it should roll and 
 bounce so far. 
 
 Andy, up to this moment, had stood in awestricken 
 silence. Now it became evident to him that this was 
 woman s war, and he affected to catch sight of a squir 
 rel on the walnut over the way, ran briskly out into 
 the road to shy a stone at him, watched the tree 
 absorbedly a moment, and then sauntered off, hands 
 in his pockets, whistling cheerily. Andy was moved 
 by a fearful pleasure, and he made up his mind to slip 
 behind the old elder-bush further on and see them 
 fight it out. Only it did seem hard luck to have the 
 quarrel about him. 
 
 Rosie May was crying hysterically. She devoted 
 herself to the statement of obvious facts. 
 
 " You ve spoiled my house," she sobbed, over and 
 over. " You ve took an pulled it to pieces an piled 
 it up in a pile." 
 
 Devilish intelligence animated Thyrza. She knew 
 just what to answer, to leave Rosie May not one stone 
 upon another. Seeking in the treasury of her imagi 
 nation, she found the dart to slay her enemy s domes 
 tic peace. She placed herself in front of Rosie May and 
 spoke with an awful clearness while Laura, in the back 
 ground, heard and trembled. 
 
 " You have n t any house," said Thyrza, drawing 
 upon her clearest wells of English, the more to quell 
 her adversary, for Rosie May said "ain t" all day 
 
 41 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 long. " Don t you know what those sticks are ? They 
 are my pile of wood now. People tear down old houses 
 and burn em up. I ve torn down your house, and I m 
 going to burn it in my kitchen stove. You thought it 
 was your furniture I put up on the wall. It wasn t. It 
 was stones, just stones. You haven t any furniture. 
 You only had stones, and now they re gone, same as 
 your house." 
 
 Rosie May looked at her with wet eyes widened by 
 horror. She had accepted play-houses with dolls and 
 mullein gowns as something in the nature of things. 
 Now Thyrza had made them not to be. Neither of the 
 sisters had ever seen her cry, and Laura felt a wave 
 of pity for the grief so strangely emphasized by the 
 child s best clothes, her leghorn hat with its pink buds 
 and the wide blue streamers " down behind." Thyrza 
 had no pity. She moved a step nearer her fallen ad 
 versary and looked her in the eye. Probably Thyrza 
 was never in her life to know a keener sensation of 
 sheer temperamental triumph than at the instant when 
 she looked Rosie May in the eye and knew she had 
 conquered her. 
 
 " I 11 tell you something else," she said, relapsing 
 slightly into her daily speech. " If you was to dare 
 me, I d snatch off your hat and stamp on it, and I d 
 tear the Hamburg off your petticoat." 
 
 Rosie May shrieked and fled, and Thyrza, while the 
 distracted pink dot raced down the road, and Andy 
 crashed into the bushes and over the wall lest Rosie 
 May should know he had been listening, turned to 
 
 42 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 comfort her sister. Laura looked as if one universal 
 tragedy had overwhelmed them. 
 
 "0 Thyrza ! " she breathed. " Thyrza Tennant ! " 
 
 Thyrza had by no means yet fallen from the height 
 of her exaltation. 
 
 "Must be most dinner-time/ she said, from a lofty 
 calm. " Here, you take the instrument and I 11 take 
 the views." 
 
 Laura accepted her apportionment meekly and 
 trudged home with heavy steps. She wondered what 
 Mrs. Pelton would say, and whether Rosie May would 
 ever give Thyrza another easy moment. But Thyrza, 
 her head in the air, stepped on like a queen. 
 
 The day passed and nothing happened. Thyrza 
 looked at least for a thunder-shower, which she had 
 grown to consider an expression of feeling on the part 
 of a capricious God. That was a working theory in 
 Leafy Road. When the clouds darkened in the west 
 feminine conversation took on a conciliatory tinge. 
 No one criticised a neighbor, and no one referred to 
 anything ecclesiastical save in tones of highest re 
 verence. The habit of life changed. Chairs were set 
 in tumblers, and children were perched on them gin 
 gerly, because, though it was desirable that the chil 
 dren should not be struck, it was also unnecessary that 
 the tumblers should be broken. Sometimes all the 
 female members of the family piled together upon a 
 feather-bed, thence addressing adjurations to the male 
 who would sit by the window, and perhaps even smoke 
 his pipe. Thyrza looked for some such significant fin- 
 
 43 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 ish to the day ; but the west shone clear and even the 
 winds were still. Her exaltation had lasted, though 
 now it plunged into the depth of sacrifice. She got 
 out some squares of patchwork and sat down by the 
 kitchen window, sewing " over V over," to the amaze 
 ment and admiration of her mother, who had every 
 reason for regarding such a departure as portentous. 
 When Mrs. Tennant rose from her chair to get supper, 
 she paused by Thyrza to say, almost shamefacedly, 
 because it was bad for children to be praised, 
 "You ve been a real good little lady all this after 
 
 noon." 
 
 Thyrza shook her head renouncingly, and sewed 
 the faster, with minute and accurate stitches. Her 
 mother could not know that she had given up the 
 lesser world, moved by a consciousness of her own 
 splendor as a leader. 
 
 Laura said nothing that afternoon and did nothing. 
 She sat on the front step, sick at heart, and waited for 
 Mrs. Pelton, probably holding Rosie May by the hand, 
 to come toddling in on her weak ankles and cry for 
 vengeance. But still nothing happened, nor did she 
 and Thyrza, full of their guilty secret, exchange a 
 word about the awful chances. The summer day 
 passed and they sat on the steps and had their bread 
 and milk. Then their mother got up, yawned widely, 
 and wound the clock. In a moment more she was clos 
 ing the doors, and they all went up to bed in the dark. 
 Thyrza s heart was beating fast. She had felt that 
 even at the last moment Mrs. Pelton would appear; 
 
 44 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 but the silence of the world seemed like acquiescence 
 in her own right to judge and rule. Rosie May s play 
 house had been destroyed, and it was well done. 
 
 It was about two o clock when Thyrza s eyes came 
 open with a snap as if something had called her. The 
 room was full of moonlight, the brightest light, it 
 seemed to her, that she had ever seen when the sun 
 was gone. Even her lumpy blue pincushion, that 
 Laura had " worked" for her with much difficulty one 
 Christmas, was outlined on the bureau, and she could 
 see the shining track of pins that made her name. The 
 night was august and wonderful, but it was terrifying. 
 At once Thyrza knew why she was awake. She had 
 spoiled Rosie May s play-house, and even the night 
 had no shelter for her. Laura at her side was breath 
 ing softly. When Laura was asleep she seemed to go 
 quite away from this world, so that her mother, when 
 she lay with her, sometimes used to put out a hand 
 to see that the child lived. Yet Thyrza dared not 
 wake her. Laura would be a comfort, but Thyrza 
 was outlawed and must look for no assuaging. Her 
 heart beat harder than it had even in her triumph, 
 and she knew at once that her expiation must be com 
 pleted alone. She slipped out of bed and found the 
 chair where her clothes lay, and as she stood dress 
 ing she forgot her crime in the certainty of being 
 called to a high and dreadful tusk. When she had put 
 on her dress in a fantastic fashion, because she could 
 not button it in the back and was obliged to slip her 
 arms in as best she could and fasten it " hindside be- 
 
 45 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 fore/ as she and Laura sometimes did when they were 
 playing grown-up, she crept to the doorway. But there 
 she stood a moment and looked at Laura. It seemed 
 to her that she was leaving all that life held dear. She 
 might have been going to be a missionary on India s 
 coral strand, the beautiful pink shore she longed to 
 see, or to the pole in search of an explorer-husband. 
 These were possibilities she often contemplated, and 
 now they paled beside what she really had to do. The 
 stairs creaked under her foot, and once she heard her 
 mother cough, with an alarming wide-awake sound. 
 That hurried her, and in a moment she had opened 
 the outer door and sped down the garden walk. It 
 was a still world, and a terrible one, chiefly because 
 it was so light. It was clear enough to see in, yet it 
 held more than the horrors of the dark. For although 
 she could put her hand on anything, almost as if it 
 were day, the things of the night must be there as 
 well, conscious of her every step. 
 
 She had reached the gate, and a dog barked, 
 Me Adam s old Rove and it did not seem to be the 
 bark of Rove, but of all dogdom abroad in righteous 
 guardianship. She fled up the path as silently as she 
 had gone, and paused, her hand on the door. A sound 
 came from within, a little happy sound of aunt Ellie 
 in her bedroom crooning herself to sleep. It was the 
 old song, " Mary across the wild moor." Sometimes, 
 even at midnight, it rose in a strenuous wail ; but no 
 one minded, either the Tennants who heard and turned 
 to go to sleep again, or a passing neighbor who 
 
 46 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 might not even pause to say, " That s half-witted 
 Ellie." Until now it had seemed to Thyrza also like 
 a personal possession of aunt Ellie s, or a habit as 
 vital to her as breath. Now it was more. It was 
 friendly and comforting. She stole across the front 
 of the house and turned the corner to the bedroom 
 window. 
 
 " Aunt Ellie/ she whispered. 
 
 Aunt Ellie was there in a moment. 
 
 "That you?" she asked confidentially, though 
 Thyrza was aware it was only a form of words. 
 
 "Aunt Ellie," said Thyrza, "you get on your 
 clothes and come down to the gate. I want you to 
 take a walk with me." 
 
 Aunt Ellie seemed to be dancing in the extremity 
 of her pleasure. She did not cease to sing, but it was 
 in gayer key. Thyrza went back again to the gate, 
 and presently a little figure, all in white, had joined 
 her there. 
 
 " Why, aunt Ellie," she whispered, "you ve got on 
 your nightie." 
 
 "Short gownd an petticoat !" laughed the gleeful 
 voice. "Short gownd an petticoat ! " 
 
 Thyrza took her hand and they went forth, trust 
 ing each other and the night. This was the road she had 
 taken that morning in her merry mood, the stereo 
 scope under her arm and Andy sauntering abreast. 
 Now it was a fearsome and beautiful way, full of un 
 couth shadows and wonderful light. And it was the 
 way of repentance. Old Rove heard them, and pat- 
 
 47 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 tered down the path a yard or two, with a volley of 
 barks. Thyrza walked the slower. When she was 
 afraid, she never could run lest panic overtake her 
 and she dash herself into the abyss of fear itself. Then 
 aunt Ellie broke out in a shrill, wild adaptation of her 
 favorite stave, and Thyrza tightened her grasp on the 
 little hand. 
 
 "Sing soft, aunt Ellie," she whispered. 
 
 It would have been of no use to tell her not to sing 
 at all. So aunt Ellie sang soft. 
 
 o 
 
 They came to the play-house, and Thyrza led her 
 little mate to a flat stone she knew. 
 
 "Sit there/ she bade her. "Don t you move. I ll 
 be through soon s I can." 
 
 Aunt Ellie sat down, and beat a noiseless tune to 
 her song, and Thyrza, in a wild haste, set about the re 
 building of Rosie May s house. There was the pile of 
 sticks so lately turned to fire-wood. She knew their 
 place. How often had she looked at them and hated 
 them for lying in a certain way because Rosie May 
 had put them there. Now they were going back again. 
 They fell into form as marvelously as the foundations 
 of the Temple of Solomon. The stones that had been 
 the tables and chairs were rigorously disposed, and 
 the last and heaviest task of all was that of seeking 
 out the little square footstool in the pasture where 
 she had thrown it. The stone had bounced a long 
 way. It seemed merry of it that morning, but hateful 
 at night. She was afraid in the unfriendly pasture, 
 and once there was a rustling, as if aunt Ellie had 
 
 48 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 started to go home. But at last her hands fell upon 
 the little stone, and she hugged it to her breast for a 
 minute, and felt she loved it. Then it was dropped 
 into place and the task was done. Aunt Ellie was 
 fantastically stepping back and forth in the moon 
 light with her shadow, but she hardly started when 
 Thyrza ran to her and took her hand, saying, "Come, 
 let s go home ! let s go quick." The strange thing 
 about aunt Ellie was that you could never surprise 
 her very much if she realized you were "own folks." 
 Now she took Thyrza s handclasp as joyously as she 
 had accepted it in coming, and they ran along the 
 road together as if, she must have thought, it was a 
 merry game. But to Thyrza it was a flight. 
 
 When they got back to the house, after this amaz 
 ing ordeal, nothing had changed. Thyrza could hardly 
 believe it had all passed while her mother and Laura 
 slept, and the house itself kept its kind indifference. 
 Aunt Ellie was tired now. She slipped into her bed 
 room, with no desire to sing, and Thyrza stole up 
 stairs. Her mother gave a little cough. It seemed the 
 same wide-awake cough before the night s work had 
 begun. Thyrza could not undress. She was too tired, 
 and in the morning the first she knew of the day was 
 that Laura, in her nightgown, her eyes big with won 
 der, was standing by the bed and saying, 
 
 " Why, Thyrza Tennant ! you slept in your 
 clothes." 
 
 But she seemed a part of the dream that had begun 
 yesterday forenoon, and Thyrza did not feel bound 
 
 49 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 to answer her ; and at breakfast her mother, who was 
 going to the Corners to get some twist and take some 
 measurements, proved too deeply occupied with telling 
 them when to blaze a fire for dinner to return upon 
 the past. So the breakfast dishes were washed, and 
 Mrs. Tennant had gone, before the deeds of yesterday 
 began to cast even a shadow. Thyrza was feeling brave 
 now and very good. She had made her sacrifice. She 
 had every reason to believe all the hosts of heaven 
 were again on her side as, in some mysterious man 
 ner, in spite of the immutability of fact, they always 
 seemed to be. She knew she had shown extraordinary 
 courage in going out at midnight, for to call it 
 midnight made it blacker yet, and building up a 
 play-house with her own atoning hands. And just as 
 she lay down on the parlor sofa in the dark, to think 
 it over and roll under her tongue the sensation of be 
 ing brave and good once more, Laura appeared before 
 her, distraught and all but speechless. 
 
 " Thyrza ! " she said, " who do you think s comin 
 up to the front door ? It s Rosie May. She s all soul 
 alone, an she s got a plate." 
 
 Thyrza rose with the majesty of the school-teacher 
 going to the board to set a sum. Her heart did, it is 
 true, give one qualm, but she bade it down. 
 
 "I 11 go to the door," said she. 
 
 It was a new Rosie May before her, a little depre 
 cating girl with apprehension written all over her. 
 Even her clothes seemed to have partaken of this new 
 abasement. Usually they were finicking clothes, all 
 
 50 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 points and patterns. Now she wore an old tyer of a 
 miserable chocolate color that her mother had selected 
 " for common," and that Eosie May, being wise 
 in such matters, had refused. But this morning it 
 looked as if she had lacked the courage to take a 
 stand. There she was, a suppliant, holding out a 
 plate with a clean butter-cloth covering something 
 within. 
 
 " Mother s been making cup-cakes," said she, in a 
 small voice. " I brought you over two-three. We can 
 eat em together." 
 
 In a flash Thyrza learned a great page of worldly 
 wisdom, wisdom that protects and yet is hateful 
 in the having. Andy had foretold it long ago. " If 
 you d only bat Rosie May over the head once," he 
 had prophesied, " you would n t have no trouble with 
 her." And Kosie May had been batted, and the 
 trouble had ceased. This was no ogress full of evil 
 arts. It was only a little girl like another, and she 
 was named Rosie May. 
 
 Thyrza meant to do the thing magnificently. She 
 knew how. It was only to bend forward with a be 
 nignant majesty and accept the cakes. Then she 
 could say, "Come in, Rosie May. We ll eat them 
 together," in a tone that should imply, "If you ll 
 be very humble and behave yourself, and promise 
 never to forget how you ve acted all along." But 
 something, a kind of warm emotion, got hold of her 
 as it often did, and she plunged out of the doorway 
 to the step and received the cakes impetuously, call- 
 
 51 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 ing Laura as she went. Laura instantly appeared. It 
 looked as if she had been listening. Thyrza was fer 
 vid with a perfectly beautiful solution of the situa 
 tion. 
 
 " Come on down to the play-houses/ she was 
 urging. It was a blow to her to remember that Andy 
 was gone to the Corners. She wanted the setting to 
 be like yesterday s. " We 11 have a surprise-party, in 
 Rosie May s play-house." 
 
 The suppliant shrank. Even Laura gave a quick 
 reproving glance. It seemed coarse and cruel to speak 
 thus of ruined firesides. 
 
 "I guess I ll go home," said Rosie May timidly. 
 
 But Thyrza seized her by the hand. Now at last 
 she knew how it felt to dominate, though for the 
 
 f O 
 
 general good. 
 
 "You re coming to the play-house/ she an 
 nounced. " You 11 see ! Laura, you carry the cakes. 
 Come on ! " 
 
 She raced Rosie May off down the road, and Laura 
 followed, in patient guardianship. Laura did not 
 know this new Thyrza. It hardly seemed possible to 
 guess what she would do next, even, it might be, 
 sacrifice Rosie May in some fashion on her own dese 
 crated hearth. Thyrza was playing now that she was 
 a horse and trotting gig, and she rushed up to the 
 play-house door and stopped in a way that suggested 
 to Rosie May s perturbed imagination no lesser ordeal 
 than " snap the whip." But Rosie May forgot her 
 fears in what looked like even a superstitious terror. 
 
 52 
 
THE RIVAL HOUSES 
 
 " Why ! " she breathed. " Why ! my play-house ! " 
 
 There it lay in its forenoon calm, the house that 
 yesterday had tottered to its fall. Instantly Thyrza 
 saw what a merry game it was to ignore her wonder. 
 
 " I don t see s anything s the matter with the play 
 houses/ she said gayly. " Come in mine, if you 
 don t want to open yours. Maybe yours is locked 
 and you ve forgot the key. I ll get out the table." 
 She spread the tablecloth and laid the cup-cakes on 
 it in a tempting triangle. " Come, Laura ! Supper s 
 ready." 
 
 But Kosie May could hardly eat. She kept taking 
 little nibbles from the edge of her cake and looking 
 furtively at Thyrza and the play-house. Finally she 
 ventured, 
 
 " Thyrza, you remember how we was down here 
 yesterday an all?" 
 
 "I wasn t," said Thyrza, full of cup-cake and glo 
 rious invention. " Laura n I went to see great-aunt 
 Mary." 
 
 But great-aunt Mary was fifty miles away and 
 Rosie May knew it. Laura, pale with moral awe, 
 opened her mouth and closed it speechlessly. Rosie 
 May looked stunned in a world too complicated for 
 her. But in the midst of Thyrza s pride of life, a 
 shadow fell upon her. She remembered how beautiful 
 it was to sacrifice, and she remembered God. She fell 
 on her knees. 
 
 " Rosie May," she declaimed, in what was 
 known as a prayer-meeting voice, full of minor ca~ 
 
 53 
 
THE STORY or THYRZA 
 
 dence, "I m a miserable sinner. Forgive me as I 
 trust I am now forgiven above." 
 
 Rosie May stared at her abased there on the play 
 house floor, and the old look came into her face, the 
 look of cruelty and base mastership. 
 
 "Thyrza Tennant," she began sharply, "what do 
 you mean aetin as you do? Anybody d think you 
 was in prayer-meetin , to say the least." 
 
 Thyrza caught the look. Her eyes met and held it. 
 But hers had no answering sharpness. They were 
 reflecting, wondering eyes. She had really found out, 
 they said, that we are not to forget our adversary as 
 our adversary, even after we have eaten the cup-cake 
 of peace together. For an instant she felt the old 
 thrill of fear. Then she remembered the little sup 
 pliant that had come bearing cakes. It was only Rosie 
 May. She sprang to her feet. 
 
 " Yes," she said. " I guess I do remember yesterday 
 forenoon. I tore your house down, didn t I? Well, 
 I built it up afterwards, to see if I could remember 
 how it went. But I d tear it down again if I took a 
 notion. Come, let s get some mulleins and trim hats." 
 
 Rosie May obediently did. She plucked the leaves 
 and pulled the grass for strings, and when the hats 
 were trimmed she admired Thyrza s way of doing, 
 and asked for directions, quite like a milliner s ap 
 prentice. Laura looked on in wonder. She had always 
 known this was only Rosie May, but somehow she sus 
 pected Thyrza had been a long time finding it out. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 day when Thyrza was a little over fourteen she 
 sat in the orchard eating an " August sweet/ and, 
 as she ate, breaking into the beautiful regular cham 
 bers where the brown seeds lay. She was counting the 
 seeds. Thyrza counted a great deal at this time. Now 
 it was a flower with florets or regular petals, or it was 
 even the number of leaves on a spray. Always her 
 voice, as she counted, beat on the words, " yes, no, 
 yes, no," in an earnest monotone. "Yes " meant that 
 before she should be too old she might go to some 
 young ladies academy and learn the things that make 
 people great. "No" meant that she could never go 
 at all, and that the rest of her life would be spent 
 here in Leafy Road, keeping the bread sweet and 
 covering the squashes in a frost, and even making 
 little thick stubbed trousers, like her mother, and tak 
 ing her pay in "sass." To-day, as she reached "yes," 
 her mother s voice smote shrilly upon her from the 
 house. 
 
 " Thyrza ! Laura ! Where be you ? " 
 
 Thyrza knew where Laura was. She had gone with 
 Andy Me Adam over to the old cider-mill, with a 
 peck of apples tugged between them, to see if they 
 
 55 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 could start up the mill and make it go. Andy had a 
 strong disbelief that anything short of a horse could 
 turn the great wooden screw, but he was willing to 
 risk walking three-quarters of a mile on the chance, 
 and he was prepared to assert, and indeed had sworn it, 
 that a peck of apples would make as much as a quart 
 of cider, if you could only squeeze it out. They had 
 been willing that Thyrza should go, not glad but 
 willing, because her perennial hopefulness was hinder 
 ing on such solemn expeditions ; but Barton Gorse 
 had that day given her the "Age of Fable," and she 
 had to read it very fast and all at once. And when 
 she found out what a beautiful book it was, she had 
 to stop in a fever and count her apple-seeds, to see if 
 she was to read such books all her life. 
 
 "Thyrza," came her mother s voice. "Laura! You 
 step yourselves here." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant had, when she was hurried or busy, 
 the crudest phrases ready to her lips; but they never 
 purported displeasure with the children. They were 
 the sharpest weapons she could find to cut at circum 
 stance, and she used them for utility s sake. Thyrza 
 took her answer from the apple-seed she had reached 
 at " yes," and rising slowly, threw the rest away. 
 
 This was the answer she wanted, and she told her 
 self speciously that since her mother called her, she 
 must go, and take it for a finality. But half-way up 
 the narrow path worn by children s feet to the orchard 
 play-corners, she stopped, considered, and then ran 
 back. With a passionate determination to play the 
 
 56 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 game in honor, she dropped on the ground and picked 
 up all the seeds she could find; but when she had 
 finished her count, still it ended on " yes." Then, with 
 a satisfied delight in her own deep sense of probity, 
 she clapped her book under her arm and sped up the 
 orchard path. Mrs. Tennant had done calling, but she 
 stood in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand. 
 It was as if she had been seeking so earnestly that 
 she forgot to go in when her children failed to come. 
 In the other hand she held a letter, and Thyrza felt 
 instantly excited at the unusualness of that. A letter 
 might signify anything. Her mother looked down at 
 her abstractedly. It almost seemed that, although she 
 was seeking a listener, she was prepared to give her 
 own comments and answers. 
 
 "Well," she said, "your great-aunt Mary Hub- 
 bard s comin V 
 
 Thyrza s face took on deepest meaning. 
 
 " mother ! " she cried. And then, " fudge ! " 
 
 Her mother was not listening. She opened the letter 
 again, a meagre missive on a half -sheet of ruled paper, 
 and held it far away. She had mislaid her glasses, 
 and having once tasted the news in the note, there 
 was no time to find them. " There s more of it," she 
 continued, frowning. " I can t hardly make it out " 
 
 " Let me have it," said Thyrza, with the lavish help 
 fulness of one to whom glasses are yet fifty years away. 
 "She says mother ! mother ! " The word ended 
 in a little cry of joy, of terror. The apple-seeds had 
 told the truth, and like older suppliants of necromancy, 
 
 57 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Thyrza was dismayed at the plainness of the an 
 swer. 
 
 " She wants to take one of us, Laura or me, to live 
 with her for three years, and see if she can t make 
 something of us." 
 
 Her mother was regarding her in wonder. 
 
 "Well," she said, at length, "I never should ha 
 thought you d be bewitched to go an live with great- 
 aunt Mary Hubbard." 
 
 Thyrza met her wondering eyes with the vivid star 
 light look she wore when the world seemed to her as it 
 did in gay moments, a beautiful plaything waiting for 
 her to toss. 
 
 "But see ! " she cried, "see what she says. She ll 
 send us to the academy, and let us have lessons on 
 Arabella s piano, Arabella that died. mother, 
 three years aren t much ! In three years I could learn 
 everything at the academy and play the piano, and I 
 should be home." 
 
 " Well, for mercy sakes," returned Mrs. Tennant, 
 "so you ve got it all settled. Don t she say you or 
 Laura? How d you know it s goin to be you?" 
 
 Thyrza gave one fleeting confirmatory glance at the 
 letter, but did not blench. 
 
 " Laura don t want to go," she responded joyously. 
 " She just hates school. She hates great-aunt Mary, 
 too, just as much as I do ; but I d go with " She 
 had brought up against the name of an eminent and 
 very wicked personage Andy was in the habit of invok 
 ing in moments of deep emotion, but concluded not to 
 
 58 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 mention him. "I d go with anybody for three years/ 
 she ended weakly. 
 
 Mrs. Tennant still stood looking at her. She knew 
 all about Thyrza s desire for seminaries and music and 
 high places, but she had never seen the lure in evidence. 
 Already it had wrought strange wonders. This little 
 girl with the glowing cheeks and brilliant eyes hardly 
 seemed to be her own daughter at all. Mrs. Tennant 
 was uncertain whether to be proud of having a child 
 who was so " smart/ or to recognize the pain in her 
 own heart, premonitory of parting. 
 
 "Well/ she said, at this point, "I guess I 11 go in 
 an se down. My knees feel kinder weak." 
 
 Thyrza did not go in with her. Though her own 
 knees were unwontedly strong, she sat down on the 
 step and read the letter over and over, as if she might 
 spy out a little more of great-aunt Mary Hubbard s 
 mind. And when at dusk Laura came draggling in, 
 ciderless but still happy, because Andy had taken her 
 on a mile farther to see a litter of pups, she only yawned 
 when Thyrza plunged at her down the garden-path 
 and thrust the letter on her. Laura read it with some 
 difficulty, and then yawned wider. She was not really 
 used to aunt Mary s hand, and anything connected 
 with paper and ink had, to her mind, a scholastic na 
 ture and was to be avoided. She put the half -sheet 
 into its folds and gave it back. 
 
 " Anything for supper? " she asked, with a robust 
 interest. 
 
 " Laura, don t you see ? " cried Thyrza, in her most 
 
 59 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 imperative tone. " She 11 take one of us for three years, 
 three to five years." 
 
 " I guess she will," said Laura, beginning her sturdy 
 march supperward. " I would n t live with her if she 
 was all gold-diamonds, an I 11 tell her so, too. I don t 
 want none of her education," continued Laura loftily, 
 declining, in the rigor of argument, upon a conclusion 
 that had never occurred to her before. "She need n t 
 trouble herself. I guess I know enough now." 
 
 " But it s to use Arabella s piano." 
 
 "Fush on Arabella s piano! I ve heard about 
 Arabella s piano till I m sick an tired of it." 
 
 Laura had some curiously mature styles of expres 
 sion, and they always seemed appropriate to her. She 
 used them with entire simplicity, and they fell as they 
 did from her mother s lips. 
 
 Mrs. Tennant was very silent that night, and no 
 one spoke of the letter. Thyrza had a list of preposi 
 tions to learn, but she left the book face downward 
 on the table and walked back and forth through the 
 room. She could not calm herself. Outside there was 
 a thick mist driving in, and once, when her thoughts 
 seemed burning her up, she went out and ran back 
 and forth in front of the house, and reappeared, her 
 cheeks and her hair wet with little globes. Laura, by 
 the window, had forgotten the letter. She was trying 
 to teach the cat to jump over her hands, and puss, in 
 sulks, flattened herself to the ground and put back 
 her ears. Mrs. Tennant was sewing with her short 
 quick stitches, mending a rent in a little coat, and 
 
 60 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 when Thyrza came in she looked up at her briefly and 
 sighed. But Thyrza did not hear the sigh. She was 
 thinking about aunt Mary s Arabella s piano. 
 
 In two days aunt Mary Hubbard came. When the 
 girls got home from school she was there, and they 
 knew it, not only because the parlor shades were up, 
 but because their mother, warm and tired, and with 
 a worried triangular wrinkle between the eyes, met 
 them at the gate and bade them, in a tone of sharp 
 anxiety, to be sure and not make any noise; aunt 
 Mary had one of her headaches. 
 
 " No, I ain t either, Clary," came that masterful 
 voice from the house. " Not now, anyways. I guess 
 I ve managed to stave it off. Let em come right in 
 here an tell me whether they ve been good girls." 
 It was among aunt Mary s ill qualities that she could 
 hear more and see more to the general disadvantage 
 than was to be expected of normal ears and eyes, and 
 she was always candidly ready to act upon her gar 
 nered knowledge. At once the children found them 
 selves combating their old mood of resistance. " Come 
 right in here," she called again. " I ain t seen any 
 little girls for quite a spell." 
 
 They turned in at the parlor door, invested sud 
 denly with awkwardness. There she was by the win 
 dow, her crochet-work in her large, smooth hands. It 
 was one of their quarrels with her, based on an unwill 
 ing admiration, that she was always crocheting while 
 their mother had to sew on thick, unpleasant clothes. 
 Thyrza realized, with a sudden throb of horror at 
 
 61 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 herself and her glorious future, that she did actually 
 hate aunt Mary. There were fewer people and things 
 to be hated all the time, now, but aunt Mary never 
 ceased to loom in a bulk deserving of all dislikes com 
 pounded. She was so large, so fresh-colored, with the 
 little red veins on her cheek-bones, her forehead shone 
 so, and her gold-bowed glasses did so glitter. She was 
 tall and portly and tightly corseted, and her glossy 
 black silk had innumerable ruffles round the bottom, 
 and above them as many rows of velvet. But the ad 
 junct which Thyrza could never forgive her was her 
 wide scalloped collar, with its precise ceilets worked 
 by those same smooth hands. She had over and over 
 again seen aunt Mary sitting and making oeilets, 
 stabbing the collar with a fine precision, and then 
 buttonholing the round she had made ; and this was 
 at the very time, on one winter day, when Mrs. Ten- 
 nant had been obliged to sew herself into a pain in 
 her side, to finish a pair of trousers for the grange. 
 " She might at least/ thought Thyrza passionately, 
 on that day, " have offered to hem a leg, while mo 
 ther faced the top." But no ! she sat there stabbing 
 oeilets in a pattern, and estimating Mrs. Tennant s 
 household expenses, and telling her meat was n t so 
 wholesome after all, and it certainly did cost terribly. 
 Indeed, there seemed to be a fate for Thyrza in the 
 very sound of oeilets, for that winter she failed on 
 the word in a spelling-match, and stupid Rosie May 
 had gone above her. 
 
 But now the two girls, clutching at their books, as 
 
 62 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 a safeguard o some incomprehensible sort, stood 
 foolishly before the monitory guest, and their mother, 
 in the background, regarded them with an uneasy 
 shame, because they hardly seemed to be doing what 
 was expected of them ; then she glanced at aunt 
 Mary in a pervasive humbleness. 
 
 Aunt Mary let fall her work, and looked up over 
 her glasses with the particular effect of brow which, 
 as even children know, conveys reproof. 
 
 " Stand up straight, Thyrza," she admonished her. 
 " I don t know wherever you got that kind o shoul 
 ders." 
 
 Thyrza gave a miserable little shrug, and then 
 crouched into her former abasement. She knew quite 
 well that when she ran with the cat over her shoul 
 ders they were straight enough, but craven timidity 
 before one who was kin to her only in blood was 
 bowing her little frame. Aunt Mary was still regard 
 ing them with the terrible stare of one who is about 
 to buy. Then she began to talk about them to their 
 mother, as if they were articles of merchandise. 
 Laura bore it very well. She still had no wish to 
 please aunt Mary, and she saw no reason why any 
 person who could speak the language should not say 
 in her presence that she had great-uncle Pike s fresh 
 complexion and Martha Pearson s nose. But Thyrza 
 stood in a scarlet rage, feeling all the recoil of an 
 invaded personality. She forgot the neat speeches 
 she had in readiness to make aunt Mary see that 
 her bounty was appreciated. " Is the course very se- 
 
 63 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 vere at the academy ? " she had meant to say, or, at 
 a moment of great daring, when aunt Mary was 
 softened by the prospect of having a little girl come 
 to live with her, " I shall be very careful of Arabella s 
 piano." But she could not have offered these neat 
 conceptions now, had her whole academic course de 
 pended on it. Suddenly aunt Mary took off her 
 glasses altogether, and fixed the children with the 
 direct glance of her small, determined eyes. 
 
 " Well," she said, " which little girl wants to live 
 with me the most? " 
 
 Thyrza became aware in wonder that Laura was 
 actually returning the glance with unmoved fearless 
 ness, and she realized also that, after that discovery, 
 she could not do the same. She knew the reason, too. 
 Laura did not want to go. There was nothing in 
 aunt Mary s gift that she in the least desired. But 
 Thyrza, afflicted by a kind of shame, was sensible 
 that she desired the things aunt Mary had to give, 
 but that she hated the prospect of three years of 
 ceilets and inquiring looks with a vehemence not to be 
 mitigated even by the vision of Arabella s piano. 
 Conscious of her greed and her ingratitude, she 
 dropped the lids over her contrite eyes. Mrs. Ten- 
 nant had put out a hand and laid it on Thyrza s 
 shoulder. The touch seemed like an endearment. 
 
 " This is the one," she said, " that thinks she 
 better go." 
 
 Aunt Mary turned the ray of her inquisitive vision 
 full upon Thyrza shrinking in her shame. 
 
 64 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 " She does, does she ? " said aunt Mary. " Well, 
 we ll see which pleases me the best." 
 
 Then, somehow, after an awkward battle of pre 
 cedence they got out of the room, and they did not 
 see aunt Mary again until supper-time, when she re 
 buked their mother for admitting them to the feast 
 of cream-of -tartar biscuits she was herself bountifully 
 enjoying, with the fiat, " If t was a child of mine, 
 she should n t set her lips to hot bread nor, least of all, 
 a pie." 
 
 After supper, as Mrs. Tennant was putting away 
 the milk, Thyrza appeared suddenly under her elbow, 
 lifted to set the pan on a high shelf, away from the 
 cat. 
 
 " Mother," she whispered, " I want to go over to 
 Mr. Gorse s and carry him back his book." 
 
 " Well," said her mother, " you come home fore 
 dark." She, too, was impressed with the advisability 
 of thinning the social atmosphere while aunt Mary 
 stayed. 
 
 Thyrza took her book under her arm and fled up 
 the darkening road. The old Gorse house was half 
 a mile away, and she knew whatever bogies there were 
 she could escape by a sudden flight into a friendly 
 dooryard. It was not so the other way, where the 
 great poplar stood, its leaves perpetually whispering. 
 When she stepped into its shadow like a haunted 
 room, she always frightened herself anew by saying 
 over in her mind a verse she had read in one of Bar 
 ton Gorse s books : 
 
 65 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Like one that on a lonesome road, 
 Doth walk in fear and dread, 
 And having once turned round, walks on 
 And turns no more his head ; 
 Because he knows a frightful fiend 
 Doth close behind him tread." 
 
 Sometimes it was the frightful fiend that was the 
 most terrible ; sometimes it was the pursuing elephant. 
 But to-night it was quite different. She was on the 
 friendly road, and even the vague excitement of 
 aunt Mary s visit helped to keep her heart up. Her 
 blood went faster, and she began to run when she was 
 at the big white gate, and, playing she was a horse 
 and coach, she went up the driveway in a whirl. 
 
 ii 
 
 Barton Gorse was sitting on the veranda, his long 
 legs over the rail. There were voices from the kitchen 
 in the ell Michael and his sister Katie, who had 
 kept the house for old Judge Gorse, and who now 
 stayed on while the young grandson came to in 
 herit. Barton Gorse was very lonely in his earthly 
 state. He had one sister who lived mysteriously apart 
 from him, and when his grandfather died he seemed 
 to find comfort in staying at the old place, reading 
 his book and lounging along the river in his boat, day 
 and night companioned only by Michael and Katie. 
 The townsfolk had a liking for him, though his sol 
 itary habits marked him "as odd as Dick s hatband." 
 He was not very strong, they knew, but whether he 
 was consumptive or not they could not tell. When 
 
 66 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 they asked him, he only smiled. But he had one 
 playfellow. Since the time when Thyrza had " given 
 out/ as the neighbors said, at the Old Folks Concert 
 and he had carried her from the hall, he had kept 
 up a kindly, persistent interest in her, and when he 
 learned what her ambitions were, he had loaned her 
 books and talked to her about the world. 
 
 To-night, when she came galloping up the driveway 
 with the rhythm of horse s hoofs, he knew who it was, 
 and pulled down his feet and smiled. Thyrza, when 
 she became aware that some one was on the veranda, 
 bade the horse "whoa!" in a whisper, and walked up 
 the steps demurely. She was often shy with him, and 
 always a little removed. He had a serious dignity, 
 though he joked a good deal, and she was dimly 
 aware that this was because she was a little girl and 
 he wished to be polite to her. He could not treat her 
 quite like a grown-up lady. He had to make a special 
 manner for her. Barton Gorse always knew what 
 people were thinking. So it was no wonder he guessed 
 at this instant that Thyrza was not only Thyrza but 
 a horse. 
 
 "Shall I help you out of the carriage?" said he. 
 
 Thyrza was delighted all over. It seemed to put 
 them in the same world, and this was charming ; for 
 into her foolish country she had found no one as yet 
 to go. 
 
 " I m out," she said joyously. " Here, I ve brought 
 your book. Thank you ever so much." A thought 
 of great-aunt Mary at home encased in the pro- 
 
 67 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 prieties, and knowing indubitably in every event 
 what a little girl should say, prompted the tardy 
 gratitude. 
 
 "Want another?" He had risen, and she knew 
 just how he looked though she could scarcely see him 
 through the dusk : thin, with the aquiline nose and 
 beautiful blue eyes that seemed so at variance with 
 the fine straight black hair above. Everybody liked 
 Barton Gorse, except those very near him who were 
 exasperated with him for being lazy ; and even they, 
 when they saw him smile, had to own they loved him. 
 It was a melancholy face in rest, but when the thin, 
 big mouth parted over his white teeth, his cheeks 
 wrinkled up into the most infectious mirth, the recog 
 nition of one who sees that although life may be un 
 expected and unpleasant, yet it is very amusing indeed. 
 Thyrza did want a book, but she could not talk about 
 it at once. She took the little rocking-chair that was 
 always on the veranda now, beside Barton s big one. 
 He had not told her that he kept it for her, but it 
 seemed to be her chair. 
 
 " She s come," said Thyrza. There were pounds of 
 emphasis in the words. 
 
 Barton seated himself. 
 
 "Aunt Sarah?" he prompted her. 
 
 " Great-aunt Mary." 
 
 "How soon is she going to take you away ? " 
 
 " That s it," said Thyrza, in a whisper. " Oh, I 
 couldn t bear it!" 
 
 "Well, you want to go." 
 
 68 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 " I ve got to go," said Thyrza fiercely. " Should 
 you think she d want me till fall ? " 
 
 "It s like the story of the Golden Apples, isn t 
 it ? " said Barton Gorse, temporizing. He was aware 
 of the warring desires in the little ambitious heart. 
 
 " But that was the prettiest one/ said Thyrza. 
 " Laura s better looking than me, and nicer. Only 
 she doesn t want to go." 
 
 " Still, I think it s a good deal like the Golden 
 Apples. Listen ! what do you hear ? " 
 
 There was a thin little sighing cry from the kitchen. 
 Then the lament broke into baby barks. Thyrza for 
 got aunt Mary and the piano. She sprang to her 
 feet. 
 
 " It s a dog ! " she cried loudly. " It s a puppy ! " 
 
 " Wait a minute. We ll see." 
 
 He went round to the kitchen door and held a 
 colloquy with Katie. Presently he returned with 
 something in his hands. It sniveled and squirmed 
 in a fat way, and made little ineffectual attempts 
 to love all the world and destroy it at once. This 
 blubbering atom of life was deposited in Thyrza s 
 lap, and she got her hands on it. 
 
 " Oh, my ! " she kept saying. " It is a puppy. Mr. 
 Gorse, it s a darling puppy." 
 
 Barton Gorse knew exactly how she felt. He had 
 the same sensations over young and wriggling 
 things. 
 
 " He 11 yelp his head off, I m afraid," said he. 
 " I ve got to go up to town for a week, and Katie 
 
 69 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 can t mother him as much as he expects. You don t 
 want to keep him for me, do you? " 
 
 Thyrza clutched the little soft body to her breast. 
 
 " Oh ! " she breathed, " could I ? " 
 
 " I d be ever so much obliged. Katie d be nice to 
 him, but she hasn t much time to hold his hand. 
 Want him to-night?" 
 
 " I guess I 11 be going," said Thyrza, rising, her 
 legacy clasped immutably. 
 
 " Wait a minute. I 11 walk home with you." 
 
 66 1 guess I 11 be going," cried Thyrza. She was 
 half-way down the drive. Her clear young voice 
 throbbed with pleasure, and he smiled to hear it. 
 " Thank you ever so much." 
 
 Barton Gorse kept on smiling to himself. "Poor 
 little kid ! " he said aloud. Somehow he had a fore 
 boding that the academic sojourn with aunt Mary 
 was not going to be altogether fortunate, and he had 
 hit on something to give the child a little foolish 
 pleasure before she should go. 
 
 Thyrza, scudding through the night, had a certi 
 tude of richness such as she had never known. Of 
 course she preferred books to anything else, but now 
 she had not a book but a dog, and her feelings ran 
 away with her. She clutched the little body with firm 
 yet passionate hands, and held her cheek close to the 
 baby head and its silky ears. It was a spaniel, and 
 she remembered she did not even know its name. " I 
 shall call you for him," she whispered. "Barton! 
 Barton! Darling!" 
 
 70 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 Mrs. Tennant and aunt Mary were sitting in the 
 dark, and Laura had gone up to bed. Laura had 
 pronounced ideas in some directions, and she could 
 not sit in the room while aunt Mary told the time- 
 worn story of uncle Chad s illness without feeling 
 sleepy. Once upstairs she crept up on her mother s 
 bed, and lay there without undressing. She knew she 
 should not goto sleep, and it seemed to her she needed 
 just this time to think about changing the walls of 
 her play-house. But in five minutes she was off. 
 
 Thyrza came into the sitting-room with a rush. 
 Not even aunt Mary could stay the torrent of her joy. 
 
 " mother," she cried, in the shrillness of de 
 light, " what you s pose I ve got ? " 
 
 She deposited the little guest in her mother s lap. 
 He was sleepy by this time, but he had the instinct 
 ive good manners to put out his ready tongue and lick 
 Mrs. Tennant s hand. She was very tired. A day with 
 aunt Mary represented the top notch of emotion. It 
 was warfare of a sort, retreat, advance, a volley 
 when you least expected. To-night there was another 
 reason why she should be, as she said, as nervous as 
 a witch. There was work to be finished, and if she 
 could have had her sewing to decline upon, she might 
 have pricked momentary emotion into hem and seam. 
 But aunt Mary had decreed that it was terrible fool 
 ish to use up oil in summer-time, and Mrs. Tennant 
 sat with folded hands, and these idle fingers the red 
 tongue found. 
 
 " For heaven s sake ! " cried Mrs. Tennant. She 
 
 71 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 pushed back her chair, and came to her feet. " Thyrza 
 Tennant, what under the sun you got?" 
 
 Thyrza had rescued her charge. She tucked him 
 under her chin for safe keeping, and held him in a 
 tender grasp. 
 
 " Why, mother," said she, all a bubbling happiness, 
 " it s only a puppy." 
 
 "Only a puppy!" echoed aunt Mary. "Thyrza, 
 you put him right outdoors, where he belongs. No 
 wonder your mother s scairt, briugin strange dogs 
 in here as you do." 
 
 Thyrza laughed, a happy little giggle. It seemed 
 possible to think anything was funny if you had a 
 puppy under your chin. Aunt Mary rose and opened 
 the screen door. 
 
 "Here," said she, "you put him out, an tell him 
 to go home where he belongs. Come ! I can t hold 
 this door open. I hear a skeeter now." 
 
 Thyrza saw herself brought straight up to the wall 
 of sacrifice, and sacrifice was what she adored ; only 
 she had always assumed that she should not be called 
 on to relinquish anything like a puppy, a little warm 
 soft thing you could hold under your chin, and that 
 would cry all night if you put him out alone. She took 
 a step toward her mother. 
 
 " Mother ! " she called. " Mother ! " 
 
 Mrs. Tennant sounded very uncertain. 
 
 " There, Thyrza, I guess you better do as your 
 aunt Mary says. We can t have strange dogs in here 
 by night." 
 
 72 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 " Mother, lie ain t a strange dog. He s only a 
 puppy." 
 
 " Well ! " said Mrs. Tennant. Then she waited, not 
 knowing what else to do, and Thyrza let loose the 
 torrent of her defense. 
 
 " He s Barton Gorse s puppy, and Barton Gorse is 
 going to be away a whole week, and the puppy 11 cry 
 all the time, and Katie d be good to him, but that s all." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant recognized a certain indomitable note 
 in her child s voice. She had heard it there before, 
 and had neither feared it nor really yielded, though 
 she had been obliged to consider it in a respectful 
 wonder. But this was not the time for controversy, 
 with aunt Mary as voluntary umpire. She rose and 
 opened the door into the shed. 
 
 "I guess we may s well leave him in here, long s 
 it s night," she said weakly to aunt Mary over her 
 shoulder. " Barton Gorse is a real nice young man an* 
 he ain t very well." 
 
 So Thyrza and the puppy passed out into the shed, 
 and the door was shut upon them. The screen door 
 banged violently, and aunt Mary paused a moment 
 in the kitchen before ascending to her room. 
 
 "You needn t light me a lamp," said she. "I d 
 ruther by far have a candle in summer-time. Never in 
 my life did I see such carryin s on." Then she, too, 
 was gone. 
 
 Mrs. Tennant paused for a moment to reflect on the 
 singular dispersal of her household when aunt Mary 
 camped within it. Laura was in retreat upstairs, 
 
 73 
 
THE STORY or THYRZA 
 
 Thyrza languished in exile, and aunt Ellie, who had 
 " been plummin " vigorously all day, had crept home 
 to steal a bite from the dairy-shelf and slip into her 
 bedroom, where she stayed as still as a wild creature 
 in its burrow. There was no singing of " Mary across 
 the wild moor " until aunt Mary s shadow was lifted 
 from the sill. 
 
 Mrs. Tennant waited until the heavy tread above 
 had, after some disquieting renewals, plainly ceased. 
 Then she went to the shed door to whisper, "You 
 there?" 
 
 Thyrza was perched on the old chopping-block. Its 
 irregularities were distressing, and only the tips of 
 her toes reached the floor ; but she nursed the puppy 
 and forgot her banishment. At her mother s voice she 
 rose and slipped into the kitchen. Mrs. Tennant re 
 garded the little beast, lying now in an impotence of 
 sleep. 
 
 " Well ! " she commented, " he s a kind of a cunnin 
 little creatur . Black as a crow ! " 
 
 Thyrza had deposited him on the calico-covered 
 lounge, and now, being more familiar with the ways 
 of cats than of dogs, she tried to round him into a ball 
 because it seemed to her it would be more luxurious 
 to him. 
 
 " See, mother," she said movingly, " ain t he the 
 prettiest ? " 
 
 But Mrs. Tennant had had her moment of approval. 
 
 " I guess we better take him out into the barn/ 
 she considered ; but Thyrza dashed at her. 
 
 74 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 " mother, you would n t do a thing like that ! 
 I thought you liked dogs." 
 
 " Why, yes," said Mrs. Tennant, " I like em well 
 enough in their place." 
 
 " Besides he d cry all night. She d hear him," of 
 fered Thyrza, with a subtlety of impulse. 
 
 That was true, Mrs. Tennant could well believe. 
 
 " Well, what you goin to do ? " she inquired. 
 
