THE 
 BENT TWIG 
 
 m*^ 
 
 BY 
 
 DOROTHY CANFIELD 
 
 AUTHOR'OF 
 THE SQUIRREL CAGE, 
 HILLSBORO PEOPLE, Erfc. 
 
 V2T 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GROSSET& D U N L A P 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 Matli in the United States ci America 
 
Copyright, x&s, 
 
 BY 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Published October, 1915 
 
 Reprinted 
 
 November, December, 1915; 
 
 April, May, July (twice), August, 
 
 September, December, 1916 
 
 September. 191? 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 IN ARCADIA _ Arir 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Sylvia's Home 3 
 
 II The Marshalls' Friends 12 
 
 III Brother and Sister 26 
 
 IV Every One's Opinion of Every One Else . . 38 
 V Something About Husbands 44 
 
 VI The Sights of La Chance 53 
 
 VII " We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident ..." 70 
 
 VIII Sabotage 92 
 
 IX The End of Childhood 103 
 
 BOOK II 
 A FALSE START TO ATHENS 
 
 X Sylvia's First Glimpse of Modern Civilization . 113 
 XI Arnold's Future Is Casually Decided . . .123 
 
 XII One Man's Meat 131 
 
 XIII An Instrument in Tune 138 
 
 XIV Higher Education 145 
 
 XV Mrs. Draper Blows the Coals 153 
 
 XVI Playing with Matches 165 
 
 XVII Mrs. Marshall Sticks to Her Principles . . 179 
 XVIII Sylvia Skates Merrily on Thin Ice . . . .192 
 
 XIX As a Bird out of a Snare 206 
 
 XX " Blow, Wind; Swell, Billow; and Swim, Bark! " 217 
 
 XXI Some Years During Which Nothing Happens . 232 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 IN CAPUA AT LAST 
 
 A Grateful Carthaginian 
 
 More Talk Between Young Moderns 
 v 
 
 XXII 
 XXIII 
 
 237 
 250 
 
vi Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXIV Another Brand of Modern Talk . . . .261 
 
 XXV Nothing in the Least Modern 273 
 
 XXVI Molly in Her Element 284 
 
 XXVII Between Windward and Hemlock Mountains . 301 
 
 XXVIII Sylvia Asks Herself " Why Not? " . . . .312 
 
 XXIX A Hypothetical Livelihood 322 
 
 XXX Arnold Continues to Dodge the Renaissance . 333 
 
 XXXI Sylvia Meets with Pity 341 
 
 XXXII Much Ado 354 
 
 XXXIII "Whom God Hath Joined ..." 364 
 
 XXXIV Sylvia Tells the Truth 370 
 
 XXXV " A Milestone Passed, the Road Seems Clear " . 384 
 
 XXXVI The Road Is Not so Clear 392 
 
 XXXVII "... His wife and children perceiving it, began 
 to cry after him to return; but the man put his 
 fingers in his ears and ran on, crying, 'Life! 
 
 Life Eternal!'" 400 
 
 XXXVIII Sylvia Comes to the Wicket Gate .... 409 
 
 XXXIX Sylvia Drifts with the Majority .... 418 
 
 XL 
 
 XLI 
 
 XLII 
 
 XLIII 
 XLIV 
 
 XLV 
 
 XLVI 
 XLVII 
 
 BOOK IV 
 THE STRAIT PATH 
 
 A Call from Home 431 
 
 Home Again 440 
 
 " Strange that we creatures of the petty ways, 
 
 Poor prisoners behind these fleshly bars, 
 
 Can sometimes think us thoughts with God ablaze, 
 
 Touching the fringes of the outer stars " . . . 448 
 
 "Call now; is there any that will answer thee?" . 451 
 
 "A bruised reed will He not break, and a dimly 
 
 burning wick will He not quench" . . . 457 
 " That our soul may swim 
 We sink our heart down, bubbling, under wave " . 461 
 
 A Long Talk with Arnold 466 
 
 ". . . And .All the Trumpets Sounded!" „ . 479 
 
THE BENT TWIG 
 

BOOK I 
 IN ARCADIA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 SYLVIA'S HOME 
 
 Like most happy childhoods, Sylvia's early years lay back 
 of her in a long, cheerful procession of featureless days, the 
 outlines of which were blurred into one shimmering glow 
 by the very radiance of their sunshine. Here and there 
 she remembered patches, sensations, pictures, scents: 
 Mother holding baby sister up for her to kiss, and the fra- 
 grance of the baby powder — the pine-trees near the house 
 chanting loudly in an autumn wind — her father's alert face, 
 intent on the toy water-wheel he was setting for her in th€ 
 little creek in their field — the beautiful sheen of the pink silk 
 dress Aunt Victoria had sent her — the look of her mother's 
 steady, grave eyes when she was so sick — the leathery smell 
 of the books in the University Library one day when she 
 followed her father there — the sound of the rain pattering 
 on the low, slanting roof of her bedroom — these were the 
 occasional clearly outlined, bright-colored illuminations 
 wrought on the burnished gold of her sunny little life. 
 But from her seventh birthday her memories began to have 
 perspective, continuity. She remembered an occasional 
 whole scene, a whole afternoon, just as it happened. 
 
 The first of these must have marked the passing of some 
 unrecognized mental milestone, for there was nothing about 
 it to set it apart from any one of a hundred afternoons. It 
 may have been the first time she looked at what was about 
 her, and saw it. 
 
 9 
 
4 The Bent Twig 
 
 ' 'Mother was putting the baby to bed for his nap — not the 
 baby-sister — she was a big girl of five by this time, but 
 another baby, a little year-old brother, with blue eyes and 
 yellow hair, instead of brown eyes and hair like his two 
 sisters'. And when Mother stooped over the little bed, her 
 white fichu fell forward and Sylvia leaned to hold it back 
 from the baby's face, a bit of thoughtfulness which had a 
 rich reward in a smile of thanks from Mother. That was 
 what began the remembered afternoon. Mother's smiles 
 were golden coin, not squandered on every occasion. Then, 
 she and Mother and Judith tiptoed out of the bedroom into 
 Mother's room and there stood Father, with his University 
 clothes on and yet his hair rather rumpled up, as though 
 he had been teaching very hard. He had a pile of papers 
 in his hand and he said, " Barbara, are you awfully busy 
 just now ? " 
 
 Mother said, Oh no, she wasn't at all. (She never was 
 busy when Father asked her to do something, although 
 Sylvia could not remember ever once having seen her sit 
 and do nothing, no, not even for a minute!) Then Father 
 said, " Well, if you could run over these, I'd have time to 
 have some ball with the seminar after they're dismissed. 
 These are the papers the Freshmen handed in for that 
 Economics quiz." Mother said, " Sure she could," or the 
 equivalent of that, and Father thanked her, turned Judith 
 upside-down and right-side-up again so quick that she didn't 
 know what had happened, and left them all laughing as 
 they usually were when Father ran down from the study 
 for something. 
 
 So Sylvia and Judith, quite used to this procedure, sat 
 down on the floor with a book to keep them quiet until 
 Mother should be through. Neither of them could read, 
 although Sylvia was beginning to learn, but they had been 
 told the stories so many times that they knew them from 
 the pictures. The book they looked at that day had the 
 story of the people who had rowed a great boat across the 
 water to get a gold sheepskin, and Sylvia told it to Judith, 
 word for word, as Father always told it. She glanced up 
 
Sylvia's Home 5 
 
 at Mother from time to time to make sure she was getting it 
 Tight; and ever afterwards the mention of the Argonauts 
 brought up before Sylvia's eyes the picture of her mother 
 that day, sitting very straight, her strong brown fingers 
 making an occasional mark on the papers, as she turned 
 them over with a crisp rustle, her quiet face bent, in a calm 
 fixity of attention, over the pages. 
 
 Before they knew it, the work was done, Father had come 
 for the papers, and showed Sylvia one more twist in the 
 acrobatic stunt they were learning together. She could 
 already take his hands and run up to his shoulders in one 
 squirrel-like dash; but she was to learn the reverse and 
 come down on the other side, and she still got tangled up 
 with which foot to put first. So they practised whenever 
 they had, as now, a minute or two to spare. 
 
 Then Judith was set to play with her blocks like the baby 
 she still was, while Sylvia and Mother had a lesson in read- 
 ing. Sylvia could remember the very sound of Mother's 
 clear voice as she corrected a mistake. They were reading 
 a story about what happened to a drop of water that fell 
 into the brook in their field; how, watering the thirsty 
 cornfields as it flowed, the brook ran down to the river 
 near La Chance, where it worked ever so many mills and 
 factories and things. Then on through bigger and bigger 
 rivers until it reached the Mississippi, where boats rode on 
 its back; and so on down to the ocean. And there, after 
 resting a while, it was pumped up by the sun and made 
 into a cloud, and the wind blew it back over the land and 
 to their field again, where it fell into the brook and said, 
 " Why, how-de-do, Sylvia — you still here ? " 
 
 Father had written the story, and Mother had copied it 
 out on the typewriter so it would be easy for Sylvia to read. 
 
 After they had finished she remembered looking out of 
 the window and watching the big white clouds drift across 
 the pale bright April sky. They were full of hundreds of 
 drops of water, she thought, that were going to fall into 
 hundreds of other brooks, and then travel and work till they 
 reached the sea, and then rest for a while and begin all 
 
6 The Bent Twig 
 
 over again. Her dark eyes grew very wide as she watched 
 the endless procession of white mountains move across the 
 great arch of the sky. Her imagination was stirred almost 
 painfully, her mind expanding with the effort to take in the 
 new conception of size, of great numbers, of the small place 
 of her own brook, her own field in the hugeness of the world. 
 And yet it was an ordered hugeness full of comforting sim- 
 ilarity! Now, no matter where she might go, or what 
 brooks she might see, she would know that they were all of 
 one family, that the same things happened to them all, that 
 every one ended in the ocean. Something she had read 
 on a piece of paper made her see the familiar home field 
 with the yellow water of the little creek, as a part of the 
 whole world. It was very strange. She tried to tell Mother 
 something of what was in her mind, but, though Mother 
 listened in a sympathetic silence, it was evident that she 
 could make nothing out of the incoherent account. Sylvia 
 thought that she would try to tell Father, the next chance 
 she had. Even at seven, although she loved her mother pas- 
 sionately and jealously, she was aware that her father's 
 mind was more like her own. He understood some things 
 that Mother didn't, although Mother was always, always 
 right, and Father wasn't. She fell into silence again, stand- 
 ing by her mother's knee, staring out of the window and 
 watching the clouds move steadily across the sky doing their 
 share of the world's work for all they looked so soft and 
 lazy. Her mother did not break in on this meditative con- 
 templation. She took up her sewing-basket and began 
 busily to sew buttons on a small pair of half-finished night- 
 drawers. The sobered child beside her, gazing up at the blue- 
 and-white infinity of the sky, heard faintly and distantly, 
 for the first time in her life, the whirring reverberations of 
 the great mystic wheel of change and motion and life. 
 
 Then, all at once, there was a scraping of chairs overhead 
 m Father's study, a clattering on the stairs, and the sound 
 of a great many voices. The Saturday seminar was over. 
 The door below opened, and the students came out, Father 
 at the head, very tall, very straight, his ruddy hair shininf 
 
Sylvia's Home 7 
 
 in the late afternoon sun, his shirt-sleeves rolled up over 
 his arms, and a baseball in his hand. " Come on, folks," 
 Sylvia heard him call, as he had so many times before. 
 " Let's have a couple of innings before you go ! " Sylvia 
 must have seen the picture a hundred times before, but that 
 was the first time it impressed itself on her, the close-cut 
 grass of their yard as lustrous as enamel, the big pine-trees 
 standing high, the scattered players, laughing and running 
 about, the young men casting off their coats and hats, the de- 
 tached fielders running long-legged to their places. At the 
 first sound of the voices, Judith, always alert, never wasting 
 time in reveries, had scampered down the stairs and out in the 
 midst of the stir-about. Judith was sure to be in the middle 
 of whatever was going on. She had attached herself to 
 young Professor Saunders, a special favorite of the children, 
 and now was dragging him from the field to play horse with 
 her. Father looked up to the window where Sylvia and 
 Mother sat, and called : " Come on, Barbara ! Come on and 
 amuse Judith. She won't let Saunders pitch." 
 
 Mother nodded, ran downstairs, coaxed Judith over be- 
 yond first base to play catch with a soft rubber ball ; and Syl- 
 via, carried away by the cheerful excitement, hopped about 
 everywhere at once, screaming encouragement to the base 
 runners, picking up foul balls, and sending them with 
 proud importance back to the pitcher. 
 
 So they all played and shouted and ran and laughed, 
 while the long, pale-golden spring afternoon stood still, 
 until Mother held up her finger and stopped the game. 
 " The baby's awake ! " she said, and Father went bounding 
 off. When he came back with the downy pink morsel, 
 everybody gathered around to see it and exclaim over the 
 tiny fat hands and hungry little rosebud mouth. " He's 
 starved ! " said Mother. " He wants his supper, poor little 
 Buddy ! He doesn't want a lot of people staring at him, do 
 you, Buddy-baby ? " She snatched him out of Father's 
 arms and went off with him, holding him high over her 
 shoulders so that the sunshine shone on his yellow hair, and 
 made a circle of gold around his flushed, sleepy face. Then 
 
8 The Bent Twig 
 
 everybody picked up books and wraps and note-books and 
 said, " Good-by, ' Perfessor ! ' " and went off. 
 
 Father and Sylvia and Judith went out in the garden to 
 the hotbed to pick the lettuce for supper and then back 
 in the kitchen to get things ready. When Mother was 
 through giving Buddy his supper and came hurrying in to 
 help, Sylvia was proud that they had nearly everything 
 done — all but the omelet. Father had made cocoa and 
 creamed potatoes — nobody in the world could make creamed 
 potatoes as good as his — and Sylvia and Judith had between 
 them, somewhat wranglingly, made the toast and set the 
 table. Sylvia was sure that Judith was really too little to 
 be allowed to help, but Father insisted that she should try, 
 for he said, with a turn in his voice that made Sylvia aware 
 he was laughing at her, " You only learned through trying, 
 all those many years ago when you were Judith's age ! " 
 
 Mother put on one of her big gingham aprons and made 
 the omelet, and they sat down to the table out on the 
 veranda as they always did in warm weather. In La Chance 
 it begins to be warm enough for outdoor life in April. 
 Although it was still bright daylight for ever so long after 
 the sun had set, the moon came and looked at them palely 
 over the tops of the trees. 
 
 After supper they jumped up to " race through the 
 dishes," as the family catchword ran. They tried to beat 
 their record every evening and it was always a lively occa- 
 sion, with Mother washing like lightning, and Father 
 hurrying to keep up, Sylvia running back and forth to put 
 things away, and Judith bothering 'round, handing out dry 
 dish-towels, and putting away the silver. She was allowed 
 to handle that because she couldn't break it. Mother and 
 Judith worked in a swift silence, but a great deal of talking 
 and laughing went on between Sylvia and her father, while 
 Buddy, from his high-chair where he was watching the 
 others, occasionally broke out in a loud, high crow of delight. 
 They did it all, even to washing and hanging out the dish- 
 towels, in eleven and a half minutes that evening, Sylvia 
 remembered. 
 
Sylvia's Home 9 
 
 Then she and Judith went to sit on the porch on the 
 little bench Mother had made them. They tried to see who 
 could catch the first glimpse of the evening star every even- 
 ing. Mother was putting Buddy to bed and Father was 
 starting the breakfast cereal cooking on the stove. After 
 a while he went into the living-room and began to play 
 something on the piano, something full of deep, swaying 
 chords that lifted Sylvia's heart up and down as though she 
 were floating on the water. The air was full of the moist 
 fragrance of spring. When the music held its breath for 
 a moment you could hear the bedtime note of sleepy birds 
 in the oaks. Judith, who did not care much for music, 
 began to get sleepy and leaned all her soft, warm weight 
 against her big sister. Sylvia for the first time in her life 
 was consciously aware of being very happy. When, some 
 time later, the evening star shone out through the trees, 
 she drew a long breath. " See, Judith," she cried softly 
 and began to recite, 
 
 " Star-light, star-bright, 
 First star I've seen tonight " 
 
 She stopped short — it was Aunt Victoria who had taught 
 her that poem, the last time she had come to see them, a 
 year ago, the time when she had brought Sylvia the pink 
 silk dress, the only dress-up dress with lace and ribbons 
 on it Sylvia had had up to that time. As suddenly as the 
 evening star had shone out, another radiant vision flashed 
 across Sylvia's mind, Aunt Victoria, magnificent in her 
 lacy dress, her golden hair shining under the taut silk of 
 her parasol, her white, soft fingers gleaming with rings, 
 her air of being a condescending goddess, visiting 
 mortals . . . 
 
 After a time Mother stepped out on the porch and said, 
 " Oh, quick, children, wish on the shooting star." 
 
 Judith had dropped asleep like a little kitten tired of play, 
 and Sylvia looked at her mother blankly. " I didn't see anv 
 shooting star," she said. 
 
io The Bent Twig 
 
 Mother was surprised. " Why, your face was pointed 
 right up at the spot." 
 
 " I didn't see it," repeated Sylvia. 
 
 Mother fixed her keen dark eyes on Sylvia. " What's 
 the matter ? " she asked in her voice that always re- 
 quired an answer. Sylvia wriggled uncomfortably. Hers 
 was a nature which suffers under the categorical question ; 
 but her mother's was one which presses them home. 
 " What's the matter with you ? " she said again. 
 
 Sylvia turned a clouded face to her mother. " I was 
 wondering why it's not nice to be idyllic." 
 
 " What? " asked her mother, quite at a loss. Sylvia was 
 having one of her unaccountable notions. 
 
 Sylvia went to lean on her mother's knee, looking with 
 troubled eyes up into the kind, attentive, uncomprehending 
 face. " Why, the last time Aunt Victoria was here — that 
 long time ago — when they were all out playing ball — she 
 looked round and round at everything — at your dress and 
 mine and the furniture — you know — the — the uncomfort- 
 able way she does sometimes — and she said, 'Well, Sylvia 
 — nobody can say that your parents aren't leading you a 
 very idyllic life.' " 
 
 Mother laughed out. Her rare laugh was too sudden 
 and loud to be very musical, but it was immensely infectious, 
 like a man's hearty mirth. " I didn't hear her say it — but 
 I can imagine that she did. Well, what of it? What if 
 she did?" 
 
 For once Sylvia did not respond to another's mood. She 
 continued anxiously, " Well, it means something perfectly 
 horrid, doesn't it?" 
 
 Mother was still laughing. " No, no, child, what in the 
 world makes you think that?" 
 
 " Oh, if you'd heard Aunt Victoria say it ! " cried Sylvia 
 with conviction. Father came out on the veranda, saying to 
 Mother, " Isn't that crescendo superb? " To Sylvia he said, 
 as though sure of her comprehension, " Didn't you like 
 the ending, dear — where it sounded like the Argonauts all 
 striking the oars into the water at once and shouting? " 
 
Sylvia's Home n 
 
 Sylvia had been taught above everything to tell the truth. 
 Moreover (perhaps a stronger reason for frankness), 
 Mother was there, who would know whether she told the 
 truth or not. '* I didn't hear the end." 
 
 Father looked quickly from Sylvia's face to her mother's. 
 " What's the matter ? " he asked. 
 
 " Sylvia was so concerned because her Aunt Victoria had 
 called our life idyllic that she couldn't think of anything 
 else," explained Mother briefly, still smiling. Father did 
 not smile. He sat down by Sylvia and had her repeat to him 
 what she had said to her mother. When she had finished 
 he looked grave and said : " You mustn't mind what your 
 Aunt Victoria says, dear. Her ideas are very different 
 from ours." 
 
 Sylvia's mother cried out, " Why, a child of Sylvia's age 
 couldn't have taken in the significance of " 
 
 " I'm afraid," said Father, " that Sylvia's very quick to 
 take in such a significance." 
 
 Sylvia remained silent, uncomfortable at being discussed, 
 vaguely ashamed of herself, but comforted that Father had 
 not laughed, had understood. As happened so frequently, 
 it was Father who understood and Mother who did the 
 right thing. She suddenly made an enigmatic, emphatic ex- 
 clamation, " Goodness gracious!" and reaching out her long 
 arms, pulled Sylvia up on her lap, holding her close. The 
 last thought of that remembered time for Sylvia was that 
 Mother's arms were very strong, and her breast very soft. 
 The little girl laid her head down on it with a contented 
 sigh, watching the slow, silent procession of the stars. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE MARSHALLS' FRIENDS 
 
 Any one of the more sophisticated members of the faculty 
 of the State University at La Chance would have stated 
 without hesitation that the Marshalls had not the slightest 
 part in the social activities of the University; but no one 
 could have called their life either isolated or solitary. 
 Sylvia, in her memories of childhood, always heard the low,, 
 brown house ringing with music or echoing to the laughter 
 and talk of many voices. To begin with, a good many of 
 Professor Marshall's students came and went familiarly 
 through the plainly furnished rooms, although there was, of 
 course, in each year's class, a little circle of young people 
 with a taste for social distinctions who held aloof from the 
 very unselect and heterogeneous gatherings at the Marshall 
 house. 
 
 These young aristocrats were, for the most part, students 
 from the town itself, from La Chance's " best families," who 
 through parental tyranny or temporary financial depression 
 were not allowed to go East to a well-known college with 
 a sizable matriculation fee, but were forced to endure four 
 years of the promiscuous, swarming, gratuitous education 
 of the State University. All these august victims of family 
 despotism associated as little as possible with the common 
 rabble of their fellow-students, and accepted invitations 
 only from such faculty families as were recognized by the 
 inner circle of the town society. 
 
 The Marshalls were not among this select circle. Indeed, 
 no faculty family was farther from it. Every detail of 
 the Marshalls' life was in contradiction not only to the 
 standards and ideals of the exclusive " town set," but to 
 those of their own colleagues. They did not live in the 
 
 12 
 
The Marshalls' Friends 13 
 
 right part of town. They did not live in the right sort of a 
 house. They did not live in the right sort of a way. And 
 consequently, although no family had more visitors, they 
 were not the right sort of visitors. 
 
 This was, of course, not apparent to the children for a 
 good many years. Home was home, as it is to children. 
 It did not seem strange to them that instead of living in 
 a small rented house on a closely built-up street near the 
 campus in the section of the city occupied by the other 
 faculty families, they lived in a rambling, large-roomed old 
 farmhouse with five acres of land around it, on the edge of 
 the West Side. They did not know how heartily this land- 
 owning stability was condemned as folly by the rent-pay- 
 ing professors, perching on the bough with calculated 
 impermanence so that they might be free to accept at any 
 moment the always anticipated call to a larger salary. They 
 did not know, not even Sylvia, for many years, that the 
 West Side was the quite unfashionable part of town. It 
 did not seem strange to them to see their father sweeping 
 his third-floor study with his own hands, and they were 
 quite used to a family routine which included housework 
 for every one of them. Indeed, a certain amount of this 
 was part of the family fun. " Come on, folks ! " Professor 
 Marshall would call, rising up from the breakfast table, 
 " Tuesday — day to clean the living-room — all hands turn 
 to ! " In a gay helter-skelter all hands turned to. The 
 lighter furniture was put out on the porch. Professor Mar- 
 shall, joking and laughing, donned a loose linen overall suit 
 to protect his " University clothes," and cleaned the bare 
 floor with a big oiled mop ; Mrs. Marshall, silent and swift, 
 looked after mirrors, windows, the tops of bookcases, things 
 hard for children to reach; Sylvia flourished a duster; and 
 Judith and Lawrence out on the porch, each armed with a 
 whisk-broom, brushed and whacked at the chairs and sofas. 
 There were no rugs to shake, and it took but an instant to 
 set things back in their places in the clean-smelling, dust- 
 less room. 
 
 This daily drill, coming as it did early in the morning, 
 
14 The Bent Twig 
 
 usually escaped the observation of any but passing farmers, 
 who saw nothing amiss in it; but facetiously exaggerated 
 reports of its humors reached the campus, and a certain set 
 considered it very clever to lay bets as to whether the 
 Professor of Political Economy would pull out of his 
 pocket a handkerchief, or a duster, or a child's shirt, for 
 it was notorious that the children never had nursemaids 
 and that their father took as much care of them as their 
 mother. 
 
 The question of clothes, usually such a sorely insoluble 
 problem for academic people of small means, was solved by 
 the Marshalls in an eccentric, easy-going manner which 
 was considered by the other faculty families as nothing less 
 than treasonable to their caste. Professor Marshall, it is 
 true, having to make a public appearance on the campus 
 every day, was generally, like every other professor, un- 
 distinguishable from a commercial traveler. But Mrs. 
 Marshall, who often let a good many days pass without a 
 trip to town, had adopted early in her married life a sort of 
 home uniform, which year after year she wore in one form 
 or another. It varied according to the season, and accord- 
 ing to the occasion on which she wore it, but it had certain 
 unchanging characteristics. It was always very plain as 
 to line, and simple as to cut, having a skirt neither full nor 
 scant, a waist crossed in front with a white fichu, and 
 sleeves reaching just below the elbow with white turn-back 
 cuffs. As Mrs. Marshall, though not at all pretty, was a 
 tall, upright, powerfully built woman, with a dark, shapely 
 head gallantly poised on her shoulders, this garb, whether 
 short-skirted, of blue serge in the morning, or trailing, of 
 ruby-colored cashmere in the evening, was very becom- 
 ing to her. But there is no denying that it was always 
 startlingly and outrageously unfashionable. At a time when 
 every woman and female child in the United States had 
 more cloth in her sleeves than in all the rest of her dress, 
 the rounded muscles of Mrs. Marshall's arm, showing 
 through the fabric of her sleeves, smote shockingly upon 
 the eye of the ordinary observer, trained to the American 
 
The Marshalls' Friends 15 
 
 habit of sheep-like uniformity of appearance. And at the 
 time when the front of every woman's waist fell far below 
 her belt in a copiously blousing sag, Mrs. Marshall's trim 
 tautness had in it something horrifying. It must be said 
 for her that she did not go out of her way to inflict these 
 concussions upon the brains of spectators, since she always 
 had in her closet one evening dress and one street dress, 
 sufficiently approximating the prevailing style to pass un- 
 noticed. These costumes lasted long, and they took in the 
 long run but little from the Marshall exchequer: for she 
 wore them seldom, only assuming what her husband called, 
 with a laugh, her " disguise " when going into town. 
 
 For a long time, until Sylvia's individuality began to 
 assert itself, the question of dress for the children was 
 solved, with similar ease, by the typical Marshall expedient, 
 most heartily resented by their faculty acquaintances, the 
 mean-spirited expedient of getting along comfortably on 
 inadequate means by not attempting to associate with people 
 to whose society their brains and cultivation gave them the 
 right — that is to say, those families of La Chance whose 
 incomes were from three to five times that of college pro- 
 fessors. The Marshall children played, for the most part, 
 with the children of their neighbors, farmers, or small 
 merchants, and continued this humble connection after they 
 went into the public schools, where their parents sent them, 
 instead of to " the " exclusive private school of town. 
 Consequently the plainest, simplest clothes made them in- 
 distinguishable from their fellows. Sylvia and Judith also 
 enjoyed the unfair advantage of being quite unusually pretty 
 little girls (Judith being nothing less than a beauty), so that 
 even on the few occasions when they were invited to a 
 children's party in the faculty circle their burnished, 
 abundant hair, bright eyes, and fresh, alert faces made up 
 for the plainness of their white dresses and thick shoes. 
 
 It was, moreover, not only in externals like clothes that 
 the childhood of Sylvia and Judith and Lawrence differed 
 from that of the other faculty children. Their lives were 
 untouched by the ominous black cloud familiar to academic 
 
1 6 The Bent Twig 
 
 households, the fear for the future, the fear which comes 
 of living from hand to mouth, the dread of l( being obliged 
 to hand in one's resignation," a truly academic periphasis 
 which is as dismally familiar to most faculty children as its 
 blunt Anglo-Saxon equivalent of " losing your job " is to 
 children of plainer workpeople. Once, it is true, this pos- 
 sibility had loomed up large before the Marshalls, when a 
 high-protection legislature objected loudly to the professor's 
 unreverent attitude towards the tariff. But although the 
 Marshall children knew all about this crisis, as they knew 
 all about everything that happened to the family, they had 
 had no experience of the anxious talks and heartsick con- 
 sultations which would- have gone on in any other faculty 
 household. Their father had been angry, and their mother 
 resolute — but there was nothing new in that. There had 
 been, on Professor Marshall's part, belligerent, vociferous 
 talk about " freedom of speech," and on Mrs. Marshall's a 
 quiet estimate that, with her early training on a Vermont 
 farm, and with the high state of cultivation under which 
 she had brought their five acres, they could successfully go 
 into the truck-farming business like their neighbors. Be- 
 sides this, they had the resource, extraordinary among Uni- 
 versity families, of an account in the savings-bank on which 
 to fall back. They had always been able to pay their debts 
 and have a small surplus by the expedient of refusing to ac- 
 knowledge a tenth part of the social obligations under which 
 the rest of the faculty groaned and sweated with martyr's 
 pride. Perfidiously refusing to do their share in the heart- 
 breaking struggle to " keep up the dignity " of the academic 
 profession, they were not overwhelmed by the super- 
 human difficulties of that undertaking. 
 
 So it happened that the Marshall children heard no fore- 
 bodings about the future, but only heated statements of 
 what seemed to their father the right of a teacher to say 
 what he believed. Professor Marshall had gone of his own 
 initiative to face the legislative committee which was " in- 
 vestigating " him, had quite lost his temper (never very 
 securely held in leash), had told them his highly spiced 
 
The Marshalls' Friends 17 
 
 opinion of their strictures on his teaching and of the worth 
 of any teacher they could find who would submit to them. 
 Then he had gone home and put on his overalls. This 
 last was rather a rhetorical flourish; for his cosmopolitan, 
 urban youth had left him ineradicably ignorant of the 
 processes of agriculture. But like all Professor Marshall's 
 flourishes it was a perfectly sincere one. He was quite 
 cheerfully prepared to submit himself to his wife's instruc- 
 tion in the new way of life. 
 
 All these picturesque facts, as was inevitable in America, 
 had instantly reached the newspapers, which, lacking more 
 exciting news for the moment, took that matter up with 
 headlined characterizations of Professor Marshall as a 
 " martyr of the cause of academic freedom," and other 
 rather cheap phrases about " persecution " and " America, 
 the land of free speech." The legislative committee, 
 alarmed, retreated from its position." Professor Marshall 
 had not " been obliged to hand in his resignation," but 
 quite the contrary, had become the hero of the hour and 
 was warmly complimented by his colleagues, who hoped to 
 profit by an action which none of them would have dared 
 to imitate. It had been an exciting drama to the Marshall 
 children as long as it lasted. They had looked with pride 
 at an abominable reproduction of their father's photograph 
 in the evening paper of La Chance, and they had added an 
 acquaintance with the manners of newspaper reporters to 
 their already very heterogeneous experience with callers 
 of every variety ; but of real anxiety the episode had brought 
 them nothing. 
 
 As to that same extraordinary assortment of visitors at 
 the Marshall house, one of the University co-eds had said 
 facetiously that you met there every sort of person in the 
 world, from spiritualists to atheists — everybody except 
 swells. The atheist of her dictum was the distinguished and 
 misanthropic old Professor Kennedy, head of the Depart- 
 ment of Mathematics, whose ample means and high social 
 connections with the leading family of La Chance made his 
 misanthropy a source of much chagrin to the faculty ladies, 
 
1 8 The Bent Twig 
 
 and who professed for the Marshalls, for Mrs. Marshall in 
 particular, a wrong-headed admiration which was inex- 
 plicable to the wives of the other professors. The faculty 
 circle saw little to admire in the Marshalls. The spiritual- 
 ist of the co-ed's remark was, of course, poor foolish Cousin 
 Parnelia, the children's pet detestation, whose rusty clothes 
 and incoherent speech they were prevented from ridiculing 
 only by stern pressure from their mother. She always wore 
 a black straw hat, summer and winter, always carried a 
 faded green shopping bag, with a supply of yellow writing 
 paper, and always had tucked under one arm the curious, 
 heart-shaped bit of wood, with the pencil attached, which 
 spiritualists call " planchette." The Marshall children 
 thought this the most laughable name imaginable, and were 
 not always successful in restraining the cruel giggles of 
 childhood when she spoke of planchette's writing such beau- 
 tiful messages from her long-since-dead husband and chil- 
 dren. Although he had a dramatic sympathy for her sorrow, 
 Professor Marshall's greater vivacity of temperament made 
 it harder for him than for his wife to keep a straight face 
 when Cousin Parnelia proposed to be the medium whereby 
 he might converse with Milton or Homer. Indeed, his 
 fatigued tolerance for her had been a positive distaste ever 
 since the day when he found her showing Sylvia, aged ten, 
 how to write with planchette. With an outbreak of temper, 
 for which he had afterwards apologized to his wife, he had 
 forbidden her ever to mention her damn unseemly nonsense 
 to his children again. He himself was a stout unbeliever in 
 individual immortality, teaching his children that the crav- 
 ing for it was one of the egotistic impulses of the unregen- 
 erate human heart. 
 
 Between the two extremes represented by shabby, crack- 
 brained Cousin Parnelia and elegant, sardonic old Professor 
 Kennedy, there were many other habitual visitors at the 
 house — raw, earnest, graceless students of both sexes, touch- 
 ingly grateful for the home atmosphere they were allowed to 
 enter ; a bushy-haired Single-tax fanatic named Hecht, who 
 worked in the iron-foundries by day, and wrote political 
 
The Marshalls' Friends 19 
 
 pamphlets by night; Miss Lindstrom, the elderly Swedish 
 woman laboring among the poor negroes of Flytown; a 
 constant sprinkling from the Scandinavian-Americans whose 
 well-kept truck-farms filled the region near the Marshall 
 home ; one-armed Mr. Howell, the editor of a luridly radical 
 Socialist weekly paper, whom Judith called in private the 
 " old puss-cat " on account of his soft, rather weak voice 
 and mild, ingratiating ways. Yes, the co-ed had been right, 
 one met at the Marshalls' every variety of person except the 
 exclusive. 
 
 These habitues of the house came and went with the 
 greatest familiarity. As they all knew there was no servant 
 to answer the doorbell, they seldom bothered to ring, but 
 opened the door, stepped into the hall, hung up their 
 wraps on the long line of hooks, and went into the big, 
 low-ceilinged living-room. If nobody was there, they 
 usually took a book from one of the shelves lining the 
 room and sat down before the fire to wait. Sometimes 
 they stayed to the next meal and helped wash up the dishes 
 afterwards. Sometimes they had a satisfactory visit with 
 each other, two or three callers happening to meet together 
 before the fire, and went away without having seen any of 
 the Marshalls. Informality could go no further. 
 
 The only occurrence in the Marshall life remotely ap- 
 proaching the regularity and formality of a real social event 
 was the weekly meeting of the string quartet which Pro- 
 fessor Marshall had founded soon after his arrival in La 
 Chance. 
 
 It was on Sunday evening that the quartet met regularly 
 for their seance. Old Reinhardt, the violin teacher, was 
 first violin and leader; Mr. Bauermeister (in everyday life 
 a well-to-do wholesale plumber) was second violin; Pro- 
 fessor Marshall played the viola, and old Professor Kennedy 
 bent his fine, melancholy face over the 'cello. Any one who 
 chose might go to the Marshall house on Sunday evenings, 
 on condition that he should not talk during the music, and 
 did not expect any attention. 
 
 The music began at seven promptly and ended at ten. A 
 
20 The Bent Twig 
 
 little before that time, Mrs. Marshall, followed by any one 
 who felt like helping, went out into the kitchen and made 
 hot coffee and sandwiches, and when the last chord had 
 stopped vibrating, the company adjourned into the dining- 
 room and partook of this simple fare. During the evening 
 no talk was allowed except the occasional wranglings of the 
 musicians over tempo and shading, but afterwards, every 
 one's tongue, chastened by the long silence, was loosened into 
 loud and cheerful loquacity. Professor Marshall, sitting at 
 the head of the table, talked faster and louder than any one 
 else, throwing the ball to his especial favorite, brilliant 
 young Professor Saunders, who tossed it back with a sure- 
 ness and felicity of phrase which he had learned nowhere 
 but in this give-and-take. Mrs. Marshall poured the coffee, 
 saw that every one was served with sandwiches, and occa- 
 sionally when the talk, running over every known topic, 
 grew too noisy, or the discussion too hot, cast in one of the 
 pregnant and occasionally caustic remarks of which she held 
 the secret. They were never brilliant, Mrs. Marshall's re- 
 marks — but they were apt to have a dry humor, and almost 
 always when she had said her brief say, there loomed out of 
 the rainbow mist of her husband's flashing, controversial 
 talk the outlines of the true proportions of the case. 
 
 After the homely feast was eaten, each guest rose and 
 carried his own cup and saucer and plate into the kitchen in 
 a gay procession, and since it was well known that, for the 
 most part, the Marshalls " did their own work," several of 
 the younger ones helped wash the dishes, while the mu- 
 sicians put away the music-racks and music, and the rest 
 put on their wraps. Then Professor Marshall stood at the 
 door holding up a lamp while the company trooped down 
 the long front walk to the gate in the hedge, and turned 
 along the country road to the cross-roads where the big 
 Interurban cars whizzed by. 
 
 All this happened with that unbroken continuity which 
 was the characteristic of the Marshall life, most marking 
 them as different from the other faculty families. Week 
 after week, and month after month, this program was fol- 
 
The Marshalls' Friends 2T 
 
 lowed with little variation, except for the music which was 
 played, and the slight picturesque uncertainty as to whether 
 old Reinhardt would or would not arrive mildly under 
 the influence of long Sunday imbibings. Not that this 
 factor interfered at all with the music. One of Sylvia's most 
 vivid childhood recollections was the dramatic contrast be- 
 tween old Reinhardt with, and without, his violin. Partly 
 from age, and partly from a too convivial life, the old, 
 heavily veined hands trembled so that he could scarcely 
 unbutton his overcoat, or handle his cup of hot coffee. His 
 head shook too, and his kind, rheumy eyes, in their endeavor 
 to focus themselves, seemed to flicker back and forth in 
 their sockets. The child used to watch him, fascinated, as 
 he fumbled endlessly at the fastenings of his violin-case, and 
 put back the top with uncertain fingers. She was waiting 
 for the thrilling moment when he should tuck the instrument 
 away under his pendulous double chin and draw his bow 
 across the strings in the long sonorous singing chord, which 
 ran up and down Sylvia's back like forked lightning. 
 
 This was while all the others were tuning and scraping 
 and tugging at their pegs, a pleasant bustle of discord which 
 became so much a part of Sylvia's brain that she could 
 never in after years hear the strumming and sawing of an 
 orchestra preparing to play, without seeing the big living- 
 room of her father's house, with its low whitewashed ceil- 
 ing, its bare, dully shining floor, its walls lined with books, 
 its shabby, comfortable furniture, the whole quickened by 
 the Promethean glow from the blaze in the grate and 
 glorified by the chastened passion of the singing strings. 
 
 The two Anglo-Saxon professors were but able amateurs 
 of their instruments. Bauermeister, huge, red, and im- 
 passive, was by virtue of his blood, a lifelong training, and 
 a musical ancestry, considerably more than an amateur; 
 and old Reinhardt was the master of them all. His was 
 a history which would have been tragic if it had happened 
 to any but Reinhardt, who cared for nothing but an easy 
 life, beer, and the divine tones which he alone could draw 
 from his violin. He had offered, fifty years ago in Vienna, 
 
22 The Bent Twig 
 
 the most brilliant promise of a most brilliant career, a 
 promise which had come to naught because of his monstrous 
 lack of ambition, and his endless yielding to circumstance, 
 which had finally, by a series of inconceivable migrations, 
 landed him in the German colony of La Chance, impecu- 
 nious and obscure and invincibly convinced that he had 
 everything worth having in life. " Of vat use ? " he would 
 say, even now, when asked to play in public — " de moosic 
 ist all — and dat is eben so goodt here mit friends." Or, 
 " Dere goes a t'ousand peoples to a goncert — maybe fife 
 from dat t'ousand lofes de moosic — let dose fife gome to 
 me — and I play dem all day for noding ! " or again, more 
 iconoclastically still, — when told of golden harvests to be 
 reaped, " And for vat den ? I can't play on more dan von 
 fioleen at a time — is it? I got a good one now. And if I 
 drink more beer dan now, I might make myself seeck ! " 
 This with a prodigiously sly wink of one heavy eyelid. 
 
 He gave enough music lessons to pay his small expenses, 
 although after one or two stormy passages in which he 
 treated with outrageous and unjustifiable violence the 
 dawdling pupils coming from well-to-do families, he made it 
 a rule to take no pupils whose parents employed a servant, 
 and confined himself to children of the poorer classes, 
 among whom he kept up a small orchestra which played 
 together twice a week and never gave any concerts. And 
 almost since the arrival of the Marshalls in La Chance and 
 his unceremonious entrance into the house as, walking 
 across the fields on a Sunday afternoon, he had heard 
 Professor Marshall playing the Doric Toccata on the newly 
 installed piano, he had spent his every Sunday evening in 
 their big living-room. 
 
 He had seen the children appear and grow older, and 
 adored them with Teutonic sentimentality, especially Sylvia, 
 whom he called his " Moonbeam brincess," his " little 
 ellfen fairy," and whom, when she was still tiny, he used to 
 take up on his greasy old knees and, resting his violin on her 
 head, play his wildest fantasies, that she might feel how it 
 " talked to her bones." 
 
The Marshalls' Friends 23 
 
 In early childhood Sylvia was so used to him that, like 
 the others of her circle, she accepted, indeed hardly noticed, 
 his somewhat startling eccentricities, his dirty linen, his 
 face and hands to match, his shapeless garments hanging 
 loosely over the flabby corpulence of his uncomely old body, 
 his beery breath. To her, old Reinhardt was but the queer 
 external symbol of a never-failing enchantment. Through 
 the pleasant harmonious give-and-take of the other instru- 
 ments, the voice of his violin vibrated with the throbbing 
 passion of a living thing. His dirty old hand might shake 
 and quaver, but once the neck of the fiddle rested between 
 thumb and forefinger, the seraph who made his odd abiding- 
 place in old Reinhardt's soul sang out in swelling tones and 
 spoke of heavenly things, and of the Paradise where we 
 might live, if we were but willing. 
 
 Even when they were quite little children, Sylvia and 
 Judith, and later, Lawrence, were allowed to sit up on Sun- 
 day evenings to listen to the music. Judith nearly always 
 slept steadily ; and not infrequently after a long day of out- 
 door fun, stupefied with fresh air and exercise, Lawrence, 
 and Sylvia too, could not keep their eyes open, and dozed 
 and woke and dozed again, coiled like so many little kittens 
 among the cushions of the big divan. In all the intensely 
 enjoyed personal pleasures of her later youth, and these 
 were many for Sylvia, she was never to know a more utter 
 sweetness than thus to fall asleep, the music a far-ofl mur- 
 mur in her ears, and to wake again to the restrained, clari- 
 fied ecstasy of the four concerted voices. 
 
 And yet it was in connection with this very quartet that 
 she had her first shocked vision of how her home-life 
 appeared to other people. She once chanced, when she was 
 about eight years old, to go with her father on a Saturday 
 to his office at the University, where he had forgotten some 
 papers necessary for his seminar. There, sitting on the 
 front steps of the Main Building, waiting for her father, 
 she had encountered the wife of the professor of European 
 History with her beautiful young-lady sister from New 
 York and her two daughters, exquisite little girls in white 
 
24 The Bent Twig 
 
 serge, whose tailored, immaculate perfection made Sylvia's 
 heart heavy with a sense of the plebeian inelegance of her 
 own Saturday-morning play-clothes. Mrs. Hubert, obeying 
 an impulse of curiosity, stopped to speak to the little 
 Marshall girl, about whose queer upbringing there were so 
 many stories current, and was struck with the decorative 
 possibilities of the pretty child, apparent to her practised 
 eye. As she made the kindly intended, vague remarks cus- 
 tomarily served out to unknown children, she was thinking : 
 " How can any woman with a vestige of a woman's in- 
 stinct dress that lovely child in ready-made, commonplace, 
 dark-colored clothes ? She would repay any amount of care 
 and thought." " So you take music-lessons too, besides 
 your school ? " she asked mechanically. She explained to 
 her sister, a stranger in La Chance : " Music is one of the 
 things I starve for, out here! We never hear it unless 
 we go clear to Chicago — and such prices ! Here, there is 
 simply no musical feeling ! " She glanced again at Sylvia, 
 who was now answering her questions, fluttered with pleas- 
 ure at having the beautiful lady speak to her. The beauti- 
 ful lady had but an inattentive ear for Sylvia's statement 
 that, yes, lately Father had begun to give her lessons on 
 the piano. With the smoothly working imagination coming 
 from a lifetime of devotion to the subject, Mrs. Hubert 
 was stripping off Sylvia's trite little blue coat and unin- 
 teresting dark hat, and was arraying her in scarlet serge 
 with a green velvet collar — " with those eyes and that 
 coloring she could carry off striking color combinations — 
 and a big white felt hat with a soft pompon of silk on one 
 side — no, a long, stiff, scarlet quill would suit her style 
 better. Then, with white stockings and shoes and gloves — 
 or perhaps pearl-gray would be better. Yes, with low-cut 
 suede shoes, fastening with two big smoked-pearl buttons." 
 She looked down with pitying eyes at Sylvia's sturdy, heavy- 
 soled shoes which could not conceal the slender, shapely 
 feet within them — "but, what on earth was the child say- 
 ing? » 
 
 " every Sunday evening — it's beautiful, and now I'm 
 
The Marshalls' Friends 25 
 
 getting so big I can help some. I can turn over the pages 
 for them in hard places, and when old Mr. Reinhardt has 
 had too much to drink and his hands tremble, he lets me un- 
 fasten his violin-case and tighten up his bow and " 
 
 Mrs. Hubert cried out, " Your parents don't let you have 
 anything to do with that old, drunken Reinhardt ! " 
 
 Sylvia was smitten into silence by the other's horrified 
 tone and hung her head miserably, only murmuring, after 
 a pause, in damning extenuation, " He's never so very 
 drunk ! " 
 
 " Well, upon my word ! " exclaimed Mrs. Hubert, in a 
 widely spaced, emphatic phrase of condemnation. To her 
 sister she added, " It's really not exaggeration then, what 
 one hears about their home life." One of her daughters, 
 a child about Sylvia's age, turned a candid, blank little face 
 up to hers, "Mother, what is a drunken reinhardt?" she 
 asked in a thin little pipe. 
 
 Mrs. Hubert frowned, shook her head, and said in a 
 tone of dark mystery : " Never mind, darling, don't think 
 about it. It's something that nice little girls shouldn't know 
 anything about. Come, Margery; come, Eleanor." She 
 took their hands and began to draw them away without 
 another look at Sylvia, who remained behind, drooping, 
 ostracised, pierced momentarily with her first blighting mis- 
 giving about the order of things she had always known. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 BROTHER AND SISTER 
 
 A fuller initiation into the kaleidoscopic divergencies of 
 adult standards was given Sylvia during the visits of her 
 Aunt Victoria. These visits were angelic in their extreme 
 rarity, and for Sylvia were always a mixture of the beatific 
 and the distressing. Only to look at Aunt Victoria was a 
 bright revelation of elegance and grace. And yet the talk 
 around table and hearth on the two or three occasions when 
 the beautiful young widow honored their roof with a sojourn 
 was hard on Sylvia's sensitive nerves. 
 
 It was not merely that a good deal of what was said was 
 unintelligible. The Marshall children were quite accus- 
 tomed to incessant conversations between their elders of 
 which they could gather but the vaguest glimmering. They 
 played about, busy in their own absorbing occupations, lend- 
 ing an absent but not wholly unattentive ear to the gabble 
 of their elders, full of odd and ridiculous-sounding words 
 like Single-tax, and contrapuntal development, and root- 
 propagation, and Benthamism, and Byzantine, and nitroge- 
 nous fertilizers, and Alexandrine, and chiaroscuro, and 
 surviving archaisms, and diminishing utility — for to keep 
 up such a flood-tide of talk as streamed through the Mar- 
 shall house required contributions from many diverging 
 rivers. Sylvia was entirely used to this phenomenon and, 
 although it occasionally annoyed her that good attention 
 was wasted on projects so much less vital than those of the 
 children, she bore it no grudge. But on the rare occasions 
 when Aunt Victoria was with them, there was a different 
 and ominous note to the talk which made Sylvia acutely 
 uneasy, although she was quite unable to follow what was 
 said. This uncomfortable note did not at all come from 
 mere difference of opinion, for that too was a familiar ele- 
 
 26 
 
Brother and Sister 27 
 
 ment in Sylvia's world. Indeed, it seemed to her that every- 
 body who came to the Marshall house disagreed with every- 
 body else about everything. The young men, students or 
 younger professors, engaged in perpetual discussions, carried 
 on in acrimonious tones which nevertheless seemed not in 
 the least to impair the good feeling between them. When 
 there was nobody else there for Father to disagree with, 
 he disagreed with Mother, occasionally, to his great delight, 
 rousing her from her customary self-contained economy of 
 words to a heat as voluble as his own. Often as the two 
 moved briskly about, preparing a meal together, they 
 shouted out from the dining-room to the kitchen a dis- 
 cussion on some unintelligible topic such as the " anachro- 
 nism of the competitive system," so loudly voiced and so 
 energetically pursued that when they came to sit down to 
 table, they would be quite red-cheeked and stirred-up, and 
 ate their dinners with as vigorous an appetite as though 
 they had been pursuing each other on foot instead of 
 verbally. 
 
 The older habitues of the house were no more peaceable 
 and were equally given to what seemed to childish listeners 
 endless disputes about matters of no importance. Professor 
 La Rue's white mustache and pointed beard quivered with 
 the intensity of his scorn for the modern school of poetry, 
 and Madame La Rue, who might be supposed to be insulated 
 by the vast bulk of her rosy flesh from the currents of 
 passionate conviction flashing through the Marshall house, 
 had fixed ideas on the Franco-Prussian War, on the relative 
 values of American and French bed-making, and the correct 
 method of bringing up girls (she was childless), which 
 needed only to be remotely stirred to burst into showers of 
 fiery sparks. And old Professor Kennedy was nothing less 
 than abusive when started on an altercation about one of 
 the topics vital to him, such as the ignoble idiocy of the 
 leisure-class ideal, or the generally contemptible nature of 
 modern society. No, it was not mere difference of opinion 
 which so charged the air during Aunt Victoria's rare visits 
 with menacing electricity. 
 
28 The Bent Twig 
 
 As a matter of fact, if she did differ in opinion from 
 her brother and his wife, the children would never have 
 been able to guess it from the invariably restrained tones of 
 her fluent and agreeable speech, so different from the out- 
 spoken virulence with which people in that house were 
 accustomed to defend their ideas. But, indefinable though 
 it was to Sylvia's undeveloped powers of analysis, she felt 
 that the advent of her father's beautiful and gracious sister 
 was like a drop of transparent but bitter medicine in a glass 
 of clear water. There was no outward sign of change, but 
 everything was tinctured by it. Especially was her father 
 changed from his usual brilliantly effervescent self. In 
 answer to the most harmless remark of Aunt Victoria, he 
 might reply with a sudden* grim sneering note in his voice 
 which made Sylvia look up at him half-afraid. If Aunt 
 Victoria noticed this sardonic accent, she never paid it the 
 tribute of a break in the smooth surface of her own con- 
 sistent good-will, rebuking her brother's prickly hostility 
 only by the most indulgent tolerance of his queer ways, a 
 tolerance which never had on Professor Marshall's sensi- 
 bilities the soothing effect which might have seemed its 
 natural result. 
 
 The visit which Aunt Victoria paid them when Sylvia was 
 ten years old was more peaceable than the one before it. 
 Perhaps the interval of five years between the two had 
 mellowed the relationship; or more probably the friction 
 was diminished because Aunt Victoria arranged matters so 
 that she was less constantly in the house than usual. On 
 that occasion, in addition to the maid who always accom- 
 panied her, she brought her little stepson and his tutor, and 
 with characteristic thoughtfulness refused to impose this 
 considerable train of attendants on a household so primi- 
 tively organized as that of the Marshalls. They all spent 
 the fortnight of their stay at the main hotel of the town, 
 a large new edifice, the conspicuous costliness of which 
 was one of the most recent sources of civic pride in La 
 Chance. Here in a suite of four much-decorated rooms, 
 which seemed unutterably elegant to Sylvia, the travelers 
 
Brother and Sister 29 
 
 slept, and ate most of their meals, making their trips out 
 to the Marshall house in a small, neat, open carriage, which, 
 although engaged at a livery-stable by Mrs. Marshall-Smith 
 for the period of her stay, was not to be distinguished 
 from a privately owned equipage. 
 
 It can be imagined what an event in the pre-eminently 
 stationary life of the Marshall children was this fortnight. 
 To Judith and Lawrence, eight and four respectively, Aunt 
 Victoria's charms and amenities were non-existent. She was 
 for Judith as negligible as all other grown-ups, save the few 
 who had good sense enough to play games and go in 
 swimming. Judith's interest centered in the new boy, whom 
 the Marshalls now saw for the first time, and who was in 
 every way a specimen novel in their limited experience of 
 children. During their first encounter, the well-groomed, 
 white-linen-clad boy with his preternaturally clean face, 
 his light-brown hair brushed till it shone like lacquer, his 
 polished nails and his adult appendage of a tutor, aroused 
 a contempt in Judith's mind which was only equaled by 
 her astonishment. On that occasion he sat upright in a 
 chair between his stepmother and his tutor, looking intently 
 out of very bright blue eyes at the two gipsy-brown little 
 girls in their single-garment linen play-clothes, swinging 
 their tanned bare legs and feet from the railing of the porch. 
 They returned this inspection in silence — on Sylvia's part 
 with the keen and welcoming interest she always felt in new 
 people who were well-dressed and physically attractive, but 
 as for Judith with a frankly hostile curiosity, as at some 
 strange and quite unattractive new animal. 
 
 The next morning, a still, oppressive day of brazen heat, 
 it was suggested that the children take their guest off to visit 
 some of their own favorite haunts to " get acquainted." 
 This process began somewhat violently by the instant halt 
 of Arnold as soon as they were out of sight of the house. 
 " I'm going to take off these damn socks and shoes," he 
 announced, sitting down in the edge of a flower-bed. 
 
 " Oh, don't ! You'll get your clean suit all dirty ! " cried 
 Sylvia, springing forward to lift him out of the well-tilled 
 
 \ 
 
30 The Bent Twig 
 
 black loam: Arnold thrust her hand away and made a 
 visible effort to increase his specific gravity. " I hope to 
 the Lord I do get it dirty ! " he said bitterly. 
 
 " Isn't it your best ? " asked Sylvia, aghast. " Have you 
 another ? " "I haven't anything but ! " said the boy sav- 
 agely. " There's a whole trunk full of them ! " He was 
 fumbling with a rough clumsiness at the lacing of his shoes, 
 but made no progress in loosening them, and now began 
 kicking at the grass. " I don't know how to get them off ! " 
 he cried, his voice breaking nervously. Judith was down on 
 her knees, inspecting with a competent curiosity the fasten- 
 ings, which were of a new variety. 
 
 " It's easy! " she said. " You just lift this little catch up 
 and turn it back, and that lets you get at the knot." As she 
 spoke, she acted, her rough brown little fingers tugging at 
 the silken laces. " How'd you ever get it fastened," she 
 inquired, "if you don't know how to unfasten it?" 
 
 " Oh, Pauline puts my shoes on for me," explained Ar- 
 nold. " She dresses and undresses me." 
 
 Judith stopped and looked up at him. " Who's Pauline ? " 
 she asked, disapproving astonishment in her accent. 
 
 " Madrina's maid." 
 
 Judith pursued him further with her little black look of 
 scorn. " Who's Madrina ? " 
 
 " Why — you know — your Aunt Victoria — my step- 
 mother — she married my father when I was a little baby — 
 she doesn't want me to call her ' mother ' so I call her 
 ' Madrina.' That's Italian for " 
 
 Judith had no interest in this phenomenon and no opinion 
 about it. She recalled the conversation to the point at 
 issue with her usual ruthless directness. " And you 
 wouldn't know how to undress yourself if somebody didn't 
 help you ! " She went on loosening the laces in a con- 
 temptuous silence, during which the boy glowered resent- 
 fully at the back of her shining black hair. Sylvia essayed 
 a soothing remark about what pretty shoes he had, but with 
 small success. Already the excursion was beginning to take 
 on the color of its ending, — an encounter between the per- 
 
 
Brother and Sister 31 
 
 sonalities of Judith and Arnold, with Sylvia and Lawrence 
 left out. When the shoes finally came off, they revealed 
 white silk half-hose, which, discarded in their turn, showed 
 a pair of startlingly pale feet, on which the new boy now 
 essayed wincingly to walk. " Ouch ! Ouch ! OUCH ! " he 
 cried, holding up first one and then the other from contact 
 with the hot sharp-edged pebbles of the path, " How do you 
 do it?" 
 
 " Oh, it always hurts when you begin in the spring," said 
 Judith carelessly. " You have to get used to it. How old 
 are you ? " 
 
 " Ten, last May." 
 
 " Buddy here began going barefoot last summer and he's 
 only four," she stated briefly, proceeding towards the barn 
 and chicken-house. 
 
 After that remark the new boy walked forward with no 
 more articulate complaints, though his face was drawn and 
 he bit his lips. He was shown the chicken-yard — full of 
 gawky, half-grown chickens shedding their down and 
 growing their feathers — and forgot his feet in the fascina- 
 tion of scattering grain to them and watching their fluttering 
 scrambles. He was shown the rabbit-house and allowed to 
 take one of the limp, unresponsive little bunches of fur in 
 his arms, and feed a lettuce-leaf into its twitching pink 
 mouth. He was shown the house-in-the-maple-tree, a 
 rough floor fixed between two large branches, with a canvas 
 roof over it, ensconced in which retreat his eyes shone with 
 happy excitement. He was evidently about to make some 
 comment on it, but glanced at Judith's dark handsome 
 little face, unsmiling and suspicious, and remained silent. 
 He tried the same policy when being shown the children's 
 own garden, but Judith tracked him out of this attempt at 
 self-protection with some direct and searching questions, 
 discovering in him such ignorance of the broadest division- 
 lines of the vegetable kingdom that she gave herself up to 
 open scorn, vainly frowned down by the more naturally 
 civilized Sylvia, who was by no means enjoying herself. 
 The new boy was not in the least what he had looked. 
 
32 The Bent Twig 
 
 She longed to return to the contemplation of Aunt Vifr 
 toria's perfections. Lawrence was, as usual, deep in an 
 unreal world of his own, where he carried forth some 
 enterprise which had nothing to do with any one about 
 him. He was frowning and waving his arms, and making 
 stabbing gestures with his fingers, and paid no atten- 
 tion to the conversation between Judith and the new 
 boy. 
 
 " What can you do ? What do you know ? " asked the 
 former at last. 
 
 " I can ride horseback," said Arnold defiantly. 
 
 Judith put him to the test at once, leading the way to 
 the stall which was the abode of the little pinto broncho, 
 left them, she explained, as a trust by one of Father's 
 students from the Far West, who was now graduated and 
 a civil engineer in Chicago, where it cost too much to keep 
 a horse. Arnold emerged from this encounter with the 
 pony with but little more credit than he had earned in the 
 garden, showing an ineptness about equine ways which led 
 Judith through an unsparing cross-examination to the in- 
 formation that the boy's experience of handling a horse 
 consisted in being ready in a riding-costume at a certain 
 hour every afternoon, and mounting a well-broken little 
 pony, all saddled and bridled, which was " brought round " 
 to the porte-cochere. 
 
 " What's a porte-cochere ? " she asked, with her inimitable 
 air of despising it, whatever it might turn out to be. 
 
 Arnold stared with an attempt to copy her own frank 
 scorn for another's ignorance. " Huh ! Don't you even 
 know that much? It's the big porch without any floor to 
 it, where carriages drive up so you can get in and out 
 without getting wet if it rains. Every house that's good 
 for anything has one." 
 
 So far from being impressed or put down, Judith took her 
 stand as usual on the offensive. " 'Fore I'd be afraid of a 
 little rain ! " she said severely, an answer which caused 
 Arnold to seem disconcerted, and again to look at her hard 
 with the startled expression of arrested attention which 
 
Brother and Sister 33 
 
 from the first her remarks and strictures seemed to cause 
 in him. 
 
 They took the pinto out. Judith rode him bareback at 
 a gallop down to the swimming pool and dived from his 
 back into the yellow water shimmering hotly in the sun. 
 This feat stung Arnold into a final fury. Without an 
 instant's pause he sprang in after her. As he came to the 
 top, swimming strongly with a lusty, regular stroke, and 
 rapidly overhauled the puffing Judith, his face shone bril- 
 liantly with relief. He was another child. The petulant 
 boy of a few moments before had vanished. " Beat you to 
 the springboard ! " he sputtered joyously, swimming low and 
 spitting water as he slid easily through it at twice Judith's 
 speed. She set her teeth and drove her tough little body 
 with a fierce concentration of all her forces, but Arnold 
 was sitting on the springboard, dangling his red and swollen 
 feet when she arrived. 
 
 She clambered out and sat down beside him, silent for an 
 instant. Then she said with a detached air, " You can swim 
 better than any boy I ever saw." 
 
 Arnold's open, blond face flushed scarlet at this state- 
 ment. He looked at the dripping little brown rat beside 
 him, and returned impulsively, " I'd rather play with you 
 than any girl I ever saw." 
 
 They were immediately reduced to an awkward silence 
 by these two unpremeditated superlatives. Judith found 
 nothing to say beyond a " huh " in an uncertain accent, and 
 they turned with relief to alarums and excursions from 
 ,the forgotten and abandoned Sylvia and Lawrence. Sylvia 
 *Vas forcibly restraining her little brother from following 
 Judith into the water. " You mustn't, Buddy ! You know 
 we aren't allowed to go in till an hour after eating and 
 you only had your breakfast a little while ago ! " She led 
 him away bellowing. 
 
 Arnold, surprised, asked Judith, " 'Cept for that, are 
 you allowed to go in whenever you want ? " 
 
 " Sure ! We're not to stay in more than ten minutes at a 
 time, and then get out and run around for half an hour in 
 
34 The Bent Twig 
 
 the sun. There's a clock under a little roof-thing, nailed 
 up to a tree over there, so's we can tell." 
 
 " And don't you get what-for, if you go in with all your 
 clothes on this way ? " 
 
 " I haven't any clothes on but my rompers," said Judith. 
 " They're just the same as a bathing suit." She snatched 
 back her prerogative of asking questions. " Where did you 
 learn to swim so ? " 
 
 " At the seashore ! I get taken there a month every 
 summer. It's the most fun of any of the places I get taken. 
 I've had lessons there from the professor of swimming ever 
 since I was six. Madrina doesn't know what to do with 
 me but have me take lessons. I like the swimming ones 
 the best. I hate dancing — and going to museums." 
 
 " What else can you do ? " asked Judith with a noticeable 
 abatement of her previous disesteem. 
 
 Arnold hesitated, his own self-confidence as evidently 
 dashed. " Well — I can fence a little — and talk French ; 
 we are in Paris winters, you know. We don't stay in Lyd- 
 ford for the winter. Nobody does." 
 
 " Everybody goes away ? " queried Judith. " What a 
 funny town ! " 
 
 " Oh, except the people who live there — the Ver- 
 monters." 
 
 Judith was more and more at a loss. " Don't you liv& 
 there ? " 
 
 " No, we don't live anywhere. We just stay places fot 
 a while. Nobody that we know lives anywhere." He in- 
 terrupted a further question from the astonished Judith to 
 ask, " How'd you happen to have such a dandy swimming- 
 pool out of such a little brook ? " 
 
 Judith, switched off upon a topic of recent and absorbing 
 interest, was diverted from investigation into the odd ways 
 of people who lived nowhere. " Isn't it great ! " she said 
 ardently. " It's new this summer — that's why I don't swim 
 so very well yet. Why, it was this way. The creek ran 
 through a corner of our land, and a lot of Father's students 
 that are engineers or something, wanted to do something 
 
Brother and Sister 35 
 
 for Father when they graduated — lots of students do, you 
 know — and everybody said the creek didn't have water 
 enough and they bet each other it did, and after Commence- 
 ment we had a kind of camp for a week — tents and things 
 all round here — and Mother cooked for them — camp fires — 
 oh, lots of fun! — and they let us children tag around as 
 much as we pleased — and they and Father dug, and fixed 
 concrete — say, did you ever get let to stir up concrete ? It's 
 great ! " 
 
 Seeing in the boy's face a blankness as great as her own 
 during his chance revelations of life on another planet, she 
 exclaimed, " Here, come on, down to the other end, and 
 I'll show you how they made the dam and all — they began 
 
 over there with " The two pattered along the edge 
 
 hand-in-hand, talking incessantly on a common topic at last, 
 interrupting each other, squatting down, peering into the 
 water, pointing, discussing, arguing, squeezing the deliciously 
 soft mud up and down between their toes, their heads close 
 together — they might for the moment have been brother 
 and sister who had grown up together. 
 
 They were interrupted by voices, and turning flushed and 
 candid faces of animation towards the path, beheld Aunt 
 Victoria, wonderful and queen-like in a white dress, a para- 
 sol, like a great rose, over her stately blond head, attended 
 by Sylvia adoring; Mrs. Marshall quiet and observant; Mr. 
 Rollins, the tutor, thin, agitated, and unhappily responsible; 
 and Professor Marshall smiling delightedly at the children. 
 
 "Why, Arnold Smith!" cried his tutor, too much over- 
 come by the situation to express himself more forcibly than 
 by a repetition of the boy's name. " Why, Arnold! Come 
 here ! " 
 
 The cloud descended upon the boy's face. " I will not ! n 
 he said insolently. 
 
 " But we were just looking for you to start back to the 
 hotel," argued Mr. Rollins. 
 
 " I don't care if you were ! " said the boy in a sullen 
 accent. 
 
 Sylvia and Judith looked on in amazement at this scene 
 
36 The Bent Twig 
 
 of insubordination, as new to them as all the rest of the 
 boy's actions. He was standing still now, submitting in a 
 gloomy silence to the various comments on his appearance, 
 which was incredibly different from that with which he had 
 started on his travels. The starch remaining in a few places 
 in his suit, now partly dried in the hot sun, caused the 
 linen to stand out grotesquely in peaks and mud-streaked 
 humps, his hair, still wet, hung in wisps about his very- 
 dirty face, his bare, red feet and legs protruded from 
 shapeless knickerbockers. His stepmother looked at him 
 with her usual good-natured amused gaze. " It is custom- 
 ary, before going in swimming, isn't it, Arnold, to take 
 your watch out of your pocket and put your cuff-links in 
 a safe-place ? " she suggested casually. 
 
 " Good Heavens ! His watch ! " cried Mr. Rollins, clutch- 
 ing at his own sandy hair. 
 
 Professor Marshall clapped the boy encouragingly on the 
 shoulder. " Well, sir, you look more like a human being,"' 
 he said heartily, addressing himself, with defiance in hisi 
 tone, to his sister. 
 
 She replied with a smile, " That rather depends, doesn't 
 it, Elliott, upon one's idea of what constitutes a human 
 being?" 
 
 Something in her sweet voice roused Judith to an ugly 
 wrath. She came forward and took her place protectingly 
 beside her new playmate, scowling at her aunt. " We were 
 having a lovely time ! " she said challengingly. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked down at the grotesque little 
 figure and touched the brown cheek indulgently with her 
 forefinger. " That too rather depends upon one's definition 
 of a lovely time," she replied, turning away, leaving with 
 the indifference of long practice the unfortunate Mr. Rol- 
 lins to the task of converting Arnold into a product possible 
 to transport through the streets of a civilized town. 
 
 Before they went away that day*, Arnold managed to seek 
 Judith out alone, and with shamefaced clumsiness to slip his 
 knife,' quite new and three-bladed, into her hand. She 
 looked at it uncomprehendingly. " For you — to keep," he 
 
Brother and Sister 37 
 
 said, flushing again, and looking hard into her dark eyes, 
 which in return lightened suddenly from their usual rather 
 somber seriousness into a smile, a real smile. Judith's 
 smiles were far from frequent, buj the recipient of one did 
 not forget it. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 EVERY ONE'S OPINION OF EVERY ONE ELSE 
 
 In this way, almost from the first, several distinct lines 
 of cleavage were established in the family party during 
 the next fortnight. Arnold imperiously demanded a com- 
 plete vacation from " lessons," and when, it was indolently 
 granted, he spent it incessantly with Judith, the two being 
 always out of doors and usually joyously concocting what 
 in any but the easy-going, rustic plainness of the Marshall 
 mode of life would have been called mischief. Mrs. Mar- 
 shall, aided by the others in turn, toiled vigorously between 
 the long rows of vegetables and a little open shack near by, 
 where, on a superannuated but still serviceable cook-stove, 
 she " put up," for winter use, an endless supply of the 
 golden abundance which, Ceres-like, she poured out every 
 year from the Horn of Plenty of her garden. Sylvia, in 
 a state of hypnotized enchantment, dogged her Aunt Vic- 
 toria's graceful footsteps and still more graceful, leisurely 
 halts ; Lawrence bustled about on his own mysterious busi- 
 ness in a solitary and apparently exciting world of his 
 own which was anywhere but in La Chance ; and Professor 
 Marshall, in the intervals of committee work at the Uni- 
 versity, now about to open, alternated between helping his 
 wife, playing a great deal of very noisy and very brilliant 
 music on the piano, and conversing in an unpleasant voice 
 with his sister. 
 
 Mr. Rollins, for whom, naturally, Arnold's revolt meant 
 unwonted freedom, was for the most part invisible, " seeing 
 the sights of La Chance, I suppose," conjectured Aunt Vic- 
 toria indifferently, in her deliciously modulated voice, when 
 asked what had become of the sandy-haired tutor. And 
 because, in the intense retirement and rustication of this 
 
 38 
 
Every One's Opinion of Every One Else 39 
 
 period, Mrs. Marshall-Smith needed little attention paid 
 to her toilets, Pauline also was apparently enjoying an un- 
 usual vacation. A short time after making the conjecture 
 about her stepson's tutor, Aunt Victoria had added the sug- 
 gestion, level-browed, and serene as always, " Perhaps he 
 and Pauline are seeing the sights together." 
 
 Sylvia, curled on a little stool at her aunt's feet, turned 
 an artless, inquiring face up to her. " What are the ' sights ' 
 of La Chance, Auntie ? " she asked. 
 
 Her father, who was sitting at the piano, his long ringers 
 raised as though about to play, whirled about and cut in 
 quickly with an unintelligible answer, " Your Aunt Vic- 
 toria refers to non-existent phenomena, my dear, in order 
 to bring home to us the uncouth provinciality in which we 
 live." 
 
 Aunt Victoria, leaning back, exquisitely passive, in one 
 of the big, shabby arm-chairs, raised a protesting hand. 
 " My dear Elliott, you don't do your chosen abiding-place 
 justice. There is the new Court-House. Nobody can deny 
 that that is a sight. I spent a long time the other day 
 contemplating it. That and the Masonic Building are a 
 pair of sights. I conceive Rollins, who professes to be 
 interested in architecture, as constantly vibrating between 
 the two." 
 
 To which handsome tribute to La Chance's high-lights, 
 Professor Marshall returned with bitterness, " Good Lord, 
 Vic, why do you come, then ? " 
 
 She answered pleasantly, " I might ask in my turn why 
 you stay." She went on, " I might also remind you that 
 you and your children are the only human ties I have." 
 She slipped a soft arm about Sylvia as she spoke, and 
 turned the vivid, flower-like little face to be kissed. When 
 Aunt Victoria kissed her, Sylvia always felt that she had, 
 like Diana in the story-book, stooped radiant from a shin- 
 ing cloud. 
 
 There was a pause in the conversation. Professor Mar- 
 shall faced the piano again and precipitated himself head- 
 long into the diabolic accelerandos of " The Hall of the 
 
40 The Bent Twig 
 
 Mountain-King." His sister listened with extreme and 
 admiring appreciation of his talent. " Upon my word, 
 Elliott," she said heartily, "under the circumstances it's 
 incredible, but it's true — your touch positively improves." 
 
 He stopped short, and addressed the air above the piano 
 with passionate conviction. " I stay because, thanks to my 
 wife, I've savored here fourteen years of more complete 
 reconciliation with life — I've been vouchsafed more use- 
 fulness — I've discovered more substantial reasons for exist- 
 ing than I ever dreamed possible in the old life — than any 
 one in that world can conceive ! " 
 
 Aunt Victoria looked down at her beautiful hands clasped 
 in her lap. " Yes, quite so," she breathed. " Any one who 
 knows you well must agree that whatever you are, or do, 
 or find, nowadays, is certainly ' thanks to your wife/ " 
 
 Her brother flashed a furious look at her, v and was 
 about to speak, but catching sight of Sylvia's troubled little 
 face turned to him anxiously, gave only an impatient shake 
 to his ruddy head — now graying slightly. A little later he 
 said : " Oh, we don't speak the same language any more, 
 Victoria. I couldn't make you understand — you don't know 
 — how should you? You can't conceive how, when one is 
 really living, nothing of all that matters. What does archi- 
 tecture matter, for instance ? " 
 
 " Some of it matters very little indeed," concurred his 
 sister blandly. 
 
 This stirred him to an ungracious laugh. " As for keep- 
 ing up only human ties, isn't a fortnight once every five 
 years rather slim rations ? " 
 
 " Ah, there are difficulties — the Masonic Building " 
 
 murmured Aunt Victoria, apparently at random. But 
 then, it seemed to Sylvia that they were always speaking 
 at random. For all she could see, neither of them ever 
 answered what the other had said. 
 
 The best times were when she and Aunt Victoria were 
 all alone together — or with only the silent, swift-fingered, 
 Pauline in attendance during the wonderful processes of 
 dressing or undressing her mistress. These occasions 
 
Every One's Opinion of Every One Else 41 
 
 seemed to please Aunt Victoria best also. She showed her- 
 self then so winning and gracious and altogether magical 
 to the little girl that Sylvia forgot the uncomfortableness 
 which always happened when her aunt and her father were 
 together. As they came to be on more intimate terms, 
 Sylvia was told a great many details about Aunt Victoria's 
 present and past life, in the form of stories, especially 
 about that early part of it which had been spent with her 
 brother. Mrs. Marshall-Smith took pains to talk to Sylvia 
 about her father as he had been when he was a brilliant 
 dashing youth in Paris at school, or as the acknowledged 
 social leader of his class in the famous Eastern college. 
 " You see, Sylvia," she explained, " having no father or 
 mother or any near relatives, we saw more of each other 
 than a good many brothers and sisters do. We had nobody 
 else — except old Cousin Ellen, who kept house for us in 
 the summers in Lydford and traveled around with us." 
 Lydford was another topic on which, although it was already 
 very familiar to her from her mother's reminiscences of 
 her childhood in Vermont, Aunt Victoria shed much light 
 for Sylvia. Aunt Victoria's Lydford was so different from 
 Mother's, it seemed scarcely possible they could be the same 
 place. Mother's talk was all about the mountains, the 
 sunny upland pastures, rocky and steep, such a contrast to 
 the rich, level stretches of country about La Chance; about 
 the excursions through these slopes of the mountains every 
 afternoon, accompanied by a marvelously intelligent collie 
 dog, who helped find the cows ; about the orchard full of 
 old trees more climbable than any others which have grown 
 since the world began ; about the attic full of drying pop- 
 corn and old hair-trunks and dusty files of the New York 
 Tribune; about the pantry with its cookie- jar, and the 
 " back room " with its churn and cheese-press. 
 
 Nothing of all this existed in the Lydford of which Aunt 
 Victoria spoke, although some of her recollections were also 
 of childhood hours. Once Sylvia asked her, " But if you 
 were a little girl there, and Mother was too, — then you and 
 Father and she must have played together sometimes ? " 
 
42 The Bent Twig 
 
 Aunt Victoria had replied with decision, " No, I never 
 saw your mother, and neither did your father — until a few 
 months before they were married." 
 
 " Well, wasn't that queer? " exclaimed Sylvia — " she al- 
 ways lived in Lydford except when she went away to col- 
 lege." 
 
 Aunt Victoria seemed to hesitate for words, something 
 unusual with her, and finally brought out, " Your mother 
 lived on a farm, and we lived in our summer house in the 
 village." She added after a moment's deliberation : " Her 
 uncle, who kept the farm, furnished us with our butter. 
 Sometimes your mother used to deliver it at the kitchen 
 door." She looked hard at Sylvia as she spoke. 
 
 " Well, I should have thought you'd have seen her 
 there ! " said Sylvia in surprise. Nothing came to the Mar- 
 snails' kitchen door which was not in the children's field of 
 consciousness. 
 
 " It was, in fact, there that your father met her," stated 
 Aunt Victoria briefly. 
 
 " Oh yes, I remember," said Sylvia, quoting fluently 
 from an often heard tale. " I've heard them tell about it 
 lots of times. She was earning money to pay for her last 
 year in college, and dropped a history book out of her 
 basket as she started to get back in the wagon, and Father 
 picked it up and said, ' Why, good Lord ! who in Lydford 
 reads Gibbon ? ' And Mother said it was hers, and they 
 talked a while, and then he got in and rode off with her." 
 
 " Yes," said Aunt Victoria, " that was how it happened. 
 . . . Pauline, get out the massage cream and do my face, will 
 you ? " 
 
 She did not talk any more for a time, but when she began, 
 it was again of Lydford that she spoke, running along in 
 a murmured stream of reminiscences breathed faintly be- 
 tween motionless lips that Pauline's reverent ministrations 
 might not be disturbed. Through the veil of these half- 
 understood recollections, Sylvia saw highly inaccurate pic- 
 tures of great magnificent rooms filled with heavy old 
 mahogany furniture, of riotously colored rose-gardens, ter- 
 
Every One's Opinion of Every One Else 43 
 
 raced and box-edged, inhabited by beautiful ladies always, 
 like Aunt Victoria, " dressed-up," who took tea under 
 brightly striped, pagoda-shaped tents, waited upon by slant- 
 eyed Japanese (it seemed Aunt Victoria had nothing but 
 Japanese servants). The whole picture shimmered in the 
 confused imagination of the listening little girl, till it 
 blended indistinguishably with the enchantment of her 
 fairy-stories. It all seemed a background natural enough 
 for Aunt Victoria, but Sylvia could not fit her father into it. 
 
 " Ah, he's changed greatly — he's transformed — he is not 
 the same creature," Aunt Victoria told her gravely, speak- 
 ing according to her seductive habit with Sylvia, as though 
 to an equal. " The year when we lost our money and he 
 married, altered all the world for us." She linked the two 
 events together, and was rewarded by seeing the reference 
 slide over Sylvia's head. 
 
 " Did you lose your money, too ?" asked Sylvia, astounded. 
 It had never occurred to her that Aunt Victoria might have 
 been affected by that event in her father's life, with which 
 she was quite familiar through his careless references to 
 what he seemed to regard as an interesting but negligible 
 incident. 
 
 " All but the slightest portion of it, my dear — when I 
 was twenty years old. Your father was twenty-five." 
 
 Sylvia looked about her at the cut-glass and silver uten- 
 sils on the lace-covered dressing-table, at Aunt Victoria's 
 pale lilac crepe-de-chine negligee, at the neat, pretty young 
 maid deft-handedly rubbing the perfumed cream into the 
 other woman's well-preserved face, impassive as an idol's. 
 
 " Why — why, I thought " she began and stopped, a 
 
 native delicacy making her hesitate as Judith never did. 
 
 Aunt Victoria understood. " Mr. Smith had money," 
 she explained briefly. " I married when I was twenty-one." 
 
 " Oh," said Sylvia. It seemed an easy way out of 
 difficulties. She had never before chanced to hear Aunt 
 Victoria mention her long-dead husband. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 SOMETHING ABOUT HUSBANDS 
 
 She did not by any means always sit in the hotel and 
 watch Pauline care for different portions of Aunt Victoria's 
 body. Mrs. Marshall-Smith took, on principle, a drive 
 every day, and Sylvia was her favorite companion. At first 
 they went generally over the asphalt and in front of the 
 costly and incredibly differing " mansions " of the " resi- 
 dential portion " of town, but later their drives took them 
 principally along the winding roads and under the thrifty 
 young trees of the State University campus. They often 
 made an excuse of fetching Professor Marshall home from 
 a committee meeting, and as the faculty committees at 
 that time of year were, for the most part, feverishly occupied 
 with the classification of the annual flood-tide of Freshmen, 
 he was nearly always late, and they were obliged to wait 
 long half-hours in front of the Main Building. 
 
 Sylvia's cup of satisfaction ran over as, dressed in her 
 simple best, which her mother without comment allowed 
 her to put on every day now, she sat in the well-appointed 
 carriage beside her beautiful aunt, at whom every one 
 looked so hard and so admiringly. The University work 
 had not begun, but unresigned and harassed professors and 
 assistants, recalled from their vacations for various execu- 
 tive tasks, were present in sufficient numbers to animate the 
 front steps of the Main Building with constantly gathering 
 and dissolving little groups. These called out greetings to 
 each other, and exchanged dolorous mutual condolences on 
 their hard fate; all showing, with a helpless masculine 
 naivete, their consciousness of the lovely, observant figure 
 in the carriage below them. Of a different sort were the 
 professors' wives, who occasionally drifted past on the path- 
 
 44 
 
Something About Husbands 45 
 
 Aunt Victoria might have been a blue-uniformed messenger- 
 boy for all that was betrayed by their skilfully casual 
 glance at her and then away, and the subsequent direct- 
 ness of their forward gaze across the campus. Mrs. 
 Marshall-Smith had for both these manifestations of con- 
 sciousness of her presence the same imperturbable smile of 
 amusement. " They are delightful, these colleagues of your 
 father's ! " she told Sylvia. Sylvia had hoped fervently that 
 the stylish Mrs. Hubert might see her in this brief apothe- 
 osis, and one day her prayer was answered. Straight down 
 the steps of the Main Building they came, Mrs. Hubert glis- 
 tening in shiny blue silk, extremely unaware of Aunt Vic- 
 toria, the two little girls looking to Sylvia like fairy prin- 
 cesses, with pink-and-white, lace-trimmed dresses, and big 
 pink hats with rose wreaths. Even the silk laces in their 
 low, white kid shoes were of pink to match the ribbons, 
 which gleamed at waist and throat and elbow. Sylvia 
 watched them in an utter admiration, and was beyond 
 measure shocked when Aunt Victoria said, after they had 
 stepped daintily past, " Heavens ! What a horridly over- 
 dressed family! Those poor children look too absurd, 
 tricked out like that. The one nearest me had a sweet, 
 appealing little face, too." 
 
 " That is Eleanor," said Sylvia, with a keen, painful 
 recollection of the scene a year ago. She added doubtfully, 
 '* Didn't you think their dresses pretty, Aunt Victoria ? " 
 
 " I thought they looked like pin-cushions on a kitchen- 
 maid's dressing-table," returned Aunt Victoria more forcibly 
 than she usually expressed herself. " You look vastly bet- 
 ter with the straight lines of your plain white dresses. 
 You have a great deal of style, Sylvia. Judith is hand- 
 somer than you, but she will never have any style." This 
 verdict, upon both the Huberts and herself, delivered with 
 a serious accent of mature deliberation, impressed Sylvia. 
 It was one of the speeches she was to ponder. 
 
 Although Professor Marshall showed himself noticeably 
 negligent in the matter of introducing his colleagues to his 
 sister, it was only two or three days before Aunt Victoria's 
 
46 The Bent Twig 
 
 half-hours of waiting before the Main Building had other 
 companionship than Sylvia's. This was due to the decisive 
 action of young Professor Saunders, just back from the 
 British Museum, where, at Professor Marshall's suggestion, 
 he had been digging up facts about the economic history of 
 the twelfth century in England. Without waiting for an 
 invitation he walked straight up to the carriage with the 
 ostensible purpose of greeting Sylvia, who was a great 
 favorite of his, and who in her turn had a romantic admira- 
 tion for the tall young assistant. Of all the faculty people 
 who frequented the Marshall house, he and old Professor 
 Kennedy were the only people whom Sylvia considered 
 " stylish," and Professor Kennedy, in spite of his very high 
 connection with the aristocracy of La Chance, was so cross 
 and depressed that really his " style " did not count. She 
 was now greatly pleased by the younger professor's public 
 and cordial recognition of her, and, with her precocious 
 instinct for social ease, managed to introduce him to her 
 aunt, even adding quaintly a phrase which she had heard 
 her mother use in speaking of him, " My father thinks 
 Professor Saunders has a brilliant future before him." 
 
 This very complimentary reference had not the effect she 
 hoped for, since both the young man and Aunt Victoria 
 laughed, exchanging glances of understanding, and said to 
 each other, " Isn't she delicious ? " But at least it effect- 
 ually broke any ice of constraint, so that the new-comer felt 
 at once upon the most familiarly friendly terms with the 
 sister of his chief. Thereafter he came frequently to lean 
 an arm on the side of the carriage and talk with the " ladies- 
 in-waiting," as he called the pretty woman and child. Once 
 or twice Sylvia was transferred to the front seat beside 
 Peter, the negro driver, on the ground that she could watch 
 the horses better, and they took Professor Saunders for a 
 drive through the flat, fertile country, now beginning to 
 gleam ruddy with autumnal tints of bronze and scarlet and 
 gold. Although she greatly enjoyed the social brilliance of 
 these occasions, on which Aunt Victoria showed herself un- 
 expectedly sprightly and altogether enchanting, Sylvia felt 
 
Something About Husbands 47 
 
 a little guilty that they did not return to pick up Professor 
 Marshall, and she was relieved, when they met at supper, 
 that he made no reference to their defection. 
 
 He did not, in fact, mention his assistant's name at all, 
 and yet he did not seem surprised when Professor Saunders, 
 coming to the Sunday evening rehearsal of the quartet, 
 needed no introduction to his sister, but drew a chair up 
 with the evident intention of devoting all his conversation to 
 her. For a time this overt intention was frustrated by old 
 Reinhardt, smitten with an admiration as unconcealed for 
 the beautiful stranger. In the interval before the arrival 
 of the later members of the quartet, he fluttered around 
 her like an ungainly old moth, racking his scant English for 
 complimentary speeches. These were received by Aunt Vic- 
 toria with her best calm smile, and by Professor Saunders 
 with open impatience. His equanimity was not restored by 
 the fact that there chanced to be rather more general talk 
 than usual that evening, leaving him but small opportunity 
 for his tete-a-tete. 
 
 It began by the arrival of Professor Kennedy, a little 
 late, delayed at a reunion of the Kennedy family. He was 
 always reduced to bilious gloom by any close contact with 
 that distinguished, wealthy, and much looked-up-to group 
 of citizens of La Chance, and this evening he walked into 
 the front door obviously even more depressed than usual. 
 The weather had turned cool, and his imposingly tall old 
 person was wrapped in a cape-overcoat. Sylvia had no fond- 
 ness for Professor Kennedy, but she greatly admired his 
 looks and his clothes, and his handsome, high-nosed old face. 
 She watched him wrestle himself out of his coat as though it 
 were a grappling enemy, and was not surprised at the irrita- 
 bility which sat visibly upon his arching white eyebrows. 
 He entered the room trailing his 'cello-bag beside him and 
 plucking peevishly at its drawstrings, and although Aunt 
 Victoria quite roused herself at the sight of him, he re- 
 ceived his introduction to her with reprehensible indiffer- 
 ence. He sank into a chair and looked sadly at the fire, 
 taking the point of his white beard in his long, tapering 
 
48 The Bent Twig 
 
 fingers. Professor Marshall turned from the piano, where 
 he sat, striking A for the conscientious Bauermeister to 
 tune, and said laughingly, " Hey there, Knight of the Dolor- 
 ous Countenance, what vulture is doing business at the old 
 stand on your liver?" 
 
 Professor Kennedy crossed one long, elegantly slim leg 
 over the other, " I've been dining with the Kennedy family," 
 he said, with a neat and significant conciseness. 
 
 " Anything specially the matter with the predatory 
 rich ? " queried Marshall, reaching for his viola-case. 
 
 Professor Kennedy shook his head. " Alas ! there's never 
 anything the matter with them. Comme le diable, Us se 
 portent toujours b'xen." 
 
 At the purity of accent with which this embittered remark 
 was made, Mrs. Marshall-Smith opened her eyes, and paid 
 more attention as the old professor went on. 
 
 " The last of my unmarried nieces has shown herself a 
 true Kennedy by providing herself with a dolichocephalic 
 blond of a husband, like all the others. The dinner was 
 given in honor of the engagement." 
 
 Sylvia was accustomed to finding Professor Kennedy's 
 remarks quite unintelligible, and this one seemed no odder 
 to her than the rest, so that she was astonished that Aunt 
 Victoria was not ashamed to confess as blank an ignorance 
 as the little girl's. The beautiful woman leaned toward the 
 morose old man with the suave self-confidence of one who 
 has never failed to charm, and drew his attention to her by 
 a laugh of amused perplexity. " May I ask," she inquired, 
 "what kind of a husband is that? It is a new variety to 
 me." 
 
 Professor Kennedy looked at her appraisingly. " It's the 
 kind most women aspire to," he answered enigmatically. 
 He imparted to this obscure remark the air of passing a 
 sentence of condemnation. 
 
 Sylvia's mother stirred uneasily in her chair and iooked 
 at her husband. He had begun to take his viola from the 
 case, but now returned it and stood looking quizzically from 
 his sister to his guest. " Professor Kennedy talks a special 
 
Something About Husbands 49 
 
 language, Vic," he said lightly. M Some day he'll make a 
 book of it and be famous. He divides us all into two kinds : 
 the ones that get what they want by taking it away from 
 other people — those are the dolichocephalic blonds — 
 though I believe it doesn't refer to the color of their hair. 
 The other kind are the white folks, the unpredatory ones 
 who have scruples, and get pushed to the wall for their 
 pains." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned to the young man beside her. 
 "It makes one wonder, doesn't it," she conjectured pleas- 
 antly, " to which type one belongs oneself?" 
 
 In this welcome shifting from the abstract to the under- 
 standably personal, old Reinhardt saw his opportunity. 
 " Ach, womens, beautifool and goot womens ! " he cried in 
 his thick, kindly voice. " Dey are abofe being types. To 
 every good man, dey can be only wie eine blume, so hold 
 and schon " 
 
 Professor Kennedy's acid voice broke in — " So you're still 
 in the 1830 Romantische Schule period, are you, Rein- 
 hardt? " He went on to Mrs. Marshall-Smith : " But there 
 is something in that sort of talk. Women, especially those 
 who consider themselves beautiful and good, escape being 
 either kind of type, by the legerdemain with which they get 
 what they want, and yet don't soil their fingers with preda- 
 tory acts." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith was, perhaps, a shade tardy in ask- 
 ing the question which he had evidently cast his speech to 
 extract from her, but after an instant's pause she brought it 
 out bravely. " How in the world do you mean ? " she asked, 
 smiling, and received, with a quick flicker of her eyel'ds, 
 the old man's response of, " They buy a dolichocephalic 
 blond to do their dirty work for them and pay for him with 
 their persons." 
 
 "Oh!" cried Mrs. Marshall, checking herself in a sud- 
 den deprecatory gesture of apology towards her sister-in- 
 law. She looked at her husband and gave him a silent, 
 urgent message to break the awkward pause, a message 
 which he disregarded, continuing coolly to inspect his finger- 
 
50 The Bent Twig 
 
 nails with an abstracted air, contradicted by the half-smile 
 on his lips. Sylvia, listening to the talk, could make nothing 
 out of it, but miserably felt her little heart grow leaden as 
 she looked from one face to another. Judith and Lawrence, 
 tired of waiting for the music to begin, had dropped asleep 
 among the pillows of the divan. Mr. Bauermeister yawned, 
 looked at the clock, and plucked at the strings of his violin. 
 He hated all talk as a waste of time. Old Reinhardt's simple 
 face looked as puzzled and uneasy as Sylvia's own. Young 
 Mr. Saunders seemed to have no idea that there was any- 
 thing particularly unsettling in the situation, but, disliking 
 the caustic vehemence of his old colleague's speech, inter- 
 posed to turn it from the lady by his side. " And you're the 
 man who's opposed on principle to sweeping generaliza- 
 tions ! " he said in cheerful rebuke. 
 
 " Ah, I've just come from a gathering of the Clan Ken- 
 nedy," repeated the older man. " I defy anybody to pro- 
 duce a more successfully predatory family than mine. The 
 fortunes of the present generation of Kennedys don't come 
 from any white-livered subterfuge, like the rise in the value 
 of real estate, as my own ill-owned money does. No, sir; 
 the good, old, well-recognized, red-blooded method of going 
 out and taking it away from people not so smart as they 
 are, is good enough for them, if you please. And my 
 woman relatives " He swept them away with a ges- 
 ture. "When I " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall cut him short resolutely. " Are you going 
 to have any music tonight, or aren't you ? " she said. 
 
 He looked at her with a sudden, unexpected softening of 
 his somber eyes. " Do you know, Barbara Marshall, that 
 there are times when you keep one unhappy old misanthrope 
 from despairing of his kind ? " 
 
 She had at this unlooked-for speech only the most honest 
 astonishment. " I don't know what you're talking about," 
 she said bluntly. 
 
 Judith stirred in her sleep and woke up blinking. When 
 she saw that Professor Kennedy had come in, she did what 
 Sylvia would never have dared do; she ran to him and 
 
Something About Husbands 51 
 
 climbed up on his knee, laying her shining, dark head 
 against his shoulder. The old man's arms closed around 
 her. " Well, spitfire," he said, f? comment ga route, eh ? " 
 
 Judith did not trouble herself to answer. With a ges- 
 ture of tenderness, as unexpected as his speech to her 
 mother, her old friend laid his cheek against hers. " You're 
 another, Judy. You'll never marry a dolichocephalic blond 
 and make him pull the chestnuts out of the fire for you, 
 will you ? " he said confidently. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall rose with the exasperated air of one whose 
 patience is gone. She made a step as though to shield her 
 husband's sister from the cantankerous old man. "If I 
 
 hear another word of argument in this house tonight " 
 
 she threatened. " Mr. Reinhardt, what are these people 
 here for ? " 
 
 The musician awoke, with a sigh, from his dazzled con- 
 templation of his host's sister, and looked about him. " Ach, 
 yes ! Ach, yes ! " he admitted. With a glance of adoration 
 at the visitor, he added impressively what to his mind 
 evidently signified some profoundly significant tribute, " Dis 
 night we shall blay only Schubert ! " 
 
 Sylvia heaved a sigh of relief as the four gathered in 
 front of the music-racks at the other end of the room, 
 tuning and scraping. Young Mr. Saunders, evidently 
 elated that his opportunity had come, leaned toward Aunt 
 Victoria and began talking in low tones. Once or twice 
 they laughed a little, looking towards Professor Kennedy. 
 
 Then old Reinhardt, gravely pontifical, rapped with his 
 bow on his rack, lifted his violin to his chin, and — an 
 obliterating sponge was passed over Sylvia's memory. All 
 the queer, uncomfortable talk, the unpleasant voices, the 
 angry or malicious or uneasy eyes, the unkindly smiling 
 lips, all were washed away out of her mind. The smooth, 
 swelling current of the music was like oil on a wound. 
 As she listened and felt herself growing drowsy, it seemed 
 to her that she was being floated away, safely away from the 
 low-ceilinged room where personalities clashed, out to cool, 
 star-lit spaces. 
 
52 
 
 The Bent Twig 
 
 All that night in her dreams she heard only old Rein- 
 hardt's angel voice proclaiming, amid the rich murmur of 
 assent from the other strings : 
 
 P 
 
 i=¥ 
 
 35=*S 
 
 m ^ j c-ji 
 
 ^m 
 
 ^^ 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE SIGHTS OF LA CHANCE 
 
 One day at the end of a fortnight, Aunt Victoria and 
 Arnold were late in their daily arrival at the Marshall 
 house, and when the neat surrey at last drove up, they 
 both showed signs of discomposure. Discomposure was no 
 unusual condition for Arnold, who not infrequently made 
 his appearance red-faced and sullen, evidently fresh from 
 angry revolt against his tutor, but on that morning he was 
 anything but red-faced, and looked a little scared. His 
 stepmother's fine complexion, on the contrary, had more 
 pink than usual in its pearly tones, and her carriage had 
 less than usual of sinuous grace. Sylvia and Judith ran 
 down the porch steps to meet them, but stopped, startled by 
 their aspect. Aunt Victoria descended, very straight, her 
 head high-held, and without giving Sylvia the kiss with 
 which she usually marked her preference for her older 
 niece, walked at once into the house. 
 
 Although the impressionable Sylvia was so struck by 
 these phenomena, that, even after her aunt's disappearance, 
 she remained daunted and silent, Judith needed only the 
 removal of the overpowering presence to restore her cool- 
 ness. She pounced on Arnold with questions. " What you 
 been doing that's so awful bad? I bet you caught it all 
 right ! " 
 
 " 'Tisn't me," said Arnold in a subdued voice. " It's 
 Pauline and old Rollins that caught it. They're the ones 
 that ha' been bad." 
 
 Judith was at a loss, never having conceived that grown- 
 ups might do naughty things. Arnold went on, " If you'd 
 ha' heard Madrina talking to Pauline — say ! Do you know 
 what I did? I crawled under the bed — honest I did. It 
 
 53 
 
54 The Bent Twig 
 
 didn't last but a minute, but it scared the liver out o' me." 
 This vigorous expression was a favorite of his. 
 
 Judith was somewhat impressed by his face and manner, 
 but still inclined to mock at a confession of fear. "Under 
 the bed!" she sneered. 
 
 Arnold evidently felt the horror of the recently enacted 
 scene so vividly that there was no room for shame in his 
 mind. " You bet I did ! And so would you too, if you'd 
 ha' been there. Gee!" 
 
 In spite of herself Judith looked somewhat startled by 
 the vibration of sincerity in his voice, and Sylvia, with her 
 quick sympathy of divination, had turned almost as pale 
 as the little boy, who, all his braggart turbulence gone, 
 stood looking at them with a sick expression in his eyes. 
 
 " Was it in your room ? " asked Judith. " I thought 
 Pauline's room was on the top floor. What was she doing 
 down there ? " 
 
 " No, it was in old Rollins' room — next to mine. I don't 
 know what Pauline was doing there." 
 
 " What did Pauline do when Aunt Victoria scolded her ? " 
 asked Sylvia. She had come to be fond of the pretty young 
 maid with her fat, quick hands and her bright, warm- 
 hearted smile for her mistress' little niece. One day, when 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith had, for a moment, chanced to leave 
 them alone, Pauline had given her a sudden embrace, and 
 had told her : " At 'ome zere are four leetle brozers and 
 sisters. America is a place mos' solitary ! " " What did 
 Pauline do?" asked Sylvia again as Arnold did not an- 
 swer. 
 
 The boy looked down. " Pauline just cried and cried," 
 he said in a low tone. " I liked Pauline ! She was awful 
 good to me. I — I heard her crying afterwards as she went 
 away. Seemed to me I could hear her crying all the way 
 out here." 
 
 " Did she go away ? " asked Judith, trying to make some- 
 thing coherent out of the story. Arnold nodded. 
 
 " You bet she did. Madrina turned her right out — and 
 old Rollins too." 
 
The Sights of La Chance 55 
 
 " Was he there ? What was the matter anyhow ? " Judith 
 persisted. 
 
 Arnold twisted uncomfortably, loath to continue bringing 
 up the scene. " I d'n know what was the matter. Yes, 
 old Rollins was there, all right. He's gone away too, the 
 doggoned old thing — for good. That's something!" He 
 added, "Aw, quit talkin' about it, can't you! Let's 
 play!" 
 
 " It's my turn to help Mother with the tomatoes," said 
 Judith. " She's doing the last of the canning this morning. 
 Maybe she'd let you help." 
 
 Arnold brightened. " Maybe she would ! " he said, add- 
 ing eagerly, " Maybe she'd tell us another of the stories 
 about her grandmother." 
 
 Judith snatched at his hand and began racing down the 
 path to the garden. " Maybe she would ! " she cried. They 
 both called as they ran, " Mother, oh, Mother ! " and as 
 they ran, they leaped and bounded into the bright autumn 
 air like a couple of puppies. 
 
 Sylvia's mental resiliency was not of such sturdily elastic 
 stuff. She stood still, thinking of Pauline crying, and cry- 
 ing — and started aside when her aunt came out again on 
 the porch. 
 
 " I don't find any one in the house, Sylvia dear," said 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith quietly. Sylvia looked up into the 
 clear, blue eyes, so like her father's, and felt the usual 
 magic spell lay hold on her. The horrid impression made 
 by Arnold's story dimmed and faded. Arnold was always 
 getting things twisted. She came up closer to her aunt's 
 side and took the soft, smooth ringers between her two 
 little hard, muscular hands. In her relief, she had for- 
 gotten to answer. Mrs. Marshall- Smith said again, 
 " Where are your parents, dear?" 
 
 " Oh," said Sylvia. " Oh yes— why, Father's at the Uni- 
 versity at a committee meeting and Mother's out by the 
 garden putting up tomatoes. Judy and Arnold are help- 
 ing her." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith hesitated, looked about her rest- 
 
56 The Bent Twig 
 
 lessly, and finally raised her parasol, of a gold-colored silk, 
 a lighter tone, but the same shade as her rich plain broad- 
 cloth costume of tan. " Shall we take a little walk, my 
 dear?" she suggested. "I don't feel like sitting still just 
 now — nor " — she looked down into Sylvia's eyes — " nor 
 yet like canning tomatoes." 
 
 That walk, the last one taken with Aunt Victoria, be- 
 came one of Sylvia's memories, although she never had a 
 vivid recollection of what they saw during their slow ram- 
 ble. It was only Aunt Victoria whom the little girl re- 
 membered — Aunt Victoria moving like a goddess over their 
 rough paths and under the changing glory of the autumn 
 leaves. She herself was a brighter glory, with her shin- 
 ing blond hair crowned by a halo of feathery, gold-colored 
 plumes, the soft, fine, supple broadcloth of her garments 
 gleaming in the sunshine with a sheen like that of a well- 
 kept animal's coat. There breathed from all her person a 
 faint odor of grace and violets and unhurried leisure. 
 
 Sylvia clung close to her side, taking in through all 
 her pores this lovely emanation, not noticing whether they 
 were talking or not, not heeding the direction of their 
 steps. She was quite astonished to find herself on the 
 University campus, in front of the Main Building. Aunt 
 Victoria had never walked so far before. " Oh, did you 
 want to see Father?" she asked, coming a little to her- 
 self. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith said, as if in answer, " Just sit 
 down here and wait for me a minute, will you, Sylvia ? " 
 moving thereupon up the steps and disappearing through 
 the wide front door. Sylvia relapsed into her day-dreams 
 and, motionless in a pool of sunlight, waited, quite uncon- 
 scious of the passage of time. 
 
