: 
 
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 DRUMSTICKS
 
 DRUMSTICKS 
 
 KATHERINE 
 MARY 
 CHEEVER 
 MEREDITH 
 
 (JOHANNA STAATS) 
 
 A LITTLE STORY OF A 
 SINNER AND A CHILD 
 
 (SECOND EDITION) 
 
 MDCCCXCV 
 THE TRANSATLANTIC PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 63 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 LONDON 
 26 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895 
 
 BY 
 THE TRANSATLANTIC PUBLISHING COMPANY
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER FAOB 
 
 I. In which the Sinner meets the Child .... 5 
 
 II. Being an interpolation 27 
 
 III. In which the Sinner repents 43 
 
 IV. Introducing the Woman who was a Wife, 
 
 but, most of all, a Mother 61 
 
 V. Showing how the Sinner posed 75 
 
 VI. Containing a Confession 94 
 
 VII. Showing how the Child seemingly profits 
 
 by the bin 101 
 
 VIII. During which the Child is happy 119 
 
 IX. Dealing with the Sinner, the Child, and 
 
 a little Ship 131 
 
 PART II. 
 
 I. In which the Child makes a Prayer 137 
 
 II. In which the Good Woman learns to lie. . 152 
 
 III. In which the Woman thinks aloud a little 168 
 
 IV. The Ship reaches the Star 175 
 
 V. Showing that the Lucky Sinner knows 
 
 a Woman 189 
 
 178218G
 
 ' For the daintiest bird 
 Is the sport of the storm."
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 " For the daintiest bird 
 Is the sport of the storm." 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 IN WHICH THE SIN X EE MEETS THE CHILD. 
 
 " HAVE they como to the sweets ?" 
 
 " I believe they have." 
 
 A man's astonished gaze sought the 
 shadows above upon the first stair lauding, 
 where the stamped leathers of the wall 
 were imperfectly lighted by a swinging 
 Venetian lamp. It was a small, cautious, 
 yet tranquil voice which had thus ad- 
 dressed him, and he walked slowly to the 
 foot of the stairs, his head upon one side, 
 fondling his smooth chin, hesitating, as 
 he regarded the person of a young female 
 child, whose one white, trailing night gar-
 
 6 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 ment was worn with sleepy nonchalance. 
 
 A child ? And here ! 
 
 He had known of its existence, yet the 
 incongruity of its presence in this house 
 had never struck him before. He had 
 been aware that somewhere away up in the 
 fourth story there was a place where a 
 child lived, uneventfully enough, hidden 
 away under the eaves like a swallow. The 
 thought had knocked at the door of his 
 sense. He had heard Sophie speak of her, 
 yet not as often as she had spoken of the 
 cook. 
 
 He had never seen the cook. But here 
 was the child in person. There was a 
 puzzled interrogation in his air as he ap- 
 proached the small being. Its name ! 
 What was it ? He could not recall it. 
 Yet he remembered that he had thought 
 that creature of laughter, Sophie, alluding 
 to a canary when he had first heard her 
 use it. 
 
 "A bird?" he had asked. 
 
 " No, my child/' she had replied, some- 
 what carelessly. 
 
 And he had taken it quite seriously for
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 7 
 
 as long a time as it had taken him to finish 
 the cigar he was then smoking. And af- 
 terward he had found that nothing apper- 
 taining to Sophie could be for a moment 
 taken seriously. 
 
 " Have they marrons to-night ?" 
 
 " I think so." 
 
 " Will you fetch me some ?" 
 
 " With pleasure ! " 
 
 "And not tell ?" 
 
 " Not I. I never tell." 
 
 " That's because you're a man/' was the 
 amazing answer. " Boys never tell. Girls 
 do. Sophie does. Joy says so. / don't. 
 But then I never have anything to tell." 
 Here the child laughed cheerfully, adding 
 with emphasis : " Perhaps you wouldn't 
 mind going after the marrons right away. 
 If you don't, they may eat 'em all up." 
 She extended both hands with a dramatic 
 gesture and upturned pink palms. 
 
 The child seemed tall for her years, 
 which Poole imagined to be seven. She 
 was very slim, with a small head, upon 
 which the dark hair was closely cut. John 
 Poole made a laughing inclination as he
 
 8 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 turned upon his heel, disappearing within 
 a supper room at the end of the hall, leav- 
 ing his new acquaintance to peer between 
 the uprights of the balustrade, rubbing 
 her eyes sleepily and yawning. 
 
 The polished floor in the hall beneath 
 her reflected dully the stiff black legs of a 
 couple of chairs, as well as the snow of 
 some roses heaped upon a pile of fur-bor- 
 dered wraps. It was close upon midnight, 
 and the warm, perfumed atmosphere was 
 frequently cut, as with a knife, by the 
 sharp air from without, when the door 
 opened to admit guests, who were, with- 
 out exception, men. Lamps, shaded in 
 embroidered laces and gay-colored silks, 
 dimly lighted a small unoccupied recep- 
 tion room at the right of the entrance. 
 But the chief radiance fell from the open 
 door of a supper room at the end of the 
 hall. Laughter, scrappy sentences, ex- 
 clamations, greetings, and farewells could 
 be beard from within, where some half- 
 dozen people sat informally about a table. 
 A woman's voice, shrill, mocking, yet sin-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 9 
 
 gularly sweet, singled itself out from the 
 rest. 
 
 The child waited, listening, her dark 
 eyes gloomily apprehensive of a failure in 
 the raid she had instituted upon the mar- 
 rons glacee. 
 
 Her wide-parted lips revealed bits of 
 tiny darkened first teeth, of which one 
 was already loosened, being displaced by 
 a firm, white, new one. This she nerv- 
 ously fingered, in a childish way, with a 
 little thin forefinger. The child had a 
 small, fine, perfectly straight nose, which 
 promised character to the face in future, 
 and already gave a certain charm to its 
 immaturity. The eyes were large, soft, 
 and expressive. Leaning, she grasped the 
 balustrade in both hands, looking down 
 into the hall with grave anxiety, and shiv- 
 ering as she felt the night air which en- 
 tered with the last visitor, a new-comer, 
 a tall, anaemic young fellow, who nodded 
 to Poole as he returned with the desired 
 marrons. 
 
 " Alex ! " 
 
 " Poole ! What's your hurry ? "
 
 10 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 A glance explained the situation. 
 
 " The youngster, hey ? Say, Poole, 
 wasn't it glorious ? " 
 
 "Very good." 
 
 " Very good ! Nonsense ! It was a 
 hit. There'll be a long run ! I suppose 
 Sophie is receiving congratulations. In 
 a hurry ? Ah, I see. Paying court to 
 the child, eh ? I suppose it is hers. 
 Isn't it ? " 
 
 " If you'll allow me, I'll go and ask it." 
 
 "Certainly. Well yours later." And 
 the speaker vanished within the supper 
 room. 
 
 That night the new light opera, "The 
 Golden Bubble," had put a cap and bells 
 upon the head of the foolish old town. 
 And the mesmeric beauty and sweet voice 
 of Sophie Stang had contributed to the 
 success of the first night performance. 
 The critics were at that moment scribbling 
 the fact in order to feed the machines of 
 morning dailies. They were not saying 
 much about "E in alt," nor were they al- 
 luding to supernal adagios and cosmic 
 tones to grace an angelic choir. They
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 11 
 
 were announcing, simply enough, that lit- 
 tle Sophie Stang, a London music hall 
 singer within the five years, had made a 
 success of a small role in a new operatic 
 skit, the score of which was good, very 
 good, and the book of which was bad, 
 very bad if one asks for the truth always. 
 And the town hugged its sides as it whis- 
 tled the airs of " The Golden Bubble," and 
 the dozen or so friends of Miss Stang were 
 making of her small, narrow-fronted 
 house a sort of temple, the air of which 
 swooned with the breath of the purple and 
 white floral tokens which were heaped 
 mightily within it. 
 
 And upon the first stair landing of that 
 house, which had been rented for the sea- 
 son, the small daughter of Sophie Stang 
 awaited anxiously some much desired, if 
 undesirable, marrons glacee an inno- 
 cent child herself more desirable than 
 desired. 
 
 With kindly deference Poole gallantly 
 presented the sweets the little one, run- 
 ning lightly up the stairs to do so. He 
 found himself quietly interested. An
 
 12 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 hour before he had been very much bored, 
 but he now promised himself some amuse- 
 ment. He settled himself upon the upper 
 stair close beside his small companion, 
 who, already seated, was balancing the 
 plate with difficulty upon her knees as she 
 began to eat her coveted marrons. Sud- 
 denly she looked up. 
 
 " You didn't tell Sophie ? " 
 
 " Certainly not ! " asserted Poole, warm- 
 ly. " Didn't I promise I would not ?" 
 
 " I'm glad you didn't. She would have 
 scolded Joy." 
 
 " May I ask who is Joy ?" 
 
 " Joy's a nice old person. She sleeps 
 in my room and cares for me. She came 
 over with us when we came. I've known 
 her longest of any one except Sophie." 
 
 " Sophie ! Is not Sophie your mamma?" 
 
 " Of course she is !" with a puzzled 
 glance at him. 
 
 " Then why do you call her Sophie ? 
 Why not call her ' Mamma,' as other little 
 girls call their mothers ?" 
 
 " I'm afraid I'm afraid I'm not like 
 other little girls !" said the child, looking
 
 DEITMSTICKS. 13 
 
 at him closely and toying with a chestnut. 
 The smile left her lips, and the puzzled 
 look in her eyes became intensified. 
 
 The man sat staring at her, silent, his 
 hands planted upon his knees. Here was 
 a situation. This child was not at all 
 what one would have expected of the 
 child of Sophie. Or was it, perhaps, that 
 Sophie was not what one would have ex- 
 pected of the mother of such a child ? 
 
 ff Aren't you a bit lonely, sometimes ?" 
 he asked of her, suddenly. 
 
 " I don't understand I" said she, with 
 raised brows. She sighed. Then, attract- 
 ed by the marrons again, she began to 
 munch them, rolling her eyes like a bliss- 
 ful kitten. 
 
 "I come down here at night; that's 
 fun, you know," she added, presently. 
 " Riggs brings me things. But I knew he 
 was too busy to-night. I could hear the 
 corks pop. I wake up when I hear Sophie 
 come home in her carriage. There's such 
 a noise always ! Before that everything 
 is so awful quiet. They all laugh down
 
 14 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 here. Joy never laughs. So I come down 
 and listen/* 
 
 " And no one knows but Riggs ?" Poole 
 knew who Riggs was. 
 
 "No. You see, I creep, creep, like a 
 mouse. I play I'm a mouse. Then, when 
 I get here, and see Riggs in the hall, I 
 scratch with my fingers so." She gently 
 rasped the balusters with her tiny nails. 
 "And then he brings me sweets. And 
 he never tells Sophie. Then I sit here, 
 like a mouse, and nibble, and listen, until 
 I get cold and tired ; then I go back to 
 bed, and there is old Joy asleep. She 
 never knows. Are you afraid of a 
 mouse ?" 
 
 " No. But I don't like them. I like 
 you. How could I help that ?" 
 
 His gray eyes were rather small and 
 pale, but there was a pleasant light in 
 them which the child fancied. They had 
 heavy lids and there were lines about 
 them, but on the whole she decided that 
 they were not ugly eyes. His rather wide 
 mouth had a slow smile. 
 
 "Fm glad," replied the child, hushing
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 15 
 
 her voice to a confidential whisper. " I 
 like you, too." 
 
 " That is very nice. Why should yon ?" 
 
 " Because you're good." 
 
 " Am I ?" And the man seemed first 
 amused and then saddened. And his 
 tones grew quite tender as he said : " But 
 you ought to be asleep, small woman !" 
 
 "I was. But I dreamed. I always 
 dream. I hate to dream." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because I dream so many things that 
 aren't so. And then it is worse when I 
 wake up." The little face was very sober. 
 
 " What things ?" He caressed her short 
 locks. 
 
 " Oh, that I'm like other little girls 
 that I've a papa. Will you never laugh if 
 I ask you a question ?" 
 
 ' ' Never !" promised Poole, earnestly. 
 
 " Well, have all these other little girls 
 papas ?" 
 
 Poole whistled a strain of " The Golden 
 Bubble," softly, and drew a long breath 
 before he answered her question with 
 another.
 
 16 DKUMSTTCKS. 
 
 << Why do you ask that ?" 
 
 " Because I heard so. And I wonder 
 about it." 
 
 The cheek nearest Poole became sud- 
 denly plump with the fulness of a marron. 
 With enforced deliberation she proceeded : 
 
 " One day in the park you know I go 
 every day to the park one day in the 
 park I liked a little girl, and she liked 
 me. But her nurse knew Joy, and she 
 put her head up, so, and pulled the little 
 girl away by her arm. She said, 'You 
 mustn't play with her she hasn't any 
 papa !' And she laughed, and Joy was 
 just as mad. I never saw her so mad. 
 The little girl's name was Fanny. Her 
 maid called her so. Do you like that 
 name ?" 
 
 " It is a good name enough. But what 
 is yours ? 
 
 " I don't believe I ever had any real name. 
 But they call me most always Drum- 
 sticks." 
 
 It was the name which Poole had heard 
 the child's mother use once or twice, and 
 which for some unaccountable reason he
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 17 
 
 had been unable to recall. The situation 
 was becoming more interesting. There 
 was so much of incongruity between this 
 friendly little child with the innocent 
 eyes, her forlorn young life hidden away a 
 secret of the fourth floor ; and the mother 
 of the child, whose mocking voice he could 
 hear as he sat indulging himself in his 
 queer tete-a-tete. With the mother he 
 felt himself something of a saint. "With 
 the child he was conscious that he was but 
 a man and a bad one. He smiled as he 
 tried to explain this to himself, and the 
 child seeing his cheerfulness thought it 
 was mirth inspired by her odd name, of 
 which she was always much ashamed. 
 
 " "What a name ! " he said, absently, at 
 length. " Why do they call such a small 
 and very sweet child by such a long and 
 very ugly name ? " 
 
 "That was what Riggs asked Joy 
 when we first came." And the child's 
 eyes sparkled with pleasure at the en- 
 chantment of his careless flattery. 
 
 " What did Joy say ?" 
 
 " She said " and the child enunciated
 
 18 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 each word carefully and solemnly, as if long 
 committed to memory and often studied 
 in search of a meaning " she said, that 
 she guessed it was while any one would like 
 a wing or a bit of the white meat, that no- 
 body wanted drumsticks the legs of the 
 chicken, you know." 
 
 There was more than a suggestion of 
 tearful pride in the voice now, and Poole 
 looked gravely away from her as she con- 
 tinued, half shutting his eyes and stretch- 
 ing out his arm as if to enfold her within 
 its circle. He restrained himself, how- 
 ever, amused to find that he was afraid 
 of offending by offering sympathy which 
 had not as yet been asked. Drumsticks 
 was not a young person with whom one 
 might take liberties carelessly. 
 
 " You see, I was named on Christmas 
 night. Joy says I was brought to the 
 table for the first time then, and when 
 they named me oh, I don't remember all 
 of it. It's too long. But I remember 
 what Joy told Riggs. I went off by my- 
 self and got Miss Gray Blanket (Poole 
 afterwards made the acquaintance of this
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 19 
 
 friend of the loneliest child he ever knew), 
 and we thought about it for a long while." 
 
 Poole watched her from the corners of 
 his eyes. She had forgotten the remain- 
 ing marrons, and was speaking with the 
 composure of a sad woman of the world. 
 
 " I guess it's true. Nobody wants me. 
 Sophie doesn't, and Joy doesn't often. 
 They all say 'Run away, Drumsticks!' 
 They've said that most often of anything 
 they've ever said to me 'Run away, 
 Drumsticks I ' ' She looked at him very 
 anxiously. 
 
 "Do you think you could like a little 
 girl with such a name ? " 
 
 " I know I could. On second thought, 
 I like the name very much. It's so odd, 
 don't you know ! And there's only one 
 Drumsticks. And I'm sure she's an aw- 
 fully jolly sort." 
 
 The child clasped her hands and held 
 them out to her new friend, while she 
 flashed upon him a very radiant face. As 
 the sceptre was extended he made bold to 
 touch her little dark head with his kiss.
 
 20 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 In a second her arms were about his 
 neck, her lips at his ear : 
 
 " Kiss me would you mind ? just 
 once more ; no one ever, ever kisses me." 
 
 And this time the kiss became quite a 
 solemn affair almost a sacrament a seal 
 to a compact one never to be forgotten 
 by Poole. There are memories of kisses 
 and kisses to a man dreaming over his 
 pipe along in his forties. And none are 
 recalled more tenderly than those ex- 
 changed with a pure little maiden of very 
 few summers. And the worse a man is 
 morally, the more prone he is to dwell 
 upon such recollections. 
 
 John Adzit Poole was twenty-seven 
 years old at the time of the happenings 
 related in this story. But he lived to be 
 old enough to care for memories. And 
 among others he often saw himself sitting 
 in the dusky shadows of the staircase 
 with a very small grave maiden by his 
 side. Almost he could recall the sound 
 of that airy mockery in the tones of 
 the mother as he heard it from the supper 
 room below, amid a chorus of male voices.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 21 
 
 And when he did so the pain of it and 
 the shame of it grew great, and he needed 
 the other memory of a child's holy kiss 
 to give him back again his manhood's 
 self-respect. 
 
 "Who are your companions ? Who 
 does Drumsticks play with ? " he asked, 
 stroking her head gently, and by this time 
 absolutely lost in amazement at the posi- 
 tion in which he found himself. Poole 
 had never liked children. 
 
 " Oh ! I play with Miss Gray Blanket, 
 and I play with Fanny." 
 
 " Fanny ? The little girl ? " 
 
 " Yes. After it's dark, you know, I 
 play with her. Then I talk to her. She 
 never answers. But I play she's so tired 
 she can't. Of course, I can't play that 
 when it is light. For then I could see 
 that she was not there. But in the dark 
 she might be." 
 
 "Exactly," responded Poole, abstract- 
 edly. He was thinking that many men 
 and women indulge in the same game. 
 Sometimes with their faith in each other ; 
 more often, though, with their creeds.
 
 22 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 " So I say every night : ' Good-night, 
 Fanny ! ' and then I say softly to my 
 blanket : ' She's asleep ! Don't wake her 
 up ! ' And we both lie very still, until 
 the first thing I know why, I don't 
 know anything I" Drumsticks laughed 
 merrily, and, snuggling close to Poole, 
 seemed to anticipate somewhat passing 
 that night upon the stairs. 
 
 He was thinking that she ought to be 
 in bed, and wondering how best to sug- 
 gest the subject without any appearance 
 of haste. 
 
 " Do you think Sophie is pretty ? " 
 The question seemed to explode in his 
 ear. He had thought Sophie extremely 
 beautiful and been sorry for it. His 
 eyes suddenly became mere expressionless 
 slits, outlined by his short black lashes. 
 
 " Very/' said he briefly. " But you 
 must go to bed now." 
 
 " I will." She arose obediently, placing 
 the plate and remaining marrons upon the 
 upper stair. 
 
 "Shall I see you again?" she asked 
 wistfully.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 23 
 
 " I think so of course. " 
 
 " People change so ! You see the same 
 people a few days or only once I mean 
 I see them over the balustrades when Fm in 
 the hall here looking down. And then 
 you never, never see them any more. 
 Always new people and new places. 
 I've seen you heaps of times when I've 
 been here watching. Would you mind 
 would you be mad if I told you what 
 I've always, always called you ? ' 
 
 They were both standing now, Poole 
 shaking out his trouser-legs and stretch- 
 ing his arms. He was tired and glad to 
 end it. He looked down upon her slim 
 person, her face grown rosy during the 
 half-hour, reminding him of a small 
 round apple stuck upon a willow switch. 
 Her head, although so small, impressed 
 one as being too heavy for her slender 
 swaying body. 
 
 "May I whisper ? You won't be mad f " 
 
 He stooped laughingly. 
 
 " I call you, I have always called you 
 quite to myself, you know no one knew
 
 24 DKUMSTICKS. 
 
 and it has been such a comfort ! " Her 
 lips were against his ear. 
 
 " You came so often, you know " 
 " Yes, yes ! What was it my name, 
 which you gave me ? " 
 
 " I called you my Play -papa ! " 
 Poole started away from her, flushing 
 an angry red. The servants ! Had the 
 child been taught ? A glance at her face 
 dispelled the idea. Yet dropping the for- 
 mer tenderness of tone, he kissed her 
 coldly, pulled her pretty white ear, and 
 told her indifferently to run away up to 
 bed. Turning, he leisurely descended the 
 stairs, looking at his watch as he did so. 
 
 Drumsticks had flown away into the 
 darkness, yet just as Poole replaced his 
 watch in his vest pocket he heard a stifled 
 but unmistakable sound. Drumsticks was 
 evidently weeping, guilty of an offence 
 which she would never comprehend. 
 
 "The little devil!" murmured Poole 
 to himself. Then he whipped about, and, 
 running up three steps at a time, came 
 upon her half-way up the second flight.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 25 
 
 There was no light in the third and fourth 
 stories of the house. 
 
 Lifting her in his arms, her wet cheek 
 against his, he carried her slowly the rest 
 of her journey. 
 
 " Drumsticks, see here ! " he whispered, 
 out of breath and panting, although her 
 weight was slight. " Call me Play-papa 
 if you like. But prove that girls can keep 
 secrets as well as boys ! And don't tell 
 any one not even Fanny ! " 
 
 The relief from her misery was so sud- 
 den that Drumsticks administered an im- 
 passioned hug which exhibited unexpected 
 strength. As she slipped from his arms 
 just outside a door upon the fourth floor 
 of the house, and from which the light of 
 a night lamp shone, her loose night robe 
 drew tightly across her childish knees, 
 which, having recently lost their infantile 
 roundness, were assuming the character- 
 istic angularity of her seven years. 
 
 " Aren't feet ugly ?" she asked of him, 
 smilingly, through damp lashes, and re- 
 garding her own with critical attention. 
 
 " But good-night "
 
 26 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 And while well upon his way down the 
 third flight a fervent, floating whisper 
 reached him a mere shadow of a voice : 
 
 " Good-night, good-night, Play-papa ! "
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 BEING AN INTERPOLATION. 
 
 " If I could dwell 
 
 Where Israfel 
 Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
 
 He might not sing so wildly well 
 A mortal melody." 
 
 To make a story, two men and a woman 
 are necessary, or one man and two women. 
 The first is a comedy, the second a tragedy. 
 And when a child or so is included in the 
 dramatis persona the whole thing becomes 
 still more complicated. 
 
 John Adzit 1'oole at twenty-seven was a 
 young man of fair family, a moderate in- 
 come, the best of reputations, and good 
 intentions. 
 