 Thyrza gathered him, with a swift motion, into her 
 arms. 
 
 " He can sleep on the foot of my bed," she de 
 clared, on her way to the staircase. " I 11 give him 
 the old brown shawl." 
 
 She was gone before her mother could say her nay. 
 Mrs. Tennant locked the doors and she also went up 
 stairs. She did not go into the children s room. It 
 seemed to her that it was better not to know. So she 
 deftly peeled off Laura s clothing and rolled her into 
 bed, and then, with a sigh of physical tiredness, dropped 
 down beside her. She felt like saying her prayers that 
 night, and leaving Thyrza and the puppy to God, 
 Whom she would also have asked to protect them all 
 from aunt Mary. But to her God was the God of 
 Eternal Sabbaths and unreasonable though doubt 
 less praiseworthy wrath, and she could not trouble 
 Him. 
 
 The nextmorning, when the others met at the break 
 fast-table, Thyrza was in the barn, ecstatically feeding 
 the puppy from her own glass of milk. 
 
 " Where s that dog ? " inquired aunt Mary. 
 
 75 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " I guess Thyrza s put him out some er s/ returned 
 Mrs. Tennant guiltily. 
 
 " Where s Thyrza?" 
 
 "Laura," said Mrs. Tennant, shifting the responsi 
 bility, " where s your sister ? " 
 
 Laura looked at her mother and then at aunt Mary. 
 She had probably never told a lie in her life, but now 
 she said calmly, not knowing why she said it, " Thyrza s 
 gone over to Mis McAdam s to borrow the Sunday- 
 school question-book." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant narrowed her gaze and looked at her 
 piercingly. She opened her mouth and closed it. Then 
 she poured the coffee. Aunt Mary, being occupied in 
 receiving her cup, strangely did not pursue the ques 
 tion further. 
 
 The next three days were periods of warfare and 
 evasion. Thyrza and Laura took turns in amusing 
 their little guest, secreted in the barn and taken for 
 short walks after dusk. It was ticklish business, 
 though there grew to be the wildest pleasure in it, 
 and by reason of the strain, they had the seeming of 
 two very gentle and serious little girls. This was when 
 they were in the house, always with their ears pricked 
 to catch the sound of a betraying yelp. At the end 
 of the third day, aunt Mary called them before her. 
 She wore the guise of an excellent humor. 
 
 " Now," said she, " who s goin home to live with 
 me?" 
 
 Laura looked stolidly past her. The quest was not 
 for her. Thyrza trembled. She forced herself to meet 
 
 76 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 aunt Mary s eye, but her throat felt parched, and 
 she could only begin miserably, 
 
 "If you d take me, aunt Mary " 
 
 There she stayed, and aunt Mary seemed in a way 
 to be mollified by her confusion. It was fitting on an 
 occasion of such grandeur. 
 
 "Well," she returned graciously, "I guess you re 
 the one that wants it. So if you ve took it upon your 
 self to try What under the heaven s that?" 
 
 It was the sound of a rush and scurry down the 
 stairs and the advent of a little black demon of a 
 puppy. He bore aunt Mary s bonnet in his mouth and 
 tripped in it outrageously. Some remaining shreds 
 of the veil were clinging to his ears. Thyrza, at a 
 glance, knew that he was a wrecker of fortunes as well 
 as bonnets, but she opened her mouth wide and broke 
 into ecstatic laughter. Laura, on whom the irony of 
 the event had not yet fallen, sprang on him and 
 snatched the bonnet. She had it, all but one string, 
 and that he held in his determined teeth, worrying 
 it, bracing his feet and pulling back with all the force 
 of evil, growling meantime satanically. But somehow 
 Laura got the string, and immediately aunt Mary was 
 holding a distorted thing in her hand, repeating trag 
 ically, 
 
 "That s my bunnit. That s my bunnit an my 
 veil." 
 
 The puppy, in a sportive oblivion to the disaster 
 he had wrought, dived under her dress, seeking out her 
 ankles, and again Laura fell upon him. She dragged 
 
 77 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 him forth, thrust him outside the screen door, and by 
 a happy inspiration, threw her slipper after him. If 
 he had something to worry, Laura knew, he would 
 keep himself busy. She returned breathless to a tri 
 umph she had not foreseen. 
 
 "You come here," said aunt Mary. She laid a 
 heavy hand upon her shoulder. " You re a good little 
 girl. You re the one for me." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant, not yet included in the fateful mo 
 ment, was coming calmly in. 
 
 "Clary," aunt Mary cried, "I ve made my choice. 
 It s this one." She gave Laura a little confirmatory 
 shake, and Laura, without a word, stampeded out of the 
 house. Thyrza ran after her, and overtook her in the 
 orchard. Thyrza had scooped up the puppy on the way, 
 and he had retained his solacing shoe. Now Laura 
 snatched it from him and put it on her foot. She was 
 white with anger. 
 
 "Why," she said, "I wouldn t no more go an 
 live with her " 
 
 Thyrza, too, was white with the agony of loss. 
 Arabella s piano stood before her eyes. She could 
 almost hear it playing sad tunes of renunciation and 
 farewell. 
 
 "Laura Tennant," said she, "you ve got to." 
 
 Laura, her foot in air, and the slipper half -buttoned, 
 looked up at her, wild-eyed. 
 
 " I d like to know why I ve got to ? " she inquired, 
 with a faithful reproduction of her mother s direct 
 ness. 
 
 78 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 Thyrza stood before her, hands clasped in the in 
 tensity of her appeal. 
 
 "Don t you see," she cried vehemently, "if I can t 
 go, you ve got to? You ve got to learn everything 
 at the academy and tell me. You ve got to play on 
 Arabella s piano, and maybe you can come home 
 sometimes, and you can show me, on the bureau or 
 something, and then when I have a piano, it won t 
 be too late. Laura, you ve got to go!" 
 
 When Thyrza said, "you ve got to," Laura never 
 lingered. She gave her now one long, miserable 
 look, and then unbuttoned her slipper, as if for occu 
 pation, and fell to buttoning it again. To Thyrza the 
 look was not very different from others when Laura 
 had yielded against her will. She had had experience 
 of that round face drained of its color, those despair 
 ing eyes ; but this time she could not ignore it. The 
 face stayed with her afterwards ; it was to be with 
 her always. 
 
 Laura finished fumbling with her shoes. She got 
 up and said briefly, 
 
 " Come, le s go in." 
 
 Somehow Thyrza did not dare speak to her again 
 about what was to be, and no one said very much 
 until bed-time. Then aunt Mary, on her way up 
 stairs, candle in hand, paused at the door. 
 
 " I shall be goin by day arter to-morrer," she an 
 nounced. " Clary, you have Laura ready to go with 
 
 me." 
 
 After she had made her exit, the three sat there in 
 
 79 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 a dry-eyed misery. Laura knew nothing could save 
 her, and she did not ask to be saved. Thyrza knew 
 it, too. Somebody must go out to bottle the spring of 
 knowledge and bring it home. If she herself could not 
 ride on the quest, it must be Laura. The mother had 
 thoughts they could not share, and never guessed at 
 all until they were grown up and these agonies were 
 but the hardships of a remembered past. Aunt Mary 
 had money. Mrs. Tennant did not want it for herself; 
 her own simple life, all scantily paid work and no cer 
 tainties, sufficed her. But she had at her heart the one 
 golden hope of aunt Mary s remembering the chil 
 dren in her will. If aunt Mary were offended, that 
 could not be. So she, too, dedicated little silent Laura 
 to be the sacrifice. 
 
 The first cricket of the year was chirping that night. 
 It seemed to Thyrza the saddest sound she had ever 
 heard. The puppy had been shut ruthlessly in the 
 barn, and when he yelped no one offered to go to him. 
 Once Mrs. Tennant glanced inquiringly at Thyrza, 
 and Thyrza answered from her misery, 
 
 "Let him cry." 
 
 Then suddenly Laura rose and, keeping her face 
 away from them, went upstairs. They followed pre 
 sently, and found her undressing mechanically in the 
 room that had been hers and Thyrza s ever since they 
 could remember. Mrs. Tennant paused at the door a 
 moment. 
 
 "You better shut that west winder," she advised 
 dryly, " not have the breeze on you all night ; " and 
 
 80 
 
THE GOLDEN APPLE 
 
 when they were ready for bed, she appeared again, in 
 her nightgown. She looked old and worn. The last 
 half-hour seemed to have done something to her. She 
 looked past Thyrza, miserably weeping into her bureau 
 drawer, which for some reason she elected to put in 
 order at that time, and her gaze rested upon Laura 
 with yearning and invitation. 
 
 "Don t you want to come into mother s room?" 
 she asked, and Laura, saying nothing, went. 
 
 For those two nights she slept in her mother s arms, 
 and Thyrza was by herself. There were two silent 
 days, as arid as the intervals of drought in a thirsty 
 land. And on the third day at dusk Thyrza stood by 
 the gate alone and looked down the road. That was 
 the way Laura had gone, a firm figure, but a very little 
 one beside aunt Mary s bulk, in the "accommodation " 
 ordered to take them to the train. There at the gate 
 Barton Gorse found her. He came striding along the 
 road, very gayly, whistling a march. He had come 
 home two days earlier to see her, fearing lest she 
 should be gone. He walked up to her, confidently 
 smiling. When he saw her face, his own grew grave. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked. Thyrza was looking at 
 him in the frankest misery. " What is it ?" he repeated. 
 
 "Laura s gone." 
 
 "Gone where?" 
 
 "With great-aunt Mary." 
 
 He pursed his lips a moment. Then his face grew 
 tender. 
 
 " Was it the Golden Apple, then?" he asked. 
 
 81 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " Aunt Mary chose her ? " 
 
 She nodded again. Barton Gorse stood there a long 
 time, looking at her. His own life, in its future possi 
 bilities, passed before him, as her life was rushing 
 before her. He was wondering how much he could 
 pledge. 
 
 " Thyrza," he said. 
 
 She looked up quickly, his voice was so gentle, so 
 kind, as he had fitted it to her need. He spoke very 
 quickly, as if he might be betraying more of his inti 
 mate self than he had meant to. 
 
 " Thyrza, I m not good for much in some ways. 
 I m not very fit. Lord, I can t talk about it ! but 
 you won t tell. I can t bang about like other fellows. 
 I ve got to be studious, all that, you know." She 
 was looking at him with clear, sorrowful eyes, wonder 
 ing what was coming, because he seemed to be for 
 getting her grief and craving sympathy for himself. 
 Yet it was not sympathy, she knew at once. " I can 
 live where I like," he said awkwardly. " I shall be 
 here a lot. I will be here, I promise you. I 11 be your 
 tutor. You won t have to go to aunt Mary s, even for 
 a piano." 
 
 She looked at him for a moment in the incredu 
 lous joy of such a promise. Then her sorrow over 
 whelmed her, and she leaned forward on the fence 
 and sobbed, 
 
 " It is n t that. It is n t pianos, nor learning, nor the 
 academy. It s Laura Laura Laura ! " 
 
IV 
 
 THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 J_T was when Thyrza was only a little over fifteen 
 that Barton Gorse s uncle, Terry Updike, came home 
 from Europe with an impelling desire of finding out 
 what his nephew was like, and why he had not only 
 failed to establish himself in some profession at home, 
 but had not even gone over to do indefinite things 
 abroad. Terry Updike was a writer of books, the 
 brother of Barton s mother, and he had for years 
 elected to live in England. It seemed to him that 
 there was something difficult to be understood in the 
 way Barton had settled down at Leafy Road after his 
 grandfather s death. The boy had an older sister in, 
 America, and he must also have ambitions, hot blood 
 to be cooled, even intemperances to be outworked. It 
 was not like youth in a strenuous time to take on 
 the habits of middle age, and settle beside stagnant 
 waters. So, with an irritated sense of doing a foolish 
 thing, he broke the established habit of his life a 
 winter s work in Devon, the London season, and 
 summer on the Continent and set sail for America. 
 Barton, when he found he was coming, had proposed 
 a dutiful meeting in New York as soon as he should 
 land ; but that his uncle definitely refused. He 
 wanted, though this he did not say, to come down to 
 
 83 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Leafy Road and see for himself the environment that 
 had either relaxed the lad or enchanted him. 
 
 Thyrza was taking lessons of Barton every day 
 now. They were reading Virgil, and she felt very 
 learned. One afternoon she looked up from her sight 
 reading with a flushed face, beseeching in every line 
 to be commended. She was a glutton for praise; she 
 never got enough, and however fat with it she was, a 
 word of reproof reduced her to penury. Barton sat 
 leaning back in his chair, tapping his lips with a pen 
 cil and smiling. He was thinking what a queer little 
 girl she was, how fierce in her devotions, how self- 
 centred and bent upon certain rewards that, from his 
 circumscribed area of outlook, he thought were more 
 valuable to men than to women. Barton had not 
 known many differing types of people, and it some 
 times seemed to him that Thyrza was the very queer 
 est child he had ever met, and the least fitted to be 
 a woman. She was so bent upon distinction, upon 
 things that, he believed, belonged to what they called 
 the intellectual life, and so burningly anxious to be 
 cognizant of emotions with large names. Yet after all 
 she was only a thin child with big eyes and freckles 
 on her nose, dressed, most of the time, in a brown 
 calico pathetically serviceable. To-day he had some 
 thing to break to her. They sat in the faded, sombre 
 room known as the library at the Gorse house, though 
 there were but few books, because Judge Gorse had 
 kept his law library in the little office out in the 
 grounds. But the books here were in old leather 
 
 84 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 bindings that gave forth a pungent smell. The chairs 
 were covered in worn leather with brass tacks, and 
 everything looked dignified and old. The room was 
 always in order and always clean, but it affected 
 sharp young senses, fresh from outdoor challenges, 
 with a deadening as of things left a long time to 
 grow musty and decay. 
 
 Thyrza looked up suddenly from her book and 
 Barton noted how bright her eyes were, like those 
 of some inquisitive young animal. 
 
 " This room smells like poison," said she. 
 
 Barton sprang to his feet. 
 
 " Heavens ! Do you mean the air s bad ? " Then, 
 as the door and all the windows were open, and he 
 could do nothing, he sat down again. 
 
 Thyrza was shocked at her implication. 
 
 " Oh, no, sir," she hastened to say. " I guess what 
 I mean is it smells like an old book we Ve got. It s 
 about poisoners. It s an awful old book a very old 
 book and this air s just like it. I guess it s only 
 the smell of leather." 
 
 " Well, you need n t scare a chap to death, with 
 your poisons." 
 
 Thyrza sat contentedly with her eyes fixed on the 
 time-softened backs of Michelet s France, in a kind of 
 worshipful muse. It seemed as if there were nothing 
 on earth so wonderful as to live in a quiet room and 
 read from one book and look up to see another wait 
 ing for her. 
 
 "Only to think," she said wonderingly, " there s 
 
 85 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 just that one book at home, except the Bible, 
 and here there s more than I could read in a 
 month." 
 
 "Help yourself, Dryasdust," said Barton reck 
 lessly. " Drink deep. If any young woman can drown 
 dull care in Gibbonses without regard to ribbonses 
 (I thought of that this minute, talking right along 
 just as I am now! ain t I smart !), why, I m not the 
 man to curb her. Well!" He settled himself again, 
 and began beating an accompaniment to his words 
 with the pencil on his palm. He was often shy before 
 Thyrza s intellectual curiosities. The pencil was a 
 pedagogical symbol that kept him in heart. " We can t 
 have more than an hour a day for a while," he an 
 nounced. " My uncle s coming." 
 
 Thyrza looked at him and blanched. In her 
 strangely alternated nature she had as wild a belief 
 in ill fortune as in good. Her fears served to balance 
 her outrageous hopes. "It s all over," her heart said, 
 while she continued to look at him respectfully. " The 
 Virgil will stop, the French will never be begun, and 
 I shan t be educated." 
 
 Barton was continuing, 
 
 "My uncle Terry is on his way here from England. 
 He s going to visit me. So till I see what his habits 
 are and how much he wants of me, we d better cut 
 down our time a little." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Thyrza. Then she added with 
 timidity, for she sometimes had an impression that 
 Barton smiled at her when she offered unsolicited 
 
 86 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 opinions on matters connected with the intellectual 
 life, " He writes beautiful books." 
 
 Barton smiled this time, only rather absently. 
 Thyrza responded with an inward shiver. Something 
 within her, as raw as vanity, forbade her to seem to 
 make a mistake, which, in the intellectual life, she 
 felt, would be irreparable. That life was a winged 
 flight from mountain top to top. One must never lose 
 pinions and fall fluttering, broken-winged, into the 
 valley. 
 
 " He s written an awful lot," said Barton, with a 
 species of indulgence toward an uncle who served 
 strange gods. " I don t see what he wants in America. 
 Well, anyhow he s coming, and we 11 cut down our 
 time till we see what the old chap likes." 
 
 Thyrza, speeding home that afternoon along the 
 road, foot deep now in yellow and red leaves, felt 
 passionately sad and yet extremely happy at recogniz 
 ing her feeling. The day was all soft reminders and 
 sweet consolations, a touch in it of hottest summer, 
 and yet tempered with the benignity of the end. All 
 the mists of the world, she thought, had flown to 
 gether into one purple bloom that veiled the hills and 
 made the farther woods enchanted barriers. And 
 nearer there was, in homely imitation, the curling 
 upward of smoke from the neighborhood chimneys, 
 where a score of houses made ready for tea. It was a 
 wonderfully beautiful autumn, and Thyrza was trem 
 blingly happy in it, with an undercurrent of lonesome- 
 ness and pain. 
 
 87 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Laura had really gone. She was with great-aunt 
 Mary, beginning at the academy and learning to play 
 on Arabella s piano, and very homesick, Thyrza 
 thought it probable, very despondent over the value 
 of what she was learning at such pains, yet treading 
 her appointed path with dutiful little feet, as Laura 
 would. Thyrza missed her in a sickening way that she 
 defined to herself, having no other measure of com 
 parison, as " like death." There was a lump in her 
 throat and the whole earth looked to her like a dwell 
 ing-place for homesickness and pain. Her mother, too, 
 she knew, was suffering for Laura, though she invested 
 Mrs. Tennant with her own temperament, and gave 
 it credit for an intensity of wretchedness it had never 
 known. Mrs. Tennant had taken on an unwholesome 
 yellow. She looked older, and the triangular frown 
 on her forehead had run into a snarl of lines ; but 
 Thyrza saw in these outward changes the tokens of 
 midnight vigils, of sobs and rending anguish that 
 could by no means have sprung from that nature 
 unless Mrs. Tennant had, in her own words, " gone 
 ravin distracted." 
 
 Thyrza felt that she had two tasks : she must study 
 night and day, in pursuit of the intellectual life, and 
 she must be a comfort to her mother. Sometimes Mrs. 
 Tennant accepted her ministrations with a patient 
 tolerance. Often she had to put them by. Thyrza had 
 heard of little girls who were a solace because they 
 read the Scriptures to their elders ; and often when 
 her mother was buttonholing, with the twist of the 
 
 88 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 hand that seemed at once so experienced and so bril 
 liant, she brought out the picture Bible from the 
 parlor and devotedly read a chapter. Mrs. Tennant 
 fidgeted. It was impossible to let the sacred stream 
 roll on unheeded, yet it did distract her from her task. 
 Thyrza knew, too, that a word in season has an up 
 lifting effect upon older guardians, and she fell into 
 a way of appearing before her mother when the su 
 perciliary knot of worries tightened in Mrs. Tennant s 
 forehead, and adjuring her to " hope on hope ever," 
 or assuring her that it is likely to be " darkest just 
 before the day." Sometimes Mrs. Tennant, at such an 
 onslaught, regarded her with a mildly hopeless look ; 
 but again, and valuing the child s wayward sympathy 
 for what it was worth, she would return in her own 
 language, " That ? s a good girl." Thyrza knew this 
 was the highest praise. 
 
 Terry Updike came. Thyrza was walking home 
 from the Corners, where she had been for groceries, 
 when she heard behind her the plodding tread of 
 Judge Gorse s Dill. She wished she had stepped over 
 the wall and hidden behind the barberry bushes before 
 ever this had happened to her. It was not because she 
 was ashamed of carrying parcels, but she knew she 
 must look funny with three tucked under her arm and 
 the big bag of sugar in her hands. Barton would be 
 sure to ask her to ride, and she would have to look up 
 and answer in the face of an author home from Eng 
 land, and it would be agony. It all happened as she 
 had guessed. Barton, driving the old chaise, had 
 
 89 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 pulled up and said, with the scrupulous courtesy he 
 always used to her, - 
 
 " Let us take you home, Thyrza." 
 
 Thyrza stood there by the roadside, flushed by her 
 shyness and her walk, and looking almost pretty, 
 though in her own miserable conception she was only 
 what her mother would have called numb. 
 
 " No, thank you, sir," she said, in a shy little voice. 
 " I m not going very far." 
 
 That seemed to her, as soon as she had ventured it, 
 the most hideously ridiculous thing possible to have 
 said, because Barton knew exactly how far she was 
 going. It was a country formula of refusal, but oh, 
 how foolish to have used it here ! Barton was answer 
 ing gravely, - 
 
 " Then let us take your parcels. This is Miss 
 Thyrza Tennant, uncle. Thyrza, this is my uncle 
 Terry." 
 
 Thyrza was passing the bundles into the chaise as 
 the easiest way of parting with them both, and there 
 seemed to be no way, in courtesy, but to look up 
 when she answered Terry Updike s " How do you 
 do?" with her shy, "Pretty well, I thank you, sir." 
 Terry Updike was looking straight at her with a 
 keenness grown out of his desire to know everything 
 that could enlighten him about Barton s frame of 
 mind or his probable future. Thyrza was a little girl. 
 Still, she was a girl, and he had to classify her in re 
 lation to his nephew. Thyrza met the glance. She 
 stayed poised a moment, as if it held her, while her 
 
 90 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 own pupils grew black and the red surged into her 
 cheeks. 
 
 Terry Updike was a handsome man of a foreign 
 type. He wore a long mustache and imperial in the 
 day when imperials were no more save with the un 
 fashionable or the daring, and he had eyes of a liquid 
 meaning. He was taking off his soft hat with a swift 
 movement full of chivalry and grace, and Thyrza s 
 heart responded with a great leap toward him and all 
 the passionate romance of knights and lovers. The 
 old horse jogged on, and she was left alone by the 
 roadside, a maid come into her dowry of a dream. 
 She walked home in an ecstasy. It was not long 
 since she had read "Jane Eyre," and Terry Up 
 dike seemed to be sitting in a garden with her in a 
 perpetual dusk, with the moth hovering over the 
 flower and the lightning playing from the clouds. 
 She was asking him if she suited him, and he was 
 answering, " To the finest fibre of my being." She 
 had not heard his voice, except in this waking dream, 
 but it was deep, she knew, and full of passion. That 
 was a beautiful word, Thyrza thought. Once she asked 
 Barton Gorse what he thought it meant, and he an 
 swered : " Oh, warm emotion ! It s a word for poetry." 
 
 When she got home, her mother was sewing by 
 the window and the parcels lay on the kitchen table. 
 Thyrza walked through the room without speaking, 
 and in her dream laid her hand gently upon one of 
 the parcels. His hand, she knew, might have touched 
 it. Her mother looked up briefly. 
 
 91 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " That s the sugar," she said. " You can empt it 
 if you want. Who s that with Barton Gorse? Looked 
 like an elderly man." 
 
 Thyrza turned in sudden suspicion. It seemed as if 
 her mother almost meant to wound her. 
 
 " It s Mr. Terry Updike," she said chokingly. 
 
 A swift tremor ran over her at saying his name at 
 all. 
 
 " Oh ! " returned her mother, unreeling a needle 
 ful of thread. " Well, he is a kind of an elderly man. 
 He ain t been here for nigh onto twenty years, I 
 guess." 
 
 Thyrza walked away into the kitchen garden. 
 There was a breach she knew between her and her 
 mother. " An elderly man," her indignant mind kept 
 repeating; but caught by its reminiscent sound, 
 memory tossed her another term she had fallen upon 
 in her reading, "a knight of eld." She repeated it 
 in an ecstasy : " a knight of eld." The dahlias were 
 blooming hard in the garden, a sturdy row all along 
 by the old gray fence. She had been saving one, a 
 deep red with petals perfectly quilled, to carry the 
 minister s wife, whose dahlias were all straw-color and 
 a miserable pink ; but now she snapped the stem and 
 set the flower in the neck of her brown dress. In a 
 moment, she did not know why, she had unbraided 
 her thick black hair and let it sweep about her face, 
 and taken the narrow velvet from her neck to snood 
 it. She tucked the dahlia into the snood and stood 
 there looking at the yellowing sky and repeating to 
 
 92 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 herself, " a knight of eld." A wind had risen, and she 
 went through the orchard and into the pasture to run 
 in the face of it and let it sweep back her hair. She 
 could almost feel that Terry Updike saw her, as she 
 fled, and found her beautiful. The sun went down, 
 and she ran in, the sun and wind in her face and the 
 dahlia still in her tangled locks. 
 
 Her mother was making biscuits, and there was a 
 warm odor of apple-sauce through the house. Mrs. 
 Tennant looked up with one of her casual glances, and 
 stayed her hand. 
 
 " For mercy sake ! " said she. " Do go up chamber 
 an comb your hair. It looks like a hurrah s nest." 
 
 Thyrza went up with the impetus of her new pos 
 session still upon her ; but as she passed aunt Ellie, 
 sitting by the fire with a book held wisely in her lap, 
 the little creature put out her hand and whimpered 
 until Thyrza stayed beside her. Aunt Ellie lifted the 
 hand higher, to stroke the dahlia petals. 
 
 " Pretty ! " she chanted. " Nice pretty ! " 
 
 Thyrza, in her chamber, braided her hair scorn 
 fully and with a cold patience appropriate to one who 
 was living out a story. Her mother had bade her do it, 
 she thought, and it was her destiny to yield ; but she 
 laid the dahlia in a drawer between her two best hair- 
 ribbons, to fade and dry, and remind her perpetually 
 of to-day. 
 
 Thyrza kept a diary at this time in an old writing- 
 book Andy McAdarn had " hove away," as he said, 
 because he had no understanding of the letter " q, 
 
 93 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 and his first assault upon it had been hooted at so 
 vociferously by the boy who sat with him and who 
 made skillful reproductions of it on the board at noon, 
 to the joy of his comrades, and their downfall when 
 Andy settled that score. She was accustomed to write 
 a few lines in it just before going to bed, putting 
 down the number of verses she had learned, or, in 
 these prouder days, the lines of Virgil. But now, 
 though she knew it was the moment for setting the 
 table and that her mother would expect that dutiful 
 aid, she flew to the window and in the last light put 
 down in her diary, " He has come. A knight of eld. 
 Dahlias." Then she ran into her mother s room and 
 took down the old broken-pointed scissors that were 
 always hanging over the string basket, and, in a pas 
 sionate haste, cut off a tress of her long hair. She 
 tied it with a bit of the narrow velvet she was wear 
 ing that moment when he had begun to love her, and 
 shut it into the diary. It seemed to her that something 
 irrevocable had been accomplished. She felt in some 
 way which it was unnecessary to understand, as if they 
 had spoken their troth, and that although the lock of 
 hair was in her book, it was also in his keeping. 
 
 She went down to supper with a staid and dignified 
 air. It was apparent to her that, now she was plighted 
 to one of his great gifts and incomparable beauty, she 
 could never stoop to childish actions. She was a grown 
 up lady, and it was at this time that she began to 
 wonder whether she was not a changeling, and whether 
 her mother was really her mother and not perhaps a 
 
 94 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 nurse with whom she had been left while her real mother 
 went abroad, to be drowned on the way. She washed 
 the dishes with a silent dignity because it seemed to 
 her all duties must be fulfilled, and then seated herself 
 by the lamp with "Endymion." 
 
 " Shall I read to you ? " she asked politely. How 
 could she add, "mother"? How did she know this was 
 her mother, and not that lowly, faithful thrall? Mrs. 
 Tennant glanced at the book and saw that the lines 
 were of one length and that it had no pictures. 
 
 " If you d like to," she said sighfully. 
 
 Thyrza began, but her mind was ever on the proud 
 conception of herself as a changeling and her mother as 
 the faithful nurse. At that moment of high decisions 
 and great challenges, she wondered if the truth would 
 not be best. What if she should lay down the book, 
 transfix her mother with a glance, and invite her to 
 tell all? She could assure her, "I shall never forsake 
 you. I shall love you just the same." These wonder 
 ments kept on in a whirling race while she read Keats, 
 and her mother sewed and considered whether she 
 should get enough apples to dry. It was very quiet 
 in the dusky kitchen, with only the little bright lamp 
 to shed its circle of power. The clock struck eight. 
 About this time, she knew, Laura used to stumble up 
 from the lounge where she was always helpless under 
 preliminary naps, and with the cat tucked under her 
 chin, struggle round the room on drowsy errands, 
 trying to wake herself before the inevitable going 
 upstairs. There was the cat, a lonesome round island 
 
 95 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 of fur, still on the lounge ; but Laura was pursuing 
 the aims she did not see under the rod of great-aunt 
 Mary. Thyrza ceased hearing the lovely lines, save 
 as a monotonous drone set her to complete. She tried 
 to blink her eyes open, and fixed them on her mother. 
 There she sat, the worried snarl in her forehead, pull 
 ing the thread in and out. It looked as if she had sat 
 there ever since Thyrza could remember anything; for 
 she wore the kind of dress she had always worn, and 
 her veined hands had the same knuckly look. She was 
 the most familiar thing in the world. 
 
 The book Thyrza was reading belonged to Barton 
 Gorse. In pursuance of her custom of being careful, 
 she had wrapped it in a clean old handkerchief, and 
 where her thumb held it open in the properest fashion 
 was a scrap of paper to protect the page. Thyrza, in 
 her daze of sleep and loneliness, forgot how precious 
 it was. She closed it recklessly, and it slid downward 
 to the floor. 
 
 "The land!" cried Mrs. Tennant, startled into 
 life. " I believe I most lost myself." 
 
 Thyrza was on her knees, her head in her mother s 
 lap. 
 
 " mother," she was sobbing, " don t you die, will 
 you ? Promise me you won t die." It seemed to her 
 as if nothing less than the destruction of this dear 
 and homely creature was enough to punish her trai 
 torous denial. 
 
 Mrs. Tennant dropped her coarse sewing beside the 
 wet cheek, where it felt rough and yet divinely wel- 
 
 96 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 come because it was familiar. She laid a hand on 
 Thyrza s hair and smoothed it with the awkwardness 
 of one who has no habit of caresses. 
 
 " There ! " she said, " I guess you better go right 
 up to bed. I guess you Ve got a kind of a cold, runnin 
 in the wind so." 
 
 Thyrza did go up to bed, her face swollen with 
 tears and the cat over her shoulder as one small alle 
 viation. She put the cat on her counterpane and then 
 went to turn down her mother s coverlet, and kiss the 
 pillow and the substantial unbleached nightgown 
 with a penitential fervor. 
 
 That night Barton and his uncle sat late beside the 
 library hearth. Terry Updike, from the indoor habit 
 of his secluded life, had a shivering delicacy that 
 called for fire, the look and feel of it. He piled on 
 wood until Barton had to retreat from the outpouring 
 warmth, and only then relaxed and stretched out his 
 legs in a perfect ease. Barton was willing to be hot 
 or cold as his uncle chose. He had been pathetically 
 lonely at times in Leafy Road, and now he felt as if 
 things were happening. Updike, out of his relaxed 
 mood, suddenly turned on him a probing glance. 
 
 "Going back with me?" he asked. 
 
 Barton started. 
 
 "Back?" he echoed. "Back where?" 
 
 " To England, France, wherever you want, within 
 reason. I ve come to carry you off." 
 
 97 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Barton sank back into his chair. He shook his 
 head, smiling a little ruefully, with an air of knowing 
 reasons. 
 
 "No," he said, "I stay right here." 
 
 His uncle turned on him a fuller look, one that 
 lingered and studied. 
 
 "What do you mean, boy?" he asked kindly. 
 "What are you settling down here for, at twenty- 
 three? You re squandering your best years." 
 
 Barton made a quick movement of dissent, and then 
 forbade himself to answer. 
 
 "Why?" repeated Updike. "Why?" 
 
 " I m not idle," said Barton, rather irritably. " I 
 study." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Latin, mathematics. I m rubbing up my Greek." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 Barton turned uneasily, to let the firelight play on 
 his ear. 
 
 "Oh, I don t half know. How should I know ? Yes, 
 I do, in a way. I m tutoring a little girl, and that got 
 me into it. Now I rather like it." 
 
 Updike answered reflectively, in a musing conclu- 
 siveness of tone, 
 
 " The little girl in spotted print, carrying the bun 
 dles." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " She s not a very little girl." 
 
 " No, but she s young not over fifteen, I fancy." 
 
 " What are you doing it for, Bart ? " 
 
 98 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 Barton paused for a long interval. Then he broke 
 out, 
 
 " Because she wants it so infernally. I never saw 
 anybody want anything in the world so much." 
 
 " Is she very clever? " 
 
 " Wonderfully. I try not to let her see how much 
 cleverer she is than I am." 
 
 " Horrible child ! How does she use her gifts ? " 
 
 "Well, for an instance, we began Latin together 
 this fall " 
 
 "You did n t begin?" 
 
 " No, I d had it before. I began reviewing labori 
 ously, keeping ahead of her. Now she reads Virgil 
 like a shot, and I m still trying to keep ahead. And 
 I can t, uncle, I simply can t. She s no idea how 
 I m tottering to my fall when she s prancing along 
 with her subjunctives and ablative absolutes. If she 
 should ever ask me a question, I should double up 
 under the table. That she does n t know." 
 
 " The little devil ! " said Updike meditatively. Then 
 he took out his cigar and held it between two fingers 
 while he continued, still in that keen yet musing 
 way, "You wanted to go to West Point, didn t 
 you?" 
 
 Barton twisted in his chair. He had flushed un 
 easily. 
 
 " How did you know ? " he parried. 
 
 " You told me, long ago long, long ago, in a let 
 ter. Then I heard no more about it. I supposed gramp 
 was boosting you, and presently gramp had died, and 
 
 99 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 I woke up and realized you hadn t gone to West Point. 
 Why did n t you, Bart?" 
 
 Barton rose and walked to the window, where as he 
 approached he saw the semblance of another firelit 
 room and his uncle looking quietly his way. But his 
 moving figure blotted out the picture from the pane, 
 and he was gazing into an impenetrable night. His 
 uncle had asked the question again, and he answered 
 from his covert, his back still turned upon the room. 
 
 " They would n t have me." 
 
 " Why ? " The tone of that question was quieter 
 even, but in the same measure more insistent. 
 
 " There s something the matter with me." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " It s my heart." 
 
 Updike s lips formed a round of assent and under 
 standing. Then they closed again upon the cigar. He 
 smoked, and the young man looked out into the night. 
 
 " The alternative, then," said the older man, " would 
 be something sedentary, perhaps. If you can t go for 
 a sojer, why, you can do scores of things." 
 
 " No, I thank you." 
 
 " You have n t given up the ship ? " 
 
 All this was what Barton had not mentioned to & 
 soul. Strange things had happened to his endurance 
 before he was given that verdict on his bodily state, 
 but he had not spoken of them. Then, having the 
 verdict and knowing at last why the things had hap 
 pened, still he did not speak. His grandfather had gone 
 out of the world unmoved in the harsh judgment that 
 
 100 
 
THE KNIGHT OF EL> 
 
 the boy had no ambition, and Barton, knowing that, 
 had merely been able to curl the leaves of his seclusion 
 more imperatively about him and wrap himself in the 
 solitude which seemed to him the only possible con 
 dition for a crippled youth. His uncle was speaking. 
 
 "Does Helen know?" 
 
 "Helen? She s got troubles of her own." 
 
 " Is that fellow hanging round her still ? " 
 
 Barton s eyes filled with angry tears. He nodded. 
 
 "Where is she?" Updike asked. 
 
 " With her old governess in Canada. He s there." 
 
 " And his wife ?" 
 
 " No. I believe not. It s not so bad as that." 
 
 " You ought to be with her." 
 
 Barton looked at him in a quick scorn. 
 
 " She won t have me. Do you suppose I should be 
 here if she would ? She thinks I don t understand. 
 Helen s an angel." 
 
 "Barton," said Updike, with a delightful wheedling 
 of a sort that made it intolerable to refuse him, " come 
 over to England with me. I can find lots of uses for 
 you." He had meant to stretch persuasion to its limit 
 and say, " I need you " ; but it was n t true, and he 
 could not manage it. Indeed, it was so vastly untrue 
 that, as he remembered at this minute, he was only 
 here now because, in the midst of his perfectly ordered 
 and absolutely satisfying life over there the problem 
 atic case of this lone nephew had reached him like a 
 little cry. 
 
 Barton came back to his seat. He was pale, and his 
 101 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 eyes had a suffused look, almost as if they had bred 
 tears. He sat down, and with his arms hanging over 
 the side of the chair, a lax and miserable figure that, 
 having once renounced pride, saw no reason for any 
 show of it, spoke with a pale decision. 
 
 " I can t fight it out. There s nothing to fight out, 
 that s all. I m no more equipped than any other crip 
 ple. It amuses me to live along here and teach my 
 little girl. When she knows as much as I do that ll 
 be in a very few minutes well, then I can see what 
 I 11 do next to take up the time." 
 
 Updike had a charming smile. It often helped him 
 to kindly domination. 
 
 "Let s send her away to school," he said, with a 
 fascinating readiness. 
 
 Barton stared. 
 
 "Thyrza?" 
 
 " Is that her name ? Yes, the little hop-pole in the 
 brown frock. Send her to school, Bart. I 11 pay for 
 her." 
 
 Barton looked at him with incredulous eyes. 
 
 " By George ! " he breathed. " Would you ? " 
 
 " I d promise it for a year. Perhaps I d do more. 
 Is there anything she d rather have ? " 
 
 Barton broke into a laugh. 
 
 " To protect me from her arts ? that infant of fif 
 teen ? " His uncle was looking at him with a kindly 
 middle-aged smile. 
 
 " Well," he continued, "what is there she d rather 
 have?" 
 
 102 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 " Why/ said Barton, watching him with the lifted 
 eyebrow of quizzical consideration, " I almost think 
 she d rather have a piano." 
 
 " Brava ! a piano it is then. One condition only. 
 You are to leave here with me in a week s time. Done ? " 
 
 Barton began flushing and continued to the point 
 of a deep red. 
 
 " It s a fact, is n t it ? You want to get me out of 
 her way that little girl. Don t be an idiot." 
 
 Updike was smoking meditatively, looking into the 
 fire. 
 
 " Oh, let her have her piano, if she wants it. It 11 
 be better for her and better for you. It s funny for you 
 to have a young girl here every day reading Virgil. 
 Her mother doesn t come with her, I take it?" 
 
 " Her mother ! " Barton laughed again, satirically. 
 He had a vision of Mrs. Tennant as he had seen her, 
 upon the swiftest of flights along interminable seams. 
 " We don t do things that way here. Why, you remem 
 ber what it is to live in America, in the country. 
 Don t be an ass." 
 
 Updike quite approved of him for forgetting their 
 ill-matched ages. 
 
 " Well," he said, tolerant of it all, country customs, 
 little learned maidens and stubborn nephews, " you 
 present the case to her to-morrow when she comes 
 for her lesson. Tell her an imaginary personage will 
 give her the desire of her heart. Only you know it 
 means you come away with me. It means that." Then 
 he cleverly turned the talk to other things, and Bar- 
 
 103 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 ton found himself unable to recur to qualifying re 
 buttals. 
 
 Thyrza did not go for her lesson next day. She was 
 in bed with a cold acquired by running against the 
 wind with beflowered locks. The cold was not bad 
 enough to keep her in bed, .but she elected to stay 
 there, to escape the possibility of going for her lesson 
 or being sought to be asked why she was delinquent. 
 It was impossible to go, she knew quite definitely, be 
 cause Terry Updike was there and she loved him. 
 Her love stood between them. Never could she ap 
 proach him, never take a step toward him or raise 
 her eyes to his, because he was the one love of her 
 life, and for some reason this must be so. She asked 
 herself no questions on the subject of love and its 
 usages. She did not try to compare her passion with 
 any other, but only recognized the new state of being. 
 It was an exaltation all unlike the uplifting of sacrifice 
 which had before been her top notch of feeling. Now 
 she was shut away into a particular world, with him 
 only, the sacred, wonderful, dreadful image of him, 
 never to come out any more, she knew. 
 
 Of his part of their mutual tie she did not think. 
 He seemed indissolubly connected with her, and it 
 could not be that he loved her, poor Cinderella as she 
 was. Yet somehow she felt he did. The beautiful 
 rhythmic steps of her own devotion were not taken 
 alone. Surely she heard other steps falling in with 
 them. There must be two, she was certain, dancing, 
 singing, side by side. So she lay in her bed and 
 
 104 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 wrote little thoughts in her diary, things that meant 
 something to her but would signify nothing if the 
 book were found, and looked at her slim brown hands 
 with the pretty nails and wished they were beautiful. 
 Her mother kept coming upstairs at first, frowning at 
 her strange state and dropping a kindly touch on her 
 wrist. 
 
 " Seems as if you was a mite feverish," she said. 
 " But you don t have no cold to speak of." 
 
 " I want to move my bed to the window," declared 
 Thyrza, the fever in her hurried voice. " I want to 
 see the road." 
 
 " You better by half get up an come down to sup 
 per," urged Mrs. Tennant. " Mother 11 open a tumbler 
 o jelly." 
 
 But she could not go. She sprang up, and with a 
 passionate strength helped pull her bed about, and 
 there she lay looking out of the window, wondering 
 what she could do if he did go by. 
 
 One day, Barton walked up the road and stopped 
 at the door to ask why she had not come for lessons. 
 He was so sorry, her mother came to tell her. He 
 would call again the next day. She watched him 
 walking back home at a swinging pace. It seemed 
 incredible that he was going to see Terry Updike, to 
 talk with him, sit at the table with him, say good 
 night. 
 
 Next day, when the sun was pale on yellow leaves 
 and crows were cawing at a distance, Barton came 
 again, and when she in her timid obstinacy refused 
 
 105 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 to see him, sent up word, with the authority of the 
 preceptor, that she must. Her mother, wholly dazed 
 by all the atmospheric changes, helped her put on her 
 clothes, and at the end gave her a little encouraging 
 yet half-exasperated push toward the stairway. It 
 was a pale, miserable little maiden, all excitement, 
 that entered the room where Barton waited for her. 
 He had few words to spend on her illness. Barton 
 was playing a little game with himself. If Thyrza 
 snatched at the piano, he would take it as a sign 
 that he was to go away with his uncle to France, to 
 England. 
 
 " Get your hat," he said at once. " Come out and 
 walk. I want to tell you something." 
 
 Thyrza hated her old brown hat with the draggled 
 feather too often curled over the kitchen lamp. She 
 went out bareheaded, and he followed. When they 
 were under the maples, in that yellowing drift of 
 leaves, he spoke, striking at the ground as he talked, 
 with a stick newly, she was sure, in his possession. 
 At once she felt it belonged to Terry Updike. It 
 seemed a remarkable stick. 
 
 " Thyrza," said Barton, " what do you suppose my 
 uncle means to do ? " 
 
 She felt her teeth chattering on the words. 
 
 " I don t know." 
 
 " He wants to give you a piano." 
 
 She stopped and trembled, looking off into the 
 road vista, framed now by thinning boughs. It did 
 not come to her to ask why. It only seemed a most 
 
 106 
 
THE KNIGHT OF ELD 
 
 solemn thing that Terry Updike should have had 
 that wish. 
 
 "He is going hack to England/ said Barton. He 
 was watching her curiously, realizing that even he had 
 not yet known how intensely she could feel. "He 
 wants to take me with him, and he wants to give you 
 a piano. I told him how you liked to study and how 
 you wanted a piano. He s going to give it to you." 
 
 Thyrza had not moved. Now her mouth trembled 
 a little, and he saw a tear roll down her cheek. 
 
 " I can t let him," she said. 
 
 Barton roused himself. 
 
 " You 11 be an idiot. Come, Thyrza. He s a good 
 old chap. Don t you know how old he is ? " 
 
 Thyrza scarcely heard him. She knew she could not 
 explain, but it had become at once evident to her 
 that because she loved Terry Updike she could not 
 take the piano. She turned to Barton, her solemn 
 tear-wet eyes fixed on his. 
 
 "I thank him ever so much," she said, "but I 
 can t take it. You tell him I can t take it." 
 
 Barton laughed aloud. The burden of his own de 
 cision rolled from him at her words. 
 
 "You won t take the piano," he said. "Well, 
 Thyrza " The sunset light was on her face and it 
 suddenly came to him that she had a kind of beauty. 
 " Well, Thyrza, I won t go abroad either. We 11 sink 
 or swim together." 
 
 He put out his hand. Thyrza was looking at him 
 with a piteous face. She had but one thought. 
 
 107 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " What time is he going? " 
 
 " On the early train. I shall run up to town with 
 him. We can t have any lessons to-morrow." He was 
 still regarding her with his kindly quirk of the mouth 
 that was not quite a smile, wondering whether, after 
 all, she cared as much about her piano as he had 
 thought. He put it crudely, "I guess you like books 
 better than pianos anyway, don t you, Thyrza?" 
 
 Her chin quivered a little. No one, she knew, would 
 understand, except the Knight of Eld himself, and if 
 they were never to meet again, she could not tell him. 
 
 " I guess so/ she said faintly. 
 
 The next morning she was at her window, kneeling 
 there half-hidden by the curtain. She had dressed 
 very carefully, because she knew this hour of his 
 going was one she should never forget. She had 
 wound her hair round the top of her head in a coro 
 net, like a picture in the fashion magazines " up attic," 
 and had pinned the front of her dress with her mo 
 ther s cameo pin. At exactly the time she had expected, 
 she heard the slow plodding of hoofs upon the road. 
 There they were, crowded into the chaise, Barton and 
 his uncle, and Michael driving them. Terry Updike 
 was on her side, and she saw again the fine sweep of 
 the profile, the square shoulders, the large soft hat 
 that seemed to need only a feather to make him a 
 prince in the eyes of every one as he was in hers. She 
 crouched behind the curtain lest, by some chance, he 
 should look up. But his face was set forward, sternly, 
 she thought. The Knight of Eld was gone. 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 W HEN Andy McAdam was nineteen years old, he 
 ran away. The immediate cause of his flight was that 
 his grandmother, then something over seventy, inti 
 mated that it was time to sow the peas; but the real 
 reason was that Andy felt spring fever in his blood 
 and blindly wanted to be gone. There was nothing in 
 Leafy Road to absorb a creature like him, half -gypsy 
 and all a rioting youth and health. He had been so 
 bered with the logical effect of turning deeply sulky 
 when Laura Tennant went away to live with her great- 
 aunt Mary Hubbard and be educated. Andy would 
 have fallen upon the boy that should accuse him of 
 playing with girls ; but Laura was his chum, sought 
 out at shy moments for hidden confidences about his 
 future riches and power and hypothetical experiences 
 with firearms. Thyrza he bore with when he must, be 
 cause she was Laura s sister ; but she was always talking 
 about things you did n t understand, and being hurt or 
 proud when you didn t know you d spoken to her. 
 
 That morning when he ran away, the blackbirds 
 were deep in their jarring chorus, and there was a 
 smell of damp earth and new leaves. Andy rose from 
 the breakfast table and stretched himself. He was a 
 strange fellow for plodding country ways, very active 
 and yet lazy, a handsome creature, too, with great 
 
 109 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 height and strong shoulders, and health visible in his 
 reddish hair and ruddy skin. His grandmother, a slen 
 der old lady, very straight yet with a peculiar way of 
 carrying her head now, because her glasses never 
 seemed to h t and she had to peer round something to 
 see at all, looked up and trembled a little. She was 
 not afraid of Andy, but she knew how he would hate 
 what she had to say. Andy liked her very much, 
 though he was often exasperated because her frailty 
 stood continually in his path. It seemed to him some 
 times as if she made herself older than she need, to 
 excite his compassion and so hinder him further. She 
 clung to an inherited type of clothes that even ancient 
 ladies in Leafy Road wore no more, strange bonnets 
 and figured veils, and caps with bulbous rosettes of 
 satin ribbon, when she " went abroad " to call, and an 
 tique little shoulder-shawls on even a warm day. Andy 
 felt as if she were playing the game of age and youth 
 with him, and as if, whenever the thought of the sea 
 and a pushing wind came upon him, or railroads, and 
 he in a flying engine bending forward, his hand on the 
 throttle, one of her pathetic little shawls waved before 
 him, a signal to pause. He had a theory that he might 
 have made something, but that his grandmother s caps 
 and shawls prevented. 
 