 This long reverie was at last broken by the return of 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith. She was not alone, but the radiant 
 young man who walked beside her was not her brother, 
 and nothing could have differed more from the brilliantly 
 hard gaze wftich Professor Marshall habitually bent on his 
 sister, than the soft intentness with which young Mr. 
 
The Sights of La Chance 57 
 
 Saunders regarded the ripely beautiful woman. The 
 dazzled expression of his eyes was one of the remembered 
 factors of the day for Sylvia. 
 
 The two walked down the shaded steps, Sylvia watching 
 them admiringly, the scene forever printed on her memory, 
 and emerged into the pool of sunshine where she sat, swing- 
 ing her legs from the bench. They stood there for some 
 minutes, talking together in low tones. Sylvia, absorbed 
 in watching the play of light on Aunt Victoria's smooth 
 cheek, heard but a few words of what passed between them. 
 She had a vague impression that Professor Saunders con- 
 tinually began sentences starting firmly with " But," and 
 ending somehow on quite another note. She felt dimly 
 that Aunt Victoria was less calmly passive than usual in 
 a conversation, that it was not only the enchanting rising 
 and falling inflections of her voice which talked, but her 
 eyes, her arms, her whole self. Once she laid her hand 
 for an instant on Professor Saunders' arm. 
 
 More than that Sylvia could not remember, even when 
 she was asked later to repeat as much as she could of what 
 she had heard. She was resolving when she was grown-up 
 to have a ruffle of creamy lace falling away from her neck 
 and wrists as Aunt Victoria did. She had not only for- 
 gotten Arnold's story, she had forgotten that such a boy 
 existed. She was living in a world all made up of radiance 
 and bloom, lace and sunshine and velvet, and bright hair 
 and gleaming cloth and smooth voices and the smell of 
 violets. 
 
 After a time she was aware that Professor Saunders 
 shook hands and turned back up the steps. Aunt Victoria 
 began to move with her slow grace along the road towards 
 home, and Sylvia to follow, soaking herself in an impres- 
 sion of supreme suavity. 
 
 When, after the walk through the beech-woods, they 
 reached the edge of the Marshall field, they saw a stiff 
 plume of blue smoke stand up over the shack by the gar- 
 den and, as they approached, heard a murmur of voices. 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith stopped, furled her parasol, and sur- 
 
58 The Bent Twig 
 
 veyed the scene within. Her sister-in-law, enveloped in a 
 large blue apron, by no means fresh, sat beside a roughly 
 built table, peeling tomatoes, her brown stained fingers 
 moving with the rapidity of a prestidigitator's. Judith 
 stood beside her, also attacking the pile of crimson fruit, 
 endeavoring in vain to emulate her mother's speed. Over 
 the hot, rusty stove hung Arnold, red-faced and bright- 
 eyed, armed with a long, wooden spatula which he con- 
 tinually dug into the steaming contents of an enormous 
 white-lined kettle. As, at the arrival of the new-comers, 
 Mrs. Marshall's voice stopped, he looked around and 
 frowned impatiently at his stepmother. " She's just got 
 to the excitin' part," he said severely, and to the raconteur 
 eagerly, " 'N'en what?" 
 
 Mrs. Marshall looked up at her husband's sister, smiled, 
 and went on, — Sylvia recognized the story as one of her 
 own old favorites. " Well, it was very early dawn when she 
 had to go over to the neighbor's to borrow some medicine 
 for her father, who kept getting sicker all the time. As she 
 hurried along across the meadow towards the stile, she 
 kept wondering, in spite of herself, if there was any truth 
 in what Nat had said about having seen bear tracks near 
 the house the day before. When she got to the stile she 
 ran up the steps — and on the top one she stood still, for 
 
 there " She made a dramatic pause and reached for 
 
 another tray of tomatoes. Arnold stopped stirring the pot 
 and stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the narrator, the 
 spatula dripping tomato- juice all along his white trousers. 
 " There on the other side, looking up at her, was a bear— 
 a big black bear." 
 
 Arnold's mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. 
 
 " My grandmother was dreadfully frightened. She was 
 only seventeen, and she hadn't any kind of a weapon, not 
 so much as a little stick with her. Her first idea was to 
 turn and run as fast as she could, back home. But she 
 remembered how sick her father was, and how much he 
 needed the medicine; and then besides, she used to say, all 
 of a sudden it made her angry, all over, to have that great 
 
The Sights of La Chance 59 
 
 stupid animal get in her way. She always said that nothing 
 * got her mad up ' like feeling afraid. So what do you 
 suppose she did ? " 
 
 Arnold could only shake his head silently in an ecstasy 
 of impatience for the story to continue. Judith and Sylvia 
 smiled at each other with the insufferable complacence of 
 auditors who know the end by heart. 
 
 " She just pointed her finger at the bear, and she said in 
 a loud, harsh voice : ' Shame ! Shame ! Shame on you ! 
 For sha-a-ame ! ' She'd taught district school, you know, 
 and had had lots of practice saying that to children who 
 had been bad. The bear looked up at her hard for a 
 minute, then dropped his head and began to walk slowly 
 away. Grandmother always said, ' The great lummox lum- 
 bered off into the bushes like a gawk of a boy who's been 
 caught in mischief/ She waited just a minute and then 
 ran like lightning along the path through the woods to 
 the neighbors and got the medicine. ,, 
 
 The story was evidently over, the last tomato was 
 peeled. Mrs. Marshall rose, wiping her stained and drip- 
 ping hands on her apron, and went to the stove. Ar- 
 nold started as if coming out of a dream and looked 
 about him with wondering eyes. " Well, what-d'you-think- 
 o'-that? " he commented, all in one breath. " Say, 
 Mother," he went on, looking up at her with trusting eyes, 
 searching the quiet face, "what do you suppose made the 
 bear go away? You wouldn't think a little thing like that 
 would scare a bear!" 
 
 Mrs. Marshall began dipping the hot, stewed tomatoes 
 into the glass jars ready in a big pan of boiling water on 
 the back of the stove. The steam rose up, like a cloud, into 
 her face, which began to turn red and to glisten with 
 perspiration. " Oh, I don't suppose it really frightened the 
 bear," she said moderately, refraining from the dramatic 
 note of completeness which her husband, in spite of him- 
 self, gave to everything he touched, and adding instead the 
 pungent, homely savor of reality, which none relished more 
 than Sylvia and her father, incapable themselves of achiev- 
 
60 The Bent Twig 
 
 ing it. " 'Most likely the bear would have gone away of 
 his own accord anyhow. They don't attack people unless 
 they're stirred up." Arnold bit deeply into the solidity of 
 this unexaggerated presentation, and was silent for. a mo- 
 ment, saying then : " Well, anyhow, she didn't know he'd go 
 away ! She was a sport, all right ! " 
 
 " Oh yes, indeed," said Mrs. Marshall, dipping and 
 steaming, and wiping away the perspiration, which ran 
 down in drops to the end of her large, shapely nose. 
 " Yes, my grandmother was a sport, all right." The acrid 
 smell of hot, cooking tomatoes filled the shed and spread 
 to the edge where Sylvia and her aunt stood, still a little 
 aloof. Although it bore no resemblance to the odor of 
 violets, it could not be called a disgusting smell : it was the 
 sort of smell which is quite agreeable when one is very 
 hungry. But Sylvia was not hungry at all. She stepped 
 back involuntarily. Mrs. Marshall-Smith, on the contrary, 
 advanced a step or so, until she stood close to her sister- 
 in-law. " Barbara, I'd like to see you a few minutes with- 
 out the children," she remarked in the neutral tone she al- 
 ways had for her brother's wife. " A rather unpleasant 
 occurrence — I'm in something of a quandary." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall nodded. " All right," she agreed. " Scat- 
 ter out of here, you children! Go and let out the hens, 
 and give them some water ! " 
 
 Arnold needed no second bidding, reminded by his step- 
 mother's words of his experiences of the morning. He 
 and Judith scampered away in a suddenly improvised race 
 to see who would reach the chicken-house first. Sylvia 
 went more slowly, looking back once or twice at the pic- 
 ture made by the two women, so dramatically contrasted — 
 her mother, active, very upright, wrapped in a crumpled 
 and stained apron, her dark hair bound closely about her 
 round head, her moist, red face and steady eyes turned 
 attentively upon the radiant creature beside her, cool and 
 detached, leaning willow-like on the slender wand of the 
 gold-colored parasol. 
 
 Professor Marshall chanced to be late that day in com- 
 
The Sights of La Chance 61 
 
 ing home for luncheon, and Aunt Victoria and Arnold had 
 returned to the hotel without seeing him. His wife re- 
 marked that Victoria had asked her to tell him something, 
 but, acting on her inviolable principle that nothing must in- 
 terfere with the cheerful peace of mealtime, said nothing 
 more to him until after they had finished the big plate 
 of purple grapes from her garden, with which the meal 
 ended. 
 
 Then Judith vanished out to the shop, where she was 
 constructing a rabbit-house for the latest family. Sylvia 
 took Lawrence, yawning and rubbing his eyes, but fighting 
 desperately against his sleepiness, upstairs for his nap. 
 When this task fell to Judith's lot it was despatched with 
 business-like promptness!, but Lawrence had early dis- 
 covered a temperamental difference between his two sisters, 
 and Sylvia was seldom allowed to leave the small bed until 
 she had paid tribute to her ever-present desire to please, 
 in the shape of a story or a song. On that day Buddy was 
 more exacting than usual. Sylvia told the story of Cinder- 
 ella and sang, " A Frog He Would a- Wooing Go," twice 
 through, before the little boy's eyes began to droop. Even 
 then, the clutch of his warm, moist fingers about her hand 
 did not relax. When she tried to slip her fingers out of his, 
 his eyelids fluttered open and he tightened his grasp with a 
 wilful frown. So she sat still on the edge of his bed, wait- 
 ing till he should be really asleep. 
 
 From the dining-room below her rose the sound of 
 voices, or rather of one voice — her father's. She wondered 
 why it sounded so angry, and then, mixed with some un- 
 intelligible phrases — " turned out on the street, in trouble — 
 in a foreign land — Good God ! " she caught Pauline's name. 
 Oh yes, that must be the trouble. Mother was telling 
 Father about Pauline — whatever it was she had done — and 
 he was as mad about it as Aunt Victoria had been. If 
 Aunt Victoria's voice had sounded like that, she didn't 
 wonder that Arnold had hidden under the bed. If she could 
 have moved, she, too, would have run away, although the 
 idea that she ought to do so did not occur to her. There 
 
62 The Bent Twig 
 
 had been no secrets in that house. The talk had always 
 been for all to hear who would. 
 
 But when she tried again to slip her hand away from 
 Buddy's the little boy pulled at it hard, and half opening 
 his eyes, said sleepily, " Sylvie stay with Buddy — Sylvie 
 
 stay " Sylvia yielded weakly, said : " Yes — sh ! sh I 
 
 Sister'll stay. Go to sleep, Buddy." 
 
 From below came the angry voice, quite loud now, so 
 that she caught every queer-sounding word—" righteous 
 indignation indeed! What else did she do, I'd like to 
 know, when she wanted money. The only difference was 
 that she was cold-blooded enough to extract a legal status 
 from the old reprobate she accosted." 
 
 Sylvia heard her mother's voice saying coldly, " You 
 ought to be ashamed to use such a word ! " and her father 
 retort, " It's the only word that expresses it ! You know 
 as well as I do that she cared no more for Ephraim Smith 
 than for the first man she might have solicited on the street 
 — nor so much! God! It makes me sick to look at her 
 and think of the price she paid for her present damn 
 Olympian serenity." 
 
 Sylvia heard her mother begin to clear off the table. 
 There was a rattle of dishes through which her voice rose 
 impatiently. " Oh, Elliott, why be so melodramatic always, 
 and spoil so much good language ! She did only what every 
 girl brought up as she was, would have done. And, any- 
 how, are you so very sure that in your heart you're not so 
 awfully hard on her because you're envious of that very 
 prosperity ? " 
 
 He admitted, with acrimony, the justice of this thrust 
 " Very likely. Very likely ! — everything base and mean in 
 me, that you keep down, springs to life in me at her touch, 
 I dare say I do envy her — I'm quite capable of that — am 
 I not her brother, with the same " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall said hastily : " Hush ! Hush ! Here's 
 Judith. For Heaven's sake don't let the child hear you ! " 
 
 For the first time the idea penetrated Sylvia's head that 
 she ought not to have listened. Buddy was now soundly 
 
The Sights of La Chance 63 
 
 asleep : she detached her hand from his, and went soberly 
 along the hall into her own room. She did not want to see 
 her father just then. 
 
 A long time after, Mother called up to say that Aunt 
 Victoria had come for her afternoon drive, and to leave 
 Arnold. Sylvia opened the door a crack and asked, 
 "Where's Father?" 
 
 " Oh, gone back to the University this long time," an- 
 swered her mother in her usual tone. Sylvia came down 
 the stairs slowly and took her seat in the carriage beside 
 Aunt Victoria with none of her usual demonstrative show 
 of pleasure. 
 
 " Don't you like my dress ? " asked Aunt Victoria, as 
 they drove away. " You don't even notice it, and I put 
 it on 'specially to please you — you're the one discriminating 
 critic in this town ! " As Sylvia made no answer to this 
 sally, she went on : " It's hard to get into alone, too. I 
 had to ask the hotel chambermaid to hook it up on the 
 shoulders." 
 
 Thus reminded of Pauline, Sylvia could have but in- 
 attentive eyes for the creation of amber silk and lace, and 
 brown fur, which seductively clad the handsome body be- 
 side her. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith gave her favorite a penetrating look. 
 " What's the matter with you, Sylvia ? " she asked in the 
 peremptory note which her sweet voice of many modula- 
 tions could startlingly assume on occasion. Sylvia had 
 none of Judith's instant pugnacious antagonism to any per- 
 emptory note. She answered in one imploring rush of a 
 question, " Aunt Victoria, why should Father be so very 
 mad at Pauline ? " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked a little startled at this direct 
 reference to the veiled storm-center of the day, but not at 
 all displeased. " Oh, your mother told him ? Was he so 
 very angry?" she asked with a slight smile. 
 
 " Oh, dreadfully ! " returned Sylvia. " I didn't mean to 
 listen, but I couldn't help it. Buddy wouldn't go to sleep 
 and Father's voice was so loud — and he got madder and 
 
64 The Bent Twig 
 
 madder at her." She went on with another question, 
 " Auntie, who was Ephraim Smith ? " 
 
 Aunt Victoria turned upon her in astonishment, and 
 did not, for a moment, answer ; then : " Why, that was the 
 name of my husband, Sylvia. What has that to do with 
 anything ? " 
 
 " Why didn't Pauline like him ? " asked Sylvia. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith replied with a vivacity of surprise 
 which carried her out of her usual delicate leisure in speech. 
 "Pauline? Why, she never saw him in her life! What 
 are you talking about, child ? " 
 
 " But, Father said — I thought — he seemed to mean " 
 
 Sylvia halted, not able to remember in her bewilderment 
 what it had been that Father had said. In a blur of doubt 
 and clouded perceptions she lost all definite impression of 
 what she had heard. Evidently, as so often happened, she 
 had grown-ups' affairs all twisted up in her mind. 
 
 Aunt Victoria was touched with kindly amusement at 
 the little girl's face of perplexity, and told her, dismissing 
 the subject: "Never mind, dear, you evidently misunder- 
 stood something. But I wonder what your father could 
 have said to give you such a funny idea." 
 
 Sylvia gave it up, shaking her head. They turned into 
 the main street of La Chance, and Aunt Victoria directed 
 the coachman to drive them to " the " drug store of town, 
 and offered Sylvia her choice of any soda water confection 
 she might select. This completed the " about-face " of the 
 mobile little mind. After several moments of blissful 
 anguish of indecision, Sylvia decided on a peach ice-cream 
 soda, and thereafter was nothing but sense of taste as she 
 ecstatically drew through a straw the syrupy, foamy 
 draught of nectar. She took small sips at a time and held 
 them in the back of her mouth till every minute bubble of 
 gas had rendered up its delicious prickle to her tongue. 
 Her consciousness was filled to its uttermost limits with a 
 voluptuous sense of present physical delight. 
 
 And yet it was precisely at this moment that from her 
 subconscious mind, retracing with unaided travail a half- 
 
The Sights of La Chance 65 
 
 forgotten clue, there sprang into her memory a complete 
 phrase of what her father had said. She gave one more 
 suck to the straw and laid it aside for a moment to say- 
 in quite a comfortable accent to her aunt : " Oh yes, now I 
 remember. He said she didn't care for him any more than 
 for the first man she might have solicited in the street." 
 For an instant the words came back as clearly as though 
 they had just been uttered, and she repeated them fluently, 
 returning thereupon at once to the charms of the tall, foam- 
 filled frosted glass. 
 
 Evidently Aunt Victoria did not follow this sudden 
 change of subject, for she asked blankly, "Who? Who 
 didn't care for who ? " 
 
 " Why, I supposed, Pauline for Ephraim Smith. It was 
 that that made Father so mad," explained Sylvia, sucking 
 dreamily, her eyes on the little maelstrom created in the 
 foaming liquid by the straw, forgetting everything else. 
 The luxurious leisure in which she consumed her potation 
 made it last a long time, and it was not until her suction 
 made only a sterile rattling in the straw that she looked 
 up at her aunt to thank her. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith's face was averted and she did not 
 turn it back as she said, " Just run along into the shop 
 and leave your glass, Sylvia — here is the money." 
 
 After Sylvia took her seat again in the carriage, the 
 coachman turned the horse's head back up the Main Street. 
 " Aren't you going to the campus ? " asked Sylvia in sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " No, we are going to the hotel," said Aunt Victoria. 
 She spoke quietly, and seemed to look as usual, but Sylvia's 
 inner barometer fell fast with a conviction of a change in 
 the emotional atmosphere. She sat as still as possible, and 
 only once glanced up timidly at her aunt's face. There was 
 no answering glance. Aunt Victoria gazed straight in front 
 of her. Her face looked as it did when it was being mas- 
 saged — all smooth and empty. There was, however, one 
 change. For the first time that day, she looked a little 
 pale. 
 
66 The Bent Twig 
 
 As the carriage stopped in front of the onyx-lined, palm- 
 decorated, plate-glass-mirrored " entrance hall " of the ex- 
 pensive hotel, Aunt Victoria descended, motioning to Sylvia 
 not to follow her. " I haven't time to drive any more this 
 afternoon," she said. " Peter will take you home. And 
 have him bring Arnold back at once." She turned away 
 and, as Sylvia sat watching her, entered the squirrel-cage 
 revolving door of glass, which a little boy in livery spun 
 about for her. 
 
 But after she was inside the entrance hall, she signified 
 to him that she had forgotten something, and came imme- 
 diately out again. What she had forgotten surprised Sylvia 
 as much as it touched her. Aunt Victoria came rapidly to 
 the side of the carriage and put out her arms. " Come 
 here, dear," she said in a voice Sylvia had never heard 
 her use. It trembled a little, and broke. With her quick 
 responsiveness, Sylvia sprang into the outstretched arms, 
 overcome by the other's emotion. She hid her face against 
 the soft, perfumed laces and silk, and heard from beneath 
 them the painful throb of a quickly beating heart. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith held her niece for a long moment 
 and then turned the quivering little face up to her own 
 grave eyes, in which Sylvia, for all her inexperience, read a 
 real suffering. Aunt Victoria looked as though somebody 
 were hurting her — hurting her awfully — Sylvia pressed her 
 cheek hard against her aunt's, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith 
 felt, soft and warm and ardent on her lips, the indescrib- 
 ably fresh kiss of a child's mouth. " Oh, little Sylvia ! " 
 she cried, in that new, strange, uncertain voice which trem- 
 bled and broke, " Oh, little Sylvia ! " She seemed to be 
 about to say something more, said in fact in a half-whisper, 
 
 " I hope — I hope " but then shook her head, kissed 
 
 Sylvia gently, put her back in the carriage, and again dis- 
 appeared through the revolving door. 
 
 This time she did not turn back. She did not even look 
 back. After a moment's wait, Peter gathered up the reins 
 and Sylvia, vaguely uneasy, and much moved, drove home 
 in a solitary state, which she forgot to enjoy. 
 
The Sights of La Chance 67 
 
 The next morning there was no arrival, even tardy, of 
 the visitors from the hotel. Instead came a letter, breaking 
 the startling news that Aunt Victoria had been called un- 
 expectedly to the East, and had left on the midnight train, 
 taking Arnold with her, of course. Judith burst into angry 
 expressions of wrath over the incompleteness of the cave 
 which she and Arnold had been excavating together. The 
 next day was the beginning of school, she reminded her 
 auditors, and she'd have no time to get it done! Never! 
 She characterized Aunt Victoria as a mean old thing, 
 an epithet for which she was not reproved, her mother 
 sitting quite absent and absorbed in the letter. She read 
 it over twice, with a very puzzled air, which gave an odd 
 look to her usually crystal-clear countenance. She asked 
 her husband one question as he went out of the door. 
 " You didn't see Victoria yesterday — or say anything to 
 her ? " to which he answered, with apparently uncalled-for 
 heat, "I did not! I thought it rather more to the purpose 
 to try to look up Pauline." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall sprang up and approached him with an 
 anxious face. He shook his head : " Too late. Disappeared. 
 No trace." 
 
 She sat down again, looking sad and stern. 
 
 Professor Marshall put on his hat with violence, and 
 went away. 
 
 When he came home to luncheon there was a fresh 
 sensation, and again a disagreeable one. He brought the 
 astounding news that, at the very beginning of the semes- 
 ter's work, he had been deserted by his most valuable 
 assistant, and abandoned, apparently forever, by his most- 
 loved disciple. Saunders had left word, a mere laconic 
 note, that he had accepted the position left vacant by the 
 dismissal of Arnold's tutor, and had entered at once upon 
 the duties of his new position. 
 
 Professor Marshall detailed this information in a hard, 
 level voice, and without further comment handed his wife 
 Saunders' note. She read it rapidly, this time with 
 no perplexity, and laid it down, saying to her husband, 
 
68 The Bent Twig 
 
 briefly, " Will you kindly remember that the children are 
 here?" 
 
 Judith looked at Sylvia in astonishment, this being the 
 first time that that well-worn phrase, so familiar to most 
 children, had ever been heard in the Marshall house. Why 
 shouldn't Father remember they were there? Couldn't he 
 see them? Judith almost found the idea funny enough to 
 laugh at, although she had not at all in general Sylvia's 
 helpless response to the ridiculous. Sylvia did not laugh 
 now. She looked anxiously at her father's face, and was 
 relieved when he only answered her mother's exhortation 
 by saying in a low tone : " Oh, / have nothing to say. It's 
 beyond words ! " 
 
 Luncheon went on as usual, with much chatter among 
 the children. Some time later — in the midst of a long 
 story from Lawrence, Mrs. Marshall herself brought up 
 the subject again. Buddy was beginning to struggle with 
 the narrative form of self-expression, and to trip his tongue 
 desperately over the tenses. He had just said, " And the 
 rabbit was naughty, didn't he was ? " when his mother ex- 
 claimed, addressing her husband's grim face, " Good 
 Heavens, don't take it so hard, Elliott." 
 
 He raised an eyebrow, but did not look up from the 
 pear he was eating. " To be responsible, as I feel I am, 
 for the pitching into a cul-de-sac of the most promising 
 young " 
 
 His wife broke in, "Responsible! How in the world are 
 you responsible ! " she added quickly, as if at random, to 
 prevent the reply which her husband was evidently about to 
 cast at her. " Besides, how do you know ? — one never 
 knows how things will turn out — she may — she may marry 
 him, and he may have a life which will give him more 
 leisure for investigation than if " 
 
 Professor Marshall wiped his lips violently on his nap- 
 kin and stood up. " Nothing would induce her to marry 
 him — or any one else. She's extracted from marriage all 
 she wants of it. No, she'll just keep him trailing along, 
 in an ambiguous position, sickened and tantalized and 
 
The Sights of La Chance 69 
 
 fevered, till all the temper is drawn out of him — and then 
 he'll be dropped." 
 
 He turned away with an impatient fling of his head. His 
 wife stood up now and looked at him anxiously. " Go play 
 us something on the piano," she urged. This was not a 
 common exhortation from her. She cared very little for 
 music, and with her usual honesty she showed, as a rule, a 
 very passive attitude towards it. 
 
 Professor Marshall glanced at her with a flash of an- 
 ger. " Sometimes you count too much on my childish- 
 ness, Barbara," he said resentfully, and went out of the 
 door without further words. 
 
 Decidedly the discomposing effect of Aunt Victoria's visit 
 lasted even after she had gone away. But the next day 
 was the beginning of the school term, the busy, regular 
 routine was taken up, Sylvia was promoted to the 5A 
 grade, and at home Father let her begin to learn the Pil- 
 grim's Chorus, from Tannhauser. 
 
 Life for the eager little girl moved quickly forward at 
 its usual brisk pace, through several years to come. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 " WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF- 
 EVIDENT . . ." 
 
 The public school to which the Marshall children went 
 as soon as they were old enough was like any one of ten 
 thousand public schools — a large, square, many-windowed, 
 extravagantly ugly building, once red brick, but long ago 
 darkened almost to black by soft-coal smoke. About it, 
 shaded by three or four big cottonwood-trees, was an in- 
 closed space of perhaps two acres of ground, beaten per- 
 fectly smooth by hundreds of trampling little feet, a hard, 
 bare earthen floor, so entirely subdued to its fate that 
 even in the long summer vacation no spear of grass could 
 penetrate its crust to remind it that it was made of com- 
 mon stuff with fields and meadows. 
 
 School began at nine o'clock in the morning and, as a 
 rule, three-fourths of the children had passed through the 
 front gate twenty or thirty minutes earlier. Nobody knew 
 why it should be considered such a hideous crime to be 
 " tardy," but the fact was that not the most reckless and 
 insubordinate of the older boys cared to risk it. Any one 
 of the four hundred children in any public school in the 
 city preferred infinitely to be absent a day than to have the 
 ghastly experience of walking through deserted streets 
 (that is, with no children on them), across the empty play- 
 ground frighteningly unlike itself, into the long, desolate 
 halls which, walk as cat-like as one might, resounded to 
 the guilty footsteps with accusing echoes. And then the 
 narrow cloakroom, haunted with limp, hanging coats and 
 caps and hats, and finally the entry into the schoolroom, 
 seated rank on rank with priggishly complacent schoolmates, 
 
 70 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident" 71 
 
 looking up from their books with unfriendly eyes of blame 
 at the figure of the late-comer. 
 
 All over that section of La Chance, during the hour be- 
 tween half-past seven and half-past eight in the morning, 
 the families of school children were undergoing a most 
 rigorous discipline in regularity and promptness. No 
 child was too small or too timid to refrain from embit- 
 tering his mother's life with clamorous upbraidings if 
 breakfast were late, or his school-outfit of clothes were not 
 ready to the last button, so that he could join the proces- 
 sion of schoolward-bound children, already streaming past 
 his door at a quarter past eight. The most easy-going and 
 self-indulgent mother learned to have at least one meal a 
 day on time ; and the children themselves during those eight 
 years of their lives had imbedded in the tissue of their 
 brains and the marrow of their bones that unrebelling habit 
 of bending their backs daily to a regular burden of work 
 not selected by themselves — which, according to one's point 
 of view, is either the bane or the salvation of our modern 
 industrial society. 
 
 The region where the school stood was inhabited, for 
 the most part, by American families or German and Irish 
 ones so long established as to be virtually American; a 
 condition which was then not infrequent in moderate-sized 
 towns of the Middle West and which is still by no means 
 unknown there. The class-rolls were full of Taylors and 
 Aliens and Robinsons and Jacksons and Websters and Raw- 
 sons and Putnams, with a scattering of Morrisseys and 
 Crimminses and O'Hearns, and some Schultzes and Bru- 
 backers and Helmeyers. There was not a Jew in the school, 
 because there were almost none in that quarter of town, 
 and, for quite another reason, not a single negro child. 
 There were plenty of them in the immediate neighborhood, 
 swarming around the collection of huts and shanties near 
 the railroad tracks given over to negroes, and known as 
 Flytown. But they had their own school, which looked 
 externally quite like all the others in town, and their play- 
 ground, beaten bare like that of the Washington Street 
 
72 The Bent Twig 
 
 School, was filled with laughing, shouting children, ranging 
 from shoe-black through coffee-color to those occasional 
 tragic ones with white skin and blue eyes, but with the 
 telltale kink in the fair hair and the bluish half-moon at 
 the base of the finger-nails. 
 
 The four hundred children in the Washington Street 
 School were, therefore, a mass more homogeneous than 
 alarmists would have us believe it possible to find in this 
 country. They were, for all practical purposes, all Ameri- 
 can, and they were all roughly of one class. Their families 
 were neither rich nor poor (at least so far as the children's 
 standards went). Their fathers were grocers, small clerks, 
 merchants, two or three were truck-farmers, plumbers, 
 carpenters, accountants, employees of various big businesses 
 in town. 
 
 It was into this undistinguished and plebeian mediocrity 
 that the Marshall children were introduced when they be- 
 gan going to school. 
 
 The interior of the school-building resembled the outside 
 in being precisely like that of ten thousand other graded 
 schools in this country. The halls were long and dark and 
 dusty, and because the building had been put up under 
 contract at a period when public contract-work was not 
 so scrupulously honest as it notably is in our present cleanly 
 muck-raked era, the steps of the badly built staircase 
 creaked and groaned and sagged and gave forth clouds 
 of dust under the weight of the myriads of little feet which 
 climbed up and down those steep ascents every day. Every- 
 thing was of wood. The interior looked like the realized 
 dream of a professional incendiary. 
 
 The classrooms were high and well-lighted, with many 
 large windows, never either very clean or very dirty, which 
 let in a flood of our uncompromisingly brilliant American 
 daylight upon the rows of little seats and desks screwed, like 
 those of an ocean liner, immovably to the floor, as though at 
 any moment the building was likely to embark upon a cruise 
 in stormy waters. 
 
 Outwardly the rows of clean-faced, comfortably dressed, 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident" 73 
 
 well-shod American children, sitting in chairs, bore 
 no resemblance to shaven-headed, barefooted little Ara- 
 bian students, squatting on the floor, gabbling loud un- 
 comprehended texts from the Koran; but the sight of 
 Sylvia's companions bending over their school-books with 
 glazed, vacant eyes, rocking back and forth as a rhythmical 
 aid to memorizing, their lips moving silently as they re- 
 peated over and over, gabblingly, the phrases of the 
 printed page, might have inclined a hypothetical visitor 
 from Mars to share the bewildered amusement of the 
 American visitors to Moslem schools. Sylvia rocked and 
 twisted a favorite button, gabbled silently, and recited 
 fluently with the rest, being what was known as an apt 
 and satisfactory pupil. In company with the other chil- 
 dren she thus learned to say, in answer to questions, that 
 seven times seven is forty-nine; that the climate of Brazil 
 is hot and moist; that the capital of Arkansas is Little 
 Rock ; and that " through " is spelled with three misleading 
 and superfluous letters. 
 
 What she really learned was, as with her mates, another 
 matter — for, of course, those devouringly active little minds 
 did not spend six hours a day in school without learning 
 something incessantly. The few rags and tatters of book- 
 information they acquired were but the merest fringes on 
 the great garment of learning acquired by these public- 
 school children, which was to wrap them about all their 
 lives. What they learned during those eight years of sit- 
 ting still and not whispering had nothing to do with the 
 books in their desks or the lore in their teachers' brains. 
 The great impression stamped upon the wax of their 
 minds, which became iron in after years, was democracy — 
 a crude, distorted, wavering image of democracy, like 
 every image an ideal in this imperfect world, but in its 
 essence a reflection of the ideal of their country. No 
 European could have conceived how literally it was true 
 that the birth or wealth or social position of a child made 
 no difference in the estimation of his mates. There were 
 no exceptions to the custom of considering the individual 
 
74 The Bent Twig 
 
 on his own merits. These merits were often queerly enough 
 imagined, a faculty for standing on his head redounding as 
 much, or more, to a boy's credit as the utmost brilliance in 
 recitation, or generosity of temperament, but at least he 
 was valued for something he himself could do, and not for 
 any fortuitous incidents of birth and fortune. 
 
 Furthermore there lay back of these four hundred chil- 
 dren, who shaped their world to this rough-and-ready imi- 
 tation of democracy, their families, not so intimately known 
 to each other, of course, as the children themselves, but 
 still by no means unknown in their general characteristics; 
 four hundred American families who were, on the whole, 
 industrious, law-abiding, who loved their children, who 
 were quite tasteless in matters of art, and quite sound 
 though narrow in matters of morals, utterly mediocre in 
 intelligence and information, with no breadth of outlook 
 in any direction; but who somehow lived their lives and 
 faced and conquered all the incredible vicissitudes of that 
 Great Adventure, with an unconscious, cheerful forti- 
 tude which many an acuter mind might have envied 
 them. 
 
 It is possible that the personal knowledge of these four 
 hundred enduring family lives was, perhaps, the most im- 
 portant mental ballast taken on by the children of the com- 
 munity during their eight years' cruise at school. Certainly 
 it was the most important for the sensitive, complicated, 
 impressionable little Sylvia Marshall, with her latent dis- 
 taste for whatever lacked distinction and external grace, 
 and her passion for sophistication and elegance, which was 
 to spring into such fierce life with the beginning of her 
 adolescence. She might renounce, as utterly as she pleased, 
 the associates of her early youth, but the knowledge of their 
 existence, the acquaintance with their deep humanity, the 
 knowledge that they found life sweet and worth living, all 
 this was to be a part of the tissue of her brain forever, and 
 was to add one to the conflicting elements which battled 
 within her for the mastery during all the clouded, stormy 
 radiance of her youth. 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident" 75 
 
 The families which supplied the Washington Street 
 School being quite stationary in their self-owned houses, 
 few new pupils entered during the school-year. There was, 
 consequently, quite a sensation on the day in the middle 
 of March when the two Fingal girls entered, Camilla in the 
 " Fifth A " grade, where Sylvia was, and Cecile in the 
 third grade, in the next seat to Judith's. The girls them- 
 selves were so different from other children in school that 
 their arrival would have excited interest even at the begin- 
 ning of the school-year. Coming, as they did, at a time 
 when everybody knew by heart every detail of every one 
 else's appearance from hair-ribbon to shoes, these two 
 beautiful exotics, in their rich, plain, mourning dresses were 
 vastly stared at. Sylvia's impressionable eyes were espe- 
 cially struck by the air of race and breeding of the new- 
 comer in her class. Everything about the other child, from 
 her heavy, black hair, patrician nose, and large dark eyes 
 to her exquisitely formed hands, white and well-cared-for, 
 seemed to Sylvia perfection itself. 
 
 During recess she advanced to the new-comer, saying, 
 with a bright smile : " Aren't you thirsty ? Don't you want 
 me to show you where the pump is ? " She put out her hand 
 as she spoke and took the slim white fingers in her own 
 rough little hand, leading her new schoolmate along in 
 silence, looking at her with an open interest. 
 
 She had confidently expected amicable responsiveness in 
 the other little girl, because her experience had been that 
 her own frank friendliness nearly always was reflected 
 back to her from others; but she had not expected, or in- 
 deed ever seen, such an ardent look of gratitude as burned 
 in the other's eyes. She stopped, startled, uncomprehend- 
 ing, as though her companion had said something unin- 
 telligible, and felt the slim fingers in her hand close about 
 her own in a tight clasp. " You are so very kind to show 
 me this pump," breathed Camilla shyly. The faint flavor 
 of a foreign accent which, to Sylvia's ear, hung about these 
 words, was the final touch of fascination for her. That in- 
 stant she decided in her impetuous, enthusiastic heart that 
 
7 j 
 
 The Bent Twig 
 
 Camilla was the most beautiful, sweetest, best-dressed, 
 loveliest creature she had ever seen, or would ever see in 
 her life; and she bent her back joyfully in the service of her 
 ideal. She would not allow Camilla to pump for herself, 
 but flew to the handle with such energy that the white 
 water gushed out in a flood, overflowing Camilla's cup, 
 spattering over on her fingers, and sparkling on the sheer 
 white of her hemstitched cuffs. This made them both 
 laugh, the delicious silly laugh of childhood. 
 
 Already they seemed like friends. " How do you pro- 
 nounce your name ? " Sylvia asked familiarly. 
 
 " Cam-eela Fingal," said the other, looking up from her 
 cup, her upper lip red and moist. She accented the sur- 
 name on the last syllable. 
 
 " What a perfectly lovely name ! " cried Sylvia. " Mine 
 is Sylvia Marshall." 
 
 " That's a pretty name too," said Camilla, smiling. She 
 spoke less timidly now, but her fawn-like eyes still kept 
 their curious expression, half apprehension, half hope. 
 
 " How old are you ? " asked Sylvia. 
 
 " Eleven, last November." 
 
 " Why, my birthday is in November, and I was eleven 
 too ! " cried Sylvia. " I thought you must be older — you're 
 so tall." 
 
 Camilla looked down and said nothing. 
 
 Sylvia went on : " I'm crazy about the way you do your 
 hair, in those twists over your ears. When I was study- 
 ing my spelling lesson, I was trying to figure out how 
 you do it." 
 
 " Oh, I don't do it. Mattice does it for us — for Cecile 
 and me — Cecile's my sister. She's in the third grade." 
 
 " Why, I have a sister in the third grade too ! " ex- 
 claimed Sylvia, much struck by this second propitious co- 
 incidence. " Her name is Judith and she's a darling. 
 Wouldn't it be nice if she and Cecile should be good friends 
 too!" She put her arm about her new comrade's waist, 
 convinced that they were now intimates of long standing. 
 They ran together to take their places at the sound of the 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self -Evident" 77 
 
 bell; all during the rest of the morning session she smiled 
 radiantly at the new-comer whenever their eyes met. 
 
 She planned to walk part way home with her at noon, 
 but she was detained for a moment by the teacher, and 
 when she reached the front gate, where Judith was waiting 
 for her, Camilla was nowhere in sight. Judith explained 
 with some disfavor that a surrey had been waiting for 
 the Fingal girls and they had been driven away. 
 
 Sylvia fell into a rhapsody over her new acquaintance and 
 found to her surprise (it was always a surprise to Sylvia 
 that Judith's tastes and judgments so frequently differed 
 from hers) that Judith by no means shared her enthusiasm. 
 She admitted, but as if it were a matter of no importance, 
 that both Camilla and Cecile were pretty enough, but she 
 declared roundly that Cecile was a little sneak who had 
 set out from the first to be " Teacher's pet." This title, in 
 the sturdy democracy of the public schools, means about 
 what " sycophantic lickspittle " means in the vocabulary of 
 adults, and carries with it a crushing weight of odium 
 which can hardly ever be lived down. 
 
 " Judith, what makes you think so ? " cried Sylvia, horri- 
 fied at the epithet. 
 
 " The way she looks at Teacher — she never takes her 
 eyes off her, and just jumps to do whatever Teacher says. 
 And then she looks at everybody so kind o' scared — 's'if she 
 thought she was goin' to be hit over the head every minute 
 and was so thankful to everybody for not doing it. Makes 
 me feel just like doin' it!" declared Judith, the Anglo- 
 Saxon. 
 
 Sylvia recognized a scornful version of the appealing 
 expression which she had found so touching in Camilla. 
 
 " Why, I think it's sweet of them to look so ! When 
 they're so awfully pretty, and have such good clothes — and 
 a carriage — and everything ! They might be as stuck-up as 
 anything! I think it's just nice for them to be so sweet! " 
 persisted Sylvia. 
 
 "I don't call it bein' sweet," said Judith, "to watch 
 Teacher every minute and smile all over your face if she 
 
78 The Bent Twig 
 
 looks at you and hold on to her hand when she's talkhY to 
 you ! It's silly ! " 
 
 They argued all the way home, and the lunch hour was 
 filled with appeals to their parents to take sides. Professor 
 and Mrs. Marshall, always ready, although occasionally 
 somewhat absent, listeners to school news, professed them- 
 selves really interested in these new scholars and quite 
 perplexed by the phenomenon of two beautiful dark-eyed 
 children, called Camilla and Cecile Fingal. Judith refused 
 to twist her tongue to pronounce the last syllable accented, 
 and her version of the name made it sound Celtic. " Per- 
 haps their father is Irish and the mother Italian or Span- 
 ish," suggested Professor Marshall. 
 
 Sylvia was delighted with this hypothesis, and cried out 
 enthusiastically, " Oh yes — Camilla looks Italian — like an 
 Italian princess ! " 
 
 Judith assumed an incredulous and derisive expression 
 and remained silent, an achievement of self-control which 
 Sylvia was never able to emulate. 
 
 The Fingal girls continued to occupy a large space in 
 Sylvia's thoughts and hours, and before long they held a 
 unique position in the opinion of the school, which was 
 divided about evenly between the extremes represented by 
 Sylvia and Judith. The various accomplishments of the 
 new-comers were ground both for uneasy admiration and 
 suspicion. They could sing like birds, and, what seemed 
 like witchcraft to the unmusical little Americans about 
 them, they could sing in harmony as easily as they could 
 carry an air. And they recited with fire, ease, and evident 
 enjoyment, instead of with the show of groaning, unwilling 
 submission to authority which it was etiquette in the Wash- 
 ington Street School to show before beginning to " speak 
 a piece." 
 
 They were good at their books too, and altogether, with 
 their quick docility, picturesqueness, and eagerness to please, 
 were the delight of their teachers. In the fifth grade, 
 Sylvia's example of intimate, admiring friendship definitely 
 threw popular favor on the side of Camilla, who made every 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self -Evident" 79 
 
 effort to disarm the hostility aroused by her too-numerous 
 gifts of nature. She was ready to be friends with the poor- 
 est and dullest of the girls, never asked the important roles 
 in any games, hid rather than put forward the high marks 
 she received in her studies, and was lavish with her invita- 
 tions to her schoolmates to visit her at home. 
 
 The outside of this house, which Mr. Fingal had rented 
 a month or so before when they first moved to La Chance, 
 was like any one of many in the region; but the interior 
 differed notably from those to which the other children 
 were accustomed. For one thing there was no " lady of 
 the house," Mrs. Fingal having died a short time before. 
 Camilla and Cecile could do exactly as they pleased, and 
 they gave the freedom of the house and its contents lavishly 
 to their little friends. In the kitchen was an enormous old 
 negro woman, always good-natured, always smelling of 
 whiskey. She kept on hand a supply of the most meltingly 
 delicious cakes and cookies, and her liberal motto, M Heah, 
 chile, put yo' han' in the cookie- j ah and draw out what 
 you lights on ! " was always flourished in the faces of the 
 schoolmates of the two daughters of the house. 
 
 In the rest of the house, filled with dark, heavy, dimly 
 shining furniture, reigned Mattice, another old negro 
 woman, but, unlike the jolly, fat cook, yellow and shriveled 
 and silent. She it was who arrayed Camille and Cecile with 
 such unerring taste, and her skilful old hands brushed and 
 dressed their long black hair in artful twists and coils. 
 
 Here, against their own background, the two girls seemed 
 more at their ease and showed more spontaneity than at 
 school. They were fond of " dressing up " and of organiz- 
 ing impromptu dramatizations of the stories of familiar 
 books, and showed a native ability for acting which ex- 
 plained their success in recitations. Once when the fun was 
 very rollicking, Camilla brought out from a closet a banjo 
 and, thrumming on its strings with skilful fingers, played a 
 tingling accompaniment to one of her songs. The other 
 little girls were delighted and clamored for more, but she 
 put it away quickly with almost a frown on her sweet 
 
80 The Bent Twig 
 
 face, and for once in her life did not yield to their demands. 
 
 " Well, I think more of her for that ! " remarked Judith, 
 when this incident was repeated to her by Sylvia, who cried 
 out, " Why, Judy, how hateful you are about poor Camilla ! " 
 
 Nothing was learned about the past history of the Fin- 
 gals beyond the fact, dropped once by the cook, that they 
 had lived in Louisiana before coming to La Chance, but 
 there were rumors, based on nothing at all, and everywhere 
 credited, that their mother had been a Spanish-American 
 heiress, disinherited by her family for marrying a Protes- 
 tant. Such a romantic and picturesque element had never 
 before entered the lives of the Washington Street school- 
 children. Once a bold and insensitive little girl, itching to 
 know more of this story-book history, had broken the silence 
 about Mrs. Fingal and had asked Camilla bluntly, " Say, 
 who was your mother, anyway ? " The question had been 
 received by Camilla with whitening lips and a desperate 
 silence — ended by a sudden loud burst of sobs, which tore 
 Sylvia's heart. " You mean, horrid thing! " she cried to the 
 inquisitor. " Her mother isn't dead a year yet ! Camilla 
 can't bear to talk about her ! " 
 
 Once in a great while Mr. Fingal was -visible, — a bald, 
 middle-aged man with a white, sad face, and eyes that never 
 smiled, although his lips often did when he saw the clusters 
 of admiring children hanging about his daughters. 
 
 Judith held aloof from these gatherings at the Fingal 
 house, her prejudice against the girls never weakening, 
 although Cecile as well as Camilla had won over almost all 
 the other girls of her grade. Judith showed the self-con- 
 tained indifference which it was her habit to feel about mat- 
 ters which did not deeply stir her, and made no further at- 
 tempts to analyze or even to. voice her animosity beyond 
 saying once, when asked to go with them on a drive, that 
 she didn't like their " meechin' ways," — a vigorous New 
 England phrase which she had picked up from her mother. 
 
 About a month after the Fingal girls entered school, the 
 project of a picnic took form among the girls of the Fifth A 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident" 81 
 
 grade. One of them had an uncle who lived three or four 
 miles from town on a farm which was passed by the Inter- 
 urban trolley line, and he had sent word that the children 
 could, if they li^ed, picnic in his maple woods, which over- 
 hung the brown waters of the Piquota river. There was 
 to be no recess that day in Five A, and the grade was to be 
 dismissed half an hour earlier than usual, so that the girls 
 could go out on the trolley in time to get the supper ready. 
 The farmer was to bring them back by moonlight in his 
 hay-wagon. 
 
 The prospect seemed ideal. Five A hummed with ex- 
 citement and importance as the various provisions were 
 allotted to the different girls and the plans talked over. 
 Sylvia was to bring bananas enough for the crowd; one 
 of the German-American girls, whose father kept a grocery- 
 store, promised pickles and olives; three or four together 
 were to make the sandwiches, and Camilla Fingal was to 
 bring along a big bag of the famous rich and be-raisined 
 cookies that lived in the " cookie-jah." Sylvia, who always 
 enjoyed prodigiously both in anticipation and in reality any 
 aocial event, could scarcely contain herself as the time drew 
 near with every prospect of fair weather. 
 
 The morning of the day was clear and fine, a perfect ex- 
 ample of early spring, with silvery pearls showing on 
 the tips of the red-twig osiers, and pussy-willows gleam- 
 ing gray along the margins of swampy places. Sylvia and 
 Judith felt themselves one with this upward surge of new 
 life. They ran to school together, laughing aloud for no 
 reason, racing and skipping like a couple of spring lambs, 
 their minds and hearts as crystal-clear of any shadow as the 
 pale-blue, smiling sky above them. The rising sap beat in 
 their young bodies as well as in the beech-trees through 
 which they scampered, whirling their school-books at the 
 end of their straps, and shouting aloud to hear the squirrel's 
 petulant, chattering answer. 
 
 When they came within sight and hearing of the school- 
 house, their practised ears detected (although with no hint 
 of foreboding) that something unusual had happened. The 
 
82 The Bent Twig 
 
 children were not running about and screaming, but stand- 
 ing with their heads close together, talking, and talking, and 
 talking. As Judith and Sylvia came near, several ran to 
 meet them, hurling out at them like a hard-flung stone: 
 " Say — what d'ye think ? Those Fingal girls are niggers ! " 
 
 To the end of her life, Sylvia would never forget the rend- 
 ing shock of disillusion brought her by these blunt words. 
 She did not dream of disbelieving them, or of underestimat- 
 ing their significance. A thousand confirmatory details leaped 
 into her mind: the rich, sweet voices — the dramatic ability 
 — the banjo — the deprecatory air of timidity — the self-con- 
 scious unwillingness to take the leading position to which 
 their talents and beauty gave them a right. Yes, of course 
 it was true ! In the space of a heartbeat, all her romantic 
 Italian imaginings vanished. She continued to walk for- 
 ward mechanically, in an utter confusion of mind. 
 
 She heard Judith asking in an astonished voice, " Why, 
 what makes you think so ? " and she listened with a tor- 
 tured attention to the statement vouchsafed in an excited 
 chorus by a great many shrill little voices that the Fingals' 
 old cook had taken a little too much whiskey for once and 
 had fallen to babbling at the grocery-store before a highly 
 entertained audience of neighbors, about the endless pere- 
 grinations of the Fingal family in search of a locality where 
 the blood of the children would not be suspected — "an* 
 theah motheh, fo' all heh good looks, second cousin to 
 Mattice ! " she had tittered foolishly, gathering up her basket 
 and rolling tipsily out of the store. 
 
 " Well — " said Judith, " did you ever ! " She was evi- 
 dently as much amazed as her sister, but Sylvia felt with a 
 sinking of the heart that what seemed to her the real signifi- 
 cance of the news had escaped Judith. 
 
 The Five A girls came trooping up to Sylvia. — " Of 
 course we can't have Camilla at the picnic." — " My uncle 
 wouldn't want a nigger there." — " We'll have to tell her she 
 can't come." 
 
 Sylvia heard from the other groups of children about 
 them snatches of similar talk. — " Anybody might ha' known 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident" 83 
 
 it — singin' the way they do — just like niggers' voices." — 
 " They'll have to go to the nigger school now." — u Huh ! 
 puttin' on airs with their carriage and their black dresses — 
 nothin' but niggers ! " The air seemed full of that word. 
 Sylvia sickened and quailed. 
 
 Not so Judith ! It had taken her a moment to understand 
 the way in which the news was being received. When she 
 did, she turned very pale, and broke out into a storm of 
 anger. She stuttered and halted as she always did when 
 overmastered by feeling, but her words were molten. She 
 ignored the tacit separation between children of different 
 grades and, though but a third-grader, threw herself pas- 
 sionately among the girls who were talking of the picnic, 
 clawing at their arms, forcing her way to the center, a rag- 
 ing, white-faced, hot-eyed little thunderbolt. " You're the 
 meanest low-down things I ever heard of ! " she told the 
 astonished older girls, fairly spitting at them in her fury. 
 " You — you go and s-sponge off the Fingals for c-c-cakes 
 ind rides and s-s-soda water — and you think they're too 
 1-1-lovely for w- words — and you t-t-try to do your hair just 
 the way C-C-Camilla does. They aren't any different to-day 
 f-f-from what they were yesterday — are they? You make 
 me sick — you m-m-make m-m-me " 
 
 The big bell rang out its single deep brazen note for the 
 formation of lines, and the habit of unquestioning, instant 
 obedience to its voice sent the children all scurrying to their 
 places, from which they marched forward to their respective 
 classrooms in their usual convict silence. Just as the line 
 ahead was disappearing into the open door, the well-kept, 
 shining surrey drove up in haste and Camilla and Cecile, 
 dazzling in fresh white dresses and white hair ribbons, ran 
 to their places. Evidently they had heard nothing. Camilla 
 turned and smiled brightly at her friend as she stepped 
 along in front of her. 
 
 Sylvia experienced another giddy reaction of feeling. Up 
 to that moment, she had felt nothing but shocked and in- 
 tensely self-centered horror at the disagreeableness of what 
 had happened, and a wild desire to run away to some quiet 
 
84 The Bent Twig 
 
 spot where she would not have to think about it, where it 
 could not make her unhappy, where her heart would stop 
 beating so furiously. What had she ever done to have such 
 a horrid thing happen in her world ! She had been as much 
 repelled by Judith's foaming violence as by any other ele- 
 ment of the situation. If she could only get away ! Every 
 sensitive nerve in her, tuned to a graceful and comely 
 order of life, was rasped to anguish by the ugliness of it 
 all. Up to the moment Camilla came running to her place 
 — this had been the dominant impulse in the extreme con- 
 fusion of Sylvia's mind. 
 
 But at the sight of Camilla she felt bursting up through 
 this confusion of mind, and fiercely attacking her instinct of 
 self-preservation, a new force, unsuspected, terribly alive — 
 sympathy with Camilla — Camilla, with her dog-like, timid, 
 loving eyes — Camilla, who had done nothing to deserve un- 
 happiness except to be born — Camilla, always uneasy with 
 tragic consciousness of the sword over her head, and now 
 smiling brightly with tragic unconsciousness that it was 
 about to fall. Sylvia's heart swelled almost unendurably. 
 She was feeling, for the first time in her life consciously, the 
 two natures under her skin, and this, their first open 
 struggle for the mastery of her, was like a knife in her 
 side. 
 
 She sat during the morning session, her eyes on the 
 clock, fearing miserably the moment of dismissal at noon, 
 when she must take some action — she who only longed to 
 run away from discord and dwell in peace. Her mind 
 swung, pendulum-like, from one extreme of feeling to an- 
 other. Every time that Camilla smiled at her across the 
 heads of the other children, sullenly oblivious of their 
 former favorite, Sylvia turned sick with shame and pity. 
 But when her eyes rested on the hard, hostile faces which 
 made up her world, the world she had to live in, the world 
 which had been so full of sweet and innocent happiness for 
 her, the world which would now be ranged with her or 
 against her according to her decision at noon, she was over- 
 come by a panic at the very idea of throwing her single self 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self -Evident" 85 
 
 against this many-headed tyrant. With an unspeakable 
 terror she longed to feel the safe walls of conformity about 
 her. There was a battle with drawn swords in the heart of 
 the little girl trying blindly to see where the n came in 
 41 pneumonia." 
 
 The clock crept on, past eleven, towards twelve. Sylvia 
 had come to no decision. She could come to no decision! 
 She felt herself consciously to be unable to cope with the 
 crisis. She was too small, too weak, too shrinking, to make 
 herself iron, and resist an overwhelming force. 
 
 It was five minutes of twelve. The order was given to 
 put away books and pencils in the desks. Sylvia's hands 
 trembled so that she could hardly close the lid. 
 
 " Turn ! " said the teacher, in her tired, mechanical voice. 
 The children turned their stubbed-toed shoes out into the 
 aisle, their eyes menacingly on Camilla. 
 
 " Rise ! " Like a covey of partridge, they all stood up, 
 stretching, twisting their bodies, stiff and torpid after the 
 long hours of immobility. 
 
 " Pass ! " Clattering feet all over the building began 
 moving along the aisles and out towards the cloakrooms. 
 Every one seized his own wraps with a practised snatch, and 
 passed on, still in line, over the dusty wooden floors of the 
 hall, down the ill-built, resounding stairs, out to the play- 
 ground — out to Sylvia's ordeal. 
 
 As she came out blinkingly into the strong spring sun- 
 light, she still had reached no decision. Her impulse was 
 to run, as fast as she could, out to the gate and down 
 the street — home ! But another impulse held her back. 
 The lines were breaking up. Camilla was turning about 
 with a smile to speak to her. Malevolent eyes were fixed on 
 them from all sides. Sylvia felt her indecision mount in a 
 cloud about her, like blinding, scalding steam. 
 
 And then, there before her, stood Judith, her proud dark 
 little face set in an angry scowl, her arm about Cecile Fin- 
 gal's neck. 
 
 Sylvia never could think what she would have done if 
 Judith had not been there ; but then, Judith was one of the 
 
86 The Bent Twig 
 
 formative elements of her life — as much as was the food 
 she ate or the thoughts she had. What she did was to turn 
 as quickly and unhesitatingly as though she had always 
 meant to do it, put her arm through Camilla's and draw 
 her rapidly towards the gate where the surrey waited. 
 Judith and Cecile followed. The crowds of astonished, and 
 for the moment silenced, children fell back before them. 
 
 Once she had taken her action, Sylvia saw that it was the 
 only one possible. But she was upheld by none of the tra- 
 ditional pride in a righteous action, nor by a raging single- 
 mindedness like Judith's, who stalked along, her little fists 
 clenched, frowning blackly to right and left on the other 
 children, evidently far more angry with them than sym- 
 pathetic for Cecile. Sylvia did not feel angry with any one. 
 She was simply more acutely miserable than she had ever 
 dreamed possible. The distance to the surrey seemed end- 
 less to her. 
 
 Her sudden rush had taken Camilla so completely by sur- 
 prise that not until they were at the gate did she catch her 
 breath to ask laughingly : " What in the world's the matter 
 with you, Sylvia ? You act so queer ! " 
 
 Sylvia did not answer, every nerve bent on getting Camilla 
 into safety, but a little red-headed boy from the second 
 grade, who could scarcely talk plainly, burst out chantingly, 
 pointing his dirty forefinger at Camilla: 
 
 " Nigger, nigger, never die, 
 Black face and shiny eye, 
 Curly hair and curly toes — 
 Thai's the way the nigger goes ! " 
 
 There was a loud laugh from the assembled children. 
 
 Camilla wavered as though she had been struck. Her 
 lovely face turned ashy-gray, and she looked at Sylvia with 
 the eyes of one dying. 
 
 From the deepest of her nature, Sylvia ^sponded to that 
 look. She forgot the crowd, — boldly, unafraid, beside her- 
 self with pity, she flung her arms about her friend's neck, 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self -Evident" 87 
 
 hiding the white face on her shoulder. Judith ran up, 
 blazing with rage, and pulled at Camilla's arm. " Don't 
 give in ! Don't give in ! " she screamed. " Don't cry ! Don't 
 let 'em see you care ! Sass 'em back, why don't you ? Hit 
 that little boy over the head! Sass them back, why don't 
 you?" 
 
 But Camilla only shook her head vehemently and shrank 
 away into the carriage, little Cecile stumbling after, the 
 silent tears streaming down her face. The two clasped each 
 other, and the surrey drove quickly away, leaving the Mar- 
 shall girls standing on the curb. 
 
 Judith turned around and faced the crowds of enemies 
 back of them. " Nasty old things ! " she cried, sticking out 
 her tongue at them. She was answered by a yell, at which 
 she made another face and walked away, pulling Sylvia with 
 her. For a few steps they were followed by some small boys 
 who yelled in chorus : 
 
 " Judith's mad and I'm glad, 
 And I know what'll please her : 
 A bottle of wine to make her shine, 
 And two little niggers to squeeze her ! " 
 
 They were beginning this immemorially old chant over again 
 when Judith turned and ran back towards them with a 
 white, terrible face of wrath. At the sight they scattered 
 like scared chickens. 
 
 Judith was so angry that she was shivering all over her 
 small body, and she kept repeating at intervals, in a suffo- 
 cated voice : " Nasty old things ! Just wait till I tell my 
 father and mother ! " 
 
 As they passed under the beech-trees, it seemed to Sylvia 
 a physical impossibility that only that morning they had 
 raced and scampered along, whirling their school-books and 
 laughing. 
 
 They ran into the house, calling for their parents in ex- 
 cited voices, and pouring out incoherent exclamations. 
 Sylvia cried a little at the comforting sight of her mother's 
 
88 The Bent Twig 
 
 face and was taken up on Mrs. Marshall's lap and closely 
 held. Judith never cried ; she had not cried even when she 
 ran the sewing-machine needle through her thumb; but 
 when infuriated she could not talk, her stammering grow- 
 ing so pronounced that she could not get out a word, and it 
 was Sylvia who told the facts. She was astonished to find 
 them so few and so quickly stated, having been under the 
 impression that something of intense and painful excitement 
 had been happening every moment of the morning. 
 
 But the experience of her parents supplied the tragic back- 
 ground of strange, passionate prejudice which Sylvia could 
 not phrase, and which gave its sinister meaning to her briefly 
 
 told story : " and so Judith and I walked with them out 
 
 to the gate, and then that little Jimmy Cohalan yelled out, 
 ' nigger — nigger ' — you know " 
 
 Judith broke in, her nostrils distended, "And they never 
 sassed back, or hit anybody or anything — just crumpled up 
 and cried ! " 
 
 Sylvia was aghast with bewilderment. " Why, I thought 
 you were on their side ! " 
 
 "Well, I am!" asserted Judith, beginning to stammer 
 again. " But I don't have to like 'em any better, do I — 
 because I get mad when a 1-1-lot of mean, n-nasty girls that 
 
 have b-b-b-been s-s-spongin' off " She stopped, balked 
 
 by her infirmity, and appealed to her parents with a silent 
 look of fury. 
 
 " What shall we do, Mother ? " asked Sylvia despairingly, 
 looking up into her mother's face from the comfortable 
 shelter of her long, strong arms. Mrs. Marshall looked 
 down at her without speaking. It occurred to Sylvia dis- 
 quietingly that her mother's expression was a little like 
 Judith's. But when Mrs. Marshall spoke it was only to 
 say in her usual voice : " Well, the first thing to do is to 
 have something to eat. Whatever else you do, don't let a 
 bad condition of your body interfere with what's going on 
 in your mind. Lunch is getting cold — and don't talk about 
 trouble while you're eating. After you're through, Father'll 
 tell you what to do." 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident" 89 
 
 Professor Marshall made a gesture of dismay. " Good 
 Lord, Barbara, don't put it off on me ! " 
 
 His wife looked at him with smoldering eyes. " I cer- 
 tainly have nothing to say that would be fit for children to 
 hear ! " she said in an energetic tone, beginning to serve 
 the baked beans, which were the main dish for the day. 
 
 After the meal, always rather hasty because of the chil- 
 dren's short noon-hour, Sylvia and Judith went to sit on 
 their father's knees, while he put an arm about each and, 
 looking from one serious expectant face to the other, began 
 his explanation. He cleared his throat, and hesitated before 
 beginning, and had none of his usual fluency as he went on. 
 What he finally said was : " Well, children, you've stumbled 
 into about the hardest problem there is in this country, and 
 the honest truth is that we don't any of us know what's 
 right to do about it. The sort of thing that's just happened 
 in the Washington Street School is likely to happen 'most 
 anywhere, and it's no harder on these poor little playmates 
 of yours than on all colored people. But it's awfully hard 
 on them all. The best we can do is to hope that after a 
 great many people have lived and died, all trying to do 
 their best, maybe folks will have learned how to manage 
 better. Of course, if grown men and women don't know 
 how to help matters, you little girls can't expect to fix 
 things either. All you can do is to go on being nice to 
 Camilla and " 
 
 Judith broke in here hotly, " You don't mean we oughtn't 
 to do something about the girls being so mean to them — 
 not letting Camilla go to the picnic and " 
 
 " What could you do ? " asked her father quietly, " that 
 would make things any better for Camilla? If you were 
 forty times as strong as you are, you couldn't make the 
 other girls want Camilla at the picnic. It would only spoil 
 the picnic and wouldn't help Camilla a bit." Professor 
 Marshall meditated a moment, and went on, " Of course 
 I'm proud of my little daughters for being kind to friends 
 who are unhappy through no fault of theirs" (Sylvia 
 winced at this, and thought of confessing that she was very 
 
90 The Bent Twig 
 
 near running away and leaving Camilla to her fate), "and 
 I hope you'll go on being as nice to your unfortunate 
 friends as ever " 
 
 Judith said : " They aren't friends of mine ! / don't like 
 them ! " 
 
 As not infrequently happened, something about Judith's 
 attitude had been irritating her father, and he now said 
 with some severity, " Then it's a case where Sylvia's loving 
 heart can do more good than your anger, though you evi- 
 dently think it very fine of you to feel that ! " 
 
 Judith looked down in a stubborn silence, and Sylvia 
 drooped miserably in the consciousness of receiving un- 
 deserved praise. She opened her mouth to explain her 
 vacillations of the morning, but her moral fiber was not 
 equal to the effort. She felt very unhappy to have Judith 
 blamed and herself praised when things ought to have been 
 reversed, but she could not bring herself to renounce her 
 father's good opinion. 
 
 Professor Marshall gave them both a kiss and set them 
 down. " It's twenty minutes to one. You'd better run 
 along, dears," he said. 
 
 After the children had gone out, his wife, who had pre- 
 served an unbroken silence, remarked dryly, " So that's the 
 stone we give them when they ask for bread." 
 
 Professor Marshall made no attempt to defend himself. 
 " My dim generalities are pretty poor provender for honest 
 children's minds, I admit," he said humbly, " but what else 
 have we to give them that isn't directly contradicted by 
 our lives? There's no use telling children something that 
 they never see put into practice." 
 
 " It's not impossible, I suppose, to change our lives," 
 suggested his wife uncompromisingly. 
 
 Professor Marshall drew a great breath of dishearten- 
 ment. " As long as I can live without thinking of that 
 element in American life — it's all right. But when anything 
 brings it home — like this today — I feel that the mean com- 
 promise we all make must be a disintegrating moral force 
 in the national character. I feel like gathering up all of you, 
 
"We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident" 91 
 
 and going away — away from the intolerable question — to 
 Europe — and earning the family living by giving English 
 lessons ! " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall cried out, " It makes me feel like going 
 out right here in La Chance with a bomb in one hand and a 
 rifle in the other ! " 
 
 From which difference of impression it may perhaps be 
 seen that the two disputants were respectively the father 
 and mother of Sylvia and Judith. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall rose and began clearing away the luncheon 
 dishes. As she disappeared into the kitchen, she paused a 
 moment behind the door, a grim, invisible voice, remarking, 
 "And what we shall do is, of course, simply nothing at 
 
 aiir 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 SABOTAGE 
 
 Sylvia and Judith walked to school in a profound silence. 
 Sylvia was shrinking with every nerve from the ordeal of 
 facing again those four hundred hostile faces ; from the new 
 and painful relations with her playmates which lay before 
 her. She was now committed irrevocably to the cause of 
 the Fingals, and she felt a terrified doubt of having enough 
 moral strength to stick to that position. 
 
 For the moment the problem was settled by their arriv- 
 ing at the schoolhouse almost too late. The lines were just 
 marching into the building, and both girls barely slipped into 
 their places in time. Sylvia noticed with relief that Camilla 
 was absent. 
 
 All the Five A girls had paper bags or pasteboard boxes, 
 and in the air of the Five A cloakroom was a strong smell 
 of vinegar. Gretchen Schmidt's pickles had begun to soak 
 through the bag, and she borrowed the cover of a box to set 
 them in. These sounds and smells recalled the picnic to 
 Sylvia's mind, the picnic to which she had been looking 
 forward with such inexpressible pleasure. For an instant 
 she was aghast to think that she had forgotten her bananas, 
 tied up all ready at home on the sideboard. But the next 
 instant she thought sadly that she probably would not be 
 welcome at the picnic. She went to her seat and sat for- 
 lorn through the changing lessons of the afternoon. 
 » The teacher ground out the half-hour lessons wearily, her 
 eyes on the clock, as unaware of the crisis in her class as 
 though she were in another planet. At four o'clock Sylvia 
 filed out with the other children to the cloakroom, but there 
 was not the usual quick, practised grab, each for his own be- 
 longings. The girls remained behind, exclaiming and 
 
 92 
 
Sabotage 93 
 
 lamenting. Such a clamor arose that the teacher came hur- 
 rying in, anxious for the reputation for good behavior of 
 her class. Good behavior in the Washington Street School, 
 as in a penitentiary, was gauged by the degree of silence and 
 immobility achieved by the inmates. 
 
 The girls ran to Miss Miller, crying out, " Somebody's 
 stolen our lunches, — we left them here — all our boxes and 
 things — and they're all gone ! " 
 
 Sylvia hung back in the door to the schoolroom, apart 
 from the others, half relieved by the unexpected event which 
 diverted attention from her. 
 
 One of the boys who had gone ahead in the line now 
 came back, a large cucumber stuck in the corner of his 
 mouth like a fat, green cigar. He announced with evident 
 satisfaction in the girls' misfortune that the steps were 
 strewn with pickles. The bag must have burst entirely as 
 they were being carried downstairs. Gretchen Schmidt be- 
 gan to weep, — " all them good pickles ! " One of the 
 
 girls flew at the boy who brought the bad news. " I just 
 bet you did it yourself, Jimmy Weaver, you an' Frank Ken- 
 nedy. You boys were mad anyhow because we didn't ask 
 you to come to the picnic." 
 
 Jimmy's face assumed the most unmistakably genuine 
 expression of astonishment and aggrieved innocence. " Aw, 
 you're off yer base ! I wouldn't ha' gone to your darned old 
 picnic — an' wasn't I in the room every minute this after- 
 noon ? " 
 
 " No, you weren't — you weren't ! " More of the girls had 
 come to the attack, and now danced about the boy, hurling 
 accusations at him. " You got excused to get a drink of 
 water ! And so did Pete Roberts ! You did it then ! You 
 did it then! You did " 
 
 "Hush, children! Not so loud!" said Miss Miller. 
 " You'll have the Principal down here!" 
 
 At this terrible threat the children, in spite of their heat, 
 lowered their voices. Jimmy was beginning an angry, half- 
 alarmed protest — " Aw, 'twas a tramp must ha' got in an* 
 saw " when he was pushed out of the way by a small, 
 
94 The Bent Twig 
 
 vigorous hand. Judith Marshall walked in, her face very 
 pale. She was breathing hard, and through her parted lips, 
 as though she had been running fast, her small white teeth 
 showed like those of an enraged squirrel. " I threw your 
 picnic things in the river," she said. 
 
 The older children recoiled from this announcement, and 
 from the small, tense figure. Even the teacher kept her 
 distance, as though Judith were some dangerous little ani- 
 mal. 
 
 " What in the world did you do that for ? " she asked in 
 a tone of stupefaction. 
 
 " Because they are n-n-nasty, mean things," said Judith, 
 " and if they weren't going to let C-C-Camilla go to the 
 picnic, I wasn't going to let them have any picnic ! " 
 
 The teacher turned around to Sylvia, now almost as 
 white as her sister, and said helplessly, " Sylvia, do you 
 know what she's talking about ? " 
 
 Sylvia went forward and took Judith's hand. She was 
 horrified beyond words by what Judith had done, but Judith 
 was her little sister. " Yes, ma'am," she said, to Miss 
 Miller's question, speaking, for all her agitation, quickly 
 and fluently as was her habit, though not very coherently. 
 " Yes, ma'am, I know. Everybody was saying this morning 
 that the Fingals' mother was a negro, and so the girls 
 weren't going to invite Camilla to the picnic, and it made 
 Judith mad." 
 
 " Why, she didn't know Camilla very well, did she ? " 
 asked the teacher, astonished. 
 
 " No, ma'am," said Sylvia, still speaking quickly, although 
 the tears of fright were beginning to stand in her eyes. " It 
 just made her mad because the girls weren't going to in- 
 vite her because she didn't think it was anyhow hei 
 fault." 
 
 " Whose fault ! " cried the teacher, completely lost. 
 
 " Camilla's," quavered Sylvia, the tears beginning to fall. 
 
 There was a pause. "Well — I never!" exclaimed the 
 teacher, whose parents had come from New England. She 
 was entirely at a loss to know how to treat this unprece- 
 
Sabotage 95 
 
 dented situation, and like other potentates with a long habit 
 of arbitrary authority, she covered her perplexity with a 
 smart show of decision. " You children go right straight 
 home, along out of the building this minute," she com- 
 manded. " You know you're not allowed to loiter around 
 after school-hours. Sylvia and Judith, stay here. I'm 
 going to take you up to the Principal's office." 
 
 The girls and Jimmy Weaver ran clattering down the 
 stairs, in an agreeably breathless state of excitement. In 
 their opinion the awfulness of the situation had been ade- 
 quately recognized by the teacher and signaled by the 
 equally awful expedient of a visit to the Principal's office, 
 the last resort in the case of the rarely occurring insubordi- 
 nate boy. 
 
 Because Miss Miller had not the least idea what to say in 
 an event so far out of the usual routine, she talked a great 
 deal during the trip through the empty halls and staircases 
 up to the Principal's office on the top floor; chiefly to the 
 effect that as many years as she had taught, never had 
 she encountered such a bad little girl as Judith. Judith 
 received this in stony silence, but Sylvia's tears fell fast. 
 All the years of her docile school existence had trained her 
 in the habit of horror at insubordination above every other 
 crime. She felt as disgraced as though Judith had been 
 caught stealing, — perhaps more so. 
 
 Miss Miller knocked at the door; the Principal, stooping 
 and hollow-chested, opened it and stood confronting with 
 tired, kind eyes the trio before him — the severe woman, 
 with her pathetic, prematurely old face and starved flat body, 
 the pretty little girl hanging down her head and weeping, 
 the smaller child who gave him one black defiant look 
 and then gazed past him out of the window. 
 
 " Well, Miss Miller ? " he asked. 
 
 " I've brought you a case that I don't know what to do 
 with,' , she began. " This is Judith Marshall, in the third 
 grade, and she has just done one of the naughtiest things 
 I ever heard of " 
 
 When she had finished her recital, " How do you know 
 
96 The Bent Twig 
 
 this child did it ? " asked Mr. Bristol, always his first ques- 
 tion in cases between teachers and pupils. 
 
 " She was so brazen as to come right back and tell us so," 
 said Miss Miller, her tone growing more and more con- 
 demnatory. 
 
 Judith's face, capable of such rare and positive beauty, 
 had now shut down into a hard, repellent little mask of hate. 
 Mr. Bristol looked at her for a moment in silence, and then 
 at Sylvia, sobbing, her arm crooked over her face, hiding 
 everything but her shining curls. " And what has this little 
 girl to do with anything ? " he asked. 
 
 "This is Sylvia Marshall, Judith's sister, and of course 
 she feels dreadfully about Judith's doing such a dreadful 
 thing," explained Miss Miller inelegantly. 
 
 Mr. Bristol walked back to his desk and sat down. 
 " Well, I think I needn't keep you any longer, Miss Miller," 
 he said. " If you will just leave the little girls here for a 
 while perhaps I can decide what to do about it." 
 
 Thus mildly but unmistakably dismissed, the teacher 
 took her departure, pushing Sylvia and Judith inside the 
 door and shutting it audibly after her. She was so tired 
 as she walked down the stairs that she ached, and she 
 thought to herself, " As if things weren't hard enough with- 
 out their going and being naughty ! " 
 
 Inside the room there was a moment's silence, filled al- 
 most palpably by Sylvia's quivering alarm, and by Judith's 
 bitter mental resistance. Mr. Bristol drew out a big book 
 from the shelf over his desk and held it out to Sylvia. " I 
 guess you all got pretty excited about this, didn't you ? " 
 he said, smiling wisely at the child. " You and your sister 
 sit down and look at the pictures in this for a while, till 
 you get cooled off, and then I'll hear all about it." 
 
 Sylvia took the book obediently, and drew Judith to a 
 chair, opening the pages, brushing away her tears, and try- 
 ing to go through the form of looking at the illustrations, 
 which were of the birds native to the region. In spite of 
 her emotion, the large, brightly colored pictures did force 
 their way through her eye to her brain, instinct in every 
 
Sabotage 97 
 
 fiber with the modern habit of taking in impressions from 
 the printed page ; and for years afterwards she could have 
 told the names of the birds they saw during that long, still 
 half-hour, broken by no sound but the tap-tap-tap of Mr. 
 Bristol's typewriter. He did not once look towards them. 
 This was partly a matter of policy, and partly because he 
 was trying desperately to get a paper written for the next 
 Convention of Public School Principals, which he was to 
 address on the " Study of Arithmetic in the Seventh Grade." 
 He had very fixed and burning ideas about the teaching of 
 arithmetic in the seventh grade, which he longed with a true 
 believer's fervor to see adopted by all the schools in the 
 country. He often said that if they would only do so, the 
 study of arithmetic would be revolutionized in a decade. 
 
 Judith sat beside her sister, not pretending to look at the 
 book, although the rigidity of her face insensibly softened 
 somewhat in the contagious quiet of the room. 
 
 When they had turned over the last page and shut the 
 book, Mr. Bristol faced them again, leaning back in his 
 swivel-chair, and said : " Now, children — all quiet ? One of 
 you begin at the beginning and tell me how it happened." 
 Judith's lips shut together in a hard line, so Sylvia began, 
 surprised to find her nerves steadied and calmed by the 
 silent half-hour of inaction back of her. She told how they 
 were met that morning by the news, how the children 
 shouted after Camilla as she got into the carriage, how the 
 Five A girls had decided to exclude her from the picnic, 
 how angry Judith had been, and then — then — she knew no 
 more to tell beyond the bare fact of Judith's passionate 
 misdeed. 
 
 Mr. Bristol began to cross-examine Judith in short, quiet 
 sentences. " What made you think of throwing the things 
 into the river ? " 
 
 " I was afraid they'd get them back somehow if I didn't," 
 said Judith, as if stating a self-evident argument. 
 
 " Where did you go to throw them in? To the Monroe 
 Street bridge?" 
 
 "No, I didn't have time to go so far. I just went down 
 
98 The Bent Twig 
 
 through Randolph Street to the bank and there was a boat 
 there tied to a tree, and I got in and pushed it out as far as 
 the rope would go and dropped the things in from the other 
 end." 
 
 Sylvia caught her breath in terror at this recital. The 
 Piquota river ran swift and turbid and deep between high 
 banks at that point. " Weren't you afraid to venture out in 
 a boat all by yourself ? " asked the man, looking at Judith's 
 diminutive person. 
 
 " Yes, I was," said Judith unexpectedly. 
 
 Mr. Bristol said " Oh " and stood in thought for a 
 
 moment. Some one knocked on the door, and he turned 
 to open it. At the sight of the tall figure standing there in 
 his pepper-and-salt suit, Sylvia's heart gave a great bound 
 of incredulous rapture. The appearance of a merciful 
 mediator on the Day of Judgment could not have given her 
 keener or more poignant relief. She and Judith both ran 
 headlong to their father, catching his hands in theirs, cling- 
 ing to his arms and pressing their little bodies against his. 
 The comfort Sylvia felt in his mere physical presence was 
 inexpressible. It is one of the pure golden emotions of 
 childhood, which no adult can ever recover, save perhaps a 
 mystic in a moment of ecstatic contemplation of the power 
 and loving-kindness of his God. 
 
 Professor Marshall put out his hand to the Principal, 
 introducing himself, and explained that he and his wife had 
 been a little uneasy when the children had not returned 
 from school. Mr. Bristol shook the other's hand, saying 
 that he knew of him through mutual acquaintances and 
 assuring him that he could not have come at a more oppor- 
 tune moment. " Your little daughter has given me a hard 
 nut to crack. I need advice." 
 
 Both men sat down, Sylvia and Judith still close to their 
 father's side, and Mr. Bristol told what had happened in a 
 concise, colorless narration, ending with Judith's exploit with 
 the boat. " Now what would you do in my place ? " he 
 said, like one proposing an insoluble riddle. 
 
 Sylvia, seeing the discussion going on in such a quiet, con- 
 
Sabotage 99 
 
 versational tone, ventured in a small voice the suggestion 
 that Judith had done well to confess, since that had saved 
 others from suspicion. " The girls were sure that Jimmy- 
 Weaver had done it." 
 
 " Was that why you came back and told ? " asked Pro- 
 fessor Marshall. 
 
 " No," said Judith bluntly, " I never thought of that. I 
 wanted to be sure they knew why it happened." 
 
 The two men exchanged glances. Professor Marshall 
 said : " Didn't you understand me when I told you at noon 
 that even if you could make the girls let Camilla go to the 
 picnic, she wouldn't have a good time ? You couldn't make 
 them like to have her ? " 
 
 u Yes, I understood all right," said Judith, looking straight 
 at her father, "but if she couldn't have a good time — and 
 no fault of hers — I wasn't going to let them have a good 
 time either. I wasn't trying to make them want her. I was 
 trying to get even with them ! " 
 
 Professor Marshall looked stern. " That is just what I 
 feared, Judith, and that hateful spirit is the bad thing about 
 the whole business." He turned to the Principal : " How 
 many girls were going to the picnic ? " 
 
 The other, with a wide gesture, disavowed any knowl- 
 edge of the matter. " Good Heavens ! how should I know ? " 
 
 Sylvia counted rapidly. " Fourteen," she said. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Bristol, how would this do for a punishment ? 
 Judith has worked in various ways, digging up dandelions 
 from the lawn, weeding flower-beds, running errands — you 
 know— all the things children do — and she has a little more 
 than five dollars in her iron savings-bank, that she has been 
 saving for more than a year to buy a collie puppy. Would 
 you be satisfied if she took that money, divided it into four- 
 teen parts, and took it herself in person to each of the 
 girls?" 
 
 During this proposal Judith's face had taken on an expres- 
 sion of utter dismay. She looked more childlike, more like 
 her years than at any moment during the interview. " Oh, 
 Father! " she implored him, with a deep note of entreaty. 
 
ioo The Bent Twig 
 
 He did not look at her, but over her head at the Prin- 
 cipal, who was rising from his chair with every indication of 
 relief on his face. " Nothing could be better," he said. 
 That will be just right — every one will be satisfied. And 
 I'll just say for the sake of discipline that little Judith shan't 
 come back to school till she has done her penance. Of 
 course she can get it all done before supper-time tonight. 
 All our families live in the vicinity of the school." He 
 was shaking Professor Marshall's hand again and edging 
 him towards the door, his mind once more on his paper, 
 hoping that he might really finish it before night — if only 
 there were no more interruptions ! 
 
 His achievement in divining the mental processes of two 
 children hysterical with excitement, his magnetic taming 
 of those fluttering little hearts, his inspired avoidance of a 
 fatal false step at a critical point in the moral life of two 
 human beings in the making — all this seemed as nothing 
 to him — an incident of the day's routine already forgotten. 
 He conceived that his real usefulness to society lay in the 
 reform of arithmetic-teaching in the seventh grade, and he 
 turned back to his arguments with the ardor of the great 
 landscape painter who aspires to be a champion at billiards. 
 
 Professor Marshall walked home in silence with his two 
 daughters, explained the matter to his wife, and said that 
 he and Sylvia would go with Judith on her uncomfortable 
 errand. Mrs. Marshall listened in silence and went herself 
 to get the little bank stuffed full of painfully earned pennies 
 and nickels. Then she bade them into the kitchen and gave 
 Judith and Sylvia each a cookie and a glass of milk. 
 
 She made no comment whatever on the story, or on her 
 husband's sentence for the culprit, but just as the three 
 were going out of the door, she ran after them, caught 
 Judith in her arms, and gave her a passionate kiss. 
 
 The next day was Saturday, and it was suggested that 
 Judith and Sylvia carry on their campaign by going to see 
 the Fingals and spending the morning playing with them 
 as though nothing had happened. 
 
Sabotage 101 
 
 As they approached the house, somewhat perturbed by 
 the prospect, they saw with surprise that the windows were 
 bare of the heavy yellow lace curtains which had hung in 
 the parlor, darkening that handsomely furnished room to 
 a rich twilight. They went up on the porch, and Judith 
 rang the bell resolutely, while Sylvia hung a little back of 
 her. From this position she could see into the parlor, and 
 exclaimed, " Why, Judy, this isn't the right house — nobody 
 lives here ! " The big room was quite empty, the floors bare 
 of the large soft rugs, and as the children pressed their faces 
 to the pane, they could see through an open door into a 
 bedroom also dismantled and deserted. 
 
 They ran around the house to the back door and knocked 
 on it. There was no answer. Judith turned the knob, the 
 door opened, and they stood in what had been unmistakably 
 the Fjngals' kitchen. Evidence of wild haste and confusion 
 was everywhere about them — the floor was littered with 
 excelsior, the shelves half cleared and half occupied still 
 with cooking supplies, a packing-box partly filled with 
 kitchenware which at the last moment the fugitives had 
 evidently decided to abandon. 
 
 The little girls stood in this silent desolation, looking 
 about them with startled eyes. A lean mother-cat came 
 and rubbed her thin, pendent flanks against their legs, purr- 
 ing and whining. Three kittens skirmished joyfully in the 
 excelsior, waylaying one another in ambush and springing 
 out with bits of the yellow fibers clinging to their woolly 
 soft fur. 
 
 " They've gone! " breathed Sylvia. " They've gone away 
 for good ! " 
 
 Judith nodded, even her bold and unimaginative spirit 
 somewhat daunted by the ghostly silence of the house. 
 Sylvia tiptoed to the swinging-door and pushed it open. 
 Yes, there was the pantry, like the kitchen, in chaotic dis- 
 order, tissue paper and excelsior thick on the floor, and 
 entangled with it the indescribable jumble of worthless, dis- 
 connected objects always tumbled together by a domestic 
 crisis like a fire or a removal — old gloves, whisk-brooms, 
 
rcz The Bent Twig 
 
 hat-forms, lamps, magazines, tarnished desk-fittings. The 
 sight was so eloquent of panic haste that Sylvia let the door 
 swing shut, and ran back into the kitchen. 
 
 Judith was pointing silently to a big paper bag on the 
 shelf. It had been tossed there with some violence evi- 
 dently, for the paper had burst and the contents had cas- 
 caded out on the shelf and on the floor — the rich, be-raisined 
 cookies which Camilla was to have taken to the picnic. 
 Sylvia felt the tears stinging her eyelids, and pulled Judith 
 out of the tragic house. They stood for a moment in the 
 yard, beside a bed of flowering crocuses, brilliant in the 
 sun. The forsaken house looked down severely at them 
 from its blank window^: Judith was almost instantly re- 
 lieved of mental tension by the outdoor air, and stooped 
 down unconcernedly to tie her shoe. She broke the lacing 
 and had to sit down, take it out of the shoe, tie it, and 
 put it back again. The operation took some time, during 
 which Sylvia stood still, her mind whirling. 
 
 For the first time in her steadily forward-going life there 
 was a sharp, irrevocable break. Something which had been 
 yesterday was now no more. She would never see Camilla 
 again, she who recalled Camilla's look of anguish as though 
 they still stood side by side. Her heart filled with unspeak- 
 able thankfulness that she had put her arms around Ca- 
 milla's neck at that supreme last moment. That had not 
 been Judith's doing. That had come from her own heart. 
 Unconsciously she had laid the first stone in the wall of self- 
 respect which might in the future fortify her against her 
 weaknesses. 
 
 She stood looking up blindly at the house, shivering again 
 at the recollection of its echoing, empty silence. The mo- 
 ment was one she never forgot. Standing there in that 
 commonplace backyard, staring up at a house like any one 
 of forty near her, she felt her heart grow larger. In that 
 moment, tragedy, mystery, awe, and pity laid their shadowy 
 fingers on her shining head. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE END OF CHILDHOOD 
 
 That afternoon a couple of children who came to play 
 in the Marshall orchard brought news that public opinion, 
 after the fashion of that unstable weathercock, was veering 
 rapidly, and blowing from a wholly unexpected quarter. 
 " My papa says," reported Gretchen Schmidt, who never 
 could keep anything to herself, even though it might be by 
 no means to her advantage to proclaim it — " my papa says 
 that he thinks the way American people treats colored peo- 
 ples is just fierce ; and he says if he'd ha' known about our 
 not letting Camilla go to the picnic, he'd ha' taken the 
 trouble to me ■ mit der Hachen Hand schlagen/ That 
 means he'd have spanked me good and plenty." 
 
 Maria Perkins, from the limb where she hung by her 
 knees, responded, " Yup, my Uncle Eben says he likes 
 Judy's spunk." 
 
 " I guess he wouldn't have, if it'd ha' been his pickles ! " 
 Gretchen made a last stand against the notorious injustice of 
 fickle adult prejudices. 
 
 But the tide had begun to turn. On Monday morning 
 Sylvia and Judith found themselves far from ostracized, 
 rather the center of much respectful finger-pointing on the 
 part of children from the other grades who had never paid 
 the least attention to them before. And finally when the 
 Principal, passing majestically from room to room in his 
 daily tour of inspection, paused in his awful progress and 
 spoke to Judith by name, asking her quite familiarly and 
 condescendingly what cities you would pass through if you 
 went from Chicago to New Orleans, the current set once 
 and for all in the other direction. No mention was ever 
 made of the disappearance of the Fingals, and the Marshall 
 children found their old places waiting for them. 
 
104 The Bent Twig 
 
 It was not long before Judith had all but forgotten the 
 episode; but Sylvia, older and infinitely more impression- 
 able, found it burned irrevocably into her memory. For 
 many and many a week, she did not fall asleep without 
 seeing Camilla's ashy face of wretchedness. And it was 
 years before she could walk past the house where the Fin- 
 gals had lived, without feeling sick. 
 
 Her life was, however, brimming with active interests 
 which occupied her, mind and body. There was rarely a 
 day when a troop of children did not swarm over the Mar- 
 shall house and barn, playing and playing and playing with 
 that indomitable zest in life which is the birthright of human- 
 ity before the fevers and chills of adolescence begin. Sylvia 
 and Judith, moreover, were required to assume more and 
 more of the responsibility of the housework, while their 
 mother extracted from the Marshall five acres an ever in- 
 creasing largesse of succulent food. Sylvia's seances with 
 old Reinhardt and the piano were becoming serious affairs : 
 for it was now tentatively decided that she was to earn her 
 living by teaching music. There were many expeditions on 
 foot with their mother, for Mrs. Marshall had become, little 
 by little, chief nurse and adviser to all the families of the 
 neighborhood ; and on her errands of service one of her 
 daughters was needed to carry supplies and act as assistant. 
 And finally, as the children grew older, and the family tradi- 
 tion of bookishness took hold of them, there were shelves 
 and shelves to be devoured, a strange mixture — Thackeray, 
 Maeterlinck, Fielding, Hakluyt, Ibsen, Dickens, Ruskin, 
 Shaw, Austen, Moliere, Defoe, Cervantes, Shakespeare, — 
 the children dipped, or tasted or swallowed whole, according 
 to their temperaments and the books they happened on. 
 
 When Sylvia was thirteen, almost fourteen years old, 
 she " graduated " from the eighth grade of the public schools 
 and was ready to enter the High School. But after a good 
 many family councils, in most of which, after the unreticent 
 Marshall manner, she herself was allowed to be present, it 
 was decided not to send her to the huge new Central High 
 School, which had cost La Chance such a big slice of its 
 
The End of Childhood 105 
 
 taxes, but to prepare her at home for her course at the 
 State University. She had been growing very fast, was a 
 little thin and white, and had been outgrowing her strength. 
 This at least was the reason given out to inquirers. In 
 reality her father's prejudice against High School life for 
 adolescents was the determining cause. In the course of 
 his University work he was obliged to visit a good many 
 High Schools, and had acquired a violent prejudice against 
 the stirring social life characteristic of those institutions. 
 
 Sylvia's feelings about this step aside from the beaten 
 track were, like many of Sylvia's feelings, decidedly mixed. 
 She was drawn towards the High School by the suction of 
 the customary. A large number of her classmates expected 
 as a matter of course to pass on in the usual way; but, 
 with an uneasy qualm, half pride and half apprehension, 
 Sylvia was beginning to feel her difference from ordinary 
 children. She was not altogether sorry to say good-bye to 
 her playmates, with whom she no longer had much in 
 common. She would miss the fun of class-life, of course; 
 but there was a certain distinction involved in being edu- 
 cated " differently." She might be queer, but sin^e she was 
 apparently fated to be queer, she might as v 11 not be 
 " common " as well. Finally, because she was still, at four- 
 teen, very much of a child, the scale was tipped by her 
 thinking what fun it would be to go down-town on errands 
 in school hours. Charles Lamb, lost in painful wonder at 
 his own leisure after thirty-six years of incessant office- 
 hours, could savor no more acutely than an American 
 school-child the exquisite flavor of freedom at an hour 
 formerly dedicated to imprisonment. 
 
 As a matter of fact, during the next three years Sylvia's 
 time was more constantly occupied than when there was a 
 fixed time-limit to her studies. Her teachers were always 
 about her, and lightly as the new yoke pressed, she wore it 
 practically without intermission. Her immersion in the 
 ideals, the standards, the concepts of her parents was com- 
 plete, engulfing. Somebody was nearly always teaching her 
 something. She studied history and Latin with her father; 
 
106 The Bent Twig 
 
 mathematics with her mother. She learned to swim, to 
 play tennis, to ride in the summer-time, and to skate on the 
 frozen swimming-pool in winter, all without stirring from 
 home. Old Reinhardt was supposed to come twice a week 
 to give her a piano-lesson, but actually he dropped in almost 
 every day to smoke meditatively and keep a watchful ear 
 on her practising. 
 
 Although during those years she was almost literally 
 rooted to the Marshall soil, watered by Marshall convic- 
 tions, and fed by Marshall information, the usual miracle 
 of irresistibly individual growth went silently and uncon- 
 sciously forward in her. She was growing up to be herself, 
 and not her mother or her father, little as any one in her 
 world suspected the presence of this unceasingly recurrent 
 phenomenon of growth. She was alive to all the impres- 
 sions reflected so insistently upon her, but she transmuted 
 them into products which would immensely have surprised 
 her parents, they being under the usual parental delusion 
 that they knew every corner of her heart. Her budding 
 aversions, convictions, ambitions were not in the least the 
 aversions, convictions, and ambitions so loudly voiced about 
 her; and a good deal of her energy was taken up in a more 
 or less conscious reaction from the family catchwords, with 
 especial emphasis laid on an objection to the family habit of 
 taking their convictions with great seriousness. 
 
 Her father would have been aghast if he could have felt 
 the slightest reflection from the heat of her detestation of 
 his favorite, Emersonian motto, which, now that he had 
 reached five and forty, he was apt to repeat with the itera- 
 tion natural to his age, rousing in Sylvia the rebellious 
 exasperation felt by her age for over-emphatic moralizings. 
 
 On the occasion of one of the annual gatherings at the 
 Marshall house of the Seniors in her father's classes, she 
 remarked fiercely to Judith, u If Father gets off that old 
 Emerson, ' What will you have, quoth God. Take it and 
 pay for it/ again tonight in his speech, I'm going to get 
 right up and scream." 
 
 Judith stared. The girls were in the kitchen, large aprons 
 
The End of Childhood 107 
 
 over their best dresses, setting out rows of plates for the 
 chicken salad which was to come after the music. " I don't 
 see anything to scream about in that ! " said Judith with a 
 wondering contempt for Sylvia's notions. 
 
 " I'm so sick of it ! " cried Sylvia, tearing the lettuce- 
 leaves apart with venom. " Father never gets through any 
 sort of a speech that he doesn't work it in — and I hate it, 
 anyhow ! It makes me feel as though somebody had banged 
 a big door in my face and shut me up in prison." 
 
 " Well, for goodness' sakes ! " cried Judith, who, at this 
 period of their lives, had remained rather more than her 
 three years behind Sylvia's intelligence. " How do you get 
 all that out of that!" 
 
 " You haven't sense enough to know what it means, that's 
 all ! " retorted Sylvia. " It means something perfectly hate- 
 ful, the way Father uses it. It means you've got to pay 
 for every single thing you do or get in this world! It's 
 somebody tagging you round with an account-book, seeing 
 how big a bill you're running up. It's the perfectly horrid 
 way Father and Mother make us do, of always washing up 
 the dishes we dirty, and always picking up the things we 
 drop. Seems as though I'd die happy, if I could just step 
 out of my nightgown in the morning and leave it there, and 
 know that it would get hung up without my doing it." 
 
 " Well, if that's all you want, to die happy," said Judith, 
 the literal-minded, " I will do that much for you ! " 
 
 " Oh gracious, no ! That wouldn't do any good ! You 
 know I couldn't take any satisfaction letting you do that ! " 
 objected Sylvia peevishly, fuming and fumbling helplessly 
 before the baffling quality of her desires. " I don't want 
 just somebody to pick it up for me. I want it picked up by 
 somebody that I don't care about, that I don't see, that I'd 
 just as soon have do the tiresome things as not. I want 
 somebody to do it, and me to feel all right about having 
 them do it!" 
 
 " Well, for goodness' sakes ! " Judith was reduced again 
 to mere wonder. 
 
 Professor and Mrs. Marshall stepped into the kitchen for 
 
108 The Bent Twig 
 
 a moment to see that everything was progressing smoothly. 
 The professor had his viola in his hand and was plucking 
 softly at the strings, a pleasant, tranquil anticipation of 
 harmony on his face. He looked affectionately at his 
 daughters and thought what dear good children they were. 
 Judith appealed to her parents : " Sylvia's as crazy as a loon. 
 She says she wants somebody to do her work for her, and 
 yet she wants to feel all right about shirking it ! " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall did not follow, and did not care. 
 " What ? " she said indifferently, tasting the chicken-salad 
 in the big yellow bowl, and, with an expression of serious 
 consideration, adding a little more salt to it. 
 
 But Sylvia's father understood, " What you want to re- 
 member, daughter," he said, addressing himself to his oldest 
 child with a fond certainty of her quick apprehension, " is 
 that fine saying of Emerson, ' What will you have, quoth — ' " 
 A raw-boned assistant appeared in the doorway. " Every- 
 body here, I guess, Perfesser," he said. 
 
 When the girls were alone again, Sylvia stole a look at 
 Judith and broke into noiseless giggles. She laughed till 
 the tears ran down her cheeks and she had to stop work and 
 go to the kitchen sink to wash her face and take a drink of 
 water. " You never do what you say you're going to," said 
 Judith, as gravely alien to this mood as to the other. " I 
 thought you said you'd scream." 
 
 " I am screaming," said Sylvia, wiping her eyes again. 
 
 They were very familiar with the work of preparing the 
 simple " refreshments " for University gatherings. Their 
 mother always provided exactly the same viands, and long 
 practice had made them letter-perfect in the moves to be 
 made. When they had finished portioning off the lettuce- 
 leaves and salad on the plates, they swiftly set each one on 
 a fresh crepe-paper napkin. Sylvia professed an undying 
 hatred for paper napkins. " I don't see why," said Judith. 
 " They're so much less bother than the other kind when 
 you're only going to use them once, this way." " That's 
 it," asserted Sylvia ; " that's the very stingy, economical 
 thing about them I hate, their not being a bother! I'd like 
 
The End of Childhood 109 
 
 to use big, fine-damask ones, all shiny, that somebody had 
 ironed twenty minutes, every one, like those we had at 
 Eleanor Hubert's birthday party. And then I'd scrunch 
 them up and throw them in the laundry if there was the 
 least speck on them." 
 
 " I wouldn't like the job of doing them up," said Judith. 
 
 " Neither would I. I'd hate it ! And I wouldn't," con- 
 tinued Sylvia, roaming at will in her enchanted garden; 
 " I'd hire somebody to take all the bother of buying them 
 and hemming them and doing them up and putting them on 
 the table. All I'd do, would be to shake them out and lay 
 them across my lap," she went through a dainty-fingered 
 pantomime, " and never think a thing about how they got 
 there. That's all / want to do with napkins. But I do love 
 'em big and glossy. I could kiss them ! " 
 
 Judith was almost alarmed at the wildness of Sylvia's 
 imaginings. " Why, you talk as though you didn't have 
 good sense tonight, Sylvie. It's the party. You always get 
 so excited over parties." Judith considered it a " come- 
 down " to get excited over anything. 
 
 " Great Scotland ! I guess I don't get excited over one 
 of these student parties ! " Sylvia repudiated the idea. " All 
 Father's ' favorite students ' are such rough-necks. And it 
 makes me tired to have all our freaks come out of their 
 holes when we have company — Miss Lindstrom and Mr. 
 Hecht and Cousin Parnelia and all." 
 
 " The President comes," advanced Judith. 
 
 Sylvia was sweeping in her iconoclasm. " What if he 
 does — old fish-mouth! He's nobody — he's a rough-neck 
 himself. He used to be a Baptist minister. He's only Presi- 
 dent because he can talk the hayseeds in the Legislature into 
 giving the University big appropriations. And anyhow, he 
 only comes here because he has to — part of his job. He 
 doesn't like the freaks any better than I do. The last time 
 he was here, I heard Cousin Parnelia trying to persuade 
 him to have planchette write him a message from Abraham 
 Lincoln. Isn't she the limit, anyhow ! " 
 
 The girls put off their aprons and slipped into the big, 
 
no The Bent Twig 
 
 low-ceilinged living-room, singing like a great sea-shell with 
 thrilling violin-tones. Old Reinhardt was playing the 
 Kreutzer, with Professor Marshall at the piano. Judith 
 went quietly to sit near Professor Kennedy, and Sylvia sat 
 down near a window, leaning her head against the pane as 
 she listened, her eyes fixed on the blackness outside. Her 
 face cleared and brightened, like a cloudy liquor settling to 
 limpidity in a crystal vase. Her lips parted a little, her eyes 
 were fixed on a point incalculably distant. Her mind 
 emptied itself of everything but her joy in the glorious 
 cadences. . . . 
 
 If she had been asked what she and Judith had been 
 talking of, she could not have told; but when, after the 
 second movement was finished, old Reinhardt put down his 
 violin and began to loosen his bow (he never played the 
 presto finale), it all came back to the girl as she looked 
 around her at her father's guests. She hated the way the 
 young men's Adam's apples showed through their too-widely 
 opened collars, and she loathed the way the thin brown hair 
 of one of the co-eds was strained back from her temples. 
 She received the President's condescending, oleaginous 
 hand-shake with a qualm at his loud oratorical voice and 
 plebeian accent, and she headed Cousin Parnelia off from a 
 second mediumistic attack, hating her badly adjusted false- 
 front of hair as intensely as ever Loyola hated a heretic. 
 And this, although uncontrollably driven by her desire to 
 please, to please even a roomful of such mediocrities, she 
 bore to the outward eyes the most gracious aspect of 
 friendly, smiling courtesy. Professor Marshall looked at 
 her several times, as she moved with her slim young grace 
 among his students and friends, and thought how fortunate 
 he was in his children. 
 
 After the chicken-salad and coffee had been successfully 
 served and eaten, one of the Seniors stepped forward with 
 an awkward crudeness and presented Professor Marshall 
 with a silver-mounted blotting-pad. The house was littered 
 with such testimonials to the influence of the Professor 
 on the young minds under his care, testimonials which 
 
The End of Childhood in 
 
 his children took as absolutely for granted as they did 
 everything else in the home life. On this occasion Sylvia 
 was so afflicted because the young rustic appointed 
 to make the presentation speech, forgot most of what 
 he had planned to say, that she felt nothing but the 
 liveliest impatience with the whole proceeding. But 
 her father's quick heart was touched, and more than half 
 of his usual little speech of farewell to his Seniors was an 
 expression of thanks to them. Before he had finished the 
 last part, which consisted of eloquent exhortations to the 
 higher life, none the less sincerely heartfelt for being re- 
 markably like similar speeches he had made during the last 
 twenty years, he had quoted his favorite saying from Emer- 
 son. Judith looked apprehensively at Sylvia; but she was 
 not laughing. She evidently was not hearing a word her 
 father said, being lost in the contemplation of the perfect 
 evening costume of the newest assistant in Professor Mar- 
 shall's department. He was a young man from Massachu- 
 setts, fresh from Harvard, who had come West to begin 
 his teaching that year. His was certainly the most modern 
 dress-suit in the University faculty; and he wore it with 
 a supercilious disregard for its perfections which greatly 
 impressed Sylvia. 
 
