IDUNA 
 
 AND 
 
 (j)THER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 -GEORGE -A- HIBBARD-
 
 IDUNA 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE A. HIBBARD 
 
 NEW- YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 1891
 
 Copyright, 1891, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 
 3515 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IDUNA I 
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 63 
 
 PAPOOSE IOI 
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 169 
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 215 
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 267 
 
 1703619
 
 IDUNA
 
 IDUNA 
 
 I HAD just passed through that first really 
 passionate part of a man's life which gen 
 erally comes somewhere in his third decade, 
 and had entered upon the brief period which 
 invariably follows, when, in our comparative 
 inexperience, we think that we have so felt 
 all that the world gives of enjoyment or sor 
 row that, if not incapable of new or strong 
 emotion, we are at least quite beyond the 
 possibility of surprise. I was more than 
 startled, however, when, in the first compla 
 cency of this latter time, I received a request 
 which I could not, and which indeed I had 
 no desire to disregard. In his will my father 
 had enjoined upon me that whenever and 
 whithersoever a lifelong friend should sum 
 mon me, I should immediately and literally 
 obey the call. I was then to learn some 
 thing of great importance to myself. As 
 may well be imagined, I had at one time and
 
 4 IDUNA 
 
 another thought much of the probable nat 
 ure of the communication thus to be made ; 
 but as the years passed and the summons 
 did not come, I had gradually ceased to 
 think of the matter. But now I had received 
 it, and without an hour's delay I started in 
 obedience to it. 
 
 Mr. Dacre I will so call him, for if it so 
 happens that you have never heard of him it 
 will be as well as if I used his real name, and 
 if, as is more than probable, you have known 
 him by reputation, I can thus present him to 
 you without encountering the impediment 
 of a preconception or any possible prejudice 
 arising from association Mr. Dacre, my fa 
 ther's friend, was hardly known to me. I 
 did not remember that I had seen him even 
 when a child, and I had only heard of him in 
 later years, in the vague, fitful way in which 
 travellers hear so much from home. I knew 
 that he had once been very prominent polit 
 ically, and that he had held high office. I 
 had always understood that he was a man 
 of great wealth, and lately I had heard him 
 described as a man of strange character a 
 misanthrope, a pagan. At the most success 
 ful moment of his career he had been stricken
 
 IDUNA 5 
 
 down by the death of his young wife. He 
 had never fully recovered from the blow. 
 Renouncing power and ambition, he had 
 withdrawn wholly from the world, of which 
 he had been so important a part, and had 
 retired to a great estate in a secluded and 
 beautiful part of a country distant from the 
 scene of his former life. There he lived in 
 
 splendid solitude. 
 
 * * * 
 
 It was near sunset when I arrived, after a 
 long journey, at my destination. Looking 
 about me in some perplexity as to what was 
 to become of me, I saw a servant in quiet 
 livery, who immediately approached me and 
 informed me that the carriage was waiting. I 
 entered it at once and was driven rapidly away. 
 I had not gone far when I felt a cool breeze, 
 and soon I caught glimpses of the sea, which 
 in the low light of the hour seemed, in the 
 distance, but a dull, slaty expanse. It was a 
 beautiful evening, and as the carriage rolled 
 along the smooth, hard road I fell into a rev- 
 ery, in which memories and expectations 
 strangely mingled. I felt that my life had 
 indeed held its way only over the barrens of 
 existence, when such a scene of peaceful
 
 6 IDUNA 
 
 beauty brought to me no blossom or blade 
 of tender memory ; I wondered if aught 
 awaited me in these new surroundings that 
 could give me the full, healthy interest I so 
 lately had known. I wondered in a vague, 
 listless fashion if it might be so. That was 
 all. I could not believe such a thing proba 
 ble or possible. 
 
 The lights shone in the windows of a cot 
 tage by the' roadside as I passed, and when I 
 reached the stately pile which was Mr. Dacre's 
 home, it was too dark to distinguish anything 
 in detail. I could only see the heavy mass of 
 a huge building against a dusky sky. Evi 
 dently I was not taken to the great entrance, 
 but to a private doorway. A curiously shaped 
 sconce, which seemed almost heavy with a 
 crushed-down throng of lights striving towards 
 uprising, gave forth a subdued glow in the hall 
 through which I was conducted by a servant 
 who, it was plain, had awaited my arrival ; but 
 even by this slight illumination I saw some 
 thing of the internal splendor of the house. 
 The man led me up a flight of stairs, and, 
 after conducting me through a long corridor, 
 ushered me into a suite of spacious rooms 
 looking on the sea. He informed me that
 
 IDUNA 7 
 
 dinner would be served in an hour, but that 
 Mr. Dacre desired to see me in the library as 
 soon as I should be ready. 
 
 I dressed hastily, for I was very eager to 
 meet my host very anxious to learn as soon 
 as possible what I could not doubt was very 
 important to myself. 
 
 I passed down the main stairway into the 
 central hall, and was shown the way to the 
 library. The serried volumes, almost mur 
 murous with accumulated meaning, thronged 
 along the high walls. As I entered, the only 
 occupant of the immense room came forward 
 to meet me. I knew at once that this was 
 Mr. Dacre. I had seen many a man who 
 might well awaken reverence or awe, many 
 who held by inheritance or who had won 
 proud position or wide authority, many sur 
 rounded by the aureola of rank or crowned 
 by the nimbus of fame, but I had never seen 
 any more striking personage than my father's 
 friend. I had never seen any man of such 
 personal significance, of such grand physical 
 aspect, of such apparent power and knowl 
 edge blended in such harmonious air, and all 
 borne with the habitual grace of one long ac 
 customed to life's best associations.
 
 8 IDUNA 
 
 " You are my friend's son," he said in 
 strong, resonant voice, adding, as he grasped 
 my hand with the assuring warmth of wel 
 come, " You have lost no time in coming. I 
 like that." 
 
 I told him I could but obey my father's 
 command so solemnly expressed. 
 
 " Many might have found cause for de 
 lay," he said, half to himself. 
 
 The announcement of dinner interrupted 
 our conversation, but Mr. Dacre lingered as 
 if expecting some one. 
 
 " My daughter Alda is late," he said. " She 
 is with her sister." 
 
 I heard this announcement with great sur 
 prise, for I did not know that Mr. Dacre had 
 any children. In a moment the door was 
 opened, and a young girl entered. Light and 
 frail was the form that met my sight so 
 slight, so fine, that it seemed, in her, human 
 clay had found a hitherto unknown purity. 
 As light through delicate porcelain, so some 
 unearthly radiance shone through the diaph 
 anous face. She moved as if imponderable, 
 and as she came towards us I saw in her 
 cheek the fair, false glow that tells so surely 
 of approaching death.
 
 IDUNA 9 
 
 At dinner we talked only of indifferent 
 things. I never would have imagined that 
 Mr. Dacre's life was one of isolation and mo 
 notony. He might still have been the active 
 director of great affairs. Every subject upon 
 which we touched, even such as had only re 
 cently caught the attention of the world, 
 seemed entirely familiar to him. 
 
 Alda spoke little, but in all she said she 
 showed wide knowledge and infinite refine 
 ment. After she had mentioned her sister, 
 whose name I now first heard was Iduna, I 
 became more than curious to know why she 
 too did not dine with us, but was held from 
 inquiry by some inexplicable feeling. There 
 was no need, however, for inquiry, as Alda 
 almost immediately said : 
 
 " My sister is very young, and has seen 
 hardly any one. She has lived so quiet a 
 life that any change might excite her too 
 much." 
 
 Instead of producing the calming effect of 
 an explanation, what she said only excited 
 my interest the more. I was not satisfied. I 
 could not understand why I felt as I did, but 
 I was sure something was held from me, that 
 some mystery was here.
 
 io IDUNA 
 
 Dinner came to an end, and Alda rose and 
 left me alone with Mr. Dacre. 
 
 Though my life had been such as" to give 
 me a certain amount of self-confidence, and 
 though contact with the world had long ago 
 brushed away the delicate bloom of youthful 
 shyness, I felt an unaccountable restraint in 
 his presence. 
 
 " It was hardly light enough when I came," 
 I said, at last freeing myself from the mo 
 mentary constraint, " to see the beauty of 
 your place." 
 
 "You will like it," he said, and he spoke 
 with an overmastering sadness that now, since 
 I had seen Alda, I thought I could under 
 stand, but which I was yet to learn I had lit 
 tle fathomed. " It is a fine place, and I would 
 be glad if people of my race had always lived 
 in it. If it takes three generations to make 
 a gentleman, it takes certainly as many to 
 make a home." 
 
 " It has not always been yours?" 
 
 " No. It came to me as you see it, rich in 
 so much that arises from the picturesquely 
 blent life of other days." 
 
 "The present," I said, hardly understand 
 ing exactly what I meant, <r often has unworn
 
 IDUNA. ji 
 
 attractions for me, sometimes more subtle and 
 even more striking than those of the past." 
 
 " It is true," he answered quickly. ' Our 
 time has its own charm. The humblest life 
 has a meaning that formerly could hardly 
 have belonged to the highest. When our 
 knowledge is so great, when our interests 
 are so complex, when our relations are so 
 broad, when all the world is our home and 
 every man our neighbor, who would wish for 
 the narrow circumstances of an earlier age ?" 
 
 He had forgotten himself, and the sentences 
 came with a vigor I had not expected. 
 
 He continued for some time to talk with 
 the same animation and directness. I hoped 
 that he might make some allusion to the 
 cause of my summons, but he did not. Before 
 I was aware of it I found that, without ques 
 tioning me, he had led me to speak of my 
 life, to disclose almost my inner self. Startled 
 into sudden consciousness, I felt very much 
 as might an intelligent animalcule aware that 
 he was in the focus of a solar microscope. I 
 knew that my moral and mental fabric was as 
 evident to him as might be the structure of 
 the creature beneath the lenses, and I felt 
 myself powerless to escape. Why he wished
 
 12 IDUNA 
 
 so closely to learn the strength, the weakness, 
 the very texture of my character all, in 
 short, that I was I did not discover. 
 
 " You have," he said finally, " led the life 
 of many rich and fairly educated young men 
 of the day not doing anything particularly 
 foolish or singularly wise. However, it is 
 more important not to do foolish things in 
 this world than to do wise ones." 
 
 I replied that although I had no particular 
 ambition, still I did not despair of leading a 
 life which would prove satisfactory to myself, 
 even if it might not be one which would be 
 generally called successful. 
 
 " The truly successful man," he replied, 
 " as has already been said of the greatest 
 rogue, is never found out. Success is a bit 
 terness, something depending on the power 
 to use men and amuse women. Success," he 
 spoke with a strange intensity, "success a 
 moment of satiety after years of want ; for 
 success is always intrenched behind a failure, 
 won through and beyond the fosse of defeat. 
 Success," he continued bitterly, "when a man 
 must so often be a charlatan to succeed in the 
 world, a fool to enjoy it, and yet strange para 
 dox a hypocrite to seem satisfied to leave it."
 
 IDUNA 13 
 
 We sat at the table a short time, and then 
 went out on the terrace, from which we could 
 look on the sea, now lit by the rising moon. 
 Mr. Dacre told me that Alda could not bear 
 the night air, and added that she always spent 
 the evening with her sister. But little more 
 was said, as he soon left me, telling me that 
 he should not see me at breakfast, but that 
 he hoped to meet me in the library at eleven 
 o'clock in the morning. 
 
 As I sat smoking late into the night, I pon 
 dered deeply on what I had heard and seen, 
 seeking a solution of the multiplying ques 
 tions which arose. I thought of the prob 
 able nature of the communication which I 
 could not doubt was to be made to me in the 
 morning ; but gradually perhaps because I 
 had long ago exhausted all power of con 
 jecture in that direction my thoughts wan 
 dered. Why had I not seen Iduna? What 
 could be the reason for her seclusion? I 
 hoped that the morrow might bring also an 
 
 answer to these questions. 
 
 x- * * 
 
 I arose early, after a night of fitful sleep, 
 and, breakfasting alone, I spent the time be 
 fore the appointed hour in exploring some
 
 14 IDUNA 
 
 part of the extensive grounds. The place 
 was more splendid even than I had thought 
 it. 
 
 It was exactly eleven when I entered the 
 library and found Mr. Dacre seated where I 
 had first seen him. He seemed wearied, or he 
 was really more worn and older than I had 
 thought him. He did not rise, but, glancing 
 at me, pointed to a chair near his own. 
 
 " I suppose," he began, " that you have no 
 idea why I have sent for you ?" 
 I said that I had not. 
 
 " You have never thought of marriage ?" 
 he asked abruptly. 
 
 I replied, in great amazement, that I never 
 had in any personal sense. 
 
 " Your father and I," he continued, with 
 the same directness and gazing steadfastly at 
 me, " as you well know, were dear friends 
 friends in that rare, long friendship which no 
 doubt dare ever assail a friendship stronger 
 than life. When my daughter Iduna was 
 born, ten years after yourself, your father and 
 I agreed we but ratified an agreement our 
 life-long friendship seemed to have made for 
 us that you should marry." 
 
 I was utterly astounded. Although my
 
 IDUNA 15 
 
 conjectures had taken, as I supposed, all pos 
 sible and impossible directions, I had never 
 thought of anything of the nature of this 
 announcement. I did not, or rather I could 
 not, reply. 
 
 " It was the wish of your father's latter 
 life of his death-bed. I sat by that death 
 bed ; I saw the gathering darkness of the 
 great calamity close around him." He was 
 for the moment too much moved for further 
 speech, but he soon controlled himself and 
 went on. " I had before seen those I loved 
 pass away, and from my earliest years I had 
 been awed by the consciousness of death's 
 fearful presence, but not till then did I fully 
 learn life's lesson." 
 
 I did not understand him, but I did not 
 even think of asking what he meant. 
 
 " His wish has long been mine, and now, 
 when we first meet in your maturer years, I 
 find it stronger than ever before." 
 
 He paused for a moment. 
 
 " In the meantime you were to know noth 
 ing of this, you were to be free ; for I would 
 have no inexperienced, domesticated, home- 
 taught being, led only by the lines of our 
 compact. I wanted a man, vivid, schooled
 
 i6 IDUNA 
 
 by events, strong in complete manhood, to 
 win my child, appreciating how much he 
 won." 
 
 I was so busied with my crowding thoughts 
 that I still sat silent. 
 
 " And now," he continued, somewhat hesi 
 tatingly, " I have to disclose something 
 something which may make all impossible 
 something which places my child apart from 
 all the world something which makes her 
 higher than any living being something so 
 strange, so exceptional, that you will not at 
 first fully realize the meaning of what I say." 
 
 I looked at him in wonder. 
 
 " What I am about to reveal to you," he 
 went on, " has arisen from the conditions of 
 my own life. I have never known that full, 
 whole happiness which some contend is pos 
 sible. I have never even known the light 
 heedlessness which passes with the world for 
 happiness. I have never been happy either 
 in the true or the accepted meaning of the 
 word. One by one I have seen those die to 
 whom my heart was bound by every ligament 
 of love. From my young years the world 
 has seemed to me but an endless vault where 
 the footsteps brought no progress, the voice
 
 IDUNA 17 
 
 awoke no echo; where the eye dwelt on no 
 color, and the ear listened to tidings from no 
 real land ; through which life struggled to its 
 end, borne down with its one whole truth 
 the dread truth that all is nothing. Why 
 are the words of the wise man all that there 
 is of wisdom ' all is vanity'? At the time 
 when men should be exultant in their life, 
 their strength, my friend, my true friend, was 
 hurried from me." He hesitated, but almost 
 immediately continued. " What I then 
 thought a culmination was, after all, only a 
 degree of grief. I loved her mother," the 
 strong voice shook. " I was doomed to watch 
 her slowly failing strength, to see the begin 
 ning, the progress of that insidious disease 
 by which death most stealthily approaches 
 its victims. The children lived Alda, who I 
 feared might soon follow her mother ; Iduna, 
 younger, and strong with the principle of 
 life. I had suffered, and I wished to spare 
 them. Could I not, throughout this life, 
 cheat Death himself Death, the true source 
 of all our woe, the destroyer of every hope ? 
 All life must end, and the bitter knowledge 
 taints its every moment. Faiths to me re 
 member, I speak only of myself seem but 
 2
 
 iS IDUNA 
 
 the inventions of men, subterfuges, evasions 
 of the truth that there is nothing beyond the 
 grave evasions that promise much, but allay 
 nothing. I would give all I possess for the 
 faith of the humblest, the faith that beyond 
 this life we may be what this magnificent 
 human nature, freed from hindering passion, 
 stripped of encumbering flesh, immeasurable 
 in all it is, should be I would give all for 
 the sweet, the abiding, the all-sustaining faith 
 of the humblest who believes. I was deter 
 mined that Iduna for Alda already knew 
 the truth should live a life happier than 
 any ever before led by human being. She 
 should know nothing of the taint, the terror 
 of existence. She does not. She does 
 not know that there is such a thing as 
 death." 
 
 He fell back in his chair exhausted. 
 
 " Through her whole life," he soon con 
 tinued more calmly, " Iduna has been guard 
 ed, kept from the terrible knowledge. She 
 was too young to know of her mother's 
 death. Alda believed that she had inherited 
 the fatal disease, but has always kept such 
 knowledge from her sister. Only thus could 
 Iduna have led the happy life she has. In
 
 ID UNA 19 
 
 almost entire renunciation of individual exist 
 ence, Alda has lived for her sister has given 
 her life, that must at best be short, to make 
 her sister happy. And Iduna has lived as no 
 one has ever lived before happier than any 
 human being for, of all animate things, 
 boasted, boastful man is the poorest. Look 
 at the lowlier dwellers on the earth the deni 
 zens of the air and of the sea. Through their 
 lives they seem filled with the gladness of im 
 mortality. The meanest thing that crawls 
 basks in the sunlight of its existence, un- 
 chilled by the thought of death. 
 
 " But," he continued, " the time has now 
 come for her to learn the truth for learn it 
 some day, sooner or later, she must. Alda 
 will follow her mother not soon, I think, for 
 I have done what I could and then Iduna 
 must know. I have sent for you in fulfilment 
 of my agreement with your father. My hope, 
 my whole hope, is now in you. Win her, and 
 under the dominion of strong and revealing 
 love she can best hear the truth." 
 
 " But," I said, " I" 
 
 " You will find her young and fair," he in 
 terrupted. " Win her, and you will be the 
 happiest among men."
 
 20 IDUNA 
 
 " But," I continued, " I have not the vanity 
 to think I might succeed." 
 
 " She is hardly more than a child. She has 
 seen no one, and if she had, you are not one 
 to fail in finding favor in a young girl's eyes." 
 
 He placed his hand on my shoulder as he 
 spoke, with the greatest kindliness he had 
 yet shown me, and, seeming to loose the ten 
 sion in which he had held himself, he almost 
 smiled. 
 
 "You shall see Iduna at luncheon," he 
 continued. " But remember, what you under 
 take will not be easy. You must not let fall 
 a word which could awaken even an inquiry 
 as to what she does not know." 
 
 Mr. Dacre arose and silently left me. 
 
 I did not stir. The wonderful, and even 
 the strange, had always held a charm for me. 
 It seemed that through them I could often 
 best catch glimpses of that underlying princi 
 ple, that intellectual picturesqueness, that es 
 sential of clear, high pleasure, which we, half 
 sneeringly, call romance that romance which, 
 often hidden, lies in the life of every one, and 
 which, once discovered, explains much and 
 glorifies all. Already, and with strange, 
 forerunning feeling, I was half in love with
 
 IDUNA 21 
 
 this young girl, so singularly blessed or 
 cursed. 
 
 I was so busy with my thoughts that the 
 time passed quickly, and the hour for my 
 presentation to Iduna came before I real 
 ized it. 
 
 Mr. Dacre met me, and led me through a 
 long gallery, where, in the pictures on the 
 wall, I recognized the color or the manner of 
 many a great painter, to a part of the house 
 where I had not yet been. He paused before 
 a heavily curtained door, and said to me in a 
 low tone : 
 
 " Be on your guard." 
 
 The room into which he led me was singu 
 larly different from the others I had seen. I 
 felt as if I had passed out of some dark cav 
 ern into the clear noontide. Here all was 
 graceful, fanciful, bright. The broad day fell 
 on light tones and delicate textures. Flowers 
 were everywhere, and through the large, low 
 windows I could see what I can best call a 
 garden a garden in the meaning of the word 
 in the time of Cowley and Evelyn with 
 carefully kept walks and trim beds, gay with 
 the blooms of midsummer. 
 
 Alda was seated at a piano, on which, I
 
 22 IDUNA 
 
 noticed, lay a violin, but she rose as we en 
 tered. I gazed upon her delicate face, where 
 still deepened the expression of calm resigna 
 tion, with a new interest, now that I had been 
 told about her life. 
 
 " Iduna will be here in a moment," she 
 said. 
 
 Almost as she spoke a portiere was lifted, 
 and a young girl entered the room. 
 
 She was not only the most beautiful crea 
 ture I had ever seen, she seemed a being such 
 as vagrant fancy or imagination's self may 
 only show for a moment a realization of 
 the vision of some rapt, rare hour, lovelier 
 than I might ever hope to see in life. I 
 would not attempt to describe her had I 
 never seen her again, for I was more than 
 dazzled. Even now I can say little more 
 than that her hair was dark, and that she had 
 dark eyes eyes that looked steadily at you, 
 trusting, unhesitating, questioning, as the 
 grave eyes of children, appealing to you for 
 revelation of strange things, wonderful, but 
 by no possibility untrue. She seemed the 
 embodiment of youth ; of air from out some 
 fresh break in the sky ; of sunlight, the only 
 thing in all this material world ever unques-
 
 IDUNA 23 
 
 tionably new ; of all that is healthful and 
 joyous in nature. 
 
 " Good-morning, papa ; you are late," she 
 said. " I thought you were not coming." 
 
 I can hear her voice now, so clear and yet 
 so full of meaning vibrant, it almost seemed, 
 with harmonies of far association. 
 
 " Yes," answered Mr. Dacre, " but I have 
 brought one who will help me bear any re 
 proach." 
 
 " I am very glad you have come," she said, 
 looking at me gravely. " Papa, I fear some 
 times, is very lonely." 
 
 I had been greatly perplexed when I 
 thought what might be the difficulty of avoid 
 ing allusion to all that I had been told to 
 avoid. But now, when I was in her presence, 
 I felt at once that this would be more than 
 easy. Had I not been told all that I had, I 
 would not have thought that her life had 
 been in any way unusual ; she appeared so 
 perfectly natural, and so like any other very 
 intelligent and well-brought-up young girl. 
 
 " He hardly need be so," I said, thought 
 lessly, in my new confidence. " One might 
 be utterly happy here without seeing a 
 soul."
 
 24 IDUNA 
 
 She looked up at me quickly in a startled 
 way. 
 
 " A soul," she said, and then, pausing a 
 moment, added, " I wonder what you mean." 
 
 " Anybody," I replied, confusedly, as Alda 
 glanced at me warningly. 
 
 "A soul," she repeated, musingly. "It 
 must be some new word." 
 
 " We will go to luncheon," said Mr. Dacre, 
 almost sternly. 
 
 I saw Iduna look at him in surprise, as if 
 such tone were new to her, and then follow 
 Alda into the next room. 
 
 " I have not seen this part of the grounds," 
 I said, looking out of the window. 
 
 " It is my own garden. Not even Alda 
 touches a leaf in it. There I gather my own 
 roses," she said, " and am wounded by my 
 own thorns." 
 
 " It must give you a charming occupa 
 tion," I replied, resolved to be as safely com 
 monplace as possible ; and then, remembering 
 the piano and violin I had seen, I added, 
 " But you have others ; you are fond of 
 music?" 
 
 "Above all else," she answered enthusias 
 tically; " but I like my violin better than my
 
 IDUNA 25 
 
 piano it is a very wonderful one. I will 
 show it to you after luncheon no, I will 
 get it now," and she impulsively rose. 
 
 " Music is the only thing that is quite 
 safe," said Mr. Dacre, after she had left the 
 room. 
 
 " See," she said, as she returned with the 
 violin, " it was made more than two hundred 
 years ago by a man of the name of Stradi- 
 varius. I am going to ask papa to have him 
 make another for me." 
 
 She spoke with such simple belief, such 
 confidence in what she said, that I did not 
 for the moment appreciate its remarkable 
 nature. It seemed for the instant that the 
 master still lived still wrought at Cremona. 
 
 Alda seldom spoke, and I could see that 
 her eyes followed every motion of her sister 
 with tender interest. She seemed utterly lost 
 in Iduna and to have no thought for herself. 
 It was startling in its strangeness and pathos, 
 the relation existing between these two young 
 girls, so far apart in thought, so close in love 
 so different, and yet made so alike by the 
 serenity and isolation of their lives. 
 
 Iduna spoke of herself with the utter un 
 reserve of a child.
 
 26 IDUNA 
 
 " I am a little sad sometimes," she said, 
 " but papa tells me I live very much as other 
 girls do, only that I am happier than they, 
 and of course he knows. Alda knows much 
 more than I do, and she says as he does ; but 
 if I knew as much, I am sure I would not be 
 satisfied to live as she does. Sometimes I 
 think I would like something else what, I 
 do not know. Alda tells me that the world 
 is very large, and I know there "is much in it 
 I would like to see. I go to the big globe, 
 and I find a little dot called London, which 
 Alda tells me is a great city where there are 
 millions of people, and then I find another 
 little dot called Paris, which is another great 
 place, where she says that they would under 
 stand me if I spoke French ; but when I ask 
 papa about them he says they are wicked 
 and ugly. But still I should like to see them 
 once." 
 
 " I have seen them," I answered, " and I 
 am sure that they would only make you un 
 happy." 
 
 "But," continued Iduna, " there are other 
 things. I know about the opera for Alda 
 has told me where there is a crowd of peo 
 ple and wonderful music ; and then there are
 
 IDUNA 27 
 
 balls where everything is beautiful and you 
 dance. Oh, I sometimes want it all to begin." 
 
 She paused, and, as she gazed afar off, her 
 eyes caught lustre from the lights of the vague 
 and brilliant scenes that arose before her. 
 
 After luncheon, while Mr. Dacre and Alda 
 sat under the shadow of a huge awning, for 
 the noonday heat was great, I walked with 
 Iduna in her garden 
 
 " The fairest garden in her looks, 
 And in her mind " 
 
 something infinitely beyond the wisdom of 
 "the wisest books." 
 
 " But does this really interest you ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Why should- it not ?" I replied. 
 
 " I should think," she said, " that a man 
 who can go everywhere would not care for 
 such things. I am sure I should not. But" 
 and she stopped suddenly " I must not say 
 this. You saw how grieved papa looked at 
 luncheon." 
 
 Soon we reached a weather-stained stone 
 seat that had been placed at a commanding 
 point, and sat down. 
 
 " How beautiful !" I exclaimed, involunta-
 
 28 IDUNA 
 
 rily, looking out on a wonderful expanse of 
 verdant land and glistening sea. 
 
 " Is it ?" asked Iduna. " I have never seen 
 anything else." 
 
 We looked for a moment in silence on the 
 scene. 
 
 " Tell me about it," she said, with a pretty 
 air of command. 
 
 "What?" I asked. 
 
 " The great, big world. I am never tired 
 of hearing about it. There must be other 
 beautiful places, and it must be full of lovely 
 things and charming people." 
 
 " And of great wrongs and forbidding 
 sights," I added. 
 
 " That is what papa says," she replied, sor 
 rowfully. 
 
 "What a fine dog!" I exclaimed, wishing 
 to turn her thoughts in another direction, as 
 a large mastiff took his slow, lounging way 
 down the walk. 
 
 " Is he not handsome ?" she said. " And I 
 have others, and I have birds. Do you know," 
 she continued, after an instant's hesitation, 
 " something so strange happened to one of 
 my birds." 
 
 " What ?" I asked.
 
 IDUNA 29 
 
 " About a week ago," she said, speaking 
 with an air of mystery, " I found it lying in 
 its cage quite cold and stiff. They said that 
 it was not well, as they say I am ill when my 
 head aches after I have been in the sun, but 
 this was not like that. It lay very still. I 
 do not think that it could move at all." 
 She looked up at me inquiringly. "They 
 took it away, and it only came back yester 
 day." 
 
 " And is that strange ?" 
 
 " No," and her pure, clear eyes met mine in 
 actual demand. " But I do not believe that 
 it is the same bird." 
 
 " Are you not mistaken ?" 
 
 " No; I am quite sure," she replied. " But 
 why did they not bring back my bird ?" 
 
 I could make no answer. 
 
 Mr. Dacre and Alda soon joined us. I saw 
 that he thought I had remained long enough, 
 and therefore, though I would have given 
 much to have seen Iduna longer, I accompa 
 nied him on his almost immediate return to 
 the house. 
 
 Alda did not leave her sister. 
 
 " The coming of a stranger is a great event 
 in her life," said Mr. Dacre, as we walked
 
 30 IDUNA 
 
 along, " and her excitement, I feared, would 
 be great." 
 
 He looked at me with his peculiarly pierc 
 ing glance, evidently striving to sec what im 
 pression Iduna's beauty and grace had made. 
 It was plain that he was satisfied with what 
 he saw, though I doubt if he recognized the 
 full extent of my feeling. Beside all else, I 
 felt as if I had stood in some place hallowed 
 by Heaven's highest attributes peace and 
 eternal duration. Iduna almost seemed to 
 me the immortal being she thought herself, 
 whose only world could be the world in which 
 she thought she lived. 
 
 " Tell me," I said, " how has she been kept 
 in ignorance so long?" 
 
 " Love can do much," he answered, " and 
 she has always had her sister's care. When 
 her mother died I withdrew from the world. 
 I, who had hitherto known only a fevered and 
 intense existence, desired to live in complete 
 seclusion. My disappearance caused at the 
 time much surprise ; but as the years have 
 passed I have been forgotten, and now at last 
 am left in peace. I came here in the hope 
 that my children might escape the disease 
 that I knew threatened them. Here I have
 
 IDUNA 31 
 
 ever since remained, with what content mem 
 ory and prescience allow me. Aldaand Iduna 
 have been, as you see them, always alone 
 Alda learning much, that she might teach her 
 sister. And thus Iduna has been able to know 
 all usually known by young girls, except those 
 fictions called histories, and those histories 
 called fictions. And why should she know 
 these ? the first so often false records of act 
 ual existences, which, having received the 
 sanction of time, serve the world as well as 
 truths ; the second, true records of unreal 
 existences, called false because they are but 
 the creatures of imagination, and which in 
 the comparative simplicity of their incom 
 pleteness can only be fully understood, and 
 are therefore more truthful than the real; 
 existences, however, in that very incomplete 
 ness so different from multiform humanity 
 that they are as delusive to the inexperience 
 of youth as they are unsatisfactory to the 
 
 wisdom of age." 
 
 * * * 
 
 It amazed me, and I dwelt upon it after 
 Mr. Dacre had left me, that he should fail to 
 recognize that Iduna could not learn with 
 out danger the truth incompatible with every
 
 32 1DUNA 
 
 thought of her life that truth which none 
 of us could bear save through its habitual 
 and familiar but almost unrecognized pres 
 ence. I saw that a great danger threatened 
 her, and I determined that I would, if it were 
 
 possible, avert it. 
 
 * * -x- 
 
 A few days passed, and already the time 
 when I was away from Iduna seemed a sum 
 of hateful seconds, minutes, hours, to be 
 borne as best it might. I regarded it only as 
 so much superfluous existence. I was torn, 
 worn, perplexed by all that at its best is pain 
 and at its worst is pleasure. In short, I was 
 in love. I sought the sea, as have the lovers 
 of all ages; and in the ceaseless beat and 
 regular pulse of the changing, changeless 
 waves I seemed to find a certain peace. 
 
 I sometimes almost brought myself to be 
 lieve that Iduna was touched with something 
 which, even if recognized, would be inexpli 
 cable to herself something trembling tow 
 ards love for me. I could hardly believe it 
 possible that such happiness could be mine, 
 and yet it seemed I sometimes saw it saw 
 the unrecognized truth that only the word 
 less eyes express.
 
 IDUNA 33 
 
 Those were very happy days, little pre 
 paring us for what was to come. 
 
 One night Alda, who usually dined with 
 Mr. Dacre and myself, sat with me, as the 
 breeze was soft and warm, on the terrace, in 
 the strong, white moonlight. 
 
 " Iduna," she said, " has lately passed the 
 most eventful days of her life." 
 
 "Your own life," I answered, "has scarcely 
 been one of greater variety." 
 
 " Not in incident, but in thought ; for I 
 have always known of the last great change." 
 
 " You must have found your task some 
 times a hard one." 
 
 " No," she replied, " for it has been no 
 task ; it has been a duty which I have loved 
 to fulfil. You know that my belief is the 
 same as my father's that our acts only are 
 immortal ; that every action of our lives starts 
 a series of events that continues always, in 
 creasing and widening forever. When I was 
 a little girl he explained it all to me. I have 
 always known I must die, as it is called, very 
 soon." She spoke with a calmness, pathetic 
 in its deep despair. " And in all I have done 
 I have only gone on living a life that is to 
 live." 
 3
 
 34 IDUNA 
 
 I listened, profoundly moved. 
 
 " The dread of death," she continued, 
 " robs us of all real happiness. Could my 
 sister have led the glad life she has, had she 
 known the truth ? Would not every hour 
 have been darkened by the coming doom ? 
 Could I bring sorrow on one I loved as I 
 loved her? And would I not have done this 
 if she had known all ? And now " 
 
 She looked at me in an agony of supplica 
 tion. 
 
 "Will you, can you help me?" she said, in 
 a low, thrilling tone. 
 
 " I will do anything," I answered " any 
 thing." 
 
 " I have no one to whom I can go for help 
 but you." 
 
 " Your father," I suggested. 
 
 " He least of any one," she said, and I saw 
 that she slightly shuddered. " I dare not tell 
 him." 
 
 " Can you not tell me ?" I asked. 
 
 " I do not know. Wait I was weak it 
 was an impulse. I must see what is right." 
 
 She sat silent for a long time, almost rigid 
 in the intensity of thought. 
 
 " I must go," she said, suddenly rising.
 
 IDUNA 35 
 
 Later in the evening when alone I tried to 
 read, to write, but could do neither. My life 
 was strange and difficult. When with Iduna 
 I was forced to assume a gayety I might not 
 feel. I must be no spot in her sunshine, no 
 blot on the face of her fair world. With Alda 
 I felt all the suffering of a life without joy in 
 the present, without hope for the future ; I 
 shared her sorrow as I seemed to share 
 Iduna's happiness. 
 
 They were both excellent musicians, play 
 ing with great skill and feeling, and Iduna 
 Alda did not sing often sang for me with 
 out the slightest embarrassment, and with the 
 free, natural impulse of a bird. Her voice was 
 pure and rare, and moved me deeply. Then 
 I first noticed a slight shade of care in any 
 thing she did, and I wondered what could 
 have taught her the low, wild sadness that 
 throbbed in those glorious tones. Her songs 
 were, of course, such as could awaken no sus 
 picion of the truth kept from her. 
 
 One day I came upon some sketches made 
 by the sisters, which showed great artistic 
 feeling and much technical excellence. 
 
 "How did you learn to do this?" I asked 
 Iduna.
 
 36 IDUNA 
 
 " Oh," she exclaimed, " Alda taught me. 
 
 She has taught me everything." 
 
 * -x- # 
 
 As Iduna always had been, so was she now, 
 deeply interested in the outer world. She 
 regarded me as a new-comer from that won 
 derful place, with the same feeling of awe and 
 admiration with which people of old must 
 have looked upon some one who had just 
 returned from a long and perilous journey 
 through distant and unknown countries. She 
 could not have viewed me with more curios 
 ity had I been an inhabitant of another world, 
 and indeed I could not have come from one 
 any stranger than the one she pictured to 
 herself. As I realized more and more what 
 she thought, I was more and more amazed. 
 To her, Velasquez still wielded his heroic 
 brush, Titian yet created his wondrous tones, 
 and Rembrandt held sway over light and 
 shadow. To her, Handel still wrote orato 
 rios, Mozart operas, and Schubert songs. To 
 her, many a great writer of the past, known 
 through verses untouched with mortality, still 
 lived. I wondered how much she had really 
 learned of the great names of history, and I 
 once incautiously spoke of Napoleon.
 
 IDUNA 37 
 
 " Napoleon," she said ; " who is he ?" 
 
 " A very great man." 
 
 " Does he make music or pictures or poe 
 try?" 
 
 " None of these," I answered. 
 
 " But you say he is a very great man." 
 
 I could not tell her that he was a great 
 soldier, something she could not understand. 
 
 " But what does he make ?" she insisted. 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " Then how is he great? Oh, I know," she 
 exclaimed, suddenly ; " he does a great deal 
 of good." 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then how is he great ?" 
 
 " The ruler of a people is always great," I 
 answered, evasively. 
 
 " But he is only great because he can do 
 so much good," she replied, triumphantly. 
 '' So you see I was right." 
 
 I tried to learn her simple ideas of the con 
 ditions of life. I found that she had not 
 hitherto sought to explain much ; indeed, she 
 had not been allowed to see much that she 
 would think should be explained. She lived 
 absolutely secluded, and never talked with 
 any one except her father, Alda, and myself.
 