 She looked at him with the little cant of her head 
 that was moving to him and made him angry because 
 he had to heed it. 
 
 " I guess other folks early peas are all in by now/ 
 she said. 
 
 110 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 Andy growled. He had gone into the shed to look 
 at his gun, as it sat there in the corner, and wonder 
 if he wanted to go and shoot at a mark. 
 
 "Thyrza Tennant put theirn in herself/ said his 
 grandmother, still watching him with that poise of her 
 head. "She s a terrible smart girl." 
 
 Andy growled again and thought how handsome 
 and smooth Laura had looked in her placid beauty, the 
 last time she came home to visit. Mrs. McAdam seemed 
 to read his mind in a way she had. They were together 
 every day, and she thought of Andy all the time. 
 
 "I guess," she said, not maliciously, but with a 
 simple candor, " Laura never 11 be back here to live, 
 
 now." 
 
 Andy ceased looking at his gun, and stared out at 
 the chopping-block in the shed. He was thinking of 
 Laura, with a rebellious bitterness, and yet realizing 
 also that it would be only a few hours before he should 
 be asked to split kindlings on that chopping-block, 
 when all the world was calling him to blue waters and 
 long roads. His grandmother had begun one of her 
 vexatious ramblings wherein she told what they both 
 knew equally. 
 
 " You see Laura got kinder ketched there. Her 
 aunt took an educated her an all, an then when her 
 aunt was bed-rid, of course Laura had to stay an take 
 care of her. Mebbe Thyrza s got some peas left over. 
 She s gone to school now, ain t she ? Mebbe I could 
 see her when she comes home at noon." 
 
 Andy set down his gun and, willfully silent, walked 
 
 111 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 out of the house. His grandmother rose and peered 
 after him, though she could not see him. She listened 
 a moment, to hear whether he went whistling, but 
 there was not a sound. 
 
 Thyrza was teaching the district school, and when 
 she came rustling home in her starched dimity, walk 
 ing with head erect as she always did because that 
 seemed to her the way to walk, Mrs. McAdam called 
 to her from the door. 
 
 " You ain t seen Andy round the neighborhood, I 
 s pose ? I be n waitin for him to split me some kin- 
 dlin ." 
 
 " No," said Thyrza. She had a clear, sweet, rather 
 masterful voice. " You wait, Mrs. McAdam ; I 11 pick 
 you up some chips." She leaned her parasol against the 
 front fence, and came hurrying up the walk. 
 
 Mrs. McAdam had great respect for Thyrza because 
 she spoke so prettily and was smart as a trap. 
 
 "Don t you do no such thing," she adjured her. 
 "I can manage to scrape some together. Like s not 
 he s gone fishin , an won t be home till night." 
 
 But Thyrza deftly picked up the chips and then 
 "blazed" the fire herself. When she got home where 
 her mother had their dinner of greens and boiled 
 potatoes waiting, she said, with a dignified dis 
 pleasure, 
 
 " I should think Andy d be ashamed to make his 
 grandmother run round after him all the time, splitting 
 kindling and things." 
 
 " Well," said her mother tolerantly, "Andy s young. 
 112 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 He never was cut out for a farmer. He s a kind of a 
 wanderin spirit." 
 
 " I m going to speak to him about it," said Thyrza. 
 But she did not speak to him because Andy failed to 
 come home. The spring went on and summer passed, 
 and there was never a word from him. At first his 
 grandmother bemoaned herself bitterly that she had 
 asked him to sow the peas, because that, she always 
 believed, had been the just cause of his going. 
 Andy, in her fond mind, developed into a hero who 
 should never have been set to common tasks. Then, 
 when her eyes troubled her the more, and it was an 
 effort to lament, she withdrew into a hurt silence, and 
 became a very old woman before her time. She dated 
 all her misfortunes from the hour of Andy s flight. 
 
 " Ain t it hard?" she would say to Thyrza, over 
 and over again, "ain t it kinder hard I didn t know 
 no better than to drive him off, when he s as good a 
 boy as ever stepped ? A dear good boy, Andy was, 
 a dear good boy." 
 
 Thyrza did not think he was a dear good boy. She 
 had passionate angers in her which seemed all justice, 
 and she knew that if she ever saw Andy McAdam 
 again she should give him a piece of her mind. But 
 her heart ached too, in anger, she thought, though 
 it seemed strangely accordant with grandmother 
 McAdam s pain of loss, for she understood that very 
 well. But whether out of compassion or a fierce 
 loyalty to the wandering youth, she assumed the care 
 of the old lady in a way that made Mrs. McAdam 
 
 113 
 
THE STORY OF THYUZA 
 
 cling to her pathetically, and awakened the neighbors, 
 also, to a wondering service. It was a kindly place, 
 but when illness had stricken one of its children and 
 the rest had thronged about with help, they forgot, 
 after a time, and turned back to their own vocations. 
 But Thyrza never forgot. She was a vital creature, 
 full of life and will, and born to a passionate giving 
 like the fruit that drops, in a large radius, from a 
 spreading tree. 
 
 Soon after Andy had gone, Laura came home for 
 a visit. She had grown into a tall, rich-looking crea 
 ture, with an abundance of brown hair and a warm 
 skin ; she had, too, an unfailing air of gentle kindli 
 ness. Thyrza, beside her, looked like a thin race-horse 
 all fire and speed, ready to run till she dropped ; but 
 Thyrza had not that other potent and most homely 
 charm. Thyrza might rush to the aid of a struggling 
 world, but Laura went about shedding honey from 
 her breath. 
 
 When Laura was told that Andy had run away, she 
 paled a little under the bloom of her cheek, and an 
 swered with a look of tacit inquiry. 
 
 " Yes," said Thyrza, " I ve wondered myself. Mrs. 
 McAdam never seems to think of that. Of course 
 something s happened to him." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Laura, " that wasn t what I meant. 
 I was only trying to think what had become of him. 
 Oh, no, nothing s happened to Andy ! " 
 
 " Why, how do you know ? " asked Thyrza, won 
 dering. 
 
 114 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 " Because there has n t. He s just run away, that s 
 all." 
 
 " What made him run away ? " 
 
 "He just felt like it/ said Laura. "That s all." 
 
 Thyrza had again that sense she had been conscious 
 of ever since their childhood, that Laura understood 
 all about Andy, in a definite fashion, even though she 
 might never be able to explain him to any one else. 
 
 In a few days Laura went away again to her dull 
 task of nursing great-aunt Mary, whose legs, to the 
 horror of the townspeople, who thought she must have 
 incurred celestial wrath to have contracted a disease 
 of such eccentricity, seemed turning to marble ; and 
 Mrs. Tennant, after watching her along the road with 
 
 t O O 
 
 the patient longing she felt all the time now, like an 
 inward misery, returned to her sewing, with a sigh. 
 
 Thyrza went on with her studying by night and all 
 her passionate service. She did not question where 
 her study would lead her. When the neighbors began 
 to wonder why, after three years of lessons with 
 Barton Gorse, she should continue carrying heavy 
 books to and from the schoolhouse, to utilize even the 
 time from twelve to one, when she stayed at noon on a 
 wet day, she could give them no enlightenment. 
 
 "What you goin to do with all you know?" they 
 asked her, at times. 
 
 But Thyrza, who privately thought she had accumu 
 lated a good stock of data, was merely conscious that 
 some time there would be a glorious event, and for 
 that she was resolved to be prepared. When Barton 
 
 115 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Gorse went away to his uncle Terry, still in Europe 
 and summoning his nephew in irritated letters as of 
 one who was hindered from doing a duty by the 
 obstinacy of the recipient, she felt bereft. He was 
 like a guardian, the verdict of the world she did not 
 know, on all her deeds and wonderings. " Write to 
 me," he had said, and she had eagerly assented. But 
 it proved, on trial, that she could not write. Nothing 
 happened to her save that she began teaching the 
 district school, and kept on teaching it. She became 
 aware then that her inward life was all the life she 
 lived, and this she had been in the habit of presenting 
 to Barton Gorse in an innocent betrayal. But the 
 things that seemed quite natural to say when you were 
 walking with your teacher, or when you could look up 
 from Virgil and ask about them, or even when you 
 thought of them in the night and saved them to talk 
 about the next day, would seem very silly set down 
 in a letter. Besides, Barton would be with his uncle 
 Terry, who was an author, and who might graciously 
 read a line or two out of a letter from home; and 
 nothing she had to say could stand so high a test. 
 Terry Updike was a wonderful figure to her. For 
 months after his visit in Leafy Road, she had thought 
 of him with a single-minded worship. He was the 
 unconscious arbiter of all her actions, and her exqui 
 site daily life, all truth and cleanness, as she tried to 
 make it, was a page that she dared not think could 
 ever be referred to him, but that must be worthy of 
 his eye. 
 
 116 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 One day she carried a mince pie to Mrs. McAdam, 
 who found large solace in rich food. Thyrza knew a 
 great deal about hygienic theory and practiced it with 
 a scorn of succulent delights ; but she could not quite 
 resist that look of eager pleasure on a pinched old 
 face, and kept her ancient friend abundantly supplied 
 with "sweet trade." 
 
 To-day she found Mrs. McAdam smaller, more con 
 tracted than ever into the sphere of her poverty and 
 blindness. She sat by the window in the pale after 
 noon sun, the corners of her mouth dropped, as if she 
 were a crying child. She looked up with a quivering 
 readiness when Thyrza opened the door. 
 
 "Thyrza," said she, "did you know my sight s 
 failin me?" 
 
 "Yes," said Thyrza, "I knew it. There, Mrs. 
 McAdam, I ve brought you a saucer pie." 
 
 "I won t cut it till supper-time," said the old lady. 
 "Thyrza, don t it seem to you, now my sight s failin 
 me, as if Andy might write me a line or two?" 
 
 Indignant comment rose to Thyrza s lips, but she 
 turned it into soothing. 
 
 "He ll write, Mrs. McAdam. Andy 11 write when 
 he gets round to it." 
 
 But when she had talked over the neighborhood 
 news, and laid the fire for supper, she walked home 
 thoughtfully and up into her chamber, there to perch 
 on the bed, her chin in her hand, and think again. 
 She was not sure that she was going to do right, but 
 she was clearly convinced that something must be done. 
 
 117 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 That night she stayed in her room writing, while 
 her mother sewed below, and next morning she ran 
 over to the post-office and then back to Mrs. 
 McAdam s. There was a thick envelope in her hand. 
 She burst in on her old friend, now occupied with 
 the painstaking task of clearing up after breakfast. 
 Thyrza dared not wait for greetings, lest her purpose 
 fail. 
 
 " Only think ! " she cried. "I ve been to the post- 
 office and I ve brought you a letter." 
 
 Mrs. McAdam laid down her dish towel and stood 
 still at the table, supporting herself by one trembling 
 hand. 
 
 "Who s it from?" she asked weakly. "Open it, 
 dear, open it. Who s it from?" 
 
 Thyrza tore it open in a desperate haste. Her eyes 
 were bright with a kind of moral terror. 
 
 " It s signed," she said, in a clear voice, " * Yours 
 with love, Andy McAdam. 
 
 Mrs. McAdam turned away from her and walked 
 over to her own particular chair by the window. There 
 she sat down. 
 
 "Well," she whispered, "what s he say?" 
 
 It was a remarkable letter. Andy was well, but not 
 happy, because he wanted to see his grandmother so 
 much. Yet he was getting on, and he hoped in time to 
 have something in the bank, and then he meant either 
 
 O 
 
 to send her money regularly or to come home to live 
 with her. He loved her dearly. She had been the best 
 friend to him that ever a boy had, and the time would 
 
 118 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 come when he would prove it. This was a particularly 
 warm and outspoken letter for a tongue-tied youth 
 like Andy, but his grandmother remembered the times, 
 years ago, when he had come shamefacedly to her at 
 twilight, just before he went to bed, and stretched 
 himself at her feet, to put his head in her lap while 
 she stroked his hair. Andy was like a dog in wanting 
 his head rubbed, and now, when these warm words 
 came in Thyrza s eager, throbbing voice, his grand 
 mother seemed to feel again under her old fingers that 
 thick, rough crop of red. But all she could say was, 
 
 " You look over it ag in, Thyrza, an see if he don t 
 say what he s doin of." 
 
 " No," said Thyrza, " he does n t say." 
 
 " You look at the postmark, dear." 
 
 " It s blotted," said Thyrza. Then catching the dis 
 appointment in the old face, she glanced again. " Oh/ 
 said she, " it s a place in Missouri." 
 
 "You give it here," Mrs. Me Adam bade her. "I d 
 kinder like to see f I can t make suthin of it." 
 
 Thyrza left her alone with her letter, and for this 
 once it happened that her dreams were true. Grand 
 mother McAdam loved her letter as passionately as 
 the romantic heart could wish. 
 
 Thyrza was always imagining the most poetic things 
 for everybody to do in any given place, and undis 
 mayed, when they failed to do them, imagining again. 
 Once she had heard that Captain Frisbee was coming 
 home from a voyage, and had instantly conceived the 
 picture of his wife s meeting him at the steps and 
 
 119 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 throwing herself into his arms, perhaps with a joyous 
 cry. But she had happened to be at the station to meet 
 Laura the day Captain Frisbee came, and the captain s 
 wife was there, too. Mrs. Frisbee was sitting out with 
 the team, waiting, a large, important figure in a cash 
 mere shawl, and Captain Frisbee had appeared bear- 
 ins: one end of his chest, while the station-master car- 
 
 O 
 
 ried the other. He had cast an incidental glance at his 
 wife, and, seeing her in unimpaired solidity, had re 
 marked to the station-master, as they fitted in the trunk, 
 " Cant her a leetle to the no theast, Billy" ; after which 
 he took the reins from his wife s hand, jumped in, and 
 said, in quite his usual tone, "Any errands, Mary?" 
 This was always happening. Thyrza was forever 
 painting the picture in dazzling colors, and the world 
 was as regularly toning it down. But grandmother 
 McAdam would have satisfied her : for that night and 
 for many nights after, indeed, until another letter 
 came, she slept with her treasure under her pillow. 
 By and by there were other letters, and all that win 
 ter they kept on coming. Andy told nothing but good 
 news. It could not have been otherwise, for he was on 
 the tip-top of prosperity and had only the best of news 
 to tell. He gave no hope of returning, but grand 
 mother understood that was only because of the delay 
 of fortune. When he could leave with safety to his 
 investments, she would see him home. The neighbors 
 had had little idea of grandma s living through the 
 winter ; but under the impetus of joy she brightened 
 wonderfully. She even said one day, 
 
 120 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 " Thyrza, I most think my eyes are a mite clearer." 
 Still she did not see any better. Perhaps it seemed to 
 her that she could discern the picture of Andy s pros 
 perous life. 
 
 One afternoon in the early spring, three years after 
 Andy had gone away, Thyrza had read to her the 
 most beautiful letter of all. It told how Andy had been 
 settled for some months in a mining country, and how 
 he hoped to come home with his pockets full of rocks. 
 Thyrza, as she read these vulgar expressions, hated 
 them, but they were exactly the phrases Andy had to 
 use, and to grandma McAdam they brought almost his 
 visible presence into the room. Then Thyrza laid down 
 the sheet and looked up at the old woman nodding her 
 delight over Andy s lips at her ear, telling his good 
 fortune, and wondered if it would not be possible for 
 grandma McAdam to be called away while she was 
 so content. Thyrza had swift dramatic ways of dispos 
 ing of people who were either in trouble or robbed of 
 the robust and vivid joys of living. She found her 
 self always pushing them off into another life where, 
 the Bible told her, the crooked was made straight. 
 There was no way out of it for grandma McAdam 
 unless she died or Andy came home, and Andy was a 
 wandering star and would never come home at all. 
 And Thyrza, after saying good-night, went out of the 
 shed-door in the gathering dusk, and met Andy face 
 to face. 
 
 She retreated, and stood, her back against the door, 
 defending it from him. A throb in her breast told her 
 
 121 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 how glad she was to see him. He had been a man when 
 he went away, with full stature and strength. But 
 though he could not have grown, he was more than 
 that now. His frame had knit itself into something 
 splendid in power and the promise of endurance. His 
 face, the red of health in it, mixed with that sanguine 
 color in a potency that seemed to deny the weakening 
 of time, was lighted by his bold, compelling eyes, and 
 his red-brown hair seemed to curl as if it had a sepa 
 rate life of its own, and every lock would live and 
 move of its own vitality if it were shorn and scattered. 
 The earth had given birth to a man in Andy, and the 
 power and strength she had put into him were enough 
 to drive him fast on any road and drag willing cap 
 tives after him. He was regarding Thyrza with a smile 
 of open-eyed approval. 
 
 " By George!" he said, "I didn t think you d 
 turn into this kind of girl. You re as handsome as a 
 picture. Gramma inside?" 
 
 Thyrza crimsoned to her hair. People had not been 
 in the habit of telling her she was handsome as a 
 picture, and when she looked in the glass with anxious 
 scrutiny, her mother s own worried frown born sud 
 denly in her brow, she sometimes wondered if she had 
 any good looks at all. But save as an unconscious 
 shock, to rouse dormant responses and be remembered 
 afterwards, whatever he could say to her must have 
 no effect on her now. She thought of grandma. 
 
 " Come out through the orchard," she said. " I ve 
 got to see you first." 
 
 122 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 Andy s face sobered. 
 
 " She s alive, ain t she?" he insisted. 
 
 A small wave of anger, not like the surge Thyrza 
 expected to feel, touched her for a moment, at think 
 ing he could be away three years and not know whether 
 his grandmother was dead or not. But she could not 
 fight that out. She was leading the way into the 
 orchard and he was following, giving one glance at 
 the road where a man and a young woman were driv 
 ing by. 
 
 "Old Pelton! or I ll be shot!" said Andy. "He 
 ain t changed a hair. That ain t Rosie May with him? " 
 
 " Yes," said Thyrza absently, after one glance at 
 the plump figure and the nodding feathers, " that s 
 Rosie May." 
 
 " Remember how you busted her play-house ? If 
 I ve thought of that once in the last three years I ve 
 thought of it forty times." 
 
 They were facing each other now down under the 
 sopsavine. The trees were in bloom, and beside the 
 apple fragrance there was the elusive scent of spring. 
 Thyrza felt the pleasure and the sharp ache of it all, 
 spring, twilight, the moment when youth, in its 
 causeless melancholy, longs for death because it can 
 imagine nothing else so great to long for, as if the 
 change itself must be as poignant as the grief it brings. 
 For no reason it came to her, in one wave of tragic 
 pain, that it would be sweet to die with Andy under 
 the apple-boughs, and know no more. Yet when she 
 had these fleeting desires for death, it always seemed 
 
 123 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 to her as if her own curious spirit would be waking 
 still, observing the earth and seeing how much people 
 regretted her. But there was much to be said, and as 
 the awkwardness of it came upon her, she knew Andy 
 would laugh, and with unconscious cleverness made a 
 stroke at him. 
 
 " I should like to know why you have n t written to 
 your grandmother all this time." 
 
 Andy broke off an apple-bloom and, putting his head 
 on one side to note the effect, held it against her cheek. 
 He shook his head then and threw the bloom away. 
 
 " No good," he said, " you ain t pink. You re red 
 and brown. Why didn t I write ? Why, cause I did n t, 
 that s all ! After I ve been in the room five minutes, 
 she never 11 know whether I wrote or not." 
 
 Andy had not had to live many years to find that 
 out. He had the gift of pleasing, sometimes even 
 without active effort or even speech. Thyrza felt sud 
 denly, not like a righteous judge, but the foolish cul 
 prit brought unexpectedly to book. 
 
 " She wanted to hear from you dreadfully. She was 
 so lonesome she most died." 
 
 " Sho ! " said Andy, with a cordial interest. " Well, 
 I 11 make it up to her. Say, Thyrza, I Ve got money." 
 
 Thyrza looked at him, her lips parted, her eyes wide. 
 She had never yet met anybody who made money save 
 from the proceeds of selling a cow, and then another 
 cow had to be bought in place of it, and the joy was 
 fleeting. Andy smiled gloriously at her. This stunned 
 surprise was what he hoped for. 
 
 124 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 " Yes/ he said, " I ve been west. First I went on 
 the railroad. Then I got in with a feller that had 
 a kind of a nose for such things, and we bought 
 some land, and there was copper in it same as he said 
 there d be. We sold out, and I need n t do another 
 stroke of work, if I don t want to." 
 
 Thyrza was aghast with the fateful wonder of it. 
 
 " Why," said she, " I told her t was a mine." 
 
 "Told who?" 
 
 " Your grandmother." 
 
 "How d you know?" 
 
 " Oh, I had to say something ! " 
 
 " But you did n t know ?" 
 
 " I wrote letters to her." 
 
 Andy stared. 
 
 " Wrote letters to her? " he repeated. 
 
 " Yes." It became more difficult with every word, 
 and Thyrza, in her vain strength of mind, feared ex 
 ceedingly to hear that derisive hoot of his. She hated, 
 in a moral question like this, to be put in the wrong, 
 and all winter she had known well that it was a moral 
 question. She lifted her head, and, with a flushed 
 cheek and kindling eye, essayed her own defense. 
 " You did n t write to your grandmother, and she was 
 alone and old, and most blind " 
 
 Andy was listening curiously, but the one word 
 caught and held him. 
 
 "Blind?" he echoed. 
 
 " Yes. The doctor says it s cataract. She can t see 
 hardly at all. So I wrote letters to her as if they were 
 
 125 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 from you, and I read them to her, and she was 
 pleased." 
 
 Andy had kept on staring at her, but now Thyrza 
 did not care whether he blamed her or not, or even 
 whether her perfidy should be known, and perhaps 
 grandma McAdam cease thinking she was such a 
 starched-dimity miss and learn that she had been only 
 a forger after all. Andy stood immovable. His im 
 agination seemed unable to grapple with the case. 
 
 " You wrote letters and said they were from me?" 
 He repeated it incredulously. 
 
 " Yes," said Thyrza, holding her head higher. 
 
 "Nice letters?" 
 
 " Nice as I could write." 
 
 " Tell her I was prosperin ? Give her my love 
 and all that ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Andy did not laugh. She stole a quick look at 
 him and saw how his face had softened. Even the 
 full, curved lips seemed trembling a little. He came 
 a step nearer, and Thyrza, to whom it had not oc 
 curred that new things of that sort came with an 
 assault, found she was in his arms. 
 
 " You re a trump, Thyrza," Andy was saying, in a 
 moved voice close to her ear. " You re a trump, if 
 ever there was one." Then his lips had touched her 
 cheek softly and as she drew her head back with an 
 impulse of wondering terror, he had kissed her on 
 the mouth, and she had released herself, or he had 
 let her go. She could not look at him now, but she 
 
 126 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 gazed past him, and her breath came sobbingly with 
 the sense of escape and the knowledge of strange 
 things. But it was wonderful that it had come so 
 suddenly, for she guessed what it was. This was 
 love; she had read about it, and she knew people 
 often felt it quite suddenly for each other, and that 
 was the sacredness of it, and the charm. It was as 
 if Andy had come from far, bringing her a rich gift, 
 and had not waited an hour or minute, but had 
 poured it all at once into her lap. She turned and 
 swiftly took the path across the orchard to the road. 
 
 " Thyrza ! " he called. 
 
 She hesitated, knowing she could not look, but 
 letting him overtake her, if he would. In an instant 
 he was beside her ; his hand was on her wrist. 
 
 " I m goin back to-night," he said, " back as far 
 as New York. I m there on business. But I shall 
 come again." 
 
 He bent to kiss her, but for some reason she 
 could not let him now, and his lips brushed her 
 cheek. Then she broke away from him and walked 
 toward home, while Andy strode in to tell grandma 
 he was alive and the beautiful letters were all true. 
 
 Thyrza went softly in at the back way, not to call 
 forth a question from her mother, and slipped up 
 stairs to her own room. She knelt by her bed, and 
 buried her burning face in the little white quilt. It 
 had come, her heart told her, love and all the joy 
 and pain. Something was gone, too, with the touch 
 of those invading lips. Something had even vio- 
 
 127 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 lated the room where her maiden life had flamed on 
 untouched and calm. There was a warm presence in 
 it, a dominating will, a crude demandingness that 
 almost burned her up with the heat of self-assertion. 
 And it had all come so swiftly. Years ago she had 
 decided, in her childish mind, that Andy and Laura 
 would be married when they grew up. Their childish 
 companionship needed only a shade more of intimacy 
 to be called " going together." But in some strange 
 way it had been decreed that Andy should bring 
 the gift to her, and that, since it inspired her with a 
 terror which was not denial, it must be her gift. 
 
 That night she dressed her dark hair in beautiful 
 lustrous braids and made herself sweet in a scrupu 
 lous care that was like adorning for a bridal. Her 
 mother looked at her and wondered. 
 
 66 What you got on your cashmere for ? " she 
 asked, and Thyrza, in the exaltation that sustained 
 her since her crowning, could not stoop to palter. 
 
 "Andy s come," she said simply, lifting her head 
 in a sweet pride. Her lips took on a smiling curve. 
 She hardly dared think of them and the chrism of 
 that kiss lest her color should betray her. 
 
 Mrs. Tennant laid down her work. 
 
 "Andy Me Adam!" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Well ! " said Mrs. Tennant, in a pregnant ejacu 
 lation. "How she look?" 
 
 " I can t tell," said Thyrza, out of her dream. 
 
 " What s his grandmother say to him ? " 
 
 128 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 " I did n t see them together. I met him at the 
 door. We talked, and I came home." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant said no more about the cashmere 
 dress. She was too full of small wonderments. Had 
 Andy done well or ill? Had he come for good? 
 Thyrza answered at random now, as she moved about, 
 getting an early supper. She wanted to have it " out 
 of the way " before Andy should appear. Then she 
 supposed that according to the country custom they 
 would talk a little with her mother, and Andy would 
 perhaps ask her to go to walk, when he would tell 
 her dear, intimate things such as lovers know, and 
 they would part at the door and she would go upstairs 
 to dream. Life would never be the same again. 
 
 But after the dishes were done and the kitchen 
 looked as neat as wax, she ran hastily upstairs. A 
 loyal rite must be accomplished before the bridegroom 
 came. There was a pressed flower in a book, put 
 there when she was a little girl, and a date and some 
 words. Those must be destroyed that she might go 
 to her lover with untarnished faith. When she came 
 back with her sacrifice rolled in a piece of tissue paper, 
 to escape her mother s eye, she found Mrs. Tennant 
 had gone to the next neighbor s to tell the news 
 of Andy s visit. So Thyrza did not have to go into 
 the parlor to do her deed unseen. She laid the paper 
 solemnly on the andirons in the sitting-room, and 
 stood there while it blazed. Then she felt unblem 
 ished in her loyalty. Terry Updike should be as if he 
 had never been, that Andy might be all in all. 
 
 129 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 She took a book and sat down by the window and 
 waited for him, but it was impossible to read. Some 
 times she thought her cheeks were too red and ran 
 to look at them. But she was pale, and then it seemed 
 to her he would not find her comely. In spite of what 
 he had said that afternoon, Thyrza had grave doubts 
 of her beauty. The dusk came, and she lighted the 
 shining lamp and put it out again because it made 
 the room too large and bright to sit in with her own 
 thoughts, and no one to tell her they were natural 
 and right, or to laugh, in that way Andy had, as if 
 he half scorned things and was indifferent to them, 
 and yet tender of them. Then it occurred to her that 
 if the house were dark he might not come, and she 
 lighted the lamp again. 
 
 At nine o clock her mother hurried in, aglow with 
 interest. 
 
 " Well," she said, " I ve seen Andy." 
 
 " Where is he ? " asked Thyrza coldly, because her 
 throat hurt her and it was hard to speak aloud. 
 
 "Over to the Peltons ." 
 
 " You been over there ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Tennant, dropping her little 
 shawl from her head to her shoulders and sitting 
 down in the rocking-chair for a minute of swaying 
 comfort before she went to bed. " I did n t want to 
 poke in to gran ma McAdam s, first night he was 
 there, but I did feel as if I must know if anybody d 
 seen him. Rosie May see him first thing. She said 
 he was goin out o the shed-door with you." 
 
 130 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 " Yes." Thyrza looked at her mother compellingly. 
 She wanted to cry out in her impatience, and declare 
 it was nothing to her, what Rosie could say. " Where 
 was Andy ? " 
 
 " Well, of all things to happen ! While we were 
 settin there in the dark who should come trampin 
 along the walk but Andy himself." 
 
 Thyrza got up and laid her book down on the table. 
 
 " What d he want ? " she asked, in a voice that 
 sounded cold even to her own dull ears. 
 
 " Why, first thing, we thought he d come to make 
 a call. But no, he wanted Elmer to harness up an 
 take him over to the leven o clock. Seems he had to 
 ketch the train an be in New York by daylight." 
 
 "In New York?" repeated Thyrza, without emo 
 tion. 
 
 "Yes, Andy s a great man o business now. He d 
 got to meet somebody, an I dunno what all. Well, 
 I ll be gittin along to bed." She rose and stretched 
 herself, yawning. 
 
 Thyrza felt small and young again. She could 
 have laid hold of her mother s skirts and begged her 
 to stay, until they together should unravel this coil 
 of woman s being. In spite of herself something 
 sharp came into her voice and made it like a cry. 
 
 " That wasn t all he said, mother. What d he say?" 
 
 Mrs. Tennant had wound the clock and given a 
 comprehensive look at doors and windows. 
 
 "Yes," she decided, "that was about all, I guess. 
 You see he only come to git Elmer to harness up. 
 
 131 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 He said good-by all round. Yes, he did ask for Laura. 
 How s Laura, Mis Tennant? says he. How is she? 
 I told him she s with great-aunt Mary an likely to 
 be. I guess I was the last one he spoke to fore he 
 went out. I shall come back/ he says. I m comin 
 back. " 
 
 Then Mrs. Tennant opened the chamber door and 
 looked back inquiringly for Thyrza to follow. But 
 Thyrza had brought a pile of books from the cup 
 board, and ranged them on the table. 
 
 "I think I ll sit up awhile," she said. 
 
 That was not unusual. Mrs. Tennant told the 
 neighbors with pride that Thyrza sometimes studied 
 till leven or twelve at night. 
 
 "Well," she returned, "you be careful o the 
 lamp." Then Thyrza heard her brisk footsteps on the 
 floor above. 
 
 Thyrza did study awhile because she had said 
 she would, and her rigid integrity forbade her to 
 leave a word unfulfilled; but the stillness rang with 
 voices, and presently she pushed her books away, 
 went softly to the door and opened it. The night was 
 clear and still. She knew where he was now, walking 
 up and down at the little station, waiting for the train 
 and thinking of what had come to pass. She put out 
 her arms into the dark, pretending that his thoughts 
 had wings and that she could compel them to her. 
 Then she blushed and was ashamed; but drawn to 
 him, forbidden to shut herself indoors before he had 
 irrevocably gone, she stepped out and sat down on 
 
 132 
 
THE LETTERS 
 
 the sill. This was where she and Laura had sat, years 
 ago, to eat their bread and milk, and now she was on 
 her way to love and marriage. The thought of Laura 
 ran like a questioning note into this grave harmony. 
 Laura, too, as well as Andy, kept calling to her, not 
 complainingly but wonderingly. That made the night 
 all the more vocal and strange. She was almost ter 
 ribly alive, responsive to every tie that had ever held 
 her. 
 
 And then, as she sat in her bright wonder at the 
 fullness of life, the great wave that seemed sweeping 
 in with the sun on its crest, there was a shriek of the 
 train in the distance, and it went away with a dimin 
 ishing roar, still like the sound of waves, and she 
 knew Andy had gone. Once more she stretched out 
 her arms toward him, and then rose to go in, happier 
 perhaps than if he had come. She could not have 
 borne the impetuous call of his warm willfulness. 
 Now she had her dream to cherish, that and his pro 
 mise. He would come back. 
 
VI 
 
 TROY TAVERN 
 
 J_HE neighbors said that Thyrza Tennant was 
 changed. She had been a kind of a thinnish wisp of 
 a girl, but now she was as handsome a ereatur as ever 
 stepped. They could not know that this was chiefly 
 because Andy Me A dam had kissed her and Thyrza 
 had answered in a solemn troth-plight, and that, al 
 though Andy had neither come back nor written her 
 a word, she walked in a rich and stately dream, and 
 held herself remote from lesser things. She had usu 
 ally, though without definite intention, kept aloof from 
 her girl mates. They wanted to talk about beaux and 
 singing-school, and Thyrza invited no less exalted con 
 verse than such as might, at any minute, ripple round 
 to Emerson s Essays or the "Everlasting Yea" of 
 Carlyle. She read with fervor, chiefly what her mother 
 called knowledge-books because, although novels, the 
 poorest as well as the best, seemed all a delightful 
 invitation, she had doubts whether they might not 
 prove a waste of time. Great parcels of books came to 
 her from week to week, often from publishers and 
 again from the library of the old Gorse house at Long 
 ford, fifty miles away. This was the house that had 
 belonged to Barton s mother, and now, while he was 
 abroad, it was leased by the minister, and to him Bar 
 ton had left the task of making studious selection of 
 
 134 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 books for a learned young lady who meant to be great. 
 All these books Thyrza was saving with care, for she 
 knew they would some time go back on Barton Gorse s 
 shelves; the few novels she carried, according to 
 his orders, to the little circulating library where 
 "Queechy" and "The Wide Wide World" made the 
 top notch of excellence. 
 
 It was this sedate reading which had set her apart 
 from her mates ; but now, in her new estate of hap 
 piness, she longed to be nearer them. It seemed to 
 her that, if she was to be married, she might even 
 take to long hours of sewing on bleached cloth for 
 her "setting out "; and one afternoon, in a foretaste 
 of domestic ardor, she took some serpentine braid that 
 had lain in her mother s basket, and ran over to Eosie 
 May s, to crochet. Rosie May, sitting by the window 
 in a sprigged challis, her fair hair crimped to a high 
 degree of excellence, saw her coming and called to her 
 mother, in the kitchen scouring tins, 
 
 " There s Thyrza Tennant. What do you s pose 
 she wants?" 
 
 Mrs. Pelton s ankles troubled her seriously, and 
 she was making her scouring festival a static nary pro 
 cess, all her implements collected within arm s reach. 
 She gave one fleeting glance from the window and 
 did not answer, and Thyrza, opening the side-door and 
 making her way in, according to the country custom, 
 found Rosie May alone. Thyrza blushed beautifully, 
 all over her face. She was conscious of the rarity of 
 this gregarious mood. 
 
 135 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " I thought I d come over/ she said awkwardly, 
 " and see if you d show me how to crochet." 
 
 " Why, yes," said Rosie May. She was hemstitch 
 ing a ruffle, with a pucker of her pretty forehead 
 when she counted threads. " Sit down. For the land, 
 Thyrza ! what makes that braid so yellow? " 
 
 " Mother got it a good many years ago," said 
 Thyrza. " It s been lying in her basket. I guess she 
 bought it for us, and she never s had time from her 
 tailoring to put the edge on." Her voice deepened as 
 she looked back at those years of hurried stitches. 
 "I guess t isn t very clean either." 
 
 " Well, it 11 wash out," said Rosie May practically. 
 " Here, you take this needle. Yours is a mile too big." 
 
 They bent their heads together over the work, and 
 Rosie s plump finger flew back and forth in a fashion 
 that seemed to Thyrza the perfection of graceful ease. 
 After a time Thyrza caught the knack, though she 
 worked with a stiffened wrist, and they sat each at 
 her window, weaving and talking. 
 
 " When s Andy comin home again ? " asked Rosie 
 May suddenly. She did not look up, but Thyrza felt 
 the piercingness of the question and flushed richly. 
 
 " I don t know," she answered. 
 
 " I did n t know but what you might have heard 
 old Mis McAdam say." 
 
 No." 
 
 " She was terrible set up after he come, mother 
 said." 
 
 " Yes, oh, yes," agreed Thyrza, earnestly, with the 
 
 136 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 relief of veering away from Andy s name. " Why, 
 she s been as ambitious ! It almost seems as if she 
 could see better. I suppose it s because she s got so 
 much more courage." 
 
 " I think Andy s awful good-looking don t you ? " 
 asked Rosie May. 
 
 The question seemed like an assault, it came so near. 
 
 "I don t know as he s changed much/ said Thyrza, 
 with dignity. 
 
 Rosie May laughed. 
 
 " Well, he s grown some, ain t he ? " she pursued. 
 
 " I don t know s he has, since he went away," said 
 Thyrza obstinately. " He was tall then and he s tall 
 
 now." 
 
 " Well, anyway, he s an awful handsome fellow. 
 I used to think his hair was goin to be red, but now 
 it s a little mite darker, I would n t have it changed 
 for the world." 
 
 Thyrza remembered, with an aching throat, the 
 touch of the soft thick hair against her cheek. She 
 came to her feet because it seemed impossible to sit 
 there another instant and hear Rosie May s innocent, 
 clumsy footsteps sounding through her house of 
 dreams. But Rosie May had scurried without warning 
 into another track. She had dropped her work in her 
 lap. Her blue eyes, rounder than their wont, were 
 staring out of the window. 
 
 " There s the depot carriage," she said. " Who s he 
 brought over ? Why, Thyrza Tennant, I believe to 
 my soul that s Barton Gorse s bag. Barton s stopped 
 
 137 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 to your house an sent his bag on along home. You 
 see if t ain t so." 
 
 Rosie was standing now, one hand on the window- 
 sill, in the attitude of peering. Thyrza, too, came to 
 her feet. 
 
 " I must go," she said, and with her coil of edging 
 grasped, regardless of method, she hurried out and 
 ran along the road. 
 
 When she reached her mother s house, Barton Gorse 
 had knocked and waited at the door, and now he was 
 walking down the path. Mrs. Tennant, Thyrza knew, 
 had gone for a rare afternoon hour s shopping, and 
 the door was locked. 
 
 "I m coming," she called, and Barton waited for 
 her. 
 
 He had changed, in a puzzling way, since leaving 
 Leafy Road, the year before. Then, although he was 
 her tutor, he had not seemed so very much older. 
 They were comrades in so many fashions that his 
 knowing the roots of words, and his acquaintance 
 with the far mysterious world that was as yet to her 
 but as a picture in a book, had not really removed 
 him from her. Now he had developed, not actually 
 perhaps in contour, but into an air of worldly ease 
 that seemed to add to his breadth and stature. His 
 face had hardly changed, the serious face with its 
 sudden flashing smile, except that now it had a settled 
 look of pain, born, she knew, of something accepted, 
 something silently endured. Thyrza wondered, with 
 a swift sympathetic throb, what the look meant. 
 
 138 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 They met, and he held her hand in his and gazed 
 at her. She was flushed by her haste, and his eyes 
 betrayed a frank delight in her, a surprise, even, that 
 she surpassed his expectation. 
 
 "Can t we walk? " he asked. " I want to see your 
 mother, but not yet." 
 
 She assented, and they turned back on the road by 
 which he had come. He began at once to talk. 
 
 "Thyrza, I did so want to see you." 
 
 Her face was lifted eagerly. 
 
 " Have you come to stay ? " she asked. 
 
 " No, only a night. I m due at Lava Lake. My sis 
 ter s there." 
 
 "Mrs. Davidson?" 
 
 " Yes, my sister Helen." 
 
 Since Thyrza had grown up, she had heard some of 
 the stories about Helen Davidson : how she had, in her 
 beautiful youth, run away with a man who afterwards, 
 when his wife died, had married her. How she was 
 still as beautiful as in her youth she had been daring, 
 and how for a year or more, cast off by society for 
 her erratic course, she had taken refuge with a colony 
 of people who believed no more than she did in the 
 established order of life. 
 
 " She d been there before, had n t she ? " 
 
 "Yes." He spoke rapidly, glancing at her from 
 time to time, as if this were a story he had meant to 
 tell her when the moment should serve, and walking 
 a step ahead of her now, so that he could turn and 
 interrogate her face. " She left there to join her hus- 
 
 139 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 band. Now she s come back. Thyrza, I m afraid my 
 sister s miserable." 
 
 She had nothing to say that would adequately 
 match the misgiving of his tone. He continued, 
 
 " She has written me the truth at last. You did n t 
 know, of course, none of the people here know, 
 how unfortunate her marriage was." 
 
 Thyrza opened her lips for the innocent counter- 
 assurance that indeed she knew; but it became at 
 once evident to her that his only comfort, in his hurt 
 apprehension, was to believe his sister s sorrow had 
 been hidden. 
 
 " The first of her being with him," he went on, " was 
 all a horror, a miserable, ignorant, splendid act of love. 
 She went away with him, Thyrza, before his wife died. 
 She was despised by her own friends. I can t forget 
 it." His drawn face showed how temperate his words 
 were beside the shame and fierce partisanship he re 
 membered. " They talked about her as if she were a 
 different kind of woman." His mouth shut savagely 
 on the words as if he bit them off. "They didn t 
 know her. She was the sweetest girl, Thyrza, the most 
 innocent 
 
 "I saw her once," Thyrza made haste to tell him. 
 "She was perfectly lovely." 
 
 "His wife died and he married her. But she had 
 only about strength enough to live through that 
 horrible time when she was on her defense against 
 the world. She began to break. He began to hate 
 her. He was ambitious, by that time. He had gone 
 
 140 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 into politics and his domestic past was brought up 
 against him. Well, Thyrza, my sister s wretched. 
 That s the end of it all. She s wretched." 
 
 "And she s at Lava Lake?" 
 
 "That s the strange part of it. She is with that 
 colony of men and women on the border of the little 
 lake I told you about. They have gone there to lead 
 the higher life, they say. She has joined them because 
 her husband cast her off and because she has no social 
 affiliations any more. At last she has written to me. 
 I am going to her to-morrow." 
 
 "Society is cruel! " Thyrza had all the fierce way 
 ward certainty of youth. She saw the world arrayed 
 against a broken creature who, from excess of courage, 
 had defied it, but only out of a sweet innocence. 
 
 "It has been cruel to her. But I wanted to see you. 
 I wanted to ask you, if I can persuade her to come 
 here, if you would be with her at the house. She 11 
 have a maid, you know, but if she could be sure of 
 somebody like you to sit with her, read to her, talk 
 about the innocent things girls like Thyrza, would 
 your mother let you?" 
 
 " Certainly I should do it," cried Thyrza, in an ecstasy 
 of response. She saw herself already dedicated to the 
 rescue of miserable innocence, and knew at last what 
 it had meant when, a child, she had wondered if she 
 should not some time go as a missionary. All sacrifice 
 had been beautiful to her; this was the supreme leap 
 for which her will had been gathering. 
 
 Barton had continued. 
 
 141 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " You see, when I thought of you and how she d 
 love to have you with her, I hadn t considered I d 
 no right to ask you. Don t you see, Thyrza, she s just 
 the same woman to the world as if she was n t a hurt 
 angel to me? The world would say I d no business 
 to ask a young girl like you and you above all 
 people to go to a woman with a name like hers." 
 
 "Oh, they couldn t be so cruel!" cried Thyrza. 
 " They could n t." 
 
 " Yes, they could." 
 
 "Then it sail dreadful." 
 
 "It is dreadful. And if your mother was a worldly 
 woman she would n t let you go." 
 
 "She will let me go," said Thyrza. "I shall go." 
 Her face matched her tone. It was the tone of willful 
 and deliberate resolve. 
 
 "You are a dear," said Barton. "Anyway, it s 
 sweet to have you want to go. I have n t asked you 
 about yourself, Thyrza. You have n t written much 
 to me." 
 
 She shook her head. Her clear look met his, in a 
 wonder, now she had seen him, that she should have 
 thought it hard to write. 
 
 " I could n t seem to," she answered. 
 
 " Well, now I am home, you must tell me every 
 thing." 
 
 Everything ! She could not tell him about Andy. 
 That suddenly seemed, not a dissonant note, but an 
 unfamiliar one, in their old harmony. 
 
 "Let us go back," he said. "I must see your 
 
 142 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 mother. I want to talk to her about Helen. But I 
 don t know how. I can t ask her if her daughter may 
 come to see my sister. I can t put Helen in that place. 
 It s easier to talk to you. But perhaps I should n t 
 even have done that." 
 
 " Mother has n t got back." Thyrza was glad the 
 theme must be deferred. Her mother was too literal, 
 too simple, to be confronted, unprepared, by a great 
 burning question like this, the rescue of innocence. 
 It would only bewilder her, though, if it could be 
 presented circumspectly, Thyrza knew what she would 
 say. " She s going to wait for the six o clock, to see 
 if there s a letter from Laura. Let me tell her." 
 
 " You must n t persuade her. You must abide by 
 what she says. You re not teaching ? " 
 
 " School closed early this spring." 
 
 They were at her gate, and she paused, her hand 
 on the latch, with a pondering look at him. It was 
 better that he should not wait, but it was lovely to 
 see him, and she wished he could stay, though his 
 months of absence and the strange countries he had 
 seen were farthest from their thoughts. They were 
 both intent, out of passionate pity, on Helen David 
 son and her wrongs. But Barton Gorse saw again 
 how exquisite Thyrza was, with the beauty of strength 
 and tempered fibre. She had made the most of her 
 youth. She walked well and stood well, and looked 
 the world in the eye when it challenged her, and, for 
 the rest, inheritance and country living had done its 
 best for her. She was a fine young creature, and he 
 
 143 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 took off his hat with a homage of which she was sud 
 denly aware. She met it with a flush and a surprised 
 and kindling glance. 
 
 " I must go/ he said. " Good-by, Thyrza." 
 
 She could hardly wait to see her mother, although 
 the martial fire in her was ready to flame up if her 
 mother could withstand the pathos of the question. 
 At last Mrs. Tennant came, weighted by bundles, and 
 disposed them hastily on the kitchen table. She 
 turned a flushed face upon Thyrza, with the bright, 
 half-triumphant look of one who has brought news. 
 Thyrza read the signal. 
 
 " Any letter ? " she asked. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant extended the letter and then with 
 held it, though Thyrza s fingers were upon it, to take 
 the eager privilege of telling the news herself. " It s 
 only a line. Aunt Mary s sick. The doctor don t offer 
 any hope." 
 
 Thyrza s heart gave a great bound. The long exile 
 might be nearly over. Laura would come home. 
 
 " Does she want us to go over ? " 
 
 " No. Aunt Mary would n t hear to that. Laura 
 says it may be a long pull ; but there s no hope." 
 
 Thyrza read the letter absently. It seemed a simple 
 thing that there should rest a joyous satisfaction in 
 there being no hope. Aunt Mary led such a weighted 
 life that Thyrza was innocently agreed to think of her 
 as elsewhere ; and she had many things to talk about 
 with Laura. 
 
 144 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 "Mother/ she said, "Barton Gorse has been 
 here." 
 
 "You don t say ! He goin to stay right along?" 
 
 Mrs. Tennant had seated herself, in a brief conces 
 sion to her aching feet and to what she would have 
 called a " goneness " within her, something that re 
 sponded to her every thought of Laura and was ready 
 now upon the intimation that their long parting 
 might be over soon. 
 
 " He stayed over a train. His sister Helen may come 
 here to live." She watched her mother. 
 
 But Mrs. Tennant s mind still dwelt on Laura. She 
 answered absently. 
 
 " Helen Gorse ain t been here since she was your 
 age. She was pretty then, pretty as a picture." Thyrza 
 waited. Her mother, as if in answer to that inward 
 interrogation, woke to a clearer memory. " She s had 
 a queer kind of a life. I guess she ain t been all she 
 should be." 
 
 Thyrza flew into the wild defense she had been 
 preparing. 
 
 " Mother, you don t know ! we don t any of us 
 know ! " 
 
 Mrs. Tennant stared at her briefly. 
 
 " Well," she returned, " mebbe we don t. I ve heard 
 the whole story, but I can t say s any of us have got 
 the rights on t. Here! you empt the sugar an I ll 
 see to the rest the things." 
 
 She got upon her ill-used feet and trotted off, at her 
 working pace, into the pantry. Thyrza followed her. 
 
 145 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Mother/ she said, " if she comes here, I m going 
 to be with her a good deal. Barton Gorse asked me 
 to. She is n t strong." 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Tennant, "I don t know how 
 handy you d be nursin ." 
 
 "Should you mind my being with her?" 
 