 After these usual formalities were thus safely past, some 
 one suggested a game of charades to end the evening. 
 Amid great laughter and joking from the few professors 
 present and delighted response from the students who found 
 it immensely entertaining to be on such familiar terms with 
 their instructors, two leaders began to " choose sides." The 
 young assistant from Harvard said in a low tone to his 
 friend, not noticing Professor Marshall's young daughter 
 near them : " They won't really go on and do this fool, 
 undignified, backwoods stunt, will they? They don't ex- 
 pect us to join in!" 
 
 " Oh yes, they will," answered his friend, catching up his 
 tone of sophisticated scorn. He too was from Harvard, 
 from an earlier class. " You'll be lucky if they don't have 
 a spelling-down match, later on." 
 
ii2 The Bent Twig 
 
 " Good Lord ! " groaned the first young man. 
 
 " Oh, you mustn't think all of the University society is 
 like this! " protested the second. " And anyhow, we can 
 slope now, without being noticed." 
 
 Sylvia understood the accent and tone of this passage 
 more than the exact words, but it summed up and brought 
 home to her in a cruelly clarified form her own groping 
 impressions. The moment was a terribly painful one for 
 her. Her heart swelled, the tears came to her eyes, she 
 clenched her fists. Her fine, lovely, and sensitive face 
 darkened to a tragic intensity of resolve. She might have 
 been the young Hannibal, vowing to avenge Carthage. 
 What she was saying to herself passionately was, " When / 
 get into the University, I will not be a jay ! " 
 
 It was under these conditions that Sylvia passed from 
 childhood, and emerged into the pains and delights and 
 responsibilities of self-consciousness. 
 
BOOK II 
 A FALSE START TO ATHENS 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 SYLVIA'S FIRST GLIMPSE OF MODERN 
 CIVILIZATION 
 
 Although there was not the slightest actual connection 
 between the two, the trip to Chicago was always in Sylvia's 
 mind like the beginning of her University course. It is 
 true that the journey, practically the first in Sylvia's life, 
 was undertaken shortly before her matriculation as a Fresh- 
 man, but this fortuitous chronological connection could not 
 account for Sylvia's sense of a deeper unity between the 
 two experiences. The days in Chicago, few as they were, 
 were as charged with significance for her as the successive 
 acts in a drama, and that significance was of the substance 
 and marrow of the following and longer passage in her 
 life. 
 
 The fact that her father and her mother disagreed about 
 the advisability of the trip was one of the salient points 
 in the beginning. When Aunt Victoria, breaking a long 
 silence with one of her infrequent letters, wrote to say that 
 she was to be in Chicago " on business " during the last 
 week of September, and would be very glad to have her 
 sister-in-law bring her two nieces to see her there, Professor 
 Marshall said, with his usual snort: "Business nothing! 
 She never has any business. She won't come to see them 
 here, that's all. The idea's preposterous." But Mrs. Mar- 
 shall, breaking a long silence of her own, said vigorously : 
 " She is your sister, and you and your family are the only 
 
 113 
 
ii4 The Bent Twig 
 
 blood-kin she has in the world. I've a notion — I have had 
 for some time — that she was somehow terribly hurt on that 
 last visit here. It would be ungenerous not to go half-way 
 to meet her now." 
 
 Sylvia, anxiously hanging on her father's response, was 
 surprised when he made no protest beyond, " Well, do as 
 you please. I can keep Lawrence all right. She only speaks 
 of seeing you and the girls." It did not occur to Sylvia, 
 astonished at this sudden capitulation, that there might be a 
 discrepancy between her father's habit of vehement speech 
 and his real feeling in this instance. 
 
 It was enough for her, however, that they were going to 
 take a long journey on the train overnight, that they were 
 going to see a great city, that they were going to see Aunt 
 Victoria, about whom her imagination had always hovered, 
 with a constancy enhanced by the odd silence concerning her 
 which was the rule in the Marshall house. 
 
 She was immensely stirred by the prospect. She made 
 herself, in the brief interval between the decision and the 
 beginning of the journey, a new shirt-waist of handkerchief 
 linen. It took the last cent of her allowance to buy the 
 material, and she was obliged, by a secret arrangement with 
 her father, to discount the future, in order to have some 
 spending-money in the city. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall was quite disappointed by the dullness of 
 Sylvia's perceptions during that momentous first trip, which 
 she had looked forward to as an occasion for widening the 
 girls' horizon to new interests. Oddly enough it was Judith, 
 usually so much less quick than Sylvia, who asked the in- 
 telligent questions and listened attentively to her mother's 
 explanations about the working of the air-brakes, and the 
 switching systems in railroad yards, and the harvesting of 
 the crops in the flat, rich country gliding past the windows. 
 It was quite evident that not a word of this highly instruc- 
 tive talk reached Sylvia, sitting motionless, absorbing every 
 detail of her fellow-passengers' aspect, in a sort of trance 
 of receptivity. She scarcely glanced out of the windows, 
 except when the train stopped at the station in a large town, 
 
Sylvia's Glimpse of Modern Civilization u 
 
 .3 
 
 when she transferred her steady gaze to the people coming 
 and going from the train. " Just look, Sylvia, at those blast- 
 furnaces!" cried her mother as they passed through the 
 outskirts of an industrial town. " They have to ketp them 
 going, you know, night and day." 
 
 "Oh, do they? What for?" asked Judith, craning her 
 neck to watch the splendid leap of the flames into the dark- 
 ness. 
 
 " Because they can't allow the ore to become " Mrs. 
 
 Marshall wondered why, during her conscientious explana- 
 tion of blast-furnaces, Sylvia kept her eyes dully fixed on 
 her hands on her lap. Sylvia was, as a matter of fact, 
 trying imaginary bracelets on her slim, smooth, white wrists. 
 The woman opposite her wore bracelets. 
 
 " Isn't it fine," remarked the civic-minded Mrs. Mar- 
 shall, " to see all these little prairie towns so splendidly 
 lighted?" 
 
 " I hadn't noticed them," said Sylvia, her gaze turned on 
 the elegant nonchalance of a handsome, elderly woman 
 ahead of her. Her mother looked at her askance, and 
 thought that children are unaccountable. 
 
 There were four of the Chicago days, and such important 
 events marked them that each one had for all time a physi- 
 ognomy of its own. Years afterwards when their travels 
 had far outrun that first journey, Sylvia and Judith could 
 have told exactly what occurred on any given day of that 
 sojourn, as u on the third day we were in Chicago." 
 
 The event of the first day was, of course, the meeting with 
 Aunt Victoria. They went to see her in a wonderful hotel, 
 entering through a classic court, with a silver-plashing foun- 
 tain in the middle, and slim Ionic pillars standing up white 
 and glorious out of masses of palms. This dreamlike spot of 
 beauty was occupied by an incessantly restless throng of lean, 
 sallow-faced men in sack-coats, with hats on the backs of 
 their heads and cigars in the corners of their mouths. The 
 air was full of tobacco smoke and the click of heels on the 
 marble pavement. At one side was a great onyx-and- 
 marble desk, looking like a soda-water fountain without the 
 
n6 The Bent Twig 
 
 silver faucets, and it was the thin-cheeked, elegant young- 
 old man behind this structure who gave instructions whereby 
 Mrs. Marshall and her two daughters found their way to 
 Aunt Victoria's immense and luxurious room. She was 
 very glad to see them, shaking hands with her sister-in-law 
 in the respectful manner which that lady always seemed 
 to inspire in her, and embracing her two tall young nieces 
 with a fervor which melted Sylvia's heart back to her old 
 childish adoration. 
 
 " What beautiful children you have, Barbara ! " crietl 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith, holding Judith off at arm's length 
 and looking from her to Sylvia ; " although I suppose I 
 ought not to tell them that ! " She looked at Sylvia with«an 
 affectionate laugh. "Will you be spoiled if I tell you you 
 are very pretty ? " she asked. 
 
 " I can't think of anything but how pretty you are ! " said 
 Sylvia, voicing honestly what was in her mind. 
 
 This answer caused her aunt to cry out : " Oh ! Oh ! 
 And tact too ! She's meant for social success ! " She left 
 this note to vibrate in Sylvia's ears and turned again to her 
 sister-in-law with hospitable remarks about the removing 
 of wraps. As this was being done, she took advantage of 
 the little bustle to remark from the other side of the room, 
 " I rather hoped Elliott would come with you." She spoke 
 lightly, but there was the tremor of feeling in her sweet 
 voice which Sylvia found she remembered as though it 
 had been but yesterday she had heard it last. 
 
 " You didn't ask him," said Mrs. Marshall, with her 
 usual directness. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith arched her eyebrows, dropped her 
 eyelids, and shook her head. " No, I didn't ask him," she 
 admitted, and then with a little wry twist of her lips, " But 
 I rather hoped he might feel like coming." She looked down 
 at her hands. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall surprised her daughters very much by 
 going across the room and kissing her husband's sister. 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith took the other's strong, hard hand be- 
 tween her soft fingers. " That's generous in you, Barbara," 
 
Sylvia's Glimpse of Modern Civilization 117 
 
 she said, looking intently into the pitying dark eyes. " I'm 
 human, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I know you're human," said Mrs. Marshall, look- 
 ing down at her gravely. " So are we all of us. So's Elliott. 
 Don't forget that." With which obscure reference, entirely 
 unintelligible tp the two girls, the matter was forever 
 dropped. 
 
 The two ladies thereupon embarked upon the difficult 
 business of laying out to the best advantage the few days 
 before them so that every hour might be utilized for the 
 twofold purpose of seeing each other and having the girls 
 see the sights. Judith went to the- window during this con- 
 versation, and looked down into the crowded street, the first 
 city street she had ever seen. Sylvia sat quietly and im- 
 printed upon her memory every item in the appearance of 
 the two women before her, not the first time she had com- 
 pared them. Mrs. Marshall was dressed in a dark-blue, 
 well-preserved, ready-made suit, dating from the year be- 
 fore. It was in perfect condition and quite near enough the 
 style of the moment to pass unnoticed. Sylvia saw nothing 
 to be ashamed of in her mother's unaccented and neutral 
 costume, but there was no denying that she looked exactly 
 like any one else. What was most apparent to the dis- 
 cerning eye was that her garb had been organized in every 
 detail so as to consume as little thought and effort as 
 possible. Whereas Aunt Victoria — Sylvia's earnest and 
 thoughtful efforts at home-dressmaking had fitted her, if 
 for nothing else, for a full appreciation of Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith's costume. She had struggled with cloth enough to 
 bow her head in respect and awe before the masterly tailor- 
 ing of the rich, smooth broadcloth dress. She knew from 
 her own experience that the perfection of those welted 
 seams could not be accomplished by even the most 
 intense temporary concentration of amateur forces. No 
 such trifling fire of twigs lighted the way to that pinnacle. 
 The workman who had achieved that skill had cut 
 down the whole tree of his life and thrown it into the 
 flame. 
 
n8 The Bent Twig 
 
 Like a self-taught fiddler at the concert of a master, Syl- 
 via's failures had taught her the meaning of success. Al- 
 though her inexperience kept her from making at all a close 
 estimate of the literal cost of the toilet, her shrewdness made 
 her divine the truth, which was that Mrs. Marshall-Smith, 
 in spite of the plainness of her attire, could have clad herself 
 in cloth-of-gold at a scarcely greater expenditure of the 
 efforts and lives of others. Sylvia felt that her aunt was 
 the most entirely enviable person in the world, and would 
 gladly have changed places with her in a moment. 
 
 That was, on the whole, the note of the Chicago trip, all 
 the dazzling lights and reflections of which focused, for 
 Sylvia, upon Aunt Victoria's radiant person. At times, 
 the resultant beam was almost too much for the young eyes ; 
 as, for example, on the next day when the two made a 
 momentous shopping expedition to the largest and finest 
 department store in the city. " I've a curiosity to see," Aunt 
 Victoria had declared carelessly, " what sort of things are 
 sold in a big Western shop, and besides I've some purchases 
 to make for the Lydford house. Things needs freshening 
 up there. I've thought of wicker and chintz for the living- 
 room. It would be a change from what I've had. Perhaps 
 it would amuse the children to go along? " 
 
 At this, Judith, who had a boy's detestation of shopping, 
 looked so miserable that Aunt Victoria had laughed out, 
 her frank, amused laugh, and said, " Well, Sylvia and I 
 alone, then ! " 
 
 " Judith and I'll go to Lincoln Park to take a walk by the 
 lake," said Mrs. Marshall. " Our inland young folks have 
 never seen so much water all at once." 
 
 Sylvia had been, of course, in the two substantial and 
 well-run department stores of La Chance, when she went 
 with her mother to make their carefully considered pur- 
 chases. They always went directly to the department in 
 question, where Mrs. Marshall's concise formula ran usually 
 along such lines as, " I would like to look at misses' coats, 
 size 16, blue or brown serge, moderate style, price some- 
 where between ten and fifteen dollars." And then thev 
 
Sylvia's Glimpse of Modern Civilization 119 
 
 looked at misses' coats, size 16, blue or brown serge, of the 
 specified price; and picked out one. Sylvia's mother was 
 under the impression that she allowed her daughters to 
 select their own clothes because, after all these defining and 
 limiting preliminaries, she always, with a very genuine in- 
 difference, abandoned them to their own choice between the 
 four or five garments offered. 
 
 Even when Sylvia, as she grew older, went by herself to 
 make a small purchase or two, she was so deeply under the 
 influence of her mother's example that she felt it unbecom- 
 ing to loiter, or to examine anything she knew she could 
 not buy. Besides, nearly all the salespeople, who, for the 
 most part, had been at their posts for many years, knew 
 her from childhood, and if she stopped to look at a show- 
 case of new collars, or jabots, they always came pleasantly 
 to pass the time of day, and ask how her little brother was* 
 and how she liked studying at home. She was ashamed 
 to show in their presence anything but a casual, dignified 
 interest in the goods they handled. 
 
 After these feeble and diluted tipplings, her day with 
 Aunt Victoria was like a huge draught of raw spirits. That 
 Tiuch-experienced shopper led her a leisurely course up one 
 dazzling aisle and down another, pausing ruthlessly to look 
 and to handle and to comment, even if she had not the least 
 intention of buying. With an inimitable ease of manner 
 she examined whatever took her fancy, and the languid, 
 fashionably dressed salesladies, all in aristocratic black, 
 showed to these whims a smiling deference, which Sylvia 
 knew could come from nothing but the exquisite tailoring of 
 Aunt Victoria's blue broadcloth. This perception did not in 
 the least lower her opinion of the value of the deference. 
 It heightened her opinion of the value of tailoring. 
 
 They stood by glass tables piled high with filmy and costly 
 underwear, such underwear as Sylvia had never dreamed 
 could exist, and Aunt Victoria looked casually at the cob- 
 web tissues which the saleswoman held up, herself hankering 
 in a hungry adoration of the luxury she would never touch 
 in any other way. Without apology or explanation, other 
 
120 The Bent Twig 
 
 than Aunt Victoria's gracious nod of dismissal, they moved 
 on to the enchanted cave where, under the stare of in- 
 numerable electric lights, evening wraps were exhibited. 
 The young woman who served them held the expensive, 
 fragile chiffon of the garments up in front of her black 
 uniform, her eyes wistful and unsatisfied. Her instant of 
 glory was over when Aunt Victoria bought one of these, 
 exclaiming humorously about the quaintness of going from 
 Paris to Chicago to shop. It was of silver tissue over v/hite 
 brocade, with a collar of fur, and the price was a hundred 
 and thirty-seven dollars. Sylvia's allowance for all her 
 personal expenses for a whole year was a hundred and 
 twenty. To reach the furniture, they passed by, with an 
 ignoring contempt, huge counters heaped with hundreds 
 and hundreds of shirt-waists, any one of which was better 
 than the one Sylvia had made with so much care and 
 interest before leaving home. 
 
 Among the furniture they made a long stay. Aunt Vic- 
 toria was unexpectedly pleased by the design of the wicker 
 pieces, and bought and bought and bought ; till Sylvia turned 
 her head away in bewilderment. She looked down a long 
 perspective of glittering show-cases filled with the minor 
 luxuries of the toilet, the ruffs, the collars, the slipper- 
 rosettes, the embroidered belts, the hair ornaments, the 
 chiffon scarves, all objects diverse, innumerable, perishable 
 as mist in tree-branches, all costly in exact ratio to their 
 fragility. Back of her were the children's dresses, fairy-like, 
 simple with an extravagantly costly simplicity. It occurred 
 to Sylvia as little as to many others of the crowd of half- 
 hypnotized women, wandering about with burning eyes and 
 watering mouths through the shrewdly designed shop, that 
 the great closets back of these adroitly displayed fineries 
 might be full of wearable, firm-textured little dresses, such 
 as she herself had always worn. It required an effort of the 
 will to remember that, and wills weak, or not yet formed, 
 wavered and bent before the lust of the eye, so cunningly in- 
 flamed. Any sense of values, of proportion, in Sylvia was 
 dumfounded by the lavishness, the enormous quantities, the 
 
Sylvia's Glimpse of Modern Civilization 121 
 
 immense varieties of the goods displayed. She ached with 
 covetousness. ... 
 
 When they joined the others at the hotel her mother, after 
 commenting that she looked rather flushed and tired, hap- 
 pened to ask, " Oh, by the way, Sylvia, did you happen to 
 come across anything in serge suits that would be suitable 
 for school-wear? " 
 
 Sylvia quivered, cried out explosively, "No!" and turned 
 away, feeling a hot pulse beating through her body. But 
 Aunt Victoria happened to divert attention at that mo- 
 ment. She had been reading, with a very serious and 
 somewhat annoyed expression, a long telegram just handed 
 her, and now in answer to Mrs. Marshall's expression of 
 concern, said hastily, " Oh, it's Arnold again. . . . It's al- 
 ways Arnold ! " She moved to a desk and wrote a brief 
 telegram which she handed to the waiting man-servant. 
 Sylvia noticed it was addressed to Mr. A. H. Saunders, a 
 name which set dimly ringing in her head recollections now 
 muffled and obscured. 
 
 Aunt Victoria went on to Mrs. Marshall : " Arnold hates 
 this school so. He always hates his schools." 
 
 " Oh, he is at school now ? " asked Mrs. Marshall. " You 
 haven't a tutor for him ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, Mr. Saunders is still with him — in the sum- 
 mers and during holidays." Mrs. Marshall-Smith explained 
 further : " To keep him up in his studies. He doesn't learn 
 anything in his school, you know. They never do. It's 
 only for the atmosphere — the sports; you know, they play 
 cricket where he is now — and the desirable class of boys 
 he meets . . . All the boys have tutors in vacation times to 
 coach them for the college-entrance examinations." 
 
 The face of the college professor's wife continued im- 
 movably grave during this brief summary of an educational 
 system. She inquired, " How old is Arnold now ? " learned 
 that he was seventeen, remembered that, oh yes, he was a 
 year older than Sylvia, and allowed the subject to drop into 
 one of the abysmal silences for which she alone had the 
 courage. Her husband's sister was as little proof against 
 
122 The Bent Twig 
 
 it as her husband. As it continued, Mrs. Marshall- Smith 
 went through the manceuvers which in a less perfectly bred 
 person would have been fidgeting. . . . 
 
 No one paid any attention to Sylvia, who sat confront- 
 ing herself in a long mirror and despising every garment 
 she wore. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 ARNOLD'S FUTURE IS CASUALLY DECIDED 
 
 The next day was to have been given up to really im- 
 proving pursuits. The morning in the Art Institute came 
 off as planned. The girls were marshaled through the sculp- 
 ture and paintings and various art objects with about the 
 result which might have been expected. As blankly inex- 
 perienced of painting and sculpture as any Bushmen, they 
 received this sudden enormous dose of those arts with an 
 instant, self-preservatory incapacity to swallow even a 
 small amount of them. It is true that the very first exhibits 
 they saw, the lions outside the building, the first paint- 
 ings they encountered, made an appreciable impression on 
 them ; but after this they followed their elders through the 
 interminable crowded halls of the museum, their legs aching 
 with the effort to keep their balance on the polished floors, 
 their eyes increasingly glazed and dull. For a time a few 
 eccentric faces or dresses among the other sightseers pene- 
 trated through this merciful insensibility, but by noon the 
 capacity for even so much observation as this had left them. 
 They set one foot before the other, they directed their eyes 
 upon the multitudinous objects exhibited, they nodded their 
 heads to comments made by the others, but if asked sud- 
 denly what they had just seen in the room last visited, 
 neither of them could have made the faintest guess. 
 
 At half-past twelve, their aunt and mother, highly self- 
 congratulatory over the educational morning, voted that 
 enough was as good as a feast, and led their stunned and 
 stupefied charges away to Aunt Victoria's hotel for lunch. 
 
 It was while they were consuming this exceedingly appe- 
 tizing meal that Sylvia saw, threading his way towards 
 them between the other tables, a tall, weedy, expensively 
 
 123 
 
124 The Bent Twig 
 
 dressed young man, with a pale freckled face and light- 
 brown hair. When he saw her eyes on him he waved his 
 hand, a largely knuckled hand, and grinned. Then she saw 
 that it was not a young man, but a tall boy, and that the 
 boy was Arnold. The quality of the grin reminded her that 
 she had always liked Arnold. 
 
 His arrival, though obviously unexpected to the last de- 
 gree, caused less of a commotion than might have seemed 
 natural. It was as if this were for Aunt Victoria only an 
 unexpected incident in a general development, quite re- 
 signedly anticipated. After he had shaken hands with 
 everybody, and had sat down and ordered his own luncheon 
 very capably, his stepmother remarked in a tolerant tone, 
 " You didn't get my telegram, then ? " He shook his head : 
 " I started an hour or so after I wired you. We'd gone 
 down to the town with one of the masters for a game with 
 Concord. There was a train just pulling out as we went 
 by the station, and I ran and jumped on." 
 
 " How'd you know where it was going?" challenged 
 Judith. 
 
 " I didn't," he explained lightly. He looked at her with 
 the teasing, provocative look of masculine seventeen for 
 feminine thirteen. " Same old spitfire, I see, Miss Judy," 
 he said, his command of unhackneyed phrases by no means 
 commensurate with his desire to be facetious. 
 
 Judith frowned and went on eating her eclair in silence. 
 It was the first eclair she had ever eaten, and she was more 
 concerned with it than with the new arrival. 
 
 Nobody made any comment on Arnold's method of be- 
 ginning journeys until Mrs. Marshall asked, " What did 
 you do it for ? " She put the question with an evident 
 seriousness of inquiry, not at all with the rhetorical re- 
 proach usually conveyed in the formula she used. 
 
 Arnold looked up from the huge, costly, bloody beef- 
 steak he was eating and, after an instant's survey of the 
 grave, kind, face opposite him, answered with a seriousness 
 like her own, " Because I wanted to get away." He added 
 after a moment, laughing and looking again at the younger 
 
Arnold's Future Is Casually Decided 125 
 
 girl, " I wanted to come out and pull Judy's hair again ! " 
 He spoke with his mouth full, and this made him entirely 
 a boy and not at all the young man his well-cut clothes 
 made him appear. 
 
 Without speaking, Judith pulled her long, smooth braid 
 around over her shoulder where she could protect the end 
 of it. Her mouth was also full, bulgingly, of the last of her 
 eclair. They might have been brother and sister in a com- 
 mon nursery. 
 
 " My ! Aren't you pretty, Sylvia ! " was Arnold's next 
 remark. " You're a regular peach ; do you know it ? " He 
 turned to the others : " Say, let's go to a show this after- 
 noon," he proposed. " Tling-Tling's in town. I saw it in 
 the papers as I came in. The original company's singing. 
 Did you ever hear them ? " he asked Sylvia. " They beat the 
 other road companies all hollow." 
 
 Sylvia shook her head. She had never heard the name 
 before, the Broadway brand of comic opera being outside 
 her experience to a degree which would have been incon- 
 ceivable to Arnold. 
 
 There was some discussion over the matter, but in the end, 
 apparently because there was nothing else to do with Arnold, 
 they all did go to the " show," Arnold engineering the ex- 
 pedition with a trained expertness in the matter of ticket- 
 sellers, cabs, and ushers which was in odd contrast to 
 his gawky physical immaturity. At all the stages of the 
 process where it was possible, he smoked cigarettes, pro- 
 ducing them in rapid succession out of a case studded with 
 little pearls. His stepmother looked on at this, her beauti- 
 ful manner of wise tolerance tightening up a little, and after 
 dinner, as they sat in a glittering corridor of the hotel to 
 talk, she addressed him suddenly in a quite different tone. 
 " I don't want you to do that so much, Arnold," she said. 
 His hand was fumbling for his case again. " You're too 
 young to smoke at all," she said definitely. He went on 
 with his automatic movements, opening the case, taking out 
 a cigarette and tapping it on the cover. " Oh, all the fel- 
 lows do," he said rebelliously, and struck a match. 
 
126 The Bent Twig 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith aroused herself to a sudden, low- 
 toned, iron masterfulness of voice and manner which, for 
 all its quietness, had the quality of a pistol shot in the 
 family group. She said only, " Put away that cigarette " ; 
 but by one effort of her will she massed against the rebellion 
 of his disorganized adolescence her mature, well-ripened 
 capacity to get her own way. She held him with her eyes 
 as an animal-trainer is supposed to cow his snarling, yellow- 
 fanged captives, and in a moment Arnold, with a pettish 
 gesture, blew out the match and shut the cigarette case with 
 a snap. Mrs. Marshall-Smith forbore to over-emphasize 
 her victory by a feather-weight of gloating, and turned to 
 her sister-in-law with a whimsical remark about the pre- 
 posterousness of one of the costumes passing. Arnold 
 sulked in silence until Judith, emerging from her usual 
 self-contained reticence, made her first advance to him. 
 " Let's us all go there by the railing where we can look 
 down into the central court," she suggested, and having a 
 nodded permission from their elders, the three children 
 walked away. 
 
 They looked down into the great marble court, far below 
 them, now fairy-like with carefully arranged electric lights, 
 gleaming through the palms. The busily trampling cohorts 
 in sack-coats and derby hats were, from here, subdued by 
 distance to an aesthetic inoffensiveness of mere ant-like com- 
 ings and goings. 
 
 " Not so bad," said Arnold, with a kindly willingness tc 
 be pleased, looking about him discriminatingly at one detail 
 after another of the interior, the heavy velvet and gold 
 bullion of the curtains, the polished marble of the paneling, 
 the silk brocade of the upholstery, the heavy gilding of the 
 chairs. . . . Everything in sight exhaled an intense con- 
 sciousness of high cost, which was heavy on the air like a 
 musky odor, suggesting to a sensitive nose, as does the odor 
 of musk, another smell, obscured but rancidly perceptible 
 — the unwashed smell, floating up from the paupers' cellars 
 which support Aladdin's palaces of luxury. 
 
 But the three adolescents, hanging over the well-designed 
 
Arnold's Future Is Casually Decided 127 
 
 solid mahogany railing, had not noses sensitive to this 
 peculiar, very common blending of odors. Judith, in fact, 
 was entirely unconscious even of the more obvious of the 
 two. She was as insensitive to all about her as to the too- 
 abundant pictures of the morning. She might have been 
 leaning over a picket fence. " I wouldn't give in to Her ! " 
 she said to Arnold, staring squarely at him. 
 
 Arnold looked nettled. " Oh, I don't ! I don't pay any 
 attention to what she says, except when she's around where 
 I am, and that's not so often you could notice it much! 
 Saunders isn't that kind ! Saunders is a gay old bird, I tell 
 you ! We have some times together when we get 
 going ! " 
 
 It dawned on Sylvia that he was speaking of the man who, 
 five years before, had been their young Professor Saunders. 
 She found that she remembered vividly his keen, handsome 
 face, softened by music to quiet peace. She wondered what 
 Arnold meant by saying he was a gay old bird. 
 
 Arnold went on, shaking his head sagely : " But it's 
 my belief that Saunders is beginning to take to dope . . . 
 bad business ! Bad business ! He's in love with Ma- 
 drina, you know, and has to drown his sorrows some 
 way." 
 
 Even Judith, for all her Sioux desire to avoid seeming 
 surprised or impressed, could not restrain a rather startled 
 look at this lordly knowledge of the world. Sylvia, although 
 she had scarcely taken in the significance of Arnold's words, 
 dropped her eyes and blushed. Arnold surveyed them with 
 the indulgent look of a rakish but good-hearted man of the 
 world patting two pretty children on the head. 
 
 Judith upset his pose by bringing the talk abruptly back 
 to where she had begun it. " But you did give in to her ! 
 You pretend you didn't because you are ashamed. She just 
 looked you down. I wouldn't let anyhody look me down. 
 I wouldn't give in to anybody ! " 
 
 Under this attack, the man of the world collapsed into an 
 awkward overgrown boy, ill at ease, with red lids to his eyes 
 and premature yellow stains on two fingers of his left hand. 
 
128 The Bent Twig 
 
 He shifted his feet and said defensively : " Aw, she's a 
 woman. A fellow can't knock her down. I wouldn't let a 
 man do it." He retreated still further, through another 
 phase, and became a little boy, heated and recriminatory: 
 " I'd like to know who you are to talk ! You give in to your 
 mother all the time ! " 
 
 " I don't give in to my mother ; I mind her," said Judith, 
 drawing a distinction which Arnold could not follow but 
 which he was not acute enough to attack other than by a 
 jeering, " Oh, what a crawl ! What's the difT? " 
 
 " And I mind her whether she's there or not ! / do ! " 
 continued Judith, pressing what she seemed, inexplicably to 
 Arnold, to consider her advantage. 
 
 Sylvia was vexed with them for talking so loudly and 
 getting so red-faced and being so generally out of key with 
 the booming note of luxury resounding about them. " Hush ! 
 hush ! " she said ; " don't be so silly. We ought to be 
 going back." 
 
 Arnold took her rebuke without protest. Either some- 
 thing in this passage-at-arms had perversely brought a sud- 
 den impulse to his mind, or he had all along a purpose in 
 his fantastic trip West. As they reached the two ladies, he 
 burst out, " Say, Madrina, why couldn't I go on to La 
 Chance and go to school there, and live with the Mar- 
 shall ?" 
 
 Four amazed faces were turned on him. His stepmother 
 evidently thought him stricken with sudden insanity and 
 strove distractedly to select, from the heaped pile of her 
 reasons for so thinking, some few which might be cited 
 without too great offense to her brother's mode of life: 
 " Why, what a strange idea, Arnold ! What ever made you 
 think of such a thing ? You wouldn't like it ! " She was 
 going on, as in decency bound, to add that it would be also 
 rather a large order for the Marshalls to adopt a notably 
 " difficult " boy, when Judith broke in with a blunt divina- 
 tion of what was in her aunt's mind. " You'd have to wash 
 dishes if you came to our house," she said, " and help peel 
 potatoes, and weed the celery bed." 
 
Arnold's Future Is Casually Decided 129 
 
 "I'd like it!" declared Arnold. "We'd have lots of 
 fun." 
 
 " I bet we would ! " said Judith, with an unexpected 
 assent. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith laughed gently. " You don't know 
 what you're talking about, you silly boy. You never did 
 an hour's work in your life ! " 
 
 Arnold sat down by Mrs. Marshall. " I wouldn't be in 
 the way, would I ? " he said, with a clumsy pleading. He 
 hesitated obviously over the " Mother " which had risen to 
 his lips, the name he had had for her during the momentous 
 visit of five years before, and finally, blushing, could not 
 bring it out. " I'd like it like anything! I wouldn't be . . . 
 I'd be different! Sylvie and Judy seem like little sisters to 
 me." The red on his face deepened. " It's — it's good for a 
 fellow to have sisters, and a home," he said in a low tone not 
 audible to his stepmother's ears. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall put out a large, strong hand and took his 
 slack, big-knuckled fingers into a tight clasp. Mrs. Mar- 
 shall-Smith evidently thought a light tone best now, as al- 
 ways, to take. " I tell you, Barbara " — she suggested laugh- 
 ingly, " we'll exchange. You give me Sylvia, and take 
 Arnold." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall ignored this as pure facetiousness, and 
 said seriously : " Why really, Victoria, it might not be a 
 bad thing for Arnold to come to us. I know Elliott would 
 be glad to have him, and so would I." 
 
 For an instant Arnold's life hung in the balance. Mrs. 
 Marshall-Smith, gleaming gold and ivory in her evening- 
 dress of amber satin, sat silent, startled by the suddenness 
 with which the whole astonishing question had come up. 
 There was in her face more than one hint that the proposi- 
 tion opened a welcome door of escape to her. . . . 
 
 And then Arnold himself, with the tragic haste of youth, 
 sent one end of the scales down, weighted so heavily that 
 the sight of his stepmother's eyes and mouth told him it 
 could never rise again. In the little, pregnant pause, he 
 cried out joyfully, " Oh, Mother ! Mother ! " and flung his 
 
130 The Bent Twig 
 
 arms around Mrs. Marshall's neck. It was the only time he 
 had shown the slightest emotion over anything. It burst 
 from him with surprising effect. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith was, as she had said, only human, 
 and at this she rose, her delicate face quiet and impassive, 
 and shook out the shimmering folds of her beautiful dress. 
 She said casually, picking up her fan and evidently prepar- 
 ing for some sort of adjournment: " Oh, Arnold, don't be 
 so absurd. Of course you can't foist yourself off on a 
 family that's no relation to you, that way. And in any 
 case, it wouldn't do for you to graduate from a co-educa- 
 tional State University. Not a person you know would 
 have heard of it. You know you're due at Harvard next 
 fall." With adroit fingers, she plucked the string sure 
 to vibrate in Arnold's nature. H . Do go and order a table for 
 us in the Rose-Room, there's a good boy. And be sure 
 to have the waiter give you one where we can see the 
 dancing." 
 
 The matter was settled. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 ONE MAN'S MEAT . . . 
 
 That night after the Marshalls had gone back to their 
 somewhat shabby boarding-house, " things " happened to the 
 two people they had left in the great hotel. Sylvia and 
 Judith never knew the details, but it was apparent that 
 something portentous had occurred, from the number of tele- 
 grams Aunt Victoria had managed to receive and send be- 
 tween the hour when they left her in the evening, and 
 eleven o'clock the next morning, when they found her, 
 hatted and veiled, with an array of strapped baggage around 
 her. 
 
 " It's Arnold again ! " she told them, with a resigned 
 gesture. She laid down the time-table she had been con- 
 sulting and drew Mrs. Marshall to the window for a low- 
 voiced explanation. When she came back, " I'm so sorry, 
 dears, to cut short even by a single day this charming time 
 together," she told the girls. " But the news I've been get- 
 ting from Arnold's school — there's nothing for me to do 
 but to stop everything and take him back there to see what 
 can be done to patch things up." She spoke with the 
 patient air of one inured to the sacrifices involved in the 
 upbringing of children. " We leave on the eleven-forty — 
 oh, I am so sorry! But it would have been only one day 
 more. I meant to get you both a dress — I've 'phoned to 
 have them sent to you." 
 
 The rest was only the dreary, bustling futility of the last 
 moments before train-time — kisses, remarks about writ- 
 ing more often; a promise from Aunt Victoria to send 
 Sylvia from time to time a box of old dresses and fineries 
 as material for her niece's dressmaking skill ; — from Arnold, 
 appearing at the last minute, a good deal of rather flat, well- 
 
 131 
 
132 The Bent Twig 
 
 meant chaffing, proffered with the most entire unconcern as 
 to the expressed purpose of their journey; and then the 
 descent through long, mirrored, softly carpeted corridors to 
 the classic beauty of the Grecian temple where the busy 
 men, with tired eyes, came and went hurriedly, treading 
 heavily on their heels. Outside was the cab, Arnold ex- 
 tremely efficient in browbeating the driver as to the stowing 
 away of bags, more kisses, in the general cloud of which 
 Arnold pecked shyly at Sylvia's ear and Judith's chin ; then 
 the retreating vehicle with Arnold standing up, a tall, 
 ungainly figure, waving a much-jointed hand. 
 
 After it was out of sight the three watchers looked at 
 each other in a stale moment of anticlimax. 
 
 " Arnold's horrid, isn't he ? " said Judith thoughtfully. 
 
 " Why, I like him ! " opposed Sylvia. 
 
 " Oh, I like him, all right," said Judith. 
 
 Then both girls looked at their mother. What next . . . ? 
 They were not to have gone back to La Chance until the 
 next night. Would this change of plans alter their schedule ? 
 Mrs. Marshall saw no reason why it should. She proposed 
 a sightseeing expedition to a hospital. Miss Lindstrom, the 
 elderly Swedish woman who worked among the destitute 
 negroes of La Chance, had a sister who was head-nurse in 
 the biggest and newest hospital in Chicago, and she had 
 written very cordially that if her sister's friends cared to 
 inspect such an institution, she was at their service. Neither 
 of the girls having the slightest idea of what a hospital was 
 like, nor of any other of the sights in the city which they 
 might see instead, no objection was made to this plan. 
 
 They made inquiries of a near-by policeman and found 
 that they could reach it by the elevated. Their encounter 
 with this metropolitan facility for transportation turned 
 out to be among the most memorable bits of sightseeing of 
 their trip. Neither of the girls had ever imagined anything 
 so lurid as the Saturday noon jam, the dense, packed throngs 
 waiting on the platforms and bursting out through the 
 opened doors like beans from a split bag, their places in- 
 stantly taken by an even greater crowd, perspiring, fighting 
 
One Man's Meat ... 133 
 
 grimly for foot-room and expecting and receiving no other 
 kind. Judith was fired contagiously with the spirit about 
 her, set her teeth, thrust out her elbows, shoved, pushed, 
 grunted, fought, all with a fresh zest in the performance 
 which gave her an immense advantage over the fatigued 
 city-dwellers, who assaulted their fellow-citizens with only 
 a preoccupied desire for an approach to a breathing space, 
 and, that attained, subsided into lurching, strap-hanging 
 quiescence. Judith secured with ease, on all the public 
 vehicles they utilized that day, a place on the outside edge of 
 a platform, where she had fresh air in abundance and could 
 hang over the grating to watch with extreme interest the in- 
 timate bits of tenement-house life which flashed jerkily by. 
 
 But Sylvia, a shuddering chip on the torrent, always 
 found herself in the exact middle of the most crowded spot, 
 feeling her body horrifyingly pressed upon by various in- 
 visible ones behind her and several only too visible ones in 
 front, breathing down the back of somebody's neck, often a 
 dirty and sweaty one, with somebody breathing hotly down 
 the back of her own. Once as a very fat and perspiring 
 German-American began to fight the crowd in the endeavor 
 to turn around and leave the car, his slowly revolving bulb- 
 ous bulk pushed her so smotheringly into the broad back of 
 a negro ahead of her that she felt faint. As they left the 
 car, she said vehemently : " Oh, Mother, this makes me 
 sick ! Why couldn't we have taken a cab ? Aunt Victoria 
 always does ! " 
 
 Her mother laughed. " You little country girl ! A cab 
 for as far as this would cost almost as much as the ticket 
 back to La Chance." 
 
 " I don't see why we came, then ! " cried Sylvia. " It's 
 simply awful ! And this is a horrid part of town ! " She 
 suddenly observed that they were walking through a very 
 poor, thickly inhabited street, such as she had never seen 
 before. As she looked about her, her mother stopped laugh- 
 ing and watched her face with a painful attention. Sylvia 
 looked at the tall, dingy houses, the frowzy little shops, the 
 swarms of dirty-nosed children, shrill-voiced, with matted 
 
134 The Bent Twig 
 
 hair, running and whooping in the street, at the slatternly 
 women yelling unobeyed orders to them out of half- 
 glimpsed, cheerless interiors, smelling of cabbage and dish- 
 water. It was Sylvia's first sight of the life of city poor, 
 and upon her face of disgust and revulsion her mother bent 
 a stern and anxious eye. 
 
 " See here, Sylvia ! " she said abruptly, " do you know 
 what / was thinking about back there in the crowd on the 
 elevated? I was thinking that lots of girls, no older than 
 my girl, have to stand that twice a day, going to earn their 
 livings." 
 
 Sylvia chafed under the obviously admonitory tone of this. 
 " I don't see that that makes it any easier for us if they 
 do!" she said in a recalcitrant voice. She stepped wide 
 to avoid a pile of filth on the sidewalk, and clutched at 
 her skirt. She had a sudden vision of the white-tiled, 
 velvet-carpeted florist's shop in a corner of Aunt Victoria's 
 hotel where, behind spotless panes of shining plate-glass, 
 the great clusters of cut-flowers dreamed away an enchanted 
 life — roses, violets, lilies of the valley, orchids. . . . 
 
 " Here we are at the hospital," said Mrs. Marshall, a 
 perplexed line of worry between her brows. But at once 
 she was swept out of herself, forgot her seriously taken 
 responsibility of being the mother of a girl like Sylvia. She 
 was only Barbara Marshall, thrilled by a noble spectacle. 
 She looked up at the great, clean, many-windowed facade 
 above them, towering, even above the huge bulk of the 
 gas-tanks across the street, and her dark eyes kindled. 
 " A hospital is one of the most wonderful places in the 
 world I " she cried, in a voice of emotion. " All this — to 
 help people get well ! " 
 
 They passed into a wide, bare hall, where a busy young 
 woman at a desk nodded on hearing their names, and spoke 
 into a telephone. There was an odd smell in the air, not 
 exactly disagreeable, yet rather uncomfortably pungent. 
 " Oh, iodoform," remarked the young woman at the desk, 
 hearing them comment on it. " Do you get it ? We don't 
 notice it here at all." 
 
 f) 
 
One Man's Meat ... 135 
 
 Then came Miss Lindstrom's sister, powerfully built, 
 gaunt, gray, with a professional, impersonal cheerfulness. 
 The expedition began. " I'll take you to the children's 
 ward first," said Miss Lindstrom ; " that always interests 
 visitors so much. . . ." 
 
 Rows on rows of little white beds and white, bloodless 
 faces with an awful patience on them, and little white hands 
 lying in unchildlike quiet on the white spreads; rows on 
 rows of hollow eyes turned in listless interest on the visitors ; 
 nurses in white, stepping briskly about, bending over the 
 beds, lifting a little emaciated form, deftly unrolling a 
 bandage ; heat ; a stifling smell of iodoform ; a sharp sudden 
 cry of pain from a distant corner; somewhere a dully 
 beating pulse of low, suppressed sobs. . . . 
 
 They were out of the children's ward now, walking along 
 a clean bare corridor. Sylvia swallowed hard. Her eyes 
 felt burning. Judith held her mother's hand tightly. Miss 
 Lindstrom was explaining to Mrs. Marshall a new system 
 of ventilation. 
 
 " This is one of the women's wards," said their leader, 
 opening another swinging door, from which rushed forth a 
 fresh blast of iodoform. More rows of white beds, each 
 with its mound of suffering, each with its haggard face 
 of pain. More nurses, bearing basins of curious shape, 
 bandages, hot-water bottles, rubber tubes. There was more 
 restlessness here than in the children's ward, less helpless 
 prostration before the Juggernaut of disease . . . fretful- 
 ness, moans, tossing heads, wretched eyes which stared at 
 the visitors in a hostile indifference. 
 
 " Oh, they are just putting the dressing on such an 
 interesting case ! " said Miss Lindstrom's voice coming to 
 Sylvia from a great distance. She spoke with the glow of 
 professional enthusiasm, with that certainty, peculiar to 
 sincere doctors and nurses, that a complicated wound is a 
 fascinating object. 
 
 In spite of herself Sylvia had one glimpse of horribly 
 lacerated red tissues. . . . She gripped her hands together 
 after this and looked fixedly at a button on her glove, until 
 
136 The Bent Twig 
 
 Miss Lindstrom's voice announced : " It's the Embury stitch 
 that makes that possible : we've just worked out the applica- 
 tion of it to skin-graft cases. Two years ago she'd have lost 
 her leg. Isn't it simply splendid ! 
 
 She said cordially as they moved forward : " Sister Selma 
 said to treat you as though you were the Queen of Sweden, 
 and I am! You're seeing things that visitors are never 
 allowed to see." 
 
 They walked on and on interminably, past innumerable 
 sick souls, each whirling alone in a self-centered storm of 
 suffering; and then, somehow, they were in a laboratory, 
 where an immensely stout and immensely jovial doctor in 
 white linen got down from a high stool to shake hands with 
 them and profess an immense willingness to entertain them. 
 "... but I haven't got anything much today," he said, 
 with a disparaging wave of his hand towards his test-tubes. 
 "Not a single death-warrant. Oh yes, I have too, one 
 brought in yesterday." He brought them a test-tube, stop- 
 pered with cotton, and bade them note a tiny bluish patch 
 on the clear gelatine at the bottom. " That means he's a 
 dead one, as much as if he faced the electric chair," he 
 explained. To the nurse he added, " A fellow in the men's 
 ward, Pavilion G. Very interesting culture . . . first of 
 that kind I've had since I've been here." As he spoke he 
 was looking at Sylvia with an open admiration, bold, in- 
 trusive, flippant. 
 
 They were passing along another corridor, hot, silent, 
 their footsteps falling dully on a long runner of corrugated 
 rubber, with red borders which drew together in the distance 
 like the rails streaming away from a train. Behind a closed 
 door there suddenly rose, and as quickly died away, a 
 scream of pain. With an effort Sylvia resisted the impulse 
 to clap her hands over her ears. 
 
 " Here we are, at the minor operating-room," said Miss 
 Lindstrom, pausing. " It's against the rules, but if you 
 want to look from across the room — just to say you've 
 been there — " She held the door open a little, a suffo- 
 cating odor of anaesthetics blew out in their faces, like a 
 
One Man's Meat ... 137 
 
 breath from a dragon's cave. Mrs. Marshall and Judith 
 stepped forward. But Sylvia clutched at her mother's arm 
 and whispered: " Mother! Mother! I don't think I'll go on. 
 I feel — I feel — I'll go back down to the entrance hall to 
 wait." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall nodded a preoccupied assent, and Sylvia 
 fled away down the endless corridor, looking neither to the 
 right nor the left, down repeated flights of scrubbed and 
 sterilized marble stairs, into the entrance hall, and, like a 
 bolt from a bow, out of it on the other side, out into the 
 street, into the sunshine, the heat, the clatter, the blessed, 
 blessed smell of cabbage and dish-water. . . . 
 
 After a time she went to sit down on the top step of the 
 hospital entrance to wait. She contemplated with exquisite 
 enjoyment the vigorous, profane, hair-pulling quarrel be- 
 tween two dirty little savages across the street. She could 
 have kissed her hand to the loud-voiced woman who came 
 scuffling to the window to scold them, clutching a dirty 
 kimono together over a Hogarth-like expanse of bosom. 
 They were well, these people, blood ran in their veins, their 
 skin was whole, they breathed air, not iodoform! Her 
 mother had pulled the string too tight, and Sylvia's ears 
 were full of the ugly twang of its snapping. 
 
 When, at last, Judith and Mrs. Marshall came out, hand- 
 in-hand, Sylvia sprang up to say : " What an awful place ! 
 I hope I'll never have to set foot in one again ! " But quick 
 as was her impulse to speech, her perceptions were quicker, 
 and before the pale exaltation of the other two, she fell 
 silent, irritated, rebellious, thoroughly alien. They walked 
 along in silence. Then Judith said, stammering a little with 
 emotion, " M-M-Mother, I want to b-b-b-be a trained 
 n-n-nurse when I grow up." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 AN INSTRUMENT IN TUNE 
 
 As they drew near to their boarding-house late that after- 
 noon, very hot, very crumpled, very solemn, and very much 
 out of tune with one another, they were astonished to see 
 a little eager-faced boy dash out of the house and run 
 wildly to meet them, shouting as he came. 
 
 "Why, Lawrence Marshall!" cried his mother, picking 
 him up in strong arms; "how ever in the world did you 
 get here ! " 
 
 " Father brungded me," cried the child, clasping her 
 tightly around the neck. " We got so lonesome for Mother 
 we couldn't wait." 
 
 And then Sylvia had stamped on her mind a picture which 
 was to come back later — her father's face and eyes as he 
 ran down the steps to meet his wife. For he looked at his 
 daughters only afterwards, as they were all walking along 
 together, much excited, everybody talking at once, and 
 hanging on everybody's arm. ". . . Yes, Buddy's right! 
 We found we missed you so, we decided life wasn't worth it. 
 You don't know, Barbara, what it's like without you — you 
 don't know! " 
 
 Her father's voice sounded to Sylvia so loud, so gay, so 
 vital, so inexpressibly welcome. . . . She leaped up at his 
 face like a young dog, for another kiss. w Oh, I'm awfully 
 glad you came ! " she cried, wondering a little herself at the 
 immensity of her relief. She thought that she must get 
 him by himself quickly and tell him her side of that hos- 
 pital story, before her mother and Judith began on any 
 virtuous raptures over it. 
 
 But there was no consecutive talk about anything after 
 they all were joyfully gathered in their ugly, commonplace 
 
 138 
 
An Instrument in Tune 139 
 
 boarding-house bedroom. They loosened collars and belts, 
 washed their perspiring and dusty faces, and brushed 
 hair, to the tune of a magpie chatter. Sylvia did not 
 realize that she and her father were the main sources of 
 this volubility, she did not realize how she had missed his 
 exuberance, she only knew that she felt a weight lifted from 
 her heart. She had been telling him with great enjoyment 
 of the comic opera they had seen, as she finished putting 
 the hairpins into her freshly smoothed hair, and turned, a 
 pin still in her mouth, in time to be almost abashed by the 
 expression in his eyes as he suddenly drew his wife to him. 
 
 " Jove ! Barbara ! " he cried, half laughing, but with a 
 quiver in his voice, " it's hell to be happily married ! A 
 separation is — well, never mind about it. I came along 
 anyhow ! And now I'm here I'll go to see Vic of course. " 
 
 " No, you won't," said Judith promptly. " She's gone 
 back. To get Arnold out of a scrape." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall explained further, and incidentally touched 
 upon her sister-in-law's views of the relation between ex- 
 pensive boys' schools and private tutors. Her dryly humor- 
 ous version of this set her husband off in a great mirthful 
 roar, to which Sylvia, after a moment of blankness, suddenly 
 joined a burst of her own clear laughter. At the time she had 
 seen nothing funny in Aunt Victoria's statement, but she was 
 now immensely tickled to remember Aunt Victoria's Olym- 
 pian certainty of herself and her mother's grave mask of 
 serious consideration of the idea. Long after her father had 
 stopped laughing, she still went on, breaking out into de- 
 lighted giggles. Her new understanding of the satire back 
 of her mother's quiet eyes, lent to Aunt Victoria's golden 
 calm the quaint touch of caricature which made it self- 
 deceived complacency. At the recollection she sent up 
 rocket after rocket of schoolgirl laughter. 
 
 Her mother, absorbed in conscientious anxiety about 
 Sylvia's development, and deeply disappointed by the result 
 of the visit to the hospital, ignored this laughter, nor did 
 Sylvia at all guess that she was laughing away half the 
 spell which Aunt Victoria had cast about her. When they 
 
140 The Bent Twig 
 
 went down to their supper of watery creamed potatoes, 
 and stewed apricots in thick saucers, she was in such good 
 humor that she ate this unappetizing fare with no protest. 
 
 " Now, folks," said Professor Marshall, after supper, 
 " we have to go home tomorrow early, so we ought to have 
 one more fling tonight. While I was waiting for you to 
 come back this afternoon, I looked up what Chicago has to 
 offer in the way of flings, and this is what I found. Here, 
 Barbara," he took a tiny envelope out of his upper waist- 
 coat pocket, " are two tickets for the symphony orchestra. 
 By the greatest of luck they're giving a special concert for 
 some charity or other, a beautiful program; a sort of 
 musical requiem. Sylvia mustn't miss it; you take her. 
 And here," he spun round to face Judith and Lawrence, 
 producing another slim, tiny envelope from the other upper 
 waistcoat pocket, " since symphony concerts are rather 
 solid meat for milk teeth, and since they last till way after 
 bedtime, I have provided another sort of entertainment; 
 to wit : three seats for moving pictures of the only real and 
 authentic Cheyenne Bill's Congress of the World's Fron- 
 tiersmen. All in favor of going there with me, say ' Aye.' ,! 
 
 " Aye ! " screamed Judith and Lawrence. Everybody 
 laughed in pleased excitement and everybody seemed sat- 
 isfied except Mrs. Marshall, who insisted that she should 
 go to the moving pictures while the Professor took Sylvia 
 to the concert. 
 
 Then followed the most amiable, generous wrangle as to 
 which of the parents should enjoy the adult form of amuse- 
 ment. But while the Professor grew more and more half- 
 hearted in his protestations that he really didn't care where 
 he went, Mrs. Marshall grew more and more positive that 
 he must not be allowed to miss the music, finally silencing 
 his last weak proffer of self-abnegation by saying peremp- 
 torily : " No, no, Elliott ; go on in to your debauch of 
 emotion. I'll take the children. Don't miss your chance. 
 You know it means ten times as much to you as to me. 
 You haven't heard a good orchestra in years." 
 
 Sylvia had never been in such a huge hall as the one 
 
An Instrument in Tune 141 
 
 where they presently sat, high, giddily high in the eyrie of 
 a top gallery. They looked down into yawning space. The 
 vast size of the auditorium so dwarfed the people now taking 
 their innumerable seats, that even after the immense audi- 
 ence was assembled the great semicircular enclosure 
 seemed empty and blank. It received those thousands of 
 souls into its maw, and made no sign ; awaiting some visita- 
 tion worthy of its bulk. 
 
 The orchestra, an army of ants, straggled out on the stage. 
 Sylvia was astonished at their numbers — sixteen first 
 violins, she saw by the program! She commented to her 
 father on the difficulty of keeping them all in tune. He 
 smiled at her absently, bade her, with an air of suppressed 
 excitement, wait until she had heard them, and fell to biting 
 his nails nervously. She re-read the program and all the 
 advertisements, hypnotized, like every one else in the audi- 
 ence, by the sight of printed matter. She noticed that the 
 first number of this memorial concert was the funeral march 
 from the Gotterdammerung, which she knew very well 
 from having heard a good many times a rather thin version 
 of it for four strings and a piano. 
 
 The conductor, a solitary ant, made his toilsome way 
 across the great front of the stage, evoking a burst of 
 applause, which resounded hollowly in the inhuman spaces 
 of the building. He mounted a step, waved his antennae, 
 there was a great indrawn breath of silence, and then Sylvia, 
 waiting with agreeable curiosity to hear how a big orchestra 
 would really sound, gasped and held her breath. The cup 
 of that vast building suddenly brimmed with a magical flood 
 of pure tone, coming from everywhere, from nowhere, from 
 her own heart as well as from outside her body. The 
 immense hall rang to the glorious quality of this sound as 
 a violin-back vibrates to the drawn bow. It rained down on 
 her, it surged up to her, she could not believe that she 
 really heard it. 
 
 She looked quickly at her father. His arms were folded 
 tightly across his chest. He was looking frowningly at^ 
 the back of the chair in front of him. It was evident that 
 
142 The Bent Twig 
 
 Sylvia did not exist for him. She was detached from her 
 wonder at his pale sternness by the assault on her nerves 
 made by the first of those barbaric outcries of woe, that sud- 
 den, brief clamor of grief, the shouts of despair, the beating 
 upon shields. Her heart stood still — There rose, sing- 
 ing like an archangel, the mystic call of the Volsung, then 
 the yearning melody of love; such glory, such longing for 
 beauty, for life — and then brusquely, again and again, the 
 screaming, sobbing recollection of the fact of death. . . . 
 
 When it was over, Sylvia's breath was still coming pant- 
 
 ingly. "Oh, Father! How — how wonderful — how " 
 
 she murmured. 
 
 He looked at her, as though he were angry with her, and 
 yet scarcely seeming to know her, and spoke in a hard, 
 bitter tone: " And it is years since I have heard one! " He 
 seemed to cry out upon her for the conditions of his life. 
 
 She had no key for these words, could not imagine a 
 meaning for them, and, chilled and repelled, wondered if she 
 had heard him rightly. 
 
 The funeral march from the Eroica began, and her 
 father's face softened. The swelling volume of tone rose 
 like a flood-tide. The great hall, the thousands of human 
 hearts, all beat solemnly in the grave and hopeless pulsa- 
 tions of the measured chords. The air was thick with sor- 
 row, with quiet despair. No outcries here, no screams — 
 the modern soul advancing somberly with a pale composure 
 to the grave of its love, aware that during all the centuries 
 since the dead Siegfried was lifted high on the shoulders of 
 his warriors not a word of explanation, of consolation has 
 been found; that the modern, barren self-control means 
 only what the barbarian yells out in his open abandonment 
 to sorrow — and yet such beauty, such beauty in that sing- 
 ing thread of melody — " durch Leiden, Freude!" 
 
 Not even the shadow of death had ever fallen across 
 Sylvia's life, or that of her father, to explain the premoni- 
 tory emotion which now drew them together like two fright- 
 ened children. Sylvia felt the inexorable music beating in 
 her own veins, and when she took her father's hand it 
 
An Instrument in Tune 143 
 
 seemed to her that its strong pulses throbbed to the same 
 rhythm; beauty, and despair . . . hope . . . life . . . death. 
 At the end, " Oh, Father — oh, Father ! " she said under 
 her breath, imploringly, struggling to free herself from 
 the muffling, enveloping sense of imminent disaster. He 
 pressed her hand hard and smiled at her. It was his 
 own old smile, the father-look which had been her heart's 
 home all her life — but it was infinitely sweeter to her now 
 than ever before. She had never felt closer to him. 
 There was a pause during which they did not speak, and 
 then there burst upon them the splendid tumult of " Death 
 and Transfiguration," which, like a great wind, swept Sylvia 
 out of herself. She could not follow the music — she had 
 never heard of it before. She was beaten down, over- 
 whelmed, freed, as though the transfiguration were her 
 own, from the pitiful barriers of consciousness. . . . 
 
 " Was ihe concert good ? " asked Mrs. Marshall, yawning, 
 and reaching out of bed to kiss Sylvia sleepily. She 
 laughed a little at their faces. " Oh, music is a madness ! 
 To spend a cheerful evening listening to death-music, and 
 then come back looking like Moses before the Burning 
 Bush!" 
 
 " Say, you ought to have seen the stunt they did with 
 their lassos," cried Judith, waking in the bed on the other 
 side of the room, and sitting up with her black hair tousled 
 about her face. " I'm going to try it with the pinto when 
 we get home." 
 
 "I bet you'll do it, too," came from Lawrence the loyal, 
 always sure of Judith's strength, Judith's skill. 
 
 Sylvia looked at her father over their heads and smiled 
 faintly. It was a good smile, from a full heart. 
 
 " Aunt Victoria sent our dresses," said Judith, dropping 
 back on the pillow. " That big box over there. Mine has 
 pink ribbons, and yours are blue." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall looked at the big box with disfavor, and 
 then at Sylvia, now sunk in a chair, her hands clasped be- 
 hind her head, her eyes dreamy and half closed. 
 
144 The Bent Twig 
 
 Across the room the long pasteboard box displayed a 
 frothy mass of white lace and pale shining ribbons. Sylvia 
 looked at it absently and made no move to examine it. 
 She closed her eyes again and beat an inaudible rhythm with 
 her raised fingers. All through her was ringing the upward- 
 surging tide of sound at the end of " Death and Transfigura- 
 tion." 
 
 " Oh, go to bed, Sylvia ; don't sit there maundering over 
 the concert," said her mother, with a good-natured asperity. 
 But there was relief in her voice. 
 
CHAPTER XIVI 
 HIGHER EDUCATION 
 
 To any one who is familiar with State University life, the 
 color of Sylvia's Freshman year will be vividly conveyed 
 by the simple statement that she was not invited to join a 
 fraternity. To any one who does not know State Uni- 
 versity life, no description can convey anything approaching 
 an adequate notion of the terribly determinative significance 
 of that fact. 
 
 The statement that she was invited to join no sorority 
 is not literally true, for in the second semester when it was 
 apparent that none of the three leading fraternities in- 
 tended to take her in, there came a late " bid " from one of 
 the third-rate sororities, of recent date, composed of girls 
 like Sylvia who had not been included in the membership 
 of the older, socially distinguished organizations. Cut to 
 the quick by her exclusion from the others, Sylvia refused 
 this tardy invitation with remorseless ingratitude. If she 
 were not to form one of the " swell " set of college, at least 
 she would not proclaim herself one of the " jays," the 
 "grinds," the queer girls, who wore their hair straight 
 back from their foreheads, who invariably carried off Phi 
 Beta Kappa, whose skirts hung badly, whose shoe-heels 
 •turned over as they walked, who stood first in their classes, 
 whose belts behind made a practice of revealing large white 
 safety-pins; and whose hats, even disassociated from their 
 dowdy wearers, and hanging in the cloakroom, were of an 
 almost British eccentricity. 
 
 Nothing of this sort could be alleged against Sylvia's 
 appearance, which she felt, as she arrayed herself every 
 morning, to be all that the most swagger frat could ask of a 
 member. Aunt Victoria's boxes of clothing, her own nimble 
 
 145 
 
146 The Bent Twig 
 
 fingers and passionate attention to the subject, combined te 
 turn her out a copy, not to be distinguished from the origi- 
 nal, of the daughter of a man with an income five times 
 that of her father. As she consulted her mirror, it occurred 
 to her also, as but an honest recognition of a conspicuous 
 fact, that her suitable and harmonious toilets adorned a per- 
 son as pleasing to the eye as any of her classmates. 
 
 During the last year of her life at home she had shot up 
 very fast, and she was now a tall, slender presence, pre- 
 served from even the usual touching and delightful awk- 
 wardness of seventeen by the trained dexterity and strength 
 with which she handled her body, as muscular, for all its 
 rounded slimness, as a boy's. Her hair was beautiful, a 
 bright chestnut brown with a good deal of red, its brilliant 
 gloss broken into innumerable high-lights by the ripple of 
 its waviness; and she had one other positive beauty, the 
 clearly penciled line of her long, dark eyebrows, which ran 
 up a trifle at the outer ends with a little quirk, giving an 
 indescribable air of alertness and vivacity to her expression. 
 Otherwise she was not at that age, nor did she ever become, 
 so explicitly handsome as her sister Judith, who had at 
 every period of her life a head as beautiful as that on a 
 Greek coin. But when the two were together, although the 
 perfectly adjusted proportions of Judith's proud, dark face 
 brought out the irregularities of Sylvia's, disclosed the tilt 
 of her small nose, made more apparent the disproportionate 
 width between her eyes, and showed her chin to be of no 
 mold in particular, yet a modern eye rested with far more 
 pleasure on the older sister's face. A bright, quivering 
 mobility like sunshine on water, gave it a charm which was 
 not dependent on the more obvious prettinesses of a fine- 
 grained, white skin, extremely clear brown eyes, and a 
 mouth quick to laugh and quiver, with pure, sharply cut out- 
 line and deeply sunk corners. Even in repose, Sylvia's face 
 made Judith's seem unresponsive, and when it lighted up in 
 talk and laughter, it seemed to give out a visible light. In 
 contrast Judith's beautiful countenance seemed carved out 
 of some very hard and indestructible stone. 
 
Higher Education 147 
 
 And yet, in spite of this undeniably satisfactory physical 
 outfit, and pre-eminent ability in athletics, Sylvia was not 
 invited to join any of the best fraternities. It is not sur- 
 prising that there was mingled with her bitterness on the 
 subject a justifiable amount of bewilderment. What did 
 they want? They recruited, from her very side in classes, 
 girls without half her looks or cleverness. What was the 
 matter with her? She would not for her life have given a 
 sign to her family of her mental sufferings as, during that 
 first autumn, day after day went by with no sign of welcome 
 from the social leaders of her new world; but a mark was 
 left on her character by her affronted recognition of her 
 total lack of success in this, her first appearance outside the 
 sheltering walls of her home; her first trial by the real 
 standards of the actual world of real people. 
 
 The fact, which would have been balm to Sylvia's vanity, 
 had she ever had the least knowledge of it, was that upon her 
 appearance in the Freshman class she had been the occasion 
 of violent discussion and almost of dissension in the councils 
 of the two " best " fraternities. Her beauty, her charm, 
 and the rumors of her excellence in tennis had made a flutter 
 in the first fraternity meetings after the opening of the 
 autumn term. The younger members of both Sigma Beta 
 and Alpha Kappa counseled early and enthusiastic " rush- 
 ing " of the new prize, but the Juniors and Seniors, wise in 
 their day and generation, brought out a number of damning 
 facts which would need to be taken into consideration if 
 Sylvia wore their pin. 
 
 There were, in both fraternities, daughters of other 
 faculty families, who were naturally called upon to furnish 
 inside information. They had been brought up from child- 
 hood on the tradition of the Marshalls' hopeless queerness, 
 and their collective statement of the Marshalls' position ran 
 somewhat as follows : " The only professors who have any- 
 thing to do with them are some of the jay young profs from 
 the West, with no families; the funny old La Rues — you 
 know what a hopeless dowd Madame La Rue is — and Pro- 
 fessor Kennedy, and though he comes from a swell family 
 
148 The Bent Twig 
 
 he's an awful freak himself. They live on a farm, like 
 farmers, at the ends of the earth from anybody that any- 
 body knows. They are never asked to be patrons of any 
 swell college functions. None of the faculty ladies with 
 any social position ever call on Mrs. Marshall — and no 
 wonder. She doesn't keep any help, and when the doorbell 
 rings she's as apt to come running in from the chicken 
 housevwith rubber boots on, and a basket of eggs — and the 
 queerest clothes ! Like a costume out of a book ; and they 
 never have anybody to wait on the table, just jump up and 
 down themselves — you can imagine what kind of a frat 
 tea or banquet Sylvia would give in such a home — and of 
 course if we took her in, we couldn't very well tell her her 
 family's so impossible we wouldn't want their connection 
 with the frat known — and the students who go there are a 
 perfect collection of all the jays and grinds and freaks in 
 college. It's enough to mark you one to be seen there — 
 you meet all the crazy guys you see in classes and never 
 anywhere else — and of course that wouldn't stop when 
 Sylvia's frat sisters began going there. And their house 
 wouldn't do at all to entertain in — it's queer — no rugs — 
 dingy old furniture — nothing but books everywhere, even in 
 their substitute for a parlor — and you're likely to meet not 
 only college freaks, but worse ones from goodness knows 
 where. There's a beer-drinking old monster who goes there 
 every Sunday to play the fiddle that you wouldn't have 
 speak to you on the street for anything in the world. And 
 the way they entertain! My, in such a countrified way! 
 Some of the company go out into the kitchen to help Mrs. 
 Marshall serve up the refreshments— and everything home- 
 made — and they play charades, and nobody knows what else 
 
 — bean-bag, or spelling-down maybe " 
 
 This appalling picture, which in justice to the young 
 delineators must be conceded to be not in the least over- 
 drawn, was quite enough to give pause to those impetuous 
 and immature young Sophomores who had lacked the philo- 
 sophical breadth of vision to see that Sylvia was not an 
 isolated phenomenon, but (since her family lived in La 
 
Higher Education 149 
 
 Chance) an inseparable part of her background. After all, 
 the sororities made no claim to be anything but social or- 
 ganizations. Their standing in the college world depended 
 upon their social background, and of course this could only 
 be made up of a composite mingling of those of their in- 
 dividual members. 
 
 Fraternities did not wish to number more than sixteen or 
 eighteen undergraduates. That meant only four or five to 
 be chosen from each Freshman class, and that number of 
 " nice " girls was not hard to find, girls who were not only 
 well dressed, and lively and agreeable in themselves, but 
 who came from large, well-kept, well-furnished houses on 
 the right streets of La Chance ; with presentable, card-play- 
 ing, call-paying, reception-giving mothers, who hired 
 caterers for their entertainments; and respectably absentee 
 fathers with sizable pocketbooks and a habit of cash lib- 
 erality. The social standing of the co-eds in State Uni- 
 versities was already precarious enough, without running 
 the risk of acquiring dubious social connections. 
 
 If Sylvia had been a boy, it is almost certain that the 
 deficiencies of her family would have been overlooked in 
 consideration of her potentialities in the athletic world. 
 Success in athletics was to the men's fraternities what social 
 standing was to the girls'. It must be remarked parentheti- 
 cally that neither class of these organizations had the slight- 
 est prejudice against high scholastic standing. On the con- 
 trary it was regarded very kindly by fraternity members, as 
 a desirable though not indispensable addition to social stand- 
 ing and physical prowess. 
 
 But Sylvia was not a boy, and her fine, promising game 
 of tennis, her excellence in the swimming-pool, and her 
 success on the gymnasium floor and on the flying rings, 
 served no purpose but to bring to her the admiration of the 
 duffers among the girls, whom she despised, and the un- 
 spoken envy of the fraternity girls, whose overtures at 
 superficial friendliness she constantly rebuffed with stern, 
 wounded pride. 
 
 The sharpest stab to her pride came from the inevitable 
 
150 The Bent Twig 
 
 publicity of her ordeal. For, though her family knew noth- 
 ing of what that first year out in the world meant to her,, 
 she had not the consolation of hoping that her condition was 
 not perfectly apparent to every one else in the college world. 
 At the first of the year, all gatherings of undergraduates not 
 in fraternities hummed and buzzed with speculations about 
 who would or would not be " taken " by the leading fra- 
 ternities. For every girl who was at all possible, each day 
 was a long suspense, beginning in hope and ending in list- 
 lessness ; and for Sylvia in an added shrinking from the 
 eyes of her mates, which were, she knew, fixed on her with a 
 relentless curiosity which was torture to one of her tem- 
 perament. She had been considered almost sure to be early 
 invited to join Alpha Kappa, the frat to which most of the 
 faculty daughters belonged, and all during the autumn she 
 was aware that when she took off her jacket in the cloak- 
 room, a hundred glances swept her to see if she wore at 
 last the coveted emblem of the " pledged " girl ; and when 
 an Alpha Kappa girl chanced to come near her with a 
 casual remark, she seemed to hear a significant hush among 
 the other girls, followed by an equally significant buzz of 
 whispered comment when the fraternity member moved 
 away again. This atmosphere would have made no impres- 
 sion on a nature either more sturdily philosophic, or more 
 unimaginative than Sylvia's (Judith, for instance, was not 
 in the least affected by the experience), but it came to be 
 a morbid obsession of this strong, healthy, active-minded 
 young creature. It tinged with bitterness and blackness 
 what should have been the crystal-clear cup holding her 
 youth and intelligence and health. She fancied that every 
 one despised her. She imagined that people who were in 
 reality quite unaware of her existence were looking at her 
 and whispering together a wondering discussion as to why 
 she was not " in the swim " as such a girl ought to be — all 
 girls worth their salt were. 
 
 Above all she was stung into a sort of speechless rage by 
 her impotence to do anything to regain the decent minimum 
 of personal dignity which she felt was stripped from her by 
 
Higher Education 151 
 
 this constant play of bald speculation about whether she 
 would or would not be considered " good enough ?' to be in- 
 vited into a sorority. If only something definite would 
 happen ! If there were only an occasion on which she might 
 in some way proudly proclaim her utter indifference to fra- 
 ternities and their actions! If only the miserable business 
 were not so endlessly drawn out! She threw herself with 
 a passionate absorption into her studies, her music, and her 
 gymnasium work, cut off both from the "elect" and from the 
 multitude, a proudly self-acknowledged maverick. She 
 never lacked admiring followers among less brilliant girls 
 who would have been adorers if she had not held them off 
 at arm's length, but her vanity, far from being omnivorous, 
 required more delicate food. She wished to be able to cry 
 aloud to her world that she thought nothing and cared noth- 
 ing about fraternities, and by incessant inner absorption in 
 this conception she did to a considerable extent impose it 
 upon the collective mind of her contemporaries. She, the 
 yearningly friendly, sympathetic, sensitive, praise-craving 
 Sylvia, came to be known, half respected and half disliked, 
 as proud and clever, and -; high-brow," and offish, and con- 
 ceited, and so " queer " that she cared nothing for the ordi- 
 nary pleasures of ordinary girls. 
 
 This reputation for a high-browed indifference to com- 
 monplace mortals was naturally not a recommendation to 
 the masculine undergraduates of the University. These 
 young men, under the influence of reports of what was 
 done at Cornell and other more eastern co-educational in- 
 stitutions, were already strongly inclined to ignore the 
 co-eds as much as possible. The tradition was growing 
 rapidly that the proper thing was to invite the " town- 
 girls " to the college proms and dances, and to sit beside 
 them in the grandstand during football games. As yet, 
 however, this tendency had not gone so far but that those 
 co-eds who were members of a socially recognized fraternity 
 were automatically saved from the neglect which enveloped 
 all other but exceptionally flirtatious and undiscriminating 
 girls. Each girls' fraternity, like the masculine organiza- 
 
1^2 The Bent Twig 
 
 tions, gave one big hop in the course of the season and 
 several smaller dances, as well as lawn-parties and teas 
 and stage-coach parties to the football games. The young 
 men naturally wished to be invited to these functions, the 
 increasing elaborateness of which kept pace with the in- 
 creasing sophistication of life in La Chance and the increas- 
 ing cost of which made the parents of the girls groan. Con- 
 sequently each masculine fraternity took care that it did not 
 incur the enmity of the organized and socially powerful 
 sororities. But Sylvia was not protected by this aegis. She 
 was not invited during her Freshman year to the dances 
 given by either the sororities or the fraternities; and the 
 large scattering crowd of masculine undergraduates were 
 frightened away from the handsome girl by her supposed 
 haughty intellectual tastes. 
 
 Here again her isolation was partly the result of her own 
 wish. The raw-boned, badly dressed farmers' lads, with 
 red hands and rough hair, she quite as snobbishly ignored 
 as she was ignored in her turn by the well-set-up, fashion- 
 ably dressed young swells of the University, with their 
 white hands, with their thin, gaudy socks tautly pulled over 
 their ankle-bones, and their shining hair glistening like 
 lacquer on their skulls (that being the desideratum in youth- 
 ful masculine society of the place and time) . Sylvia snubbed 
 the masculine jays of college partly because it was a breath 
 of life to her battered vanity to be able to snub some one, 
 and partly because they seemed to her, in comparison with 
 the smart set, seen from afar, quite and utterly undesirable. 
 She would rather have no masculine attentions at all than 
 such poor provender for her feminine desire to conquer. 
 
 Thus she trod the leafy walks of the beautiful campus 
 alone, ignoring and ignored, keenly alive under her shell of 
 indifference to the brilliant young men and their chosen few 
 feminine companions. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 MRS. DRAPER BLOWS THE COALS 
 
 The most brilliant of these couples were Jermain Fiske, 
 Jr., and Eleanor Hubert. The first was the son of the well- 
 known and distinguished Colonel Jermain Fiske, one of the 
 trustees of the University, ex-Senator from the State. He 
 belonged to the old, free-handed, speech-making type of 
 American statesmen, and, with his florid good looks, his 
 great stature, his loud, resonant, challenging voice, and his 
 picturesque reputation for highly successful double-dealing, 
 he was one of the most talked-of men in the State, despite 
 his advanced years. His enemies, who were not few, said 
 that the shrewdest action of his surpassingly shrewd life 
 had been his voluntary retirement from the Senate and 
 from political activities at the first low murmur heralding the 
 muck-raking cyclone which was to devastate public life as 
 men of his type understood it. But every inhabitant of the 
 State, including his enemies, took an odd pride in his 
 fiercely debonair defiance to old age, in his grandiloquent, 
 too fluent public addresses, and in the manner in which, 
 despite his dubious private reputation, he held open to him, 
 by sheer will-power, sanctimonious doors which were closed 
 to other less robust bad examples to youth. 
 
 This typical specimen of an American class now passing 
 away, had sent his son to the State University instead of to 
 an expensive Eastern college because of his carefully 
 avowed attitude of bluff acceptance of a place among the 
 plain people of the region. The presence of Jermain, Jr., 
 in the classrooms of the State University had been capital 
 for many a swelling phrase on his father's part — " What's 
 good enough for the farmers' boys of my State is good 
 enough for my boy," etc., etc. 
 
 As far as the young man in question was concerned, he 
 
 153 
 
1 54 The Bent Twig 
 
 certainly showed no signs whatever of feeling himself sacri- 
 ficed for his father's advantage, and apparently considered 
 that a leisurely sojourn for seven years (he took both the 
 B.A. and the three-year Law course) in a city the size of 
 La Chance was by no means a hardship for a young man 
 in the best of health, provided with ample funds, and never 
 questioned as to the disposition of his time. He had had 
 at first a reputation for dissipation which, together with his 
 prowess on the football field, had made him as much talked 
 of on the campus as his father in the State ; but during his 
 later years, those spent in the Law School, he had, as the 
 college phrase ran, " taken it out in being swagger/' had 
 discarded his former shady associates, had two rooms in 
 the finest frat house on the campus, and was the only 
 student of the University to drive two horses tandem to a 
 high, red-wheeled dog-cart. His fine physique and reputa- 
 tion for quick assertion of his rights saved him from the 
 occasional taunt of dandyism which would have been flung 
 at any other student indulging in so unusual a freak of 
 fashion. 
 
 During Sylvia's Freshman year there usually sat beside 
 him, on the lofty seat of this equipage, a sweet-faced, gentle- 
 browed young lady, the lovely flower blooming out of the 
 little girl who had so innocently asked her mother some ten 
 years ago what was a drunken reinhardt. The oldest 
 daughter of the professor of European History was almost 
 precisely Sylvia's age, but now, when Sylvia was laboring 
 over her books in the very beginning of her college life, 
 Eleanor Hubert was a finished product, a graduate of an 
 exclusive, expensive girls' boarding-school in New York, 
 and a that-year's debutante in La Chance society. Her 
 name was constantly in the items of the society columns, she 
 wore the most profusely varied costumes, and she drove 
 about the campus swaying like a lily beside the wealthiest 
 undergraduate. Sylvia's mind was naturally too alert an<# 
 vigorous, and now too thoroughly awakened to intellectual 
 interests, not to seize with interest on the subjects she 
 studied that year ; but enjoy as much as she tried to do, and 
 
Mrs. Draper Blows the Coals 155 
 
 did, this tonic mental discipline, there were many moments 
 when the sight of Eleanor Hubert made her wonder if after 
 all higher mathematics and history were of any real value. 
 
 During this wretched year of stifled unhappiness, she not 
 only studied with extreme concentration, but, with a healthy 
 instinct, spent a great deal of time in the gymnasium. It 
 was a delight to her to be able to swim in the winter-time, 
 she organized the first water-polo team among the co-eds, 
 and she began to learn fencing from the Commandant of the 
 University Battalion. He had been a crack with the foils 
 at West Point, and never ceased trying to arouse an interest 
 in what seemed to him the only rational form of exercise ; 
 but fencing at that time had no intercollegiate vogue, and 
 of all the young men and women at the State University, 
 Sylvia alone took up his standing offer of free instruction 
 to any one who cared to give the time to learn; and even 
 Sylvia took up fencing primarily because it promised to 
 give her one more occupation, left her less time for loneli- 
 ness. As it turned out, however, these lessons proved faf 
 more to her than a temporary anodyne : they brought her 
 a positive pleasure. She delighted the dumpy little captain 
 with her aptness, and he took the greatest pains in his in- 
 struction. Before the end of her Freshman year she twice 
 succeeded in getting through his guard and landing a thrust 
 on his well-rounded figure; and though to keep down her 
 conceit he told her that he must be losing, along with his 
 slenderness, some of his youthful agility, he confessed to his 
 wife that teaching Miss Marshall was the best fun he had 
 had in years. The girl was as quick as a cat, and had a 
 natural-born fencer's wrist. 
 
 During the summer vacation she kept up her practice 
 with her father, who remembered enough of his early train- 
 ing in Paris to be more than a match for her, and in the 
 autumn of her Sophomore year, at the annual Gymnasium 
 exhibition, she gave with the Commandant a public bout 
 with the foils in which she notably distinguished herself. 
 The astonished and long-continued applause for this new 
 feature of the exhibition was a draught of nectar to her 
 
156 The Bent Twig 
 
 embittered young heart, but she acknowledged it with not 
 the smallest sign of pleasure, showing an impassive face as 
 she stood by the portly captain, slim and tall and young 
 and haughty, joining him in a sweeping, ceremonious salute 
 with her foil to the enthusiastic audience, and turning on her 
 heel with a brusqueness as military as his own, to march 
 firmly with high-held head beside him back to the ranks of 
 blue-bloomered girls who stood watching her. 
 
 The younger girls in Alpha Kappa and Sigma Beta were 
 seizing this opportunity to renew an old quarrel with their 
 elders in the fraternities and were acrimoniously hoping that 
 the older ones were quite satisfied with their loss of a bril- 
 liant member. These accusations met with no ready answer 
 from the somewhat crestfallen elders, whose only defense 
 was the entire unexpectedness of the way in which Sylvia 
 was distinguishing herself. Who ever heard before of a 
 girl doing anything remarkable in athletics? And anyhow, 
 now in her Sophomore year it was too late to do anything. 
 A girl so notoriously proud would certainly not consider a 
 tardy invitation, and it would not do to run the risk of 
 being refused. It is not too much to say that to have 
 overheard a conversation like this would have changed the 
 course of Sylvia's development, but of such colloquies she 
 could know nothing, attributing to the fraternities, with all 
 an outsider's resentful overestimation of their importance, 
 an arrogant solidarity of opinion and firmness of purpose 
 which they were very far from possessing. 
 
 Professor and Mrs. Marshall and Lawrence and Judith, 
 up in the front row of chairs set for the audience about the 
 running track, followed this exploit of Sylvia's with naively 
 open pride and sympathy, applauding even more heartily 
 than did their neighbors. Lawrence, as usual, began to 
 compose a poem, the first line of which ran, 
 
 " Splendid, she wields her gleaming sword — — " 
 
 The most immediate result of this first public success of 
 Sylvia's was the call paid to Mrs. Marshall on the day 
 
Mrs. Draper Blows the Coals 157 
 
 following by Mrs. Draper, the wife of the professor o£ 
 Greek. Although there had never been any formal social 
 intercourse between the two ladies, they had for a good 
 many years met each other casually on the campus, and 
 Mrs. Draper, with the extremely graceful manner of assur- 
 ance which was her especial accomplishment, made it seem 
 quite natural that she should call to congratulate Sylvia's 
 mother on the girl's skill and beauty as shown in her prowess 
 on the evening before. Mrs. Marshall prided herself on 
 her undeceived view of life, but she was as ready to hear 
 praise of her spirited and talented daughter as any other 
 mother, and quite melted to Mrs. Draper, although her 
 observations from afar of the other woman's career in La 
 Chance had never before inclined her to tolerance. So that 
 when Mrs. Draper rose to go and asked casually if Sylvia 
 couldn't run in at five that afternoon to have a cup of tea 
 at her house with a very few of her favorites among the 
 young people, Mrs. Marshall, rather inflexible by nature 
 and quite unused to the subtleties of social intercourse, 
 found herself unable to retreat quickly enough from her re- 
 flected tone of cordiality to refuse the invitation for her 
 daughter. 
 
 When Sylvia came back to lunch she was vastly flut- 
 tered and pleased by the invitation, and as she ate, her 
 mind leaped from one possible sartorial combination to 
 another. Whatever she wore must be exactly right to be 
 worthy of such a hostess: for Mrs. Draper was a con- 
 spicuous figure in faculty society. She had acquired, 
 through years of extremely intelligent maneuvering, a repu- 
 tation for choice exclusiveness which was accepted even in 
 the most venerable of the old families of La Chance, those 
 whose founders had built their log huts there as long as fifty 
 years before. In faculty circles she occupied a unique posi- 
 tion, envied and feared and admired and distrusted and 
 copiously gossiped about by the faculty ladies, who accepted 
 with eagerness any invitations to entertainments in her 
 small, aesthetic, and perfectly appointed house. She was 
 envied even by women with much more than her income : — 
 
158 The Bent Twig 
 
 for of course Professor Draper had an independent in- 
 come; it was hardly possible to be anybody unless one be- 
 longed to that minority of the faculty families with re- 
 sources beyond the salary granted by the State. 
 
 Faculty ladies were, however, not favored with a great 
 number of invitations to Mrs. Draper's select and amusing 
 teas and dinners, as that lady had a great fancy for sur- 
 rounding herself with youth, meaning, for the most part, 
 naturally enough, masculine youth. With an unerring and 
 practised eye she picked out from each class the few young 
 men who were to her purpose, and proclaiming with the 
 most express lack of reticence the forty-three years which 
 she by no means looked, she took these chosen few undei 
 a wing frankly maternal, giving them, in the course of an 
 intimate acquaintance with her and the dim and twilight 
 ways of her house and life, an enlightening experience of 
 a civilization which she herself said, with a humorous ap- 
 preciation of her own value, quite made over the young, un- 
 licked cubs. This statement of her influence on most of 
 the young men drawn into her circle was perhaps not much 
 exaggerated. 
 
 From time to time she also admitted into this charmed 
 circle a young girl or two, though almost never one of the 
 University girls, of whom she made the jolliest possible fun. 
 Her favorites were the daughters of good La Chance 
 families who at seventeen had " finished " at Miss Home's 
 Select School for Young Ladies, and who came out in 
 society not later than eighteen. She seemed able, as long 
 as she cared to do it, to exercise as irresistible a fascina- 
 tion over these youthful members of her own sex as over the 
 older masculine undergraduates of the University. They 
 copied their friend's hats and neckwear and shoes and her 
 mannerisms of speech, were miserable if she neglected them 
 for a day, furiously jealous of each other, and raised to the 
 seventh heaven by attention from her. Just at present the 
 only girl admitted frequently to Mrs. Draper's intimacy was 
 Eleanor Hubert. 
 
 On the day following the Gymnasium exhibition, when 
 
Mrs. Draper Blows the Coals 159 
 
 Sylvia, promptly at five, entered the picturesque vine- 
 covered Draper house, she found it occupied by none of 
 the usual habitues of the place. The white-capped, black- 
 garbed maid who opened the door to the girl held aside 
 for her a pair of heavy brown-velvet portieres which veiled 
 the entrance to the drawing-room. The utter silence of this 
 servitor seemed portentous and inhuman to the young guest, 
 unused to the polite convention that servants cast no 
 shadow and do not exist save when serving their superiors. 
 
 She found herself in a room as unlike any she had ever 
 seen as though she had stepped into a new planet. The 
 light here was as yellow as gold, and came from a great 
 many candles which, in sconces and candelabra, stood about 
 the room, their oblong yellow flame as steady in the breath- 
 less quiet of the air as though they burned in a vault under- 
 ground. There was not a book in the room, except one in 
 a yellow cover lying beside a box of candy on the mantel- 
 piece, but every ledge, table, projection, or shelf was cov- 
 ered with small, queerly fashioned, dully gleaming objects 
 of ivory, or silver, or brass, or carved wood, or porcelain. 
 
 The mistress of the room now came in. She was in a 
 loose garment of smoke-brown chiffon, held in place occa- 
 sionally about her luxuriously rounded figure by a heavy 
 cord of brown silk. She advanced to Sylvia with both hands 
 outstretched, and took the girl's slim, rather hard young 
 fingers in the softest of melting palms. " Aren't you a 
 dear, to be so exactly on time ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 Sylvia was a little surprised. She had thought it axio- 
 matic that people kept their appointments promptly. " Oh, 
 I'm always on time," she answered simply. 
 
 Mrs. Draper laughed and pulled her down on the sofa. 
 " You clear-eyed young Diana, you won't allow me even 
 an instant's illusion that you were eager to come to see me ! " 
 
 " Oh yes, I was! " said Sylvia hastily, fearing that she 
 might have said something rude. 
 
 Mrs. Draper laughed again and gave the hand she still 
 held a squeeze. " You're adorable, that's what you are ! M 
 She exploded this pointblank charge in Sylvia's face with 
 
160 The Bent Twig 
 
 nonchalant ease, and went on with another. " Jerry Fiske 
 is quite right about you. I suppose you know that you're 
 here today so that Jerry can meet you." 
 
 As there was obviously not the faintest possibility of 
 Sylvia's having heard this save through her present in- 
 formant, she could only look what she felt, very much at 
 a loss, and rather blank, with a heightened color. Mrs. 
 Draper eyed her with an intentness at variance with the 
 lightness of her tone, as she continued : u I do think Jerry'd 
 have burned up in one flare, like a torch, if he couldn't 
 have seen you at once ! After you'd fenced and disappeared 
 again into that stupid crowd of graceless girls, he kept 
 track of you every minute with his opera-glasses, and kept 
 saying : ' She's a goddess ! Good Lord ! how she carries 
 herself ! ' It was rather hard on poor Eleanor right there 
 beside him, but I don't blame him. Eleanor's a sweet thing, 
 but she'd be sugar and water compared to champagne if 
 she stood up by you." 
 
 For a good many months Sylvia had been craving praise 
 with a starved appetite, and although she found this down- 
 pour of it rather drenching, she could not sufficiently col- 
 lect herself to make the conventional decent pretense that it 
 was unwelcome. She flushed deeply and looked at her 
 hostess with dazzled eyes. Mrs. Draper affected to see in 
 her silence a blankness as to the subject of the talk, and 
 interrupted the flow of personalities to cry out, with a pre- 
 tense of horror, " You don't mean to say you don't know 
 who Jerry Fiske isl" 
 
 Sylvia, as unused as her mother to conversational traps, 
 fell into this one with an eager promptness. " Oh yes, in- 
 deed ; I know him by sight very well," she said and stopped, 
 flushing again at a significant laugh from Mrs. Draper. " I 
 mean," she went on with dignity, " that Mr. Fiske has al- 
 ways been so prominent in college — football and all, you 
 know — and his father being one of our State Senators so 
 long — I suppose everybody on the campus knows him by 
 sight." Mrs. Draper patted the girl's shoulder propitiat- 
 ingly. " Yes, yes, of course," she assented. She added, 
 
Mrs. Draper Blows the Coals 161 
 
 " He's ever so good-looking, don't you think — like a great 
 Viking with his yellow hair and bright blue eyes ? " 
 
 " I never noticed his eyes," said Sylvia stiffly, suspicious 
 of ridicule in the air. 
 
 " Well, you'll have a chance to this afternoon," answered 
 her hostess, " for he's the only other person who's to be 
 admitted to the house. I had a great time excusing myself 
 to Eleanor — she was coming to take me out driving — but of 
 course it wouldn't do — for her own sake — the poor darling 
 — to have her here today ! " 
 
 Sylvia thought she could not have rightly understood the 
 significance of this speech, and looked uncomfortable. 'Mrs. 
 Draper said : " Oh, you needn't mind cutting Eleanor out — 
 she's only a dear baby who can't feel anything very deeply. 
 It's Mamma Hubert who's so mad about catching Jerry. 
 Since she's heard he's to have the Fiske estate at Mercerton 
 as soon as he graduates from Law School, she's like a wild 
 creature! If Eleanor weren't the most unconscious little 
 bait that ever hung on a hook Jerry'd have turned away in 
 disgust long ago. He may not be so very acute, but Mamma 
 Hubert and her manceuvers are not millstones for seeing 
 through ! " 
 
 The doorbell rang, one long and one short tap. " That's 
 Jerry's ring," said Mrs. Draper composedly, as though she 
 had been speaking of her husband. In an instant the heavy 
 portieres were flung back by a vigorous arm, and a very 
 tall, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven young man, in a well- 
 tailored brown suit, stepped in. He accosted his hostess 
 with easy assurance, but went through his introduction to 
 Sylvia in a rather awkward silence. 
 
 " Now we'll have tea," said Mrs. Draper at once, pressing 
 a button. In a moment a maid brought in a tray shining 
 with silver and porcelain, set it down on the table in front 
 of Mrs. Draper, and then wheeled in a little circular table 
 with shelves, a glorified edition in gleaming mahogany of 
 the homely, white-painted wheeled-tray of Sylvia's home. 
 On the shelves was a large assortment of delicate, small 
 cakes and paper-thin sandwiches. While she poured 
 
1 62 The Bent Twig 
 
 out the amber-colored tea into the translucent cups, 
 Mrs. Draper kept up with the new-comer a lively mono- 
 logue of personalities, in which Sylvia, for very ignorance 
 of the people involved, could take no part. She sat silent, 
 watching with concentration the two people before her, the 
 singularly handsome man, certainly the handsomest man she 
 had ever seen, and the far from handsome but singularly 
 alluring woman who faced him, making such a display of 
 her two good points, her rich figure and her fine dark eyes, 
 that for an instant the rest of her person seemed non- 
 existent. 
 
 "How do you like your tea, dear?" The mistress of 
 the house brought her stranded guest back into the current 
 of talk with this well-worn hook. 
 
 " Oh, it doesn't make any difference," said Sylvia, who, 
 as it happened, did not like the taste of tea. 
 
 " You really ought to have it nectar ; with whipped am- 
 brosia on top." Mrs. Draper troweled this statement on 
 with a dashing smear, saving Sylvia from being forced to 
 answer, by adding lightly to the man, " Is ambrosia any- 
 thing that will whip, do you suppose ? " 
 
 " Never heard of it before," he answered, breaking his 
 silence with a carefree absence of shame at his confession 
 of ignorance. " Sounds like one of those labels on a soda- 
 water fountain that nobody ever samples." 
 
 Mrs. Draper made a humorously exaggerated gesture of 
 despair and turned to Sylvia. " Well, it's just as well, my 
 dear, that you should know at the very beginning what a 
 perfect monster of illiteracy he is ! You needn't expect any- 
 thing from him but his stupid good-looks, and money and 
 fascination. Otherwise he's a Cave-Man for ignorance. 
 You must take him in hand ! " She turned back to the man. 
 *' Sylvia, you know, is as clever as she is beautiful. She had 
 the highest rank but three in her class last year." 
 
 Sylvia was overcome with astonishment by this knowl- 
 edge of a fact which had seemed to make no impression on 
 the world of the year before. " Why, how could you know 
 that ! " she cried. 
 
Mrs. Draper Blows the Coals 163 
 
 Mrs. Draper laughed. " Just hear her ! " she appealed to 
 the young man. Her method of promoting the acquaintance 
 of the two young people seemed to consist in talking to each 
 of the other. " Just hear her ! She converses as she fences 
 — one bright flash, and you're skewered against the wall — 
 no parryings possible ! " She faced Sylvia again : " Why, 
 my dear, in answer to your rapier-like question, I must 
 simply confess that this morning, being much struck with 
 Jerry's being struck with you, I went over to the registrar's 
 office and looked you up. I know that you passed supremely 
 well in mathematics and French (what a quaint combina- 
 tion!), very well indeed in history and chemistry, and 
 moderately in botany. What's the matter with botany? I 
 have always found Professor Cross a very obliging little 
 man." 
 
 " He doesn't make me see any sense to botany," explained 
 Sylvia, taking the question seriously. " I don't seem to get 
 hold of any real reason for studying it at all. What dif- 
 ference does it make if a bush is a hawthorn or not? — 
 and anyhow, I know it's a hawthorn without studying 
 botany." 
 
 The young man spoke for himself now, with a keen relish 
 for Sylvia's words. He faced her for the first time. " Now 
 you're shouting, Miss Marshall ! " he said. " That's the 
 most sensible thing I ever heard said. That's just what I 
 always felt about the whole B.A. course, anyhow ! What's 
 the diff? Who cares whether Charlemagne lived in six 
 hundred or sixteen hundred? It all happened before we 
 were born. What's it all to us ? " 
 
 Sylvia looked squarely at him, a little startled at his di- 
 rectly addressing her, not hearing a word of what he said 
 in the vividness of her first-hand impression of his per- 
 sonality, his brilliant blue eyes, his full, very red lips, his 
 boldly handsome face and carriage, his air of confidence. 
 In spite of his verbal agreement with her opinion, his look 
 crossed hers dashingly, like a challenge, a novelty in the 
 amicable harmony which had been the tradition of her life. 
 She felt that tradition to be not without its monotony, and 
 
164 The Bent Twig 
 
 her young blood warmed. She gazed back at him silently, 
 wonderingly, frankly. 
 
 With her radiantly sensuous youth in the first splendor of 
 its opening, with this frank, direct look, she had a moment 
 of brilliance to make the eyes of age shade themselves as 
 against a dazzling brightness. The eyes of the man op- 
 posite her were not those of age. They rested on her, 
 aroused, kindling to heat. His head went up like a stag's. 
 She felt a momentary hot throb of excitement, as though 
 her body were one great fiddle-string, twanging under a 
 vigorously plucking thumb. It was thrilling, it was startling, 
 it was not altogether pleasant. The corners of her sensitive 
 mouth twitched uncertainly. 
 
 Mrs. Draper, observing from under her down-drooped 
 lids this silent passage between the two, murmured amusedly 
 to herself, " Ah, now you're shouting, my children ! " 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 PLAYING WITH MATCHES 
 
 There was much that was acrid about the sweetness of 
 triumph which the next months brought Sylvia. The sud- 
 den change in her life had not come until there was an 
 accumulation of bitterness in her heart the venting of which 
 was the strongest emotion of that period of strong emotions. 
 As she drove about the campus, perched on the high seat 
 of the red-wheeled dog-cart, her lovely face looked down 
 with none of Eleanor Hubert's gentleness into the envying 
 eyes of the other girls. A high color burned in her cheeks, 
 and her bright eyes were not soft. She looked continually 
 excited. 
 
 At home she was hard to live with, quick to take offense 
 at the least breath of the adverse criticism which she felt, 
 unspoken and forbearing but thick in the air about her. She 
 neglected her music, she neglected her studies; she spent 
 long hours of feverish toil over Aunt Victoria's chiffons and 
 silks. There was need for many toilets now, for the in- 
 cessantly recurring social events to which she went with 
 young Fiske, chaperoned by Mrs. Draper, who had for her 
 old rival and enemy, Mrs. Hubert, the most mocking of 
 friendly smiles, as she entered a ballroom, the acknowledged 
 sponsor of the brilliant young sensation of the college 
 season. 
 
 At these dances Sylvia had the grim satisfaction, not in- 
 frequently the experience of intelligent young ladies, of 
 being surrounded by crowds of admiring young men, for 
 whom she had no admiration, the barren sterility of whose 
 conversation filled her with astonishment, even in her fever 
 of exultation. She knew the delights of frequently " split- 
 ting " her dances so that there might be enough to go 
 around. She was plunged headlong into the torrent of 
 
 165 
 
1 66 The Bent Twig 
 
 excitement which is the life of a social favorite at a large 
 State University, that breathless whirl of one engagement 
 after another for every evening and for most of the days, 
 which is one of the oddest developments of the academic 
 life as planned and provided for by the pioneer fathers of 
 those great Western commonwealths ; and she savored every 
 moment of it, for during every moment she drank deep at 
 the bitter fountain of personal vindication. She went to 
 all the affairs which had ignored her the year before, to all 
 the dances given by the " swell men's fraternities," to the 
 Sophomore hop, to the " Football Dance," at the end of the 
 season, to the big reception given to the Freshman class by 
 the Seniors. And in addition to these evening affairs, she 
 appeared beside Jerry Fiske at every football game, at the 
 first Glee Club Concert, at the outdoor play given by the 
 Literary Societies, and very frequently at the weekly recep- 
 tions to the students tendered by the ladies of the faculty. 
 These affairs were always spoken of by the faculty as 
 an attempt to create a homogeneous social atmosphere on 
 the campus; but this attempt had ended, as such efforts 
 usually do, in adding to the bewildering plethora of social 
 life of those students who already had too much, and in 
 being an added sting to the solitude and ostracism of those 
 who had none. Naturally enough, the ladies of the faculty 
 who took most interest in these afternoon functions were 
 the ones who cared most for society life, and there was 
 only too obvious a contrast between their manner of kindly, 
 vague, condescending interest shown to one of the " rough- 
 neck " students, and the easy familiarity shown to one of 
 those socially " possible." The " rough-necks " seldom 
 sought out more than once the prettily decorated tables 
 spread every Friday afternoon in the Faculty Room, off the 
 reading-room of the Library. Sylvia especially had, on the 
 only occasion when she had ventured into this charming 
 scene, suffered too intensely from the difference of treat- 
 ment accorded her and that given Eleanor Hubert to feel 
 anything but angry resentment. After that experience, she 
 had passed along the halls with the other outsiders, books 
 
Playing with Matches 167 
 
 in hand, her head held proudly high, and never turned even 
 to glance in at the gleaming tables, the lighted candles, and 
 the little groups of easily self-confident fraternity men and 
 girls laughing and talking over their teacups, and revenging 
 vicariously the rest of the ignored student-body by the calm 
 young insolence with which they in their turn ignored their 
 presumptive hostesses, the faculty ladies. 
 
 Mrs. Draper changed all this for Sylvia with a wave of 
 her wand. She took the greatest pains to introduce her 
 protegee into this phase of the social life of the University. 
 On these occasions, as beautiful and as over-dressed as any 
 girl in the room, with Jermain Fiske in obvious attendance ; 
 with the exclusive Mrs. Draper setting in a rich frame of 
 commentary any remark she happened to make ( Sylvia was 
 acquiring a reputation for great wit) ; with Eleanor Hubert, 
 eclipsed, sitting in a corner, quite deserted save for a funny 
 countrified freak assistant in chemistry ; with all the " swell-* 
 est f rat men " in college rushing to get her tea and sand- 
 wiches ; with Mrs. Hubert plunged obviously into acute un- 
 happiness, Sylvia knew as ugly moments of mean satisfac- 
 tion as often fall to the lot even of very pretty young 
 women. 
 
 At home she knew no moments of satisfaction of any 
 variety, although there was no disapprobation expressed by 
 any one, except in one or two characteristically recondite 
 comments by Professor Kennedy, who was taking a rather 
 uneasy triumph in the proof of an old theory of his as to 
 Sylvia's character. One afternoon, at a football game, he 
 came up to her on the grandstand, shook hands with Jer- 
 main Fiske, whom he had flunked innumerable times in 
 algebra, and remarked in his most acid voice that he wished 
 to congratulate the young man on being the perfect specimen 
 of the dolichocephalic blond whose arrival in Sylvia's life 
 he had predicted years before. Sylvia, belligerently aware 
 of the attitude of her home world, and ready to resent 
 criticism, took the liveliest offense at this obscure comment, 
 which she perfectly understood. She flushed indignantly and 
 glared in silence with the eyes of an angry young goddess. 
 
168 The Bent Twig 
 
 Young Fiske, who found the remark, or any other made by 
 a college prof, quite as unintelligible as it was unimportant, 
 laughed with careless impudence in the old man's face ; and 
 Mrs. Draper, for all her keenness, could make nothing of it. 
 It sounded, however, so quite like a dictum which she her- 
 self would have liked to make, that she cross-questioned 
 Sylvia afterwards as to its meaning ; but Sylvia lied fluently, 
 asserting that it was just some of Professor Kennedy's 
 mathematical gibberish which had no meaning. 
 