 In the spring of the year in which the 
 happenings of this small tale occurred in 
 fact, up to the third day of the June of 
 that year he had the one woman in his
 
 28 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 life which the law allows a man, she being, 
 as you will at once take it, his wife. Up 
 to that time, then, we had not the ma- 
 terial for a story. But Poole was happy in 
 a decent, sober way, which never is known 
 to be the case after the story commences. 
 And so was Charlotte, his good and true 
 wife. And so also, for aught we know, 
 was young Poole, their infant son and 
 heir, in spite of the lack of experience ap- 
 pertaining to his extreme youth. 
 
 But upon the third day of June the sec- 
 ond woman had made her appearance. 
 With her came the tragedy, upon which 
 Poole's family, income, reputation, and 
 even good intentions seemed to confer the 
 gigantic proportions of crime. An out- 
 and-out roue sins so constantly that those 
 sins seem to dwindle in the eyes of the 
 observer, until if he struggles madly to sin 
 a great sin he seems but to have commit- 
 ted an indiscretion. Poole, on the con- 
 trary, had always been a most exemplary 
 young man. And when after years of 
 correct living he fell, his soul was stag- 
 gered by the monstrous proportions of the
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 29 
 
 thing. One may as well state that his good 
 intentions might have saved him if he had 
 not had, at the same time, that well-de- 
 veloped sixth sense, which is an insane 
 love of beauty, and which is, no doubt, 
 but a refinement of our sense of utility, as 
 Byron would have us believe, and he ought 
 to know. 
 
 There is a something of pleasure which 
 a fine swimmer feels [if only Poole had 
 never learned to swim !] which is abso- 
 lutely unknown to the timid. The latter 
 is constantly repeating to himself, " Dare 
 I ? " And his mind deals extensively with 
 distance, depth, tide, undertow, current, 
 and other well-forgotten matters. He 
 knows nothing of that exquisite remote- 
 ness from self-consciousness experienced 
 by the swimmer, who is so far amphibious 
 as to become indifferent to such considera- 
 tions. 
 
 To such an one the things the other 
 fears are but words caught in the hollow 
 of the wave-cup, and flung to him from 
 bathers at the white surf -edge. He fon- 
 dles the water, and is treated in return so
 
 30 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 benignly that he comes to believe himself 
 its master. He lies upon the rocking 
 waves, and dreams awake such dreams as 
 never come 011 shore. Effort is not. Ease 
 is. And he is the lover whose mistress is 
 the translucent greenery of wild waste 
 waters. Poole was such a swimmer. 
 
 The first of June of the year of which 
 we write, Poole pere went to Atlantic City 
 with his wife, who was a bit run down, 
 and who had never seemed quite to regain 
 the vitality which she had so generously 
 presented to Poole fils. That infant was 
 left in town with his estimable grand- 
 mother, who was assisted in the function 
 of his entertainment by a very grand and 
 important nurse. Poole was very glad to 
 get away from the three last mentioned 
 personages. They . had, between them, 
 contrived to make him feel very small for 
 some time, the baby and the nurse having 
 appeared simultaneously about six months 
 before. Each morning his wife, the good 
 Charlotte, awaited anxiously at the hotel 
 the appearance of a wire which usually 
 condensed the anxiety of twenty-four
 
 DKUMSTICKS. 31 
 
 hours to a certainty that all was well with ' 
 Poole junior. 
 
 The morning of the momentous third 
 of June, Charlotte was doing just this 
 thing. She was sitting with clasped hands 
 bracing her nerves for the worst. Each 
 day it was the same, the young mother 
 fully anticipating an evil which had not 
 materialized, and which has not, as yet, 
 done so. 
 
 And Poole was lying, with that insolent 
 assurance which even nature respects, upon 
 the smooth glass of the rollers which 
 further in shore were attacking the bathers 
 in a formidable surf. 
 
 He had few things to think about. 
 He was wishing that he had more money 
 a thought he owned in common with all 
 men. He was wishing that the boy Ernest 
 his first-born had looked just a bit 
 less like his estimable grandmother, Mrs. 
 Twombly-Applegate. "What the devil did 
 the gods mean by making of his son an ex- 
 ample of heredity ? For his wife's mother, 
 Mrs. Twombly-Applegate, was the one 
 person in all the world whom genial Jack
 
 32 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 Poole honestly disliked. And it got onto 
 his nerves to see his heir look at him with 
 a Twombly-Applegate stare. 
 
 And then Charlotte. 
 
 She had asked him, not an hour ago, if 
 he loved her no longer. Why did women 
 ask questions like that ? And he found 
 that she had put an idea into his head. 
 Had he changed ? 
 
 Now there is a certain infidelity of 
 thought present in the mind of the most 
 faithful husband, which if realized by the 
 wife would occasion her anguish. It is 
 possible for the male animal to be faith- 
 ful in point of fact, but the height of 
 fidelity of fancy has never yet been scaled 
 by him. Only a woman of sensitive intui- 
 tions grasps the situation, however. That 
 such is the case, is a matter of congratula- 
 tion. And so, a man is often mentally 
 faithless without himself knowing it. A 
 clever wife can impose upon her husband 
 the belief that she is the one woman of 
 all the world to him, when in sad cynicism 
 amounting to amusement she sees his 
 mental lapses.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 33 
 
 In this, the danger of a habit of analysis j 
 lies. To look at things on the surface, to 
 accept every-day events in every- day man- 
 ner, to live in the major and to avoid the 
 minor, is the wise course. There is danger 
 in going back of the returns, for only a 
 god can do so fully. Poole was " differ- 
 ent/' but he had not imagined that he 
 was changed until Charlotte had bedewed 
 her pillow with tears and announced the 
 fact with lamentation. He was changed 
 because he had had a bad six months of it. 
 Given the environments which beset the 
 young couple before the babe came and 
 the nurse and the grandmother, and 
 Poole would have been the same Poole, al- 
 though there had always been more of 
 contentment than ecstasy in his love for 
 Charlotte. And so there was nothing to 
 do about it. He was a bad husband who 
 had not kept on doing what he had vowed 
 he would do, viz.: love ever. And how 
 could a man be so foolish as to vow such a 
 thing in the first place, Poole wondered. 
 And could he be made to "love ever?" 
 and could it be done in the face of a
 
 34 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 squalling infant (young Poole never cried 
 except when suffering from colic), and an 
 experienced nurse, not to speak of a Mrs. 
 Twombly-Applegate ? 
 
 Poole concluded not. 
 
 " Heigh-oh !" he said at length, turn- 
 ing over upon his stomach and striking 
 out lazily. "At any rate they can't 
 bother a fellow out here ! " 
 
 "I should think not/' remarked a voice 
 placidly. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ! " exclaimed Poole, 
 quite as if be bad trod upon a woman's 
 gown in a drawing-room, and staring very 
 hard at a face whose chin was cutting the 
 water bravely, close at his side. 
 
 " For what ? Because I took your 
 head for a barrel bobbing about in the 
 water ? What a big head it is, to be sure ! 
 And then after I saw you were no bar- 
 rel, but a man, I came on still. I thought 
 you might require assistance." There 
 was a challenge in the mockery of the 
 voice which would never have been ac- 
 cepted if the face at which Poole gazed 
 had been less beautiful. But beautiful it
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 35 
 
 was, and thus are the sons of men un- 
 done. 
 
 Suddenly, the woman turned upon her 
 back, rising and falling upon the green 
 Atlantic as composedly as if in a steamer 
 chair upon the deck of a liner. "Without 
 a word, yet hardly knowing what else to 
 do, Poole remained beside her. She closed 
 her eyes peacefully. She had the face of 
 an angel upon a stone tomb. But Poole 
 found no trouble in deciding that she was 
 not fashioned of stone, being equally as- 
 sured that she was no angel. Her arms 
 were over her head. They matched her 
 face. Her hands were clasped beneath 
 her head. Her bathing dress was cut in 
 the French fashion, was of thin silk, and 
 was, naturally, very wet, and consequent- 
 ly clinging. 
 
 The costume was old, its material faded, 
 hinting much familiarity with salt water, 
 and just at the shoulder there was a small 
 rent. As the unknown's eyes were closed, 
 Poole felt there could be no indiscretion 
 in decorously observing it. And the wo- 
 man's form was of the divinest.
 
 36 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 " My name is Sophie Stang. "What is 
 yours ?" the beautiful lips murmured. 
 
 " Morley ah George Morley ! " re- 
 sponded Poole without an instant's hesita- 
 tion. So easily do we fall in the manner 
 of evil. 
 
 Immediately the lips with their deeply 
 tucked in corners unbent in a heavenly 
 smile. There was a gurgle of laughter 
 and she murmured again : 
 
 "Ah quite so my honest gentle- 
 man ! " 
 
 Poole considered. Here was a woman 
 whose feet and arms were naked, the re- 
 mainder of her very beautiful person be- 
 ing veiled only in a thin, faded silk bath- 
 ing costume, which was audacious to 
 the limit of decency, and the woman 
 talked through lips virginal as to purity 
 of curve, to a strange man himself 
 whom she met for the first time in the 
 water. 
 
 "I am tired, my fair friend," said he, 
 coolly, with perhaps a suggestion of dis- 
 gust in tone. " I think I'll say good 
 morning and go in. I'll not insult so
 
 DEUMSTICKS. 37 
 
 splendid a swimmer by any offer of help." 
 
 So much for his good intentions. 
 
 If he had only left her there without 
 another look, there might have been no 
 story after all. But alas ! The woman 
 did not reply for a moment, and when 
 she moved her lips it could not have been 
 her intention to answer his farewell in 
 any way, for she did not open them to 
 speak, but to sing. 
 
 Alas and alas for the mischief that 
 embryo sixth sense is capable of bringing 
 about ! Develop the idea of utility into 
 an insane love of beauty and add a mor- 
 bid susceptibility to the power of music ! 
 Where are good intentions then ? What 
 becomes of them ? I declare unto you 
 that Poole forgot he had ever owned any. 
 
 Sophie Stang sang softly an air which 
 was afterward presented to New York 
 in the second act of "The Golden 
 Bubble." 
 
 " Pardon all the faults of me 
 For the love of long ago 
 Good-bye." 
 
 And Poole waited, staring, drinking in
 
 38 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 the unearthly sweetness of what was 
 rather a thin voice. But the lips were so 
 beautiful : 
 
 " Not a word for me, 
 Not a look or kiss 
 Good-bye !" 
 
 The voice warbled on, and Poole still 
 lingered. 
 
 Then, even as he waited like a stupid 
 fish, she lay again silent, at rest, with 
 closed eyes. And just as he was drawing 
 one long, deep breath, he saw again a 
 smile tucked into the corners of her per- 
 fect mouth, and there was a twang of 
 mockery in it, and it stung him to recog- 
 nize that she was aware of his presence 
 and that he had hung about her unable 
 to leave the spot after a most pompous 
 farewell. With a last long look of un- 
 willing admiration, he left her, trying 
 indeed to sneak through the tell-tale 
 splashing water before the woman should 
 open her fine eyes. 
 
 As he struck out for the shore and his 
 virtue with a powerful regular stroke, he 
 mused to himself :
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 39 
 
 "What will Charlotte say ?" 
 The fact of the matter was this : Char- 
 lotte never commented upon the matter 
 
 at all. For Poole never told her of it. 
 ***** 
 
 Upon the fifteenth day of June Poole 
 had crossed upon the Thirty-fourth Street 
 Ferry with his wife, his child, the child's 
 grandmother, and a heterogeneous collec- 
 tion of maid servants. It was the day set 
 apart for the family flitting from the 
 small town house on Fifty-first Street to 
 their other more commodious home down 
 upon Long Island. Within the limits of 
 a certain village upon the south shore 
 Charlotte owned a cottage which had been 
 left her by her father, and to which each 
 summer of their five years of married life 
 she had returned. Poole had always been 
 down of a Sunday, and the life there was 
 dearer to Charlotte than that in town. 
 There, for the first time, she now took 
 their son. Poole promised to come down 
 often. And he believed that he intended 
 to keep his promise. Perhaps he did. 
 But nothing had been quite right between
 
 40 DKUAf STICKS. 
 
 Charlotte and him since the day she had 
 asked him if lie had not changed. Char- 
 lotte's eyes were upon him, questioning, 
 begging, as a woman's pure eyes can do. 
 To the last they implored him, but Mrs. 
 Twombly-Applegate was close at hand, 
 and just as the train moved out of the 
 station young Poole lifted up his voice and 
 wept, and Charlotte turned to him, more 
 mother, in the moment of parting, than 
 wife. 
 
 Poole returned alone, crossing the ferry 
 very much wrapped up in a mood. When 
 the boat ran into the slip a hansom caught 
 his eye. The day was hot, the afternoon 
 spoiled for business, and it was too early to 
 find a friend at his club. Hailing the han- 
 som, he ordered the cabman to kill an hour 
 for him in the shady drives of Central 
 Park. Leaning well forward on his el- 
 bows, a cigarette in his teeth, he contin- 
 ued his mood. It was hot, with a hint of 
 mugginess, and the town seemed filled 
 with odors, more or less oppressing. 
 Poole grew more and more disgusted with 
 his thoughts, which dwelt chiefly upon the
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 41 
 
 discomforts of dining in one place and 
 sleeping in another. Dining ! It wasn't 
 the dining as much as it was the break- 
 fasting which he dreaded. Why could 
 not cook have been left ? No ! She must 
 go down on the Island with the rest, and 
 he, who was of no consequence because of 
 being merely the head of the family he 
 must go each night to a musty closed-up 
 house to sleep, and tumble out, to break- 
 fast, as best he might, at club or hotel or 
 restaurant. He was of no consequence to 
 any one since his son had come upon the 
 scene. And he became so savage in thought 
 that he looked his thought, and a woman, 
 passing, smiled to see him. 
 
 It was Sophie Stang, as luck would 
 have it. Her face flashed luminously from 
 a carriage window, and Poole saw it. In 
 a second more they had passed each other. 
 
 There is a ripe redness of the rose, 
 haunting, intoxicating with fulness and 
 perfume. And a rose like that seduces 
 with the passion born of the mind and 
 senses. Such a rose was Sophie. And 
 there are other roses small, sweet bios-
 
 42 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 soms often carelessly thrown aside, yet 
 winning from us an emotion of the heart. 
 Of such was Charlotte. 
 
 Yet Poole was still ignorant of what 
 was already a fact. 
 
 There were two women in his life and 
 had been since the third of the month. 
 
 Ah, the beauty of the first rose ! Good- 
 ness knows, beauty can sting like a whip, 
 and get into the blood like veritable wine! 
 
 And the truth was this: not once since 
 the third of June had John Poole shut his 
 eyes without a demon presenting itself 
 dream-wise. And the demon ever took 
 on female shape, and floated upon waters 
 blue, and had for a mouth a line of curved 
 sweetness, into each corner of which was 
 tucked a smile.
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 WHICH THE SIGNER REPENTS. 
 
 " This is the tale I have to tell. 
 Show the fellow the way to hell." 
 
 AND it was upon those lips that Poolers 
 thought dwelt as he slowly descended the 
 stairs after leaving the child. But the 
 wonder of it and the amazement all 
 lay in this : They had now no charm for 
 him. He could not recall just what their 
 charm had been. Charm of that sort 
 has a way of evaporating. And stranger 
 than all, it was to Charlotte now that his 
 imagination turned. It was her face 
 which the women whom he met upon the 
 street all wore. If June had turned his 
 moral sense topsy-turvy, September was 
 setting it upon its legs again. 
 
 " Three months ! I am a chump ! " 
 and at each word Poole brought himself 
 down another stair. 
 
 He paused at the entrance of a small
 
 44 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 room on the second floor, listening to the 
 voices below stairs. Sophie was singing 
 an air which she had caused to have inter- 
 polated in the score of " The Golden Bub- 
 ble. " The words were those to which he 
 had listened upon that morning in June. 
 She was singing slowly, and with a languor 
 born of wine. For Sophie took too much 
 wine. 
 
 What were his thoughts as he listened ? 
 What are the thoughts of any man when 
 disenchantment has come and is griping 
 his soul and wringing it dry before it 
 tosses it over to the next comer re- 
 morso ? 
 
 And the words of the song : 
 
 " Pardon all the faults of me 
 For the love of long ago 
 (iood-bye." 
 
 Would to God he might go to Charlotte 
 and implore her thus ! He had never ex- 
 pected to put a construction to find in 
 the words a meaning which he would 
 long to utilize in such a fashion. 
 
 The last word was carried to a high
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 45 
 
 note, perilously sweet, and held there, and 
 played with, and finally flung slowly away 
 into a silence. It was very pretty. She 
 sang it better than when before the foot- 
 lights earlier in the night. And amid the 
 stir of the departures which followed and 
 the thanks of some half-dozen men, he 
 heard the loud, boyish voice of Alexander 
 Brand asking for him. But he never 
 stirred, merely cursing him inwardly be- 
 cause of the fact that through his kind 
 offices he had been made a guest of the 
 house where he now stood. He never saw 
 him that he did not long to insult him. 
 So unreasonable is man when he has been 
 given exactly what he has most craved. 
 
 He walked into the little room at the 
 door of which he had been standing, de- 
 termined to see Sophie for some minutes 
 before his departure. He wanted to ask 
 her some questions about the child which 
 had not occurred to him before. He sank 
 upon a low, fur-covered couch, throwing 
 his head back and staring at a ceiling 
 which displayed elaborately in fresco the 
 Apotheosis of Narcissus. The house,
 
 46 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 which had been rented for the season by 
 Sophie, had once belonged to a very grand 
 family. Sophie always alluded to that 
 ceiling as " nymphs on toast." Venus 
 was simply indicated amid the clouds of 
 a .background. There floated through 
 Poolers mind a vague wish that in life 
 in his life she had been thus unob- 
 trusively insinuated. To his fancy, the 
 misty face took on the lines of that be- 
 longing to Sophie. As for Echo, he 
 could not see her face. And then, again, 
 his thought travelled to Charlotte. It oc- 
 curred to Poole that there were worse en- 
 tanglements in real life than any of the 
 mythological complications with which he 
 was familiar. He groaned, and muttered 
 a few words, which we may be pardoned 
 for supposing to have been : 
 
 " Lord be merciful to me a fool!" 
 After that he was silent, but his silence 
 was punctuated by the swish of sweeping 
 garments as Sophie came slowly upstairs, 
 still humming : 
 
 " Pardon all the faults of me." 
 A moment, and one of the most beauti-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 47 
 
 ful women in all the town stood leaning 
 against the casement of the door looking 
 at him. "Without rising, still lounging, his 
 hands in his pockets, he returned her 
 glance. Their story, and the story of the 
 last three months, lay in the look. She 
 seemed very weary, tranquilly devoid of 
 surprise at finding him there, and possibly 
 a bit bored. Her charming eyes were still 
 disfigured by the rouge upon their lids. 
 Gradually a something petulant grew in 
 their expression. She yawned, and threw 
 the flowers she carried behind a chair, but 
 Poole's quick eye caught sight of a card 
 which was attached to them. They were 
 not his flowers, yet of the many bouquets 
 which she had had showered upon her that 
 night she had apparently singled these out 
 by her favor. She advanced slowly and 
 stood before Poole. 
 
 "Well? "said she. 
 
 "Well? "echoed he. 
 
 "You didn't take supper with me. 
 Were you not hungry ? " 
 
 " No. I preferred seeing you after the
 
 48 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 others left, and I have been talking with 
 the child." 
 
 " Drumsticks?" Sophie was too tired to 
 question him in regard to their meeting 
 at that hour of the night or morning. 
 
 " "Why that ridiculous name ? " 
 
 Sophie pouted and made no answer. 
 She was studying him in the mirror, 
 scorning her own wonderful image to do 
 so. 
 
 " How came you to allow a child to be 
 so named ? " he insisted. 
 
 " Why should I answer ? Jack, we 
 have been a good deal together for three 
 months. The first you occupied in 
 rhapsodies. The second with long silences, 
 and the third and last with criticisms. To 
 them you seem pleased to add questions 
 interrogations as to a past with which 
 you can have no concern. I'm tired ! " 
 
 " So am I. But surely you will answer 
 a few questions about the child not your- 
 self ? And tell me that name why ' : 
 
 ' Well, then you'll be angry ! No ? 
 She was not named at all for a year. I was 
 doing the Columbine at never mind in
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 49 
 
 London. The Pierrot was her father. 
 He named her on Christmas night at 
 supper after the play. A few of the 
 company were supping together at my 
 lodgings. He had been drinking. In 
 serving the fowl we had all refused what you 
 Americans call the drumsticks. It seemed 
 to strike him then that we should call the 
 baby ' Drumsticks/ It was merely a joke 
 or intended as one. He took the child and 
 went through a mock christening, wetting 
 her forehead with wine, and calling her 
 Drumsticks. And somehow or other the 
 name has stuck to her. I suppose because 
 it fits. It was true. He didn't want her, nor 
 I, nor any one. There ! Now you know ! " 
 Sophie mused, with an odd smile curv- 
 ing her lips. Memory was representing 
 once more to her a midnight scene in a 
 cheap London lodging house. She saw 
 again an ill-set supper table whose piece 
 de resistance was a tough and leathery 
 fowl. She saw herself still in the costume 
 of a Columbine a Sophie ignorant of a 
 future which was to the Sophie of to-day 
 a very glittering and satisfactory present.
 
 50 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 And opposite her at table she saw once 
 more the kindly, whimsical Pierrot, his 
 face still streaked with the white paint of 
 the pantomime, and still oddly enough 
 framed in a huge ruff. There were three 
 others at the table. And all had been 
 more or less tipsy. The child had been 
 asleep in a large hamper, half filled with 
 old properties. And Pierrot had dragged 
 it to light in order to christen it his in- 
 nocent little daughter in the cheap wine, 
 and with drunken mirth, amid the rough 
 jests and hilarity of those player-folk. 
 
 "Ah the child of a Columbine and 
 a Pierrot ! " A quickly fading jealousy 
 was in the tone, and also disgust, fatigue. 
 "What was his other name?" 
 
 "Why ask? Why revive ancient his- 
 tory? And what is it to you, anyway?" 
 Sophie was clearly puzzled. She had 
 spoken to Poole several times about the 
 child, and her remarks had met with si- 
 lence upon his part. As for the fact that 
 he had not seen the girl before, it was 
 largely due to chance. For the rest, Joy 
 had her instructions, and the child had
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 51 
 
 been kept in the fonrth story of the house, 
 with the exception of the hours which she 
 passed each day in taking the air. And 
 daughters are awkward to women like 
 Sophie. 
 
 "Is he dead?" asked Poole, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " Dead ! Yes ; long ago." 
 
 "What are you going to do with her 
 the child?" 
 