 "Why, no, not if you feel to." Then the mother 
 instinct went on hungering for Laura. 
 
 Thyrza stepped about the house that day in a proud 
 certainty that her opportunity had come. She always 
 knew she had a mission, and she had interrogated 
 God about it unceasingly. 
 
 But when two more days had gone, there was a let 
 ter from Barton Gorse. He was with his sister at the 
 Lava Lake colony, a place of dire melancholy to him, 
 but where she seemed moderately content. She re 
 fused definitely to think of going home with him, and 
 he was the more disappointed in that he saw how she 
 brightened when he spoke of her having Thyrza s 
 company. She had instantly responded that Thyrza 
 might be a companion or a secretary. She remembered 
 Thyrza well, a little bright-eyed girl who used to come 
 with thimbleberries. She was often very lonely with her 
 maid, and at the colony they were all too intellectual. 
 Barton explained that this was her own charitable 
 opinion ; to his mind the colonists were nomadic folk 
 of an enthusiastic turn who had resuscitated certain 
 ancient and mystical beliefs and dressed them in new 
 clothes, to live by. The company was added unto, 
 as its sum was capriciously depleted, by more of the 
 
 146 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 eccentric and unsettled for whom crude philosophy had 
 a charm, and they seemed to him, he was sorry to say, 
 all mad as hatters. Helen wanted Thyrza very much. 
 She even proposed inviting her to the lake, a salaried 
 companion. That, of course, her mother would not 
 advise, nor could he ; but if he could persuade Helen 
 to go with him to Leafy Road, he depended on his 
 little friend to be neighborly to them both. 
 
 Thyrza had no sooner devoured the letter than she 
 knew what was to do. She called into the kitchen 
 where Mrs. Tennant was mixing bread, 
 
 " Mother, I m going to Lava Lake." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant let her floury hands rest on the cush 
 ion of dough and waited, the anxious scowl between 
 her eyes. Thyrza explained. She even read a part of 
 the letter. 
 
 " You see," she ended, " they need me." 
 
 "I don t see s he says so," ventured Mrs. Tennant. 
 
 It seemed to Thyrza very noble of him not to make 
 the summons more direct. She was exactly like the 
 child she had been when she thought of some de 
 manding quest. 
 
 " They want me," she responded solemnly. " They 
 need me." 
 
 Mrs. Tennant still failed to see that clearly, but she 
 was used to yielding in an acquiescence, not perhaps 
 humble but rather matter-of-course, while Thyrza, who 
 had a larger outlook through books and mysterious 
 ambitions, mapped out uncharted ways. She could 
 only repeat, " If you feel to," and then she helped 
 
 147 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 pack the little hair trunk that seemed to Thyrza of 
 rather a doubtful and unsophisticated excellence ; and, 
 in this great access of newness mingled with the pos 
 sibility of Laura s coming, felt life stir about her in a 
 way that made her young. Nothing save the dramatic 
 event of Laura s exile had happened for years ; but 
 now it seemed as if life were surging about them, and 
 as if her children were the ones the waves of fortune 
 were uplifted for. 
 
 Then it was morning, and Thyrza had asked the 
 Pelton boy to carry her trunk to the station, and at 
 three o clock she had gone, sitting very straight in 
 the farm-wagon and turning on her mother a look 
 quite passionate, at last. Thyrza s tender heart smote 
 her. She wondered now whether she ought to leave 
 her mother. She had those choking pangs that were 
 always assailing her for people she loved, and the un 
 tried world before her loomed dark and strange. 
 
 " mother ! " she called. The boy pulled up and 
 Mrs. Tennant came forward and laid her hand on the 
 wheel. 
 
 " You ain t forgot anything ? " she asked. Her face, 
 uplifted in the spring light, was all dry channels, not 
 of emotion but of wear. Thyrza stepped out of the 
 wagon and put her arms about her mother and kissed 
 her. 
 
 "Mother! mother! " she repeated, in a muffled un 
 dertone. 
 
 " There! " said Mrs. Tennant. " You ll be late for 
 the cars." But though she put Thyrza away, her own 
 
 148 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 face was suffused in response to that sudden passion ; 
 and when the wagon disappeared at the curve, she had 
 tears in her eyes. There was something irrevocable 
 about the parting. 
 
 From three o clock to five Thyrza went on her un 
 familiar way. She was not used to traveling and she 
 suspected that there were many easy habits of it to 
 learn before she could escape notice by the device of 
 behaving like everybody else. She sat primly, to seem 
 capable of everything. The other travelers were wildly 
 interesting to her and yet in a way potentially un 
 friendly: for who could say when they might not be 
 gin to smile at her country manners ? The landscape 
 from the window was different from her natal ground. 
 She had talked about mountains and valleys, but when 
 her mind conjured up the dry land, what she had al 
 ways seen was her own rolling level near the sea. But 
 here were hills and the dark clefts and sweet hollows 
 between them. It was all delicate airy blue in the 
 light and sombre in shadow, and the majesty of it 
 brought the tears to her eyes and a rising of the heart 
 because now she was going out into so wonderful a 
 world, and for so noble an end. Then the day stilled 
 into quiet before dusk, and she was at Troy Junction, 
 where she had an hour to wait. It was not so easy to 
 her timid mind to leave the car and encounter new faces 
 at the station ; but she straightened herself, to look 
 like an habitual traveler, and made her descent. She 
 crossed the platform toward the waiting-room and a fig 
 ure stayed her. Some one took her bag. It was Andy. 
 
 149 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Thyrza, after the first start of wonder, looked up 
 at him in a quivering adoration. She was just tired 
 enough, just homesick enough, to feel all her blood 
 turn with a rush toward the accustomed and fling 
 
 o 
 
 herself into its kind arms. That it should be Andy 
 seemed to her like fate. She could only say his name, 
 and then she followed him unquestioningly while he 
 led the way out from the station and into a tree-shaded 
 road where spring was beginning. Then he asked her, 
 with much interest, where she had been going. Thyrza 
 told him, and he frowned. 
 
 "Don t have too much to do with that fellow," he 
 said, after she had spoken of Barton s letter. "I never 
 thought any too much of him." 
 
 That had a sound of virile, elemental jealousy, and 
 her heart responded to it. New emotions were rising 
 in her, and suddenly she made out that she had an 
 impetuous self in hand, one that saluted Andy unhesi 
 tatingly and called him master. She did not look at 
 him now ; yet the one glance on the platform had 
 snatched a picture she could never forget. Andy had 
 been walking, and now he was flushed by a pink as 
 pretty as that on a girl s cheek. He carried his hat 
 in his hand, and a moist, thick lock of hair fell over 
 his forehead as it used to do, Thyrza remembered, 
 when he was a boy and had run away from her with 
 some of her treasures until Laura called him back. 
 Something besides the charm of his strong presence 
 inspirited her now; it was the pure triumph of finding 
 him voluntarily at her side. 
 
 150 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 "Where are you going?" she asked at length, 
 softly, with a late curiosity. Yet really it was only to 
 fill up a pause. To have him there beside her was again 
 a fate, not to be questioned. 
 
 "Down to Leafy Road," he answered rather ab 
 sently. Andy was thinking of a man who had just 
 betrayed him in a business deal. When he met Thyrza, 
 he had been cursing the man in his mind, and now an 
 ugly devil was still regnant in him. He felt destructive. 
 He wanted to hurt and slay. Yet it was good to see 
 Thyrza, who had an impetuous kindness for him, after 
 all the years, and who looked like home. 
 
 " To see grandma ? " she was asking, still with that 
 pretty shyness. 
 
 Then he remembered her again. 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "To see you." 
 
 " Oh, I m glad I met you," said Thyrza. " Andy, 
 I m so glad!" 
 
 They were in a darkened stretch of road, with 
 cedars on each side, and at the thrill in her voice he 
 put his arm about her and drew her to him. She 
 looked up at him adoringly, with a little sigh, and he 
 kissed her. 
 
 " By George ! " said Andy wonderingly, " I believe 
 you do like me." 
 
 "Like you!" she repeated. She wished he would 
 use the greater word, but since he had not chosen it, 
 she dared not. 
 
 He was looking eagerly into her face like one who 
 sought a gift. 
 
 151 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Say, Thyrza," he was urging, " don t wait for 
 the train. Walk on to Troy Town, and pick up the 
 train there. There s a tavern at Troy Town. We 11 
 get somethin to eat. Then you can take the eight 
 o clock." 
 
 She withdrew from him, though the adventure 
 seemed delightful to her. 
 
 "But when 11 you get your train?" she asked. 
 
 "I ll wait till mornin . There s another one at 
 
 six." 
 
 Somehow, she did not know how, but entirely with 
 her consent, they were walking quite fast with long, 
 according steps, and Andy was talking. He told her 
 a man had used him like the devil, and she said, " Poor 
 Andy!" They had owned a claim together, Andy 
 said, and the chap had been cleverer than he and 
 pocketed a thousand of his money. There was enough 
 left to make him comfortable as long as he lived, but 
 he hated to be done. He grew morose then. She pitied 
 him, and he told her she was a dear old girl. But he 
 spoke absently, and Thyrza felt, with a pang, as she 
 had before when she seemed about to be most happy 
 with him, that his whole mind was not with her. But, 
 she reflected humbly, it might be so with all men who 
 had great affairs to think of. She did not know. Then 
 he asked her a question or two about Helen Davidson, 
 and almost in the words she had heard the country 
 people use, " she was no better than she should be." 
 
 Thyrza flew to her defense. A woman like Helen, 
 she told him, was above society and above the law. 
 
 152 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 Walking fast through the deepening shades, with the 
 cold moist air of the ravines upon her cheek, she felt 
 as if she were for the first time gloriously free, led by 
 great simple certainties that are above the world. She 
 spoke further in Helen s defense, and Andy heard 
 amazedly. Now at last she had made him listen, half 
 with this incredulous wonder, half admiration of what 
 seemed to be her foolhardy courage. 
 
 "You re a great girl, Thyrza," he kept saying. "I 
 never thought you d turn into this kind of a girl." 
 
 The moon came out and glinted here and there 
 through the cedars, and still they walked, past farm 
 houses with a lonely light and again into other stretches 
 of wood. 
 
 " We ve got to put on steam," said Andy. He took 
 out his watch, and struck a match. "By George, 
 Thyrza, there s your train ! " 
 
 It was shrieking into the station ahead of them, a 
 mile away. She snatched at her bag, but he withheld 
 it, though he quickened his steps with hers. 
 
 " Oh, we must run," she cried. " Andy, I must get 
 my train." 
 
 " I m sorry," he was repeating while they pelted 
 on. " Honest I am, Thyrza." His voice rang true, and 
 though she believed it, there was no comfort for her 
 in anything less than the miracle that might knit up 
 her broken journey. He stopped and laid his hand 
 detain ingly on hers. 
 
 " No use, Thyrza. There goes your train." 
 
 It was groaning out of the station, and they heard 
 153 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 it rolling off into the night, leaving only the ghostly 
 silence it had overpowered. Thyrza spoke. 
 
 "Well, it s nobody s fault but my own." But 
 though she drew upon her old stiff dignity, she 
 sobbed as she said it, and Andy, hearing, was again 
 sorry for her. 
 
 He answered soberly. 
 
 " We 11 stop at the tavern an have supper. Then 
 I 11 leave you there an in the mornin you can go 
 ahead." 
 
 They walked laggingly into the little town and up 
 to the low-browed tavern at the market-square. It 
 was gay with lights, and there were voices in excited 
 chorus. Andy paused doubtfully at the door, but 
 some one opened it, and they faced a reeling rout of 
 dancers, country girls and boys at their gayest, yet 
 all respectable and decorous, a "circle " at its pranks. 
 Yet it was the world, however simple, and Andy, 
 facing it, drew Thyrza into the room and up to the 
 desk. Everybody looked at them. They were too 
 splendid in their youth and height and color not to 
 be stared at, and Thyrza, conscious of her shy dis 
 comfort, held her head high, as if with pride. Then 
 she heard Andy ordering supper for himself and 
 that was the word his wife. Immediately, it seemed, 
 they were at a small table at one end of the dining- 
 room, where a large one had been made of boards 
 and benches for the dancers to sit at later. Thyrza 
 looked at Andy across the cloth. Her eyes reproached 
 him sombrely. 
 
 154 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 " How could you ? " she asked. 
 
 He was laughing now, in great spirits. She had 
 never seen anybody so merry with a kind of intoxi 
 cation of being glad. He leaned across the table and 
 looked at her. 
 
 "You like me, Thyrza," he challenged her. "You 
 know you do." 
 
 " You make fun of sacred things !" 
 
 " Do I ? What are sacred things ? " 
 
 "That word was sacred." 
 
 But he could not remember what word he had said, 
 and she would not tell him. 
 
 When the supper had been brought and they were 
 eating, he said to her, with a sudden earnestness, 
 
 "Thyrza, you do like me?" 
 
 It seemed to her the time to use the great word, 
 and she answered slowly, so low that he could hardly 
 hear, 
 
 " I love you, Andy." 
 
 It was done. She had told him, and now she knew 
 he would tell her. 
 
 "What if you thought you never were goin to 
 see me again ? " 
 
 She held her lips from quivering. 
 
 "It s true, Thyrza." He was watching her, not 
 cruelly, nor speciously, but with an excited wonder 
 that a girl of Thyrza s type could be so reckless. 
 " I m goin back west " 
 
 " You said you were going to Leafy Road." 
 
 " That was only for a day, to say good-by." 
 
 155 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 "But you 11 go?" 
 
 " No. I lost the train." 
 
 "You lost the train?" 
 
 " Yes, for you. You made me lose it. You were so 
 sweet, Thyrza." 
 
 " Shan t you come back ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I shall come back. But if you like me, 
 Thyrza, you must tell me about it. We ve got to tell 
 each other." 
 
 At once she felt most happy and most miserable. 
 The greatest thing in life had raced to find her, and 
 she was in an ecstasy of union with the earth, the 
 stars, the sky ; only she was not content. It was 
 like the sea, rather, an immensity of unrest. But she 
 accepted her tumultuous dower because it was, she 
 felt, inevitable. Other women had received it with 
 the same sad rapture, only, looking on, one could 
 perhaps have said they were happy or not happy at 
 all. But in her perplexing case no one from outside, 
 she knew, could possibly have told any more than 
 she could tell herself, whether she was happy. She 
 was simply leagued forever to unrest and she must be 
 obedient to it. She looked at Andy with a pathetic 
 seeking, and he saw her lips tremble. Again it 
 amazed him. Thyrza, even when she was a child, had 
 been so independent and so proud. 
 
 " Yes, Andy," she said, in her newly accepted obedi 
 ence to him. " I do want to talk to you." 
 
 Then he had gone to the desk, leaving her to sit 
 there in an access of shyness, holding her head high 
 
 156 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 because the dancers in the next room might see her 
 as they passed the open doorway, and yet not know 
 ing there was anything to fear ; and he came back 
 with a key and said to her in his kindest tone, 
 
 "Come, he ll show us a room." 
 
 The clerk, too, was waiting, with a light. Thyrza 
 rose ; the dancers embarrassed her, and she was grate 
 ful to escape. 
 
 " Do you know about the train ? " she asked Andy. 
 
 "Yes. Five o clock/ 
 
 " For Lava Lake ? " She insisted, and now she 
 turned to the waiting clerk. "You sure there s a 
 train at five o clock ? " 
 
 He did not answer for an instant because he was 
 held by the look in her eyes, a clear, beautiful look 
 that, one would have known, was the look of inno 
 cence. But he recovered himself quickly and answered 
 that the train was at five and he would be sure to call 
 them half an hour beforehand. 
 
 The room where he left them was a great square 
 chamber untouched in essentials since the building 
 of the house, two hundred years before. It had digni 
 fied wainscoting and great brass locks, and a fireplace. 
 
 " What a queer paper," said Thyrza, struck by the 
 soft pink background and the spindling flowers. 
 " Pretty, too." 
 
 But Andy had unpinned her hat with a deftness 
 that amazed her, and then he put out the light be 
 cause, he said, the moonlight was so pretty, and took 
 her in his arms. 
 
 157 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Thyrza," he told her roughly, " I ain t fit for you 
 to like." 
 
 She put him away from her an arm s length, 
 and looked at him solemnly, in the moonlighted 
 chamber. 
 
 "You are my prince," she said, in a thrilling voice. 
 "You are my king." 
 
 Andy was gazing at her as solemnly, it seemed to 
 her, but his tone was all amazement. 
 
 "Thyrza, what a queer girl you are!" But in an 
 instant he had put an arm round her waist and drawn 
 her to the window where light was flooding in, 
 through the sparse foliage of the locusts, and Thyrza s 
 cheek was touching his in a caressing stillness. She 
 was happy at last, she told herself. The dancing mea 
 sure of the violins and bass-viol came up from below, 
 and lifted her soul on beating sound, and she seemed 
 to discover that everybody was happy. 
 
 "I never dreamt of this happening did you?" 
 A.ndy whispered. 
 
 "Never!" A thought of Laura made her heart 
 bound toward her sister in a great flood of desire to 
 tell her everything: that she was beloved, that she 
 was going to be married. Nay, that she was married 
 already ; for she knew nothing could be more sacred 
 than the troth they had plighted by this seclusion, 
 and the thought of Helen Davidson, choosing Aer 
 lover against a foolish world, had put a fighting ele 
 ment into her allegiance to him. She laughed happily 
 over the memory of home. 
 
 158 
 
TROY TAVERN 
 
 "I wonder," she breathed, "what Laura 11 say !" 
 
 He withdrew from her, and in the moonlight she 
 saw him scowl. 
 
 "What is it?" she trembled. 
 
 He was silent, and then he asked her, as if spurred 
 by an irresistible curiosity, against his will, 
 
 "What kind of a girl is Laura? " But he did not 
 wait for her to answer. "What s the use?" he said. 
 "I ain t seen her since she was a little thing." 
 
 Then he drew her back into his arms again, and 
 asked her questions. He seemed inspired by a bound 
 less curiosity about her liking for him. Had she 
 always liked him? Had it lasted since they were 
 children, all through the time of his running away ? 
 
 " Always," Thyrza told him, simply. Since it was 
 love now, she knew it must always have been love, 
 for that was unchanging and eternal. Then, when 
 she clung to her avowal, he had nothing to say but 
 more wonder over her queerness, and though Thyrza 
 was conscious of a pang at his dull words, unlike 
 romance, she contented herself with thinking he was 
 a man, and must speak according to his kind. Only 
 poets could plead like Romeo, and she was entirely 
 conscious, in the sane certainties of her mind, that 
 Andy would not understand if she told him what 
 Romeo had said. But that made no difference to her. 
 His passion and Romeo s were the same, and for her 
 own private treasury, one that could not be shared, 
 she had the memory of poetic words to fit into the 
 lovely night, like flowers in a wreath. He was telling 
 
 159 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 her now, in a sudden remembered bitterness, how his 
 crony had done him, and declaring nobody could be 
 trusted. 
 
 "Why, Andy!" said Thyrza. 
 
 He laughed then, and kissed her. 
 
 "I take it back," he said. "Except you, Thyrza. 
 You re the top of the tree. What would you do for 
 me?" 
 
 "Die for you," said Thyrza solemnly, in her poet s 
 jargon. 
 
 "How long will you like me? Say, girl, say?" 
 
 "Why, forever, Andy! " She was half crying in 
 her wonder over his scoffing, and more and more, in 
 spite of her allegiance to him, she felt the strange 
 ness of their difference. The pain of love had begun, 
 she told herself, as the poets said it did. It was joy 
 and pain. And always, in the sea of her thoughts 
 was the memory of Helen Davidson, who had elected 
 to follow her lover though she lost the world, and of 
 Tristan and Isolde, who had died. The hurt of find 
 ing he had only brief uncouth responses to the rhap 
 sodies that seemed in a moment sweetly natural to 
 her, she accepted like something she must bear be 
 cause Andy was what he was. But he loved her, and 
 she could make him different. 
 
 It was dawn when they parted at the door of the 
 chamber and went down to the disordered room 
 where the dancing had been two hours over. Thyrza 
 walked calmly now, not with the semblance of pride 
 that covers shyness ; she felt regnant over life. Andy 
 
 160 
 
TKOY TAVERN 
 
 paid something at the desk, and they walked away 
 together. She had refused to eat there with him, 
 why, she did not know, and he had had sandwiches 
 and fruit put up for them both. While they were still 
 within the cover of the cedar trees before the station, 
 he dropped one little package into her bag. 
 
 " There ! " said he, " you can eat it as soon as 
 you re aboard." 
 
 Dismay seized upon her. 
 
 "Why, Andy," she faltered, " you re not going to 
 leave me?" 
 
 He laughed a little. 
 
 "Why," said he, "ain t you goin to the lake?" 
 
 "But I thought " She was confused. She had 
 thought that everything was different, that his claim 
 had cancelled lesser ones and they should never be 
 separated any more. But she could not say to him, 
 "I thought I was going with you." 
 
 " We Ve got to hurry," said Andy. " Wait a min 
 ute. I m goin to leave you here." 
 
 "0 Andy, why?" 
 
 "We were seen goin away from the station to 
 gether. We don t want to go back together. I ain t 
 thinkin of myself. I m thinkin of you." 
 
 "But Andy " She was the more confused. Then 
 they were not to be together not yet. 
 
 "Ain t you goin to the lake ? " 
 
 "Yes, if you tell me, Andy." 
 
 He put her bag into her hand. He compelled her 
 notice. 
 
 161 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 "Now, Thyrza, listen to me. Your train will be in 
 in five minutes. You go, an do as you planned." 
 
 "Yes, Andy." 
 
 Her eyes were brimming, and they were lifted to 
 his with a look he had not seen in them before. It 
 was not reproach. The look was gentle, but it held 
 the knowledge of the tree of life. He smiled at her 
 with an irritating kindliness. Andy wished well to 
 everybody. All his great impatiences came when he 
 was thwarted, never otherwise. 
 
 "I 11 write to you," he promised her. " I 11 be true 
 to you, so help me God ! " 
 
 " You re coming for me ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, of course, Thyrza." 
 
 "When will you come?" she insisted feverishly. 
 
 " Soon, soon ! As soon as I can manage it. There ! 
 I hear it down the valley. Kun ! there s a good girl. 
 Kun ! " 
 
 She took her bag and fled along the road. The 
 train came in, and presently it was carrying her 
 away. 
 
VII 
 
 THE KETUEN 
 
 JL EARS ago, a syndicate built a hotel on the shore 
 of Lava Lake, and judging, from a too impetuous 
 trust in probability, that there would be an overflow 
 from this main building, put up also a colony of cot 
 tages where guests should lodge, going thence to the 
 hotel table. That was when sulphur was discovered, 
 and the newspapers had blossomed into encomiums of 
 the mountain air and healing properties of the springs. 
 The air continued to waft clear currents and to uplift 
 the spirits, and the springs never ceased to gush ; but 
 for some hidden reason no one came to the hotel. 
 The syndicate melted, the hotel itself drifted through 
 all stages of decay and became a shelter for picnick 
 ers and a lodging-house for tramps. From this time 
 it grew to be a point of prowess with sojourners to 
 break several panes of glass before leaving, and one 
 day, some one bolder than the rest kicked out a door. 
 Then ravage and decay reigned together. The French- 
 ies at Bass Point came over to extract firewood from 
 its walls, and the long winter storms filled it with snow 
 that sometimes lay there while the arethusa bloomed 
 outside. Gales from the lake assaulted it until its 
 flimsy frame went down, and then raspberry bushes 
 grew up within the wide verandas. 
 
 Meantime the little houses, from security of hum- 
 
 163 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 bleness, had better withstood the chances of decline. 
 In one an insane preacher who believed that the end 
 of the world had come and that he was living in para 
 dise, had laid his pallet of grass gathered from the 
 pasture about, and sat all day at his door looking 
 abroad with a beatific smile, and telling raspberry- 
 pickers from the village that he saw Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob, and that their own eyes were holden or 
 they also could see. A runaway couple took refuge in 
 another until a domestic storm should have blown 
 over, and lived on bananas and biscuits until hunger 
 forced them out. 
 
 Then the Believers came. They were a body pledged 
 to mystical certainties which nobody outside their cult, 
 they said, had ever formulated, and they had come to 
 gether chiefly because of weariness in a world where 
 sects divide and business smites and slays. They were 
 all men and women of an untidily abstruse turn of 
 mind, and of no mental training. Black, as it had been 
 accepted by practical dyers, never meant black to 
 them. White was anything but precisely white. They 
 were eager to think it might be the good purpose of 
 God to maintain a fluid universe, and cause any ap 
 pearance to flow into any other, to suit the individual 
 need. They had gathered from popular expositions 
 of oriental secrets a vast quantity of ragged theory, 
 and accepted it with a joyous belief that it had never 
 been transmitted before; and they wanted more than 
 anything else to be good. They were good, a set 
 of mild, well-wishing, industrious creatures, who, 
 
 164 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 through their esoteric hospitality, had established a 
 claim on the next world and all worlds, and who ate 
 no meat. They had, with much trouble, put together 
 a small sum of money and bought up the cottages 
 and the land about them, and after honest but not 
 always picturesque efforts to make the cottages water 
 tight, had lived in them, making homespun rugs, 
 braiding mats, weaving coverlets, and in other ways 
 ministering to the taste of a public roused to the aes 
 thetic value of colonial semblances. They were the 
 Believers, they were ready to tell you, with a look of 
 grateful happiness ; and if you asked what they be 
 lieved, they would go off into rapt reminiscences of 
 discursive reading, their faces shining like the sun. 
 Helen Davidson had come to them by chance. She 
 had been suddenly ill when she and her husband had 
 taken a day s excursion on the little boat that plies 
 up and down the lake, and had landed to ask if she 
 might spend the night. The Believers found her 
 beautiful. Her elegance contrasted strangely with their 
 own tough type, that had long left comeliness behind. 
 Her clothes, also, models of the latest wear, fine in 
 embroidery and lace, seemed worshipfully lovely to 
 them, and women dressed in brown skirts and dark 
 blue waists, crowded about her to finger her fabrics, 
 with a naive curiosity. They were like savages over 
 the first white man, and Helen at first had laughed. 
 Then she loved them, they were so kind, and gave 
 away her trinkets to them. But these, though they 
 held them sadly for a moment, they could not accept. 
 
 165 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 They were vowed to individual poverty, notwithstand 
 ing that the community might fatten and increase, 
 premising, after a certain accumulation, that it was 
 to spend its surplus on the poor. 
 
 To Helen, thrown too much on her husband, after 
 her runaway exile with him and their delayed mar 
 riage, this was a window into an infinity of simple 
 kindness. She had left the world that scorned her. 
 This was another sphere. So when her husband 
 unpremeditatedly withdrew from her, because he had 
 not bargained for a woman who brought him public 
 ill-fortune by sacrificing, in the eye of the world, 
 more than he had ever, after the first, besought, she 
 took her way again as fast as train and boat would 
 carry her to the Believers ; and because they adored 
 her and found her different from themselves, she was 
 allowed to keep her maid and merely to pay board 
 without sharing their manual tasks. Here she floated 
 on a sea of calm. There were no very young people 
 among the Believers. They did not judge it best to 
 admit postulants under thirty-five, an age at which 
 doubts and mental fears might reasonably cease. 
 
 Thyrza, landing from the boat in the early morn 
 ing, walked up the path toward the cottages to find 
 her. She passed the ruined hotel where the raspber 
 ries grew, and glanced at it with a transient interest, 
 because her studious mind bade her observe. She had 
 seen many sights that day new to her untraveled 
 eyes, but now even the mountain, its long wavy line 
 fretted by firs, seemed meagre to her. Something 
 
 166 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 had dulled her spirits and eaten up the zest of her 
 challenge to life. She was a little tired, she told her 
 self with some wonder, the sensation was so new to 
 her, sad, too, for she had left her lover behind. At 
 a steep pitch in the path she stopped, with a momen 
 tary return of pulsing vigor. There was the smell of 
 firs hot under the morning sun ; at this point, for 
 some reason, there was always a waft of it. Here, 
 too, a woman met her, a thin, dry creature between 
 thirty and forty, with brown h air curled tight and 
 twisted into a knot, a tanned face and bright eyes. 
 She was dressed in brown and blue, the uniform of the 
 Believers, and her sleeves were rolled to her elbows, 
 over strong, thin arms. Thyrza looked at her and 
 hesitated before a question. 
 
 " What is it? " asked the woman. She had a voice 
 of beautiful sweetness, so soft that it arrested the 
 mind with a promise of something unforeseen. Thyrza 
 drew a quick little breath. At this reaction she sud 
 denly learned how homesick she had been and how 
 forlorn. The woman was manifestly a guide to hos 
 pitable things. 
 
 " I want to find Mrs. Davidson," said Thyrza. 
 " I ve come to stay with her." 
 
 The woman smiled delightfully. 
 
 " It s that cottage up there," she answered, point 
 ing, "the one with the ferns along the front." 
 
 She gave a nod and turned, and Thyrza, thanking 
 her, went on. She kept her eyes on the cottage, and 
 her heart beat hard. She thought herself a fool to 
 
 167 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 have come on a mission of tenderness to this orderly 
 place where life had been going on without her, and 
 people like the brown-faced woman were about Helen 
 Davidson, ready to love and serve. So it was feeling 
 very small and with no conceit of herself that she 
 went up the steps of the veranda and came upon a 
 lady dressed in white, and lying in a long chair. This 
 was Helen Davidson, she knew at once. She was like 
 the family, only with a fragility, an appealingness, 
 all her own. She had a pale cheek and wistful violet 
 eyes with black lashes and beautiful dark brows. Her 
 thick soft hair was like a shadow, and her hands, in 
 their white delicacy, like no hands Thyrza had ever 
 seen. Thyrza felt a great timidity and an enormous 
 doubt of her own value to so wonderful a creature. 
 All the gifts she had to bring seemed coarse and use 
 less. The lady was looking at her. She spoke in a 
 gentle voice. 
 
 " Did Margaret Petrie send you here?" 
 
 " Margaret Petrie ? " 
 
 " I saw you talking with her in the path. Did she 
 send you ? " 
 
 "I asked the way," said Thyrza. Her voice choked 
 her. At once she knew that she, not the lady, was 
 the one who needed help. She felt " wee," as she 
 had once heard Barton Gorse say, when he was pity 
 ing her after she had been ill, and it came over her 
 that her mother was not here. Helen Davidson must 
 have read some of these things in her face, for she 
 rose, and took Thyrza s bag from her. 
 
 168 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 " Are you one of the Believers ? " she asked sweetly. 
 
 " No/ said Thyrza. " My name is Thyrza Tennant. 
 I came to stay with you. Your brother asked me to 
 because you were most alone." 
 
 She saw Helen flushing all over her face. The 
 warm blood made it bloom out into a wonderful 
 beauty, and even in its worn loveliness it could be 
 seen how enchanting a girl she must have been. 
 
 " How perfectly lovely that was of Barton," she 
 cried. " You re little Thyrza Tennant ! Why, you re 
 taller than I am. Take off your hat. Mary O Brien ! 
 Mary ! " 
 
 A rosy maid appeared from the room within. 
 Thyrza was afraid of her. She was not used to maids 
 who wore such white aprons with a glossy surface. 
 All the , domestics she knew were help, and it was 
 only by a turn of fortune s wheel that she had not 
 been help herself. If she had not taken to books 
 and inherited the district school from the minister s 
 serious daughter, she could have hoped for nothing 
 more exalted. 
 
 Helen Davidson fluttered about in a happy fever, 
 putting Thyrza into a comfortable chair when she 
 refused to lie down, taking her hat, wafting Mary 
 away for coffee and rolls. It was evidently a delight 
 to her to have a guest all her own, and one decreed 
 by Barton. 
 
 "It s like a letter from him," she exclaimed. 
 " Poor old chap ! he hated so to go. I had to make 
 him." 
 
 169 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Thyrza sat up straight. 
 
 " To go ? " She faltered. " I thought he would be 
 here." 
 
 "He s gone to England. My uncle wanted him * 
 my uncle, Mr. Updike, the author. I made him go." 
 
 " How could he go ? " said Thyrza, in a daze of 
 wonder. She was breaking through the crust of her 
 timidity, almost to argue and expostulate. " He wanted 
 to be with you. He wanted it more than anything in 
 all the worid." 
 
 The color rushed to Helen s face. She looked for 
 an instant fiercely proud, as if through memory of 
 the arguments it had taken to dismiss him, the bit 
 terness of using them. 
 
 " I made him," she said coldly. " My uncle had 
 written to me. He s afraid Barton will waste his life. 
 He wanted me to use my influence. I used it. I told 
 Bart I liked to be alone." 
 
 Her face quivered passionately, but at once she 
 put the topic by, as a completed issue, recalling her 
 self to a sweet interest in the stranger to whom she 
 had, with one of her intemperate impulses, shown 
 too much. Helen was always doing that. She had an 
 eager love of companionship, a hunger for feeling 
 that she was understood. It led her all lengths, this 
 temptation to impetuous forays among her kind, until 
 pride, pursuing, brought her back sedately to her 
 pathetic state again. To Thyrza the whole scheme was 
 out of drawing. Barton Gorse had summoned her 
 to be a comfort to his sister, and she had responded 
 
 170 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 in her old reliance on him, knowing he would tell 
 her how to act. She rose from her chair. 
 
 "I ought not to have come/ she said. Then, with 
 an involuntary return to the speech of her familiars, 
 she added, in the country formula of those who end 
 a call, "I guess I ll be going now." 
 
 Helen Davidson understood at once. She took her 
 by both hands, and put her back into the chair. 
 
 "No, you don t, Thyrza Tennant," she said, with 
 the old willfulness of the youth she had laid aside. "I 
 need you twice as much if I don t have Bart. Here s 
 your coffee, child. Mary, get a room ready. Where s 
 your trunk? I ll send a man for it. Now when we re 
 quite settled, you can read to me." 
 
 Thyrza stayed. Helen Davidson, in a way she had, 
 made her at once at home and stretched a place for her. 
 Helen, Thyrza found, was one of the people whose 
 charm it is to spend an immense energy on trifles. 
 They play, and the more sedate, looking on at them, 
 are involuntarily charmed into attention by their ab 
 sorption in the game. Helen had lost all chance at big 
 games, she would have said. She was an unaffect 
 edly sad woman, her mind fixed persistently upon a 
 wayward past; but she put an amazing energy into 
 the trifles that had once beguiled her. She invented 
 idle occupations, and pursued them, not so much as 
 if they amused her, but as if they were a species of 
 tribute demanded by time before he would consent to 
 pass, the semblance of activity desirable because life 
 is framed on something of that sort. A whole week 
 
 171 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 she spent in making a garden bed, shaped like a star, 
 and planting golden-rod in it. But it was on a rocky 
 hillside where not even golden-rod would grow, though 
 that left her enthusiasm unweakened when she found 
 it out. She took three forenoons out of one week to 
 teach a kitten a trick no kitten could do, and seemed 
 to be exhaling her whole soul in the process. Thyrza, 
 watching, adored her and felt dull and pale beside 
 her. 
 
 At night they sat on the veranda, looking at the 
 stars and talking, while the Believers, in groups on 
 other verandas, mulled over the future state of the 
 soul and dozed away the day s weariness. Margaret 
 Petrie was always with them. That was not her name, 
 she once told Thyrza brightly; she had invented it. 
 There was no valid reason why she should not use 
 her own name, but she liked change exceedingly. If 
 she could alter the color of her eyes she would do it ; 
 her name, at least, fell within the limit of choice. 
 
 When Thyrza one night timidly referred to her as 
 a Believer, she owned that she was really here because 
 she liked the open-air life, the regular work and the 
 mild insanity of the people. 
 
 "I shan t stay," she said. "Law, chile! another 
 winter I may be in Washington, in my wampum, go- 
 in or out to dinner on the arm of Prester John." 
 
 f 
 
 The summer went slowly, its steps detained, it 
 seemed, by the monotony of life, and the middle of 
 September was come. Thyrza had written to resign 
 her school, because she knew, when she left Helen 
 
 172 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 Davidson, she should go to Andy and be his wife. 
 But Andy had not written to her. She had written 
 him many times, at first lovingly, then beseechingly, 
 and even then he did not answer. Her mother wrote, 
 and Laura, too, to say that aunt Mary Hubbard had 
 died and that Laura had gone home. After that, Mrs. 
 Tennant chanced to say that Andy was there, and 
 that they saw a good deal of him. Thyrza s hope reared 
 its head triumphant. He went there because they be 
 longed to her, and this was a way of being near her. 
 She wrote him that day passionately and imploringly, 
 and with an outspoken appeal she was agonized to 
 make. But still he did not answer. 
 
 One soft, windy night, with far-off lightnings in the 
 sky, the three women sat together on Helen s veranda. 
 She had been restless all day, and now the inner storm 
 had culminated, and they were conscious that, as she 
 sat there, her face bent into her hands, she must be 
 crying softly. Thyrza stirred about on futile mis 
 sions, fearful of seeming too cognizant of a betraying 
 mood; but presently Margaret Petrie ventured, with 
 her wholesome candor, 
 
 "Tired, ladybird?" 
 
 "Homesick," said Helen, at once, in as frank an 
 answer. "Homesick! IVe got no home and I m 
 sick to death for it." 
 
 "Too bad," said Margaret Petrie, in a sweet mono 
 tony that freighted the bare words and made them 
 sail like spice ships. "Too bad, ladybird." 
 
 Helen drew out her handkerchief and wiped her 
 
 173 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 face. She put it away decisively, as one who has 
 resolved to cry no more. 
 
 "It s for Bart/ she said. "He s my folks. You 
 know what that word means, Thyrza. They say that 
 in Leafy Road." 
 
 Thyrza put out a timid hand, touched her sleeve, 
 and then withdrew it. 
 
 "He d come," she said. "He d come in a minute 
 if you sent for him." 
 
 Her own heart rose in an excited yearning at even 
 the thought of Barton Gorse, who knew so well how 
 to make the rough places plain. He meant protec 
 tion, unfaltering kindliness. He was like the sun 
 for warmth and a tree giving shelter. He must not 
 shield her, for she had gone into another house of 
 life, and she must not even tell her needs to him; but 
 it would be something if the tree grew where she could 
 see its branches wave. 
 
 " No," said Helen, " no ! He s not coming to me. 
 I m not going to allow it, Thyrza Tennant ! " She 
 rose, and they could fancy her slight figure quivering 
 with the intensity of passion that moved her voice. 
 
 " What is it ? " Thyrza trembled. She, too, had risen, 
 and they faced each other. 
 
 " You re young," said Helen. Now she was shak 
 ing from head to foot. " Why, how short a time it is 
 since I was young myself ! Some might say I was 
 young now. Why, look at me ! I m shut off from all 
 the people I ve ever known because I m not like them 
 any more. And it is n t only that I ve killed myself. 
 
 174 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 I m finding out that other thing. I ve made it hard 
 for other people because I ve done what I ve 
 done." 
 
 One of her panics of remorse had come upon her. 
 This they sadly understood. She slipped away into 
 the house, and they heard a closing door above. 
 These were the attacks they had to accept, from time 
 to time, though until now there had lacked this 
 commentary of flaming words. 
 
 Margaret Petrie stood, head bent, listening. When 
 the door closed she gave a sharp, quick sigh. " It s 
 over," she said. " Maybe she 11 go to bed now, and 
 Mary 11 tell her stories about Ireland." 
 
 Thyrza stood there, all a rigid horror. At last she 
 found that she was speaking in a harsh and dreadful 
 voice, and that all she could say was one word, " Stop ! 
 stop ! " She repeated it many times, and then began 
 to shake all over, and Margaret Petrie put an arm 
 about her, and half lifted her to her feet, and together 
 they walked away, down the steps and into the scat 
 tering woods that fringed the forest. Thyrza was cry 
 ing now. " What shall I do ? " she was moaning. She 
 had forgotten Margaret Petrie. She seemed to be talk 
 ing to God and His angels. " I must not tell. You 
 must not make me tell." In those words it seemed that 
 she had again remembered Margaret Petrie. 
 
 Margaret was standing with both arms about her 
 now. 
 
 " Have you written to him, Thyrza ? " she asked, in 
 her firm voice. 
 
 175 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 But Thyrza could not speak. The very heart of 
 -wifely loyalty forbade her answering. 
 
 " May I write to him?" Margaret was asking, and 
 then she cried out violently, 
 
 " No ! no ! no ! " 
 
 "May I go and find him?" 
 
 "No ! no ! " Her mind made a great leap, a willful 
 one, it seemed, to give her pain, to Helen Davidson 
 who had shone once like an angelic creature facing a 
 world of wrong. Now, in the fierce realities of this 
 moment, Helen looked like a beautiful child, not made 
 to front anything, but to play a pretty game with life 
 and drop it when her toys were broken. Nobody, ex 
 cept perhaps Margaret Petrie, seemed stronger than 
 herself, and even to Margaret she could not speak, 
 because of that dread vow to Andy, the unspoken vow 
 of loyalty till death, welded as his lips touched hers. 
 
 She put Margaret away from her. 
 
 " I must go in," she said, in a muffled voice. " Let 
 me go in." 
 
 Margaret followed her, but at the steps she put a 
 hand on Thyrza s wrist and drew her back. 
 
 "Wait," she said. "Here, give me your other 
 hand." 
 
 She was slipping a ring on the bare third finger. 
 
 "What is that?" asked Thyrza. 
 
 "It is my mother s wedding-ring," said Margaret 
 Petrie. 
 
 Thyrza, with an extreme emotion which seemed to 
 be a tempest of shame, and so unlike anything she 
 
 176 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 had felt in all her life, put her hand to it, to snatch 
 it off. But her fingers stayed themselves, holding it. 
 
 " What makes you give it to me ? " she asked. 
 
 "I don t know," said Margaret Petrie. Her voice 
 had gathered to itself wonderful complex notes that 
 made a harmony. " It s my mother s wedding-ring. 
 Good-night, Thyrza." 
 
 She vanished into the dusk, and Thyrza, turning 
 to watch her, saw her figure intermittently in the light 
 ning as she went down the hill to her own cottage. 
 Helen within, her emotion incredibly over, was sitting 
 by the lamp now, a book of old French songs open 
 before her, trying them, in a weak, melodious voice. 
 Thyrza lifted her arms to the dark, lightning-smitten 
 heaven and whispered, "God! God! God!" 
 
 All night she lay still, falling into abysses of sleep 
 and then starting awake with the dread of morning 
 and of meeting them again, Helen with that wild out 
 cry ready to rise again to her lips and Margaret Petrie 
 in her mastering kindliness. Thyrza made up her 
 mind that she must go away at once, home even, to 
 her outraged mother s house ; for there she would find 
 Andy. But in the morning everything was different. 
 A telegram had come for her. It was from Laura. 
 Their mother was ill and in danger. The telegram, 
 said, in its stiff simplicity, " a cold and then lung 
 fever." 
 
 Thyrza threw things into her trunk and put on her 
 hat and gloves. At the last minute she ran into 
 Helen s room and found her lying in bed among her 
 
 177 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 laces ; she wore the absorbed look she had when she 
 was beguiling the time by childish occupations. She 
 had made a little mob-cap out of her frail handker 
 chief, and was trying to fit it on the kitten s head, 
 and Thyrza, seeing her thus intent upon a foolish 
 task, felt a species of rage at her. For the moment it 
 submerged all the worship she had conceived for a 
 charm that was constraining by its very childishness. 
 Helen seemed unwittingly to have failed her. She 
 had taken a forbidden way and she should have been 
 colossal in it, a beacon, not a frail figure stooping to 
 gather flowers by the edge. But as Thyrza said, with 
 a roughness born of her grief, " My mother is sick," 
 and thrust forward the corroborating telegram, she was 
 conscious, pace for galloping pace with her anger, of 
 unquenchable love for Helen, her beauty, her appeal- 
 ingness. And almost before Helen could read the 
 telegram and stretch out hands of sympathy and fare 
 well, the whistle sounded from the little boat, and 
 Thyrza had gone. 
 
 The journey back was a curious, worn duplicate of 
 her coming. There were the same names, the unfa 
 miliar types that had caught her eye, but they were 
 tiresome now. She felt like an old and jaded traveler. 
 At the junction where she had seen Andy with that 
 lift of the heart, she alighted and, lids downcast, 
 walked into the waiting-room and sat in an ache of 
 memory waiting for her train. Then, too soon it 
 seemed, she was coming into the little station at 
 Leafy Road, not a girl as she had left it, but a woman 
 
 178 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 with a woman s dreadful secret. And there, as if God 
 had listened to her at last, and had opened to her the 
 gate of pardon, again stood Andy. He was beside the 
 Peltons farm-wagon, and she knew he had come to 
 take her home. Thyrza ran to him, regardless of the 
 neighbors standing by. She lifted her tear-wet eyes 
 to his, knowing he would read their story and under 
 stand her better than he had. In a moment he would 
 kiss her before them all, because he would be so proud 
 to show them she belonged to him, and there would 
 be a space, if her mother was not worse, for them to 
 slip into the minister s and come out with the same 
 name and all the weight of their glad promises light 
 upon them. 
 
 But Andy had put her into the wagon, taken her 
 trunk from the station-master with the air of one who 
 had more strength than he knew what to do with, 
 and tossed it in behind. Thyrza s first question was 
 for her mother, but the sight of him made all ways 
 so clear and plain that she felt her mother s well- 
 being was included in her own. So she could only say 
 his name again, and then sit still in a rapture of 
 recognition that sad things change to joy. The day 
 was all brilliant sky and a stillness so great that no 
 leaf stirred. Andy, in the one glance she had dared to 
 take of him, looked like a glorious image of life that 
 was to be forever young and strong. The blood was 
 in his cheeks, his eyes were dilated with an emotion 
 she understood as the joy of seeing her. Again she 
 had the feeling, as she always did when she was with 
 
 179 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 him, of going with the current, the great stream of 
 being that would bear her on and not betray her. 
 They drove into the shade of the pines, and there 
 Andy pulled in old Bess, and made her walk. She 
 saw how masterfully his hands held the reins, but 
 with a tightness, she noted, not proportioned to the 
 horse s pace. At once she translated it into the ner 
 vous tension of the moment and her coming. 
 
 "Look here," said Andy. He had meant to speak 
 very kindly. If his voice jarred now, it was from des 
 peration. "That last letter you wrote me " 
 
 " Yes," she trembled. 
 
 "That wa n t true?" 
 
 " Why, Andy ! " A thousand arguments were in 
 her answer. There was nothing she could say to him 
 that would not be true, and there were sacred things 
 she could not say at all, unless, as it had happened 
 now, the need were urgent. The brute came up in 
 Andy, the brute that fought because it was afraid, 
 for her, for himself and for another to whom, at that 
 instant, he was throbbingly alive. 
 
 "Look here," he repeated, "I m a married man." 
 
 Thyrza turned to look at him with a most innocent 
 wonder to think how he could jest. Her silence 
 seemed to challenge him and, at the same time, he 
 gathered courage from it. 
 
 " We were married some days ago," he said. 
 " Laura s married me." 
 
 Suddenly she believed him, and gave a cry that 
 sounded to her ears, as well as his, not like a human 
 
 180 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 cry at all. She lifted her clasped hands from her lap, 
 perhaps in involuntary prayer ; but while her eyes 
 dwelt upon the freshness of his cheek, the hands 
 refused to plead, and, still clenched, they struck him 
 in the face. Andy did not move. He drew the horse 
 to a halt, and they sat there together, the still day 
 vibrating with a thousand delicate thrills, and one bird 
 down in the ravine calling three long notes, as if by 
 a bow upon a string. Thyrza found, as if it were a 
 snake lurking in the ambush of the day, a wilder 
 fear. She hurled it at him. 
 
 "Have you been honest with her ? Is she married?" 
 
 He swore an angry oath. 
 
 " Of course she s married to me. Do you s pose 
 I d use Laura Tennant anyways but fair?" 
 
 "It s well for you. I would have killed you." 
 
 Andy broke into tumultuous explanation, not as de 
 fending himself, but touching his allegiance to Laura. 
 
 "She s always been in my mind, Laura has, ever 
 since I was five year old. When I went away, I kinder 
 forgot about her, an then I come back an she was 
 gone, an you " He stopped in sullen decency, but 
 Thyrza cared very little about the balance of blame. 
 Later she could think of it and try, with a bruised 
 wonder, to fit her conception of her love to what 
 Andy had had to offer in turn; but now she, too, 
 thought of Laura. 
 
 "How long has she been married to you?" 
 
 " Less n a week," said Andy morosely. She was 
 nearing evidence he meant to cover. 
 