 38 IDUNA 
 
 " I like," she said, " to think of the crowded 
 world, to imagine myself in cities, to fancy 
 that I wander through their streets, to listen 
 to the sound of many voices. I wonder if 
 what I think is at all like what they really 
 are." 
 
 I could not tell her how much her radiant 
 
 visions differed from reality. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Within a few days I again found myself 
 alone with Alda on the terrace. 
 
 " I want," she said, hurriedly, " to finish 
 what I began to tell you." 
 
 "Yes," I answered, and I felt that what she 
 was about to say was of such a nature as to 
 preclude formal speech. 
 
 " I have not dared to tell my father. I do 
 not know how he could bear it. I have strug 
 gled alone with my sorrow." She paused, 
 looking wistfully out over the sea. " I shall 
 not live much longer." 
 
 I uttered an abrupt exclamation of dis 
 sent. 
 
 " I am not as strong as you all think I am. 
 Day by day I have striven to appear well, 
 but I am afraid I cannot much longer main 
 tain the deception. At any moment I may
 
 IDUNA 39 
 
 be too weak to act my part, and I tremble to 
 think of what will happen to him to Iduna." 
 
 I saw in an instant of fearful recognition 
 the terrors of the impending catastrophe. If 
 Mr. Dacre were called upon again to bear 
 the visitation of his dread enemy if Iduna 
 were suddenly to learn that she must thus 
 part from her sister, and that eyery thought 
 of her life was mistaken I could but fear 
 the worst. 
 
 " I ask you for help," she said. " I have, as 
 I told you, no one else to whom I can go." 
 
 " What can I do ?" I asked eagerly. " What 
 ever you want me to do I will do." 
 
 " My father must know the truth." 
 
 "And you wish me to tell him!" I ex 
 claimed, almost in terror. 
 
 "Yes. I cannot do it." 
 
 I stood appalled at the difficulty, the pain- 
 fulness of what she proposed, but never for 
 an instant did I think of refusing to do as she 
 wished. 
 
 " I will tell him," I answered, quickly, " that 
 you say you are not as strong as he thinks 
 you are not that you fear the worst. In 
 deed," I added, " I cannot believe that I need 
 say that."
 
 40 IDUNA 
 
 " Even what you tell him will shock him 
 greatly," she said, entirely disregarding the 
 latter part of what I had said. 
 
 " But he must be told." 
 
 "Wait wait," she said, suddenly. "Wait 
 at least another day. I may be better. I 
 will find an opportunity to tell you what to 
 do. I must think." 
 
 I passed a night of agonizing thought. I 
 could only hope that Alda, overcome by mor 
 bid fancies, imagined herself worse than she 
 really was. I could only await, with what 
 courage and confidence I might, the course 
 of events. 
 
 I was more impressed than ever with the 
 strangeness of my position when I met Iduna 
 on the following morning. She was standing 
 with the bright sunlight falling on her, and 
 the scarlet, yellow, and purple glories of the 
 summer about her. In her hand she held a 
 dead butterfly. It was a \vondrous allegory, 
 this fair young creature looking with such 
 gentle interest at this emblem of the soul. I 
 thought she gazed upon it as some angel 
 might upon some newly disembodied spirit. 
 
 " See," she said, glancing up perplexedly 
 from the gorgeously colored thing, "there is
 
 IDUNA 41 
 
 something the matter with it. I think it 
 must be broken." 
 
 She spoke as she might of a watch that 
 had stopped running. 
 
 " Yes," I answered, as if in inquiry, and 
 anxiously awaiting what she might say. 
 
 " Will it never fly again ?" she asked. 
 
 I affected to examine it with great care. 
 
 " It is very strange," she went on, " but 
 what becomes of them when they are broken? 
 Are they not mended ?" 
 
 " No," I replied. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I suppose," I answered, " no one cares 
 enough for them." 
 
 " But I do the beautiful thing. Take it," 
 she said, with an air of authority, placing 
 the dead insect in my hand, " and have it 
 mended." 
 
 She was for a moment lost in deep thought, 
 and then asked : 
 
 " But are people never broken ? M 
 
 I dared not answer. 
 
 " If I should fall from the top of the cliff, 
 I should be broken ?" 
 
 " Yes," I replied. 
 
 "And then I should be mended," she con-
 
 42 IDUNA 
 
 tinued, meditatively. " It is all very strange. 
 I never thought of it before. I once saw a 
 man who had but one arm. He looked very 
 poor. I suppose he was mended badly." 
 
 My presence in her father's house had 
 awakened her to many an inquiry, and she 
 seemed now on the very verge of the great 
 discovery. Mr. Dacre told me that she had 
 changed greatly in a short time. Heretofore, 
 she had heard everything with the simple 
 confidence of childhood, and, indeed, in much 
 she was but a child. But now she seemed to 
 have grown suddenly older, and there ap 
 peared a vague doubt in her voice, and a cer 
 tain misgiving in her eyes. Still, her world 
 seemed really untouched ; still, she lived 
 among her own fair visions, thinking 
 
 " Unthought-like thoughts that are the souls of 
 thought." 
 
 But in her mind there was unaccustomed ac 
 tivity, intermittent, but evidently increasing. 
 
 I remember that very day we saw a bird 
 soaring in the air, and that she murmured 
 the first half-dozen stanzas of Shelley's " Sky 
 lark." 
 
 "Spirit?" I interrupted.
 
 IDUNA 43 
 
 " Oh," she answered, " do you not under 
 stand? a fairy." 
 
 " Do you believe in fairies ?" I asked. 
 
 " Of course," she answered, looking at me 
 in surprise. " Do not you ?" 
 
 " Some do not," I said. 
 
 " How very strange !" she replied, wonder- 
 ingly. " But everything is very strange now. 
 I feel as I never have felt before. I feel as 
 if I were far away somewhere in a place I 
 had never seen before. I feel as if I were 
 lost." 
 
 She seemed, indeed, lost in vague wonder 
 ment, and, to distract her attention, I asked 
 her if she knew the rest. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she answered, with a quick re 
 turn to her own glad self. 
 
 She repeated the last four stanzas. The 
 
 others had evidently not been taught to her. 
 * * * 
 
 I awaited all day, with great anxiety, the 
 promised message from Alda, but none came. 
 I tried to hope that all might still be well. 
 But in the evening what little confidence I 
 had was in a moment destroyed. 
 
 " You must tell him," she whispered, hur 
 riedly, as I held back a curtain for her to
 
 44 IDUNA 
 
 pass. " Tell him the most that you think is 
 right." 
 
 After she had taken a step or two she 
 turned back. 
 
 " Tell him soon," she said ; " tell him to 
 morrow." 
 
 I felt that we were on the verge of some 
 terrible experience. I could not but believe 
 that what she feared must soon come to pass. 
 Her accents of anguish c'arried conviction, 
 and I shuddered at the thought of what 
 might be immediately before us. 
 
 Early the next morning I received a hur 
 ried note from Mr. Dacre, begging me to 
 come to him with all speed. 
 
 Before he spoke I saw that his grief was 
 terrible. 
 
 " Alda," he said, shudderingly, " is very ill." 
 
 With a quick prescience of impending evil 
 that only long suffering could give, he fore 
 saw all. 
 
 I had not expected so rude an awakening. I 
 asked him what he had done, and learned that 
 he had sent to the metropolis for a famous 
 physician, who was to come with all the speed 
 unlimited expenditure could make possible.
 
 IDUNA 45 
 
 Iduna had often been left alone while Alda 
 was with Mr. Dacre, and it was therefore easy 
 to keep her from suspecting anything. I would 
 be able satisfactorily to answer any inquiry 
 about her sister by saying that she was busy 
 with her father. 
 
 As I entered the room I paused for an in 
 stant at the door. Iduna was singing, and I 
 caught the refrain of a song I had written 
 for her : 
 
 A grief that comes 
 
 Is a joy when sped ; 
 And a joy, after all, 
 Is a grief when fled. 
 
 "What do you know," I asked, trying to 
 speak cheerfully, "of griefs and joys?" 
 
 " Oh, very much." 
 
 "What is a grief?" I asked, and I thought 
 that she might soon know grief greater than 
 she could bear. 
 
 "A grief it is when the winter comes, 
 when the night draws on, when the day is 
 dark with clouds." 
 
 Her deep sympathy with nature was height 
 ened by her utter ignorance of anything really 
 like human experience, and she there found a 
 source for grief which is common to us all. I
 
 46 IDUNA 
 
 thought that indeed sorrow must be equal in 
 all lives. Her sensitive nature felt the mourn 
 ful aspects of the outer world with singular 
 intensity, and she was as much affected by 
 such subtle and generally disregarded influ 
 ences as is an ordinary mortal by the harrow 
 ing occurrences of life. 
 
 "And joy?" I continued. 
 
 " It is when you hear gay music, when the 
 flowers come, and when the sun shines." 
 
 Music for her but expressed the changing 
 phases of nature. To her it had never sobbed 
 a dirge or pealed a requiem. 
 
 In the afternoon the physician arrived. 
 We awaited what he might say in agonizing 
 suspense. 
 
 I was with Mr. Dacre when the opinion 
 was given, and I could see that he tried to 
 prepare himself to hear the worst. The great 
 physician, with that gentle, scarcely broken 
 impassibility which, as a frequent bearer of 
 the tidings of death, he had insensibly ac 
 quired, spoke hesitatingly but positively. He 
 tried to break all to us as gently as possible, 
 but did not attempt to conceal the truth. 
 There was no room for hope. 
 
 " The disease has made such inroads," he
 
 IDUNA 47 
 
 said, finally, " that I must warn you that the 
 end may be very near." 
 
 Mr. Dacre did not even raise his head. He 
 said nothing until we were alone, and then he 
 burst wildly forth : 
 
 " Again the curse has come upon me. 
 Again must I endure the unutterable agony 
 of a last parting. Death, Death, my enemy 
 and my conqueror, when will you complete 
 your work and make me your grateful vic 
 tim ?" 
 
 He paused in sudden thought. 
 
 " But Iduna!" he exclaimed. 
 
 " She cannot be told," I said, decisively, 
 " it might kill her." 
 
 " It might kill her!" he repeated slowly, as 
 if at first he did not apprehend what I said ; 
 and then he added, as if its full meaning had 
 suddenly flooded in upon him with all the 
 anguish and dismay it could bring, " I had 
 thought she might live on happily, and that 
 when she learned the truth, her happy years 
 would help her to bear it. It might kill her! 
 Outraged Death fills me with a new terror." 
 
 His grief and horror overcame him. 
 
 "What can be done?" he asked at length, 
 helplessly.
 
 48 ID UNA 
 
 "We must tell her that Alda is going 
 away," I answered, feeling that something 
 must indeed be done, and being unable in 
 my consternation to think of anything better. 
 
 " Yes," he replied, obediently. 
 
 " We will gain time Alda may recover 
 all may be well yet." 
 
 I went immediately to Iduna, whom I now 
 felt it my duty to protect. She again asked 
 for Alda, and I told her that she was busy 
 with her father, thinking it wise to delay as 
 much as possible the announcement that her 
 sister was going away. She was painting, 
 and she showed me her work. 
 
 " Is it like a city?" she asked. 
 
 It was the city of a dream. Tall palaces 
 rose one above another, fountains plashed in 
 the great squares, and through the marble 
 ways poured throngs of people, clad in gold 
 and purple. On the broad, dark waters of 
 the harbor rode stately ships, while a sky of 
 perfect blue bent down to meet the dim and 
 distant mountains. Faulty though the work 
 might be, and inspired as it was by the pict 
 ures of Turner, the effect was indescribable. 
 It was a vision dazzling, bewildering, beauti 
 ful, that she alone could have seen.
 
 IDUNA 49 
 
 As the day passed, Alda became stronger 
 and asked to see her sister. Though no real 
 farewell was possible, she wished to speak 
 once more to Iduna. Unnatural, horrible 
 even as such an interview must be, who could 
 deny her this last request ? She insisted, I 
 was afterwards told, on rising, and leaning on 
 her father almost carried by him she 
 reached Iduna's apartments. 
 
 I would have withdrawn, but Mr. Dacre 
 motioned me to remain. 
 
 " You have not come all day," said Iduna, 
 reproachfully. Alda, as soon as she was 
 in the presence of her sister, seemed to 
 regain her strength in a marvellous man 
 ner. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I am going away." 
 
 " Going away !" repeated Iduna in won 
 der. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad !" 
 
 I involuntarily put out my hand, seeking 
 support. 
 
 " Glad glad, Iduna !" said Alda, slowly. 
 
 " Yes. Glad, so very glad ! You will see 
 4
 
 50 IDUNA 
 
 so much, and when you come back you will 
 tell it all to me." 
 
 " But," said Alda, and to me who knew her 
 infinite anguish, it seemed she spoke with a 
 calmness not of the earth, " I may be gone a 
 long time." 
 
 "A long time," answered Iduna in amaze 
 ment. " There is no long time. We have 
 all time. What can it matter?" 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 "And you will see the world you will see 
 all of which we have talked and dreamed. 
 How happy you will be." 
 
 " If you are happy, then I am happy." 
 
 " I am happy, only " and she paused. " I 
 should be so glad to go with you." 
 
 "It is a journey upon which I must go 
 alone." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " I do not know." 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 " I cannot tell." 
 
 " Will papa go with you ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 Already Alda's strength was failing ; in 
 deed, I do not think she could have borne 
 longer the agony of that last, strange parting.
 
 IDUNA 51 
 
 " Shall I see you again before you go ?" 
 Iduna asked. 
 
 " No," replied Alda, for the first time losing 
 her marvellous self-control. " I am going 
 now." 
 
 " I shall think of you every moment," said 
 Iduna, gently. Parting had, in her belief that 
 life was endless, no meaning such as embit 
 ters the slightest separation from those we 
 love. 
 
 Mr. Dacre had stood as if stupefied by be 
 numbing woe. His eyes were fixed and 
 meaningless, and his lips painfully rigid. He 
 looked like one in a trance. 
 
 As the sisters drew close in an embrace 
 which I knew would be the last, I turned 
 away. 
 
 Once out of Iduna's sight, Alda's will sus 
 tained her no longer, and she sank uncon 
 scious. I feared that the end might come 
 even then, and waited for some time before 
 I returned to Iduna. I expected that she 
 would immediately ask me if her sister had 
 gone, but the thought that Alda would have 
 remained after parting with her would have 
 been impossible to her. 
 
 The sky, which for days had been the per-
 
 52 IDUNA 
 
 fection of calm, clear blue, now seemed hazy 
 and hot, and in the distance could be heard 
 the low rumble of thunder. I saw Iduna 
 start, and that a slight tremor passed over 
 her. 
 
 " You are afraid," I said. 
 
 "It is terrible/' she exclaimed. "If it 
 comes while Alda is away, I do not know 
 what I shall do." 
 
 The hours dragged slowly by, and, leaving 
 Iduna, I sought news of Alda. Mr. Dacre 
 was with her, and the attendants said that 
 she was sinking fast. 
 
 I returned to Iduna. 
 
 She was gazing pensively upon the land 
 scape, which now lay under the lessening 
 light of a fair, sunset sky ; for, as sometimes 
 happens towards evening, the threatening 
 heavens had cleared, and all was soft and 
 golden. 
 
 " I have been thinking of Alda," she said. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I feel a sadness that I never knew before. 
 I wonder why she went." 
 
 " She told you that she must." 
 
 " She told me she could not tell me why 
 she went, but she will tell me some time."
 
 IDUNA 53 
 
 I had often been struck with Iduna's sim 
 ple faith, and was not now surprised at her 
 content with our inadequate explanation. 
 Nothing seemed unnatural to her, for the 
 reason that all her life was so unnatural. 
 The wildest fancy of the most marvellous 
 fairy tale would have seemed, in her ample 
 trust, possible and usual. 
 
 " I do not feel as if I were myself," she con 
 tinued, rising and walking rapidly up and 
 down. "Something is coming something 
 I cannot understand." 
 
 " What ?" I asked. 
 
 " I feel as if a darkness had fallen over 
 everything." 
 
 Indeed, she seemed strangely changed. A 
 fear lay in her eyes that I had never seen 
 before. 
 
 " But I will think of Alda," she continued. 
 " I will try and imagine where she is. I will 
 think of her in the world so new to her. I 
 will think of her looking with wondering 
 eyes on so many strange things. I will think 
 of her away off in that great wide place." 
 
 Her words were hideous to me in their 
 terrible significance. Alda might indeed be 
 in a new, strange world, stranger even than
 
 54 IDUNA 
 
 Iduna could imagine so strange that phi 
 losopher or visionary in all earth's genera 
 tions has never been able even to approach 
 
 conception of it. 
 
 * * * 
 
 That night Alda died. 
 
 She was conscious until the last, and even 
 at that supreme moment, thought, as she had 
 done all her life long, of others rather than 
 herself. She spoke cheeringly to her father, 
 trying to comfort him in his unutterable 
 agony. She did not speak of Iduna, except 
 to repeat her name again and again in tones 
 of longing tenderness. When I heard some 
 time after midnight that the end had come, 
 I went out into the darkness in my grief I 
 could not endure the confining walls and 
 paced the echoing terrace until the sun rose. 
 I did not see Mr. Dacre. He had not left 
 the room where Alda died, and now sat, the 
 physician told me, speechless by her side. 
 
 I found Iduna as she had been the day be 
 fore, disturbed, restless, almost wild. 
 
 " Tell me," she said, coming eagerly tow 
 ards me, " has Alda really gone?" 
 
 " Yes," I answered. She could not know 
 in what sense her sister had gone from her.
 
 IDUNA 55 
 
 " I did not know I have been thinking all 
 night it seemed that you were all keeping 
 something from me." 
 
 Evidently she did not expect an answer ; 
 I did not make any. 
 
 " I remember, " she continued, " that a long 
 time ago, a very long time ago, I once saw a 
 book that had a strange word in it. I do not 
 know why I remember it now, unless for the 
 reason that it is the only thing that has ever 
 really troubled me, and now when I am so 
 sad I think of it." , 
 
 " You must not trouble yourself about a 
 word," I said, but she did not hear me. The 
 accumulated questionings of years of vague 
 uncertainty seemed to be taking form. As 
 steam, at first invisible, becomes perceptible 
 vapor as it rises, and finally falls in drops, so 
 were the dim exhalations of her doubts re 
 solving themselves into questions. 
 
 " It was a little word," she went on, " and 
 I asked Alda what it meant, but she said it 
 was something I must not know. How could 
 a word mean something I must not know?" 
 
 Remember that I loved her passionately, 
 wholly, unquestioningly, and you will perhaps 
 understand with what torture I heard her
 
 5& IDUNA 
 
 speak as she did. I could do nothing to help 
 her. I could only try and keep her from learn 
 ing that ghastly truth which, suddenly heard 
 in all its awful entirety, none could bear. 
 
 " She said I must not know what it meant, 
 and so I cannot ask you about it. There are 
 things, then, we should not know?" 
 
 " Yes," I answered. 
 
 " How strange ! The world seems stranger 
 every day. And must we not know, too, why 
 we must not know?" 
 
 " Often." 
 
 * * * 
 
 The day was intensely hot, and I told 
 Iduna that the heavy, stifling atmosphere 
 had affected her. 
 
 " No," she replied, " but I feel as if some 
 thing was to happen. I feel as I do before 
 the thunder and the lightning come. I feel 
 what Alda told me is called terror." 
 
 About noon a servant informed me that 
 Mr. Dacre desired to see me. 
 
 I was to meet him in the library. When 
 I entered no one was there, and as I stood 
 waiting, all the incidents of my stay in the 
 house passed in rapid review. I thought of 
 the happy, peaceful hours that at first flew
 
 IDUNA 57 
 
 so swiftly by, hours in which my love for 
 Iduna had grown to an overmastering pas 
 sion. I thought of Alda's first appeal to me 
 that night on the moonlit terrace, a night 
 that seemed so very far away and yet was in 
 reality so near. I thought of that last inter 
 view between the sisters. 
 
 Mr. Dacre entered. 
 
 I could not believe it possible that such a 
 change could have taken place in so short a 
 time. He came towards me with the bent 
 form and hesitating step of great age. As he 
 slowly approached, I could see how his cheeks 
 had fallen, how sunken were his eyes. His 
 very voice was different no longer of rich, 
 vigorous tone, but weak and quavering. 
 
 " Iduna," he said, " is she well ?" 
 
 " Yes," I replied. 
 
 " She does not know ?" he continued. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But she must." 
 
 " In time she must. It might kill her now." 
 
 " I have dared too much," he said, wildly. 
 " This is my punishment. My faith in faith 
 lessness is gone. That indefinable Power 
 that men in all ages have held in awe in 
 the fair deities of the ancient world, in the
 
 5 8 IDUNA 
 
 harsh tyrants of untutored savages, in the 
 more perfect conceptions of a later time 
 that Power I have outraged. This this is 
 my retribution." 
 
 I caught him as he fell, and, placing him in 
 a chair, I despatched a servant for the physi 
 cian. Mr. Dacre had fainted. As the re 
 storatives were applied I happened to glance 
 through the window. The oppressive heat 
 of the day was not lessened by a breeze, and 
 I saw that dark, heavy clouds, glowing with 
 a yellowish purple, were rising over the sea. 
 It was the storm that had threatened through 
 the day. The clouds came on with the swift 
 ness, the apparent intensity of purpose pecul 
 iar to the summer, and low, but deep, I could 
 hear the mutter of the thunder. I thought 
 of Iduna, but at that moment the physician 
 called upon me to assist him. I felt the first 
 hot, sickening gust of a newly awakened 
 wind, and saw a blinding, brilliant flash of 
 lightning. I could hear the stroke of the 
 rising waves on the beach. A deep gloom 
 overspread earth and sea. The big drops of 
 the hastening rain began to fall. The light 
 ning was almost incessant ; the roar of the 
 storm continuous. The wind blew a hurri-
 
 ID UNA 59 
 
 cane. The rain fell, it almost seemed, in a 
 solid, steely mass. The tumult was inde 
 scribable. Remembering Iduna's fear of the 
 thunder, I longed to return to her, but stood 
 for a moment irresolute, doubting if I should 
 leave her father. 
 
 Suddenly, together, there came a crash as 
 if the world itself were shattered a flash 
 a starting sinew on the arm of God. 
 
 The bolt had struck the house. 
 
 I stood appalled. I could hear the rush of 
 the frightened servants through the halls, 
 and then there was comparative stillness. 
 
 What a shriek ! 
 
 My heart seemed to stop beating. I started 
 in the direction of the sound. Hastening on, 
 I came to the room from which the cry pro 
 ceeded. I paused upon the threshold, stunned 
 by what I saw. Iduna lay upon the dead body 
 of her sister. In the excitement of the mo 
 ment, and abandoned by her attendants, in 
 her terror of the storm, she had fled to seek 
 her father, and she was alone with death ! 
 
 Hearing me approach, she looked quickly 
 up. 
 
 "Help me help me!" she cried, agoniz 
 ingly. " What can have happened? I cannot
 
 60 IDUNA 
 
 awaken her ; she is so white and cold and 
 still. I am afraid of my sister. Alda! Alda!" 
 
 Even in her terror it seemed she sought 
 with multiplied kisses to give warmth, mo 
 tion to the inanimate body. 
 
 I stood speechless. I could not tell her 
 that her sister would never awake again. 
 I could not then reveal this horror and 
 mystery of the world. I could not tell 
 her what it was. I could not tell her that 
 this was death awful in any form even to 
 those who through life have anticipated its 
 coming. 
 
 "Can you do nothing?" she cried, in pitiful 
 anguish, as she looked up at me. 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "Is it true?" she exclaimed, while a strange, 
 tremulous look, as if reason itself were shaken, 
 came into her eyes. " Is this the thing I 
 feared?" She grasped my arm, and spoke 
 almost in a whisper, " Is this what I once 
 dreamed something that must come when 
 we can neither move, nor breathe, nor speak? 
 I thought," she continued, her voice becoming 
 hoarse, almost raspingly hoarse in horror, " it 
 was not true, and yet I dared not ask. Tell 
 me," she spoke so low that I could hardly
 
 IDUNA 61 
 
 hear her, as she pointed to her sister, " is this 
 that word death ?" 
 
 I did not speak. 
 
 " It is true !" she shrieked, and, starting 
 back, she fell to the floor. 
 
 This strange story was told to me by an 
 old friend whom I had not seen for a long 
 time. He told it to me as we sat before the 
 sinking fire in the last hours of a winter night. 
 We had been at the great ball of the year, 
 and he had come home with me. As he fin 
 ished, the flame flickered low, and I noticed 
 that the gray light of morning was beginning 
 to steal through the curtains. A white rose 
 dropped from his button-hole and fell among 
 the ashes of many cigars. 
 
 "Did she die?" 
 
 " No," he answered, slowly and gently. 
 " Within eventless walls, where even the pres 
 ent time seems measureless, Iduna lives. She 
 is one of a religious sisterhood. She seeks the 
 immortality she once thought was hers."
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 " T T TELL, Alston, my occidental Croesus, 
 V V there's nothing like the meeting of 
 old friends. It wakes up the sympathies, it 
 checks the heart's corrosion. But you rust 
 hasn't touched that organ. How prosperity 
 has agreed with you ! Me ! tartrate of acri 
 mony has been my medicine for many a day ; 
 and what good has it done me?" 
 
 Alston said nothing, but stood looking at 
 the speaker. 
 
 The two men leaned against the marble 
 breastwork thrown up in the hall of the 
 great hotel that the clerks might not be over 
 run by invading hordes. Servants came and 
 went, arriving and departing travellers jostled 
 one another in their eagerness. Those who 
 sought guests, and guests themselves, at 
 tacked the office with ceaseless and varied 
 demands, some perhaps asking to see a po 
 tentate, others possibly desiring a postage- 
 stamp. 
 5
 
 66 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 It was a characteristic night in the thronged 
 corridors and crowded rooms. Thousands 
 fortunes, perhaps were made or lost in the 
 quick utterance of short words. Hopes, am 
 bitions, found then and there happy issue or 
 paralyzing defeat. A man, master of world- 
 craft, might laugh with light or bitter sar 
 casm, as was his temperament or his mood, 
 as he looked upon those who met and talked 
 together, or who sat or stood separately 
 around. He would know, for it was in the 
 air, that the future even of a political party 
 depended largely upon the action of a score 
 or more of its managers gathered in the 
 house that night. A half-dozen men, whose 
 sleight of management was with as many 
 counties, laughed at the turns of speech of 
 another, who thought he manipulated a state, 
 while they awaited the expected appearance 
 of a man of national reputation who in 
 tended to "capture" all of them. A rumor 
 flitted about, like a bat in a twilight room, 
 that it was suspected by the knowing that 
 before midnight a plan would reach its 
 golden acme a plan by which all the pro 
 ducers of one of the country's great products 
 would finally unite in a long- desired, long-
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 67 
 
 unattainable "trust," the obdurate and recal 
 citrant manufacturer, without whose concur 
 rence all was impracticable, having finally 
 yielded to the irrefragable logic of necessity. 
 In the afternoon there had been one of the 
 usual flurries in the "street." Zenith and 
 Nadir preferred had gone off three points, 
 and brokers slid about with whisper, glance, 
 and shrug, wondering whether a thrill of sym 
 pathetic depression would tingle along the 
 stock of competing lines. Lawyers, editors, 
 noted and powerful, were there; millionaires, 
 arch-millionaires, whose wealth made them 
 world-famous, were in the throng. Not only 
 the city's habitual dwellers were to be seen, 
 but many parts of the country had sent 
 worthy representatives to this chaotic con 
 gress. Silent and self-contained owners of 
 plantations in Louisiana chatted with alert, 
 restless men whose wealth lay in the dark 
 and odorous forests of Maine. A mining 
 expert from Colorado, panegyrizing the 
 stock of a silver company risen, so to 
 speak, from the lode that day, walked up 
 and down between two rigorously dressed, 
 smooth-shaven capitalists from Massachu 
 setts. Ranchmen from the prairies, almost
 
 68 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 awkwardly inert just then, and evidently the 
 men they really could be only where there 
 were scope and air and action, talked with prim 
 and pragmatical business men from Manhat 
 tan's " Swamp." Here and there a quiet pro 
 vincial, with unacknowledged longing for 
 his home, gazed silently upon individuals, 
 groups, the crowd, and wondered if he could 
 really like what he thought he saw. Now a 
 messenger boy hurried out ; now a telegraph 
 boy, hastening in, handed a despatch over 
 the counter a despatch that might mean 
 so very much, so very little. The incessant 
 tramp not breaking silence, but crushing it 
 as if into atoms under foot mingled with 
 the unceasing grind, the suppressed roar, of 
 the wheels in near and in distant streets. 
 
 Alston's inattention to all around grew 
 even deeper. His companion stood gather 
 ing the ragged end of his moustache between 
 his teeth, biting it vigorously. It was easy 
 to see that, though apparently for the 
 moment lost in thought, he was struggling 
 towards some resolution. His eyes were 
 fixed upon a large mirror that seemed to 
 open up a vista of other lighted halls, filled 
 with other clustering or hurrying men. Then
 
 the deep, shadowed lines in his face grew 
 thinner, straighter, as if beneath sudden and 
 stronger tension, and he turned towards 
 Alston with at first an inarticulate sound, 
 too unformed for an oath, too raucous for a 
 laugh still like either, but, above all, fit at 
 once to arrest attention by its mocking tone 
 of defiant propitiation. 
 
 " I say, Alston, I want to celebrate your 
 return. I want some money, I want ' It 
 was evident he was forcing his recklessness 
 to a point where it might give way. " I must 
 do this occasion honor. I want to drink your 
 health. I am particular about my drinks ; 
 a man must be particular about something 
 or he'll lose his self-respect. I want to drink 
 your health at one particular place a place 
 where they know me, perhaps not wisely, but 
 certainly too well. But there's nothing like 
 a money difference to keep men apart. I've 
 had their liquids and I haven't liquidated. 
 Lend me ' 
 
 Alston turned upon him with a look that 
 was a peremptory stop, a sentinel's challenge 
 to one about setting foot on prohibited 
 ground. The last speaker glanced furtively 
 up, checked himself abruptly, and, with sud-
 
 70 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 den confusion, his forced effrontery came to 
 a momentary end. Again he gathered his 
 moustache between his teeth, gnawing it 
 savagely, and brushed a particle of dust 
 from the sleeve of his perfectly fitting coat. 
 It was an obstinate particle; it required 
 some embarrassing seconds for its removal, 
 and then the eyes of the men met, but only 
 in instantaneous encounter. They were 
 young men, neither over thirty-five; Alston, 
 perhaps from his heavier figure and broader 
 shoulders, apparently the older of the two ; 
 'both evidently in the full vigor of manhood; 
 both men with every aspect full of that in 
 describable significance that belongs only to 
 one who has had something far more than 
 the usual life, who has undergone much and 
 lived all through it, without the weakening 
 of a muscle or the lessening of a faculty. 
 For a moment Alston stood silently look 
 ing at his companion looking at him with 
 the questioning, long -practised look \vith 
 which experience so quickly sums up, so 
 to speak, the human column that stands be 
 fore it. 
 
 "Trego," he said and there was con 
 tempt, wonder, pity, perhaps a touch of tri-
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 71 
 
 umph even, in that one word "Trego, come 
 up to my room. I want to talk to you." 
 
 Alston turned without waiting for reply, 
 and moved towards the main stairway. Trego, 
 not in reluctance, but only instinctively, paus 
 ing that he might the better gather into com 
 prehensible compass all that the unexpected 
 meeting, the strangely different fortunes of 
 the two, the past, and the outlook for the 
 future brought in mingled confusion to his 
 half-consciousness, stood motionless for an 
 instant, and then with hurried step caught 
 up with Alston, already half-way across the 
 hall, and slipped his hand familiarly over his 
 arm. 
 
 "Ah, Alston," he said, "there's nothing 
 like having been boys together." 
 
 Alston half drew away. 
 
 Without another word they mounted the 
 marble stairs. 
 
 "They seem to know you," said Trego, in 
 a tone of jarring, significant jocularity, pain 
 ful to Alston's ear, as they entered the room. 
 " They've lodged you well. I don't believe 
 they missed a single million when they took 
 your measure for these rooms. I see the 
 railroad president in the heavy hangings. 

 
 72 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 I tread on traces of a dozen directorships in 
 big corporations when I walk on these car 
 pets. There is not even a chair in which 
 I cannot detect the essential rich man. 
 Everywhere I see that devil-on-two-sticks, 
 the dollar-mark." 
 
 It was merely the main room of a suite of 
 apartments in the huge hotel reserved for 
 guests distinguished worthily, or perhaps 
 sometimes unworthily, from their kind a 
 room not like so many where provision for 
 comfort is so apparent as to make all uncom 
 fortable ; where colors are in confusion with 
 out blending tone; splendor in its new 
 clothes; a strike, a riot of upholstery, which 
 even assuaging shadows cannot quell. Never 
 theless, it was a place to which no human 
 creature could ever be bound by the gradu 
 ally tightening bonds of daily association a 
 place which retained no more personal im 
 press from any of the hundreds that it had 
 harbored than its mirrors had retained trace 
 of the changing forms they had reflected. 
 
 Alston turned up the gas already lighted, 
 and threw himself with decisive action into 
 one of the large arm-chairs. 
 
 "Sit down, Trego," he almost commanded,
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 73 
 
 pointing to another. "Sit down; I've some 
 thing to say to you." 
 
 Trego had really lost nothing of the de 
 fiant assurance that had for a moment appar 
 ently deserted him, an assurance evidently 
 the result of exertion so painful that his 
 assumed airiness of language and ease of 
 manner were almost ghastly in their unnatu- 
 ralness ghastly as is the flutter, the invol 
 untary twitch, following sudden animal death. 
 
 Silently, and a little sullenly, he took the 
 seat to which Alston pointed. 
 
 "I didn't think," said Alston, "that you 
 had come to this." 
 
 " Nor have I," answered Trego, instantly. 
 " It's all come to me. I might say that I 
 haven't come to anything. It would be the 
 strict truth." 
 
 " No jesting," said Alston, sternly. "I've 
 a reason for asking. How do you live?" 
 
 " I might tell you it was none of your 
 business," answered the other. " But I 
 don't. It's seldom I can afford such luxury. 
 You might feel insulted. I live on my wits. 
 They don't quote such stock in the market, 
 but it pays nevertheless pays something. 
 But there's another kind that pays better,
 
 74 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 it's so weak and well watered the witless- 
 ness of others." 
 
 " You are telling me the truth ?" said 
 Alston, half rising. 
 
 "Sit down," said Trego. "Truth is an 
 other delicacy I can't afford, but to-night I 
 feel extravagant. I waste my substance on 
 a returning friend." 
 
 Alston drew his chair slightly nearer the 
 speaker. 
 
 "To be fair with myself," Trego began, 
 "I am not generally as low as this. It's 
 neap tide with me, and my life shows the 
 slime and the ooze and the crawling things. 
 I've a most irregularly regular occupation, a 
 most unlearned profession, requiring a man 
 to know everything. I am "--and then 
 some humorous recollection or some gro 
 tesque turn of thought gave the first real 
 ring of merriment to his voice "I am an 
 empirical philosopher; peripatetic, and with 
 such places as these for my groves, my por 
 ticos. I am a psychological expert. I pro 
 fess human nature in all its branches. I am 
 about to issue abusiness card : ' William Trego, 
 Guide, Philosopher, and Friend. Address, 
 care of the Devil, No. I, The Broad Road.'"
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 75 
 
 "Trego," interrupted Alston, with per 
 emptory impatience, "what do you do?" 
 
 "Practise a liberal art liberal if it only 
 paid better." 
 
 He glanced quickly at Alston before he 
 resumed. 
 
 "As fortune failed," he went on "and it 
 soon did I felt I must be practical. I de 
 voted myself to the study of that sufficiently 
 unnatural branch of natural history human 
 ity. Perplexing, isn't it, there's so much of 
 human nature in man, so little of the man in 
 human nature ? I found myself hard pressed. 
 Something oust be done. I had read or 
 thought perhaps I thought it that if a man 
 could supply one of the ordinary needs of 
 mankind in a more satisfactory way than did 
 any other, he might be assured of fortune. 
 What could I do? Supplying appetites was 
 overworked; very accommodating millions 
 were quite busy doing a good many things 
 about people's necessities. Really, I didn't 
 want to disturb so many worthy persons by 
 setting up the same kind of shop. Were 
 there any other demands? Curiosity and 
 vanity, untiring, insatiate. Here were un 
 bounded wants. Could I bring to market
 
 76 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 delicacies, in season or out, never before 
 offered? The press had partly anticipated 
 me, but there was much to which that alto 
 gether lovely thing, 'personal journalism/ 
 had not given type. I could beat the news 
 papers, I thought, and I have done it. I am 
 ringmaster in the world's great though single- 
 ringed circus of performing animals." 
 
 The sudden light of merriment that had 
 danced before each sentence as he went on 
 sank as sinks the will-o'-the-wisp, as he 
 stopped for a moment, abandoning his face 
 to an expression as lack-lustre and repel 
 ling as before. The smile stiffened and his 
 lips tightened in his usual expression of light 
 scornfulness. 
 
 "What do you mean?" said Alston, exas 
 perated by what seemed to him a display of 
 extravagant nonsense. 
 