 "I don't know. Why should I do any- 
 thing ? She's well enough off as she is. 
 Perhaps some day if she only devel- 
 ops voice I may find her some place on 
 the stage. But I'm afraid there is no 
 voice ! " Sophie felt distinctly cross. 
 
 "Thank God!" 
 
 "You are polite!" Sophie felt that she 
 was insulted, but she was too sleepy to 
 resent with energy. " Has she been com- 
 plaining?" she added suddenly and sharply 
 after thinking a moment. 
 
 " She did not complain." 
 
 "But why this sudden interest, may 
 I ask?" 
 
 " I have seen her/' he answered, briefly.
 
 52 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 " And you are much impressed ?" 
 
 " I liked the little thing." 
 
 " I suppose she reminded you of your 
 own." 
 
 " That will do!" he exclaimed, roughly. 
 
 " Jack ! " She fell upon her knees be- 
 side him. 
 
 "Sophie!" 
 
 Her long, polished, bare arms encircled 
 him. Her head, with its glossy blue-black 
 hair, was against his heart, but its beat 
 did not quicken. Through her laces he 
 could feel hers throb. It was a fickle 
 heart. It had beat for a Pierrot once, 
 and others. It had since beat for him. 
 Yesterday for Pierrot, to-day for him- 
 self, and to-morrow his eye travelled to 
 the flowers huddled behind the chair, and 
 noted once more the corner of the card 
 they all but concealed. There is always a 
 to-morrow for a woman whose lips are as 
 graciously curved and who has not for- 
 gotten how to jmile. Her shoulders rose 
 and fell, and he knew that she was weep- 
 ing. He looked admiringly at those per- 
 fect shoulders, with their opalescent lights
 
 DBUMSTICKS. 53 
 
 gleaming from the shadow of laces as frail 
 as their wearer. There was a bluish down 
 where the hair melted into the nape of the 
 neck. The edge of her ear shone as deli- 
 cately white as a camellia petal and was 
 just as bloodless. 
 
 " Not a drop of her blood was human, 
 
 But she was made like a soft, sweet woman. 
 
 * * * Lilith skirts of Eden. 
 
 With her was hell and with Eve was heaven." 
 
 As Poole stared at her thus he became 
 conscious that his hands were still within 
 his pockets. He slowly drew them out 
 and placed them one on each of her shoul- 
 ders. There was no passion in their 
 touch, only kindness and pity. And it 
 was but three months since their first 
 meeting in the blue waters of the Atlantic. 
 She was crying, and after all she was, or 
 had been, a woman. But he said nothing 
 to her, only sat there with a hand on either 
 shoulder, and thought dully that he liked 
 her better when she laughed. Such as she 
 had no business with tears. 
 
 " You think you care for me a little
 
 54 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 still ? " He finally broke the silence with 
 what he felt to be a silly remark. 
 
 " Think!" cried Sophie, with tragic 
 emphasis. 
 
 " Be sensible, can't you ?" 
 
 " I know I've seen it coming! You in- 
 tend throwing me over ! " 
 
 "Throw you over! Fiddlesticks!" It 
 cheered him immensely to have her break 
 the ice of a subject which had gradually 
 been growing thin. " Damn the past ! 
 Three months ! What are they ? In a 
 year's time you'll have as little place for 
 me in your memory as you have to-night 
 for Pierrot." 
 
 " I ought never to have told you that! " 
 she said, moodily. 
 
 " But the child ! " 
 
 " Plague take her ! I wish " She 
 hesitated. They were both upon their feet 
 now, his hands still upon her naked 
 shoulders. His eyes calculated coolly 
 the magic of her physical charm. It was 
 great, yet it was all physical. And not 
 one spark stirred the ice of that glance. 
 
 Her loveliness had had the grace to en-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 55 
 
 thral. Her charm such as it was had 
 forged gyves upon his sense which it was 
 now enabled to toss aside. The tender 
 flame in burning had melted his chains. 
 He was cloyed with caresses, and aghast 
 at the price of self-respect, which he had 
 paid for them. He felt a disgust for her, 
 for, to his mind, she embodied his weak- 
 ness. He had been a chump an ass a 
 despicable fool. She influenced him no 
 longer. He was free to look upon her as 
 upon a picture, or a statue, of which 
 every line was an enchantment. She was 
 no less beautiful, yet with only a whim- 
 sical sadness, such as one bestows upon 
 all last things, he could have said to her 
 then that good-bye which time was fetch- 
 ing for them in some dim to-morrow. 
 
 Sophie's faultless face ! Sophie's faulty 
 soul ! 
 
 " Little sinner " he swung her gently 
 to and fro by her shoulders. " What did 
 you expect ? " 
 
 Sophie shook herself free and walked 
 shivering to the fireplace. She could 
 have a chill accompanied with a rain of
 
 56 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 tears as easily as she could laugh all of a 
 glow ten minutes later. Poole watched 
 her, but he was not thinking of her. 
 
 The child upstairs ! He would say a 
 word for it before he left the house that 
 night. There might be that thing a 
 soul to consider. Charlotte would have 
 thought so, and to return to clean tilings, 
 as he had it in mind to do, leaving behind 
 in the wreckage of the summer's storm a 
 little weak woman-child, in whose eyes 
 divine innocence dwelt, seemed to Poole 
 impossible. He must try to do something 
 for the child, and then 
 
 He might go out of that house to-night 
 and never enter it again. But what of 
 the child upstairs, the helpless sport of 
 the tempest of a mother's sin ? Was it 
 Quixotic to hope that he could befriend 
 her ? Might it not count in his favor on 
 the day when all was judged ? And he 
 liked the child. It was a sweet child, and 
 seemed best of all to have inherited 
 nothing of its mother. If she Sophie 
 had seemed to care for it, all would have 
 been different. Many very bad women,
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 57 
 
 he had heard, cared for their children 
 like beasts. But Sophie cared nothing 
 for hers. She had wished it dead since 
 the hour she had first felt the mysterious 
 throb of its being. 
 
 And then he tried to explain to himself 
 how it was that he felt such a consuming' 
 interest in a child which he had never 
 seen until that night, and for whose 
 mother he cared less than nothing. He 
 brought the full force of his mind to the 
 subject, and he has thought intently of it 
 many, many times since that first night. 
 And it is still as it was then a thing 
 which he has never been able to explain. 
 He has given it up long ago. But it was 
 as I have written. That part of this little 
 story is as true as well as as the kindli- 
 est, tenderest, most unselfish interest you, 
 reader, have ever taken in the smallest, 
 most helpless and suffering thing of which 
 you have ever known. No truer but as 
 true as that. 
 
 And then the child was thin, old, wise, 
 and hungry for affection. In short all
 
 58 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 things which a little female child of seven 
 years ought not to be. 
 
 She looked as if she ought to have some 
 one of her own who would be foolish over 
 her. Some one who would rock her to 
 sleep and tell her fairy tales. 
 
 And she had Sophie. 
 
 And then Poole thought of Charlotte. 
 Ah, some women were made to lavish love 
 as others were made to be loved. Some 
 were lovers and for lovers. And others 
 were mothers. And it was a good thing 
 for the children that all this was so. 
 
 " She's such a queer little creature ! " 
 broke in Sophie suddenly upon his 
 thoughts, and quite as if his had influ- 
 enced her own. " She has such ideas! 
 Fancy ! She thinks she has a bird in her 
 breast her heart, you know ; she clasps 
 her hands upon it and listens, and is 
 always asking if we, too, hear the lird. 
 Fancy \ 
 
 "You love her? " [A question fora 
 mother !] 
 
 " I ? Love her ? Let me be honest 3 
 No. She never has seemed my own.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 59 
 
 Sometimes I think she is not. She was 
 put out to nurse soon after the christening 
 episode, and for four years I never even 
 saw her. He Pierrot used to go and 
 see her. I believe he cared something for 
 her, in a way. He paid her board, and I 
 paid it whichever one had a little money, 
 you understand. And then I heard that 
 he was dead. And the woman, a very 
 decent person, wanted to keep the child for 
 her own. But I thought I might regret 
 giving her up. I often wish I had left her 
 with that woman. Probably it would 
 have been better. 
 
 "Well I did not/' she continued. 
 "And here she is. Since then she has 
 been left to old Joy. Who is Joy ? 
 Another decent person ? " Sophie smiled. 
 " I always employ most circumspect 
 maids. " 
 
 Poole looked at his watch. It was two 
 o'clock. He felt the need of sleep and 
 time to think. He longed more and more 
 to do something for Drumsticks, if but to 
 change her name. He walked to the door. 
 
 " I'll see I'll see " He hesitated.
 
 60 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 Sophie drew near him with such a 
 wealth of expression in her lovely eyes as 
 would have deceived any man into believ- 
 ing her loving and lovable. But she was 
 neither. Poole knew it, and looked at her 
 gravely. 
 
 "So it is over ?" she faltered. 
 
 " What did you expect ? You knew it 
 must end ! " 
 
 "But, so soon?" 
 
 "Good-bye." 
 
 " Only oh, Jack ! " 
 
 " Good-bye ! " A cunning gleamed in 
 Sophie's eyes. 
 
 But the child ? " she breathed softly. 
 
 Poole hesitated, bit his lip, looked at 
 her keenly, and then answered : 
 
 "Fll run in to-morrow afternoon and 
 talk over some plan for her." Then he 
 went away. 
 
 Sophie laughed.
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LNTRODUCIXG THE WOMAU WHO WAS A 
 WIFE, BUT, MOST OF ALL, A MOTHER. 
 
 "A sweetness clings to all her flesh, 
 
 Like early grasses steeped in dew ; 
 And in her silky hair the fresh, 
 Faint odors that from Heaven she drew."" 
 
 CHARLOTTE was the pure woman. 
 
 Such a calm brow, such a meek lip, such 
 kindness of glance shone in her dear face 
 as made the old turn to look and little 
 children laugh from sheer happiness. 
 Charlotte was an embodied smile the 
 smile which would cheer a man, but never 
 tempt him. The Vast Secret of the Eter- 
 nal Mother dwelt in her heart, and to see 
 her with her baby studying the manifes- 
 tations of the Man as revealed in him was 
 to see the Madonna. She was akin to 
 nature, as such a woman would be. She 
 loved the mists, the silvery satins of wind- 
 ing roads, the reeds tilting against the
 
 62 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 breezes of the salt marsh lands, the mes- 
 sages of nightfall and daybreak, the hoarse 
 whispering of the sea, but a mile distant 
 from the old house at Seascrest. But, above 
 all, she loved her garden. She loved the 
 shady walks, the sunny stretches of velvet 
 lawn, the decorous, prim, old-fashioned 
 flower beds, and the hum and buzz of 
 blundering bees and insects. 
 
 There was not one particle of sentimen- 
 tality about Charlotte, nor anything which 
 was not heartily sensible and completely 
 normal. She was happy, as all such sim- 
 ple people are, because she lived so close 
 to Nature as to partake of her health. 
 And she was lovable, because she was lov- 
 ing, and honest, and true, in the kind of 
 way that little children know and recog- 
 nize at once. And in the kind of way a 
 sick soul knows and longs for with a long- 
 ing unutterable. In short, she was un- 
 like the usual young woman who plays a 
 part in a story. She made you think of 
 brisk, waving grain, or a breath of sum- 
 mer morning in green woods, and that in-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 63 
 
 effable odor of pure mother earth after 
 warm rains. 
 
 Charlotte's eyes were small, pale brown, 
 and very kindly, her nose neat, and in 
 harmony with the rest of her -face, which 
 is the proper thing for a nose to be. Her 
 month was fresh-looking, healthy, pleas- 
 ing in a rich laugh, which showed all of 
 her clean, white, rather square teeth. 
 She laughed easily, and with a merry 
 gurgle to end with, which seemed to draw 
 out the merriment of her thought, and to 
 linger over it. 
 
 It is only the unsullied soul who can be 
 in touch with Nature as was Charlotte, 
 for sin makes us blind and deaf to the 
 simple delights of the fragrant earth de- 
 lights which cost nothing, and have a 
 power to bless. 
 
 All through the summer Poole had 
 avoided Seascrest upon this plea and that. 
 He was too tired for the trip, he was too 
 busy, and he declared that business would 
 go to the ever ready bow-wows if he 
 neglected it. And his visits had become 
 more and more a rare thing. Charlotte
 
 64 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 felt a vague unrest, as one feels the com- 
 ing of a storm. There was an ominous 
 lull, broken only by the fitful flashes of 
 Mrs. Applegate's tongue. That her in- 
 dignation was natural and righteous we 
 cannot deny. As for Charlotte, she was 
 too proud to say anything. She would 
 wait and trust. And soon, very soon, it 
 would be all right. And that horrid 
 business which was keeping her Jack in 
 town so much through all the long, hot 
 days would arrange itself at last, as busi- 
 ness always did. 
 
 And so it had limped away lamely, 
 this summer, which September stared at 
 with hob, baked eyeballs. 
 
 But Mrs. Applegate had her suspicions. 
 She even knew men. However, when one 
 knows more than the people about them, 
 and one is unable to conceal that fact, one 
 only gets one's self disliked. And Mrs. 
 Applegate, knowing this, among other 
 things, bode her wee. But there was an 
 occasional spit, as of water upon fire, 
 which Charlotte overlooked. No other
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 65 
 
 woman was ever seen who conld overlook 
 as much as Charlotte. 
 
 It was a thing to make a broken heart 
 heal to see Charlotte of a summer morn- 
 ing, intoxicated with the dew of her own 
 life, anxiously leaning over her roses near 
 the garden path, her young child in her 
 arms, stretching his baby fingers to the 
 gay darlings of the flower bed, and se- 
 cure in mother-love. 
 
 To Charlotte the death of a flower was 
 a pain, a sting; a blight upon a blos- 
 som, a regret. And her delight in the 
 luxurious unfolding of a promising bud 
 was a thing belonging to her own pure 
 heart. 
 
 Charlotte, in crisp, morning muslin, 
 with a bit of pink about it, matching the 
 health which had returned to her dear 
 cheeks and the bald head of her child, 
 was like an eternal morning. And to see 
 her thus, as Mrs. Applegate saw her, 
 knowing that the young husband who 
 should have shared the picture cared not 
 for it, or at least failed to avail himself 
 of an opportunity of admiring it, was to
 
 66 . DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 a mother Mrs. Applegate was a mother 
 and a good one like swallowing a toad. 
 It wouldn't swallow. 
 
 And yet Poole had some few times 
 watched his wife and son thus from the 
 breakfast room window on those rare 
 mornings which had chanced to find him 
 at Seascrest. And he had watched them 
 lately with a mingling of pleasure and 
 pain pleasure at the picture they made, 
 and pain at his own isolation. For these 
 people were far apart, sin having set the 
 feet of the man outside of any garden 
 of pure delight. 
 
 Yet, such lives as that of Charlotte 
 make bridges upon which less holy nat- 
 ures may at last cross and find again lost 
 Eden, and heaven. 
 
 There was little color in the lips of 
 Charlotte, and nothing sensual in the 
 radiance of her soft brown eyes. And 
 Poole often owned thoughts which were 
 a sacrilege in the presence of her splendid 
 white soul. Such thoughts could not 
 live long in the atmosphere which she 
 created. If she had been with him at the
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 67 
 
 first to encourage his good intentions ! 
 Well, she was not; if she had been he 
 was clean enough to have preferred white 
 to scarlet. With her, and about her, 
 gentle deeds flourished like, her roses 
 wherever she carried her smiles. But 
 Poole had been separated from her by a 
 deadly trio : " Baby, Applegate and 
 Company/' And he was very, very weak 
 in a word, he was a man. 
 
 All the good in Poole belongedto \ 
 Charlotte. But it seemed that there had 
 lurked in his nature a good deal of com- 
 monplace evil. He loved Charlotte had 
 always loved her with the love which 
 her personality evoked. That there was 
 another side to the fellow was his misfor- 
 tune no less than hers. She had been his 
 star. But Thales came to grief while 
 star gazing. And Poole, with his eyes 
 upon a star, had walked into a puddle. 
 Now his boots were muddy. And that 
 made his star out of the question. 
 
 What the other woman what Sophie 
 was to him does not matter. The less the 
 pen deals with her the more ink will be
 
 68 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 saved for Drumsticks. For, after all, this 
 is intended as a story of that sweet child. 
 
 Poole, Charlotte, and Sophie have to do 
 with the common storm which is whirled 
 into life by the winds Desire and Satiety. 
 Such storms are old revolting stories, so 
 complicated with motives, pregnant with 
 heredity and circumstance, that a humble 
 pen does well to touch upon them deli- 
 cately, thus evading heavy responsibili- 
 ties. It is with the child mine would 
 linger a small reed tossed upon mighty 
 waters Drumsticks whom nobody 
 wanted, whose mother was a Columbine, 
 and whose father was a Pierrot. 
 
 And yet, how tell of her and omit the 
 others ? 
 
 Ah ! if, when you cast this little story 
 aside, you will but regard my difficulty in 
 this matter with charity ! If the shad- 
 ows of the picture may be but suggested 
 in Sophie ! If the pale color which 
 touched the life of Drumsticks shall re- 
 mind you in pitying fashion of that kind 
 sinner Poole ! If the high lights, shin- 
 ing to touch tenderly her pain, recall the
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 69 
 
 gracious womanliness of Charlotte ! And 
 if, more than all, you shall recall with 
 something of affection a small female 
 child, who was called Drumsticks because 
 "nobody wanted her," the pen will not 
 have entirely failed. 
 
 The day following the night which wit- 
 nessed the meeting of the man of the story 
 with Drumsticks was a heavy one. Poole 
 staggered under it until it was time to call 
 upon Sophie, as he had promised. Then 
 he despatched her a hasty begging off, and 
 wired Charlotte to expect him. 
 
 During the day he had been seized with 
 a great longing to see and be with Char- 
 lotte. To touch her ! Was there not 
 healing in her presence ? 
 
 The ferry, the ensuing ride by train, the 
 jolt to the house after reaching Seascrest 
 in Charlotte's ridiculously high English' 
 cart, the gathering gloom, the distant 
 complaint of the sea, all got on his nerves, 
 and he swore softly to himself. He was 
 afraid to whistle. His tune might take 
 on an air of "The Golden Bubble" 
 " Pardon all the faults of ine."
 
 70 DKUMSTICKS. 
 
 He felt that lie was going to a temple to 
 besmirch the altar by laying upon it a 
 copy of Baudelaire. Ah ! if lie could only 
 tell Charlotte all, and leave it to her. 
 Let her tell him at once if he had better 
 go hang himself. If he told her what 
 would she say ? How would she look ? 
 He entered the house like a thief. Al- 
 though Charlotte anticipated his arrival, 
 the everlasting nursery had interfered witli 
 the father's welcome. He ground his 
 teeth savagely as he heard the elephantine 
 Applegate tread overhead, and then nearly 
 fell to weeping as he distinguished Char- 
 lotte's soft singing, and recognized a bye- 
 low. He threw himself into a chair and 
 waited in the little cottage library. 
 
 The room was not yet lighted for the 
 night, but upon Charlotte's little bandy- 
 legged writing desk a candle stood, and 
 its saffron gleam fell upon a photograph 
 of Poole, which he had given her in college 
 days, while love was young. He looked 
 at it critically, as if regarding the face of 
 an entire stranger. 
 
 Had he ever looked like that ?
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 71 
 
 " I ought to have died then," he groaned 
 to himself, with a twitching of the lips, 
 which drew his mouth into the dismal sem- 
 blance of a smile. "Since then I've made 
 the acquaintance of the serpent. There 
 was no slime on me then ! 'Twouldn't 
 make a bad portrait of St. John ! adding 
 a halo ! " And he sat despising himself. 
 
 Finally Charlotte entered the room. 
 
 " You here, Jack ! " (Delight. ) 
 
 "As you see/' (Gloom.) 
 
 Soft robed, purely fragile, colorless, 
 and sweet as the Quaker twilight of the 
 evening, Charlotte made him welcome 
 with all the heart dwelling in her soft, 
 white bosom. But he, poor wretch, felt 
 it was all for the Jack she thought him to 
 be the St. Jack and not Jack the cur, 
 which he knew himself to be. And so her 
 warm greeting only ground his spirit to 
 earth. 
 
 He tried to tell her all that night, be- 
 fore sleeping, but only ended in groaning 
 and looking so white that Charlotte flew 
 for the hot water bag and insisted upon 
 symptoms of appendicitis Alas, he wished
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 s it had been as she feared ! If a surgeon's 
 > knife could cut away evil memories, re- 
 grets and sin, then might each human do 
 a little private, amateurish hackling. 
 
 "I'll tell her in the morning," thought 
 Poole, and, turning, tried to sleep. 
 
 That night all the casements shook. 
 The mad winds came up from the sea and 
 toyed with the little cottage, and called 
 fearful threats through unwary keyholes. 
 The chill came in and laid weird fingers 
 upon the embers. The air throbbed with 
 sounds. These things are bought and 
 sold with country houses. , 
 
 And Poole lay sweating in remorseful 
 terror, dreading the telling of his story, 
 and knowing that it was not for him, as 
 for other men, to go about grinning over 
 his escapade, and to kiss first a Sophie and 
 then a Charlotte. He was too honest a 
 bad man for that. And some day, if not 
 to-morrow, he must tell his wife. 
 
 Finally, he fell into a fitful sleep, and, 
 dreaming, dreamed that he stood beside a 
 hideous grave-digger, who was laughing as 
 he evaded his Poole's inquiries in re-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 73 
 
 gard to the grave the fellow was digging. 
 Was it for Sophie, or for Charlotte ? He 
 would know ! And the grave-digger 
 would give no answer, only laughing more 
 like a devil than ever. And Poole began 
 to dread with a mighty dread that it was 
 the grave of the sweet Charlotte. And 
 he awakened abruptly, with every pulse 
 bounding. The room was black black 
 with the darkness of the hours directly 
 following midnight. He listened, but 
 could not hear the gentle breathing for 
 which he waited. Softly, he raised him- 
 self upon one elbow and leaned over her 
 pillow. Something dark lay there, and 
 his hand sought carefully for the silky 
 head and quiet cheek. Yes ; she was 
 there. She was alive, warm, and sleep- 
 ing. 
 
 And he must rob her in the morning of 
 the power to sleep like that ! 
 
 She would suffer less if he killed her 
 now. 
 
 And John Poole fell back upon his pil- 
 low and wept scalding, bitter tears not a
 
 74 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 woman's easy tears ; but a man's tears 
 salt and tainted. 
 
 And in the morning he left for town 
 by an early train, and without a con- 
 fession.
 
 PAKT I. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 SHOWING HOW THE SIGNER POSED. 
 
 " Thou little maiden, I thank thee much ; 
 
 And well I would thou should' st pray for me ; 
 But lam a sinful man, and such 
 As ill should pray for thee." 
 