 In the growing acquaintance of Sylvia and Jermain, Mrs. 
 Draper acted assiduously as chaperon, a refinement of 
 sophisticated society which was, as a rule, but vaguely ob- 
 served in the chaotic flux of State University social life, and 
 she so managed affairs that they were seldom together 
 alone. For obvious reasons Sylvia preferred to see the 
 young man elsewhere than in her own home, where indeed 
 he made almost no appearance, beyond standing at the door 
 of an evening, very handsome and distinguished in his 
 evening dress, waiting for Sylvia to put on her wraps and 
 go out with him to the carriage where Mrs. Draper sat ex- 
 pectant, furred and velvet-wrapped. This discreet man- 
 ager made no objection to Sylvia's driving about the campus 
 in the daytime alone with Jermain, but to his proposal to 
 drive the girl out to the country-club for dinner one evening 
 she added blandly the imperious proviso that she be of the 
 party; and she discouraged with firmness any projects for 
 solitary walks together through the woods near the campus, 
 although this was a recognized form of co-educational 
 amusement at that institution of learning. 
 
 For all her air of free-and-easy equality with the young 
 man, she had at times a certain blighting glance which, 
 turned on him suddenly, always brought him to an agree- 
 ment with her opinion, an agreement which might obviously 
 ring but verbal on his tongue, but which was nevertheless 
 the acknowledged basis of action. As for Sylvia, she 
 acquiesced, with an eagerness which she did not try to 
 understand, in any arrangement which precluded tete-a-tetes 
 with Jerry. 
 
Playing with Matches 169 
 
 She did not, as a matter of fact, try to understand any- 
 thing of what was happening to her. She was by no means 
 sure that she liked it, but was stiffened into a stubborn re- 
 sistance to any doubts by the unvoiced objection to it all at 
 home. With an instinct against disproportion, perverse per- 
 haps in this case, but with a germ of soundness in it, she 
 felt confusedly and resentfully that since her home circle 
 was so patently narrow and exaggerated in its standard of 
 personality, she would just have to even things up by 
 being a little less fastidious than was her instinct ; and on the 
 one or two occasions when a sudden sight of Jerry sent 
 through her a strange, unpleasant stir of all her flesh, she 
 crushed the feeling out of sight under her determination to 
 assert her own judgment and standards against those which 
 had (she now felt) so tyrannically influenced her childhood. 
 But for the most part she did little thinking, shaking as 
 loudly as possible the reverberating rattle of physical ex- 
 citement. 
 
 Thus everything progressed smoothly under Mrs. Dra- 
 per's management. The young couple met each other 
 usually in the rather close air of her candle-lighted living- 
 room, drinking a great deal of tea, consuming large numbers 
 of delicate, strangely compounded sandwiches, and listen- 
 ing to an endless flow of somewhat startlingly frank per- 
 sonalities from the magnetic mistress of the house. Sylvia 
 and Jermain did not talk much on these occasions. They 
 listened with edification to the racy remarks of their hostess, 
 voicing that theoretical " broadness " of opinion as to the 
 conduct of life which, quite as much as the perfume which 
 she always used, was a specialty of her provocative per- 
 sonality; they spoke now and then, to be sure, as she drew 
 them into conversation, but their real intercourse was al- 
 most altogether silent. They eyed each other across the 
 table, breathing quickly, and flushing or paling if their 
 hands chanced to touch in the services of the tea-table. 
 Once the young man came in earlier than usual and found 
 Sylvia alone for a moment in the silent, glowing, perfumed 
 room. He took her hand, apparently for the ordinary hand- 
 
170 The Bent Twig 
 
 clasp of greeting, but with a surge of his blood retained 
 it, pressing it so fiercely that his ring cut into her finger, 
 causing a tiny drop of bright red to show on the youthful 
 smoothness of her skin. At this living ruby they both stared 
 fixedly for an instant ; then Mrs. Draper came hastily into 
 the room, saying chidingly, " Come, come, children ! " and 
 looking with displeasure at the man's darkly flushed face. 
 Sylvia was paler than usual for the rest of the afternoon, 
 and could not swallow a mouthful of the appetizing food, 
 which as a rule she devoured with the frank satisfaction of 
 a hungry child. She sat, rather white, not talking much, 
 avoiding Jerry's eyes for no reason that she could analyze, 
 and, in the pauses of the conversation, could hear the blood 
 singing loudly in her ears. 
 
 Yet, although she felt the oddest relief, as after one more 
 escape, at the end of each of these afternoons with her new 
 acquaintances, afternoons in which the three seemed per- 
 petually gliding down a steep incline and as perpetually 
 being arrested on the brink of some unexplained plunge, 
 she found that their atmosphere had spoiled entirely her 
 relish for the atmosphere of her home. The home supper- 
 table seemed to her singularly flat and distasteful with its 
 commonplace fare — hot chocolate and creamed potatoes and 
 apple sauce, and its brisk, impersonal talk of socialism, and 
 politics, and small home events, and music. As it hap- 
 pened, the quartet had the lack of intuition to play a great 
 deal of Haydn that autumn, and to Sylvia the cheerful, 
 obvious tap-tap-tap of the hearty old master seemed to 
 typify the bald, unsubtle obtuseness of the home attitude 
 towards life. She herself took to playing the less difficult 
 of the Chopin nocturnes with a languorous over-accentuation 
 of their softness which she was careful to keep from the 
 ears of old Reinhardt. But one evening he came in, un- 
 heard, listened to her performance of the B-flat minor 
 nocturne with a frown, and pulled her away from the 
 piano before she had finished. " Not true music, not true 
 love, not true anydings ! " he said, speaking however with 
 an unexpected gentleness, and patting her on the shoulder 
 
Playing with Matches 171! 
 
 with a dirty old hand. " Listen ! " He clapped his fiddle 
 under his chin and played the air of the andante from the 
 Kreutzer Sonata with so singing and heavenly a tone that 
 Sylvia, as helpless an instrument in his skilful hands as 
 the violin itself, felt the nervous tears stinging her eyelids. 
 
 This did not prevent her making a long detour the next 
 day to avoid meeting the uncomely old musician on the 
 street and being obliged to recognize him publicly. She 
 lived in perpetual dread of being thus forced, when in the 
 company of Mrs. Draper or Jermain, to acknowledge her 
 connection with him, or with Cousin Parnelia, or with any 
 of the eccentrics who frequented her parents' home, and 
 whom it was physically impossible to imagine drinking tea 
 at Mrs. Draper's table. 
 
 It was beside this same table that she met, one day in 
 early December, Jermain Fiske's distinguished father. He 
 explained that he was in La Chance for a day on his way 
 from Washington to Mercerton, where the Fiske family 
 was collecting for its annual Christmas house-party, and 
 had dropped in on Mrs. Draper quite unexpectedly. He 
 was, he added, delighted that it happened to be a day 
 when he could meet the lovely Miss Marshall of whom 
 (with a heavy accent of jocose significance) he had heard 
 so much. Sylvia was a little confused by the pointed atten- 
 tions of this gallant old warrior, oddly in contrast with the 
 manner of other elderly men she knew; but she thought 
 him very handsome, with his sweeping white mustache, his 
 bright blue eyes, so like his son's, and she was much im- 
 pressed with his frock-coat, fitting snugly around his well- 
 knit, erect figure, and with the silk hat which she noticed 
 on the table in the hall as she went in. Frock-coats and 
 silk hats were objects seldom encountered in La Chance, 
 except in illustrations to magazine-stories, or in photographs 
 of life in New York or Washington. But of course, she 
 reflected, Colonel Fiske lived most of his life in Washington, 
 about the cosmopolitan delights of which he talked most 
 eloquently to the two ladies. 
 
 As was inevitable, Sylvia also met Eleanor Hubert more 
 
172 The Bent Twig 
 
 or less at Mrs. Draper's. Sylvia had been rendered acutely 
 self-conscious in that direction by Mrs. Draper's very open 
 comments on her role in the life of the other girl, and at 
 first had been so smitten by embarrassment as positively to 
 be awkward, a rare event in her life : but she was soon set at 
 ease by the other girl's gentle friendliness, so simple and sin- 
 cere that even Sylvia's suspicious vanity could not feel it to be 
 condescension. Eleanor's sweet eyes shone so kindly on her 
 successful rival, and she showed so frank and unenvious an 
 admiration of Sylvia's wit and learning, displayed perhaps 
 a trifle ostentatiously by that young lady in the ensuing con- 
 versation with Mrs. Draper, that Sylvia had a fresh, healing 
 impulse of shame for her own recently acquired attitude of 
 triumphing hostility towards the world. 
 
 At the same time she felt a surprised contempt for the 
 other girl's ignorance and almost illiteracy. Whatever else 
 Eleanor had learned in the exclusive and expensive girls' 
 school in New York, she had not learned to hold her own 
 in a conversation on the most ordinary topics ; and as for 
 Mrs. Draper's highly spiced comments on life and folk, her 
 young friend made not the slightest attempt to cope with 
 them or even to understand them. The alluring mistress 
 of the house might talk of sex-antagonism and the hateful- 
 ness of the puritanical elements of American life as much 
 as she pleased. It all passed over the head of the lovely, 
 fair girl, sipping her tea and raising her candid eyes to meet 
 with a trustful smile, perhaps a little blank, the glance of 
 whomever chanced to be looking at her. It was significant 
 that she had the same smile for each of the three very dis- 
 similar persons who sat about the tea-table. Of all the circle 
 into which Sylvia's changed life had plunged her, Eleanor, 
 the type of the conventional society bud, was, oddly enough, 
 the only one she cared to talk about in her own extremely 
 unconventional home. But even on this topic she felt 
 herself bruised and jarred by the severity, the unpictur- 
 esque austerity of the home standards. As she was trying to 
 give her mother some idea of Eleanor's character, she quoted 
 one day a remark of Mrs. Draper's, to the effect that 
 
Playing with Matches 173 
 
 " Eleanor no more knows the meaning of her beauty than 
 a rose the meaning of its perfume." Mrs. Marshall kept 
 a forbidding silence for a moment and then said : " I don't 
 take much stock in that sort of unconsciousness. Eleanor 
 isn't a rose, she isn't even a child. She's a woman. The 
 sooner girls learn that distinction, the better off they'll be, 
 and the fewer chances they'll run of being horribly mis- 
 understood." 
 
 Sylvia felt very angry with her mother for this un- 
 sympathetic treatment of a pretty phrase, and thought with 
 resentment that it was not her fault if she were becoming 
 more and more alienated from her family. 
 
 This was a feeling adroitly fostered by Mrs. Draper, who, 
 in her endless talks with Sylvia and Jermain about them- 
 selves, had hit upon an expression and a turn of phrase 
 which was to have more influence on Sylvia's development 
 than its brevity seemed to warrant. She had, one day, 
 called Sylvia a little Athenian, growing up, by the oddest 
 of mistakes, in Sparta. Sylvia, who was in the Pater-read- 
 ing stage of development, caught at her friend's phrase as 
 at the longed-for key to her situation. It explained every- 
 thing. It made everything appear in the light she wished 
 for. Above all it enabled her to clarify her attitude towards 
 her home. Now she understood. One did not scorn Sparta. 
 One respected it, it was a noble influence in life; but for 
 an Athenian, for whom amenity and beauty and suavity 
 were as essential as food, Sparta was death. As was natural 
 to her age and temperament, she sucked a vast amount of 
 pleasure out of this pitying analysis of her subtle, compli- 
 cated needs and the bare crudity of her surroundings. She 
 now read Pater more assiduously than ever, always carry- 
 ing a volume about with her text-books, and feeding on 
 this delicate fare in such unlikely and dissimilar places as 
 on the trolley-cars, in the kitchen, in the intervals of prepar- 
 ing a meal, or in Mrs. Draper's living-room, waiting for 
 the problematical entrance of that erratic luminary. 
 
 There was none of Mrs. Draper's habits of life which 
 made more of an impression on Sylvia's imagination thai? 
 
174 The Bent Twig 
 
 her custom of disregarding engagements and appointments, 
 of coming and going, appearing and disappearing quite as. 
 she pleased. To the daughter of a scrupulously exact 
 family, which regarded tardiness as a fault, and breaking an 
 appointment as a crime, this high-handed flexibility in deal- 
 ing with time and bonds and promises had an exciting 
 quality of freedom. 
 
 On a good many occasions these periods of waiting 
 chanced to be shared by Eleanor Hubert, for whom, after 
 the first two or three encounters, Sylvia came to have a 
 rather condescending sympathy, singularly in contrast to the 
 uneasy envy with which she had regarded her only a few 
 months before. However, as regards dress, Eleanor was 
 still a phenomenon of the greatest interest, and Sylvia never 
 saw her without getting an idea or two, although it was 
 plain to any one who knew Eleanor that this mastery of 
 the technique of modern American costume was no achieve- 
 ment of her own, that she was merely the lovely and plas- 
 tic material molded, perhaps to slightly over-complicated 
 effects, by her mother's hands. 
 
 From that absent but pervasive personality Sylvia took 
 one suggestion after another. For instance, a very brief 
 association with Eleanor caused her to relegate to the scrap- 
 heap of the " common " the ready-made white niching for 
 neck and sleeves which she had always before taken for 
 granted. Eleanor's slim neck and smooth wrists were al- 
 ways set off by a few folds of the finest white chiffon, laid 
 with dexterous carelessness, and always so exquisitely fresh 
 that they were obviously renewed by a skilful hand after 
 only a few hours' wearing. The first time she saw Eleanor, 
 Sylvia noticed this detail with appreciation, and immediately 
 struggled to reproduce it in her own costume. Like other 
 feats of the lesser arts this perfect trifle turned out to de- 
 pend upon the use of the lightest and most adroit touch. 
 None of the chiffon which came in Aunt Victoria's boxes 
 would do. It must be fresh from the shop-counter, ruinous 
 as this was to Sylvia's very modest allowance for dress. 
 Even then she spoiled many a yard of the filmy, unmanage- 
 
Playing with Matches 175 
 
 able stuff before she could catch the spirit of those ap- 
 parently careless folds, so loosely disposed and yet never 
 displaced. It was a phenomenon over which a philosopher 
 might well have pondered, this spectacle of Sylvia's keen 
 brain and well-developed will-power equally concerned with 
 the problems of chemistry and philosophy and history, and 
 with the problem of chiffon folds. She herself was aware 
 of no incongruity, indeed of no difference, between the two 
 sorts of efforts. 
 
 Many other matters of Eleanor's attire proved as fruitful 
 of suggestion as this, although Aunt Victoria's well-remem- 
 bered dictum about the " kitchen-maid's pin-cushion " was 
 a guiding finger-board which warned Sylvia against the 
 multiplication of detail, even desirable detail. 
 
 Mrs. Hubert had evidently studied deeply the sources of 
 distinction in modern dress, and had grasped with philo- 
 sophic thoroughness the underlying principle of the art, 
 which is to show effects obviously costly, but the cost of 
 which is due less to mere brute cash than to prodigally ex- 
 pended effort. Eleanor never wore a costume which did 
 not show the copious exercise by some alert-minded human 
 being, presumably with an immortal soul, of the priceless 
 qualities of invention, creative thought, trained attention, 
 and prodigious industry. Mrs. Hubert's unchallengeable 
 slogan was that dress should be an expression of individ- 
 uality, and by dint of utilizing all the details of the attire 
 of herself and of her two daughters, down to the last ruffie 
 and buttonhole, she found this medium quite sufficient to 
 express the whole of her own individuality, the conspicuous 
 force of which was readily conceded by any observer of the 
 lady's life. 
 
 As for Eleanor's own individuality, any one in search of 
 that very unobtrusive quality would have found it more in 
 the expression of her eyes and in the childlike lines of 
 her lips than in her toilets. It is possible that Mrs. Hubert 
 might have regarded it as an unkind visitation of Provi- 
 dence that the results of her lifetime of effort in an im- 
 portant art should have been of such slight interest to her 
 
176 The Bent Twig 
 
 daughter, and should have served, during the autumn under 
 consideration, chiefly as hints and suggestions for her 
 daughter's successful rival. 
 
 That she was Eleanor's successful rival, Sylvia had Mrs. 
 Draper's more than outspoken word. That lady openly 
 gloried in the impending defeat of Mrs. Hubert's machina- 
 tions to secure the Fiske money and position for Eleanor; 
 although she admitted that a man like Jerry had his two 
 opposing sides, and that he was quite capable of being 
 attracted by two such contrasting types as Sylvia and 
 Eleanor. She informed Sylvia indeed that the present wife 
 of Colonel Fiske — his third, by the way — had evidently been 
 in her youth a girl of Eleanor's temperament. It was more 
 than apparent, however, that in the case of the son, Sylvia's 
 "type" was in the ascendent; but it must be set down to 
 Sylvia's credit that the circumstance of successful competi- 
 tion gave her no satisfaction. She often heartily wished 
 Eleanor out of it. She could never meet the candid sweet- 
 ness of the other's eyes without a qualm of discomfort, and 
 she suffered acutely under Eleanor's gentle amiability. 
 
 Once or twice when Mrs. Draper was too outrageously 
 late at an appointment for tea, the two girls gave her up, and 
 leaving the house, walked side by side back across the 
 campus, Sylvia quite aware of the wondering surmise which 
 followed their appearance together. On these occasions, 
 Eleanor talked with more freedom than in Mrs. Draper's 
 presence, always in the quietest, simplest way, of small 
 events and quite uninteresting minor matters in her life, or 
 the life of the various household pets, of which she seemed 
 extremely fond. Sylvia could not understand why, when 
 she bade her good-bye at the driveway leading into the 
 Hubert house, she should feel anything but a rather con- 
 temptuous amusement for the other's insignificance, but 
 the odd fact was that her heart swelled with inexplicable 
 warmth. Once she yielded to this foolish impulse, and felt 
 a quivering sense of pleasure at the sudden startled re- 
 sponsiveness with which Eleanor returned a kiss, clinging 
 to her as though she were an older, stronger sister. 
 
Playing with Matches 177 
 
 One dark late afternoon in early December, Sylvia waited 
 alone in the candle-lighted shrine, neither Eleanor nor her 
 hostess appearing. After five o'clock she started home alone 
 along the heavily shaded paths of the campus, as dim as 
 caves in the interval before the big, winking sputtering arc- 
 lights were flashed on. She walked swiftly and lightly 
 as was her well-trained habit, and before she knew it, was 
 close upon a couple sauntering in very close proximity. 
 With the surety of long practice Sylvia instantly diagnosed 
 them as a college couple indulging in what was knowi* 
 euphemistically as " campus work," and prepared to pass 
 them with the slight effect of scorn for philanderings which 
 she always managed to throw into her high-held iiead and 
 squarely swinging shoulders. But as she came up closer, 
 walking noiselessly in the dusk, she recognized an eccentric, 
 flame-colored plume just visible in the dim light, hanging 
 down from the girl's hat — and stopped short, filled with a 
 rush of very complicated feelings. The only flame-colored 
 plume in La Chance was owned and worn by Eleanor 
 Hubert, and if she were out sauntering amorously in the 
 twilight, with whom could she be but Jerry Fiske, — and 
 that meant — Sylvia's pangs of conscience about supplant- 
 ing Eleanor were swept away by a flood of anger as at a 
 defeat. She could not make out the girl's companion, be- 
 yond the fact that he was tall and wore a long, loose over- 
 coat. Jerry was tall and wore a long, loose overcoat. Sylvia 
 walked on, slowly now, thoroughly aroused, quite unaware 
 of the inconsistency of her mental attitude. She felt a ris- 
 ing tide of heat. She had, she told herself, half a notion 
 to step forward and announce her presence to the couple, 
 whose pace as the Hubert house was approached became 
 slower and slower. 
 
 But then, as they stood for a moment at the entrance of 
 the Hubert driveway, the arc-lights blazed up all over the 
 campus at once and she saw two things : one was that 
 Eleanor was walking very close to her companion, with her 
 arm through his, and her little gloved fingers covered by 
 his hand, and next that he was not Jerry Fiske at all, but 
 
178 The Bent Twig 
 
 the queer, countrified " freak •' assistant in chemistry with 
 whom Eleanor, since Jerry's defection, had more or less 
 masked her abandonment. 
 
 At the same moment the two started guiltily apart, and 
 Sylvia halted, thinking they had discovered her. But it was 
 Mrs. Hubert whom they had seen, advancing from the other 
 direction, and making no pretense that she was not in 
 search of an absent daughter. She bore down upon the 
 couple, murmured a very brief greeting to the man, accom- 
 panied by a faint inclination of her well-hatted head, drew 
 Eleanor's unresisting hand inside her arm, and walked her 
 briskly into the house. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 MRS. MARSHALL STICKS TO HER PRINCIPLES 
 
 During the autumn and early winter it not only hap- 
 pened unfortunately that the quartet played altogether too 
 much Haydn, but that Sylvia's father, contrary to his 
 usual custom, was away from home a great deal. The 
 State University had arrived at that stage of its career when, 
 if its rapidly increasing needs and demands for State money 
 were to be recognized by the Legislature, it must knit itself 
 more closely to the rest of the State system of education, 
 have a more intimate affiliation with the widely scattered 
 public high schools, and weld into some sort of homegeneity 
 their extremely various standards of scholarship. This was 
 a delicate undertaking, calling for much tact and an accurate 
 knowledge of conditions in the State, especially in the rural 
 districts. Professor Marshall's twenty years of popularity 
 with the more serious element of the State University 
 students (that popularity which meant so little to Sylvia, 
 and which she so ignored) had given him a large acquaint- 
 ance among the class which it was necessary to reach. He 
 knew the men who at the University had been the digs, 
 and jays, and grinds, and who were now the prosperous 
 farmers, the bankers, the school-trustees, the leading men 
 in their communities ; and his geniality, vivacity, and knack 
 for informal public speaking made him eminently fitted to 
 represent the University in the somewhat thankless task of 
 coaxing and coercing backward communities to expend the 
 necessary money and effort to bring their schools up to the 
 State University standard. 
 
 If all this had happened a few years sooner, he undoubt- 
 edly would have taken Sylvia with him on many of these 
 journeys into remote corners of the State, but Sylvia had 
 
 179 
 
180 The Bent Twig 
 
 her class-work to attend to, and the Professor shared to 
 the fullest extent the academic prejudice against parents 
 who broke in upon the course of their children's regular 
 instruction by lawless and casual junketings. Instead, it 
 was Judith who frequently accompanied him, Judith who 
 was now undergoing that home-preparation for the Uni- 
 versity through which Sylvia had passed, and who, since 
 her father was her principal instructor, could carry on her 
 studies wherever he happened to be; as well as have the 
 stimulating experience of coming in contact with a wide 
 variety of people and conditions. It is possible that Pro- 
 fessor Marshall's sociable nature not only shrank from the 
 solitude which his wife would have endured with cheerful- 
 ness, but that he also wished to take advantage of this 
 opportunity to come in closer touch with his second daugh- 
 ter, for whose self-contained and occasionally insensitive 
 nature he had never felt the instinctive understanding he 
 had for Sylvia's moods. It is certain that the result v/as a 
 better feeling between the two than had existed before. 
 During the long hours of jolting over branch railroads back 
 to remote settlements, or waiting at cheerless junctions for 
 delayed trains, or gaily eating impossible meals at extraor- 
 dinary country hotels, the ruddy, vigorous father, now grow- 
 ing both gray and stout, and the tall, slender, darkly hand- 
 some girl of fifteen, were cultivating more things than 
 history and mathematics and English literature. The most 
 genuine feeling of comradeship sprang up between the two 
 dissimilar natures, a feeling so strong and so warm that 
 Sylvia, in addition to her other emotional complications, felt 
 occasionally a faint pricking of jealousy at seeing her pri- 
 macy with her father usurped. 
 
 A further factor in her temporary feeling of alienation 
 from him was the mere physical fact that she saw him much 
 less frequently and that he had nothing like his usual inti- 
 mate knowledge of her comings and goings. And finally, 
 Lawrence, now a too rapidly growing and delicate lad of 
 eleven, had a series of bronchial colds which kept his 
 mother much occupied with his care. As far as her family 
 
Mrs. Marshall Sticks to Her Principles 181 
 
 was concerned, Sylvia was thus left more alone than ever 
 before, and although she had been trained to too delicate 
 and high a personal pride to attempt the least concealment 
 of her doings, it was not without relief that she felt that 
 her parents had but a very superficial knowledge of the ex- 
 tent and depth to which she was becoming involved in her 
 new relations. She herself shut her eyes as much as possible 
 to the rate at which she was progressing towards a destina- 
 tion rapidly becoming more and more imperiously visible; 
 and consciously intoxicated herself with the excitements 
 and fatigues of her curiously double life of intellectual 
 effort in classes and her not very skilful handling of the 
 shining and very sharp-edged tools of flirtation. 
 
 But this ambiguous situation was suddenly clarified by 
 the unexpected call upon Mrs. Marshall, one day about the 
 middle of December, of no less a person than Mrs. Jermain 
 Fiske, Sr., wife of the Colonel, and Jerry's stepmother. 
 Sylvia happened to be in her room when the shining car 
 drove up the country road before the Marshall house, 
 stopped at the gate in the osage-orange hedge, and dis- 
 charged the tall, stooping, handsomely dressed lady in rich 
 furs, who came with a halting step up the long path to the 
 front door. Although Sylvia had never seen Mrs. Fiske, 
 Mrs. Draper's gift for satiric word-painting had made het 
 familiar with some items of her appearance, and it was* 
 with a rapidly beating heart that she surmised the identity 
 of the distinguished caller. But although her quick intel- 
 ligence perceived the probable significance of the appear- 
 ance, and although she felt a distinct shock at the seriousnr s» 
 of having Jerry's stepmother call upon her, she was diverted 
 from these capital considerations of such vital importance 
 to her life by the trivial consideration which had, so fre- 
 quently during the progress of this affair, absorbed her mind 
 to the exclusion of everything else — the necessity for keep- 
 ing up appearances. If the Marshall tradition had made 
 it easier for her to achieve this not very elevated goal, she 
 might have perceived more clearly where her rapid feet 
 were taking her. Just now, for example, there was nothing 
 
1 82 The Bent Twig 
 
 in her consciousness but the embittered knowledge that there, 
 was no maid to open the door when Mrs. Fiske should ring, 
 
 She was a keen-witted modern young woman of eighteen, 
 with a well-trained mind stored with innumerable facts of 
 science, but it must be admitted that at this moment she 
 reverted with passionate completeness to quite another type. 
 She would have given — she would have given a year of her 
 life — one of her fingers — all her knowledge of history — 
 anything! if the Marshalls had possessed what she felt any 
 decently prosperous grocer's family ought to possess — a 
 well-appointed maid in the hall to open the door, take 
 Mrs. Fiske's card, show her into the living-room, and go 
 decently and in order to summon the mistress of the house. 
 Instead she saw with envenomed foresight what would hap- 
 pen. At the unusual sound of the bell, her mother, who 
 was playing dominoes with Lawrence in one of his con- 
 valescences, would open the door with her apron still on, 
 and her spectacles probably pushed up, rustic fashion, on 
 top of her head. And then their illustrious visitor, used 
 as of course she was to ceremony in social matters, would 
 not know whether this was the maid, or her hostess; and 
 Mrs. Marshall would frankly show her surprise at seeing 
 a richly dressed stranger on the doorstep, and would per- 
 haps think she had made a mistake in the house; and Mrs. 
 Fiske would not know whether to hand over the cards she 
 held ready in her whitely gloved fingers — in the interval 
 between the clanging shut of the gate and the tinkle of the 
 doorbell Sylvia endured a sick reaction against life, as an 
 altogether hateful and horrid affair. 
 
 As a matter of fact, nothing of all this took place. When 
 the bell rang, her mother called out a tranquil request to her 
 to go and open the door, and so it was Sylvia herself who 
 confronted the unexpected visitor, — Sylvia a little flurriec 1 
 and breathless, but ushering the guest into the house with 
 her usual graceful charm of manner. 
 
 She had none of this as a moment later she went rather 
 slowly upstairs to summon her mother. It occurred to her 
 that Mrs. Marshall might very reasonably be at a loss a? 
 
Mrs. Marshall Sticks to Her Principles 183 
 
 to the reason of this call. Indeed, she herself felt a sinking 
 alarm at the definiteness of the demonstration. What could 
 Mrs. Fiske have to say to Mrs. Marshall that would not 
 lead to some agitating crystallization of the dangerous solu- 
 tion which during the past months Mrs. Marshall's daughter 
 had been so industriously stirring up? Mrs. Marshall 
 showed the most open surprise at the announcement, " Mrs. 
 Colonel Fiske to see me? What in the world " she be- 
 gan, but after a glance at Sylvia's down-hung head and 
 twisting ringers, she stopped short, looking very grave, and 
 rose to go, with no more comments. 
 
 They went down the stairs in silence, tall mother and 
 tall daughter, both sobered, both frightened at what might 
 be in the other's mind, and at what might be before them, 
 and entered the low-ceilinged living-room together. A pale 
 woman, apparently as apprehensive as they, rose in a haste 
 that had almost some element of apology in it, and offered 
 her hand to Mrs. Marshall. " I'm Mrs. Fiske," she said 
 hurriedly, in a low voice, " Jerry's stepmother, you know. 
 I hope you won't mind my coming to see you. What a 
 perfectly lovely home you have ! I was wishing I could 
 just stay and stay in this room." She spoke rapidly with 
 the slightly incoherent haste of shy people overcoming their 
 weakness, and glanced alternately, with faded blue eyes, at 
 Sylvia and at her mother. In the end she remained stand- 
 ing, looking earnestly into Mrs. Marshall's face. That lady 
 now made a step forward and again put out her hand with 
 an impulsive gesture at which Sylvia wondered. She herself 
 had felt no attraction towards the thin, sickly woman who 
 had so little grace or security of manner. It was constantly 
 surprising Sylvia to discover how often people high in social 
 rank seemed to possess no qualifications for their position. 
 She always felt that she could have filled their places with 
 vastly more aplomb. 
 
 " I'm very glad to see you," said Mrs. Marshall in a 
 friendly tone. " Do sit down again. Sylvia, go and make 
 us some tea, won't you? Mrs. Fiske must be cold after 
 driving out here from town." 
 
184 The Bent Twig 
 
 When Sylvia came back ten minutes later, she found the 
 guest saying, " My youngest is only nine months old, and 
 he is having such a time with his teeth." 
 
 " Oh ! " thought Sylvia scornfully, pouring out the tea. 
 " She's that kind of a woman, is she ? " With the astonish- 
 ingly quick shifting of viewpoint of the young, she no longer 
 felt the least anxiety that her home, or even that she her- 
 self should make a good impression on this evidently quite 
 negligible person. Her anguish about the ceremony of 
 opening the door seemed years behind her. She examined 
 with care all the minutiae of the handsome, unindivid- 
 ualized costume of black velvet worn by their visitor, 
 but turned an absent ear to her talk, which brought out 
 various facts relating to a numerous family of young chil- 
 dren. " I have six living," said Mrs. Fiske, not meeting 
 Mrs. Marshall's eyes as she spoke, and stirring her tea 
 slowly, " I lost four at birth." 
 
 Sylvia was indeed slightly interested to learn through 
 another turn of the conversation that the caller, who looked 
 to her unsympathetic eyes any age at all, had been married 
 at eighteen, and that that was only thirteen years ago. 
 Sylvia thought she certainly looked older than thirty-one, 
 advanced though that age was. 
 
 The call passed with no noteworthy incidents beyond a 
 growing wonder in Sylvia's mind that the brilliant and 
 dashing old Colonel, after his other matrimonial experi- 
 ences, should have picked out so dull and colorless a wife. 
 She was not even pretty, not at all pretty, in spite of her 
 delicate, regular features and tall figure. Her hair was dry 
 and thin, her eyes lusterless, her complexion thick, with 
 brown patches on it, and her conversation was of a domes- 
 ticity unparalleled in Sylvia's experience. She seemed 
 oddly drawn to Mrs. Marshall, although that lady was now 
 looking rather graver than was her wont, and talked to her 
 of the overflowing Fiske nursery with a loquacity which was 
 evidently not her usual habit. Indeed, she said naively, as 
 she went away, that she had been much relieved to find Mrs. 
 Marshall so approachable. " One always thinks of Uni 
 
Mrs. Marshall Sticks to Her Principles 185 
 
 versity families as so terribly learned, you know," she said, 
 imputing to her hostess, with a child's tactlessness, an 
 absence of learning like her own. " 1 really dreaded to 
 come — I go out so little, you know — but Jerry and the 
 Colonel thought I ought, you know — and now I've really 
 enjoyed it — and if Miss Marshall will come, Jerry and the 
 Colonel will be quite satisfied. And so, of course, will I." 
 With which rather jerky valedictory she finally got herself 
 out of the house. 
 
 Sylvia looked at her mother inquiringly. " If I go 
 where ? " she asked. Something must have taken place 
 while she was out of the room getting the tea. 
 
 " She called to invite you formally to a Christmas house- 
 party at the Fiskes' place in Mercerton," said Mrs. Mar- 
 shall, noting smilelessly Sylvia's quick delight at the news. 
 "Oh, what have I got to wear!" cried the girl. Mrs. 
 Marshall said merely, " We'll see, we'll see," and without 
 discussing the matter further, went back to finish the inter- 
 rupted game with Lawrence. £ 
 
 But the next evening, when Professor Marshall returned 
 from his latest trip, the subject was taken up in a talk 
 between Sylvia and her parents which was more agitating 
 to them all than any other incident in their common life, 
 although it was conducted with a great effort for self- 
 control on all sides. Judith and Lawrence had gone up- 
 stairs to do their lessons, and Professor Marshall at once 
 broached the subject by saying with considerable hesita- 
 tion, " Svlvia — well — how about this house-party at the 
 Fiskes'?" 
 
 Sylvia was on the defense in a moment. " Well, how 
 about it?" she repeated. 
 
 " I hope you don't feel like going." 
 
 " But I do, very much ! " returned Sylvia, tingling at the 
 first clear striking of the note of disapproval she had felt 
 for so many weeks like an undertone in her life. As her 
 father said nothing more, biting his nails and looking at 
 her uncertainly, she added in the accent which fitted the 
 words, " Why shouldn't L? " 
 
1 86 The Bent Twig 
 
 He took a turn about the room and glanced at his wife, 
 who was hemming a napkin very rapidly, her hands trem- 
 bling a little. She looked up at him warningly, and he 
 waited an instant before speaking. Finally he brought out 
 with the guarded tone of one forcing himself to moderation 
 of speech, " Well, the Colonel is an abominable old black- 
 guard in public life, and his private reputation is no 
 better." 
 
 Sylvia flushed. " I don't see what that has to do with 
 his son. It's not fair to judge a young man by his father — 
 or by anything but what he is himself — you yourself are 
 always saying that, if the trouble is that the father is poor 
 or ignorant or something else tiresome." 
 
 Professor Marshall said cautiously, " From what I hear, 
 I gather that the son in this case is a good deal like his 
 father." 
 
 " No, he isn't! " cried Sylvia quickly. " He may have 
 been wild when he first came up to the University, but he's 
 all right now ! " She spoke as with authoritative and inti- 
 mate knowledge of all the details of Fiske, Jr.'s, life. " And 
 anyhow, I don't see what difference it makes, what the 
 Colonel's reputation is. I'm just going up there with a 
 lot of other young people to have a good time. Eleanor 
 Hubert's invited, and three or four other society girls. I 
 don't see why we need to be such a lot more particular than 
 other people. We never are when it's a question of people 
 being dirty, or horrid, other ways ! How about Cousin 
 Parnelia and Mr. Reinhardt? I guess the Fiskes would 
 laugh at the idea of people who have as many queer folks 
 around as we do, thinking they aren't good enough." 
 
 Professor Marshall sat down across the table from his 
 daughter and looked at her. His face was rather ruddier 
 than usual and he swallowed hard. " Why, Sylvia, the point 
 is this. It's evident, from what your mother tells me of 
 Mrs. Fiske's visit, that going to this house party means 
 more in your case than with the other girls. Mrs. Fiske 
 came all the way to La Chance to invite you, and from 
 what she said about you and her stepson, it was evident 
 
M r s. Marshall Sticks to Her Principles 187 
 
 that she and the Colonel " He stopped, opening his 
 
 hands nervously. 
 
 " I don't know how they think they know anything about 
 it," returned Sylvia with dignity, though she felt an inward 
 qualm at this news. " Jerry's been ever so nice to me and 
 given me a splendid time, but that's all there is to it. Lots 
 of fellows do that for lots of girls, and nobody makes such a 
 fuss about it." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall laid down her work and went to the heart 
 of the matter. " Sylvia, you don't like Mr. Fiske? " 
 
 " Yes, I do ! " said Sylvia defiantly, qualifying this state- 
 ment an instant later by, " Quite well, anyhow. Why 
 shouldn't I?" 
 
 Her mother assumed this rhetorical question to be a 
 genuine one and answered it accordingly. " Why, he doesn't 
 seem at all like the type of young man who would be liked 
 by a girl with your tastes and training. I shouldn't think 
 you'd find him interesting or " 
 
 Sylvia broke out : " Oh, you don't know how sick I get 
 of being so everlastingly high-brow! What's the use of 
 it? People don't think any more of you ! They think less ! 
 You don't have any better time — nor so good! And why 
 should you and Father always be so down on anybody that's 
 rich, or dresses decently? Jerry's all right — if his clothes 
 do fit!" 
 
 " Do you really know him at all ? " asked her father 
 pointedly. 
 
 " Of course I do — I know he's very handsome, and 
 awfully good-natured, and he's given me the only good 
 time I've had at the University. You just don't know how 
 ghastly last year was to me ! I'm awfully grateful to Jerry, 
 and that's all there is to it ! " 
 
 Before this second disclaimer, her parents were silent 
 again, Sylvia looking down at her lap, picking at her fingers. 
 Her expression was that of a naughty child — that is, with 
 a considerable admixture of unhappiness in her wilfulness. 
 
 By this time Professor Marshall's expression was clearly 
 one of downright anger, controlled by violent effort. Mrs,, 
 
1 88 The Bent Twig 
 
 Marshall was the first one to speak. She went over to 
 Sylvia and laid her hand on her shoulder. " Well, Sylvia 
 
 dear, I'm sorry about " She stopped and began again. 
 
 "You know, dear, that we always believed in letting our 
 children, as far as possible, make their own decisions, and 
 we won't go back on that now. But I want you to under- 
 stand that that puts a bigger responsibility on you than on 
 most girls to make the right decisions. We trust you — your 
 good sense and right feeling — to keep you from being 
 carried away by unworthy motives into a false position. 
 And, what's just as important, we trust to your being clear- 
 headed enough to see what your motives really are." 
 
 " I don't see," began Sylvia, half crying, " why some- 
 thing horrid should come up just because I want a good 
 time — other girls don't have to be all the time so solemn, 
 and thinking about things ! " 
 
 " There'd be more happy women if they did," remarked 
 Mrs. Marshall, adding : " I don't believe we'd better talk 
 any more about this now. You know how we feel, and 
 you must take that into consideration. You think it 
 over." 
 
 She spoke apparently with her usual calmness, but as she 
 finished she put her arms about the girl's neck and kissed 
 the flushed cheeks. Caresses from Mrs. Marshall were 
 unusual, and, even through her tense effort to resist, Sylvia 
 was touched. " You're just worrying about nothing at 
 all, Mother," she said, trying to speak lightly, but escaped 
 from a possible rejoinder by hurriedly gathering up her 
 text-books and following Judith and Lawrence upstairs. 
 
 Her father and mother confronted each other. " Well! " 
 said Professor Marshall hotly, " of all the weak, incon- 
 clusive, modern parents — is this what we've come to ? " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall took up her sewing and said in the tone 
 which always quelled her husband, " Yes, this is what we've 
 come to." 
 
 His heat abated at once, though he weiit on combatively, 
 " Oh, I know what you mean, reasonable authority and not 
 tyranny and all that — yes, I believe in it — of course — but 
 
Mrs. Marshall Sticks to Her Principles 189 
 
 this goes beyond " he ended. " Is there or is there not 
 
 such a thing as parental authority ? " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall answered with apparent irrelevance, " You 
 remember what Cavour said?" 
 
 Good Heaven ! No, I don't remember ! " cried Pro- 
 fessor Marshall, with an impatience which might have been 
 Sylvia's. 
 
 " He said, ' Any idiot can rule by martial law/ " 
 
 " Yes, of course, that theory is all right, but " 
 
 " If a theory is all right, it ought to be acted upon." 
 
 Professor Marshall cried out in exasperation, " But see 
 here, Barbara — here is a concrete fact — our daughter — our 
 precious Sylvia — is making a horrible mistake — and because 
 of a theory we mustn't reach out a hand to pull her back." 
 
 " We can't pull her back by force," said his wife. " She's 
 eighteen years old, and she has the habit of independent 
 thought. We can't go back on that now." 
 
 " We don't seem to be pulling her back by force or in 
 any other way ! We seem to be just weakly sitting back and 
 letting her do exactly as she pleases." 
 
 " If during all these years we've had her under our in- 
 fluence we haven't given her standards that " began the 
 
 mother. 
 
 " You heard how utterly she repudiated our influence and 
 our standards and " 
 
 " Oh, what she says — it's what she's made of that'll 
 count — that's the only thing that'll count when a crisis 
 comes " 
 
 Professor Marshall interrupted hastily : " When a crisis f 
 What do you call this but a crisis — she's like a child about 
 to put her hand into the fire." 
 
 " I trust in the training she's had to give her firm enough 
 nerves to pull it out again when she feels the heat," said 
 her mother steadily. 
 
 Professor Marshall sprang up, with clenched hands, tall, 
 powerful, helpless. " It's outrageous, Barbara, for all your 
 talk ! We're responsible ! We ought to shut her up under 
 lock and key " 
 
190 The Bent Twig 
 
 " So many girls have been deterred from a mistake by 
 being shut up under lock and key ! " commented Mrs. Mar- 
 shall, with an ironical accent. 
 
 " But, good Heavens ! Think of her going to that old 
 scoundrel's — how can I look people in the face, when they 
 all know my opinion of him — how I've opposed his being a 
 Trustee and " 
 
 " Ah, ! " remarked his wife significantly, " that's 
 
 the trouble, is it?" 
 
 Professor Marshall flushed, and for a moment made no 
 rejoinder. Then, shifting his ground, he said bitterly : " I 
 think you're forgetting that I've had a disillusionizing ex- 
 perience in this sort of thing which you were spared. You 
 forget that Sylvia is closely related to my sister." 
 
 " I don't forget that — but I don't forget either that Sylvia 
 has had a very different sort of early life from poor Vic- 
 toria's. She has breathed pure air always — I trust her to 
 recognize its opposite." 
 
 He made an impatient gesture of exasperation. " But 
 she'll be in it— it'll be too late " 
 
 " It's never too late." She spoke quickly, but her un- 
 wavering opposition began to have in it a note of tension. 
 
 " She'll be caught — she'll have to go on because it'll be 
 too hard to get out •" 
 
 " The same vigor that makes her resist us now will give 
 her strength then — she's not Eleanor Hubert." 
 
 Her husband burst out upon her in a frightened, angry 
 rush of reproach : " Barbara — how can you ! You make me 
 turn cold ! This isn't a matter of talk — of theories — we're 
 confronted with " 
 
 She faced him down with unflinching, unhappy eyes. 
 " Oh, of course if we are to believe in liberty only so long 
 as everything goes smoothly " She tried to add some- 
 thing to this, but her voice broke and she was silent. Her 
 husband looked at her, startled at her pallor and her 
 trembling lips, immensely moved by the rare discomposure 
 of that countenance. She said in a whisper, her voice 
 shaking, " Our little Sylvia — my first baby " 
 
Mrs. Marshall Sticks to Her Principles 191 
 
 He flung himself down in the chair beside her and took 
 her hand. " It's damnable ! " he said. 
 
 His wife answered slowly, with long pauses. " No — it's 
 all right — it's part of the whole thing — of life. When you 
 bring children into the world — when you live at all — you 
 must accept the whole. It's not fair to rebel — to rebel at the 
 pain — when " 
 
 " Good God, it's not our pain I'm shrinking from ! " 
 
 he broke out. 
 
 " No — oh no — that would be easy " 
 
 With an impulse of yearning, and protection, and need, he 
 leaned to put his arms around her, his graying beard against 
 her pale cheek. They sat silent for a long time. 
 
 In the room above them, Sylvia bent over a problem in 
 trigonometry, and rapidly planned a new evening-dress. 
 After a time she got up and opened her box of treasures 
 from Aunt Victoria. The yellow chiffon would do — Jerry 
 had said he liked yellow — she could imagine how Mrs. 
 Hubert would expend herself on Eleanor's toilets for this 
 great occasion — if she could only hit on a design which 
 wouldn't look as though it came out of a woman's maga- 
 zine — something really sophisticated — she could cover her 
 old white slippers with that bit of gold-tissue off Aunt 
 Victoria's hat — she shook out the chiffon and laid it over 
 the bed, looking intently at its gleaming, shimmering folds 
 and thinking, " How horrid of Father and Mother to go 
 and try to spoil everything so ! " She went back to the 
 problem in trigonometry and covered a page with figures, 
 at which she gazed unseeingly. She was by no means happy. 
 She went as far as the door, meaning to go down and kiss 
 her parents good-night, but turned back. They were not a 
 family for surface demonstrations. If she could not yield 
 her point — She began to undress rapidly, turned out the 
 light, opened the windows, and sprang into bed. " If they 
 only wouldn't take things so awfully solemnly!" she said 
 to herself petulantly. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 SYLVIA SKATES MERRILY ON THIN ICE 
 
 The design for the yellow chiffon dropped almost lit- 
 «rally at Sylvia's feet the next day, on the frontispiece of 
 a theatrical magazine left by another passenger in the street- 
 car in which she chanced to be riding. Sylvia pounced on 
 it with instant recognition of its value. It was " different " 
 and yet not " queer," it was artistic and yet fashionable, 
 and with its flowing lines it would not be hard to construct. 
 It was the creation of a Parisian boulevard actress, known 
 widely for her costumes, for the extraordinary manner in 
 which she dressed her hair, and for the rapidity of her 
 succeeding emotional entanglements. Her name m^ant 
 nothing to Sylvia. She tore out the page, folded it, and pu* 
 it for safe-keeping between the pages of her text-book o? 
 Logic. 
 
 That afternoon she began work on it, running the long 
 seams up on the machine with whirring rapidity, acutely 
 aware of her mother's silent, uncommenting passage back 
 and forth through the sewing-room. With an impulse of 
 secrecy which she did not analyze, she did the trying-on 
 in her own room, craning and turning about before her 
 own small mirror. She knew that her mother would think 
 the dress was cut too low, although, as she told herself, 
 looking with complacency at the smooth, white, exquisitely 
 fine-grained skin thus disclosed, it wasn't nearly as low cut. 
 as the dresses Eleanor Hubert wore to any little dance. 
 She had long felt it to be countrified in the extreme to 
 wear the mild compromises towards evening-dress which 
 she and most of the State University girls adopted, as 
 compared with the frankly disclosing gowns of the " town 
 girls " whose clothes came from Chicago and New York. 
 
 192 
 
Sylvia Skates Merrily on Thin Ice 193 
 
 She knew from several outspoken comments that Jerry 
 admired Eleanor's shoulders, and as she looked at her 
 own, she was not sorry that he was to compare them to 
 those of the other girl. 
 
 After this brief disposal of the question, she gave it no 
 more thought, working with desperate speed to complete 
 all her preparations. She had but a week for these, a 
 week filled with incessant hurry, since she was naturally 
 unwilling to ask help of her mother. Judith was off again 
 with her father. 
 
 This absence greatly facilitated the moment of Sylvia's 
 departure, which she had dreaded. But, as it happened, 
 there was only her mother to whom to say the rather 
 difficult good-bye, her mother who could be counted on 
 never to make a scene. 
 
 About the middle of the morning of the twenty-third 
 of December, she came down the stairs, her hand-bag in 
 her hand, well-hatted, well-gloved, freshly veiled, having 
 achieved her usual purpose of looking to the casual eye like 
 the daughter of a wealthy man. She had put all of her 
 autumn allowance for dress into a set of furs, those being 
 something which no ingenuity could evolve at home. The 
 rest of her outfit, even to the odd little scarlet velvet hat, 
 with its successful and modish touch of the ugly, was the 
 achievement of her own hands. Under its absurd and 
 fashionable brim, her fresh face shone out, excessively 
 pretty and very young. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall kissed her good-bye gently, not smiling at 
 Sylvia's attempt to lighten the moment's seriousness by 
 saying playfully, " Now, Mother, don't you be such an old 
 worrier ! " But she said nothing " uncomfortable," for 
 which Sylvia was very grateful. 
 
 She had no sooner embarked upon the big Interurban 
 trolley-car which was to take her to Mercerton than her 
 attention was wholly diverted from uneasy reflections by 
 the unexpected appearance of two of the house-party 
 guests. Eleanor Hubert, every detail of her complicated 
 costume exquisitely finished as a Meissonier painting, sat 
 
194 The Bent Twig 
 
 looking out of the window rather soberly, and so intently 
 that she saw neither Sylvia's entrance, nor, close upon her 
 heels, that of a florid- faced, rather heavily built young 
 man with a large, closely shaven jaw, who exclaimed joy- 
 fully at seeing Miss Marshall, and appropriated with ready 
 assurance the other half of her seat. 
 
 " Now, this is surely dandy ! You're going to the house- 
 party too, of course ! " he cried, unbuttoning and throwing 
 back his bright tan overcoat. " Here's where I cut Jerry 
 out all right, all right ! Wait a minute ! How much time 
 have we?" He appealed to the conductor as though a 
 matter of life and death depended on the answer. " Four 
 
 minutes? — here goes " He sprang to his feet, dashed 
 
 out of the car and disappeared, leaving his coat beside 
 Sylvia. It was evidently quite new, of the finest material, 
 with various cunningly stitched seams and straps disposed 
 upon its surface in a very knowing way. Sylvia noted out 
 of the corner of her eye that the address of the maker, 
 woven into the neckband, was on Fifth Avenue, New York. 
 
 The four minutes passed — and the conductor approached 
 Sylvia. " Your friend's coming back, ain't he ? " he asked, 
 with the tolerant, good-natured respect natural for the 
 vagaries of expensively dressed young men who wore 
 overcoats made on Fifth Avenue. Sylvia, who had met 
 the young man but once before, when Jerry had introduced 
 him as an old friend, was a little startled at having a casual 
 acquaintance so publicly affixed to her; but after an in- 
 stant's hesitation, in which she was reflecting that she 
 positively did not even remember her " friend's " name, she 
 answered, " Oh yes, yes, I suppose so — here he is now." 
 
 The young man bounded up on the back platform panting, 
 holding his hat on with one hand, a large box of candy in 
 the other. Sylvia glanced at the name on the cover. " You 
 didn't go all the way to Dutton's! " she cried. 
 
 He nodded, breathless, evidently proud of his feat, and 
 when he caught his breath enough to speak, explained, 
 *' Yepp, — it's the only place in this bum town where you 
 can get Alligretti's, and they're the only kind that 're fit to 
 
Sylvia Skates Merrily on Thin Ice 195 
 
 eat." He tore open the box as he spoke, demolishing with 
 ruthless and practised hands the various layers of fine 
 paper and gold cord which wrapped it about, and presented 
 the rich layer of black chocolates to Sylvia. " Get a move 
 on and take one," he urged cordially ; " I pretend I buy 
 'em for the girls, but I'm crazy about 'em myself." He 
 bit into one with an air of prodigious gusto, took off his 
 hat, wiped his forehead, and looked at Sylvia with a relish 
 as frank as his enjoyment of the bonbon. "That's a cork- 
 ing hat you got on," he commented. " Most girls would 
 look like the old Harry with that dangling thing in their 
 eyes, but you can carry it off all right." 
 
 Sylvia's face assumed a provocative expression. " Did 
 you ever make that remark to any other girl, I wonder ? " 
 she said reflectively. 
 
 He laughed aloud, eying her with appreciation, and clap- 
 ping another large black chocolate into v-his mouth. " You're 
 the prompt article, aren't you ? " he said. He hitched him- 
 self over and leaned towards her. " Something tells me I'm 
 goin' to have a good time at this house-party, what ? " 
 
 Sylvia stiffened. She did not like his sitting so close to 
 her, she detected now on his breath a faint odor of alcohol, 
 and she was afraid that Eleanor Hubert would think her 
 lacking in dignity. She regretted having succumbed to the 
 temptation to answer him in his own tone; but, under her 
 bravado, she was really somewhat apprehensive about this 
 expedition, and she welcomed a diversion. Besides, the 
 voluble young man showed not the slightest sign of noting 
 her attempt to rebuff him, and she found quite unavailing 
 all her efforts to change the current of the talk, the loud, 
 free-and-easy, personally admiring note of which had the 
 effect on her nerves of a draught of raw spirits. She did 
 not enjoy the taste while it was being administered, but the 
 effect was certainly stimulating, not to say exciting, and 
 absorbed her attention so entirely that uncomfortable self- 
 questionings were impossible. She was also relieved to note 
 that, although the young man flung himself about in the 
 public conveyance with the same unceremonious self- 
 
196 The Bent Twig 
 
 assurance that he would have shown in a lady's drawing- 
 room, Eleanor Hubert, at the other end of the car, was 
 apparently unaware of his presence. Perhaps she too had 
 some grounds for uncomfortable thought, for through- 
 out the hour's journey she continued to stare unseeingly 
 out of the window, or to look down fixedly and rather sadly 
 at her gloved hands. 
 
 Even through the confusion of her own ideas and plans, 
 and the need for constant verbal self-defense against the 
 encroaching familiarity of her companion, the, notion flitted 
 across Sylvia's mind that probably Eleanor was thinking of 
 the young assistant in chemistry. How queer and topsy- 
 turvy everything was, she reflected, as she bandied lively 
 words with the lively young man at her side, continuing to 
 eat his candies, although their rich, cloying taste had al- 
 ready palled on her palate — here was Mrs. Hubert throw- 
 ing Eleanor at Jerry's head, when what Eleanor wanted 
 was that queer, rough-neck freak of an assistant prof ; and 
 here were Jerry's parents making such overtures to Sylvia, 
 when what she wanted — she didn't know what she did 
 want. Yes, she did, she wanted a good time, which was 
 somehow paradoxically hard to attain. Something always 
 kept spoiling it, — half the time something intangible inside 
 her own mind. She gave the candy-box a petulant push. 
 '* Oh, take it away ! " she said impatiently ; " I've eaten so 
 many now, it makes me sick to look at them ! " 
 
 The donor showed no resentment at this ingratitude, 
 holding the box on his knees, continuing to help himself 
 to its contents with unabated zest, and to keep the conver- 
 sation up to concert pitch : " the only girl I ever saw 
 
 who'd stop eating Alligretti's while there was one left — 
 another proof that there's only one of you — I said right off, 
 that any co-ed that Jerry Fiske would take to must be a 
 
 unique specimen " He did not further specify ths 
 
 period to which he referred by his " right off," but the 
 phrase gave Sylvia a tingling, uncomfortable sense of having 
 been for some time the subject of speculation in circles of 
 which she knew nothing. 
 
Sylvia Skates Merrily on Thin Ice 197 
 
 They were near Mercerton now, and as she gathered her 
 wraps together she found that she was bracing herself as 
 for an ordeal of some sort. The big car stopped, a little 
 way out of town, in front of a long driveway bordered 
 with maple-trees; she and the young man descended from 
 one end-platform and Eleanor Hubert from the other, into 
 the midst of loud and facetious greetings from the young 
 people who had come down to meet them. Jerry was there, 
 very stalwart, his white sweater stretched over his broad 
 chest. All the party carried skates, which flashed like 
 silver in the keen winter sun. They explained with many 
 exclamations that they had been out on the ice, which was, 
 so the three new-comers were assured many times, " per- 
 fectly grand, perfectly dandy, simply elegant ! " 
 
 A big, many-seated sled came jingling down the driveway 
 now, driven by no less a personage than Colonel Fiske him- 
 self, wrapped in a fur-lined coat, his big mustache white 
 against the red of his strongly marked old face. With 
 many screams and shouts the young people got themselves 
 into this vehicle, the Colonel calling out in a masterful 
 roar above the din, " Miss Marshall's to come up here 
 with me ! " 
 
 He held in his pawing, excited horses with one hand 
 and helped Sylvia with the other. In the seat behind them 
 sat Jerry and Eleanor Hubert and the young man of the 
 trolley trip. Sylvia strained her ears to catch Jerry's intro- 
 duction of him to Eleanor, so that she might know his 
 name. It was too absurd not even to know his name! 
 But the high-pitched giggles and deeper shouts of mirth 
 from the rest of the party drowned out the words. As a 
 matter of fact, although he played for an instant a rather 
 important role in Sylvia's drama, she was destined never to 
 know his name. 
 
 The Colonel looked back over the sleighload, shouted 
 out " All aboard ! " loosened the reins, and snapped his 
 whip over the horses' heads. They leaped forward with 
 so violent a spring that the front runners of the long sled 
 were for an instant lifted into the air. Immediately all the 
 
198 The Bent Twig 
 
 joyful shrieking and screaming which had gone on before, 
 became as essential silence compared to the delighted up- 
 roar which now rose from the sleigh. The jerk had thrown 
 most of the young people over backward into each other's 
 arms and laps, where, in a writhing, promiscuous mass, they 
 roared and squealed out their joy in the joke, and made 
 ineffectual and not very determined efforts to extricate 
 themselves. Sylvia had seen the jerk coming and saved 
 herself by a clutch forward at the dashboard. Glancing 
 back, she saw that Jerry and Eleanor Hubert still sat up- 
 right; although the gay young man beside them had let 
 himself go backward into the waving arms and legs, and, 
 in a frenzy of high spirits, was shouting and kicking and 
 squirming with the others. It was a joke after his own 
 heart. 
 
 Colonel Fiske, so far from slackening his pace to help 
 his young guests out of their predicament, laughed loudly 
 and cracked his whip over the horses' ears. They went up 
 the long, curving driveway like a whirlwind, and drew up 
 under the porte-cochere of a very large brick-and-stone 
 house with another abrupt jerk which upset those in the 
 sleigh who had succeeded in regaining their seats. Pande- 
 monium broke out again, in the midst of which Sylvia saw 
 that Mrs. Fiske had come to the doorway and stood in it 
 with a timid smile. The Colonel did not look at her, Jerry 
 nodded carelessly to her as he passed in, and of all the 
 disheveled, flushed, and laughing young people who 
 crowded past her into the house, only Sylvia and Eleanor 
 recognized her existence. The others went past her with- 
 out a glance, exclaimed at the lateness of the hour, cried 
 out that they must go and " fix up " for lunch, and ran 
 upstairs, filling the house with their voices. Sylvia heard 
 one girl cry to another, u Oh, I've had such a good time ! 
 I've hollered till I'm hoarse ! " 
 
 After luncheon, a meal at which more costly food was 
 served than Sylvia had ever before seen, Jerry suggested 
 between puffs of the cigarette he was lighting that they have 
 a game of billiards. Most of the young people trooped off 
 
Sylvia Skates Merrily on Thin Ice 199 
 
 after him into the billiard-roc n, but Sylvia, after a mo- 
 ment's hesitation, lingered ne^' the big wood-fire in the 
 hall, unwilling to admit that she had never seen a bil- 
 liard table. She made a pretext of staying to talk to 
 Mrs. Fiske, who sat stooping her tall figure forward in a 
 chair too small for her. Sylvia looked at this ungraceful 
 attitude with strong disapproval. What she thought was 
 that such inattention to looks was perfectly inexcusable. 
 What she said was, in a very gracious voice : " What a 
 beautiful home you have, Mrs. Fiske! How wonderfully 
 happy you must be in it." 
 
 The other woman started a little at being addressed, and 
 looked around vaguely at the conventional luxury of the 
 room, with its highly polished floors, its huge rich rugs, its 
 antlers on the wall, and its deeply upholstered leather 
 chairs. When Sylvia signified her intention of continuing 
 the talk by taking a seat beside the fire, Mrs. Fiske roused 
 herself to the responsibility of entertaining the young guest. 
 After some futile attempts at conversation in the abstract, 
 she discharged this responsibility through the familiar ex- 
 pedient of the family photograph album. With this be- 
 tween them, the two women were able to go through the 
 required form of avoiding silences. Sylvia was fearfully 
 bored by the succession of unknown faces, and utterly un- 
 able to distinguish, in her hostess* somewhat disconnected 
 talk, between the different sets of the Colonel's children. 
 " This one is Stanley, Jermain's brother, who died when 
 he was a baby," the dull voice droned on ; " and this is 
 Mattie in her wedding dress." 
 
 " Oh, I didn't know Jerry had a married sister," mur- 
 mured Sylvia indifferently, glad of any comment to make. 
 
 " She's only his half-sister, a great deal older." 
 
 " But you haven't a daughter old enough to be married ? " 
 queried Sylvia, astonished. 
 
 " Oh — no — no. Mattie is the daughter of the Colonel's 
 first wife." 
 
 " Oh," said Sylvia awkwardly, remembering now that 
 Mrs. Draper had spoken of the Colonel's several mar- 
 
200 The Bent Twig 
 
 riages. She added to explain her question, " I'd forgotten 
 that Jerry's mother was the Colonel's second wife and not 
 his first." 
 
 " She was his third," breathed Mrs. Fiske, looking down 
 sX the pages of the album. 
 
 Sylvia repressed a " Good gracious ! " of startled re 
 pugnance to the topic, and said, to turn the conversation, 
 " Oh, who is that beautiful little girl with the fur cap ? " 
 
 " That is my picture," said Mrs. Fiske, " when I was 
 eighteen. I was married soon after. I've changed very 
 much since my marriage." Decidedly it was not Sylvia's 
 lucky day for finding topics of talk. She was wondering 
 how the billiard game was progressing, and was sorry she 
 had not risked going with the others. She was recalled 
 by Mrs. Fiske's saying with a soft earnestness, " I want you 
 to know, Miss Marshall, how I appreciate your kindness to 
 me!". 
 
 Sylvia looked at her in astonishment, half fearing that 
 she was being made fun of. 
 
 The other went on : " It was very nice of you — your 
 staying here to talk with me instead of going off with the 
 
 young people — the others don't often " She played 
 
 nervously with a gleaming pendant on a platinum chain 
 which hung over her flat chest, and went on : " I — you 
 have always seemed to me the very nicest of Jerry's friends 
 — and I shall never forget your mother's kindness. I 
 hope — I hope so much I shall see more of her. The 
 Colonel thinks so too — we've liked so much having him 
 like you." The incoherence of this did not prevent Sylvia's- 
 having a chillingly accurate grasp on its meaning. " It is 
 the Colonel's hope," she went on painfully, " to have Jerry 
 marry as soon as he graduates from the Law School. The 
 Colonel thinks that nothing is so good for a young man as 
 an early marriage — though of course Jerry isn't so very, 
 very young any more. He — the — Colonel is a great be- 
 liever in marriage " Her voice died away into mur- 
 murs. Her long, thin throat contracted in a visible swallow. 
 
 At this point only Sylvia's perception of the other's an- 
 
Sylvia Skates Merrily on Thin Ice 201 
 
 guished embarrassment prevented her from literally run- 
 ning away. As it was, they sat silent, fingering over the 
 pages of the album and gazing unseeingly at the various 
 set countenances which looked out at them with the un- 
 natural glare of the photographed. Sylvia was canvassing 
 desperately one possibility of escape after another when 
 the door opened, and the lively young man of the trolley- 
 car stepped in. He tiptoed to the fireplace with exaggerated 
 caution, looking theatrically over his shoulder for a pursuer. 
 Sylvia positively welcomed his appearance and turned to 
 him with a cordiality quite unlike the cool dignity with 
 which she had planned to treat him. He sat down on the 
 rug before the fire, very close to her feet, and looked up at 
 her, grinning. " Here's where I get another one on Jerry — 
 what?" he said, ignoring Mrs. Fiske. "Old Jerry thinks 
 he's playing such a wonderful game in there he can't tear 
 himself away — but there'll be something doing, I guess, 
 when he does come and finds where i* am!" He ha/1 par- 
 taken freely of the excellent white wine served at luncheon 
 (the first Sylvia had ever seen), and though entirely master 
 of his speech, was evidently even more uplifted than was 
 his usual hilarious wont. Sylvia looked down at him, and 
 across at the weak-faced woman opposite her, and had a 
 moment of wishing heartily she had never come. She 
 stood up impatiently, a movement which the young man 
 took to mean a threat of withdrawal. " Aw, don't go ! " he 
 pleaded, sprawling across the rug towards her. As she 
 turned away, he snatched laughingly at her skirts, crying 
 out, " Tag ! You're caught ! You're It ! " 
 
 At this moment Jerry Fiske appeared in the doorway. 
 He looked darkly at his friend's cheerful face and said 
 shortly: " Here, Stub— quit it! Get up out of that! " He 
 added to Sylvia, holding out his hand : " Come on, go skat- 
 ing with me. The ice is great." 
 
 " Are the others going ? " asked Sylvia. 
 
 " Oh yes, I suppose so," said Jerry, a trifle impatiently. 
 
 The young man on the floor scrambled up. " Here's one 
 that's going, whoever else don't," he announced. 
 
202 The Bent Twig 
 
 " Get yourself a girl, then," commanded Jerry, " and tell 
 the rest to come along. There's to be eats at four o'clock." 
 
 The ice was even as fine as it had been so redundantly 
 represented to Sylvia. Out of doors, leaning her supple, 
 exquisitely poised body to the wind as she veered like a 
 bird on her flying skates, Sylvia's spirits rebounded with 
 an instant reaction into enjoyment. She adored skating, 
 and she had in it, as in all active exercise, the half-wild 
 pleasure of one whose childhood is but a short time be- 
 hind her. Furthermore, her costume prepared for this 
 event (Mrs. Draper had told her of the little lake on the 
 Fiske estate) was one of her successes. It had been a 
 pale cream broadcloth of the finest texture, one of Aunt 
 Victoria's reception gowns, which had evidently been 
 spoiled by having coffee spilled down the front breadth. 
 Sylvia had had the bold notion of dyeing it scarlet and 
 making it over with bands of black plush (the best bits 
 from an outworn coat of her mother's). On her gleaming 
 red-brown hair she had perched a little red cap with a 
 small black wing on either side (one of Lawrence's pet 
 chickens furnished this), and she carried the muff which 
 belonged with her best set of furs. Thus equipped, she 
 looked like some impish, slender young Brunhilde, with her 
 two upspringing wings. The young men gazed at her with 
 the most unconcealed delight. As she skated very well, 
 better than any of the other girls, she felt, sweeping about 
 the pond in long, swift curves, that she was repaid for her 
 ignorance of billiards. 
 
 Jerry and the young man he called Stub were openly in 
 competition for her attention, highly jocose on Stub's part 
 and not at all so on Jerry's, whose brow did not clear at 
 the constant crackling of the other's witticisms. On the 
 shore burned a big fire, tended by a man-servant in livery, 
 who was occupied in setting out on a long table a variety of 
 sandwiches and cups of steaming bouillon. Sylvia had never 
 encountered before a real man-servant in livery. She 
 looked at him with the curiosity she might have shown r*t 
 
Sylvia Skates Merrily on Thin Ice zoz 
 
 seeing a mediaeval knight in full armor. Jerry brought her 
 a cup of the bouillon, which was deliciously hot and strong. 
 Experienced as she was in the prudent provisioning of the 
 Marshall kitchen she was staggered to think how many 
 chickens had gone into filling with that clear liquor the big 
 silver tureen which steamed over the glittering alcohol 
 lamp. The table was set, for that casual outdoor picnic 
 lunch, as she could hardly have imagined a royal board. 
 
 " What beautiful things your people have ! " she ex- 
 claimed to Jerry, looking at a pile of small silver forks 
 with delicately carved ivory handles. " The rugs in the 
 house are superb." 
 
 Jerry waved them aside as phenomena of no importance. 
 " All of 'em tributes from Dad's loving constituents," he 
 said, repeating what was evidently an old joke in the family. 
 " You'd better believe Dad doesn't vote to get the tariff 
 raised on anything unless he sees to it that the manu- 
 facturers know who they have to thank. It works some- 
 thing fine ! Talk about the presents a doctor gets from his 
 grateful patients ! Nothing to it ! " 
 
 This picturesque statement of practical politics meant so 
 little to Sylvia's mind that she dismissed it unheard, admir- 
 ing, in spite of her effort to take things for granted, the 
 fabulous fineness of the little fringed napkin set under the 
 bouillon cup. Jerry followed the direction of her eyes. 
 " Yep — tariff on linen," he commented pregnantly. 
 
 The young man called Stub now sped up to them, skating 
 very fast, and swept Sylvia off. "Here's where we show 
 'em how to do it ! " he cried cheerfully, skating backward 
 with crazy rapidity, and pulling Sylvia after him. There 
 was a clang of swift steel on ice, and Jerry bore down 
 upon them, the muscles of his jaw showing prominently. 
 Without a word he thrust his friend aside, caught at Sylvia's 
 hands, and bore her in a swooping flight to the other end of 
 the pond, now deserted by the other skaters. 
 
 As they sped along he bent over Sylvia fiercely and said 
 in a low, angry tone, " You don't like that bounder, do 
 you? You don't!" 
 
204 The Bent Twig 
 
 Sylvia was astonished at the heat of his suspicion. She 
 had known that Jerry was not notably acute, but it had 
 seemed to her that her dislike for his friend must be more 
 than apparent to any one. They had reached the edge of 
 the ice now, and Sylvia's hands were still in Jerry's, al- 
 though they were not skating, but stood facing each other. 
 A bush of osier, frozen into the ice, lifted its red twigs 
 near them. Sylvia looked down at it, hesitating how to 
 express her utter denial of any liking for the hilarious 
 young man. Jerry misunderstood her pause and cried out : 
 " Good God ! Sylvia ! Don't say you do." 
 
 Sylvia's heart gave a frightened leap. " Oh no — no — not 
 a bit 1 " she said hastily, looking longingly across the pond 
 at the group around the fire. Jerry caught his breath 
 with a gasp and gripped her hands hard. " It makes me 
 crazy to see you look at another fellow," he said. He 
 forced her eyes to meet his. u Sylvia — you know — you 
 know what I mean." 
 
 Yes, Sylvia knew what he meant. Her very white face 
 showed that. The young man went on, pressing, masterful, 
 confident, towering over her : " It's idiotic to speak of it 
 now, out here — with all these people around — but it just 
 got me to see you with that — I wasn't sure how I felt about 
 you till I saw how I felt when you seemed so friendly with 
 him, when you got off the car together. Then I knew. 
 It made me crazy — I wanted you ! " 
 
 Sylvia had not been able once to look away from him 
 since he began to speak. Her mouth was a little open in 
 her white face, her eyes fixed with a painful intensity on 
 his. He moistened his lips with his tongue. " Sylvia — its 
 all right— isn't it ? " 
 
 With no change of expression in her strained face, Sylvia 
 nodded. As suddenly and apparently as automatically she 
 took a backward step. 
 
 The young man made a great stride towards her — there 
 was a sound of quick strokes on the ice and — " BOO ! " 
 shouted the hilarious young man, bursting between them 
 at railroad speed. He executed a marvelous pirouette and 
 
Sylvia Skates Merrily on Thin Ice 205 
 
 returned instantly, calling out, " Less spooning in the cor- 
 ners if you please — or if it's got to be, let me in ! " He 
 was followed closely by a string of young men and girls, 
 playing snap-the-whip. They " snapped " just as they 
 reached Jerry. The end girl flew off and bumped, scream- 
 ing with joy, into Jerry's arms. He looked furiously over 
 her head towards Sylvia, but she had been enveloped in a 
 ring and was being conveyed away to the accompaniment 
 of the usual squeals and shouts. The Colonel had come 
 down to take them all back, she was informed, and was 
 waiting for them with the sleigh. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 AS A BIRD OUT OF A SNARE 
 
 Sylvia dressed for dinner literally like one in a dream. 
 Outwardly she was so calm that she thought she was so 
 inwardly. It was nothing like so exciting as people said, 
 to get engaged, she thought as she brushed out her hair 
 and put it up in a big, gleaming knot. Here she had been 
 engaged for a whole hour and a half, and was getting 
 calmer every minute, instead of the reverse. She astonished 
 herself by the lucidity of her brain, although it only worked 
 by snatches — there being lacunae when she could not have 
 told what she was doing. And yet, as she had approached 
 the house, sitting again beside the Colonel, she had looked 
 with a new thrill of interest at its imposing battlemented 
 iacade. The great hall had seemed familiar to her already 
 as she stepped across it on her way to the stairs, her feet 
 had pressed the rugs with assurance, she had been able to 
 be quite nonchalant about refusing the services of the maid 
 who offered to help her dress. 
 
 It was true that from time to time she suddenly flushed 
 or paled ; it was true that her mind seemed incapable 
 of the slightest consecutive thought; it was true that 
 she seemed to be in a dream, peopled by crazily incon- 
 sequent images — she had again and again a vision, star- 
 tlingly vivid, of the red-twigged osier beside which she had 
 stood; it was true that she had a slight feeling of vertigo 
 when she tried to think ahead of the next moment — but still 
 she was going ahead with her unpacking and dressing so 
 steadily that she marveled. She decided again from the 
 depth of her experience that getting engaged was nothing 
 like so upsetting an event as people made out. She thrust 
 the last pin into her hair and tipped her head preeningly 
 
 206 
 
As a Bird out of a Snare 207 
 
 before the big triplicate mirror — the first time she had ever 
 encountered this luxury outside of a ready-made clothes 
 shop. The yellow chiffon came out from the trunk in per- 
 fect condition, looking like a big, silk-petaled flower as she 
 slipped it on over her bare shoulders, and emerged above, 
 triumphant and yet half afraid to look at herself in the 
 mirror lest she should see that her home-made toilet had 
 not " the right look." One glance satisfied even her jealous 
 eagerness. It had exactly the right look — that is, it looked 
 precisely like the picture from which she had copied it. 
 She gazed with naive satisfaction at the faithfulness with 
 which her reflected appearance resembled that of the 
 Parisian demi-mondaine whose photograph she had seen, 
 and settled on her slim, delicately modeled shoulders the 
 straps of shirred and beaded chiffon which apparently per- 
 formed the office of keeping her dress from sliding to the 
 floor. In reality, under its fluid, gauzy draperies, it was 
 constructed on a firm, well-fitting, well-fastened foundation 
 of opaque cloth which quite adequately clothed the young 
 body, but its appearance was of a transparent cloud, only 
 kept from floating entirely away by those gleaming straps 
 on the shoulders, an effect carefully calculated in the origi- 
 nal model, and inimitably caught by Sylvia's innocent 
 fingers. 
 
 She turned herself about, artlessly surprised to see that 
 her neck and shoulders looked quite like those of the women 
 in the fashion-plates and the magazine illustrations. She 
 looked at the clock. It was early yet. She reflected that 
 she never could take the time other girls did in dressing. 
 She wondered what they did. What could one do, after 
 one's bath was taken, one's hair done, and one's gown 
 donned — oh, of course, powder! She applied it liberally, 
 and then wiped away every grain, that being what she had 
 seen older girls do in the Gymnasium dressing-room. Then 
 with a last survey of her face, unaltered by the ceremonial 
 with the powder-puff, she stepped to the door. 
 
 But there, with her hand on the knob, she was halted by 
 an inexplicable hesitation about opening the door and show- 
 
208 The Bent Twig 
 
 ing herself. She looked down at her bare shoulders and 
 bosom, and faintly blushed. It was really very, very low, 
 far lower than any dress she had ever worn ! And the fact 
 that Eleanor Hubert, that all the " swell " girls wore theirs 
 low, did not for the moment suffice her — it was some- 
 how different — their showing their shoulders and her show* 
 ing her own. She could not turn the knob and stood, 
 irresolute, frowning vaguely, though not very deeply dis- 
 quieted. Finally she compromised by taking up a pretty- 
 spangled scarf Aunt Victoria had sent her, wrapping it 
 about her like a shawl, in which quaint garb she went out 
 in more confidence, and walked down the hall to the stair- 
 way. Half-way down she met Colonel Fiske just coming 
 up to dress. Seeing one of his young guests arrayed for 
 the evening he made her his compliments, the first words 
 rather absent and perfunctory. But when he was aware 
 which guest she was, he warmed into a pressing and per- 
 sonal note, as his practised eyes took in the beauty, tonight 
 startlingly enhanced by excitement, of the girl's dark, 
 shining eyes, flushed cheeks, and white neck and arms. 
 He ended by lifting her hand, in his florid way, and press- 
 ing it to his white mustache for a very fervent kiss. Sylvia 
 blushed prettily, meeting his hot old eyes with a dewy 
 unconsciousness, and smiling frankly up into the deeply 
 lined carnal face with the simple-hearted pleasure she 
 would have felt at the kind word of any elderly man. The 
 Colonel seemed quite old to her — much older than her 
 father — like Professor Kennedy. 
 
 u Jerry's in the library, waiting," his father announced 
 with a sly laugh. " I wondered at the young rascal's being 
 dressed so far ahead of time." He turned reluctantly and 
 went on up the stairs, leaving Sylvia to go forward to her 
 first meeting alone with the man she had promised to 
 marry. As she descended the long flight of stairs, her scarf, 
 loosened by her movement, slipped unobserved in her ex- 
 citement and hung lightly about her shoulders. 
 
 The door to the library was shut. She opened it with a 
 rapidly beating heart and stood on the threshold, shyly hesi- 
 
As a Bird out of a Snare 209 
 
 tating to advance further, looking with agitation at the stal- 
 wart, handsome, well-groomed figure which stood in an 
 attitude of impatient expectation by the window. Except 
 for the light which came in from the electric bulb on the 
 porch outside, the big room was in twilight. In the bril- 
 liantly lighted door-opening, she stood revealed as by a 
 searchlight. 
 
 At the sound of the opening door, and his name spoken 
 in a quavering voice, the young man turned, paused an 
 instant as if blinded by the vision, and sprang forward. 
 The door behind Sylvia swung shut, and her eyes, widening 
 in the dusk, saw only the headlong, overwhelming rush upon 
 her of her lover. She was enfolded strongly in muscular 
 arms, she was pressed closer and yet closer to a powerful 
 body, whose heat burned through the thin broadcloth, she 
 was breathless, stunned, choked. As the man bent forward 
 over her, clasping her to him, her flexible spine bent and 
 her head drooped backward, her face with its flush all 
 gone, gleaming white in the dusk. At this he rained kisses 
 on it, on her eyes, hair, cheeks, mouth, the burning soft- 
 ness of his full lips seeming to leave a smear on her skin 
 where they pressed it. Still holding her with one arm, 
 pressed to him as though the two young bodies were gripped 
 together by a vice, he loosened the other arm and thrust 
 it at the back of her dress, through the flimsy gauze of her 
 scarf, down next her body. His stiff cuff caught on the 
 edge of her dress, and his sleeve slid up — it was his bare 
 arm against her naked flesh. He gave a savage, smothered, 
 gasping exclamation, pressed his fingers deeply into her 
 side, still kissing her passionately, her neck, her shoulders, 
 burying his hot face in her bosom. 
 
 It was the girl's body which acted, since at the first in- 
 stant of the whirlwind which had broken over her, her 
 mind had been shocked into a swooning paralysis. Only 
 her strong, sound body, hardened by work, fortified by out- 
 door exercise, was ready in its every fiber for this moment. 
 Her body bent suddenly like a spring of fine steel, its 
 strength momentarily more than a match for his, and thrust 
 
210 The Bent Twig 
 
 the man from her with staggering violence. Her reaction 
 from him was as physical a sensation as though she had 
 bitten into a tempting fruit and found it not sweet — not 
 even bitter — but nasty. She sickened at the sight of him. 
 
 As he caught his balance, laughing a little but not at all 
 good-naturedly, and started back towards her with a 
 dangerous dark face of excited anger and desire, his head- 
 long rush was checked an instant by the fierce eyes which 
 flamed at him from her crimson face. Even her neck and 
 shoulders were now scarlet. She held him off for the 
 space of a breath, giving one deep exclamation, "Oh!" 
 short, sharply exhaled, almost like a blow in his face. 
 
 But his blood was up as well as hers, and after his 
 momentary pause, he rushed forward again, his hand- 
 some, blond face black with passion. 
 
 Sylvia stooped, gathered up her skirts, turned, burst 
 open the door, and fled out of the room, running in her high- 
 heeled satin slippers as she did on the track in the Gym- 
 nasium, with long, deer-like bounds. In a flash she had 
 crossed the wide hall — which was as it happened empty, 
 although she would not have slackened her pace for all the 
 assembled company — and was darting arrow-like up the 
 stairs, her torn scarf flying behind her like a banner. Her 
 flight had been so unexpected and so swift that young 
 Fiske did not attempt to follow her; but she reached her 
 room, flung the door shut, and locked it with as much 
 precipitancy as though he were on her heels, instead of 
 standing quite still, open-mouthed, where she had left him. 
 
 The sharp crack of her slamming door, loud in the quiet 
 house, broke the spell which held him. His mouth shut, 
 and his clenched hands loosened from their fierce tension. 
 He took an aimless step and drew a long breath. A mo- 
 ment later, quite automatically, he fumbled for his cigarette- 
 case, and finding it, took out a cigarette and lighted it with 
 fingers that were not steady. The familiar action and the 
 first puff of smoke affected him like emerging from a tur- 
 moil of darkness into the quiet and order of a well-lighted 
 room, Well, may I be damned ! he said to himself with 
 
As a Bird out of a Snare 211 
 
 the beginning of a return of his usual assurance — " the 
 damn little spitfire ! " 
 
 He walked about the room, puffing vigorously, feeling 
 with relief his blood resume its usual rate of circulation. 
 His head seemed to clear of a thick vapor. The star- 
 tling recollection of the anger in his fiancee's eyes was fad- 
 ing rapidly from his mind. Now he only saw her, blushing, 
 recoiling, fleeing — he laughed out a little, this time not 
 angrily, but with relish. " Ain't she the firebrand ! " he 
 said aloud. He found his desire for her a hundredfold 
 enhanced and stood still, his eyes very lustrous, feeling 
 again in imagination the warm softness of her bosom under 
 his lips. " Gee ! " he exclaimed, turning restlessly in his 
 pacing walk. 
 
 He was aware that some one in the room moved. " Jer- 
 main," said his stepmother's faint voice. He looked at her 
 smiling. " Hello, Momma," he said good-naturedly, " when 
 did you gum-shoe in ? " 
 
 " Oh, just now," she told him, giving him an assurance 
 which he doubted, and which he would not have valued 
 had he known it to be true. He was perfectly indifferent 
 as to the chance that this negligible person might have been 
 a spectator to the scene between the son of the house and a 
 guest. If she said anything about it, he meant to give the 
 all-sufficing explanation that he and Miss Marshall had 
 just become engaged. This would of course, it seemed 
 self-evident to him, make it all right. 
 
 But Mrs. Fiske did not make any remark calling forth 
 that information. She only said, in her usual listless man- 
 ner, " Your sleeve is shoved up." 
 
 He glanced down in surprise, realizing how excited he 
 must be not to have noticed that before, and remained for 
 a moment silent, looking at the splendidly muscular white 
 arm, and the large well-manicured hand. He was feeling 
 in every nerve the reminiscence of the yielding firmness of 
 Sylvia's flesh, bare against his own. The color came up 
 flamingly into his face again. He moistened his lips with 
 his tongue. "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed, contemptu- 
 
212 The Bent Twig 
 
 ously careless of his listener, " I'm wild in love with 
 that girl ! " He pulled his sleeve down with a quick, 
 vigorous gesture, deftly shot the cuff out beyond the 
 black broadcloth, and, the picture of handsome, well- 
 groomed youth in easy circumstances, turned again to his 
 father's wife. " What you in here for, anyhow ? " he asked 
 still with his light absence of concern about anything she 
 idid or did not do. 
 
 She hesitated, looking about the room. " I thought Miss 
 Marshall would be here. She promised to come down early 
 to write the names on the place-cards. I thought I heard 
 her voice." 
 
 " You did," he told! her. " She came down early all 
 right — but she went back again." He laughed, tossed his 
 cigarette-end in the fireplace, and vouchsafing no more ex- 
 planation, strolled into the billiard-room, and began to 
 knock the balls about, whistling a recent dance tune with 
 great precision and vivacity. He was anticipating with 
 quickened blood the next meeting with Sylvia. As he 
 thrust at the gleaming balls, his mouth smiled and his eyes 
 burned. 
 
 Mrs. Fiske went upstairs and knocked at Sylvia's door. 
 There was a rush of quick footsteps and the girl asked from 
 the other side in a muffled voice, " Who is it ? " Mrs. Fiske 
 gave her name, and added, in answer to another question, 
 that she was alone. The door opened enough for her to 
 enter, and closed quickly after her. She lodktt about the 
 disordered room, saw the open trunk, the filmy cascade of 
 yellow chiffon half on and half off the bed, the torn and 
 crumpled spangled scarf, and Sylvia herself, her hastily 
 donned kimono clutched about her with tense hands. 
 
 The mistress of the house made no comment on this 
 scene, looking at Sylvia with dull, faded eyes in which 
 there was no life, not even the flicker of an inquiry. But 
 Sylvia began in a nervous voice to attempt an explanation : 
 " Oh, Mrs. Fiske — I — you'll have to excuse me — I must go 
 home at once — I — I was just packing. I thought — if I 
 hurried I could make the eight-o'clock trolley back to 
 
As a Bird out of a Snare 213 
 
 La Chance, and you could send my trunk after me." Her 
 every faculty was so concentrated on the single idea of 
 flight — flight back to the safety of home, that she did not 
 think of the necessity of making an excuse, giving a reason 
 for her action. It seemed that it must be self-evident to 
 the universe that she could not stay another hour in that 
 house. 
 
 Mrs. Fiske nodded. " Yes, I'll send your trunk after 
 you," she said. She drew a long breath, almost audible, 
 and looked down at the fire on the hearth. Sylvia came 
 up close to her, looking into her lusterless eyes with deep 
 entreaty. " And, Mrs. Fiske, would you mind not telling 
 any one I'm going, until I'm gone — nobody at all! It's 
 because — I — you could say I didn't feel well enough to 
 come down to dinner. I — if you — and say I don't want any 
 dinner up here either ! " 
 
 " Won't you be afraid to go down through the grounds 
 to the trolley alone, at night ? " asked Mrs. Fiske, without 
 looking at her. 
 
 " Everybody will be at dinner, won't they ? " asked Sylvia. 
 
 Mrs. Fiske nodded, her eyes on the floor. 
 
 Upon which, '* Oh no, I won't be afraid ! " cried Sylvia. 
 
 Her hostess turned to the door. " Well, I won't tell them 
 if you don't want me to," she said. She went out, without 
 another word, closing the door behind her. Sylvia locked 
 it, and went on with her wild packing. When she came to 
 the yellow chiffon she rolled it up tightly and jammed it 
 into a corner of her trunk; but the instant afterward she 
 snatched it out and thrust it fiercely into the fire. The light 
 fabric caught at once, the flames leaped up, filling the room 
 with a roaring heat and flare, which almost as quickly died 
 down to blackened silence. 
 
 Sylvia faced that instant of red glare with a grimly set 
 jaw and a deeply flushed face. It did not look at all like 
 her own face. 
 
 At a quarter of eight the room was cleared, the trunk 
 strapped and locked, and Sylvia stood dressed for the 
 street, gloved, veiled, and furred. Under her veil her face 
 
214 The Bent Twig 
 
 showed still very flushed. She took up her small handbag 
 and her umbrella and opened the door with caution. A 
 faint clatter of dishes and a hum of laughing talk came up 
 to her ears. Dinner was evidently in full swing. She 
 stepped out and went noiselessly down the stairs. On 
 the bottom step, close to the dining-room door, her um- 
 brella-tip caught in the balustrade and fell with a loud clat- 
 ter on the bare polished floor of the hall. Sylvia shrank 
 into herself and waited an instant with suspended breath 
 for the pause in the chatter and laughter which it seemed 
 must follow. The moment was forever connected in her 
 mind with the smell of delicate food, and fading flowers, 
 and human beings well-washed and perfumed, which 
 floated out to her from the dining-room. She looked about 
 her at the luxuriously furnished great hall, and hated every 
 inch of it. 
 
 If the noise was heard, it evidently passed for something 
 dropped by a servant, for Colonel Fiske, who was telling 
 a humorous story, went on, his recital punctuated by 
 bass and treble anticipatory laughter from his auditors: 
 
 " and when he called her upon the 'phone the next day 
 
 to ask her about it, she said she didn't know he'd been there 
 at all ! " A roar of appreciation greeted this recondite 
 climax, under cover of which Sylvia opened the front 
 door and shut it behind her. 
 
 The pure coldness of the winter night struck sharply and 
 gratefully on her senses after the warmth and indoor odors 
 of the house. She sprang forward along the porch and 
 down the steps, distending her nostrils and filling her lungs 
 again and again. These long deep breaths seemed to her 
 like the renewal of life. 
 
 As her foot grated on the gravel of the driveway she 
 heard a stealthy sound back of her, at which her heart 
 leaped up and stood still. The front door of the house had 
 opened very quietly and shut again. She looked over her 
 shoulder fearfully, preparing to race down the road, but 
 seeing only Mrs. Fiske's tall, stooping figure, stopped and 
 turned expectantly. The older woman came down the steps 
 
As a Bird out of a Snare 215 
 
 towards the fugitive, apparently unaware of the biting 
 winter wind on her bared shoulders. Quite at a loss, and 
 suspiciously on her guard, Sylvia waited for her, searching 
 the blurred pale face with impatient inquiry. 
 
 " I — I thought I'd walk with you a little ways," said the 
 other, looking down at her guest. 
 
 " Oh no ! Don't! " pleaded Sylvia in despair lest some 
 one notice her hostess' absence. "You'll take a dreadful 
 cold! With no wraps on — do go back! I'm not a bit 
 afraid!" 
 
 The other looked at her with a smoldering flush rising 
 through the ashes of her gray face. " It wasn't that — I 
 didn't suppose you'd be afraid — I — I just thought I'd like 
 to go a ways with you," she repeated, bringing out the 
 words confusedly and with obvious difficulty. "I won't 
 make you late," she added, as if guessing the girl's thoughts. 
 She put a thin hand on Sylvia's arm and drew her rapidly 
 along the driveway. For a moment they walked in silence. 
 Then, " How soon will you reach home ? " she asked. 
 
 " Oh, about a quarter to ten — the Interurban gets into 
 La Chance at nine-fifteen, and it's about half an hour 
 across town on the Washington Street trolley." 
 
 " In less than two hours ! " cried Mrs. Fiske wildly. " In 
 less than two hours ! " 
 
 Seeing no cause for wonder in her statement, and not 
 welcoming at all this unsought escort, Sylvia made no 
 answer. There was another silence, and then, looking in 
 the starlight at her companion, the girl saw with consterna- 
 tion that the quiet tears were running down her cheeks. 
 She stopped short, " Oh . . . oh!" she cried. She caught 
 up the other's hand in a bewildered surprise. She had not 
 the faintest idea what could cause her hostess' emotion. 
 She was horribly afraid she would lose the trolley. Her 
 face painted vividly her agitation and her impatience. 
 
 Mrs. Fiske drew back her hand and wiped her eyes with 
 her palm. " Well, I must be going back," she said. She 
 looked dimly at the girl's face, and suddenly threw her 
 arms about Sylvia's neck, clinging to her. She murmured 
 
216 The Bent Twig 
 
 incoherent words, the only ones which Sylvia could make 
 out being, "I can't — I can't — I can't!" 
 
 What it was she could not do, remained an impenetrable 
 mystery to Sylvia, for at that moment she turned away 
 quickly, and went back up the driveway, her face in her 
 hands. Sylvia hesitated, penetrated, in spite of her absorp- 
 tion in her own affairs, by a vague pity, but hearing in the 
 distance the clang of the trolley-car's bell, she herself 
 turned and ran desperately down the driveway. She 
 reached the public road just in time to stop the heavy 
 car, and to swing herself lightly on, to all appearances 
 merely a rather unusually well-set-up, fashionably dressed 
 young lady, presenting to the heterogeneous indifference of 
 the other passengers in the car even a more ostentatiously 
 abstracted air than is the accepted attitude for young 
 ladies traveling alone. One or two of her fellow voyagers 
 wondered at the deep flush on her face, but forgot it the 
 next moment. It was a stain which was not entirely to 
 fade from Sylvia's face and body for many days to come. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 "BLOW, WIND; SWELL, BILLOW; AND SWIM, 
 BARK!" 
 
 She reached home, as she had thought, before ten o'clock, 
 her unexpected arrival occasioning the usual flurry of ex- 
 clamation and question not to be suppressed even by the 
 most self-contained family with a fixed desire to let its 
 members alone, and a firm tradition of not interfering in 
 their private affairs. Judith had come home before her 
 father and now looked up from her game of checkers with 
 wondering eyes. Sylvia explained that she was not sick, 
 and that nothing had happened to break up or disturb the 
 house-party. M I just felt like coming home, that's all ! " 
 she said irritably, touched on the raw by the friendly lov- 
 ing eyes and voices about her. She was glad at least that 
 her father was not at home. That was one less to look at 
 her. 
 
 " Well, get along to bed with you ! " said her mother, 
 in answer to her impatient explanation. " And, you chil- 
 dren — keep still ! Don't bother her ! " 
 
 Sylvia crept upstairs into the whiteness of her own 
 slant-ceilinged room, and without lighting a lamp sat down 
 on the bed. Her knees shook under her. She made no 
 move to take off her furs or hat. She felt no emotion, only 
 a leaden fatigue and lameness as though she had been 
 beaten. Her mother, coming in five minutes later with a 
 lighted lamp and a cup of hot chocolate, made no comment 
 at finding her still sitting, fully dressed in the dark. She 
 set the lamp down, and with swift deftness slipped out 
 hatpins, unhooked furs, unbuttoned and unlaced and loos- 
 ened, until Sylvia woke from her lethargy and quickly com- 
 pleted the process, slipping on her nightgown and getting 
 into bed. Not a word had been exchanged. Mrs. Marshall 
 
 217 
 
2i 8 The Bent Twig' 
 
 brought the cup of hot chocolate and Sylvia drank it as 
 though she were a little girl again. Her mother kissed 
 her good-night, drew the blankets a little more snugly over 
 her, opened two windows wide, took away the lamp, and 
 shut the door. 
 
 Sylvia, warmed and fed by the chocolate, lay stretched 
 at full length in the bed, breathing in the fresh air which 
 rushed across her face from the windows, feeling herself 
 in a white beatitude of safety and peace. Especially did 
 she feel grateful to her mother. " Isn't Mother great! " she 
 said to herself. Everything that had passed seemed like a 
 confusing dream to her, so dreadful, so terrifying that she 
 was amazed to feel herself, in spite of it, overcome with 
 drowsiness. Now the roles were reversed. It was her 
 brain that was active, racing and shuddering from one 
 frightening mental picture to another, while her body, 
 young, sound, healthful, fell deeper and deeper into torpor, 
 dragging the quivering mind down to healing depths of 
 oblivion. The cold, pure air blew so strongly in her face 
 that she closed her eyes. When she opened them again the 
 sun was shining. 
 
 She started up nervously, still under the influence of a 
 vivid dream — strange. . . . Then as she blinked and rubbed 
 her eyes she saw her mother standing by the bed, with a 
 pale, composed face. 
 
 " It's nine o'clock, Sylvia," she said, " and Mr. Fiske is 
 downstairs, asking to see you. He tells me that you and 
 he are engaged to be married." 
 
 Sylvia was instantly wide awake. " Oh no ! Oh no ! " 
 she said passionately. " No, we're not ! I won't be ! I 
 won't see him ! " She looked about her wildly, and added, 
 " I'll write him that — just wait a minute." She sprang out 
 of bed, caught up a pad of paper, and wrote hastily : " It 
 was all a mistake — I don't care for you at all — not a bit! 
 I hope I shall never have to speak to you again." " There," 
 she said, thrusting it into her mother's hands. She stood 
 for a moment, shivering in her thin nightgown in the icy 
 draught, and then jumped back into bed again. 
 
"Blow, Wind; Swell, Billow; Swim, Bark!" 219 
 
 Her mother came back in a few moments, closed the 
 windows, and opened the register. There was not in her 
 silence or in a line of her quiet presence the faintest hint 
 of curiosity about Sylvia's actions. She had always main- 
 tained in theory, and now at this crisis with characteristic 
 firmness of purpose acted upon her theory, that absolutely 
 unforced confidence was the only kind worth having, and 
 that moreover, unless some help was necessary, it might 
 be as well for the younger generation early to acquire the 
 strengthening capacity to keep its own intimate experiences 
 to the privacy of its own soul, and learn to digest them 
 and feed upon them without the dubiously peptonizing aid 
 of blundering adult counsel. Sylvia watched her mother 
 with wondering gratitude. She wasn't going to ask ! She 
 was going to let Sylvia shut that ghastly recollection into 
 the dark once for all. She wasn't going by a look or a 
 gesture to force her helplessly responsive child to give, by 
 words, weight and substance to a black, shapeless horror 
 from which Sylvia with a vivid impulse of sanity averted 
 her eyes. 
 
 She got out of bed and put her arms around her moth- 
 er's neck. "Say, Mother, you are great!" she said in 
 an unsteady voice. Mrs. Marshall patted her on the 
 back. 
 
 " You'd better go and take your bath, and have your 
 breakfast," she said calmly. " Judith and Lawrence have 
 gone skating." 
 
 When Sylvia, tingling with the tonic shock of cold water 
 and rough toweling, and rosy in her old blue sailor-suit, 
 came downstairs, she found her mother frying pancakes 
 for her in the kitchen blue with smoke from the hot fat. 
 She was touched, almost shocked by this strange lapse from 
 the tradition of self-help of the house, and said with rough 
 self-accusation : " My goodness ! The idea of your waiting 
 on me!" She snatched away the handle of the frying-pan 
 and turned the cakes deftly. Then, on a sudden impulse, 
 she spoke to her mother, standing by the sink. " I came 
 back because I found I didn't like Jerry Fiske as much as 
 
220 The Bent Twig 
 
 I thought I did. I found I didn't like him at all," she said, 
 her eyes on the frying-pan. 
 
 At this announcement her mother's face showed pale, 
 and for an instant tremulous through the smoke. She 
 did not speak until Sylvia lifted the cakes from the pan and 
 piled them on a plate. At this signal of departure into the 
 dining-room she commented, "Well, I won't pretend that 
 I'm not very glad." 
 
 Sylvia flushed a little and looked towards her silently. 
 She had a partial, momentary vision of what the past two 
 months must have been to her mother. The tears stood in 
 her eyes. " Say, Mother dear," she said in a quavering 
 voice that tried to be light, " why don't you eat some of 
 these cakes to keep me company? It's 'most ten. You 
 must have had breakfast three hours ago. It'd be fun! I 
 can't begin to eat all these." 
 
 " Well, I don't care if I do," answered Mrs. Marshall. 
 Sylvia laughed at the turn of her phrase and went into 
 the dining-room. Mrs. Marshall followed in a moment 
 with a cup of hot chocolate and buttered toast. Sylvia 
 pulled her down and kissed her. " You'd prescribe hot 
 chocolate for anything from getting religion to a broken 
 leg ! " she said, laughing. Her voice shook and her laugh 
 ended in a half-sob. 
 
 " No — oh no ! " returned her mother quaintly. " Some- 
 times hot milk is better. Here, where is my share of those 
 cakes ? " She helped herself, went around the table, and 
 sat down. " Cousin Parnelia was here this morning," she 
 went on. " Poor old idiot, she was certain that planchette 
 would tell who it was that stole our chickens. I told 
 her to go ahead — but planchette wouldn't write. Cousin 
 Parnelia laid it to the blighting atmosphere of skepticism 
 of this house." 
 
 Sylvia laughed again. Alone in the quiet house with her 
 mother, refreshed by sleep, aroused by her bath, safe, shel- 
 tered, secure, she tried desperately not to think of the 
 events of the day before. But in spite of herself they came 
 back to her in jagged flashes — above all, the handsome blond 
 
"Blow, Wind; Swell, Billow; Swim, Bark!" 221 
 
 face darkened by passion. She shivered repeatedly, her 
 voice was quite beyond her control, and once or twice her 
 hands trembled so that she laid down her knife and fork. 
 She was silent and talkative by turns — a phenomenon of 
 which Mrs. Marshall took no outward notice, although when 
 the meal was finished she sent her daughter out into the 
 piercing December air with the command to walk six miles 
 before coming in. Sylvia recoiled at the prospect of soli- 
 tude. " Oh, I'd rather go and skate with Judy and Larry ! " 
 she cried. 
 
 " Well, if you skate hard enough," her mother conceded. 
 
 The day after her return Sylvia had a long letter from 
 Jermain Fiske, a letter half apologetic, half aggrieved, pas- 
 sionately incredulous of the seriousness of the break be- 
 tween them, and wholly unreconciled to it. The upshot of 
 his missive was that he was sorry if he had done anything 
 to offend her, but might he be everlastingly confounded 
 if he thought she had the slightest ground for complaint! 
 Everything had been going on so swimmingly — his father 
 had taken the greatest notion to her — had said (the very 
 evening she'd cut and run that queer way) that if he mar- 
 ried that rippingly pretty Marshall girl he could have the 
 house and estate at Mercerton and enough to run it on, and 
 could practise as much or as little law as he pleased and 
 go at once into politics — and now she had gone and acted 
 so — what in the world was the matter with her — weren't 
 they engaged to be married — couldn't an engaged man kiss 
 his girl — had he ever been anything but too polite for words 
 to her before she had promised to marry him — and what 
 about that promise anyhow? His father had picked out 
 the prettiest little mare in the stables to give her when the 
 engagement should be announced — the Colonel was as much 
 ai: a loss as he to make her out — if the trouble was that 
 she didn't want to live in Mercerton, he was sure the 
 Colonel would fix it up for them to go direct to Washing- 
 ton, where with his father's connection she could imagine 
 what an opening they'd have ! And above all he was crazy 
 
222 The Bent Twig 
 
 about her — he really was ! He'd never had any idea what 
 it was to be in love before — he hadn't slept a wink the night 
 she'd gone away — just tossed on his bed and thought of her 
 and longed to have her in his arms again- " Sylvia sud- 
 denly tore the letter in two and cast it into the fire, breath- 
 ing hard. In answer she wrote, M It makes me sick to 
 think of you ! " 
 
 She could not endure the idea of " talking over " the ex- 
 perience with any one, and struggled to keep it out of her 
 mind, but her resolution to keep silence was broken by 
 Mrs. Draper, who was informed, presumably by Jermain 
 himself, of the circumstances, and encountering Sylvia in 
 the street waited for no invitation to confidence by the girl, 
 but pounced upon her with laughing reproach and insidi- 
 ously friendly ridicule. Sylvia, helpless before the graceful 
 assurance of her friend, heard that she was a silly little 
 unawakened schoolgirl who was throwing away a bril- 
 liantly happy and successful life for the queerest and fun- 
 niest of ignorant notions. " What did you suppose, you 
 baby? You wouldn't have him marry you unless he was 
 in love with you, would you? Why do you suppose a man 
 wants to marry a woman? Did you suppose that men in 
 love carry their sweethearts around wrapped in cotton- 
 wool ? You're a woman now, you ought to welcome life — 
 rich, full-blooded life — not take this chilly, suspicious atti- 
 tude toward it! Why, Sylvia, I thought you were a big, 
 splendid, vital, fearless modern girl — and here you are act- 
 ing like a little, thin-blooded New England old maid. How 
 can you blame Jerry? He was engaged to you. What do 
 you think marriage is? Oh, Sylvia, just think what your 
 life would be in Washington with your beauty and 
 charm ! " 
 
 This dexterously aimed attack penetrated Sylvia's armor 
 at a dozen joints. She winced visibly, and hung her head, 
 considering profoundly. She found that she had nothing 
 to oppose to the other's arguments. Mrs. Draper walked 
 beside her in a silence as dexterous as her exhortation, her 
 hand affectionately thrust through Sylvia's arm. Finally, 
 
"Blow, Wind; Swell, Billow; Swim, Bark!" 223 
 
 Sylvia's ponderings continuing so long that they were ap- 
 proaching the Marshall house, in sight of which she had no 
 mind to appear, she gave Sylvia's arm a little pat, and 
 stood still. She said cheerfully, in a tone which seemed to 
 minimize the whole affair into the smallest of passing in- 
 cidents : " Now, you queer darling, don't stand so in your 
 own light ! A word would bring Jerry back to you now — 
 but I won't say it will always. I don't suppose you've ever 
 considered, in your young selfishness, how cruelly you have 
 hurt his feelings ! He was awfully sore when I saw him. 
 And Eleanor Hubert is right on the spot with Mamma 
 Hubert in the background to push." 
 