 "Mean?" said Trego, the underlying bit 
 terness edging every word with spiteful tone. 
 "I'll tell yo what I mean. Suppose your 
 self some mere ravelling from civilization's 
 untrimmed edge, some sober thread pulled 
 from the warp or woof of provincial life; sup 
 pose yourself one of human nature's tolerably 
 well-meaning creatures, alone in this consid-
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 77 
 
 erable city, anxious to see the world, with 
 out insurmountable objection to the flesh, 
 and not so terribly averse to that gentleman 
 whose reputation improves every day the 
 devil. Would it satisfy you to see parks, 
 buildings, libraries, galleries? Wouldn't it 
 depreciate you with yourself a little that you 
 didn't see more, where you knew there was 
 so much more to be seen? Of course it 
 would. You would rather lounge at the 
 side-scenes than sit with the audience. To 
 know a city is more than to know a science 
 or another language than your own, and it 
 takes much more time. I know this city. 
 I give gentlemen seeking knowledge the 
 benefit of what I know for a consideration. 
 I am a Mentor in a moustache to any Te- 
 lemachus, white-bearded or otherwise. You 
 jostle against a man in the street, and, if it 
 were not for me, you would not know that 
 he bore a name that is a household word. I 
 point out the man of awe-inspiring millions ; 
 the politician, who drops, on sight, from his 
 apotheosis; the great actor, on the pavement 
 so very unlike himself as he walked down 
 the stage last night ; the gentleman who 
 drives a successful trade in parts of speech,
 
 78 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 English warranted to go, and. who sells his 
 phrases to be put in print; the quite aberrant 
 man, astray from the commands of the dec 
 alogue, the prohibitions of the statutes, who 
 might be in prison if others did not fear to 
 go there too; notorieties; celebrities; wor 
 thies and unworthies ; philanthropists; crim 
 inals ; mezzo-malefactors, gay enough to 
 catch the public eye I show them all, all 
 the performers in my raree-show, performers 
 who furnish their own wardrobes and support 
 themselves, playing among properties cer 
 tainly not mine, every one a star. I am ready 
 to meet all requirements. I furnish gratifica 
 tion for the moment, and I do more I sup 
 ply a lasting pleasure. I enable my patrons 
 to make their neighbors and friends miser 
 able, as they recount, in rural quiet, adven 
 tures such as have never come within such 
 simple experience. Would you like," he 
 added, mockingly, "to see what there is in 
 town, Mr. Alston?" 
 
 "Trego," said the other, severely, "are you 
 telling me the truth?" 
 
 "Truth, not the whole truth, but some 
 thing very like the truth," answered Trego, 
 in the tone of one administering an oath.
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 79 
 
 "You mean that you are " 
 
 "I mean nothing," said Trego, suddenly 
 and almost fiercely starting into assumed 
 dignity. " But if you think I am more in a 
 mood for jesting than you are, Harry Alston, 
 you are mistaken. You mistake " and for an 
 instant he remembered himself, but at once 
 was lost again in the rattling, gibing tone 
 " the sound of the fool's-cap bells. If you 
 think it was an easy thing, a bearable thing, 
 for me, remembering what I was, to ask you, 
 remembering what you were and recognizing 
 what you are, to lend me money, you think me 
 worse than I think myself. Your plummet 
 sounds swings in an abyss deeper, wider, 
 darker than any to which I have sunk." 
 
 " Why, then, did you attempt it?" 
 
 " I am talking to-night as I never expected 
 to talk again. I'll tell you even that. I did 
 it strange, isn't it? from self-respect." 
 
 "From self-respect?" 
 
 " Those who have always held the straight 
 way know but little of the tricks perverted 
 nature plays us in the crooked. Had I, at 
 the sight of you, found myself so far re 
 moved from what I thought myself as to 
 forego an act to which I supposed I had
 
 8o THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 been long since hardened, I should have been 
 shaken in that strength of stolid indifference, 
 cultivated and at last attained, which has 
 become my best protection from shame and 
 remorse. It is as unsettling to skilled, con 
 sistent, useful depravity to admit a good 
 impulse as for an honest man to yield to a 
 bad one." 
 
 " And you have done a shameful thing to 
 prove to yourself that you were strong 
 enough or weak enough to act as if wholly 
 lost to shame." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 As he answered he looked up defiantly, 
 and his almost convulsive grasp, tightening 
 on the arm of his chair, was all that showed 
 consciousness of his situation. 
 
 There was silence for a minute, broken 
 only by Alston's scarcely audible step on the 
 thick carpet. 
 
 " Trego," said Alston at last, " I will be 
 even more frank than you. I shall speak of 
 much that you know; but when I have said 
 what I shall say, you will understand why 
 I have said it." 
 
 Trego silently bowed. 
 
 " Boyhood," continued Alston, " is no time
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 81 
 
 for friendship ; companionship is all it really 
 knows. We were companions nothing 
 more, nothing less ; but as we grew older 
 let me be frank as each gathered to him 
 self those many things that made character 
 what it is, we did not like each other. It 
 was hardly hatred, possibly only instinctive 
 aversion arising from the repugnance of in 
 congruous, irreconcilable dissimilarity ; a feel 
 ing, however, at last given intensity by that 
 hostile instinct that comes to all male things 
 at such time as came to us when you were 
 to marry Mary Hayden." 
 
 Again Trego bowed his head ; now, how 
 ever, with more emphatic assent. 
 
 " But I will go back a little," Alston went 
 on. " You remember Class Day. It is a 
 day when in sudden kindliness men say 
 things that sometimes they do not and some 
 times will not remember. If ever there was 
 a time to stand by every inference even a 
 friend might then draw, it is now." 
 
 ''You are generous," said Trego. 
 
 " I am not. We did not think then who 
 would give or take. We will not now. Per 
 haps you can give me much more per 
 haps than I can give you." 
 6
 
 82 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 j " 
 
 " Do not speak. I barely got my degree; 
 they gave you honors whether you de 
 served them or not doesn't matter now. 
 Then trouble came to me ruin they called 
 it the consequence of squandered time, of 
 qualities, merits perhaps if only differently 
 directed. You may have gloried in my fail 
 ure I do not know. I, if it had been oth 
 erwise, might have gloried in yours I do 
 not know. I was disgraced, and then, when 
 all thought me lost then there came to me 
 that weakness that was my only strength. 
 I dared not ask Mary Hayden to marry me 
 I but you then I must have hated you 
 you, rich, unassailably respectable, skilful 
 in the pretty, petty ways of what is called 
 society, easily master of that indescribable 
 grace of manner and flexibility of speech 
 that, more than wealth or reputation or 
 personal attractiveness, win their way with 
 women ; you plying light arts in piqued per 
 sistence ; affecting humility, yet stealing an 
 upward look to see whether the affectation 
 would not give you vantage enough to 
 push a ready, careful foot another line's 
 breadth in approach you you murmured
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 83 
 
 and laughed, and at last, filling a presence 
 into which I was too little or too much of 
 a man to step, you won. I hated you then, 
 Trego, and in such a nature as mine I do 
 not believe such hatred wholly dies out. 
 But I will help you if if in such act I can 
 repay in smallest fraction anything of what 
 I owe to another." 
 
 Alston paused, as if hoping that Trego 
 might say something, but the other sat silent. 
 With slow, firm step Alston approached him, 
 and for a moment stood silent himself be 
 fore the silent man. 
 
 " If you knew how I loved her," he con 
 tinued, "you might not listen to me. I 
 loved her as a strong man, not yet wholly 
 lost, loves the marvel of earth, a good 
 woman ; loved her as a man almost lost, a 
 man not unfamiliar with evil, can love the 
 woman who represents to him all that there 
 is of good for dull inexperience can. never 
 have true appreciation of the full beauty of 
 such pure, high, gracious rectitude. I heard 
 of your engagement. Calamity her loss 
 neither sunk me in despair nor roused me 
 into anger. All only braced me it seemed 
 strange to me then, it seems stranger to me
 
 84 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 now with strength concentrated in vigorous 
 capability ; every faculty, all that I was, was 
 bent towards the attainment of that wealth 
 and power that best attest success to the 
 world." 
 
 Alston paused for an instant. 
 
 " I have lived a dozen lives in the last ten 
 years," he resumed. "A man finds easy field 
 for it beyond the Mississippi. I have known 
 mere manual toil months, years of it in 
 the very midst of all that was squalid, vi 
 cious, vile. I have lived years when I gave 
 up every minute, every power, to that unre 
 mitting labor absolutely necessary to the 
 seizure of opportunity, to the control of cir 
 cumstances, the mastery of men. Courage, 
 firmness, continued endeavor, strength in its 
 fulness, and more, are necessary to win all 
 that I have won in the last ten years. But 
 I feel no touch of vanity. I know too well 
 what we all are, and how weak the strongest 
 is. I know that even with such strength as 
 mine, unaided, I should perhaps have attained 
 little. Mere integrity, industry, intensity of 
 purpose, would not have been enough for 
 me ; for men are busy, and expediency, im 
 patience in accomplishment, many things,
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 85 
 
 hasten or persuade men into doing what they 
 otherwise might not have done. But if ever 
 there is present one noble idea, if there stands 
 before the mind's eye a personality, living, 
 breathing, of humankind, though seemingly 
 above it, whose every thought, whose whole 
 being is purest, best yes, and most beauti 
 ful ; and if such personality is loved, wor 
 shipped loved, Trego resent it, if you 
 dare, for I speak of your wife then comes 
 knowledge of the reality, the power of all 
 things good ; then for him who so loves 
 there is a rule ever present, ever strong to 
 control evil, to restrain passion, quick to 
 mould and direct character, acts, career. So 
 my ten years of life have been shaped. The 
 cunning of a doctrine, the stress of a moral 
 ist, the dogmatism of a creed, would have 
 been to me as nothing. I was subdued, 
 governed by the idea of one beautiful life. 
 It is the serene life lived nearly two thousand 
 years ago that to-day gives our religion pre 
 vailing actuality the serene life of the sad 
 Man without laughter. I hold but the half- 
 fearful, half-hopeful credence of so many in 
 these days. But there is one devotion that 
 always has had, always will have, strong
 
 86 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 appeal to my better self the worship of the 
 Madonna. With an awe that would soften 
 to tenderness if reverence did not restrain, I 
 found my shrine, I worshipped my Madonna. 
 I regulated my life by what I supposed, had 
 she known my acts and all that surrounded 
 them, Mary Hayden would have thought 
 worthy of a man true to himself. I found 
 an absolutely adequate and unfailing rule of 
 conduct. I submitted every plan, every 
 proposed act, to this test would she ap 
 prove if she knew all ? And more, would I 
 shrink from telling her ? There was my 
 safety. The thought that I might so shrink 
 aroused alarm ; some baseness must lurk 
 somewhere. It was enough. I did nothing 
 that I would not gladly have told her had I 
 been permitted to seek her guidance a guid 
 ance that I do not believe, Trego, you have 
 followed." 
 
 Trego started. 
 
 " See here, Alston," he exclaimed, " have 
 you how much do you believe a man will 
 can bear?" 
 
 " Sit still and hear me out," said Alston. 
 "This simple rule," he continued, "this sim 
 ple method this, more than what I was, has
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 87 
 
 made me what I am, master of circumstance 
 and of myself ; has given me all that I pos 
 sess wealth, power, the confidence of men. 
 It is as unfailing now when I am at 
 tempting to do mere justice to her, not 
 flattering myself when I am the first man 
 in my State as when all that I had to resist 
 was the push of an appetite, or the persua 
 sion of the chance of small gain. No mat 
 ter how complicated the circumstances, my 
 rule never fails me. Motives are dexterous 
 in specious pretences, but what would she 
 say she, who, not knowing all that men 
 know, would yet know infinitely more? All 
 else has been nothing, and is nothing, com 
 pared with the thought of her. That thought 
 has been my strength, my test, my restraint, 
 my impulsion. It is the vital point around 
 which my life gathers the nucleus of what 
 otherwise would be unsustained, unformed, 
 empty. Life without this reality would be 
 objectless, scattered, void. Trego, under 
 stand me. I did not expect to know any 
 thing so soon. That I would have sought 
 information of her and of you before I re 
 turned is true. Our meeting here to-night 
 is, of course, purely accidental. Had I found
 
 88 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 you holding the place the world expected 
 of you that she expected of you I would 
 have said nothing. I would have gone, and 
 neither of you would have seen me. But I 
 have not found you occupying such position. 
 I find you resorting to an expedient, to say 
 the least of it, questionable, even if neces 
 sary to the earning of your livelihood. I ask 
 you and, remembering what Mary Hayden 
 has unconsciously done for me, I have the 
 right of a more than grateful man to ask it 
 what have you done for her? Has she 
 suffered ? has she been in want ? does she 
 suffer? is she in want now? Have you been 
 as false to the promises that you made to 
 her as you have to the promises you gave 
 the world ?" 
 
 " Had any other man spoken as you 
 speak," said Trego, hoarsely, "he would suf 
 fer for it." 
 
 " Not if he spoke as I speak," answered 
 Alston quietly, almost solemnly. " Not if 
 he spoke with such a motive as mine. There 
 is no remedy for the past. We can mend 
 the present. We must assure the future. 
 We cannot do that properly if every word 
 is not the plain, severe truth. What would
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 8g 
 
 Mary Hayden say that I should do now if 
 she knew all?" 
 
 Trego did not answer. 
 
 Both had been silent for some minutes 
 when there came a rap at the door. Neither 
 gave it attention, and Alston continued his 
 walk. 
 
 The knock was repeated. 
 
 " There is some one at the door," said Trego. 
 
 " Come in," commanded Alston. 
 
 A servant entered with a card. 
 
 " I must see him," said Alston, after he 
 had taken it and glanced at the name it 
 bore. " He is here in answer to my despatch. 
 I will be gone but for a moment. Wait 
 here ; I will meet him in the next room." 
 
 He drew a heavily wrought porttire aside 
 and passed through the doorway. 
 
 Trego did not leave his chair. He glanced 
 at Alston as he disappeared; then, after a 
 moment of irresolution, he drew a letter from 
 his pocket and spread it out upon his knee, 
 carefully smoothing down its creases and 
 turning back its crumpled edges. 
 
 He nervously glanced about the room as 
 if he were fearful that some one might see 
 what it contained.
 
 90 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 " If I were the man he thinks I am if I 
 were the man I thought myself I would do 
 it," he muttered. " I could shake the foun 
 dation of his self-satisfied assurance. I 
 could make him feel something of what I 
 have suffered. Hates me, does he? I hate 
 him. Why? How has he hurt me? As 
 success always hurts him who has failed. 
 Because he can dare offer me aid. But 
 shall I do him this harm ? Shall I deprive 
 him of that, in losing which he says he 
 would lose all ? Rich as he is, shall I make 
 him poorer than I am ? Shall I rob him of 
 his illusion of his reality? Because the 
 coin is counterfeit, shall I take it from him ? 
 And still, he hates me, and I " 
 
 Bending low and with difficulty making 
 out the faint and blotted lines scrawled on 
 the coarse paper, without date or intimation 
 of place, he read : 
 
 "DEAR BILLY, When in my first love-letter I 
 so wrote your name it was with something of the 
 timidity with which I write it now, and yet how 
 different the feeling ! Then I wrote with joyous 
 satisfaction, with shrinking, girlish glee; now I 
 write in shame, and now I am afraid. I did not 
 think then that, as a broken-hearted woman, borne
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 91 
 
 down with the sense of all that she has done, I should 
 write to you, unworthy of forgiveness as I am, and 
 only daring to use that name that I may ask you 
 to remember what I once was to you what I once 
 really was. I cannot live long, Billy, they tell me, 
 and it is really all that I can do to write this letter. 
 I may die to-night, and I may live longer, and with 
 something of my old strength ; but the time will 
 soon come when all that will be left of Mary Hayden 
 will be a bitter memory in the mind of the man 
 she loved with all the strength of which she was 
 ever capable. For I have always loved you, Billy, 
 in my way. All the time that I clogged your every 
 effort, all the time I slowly but surely dragged you 
 down, I loved you always in my way slight, 
 perhaps, but still outlasting everything else. At the 
 yery last I loved you, strange as it may seem and 
 hard as it is to be believed. What I did was through 
 flattered vanity and the need, fierce as an opium 
 eater's, for things trifles, yet so much to me 
 which with only our narrowing means I could not 
 have. But I did so like pretty things, gayety, joy, 
 abundance of bright life. Even the night when I 
 went away, unnatural as it may seem, I remember 
 thinking how much nicer it would be if you were 
 going with us. It is absurd to have thought it at 
 such a time, but I wanted you to go too I really 
 did. I was not bad, Billy, I was not. I never could 
 quite see, feel, things as others did ; I believe I never 
 had what they call a moral sense. But I am not 
 attempting a vindication. I only wish before I die
 
 92 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 to tell you the truth, to tell you the remorse I feel 
 for what I have done to you. I have ruined you, 
 and I know it. You would have been a good man, 
 perhaps a great man, if it had not been for me. 
 
 " Everybody I once knew, for whom I cared, thinks 
 me dead every one but you. It was the least I 
 could do, after leaving you, to help you in the de 
 ception. And it is the bitter truth that I am dead. 
 Every hope, every joy that belonged to Mary Hay- 
 den has passed away. I am not what I was a 
 woman yet to suffer, but dead to you, and dead to 
 all once so very pleasant, so very dear. And I do 
 not tell you what I suffer. I believe even now it 
 would give you pain could you know, and I am 
 silent. If the girl you married could cling to your 
 heart one moment sin and suffering have left her 
 a woman even yet, and she would not hurt the 
 man she loved agony could not wring from her 
 even one murmur. It may come, for you have not 
 succeeded in the world, and suffering explains so 
 much, softens so much, teaches us to pardon so 
 much : it may come some moment of tenderness 
 at thought of some little thing ; not when our lips 
 met, for such thoughts madden, but of some time 
 when my hand just touched your arm and I laughed 
 up in your face, happy in mocking caprice some 
 moment of tenderness when you might even wish 
 to see me. But do not seek to do it. I long, but I 
 could not bear it, Billy. Could you ? And I will 
 not tell you where I am. 
 
 " I am dead ; and if, as some say, remorse is the
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 93 
 
 punishment that awaits our sins hereafter, I am al 
 ready in hell. I know the anguish of ineffectual 
 repentance. My guilt stands out in all its naked 
 hideousness, without any of the palliations with 
 which I once clothed it, and I recognize the evil I 
 have always been. Do you think that He will 
 punish us that way? He knows we are women and 
 how weak we are. Is it just that the weak should 
 suffer most ? If it were so, annihilation were far 
 kinder than a merciful Father. If we sin, how much 
 are we overtempted, how weak to withstand temp 
 tation ! I know that He will be kind to us. One 
 of us was the mother of the Child. 
 
 " I can hardly write any more. Why I have writ 
 ten at all, I have told you. I am sorry. That is all I 
 can say. If you can feel more kindly towards me be 
 cause I feel so kindly towards you she who I was 
 would say so much more than this I would be 
 glad. But do not seek to have me know it. I shall 
 soon be where, if it be possible to know anything, I 
 shall know all, and if one does not, then it does not 
 matter. 
 
 " Good-bye, Billy. I owe you the happiest and 
 best days of my life, and, weak creature that I was, 
 you held me for a long time above myself. I should 
 like to feel that this poor letter even for one moment 
 has softened you towards me, and so made some 
 one better better through me, who have made so 
 many worse. Good-bye. I am sorry. Good-bye. 
 
 'MARY."
 
 94 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 He ceased reading and sat resting his head 
 upon his hand, gathering the skin of his fore 
 head between his fingers, as is the habit of 
 some men when lost in thought. 
 
 " I can't do it," he muttered, hoarsely. 
 "I would not darken her heaven; I would 
 not add one agony to her hell. It might 
 be justification of myself, revenge upon 
 him, but I cannot show him that letter." 
 He paused, then quickly continued : " Per 
 haps there is some good left in me, after 
 all." 
 
 He was so absorbed that he did not notice 
 when Alston entered the room. He said 
 nothing to him, even when he had crossed 
 the floor and stood silently before him. 
 
 " I am waiting for your answer," said Al 
 ston. 
 
 " Wait," he replied, roughly. 
 
 He rose, went to the window and looked 
 out. The evening was well advanced, but 
 the crowds from the theatres, soon to fill the 
 walks, had not yet appeared. The Square 
 and the converging streets were dismal, 
 almost slimy, repulsive, shining as they were 
 from the just fallen rain. The sharp shadows 
 made by the electric lights, heavy and dis-
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 95 
 
 tinct as the border of a mourning - card, 
 seemed to edge everything to harden what 
 he saw into greater and more impressive se 
 verity. 
 
 " What have you to say ?" demanded Alston. 
 
 " Nothing," replied Trego. 
 
 Then he turned, faced Alston for a mo 
 ment, and added: 
 
 " She died five years ago." 
 
 Alston stood rigidly erect. 
 
 "Died!" he said; "died and yet it is 
 better so. But stand there she is no man's 
 now. I, too, have my rights. Tell me, did 
 she die before did she know " 
 
 " What I am?" said Trego, fiercely. " Drop 
 that. You had better." 
 
 " I will know the truth." 
 
 " I swear, Henry Alston," said Trego, in a 
 tone that dispelled all doubt " I swear that 
 she suffered nothing from me. I swear it 
 to you by all that there is left to me to hold 
 sacred." 
 
 " And I believe you," answered Alston ; 
 " and it is well that I do. If I did not, I 
 would shoot you down where you stand." 
 
 " Possibly," said Trego, with harsh, rattling, 
 enigmatical laugh.
 
 96 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 He rose and moved towards the table in 
 the centre of the room. 
 
 "Will you allow me?" he added. "A 
 lady's letter. I must see that it reaches no 
 other hands." 
 
 He held the paper to the gaslight, and the 
 two men stood watching the eager flame 
 snatch at it ; watched the play of the yellow 
 blaze, saw the blackening, writhing edges as 
 the paper burned, saw the light ashes fall 
 and pass from sight watched, and said 
 nothing. Would either have spoken had 
 either thought how typical it was of a lost 
 
 life? 
 
 * * * 
 
 The rain had stopped some time before, 
 but the air seemed still heavy with moisture. 
 A thin fog had come up suddenly, and the 
 electric lights shone only in dull, overspread 
 ing glow. As the two men stepped upon 
 the walk, the crowd from the theatre close at 
 hand had just begun to break upon the street. 
 
 " I could not stay inside," said Alston. 
 " There's a life in every breath of air." 
 
 Trego said nothing. 
 
 " I am going back to-morrow," continued 
 Alston.
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 97 
 
 "Yes," replied Trego, absently. 
 
 Both men spoke as if there were but little 
 left for which they might care. They seemed 
 bewildered, lost, as if chaos had suddenly 
 turned to blank space vacancy without 
 confine. 
 
 They walked in silence up the Avenue. 
 
 Then suddenly there came, dull and yet 
 distinct, that ominous sound that means so 
 much to the dwellers in cities to everyone 
 who knows what it is the rush, the clang, 
 the nearing, passing, departing something 
 that brings to mind dark thoughts of dis 
 ease, of casualty, of crime, of the long, silent 
 suffering of the sick-bed, of the mutilation 
 of sudden accident, of the direful wrongs 
 man dares do to man ; a sound that brings 
 to mind thoughts of the hospital, the knife, 
 the grave. No man loiters so carelessly 
 that he will not turn in sudden gravity 
 when he hears it ; none is so busy that he 
 will not pause as it comes to his ear 
 a throbbing, dominating sound, heard now 
 above the rattle of glittering equipages 
 giving way before it, and now, at 'midnight, 
 lessening down the distance of some deserted 
 street. 
 7
 
 g8 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 Alston scarcely noticed the ambulance as 
 it approached. 
 
 People farther along were gathered about 
 the edge of the sidewalk, and Trego has 
 tened on alone. 
 
 A woman lay upon the pavement, her 
 head resting upon the curb-stone as upon 
 a pillow. 
 
 With quick, sharp exclamation he started 
 back. The gathering whiteness, the tight 
 ening rigidity of his countenance, could be 
 plainly seen beneath the hard, brutal glare of 
 the electric light. He fell upon his knees, 
 and, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, 
 dropped it over her upturned face. 
 
 The ambulance stopped. The young 
 physician who came with it sprang out and 
 made a hurried examination, utterly disre 
 garding the kneeling man ; but in a minute 
 he instinctively turned to him with signifi 
 cant gesture. 
 
 " She is dead ?" asked Trego. 
 
 The young man bowed his head, and with 
 that instantaneous something that, when 
 occasion comes, tells any man whither to 
 turn for aid, he said : 
 
 " Will you help me ?"
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 99 
 
 Trego staggered to his feet, and together 
 they placed the lifeless body within the 
 terrible shelter of the injured and the dead. 
 
 The bell struck the silence as with sud 
 den blow; the horse leaped beneath the 
 lash ; the wheels rattled on the pavement, 
 and the ambulance vanished down the 
 Avenue as might some quick and ghastly 
 vision of the night. 
 
 " What is it ?" asked Alston, as he came 
 up to Trego, who stood silent in the thin 
 ning crowd. 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 "What is it?" repeated Alston, taking 
 Trego by the arm. 
 
 Trego started. 
 
 " The end of a tragedy," he answered, 
 steadily, rigidly. 
 
 Then, after a moment, he added, abrupt- 
 ly: 
 
 " Let me have some money. I haven't a 
 dollar. I must have money to-night. I'll 
 need it to-morrow. It is the only way I 
 can get it, and I must have it. Let me 
 have some money. Do you hear me ? 
 Money ! I will repay it ; you may be sure 
 of that."
 
 TOO THE WOMAN IN THE CASE 
 
 "Would she say that I should if she 
 knew?" asked Alston. 
 
 " Yes," answered Trego, more quietly " if 
 she knew all that you have told me to 
 night."
 
 PAPOOSE
 
 PAPOOSE 
 
 AT four o'clock the scant winter sun 
 light filtered but dimly through the 
 heavy, low-lying clouds, the smoke-thicken 
 ed air, and the quick-whirling snow-flakes. 
 Down in the narrow city street, where the 
 vans and carts and cabs seemed almost to 
 flow with and be borne along by a stream of 
 liquid mud that hid the pavement a noisy 
 debacle tearing down this ragged, urban 
 gully, like 'a raft with loosened withes rush 
 ing and tumbling through a flume the light 
 was gray and grisly. Above and through the 
 grimy, cobwebbed windows of a large room, 
 just beneath the eaves of one of the large 
 buildings lining the cramped thoroughfare, 
 it seemed to lose its character as light, and 
 to be sifted and to fall as might dull, sodden 
 sand through a sieve. It was a very poor 
 place. There were no curtains on the win 
 dows ; the floor was bare. In one corner
 
 104 PAPOOSE 
 
 stood a small, square stove ; no comforting 
 fire in its barren grate ; no welcoming light 
 between its gray bars ; its name, " The Fire 
 side," appearing in raised, rusty letters across 
 its front, a grim sarcasm, a sort of iron irony. 
 The rust-scaled pipe ran low at first along 
 the wall, then rose to and through a tin-filled 
 square of a window-sash, as if it were the 
 writhing, sharp -jointed, evil genius of the 
 forbidding place. In another corner was a 
 long, low, ragged divan, and near it doddered 
 a decrepit chair, with one arm uplifted, 
 threatening away all approach. But the 
 room was not without things not wholly ac 
 cordant. Upon the walls, in plain, pale hard 
 wood frames, hung crookedly an autotype 
 of the angel's head in Botticelli's "Spring," 
 and a reproduction of Diirer's " Melancholia." 
 A large chair, covered with rich but well- 
 worn stuff, stood in front of the grim stove, 
 and in a doorway leading to an adjoining 
 room hung from a broken rod a heavy por- 
 ttire of embroidered silk. A bookcase of 
 elaborately carved oak rose above the lead- 
 colored wainscot, its two upper shelves 
 empty, its three lower only partially filled. 
 There was something about its aspect that
 
 PAPOOSE 
 
 105 
 
 made it plain to the minds even of those 
 who least understand the untold that, not 
 very long before, the empty shelves had 
 been filled ; that the volumes now left 
 were not then deserted by those most sal 
 able of them all. On its top, at one end, 
 rose a small bronze Martha and Mephisto 
 evidently at loss for an object of the 
 sympathy of the one and the sneer and 
 jeer of the other, for none could be so with 
 out the eyes that see the unseen as not to 
 see that a Faust and Marguerite, creatures 
 of the same metal, were but lately gone from 
 the opposite side. Between the divan and 
 the stove lay a fine Persian rug with a stain 
 in one corner and a hole in the other ; and 
 on a stand in the angle nearest the door was 
 quite an array of cups and plates and jars, 
 some of them beautiful and costly, no two 
 of them, however, of the same kind and pat 
 tern, and all looking 'like fine folk out of 
 place and out of luck ; these and other 
 things evidently appertaining to a better life 
 than was possible in such quarters. There 
 was scarcely an air of squalor about the room, 
 but it was gray in its dusty ceiling, worn 
 as to its broken paper-hanging, neglected,
 
 106 PAPOOSE 
 
 and in its aspect and influence very melan 
 choly. 
 
 On one of the rickety chairs, and at an 
 unpainted table, its broad top spotted with 
 ink stains, sat a man, his elbows resting on 
 its edge, and his face covered by his hands. 
 He had held this attitude for some time. 
 The small cheap clock on the bookcase 
 Mephisto used to grimace over it at Faust 
 its clear ticking unnaturally strong for a 
 thing so small, as unnaturally loud as is the 
 harsh, stridulous piping of some persistent 
 little demagogue in the commonwealth of 
 some tree upon a hot summer's night the 
 busy little clock had tallied off the minutes 
 of half an hour since he had stirred. Now, 
 as he raised his head, he saw through the 
 window before him how dull and metallic, 
 how like worn and blackened tin, the light, 
 if light it might be called, of the closing day 
 had become. Rising, he stood for a mo 
 ment, with one hand upon the table, evi 
 dently irresolute ; then he walked backward 
 and forward half a dozen times, the length 
 of the room. His step was sometimes firm, 
 but now and then he seemed to falter in his 
 walk. As if something of the power of voli-
 
 PAPOOSE 107 
 
 tion were lost, he would almost stop for a 
 second with slight, spasmodic, purposeless 
 gestures. It was patent in his most expres 
 sive face, even in that light, that he was 
 with quick change tossed to and fro, from 
 resolution to weakness, from weakness to 
 resolution, ungoverned really by self -con 
 trolling power. One might almost fancy 
 that the now strained and now relaxed lines 
 in his face were as the sinews of the thoughts 
 that struggled, staggered, went down, arose, 
 and went on in the contest then at its height 
 in his mind. 
 
 As abruptly as he had risen, and as if at 
 last in absolute determination, he sat down, 
 and, drawing a few sheets of paper scattered 
 on the table towards him, he took up a pen 
 and wrote, hastily: 
 
 " As you are the only one who has any 
 right to expect an explanation, or to whom I 
 have the slightest desire to attempt justifica 
 tion of what I am about to do, I write to you." 
 
 He paused, and again glanced up at the 
 window ; the light for the clouds now in 
 places seemed worn and frayed was a little 
 stronger, but still it was more like some
 
 io8 PAPOOSE 
 
 sickly phosphorescence than the deadened 
 but healthy glow of the ruddy sun. Then 
 he wrote hurriedly on : 
 
 " I do not know that I can justify either 
 myself or my act. The taking of a crim 
 inal's forfeited life is defensible; the taking 
 of the life of him who attacks your own may 
 be vindicated. If my life has wronged me, 
 deceived me, threatened me, may I not take 
 it, when it is mine.? 
 
 " The instinct of most men, finding them 
 selves where I find myself, is mere cowardli 
 ness, and through such instinct they degrade 
 duties and responsibilities into safeguards, 
 and lurk behind them in excuse for their 
 weakness. Men fear pain as do children 
 ready with their outcry ; fear death as chil 
 dren shudder at the thought of a darkened 
 room. They affect endurance in mock 
 heroism, and sneer at suicide because they 
 are afraid. I do not shrink from pain 
 the crash of the marring bullet through the 
 flesh and bone will be but for a moment. I 
 do not fear the darkness generally the hab 
 itation of peace ; I rather seek it seek the 
 content of oblivion. I believe in the subtle
 
 PAPOOSE 109 
 
 delight of eternal unconsciousness, in the still 
 blissfulness of restful absorption into the im 
 mensity of that nature that no man has dared 
 as yet to blaspheme. There is much to truth 
 fully express which requires paradox, and 
 these are of them. It is a confused world, and 
 in such confusion there must be affirmative 
 opposites; to declare these may require con 
 flicting words, but from such discordant clash 
 often comes the most important truth. 
 
 " I might dilate upon the disasters of my 
 life. You know them my failures, my fol 
 lies, my fancies, my frenzies you know 
 them almost in detail. But I am not petu 
 lant, querulous, or angry, and I do not do it. 
 I possessed imagination that builded me a 
 house of life, with lofty columns and wide 
 architrave. I had the means to people my 
 house with imagined actualities; but now 
 the frieze lies along the foundation, and my 
 realities have not the substance of dreams. 
 My fortune is gone, and here in this miser 
 able chamber I scrawl words I scarce heed 
 and never shall read; here in poverty, al 
 most in darkness, for the horizon is lost in 
 mist, the west is hung with wolf pelts, and 
 the night the Night is at hand.
 
 no PAPOOSE 
 
 " The world will dismiss me from thought 
 with flippant condemnation, saying that my 
 ruin is of my own making. It may be, but 
 I am therefore the more worthy of atten 
 tion. If the world would really know any 
 thing of human existence, it must study the 
 life, not of him who has succeeded, but of 
 him who has failed. Success may be an 
 accident, or the point where linked and 
 common concatenation is chain-bolted to a 
 necessary result. But a man always ruins 
 himself characteristically, and his failure ex 
 hibits his real nature. He is the natural 
 man, and seeming paradox again he is 
 often the happiest man. His nature has 
 had its exercise ; he has striven along the 
 line of its tendencies. He has lived. Nine 
 times in ten he who has succeeded has only 
 lifted and planted foot in marked places. 
 Good sense has been a soul-stifling bane ; 
 good maxims benumbing restraints. I am 
 a failure. I have lived after my own fash 
 ion, and if I have not achieved happiness, 
 who may? I have ruined myself in my own 
 way. I have missed no chance, neglected 
 no opportunity. Myself and I rejoiced in 
 our youth and my fortune. All is gone.
 
 PAPOOSE in 
 
 Myself my last coin I drop to-day into 
 that slot the grave. 
 
 " I have a few things left whereupon I 
 might realize enough to pay life's wages for 
 some days longer. I have lived for a fort 
 night on the works of Herr Schopenhauer 
 something, I natter myself, extraordinary, if 
 not unique. The complacent omniscience 
 in prose, and the lightness and sweetness in 
 verse, in certain volumes of Matthew Arnold 
 might sustain me possibly for a week ; but 
 perhaps I overestimate my strength. I ne 
 gotiated a Barbadienne Faust to a gentle 
 man of the Order of the Golden Three Balls 
 ten days ago. Happy Faust, who lived in 
 a time when men could sell their souls ! 
 Now there is no longer a devil, and if I at 
 tempted to raise the wind on such security 
 in any other market, I would be regarded 
 as a common swindler, attempting to obtain 
 goods under false pretences. I have limbs, 
 senses, health. You once did me the honor 
 to say that I had faculties that would not 
 be inapt at turning pennies or earning plau 
 dits. But why make use of any of these? 
 Why should I take pains to support this 
 clumsy body that gave me so little satisfac-
 
 ii2 PAPOOSE 
 
 tion, even when I was not put to such trou 
 ble for its keep ? A bullet shall close the 
 disjointed phrase of my life ; a bullet shall 
 be the period that ends this jargon, unintel 
 ligible to myself and to all. 
 
 " Do not think that I am careless or flip 
 pant. All solemnities of the moment stand 
 around me. What is gone I know ; what is 
 to come, who can tell ? Myriads have be 
 lieved in futurity; in such comparison how 
 poor, how paltry, is individual doubt ! Think 
 of the massed suffering of ages borne in sus 
 taining credence, and one man's trouble 
 seems but peevishness. I think of one 
 man's complaint in the sweep of the world's 
 lamentation, and it seems but as the creak 
 of a loosened shutter in the roar of the 
 north wind. Others live, they say, because 
 life is a duty; because I have had some 
 small argumentative business with myself, 
 and rays of perhaps better light have at 
 times shot through mere logic, and I may 
 have seemed to have freed myself from 
 obligation, shall I desert ? But but much 
 thought has made me weary, too weak for 
 effective review. I have said my life shall 
 have its period ; an interrogation-point were
 
 PAPOOSE 113 
 
 better punctuation ; with weak iteration I 
 echo Rabelais' 'Perhaps.' The pellet of the 
 pistol ball shall physic my present pain 
 characteristic cure life true to itself to the 
 last. Is there no button-hole in a shroud ? 
 I cannot seize Death by a lapel and ply him 
 with questions. 
 
 " I go to forget ; I expect to be forgotten. 
 Pity me, despise me; they bury suicides 
 now at such cross-roads. 
 
 " I doubt if I have really said anything, 
 when I wanted to say so much, and that so 
 clearly. I do not even know what I have 
 said, for I am not calm, unimpatient ; I 
 seem goaded as with some strange haste. 
 But, fast friend, tried comrade, I bid you a 
 good lifetime ; wish me a good eternity. 
 
 " MORRIS." 
 