 AKD for the remainder of the month 
 Poole found one set of excuses to keep 
 well away from Seascrest, and another 
 which gave him many half-hours with 
 Drumsticks, away up in her fourth floor 
 front. 
 
 Perhaps a man must have lost all of his 
 self-respect, have had his self-love bitterly 
 wounded, and then have been loved at 
 first sight by an innocent little female 
 child " because he was good/' to under- 
 stand just what comfort the society of 
 Drumsticks was to John Poole. His van- 
 ity, or what there was left of it, had been 
 tickled by her preference, as vanity always 
 is by that of a pure-souled child, or even 
 the unsought friendliness of a dog. Chil-
 
 76 DKUMSTICKS. 
 
 dren and dogs have a reputation for dis- 
 cernment. 
 
 And so if he saw Sophie less it was be- 
 cause he saw more of Drumsticks, and not 
 that he remained away from the house. 
 And more and more through those ebbing 
 days of September it was to see the child 
 that he came. He ran in during the morn- 
 ing hours on his way down town to his office, 
 and found time for an hour with her dur- 
 ing the early twilights before Sophie had a 
 chance to return from her regular after- 
 noon drive. And the attraction between 
 the man and the child was one of those in- 
 stinctive, marvellous, genuine, and never- 
 to-be-explained things which can hardly 
 be described. 
 
 There was nothing of Sophie in Drum- 
 sticks. 
 
 If Heredity had a finger in the matter, 
 that finger had traced the child's person- 
 ality directly to a Columbine and a Pier- 
 rot. The graceful sweetness, innocent 
 frolic, and underlying sadness of the dear 
 childish pantomime seemed to be her in- 
 heritance. It was as if she had been im-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 77 
 
 maculately conceived of Christmas-tide 
 by a genial spirit of good will. And it 
 was her charm, as well as her misfortune, 
 that she loved easily. 
 
 The memories which Poole retained of 
 Drumsticks are largely of these weeks. 
 
 Daughter of a harlot, she possessed a 
 tender, graceful wistfulness for all that 
 was true and good. Explain it who can ! 
 Daughter of a clown, the delicate, frail 
 tragedy of her being had about it the 
 fragrant revelation of innocence. Were the 
 mother at heart the light of love she 
 seemed were the father the imp of 
 darkness how explain the elusive grace 
 of that childish character ? 
 
 And it was a singular fact that while 
 the thoughts of the child's loneliness away 
 up in the dismal fourth floor, amid the 
 gloomy cheapness of the house, brought 
 Poole continually within the circle of 
 Sophie's spell, his mind grew to be more 
 and more with Charlotte. If it had not 
 been for the child at this time it is certain 
 he would have broken entirely with Sophie. 
 
 The twilight was their favorite hour.
 
 78 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 After a day of wretchedness, routine 
 forcing his mind to fulfil official duties, 
 with the feeling that his misery was writ- 
 ten upon his face, unwilling to be with 
 Sophie, unworthy to seek Charlotte, he 
 found a strange consolation in the com- 
 pany of the child. There, at the window 
 of that fourth floor front room, they would 
 sit, the child's round head fitting itself to 
 the hollow between his cheek and shoul- 
 der, watching the twilight fade and the 
 street lamps shine out beloAv them. They 
 talked much confidingly, trusting also to 
 long silences, the latter pleasing the man 
 best; and during them, when his thoughts 
 wandered hellward, it may have saved him 
 more than he ever knew to have had the 
 feel of Drumsticks' arm about his neck. 
 And nothing would have pained him more 
 than to have Drumsticks know that he 
 was not to be loved " because he was 
 good." 
 
 There, before the trees in the small park 
 opposite became entangled in the dusk, 
 they gravely discussed them. Drumsticks 
 had named them, and they always spoke
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 79 
 
 of them, calling each by name ana weav- 
 ing many quaint fancies in regard to them, 
 quite in the whimsical manner peculiar to 
 the child. The season was late, a hazy 
 warmth still pervading the earth, and the 
 leaf and branch of her friends were not as 
 yet much changed. One, an elm, was 
 stripping itself of its greenery, however. 
 The child had named it after Sophie's 
 manager, a person whom she feared and 
 whom Poole disliked for his coarse pres- 
 ence and bulging, frog-like eyes. And 
 the two child and man professed them- 
 selves delighted with the havoc a first 
 frost had played with his namesake. 
 
 " See ! see ! he is losing his coat ! 
 Goody!" And Drumsticks clapped her 
 hands. 
 
 " But Fanny is still, oh, so pretty \" she 
 added. " Fanny" was a green privet. 
 
 A dark pine had been made a namesake 
 of Poolers. A maple was called " Joy/' 
 and a lilac " Sophie," because it was grace- 
 ful. And Poole himself had selected a 
 delicate silver birch, scarce as high as the
 
 80 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 child's head, to bear the name of Drum- 
 sticks. 
 
 " Such a nice little tree ! And such a 
 horrid name ! " said she, after delibera- 
 tion; " but I like it to be so near the dear 
 pine ! " It was a slight, swaying thing, 
 and really leaned quite as if for protection 
 toward the larger full-grown tree. 
 
 ' ' Just as I do to my Play-papa ! " she 
 would murmur, affectionately, clinging to 
 him in a transport of gratitude. 
 
 And so this distracted, guilty-minded 
 man lingered with his small friend, each 
 soothing the other's sense of loneliness. 
 The room in which they sat through these 
 hours was a commonplace one with two 
 beds, one of which, the smaller, was occu- 
 pied by the child, and the other by Toy. 
 Upon the foot of that belonging to Drum- 
 sticks was usually thrown a blanket. This 
 blanket was of fine gray wool, with an ara- 
 besque of white along its borders. It was 
 worn shabby in places, but was still ex- 
 cessively soft and comforting to the touch, 
 and was a part of Drumsticks' earliest re- 
 membrance. To its ample folds she had
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 81 
 
 turned when too young to talk, a dumb 
 consoler for each hurt of mind and body. 
 It was associated in Joy's mind with the 
 episode of her first meeting with her young 
 charge. 
 
 " Tliat is what you are here for ! " 
 Sophie had said, and had pointed one 
 taper finger to a heap of wool upon a 
 hearth-rug. 
 
 " That" turned out, upon examination, 
 to be a small child, who had cried herself 
 to sleep, huddled within the folds of a 
 gray blanket. As time went on it was 
 found impossible to divorce the child from 
 the blanket. If mislaid, the London lodg- 
 ing house, where they then were, was filled 
 with infantile shrieks. 
 
 Drumsticks no longer shrieked. Her 
 griefs had become quieter, if no less bitter. 
 But the blanket still existed, a consola- 
 tion paramount. 
 
 The child was always dressed in the 
 height of fashion at this period, although 
 her immediate environment of living 
 rooms was so plain. This elaborate ward- 
 robe was the only thing about her in
 
 82 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 which Sophie evinced any interest. But 
 the fine things never seemed to belong to 
 Drumsticks. They were selected with 
 more of an eye to picturesqueness than to 
 any exquisite daintiness, and her pale lit- 
 tle round face smiled out above her frip- 
 peries in a remote and superior way which 
 was not the least of her attractions. As 
 Poolers eyes rested upon her grandeur, his 
 mind reverted to the plainly wrought, 
 fine, hand-finished raiment which he had 
 seen Charlotte select for their son. 
 
 One afternoon, about four or five of the 
 clock, Poole found his way up the four 
 flights of stairs to the door of the room. 
 Drumsticks stood at the window, her face 
 pressed flat against the pane, while from 
 one hand trailed the gray blanket, telling 
 Poole the story of some grief, or a battle 
 royal with Joy. 
 
 " Miss will? " 
 
 "No I" 
 
 " Miss likes her own way ! " grumbled 
 Joy. 
 
 " That's one of my nicest faults ! " com-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 83 
 
 posedly announced the child, with her face 
 still against the pane. 
 
 Whatever the point may have been, Joy 
 did not care to press it, and seeing Poole, 
 left the room to seek more congenial as- 
 sociates. 
 
 Drumsticks was absorbed in her window, 
 one hand holding the blanket, and the 
 other pressed tightly against her heart. 
 It was a frequent gesture with her. There 
 were a few cobweb clouds trailing across 
 the sunset, suggesting the approach of a 
 huge black spider, who should shortly 
 bring darkness after him. Pallid lights 
 quivered on the edges of facades, and the 
 crowds in the street below seemed shadows 
 trooping through some ravine. The street 
 was sulky, unwilling to take on the good 
 humor of gas jets. And Drumsticks 
 waited at the window, her young soul 
 soaking itself in sensations and impres- 
 sions which it did not understand. 
 
 Her ear caught Poole's step as he entered, 
 and she ran to him with a quick change of 
 mood, dropping her blanket, and forget- 
 ting all but the joy of his arrival.
 
 84 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 ' ' I was waiting for you I knew you 
 would come," she cried. 
 
 "What were you doing while you 
 waited?" asked Poole carelessly, thinking to 
 hear of a dispute between herself and Joy. 
 
 " Oh, just thinking thinking till my 
 thinks were sprained ! " 
 
 "Here what's this hand doing?" 
 And drawing her to his knee, he tried to 
 remove the hand she still held upon her 
 breast. 
 
 " There's a little bird sometimes it goes 
 to sleep then I don't feel it. But when 
 it wakes up it begins to hop and jump. 
 Feel it ! Put your ear close so ! " 
 
 Poole pressed his ear firmly against the 
 tender childish breast, as he had so often 
 done before. Her heart was beating 
 rapidly, and with a harsh sound. Drum- 
 sticks was the unfortunate possessor of an 
 emotional, nervous temperament, and the 
 least excitement altered its action. 
 
 "Is it all right?" she asked, puzzled 
 by the thought slie saw in his face. 
 
 " Why, of course, small person ! It's a 
 bully good little bird, that ! "
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 85 
 
 And then he hugged her, and took her 
 upon his knee, and they had much conver- 
 sation of a highly important nature in re- 
 gard to the tooth which had come out that 
 day, when she was biting an apple. Joy 
 had told her that another would replace 
 it. This she was inclined to doubt until 
 reassured by Poole. 
 
 As they sat they heard faint sounds 
 from below stairs, suggesting the return 
 of Sophie from her drive. The man and 
 child sitting together in the dark room 
 listened without comment to the voices. 
 Poole peered at his watch, leaning to the 
 fading window square as he did so. He 
 found that his hour was up. He must 
 leave. Drumsticks clung to him as he 
 passed down the stairs. Sophie saw them 
 through her doorway and called them in. 
 She had thrown off her rich dress, and 
 was resting herself in a corsetless, loose, 
 white neglige, its saffron ribbons being 
 carelessly untied, exposing her neck and 
 breast. Her hair, being uncoiled, fell in 
 a disorderly mass upon those wonderful
 
 86 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 shoulders. Drumsticks would never be 
 as beautiful. 
 
 The child regarded her gravely, trou- 
 bled and uneasy at this marked disorder 
 of attire in Poole's presence. And he 
 was no less embarrassed. But Sophie was 
 at ease and inwardly amused as she saw 
 that he was afraid she might forget the 
 child, and offend by an offered caress. 
 
 She busied herself arranging a new 
 shade upon an enormous lamp which she 
 had caused to be lighted. It was com- 
 posed of countless masks, most of which 
 had opera ball histories, and all of which 
 were decorated with autographs. Among 
 them were monks and devils, faces gro- 
 tesque, not pleasing, smiling scarlet- 
 lipped satin affairs, and others were bits 
 of velvet with slits for eyes, and frills of 
 black and white lace. The rosy light shed 
 by the silken lining of the shade shone 
 through the apertures of oblique eye-holes, 
 and the cavities curved into exaggerated 
 smiles representing the mouths of the 
 masks, tinging Sophie's perfectly 
 chiselled features with pearly tints.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 87 
 
 She touched the masks lightly with the 
 tips of her fingers, giving with retrospec- 
 tive smiles some small incident relative to 
 her possession of each. Poole found it 
 impossible to resist admiring the picture 
 the woman made, although his whole 
 nature revolted at the license of her re- 
 marks, her dress, and her indifference to 
 the presence of her little daughter. She, 
 catching his expression and laughing at 
 it, suddenly assumed the pose of e< The 
 Woman of Masks/' a picture for which 
 she had stood as a model in Paris, and 
 murmured audaciously : 
 
 " Je t'aime ! Je t'aime ! " 
 
 He did not answer. But Drumsticks 
 looked from one to the other, and said 
 quaintly : 
 
 " It's French ! and I haven't got as far 
 as that!" 
 
 Sophie burst into a peal of musical, 
 mocking laughter at the double construc- 
 tion which she immediately placed upon 
 the child's utterance. The child's inno- 
 cent words, followed by the mother's laugh, 
 jarred upon Poole hideously. He felt
 
 88 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 wretchedly unhappy. Bidding Drum- 
 sticks run away upstairs again, % he watched 
 the handsomely dressed child clamber 
 up the long flight. He preferred the 
 dreary emptiness and darkness of the 
 fourth floor for her to the moral atmos- 
 phere where they were. He did not re- 
 turn to Sophie's room, but she followed 
 him to the hall, negligently wrapping her- 
 self in her theatre wrap. 
 
 " Was there ever such another fool 
 over a child ? '' she said jealously. " Why 
 don't you adopt her yourself ? Heaven 
 knows, I'm willing ! " 
 
 He paused abruptly, his hand upon the 
 stair rail. 
 
 " Do you mean that ?" 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 "Would you give her to me and prom- 
 ise not to claim her again ? " 
 
 She was leaning upon the balustrade, her 
 face in shadow, and turning the heavily 
 jewelled rings she wore over and over 
 upon her fingers. Brilliant white and 
 cardinal flashes gleamed from them, and
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 89 
 
 she seemed more occupied with them than 
 with her words. 
 
 " Why not ? " she repeated, as before ; 
 then, seeing that he was in earnest, she 
 became more thoughtful. " Why not?" 
 she whispered. " You would be good to 
 the little thing. She's your kind ! " Then 
 a cynical smile followed as she added : 
 " What would she say ?" 
 
 He paid no attention to her last ques- 
 tion, but grasping her hands he turned 
 her face to the light. 
 
 " Sophie, it would be a serious business ! 
 If I took her it would be to keep her ! 
 There could be no backing out, no change 
 of mind \" 
 
 " Fiddlesticks ! If I once arranged her 
 future well, and got rid of the responsi- 
 bility, I should not want her back ? " 
 
 And, looking in her face, he saw that 
 she was serious. 
 
 He drew a long breath. 
 
 " We'll talk this over again. " 
 
 And as he went out of the front door 
 he looked up to where a flood of pink 
 light seemed to centre about the wonder-
 
 90 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 f ul face and form of Sophie, as she leaned, 
 still smiling, over the balustrade watching 
 his departure. 
 
 She had never shown the slightest trace 
 of regret over the matter of his indiffer- 
 ence to her charms since the night of the 
 first performance of " The Golden Bub- 
 ble. " It had been, and still was, a great 
 success, and would probably run until 
 Christmas, when a new extravaganza would 
 be put upon the same stage, in which 
 Sophie was to have a part. He had gathered 
 this from her, and knew that the company 
 were already rehearsing. Further than 
 that she had said nothing to him of her 
 affairs. And it was with the most smiling 
 good humor that she saw his brief infatu- 
 ation for herself changed into a friendship 
 for the child. Now it struck him for the 
 first time that she might have had the 
 adoption of Drumsticks by himself in mind 
 all of the time. It is probable that to the 
 shrewd Sophie the idea had occurred be- 
 fore this evening. 
 
 Poole walked down the block toward 
 Broadway, with his hands behind him,
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 91 
 
 grasping his stick. The streets were 
 crowded, many pedestrians carrying um- 
 brellas, as the mist was gradually congeal- 
 ing into a cold rain. The wet dripped 
 from the f aQades and steeples. The grime 
 of it! Dirty Manhattan, lying like a trol- 
 lop in the embrace of encircling rivers, 
 while her heart reeked with the secret 
 soul-tragedies of sin, even as her bells of 
 a Sunday rang out angelic chimes! 
 
 It would surely be something to save 
 one little white soul out of all this filth ! 
 
 Sleek, well dressed, leisurely, and 
 wretched, he was perhaps envied of many 
 as he passed on his way. And, in mind, 
 he was picturing the last four months to 
 himself a sort of sad chiaroscuro never 
 to be eliminated from his past. And in a 
 monotone ran the accompaniment to this 
 thought : 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 In order to save Drumsticks from the 
 wreck he must tell Charlotte all, and at 
 once. She would never recover her con- 
 fidence in him. It would mean the death 
 of that beautiful thing. But he would re-
 
 92 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 cover a certain portion of his self-respect. 
 And Drumsticks wonld be safe. For 
 Charlotte would take her, and the child 
 would lead a happy life, and grow to be a 
 true and good woman. 
 
 On the other hand, he might do as other 
 men about him did were doing cover it 
 up, forget it if he could. And the child ? 
 Let her go to the devil ! And she would ! 
 Sophie would see to that. 
 
 He could not do this. Ah, Charlotte! 
 
 He would he would tell her all. He 
 knew his Charlotte! The royal nature of 
 her! The everlasting tenderness of her! 
 And her good will to all especially little 
 children. 
 
 If the Charlottes only knew how much 
 better the John Pooles love them after 
 having met and loathed the Sophies! Or 
 perhaps one might say how much more 
 they appreciate them! 
 
 Acting on a resolution thus born of im- 
 pulse, and nourished by desperation, Poole 
 took that night's nine o'clock train for 
 Seascrest. And he went with the deter- 
 mination to tell Charlotte all. And if she
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 93 
 
 should tell him to go away into the hope- 
 lessness of an existence without her, he 
 knew her well enough to know that she 
 would take Drumsticks. And he hoped 
 that out of the black night which covered 
 him a new day might dawn for the child. 
 As he settled himself in his car chair he 
 shook out his paper and glanced at its 
 date. It was that of the last day in Sep- 
 tember.
 
 PAET I. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONTAINING A CONFESSION. 
 
 " Oft., blame me not that 1 
 
 Have been a shipwrecked man ! 
 You little know how high 
 TJie tide and current ran ! " 
 
 IT must be a very hard thing to tell one 
 woman of another when you and she both 
 know that other has no business whatever 
 to be in the enclosure you ironically call 
 your life, but which you inform yourself 
 is hell. 
 
 If Charlotte had but been of a suspicious 
 nature ! It would have been so much 
 easier for Poole to be dishonest. But 
 when a sweet woman trusts a bad man, 
 even while he is glutted with sin, and a 
 sweet child loves him on sight "because 
 he is good," strange things happen, espe- 
 cially if the man happens to have a vein of 
 honesty imbedded in the rock of his 
 nature. Honesty is a terrible thing. A 
 man who is born honest can never be bad 
 with a particle of comfort in his badness.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 95 
 
 Still, if Charlotte had not been just Char- 
 lotte, and if it had not been for the child, 
 Poole would probably have gone on 
 through life like many another devil- 
 prodded man, with a secret as big as an 
 Edam cheese, masticated, but illy-digested 
 by his soul. 
 
 As it was, once settled in his determina- 
 tion to confess, a fury of haste seized him. 
 Should he never reach Seascrest ? He 
 missed the train which he expected to 
 catch, and was forced to wait in the sta- 
 tion another hour the longest hour he 
 ever knew. And during it he had nothing 
 but thoughts to occupy him. ^^ata^ 
 
 Morals are a matter of comparison^ arid 
 the person who might feel himself a saint 
 in a concert hall would feel a sinner in a 
 cathedral. So Poole, who, when with 
 Sophie, felt himself oppressed with the 
 weight of his own moral superiority, be- 
 came convinced of his obliquity when 
 even in thought he approached Charlotte. 
 
 And he was going to tell her all. 
 
 That from one point of view it might 
 have been better to have saved her the
 
 96 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 pain was true, but Poole was beyond dis- 
 cussing that with himself. He was filled 
 with the madness of a desire to recover his 
 lost honesty and end the lie of it all. A 
 man may be bad with a something good 
 about him which shall eventually save 
 him. So he may be good with a some- 
 thing bad about him which shall ulti- 
 mately work his destruction. That John 
 Adzit Poole was a bad man there was no 
 shadow of doubt. But he had as much 
 which was not purely evil as may lie in 
 inbred honesty. And there is nothing so 
 well calculated to destroy the peace of 
 mind of a whole family as one really hon- 
 est person within it, when that person has 
 gone wrong. 
 
 A confession would put Poole square 
 with his conscience, as it was also associ- 
 ated with repentance ; and it was this 
 honest desire of his to throw off deceit 
 which was his own personal saving. But 
 that confession was to ruin many fair 
 things for Charlotte, such as faith, and 
 trust, and a blessed ignorance of evil. 
 Might not some man have been strong
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 97 
 
 enough to roast on in a simmering hell, 
 cheerfully offering the devil his own soul, so 
 such a woman be spared the awakening ? 
 
 There are two classes of sin. One we 
 commit feeling the greatest horror lest the 
 world should discover it. And we say of 
 it : " God would forgive it, as he made 
 us human ! " The second class the 
 world chuckles over and shares with us, 
 but the soul has an uneasy conviction that 
 the good God's point of view would be 
 different. Poole decided that his belonged 
 to the first class, and he felt that if Char- 
 lotte would overlook it he would not 
 worry about any heavenly forgiveness. 
 Since Eden, more forgiveness had been 
 asked and bestowed upon souls for that 
 particular sin than for any other. 
 
 But Poole's sin was to lose him an 
 Eden which he had at first valued but 
 lightly, and whose worth he was finally to 
 realize with the despair of sickening loss. 
 
 That evening not daring to risk a 
 wakeful night, during which he was afraid 
 his resolve might weaken as once before 
 he told Charlotte all.
 
 98 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 How he took the heart of her, and tore 
 and wrung it with the anguish of his tale, 
 I cannot tell. That he would have died 
 rather than have hurt her so cruelly, is as 
 trite as his weakness. But he had to live 
 on, and it was not in the nature of the 
 man to be able to live a lie. And so he 
 told what was a strange, wild story for a 
 man to tell, and for a woman to hear. It 
 blistered the page of life upon which it 
 was written. It showed the pure Charlotte 
 the stress of a man's unruly passion for 
 the first time. It opened to her astonished 
 vision the weakness of the will of him, 
 along with the truth that dwelt in his 
 nature. 
 
 For the first time she knew of the 
 sphinx- woman she with the female breast 
 and face and body of beast. The black 
 cloud of knowledge came and rested upon 
 Charlotte, but through and above it she 
 lifted loving eyes lifted them skyward, 
 and so saw the end was not of this earth, 
 and seeing, was enabled to forgive. 
 ( A something went out of life for her, 
 and a something entered in. Along with
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 99 
 
 the bewilderment of a first jealousy of 
 woman came, like a straw upon dark 
 waters, a yearning pity for a child. 
 