 Sylvia broke her silence to say in a low tone, blushing 
 scarlet, "He was — horrid!" 
 
 Mrs. Draper dropped her light tone and said earnestly: 
 " Dear little ignorant Sylvia — you don't recognize life when 
 you see it. That's the way men are — all men — and there's 
 no use thinking it horrid unless you're going into a con- 
 vent. It's not so bad either, — once you get the hang 
 of managing it — it's a hold on them. It's a force, like any 
 other force of nature that you can either rebel against, or 
 turn to your account and make serviceable, if you'll only 
 accept it and not try to quarrel with water for running 
 downhill. As long as she herself isn't carried away by it, 
 it's a weapon in the hand of a clever woman. Oniy the 
 stupid women get hurt by it — the silly ones who can't 
 keep their heads. And after all, my dear, it is a force of 
 nature — and you're too intelligent not to know that there's 
 no use fighting against that. It's just idiotic and puritanic 
 to revolt from it — and doesn't do any good besides ! " She 
 looked keenly into Sylvia's downcast, troubled face, and 
 judged it a propitious moment for leaving her. " Good-bye, 
 darling," she said, with a final pat on the shoulder. 
 
 Sylvia walked slowly into the house, her heart like lead. 
 Her food had no savor to her. She did not know what 
 she was eating, nor what her mother, the only one at home 
 for lunch, was saying to her. As a matter of fact Mrs. 
 Marshall said very little, even less than was her custom, 
 
224 The Bent Twig 
 
 Her face had the look of terrible, patient endurance it had 
 worn during the time when Lawrence had had pneumonia, 
 and his life had hung in the balance for two days ; but she 
 went quietly about her usual household tasks. 
 
 After the meal was over, Sylvia continued to sit alone 
 at the table, staring palely down at the tablecloth, her mind 
 full of Mrs. Draper's illuminating comments on life, which 
 had gone through her entire system like a dexterously ad- 
 ministered drug. And yet that ingenious lady would have 
 been surprised to know how entirely her attack had failed 
 in the one point which seemed to her important, the possi- 
 bility of a reconciliation between Sylvia and Jermain. The 
 girl was deeply under the impression made by the philos- 
 ophy of the older woman; she did not for the moment 
 dream of denying its truth ; but she stood granite in a per- 
 fectly illogical denial of its implications in her own case. 
 She did not consciously revolt against the suggestion that 
 she renew her relations to Jerry Fiske, because with a 
 united action of all her faculties she refused utterly to 
 consider it for an instant. She would no more have been 
 persuaded to see Jerry again, by a consideration of the 
 material advantages to be gained, than she could have been 
 persuaded to throw herself down from the housetop. That 
 much was settled, not by any coherent effort of her brain, 
 but by a co-ordination of every instinct in her, by the action 
 of her whole being, by what her life had made her. 
 
 But that certainty brought her small comfort in the 
 blackness of the hour. What hideous world was this in 
 which she had walked unawares until now ! Mrs. Draper's 
 jaunty, bright acceptance of it affected her to moral nausea. 
 All the well-chosen words of her sophisticated friend were 
 imbedded in the tissue of her brain like grains of sand in 
 an eyeball. She could not see for very pain. And yet her 
 inward vision was lurid with the beginning of understand- 
 ing of the meaning of those words, lighted up as they were 
 by her experience of the day before, now swollen in her 
 distraught mind to the proportions of a nightmare : " It's a 
 weapon in the hand of a clever woman — it's not so bad 
 
" Blow, Wind ; Swell, Billow ; Swim, Bark ! " 225 
 
 once you get the hang of managing it — it's a hold on 
 
 men " Sylvia turned whiter and whiter at the glimpse 
 
 she had had of what was meant by Mrs. Draper's lightly 
 evasive " it " ; a comprehension of which all her " ad- 
 vanced " reading and study had left her mind as blankly 
 ignorant as a little child's. Now it was vain to try to shut 
 her thoughts away from Jermain. She lived over and over 
 the scene with him, she endured with desperate passivity 
 the recollection of his burning lips on her bosom, his 
 ringers pressing into her side. Why not, if every man was 
 like that as soon as he dared? Why not, if that was all 
 that men wanted of women ? Why not, if that was the sole 
 ghastly reality which underlay the pretty-smooth surface of 
 life? 
 
 And beyond this bleak prospect, which filled her with 
 dreary horror, there rose glimpsed vistas which sent the 
 shamed blood up to her face in a flood — if every man was 
 like that, why, so were the men she had known and loved 
 and trusted ; old Reinhardt, who seemed so simple, what 
 had been his thoughts when he used years ago to take her 
 on his knee — what were his thoughts now when he bent 
 over her to correct her mistakes on the piano? 
 
 The expression of Colonel Fiske's eyes, as he had com- 
 plimented her, brought her to her feet with a shudder — but 
 Colonel Fiske was an old, old man — as old as Professor 
 Kennedy — 
 
 Why, perhaps Professor Kennedy — perhaps — she flung 
 out her arms — perhaps her father — 
 
 She ran to the piano as to a refuge, meaning to drown 
 out these maddening speculations, which were by this time 
 tinctured with insanity; but the first chords she struck 
 jarred on her ear like a discordant scream. She turned 
 away and stood looking at the floor with a darkening face, 
 one hand at her temple. 
 
 Her mother, darning stockings by the window, suddenly 
 laid down her work and said : " Sylvia, how would you 
 like to walk with me over to the Martins' to see if 
 
226 The Bent Twig 
 
 they have any eggs? Our hens have absolutely gone back 
 on us." 
 
 Sylvia did not welcome this idea at all, feeling as over- 
 whelming an aversion to companionship as to solitude, but 
 she could think of no excuse, and in an ungracious silence 
 put on her wraps and joined her mother, ready on the 
 porch, the basket in her mittened hand. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall's pace was always swift, and on that crisp, 
 cold, sunny day, with the wind sweeping free over the great 
 open spaces of the plain about them, she walked even more 
 rapidly than usual. Not a word was spoken. Sylvia, quite 
 as tall as her mother now, and as vigorous, stepped be- 
 side her, not noticing their pace, nor the tingling of the 
 swift blood in her feet and hands. Her fresh young face 
 was set in desolate bitterness. 
 
 The Martins' house was about six miles from the Mar- 
 snails'. It was reached, the eggs procured, and the return 
 begun. Still not a word had been exchanged between the 
 two women. Airs. Marshall would have been easily capable, 
 under the most ordinary circumstances, of this long self- 
 contained silence, but it had worked upon Sylvia like a 
 sojourn in the dim recesses of a church. She felt moved, 
 stirred, shaken. But it was not until the brief winter sun 
 was beginning to set red across the open reaches of field 
 and meadow that her poisoned heart overflowed. " Oh, 
 
 Mother ! " she exclaimed in an unhappy tone, and said 
 
 no more. She knew no words to phrase what was in her 
 mind. 
 
 14 Yes, dear," said her mother gently. She looked at her 
 daughter anxiously, expectantly, with a passion of yearn- 
 ing in her eyes, but she said no more than those two words. 
 
 There was a silence. Sylvia was struggling for expres- 
 sion. They continued to walk swiftly through the cold, 
 ruddy, sunset air, the hard-frozen road ringing beneath 
 their rapid advance. Sylvia clasped her hands together 
 hard in her muff. She felt that something in her heart 
 was dying, was suffocating for lack of air, and yet that it 
 would die if she brought it to light. She could find no 
 
"Blow, Wind; Swell, Billow; Swim, Bark!" 227 
 
 words at all to ask for help, agonizing in a shy reticence 
 impossible for an adult to conceive. Finally, beginning at 
 random, very hurriedly, looking away, she brought out, 
 faltering, " Mother, is it true that all men are — that when 
 a girl marries she must expect to — aren't there any men 
 
 who " She stopped, burying her burning face in her 
 
 muff. 
 
 Her words, her tone, the quaver of desperate sincerity in 
 her accent, brought her mother up short. She stopped 
 abruptly and faced the girl. " Sylvia, look at me ! " she 
 said in a commanding voice which rang loud in the frosty 
 silences about them. Sylvia started and looked into her 
 mother's face. It was moved so darkly and so deeply 
 from its usual serene composure that she would have re- 
 coiled in fear, had she not been seized upon and held 
 motionless by the other's compelling eyes. 
 
 M Sylvia," said her mother, in a strong, clear voice, 
 acutely contrasted to Sylvia's muffled tones, " Sylvia, it's a 
 lie that men are nothing but sensual! There's nothing in 
 marriage that a good girl honestly in love with a good 
 man need fear." 
 
 * But — but " began Sylvia, startled out of her shy- 
 ness. 
 
 Her mother cut her short. Anything that's felt by 
 decent men in love is felt just as truly, though maybe not 
 always so strongly, by women in love. And if a woman 
 doesn't feel that answer in her heart to what he feels — why, 
 he's no mate for her. Anything's better for her than going 
 on. And, Sylvia, you mustn't get the wrong idea. Sensual 
 feeling isn't bad in itself. It's in the world because we 
 have bodies as well as minds — it's like the root of a plant. 
 But it oughtn't to be a very big part of the plant. And it 
 must be the root of the woman's feeling as well as the 
 man's, or everything's all wrong." 
 
 " But how can you tell! " burst out Sylvia. 
 
 " You can tell by the way you feel, if you don't lie to 
 yourself, or let things like money or social position count. 
 If an honest girl shrinks from a man instinctively, there's 
 
228 The Bent Twig 
 
 something not right — sensuality is too big a part of what 
 the man feels for her — and look here, Sylvia, that's not 
 always the man's fault. Women don't realize as they 
 ought how base it is to try to attract men by their bodies," 
 she made her position clear with relentless precision, " when 
 
 they wear very low-necked dresses, for instance " At 
 
 this chance thrust, a wave of scarlet burst up suddenly over 
 Sylvia's face, but she could not withdraw her eyes from 
 her mother's searching, honest gaze, which, even more than 
 her words, spoke to the girl's soul. The strong, grave 
 voice went on unhesitatingly. For once in her life Mrs. 
 Marshall was speaking out. She was like one who wel- 
 comes the opportunity to make a confession of faith. 
 " There's no healthy life possible without some sensual 
 feeling between the husband and wife, but there's nothing 
 in the world more awful than married life when it's the 
 only common ground/' 
 
 Sylvia gazed with wide eyes at the older woman's face, 
 ardent, compelling, inspired, feeling too deeply, to realize 
 it wholly, the vital and momentous character of the moment. 
 She seemed to see nothing, to be aware of nothing but her 
 mother's heroic eyes of truth; but the whole scene was 
 printed on her mind for all her life — the hard, brown road 
 they stood on, the grayed old rail-fence back of Mrs. Mar- 
 shall, a field of brown stubble, a distant grove of beech- 
 trees, and beyond and around them the immense sweeping 
 circle of the horizon. The very breath of the pure, scentless 
 winter air was to come back to her nostrils in after years. 
 
 " Sylvia," her mother went on, " it is one of the responsi- 
 bilities of men and women to help each other to meet on a 
 high plane and not on a low one. And on the whole — 
 health's the rule of the world — on the whole, that's the 
 way the larger number of husbands and wives, imperfect as 
 they are, do live together. Family life wouldn't be possible 
 a day if they didn't." 
 
 Like a strong and beneficent magician, she built up again 
 and illuminated Sylvia's black and shattered world. " Your 
 father is just as pure a man as I am a woman, and I 
 
"Blow, Wind; Swell, Billow; Swim, Bark!" 229 
 
 would be ashamed to look any child of mine in the face if 
 he were not. You know no men who are not decent — 
 except two — and those you did not meet in your parents' 
 home." 
 
 For the first time she moved from her commanding atti- 
 tude of prophetic dignity. She came closer to Sylvia, but 
 although she looked at her with a sudden sweetness which 
 affected Sylvia like a caress, she but made one more im- 
 personal statement : " Sylvia dear, don't let anything make 
 you believe that there are not as many decent men in the 
 world as women, and they're just as decent. Life isn't 
 worth living unless you know that — and it's true." Ap- 
 parently she had said all she had to say, for she now 
 kissed Sylvia gently and began again to walk forward. 
 
 The sun had completely set, and the piled-up clouds on 
 the horizon flamed and blazed. Sylvia stood still, looking 
 at them fixedly. The great shining glory seemed reflected 
 from her heart, and cast its light upon a regenerated world 
 — a world which she seemed to see for the first time. 
 Strange, in that moment of intensely personal life, how 
 her memory was suddenly flooded with impersonal im- 
 pressions of childhood, little regarded at the time and 
 long since forgotten, but now recurring to her with the 
 authentic and uncontrovertible brilliance which only first- 
 hand experiences in life can bring with them — all those 
 families of her public-school mates, the plain, ugly homes 
 in and out of which she had come and gone, with eyes 
 apparently oblivious of all but childish interests, but really 
 recording life-facts which now in her hour of need stretched 
 under her feet like a solid pathway across an oozing marsh. 
 All those men and women whom she had seen in a thousand 
 unpremeditated acts, those tired-faced, kind-eyed, unlettered 
 fathers and mothers were not breathing poisoned air, were 
 not harboring in their simple lives a ghastly devouring wild- 
 beast. She recalled with a great indrawn breath all the 
 farmer-neighbors, parents working together for the chil- 
 dren, the people she knew so well from long observation 
 of their lives, whose mediocre, struggling existence had 
 
230 The Bent Twig 
 
 filled her with scornful pity, but whom now she recalled 
 with a great gratitude for the explicitness of the revelations 
 made by their untutored plainness. For all she could ever 
 know, the Drapers and the Fiskes and the others of their 
 world might be anything, under the discreet reticence of 
 their sophistication ; but they did not make up all the world. 
 She knew, from having breathed it herself, the wind of 
 health which blew about those other lives, bare and open 
 to the view, as less artless lives were not. There was some 
 other answer to the riddle, beside Mrs. Draper's. 
 
 Sylvia was only eighteen years old and had the childish 
 immaturity of her age, but her life had been so ordered that 
 she was not, even at eighteen, entirely in the helpless posi- 
 tion of a child who must depend on the word of others. 
 She had accumulated, unknown to herself, quite apart from 
 polished pebbles of book-information, a small treasury of 
 living seeds of real knowledge of life, taken in at first-hand, 
 knowledge of which no one could deprive her. The realiza- 
 tion of this was a steadying ballast which righted the wildly 
 rolling keel under her feet. She held up her head bravely 
 against the first onslaught of the storm. She set her hand 
 to the rudder ! 
 
 Perceiving that her mother had passed on ahead of her 
 she sprang forward in a run. She ran like a schoolboy, like 
 a deer, like a man from whose limbs heavy shackles have 
 been struck off. She felt so suddenly lightened of a great 
 heaviness that she could have clapped her hands over her 
 head and bounded into the air. She was, after all, but 
 eighteen years old, and three years before had been a child. 
 
 She came up to her mother with a rush, radiating life. 
 Mrs. Marshall looked at the glowing face and her own 
 eyes, dry till then, filled with the tears so rare in her self- 
 controlled life. She put out her hand, took Sylvia's, and 
 they sped along through the quick-gathering dusk, hand- 
 in-hand like sisters. 
 
 Judith and Lawrence had reached home before them, 
 and the low brown house gleamed a cheerful welcome to 
 them from shining windows. For the first time in her life, 
 
"Blow, Wind; Swell, Billow; Swim, Bark!" 231 
 
 Sylvia did not take for granted her home, with all that it 
 meant. For an instant it looked strangely sweet to her. 
 She had a passing glimpse, soon afterwards lost in other 
 impressions, of how in after years she would look back on 
 the roof which had sheltered and guarded her youth. 
 
 She lay awake that night a long time, staring up into the 
 cold blackness, her mind very active and restless in the 
 intense stillness about her. She thought confusedly but 
 intensely of many things — the months behind her, of Jerry, 
 of Mrs. Draper, of her yellow dress, of her mother — of 
 herself. In the lucidity of those silent hours of wakeful- 
 ness she experienced for a time the piercing, regenerating 
 thrust of self-knowledge. For a moment the full-beating 
 pulses of her youth slackened, and between their throbs 
 there penetrated to her perplexed young heart the rarest 
 of human emotions, a sincere humility. If she had not 
 burned the yellow dress at Mercerton, she would have 
 arisen and burned it that night. . . . 
 
 During the rest of the Christmas vacation she avoided 
 being alone. She and Judith and Lawrence skated a great 
 deal, and Sylvia learned at last to cut the grapevine pat- 
 tern on the ice. She also mastered the first movement of 
 the Sonata Pathetique, so that old Reinhardt was almost 
 satisfied. 
 
 The day after the University opened for the winter term 
 the Huberts announced the engagement of their daughter 
 Eleanor to Jermain Fiske, Jr., the brilliant son of that dis- 
 tinguished warrior and statesman, Colonel Jermain Fiske. 
 Sylvia read this announcement in the Society Column of the 
 La Chance Morning Herald, with an enigmatic expression 
 on her face, and betaking herself to the skating-pond, cut 
 grapevines with greater assiduity than ever, and with a 
 degree of taciturnity surprising in a person usually so 
 talkative. That she had taken the first step away from the 
 devouring egotism of childhood was proved by the fact that 
 at least part of the time, this vigorous young creature, 
 swooping about the icy pond like a swallow, was thinking 
 pityingly of Eleanor Hubert's sweet face. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 SOME YEARS DURING WHICH NOTHING 
 HAPPENS 
 
 Judith had said to the family, taking no especial, pains 
 that her sister should not hear her, " Well, folks, now that 
 Sylvia's got through with that horrid Fiske fellow, I do 
 hope we'll all have some peace ! " a remark which proved 
 to be a prophecy. They all, including Sylvia herself, knew 
 the tranquillity of an extended period of peace. 
 
 It began abruptly, like opening a door into a new room. 
 Sylvia had dreaded the beginning of the winter term and 
 the inevitable sight of Jerry, the enforced crossings of 
 their paths. But Jerry never returned to his classes at all. 
 The common talk was to the effect that the Colonel had 
 " worked his pull " to have Jerry admitted to the bar with- 
 out further preliminaries. After some weeks of relief, it 
 occurred to Sylvia that perhaps Jerry had dreaded meet- 
 ing her as much as she had seeing him. For whatever rea- 
 son, the campus saw young Fiske no more, except on the 
 day in May when he passed swiftly across it on his way to 
 the Hubert house where Eleanor, very small and white- 
 faced, waited for him under a crown of orange blossoms. 
 
 Sylvia did not go to the wedding, although an invitation 
 had come, addressed economically and compendiously to 
 " Professor and Mrs. Marshall and family." It was a 
 glorious spring day and in her Greek history course they 
 had just reached the battle of Salamis, at the magnificent 
 recital of which Sylvia's sympathetic imagination leaped up 
 rejoicing, as all sympathetic imaginations have for all these 
 many centuries. She was thrilling to a remembered bit 
 of " The Persians " as she passed by the Hubert house late 
 that afternoon. She was chanting to herself, " The right 
 
 232 
 
Years During Which Nothing Happens 233 
 
 wing, well marshaled, led on foremost in good order, and 
 we heard a mighty shout — ' Sons of the Greeks ! On ! 
 Free your country ! ' " She did not notice that she trod 
 swiftly across a trail of soiled rice in the Hubert drive- 
 way. 
 
 She was like a person recovered from a fever who finds 
 mere health a condition of joy. She went back to her music, 
 to her neglected books, with a singing heart. And in ac- 
 cordance with the curious ways of Providence, noted in the 
 proverb relating the different fates of him who hath and 
 him who hath not, there was at once added to her pleasure 
 in the old elements of her life the very elements she had 
 longed for unavailingly. Seeing her friendly and shining 
 of face, friendliness went out to her. She had made many 
 new acquaintances during her brief glittering flight and had 
 innumerable more points of contact with the University life 
 than before. She was invited to a quite sufficient number of 
 hops and proms, had quite the normal number of masculine 
 " callers/' and was naively astonished and disillusioned to 
 find that those factors in life were by no means as entirely 
 desirable and amusing as her anguished yearning had fan- 
 cied them. She joined one of the literary societies and took 
 a leading part in their annual outdoor play. At the begin- 
 ning of her Junior year, Judith entered as a Freshman and 
 thereafter became a close companion. Sylvia devoured cer- 
 tain of her studies, history, and English, and Greek, with 
 insatiable zest and cast aside certain others like political 
 economy and physics, which bored her, mastering just 
 enough of their elements to pass an examination and 
 promptly forgetting them thereafter. She grew rapidly in 
 intellectual agility and keenness, not at all in philosophical 
 grasp, and emotionally remained as dormant as a potato in 
 a cellar. 
 
 She continually looked forward with a bright, vague in- 
 terest to " growing up," to the mastery of life which 
 adolescents so trustfully associate with the arrival of adult 
 years. She spent three more years in college, taking a Mas- 
 ter's degree after her B.A., and during those three years, 
 
234 The Bent Twig 
 
 through the many-colored, shifting, kaleidoscopic, disor- 
 ganized life of an immensely populous institution of learn- 
 ing, she fled with rapid feet, searching restlessly everywhere 
 for that entity, as yet non-existent, her own soul. 
 
 She had, in short, a thoroughly usual experience of mod- 
 ern American education, emerging at the end with a vast 
 amount of information, with very little notion of what it 
 was all about, with Phi Beta Kappa and a great wonder 
 what she was to do with herself. 
 
 Up to that moment almost every step of her life had 
 been ordered and systematized, that she might the more 
 quickly and surely arrive at the goal of her diploma. Rush- 
 ing forward with the accumulated impetus of years of 
 training in swiftly speeding effort, she flashed by the goal 
 . . . and stopped short, finding herself in company with a 
 majority of her feminine classmates in a blind alley. 
 u Now what ? " they asked each other with sinking hearts. 
 Judith looked over their heads with steady eyes which saw 
 but one straight and narrow path in life, and passed on by 
 them into the hospital where she began her nurse's training. 
 Sylvia began to teach music to a few children, to take on 
 some of Reinhardt's work as he grew older. She prac- 
 tised assiduously, advanced greatly in skill in music, read 
 much, thought acutely, rebelliously and not deeply, helped 
 Lawrence with his studies . . . and watched the clock. 
 
 For there was no denying that the clock stood still. She 
 was not going forward to any settled goal now, she was 
 not going forward at all. She was as far from suspecting 
 any ordered pattern in the facts of life as when she had 
 been in college, surrounded by the conspiracy of silence 
 about a pattern in facts which university professors so con- 
 scientiously keep up before their students. She was slowly 
 revolving in an eddy. Sometimes she looked at the deep, 
 glowing content of her father and mother with a fierce re- 
 sentment. " How can they ! " she cried to herself. At 
 other times she tried to chide herself for not being as con- 
 tented herself, "... but it's their life they're living," she 
 said moodily, "and I haven't any to live. I can't live on 
 
Years During Which Nothing Happens 235 
 
 their happiness any more than the beefsteaks somebody 
 else has eaten can keep me from starving to death." 
 
 The tradition of her life was that work and plenty of it 
 would keep off all uneasiness, that it was a foolishness, not 
 to say a downright crime, to feel uneasiness. So she prac- 
 tised many hours a day, and took a post-graduate course in 
 early Latin. But the clock stood still. 
 
 One of the assistants in her father's department pro- 
 posed to her. She refused him automatically, with a won- 
 dering astonishment at his trembling hands and white lips. 
 Decidedly the wheels of the clock would never begin to 
 revolve. 
 
 And then it struck an hour, loudly. Aunt Victoria wrote 
 inviting Sylvia to spend a few weeks with her during the 
 summer at Lydford. 
 
 Sylvia read this letter aloud to her mother on the vine- 
 covered porch where she had sat so many years before, and 
 repeated " star-light, star-bright " until she had remembered 
 Aunt Victoria. Mrs. Marshall watched her daughter's face 
 as she read, and through the tones of the clear eager voice 
 she heard the clock striking. It sounded to her remarkably 
 like a tolling bell, but she gave no sign beyond a slight 
 paling. She told herself instantly that the slowly ticking 
 clock had counted her out several years of grace beyond 
 what a mother may expect. When Sylvia finished and 
 looked up, the dulled look of resignation swept from her 
 face by the light of adventurous change, her mother 
 achieved the final feat of nodding her head in prompt, 
 cheerful assent. 
 
 But when Sylvia went away, light-hearted, fleeting 
 forward to new scenes, there was in her mother's farewell 
 kiss a solemnity which she could not hide. " Oh, Mother 
 dear ! " protested Sylvia, preferring as always to skim over 
 the depths which her mother so dauntlessly plumbed. " Oh, 
 Mother darling ! How can you be so — when it's only for a 
 few weeks!" 
 
BOOK III 
 IN CAPUA AT LAST 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 A GRATEFUL CARTHAGINIAN 
 
 Arnold Smith put another lump of sugar on his saucer, 
 poured out a very liberal allowance of rum into his tea, 
 and reached for a sandwich, balancing the cup and saucer 
 with a deftness out of keeping with his long, ungraceful 
 loose- jointedness. He remarked in an indifferent tone to 
 Sylvia, back of the exquisitely appointed tea-tray : " I don't 
 say anything because I haven't the least idea what you are 
 talking about. Who was Capua, anyhow ? " 
 
 Sylvia broke into a peal of laughter which rang like a 
 silver chime through the vine-shaded, airy spaces of the 
 pergola. Old Mr. Sommerville, nosing about in his usual 
 five-o'clock quest, heard her and came across the stretch of 
 sunny lawn to investigate. " Oh, here's tea ! " he remarked 
 on seeing Arnold, lounging, white-flanneled, over his cup. 
 He spoke earnestly, as was his custom when eating was in 
 question, and Sylvia served him earnestly and carefully, 
 with an instant harmonious response to his mood, putting 
 in exactly the right amount of rum and sugar to suit his 
 taste, and turning the slim-legged " curate's assistant " so 
 that his favorite sandwiches were nearest him. 
 
 " You spoil the old gentlemen, Sylvia," commented Ar- 
 nold, evidently caring very little whether she did or not. 
 
 " She spoils everybody," returned Mr. Sommerville, tast- 
 ing his tea complacently ; " ' c'est son metier.' She has an 
 uncanny instinct for suiting everybody's taste." 
 
 Sylvia smiled brightly at him, exactly the brilliant smile 
 
 237 
 
238 The Bent Twig 
 
 which suited her brilliant, frank face and clear, wide-open 
 eyes. Under her smile she was saying to herself, " If that's 
 so, I wonder — not that I care at all — but I really wonder 
 why you don't like me." 
 
 Sylvia was encountering for the first time this summer 
 a society guided by tradition and formula, but she was not 
 without excellent preparation for almost any contact with 
 her fellow-beings, a preparation which in some ways served 
 her better than that more conscious preparation of young 
 ladies bred up from childhood to sit behind tea-tables and 
 say the right things to tea-drinkers. Association with the 
 crude, outspoken youth at the State University had been an 
 education in human nature, especially masculine nature, for 
 her acute mind. Her unvarnished association with the 
 other sex in classroom and campus had taught her, by means 
 of certain rough knocks which more sheltered boarding- 
 school girls never get, an accuracy of estimate as to the 
 actual feeling of men towards the women they profess to 
 admire unreservedly which (had he been able to conceive 
 of it) old Mr. Sommerville would have thought nothing 
 less than cynical. 
 
 But he did not conceive of it, and now sat, mellowed by 
 the Tightness of his tea, white-haired, smooth-shaven, pink- 
 gilled, white-waistcoated, the picture of old age at its best, 
 as he smiled gallantly at the extremely pretty girl behind the 
 table. Unlike Sylvia he knew exactly why he did not like 
 her and he wasted no time in thinking about it. " What 
 were you laughing about, so delightfully, as I came in, eh ? " 
 he asked, after the irretrievable first moment of joy in 
 gratified appetite had gone. 
 
 Sylvia had not the slightest backwardness about explain- 
 ing. In fact she always took the greatest pains to be ex- 
 plicit with old Mr. Sommerville about the pit from which 
 she had been digged. Why, this visit to Aunt Victoria 
 is like stepping into another world for me. Everything is 
 so different from my home-life. I was just thinking, as I 
 sat there behind all this glorious clutter," she waved a slim 
 hand over the silver and porcelain of the tea-table, " what 
 
A Grateful Carthaginian 239 
 
 a change it was from setting the table one's self and wash- 
 ing up the dishes afterwards. That's what we always do 
 at home. I hated it and I said to Arnold, ' I've reached 
 Capua at last ! ' and he said," she stopped to laugh again, 
 heartily, full-throated, the not-to-be-imitated laugh of gen- 
 uine amusement, " he said, ' Who is Capua, anyhow ? ' " 
 
 Mr. Sommerville laughed, but grudgingly, with an im- 
 patient shake of his white head and an uneasy look in his 
 eyes. For several reasons he did not like to hear Sylvia 
 laugh at Arnold. He distrusted a young lady with too keen 
 a sense of humor, especially when it was directed towards 
 the cultural deficiencies of a perfectly eligible young man. 
 To an old inhabitant of the world, with Mr. Sommerville's 
 views as to the ambitions of a moneyless young person, 
 enjoying a single, brief fling in the world of young men 
 with fortunes, it seemed certain that Sylvia's lack of tactful 
 reticence about Arnold's ignorance could only be based on 
 a feeling that Arnold's fortune was not big enough. She 
 was simply, he thought with dismay, reserving her tact and 
 reticence for a not-impossible bigger. His apprehensions 
 about the fate of a bigger of his acquaintance if its owner 
 ever fell into the hands of this altogether too well-informed 
 young person rose to a degree which almost induced him to 
 cry out, " Really, you rapacious young creature, Arnold's is 
 all any girl need ask, ample, well-invested, solid. . . ." But 
 instead he said, " Humph ! Rather a derogatory remark 
 about your surroundings, eh ? " 
 
 Arnold did not understand, did not even hear, leaning 
 back, long, relaxed, apathetic, in his great wicker-chair and 
 rolling a cigarette with a detached air, as though his hands 
 were not a part of him. But Sylvia heard, and under- 
 stood, even to the hostility in the old gentleman's well- 
 bred voice. '' Being in Capua usually referring to the fact 
 that the Carthaginians went to pieces that winter ? " she 
 asked. " Oh yes, of course I know that. Good gracious ! I 
 was brought up on the idea of the dangers of being in 
 Capua. Perhaps that's why I always thought it would be 
 such fun to get there." She spoke rebelliously. 
 
240 The Bent Twig 
 
 " They got everlastingly beaten by the Romans," ad- 
 vanced Mr. Sommerville. 
 
 " Yes, but they had had one grand good time before ! 
 The Romans couldn't take that away from them! I think 
 the Carthaginians got the best of it ! " Provocative, light- 
 hearted malice was in her sparkling face. She was think- 
 ing to herself with the reckless bravado of youth, "Well, 
 since he insists, I'll give him some ground for distrusting 
 my character ! " 
 
 Arnold suddenly emitted a great puff of smoke and a 
 great shout of " Help ! help ! Molly to the rescue ! " and 
 when a little white-clad creature flitting past the door 
 turned and brought into that quiet spot of leafy shadow 
 the dazzling quickness of her smile, her eyes, her golden 
 hair, he said to her nonchalantly : " Just in time to head 
 them off. Sylvia and your grandfather were being so high- 
 brow I was beginning to feel faint." 
 
 Molly laughed flashingly. " Did Grandfather keep his 
 end up ? I bet he couldn't ! " 
 
 Arnold professed an entire ignorance of the relative 
 status. " Oh, I fell off so far back I don't know who got in 
 first. Who was this man Capua, anyhow? I'm a graduate 
 of Harvard University and I never heard of him." 
 
 " I'm a graduate of Miss Braddon's Mountain School for 
 Girls," said Molly, " and / think it's a river." 
 
 Mr. Sommerville groaned out, exaggerating a real qualm, 
 "What my mother would have said to such ignorance, 
 prefaced by ' I bet ! ' from the lips of a young lady ! " 
 
 " Your mother," said Molly, " would be my great-grand- 
 mother ! " She disposed of him conclusively by this state- 
 ment and went on : " And I'm not a young lady. Nobody 
 is nowadays." 
 
 u What are you, if a mere grandfather may venture to 
 inquire ? " asked Mr. Sommerville deferentially. 
 
 " I'm a femme watt-man," said Molly, biting a large 
 piece from a sandwich. 
 
 Arnold explained to the others : " That's Parisian for a 
 lady motor-driver ; some name ! " 
 
A Grateful Carthaginian 241 
 
 '* Well, you won't be that, or anything else alive, if you go 
 on driving your car at the rate I saw it going past the house 
 this morning," said her grandfather. He spoke with an 
 assumption of grandfatherly severity, but his eyes rested on 
 her with a grandfather's adoration. 
 
 " Oh, I'd die if I went under thirty-five/' observed Miss 
 Sommerville negligently. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Sommerville," Arnold backed up his gen- 
 eration. " You can't call thirty-five per hour dangerous, 
 not for a girl who can drive like Molly." 
 
 " Oh, I'm as safe as if I were in a church," continued 
 Molly. " I keep my mind on it. If I ever climb a telegraph- 
 pole you can be sure it'll be because I wanted to. I never 
 take my eye off the road, never once." 
 
 " How you must enjoy the landscape," commented her 
 grandfather. 
 
 " Heavens ! I don't drive a car to look at the landscape ! " 
 cried Molly, highly amused at the idea, apparently quite 
 new to her. 
 
 " Will you gratify the curiosity of the older generation 
 once more, and tell me what you do drive a car for?" in- 
 quired old Mr. Sommerville, looking fondly at the girl's 
 lovely face, like a pink-flushed pearl. 
 
 " Why, I drive to see how fast I can go, of course," ex- 
 plained Molly. " The fun of it is to watch the road eaten 
 up." 
 
 " It is fascinating," Sylvia gave the other girl an un- 
 expected reinforcement. " I've driven with Molly, and I've 
 been actually hypnotized seeing the road vanish under the 
 wheels." 
 
 " Oh, children, children ! When you reach my age," 
 groaned Arnold, "and have eaten up as many thousand 
 miles as I, you'll stay at home." 
 
 " I've driven for three years now," asserted Molly, " and 
 every time I buy a new car I get the craze all over again. 
 This one I have now is a peach of an eight. I never want 
 to drive a six again, — never! I can bring it up from a 
 creep to — to fast enough to scare Grandfather into a fit, 
 
242 The Bent Twig 
 
 without changing gears at all— just on the throttle " 
 
 She broke off to ask, as at a sudden recollection, " What 
 was it about Capua, anyhow?" She went to sit beside 
 Sylvia, and put her arm around her shoulder in a caressing 
 gesture, evidently familiar to her. 
 
 " It wasn't about Capua at all," explained Sylvia indul- 
 gently, patting the lovely cheek, as though the other girl had 
 been a child. " It was your grandfather finding out what 
 a bad character I am, and how I wallow in luxury, now I 
 have the chance." 
 
 " Luxury ? " inquired Molly, looking about her rather 
 blankly. 
 
 Sylvia laughed, this time with a little veiled, pensive note 
 of melancholy, lost on the others but which she herself 
 found very touching. " There, you see you're so used to it, 
 you don't even know what I'm talking about ! " 
 
 " Never mind, Molly," Arnold reassured hen " Neither 
 do I ! Don't try to follow ; let it float by, the way I do ! " 
 
 Miss Sommerville did not smile. She thrust out her red 
 lips in a wistful pout, and looking down into the sugar-bowl 
 intently, she remarked, her voice as pensive as Sylvia's 
 own: I wish I did! I wish I understood! I wish I were 
 as clever as Sylvia ! " 
 
 As if in answer to this remark, another searcher after 
 tea announced himself from the door — a tall, distinguished, 
 ugly, graceful man, who took a very fine Panama hat from , 
 a very fine head of brown hair, slightly graying, and said 
 in a rich, cultivated voice : " Am I too late for tea ? I don't 
 mind at all if it's strong." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Molly Sommerville, flushing and drawing 
 away from Sylvia; "Lord!" muttered Arnold under his 
 breath ; and " Not at all. I'll make some fresh. I haven't 
 had mine yet," said Sylvia, busying herself with the alcohol 
 flame. 
 
 " How're you, Morrison ? " said Mr. Sommerville with 
 no enthusiasm, holding out a well-kept old hand for the 
 other to shake. 
 
 Arnold stood up, reached under his chair, and pulled out 
 
A Grateful Carthaginian 243 
 
 a tennis racquet. " Excuse me, Morrison, won't you, if I 
 run along?" he said. "It's not because you've come. I 
 want a set of tennis before dinner if I can find somebody 
 to play with me. Here, Molly, you've got your tennis shoes 
 on already. Come along." 
 
 The little beauty shook her head violently. " No . . . 
 goodness no! It's too hot. And anyhow, I don't ever 
 want to play again, since I've seen Sylvia's game." She 
 turned to the other girl, breathing quickly. " You go, Sylvia 
 dear. I'll make Mr. Morrison's tea for him." 
 
 Sylvia hesitated a barely perceptible instant, until she saw 
 old Mr. Sommerville's eyes fixed speculatively on her. 
 Then she stood up with an instant, cheerful alacrity. 
 " That's awfully good of you, Molly darling ! You won't 
 mind, will you, Mr. Morrison ! " She nodded brightly to 
 the old gentleman, to the girl who had slipped into her 
 place, to the other man, and was off. 
 
 The man she had left looked after her, as she trod with 
 her long, light step beside the young man, and murmured, 
 " Et vera incessu patuit dea." 
 
 Molly moved a plate on the table with some vehemence. 
 " I suppose Sylvia would understand that language." 
 
 * She would, my dear Molly, and what's more, she would 
 scorn me for using such a hackneyed quotation." To Mr. 
 Sommerville he added, laughing, " Isn't it the quaintest 
 combination — such radiant girlhood and her absurd book- 
 learning ! " 
 
 Mr. Sommerville gave his assent to the quaintness by 
 silence, as he rose and prepared to retreat. 
 
 " Good-bye, Grandfather," said Molly with enthusiasm. 
 
 As they walked along, Arnold was saying to Sylvia with 
 a listless appreciation : " You certainly know the last word 
 of the game, don't you, Sylvia ? I bet Morrison hasn't had 
 a jolt like that for years." 
 
 " What are you talking about ? " asked Sylvia, perhaps 
 slightly overdoing her ignorance of his meaning. 
 
 " Why, it's a new thing for him, let me tell you, to have 
 
244 The Bent Twig 
 
 a girl jump up as soon as he comes in and delightedly leave 
 him to another girl. And then to thank the other girl for 
 being willing to take him off your hands, — that's more than 
 knowing the rules, — that's art ! " He laughed faintly at 
 the recollection. " It's a new one for Morrison to meet a 
 girl who doesn't kowtow. He's a very great personage in 
 his line, and he can't help knowing it. The very last word 
 on Lord-knows-what-all in the art business is what one 
 Felix Morrison says about it. He's an eight-cylinder 
 fascinator too, into the bargain. Mostly he makes me sore, 
 but when I think about him straight, I wonder how he 
 manages to keep on being as decent as he is — he's really 
 a good enough sort! — with all the high-powered petti- 
 coats in New York burning incense. It's enough to turn 
 the head of a hydrant. That's the hold Madrina has on 
 him. She doesn't burn any incense. She wants all the 
 incense there is being burned, for herself ; and it keeps old 
 Felix down in his place — keeps him hanging around too. 
 You stick to the same method if you want to make a go 
 of it." 
 
 " I thought he wrote. I thought he did gesthetic criticisms 
 and essays," said Sylvia, laughing aloud at Arnold's quaint 
 advice. 
 
 " Oh, he does. I guess he's chief medicine-man in his 
 tribe all right. It's not only women who kowtow ; when old 
 man Merriman wants to know for sure whether to pay a 
 million for a cracked Chinese vase, he always calls in Felix 
 Morrison. Chief adviser to the predatory rich, that's one 
 of his jobs ! So you see," he came back to his first point, 
 " it must be some jolt for the sacred F. M. to have a young 
 lady, just a young lady, refuse to bow at the shrine. You 
 couldn't have done a smarter trick, by heck! I've been 
 watching you all those weeks, just too tickled for words. 
 And I've been watching Morrison. It's been as good as a 
 play! He can't stick it out much longer, unless I miss 
 my guess, and I've known him ever since I was a kid. He's 
 just waiting for a good chance to turn on the faucet and 
 hand you a full cup of his irresistible fascination." He 
 
A Grateful Carthaginian 245 
 
 added carelessly, bouncing a ball up and down on the tense 
 catgut of his racquet : " What all you girls see in that old 
 wolf-hound, to lose your heads over ! It gets me ! " 
 
 " Why in the world ' wolf-hound ' ? " asked Sylvia. 
 
 " Oh, just as to his looks. He has that sort of tired, 
 dignified, deep-eyed look a big dog has. I bet his eyes 
 would be phosphorescent at night too. They are that kind ; 
 don't you know, when you strike a match in the evening, 
 how a dog's eyes glow? It's what makes 'em look so 
 soft and deep in the daytime. But as to his innards — no, 
 Lord no ! Whatever else Morrison is he's not a bit like 
 any dog that ever lived — first cousin to a fish, I should 
 say." 
 
 Sylvia laughed. " Why not make it grizzly bear, to take 
 in the rest of the animal kingdom ? " 
 
 " No," persisted Arnold. " Now I've thought of it, I 
 mean fish, a great big, wise old fellow, who lives in a deep 
 pool and won't rise to any ordinary fly." He made a 
 brain-jolting change of metaphor and went on : " The plain 
 truth, and it's not so low-down as it seems, is that a big 
 fat check-book is admission to the grandstand with Felix. 
 It has to be that way! He hasn't got much of his own, 
 and his tastes are some " 
 
 " Molly must be sitting in the front row, then," com- 
 mented Sylvia indifferently, as though tired of the sub- 
 ject. They were now at the tennis-court. " Run over to 
 the summer-house and get my racquet, will you? It's on 
 the bench." 
 
 " Yes, Molly's got plenty of money," Arnold admitted 
 is he came back, his accent implying some other lack which 
 he forgot to mention, absorbed as he at once became in 
 coping with his adversary's strong, swift serve. 
 
 The change in him, as he began seriously to play, was 
 startling, miraculous. His slack loose- jointedness stiffened 
 into quick, flexible accuracy, his lounging, flaccid air dis- 
 appeared in a glow of concentrated vigorous effort. The 
 bored good-nature in his eyes vanished, burned out by a 
 stern, purposeful intensity. He was literally and visibly 
 

 246 The Bent Twig 
 
 another person. Sylvia played her best, which was excel- 
 lent, far better than that of any other girl in the summer 
 colony. She had been well trained by her father and her 
 gymnasium instructor, and played with an economy of 
 effort delightful to see; but she was soon driven by her 
 opponent's tiger-like quickness into putting out at once her 
 every resource. There, in the slowly fading light of the 
 long mountain afternoon, the two young Anglo-Saxons 
 poured out their souls in a game with the immemorial in- 
 stinct of their race, fierce, grim, intent, every capacity of 
 body and will-power brought into play, everything else in 
 the world forgotten. . . . 
 
 For some time they were on almost equal terms, and 
 then Sylvia became aware that her adversary was getting 
 the upper hand of her. She had, however, no idea what 
 the effort was costing him, until after a blazing fire of im- 
 possibly rapid volleys under which she went down to de- 
 feat, she stopped, called out, " Game and set ! " and added 
 in a generous tribute, " Say, you can play ! " Then she 
 saw that his face was almost purple, his eyes bloodshot, and 
 his breath came in short, gasping pants. " Good gracious, 
 what's the matter ! " she cried, running towards him in 
 alarm. She was deeply flushed herself, but her eyes were 
 as clear as clear water, and she ran with her usual fawn- 
 like swiftness. Arnold dropped on the bench, waving her a 
 speechless reassurance. With his first breath he said, 
 " Gee ! but you can hit it up, for a girl ! " 
 
 " What's the matter with you ? " Sylvia asked again, 
 sitting down beside him. 
 
 " Nothing ! Nothing ! " he panted. " My wind ! It's con- 
 foundedly short." He added a moment later, " It's tobacco 
 — this is the sort of time the cigarettes get back at you> 
 you know ! " The twilight dropped slowly about them like 
 a thin, clear veil. He thrust out his feet, shapely in their 
 well-made white shoes, surveved them with dissatisfaction, 
 and added with moody indifference : " And cocktails too. 
 They play the dickens with a fellow's wind." 
 
 Sylvia said nothing for a moment, looking at him by no 
 
A Grateful Carthaginian 247 
 
 means admiringly. Her life in the State University had 
 brought her into such incessant contact with young men 
 that the mere fact of sitting beside one in the twilight 
 left her unmoved to a degree which Mr. Sommerville's 
 mother would have found impossible to imagine. When 
 she spoke, it was with an impatient scorn of his weakness, 
 which might have been felt by a fellow-athlete: "What 
 in the world makes you do it, then ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " he said challengingly. 
 
 " You've just said why not — it spoils your tennis. 
 It must spoil your polo. Was that what spoiled your 
 baseball in college? You'd be twice the man if you 
 wouldn't." 
 
 " Oh, what's the use ? " he said, an immense weariness 
 in his voice. 
 
 " What's the use of anything, if you are going to use 
 that argument?" said Sylvia, putting him down con- 
 clusively. 
 
 He spoke with a sudden heartfelt simplicity, " Damn 'f I 
 know, Sylvia." For the first time in all the afternoon, his 
 voice lost its tonelessness, and rang out with the resonance 
 of sincerity. 
 
 She showed an unflattering surprise. " Why, I didn't 
 know you ever thought about such things." 
 
 He looked at her askance, dimly amused. " High opinion 
 you have of me ! " 
 
 She looked annoyed at herself and said with a genuine 
 good-will in her voice, " Why, Arnold, you know I've al- 
 ways liked you." 
 
 " You like me, but you don't think much of me," he 
 diagnosed her, " and you show your good sense." He 
 looked up at the picturesque white house, spreading its 
 well-proportioned bulk on the top of the terraced hillside 
 before them. " I hope Madrina is looking out of a window 
 and sees us here, our heads together in the twilight. You've 
 guessed, I suppose, that she had you come on here for my 
 benefit. She thinks she's tried everything else, — now 
 it's her idea to get me safely married. She'd have one 
 
248 The Bent Twig 
 
 surprise, wouldn't she, if she could hear what we're 
 saying ! " 
 
 " Well, it would be a good thing for you," remarked 
 Sylvia, as entirely without self-consciousness as though 
 they were discussing the tennis game. 
 
 He was tickled by her coolness. " Well, Madrina sure 
 made a mistake when she figured on you!" he commented 
 ironically. And then, not having been subjected to the 
 cool, hardy conditions which caused Sylvia's present clear- 
 headedness, he felt his blood stirred to feel her there, so 
 close, so alive, so young, so beautiful in the twilight. He 
 leaned towards her and spoke in a husky voice, " See here, 
 Sylvia, why don't you try it ! " 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ! " said the girl, not raising her voice at 
 all, not stirring. " You don't care a bit for me." 
 
 * Yes, I do ! I've always liked you ! " he said, not per- 
 ceiving till after the words were out of his mouth that he 
 had repeated her own phrase. 
 
 She laughed to hear it, and he drew back, his faint stir- 
 ring of warmth dashed, extinguished. " The fact is, 
 Sylvia," he said, "you're too nice a girl to fall in love 
 with." 
 
 " What a horrid thing to say ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 "About you?" he defended himself. "I mean it as a 
 compliment." 
 
 " About falling in love," she said. 
 
 " Oh ! " he said blankly, evidently not at all following her 
 meaning. 
 
 " What time is it ? " she now inquired, and on hearing 
 the hour, " Oh, we'll be late to dress for dinner," she said 
 in concern, rising and ascending the marble steps to the 
 terrace next above them. 
 
 He came after her, long, loose-jointed, ungraceful. He 
 was laughing. " Do you realize that I've proposed marriage 
 to you and you've turned me down ? " he said. 
 
 " No such a thing ! " she said, as lightly as he. 
 
 " It's the nearest / ever came to it ! " he averred. 
 
 She continued to flit up the terraces before him, her 
 
A Grateful Carthaginian 249 
 
 voice rippling with amusement dropping down on him 
 through the dusk. " Well, you'll have to come nearer than 
 that, if you ever want to make a go of it ! " she called over 
 her shoulder. Upon which note this very modern con- 
 versation ended. 
 
CHAPTER XXIM 
 MORE TALK BETWEEN YOUNG MODERNS 
 
 When they met at dinner, they laughed outright at the 
 sight of one another, a merry and shadowless laugh. For 
 an instant they looked like light-hearted children. The 
 change of Arnold's long sallow face was indeed so notice- 
 able that Mrs. Marshall-Smith glanced sharply at him, and 
 then looked again with great satisfaction. She leaned to 
 Sylvia and laid her charming white hand affectionately 
 over the girl's slim, strong, tanned fingers. " It's just a joy 
 to have you here, my dear. You're brightening us stupid, 
 bored people like fresh west wind ! " She went on address- 
 ing herself to the usual guest of the evening : " Isn't it al- 
 ways the most beautiful sight, Felix, how the mere presence 
 of radiant youth can transform the whole atmosphere of 
 life ! " 
 
 " I hadn't noticed that my radiant youth had trans- 
 formed much," commented Arnold dryly; "and Sylvia's 
 only a year younger than I." 
 
 He was, as usual, disregarded by the course of the con- 
 versation. " Yes, sunshine in a shady place . . ." quoted 
 Morrison, in his fine mellow tenor, looking at Sylvia. It 
 was a wonderful voice, used with discretion, with a fine 
 instinct for moderation which would have kept the haunt- 
 ing beauty of its intonations from seeming objectionable 
 or florid to any but American ears. In spite of the 
 invariable good taste with which it was used, American 
 men, accustomed to the toneless speech of the race, and 
 jealously suspicious of anything approaching art in every- 
 day life, distrusted Morrison at the first sound of his voice. 
 Men who were his friends (and they were many) were in 
 the habit of rather apologizing for those rich and harmo- 
 
 250 
 
More Talk Between Young Moderns 251 
 
 nious accents. The first time she had heard it, Sylvia had 
 thought of the G string of old Reinhardt's violin. 
 
 " I never in my life saw anything that looked less like a 
 shady place," observed Sylvia, indicating with an admiring 
 gesture the table before them, gleaming and flashing its 
 glass and silver and close-textured, glossy damask up into 
 the light. 
 
 " It's morally that we're so shady ! " said Arnold, admir- 
 ing his own wit so much that he could not refrain from 
 adding, " Not so bad, what ? " The usual conversation at 
 his stepmother's table was, as he would have said, so pes- 
 tilentially high-brow that he seldom troubled himself to 
 follow it enough to join in. Arnold was in the habit of 
 dubbing " high-brow " anything bearing on aesthetics ; and 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith's conversational range hardly extend- 
 ing at all outside of aesthetics of one kind or another, com- 
 munication between these two house-mates of years' stand- 
 ing was for the most part reduced to a primitive simplicity 
 for which a sign-language would have sufficed. Arnold's 
 phrase for the situation was, " I let Madrina alone, and she 
 don't bother me." But now, seeing that neither the facade 
 of Rouen, nor the influence of Chardin on Whistler, had 
 been mentioned, his unusual loquacity continued. " Well, if 
 one west wind (I don't mean that as a slam on Sylvia for 
 coming from west of the Mississippi) has done us so much 
 good, why not have another ? " he inquired. " Why couldn't 
 Judith come on and make us a visit too? It would be fun 
 to have a scrap with her again." He explained to Mor- 
 rison: " She's Sylvia's younger sister, and we always quar- 
 reled so, as kids, that after we'd been together half an 
 hour the referee had to shoulder in between and tell us, 
 * Nix on biting in clinches.' She was great, all right, Judith 
 was ! How is she now ? " he asked Sylvia. " I've been 
 meaning ever so many times to ask you about her, and 
 something else has seemed to come up. I can't imagine 
 Judy grown up. She hasn't pinned up that great long 
 braid, has she, that used to be so handy to pull ? " 
 
 Sylvia took the last of her soup, put the spoon on the; 
 
252 The Bent Twig 
 
 plate, and launched into a description of Judith, one of 
 her favorite topics. "Oh, Judith's just Hue! You ought 
 to see her ! She's worth ten of me : she has such lots of 
 character ! And handsome ! You never saw anything like 
 Judith's looks. Yes, she's put her hair up! She's twenty- 
 years old now, what do you suppose she does with her hair? 
 She wears it in a great smooth braid all around her head. 
 And she has such hair, Aunt Victoria ! " She turned from 
 Arnold to another woman, as from some one who would 
 know nothing of the fine shades of the subject. " No short 
 hairs at all, you know, like everybody else, that will hang 
 down and look untidy ! " She pulled with an explanatory 
 petulance at the soft curls which framed her own face in 
 an aureole of light. " Hers is all long and smooth, and the 
 color like a fresh chestnut, just out of the burr; and her 
 nose is like a Greek statue — she is a Greek statue ! " 
 
 She had been carried by her affectionate enthusiasm out 
 of her usual self-possession, her quick divination of 
 how she was affecting everybody, and now, suddenly find- 
 ing Morrison's eyes on her with an expression she did not 
 recognize, she was brought up short. What had she said 
 to make him look at her so oddly ? 
 
 He answered her unspoken question at once, his voice 
 making his every casual word of gold : " I am thinking 
 that I am being present at a spectacle which cynics say is 
 impossible, the spectacle of a woman delighting — and with 
 the most obvious sincerity — in the beauty of another." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Sylvia, relieved to know that the odd look 
 concealed no criticism, " I didn't know that anybody nowa- 
 days made such silly Victorian generalizations about 
 woman's cattiness, — anybody under old Mr. Sommerville's 
 age, that is. And anyhow, Judith's my sister." 
 
 " Cases of sisters, jealous of each other's good looks, 
 have not been entirely unknown to history," said Morrison, 
 smiling and beginning to eat his fish with a delicate relish. 
 
 " Well, if Judy's so all-fired good-looking, let's have her 
 come on, Madrina," said Arnold. " With her and Sylvia 
 together, we'd crush Lydford into a pulp." He attacked 
 
More Talk Between Young Moderns 253 
 
 liis plate with a straggling fork, eating negligently, as he 
 did everything else. 
 
 " She has a standing invitation, of course," said Mrs. 
 Marshall-Smith. " Indeed, I wrote the other day, asking 
 her if she could come here instead of to La Chance for 
 her vacation. It's far nearer for her." 
 
 * Oh, Judith couldn't waste time to go visiting/' said 
 Sylvia. " I've told you she is worth ten of me. She's on 
 the home-stretch of her trained-nurse's course now. She 
 has only two weeks' vacation." 
 
 " She's going to be a trained nurse ? " asked Arnold in 
 surprise, washing down a large mouthful of fish with a 
 large mouthful of wine. " What the dickens does she do 
 that for?" 
 
 " Why, she's crazy about it, — ever since she was a little 
 girl, fifteen years old and first saw the inside of a hospital. 
 That's just Judith, — so splendid and purposeful, and 
 single-minded. I wish to goodness / knew what I want 
 to do with myself half so clearly as she always has." 
 
 If she had, deep under her consciousness, a purpose to 
 win more applause from Morrison, by more disinterested 
 admiration of Judith's good points, she was quite rewarded 
 by the quickness with which he championed her against her 
 own depreciation. " I've always noticed," he said medita- 
 tively, slowly taking a sip from his wine-glass, " that no- 
 body can be single-minded who isn't narrow-minded; and 
 I think it likely that people who aren't so cocksure what 
 they want to do with themselves, hesitate because they have 
 a great deal more to do with. A nature rich in fine and 
 complex possibilities takes more time to dispose of itself, 
 but when it does, the world's beauty is the gainer." He 
 pointed the reference frankly by a smile at Sylvia, who 
 flushed with pleasure and looked down at her plate. She 
 was surprised at the delight which his leisurely, whim- 
 sically philosophical little speech gave her. She forgot 
 to make any answer, absorbed as she was in poring over 
 it and making out new meanings in it. How he had 
 understood at less than a word the secret uncertainty of 
 
254 The Bent Twig 
 
 herself which so troubled her; and with what astonishing 
 sureness he had known what to say to reassure her, to make 
 her see clear! And then, her quick mind leaped to an- 
 other significance. . . . All during these past weeks when 
 she had been falling more and more under the fascination 
 of his personality, when she had been piqued at his dis- 
 regard of her, when she had thought he found her " young," 
 and had bracketed her carelessly with Arnold, he had been 
 in reality watching her, he had found her interesting enough 
 to observe her, to study her, to have a theory about her 
 character; and having done all that, to admire her as she 
 admired him. Never in her life had she been the recipient 
 of flattery so precisely to her taste. Her glow of pleasure 
 was so warm that she suddenly distrusted her own judg- 
 ment, she looked up at him quickly to see if she had not 
 mistaken his meaning, had not absurdly exaggerated the 
 degree to which he . . . she found his eyes on hers, deep- 
 set, shadowy eyes which did not, as she looked up, either 
 smile or look away. Under cover of a rather wrangling dis- 
 cussion between Arnold and his stepmother as to having 
 some champagne served, the older man continued to look 
 steadily into Sylvia's eyes, with the effect of saying to her, 
 gravely, kindly, intimately : " Yes, I am here. You did 
 not know how closely you have drawn me to you, but here 
 I am." Across the table, across the lights, the service, the 
 idle talk of the other two, she felt him quietly, ever so 
 gently but quite irresistibly, open an inner door of her 
 nature . . . and she welcomed him in. 
 
 After dinner, when Mrs. Marshall-Smith lifted her eye- 
 brows at Sylvia and rose to go, Arnold made no bones of 
 his horror at the prospect of a tete-a-tete with the dis- 
 tinguished critic. " Oh, I'm going in with you girls ! " he 
 said, jumping up with his usual sprawling uncertainty of 
 action. He reserved for athletic sports all his capacity for 
 physical accuracy. " Morrison and I bore each other more 
 than's legal ! " 
 
 " I may bore you, my dear Arnold," said the other, ris- 
 
More Talk Between Young Moderns 255 
 
 ing, " but you never bored me in your life, and I've known 
 you from childhood." 
 
 To which entirely benevolent speech, Arnold returned 
 nothing but the uneasy shrug and resentful look of one 
 baffled by a hostile demonstration too subtle for his powers 
 of self-defense. He picked up the chair he had thrown 
 over, and waited sulkily till the others were in the high- 
 ceilinged living-room before he joined them. Then when 
 Morrison, in answer to a request from his hostess and old 
 friend, sat down to the piano and began to play a piece 
 of modern, plaintive, very wandering and chromatic music, 
 the younger man drew Sylvia out on the wide, moon-lighted 
 veranda. 
 
 " Morrison is the very devil for making you want to 
 punch his head, and yet not giving you a decent excuse. 
 I declare, Sylvia, I don't know but that what I like best 
 of all about you is the way you steer clear of him. He's 
 opening up on you too. Maybe you didn't happen to 
 notice ... at the dinner-table? It wasn't much, but I 
 spotted it for a beginning. I know old Felix, a few." 
 Sylvia felt uneasy at the recurrence of this topic, and cast 
 about for something to turn the conversation. " Oh, Ar- 
 nold," she began, rather at random, " whatever became of 
 Professor Saunders? I've thought about him several times 
 since I've been here, but I've forgotten to ask you or 
 Tantine. He was my little-girl admiration, you know." 
 
 Arnold smoked for a moment before answering. Then, 
 " Well, I wouldn't ask Madrina about him, if I were you. 
 He's not one of her successes. He wouldn't stay put." 
 
 Sylvia scented something uncomfortable, and regretted 
 having introduced the subject. 
 
 Arnold added thoughtfully, looking hard at the ash of 
 his cigarette, " I guess Madrina was pretty bad medicine 
 for Saunders, all right." 
 
 Sylvia shivered a little and drew back, but she instantly 
 put the matter out of her mind with a trained and definite 
 action of her will.' It was probably " horrid"; nothing 
 could be done about it now; what else could they talk 
 
256 The Bent Twig 
 
 about that would be cheerful ? This was a thought-sequence 
 very familiar to Sylvia, through which she passed with 
 rapid ease. 
 
 Arnold made a fresh start by offering her his cigarette- 
 box. " Have one," he invited her, sociably. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Oh, all the girls do," he urged her. 
 
 Sylvia laughed. " I may be a fresh breeze from beyond 
 the Mississippi, but I'm not so fresh as to think it's wicked 
 for a girl to smoke. In fact I like to, myself, but I can't 
 stand the dirty taste in my mouth the next morning. 
 Smoking's not worth it." 
 
 " Well ..." commented Arnold. Apparently he found 
 something very surprising in this speech. His surprise 
 spread visibly from the particular to the general, like the 
 rings widening from a thrown pebble, and he finally broke 
 out : " You certainly do beat the band, Sylvia. You get 
 met You're a sample off a piece of goods that I never saw 
 before ! " 
 
 " What now ? " asked Sylvia, amused. 
 
 " Why, for instance, — that reason for your not smoking. 
 That's not a girl's reason. That's a man's ... a man 
 who's tried it ! " 
 
 " No, it isn't ! " she said, the flicker of amusement still 
 on her lips. " A man wouldn't have sense enough to know 
 that smoking isn't worth waking up with your mouth full 
 of rancid fur." 
 
 "Oh gosh!" cried Arnold, tickled by the metaphor: 
 " rancid fur ! " 
 
 '* The point about me, why I seem so queer to you," ex- 
 plained Sylvia, brightening, " is that I'm a State University 
 girl. I'm used to you. I've seen hundreds of you! The 
 fact that you wear trousers and have to shave and wear 
 your hair cut short, and smell of tobacco, doesn't thrill me 
 for a cent. I know that I could run circles around you if it 
 came to a problem in calculus, not that I want to brag." 
 
 Arnold did not seem as much amused as she thought 
 he would be. He smoked in a long, meditative silence, 
 
More Talk Between Young Moderns 257 
 
 and when he spoke again it was with an unusual seri- 
 ousness. " It's not what you feel or don't feel about 
 me . . . it's what / feel and don't feel about you, that gets 
 me," he explained, not very lucidly. " I mean liking you 
 so, without ... I never felt so about a girl. I like it. 
 ... I don't make it out. . . ." He looked at her with 
 sincerely puzzled eyes. 
 
 She answered him as seriously. " I think," she said, 
 speaking a little slowly, " I think the two go together, don't 
 they?" 
 
 "How do you mean?" he asked. 
 
 " Why — it's hard to say " she hesitated, but evidently 
 
 not at all in embarrassment, looking at him with serious 
 eyes, limpid and unafraid. "Tve been with boys and men 
 a lot, of course, in my classes and in the laboratories and 
 everywhere, and I've found out that in most cases if the 
 men and the girls really, really in their own hearts don't 
 want to hurt each other, don't want to get something out 
 of the other, but just want to be friends — why, they can be ! 
 Psychologists and all the big-wigs say they can't be, I 
 know — but, believe me ! — I've tried it — and it's awfully 
 nice, and it's a shame that everybody shouldn't know that 
 lots of the time you can do it — in spite of the folks who 
 write the books ! Maybe it wasn't so when the books were 
 written, maybe it's only going to be so, later, if we all are 
 as square as we can be now. But as a plain matter of fact, 
 in one girl's experience, it's so, now! Of course," she 
 modified by a sweeping qualification the audacity of her 
 naively phrased, rashly innocent guess at a new possibility 
 for humanity, " of course if the man's a decent man." 
 
 Arnold had not taken his gaze for an instant from her 
 gravely thoughtful eyes. He was quite pale. He looked 
 astonishingly moved, startled, arrested. When she stopped, 
 he said, almost at once, in a very queer voice as though 
 it were forced out of him, " I'm not a decent man." 
 
 And then, quite as though he could endure no longer her 
 clear, steady gaze, he covered his eyes with his hand. An 
 instant later he had sprung up and walked rapidly away 
 
258 The Bent Twig 
 
 out to the low marble parapet which topped the terrace. 
 His gesture, his action had been so eloquent of surprised, 
 intolerable pain, that Sylvia ran after him, all one quick 
 impulse to console. " Yes, you are, Arnold ; yes, you are ! " 
 she said in a low, energetic tone, " you are!" 
 
 He made a quavering attempt to be whimsical. " I'd like 
 to know what you know about it ! " he said. 
 
 "I know! I know!" she simply repeated. 
 
 He faced her in an exasperated shame. " Why, a girl 
 like you can no more know what's done by a man like 
 me . . ." his lips twitched in a moral nausea. 
 
 " Oh . . . what you've done . . ." said Sylvia ..." it's 
 what you are ! " 
 
 " What I am" repeated Arnold bitterly. " If I were worth 
 my salt I'd hang myself before morning! " The heart-sick 
 excitement of a man on the crest of some moral crisis looked 
 out luridly from his eyes. 
 
 Sylvia rose desperately to meet that crisis. " Look here, 
 Arnold. I'm going to tell you something I've never spoken 
 of to anybody . . . not even Mother . . . and I'm going 
 to do it, so you'll believe me when I say you're worth liv- 
 ing. When I was eighteen years old I was a horrid, selfish, 
 self-willed child. I suppose everybody's so at eighteen. I 
 was just crazy for money and fine dresses and things like 
 that, that we'd never had at home; and a man with a lot 
 of money fell in love with me. It was my fault. I made 
 him, though I dic^'t know then what I was doing, or at 
 least I wouldn't let myself think what I was doing. And 
 I got engaged to him. I got engaged at half-past four in 
 the afternoon, and at seven o'clock that evening I was 
 running away from him, and I've never seen him since." 
 Her voice went on steadily, but a quick hot wave of scarlet 
 flamed up over her face. " He was not a decent man," she 
 said briefly, and went on : " It frightened me almost to 
 death before I got my bearings : I was just a little girl and 
 I hadn't understood anything — and I don't understand 
 much now. But I did learn one thing from all that — I 
 learned to know when a man isn't decent. I can't tell you 
 
More Talk Between Young Moderns 259 
 
 how I know — it's all over him — it's all over me — it's his 
 eyes, the way he stands, the expression of his mouth — I 
 don't only see it — I feel it — I feel it the way a thermom- 
 eter feels it when you put a match under the bulb ... I 
 know! " She brought her extravagant, her preposterous, her 
 ignorant, her incredibly convincing claims to an abrupt end. 
 
 " And you ' feel ' that I . . ." began Arnold, and could 
 not go on. 
 
 " I'd like you for my brother," she said gently. 
 
 He tried to laugh at her, but the honest tears were in 
 his eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about, 
 you silly dear," he said unsteadily, " but I'm awfully glad 
 you came to Lydford." 
 
 With her instinct for avoiding breaks, rough places, Syl- 
 via quickly glided into a transition from this speech back 
 into less personal talk. " Another queer thing about that 
 experience I've never understood: — it cured me of being 
 so crazy about clothes. You wouldn't think it would have 
 anything to do with that, would you ? And I don't see how 
 it did. Oh, I don't mean I don't dearly love pretty dresses 
 now. I do. And I spend altogether too much time think- 
 ing about them — but it's not the same. Somehow the 
 poison is out. I used to be like a drunkard who can't get 
 a drink, when I saw girls have things I didn't. I suppose," 
 she speculated philosophically, " I suppose any great jolt 
 that shakes you up a lot, shakes things* into different pro- 
 portions." * 
 
 " Say, that fellow must have been just about the limit! " 
 Arnold's rather torpid imagination suddenly opened to the 
 story he had heard. 
 
 " No, no ! " said Sylvia. " As I look back on it, I make 
 a lot more sense out of it" (she might have been, by her 
 accent, fifty instead of twenty-three), "and I can see that 
 he wasn't nearly as bad as I thought him. When I said he 
 wasn't decent, I meant that he belonged in the Stone Age, 
 and I'm twentieth-century. We didn't fit together. I sup- 
 pose that's what we all mean when we say somebody isn't 
 decent . . . that he's stayed behind in the procession. I 
 
260 The Bent Twig 
 
 don't mean that man was a degenerate or anything like that 
 ... if he could have found a Stone Age woman he'd 
 have . . . they'd have made a good Stone Age marriage of 
 it. But he didn't, the girl he . . ." 
 
 " Do you know, Sylvia," Arnold broke in wonderingly, 
 " I never before in all my life had anybody speak to me of 
 anything that really mattered. And I never spoke this way 
 myself. I've wanted to, lots of times; but I didn't know 
 people ever did. And to think of its being a girl who does 
 it for me, a girl who . . ." His astonishment was immense. 
 
 " Look here, Arnold," said Sylvia, with a good-natured 
 peremptoriness. " Let a girl be something besides a girl, 
 can't you ! " 
 
 But her attempt to change the tone to a light one failed. 
 Apparently, now that Arnold had broken his long silence, he 
 could not stop himself. He turned towards her with a 
 passionate gesture of bewilderment and cried : " Do you 
 remember, before dinner, you asked me as a joke what was 
 the use of anything, and I said I didn't know? Well, I 
 don't! I've been getting sicker and sicker over everything. 
 What the devil am I here for, anyhow ! " 
 
 As he spoke, a girl's figure stepped from the house to the 
 veranda, from the veranda to the turf of the terrace, and 
 walked towards them. She was tall, and strongly, beauti- 
 fully built ; around her small head was bound a smooth braid 
 of dark hair. She walked with a long, free step and held 
 her head high. As she came towards them, the moonlight 
 full on her dark, proud, perfect face, she might have been 
 the youthful Diana. 
 
 But it was no antique spirit which looked out of those 
 frank, fearless eyes, and it was a very modern and col- 
 loquially American greeting which she now gave to the 
 astonished young people. " Well, Sylvia, don't you know 
 your own sister? " and " Hello there, Arnold." 
 
 "Why, Judith Marshall!" cried Sylvia, falling upon her 
 breathlessly. "However in the world did you get here!" 
 
 Arnold said nothing. He had fallen back a step and now 
 looked at the new-comer with a fixed, dazzled gaze. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 ANOTHER BRAND OF MODERN TALK 
 
 " Where's Judith ? " said Arnold for sole greeting, as 
 he saw Morrison at the piano and Sylvia sitting near it, 
 cool and clear in a lacy white dress. Morrison lifted long 
 fingers from the keys and said gravely, " She came through 
 a moment ago, saying, ' Where's Arnold ? ' and went out 
 through that door." His fingers dropped and Chopin's 
 voice once more rose plaintively. 
 
 The sound of Arnold's precipitate rush across the room 
 and out of the door was followed by a tinkle of laughter 
 from Sylvia. Morrison looked around at her over his 
 shoulder, with a flashing smile of mutual understanding, 
 but he finished the prelude before he spoke. Then, without 
 turning around, as he pulled out another sheet from the 
 music heaped on the piano, he remarked : " If that French 
 philosopher was right when he said no disease is as con- 
 tagious as love-making, we may expect soon to find the 
 very chairs and tables in this house clasped in each other's 
 arms. Old as I am, I feel it going to my head, like a bed 
 of full-blooming valerian." 
 
 Sylvia made no answer. She felt herself flushing, and 
 could not trust her voice to be casual. He continued for a 
 moment to thumb over the music aimlessly, as though wait- 
 ing for her to speak. 
 
 The beautiful room, darkened against the midsummer 
 heat, shimmered dimly in a transparent half-light, the vivid 
 life of its bright chintz, its occasional brass, its clean, daring 
 spots of crimson and purple flowers, subdued into a fabu- 
 lous, half-seen richness. There was not a sound. The 
 splendid heat of the early August afternoon flamed, and 
 paused, and held its breath. 
 
 361 
 
262 The Bent Twig 
 
 Into this silence, like a bird murmuring a drowsy note 
 over a still pool, there floated the beginning of Am Meer. 
 Sylvia sat, passive to her finger-tips, a vase filled to the 
 brim with melody. She stared with unseeing eyes at the 
 back of the man at the piano. She was not thinking of him, 
 she was not aware that she was conscious of him at all ; but 
 hours afterward wherever she looked, she saw for an in- 
 stant again in miniature the slender, vigorous, swaying 
 figure ; the thick brown hair, streaked with white and curling 
 slightly at the ends ; the brooding head. . . . 
 
 When the last note was still, the man stood up and 
 moved away from the piano. He dropped into an arm- 
 chair near Sylvia, and Iear.ir^' -is fine, ugly head back 
 against the brilliant chintz, he looked at her meditatively. 
 His great bodily suavity gave his every action a curious 
 significance and grace. Sylvia, still under the spell of his 
 singing, did not stir, returning his look out of wide, dream- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 When he spoke, his voice blended with the silence almost 
 as harmoniously as the music. ..." Do you know what 
 I wish you would do, Miss Sylvia Marshall? I wish you 
 would tell me something about yourself. Now that I'm no 
 longer forbidden to look at you, or think about you. . . ." 
 
 " Forbidden ? " asked Sylvia, very much astonished. 
 
 " There ! " he said, wilfully mistaking her meaning, and 
 smiling faintly, " I am such an old gentleman that I'm per- 
 fectly negligible to a young lady. She doesn't even notice 
 or not whether I look at her, and think about her." 
 
 A few years before this Sylvia would have burst out 
 impetuously, " Oh yes, I have ! I've wondered awfully 
 what made you so indifferent," but now she kept this re- 
 flection to herself and merely said, " What in the world did 
 you fancy was ' forbidding ' you ? " 
 
 " Honor ! " said Morrison, with a note of mock solem- 
 nity. "Honor! Victoria was so evidently snatching at 
 you as a last hope for Arnold. She gave me to under- 
 stand that everybody else but Arnold was to be strictly 
 non-existent. But now that Arnold has found a character 
 
Another Brand of Modern Talk 263 
 
 beautifully and archaically simple to match his own primi- 
 tive needs, I don't see why I shouldn't enjoy a little civilized 
 talk with you. In any case, it was absurd to think of you 
 for Arnold. It merely shows how driven poor Victoria 
 was!" 
 
 Sylvia tried to speak lightly, although she was pene- 
 trated with pleasure at this explanation of his holding aloof. 
 " Oh, / like Arnold very much. I always have. There's 
 something . . . something sort of touching about Arnold, 
 don't you think? Though I must say that I've heard 
 enough about the difference between training quail dogs 
 and partridge dogs to last me the rest of my life. But 
 that's rather touching too, his not knowing what to do with 
 himself but fiddle around with his guns and tennis-racquets. 
 They're all he has to keep him from being bored to death, 
 and they don't go nearly far enough. Some day he will just 
 drop dead from ennui, poor Arnold! Wouldn't he have 
 enjoyed being a civil engineer, and laying out railroads in 
 wild country ! He'd have been a good one too ! The same 
 amount of energy he puts into his polo playing would make 
 him fight his way through darkest Thibet." She meditated 
 over this hypothesis for a moment and then added with a 
 nod of her head, " Oh yes, I like Arnold ever so much . . . 
 one kind of ' liking/ " 
 
 " Of course you like him," assented the older man, who 
 had been watching her as she talked, and whose manner 
 now, as he took up the word himself, resembled that of an 
 exquisitely adroit angler, casting out the lightest, the most 
 feathery, the most perfectly controlled of dry-flies. " You're 
 too intelligent not to like everybody who's not base — and 
 Arnold's not base. And he ' likes ' you. If you had cared 
 to waste one of your red-brown tresses on him, you could 
 have drawn him by a single hair. But then, everybody 
 ' likes ' you." 
 
 " Old Mr. Sommerville doesn't ! " said Sylvia, on an im- 
 pulse. 
 
 Morrison looked at her admiringly, and put the tips of his 
 fingers together with exquisite precision. " So you add 
 
264 The Bent Twig 
 
 second sight to your other accomplishments ! How in the 
 world could a girl of your age have the experience and 
 intuition to feel that? Old Sommerville passes for a great 
 admirer of yours. You won't, I hope, go so uncannily 
 far in your omniscience as to pretend to know why he 
 doesn't like you ? " 
 
 " No, I won't," said Sylvia, " because I haven't the very 
 faintest idea. Have you?" 
 
 " I know exactly why. It's connected with one of the old 
 gentleman's eccentricities. He's afraid of you on account 
 of his precious nephew." 
 
 " I didn't know he had a nephew." Sylvia was im- 
 mensely astonished. 
 
 "Well, he has, and he bows down and worships him, as 
 he does his granddaughter. You see how he adores Molly. 
 It's nice of the old fellow, the cult he has for his descend- 
 ants, but occasionally inconvenient for innocent bystanders. 
 He thinks everybody wants to make off with his young folks. 
 You and I are fellow-suspects. Haven't you felt him wish 
 he could strike me dead, when Molly makes tea for me, or 
 turns over music as I play ? " He laughed a little, a gentle, 
 kind, indulgent laugh. "Molly!" he said, as if his point 
 were more than elucidated by the mere mention of her 
 name. 
 
 Sylvia intimated with a laugh that her point was clearer 
 yet in that she had no name to mention. " But I never saw 
 his nephew. I never even heard of him until this minute." 
 
 " No, and very probably never will see him. He's very 
 seldom here. And if you did see him, you wouldn't like 
 him — he's an eccentric of the worst brand," said Morrison 
 tranquilly. " But monomanias need no foundation in 
 fact " He broke off abruptly to say : " Is this all an- 
 other proof of your diabolical cleverness? I started in to 
 hear something about yourself, and here I find myself talk- 
 ing about everything else in the world." 
 
 " I'm not clever," said Sylvia, hoping to be contradicted. 
 
 " Well, you're a great deal too nice to be consciously 
 so," admitted Morrison. " See here," he went on, " it's 
 
Another Brand of Modern Talk 265 
 
 evident that you're more than a match for me at this game. 
 Suppose we strike a bargain. You introduce yourself to 
 me and I'll do the same by you. Isn't it quite the most 
 fantastic of all the bizarreries of human intercourse that * 
 an ' introduction ' to a fellow-being consists in being in- 
 formed of his name, — quite the most unimportant, for- 
 tuitous thing about him ? " 
 
 Sylvia considered. " What do you want to know ? " she 
 asked finally. 
 
 " Well, I'd like to know everything," said the man gaily. 
 " My curiosity has been aroused to an almost unappeasable 
 pitch. But of course I'll take any information you feel like 
 doling out. In the first place, how, coming from such 
 a . . ." He checked himself and changed the form of his 
 question : " I overheard you speaking to Victoria's maic}, 
 and I've been lying awake nights ever since, wondering 
 how it happened that you speak French with so pure an 
 accent." 
 
 " Oh, that's simple ! Professor and Madame La Rue 
 are old friends of the family and I've spent a lot of time 
 with them. And then, of course, French is another mother- 
 language for Father. He and Aunt Victoria were brought 
 up in Paris, you know." 
 
 Morrison sighed. " Isn't it strange how all the miracles 
 evaporate into mere chemical reactions when you once in- 
 vestigate ! All the white-clad, ghostly spirits turn out to 
 be clothes on the line. I suppose there's some equally 
 natural explanation about your way on the piano — the 
 clear, limpid phrasing of that Bach the other day, and then 
 the color of the Bizet afterwards. It's astonishing to hear 
 anybody of your crude youth playing Bach at all — and then 
 to hear it played right — and afterwards to hear a modern 
 given his right note. . . ." 
 
 Sylvia was perfectly aware that she was being flattered, 
 and she was immensely enjoying it. She became more 
 animated, and the peculiar sparkle of her face more spirited. 
 " Oh, that's old Reinhardt, my music teacher. He would 
 take all the skin off my knuckles if I played a Bach gigue 
 
266 The Bent Twig 
 
 the least bit like that Arlesienne Minuet. He doesn't ap- 
 prove of Bizet very much, anyhow. He's a tremendous 
 classicist." 
 
 " Isn't it," inquired Morrison, phrasing his question care- 
 fully, " isn't it, with no disrespect to La Chance intended, 
 isn't it rather unusually good fortune for a smallish West- 
 ern city to own a real musician ? " 
 
 " Well, La Chance bears up bravely under its good for- 
 tune," said Sylvia dryly. " Old Mr. Reinhardt isn't exactly 
 a prime favorite there. He's a terribly beery old man, and 
 he wipes his nose on his sleeve. Our house was the only 
 respectable one in town that he could go into. But then, 
 our house isn't so very respectable. It has its advantages, 
 not being so very respectable, though it 'most killed me as 
 a young girl to feel us so. But I certainly have a choice 
 gallery of queer folks in my acquaintance, and I have the 
 queerest hodge-podge of scraps of things learned from 
 them. I know a little Swedish from Miss Lindstrom. 
 She's a Swedish old maid who does uplift work among 
 the negroes — isn't that a weird combination? You just 
 ought to hear what she makes of negro dialect ! And I know 
 all the socialist arguments from hearing a socialist editor 
 get them off every Sunday afternoon. And I even know 
 how to manage planchette and write mediumistically — save 
 the mark! — from Consin Parnelia, a crazy old cousin of 
 Mother's who hangs /ound the house more or less." 
 
 " I begin to gather," surmised Morrison, " that you must 
 have a remarkable father and mother. What are they 
 like?" 
 
 " Well," said Sylvia thoughtfully, " Mother's the bravest 
 thing you ever saw. She's not afraid of anything! I don't 
 mean cows, or the house-afire, or mice, or such foolish- 
 ness. I mean life and death, and sickness and poverty and 
 fear. . . ." 
 
 Morrison nodded his head understanding^, a fine light 
 of appreciation in his eyes, " Not to be afraid of fear — 
 that's splendid." 
 
 Sylvia went on to particularize. " When any of us are 
 
Another Brand of Modern Talk 267 
 
 sick — it's my little brother Lawrence who is mostly — 
 Judith and I are always well — Father just goes all to 
 pieces, he gets so frightened. But Mother stiffens her back 
 and makes everything in the house go on just as usual, very 
 quiet, very calm. She holds everything together tight. She 
 says it's sneaking and cowardly if you're going to accept 
 life at all, not to accept all of it — the sour with the sweet — • 
 and not whimper." 
 
 " Very fine, — very fine ! Possibly a very small bit . . . 
 grim?" commented Morrison, with a rising inflection. 
 
 " Oh, perhaps, a little ! " agreed Sylvia, as if it did not 
 matter; " but I can't give you any idea of Mother. She's — 
 she's just great! And yet I couldn't live like her, without 
 wanting to smash everything up. She's somebody that 
 Seneca would have liked." 
 
 "And your father?" queried Morrison. 
 
 " Oh, he's great too — dear Father — but so different ! 
 He and Mother between them have just about all the varie- 
 ties of human nature that are worth while! Father's red- 
 headed (though it's mostly gray now), and quick, and blus- 
 tering, and awfully clever, and just adored by his students, 
 and talks every minute, and apparently does all the deciding, 
 and yet ... he couldn't draw the breath of life without 
 Mother; and when it comes right down to doing anything, 
 what he always does is what he knows will come up to her 
 standard." 
 
 Morrison raised delightedly amused hands to heaven. 
 " The Recording Angel domiciled in the house ! " he cried. 
 " It had never occurred to me before how appallingly dis- 
 cerning the eye of the modern offspring must be. Go on, 
 go on ! " 
 
 Elated by the sensation of appearing clever, Sylvia con- 
 tinued with a fresh flow of eloquence. " And there never 
 was such a highly moral bringing-up as we children have 
 had. It's no fault of my family's if I've turned out a grasp- 
 ing materialist ! I was brought up " — she flamed out sud- 
 denly as at some long-hoarded grievance — " I was brought 
 up in a moral hot-house, and I haven't yet recovered from 
 
268 The Bent Twig 
 
 the shock of being transplanted into real earth in the real 
 world." 
 
 Morrison paid instant tribute to her aroused and serious 
 feeling by a grave look of attention. " Won't you explain ? * 
 he asked. " I'm so dull I don't follow you. But I haven't 
 been so interested in years." 
 
 " Why, I mean," said Sylvia, trying hard to reduce to 
 articulateness a complicated conception, " I mean that 
 Father and Mother just deliberately represented values to 
 me as different from what they really are, with real folks! 
 And now I find that I'm real folks ! I can't help it. You 
 are as you are, you know. They kept representing to me 
 always that the best pleasures are the ones that are the most 
 important to folks — music, I mean, and Milton's poetry, 
 and a fine novel — and, in Mother's case, a fine sunset, or 
 a perfect rose, or things growing in the garden." 
 
 No old associate of Morrison's would have recognized 
 the man's face, shocked as it was by surprise and interest 
 out of his usual habit of conscious, acute, self-possessed ob- 
 servation. The angler had inadvertently stepped off a ledge 
 into deep water, and a very swift current was tugging at 
 him. He leaned forward, his eyes as eager with curiosity 
 as a boy's. " Do I understand you to say that you repudiate 
 those ' best pleasures ' ? " 
 
 " Of course you don't understand anything of the sort," 
 said Sylvia very earnestly. " They've soaked me so in 
 music that I'm a regular bond-slave to it. And a perfect 
 rose is associated with so many lovely recollections of 
 Mother's wonderful silent joy in it, that I could weep for 
 pleasure. What I'm talking about — what I'm trying to tell 
 you, is the shock it was to me, when I got out of that 
 artificially unworldly atmosphere of home — for there's no 
 use talking, it is artificial ! — to find that those pleasures 
 aren't the ones that are considered important and essential. 
 How did I find things in the real world? Why, I find that 
 people don't give a thought to those ' best pleasures ' until 
 they have a lot of other things first. Everything Vd been 
 trained to value and treasure was negligible, not worth both- 
 
Another Brand of Modern Talk 269 
 
 ering about. But money — position — not having to work — 
 elegance — those are vital — prime! Real people can't en joy- 
 hearing a concert if they know they've got to wash up a 
 lot of dishes afterwards. Hiring a girl to do that work 
 is the first thing to do ! There isn't another woman in the 
 world, except my mother, who'd take any pleasure in a 
 perfect rose if she thought her sleeves were so old-fashioned 
 that people would stare at her. Folks talk about liking to 
 look at a fine sunset, but what they give their blood and 
 bones for, is a fine house on the best street in town ! " 
 
 " Well, but you're not ' people ' in that vulgar sense ! " 
 protested Morrison. He spoke now without the slightest 
 arriere-pensee of flattering her, and Sylvia in her sudden 
 burst for self-expression was unconscious of him, save as 
 an opponent in an argument. 
 
 " You just say that, in that superior way," she flashed at 
 him, " because you don't have to bother your head about 
 such matters, because you don't have to associate with 
 people who are fighting for those essentials. For they are 
 what everybody except Father and Mother — everybody 
 feels to be the essentials — a pretty house, handsome clothes, 
 servants to do the unpleasant things, social life — oh, plenty 
 of money sums it all up, ' vulgar ' as it sounds. And I 
 don't believe you are different. I don't believe anybody you 
 know is really a bit different! Let Aunt Victoria, let old 
 Mr. Sommerville, lose their money, and you'd see how un- 
 important Debussy and Masaccio would be to them, com- 
 pared to having to black their own shoes ! " 
 
 " Well, upon my word ! " exclaimed Morrison. " Are 
 you at eighteen presuming to a greater knowledge of life 
 than I at forty?" 
 
 " I'm not eighteen, I'm twenty-three," said Sylvia. " The 
 difference is enormous. And if I don't know more about 
 plain unvarnished human nature than you, I miss my guess ! 
 You haven't gone through five years at a State University, 
 rubbing shoulders with folks who haven't enough sophisti- 
 cation to pretend to be different from what they are. You 
 haven't taught music for three years in the middle-class 
 
270 The Bent Twig 
 
 families of a small Western city ! " She broke off to laugh 
 an apologetic depreciation of her own heat. " You'd think 
 I was addressing a meeting," she said in her usual tone. 
 " I got rather carried away because this is the first time I 
 ever really spoke out about it. There are so few who could 
 understand. If I ever tried to explain it to Father and 
 Mother, I'd be sure to find them so deep in a discussion of 
 the relation between Socrates and Christ that they couldn't 
 pay any attention ! Professor Kennedy could understand — 
 but he's such a fanatic on the other side." 
 
 Morrison looked a quick suspicion. "Who is Professor 
 Kennedy ? " he inquired ; and was frankly relieved when 
 Sylvia explained : " He's the head of the Mathematics De- 
 partment, about seventy years old, and the crossest, can- 
 tankerousest old misanthrope you ever saw. And thinks 
 himself immensely clever for being so! He just loathes 
 people — the way they really are — and he dotes on Mother 
 and Judith because they're not like anybody else. And he 
 hates me because they couldn't all hypnotize me into looking 
 through their eyes. He thinks it low of me to realize that 
 if you're going to live at all, you've got to live with people, 
 and you can't just calmly brush their values on one side. 
 He said once that any sane person in this world was like 
 a civilized man with plenty of gold coin, cast away on a 
 desert island with a tribe of savages who only valued beads 
 and calico, and buttons and junk. And I said (I knew 
 perfectly well he was hitting at me) that if he was really 
 cast away and couldn't get to another island, I thought the 
 civilized man would be an idiot to starve to death, when he 
 could buy food of the savages by selling them junk. And 
 I thought he just wasted his breath by swearing at the 
 savages for not knowing about the value of gold. There I 
 was hitting at him! He's spoiled his digestion, hating the 
 way people are made. And Professor Kennedy said some- 
 thing nasty and neat (he's awfully clever) about that being 
 rather a low occupation for a civilized being — taking ad- 
 vantage of the idiocies of savages — he meant me, of course 
 — and he's right, it is a mean business ; I hate it. And that's 
 
Another Brand of Modern Talk 271 
 
 why Fve always wanted to get on another island — not an 
 uninhabited island, like the one Father and Mother have — 
 but one where — well, this is one ! " she waved her hand 
 about the lovely room, " this is just one ! Where every- 
 thing's beautiful — costly too — but not just costly; where all 
 the horrid, necessary consequences of things are taken care 
 of without one's bothering — where flowers are taken out 
 of the vases when they wilt and fresh ones put in; and 
 dishes get themselves washed invisibly, inaudibly — and litter 
 just vanishes without our lifting a hand. Of course the 
 people who live so always, can rejoice with a clear mind in 
 sunsets and bright talk. That's what I meant the other day 
 — the day Judith came — when I said I'd arrived in Capua 
 at last; when old Mr. Sommerville thought me so material- 
 istic and cynical. If he did that, on just that phrase — what 
 must you think, after all this confession intime d'un enfant 
 du sieclef " She stopped with a graceful pretense of dread- 
 ing his judgment, although she knew that she had been 
 talking well, and read nothing but admiration in his very 
 expressive face. 
 
 " But all this means, you extraordinary young person, 
 that you're not in the least an enfant du siecle!" he cried. 
 " It means that you're dropped down in this groaning, heavy- 
 spirited twentieth century, troubled about many things, from 
 the exact year that was the golden climax of the Renais- 
 sance; that you're a perfect specimen of the high-hearted, 
 glorious . . ." he qualified on a second thought, " unless 
 your astonishing capacity to analyze it all, comes from the 
 nineteenth century ? " 
 
 " No, that comes from Father," explained Sylvia, laugh- 
 ing. " Isn't it funny, using the tool Father taught me to 
 handle, against his ideas ! He's just great on analysis. As 
 soon as we were old enough to think at all, he was always 
 practising us on analysis — especially of what made us want 
 things, or not like them. It's one of his sayings — he's al- 
 ways getting it off to his University classes — that if you 
 have once really called an emotion or an ambition by its 
 right name, you have it by the tail, so to speak — that if 
 
272 The Bent Twig 
 
 you know, for instance, that it's your vanity and not your 
 love that's wounded by something, you'll stop caring. But 
 I never noticed that it really worked if you cared hard 
 enough. Diagnosing a disease doesn't help you any, if you 
 keep right on being sick with it." 
 
 " My dear ! My dear ! " cried the man, leaning towards 
 her again, and looking — dazzled — into the beauty and in- 
 telligence of her eyes, " the idea that you are afflicted with 
 any disease could only occur to the morbid mind of the 
 bluest-nosed Puritan who ever cut down a May-pole! 
 You're wonderfully, you're terrifyingly, you are superbly 
 sound and vigorous ! " 
 
 Breaking in upon this speech, there came the quick, smooth 
 purr of an automobile with all its parts functioning per- 
 fectly, a streak of dark gray past the shutters, the sigh of 
 an engine stopped suddenly — Molly Sommerville sprang 
 from behind the steering wheel and ran into the house. 
 She was exquisitely flushed and eager when she came in, 
 but when she saw the two alone in the great, cool, dusky 
 room, filled to its remotest corners with the ineffable aroma 
 of long, intimate, and interrupted talk, she was brought 
 up short. She faltered for an instant and then continued 
 to advance, her eyes on Sylvia. " It's so hot," she said, at 
 random, " and I thought I'd run over for tea " 
 
 " Oh, of course," said Sylvia, jumping up in haste, " it's 
 late! I'd forgotten it was time for tea! Blame me! 
 Since I've been here, Aunt Victoria has left it to me — 
 where shall I say to have it set ? " 
 
 " The pergola's lovely," suggested Molly. She took her 
 close motor-hat from the pure gold of her hair with a rather 
 listless air. 
 
 " All right — the pergola ! " agreed Sylvia, perhaps a little 
 too anxiously. In spite of herself, she gave, and she knew 
 she was giving, the effect of needing somehow to make 
 something up to Molly. . . . 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 NOTHING IN THE LEAST MODERN 
 
 Sylvia was sitting in the garden, an unread book on her 
 knees, dreaming among red and yellow and orange gladioli. 
 She looked with a fixed, bright, beatific stare at the flame- 
 colored flowers and did not see them. She saw only Felix 
 Morrison, she heard only his voice, she was brimming with 
 the sense of him. In a few moments she would go into the 
 house and find him in the darkened living-room, as he had 
 been every afternoon for the last fortnight, ostensibly come 
 in to lounge away the afternoon over a book, really wait- 
 ing for her to join him. And when she came in, he would 
 look up at her, that wonderful penetrating deep look of 
 his . . . and she would welcome him with her eyes. 
 
 And then they would talk! Judith and Arnold would 
 be playing tennis, oblivious of the heat, and Aunt Victoria 
 would be annihilating the tedious center of the day by sleep. 
 Nobody would interrupt them for hours. How they would 
 talk ! How they had talked ! As she thought of it the 
 golden fortnight hummed and sang about Sylvia's ears like 
 a Liszt Liebes-Traum. 
 
 They had talked of everything in the world, and it all 
 meant but one thing, that they had discovered each other, 
 a discovery visibly as wonderful for Morrison as for the 
 girl. They had discovered each other, and they had been 
 intelligent enough to know at once what it meant. They 
 knew ! And in a moment she would go into the house to 
 him. She half closed her eyes as before a too-great bril- 
 liance. . . . 
 
 Arnold appeared at the other end of the long row of 
 gladioli. He was obviously looking for some one. Sylvia 
 called to him, with the friendly tone she always had for 
 
274 The Bent Twig 
 
 him : " Here I am ! I don't know where Judith is. Will 
 I do?" 
 
 From a distance Arnold nodded, and continued to ad- 
 vance, the irregularity of his wavering gait more pronounced 
 than usual. As soon as she could see the expression of his 
 face, Sylvia's heart began to beat fast, with a divination 
 of something momentous. He sat down beside her, took 
 off his hat, and laid it on the bench. " Do you remember," 
 he asked in a strange, high voice, " that you said you would 
 like me for your brother ? " 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Well, I'm going to be," he said, and covering his face 
 with his hands, burst into sobs. 
 
 Sylvia was so touched by his emotion, so sympathetically 
 moved by his news, that even through her happy ejacula- 
 tions the tears rained down her own cheeks. She tried to 
 wipe them away and discovered, absurdly enough, that she 
 had lost her handkerchief. " Aren't we idiots ! " she cried 
 in a voice of joyful quavers. " I never understood before 
 why everybody cries at a wedding. See here, Arnold, I've 
 lost my handkerchief. Loan me yours." She pulled his 
 handkerchief out of his pocket, she wiped her eyes, she put 
 a sisterly kiss on his thin, sallow cheek, she cried : " You 
 dears! Isn't it too good to be true! Arnold! So soon! 
 Inside two weeks ! How ever could you have the courage ? 
 Judith ! My Judith ! Why, she never looked at a man 
 before. How did you dare?" 
 
 His overmastering fit of emotion was passed now. His 
 look was of white, incredulous exaltation. " We saw each 
 other and ran into each other's arms," he said ; " I didn't 
 have to * dare.' It was like breathing." 
 
 " Oh, how perfect ! " she cried, " how simply, simply 
 perfect ! " and now there was for an instant a note of wist- 
 ful envy in her voice. " It's all perfect ! She never so 
 much as looked at a man before, and you said the other 
 night you'd never been in love before." 
 
 Arnold looked at her wildly. " I said that ! " he cried. 
 
 " Why, yes, don't you remember, after that funny, joking 
 
Nothing in the Least Modern 275 
 
 talk with me, you said that was the nearest you'd ever come 
 to proposing to any girl ? " 
 
 " God Almighty ! " cried the man, and did not apologize 
 for the blasphemy. He looked at her fixedly, as though un- 
 guessed-at horizons of innocence widened inimitably be- 
 fore his horrified eyes. And then, following some line of 
 association which escaped Sylvia, " I'm not fit to look at 
 Judith ! " he cried. The idea seemed to burst upon him 
 like a thunder-clap. 
 
 Sylvia patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. " That's 
 the proper thing for a lover to think ! " she said with cheer- 
 ful, commonplace inanity. She did not notice that he 
 shrank from her hand, because she now sprang up, crying, 
 " But where's Judy ? Where is Judy ? " 
 
 He nodded towards the house. " She sent me out to 
 get you. She's in her room — she wants to tell you 
 — but when I saw you, I couldn't keep it to myself." His 
 exaltation swept back like a wave, from the crest of which 
 he murmured palely, " Judith ! Judith ! " and Sylvia laughed 
 at him, with the tears of sympathy in her eyes, and leaving 
 him there on the bench staring before him at the living 
 fire of the flame-colored flowers, she ran with all her speed 
 into the house. 
 
 Morrison, lounging in a chair with a book, looked up, 
 startled at her whirlwind entrance. " What's up ? " he in- 
 quired. 
 
 At the sound of his voice, she checked herself and 
 pirouetted with a thistle-down lightness to face him. Her 
 face, always like a clear, transparent vase lighted from 
 within, now gave out, deeply moved as she was, an almost 
 visible brightness. " Judith ! " she cried, her voice ringing 
 like a silver trumpet, " Judith and Arnold ! " She was 
 poised like a butterfly, and as she spoke she burst into flight 
 again, and was gone. 
 
 She had not been near him, but the man had the distinct 
 impression that she had thrown herself on his neck and 
 kissed him violently, in a transport of delight. In the 
 silent room, still fragrant, still echoing with her passage, 
 
276 The Bent Twig 
 
 he closed his book, and later his eyes, and sat with the ex- 
 pression of a connoisseur savoring an exquisite, a perfect 
 impression. . . . 
 
 Tea that afternoon was that strangest of phenomena, a 
 formal ceremony of civilized life performed in the abashing 
 and disconcerting presence of naked emotion. Arnold and 
 Judith sat on opposite sides of the pergola, Judith shining 
 and radiant as the dawn, her usually firmly set lips soft and 
 tremulous ; Arnold rather pale, impatient, oblivious to what 
 was going on around him, his spirit prostrated before the 
 miracle ; and when their starry eyes met, there flowed from 
 them and towards them from every one in the pergola, a 
 thousand unseen waves of excitement. 
 
 The mistress of the house herself poured tea in honor of 
 the great occasion, and she was very humorous and amusing 
 about the mistakes caused by her sympathetic agitation 
 " There ! I've put three lumps in yours, Mr. Sommerville. 
 How could I ! But I really don't know what Fm doing. 
 This business of having love-at-first-sight in one's very 
 
 family ! Give your cup to Molly; I'll make you a 
 
 fresh one. Oh, Arnold! How could you look at Judith 
 just then! You made me fill this cup so full I can't pass 
 it!" 
 
 Mr. Sommerville, very gallant and full of compliments 
 and whimsical allusions, did his best to help their hostess 
 strike the decent note of easy pleasantry; but they were 
 both battling with something too strong for them. Un- 
 seconded as they were by any of the others, they gave a 
 little the effect of people bowing and smirking to each other 
 at the foot of a volcano in full eruption. Morrison, pick- 
 ing up the finest and sharpest of his conversational tools, 
 ventured the hazardous enterprise of expressing this idea to 
 them. Mrs. Marshall-Smith, trying one topic after another, 
 expressed an impatience with the slow progress of a Henry 
 James novel she was reading, and Mr. Sommerville, remark- 
 ing with a laugh, " Oh, you cannot hurry Henry," looked 
 to see his mild witticism rewarded by a smile from the 
 
Nothing in the Least Modern 277 
 
 critic. But Morrison shook his head, " No, my dear old 
 friend. // faut Hurler avec les hups — especially if you are 
 so wrought up by their hurlements that you can't hear 
 yourself think. I'm just giving myself up to the rareness, 
 the richness of the impression." 
 
 The new fiancee herself talked rather more than usual, 
 though this meant by no means loquacity, and presented 
 more the appearance of composure than any one else there ; 
 although this was amusingly broken by a sudden shortness 
 of breath whenever she met Arnold's eyes. She said in 
 answer to a question that she would be going on to her 
 hospital the day after tomorrow — her two weeks' vacation 
 over — oh yes, she would finish her course at the hospital; 
 she had only a few more months. And in answer to another 
 question, Arnold replied, obviously impatient at having to 
 speak to any one but Judith, that of course he didn't mind 
 if she went on and got her nurse's diploma — didn't she 
 want to? Anything she wanted. . . . 
 