 The young man paused, and looked up 
 with half-bewildered stare. Wholly sane, 
 perhaps, when he began to write, the weight 
 and multiplicity of his thoughts, the stress 
 of the time, as perhaps some might infer 
 from what he had written, had wrought in 
 him at last something like madness. In 
 telligence now, for a moment at least,
 
 114 PAPOOSE 
 
 seemed to struggle back to the world of 
 sense and comprehensibility. He placed to 
 gether the loose sheets on which he had 
 written, even numbered the leaves ; then, 
 folding them carefully, he placed them in 
 an envelope, sealed it, and wrote a name 
 upon it " Philip Vassel, Esq." and then 
 an address. 
 
 It had grown so dark that the figures on 
 the dial of the little clock could not be seen 
 from where he sat. He rose, and stepped 
 quickly across the floor. " Ten minutes of 
 five," he said. For a moment he stood in 
 apathetic self -absorption, then he hastily 
 drew open a drawer in the lower part of the 
 bookcase. The object that he took from it 
 shone, even in that dim light, in his hand. It 
 was a small thing. It might at first have 
 seemed some costly, useless bibelot, so rich 
 was it with ivory and silver ; some pretty 
 plaything, were it not for a spiteful look, 
 like the look of a pampered toy terrier. It 
 was a highly ornamented revolver, but so 
 small was it that it lay wholly within his 
 palm small, but at a man's temple capable 
 of deadly bark and bite. " It might as well 
 be at five as any other time," he said, clearly,
 
 PAPOOSE 115 
 
 and unconscious that he spoke. " Seven 
 minutes to eternity." He carried the clock 
 to the table, and sat down. He did not 
 bow his head this time ; he sat erect, star 
 ing at the dial before him. It seemed to 
 him that he was lost in a confused, luminous 
 haze, a sort of half-consciousness of some 
 things and quick comprehension of others, 
 mingled with confused memories of many 
 things, as swarmed flies mingle, eddying 
 about a spire, or around the spray ending a 
 branch just stirred by the breeze, a puff 
 of waving, shining mist in a summer sun-, 
 set lost in a cloud that it seemed must 
 instantly shift into a flash lighting up, with 
 complete revealment, a moment crowded 
 with recollections of a whole life such a 
 moment as he had read comes to dying 
 men. But no such moment came. " Per 
 haps it is not near enough," he said, again 
 aloud. 
 
 It was as if faculty of thought, use of 
 mental processes, were gone. There was 
 nothing left save indifferent recognition of 
 the plain, clear, seemingly quite unimpor 
 tant fact of life. " I might as well sit here 
 waiting to take some narcotic," he said.
 
 n6 PAPOOSE 
 
 But now came hurrying things things 
 unconnected, dissimilar, erratic. They came 
 as eager bidders might hasten to the auction 
 of a dead man's chattels hasten and jostle 
 on the threshold. He remembered that a 
 Frenchman that was the first thought that 
 shouldered in had once said that suicide 
 was ill-mannered, that it was the height of 
 impoliteness to go where you were not in 
 vited, and for a moment the grim, facile 
 epigram almost amused him, and he slightly 
 smiled. But quickly hurrying, so closely 
 crowding that they overlapped and partly 
 obscured each other, came other thoughts, 
 memories, disconnected, inappropriate in 
 opportune he would have considered them 
 had he had power of criticism left. He 
 thought of an apple-tree as he had, when 
 a child, once seen it in full blossom, when 
 the pied flowers were as swarms of butter 
 flies alighted all over on its stiff little 
 twigs ; now the river before his uncle's 
 country place was as clear as on that summer 
 afternoon when, a boy, he swam the spark 
 ling stream, than which the upper sky could 
 not have been so blue, " so cool, so calm, so 
 bright;" now shot into vision the face, seen
 
 PAPOOSE 117 
 
 once, and once only, of a young girl who 
 waited at a gate for some one perhaps her 
 lover in a shaded and leafy lane through 
 which he had hastily ridden, when a younger 
 man, one autumn evening a face that 
 struck him like the clash of cymbals. And 
 then suddenly, as if beneath some occult 
 spell, in almost visible form and tangible 
 substance, his situation seemed to stand be 
 fore him, and he became a horror-paralyzed 
 spectator of himself. There were prefigured 
 to him the terrible aspects of the tragedy 
 about to be enacted, and of what would fol 
 low when the curtain had gone down. The 
 sound of the pistol ; the crash of the ball ; 
 the blood slow pulsing in its outflow; the 
 oozing brain ; the rattle of the fallen weapon ; 
 his own duller, heavier fall. Perhaps some 
 one would hear the report of that discharge, 
 and force the locked door would find what 
 he had hardly ceased to be, quivering, shud 
 dering, as it would be, as if still trembling at 
 encounter with sudden death ; perhaps none 
 would hear in the big deserted building that 
 was more probable and limbs and features 
 would harden into rigidity, and darkness 
 would gather in the place as flocking ravens
 
 n8 PAPOOSE 
 
 gather to the slain, and all its space would 
 become vacant of light as his own eyes, un- 
 warmed as his heart, and, all night, that which 
 he had become would be left alone in the 
 horrible darkness and terrible silence a 
 silence only broken by the ticking of the 
 clock, that would be like the clicking of the 
 chisel of some busy stone-cutter at work upon 
 black marble. And then would come a 
 brazen to-morrow that would, in some way, 
 crowd people into the room, and, as if it were 
 a merit in itself, would play exhibitor of the 
 dread thing he was. There would be ghastly 
 faces and horrified exclamations, and 
 What noise was that in the street ? But 
 was it of any consequence to him what noise 
 it might be? 
 
 He glanced at that diligent laborer, the 
 little clock. With steady, sturdy beat it 
 ticked away almost blithely at its work. 
 There, in that place, it seemed indeed alive, 
 and to torment a man with its activity. 
 
 The last minute before five. 
 
 His hand tightened upon the revolver's 
 small stock. The muzzle touched his temple. 
 Scarce a thread of white lay between the 
 hour point and the imperceptibly advancing
 
 PAPOOSE 119 
 
 minute-hand. Now the minute-hand passes 
 the top of the X in XII. Now 
 
 Rap, rap, came a faint, fumbling knock at 
 the door. 
 
 Morris instinctively turned his head. The 
 revolver already bore upon space. 
 
 Rap, rap, once more. 
 
 The revolver was slightly lowered. 
 
 Rap, and then the knock suddenly ceased, 
 and there was a sort of rustling, brushing 
 noise as if something fell with slow descent, 
 partly sustained by the door. 
 
 Certainly this was annoying and perplex 
 ing. There are times when a man has the 
 right to expect to be alone, when any dis 
 turbance is intrusion. Can't a gentleman 
 take his own life in peace ? he thought, with 
 whimsical exasperation. But then a knock 
 at the door. Darwin, as w r e all know, had 
 an idea that perhaps the vertebrata are de 
 scended from an animal allied to existing 
 tidal ascidians ; and that this might possibly 
 account for the mysterious fact that many 
 normal and abnormal vital processes of the 
 human vertebrate seem under the influence 
 of the moon. Possibly the impulse to an 
 swer a knock at our door has its origin in
 
 120 PAPOOSE 
 
 some almost as remotely transmitted in 
 stinct, derived from aboriginal time, when a 
 man had 
 
 " No enemy, 
 But winter and rough weather," 
 
 and such a summons was an appeal for aid 
 and shelter. Whatever may be the reason 
 perhaps because the world is so full of pos 
 sibilities, and imagination is so rich and 
 vivid it becomes an irresistible .demand, 
 strong in the very weakness of its petition, 
 and even at such a time Morris was not 
 able to free himself from the unavoidable 
 inclination to answer the call. He placed 
 the pistol on the table, and, stepping quickly 
 to the door, unlocked it. It was much 
 darker in the hall than in the room. Glanc 
 ing down, he saw what seemed a large 
 bundle, so shapeless and still was it. He 
 looked at it for a moment in the moment 
 recalling staggering, straggling faculties to 
 power to comprehend actual things and 
 then, stooping down, sought by sense of 
 touch to discover what it really was. At 
 first he felt merely a fold of woollen cloth ; 
 then, what he knew to be an arm ; and then 
 soft hair, and a cold, small human face.
 
 PAPOOSE I2 i 
 
 " It's a child," he said, "and half frozen." 
 He gathered the limp body in his arms, 
 and carried it to the big arm-chair in front 
 of the tireless stove ; he seized the chair in 
 which he had been sitting, and, raising it 
 above his head, he brought it down with such 
 violence on the floor that it flew into many 
 fragments. These, with an old newspaper 
 caught from the table, he stuffed into the 
 grate. A match picked from a scattered 
 dozen upon a shelf beneath the stove-pipe 
 in an instant ignited the paper, and certain 
 grotesque shadows that had hung like so 
 many vampire-bat skins in a wizard's cell 
 about the room began a danse macabre on 
 the wall, tiptoeing and bowing to an elfin 
 tribe of their kindred who ran towards them 
 from out hiding-places behind chairs and 
 tables. There was a little coal in a small 
 box ; he rattled some of it down upon the 
 flames, and many of the shadows, frightened 
 at the noise, fled out of sight. Then he 
 drew up the chair nearer the blaze. Taking 
 off the child's heavy shoes one heel showed 
 pinkly through a hole in the stocking he 
 placed a large book upon the hearth and the 
 small feet upon it ; then he chafed the little
 
 122 PAPOOSE 
 
 hands, blue with cold, between his own. 
 How strange and it came in fleeting, tran 
 sitory thought that what five minutes be 
 fore had seemed worse than useless to him 
 self seemed suddenly so inexpressibly pre 
 cious in this scantily clad child something 
 to be preserved if human exertion could do 
 it ! But the sense of this incongruity was but 
 for a moment ; the ragged waif occupied his 
 active attention. A bright something ran 
 over the small face, and the large eyes slowly 
 opened in amazement. 
 
 " Will I die ?" she asked, faintly, as she 
 gazed up at the man bending over her. " I 
 don't want to die." 
 
 " No," he answered, as heartily and as- 
 suringly as he could ; " not a bit of it." 
 
 " I am glad," she said, as her head sank 
 again with a little sigh. 
 
 His voice seemed to him strained, stiffened, 
 and formal. 
 
 " You'll be all right soon," he went on, 
 speaking rapidly, and provoked that he 
 could not command an easier and more 
 natural tone. " You are only a little cold," 
 and he grew absolutely angry that, out of 
 practice as he had been, he could not do
 
 PAPOOSE 123 
 
 more in softening his words. " You will be 
 warm in three minutes," he added, a little 
 more satisfactorily " a minute " would have 
 sounded harsh "and then you will feel 
 better." 
 
 " I feel better now," said the child, quite 
 comfortably. " But don't watch me so. 
 " I've a-ma-zing dislike to being watched so." 
 
 "You've what ?" he asked, astonished at 
 the long words, and looking at her even 
 more earnestly. 
 
 "A-ma-zing dislike," she repeated, turning 
 a languid face towards him, almost with fine- 
 ladyish air. 
 
 " Oh !" he exclaimed, and began looking 
 at the grate. 
 
 " That is a very nice fire," she said. " I 
 don't think I ever saw a nicer fire. I don't 
 pos-i-tive-ly." 
 
 And as the word fell very slowly, Morris 
 turned and looked at her again. 
 
 " Didn't I tell you, don't ?" she said, with 
 a strange little look of command. " But 
 what a soft chair, and what pretty colors ?'' 
 and with a light forefinger she followed the 
 shape of a spreading leaf woven in the tapis- 
 serie. " You must be a very rich man."
 
 124 PAPOOSE 
 
 If some one had ascribed to him omni 
 science or omnipresence, the powers of an 
 Indian adept, or the ability of a circus con 
 tortionist, Morris could not have been more 
 staggered. That she had not a doubt about 
 what she said, was plain in the wondering, 
 almost admiring glance that she turned upon 
 him. 
 
 " It's nice to have money," she said, and 
 she held her small hand before her face, 
 almost as if she were careful of her com 
 plexion, and afraid that the fire-light would 
 hurt it. If the broken-winged sparrow that 
 he had picked up in the gutter a week ago 
 had b.ent its pathetic eye upon him and 
 given utterance to some aphorism, say from 
 the collection of maxims Lord Chesterfield 
 gathered from the memoirs of Cardinal de 
 Retz, he could not have been more amazed. 
 He looked at her attentively. Her cheeks 
 were sunken; her lips were pale; her eyes 
 unnaturally bright. Over her features was 
 the worn, weary look the look that lies 
 upon features shadowed and sharpened by 
 the pinch and privation of poverty. But in 
 her case it did not seem unpleasant ; there 
 mingled with it no aspect of unnatural precoc-
 
 PAPOOSE 125 
 
 ity, nothing of the expression of the impish 
 acuteness of too-clever children. It seemed 
 only the result of hardship, of experiences 
 that should not have come to one so young. 
 But she was a beautiful child even as she 
 was, with that look of race, or breeding, or 
 whatever it is, the quality of all really fine 
 organisms never wholly lost, no matter in 
 what strait the human or brute creature may 
 be ; that something that belongs to all 
 thoroughbreds those who win the race by 
 a neck if needs be, but win those among 
 us of pure lineage, trace of which may have 
 been, perhaps, for a time lost, drawn from 
 remote source, as it may have been, and 
 through and over common clay to those 
 who dare and do, compelled to do and dare 
 by something in their nature something 
 giving assurance of endurance and strength 
 in reserve equal to all assail, and even in 
 defeat not wholly overcome. 
 
 u Don't you feel much better now ? " 
 he asked, as he looked down upon this 
 calm little creature, evidently so self-pos 
 sessed. 
 
 " I think," she said, unhesitatingly, " that 
 I am hungry."
 
 126 PAPOOSE 
 
 Of course she must be hungry. He was 
 a brute not to have thought of that before. 
 But what could he give her ? A man on the 
 point of committing suicide, and in such 
 rooms, would hardly be apt to have a well- 
 stocked larder; and, to tell the truth, so little 
 had Morris had of coin or of any currency 
 for the last weeks that command over food 
 or drink had been but slight. 
 
 " I'm afraid," he said, blankly, " that I 
 haven't anything." 
 
 If, half an hour before, any sensible man 
 had told him that he, Richard Morris, then 
 only thinking of quitting an existence that 
 he found unbearable, would so soon and so 
 eagerly long for the possession of the sim 
 plest sustenance that might maintain life for 
 a hungry child, that he should feel such 
 awkward shamefacedness that he had not 
 anything to give her, he would have turned 
 from him with the scorn that most merely 
 sensible people deserve. 
 
 " But I can go out and get something," 
 he added, suddenly remembering the for 
 tune of a few pieces of silver loose in his 
 pocket. 
 
 " Please do," she said ; " I am very hun-
 
 PAPOOSE 127 
 
 gry. I haven't eaten anything for a whole, 
 long, awful day. Won't won't you please 
 hurry ?" 
 
 A whole day ! This child without food 
 for a whole day ! The thing was startling ; 
 the thought of it one to make a man pro 
 voked with himself and his kind. She must 
 have food, and at once. He started towards 
 the door, but he did not like to leave her 
 alone, weak as she was. He hesitated, and 
 then suddenly, with glad relief, he remem 
 bered that he had some preserved fruit and 
 some crackers purchased long before, when 
 he had yet hope, and thought of striving to 
 make something of his life. He found them, 
 and gave the already opened bottle and the 
 untied parcel to the child. But, he asked 
 himself, had he done rightly ? Were Wies 
 baden strawberries and those dry, sweet bis 
 cuits really the thing to give to a starving 
 little being like this ? But already she had 
 the bottle under one arm, and one of the 
 crackers loaded with the luscious berries at 
 her lips. 
 
 " Oh !" she said in an instant ; and there 
 was ineffable depth of satisfaction unspeak 
 able ecstasy of gratification, in the half-
 
 128 PAPOOSE 
 
 murmured, half -ejaculated syllable. The 
 countenance of a gourmet suffused with de 
 light in a just-tasted and supremely delicate 
 plat ; of a connoisseur, aglow as the bouquet 
 and flavor of some rare, age -thinned ichor 
 of some royal vine melt along two senses 
 for the instant seemingly made exquisitely 
 one were but blanks compared to the 
 child's face as she finished the quick feat of 
 swallowing her first mouthful. But as the 
 second half-cracker and its load disappeared, 
 Morris wondered if he should not stop her. 
 Famished persons, he had read, should not 
 be allowed to eat so much and so quickly. 
 
 " I never, never tasted anything so good," 
 she managed to say. " Do you always eat 
 such good things?" 
 
 This last, after a large part of a well- 
 freighted cracker had been swallowed in one 
 mouthful. 
 
 He did not answer. He had unexpectedly 
 made a humiliating discovery. He was very 
 hungry himself fiercely, ravenously hungry. 
 Whether it was the child's eager voracity or 
 only the nearness of this vivid bit of human 
 life that relaxed the tension of the last mor 
 bid days and humanized him into something
 
 PAPOOSE 129 
 
 more natural, he did not take time to think. 
 He was hungry; that was the present, active 
 fact. He picked up one of the crackers, and 
 almost hesitatingly took a bite of it. 
 
 " Put on some of this," she insisted, with 
 a certain richness in her gobbled words, for 
 her mouth was full. 
 
 He did as he was bidden, and, sitting on 
 the arm of the chair, he began eating with 
 as much appetite and almost as much sense 
 of gratification as the child herself. It was 
 a close thing between them, first one and 
 then the. other at the bottle; and sometimes, 
 when his hand was slightly before hers, she 
 rapped it with a cracker, and insisted that 
 her own should be first. 
 
 Soon he laughed. 
 
 "Don't," said the child "don't laugh 
 that way. Aren't you glad?" 
 
 He stopped. It was grotesquely ludi 
 crous, enough to divert a very devil with 
 any touch of facetiousness in his diabolism. 
 A handful of minutes or so ago, and actually 
 he was going to shoot himself, and here he 
 was seated on the same chair with a child 
 on whom he had never laid eyes before, 
 silently and diligently eating " bread and 
 9 

 
 130 
 
 PAPOOSE 
 
 honey." It was like smearing the ghastly 
 face of tragedy with jam, like filling the ter 
 rible hand of self-slaughter with bonbons. 
 What anticlimax could have been more 
 complete? what bathos more profound? 
 
 And still they sat speechless, and, like the 
 sailor's wife, 
 
 "mouncht, and mouncht, and mouncht," 
 
 only now and then turning eager, curious, 
 watchful eyes upon each other. 
 
 " What is your name ?" he asked at length, 
 as he shook the cracker crumbs from his 
 fingers. 
 
 " Papoose," she answered, quickly, as she 
 took a bite of the last cracker of them all. 
 
 4 
 
 " But that's hardly your real name, you 
 know," he said. "You must have some 
 other." 
 
 " Oh yes !" she answered, looking into the 
 bottle, where some inches of its contents 
 still remained, and as if the other name were 
 a wholly unimportant superfluity, " I've an 
 other two Marjory Penhallow." 
 
 " Marjory Penhallow," he repeated. 
 
 " Every one calls me Papoose," she said,
 
 PAPOOSE i 3I 
 
 indifferently. " I think you'd better call me 
 Papoose." 
 
 He did not understand exactly how it was 
 brought about, but from that moment he 
 knew he was enlisted in her cause. Not that 
 her supremacy had been declared ; quite the 
 contrary ; her dependence had been estab 
 lished, that was all a dependence more 
 masterful than any tyranny. 
 
 "How old are you?" he asked, hesi 
 tatingly, and almost fearful of appearing 
 rude. 
 
 "Twelve and a half," she answered. " Is 
 not that too young?" she added, contemp 
 tuously. 
 
 " I have known people younger," Morris 
 answered, with grave politeness. 
 
 " It seems strange," she said, "but I ought 
 to be older. It seems to me that I have 
 lived years and years." 
 
 " And," he asked, taking advantage of the 
 opportunity for there was a diminutive 
 stateliness, a minimized dignity, about this 
 young person that had hitherto led him in 
 sensibly to abstain from asking her such 
 questions, although he was desirous of know 
 ing what had brought her to his door in
 
 I32 PAPOOSE 
 
 such condition and at such a time " have 
 you always lived here ?" 
 
 " In this city, do you mean, or in this 
 house ?" she asked, precisely. 
 
 " Do you did you live in this building?" 
 he demanded, in astonishment. 
 
 It was a large structure, with many rooms 
 and long, narrow halls. Its lower part was 
 used for shops, the second and third stories 
 for small manufacturing work, and the top 
 for cheap lodging- rooms. Now, as it hap 
 pened, Morris was the only occupant of the 
 cold, deserted upper story, where tenants 
 came and went with such significant fre 
 quency. 
 
 " A long time," she answered. " The 
 Necromancer and Isaac Newton and I." 
 
 " Who ?" 
 
 " The Necromancer and Isaac Newton 
 and I," she repeated. " The Necromancer 
 was my uncle, Isaac Newton was the cat, 
 and I was myself." 
 
 "Why the Necromancer?" 
 
 " Because he used to do such strange 
 
 things. He made queer-looking little bits 
 
 of machines, and had queer mixtures in 
 
 i queer glasses. He had a white beard, just
 
 PAPOOSE 133 
 
 like necromancers in books. He was a 
 great inventor. I always wanted him to 
 discover the philosopher's stone I'd read 
 about, but he wouldn't." 
 
 "No?" said Morris. 
 
 " No, he wouldn't ;" and she went on 
 slowly, and with a great effort of memory : 
 " he said modern chem-is-try did more than 
 ancient al-che-my ever thought of doing ; 
 that no trans-mu-tation was as wonderful as 
 some of the results of e-lec-tri-cal action; 
 that his philosopher's stone would make us 
 as rich as if he could really make gold. I did 
 not understand him very well. Do you ?" 
 
 " I think so," said Morris. " And the cat ?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " The cat was Isaac Newton, because he 
 was the greatest man that ever was," she 
 said, confidently. 
 
 " How long did you live here?" he asked. 
 
 " Years, but not in these rooms. They 
 were too grand for us. We lived in small 
 ones on the other side." 
 
 " Why did you go away?" 
 
 " The Necromancer died," she answered, 
 with something hushed in her tone. " I 
 found him lying beside his work-bench one
 
 134 PAPOOSE 
 
 day, on the floor, and there was a little spot 
 of blood on his white forehead. They said 
 it was falling on the floor did it. Oh, he 
 was so thin and light that I could have lifted 
 him almost !" 
 
 Neither spoke for a moment. 
 
 "I held his head," she went on, "and 
 screamed and screamed. He was so stiff, 
 you know, and hard. Then I kissed him on 
 his forehead where there wasn't any blood, 
 and then I screamed again, and then people 
 came." 
 
 She cast one look over her shoulder into 
 a dark part of the room, and then turned 
 quickly towards the protecting light of the 
 coals, now brightly aglow in the stove. 
 
 "Then the Schroeders came," she went on. 
 
 "Who were the Schroeders?" he asked in 
 a minute. 
 
 "They were very nice people," she said, 
 with a quick adaptability ; " de-light-ful peo 
 ple. They used to live in these rooms, and 
 that's why I came here to-night. They were 
 just married. They had a rose-bush in the 
 window, and a canary-bird. Isaac Newton 
 used to come here with me, and when he 
 saw the canary-bird he would roll his eyes
 
 PAPOOSE 135 
 
 around, and just open his mouth a little, so 
 that you could see a little white of his 
 teeth, and I'm sure he would have eaten 
 it if he conld. Mr. Schroeder she called 
 him Max, but of course I couldn't do that 
 was a piano-tuner, and I don't believe 
 piano-tuners are very rich men. But they 
 were much richer than we, and they were 
 so nice to me. They took me to their 
 rooms and kept me weeks." 
 
 "And this was a long time ago?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " Ever so long ago in the spring," she 
 continued, " But one day Mrs. Schroeder 
 found a letter in one of my old dresses that 
 said that if anything happened I was to 
 be sent to some cousins who lived in the 
 country, and that they were to take care of 
 me. And so one day Mr. Schroeder took 
 me to see them, and oh ! they were such 
 strange people ! One Christmas the jani 
 tor's second youngest baby got an ark in 
 his stocking, and that ark was in-hab-i-ted 
 by Noah and Shem and Ham. Well, they 
 were just like my cousins, only that they 
 were much smaller, of course I never saw 
 a house like theirs ; but then I have not
 
 136 PAPOOSE 
 
 seen the inside of many houses ; a great, big 
 place, almost as large as this, that was never 
 warm, and where there was no dust. It 
 seemed to me sometimes that if it could be 
 a little dirtier, it would be a little warmer. 
 Oh, it was so clean ! it seemed to me that 
 the things were almost raw. I don't think 
 that they had much money either how 
 very strange it is that really nobody I know 
 seems to have much money ? but they told 
 me that they would not sell it and move 
 into one of the small warm cottages, for 
 anything ; that they had in-her-i-ted it, and 
 that it was an-ces-tral. Well, they talked 
 together, and then they finally said that 
 they would keep me. Then Mr. Schroeder 
 went away, and then I cried, and they stood 
 and looked at me so solemnly and so kindly, 
 as if they didn't know what to do with me." 
 
 "And did you live there long?" asked 
 Morris, as she paused for a moment. 
 
 " Long !" she exclaimed. " Two thousand 
 years by the parlor clock." 
 
 " Well ?" he said, laughing at last. 
 
 " Oh, you want to hear more? We didn't 
 have much re-cre-a-tion there some of my 
 words I've only read, and I'm not quite sure
 
 PAPOOSE 137 
 
 of the pro-nun-ci-a-tion in that house. Sun 
 day there was the most to do, for we used 
 to drive to church with a horse with queer, 
 straight bones like rulers, and sit in straight 
 up-and-down pews like my cousins' chair- 
 backs, and listen to a man who did not 
 seem to me to talk very civilly to the peo 
 ple." 
 
 " But they were always kind to you ?" 
 said Morris. 
 
 " Oh yes ; but there is such a difference 
 in 'kind,' you know. There was the Ne 
 cromancer's ' kind ' the biggest " and she 
 held out her arms as if she would include 
 miles of space; "and there was the Schroe- 
 ders' 'kind;' and then there is your 'kind' 
 all of them different," and she looked up at 
 him. " What is your name?" she asked, sud 
 denly. 
 
 " Morris." 
 
 " Yes, Morris, they were always one kind 
 of ' kind ;' but really they didn't know how, 
 and I cried and cried, and thought I should 
 die." 
 
 "What didn't you like?" 
 
 "The country, for one thing. It was aw 
 ful."
 
 i 3 8 PAPOOSE 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Morris, softly. He had 
 always had a vague idea that children al 
 ways liked the country, and the answer sur 
 prised him. 
 
 " It was frightful. Perhaps I should like 
 it if it was more pop-u-lated ; but there was 
 almost no one to see all day long, and al 
 most nothing to do. No swarms of people, 
 no lovely shop windows, no hand-organs 
 nothing. In the summer it was bad, very 
 bad, but in the winter oh ! It was like be 
 ing shut up in a cave in the dark, and I was 
 afraid. At night I could only sit and think 
 how it was at home, where the pretty elec 
 tric lights were shining, and the people were 
 going to the theatres ; and I couldn't stay 
 out there any longer, Morris, and so I ran 
 away." 
 
 " What ?" 
 
 " Ran away," she repeated. 
 
 "How did you do that?" 
 
 " When Mr. Schroeder went away he gave 
 me my cousins didn't come clear to the 
 gate a little money. He said he thought 
 he was looking back at my woman cousin, 
 who stood on the steps and held out her 
 hand to see if it was raining that I might
 
 I'APOOSE 
 
 139 
 
 some time want to buy something to please 
 myself; for, God bless me! he said, he didn't 
 believe I would have much to please me 
 there. I kept that money for a per-i-od of 
 dis-tress, and when I ran away I walked to 
 the station ; it wasn't far, not more than fif 
 teen blocks. I stepped up to the janitor of 
 the station-house and said : ' Is that enough 
 to buy a ticket to New York ? If it is, I 
 want a very good one, please.' ' What are 
 you going to New York for?' he asked, while 
 he was pulling a ticket out of a place. ' To 
 see friends,' I said, and then he gave me the 
 ticket. And that was true, for I was going 
 to see the Schroeders. I got to the city, and 
 then I had to ask my way, first from one 
 policeman and then from another, and I 
 kept getting hungrier and colder, and then I 
 lost my way, and it has taken me all day to get 
 here, and the Schroeders are gone, after all, 
 and I'm sure I don't know what I shall do." 
 There was little of doubt, less of helpless 
 ness, and nothing at all of despair expressed 
 in her last few words. So far was she from 
 doubt or fear that it was evident that her 
 only anxiety was to obtain the rest of the 
 strawberries without cracker as she was.
 
 I 4 o PAPOOSE 
 
 She tipped up the bottle, and tried to cram 
 her hand down the neck. 
 
 " I think," said Morris, " that perhaps, you 
 know, you hadn't better eat any more of 
 that now." 
 
 " But I am very hungry,"' she insisted. 
 
 " Suppose we go out and get something 
 well healthier," he said. 
 
 "And bring it back here and eat it?" she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 "If you like." 
 
 " Shoes," she cried. " Give me my shoes." 
 
 Morris handed them to her, and in a mo 
 ment she had them on, and with a quick 
 stamp or two she settled her feet well into 
 them. 
 
 The weather had suddenly changed. As 
 Morris and Papoose stepped out of the 
 building, they found the street and side 
 walks white with the new-fallen snow. It 
 had been cold in the afternoon, but it was 
 much colder now, and was freezing rapidly. 
 The city no longer seemed murky, dismal, 
 and forbidding, but bright, clean, and spark 
 ling. The mud had stiffened, and was hid 
 from sight ; the snow had filled the dusky
 
 PAPOOSE 141 
 
 corners and crannies in the forlorn build 
 ings, and lay thickly on the dark, sullen 
 roofs. The electric lights were somewhat 
 dimmed by the thick flakes, and each looked 
 like some great globular, semi-transparent 
 fruit with gleaming core ; but still they man 
 aged to light everything very brilliantly, 
 causing the fringing icicles on the window- 
 ledges and eaves to glisten, until it might 
 seem in some places almost as if the houses 
 were illuminated for some festival, with rows 
 of suspended and sparkling lamps. The 
 vehicles in the street were fewer, but the 
 people on the sidewalks were, if anything, 
 more numerous. The dull roar of the 
 wheels was stilled, and the crowds no longer 
 walked as if in tread-mill work, but with brisk 
 step, as if freed, at least for a time, from 
 routine and care. The ceaseless, unwearied 
 murmur of the great city filled the air that 
 wonderful diapason, present always, but with 
 varying resonance, and at most times with 
 saddening or dismaying undertone ; now, 
 however, rising almost with something of 
 gentle assurance, of quieting promise, as 
 might some Brobdingnagian lullaby. And 
 the air the air gave quick elation. The
 
 142 PAPOOSE 
 
 change was as great and evident as might 
 be noticed if some sad, dark water of some 
 iron - impregnated spring were suddenly 
 charged with keen vivacity and glad vola 
 tility. 
 
 Morris had not been out for two days, nor 
 had he for a longer time given attention to 
 the things of the surrounding world. Now 
 he noticed the stir, the brilliancy, the 
 thronged ways, the illuminated shops, with 
 some surprise. Was the city always like 
 this, and had he never realized it? Was it 
 his mood or the world that was changed, or 
 both? 
 
 " Everything seems very gay to-night," he 
 said, as he took the child's hand. 
 
 " Why !" Papoose exclaimed, in amaze 
 ment. " Don't you know ?" 
 
 " No," he confessed. 
 
 "Why, it's Christmas Eve! Didn't you 
 know that? I thought that everybody 
 knew that." 
 
 Christmas Eve, and not to know it ! He 
 had never felt quite so humiliated in his life. 
 There was not a beggar in the street, not a 
 prisoner in his cell, who did not know it, 
 whose heart was not a little gladder, whose
 
 PAPOOSE 143 
 
 feeling was not a little kindlier, for the 
 knowledge. He was but a drivelling creat 
 ure, with small faculties in petty derange 
 ment ; he was a poltroon who would be fugi 
 tive from annoyance, would hasten out of 
 life in mere spite. He had gathered up a 
 store of ills, and in his vain desire to put the 
 great scheme of creation in fault, he set 
 value by them as a madman might to the 
 pebbles he thought diamonds. Any village 
 idiot, wandering afield with straw -decked 
 hat, and cackling with laughter at the good 
 things he heard from his familiars in the air, 
 was wise and worthy of admiration beside 
 his cowardly, imbecile self. So he thought, 
 or so he instinctively felt, as he again walked 
 the world, the keen wind blowing in his face, 
 and the lights about him, and a warm little 
 hand tight in his own. Kill himself ! Kill 
 himself. And on Christmas Eve ! The hor 
 ror of it ! 
 
 Papoose marched on in a delirium of vivid 
 delight. The movement, the general air of 
 festivity, charmed her ; the noise delighted 
 her; but the windows the wonderful pano 
 rama of the shop windows filled her with 
 complete and ceaseless satisfaction. The con-
 
 144 PAPOOSE 
 
 fectioners', where white-capped and aproned 
 men pulled out and about the gigantic skeins 
 of shining candy ; the toy-shops, where seemed 
 collected the small models from which every 
 thing had been made ; the jewellers', where 
 the gems glittered on the dark plush cushions 
 only less brilliantly than the now unclouded 
 stars in the wind-cleared heavens in the soft, 
 black velvet sky all were enchanting. But 
 it was before a great jeweller's shop that she 
 paused the longest and looked the most wist 
 fully. 
 
 " Oh !" she said, shaking her head slowly, 
 " if I only had one ring, even like that dear 
 little one with the blue flower, I would be 
 happy happy happy !" She turned reluc 
 tantly away. " It's nice to look at them, any 
 way," she sighed. 
 
 But her beloved and regained city filled 
 her with too great a joy to be easily sub 
 dued, and she quickly brightened up. 
 
 " I haven't got much money, you know," 
 said Morris, apologetically, as they went on. 
 
 " Oh no !" she answered, quickly and cheer 
 fully, as if that of course were everybody's 
 natural condition, and no more to be deplored 
 than the fact that one has no more than
 
 PAPOOSE 145 
 
 ten toes. " But you've got some, haven't 
 you ?" 
 
 " That's all," and he drew from his pocket 
 a few half-dollars and quarters. 
 
 "All that to spend at once?" she cried. 
 " But won't you need it for rent?" 
 
 "I think not." 
 
 "Surely?" 
 
 " Surely." 
 
 " Oh, how much we shall buy ! Let me 
 show you." 
 
 Papoose knew the streets of that quarter 
 of the town as a nun knows her cloister. 
 She knew exactly where she wished to go. 
 Gradually Morris found his pockets filled 
 with packages, his hands with bundles. Pa 
 poose, rich in experience, worked wonders 
 with the small handful of money ; never be 
 fore would he have believed that so little 
 would have bought so much. 
 
 " Go to the best, and you'll get the best, 
 and the most, "she said, sagaciously, as they 
 left a huge establishment, where she had judi 
 ciously invested twenty-five cents at least. 
 
 Every one remembered her ; everywhere 
 she was greeted as an old friend. At the 
 baker's she was treated as a distinguished 
 10 

 
 146 PAPOOSE 
 
 stranger ; at the little French shop selling 
 charcuterie she received an ovation ; at the 
 great grocer's, a triumph. The hurrying 
 clerks in the largest and most crowded places 
 treated her with particular deference, and 
 received her orders with peculiar attention. 
 All had missed her, and were glad to see her. 
 The greetings she received affably ; the 
 questions she answered briefly. She was 
 very busy, and had no time for gossip now. 
 At last she announced that all her purchases 
 had been made. 
 
 As they returned to what Papoose already 
 designated as "home, "Morris felt himself an 
 other man. An hour perhaps before, he had 
 been of a different nature, out of kindred 
 with his kind; now he felt as if he had found 
 a new naturalization. He felt like the oth 
 ers; he too carried bundles as so many did, 
 and dropped them and laughed, and was 
 laughed at by a companion. How long a 
 way he had travelled in a short time ! He 
 was really almost jolly. Human voices rang, 
 but gently and yet deeply, and with more 
 cheer than any voices he had ever before 
 heard; the crowd was no obstruction, rather 
 something companionable and pleasant ; the
 
 PAPOOSE 
 
 147 
 
 jostle of a shoulder an informal salutation ; 
 every stare a " Merry Christmas!" Meet the 
 world fairly, and it will strike hands with 
 you in fair bargain ; loosen a strap so that 
 its load will sit easier on its shoulder, and 
 it will help you with your own burden ; 
 slink away in hypochondriacal mood, and 
 can you expect it with its wholesome, healthy 
 strength, with all the careless exuberance of 
 its life, to turn after you, to run down your 
 small blind alley, and nourish your petty 
 vanity with the pap of cajolery? In some 
 such fashion now ran his thoughts. 
 
 Suddenly Papoose stopped, and with her 
 finger on her lip a frequent gesture with 
 her looked up at the sky. 
 
 "How dark it is away there!" she said, 
 slowly. "I always feel as if it must be all 
 so, all about us, below us too, and that the 
 Necromancer has gone down through a dark 
 door into that." 
 
 How dark it would have been with him ! 
 thought Morris, "away there," had his 
 journey not been stopped upon the thresh 
 old by a fainting child's weak hand. 
 
 Morris placed the packages on the table.
 
 I 4 8 PAPOOSE 
 
 " We should have got something to light up 
 the place," he said, reproachfully. 
 
 " Open the long bundle," commanded Pa 
 poose, briefly. 
 