 And for the man pity also and for- 
 giveness. 
 
 But poor Poole ! It was the pity and 
 forgiveness which left him no longer the 
 One Man, but a miserable creature to be 
 looked down upon in mercy, and never up 
 to in respect. So John Poole lost his 
 Eden, and felt it, and knew it, and was 
 never to forget it. 
 
 The little story grows a sad one, al- 
 though one does not like to have it so. 
 But sweetness, and innocence, and tender 
 hearts are no protection from the invader 
 grief. And this story is necessarily sad, as 
 it is true. And there are alive to-day those 
 who, if they chance upon it, will throw 
 their memory back into the years and 
 recognize it as such. The Charlotte and 
 the Sophie still live. The one devoted to 
 her son, who often makes with her a pil- 
 grimage to where, under grass green 
 enough for forgetfulness, a sinner sleeps. 
 A kind sinner whose heart was too hot,
 
 100 DBUMSTICKS. 
 
 and whose mind was too generous to insure 
 just judgment from those whom he in- 
 jured. 
 
 And dead he possesses a something 
 which was never entirely his in life. 
 
 For that gentle woman often instructs 
 her son that he is to be good like his 
 father. Thus are sins forgiven to the 
 dead by the living, when the living are 
 women, and have warm bosoms shelter- 
 ing tender hearts. As for Sophie, she 
 sang in a minor part at Covent Garden not 
 long ago. That she remembers best Poole 
 or Pierrot who can say ?
 
 PAKT I. 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SHOWING HOW THE CHILD SEEMINGLY PROFITS 
 BY THE SIN. 
 
 "As a silver thistle, whirling, wind-blown, 
 Is by frail chance on a fair hill-aide sown ! " 
 
 THE strangest condition Avhich Char- 
 lotte made in regard to their adoption of 
 Drumsticks was that she herself should 
 see and talk with the mother of the child. 
 
 And before Poole had recovered from 
 his amazement at this, he was informed 
 by Sophie that unless she should meet his 
 wife she should most emphatically refuse 
 to surrender the child to her care. 
 
 " Would you expect me to give her up 
 to one whom I had never seen ? " she de- 
 manded virtuously. 
 
 Now, this was the thing of all others 
 which Poole most dreaded. The man does 
 not feel complacency at the idea of the two 
 women in his life meeting for a chat. It 
 was distinctly unpleasant. He was not
 
 102 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 sure of what Sophie might or might not 
 say to Charlotte. But the women had 
 their way in the matter. 
 
 And each demanded the meeting of him 
 in the name of Drumsticks, but each was 
 actuated by another motive curiosity. 
 
 Can one believe that Lilith and Eve 
 never met ? Aye, and gazed each at each 
 with hungry, curious eyes ? 
 
 Sophie willed to see this immaculate 
 virtue which men respected, and left 
 to weep at home. And, as for Char- 
 lotte, she was no less inquisitive in regard 
 to this incarnate mystery one of those 
 strange creatures who had only to lift a 
 pencilled eyebrow to steal one's husband. 
 And yet what could two beings from 
 such different worlds find to say to each 
 other ? 
 
 But the two women had their way in 
 the matter. 
 
 What passed between them we shall 
 never know. Poole never did, and could 
 only recall that the visit gave him a very 
 bad half-hour. Each had something 
 which the other envied, for Sophie pos-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 103 
 
 sessed what Charlotte never had beauty. 
 And Charlotte owned what Sophie had 
 forever lost virtue. Add to this the fact 
 that each had loved the same man in her 
 own way, and it is not difficult to conceive 
 that the conversation must have been a 
 rare one. 
 
 As its result, Drumsticks was trans- 
 ferred from one house to another upon 
 the day following. 
 
 The parting between Drumsticks and 
 her mother was characteristic. The child 
 clung tightly to Poole's hand, who had 
 come to fetch her. Sophie cried softly, 
 picturesquely, and then fell into a sort of 
 purring rage. 
 
 As for Drumsticks, she took it all quite 
 as a matter of course. Not one thing which 
 happens in the lives of happily common- 
 place children had ever happened to her. 
 
 She considered the matter very gravely 
 as she sat by Poole's side in the cab. All 
 her old belongings had been left behind at 
 Charlotte's request, who wished to sur- 
 round the child with an entirely new 
 environment all save the gray blanket.
 
 104 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 And she was to leave Sophie forever that 
 odd word which was too long for Drum- 
 sticks to understand, as it is for most of us 
 and she was going to leave also forever 
 Joy, and the room where she had lived 
 so long in the fourth story of an ugly 
 house, and she should never see it again, 
 and she was very glad of all this, especially 
 as she was going to live with her Play- 
 papa al ways al ways. 
 
 She looked blissfully at him as she 
 thought this, and he caught the glance, 
 and it made her strange affection for him, 
 and his for her, seem a holy thing. 
 
 The child was very quiet throughout 
 the trip to Seascrest. Poole remembered 
 afterward how she clung to him while 
 crossing over the ferry, and how she had 
 sat upon the car seat in the train, with 
 her brown shoes thrust out, heels together, 
 and her small hands folded decorously in 
 her lap. Her lips were compressed, her 
 eyes solemnly observant of everything. 
 And during the drive over to the house 
 from the station, she had sighed often, 
 with one hand upon her heart, breathing
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 105 
 
 in the cool salt-fog, and watching, with 
 quickly shifting glances, each glimmering 
 light, and the long, black hedges which 
 defined the properties of the various coun- 
 try houses. Then had come the crunch- 
 ing of gravel as they turned into a neat 
 driveway, which at last brought them to a 
 doorway from whence shone a cheerful 
 glow, suggesting firelight. For although 
 the days are still of summer, the October 
 nights are chill down upon Long Island. 
 
 And then Charlotte, who only im- 
 pressed Drumsticks upon that first night 
 as a something sweet-smelling, soft, and 
 warm, whose voice was a caress. Into 
 the embrace of this rare person she was 
 cuddled, and cradled, bewildered and 
 charmed. 
 
 Ah, that night ! That night ! Happy 
 Drumsticks. 
 
 An hour later Poole was left alone in the 
 library downstairs ; there was the stir which 
 tells of the introduction of the unusual 
 into a methodical family life. He listened 
 as he paced the floor with thoughts burning 
 to ashes like the cigar between his fingers.
 
 106 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 
 
 With the nurse Clara, as with Poole 
 junior, Drumsticks was an immediate suc- 
 cess. That it had been so with her son 
 was a pleasure to Charlotte, and leaving 
 the two children together, she stole down 
 to where Poole sat in the shadow. She 
 stood for a moment in silence; then, after 
 exclaiming against his remaining in the 
 dark, she hesitatingly added : 
 
 " Jack that name of hers that ridic- 
 ulous name what can be done about it?" 
 
 Poole deliberated. He felt ill and thor- 
 oughly miserable, and quite in the mood 
 to regret having brought the child to his 
 house. He was inclined to think it 
 had been absurdly Quixotic. He avoided 
 Charlotte's eyes, feeling that he should 
 never care to look in them again. 
 
 " I we cannot go on calling her 
 Drumsticks," she added. 
 
 " I had not thought of it I have not 
 given much I'm afraid there will be much 
 of which I have had no forethought. But 
 call her what you like, Charlotte. It 
 can do no harm." 
 
 " And you ? What are you to be to her?
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 107 
 
 Isn't it best that the ' Play-papa ' should 
 be dropped ? " 
 
 " As you like. It is all in your hands, 
 Charlotte. I will try and carry out any 
 plans you consider proper." 
 
 She stood thinking. 
 
 " It will have to be thought out little by 
 little. I've told Clara that she is the child 
 of a friend of yours, that the father is 
 dead and the mother unable to care for 
 her properly, and that for that reason we 
 have taken her. As far as the story goes, 
 it is true enough." 
 
 " Tell her tell others what you like," 
 he said, dejectedly. 
 
 " But one wishes to be truthful if pos- 
 sible, Jack. And we ought both to say 
 the same thing of her." 
 
 " I know I know." 
 
 " I shall say as little as possible. There 
 will be a gossip as you said that night. 
 People will talk. They will say there is 
 a story. But we are prepared for that/' 
 said Charlotte, bravely. " And it will all 
 die away after a bit. " 
 
 Poole nodded. The dusk hid his
 
 108 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 wretched face from her eyes. And she ! 
 He had been shocked that night to notice 
 the change in her. Her lassitude, her 
 gray pallor ! She was sweet she would 
 always be sweet but the fire the color 
 the freshness all were missing. She was 
 like a rose still, but like a rose which had 
 been pressed in a book. And he had 
 done it. 
 
 After lighting some candles, and ringing 
 for lamps, Charlotte glanced at the clock, 
 immediately disappearing, murmuring 
 something about the children's bedtime. 
 
 It is a trite saying that man only real- 
 izes how much he has loved a woman 
 when he has lost her, or fears to do so. 
 Yet Poole watched Charlotte leave the 
 room, .following her form with hungry 
 wistf ulness, as if all he prized in life went 
 with her. 
 
 He remembered when the happiness 
 he had felt with her seemed to him like 
 fattening upon monotonous fields of 
 serenity. It had not satisfied his nature. 
 It had been restful and full of peace. 
 And he had grown sick unto death of it
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 109 
 
 all. And now it seemed so beautiful a 
 thing and was forever out of reach. To 
 a nature, to a temperament like Poole's, 
 such spiritual meadow lands of smiling 
 pastoral quiet would only be endurable- 
 after the tempest. The tempest had 
 come and gone. He had had his fling 
 amid its fierceness. And he had come at 
 last to prize serenity, peace, and quiet, 
 only to find the way to those blessings 
 closed. These are life's little ironies. 
 
 Charlotte had not one particle of tem- 
 perament or any other nonsense about 
 her. She represented rest, clean thoughts, 
 and purity. And there had been a time 
 when he had tired of these things. 
 
 "I was a cur a dirty cur!" he ex- 
 claimed, bitterly. " And I deserve all I 
 am getting ! " He tossed his cigar into 
 the garden, opening the window to do so, 
 and glad for the touch of frosty air. It 
 fell among some geraniums, and he 
 watched it shine for a moment before it 
 died out. 
 
 Upstairs, Charlotte was singing to the 
 children :
 
 110 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 ' ' Little ones to Him belong ; 
 They are weak, but He is strong." 
 
 Poole closed the window and listened. 
 In another moment he heard Drumsticks 
 singing away like a young bobolink, try- 
 ing to follow Charlotte, lilting the tune, 
 fumbling it, dropping it, then catching it 
 again with a rush. And, above all, so 
 happy in it ! 
 
 And it seemed then as if all the sin 
 and misery had resulted in a great 
 good to an innocent child. 
 
 Poole hoped this, although in the 
 short time she had been beneath his 
 roof the knowledge had come to him 
 that her mere presence was to be a con- 
 stant reminder to him and to Char- 
 lotte of his guilt. For through it 
 he had found Drumsticks. The voices 
 upstairs continuing, Poole felt himself 
 drawn toward them. There was noth- 
 ing morbid but what must find healing 
 and comfort in the presence of Charlotte. 
 And so he went as near as he dared go. 
 He knew he should disturb them in the 
 nursery, and thought it best to leave Drum-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. Ill 
 
 sticks entirely to his wife, this first even- 
 ing. But he crept noiselessly to a recess 
 in the hall, just outside the nursery door, 
 where there was a couch and some cush- 
 ions. He flung himself upon it, feeling 
 less lonely than when below in the library. 
 For he was nearer Charlotte. 
 
 As he passed the nursery door he saw 
 the top of her brown head reflected in the 
 toilet glass, as she swung to and fro in an 
 old rocker which stood near a window, 
 whose shades and curtains were pulled 
 aside. 
 
 As he lay upon the couch he could hear 
 the creaking of the chair. That Charlotte 
 had his boy upon her breast, and that 
 Drumsticks was encircled by one arm, he 
 gathered from what was said by the 
 speaker, and by an occasional low croon, 
 with which he had heard Charlotte accen- 
 tuate a kiss when given to their child. A 
 lamp burned very dimly within the room. 
 
 " And I can ask Him anything any- 
 thing ?" he heard Drumsticks say, pres- 
 ently. 
 
 " Anything," soberly replied Charlotte.
 
 112 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 " And He'll do it He'll give me what I 
 ask?" 
 
 ' ' Yes. Perhaps not exactly as a little girl 
 would like. But in His own way he will." 
 
 "And He likes us to forgive had 
 people ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The child considered. "I s'pose God 
 knows we don't mean it when we pray for 
 'em. So He wouldn't pay any attention, 
 anyway. And He will make anybody good 
 if we ask Him ? and bless 'em ? " 
 
 " That is what He likes us to ask when 
 we pray." Charlotte was evidently 
 charmed with the eagerness with which 
 Drumsticks was absorbing spiritual truths. 
 
 " Who called Him God ? " was the next 
 question. 
 
 Charlotte hesitated. " Dear, there are 
 so many things one cannot explain to a 
 little bit of a girl ! " 
 
 "But grown folks understand it all, do 
 they ? Do you ? " asked the child, earn- 
 estly. 
 
 " I try to, but I am very, very igno- 
 rant."
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 113 
 
 Drumsticks thought a few moments so 
 intently that her breathing seemed la- 
 bored. Then she said aloud, as if to her- 
 self : 
 
 "I shall just ask Him to bless my Play- 
 papa. I shan't ask Him to make him 
 good. He's good enough, and so even 
 big folks are just like little children to 
 this awful great Jesus ! My ! He must 
 be big ! Is He as big as this house ? " 
 
 Charlotte waited for wisdom. ' ' Dear, 
 that is another one of the things we can- 
 not understand. We are not told God's 
 size oh, dear wait until you're older ! " 
 
 "But He's big?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And my Play-papa as big as he is 
 and all grown up is just God's little 
 boy ? " demanded Drumsticks, excitedly. 
 
 God's little boy was miserably accepting 
 a spiritual spanking at that moment. 
 Oh, how far away from him the gentle 
 group within the nursery seemed ! How 
 happy he would have been to have felt 
 himself clean, pure in spirit, and to have 
 been one with them ! And what a bore
 
 114 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 he would have thought such an hour be- 
 fore he had rendered himself an outcast 
 from all such simple pleasure ! 
 
 Charlotte arose to lay her boy in his 
 cradle, leaning above him lovingly. He 
 was warm, his pink face covered with tiny 
 drops of moisture, and his cheeks crimped 
 with the imprint of the embroidery upon 
 the waist of her gown. Drumsticks fol- 
 lowed her upon the tips of her toes, 
 breathless, eagerly drinking in all the 
 strange newness of the scene, enchanted 
 with this her first dwelling in mother- 
 land. 
 
 The two stood in a hushed silence for a 
 moment, and for that space of time the 
 woman's face lost its impress of bravely 
 borne new pain. 
 
 He was her man. He had never been 
 false to her. Her child years would only 
 make it more true. There is only one 
 woman in the life of each man whom he 
 may never forget. He may marry and 
 bury a serial of wives, but in all the days 
 / of the years of his life there will be for 
 him but one mother. And there is no 

 
 DRUMSTICKS. 115 
 
 title to be won of woman as satisfying as 
 that of the Mother of Men. So Charlotte's 
 thoughts ran. 
 
 Eetnrning to her rocker, Charlotte 
 moved it a little, that it might command a 
 better view of the night, with its cold 
 stars, and then wrapped the white-gowned 
 figure of Drumsticks in her luxurious em- 
 brace. She had the arms and bosom which 
 a child turns to, and nestles into, and, 
 feeling quite safe, adores. Then she 
 stooped and gathered her soft skirt about 
 the child's naked feet, and covered her to 
 the chin in its fold, and smiled above her 
 like the angel she was. 
 
 And Poole knew what the two were 
 about from the gentle rustling, the creak- 
 ing of the rocker, and his knowledge of 
 Charlotte. 
 
 "Now talk \" demanded Drumsticks, 
 forgetting at last her gray blanket, and 
 not measuring her bliss at all, but like a 
 child accepting it naturally. 
 
 For children are philosophers, in that 
 they make their own the lost art of exist-
 
 116 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 ing, idly intoxicated with the mere tran- 
 quil sense of being. 
 
 And Charlotte talked, and Poole thought 
 he had never heard her talk as well. But 
 that was possibly because he found him- 
 self outside of it all. In his isolation 
 he heard her try to explain to the child 
 the change that had come to her life. 
 There was to be as it were a new 
 heaven and a new earth, and to Drum- 
 sticks it seemed mostly heaven. There 
 was to be no Play-papa, it was true, but a 
 kind Uncle Jack, who would love her more 
 than ever. And there was to be an Aunt 
 Charlotte, and, stranger than all, there 
 was to be no Drumsticks, but a new little 
 girl, with quite a new name, and who was 
 to have nothing to do but play, be good, 
 and love God. It was to be almost like 
 Kevelations. though Drumsticks had never 
 heard of that. 
 
 She lay very still, her sensitive lips 
 quivering, her eyes as bright as those of a 
 bird. She tried to take it all in, and to 
 understand what the pleasant voice was tell- 
 ing her. But she found 'it a bit difficult.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 117 
 
 " And so I've no Play-papa but just 
 an Uncle Jack ? " 
 
 " It is better so, dear." 
 
 " And he wasn't a real Play-papa ? " 
 
 Charlotte hesitated before her answer. 
 " No." 
 
 " And now he is a real Uncle Jack ? " 
 
 Another pause. " He \vill be as good 
 as one." 
 
 " I'd like something real/' said the 
 child's wistful voice. "And Sophie?" 
 added the new little girl, after another 
 pause. 
 
 " Forget her, dear, and don't talk of 
 her to any one ! " 
 
 " All right. I will," was the answer. 
 The child was much impressed by the 
 mystery of it all. " And what is what 
 relation is my Uncle Jack to you ? " 
 
 " He is the papa of dear baby." 
 
 And Poole overhearing, accepted the 
 position given him in the menage. And 
 then he held his breath, fearing the next 
 question. It came^the one he had in- 
 stinctively dreaded and endowed with 
 awfulness.
 
 118 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 " And what relation is my Uncle Jack to 
 Sophie ?" 
 
 A cold sweat was upon Poole, and he 
 awaited the answer in a fury. It came 
 without hesitation. 
 
 " He was and is no relation." 
 
 "And what is my new name ?" asked 
 the child, after another silence which had 
 led Charlotte to hope her sleeping. 
 
 "I don't know, Drumsticks only we 
 must find something dear enough and 
 pretty enough for our own little girl. 
 Try and sleep."
 
 PAET I. 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DURING WHICH THE CHILD IS HAPPY. 
 
 " Et Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, 
 L'espace cTun matin." 
 
 THE following weeks of that autumn 
 were the happiest of the child's life. And 
 the love which she found with Poole and 
 Charlotte was like a sunbeam which, 
 stealing for an hour through the shutters, 
 lights the melancholy of a darkened room. 
 
 She grew rosy, expanding like a young 
 plant taken from the cellar into the open. 
 The expression of her face changed. For 
 the first time in her life she knew that 
 simple, healthy existence of which the 
 town-bred child is ignorant. For the 
 first time she was subjected to that nur- 
 sery routine so conventional, so sensible, 
 and so morally wholesome for the young 
 human animal. Her small body was 
 clothed in simplest attire of warm wool, 
 with fine aprons overlaying it whitely.
 
 120 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 These took the place of those over ornate 
 and conspicuous frocks with which So- 
 phie had been pleased to robe her. 
 
 Her early supper in the nursery, with 
 the crowing baby and the gentle Charlotte 
 for companions, waited upon by the deft 
 Clara, was a delight. The two children 
 became very fond of each other, and little 
 Poole turned to her each morning as 
 soon as sleep left him. Each night Char- 
 lotte had much to tell her husband of 
 Drumsticks' new grace and fancy. It 
 was a safe subject, and there was much to 
 avoid in conversation. Poole was trying 
 hard to wait patiently, hoping that at 
 least a part of the heart he had lost might 
 some time be returned to him. And he 
 was very miserable all of these never-to-be- 
 forgotten days. About the raised eye- 
 brows of it, and the gossip of it, he gave 
 himself little concern. A rich man can 
 afford a sin now and then. 
 
 What is a sin worth ? 
 
 Surely not the price paid for it. 
 
 Poole was far more miserable than 
 Charlotte. To her pure, frank, sensible
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 121 
 
 Charlotte there seemed but one course 
 open, since she had elected to live out her 
 life with him that of making the best of 
 it all. 
 
 Lacking in imagination, she was spared 
 much anguish, as she failed to picture the 
 scenes which jealousy would have sug- 
 gested. Less a woman than an angel, 
 she was not of a type to undergo that cru- 
 cifixion of the heart which would have 
 bowed some women to the earth. Char- 
 lotte did not understand. That woman 
 is happiest who understands men least. 
 But the measure of sorrow which had 
 come to her left her a richness of charm 
 which she had not before owned. Not 
 realizing this, Poole wondered continually 
 how he had failed to perceive that she 
 possessed it. Grief is a passion, and any 
 passion ripens. There are natures which 
 are only brought to fruition through 
 transports of tears. Those delicate flow- 
 ers of trust, affection, and sympathy 
 which bloom to perfection in such a nat- 
 ure as that of Charlotte had seemed but 
 commonplace until the white moonlight
 
 122 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 of mysterious charm had mantled them. 
 And when that happened they were lost 
 to Poole. The man or woman who, pos- 
 sessing them, risks such a loss, through 
 the yielding to ephemeral desire, deserves 
 the banishment from Eden which may 
 follow. The love of Charlotte might have 
 been a Garden Delight to one who could 
 have forgotten, amid its lilies, the vivid 
 temptings of other blossoms growing out- 
 side the lawful enclosure. 
 
 Poole had strayed after the forbidden. 
 And now he found himself locked outside 
 the Garden, clinging to the palings like a 
 bad small boy, and curiously watching the 
 goings-on within, where Drumsticks had 
 been admitted to play among the lilies. 
 He had been a hog, and was now in a posi- 
 tion to dispute with Thoreau the entailed 
 right to satisfaction attributed to that 
 animal. He had wallowed, and found 
 himself neither satisfied nor a philoso- 
 pher. Ah if he had but been a little 
 better man or a little worse ! 
 
 Meanwhile Drumsticks was happy. She 
 was happy as only children are happy.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 123 
 
 She asked no questions. Her lot had been 
 cast into her lap, and it was a fine one, 
 and she was very busy with it. Her new 
 name had not as yet been decided upon, 
 although it was much discussed. 
 