 No — decidedly the thing was too big to make a successful 
 fete of. Morrison was silent and appreciatively observant, 
 his eyes sometimes on Sylvia, sometimes on Judith; Mr. 
 Sommerville, continuing doggedly to make talk, descended 
 to unheard-of trivialities in reporting the iniquities of his 
 chauffeur; Molly stirred an untasted cup, did not raise her 
 eyes at all, and spoke only once or twice, addressing to 
 Sylvia a disconnected question or two, in the answers to 
 which she had obviously no interest. Judith and Arnold 
 had never been very malleable social material, and in their 
 present formidable condition they were as little assistance 
 in the manufacture of geniality as a couple of African 
 lions. 
 
 The professional fete-makers were consequently enor- 
 mously relieved when it was over and their unavailing ef- 
 forts could be decently discontinued. Professing different 
 reasons for escape, they moved in disjointed groups across 
 the smooth perfection of the lawn towards the house, where 
 Molly's car stood, gleaming in the sun. Sylvia found her- 
 self, as she expected, manoeuvered to a place beside Morrison. 
 
278 The Bent Twig 
 
 He arranged it with his unobtrusive deftness in getting 
 what he wanted out of a group of his fellow-beings, and 
 she admired his skill, and leaned on it confidently. They 
 had had no opportunity that day for the long talk which had 
 been a part of every afternoon for the last week; and she 
 now looked with a buoyant certainty to have him arrange 
 an hour together before dinner. Her anticipation of it on 
 that burning day of reflected heat sent thrills of eager dis- 
 quietude over her. It was not only for Judith and Arnold 
 that the last week had been one of meeting eyes, long twi- 
 light evenings of breathless, quick-ripening intimacy. . . . 
 
 As they slackened their pace to drop behind Mr. Som- 
 merville, who walked hand-in-hand with his granddaughter 
 in front of them, Morrison said, looking at her with burn- 
 ing eyes, "... an instrument so finely strung that it 
 vibrates at the mere sound of another wakened to melody — 
 what mortal man lives who would not dream of its re- 
 sponse if he could set his own hand to the bow ? " 
 
 The afternoon had been saturated with emotional excite- 
 ment and the moment had come for its inevitable crytal- 
 lization into fateful words. The man spoke as though he 
 were not wholly conscious of what he was saying. He 
 stepped beside her like one in a dream. He could not take 
 his eyes from her, from her flushed, grave, receptive face, 
 from her downcast, listening eyes, her slow, trance-like step 
 as she waited for him to go on. He went on : " It be- 
 comes, my dear, I assure you — the idea of that possibility 
 becomes absolutely an obsession — even to a man usually 
 quite his own master " 
 
 They were almost at a standstill now, and the two in 
 front of them had reached the house. Sylvia had a mo- 
 ment of what seemed to her the purest happiness she had 
 ever known. . . . 
 
 From across the lawn they saw a violent gesture — 
 Molly had thrown her grandfather's clinging hand from 
 her, and flashed back upon the two, lingering there in the 
 sunlight. She cast herself on Sylvia, panting and trying 
 to laugh. Her little white teeth showed in what was almost 
 
Nothing in the Least Modern 279 
 
 a grimace. " Why in the world are you two poking along 
 so?" she cried, passing her arm through Sylvia's. Her 
 beautiful sunny head came no more than to Sylvia's shoul- 
 der. Without waiting for an answer she went on hurriedly, 
 speaking in the tones of suppressed excitement which 
 thrilled in every one's voice that day : " Come on, Sylvia — 
 let's work it off together! Let me take you somewhere — 
 let's go to Rutland and back." 
 
 " That's thirty miles away ! " said Sylvia, " and it's past 
 five now." 
 
 " I'll have you there and back long before seven," as- 
 serted Molly. " Come on . . . come on . . ." She pulled 
 impatiently, petulantly at the other girl's arm. 
 
 "I'm not invited, I suppose," said Morrison, lighting a 
 cigarette with care. 
 
 Molly looked at him a little wildly. " No, Felix, you're 
 not invited ! " she said, and laughed unsteadily. 
 
 She had hurried them along to the car, and now they 
 stood by the swift gray machine, Molly's own, the one she 
 claimed to love more than anything else in the world. She 
 sprang in and motioned Sylvia to the seat beside her. 
 
 " Hats ? " suggested Morrison, looking at their bare, 
 shining heads. He was evidently fighting for time, ma- 
 nceuvering for an opening. His success was that of a man 
 gesticulating against a gale. Molly's baldly unscrupulous 
 determination beat down the beginnings of his carefully 
 composed opposition before he could frame one of his 
 well-balanced sentences. " No — no — it takes too long to 
 go and get hats ! " she cried peremptorily. " If you can't 
 have what you want when you want it, it's no use having 
 it at all!" 
 
 " I'm not sure," remarked Morrison, " that Miss Mar- 
 shall wants this at all." 
 
 " Yes, she does ; yes, she does ! " Molly contradicted 
 him heatedly. Sylvia, hanging undecided at the step, felt 
 herself pulled into the car; the door banged, the engine 
 started with a smooth sound of powerful machinery, the 
 car leaped forward. Sylvia cast one backward glance at 
 
280 The Bent Twig 
 
 Morrison, an annoyed, distinguished, futile presence, stand- 
 ing motionless, and almost instantly disappearing in the 
 distance in which first he, and then the house and tall 
 poplars over it, shrank to nothingness. 
 
 Their speed was dizzying. The blazing summer air blew 
 hot and vital in their faces; their hair tugged at the pins 
 and flew back in fluttering strands; their thin garments 
 clung to their limbs, molded as closely by the compressing 
 wind as by water. Molly did not turn her eyes from the 
 road ahead, leaping up to meet them, and vanishing under 
 the car. She tried to make a little casual talk : " Don't you 
 love to let it out, give it all the gas there is ? " " There's 
 nothing like a quick spin for driving the nightmares out of 
 your mind, is there ? " But as Sylvia made no answer to 
 these overtures (the plain fact was that Sylvia had no 
 breath for speech, — for anything but a horrified fascinated 
 glare at the road), she said suddenly, somberly, " If I were 
 you, I certainly should despise me ! " She took the car 
 around a sharp curve on two wheels. 
 
 Sylvia clutched at the side and asked wonderingly, 
 " Why in the world ? " in a tone so permeated with sin- 
 cerity that even Molly felt it. 
 
 " Don't you know? " she cried. " Do you mean to say 
 you don't know?" 
 
 " Know what? " asked Sylvia. Hypnotized by the driv- 
 er's intent and unwavering gaze on the road, she kept her 
 own eyes as fiercely concentrated, her attention leaping 
 from one quickly seen, instantly disappearing detail to 
 another, — a pile of gravel here, — a half-buried rock there. 
 — They both raised their voices to be heard above the 
 sound of the engine and the rush of the car. " Know 
 what ? ■ • repeated Sylvia loudly. 
 
 " Why do you suppose I made myself ridiculous by pull- 
 ing you away from Felix that idiotic, humiliating way ! " 
 Molly threw this inquiry out, straight before her, angrily. 
 The wind caught at her words and hurled them behind. 
 
 In a flash Sylvia understood something to which she had 
 been resolutely closing her perceptions. She felt sick and 
 
Nothing in the Least Modern 281 
 
 scared. She clutched the side, watched a hill rise up steep 
 before them and flatten out under the forward leap of the 
 car. She thought hard. Something of her little-girl, over- 
 mastering horror of things, rough, outspoken, disagreeable, 
 swept over her. She violently wished that she could escape 
 from the conversation before her. She would have paid 
 almost any price to escape. 
 
 But Molly's nerves were not so sensitive. She evidently 
 had no desire to escape or to let Sylvia. The grim little 
 figure at the steering-wheel controlled with her small hands 
 the fate of the two. She broke out now, impatient at 
 Sylvia's silence : " Any fool could see that it was because 
 I couldn't bear to see you with Felix another minute, and 
 because I hadn't any other way to get you apart. Every- 
 body else there knew why. I knew they knew. But I 
 couldn't help it. I couldn't bear it another instant ! " 
 
 She broke the glass of decent reticence with a great clat- 
 tering blow. It shivered into fragments. There was noth- 
 ing now between them but the real issue in all its uncomely 
 bareness. This real issue, the maenad at the wheel now 
 held up before them in a single brutal statement — " Are you 
 in love with Felix? I am." 
 
 There was something eerie, terrifying, in her casting these 
 words out, straight before her. Sylvia looked in awe at 
 the pale, pinched profile, almost unrecognizable in its stern 
 misery. " Because if you're not," Molly went on, her 
 white lower lip twitching, " I wish you'd keep out. It was 
 all right before you came with your horrible cleverness. 
 It was all right. It was all right." 
 
 Through the iteration of this statement, through the 
 tumult of her own thoughts, through the mad rush of the 
 wind past her ears, Sylvia heard as clearly as though she 
 sat again in the great, dim, quiet room, a melodious voice 
 saying gently, indulgently, laughingly, "Molly!" Secure 
 in her own safe place of favor she felt a great wave of 
 generous pity for the helpless self-deception of her sister- 
 woman. Fired by this and by the sudden perception of an 
 opening for an act of spectacular magnanimity — would it 
 
282 The Bent Twig 
 
 be any the less magnanimous because it would cost her 
 nothing in the end?— she reached for the mantle of the 
 beau role and cast it about her shoulders. " Why, Molly 
 dear ! " she cried, and her quick sympathies had never been 
 more genuinely aroused, " Molly dear, of course I'll keep 
 out, if you want me to. I'll leave the coast clear to you 
 as long as you please." 
 
 She was almost thrown from the seat by the jarring grind 
 of the car brought to a sudden standstill. Molly caught her 
 hands, looked into her face, the first time their eyes had 
 met. " Do you mean it . . . Sylvia ? " 
 
 Sylvia nodded, much agitated, touched by the other's 
 pain, half ashamed of her own apparent generosity which 
 was to mean no loss to her, no gain to Molly. In the sudden 
 becalmed stillness of the hot afternoon their bright, blown 
 hair fell about their faces in shining clouds. 
 
 "I didn't understand before," said Sylvia; and she was 
 speaking the truth. 
 
 " And you'll let him alone ? You won't talk to him — play 
 his accompaniments — oh, those long talks of yours ! " 
 
 " We've been talking, you silly dear, of the Renaissance 
 compared to the Twentieth Century, and of the passing of 
 the leisure class, and all the beauty they always create," 
 said Sylvia. Again she spoke the literal truth. But the 
 true truth, burning on Molly's tongue, shriveled this to 
 ashes. " You've been making him admire you, be inter- 
 ested in you, see how little / amount to ! " she cried. " But 
 if you don't care about him yourself — if you'll — two weeks, 
 Sylvia — just keep out for two weeks . . ." As if it were 
 part of the leaping forward of her imagination, she sud- 
 denly started the car again, and with a whirling, reck- 
 less wrench at the steering-wheel she had turned the 
 car about and was racing back over the road they had 
 come. 
 
 M Where are you going ? " cried Sylvia to her, above the 
 noise of their progress. 
 
 " Back ! " she answered, laughing out. " What's the use of 
 going on now?" She opened the throttle to its widest 
 
Nothing in the Least Modern 283 
 
 and pressing her lips together tightly, gave herself up to 
 the intoxication of speed. 
 
 Once she said earnestly : " You're fine, Sylvia ! I never 
 knew a girl could be like you ! " And once more she threw 
 out casually : " Do you know what I was going to do if I 
 found out you and Felix — if you hadn't . . . ? I was going 
 to jump the car over the turn there on Prospect Hill." 
 
 Remembering the terrible young face of pain and wrath 
 which she had watched on the way out, Sylvia believed her ; 
 or at least believed that she believed her. In reality, her 
 immortal youth was incapable of believing in the fact of 
 death in any form. But the words put a stamp of tragic 
 sincerity on their wild expedition, and on her companion's 
 suffering. She thought of the two weeks which lay before 
 Molly, and turned away her eyes in sympathy. . . . 
 
 Ten days after this, an announcement was made of the 
 engagement of Mary Montgomery Sommerville, sole heiress 
 of the great Montgomery fortune, to Felix Morrison, the 
 well-known critic of aesthetics. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 MOLLY IN HER ELEMENT 
 
 Sylvia faced her aunt's dictum with heartsick shrinking 
 from its rigor; but she recognized it as an unexaggerated 
 statement of the facts. " You can't go home now, Sylvia — 
 everybody would say you couldn't stand seeing Molly's 
 snatch at Felix successful. You really must stay on to 
 let people see that you are another kind of girl from 
 Molly, capable of impersonal interest in a man of Felix's 
 brains." 
 
 Sylvia thought of making the obviously suitable remark 
 that she cared nothing about what people thought, but such 
 a claim was so preposterously untrue to her character that 
 she could not bring the words past her lips. As a matter 
 of fact, she did care what people thought. She always had ! 
 She always would ! She remained silent, looking fixedly 
 out of the great, plate-glass window, across the glorious 
 sweep of blue mountain-slope and green valley com- 
 manded by Mrs. Marshall-Smith's bedroom. She did not 
 resemble the romantic conception of a girl crossed in love. 
 She looked very quiet, no paler than usual, quite self-pos- 
 sessed. The only change a keen eye could have noted was 
 that now there was about her an atmosphere of slightly rigid 
 dignity, which had not been there before. She seemed less 
 girlish. 
 
 No eyes could have been more keenly analytical than 
 those of Mrs. Marshall-Smith. She saw perfectly the new 
 attribute, and realized perfectly what a resolute stiffening 
 of the will it signified. She had never admired and loved 
 Sylvia more, and being a person adept in self-expression, 
 she saturated her next speech with her admiration and 
 affection. "Of course, you know, my dear, that I'm not 
 
 284. 
 
Molly in Her Element 285 
 
 one of the herd. I know entirely that your feeling for 
 Felix was just what mine is — immense admiration for his 
 taste and accomplishments. As a matter of fact it was 
 apparent to every one that, even in spite of all Molly's 
 money, if you'd really cared to . . . " 
 
 Sylvia winced, actually and physically, at this speech, 
 which brought back to her with a sharp flick the egregious- 
 ness of her absurd self-deception. What a simpleton she 
 had been — what a little naive, provincial simpleton ! In spite 
 of her high opinion of her own cleverness and knowledge of 
 people, how stupidly steeped she had been in the childish, 
 idiotic American tradition of entire disinterestedness in the 
 relations of men and women. It was another instance of 
 how betrayed she constantly was, in any manceuver in the 
 actual world, by the fatuous idealism which had so colored 
 her youth — she vented her emotion in despising that ideal- 
 ism and thinking of hard names to call it. 
 
 "■ . . . though of course you showed your intel- 
 ligence by not really caring to," went on Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith ; " it would have meant a crippled life for both of 
 you. Felix hasn't a cent more than he needs for himself. 
 If he was going to marry at all, he was forced to marry 
 carefully. Indeed, it has occurred to me that he may have 
 thrown himself into this, because he was in danger of losing 
 his head over you, and knew how fatal it would be. For 
 you, you lovely thing of great possibilities, you need a rich 
 soil for your roots, too, if you're to bloom out as you 
 ought to." 
 
 Sylvia, receiving this into a sore and raw consciousness, 
 said to herself with an embittered instinct for cynicism that 
 she had never heard more euphonious periphrases for sell- 
 ing yourself for money. For that was what it came down 
 to, she had told herself fiercely a great many times during 
 the night Felix had sold himself for money as outright 
 as ever a woman of the streets had done. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall- Smith, continuing steadily to talk (on the 
 theory that talking prevents too great concentration of 
 thought), and making the round of all the possible things 
 
.286 The Bent Twig 
 
 to say, chanced at this moment upon a qualification to this 
 theory of Morrison's conduct which for an instant caught 
 Sylvia's attention, " and then there's always the possi- 
 bility that even if you had cared to — Molly might have been 
 too much for you, for both of you. She always has had 
 just what she wanted — and people who have, get the habit. 
 I don't know if you've noticed it, in the little you've seen 
 of her, but it's very apparent to me, knowing her from 
 childhood up as I have, that there's a slight coarseness 
 of grain in Molly, when it's a question of getting what 
 she wants. I don't mean she's exactly horrid. Molly's a 
 dear in her way, and I'm very fond of her, of course. If 
 she can get what she wants without walking over anybody's 
 prostrate body, she'll go round. But there's a directness, 
 a brilliant lack of fine shades in Molly's grab. . . . 
 It makes one remember that her Montgomery grandfather 
 had firmness of purpose enough to raise himself from an 
 ordinary Illinois farmer to arbiter of the wheat pit. Such 
 impossible old aunts — such cousins — occasionally crop up 
 still from the Montgomery connection. But all with the 
 same crude force. It's almost impossible for a temperament 
 like Felix's to contend with a nature like that." 
 
 Sylvia was struck by the reflection, but on turning it over 
 she saw in it only another reason for anger at Morrison. 
 " You make your old friend out as a very weak character," 
 she said. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith's tolerant, clear view of the infirmi- 
 ties of humanity was grieved by this fling of youthful sever- 
 ity. " Oh, my dear ! my dear ! A young, beautiful, enor- 
 mendously rich, tremendously enamored girl? That's a 
 combination ! I don't think we need consider Felix exactly 
 weak for not having resisted ! " 
 
 Sylvia thought she knew reasons for his not yielding, but 
 she did not care to discuss them, and said nothing. 
 
 " But whether," continued Mrs. Marshall-Smith, attempt- 
 ing delicately to convey the only reflection supposed to be 
 of comfort to a girl in Sylvia's situation, " whether or not 
 Molly will find after marriage that even a very masterful 
 
Molly in Her Element 287 
 
 and ruthless temperament may fail entirely to possess and 
 hold the things it has grabbed and carried off . . ." 
 
 Sylvia repudiated the tacit conception that this would be 
 a balm to her. " Oh, I'm sure I hope they'll manage ! " she 
 said earnestly. 
 
 " Of course ! Of course ! " agreed Mrs. Marshall-Smith. 
 " Who doesn't hope so ? " She paused, her loquacity run 
 desperately thin. There was the sound of a car, driving 
 up to the front door. Sylvia rose in apprehension. Her 
 aunt motioned a reassurance. " I told Tojiko to tell every 
 one that we are not in — to anybody." 
 
 Helene came to the door on silent, felt-shod feet, a black- 
 and-white picture of well-trained servility. " Pardon, 
 Madame, Tojiko says that Mile. Sommerville wishes to 
 see Mile. Sylvie." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked with considerable apprehen- 
 sion at her niece. " You must get it over with some time, 
 Sylvia. It'll be easier here than with a lot of people staring 
 at you both, and making nasty speculations." Neither she 
 nor Sylvia noticed that for an instant, in her haste, she 
 had quite dropped her careful pretension that Sylvia could, 
 of course, if she had really cared to. . . . 
 
 Sylvia set her jaw, an action curiously visible under the 
 smooth, subtle modeling of her young cheeks. She said to 
 Helene in a quiet voice: '' Zfais bien sur! Tell her we're 
 not yet dressed, but if she will give herself the trouble to 
 come up. . . ." 
 
 Helene nodded and retreated. Sylvia looked rather pale. 
 
 " You don't know what a joy your perfect French is to 
 me, dear," said Mrs. Marshall- Smith, still rapidly turning 
 every peg in sight in an endeavor to loosen tension ; but no 
 noticeable relaxation took place in Sylvia. It did not seem 
 to her at just that moment of great importance that she 
 could speak good French. 
 
 With desperate haste she was saying to herself, " At 
 least Molly doesn't know about anything. I told her I 
 didn't care. She believed me. I must go on pretending 
 that I don't. But can I ! But can I ! " 
 
288 The Bent Twig 
 
 Light, rapid steps came flying up the stairs and down the 
 long hall. " Sylvia ! Sylvia ! " Molly was evidently hesi- 
 tating between doors. 
 
 " Here — this way — last door — Aunt Victoria's room ! " 
 called Sylvia, and felt like a terror-stricken actor making a 
 first public appearance, enormously surprised, relieved, and 
 heartened to find her usual voice still with her. As Molly 
 came flying into the room, she ran to meet her. They fell 
 into each other's arms with incoherent ejaculations and, 
 under the extremely appreciative eye of Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith, kissed each other repeatedly. 
 
 " Oh, isn't she the dear ! " cried Molly, shaking out amply 
 to the breeze a victor's easy generosity. M Isn't she the 
 darlingest girl in the world! She understands so! When 
 I saw how perfectly sweet she was the day Arnold and 
 Judith announced their engagement, I said to myself I 
 wanted her to be the first person I spoke to about mine." 
 
 The approach of the inexorable necessity for her first 
 words roused Sylvia to an inspiration which struck out an 
 almost visible spark of admiration from her aunt. " You 
 just count too much on my being ' queer,' Molly," she said 
 playfully, pulling the other girl down beside her, with an 
 affectionate gesture. " How do you know that I'm not fear- 
 fully jealous of you? Such a charmer as your fiance 
 is!" 
 
 Molly laughed delightedly. " Isn't she wonderful — not 
 to care a bit — really ! " she appealed to Sylvia's aunt. " How 
 anybody could resist Felix — but then she's so clever. She's 
 wonderful ! " 
 
 Sylvia, smiling, cordial, clear-eyed and bitter-hearted, 
 thought that she really was. 
 
 " But I can't talk about it here ! " cried Molly restlessly. 
 " I came to carry Sylvia off. I can't sit still at home. I 
 want to go ninety miles an hour! I can't think straight 
 unless I'm behind the steering-wheel. Come along, Sylvia ! " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith thereupon showed herself, for all 
 her amenity and grace, more of a match of Molly's force 
 and energy than either Sylvia or Morrison had been on p 
 
Molly in Her Element 289 
 
 certain rather memorable occasion ten days before. She 
 opposed the simple irresistible obstacle of a flat command. 
 " Sylvia's not going out in a car dressed in a lace-trimmed 
 negligee, with a boudoir cap on, whether you get what you 
 want the minute you want it or not, Molly Sommerville," 
 she said with the authoritative accent which had always 
 quelled Arnold in his boyhood (as long as he was within 
 earshot). The method was effective now. Molly laughed. 
 Sylvia even made shift to laugh; and Helene was sum- 
 moned to put on the trim shirt-waist, the short cloth skirt 
 and close hat which Mrs. Marshall-Smith selected with care 
 and the history of which she detailed at length, so copiously 
 that there was no opportunity to speak of anything less 
 innocuous. Her unusual interest in the matter even caused 
 her to accompany the girls to the head of the stairs, still 
 talking, and she called down to them finally as they went 
 out of the front door, ". . . it's the only way with 
 Briggs — he's simply incorrigible about delays — and yet no- 
 body does skirts as he does ! You just have to tell him 
 you will not take it, if he doesn't get it done on time! " 
 
 Sylvia cast an understanding, grateful upward look at 
 her aunt and stepped into the car. So far it had gone better 
 than she feared. But a tete-a-tete with Molly, overflowing 
 with the confidences of the newly betrothed — she was not 
 sure that she could get through with that with credit. 
 
 Molly, however, seemed as little inclined to overflow as 
 Sylvia to have her. She talked of everything in the world 
 except of Felix Morrison; and it was not long before 
 Sylvia's acuteness discovered that she was not thinking of 
 what she was saying. There passed through her mind a 
 wild, wretched notion that Molly might after all know — 
 that Felix might have been base enough to talk about her 
 to Molly, that Molly rnight be trying to " spare her." But 
 this idea was instantly rejected: Molly was not subtle 
 enough to conceive of such a course, and too headlong not 
 to make a hundred blunders in carrying it out ; and besides, 
 it would not explain her manner. She was abstracted ob- 
 viously for the simple reason that she had something on 
 
290 The Bent Twig 
 
 her mind, something not altogether to her liking, judging 
 from the uneasy color which came and went in her face, 
 by her rattling, senseless flow of chatter, by her fidget- 
 ing, unnecessary adjustments of the mechanism of the 
 car. . . . 
 
 Sylvia herself, in spite of her greater self-control, looked 
 out upon the world with nothing of her usual eager wel- 
 come. The personality of the man they did not name hung 
 between and around the two women like a cloud. As they 
 swept along rapidly, young, fair, well-fed, beautifully 
 dressed, in the costly, shining car, their clouded faces might 
 to a country eye have been visible proofs of the country 
 dictum that " rich city folks don't seem to get no good 
 out'n their money and their automobiles: always layin' 
 their ears back and lookin' 'bout as cheerful as a balky 
 horse." 
 
 But the country eyes which at this moment fell on them 
 were anything but conscious of class differences. It was 
 a desperate need which reached out a gaunt claw and plucked 
 at them when, high on the flank of the mountain, as they 
 swung around the corner of a densely wooded road, they 
 saw a wild-eyed man in overalls leap down from the bushes 
 and yell at them. 
 
 Sylvia was startled and her first impression was the 
 natural feminine one of fear — a lonely road, a strange 
 man, excited, perhaps drunk — But Molly, without 
 an instant's hesitation, ground the car to a stop in 
 a cloud of dust. " What's the matter?" she shouted as 
 the man sprang up on the running-board. He was gasp- 
 ing, purple, utterly spent, and for an instant could only 
 beat the air with his hands. Then he broke out in a hoarse 
 shout — the sound in that quiet sylvan spot was like a 
 tocsin: " Fire! An awful fire! Hewitt's pine woods— up 
 that road ! " He waved a wild, bare arm — his shirt-sleeve 
 was torn to the shoulder. " Go and git help. They need 
 all the men they can git ! " 
 
 He dropped from the running-board and ran back up 
 the hill through the bushes. They saw him lurch from one 
 
Molly in Her Element 291 
 
 side to the other; he was still exhausted from his dash 
 down the mountain to the road; they heard the bushes 
 crash, saw them close behind him. He was gone. 
 
 Sylvia's eyes were still on the spot where he had disap- 
 peared when she was thrown violently back against the 
 seat in a great leap forward of the car. She caught at the 
 side, at her hat, and saw Molly's face. It was transfigured. 
 The brooding restlessness was gone as acrid smoke goes 
 when the clear flame leaps up. 
 
 " What are you doing? " shouted Sylvia. 
 
 " To get help," answered Molly, opening the throttle an- 
 other notch. The first staggering plunge over, the car 
 settled down to a terrific speed, purring softly its puissant 
 vibrant song of illimitable strength. " Hear her sing ! Hear 
 her sing ! " cried Molly. In three minutes from the time 
 the man had left them, they tore into the nearest village, 
 two miles from the woods. It seemed that in those three 
 minutes Molly had not only run the car like a demon, but 
 had formed a plan. Slackening speed only long enough to 
 waltz with the car on a street-corner while she shouted an 
 inquiry to a passer-by, she followed the wave of his hand 
 and flashed down a side-street to a big brick building which 
 proclaimed itself in a great sign, " Peabody Brush-back 
 Factory." 
 
 The car stopped. Molly sprang out and ran as though 
 the car were a rifle and she the bullet emerging from it. 
 She ran into a large, ugly, comfortable office, where several 
 white-faced girls were lifting their thin little fingers from 
 typewriter keys to stare at the young woman who burst 
 through and in at a door marked " Manager." 
 
 " There's a fire on the mountain — a great fire in Hewitt's 
 pine woods," she cried in a clear, peremptory voice that 
 sounded like a young captain leading a charge. " I can 
 take nine men on my car. Will you come with me and 
 tell which men to go?" 
 
 A dignified, elderly man, with smooth, gray hair and a 
 black alpaca office coat, sat perfectly motionless behind his- 
 desk and stared at her in a petrified silence. Molly stamped 
 
292 The Bent Twig 
 
 her foot. " There's not an instant to lose," she said ; " they 
 need every man they can get." 
 
 " Who's the fire-warden of this township ? " said the 
 elderly man foolishly, trying to assemble his wits. 
 
 Molly appeared visibly to propel him from his chair by 
 her fury. " Oh, they need help NOW! " she cried. " Come 
 on ! Come on ! " 
 
 Then they stood together on the steps of the office. 
 " Those men unloading lumber over there could go," said 
 the manager, " and I'll get three more from the packing- 
 rooms." 
 
 " Don't go yourself ! Send somebody to get them ! " com- 
 manded Molly. " You go and telephone anybody in town 
 who has a car. There'll be sure to be one or two at the 
 garage." 
 
 Sylvia gasped at the prodigy taking place before her eyes, 
 the masterful, keen-witted captain of men who emerged 
 like a thunderbolt from their Molly — Molly, the pretty little 
 beauty of the summer colony I 
 
 She had galvanized the elderly New Englander beside her 
 out of his first momentary apathy of stupefaction. He now 
 put his own competent hand to the helm and took com- 
 mand. 
 
 " Yes," he said, and with the word it was evident that 
 he was aroused. Over his shoulder, in a quiet voice that 
 carried like the crack of a gun : " Henderson, go get three 
 men from the packing-room to go to a forest-fire. Shut 
 down the machinery. Get all the able-bodied men ready in 
 gangs of seven. Perkins, you 'phone Tim O'Keefe to bring 
 my car here at once. And get Pat's and Tom's and the 
 two at the hotel." 
 
 "Tools?" said Molly. 
 
 He nodded and called out to the men advancing with a 
 rush on the car : " There are hoes and shovels inside the 
 power-house door. Better take some axes too." 
 
 In four minutes from the time they had entered the 
 village (Sylvia had her watch in her hand) they were flying 
 back, the car packed with men in overalls and clustered 
 
Molly in Her Element 293 
 
 thick with others on the running-board. Back of them the 
 whistle of the factory shrieked a strident announcement of 
 disaster. Women and children ran to the doors to stare 
 up and down, to cry out, to look and with dismayed faces 
 to see the great cloud of gray smoke pouring up from the 
 side of the mountain. There was no soul in that village 
 who did not know what a forest-fire meant. 
 
 Then in a flash the car had left the village and was 
 rushing along the dusty highroad, the huge, ominous pillar 
 of smoke growing nearer. The men stared up at it with 
 sober faces. " Pretty hot fire ! " said one uneasily. 
 
 They reached the place where the man had yelled to 
 them — ten minutes exactly since they had left it. Molly 
 turned the car into the steep sandy side-road which led up 
 the mountain. The men shouted out in remonstrance, 
 " Hey, lady ! You can't git a car up there. We'll have to 
 walk the rest of the way. They don't never take cars 
 there." 
 
 " This one is going up," sang out Molly gallantly, almost 
 gaily, opening the throttle to its fullest and going into 
 second speed. 
 
 The sound of the laboring engine jarred loudly through 
 all the still, hot woods; the car shook and trembled under 
 the strain on it. Molly dropped into low. A cloud of evil- 
 smelling blue gasoline smoke rose up from the exhaust 
 behind, but the car continued to advance. Rising steadily, 
 coughing and choking, up the cruelly steep grades, bump- 
 ing heavily down over the great water-bars, smoking, rat- 
 tling, quivering — the car continued to advance. A trickle 
 of perspiration ran down Molly's cheeks. The floor was 
 hot under their feet, the smell of hot oil pungent in their 
 nostrils. 
 
 They were eight minutes from the main road now, and 
 near the fire. Over the trail hung a cloud of smoke, and, 
 as they turned a corner and came through this, they saw 
 that they had arrived. Sylvia drew back and crooked her 
 arm over her eyes. She had never seen a forest fire before. 
 She came from the plain-country, where trees are almost 
 
294 The Bent Twig 
 
 sacred, and her first feeling was of terror. But then she 
 dropped her arm and looked, and looked again at the 
 glorious, awful sight which was to furnish her with night- 
 mares for months to come. 
 
 The fire was roaring down one side of the road towards 
 them, and away to the right was eating its furious, sulphur- 
 ous way into the heart of the forest. They stopped a hun- 
 dred feet short, but the blare of heat struck on their faces 
 like a blow. Through the dense masses of smoke, terrifying 
 glimpses of fierce, clean flame ; a resinous dead stump burn- 
 ing like a torch ; a great tree standing helpless like a martyr 
 at the stake, suddenly transformed into a frenzied pillar of 
 fire. . . . Along the front of this whirlpool of flame 
 toiled, with despairing fury, four lean, powerful men. 
 As they raised their blackened, desperate faces and saw 
 the car there, actually there, incredibly there, black with 
 its load of men, they gave a deep-throated shout of relief, 
 though they did not for an instant stop the frantic plying 
 of their picks and hoes. The nine men sprang out, their 
 implements in their hands, and dispersed along the fighting- 
 line. 
 
 Molly backed the car around, the rear wheels churning 
 up the sand, and plunged down the hill into the smoke. 
 Through the choking fumes of this, Sylvia shouted at her, 
 "Molly! Molly! You're great!'' She felt that she would 
 always hear ringing in her ears that thrilling, hoarse shout 
 of relief. 
 
 Molly shouted in answer, " I could scream, I'm so 
 happy ! " And as they plunged madly down the mountain 
 road, she said : " Oh, Sylvia, you don't know — I never 
 was any use before — never once — never! I got the first 
 load of help there ! How they shouted ! " 
 
 At the junction of the side-road with the highway, a 
 car was discharging a load of men with rakes and picks. 
 " / took my car up ! " screamed Molly, leaning from the 
 steering wheel but not slackening speed as she tore past 
 them. 
 
 The driver of the other car, a young man with the face 
 
Molly in Her Element 295 
 
 of a fighting Celt, flushed at the challenge and, motioning 
 the men back into the car, started up the sandy hill. Molly 
 laughed aloud. " I never was so happy in my life ! " she 
 said again. 
 
 Both girls had forgotten the existence of Felix Morrison. 
 
 They passed cars now, many of them, streaming south 
 at breakneck speed, full to overflowing with unsmiling 
 men in working clothes, bristling with long-handled imple- 
 ments. But as they fled down the street to the factory they 
 saw, waiting still, some twenty or more men in overalls 
 drawn up, ready, armed, resolute. . . . 
 
 " How strong men are ! " said Molly, gazing in ecstasy 
 at this array of factory hands. " I love them ! " She added 
 under her breath, " But / take them there ! " 
 
 While the men were swarming into the car, the gray- 
 haired manager came out to report, as though to an officer 
 equal in command, " I've telephoned to Ward and Howe's 
 marble-works in Chitford," he said. " They've sent down 
 fifty men from there. About seventy-five have gone from 
 this village. I suppose all the farmers in that district are 
 there by this time." 
 
 " Will they ever stop it ! " asked Sylvia despairingly, 
 seeing wherever she looked nothing but that ravening, fiery 
 leap of the flames, feeling that terrible hot breath on her 
 cheek. 
 
 The question and accent brought the man for the first 
 time to a realization of the girls' youth and sex. He shifted 
 to paternal reassurance. " Oh yes, oh yes," he said, look- 
 ing up the valley appraisingly at the great volume of the 
 smoke, "with a hundred and fifty men there, almost at 
 once, they'll have it under control before long. Everything 
 with a forest fire depends on getting help there quickly. 
 Ten men there almost at once do more than fifty men an 
 hour later. That's why your friend's promptness was so 
 important. I guess it might have been pretty bad if they'd 
 had to wait for help till one of them could have run to 
 the village. A fire, a bad fire like that, gets so in an hour 
 that you can't stop it — can't stop it till it gets out where 
 
296 The Bent Twig 
 
 you can plow a furrow around it. And that's a terrible 
 place for a fire up there. Lots of slash left." 
 
 Molly called over her shoulder to the men climbing on 
 the car, " All ready there ? " and was off, a Valkyr with 
 her load of heroes. 
 
 Once more the car toiled and agonized up the execrable 
 sandy steepness of the side-road ; but in the twenty minutes 
 since they had been there the tide had turned. Sylvia 
 was amazed at the total shifting of values. Instead of four 
 solitary workers, struggling wildly against overwhelming 
 odds, a long line of men, working with a disciplined, orderly 
 haste, stretched away into the woods. Imperious and sav- 
 age, the smoke and swift flames towered above them, leap- 
 ing up into the very sky, darkening the sun. Bent over 
 their rakes, their eyes on the ground, mere black specks 
 against the raging glory of the fire, the line of men, with 
 an incessant monotonous haste, drew away the dry leaves 
 with their rakes, while others who followed them tore at 
 the earth with picks and hoes. It was impossible to believe 
 that such ant-labors could avail, but already, near the road, 
 the fire had burnt itself out, baffled by its microscopic as- 
 sailants. As far as the girls could see into the charred 
 underbrush, a narrow, clean line of freshly upturned earth 
 marked where the fiercest of all the elements had been 
 vanquished by the humblest of all the tools of men. Be- 
 wildered, Sylvia's eyes shifted from the toiling men to the 
 distance, across the blackened desolation near them, to 
 where the fire still tossed its wicked crest of flames defiantly 
 into the forest. She heard, but she did not believe the 
 words of the men in the car, who cried out expertly as 
 they ran forward, " Oh, the worst's over. They're shutting 
 down on it." How could the worst be over, when there was 
 still that whirling horror of flame and smoke beyond them? 
 
 Just after the men had gone, exultant, relieved, the 
 girls turned their heads to the other side of the road, 
 and there, very silent, very secret and venomous, leaped 
 and glittered a little ring of flames. An hour before, it 
 would have looked a pretty, harmless sight to the two who 
 
Molly in Her Element 297 
 
 now sat, stricken by horror into a momentary frozen still- 
 ness. The flames licked at the dry leaves and playfully 
 sprang up into a clump of tall dry grass. The fire was 
 running swiftly towards a bunch of dead alders standing 
 at the edge of the forest. Before it had spread an inch 
 further, the girls were upon it, screaming for help, scream- 
 ing as people in civilization seldom scream, with all their 
 lungs. With uplifted skirts they stamped and trod out, 
 under swift and fearless feet, the sinister, silent, yellow 
 tongues. They snatched branches of green leaves and beat 
 fiercely at the enemy. It had been so small a spot compared 
 to the great desolation across the road, they stamped out 
 the flames so easily, that the girls expected with every 
 breath to see the last of it. To see it escape them, to see 
 it suddenly flare up where it had been dead, to see it 
 appear behind them while they were still fighting it in 
 front, was like being in a nightmare when effort is im- 
 possible. The ring widened with appalling, with unbe- 
 lievable rapidity. Sylvia could not think it possible that 
 anything outside a dream could have such devouring swift- 
 ness. She trod and snatched and stamped and screamed, 
 and wondered if she were indeed awake. . . . 
 
 Yet in an instant their screams had been heard, three or 
 four smoke-blackened fire-fighters from beyond the road 
 ran forward with rakes, and in a twinkling the danger was 
 past. Its disappearance was as incredible as its presence. 
 "Ain't that just like a fire in the woods?" said one of 
 the men, an elderly farmer. He drew a long, tremulous 
 breath. " It's so tarnation quick ! It's either all over before 
 you can ketch your breath, or it's got beyond you for good.' , 
 It evidently did not occur to him to thank the girls for 
 their part. They had only done what every one did in an 
 emergency, the best they could. He looked back at the 
 burned tract on the other side of the road and said: 
 " They've got the best of that all right, too. I jest heard 
 'em shoutin' that the men from Chitford had worked round 
 from the upper end. So they've got a ring round it. Nothin' 
 to do now but watch that it don't jump. My! 'Twas a 
 
298 The Bent Twig 
 
 close call. I've been to a lot of fires in my day, but I 
 d'know as I ever see a closeter call ! " 
 
 "It can't be over!" cried Sylvia, looking at the lurid 
 light across the road. "Why, it isn't an hour since 
 we " 
 
 "Land! No, it ain't over!" he explained, scornful 
 of her inexperience. " They'll have to have a gang 
 of men here watchin' it all night — and maybe all to- 
 morrow — 'less we have some rain. But it won't go no 
 further than the fire-line, and as soon as there're men 
 enough to draw that all around, it's got to stop ! " He 
 went on to his companion, irritably, pressing his hand to 
 his side : " There ain't no use talkin', I got to quit fire- 
 fightin'. My heart 'most gi'n out on me in the hottest 
 of that. And yit I'm only sixty! " 
 
 " It ain't no job for old folks," said the other bitterly. 
 ** If it had ha' gone a hundred feet further that way, 'twould 
 ha' been in where Ed Hewitt's been lumberin', and if it had 
 got into them dry tops and brush — well, I guess 'twould 
 ha' gone from here to Chitford village before it stopped. 
 And 'twouldn't ha' stopped there, neither ! 
 
 The old man said reflectively : " 'Twas the first load of 
 men did the business. 'Twas nip and tuck down to the 
 last foot if we could stop it on that side. I tell you, ten 
 minutes of that kind o' work takes about ten years ofl'n a 
 man's life. We'd just about gi'n up when we saw 'em 
 coming. I bet I won't be no gladder to see the pearly gates 
 than I was to see them men with hoes." 
 
 Molly turned a glowing, quivering face of pride on Sylvia, 
 and then looked past her shoulder with a startled expres- 
 sion into the eyes of one of the fire-fighters, a tall, lean, 
 stooping man, blackened and briar-torn like the rest. 
 " Why, Cousin Austin ! " she cried with vehement surprise, 
 
 u what in the world " In spite of his grime, she gave 
 
 him a hearty, astonished, affectionate kiss. 
 
 " I was just wondering," said the man, smiling indul- 
 gently down on her, " how soon you'd recognize me, you 
 little scatter-brain." 
 
Molly in Her Element 299 
 
 " I thought you were going to stick in Colorado all sum- 
 mer," said Molly. 
 
 " Well, I heard they were short of help at Austin 
 Farm and I came on to help get in the hay," said the man. 
 Both he and Molly seemed to consider this a humorous 
 speech. Then, remembering Sylvia, Molly went through 
 a casual introduction. " This is my cousin — Austin Page — 
 my favorite cousin! He's really awfully nice, though so 
 plain to look at." She went on, still astonished, " But 
 how'd you get here? " 
 
 " Why, how does anybody in Vermont get to a forest 
 fire ? " he answered. " We were out in the hayfield, saw 
 the smoke, left the horses, grabbed what tools we could 
 find, and beat it through the woods. That's the technique 
 of the game up here." 
 
 " I didn't know your farm ran anywhere near here," 
 said Molly. 
 
 " It isn't so terribly near. We came across lots tolerable 
 fast. But there's a little field, back up on the edge of the 
 woods that isn't so far. Grandfather used to raise potatoes 
 there. I've got it into hay now," he explained. 
 
 As they talked, the fire beyond them gave definite signs 
 of yielding. It had evidently been stopped on the far side 
 and now advanced nowhere, showed no longer a malign 
 yellow crest, but only rolling sullenly heavenward a dimin- 
 ishing cloud of smoke. The fire-fighters began to straggle 
 back across the burned tract towards the road, their eyeballs 
 gleaming white in their dark faces. 
 
 " Oh, they mustn't walk ! I'll take them back — the 
 darlings ! " said Molly, starting for her car. She was quite 
 her usual brisk, free-and-easy self now. " Cracky ! I hope 
 I've got gas enough. I've certainly been going some!" 
 
 " Why don't you leave me here ? " suggested Sylvia. " I'll 
 walk home. That'll leave room for one more." 
 
 " Oh, you can't do that ! " protested Molly faintly, though 
 she was evidently at once struck with the plan. " How'd 
 you find your way home ? " She turned to her cousin. 
 " See here, Austin, why don't you take Sylvia home ? You 
 
300 The Bent Twig 
 
 ought to go anyhow and see Grandfather. He'll be awfully 
 hurt to think you're here and haven't been to see him." 
 She threw instantly into this just conceived idea the force 
 which always carried through her plans. " Do go ! I feel 
 so grateful to these men I don't want one of them to walk 
 a step ! " 
 
 Sylvia had thought of a solitary walk, longing intensely 
 for isolation, and she did not at all welcome the suggestion 
 of adapting herself to a stranger. The stranger, on his 
 part, looked a very unchivalrous hesitation ; but this proved 
 to be only a doubt of Sylvia's capacity as a walker. 
 
 " If you don't mind climbing a bit, I can take you over 
 the gap between Hemlock and Windward Mountain and 
 make a bee-line for Lydford. It's not an hour from here, 
 that way, but it's ten miles around by the road — and hot 
 and dusty too." 
 
 "Can she climb!" ejaculated Molly scornfully, impatient 
 to be off with her men. " She went up to Prospect Rock 
 in forty minutes." 
 
 She high-handedly assumed that everything was settled 
 as she wished it, and running towards the car, called with 
 an easy geniality to the group of men, starting down the 
 road on foot, " Here, wait a minute, folks, I'll take you 
 back!" 
 
 She mounted the car, started the engine, waved her hand 
 to the two behind her, and was off. 
 
 The lean, stooping man looked dubiously at Sylvia. 
 " You're sure you don't mind a little climb ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh no, I like it," she said listlessly. The moment for 
 her was of stale, wearied return to real life, to the actual 
 world which she was continually finding uglier than she 
 hoped. The recollection of Felix Morrison came back tc 
 her in a bitter tide. 
 
 " All ready ? " asked her companion, mopping his fore- 
 head with a very dirty handkerchief. 
 
 " All ready," she said and turned, with a hanging head, 
 to follow him. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 BETWEEN WINDWARD AND HEMLOCK 
 MOUNTAINS 
 
 For a time as they plodded up the steep wood-road, over- 
 grown with ferns and rank grass, with dense green walls of 
 beech and oak saplings on either side, what few desultory 
 remarks they exchanged related to Molly, she being literally 
 the only topic of common knowledge between them. Sylvia, 
 automatically responding to her deep-lying impulse to give 
 pleasure, to be pleasing, made an effort to overcome her 
 somber lassitude and spoke of Molly's miraculous com- 
 petence in dealing with the fire. Her companion said that 
 of course Molly hadn't made all that up out of her head on 
 the spur of the moment. " After spending every summer 
 of her life in Lydford, it would be surprising if so ener- 
 getic a child as Molly hadn't assimilated the Vermont 
 formula for fighting fire. " They always put for the nearest 
 factory and get all hands out/' he explained, adding medi- 
 tatively, as he chewed on a twig : " All the same, the inci- 
 dent shows what I've always maintained about Molly: that 
 she is, like 'most everybody, lamentably miscast. Molly's 
 spirit oughtn't to have taken up its abiding place in that 
 highly ornamental blond shell, condemned after a fashion- 
 able girl's education to pendulum swings between Paris and 
 New York and Lydford. It doesn't fit for a cent. It 
 ought to have for habitation a big, gaunt, powerful man's 
 body, and for occupation the running of a big factory." 
 He seemed to be philosophizing more to himself than to 
 Sylvia, and beyond a surprised look into his extremely 
 grimy face, she made no comment. She had taken for 
 granted from the talk between him and Molly that he was 
 one of the " forceful, impossible Montgomery cousins," and 
 
 301 . 
 
302 The Bent Twig 
 
 had cast her own first remarks in a tone calculated to fit in 
 with the supposititious dialect of such a person. But his 
 voice, his intonations, and his whimsical idea about Molly 
 fitted in with the conception of an " impossible " as little 
 as with the actual visible facts of his ragged shirt-sleeves 
 and faded, earth-stained overalls. They toiled upwards in 
 silence for some moments, the man still chewing on his 
 birch-twig. He noticed her sidelong half-satirical glance at 
 it. " Don't you want one ? " he asked, and gravely cut a 
 long, slim rod from one of the saplings in the green wall 
 shutting them into the road. As he gave it to her he ex- 
 plained, " It's the kind they make birch beer of. You nip 
 off the bark with your teeth. You'll like it." 
 
 Still more at sea as to what sort of person he might be, 
 and now fearing perhaps to wound him if he should turn 
 out to be a very unsophisticated one, Sylvia obediently set 
 her teeth to the lustrous, dark bark and tore off a bit, which 
 gave out in her mouth a mild, pleasant aromatic tang, 
 woodsy and penetrating, unlike any other taste she knew. 
 "Good, isn't it?" said her companion simply. 
 
 She nodded, slowly awakening to a tepid curiosity about 
 the individual who strode beside her, lanky and powerful in 
 his blue jeans. What an odd circumstance, her trudging 
 off through the woods thus with a guide of whom she knew 
 nothing except that he was Molly Sommerville's cousin 
 and worked a Vermont farm — and had certainly the dirtiest 
 face she had ever seen, with the exception of the coal-black- 
 ened stokers in the power-house of the University. He 
 spoke again, as though in answer to what might naturally be 
 in her mind : " At the top of the road it crosses a brook, 
 and I think a wash would be possible. I've a bit of soap 
 in my pocket that'll help — though it takes quite a lot of 
 scrubbing to get off fire-fighting grime." He looked poinr- 
 edly down at her as he talked. 
 
 Sylvia was so astonished that she dropped back through 
 years of carefully acquired self-consciousness into a moment 
 of the stark simplicity of childhood. " Why — is my face 
 dirty ? " she cried out. 
 
Between Windward and Hemlock Mountains 303 
 
 The man beside her apparently found the contrast be- 
 tween her looks and the heartfelt sincerity of her question 
 too much for him. He burst into helpless laughter, though 
 he was adroit enough to thrust forward as a pretext, " The 
 picture of my own grime that I get from your accent is 
 tremendous ! " But it was evidently not at his own joke 
 that he was laughing. 
 
 For an instant Sylvia hung poised very near to extreme 
 annoyance. Never since she had been grown up, had she 
 appeared at such an absurd disadvantage. But at once the 
 mental picture of herself, making inaudible carping strictures 
 on her companion's sootiness and, all unconscious, lifting to 
 observe it a critical countenance as swart as his own — » 
 the incongruity smote her deliciously, irresistibly! Sore 
 heart or not, black depression notwithstanding, she needs 
 must laugh, and having laughed, laugh again, laugh louder 
 and longer, and finally, like a child, laugh for the sake of 
 laughing, till out through this unexpected channel she dis- 
 charged much of the stagnant bitterness around her heart. 
 
 Her companion laughed with her. The still, sultry sum- 
 mer woods echoed with the sound. " How human, how 
 lusciously human! " he exclaimed. " Neither of us thought 
 that he might be the blackened one ! " 
 
 " Oh, mine can't be as bad as yours ! " gasped out Sylvia, 
 but when she rubbed a testing handkerchief on her cheek, 
 she went off in fresh peals at the sight of the resultant 
 black smears. 
 
 " Don't, for Heaven's sake, waste that handkerchief," 
 cautioned her companion. " It's the only towel between us. 
 Mine's impossible ! " He showed her the murky rag which 
 was his own; and as they spoke, they reached the top of 
 the road, heard the sound of water, and stood beside the 
 brook. 
 
 He stepped across it, in one stride of his long legs, rolled 
 up his shirt-sleeves, took a book out of his pocket, laid it 
 on a stone, and knelt down. " I choose this for my wash- 
 basin," he said, indicating a limpid pool paved with clean 
 gray pebbles. 
 
304 The Bent Twig 
 
 Sylvia answered in the same note of play, "This'll be 
 mine." It lay at the foot of a tiny waterfall, plashing 
 with a tinkling note into transparent shallows. She cast 
 an idle glance on the book he had laid down and read its 
 title, "A History of the Institution of Property," and re- 
 flected that she had been right in thinking it had a familiar- 
 looking cover. She had dusted books with that sort of cover 
 all her life. 
 
 Molly's cousin produced from his overalls a small piece 
 of yellow kitchen-soap, which he broke into scrupulously 
 exact halves and presented with a grave flourish to Sylvia. 
 " Now, go to it," he exhorted her ; " I bet I get a better 
 wash than you." 
 
 Sylvia took off her hat, rolled up her sleeves, and began? 
 on vigorous ablutions. She had laughed, yes, and heartily, 
 but in her complicated many-roomed heart a lively pique 
 rubbed shoulders with her mirth, and her merriment was 
 tinctured with a liberal amount of the traditional feminine 
 horrified disgust at having been uncomely, at having uncon- 
 sciously been subjected to an indignity. She was determined 
 that no slightest stain should remain on her smooth, fine- 
 textured skin. She felt, as a pretty woman always feels, 
 that her personality was indissolubly connected with her 
 looks, and it was a symbolic act which she performed as 
 she fiercely scrubbed her face with the yellow soap till its 
 acrid pungency blotted out for her the woodland aroma of 
 moist earth and green leaves. She dashed the cold water 
 up on her cheeks till the spattering drops gleamed like 
 crystals on the crisp waviness of her ruddy brown hair. 
 She washed her hands and arms in the icy mountain water 
 till they were red with the cold, hot though the day was. 
 She was chilled, and raw with the crude astringency of the 
 soap, but she felt cleansed to the marrow of her bones, as 
 though there had been some mystic quality in this lustration 
 in running water, performed under the open sky. The 
 racy, black-birch tang still lingering on her tongue was a 
 flavor quite in harmony with this severely washed feeling. 
 It was a taste notably clean. 
 
Between Windward and Hemlock Mountains 305 
 
 She looked across the brook at her companion, now sitting 
 back on his heels, and saw that there had emerged from 
 his grime a thin, tanned, high-nosed face, topped by drab- 
 colored hair of no great abundance and lighted by a pair 
 of extraordinarily clear, gray eyes. She perceived no more 
 in the face at that moment, because the man, as he looked up 
 at her, became nothing but a dazzled mirror from which 
 was reflected back to her the most flattering image of her 
 own appearance. Almost actually she saw herself as she 
 appeared to him, a wood-nymph, kneeling by the flowing 
 water, vital, exquisite, strong, radiant in a cool flush, her 
 uncovered hair gleaming in a thousand loosened waves. 
 Like most comely women of intelligence Sylvia was in- 
 timately familiar with every phase of her own looks, and 
 she knew down to the last blood-corpuscle that she had 
 never looked better. But almost at once came the stab 
 that Felix Morrison was not the man who was looking 
 at her, and the heartsick recollection that he would never 
 again be there to see her. Her moment of honest joy in 
 being lovely passed. She stood up with a clouded face, 
 soberly pulled down her sleeves, and picked up her hat. 
 
 "Oh, why don't you leave it off?" said the man across 
 the brook. " You'd be so much more comfortable ! " She 
 knew that he meant her hair was too pretty to cover, and 
 did not care what he meant. " All right, I'll carry it," she 
 assented indifferently. 
 
 He did not stir, gazing up at her frankly admiring. 
 Sylvia made out, from the impression he evidently now had 
 of her, that her face had really been very, very dirty; and 
 at the recollection of that absurd ascent of the mountain 
 by those two black-faced, twig-chewing individuals, a re- 
 turn of irrepressible laughter quivered on her lips. Be- 
 fore his eyes, as swiftly, as unaccountably, as utterly as an 
 April day shifts its moods, she had changed from radiant, 
 rosy wood-goddess to saddened mortal and thence on into 
 tricksy, laughing elf. He burst out on her, " Who are you, 
 anyhow ? " 
 
 She remembered with a start. " Why, that's so, Molly 
 
306 The Bent Twig 
 
 didn't mention my name — isn't that like Molly ! Why, I'm 
 Sylvia Marshall/' 
 
 " You may be named Sylvia Marshall ! " he said, leaving 
 an inference in the air like incense. 
 
 " Well, yes, to be sure," rejoined Sylvia; " I heard some- 
 body only the other day say that an introduction was the 
 quaintest of grotesques, since people's names are the 
 most " 
 
 He applied a label with precision. " Oh, you know 
 Morrison ? " 
 
 She was startled at this abrupt emergence of the name 
 which secretly filled her mind and was aware with exas- 
 peration that she was blushing. Her companion appeared 
 not to notice this. He was attempting the difficult feat of 
 wiping his face on the upper part of his sleeve, and said in 
 the intervals of effort : " Well, you know my name. Molly 
 didn't forget that." 
 
 " But / did," Sylvia confessed. " I was so excited by 
 the fire I never noticed at all. I've been racking my brains 
 to remember, all the way up here." 
 
 For some reason the man seemed quite struck with this 
 statement and eyed her with keenness as he said : " Oh — 
 really? Well, my name is Austin Page." At the candid 
 blankness of her face he showed a boyish flash of white 
 teeth in a tanned face. " Do you mean to say you've never 
 heard of me? " 
 
 " Should I ? " said Sylvia, with a graceful pretense of 
 alarm. " Do you write, or something? Lay it to my igno- 
 rance. It's immense." 
 
 He shook his head. He smiled down on her. She 
 noticed now that his eyes were very kind as well as clear 
 and keen. " No, I don't write, or anything. There's no 
 reason why you should ever have heard of me. I only 
 thought — I thought possibly Molly or Uncle George might 
 have happened to mention me." 
 
 " I'm only on from the West for a visit," explained 
 Sylvia. " I never was in Lydford before. I don't know 
 the people there." 
 
Between Windward and Hemlock Mountains 307 
 
 " Well then, to avoid Morrison's strictures on introduc- 
 tions I'll add to my name the information that I am 
 thirty-two years old; a graduate of Columbia University; 
 that I have some property in Colorado which gives me a 
 great deal of trouble; and a farm with a wood lot in Ver- 
 mont which is the joy of my heart. I cannot endure 
 politics ; I play the flute, like my eggs boiled three minutes, 
 and admire George Meredith." 
 
 His manceuvers with his sleeve were so preposterous 
 that Sylvia now cried to him : " Oh, don't twist around that 
 way. You'll give yourself a crick in the neck. Here's my 
 handkerchief. We were going to share that, anyhow." 
 
 "And you," he went on gravely, wiping his face with 
 the bit of cambric, "are Sylvia Marshall, presumably 
 Miss ; you can laugh at a joke on yourself ; are not afraid 
 to wash your face with kitchen soap; and apparently are 
 the only girl in the twentieth century who has not a 
 mirror and a powder-puff concealed about her person." 
 
 All approbation was sweet to Sylvia. She basked in 
 this. c * Oh, I'm a Hottentot, a savage from the West, as 
 I told you," she said complacently. 
 
 " You've been in Lydford long enough to hear Morrison 
 hold forth on the idiocies of social convention, the while he 
 neatly manipulates them to his own advantage." 
 
 Sylvia had dreaded having to speak of Morrison, but 
 she was now greatly encouraged by the entire success of 
 her casual tone, as she explained, " Oh, he's an old friend 
 of my aunt's, and he's been at the house a good deal." She 
 ventured to try herself further, and inquired with a bright 
 look of interest, " What do you think of his engagement 
 to your cousin Molly ? " 
 
 He was petrified with astonishment. "Molly engaged 
 to Morrison!" he cried. "We can't be talking about the 
 same people. I mean Felix Morrison the critic." 
 
 She felt vindicated by his stupefaction and liked him for 
 it. " Why, yes, hadn't you heard ? " she asked, with an 
 assumption of herself seeing nothing surprising in the news. 
 
 " No, I hadn't, and I can't believe it now ! " he said, 
 
308 The Bent Twig 
 
 blinking his eyes. " I never heard such an insane com- 
 bination of names in my life." He went on, " What under 
 the sun does Molly want of Morrison ! " 
 
 Sylvia was vexed with him for this unexpected view. 
 He was not so discerning as she had thought. She turned 
 away and picked up her hat. " We ought to be going on," 
 she said, and as they walked she answered, " You don't 
 seem to have a very high opinion of Mr. Morrison." 
 
 He protested with energy. " Oh yes, I have. Quite the 
 contrary, I think him one of the most remarkable men 
 I know, and one of the finest. I admire him immensely. 
 I'd trust his taste sooner than I would my own." 
 
 To this handsome tribute Sylvia returned, smiling, " The 
 inference is that you don't think much of Molly." 
 
 " I know Molly ! " he said simply. " I've known her 
 and loved her ever since she was a hot-tempered, imperious 
 little girl — which is all she is now. Engaged . . . and 
 engaged to Morrison ! It's a plain case of schoolgirl in- 
 fatuation ! " He was lost in wonder, uneasy wonder it 
 seemed, for after a period of musing he brought out: 
 " They'll cut each other's throats inside six months. Or 
 Molly'll cut her own. What under the sun was her 
 grandfather thinking of ? " 
 
 Sylvia said gravely, " Girls' grandfathers have such an 
 influence in their marriages." 
 
 He smiled a rueful recognition of the justice of her 
 thrust and then fell into silence. 
 
 The road did not climb up now, but led along the side 
 of the mountain. Through the dense woods the sky-line, 
 first guessed at, then clearly seen between the thick- 
 standing tree-trunks, sank lower and lower. " We are 
 approaching," said Page, motioning in front of them, 
 " the jumping-off place." They passed from the tempered 
 green light of the wood and emerged upon a great windy 
 plateau, carpeted thickly with deep green moss, flanked 
 right and left with two mountain peaks and roofed over 
 with an expanse of brilliant summer sky. Before them the 
 plateau stretched a mile or more, wind-swept, sun-drenched, 
 
Between Windward and Hemlock Mountains 309 
 
 with an indescribable bold look of great altitude; but close 
 to them at one side ran a parapet-like line of tumbled rock 
 and beyond this a sheer descent. The eye leaped down 
 abrupt slopes of forest to the valley they had left, now a 
 thousand feet below them, jewel-like with mystic blues 
 and greens, tremulous with heat. On the noble height 
 where they stood, the wind blew cool from the sea of mist- 
 blue peaks beyond the valley. 
 
 Sylvia was greatly moved. " Oh, what a wonderful 
 spot ! " she said under her breath. " I never dreamed that 
 
 anything could be " She burst out suddenly, scarcely 
 
 knowing what she said, " Oh, I wish my mother could be 
 here ! " She had not thought of her mother for days, and 
 now hardly knew that she had spoken her name. Standing 
 there, poised above the dark richness of the valley, her 
 heart responding to those vast airy spaces by an upward- 
 soaring sweep, the quick tears of ecstasy were in her eyes. 
 She had entirely forgotten herself and her companion. He 
 did not speak. His eyes were on her face. 
 
 She moved to the parapet of rock and leaned against it. 
 The action brought her to herself and she flashed around 
 on Page a grateful smile. " It's a very beautiful spot you've 
 brought me to/' she said. 
 
 He came up beside her now. " It's a favorite of mine," 
 he said quietly. " If I come straight through the woods it's 
 not more than a mile from my farm. I come up here for 
 the sunsets sometimes — or for dawn." 
 
 Sylvia found the idea almost too much for her. " Oh!" 
 she cried — " dawn here ! " 
 
 " Yes," said the man, smiling faintly. " It's all of that ! " 
 
 In her life of plains and prairies Sylvia had never been 
 upon a great height, had never looked down and away upon 
 such reaches of far valley, such glorious masses of sunlit 
 mountain; and beyond them, giving wings to the imagina- 
 tion, were mountains, more mountains, distant, incalculably 
 distant, with unseen hollow valleys between; and finally, 
 mountains again, half cloud, melting indistinguishably into 
 the vaporous haze of the sky. Above her, sheer and vast, 
 
310 The Bent Twig 
 
 lay Hemlock Mountain, all its huge bulk a sleeping, pas- 
 sionless calm. Beyond was the solemnity of Windward 
 Mountain's concave shell, full to the brim with brooding 
 blue shadows, a well of mystery in that day of wind-blown 
 sunshine. Beneath her, above her, before her, seemingly 
 the element in which she was poised, was space, illimitable 
 space. She had never been conscious of such vastness, she 
 was abashed by it, she was exalted by it, she knew a mo- 
 ment of acute shame for the pettiness of her personal 
 grievances. For a time her spirit was disembarrassed of 
 the sorry burden of egotism, and she drank deep from the 
 cup of healing which Nature holds up in such instants of 
 beatitude. Her eyes were shining pools of peace. . . . 
 
 They went on in a profound silence across the plateau, 
 the deep, soft moss bearing them up with a tough elasticity, 
 the sun hot and lusty on their heads, the sweet, strong 
 summer wind swift and loud in their ears, the only sound 
 in all that enchanted upland spot. Often Sylvia lifted her 
 face to the sky, so close above her, to the clouds moving 
 with a soundless rhythm across the sky; once or twice she 
 turned her head suddenly from one side to the other, to 
 take in all the beauty at one glance, and smiled on it all, 
 a vague, sunny, tender smile. But she did not speak. 
 
 As she trod on the thick moss upspringing under her 
 long, light step, her advance seemed as buoyant as though 
 she stepped from cloud to cloud. . . . 
 
 When they reached the other side, and were about to 
 begin the descent into Lydford valley, she lingered still. 
 She looked down into the valley before her, across to the 
 mountains, and, smiling, with half-shut eyes of supreme 
 satisfaction, she said under her breath : " It's Beethoven — 
 just the blessedness of Beethoven ! The valley is a legato 
 passage, quiet and flowing; those far, up-pricking hills, 
 staccato; and the mountains here, the solemn chords." 
 
 Her companion did not answer. She looked up at him, 
 inquiringly, thinking that he had not heard her, and found 
 him evidently too deeply moved to speak. She was startled, 
 almost frightened, almost shocked by the profundity of 
 
Between Windward and Hemlock Mountains 3 1 1 
 
 his gaze upon her. Her heart stood still and gave a great 
 leap. Chiefly she was aware of an immense astonishment 
 and incredulity. An hour before he had never seen her, 
 had never heard of her — and during that hour she had been 
 barely aware of him, absorbed in herself, indifferent. How 
 could he in that hour have . . . 
 
 He looked away and said steadily, " — and the river is 
 the melody that binds it all together." 
 
 Sylvia drew a great breath of relief. She had been the 
 victim of some extraordinary hallucination: " — with the 
 little brooks for variations on the theme,' , she added hastily. 
 
 He held aside an encroaching briar, stretching its thorny 
 arm across the path. " Here's the beginning of the trail 
 down to Lydford," he said. " We will be there in twenty 
 minutes. It's almost a straight drop down." 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 SYLVIA ASKS HERSELF "WHY NOT?" 
 
 If Sylvia wondered, as she dropped down the heights to 
 the valley, what her reception might be at her aunt's cere- 
 monious household when she entered escorted by a strange 
 hatless man in blue overalls, her fancy fell immeasurably 
 short of the actual ensuing sensation. Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith, her stepson, Felix Morrison, and old Mr. Sommer- 
 ville were all sitting together on the wide north veranda, 
 evidently waiting to be called to luncheon when, at half- 
 past one, the two pedestrians emerged through a side 
 wicket in the thick green hedge of spruce, and advanced 
 up the path, with the free, swinging step of people who 
 have walked far and well. The effect on the veranda was 
 unimaginable. Sheer, open-mouthed stupefaction blurred 
 for an instant the composed, carefully arranged masks of 
 those four exponents of decorum. They gaped and stared, 
 unable to credit their eyes. 
 
 And then, according to their natures, they acted. Mrs. 
 Marshall-Smith rose quickly, smiled brilliantly, and stepped 
 forward with welcoming outstretched hands. " Why, Sylvia 
 dear, how delightful! What. an unexpected pleasure, Mr. 
 Page ! " 
 
 Old Mr. Sommerville fairly bounded past Sylvia, caught 
 the man's arm, and said in an anxious, affectionate, startled 
 voice, " Why, Austin ! Austin ! Austin ! " 
 
 Morrison rose, but stood quietly by his chair, his face 
 entirely expressionless, palpably and correctly " at atten- 
 tion." He had not seen Sylvia since the announcement 
 of his engagement the day before. He gave her now a 
 graceful, silent, friendly salute from a distance as she 
 stood by her aunt, he called out to her companion a richly 
 
 312 
 
Sylvia Asks Herself " Why Not?" 313 
 
 cordial greeting of " Well, Page. This is luck indeed ! " 
 but he indicated by his immobility that as a stranger he 
 would not presume to go further until the first interchange 
 between blood-kin was over. 
 
 As for Arnold, he neither stirred from his chair, nor 
 opened his mouth to speak. A slow smile widened on his 
 lips : it expanded. He grinned delightedly down at his 
 cigarette, and up at the ceiling, and finally broke into an 
 open laugh of exquisite enjoyment of the scene before him. 
 
 Four people were talking at once; Mr. Sommerville, a 
 dismayed old hand still clutching at the new-comer, was 
 protesting with extreme vigor, and being entirely drowned 
 out by the others, " Of course he can't stay — as he is! I'll 
 go home with him at once! His room at my house is 
 always ready for him ! — fresh clothes ! — No, no — impossible 
 to stay ! " Mrs. Marshall-Smith was holding firm with her 
 loveliest manner of warm friendliness concentrated on 
 Page. " Oh, no ceremony, Mr. Page, not between old 
 friends. Luncheon is just ready — who cares how you 
 look?" She did not physically dispute with Mr. Sommer- 
 ville the possession of the new-comer, but she gave entirely 
 that effect. 
 
 Sylvia, unable to meet Morrison's eyes, absorbed in the 
 difficulty of the moment for her, unillumined by the byplay 
 between her aunt and old Mr. Sommerville, strove for an 
 appearance of vivacious loquacity, and cast into the con- 
 versation entirely disregarded bits of description of the 
 fire. "Oh, Tantine, such an excitement! — we took nine 
 
 men with hoes up such a steep ! " And finally Page, 
 
 resisting old Mr. Sommerville's pull on his arm, was say- 
 ing : " If luncheon is ready, and I'm invited, no more needs 
 to be said. I've been haying and fire-fighting since seven 
 this morning. A wolf is nothing compared with me." He 
 looked across the heads of the three nearest him and 
 called to Arnold : " Smith, you'll lend me some flannels, 
 won't you? We must be much of the same build." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned, taking no pains to hide her 
 satisfaction. She positively gloated over the crestfallen 
 
3 14 The Bent Twig 
 
 Mr. Sommerville. " Sylvia, run quick and have Helene 
 smooth your hair. And call to Tojiko to put on an extra 
 place for luncheon. Arnold, take Mr. Page up to your 
 room, won't you, so that he " 
 
 Sylvia, running up the stairs, heard her late companion 
 protesting: "Oh, just for a change of clothes, only a 
 minute — you needn't expect me to do any washing. I'm 
 clean. I'm washed within an inch of my life — yellow 
 soap — kitchen soap ! " 
 
 " And our little scented toilet futilities," Morrison's 
 cameo of small-talk carried to the upper hall. " What could 
 they add to such a Spartan lustration ? " 
 
 " Hurry, Helene," said Sylvia. " It is late, and Mr. Page 
 is dying of hunger." 
 
 In spite of the exhortation to haste, Helene stopped 
 short, uplifted brush in hand. " Mr. Page, the million- 
 aire ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 Sylvia blinked at her in the glass, amazed conjectures 
 racing through her mind. But she had sufficient self- 
 possession to say, carelessly as though his identity was 
 nothing to her : " I don't know. It is the first time I have 
 seen him. He certainly is not handsome." 
 
 Helene thrust in the hairpins with impassioned haste 
 and deftness, and excitedly snatched a lace jacket from a 
 drawer. To the maid's despair Sylvia refused this adorn- 
 ment, refused the smallest touch of rouge, refused an orna- 
 ment in her hair. Helene wrung her hands. " But see, 
 Mademoiselle is not wise ! For what good is it to be so 
 savage! He is more rich than all! They say he owns 
 all the State of Colorado ! " 
 
 Sylvia, already in full retreat towards the dining-room, 
 caught this last geographic extravagance of Gallic fancy, 
 and laughed, and with this mirth still in her face made 
 her re-entry on the veranda. She had not been away three 
 minutes from the group there, and she was to the eye as 
 merely flushed and gay when she came back as when she 
 went away; but a revolution had taken place. Closely 
 shut in her hand, she held, held fast, the key Helene had 
 
Sylvia Asks Herself " Why Not?" 315 
 
 thrust there. Behind her smile, her clear, bright look of 
 valiant youth, a great many considerations were being 
 revolved with extreme rapidity by an extremely swift and 
 active brain. 
 
 Swift and active as was the brain, it fairly staggered 
 under the task of instantly rearranging the world according 
 to the new pattern : for the first certainty to leap into sight 
 was that the pattern was utterly changed by the events of the 
 morning. She had left the house, betrayed, defenseless save 
 for a barren dignity, and she had re-entered it in triumph, 
 or at least with a valid appearance of triumph, an appear- 
 ance which had already tided her over the aching difficulty 
 of the first meeting with Morrison and might carry her 
 . . . she had no time now to think how far. 
 
 Page and Arnold were still invisible when she emerged 
 again on the veranda, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith pounced 
 on her with the frankest curiosity. " Sylvia, do tell us — 
 how in the world " 
 
 Sylvia was in the midst of a description of the race to 
 the fire, as vivid as she could make it, when Arnold saun- 
 tered back and after him, in a moment, Page, astonishingly 
 transformed by clothes. His height meant distinction now. 
 Sylvia noted again his long, strong hands, his aquiline, 
 tanned face and clear eyes, his thoughtful, observant eyes. 
 There was a whimsical quirk of his rather thin but 
 gentle lips which reminded her of the big bust of Emerson 
 in her father's study. She liked all this ; but her suspicious- 
 ness, alert for affront, since the experience with Morrison, 
 took offense at his great ease of manner. It had seemed 
 quite natural and unaffected to her, in fact she had not 
 at all noticed it before ; but now that she knew of his great 
 wealth, she instantly conceived a resentful idea that possibly 
 it might come from the self-assurance of a man who knows 
 himself much courted. She held her head high, gave to 
 him as to Arnold a nod of careless recognition, and con- 
 tinued talking : " Such a road — so steep — sand half-way 
 to the hubs, such water-bars ! " She turned to Morrison 
 with her first overt recognition of the new status between 
 
316 The Bent Twig 
 
 them. " You ought to have seen your fiancee ! She was 
 wonderful ! I was proud of her ! " 
 
 Morrison nodded a thoughtful assent. " Yes, Molly's 
 energy is irresistible," he commented, casting his remark 
 in the form of a generalization the significance of which 
 did not pass unnoticed by Sylvia's sharp ears. They were 
 the first words he had spoken to her since his engagement. 
 
 " Luncheon is ready," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith. " Do 
 come in." Every one by this time being genuinely hungry, 
 and for various reasons extremely curious about the hap- 
 penings back of Sylvia's appearance, the meal was dedicated 
 frankly to eating, varied only by Sylvia's running account 
 of the fire. " And then Molly wanted to take the fire- 
 fighters home, and I offered to walk to have more room 
 for them, and Mr. Page brought me up the other side of 
 Hemlock and over the pass between Hemlock and Wind- 
 ward and down past Deer Cliff, home," she wound up, 
 compressing into tantalizing brevity what was patently for 
 her listeners by far the most important part of the expedi- 
 tion. 
 
 " Well, whatever route he took, it is astonishing that he 
 knew the way to Lydford at all," commented Mrs. Mar- 
 shall-Smith. " I don't believe you've been here before for 
 years ! " she said to Page. 
 
 " It's my confounded shyness," he explained, turning 
 to Sylvia with a twinkle. "The grand, sophisticated ways 
 of Lydford are too much for the nerves of a plain-living 
 rustic like me. When I farm in Vermont the spirit of the 
 place takes hold of me. I'm quite apt to eat my pie with 
 my knife, and Lydford wouldn't like that." 
 
 Sylvia was aware, through the laughter which followed 
 this joking remark, that there was an indefinable stir 
 around the table. His turning to her had been pronounced. 
 She took a sore pleasure in Morrison's eclipse. For the 
 first time he was not the undisputed center of that circle. 
 He accepted it gravely, a little preoccupied, a little absent, 
 a wonderfully fine and dignified figure. Under her 
 misanthropic exultation, Sylvia felt again and again the 
 
Sylvia Asks Herself "Why Not?" 317 
 
 stab of her immense admiration for him, her deep affinity 
 for his way of conducting life. Whatever place he might 
 take in the circle around the luncheon table, she found him 
 inevitably at the center of all her own thoughts. However 
 it might seem to those evidently greatly struck with her 
 extraordinary good luck, her triumph was in reality only 
 the most pitiful of pretenses. But such as it was, and it 
 gleamed richly enough on the eyes of the onlookers, she 
 shook it out with a flourish and gave no sign of heartsick 
 qualms. She gave a brilliantly undivided attention to the 
 bit of local history Page was telling her, of a regiment of 
 Green Mountain Boys who had gone down to the Battle of 
 Bennington over the pass between Windward and Hem- 
 lock Mountain, and she was able to stir Page to enthusiasm 
 by an appreciative comparison of their march with the 
 splendid and affecting incident before Marathon, when the 
 thousand hoplites from the little town of Platasa crossed 
 the Cithaeron range and went down to the plain to join 
 the Athenians in their desperate stand. 
 
 " How do you happen to come East just now, any- 
 how ? " inquired old Mr. Sommerville, resolutely shoulder- 
 ing his way into the conversation. 
 
 " My yellow streak ! " affirmed his nephew. "Colorado 
 got too much for me. And besides, I was overcome by an 
 atavistic longing to do chores." He turned to Sylvia 
 again, the gesture as unconscious and simple as a boy's. 
 " My great-grandfather was a native of these parts, and 
 about once in so often I revert to type." 
 
 " All my mother's people came from this region too," 
 Sylvia said. She added meditatively, "And I think I 
 must have reverted to type — up there on the mountain, this 
 morning." 
 
 He looked at her silently, with softening eyes. 
 
 " You'll be going back soon, I suppose, as usual ! " said 
 old Mr. Sommerville with determination. 
 
 " To Colorado ? " inquired Page. " No, I think — I've a 
 notion I'll stay on this summer for some time. There is 
 an experiment I want to try with alfalfa in Vermont." 
 
318 The Bent Twig 
 
 Over his wineglass Arnold caught Sylvia's eye, and 
 winked. 
 
 " Still reading as much as ever, I suppose." Mr. Som- 
 merville was not to be put down. " When I last saw you, 
 it was some fool socialistic poppycock about the iniquity 
 of private exploitation of natural resources. How'd they 
 ever have been exploited any other way I'd like to know! 
 What's socialism? Organized robbery! Nothing elsel 
 * Down with success ! Down with initiative ! Down with 
 brains!' Stuff!" 
 
 " It's not socialism this time : it's Professor Merritt's 
 theories on property," said Sylvia to the old gentleman, 
 blandly ignoring his ignoring of her. 
 
 Page stared at her in astonishment. " Are you a clair- 
 voyant ? " he cried. 
 
 " No, no," she explained, laughing. " You took it out 
 of your pocket up there by the brook." 
 
 " But you saw only the title. Merritt's name isn't on 
 the cover." 
 
 " Oh, it's a pretty well-known book," said Sylvia easily. 
 " And my father's a professor of Economics. When I was 
 little I used to have books like that to build houses with, 
 instead of blocks. And I've had to keep them in order and 
 dusted ever since. I'm not saying that I know much about 
 their insides." 
 
 " Just look there ! " broke in Arnold. " Did I ever see 
 a young lady pass up such a perfectly good chance to 
 bluff!" 
 
 As usual nobody paid the least attention to his remark. 
 The conversation shifted to a radical play which had been 
 on the boards in Paris, the winter before. 
 
 After luncheon, they adjourned into the living-room. As 
 the company straggled across the wide, dimly shining, 
 deeply shaded hall, Sylvia felt her arm seized and held, 
 and turning her head, looked into the laughing face of 
 Arnold. " What kind of flowers does Judy like the best?" 
 he inquired, the question evidently the merest pretext to 
 detain her, for as the others moved out of earshot he said 
 
Sylvia Asks Herself "Why Not?" 319 
 
 in a delighted whisper, his eyes gleaming in the dusk with 
 amused malice : " Go it, Sylvia ! Hit 'em out ! It's worth 
 enduring oceans of Greek history to see old Sommerville 
 squirm. Molly gone — Morrison as poor as a church 
 mouse ; and now Page going fast before his very eyes " 
 
 She shook off his hand with genuine annoyance. " I 
 don't know what you're talking about, Arnold. You're 
 horrid! Judith doesn't like cut flowers at all, — any kind. 
 She likes them alive, on plants." 
 
 " She would!" Arnold was rapt in his habitual certainty 
 that every peculiarity of Judith's was another reason for 
 prostrate adoration. " I'll send her a window-box for 
 every window in the hospital." His admiration overflowed 
 to Judith's sister. He patted her on the shoulder. " You're 
 all right too, Sylvia. You're batting about three-sixty, right 
 now. I've always told the girls when they said Page was 
 offish that if they could only get in under his guard once — 
 and somehow you've done it. I bet on you " He be- 
 gan to laugh at her stern face of reproof. " Oh, yes, yes, 
 I agree! You don't know what I'm talking about! It's 
 just alfalfa in Vermont! Only my low vulgarity to think 
 anything else ! " He moved away down the hall. " Beat 
 it! I slope!" 
 
 "Where are you going?" she asked. 
 
 " Away ! Away ! " he answered. " Anywhere that's 
 away. The air is rank with Oscar Wilde and the Renais- 
 sance. I feel them coming." Still laughing, he bounded 
 upstairs, three steps at a time. 
 
 Sylvia stepped forward, crossed the threshold of the 
 living-room, and paused by the piano, penetrated by bitter- 
 sweet associations. If Morrison felt them also, he gave no 
 sign. He had chosen a chair by a distant window and 
 was devoting himself to Molly's grandfather, who accepted 
 this delicate and entirely suitable attention with a rather 
 glum face. Mrs. Marshall-Smith and Page still stood in 
 the center of the room, and turned as Sylvia came in. 
 " Do give us some music, Sylvia," said her aunt, sinking 
 into a chair while Page came forward to sit near the piano. 
 
320 The Bent Twig 
 
 Sylvia's fingers rested on the keys for a moment, her 
 face very grave, almost somber, and then, as though taking 
 a sudden determination, she began to play a Liszt Liebes- 
 Traum. It was the last music Morrison had played to her 
 before the beginning of the change. Into its fevered 
 cadences she poured the quivering, astonished hurt of her 
 young heart. 
 
 No one stirred during the music nor for the moment 
 afterward, in which she turned about to face the room. She 
 looked squarely at Morrison, who was rolling a cigarette 
 with meticulous care, and as she looked, he raised his eyes 
 and gave her across the room one deep, flashing glance of 
 profound significance. That was all. That was enough. 
 That was everything. Sylvia turned back to the piano 
 shivering, hot and cold with secret joy. His look said, 
 " Yes, of course, a thousand times of course, you are the 
 one in my heart/' What the facts said for him was, " But 
 I am going to marry Molly because she has money." 
 
 Sylvia was horrified that she did not despise him, that 
 she did not resent his entering her heart again with the 
 intimacy of that look. Her heart ran out to welcome him 
 back; but from the sense of furtiveness she shrank back 
 with her lifetime habit and experience of probity, with the 
 instinctive distaste for stealth engendered only by long and 
 unbroken acquaintance with candor. With a mental action 
 as definite as the physical one of freeing her feet from a 
 quicksand she turned away from the alluring, dim possi- 
 bility opened to her by that look. No, no ! No stains, no 
 smears, no shufflings ! She was conscious of no moral im- 
 pulse, in the usual sense of the word. Her imagination 
 took in no possibility of actual wrong. But when, with a 
 fastidious impulse of good taste, she turned her back on 
 something ugly, she turned her back unwittingly on some- 
 thing worse than ugly. 
 
 But it was not easy! Oh, not at all easy! She quailed 
 with a sense of her own weakness, so unexpected, so fright- 
 ening. Would she resist it the next time? How pierced 
 with helpless ecstasy she had been by that interchange of 
 
Sylvia Asks Herself " Why Not?" 321 
 
 glances ! What was there, in that world, by which she 
 could steady herself? 
 
 " How astonishingly well you play," said Page, rousing 
 himself from the dreamy silence of appreciation. 
 
 " I ought to," she said with conscious bitterness. " I 
 earn my living by teaching music." 
 
 She was aware from across the room of an electric 
 message from Aunt Victoria protesting against her per- 
 versity; and she reflected with a morose amusement that 
 however delicately phrased Aunt Victoria's protests might 
 be, its substance was the same as that of Helene, crying 
 out on her for not adding the soupcon of rouge. She took 
 a sudden resolution. Well, why not? Everything con- 
 spired to push her in that direction. The few factors which 
 did not were mere imbecile idealism, or downright hy- 
 pocrisy. She drew a long breath. She smiled at Page, a 
 smile of reference to something in common between them. 
 "Shan't I play you some Beethoven?" she asked, "some- 
 thing with a legato passage and great solemn chords, and 
 a silver melody binding the whole together?" 
 
 " Oh yes, do ! " he said softly. And in a moment she 
 was putting all of her intelligence, her training, and her 
 capacity to charm into the tones of the E-flat Minuet. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 A HYPOTHETICAL LIVELIHOOD 
 
 The millionaire proprietor had asked them all over o 
 the Austin Farm, and as they drew near the end of y.e<e 
 very expensive and delicately served meal which Page had 
 spoken of as a " picnic-lunch," various plans for the dis- 
 position of the afternoon were suggested. These sugges- 
 tions were prefaced by the frank statement of the owner 
 of the place that whatever else the others did, it was his 
 own intention to take Miss Marshall through a part of 
 his pine plantations and explain his recent forestry opera- 
 tions to her. The assumption that Miss Marshall would 
 of course be interested in his pine plantations and lumber- 
 ing operations struck nobody but Miss Marshall as queer. 
 With the most hearty and simple unconsciousness, they 
 unanimously felt that of course Miss Marshall would be 
 interested in the pine plantations and the lumbering opera- 
 tions of any man who was worth nobody knew how many 
 millions in coal, and who was so obviously interested in her. 
 
 Sylvia had been for some weeks observing the life about 
 her with very much disillusioned eyes and she now labeled 
 the feeling on the part of her friends with great accuracy, 
 saying to herself cynically, " If it were prize guinea-pigs or 
 collecting beer-steins, they would all be just as sure that I 
 would jump up and say, ' Oh yes, do show me, Mr. 
 Page ! ' " Following this moody reflection she immediately 
 jumped up and said enthusiastically, " Oh yes, do show 
 me, Mr. Page ! " The brilliance in her eyes during these 
 weeks came partly from a relieved sense of escape from 
 a humiliating position, and partly from an amusement at 
 the quality of human nature which was as dubiously enjoy- 
 able as the grim amusement of biting on a sore tooth. 
 
 322 
 
A Hypothetical Livelihood 323 
 
 She now took her place by the side of their host, and 
 thought, looking at his outdoor aspect, that her guess at 
 what to wear had been better than Aunt Victoria's or 
 Molly's. For the question of what to wear had been a 
 burning one. Pressure had been put on her to don just a 
 lacy, garden-party toilette of lawn and net as now auto- 
 matically barred both Aunt Victoria and Molly from the 
 proposed expedition to the woods. Nobody had had the 
 least idea what was to be the color of the entertainment 
 offered them, for the great significance of the affair was 
 that it was the first time that Page had ever invited any 
 one to the spot for which he evidently felt such an un- 
 accountable affection. Aunt Victoria had explained to 
 Sylvia, " It's always at the big Page estate in Lenox that 
 he entertains, or rather that he gets his mother to do 
 the absolutely indispensable entertaining for him." Mor- 
 rison said laughingly : " Isn't it the very quintessence of 
 quaintness to visit him there! To watch his detached, 
 whimsical air of not being in the least a part of all the 
 magnificence which bears his name. He insists, you 
 know, that he doesn't begin to know his way around 
 that huge house ! " " It was his father who built the 
 Lenox place," commented Mrs. Marshall-Smith. " It 
 suited his taste to perfection. Austin seems to have a 
 sort of Marie-Antoinette reaction towards a somewhat 
 painfully achieved simplicity. He's not the man to take any 
 sort of pose. If he were, it would be impossible not to sus- 
 pect him of a little pose in his fondness for going back to 
 his farmer great-grandfather's setting." Guided by this 
 conversation, and by shrewd observations of her own, 
 Sylvia had insisted, even to the point of strenuousness, 
 upon wearing to this first housewarming a cloth skirt and 
 coat, tempering the severity of this costume with a suffi- 
 ciently feminine and beruffied blouse of silk. As their car 
 had swung up before the plain, square, big-chimneyed old 
 house, and Page had come to meet them, dressed in khaki- 
 colored forester's garb, with puttees, Aunt Victoria had 
 been generous enough to admit by an eye-flash to Sylvia 
 
324 The Bent Twig 
 
 that the girl knew her business very well. There was not, 
 of course, Sylvia reflected, the slightest pretense of obscur- 
 ity between them as to what, under the circumstances, her 
 business was. 
 
 All this lay back of the fact that, as Sylvia, her face 
 bright with spontaneous interest in pine plantations and 
 lumbering operations, stepped to the side of the man in 
 puttees, her costume exactly suited his own. 
 
 From the midst of a daring and extremely becoming 
 arrangement of black and white striped chiffon and emerald- 
 green velvet, Molly's beautiful face smiled on them ap- 
 provingly. For various reasons, the spectacle afforded her 
 as much pleasure as it did extreme discomfort to her 
 grandfather, and with her usual masterful grasp on a situa- 
 tion she began to arrange matters so that the investigation 
 of pine plantations and lumber operations should be con- 
 ducted en tete-a-tete. " Mrs. Marshall-Smith, you're going 
 to stay here, of course, to look at Austin's lovely view! 
 Think of his having hidden that view away from us all till 
 now ! I want to go through the house later on, and without 
 Austin, so I can linger and pry if I like ! I want to look 
 at every single thing. It's lovely — the completest Yankee 
 setting! It looks as though we all ought to have on clean 
 gingham aprons and wear steel-rimmed spectacles. No, 
 Austin, don't frown ! I don't mean that for a knock. I 
 love it, honestly I do! I always thought I'd like to wear 
 clean gingham aprons myself. The only things that are 
 out of keeping are those shelves and shelves and shelves of 
 solemn books with such terrible titles ! " 
 
 " That's a fact, Page," said Morrison, laughing. " Molly's 
 hit the nail squarely. Your modern, economic spasms over 
 the organization of industrialism are out of place in that 
 delightful, eighteenth century, plain old interior. They 
 threw their fits over theology ! " 
 
 The owner of the house nodded. " Yes, you know your 
 period! A great-great-grandfather of mine, a ministerial 
 person, had left a lot of books on the nature of the Trinity 
 and Free Will and such. They had to be moved up to the 
 
A Hypothetical Livelihood 325 
 
 attic to make room for mine. What books will be on those 
 shelves a hundred years from now, I wonder?" 
 
 " Treatises on psychic analysis, on how to transfer 
 thought without words, unless I read the signs of the times 
 wrong," Morrison hazarded a guess. 
 
 Molly was bored by this talk and anxious to get the walk- 
 ers off. " You'd better be starting if you're going far up 
 on the mountain, Austin. We have to be back for a tea 
 at Mrs. Neville's, where Sylvia's to pour. Mrs. Neville 
 would have a thing or two to say to us, if we made her 
 lose her main drawing card." 
 
 " Are you coming, Morrison ? " asked Page. 
 
 " No, he isn't," said Molly decidedly. " He's going to 
 stay to play to me on that delicious tin-panny old harpsi- 
 chordy thing in your ' best room.' You do call it the 
 ' best room/ don't you ? They always do in New England 
 dialect stories. Grandfather, you have your cards with 
 you, haven't you? You always have. If you'll get them 
 out, Felix and Arnold and I'll play whist with you." 
 
 Only one of those thus laid hold of, slipped out from her 
 strong little fingers. Arnold raised himself, joint by joint, 
 from his chair, and announced that he was a perfect nut- 
 head when it came to whist. " And, anyhow," he went on 
 insistently, raising his voice as Molly began to order him 
 back into the ranks — " And, anyhow, I don't want to play 
 whist ! And I do want to see what Page has been up to all 
 this time he's kept so dark about his goings-on over here. 
 No, Molly, you needn't waste any more perfectly good lan- 
 guage on me. You can boss everybody else if you like, 
 but I'm the original, hairy wild-man who gets what he 
 wants." 
 
 He strolled off across the old-fashioned garden and out 
 of the gate with the other two, his attention given as usual 
 to lighting a cigarette. It was an undertaking of some diffi- 
 culty on that day of stiff September wind which blew Syl- 
 via's hair about her ears in bright, dancing flutters. 
 
 They were no more than out of earshot of the group 
 left on the porch, than Sylvia, as so often happened in her 
 
326 The Bent Twig 
 
 growing acquaintanceship with Page, found herself obliged 
 entirely to reconstruct an impression of him. It was with 
 anything but a rich man's arrogant certainty of her interest 
 that he said, very simply as he said everything : " I appre- 
 ciate very much, Miss Marshall, your being willing to come 
 along and see all this. It's a part of your general kindness 
 to everybody. I hope it won't bore you to extremity. I'm 
 so heart and soul in it myself, I shan't know when to stop 
 talking about it. In fact I shan't want to stop, even if I 
 know I should. I've never said much about it to any one 
 before, and I very much want your opinion on it." 
 
 Sylvia felt a decent pinch of shame, and her eyes were 
 not brilliant with sardonic irony but rather dimmed with 
 self-distrust as she answered with a wholesome effort for 
 honesty : " I really don't know a single thing about forestry, 
 Mr. Page. You'll have to start in at the very beginning, 
 and explain everything. I hope I've sense enough to take 
 an intelligent interest." Very different, this, from the 
 meretricious sparkle of her, " Oh yes, do show me, Mr. 
 Page." She felt that to be rather cheap, as she remem- 
 bered it. She wondered if he had seen its significance, had 
 seen through her. From a three weeks' intensive ac- 
 quaintance with him, she rather thought he had. His eyes 
 were clear, formidably so. He put her on her mettle. 
 
 Arnold had lighted his cigarette by this time, offered one 
 to Page with his incurable incapacity to remember that not 
 every sane man smokes, and on being refused, put his 
 hands deep in his pockets. The three tall young people 
 were making short work of the stretch of sunny, windy, 
 upland pasture, and were already almost in the edge of 
 the woods which covered the slope of the mountain above 
 them up to the very crest, jewel-green against the great, 
 piled, cumulus clouds. 
 
 " Well, I will begin at the beginning, then," said Page. 
 " I'll begin back in 1762, when this valley was settled and 
 my ever-so-many-greats-grandfather took possession of a 
 big slice of this side of Hemlock Mountain, with the sole 
 idea that trees were men's enemies. The American colo- 
 
A Hypothetical Livelihood 327 
 
 nists thought of forests, you know, as places for Indians 
 to lurk, spots that couldn't be used for corn, growths to 
 be exterminated as fast as possible." 
 
 They entered the woods now, walking at a good pace up 
 the steeply rising, grass-grown wood-road. Sylvia quite 
 consciously summoned all her powers of attention and con- 
 centration for the hour before her, determined to make a 
 good impression to counteract whatever too great insight 
 her host might have shown in the matter of her first in- 
 terest. She bent her fine brows with the attention she 
 had so often summoned to face a difficult final examina- 
 tion, to read at the correct tempo a complicated piece of 
 music, to grasp the essentials of a new subject. Her 
 trained interest in understanding things, which of late had 
 been feeding on rather moldy scraps of cynical psychology, 
 seized with energy and delight on a change of diet. She 
 not only tried to be interested. Very shortly she was in- 
 terested, absorbed, intent. What Page had to say fas- 
 cinated her. She even forgot who he was, and that he was 
 immensely rich. Though this forgetfulness was only mo- 
 mentary it was an unspeakable relief and refreshment to 
 her. 
 
 She listened intently; at times she asked a pertinent 
 question; as she walked she gave the man an occasional 
 direct survey, as impersonal as though he were a book 
 from which she was reading. And exactly as an intelli- 
 gent reader, in a first perusal of a new subject, snatches 
 the heart out of paragraph after paragraph, ignoring the 
 details until later, she took to herself only the gist of her 
 host's recital. Yes, yes, she saw perfectly the generations 
 of Vermont farmers who had hated trees because they 
 meant the wilderness, and whose destruction of forests was 
 only limited by the puniness of the forces they matched 
 against the great wooded slopes of the mountains they 
 pre-empted. And she saw later, the long years of utter 
 neglect of those hacked-at and half-destroyed forests while 
 Page's grandfather and father descended on the city and on. 
 financial operations with the fierce, fresh energy of fron- 
 
328 The Bent Twig 
 
 tiersmen. She was struck by the fact that those ruthless 
 victors of Wall Street had not sold the hundreds of worth- 
 less acres, which they never took the trouble to visit; and 
 by the still more significant fact that as the older ones of 
 the family died, the Austins, the Pages, the Woolsons, the 
 Hawkers, and as legacy after legacy of more worthless 
 mountain acres came by inheritance to the financiers, those 
 tracts too were never sold. They never thought of them, 
 Page told her, except grumblingly to pay the taxes on 
 them; they considered them of ridiculously minute pro- 
 portions compared to their own titanic manipulations, but 
 they had never sold them. Sylvia saw them vividly, those 
 self-made exiles from the mountains, and felt in them some 
 unacknowledged loyalty to the soil, the barren soil which 
 had borne them, some inarticulate affection which had lived 
 through the heat and rage of their embattled lives. The 
 taproot had been too deep for them to break off, and now 
 from it there was springing up this unexpected stem, this 
 sole survivor of their race who turned away from what 
 had been the flaming breath of life in their brazen nostrils, 
 back to the green fragrance of their mutilated and forgotten 
 forests. 
 
 Not the least of the charm of this conception for Sylvia 
 came from the fact that she quarried it out for herself 
 from the bare narration presented to her, that she read it 
 not at all in the words, but in the voice, the face, the 
 manner of the raconteur. She was amused, she was 
 touched, she was impressed by his studiously matter-of- 
 fact version of his enterprise. He put forward with the 
 shy, prudish shamefacedness of the New Englander the 
 sound financial basis of his undertaking, as its main claim 
 on his interest, as its main value. " I heard so much about 
 forestry being nothing but a rich man's plaything," he said. 
 " I just got my back up, and wanted to see if it couldn't be 
 made a paying thing. And I've proved it can be. I've had 
 the closest account kept of income and outgo, and so far 
 from being a drain on a man to reforest his woodland and 
 administer it as he should, there's an actual profit in it, 
 
A Hypothetical Livelihood 329 
 
 enough to make a business of it, enough to occupy a man 
 for his lifetime and his son after him, if he gives it his 
 personal care." 
 
 At this plain statement of a comprehensible fact, Ar- 
 nold's inattention gave place to a momentary interest. " Is 
 there ? " he asked with surprise. " How much ? " 
 
 " Well," said Page, " my system, as I've gradually worked 
 it out, is to clear off a certain amount each year of our 
 mediocre woodland, such as for the most part grows up 
 where the bad cutting was done a couple of generations 
 ago — maple and oak and beech it is, mostly, with little 
 stands of white birch, where fires have been. I work that 
 up in my own sawmill so as to sell as little of a raw product 
 as possible; and dispose of it to the wood-working fac- 
 tories in the region." (Sylvia remembered the great 
 * brush-back factory " whence Molly had recruited her 
 fire-fighters.) " Then I replant that area to white pine. 
 That's the best tree for this valley. I put about a thousand 
 trees to the acre. Or if there seems to be a good prospect 
 of natural reproduction, I try for that. There's a region 
 over there, about a hundred acres," he waved his hand 
 to the north of them, " that's thick with seedling ash. I'm 
 leaving that alone. But for the most part, white pine's our 
 best lay. Pine thrives on soil that stunts oak and twists 
 beech. Our oak isn't good quality, and maple is such an 
 interminably slow grower. In about twenty years from 
 planting, you can make your first, box-board cutting of 
 pine, and every ten years thereafter -" 
 
 Arnold had received this avalanche of figures and species 
 with an astonished blink, and now protested energetically 
 that he had had not the slightest intention of precipitating 
 any such flood. " Great Scott, Page, catch your breath ! 
 If you're talking to me, you'll have to use English, anyhow. 
 I've no more idea what you're talking about! Who do 
 you take me for? / don't know an ash-tree from an ash- 
 cart. You started in to tell me what the profit of the thing 
 is." 
 
 Page looked pained but patient, like a reasonable man 
 
330 The Bent Twig 
 
 who knows his hobby is running away with him, but who 
 cannot bring himself to use the curb. " Oh yes," he said 
 apologetically. " Why, we cleared last year (exclusive of 
 the farm, which yields a fair profit) — we cleared about two 
 thousand dollars." Arnold seemed to regard this state- 
 ment as quite the most ridiculous mouse which ever issued 
 from a mountain. He burst into an open laugh. " Almost 
 enough to buy you a new car a year, isn't it ? " he com- 
 mented. 
 
 Page looked extremely nettled. An annoyed flush showed 
 through the tan of his clear skin. He was evidently very 
 touchy about his pet lumbering operations. " A great many 
 American families consider that a sufficient income," he 
 said stiffly. 
 
 Sylvia had another inspiration, such as had been the 
 genesis of her present walking-costume. " You're too silly, 
 Arnold. The important thing isn't what the proportion 
 with Mr. Page's own income is! What he was trying to 
 do, and what he has done, only you don't know enough to 
 see it, is to prove that sane forestry is possible for forest- 
 owners of small means. I know, if you don't, that two 
 thousand is plenty to live on. My father's salary is only 
 twenty-four hundred now, and we were all brought up 
 when it was two thousand." 
 
 She had had an intuitive certainty that this frank revela- 
 tion would please Page, and she was rewarded by an 
 openly ardent flash from his clear eyes. There was in his 
 look at her an element of enchanted, relieved recognition, 
 as though he had nodded and said : " Oh, you are my kind 
 of a woman after all ! I was right about you." 
 
 Arnold showed by a lifted eyebrow that he was con- 
 scious of being put down, but he survived the process with 
 his usual negligent obliviousness of reproof. " Well, if 
 two thousand a year produced Judith, go ahead, Page, and 
 my blessing on you ! " He added in a half-apology for 
 his offensive laughter, " It just tickled me to hear a man 
 who owns most of several counties of coal-mines so set 
 up over finding a nickel on the street ! " 
 
A Hypothetical Livelihood 331 
 
 Page had regained his geniality. " Well, Smith, maybe I 
 needn't have jumped so when you stepped on my toe. But 
 it's my pet toe, you see. You're quite right — I'm ever- 
 lastingly set up over my nickel. But it's not because I 
 found it. It's because I earned it. It happens to be the 
 only nickel I ever earned. It's natural I should want it 
 treated with respect." 
 
 Arnold did not trouble to make any sense out of this 
 remark, and Sylvia was thinking bitterly to herself : " But 
 that's pure bluff! I'm not his kind of a woman. I'm 
 Felix Morrison's kind ! " No comment, therefore, was 
 made on the quaintness of the rich man's interest in earn- 
 ing capacity. 
 
 They were now in one of the recent pine plantations, 
 treading a wood-road open to the sky, running between 
 acres and acres of thrifty young pines. Page's eyes glist- 
 ened with affection as he looked at them, and with the un- 
 wearied zest of the enthusiast he continued expanding on 
 his theme. Sylvia knew the main outline of her new 
 subject now, felt that she had walked all around it, and was 
 agreeably surprised at her sympathy with it. She con- 
 tinued with a genuine curiosity to extract more details; 
 and like any man who talks of a process which he knows 
 thoroughly, Page was wholly at the mercy of a sympathetic 
 listener. His tongue tripped itself in his readiness to an- 
 swer, to expound, to tell his experiences, to pour out a 
 confidently accurate and precise flood of information. Syl- 
 via began to take a playful interest in trying to find a weak 
 place in his armor, to ask a question he could not answer. 
 But he knew all the answers. He knew the relative weight 
 per cubic foot of oak and pine and maple; he knew the 
 railroad rates per ton on carload lots ; he knew why it is 
 cheaper in the long run to set transplants in sod-land 
 instead of seeding it; he knew what per cent to write off 
 for damage done by the pine weevil, he reveled in compli- 
 cated statistics as to the actual cost per thousand for chop- 
 ping, skidding, drawing, sawing logs. He laughed at 
 Sylvia's attempts to best him, and in return beat about her 
 
332 The Bent Twig 
 
 ears with statistics for timber cruising, explained the varia- 
 tions of the Vermont and the scribner's decimal log rule, 
 and recited log-scaling tables as fluently as the multiplica- 
 tion table. They were in the midst of this lively give-and- 
 take, listened to with a mild amusement on Arnold's part, 
 when they emerged on a look-out ledge of gray slate, and 
 were struck into silence by the grave loveliness of the im- 
 mense prospect below them. 
 