 181 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Then it s too late," she brooded. " I can t ask 
 her to leave you now." 
 
 66 Leave me ! Do you want to kill her? " 
 
 Still she had no answers for him. He seemed as alien 
 to her as the whirlwind that had wrought destruction. 
 It had done its work and passed on ; she must repair 
 a ragged world. 
 
 "Less than a week/ she repeated. "She s been 
 married to you less than a week ! " Then in an instant 
 a bitter wisdom seemed to be born in her, with the pain 
 of suddenness. It made her cry, " You married her 
 after you got my letter ! You hurried her because you 
 knew if I saw her, if she heard " The wonder of it 
 choked her, and she ceased. 
 
 Andy, looking straight forward between the horse s 
 ears, was answering, 
 
 " I wa n t goin to lose Laura Tennant, after I d 
 seen her again, an I wa n t goin to " He stopped 
 with a tardy lenience, and Thyrza s mind pieced out 
 the thought. He was not going to bind himself to a 
 woman he did not love. 
 
 " Well," she said, in a dry voice, "start up the horse. 
 We must get home." 
 
 But Andy did not move. 
 
 "Say, Thyrza," he entreated, "we re goin out 
 west to live. As soon as this is over I shall take her 
 away, an you two need n t ever meet again " 
 
 " As soon as it s over ? " she repeated in a low voice. 
 "As soon as my mother is dead? Take me home to 
 my mother. Take me home." 
 
 182 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 She laid her hand upon the whip, and Andy drove 
 along. He was still offering what, it was evident, he 
 had conceived as fitting for her. 
 
 " It s a bad business, Thyrza. But there s money 
 enough. I can settle a nice sum on you." 
 
 Thyrza sat straight and still, looking before her. 
 She heard him, but he did not seem to her a person to 
 be answered. He was the man driving the horse. All 
 he could do for her now was to take her home. At the 
 gate he spoke again, with a scared timidity, strangely 
 contrasted with his size and physical dominance. 
 
 "You ain t goin to thresh this out with Laura? 
 You d kill her. I don t care about myself I swear 
 I don t but you ll kill your sister." 
 
 Thyrza did not answer. Before he could descend, 
 she sprang out over the wheel. And there was Laura 
 coming down the path. 
 
 Thyrza, her eyes fixed on her as they ran to meet, 
 noted, with a wild wonder, how beautiful she was. 
 Laura was all calm sweetness and ripe womanhood. 
 There were tears in her eyes, but an exaltation also, as 
 if she had known new raptures and could translate 
 present grief into a coming tenderness. She put out 
 her arms, and Thyrza, running to her, laid her head 
 on her shoulder and hid her face there. She could not 
 kiss her. With some last sad defense of honor it came 
 to her that, as long as she lived, she could never kiss 
 Laura again. She might die for her, but she could not 
 touch her lips. Laura was saying gently, 
 
 " It s over, dear. It s over." 
 183 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 To Thyrza the words were only the dirge over her 
 own sad state, and she was answering through her 
 shuddering, " Yes ! yes ! " 
 
 Laura looked across her at Andy standing mute in 
 fear. 
 
 " Somebody s told you ! " she said. 
 
 Then Thyrza understood. She withdrew from her 
 sister, and stood looking at her. 
 
 "Is it mother?" she asked. "Is it my mother?" 
 
 Laura stretched out her hands again, and her face 
 quivered. 
 
 "She went in a minute, dear. She d just been 
 talking about you, how pleased she was to have you 
 come, and how nice t would be to have us all together 
 again and Andy, too ! and then she asked me to 
 raise her up, and I did, and she died in a minute. But 
 twas easy, dear. She didn t have any pain." 
 
 Thyrza still looked at her, and then her face broke 
 and twisted into lines appalling in its smooth young 
 fairness. She lifted her hands to the sky and laughed 
 out. 
 
 "I thank you," she cried. "I thank you! God, I 
 thank you ! " 
 
 " Thyrza ! " called her sister. " What s that you re 
 saying?" 
 
 That brought Thyrza s eyes back to her sister and 
 the wild impulse passed. 
 
 " I thanked God she did n t suffer pain," she said. 
 " Come, Laura, let s go in." 
 
 At the sill she pushed Laura before her, and turned 
 
 184 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 to shut the door, lest Andy should come, too ; but 
 that, she remembered, was a part of her insanity, and 
 she let him follow them. Thyrza had not seen death, 
 and when she went with Laura into their mother s 
 room where a brisk neighbor was busy, she found in 
 credible majesty in the still figure, and it calmed her. 
 The worn hands brought her an anguish unspeakable. 
 With a quick leap toward remorseful understanding, 
 she told herself she might have saved some of their 
 toil if she had not gone so marty ways in search of 
 sacrifice. But it seemed to her that now her only 
 help was in her mother. They were both dead to the 
 world. She began to see how little things avail 
 the sunlit day, the bird of sorrow that broods over the 
 lintel, or the bird of joy that perches for a moment 
 by the window and is gone. The neighbor spoke un 
 kindly to her, with a grudging sympathy, and Thyrza 
 knew it had been considered wrong of her to leave 
 her mother these last weeks. She bowed her head 
 to it. 
 
 " Where s aunt Ellie ? " she asked, with a sudden 
 recurrence of thought to the house as it was. 
 
 Laura smiled a little in the midst of her tears. 
 
 " Gone plumming ! She s known something s the 
 matter. She s missed mother." 
 
 When they had gone downstairs and Andy had 
 driven away with the Peltons horse, Laura drew her 
 into the sitting-room and there brought her a cup of 
 tea. Thyrza looked at it with the distaste she had 
 now for everything that would help the flesh to live. 
 
 185 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 It came to her sick fancy that Andy might have 
 bought it. 
 
 " Is that mother s tea ? " she asked, making no 
 motion toward it. 
 
 "Why, yes/ said Laura, wondering. "Of course 
 it s mother s tea." 
 
 " Out of the old black caddy ? " 
 
 " Yes, Thyrza, yes." 
 
 Thyrza took it then, and drained the cup. It 
 seemed as if her mother s hand had poured it for her. 
 
 Laura sat down and prepared to talk a little, watch 
 ing her tenderly as one who must be mercifully used. 
 She had fallen, in these few days of trouble, in a 
 self-forgetful calm. Thyrza did not know how much 
 of it had been the habit of her life with great-aunt 
 Mary Hubbard ; but she saw that Laura, in spite of 
 her freshness, was no longer young. There were fine 
 lines between her brows, a significant tracery where 
 their mother s had grown ugly, and her eyes looked 
 gravely out, as if they were used to finding cares. 
 Yet even on this dark day there was anticipation in 
 her face and a kind of wonder, as if she had met 
 joys unprepared. When they had talked about their 
 mother for a time, she said, with a beautiful blush, 
 
 " Andy told you, about him and me? " 
 
 Thyrza nodded. 
 
 " I could n t have done it," said Laura, almost as 
 if she excused herself, "not in such a hurry. But 
 he would n t take ( no. It was the very first day of 
 mother s being sick, and he said he must marry me 
 
 186 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 so as to be with me and be with her. Mother was real 
 pleased." 
 
 Laura looked anything but a weak woman to be 
 swept along by Andy s impetuous will, and Thyrza, 
 studying her with a fixedness to understand, realized 
 that the woman Laura had only completed a troth 
 the child Laura had begun. 
 
 " It was pretty sudden," she forced herself to say. 
 
 " Yes," Laura answered. " I ve missed him a good 
 deal all these years." Again she blushed sweetly all 
 over her face, and Thyrza understood that she had 
 been living on the memory of Andy. 
 
 Now Laura, gently reproachful of herself, because 
 this was a house of mourning, had turned away from 
 inapposite romance. She had at once the manner 
 of the wife, secure in waiting love. " He s going to 
 stay with grandma McAdam now. He said twas 
 better, you and me being together. I thought t was 
 pretty nice of him." 
 
 Thyrza nodded, and realized that now it was pos 
 sible to eat and sleep here. But though that night 
 she put her arms about Laura, when they crept into 
 bed together, and laid her head on her sister s shoul 
 der in the dread certainty that, after this, there would 
 be no near human love for her, she could not kiss her. 
 Laura s lips, she knew again, must not be doubly sullied. 
 
 Next morning it proved that Andy had been called 
 away on urgent business. He might not be back for 
 a week, and it was impossible to delay, even for Mrs. 
 Tennant s funeral. So the sisters went through their 
 
 187 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 simple rites and then, after the neighbors had gone 
 home, sat down to confidences. 
 
 " What makes you watch me so ? " Laura asked, 
 at length. 
 
 " I don t know when I shall see you again," Thyrza 
 answered. 
 
 " Why, you 11 be right here. The house belongs 
 to you and me. I shan t ever touch it. Andy s got 
 plenty, and he 11 let aunt Ellie live with us." 
 
 Thyrza was watching her with eyes that glittered. 
 
 " I understood you were going out west." 
 
 "So he says, but I guess we shan t, right off." 
 Laura spoke with the easy assurance of one to whom 
 everything would be conceded. " I must see to 
 grandma Me Adam, too. No, Thyrza, you stay right 
 here, and we 11 either live along with you or go over 
 to grandma s." 
 
 Thyrza shook her head. One of the irrevocable 
 things now was her parting with this spot ; yet she 
 could not say so. 
 
 "Aunt Mary left us some money, didn t she?" 
 
 " Two hundred a year apiece as long as we live. I 
 brought you yours." 
 
 "Brought it to me?" 
 
 " Yes. The will said the first payment was to be 
 made right off after her death. There was quite a 
 little ready money, and I was executor, and I put it 
 in my pocket for you. Aunt Mary was queer, but she 
 was square. She said twas no use keeping folks 
 lounging round a year or two, waiting for what they 
 
 188 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 were coming into. Sometimes, Thyrza, I believe she 
 never thought she d treated you quite right." 
 
 Thyrza was on her feet, staring at her. 
 
 "Two hundred dollars!" she breathed. "Where is 
 it?" 
 
 "It s in the desk drawer. You want it now? Why, 
 you can have it." 
 
 She rose and went to the drawer, and Thyrza 
 watched her. Laura took out a little roll, four fifty- 
 dollar bills, and gave it to her. 
 
 Thyrza s eyes were greedy. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "I never thought such a thing 
 could happen to me. I m going now. I m going to 
 night." 
 
 Laura was all a-quiver with hurt wonder. 
 
 "Thyrza, what s got into you?" she reproached 
 her. It sounded like their mother. "I should think 
 you d want to stay till Andy comes." 
 
 " You can write to him," said Thyrza. " You can 
 tell him you re alone. He ll come. Laura! Laura! 
 see!" 
 
 She pointed from the window at Margaret Petrie 
 walking up the path. She had put on what the Be 
 lievers were accustomed to call the world s dress, and 
 Thyrza, seeing how even its plainness became her, 
 felt a timidity before her. 
 
 "Who is it?" Laura inquired, wonderingly. 
 
 "Margaret Petrie, the one I wrote about. Laura, 
 if she talks to you " 
 
 But Laura, with an instant hospitality, had hastened 
 
 189 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 to the door, to let in Thyrza s friend, and Margaret 
 Petrie was saying to her, 
 
 " I was going through. I Ve left the Lake. I wanted 
 to ask Thyrza to come with me." 
 
 Her sane composure had weight with Laura, and 
 it seemed at once quite reasonable for Thyrza to go. 
 It was right also, Laura owned, to hurry, though she 
 did not learn why. The wind of their inexplicable 
 haste persuaded her. Margaret Petrie was, at the 
 least, a beneficent lady who would conduct Thyrza 
 to ways of showing what was in her. To Laura the 
 world was strange that day, so that it might well take 
 any guise. It was a world of love and death, of long 
 parting and renewals. That her mother had died was 
 anguish incredible, and that Andy would any instant 
 return to her, all warm, dominating love, was as great 
 a marvel. She was beside herself with tenderness and 
 grief, so smitten by them on the one side and the 
 other that her calm nature kept its balance and made 
 her seem unmoved by either. 
 
 Thyrza s trunk was sent to the station, and in the 
 late afternoon she and Margaret set forth. The day 
 was cool and sweet, and ostensibly because of that 
 they had elected to walk, though they had agreed 
 upon it tacitly because it was the way of solitude. 
 Laura went with them to the gate, and when they 
 paused there, lifted her apron and wiped her spring 
 ing tears. It was the very gesture of their mother, 
 and at once she knew it and so did Thyrza. But they 
 could only say good-by, and Thyrza, in the saying, 
 
 190 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 laid her head upon her sister s shoulder. Then she 
 turned to go, but halted and looked back. Her mind 
 coursed over the years of their separation, and again 
 she saw Laura borne unwillingly away to be educated 
 and learn to play on great-aunt Mary s Arabella s 
 piano. In that flash of inner vision upon things as 
 they are, she saw that Laura was exactly as she would 
 have been if she had not gone, a gentle soul, all 
 pliant dignity. But if she had spent her girlhood 
 happily at home, she might not have gained those lines 
 between her brows. Thyrza spoke, from her ironic 
 wonderment, 
 
 " Laura, what s become of aunt Mary s Arabella s 
 piano?" 
 
 " Why," said Laura, "it went to the auction room, 
 but it didn t fetch anything. The man said twas a 
 cheap affair anyway, and it stood so long twas all 
 rusted out." 
 
 When Thyrza and Margaret Petrie were walking 
 down the road, they heard a sound of some one sing 
 ing. It came from behind the big elder-bush, and 
 Thyrza, to whom it was a call of duty, stopped, a 
 detaining finger on Margaret Petrie s arm. The song 
 grew in shrill volume. It was " Mary across the wild 
 moor," and on one of its melancholy cadences, aunt 
 Ellie, her little pail held carefully, came out from 
 behind the elder and slipped her hand into Thyrza s. 
 
 " She thinks she can go," said Thyrza. The tears 
 were running down her cheeks, and she looked at 
 Margaret Petrie in dubious trouble. 
 
 191 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " She can/ said Margaret Petrie. No problem was 
 too stiff for her. " Come, Thyrza s little aunt. Come 
 home with us." 
 
 The tone, the chosen words, made the invitation 
 hospitably convincing. Aunt Ellie took up her song 
 quite gayly, and walked with them. But half a mile 
 further on, she left them. There was a .path, between 
 cedars, to a great yellow house. She sped up the path, 
 and while they watched her, awaiting her return, she 
 knocked boldly on the door, and they saw it open, and 
 then close behind her. 
 
 "Who lives there?" Margaret Petrie asked. 
 
 Thyrza was still staring up the path. At first she 
 could not answer. It had come upon her like a crown 
 ing wave over her own surge of grief that she did 
 not yet know fully the extent of change sprung from 
 her mother s death. Even aunt Ellie had somehow 
 felt the salt wash of it, and was withdrawing herself, 
 with pathetic logic, from the home where it had 
 touched her. Thyrza answered slowly, in a tone of 
 awe at all this strangeness, 
 
 It s the Poor Farm." 
 
VIII 
 
 THE DISCOVERY 
 
 JL RETOWER was an academy seat, with mellow red 
 buildings, and greensward, and the seclusion of an 
 English town. Deep-toned bells spoke at hours to be 
 observed by students and professors in residence, and 
 boys with books were always walking in ancient paths 
 across the green. There was one narrow street of low 
 houses behind the academy buildings, the bank at its 
 rear falling steeply to the river, and in one of the 
 houses Thyrza and her baby lived, and she worked 
 to take care of him. Petrie was a beautiful baby, 
 with her own dark coloring and a strong way of 
 using his hands and feet. Thyrza had a little garden 
 in her front yard, and on the gate was tacked a 
 board with the word " Mending " painted on it in 
 neat letters. She had lived here a year now, sewing 
 very hard ; and one day, standing at her gate for a 
 moment, in the early morning, wishing more students 
 would come to bring mercifully frayed clothes, she 
 saw a woman crossing the road to her. This was a 
 pretty, plump blond, with an efflorescence of gay 
 colors. Thyrza felt the sickening of her startled 
 heart, and the blood ran out of her cheeks. But she 
 stood still, holding her small dark head proudly, and 
 looked straight across the road at the woman as she 
 came. It was Rosie May Pelton, and as Thyrza waited 
 
 193 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 for her, strangely she could only think of the Rosie 
 May that was a little girl, and of tearing up her 
 play-house. She did not feel capable any more of de 
 stroying even a play-house. Rosie May, in her pink 
 beauty, looked far more likely to wield the master- 
 hand. She was calling as she came, 
 
 " Why, Thyrza Tennant ! you don t mean to say 
 that s you?" 
 
 "Yes," said Thyrza steadily. "It s I. Come in, 
 won t you?" 
 
 Rosie May was arrested by the little sign. " You 
 don t mean to say you ve set up doin mendin ?" she 
 cascaded, in a torrent of incredulity. 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Laura said you lived at Hemenway." 
 " I have my mail sent there." 
 " Well, ain t you the greatest not to let your own 
 sister know where you live ! What you s pose I m 
 down here for ? " 
 
 Thyrza had a vivid impression that Nemesis might 
 have directed her, but she answered in the safe com 
 monplace, 
 
 " I don t know." 
 
 "Old uncle Dan el Wright lives along here some- 
 wheres. He s got a kind of a junk shop, I guess, 
 old ancient things. There s an excursion down the 
 river. Did n t you know it ? I promised mother I d 
 run ahead o the others an hunt up uncle Dan, if I 
 had time. Why, Thyrza Tennant, whose baby s 
 that?" 
 
 194 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 Little Petrie had come, with slow unconscious dig 
 nity, to the door, and stood there holding by the cas 
 ing. Thyrza turned and saw him, and her heart 
 seemed to overwhelm her in a rush of compassionate 
 love for him, and pride in his great beauty. This was 
 only for an instant. She did not dare look at him 
 longer, lest tears should rise to her eyes and the blood 
 to her cheeks, and engulf her in what might look like 
 shame. Her eyes were bent on Rosie May gravely and 
 with no hint of deflection. 
 
 " It is my baby," she said, " my son." 
 
 "Why, Thyrza ! I never knew you were married." 
 
 "No," said Thyrza, in the same grave tone. "I 
 am not married ; but this is my son." 
 
 Rosie May had blanched a little under the bloom 
 of her cheek. She stood staring, her pretty lips vac 
 uously parted. 
 
 " Well ! " she breathed. 
 
 There were voices in the distance, and she turned 
 with an evident relief. 
 
 " There they are, lots of folks from home. Laura s 
 there, too. I forgot to tell you." 
 
 "Laura! " Now Thyrza s voice broke with the an 
 guish of terror. " Where is Laura ?" 
 
 "Why, it s an excursion an we said we d go. 
 Andy would n t, so Laura said she d come with 
 
 me." 
 
 For a minute the world was black before Thyrza, 
 and she caught at the fence-post to steady her 
 self. There was one sustaining certainty to draw her 
 
 195 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 from her threatened swoon : Laura must not hear ill 
 news of her from Rosie May. She saw the group of 
 people coming, all in holiday dress, carrying baskets 
 of luncheon and paper bags filled with fruit bought 
 by the way. They were talking fast and laughing, 
 and those in the van turned to call back gibes to the 
 rear. It sounded as if they had formed a compact to 
 keep a concerted pitch. Their gayety filled Thyrza 
 with sad wonderment. It seemed amazing that men and 
 women should behave like children in a dark world 
 honeycombed with pitfalls to engulf them. As they 
 neared she heard herself crying, " Laura ! Laura ! " 
 and then a tall, lovely Laura detached herself from 
 the group and came running forward. Others came, 
 too, exclaiming that it was Thyrza Tennant ; but she 
 shut the gate in their faces and in the face of Rosie 
 May, and drew Laura up the path. Laura, in her sur 
 prise and pleasure, only threw a gay good-by to the 
 others and the wondering explanation that she had 
 found her sister, and then the two were at the step, 
 and Petrie stood there facing them. Laura stooped 
 and drew him to her. 
 
 " No ! no ! " Thyrza bade her. " You must n t touch 
 him. Come in with me." She led her sister past the 
 little creature, and in the sitting-room they faced each 
 other. 
 
 Laura looked at her sister with wonder and a name 
 less apprehension. In the delight of their meeting, 
 she had been about to kiss her, but Thyrza looked 
 strange and forbidding to her, and she dared not. 
 
 196 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 "The child is mine/ said Thyrza, in a harsh voice. 
 " I ve just told Rosie May." 
 
 Still Laura looked at her from those wide beautiful 
 brown eyes. Thyrza, with a sickening attention, noted 
 every detail of her dress, the rich pin at her throat, 
 the newness of her gloves. Laura, she saw, was pros 
 perous, and if it could be judged from the soft cheek, 
 the sweetly curving mouth and the untroubled eyes, 
 she was happy. A deadly caution bade her remember 
 to take heed and keep her so. 
 
 A shade of hurt wonder flickered into Laura s face. 
 
 " Why, Thyrza," she began, " you never told me." 
 
 It was the old question, Thyrza knew, the one 
 Rosie May had asked, the one the doctor and the 
 minister had innocently implied : her marriage. She 
 shook her head, as if she could not be swift enough 
 in her repudiating. 
 
 " This is my child," she said. " He has n t any 
 father. Won t you understand ? I m not married, 
 Laura. I never was. I never shall be." 
 
 Laura turned on her heel, with a swift whirl of her 
 pretty skirts. She walked to the window and stood 
 there a second. When she turned back again, her 
 cheeks were scarlet, and rage was in her tender eyes. 
 
 " Oh, if I told him ! " she cried in a choking voice, 
 "if I told Andy, I believe he d kill him." 
 
 "No! no! no!" Thyrza heard herself saying. 
 " Don t tell him. He must n t know." 
 
 " She 11 tell him," said Laura hotly. Rosie May. 
 She 11 tell every soul that ever see you. Oh ! " It was 
 
 197 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 a cry all hurt and bleeding tenderness. She held her 
 arms out. Laura was not a woman of outspoken pro 
 testations and free caresses. Now her voice had melo 
 dious calls in it, mother-notes Thyrza had never 
 heard there. " Come here to me," she was crying. 
 " Oh, come to me, you dear, you darlin dear ! " 
 
 In a moment she was in Thyrza s low sewing-chair, 
 and Thyrza, at her feet, had bent her head on Laura s 
 knee and was crying, crying, in a great wondering hap 
 piness that she could shed such tears as these. " Come 
 up here," Laura was saying, " so s I can kiss you." 
 
 " No ! no ! " Thyrza moaned. " You must n t ever 
 ask me, Laura. I must n t ever kiss you again nor 
 anybody," she added in quick craftiness, lest Laura 
 should ask why. 
 
 But Laura thought she understood how a woman 
 to whom the semblance of love had been her undoing 
 should swerve away from all its currency. 
 
 " You kiss him," she said coaxingly. " You kiss the 
 little boy." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " said Thyrza, from her sad abandon 
 ment. " I kiss him. But we re in one world, he and 
 I. We re dead in your world, Laura. We re in our 
 own world together. Sometimes it s heaven, but when 
 he grows up, it ll be my hell." 
 
 But Laura had a simple mind, and imagery meant 
 very little to her. 
 
 "You needn t kiss me till you feel to," she said. 
 "I ll hug you though ; I m going to hug him, too, in 
 a minute. He s sweet pretty, dear." 
 
 198 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 Thyrza sat up, there at her feet, and lifted a tear- 
 disfigured face to look at her. She had never known 
 Laura, she saw. Laura was a good woman, according 
 to all the world s requirements. She was a sane, stern 
 woman, too. She could not have walked into the bog 
 that looked a blossomy path to Thyrza. She would 
 have seen the oily waters underneath. Yet Laura was 
 regarding her with clear, tender eyes, and treating 
 her as if she were a young mother who had not stolen 
 her child. 
 
 " I shall feel terribly if I never have any myself," 
 she was saying. " And somehow I don t believe I 
 shall." A shade of pathos veiled her face, deepening 
 its tenderness. Little Petrie, in the doorway, catching 
 at sunbeams, began to sing himself a song new as 
 to time and language. " Now ain t that sweet?" 
 
 Thyrza looked up at her in a kind of worship. 
 Laura, instead of herself, seemed to be motherhood, 
 the motherhood that leans and listens for all children s 
 crying. But Laura had left brooding over Petrie and 
 flown back to her. 
 
 "Now you ve got to come home with me," she 
 was saying. " Not to-day, though. I 11 see Andy 
 first. But he 11 be willing. He 11 be glad. I 11 make 
 him." 
 
 Thyrza could put that aside for an after-moment s 
 refusal. The first great wonder had to be fathomed 
 now. 
 
 " Laura ! " she spoke timidly. " You don t seem to 
 treat me as if I was different." 
 
 199 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Laura stooped and put her two firm hands on 
 Thyrza s shoulders. 
 
 " Darlin ," she said, " there ain t ever any blame 
 going to be betwixt you and me. There ain t anything 
 you could do would ever make me set by you less, nor 
 ask you a question unless you felt to tell me. You 
 could n t tell me, darlin , could you ? " 
 
 " No ! " said Thyrza. Her voice rang dreadfully 
 against her sister s pleading. " No! no ! " 
 
 " I don t mean tell me who he is. Of course I know 
 that, dear. Of course I know ! But why he should n t 
 marry you ! He liked you awfully." 
 
 Thyrza came to her feet, and stood staring at her 
 sister. Her breath came pantingly. 
 
 "You know, Laura?" she whispered. "How can 
 you say you know?" 
 
 " He was always terrible fond of you," Laura went 
 on, lost now in her own yearning to set the matter 
 right. "He never d have given you lessons all that 
 time, and sent you books and all. Of course he liked 
 you, dear." 
 
 Thyrza gave a little cry. 
 
 " You must not think it, Laura, not for a minute, 
 not a second! Why, he s the best man " The 
 thought of Barton Gorse, all tender chivalry, choked 
 her, and she could not go on. He seemed to her now, 
 using her sad knowledge of what man might be, with 
 out passions and so without cruelty. 
 
 Laura was smiling at her in a beautiful way. 
 
 " Yes, dear," she said. " You want to cover him. 
 200 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 I don t blame you. I should if t was somebody I set 
 by so if t was Andy, though that " She bit the 
 word off in quick compunction ; but Thyrza knew 
 she was about to say, " though that could n t be." 
 An insane impulse, the extreme of nervous emotion, 
 swept over her. She forgot Laura whom she might 
 kill, and forgot herself, who seemed to be already 
 dead, and remembered only the bitter, irrevocable 
 fact. " It is Andy ! " she wanted to cry. t( It s Andy ! 
 your Andy ! " In a moment she passed her hand over 
 her blurred vision and asked Laura, " Have I said 
 anything? " 
 
 " No," Laura was answering, in that brooding 
 mother-voice, " not a word, dear. Nor you need n t. 
 Only if you d tell me where he is now, maybe Andy 
 and I could do something. Andy would go to the 
 world s end after him. A man knows what to say to a 
 
 man." 
 
 " Then," said Thyrza, " listen. Nobody shall go for 
 me. Nobody shall speak for me. I speak for myself. 
 I speak every day. I speak to God. I say, ( Help me 
 bring up the child. That s all. If you set folks on 
 my track, Laura, you 11 kill me. You 11 murder me." 
 
 She had always dominated Laura in a way, but now 
 it was the pathos of her anguish and not her will 
 that gave her power. Laura, too, rose and gently 
 took her hands. 
 
 " Nobody s going to hurt you, darlin dear," she 
 said. " Now le s see the baby." 
 
 Little Petrie, having at that moment finished his 
 201 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 most pressing affairs with the sunshine, came stag 
 gering past in pursuit of the cat s tail, inexplicably 
 withdrawn whenever he faltered toward it. Laura 
 took him up and sat with him on her knee, babbling 
 to him in a foolish language, and to Thyrza about 
 his feet and petticoats. All that forenoon they sat, 
 busy with the talk of happy matrons, and no word 
 was said to break the bubble of content. As the 
 afternoon slipped on, Laura said falteringly that per 
 haps she d better not wait for the boat-folks. She 
 might take an earlier train. Thyrza, in her turn, 
 hesitated. 
 
 " Yes," she said, at last. " If you feel to." 
 
 Each knew what was in the other s mind. Rosie 
 May would have told all the neighbors how she had 
 found Thyrza Tennant, and if Thyrza and Laura 
 were to meet their trouble with courage, they must 
 seek it eagerly. 
 
 " Well," concluded Laura, "maybe I d better go 
 back with them. I 11 be ready when they come 
 along." 
 
 There were things not to be spoken : Thyrza s cry 
 ing sense that she could not be permitted to carry 
 her shame alone, but that Laura must bear some part 
 of it with her, and Laura s longing to lift all the load 
 she might, yet knowing Thyrza s share of it could 
 not be lightened. When the mid-afternoon came, 
 Laura pinned on her hat, and they put their arms 
 about each other again, though they did not kiss. 
 Laura had tenderly refrained from offering it. Then 
 
 202 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 she went out to the gate and waited, and Thyrza 
 stood in the doorway, the child upon her arm, in the 
 old attitude of motherhood. In spite of her slender- 
 ness, her steadfast pose made her majestic, and the 
 group of people in the rear of the excursion crowd 
 looked up at her silently, though none of them could 
 speak. It was not because they were condemning her, 
 but because the strangeness of it all had wrought 
 upon them. 
 
 There was to be another encounter at the gate. A 
 man walking rapidly and meeting the crowd had 
 stopped to speak to Laura, but she, Thyrza could 
 see, brushed by with what looked like a sudden in 
 voluntary scorn of him, and joined her party. He 
 came up the path. It was Barton Gorse, and he was 
 deeply changed from the man Thyrza knew. He 
 looked more than the two years older, and his face 
 had sharpened to an edge, as if he had suffered, and 
 indeed was suffering still, and might break under it. 
 His eyes were all a beseeching fire. She did not alter 
 her position, though an inward terror urged her to put 
 down the child. It seemed, for some hidden reason, 
 that she must stand there holding her boy and wait 
 ing for Barton Gorse to come. He saw what to do, 
 as he had always seen it for her, and took her by the 
 elbow and turned her gently. 
 
 " Come in, Thyrza," he said. He sounded breath 
 less. " Put him down. For a minute, only a minute. 
 I must talk to you." 
 
 They were facing each other in the little room, as 
 
 203 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 she and Laura had stood, and Petrie, always the 
 busiest of men, was off on another fruitless trip for 
 the trophy of a furry tail. At first Barton could only 
 look at her. He did not speak. Her eyes were drawn 
 to his, and she felt how strange her face must look, 
 in its mask of pain. 
 
 "Dear child!" said Barton Gorse. "0 my dear 
 child!" 
 
 He had never been outspoken to her before, a 
 little humorous, full of quaint sayings and abusive 
 praise and an emphatic blame that was also a kind of 
 commendation. Thyrza s lip trembled a little, but she 
 faced him bravely, as if she offered the betrayal of her 
 eyes to him to make of it what he might. He was 
 continuing. 
 
 " I came home to see you. Sit down, dear child. 
 Let me sit down. Thyrza, I found Margaret Petrie in 
 London. She told me things." 
 
 " Yes," said Thyrza, with a miserable acquiescence. 
 " She should not have told you." 
 
 "She had to. We talked about you and somehow 
 she s very sympathetic. She gets things out of 
 you I let her see I loved you. So she had to tell 
 
 me." 
 
 Thyrza s eyes were fixed on him now in wide amaze 
 ment. Shyness was over for her. The little creature in 
 the next room was her eternal witness that girlish 
 tremblings had gone from her forever. Barton was 
 sitting bent in his chair, dangling his hat iu his hands. 
 
 o 
 
 and looking at it as he talked. 
 
 204 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 " You see, dear, I must have always loved you. But 
 I knew I was no sort of a fellow to ask any woman 
 to be kind to me " 
 
 " You ! " said Thyrza bitterly. 
 
 "I ve got a nasty heart. You didn t know that. 
 It keeps me pretty soft, a kind of a Miss Nancy, a 
 Willy boy, you know. I m not quoted in the market. 
 I m damaged goods. So when I got fond of you, I 
 knew there was nothing for it but to tuck it away in 
 the attic with other things, West Point and such. But 
 when she told me that, I had to come." 
 
 "From England?" asked Thyrza, wondering. She 
 thought very seriously of ocean voyages and the image 
 of the rushing ship and the full sails it had sails 
 because the ships in poetry always had pervaded her 
 mind to overflowing. 
 
 "Yes. I left uncle Terry in the lurch. I didn t 
 stop to see Helen. I came for you, dear, to ask you 
 to marry me and go back with me, to Italy, to England. 
 Come ! " 
 
 Thyrza shook her head dumbly. The tears were 
 standing in her eyes. He began again, in the same 
 haste. 
 
 " You might wonder why I ask you now, when I 
 didn t before. I haven t been able to get a new heart 
 and I m still a mollycoddle. Well, it s that little fel 
 low, dear." He jerked his thumb toward the kitchen, 
 where Petrie was declaiming over the geranium he had 
 denuded of its bloom. " You 11 have an awful time 
 bringing him up. I could help, though I m not much 
 
 205 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 good. It ll be better for him in every way- he 
 stumbled a little there, and his mouth twitched 
 " Say yes, dear, and come. I could n t begin to tell 
 you how I should feel proud, chiefly. Happy, too, 
 but most infernally proud." 
 
 Thyrza had to adjust herself to this new idea of 
 him before she could even consider it as something 
 within her own radius of light. From the beginning 
 of their acquaintance he had been a beneficent crea 
 ture entirely removed from her by his knowledge 
 and his birth. The shadow of a great roof as com 
 pared with her humble one had been over him 
 from the first. She could never have thought of 
 Judge Gorse s grandson in relation to herself, save 
 as conferring benefits. But he was asking her to 
 marry him and he was making it very much of a 
 condescension from her. She had lost all her worldly 
 status, and he was begging her to stoop. 
 
 "Do you mean you want to marry me for him?" 
 She pointed a forefinger at the other room. 
 
 The things the child had meant to Gorse came 
 crowding back upon him now, and he could not quite 
 assent. Since Margaret Petrie had told him this invio 
 late shrine had been defiled, though she could not 
 tell the manner of it, he had been, in London and on 
 his voyage, overwhelmed by the onslaught. The child 
 had seemed to him only the horrible witness to what 
 Thyrza had suffered, and if he could have heard of 
 his death he must have thanked God. Without the 
 child she could be rescued from her miserable lot. 
 
 206 
 
THE D i sco VERY 
 
 With him, unless she accepted what he offered her 
 with a quicker, stronger grasp than he believed she 
 would, it might be hard to build up her house again. 
 He was trying to be hopeful. But the child, this alien 
 offspring of a man more dreadful to him because he 
 was nameless, a monster that had come out of the 
 dark for the slaying of innocence, no, he could 
 not say he wished well to the child. It must share, 
 for the present, in his horror of the unknown father. 
 So he answered humbly, conscious, through his mis 
 erable jealousy, that Thyrza s love for the little crea 
 ture would start back aghast if he told her he felt 
 only hatred. 
 
 "No, Thyrza. It s not for his sake. I want you 
 for my own. But I use him for an argument, and I ll 
 be square with him." 
 
 She sat with her hands clasped on her knees, look 
 ing through the window over the little garden at the 
 river where academy boys were at their practice, and 
 some on the shore, watching or training them, were 
 calling back and forth. It was all youth and May. 
 Barton looked at her while she sent her absent gaze 
 so far into the possibilities of things. He could study 
 her face and muse bitterly on his carelessness in not, 
 in some way, seeing that his lamb was in shelter 
 before he left her to the wolf. But who could have 
 thought she would not be defended, if not by her 
 austere maiden instincts, by the simple innocence of 
 her life? That he could not pursue any great dis 
 tance without the madness coming on him again, and 
 
 207 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 he put it away, to muse on the dignity and beauty of 
 her presence under the added bloom he would not 
 recognize of sad, yet happy motherhood. Her eyes 
 came back to him. They were wonderfully lighted 
 from some soft fire within. 
 
 " No," said Thyrza, " I can t ever do it." 
 "You don t care about me, of course. But it s 
 possible, Thyrza, it would be best for you to marry 
 me, even if " He paused because there was no 
 word gentle enough to tell her their union might be a 
 hard task they must essay together, since she would 
 suffer so incredibly if she were to fight alone. She 
 was speaking bitterly. 
 
 "I guess I don t know what love is." Then her 
 face flamed all over, and a river of angry light seemed 
 rushing from her eyes. " But I know what hate 
 
 is." 
 
 He was glad. At once he felt almost like a con 
 queror. If she had no allegiance to the vanished trai 
 tor, as Margaret Petrie assured him she believed, one 
 path was clear to his own claims. She turned to him 
 with a movement of entire self-abandonment. He felt 
 that she was resigning herself to her confidence in 
 him and trembled before what she might say. He 
 could anticipate the passion of it. But she spoke with 
 perfect self-control. 
 
 "I feel differently about love; I feel differently 
 about marriage." 
 
 He could understand why well enough, but it was 
 best to say, with his old humorous smile at her, 
 
 208 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 " We mustn t think there are n t splendid marriages, 
 because some of them go under." 
 
 "Laura is married/ she answered, as if she stated 
 some incredible fact her mind refused to grasp. 
 
 " I know. She married Andy, did n t she ? " 
 
 "Yes." Thyrza had an instant then for wonder 
 ing why her eyelids did not flicker even if her 
 lips were loyal to her. She had no fear. The fate 
 of so many worlds hung on her silence that she knew 
 it could be kept. If Andy were there in the room, 
 the thought that she held Laura s dear soul s happi 
 ness in her hands would have kept her cheek from 
 blanching. But she roused herself. She even smiled 
 at him. 
 
 " It s so queer," she said, "to be talking to you as 
 if we were the same age." 
 
 "I m not so old, Thyrza," he answered, with a 
 pang. 
 
 " No, oh, no ! But you see you Ve seemed different 
 from anybody to me because you were my teacher. 
 I never should have dreamed of " 
 
 "Of my asking you to marry me? Well, it is a lib 
 erty. I ve tried not to, but you see I really want you 
 very much." 
 
 His kind voice made all things possible. It was the 
 voice of his prophesying that if she read her Virgil at 
 that rate, she d have no trouble in taking her degree 
 at any college. For an instant she wondered if it were 
 credible that life could be smoothed like that. Could 
 paths be made so easy by these flooding rose-leaves 
 
 209 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 that might be forgiveness, even if nothing now must 
 be called love ? Her brows contracted. She seemed to 
 be frowning over thought. 
 
 " What is it, Thyrza?" he ventured to ask her. 
 
 She could not tell him. What was the feeling that 
 had made her meet the other man s hideous passion 
 with a rush of adoring acquiescence and now left her 
 stranded on the barren shore of hatred for all emotion 
 masking under that name ? The hardest part of her 
 daily suffering, harder even than the general con 
 tumely, was her hatred of Andy. If she could feel 
 that she loved him, that, in spite of Laura s possession 
 of him, she could cling to some dread allegiance, she 
 thought she could have found one of the approaches 
 to an austere content. But Andy had seemed a god 
 to her, and now he was a beast. Not that, even : she 
 was more just to him. He was a man whom nature 
 had sent into the world with great shoulders and bright 
 hair. Not only was her mind dead to him, but the first 
 kiss that had seemed to her the inevitable expression 
 of a sacred love what was it but the easy common 
 place of a creature to whom love is no more than to 
 the beasts that perish ? It all made her think warily 
 and even scornfully of herself. If she could crown 
 the satyr, was there satyr blood in her, too, and 
 must she beware of all that drunken following ? But 
 she was saying to Barton, 
 
 " You must n t come here any more." 
 
 He paled under his surprise. Then, it seeming a 
 prudential veto, he accepted it. 
 
 210 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 " Very well," he said. " We can write, until I come 
 to take you away for good." 
 
 " I shan t go, Barton." She had never called him 
 by his name before. It was impossible to call him any 
 thing else now that they were man and woman fighting 
 out a common issue. 
 
 " You won t marry me ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 He essayed a smile. It was his pathetic medicine to 
 soften her unyieldingness. 
 
 " I m not so unlovable. I m an excellent fellow to 
 live with." 
 
 " You must n t come," she repeated. " You must n t 
 be " Then she paused, with another flooding of 
 color in her face. It was borne in upon her that she 
 must not even tell him his name was not to be con 
 nected with hers lest others leap at Laura s certainty, 
 and he should be despised as Laura had condemned 
 him at the gate. 
 
 Little Petrie, absorbed in sundry mischiefs, had been 
 very quiet, but now he came in, with great decision 
 in his walk, to demand the creature he had a right to. 
 He laid his hand upon Thyrza s dress, and, with the 
 mechanical response of motherhood, she bent to take 
 him up. Gorse rose, in irrepressible revolt. 
 
 "Put him down, Thyrza," he said, in a changed 
 voice. " Put him down." 
 
 She obeyed sadly. 
 
 " You see," she said, " you could n t bear him." 
 
 " I could bear it if you if he belonged to me." 
 211 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 "For a whole lifetime? You can t bear a minute 
 of him." 
 
 " That s because it s not a lifetime. If I m not to 
 come here, not to see you again, I ve a right to my 
 minute with you. Send him away. I beg it of you." 
 
 She rose and, lifting the child, took him into the 
 next room. There she cast about for something to 
 keep him quiet, and finding it in one of Margaret 
 Petrie s gayest pillows, perennially rescued from him, 
 tossed it down before him, came back and shut the 
 door. She looked at Gorse defiantly. 
 
 You must n t think I could do that if you were n t 
 going away," she said. " I love him." 
 
 His face curved into a bitter smile. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " of course you love him." 
 
 "Besides that," she continued, "he s my work 
 what I Ve got to do. I shall bring him up." 
 
 " Yes," said Gorse, " you 11 lay down your life for 
 him." 
 
 She accepted that as a matter of course. 
 
 " I came here," she explained, " because there s 
 the academy. There are day-scholars, too, you know. 
 I could n t ever afford to send him away to school ; 
 but if we live here " 
 
 " Thyrza," he broke in, " I ve loads of money." 
 
 She would not even hear it. 
 
 " I have two hundred a year," she went on, as 
 if she recited a lesson. He could see how she must 
 have gone over the sterile ground as she sat here 
 alone and planned the campaign of her coming life. 
 
 212 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 (: I had to spend it all this year." At once he knew 
 how it had been spent. She had refused to let Mar 
 garet Petrie help her even at the time of the boy s 
 birth, and she had furnished this little house with the 
 remnant of the money. " But after this I can save it 
 all. I mend for the boys. I earn a lot." 
 
 He thought of her mother sitting by the window, 
 " tailoring," and Thyrza also thought of her. 
 
 "It s no work for you, Thyrza," he said gently. 
 " You can teach at least. Why, you re my prize 
 pupil. It does n t make any difference that I ve had 
 only one. You d be a prize pupil anywhere." 
 
 " I can t teach," she answered steadily, as of one 
 of the things she also had desired and laid by. " I am 
 not married and not a widow. People would n t let 
 their children come to me." 
 
 He could have cursed a world that would not take 
 the trouble to understand her; but that, he knew, 
 was the injustice of his pitying love. All the expedi 
 ents that go to the defense of hurt maidenhood 
 thronged upon him like temptations. She could give 
 herself, in some strange place, the title of a married 
 woman. She could even put away the child but 
 that he rejected as a foul suggestion she would repu 
 diate and him with it, if he presented it to her. 
 
 " You call yourself - " he hesitated, in the un 
 stable hope that with strangers she might consent to 
 wear the veil of a stolen title. Thyrza lifted her head 
 a shade. 
 
 " Miss Tennant," she said. " That J s what every- 
 213 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 body calls me the boys when they bring their mend 
 ing, the minister. I told him. He said Mrs. Ten 
 nant for a long time." 
 
 " The minister ? " 
 
 " Yes. I go to church. I thought it would be better 
 for the boy as he grows up." 
 
 Gorse desired to know as little as possible about 
 the boy, yet he had a yearning desire to be on fa 
 miliar terms with all her ties. 
 
 " What is his name ? " he asked. 
 
 " Petrie. Margaret is his godmother. He is Petrie 
 Tennant, and I am Thyrza Tennant." 
 
 Following the unbending course of her voice, and 
 seeing her there in that upright poise of a woman 
 strong in health and fearlessness, it was almost possi 
 ble to believe she was proud of her isolated state, and 
 that, being different from the world, she condemned 
 the world for its unlikeness to her. But he knew 
 better. He knew Thyrza Tennant. She was fighting 
 a terrible fight, and she had dared not deflect by a 
 line from the course marked out for her. What had 
 marked it out ? chance, her own blind impulse, or the 
 monstrous chaos of the world ? 
 
 "But," she concluded, " you mustn t come here any 
 
 more." 
 
 It seemed his dismissal and he rose. 
 
 " I shall write to you," he temporized. 
 
 She considered a moment. Then her face quivered 
 a little, and she looked up at him in a childlike inter 
 rogation. If it had not been for the potency of that 
 
 214 
 
THE DISCOVERY 
 
 other presence in the next room, he could have believed 
 that this was his child, his pupil, come to him for 
 help. 
 
 " It seems," she faltered, " as if I might have that." 
 
 " You re going to have it," he assured her quickly, 
 lest she should reconsider and deny him. " We re 
 both going to have it." 
 
 He held out his hand, and Thyrza gave him hers. 
 
 " You 11 promise," she said earnestly, " you won t 
 come ? " 
 
 He was scanning her face sharply. 
 
 " It almost seems," he said, " as if somehow you 
 think it s for my sake I m not to come." 
 
 She would not raise that for a defense, because he 
 could knock it down. It was for his sake, for his dig 
 nified name, but it was also for hers, a little. She had 
 to take her path alone, her son holding by her hand ; 
 this because that other path she took, in however 
 pathetic ignorance, led into this one. 
 
 " Is it for my sake, Thyrza ? " he was repeating. 
 "Or for yours?" 
 
 She stood still thinking. 
 
 "I know you ll tell me the truth," he pursued. 
 " You always tell the truth." 
 
 The blood came into her face, and her eyes turned 
 to him in a look of flooding gratitude. He had under 
 stood her, and made her happier than he could guess. 
 
 "That s it," she said, "the truth! Whatever it 
 leads to, always, always I m going to tell the truth. 
 I m going to teach the boy to tell it. Whatever comes 
 
 215 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 of it, he s to be my son and nothing else. We re going 
 to face it, every single time." 
 
 He put the question of the boy aside. He was 
 thinking tumultuously of himself and her. 
 
 "If I m not to come, Thyrza," he insisted, "is it 
 for my sake or yours? " 
 
 " You are not to come/ she told him unvaryingly, 
 and at last he answered, 
 
 " I m not to come yet." 
 
 Then he went away. 
 
IX 
 THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 _L HYRZA TENNANT, busy over the stove in her clean 
 little kitchen, felt the approach of happiness. Several 
 times during the past years she had heard it rushing 
 by her to other goals, and once or twice it had even 
 seemed for a moment as if it might pause at her own 
 door. But it always turned off, just before reaching 
 her, into those mysterious alleys that led elsewhere, 
 all of them apparently defended by signs forbidding 
 those bearing gifts to come her way. She was a 
 beautiful woman now, because her life had been set 
 to the measure of a simple wholesomeness. As soon 
 as her baby came she had charged herself to learn the 
 rules that keep the health of the body, and to main 
 tain them, with an unbroken rigor, for her son and 
 for herself. Strength must be his equipment and 
 hers also, because he was inheritor of a lonely birth 
 right, and she must be his unfailing guardian. At 
 this time she need not have looked middle-aged at all 
 if she had fostered her good gifts. All the attributes 
 of a later youth were hers, none lacking but the 
 light-heartedness that sometimes blooms in middle life. 
 That seemed to have flown first of all out of her box 
 of plenty. 
 