 Poole wished to call the child Pamela, 
 after a little playmate of his who had 
 died when he was away at school for the 
 first time. She had gone away leaving a 
 memory like the odor of new-mown hay 
 in his boyish life. And at times through- 
 out his manhood it had delicately ob- 
 truded itself in a vague way, always subt- 
 ly suggesting things clean, and the early 
 hours of a dewy morning in spring. And 
 the name pleased Charlotte very well. 
 
 But Mrs. Applegate's indifference to 
 the child's advent suddenly developed 
 into a vital interest whenever the subject 
 of the new name was approached. Her 
 zeal was never understood by Poole, nor 
 did he ever know what ideas she enter- 
 tained as to the presence of the child in 
 the family. All that had passed upon the 
 subject had been conducted behind closed 
 doors by Charlotte. Drumsticks had
 
 124 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 been accepted by the old lady and endured, 
 and even made much of. For Drum- 
 sticks " had a way with her," as even the 
 cook owned. Any one who ever knew the 
 child will find a pleasure in recalling it. 
 
 But in the matter of the new name 
 Mrs. Applegate stood firm. It must be 
 religious the more religious the better 
 as a sort of offset to the one the child had 
 so far owned. The name of Drumsticks 
 was worse than mythology, and Mrs. Ap- 
 plegate considered mythology very bad 
 indeed. The gentle tides of days must 
 be allowed to rise and ebb before it would 
 be possible to divorce her from her choice 
 of Hannah, a name which she considered 
 unpretending and at the same time most 
 respectable. Charlotte evaded an imme- 
 diate decision in the matter, knowing by 
 experience that she should gain a point 
 by doing so. And the child herself was 
 so happy it really appeared to matter very 
 little whether she had any name at all. 
 
 Her startling and ingenuous acceptance 
 of Scripture was surprising, and occasion- 
 ally disconcerting.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 125 
 
 It afforded Mrs. Applegate continual 
 consternation. ' One morning she discov- 
 ered Drumsticks kneeling in the barn- 
 yard, with arms outstretched to fluttering 
 pigeons above her head, and a most 
 piously exalted expression upon her small, 
 round face. 
 
 " What are yon doing, child ? Get up 
 instantly ! You are quite daubed with 
 filth ! " exclaimed the old lady, indig- 
 nantly. 
 
 "I'm playing Fm the Virgin Mary! 
 Don't you see the angel ? " piped the 
 child's healthy treble, and Mrs. Applegate 
 was overcome, and retreated gasping and 
 wordless. 
 
 The imaginative faculty was enormously 
 developed in the child, enabling her faith 
 in Charlotte to cause in her mind a most 
 literal acceptance of the mighty religious 
 statements of nursery talks. And her 
 questions would have staggered better the- 
 ology than that of the gentle Charlotte. 
 
 Among other characteristics of Drum- 
 sticks which never failed to puzzle and 
 scandalize Mrs. Applegate, was the love
 
 126 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 she entertained for the old gray blanket. 
 She regarded it as foolish in the extreme, 
 and even a setting up of an idol, as it 
 were. This was especially true when she 
 discovered that the child talked to it as if 
 it were a live thing. And when she in- 
 sisted upon rewarding the blanket for 
 fictitious virtues, and upon punishing it 
 for alleged lapses, Mrs. Applegate drew 
 the line. 
 
 Happening to enter the nursery upon 
 the occasion of a bath hour, she found 
 the baby redolent of violet powder, and 
 with his damp, gold curls fresh from 
 Charlotte's fingers. 
 
 To this royal highness came his hand- 
 maid, Drumsticks, scantily arrayed and 
 dragging the gray blanket. With stern 
 persistence she impressed upon the inter- 
 ested infant that Miss Gray Blanket was 
 bad very bad indeed. 
 
 " Baby whip ! so ! Bad bad la d!" 
 
 And Poole, the younger, ever ready, as 
 humans are, to punish, did most solemnly 
 spat with his fat, pink palms upon the 
 blanket which Drumsticks held before him.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 127 
 
 "Why do you teach baby thus, child ?" 
 questioned the old lady, with stiff lips. 
 
 " I must ! She was so naughty ! " 
 Here Drumsticks shook the blanket in- 
 dignantly. 
 
 " Naughty ! A blanket naughty ! 
 Come ! come ! This is too much ! How 
 very silly for a little girl of seven ! " 
 
 "But you don't know!" 
 
 " What is it I don't know ?" 
 
 (Many things, possibly, Mrs. Apple- 
 gate!) 
 
 " Why/' replied Drumsticks, sinking 
 her voice to a whisper, "she [the blanket] 
 said she didn't love Jesus ! " 
 
 Mrs. Applegate stared hard at the 
 child. It was a high-bred stare of which 
 she was pardonably vain. She opened her 
 mouth, which was inclined to be abysmal, 
 by the way, and then closed it, her book- 
 ish nose drooping over it once more in a 
 resigned fashion. 
 
 That afternoon, however, she offered a 
 protest to Charlotte. 
 
 " Why do you teach the child so er 
 literally from the Bible?"
 
 128 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 " Because I believe literally." 
 "All of it?" 
 
 " Yes, mother ! It seems to me that 
 one must accept it so as a little child 
 or not at all." 
 
 " What a child you are yourself, Char- 
 ley ! " Mrs. Applegate's tone became 
 mildly tolerant. 
 
 "Ami?" 
 
 " But literally one can struggle ! 
 but That first chapter of Matthew ! 
 Why er " Mrs. Applegate had never 
 been in touch with Matthew. 
 
 She bulged mentally as one who had in 
 her own opinion flouted that disciple. 
 " But I hope," she added, virtuously, 
 " that I believe all that is necessary ! " 
 
 "I don't know, mother/' said Char- 
 lotte, simply, not as a reply to the possi- 
 ble inquiry in Mrs. Applegate's foregoing 
 remark, but thoughtfully, as one whose 
 wistful eyes search a spiritual horizon. 
 "I don't know. I must believe it all! 
 I must believe it to live ! " There was a 
 sob caught in Charlotte's white throat. 
 
 " Humph ! This Quixotic adoption of
 
 DKUMSTICKS. 129 
 
 this unearthly child is only a beginning ! " 
 And Mrs. Applegate was fain to groan 
 aloud. 
 
 But Drumsticks knew nothing of such 
 talk. She was living her dreams. And 
 the star, and the dear Jesus, who loved her 
 so much that He would grant her every 
 wish, continued to be as real to her as the 
 arms of Charlotte. 
 
 And oh, the enchanted hours in the gar- 
 den ! 
 
 There was an old tree, with a clematis 
 vine about it, and with a crook in its 
 trunk which made a fine seat, quite as if 
 a fairy had ordered it to be so. Some of 
 the flowers were gone, it was true, but in 
 each seed clinging to its pod there was 
 left a promise to a little dreamer like 
 Drumsticks. And there were still many 
 blossoms hanging upon the stalks of the 
 carnations, and nasturtiums along with 
 chrysanthemums wooed by dull old bees ; 
 and there was a spider but why dwell 
 upon it ? 
 
 Oh, the dreams the child found there ! 
 and the dreams she left there for all to
 
 130 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 dream who should come after her ! A 
 dream of a small, serious child, with in- 
 tent, earnest eyes, a sweet mouth, and 
 with a certain grace of childish ease in 
 movement which was all her own. The 
 little figure seems still to flit about those 
 garden paths upon certain golden autumn 
 days when all is very still. 
 
 And then, best of all, a ringing, just at 
 dusk, of the bell, calling to supper in the 
 nursery, where a delicious feeling of cosey 
 well-being and of shut-in-ness was im- 
 parted when the shades were lowered. 
 
 Ting-a-ling ! Ting-a-ling ! No ! there 
 was no more cheery sound than that ! 
 
 And when Poole, coming from town 
 some hours later, stole up the stairs to 
 make his dinner toilette, it was frequently 
 to hear the drowsy murmur of a happy 
 child's voice : 
 
 " Now I lay me down to sleep ; 
 I pray the Lord my soul to keep."
 
 PAKT I. 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DEALING WITH THE SINNER, THE CHILD, AND A 
 LITTLE SHIP. 
 
 " Madame, as you pass us by. 
 
 Dreaming of your loves and wines, 
 
 Do not brush your rich brocade 
 Against this little maid of mine, 
 
 Madame, as you pass us by! " 
 
 ONE evening Poole, returning to Seas- 
 crest by an early train, insinuated himself, 
 with a fine art, into the nursery at bed- 
 time. 
 
 Keeping one eye well upon Charlotte, he 
 dandled his astonished son upon his knee, 
 according attentions never rendered be- 
 fore. It must be remembered that Poole 
 had always disliked babies, and as a young 
 father had never experienced the glow of 
 pride said to be the property of paternity. 
 Charlotte went quietly about, folding and 
 arranging the children's clothing, and con- 
 sulting in a low voice with Clara the de- 
 tails of a nightly nursery toilette. She was 
 surprised at Poolers caring to be with them,
 
 132 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 and a little amused. But Charlotte never 
 wondered at anything long. She undressed 
 Drumsticks before she came for the baby. 
 When she took him from his father their 
 hands touched, and the contact was un- 
 noticed by her, although since the night 
 upon which he had made his wild confes- 
 sion she had never been as near to him. 
 
 With Poole it was not so. 
 
 Her touch was so tenderly feminine, so 
 full of the gift of herself, that he longed 
 to fall at her feet in most abject humility 
 and beg that she lay her hands upon his 
 head, that the fever of his brain might 
 leave him. 
 
 But he only said : " Go to mamma, 
 youngster ! " with a half -embarrassed dab 
 of a kiss, which fell wide of its mark. 
 
 He watched them for a moment, but 
 Drumsticks, jealous, stole within the cir- 
 cle of his arm. She loved him, and be- 
 lieved in him. That was written in her de- 
 lightful eyes. He drew her to a chair by 
 the window, and took her upon his lap, 
 and they looked out into the twilight to- 
 gether, as they had done so often in town.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 133 
 
 He thought of those days and wandered if 
 she was thinking of them also, and almost 
 feared that she was, and would speak of 
 them. The memory of the trees in the 
 little city park which they had named, 
 and which had been companions to the 
 child, brought other memories which he 
 had hoped would soon die to her and 
 himself. Darkness was gathering, and 
 the colors of the garden just beneath the 
 window were fast blending, but far out in 
 the dusky purple distance the tossing 
 ocean gave out a horizon line against a sky 
 with one star. 
 
 The child lay very still against his heart 
 for a little, and Poole derived a certain 
 comfort from her presence. Charlotte 
 and his own boy were removed from him 
 by his own acts. But here was one a 
 Columbine's baby who loved him, and 
 whose love had come to him through his 
 sin, and her faith in him was the one re- 
 deeming feature of the whole affair. 
 
 Drumsticks did not understand. And 
 never would understand. But her love 
 soothed him by the flatter)' of its intuition.
 
 134 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 Only the love of a little child, or of a dog, 
 can comfort thus. 
 
 " Do you like apple marmalade, Uncle 
 Jack?" 
 
 " Awfully!" He was relieved to find 
 her thoughts dwelling upon the near past 
 of the nursery supper table, and not with 
 one more remote. A happy child has 
 little thought of anything but the present. 
 
 " And did you used to love it when you 
 were a little boy ? " 
 
 " Better than anything except cakes and 
 honey." 
 
 " Did you spread it on bread ?" 
 
 "No, I was a bad boy, Drumsticks I 
 wanted all jam." 
 
 " Did you ? " The child was interested, 
 and reflected before she added : "We 
 have it spread on biscuit. But you 
 never, never could be lad, Uncle Jack ! " 
 
 Poole did not care to discuss this, and 
 they were again silent. As the twilight 
 deepened, the blues and greens blurred 
 into the gray of the distance, but the star 
 shone with added brilliance. It was 
 watched nightly by Drumsticks, as Poole
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 135 
 
 knew, but for the first time they watched 
 it together. Suddenly a feather of white 
 flickered out upon the tossing waves of the 
 sea. 
 
 " The sail ! " cried Drumsticks, en- 
 chanted, sitting bolt upright. 
 
 And then she explained to Poole that 
 every night a little boat had started for 
 the star, and had sailed away ever so far, 
 but had never seemed to reach it yet. He 
 pretended a vast interest in the attempt, 
 and once more they carried on their fanci- 
 ful talk very much as upon those other 
 evenings when they had sat at the window 
 of a dreary fourth floor front room. And 
 it was Charlotte's turn to listen as she 
 sat and rocked Poole the younger in her 
 arms. 
 
 "The little white ship is sailing, sail- 
 ing-" 
 
 "And by-and-by " 
 
 " It will reach the kind white star," 
 murmured Drumsticks, sleepily finishing 
 the sentence. 
 
 Finally, when twilight melted the hori- 
 zon line completely, and sea and sky
 
 130 DKUMSTICKS. 
 
 seemed to mingle, she suddenly declared 
 that it was accomplished. The ship had 
 at length reached the star. 
 
 "For I saw it I" cried Drumsticks, joy- 
 fully, and half asleep. 
 
 In after years Poole was often to recall 
 this evening. And when he did so, it was 
 to think with pain which was not all bit- 
 ter of the troubled sea of his passion, over 
 which had danced such a brave little craft, 
 always steering for the light, and reaching 
 it only at that hour when horizons are lost 
 and earth melts away into heaven.
 
 PAET H. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 WHICH THE CHILD MAKES A PEATEE. 
 
 " They say that God lives very high ! 
 But if you look above the pines 
 You cannot see our God. And why f 
 
 God is so good, He wears a fold 
 
 Of heaven and earth across his face. 
 Like secrets kept, for love, untold." 1 ' 
 
 FOE six weeks Fate wove peaceful, happy 
 days into the fabric of which she was fash- 
 ioning Drumsticks' life. After that her 
 inexorable fingers insisted upon something 
 by way of contrast. Those who now re- 
 member those six weeks attribute to them 
 an almost tearful beauty. Is it not the 
 early death of the rose which gives to it a 
 subtle charm ? Fate dotes upon elfin 
 arabesques, and upon smooth backgrounds 
 of white days she loves to hurl grotesque 
 blots, spectral traceries of despair and 
 vice. And she has a devilish art in it all. 
 
 The day following Poole's advent into
 
 138 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 the nursery, Mrs. Twombly-Applegate was 
 sitting in a corner of the library which 
 was a spot dear to her because of its win- 
 dow. There, when there was sunlight, she 
 found it; and when there was none, as 
 upon this day in the middle of November, 
 it still possessed advantages. 
 
 She had just laid aside the morning pa- 
 per, when she distinctly heard the crunch- 
 ing of wheels upon the gravelled drive. 
 She peered between the ruffled muslin 
 curtains, being rewarded by the vision of 
 a very elegant female, who stepped lan- 
 guidly from the shabby village wagon, 
 which, it was easy to surmise, had brought 
 her from the station. She was in travel- 
 ling dress, and the light of day failed to 
 discover a flaw in her perfect beauty. 
 Mrs. Applegate sat on calmly in her cor- 
 ner, quietly turning over in her mind the 
 names of various beauties of whom she 
 had heard. Then she found time to won- 
 der if the parlor maid was out, or perhaps 
 dead, for, although the bell was persist- 
 ently touched by an exquisite hand, the 
 electric current seemed flatly refusing to
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 139 
 
 do its work. After assimilating the fact 
 that things were not connecting in their 
 usual decorous and orderly manner, Mrs. 
 Applegate resolved to herself open the door. 
 Accordingly, she acted upon her resolu- 
 tion with much dignity, and herself ush- 
 ered Sophie for it was Sophie into the 
 tiny reception room. It struck Mrs. Ap- 
 plegate that her visitor seemed to take it 
 for granted that she was already known. 
 Puzzled and pondering, she procured the 
 belated maid, sending her to call Char- 
 lotte, for whom the stranger asked, giving 
 no name. Mrs. Applegate's interest was 
 stimulated by the impression of mystery 
 which hung about the call, even as did a 
 faint suggestion of Chypre exhale from 
 the fair unknown's attire. Charlotte 
 came immediately, and, not recognizing 
 a voice which she had heard but once be- 
 fore in the modulated murmur in which 
 it commented upon the weather in re- 
 sponse to Mrs. Applegate's sprightly 
 originality upon that subject, she was well 
 within the room before she grasped the 
 situation.
 
 140 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 Then, in the twinkling of an eye, she 
 accepted what was to follow, and such a 
 pitiful shock of grief smote her with the 
 knowledge as to turn her face as clear a 
 white as the gown she wore. The two 
 women looked at each other steadily, each 
 considering intently. And Mrs. Apple- 
 gate was moved with a deep curiosity. 
 
 Sophie was blooming with the fulness 
 of her magical beauty, and Charlotte's 
 sickening heart fell with the sight, in a 
 helpless, weary, first realization of the 
 might of it. There again was that peer- 
 less face with the ripe lips, whose inimita- 
 ble smiles were tucked so redly into their 
 corners that face those lips which she 
 had hoped never to see again ! 
 
 And Sophie's eyes, with their power of 
 asking, answering, laughing, weeping, 
 dreaming, as no other eyes might do ! 
 
 And Charlotte ! what had she ? She 
 asked it of herself. Nothing but a pure 
 white life a white heart incapable of 
 guile, a white soul gentle as heaven, and 
 at the present moment a very white face 
 also.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 141 
 
 There was so much of tragedy in that 
 face, that even her mother was aghast at 
 the sight, and never thought of neglected 
 introductions. 
 
 And Sophie ? 
 
 Sophie was nattered, and amused, im- 
 mediately achieving the greatest bit of 
 acting of her life. 
 
 " My child ! " she stammered, going 
 first red, and then pale. 
 
 Mrs. Applegate nearly fell out of her 
 chair. 
 
 Sophie was thinking : " I believe the 
 poor fool thinks I've come after him ! " 
 
 The fact of the matter was that Sophie 
 was where she was because of an idle 
 hour, a bump of curiosity, and a spice 
 of malice. Poole had piqued her by the 
 absoluteness with which he had dropped 
 out of her life. And she had conceived 
 the idea that a mother's longing to see 
 once more the child she had renounced 
 from most unselfish motives would be con- 
 sidered a fitting and proper explanation 
 for a visit which would at the same time 
 recall her to his mind. He would be com-
 
 142 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 pelled to think of her. Why should she 
 wish him to do so ? Let him who under- 
 stands her class decide. And she felt 
 that she could not enter his thoughts with- 
 out stirring them. And when a man's 
 thoughts are stirred by such a woman 
 what then ? She did not want him back 
 again. No. But she refused to be for- 
 gotten. 
 
 So she had stammered very prettily 
 " My child ! n 
 
 " This visit was not anticipated," said 
 Charlotte, wondering if it were not all a 
 bad a very bad dream. She came for- 
 ward a step or so, clasping her hands 
 laxly in front of her, and seeming to 
 ignore a chair which stood at her side. 
 Sophie noted the fact that the wife de- 
 clined to sit in her presence. 
 
 It was a small peg to hang life and 
 death upon, yet, perhaps if Charlotte had 
 seemed less icily superior all might have 
 been different. But it was as it was, and the 
 consequences have worked themselves out. 
 
 I wa nt to see her Drumsticks. I 
 my is it so strange ?"
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 143 
 
 " Very natural, I'm sure ! " murmured 
 Mrs. Applegate, feebly resolving to be 
 mistress of the occasion. The might of 
 the encounter woman to woman she 
 felt dimly, but the extreme beauty of the 
 person who was evidently the mysterious 
 mother of the alien Drumsticks staggered 
 all of her previous conceptions of her per- 
 sonality. 
 
 This the mother of a child who had no 
 other name than that of Drumsticks ? 
 This ! This youthful, magnificent creat- 
 ure ! Where, then, was the poverty which 
 alone should have parted them ? She rec- 
 ognized that she Mrs. Twombly- Apple- 
 gate had been insulted by being kept in 
 the dark. And from the moment of that 
 recognition she ranged herself in line 
 with Sophie. So great is feminine spite. 
 
 " Drumsticks ! You want to see her f " 
 faltered Charlotte. 
 
 "I repeat is it strange ?" Sophie's 
 voice became mournfully musical. 
 
 At this moment Life cracked a danger- 
 ous joke. Drumsticks ran into the room. 
 
 We all know that those dramatic inci-
 
 144 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 dents which in a play are most criticised 
 as unreal are exactly those which in life 
 most often occur. The happenings in 
 this small tale are exaggerated ? They 
 are forced ? Unnatural ? Very well. You 
 are mistaken. For the story of Drum- 
 sticks is a true one. 
 
 And so the child exactly as if it were 
 all in a play ran into the room at the 
 critical moment. 
 
 Seeing before her Sophie, she stopped 
 short, and, without a word, turned trou- 
 bled, brilliant eyes full upon Charlotte, 
 like those of a small deer led by cruel 
 lights, and asking dumbly of the hunter 
 the reason of its death pang. 
 
 "Come to me, Drumsticks I" said 
 Charlotte, moved to extremest pity by the 
 sight of those eyes. 
 
 " Come to me, Drumsticks ! " called 
 Sophie, winningly, to the child, in quite 
 the same breath. 
 
 Then was the fact that things go easily 
 wrong emphasized. For Drumsticks ig- 
 nored her mother, and ran straight into 
 the open arms of Charlotte, kicking away
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 145 
 
 a rug in the trip, shocking the sensibili- 
 ties of Mrs. Applegate, enraging Sophie, 
 and hastening her fate with running 
 feet. 
 
 A savage flame leaped into the pupils of 
 Sophie's lovely orbs. At that second, 
 born of an animal jealousy, came the re- 
 solve to claim the child again. Why not ? 
 There had been nothing legal about the 
 adoption of Drumsticks. Poole had 
 dreaded the publicity, the ripple of com- 
 ment, which would have followed making 
 it such, and had trusted to the relief he 
 knew Sophie experienced in ridding her- 
 self of a charge which had ever been un- 
 welcome. But he had not calculated 
 upon the shifting tides of a woman's 
 whim 
 
 "As the sunned bosom of a humming bird 
 At each pant lifts some fiery hue 
 Fierce gold, bewildering green, or blue ; 
 The same, yet ever new." 
 
 The complexity of wheels within wheels 
 is as nothing to the purposes set in motion 
 when the wife and the other woman meet.
 
 146 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 And from the moment when these two 
 met thus the child's fate was as a straw 
 borne about upon rushing currents of 
 feminine emotion. 
 
 As for Sophie, she arose, exclaiming, 
 after the fashion of a female David : " My 
 child ! My child ! " And she fell upon 
 the gentle Charlotte, and the terrified 
 Drumsticks, tearing her child from those 
 other more tender arms, straining her to a 
 maternal embrace which held more ele- 
 ments within it of jealous anger than of 
 maternity. 
 
 And Mrs. Applegate, looking on, sym- 
 pathized with Sophie. 
 
 "A mother's rights are sacred," she 
 breathed out. 
 