 Within were two candles. 
 
 " Is it your pleasure that the illumination 
 begin ?" he asked. 
 
 Papoose nodded. 
 
 Morris placed one candle in a long Vene 
 tian glass a piece of rich, rare, twisted Mu- 
 rano work and the other in the neck of a 
 beer bottle, and put them on a small mantel 
 behind the stove. 
 
 " The effect," he said, stepping back, " is 
 even brilliant." 
 
 Papoose undid the other bundles, and 
 spread their contents on the table. There 
 was bread ; there were several sausages, very 
 fat and brown ; there were some white, 
 creamy cheeses ; and there was a box of sar 
 dines; a Yorkshire pie purchased at the 
 suggestion of Morris ; and there was a pack 
 age of chocolate, already prepared for use ; 
 and there was another bottle of the straw 
 berries. 
 
 " I can get some water in the hall," she said ; 
 and, seizing a dish, she ran out of the room.
 
 PAPOOSE 149 
 
 In a moment she had the chocolate boil 
 ing on the fire, in a pot that she recognized 
 as belonging to the Schroeders, and that 
 Morris had acquired with all the other goods 
 of an outgoing tenant, which he had pur 
 chased without much thought of what he 
 was getting. 
 
 " Now we can begin," Papoose said, final 
 ly, when she had set the table to her satis 
 faction, and when the chocolate was quite 
 ready. 
 
 Morris had a bottle or two of Apollinaris 
 that he had procured, and, opening one, he 
 filled a glass for Papoose. But she did not 
 like it. After a sip she turned away with a 
 disgusted moite. 
 
 "Oh, the horrid stuff!" she exclaimed. 
 " It spits in my face." 
 
 They were very hungry ; they were very 
 silent. There are repasts at which conver 
 sation is not the most brilliant part of the 
 performance. 
 
 While they were still eating, one of the 
 great events of the evening took place. 
 
 " Oh !" cried Papoose, suddenly drawing up 
 her feet. Almost at the same instant a feeble, 
 plaintive " me-ouw " sounded under the table.
 
 150 PAPOOSE 
 
 " It's Isaac Newton," she exclaimed, look 
 ing down, and immediately she was on her 
 knees with the cat in her arms. " But how 
 he does look !" 
 
 Certainly Isaac Newton did not look 
 flourishing. He was thin to emaciation, 
 his fur was ruffled and soiled, and his ears 
 were torn and scarred. He had evidently 
 encountered disastrous days and stormy 
 nights, and there was a dispirited, not to 
 say a dissipated, look about him that was 
 very shocking. But he did not appear in the 
 least aware of his own shortcomings. He 
 acted quite as if nothing had happened, as 
 if he were in his best evening dress. He 
 calmly allowed himself to be stroked with 
 out any manifestations of undue delight, 
 only purring very loudly, and butting his 
 head energetically against the child's arm. 
 
 But Papoose was, on the whole, disap 
 pointed with the meeting. 
 
 " I think you're a good-for-nothing old 
 cat," she said. " You're not in the least 
 glad to see me ; but I'll feed you all the 
 same." 
 
 At last, between Morris and herself and 
 Isaac Newton, almost everything was eaten,
 
 PAPOOSE 151 
 
 and Papoose settled herself back in her 
 chair. 
 
 " Wasn't it good ?" she said. 
 
 " Good ?" he answered. " It was am 
 brosial." 
 
 " You were hungry too ?" she said, in 
 some astonishment. " Why were you hun 
 gry with so much money ?" 
 
 " Because I forgot," he answered, lamely. 
 
 " You must have been very happy." 
 
 " Or very miserable." 
 
 " That is silly. When we are hungry and 
 cold and alone, we are miserable. But you 
 were not cold, and you had money to buy 
 food, and you were in the city. Don't you 
 know anybody ?" 
 
 " A great many." 
 
 " Then why were you alone ?" 
 
 " It is good to be alone sometimes," he said. 
 
 " Never," she answered, decidedly. " Don't 
 they want to see you ?" 
 
 " Some do." 
 
 " Then why don't you see them ?" 
 
 " Because," answered Morris, slowly, " I 
 suppose I am proud, and afraid they might 
 think that I want their help." 
 
 " How silly !" said Papoose, contemptu-
 
 152 PAPOOSE 
 
 ously. "If you want their help, you want 
 it. Why shouldn't people help each other? 
 You've helped me." 
 
 " I thought I had gone down too far to 
 help any one." 
 
 " Well, you see," she responded, trium 
 phantly. "And if it hadn't been for you, 
 what would I have done? Are you sorry?" 
 
 " Very glad." 
 
 " Then why shouldn't they be glad ? I 
 don't understand you. You are very silly." 
 
 It struck Morris with something of aston 
 ishment that really, on the moment, he 
 could not give a direct and concise state 
 ment of his woes that would satisfy this 
 direct and practical fellow-creature. There 
 was certainly something wrong. Before this 
 healthy, cheerful little person anything he 
 could have said would have seemed artificial 
 and false. 
 
 " I wonder, Morris," she said, " if you are 
 stupid. You haven't said anything in the 
 least amusing since I have been here, and 
 then to be miserable, and on Christmas Eve! 
 I never heard of anything so silly. Why, 
 Christmas is meant to make us happy." 
 
 " Yes," said Morris.
 
 PAPOOSE 153 
 
 " Of course," she went on, " there was a 
 time long, long ago when there was no 
 Christmas. Then the world was not really 
 happy, for then it was only wise ; it did not 
 know so well how to love. Then a Child 
 was born, who grew to be a Man, and who 
 taught it new things. People had known a 
 great deal before, but they did not know 
 how to love each other as well as now, for 
 that was what He taught them." And she 
 added, slowly and laboriously, " on earth 
 peace, good will toward men." 
 
 " Yes," said Morris, in a very low tone. 
 
 " I have seen pictures of Him many times. 
 They were not always quite the same, but 
 very much alike. In them He is always sad. 
 I wonder why, since He taught us happi 
 ness?" She paused. "And that is what 
 Christmas is His birthday the birthday 
 of the Man who showed us how to be 
 happy." 
 
 Papoose sat gazing into the fire and strok 
 ing Isaac Newton's bobbing head. As she 
 finished speaking she closed her eyes for an 
 instant, and then opened them very quickly. 
 She was evidently becoming sleepy. 
 
 Morris had forgotten her. He was think-
 
 154 PAPOOSE 
 
 ing of what he was, and what he had in 
 tended. Suppose there were no God so ran 
 his thoughts yet here, if not the great con 
 trivance, was the great casualty of all things, 
 and man the acme of the accident. How 
 despicable to disgrace his kind by such ex 
 hibition exhibition proving that the height 
 of being is, after all, as weak as the pulp 
 of protoplasm, as small as an atom of mat 
 ter ! Certainly even fortuity must have laws, 
 and such an act as he had contemplated could 
 not be within the true operation of forces 
 strong enough to make and regulate a world. 
 That a man should be coward enough to 
 hide himself in oblivion, this was craven 
 lese-majest^ against creation however created. 
 But if there be a God and no human being 
 was ever sure that there was not what 
 then? The self-stultification of setting him 
 self up against the Most High, of nullifying 
 the ordinance of his own life ; the insult of 
 throwing back such gift to its Giver what 
 could such creature hope in eternity? What 
 could such petty larcener who stole his own 
 existence hope among those who had suf 
 fered and nobly borne ? But he could think 
 no more. How unsubstantial it all must
 
 PAPOOSE 155 
 
 really have been ! It had needed but the 
 touch of a child's hand, only a few mo 
 ments' apposition with a clear, pure numan 
 nature, to reteach him what life really is, 
 to make him breathe its breath again with 
 ample lungs. The old law was right, as it 
 was in so many things that are called bar 
 barous. A suicide's burial should be at the 
 cross-roads, where the earth shall be so tram 
 pled that through it no ghost even can arise. 
 
 Here Papoose stirred, making a brave 
 struggle to keep awake. 
 
 "What have you been thinking about?" 
 asked Morris, with a start. 
 
 " I was thinking that it was Christmas 
 Eve, and I was wondering if I hung up my 
 stocking " 
 
 Morris glanced quickly at her. It was 
 not a matter likely to occur to him, and he 
 had not thought of this very important part 
 in the observance of Noel. But he had no 
 more money wherewith to buy even the 
 humblest gift, and surely on this night any 
 place where money might be procured, as he 
 had procured that which had supported 
 him for the past days, must in very decency 
 have folded its shutters, as bats their wings,
 
 156 PAPOOSE 
 
 and closed its doors for the time. A small 
 fraction of one of the smallest sums that he 
 had squandered without thought would have 
 given her pleasure incalculable, and he re 
 gretted that he had no money for her as he 
 had never regretted the want for himself. A 
 little honest exertion and he would not have 
 been in such a plight. But she should have 
 something; Christmas morning should not 
 bring her the great grief of finding herself 
 giftless. 
 
 " You might try," he .suggested. 
 
 She shook her head wearily, but her stock 
 ing was already off, and her hand run into 
 it. 
 
 " There's a hole," she said, and, with that 
 power of quick transition from sadness to 
 joy that characterized her, she laughed 
 gayly. 
 
 " Here," said Morris, picking up a piece of 
 twine with which one of the bundles had 
 been fastened ; " we'll mend it." Clumsily 
 he tied it around the torn part of the heel. 
 " There !" as he hung the stocking from the 
 mantel. 
 
 " The last time I hung up my stocking," 
 she said, " I got this with the other things,"
 
 PAPOOSE 157 
 
 and she pulled from out of her dress a little 
 gold locket hung upon a worn piece of ribbon 
 around her neck. " Isn't she pretty?" she ask 
 ed, as she opened it and handed it to Morris. 
 
 " Very," he answered ; " but it is very much 
 like you." 
 
 " Yes," she said ; " it was my mamma." 
 
 " Oh !" he exclaimed. Where had he seen 
 the face before lovely, petulantly attrac 
 tive, animatedly charming as the child's 
 own ? Had he seen it, or was his recollec 
 tion the memory of some painter's canvas- 
 caught ideal, or the lingering remembrance 
 of some striking portrait ? In Papoose he 
 had once or twice noticed expressions that 
 in the same way seemed to remind him of 
 somebody or something, and the face in the 
 locket, in its more vivid suggestion, only in 
 creased his perplexity. 
 
 "It was made before she ran away and 
 married papa," went on Papoose. 
 
 Might it be possible? The idea was too 
 preposterous even for a moment's harborage, 
 and yet 
 
 " Mamma ran away just as I have, and 
 they wouldn't see her, and she wouldn't see 
 them, and she died."
 
 158 PAPOOSE 
 
 He turned over the locket. There was 
 the name still clear in the worn gold, and 
 with the date, too. And so it was all ex 
 plained. 
 
 Papoose, with her head in one corner of 
 the chair, had gone to sleep. 
 
 Morris, in the unrest of conflicting emo 
 tions, had not thought what he should do 
 with her for the night ; but now the ques 
 tion, if question there had been, seemed 
 settled. He lifted her from the chair, and, 
 carrying her into the next room, he placed 
 her on the bed ; then, covering her carefully 
 with a blanket or two, he went out, drawing 
 the portiere behind him. 
 
 " He must know and to-night," he said, 
 pausing again before the fire. "I'll go my 
 self. I'll accept his aid if he offers it. As 
 she says, ' Why shouldn't they be glad ?' '' 
 
 Now the crowd had disappeared, and the 
 streets were almost deserted. As Morris 
 walked quickly uptown, he thought again of 
 the change the last few hours had brought. 
 He had given help to a frail existence that 
 might have been lost without his aid, even 
 when he would have taken his own strong
 
 PAPOOSE 159 
 
 
 
 life. Which were the nobler thing ? He 
 did not make direct answer to this self- 
 question, but he felt that somewhere in that 
 unuttered response lay the final solution of 
 all his doubts and difficulties. 
 
 He was passing before a great church, 
 and through the gorgeous windows the light 
 shone in soft, subdued color ; from within, 
 the rich, massed music seemed to press even 
 through the white stone walls in a purity and 
 sweetness before unknown to him. The 
 moon swept a cloud away, and shone on 
 cornice and pinnacle, on frieze and spire, on 
 the dainty carving of the marble, on the 
 wreathed snow that in some places covered 
 it, both emulous in unexcelling whiteness. 
 Now the organ's sound seemed to burst the 
 cathedral doors, and in grand volume came 
 a paean, an acclaim, a cry of proud, trium 
 phant joy, 
 
 " For unto us a Child is born." 
 
 It was a midnight service for Christmas 
 Eve, and as he stood with his bowed head 
 against the iron railing, he thought how truth 
 had come to him that night from the lips of 
 a child, and he realized as never before the
 
 160 PAPOOSE 
 
 significance of that birth more than eighteen 
 hundred years ago that event that has been 
 of more moment to the world than any 
 other since it emerged from chaos, and per 
 haps is of more momentous importance to 
 day than ever before. 
 
 When Morris mounted the steps of the 
 great house away up the Avenue, its whole 
 front was dark, no light appearing except 
 in the vestibule, where the heavy lamp was 
 still burning. But he knew the habits of 
 the inmates too well not to be certain that 
 some one would be awake and on duty. He 
 rang the bell confidently. Vassel's own 
 man opened the door, the butler doubtless 
 having long gone to such sleep as a butler's 
 conscience permits. 
 
 " Mr. Richard !" exclaimed the man, start 
 ing back. 
 
 "Yes, Jarvis, it is I,' 1 said Morris. "I 
 am no Christmas ghost. Is Mr. Vassel 
 still up?" 
 
 " He is, Mr. Richard. He's sitting in the 
 library, thinking and thinking, as he's always 
 doing." 
 
 " I'll go alone," said Morris, as he walked
 
 PAPOOSE 161 
 
 towards the room he knew so well. The 
 door was partially open, and as he crossed 
 the threshold he glanced around. He had 
 not seen it for a long time the gallery 
 with the brass railing running around three 
 of its sides ; the great mantel above the 
 fireplace at the farther end rising to the 
 ceiling ; the volumes in thousands clinging 
 and clustering tier on tier, the rich bind 
 ings and the dark shelvings deepening in 
 their soft tones. The big table was litter 
 ed, as always, with pamphlets and papers 
 in that peculiar confusion that denotes 
 familiar use. Over all, the light seemed 
 massed, condensed into something richer 
 even than light, but everywhere almost the 
 same. Anywhere an Elzevir Terence might 
 easily be read, the 'most delicate touch of 
 a Clovis Eve tooling clearly seen. No 
 sound arose from the thick carpet as Mor 
 ris advanced. 
 
 Vassel sat before the fire, one elbow upon 
 the arm of his chair, his head on his hand. 
 
 " Philip," said Morris. 
 
 Vassel looked up without start or mani 
 festation of surprise. 
 
 " You can leave us, Jarvis," he said to 
 ii
 
 162 PAPOOSE 
 
 the man who had followed Morris into the 
 room , and as he came forward Morris saw 
 how much older he appeared, how changed 
 he was from what he had been when he had 
 last seen him. 
 
 " I am glad you have come," he said to 
 Morris as he took his hand. " I have hoped 
 for a long time that you would come. Sit 
 here," and he pointed to a chair opposite 
 the one in which he had been seated. 
 
 The two men gazed at each other for a 
 moment without a word. 
 
 " I have come to ask your help," said Morris. 
 
 " I would have given it without the asking 
 had I known where to find you or how to 
 give it." 
 
 " I would not have accepted it then," 
 answered Morris. " I would not do so now 
 had I not learned much when I thought I 
 knew the most. I have learned to-night 
 life's greatest lesson : in trying to help 
 another I have helped myself. The touch 
 of a hand weaker than mine has given me 
 strength ; the gift of one poorer than myself 
 has given me riches. He is an inexperienced 
 fool, Philip, who says that he can do without 
 the companionship of his kind ; an arrogant
 
 PAPOOSE 163 
 
 braggart who thinks that he can dispense 
 with such aid." 
 
 " Have I ever felt that I was all-sufficient 
 to myself?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Have I ever held my hand when I could 
 give aid to any I thought worthy of it?" 
 
 "You have always been just; but we 
 must be more we must be generous. Om 
 niscience alone has the right to be simply, 
 severely just ; humanity must be something 
 more, lest it make mistake ; it must be 
 amply generous. The spirit that in your 
 father drove your sister from his house is 
 in you. If he had not died so suddenly, can 
 you doubt that he finally would have re 
 lented? Do you doubt now what he would 
 have done?" 
 
 "Where did you learn what you tell me?" 
 
 " From a child." 
 
 " From a child ?" 
 
 " From a child who can teach you as 
 much as she has taught me. You need aid 
 of such kind as much as I did, who would 
 have shot myself if it had not come. I bring 
 you joy and grief. Can you bear either or 
 both?"
 
 1 64 PAPOOSE 
 
 " The last, yes ; the first, I think so. I 
 have not known it lately." 
 
 " Philip," said Morris, "she " pointing to 
 the mantel, where a large picture framed in 
 the marble was partially covered with a 
 curtain " is gone, but it was her child who 
 saved my life to-night. I think sense of the 
 inadequacy of a life alone lived for one's 
 self alone perhaps has come to you before ; 
 be helped, as I have been helped, to further 
 knowledge before it is too late." 
 
 The purveyor of light the next morning 
 gave it forth with Christmas prodigality. 
 It was not light left over from yesterday's 
 supply, polished up and made ready for to 
 day's use. It seemed rather of other es 
 sentials, of another nature. Its touch gave 
 gladness; wherever it dwelt or lay it seemed 
 a coating for delight. It threw itself, plate 
 upon plate, upon the closed wooden shutters 
 of the room where Papoose slept, and, run 
 ning into and filling their small cracks, seemed 
 to drip down like molten solder, part silver 
 and part gold. But it was noiseless, and 
 could not break the sleep of the tired child. 
 It was nearly noon when she awoke. She
 
 PAPOOSE 165 
 
 slowly opened her eyes and gazed about her. 
 That she was puzzled by her surroundings 
 was as evident as that she was wholly un 
 dismayed. 
 
 A woman of fifty, almost stately in her 
 heavy cloth dress, rose from the chair in 
 which she sat at the head of the bed, and 
 stood before her. 
 
 " Where am I ?" asked Papoose, amazedly. 
 
 " You are in Mr. Morris's rooms," the 
 woman answered. " I am Mrs. Beattie, Mr. 
 Vassel's housekeeper; and here," she said, 
 " is your maid Felicie." 
 
 That she must have awoke, somebody 
 else, was the first thing that Papoose thought 
 as she sat staring before her, and immedi 
 ately she had decided that she would not 
 let them know who she really was not at 
 first. 
 
 " Where is Morris?" she asked. 
 
 " Mr. Morris and Mr. Vassel are in the 
 next room," answered Mrs. Beattie. " Will 
 you get up now?" 
 
 It was a very different Papoose who drew 
 back the portitre a little later. A rich dress 
 hung in heavy folds about her ; rich furs
 
 i66 PAPOOSE 
 
 were gathered at her throat ; upon her head 
 was a small marvel of a hat, and on her 
 hands were long, wrinkled gloves. 
 
 " Oh !" she exclaimed. 
 
 Much was in the room that had not been 
 there before. The divan was covered with 
 packages, the tables with bundles and cases. 
 The long-coated footman, who now stood 
 just outside the door, had borne many arm- 
 fuls from the heavy carriage that was at the 
 entrance of the building. It had been diffi 
 cult to gather all the objects Christmas 
 morning, but Vassel, assisted by Jarvis, 
 who had accomplished wonders, with re 
 lieving lavishness, had managed to have it 
 done. 
 
 " Oh !" repeated Papoose. 
 
 There were toys, fantastic and intricate ; 
 trifles of all kinds, dainty and delightful ; 
 there were things wholly unfitted for a child 
 in their rarity and value. 
 
 " Oh, Morris," she said, " how could you 
 have done it?" 
 
 " I didn't," he said. " You must thank 
 another." 
 
 Then for the first time she looked at 
 Vassel, who had stood somewhat apart.
 
 PAPOOSE 167 
 
 " But," she answered, stoutly, " you were 
 first, and I will thank you first." 
 
 Seizing Morris's hand, she kissed it. With 
 wild cry and exclamation she pillaged the 
 place. When all lay revealed to her, she 
 turned to the stocking that hung apparently 
 as limp and lank as it had the night before. 
 
 Away in its toe was the blue ring. 
 
 " It is all I could give, Papoose," said 
 Morris. " Will you wear it ?" 
 
 The price of the weapon that the night 
 before he had held at his temple had 
 bought it. 
 
 " Put it on," she commanded. She held 
 out her hand, admiring the effect. " Oh, 
 Morris," she said, " aren't you glad I 
 came ?" 
 
 " Yes," he answered ; and he shuddered 
 as he glanced about the place, and thought 
 how different a sight might have been there 
 had she not come.
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?"
 
 'WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 " T T is positively not to be borne any 
 J- longer," said the Colonel, half laugh 
 ing, yet wholly in earnest, as he brought 
 down his heavy fist emphatically upon the 
 yielding arm of the large chair. 
 
 The Colonel, the Counsellor, and the 
 Honorable were seated in that line of chairs 
 that bends around the great fireplace in 
 the main hall of the Andros Club. Richly 
 sober in their upholstery, and dignifiedly 
 luxurious in their conformation, these chairs, 
 with the small table at the arm of each, 
 present an imposing sight, standing equi 
 distant, as they do, about that broad hearth. 
 To the imaginative they might easily seem, 
 in their comfortable rotundity, a gathering 
 about the club fire of some substantial 
 elderly gentlemen, ballasted by the con 
 sciousness of money-bags, who have met in 
 solemn conclave, communicating with each
 
 172 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 other in expressive sentences and compre 
 hensive silences. 
 
 Upon their thoughtful faces fell the shift 
 ing light of the wood fire, from which wilful 
 and flickering gleams, emissaries to dark 
 ened corners of the hall, ran with hastening 
 feet. The place the unassailable strong 
 hold of masculine independence is condu 
 cive to confidence. The house had once 
 been a private residence. Now it has ex 
 changed the perfume of flowers for the 
 scent of cigars, the ripples of ivory keys 
 for the click of ivory balls, the laughter of 
 young girls for the din of men's voices, and 
 the household character the accumulated 
 meaning that gathers where a family lives 
 for the less significant aspects that have 
 existence in places where life is not passed, 
 where the real sorrows and joys of human 
 ity do not find dwelling. The time, too, is 
 propitious for the business in hand. It is 
 that interim between afternoon and even 
 ing the lazy, the luxurious, \.\\.Q good quarter 
 of an hour before dinner; the space wherein 
 affairs and cares should not be suffered to 
 obtrude ; when anticipatory appetite breeds 
 lenient geniality ; when life gathers, in a
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 173 
 
 certain sluggishness, vivacity for what is to 
 come. 
 
 The subject had long been increasing in 
 gravity with all of us individually, but not 
 one had yet had the courage to make any 
 mention of it. Each of us knew that the 
 other two felt its weight, when we met as 
 we did every day at the club for an ante 
 prandial cigar, but no one had hitherto 
 broached it. To-day, a short silence, a stare 
 passing from one to the other, as the pipe 
 passes from hand to hand at an Indian 
 council, preceded its open recognition. The 
 Honorable first introduced the matter, in 
 hesitating, diffident, doubtful speech. Some 
 thing some new instance of our oppression 
 had probably happened during the day, 
 that had goaded him beyond endurance. 
 His words fell as the first .shower drops fall 
 on parched herbage ; expression grew ani 
 mated in our faces, like starting, revivified 
 verdure. The Counsellor, as is the wont of 
 his kind, insinuated a qualification, a proviso. 
 It was stricken out without motion. Then 
 the Colonel, as has been seen, emphatically 
 instituted the first real proceeding in the 
 matter, and sealed it with his fist. Instinc-
 
 174 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 tively we pulled our chairs slightly out of 
 line and closer together, and the affair was 
 at last formally, earnestly under considera 
 tion. 
 
 We had been boys together when Andros 
 was not the great place it is. Each knew 
 the life, the times of the others almost as 
 well as his own ; knew the school scrapes 
 and the college difficulties into which each 
 had fallen ; knew how often each had been 
 refused, and by whom ; knew the opportuni 
 ties that had been seized, the chances that 
 had been lost; knew the thousand trivial 
 incidents of each other's daily existence. 
 Our pleasures, our troubles, our hopes, our 
 likings, our hates, our antipathies, our for 
 bearances, were more or less alike ; our very 
 processes of tho.ught were much the same. 
 We understood each other thoroughly, feel 
 ing in each other that ease and security that 
 perfect sympathy alone can bring. And 
 now we, and others like us, were suffering 
 from the same grievance a grievance we 
 had all endured for months. But we could 
 bear the evil no longer. Action must be 
 taken so said the Colonel, and so said the
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 175 
 
 others action in our own behalf, and in 
 behalf of the rest who were unhappy be 
 neath the same burden. 
 
 We had long been, we thought, an im 
 portant part of the community a circle, of 
 the perfection of which we never had doubt. 
 It might not be arrogating too much to our 
 selves to say that we and our associates 
 formed the good society of the place. No 
 sphere in all the spheres had truer radii, such 
 quite perfect periphery ; and if ever a circle 
 could be squared, none could be so easily 
 established in complete rectangularity as 
 ours. We had great confidence in our funded 
 intelligence, though, to be sure, we carried 
 no great amount of small change in the way 
 of brilliancy. Good society is in too good 
 credit to require it; only the insecure need 
 to be amusing. W T e knew that we were 
 more than well off ; but we were not exact 
 ly purse-proud, we were only a little over- 
 purse-complacent. Freshly caught wealth, 
 unhung and without mellowed flavor, was 
 to us rather raw and rank. Ostentation was 
 a personal affront ; and yet we would have 
 regarded mere ancestral assumption as some 
 thing akin to body-snatching. We were an
 
 i?6 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 amazingly difficult set to satisfy. Possibly 
 we had no very fixed views, and were only 
 very comfortable complexities of prejudices, 
 self-satisfactions, mutual gratulations, unas 
 sertive pretensions, with just enough doubt 
 about our own perfectness to make us quite 
 apt to be censorious of all things which 
 could possibly lead us to any misgiving. 
 But such as we were, we were well contented, 
 and we desired no change. We ran in deep, 
 easy, long-worn grooves, as imperceptibly as 
 if upon wheels with rubber tire. 
 
 We were not very gay. Andros was then 
 a place where great sprightliness would cer 
 tainly be out of true tone. It might as 
 well be confessed that it was provincial ; 
 but its provincialism was light, bright, with 
 many leavening urbanities. We had not 
 fully recognized the rapidity with which its 
 affairs had increased, and yet we heard the 
 hum of multiplying existence, and could 
 not but see the purposeful stir all around 
 us. We were of the Bourbon spirit ; the 
 old regime, the older order, satisfied us, and 
 we did not apprehend a deluge of innova 
 tion, now, or after us. If we did not forget, 
 we did not anticipate. We were old fogies,
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 177 
 
 middle-aged and mediaeval, with no con 
 sciousness of or desire for any renaissance. 
 Of course, in our youth, like all others, we 
 had been radicals, knew hot-headed dreams, 
 and had been beset by impracticable long 
 ings. But the lava of such young years 
 had cooled after ebullience, and had stiff 
 ened beneath the gray, ash-bestrewn crust 
 of indifference. Not a man of us but had 
 already, on some morning, awakened and 
 found himself, not famous, but forty. The 
 deposits of the tertiary formation are not 
 more firmly settled than were we in our 
 peculiar social stratification. There had 
 been no change for a long time. Alas! 
 we were not students of Heraclitus. We 
 had not fathomed the profundity of his 
 rather Hibernian aphorism, " Everything is 
 and is not." 
 
 As will sometimes happen in such some 
 what mature American places, there had not 
 been a wedding of any consequence for a 
 long time. Had we been given to such in 
 vestigation, we might have been almost led 
 to believe in some theory of meteorology, in 
 which, with undulatory and periodic sweep, 
 sentiment charges the air at long-separated 
 12
 
 178 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 periods, and the stagnation in which there is 
 no marrying or giving in marriage is, as if 
 in elemental change and with atmospheric 
 action, suddenly broken up. There had 
 been no considerable engagement for years ; 
 indeed, there were none to become engaged. 
 Our children were still young, too young to 
 be far enough advanced in their education to 
 deal with that problem in mystic mathe 
 matics by which two are made one ; and this 
 possibly will better explain the fact that no 
 case of such heart failure, or acceleration, had 
 occurred for so long. Of course there had 
 been marriages in the town, contraction of 
 wedlock, connubial starts in life, conjugal be 
 ginnings ; but, it is repeated, there had been 
 no weddings worth mentioning, none in that 
 important fragment of the world in which 
 we were so prominent. " The felicity of un 
 bounded domesticity" had become with us 
 something a matter of course ; the manna 
 had ceased to seem a miracle, and was ev- 
 ery-day bread. The balance of power was 
 finally well established and carefully guard 
 ed ; mutual boundaries were clearly defined 
 and rights respected. If something of the 
 transport was gone, so was something of
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 179 
 
 the trouble and vexation of spirit. Peace 
 reigned; usage, that beneficent power, had 
 fixed everything that could be expected of 
 a husband, ordinated whatever a wife might 
 ask ; and the edicts, the code of Custom the 
 Great, were never broken. Could such 
 golden period last? Fatuous men: we 
 should have known that mortality could not 
 hold such Elysian tract in anything like 
 life estate. 
 
 Richard Garrard Fenwick so his name 
 stood on the club list had been too young 
 he was five years younger than the Hon 
 orable, who was the junior of the other 
 two when the last hymeneal levy had been 
 made, and had so escaped the draft. But, 
 young and unmarried as he was, he seemed 
 as thoroughly our companion as if he wore 
 the medals, the crosses, the decorations, of 
 a dozen years of matrimonial warfare. He 
 served with us on directorial boards ; he 
 made one of our number at whist. It was 
 only when he dined with us, as he so often 
 did, at the house of one or another, that 
 we remembered the exceptionality of his 
 situation from the necessity of having some 
 one in to " balance the table." He was one of
 
 l8o "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 us, naturally, firmly, completely ; and we no 
 more thought of possibility of change in him 
 than change in anything else. 
 
 The first warning was as weak, as misun 
 derstood, as disregarded, as first warnings 
 usually are innocent, easy, unalarmed men, 
 we knew nothing of its portent. Mrs. Har- 
 pending announced that her niece was to 
 stay with her for a month of the early win 
 ter. This, it would have seemed to any one, 
 was a comparatively insignificant matter, 
 certainly nothing to shake able-bodied and 
 sound-minded gentlemen with alarm, and, 
 in fact, we gave no particular heed to it. 
 We felt no trepidation ; we received the 
 statement with something even like delight. 
 The thought of having a bright, pretty girl 
 about was not unpleasing. But if such was 
 our perhaps pardonable obtuseness then, 
 what can extenuate our crass stupidity when 
 we were not panic - stricken upon the first 
 appearance of Miss Edith Armistead her 
 self ? The event took place at a small din 
 ner given by the unapprehensive Colonel, 
 absolutely in the young lady's honor. Old 
 idiots that we were, we must have lost our 
 heads as well as our hearts before she had
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 181 
 
 walked half across the room, as she did, 
 gracefully rigid in her slim erectness, for 
 she was so young that she still carried her 
 self with a certain charming self-conscious 
 ness. We were her slaves from that moment 
 metaphorically prostrate at her long, nar 
 row, glittering shoes. We were wholly with 
 out alarm. There was a piquancy in her 
 prettiness that won us towards her; there 
 was a charm in her gracious hesitancy of 
 manner that captivated us ; and after the 
 dinner we chatted on to each other about 
 her with a sort of semi-senile garrulity. We 
 did not notice it at the time, but Fenwick 
 sat at the table unusually silent. In the 
 drawing-room, after dinner, we surrounded 
 her, claimed with selfish effrontery every 
 word that fell from her lips, and appropri 
 ated every glance of her bright young eyes, 
 so that he could not speak to her. Fen- 
 wick had no opportunity during the entire 
 evening to approach her ; but when the 
 time came for the Harpendings to go, he 
 quite annoyed us by happening to be in 
 the hall and going with them to their car 
 riage. Even then perhaps over-tickled van 
 ity was to blame not a man of us was 
 stricken with terror.
 
 182 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 We all wanted the young stranger to 
 have a good time ; and in our middle-aged 
 way we did all we could for her. We each 
 of us gave her a dinner ; and the Colonel, in 
 his hot-headed fashion, got up what he 
 called a dance for her. She looked radiant, 
 and she assured us, in her pretty, emphatic 
 way, that she had enjoyed herself immensely ; 
 but, in looking back on the affair, I am afraid 
 that the gayety was dismal, the delight too 
 decorous for her. Of course Fenwick was 
 in everything that was going on. He was 
 our only young man, and we made the 
 most of him. The reckless way in which 
 those young persons were thrown together 
 was something without parallel in the long 
 annals of human fatuity. Why, we favored 
 it ; brought it about ; delighted in it ! Of 
 course we knew what was going forward ; 
 we even thought we were clever to find it 
 out. We knew how all would end ; we 
 believed we were profound in making that 
 discovery. Each of us felt as if he had 
 part and lot in the matter himself. We 
 saw them walking briskly up the avenue in 
 the brilliant, opalescent, autumn afternoons ; 
 we saw them sitting, suddenly silent, in the
 
 " WOULD DICK DO THAT ?" 183 
 
 early twilights of the winter evenings, be 
 fore the glowing grate ; we saw them talking 
 in low tone, away from every brazen glare 
 of light, in the nights of the holidays ; 
 and we grew sentimental, and thought of 
 our own long-ago wooings and doings; and 
 in eager but concealed earnestness revelled 
 expansively in the recollection of long-un- 
 remembered incidents. The Colonel, coming 
 upon the girl quite unexpectedly as she 
 stood upon the Harpending stairway, giving 
 Fenwick a rose from those which lay be 
 side her plate at dinner, remembered how, 
 years before, a bunch of violets had been 
 dropped to him over that very balustrade, 
 and telegraphed the next morning for the 
 brougham which only the day before he had 
 declared would be a useless extravagance. 
 The milk of human kindness was very rich 
 just then, and there mantled upon it the 
 cream of large-hearted sympathy. We part 
 ly lived in one of those provinces where 
 time and space seem held suspended, each 
 in a sort of incomprehensible solution of 
 the other, and where all material things 
 are shadowless. We were then witless deni 
 zens of a region of belated romance ; and
 
 184 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 all this time not a man of us trembled 
 in definite or even indefinite apprehension. 
 
 In due time the engagement was announced. 
 Everybody was satisfied; everybody approved. 
 He was well-born, well-featured, well-man 
 nered, and more than well-to-do ; and she 
 was of good birth, good-breeding, and much 
 more than good looks. We gave her con 
 gratulations, and we gave her flowers. We 
 were delighted that we were to have one so 
 fresh, so cheery, so bright, so graceful, so 
 beautiful, always with us, for of course they 
 would live in the great house on the avenue, 
 that had looked so dull, so desolate, so like a 
 prison in which old pleasures were serving out 
 life-sentences, ever since the death of Fen- 
 wick's grandfather. 
 
 It was not a long betrothment. 
 
 One bright spring morning the chimes of 
 old St. Barnabas's the old church which the 
 town, in its growth marching away, had left 
 in the heart of the business quarter rang 
 gayly over the busy streets ; and victorias 
 and coupes filled with festal-clad occupants 
 struggled through cars and carts and wagons 
 and vans, and crushed around the main en 
 trance of the church, the very drivers good-
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 185 
 
 humored in the joy of the occasion. And 
 then, as the noonday sun fell in purple 
 splendor through the stained glass, Dr. 
 Quartle, who had married all of us and 
 baptized the most of us, pronounced the 
 final solemn words hardly second in their 
 import and consequence to the last requiem 
 ceternam, for beneath them two lives are 
 ended and two lives begun "Those whom 
 God hath joined together let no man put 
 asunder." 
 
 We loaded the bride with presents. No 
 artfulness could have exceeded that with 
 which we concealed from each other what 
 we were to do in that line, for there was 
 more meanness than magnanimity in the 
 business each desired to excel the others. 
 We came out at the wedding breakfast in 
 surprising strength. The Colonel especially 
 was effusive, positive, globose, glorious, in 
 style and gesture. 
 
 They went to Europe for a wedding trip, 
 and were gone three months. We were un 
 affectedly glad to see them on their return, 
 and we made their home-coming something 
 of an ovation. Even then there was no fore 
 boding of the trouble to come ; but as time
 
 i86 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 passed, and we began to return to the old 
 routine of our lives, which before had been 
 no more the subject of thought than the 
 constituents of the atmosphere, a stealthy 
 shadow, a dissatisfying suspicion, a jar as if 
 something had fallen into our grooves, and 
 the wheels of habit struck obstructing nov 
 elty all these commingled beset us and 
 played the Incarnation of Evil with us. The 
 Honorable, it was observed, broke off in a 
 lucky run at cards and went home at eleven 
 o'clock ; the Counsellor now rarely took the 
 club in his way when he went to dinner; 
 and when the Colonel, in a high hat, was 
 caught one Sunday morning as he was be 
 ing quietly led to church, it was plain to the 
 meanest understanding that some powerful 
 influence was at work. It was a surprise, a 
 shock. We groped blindly for the cause of 
 such disturbances, and we found it. The 
 discovery came about, like other great dis 
 coveries, by accident. In the lobby of a 
 theatre one evening, between the acts, the 
 Honorable fell into interesting discussion 
 with the Editor, and left Mrs. Honorable 
 alone some time, while the play went on. 
 He hail scarcely taken his seat by her side
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 187 
 
 again, when he was met by the inquiry, 
 ''Would Dick do that?" 
 