 " — and of course," murmured Page finally, on another 
 note, " of course it's rather a satisfaction to feel that you 
 are making waste land of use to the world, and helping to 
 
 protect the living waters of all that " He waved his 
 
 hand over the noble expanse of sunlit valley. M It 
 seems " — he drew a long breath — " it seems something 
 quite worth doing." 
 
 Sylvia was moved to a disinterested admiration for him;, 
 and it was a not unworthy motive which kept her from 
 looking up to meet his eyes on her. She felt a petulant dis- 
 taste for the calculating speculations which filled the minds 
 of all her world about his intentions towards her. He was 
 really too fine for that. At least, she owed it to her own 
 dignity not to abuse this moment of fine, impersonal emo- 
 tion to advance another step into intimacy with him. 
 
 But as she stood, looking fixedly down at the valley, she 
 was quite aware that a sympathetic silence and a thought- 
 ful pose might make, on the whole, an impression quite as 
 favorable as the most successfully managed meeting of 
 eyes. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 ARNOLD CONTINUES TO DODGE THE 
 RENAISSANCE 
 
 A gaunt roaming figure of ennui and restlessness, Ar- 
 nold appeared at the door of the pergola and with a petu- 
 lant movement tore a brilliant autumn leaf to pieces as 
 he lingered for a moment, listening moodily to the talk 
 within. He refused with a grimace the chair to which 
 Sylvia motioned him. " Lord, no ! Hear 'em go it ! " he 
 said quite audibly and turned away to lounge back towards 
 the house. Sylvia had had time to notice, somewhat 
 absently, that he looked ill, as though he had a head- 
 ache. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith glanced after him with misgiving, 
 and, under cover of a brilliantly resounding passage at 
 arms between Morrison and Page, murmured anxiously to 
 Sylvia, " I wish Judith would give up her nonsense and 
 marry Arnold ! " 
 
 " Oh, they've only been engaged a couple of months," 
 said Sylvia. "What's the hurry! She'll get her diploma 
 in January. It'd be a pity to have her miss ! " 
 
 Arnold's stepmother broke in rather impatiently, " If I 
 were a girl engaged to Arnold, I'd marry him ! " 
 
 " — the trouble with all you connoisseurs, Morrison, is 
 that you're barking up the wrong tree. You take for 
 granted, from your own tastes, when people begin to buy 
 jade Buddhas and Zuloaga bull-fighters that they're want- 
 ing to surround themselves with beauty. Not much! It's 
 the consciousness of money they want to surround them- 
 selves with ! " 
 
 Morrison conceded part of this. " Oh, I grant you, there's 
 a disheartening deal of imitation in this matter. But 
 
 3AS 
 
334 The Bent Twig 
 
 America's new to aesthetics. Don't despise beginnings be- 
 cause they're small ! " 
 
 "A nettle leaf is small. But that's not the reason why- 
 it won't ever grow into an oak. Look here! A sheaf of 
 winter grasses, rightly arranged in clear glass, has as much 
 of the essence of beauty as a bronze vase of the Ming 
 dynasty. I ask you just one question, How many people do 
 you know who are capable of " 
 
 The art-critic broke in : " Oh come ! You're setting up 
 an impossibly high standard of aesthetic feeling." 
 
 " I'm not presuming to do any such thing as setting up 
 a standard! I'm just insisting that people who can't ex- 
 tract joy from the shadow pattern of a leafy branch on a 
 gray wall, are liars if they claim to enjoy a fine Japanese 
 print. What they enjoy in the print is the sense that they've 
 paid a lot for it. In my opinion, there's no use trying to 
 advance a step towards any sound aesthetic feeling till 
 some step is taken away from the idea of cost as the cri- 
 terion of value about anything." He drew a long breath 
 and went on, rather more rapidly than was his usual habit 
 of speech : " I've a real conviction on that point. It's come 
 to me of late years that one reason we haven't any national 
 art is because we have too much magnificence. All our 
 capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace- 
 like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum 
 is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have 
 no ears for the still, small voice of beauty. And perhaps," 
 he paused, looking down absently at a crumb he rolled be- 
 tween his thumb and finger on the table, " it's possible that 
 the time is ripening for a wider appreciation of another 
 kind of beauty . . . that has little to do even with such 
 miracles as the shadow of a branch on a wall." 
 
 Morrison showed no interest in this vaguely phrased 
 hypothesis, and returned to an earlier contention : " You 
 underestimate," he said, " the amount of education and taste 
 and time it takes to arrange that simple-looking vase of 
 grasses, to appreciate your leaf-shadows." 
 
 " All I'm saying is that your campaign of aesthetic edu- 
 
Arnold Continues to Dodge the Renaissance 335 
 
 cation hasn't made the matter vital enough to people, to any 
 people, not even to people who call themselves vastly- 
 aesthetic, so that they give time and effort and self-school- 
 ing to the acquisition of beauty. They not only want their 
 money to do their dirty work for them, they try to make 
 it do their fine living for them too, with a minimum of 
 effort on their part. They want to buy beauty, outright, 
 with cash, and have it stay put, where they can get their 
 fingers on it at any time, without bothering about it in the 
 meantime. That's the way a Turk likes his women — same 
 impulse exactly." 
 
 " I've known a few Caucasians too . . .," Mrs. Mar- 
 shall-Smith contributed a barbed point of malice to the 
 talk. 
 
 Page laughed, appreciating her hit. " Oh, I mean Turk 
 as a generic term." Sylvia, circling warily about the con- 
 testants, looking for a chance to make her presence felt, 
 without impairing the masculine gusto with which they 
 were monopolizing the center of the stage, tossed in a sug- 
 gestion, " Was it Hawthorne's — it's a queer fancy like 
 Hawthorne's — the idea of the miser, don't you remember, 
 whose joy was to roll naked in his gold pieces?" 
 
 Page snatched up with a delighted laugh the metaphor 
 she had laid in his hand. " Capital ! Precisely ! There's 
 the thing in a nutshell. We twentieth century Midases 
 have got beyond the simple taste of that founder of the 
 family for the shining yellow qualities of money, but we love 
 to wallow in it none the less. We like to put our feet 
 on it, in the shape of rugs valued according to their cost, 
 we like to eat it in insipid, out-of-season fruit and vege- 
 tables." 
 
 " Doesn't it occur to you," broke in Morrison, " that 
 you may be attacking something that's a mere phase, an 
 incident of transition ? " 
 
 " Is anything ever anything else ! " Page broke in to say. 
 
 Morrison continued, with a slight frown at the interrup- 
 tion, " America is simply emerging from the frontier con- 
 dition of bareness, and it is only natural that one, or per- 
 
336 The Bent Twig 
 
 haps two generations must be sacrificed in order to attain 
 a smooth mastery of an existence charged and enriched 
 with possession." He gave the effect of quoting a para- 
 graph from one of his lectures. 
 
 " Isn't the end of that ' transition/ " inquired Page, 
 usually simply that after one or two generations people 
 grow dulled to everything but possession and fancy them- 
 selves worthily occupied when they spend their lives regu- 
 lating and caring for their possessions. I hate," he cried 
 with sudden intensity, " I hate the very sound of the 
 word ! " 
 
 " Does you great credit, I'm sure," said Morrison, with a 
 faint irony, a hidden acrimony, pricking, for an instant, an 
 ugly ear through his genial manner. 
 
 Ever since the day of the fire, since Page had become a 
 more and more frequent visitor in Lydford and had seen 
 more and more of Sylvia, she had derived a certain 
 amount of decidedly bad-tasting amusement from the fact 
 of Morrison's animosity to the other man. But this was 
 going too far. She said instantly, " Do you know, I've just 
 thought what it is you all remind me of — I mean Lydford, 
 and the beautiful clothes, and nobody bothering about any- 
 thing but tea and ideas and knowing the right people. I 
 knew it made me think of something else, and now I know — 
 it's a Henry James novel ! " 
 
 Page took up her lead instantly, and said gravely, put- 
 ting himself beside her as another outsider : " Well, of 
 course, that's their ideal. That's what they try to be like 
 — at least to talk like James people. But it's not always 
 easy. The vocabulary is so limited." 
 
 "Limited!" cried Mrs. Marshall-Smith. "There are 
 more words in a Henry James novel than in any dic- 
 tionary ! " 
 
 " Oh yes, words enough ! " admitted Page, " but all about 
 the same sort of thing. It reminds me of the seminarists 
 in Rome, who have to use Latin for everything. They can 
 manage predestination and vicarious atonement like a shot, 
 but when it comes to ordering somebody to call them for 
 
Arnold Continues to Dodge the Renaissance 337 
 
 the six-twenty train to Naples they're lost. Now, you 
 can talk about your bric-a-brac in Henry- Jamesese, you 
 can take away your neighbor's reputation by subtle sugges- 
 tion, you can appreciate a fine deed of self-abnegation, if it's 
 not too definite! I suppose a man could even make an 
 attenuated sort of love in the lingo, but I'll be hanged if I 
 see how anybody could order a loaf of bread." 
 
 " One might do without bread, possibly ? " suggested 
 Morrison, pressing the tips of his beautiful fingers to- 
 gether. 
 
 " By Jove," cried Page, in hearty assent, " I've a notion 
 that lots of times they do ! " 
 
 This was getting nowhere. Mrs. Marshall-Smith put 
 her hand to the helm, and addressed herself to Morrison 
 with a plain reminder of the reason for the grotesqueness of 
 his irritability. " Where's Molly keeping herself nowa- 
 days ? " she inquired. " She hasn't come over with you, to 
 tea, for ever so long. The pergola isn't itself without her 
 sunny head." 
 
 " Molly is a grain of sand in a hurricane, nowadays," 
 said Morrison seriously. " It seems that the exigencies of 
 divine convention decree that a girl who is soon to be 
 married belongs neither to herself, to her family, to her 
 fiance — oh, least of all to her fiance — but heart and soul and 
 body to a devouring horde of dressmakers and tailors and 
 milliners and hairdressers and corsetieres and petticoat 
 specialists and jewelers and hosiery experts and " 
 
 They were all laughing at the interminable defile of words 
 proceeding with a Spanish gravity, and Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith broke in, " I don't hear anything about house- 
 furnishers." 
 
 " No," said Morrison, " the house-furnisher's name is 
 F. Morrison, and he has no show until after the wedding." 
 
 " What are your plans ? " asked Mrs. Marshall-Smith. 
 
 " Nothing very definite except the great Date. That's 
 fixed for the twenty-first." 
 
 " Oh, so soon . . . less than three weeks from now ! " 
 
 Morrison affected to feel a note of disapproval in her 
 
338 The Bent Twig 
 
 voice, and said with his faint smile, " You can hardly blame 
 me for not wishing to delay." 
 
 " Oh, no blame! " she denied his inference. " After all it's 
 over a month since the engagement was announced, and 
 who knows how much longer before that you and Molly 
 knew about it. No. I'm not one who believes in long 
 engagements. The shorter the better." 
 
 Sylvia saw an opportunity to emerge with an appearance 
 of ease from a silence that might seem ungracious. It was 
 an enforced manceuver with which the past weeks had made 
 her wearily familiar. " Aunt Victoria's hitting at Arnold 
 and Judith over your head," she said to Morrison. " It's 
 delicious, the way Tantine shows herself, for all her veneer 
 of modernity, entirely nineteen century in her impatience 
 of Judith's work. Now that there's a chance to escape 
 from it into the blessed haven of idle matrimony, she can't 
 see why Judith doesn't give up her lifetime dream and 
 marry Arnold tomorrow." 
 
 Somewhat to her surprise, her attempt at playfulness had 
 no notable success. The intent of her remarks received 
 from her aunt and Morrison the merest formal recognition 
 of a hasty, dim smile, and with one accord they looked at 
 once in another direction. "And after the wedding?" 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith inquired — "or is that a secret?" 
 
 " Oh no, when one belongs to Molly's exalted class or is 
 about to be elevated into it, nothing is secret. I'm quite 
 sure that the society editor of the Herald knows far better 
 than I the names of the hotels in Jamaica we're to fre- 
 quent." 
 
 " Oh ! Jamaica ! How . . . how . . . original ! " Mrs. 
 Marshall-Smith cast about her rather desperately for a 
 commendatory adjective. 
 
 * Yes, quite so, isn't it ? " agreed Morrison. " It's Molly's 
 idea. She is original, you know. It's one of her greatest 
 charms. She didn't want to go to Europe because there is 
 so much to see there, to do. She said she wanted a honey- 
 moon and not a personally conducted trip." 
 
 They all laughed again, and Sylvia said : " How like 
 
Arnold Continues to Dodge the Renaissance 339 
 
 Molly! How clever! Nobody does her thinking for 
 her!" 
 
 " The roads in Jamaica are excellent for motoring, too, 
 I hear/' added Morrison. " That's another reason, of 
 course." 
 
 Page gave a great laugh. " Well, as Molly's cousin, let 
 me warn you ! Molly driving a car in Jamaica will be like 
 Pavlova doing a bacchante on the point of a needle ! You'll 
 have to keep a close watch on her to see that she doesn't 
 absentmindedly dash across the island and jump off the 
 bank right on into the ocean." 
 
 " Where does F. Morrison, house-furnishing-expert, come 
 in ? " asked Mrs. Marshall-Smith. 
 
 "After the wedding, after Jamaica," said Morrison. 
 " We're to come back to New York and for a few months 
 impose on the good nature of Molly's grandfather's house- 
 hold, while we struggle with workmen et al. The Mont- 
 gomery house on Fifth Avenue, that's shut up for so many 
 years, — ever since the death of Molly's parents, — is the one 
 we've settled on. It's very large, you know. It has possi- 
 bilities. I have a plan for remodeling it and enlarging it 
 with a large inner court, glass-roofed — something slightly 
 Saracenic about the arches — and what is now a suite of 
 old-fashioned parlors on the north side is to be made into 
 a long gallery. There'll be an excellent light for paintings. 
 I've secured from Duveen a promise for some tapestries I've 
 admired for a long time — Beauvais, not very old, Louis 
 XVII — but excellent in color. Those for the staircase . . ." 
 
 He spoke with no more animation than was his custom, 
 with no more relish than was seemly; his carefully chosen 
 words succeeded each other in their usual exquisite preci- 
 sion, no complacency showed above the surface ; his attitude 
 was, as always, composed of precisely the right proportion 
 of dignity and ease ; but as he talked, some untarnished in- 
 stinct in Sylvia shrank away in momentary distaste, the 
 first she had ever felt for him. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith evidently did not at all share this 
 feeling. " Oh, what a house that will be ! " she cried, lost 
 
34-0 The Bent Twig 
 
 in forecasting admiration. "You! with a free hand! A 
 second house of Jacques Cceur!" Sylvia stood up, rather 
 abruptly. " I think I'll go for a walk beside the river," she 
 said, reaching for her parasol. 
 
 "May I tag along?" said Page, strolling off beside her 
 with the ease of familiarity. 
 
 Sylvia turned to wave a careless farewell to the two thus 
 left somewhat unceremoniously in the pergola. She was 
 in brown corduroy with suede leather sailor collar and broad 
 belt, a costume which brought out vividly the pure, clear 
 coloring of her face. " Good-bye," she called to them with 
 a pointedly casual accent, nodding her gleaming head. 
 
 " She's a very pretty girl, isn't she ? " commented Mrs. 
 Marshall-Smith. Morrison, looking after the retreating 
 figures, agreed with her briefly. " Yes, very. Extraordi- 
 narily perfect specimen of her type." His tone was dry. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked with annoyance across the 
 stretch of lawn to the house. " I think I would better go to 
 see where Arnold is," she said. Her tone seemed to signify 
 more to the man than her colorless words. He frowned and 
 said, " Oh, is Arnold . . . ? " 
 
 She gave a fatigued gesture. " No — not yet — but for the 
 last two or three days . . ." 
 
 He began impatiently, " Why can't you get him off this 
 time before he . . ." 
 
 " An excellent idea," she broke in, with some impatience 
 of her own. " But slightly difficult of execution." 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 SYLVIA MEETS WITH PITY 
 
 Under the scarlet glory of frost-touched maples, beside 
 the river strolled Sylvia, conscious of looking very well and 
 being admired ; but contrary to the age-old belief about her 
 sex and age, the sensation of looking very well and being 
 admired by no means filled the entire field of her conscious- 
 ness. In fact, the corner occupied by the sensation was so 
 small that occasional efforts on her part to escape to it from 
 the less agreeable contents of her mind were lamentable 
 failures. Aloud, in terms as felicitous as she could make 
 them, she was commenting on the beauty of the glass-smooth 
 river, with the sumptuously colored autumn trees casting 
 down into it the imperial gold and crimson of their reflec- 
 tions. Silently she was struggling to master and dominate 
 and suppress a confusion of contradictory mental processes. 
 At almost regular intervals, like a hollow stroke on a brazen 
 gong, her brain resounded to the reverberations of " The 
 wedding is on the twenty-first." And each time that she 
 thrust that away, there sprang up with a faint hissing note 
 of doubt and suspicion, " Why does Aunt Victoria want 
 Arnold married ? " A murmur, always drowned out but in- 
 cessantly recurring, ran: " What about Father and Mother? 
 What about their absurd, impossible, cruel, unreal, and 
 beautiful standards ? " Contemptible little echoes from the 
 silly self-consciousness of the adolescence so recently left 
 behind her ..." I must think of something clever to say. 
 I must try to seem different and original and independent 
 and yet must attract," mingled with an occasional fine sin- 
 cerity of appreciation and respect for the humanity of the 
 man beside her. Like a perfume borne in gusts came re- 
 action to the glorious color about her. Quickly recurring 
 
 341 
 
342 The Bent Twig 
 
 and quickly gone, a sharp cymbal-clap of alarm . . . 
 " What shall I do if Austin Page now . . . today ... or 
 tomorrow . . . tells me . . . ! " And grotesquely, the com- 
 panion cymbal on which this smote, gave forth an antiph- 
 onal alarm of, "What shall I do if he does not ! " While, 
 unheard of her conscious ear, but coloring everything with 
 its fundamental note of sincerity, rose solemnly from the 
 depths of her heart the old cry of desperate youth, " What 
 am I to do with my life ? " 
 
 No, the eminently successful brown corduroy, present 
 though it was to the mind of the handsome girl wearing it, 
 was hardly the sure and sufficient rock of refuge which tra- 
 dition would have had it. 
 
 With an effort she turned her attention from this con- 
 fused tumult in her ears, and put out her hand, rather at 
 random, for an introduction to talk. " You spoke, back there 
 in the pergola, of another kind of beauty — I didn't know 
 what you meant." He answered at once, with his usual 
 direct simplicity, which continued to have for Sylvia at this 
 period something suspiciously like the calmness of a reign- 
 ing sovereign who is above being embarrassed, who may 
 speak, without shamefacedness, of anything, even of moral 
 values, that subject tabu in sophisticated conversation. 
 " Ah, just a notion of mine that perhaps all this modern 
 ferment of what's known as * social conscience ' or ' civic 
 responsibility,' isn't a result of the sense of duty, but of the 
 old, old craving for beauty." 
 
 Sylvia looked at him, astonished. "Beauty?" 
 
 " Why yes, beauty isn't only a matter of line and color, is 
 it? There's the desire for harmony, for true proportions, 
 for grace and suavity, for nobility of movement. Perhaps 
 the lack of those qualities is felt in human lives as much 
 as on canvases ... at least perhaps it may be felt in the 
 future." 
 
 " It's an interesting idea," murmured Sylvia, " but I don't 
 quite see what it means, concretely, as applied to our actual 
 America." 
 
 He meditated, looking, as was his habit when walking, up 
 
Sylvia Meets with Pity 343 
 
 at the trees above them. " Well, let's see. I think I mean 
 that perhaps our race, not especially inspired in its instinct 
 for color and external form, may possibly be fumbling 
 toward an art of living. Why wouldn't it be an art to keep 
 your life in drawing as well as a mural decoration?" He 
 broke off to say, laughing, " I bet you the technique would 
 be quite as difficult to acquire," and went on again, thought- 
 fully : " In this modern maze of terrible closeness of inter- 
 relation, to achieve a life that's happy and useful and causes 
 no undeserved suffering to the untold numbers of other 
 lives w T hich touch it — isn't there an undertaking which needs 
 the passion for harmony and proportion? Isn't there a 
 beauty as a possible ideal of aspiration for a race that prob- 
 ably never could achieve a Florentine or Japanese beauty 
 of line ? " He cast this out casually, as an idea which had 
 by chance been brought up to the top by the current of the 
 talk, and showed no indication to pursue it further when 
 Sylvia only nodded her head. It was one of the moments 
 when she heard nothing but the brazen clangor of " the 
 wedding is on the twenty-first," and until the savage con- 
 striction around her heart had relaxed she had not breath 
 to speak. But that passed again, and the two sauntered 
 onward, in the peaceable silence which was one of the great 
 new pleasures which Page was able to give her. It now 
 seemed like a part of the mellow ripeness of the day. 
 
 They had come to a bend in the slowly flowing river, 
 where, instead of torch-bright maples and poplars, rank upon 
 rank of somber pines marched away to the summit of a 
 steeply ascending foothill. The river was clouded dark with 
 their melancholy reflections. On their edge, overhanging 
 the water, stood a single sumac, a standard-bearer with a 
 thousand little down-drooping flags of crimson. 
 
 " Oh," said Sylvia, smitten with admiration. She sat 
 down on a rock partly because she wanted to admire at her 
 leisure, partly because she was the kind of a girl who looks 
 well sitting on a rock; and as she was aware of this latter 
 motive, she felt a qualm of self-scorn. What a cheap vein 
 of commonness was revealed in her — in every one — by the 
 
344 The Bent Twig 
 
 temptation of a great fortune! Morrison had succumbed 
 entirely. She was nowadays continually detecting in her- 
 self motives which made her sick. 
 
 Page stretched his great length on the dry leaves at her 
 feet. Any other man would have rolled a cigarette. It was 
 one of his oddities that he never smoked. Sylvia looked 
 down at his thoughtful, clean face and reflected wonder- 
 ingly that he seemed the only person not warped by money. 
 Was it because he had it, or was it because he was a very 
 unusual person? 
 
 He was looking partly at the river, at the pines, at the 
 flaming tree, and partly at the human embodiment of the 
 richness and color of autumn before him. After a time 
 Sylvia said : " There's Cassandra. She's the only one who 
 knows of the impending doom. She's trying to warn the 
 pines." It had taken her some moments to think of this. 
 
 Page accepted it with no sign that he considered it any- 
 thing remarkable, with the habit of a man for whom people 
 produced their best : " She's using some very fine langujge 
 for her warning, but like some other fine language it's a 
 trifle misapplied. She forgets that no doom hangs over the 
 pines. She's the fated one. They're safe enough." 
 
 Sylvia clasped her hands about her knees and looked 
 across the dark water at the somber trees. " And yet they 
 don't seem to be very cheerful about it." It was her opinion 
 that they were talking very cleverly. 
 
 " Perhaps," suggested Page, rolling over to face the 
 river — " perhaps she's not prophesying doom at all, but 
 blowing a trumpet-peal of exultation over her own good 
 fortune. The pines may be black with envy of her." 
 
 Sylvia enjoyed this rather macabre fancy with all the zest 
 of healthful youth, secure in the conviction of its own im- 
 mortality. " Yes, yes, life's ever so much harder than 
 death." 
 
 Page dissented with a grave irony from the romantic 
 exaggeration of this generalization. " I don't suppose the 
 statistics as to the relative difficulty of life and death are 
 really very reliable." 
 
Sylvia Meets with Pity 345 
 
 Sylvia perceived that she was being, ever so delicately, 
 laughed at, and tried to turn her remark so that she could 
 carry it off. " Oh, I don't mean for those who die, but those 
 who are left know something about it, I imagine. My 
 mother always said that the encounter with death is the 
 great turning-point in the lives of those who live on. She 
 said you might miss everything else irrevocable and vital — 
 falling in love, having children, accomplishing anything — 
 but that sooner or later you have to reckon with losing some- 
 body dear to you." She spoke with an academic interest 
 in the question. 
 
 " I should think," meditated Page, taking the matter into 
 serious consideration, " that the vitalness of even that ex- 
 perience would depend somewhat on the character under- 
 going it. I've known some temperaments of a proved 
 frivolity which seemed to have passed through it without 
 any great modifications. But then I know nothing about it 
 personally. I lost my father before I could remember him, 
 and since then I haven't happened to have any close en- 
 counter with such loss. My mother, you know, is very 
 much alive." 
 
 " Well, I haven't any personal experience with death in 
 my immediate circle either," said Sylvia. " But I wasn't 
 brought up with the usual cult of the awfulness of it. 
 Father was always anxious that we children should feel it 
 something as natural as breathing — you are dipped up from 
 the great river of consciousness, and death only pours you 
 back. If you've been worth living, there are more elements 
 of fineness in humanity." 
 
 Page nodded. " Yes, that's what they all say nowadays. 
 Personal immortality is as out of fashion as big sleeves." 
 
 " Do you believe it ? " asked Sylvia, seeing the talk take 
 an intimate turn, " or are you like me, and don't know at 
 all what you do believe?" If she had under this pseudo- 
 philosophical question a veiled purpose analogous to that of 
 the less subtle charmer whose avowed expedient is to get 
 " a man to talk about himself " the manceuver was eminently 
 successful. 
 
346 The Bent Twig 
 
 " I've never had the least chance to think about it," he 
 said, sitting up, " because I've always been so damnably 
 beset by the facts of living. I know I am not the first of 
 my race to feel convinced that his own problems are the 
 most complicated, but . . ." 
 
 " Yours!" cried Sylvia, genuinely astonished. 
 
 " And one of the hardships of my position," he told her 
 at once with a playful bitterness, " is that everybody refuses 
 to believe in the seriousness of it. Because my father, 
 after making a great many bad guesses as to the possible 
 value of mining stock in Nevada, happened to make a series 
 of good guesses about the value of mining stock in Colo- 
 rado, it is assumed that all questions are settled for me, 
 that Lean joyously cultivate my garden, securely intrenched 
 in the certainty that this is the best possible of all possible 
 worlds." 
 
 " Oh yes — labor unions — socialism — I. W. W.," Sylvia 
 murmured vaguely, unable, in spite of her intelligence, to 
 refrain from marking, by a subsidence of interest, her in- 
 stinctive feeling that those distant questions could not in the 
 nature of things be compared to present, personal compli- 
 cations. 
 
 " No — no — ! " he protested. " That's no go ! I've tried 
 for five years now to shove it out of sight on some one of 
 those shelves. I've learned all the arguments on both sides. 
 I can discuss on both sides of those names as glibly as any 
 other modern quibbler. I can prove the rights of all those 
 labels or I can prove the wrongs of them, according to the 
 way my dinner is digesting. What stays right there, what 
 I never can digest (if you'll pardon an inelegant simile that's 
 just occurred to me), a lump I never can either swallow 
 entirely down or get up out of my throat, is the fact that 
 there are men, hundreds of men, thousands of men, working 
 with picks underground all day, every day, all their lives, 
 and that part of their labor goes to provide me with the 
 wherewithal to cultivate my taste, to pose as a patron of 
 the arts, to endow promising pianists — to go through all the 
 motions suitable to that position to which it has pleased 
 
Sylvia Meets with Pity 347 
 
 Providence to call me. It sticks in my crop that my only 
 connection with the entire business was to give myself the 
 trouble to be born my father's son." 
 
 " But you do work ! " protested Sylvia. " You work on 
 your farm here. You run all sorts of lumbering operations 
 in this region. The first time I saw you, you certainly looked 
 less like the traditional idea of a predatory coal-operator." 
 She laughed at the recollection. 
 
 " Oh yes, I work. When my undigested lump gets too 
 painful I try to work it off — but what I do bears the 
 same relation to real sure-enough work that playing tennis 
 does to laying brick. But such as it is, it's real satisfaction 
 I get out of my minute Vermont holdings. They come 
 down to me from my farmer great-grandfather who held 
 the land by working it himself. There's no sore spot there. 
 But speak of Colorado or coal — and you see me jump with 
 the same shooting twinge you feel when the dentist's probe 
 reaches a nerve. An intelligent conscience is a luxury a 
 man in my position can't afford to have." He began with 
 great accuracy to toss small stones at a log showing above 
 the surface of the water. 
 
 Sylvia, reverting to a chance remark, now said : " I never 
 happened to hear you speak of your mother before. Does 
 she ever come to Lydford ? " 
 
 He shook his head. " No, she vibrates between the Madi- 
 son Avenue house and the Newport one. She's very happy 
 in those two places. She's Mr. Sommerville's sister, you 
 know. She's one of Morrison's devotees too. She col- 
 lects under his guidance." 
 
 " Collects ? " asked Sylvia, a little vaguely. 
 
 " Oh, it doesn't matter much what — the instinct, the re- 
 sultant satisfaction are the same. As a child, it's stamps, 
 
 or buttons, or corks, later on As a matter of fact, it's 
 
 lace that my mother collects. She specializes in Venetian 
 lace — the older the better, of course. The connection with 
 coal-mines is obvious. But after all, her own fortune, 
 coming mostly from the Sommerville side, is derived from- 
 oil. The difference is great ! " 
 
348 The Bent Twig 
 
 "Do you live with her?" asked Sylvia. 
 
 " My washing is said to be done in New York," he said 
 seriously. " I believe that settles the question of residence 
 for a man." 
 
 " Oh, how quaint ! " said Sylvia, laughing. Then with 
 her trained instinct for contriving a creditable exit before 
 being driven to an enforced one by flagging of masculine 
 interest, she rose and looked at her watch. 
 
 " Oh, don't go ! " he implored her. " It's so beautiful 
 here — we never were so — who knows when we'll ever again 
 be in so . . ." 
 
 Sylvia divined with one of her cymbal-claps that he had 
 meant, perhaps, that very afternoon to — She felt a dis- 
 sonant clashing of triumph and misgiving. She thought 
 she decided quite coolly, quite dryly, that pursuit always 
 lent luster to the object pursued ; but in reality she did not 
 at all recognize the instinct which bade her say, turning 
 her watch around on her wrist : " It's quite late. I don't 
 think I'd better stay longer. Aunt Victoria likes dinner 
 promptly." She turned to go. 
 
 He took his small defeat with his usual imperturbable 
 good nature, in which Sylvia not infrequently thought she 
 detected a flavor of the unconscious self-assurance of the 
 very rich and much-courted man. He scrambled to his 
 feet now promptly, and fell into step with her quick-tread- 
 ing advance. " You're right, of course. There's no need to 
 be grasping. There's tomorrow — and the day after — and 
 the day after that — and if it rains we can wear rubbers and 
 carry umbrellas." 
 
 " Oh, I don't carry an umbrella for a walk in the rain," 
 she told him. " It's one of our queer Marshall ways. We 
 only own one umbrella for the whole family at home, 
 and that's to lend. I wear a rubber coat and put on a 
 sou'wester and let it rain." 
 
 " You would ! " he said in an unconscious imitation of 
 Arnold's accent. 
 
 She laughed up at him. " Shall I confess why I do ? 
 Because my hair is naturally curly." 
 
Sylvia Meets with Pity 349 
 
 " Confession has to be prompter than that to save souls," 
 he answered. " I knew it was, five weeks ago, when you 
 splashed the water up on it so recklessly there by the 
 brook." 
 
 She was astonished by this revelation of depths behind 
 that well-remembered clear gaze of admiration, and dis- 
 mayed by such unnatural accuracy of observation. 
 
 " How cynical of you to make such a mental com- 
 ment ! " 
 
 He apologized. "It was automatic — unconscious. I've 
 had a good deal of opportunity to observe young ladies." 
 And then, as though aware that the ice was thin over an 
 unpleasant subject, he shifted the talk. " Upon my word, 
 I wonder how Molly and Morrison will manage ? " 
 
 " Oh, Molly's wonderful. She'd manage anything," said 
 Sylvia with conviction. 
 
 " Morrison is rather wonderful himself," advanced Page. 
 " And that's a magnanimous concession for me to make 
 when I'm now so deep in his bad books. Do you know, by 
 the way," he asked, looking with a quick interrogation at 
 the girl, "why I'm so out of favor with him?" 
 
 Sylvia's eyes opened wide. She gazed at him, startled, 
 fascinated. Could " it " be coming so suddenly, in this 
 casual, abrupt manner ? " No, I don't know," she managed 
 to say; and braced herself. 
 
 " I don't blame him in the least. It was very vexing. I 
 went back on him — so to speak; dissolved an aesthetic 
 partnership, in which he furnished the brains, and my coal- 
 mines the sinews of art. / was one of his devotees, you 
 know. For some years after I got out of college I col- 
 lected under his guidance, as my mother does, as so many 
 people do. I even specialized. I don't like to boast, but I 
 dare affirm that no man knows more than I about sixteenth 
 century mezza-majolica. It is a branch of human knowl- 
 edge which you must admit is singularly appropriate for a 
 dweller in the twentieth century. And of great value to 
 the world. My collection was one of Morrison's triumphs." 
 
 Sylvia felt foolish and discomfited. With an effort she 
 
350 The Bent Twig 
 
 showed a proper interest in his remarks. " Was ? " she 
 asked. " What happened to it ? " 
 
 " I went back on it. In one of the first of those fits of 
 moral indigestion. One day, I'd been reading a report in 
 one of the newspapers on the status of the coal-miner, and 
 the connection between my bright-colored pots and platters, 
 and my father's lucky guess, became a little too dramatic 
 for my taste. I gave the collection to the Metropolitan, and 
 I've never bought a piece since. Morrison was immensely 
 put out. He'd been to great trouble to find some fine 
 Fontana specimens for me. And then not to have me look 
 
 at them He was right too. It was a silly, pettish thing 
 
 to do. I didn't know any better then. I don't know any 
 better now." 
 
 It began to dawn on Sylvia that, under his air of whim- 
 sical self-mockery he was talking to her seriously. She 
 tried to adjust herself to this, to be sympathetic, earnest; 
 though she was still smarting with the sense of having ap- 
 peared to herself as undignified and ridiculous. 
 
 " And besides that," he went on, looking away, down 
 the dusty highroad they were then crossing on their way 
 back to the house — " besides that, I went back on a great 
 scheme of Morrison's for a National Academy of ^Esthetic 
 Instruction, which I was to finance and he to organize. He 
 had gone into all the details. He had shown wonderful 
 capacity. It's really very magnanimous of him not to bear 
 me more of a grudge. He thought that giving it up was 
 one of my half-baked ideas. And it was. As far as any- 
 thing I've accomplished since, I might as well have been 
 furthering the appreciation of Etruscan vases in the Middle- 
 West. But then, I don't think he'll miss it now. If he 
 still has a fancy for it, he can do it with Molly's money. 
 She has plenty. But I don't believe he will. It has oc- 
 curred to me lately (it's an idea that's been growing on me 
 about everybody) that Morrison, like most of us, has been 
 miscast. He doesn't really care a continental about the 
 aesthetic salvation of the country. It's only the contagion 
 of the American craze for connecting everything with social 
 
Sylvia Meets with Pity 351 
 
 betterment, tagging everything with that label, that ever 
 made him think he did. He's far too thoroughgoing an 
 aesthete himself. What he was brought into the world for, 
 was to appreciate, as nobody else can, all sorts of esoterically 
 fine things. Now that he'll be able to gratify that taste, 
 he'll find his occupation in it. Why shouldn't he? It'd 
 be a hideously leveled world if everybody was trying to be 
 a reformer. Besides, who'd be left to reform? I love to 
 contemplate a genuine, whole-souled appreciator like Mor- 
 rison, without any qualms about the way society is put 
 together. And I envy him ! I envy him as blackly as your 
 pines envied the sumac. He's got out of the wrong role 
 into the right one. I wish to the Lord I could ! " 
 
 They were close to the house now, in the avenue of pop- 
 lars, yellow as gold above them in the quick-falling autumn 
 twilight. Sylvia spoke with a quick, spirited sincerity, her 
 momentary pique forgotten, her feeling rushing out gen- 
 erously to meet the man's simple openness. " Oh, that's 
 the problem for all of us! To know what role to play! 
 If you think it hard for you who have only to choose — how 
 
 about the rest of us who must ?" She broke off. 
 
 " What's that ? What's that ? " 
 
 She had almost stumbled over a man's body, lying prone, 
 half in the driveway, half on the close-clipped grass on 
 the side; a well-dressed man, tall, thin, his limbs sprawled 
 about broken-jointedly. He lay on his back, his face 
 glimmering white in the clear, dim dusk. Sylvia recog- 
 nized him with a cry. " Oh, it's Arnold ! He's been struck 
 by a car ! He's dead ! " 
 
 She sprang forward, and stopped short, at gaze, frozen. 
 
 The man sat up, propping himself on his hands and 
 looked at her, a wavering smile on his lips. He began to 
 speak, a thick, unmodulated voice, as though his throat 
 were stiff. " Comingtomeetyou," he articulated very rapidly 
 and quite unintelligibly, " an 'countered hill in driveway 
 , . . no hill in driveway, and climbed and climbed " — he 
 lost himself in repetition and brought up short to begin 
 again, " — labor so 'cessive had to rest " 
 
35 2 The Bent Twig 
 
 Sylvia turned a paper-white face on her companion. 
 t( What's the matter with him ? " she tried to say, but Page 
 only saw her lips move. He made no answer. That she 
 would know in an instant what was the matter flickered 
 from her eyes, from her trembling white lips ; that she did 
 know, even as she spoke, was apparent from the scorn and 
 indignation which like sheet-lightning leaped out on him. 
 " Arnold ! For shame! Arnold ! Think of Judith ! " 
 
 At the name he frowned vaguely as though it suggested 
 something extremely distressing to him, though he evidently 
 did not recognize it. "Judish? Judish?" he repeated, 
 drawing his brows together and making a grimace of great 
 pain. "What's Judish?" 
 
 And then, quite suddenly the pain and distress were 
 wiped from his face by sodden vacuity. He had hitched 
 himself to one of the poplars, and now leaned against this, 
 his head bent on his shoulder at the sickening angle of a 
 man hanged, his eyes glassy, his mouth open, a trickle of 
 saliva flowing from one corner. He breathed hard and 
 loudly. There was nothing there but a lump of uncomely 
 flesh. 
 
 Sylvia shrank back from the sight with such disgust that 
 she felt her flesh creep. She turned a hard, angry face on 
 Page. " Oh, the beast ! The beast ! " she cried, under her 
 breath. She felt defiled. She hated Arnold. She hated 
 life. 
 
 Page said quietly : " You'll excuse my not going with 
 you to the house? I'll have my car and chauffeur here 
 in a moment." He stepped away quickly and Sylvia turned 
 to flee into the house. 
 
 But something halted her flying feet. She hesitated, 
 stopped, and pressed her hands together hard. He could 
 not be left alone there in the driveway. A car might run 
 over him in the dusk. She turned back. 
 
 She stood there, alone with the horror under the tree. 
 She turned her back on it, but she could see nothing but 
 the abject, strengthless body, the dreadful ignominy of the 
 face. They filled the world. 
 
Sylvia Meets with Pity 353 
 
 And then quickly — everything came quickly to Sylvia — 
 there stood before her the little boy who had come to see 
 them in La Chance so long ago, the little honest-eyed boy 
 who had so loved her mother and Judith, who had loved 
 Pauline the maid and suffered with her pain ; and then the 
 bigger boy who out of his weakness had begged for a share 
 of her mother's strength and been refused ; and then the 
 man, still honest-eyed, who, aimless, wavering, had cried 
 out to her in misery upon the emptiness of his life; and 
 who later had wept those pure tears of joy that he had 
 found love. She had a moment of insight, of vision, of 
 terrible understanding. She did not know what was tak- 
 ing place within her, something racking — spasmodic throes 
 of sudden growth, the emergence for the first time in all her 
 life of the capacity for pity ... 
 
 When, only a moment or two later, Page's car came 
 swiftly down the driveway, and he sprang out, he found 
 Sylvia sitting by the drunkard, the quiet tears streaming 
 down her face. She had wiped his mouth with her hand- 
 kerchief, she held his limp hand in hers, his foolish staring 
 face was hidden on her shoulder. . . . 
 
 The two men lifted him bodily, an ignoble, sagging weight, 
 into the car. She stood beside him and, without a word, 
 stooped and gently disposed his slackly hanging arms be- 
 side him. 
 
 Dark had quite fallen by this time. They were all silent, 
 shadowy forms. She felt that Page was at her side. He 
 leaned to her. Her hand was taken and kissed. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 MUCH ADO . . . 
 
 The rest of October was a period never clear in Sylvia's 
 head. Everything that happened was confusing and almost 
 everything was painful; and a great deal happened. She 
 had thought at the time that nothing would ever blur in 
 her mind the shock of finding Aunt Victoria opposed to 
 what seemed to her the first obvious necessity: writing to 
 Judith about Arnold. She had been trying for a long time 
 now with desperate sincerity to take the world as she 
 found it, to see people as they were with no fanatic in- 
 tolerance, to realize her own inexperience of life, to be 
 broad, to take in without too much of a wrench another 
 point of view ; but to Aunt Victoria's idea, held quite simply 
 and naturally by that lady, that Judith be kept in ignorance 
 of Arnold's habits until after marriage, Sylvia's mind closed 
 as automatically, as hermetically as an oyster-shell snaps 
 shut. She could not discuss it, she could not even attend 
 with hearing ears to Mrs. Marshall-Smith's very reasonable 
 ! presentation of her case; the long tradition as to the justi- 
 fiability of such ignorance on a bride's part; the impossi- 
 bility that any woman should ever know all of any man's 
 character before marriage; the strong presumption that 
 marriage with a woman he adored would cure habits con- 
 tracted only through the inevitable aimlessness of too much 
 wealth; the fact that, once married, a woman like Judith 
 would accept, and for the most part deal competently with, 
 facts which would frighten her in her raw girlish state of 
 ignorance and crudeness. Sylvia did not even hear these 
 arguments and many more like them, dignified with the 
 sanction of generations of women trying their best to deal 
 with life. She had never thought of the question before. 
 
 354 
 
Much Ado . . . 255 
 
 It was the sort of thing from which she had always averted 
 her moral eyes with extreme distaste ; but now that it was 
 forced on her, her reaction to it was instantaneous. From 
 the depths of her there rose up fresh in its original vigor, 
 never having been dulled by a single enforced compliance 
 with a convention running counter to a principle, the most 
 irresistible instinct against concealment. She did not argue ; 
 she could not. She could only say with a breathless cer- 
 tainty against which there was no holding out : " Judith 
 must know ! Judith must know ! " 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith, alarmed by the prospect of a 
 passage-at-arms, decreed quietly that they should both 
 sleep on the question and take it up the next morning. Syl- 
 via had not slept. She had lain in her bed, wide-eyed; a 
 series of pictures passing before her eyes with the un- 
 natural vividness of hallucinations. These pictures were 
 not only of Arnold, of Arnold again, of Arnold and Judith. 
 There were all sorts of odd bits of memories — a conversa- 
 tion overheard years before, between her father and Law- 
 rence, when Lawrence was a little, little boy. He had 
 asked — it was like Lawrence's eerie ways — apropos of noth- 
 ing at all, " What sort of a man was Aunt Victoria's hus- 
 band?" 
 
 His father had said, " A rich man, very rich." This 
 prompt appearance of readiness to answer had silenced the 
 child for a moment : and then ( Sylvia could see his thin 
 little hands patting down the sand-cake he was making) 
 he had persisted, " What kind of a rich man ? " His father 
 had said, " Well, he was bald — quite bald — Lawrence, come 
 run a race with me to the woodshed." Sylvia now, ten 
 years later, wondered why her father had evaded. What 
 kind of a man had Arnold's father been? 
 
 But chiefly she braced herself for the struggle with Aunt 
 Victoria in the morning. It came to her in fleeting glimpses 
 that Aunt Victoria would be only human if she resented 
 with some heat this entire disregard of her wishes ; that the 
 discussion might very well end in a quarrel, and that a 
 quarrel would mean the end of Lydford with all that Lyd- 
 
356 The Bent Twig 
 
 ford meant now and potentially. But this perception was 
 swept out of sight, like everything else, in the single- 
 ness of her conviction : " Judith must know ! Judith must 
 know ! " 
 
 There was, however, no struggle with Aunt Victoria in 
 the morning. Mrs. Marshall-Smith, encountering the same 
 passionate outcry, recognized an irresistible force when she 
 encountered it ; recognized it, in fact, soon enough to avoid 
 the long-drawn-out acrimony of discussion into which a 
 less intelligent woman would inevitably have plunged; 
 recognized it almost, but not quite, in time to shut of! from 
 Sylvia's later meditations certain startling vistas down 
 which she had now only fleeting glimpses. " Very well,, 
 my dear," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith, her cherished clarity 
 always unclouded by small resentments, — "very well, we will 
 trust in your judgment rather than my own. I don't pre- 
 tend to understand present-day girls, though I manage to 
 be very fond of one of them. Judith is your sister. You 
 will do, of course, what you think is right. It means, of 
 course, Judith being what she is, that she will instantly 
 cast him off ; and Arnold being what he is, that means that 
 he will drink himself into delirium tremens in six months. 
 His father . . ." She stopped short, closing with some 
 haste the door to a vista, and poured herself another cup 
 of coffee. They were having breakfast in her room, both 
 in negligee and lacy caps, two singularly handsome rep- 
 resentatives of differing generations. Mrs. Marshall-Smith 
 looked calm, Sylvia extremely agitated. She had been 
 awake at the early hour of deadly pale dawn when a swift, 
 long-barreled car had drawn up under the porte-cochere and 
 Arnold had been taken away under the guard of a short, 
 broad, brawny man with disproportionately long arms. 
 She was not able to swallow a mouthful of breakfast. 
 
 During the night, she had not looked an inch beyond her 
 blind passion of insistence. Now that Aunt Victoria 
 yielded with so disconcerting a suddenness, she faced with 
 a pang what lay beyond. " Oh, Judith wouldn't cast him 
 off! She loves him so! She'll give him a chance. You 
 
Much Ado . . . 357 
 
 don't know Judith. She doesn't care about many things, 
 but she gives herself up absolutely to those that do matter to 
 her. She adores Arnold! It fairly frightened me to see 
 how she was burning up when he was near. She'll insist 
 on his reforming, of course — she ought to — but " 
 
 " Suppose he doesn't reform to suit her," suggested Mrs. 
 Marshall-Smith, stirring her coffee. " He's been reformed 
 at intervals ever since he was fifteen. He never could stay 
 through a whole term in any decent boys' school." Here 
 was a vista, ruthlessly opened. Sylvia's eyes looked down 
 it and shuddered. " Poor Arnold ! " she said under her 
 breath, pushing away her untasted cup. 
 
 " I'm dull enough to find you take an odd way to show 
 your sympathy for him," murmured Mrs. Marshall-Smith, 
 with none of the acidity the words themselves seemed to 
 indicate. She seemed indeed genuinely perplexed. " It's 
 not been exactly a hilarious element in my life either. But 
 I've always tried to hold on to Arnold. I thought it my 
 duty. And now, since Felix Morrison has found this excel- 
 lent specialist for me, it's much easier. I telegraph to him 
 and he comes at once and takes Arnold back to his sani- 
 tarium, till he's himself again." For the first time in weeks 
 Morrison's name brought up between them no insistently 
 present, persistently ignored shadow. The deeper shadow 
 now blotted him out. 
 
 " But Aunt Victoria, it's for Judith to decide. She'll do 
 the right thing." 
 
 " Sometimes people are thrown by circumstances into a 
 situation where they wouldn't have dreamed of putting 
 themselves — and yet they rise to it and conquer it," philos- 
 ophized Aunt Victoria. " Life takes hold of us with strong 
 hands and makes us greater than we thought. Judith will 
 mean to do the right thing. If she were married, she'd 
 haz'e to do it ! It seems to me a great responsibility you 
 take, Sylvia — you may, with the best of intentions in the 
 world, be ruining the happiness of two lives." 
 
 Sylvia got up, her eyes red with unshed tears. It was 
 not the first time that morning. " It's all too horrible," she 
 
358 The Bent Twig 
 
 murmured. " But I haven't any right to conceal it from 
 Judith." 
 
 Her eyes were still red when, an hour later, she stepped 
 into the room again and said, " I've mailed it." 
 
 Her aunt, still in lavender silk negligee, so far pro- 
 gressed towards the day's toilet as to have her hair care- 
 fully dressed, looked up from the Revue Bleue, and nodded. 
 Her expression was one of quiet self-possession. 
 
 Sylvia came closer to her and sat down on a straight- 
 backed chair. She was dressed for the street, and hatted, as 
 though she herself had gone out to mail the letter. " And 
 now, Tantine," she said, with the resolute air of one broach- 
 ing a difficult subject, " I think I ought to be planning to 
 go home very soon." It was a momentous speech, and 
 a momentous pause followed it. It had occurred to Sylvia, 
 still shaken with the struggle over the question of secrecy, 
 that she could, in decency, only offer to take herself away, 
 after so violently antagonizing her hostess. She realized 
 with what crude intolerance she had attacked the other 
 woman's position, how absolutely with claw and talon she 
 had demolished it. She smarted with the sense that she had 
 seemed oblivious of an " obligation." She detested the 
 sense of obligation. And having become aware of a debt 
 due her dignity, she had paid it hastily, on the impulse of 
 the moment. But as the words still echoed in the air, she 
 was struck to see how absolutely her immediate future, all 
 her future, perhaps, depended on the outcome of that con- 
 versation she herself had begun. She looked fixedly at her 
 aunt, trying to prepare herself for anything. But she was 
 not prepared for what Mrs. Marshall-Smith did. 
 
 She swept the magazine from her lap to the floor and 
 held out her arms to Sylvia. " I had hoped — I had hoped 
 you were happy — with me," she said, and in her voice was 
 that change of quality, that tremor of sincerity which Sylvia 
 had always found profoundly moving. The girl was over- 
 come with astonishment and remorse — and immense relief. 
 She ran to her. " Oh, I am ! I am ! I was only thinking — 
 I've gone against your judgment." Her nerves, stretched 
 
Much Ado . . . 359 
 
 with the sleepless night and the strain of writing the dread- 
 ful letter to Judith, gave way. She broke into sobs. She 
 put her arms tightly around her aunt's beautiful neck and 
 laid her head on her shoulder, weeping, her heart swelling, 
 her mind in a whirling mass of disconnected impressions. 
 Arnold — Judith . . . how strange it was that Aunt Vic- 
 toria really cared for her — did she really care for Aunt 
 Victoria or only admire her? — did she really care for any- 
 body, since she was agreeing to stay longer away from her 
 father and mother? — how good it would be not to have 
 to give up Helene's services — what a heartless, materialistic 
 girl she was — she cared for nothing but luxury and money 
 — she would be going abroad now to Paris — Austin Page — 
 he had kissed her hand . . . and yet she felt that he saw 
 through her, saw through her mean little devices and strata- 
 gems — how astonishing that he should be so very, very 
 rich — it seemed that a very, very rich man ought to be 
 different from other men — his powers were so unnaturally 
 great — girls could not feel naturally about him . . . And 
 all the while that these varying reflections passed at light- 
 ning speed through her mind, her nervous sobs were con- 
 tinuing. 
 
 Aunt Victoria taking them, naturally enough, as signs 
 of continued remorse, lifted her out of this supposed slough 
 of despond with affectionate peremptoriness. "Don't feel 
 so badly about it, darling. We won't have any more talk 
 for the present about differing judgments, or of going 
 away, or of anything uncomfortable " ; and in this way, with 
 nothing clearly understood, on a foundation indeed of mis- 
 understanding, the decision was made, in the haphazard 
 fashion which characterizes most human decisions. 
 
 The rest of the month was no more consecutive or logical. 
 Into the midst of the going-away confusion of a household 
 about to remove itself half around the world, into a house 
 distracted with packing, cheerless with linen-covers, deso- 
 late with rolled-up rugs and cold lunches and half-packed 
 trunks, came, in a matter-of-fact manner characteristic of 
 its writer, Judith's answer to Sylvia's letter. Sylvia opened 
 
360 The Bent Twig 
 
 it, shrinking and fearful of what she would read. She had, 
 in the days since hers had been sent, imagined Judith's an- 
 swer in every possible form ; but never in any form remotely 
 resembling what Judith wrote. The letter stated in Judith's 
 concise style that of course she agreed with Sylvia that there 
 should be no secrets between betrothed lovers, nor, in this 
 case, were there any. Arnold had told her, the evening be- 
 fore she left Lydford, that he had inherited an alcoholic 
 tendency from his father. She had been in communication 
 with a great specialist in Wisconsin about the case. She 
 knew of the sanitarium to which Arnold had been taken and 
 did not like it. The medical treatment there was not serious. 
 She hoped soon to have him transferred to the care of Dr. 
 Rivedal. If Arnold's general constitution were still sound, 
 there was every probability of a cure. Doctors knew so 
 much more about that sort of thing than they used to. Had 
 Sylvia heard that Madame La Rue was not a bit well, that 
 old trouble with her heart, only worse? They'd been 
 obliged to hire a maid — how in the world were the La Rues 
 going to exist on American cooking? Cousin Parnelia said 
 she could cure Madame with some Sanopractic nonsense, a 
 new fad that Cousin Parnelia had taken up lately. Pro- 
 fessor Kennedy had been elected vice-president of the 
 American Mathematical Association, and it was funny to 
 see him try to pretend that he wasn't pleased. Mother's 
 garden this autumn was . . . 
 
 "Well!" ejaculated Sylvia, stopping short. Mrs. Mar- 
 shall-Smith had stopped to listen in the midst of the ex- 
 hausting toil of telling Helene which dresses to pack and 
 which to leave hanging in the Lydford house. She now 
 resumed her labors unflaggingly, waving away to the closet 
 a mauve satin, and beckoning into a trunk a favorite black- 
 and-white chiffon. To Sylvia she said, " Now I know 
 exactly how a balloon feels when it is pricked." 
 
 Sylvia agreed ruefully. " I might have known Judith 
 would manage to make me feel flat if I got wrought up about 
 it. She hates a fuss made over anything, and she can al- 
 ways take you down if you make one." She remembered 
 
Much Ado ... 361 
 
 with a singular feeling of discomfiture the throbbing 
 phrases of her letter, written under the high pressure of 
 the quarrel with Aunt Victoria. She could almost see the 
 expression of austere distaste in the stern young beauty of 
 Judith's face. Judith was always making her appear foolish ! 
 
 " We were both of us," commented Mrs. Marshall-Smith 
 dryly, " somewhat mistaken about the degree of seriousness 
 with which Judith would take the information." 
 
 Sylvia forgot her vexation and sprang loyally to Judith's 
 defense. " Why, of course she takes it like a trained nurse, 
 like a doctor — feels it a purely medical affair — as I suppose 
 it is. We might have known she'd feel that way. But as 
 to how she really feels inside, personally, you can't teE 
 anything by her letter ! You probably couldn't tell anything 
 by her manner if she were here. You never can. She may 
 be simply wild about a thing inside, but you'd never guess." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith ventured to express some skepticism 
 as to the existence of volcanic feelings always so sedulously 
 concealed. " After all, can you be so very sure that she is 
 ever ' simply wild ' if she never shows anything ? " 
 
 " Oh, you're sure, all right, if you've lived with her — you 
 feel it. And then, after about so long a time of keeping it 
 down, she breaks loose and does something awful, that I'd 
 never have the nerve to do, and tears into flinders anything 
 she doesn't think is right. Why, when we were little girls 
 and went to the public schools together, two of our little 
 playmates, who turned out to have a little negro blood, 
 we . . ." Sylvia stopped, suddenly warned by some in- 
 stinct that Aunt Victoria would not be a sympathetic lis- 
 tener to that unforgotten episode of her childhood, that epi- 
 sode which had seemed to have no consequences, no sequel, 
 but which ever since that day had insensibly affected the 
 course of her growth, like a great rock fallen into the 
 current of her life. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith, deliberating with bated breath be- 
 tween broadcloth and blue panama, did not notice the 
 pause. She did, however, add a final comment on the 
 matter, some moments later, when she observed, " How 
 
362 The Bent Twig 
 
 any girl in her senses can go on studying, when she's en- 
 gaged to a man who needs her as much as Arnold needs 
 Judith ! " To which Sylvia answered irrelevantly with a 
 thought which had just struck her thrillingly, " But how per- 
 fectly fine of Arnold to tell her himself ! M 
 
 " She must have hypnotized him," said Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith with conviction, " but then I don't pretend to under- 
 stand the ways of young people nowadays." She was now 
 forty-five, in the full bloom of a rarely preserved beauty, and 
 could afford to make remarks about the younger generation. 
 " At any rate," she went on, " it is a comfort to know that 
 Judith has set her hand to the wheel. J have not in years 
 crossed the ocean with so much peace of mind about Arnold 
 as I shall have this time," said his stepmother. " No, leave 
 that blue voile, Helene, the collar never fitted." 
 
 " Oh, he doesn't spend the winters in Paris with you ? " 
 asked Sylvia. 
 
 " He's been staying here in Lydford of late — crazy as 
 it sounds. He was simply so bored that he couldn't think 
 of anything else to do. He has, besides, an absurd theory 
 that he enjoys it more in winter than in summer. He says 
 the natives are to be seen then. He's been here from his 
 childhood. He knows a good many of them, I suppose. 
 Now, Helene, let's see the gloves and hats." 
 
 It came over Sylvia with a passing sense of great strange- 
 ness that she had been in this spot for four months and, 
 with the exception of the men at the fire, she had not met, 
 had not spoken to, had not even consciously seen a single 
 inhabitant of the place. 
 
 And in the end, she went away in precisely the same state 
 of ignorance. On the day they drove to the station she did, 
 indeed, give one fleeting glimpse over the edge of her nar- 
 row prison-house of self-centered interest. Surrounded by 
 a great many strapped and buckled pieces of baggage, with 
 Helene, fascinatingly ugly in her serf's uniform, holding 
 the black leather bag containing Aunt Victoria's jewels, they 
 passed along the street for the last time, under the great 
 elms already almost wintry with their bare boughs. Now 
 
Much Ado ... 363 
 
 that it was too late, Sylvia felt a momentary curiosity 
 about the unseen humanity which had been so near her 
 all the summer. She looked out curiously at the shabby 
 vehicles (it seemed to her that there were more of them than 
 in the height of the season), at the straight-standing, plainly 
 dressed, briskly walking women and children (there seemed 
 to be a new air of life and animation about the street now 
 that most of the summer cottages were empty), and at the 
 lounging, indifferent, powerfully built men. She wondered, 
 for a moment, what they were like, with what fortitude their 
 eager human hearts bore the annual display of splendor they 
 might never share. They looked, in that last glimpse, some- 
 how quite strong, as though they would care less than she 
 would in their places. Perhaps they were only hostile, not 
 envious. 
 
 " I dare say/' said Aunt Victoria, glancing out at a buck- 
 board, very muddy as to wheels, crowded with children, 
 " that it's very forlorn for the natives to have the life all 
 go out of the village when the summer people leave. They 
 must feel desolate enough ! " 
 
 Sylvia wondered. 
 
 The last thing she saw as the train left the valley was the 
 upland pass between Windward and Hemlock mountains. 
 It brought up to her the taste of black birch, the formidably 
 clean smell of yellow soap, and the rush of summer wind 
 oast her ears. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 » WHOM GOD HATH JOINED . . ." 
 
 They were to sail on the 23d, and ever since the big 
 square invitation had come it had been a foregone conclu- 
 sion, conceded with no need for wounding words, that there 
 was no way out of attending the Sommerville-Morrison wed- 
 ding on the 2 1 st. They kept, of course, no constrained 
 silence about it. Aunt Victoria detested the awkwardness 
 of not mentioning difficult subjects as heartily as she did 
 the mention of them; and as the tree toad evolves a skin 
 to answer his needs, she had evolved a method all her own 
 of turning her back squarely on both horns of a dilemma, 
 No, there was no silence about the wedding, only about the 
 possibility that it might be an ordeal, or that the ordeal 
 might be avoided. It could not be avoided. There was 
 nothing to be said on that point. But there was much talk f 
 during the few days of their stay in New York, about the 
 elaborate preparations for the ceremony. Morrison, who* 
 came to see them in their temporary quarters, kept up a some* 
 what satirical report as to the magnificence of the perform- 
 ance, and on the one occasion when they went to see Molly 
 they found her flushed, excited, utterly inconsecutive, dis- 
 tracted by a million details, and accepting the situation as 
 the normal one for a bride-to-be. There were heart-search- 
 ings as to toilets to match the grandeur of the occasion ; and 
 later satisfaction with the moss-green chiffon for Sylvia and 
 violet-colored velvet for her aunt. There were consultations 
 about the present Aunt Victoria was to send from them both, 
 a wonderfully expensive, newly patented, leather traveling- 
 case for a car, guaranteed to hold less to the square inch and 
 pound than any other similar, heavy, gold-mounted con- 
 trivance. Mrs. Marshall-Smith told Morrison frankly, in 
 
 364 
 
" Whom God Hath Joined . . ." 365 
 
 this connection, that she had tried to select a present which 
 Molly herself would enjoy. 
 
 "Am I not to have a present myself?" asked Morrison. 
 " Something that you selected expressly for me ? " 
 
 " No," said Sylvia, dropping the sugar into his tea with 
 deliberation. " You are not to have any present for your- 
 self." 
 
 She was guiltily conscious that she was thinking of a 
 certain scene in " The Golden Bowl," a scene in which a 
 wedding present figures largely ; and when, a moment later, 
 he said, " I have a new volume of Henry James I'd like 
 to loan you," she knew that the same scene had been in his 
 head. She would not look at him lest she read in his eyes 
 that he had meant her to know. As she frequently did in 
 those days, she rose, and making an excuse of a walk in 
 the park, took herself off. 
 
 She was quite calm during this period, her mind full of 
 trivial things. She had the firm conviction that she was 
 living in a dream, that nothing of what was happening was 
 irrevocable. And besides, as at Lydford, for much of the 
 day, she was absorbed in the material details of her life, 
 being rubbed and dressed and undressed, and adorned and 
 fed and catered to. They were spending the few days be- 
 fore sailing in a very grand hotel, overlooking Central Park. 
 Sylvia had almost every day the thought that she herself 
 was now in the center of exactly the same picture in which, 
 as a child, she had enviously watched Aunt Victoria. She 
 adored every detail of it. It was an opening-out, even from 
 the Lydford life. She felt herself expanding like a dried 
 sponge placed in water, to fill every crack and crevice of 
 the luxurious habits of life. The traveling along that road 
 is always swift ; and Sylvia's feet were never slow. During 
 the first days in Vermont, it had seemed a magnificence to 
 her that she need never think of dish-washing or bed- 
 making. By this time it seemed quite natural to her that 
 Helene drew and tempered the water for her bath, and put 
 on her stockings. Occasionally she noticed with a little sur- 
 prise that she seemed to have no more free time than in the 
 
366 The Bent Twig 
 
 laborious life of La Chance ; but for the most part she threw 
 out, in all haste, innumerable greedy root-tendrils into the 
 surcharged richness of her new soil and sent up a rank 
 growth of easeful acquiescence in redundance. 
 
 The wedding was quite as grand as the Sommervilles had 
 tried to make it. The street was crowded with staring, curi- 
 ous, uninvited people on either side of the church, and 
 when the carriage containing the bride drove up, the surge 
 forward to see her was as fierce as though she had been 
 a defaulting bank-president being taken to prison. The police 
 had to intervene. The interior, fern and orchid swathed, 
 very dimly lighted by rich purple stained glass and aristo- 
 cratic dripping wax candles instead of the more convenient 
 electric imitations, was murmurous with the wonderful 
 throbbing notes of a great organ and with the discreet low 
 tones of the invited guests as they speculated about the 
 relative ages and fortunes of the bride and bridegroom. The 
 chancel was filled with a vested choir which, singing and 
 carrying a cross, advanced down the aisle to meet the 
 bridal party. Molly, who had not been in a church since 
 her childhood, had needed to be coached over and over 
 again in the ins and outs of the complicated service. 
 
 Sylvia, seated several guests away from the aisle, saw 
 little of the procession as it went up into the chancel. She 
 caught a glimpse of a misty mass of white and, beside it, old 
 Mr. Sommerville's profile, very white and nervous and de- 
 termined. She did not at that time see the bridegroom at 
 all. The ceremony, which took place far within the chancel, 
 was long and interspersed with music from the choir. 
 Sylvia, feeling very queer and callous, as though, under an 
 anaesthetic, she were watching with entire unconcern the 
 amputation of one of her limbs, fell to observing the people 
 about her. The woman in front of her leaned against the 
 pew and brought her broad, well-fed back close under 
 Sylvia's eyes. It was covered with as many layers as a 
 worm in a cocoon. There were beads on lace, the lace in- 
 crusted on other lace, chiffon, fish-net, a dimly seen filmy 
 satin, cut in points, and, lower down, an invisible founda- 
 
" Whom God Hath Joined . . ." 367 
 
 tion of taffeta. Through the interstices there gleamed a 
 revelation of the back itself, fat, white, again like a worm in 
 a cocoon. 
 
 Sylvia began to plan out a comparison of dress with 
 architecture, bringing out the insistent tendency in both to 
 the rococo, to the burying of structural lines in ornamen- 
 tation. The cuff, for instance, originally intended to pro- 
 tect the skin from contact with unwashable fabrics, de- 
 generated into a mere bit of " trimming," which has lost 
 all its meaning, which may be set anywhere on the sleeve. 
 Like a strong hand about her throat came the knowledge 
 that she was planning to say all this to please Felix Morri- 
 son, who was now within fifty feet of her, being married 
 to another woman. 
 
 She flamed to fever and chilled again to her queer absence 
 of spirit. . . . There was a chorister at the end of the line 
 near her, a pale young man with a spiritual face who 
 chanted his part with shining rapt eyes. While he sang he 
 slipped his hand under his white surplice and took out his 
 watch. Still singing " Glory be to the Father, the Son, and 
 the Holy Ghost," he cast a hasty eye on the watch and 
 frowned impatiently. He was evidently afraid the business 
 in hand would drag along and make him late to another 
 appointment, " is now and ever shall be, world with- 
 out end. Amen ! " he sang fervently. Sylvia repressed an 
 hysterical desire to laugh. 
 
 The ceremony was over; the air in the building beat 
 wildly against the walls, the stained-glass windows, and 
 the ears of the worshipers in the excited tumult of the 
 wedding-march; the procession began to leave the chancel. 
 This time Sylvia caught one clear glimpse of the prin- 
 cipals, but it meant nothing to her. They looked like wax 
 effigies of themselves, self-conscious, posed, emptied of their 
 personalities by the noise, the crowds, the congestion of 
 ceremony. The idea occurred to Sylvia that they looked 
 as though they had taken in as little as she the signifi- 
 cance of what had happened. The people about her 
 were moving in relieved restlessness after the long im- 
 
368 The Bent Twig 
 
 mobility of the wedding. The woman next her went down 
 on her knees for a devout period, her face in her white 
 gloves. When she rose, she said earnestly to her com- 
 panion, " Do you know if I had to choose one hat-trimming 
 for all the rest of my life, I should make it small pink roses 
 in clusters. It's perfectly miraculous how, with black chif- 
 fon, they never go out ! " She settled in place the great 
 cluster of costly violets at her breast which she seemed to 
 have exuded like some natural secretion of her plump and 
 expensive person. " Why don't they let us out ! " she said 
 eomplainingly. 
 
 A young man, one of those born to be a wedding usher, 
 now came swiftly up the aisle on patent leather feet and 
 untied with pearl-gray ringers the great white satin ribbon 
 which restrained them in the pew. Sylvia caught her aunt's 
 eye on her, its anxiety rather less well hidden than usual. 
 With no effort at all the girl achieved a flashing smile. It 
 was not hard. She felt quite numb. She had been present 
 only during one or two painful, quickly passed moments. 
 
 But the reception at the house, the big, old-fashioned, very 
 rich Sommerville house, was more of an ordeal. There 
 was the sight of the bride and groom in the receiving-line, 
 now no longer tndly executed graven images, but quite, 
 themselves — Molly starry-eyed, triumphant, astonishingly 
 beautiful, her husband distinguished, ugly, self-possessed,, 
 easily the most interesting personality in the room; there 
 was the difficult moment of the presentation, the handclasp 
 with Felix, the rapturous vague kiss from Molly, evidently 
 too uplifted to have any idea as to the individualities of the 
 people defiling before her; then the passing on into the 
 throng, the eating and drinking and talking with acquaint- 
 ances from the Lydford summer colony, of whom there 
 were naturally a large assortment. Sylvia had a growing 
 sense of pain, which was becoming acute when across the 
 room she saw Molly, in a lull of arrivals, look up to her 
 husband and receive from him a smiling, intimate look of 
 possession. Why, they were married! It was done ! 
 
 The delicate food in Sylvia's mouth turned to ashes. 
 
" Whom God Hath Joined . . ." 369 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith's voice, almost fluttered, almost 
 (for her) excited, came to her ears: " Sylvia — here is Mr. 
 Page! And he's just told me the most delightful news, 
 that he's decided to run over to Paris for a time this fall." 
 
 " I hope Miss Marshall will think that Paris will be big 
 enough for all of us?" asked Austin Page, fixing his re- 
 markably clear eyes on the girl. 
 
 She made a great effort for self-possession. She turned 
 her back on the receiving-line. She held out her hand 
 cordially. " I hope Paris will be quite, quite small, so that 
 we shall all see a great deal of each other," she said warmly. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 SYLVIA TELLS THE TRUTH 
 
 They left Mrs. Marshall-Smith with a book, seated on a 
 little yellow-painted iron chair, the fifteen-centime kind, at 
 the top of the great flight of steps leading down to the wide 
 green expanse of the Tapis Vert. She was alternately 
 reading Huysmans' highly imaginative ideas on Gothic 
 cathedrals, and letting her eyes stray up and down the long 
 facade of the great Louis. Her powers of aesthetic assimila- 
 tion seemed to be proof against this extraordinary mixture 
 of impressions. She had insisted that she would be entirely 
 happy there in the sun, for an hour at least, especially if 
 she were left in solitude with her book. On which intima- 
 tion Sylvia and Page had strolled off to do some exploring. 
 It was a situation which a month of similar arrangements 
 had made very familiar to them. 
 
 " No, I don't know Versailles very well," he said in an- 
 swer to her question, " but I believe the gardens back of the 
 Grand and Petit Trianon are more interesting than these 
 near the Chateau itself. The conscientiousness with which 
 they're kept up is not quite so formidable." 
 
 So they walked down the side of the Grand Canal, ad- 
 miring the rather pensive beauty of the late November 
 woods, and talking, as was the proper thing, about the great 
 Louis and his court, and how they both detested his style 
 of gilded, carved wall ornamentation, although his chairs 
 weren't as bad as some others. They turned off at the 
 cross-arm of the Canal towards the Great Trianon; they 
 talked, again dutifully in the spirit of the place, about 
 Madame de Maintenon. They differed on this subject just 
 enough to enjoy discussing it. Page averred that the whole 
 affair had always passed his comprehension, " — what that 
 
 370 
 
Sylvia Tells the Truth 371 
 
 ease-loving, vain, indulgent, trivial-minded grandson of 
 Henri Quatre could ever have seen for all those years in 
 that stiff, prim, cold old school-ma'am " 
 
 But Sylvia shook her head. " I know how he felt. He 
 had to have her, once he'd found her. She was the only 
 person in all his world he could depend on." 
 
 " Why not depend on himself ? " Page asked. 
 
 " Oh, he couldn't ! He couldn't ! She had character and 
 he hadn't." 
 
 " What do you mean by character ? " he challenged her. 
 
 " It's what I haven't ! " she said. 
 
 He attempted a chivalrous exculpation. " Oh, if you 
 mean by character such hard, insensitive lack of imagination 
 as Madame de Maintenon's " 
 
 " No, not that," said Sylvia. " You know what I mean by 
 character as well as I." 
 
 By the time they were back of the Little Trianon, this 
 beginning had led them naturally enough away from the 
 frivolities of historical conversation to serious considera- 
 tions, namely themselves. The start had been a reminiscence 
 of Sylvia's, induced by the slow fall of golden leaves from 
 the last of the birches into the still water of the lake in 
 the midst of Marie Antoinette's hamlet. They stopped on 
 an outrageously rustic bridge, constructed quite in the arti- 
 ficially rural style of the place, and, leaning on the railing, 
 watched in a fascinated silence the quiet, eddying descent 
 of the leaves. There was not a breath of wind. The leaves 
 detached themselves from the tree with no wrench. They 
 loosened their hold gradually, gradually, and finally out of 
 sheer fullness of maturity floated down to their graves with 
 a dreamy content. 
 
 " I never happened to see that effect before," said Page. 
 " I supposed leaves were detached only by wind. It's aston- 
 ishingly peaceful, isn't it ? " 
 
 " I saw it once before," said Sylvia, her eyes fixed on the 
 noiseless arabesques traced by the leaves in their fall — " at 
 home in La Chance. I'll never forget it." She spoke in a 
 low tone as though not to break the charmed silence about 
 
372 The Bent Twig 
 
 them, and, upon his asking her for the incident, she went on, 
 almost in a murmur : " It isn't a story you could possibly 
 understand. You've never been poor. But I'll tell you if 
 you like. I've talked to you such a lot about home and the 
 queer people we know — did I ever mention Cousin Par- 
 nelia? She's a distant cousin of my mother's, a queer 
 woman who lost her husband and three children in a train- 
 wreck years ago, and has been a little bit crazy ever since. 
 She has always worn, for instance, exactly the same kind of 
 clothes, hat and everything, that she had on, the day the 
 news was brought to her. The Spiritualists got hold of her 
 then, and she's been one herself for ever so long — table- 
 rapping — planchette-writing — all the horrid rest of it, and 
 she makes a little money by being a " medium " for igno- 
 rant people. But she hardly earns enough that way to keep 
 her from starving, and Mother has for ever so long helped 
 her out. 
 
 " Well, there was a chance to buy a tiny house and lot for 
 her — two hundred and twenty dollars. It was just a two* 
 roomed cottage, but it would be a roof over her head a'; 
 least. She is getting old and ought to have something to 
 fall back on. Mother called us all together and said this 
 would be a way to help provide for Cousin Parnelia's old 
 age. Father never could bear her (he's so hard on ignorant, 
 superstitious people), but he always does what Mother 
 thinks best, so he said he'd give up the new typewriter he'd 
 been hoping to buy. Mother gave up her chicken money 
 she'd been putting by for some new rose-bushes, and she 
 loves her roses too ! Judith gave what she'd earned pick- 
 ing raspberries, and I — oh, how I hated to do it ! but I was 
 ashamed not to — I gave what Fd saved up for my autumn 
 suit. Lawrence just stuck it out that he hated Cousin 
 Parnelia and he wouldn't give a bit. But he was so little 
 that he only had thirty cents or something like that in a tin 
 bank, so it didn't matter. When we put it all together it 
 wasn't nearly enough of course, and we took the rest out of 
 our own little family savings-bank rainy-day savings and 
 bought the tiny house and lot. Father wanted to ' surprise ' 
 
Sylvia Tells the Truth 373 
 
 Cousin Parnelia with the deed. He wanted to lay it under 
 some flowers in a basket, or slip it into her pocket, or send 
 it to her with some eggs or something. But Mother — it 
 was so like her! — the first time Cousin Parnelia happened 
 to come to the house, Mother picked up the deed from her 
 desk and said offhand, ■ Oh, Parnelia, we bought the little 
 Garens house for you/ and handed her the paper, and went 
 to talking about cutworms or Bordeaux mixture." 
 
 Page smiled, appreciative of the picture. " I see her. I 
 see your mother — Vermont to the core." 
 
 " Well, it was only about two weeks after that, I was 
 practising and Mother was rubbing down a table she was 
 fixing over. Nobody else happened to be at home. Cousin 
 Parnelia came in, her old battered black straw hat on one 
 ear as usual. She was all stirred up and pleased about a 
 new ' method ' of using planchette. You know what 
 planchette is, don't you? The little heart-shaped piece of 
 wood spiritualists use, with a pencil fast to it, to take down 
 their silly ' messages.' Some spiritualistic fake was visiting 
 town conducting seances and he claimed he'd discovered 
 some sort of method for inducing greater receptivity — or 
 something like that. I don't know anything about spiritual- 
 ism but little tags I've picked up from hearing Cousin 
 Parnelia talk. Anyway, he was ' teaching ' other mediums 
 for a big price. And it came out that Cousin Parnelia had 
 mortgaged the house for more than it was worth, and had 
 used the money to take those ' lessons/ I couldn't believe 
 it for a minute. When I really understood what she'd 
 done, I was so angry I felt like smashing both fists down 
 on the piano keys and howling ! I thought of my blue cor- 
 duroy I'd given' up — I was only fourteen and just crazy 
 about clothes. Mother was sitting on the floor, scraping 
 away at the table-leg. She got up, laid down her sandpaper, 
 and asked Cousin Parnelia if she'd excuse us for a few 
 minutes. Then she took me by the hand, as though I was 
 a little girl. I felt like one too, I felt almost frightened by 
 Mother's face, and we both marched out of the house. She 
 didn't say a word. She took me down to our swimming-hole 
 
374 The Bent Twig 
 
 in the river. There is a big maple-tree leaning over that. 
 It was a perfectly breathless autumn day like this, and the 
 tree was shedding its leaves like that birch, just gently, 
 slowly, steadily letting them go down into the still water. 
 We sat down on the bank and watched them. The air was 
 full of them, yet all so quiet, without any hurry. The water 
 was red with them, they floated down on our shoulders, on 
 our heads, in our laps — not a sound — so peaceful — so calm — 
 so perfect. It was like the andante of the Kreutzer. 
 
 " I knew what Mother wanted, to get over being angry 
 with Cousin Parnelia. And she was. I could see it in her 
 face, like somebody in church. I felt it myself — all over, like 
 an E string that's been pulled too high, slipping down into 
 tune when you turn the peg. But I didn't want to feel it. I 
 wanted to hate Cousin Parnelia. I thought it was awfully 
 hard in Mother not to want us to have even the satisfaction 
 of hating Cousin Parnelia! I tried to go on doing it. I 
 remember I cried a little. But Mother never said a word — 
 just sat there in that quiet autumn sunshine, watching the 
 leaves falling — falling — and I had to do as she did. And 
 by and by I felt, just as she did, that Cousin Parnelia was 
 only a very small part of something very big. 
 
 " When we went in, Mother's face was just as it always 
 was, and we got Cousin Parnelia a cup of tea and gave her 
 part of a boiled ham to take home and a dozen eggs and 
 a loaf of graham bread, just as though nothing had hap- 
 pened." 
 
 She stopped speaking. There was no sound at all but the 
 delicate, forlorn whisper of the leaves. 
 
 " That is a very fine story ! " said Page finally. He spoke 
 with a measured, emphatic, almost solemn accent. 
 
 "Yes, it's a very fine story," murmured Sylvia a little 
 wistfully. " It's finer as a story than it was as real life. It 
 was years before I could look at blue corduroy without feel- 
 ing stirred up. I really cared more about my clothes than I 
 did about that stupid, ignorant old woman. If it's only a 
 cheerful giver the Lord loves, He didn't feel much affection 
 for me." 
 
Sylvia Tells the Truth 375 
 
 They began to retrace their steps. " You gave up the blue 
 corduroy," he commented as they walked on, " and you 
 didn't scold your silly old kinswoman." 
 
 " That's only because Mother hypnotized me. She has 
 character. I did it as Louis signed the revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes, because Madame de Maintenon thought 
 he ought to." 
 
 " But she couldn't hypnotize your brother Lawrence, al- 
 thought he was so much younger. He didn't give up his 
 thirty-seven cents. I think you're bragging without cause if 
 you claim any engaging and picturesque absence of char- 
 acter." 
 
 " Oh, Lawrence — he's different ! He's extraordinary ! 
 Sometimes I think he is a genius. And it's Judith who 
 hypnotizes him. She supplies his character." 
 
 They emerged into an opening and walked in silence for 
 some moments towards the Grand Trianon. 
 
 " You're lucky, very lucky," commented Page, " to have 
 such an ample supply of character in the family. I'm an 
 only child. There's nobody to give me the necessary hypo- 
 dermic supply of it at the crucial moments." He went on, 
 turning his head to look at the Great Trianon, very mel- 
 low in the sunshine. " It's my belief, however, that 
 at the crucial moments you have plenty of it of your 
 own." 
 
 " That's a safe guess ! " said Sylvia ironically, " since there 
 never have been any crucial moments in a life so uninter- 
 estingly eventless as mine. I wonder what I would do," 
 she mused. " My own conviction is that — suppose I'd 
 lived in the days of the Reformation — in the days of Christ 
 — in the early Abolition days " She had an instant cer- 
 tainty : " Oh, I have been entirely on the side of whatever 
 was smooth, and elegant, and had amenity — I'd have hated 
 the righteous side ! " 
 
 Page did not look very deeply moved by this revelation 
 of depravity. Indeed, he smiled rather amusedly at her, 
 and changed the subject. " You said a moment ago that I 
 couldn't understand, because I'd always had money. Isn't 
 
376 The Bent Twig 
 
 it a bit paradoxical to say that the people who haven't a 
 thing are the only ones who know anything about it ? " 
 
 " But you couldn't realize what losing the money meant 
 to us. You can't know what the absence of money can do 
 to a life." 
 
 " I can know," said Page, " what the presence of it can- 
 not do for a life." His accent implied rather sadly that the 
 omissions were considerable. 
 
 " Oh, of course, of course," Sylvia agreed. " There's any 
 amount it can't do. After you have it, you must get the 
 other things too." 
 
 He brought his eyes down to her from a roving quest* 
 among the tops of the trees. " It seems to me you want a 
 great deal," he said quizzically. 
 
 "Yes, I do," she admitted. "But I don't see that you 
 have any call to object to my wanting it. You don't have 
 to wish for everything at once. You have it already." 
 
 He received this into one of his thoughtful silences, but 
 presently it brought him to a standstill. They were within 
 sight of the Grand Canal again, looking down from the 
 terrace of the Trianon. He leaned against the marble 
 balustrade and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. His 
 clear eyes were clouded. He looked profoundly grave. " I 
 am thirty-two years old," he said, " and never for a moment 
 of that time have I made any sense out of my position in 
 life. If you call that ' having everything ' " 
 
 It occurred to Sylvia fleetingly that she had never made 
 any sense out of her position in life either, and had been 
 obliged to do a great many disagreeable things into the bar- 
 gain, but she kept this thought to herself, and looked con- 
 spicuously what she genuinely felt, a sympathetic interest. 
 The note of plain direct sincerity which was Page's hall- 
 mark never failed to arrest her attention, a little to arouse 
 her wonder, and occasionally, for a reason that she did not 
 like to dwell upon, somewhat to abash her. The reason was 
 that he never spoke for effect, and she often did. He was 
 not speaking for effect now : he seemed scarcely even to be 
 speaking to her, rather to be musingly formulating some- 
 
Sylvia Tells the Truth 377 
 
 thing for his own enlightenment. He went on. " The fact 
 is that there is no sense to be made out of my situation in 
 life. I am like a man with a fine voice, who has no ear." 
 
 He showed surprise that Sylvia failed to follow this, and 
 explained. " I mean the voice is no good to that kind of a 
 man, it's no good to anybody. It's the craziest, accidental 
 affair anyhow, haven't you ever noticed it ? — who draws the 
 fine voices. Half the time — more than half the time, most 
 of the time it seems to me when I've been recently to a lot 
 of concerts, the people who have the voices haven't any other 
 qualifications for being singers. And it's so with coal- 
 mines, with everything else that's inherited. For five years 
 now I've given up what I'd like to do, and I've tried, under 
 the best maestri I could find, to make something out of my 
 voice, so to speak. And it's no go. It's in the nature of 
 things that I can't make a go of it. Over everything I 
 do lies the taint that I'm the ' owner ' ! They are suspicious 
 of me, always will be — and rightly so. Anybody else not 
 connected with the mediaeval idea of ' possession ' could do 
 better than I. The whole relation's artificial. I'm in it for 
 the preposterous reason that my father, operating on Wall 
 Street, made a lucky guess, — as though I should be called 
 upon to run a locomotive because my middle initial is L ! " 
 
 Sylvia still felt the same slight sense of flatness when this 
 recurring topic thrust itself into a personal talk ; but during 
 the last month she had adjusted herself to Page so that this 
 no longer showed on the surface. She was indeed quite 
 capable of taking an interest in the subject, as soon as she 
 could modulate herself into the new key. " Yes, of course," 
 she agreed, " it's like so many other things that are perfectly 
 necessary to go on with, perfectly absurd when you look 
 closely at them. My father nearly lost his position once for 
 saying that all inheritance was wrong. But even he never 
 had the slightest suggestion as to what to do about it, how 
 to get an inheritance into the hands of the people who might 
 make the best use of it." She was used from her childhood 
 to this sort of academic doubt of everything, conducted side 
 by side with a practical acceptance of everything. Professor 
 
378 The Bent Twig 
 
 and Madame Li* Rue, in actual life devotedly faithful mar- 
 ried lovers, staid, stout, habit-ridden elderly people, pro- 
 fessed a theoretical belief in the flexibility of relationships 
 sanctioned by the practice of free love. It was perhaps with 
 this recollection in her mind that she suggested, " Don't you 
 suppose it will be like the institution of marriage, very, very 
 gradually altered till it fits conditions better?" 
 
 " In the meantime, how about the cases of those who are 
 unhappily married?" 
 
 " I don't see anything for them but just to get along the 
 best they can," she told him. 
 
 " You think I'd better give up trying to do anything with 
 my Colorado ? " he asked her, as though genuinely seek- 
 ing advice. 
 
 " I should certainly think that five years was plenty long 
 enough for a fair trial! You'd make a better ambassador 
 than an active captain of industry, anyhow," she said with 
 conviction. Whereupon he bestowed on her a long, thought- 
 ful stare, as though he were profoundly pondering her sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 They moved forward towards the Grand Canal in silence. 
 Privately she was considering his case hardly one of extreme 
 hardship. Privately also, as they advanced nearer and 
 nearer the spot where they had left Mrs. Marshall-Smith, 
 she was a little dreading the return to the perfect breeding 
 with which Aunt Victoria did not ask, or intimate, or look, 
 the question which was in her mind after each of these 
 strolling tete-a-tetes which consistently led nowhere. There 
 were instants when Sylvia would positively have preferred 
 the vulgar openness of a direct question to which she might 
 have answered, with the refreshing effect to her of a little 
 honest blood-letting : " Dear Aunt Victoria, I haven't the 
 least idea myself what's happening! I'm simply letting 
 myself go because I don't see anything else to do. I have 
 even no very clear idea as to what is going on inside my 
 own head. I only know that I like Austin Page so much 
 (in spite of a certain quite unforgotten episode) there would 
 be nothing at all unpleasant about marrying him; but I 
 
Sylvia Tells the Truth 379 
 
 also know that I didn't feel the least interest in him until 
 Helene told me about his barrels of money: I also know- 
 that I feel the strongest aversion to returning to the Spartan 
 life of La Chance ; and it occurs to me that these two things 
 may throw considerable light on my ' liking ' for Austin. 
 As for what's in his mind, there is no subject on which I'm 
 in blacker ignorance. And after being so tremendously 
 fooled, in the case of Felix, about the degree of interest a 
 man was feeling, I do not propose to take anything for 
 granted which is not on the surface. It is quite possible that 
 this singularly sincere and simple-mannered man may not 
 have the slightest intention of doing anything more than 
 enjoy a pleasant vacation from certain rather hair-splitting 
 cares which seem to trouble him from time to time." As 
 they walked side by side along the stagnant waters, she was 
 sending inaudible messages of this sort towards her aunt; 
 she had even selected the particular mauve speck at the 
 top of the steps which might be Mrs. Marshall-Smith. 
 
 In the glowing yellow gold of the sky, a faintly whirring 
 dark-gray spot appeared : an airman made his way above the 
 Grand Canal, passed above the Chateau, and disappeared. 
 They had sat down on a bench, the better to crane their 
 heads to watch him out of sight. Sylvia was penetrated 
 with the strangeness of that apparition in that spot and 
 thrilled out : " Isn't it wonderful ! Isn't it wonderful ! 
 HereV 
 
 " There's something more wonderful ! " he said, indicating 
 with his cane the canal before them, where a group of neat, 
 poorly dressed, lower middle-class people looked proudly 
 out from their triumphal progress in the ugly, gasping little 
 motor-boat which operates at twenty-five centimes a trip. 
 
 She had not walked and talked a month with him for 
 nothing. She knew that he did not refer to motor-boats as 
 against aeroplanes. " You mean," she said appreciatively, 
 " you mean those common people going freely around the 
 royal canal where two hundred years ago " 
 
 He nodded, pleased by her quickness. " Two hundred 
 years from now," he conjectured, " the stubs of my check- 
 
380 The Bent Twig 
 
 book will be exhibited in an historical museum along with 
 the regalia of the last hereditary monarch." 
 
 Here she did not follow, and she was too intelligent to 
 pretend she did. 
 
 He lifted his eyebrows. " Relic of a quaint old social 
 structure inexplicably tolerated so late as the beginning of 
 the twentieth century." 
 
 " Oh, coal-mines forever ! " she said, smiling, her eyes 
 brilliant with friendly mockery. 
 
 "Aye! Tou jours perdrix!" he admitted. He continued 
 to look steadily and seriously into her smiling, sparkling 
 face, until, with a sudden pulse of premonition, she was 
 stricken into a frightened gravity. And then, with no pre- 
 lude, no approach, quite simply and directly, he spoke. " I 
 wonder how much you care for me ? " he said musingly, as 
 he had said everything else that afternoon : and as she 
 positively paled at the eeriness of this echo from her own 
 thought, he went on, his voice vibrating in the deep organ 
 note of a great moment, " You must know, of course, by this 
 time that I care everything possible for you." 
 
 Compressed into an instant of acute feeling Sylvia felt the 
 pangs which had racked her as a little girl when she had 
 stood in the schoolyard with Camilla Fingal before her, and 
 the terrifying hostile eyes about her. Her two selves rose 
 up against each other fiercely, murderously, as they had 
 then. The little girl sprang forward to help the woman who 
 for an instant hesitated. The fever and the struggle van- 
 ished as instantly as they had come. Sylvia felt very still, 
 very hushed. Page had told her that she always rose to 
 crucial moments. She rose to this one. " I don't know," 
 she said as quietly as he, with as utter a bravery of bare sin- 
 cerity, " I don't know how much I care for you — but I think 
 it is a great deal." She rose upon a solemn wing of courage 
 to a greater height of honesty. Her eyes were on his, as 
 clear as his. The mere beauty of her face had gone like a 
 lifted veil. For a instant he saw her as Sylvia herself did 
 not dream she could be. " It is very hard," said Sylvia 
 Marshall, with clear eyes and trembling lips of honest hu^ 
 
Sylvia Tells the Truth 381 
 
 mility, " for a girl with no money to know how much she 
 cares for a very rich man." 
 
 She had never been able to imagine what she would say 
 if the moment should come. She had certainly not intended 
 to say this. But an unsuspected vein of granite in her rang 
 an instant echo to his truth. She was bewildered to see his 
 ardent gaze upon her deepen to reverence. He took her 
 hand in his and kissed it. He tried to speak, but his voice 
 broke. 
 
 She was immensely moved to see him so moved. She was 
 also entirely at a loss. How strangely different things al- 
 ways were from forecasts of them! They had suddenly 
 taken the long-expected stride away from their former 
 relation, but she did not know where they had arrived. 
 What was the new status between them ? What did Austin 
 think she meant? It came to her with a shock that the 
 new status between them was, on the surface, exactly what 
 it was in reality ; that the avowed relation between them was, 
 as far as it went, precisely in accord with the facts of the 
 case. The utter strangeness of this in any human relation- 
 ship filled her with astonishment, with awe, almost with 
 uneasiness. It seemed unnatural not to have to pretend 
 anything ! 
 
 Apparently it did not seem unnatural to the man beside 
 her. " You are a very wonderful woman," he now said, his 
 voice still but partly under his control. " I had not thought 
 that you could exist." He took her hand again and con- 
 tinued more steadily : " Will you let me, for a little while 
 longer, go on living near you? Perhaps things may seem 
 clearer to us both, later " 
 
 Sylvia was swept by a wave of gratitude as for some act 
 of magnanimity. " You are the wonderful one ! " she cried. 
 Not since the day Helene had told her who he was, had she 
 felt so whole, so sound, so clean, as now. The word came 
 rushing on the heels of the thought : " You make one feel so 
 clean! " she said, unaware that he could scarcely understand 
 her, and then she smiled, passing with her free, natural 
 grace from the memorable pause, and the concentration of 
 
382 The Bent Twig 
 
 a great moment forward into the even-stepping advance of 
 life. That first day — even then you made me feel clean — - 
 that soap ! that cold, clean water — it is your aroma ! " 
 
 Their walk along the silent water, over the great lawn, 
 and up the steps was golden with the level rays of the sun 
 setting back of them, at the end of the canal, between the 
 distant, sentinel poplars. Their mood was as golden as the 
 light. Sometimes they spoke, sometimes they were silent* 
 Truth walked between them. 
 
 Sylvia's mind, released from the tension of that great 
 moment, began making its usual, sweeping, circling explora- 
 tions of its own depths. Not all that it found was of an 
 equal good report. Once she thought fleetingly : " This is 
 only a very, very pretty way of saying that it is all really 
 settled. With his great wealth, he is like a reigning monarch 
 — let him be as delicate-minded as he pleases, when he indi- 
 cates a wish " More than once — many, many times — 
 
 Felix Morrison's compelling dark eyes looked at her pene- 
 tratingly, but she resolutely turned away her head from 
 them, and from the impulse to answer their reproach even 
 with an indignant, well-founded reproach of her own. 
 Again and again she felt a sweet strangeness in her new 
 position. The aroma of utter sincerity was like the scent of 
 a wildflower growing in the sun, spicy, free. She wondered 
 at a heart like his that could be at once ardent and subtle, 
 that could desire so profoundly (the deep vibrations of that 
 voice of yearning were in her ears still) and yet pause, and 
 stand back, and wait, rather than force a hair's breadth of 
 pretense. How he had liberated her! And once she found 
 herself thinking, " I shall have sables myself, and diamonds, 
 and a house as great as Molly's, and I shall learn how to 
 entertain ambassadors, as she will never know." She was 
 ashamed of this, she knew it to be shockingly out of key with 
 the grand passage behind them. But she had thought it. 
 
 And, as these thoughts, and many more, passed through 
 her mind, as she spoke with a quiet peace, or was silent, she 
 was transfigured into a beauty almost startling, by the 
 accident of the level golden beams of light back of her. 
 
Sylvia Tells the Truth 383 
 
 Ker aureole of bright hair glowed like a saint's halo. The 
 curiously placed lights and unexpected shadows brought out 
 new subtleties in the modeling of her face. Her lightened 
 heart gleamed through her eyes, like a lighted lamp. After 
 a time, the man fell into a complete silence, glancing at her 
 frequently as though storing away a priceless memory t . . , 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 " A MILESTONE PASSED, THE ROAD SEEMS 
 CLEAR " 
 
 As the " season " heightened, the beautiful paneled walls 
 of Mrs. Marshall-Smith's salon were frequently the back- 
 ground for chance gatherings of extremely appropriate call- 
 ers. They seemed a visible emanation of the room, so 
 entirely did they represent what that sort of a room was 
 meant to contain. They were not only beautifully but 
 severely dressed, with few ornaments, and those few a 
 result of the same concentrated search for the rare which 
 had brought together the few bibelots in the room, which 
 had laid the single great dull Persian rug on the unobtru- 
 sively polished oaken floor, which had set in the high, south 
 windows the boxes of feathery green plants with delicate 
 star-like flowers. 
 
 And it was not only in externals that these carefully 
 brushed and combed people harmonized with the mellow 
 beauty of their background. They sat, or stood, moved 
 about, took their tea, and talked with an extraordinary per- 
 fection of manner. There was not a voice there, save per- 
 haps Austin Page's unstudied tones, which was not carefully 
 modulated in a variety of rhythm and pitch which made 
 each sentence a work of art. They used, for the most part, 
 low tones and few gestures, but those well chosen. There 
 was an earnest effort apparent to achieve true conversational 
 give-and-take, and if one of the older men found himself 
 yielding to the national passion for lengthy monologues on 
 a favorite theme, or to the mediocre habit of anecdote, 
 there was an instant closing in on him of carefully cas- 
 ual team-work on the part of the others which soon 
 reduced him to the tasteful short comment and answer 
 
 384 
 
" The Road Seems Clear " 385 
 
 which formed the framework of the afternoon's social 
 activities. 
 
 The topics of the conversation were as explicitly in har- 
 mony with the group-ideal as the perfectly fitting gloves of 
 the men, or the smooth, burnished waves of the women's 
 hair. They talked of the last play at the Francais, of the 
 exhibitions then on view at the Petit Palais, of a new tenor 
 in the choir of the Madeleine, of the condition of the auto- 
 mobile roads in the Loire country, of the restoration of the 
 stained glass at Bourges. 
 
 On such occasions, a good deal of Sylvia's attention being 
 given to modulating her voice and holding her hands and 
 managing her skirts as did the guests of the hour, she 
 usually had an impression that the conversation was clever. 
 Once or twice, looking back, she had been somewhat sur- 
 prised to find that she could remember nothing of what 
 had been said. It occurred to her, fleetingly, that of so 
 much talk, some word ought to stick in her usually retentive 
 memory; but she gave the matter no more thought. She 
 had also been aware, somewhat dimly, that Austin Page was 
 more or less out of drawing in the carefully composed 
 picture presented on those social afternoons. He had the 
 inveterate habit of being at his ease under all circumstances, 
 but she had felt that he took these great people with a really 
 exaggerated lack of seriousness, answering their chat at 
 random, and showing no chagrin when he was detected in 
 the grossest ignorance about the latest move of the French 
 Royalist party, or the probabilities as to the winner of the 
 Grand Prix. She had seen in the corners of his mouth an 
 inexplicable hidden imp of laughter as he gravely listened, 
 cup in hand, to the remarks of the beautiful Mrs. William 
 Winterton Perth about the inevitable promiscuity of de- 
 mocracy, and he continually displayed a tendency to gravi- 
 tate into the background, away from the center of the stage 
 where their deference for his name, fortune, and personality 
 would have placed him. Sylvia's impression of him was far 
 from being one of social brilliance, but rather of an almost 
 wilful negligence. She quite grew used to seeing him, a 
 
386 The Bent Twig 
 
 tall, distinguished figure, sitting at ease in a far corner, and 
 giving to tne scene a pleasant though not remarkably re- 
 spectful attention. 
 
 On such an afternoon in January, the usual routine had 
 been preserved. The last of the callers, carrying off Mrs. 
 Marshall-Smith with her, had taken an urbane, fair-spoken 
 departure. Sylvia turned back from the door of the salon, 
 feeling a fine glow of conscious amenity, and found that 
 Austin Page's mood differed notably from her own. He 
 had lingered for a tete-a-tete, as was so frequently his habit, 
 and now stood before the fire, his face all one sparkle of 
 fun. " Don't they do it with true American fervor ! " he 
 remarked. " It would take a microscope to tell the differ- 
 ence between them and a well-rehearsed society scene on 
 the stage of the Frangais ! That's their model, of course. 
 It is positively touching to see old Colonel Patterson sub- 
 duing his twang and shutting the lid down on his box of 
 comic stories. I should think Mrs. Patterson might allow 
 him at least that one about the cowboy and the tenderfoot 
 who wanted to take a bath ! " 
 
 The impression made on Sylvia had not in the least cor- 
 responded to this one; but with a cat-like twist of her 
 flexible mind, she fell on her feet, took up his lead, and 
 deftly produced the only suitable material she had at com- 
 mand. " They seem to talk well, about such interesting 
 things, and yet I can never remember anything they say. 
 It's odd," she sat down near the fireplace with a great air 
 of pondering the strange phenomenon. 
 
 " No, it isn't odd," he explained, dropping into the chair 
 opposite her and stretching out his long legs to the blaze. 
 " It's only people who do something, who have anything to 
 say. These folks don't do anything except get up and sit 
 down the right way, and run their voices up and down the 
 scale so that their great-aunts would faint away to hear 
 them! They haven't any energy left over. If some one 
 would only write out suitable parts for them to memorize, 
 the performance would be perfect!" He threw back his 
 head and laughed aloud, the sound ringing through the 
 
"The Road Seems Clear" 387 
 
 room. Sylvia had seldom seen him so lightheartedly 
 amused. He explained : " I haven't seen this sort of solemn, 
 genteel posturing for several years now, and I find it too 
 delicious! To see the sweet, invincible American naivete 
 welling up in their intense satisfaction in being so sophisti- 
 cated, — oh, the harmless dears ! " He cried out upon them 
 gaily, with the indulgence of an adult who looks on at chil- 
 dren's play. 
 
 Sylvia was a trifle breathless, seeing him disappear so 
 rapidly down this unexpected path, but she was for the 
 moment spared the effort to overtake him by the arrival of 
 Tojiko with a tray of fresh mail. " Oh, letters from 
 home ! " Sylvia rejoiced, taking a bulky one and a thin one 
 from the pile. " The fat one is from Father," she said, hold- 
 ing it up. " He is like me, terribly given to loquaciousness. 
 We always write each other reams when we're apart. The 
 little flat one is from Judith. She never can think of any- 
 thing to say except that she is still alive and hopes I am, 
 and that her esteem for me is undiminished. Dear Spartan 
 Judy!" 
 
 " Do you know," said the man opposite her, " if I hadn't 
 met you, I should have been tempted to believe that the 
 institution of the family had disappeared. I never saw 
 anything like you Marshalls ! You positively seem to have 
 a real regard for each other in spite of what Bernard Shaw 
 says about the relations of blood-kin. You even, incredible 
 as it seems, appear to feel a mutual respect ! " 
 
 " That's a very pretty compliment indeed," said Sylvia, 
 smiling at him flashingly, " and I'm going to reward you 
 by reading some of Judith's letter aloud. Letters do paint 
 personalities so, don't they?" 
 
 He settled himself to listen. 
 
 " Oh, it won't take long ! " she reassured him laughingly. 
 She read: 
 
 " ' Dear Sylvie : Your last letter about the palaces at 
 Versailles was very interesting. Mother looked you up on 
 the plan of the grounds in Father's old Baedeker. I'm glad 
 
388 The Bent Twig 
 
 to know you like Paris so much. Our chief operating sur- 
 geon says he thinks the opportunities at the School of 
 Medicine in Paris are fully as good as in Vienna, and 
 chances for individual diagnoses greater. Have you visited 
 that yet ? ' " Over the letter Sylvia raised a humorous eye- 
 brow at Page, who smiled, appreciative of the point. 
 