 Sophie was weeping hysterical tears, 
 while more quiet drops were rolling over 
 Charlotte's pale cheeks. But Drumsticks 
 never cried ; only looked from the en- 
 closure of her mother's arms like a bird in 
 a snare, and besought dumbly, though 
 with struggles which but hastened the 
 now inevitable end, that Charlotte take 
 her to her heart once more. But that
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 147 
 
 tender and pure refuge was lost to Drum- 
 sticks. 
 
 "I had not bargained that you should 
 prejudice my child against me ! " wept 
 Sophie. 
 
 And Charlotte, shaking like a leaf, 
 could find no words, and so said nothing. 
 What could she say ? 
 
 "And I shall take her home with me 
 again immediately immediately do 
 you hear ? " There was outraged mother- 
 hood in every tone. Mrs. Applegate left 
 the room hastily. 
 
 "Will you not wait until " Char- 
 lotte faltered, with white lips, unable to 
 finish. 
 
 ' ' Until he comes ? " finished the other, 
 with flaming eyes. " What under heaven 
 could he do about it ? If I am determined 
 to take her away, how could he prevent it ? 
 It was only an experiment anyway ! I 
 thought I would try and live without her ! 
 But I cannot ! One would think I was 
 dragging her off to a prison ! " Then, 
 directing the torrent of her remarks to the 
 child, she added : " Drumsticks, darling !
 
 148 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 have you forgotten your own, own 
 Sophie? " 
 
 Drumsticks, darling, had not forgotten. 
 If she had it might have been easier. 
 Suddenly a strange thing happened. 
 Drumsticks spoke for the first time, 
 enunciating each word distinctly, yet in a 
 low voice : 
 
 " Please, God, make Sophie go away ! " 
 
 Then she waited. There was a silence 
 as of death in the room, and in that 
 silence something died. It was the simple 
 faith of a little child. For the stillness 
 in which she waited the answer to her 
 prayer was broken by the reappearance of 
 Mrs. Applegate. In her hands she bore 
 the ermine-lined coat and white-feathered 
 hat which Drumsticks had worn when she 
 came to them. 
 
 " As a mother I shall defend a mother 
 against the well-meant but ill-judged 
 interference of my own child. It has been 
 a mistake from first to last ! All a mis- 
 take ! It goes against nature's law to at- 
 tempt the separation of a mother and 
 child. I never liked it ! But I was not
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 149 
 
 listened to ! And now yon see !" Here 
 Mrs. Applegate turned upon the cowering 
 Charlotte with noble indignation. " It 
 has been too silly ! And the only thing 
 you can do is to let her go after spoiling 
 her yes spoiling her ! That ridiculous 
 prayer ! I never heard of such a thing ! 
 I believe the child expected an immediate 
 answer ! As if God had nothing better 
 to do ! " 
 
 Drumsticks was eying her hat and 
 coat. 
 
 " There isn't any God," said Drum- 
 sticks, reflectively, " any more'n a Santa 
 Glaus. It's all lies ! If there was any 
 God, He'd take better care of little girls 
 like me. An' He'd kill you," she added, 
 frankly, gazing feverishly at Mrs. Apple- 
 gate. 
 
 ' ' You see ! " ejaculated that individual, 
 as if her foregoing remarks had been 
 proven by this last utterance of the child, 
 and tumbling, an indignant heap, into the 
 nearest chair. 
 
 Charlotte fell upon her knees by Drum- 
 sticks' side, trying to help her, with
 
 150 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 trembling hands, in the effort to button 
 her coat and adjust the feathered hat. 
 But the child would have none of her 
 help, proudly persisting in her attempt to 
 accomplish all without assistance, although 
 Charlotte clung to her so that at length 
 her arms were about her and her wet 
 cheek against the small, stern, set face. 
 
 " Dear, dear Drumsticks, God will take 
 care of you ! " she whispered. " Believe 
 it, oh, believe it ! You are His little girl, 
 wherever you may be ; and He does love 
 you!" 
 
 Drumsticks was silent. 
 
 " Sweetheart, you believe your Aunt 
 Charlotte, don't you ? " 
 
 " You aren't my Aunt Charlotte at all ! 
 Nothin' is true! Everything's lies." 
 
 For a moment the two white faces, 
 woman and child, looked straight into each 
 other's eyes. Charlotte looked away first. 
 
 "Don't you want to say good-bye to 
 baby ? " Mrs. Applegate asked, not un- 
 kindly. 
 
 " No ! " cried the child. But, for the 
 first time, her lips quivered.
 
 DBUMSTICKS. 151 
 
 Then, in the face of as golden a sun as 
 ever gilded the roofs of happy homes, the 
 child of a Columbine and a Pierrot was 
 taken away into the shadows of her moth- 
 er's past. Before she left, she did consent 
 to kiss Charlotte, and kissed her quite as 
 firmly as a child was ever known to kiss 
 a beloved one whom she was leaving forever. 
 Of the two characters, hers was the stronger. 
 AVhat a woman she would have made ! 
 
 "One must think of the servants ! 
 Come ! Come ! " said Mrs. Applegate, 
 briskly shaking Charlotte by the shoul- 
 der, to recall her to the proprieties, after 
 Sophie had driven away with the child. 
 And she was right. One must always 
 think of the servants. And so, finally, 
 Mrs. Applegate had it all her own way. 
 
 ' ' Oh, what will Jack say?" cried 
 Charlotte between sobs. " Will he blame 
 me?" 
 
 " I should think not, indeed ! " re- 
 marked her mother, and there was a 
 wicked sparkle in that estimable woman's 
 eye which hinted of suspicion grown ban- 
 yan-like in an hour.
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 IN WHICH THE GOOD WOMAN LEARNS TO LIE. 
 
 " Pure, so pure ! and me bemoiled 
 Loathly as loathed vermin, just 
 As weak souls are left of lust 
 Loveless, low, and soiled.''' 
 
 THAT night Poole stood, wretched man, 
 and heard how another chapter had been 
 added to the story. Charlotte managed 
 to give details quite as they occurred, 
 and that Mrs. Applegate interpolated 
 glances, pregnant, and near their confine- 
 ment, with meaning, had not escaped him. 
 
 His first impulse had been to return to 
 town, and, seeing Sophie, to have endeav- 
 ored a course of reasoning. But Mrs. 
 Applegate's eye had fixed, as with a 
 lance, such a thought of action on his 
 part. Her eye evidently expected that 
 mch would be his first suggestion, and 
 what her eye expected her tongue was 
 ready for. If Poole had been able to see 
 Charlotte in private, it might have re-
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 153 
 
 suited in his following this course, but 
 hours of privacy with his wife were as if 
 they never had been. And certain it is 
 that, with the memory of Sophie's won- 
 derful beauty fresh upon her, she would 
 have hesitated to subject her erring one 
 again to its influences, although she might 
 have done so God knows with utter 
 safety. 
 
 The nursery was not quiet that night. 
 The baby missed Drumsticks and fretted 
 for her. And so also did the man who 
 walked the garden paths, with his cigar 
 for company, hoping that Charlotte would 
 come to him there in the crisp November 
 night. But she did not. 
 
 This last chapter of the whole hateful 
 affair had brought all the suffering of that 
 first knowledge again to that gentle 
 woman. Perhaps, also, a certain amount 
 of imagination had been born within her 
 from the mere force of Sophie's extraor- 
 dinary charm. For Sophie had charm. 
 She had not appeared as resistless upon the 
 first and only other time when Charlotte 
 had seen her. Upon this night of Drum-
 
 154 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 sticks* absence, the pain of pity was ob- 
 scured by the pangs of jealousy. That 
 horrid other woman ! Why, oh, why 
 should she have been gifted with such 
 diabolic beauty ? And Charlotte, in her 
 splendid and silent strength to suffer and 
 be silent, at length broke down. "Would 
 the other woman steal him once more ? 
 Was not that perhaps Sophie's object in 
 taking the child away ? It appeared that 
 there was very little to be said upon the mat- 
 ter between John Adzit Poole and she that 
 was his lawful wife, after the first brief 
 account of the taking away of Drumsticks. 
 They seemed to scan each other's faces 
 from either side of a gulf. When the 
 child went, she left a silence. And there 
 was nothing to do about it now, except to 
 live right on and let the days make un- 
 eventful history. 
 
 And the only one who was happy wrote 
 her name Applegate. And as her happi- 
 ness consisted in the luxury of intact 
 virtue from her own point of view that 
 was to be expected. The baby went on 
 persisting in fretting after Drumsticks.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 155 
 
 Clara looked curious and sorrowful in a 
 mild way. Charlotte was full of a bad 
 dream that she might have opposed So- 
 phie more vigorously, and perhaps more 
 successfully. As for Poole, it would be diffi- 
 cult, indeed, to characterize his discontent 
 with all things beginning with himself. 
 
 And so the days and weeks went by, 
 and seemed to halt and limp, yet the 
 story was even then leaping to its finish. 
 
 One evening, after the days had car- 
 ried the affair into December, a wire came 
 for Poole, just at the dinner hour. The 
 bit of paper was brought to him as the 
 three were seated at table. He laid his 
 oyster fork aside, his napkin over one 
 knee, and turned his chair to get the 
 light of the candles. Then, without a 
 comment, he read and re-read the few 
 words. Charlotte saw the tremble of his 
 hand, and the appeal in his eyes. Char- 
 lotte's intuitions had become sharpened. 
 With a glance at Mrs. Applegate, who 
 was devoting an absorbed attention to her 
 plate, she arose and left the table. Poole 
 followed her upstairs into the room which
 
 156 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 had once been theirs, but of late, Char- 
 lotte's. Once within the room, she turned, 
 clasping her hands, as if in an agony of 
 doubt and anxiety. 
 
 " You have been sent for ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And yon will go ?" Could Charlotte 
 threaten? 
 
 " Bead." 
 
 This is what Charlotte read : 
 
 " The child is dying, and asks for you. 
 Can you come to-night ? S. S." 
 
 She looked from the telegram to the man 
 before her. His eyes were staring out of 
 the window into the chill of a December 
 night, which had frosted the pane. There 
 was a brilliant moon, and all the leafless 
 shrubs of the garden seemed magnified, 
 as with a lens. Perhaps a tear did it. 
 
 Charlotte walked straight to Poole, 
 pointing with one finger to the yellow slip 
 of paper. 
 
 " Do you believe this thing to be true ? " 
 
 He seemed surprised. ' ' I see no reason 
 to doubt it. Surely "
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 157 
 
 "Surely? Surely? Of what are we 
 sure? What did Drumsticks say? 'Every- 
 thing is a lie. ' And I have heard the words 
 ever since ! " Charlotte's tones were low 
 as low as one's breath, and as wildly 
 passionate as if her name were not Char- 
 lotte. " Look at me ! Look at me, John 
 Poole ! Look in my eyes ! Do you love 
 this woman still ? Are you yearning for 
 her beauty? God knows I do not won- 
 der ! when when I look at myself!" 
 
 Poole remained silent and aghast before 
 this the new Charlotte. She walked the 
 room, and as she did so she threw her arms 
 over her head in an agony of shame at her 
 loss of control. If she had been less self- 
 controlled, she might from the first have 
 been more human. And if in those other 
 days which had gone before she had been 
 more human, she might have understood 
 her husband better. And he might have 
 been better able to resist the very human 
 sweetness tucked into the corners of 
 Sophie's charmed lips. 
 
 But Charlotte was human now. 
 
 And in that moment a moment of
 
 158 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 great perplexity and misery Poole felt a 
 hope born that some day it might be 
 years from that she would give her dear, 
 warm, now human self to him, and that if 
 they could but forget, they might be happy. 
 
 But the time for forgetting was not 
 yet. To-night there was Drumsticks. 
 
 Suddenly Charlotte's mood broke into 
 a shower of tears. 
 
 "Do yon know what I feel?" she 
 asked, piteously. " Oh, God ! Jack ! 
 The shame of it ! It is jealousy ! I saw 
 for the first time the other day how how 
 desirable she was ! And for the first 
 time the knowledge crept into my mind 
 of how you must you must " 
 
 Poole seized her by the shoulders, 
 alert and resolute. 
 
 " Listen ! " said he, " Charlotte I will 
 not go one step if you do not wish me to 
 go ! I will not go even to Drumsticks ! 
 But listen I believe it is as she says 
 I believe that something has happened to 
 the child. I do not believe this to be a 
 ruse, as you seem to suspect nor will you 
 when you come to yourself. You will see
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 159 
 
 then that if that woman had wanted 
 to see me which she does not why 
 should she ? she would have sent a mes- 
 sage to me in. town. 
 
 " And she has not done so. I have not 
 seen her nor have I tried to do so. And 
 she has not tried to see me ! And of her 
 fatal beauty of which you make so much to- 
 night it is of no value to me ! My heart 
 is full of you ! Oh, believe me, Charlotte ! 
 I am unlike other men in this that 
 there has been but two women in my life ! 
 One I loved still love and always shall 
 love ! That woman is yourself ! Don't 
 you Tcnow this ? The other she it is 
 hard to explain but you were so much 
 an angel ! And I was so much a man 
 beast, if you prefer it ! And but I 
 never loved her ! Never ! Never ! Never ! " 
 
 Doubts will always return to a heart 
 they have once frequented it is their 
 birthright. And doubts would return to 
 Charlotte's fond heart, but at that mo- 
 ment they fled in an unruly body, to- 
 tally routed by the earnestness with which 
 Poole flung his little say at her. It was
 
 160 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 not an original speech. Many men have 
 used the same words before, and if not the 
 same words, the same meaning. And as 
 each has thought himself alone in the joy of 
 his sin, so each has fancied himself alone 
 in the honest misery of his repentance. 
 
 "Where is the man who has not re- 
 pented ? 
 
 There is a felicity of confession, and of 
 absolution, and Poole began to see that the 
 latter would some day be his at the fair, 
 innocent hands of his sweet Charlotte. 
 But expiation belonged to him now. 
 
 "And as if your soul were naked do 
 you swear that you go only to the child ? 
 Are you not influenced by thoughts of Tier 
 oh oh ! " and Charlotte fell weeping 
 once more, only suddenly to desist, de- 
 manding firmly : 
 
 " How would you like it ? Tell me 
 how would you like it ? Try just try 
 and put yourself in my place \" 
 
 But this adoption of the woman's point 
 of view is a thing no man has ever been 
 able to make. 
 
 Suddenly Charlotte sprang at him.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 161 
 
 " What are you sitting there for, Jack ?" 
 she asked with inconsistency. He had 
 settled once more into an attitude of deep 
 dejection upon the side of the bed. "Why 
 don't yon hurry ? What if Drumsticks 
 oh, it cannot be ! God would not let 
 her die with that rebel heart ! Hurry ! 
 Hurry ! Go to her ! Oh, I wish I could " 
 
 And then she rushed for his travelling 
 bag, and herself helped him tumble a few 
 necessities into its depths. He consulted 
 his watch, lifting his eyebrows to look from 
 beneath his eyelids after the fashion of an 
 inebriate. Knowledge was coming to Poole 
 knowledge of his Charlotte and he was 
 a bit drunk with the whirl of it. 
 
 " And you are willing I should go ?" he 
 asked at last, standing on the porch waiting 
 for the trap which was to carry him to the 
 station in time to catch the 8:15 train to 
 town. 
 
 " There could be no choice ! I am will- 
 ing and I am not willing ! " 
 
 Charlotte was thinking again of the 
 beautiful mouth that mocking mouth 
 and exaggerating to herself, as a jealous
 
 162 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 woman will, its power over the man she 
 loved. 
 
 " Good-bye ! " he said solemnly, and his 
 eyes glistened in the moonlight as he looked 
 her full in the face. 
 
 "You will wire?" 
 
 " Either wire or come/' 
 
 "And you will come back to me ?" 
 
 " Can you doubt it, my wife ?" 
 
 And then for the first time in all these 
 many weeks Poole kissed his dear Charlotte. 
 
 Wheels jarred into the duet, and he was 
 away gone once more to the other woman. 
 
 Not yet not even yet did a surge of 
 anxious tenderness for that Drumsticks 
 who was dying overflow Charlotte's 
 heart. It was all a great whirl of maddest 
 jealousy. That woman oh, that woman ! 
 
 And the moon, with grim self-immo- 
 lation, spitted herself at the moment upon 
 a distant village spire, and there she stuck, 
 until Charlotte, red of eye and white of 
 face, went in and shut the door. And 
 shutting it, shut out all the world except 
 her boy, and Mrs. Applegate, whom she 
 met in the hall.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 163 
 
 "Would it be proper forme to ask what 
 all this means ? These tears ! John gone 
 to town without his dinner ! "What can 
 have called him away in such a hurry ? " 
 
 There was an icy incredulity in the 
 manner with which Mrs. Applegate accept- 
 ed Charlotte's rather vague explanations. 
 
 " You mean to tell me ?" 
 
 " Please don't meddle ! " 
 
 " Charlotte ! Is this my daughter ? " 
 
 "I'm afraid it is." 
 
 " You needn't tell me ! I know it has 
 something to do with that woman and 
 that extraordinary child ! " 
 
 Mrs. Applegate followed Charlotte, 
 whose flying feet were carrying her to the 
 nursery. As she went she hurled these 
 astonishing statements over her shoulder 
 at her mother : 
 
 "It has nothing whatever to do with 
 either ! I saw the despatch. It was a 
 purely business matter." 
 
 The knowledge that she was now a liar 
 seemed to afford Charlotte a strange satis- 
 faction. She felt herself to be more like 
 other people. With a half-smile she
 
 164 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 leaned above her boy in his cradle and 
 whispered : 
 
 "You have a wicked, wicked mother/' 
 
 Then, born of her own lie, for sinners 
 
 must forgive to be logical, Charlotte felt 
 
 her heart flooded with a divine mercy for 
 
 that more virile sinner, the boy's father. 
 
 It was the wrong time for Mrs. Apple- 
 gate to introduce the subject upon which 
 she had been meditating for some time. 
 But she did so. 
 
 " Charlotte," she began in a low voice, 
 after watching Clara pass out of the nur- 
 sery, and by casting a shadow upon an 
 opposite wall of the hallway give evidence 
 that she had passed down the stairway 
 " Charlotte, my poor child, I cannot tell 
 you what strange suspicions lurk in my 
 mind in regard to that woman and that 
 child." 
 
 " In regard to Jack's interest in them, 
 you mean ? " 
 
 "I dare not put it into words." 
 "Then you do mean that, mother?" 
 " You must have thought of it yourself ! 
 But you seem to lack spirit!"
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 165 
 
 "Do I?" 
 
 "It would seem so. Have you have 
 you asked Jack if there has " 
 
 "No/* 
 
 "Not that he would tell you. Men 
 are " 
 
 "That will do!" cried Charlotte, 
 fiercely. 
 
 " Eemember I am your mother ! " aghast, 
 and rising hastily to her feet. 
 
 " You are. I cannot forget it. Listen! 
 Jack never saw never even saw the 
 mother of Drumsticks. It was through 
 her sister er that we met the child 
 and fancied her and loved her and 
 But," said Charlotte, suddenly changing 
 her tone " but if she had been his mistress 
 if if Drumsticks had been his own 
 child if he had cruelly deceived me in 
 the matter I should forgive him all so 
 there!" 
 
 All of which goes to prove that Charlotte 
 was not strong-minded God bless her. 
 
 " Well! I never ! I never, never heard 
 anything like that ! My own child, too ! " 
 ejaculated Mrs. Applegate, backing out of
 
 166 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 the room. Mrs. Applegate was in some 
 ways quite wonderful, but after all, the 
 most wonderful thing of all was that she 
 should be the mother of Charlotte. 
 
 "And," pursued Charlotte, superbly, 
 "if it were true, which it isn't, I hope 
 I should be big enough and sensible 
 enough to remember that men are alto- 
 gether different from women and have 
 more temptations and and ought to be 
 forgiven/' 
 
 Here she shut the nursery door upon 
 that more advanced woman, Mrs. Apple- 
 gate. Then she went and cried her heart 
 out over the child of an erring father, and 
 cooed to him, and moaned out these con- 
 tradictory sentiments : 
 
 "He'll never, never be true to your 
 poor hideous mother, dearie ! And she 
 oh ! oh ! so beautiful " (sobs), " and such 
 lips ! " 
 
 And that night Charlotte slept in the 
 nursery, when she did sleep, which was 
 not long at a time. And a gale sprang 
 up in the night, and the Four Winds 
 blew greatly, while the little house rocked
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 167 
 
 like a cradle. Charlotte lay with her 
 child safe upon the haven of her breast, 
 and thought a little on the poor lives 
 which were beiiig swallowed by the 
 hungry waves at sea, and much upon the 
 fact that, on a wild night like this, it 
 would seem easy for a dear man like her 
 Jack to lose his soul. And especially easy 
 would it be if the devil to whom he should 
 lose it had red, red lips, with wonderful 
 meanings tucked into their corners. Es- 
 pecially, again, would he be in danger if 
 he should happen to have a very plain, 
 ordinary, simple, ignorant wife at home, 
 like herself.
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 IN WHICH THE WOMAN THINKS ALOUD A LITTLE. 
 
 "A woman sitting in a silent room 
 Full of white flowers that moved and made no sound.' ' 
 
 So Charlotte found herself alone the 
 following day alone with her thoughts, 
 which were, indeed, like white flowers, as 
 they were chiefly of a sweet child. Dead 
 birds, who had been the sport of the last 
 night's storm, were not more broken of 
 limb than was Charlotte in spirit when 
 daybreak found her. "With the first light 
 she arose, leaving her boy asleep, with 
 crumpled fists close-pressed beneath his 
 plump chin. She wandered about the 
 quiet house, still now, after the noises of 
 the night. Finally, she went to Poole's 
 room, and, wrapping herself in his wool 
 bath robe, threw open the east window 
 and looked out at the new day to which 
 earth was giving birth. Flats of marsh 
 land were bristling with pink rushes, 
 gleaming swart yet glowing out of the
 
 DEUMSTICKS. 169 
 
 early gray morning. The huge sails of 
 windmills which had so hoarsely croaked 
 throughout the night were hushed, for 
 the winds had died away. The sounds of 
 the dismal night had given place to the 
 voices which hail the birth of each new 
 day. All the earth seemed filled with a 
 joyful promise of fresh life to be. Yes, 
 it was so. The night was over ; others 
 would come, but not that one. And now 
 it was day. Charlotte heard the servants 
 creep about, stealthily preparing the com- 
 forts of the breakfast hour. And, amid 
 the comforting sounds of normal, common- 
 place life, something seemed to say to 
 Charlotte that all would yet be well. Did 
 not day follow night ? And ease, pain ? 
 
 " Well, all will be well," thought Char- 
 lotte. And then thought of Drumsticks. 
 