 It was a simple thing, but it was all-suffi 
 cient. We had heard those innocent words 
 in that deadly collocation before. We un 
 derstood. 
 
 We had cultivated a poisonous exotic ; 
 we had nourished a viper ; we had created a 
 Frankenstein that had turned and would 
 rend us. Would Dick do this, that, or the 
 other thing? We heard it at every turn. 
 Of course he wouldn't ; and what were we 
 to say ? To urge that Dick hadn't been 
 married a year, to plead a sort of reversed 
 statute of limitation, was something instantly 
 overruled as utterly irrelevant ; and though 
 in our blundering way we thought it suffi 
 cient, there was a lingering, instinctive logic 
 about us that did make it seem not the most 
 tenable thing in the world. We dared not 
 raise any personal point ; it would be con 
 tempt of every high tribunal that tried us. 
 We were powerless, answerless, and without 
 effective defence. 
 
 " Would Dick do that ?" It was a sort 
 of indirect blackmail. The whole structure 
 of our habitual existence was attacked ; the
 
 1 88 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 usages of ripened lifetimes were threatened. 
 We were to abandon the second or third 
 nature that we had so sensibly acquired, and 
 try back for a left-off something, a never so 
 ber reality, with which we had had nothing 
 to do for many years. Security was gone ; 
 peace might be destroyed. And all this be 
 cause a young man was glad to make a fool 
 of himself about a young woman. Richard 
 Garrard Fenwick might be regarded as some 
 thing approaching a public nuisance, and, in 
 objectionable feature, to be abated. We 
 came to look upon him as something of a 
 traitor; but I doubt if he ever noticed our 
 coolness blind, deluded youngster. What 
 was to be done ? Of such example an ex 
 ample must be made. We sat upon the 
 question that memorable afternoon, for to 
 the proposition that something had to be 
 done there was not a dissenting voice. We 
 felt outraged, betrayed, trapped ; and were 
 ready for immediate action. 
 
 "Got a cigar?" asked the Counsellor, ab 
 ruptly. As no one had, he rang, the order was 
 given, and the servant returned with three 
 boxes our respective well-known choices.
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" igg 
 
 The Counsellor took his cigar determined 
 ly, the Honorable his thoughtfully ; the hand 
 of the Colonel was stayed when half put 
 forth. We stared. 
 
 " Does Dick " began the Counsellor. 
 
 The Colonel actually blushed. "By Chris 
 topher!" he ejaculated, interrupting him, and 
 fulminating his every-day, working oath," I'll 
 smoke enough in the next twenty-four hours 
 to make up for the week I've left off." 
 
 Silence for three minutes. The Colonel 
 smoked grimly ; the Counsellor, as if saga 
 ciously getting up something like statistics 
 of the precise situation ; the Honorable, with 
 a far-away look. 
 
 " If we only," began the Honorable, hesi 
 tating, as if he had brought the idea from 
 the very confines of human intelligence " if 
 we only could bring him back to any of his 
 old ways!" 
 
 " Do you think," said the Colonel, " that 
 we could do anything?" 
 
 " Perhaps," said the Honorable. 
 
 " What ?" asked the Counsellor, in the 
 tone of a man who foresees easy overthrow 
 of impossible propositions. 
 
 " Suppose " began the Honorable.
 
 igo " WOULD DICK DO THAT ?" 
 
 " Suppose !" said the Colonel, imperative 
 ly. " Don't suppose propose." 
 
 "What would you say," began the Hon 
 orable, with none of that impossible bold 
 ness that the Colonel demanded, " to our in 
 viting him, one after another, to dinner at 
 the club?" 
 
 And the Colonel brought down his fist 
 upon his knee smote himself, as did Sam 
 son the Philistines, hip and thigh and de 
 clared that if the thing could be done, the 
 evil would be as the rended lion, its carcass 
 filled with a swarm of bees and honey, or 
 words to that effect. 
 
 " But suppose we should ask him and he 
 wouldn't come ?" 
 
 A sudden gloom fell on the company. 
 
 " Suppose the moon declined to keep its 
 appointment when there was an eclipse of 
 the sun to come off," said the Colonel, scorn 
 fully. " Do you suppose that Dick Fenwick 
 is a man who is going to disturb harmony, 
 keep clear of every attraction, escape every 
 force that has kept us together so long?" 
 
 " Who shall begin ?" said the Counsellor 
 abruptly. 
 
 "You," said the Colonel.
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 191 
 
 " No," said the Counsellor. " Let the dis 
 coverer of the remedy have the honor of the 
 initiative." 
 
 " Well, if it must be," replied the Honor 
 able. 
 
 And so it was settled, and so the unholy 
 league was formed. Each of us, as we slunk 
 out of the club that night, felt as if he had 
 detected himself in rather a small conspir 
 acy. But what could we do? In the midst 
 of an asparagus bed, where, out of rich foun 
 dation, and after years of cultivation, the 
 succulent shoots thrust up their heads, 
 thick - necked, in luxurious promise, there 
 had sprung up the evil growth that shook 
 over all its delicate and deadly blossoms. 
 
 The invitation was given, and, much to 
 our surprise, was quickly accepted. We 
 were exultant. When the Honorable, the 
 next morning, casually announced at his 
 breakfast - table, and from behind the ram 
 part of the morning paper, that he was go 
 ing to dine at the club, he was met by a 
 chilly glance that usually would have intimi 
 dated him ; but when he carelessly added, 
 " Oh, Dick's to be there too," he looked 
 over the printed escarpment upon an aston-
 
 I 9 2 " WOULD DICK DO THAT ?" 
 
 ished, demoralized, and completely routed 
 force. 
 
 But though the evening came, Femvick 
 did not. A note arrived at the last moment, 
 while we stood dumbly waiting, simply say 
 ing that he was kept by an urgent mat 
 ter, and apologizing for his absence. The 
 effect was instantaneous, and it was striking. 
 As the letter was read, a sudden depression 
 fell upon us. Nothing could so quickly 
 have made three such men so distinctly 
 hypocrites. The Counsellor's hilarity was 
 thin ; the airiness of the Colonel was sin 
 gularly rarefied ; the Honorable's vivacity, 
 diaphanous. 
 
 " But we will have our dinner," each ejac 
 ulated, without heart, however, in the dec 
 laration. After it was made, the Colonel 
 seemed shrunken, discouraged ; the Coun 
 sellor dwindled, doubtful ; the Honorable 
 collapsed, disconsolate. 
 
 The thing was a pitiful failure three im 
 becile shams, three idiotic pretenders, taking 
 a meal ; that was all. We praised a wine 
 while we silently condemned Fenwick. We 
 found fault with a. plat as we thought of the 
 future. Our laughter at old jokes came al-
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 193 
 
 most as harsh, tomtom sounds in celebration 
 of their funerals. We cackled a fusillade of 
 cachinnations in salute to new ones, as if 
 those of which we had been fond for years 
 were as nothing in comparison. The Hon 
 orable drank a little too much wine, and was 
 loquacious ; the Colonel ate too little, and 
 was silent ; the Counsellor distinctly re 
 frained from doing either, and his usual 
 doubts and dubitations ran into captious- 
 ness and disputation. And if in Fenwick's 
 unoccupied chair there did not plainly sit 
 all the time a silently upbraiding ghost, clad 
 in a fog -dampened mourning veil, it was 
 because outraged domesticity is not a per- 
 sonifiable quality. However, there was 
 something in the nothing before us won 
 derfully potent and depressing. The affair 
 came to a sudden and infestive end. We 
 parted in gloom, and took our separate 
 ways home, * 
 
 " And bitterly thought of the morrow." 
 
 The next afternoon we met at the club 
 as usual. If former meetings had been de 
 spondent, this was despairing. 
 
 " Well?" asked the Colonel. 
 13 

 
 IQ4 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 " I didn't happen to mention it at home 
 that Fenwick didn't come," confessed the 
 Honorable. 
 
 " Nor I," said the Counsellor. 
 
 " Nor I," growled the Colonel. 
 
 Profound silence fell around us heavily, 
 like lowered sails, like dropped curtains. 
 The great wood fire crackled impudently, 
 with aggravating cheerfulness. 
 
 "What's to be done?" was stared and 
 spoken. 
 
 " Wait, and try again," said the Colonel, 
 stubbornly. 
 
 " It's your turn next," said the Honor 
 able to the Counsellor. 
 
 For the next few days we were pitiable 
 objects. We were moody, testy, often fidg 
 ety, frequently stolid, all the time unfit for 
 sensible occupation. We aimlessly wan 
 dered to the club at unusual hours, as beset 
 people visit the scenes of their crimes and 
 misfortunes. There sprang up a slight 
 something like antipathy towards each other, 
 for there is, after all, recognized dishonor 
 among small complotters ; we felt a new 
 and guilty liking for each other, for there is 
 sympathy between even petty malefactors.
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 195 
 
 But declension in evil is swift, and calamity 
 comes as the whirlwind. 
 
 We awaited Fenwick's answer to the Coun 
 sellor's invitation with more than anxiety. 
 For a whole day and a half no reply came. 
 We exulted over a favorable response with 
 a feeling for which we despised ourselves. 
 Again the night came, but again no Fen- 
 wick ; only a note expressing a pressing 
 urgency and a regret. We were alarmed, 
 intimidated. Richard Garrard Fenwickwas 
 the very pink of punctiliousness, and yet he 
 had disposed of us, dispensed with the Coun 
 sellor's dinner, with mere phraseology worn 
 so thin as to have lost all meaning. But we 
 choked down our wrath and our fears, and 
 we choked down our dinner. There was 
 not even a pretence of hilarity. We almost 
 growled, in our general ill-temper, at each 
 other, and were afterwards guilty of apologet 
 ic tones, which should have been worse af 
 fronts than the words they sought to soften. 
 
 We had not told our wives of Fenwick's 
 second absence. In not telling the whole 
 truth to the partners of our souls and leav 
 ing all to their generous remedy, we were 
 husband-like, and we made a great mistake.
 
 IQ6 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 Alas, we know it now ! When we expati 
 ated upon the delights of the two dinners, 
 those ladies displayed an indifference which 
 would have ruffled the equable temper of 
 Mephistopheles and broken the placidity 
 of Melancthon. We grew spiritless, apa 
 thetic. Were our homes to be destroyed by 
 this thing? Were there even to be no more 
 pleasant, inspiriting matrimonial differences? 
 Were we to be of such little consequence 
 as to be incapable of exciting even feminine 
 curiosity ? 
 
 " We've gone too far," said the Colonel, 
 at our customary conclave, " to give up. 
 We must fight it out on this line if it takes 
 all winter. I'll ask him to dinner myself. 
 If he don't come " The Colonel paused. 
 His imagination is not vivid. It is a thick 
 set, rather solid faculty ; but when it sees 
 anything, it sees it plain, and the vision now 
 before his mind's eye was evidently one 
 that killed expression. 
 
 " We must strike for our whist -table and 
 our club fire," said the Counsellor. 
 
 " Each shall otherwise be as the family 
 cat, without the privilege of nocturnal ab 
 sence," said the Honorable.
 
 " WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 197 
 
 We made this last effort with the inward 
 fear that belongs to desperate attempts. 
 We risked a great deal on the issue. Our 
 peace abroad and our security at home de 
 pended upon it. Success was of vital im 
 portance, and we did everything to insure 
 it. The Colonel sent a written invitation ; 
 the others had been verbal. I think that 
 if Fenwick had declined it, we would almost 
 have felt relief, to such tension had our 
 nerves been brought. But he accepted it, 
 and his acceptance carried consternation. 
 Now had the crucial time come. This sort 
 of thing could not go on forever; if on this 
 occasion he did not appear in person, our 
 threefold duplicity must destroy us. We 
 fell in that innocent man's way, forced from 
 him expressions in which were implied 
 promises that he would certainly dine with 
 us this time. We lured him on with de 
 scriptions of what we were to expect, which 
 were to the succinct statements of a menu 
 as Swinburne is to Crabbe. 
 
 Then came the eventful evening. 
 
 " I haven't heard a word yet," said the 
 Colonel, in a low tone, but with assuring in 
 tensity as he shook each of us by the hand.
 
 IQ8 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 And there we stood, three perturbed men, 
 trustful and yet afraid. 
 
 Five minutes of seven. Fenwick certainly 
 would not fail us now. 
 
 Every considerable city has its peculiar 
 feature, its own special aspect. Rotten Row 
 on a bright afternoon of the hot and hurried 
 season ; the Boulevard des Italiens on some 
 spacious, starry night, when the cosmopol 
 itan crowd saunters along with lingering 
 steps ; Fifth Avenue upon a Sunday noon 
 of April, when lagging thousands stroll 
 and stare ; Pennsylvania Avenue at eleven 
 o'clock in the morning of a bright Janu 
 ary day, when more marked and really 
 representative men are scattered along the 
 walks than in any other such place at any 
 usual time these are instances of places and 
 scenes, each with special characteristics and 
 significance wholly its own. To our great 
 Northern cities, however, there belongs one 
 distinctively brilliant display that has not 
 gained the fame it deserves, and which in 
 brightness, animation, and inspiriting in 
 fluence will hold its own in the widest com 
 parison. In none does it find more spark-
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 199 
 
 ling, enlivening, effective presentation than 
 
 in Andros. Alaska Avenue on a winter 
 
 
 
 afternoon, when the snow has fallen and the 
 sleighing is good, is as characteristic as any 
 sight the world knows. The day should be 
 clear, brilliant, cold, and still. The snow 
 should be deep, but not too deep, and packed 
 along the driveway until it is as a softer ice, 
 as an easily malleable silver, a little chased 
 and fretted, and striped as if etched with in 
 termixing lines. The time should be about 
 four o'clock in the afternoon. Then along 
 the broad street, where stand on either side, 
 block after block, stately houses giving as 
 surance of the warmth, the soft light, the 
 luxuriousness within, move up and down 
 crowding sleighs in double rows ; gay Russian 
 sledges, with streamers flying as the horse 
 tails that Sobieski captured flashed before 
 Vienna ; staid old family affairs, large and 
 comfortable, and all crowded with humanity ; 
 these overflowing with children, those filled 
 with young girls their beauty brightened, 
 burnished, by the clear air laughing and 
 eager. Furs seem to boil over the edges of 
 the sleighs, to flow behind them, as though 
 they were ripples racing wakes in the slow-
 
 200 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 moving current. It is a glorious pageant, a 
 striking spectacle, a quick, changing, glitter 
 ing, scintillant scene, charged with strong 
 vitality. Between the counter - moving 
 streams on either side of the street dash, in 
 hardly intermittent flight, "cutters " wonder 
 ful in their spidery anatomy, torn along by 
 high-couraged, deep -lunged, clean-limbed 
 horses trotters such as might chip atoms of 
 seconds off what was thought a great record 
 in the not remote past. This is the electric 
 current, these the constant flashes that thrill 
 everything, start the heart's beat, suffuse 
 the cheeks, quicken the pulse, stir the 
 nerves. And the cheery din, the hum that 
 is everywhere, the bells jingling in the tam 
 bourine to which the minutes dance, the 
 whir of the rushing cutters, the cries, the 
 yells to the horses, the " Take care theres !" 
 the "Get out of the ways!" the hurrahs, the 
 shouts of the on-looking crowd all these, 
 mingled, are among the causes that give 
 gayety, glee, hilarity, to the time. Har 
 nesses sparkle; the varnished sleighs shine 
 like great beetles. Shadows gather in deep 
 er blue across the snow; the windows of the 
 west-facing houses blaze in vermilion glory.
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT? 201 
 
 Inspiriting sound, quickening motion, every 
 thing is intensified by the consciousness all 
 have of vivid, human presence. 
 
 Everybody was "out." The Colonel was 
 there with a great raw-boned, ewe-necked 
 animal called Lucifer, the very ideal of 
 equine ugliness, but which, though "awk 
 ward at startin','' as the groom said, when 
 once off, flung, seemed to scatter, those large 
 hoofs of his quicker, farther along the road, 
 than most, if not all, of those who tried speed 
 with him. The Honorable was there with 
 a nervous liftle bay, able almost always to 
 "hang" pertinaciously upon the rear of al 
 most " anything going," and often, and in 
 contest with those among the best, to show 
 neatly and clearly ahead. The Counsellor 
 was behind a well-tried, long-trusted gray 
 that always did well, and sometimes did won 
 ders. These were all old favorites fore 
 most in estimation among perhaps fifty 
 others, with many of whom they had been 
 or would be, in the course of the afternoon, 
 called upon or compelled to compete. But 
 on this particular occasion there was prom 
 ise of something new and of exceptional 
 interest. It was understood that Fenwick
 
 202 "WOULD DICK DO THAT? 
 
 was to bring out a new horse raised at his 
 own country place, and of which we all had 
 heard not a little. The Colonel, who had 
 all winter "led the avenue," feared that even 
 Lucifer would have to take second place, 
 when Hoyden should flash, as if on the 
 swallow's wing, along the course. Interest 
 rose to excitement almost, as the afternoon 
 ran along and Fenwick did not appear. 
 
 "Why don't he come?" growled the 
 Colonel, walking the steaming Lucifer, after 
 a victorious burst of half a mile, as the 
 cutter of the Honorable and his bay drew 
 abreast. "Is he waiting until our horses 
 are tired out?" 
 
 "Would Dick do" 
 
 One vicious cut across Lucifer's flank, 
 and the Colonel was off, his horse in a canter 
 for half a block ; and when we reached the 
 end of the course, there was the Colonel 
 grimly waiting for us. We were just get 
 ting into irregular line, when there was a 
 shout, "There he is!" 
 
 Hoyden looked perfection in build and 
 action. Nothing with keener vitality ever 
 ran or flew. She appeared eager for what 
 was before her, to know it all at view, as a
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 203 
 
 young girl knows her first ball, a youngster 
 his first battle. Behind the mare sat, in a 
 nautilus of a cutter, Richard Garrard Fen- 
 wick, calm as a conjurer, innocent as a 
 hotel clerk. Every one of us knew at a 
 glance what was to come ; every horse 
 seemed to feel it. We were all silent. Ev 
 ery energy must be put forth ; not a turn 
 of skill lost. Even Hoyden seemed im 
 pressed and quieted by the importance of 
 what was to be done. She glided into line 
 as mademoiselle takes her place in her first 
 cotillon. 
 
 And then no spoken signal was given 
 our hearts seemed simultaneously to leap 
 in response to some unuttered "Go," and 
 we were away. 
 
 There is something peculiarly exciting in 
 a race over the snow. The white lies all 
 around, objectless almost as is the atmos 
 phere, and you seem to fly over it and 
 through mere space. Silently, with only 
 the chiming bells and quick breathing of 
 the panting horses in your ears, you are 
 borne along through .the cutting blast, 
 giddy with the motion. You drink the 
 air, and it is as champagne poured from
 
 204 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 out the bottle lined with its thin ice incrus 
 tation. You are gladdened, inflamed, by 
 the zest of contest. 
 
 The course on the avenue from start to 
 finish is a little more than a mile long. The 
 Colonel had a slight lead at starting ; the 
 Honorable and the Counsellor were side by 
 side, with Fenwick almost a length behind. 
 At Omicron Street the positions were 
 hardly changed ; but before the next block 
 was passed, Fenwick was even with the 
 Honorable and the Counsellor. The speed 
 was terrific. The rows of sleighs lost form 
 and detail in one blurred blending ; they 
 ran behind us on either side like bright- 
 colored ribbons. The snow flew from the 
 quick hoofs in blinding clouds into our 
 faces. Cheers grew before us, softened be 
 hind us, as we came on. All in the track 
 made way for us, and, after we had passed, 
 pulled up, and gazed after us; all made 
 way and yet, veteran of the course as the 
 Honorable was, his cutter just grazed the 
 pole of the huge Harpending sleigh, pro 
 jected a little out of the line. 
 
 At Omega Street Fenwick had passed 
 the Honorable and the Counsellor, and to
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 205 
 
 them the race was lost. But Lucifer was 
 still ahead. There had not been a "break" 
 yet. The peculiar, regular action which 
 makes the fast trotter appear impelled by 
 some nicely adjusted, perfectly regulated 
 mechanism the motion that suggests the 
 strong walking-beam, the quick hair-spring, 
 rather than the action of less regular, more 
 unreliable muscle had not been disturbed 
 in either horse. Hoyden was gaining. How 
 the Colonel knew this it is hard to say, for 
 he did not turn his head. He can distin 
 guish no significant word in the wild hulla 
 baloo around him. But he does know it, and 
 he bends further forward, and, for the first 
 time since the start, Lucifer feels, but feels 
 lightly, the lash. Now Hoyden's nostrils 
 glow and quiver at the Colonel's elbow ; 
 now flecks of foam are cast across his ex 
 tended, rigid arms ; now the mare's small, 
 clear-lined head reaches beyond his cut 
 ter, and it is evident that the horses will 
 soon be neck and neck. They are nearing 
 the finish, the place where, at the crossing 
 of Iroquois and Alaska avenues, there is a 
 small circle. Here the crowd is the densest, 
 the confusion the greatest. The sleighs scat-
 
 206 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 ter right and left, that the opening may 
 be wider; those on foot and there are 
 many here press forward, that they may 
 miss nothing of the end, Is Hoyden up 
 with Lucifer? Is she? It would need the 
 two parallel wires to tell that as they sweep 
 on. The Colonel is almost lying on the 
 dash-board. But desperation has snatched 
 victory before now. The Colonel slightly 
 rises in his seat ; the whip has further reach ; 
 he shouts to Lucifer as if he hated the 
 beast; and But it is too much ; Lucifer 
 can do no more. He " breaks " breaks badly 
 and Hoyden, excited for there is known 
 to her now but the one thing, speed flies 
 past and into the circle, still at racing pace. 
 A large sleigh, heavily loaded with coal, 
 that never should have been allowed in such 
 a place, has ploughed its slow way along 
 Iroquois Avenue, and now has almost 
 crossed Alaska. It is almost past; but 
 there is a cry of terror a crash a crowd's 
 awful articulation; the beautiful mare gal 
 lops on alone with flying traces. And there, 
 on the snow, lies Fenwick, motionless, a clot 
 of blood on his white forehead.
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 207 
 
 If, as has been said with an iteration that, 
 though it deprives the simile of the merit 
 of novelty, certainly gives it the respectabil 
 ity of usage, we are all actors in this life, 
 we are assuredly like the players in Hamlet, 
 " the best actors in the world, either for 
 tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral- 
 comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-histori 
 cal, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral." We 
 can play all and everything, and we do it. 
 But the worst of it is that the world is 
 stocked with such a miserable, makeshift 
 company that we have often to " double " 
 our parts as it were playing the ghost and 
 the grave-digger in the same evening. No 
 more "lightning change" from the sock to 
 the cothurn was ever made in life's drama 
 than our small company made that wintry 
 afternoon. 
 
 Fenwick had been unconscious ever since 
 he had been hurled on the hard, ice-covered 
 asphalt, and the Doctor could not or would 
 not say how dangerous the injury was. We 
 all, in some inexplicable way, felt responsible 
 for the accident. As we carried him up 
 the wide steps of his own house, his eyes 
 were closed, and his limbs, uncontrolled
 
 20S "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 by volition, seemed to fall with added 
 weight. How could we face the young wife 
 against whom we had been plotting? As we 
 entered the door, " Miss Edith" we had al 
 ways called her " Miss Edith," even after her 
 marriage came down the stairs with quick, 
 gliding step. She uttered a sudden, startled 
 cry, and was by his side in an instant. 
 
 " Here," she said ; and we placed him on 
 the great couch beside the big hall fire-place. 
 She had fallen on her knees, and taken one 
 of his limp, cold hands in both of hers. 
 
 " Will he die?" she asked, in a whisper. 
 
 The Doctor affected not to hear her. 
 
 "And," she moaned, "when he went 
 away I was angry with him, and he with 
 me, and I have not seen him since !" 
 
 Fenwick never looked so handsome as he 
 did lying there, his face pallid, with illu 
 minating blood-marks, and his white, flaccid 
 hands resting upon the great fur rug. 
 
 " Why did you ask him to your cruel 
 dinner?" 
 
 The thumb-screw of remorse was given a 
 new turn. It was about our dinner they 
 had had their quarrel, perhaps their first. 
 
 '' But he didn't go," blurted out the
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 209 
 
 Colonel, in his eagerness to make amends 
 for our action. 
 
 " Didn't go !" she repeated, softly. " But 
 what did he do? I did not see him." 
 
 We were dazed, bewildered ; the basis of 
 our calculations destroyed ; the premises of 
 our conclusions swept away. 
 
 " He must have been very, very angry, 
 then," she continued. " I didn't like to have 
 him go to the others, and he did not. At 
 the last minute, I wanted him so much not 
 to go to this too, because it was the anni 
 versary of the day we first saw each other ; 
 but he said he must, because he had refused 
 the others. And I insisted, and he " She 
 bowed her head in silence over his hand. 
 " It was our first real trouble," she said, 
 looking up ; " and now and now we can 
 never make it up." 
 
 The homely phrase struck at our heart : 
 "make it up." There Fenwick lay, with 
 motionless body and obstructed brain, in 
 capable of action ; unable perhaps forever 
 to give even that pressure of the hand, or 
 utter the one simple word that might mean 
 reconciliation, and without which parting 
 would be made so much the harder. And
 
 210 "WOULD DICK DO THAT?" 
 
 we were partly to blame for it all. In the 
 light of our responsibility, "Miss Edith's" 
 grief was almost unbearable, and we would 
 gladly have departed, but some sense of 
 atonement held us chained to the spot. 
 
 "Will he not speak for a moment?" she 
 went on, turning again to the Doctor. 
 
 But no warmth appeared in the pallid 
 face, no gleam of intelligence shone in 
 those staring eyes. 
 
 The gas-lights were just springing to life 
 along the darkening avenue ; at rare inter 
 vals came the jingle of sleigh-bells. The 
 revellers of the afternoon had departed, and 
 the street was almost deserted. It was an 
 hour such as none of the party assembled 
 had ever passed, but so personal and absorb 
 ing were the interests that none at the time 
 realized its dramatic intensity. Minute after 
 minute we stood waiting for those pale lips, 
 that might soon stiffen into immobility, to 
 utter some intelligible word. 
 
 It was hardly articulate. Was it a sudden 
 exclamation ? Was it a hysterical laugh ? 
 
 Fenwick wearily rose upon his elbow and 
 looked around. "Hello !" he said. "Edith! 
 Why, what has happened ?"
 
 "WOULD DICK DO THAT? 211 
 
 " Lie down," she said, gently. " You must. 
 You have been hurt," 
 
 " I remember," he said, less faintly " the 
 race. Did I beat the Colonel?" 
 
 " Yes, dear," she answered. " But you 
 must be quite still," 
 
 Fenwick was not dead; on the contrary, 
 very much alive. How joyfully our guilty 
 hearts beat in their unshackled freedom ! 
 
 " Oh, Dick," she said, "if anything should 
 have happened ! Do you remember? Will 
 you forgive me ?" 
 
 Without the impassiveness, but with all 
 the intrusiveness, of a Greek chorus, the 
 abashed and conscience-stricken conspirators 
 gazed upon the scene. 
 
 " Forgive you ?" he said. " I acted like 
 a brute. What did I care for their dinner ? 
 But I was ashamed of myself afterwards, sent 
 a note to say that I could not come, and 
 came back to find you gone." 
 
 " I know," she said, remorsefully ; " you 
 left me alone, and I was very indignant, and 
 I went to the Harpendings'. I am so sorry!" 
 
 " I shut myself up in the smoking-room, 
 and slept there until two o'clock. You did 
 not come down this morning, and so "
 
 212 " WOULD DICK DO THAT ?" 
 
 " Oh, Dick ! if you had never been able 
 to tell me !" she cried. " I shall never let 
 you go away when you are angry again." 
 
 Though neither " Dick " nor " Miss Edith" 
 knew that we were present, one by one we 
 stole quietly from the room. 
 
 The next day we called upon Mrs. Rich 
 ard Garrard Fenwick in a body, and formally 
 and frankly " owned up." 
 
 " And you never have told that he did 
 not come?" she said. 
 
 " No," we answered, contritely. 
 
 " That was very wrong.' 
 
 We tried to explain. 
 
 "Would Dick do that?" she asked, re 
 provingly. 
 
 We all shuddered. 
 
 " And others must believe that three 
 three " 
 
 " Old fools," suggested the Colonel. 
 
 " Middle - aged gentlemen," continued 
 " Miss Edith," politely, " were able to lead 
 Dick away ?" 
 
 We appeared dubious. 
 
 " Must I sacrifice my pride in order that 
 you may escape ?"
 
 " WOULD DICK DO THAT ?" 213 
 
 We gazed at her entreatingly. 
 
 " You have all," she said, severely, " been 
 very thoughtless and wicked; but I will never 
 tell, if you promise never to do anything 
 like it again." 
 
 We assured her, with a vehemence that 
 could not but carry conviction of our sin 
 cerity, that we would not. 
 
 " Then," she said, " I forgive you." 
 
 She had wound us around her slim white 
 fingers long before ; now she has us under 
 her rosy thumb. But she uses her power 
 mercifully. It is a question whether we do 
 not wish that she was more exacting, so glad 
 are we of an opportunity to do anything 
 for her.
 
 -THE DRAGONESS"
 
 'THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 REALLY," said Mrs. Abernethy, help 
 lessly, as she sat at the dinner-table 
 one evening, so long after Christmas that the 
 character of the winter could be definitely 
 determined as decidedly " gay," but yet so 
 far removed from Lent that many events of 
 importance were still to come off, and there 
 was much that might make anticipation 
 vivid, " I don't know what I am to do about 
 Ruth. If we go South next week," she 
 continued, gazing at so much of her hus 
 band as was visible through the spaces 
 left by the intervening objects, " I cannot, 
 worn out as I am, undertake to look after her 
 in St. Augustine, and I am sure I don't see 
 how we can leave her here." 
 
 "Oh, "said Abernethy, with a certain after- 
 dinner indifference, " she'd do well enough, 
 I've no doubt, if she stayed in the house all 
 alone."
 
 2i8 " THE DRAGONESS " 
 
 " But think how highly improper !" ex 
 claimed Mrs. Abernethy, thoroughly shocked ; 
 " she certainly must have some older person 
 with her. She is so thoughtless; and there 
 is Mrs. ' Tom ' ; and then there is Harold 
 Redmond." 
 
 Abernethy nodded abstractedly. He had 
 already, and it was only Thursday, used up 
 the three excuses that regularly gave him 
 three nights a week at the club, and was 
 very busy trying to devise some scheme 
 that might serve to give him freedom on 
 this evening as well. As he was not an 
 imaginative man, he was having rather a 
 hard time of it. 
 
 " I cannot think of any one," went on 
 Mrs. Abernethy, not conscious of her hus 
 band's extraordinary mental efforts. " I 
 wouldn't mind if Andros was the place that 
 it used to be, but it has changed so that 
 you never can tell what is going to happen. 
 Since Mrs. ' Tom ' Dallison and the fast set 
 have sprung up, I consider that society has 
 very much deteriorated. Think how differ 
 ent it once was !" 
 
 " In the dark ages," said her husband. 
 
 " You may call them the dark ages if you
 
 " THE DRAGONESS " 219 
 
 like, but society was respectable then at 
 least. I consider that Mrs. Dallison has 
 been a most evil influence. Of course we 
 cannot do anything, for she was Virginia 
 Rereton, and we were all most intimate with 
 her dear mother. But if she were not a 
 Rereton I certainly would not receive her; 
 and I often wonder how that little girl, 
 whom I can remember perfectly as the qui 
 etest, shyest little thing, can have become 
 the fast, absolutely fast, woman she is." 
 
 " Oh, come, now; everything makes faster 
 time than it used to do, from horses and 
 ocean liners to " 
 
 "She need not be so excessive," said Mrs. 
 Abernethy, decidedly. " I have been always 
 opposed to letting Ruth have anything to 
 do with her, and have steadily discouraged 
 the intimacy." 
 
 Abernethy said nothing. 
 
 " But this doesn't help me to determine 
 what I am to do with Ruth. I wish every 
 day that she hadn't been left in my care. 
 Poor Fanny might have made Clara her 
 guardian ; perhaps she might know how to 
 manage a young woman that was emancipfa 
 and an heiress."
 
 220 " THE DRAGONESS " 
 
 " Why not have Maria here?" 
 
 " Why, yes," began Mrs. Abernethy, 
 slowly. And then she went on briskly : 
 " The very thing ! How clever of you to 
 think of it ! You know I always said that 
 your common-sense did at times amount to 
 brilliancy. I have always wished to have 
 her here, but I have never had a chance 
 before. I received a letter only to-day from 
 her mother " 
 
 Before Mrs. Abernethy could proceed, the 
 sharp, quick bark of a dog was heard in the 
 next room ; the quick rustle of a dress be 
 came distinctly audible, the half-opened door 
 was thrown wholly back, and a young girl, 
 dressed evidently for a ball, and very much 
 out of breath, entered, in pursuit of a fox- 
 terrier puppy. 
 
 " Ruth," exclaimed Mrs. Abernethy, look 
 ing up, "what is the matter?" 
 
 " He's got my slipper," said the girl, con 
 tinuing the chase around the table, " and I 
 can't get it away from him." 
 
 Mrs. Abernethy continued to gaze with 
 unconcealed disapproval upon the animated 
 pursuit, and when the terrier, finally driven 
 into the recess formed by the window, had
 
 " THE DRAGONESS " 221 
 
 yielded up his prize with a short yelp, she 
 spoke with some stiffness. 
 
 " Ruth," she said, " I wish you could give 
 us your attention for a moment." 
 
 " Yes, auntie," said the girl, thrusting back 
 her bright, light hair, and glancing with 
 brilliant eyes at the clock. " But they'll be 
 here for me in five minutes. We go to the 
 theatre before the dance Mrs. ' Tom's ' 
 party, you know." 
 
 Mrs. Abernethy visibly shuddered. 
 "We have just come to a conclusion that 
 may interest you," she went on. 
 
 "If it isn't nice, please don't tell me," ex 
 claimed her niece. "I've made up my mind 
 to have a particularly good time to-night." 
 
 " As you know, we are obliged to go 
 South next week on account of your un 
 cle's health," explained Mrs. Abernethy, 
 "and we think it best that you should re 
 main here. We hope that we are not un 
 wise in our decision." 
 
 " I devoutly hope not," said the niece, 
 with a strange look in her eyes. 
 
 " I am unwilling to do this, but really I see 
 no other way," continued Mrs. Abernethy. 
 " But" began Ruth.
 
 222 "THE DRAGONESS 
 
 " Of course we cannot leave you alone in 
 the house." 
 
 "I suppose not," said Ruth, mournfully. 
 
 "And," went on Mrs. Abernethy, "at the 
 excellent suggestion of your uncle, I have 
 decided to send for a near relation of his, a 
 Tady whom I have often desired to ask here, 
 who will remain with you during our ab- 
 sense." 
 
 " Is she very old ?" asked Ruth. 
 
 " I believe about thirty," answered Mrs. 
 Abernethy. 
 
 "About thirty?" sighed her niece. "And 
 will you please tell me her name?" 
 
 " Miss Maria Kittridge." 
 
 " Miss Maria Kittridge," repeated Ruth, 
 slowly. 
 
 " She is a most superior person," said Mrs. 
 Abernethy, " and has always been held in 
 the highest respect ; indeed, in her native 
 place she is quite a power." 
 
 "And what is her native place like?" 
 asked Ruth, desperately. 
 
 " It is called Hasbrook Centre, and is one 
 of those New England villages which, 
 though small in size, are rich in intelligence 
 and cultivation."
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 223 
 
 "And has she always lived there?" 
 
 "Always," replied Mrs. Abernethy. " In 
 deed, though not absolutely obliged to do 
 so, I believe Maria has always supported 
 herself since she was twenty-one by teach 
 ing school. Very early in life she enter 
 tained the most serious views in regard to 
 our responsibilities, and when she could 
 have been hardly older than you now are, 
 through her unaided exertions she had es 
 tablished a charity-organization society in 
 Hasbrook, and had caused the erection of a 
 coffee-house for the operatives in the great 
 mills." 
 
 "How does she look?" 
 
 " I have no clear memory of her personal 
 appearance, as I have not seen her since 
 she was a child ; but, if I remember rightly, 
 she was somewhat small and insignificant. 
 I have, however, always watched her career, 
 as it has been unfolded to me in her moth 
 er's letters, with the greatest interest and 
 admiration. Let me read you something 
 she has just written to me;" and Mrs. Ab 
 ernethy opened the paper she had in her 
 hand. " ' With her regular hours for teach 
 ing and the time devoted every day to the
 
 224 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 furtherance of her charitable schemes, you 
 might suppose Maria is sufficiently em 
 ployed, but to one of her temperament any 
 time unimproved is irksome. She has of 
 late been interesting herself in the various 
 socialistic questions of the hour, and has 
 written a number of articles for the more 
 serious periodicals that liave called forth 
 praise from the most distinguished author 
 ities. Of course, with such a character as 
 hers, she will always find something to do, 
 wherever she may be some grievance to 
 right, some error to correct, some reform to 
 introduce; but still, were she in another 
 place, she would be amid other surround 
 ings, and I am sure that some change would 
 do her good.' You see," said Mrs. Aber- 
 nethy, suddenly suspending her reading and 
 glancing at her niece, who was thoughtfully 
 crumpling the terrier's soft flat ears, " how 
 exceptional a person Miss Kittridge really 
 is." 
 