 Little Petrie was now Petrie Tennant, a graduate 
 of the university he had stormed and conquered with 
 
 217 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 the aid of his mother s clever brain and multitudi 
 nous stitches. Thyrza herself, when he was little, had 
 started him in his Latin. She had told him the stories 
 of gods and heroes, and read poetry to him while she 
 stood over the ironing-board and looked off from 
 moment to moment from her linen polishing to the 
 book open before her. She hardly considered what 
 Petrie would like to be, but it seemed to her ingen 
 uous mind, as it always had, the most desirable 
 thing in the world to read poetry and know about 
 gods and heroes. So she taught what she had to her 
 son, and he accepted it with the docility that made 
 one of the charms of his virile person. Thyrza was 
 sure he adored his mother, if it was adoration to walk 
 and talk and almost breathe with her, and never to 
 weary of her. He had gone, after his graduation day, 
 straight into journalism, and had at once achieved 
 certain spectacular successes which were likely to 
 recommend him for dramatic crises in all countries 
 where events moved. Now Thyrza had money and, 
 according to his fiat, without mending for it. But she 
 would not as yet move from the house by the river. 
 It seemed to her a shell she could not at once relin 
 quish. If she tried to, there were a great many chances 
 of her being bruised by a world she was not familiar 
 with. It was better for her to sit down by her own 
 window, where the near and intimate prospect had no 
 stone or branch she did not know, and there think of 
 her son and read books. But a discovery sprang out of 
 these changes in the way life pulled on her : books 
 
 218 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 were not what they had been. She had a teasing 
 sense that they were adjuncts to life, and that just 
 outside her door was life itself. She longed timidly, 
 not daring to tell herself she did, to meet it, not to 
 have it spring on her from ambush as it once had, 
 but face to face. 
 
 To-night she was waiting for Petrie to come for a 
 brief visit, a farewell one because he was to be sent 
 away again. But she would have three days with him, 
 he had written. That accounted for her happiness. 
 It was a cold night, and she was glad, because it 
 allowed her to cook him the supper he liked, with 
 cream toast and jam to top it. She looked at the 
 table for the last time, and then, conscious of the 
 rush of her anticipation, withheld for a moment by 
 these trivial yet passionate cares, stood still, a smile 
 on her face and her arms stretched upward, as she 
 sometimes lifted them in unspoken messages to the 
 power that gave her life and joy and pain. Then, 
 before she had time to contemplate her happiness 
 further, she heard the clang of the gate, and her man- 
 child came dashing in, bag in hand and all the cold 
 of the evening on his cheek. In a moment he had 
 caught her to him with an impetuous snatch and 
 laughed at her injunction to get warm. She was 
 at the flood-tide of satisfaction. Petrie was a great 
 fellow, of admirable proportions, a full flush of 
 wholesome color, and dark eyes that laughed as 
 Thyrza s, from which they got their hue, had never 
 done. To her infinite pride, he looked a gentleman, 
 
 219 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 though she did not know all the triumphant evidence 
 of that ; and Petrie, because his mind was not on the 
 shows of things, save as a means toward dominance, 
 had never thought to tell her. But it was true that 
 all through his college life, sharing the gayeties of 
 his mates who by some chance had easy money, it 
 was he who carried himself to admiration and won 
 the civilities and cap-touchings. He had indisputably 
 the air of inheritance, and Thyrza, looking on, some 
 times wondered at him for a kind of princely stranger 
 alighted at her door, with whom she had manifold 
 interests but no kinship. 
 
 To-night there was every sign of kinship and the 
 most intimate affection . He was charmed to be at home, 
 and exerted himself to please as if he had nothing to 
 recommend him but his good wits, and must stretch 
 them to the utmost. But as they sat at the table and 
 he devoured her chops and toast, she became aware 
 that a double charm invested him: he was not only 
 satisfied to be at home, but he was infinitely delighted 
 with what the world was giving him. He seemed 
 rather removed from her now in his absorption in the 
 life of youth, and she could watch him from a distance 
 and with entire ease, as one might regard the gam- 
 bolings of a fiery colt which is safely over the fence. 
 They could not always complete between them the 
 perfect globe of happiness. Thyrza knew she had 
 plucked her child out of the depths of nature, and 
 that he and she might have been light-heartedly re 
 sponsive to each other if there had been none but 
 
 220 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 nature to classify them. As it was, adore him as she 
 might, she was not always unconstrained with him. 
 There were unspoken things between them. One hour 
 of revelation there had been when he came home to 
 her, a little boy, his cheek white and his eyes blazing 
 over the incredible horror tossed at him by a gang of 
 lads in the street. Thyrza had laid a firm hand on his 
 shoulder and drawn him to her. This was the bridge 
 she had seen before her even through the shadows of 
 her difficult way. It joined, she knew, the land they 
 had lived in as the baby lives at its mother s breast, 
 and that other stretch where she and her son would 
 walk together, yet, perhaps, apart. But it must be 
 crossed. He was her son, she told him, but he had no 
 father whose name he could ever bear. He must be a 
 man, never understanding this that she told him, never 
 expecting to understand. He must be more: a gentle 
 man. Petrie had fixed his dry eyes on her face then 
 in an incredulity she remembered to this day, the 
 sting and shame of it. But he had asked no questions 
 and he had never again come home crying. He be 
 came more than ever the leader, and the boys followed 
 him; but indubitably he was not her little son any 
 more. He was the man-child who loved her and was 
 dutiful to her. 
 
 To-night, when supper was over, he sat in the fire 
 light, and Thyrza, on the other side of the hearth, 
 watched him with an adoring admiration, the curve of 
 his hand as he took the cigarette from his lips and let 
 it hang for a moment at his side, all the unconscious 
 
 221 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 virility of his pose. She had moments of pride in him 
 untainted by the secret that walked and sat with her, 
 but never until to-night one of such entire acquiescence 
 in his charm and power. He threw the cigarette into 
 the fire. 
 
 " Mother ! " he said. 
 
 " Yes/ Thyrza answered, out of her dream of him. 
 
 But it seemed he had to think a little. At last he 
 broke into a laugh. 
 
 "It s awfully hard," he said. "Mother, there s a 
 girl." 
 
 Thyrza s heart constricted, and her fire of worship 
 died. It left a dark, bare hearth. 
 
 "You don t mean you " 
 
 "I do, mother, I do." He was laughing again in 
 his charming way, but now quite without reserve since 
 he had made the plunge. " She s Putty s niece." 
 
 " Professor Putnam ? " 
 
 " She s with the Puttys this year. This fall she 
 goes back to Germany. She s studying music there." 
 
 It was like a dream. This was her little boy, and 
 he was marching steadily into that other house of life 
 where men hold up the pillars of the world under 
 their own roof-trees. 
 
 " Are you engaged ? " she asked confusedly. 
 
 " No, dear, no. Of course not. I m nothing to be 
 engaged to, yet. Putty thinks great shakes of me be 
 cause I have n t balked at any kind of work, but he d 
 be very slow about giving me his niece." 
 
 "What is her name?" Thyrza did not care very 
 
 222 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 much to know. Her name was sure to be distinguished 
 since she was selected for the wonderful role of her 
 boy s love; but questions helped to put off other 
 interrogations that were sure to come. 
 
 " Angelica." 
 
 " That s a beautiful name." 
 
 " She plays the fiddle," said Petrie. " She s got 
 an awful lot of talent. Mother ! " 
 
 Something in his voice made her start and look 
 at him, a little trembling of apprehension fluttering 
 through her. His brows were drawn together, and he 
 was gazing, not at her but at the fire. That frown 
 was, she saw, not the sign of harsh emotion, but of 
 great intentness ; yet it afflicted her like a flag of 
 trouble. He had evidently made up his mind to go on 
 without regard to his own distaste for what he had 
 to say. 
 
 " Mother, old Putty asked me the other day he 
 turned to me and asked me suddenly whether my 
 father was a professional man." 
 
 Thyrza often wondered whether when she felt in a 
 certain way, with darkened vision and a crawling at 
 the finger-tips, she had grown white, as people do 
 when they faint. Now she must, she thought, have 
 asked him some question to convoy him on, for he 
 was saying, still with that frown which seemed all 
 sombre consideration, 
 
 " I told him my forbears were country people." 
 
 " Oh ! " It was a breath of vain remonstrance. 
 Thyrza drew it involuntarily, but it told him she con- 
 
 223 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 sidered that he had seen his opportunity and had let 
 it pass him by. 
 
 " Do you remember/ he continued, as if he had 
 thought out beforehand exactly the way their talk 
 would go, " my coming to you, when I was a little 
 chap, and telling you what the fellows had been hol 
 lering after me?" 
 
 She bent her head mutely. 
 
 " Well, from that day to this nobody but old Putty 
 has ever asked me a question I could n t laugh off. 
 His butting in was pretty serious. I knew what it 
 meant. He d been considering me with reference to 
 her." 
 
 " Angelica ? " 
 
 " Yes. He d talked me over with his wife. She d 
 said they must be able to place me." 
 
 Thyrza was silent. She seemed turned to a listening 
 image, regarding the bricks of the hearth. He looked 
 at her, and drew a quick breath of irritation over the 
 miserable circumstances where they found themselves. 
 
 " Well, mother," he urged curtly, in a brusqueness 
 she dumbly forgave him, because it was the expres 
 sion of his complete hatred of his task, " I ve got to 
 be placed." 
 
 She was turning the situation over and over in her 
 
 o 
 
 mind, regarding it as her mother, in the old tailoring 
 days, might have studied a patch too problematic to 
 mend with. 
 
 " Was any one by when he asked you ? " she ven 
 tured. 
 
 224 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 " Yes. His wife Angelica." 
 
 " Yes ! " There was excuse for Petrie, she thought, 
 in not making the brutal crudeness of his assertion 
 before the girl he loved. It would have been like 
 drawing a dagger on her. " But you went to him 
 afterwards ? " she besought. " You told him then ? " 
 
 " No, mother, I have not told him one single word 
 beyond what I said." 
 
 Thyrza sat unmoved in her miserable gaze at the 
 hearth that would not help her mind, and he had to 
 go on. 
 
 " Do you remember, when I was that little chap, 
 how you told me to meet such questions ? " 
 
 " I told you," she said, almost with an anger that 
 it did not mean more to both of them at that instant, 
 " to tell the truth." 
 
 " I remember it impressed me even then as your 
 seeming to want me to lose no opportunity of telling 
 it. Did you ever happen to know how I did meet that 
 particular situation ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I 11 tell you. I went that night and licked every 
 boy of them that jeered at me. Two I called out from 
 the supper-table." 
 
 She looked up at him. The brute ferocity in his 
 voice reminded her to see what manner of son he 
 was. At once she became aware that he was a man as 
 other men are, come in to her from the world of men, 
 with all its customs and temptations in his pocket. 
 He was speaking with a dry acridity that showed he 
 
 225 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 had exhausted all possibilities of retort, most of all the 
 humorous. " I can t bloody old Putty s nose. But 
 there s got to be a suitable answer from this time 
 forth." 
 
 Thyrza now felt herself where she had always ex 
 pected to be placed : in the witness-box, accounting 
 for her life. Strangely, she did not mind it so much 
 as she had anticipated. Nerves that had held them 
 selves in training all this time, tightened, as if to 
 say, " Play upon us. We will not snap." Whether she 
 could play harmoniously was another matter, but this 
 consonant preparation was like the tuning of the 
 strings. She drew herself up slightly in her chair, and 
 forbade the hands lying in her lap to clasp each other 
 with any sign of tension. She did not look at him 
 again. This seemed to be not her son, but a man 
 equipped with every attribute save mercy, ready to 
 pronounce sentence. 
 
 " Mother," he said at last, in an impatience of 
 appeal, " I ve got to meet the world." 
 
 " There s only one way to meet it," said Thyrza, 
 in the monotony of the phrase she had found long ago 
 to cap this one of his. 
 
 "There s a mighty lot of ways," he asserted. 
 " We re not down in Judee. 
 
 She had taught him the quotation and frowned 
 slightly over it. 
 
 " There s but one way," she repeated inflexibly. 
 "You ve got to meet the world for what you are* 
 You are my son, and I was never married." 
 
 226 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 Then came the horrible question that had hung 
 over her all these years like the fatal sword. 
 
 " Why weren t you married ? " 
 
 He asked it awkwardly, miserably, because he was 
 so ashamed of asking. That question, too, had beaten 
 itself out in his mind incessantly as one he must sat 
 isfy himself upon, one he could never ask; yet now he 
 had put it, and his mother sat there unmoved in her 
 austerity. She was answering, 
 
 " I can t tell you." 
 
 "You won t tell me?" 
 
 He had gathered anger by the way, and as it had 
 seemed to her that he was a strange judge set to 
 weigh her actions, now he seemed so to himself. 
 
 "I won t tell you." 
 
 "Does any one know?" 
 
 She answered in the lifeless certitude of one on oath 
 to tell the straight story of which she was gravely 
 and miserably assured. 
 
 "I have told no one." 
 
 "Is he alive?" 
 
 That question he dragged up from the depth of his 
 intention, as if it were a foul thing he was afraid to 
 look at. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Do you see him?" 
 
 Fierce, sudden jealousy possessed him, the instinct 
 of sex-possession rising up to repudiate the man who 
 was his foe and yet so hatefully, so incredibly near to 
 him. This time she turned upon him in a sudden 
 
 227 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 anger he loved her for. It almost threw them back for 
 a moment into their relation of mother and son. 
 
 "No. Of course I don t. Why should you ask me 
 that?" 
 
 "You used to have letters," he hesitated, finding 
 it the more difficult to speak now that she had come 
 nearer to him in that moment of passion. "Every 
 week. They had a foreign postmark." 
 
 She got up and went to the corner cupboard where, 
 on the floor, was disclosed a little painted chest he 
 had always known as locked. She took a key from 
 the shelf above, unlocked the little chest and propped 
 up its lid to show him neat rows of docketed letters. 
 Several lay loosely on the top. She selected one at 
 random, and, returning, gave it to him. 
 
 "Read it," she said, with a certain proud indiffer 
 ence. "You could see any of the others exactly as 
 well. Read them all, if you like." 
 
 As he did not take the letter, she laid it on the 
 table at his hand, and presently he drew it to him 
 unwillingly and opened the thin large sheets. He read, 
 frowning at first with distaste and then with attention. 
 He came to the signature and repeated it aloud, 
 "Barton Gorse." 
 
 "That was the chap who gave you lessons," he 
 interpolated. 
 
 "Yes," she added. Then, irrepressibly, out of her 
 old-fashioned vocabulary, "Not the chap the gen 
 tleman." 
 
 But name and identity meant less to him than the 
 
 228 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 discovery in one sentence toward the end. Reading 
 that, he came oat in an explosion of surprise, 
 
 " He asks you to marry him." 
 
 "Is it in that letter?" she inquired, out of a 
 genuine indifference. "I didn t remember which one 
 it was." 
 
 " He s very incidental about it ! " 
 
 " He does it two or three times a year. There s no 
 particular need of his paving the way." Then she re 
 garded him with a sudden curiosity. " Is it a good 
 letter?" she asked. She wondered how Barton Gorse 
 would strike another man. 
 
 " Stunning ! He s got style, humor, the whole out 
 fit. Did n t you tell me he s a relation of Terry 
 Updike ? " 
 
 " His nephew." 
 
 " And you ve known him all these years. How 
 long, mother ? " 
 
 " Ever since I was a little girl and he taught me 
 Latin. He has been" her voice lingered over the 
 words u he is the best friend a woman ever had." 
 
 " Why does he live abroad? " 
 
 " He has a sister there. She made an unfortunate 
 marriage, and for a long time she and her husband 
 lived apart. Then he summoned her, but I know 
 Barton never feels quite secure about her. He wants 
 to be there on call, he says." 
 
 " Are they with Updike ? " 
 
 "Not Helen, not the sister. Barton is with him. 
 He goes to his sister now and then." 
 
 229 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Why does n t he come home ? If he asks you 
 this " he paused and looked again at the letter 
 with its incidental declaration. 
 
 " I forbade him," she rejoined steadily. " He came 
 here once years ago, when you were a baby. I told 
 him he was never to come again." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " My sister had been here that day. She " A 
 flame like the blush of young love swept over her 
 face. It seemed half indignation, half an intolerable 
 anguish. " She suspected him of oh, I can t ! I 
 can t ! " She rose to her feet, stung by the sudden re 
 membrance that the man here was her son and that 
 their talk was hideous. 
 
 But from habit as long as his youth, his tenderness 
 rose in response to her need of it. 
 
 " Sit down, dear," he said gravely. 
 
 She obeyed him. 
 
 " I cannot have him suspected," she said, in a voice 
 eloquent with the promise of tears. " I could n t then. 
 I can t now. It was better never to see him again." 
 
 " You are very fond of him, mother." 
 
 " He is the best of all creatures. I can t hurt him." 
 
 His mind had leaped back to a picture her words 
 had given him. 
 
 " Your sister, Laura," he said. " That would be my 
 aunt Laura." 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 " You suppose so, mother ? Why, would n t she 
 be?" 
 
 230 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 " I never see her/ she evaded him. " I asked her 
 not to come." 
 
 "I should like to see my aunt Laura," he mused. 
 
 "For data?" she flashed back at him. "To ask 
 about your mother?" 
 
 He did not answer that because he knew, with the 
 insight of a really tender heart, he need not. It was 
 the savage response of her overwrought nerves, and it 
 might be ignored like the distressful cry it was. He 
 began with a softness her heart responded to by 
 a wholesale leap toward whatever purpose he might 
 judge desirable. 
 
 "Mother, do you know I don t half believe you re 
 taking this right." 
 
 "This?" She looked at him now suspiciously. It 
 seemed likely he would lure her from the narrow path 
 full of hurts and dangers she had been walking for so 
 many years, and set her on some table-land of content 
 she could never leave again. He took out another 
 cigarette and then clapped it in his case as if the 
 issue were too serious to admit of indulgence by the 
 way. He turned on her his sudden, irradiating smile. 
 
 " Mother," he said, "I don t believe you know in 
 the least what kind of a world it is." 
 
 She could believe that. She waited for him to tell 
 her. He was frowning over it as he saw it, the 
 great splendid friendly and unfriendly world, and 
 wishing he knew how to translate it to her. 
 
 "You see, it s this way," he essayed. "You ve 
 lived in a corner here like a desperate little mouse 
 
 231 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 fighting the cat. That s the world, the green-eyed 
 world, all claws. Well, you ve had a devil of a fight, 
 but you re only used to fighting in your corner. Take 
 you out of it and the cat would get you." 
 
 Her lip quivered with an instant s throb, and she 
 shut her teeth upon it, as if to bid it remember what 
 savage things might happen to it if it rebeUed again. 
 
 " Your Barton Gorse, over there in England, well, 
 I dare say he does n t know the world any better." 
 
 She smiled a little because it seemed to her that 
 Barton Gorse did know nearly everything. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I suppose I sound like a blatant young 
 ass," said Petrie, responding to the smile. "But I 
 happen to be standing neck and neck with other chaps 
 of my age. We re booked for the race. We ve got to 
 make good. The meditative life, the life of reflection, 
 where are they? If we met them at the theatre we 
 should n t know them ; the theatre s the only place 
 where we do meet anything nowadays. We ve got to 
 make good." 
 
 " People do live the ideal life." 
 
 " Where do they live it ? On a settled income, then. 
 You can t live the ideal life unless you cut off coupons, 
 too. Mother, I know ! " 
 
 He had told her enough in the years of his intimate 
 contact with men, for her also to recognize many 
 things, however she might sit in her tower weaving 
 meshes to veil the ugly figure of modern contest. Petrie 
 was a favorite with men. He knew crowds of them, older 
 than the mates he ran with. Through them and his 
 
 232 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 picture of them Thyrza was aware that modern busi 
 ness is a game of slay and spare not ; but since her son 
 was to be somewhere on the outskirts of it, governing 
 intellectual issues, unless, indeed, he should make a 
 bold assault and dash in, she had felt the infection 
 of the time need not touch him at all. By a leap of 
 her quick fancy, she saw now that he was applying 
 the methods of the market-place to this business of 
 the inward life. He was presently to tell her so. 
 
 " It s fight, sheer fight, mother," he was urging. 
 "Why won t you understand it?" 
 
 " It s always been a fight," she flamed. She wanted 
 to marshal the bright names that kept crowding 
 upon her and use them like armies. These were the 
 saints, the martyrs, even the poets whose hearts had 
 broken upon the flint of "a brutal world." 
 
 " Not like this," he was saying. 
 
 "Why not like this? How is it different?" 
 
 "Once they endured the big chaps. We don t 
 endure. We conquer." 
 
 She was staring at him curiously, as if he were the 
 not altogether welcome messenger from a far country 
 bringing her news, of a sort she was obliged to heed. 
 How could she deny that the strange country had rules 
 of its own, proven perhaps more serviceable than her 
 Tables of the Law? She had nourished her faith on 
 old heroic tales. Were they only tales of legendry? 
 Surely she must listen to him. 
 
 " Why, mother," he was continuing, in a pitying 
 tenderness, " don t you know how it used to be about 
 
 233 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 diseases, even in your time? Girls got their hearts 
 broken and 6 went into a decline. Now we send em 
 to a sanatorium and feed em on milk and eggs. 
 Somebody went into consumption then, and whole 
 families shared the taint. It was a visitation of God. 
 Now we find the germ and put our foot on it. Don t 
 you see, you old dear ? The world is n t an arena where 
 we re to be eaten up alive. It s a schoolhouse where 
 we learn. It s a market-place where we fight." 
 
 This was a long speech and he glanced round at her 
 brightly, rather proud of himself. She tried humbly 
 to complete the simile. 
 
 " Yes, but, Petrie,your world has rules. Who makes 
 your rules ? " 
 
 His face flared up with the fire of youth. 
 
 " We dig em out of things as they are. We don t 
 build up a scheme of things as they never can be, and 
 stretch ourselves on Early-Christian racks to fit it. 
 No, sir ! if we want an article we plank down the cash, 
 of one sort or another, and get it." 
 
 There was silence for a moment, and she could hear 
 him breathing. 
 
 " Why, mother," he fulminated, "the world was n t 
 passed to us ready-made. We ve got to shape it for 
 ourselves." 
 
 That touched her. 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! " she cried, quite eagerly, " so I have 
 thought, Petrie. If every one was just, if every one 
 was kind " 
 
 " Why, dear soul," said Petrie pityingly, " that s 
 
 234 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 like earning a precarious living- by taking in one an 
 other s washing. It would all be milk and water, a sea 
 of it. We should drown in it. Besides, everybody 
 won t be just. They won t be kind. Don t you know 
 that ? The only thing for us to do is to study reac 
 tions, study causes, study results, say to ourselves, ( If 
 I want to reach a given point what road will take me 
 to it ? What is expedient ? " 
 
 She threw out her hands. "I hate that word, Pe- 
 trie," she said faintly. 
 
 "Expedient? How else do you suppose your institu 
 tions grew up, the ones you swear by ? They were 
 expedient. Now you see them bound round with brass 
 and iron, you think they re sacred. All you see really is 
 a kind of holy gloss over them. Don t balk at a word, 
 mother. It s expedient to take the track that leads 
 you somewhere." 
 
 Her heart was faint within her. Out of his know 
 ledge, his brand-new equipment, even the power of his 
 magnetic flesh, he seemed older than she, and infinitely 
 wiser. It was well, she thought, to conclude the argu 
 ment, to rush to her own fall, if that must be. 
 
 "Petrie," she said, "what do you want me to do?" 
 
 "That s it," he answered, in the quick relief of one 
 who sees his adversary melting to conviction. " What 
 shall we do ? " 
 
 He was turning for her the pages of the book of 
 nature which is not always the book of God. Was 
 it necessary for her to read that page ? She summoned 
 back the resolutions that had looked to her like angels 
 
 235 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 once, and now, like sad-faced angels, seemed to turn 
 their backs. 
 
 "There s but one way " she began faintly. 
 
 " Mother, there are a thousand ways. Life has 
 changed, I tell you, with the conditions of it. We ve 
 got to fight with the weapons now in use. Don t ex 
 pect me to go out with Excalibur when the other 
 fellows have smokeless powder. If one of your mys 
 tics found himself in business in New York to-day, 
 what do you think he d do? Well, I ll tell you. He d 
 play the game or he d find himself outside the ring." 
 
 Thyrza had a quick inner eye that was apt to light 
 up at the call of phrases, and immediately it thrust her 
 a vision of a green tranquil earth outside that ring 
 where dirt-smeared combatants were punching one 
 another. 
 
 " I m not going to be knocked out," her son was 
 asserting, as his handsome face scowled at the fire. 
 " I m going to stay in." 
 
 " You re going to write," his mother counseled 
 him. There was yearning suggestion in the words. 
 It warned him that in literature he was to find the 
 very playground and house of worship of the ideal. 
 Expediency had not even a hollow echo there. 
 
 " I am not going to write from a cloister," said 
 Petrie. " Europe is my preparatory dip. I m going to 
 be soused all over in life, not life that s made for me 
 and that can be lived only according to the traditions 
 of two centuries ago. After Europe I m going into 
 the wilds, into the north, into the west, everywhere 
 
 236 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 where there s space that isn t preempted, and I m 
 going to write about it." He looked strong with the 
 lust of life, and she saw how many miles he had 
 traveled since she had taught him the polite learning 
 he was regarding as a suit of clothes to wear into 
 savagery. " After all," he was saying, " I suppose 
 I m going to Europe because Angelica is to be there. 
 I need it, too, I suppose, like a language. But the 
 language is only to use in doing bigger things. It 
 is n t the biggest thing to learn it." 
 
 " Well," said Thyrza sharply, " what do you want 
 me to do ? " 
 
 " I want you first to move." 
 
 "Move!" She looked about her at the little old 
 house that had become her shell, ill-fitting in some 
 ways, as she had chafed arid it had hindered her. 
 
 " There s a house at Bosworth. It s a dear. I want 
 you to move in there as Mrs. Tennant." 
 
 Thyrza was on her feet in an instant. She clutched 
 the back of her chair, getting the chair between them 
 
 7 o o 
 
 as if he might hurt her. 
 
 " I will never " she began " never " 
 The monstrous egotism of youth was before her, 
 distorted like some gay mountebank from a picture, 
 a creature that was St. Michael in every line and yet 
 in some lights leered abominably. He was going on 
 steadily with his conception of her future. 
 
 "At least you ve given up this figment of mend 
 ing." At her glance, he stopped. " You re right. 
 God knows it has n t been a figment. You ve put 
 
 237 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 me through college with your needle. But the whole 
 atmosphere has got to be changed. We are going to 
 be respectable." 
 
 Thyrza sat down again in her place. 
 
 "I shall never be respectable/ she said, in the 
 quietest tone. " Won t you put on a stick of wood ? " 
 
 He did it with care, and the fire, obeying him, 
 danced. 
 
 " Mother," he said, in a curious and contemplative 
 tone, " you have n t had any fun, all your life." 
 
 " So he said," she returned, nodding toward the 
 cupboard where the precious letters were hoarded. 
 
 "Barton Gorse?" 
 
 " One of the last times he wrote." 
 
 " He could give it to you," said Petrie tentatively. 
 
 Immediately his mother knew, with a bitter humor 
 only now awakened, that he had caught at the shelter 
 of Barton Gorse s name for her. 
 
 " You like him very much, mother," he said again 
 suggestively. 
 
 Thyrza tried to answer quietly. She had grown so 
 used to thinking of herself as a middle-aged woman, 
 that it seemed to her absurd to make flaming declara 
 tions at the challenge of her son. 
 
 " I can t tell what I think of Barton Gorse. I don t 
 quite know." But immediately her mind, that kept 
 illustrating lif a for her in little rapid pictures, told her 
 that he was a window looking into spaciousness and 
 beauty, the beauty of the made and natural world. 
 Through him she had seen the earth outside her celL 
 
 238 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 She might not be able to set her foot on that free 
 ground, but he never let her forget it was there. 
 
 "I suppose you wonder why I bring all this up 
 to-night," Petrie was saying, flinging the words at 
 her as if he had a distaste for them. 
 
 " No. It had to be." 
 
 " To-morrow Angelica is coming." 
 
 " Here ! " Now she did take fright equal to his own. 
 The unknown beloved at hand, ready to confront him 
 and his mother with her dewy innocence, seemed a 
 more terrible figure than abstract Justice itself in its 
 panoply of right. 
 
 " She has heard old Dan el down by the wharf, 
 you know " 
 
 " Yes, Rosie May s uncle." 
 
 " She has heard he has a violin. She s coming to 
 look at it. Who is Rosie May ? It seems to me the 
 most amazing lot of new names are coming out." He 
 was looking at her half suspiciously, she thought, in 
 her bitterness, as if any name might be a witness 
 against her. 
 
 " She used to go to school with me. Go on." 
 
 " Well, Angelica is coming to look at the violin." 
 
 " He d send it," said Thyrza quickly. In that one 
 phrase she saw herself darting to a futile cover. 
 
 "No. She wrote him. He would n t. She s to be at 
 the hotel for an hour. She asked if she might call on 
 you." 
 
 "On me?" 
 
 "Things have gone a pretty good gait with us, 
 239 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 you see. She wants to know my mother! I told her 
 you and I would call." 
 
 " No ! no ! " Thyrza was saying. " It s impossible." 
 
 "I begin to think so. I didn t when I proposed it. 
 We ve only to go there and make a call " 
 
 " If you had told her the truth, Petrie ! We can t, 
 now she doesn t know it." 
 
 " I shan t tell her what you call the truth. It is n t 
 necessary." 
 
 " Do you mean you will never tell her?" 
 
 " I shan t tell her yet. When she likes me enough 
 we can tackle things together. Do you want me 
 to deal her a blow like that now and send her off 
 at a tangent? Could you ask it?" He felt hot with 
 a sudden impatience to think how he was torturing 
 her. At that instant the anger was for her because she 
 would endure the torment when she might so simply 
 prevent it. "It makes me furious/ he said, "to see 
 you sitting there so cold and still. You don t know 
 what life is and you won t let anybody tell you." 
 
 The color flamed over her face at the thought that 
 she had once run headlong toward life and it had 
 stabbed her through the heart. All the rest of the 
 time since the birth of her son had been like a flight 
 from warm bewilderments. She thought of her girl 
 hood and its pure simplicities, of its literal holding by 
 the names of sacred things and believing they would 
 vindicate themselves. All that long way since had been 
 a path with one hope lighting it : that the boy might 
 justify himself for coming sadly into the world. But 
 
 240 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 that could only be through great good fortune or the 
 power of his own will. There had always been the 
 feeling that, if she held her breath stoutly and worked 
 very hard, things might not come out so badly after 
 all. She was carrying the full cup of her secret uplifted 
 in both hands, and it was her son who had jostled her 
 and rudely sought to make it overflow. Now he was 
 asking her in a way that made him still more strange 
 to her, 
 
 " Don t you ever want to be happy, mother ? Don t 
 you want to laugh and sing and let yourself go ? " 
 
 It was like an onslaught, but she was patient under 
 it because she knew why he must make it. This was 
 only the surface, the foaming crest of his resentment 
 against life as it touched them both. Thyrza felt 
 humbly that she was indeed a poor companion. She 
 was not the heiress of any corner of the world. She 
 was a spendthrift. All her dower had gone before 
 she had so much as caught the sheen of the garments 
 it might have bought for her. And ever since, she 
 had been on that long pilgrimage, bearing the cup of 
 her knowledge of her life to an unknown altar or 
 was it to add it to some dark water of oblivion in a 
 wood ? Under the stimulus of his questions, her mind 
 was working fast. She saw in processional beauty 
 some of the things Barton Gorse could give her : a 
 rich life far from here, and, she believed, a deep de 
 votion. In that moment she knew how her spirit had 
 been welded to his through his tender loyalty, his un 
 failing service. That seemed a discovery only second 
 
 241 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 in importance to the fact that her son had brought 
 her to the bar, and that she was not answering him. 
 He was on his feet, watch in hand with that absent 
 and yet concentrated look with which a man plans 
 out a hasty combination. 
 
 " It s no use, mother," he said. "I ve got to catch 
 the train." 
 
 " The train ? What train? " 
 
 " The twelve o clock. I m going back to-night." 
 
 "You re going back? Why, Petrie Petrie 
 you ve come to stay." 
 
 He looked unyieldingly, not at her, but into the fire, 
 as if he dared not see her lest his resolution flag. 
 
 "It can t be done, mother. Angelica will be here 
 to-morrow. I must telegraph her that I was called 
 away." 
 
 " Why must you, dear ? " Her mind still failed to 
 understand that he meant inexorably to follow out the 
 campaign which would, he thought, lead him to his 
 love. 
 
 "I can t see her," he repeated. "I can t take you 
 to her. I can t bring her to you." 
 
 " Bring her. Let me go to her." 
 
 Thyrza s moved face, haggard in its appeal, seemed 
 to tell him that he could not possibly imagine how 
 beautiful it would be to her to see the girl he loved. 
 
 "Will you let me introduce you decently?" he 
 was asking, with a roughness that again told how 
 he abhorred his task. She shook her head dumbly. 
 "Very well, then." He snapped his watch and re- 
 
 242 
 
THE WISE YOUNG JUDGE 
 
 turned it to his pocket with an air of finality. " It s no 
 use, mother. One of us has got to yield in this thing, 
 or we ll, we simply can t play, that s all. For the 
 present, I ve got to go." 
 
 She saw him step into the entry, and heard him 
 take down his great-coat from the nail, and knew 
 just how he looked how big and adequate as 
 he shrugged himself into it. Life, all her conscious 
 desires and all her timid hopes of what might be, 
 seemed to have stopped altogether. Then he came in 
 again and, hat in hand, stood before her. 
 
 " Mother," he said, in his alluring way, when he 
 perhaps did not consciously mean to charm but could 
 not, by force of his real tenderness, help charming, 
 " it s the devil for us to get to a pass like this." 
 
 She put her hands on the lapels of his coat and 
 held them back a little, as if she meant to urge him 
 gently to take the garment off. She was not the 
 relinquishing silent creature she had been in her 
 moments of endurance. Thyrza held her head up and 
 her brown eyes looked into his. The mother and son 
 were at last equals. She had given birth to him, but 
 now he had escaped from her into the bounds of a 
 man s estate. He was not to obey her any more, but 
 neither was she to humor him. 
 
 " Petrie," she said, " I never thought it would come 
 like this." 
 
 "What, mother?" 
 
 " Our talking this out. But it s come." 
 
 " Yes, mother, it s come. Won t you stand by me?" 
 
 243 
 
.THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 She heard a great confusion of voices, reminding 
 her, most of them, of what she had thought it would 
 be to confront her son at the bar of his just wonders. 
 When she had planned this moment she had pledged 
 herself to remember all the iron calls to honor, the 
 strings that vibrate on battlefields where men see 
 and hear death coming. But actually all she felt was 
 an inflexible obstinacy and despair, the anguish of 
 knowing life was over again in this phase as com 
 pletely as her girlhood s life had been over years ago 
 and still accepting it. 
 
 "Won t you think of me?" he was asking her 
 again. 
 
 " I do think of you," she answered, in a rage of 
 candor. " What else am I thinking of?" 
 
 " Will you go with me to see her, as I asked you? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Will you come with me and let me put you into 
 a house of your own and say you are my mother, 
 Mrs. Tennant?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Good-by," said Petrie. " No, mother, hang it ! not 
 good-by. It s good-night." He stooped and kissed 
 her cheek, and she dropped the detaining hands from 
 his coat. 
 
 Then he went out, and she heard his steps quickly 
 on the walk and the definitive clang of the gate. 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 J_T was a morning of scudding clouds and a steely 
 white-capped river when Thyrza got out of bed, 
 where she had lain between a jaded sleep and wak 
 ing, and told herself, incredulous yet convinced, that 
 her son had left her. The counter-shot to this, if she 
 chose to be comforted, was that it was only for a 
 time ; but the inner self that is wiser than all reason 
 knew better. The act itself had been one of those 
 leaps into a path that leads away and away from 
 what has been. But no grieved and brooding wonder 
 could throw her out of the regular habits of her life. 
 They had been too laboriously fixed. This morning 
 she prepared her breakfast as scrupulously as if she 
 had the will to eat it, and set out the simple food on 
 a white cloth. When Thyrza s son had first left her for 
 college, she had reminded herself that it is easy to be 
 careless if one lives alone, and that Petrie, returning, 
 must find her as fastidious as he had left her. A hint 
 to her trained mind, meekly used to discipline, was 
 enough. It had obeyed her through all the ups and 
 downs of appetite and no appetite, and kept fresh 
 damask and orderly dishes the insignia of her desire 
 to do well. Now, after she had got the breakfast, she 
 looked at it in an unfriendly though not an interested 
 mood, and cleared it away. At ten o clock, with all 
 
 245 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 her tasks done, she sat down by the window, her 
 hands on her lap, and looked out at the garden flut 
 tering back a chilled and meagre greeting to the 
 autumn sky. It was possible to work about the house, 
 but not to sew, because sewing was no longer an act 
 in itself. It was a chain of poignant memories. " I 
 have sewed him through college," she said aloud. The 
 
 O O 
 
 task was done, and he had gone prosperously away 
 from her, and the needle was as dreadful to her as 
 the rapier that, though it has defended our dearest, 
 has drawn heart s blood in the thrust. 
 
 In this dull middle of the forenoon, when her 
 thoughts ran back and found no resting-place, because 
 the past seemed cruel to her, and panted forward and 
 found no hope, she saw a woman, a slight creature, 
 coming up the garden walk. Thyrza rose and went 
 to the door, and there she found one of the smallest, 
 most complete of ladies, and very young. Yet though 
 the girl lacked height, she gave a curious impression 
 of dignity. Perhaps it was her way of holding her 
 head, all smooth golden hair. Her cheeks were richly 
 blooming and her thick eyebrows seemed to be lines 
 of golden down. The eyebrows looked to Thyrza 
 quite the most beautiful thing the girl had, of all her 
 splendor of equipment. And blue eyes, wonderful 
 blue eyes she had those, too. This little princess 
 of a lady was dressed in dark blue, smoothly fitted, 
 with a great deal of knowing lappet and braid, and 
 a white collar above which her blond neck rose ex 
 quisitely ; her small hands were clad in dashing gloves 
 
 246 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 with gauntlets, in a day when gauntlets were not worn. 
 Thyrza did not know the girl had them made for her 
 because she absurdly liked them, but they did look 
 to her unusual and she stared at them. The girl s 
 face, she saw at once, was very quick to respond to 
 feeling, and something had distressed it. The fore 
 head, not made for worry and evidently having always 
 escaped it, wrinkled a little over the golden brows. 
 She spoke at once, in a quick way, as if she could 
 give herself no time to begin differently, and in a 
 delightful voice. 
 
 "Are you Petrie Tennant s mother?" 
 
 Wonder fell from Thyrza and gave place to a most 
 happy certainty. She, too, spoke impetuously. 
 
 " You must be Angelica." 
 
 The girl was at once inside and the door had closed 
 behind her, and, because it seemed to them at the time 
 the most natural thing to do, they were clinging 
 to each other and crying, though in a different way. 
 Thyrza had broken down as a repressed creature can 
 break when immutable necessity drives, and the girl 
 had only given way for a moment to a gust of feeling. 
 But with them both it was the recoil from the assault 
 of harsh discovery. The girl came first to her com 
 posure. She pulled off her gauntleted glove and turned 
 her back on Thyrza, looking out of the window, 
 stamping her neat foot once or twice, as if she hated 
 emotion, and wiping her eyes ostentatiously, to give 
 Thyrza color and support for the great sobs that still 
 came welling up. Thyrza began to walk the floor, 
 
 247 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 crying as she went, and once finding herself near the 
 door that led into her bedroom, she escaped through 
 it and there recovered her decent composure. When 
 she came back, quivering but master of herself again, 
 Angelica turned upon her and smiled irresistibly. 
 
 " There ! " said she. " Are you over it? So am I. 
 Are n t we the silliest ? " 
 
 She had put on a wonderful smile that was a little 
 open, a little candid of display for e very-day uses ; 
 but it was genuine. It perhaps suggested the foot 
 lights, but Thyrza, who did not know that and had 
 seen few beauties bow their recognition to a delighted 
 house, only felt that she was all loveliness and a sun 
 shine she longed to share. They sat down together, 
 though not at a distance, each by a window, where 
 Thyrza s callers were accustomed to sit in reference 
 to her, but facing each other, knee to knee. The girl 
 had willed it so, and immediately she took Thyrza s 
 hands and held them and looked at them. Thyrza 
 thought she was gazing curiously though kindly, and 
 she did not mind ; but she was not prepared to have 
 the girl kiss one hand and then the other. Angelica 
 had noted the worn nails (Thyrza had done some 
 washing and ironing for boys, in hard years, but that 
 was never told, lest Petrie should be ashamed) and 
 the pricked forefinger. They were slender hands. 
 They were meant, by intention of nature, the artificer, 
 to be beautiful, but Thyrza had thrown them into the 
 melting-pot of a great need, and they had come out 
 misshapen. 
 
 248 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 "You dear!" said Angelica, as she kissed them. 
 She began to talk rapidly, with little inquiring glances 
 and dramatic indicated gesture. "Has he spoken 
 about me ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Thyrza. 
 
 She felt suddenly quite happy, with old sorrows 
 washed out of her by her tears and this friendly 
 creature beginning to talk about Petrie. 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 " He is very fond of you." This was the timid ves 
 ture of an overwhelming fact. Thyrza was a person 
 who somehow could not mention the word love. She 
 felt as if she had offended it. Yet in shy moments 
 she believed it existed somewhere, though it had 
 mysteriously appeared only to jeer at her. 
 
 The girl was speaking again. 
 
 " I did n t mean to come here. You know he tele 
 graphed." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "He had promised to let me meet you. But he 
 was called away ? " 
 
 It was not exactly a question, yet Thyrza felt chal 
 lenged and interrogated. It seemed to her that the 
 girl had a clear right to see things exactly as they 
 were, and that they must both walk delicately amid 
 this coil of circumstance. 
 
 " Did you mean to come to see me," the girl asked, 
 " if he had n t been called away ? " 
 
 "I wanted to come," Thyrza ventured safely. 
 
 The girl seemed to put that aside with a little mo- 
 249 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 tion of her head, as if it did not carry half the weight 
 she wanted and not indeed enough to count at all. 
 But she was immersed in a warmer feeling, one, it 
 seemed, that did not affect Thyrza immediately at 
 all. 
 
 " I came down here," she said, " to see the violin." 
 
 " Did you see it ? " Thyrza ventured, timidly wel 
 coming this as a safer issue. 
 
 She dismissed that with another movement of her 
 head. 
 
 " It s been painted. It s no good. A beauty mur 
 dered, that s my impression. He s an awful old 
 
 man." 
 
 " He s uncle to a girl I used to go to school with," 
 said Thyrza, as if that accounted for anything. " Her 
 name was Rosie May." 
 
 " He s senile, he s half doting. I asked him where 
 you lived. He told me oh ! " 
 
 It was a cry that wondered how he dared to tell 
 her that thing because she was used to being held 
 very precious, and men were in the habit of consider 
 ing what she would like to hear. Thyrza was looking 
 at her with serious eyes. 
 
 " I know," she said quite simply. " He told you 
 Petrie had no father." 
 
 The girl broke down now and unaffectedly let the 
 tears run over her face. 
 
 " I had to come then," she said. " I had to see 
 you." 
 
 Thyrza was regarding her from an exquisite state 
 
 250 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 of dignity. She looked as a queen might wish to look 
 on coronation day. 
 
 "Why, it s true, my dear," she said. "It s all 
 true." 
 
 The girl s tempestuous face told where her thoughts 
 were, with the old man. 
 
 " The brute ! " she cried. 
 
 Thyrza s mind had run back a longer distance. 
 
 " He s Rosie May s uncle," she repeated. " I tore 
 up Rosie May s play-house." 
 
 The girl put Thyrza s hands together and left them 
 on her knee, with a little friendly clasp. The blood 
 had run back into her cheeks. She looked all passion 
 and demanding fury. 
 
 " But will you explain to me," she asked, with 
 something superb in her small presence, " why it was 
 left for a dreadful old man to tell me this? " 
 
 Thyrza was looking at her still with that meek dig 
 nity. She put the question she had asked Petrie the 
 night before. 
 
 " Are you engaged ? " 
 
 " Engaged ! " cried the girl, with another stamp 
 of her mandatory foot ; " why, he loves me. We 
 have n t talked about being engaged. He adores me." 
 
 " Yes," said Thyrza. She thought back to the 
 night before. " Petrie adores you." 
 
 " He said all the things men say," the girl was 
 going on, and immediately Thyrza saw that many 
 men had given her page and verse of the things that 
 might be said. " I thought he had n t a secret he 
 
 251 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 had n t a thought he did n t beg to share with me. 
 And now and now " With a quick recoil from 
 the rush of her own emotion she saw how hideous 
 it was to stand there battling upon the shield of 
 the other woman s unmoved endurance. " Oh ! " she 
 cried, " I m a cruel little beast ! " 
 
 Thyrza had put herself out of the question. 
 
 " You think Petrie deceived you ? " she temporized. 
 
 " Didn t he deceive me? " the girl threw back. 
 
 "Yes. But think think what it meant to him. 
 He has n t anything behind his own record to offer 
 you, anything untarnished, anything clean " She 
 was forsaking her own post, and going over to Pe- 
 trie s to fight for him, no matter what the arguments 
 were, so they might win. 
 
 " Hasn t anything to offer me ! " flashed the girl. 
 "Has n t he you?" 
 
 A flush swept over Thyrza s face, and unconsciously 
 she put her head up in the old habit of her girlhood. 
 There was something in the girl, some simple reckless 
 daring, that bade her take courage and assert her 
 self. 
 
 " You see I believe in you down to the ground," 
 Angelica was saying. " I d only to see you to do 
 that. And I had to see you." 
 
 Thyrza, breathing fast, approached her. 
 
 " What shall I tell you ? " she asked. 
 
 " About yourself ? Nothing." 
 
 " What the old man told you was true. I am not 
 married. I have not seen Petrie s father since my 
 
 252 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 son s birth. If I am fortunate, I shall die without 
 seeing him." 
 
 The girl, a hand lifted, was warning her. 
 
 " Don t go on. Why do you want to rip yourself 
 to pieces and tear these things out for me? I don t 
 want them. Darling lady, give me a kiss and stop 
 your poor heart s bleeding." 
 
 Nobody, out of books, had ever told Thyrza that 
 the slow throb and pain she had felt for so many 
 years seemed to them also like the dropping of the 
 heart s blood. That was what she called it to herself. 
 
 " But," Angelica went on, with a renewed dash, 
 " why did Petrie lie to me ? " 
 
 "I told you " 
 
 " I know ! I know ! " she conceded vehemently. 
 " But he can t lie to me. He shan t. I won t be lied 
 to." She seemed then, by one of her bewildering 
 turns that were like the flight of wings, to put her 
 own emotions suddenly aside, to conduct Thyrza alone 
 to a bright open field. Thyrza at once felt the lens 
 turned on her, supplementing a kindly eye which was 
 nevertheless about to force her to account for herself 
 in a way she never had before. The world, the one 
 full of blooms and birds and rivers flowing vocally, 
 was asking her all at once what she had done for it. 
 Had she joined any of its gay responses, or had she 
 let fall the curtain of her heart so that light could 
 hardly filter in and no light could get out? The 
 silver interrogation made her feel like a rock in a 
 barren pasture. She had been still ; she had done 
 
 253 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 no more. The girl s lips followed the query her eyes 
 began. 
 
 " You dear," she said, in a soft reproachful won 
 der, " you ve never had any fun." Thyrza had done 
 crying, but her inward response to that was a threat 
 ening of tears. " You ve never had any pleasures, 
 any of the things that just keep the rest of us 
 alive." 
 
 That accounted for her, Thyrza thought. When 
 she saw the girl, when she breathed her air, she be 
 came achingly aware of a life she herself had never 
 known, all fleeting experience, some of it in foreign 
 lands, some scarcely remembered because it had been 
 so multitudinous and swift, of perfumes and idle 
 hours and the languid sense that life is rich enough 
 to afford a million other things besides to-day s. 
 
 " You ve had nothing, nothing," Angelica was 
 insisting. 
 
 " I have had my son." 
 
 " Yes, but you ve sat here and worked for him. 
 You have n t let life gallop away with you." 
 
 Thyrza s instant response within herself was that 
 she trusted the hobby-horse of habit more than the 
 chariot of the sun. Angelica knew at once what she 
 would have said. 
 
 " That s precisely it," she concurred, as if it were 
 commonplace to understand perfectly. " Of course 
 you re afraid. What would be the sense of being 
 galloped away with, if there was n t some fear to go 
 with it ? What have you wanted most ? " 
 
 254 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 Thyrza smiled at her little old self. 
 
 " Once I wanted a piano." 
 
 " Did you get it ? " 
 
 " No. ; 
 
 " Do you want it now ? " 
 
 Thyrza looked down at her worn hands with all 
 their muscles tightened. 
 
 " No," she said. 
 
 " I 11 bet you don t ! " Angelica looked as if she 
 could cry again those angry tears. " You don t want 
 anything, but to see that long-legged loon of yours, 
 that well-fed, groomed, shaven young prince of the 
 blood get all he wants. But he won t, not without 
 working for it. I tell you that." 
 