 For the first time, a keen realization of 
 Drumsticks' danger struck her. With 
 the daylight her own agony of jealousy 
 seemed lessened. But, Drumsticks ! That 
 dear little one was dying was perhaps al- 
 ready dead. And her soul was it well 
 with that soul ?
 
 170 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 Charlotte felt herself seized with emo- 
 tions of pity, wonder, doubt, and then 
 faith. What had she taught the child ? 
 That to ask was to receive. And Drum- 
 sticks had believed her. Charlotte had 
 thought she herself believed what she 
 taught. One night she had heard the child 
 pray for another rose on the bush under 
 the dining-room window. And she had 
 felt a guilty responsibility and a decided 
 lack of faith, it being then November. 
 And when before breakfast the next morn- 
 ing Drumsticks had calmly announced that 
 she wanted to run out-of-doors for a mo- 
 ment, "just to pick a rose she had asked 
 God for," Charlotte had suffered from 
 theological scare. 
 
 And when Drumsticks, no whit amazed, 
 had entered the room with the rose, a 
 sickly wonder of a Long Island autumn, 
 she had not laid the rose to Providence, 
 but to an astounding climate. She had 
 drawn a long breath of relief, and had fol- 
 lowed it by a smile, with a tear in her eye, 
 for the child's simplicity of faith. 
 
 Of this teaching is the mill which will
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 171 
 
 grind out cynics. The most of us who 
 have rubbed elbows with experience have 
 come to believe in spiritual blessings, ac- 
 corded by a spiritual Father to a some- 
 thing which partakes of His own nature, 
 and which we carry about mysteriously 
 enough in the pocket of a very tangible 
 physical self. But we teach the children 
 to expect material good, because we find 
 it difficult to explain matters to the young 
 human animal. And we find a sentimen- 
 tal stir within us because they take it for 
 granted that we are not liars. But the 
 first thing we know the small being rebels. 
 It says first, " There is no Santa Claus 1" 
 and then a little later, " There is no God." 
 We are not right. Nor are they. There 
 is a Santa Claus, but he is not what we 
 led them to believe. He has not for a 
 chief characteristic a pot-belly, nor is he 
 a jolly little man with one finger against 
 a small red nose like a cranberry. But 
 he is none the less real for being a great 
 spirit of kindliness toward the helpless, 
 whose home is in the warm heart of hu- 
 manity instead of being located at the
 
 172 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 North Pole. And there is a God. Not 
 exactly the God of the creeds, perhaps. 
 And no authentic likeness is to be found 
 upon stained glass windows. But He lives 
 and moves in great spiritual Law. And 
 His name is Love. And through this He 
 "takes care of little girls" quite literally 
 " if they are good and mind Him." 
 
 These were Charlotte's simple thoughts. 
 
 She leaned from the window into the 
 new morning, wrapped in Poole's bath- 
 robe. And her face was more beautiful 
 than Sophie's had ever been as she 
 thought her little thoughts. 
 
 She herself had given a very material 
 God to a child, and when, in the most 
 terrible moment of that sweet child's 
 life, it had prayed to have him "make 
 Sophie go away," Sophie had stayed, in 
 seeming contempt of that prayer. And 
 then Drumsticks had said : 
 
 " There is no God." 
 
 Just as we have all said at times. 
 Poole had always said so. And even the 
 believing Charlotte had sometimes felt 
 that perhaps it was all a mistake, since
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 173 
 
 she had found one weak man faithless. 
 And no sooner do we say this in onr in- 
 solence than we are jerked back into the 
 spiritual nursery again. After that we 
 are more modest, and become quite free to 
 admit that, perhaps, after all, there may 
 be reasons why we do not understand. 
 And we add that if He some day will but 
 make our puzzle clear, we will be content. 
 But when he does, the grave robs us of a 
 tongue. 
 
 And Drumsticks ! 
 
 If Drumsticks were dying and that 
 evil thing was so, or Poole would have re- 
 turned by midnight, Charlotte believed 
 Drumsticks was dying with a hard little 
 heart rebelling against the God who had 
 one morning given her a rose for which 
 she cared nothing, but who, when she had 
 asked to be delivered from the enemy, had 
 not listened. 
 
 And then Charlotte wondered what 
 would be done in heaven with such a 
 naughty little angel as she was sure Drum- 
 sticks would make under the circum- 
 stances. But while she wondered her
 
 174 DKUMSTICKS. 
 
 narrowness fell away from her. Somehow 
 or other she came to believe in a new God, 
 and, with Him, a new heaven and a new 
 earth. And she remembered that to see 
 the child was to love her, and that she 
 possessed the sort of nature which made 
 even strangers 
 
 " Soften, sleeken every word, 
 As if speaking to a bird," 
 
 and concluded that she could trust the 
 child with the angels. 
 
 And for the child Charlotte believed 
 that all would be well. Why should God 
 care what a poor little child believed or 
 did not believe through the fault of 
 other people ! And Charlotte fell asleep 
 in the sunlight, dreaming that all was ex- 
 actly as she wished. 
 
 Which illustrates the chief use of 
 dreams.
 
 PART II. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE SHIP BEACHES THE STAB. 
 
 A butterfly drifted in, and flew 
 For a moment about, and then out again; 
 
 'Into my life she came like you, 
 And went; ' If altered in pain." 
 
 THE story is almost finished. It is not 
 long, but neither was the short life with 
 which it occupies itself. It was a simple 
 life, eager to live on, but a hand turned 
 the page. " Little ones to Him belong. " 
 So had run the nursery hymn at Seas- 
 crest. And we do not believe that the child 
 whose gropings after Him were thwarted 
 by mistakes failed to walk straight into 
 the arms of the Strong One when the flut- 
 tering veil fell. It was a weak little soul, 
 but it was His own. And what was is. 
 
 But the homesickness for good, the 
 blind striving after "the fun other little 
 girls had," the grief which followed dis- 
 appointment and loss of faith, were all we 
 could see of the small and quickly passing
 
 176 DKUMSTICKS. 
 
 life. From an earthly point of view, it 
 was a shipwreck such a pitiful one, and 
 of such a brave little craft. But let us 
 shorten the story ! Let the pen hasten 
 quickly to the end ! Of what Poole said 
 to Sophie when called to Drumsticks' 
 death-bed, or of what she had to say to 
 him, I do not care to speak. . Sophie 
 and even Poole are but introduced in 
 this small tale in such a way and manner 
 as to explain the presence and position of 
 Drumsticks her narrow life its sudden 
 unfolding its brief happiness its despair 
 and its speedy ending. 
 
 When Poole came and stood by Drum- 
 sticks' bed, away up in that fourth story 
 of Sophie's house, he saw the old gray 
 blanket, and, at first glance, nothing else. 
 Then, looking again, there were the two 
 eyes of her Drumsticks' eyes regarding 
 him with a gaze which was new to him, 
 but which had remained as an attribute of 
 theirs since the day she had been taken 
 away from Seascrest. There was about it 
 the hunted brilliance found in the eyes of 
 a soft wild thing lured to destruction by
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 177 
 
 light of hunter a something bewildered, 
 mournful, and reproachful. Poole had 
 seen a deer look so when hunting once in 
 the Adirondacks. His hand had spared 
 it, hesitating upon the trigger, and it had 
 splashed swiftly out of the pool, away into 
 the heart of the dim greenery of under- 
 brush. One would have thought death 
 might have been as merciful with Drum- 
 sticks. 
 
 Just what death should want with a lit- 
 tle child, it is hard to understand. But 
 that death wanted Drumsticks, and would 
 have her, Poole did not much doubt from 
 that hour. 
 
 Yet, immediately upon his arrival, and 
 at his bidding, messengers were sent for 
 men of whom it had been said that they 
 could save a man if he had but one leg 
 out of the grave. But they shook their 
 heads with what seemed a concerted 
 motion, and it took them a short time 
 only to announce that in this case there 
 was no hope. 
 
 But Drumsticks was not a man, and 
 perhaps that made a difference. She did
 
 178 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 not die that night. And she did not 
 suffer. She was dying of a subtle blood 
 poison, following one of those terrible, 
 swift-working disorders which seem to 
 select the brightest and most beautiful for 
 their victims. She lay composedly all 
 through a day as gray as her blanket, in 
 which she was huddled to the last. Twice 
 during the day she asked Poole, whose 
 presence she seemed to take quite as a 
 matter of course, to listen at her breast. 
 There was an uneasy nutter there which 
 seemed to trouble her. The bird was get- 
 ting restless. 
 
 " Is it all right?" she asked him each 
 time, uneasily. 
 
 " It's all bully right ! " And then he 
 would kiss the child, and cuddle her, and 
 soothe her into another hour's quiet. 
 Along in the afternoon she turned, with a 
 little natural gleam of mirth in her wide 
 eyes, and said in quite a strong voice : 
 
 " Look, Play-papa ! See ! Do they 
 shiver ? See " and then her voice weak- 
 ened. 
 
 Knowing that she spoke of their former
 
 DKOISTICKS. 179 
 
 friends, the trees in the little park oppo- 
 site, which they had named, he turned to 
 the window and was strong enough to 
 humor her whim, encouraging her cheer- 
 ful mood and telling her fanciful things 
 of the elm, which she had named Mr. 
 Morley, after Sophie's manager. Poole 
 had seen neither man nor tree for months. 
 But he went on weaving little sayings to 
 interest her, of the privet " Fanny," the 
 pine, the maple, and the lilac. The first 
 was still green, the second graceful even 
 while barren of leaves, and the lilac had 
 budded out of season and been frozen for its 
 pains, as Xew York lilacs often are. But 
 the slight, swaying, silver birch tree was 
 broken off close at the root, although he 
 told her nothing of that. And it was all 
 very wretched and dreary and wintry 
 outside in the little park, but he told her 
 nothing of that either. 
 
 Through the rest of the afternoon Drum- 
 sticks lay very still, thinking, with one 
 hand at the bird in her breast. 
 
 Upon awakening, all she said during the
 
 180 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 afternoon which in any way related to 
 Seascrest was when she asked : 
 
 "Has baby's tooth corned yet ?" 
 
 And Poole remembered that the subject 
 had been one of overwhelming interest to 
 her as well as to Charlotte. As to Char- 
 lotte herself, her name was not spoken. 
 And as Poole sat beside her, holding her 
 hand, it struck him that the child seemed 
 strangely old. Onqe, when he had 
 been thoughtfully observing the woman 
 crouched in the chair over by the table, 
 he turned and met Drumsticks' eyes, and 
 they seemed to be so very wise that his 
 own fell. Big so big and ironical ! Was 
 it scorn which lay in their depths, along 
 with wistf ulness ? 
 
 She occasionally complained of feeling 
 cold, and Poole helped her in her effort 
 to draw the blanket closer about her. 
 
 Her eyes became a trifle dim, but fol- 
 lowed him intelligently, seeming to ques- 
 tion, but of what he could not determine. 
 He was distinctly conscious of a wish that 
 he was a better man. He had heard that 
 very young children seem often vaguely
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 181 
 
 aware of their approaching dissolution, 
 and he became uneasily certain that some 
 strange cognizance of the situation seemed 
 dawning upon the child. But Drumsticks 
 said nothing, and Poole hung over her 
 awkwardly, cursing himself for an irre- 
 ligious, ignorant hound. Then again, 
 aghast, he recalled the child's utterance 
 as related by Charlotte. 
 
 " There is no God ! Everything is 
 lies!" 
 
 Was she dying thus, and would God 
 if indeed there were a God punish the 
 infidelity the unbelief of a little child 
 a little child who had so wished to believe 
 in Him ! It seemed to Poole that if there 
 were a God, the child was safe. Alas ! 
 it was all exceedingly uncomfortable. 
 
 He was sitting upon the edge of her bed, 
 facing her, and stroking her limp little 
 hand. He had tried to find her pulse, but 
 its rapidity and threadiness were not to be 
 counted. As he sat with his eyes upon his 
 little friend he saw once more the ques- 
 tion dumbly written in her face. 
 
 " See here. Drumsticks," he ventured at
 
 182 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 last, ' ' you're tired ; say your prayers aud go 
 to sleep. I'll sit here and take care of you ! 
 Who to 9 " she asked with quivering 
 lips. There was an indescribable bitter- 
 ness in the words. 
 
 " Say, Drumsticks tell a fellow what's 
 the matter. Are you cross ? " 
 
 " No, but Play-papa do you think 
 there's a God ? " 
 
 "Why, er er there must be don't 
 you know I" 
 
 She looked at him curiously, studying 
 his face. 
 
 " Don't you ? " he added. 
 
 " No," said the child, mournfully. 
 
 Poole felt the perspiration standing 
 upon his cold forehead. What a situa- 
 tion ! Here he was, an unbeliever, the only 
 companion, in a sense, of a little dying 
 child. As a boy he had been taught that 
 to die without faith was to be lost was to 
 be consigned to hell, in fact. Of late years 
 he had doubted this, along with most other 
 spiritual things which had been taught 
 him when a child. He gave a gasp and 
 made up his mind to lie.
 
 DKUMSTICKS. 183 
 
 " See here, Drumsticks did I ever lie 
 to you ? " Thus are most tremendous 
 fabrications often introduced. 
 
 " No," said the little girl, hesitatingly. 
 
 " Well this is square ! There is a God, 
 and er a heaven/' He wished that he 
 himself could believe it. But to such as 
 Poole, nothing is true everything is true 
 all depending on the point of view. 
 
 The child listened intently. 
 
 "And He does love little girls ? " 
 
 " Why by Jove of course He does ! " 
 
 " It doesn't seem as if it could all 
 just happen " said the child, thought- 
 fully, and after a long pause. 
 
 Then she fell once more into a light 
 slumber. 
 
 And so the day passed. As it grew dusk 
 at about the time when Drumsticks be- 
 lieved the white sail furled and the tiny 
 ship anchored safe against the star the 
 life the bit of a spark which belongs to 
 Him went out of her and the thing 
 came to pass which men call death. And 
 the child lay so lightly in the lap of the 
 Angel that Poole felt sure she had found
 
 184 DEUMSTICKS. 
 
 her best friend, for, at least, she was out 
 of it all. 
 
 He withdrew his hand from hers just as 
 Joy brought a light to the bedside. He 
 told her what he thought had happened 
 there, in the twilight, and Joy burst into 
 tears and exclamations, going below to 
 call Sophie, who had not been in the room 
 at the time. 
 
 While she was gone, Poole leaned over 
 the child and listened for the bird. He 
 heard nothing ; for its nest was now de- 
 serted. He kissed the peace of the white 
 brow, and it seemed to him that he could 
 hear Drumsticks ask, as so often before : 
 
 " Is it all right, Play-papa ? " 
 
 " It's all right ! " he answered, aloud, 
 quite as before that day, adding to him- 
 self, " Would to God my heart were as 
 quiet!" 
 
 But he did not really mean that. 
 
 Then he went away to wire Charlotte. 
 
 And as he walked over to the telegraph 
 office, he wondered very much. And to 
 an accompaniment of the feet, slipping, 
 sliding, shuffling, gliding through the
 
 DBUMSTICKS. 185 
 
 slush of the melting first snow, his won- 
 der shaped itself to know, even as he 
 asked himself : ' ' Mais ou sont les neiges 
 d'Antan ? " as Villon puts it, and it 
 seemed for a brief moment as if he under- 
 stood it all. But what he knew in that 
 moment he lost, like the rest of us, in the 
 next. It is as if the curtain lifts a bit as 
 we kiss dead lips. Be that as it may, he 
 found himself no wiser after than before, 
 and reduced to guessing like the rest of 
 us. The roofs of the great town were 
 powdered with snow, and it seemed to Poole 
 that all of the people they should have 
 sheltered in that hour were in the streets. 
 Through the crowds he stole along with 
 that strange fixedness of gaze seen upon 
 the faces of those who have recently 
 looked upon Death. 
 
 He wired Charlotte this : 
 
 " It is all over. Home to-morrow 
 night. JACK." 
 
 And she understood and read it with 
 that sense of shock with which we receive 
 that sort of news, even when we know it 
 was all we had to expect.
 
 186 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 " From Jack ? What has he to say ? " 
 asked Mrs. Applegute. They were at the 
 breakfast table, for the wire had been a 
 night message. 
 
 "All going well. Shall come home to- 
 morrow night," read Charlotte, holding 
 the oblong piece of paper before her, and 
 speaking with duplicity of tone as well 
 as of word. Really, it was extraordinary 
 of Charlotte. And then she tore the 
 thing into bits, and calmly tossed the 
 only evidence against her into the fire. 
 Mrs. Applegate was satisfied. She even 
 overcame all of her suspicions finally, and 
 after a bit was known to wonder " how 
 Drumsticks was getting on," which she, 
 perhaps, would have done even if she had 
 come to know the truth, which she never 
 did. 
 
 As for Poole, he remained in town but 
 long enough to attend to certain details 
 with patient earnestness. The following 
 day he gathered the frail little body of 
 Drumsticks into his arms and carried it 
 downstairs, laying it within the small 
 white bed he had himself purchased, and
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 187 
 
 which was to be her last. As his slow 
 feet descended the long stairways cau- 
 tiously his mind reverted to the first 
 night he had met the child, and had 
 carried her upstairs to bed. That was 
 over three months ago. 
 
 A barefoot child, she had stood in a 
 trailing night robe, clamoring for sweets, 
 at the head of the staircase in a house 
 where his feet carried him whenever he 
 could set his soul aside. A child with 
 strange graces of attraction, the child of a 
 Columbine and a Pierrot. And she had 
 smiled at him, and he, a man who had 
 never before cared for children, cared for 
 her from that hour cared for her so well 
 that now there was a lump in his throat 
 which he was convinced would never allow 
 itself to be swallowed. There had been a 
 smell of flowers about that night, and he 
 had caught her in his arms and ran up the 
 three flights of stairs, carrying her away 
 from it all, to her bed and her dreams. 
 There were flowers to-day a heavy odor 
 and he was carrying her down those same 
 stairs to another bed, and to a sleep which
 
 188 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 might or might not be dreamless. The 
 man does not live who can tell us that. 
 And with these thoughts expressed to him- 
 self a bit more brusquely, Poole laid the 
 child very carefully out of his arms into 
 the restfulness which it seemed had come 
 to her. And the man was glad that his 
 arms had been the last to hold her. 
 
 It seemed strange that Drumsticks should 
 at last take things so quietly. She who, 
 " Moving light, as all young things, 
 As young birds, or early wheat 
 When the wind blows over it," 
 had always been so full of movement. 
 And he knew that, living, no such rest 
 could ever have come to one of her heart 
 and brain, whom life had made the child 
 of a Columbine and a Pierrot. 
 
 And so he left her, turning, however, 
 at the door. 
 
 A virginal mystery of seven maiden 
 summers, a little child lying lightly, as if 
 tossed with carelessness into the lap of 
 death ; a smile in eclipse, a face half 
 turned away, its cheek and lip half show- 
 ing, with still a little color in them. But 
 most of all, a whiteness the rest a smile.
 
 PART II. 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SHOWING THAT THE LUCKY SINKER 
 KNOWS A WOMAN. 
 
 " The hand which hath held a violet doth not soon 
 forego her perfume, nor the cup from which sweet wine 
 hath flowed his fragrance." 
 
 POET OF SHIRAZ. 
 
 IT seemed to Poole as if Death had set 
 his ugly period after the sentence of his 
 sin, and in his morbid mental condition 
 the death of the child seemed to follow as 
 a sequence, which it was not, of that sin. 
 At any rate, it was all over now. 
 
 The blunder of it the raging the 
 terror and yes, the charm of it ! The 
 will that is as the will of the wind ! Alas 
 for the fever the fury and the intoxica- 
 tion of the sad mad men who sink into 
 the mire, only to turn, at the last, hopeless 
 eyes pure woman-ward ! 
 
 Well for a man then oh, well for 
 him ! if he can turn him to a Charlotte. 
 A Charlotte whose gracious soul, abundant
 
 190 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 in mercy, knows how to forget as well as 
 to forgive, and whose pure, cool hand can 
 heal the fever of his sin and give as a gift 
 that forgetfulness which is already her 
 own. 
 
 And Poole went at once to his Char- 
 lotte. 
 
 He arrived in the late afternoon. As 
 soon as they were alone in their room, 
 Poole answered the question in Char- 
 lotte's eyes by picking up a book of Mr. 
 Bunner's delightful verse, which opened 
 at a page that had so delighted Drum- 
 sticks where Charlotte had read : 
 
 " There was an old, old, old, old lady, 
 And a boy who was half-past three " 
 
 He knew that the bird in her breast had 
 always leaped to its musical quaintness, 
 and he laid upon the words a little stiff 
 prim lock of dark hair. Charlotte took 
 the book from him and stood looking at it 
 thoughtfully as he unpacked from his 
 travelling bag an old gray blanket and 
 flung it over the foot of the bed. He ran 
 his hand softly over its surface, looking 
 from his wife to it and then back again.
 
 DRUMSTICKS. 191 
 
 He thrust his hands into his pockets, 
 finally, and stood with the shadow of the 
 Puzzle on his face. 
 
 "So she Drumsticks is really 
 dead?" said Charlotte, slowly, tenderly re- 
 garding the little tress. When she closed 
 the book a tear fell. "So she is dead?" 
 
 " Yes. That's a devil of a word, Char- 
 lotte ! That word dead ! " 
 
 He sat down and began to pull off his 
 shoes, Charlotte hastening to fetch him 
 his slippers. Later she poured him a 
 small glass of brandy, which he tossed off, 
 smiling to think that the scene was like 
 certain old times. As he sat looking up 
 at her, she sank upon her knees beside 
 him, and, her brown head upon his breast, 
 began to cry softly. It seemed strange to 
 her that he should show so little feeling 
 about the death of the child. 
 
 " Oh, Jack whatever was she born 
 for!" 
 
 " Who knows ! But having been born 
 it she was dead lucky to die." 
 
 Before they went down to dinner the 
 two stood for a moment at the frosted
 
 192 DRUMSTICKS. 
 
 window, looking out. He placed his 
 arms about her, and she leaned pliantly 
 against him. Suddenly she said : 
 
 " Look, Jack ! Do you remember ? 
 There is Drumsticks' star far out over 
 there ! " 
 
 And their hearts stirred and melted into 
 one again as they thought of that sweet 
 child. The star was perhaps seen by 
 thousands, but to them it was merely 
 " Drumsticks' star." And ever would be. 
 
 And, gazing through the lens of a tear, 
 Charlotte, blessed Charlotte, was enabled, 
 by faith, to say : 
 
 " Good-night, dear Drumsticks ! " 
 
 While Poole, in doubt, could only mur- 
 mur : 
 
 " Good-bye, sweet child ! " 
 
 So good-night and good-bye. 
 
 Lawrence, Long Island, November the 
 twenty-eighth, eighteen hundred and 
 ninety-four,-
 
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