 " Yes, auntie," said Ruth. " But cannot I 
 have Betty Frew to stay with me ?" 
 
 " Oh, better have her," interrupted Ab- 
 ernethy, glancing at his niece by marriage. 
 " She might profit too by the society of this
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 225 
 
 New England Minerva this blue-stockinged 
 Pallas." 
 
 " Very well," said Mrs. Abernethy, reluc 
 tantly. 
 
 At their very first interview, Ruth and 
 Miss Frew took the situation into serious 
 consideration. 
 
 " Do you think she will be so very for 
 midable?" asked Ruth, after she had im 
 parted to her friend the facts gathered from 
 Mrs. Abernethy. 
 
 " I should think," responded Miss Frew, 
 " that she could hardly be worse. I have 
 no doubt that she will, very early, set about 
 improving our minds, and immediately un 
 dertake to show us the frivolity of our lives. 
 Now I, for one, am perfectly conscious of 
 my own triviality, but I like it. I feel very 
 much abo.ut such high moral elevation as I 
 do about Greek draperies they may be very 
 becoming in another, but they are not for 
 me. I am not Antigone ; I am article de 
 Paris" 
 
 " But what shall we do ?" 
 
 "Treat her kindly but firmly; from the 
 very outset let her see that she cannot im- 
 15
 
 226 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 pose upon us. Everything will depend upon 
 the way we first meet her. I should advise 
 extreme reserve." 
 
 "Oh," exclaimed Ruth, "it is frightful'to 
 have such a such a " She paused. 
 
 " Dragoness," suggested Miss Frew. 
 
 "Yes, that's it ' dragoness,' " went on 
 Ruth, eagerly, " always about. I was really 
 cruel to get you to come here." 
 
 "A friend in need," said Miss Frew. "I 
 will stand by you to the last sentence in the 
 last discussion in the last number of the 
 North American, and I will not even desert 
 you when I see that Browning is imminent 
 and inevitable." 
 
 II 
 
 The through express had just arrived, and 
 long before the dusty, tired-looking cars had 
 come to rest, the passengers began to jostle 
 each other on the platform and jump from 
 the moving train. Almost like an ungov 
 ernable mob, the liberated travellers surged 
 through the station, while the cries of the 
 porters, the rattle of passing trucks, the jar 
 of heavy baggage, and the deafening and
 
 "THE DRAGONESS 227 
 
 pervading roar of the escaping steam added 
 to the din and turbulence. 
 
 " But how," said Ruth, anxiously, " shall 
 we ever know her?" 
 
 "Eye-glasses," answered Miss Frew, " and 
 a dress that would be an excellent fit for 
 somebody else." 
 
 The throng in the waiting-room thinned, 
 but still no one resembling the ideal that 
 the watchers had formed of the "dragoness" 
 appeared. 
 
 " I don't believe she has come, after all," 
 said Ruth. 
 
 Almost as she spoke she heard herself ad 
 dressed in a low, sweet, shy voice. "I think 
 perhaps you may be looking for me." 
 
 Ruth turned quickly, and saw a little 
 feminine figure, clad in worn but well-fitting 
 gray. She stared with a surprised and curi 
 ous intensity, while the person upon whom 
 her eyes were fixed stood before her some 
 what embarrassedly, and evidently not quite 
 sure what to do next. In her right arm she 
 carried a large bundle, which with difficulty 
 she changed to her left, and then almost 
 timidly held out her hand. 
 
 " My name," she said, gently, " is Maria 
 Kittridge."
 
 228 "THE DRAGONESS 
 
 " The ' dragoness,' " murmured Miss Frew 
 to herself ; but Ruth, for some reason, seemed 
 unable to speak. 
 
 " I hope," went on the " dragoness " for 
 she it certainly was with greater assurance, 
 "that you have not had to wait long for me. 
 I think that we are a little late." 
 
 " No no, indeed," exclaimed Ruth, rather 
 brokenly, realizing that she must say some 
 thing. " But let Jackson take your bundle 
 and your checks." 
 
 The " dragoness " yielded up her parcel 
 with evident solicitude ; then obediently de 
 livered a single brass token to the waiting 
 servant, and meekly followed her future 
 charges through the bewildered emigrants, 
 and along the sidewalk, past the ravening 
 hackmen, to the carriage. 
 
 The lengthening winter day was drawing 
 to an end, but the sun had not yet set, and 
 still shone redly along the westward-running 
 streets, brilliantly lighting up the great glass 
 windows of the big shops, falling with warm 
 ing glow upon the crowds of work-people 
 hastening along the walks, and glittering on 
 the rattling harness of the impatient coach- 
 horses. The slight dust that rose from the
 
 "THE DRAGONESS 229 
 
 frozen but snowless streets was glitteringly 
 golden, and a thin haze, warmly violet, dulled 
 the sharp lines of the distances. The "drag- 
 oness " looked through the windows of the 
 carriage, and almost with delight seemed to 
 feast her eyes upon the city sights, to drink 
 in the harsh city sounds. 
 
 " I have never been away very much from 
 home," she exclaimed. " Only in Boston a 
 few times a year on business, and once in 
 New York long ago." 
 
 She looked very small, leaning back 
 among the cushions, but not at all insignifi 
 cant. Indeed, there was an air of determi 
 nation, of self-reliance, about her that made 
 it impossible on most occasions to overlook 
 her. Her eyes, which were certainly unnat 
 urally large or perhaps they were made to 
 appear so by her thick, curling eyelashes 
 were not turned from the panorama of the 
 streets; and her lips, which were very warmly 
 red, remained slightly parted, as if in excite 
 ment, showing her white, small, regular teeth. 
 However, if her eyes were large, they were 
 not like most large eyes, dreamy, and per 
 haps a trifle dull ; on the contrary, they were 
 very bright and wide-awake. And if her
 
 230 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 mouth was wide, it certainly was only made 
 thereby the more expressive. 
 
 " I hope you will not mind me," she said, 
 suddenly, " but I am confident that I am 
 staring." 
 
 Ruth had begun to explain to the "drag- 
 oness" that Mrs. Abernethy had been 
 obliged to start " immediately," when the 
 hollow rumble of the victoria, that could be 
 so distinctly heard on the smooth asphalt, 
 was lost as the wheels ground on the gravel 
 of the driveway and the carriage swept up 
 to the house. It was one of the latest and 
 best specimens of our modern American ar 
 chitecture, in which fantastic form is so often 
 allied with dignified simplicity, in which 
 studied rudeness is carefully blended with 
 nice elaboration, in which extreme comfort 
 ableness is not inconsistent with rich mag 
 nificence. Standing on the broad flagging 
 under the porte-cochere, the " dragoness " 
 glanced along the western front, where the 
 broad windows flashed with orange glow in 
 the light of the low sun, with the expression 
 of one who is a little overawed. Silently 
 she passed through the doors, which swung 
 open so noiselessly and mysteriously on
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 231 
 
 their bronze hinges, and entered the dim 
 hall, where the warm air was heavy with the 
 perfume of invisible flowers. She glanced, 
 with what really seemed almost reverence, 
 at the heavy polished panelling, and the dull 
 harmonious portieres that only half hid the 
 luxurious vistas beyond. She only seemed 
 to arouse herself, to awake from what ap 
 peared a pleasant revery, as the big clock 
 with, the " cathedral chimes " struck half- 
 past five ; for, as the sweet jingle languished 
 away, she slightly trembled, and looked up 
 at Ruth with a half-apologetic, half-grateful 
 smile. 
 
 " I cannot understand her," said Miss 
 Frew, excitedly. " She's an enigma a per 
 fect sphinx." 
 
 " Except," suggested Ruth, " that enigmas 
 are stupid and that sphinxes are not at all 
 pretty. And she is 'pretty awfully pretty." 
 
 " There's no doubt about it," assented 
 Miss Frew. 
 
 As they passed along the hall they saw a 
 small piece of luggage with yellow sides and 
 strange black rulings carried up the stairs. 
 
 "How fearfully in character!" said Miss
 
 232 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 Frew. And then she thought of her own 
 huge trunks, covered with the labels of the 
 steamers, the railroads, the hotels of half of 
 Christendom. 
 
 "But," said Ruth, suddenly, as if a clearer 
 realization of the terrors of the situation had 
 been vouchsafed to her " but what shall we 
 do this evening?" 
 
 " Discuss the latest theory as to the site 
 of Troy, touch lightly 'upon the probable 
 nature of the solar ' coronae,' casually con 
 sider the advisability of taxing church prop 
 erty, incidentally mention the realistic ten 
 dencies of modern literature, and then plunge 
 with absorbing interest into an inquiry into 
 socialism past, present, and to come," an 
 swered Miss Frew. 
 
 Ruth sighed deeply. 
 
 " Now I don't believe you have the least 
 idea of what ' nationalism ' is," continued 
 Miss Frew, " or could find a word to say 
 upon the tariff as a home topic ; while in 
 European politics you do not even possess 
 such essential and elemental knowledge as 
 what were the date and nature of the treaty 
 of Kuchuck-Kainardji the key of the East 
 ern question."
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 233 
 
 " No," answered Ruth, " I don't ; but I 
 know the date of the battle of Hastings." 
 
 "That, my child," observed Miss Frew, 
 " is a drug in the market. There never was 
 a girl who didn't know that ; besides, the 
 ' dragoness ' would call it ' Senlac.' " 
 
 The room to which Miss Kittridge had 
 been taken was charming with the frilled 
 and ruffled crispiness of its fittings-up, where 
 all values of blue were to be found, from the 
 dark hue of the polished tiles to the faint 
 azure of the shadowed dressing-table. The 
 "dragoness" hesitated a moment on her 
 entrance, and, only when she found herself 
 alone, sank somewhat stiffly into one of the 
 long, broad, abysmal chairs. The smoulder 
 ing fire fell in with a gentle sound, and the 
 freshly mounting flames crackling cheerful 
 ly, sent flickering lights frolicking over the 
 place, to be scattered and to glitter in a 
 hundred reflections and deflections as they 
 fell upon shining porcelain and gleaming 
 metal. Perhaps the "dragoness" was weary 
 from her ride. At all events, for some 
 reason, she sighed deeply, and, with what 
 seemed almost relaxation of her whole be-
 
 234 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 ing, settled herself more comfortably in the 
 yielding cushions of the long, low lounge. 
 It is unquestionable that she was lost in 
 meditation upon some very serious subject, 
 for she sat quite still for a long time, gaz 
 ing curiously at the leaping flames. 
 
 "We had better send for her," said Ruth, 
 when dinner was announced and the 
 " dragoness " had not yet appeared. 
 
 Still Miss Kittridge did not come ; and it 
 was only after Ruth had said, " I'm sure 
 she won't want to have us wait for her," 
 and Miss Frew and herself were passing 
 through the hall, that she appeared, de 
 scending the main stairs with great rapidity, 
 but with an evident effort not to have her 
 heels click too loudly upon the hard, pol 
 ished wood. 
 
 " You see I am always late," she said, 
 checking herself in her onrush, and bringing 
 up before them. 
 
 She was dressed very much as she had 
 been on her arrival. The gown was no 
 longer gray ; it was black. It was no longer 
 cloth ; it was silk ; but it bore unmistak 
 able evidence that its origin was the same
 
 ''THE DRAGONESS" 235 
 
 as its predecessor's. No two creations of 
 Corot or of Redfern were ever more un 
 questionably from the same hand, and Ruth 
 and Miss Frew did not for an instant hesi 
 tate to believe that the ringers that had 
 shaped both were the white, soft, firm 
 ringers of the " dragoness " herself. There 
 was the same evident effort of good taste 
 to assert itself in spite of insufficient 
 knowledge, inadequate skill, and unworthy 
 material, that had been manifested in the 
 other production. That the " dragoness " 
 looked as pretty as she did was certainly 
 not owing to the splendor or even perfect 
 suitability of her attire; indeed, that her 
 dress was at all endurable w r as wholly owing 
 to the fact that it was the " dragoness " 
 who happened to wear it. If, however, her 
 raiment was simple and severe, there was a 
 great elaboration about her hair ; and had 
 not the sages of antiquity decided a de 
 cision corroborated by the wisdom of the 
 ages that it is utterly impossible to explain 
 the action of a pretty woman, it would be 
 unhesitatingly asserted that the care she had 
 taken in the arrangement of her locks had 
 made the " dragoness " late for dinner.
 
 236 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 Ruth took the head of the table" for 
 that time only," she explained and then, 
 constituting herself a forlorn hope, bravely 
 attacked the position. 
 
 " I hope you found everything you want 
 ed?" she said. 
 
 "Oh, everything!" answered the " drag- 
 oness," effusively. 
 
 " I am afraid," continued Ruth, "that you 
 will find but little here that will interest 
 you. However, you will have a great deal 
 of time for your writing and studying and 
 and all that sort of thing." 
 
 " I suppose I might," answered, the " drag- 
 oness," doubtfully ; " but I don't think I 
 shall do very much in that way." 
 
 Ruth, greatly puzzled, was debating in her 
 own mind whether it would be fitting to 
 ask the reason of such unaccountable absti 
 nence, when Miss Frew, who had been eying 
 the " dragoness " with that critical interest 
 with which we are given to understand the 
 earlier occupants of the roof are wont to 
 receive the latest feline intruder, suddenly 
 broke out, in the manner of one whose 
 curiosity cannot longer remain unsatisfied: 
 
 " Can you really read Greek?"
 
 " THE DRAGONESS 237 
 
 " Oh, yes !" said the " dragoness," looking 
 up and smiling a little ; " it is really not so 
 hard. I began when I was quite young, 
 with a professor in Harvard College who 
 spends the summer in Hasbrook." 
 
 " Shades of Heloise and Abelard !" mur 
 mured Miss Frew. 
 
 They questioned her about the manage 
 ment of her school, her libraries, her charities. 
 They tried her on more general subjects. 
 Music she played a little, and acknowl 
 edged that she sang in the choir; but though 
 she knew that musical Italy had found an 
 Attila, she would not have recognized a 
 Wagnerian "motif" if she had met one. 
 Art she knew the histories of the old 
 masters, and had read Ruskin " for the style." 
 Literature They were about to fall upon 
 literature as a topic upon which she could 
 certainly be induced to say something, when 
 suddenly she looked up pleadingly,and spoke 
 with more decision than had hitherto been 
 apparent in her tone. 
 
 " It is very good of you," she said, " to 
 ask me so many questions about myself, and 
 about things that I know do not interest 
 you, for what can you care whether we in-
 
 238 " THE DRAGONESS " 
 
 troduce manual training into our public 
 schools, admit the works of the positive 
 thinkers to the shelves of the library, or 
 advocate co-operation among the poor? I 
 wish you would talk to me about yourselves, 
 you do so many things." 
 
 " Why," said Ruth, in surprise, " I never 
 thought of myself in that way. I only do 
 what every one else has done." 
 
 " Except myself," said the " dragoness," 
 with a grim little smile, and almost as humili 
 ated an aspect as she might be supposed to 
 wear if some one had asked her what the 
 digamma was and she had not known. 
 
 " I wonder," observed Ruth, in her em 
 barrassment, " if there will be any one here 
 to-night? I hope that Uncle Sigwill come." 
 
 "Who is that ?" asked the "dragoness." 
 
 " The dearest old imbecile that ever walked 
 or rather rode, for that's about all Uncle 
 Sig ever does. But you wouldn't care for 
 him, he isn't learned in the least, unless as 
 to the pedigree of a debutante or a race 
 horse ; isn't clever at anything except lead 
 ing a cotillon, playing a hand at whist, or driv 
 ing tandem." 
 
 " Really," said the " dragoness," and Miss
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 239 
 
 Frew, closely as she watched her, could not 
 detect whether the rising inflection indicated 
 scorn or not. " I don't think I ever saw any 
 one just like that." 
 
 " He's always in love with everybody, in 
 cluding himself, and will do all the nice 
 things for you that only a thoroughly selfish 
 man would know how to do." 
 
 " But he's at the Dallison dinner," said 
 Miss Frew. 
 
 " No ; for that's put off because because " 
 she hesitated, for she did not like to say 
 that it had been postponed because of the 
 arrival of the " dragoness " and her own in 
 ability to be there " Mrs. ' Tom ' thought 
 it would be better later in the week." 
 
 The " dragoness " glanced at Ruth inquir 
 ingly. 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. 'Tom,' " she said, in reply to 
 the mute question, " is the friend of the 
 unrighteous ; the leader of the army of the 
 ' New Order of Things ' ; the brightest, pret 
 tiest, most extravagant married woman in 
 all Andros ; my greatest friend, and auntie's 
 pet bete noire'' 
 
 "You forget Harold Redmond," suggested 
 Miss Frew, maliciously. 

 
 240 " THE DRAGONESS " 
 
 " In that case translate bete noire, black 
 sheep/' answered Ruth, calmly. 
 
 " I am sure," said the " dragoness," with 
 what, if she had been one who would have 
 been likely to have felt any sympathy with 
 such personages, could have been thought a 
 tone of respectful consideration, " I should 
 like to see them." 
 
 Dinner ended, and as Ruth rose from the 
 table and passed into the library she was 
 brought face to face with the fact that there 
 was an evening before her. Eight, nine, 
 ten, eleven one could not reasonably expect 
 to seek a well-earned rest before that time. 
 Three hours ! As she took up some sewing 
 some " plain sewing," which she had pre 
 pared " for a first effect" she glanced de 
 spondently at Miss Frew, who had seated 
 herself at the piano, and had already begun 
 to play the "Fire Music" as if she could 
 sympathize with the encircled and im 
 prisoned Brunhilde. 
 
 " And how," said Sigourney Fales, as he 
 entered the room, "do I find my burdens? 
 Your uncle's last words were that I should 
 look after you, and I come to fulfil my trust."
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 241 
 
 "If," answered Ruth, "we are as burden 
 some to you as we are to ourselves, I pity 
 you." Then, turning to the " dragoness," 
 she added, " Miss Kittridge, I want to pre 
 sent to you pur very dear friend Mr. Fales." 
 
 Ruth and Miss Frew gazed at the "drag 
 oness" with unconcealed amazement. She 
 had looked small, dowdy, insignificant, as 
 she sat in the chair near the fire and gazed 
 helplessly about the strange room ; but now 
 her hand sought a large scarlet fan that lay 
 on a table near her, and, with this carefully 
 interposed between her face and the blaze, 
 she glanced slowly up at Sigourney Fales. 
 A brighter light had come into her eyes, a 
 warmer flush was upon her cheeks ; about 
 her mouth played an enigmatical smile, half 
 challenging, half appealing. Her body ap 
 peared to stiffen and yet to relax ; to 
 straighten and yet to droop, her every mo 
 tion was more swift and yet more assured. 
 The "dragoness" seemed to cry "Ha! ha!" 
 and to scent the fray from afar. 
 
 "We have just been talking of you," she 
 said. 
 
 There was something in her voice, some 
 new, vibrant ring that caused her charges to 
 16
 
 242 " THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 glance at each other with renewed astonish 
 ment. It was hardly noticeable, but there 
 was certainly an animation, an alertness, that 
 had not been discoverable in her tones before. 
 
 " Oh," said Fales, " this is ungenerous. We 
 are only expected to leave our character be 
 hind us, as you know. We should not be 
 subjected to a sort of anticipatory vivisec 
 tion. I hope you were merciful." 
 
 " I didn't say anything," answered the 
 " dragoness " ; " and really I am very much 
 surprised, for it was something I didn't know 
 anything about." 
 
 " I am relieved," said Fales. " Of course 
 when you know something, then you will say 
 nothing. I am safe." 
 
 She laughed lightly. 
 
 " So," he said, looking complacently around, 
 " the ' dragoness ' didn't come, after all." 
 
 Ruth glanced helplessly at Miss Frew, 
 who in bewilderment was watching the un 
 conscious Fales, and the extremely conscious 
 "dragoness." 
 
 Miss Kittridge blushed deeply "She 
 must have gone to bed at ten o'clock every 
 night of her life to have that complexion at 
 her age," Miss Frew had said Miss Kittridge
 
 " THE DRAGONESS " 243 
 
 blushed deeply, as indeed she had a way 
 of doing upon all extraordinary and some 
 ordinary occasions, and spoke up brave 
 ly, before Ruth succeeded in rinding that 
 most elusive object of search something 
 to say. 
 
 " Oh," she observed, pleasantly, " I sup 
 pose I am the ' dragoness* ; but, please, 
 why did I not answer to your idea of the 
 character?" 
 
 Ruth cast on her a glance of unquestion 
 able thankfulness. 
 
 "Why, you you're too young," stammer 
 ed Fales, utterly disconcerted. 
 
 " What a subtle compliment !" laughed 
 Miss Kittridge. 
 
 What Fales answered and what the " drag- 
 oness " said that evening, are of no particu 
 lar consequence, or -would only aid in a 
 slight degree in forming any conception of 
 the remarkable character thus unexpectedly 
 introduced to Andros, or would tend only 
 slightly to promote an understanding of the 
 singular events that took place during Mrs. 
 Abernethy's absence events over which 
 she is to this day puzzled. Sufficient it is 
 to say that Sigourney Fales and the " drag-
 
 244 " THE DRAGONESS 
 
 oness" seemed to find inexhaustible subjects 
 for conversation ; that soon Miss Frew re 
 turned unnoticed to the piano, and Ruth 
 slipped unperceived into the adjoining room 
 to finish a book she had begun before 
 Christmas. At first neither of these gave 
 great heed to the flight of time, but as the 
 more rapid minute-hand had overtaken and 
 passed once and again his staid and seri 
 ous fellow-wayfarer, they gradually became 
 aware that they were getting sleepy. First 
 the onyx-and-gilt clock in the drawing-room 
 struck the hour trippingly; then the quarter 
 was sounded by the old timepiece on the 
 landing, that had come down from another 
 generation, when they took account of such 
 trifles ; then the half rang out faintly from 
 some remote region above ; and then again 
 came the hour. 
 
 "He is telling her his very oldest story," 
 whispered Ruth to Miss Frew, as she joined 
 her in the music-room ; " and she is actually 
 laughing as though she enjoyed it." 
 
 Another sixty minutes passed, and the 
 situation was becoming serious. 
 
 " She is begging him to tell her," repeated 
 Miss Frew, " how he got out of Paris during
 
 " THE DRAGONESS 245 
 
 the siege, and if he once begins upon that 
 we are lost." 
 
 Another hour dragged on, and finally 
 Fales, with visible reluctance, managed to 
 rise. 
 
 "Did he ask her to drive with him?" 
 whispered Ruth as they wearily made their 
 way up-stairs. 
 
 "I think so," replied Miss Frew, drowsily. 
 
 " What did she say?" 
 
 " I think she said that she would." 
 
 Ill 
 
 When Miss Frew and Ruth came down 
 the next morning they found the "drag- 
 oness " already in the breakfast-room. It 
 transpired long afterwards that she had arisen 
 when the day was still so new as not to be 
 recognizable by good society, and had pa 
 tiently awaited their appearance. 
 
 " Well," she said, brightly, " what are you 
 going to do this morning?" 
 
 Before Ruth could answer, a servant an 
 nounced that Mrs. Dallison wished to speak 
 to her. 
 
 " I'll bring her in," exclaimed Ruth.
 
 246 " THE DRAGONESS " 
 
 " Do," said the " dragoness." " I want to 
 see her so very much." 
 
 "Are you still alive?" asked Mrs. Dallison 
 as Ruth met her in the hall. "And are you 
 already prepared to adopt dress reform ? 
 Do you feel an overpowering desire to vote?" 
 
 " Come," answered Ruth, mysteriously. 
 
 Mrs. Dallison, with her light, rapid tread, 
 crossed the threshold of the breakfast-room, 
 and stopped short. Certainly the " drag 
 oness " was no gorgon, but she seemed to 
 have an astonishingly petrifying effect upon 
 those who beheld her. 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. "Tom," involun 
 tarily. 
 
 " Mrs. Dallison wishes to see you," said 
 Ruth, rushing to the rescue, and looking at 
 the " dragoness," who stood up nervously 
 clasping and unclasping her hands. 
 
 " Yes, Miss Kittridge," said Mrs. Dallison, 
 recovering from her too evident astonish 
 ment. " I am going to have a little dinner 
 and dance at the Country Club to-night, and 
 I want you all to come." 
 
 Now, if ever, was the chance for the "drag 
 oness" to prove herself the true duenna; now 
 was the time for her to exhibit that firmness
 
 " THE DRAGONESS " 247 
 
 of character and promptness of resolution that 
 would in future assure to her unquestioned 
 obedience and respect. But she did not 
 seem particularly determined, or at all cer 
 tain what she would do. Indeed, she looked 
 helplessly at Ruth, and only asked, mildly, 
 
 " Do you think that we could?" 
 
 " Of course," assured Ruth, joyfully ; while 
 in instantaneous process she thought : " Of 
 all things, the Country Club, Mrs. ' Tom,' 
 and probably Harold. What would auntie 
 say?" and her heart glowed with sudden 
 warmth for the " dragoness." 
 
 " We will have the greatest pleasure in 
 accepting your kind invitation," said that 
 personage, a little primly. 
 
 " If," said Mrs. " Tom," as she stood upon 
 the door-step, whither Ruth had accompanied 
 her, " the rural districts contain any more 
 like that, I hope that they will stay there. 
 I am generally quite a self-satisfied per 
 son, but a complexion such as that is alone 
 enough to make one perfectly emerald with 
 envy!" and, entering her coupe", she viciously 
 slammed the door. 
 
 W T hen Ruth returned and took her place at 
 the table, she found Miss Kittridge in evi-
 
 248 " THE DRAGONESS " 
 
 dent distress, and clearly possessed with some 
 thing she found extremely difficult'to say. 
 
 " I," she began, then paused " I want to 
 ask you something. About you know 
 what ought I to wear to-night?" 
 
 " Oh," exclaimed Ruth, " almost anything 
 will do." 
 
 " But," said the " dragoness," hopelessly, 
 " I don't seem to have even anything. You 
 see I never have cared very much about 
 my clothes." Then she added, in a sudden 
 burst of confidence, " I wish now that I had." 
 
 " I think," interrupted Miss Frew, " that 
 you might, if you wouldn't mind, take some 
 thing of mine," 
 
 " Oh! would you let me?" cried the "drag 
 oness," with an expression of the deepest 
 gratitude in her tone. " Do you think they 
 would fit?" 
 
 " We can try," answered Miss Frew. 
 
 Miss Kittridge advanced before the great 
 mirror, while Ruth and Miss Frew fell back 
 to get a better view of the result of their 
 labors. 
 
 " It is simply perfect," said Ruth, impres 
 sively, in irrepressible admiration.
 
 " THE DRAGONESS " 249 
 
 The "dragoness" looked up with a short, 
 excited laugh ; retreated a step, and then 
 gazed silently at the reflection in the glass. 
 For a long time, motionless, wordless, she 
 stood contemplating the small, slight, modish 
 , 'figure the mirror revealed to her, studying it as 
 one might some interesting stranger; then she 
 sighed deeply, and, turning, made a swift, pos 
 itive gesture with her right hand, such as one 
 makes when he puts something from him. 
 
 "I feel 'so strange," said the "dragoness;" 
 "there doesn't seem to be so much of me. 
 I suppose that is because it fits." 
 
 " Yes," assented Miss Frew. 
 
 "But then," continued the "dragoness," 
 turning her head, and vainly trying to look 
 straight down her back, " it seems as if I were 
 acting a part. I must have a rehearsal, or I 
 shall disgrace myself." 
 
 " Come down-stairs and walk about," sug 
 gested Ruth. 
 
 "Now, "said the "dragoness," as she stood 
 before the drawing-room door, " I will now 
 imagine that I am about to encounter for 
 the first time an assemblage of my fellow- 
 beings whom I wish to impress." 
 
 Drawing herself up to her full height, and
 
 250 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 bearing herself with a dignity not unworthy 
 of the stateliest presence, the " dragoness " 
 advanced through the doorway, swept into the 
 darkened apartment beyond, and suddenly 
 finding herself face to face with a startled 
 young man,who had just risen from a chair, re % 
 treated ignominiously and in utter confusion. 
 
 " Oh, Harold !" exclaimed Ruth, hasten 
 ing forward, " I had no idea you were here." 
 
 " I just sent word," he answered, without 
 once looking from the " dragoness," who, 
 blushing furiously, and evidently on the 
 point of flight, stood just within the room. 
 
 " I'm so glad you've come," continued Ruth. 
 "I want to present you to Miss Kittridge." 
 
 " I am afraid," said Redmond, at length 
 recovering from the hardly restrained laugh 
 ter that had almost prevented speech, " that 
 I have disturbed you." 
 
 "You have," said the " dragoness," sharp 
 ly ; " very seriously. I never felt more dis 
 turbed in all my life." 
 
 The strong morning light streamed in 
 through the window, and, falling on the yellow 
 and gold of the decorations, spread in a sallow 
 flood over all the place. It was a severe test, but 
 the " dragoness " stood it stood it gloriously.
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 251 
 
 " Now," said Ruth, " I know that Miss 
 Kittridge is going to ask you to stay to 
 luncheon." 
 
 " Are you ?" begged Redmond, pleadingly. 
 
 " Yes," answered the " dragoness." 
 
 The pretty ballroom of the Country Club 
 was well rilled, but the crowd was not so 
 great as to spoil the dancing. There was 
 not that crush and swirl of humanity that is 
 found so often in even larger rooms com 
 pacted masses in which individual motion 
 is almost impossible, and the dancers flow 
 along in a human current. But the floor, so 
 smooth as to reflect the lights in blurred, 
 bright blotches, as a dancing- floor should, 
 was well covered, and along the walls, hung 
 with hunting "prints," in which the "pink" 
 coats afforded brilliant color, were thick 
 rows of chaperons. It was a charming 
 room at any time, simple and tasteful in its 
 adornment, but now it seemed particularly 
 attractive, as the " buds " of the winter, in 
 a state of semi-beatitude, and the veterans, 
 married and unmarried, of other seasons, 
 with a more critical and contained enjoy 
 ment, sped onward in the dance.
 
 252 "THE DRAGONESS 
 
 Ruth, pausing as the last bars of the last 
 waltz lingered on the air and then gently 
 sank away, looked about anxiously. 
 
 "What can have become of her?" she 
 thought. " I haven't seen her for half an 
 hour." 
 
 Those who had hurried over the floor in 
 the wild rout of the dance, now, like rallied 
 soldiers, had fallen into more regular order, 
 and Ruth walked onward in their ranks. 
 
 " Where can she be ?" she asked, with her 
 lips only, as she passed Miss Frew. 
 
 Miss Frew shook her head. 
 
 "It is very strange," thought Ruth. "Can 
 it be that she isn't having a good time ?" 
 
 The slow onward march had brought her 
 opposite Mrs. " Tom," who stood by the door, 
 as radiant as a debutante, and as sagacious as 
 a dowager. 
 
 "Have you seen the ' dragoness ' any 
 where ?" asked Ruth, eagerly. 
 
 "The ' dragoness'?" answered Mrs. " Tom." 
 The name had in some way escaped from 
 custody, and for ever and aye as the " drag 
 oness " Miss Kittridge was to be known. 
 " Why, yes, I think I saw her a few moments 
 ago."
 
 " THE DRAGONESS 253 
 
 " I hope she is enjoying herself," said 
 Ruth, anxiously. 
 
 " I rather thought she was," replied Mrs. 
 " Tom," with a slight air of maliciousness. 
 " I think you'll find her somewhere down 
 stairs." 
 
 Ruth descended the steps that led to the 
 floor below, followed by Sigourney Fales, 
 with whom she had been dancing. From 
 the lower landing she was able to obtain an 
 immediate and comprehensive view of the 
 large but cozy apartment, with its broad 
 fireplace and great, low divans, that formed 
 the main room of the club-house. 
 
 In one corner, with all the cushions in 
 reach gathered for the more comfortable 
 support of her small person, sat the "drag- 
 oness," leaning back languidly, her small, 
 slippered feet peeping out from under 
 
 " Symphonies in needle-work 
 Where dimpled pearly shadows lurk," 
 
 while Harold Redmond leaned eagerly over 
 her. 
 
 "Oh!" said Miss Kittridge, in a surprised, 
 slightly injured tone; "were you looking for 
 me?"
 
 254 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 IV 
 
 And now what follows is wild, incom 
 prehensible, inconceivable. No one ever 
 exactly understood it all; no one certainly 
 ever attempted to give any account of it. 
 It seemed as if something had happened to 
 spur the not-lagging life of Andros to still 
 greater speed as if some new influence 
 more potent even than Mrs. "Tom" herself 
 had arisen and was powerfully at work. An 
 dros had been "gay" before; it was giddy 
 now. 
 
 Many marvelled at the change; Mrs. 
 " Tom," as incapable of jealousy as of any 
 other meanness, was radiant. 
 
 " I cannot conceive," she admitted " what 
 has come over the spirit of our dreams or 
 rather the spirit of our ways for we were 
 never before in such a state of wide-awake- 
 ness." 
 
 Sigourney Fales, who had heard the re 
 mark, happened that night to take Miss 
 Kittridge in to dinner. 
 
 " I know," he said, referring to Mrs. 
 " Tom's " speech, " what has made the 
 change."
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 255 
 
 "What?" asked the " dragoness," inno 
 cently. 
 
 " You," he answered. 
 
 She looked directly at him, as she had a 
 way of doing with those to whom she was 
 talking. 
 
 " What perfect nonsense !" she said. " The 
 idea that it would be possible for one person 
 to affect a whole society, and that person 
 myself !" 
 
 She paused. 
 
 "If you can change the world for one," 
 he murmured, " why not for all?" 
 
 The "dragoness" laughed merrily. 
 
 It must have been the "dragoness." She 
 had become the rage ; all men extolled her 
 fairness, her manner, her gowns, and most 
 women envied her such praise ; but, master 
 ed by her careless, fearless, unconscious car 
 riage, they forgot any bitterness they might 
 feel, and liked and admired her too. 
 
 The " dragoness " drove and dined and 
 danced. No duckling ugly or otherwise, 
 and the "dragoness" was distinctly "other 
 wise" ever took to the swim more kindly 
 than did this strange, unaccountable being. 
 From luncheon she went to " teas," from
 
 256 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 " teas " to dinners, and from dinners to 
 dances. Indeed, there was little to which 
 she did not go nothing at which she did 
 not stay, once having gone. 
 
 " I hardly know you," said Harold Red 
 mond, as he led with her the Harpendings' 
 cotillon. 
 
 "That is not strange," she answered; "I 
 hardly know myself." 
 
 She traced with her foot a mysterious 
 figure on the white, duck-covered floor, and 
 looked up. 
 
 "Come, "she said, impatiently, "one more 
 turn before the music stops." 
 
 It was very strange; she seemed to braathe 
 with stronger, freer lung ; to revel as if in 
 the expanse of a more ample life. 
 
 " I must have been frivolous all my life," 
 she confided to Ruth, " and never have 
 known it. Is not that tragic?" Then she 
 laughed, and added, " I feel as if you were 
 bringing me out." 
 
 And it did seem as if the " dragoness " 
 were some open-eyed debutante, just realiz 
 ing the possibilities of a life dreamed in dull 
 school-rooms over dreary exercises a longed- 
 for life where all the world would be as it
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 257 
 
 was between the pages of hidden novels 
 distracting and delicious. 
 
 The Abernethy library is no pretence. 
 The large book-cases rise on three sides 
 from the floor to the ceiling, filled on the 
 lower shelves with many " tall copies," and, 
 on the upper, with lighter volumes that seem 
 to have risen naturally to the top. It is a 
 large and handsome room, with heavy wood 
 work and a massive fireplace. Here and 
 there are serious-looking bronzes, and in one 
 corner a marble shows in ghostly whiteness. 
 
 On this dull February day it seemed par 
 ticularly dark, the gray light of the waning 
 afternoon merely illumining a narrow space 
 about the windows, and leaving the shadowed 
 depths of the room in an obscurity broken 
 only by the occasional and fitful gleams of 
 the fire. If Mrs. Abernethy, or Ruth, or 
 even Miss Frew, could have looked within 
 its book-lined walls at that particular time 
 of the winter day, she would have beheld a 
 scene that would have surprised and per 
 plexed her. 
 
 The " dragoness," with her hands behind 
 her and her back towards the embrasure of 
 17
 
 258 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 the deep window, stood like one at bay : while 
 before her, in evident agitation, with pale 
 cheeks and flashing eyes, was Harold Red 
 mond, utterly unconscious of the absurdity 
 of his own appearance. Whether the "drag- 
 oness" was aware of it or not was uncertain, 
 for though at times she seemed inclined to 
 laugh hysterically, there were moments when 
 it was evident she was quite as near bursting 
 into tears. 
 
 " No, no, no !" said the " dragoness," with 
 steadily increasing emphasis. 
 
 " But why not ?" urged Redmond, vig 
 orously. 
 
 " Because because you are crying for the 
 moon," she said, "and that, you know, is 
 very silly." 
 
 " But if I want it, I want it," said Harold, 
 stoutly. 
 