 Thyrza said the audacious thing that came into her 
 mind. 
 
 " Won t he get you ? " 
 
 Angelica, her hands on her knee, waited a long 
 time, thinking. At last, speaking, she seemed to give 
 every word the weight it had gained while she fash 
 ioned it. 
 
 " There is just one way for him to get me. You 
 will not tell him I have been here. You ll promise me 
 that before I leave. I shall go back to my uncle s and 
 sail for France as fast as I can sail. I shall leave 
 Petrie no word. I shall send him no address. He will 
 come and find me." 
 
 Thyrza s answer amazed and pleased her. 
 
 " Yes. That will be right." 
 
 Angelica s eyes gave bright response. 
 
 255 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Good ! I did n t expect that of you. I thought 
 you d say, c Give him his sugar-plum. 
 
 " No." Thyrza shook her head. " I have n t always 
 given him the sugar-plums he cried for." 
 
 " The better for him. He never 11 get them from 
 me. I don t believe in romantic love, my lady. You 
 might as well understand that now." She looked as 
 if she did believe in rebellion for the sake of rebelling, 
 a thousand warring feats that make life hot and va 
 riable. Thyrza learned suddenly then that there might 
 be complicated young women of a vast experience 
 of whom her secluded life had given her no under 
 standing. " Now do you believe in it romantic 
 love ? " The girl was challenging her with a sudden 
 tardy sense of the question s cruelty. 
 
 66 Romantic love ! " Thyrza repeated the words, 
 awed and timid at the sound of them. What did they 
 recall to her but the memory of a throng of nebulous 
 emotions, all belief, all ecstasy, her response to life 
 when it played upon her as the winds play on the 
 pine? Now she would have said it was being patheti 
 cally lost to a sense of all realities. 
 
 " I 11 tell you what you need," Angelica was saying. 
 She laughed now as if neither of them had an appre 
 hension of a care. " You need a girl chum. You be 
 my chum, Petrie s mother. Will you ? " 
 
 Thyrza was bewildered by the sound of it. 
 
 " I don t believe I ever did have an intimate friend," 
 she said. " There s my sister. But we were separated 
 early. No. I never had an intimate friend." 
 
 256 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 " I 11 be your intimate friend. You let me." 
 
 " But I m Petrie s mother." 
 
 " Petrie be hanged. No ! no ! Don t look like that. 
 He shan t be hanged. But Petrie s got to do a lot o 
 pilgrimage before we can be absolutely sure of his not 
 being hanged. We won t think of him. We can t 
 afford to. Women folks go on adventures now. They 
 don t stop to mull over men all the time. Besides, we 
 like him too much." 
 
 " You do care about him ! " cried Thyrza, in a 
 transport. 
 
 " Did you doubt it ? " The laughing lips were set 
 and the eyes brooded. 
 
 Thyrza immediately thought she had discovered 
 something. 
 
 "I guess," she said gently, "you do believe in 
 love." 
 
 Angelica was looking straight at her now, and there 
 dwelt a soft brightness in her eyes. 
 
 "You ve found me out, haven t you?" she said, 
 very simply. " Well, chummie, don t you tell. I don t 
 say much about it myself." She threw that issue aside, 
 as if it could not be touched on again in a very long 
 time. " Come abroad with me." 
 
 Thyrza smiled and shook her head. 
 
 " I ve lots of money," said the girl. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Thyrza. " Then that s another reason 
 why he must n t have you, not till he has money of 
 his own." 
 
 Angelica nodded her head with an equal wisdom. 
 257 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " I suppose that s true," said she. " I never thought 
 of it before. You see how necessary a mother is. I 
 feel lots older than he, older than you, really. If you 
 are his mother, I shall have to be his grandmother. 
 Poor Petrie! he ll have to toe the line. It s very 
 dull, though, isn t it?" 
 
 "What is dull?" 
 
 Her opulent eyes, rich in such surprises of mirth and 
 other changefulness, glowed and then almost shut 
 with excess of being pleased. 
 
 " Dull to stop to think of things. Dull not to say, 
 < Why, yes, Petrie, here s money. Dip both hands in. 
 Come to Paris, come to Vienna. " She drew her face 
 into a charming seriousness. " But we must consider 
 the good of the child." 
 
 " Are you going abroad to study ? " asked Thyrza. 
 
 " Yes. To study, to play. I play the fiddle, you 
 know. I play in public and folks bow down and kiss 
 my instep. If I had my fiddle here I could play the 
 heart out of your breast. That s what the London 
 paper said I did." 
 
 " Are you going alone ? " 
 
 " Yes, so to speak. With my maid. It makes auntie 
 and uncle " 
 
 "ThePutnams?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Petrie spoke of them." 
 
 " It makes them shudder. But they can t help it." 
 Again she drew her face into a sad oval. " Auntie 
 thinks I shall be spoken to." 
 
 258 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 " I should think you would be/ said Thyrza, with 
 an involuntary gush of admiration. 
 
 " Why, I am ! That s what I live for. I speak my 
 self, to stewards and things. I have hosts of friends 
 among what auntie calls the lower classes. Those 
 people she s named them ! What should I know 
 about life, if I stayed shut up in a bureau drawer? 
 That s where auntie lives, swathed in rolls upon rolls 
 of jeweler s cotton. But the moths get at her.. I can 
 tell her that. She s terribly riddled." 
 
 " I have two friends living abroad," said Thyrza. 
 She had an impulse to tell something, anything. In 
 this warm atmosphere of ready approval she felt the 
 petals of her heart uncurling. She had told God a 
 great many things in all these years, some of them wild 
 with anguish and some timidly thankful that He had 
 dealt no worse with her ; but it would be an exquisite 
 thing, like putting a tired head on a kind bosom, to 
 give some of her secrets to a warm, soft hand. 
 
 "Man or woman?" Angelica asked. One of her 
 charms, one that you felt would wear and was not 
 fleetingly exhibited for the sake of earning praise, was 
 an immediate and strict attention to what you were 
 saying. 
 
 " One is a woman," Thyrza answered. " Her name is 
 Margaret Petrie. She lives in Florence." 
 
 Angelica saw that Margaret Petrie was not the 
 actual pivot of the confidence. 
 
 " Petrie was named for her," she guessed. " I m 
 glad you told me. Anything about the child we 
 
 259 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 must n t forget he is our joint-stock baby the most 
 inconsiderable things add to my data for dealing 
 with him. Does she write to you ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, but not regularly. That would n t be 
 like her. But they re splendid letters. And she never 
 changes." 
 
 " She s older than you are ? " 
 
 " Ever so much. I never saw anybody so gay. She 
 says Florence is the paradise of the middle-aged 
 
 woman." 
 
 " Who s the other friend ? " asked Angelica. 
 " That s a man." 
 
 " What things you know ! " Thyrza laughed for 
 pleasure in the audacious wisdom of her. 
 
 " I don t know. I guess. So it is a man." 
 
 Thyrza began and told the story of Barton Gorse : 
 how he had taught her when she was a little girl and 
 he was a youth, and how he had gone abroad to live 
 with his uncle, and how he wrote her twice a week. 
 " That s his last letter," she said, pointing to a thick 
 envelope on the table. " I have n t read it. Petrie 
 read one of his letters last night. He liked it." 
 
 " Silly, to make over your letters to Petrie ! I 
 shan t give him mine." Then she became aware that 
 there was more in this than met the first apprehen 
 sion, and began guessing again. " I dare say Petrie 
 fumed about him. I m watching you, chummie. Tell 
 the truth. Did he fume?" 
 
 " I had never told him much about Barton Gorse," 
 Thyrza temporized. " Yes, I let him see the letter." 
 
 260 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 " Petrie s a jealous dog. He 11 have to get over 
 it partially. That will be a delicate matter. He 
 must get over the manifestation, not the disposition. 
 The disposition is delicious. It s a spur, to violets 
 and devotion. Dear lady, Barton Gorse is in love with 
 you." 
 
 " He asks me to marry him," said Thyrza, quite 
 simply. " He has asked me a great many times." 
 
 " Then why in the world don t you do it ? You could 
 live abroad, and go to Florence and see your Margaret 
 Petrie, and have spasms in the National Gallery, and 
 confront Mona Lisa on her own ground, and read 
 Taine. That s what you d love, blessed child." 
 
 All this Thyrza could see was not what Angelica 
 herself would love in an old-world pageant, but it had 
 no touch of satire. 
 
 "I couldn t have gone abroad, even if I mar 
 ried," she said. "I had Petrie." 
 
 " But you have n t Petrie now. He s going to 
 wander. And anyway you could leave him with me 
 with his grandmother." 
 
 Thyrza looked her friend in the eyes. 
 
 "You wouldn t have me marry a man if I did 
 n t " she hesitated. 
 
 "Love him? No, by my good right hand and my 
 fiddle-bow. But let s see, dear daughter, what love is." 
 
 " In the first place it is n t for women as old as I, 
 women with grown-up sons. And it is n t for women 
 just like me." 
 
 Angelica was reflecting. 
 
 261 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " I guess," she said at length, "you d better go 
 abroad with me. You d better let me get you into a 
 velvet gown and a picture-hat, and drive in the Bois 
 behind a pair, and go to a battle of flowers, and pelt 
 unknown Frenchmen with roses, and be spoken to in 
 the rue de la Paix because you re so handsome, and 
 have to ask a gendarme to walk a block with you to 
 protect you. What I shall have to do, chummie, is to 
 pump the breath of life into you." 
 
 Thyrza had to laugh. 
 
 " But it s not my kind of life," she demurred. " I m 
 just a dull country-woman that, when she was a girl, 
 expected a good many things that never came true." 
 
 " You re very handsome." Angelica was still star 
 ing at her with a knowing eye. " A picture-hat would 
 turn you into a raving beauty. I 11 bet you wear a 
 bonnet." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I 11 bet it s got strings." 
 
 "Narrow ones," said Thyrza humbly. 
 
 " And you take off the flowers every two years and 
 make the milliner give them another cant, and you 
 call it trimmed. Auntie does. She wears a bunch of 
 lilac. It was gathered in Paris when she was a girl, 
 and she believes in it as she does in the Louvre." 
 
 There was something in Thyrza s face, a mute 
 protest that could not make itself vocal. Angelica 
 saw it, and her tongue was holden. 
 
 " you darling ! Yes, I know," she cried then, beside 
 herself with shame. " You ve furnished Petrie s rooms 
 
 262 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 at college, and you d have worn a coal-scuttle to do it. 
 But that s past and gone, and you ve got to have a 
 picture-hat." 
 
 Thyrza was willing enough to leave this issue, 
 exciting as it sounded. 
 
 " I have n t asked you to take off your hat," she 
 said. " But I wish you d stay." 
 
 " Petrie won t be back ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then I ll stay to luncheon. Afterwards I 11 tele 
 phone auntie I m starting for New York ; so if 
 Petrie calls there he 11 be thrown off the track." 
 
 To Thyrza, it was criminal to say you were going 
 to New York and then sit down cosily on the spot 
 and eat a luncheon untinged by bitterness. If she had, 
 in stress of temptation, said she was going to New 
 York, she would have felt obliged to go, or run 
 confessing her lie all over the place. But she had a 
 bewildered conviction that this little creature, as 
 sparkling as a bird in a spring suit of sheeny feathers, 
 and as good and harmless, she was sure, had a code 
 of different rules in her pockets, rules personally 
 applied for and furnished under the restriction that 
 they must not be loaned. Angelica was still studying 
 her points with a frank intentness. 
 
 "You see," she announced, " the lines in your face 
 all help it. They give you a kind of haggard beauty, 
 Oh, you re splendid ! " 
 
 Thyrza had to recognize that she was fluttered by 
 this reversal of her own verdicts. It was exciting, as 
 
 263 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 if she had years ago put aside a dull ornament, and 
 a clever hand had taken it out and held it to the light 
 and declared that some, at least, could see it flash. 
 
 " I must get dinner," she said, with an accompany 
 ing practical wonder as to what dish was good enough. 
 " You take your things off." 
 
 Angelica was pulling out a hat-pin. She did even 
 that with a grace Thyrza found enchanting. 
 
 " I 11 stay all night if you 11 ask me." 
 
 " Why ! " said Thyrza. She stopped, with her table 
 cloth half out of the drawer. " Seems as if nothing 
 so pleasant ever did happen in this world." 
 
 " You could lend me a nightie. You re sure Petrie 
 won t come ? " 
 
 Thyrza stopped on her way to the dresser. 
 
 " Why," she breathed, there s Petrie now ! " 
 
 Angelica made one light bound to the other side of 
 the room, the farthest from the window. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " Coming down the street." 
 
 " I must go." 
 
 " You 11 meet him. Oh, stay and meet him here ! " 
 
 " He s not to know I Ve been here. You re not 
 to tell him. Promise." 
 
 " I did promise. But, oh ! " 
 
 " Is n t there a back door ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And a back street?" She was through the door 
 in the speaking, standing on the step, pinning her 
 hat again, the keen air from the river blowing more 
 
 264 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 color into her flushed face. Thyrza, shaken by an 
 anticipatory pang at the losing of her, was sorry for 
 Petrie with a double passion. 
 
 " There s a path along the river." She was point 
 ing it out. " After a while take the street at your 
 right. But it s cruel to him " 
 
 " No, it is n t," said the girl. " Step down here 
 where I can kiss you. It s no more cruel than you 
 were when you took him out of petticoats. Petrie s 
 got to grow up. Good-by, you blessed child. You 
 shall have the picture-hat, and we 11 flaner yet in 
 Paris. Good-by, you dear." 
 
 Thyrza, the touch of the fresh lips warm on hers, 
 stood watching the little figure running along the 
 river-path like a child scudding there for fun. As she 
 sometimes did when she was alone, for she had an 
 unchangeable devotion to purity of language in pub 
 lic, she returned to her mother s colloquial tongue, 
 when she was moved. "My soul!" she whispered. 
 " My soul ! " Then she heard the front door shut, and 
 Petrie calling her. She ran in, lest he should find her 
 there and see also the flying figure on the river-path. 
 Petrie met her in his rapid walk to the back of the 
 house, and caught her in his arms. 
 
 " Mother," he said. " I m an awful bounder ! " 
 
 There had been times when Thyrza would have 
 luxuriated in protestations and soft remorse because 
 they were signs of love, but her high heart was wholly 
 now with the little figure fleeing along the river and 
 the probability of its being seen. She seemed, in the 
 
 265 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 hour of her talk with Angelica, to have transferred 
 her devotion from Petrie to Petrie and his love. She 
 hugged Petrie, not so much in the warmth he had 
 expected but with a canny desire to hold him while 
 Angelica got away. 
 
 " You were a good boy to come back/ she said at 
 last, releasing him. 
 
 He was throwing off his coat. He stopped with it 
 ready to be deposited, a quick flush in his face. 
 
 " Who s been here?" he said. "I smell violets. I 
 smelled them the minute I came in." 
 
 Thyrza drew out the table and began to spread the 
 cloth. 
 
 "There aren t any violets here, unless you ve 
 brought them with you." 
 
 She, too, flushed. A daring light came into her eyes. 
 She knew in that moment that, if the crucial question 
 came, if he said to her in plain words, " Has Angelica 
 been here?" she should answer "no." The girl had 
 given her a sense that certain things must be done ; 
 it was necessary to do them and take your moral 
 chances. Thyrza had not felt her blood so move for 
 years. But he had laid down his coat and his hat with 
 it, as if his time were limited. His air of a casual vis 
 itor impressed her, and she was about to ask him if 
 he had not come for his two days, when he spoke out 
 bluntly : 
 
 " Only a bite for me. I m off this afternoon. To 
 morrow I shall be in New York, and sail for the 
 Philippines." 
 
 266 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 She had started up the fire with little sticks, but 
 this arrested her. 
 
 " You ve changed your plans/ she hurried. 
 
 " They ve been changed for me. I m told off to be 
 sent there to do some special work. I d only time to 
 see you and do one thing more. I ve got to see her, 
 too." 
 
 " Angelica." She did not say it interrogatively, but 
 as if Angelica were one of the accepted facts. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "I posted down here and went to old Wright s. 
 She had been there and gone. I shall find her at the 
 Putnams this afternoon." 
 
 Would he find her ? Thyrza hoped so, with an ach 
 ing heart, because, having seen her bright beauty, she 
 knew how desolate it would be not to see it shining, 
 if one expected it. 
 
 " I ve wired her," he pursued. 
 
 Then he would not find her. He was giving her 
 time to be away, in New York on her flight to Europe, 
 or in a dozen hiding-places her swift progresses must 
 have left ready for her. Now Thyrza s loyalty shifted, 
 and went over to her son. She longed, with a beating 
 heart, to urge him to go now, before the girl had time 
 to flee him. It was as if they two, she and Petrie, 
 were mercifully pursuing some loved animal of the 
 hearth for benevolent purposes, and she could put her 
 hand on Petrie s arm and whisper, " See ! there in 
 that bush." And then the little creature of the wild 
 impulses and the domestic heart would be caught and 
 
 267 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 stroked into acquiescence, and presently she would be 
 warm by the fireside, having only her wild dash for 
 liberty to dream of. But a keen intelligence held her 
 back. She had a saving consciousness that Angelica 
 and Petrie were different beings from herself, and 
 that they must make the laws of their own world. She 
 had nurtured him and trained his baby mind. But the 
 world was another world from the one she had known 
 in her own youth and that, in her days of retirement 
 here, she had never been able to forget. She saw it 
 in the boys who came to her to do their little tasks. 
 Youth now, all youth, seemed to be what only luxu 
 rious youth born to money and pleasures had been in 
 her day. Young conquerors conquered early. Even 
 the market-place was full of Alexanders. To be young 
 was an inheritance of itself. They must play their own 
 game, these two inheritors. 
 
 " When are you coming back ? " she safely asked. 
 
 " From the Philippines ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " When my job is done. It s a big thing, mother. 
 And I want the dough." 
 
 "The dough?" 
 
 Thyrza frowned, but only with perplexity. She had 
 never got used to a young college man who had ac 
 cess to the classics, dealing in the slang of the street. 
 Petrie laughed out, as he always did at her inno 
 cences, but it was absently. 
 
 " Money, old lady. I want money." 
 
 " Of course." She craved it for him, more, even, 
 
 268 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 she half guessed, than he wanted it himself. For he 
 in the conquering way of youth, which had somehow 
 lost the old-fashioned ideals, like a worn wallet full 
 of foreign gold that had no daily value now but only 
 a vague preciousness, might feel that it was not be 
 neath him to take a dowered bride. " I want you to 
 have it/ she went on. "I want you to be able to have 
 money and a home." Over the last word she trem 
 bled. It seemed as if it might bring down on her the 
 clatter of the discussion that had parted them yester 
 day, as if one dragged manacles from a shelf. But 
 he answered very seriously and gently. 
 
 " I want it, too, marmie. We 11 see what I can do." 
 They talked no more of anything that could recall 
 their difference or suggest Angelica. Once he laughed 
 out, at the table, and spoke shamefacedly, as if on the 
 brink of a confidence too tender to be shared. " Funny, 
 how I smelled violets ! But I suppose I m always 
 doing it. I m always thinking " He paused there 
 abruptly, and Thyrza knew he was always thinking 
 of Angelica, with the ache of love, and wondering 
 what breeze might waft him news of her. She consid 
 ered it in wonder, and then put it aside, as she often 
 did intimate and moving things, to muse over when 
 she should be alone. It was amazing to her that two 
 young and beautiful creatures like these should be 
 loving each other with no bar to thinking each other as 
 fine as they were. To her bruised and aching sense, 
 what is called love had been, when she dared define 
 it, a state in which the eyes were dazzled. The plain 
 
 269 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 could glitter for that one masquerade, and beauty, in 
 her pathetic turn, could find her image in the beast. 
 But these two were really the prince and princess. 
 Their dream was a reality. 
 
 "What you thinking about, old lady?" asked 
 Petrie. They had risen from the table and she stood 
 for a moment, her hand on her chair, looking at him. 
 Thyrza shook her head, smiling, and judging that the 
 tears in her eyes were not heavy enough to be wiped 
 away. If she left them in a pool, he might not notice 
 them. Petrie came round the table and, his arm over 
 her shoulder as if she had been another boy, bent his 
 face to her. 
 
 " You re the dearest old girl," he said. His voice 
 was broken with what he felt and his impatience 
 at expressing it. " I would n t hurt you for a million 
 dollars." 
 
 " Go and get her, Petrie," she uttered hastily, for 
 all answer. " Love her, be true to her, make her marry 
 
 you." 
 
 He selected the tiny phrase that had cost her most 
 to say. 
 
 " Be true to her ? Bet your life, mother. But there s 
 no temptation " he laughed, triumphantly, "not 
 to be true to such a girl." 
 
 "Maybe not," said Thyrza humbly. "But you be 
 true." 
 
 Then he gave her what they used to call the cinna 
 mon bear s hug, when he was about two feet high and 
 used to sit in her lap. It was the nicest hug of all, and 
 
 270 
 
THE GIRL 
 
 so it was called cinnamon. The black bear s hug was 
 ponderous and slow, the grizzly s came when you had 
 been out skating and were impatient to do a lot of 
 things, and mother wanted you to hug her before you 
 could even start doing them. But the cinnamon bear s 
 hug belonged to the twilighty times when you were 
 sleepy, a little thoughtful over the selection of bed 
 time stories, and soaked through with the certainty that 
 mother was the fount of blessings. 
 
 He went away, and Thyrza watched him, and at the 
 top of the street he turned and waved his hand to 
 her. " Good-by ! " she said under her breath. She and 
 Petrie together had left one more of the countries of 
 life for other territory. This was a special farewell, 
 not because he was going to the Philippines, but 
 because she was giving him to Angelica. She went 
 back into the room that looked doubly lonely since 
 they had both gone out of it, and yet was different 
 somehow for having framed Angelica and her breath 
 of violets, and found the one friendliest thing in it, 
 the letter lying on the table. She touched it with 
 an endearing hand. " Old friend! " her heart said, and 
 her lips were smiling. She sat down and read it through, 
 and found at the end a little sentence made of quiet 
 words. Barton Gorse was coming home now, to marry 
 her. 
 
XI 
 
 A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 JJARTON GORSE came, following on his letter as fast 
 as ship could sail. Thyrza had had a vivid day of it, 
 with some premonition that any hour might bring 
 him ; she set her house in order until it was exquisitely 
 clean. It seemed like a little shrine scoured to the 
 grain in years of tidiness and then washed anew. 
 There were delicate things baked and set aside because 
 she did not know his appetite ; but they were the dishes 
 Petrie loved. She was not tired, though she had fled 
 over the rooms with all her mother s old dispatch; 
 some radiant household vision raced before her, touch 
 ing with its guiding finger, its shining wings, the 
 spots where tasks were to be done. Thyrza was in that 
 most ecstatic state of all life, the one that is the 
 manor-house of youth, but belongs to middle age 
 only in brief expectancies when it strays by chance 
 into some flower-garden of fortune. It was the sense of 
 the pleasant which is also the new. "Can it be so?" 
 Thyrza kept asking herself as she swept and dusted 
 her house that already had a difference, as if it 
 looked for some one. " Can Barton Gorse be coming ? 
 Can he be coming to say he loves me and shall I 
 believe I love him, too? " 
 
 But some one else came first. The expressman 
 arrived with a great package, and when he had gone 
 
 272 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 Thyrza opened it with some doubt that it was for her, 
 and found what seemed Angelica s answer to all the 
 trembling questions her mind had put. It was a won 
 derful hat, all wavy curves, softened again by a 
 glorious feather that bent and rippled like a tasseled 
 tree ; and there was a fur cloak that seemed to Thyrza 
 even as splendid as it was warm. She could not know 
 it was priceless, or that Angelica had delayed sending 
 it until Petrie was well out of the country because he, 
 too, would discern its value, and that would lead to 
 questions and his guessing their small secret. Thyrza, 
 with an instinct untarnished by lack of use, pulled her 
 soft hair looser until it lent her a new shadowy grace, 
 and pinned on the hat. One added incredible beauty 
 she noted, almost transcending the hat itself : the pin 
 that came with it, sparkling and bizarre. Could she 
 be the misguided soul that had worn bonnet-strings ? 
 Then she slipped into her cloak, and partly because 
 the room seemed small for such magnificence, and 
 partly because the cloak was warm, she opened her 
 door and went out, and paced up and down the garden 
 path. 
 
 Thyrza loved fur. She stroked it with her bare 
 hand, and thought of the time when she was a little 
 girl and took out one of the top bureau-drawers to 
 stretch down her little marauding arm and feel the 
 Christmas presents in the locked drawer below. There 
 had been something soft, and she had confided to 
 Laura that it must be a muff; perhaps it was two 
 muffs, though Thyrza with her sense of privilege then 
 
 273 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 thought, if it were one, it would be for her, and Laura 
 would like that just as well. But it had turned into 
 woolly mittens carded into fluff that agonized your 
 teeth when you pulled off a mitten in mad haste while 
 the other hand was busy. Now the muff had come 
 true in a glorious apotheosis. She had fur enough to 
 clothe her from head to foot, a shining borrowed skin. 
 She stroked it again, looked down at the hem of her 
 calico dress and her worn shoe, and laughed, and then 
 put up her head in fitting pride to walk and preen 
 herself ; and turning on her path she saw Barton 
 Gorse at the gate. 
 
 When her eyes encountered him her heart gave a 
 great throb of romantic memory. It was not Barton 
 Gorse standing there, it seemed, but his uncle, the 
 iron-gray cavalier with the splendid mustache and hat 
 and cloak she had seen and loved when she was a 
 child. Thyrza really did for a moment think it was 
 Terry Updike, and it was easy to forget, in the illu 
 sion of it, that time had passed for him as for her, 
 and that as she was no longer a child so he was an old 
 man ending his days in England, while the papers 
 chronicled his least opinion, as if his state were that 
 of privilege and all his conclusions about the long 
 path he had trodden counted weightily. Terry Updike 
 was one of those whose monuments are builded in 
 their lifetime. The grain he had sown had been made 
 into bread for him to eat. 
 
 Barton Gorse opened the gate and came through 
 while she stood there staring at him in her arrested 
 
 274 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 pose. He got both her hands out of the fur cloak, 
 and held them. 
 
 "Darling child/ he said, "it must be you. Tell 
 me it is, before I call you names again." 
 
 He had changed, indeed. With middle age he had 
 not lost, he had gained something a brusque dig 
 nity of manhood that had been lacking in the discour 
 agement of his earlier years. Thyrza stared at him, 
 speechless. He shook her hands a little, in a fond 
 impatience. 
 
 "Thyrza," he insisted, "are you Thyrza?" 
 
 " Yes," she managed to say. 
 
 "Then come in where I can make love to you. I m 
 going to do it at once, I ve been such a fool to wait." 
 
 She let him lead her in as if she were a child 
 caught in truancy. In the kitchen he kept her hand, 
 and stood looking at her. 
 
 "Why," said he, "you re so handsome I don t 
 know what to do. I did n t know you were going to 
 be anything like this. I ve thought of you as my 
 good, dutiful, conjugation-adoring, declension-loving 
 Thyrza." 
 
 Then Thyrza thought at once of the fur and feath 
 ers, and wished she had not put them on, because she 
 must take them off and he would see she was no such 
 affair in her calico dress. She drew away her hand 
 and got her hat-pin out, and slipped off hat and cloak 
 in haste. Then she stood before him in her calico, 
 and thought of beggar-maids and how she had not 
 even youth to recommend her. 
 
 275 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " I don t feel as if they were mine," she said, throw 
 ing a look at the rich garment on a chair. " They 
 were given to me. They came this morning. I felt 
 I d got to put them on." 
 
 "Given to you?" He repeated it absently, his 
 eyes scanning her with their old kindliness, though the 
 incredulous admiration had gone out of them. There 
 was a difference, she saw, but somehow it had not 
 made him the less kind. 
 
 " A young lady gave them to me, the young lady 
 Petrie is going to marry." 
 
 " Where is Petrie?" He spoke interestedly, as if 
 Petrie were only some one who might come in to in 
 terrupt them at any moment and must be reckoned on, 
 
 " In the Philippines." 
 
 " That s good. That s capital of him. I shall marry 
 you before he comes back." 
 
 " Won t you sit down ? " asked Thyrza, with a flut 
 tering primness. 
 
 " Not just yet. I want you to stand here to be 
 looked at. I like you best so, in your common dress. 
 This is the way I ve thought of you. Will he like it ? " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Will Petrie like my marrying you ? " 
 
 She could not answer without making it conditional. 
 
 " He would like it." 
 
 " Good boy ! Then he really s fond of you. He 
 wants you to be happy." 
 
 Petrie did want her to be happy, she was sure, 
 but he wanted first, in his hot-headed rush toward 
 
 276 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 his own completed fate, to see her placed on some 
 accepted plane. 
 
 " Sit down," she said again. " I shall have to get 
 dinner pretty soon." 
 
 Barton Gorse released her hand and laughed. 
 
 " Are n t you cunning, Thyrza ! " he interjected, 
 the note of admiration in his voice making it appar 
 ent that he meant the word in the significance of its 
 common application to children or furry animals. 
 " You said that just like your mother. I set great 
 store by the old times, don t you ? " 
 
 Thyrza now, with her mind running ahead and 
 arranging dinner, was more at ease. Barton helped her 
 put the table out, and she spread the cloth. Then he 
 wandered about from window to window, if one may 
 wander in so small a space, and watched her deftness. 
 When she stopped at the stove for a boiling of some 
 thing or other to be accomplished, he began, from 
 no sense of the fitness of place or time, but with a 
 directness which she felt to be agitating in the ex 
 treme : 
 
 " The fact is, Thyrza, I ve come over to make love 
 to you, and I m going to do it for all I m worth." 
 
 " You don t know whether you like me after all 
 these years." Thyrza felt her face crimsoning in the 
 kettle s heat. 
 
 " Yes, I do. The thing I don t know is whether 
 you re in the way of liking me. But I intend to carry 
 the citadel by assault and marry you off before you 
 get your breath; then, when we re back in England, 
 
 277 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 you can make up your mind whether you re likely to 
 repent at leisure." 
 
 " Back in England?" 
 
 " Yes, we re going back there. It would n t be fair 
 to leave uncle Terry now he s got so used to me. But 
 you 11 like him. You 11 love him. And you 11 meet 
 such big guns of literature that you 11 have to keep 
 declining and conjugating into the night, to maintain 
 your self-respect." 
 
 " How is your uncle ? " 
 
 " He is a shadow, a beautiful shadow, of what he 
 was, a wasted old man lying there and forgetting 
 names of people, but remembering reams of poetry 
 and saying them over to himself when he can t sleep. 
 I believe he never sleeps. He seems to be half in para 
 dise now. You see he believes in paradise because 
 he s a poet. I have to, in courtesy to him." 
 
 "You can t like me," said Thyrza involuntarily. 
 "I don t talk like that." 
 
 " Of course you don t, darling child. You never 
 could. But I do like you. I just love you. I ve loved 
 you so much all these years that nobody else has been 
 able even to rent your place. Sometimes I ve been so 
 bored by it I could have slapped your hands for it. 
 But I ve liked you. Oh, I ve liked you ! " 
 
 Thyrza had the pang she remembered when she 
 saw grown-up Petrie first come walking home from 
 school with a girl. 
 
 "Have people tried?" she faltered. 
 
 "Tried?" 
 
 278 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 "To rent my place?" 
 
 His eyes spilled over with laughter. 
 
 " Oh, I put up a sign when you turned me off : To 
 rent. Unfurnished. But the minute I saw somebody 
 coming that way, I snatched down the sign and ran 
 down cellar and hid in the coal-hole." 
 
 She should never be able to keep pace with him, 
 she thought. It was better to consider him a brilliant 
 visitor, and have done with him, not a cozy inmate 
 come to stay. She thought how wonderfully he would 
 get on with Angelica, and how their thoughts would 
 fence and parry and then race together for the fun 
 of racing. Even their speech had something alike, a 
 swift, changing flow as if, although the currents were 
 apart, they were running over identical slopes and 
 hindrances. Did that betoken an inner likeness, and 
 was it a secret of her own sudden cleaving to Angelica? 
 Or did it spring from their fostering tenderness for 
 her, their wish to reassure and fortify her own sim 
 pler mind ? As if he read her in Angelica s own way, 
 he was answering with an absurd composure. 
 
 " I m not like this all the time. I m chattering to 
 make you think I m brilliant, you do love brilliancy 
 so. Partly too to keep us both from crying." 
 
 "You re so different." 
 
 "Am I, Thyrza? Well, I m old, I know." 
 
 "No, not that. You re splendid. You look like 
 him." 
 
 "Uncle Terry? Some of them say so. I don t 
 believe I really do, any to hurt, because he s the 
 
 279 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 splendidest ever. But I m not really changed, Thyrza, 
 though I talk so fast. Look at me and see." 
 
 She did look as involuntarily as she had obeyed him 
 those years ago when he had bade her hunt up some 
 thing in the lexicon. There was the old kind smile. 
 He too seemed to have remembered just which one it 
 was, and put it on to reassure her. Her smile came to 
 meet it. 
 
 " No," said Thyrza, " I guess you haven t changed." 
 
 When dinner was ready, they sat down to it and 
 talked commonplace things. She heard how Margaret 
 Petrie was holding a salon in Florence and was the 
 crown of the English set there, and how Helen David 
 son was still at Spa and always would be, adoring her 
 beast of a husband. 
 
 " But it s no use pitying her," said Barton, show 
 ing his first gloom. " She likes him. She says he 
 is n t a beast now, and that wipes out the past." 
 
 " Oh, I m glad she s got him back," said Thyrza. 
 
 " Are you ? Well, she is, too. She trumped up some 
 kind of a theory years ago about his soul, and it 
 seems to have justified her. If he s got one, she s 
 saved it if it s worth saving." 
 
 " You don t seem to doubt about uncle Terry s 
 soul!" 
 
 " Oh, no ! You can see that right through the hide, 
 like an angel in a crystal jar. No ! no ! it would be a 
 bold man that would deny a soul to uncle Terry." 
 
 When dinner was over, she put away the food, and 
 then, as she took her place at the sink to wash the 
 
 280 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 dishes, Barton, with a perfectly commonplace assur 
 ance, took a towel from the line and presented him 
 self to wipe them for her. He glanced out of the 
 window. 
 
 " How low the sun is ! " 
 
 66 It s dusk early," said Thyrza. 
 
 " I must get to my love-making. I 11 show you all 
 my cards. This i$ how I happened to come over. 
 One night, not three weeks ago, uncle Terry began 
 talking to me about his life. It was more than half 
 rhapsody, a kind of supreme confidence to himself." 
 
 Thyrza paused with a dish in air, his words seemed 
 to her so grand and beautiful. She would never get 
 over her worship of the intellectual forms of things, 
 and words would always seem to her something 
 sacred. 
 
 " He dwelt chiefly," said Gorse, without heeding 
 her, " on what he had foregone, and what he had 
 made others miss through lack of hope, not believing 
 overwhelmingly in the higher powers, the unseen 
 powers, trusting the soul of things. And he is a 
 poet! If he had that to remember, what had I?" 
 
 " Go on," Thyrza breathed. She was afraid to have 
 him stop before he had inducted her into those 
 mysteries that might make her own way plain. 
 
 " When I had listened to him for as long as he 
 would speak, I remembered you. I m always remem 
 bering you. I thought maybe if I had n t accepted 
 your decision as I did, we should both have been hap 
 pier. For you know, Thyrza, I believe, I fully believe, 
 
 281 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 not so much that you re fond of me as that you re 
 prepared to be. I feel somehow as if all this letter- 
 writing of ours it s been tiresome sometimes, but 
 it s been necessary and honest I believe all life has 
 been preparing us to love each other like sixty." 
 
 " I believe that, too ! " 
 
 She had said it before she realized what the words 
 would mean to him. They came out of the inner 
 crystalline well of her life, as if she had dipped her 
 hand in and brought it up sparkling with clear, cool 
 drops. 
 
 " Then, by George ! " said Barton, " that s all there 
 is to it. I need n t make love any more. We 11 just 
 get married and sail for England. Petrie s on his feet. 
 If he is n t, I 11 put him there." 
 
 "No! no!" 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 " I can t let you marry me." 
 
 " Let me ! You put it as if it would be disaster for 
 me. What do you mean, Thyrza?" 
 
 She looked beyond him out of the window, where 
 a squad of boys in flannels were running, elbows set 
 and faces hot, down to the river. They looked to her 
 like the youth she had never really had in its insolent 
 bravery, because misfortune came so soon ; every step 
 of their race reminded her jeeringly that she had not 
 their excuse of the unreasoning force of blood. She had 
 one weapon in her armory : prudence. Let her use it. 
 There was one thing she could not let him suffer. He 
 should not make the burden of her tarnished fame his 
 
 282 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 own, even though they went among strangers and 
 only two or three who knew her past suspected he was 
 carrying it. 
 
 "Well, then/ he was saying, in a baffled way, 
 " I ve got to go back to my love-making." 
 
 Thyrza laughed out and he laughed with her. If he 
 was endowed with such power to conjure away her 
 blue devils, where was it to lead her ? He would simply 
 go fluting through the world, and she would have to 
 follow. 
 
 "That s right, Thyrza." He was commending her. 
 "Laugh a little. Let s have some fun before we die. 
 It won t be long before the dusk is falling. The dusk ! 
 That s what you said. I love that way of putting it. 
 Well, we re going to be old pretty soon, I sooner 
 than you, ever so much sooner. The dusk will be 
 falling. Let s kindle a good fire on the hearth, and 
 light the lamp, and sit there like Darby and Joan till 
 one of us nods off. Ain t I just the poet, Thyrza? 
 But you do it with me." 
 
 He put out his hand, and Thyrza laid hers in it. At 
 the same time she shook her head. 
 
 " No, Barton, no." 
 
 " You like me, don t you?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " 
 
 " If we were thirty now, well, one of us thirty 
 and the other twenty, would n t you perhaps say 
 you loved me ? " 
 
 She nodded, keeping her clear eyes fixed on him. 
 There was never a great issue when Thyrza doubted 
 
 283 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 that she must tell the truth. She had had her temptation 
 when she realized, that other day, how in the mad 
 whirl of Angelica s commands she meant to lie heartily ; 
 but Thyrza had decided, when the hour was past, 
 that she was a craven to think it and it would have 
 done no good. All her undying hope had been in 
 drawing straight lines. 
 
 "You re afraid of the word, then," Barton was 
 persuading her gently. " We won t use it. We ll just 
 say you re going to marry me, and come to England." 
 
 Two tears ran down Thyrza s cheeks. Angelica 
 seemed to have opened to her the luxurious art of 
 crying. She shook her head. Barton looked at her a 
 long time. There were things he might have asked, not 
 because he needed to know them but because they 
 would have enlightened him toward persuading her. 
 Was the other man living, and did she, in her fastidi 
 ous honor, believe it would be a wrong to either of 
 them to make herself secure ? Was she still expiating 
 the fatal deed of her girlhood? He could not ask. 
 There was something in his knowledge of her that 
 told him how bruised a heart she carried, and not even 
 to bring about her ultimate happiness could he hurt 
 it further. He even wondered if he took her to his 
 breast and ardently called upon her blood to help him, 
 whether he might not carry the citadel by assault. 
 But he had always believed that she had suffered some 
 such wrong as an unthinking child might have endured, 
 and old nerves in her might be waiting to shriek again 
 at the demand of earthly passion. So he dropped her 
 
 284 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 hand and rose, and she stood also, and they faced each 
 other. 
 
 I 11 go, Thyrza." 
 
 That seemed a deprivation greater than she could 
 bear. 
 
 " For good ? " she faltered. 
 
 He smiled, hopefully for himself and most tenderly 
 for her. 
 
 " No, darlingest. Just back to town to see about my 
 luggage I rushed here from the boat and get it 
 to Longford, to the old house. I shall be down again 
 to-morrow. I ve got to, to attend to my love-making." 
 
 She shook her head again, but he could see that he 
 was leaving her not unhappy. When he was at the 
 door he halted, came back and took her hands, to kiss 
 them in a fervent haste. 
 
 " Good-by," he said. " Good-by, darlingest." 
 
 She watched him from the window, and just as he 
 was about to round the corner, she fled out into the 
 yard and waved to him. So he came back. They met 
 in the garden-path, and he held her hands again, such 
 hope in his eyes as she had never seen. But her own 
 eyes were brimming. 
 
 "What is it, Thyrza?" he was asking tenderly. 
 " This is n t because I m going ? That would mean 
 why, it makes me dizzy to think what splendors it 
 would mean." 
 
 She was paying no particular attention to what 
 he said, but looking him in the face with a puzzling 
 intentness. 
 
 285 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " You sure you will come back? " she asked simply. 
 
 " Sure ? Am I sure the sun will rise ? " 
 
 Then she took her hands away from him and 
 laughed a little. 
 
 "It seems as if there was something outside us/ 
 she said, "waiting for us. It seems to threaten us." 
 
 "Where, dear?" 
 
 She looked about at the quiet little street, the sky, 
 and over her shoulder at the river. Through a sudden 
 willfulness of the day the sun was out brilliantly for 
 one of the last moments of his shining. 
 
 " There," she said, with a vague motion of her 
 hand. It indicated the mystery of even the tamed 
 nature lying wide about them. 
 
 Barton laughed. 
 
 o 
 
 " You re nervous, child," he said. " We re both 
 strung up to the snapping-point. No wonder you see 
 him." 
 
 " Who, Barton ? " she whispered, out of her fear 
 that seemed the greater because she was standing in 
 the open. " Who is it I see?" 
 
 " Pan, child. I suppose he s in village streets some 
 times. It is n t always a thicket. I m coming in, dear, 
 until you re quieted." 
 
 "And lose the train?" 
 
 "No, that s the train I ve got to take. But I ve 
 a good five minutes, if I sprint a little." 
 
 Then she really laughed light-heartedly, and the 
 day smiled out of its ominous brightness. Pan had 
 passed. She even heard the rustle of his going, and 
 
 286 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 looked about over her shoulder at the river, where a 
 flying cloud cast its shadow, that was yet not the 
 shadow of a cloud but of the moving god. 
 
 " No," she said. "He s gone. You need n t sprint. 
 Good-night. Good-by, and come to-morrow." 
 
 Barton looked down at her gravely for a moment, 
 as if he questioned whether it would be better to kiss 
 and wait or to go and come again. But there was in 
 her something which still called for delicate delays, 
 and as he had planned his campaign, so he would 
 follow it. 
 
 "Then," he said, "to-morrow." 
 
 He was gone, and she turned away lest she en 
 counter the bad omen of watching him out of sight. 
 Indoors she sank down in the chair where he had sat, 
 and raised her hands to her lips and kissed them. 
 She was not going to marry him, but she was warm 
 to the heart. 
 
 The next morning she rose with the feeling of good 
 fortune, if a pleasurable excitement meant the good. 
 It was one of those mornings of early autumn when 
 the frost is on the grass in a clouded silver, and the 
 rims of all the leaves are outlined in glittering white. 
 The river looked cold but blue, and it was smooth. 
 It looked to her, who had seen so many boys rushing 
 there in a gay abandon, like a playground of youth. 
 Before her work was done, even, she went out to get 
 a breath of morning air and run along the path 
 Angelica had taken, as if the way the steps of youth 
 had hastened might bring her nearer the end youth 
 
 287 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 craved. For the first time since the murder of her 
 hope she longed for joy, personal joy that led nowhere 
 that could be mapped or predicted, but only into the 
 morning. She knew what train Barton must take, if 
 he meant to come again to her to-day ; she must be 
 back in time to finish getting the house in order for 
 him. The post had come, she found; there was a let 
 ter under her door. It was in Laura s unformed half- 
 childish hand, and seemed another omen. Laura did 
 not write often, because she had no habit of the pen, 
 and there was little to say except that they were " well 
 as usual." Thyrza read the letter. As she opened it, 
 it had even seemed to her, in her glow of hope and 
 sense of the morning, that Laura, like Angelica and 
 like Barton, had come to tell her all things were to be 
 made new. It would not have surprised her greatly, 
 in this dazed acceptance of miracle, to find that Laura 
 had written her that the old things had passed away ; 
 they had been a dream even, or a pageant, to teach 
 them both what life might be. But in that case her 
 son out conquering the world, and Angelica who only 
 came to her through her son, must be figures in a 
 dream. So it was with a vague feeling of high possi 
 bilities that she read the letter. It was very short. 
 Laura was " sort of discouraged." She wanted Thyrza. 
 It was dull as death in Leafy Eoad, but they could 
 have a nice little visit together, and though Andy was 
 away a good deal, at work, it would do him good, too, 
 when he and Thyrza got wonted. Would she come? 
 Instantly the old guardians of Thyrza s life seemed 
 
 288 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 to come flying, hooded, mantled, their faces hidden, 
 indeterminate shapes of gloom that she had conceived 
 when she used to read the translations of Greek plays 
 Barton Gorse had sent her the Furies, she had 
 learned to call them. They were in the room, they 
 had settled in the darkest corner, still veiled but im 
 placable, commanding her never to forget. She must 
 keep the bonds of the punishment she had meted out 
 to herself, because they also had decreed it, and she 
 had read the lines of it in their inexorable air. She 
 could not go to Laura, however Laura wanted her. 
 She must not enter Andy s house. 
 
 Then, as she stood there wondering how she could 
 refuse her sister, the other messenger came. In an 
 instant the boy had gone, and she was reading the 
 yellow slip with its fatal words. There had been an 
 accident. Barton Gorse was hurt. He was at his house 
 at Longford. 
 
 Thyrza had not made many journeys, and she pre 
 pared for this one in such haste as if the conventional 
 ways of traveling were unknown to her. Over her 
 clean morning calico she slipped the fur cloak not 
 because it was beautiful, but because it seemed like 
 Angelica s hand on hers and pinned on the feather 
 hat. With her old gloves and her purse in her hand, 
 she locked the door behind her, not on the Furies, 
 because they went with her, to remind her of Laura s 
 letter that must be answered by wire, and got her 
 train. And by and by, when the morning was spent and 
 a rainy sky obscured the promise of the dawn, she was 
 
 289 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 in Longford and had telegraphed Laura she could not 
 come, she put in a merciful " not yet," in spite of 
 the Furies ; and she had inquired her way to Barton s 
 house, and then, when she set off half-running and 
 stopped to get her breath and run again, it came to 
 her that she might have had a carriage, but that she 
 was too used to the efficacy of her own feet to con 
 sider it. 
 
 The old Gorse house was well back from the street, 
 and the street was the best in Longford, a shaded high 
 way with elms as old as the founding of the town. It was 
 a great cheerful yellow house, with coverts of shrubbery 
 and rowan trees in front. Their red berries were spilled 
 all over the path, and Thyrza, with a sick feeling, 
 stepped across the brown grass to avoid them, they 
 were so like blood. The door was opened to her be 
 fore she could knock. Katie stood there, Katie who 
 had been elderly once in Leafy Road and was now old. 
 She, too, was moved, Thyrza saw, at the thought of 
 old times running like a river of destiny, into this 
 sad present, and after she had motioned Thyrza to the 
 stairway, she sat down in the great hall chair and put 
 her apron to her face. Thyrza went on and turned to 
 the front room where there was a flickering fire on 
 the hearth and the furnishings of an olden time, and 
 where Barton Gorse lay in the great four-poster, the 
 coverings drawn to his chin, his eyes upon the door. 
 He was very pale, so pale that it seemed to her as if 
 the blood had drained out of him ; and immediately 
 her heart contracted, and forbade her to wonder how 
 
 290 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 else it was with him beyond the life iu those glowing 
 eyes. A man was with him, but he went away at once, 
 evidently by prearrangement, and Thyrza threw off 
 her cloak and hat, and sat down by the bed, in her 
 dress a humble attendant but in the anguish of her 
 face the nearest a man could have. Barton was smil 
 ing at her in the old way, though the smile had a 
 twitch in it. She could see that he had schooled him 
 self for her coming, and that the smile was to help 
 her through what they both had to bear. He began 
 at once. 
 
 " You hurried, did n t you ? You were a dear. The 
 chances are I live some hours. To-morrow morning-, the 
 
 O * 
 
 doctor sets. That gives us quite a while to say things." 
 The call brought its quick response. She felt the 
 hand of necessity laid upon her nerves and looked at 
 him in turn as smilingly. Then she bent and kissed 
 him. 
 