 "How absurd you are!" said the "drag 
 oness." "Science will tell you that the 
 moon is only an old, cold, dead star." 
 
 " It is my star," he said, sullenly. 
 
 "You should wish for some fair young 
 planet," observed the "dragoness," glancing 
 out of the window into the bare, brown gar 
 den, where the great spongy snow-flakes
 
 "THE DRAGONESS 259 
 
 melted as soon as they fell, " that is just 
 swinging out into space and life." 
 
 " I love you, I do ; and I cannot say or 
 think anything else," said Harold, evidently 
 reverting to some former stage of the inter 
 view. 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed the " dragoness," with 
 a little start, " it is very wrong of you to 
 say this." 
 
 " Why ?" 
 
 " There are a great many whys," she an 
 swered, seriously ; " so very many." She 
 paused for a moment, and then went on, 
 more slowly and sadly : " I know that you 
 believe that you feel what you say, but how 
 long do you believe you would feel as you 
 do now?" 
 
 " Always." 
 
 " I think not," went on the " dragoness," 
 and then for a moment she did not speak. 
 " I have not treated what you have said 
 with the seriousness that it has deserved 
 with the respect that I have really felt for 
 it. I thought that perhaps we could get 
 along the best in that way. Harold" she 
 put out her hand, but as Redmond made a 
 movement as if to take it, she swiftly placed it
 
 260 " THE DRAGONESS " 
 
 again behind her "do not think that I do 
 not prize what you have said. I prize it too 
 highly, perhaps." She again paused. " No, 
 no! You must not make me say anything, 
 for anything that I would want to say I 
 would be sure to regret." 
 
 " But can't you won't you 
 
 " What I may feel or think," interrupted 
 the "dragoness," "you must not ask me, and 
 I must not ask myself. I must not, cannot, 
 feel anything. I am an old woman." 
 
 " You are only six months older than I 
 am," urged Redmond. 
 
 " At my age that is a very great deal," 
 said the " dragoness,'' firmly. 
 
 " But I love you/' said Redmond again, 
 who, with a lover's instinct, knew that in 
 that sentence all is said, that in those sim 
 ple words lies his strongest argument. 
 
 " Yes, you do now," responded the " drag 
 oness," still more seriously. " But you have 
 loved others, and you will again. Before I 
 came here I must tell you all the 'whys' 
 you know you cared for Ruth ; you had all 
 but told her so." 
 
 " But I had not seen you." 
 
 " I am only the fancy of the moment.
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 261 
 
 You love her, and she loves you. You are 
 hers by right of youth, of beauty, of love, 
 and you shall not I shall not let you 
 make a mistake. If she suspected what you 
 have told me, she would be very miserable. 
 You must love her, and you must marry 
 her." 
 
 " But" 
 
 " You do not think now that you will do 
 it, but you will ; and the time will come when 
 you will bless me for what I have done 
 when you will laugh at yourself for thinking 
 that you ever could have been in love with 
 an old woman like me. Yes, Harold, that 
 time will come, and you will thank me for 
 saving you from yourself. No one shall ever 
 know what you have said to me ; not Ruth, 
 for she might imagine that this meant more 
 to you than it really does. You will forget 
 all about it, and I " 
 
 "And you ?" said Redmond, as the "drag- 
 oness " paused. 
 
 "Kneel down," she said; and as Redmond 
 sank on one knee at her feet she brushed 
 back an errant lock of his hair, and, bending 
 over, kissed him on the forehead. "And I will 
 forget too," she murmured.
 
 262 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 V 
 
 Mrs. Abernethy, under the graceful arches 
 of the Ponce de Leon, opened her letters, one 
 after another, with that complete calm which 
 is the product of an easy conscience, an as 
 sured position, and the knowledge that the 
 most elaborate menu has held no terrors in 
 the past, and is not likely to do so even in 
 the future. 
 
 "It's very singular that Ruth does not 
 write more frequently," she said to Aber 
 nethy, " and more fully." 
 
 Abernethy glanced up from his paper, 
 growled pleasantly, and went on with his 
 reading. 
 
 " Good gracious !" said Mrs. Abernethy, 
 suddenly. 
 
 Like an experienced husband, Abernethy 
 had come to read with readiness that strange 
 code of signals known to man and wife that 
 private system of matrimonial communica 
 tion, swift as telegraphy, secret as a cipher 
 and he looked up quickly as he caught the 
 rising inflection in his wife's voice. 
 
 " Hear what Mrs. Everingham writes to 
 me," continued Mrs. Abernethy, excitedly.
 
 "THE DRAGONESS" 263 
 
 " You know I asked her to look out a little 
 for what was going on. And now just listen 
 to what she says : ' My dear Sarah,' " she 
 read, " ' you remember with what reluctance 
 I always speak of all that concerns others, 
 but your parting injunctions and the interest 
 I take in you and yours, in a manner, will ac 
 count for what I am about to say. We, of 
 course, agree perfectly in our ideas as to cer 
 tain demoralizing conditions that have lately 
 displayed themselves in Andros, and as to 
 those who are chiefly responsible for their 
 existence. I. know what you think and feel 
 in regard to certain matters, and I am sure 
 you will fully endorse my opinion as to a 
 number of facts that have come to my no 
 tice. I hesitate to write it, but Miss Kit- 
 tridge, I fear, is not a proper person to be in 
 trusted with the guidance of two girls in the 
 society of Andros. I need only mention to 
 you the fact that she is seen almost daily in 
 the park with Mrs. " Tom " how I hate 
 these odious and undignified appellations 
 that have now become only too common ! 
 and that Harold Redmond is a constant vis 
 itor at the house. We all know how unhap 
 py Mrs. "Tom " has made her poor mother
 
 264 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 our school-girl friend and we must accept 
 her for that mother's sake; but Harold Red 
 mond, though entitled by family and fortune 
 to the highest consideration, has forfeited by 
 his heedlessness the consideration of all self- 
 respecting people. The latter part of the 
 season has been very gay, and the girls and 
 the " dragoness," as she is commonly known 
 here, have been everywhere. Sigourney 
 Fales is most attentive to her, and rumor 
 says that they will soon become engaged, if, 
 indeed, they are not engaged already. Re 
 port is also equally busy with the names of 
 your niece and Harold Redmond. If you 
 do not wish to see ' Mrs. Abernethy 
 paused. " We must start for the North at 
 once," she said, sternly. 
 
 VI 
 
 How it came about no one ever exactly 
 knew ; the matter was as much wrapped up 
 in mystery as the whole of this strange af 
 fair. But before the autumn Ruth's en 
 gagement to Harold Redmond was formally 
 announced. That "love conquers all things" 
 is an adage that, although not entitled to
 
 "THE DRAGONESS 265 
 
 rank perhaps with the brand-new truths of 
 scientific investigation, may still find some 
 advocates and adherents. Many have be 
 lieved that it was the steady persistence of 
 love that finally conquered Mrs. Abernethy. 
 It is certain that if it was so, it was no mean 
 victory. 
 
 After a brief betrothal, the wedding took 
 place. And one morning in late autumn, 
 when the yellow leaves brushed lightly 
 across the carpet on which the two walked 
 from the church door beneath a shower of 
 rice and blessings, Ruth and Harold Red 
 mond went out into life together man and 
 wife. 
 
 " I owe it all to you," wrote Ruth to the 
 " dragoness" from Algiers, whither the wed 
 ding trip had taken her. "If you had not 
 come, we would not have seen each other so 
 constantly and loved each other so much. . . . 
 It was very cruel and very kind of you to 
 send that great dragon with the jewelled 
 eyes for my wedding present. Gorgeous as 
 it is, and magnificent as it will look in the 
 centre of the table on state occasions, you 
 must know that I want to forget that even
 
 266 "THE DRAGONESS" 
 
 for a moment I ever thought of you other 
 than as I do now the dearest, kindest, 
 wisest being in all the world. . . . There is no 
 one in the universe like Harold, I am sure, 
 and I know that I do not deserve such bliss 
 as this. I am afraid that I have been very 
 vain and thoughtless and selfish. I must 
 get you to help me to improve myself to 
 help me not to waste my life as I have in 
 the past. . . . You must marry Sigourney 
 Fales. He loves you passionately, and I 
 know that you like him very much. I am 
 sure that is what it must come to at last. 
 Nothing could possibly be nicer, and I am 
 sure you would be very, very happy." . . .
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 " I want a hero : an uncommon want, 
 When every year and month sends forth a new one." 
 
 MISS ROSMARY sat gazing at the 
 new Jean Francois Millet. Her aunt, 
 who, as all the world knows, is the sole rela 
 tive of the heiress and reigning beauty, had 
 bought the celebrated picture at the last sale, 
 and only within a day or two had it been sent 
 home and hung in the gallery of the great 
 house, that grim pile stretching so many 
 precious feet along the Avenue, which the 
 famous Mr. Rosmary had left to his only 
 child. 
 
 Miss Rosmary's thoughts ran in mingled 
 revery. She was at half-angry, half-conten 
 tious odds with the world just now, and it 
 was not strange to her that the unfortunate 
 painter had been left to creep through a sad 
 life to a dismal grave. But, after all, would 
 he have been happier in another existence?
 
 270 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 Even if his peasants those sad, powerful, 
 poetic creatures should step from their 
 frames into the ducal palaces and the man- 
 - sions of millionaires that now gave so many 
 of them harborage, would they not find all 
 about them trivial, unsatisfactory, provok 
 ing ? The existences of those about them 
 might bring wonder to the brain and a 
 shadow of fear to the hearts of such simple- 
 fibred, little -gifted, meagre -lived folk as 
 the broad-natured villager of Barbizon had 
 painted; still, would such lives not appear 
 to them contemptible? And then Miss Ros- 
 mary tapped a petulant foot upon the pol 
 ished floor. But Miss Rosmary and she 
 quite understood herself was not by any 
 means dissatisfied with this sublunary globe. 
 Nor was. humanity as a whole, or in im 
 agined instances, at all out of the way to 
 her. The trouble was with the world which 
 is implied when the word is used in a re 
 stricted sense the world which is, after all, 
 the true world to each of us ; the universe 
 of our daily round, of our friends and of our 
 enemies, of our loves and of our hates, of 
 our hopes and of our fears, of our deeds 
 and of our misdeeds. Her life, it seemed to
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 271 
 
 her, was vapid, void, although to all others 
 it appeared to be as full and as finely ac 
 cented an existence as was possible to a 
 young woman in the very flush of the rest 
 less, feverish society of this our America 
 towards the last of the hurrying years of 
 this rapid -footed century a society she 
 thought shallow, imitative, wholly unorig 
 inal ; forgetting that the ingenious ages that 
 have accomplished so much have only been 
 able to discover a very few ways in which 
 people may amuse themselves. But Miss 
 Rosmary scarcely ran into such an analysis 
 as she sat and looked at the picture so filled 
 with the pathos of patient, common exist 
 ence. Perhaps it had an unperceived appeal 
 to her, for the foot committed a little stamp 
 - it might be, self-condemnatory, it might be 
 self-assertive and then Miss Rosmary arose 
 and walked across the room. She paused be 
 fore a Meissonier. What truth of drawing, 
 what real breadth, what spirit, in the few 
 square inches of the picture ! What a gentle 
 man of the gallant time! How quick would 
 have been his foot along the gay paths of 
 adventure, how ready the sword at his side 
 if the zest of hazard led to the point of
 
 272 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 danger! Both pictures added to her dis 
 content with all about her ; with the real 
 sameness of the things to which her most 
 modern and modish life confined her ; with 
 the sameness of the people who in the con 
 tentment of their unmeaningness perplexed 
 her. Was there nothing but capricious punc 
 tilio and artificial ritual ; was there not some 
 thing down in the press of the common 
 world where the dust half hid the con 
 flict ; might not lives be found there, strong, 
 inspiring, effectual lives, that would justify 
 creation ? And in the shadowy and tenu 
 ous haze of her dissatisfaction there was a 
 well-defined nucleus of denser discontent 
 discontent with things happening in al 
 most regular recurrence to herself. Wom 
 ankind, of course, did not please her 
 she had only one friend who perfectly 
 understood her and whom she perfectly 
 understood but mankind, masculine man 
 kind! 
 
 An aggressively, negatively unobjection 
 able young man, without a merit or a pros 
 pect, had offered her his very gentlemanly- 
 looking hand and something he called his 
 heart at about two that morning. Really
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 273 
 
 the thing was getting to be of too frequent 
 occurrence. There were so many of them, 
 so much alike, with their pale faces, their 
 trained accents, their consummate dress, 
 their routine lives, their routine topics 
 their clubs, their races, their hunting, and 
 themselves. Of course she detected slight 
 differences in them there are differences 
 in the dress-coated, w r hite-waistcoated, full- 
 dressed swallows that sit along the telegraph 
 wire, ignorant of the tidings of the world 
 flowing at their feet for they did not all 
 talk to her about the same things, although 
 they did in much the same manner and in 
 much the same tone. Here, one favored her 
 with languid, pessimistic doubts ; there, one 
 drawled complacent negations, as if such 
 things as establishing a race in unhappiness 
 or depopulating the heavens were easily 
 within the day's work of either. Some 
 were ill of many things ; they had caught 
 aesthetic ailments of which they never would 
 be cured unless beauty were out of fashion ; 
 they suffered from complicated sentimental 
 afflictions from which their recovery was 
 only too certain. And there were those who 
 employed language in accounts of exploits 
 18
 
 274 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 across the fences of neighboring counties ; 
 and the annotators of the gossip of the 
 day these perhaps the best worth hear 
 ing after all, she sometimes thought, for 
 they were always so much more simple and 
 natural. 
 
 She knew that in most girls there is some 
 thing left over from childhood that leads 
 them to take delight in terrifying them 
 selves, in imagination, with the exact-coated 
 entities they see so often and of whom 
 they know so little, as in younger years 
 they took delight in frightening themselves 
 with the terrors of a jack-in-the-box. They 
 like to feel the same thrill when, with un- 
 perceived glance, they see these wonderful 
 beings gazing from out mysterious inacces 
 sibility through a club window, that they 
 experienced when, taken to some circus, 
 they saw the animals in their cages. But in 
 the lives of such as those who surrounded 
 her, Miss Rosmary found no more to excite 
 her imagination than she might in the course 
 of a letter sent through the post-office. 
 What chance was there, then, for such as 
 he who had so kindly taken his negative in 
 the De Jones's conservatory at 2 A. M. ?
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 275 
 
 Does any one suppose that a girl falls in 
 love with a mere man ? There is no such 
 real difference between two fairly present 
 able masculine creatures as there is between 
 either of them and the being a young girl's 
 imagination makes of one and not of the 
 other, if it is in the one to arouse imagina 
 tion and give it wing. 
 
 Miss Rosmary had lost or mislaid not a 
 little of her temper as she was driven home 
 the night before. The wheels ground heavily 
 on the pavement ; all but one or two of the 
 over-worked echoes of the Avenue had taken 
 themselves off to their tenement houses ; just 
 past her aunt, half asleep and leaning her 
 head against the side of the carriage, she 
 caught glimpses of the grouped and scat 
 tered stars in unobstructed space. Was not 
 the world wider than the " precincts of a 
 billet-doux " ? Were there not men some 
 where men who were strong to do things, 
 and did them ; men whose failures even 
 would awaken interest ; men whose suc 
 cesses would excite exultant pride? How 
 without such as these would the world have 
 advanced so far ; how would great discov 
 eries have been made, and great fortunes;
 
 276 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 how brave deeds done and great books 
 written ? Had she seen any in the last 
 hours, any in that atmosphere heavy with 
 the odors of flowers, astir in flow and pulsa 
 tion, as music swelled or softened, murmur 
 ous and eddying, in the undertones and 
 ripples of talk and laughter had she seen 
 any who would take the enlisting shilling 
 from Effort, Fame's sergeant and orderly? 
 
 And then she laughed at herself. 
 
 Of what was she thinking? Her thoughts 
 ran back to a being of younger fancy, of 
 more unformed dream a Ruy-Blas-Hernani 
 sort of creature, daring, resolute, sometimes 
 arbitrary, but always commanding, bearing 
 down doubt with scant ceremony, wooing 
 with humility shown only to herself, carry 
 ing her away almost forcefully if need be, 
 but always with that best gentleness, the 
 gentleness of the strong. And, after all, 
 was her present hero less spectacular, less 
 dramatic ? Or had the drama, its laws, its 
 tone, only changed? Was she as absurd 
 now as then? She was sure she was not. 
 There was romance in the world since there 
 were endurance, and effort, and the glad 
 spirit of adventure ; and where there was
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 277 
 
 romance there were men and women such 
 as those of whom she dreamed, for her 
 argument ran in such circle without such 
 men and women there would be no romance. 
 
 "The morning's mail, Miss Rosmary," 
 said a servant, entering. 
 
 She took half a dozen letters from the man, 
 hastily looked them over, selected two as 
 worthy of earliest attention, and as she open 
 ed the first she hummed, almost sang, three 
 lines from the song of the Blind Beggar " in 
 a silken cloak," from the old ballad : 
 
 "When first our king his fame did advance, 
 And sought his title in delicate France, 
 In many places great perils past he " 
 
 and then she read : 
 
 " BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 " DEAREST MILLICENT, I know I am 
 your only and your half -desperate friend. 
 Yesterday was my birthday twenty-two. 
 But I think a girl's life should be counted 
 double ; I always think of summer as one 
 year, and winter as another. Twenty-two ! 
 I am forty-four if I am a day. No one here 
 can give me satisfactory sympathy, as no
 
 278 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 one can understand my troubles. But you 
 you know me, and you know how much a 
 very modern girl has against her in having 
 so much for her. You recognize our eman 
 cipation ; you appreciate the embarrassment 
 of our freedom our freedom without guid 
 ing precedent. You know that we have 
 thrust upon us new knowledge, new oppor 
 tunities ; that we must think, decide, act ; 
 that as well as old duties to others, we have 
 new duties to ourselves. You know all 
 these things none better than you and 
 you will understand me when I say that I 
 am suffering from one of my not unusual at 
 tacks of acute conscientiousness, aggravated 
 this time and with peculiar symptoms. 
 
 " You have heard a good deal about me. 
 I did not like your last letter because it did 
 not tell me what ; and you know that I 
 would tell you everything if there only could 
 be everything to tell. And well veiy well 
 if you'll let me do it in my own way. 
 
 " You know my exacting nature. You 
 know with what antagonism I stand against 
 the world if it does not continually give me 
 its superlatives, its quintessences ; and they 
 want me to marry a man who is not a par-
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 279 
 
 ticle of a paragon. Tarn living in what in 
 our old Latin grammar I never studied an 
 English or a French one, and I am not sure 
 if it is the same in those I think was called 
 the first person singular of the pluperfect 
 subjunctive. ' I might, could, would, or 
 should have loved.' I might have loved had 
 Providence seen fit to give me a humble 
 spirit, a meek, unquestioning heart ; I could 
 have loved if I had ever met a master for 
 my irreverent nature ; I would have loved 
 undoubtedly in spite of all, if I had been 
 my own grandmother, if I had not been filled 
 with imperative intellectual needs, with pos 
 itive artificial wants, trained to criticise, 
 analyze, and dissect myself until I am incapa 
 ble of a natural, spontaneous, blundering, un 
 questioning impulse ; I should have loved, 
 yes I should indeed have loved, and no 
 one knows it better than myself I should 
 have loved if I desired the usual happiness 
 of a usual world. But I never have, and I 
 fear I never shall. They want me to love, 
 but what can I do if I can't ? Change the 
 man and try another? I have done this at 
 times, and my failures have been pitiable. 
 My future sits before me grinning like an
 
 28o IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 old hag. I shall grow sharper, more cynical 
 with the passing seasons, until I become the 
 fright of the callow, and, with my unimpres 
 sionable, knowing old heart, the terror of the 
 mature. But am I to blame? You and I 
 know that I am not. 
 
 " It is a vast theme that I have just started 
 
 that I am not my own grandmother. I 
 look at Copley's picture of her in her youth 
 
 did I send you my last photograph? 
 There's a contrast. She's ahead of me in 
 prettiness I fear ; but I think of her as I 
 saw her in old age, and I know that I could 
 give her, were she here, subjects, questions, 
 suggestions, that would frighten her into 
 wakefulness. I cannot be satisfied with the 
 things that satisfied her. I may be vain of 
 my invaluable sex, but it is plain to me 
 that, in what we are, as in our requirements, 
 we have advanced as far beyond our fore- 
 mothers as our masculine complements have 
 fallen behind their forefathers. Would to 
 day's men fight for a principle? Some did 
 twenty and more years ago ; but I dance 
 with none such now. To lead a cotillon is 
 their most desperate deed ; would they lead 
 a forlorn hope, or even a hope not forlorn ?
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 281 
 
 " You know that it has for some time 
 been the desire of my amiable family to see 
 me safely married. They attempt conceal 
 ment with such extraordinary care that I 
 know precisely what they try to hide, and I 
 resent their uncomplimentary fear that my 
 money exposes me to many grievous dan 
 gers dangers such as they evidently do not 
 apprehend from my charms. Every model, 
 every fairly eligible man and they are not 
 particular about years has been paraded 
 before my undazzled eyes. Until lately 
 such attacks upon my peace of heart have 
 been desultory, unsystematic ; but for the 
 last few months the family efforts have been 
 constant, concentrated, thoroughly purpose 
 ful. One individual has been chosen out 
 of all the world to make me supremely 
 happy, and he, fortunate or unfortunate, is 
 on all occasions, natural or forced, thrust 
 into my society and bepraised beyond all 
 patience. Of course you think that I must 
 detest him. But I do not; I almost a little 
 more than endure him. Our respective and 
 respected families have long been intimate 
 indeed, in colonial times I think there 
 was some intermarriage and that he is a
 
 282 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 kind of far-away cousin of mine but I 
 really have known but little of him. He was 
 abroad with his father during the three years 
 before he entered Harvard, and then for four 
 years I was away myself. He returned only 
 a few months ago from a trip around the 
 world in his yacht. He is perfectly typical 
 and perfectly commonplace. He leads a 
 life of half-busy, half-idle leisure ; he drives 
 one of the most accurately equipped coaches 
 in the country ; he has one of the finest old 
 homes in the city and one of the finest new 
 houses in Newport ; his name hangs prom 
 inent upon a main branch of that stiffly 
 drawn production, a colonial genealogical 
 tree ; he is a perfect multitude of such 
 merits ; but to me he possesses only one 
 that he does not seem to care to please me, 
 for the traits of the man of my vision are 
 neither nautical, equine, vehicular, architect 
 ural, nor historical. 
 
 " And this is the man that they want me 
 to marry. Through life you and I have 
 been fed, so to speak, on the whitest, closest- 
 winnowed wheat ; we have read the best 
 books ; we have heard the best music ; we 
 have seen the best pictures; no great statue
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 283 
 
 gives the world the charm subtler than all 
 color, the charm of pure line and complete 
 form, that we have not seen ; that polished 
 conglomerate which you think you so detest, 
 the curiously grained and veined thing they 
 call society, we have known at its best the 
 world over ; all that we have gained or 
 garnered has been attempered by a faith the 
 key-note of which is vicarious suffering, the 
 agony of divine sacrifice. These, all these, 
 are the fruits of effort. And is a woman, a 
 woman to whom a shock to taste is severer 
 than physical pain, to fall in love, to be 
 dragged into love of something masculine 
 without a hand's motion towards worthy 
 attainment of an idler who does not earn 
 his place so well as we do onrs? I will 
 have no bankrupt to existence, no man who 
 does not pay the world his debt, I please 
 do not laugh I remember that last autumn 
 at Lenox you told me that I dreamed of a 
 marvel a combination of Count d'Orsay, 
 Shelley, and James Nasmyth. Perhaps, but 
 I see what I see. 
 
 " It will all come to nothing. He does 
 not really care for me ; I, not at all for him 
 not enough even to care that he does not
 
 284 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 care for me. I would tell you, of course, if 
 there were danger or hope or anything, 
 but there is not, nor will there ever be. 
 
 " I could write a great deal about two or 
 three new actual engagements here, but I 
 believe you want to hear what I want you 
 to hear about myself from myself. I have 
 told you but little, after all ; really nothing 
 you did not know or suspect. If will be a 
 long time, Millicent, I fear we are pottery 
 or such inductile and tenacious clay before 
 either of us has more to tell the other. 
 " Incessantly yours, 
 
 " JANET. . 
 
 " P. S. I forgot to say I refused him two 
 weeks ago." 
 
 Miss Rosmary did not lay the letter down ; 
 she sat with eyes upon it as she held it in 
 uplifted hand. 
 
 Miss Rosmary, who had never seen him, 
 could see as plainly as if he were visibly 
 before her the man to whom they wished 
 to marry her friend. She thought that she 
 knew the kind perfectly a useless creature, 
 solicitous about his dress, but ignorant of a 
 manner ; whose groom broke his horses for
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 285 
 
 him ; who would not have dared sail his 
 own yacht ; who was indifferent as to what 
 the world thought of his brains, but was 
 proud of the fame of his millions ; who 
 would rather be a guest at Sandringham 
 than master of the White House. What 
 could such a man as this Gerald Massie 
 the gossips had given her the name do ? 
 And what could the others like him, that 
 she knew so well, do that would be worth 
 the doing? She did not demand much; 
 she was very reasonable, she assured herself. 
 She only asked that a man should be 
 strong, forceful ; that he should have done 
 something, or proved to her his capability 
 for doing something, to awaken her respect 
 or excite her sympathy. But among those 
 she knew or was likely to know ! 
 
 Miss Rosmary opened her second letter in 
 quick impatience. 
 
 " ELECTRA, MONTANA. 
 
 "MY DEAR MILLICENT, Of course you 
 are surprised to receive a letter from me 
 written from this place ; but here I am, and 
 here I shall be detained for several days. I 
 am here, and don't skip you will learn 
 why in the climax of my letter.
 
 286 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 "Several things not common to a club man 
 a tame man of the city's wilderness have 
 happened to me since I saw you last ; things 
 I can tell you worth the telling, and which 
 could best be told in the twilight of some 
 lingering dinner dying in its glory, but which 
 I will nevertheless attempt to tell you now, 
 so anxious am I that you should know them, 
 and so sure am I that they will interest you. 
 If I were a wise man I would not do it, for I 
 shall only be giving you an opportunity to say 
 4 1 told you so ;' but when I am enthusiastic 
 I am never wise, and I am enthusiastic now. 
 
 " I suppose that they have been selling 
 violets for a long time on the corners of 
 Fifth Avenue, and that even the watering- 
 carts are out. They are having out here 
 what they call spring ; it is to me rather 
 the disturbed end of a vicious winter dying 
 slowly, and like a stage villain torn into 
 agonies by an aroused conscience. It has 
 been cold; great storms have been frequent; 
 the earth has been deluged, and every stream 
 is swollen. 
 
 "I know that you never read the news 
 papers, unless it is to see that you have been 
 at a place where you never thought of going,
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 287 
 
 or were engaged to a man who had never 
 been presented to you ; but even if you did 
 read them, so insignificant a fact as what 
 happened to an express train in the far 
 Northwest carrying a hundred and thirty- 
 nine passengers among whom was the 
 amiable and fairly appreciated writer of 
 these lines would make but small show in 
 the crush and condensation of the Associ 
 ated Press despatches, and would not be 
 likely to attract your attention. 
 
 " The railroad from Electra to Cartonsville 
 runs through great, almost uninhabited bar 
 rens, and at Black's Ford crosses the river. 
 It is a wild, desolate country all around ; 
 some convulsion of nature has torn out the 
 channel in which the stream runs between 
 high, broken, and rocky banks. Day before 
 yesterday the inhabitants of Black's Fo"rd, 
 fifty in number perhaps, noticed that the 
 water was rising rapidly. My informant, an 
 engineer's rod-man, left there to see that 
 the bridge is kept clear and the signal light 
 at the end properly shown my informant, 
 whose account of what was said I follow 
 quite closely, tells me that nothing like it 
 had ever been known there before.
 
 288 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 " The gray clouds broke raggedly at sun 
 set, a fierce, yellow light blazing through 
 every rift ; the wind rose, and so prevailed 
 that men with difficulty kept their feet ; 
 children were caught up by any one near 
 and carried home. When the night shut 
 down but few were gathered at the small 
 'store,' the only place of the kind at Black's 
 Ford my informant among the rest. All 
 except one belonged to the settlement a 
 stranger, a young man who had been driven 
 over from a neighboring ranch, and who 
 evidently awaited the arrival of a train. He 
 said nothing ; and though curious eyes were 
 turned on him, even the garrulous store 
 keeper forbore putting him to the question. 
 
 " It was not wholly dark outside ; there 
 was no moon, but the stars shone brightly, 
 and it seemed not far away, between the 
 driven, goaded clouds. The wind gathered 
 even more strength ; space seemed filled 
 with its sound. It roared between the river 
 banks ; it shuddered through the framework 
 *of the bridge ; at the corners of the build 
 ings strips seemed torn from it upon their 
 edges. Its shrill whistle was like the sound 
 of ripping silk ; along the barren uplands
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 289 
 
 ran noises as of knives whetted upon unvvet 
 stone. 
 
 " The door of the store was thrown sud 
 denly open and a man shouted : 
 
 " ' Come out here, all of you ! We're 
 afraid the bridge will go/ 
 
 " Even as he stood in the doorway his 
 voice could hardly be heard above the up 
 roar outside. 
 
 " All sprang to their feet ; the greater 
 number hastened to the not distant river- 
 bank. The black outlines of the great 
 bridge stood, here, clearly defined against 
 the sky ; there, lost against the massed, 
 hurrying clouds. 
 
 " ' She'll go,' said one, ' sure.' 
 
 '"She must,' assented another. 'She 
 can't stand it long.' 
 
 " ' See, see !' cried a third, ' how the wa 
 ter climbs up the 'butments.' 
 
 "As the mantle of the Tishbite divided 
 the waters, so the sheeted wind seemed to 
 drive before it flood upon flood. 
 
 " Suddenly the storekeeper spoke. 
 
 " ' When's that train due ?' he shouted. 
 
 " ' In an hour,' was the answer from all 
 sides. 
 19
 
 290 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 " ' If it don't hold up for that time the 
 train's gone,' said the storekeeper, solemnly. 
 
 "Almost as he spoke, with such tremor as 
 may come before dissolution, with groan 
 ing outcry, with the sharp crack of iron 
 torn apart, with gathering roar, the massive 
 structure bent, broke, and fell with slow, 
 final crash into the raging river. From the 
 abutments hung iron rods torn from their 
 fastenings, twisted, contorted, threatening as 
 vipers knit around some fateful head. 
 
 " ' The train's lost !' said some one above 
 the low murmur that was almost a wail. 
 
 " None dissented ; none spoke. The river 
 seemed roaring, growling for its prey ; the 
 rocks on the bank were thrust out like fangs 
 through the foam. 
 
 " ' Is there no way to give warning ?' 
 asked the stranger, speaking for the first 
 time. 
 
 " ' How'd you do it?' demanded the store 
 keeper, in the tension of the moment turning 
 angrily upon him. 
 
 " ' Is there no other way of getting 
 across?' asked the other, quietly. 
 
 " ' None.' 
 
 " ' No signal to be given ?'
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 291 
 
 " ' No,' said the station-master. ' They'll 
 drive right into the river unless there's a 
 light shown half a mile up the track.' 
 
 " ' Who's to do it ?' asked the stranger. 
 
 " ' It can't be done.' 
 
 " ' Can't we swim the river?' 
 
 "The station-master glanced down the 
 bank and laughed in half-derision. 
 
 " ' Do you think any man could get 
 through that?' he asked, sneeringly. 
 
 " ' A man might try.' 
 
 " ' Who ?' 
 
 " ' I, for one,' answered the stranger. 
 
 " ' It's death,' said some one. 
 
 "' Bring me that light yonder,' continued 
 the stranger in a quick, commanding tone, 
 ' and hang another in its place.' 
 
 " No one stirred. 
 
 " ' Do you hear me ?' he shouted, as he 
 threw off his coat. ' Bring me that light.' 
 
 " After hesitating a moment, suspicious of 
 being sent on a fool's errand, so little likely 
 did it seem that any one would have such 
 hardihood, one of the men ran towards the 
 post where shone a small lamp with a red 
 light. 
 
 " The stranger tightened the belt about
 
 292 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 his waist, walked to the water's edge, and 
 stood waiting for the lamp. 
 
 " ' Give me matches,' he said. 
 
 " Some were handed to him. 
 
 " ' And an oil-skin coat.' 
 
 " Several were offered ; he grasped the 
 nearest, and with quick, strong hand cut 
 from it two pieces. He wrapped one hastily 
 around the matches and thrust the parcel 
 into the bosom of his shirt ; the other he 
 wound around the lamp after blowing out 
 the light. 
 
 " He stood for an instant gazing at the 
 stream; then suddenly he cast off his- shoes, 
 stepped into the river, struck out, and in a 
 moment was lost to sight in the darkness. 
 
 '"By !' but the storekeeper suppressed 
 his oath 'when souls are saved he'll be sure 
 of his salvation, I don't care what else he's 
 done or hasn't.' 
 
 " As if the unuttercd but understood oath 
 gave solemnity to what was said, one of the 
 men, in low, determined voice, cried 'Amen.' " 
 
 Miss Rosmary's hand caught the letter 
 tighter ; her eyes shone with excited light. 
 In a moment she read on:
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 293 
 
 " As a crowd lining a race-track when the 
 horses sweep to the winning post, so all 
 stood rigid and silent along the shore, with 
 craning necks and eager eyes ; stood and 
 saw nothing, heard nothing but the wind 
 and the rushing water ; stood so lost in 
 strained attention that time was really the 
 nothing that it is. 
 
 " ' He's stopped her or we'd have seen her 
 head-light before this/ said one. 
 
 " ' She's often late,' answered another. 
 
 " None disputed this. 
 
 " ' Perhaps we couldn't see her lights over 
 here this weather,' said the first as the rain 
 began to fall in torrents. 
 
 " ' I tell you we could,' said the store 
 keeper. ' A man's a fool who'd think he 
 couldn't.' 
 
 " None spoke ; all knew that the angry 
 tone of the last speaker was a protest against 
 losing hope. They all stood now grouped 
 together, grouped as are frightened cattle. 
 But they were gathered in more than fear; 
 they stood in awe, in silence, as men stand 
 around a closing grave. 
 
 " Our train came to a stop with a sud-
 
 294 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 denness that brought every passenger to his 
 feet. I looked hastily out of the window. 
 The darkness was piled against the pane 
 like black marble in a quarry ; the wind 
 shrieked around the train as a maniac might, 
 finding some strange obstruction in the path 
 of his escape. I hastened forward with the 
 others. I leaned from the platform of the 
 first car and looked and listened. Just 
 in front of the train I could see moving 
 lights. 
 
 " ' He has fainted,' were the first words I 
 made ont. 
 
 " ' What has happened ?' I asked the con 
 ductor, who had been forward, as he came 
 rapidly along. 
 
 " ' The bridge below's been carried away, 
 and if that young man- hadn't come from 
 God knows where with his light, we'd all 
 have been in the river with the train on top 
 of us. Is any one of you a doctor?' 
 
 " You know about my year or two at 
 Bellevue ; perhaps I could aid, and I has 
 tened down the track. They had lifted him 
 off the rails, and lamps were held over him 
 as he lay. His eyes were closed ; he was 
 senseless, but his jaws were set in relentless
 
 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 295 
 
 resolve. We carried him to the forward 
 car. The train was backed seven miles to 
 this place, and here I am. 
 
 " The young man is still too weak to 
 give any account of himself. I am acting 
 as his nurse, and am writing in the room 
 next to the one in which he lies. I cer 
 tainly shall not leave my patient for a day 
 or two. 
 
 " And now you will remember what you 
 have always said ; you will remember our 
 many contentions ; remember your repeated 
 assertions that one must go far to find a 
 man among men that among none whom 
 you saw could a man be found : and you 
 will remember too with what serene con 
 fidence I have repeated to you that the 
 Great Duke said, ' The dandies fought well 
 at Waterloo.' 
 
 " I will let you know immediately what I 
 am going to do when I have finally decided. 
 I do not like to leave this young man. He 
 has done a fine thing and I am going to 
 see him through. I am old enough to know 
 better, but I don't. 
 
 " Sincerely your friend and guardian, 
 " JAMES GILCHRIST."
 
 296 IN MAIDEN MEDITATION 
 
 Miss Rosmary dropped the letter and sat 
 silent. She looked about her. What pre 
 tences the pictures were what mere pre 
 tences ! and the world in which she lived ! 
 Miss Rosmary started to her feet with 
 flushed cheeks. Why could she not know 
 men like this ? Poor fellow, she thought, 
 if she could only see him ; could even help 
 to care for him. How stupidly the letter 
 was written ! Nothing at all 
 
 " A telegram, Miss Rosmary," said the 
 servant, entering hastily. 
 
 Miss Rosmary tore open the yellow en 
 velope. The despatch was from Chicago, 
 and ran : 
 
 " Of course you have received my letter 
 written at Electra. Our rescuer turns out 
 to be Gerald Massie of Boston, visiting a 
 friend's ranch. He is entirely recovered, 
 and comes with me. I have taken the lib 
 erty of asking him up the river, where I 
 suppose your aunt and yourself soon go. 
 Wonderful, is it not ? 
 
 "JAMES GlLCHRIST." 
 
 THE END.
 
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