 " I wish you had stayed with me," she said. 
 " So do I, dear. But we mustn t wish." 
 It came to her in the flash of thoughts hurrying 
 past her, that, if one were to do it, she should wish 
 that she had taken him warmly to her heart, when he 
 had asked for love, and told him there was a worldful 
 of it for him. But that, too, she put aside for the time 
 when he should be gone. 
 
 He was smiling at her whimsically, a little irregular 
 smile. 
 
 "It was Pan, wasn t it," he said, "yesterday in 
 the garden ? " 
 
 291 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 The heathen gods seemed as far away from her as 
 the time when they were visible to men. All the books 
 she had read or wanted to read, the languages she had 
 longed to know, seemed like obsolete furniture she was 
 tossing into an abyss to give place for the homely fur 
 nishing where life could live. And all about her, in a 
 narrowing circle, were intelligences knit in with her 
 childish life, affections awakened after loss to sustain 
 her at this moment when life and death were so near 
 each other that she could almost see what made them 
 seem so different. Her mother, Laura, Andy even 
 they were pouring sustenance into her failing powers 
 from their long well-wishing to her. But because he 
 spoke of Pan, she nodded at him in understanding, 
 and he said from a curiosity not all whim, 
 
 " Did he come to warn us, do you think ? " 
 
 " Maybe so," said Thyrza, still humoring him. 
 
 "I often wonder whether it s hostile to us," he 
 said dreamily, " the great force outside. It tries so 
 hard to kill us off. Well, never mind. There s some 
 thing back of it that is n t hostile." Then he seemed 
 to be recalling himself to a grip on the framework of 
 things, and presently he had succeeded. " I want to 
 tell you what I ve done," he said. " Last night I 
 made my will. You ll have this house and a lot of 
 money. Now wouldn t it be nice to marry me? I 
 only made the will in case you would n t you re 
 such an obstinate little conjugating pig." 
 
 " Just as you please," said Thyrza. 
 
 She hoped she might have one of his hands to 
 
 292 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 hold, but she dared not ask whether they, too, were 
 hurt. 
 
 "No, not just as I please. Would you rather? 
 What would be easier for you staying here alone ? " 
 
 She felt the need of saying things clearly and 
 calmly, though in haste. 
 
 " If you married me, Barton, they would always 
 say you were Petrie s father and made me reparation. 
 I could n t bear to have them think that of you." 
 
 " Was that why you put me off? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "You were a goose, Thyrza." 
 
 "I couldn t have them despising you." 
 
 " But I guess you would have married me in the 
 end. I could have made you." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I should have married you." 
 
 The hooded creatures away off in some obscurity 
 outside the room, shook their heads at her, but she 
 did not mind them. She had broken her bonds of 
 expiation and remorse. 
 
 "I ll talk a little now, and then rest," he was say 
 ing. " We must say all we can. I have an idea they 11 
 deaden me at the last. So it would be easier for you 
 not to marry me ? " 
 
 "It would be easier not to have them think you 
 are not what you are." 
 
 " Well, then, let it be as it is." 
 
 " Do you care ? " 
 
 " No, darlingest. It won t make any difference 
 where I m going, nor to either of us after you come." 
 
 293 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 "Shall I go to you?" She asked it like a child, 
 with her old child earnestness over moods and tenses, 
 careful to have it all just right, and believing in his 
 power to tell her. 
 
 " Yes. It has come to me quite suddenly, to be cer 
 tain of it. It came to uncle Terry, but I thought it 
 was because he was a poet. But I see now it was be 
 cause he d got to the threshold where the door stands 
 open. You can t open the door till you get to the sill. 
 Yes. There s another country." 
 
 At that moment her own case seemed to her harder 
 than his. She forgot Petrie and that she loved him, 
 and it seemed as if it would be a long time possibly 
 before she, too, could find herself at the threshold 
 and touch the door and know she was going to see 
 Barton Gorse. He guessed or knew what she was 
 thinking. 
 
 " You ve had a pretty hard life, Thyrza, have n t 
 you?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes. I ve had a hard life." 
 
 " But does it seem long ? " 
 
 She thought back over the years. No, it had not 
 seemed long. 
 
 " Well, no more will it again. And you 11 find me 
 wanting you." He lay resting for a while and then 
 said musingly, " I thought there was some kind of a 
 bee in your bonnet about thinking you mustn t 
 marry me for that reason, you know, the reason 
 you gave. I even thought you might n t want to take 
 a legacy from me, so I left a little one to Laura and 
 
 294 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 a little one to Margaret Petrie, I guess Margaret 
 will understand and make hers over to you, but 
 you ve got the lion s share." 
 
 Presently, after a time, when the man had come in 
 and given him something and he had rested with 
 closed eyes, he looked up, in a little flash of humor, 
 and said, " I don t want a doleful dying. They 11 
 give me morphia. Then I shall say all sorts of queer 
 things, I have a suspicion I did last night, while 
 they were getting me into shape, but you just 
 remember that is n t me. It irritates me exceedingly 
 to think we may be doleful. Let s not." 
 
 The day passed very quickly to Thyrza, because 
 she never knew what time it was. All the clocks and 
 watches might have stopped for her because she 
 seemed to be living in one great moment that might 
 be called time and might be eternity. The doctor 
 came, and Barton bade him remember speaking 
 lightly in a way that need not break the heart because 
 it was entirely sincere that since he could not be 
 plucked back to life, he might be allowed to squan 
 der his hour as he pleased. 
 
 " It s mine," he said. " Thyrza " (he had not men 
 tioned her formally to any one) " Thyrza is going 
 to stay with me and I m going to talk it away." 
 
 Then it was dusk, and the night had come outside, 
 and there was a shaded lamp in the room. Thyrza 
 had been called down to dinner, and Katie served her 
 tenderly, and when she came back she was aware that 
 the doctor and the attendant had made themselves 
 
 295 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 comfortable in the next room, ready at a sound, and 
 that she was to watch beside the dying. 
 
 " Now," said Barton, " let s talk." He, too, had 
 evidently been prepared by some sustaining potion. 
 His eyes were brighter, though with a disturbing 
 brilliancy, and his cheeks were flushed. " Thyrza, 
 you seem to love me." 
 
 She tried to think of the greatest words there were. 
 
 " Oh, wonderfully ! eternally ! " 
 
 " That sgood. We should have been happy. Don t 
 you think you can kill all your ghosts and be happy 
 now?" 
 
 "I shall try," she said. 
 
 " That s a good girl. Are any of your ghosts alive 
 yet, dear ? " 
 
 " They were," she said truthfully, " until you came. 
 I guess you banished them." 
 
 "I m glad. I ve often thought I should like to 
 understand your life, Thyrza. Could I ? " 
 
 It sounded wistful. She suddenly felt that since he 
 must so soon be done with earth, it would bring him 
 nearer to her, it would keep him warmer, to consider 
 earthly things. 
 
 " It won t make you angry ? " she hesitated. 
 
 "No. I m past that. But I should like to 
 understand." 
 
 She began then, and very directly told him the 
 story of her meeting Andy and all that followed. He 
 lay with his brilliant gaze fixed on her, and her own 
 clear eyes never faltered from it. If Thyrza had all 
 
 296 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 her life been telling the truth, it appeared to her a 
 preparation, and not too arduous a one, for telling 
 it now. 
 
 "Poor child! "he said. "So you thought it was 
 love." 
 
 All the calmness possible to humanity seemed to 
 have descended upon her that she might keep him 
 undisturbed. 
 
 " Yes," she said, smiling. " I know better now." 
 
 " The earth is pretty cruel to us. She wants to be 
 peopled, the poor earth. She has to be cruel." 
 
 Thyrza went on and told him Laura had sent for 
 her, and that this was hard to meet, because she could 
 never enter Andy s house. Barton s lids had dropped, 
 but they came open here. 
 
 " Why, child," he said, " you must n t do that." 
 
 " Stay away ? How could I go ? There s Laura." 
 
 " You must n t let the past put manacles on you 
 like that. Perhaps the poor devil wants to see you and 
 go shriven, when he goes. There are paths above the 
 paths." 
 
 That she did not surely understand, but it came to 
 her that he meant there was something loftier than 
 her rigid groove. 
 
 " Is n t it funny," he said, " now I ve said that, I 
 can see paths along green terraces, one higher than 
 the other, and you can vault from one up to the other. 
 But I must n t say higher to you, or you 11 think 
 I mean scaling some rocky peak and planting banners 
 there. No ! no ! only do the thing that s warmest and 
 
 297 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 most kind. You 11 write to uncle Terry, won t 
 you? " he added, after a moment s floating off. "It s 
 a dirty trick, my deserting him this way, after he d 
 got used to me. You tell him I said so. He knew why 
 I came to see a woman. Tell him the woman loved 
 me, you loved me, Thyrza. He 11 understand." 
 
 And once again he roused to say, 
 
 "And you won t kiss Laura because it would be a 
 Judas-kiss ? Silly ! silly ! Everything s silly but 
 what was I saying? oh, but being kind! Re 
 member ! " 
 
 It seemed as if the night were slipping fast because 
 the doctor had set that as the bound to Barton s 
 life. Presently he looked at her with different eyes. 
 
 " I rather guess they 11 have to do something for 
 me," he said; and at the rustle of her dress in rising the 
 two men were there. Then after a time she was alone 
 with him again, and he said, "Is n t it strange, what 
 we miss when we listen to our coward wills? I had 
 a bad heart. I let it keep me out of a hundred things 
 that were life life. And I m not dying of it, after 
 all. You let the earth stupefy you, Thyrza, and then 
 you shut yourself up in a prison because you were 
 determined to serve out your sentence. You and I 
 might have been living in a garden all these years." 
 
 Thyrza laid her cheek on the pillow beside his. 
 
 " It is n t that you tried to be too good, darlingest," 
 he counseled her. " It s only that you did n t be 
 lieve enough I did n t either in the thing that 
 makes over and renews. It s all life life life 
 
 298 
 
A KNIGHT PEERLESS 
 
 look at the grass Thyrza ! " She lifted her head and 
 studied him. The clear, awakened tone had some 
 thing new in it. " The minute I m dead, you go to 
 Laura. See the man, if he wants you to. Tell him to 
 live in peace. Let him die in peace. Just now we want 
 it. We want peace." 
 
 66 Yes, yes, I promise." 
 
 " Don t stay for vigils in the chamber and foolish 
 funeral sermons. That would worry me. I don t want 
 you to think of me as a dead man. I shall be alive. Ask 
 uncle Terry ! Yes, you go to Laura. Ah, I m easier!" 
 The potion had begun to work. " Put your head down 
 here, darlingest. Say your prepositions. Then you 
 say a verb, you blessed old conjugating duck!" 
 
 Thyrza put down her face, as he had told her, and 
 began to say her lessons to him, and after a time the 
 two men came in and stood there quietly, and she was 
 aware of Michael and Katie in the hall without. Pre 
 sently somebody touched her on the arm, and she 
 knew it was time to go. 
 
 Downstairs later she inquired of Katie if there was 
 an early train, and when Katie asked if she must take 
 it, Thyrza answered, like a child, 
 
 " He told me to." 
 
XII 
 
 THE SISTEKS 
 
 J_T was the middle of the forenoon that Thyrza was 
 at Leafy Road, and clouds, disclaiming the prophecy 
 of the day before, had parted to let the sun through 
 gloriously. She got out at the end of the train, and, 
 because there might be one or two who would know 
 her, took the little street that runs, though deviously, 
 into the high road ; at one remembered point she 
 stepped over the stone wall into the crosscut and went 
 hurriedly toward home. This was the way running 
 past the Poor Farm, where aunt Ellie had elected to 
 stay, and where Laura had paid her scanty board 
 until she died. It was Thyrza s own road, the one 
 that had led her to all the homely happenings of her 
 youth. It had an autumn brownness now. The dust 
 was on the self heal and stone-clover, hardback was 
 out of bloom, and elder-bushes had lost their drip 
 ping, winy globes. If she went on, it would be, she 
 knew, to find other play-houses where hers had stood 
 with Laura s and Rosie May s. This was not only be 
 cause they three had, in the old days, chosen their sites 
 so cunningly that other children would find them 
 adapted to the purposes of life, but because play 
 houses are inherited from a previous generation, and 
 
 300 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 where one has been another is sure to be. It is as the 
 birds return to a beloved branch. To remember this 
 gave Thyrza an aching yet peaceful sense of the per 
 manence of homely things. 
 
 For the moment it seemed possible to drop the coil 
 of middle life, and, carrying time by assault, leap back 
 into the world when, on still mornings or windy after 
 noons and tranquil ones, she was dipping into wells 
 of learning with Barton Gorse. Yet here she smiled, 
 for Barton Gorse had never been so surely leading her 
 as now. Thyrza had never had such a sense of being 
 companioned and supported by intelligences clearer 
 than her own ; Angelica in her warm impatience and 
 her impulsive carelessness seemed to be with her, and 
 Barton Gorse, the spirit of him, everywhere, through 
 the illusion of nature. He had lifted, for a moment, 
 the curtain of the shows of life, and now he was to 
 look out at her always through the things that are, 
 and counsel her, with the authority of the removed 
 spirit, to understand their fleetingness. 
 
 Her mother s house was closed. The great elm was 
 bare, and the leaves, a drift of crumpled fragments, 
 though some of them, withered into brown scrolls, 
 seemed to hide messages of deepest import, stirred 
 under her feet with a kind of sentience, she felt, a 
 knowledge that she had come. The walls were shut 
 ting her out, yet she could see, in their mellow gray- 
 ness, that they meant kindly to her, and she turned 
 away, her hand at her throat, and on her lips the old, 
 inherited cry, " my soul ! " 
 
 301 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 Andy had torn down his grandmother s house and 
 built him a towered mansion on the hill behind ; but 
 it had not been quite finished when the crash of his 
 fortunes came, and there were bare, hideous lapses 
 in its florid amplitude, places where there were de 
 signed to be ornaments only less horrible than the 
 lack of them, but which, being missed, made it merely 
 desolate. It was a treeless plot. Andy had, in the 
 pride of his fortunes, selected a place where he could, 
 as he said, " have a view," but where it was to be 
 hoped that everybody would take from below a coun 
 ter-view, uninterrupted, of his magnificence. 
 
 Thyrza, in her humility, could not go to the double 
 front-door, weatherworn to the grain. She sought 
 out a side entrance, and twisted the button that was 
 the bell, grinding out sound without resonance. Laura 
 herself was going through the entry it gave upon, and 
 she opened the door. It was strange that, although 
 she was large and fair and handsome, with a smooth 
 outline that left care and trouble no vantage-ground 
 in her face, she should seem to Thyrza not only her 
 self but their mother as well. She was in no sense like 
 Mrs. Tennant, but she breathed to Thyrza such famil 
 iarity and kinship that surely it must be motherhood 
 that spoke in them both, through her also to Laura, 
 she had time to hope. Laura, who was a woman of no 
 outspoken passion, gazed at her an instant, taking in 
 the surprise of her, the unexpectedness of her rich 
 attire, and then uttered her name, and clung to her as 
 if Thyrza, slighter than she, were a refuge of all kinds. 
 
 302 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 " You said you would n t come/ she kept saying. 
 " You said you would n t." 
 
 " I said I could n t/ Thyrza answered gently, her 
 mind now on mercy. What Barton Gorse had coun 
 seled in brief seemed to run into everything. He was 
 the unseen witness of her deeds, to be so f orevermore. 
 " I found I could." 
 
 Laura lifted her wet face and smiled at her, 
 
 "Let me shut the door," she said. "It s kind of 
 chilly, these fall days. Come in the kitchen. There 
 ain t any fire anywheres else, an this old barracks 
 is dreadful cold." 
 
 The sound of her voice, still like their mother s, 
 though of a richer quality, was stimulating and sooth 
 ing, like food and drink. They went on to the kitchen, 
 and Thyrza was moved by the poverty, the unfinished 
 look of everything. It was a meagreness singularly 
 striking beside that of her own house, because hers 
 had been meant to be a little poor refuge and exquisite 
 cleanliness was enough to dress it ; but this had striven 
 for luxury and broken down before attaining it. She 
 went back to the hall and hung up her hat and cloak ; 
 then, finding Laura had disappeared, she returned to 
 the kitchen, and took an apron from the nail. She 
 tied it on, and Laura found her at the sink washing 
 dishes, and said nothing because the act seemed to 
 them both so natural. 
 
 " Where s Andy ? " Thyrza began at length, com 
 posedly. 
 
 Suddenly Andy seemed no longer the enemy of her 
 
 303 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 peace. She could ask for him as she had asked a 
 hundred times years ago when Laura had knowledge 
 of him through kindred purposes and Thyrza was the 
 one outside. 
 
 Laura hesitated a moment. Her mother s frown 
 sprang between her brows. Once there had been 
 delicate indication of it. Now it had come to stay. 
 
 " Well," she said, " I don t hardly know what to 
 make of it." This, Thyrza could see, was the perplexity 
 of one to whom every new issue must, through the 
 habit of misfortune, become a doubtful one. " Andy s 
 give up his speculatin an all high time, too ! even 
 a rat won t gnaw an empty cob an he s took to 
 carpenterin ." 
 
 " Well," said Thyrza, " he was always possessed to 
 get a two-foot rule into his hands." 
 
 " So he was. Sometimes seems if he s took a long; 
 
 o 
 
 turn amongst them mines an things, an gone back to 
 what he was cut out for. Mebbe we all travel a kind 
 of a roundabout way an then come back in the end." 
 
 Abstractions were alien to Laura. Even this homely 
 shred of philosophy must have been so painstakingly 
 nourished that Thyrza wondered what its roots might 
 be. 
 
 But Laura was returning to the obvious. 
 
 "Well, that s how tis," she concluded. Then she 
 cast Thyrza a quick yet doubtful glance. "I don t 
 know how you 11 take it," she said. " I heard Barton 
 Gorse was comin home. It was in the paper when he 
 sailed. He d ought to be here by now." 
 
 304 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Thyrza. She was smiling as if there 
 were something in the news to make her happy. " He 
 came. I saw him." 
 
 Again Laura threw her a sharp look, one that 
 lingered curiously upon her. 
 
 "How d you see him?" she asked. She felt, if it 
 had been by chance, that it might be matter of a 
 doubtful import ; but if he had hastened at once to 
 find Thyrza, then something might arise that was 
 fortunate and just. 
 
 But Thyrza was beginning to tell the story of his 
 coming, of his accident and of her going to him. And 
 she ended, 
 
 . " He died last night. No, this morning, it must 
 have been. The light was coming." It seemed long 
 ago. The time by clocks and watches had not returned 
 to its significance. 
 
 Laura was looking at her in a wondering sympathy. 
 
 " You hurried away an posted right down here," 
 she said. " What made you do that ? " 
 
 " I realized," said Thyrza. Then she stopped and 
 ended soberly, " I realized things are too uncertain." 
 
 "Well," said Laura. "Well." She hesitated a 
 moment. "I don t know hardly what to say, now 
 you re in grief." 
 
 Thyrza s mind flew swiftly back on the path it had 
 traversed. Was this grief? It seemed rather like 
 acquiescence in his calm. If her own forehead ached 
 under the crown blended of pain and love, she must 
 hold her head proudly, not forgetting it was a crown. 
 
 305 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 At last she had been loved. She had been bidden to 
 the high destiny of believing she should be loved 
 again. 
 
 They worked together in silence for a moment. 
 Laura essayed doubtfully, 
 
 "Did you set by hinTtill the last? " The homely 
 phrase bore in her tone all the meaning of a passion 
 ate devotion. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Thyrza, out of the quietude of her 
 state. " There was nobody like him. He set by me, 
 too. We were going to be married." 
 
 Laura drew a quick little breath. 
 
 " No," said Thyrza. " You need n t be sorry. You 
 must n t think anything of him but what s the best. 
 He was the best." 
 
 " It s a terrible world." This Laura felt she could 
 venture. " Things come too late." 
 
 It seemed to Thyrza, in this spring of her hope, 
 that nothing was too late. Everything was in its 
 place, exactly where it must have been to lead to other 
 things supremely good. Her nature, that had strained 
 forward and leaped at the beautiful, and that she had 
 herself kept so long in a narrow bound, had been 
 released again, not to the pliancy of youth but a 
 greater swing and curve toward the divine certainties 
 we know as hope. Barton, at the threshold of the 
 door he had been opening, to go into other regions, 
 had released her. 
 
 " Seems to me," she added, in Laura s own lan 
 guage, "I m going to be happier than ever I was." 
 
 306 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 Laura could not understand. 
 
 " I suppose Petrie s doin well ? " she threw in, as 
 perhaps a valid cause of contentment, one that could 
 be fathomed. 
 
 "Yes. He s in the Philippines." 
 
 "Will you think of that! It s wonderful he went 
 through college as he did." 
 
 Thyrza was about to say, with some pride, that she 
 and Petrie together did think they had done some 
 thing rather noteworthy there, but she stayed her 
 self. One part of her mind, like a sharp and kindly 
 monitor, was teaching her how to shield Barton 
 Gorse s memory, as she had shielded Laura from 
 other things. Laura would think ill of him for letting 
 the mother and child fight out their cause alone. What 
 did these things matter, save as they were kindly 
 or unkind? In a little time all men and all women 
 would be at the end of the way and the door would 
 open. 
 
 Laura was looking abstractedly past her. She wore 
 the frown of deepest thought. Now she rose and took 
 her little shawl from its nail. This had been their 
 mother s shawl. Thyrza knew it, the torn place in 
 the fringe where Barton s puppy of old memory had 
 chewed it, the spot where in a washing the plaids had 
 inexplicably run, and her heart was sick at the call 
 of vanished time. 
 
 "I m goin over to Peltons ," said Laura, with 
 determination now, " an tell Andy you re here. He 
 was thinkin some of stayin over there to dinner, to 
 
 307 
 
THE STORY or THYRZA 
 
 get along with the work ; but when he hears you ve 
 come, I guess he ll put for home." 
 
 Thyrza called after her. " Tell him I shan t stay. 
 Tell him it s only for a little while." 
 
 Shortly, it seemed, after Thyrza had sat looking in 
 a muse at the homely furnishings about her, here and 
 there poignantly familiar, as they had been supple 
 mented from her mother s store, Laura was back 
 again. She sank at once into a chair. It seemed that 
 she could meet her perplexity better so. 
 
 " I don t know hardly how to put it," she began. 
 " He says he can t come home." 
 
 " Well," returned Thyrza gently, " that s all right. 
 Why, you crying, Laura ? My lamb, you must n t cry." 
 
 The habit of tender words woven once shamefacedly 
 for Petrie only, seemed now not bright and strong 
 enough for daily use. 
 
 Laura was wiping her tears abstractedly on the 
 little shawl. 
 
 " Why," said she, "seems if he didn t feel to come. 
 I told him we d got company, an he left off ham- 
 merin an turned round, budge as you please ; an then 
 I told him t was you an he better make half a day, 
 so s to come home, an he put in hammerin for all 
 he s worth, an says he, ( You tell her I m sorry, but 
 I can t. I can t. I can t. I could n t hardly tell what 
 he meant, he hammered so, but seemed as if he kep 
 on sayin it I can t. I can t. I can t. What s got 
 into him, Thyrza ? Andy an you always used to be 
 good friends." 
 
 308 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 Thyrza lifted a cover from a too impetuous kettle. 
 She gave herself a moment for considering. 
 
 " We re good friends now," she said. " You tell 
 him he need n t be sorry any more." 
 
 Hatreds and revenges looked to her like the grains 
 of sand the sea engulfs so deep that they never 
 rise again until the waves pile them, with a million 
 others, to build a rampart. She was not to eat Andy s 
 salt ? She smiled over the puerile conceit when she sat 
 later at the kitchen table, breaking bread with Laura. 
 She could not kiss her sister whose peace she had so 
 terribly invaded. Yet an hour after, when they clung 
 to each other and parted, Thyrza looked her in the eyes 
 with eyes as honest as her own and gave her lips un 
 hesitatingly. This was because Barton Gorse, who was 
 dead, had shown her the better way. 
 
 "I told him how well Petrie s gettin on," Laura 
 said, at parting. " I thought maybe, if he was thinkin 
 of that, he d feel different if he knew the boy had 
 made somethin of himself. ( God ! he says to him 
 self, like that. T was as if he thought how we never d 
 had any children an there was n t a soul to bear his 
 name. God ! he says. Andy never s been a swearin 
 
 man." 
 
 That night Thyrza was home again, spent with 
 hurry but knowing at last the taste of happiness. 
 Barton Gorse was lying in his own house waiting for 
 burial, and her heart was with him though not urging 
 her feet to take her there. She did not even keep 
 vigil for him, but lay down in her bed, hoping for 
 
 309 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 sleep because she needed it, and folding her hands 
 like that other traveler who had found the deepest 
 rest of all. Her hat and cloak she laid aside with a 
 feeling that she should never wear them any more. 
 They had belonged to a great occasion. They seemed 
 like wedding garments spun and made for her meet 
 ing with Barton Gorse, to give him momentary earthly 
 pride in her. She thought it probable that she should 
 go back to her plain clothes and the elderly bonnet 
 with string s. 
 
 o 
 
 II 
 
 When Thyrza came into the inheritance of her 
 house, she went there alone after the last day s pack 
 ing and saying good-by to the little dwelling where 
 she had lived so long. That seemed to her not so 
 much the surrender of a part of her own life as that 
 of Petrie whom she had made over to Angelica. It 
 
 o 
 
 was all Petrie. She had taken the place to bring him 
 up in, she had worked for him there when it would 
 have been easier to lie down and die, if she had 
 wrought for herself alone ; and the chapter was fin 
 ished. Petrie was a part of her gone out into the 
 world, and the nest that had held him seemed a hol 
 low thing. She said good-by to her few acquaintances, 
 and to the river, which had been a beauty and a 
 lonesomeness more intimate in its response to her than 
 any human soul but one. Then she went to her own 
 house in Longford, which seemed to her still, because 
 he had given it to her, the house of Barton Gorse. 
 
 310 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 It was a cold, windless evening when she walked 
 up the drive. The mountain ash by the door was bare 
 and the path had been swept ; she was glad, because 
 there would be no red berries under her feet. A light 
 was in the front hall and another in the kitchen. The 
 place looked ample and dark, but it was kind. She 
 stood in front of it a long time, cold as she was, and 
 looked up at its magnificence. " Are you my house?" 
 she asked it, in a voiceless way, and it seemed to 
 answer, kindly and hopefully, that it was. Then she 
 rang the bell and Katie came, and called upon the 
 saints to govern her surprise. 
 
 " You d a right to let me know you were coming," 
 she said more than once, while she drew Thyrza back 
 into the warm kitchen where she had been sitting, 
 half asleep. Michael had gone out to have a smoke 
 and a gossip with a crony. Thyrza explained that she 
 was neither too cold nor hungry, but that somehow she 
 had wanted to come exactly like this, alone and after 
 dark. Katie got her food and drink ; then they sat and 
 talked about Barton Gorse. Thyrza was avid for ac 
 counts of him, as he was in boyhood, in his young man 
 hood, though she had seen him then ; later, she knew, 
 she could study his mother s picture hanging there in 
 the great hall, and vaguely recalling that other day 
 when she had been here and seen it like a figure 
 through a mist. It was evident that Barton had talked 
 about her to his old retainer. Katie owned as much. 
 That night when he had made his will, he had told 
 her things. Thyrza could see that she was a precious 
 
 311 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 charge. Then Katie left her by the fire and went to 
 prepare a room for her, and Thyrza presently got a 
 candle and went wandering about the lower part of 
 the house. Katie, coming down for more wood, found 
 her just as she stood in the great west parlor, an 
 awed look on her face. 
 
 " Why," said Thyrza, turning in the simplicity of 
 her wonder, " here s a piano." 
 
 Katie nodded. 
 
 " It s tuned," she said. " He told me that the night 
 he died." 
 
 " Told you it was tuned?" 
 
 " Told me to have it done. Keep the piano in 
 order, he says. Keep it tuned. 
 
 Thyrza knew why. It was for her coming. She went 
 up to it timidly, opened the cover and struck a chord. 
 It was not a new piano, but it had been wonderful in 
 its time, and now the reedy thrill of it seemed to 
 summon echoes of long ago. It summoned Barton s 
 mother and with her the little boy that learned to 
 play on those keys, and it wakened, too, the hosts of 
 Thyrza s keen desires when she had been a child and 
 all doors seemed open to her. Now there was only one 
 door open, the one by which Barton had gone, and 
 the way to it looked pleasant and the portal wreathed 
 in flowers. 
 
 While she stood there and Katie went pottering off 
 after her wood, Thyrza wondered why she had wanted 
 a piano : whether it was for the prisoned music in it 
 or because it stood for some of the unattained rich- 
 
 312 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 ness of being while she lived meagrely in her mother s 
 house. She could not tell. She did know that music 
 reft her soul away and carried it to unimagined 
 lands where new desires reigned. It was always desire 
 with her, the surge of life. What would be the desires 
 beyond the flower-wreathed door? But Katie came 
 and scolded her off to bed because the sitting-room 
 was chill, and Thyrza lay in her great four-poster 
 wakefully until the fire flickered down, and felt she 
 had at last come home. 
 
 It was the next day, when her trunks had been 
 delivered and her things were in order and the whole 
 house was warmed so that she could begin living, that 
 Angelica s telegram came, sent on from Tretower. 
 Angelica was of the sort to dart at every invention of 
 the mind of man to save trouble to the white hand 
 that had forgotten labor. Thyrza looked at the length 
 of the message and wondered. When she found it 
 came from Paris, she marveled again, because it had 
 never seemed to her that a wire had been laid under 
 the sea for less than the communication of international 
 affairs. But this was the death of no potentate. It was 
 all about Petrie, of whom Angelica wired as simply, 
 though she did not use his name, as she might have 
 talked of him in a silence behind closed doors. She 
 was jubilant. He had written her fully. When his 
 job was over, he would go to her in Paris. They would 
 be married there. They would probably live six months 
 of every year abroad. Thyrza would come to them. But 
 Thyrza thought she should not go to them. She would 
 
 313 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 stay here, the custodian and lover of Barton Gorse s 
 house, except when Laura wanted her. It might yet be 
 a lingering way to the flowery door, but it would hardly 
 be Ions enough for her to read books and make her- 
 
 O O 
 
 self grand for Barton Gorse when, as he had promised, 
 she should see him again. Thyrza cared less about 
 books than she had, but she would always have an 
 awed worship of what she called the intellectual life. 
 So three or four days passed in a sweet solitude 
 
 blooming with little tasks. She and Katie became 
 & 
 
 the kindest friends, and Thyrza at once seemed to 
 come into the inheritance of loving her house. She 
 had that intimate sense of its possession that springs 
 usually only with inheritance or after long usage, and 
 she began to have visions of what it would be when 
 Angelica and Petrie invaded it. That would never 
 be for long at a time, because they were birds of 
 passage in this keen modern air that tired her 
 but only helped their wings, and it was better for 
 Petrie to grow up with Angelica to love and scold 
 him. Thyrza was still a little afraid of Petrie, because 
 she would never get over the certainty of wronging 
 him by bringing him into the world with no inheritance ; 
 but if he frowned over Barton Gorse for giving her 
 a house, there would be Angelica to tell him, in her own 
 and Petrie s language, which was not the tongue of 
 Thyrza at all, that he must accept a part of his mother s 
 destiny. 
 
 Meantime the minister had called, and Thyrza had 
 said to him quite simply, not to court disguises, that 
 
 314 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 she had been about to marry Barton Gorse when he 
 died. The minister knew that. The doctor had told 
 him, and it became apparent that here, too, in his one 
 last night of action, Barton Gorse had prepared her 
 way for her. Even while she was talking to this 
 authoritative caller, Thyrza s mind, the part that was 
 always in tension, watching, holding itself ready for 
 the assault, warned her that the day might come when 
 her tall Petrie would walk in and she must say with 
 out flinching, " This is my son." But that might 
 never be required of her. She was beginning to 
 believe in the beneficence of things. 
 
 It was a day she always remembered as the one 
 with the beautiful sunset, when some one else came. 
 Thyrza thought she had never in her life seen such a 
 flaming west nor such rivers of various color flowing 
 together under the lucent skyey green. She had gone 
 into the porch to look at it when she saw a figure 
 walking toward her as if it came, taking the curving 
 driveway, out of the west itself. At first, it loomed, 
 through some optical illusion, very large, and by its 
 veiled face and cloaked figure, gave Thyrza, with a throb 
 of the heart, a memory of one of the three sisters she 
 had grown used to seeing, sitting in her room ready 
 to walk with her or wait for her, but never to leave 
 her free. It came closer and lessened, as it neared, 
 into the figure of a woman shrouded from the cold, 
 and Thyrza smiled, because it seemed again an omen 
 that the last Fury left had dwindled into something 
 human like herself. The woman walked rapidly, and 
 
 315 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 seeing Thyrza, threw up her shrouding veil and came 
 the faster. 
 
 " Laura ! Laura ! " 
 
 She ran down the steps, and at the foot they met. 
 Laura looked curiously old-fashioned, for the veil she 
 had thrown over her bonnet was an embroidered one 
 that had been, Thyrza knew, their grandmother s at 
 least. It might have been for warmth, but Thyrza 
 thought it looked like mourning. She drew Laura in, 
 with no more words, and put her by the blazing 
 hearth. There Laura seemed older and half-terrified, 
 as if she were unused to taking impulsive steps and 
 realized this was one. She had dragged her bonnet 
 hastily off, and her hair, rumpled beneath, gave her 
 a disordered look. Thyrza thought she was ill with 
 tiredness. They hardly spoke together until her things 
 were put away, and Thyrza had urged the fire to a 
 brighter opulence. Laura, watching her half-abstract- 
 edly, and yet as if every motion were to be prized 
 because time had so starved her of sisterly companion 
 ship, now when the fire was piled and Thyrza, from 
 a cricket, turned up to her a brightly expectant face, 
 let her hands fall in her lap in what seemed relin- 
 quishment. They lay there as if glad to find no 
 use for their practiced skill. She, too, was smiling a 
 little, faintly, but in an eager way as if she saw 
 reasons for beseeching Thyrza to let them both be 
 happy. 
 
 "Well," said she, "this is a great undertakin ." 
 
 Thyrza hardly dared respond, even by a thought. 
 
 316 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 Why had Laura come? " What is it, dear ? " she man 
 aged to ask faintly. " What have you undertaken ? " 
 
 " Comin here/ said Laura. She was really smiling 
 now. " Packin me a bag an takin the cars an all. 
 I got so worried." 
 
 Had Laura come to ask dreadful questions ? If she 
 had, Thyrza knew she must keep warm arms about 
 her sister until they both could understand there was 
 nothing to be feared, even in such clash and coil of 
 circumstance. It seemed possible at last to trust 
 everybody with the biggest secrets, to make the most 
 tremendous challenges. Yet her heart beat miserably, 
 and it was only when Laura spoke again that she 
 could find the breath to answer. 
 
 " Well, I thought it out, dear, your comin to this 
 big house all soul alone, an seemed as if I d got to 
 drop in an see how twas with you." 
 
 " Oh, is that true, Laura? is that true?" Thyrza 
 cried wildly. " Oh, how dear you were ! " 
 
 Again she hoped the storm had passed her by and 
 somehow, for good, until perhaps she and Laura met 
 within the door Barton Gorse had opened and could 
 smile at all these play-house sorrows. 
 
 " But," said Laura, " there s somethin else." 
 
 Now it had come. Thyrza knew that as well as if 
 the words were on the air. 
 
 "Yes," she answered. " Say it, Laura. Say it quick 
 and get it over." 
 
 Laura was ready. She had framed her simple 
 question. 
 
 317 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 " Thyrza, what s set him ag inst you so ? " 
 
 Thyrza made no play at obscurity. She sat now 
 with her gaze on the hearth, thinking, in a desperate 
 concentration. The firelight flushed to crimson the 
 cheek it touched, and she got up finally and moved 
 outside its range. Then she sat down in a chair at 
 the other side of the hearth. 
 
 " So," she mused, " Andy s set against me ? " 
 
 " Yes. Or, no. maybe it ain t wholly that. Sometimes 
 I ve surmised it ain t that at all. But it s somethin . 
 Seems if I could n t bear to have Andy die, maybe, 
 an not at peace with my own sister. I could n t bear 
 to die myself an think he was unforgivin ." 
 
 " Andy has n t anything to forgive me for," said 
 Thyrza, as simply as she would have reassured a 
 child. 
 
 Laura was musing still. Thyrza considered for a 
 moment. Then she went on. 
 
 " Andy has n t seen me, Laura, since Petrie was 
 born. I guess he never s wanted to." 
 
 Laura was folio wing out her own stumbling thoughts, 
 doggedly, as if she could see them to their conclusion 
 only as she went unaided. 
 
 " Andy s a good man himself," she brooded, " but 
 he never was one to be hard on folks failin s, even 
 the worst. What s made him hard on you ? " 
 
 " We can t talk about it," cried Thyrza. Her voice 
 rang out and frightened her. By a curious inversion, the 
 sound seemed to indicate a return of her old fears and 
 angers. She admonished it to be gentle. " Laura ! " 
 
 318 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 There was a question she had meant to ask once 
 only, if it were possible. It seemed as if the answer 
 might reassure and strengthen her. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Have you been happy with Andy ? " 
 
 Laura looked at her in a perfect clarity. 
 
 " Thyrza," said she, " Andy s rough an he s care 
 less, but he s been a good husband to me as good 
 as ever stepped." 
 
 " I don t mean that. Folks can be good folks, but 
 that don t make us happy with em. Have you been 
 contented ? " 
 
 Laura kept that earnest look. She seemed to be 
 charging herself, in the measure of Thyrza s vehe 
 mence, to answer with a nicety of truth. 
 
 " I Ve been as happy as the day is long. He s had 
 his black times, Andy has. Once he said he used to 
 feel when he was young he was half-drunk all the 
 time, he was so rugged. c But, he says, I got sobered 
 quick enough. I don t know what sobered him. 
 Maybe t was losin money an all, an havin things 
 come out the little end o the horn about the new 
 house. Thyrza," She was looking into the fire 
 now " what do you s pose made Barton Gorse give 
 me that legacy ? " 
 
 "He wanted to," Thyrza temporized. "He felt 
 kindly towards you, Laura." 
 
 " Why, he did n t hardly know me. He had n t begun 
 to give you lessons when I went away with great- 
 aunt Mary." 
 
 319 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 u He knew how much I set by you. Never mind, 
 if it s going to be some use." 
 
 " I guess it is ! Everything s mortgaged an has 
 been nigh onto ten years now. It s a godsend. But 
 there s another queer thing about that Andy says 
 he 11 be whipped if he 11 touch a cent of it. He says 
 it s all goin into the savin s bank in my name." 
 
 Katie came in to tell them supper was ready, and 
 Thyrza said to her, 
 
 " You remember my sister, Katie. She s come to 
 make me a visit. We have n t been able to see each 
 other for years, but she ll be here a great deal now." 
 
 Katie looked at them kindly. 
 
 u Well," said she, " God never shuts one door but 
 he opens another." 
 
 Then they went out to supper, and Laura could 
 hardly eat, and certainly could not talk, because of 
 her wonder over the exquisite table, its damask and 
 bright silver. Once or twice she hid her worn hands 
 
 o 
 
 under the cloth, when she thought Katie might be 
 looking and judging her for not growing up more of 
 a lady ; but Thyrza was so calm that presently she, too, 
 could be. 
 
 Her room was opposite Thyrza s, with the hall 
 between, and when they were undressed Thyrza went 
 across the way, her hair hanging, and brush in hand. 
 She felt little and young, and she wanted to gossip 
 as they used to, only that was in whispers lest their 
 mother should call to them to go right straight off to 
 sleep. Laura, in her nightgown, her face flushed by 
 
 320 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 the fire, was younger than the woman in the figured 
 veil. 
 
 " Mercy, Thyrza," she said, " you don t mean to tell 
 me you ve kep up brushin your hair at night, hard 
 as you ve worked." 
 
 "Every night," Thyrza smiled. She had wanted to 
 hold fast to every nicety of habit because she was 
 Petrie s mother. 
 
 "Well, I ain t," said Laura. She sat down in the 
 big hooded chair by the fire, and Thyrza wrapped a 
 shawl about her. "I ve been so tired, for the last 
 twenty years, I could n t do any more n tumble into 
 bed. Thyrza, what made you say that to old Katie? " 
 
 "What, Laura?" 
 
 " About my bein here considerable." 
 
 " You re going to be," Thyrza cried, with unaffected 
 appeal. " Why, whatever should I do if you were n t ? 
 Of course you 11 be here every minute he can spare 
 
 you." 
 
 "You see, I just packed my bag an took the train, 
 because seemed as if I had to touch you. There was 
 another reason, too. But I never so much as thought 
 you d say a thing like that." 
 
 " You re all I ve got to make a home with." 
 
 " You ve got Petrie." 
 
 " Petrie 11 be away. He s one of the roving kind." 
 
 " Andy was," Laura said, her mind going inevit 
 ably back. " Sometimes I ve though the never was the 
 man to settle down in one spot. Thyrza ! " Now the 
 moment had really come. Thyrza quailed before it 
 
 321 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 with an inherited pang, because the gentle voice had 
 in it a mandatory note lent it by trouble. It seemed 
 a family voice, mother s, perhaps, bidding them come 
 in out of the dew, or great-aunt Mary s even, echoing 
 with some truism to the effect that they must heed 
 and obey. " Thyrza," the voice relentlessly continued, 
 " if you know anything ag inst Andy that makes him 
 loath to face you, you tell me now." 
 
 The fire leaped and fell, to vault again, and the 
 answering shadows looked like uncouth shapes com 
 missioned to a mad authority. They ran over the 
 peaceful room and wrought unmeaning havoc with it. 
 The flowers on the wall-paper moved to show they 
 were alive in some new, unhappy way, and the window- 
 curtains seemed to tremble as if there were hands 
 upon them. 
 
 Thyrza, without premeditation, was on her knees 
 at her sister s side, swept by a thousand impulses, 
 commanded by as many voices. The voices chorused 
 at her, but in harmony. Barton Gorse was smilingly, 
 whimsically even, reminding her again that grief was 
 only the root of something bound to blossom glori 
 ously ; her mother was telling her in homely speech 
 to "play kind and pretty" with her sister, and 
 Angelica s clear, brilliant note, overtopping the others, 
 bade her remember there were ways of doing things 
 well when you needed to do them at all. That voice 
 of Angelica s, touched with color like little points of 
 light, was urging her to move cleverly, delighting, if 
 she could, in the game, and she, more even than the 
 
 322 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 others, made it seem as if the devil of tragedy were 
 the adversary and Thyrza must outwit him. Also 
 Thyrza seemed to be on her knees, not to Laura but 
 in the humble house of life Laura had built, kneeling 
 there and with both her hands washing it to make it 
 clean, praying in it that she might help to keep it 
 holy. Now she lifted her head and looked at her 
 sister, laughing a little, unaffectedly. Angelica, she 
 knew, was showing her that device. She chose their 
 childhood s speech, to send her darts the straighter. 
 
 " Laura," now she laughed again, "don t you 
 know what men-folks are ? Once you wear em out 
 they take to their heels, and that s the last you see 
 of em. When we were little, you and Andy were for 
 ever getting up projects together, and I was forever 
 under foot. I guess Andy had enough of me then, so 
 it s lasted till this day. Men-folks don t reason. They 
 just act." 
 
 " Well," said Laura, in a trembling clutch at a 
 responsive gayety, " seems if they acted pretty foolish 
 sometimes." 
 
 She was leaning back in her chair, shaking all over 
 with long shudders. Thyrza laid a hand on each of 
 her wrists, and holding her so, looked at her fixedly. 
 
 " Laura," she said, "there is n t a thing in the world 
 I blame Andy for, not a thing. You remember that. 
 If ever there s any need of it, you tell him so." But 
 as she said it she knew there was no need. The danger 
 had gone by. Her laugh had banished it. 
 
 " Maybe I Ve been a fool," said Laura. The shud- 
 323 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 ders, quieting now, were little more than breaths, 
 half-laughing ones. Now wifely loyalty came flooding 
 back, and she cried jealously, " I was goin to say if 
 you thought you knew anything, it wa n t true. I 
 could show you it wa n t true." 
 
 Thyrza came to her feet and sank soberly into a 
 chair. The fire had quieted into a warm-hearted glow, 
 and the room seemed stiller, in some way, the flowers 
 on the walls fixed in a garden of their own, and the 
 window-curtains like watchers keeping out the dark 
 and cold. Laura was reflecting in a relief as different 
 as possible from the mood just dissipated, and Thyrza s 
 face, reddened from the fire and shadowed by its dark 
 hair, seemed to arrest her gaze. 
 
 " Why, Thyrza," said she, " you look terrible young." 
 
 " You will now you re going to have an easier 
 time," said Thyrza, and then threw in a phrase of 
 their mother s, " when you get cruited up." 
 
 " I feel as old as the hills," Laura confessed, with 
 a little amused laugh at their plight of coming age. 
 It was the first laugh Thyrza had heard from her, and 
 she loved it. " Seems if t would be kind o restful to 
 grow old." 
 
 Thyrza considered for a moment. 
 
 " I don t know but I should like to grow old, too," 
 she said. 
 
 " It come to me the other day, that women give 
 over bein young when they get through with men- 
 folks. Well, you ve got through, Thyrza. It ain t 
 likely you 11 take notice again." 
 
 324 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 " No," said Thyrza. She laughed a little, tenderly. 
 It seemed to her as if there could hardly be minutes 
 enough in the longest day to reassure Laura from her 
 long timidity at life, to entertain and serve her. " Let s 
 play we re mother," she said. " You play it this visit 
 and I will next time." 
 
 Laura smiled then. 
 
 " You was always one to keep things goin ," she 
 said. " I guess you never d want to dress the way 
 mother did, come to that. You ve got a terrible gay 
 hat an cloak." 
 
 " I shan t wear em any more," said Thyrza ear 
 nestly, " not unless " 
 
 " Unless what, dear?" 
 
 "Unless Petrie and his wife want I should." She 
 flushed with pride when she spoke of Petrie s wife. 
 
 Laura smiled again at her, in great fondness. 
 
 " I guess you 11 wear em out," she prophesied. 
 66 1 m an old woman, Thyrza. It ain t years that 
 change us ; it s what you ve been through." 
 
 Thyrza could not answer. It seemed to her she had 
 been through enough. 
 
 " You was always one to rise on the top o the 
 wave," said Laura, ruminating. "I shouldn t be sur 
 prised if you had considerable life yet." 
 
 Thyrza wondered. She could see herself here with 
 Margaret Petrie, who had just written that she 
 was coming home, with Laura, too, in jealously de 
 sired intervals. Others would come. Margaret Petrie 
 would draw them by her divine, fantastic kindness, 
 
 325 
 
THE STORY OF THYRZA 
 
 and they could rest and go their ways again sure- 
 f ootedly. Perhaps thousands of pilgrims would come, 
 or even one or two superlatively weary, and Thyrza 
 could be allowed to read to them from the illuminated 
 missal of her hope. But there was another path. That, 
 too, she saw open to her. Petrie and Angelica might 
 summon her, and she guessed how Angelica would 
 adorn her, telling her age had its own beauty. The 
 road would lead her out into the world, and she knew 
 Barton Gorse would wish her to go, and that she 
 should strangely find his footprints there at the 
 shrines art had adorned and prayed before. It would 
 be like lingering through long galleries where every 
 picture told her some story of what he had learned 
 or loved light-heartedly ; that might ensure her a 
 more perfect kinship with him when they should 
 meet at last. Yet here she paused, remembering that 
 their harmony in that day would spring from some 
 thing simpler still the old, old love of righteous 
 ness. 
 
 Perhaps Laura, too, would go journeying with her, 
 and gasp over the wonders of the earth so faintly 
 set forth by her school geography. Whatever hap 
 pened, it was all simple and plain because Barton 
 Gorse had seemed to explain it to her, and at the end 
 there would be the flowery door and Barton Gorse to 
 show her other ways. 
 
 She came to herself with a start. Laura was regard 
 ing her benevolently. 
 
 "I guess you most dropped off," she said. 
 
 326 
 
THE SISTERS 
 
 Thyrza braided her hair and tossed it back over 
 her shoulder. She rose to say good-night. 
 
 " Laura ! " 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " What if you and I should sleep together just 
 to-night same s we used to ? " 
 
 Laura was looking at her with suffused eyes, all 
 longing and understanding. 
 
 " I guess we better," she agreed. " I m the biggest. 
 I 11 put my arm over you." 
 
 Thyrza nodded. 
 
 " Same as mother used to." 
 
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