 She went on : " ' Lawrence is making me a visit of a few 
 days. Isn't he a queer boy ! I got Dr. Wilkinson to agree, 
 as a great favor, to let Lawrence see a very interesting 
 operation. Right in the middle of it, Lawrence fainted dead 
 away and had to be carried out. But when he came to, he 
 said he wouldn't have missed it for anything, and before 
 he could really sit up he was beginning a poem about the 
 " cruel mercy of the shining knives." ' " Sylvia shook her 
 head. " Isn't that Lawrence ! Isn't that Judith ! " 
 
 Page agreed thoughtfully, their eyes meeting in a trustful 
 intimacy. They themselves might have been bound to- 
 gether by a family tie, so wholly natural seemed their 
 sociable sitting together over the fire. Sylvia thought with 
 an instant's surprise, " Isn't it odd how close he has come 
 to seem — as though I'd always, always known him; as 
 though I could speak to him of anything — nobody else ever 
 seemed that way to me, nobody ! " 
 
 She read on from the letter : " ' All of us at St. Mary's 
 are feeling very sore about lawyers. Old Mr. Winthrop 
 had left the hospital fifteen thousand dollars in his will, and 
 we'd been counting on that to make some changes in the 
 operating-room and the men's accident ward that are 
 awfully needed. And now comes along a miserable lawyer 
 who finds something the matter with the will, and everything 
 goes to that worthless Charlie Winthrop, who'll probably 
 blow it all in on one grand poker-playing spree. It makes 
 me tired ! We can't begin to keep up with the latest X-ray 
 developments without the new apparatus, and only the 
 other day we lost a case, a man hurt in a railroad wreck, 
 that I know we could have pulled through if we'd been 
 better equipped ! Well, hard luck ! But I try to remember 
 Mother's old uncle's motto, " Whatever else you do, don't 
 
"The Road Seems Clear" 389 
 
 make a fuss I " Father has been off for a few days, speaking 
 before Alumni reunions. He looks very well. Mother has 
 got her new fruit cellar fixed up, and it certainly is great. 
 She's going to keep the carrots and parsnips there too. I've 
 just heard that I'm going to graduate first in my class — 
 thought you might like to know. Have a good time, Sylvia. 
 And don't let your imagination get away with you. 
 
 " ' Your loving sister, 
 
 " ' Judith/ " 
 
 " Of all the perfect characterizations ! " murmured Page, 
 as Sylvia finished. " I can actually see her and hear her ! " 
 
 " Oh, there's nobody like Judith ! " agreed Sylvia, falling 
 into a reverie, her eyes on the fire. 
 
 The peaceful silence which ensued spoke vividly of the 
 intimacy between them. 
 
 After a time Sylvia glanced up, and finding her com- 
 panion's eyes abstractedly fixed on the floor, she continued 
 to look into his face, noting its fine, somewhat gaunt model- 
 ing, the level line of his brown eyebrows, the humor and 
 kindness of his mouth. The winter twilight cast its first 
 faint web of blue shadow into the room. The fire burned 
 with a steady blaze. 
 
 As minute after minute of this hushed, wordless calm 
 continued, Sylvia was aware that something new was hap- 
 pening to her, that something in her stirred which had 
 never before made its presence known. She felt very queer, 
 a little startled, very much bewildered. What was that half- 
 thought fluttering a dusky wing in the back of her mind? 
 It came out into the twilight and she saw if for what it was. 
 She had been wondering what she would feel if that silent 
 figure opposite her should rise and take her in his arms. As 
 she looked at that tender, humorous mouth, she had been 
 wondering what she would feel to press her lips upon it? 
 
 She was twenty-three years old, but so occupied with 
 mental effort and physical activity had been her life, that 
 not till now had she known one of those half-daring, half- 
 frightened excursions of the fancy which fill the hours of 
 
390 The Bent Twig 
 
 any full-blooded idle girl of eighteen. It was a woman grown 
 with a girl's freshness of impression, who knew that ravished, 
 scared, exquisite moment of the first dim awakening of 
 the senses. But because it was a woman grown with a 
 woman's capacity for emotion, the moment had a solemnity, 
 a significance, which no girl could have felt. This was no 
 wandering, flitting, winged excursion. It was a grave step 
 upon a path from which there was no turning back. Sylvia 
 had passed a milestone. But she did not know this. She 
 sat very still in her chair as the twilight deepened, only 
 knowing that she could not take her eyes from those tender, 
 humorous lips. That was the moment when if the man had 
 spoken, if he had but looked at her . . . 
 
 But he was following out some thought of his own, and 
 now rose, went to Mrs. Marshall-Smith's fine, small desk, 
 snapped on an electric light, and began to write. 
 
 When he finished, he handed a bit of paper to Sylvia. 
 " Do you suppose your sister would be willing to let me 
 make up for the objectionable Charlie Winthrop's defi- 
 ciences?" he asked with a deprecatory air as though he 
 feared a refusal. 
 
 Sylvia looked at the piece of paper. It was a check for 
 fifteen thousand dollars. She held there in her hand seven 
 years of her father's life, as much money as they all had 
 lived on from the years she was sixteen until now. And this 
 man had but to dip pen into ink to produce it. There was 
 something stupefying about the thought to her. She no 
 longer saw the humor and tenderness of his mouth. She 
 looked up at him and thought, " What an immensely rich 
 man he is ! " She said to him wonderingly, " You can't 
 imagine how strange it is — like magic — not to be believed — 
 to have money like that ! " 
 
 His face clouded. He looked down uncertainly at his 
 feet and away at the lighted electric bulb. " I thought it 
 might please your sister," he said and turned away. 
 
 Sylvia was aghast to think that she had perhaps wounded 
 him. He seemed to fear that he had flaunted his fortune 
 in her face. He looked acutely uncomfortable. She found 
 
"The Road Seems Clear" 391 
 
 that, as she had thought, she could say anything, anything to 
 him, and say it easily. She went to him quickly and laid her 
 hand on his arm. " It's splendid," she said, looking deeply 
 and frankly into his eyes. " Judith will be too rejoiced ! It 
 is like magic. And nobody but you could have done it so 
 that the money seems the least part of the deed ! " 
 
 He looked down at her, touched, moved, his eyes very 
 tender, but sad as though with a divination of the barrier 
 his fortune eternally raised between them. 
 
 The door opened suddenly and Mrs. Marshall-Smith came 
 in quickly, not looking at them at all. From the pale agita- 
 tion of her face they recoiled, startled and alarmed. She 
 sat down abruptly as though her knees had given way under 
 her. Her gloved hands were perceptibly trembling in her 
 lap. She looked straight at Sylvia, and for an instant did 
 not speak. If she had rushed in screaming wildly, her 
 aspect to Sylvia's eyes would scarcely have been more elo- 
 quent of portentous news to come. It was a fitting introduc- 
 tion to what she now said to them in an unsteady voice: 
 " I've just heard — a despatch from Jamiaca — something 
 terrible has happened. The news came to the American Ex- 
 press ofBce when I was there. It is awful. Molly Sommer- 
 ville driving her car alone — an appalling accident to the 
 steering-gear, they think Molly found dead under the car." 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 THE ROAD IS NOT SO CLEAR 
 
 It shocked Sylvia that Molly's death should make so little 
 difference. After one sober evening with the stunning 
 words fresh before their eyes, the three friends quickly re- 
 turned to their ordinary routine of life. It was not that 
 they did not care, she reflected — she did care. She had cried 
 and cried at the thought of that quivering, vital spirit broken 
 by the inert crushing mass of steel — she could not bring her- 
 self to think of the soft body, mangled, bloody. Austin 
 cared too : she was sure of it ; but when they had expressed 
 their pity, what more could they do ? The cabled statement 
 was so bald, they hardly could believe it — they failed al- 
 together to realize what it meant — they had no details on 
 which to base any commentary. She who had lived so 
 intensely, was dead. They were sorry for her. That was 
 all. 
 
 As an apology for their seeming callousness they reiterated 
 Aunt Victoria's dictum : " We can know nothing about it 
 until Felix comes. Let us hold our minds in suspense until 
 we know what to think." That Morrison would be in Paris 
 soon, none of them doubted. Indeed, they united in insisting 
 on the number of natural — oh, perfectly natural — reasons 
 for his coming. He had always spent a part of every winter 
 there, had in fact a tiny apartment on the Rue St. Honore 
 which dated from his bachelor life; and now he had a 
 double reason for coming, since much of Molly's fortune 
 chanced to be in French bonds. Her father had been 
 (among other things) American agent for the Comptoir 
 National des Escomptes, and he had taken advantage of his 
 unusual opportunities for acquiring solid French and re- 
 munerative Algerian securities. Page had said at once that 
 Morrison would need to go through a good many formalities, 
 
 392 
 
The Road Is Not so Clear 393 
 
 under the French laws. So pending fuller information, 
 they did not discuss the tragedy. Their lives ran on, and 
 Molly, dead, was in their minds almost as little as Molly, 
 living but absent, had been. 
 
 It was only two months before Felix Morrison arrived in 
 Paris. They had expected him. They had spoken of the 
 chance of his arrival on this or that day. Sylvia had re- 
 hearsed all the possible forms of self-possession for their 
 first meeting; but on the rainy February afternoon when 
 she came in from representing Aunt Victoria at a reception 
 and saw him sitting by the fire, her heart sank down and 
 stopped for an instant, and when it went on beating she 
 could hear no sound but the drumming of her pulse. The 
 back of his chair was towards her. All she could see as she 
 stood for a moment in the doorway was his head, the 
 thick, graying dark hair, and one long-fingered, sensitive, 
 beautiful hand lying on the arm of the chair. At the sight, 
 she felt in her own palm the soft firmness of those fingers as 
 palpably as ever she had in reality. 
 
 The instant's pause before Aunt Victoria saw her standing 
 there, gave her back her self-control. When Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith turned and gravely held out her hand, Sylvia came 
 forward with a sober self-possession. The man turned too, 
 sprang up with an exclamation apparently of surprise, 
 "Miss Marshall, you here!" and extended his hand. Syl- 
 via, searching his face earnestly, found it so worn, saw in 
 it such dark traces of suffering and sorrow, that the quick 
 tears of sympathy stood in her eyes. 
 
 Her dread of the meeting, a morbid dread that had in it 
 an acknowledged element of horror, vanished. Before that 
 moment she had seen only Molly's face as it had looked the 
 day of their desperate talk, white and despairing, and 
 resolutely bent over the steering-wheel. She had not been 
 able to imagine Felix' face at all, had instinctively put it 
 out of her mind ; but as she looked into it now, her fear of 
 it disappeared. It was the fine, sensitive face of a fine, sensi- 
 tive man who has known a great shock. What had she 
 feared she would see there ? He was still holding her hand, 
 
394 The Bent Twig 
 
 very much affected at seeing her, evidently still in a super- 
 sensitive condition when everything affected him strongly. 
 " She loved you — she admired you so ! " he said, his won- 
 derful voice wavering and uncertain. Sylvia's tears fell 
 openly at this. She sat down on a low stool near her aunt's 
 knees. " I can't believe it — I haven't been able to believe 
 it!" she told him; "Molly was — she was more alive than 
 anybody I ever saw ! " 
 
 " If you had seen her that morning," he told them both, — 
 " like a flame of vitality — almost frightening — so vivid. She 
 waved good-bye, and then that was not enough; she got 
 out of the car and ran back up the hotel-step to say good- 
 bye for just those few moments — and was off — such youth! 
 such youth in all her " 
 
 Sylvia cried out, " Oh, no ! no ! it's too dreadful ! " She 
 felt the horror sweep down on her again ; but now it did not 
 bear Felix' face among its baneful images. He stood there, 
 shocked, stricken, but utterly bewildered, utterly ignorant — 
 for the moment in her relief she had called his ignorance 
 utter innocence . . . 
 
 They did not see him again for many days, and when he 
 came, very briefly, speaking of business technicalities which 
 absorbed him, he was noticeably absent and careworn. He 
 looked much older. The gray in his thick hair had in- 
 creased. He looked very beautiful and austere to Sylvia. 
 They exchanged no more than the salutations of arrival 
 and farewell. 
 
 Then one day, as she and Aunt Victoria and Austin Page 
 strolled down the long gallery of the Louvre, they came 
 upon him, looking at the Ribera Entombment. He joined 
 them, walking with them through the Salon Carre and out 
 to the Winged Victory, calling Sylvia's attention to the 
 Botticelli frescoes beyond on the landing. " It's the first 
 time I've been here," he told them, his only allusion to what 
 lay back of him. "It is like coming back to true friends. 
 Blessed be all true friends." He shook hands with them, 
 and went away down the great stairway, a splendid figure 
 of dignity and grace. 
 
The Road Is Not so Clear 395 
 
 After this he came once and again to the apartment of 
 the Rue de Presbourg, generally it would appear to use the 
 piano. He had none in his own tiny pied-a-terre and he 
 missed it. Sylvia immensely liked his continuing to cling 
 for a time to the simple arrangements of his frugal bachelor 
 days. He could now of course have bought a thousand 
 pianos. They understood how he would miss his music, 
 and stole in quietly when, upon opening the door, Tojiko 
 told them that Mr. Morrison had come in, and they heard 
 from the salon his delicately firm touch on the keys. Some- 
 times they listened from their rooms, sometimes the two 
 women took possession of the little octagonal room off the 
 salon, all white paneling and gilt chairs, and listened there; 
 sometimes, as the weeks went on and an especially early 
 spring began to envelop Paris in a haze of sunshine and 
 budding leaves, they stepped out to listen on the wrought- 
 iron balcony which looked down the long, shining vista of 
 the tree-framed avenue. For the most part he played Bach, 
 grave, courageous, formal, great-hearted music. 
 
 Sometimes he went away with no more than a nod and 
 a smile to them, but more and more, when he had finished, 
 he came out where they were, and stood or sat to exchange 
 brief impressions on the enchanting season, or on some 
 social or aesthetic treat which " ces dames" had been enjoy- 
 ing. Austin Page was frequently with them, as in the 
 earlier part of the winter, and it was finally he himself who 
 one day took the step of asking Morrison if he would not 
 go with them to the Louvre. " No one could appreciate 
 more than Miss Marshall what has always been such a 
 delight to us all." 
 
 They went, and not only once. That was the beginning 
 of another phase; a period when, as he began to take up 
 life again, he turned to his old friends to help him do it. 
 He saw almost no one else, certainly no one else there, for 
 he was sure to disappear upon the arrival of a caller, or the 
 announcement of an expedition in which other people were 
 included. But he returned again and again to the Louvre 
 with them, his theory of galleries necessitating frequent 
 
396 The Bent Twig 
 
 visits. Nothing could be more idiotic, he held, than to try 
 to see on one occasion all, or even half, or even a tenth 
 part, of a great collection of works of art. " It is exactly as 
 reasonable," he contended, " as to read through on the same 
 day every poem in a great anthology. Who could have 
 anything but nausea for poetry after such a gorge? And 
 they must hate pictures or else be literally blind to them, the 
 people who look at five hundred in a morning! If I had 
 looked at every picture in the Long Gallery in one walk 
 through it, I should thrust my cane through the Titian 
 Francis-First itself when I came to the Salon Carre." 
 
 So he took them to see only a few, five or six, care- 
 fully selected things — there was one wonderful day when 
 he showed them nothing but the Da Vinci Saint Anne, and 
 the Venus of Melos, comparing the dissimilar beauty of 
 those two divine faces so vitally, that Sylvia for days after- 
 wards, when she closed her eyes and saw them, felt that 
 she looked on two living women. She told them this and, 
 " Which one do you see most ? " he asked her. " Oh, the 
 Saint Anne," she told him. 
 
 He seemed dissatisfied. But she did not venture to ask 
 him why. They lived in an atmosphere where omissions 
 were vital. 
 
 Sylvia often wondered in those days if there ever had 
 been a situation so precariously balanced which continued 
 to hang poised and stable, minute after minute, hour after 
 hour, day after day. There were moments when her head 
 was swimming with moral dizziness. She wondered if such 
 moments ever came to the two quiet, self-controlled men 
 who came and went, with cordial, easy friendliness, in and 
 out of the appartement on the Rue de Presbourg. They 
 gave no sign of it, they gave no sign of anything beyond the 
 most achieved appearance of a natural desire to be obliging 
 and indulgent to the niece of an old friend. This appear- 
 ance was kept up with such unflagging perseverance that it 
 almost seemed consciously concerted between them. They 
 so elaborately avoided the slightest appearance of rivalry 
 that their good taste, like a cloth thrown over an unknown 
 
The Road Is Not so Clear 397 
 
 object, inevitably excited curiosity as to what was concealed 
 beneath it. 
 
 And Sylvia was not to be outdone. She turned her own 
 eyes away from it as sedulously as they. She never let a 
 conscious thought dwell on it — and like all other repressed 
 and strangled currents of thought, it grew swollen and 
 restive, rilling her subconsciousness with monstrous, un- 
 formulated speculations. She was extremely absorbed in 
 the luxury, the amenity, the smooth-working perfection of 
 the life about her. She consciously concentrated all her 
 faculties on her prodigious opportunity for aesthetic growth, 
 for appreciation of the fine and marvelous things about her. 
 She let go the last scruple which had held her back from 
 accepting from Aunt Victoria the shower of beautiful 
 things to wear which that connoisseur in wearing apparel 
 delighted to bestow upon an object so deserving. She gave 
 a brilliant outward effect of enjoying life as it came which 
 was as impersonal as that of the two men who looked at 
 her so frequently, and this effect went as deep as her will- 
 power had command. But beneath — unacknowledged 
 waves beating on the shore of her life and roughly, irre- 
 sistibly, rudely fashioning it — rolled a ground-swell of im- 
 perious questionings. . . . 
 
 Was Felix' perfect manner of impersonal interest solely 
 due to the delicacy of his situation? Did he feel now that 
 he was as rich as Austin . . . ? But, on the other hand, why 
 did he come now and put himself in a situation which re- 
 quired the utmost efforts for unconsciousness on every- 
 body's part if not because Austin's being there had meant 
 he dared not wait? And Austin's change of manner since 
 the arrival of the other man, the film of ceremony which 
 had slid imperceptibly over the tender friendliness of his 
 manner, did that mean that he would not take advantage of 
 Morrison's temporarily tied hands, but, with a scrupulous- 
 ness all his own, would wait until the race was even and they 
 stood foot to foot on the same level ? Or had he noticed at 
 once, with those formidably clear eyes of his, some shade of 
 Jaer manner to Felix which she had not been able to com- 
 
398 The Bent Twig 
 
 mand, and was he waiting for some move from her? And 
 how could she move until she had some sign from Felix and 
 how could he give a sign? There was nothing to do but 
 to wait, to hope that the thin ice which now bent perilously 
 under the pleasant ceremonies of their life in common, 
 would hold them until . . . Even the wildest up-leaping 
 wave of that tossing tide never went beyond the blank wa/J 
 which came after the " until. . . ." 
 
 There were other moments when all that surge swung 
 back and forth to the rhythm of the poisoned recollection 
 of her unacknowledged humiliation in Lydford; when, in- 
 flamed with determination to avoid another such blow in 
 the face, Sylvia almost consciously asked herself, self-con- 
 temptuously, " Who am I, an obscure, poverty-stricken 
 music-teacher out of the West, to fancy that I have but to 
 choose between two such men, two such fortunes ? " but 
 against this counted strongly the constantly recurring 
 revelations of the obscure pasts of many of the women 
 whom she met during those days, women who were now 
 shining, acknowledged firsts in the procession of success. 
 The serene, stately, much-admired Princesse de Chevrille 
 had been a Miss Sommers from Cleveland, Ohio, and she 
 had come to Paris first as a governess. The beautiful Mrs. 
 William Winterton Perth, now Aunt Victoria's favorite 
 friend, who entertained lesser royalty and greater men of 
 letters with equal quiet dignity, had in her youth, so she 
 chanced casually one day to mention, known what it was 
 to be thrifty about car-fares. There was nothing in- 
 trinsically impossible in any of the glittering vistas down 
 which Sylvia's quick eye cast involuntary glances. 
 
 But inevitably, when the heaving dark tide rose as high 
 as this, there came a swift and deadly ebbing away of it 
 all, and into Sylvia's consciousness (always it seemed to 
 her with the most entire irrelevance) there flared up the 
 picture of Molly as she had seen her last, shimmering like 
 a jewel in her white veil — then the other picture, the over- 
 turned car, the golden head bruised and bloody and forever 
 stilled — and always, always beyond that, the gaunt, mon- 
 
The Road Is Not so Clear 399 
 
 strous possibility, too awful ever to be put into words, too 
 impossible for credence . . . 
 
 From that shapeless, looming, black mass, Sylvia fled 
 away actually and physically, springing to her feet wherever 
 she was, entering another room, taking up some other 
 occupation. 
 
 Just once she had the faintest sign from beyond the wall 
 that she was not alone in her fear of this horror. She was 
 sitting near Austin Page at a tea, one of the frequent, 
 small, richly chosen assemblages which Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith gathered about her. Part of the ensuing chatter on 
 one of these occasions turned, as modern chatter frequently 
 does, on automobiles. The husband of Mrs. William 
 Winterton Perth was an expert on such matters, having 
 for some years diverted by an interest in mechanics the 
 immense enforced leisure of a transplanted male American. 
 He was talking incessantly that day of the wonderful im- 
 provement in steering mechanism the last few years had 
 Drought about. " I tell you what, Miss Marshall ! " he in- 
 sisted, as though she had disputed the point with him, " I 
 tell you what, there used to be some excuse for piling your 
 car up by the side of the road, but nowadays any one who 
 doesn't keep in the road and right side up must be just 
 plain looking for a chance to use his car like a dose of 
 cold poison." For a moment Sylvia could not conceive why 
 she felt so sickening a thrust at her heart. She turned her 
 eyes from the speaker. They fell on a man's hand, on the 
 arm of the chair next hers. It was Austin's hand and it 
 was shaking uncontrollably. As she gazed at it, fascinated, 
 he thrust it deep into his pocket. She did not look at him. 
 In a moment he rose and crossed the room. The husband 
 of Mrs. William Winterton Perth asked for another petit 
 four, confessing his fondness for chocolate edairs,-~and 
 embarked upon demountable rims. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 * . • . His wife and children perceiving it, began to cry 
 after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his 
 ears and ran on, crying, 'Life! Life Eternal! ' " 
 
 They had been in the Louvre, had spent an hour with 
 Felix in that glowing embodiment of the pomp and majesty 
 of human flesh known as the Rubens Medici-Room, and 
 now, for the sheer pleasure of it, had decided to walk home. 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith, endowed with a figure which showed 
 as yet no need for exercise, and having passed youth's rest- 
 less liking for it, had vetoed the plan as far as she went, 
 and entering her waiting car, had been borne smoothly off, 
 an opulent Juno without her peacocks. 
 
 The three who were left, lingered for a moment in the 
 quiet sunny square of the Louvre, looking up at the statue 
 of Lafayette, around at the blossoming early shrubs. Syl- 
 via was still under the spell of the riotous, full-blown 
 splendor of the paintings she had seen. Wherever she 
 looked, she saw again the rainbow brilliance of those glossy 
 satins, that rippling flooding golden hair, those ample, 
 heaving bosoms, those liquid gleaming eyes, the soft abun- 
 dance of that white and ruddy flesh, with the patina of 
 time like a golden haze over it. The spectacle had been 
 magnificent and the scene they now entered was a worthy 
 successor to it. They walked down through the garden 
 of the Tuileries and emerged upon the Place de la Concorde 
 at five o'clock of a perfect April afternoon, when the great 
 square hummed and sang with the gleaming traffic of 
 luxury. Countless automobiles, like glistening beetles, 
 darted about, each one with its load of carefully dressed 
 and coiffed women, looking out on the weaving glitter of 
 the street with the proprietary, complacent stare of those 
 
 400 
 
"Life! Life Eternal!" 401' 
 
 who feel themselves in the midst of a civilization with 
 which they are in perfect accord. Up the avenue, beyond, 
 streamed an incessant parade of more costly cars, more 
 carriages, shining, caparisoned horses, every outfit sumptu- 
 ous to its last detail, every one different from all the others, 
 and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, till in 
 the distance they dwindled to a black stream dominated by 
 the upward sweep of the Arc de Triomphe, magnified to 
 fabulous proportions by the filmy haze of the spring day. 
 To their left flowed the Seine, blue and flashing. A little 
 breeze stirred the new leaves on the innumerable trees. 
 
 Sylvia stopped for an instant to take in the marvel of 
 this pageant, enacted every day of every season against 
 that magnificent background. She made a gesture to call 
 her companions' attention to it — " Isn't it in the key of 
 Rubens — bloom, radiance, life expansive ! " 
 
 " And Chabrier should set it to music," said Morrison. 
 
 " What does it make you think of ? " she asked. " It 
 makes me think of a beautiful young Greek, in a purple 
 chiton, with a wreath of roses in his hair." 
 
 " It makes me think of a beautiful young woman, all 
 fire and spirit, and fineness, who drinks life like a perfumed 
 wine," said Morrison, his eyes on hers. She felt a little 
 shiver of frightened pleasure, and turned to Page to carry 
 it off, " What does it make you think of ? " she asked. 
 
 " It makes me think," he answered her at once, his eyes 
 on the haze caught like a dream in the tender green of 
 the budding trees, — " it makes me think of a half-naked, 
 sweating man, far underground in black night, striking at 
 a rock with a pick." 
 
 If he had burst into loud profanity, the effect could not 
 have been more shocking. "Oh!" said Sylvia, vexed and 
 put out. She began to walk forward. Morrison in his turn 
 gave an exclamation which seemed the vent of long-stored 
 exasperation, and said with heat : " Look here, Page, you're 
 getting to be a perfect monomaniac on the subject! What 
 earthly good does it do your man with a pick to ruin a fine 
 moment by lugging him in ! " 
 
4-02 The Bent Twig 
 
 They were all advancing up the avenue now, Sylvia be- 
 tween the two men. They talked at each other across hen 
 She listened intently, with the feeling that Morrison was 
 voicing for her the question she had been all her life wish- 
 ing once for all to let fly at her parents' standards : " What 
 good did it do anybody to go without things you might have ? 
 Conditions were too vast for one person to influence. ,, 
 
 " No earthly good," said Page peaceably ; " I didn't say it 
 did him any good. Miss Marshall asked me what all. this 
 made me think of, and I told her." 
 
 " It is simply becoming an obsession with you ! " urged 
 Morrison. Sylvia remembered what Page had said about 
 his irritation years ago when Austin had withdrawn from 
 the collector's field. 
 
 " Yes, it's becoming an obsession with me," agreed Page 
 thoughtfully. He spoke as he always did, with the simplest 
 manner of direct sincerity. 
 
 " You ought to make an effort against it, really, my dear 
 fellow. It's simply spoiling your life for you ! " 
 
 " Worse than that, it's making me bad company ! " said 
 Page whimsically. " I either ought to reform or get out." 
 
 Morrison set his enemy squarely before him and pro- 
 ceeded to do battle. " I believe I know just what's in your 
 mind, Page: I've been watching it grow in you, ever since 
 you gave up majolica." 
 
 " I never claimed that was anything but the blindest of 
 impulses ! " protested Page mildly. 
 
 But it wasn't. I knew ! It was a sign you had been 
 infected by the spirit of the times and had ' caught it ' so 
 hard that it would be likely to make an end of you. It's 
 all right for the collective mind. That's dense, obtuse; it 
 resists enough to keep its balance. But it's not all right 
 for you. Now you just let me talk for a few minutes, will 
 you? I've an accumulated lot to say! We are all of us 
 living through the end of an epoch, just as much as the 
 people of the old regime lived through the last of an epoch 
 in the years before the French Revolution. I don't believe 
 it's going to come with guillotines or any of those pic- 
 
"Life! Life Eternal!" 403 
 
 turesque trimmings. We don't do things that way any- 
 more. In my opinion it will come gradually, and finally 
 arrive about two or three generations from now. And it 
 oughtn't to come any sooner! Sudden changes never save 
 time. There's always the reaction to be gotten over with, 
 if they're sudden. Gradual growths are what last. Now 
 anybody who knows about the changes of society knows 
 that there's little enough any one person can do to hasten 
 them or to put them off. They're actuated by a law of their 
 own, like the law which makes typhoid fever come to a 
 crisis in seven days. Now then, if you admit that the 
 process ought not to be hastened, and in the second place 
 that you couldn't hasten it if you tried, what earthly use 
 is there in bothering your head about it! There are lots 
 of people, countless people, made expressly to do whatever 
 is necessary, blunt chisels fit for nothing but shaping grind- 
 stones. Let them do it! You'll only get in their way if 
 you try to interfere. It's not your job. For the few people 
 capable of it, there is nothing more necessary to do for the 
 world than to show how splendid and orderly and har- 
 monious a thing life can be. While the blunt chisels hack 
 out the redemption of the overworked (and Heaven knows 
 I don't deny their existence), let those who can, preserve 
 the almost-lost art of living, so that when the millennium 
 comes (you see I don't deny that this time it's on the 
 way!) it won't find humanity solely made up of newly 
 freed serfs who don't know what use to make of their 
 liberty. How is beauty to be preserved by those who know 
 and love and serve her, and how can they guard beauty 
 if they insist on going down to help clean out the sewers? 
 Miss Marshall, don't you see how I am right? Don't you 
 see how no one can do more for the common weal than 
 just to live, as finely, as beautifully, as intelligently as 
 possible ? And people who are capable of this noblest serv- 
 ice to the world only waste themselves and serve nobody 
 if they try to do the work of dray-horses." 
 
 Sylvia had found this wonderfully eloquent and con- 
 vincing. She now broke in. " When I was a young girl 
 
404 The Bent Twig 
 
 in college, I used to have a pretentious, jejune sort of idea 
 that what I wanted out of life was to find Athens and 
 live in it — and your idea sounds like that. The best Athens, 
 you know, not sensuous and selfish, but full of lovely and 
 leisurely sensations and fine thoughts and great emotions. " 
 
 " It wasn't pretentious and jejune at all ! " said Morri- 
 son warmly, " but simply the most perfect metaphor of 
 what must have been — of course, I can see it from here — 
 the instinctive sane effort of a Mature like yours. Let's 
 all try to live in Athens so that there will be some one there 
 to welcome in humanity." 
 
 Page volunteered his first contribution to the talk. " Oh, 
 I wouldn't mind a bit if I thought we were really doing 
 what Morrison thinks is our excuse for living, creating 
 fine and beautiful lives and keeping alive the tradition of 
 beauty and fineness. But our lives aren't beautiful, they're 
 only easeful. They're not fine, they're only well-upholstered. 
 You've got to have fitly squared and substantial founda- 
 tions before you can build enduring beauty. And all this," 
 he waved his hand around him at the resplendent, modern 
 city, " this isn't Athens ; it's — it's Corinth, if you want to go 
 on being classic. As near as I can make out from what 
 Sylvia lets fall, the nearest approach to Athenian life that 
 I ever heard of, was the life she left behind her, her 
 parents' life. That has all the elements of the best Athenian 
 color, except physical ease. And ease is no Athenian 
 quality ! It's Persian ! Socrates was a stone-cutter, you 
 know. And even in the real Athens, even that best 
 Athens, the one in Plato's mind — there was a whole class 
 given over to doing the dirty work for the others. That 
 never seemed to bother Plato — happy Plato ! but — I'm sure 
 I don't pretend to say if it ultimately means more or less 
 greatness for the human race — but somehow since Chris- 
 tianity, people find it harder and harder to get back to 
 Plato's serenity on that point. I'm not arguing the case 
 against men like you, Morrison — except that there's only 
 one of you. You've always seemed to me more like Plato 
 than anybody alive, and I've regarded you as the most 
 
"Life! Life Eternal!" 405 
 
 enviable personality going. I'd emulate you in a minute — 
 if I could; but if mine is a case of mania, it's a genuine 
 case. I'm sane on everything else, but when it comes to 
 that — it's being money that I don't earn, but they, those 
 men off there underground, do earn and are forced to 
 give to me — when it comes to that, I'm as fixed in my 
 opinion as the man who thought he was a hard-boiled egg. 
 I don't blame you for being out of patience with me. As 
 you say I only spoil fine minutes by thinking of it, and as 
 you charitably refrained from saying, I spoil other people's 
 fine moments by speaking of it." 
 
 " What would you have us do ! " Morrison challenged 
 him — " all turn in and clean sewers for a living ? And 
 wouldn't it be a lovely world, if we did ! " 
 
 Page did not answer for a moment. " I wonder," he 
 finally suggested mildly, " if it were all divided up, the 
 dirty work, and each of us did our share " 
 
 " Oh, impractical ! impractical ! Wholly a back-eddy in 
 the forward-moving current. You can't go back of a 
 world-wide movement. Things are too complicated now 
 for everybody to do his share of anything. It's as reason- 
 able, as to suggest that everybody do his share of watch- 
 making, or fancy juggling. Every man to his trade ! And 
 if the man who makes watches, or cleans sewers, or even 
 mines coal — your especial sore spot — does his work well, 
 and is suited to it in temperament, who knows that he does 
 not find it a satisfaction as complete as mine in telling a bit 
 of genuine Palissy ware from an imitation. You, for in- 
 stance, you'd make a pretty coal-miner, wouldn't you? 
 You're about as suited to it as Miss Marshall here for being 
 a college settlement worker ! " 
 
 Sylvia broke out into an exclamation of wonder. " Oh, 
 how you do put your finger on the spot! If you knew 
 how I've struggled to justify myself for not going into 
 ' social work ' of some kind ! Every girl nowadays who 
 doesn't marry at twenty, is slated for ' social betterment ' 
 whether she has the least capacity for it or not. Public 
 opinion pushes us into it as mediaeval girls were shoved 
 
4o6 v The Bent Twig 
 
 into convents, because it doesn't know what else to do with 
 us. It's all right for Judith, — it's fine for her. She's made 
 for it. I envy her. I always have. But me — I never could 
 bear the idea of interfering in people's lives to tell them 
 what to do about their children and their husbands just 
 because they were poor. It always seemed to me it was 
 bad enough to be poor without having other people with a 
 little more money messing around in your life. I'm differ- 
 ent from that kind of people. If I'm sincere I can't pretend 
 I'm not different. And I'm not a bit sure I know what's 
 any better for them to do than what they're doing ! " She 
 had spoken impetuously, hotly, addressing not the men 
 beside her but a specter of her past life. 
 
 " How true that is — how unerring the instinct which 
 feels it ! " said Morrison appreciatively. 
 
 Page looked at Sylvia quickly, his clear eyes very tender. 
 " Yes, yes ; it's her very own life that Sylvia needs to live," 
 he said in unexpected concurrence of opinion. Sylvia felt 
 that the honors of the discussion so far were certainly with 
 Felix. And Austin seemed oddly little concerned by this. 
 He made no further effort to retrieve his cause, but fell 
 into a silence which seemed rather preoccupied than de- 
 feated. 
 
 They were close to the Arc de Triomphe now. A brilliant 
 sunset was firing a salvo of scarlet and gold behind it, and 
 they stood for a moment to admire. " Oh, Paris ! Paris ! " 
 murmured Morrison. " Paris in April ! There's only one 
 thing better, and that we have before us — Paris in May ! " 
 
 They turned in past the loge of the concierge, and 
 mounted in the languidly moving elevator to the apparte- 
 ment. Felix went at once to the piano and began playing 
 something Sylvia did not recognize, something brilliantly 
 colored, vivid, resonant, sonorous, perhaps Chabrier, she 
 thought, remembering his remark on the avenue. Without 
 taking off her hat she stepped to her favorite post of 
 observation, the balcony, and sat down in the twilight with 
 a sigh of exquisitely complete satisfaction, facing the sun- 
 set, the great arch lifting his huge, harmonious bulk up 
 
"Life! Life Eternal!" 407 
 
 out of the dim, encircling trees, the resplendent long stretch 
 of the lighted boulevard. The music seemed to rise up 
 from the scene like its natural aroma. 
 
 Austin Page came out after her and leaned silently on 
 the railing, looking over the city. Morrison finished the 
 Chabrier and began on something else before the two on 
 the balcony spoke. Sylvia was asking no questions of fate 
 or the future, accepting the present with wilful blindness to 
 its impermanence. 
 
 Austin said : " I have been trying to say good-bye all 
 afternoon. I am going back to America tomorrow." 
 
 Sylvia was so startled and shocked that she could not be- 
 lieve her ears. Her heart beat hard. To an incoherent, 
 stammered inquiry of hers, he answered, " It's my Colorado 
 property — always that. It spoils everything. I must go 
 back, and make a decision that's needed there. I've been 
 trying to tell you. But I can't. Every time I have tried, 
 I have not dared. If I told you, and you should beckon 
 me back, I should not be strong enough to go on. I could 
 not leave you, Sylvia, if you lifted your hand. And that 
 would be the end of the best of us both." He had turned 
 and faced her, his hands back of him, gripping the railing. 
 The deep vibrations of his voice transported her to that 
 never- forgotten moment at Versailles. He went on: "When 
 it is — when the decision is made, I'll write you. I'll write 
 you, and then — I shall wait to hear your answer ! " From 
 inside the room Felix poured a dashing spray of diamond- 
 like trills upon them. 
 
 She murmured something, she did not know what; her 
 breathing oppressed by her emotion. " Won't you — shan't 
 
 we see you — here ? " She put her hand to her side, 
 
 feeling an almost intolerable pain. 
 
 He moved near her, and, to bring himself to her level, 
 knelt down on one knee, putting his elbows on the arm 
 of her chair. The dusk had fallen so thickly that she had 
 not seen his face before. She now saw that his lips were 
 quivering, that he was shaking from head to foot. " It 
 will be for you to say, Sylvia," his voice was rough and 
 
408 The Bent Twig 
 
 harsh with feeling, " whether you see me again." He took 
 her hands in his and covered them with kisses — no grave 
 tokens of reverence these, as on the day at Versailles, 
 but human, hungry, yearning kisses that burned, that 
 burned — 
 
 And then he was gone. Sylvia was there alone in the 
 enchanted twilight, the Triumphal Arch before her, the 
 swept and garnished and spangled city beneath her. She 
 lifted her hand and saw that he had left on it not only 
 kisses but tears. If he had been there then, she would 
 have thrown herself into his arms. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 SYLVIA COMES TO THE WICKET-GATE 
 
 Three weeks passed before his letter came. The slow, 
 thrilling crescendo of May had lifted the heart up to a 
 devout certainty of June. The leaves were fully out, cast- 
 ing a light, new shadow on the sprinkled streets. Every 
 woman was in a bright-colored, thin summer dress, and 
 every young woman looked alluring. The young men wore 
 their hats tilted to one side, swung jaunty canes as they 
 walked, and peered hopefully under the brim of every 
 flowered feminine headdress. The days were like golden 
 horns of plenty, spilling out sunshine, wandering per- 
 fumed airs, and the heart-quickening aroma of the new 
 season. The nights were cool and starry. Every one in 
 Paris spent as much as possible of every hour out of doors. 
 The pale-blue sky flecked with creamy clouds seemed the 
 dome, and the city the many-colored pavement of some vast 
 building, so grandly spacious that the sauntering, leisurely 
 crowds thronging the thoroughfares seemed no crowds at 
 all, but only denoted a delightful sociability. 
 
 All the spring vegetables were at their crispest, most 
 melting perfection, and the cherries from Anjou were like 
 miniature apples of Hesperus. Up and down the smaller 
 streets went white-capped little old women, with baskets 
 on their arms, covered with snowy linen, and they chanted 
 musically on the first three notes of the scale, so that the 
 sunny vault above them resounded to the cry, " De la creme, 
 f romage a la creme ! " The three Americans had enchanted 
 expeditions to Chantilly, to Versailles again, called back 
 from the past and the dead by the miracle of spring ; to more 
 distant formidable Coucy, grimly looking out over the smil- 
 ing country at its foot, to Fontainebleau, even a two days' 
 
 409 
 
4io The Bent Twig 
 
 dash into Touraine, to Blois, Amboise, Loches, jewels set in 
 the green enamels of May . . . and all the time Sylvia's at- 
 tempt to take the present and to let the future bring what 
 it would, was pitched perforce in a higher and higher key, — 
 took a more violent effort to achieve. 
 
 She fell deeper than ever under Morrison's spell, and 
 yet the lack of Austin was like an ache to her. She had 
 said to herself, " I will not let myself think of him until 
 his letter comes," and she woke up in the night suddenly, 
 seeing the fire and tenderness and yearning of his eyes, 
 and stretching out her arms to him before she was awake. 
 And yet she had never tried so hard to divine every shade 
 of Morrison's fastidiousness and had never felt so supreme 
 a satisfaction in knowing that she did. There were strange, 
 brief moments in her life now, when out of the warring 
 complexity in her heart there rose the simple longing of a 
 little girl to go to her mother, to feel those strong, unfailing 
 arms about her. She began to guess dimly, without think- 
 ing about it at all, that her mother knew some secret of life, 
 of balance, that she did not. And yet if her mother were 
 at hand, she knew she could never explain to her — how 
 could she, when she did not know herself? — what she was 
 living through. How long she had waited the moment 
 when she would know! 
 
 One day towards the end of May, Morrison had come in 
 for lunch, a delicately chosen, deceptively simple meal for 
 which Yoshida had outdone himself. There had been a 
 savory mixture of sweetbreads and mushrooms in a smooth, 
 rich, creamy sauce; green peas that had been on the vines 
 at three o'clock that morning, and which still had the aroma 
 of life in their delectable little balls; sparkling Saumur; 
 butter with the fragrance of dew and clover in it; crisp, 
 crusty rolls; artichokes in oil — such a meal as no mone) 
 can buy anywhere but in Paris in the spring, such a simple, 
 simple meal as takes a great deal of money to buy even in 
 Paris. 
 
 " It is an art to eat like this," said Morrison, more than 
 half seriously, after he had taken the first mouthful of the 
 
Sylvia Comes to the Wicket-Gate 411 
 
 golden souffle which ended the meal. " What a May we 
 have had ! I have been thinking so often of Talleyrand's 
 saying that no one who had not lived before the French 
 Revolution, under the old regime, could know how sweet 
 life could be ; and I've been thinking that we may live to say 
 that about the end of this regime. Such perfect, golden 
 hours as it has for those who are able to seize them. It 
 is a debt we own the Spirit of Things to be grateful and to 
 appreciate our opportunity." 
 
 " As far as the luncheon goes, it's rather a joke, isn't 
 it," said his hostess, " that it should be an Oriental cook 
 who has so caught the true Gallic accent? I'll tell Tojikc 
 to tell Yoshido that his efforts weren't lost on you. He 
 adores cooking for you. No, you speak about it yourself. 
 Here comes Tojiko with the mail." 
 
 She reached for the Herald with one hand, and with the 
 other gave Sylvia a letter with the American postmark. 
 " Oh, Tojiko," said Morrison with the familiarity of an 
 habitue of the house, " will you tell your brother for me 
 that I never tasted anything like his . . ." 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith broke in with an exclamation of 
 extreme astonishment. " Oh — what do you think — ! Sylvia, 
 did you know anything about this? Of all the crazy — why, 
 
 what under the sun ? I always knew there was a vein 
 
 of the fanatic — any man who won't smoke — you may be 
 
 sure there's something unbalanced !" She now turned 
 
 the paper as she spoke and held it so that the headlines 
 leaped out across the table : 
 
 MILLIONAIRE COAL OPERATOR TURNS VAST 
 HOLDINGS OVER TO THE STATE 
 
 Son of Old Peter Page Converted to Socialism 
 
 "What!" cried Morrison. Even in the blankness of her 
 stupefaction, Sylvia was aware of a rising note in his voice 
 that was by no means dismay. 
 
 " Yes," continued Mrs. Marshall- Smith, reading rapidly 
 
412 The Bent Twig 
 
 and disconnectedly from the paper, beginning an item and 
 dropping it, as she saw it was not the one she was search- 
 ing for, " ' Mr. Page is said to have contemplated some such 
 step for a long . . .' — m-m-m, not that . . . ' well-known 
 collector of ceramics — Metropolitan Museum — member of 
 the Racquet, the Yacht, the Century, the Yale — thirty-two — 
 Mother Miss Allida Sommerville of Baltimore, formerly a 
 great beauty ' — here it is," she stopped skimming and 
 read consecutively : " ' Mr. Page's plan has been worked out 
 in all detail with experts. A highly paid, self-perpetuating 
 commission of labor experts, sociologists, and men of prac- 
 tical experience in coal-operating has been appointed to 
 administer Mr. Page's extremely extensive holdings. The 
 profits form a fund which, under the stipulations of Mr. 
 Page's agreement with the State, is to be used to finance a 
 program of advanced social activities; to furnish money 
 for mothers' pensions, even perhaps for fathers' pensions in 
 the case of families too numerous to be adequately cared 
 for on workingmen's wages ; to change the public school 
 system of the locality into open-air schools with spacious 
 grounds for manual activities of all kinds ; greatly to raise 
 wages; to lengthen the period of schooling before children 
 go into remunerative occupations. . . .' " Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith looked up, said, " Oh, you know, the kind of thing 
 such people are always talking about," and began to skip 
 again, " - — extensive plans for garden cities — public 
 libraries — books of the business to be open to employes — 
 educational future — no philanthropy — and so forth and so 
 forth.' " She glanced hurriedly down the page, caught the 
 beginning of another sentence, and read : " ' The news has 
 created an immense sensation all over the country. It is 
 prophesied that Mr. Page's unexpected action will throw 
 the coal business into great confusion. Other operators will 
 find it extremely difficult to go on with the old conditions. 
 Already it is rumored that the Chilton Coal and Coke 
 Company . . .' " 
 
 " Well, I should think so indeed ! " cried Morrison em- 
 phatically, breaking in. " With modern industrial condi- 
 
Sylvia Comes to the Wicket-Gate 413 
 
 tions hung on a hair trigger as they are, it's as though a 
 boy had exploded a fire-cracker in the works of a watch. 
 That means his whole fortune gone. Old Peter put every- 
 thing into coal. Austin will not have a cent — nothing but 
 those Vermont scrub forests of his. What a mad thing to 
 do! But it's been growing on him for a long time. I've 
 seen — I've felt it ! " 
 
 Sylvia gave a dazed, mechanical look at the letter she 
 held and recognized the handwriting. She turned very 
 white. 
 
 Aunt Victoria said instantly : " I see you have a letter to 
 read, my dear, and I want Felix to play that D'Indy Inter- 
 lude for me and explain it — Bauer is going to play it tonight 
 for the Princess de Chevrille. We'll bother you with our 
 chatter. Don't you want to take it to your room to read ? " 
 
 Sylvia stood up, holding the unopened letter in her hand. 
 She looked about her a little wildly and said : " Oh no, no ! 
 I think I'd rather be out of doors. I'll go out on the 
 balcony.'' 
 
 " It's raining," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith. 
 
 " No, not yet," said Morrison, making a great effort to 
 speak in an ordinary tone. " It's only going to." He sat 
 down at the piano. Sylvia passed him and went out to 
 the balcony. She opened the letter and read it through 
 very carefully. It was a long one and this took some time. 
 She did not hear a note of the music which poured its plain- 
 tive, eerie cadences around her. When she had finished the 
 letter she instantly started to read it again, with the sen- 
 sation that she had not yet begun to understand it. She 
 was now deeply flushed. She continually put back a floating 
 strand of hair, which recurrently fell across her forehead 
 and cheek. 
 
 After a time, Mrs. Marshall-Smith said from the open 
 door : " Felix and I are going to Madeleine Perth's. Would 
 you rather stay here ? " Sylvia nodded without looking up. 
 
 She sat motionless, looking at the letter long after she had 
 finished it. An hour passed thus. Then she was aware 
 that it was beginning to rain. The drops falling on the open 
 
414 The Bent Twig 
 
 letter dissolved the ink into blurred smears. She sprang 
 up hastily and went into the salon, where she stood irreso- 
 lute for a moment, and then, without calling Helene, went 
 to her room and dressed for the street. She moved very 
 quickly as though there were some need for extreme haste, 
 and when she stepped into the street she fell at once 
 automatically into the swinging step of the practised walker 
 who sees long miles before him. 
 
 Half an hour later she was looking up at the facade of 
 Notre Dame through the rain, and seeing there these words : 
 " I shall be waiting at Austin Farm to hear if you are at 
 all able to sympathize with me in what I have done. The 
 memory of our last words together may help you to imagine 
 with what anxiety I shall be waiting." 
 
 She pushed open the greasy, shining leather door, passed 
 into the interior, and stood for a moment in the incense- 
 laden gloom of the nave. A mass was being said. The 
 rapidly murmured Latin words came to her in a dim drone, 
 in which she heard quite clearly, quite distinctly : " There is 
 another kind of beauty I faintly glimpse — that isn't just 
 sweet smells and lovely sights and harmonious lines — it's 
 the beauty that can't endure disharmony in conduct, the 
 fine, true ear for the loveliness of life lived at its best — Syl- 
 via, finest, truest Sylvia, it's what you could, if you would — 
 you more than any other woman in the world — if we were 
 together to try " 
 
 Sylvia sank to her knees on a prie-Dieu and hid her face 
 in her hands, trying to shut out the words, and yet listening 
 to them so intently that her breath was suspended. . . . 
 " What Morrison said is true — for him, since he feels it to 
 be true. No man can judge for another. But other things 
 are true too, things that concern me. It's true that an 
 honest man cannot accept an ease founded, even remotely, 
 on the misery of others. And my life has been just that. I 
 don't know what success I shall have with the life that's 
 beginning, but I know at least it will begin straight. There 
 seems a chance for real shapeliness if the foundations are 
 all honest — doesn't there ? Oh, Sylvia — oh, my dearest love, 
 
Sylvia Comes to the Wicket-Gate 415 
 
 if I could think you would begin it with me, Sylvia! 
 Sylvia ! " 
 
 The girl sprang up and went hastily out of the church. 
 The nun kneeling at the door, holding out the silent prayer 
 for alms for the poor, looked up in her face as she passed 
 and then after her with calm, understanding eyes. Kneeling 
 there, day after day, she had seen many another young, 
 troubled soul fleeing from its own thoughts. 
 
 Sylvia crossed the parvis of Notre Dame, glistening wet, 
 and passed over the gray Seine, slate under the gray mist 
 of the rain. Under her feet the impalpable dust of a city 
 turned to gray slime which clung to her shoes. She walked 
 on through a narrow, mean street of mediaeval aspect where 
 rag-pickers, drearily oblivious of the rain, quarreled weakly 
 over their filthy piles of trash. She looked at them in 
 astonishment, in dismay, in horror. Since leaving La 
 Chance, save for that one glimpse over the edge back in 
 the Vermont mountains, she had been so consistently sur- 
 rounded by the padded satin of possessions that she had 
 forgotten how actual poverty looked. In fact, she had 
 never had more than the briefest fleeting glances at it. 
 This was so extravagant, so extreme, that it seemed im- 
 possible to her. And yet — and yet — She looked fleetingly 
 into those pale, dingy, underfed, repulsive faces and won- 
 dered if coal-miners' families looked like that. 
 
 But she said aloud at once, almost as though she had 
 crooked an arm to shield herself : " But he said he did not 
 want me to answer at once ! He said he wanted me to take 
 time — to take time — to take time . . ." She hastened her 
 steps to this refrain, until she was almost running; and 
 emerged upon the broad, well-kept expanse of the Boule- 
 vard St. Germain with a long-drawn breath of relief. 
 
 Ahead of her to the right, the Rue St. Jacques climbed the 
 hill to the Pantheon. She took it because it was broad 
 and clean and differed from the musty darkness from which 
 she had come out ; she fled up the steep grade with a swift, 
 light step as though she were on a country walk. She 
 might indeed have been upon some flat road near La 
 
41 6 The Bent Twig 
 
 Chance for all she saw of the buildings, the people around 
 her. 
 
 How like Austin's fine courage that was, his saying that 
 he did not want her to decide in haste, but to take time 
 to know what she was doing! What other man would 
 not have stayed to urge her, to hurry her, to impose his 
 will on hers, masterfully to use his personality to confuse 
 her, to carry her off? For an instant, through all her 
 wretched bewilderment, she thrilled to a high, impersonal 
 appreciation of his saying : " If I had stayed with you, I 
 should have tried to take you by force — but you are too 
 fine for that, Sylvia! What you could be to the man you 
 loved if you went to him freely — that is too splendid to 
 risk losing. I want all of you — heart, soul, mind — or 
 nothing ! " Sylvia looked up through this clear white light 
 to Austin's yearning eyes, and back through the ages with a 
 wondering pity at the dark figure of Jerry Fiske, emerging 
 from his cave. She had come a long way since then. 
 
 And then all this, everything fine, everything generous, 
 ebbed away from her with deadly swiftness, and in a cold 
 disgust with herself she knew that she had been repeating 
 over and over Morrison's " Austin will not have a cent 
 left . . . nothing but those Vermont scrub forests." So 
 that was the kind of a woman she was. Well, if that was 
 the kind of woman she was, let her live her life accordingly. 
 She was sick with indecision as she fled onward through 
 the rain. 
 
 Few pedestrians were abroad in the rain, and those who 
 were, sheltered themselves slant-wise with their umbrellas 
 against the wind, and scudded with the storm. Sylvia had 
 an umbrella, but she did not open it. She held her face up 
 once, to feel the rain fall on it, and this reminded her of 
 home, and long rainy walks with her father. She winced at 
 this, and put him hastily out of her mind. And she had been 
 unconsciously wishing to see her mother! At the very 
 recollection of her mother she lengthened her stride. There 
 was another thought to run away from! 
 
 She swung around the corner near the Pantheon and 
 
Sylvia Comes to the Wicket-Gate 417 
 
 rapidly approached the door of the great Library of Ste. 
 Genevieve. A thin, draggled, middle-aged woman-student, 
 entering hastily, slipped on the wet stones and knocked 
 from under his arm the leather portfolio of a thin, draggled, 
 middle-aged man who was just coming out. The woman 
 did not stop to help repair the damage she had done, but 
 hastened desperately on into the shelter of the building. 
 Sylvia's eyes, absent as they were, were caught and held 
 by the strange, blank look of the man, who stood motionless, 
 his shabby hat knocked to one side of his thin, gray hair, his 
 curiously filmed eyes fixed stupidly on the litter of papers 
 scattered at his feet. The rain was beginning to convert 
 them into sodden pulp, but he did not stir. The idea 
 occurred to Sylvia that he might be ill, and she advanced 
 to help him. As he saw her stoop to pick them up, he said 
 in French, in a toneless voice, very indifferently : " Don't 
 give yourself the trouble. They are of no value. I carry 
 them only to make the Library attendants think I am a bona- 
 fide reader. I go there to sleep because I have no other 
 roof." 
 
 His French was entirely fluent, but the accent was Ameri- 
 can. Sylvia looked up at him surprised. He returned her 
 gaze dully, and without another look at the papers, scuffled 
 off through the rain, across the street towards the Pantheon. 
 His boots were lamentable. 
 
 Sylvia had an instantly vanishing memory of a pool of 
 quiet sunshine, of a ripely beautiful woman and a radiant 
 young man. Before she knew she was speaking, an im- 
 pulsive cry had burst from her : " Why, Professor Saunders ! 
 Professor Saunders! Don't you know me? I am Sylvia 
 Marshall!" 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 SYLVIA DRIFTS WITH THE MAJORITY 
 
 " No, they don't let you sit down in here if you're as 
 shabby as I am," said the man, continuing his slow, feeble, 
 shuffling progress. " They know you're only a vagrant, 
 here to get out of the rain. They won't even let you stand 
 still long." 
 
 Sylvia had not been inside the Pantheon before, had never 
 been inside a building with so great a dome. They stood 
 under it now. She sent her glance up to its vast, dim, 
 , noble heights and brought it down to the saturnine, unsavory 
 wreck at her side. She was regretting the impulse which 
 had made her call out to him. What could she say to him 
 now they were together ? What word, what breath could be 
 gentle enough, light enough not to be poison to that open sore? 
 
 On his part he seemed entirely unconcerned about the 
 impression he made on her. His eyes, his sick, filmed eyes, 
 looked at her with no shrinking, with no bravado, with an 
 entire indifference which gave, through all the desolation 
 of his appearance, the strangest, careless dignity to the man. 
 He did not care what she thought of him. He did not care 
 what any one thought of him. He gave the impression of 
 a man whose accounts are all reckoned and the balance 
 struck, long ago. 
 
 " So this is Sylvia," he said, with the slightest appearance 
 of interest, glancing at her casually. " I always said you 
 would make a beautiful woman. But since I knew Victoria, 
 I've seen that you must be quite what she was at your 
 age." It might have been a voice speaking from beyond the 
 grave, so listless, so dragging was its rhythm. " How do 
 you happen to be in Paris ? " he asked. " Are your parents 
 still alive?" 
 
 418 
 
Sylvia Drifts with the Majority 419 
 
 " Oh yes! " said Sylvia, half startled by the preposter- 
 ousness of the idea that they might not be. " They're very 
 well too. I had such a good letter from Mother the other 
 day. Do you remember Professor Kennedy? He has just 
 given up his position to be professor emeritus. I suppose 
 now he'll write that book on the idiocy of the human race 
 he's been planning so long. And old Mr. Reinhardt, he's 
 still the same, they say . . . wonderful, isn't it, at his age ? " 
 She was running on, not knowing what to say, and chatter- 
 ing rather foolishly in her embarrassment. " Judith is a 
 trained nurse; isn't that just the right thing for her? I'm 
 visiting Aunt Victoria here for a while. Lawrence is a 
 Freshman at . . ." 
 
 He broke in, his hollow voice resounding in the immense, 
 vault-like spaces around them. " You'd better go home," 
 he said. " I'd leave tonight, if I were you." She looked at 
 him startled, half-scared, thinking that she had been right 
 to fancy him out of his mind. She saw with relief a burly 
 attendant in a blue uniform lounging near a group of 
 statuary. She could call to him, if it became necessary. 
 
 " You'd better go away from her at once," went on the 
 man, advancing aimlessly from one bay of the frescoes to 
 another. 
 
 Sylvia knew now of whom he was speaking, and as he 
 continued talking with a slow, dreary monotony, her mind 
 raced back over the years, picking up a scrap here, a half- 
 forgotten phrase there, an intercepted look between her 
 father and mother, a recollection of her own, a half-finished 
 sentence of Arnold's . . . 
 
 " She can't be fatal for you in the same way she has been 
 for the others, of course," the man was saying. " What 
 she'll do for you is to turn you into a woman like herself. 
 I remember now, I have thought many times, that you were 
 like her . . . of tl\e same clay. But you have something 
 else too, you have something that she'll take away from 
 you if you stay. You can't keep her from doing it. No 
 one can get the better of her. She doesn't fight. But 
 she always takes life. She has taken mine. She must 
 
420 The Bent Twig 
 
 have taken her bogie-husband's, she took young Gilbert's* 
 she took Gilbert's wife's, she took Arnold's in another way. 
 . . . God ! think of leaving a young, growing, weak soul in 
 the care of a woman like Victoria ! She took that poet's, 
 I forget his name; I suppose by this time Felix Morrison 
 is . . ." 
 
 At this name, a terrible contraction of the heart told 
 Sylvia that she was listening to what he said. " Felix Mor- 
 rison ! " she cried in stern, angry protest. " I don't know 
 what you're talking about — but if you think that Aunt Vic- 
 toria — if you think Felix Morrison " She was inarticu- 
 late in her indignation. u He was married last autumn to 
 a beautiful girl — and Aunt Victoria — what an idea! — no 
 one was more pleased than she — why — you are crazy!" 
 She flung out at him the word, which two moments before 
 she would not have been so cruel as to think. 
 
 It gave him no discomfort. " Oh no, I'm not," he said 
 with a spectral laugh, which had in it, to Sylvia's dismay, 
 the very essence of sanity. She did not know why she now 
 shrank away from him, far more frightened than before. 
 "I'm about everything else you might mention, but I'm 
 not crazy. And you take my word for it and get out while 
 you still can . . . if you still can ? " He faintly indicated 
 an inquiry, looking at her sideways, his dirty hand stroking 
 the dishonoring gray stubble of his unshaven face. " As 
 for Morrison's wife ... let her get out too. Gilbert tried 
 marrying, tried it in all unconsciousness. It's only when 
 they try to get away from her that they know she's in the 
 marrow of their bones. She lets them try. She doesn't 
 even care. She knows they'll come back. Gilbert did. And 
 his wife . . . well, I'm sorry for Morrison's wife." 
 
 " She's dead," said Sylvia abruptly. 
 
 He took this in with a nod of the head. " So much the 
 better for her. How did it happen that you didn't fall for 
 Morrison's . . ." he looked at her sharply at a change in her 
 face she could not control. " Oh, you did," he commented 
 slackly. " Well, you'd better start home for La Chance 
 tonight," he said again. 
 
Sylvia Drifts with the Majority 421 
 
 They were circling around and around the shadowy 
 interior, making no pretense of looking at the frescoed 
 walls, to examine which had been their ostensible purpose in 
 entering. Sylvia was indeed aware of great pictured spaces, 
 crowded dimly with thronging figures, men, horses, women 
 — they reached no more than the outer retina of her eye. 
 She remembered fleetingly that they had something to do 
 with the story of Ste. Genevieve. She wanted intensely to 
 escape from this phantom whom she herself had called 
 up from the void to stalk at her side. But she felt she 
 ought not to let pass, even coming from such a source, such 
 utterly frenzied imaginings against one to whom she owed 
 loyalty. She spoke coldly, with extreme distaste for the 
 subject : " You're entirely wrong about Aunt Victoria. She's 
 not in the least that kind of a woman." 
 
 He shook his head slowly. " No, no ; you misunderstand 
 me. Your Aunt Victoria is quite irreproachable, she always 
 has been, she always will be. She is always in the right. 
 She always will be. She did nothing to me but hire me to 
 teach her stepson, and when my habits became too bad, 
 discharge me, as any one would have done. She did nothing 
 to Arnold except to leave him to the best schools and the 
 best tutors money could buy. What more could any one 
 have done? She had not the slightest idea that Horace 
 Gilbert would try to poison his wife, had not the slightest 
 connection with their quarrel. The young poet, — Adams 
 was his name, now I remember — did not consult her before 
 he took to cocaine. Morphine is my own specialty. Vic- 
 toria of course deplored it as much as any one could. No, 
 I'm not for a minute intimating that Victoria is a Messalina. 
 We'd all be better off if she were. It's only our grossness 
 that finds fault with her. Your aunt is one of the most 
 respectable women who ever lived, as ' chaste as unsunned 
 snow — the very ice of chastity is in her ! ' Indeed, I've often 
 wondered if the redoubtable Ephraim Smith himself, for all 
 that he succeeded in marrying her, fared any better than 
 the rest of us. Victoria would be quite capable of cheating 
 him out of his pay. She parches, yes, she dries up the 
 
422 The Bent Twig 
 
 blood — but it's not by her passion, not even by ours. Honest 
 passion never kills. It's the Sahara sands of her egotism 
 into which we've all emptied our veins." 
 
 Sylvia was frozen to the spot by her outraged indigna- 
 tion that any one should dare speak to her thus. She 
 found herself facing a fresco of a tall, austere figure in an 
 enveloping white garment, an elderly woman with a thin, 
 worn, noble face, who laid one fine old hand on a stone 
 parapet and with divine compassion and tenderness looked 
 out over a sleeping city. The man followed the direction 
 of her eyes. " It's Puvis de Chavannes' Ste. Genevieve as an 
 old woman, guarding and praying for the city. Very good, 
 isn't it? I especially admire the suggestion of the plain 
 bare cell she has stepped out from. I often come here to 
 look at it when I've nothing to eat." He seemed as flaccidly 
 willing to speak on this as on any other topic ; to find it no 
 more interesting than the subject of his former speech. 
 
 Sylvia was overcome with horror of him. She walked 
 rapidly away, towards the door, hoping he would not follow 
 her. He did not. When she glanced back fearfully over 
 her shoulder, she saw him still standing there, looking up 
 at the gaunt gray figure of beneficent old age. His dread- 
 ful broken felt hat was in his hand, the water dripped from 
 his frayed trousers over the rotting leather of his shoes. 
 As she looked, he began to cough, loudly, terribly, so that 
 the echoing reaches of the great nave resounded to the 
 sound. Sylvia ran back to him and thrust her purse into his 
 hand. At first he could not speak, for coughing, but 
 in a moment he found breath to ask, " Is it Victoria's 
 money ? " 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 He held it for a moment, and then opening his hand let 
 it drop. As she turned away Sylvia heard it fall clinking 
 on the stone floor. At the door she turned for one last look, 
 and saw him weakly stooping to pick it up again. She 
 fairly burst out of the door. 
 
 It was almost dusk when she was on the street again, 
 looking down the steep incline to the Luxembourg Gar- 
 
Sylvia Drifts with the Majority 423 
 
 dens. In the rainy twilight the fierce tension of the Rodin 
 " Thinker " in front of the Pantheon loomed huge and 
 tragic. She gave it a glance of startled sympathy. She had 
 never understood the statue before. Now she was a prey 
 to those same ravaging throes. There was for the moment 
 no escaping them. She felt none of her former wild im- 
 pulse to run away. What she had been running away from 
 had overtaken her. She faced it now, looked at it squarely, 
 gave it her ear for the first time ; the grinding, dissonant note 
 under the rich harmony of the life she had known for all 
 these past months, the obscure vaults underlying the shining 
 temple in which she had been living. 
 
 What beauty could there be which was founded on such 
 an action as Felix' marriage to Molly — Molly, whose pas- 
 sionate directness had known the only way out of the im- 
 passe into which Felix should never have let her go ? . . . . 
 An echo from what she had heard in the mass at Notre 
 Dame rang in her ears, and now the sound was louder — ■ 
 Austin's voice, Austin's words : " A beauty that can't endure 
 disharmony in conduct, the fine true ear for the deeper 
 values, the foundations " It was Austin, asking him- 
 self what beauty could be in any life founded, even remotely 
 as his was, on any one's misery? 
 
 For a long time she stood there, silent, motionless, her 
 hands clenched at her sides, looking straight before her in 
 the rain. Above her on his pedestal, the great, bronze, 
 naked, tortured man ground his teeth as he glared out from 
 under the inexorable limitations of his ape-like forehead, 
 and strove wildly against the barriers of his flesh . . . 
 
 Wildly and vainly, against inexorable limitations! Syl- 
 via was aware that an insolent young man, with moist pro- 
 tuberant eyes, had come up where she stood there, alone, 
 motionless on the public street. He put his arm in hers, 
 clasped her hand in a fat, soft palm, and, " Allons, ma 
 belle!" he said with a revolting gayety. 
 
 Sylvia pulled away from him, cried out fiercely in 
 English, " Don't you dare to touch me ! " and darted 
 away. 
 
424 The Bent Twig 
 
 He made no attempt at pursuit, acknowledging his mis< 
 take with an easy shrug and turning off to roam, a dim, 
 predatory figure, along the dusky street. He had startled 
 and frightened the girl so that she was trembling when she 
 ventured to slow down to a walk under the glaring lights of 
 the Boulevard St. Michel. She was also shivering with wet 
 and cold, and without knowing it, she was extremely 
 hungry. As she fled along the boulevard in the direction of 
 her own quarter of the city, her eye caught the lighted 
 clock at the kiosk near Cluny. She was astonished to see 
 that it was after seven o'clock. How long could she have 
 stood there, under the shadow of that terrific Thinker, con- 
 sumed quite as much as he by the pain of trying to rise 
 above mere nature? An hour — more than an hour, she 
 must have been there. The Pantheon must have closed 
 during that time, and the dreadful, sick man must have 
 passed close by her. Where was he now ? What makeshift 
 shelter harbored that cough, those dirty, skeleton hands, 
 those awful eyes which had outlived endurance and come 
 to know peace before death . . . 
 
 She shivered and tried to shrink away from her wet, 
 clinging clothing. She had never, in all her life before, 
 been wet and cold and hungry and frightened, she had 
 never known from what she had been protected. And now 
 the absence of money meant that she must walk miles in 
 the rain before she could reach safety and food. For three 
 cents she could ride. But she had not three cents. How 
 idiotic she had been not to keep a few sous from her purse. 
 What a sickening thing it had been to see him stoop to 
 pick it up after he had tried to have the pride not to touch 
 it. That was what morphine had done for him. And he 
 would buy more morphine with that money, that was the 
 reason he had not been able to let it lie . . . the man who 
 had been to her little girlhood the radiant embodiment of 
 strength and fineness ! 
 
 Her teeth were chattering, her feet soaked and cold. She 
 tried to walk faster to warm her blood, and discovered that 
 she was exhausted, tired to the marrow of her bones. Her 
 
Sylvia Drifts with the Majority 425 
 
 feet dragged on the pavement, her arms hung heavily by her 
 side, but she dared not stop a moment lest some other man 
 with abhorrent eyes should approach her. 
 
 She set her teeth and walked; walked across the Seine 
 without a glance at its misted lights blinking through the 
 rain, walked on past the prison of Marie Antoinette, with- 
 out a thought of that other harmless woman who had loved 
 bright and lovely things while others suffered: walked on 
 upon the bridge across the Seine again. This bewildered 
 her, making her think that she was so dazed she had 
 doubled on her tracks. She saw, a long way off, a solitary 
 hooded sergent de ville, and dragged herself across an end- 
 less expanse of wet asphalt to ask him her way. But just 
 before she reached him, she remembered suddenly that of 
 course she was on the island and was obliged to cross the 
 Seine again before reaching the right bank. She returned 
 weary and disheartened to her path, crossed the bridge, and 
 then endlessly, endlessly, set one heavy foot before the 
 other under the glare of innumerable electric lights staring 
 down on her and on the dismal, wet, and deserted streets. 
 The clocks she passed told her that it was nearly eight 
 o'clock. Then it was past eight. What must they be think- 
 ing of her on the Rue de Presbourg? She tried again to 
 hurry, but could force her aching muscles to no more than 
 the plod, plod, plod of her dogged advance over those in- 
 terminable miles of pavement. There was little of her 
 then that was not cold, weary, wet flesh, suffering all the 
 discomforts that an animal can know. She counted her 
 steps for a long time, and became so stupidly absorbed in 
 this that she made a wrong turning and was blocks out of 
 her way before she noticed her mistake. This mishap re- 
 duced her almost to tears, and it was when she was choking 
 them weakly back and setting herself again to the cruel long 
 vista of the Champs-Elysees that an automobile passed her 
 at top speed with a man's face pressed palely to the panes. 
 Almost at once the car stopped in answer to a shouted com- 
 mand ; it whirled about and bore down on her. Felix Mor- 
 rison sprang out and ran to her with outstretched arms, his 
 
426 The Bent Twig 
 
 rich voice ringing through the desolation of the rain and the 
 night — " Sylvia ! Sylvia ! Are you safe ? " 
 
 He almost carried her back to the car, lifted her in. 
 There were wraps there, great soft, furry, velvet wraps 
 which he cast about her, murmuring broken ejaculations 
 of emotion, of pity, of relief — " Oh, your hands, how 
 cold ! Sylvia, how could you ? Here, drink this ! I've been 
 insane, — absolutely out of my mind ! Let me take off your 
 hat — Oh, your poor feet — I was on my way to — I was 
 
 afraid you might have Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, to have you 
 
 safe ! " She tried to bring to mind something she had in 
 tended to remember; she even repeated the phrase over to 
 herself, " It was an ugly, ugly thing to have married Molly," 
 but she knew only that he was tenderness and sheltering 
 care and warmth and food and safety. She drew long 
 quivering breaths like a child coming out of a sobbing fit. 
 
 Then before there was time for more thought, the car 
 had whirled them back to the door, where Aunt Victoria, 
 outwardly calm, but very pale, stood between the concierge 
 and his wife, looking out into the rainy deserted street. 
 
 At the touch of those warm embracing arms, at that 
 radiant presence, at the sound of that relieved, welcoming 
 voice, the nightmare of the Pantheon faded away to black- 
 ness. . . . 
 
 Half an hour later, she sat, fresh from a hot bath, breath- 
 ing out delicately a reminiscence of recent violet water and 
 perfumed powder; fresh, fine under-linen next her. glowing 
 skin ; shining and refreshed, in a gown of chiffon and satin ; 
 eating her first mouthful of Yoshido's ambrosial soup. 
 
 " Why, I'm so sorry," she was saying. " I went out 
 for a walk, and then went further than I meant to. I've 
 been over on the left bank part of the time, in Notre Dame 
 and the Pantheon. And then when I started to come home 
 it took longer than I thought. It's so apt to, you know." 
 
 " Why in the world, my dear, did you walk home ? " cried 
 Aunt Victoria, still brooding over her in pitying sympathy. 
 
 " I'd — I'd lost my purse. I didn't have any money." 
 
 " But you don't pay for a cab till you come to the end 
 
Sylvia Drifts with the Majority 427" 
 
 of your journey ! You could have stepped into a taxi and 
 borrowed the money of the concierge here." 
 
 Sylvia was immensely disconcerted by her rustic naivete 
 in not thinking of this obvious device. " Oh, of course ! 
 How could I have been so — but I was tired when I came 
 to start home — I was very tired — too tired to think clearly ! " 
 
 This brought them all back to the recollection of what 
 had set her off on her walk. There was for a time rather 
 a strained silence; but they were all very hungry — dinner 
 was two hours late — and the discussion of Yoshido's roast 
 duckling was anything but favorable for the consideration 
 of painful topics. They had champagne to celebrate her 
 safe escape from the adventure. To the sensation of per- 
 fect ease induced by the well-chosen dinner this added a 
 little tingling through all Sylvia's nerves, a pleasant, light, 
 bright titillation. 
 
 All might have gone well if, after the dinner, Felix had 
 not stepped, as was his wont, to the piano. Sylvia had 
 been, up to that moment, almost wholly young animal, given 
 over to bodily ecstasy, of which not the least was the agree- 
 able warmth on her silk-clad ankle as she held her slippered 
 foot to the fire. 
 
 But at the first chords something else in her, slowly, with 
 extreme pain, awoke to activity. All her life music had 
 spoken a language to which she could not shut her ears, and 
 now — her face clouded, she shifted her position, she held 
 up a little painted screen to shield her face from the fire, 
 she finally rose and walked restlessly about the room. 
 Every grave and haunting cadence from the piano brought 
 to her mind, flickering and quick, like fire, a darting ques- 
 tion, and every one she stamped out midway, with an effort 
 of the will. 
 
 The intimacy between Felix and Aunt Victoria, it was 
 
 strange she had never before thought of course not — 
 
 what a hideous idea! That book, back in Lydford, with 
 Horace Gilbert's name on the fly-leaf, and Aunt Victoria's 
 cool, casual voice as she explained, " Oh, just a young 
 architect who used to " Oh, the man in the Pantheon 
 
428 The Bent Twig 
 
 was simply brutalized by drugs; he did not know what he 
 was saying. His cool, spectral laugh of sanity sounded 
 faintly in her ears again. 
 
 And then, out of a mounting foam of arpeggios, there 
 bloomed for her a new idea, solid enough, broad enough, 
 high enough, for a refuge against all these wolfish fangs. 
 She sat down to think it out, hot on the trail of an answer, 
 the longed-for answer. 
 
 It had just occurred to her that there was no possible 
 logical connection between any of those skulking phantoms 
 and the golden lovely things they tried to defile. Even if 
 some people of wealth and ease and leisure were not as 
 careful about moral values as about colors, and aesthetic 
 harmonies — that meant nothing. The connection was 
 purely fortuitous. How silly she had been not to see that. 
 Grant, for purposes of argument, that Aunt Victoria was 
 self-centered and had lived her life with too little regard 
 for its effect on other people, — grant even that Felix had, 
 under an almost overpowering temptation, not kept in a 
 matter of conduct the same rigid nicety of fastidiousness 
 which characterized his judgment of marbles — what of it? 
 That did not mean that one could only be fine and true in 
 conduct by giving up all lovely things and wearing hair- 
 shirts. What an outgrown, mediaeval idea ! How could she 
 have been for a moment under its domination ! It was just 
 that old Puritanism, Spartanism of her childhood, which 
 was continually reaching up its bony hand from the grave 
 where she had interred it. 
 
 The only danger came, she saw it now, read it plainly 
 and clear-headedly in the lives of the two people with her, 
 the only danger came from a lack of proportion. It cer- 
 tainly did seem to be possible to allow the amenities and 
 aesthetic pleasures to become so important that moral fine- 
 ness must stand aside till they were safe. But anybody 
 who had enough intelligence could keep his head, even if 
 the temptation was alluring. And simply because there was 
 that possible danger, why not enjoy delightful things as 
 long as they did not run counter to moral fineness! How 
 
Sylvia Drifts with the Majority 429 
 
 absurd to think there was any reason why they should; 
 quite the contrary, as a thousand philosophers attested. 
 They would not in her case, at least! Of course, if a de- 
 cision had to be taken between the two, she would never 
 hesitate — nevei ! As she phrased this conviction to herself, 
 she turned a rL;g on her white slim finger and had a throb 
 of pleasure in the color of the gem. What harmless, im- 
 personal pleasures they were! How little they hurt any 
 one ! And as to this business of morbidly probing into 
 healthy flesh, of insisting on going back of everything, 
 farther than any one could possibly go, and scrutinizing the 
 origin of every dollar that came into your hand . . . why, 
 that way lay madness ! As soon try to investigate all the 
 past occupants of a seat in a railway before using it for a 
 journey. Modern life was not organized that way. It was 
 too complicated. 
 
 Her mind rushed on excitedly, catching up more cer- 
 tainty, more and more reinforcements to her argument as 
 it advanced. There was, therefore, nothing inherent in the 
 manner of life she had known these last months to account 
 for what seemed ugly underneath. There was no reason 
 why some one more keenly on his guard could not live as 
 they did and escape sounding that dissonant note ! 
 
 The music stopped. Morrison turned on the stool and 
 seeing her bent head and moody stare at the fire, sent an 
 imploring glance for help to Mrs. Marshall-Smith. 
 
 Just let her have the wealth and leisure and let her show 
 how worthily she could use it! There would be an 
 achievement ! Sylvia came around to another phase of her 
 new idea, there would be something worth doing, to show 
 that one could be as fine and true in a palace as in a hut, — 
 even as in a Vermont farmhouse ! At this, suddenly all 
 thought left her. Austin Page stood before her, fixing 
 on her his clear and passionate and tender eyes. At that 
 dear and well-remembered gaze, her lip began to quiver like 
 a child's, and her eyes filled. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith stirred herself with the effect of a 
 splendid ship going into action with all flags flying. " Syl- 
 
430 The Bent Twig 
 
 via dear," she said, " this rain tonight makes me think of 
 a new plan. It will very likely rain for a week or more 
 now. Paris is abominable in the rain. What do you say 
 to a change? Madeleine Perth was telling ne this after- 
 noon that the White Star people are runnii * a few ships 
 from Portsmouth by way of Cherbourg aroun J by Gibraltar, 
 through the Mediterranean to Naples. That's one trip your 
 rolling-stone of an aunt has never taken, and I'd rather 
 like to add it to my collection. We could be in Naples in 
 four days from Cherbourg and spend a month in Italy, 
 going north as the heat arrived. Felix — why don't yon 
 come along? You've been wanting to see the new low 
 reliefs in the Terme, in Rome ? " 
 
 Sylvia's heart, like all young hearts, was dazzled almost 
 to blinking by the radiance shed from the magic word 
 Italy. She turned, looking very much taken aback and 
 bewildered, but with light in her eyes, color in her face. 
 
 Morrison burst out : " Oh, a dream realized ! Something 
 to live on all one's days, the pines of the Borghese — the 
 cypresses of the Villa Medici — roses cascading over the 
 walls in Rome, the view across the Campagna from the 
 terraces at Rocca di Papa " 
 
 Sylvia thought rapidly to herself : " Austin said he did 
 not want me to answer at once. He said he wanted me to 
 take time — to take time! I can decide better, make more 
 sense out of everything, if I — after I have thought more, 
 have taken more time. No, I am not turning my back on 
 him. Only I must have more time to think " 
 
 Aloud she said, after a moment's silence, " Oh, nothing 
 could be lovelier ! " 
 
 She lay in her warm, clean white bed that night, sleep- 
 ing the sound sleep of the healthy young animal which has 
 been wet and cold and hungry, and is now dry and warmed 
 and fed. 
 
 Outside, across the city, on his bronze pedestal, the tor- 
 tured Thinker, loyal to his destiny, still strove terribly 
 against the limitations of his ape-like forehead. 
 
BOOK IV 
 THE STRAIT PATH 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 A CALL FROM HOME 
 
 It was quite dark when they arrived in the harbor at 
 Naples ; and they were too late to go through the necessary 
 formalities of harbor entering. In company with several 
 other in- and outward-bound steamers, the Carnatic lay 
 to for the night. Some one pointed out a big liner which 
 would sail for New York the next morning, lying like a 
 huge, gaily lighted island, the blare of her band floating 
 over the still water. 
 
 Sylvia slept little that night, missing the rolling swing 
 of the ship, and feeling breathless in the stifling immobility 
 of the cabin. She tossed about restlessly, dozing off at 
 intervals and waking with a start to get up on her knees and 
 look out through the port-hole at the lights of Naples 
 blazing steadily in their semicircle. She tried to think 
 several times, about her relations to Felix, to Austin — but 
 nothing came to her mind except a series of scenes in which 
 they had figured, scenes quite disconnected, which brought 
 no enlightenment to her. 
 
 As she lay awake thus, staring at the ceiling, feeling in 
 the intense silence and blackness that the fluttering of her 
 eyelids was almost audible, her heart beating irregularly, 
 now slow, now fast, it occurred to her that she was begin- 
 ning to know something of the intensity of real life — real 
 grown-up life. She was astonished to enjoy it so little. 
 
 She fell at last, suddenly, fathoms deep into youthful 
 slumber, and at once passed out from tormented darkness 
 
 431 
 
432 The Bent Twig 
 
 into some strange, sunny, wind-swept place on a height 
 And she was all one anguish of longing for Austin. Anc 1 
 he came swiftly to her and took her in his arms and kissed 
 her on the lips. And it was as it had been when she was a 
 child and heard music, she was carried away by a great 
 -swelling tide of joy . . . But dusk began to fall again: 
 Austin faded; through the darkness something called arn* 
 called to her, imperatively. With great pain she struggled 
 up through endless stages of half-consciousness, until she 
 was herself again, Sylvia Marshall, heavy-eyed, sitting up 
 in her berth and saying aloud, " Yes, what is it ? " in answer 
 to a knocking on the door. 
 
 The steward's voice answered, announcing that the first 
 boat for shore would leave in an hour. Sylvia sprang out 
 of bed, the dream already nothing more than confused 
 brightness in her mind. By the time she was dressed, it 
 had altogether gone, and she only knew that she had had a 
 restless night. She went out on the deck, longing for the 
 tonic of pure air. The morning was misty — it had rained 
 during the night — and clouds hung heavy and low over the 
 city. Out from this gray smother the city gleamed like a 
 veiled opal. Neither Felix nor her aunt was to be seen. 
 When she went down to breakfast, after a brisk tramp back 
 and forth across the deck, she was rosy and dewy, her trium- 
 phant youth showing no sign of her vigils. She was saying 
 to herself: " Now I've come, it's too idiotic not to enjoy it. 
 I shall let myself go ! " 
 
 Helene attended to the ladies' packing and to the labeling 
 and care of the baggage. Empty-handed, care-free, feeling 
 like a traveling princess, Sylvia climbed down from the 
 great steamer into a dirty, small harbor-boat. Aunt Vic- 
 toria sat down at once on the folding camp-chair which 
 Helene always carried for her. Sylvia and Felix stood 
 together at the blunt prow, watching the spectacle before 
 them. The clouds were lifting from the city and from 
 Vesuvius, and from Sylvia's mind. Her spirits rose as the 
 boat went forward into the strange, foreign, glowing scene. 
 
 The oily water shimmered in smooth heavings as the 
 
A Call from Home 433 
 
 clumsy boat advanced upon it The white houses on the 
 hills gleamed out from their palms. As the boat came 
 closer to the wharf, the travelers could see the crowds of 
 foreign-looking people, with swarthy faces and cheap, un- 
 graceful clothes, looking out at the boat with alert, specula- 
 tive, unwelcoming eyes. The noise of the city streets, 
 strange to their ears after the days of sea silence, rose clat- 
 tering, like a part of the brilliance, the sparkle. The sun 
 broke through the clouds, poured a flood of glory on the 
 refulgent city, and shone hotly on the pools of dirty water 
 caught in the sunken spots of the uneven stone pavement. 
 
 Aunt Victoria made her way up the gang-plank to the 
 landing dock, achieving dignity even there. Felix sprang 
 after her, to hand her her chair, and Helene and Sylvia fol- 
 lowed. Mrs. Marshall-Smith sat down at once, opening 
 her dark-purple parasol, the tense silk of which was changed 
 by the hot Southern sun into an iridescent bubble. " We 
 will wait here till the steward gets our trunks out," she 
 announced. " It will be amusing to watch the people." The 
 four made an oasis of aristocracy in the seething, shouting, 
 frowzy, gaudy, Southern crowd, running about with the 
 scrambling, undignified haste of ants, sweating, gesticulating, 
 their faces contorted with care over their poor belongings. 
 Sylvia was acutely conscious of her significance in the 
 scene. She was also fully aware that Felix missed none of 
 the contrast she made with the other women. She felt at 
 once enhanced and protected by the ignobly dressed crowd 
 about her. Felix was right — in America there could be no 
 distinction, there was no background for it. 
 
 The scene about them was theatrically magnificent. In 
 the distance Vesuvius towered, cloud-veiled and threaten- 
 ing, the harbor shone and sparkled in the sun, the vivid, out- 
 reaching arms of Naples clasped the jewel-like water. From 
 it all Sylvia extracted the most perfect distillation of 
 traveler's joy. She felt the well-to-do tourist's care-free de- 
 tachment from the fundamentals of life, the, tourist's sense 
 that everything exists for the purpose of being a sight for 
 him to see. She knew, and knew with delight, the wan- 
 
434 The Bent Twig 
 
 derer's lightened, emancipated sense of being at a distance 
 from obligations, that cheerful sense of an escape from the 
 emprisoning solidarity of humanity which furnishes the zest 
 of life for the tourist and the tramp, enabling the one light- 
 heartedly to offend proprieties and the other casually to 
 commit murder. She was embarked upon a moral vaca- 
 tion. She was out of the Bastile of right and wrong. She 
 had a vision of what freedom from entangling responsi- 
 bilities is secured by traveling. She understood her aunt's 
 classing it as among the positive goods of life. 
 
 A man in a shabby blue uniform, with a bundle of letters 
 in his hand, walked past them towards the boat. 
 
 " Oh, the mail," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith. u There may 
 be some for us." She beckoned the man to her, and said, 
 " Marshall-Smith ? Marshall ? Morrison ? " 
 
 The man sorted over his pile. " Cable for Miss Mar- 
 shall," he said, presenting it to the younger lady with a 
 bold, familiar look of admiration. u Letter for F. Mor- 
 rison: two letters for Mrs. Marshall-Smith." Sylvia 
 opened her envelope, spread out the folded sheet of paper, 
 and read what was scrawled on it, with no realization of 
 the meaning. She knew only that the paper, Felix, her 
 aunt, the crowd, vanished in thick blackness, through which, 
 much later, with a great roaring in her ears, she read, as 
 though by jagged flashes of lightning : " Mother very ill. 
 Come home at once. Judith." 
 
 It seemed to her an incalculably long time between 
 her first glance at the words and her understanding of 
 them, but when she emerged from the blackness and 
 void, into the flaunting sunlight, the roaring still in her 
 ears, the paper still in her hands, the scrawled words still 
 venomous upon it, she saw that not a moment could have 
 passed, for Felix and her aunt were unfolding letters of 
 their own, their eyes beginning to run quickly over the 
 pages. 
 
 Sylvia stood quite still, feeling immeasurably and bitterly 
 alone. She said to herself : " Mother is very sick. I must 
 
A Call from Home 435 
 
 go home at once. Judith." But she did not know what she 
 said. She felt only an impulse to run wildly away from 
 something that gave her intolerable pain. 
 
 Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned over a page of her letter, 
 smiling to herself, and glanced up at her niece. Her smile 
 was smitten from her lips. Sylvia had a fantastic vision 
 of her own aspect from the gaping face of horror with 
 which her aunt for an instant reflected it. She had never 
 before seen Aunt Victoria with an unprepared and discom 
 posed countenance. It was another feature of the night- 
 mare. 
 
 For suddenly everything resolved itself into a bad dream, 
 — her aunt crying out, Helene screaming and running to her, 
 Felix snatching the telegram from her and reading it aloud 
 — it seemed to Sylvia that she had heard nothing for 
 years but those words, " Mother very sick. Come home 
 at once. Judith." She heard them over and over after his 
 voice was silent. Through their constant echoing roar in 
 her ears she heard but dimly the babel of talk that arose — 
 Aunt Victoria saying that she could not of course leave at 
 once because no passage had been engaged, Helene foolishly 
 offering smelling-salts, Felix darting off to get a carriage 
 to take them to the hotel where she could be out of the 
 crowd and they could lay their plans — " Oh, my poor dear ! 
 — but you may have more reassuring news tomorrow, you 
 know," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith soothingly. 
 
 The girl faced her aunt outraged. She thought she cried 
 out angrily, " tomorrow ! " but she did not break her silence. 
 She was so torn by the storm within her that she had no 
 breath for recriminations. She turned and ran rapidly some 
 distance away to the edge of the wharf, where some small 
 rowboats hung bobbing, their owners sprawled on the seats, 
 smoking cigarettes and chattering. Sylvia addressed the 
 one nearest her in a strong, imperious voice. " I want you 
 to take me out to that steamer," she said, pointing out to the 
 liner in the harbor. 
 
 The man looked up at her blankly, his laughing, im- 
 pertinent brown face sobered at once by the sight of her 
 
436 The Bent Twig 
 
 own. He made a reply in Italian, raising his shoulders. 
 Some ill-dressed, loafing stragglers on the wharf drew near 
 Sylvia with an indolent curiosity. She turned to them and 
 asked, " Do any of you speak English ? " although it was 
 manifestly inconceivable that any of those typical Neapoli- 
 tans should. One of them stepped forward, running his 
 hand through greasy black curls. " I kin, lady," he said with 
 a fluent, vulgar New York accent. " What ye want ? " 
 
 " Tell that man," said Sylvia, her lips moving stiffly, " to 
 take me out to the ship that is to leave for America this 
 morning — and now — this minute, I may be late now ! " 
 
 After a short impassioned colloquy, the loafer turned 
 to her and reported : " He says if he took you out, you 
 couldn't git on board. Them big ships ain't got no way 
 for folks in little boats to git on. And he'd ask you thirty 
 lire, anyhow. That's a fierce price. Say, if you'll wait a 
 
 minute, I can get you a man that'll do it for " Mrs. 
 
 Marshall-Smith and Helene had followed, and now broke 
 through the line of ill-smelling loungers. Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith took hold of her niece's arm firmly, and began to 
 draw her away with a dignified gesture. " You don't know 
 what you are doing, child," she said with a peremptory 
 accent of authority. " You are beside yourself. Come 
 with me at once. This is no " 
 
 Sylvia did not resist her. She ignored her. In fact, 
 she did not understand a word that her aunt said. She 
 shook off the older woman's hand with one thrust of her 
 powerful young arm, and gathering her skirts about her, 
 leaped down into the boat. She took out her purse and 
 showed the man a fifty-lire bill. " Row fast ! Fast ! " she 
 motioned to him, sitting down in the stern and fixing her 
 eyes on the huge bulk of the liner, black upon the brilliance 
 of the sunlit water. She heard her name called from the 
 wharf and turned her face backward, as the light craft began 
 to move jerkily away. 
 
 Felix had come up and now stood between Mrs. Marshall- 
 Smith and her maid, both of whom were passionately ap- 
 pealing to him! He looked over their heads, saw the girl 
 
A Call from Home 437 
 
 already a boat-length from the wharf, and gave a gesture 
 of utter consternation. He ran headlong to the edge of the 
 dock and again called her name loudly, " Sylvia! Sylvia!" 
 There was no mistaking the quality of that cry. It was the 
 voice of a man who sees the woman he loves departing from 
 him, and who wildly, imperiously calls her back to him. 
 But she did not return. The boat was still so close that 
 she could look deeply into his eyes. Through all her tumult 
 of horror, there struck cold to Sylvia's heart the knowledge 
 that they were the eyes of a stranger. The blow that had 
 pierced her had struck into a quivering center of life, so 
 deep within her, that only something as deep as its terrible 
 suffering could seem real. The man who stood there, so 
 impotently calling to her, belonged to another order of 
 things — things which a moment ago had been important to 
 her, and which now no longer existed. He had become 
 for her as remote, as immaterial as the gaudy picturesque- 
 ness of the scene in which he stood. She gave him a long 
 strange look, and made a strange gesture, a gesture of 
 irrevocable leave-taking. She turned her face again to the 
 sea, and did not look back. 
 
 They approached the liner, and Sylvia saw some dark 
 heads looking over the railing at her. Her boatman rowed 
 around the stern to the other side, where the slanting stairs 
 used in boarding the harbor-boats still hung over the side. 
 The landing was far above their heads. Sylvia stood up 
 and cried loudly to the dull faces, staring down at her from 
 the steerage deck. " Send somebody down on the stairs 
 to speak to me." There was a stir ; a man in a blue uniform 
 came and looked over the edge, and went away. After a 
 moment, an officer in white ran down the stairs to the 
 hanging landing with the swift, sure footing of a seaman. 
 Sylvia stood up again, turning her white face up to him, 
 her eyes blazing in the shadow of her hat. " I've just 
 heard that my mother is very sick, and I must get back to 
 America at once. If you will let down the rope ladder, I 
 can climb up. I must go! I have plenty of money. I 
 must!" 
 
438 The Bent Twig 
 
 The officer stared, shook his head, and ran back up the 
 stairs, disappearing into the black hole in the ship's side. 
 The dark, heavy faces continued to hang over the railing, 
 staring fixedly down at the boat with a steady, incurious 
 gaze. Sylvia's boatman balanced his oar-handles on his 
 knees, rolled a cigarette and lighted it. The boat swayed 
 up and down on the shimmering, heaving roll of the water, 
 although the ponderous ship beside it loomed motionless 
 as a rock. The sun beat down on Sylvia's head and up in 
 her face from the molten water till she felt sick, but when 
 another officer in white, an elderly man with an impassive, 
 bearded face, came down the stairs, she rose up, instantly 
 forgetful of everything but her demand. She called out her 
 message again, straining her voice until it broke, poised so 
 impatiently in the little boat, swinging under her feet, that 
 she seemed almost about to spring up towards the two men 
 leaning over to catch her words. When she finished, the 
 older man nodded, the younger one ran back up the stairs, 
 and returned with a rope ladder. 
 
 Sylvia's boatman stirred himself with an ugly face of 
 misgiving. He clutched at her arm, and made close before 
 her face the hungry, Mediterranean gesture of fingering 
 money. She took out her purse, gave him the fifty-lire note, 
 and catching at the ladder as it was flung down, disregard- 
 ing the shouted commands of the men above her to " wait ! " 
 she swung herself upon it, climbing strongly and surely in 
 spite of her hampering skirts. 
 
 The two men helped her up, alarmed and vexed at the 
 risk she had taken. They said something about great 
 crowds on the boat, and that only in the second cabin was 
 there a possibility for accommodations. If she answered 
 them, she did not know what she said. She followed the 
 younger man down a long corridor, at first dark and smell- 
 ing of hemp, later white, bright with electric light, smelling 
 strongly of fresh paint, stagnant air, and machine-oil. They 
 emerged in a round hallway at the foot of a staircase. The 
 officer went to a window for a conference with the official 
 behind it, and returned to Sylvia to say that there was no 
 
A Call from Home 439 
 
 room, not even a single berth vacant. Some shabby 
 woman-passengers with untidy hair and crumpled clothes 
 drew near, looking at her with curiosity. Sylvia appealed 
 to them, crying out again, " My mother is very sick and I 
 must go back to America at once. Can't any of you — can't 
 
 y 0U ?" she stopped, catching at the banisters. Her 
 
 knees were giving way under her. A woman with a flabby 
 pale face and disordered gray hair sprang towards her and 
 took her in her arms with a divine charity. et You can have 
 half my bed ! " she cried, drawing Sylvia's head down on 
 her shoulder. " Poor girl ! Poor girl ! I lost my only 
 son last year ! " 
 
 Her accent, her look, the tones of her voice, some emana- 
 tion of deep humanity from her whole person, reached Syl- 
 via's inner self, the first message that had penetrated to 
 that core of her being since the deadly, echoing news of the 
 telegram. Upon her icy tension poured a flood of dis- 
 solving warmth. Her hideous isolation was an illusion. 
 This plain old woman, whom she had never seen before, 
 was her sister, her blood-kin, — they were both human 
 beings. She gave a cry and flung her arms about the other's 
 neck, clinging to her like a person falling from a great 
 height, the tears at last streaming down her face. 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 HOME AGAIN 
 
 The trip home passed like a long shuddering bad dream 
 in which one waits eternally, bound hand and foot, for a 
 blow which does not fall. Somehow, before the first day 
 was over, an unoccupied berth was found for Sylvia, in a 
 tiny corner usually taken by one of the ship's servants. 
 Sylvia accepted this dully. She was but half alive, all her 
 vital forces suspended until the journey should be over. 
 The throbbing of the engines came to seem like the beat- 
 ing of her own heart, and she lay tensely in her berth 
 for hours at a time, feeling that it was partly her energy 
 which was driving the ship through the waters. She 
 only thought of accomplishing the journey, covering the 
 miles which lay before her. From what lay at the end 
 she shrank back, returning again to her hypnotic absorption 
 in the throbbing of the engines. The old woman who had 
 offered to share her berth had disappeared at the first rough 
 water and had been invisible all the trip. Sylvia did not 
 think of her again. That was a recollection which with all 
 its sacred significance was to come back later to Sylvia's 
 maturer mind. 
 
 The ship reached New York late in the afternoon, and 
 docked that night. Sylvia stood alone, in her soiled wrinkled 
 suit, shapeless from constant wear, her empty hands clutch- 
 ing at the railing, and was the first passenger to dart down 
 the second-class gang-plank. She ran to see if there were 
 letters or a telegram for her. 
 
 " Yes, there is a telegram for you," said the steward, hold- 
 ing out a sealed envelope to her. " It came on with the 
 pilot and ought to have been given you before." 
 
 She took the envelope, but was unable to open it. The 
 
 ^40 
 
Home Again 441 
 
 arc lights flared and winked above her in the high roof 
 of the wharf; the crowds of keen-faced, hard-eyed men 
 and women in costly, neat-fitting clothing were as oblivious 
 of her and as ferociously intent on their own affairs as the 
 shabby, noisy crowd she had left in Naples, brushing by 
 her as though she were a part of the wharf as they bent over 
 their trunks anxiously, and locked them up with determina- 
 tion. It seemed to Sylvia that she could never break the 
 spell of fear which bound her fast. Minute after minute 
 dragged by, and she still stood, very white, very sick. 
 
 She was aware that some one stood in front of her, 
 looking into her face, and she recognized one of the ship's 
 officials whom she had noticed from a distance on the ship, 
 an under-officer, somehow connected with the engines, who 
 had sat at table with the second-class passengers. He was 
 a burly, red-faced man, with huge strong hands and a 
 bald head. 
 
 He looked at her now for a moment with an intent kind- 
 ness, and taking her arm led her a step to a packing-case on 
 which he made her sit down. At the break in her immo- 
 bility, a faintness came over Sylvia. The man bent over her 
 and began to fan her with his cap. A strong smell of stale 
 and cheap tobacco reached Sylvia from all of his obese 
 person, but his vulgar, ugly face expressed a profoundly 
 self- forgetful concern. " There, feelin' better?" he asked, 
 his eyes anxiously on hers. The man looked at the en- 
 velope comprehendingly : " Oh — bad news " he mur- 
 mured. Sylvia opened her hand and showed him that tt 
 had not been opened. " I haven't looked at it yet," she said 
 pitifully. 
 
 The man made an inarticulate murmur of pity — put out 
 his thick red fingers, took the message gently from her hand, 
 and opened it. As he read she searched his face with an 
 impassioned scrutiny. 
 
 When he raised his eyes from the paper, she saw in 
 them, in that grossly fleshy countenance, such infinite pity 
 that even her swift intuition of its meaning was not sa 
 swift as to reach her heart first. The blow did not reach 
 
442 The Bent Twig 
 
 her naked and unprotected in the solitude of her egotism, 
 as it had at Naples. Confusedly, half-resentfully, but irre- 
 sistibly she knew that she did not — could not — stand alone, 
 was not the first thus to be struck down. This knowledge 
 brought the tonic summons to courage. She held out her 
 hand unflinchingly, and stood up as she read the message, 
 " Mother died this morning at dawn." The telegram was 
 dated three days before. She was now two days from home. 
 
 She looked up at the man before her and twice tried to 
 speak before she could command her voice. Then she said 
 quite steadily : " I live in the West. Can you tell me any- 
 thing about trains to Chicago ? " 
 
 " I'm going with ye, to th' train," he said, taking her 
 arm and moving forward. Two hours later his vulgar, ugly, 
 compassionate face was the last she saw as the train moved 
 out of the station. He did not seem a stranger to Sylvia. 
 She saw that he was more than middle-aged, he must have 
 lost his mother, there must have been many deaths in his 
 past. He seemed more familiar to her than her dearest 
 friends had seemed before; but from now on she was to 
 feel closer to every human being than before to her most 
 loved. A great breach had been made in the wall of her 
 life — the wall which had hidden her fellows from her. She 
 saw them face the enigma as uncomprehendingly, as help- 
 lessly as she, and she felt the instinct of terror to huddle 
 close to others, even though they feel — because they feel — a 
 terror as unrelieved. It was not that she loved her fellow- 
 beings more from this hour, rather that she felt, to the root 
 of her being, her inevitable fellowship with them. 
 
 The journey home was almost as wholly a period of sus- 
 pended animation for Sylvia as the days on the ocean had 
 been. She had read the telegram at last; now she knew 
 what had happened, but she did not yet know what it 
 meant. She felt that she would not know what it meant 
 until she reached home. How could her mother be dead? 
 What did it mean to have her mother dead? 
 
 She said the grim words over and over, handling them 
 with heartsick recklessness as a desperate man might 
 
Home Again 443 
 
 handle the black, ugly objects with smoking fuses which he 
 knows carry death. But for Sylvia no explosion came. 
 No ravaging perception of the meaning of the words reached 
 her strained inner ear. She said them over and over, the 
 sound of them was horrifying to her, but in her heart she 
 did not believe them. Her mother, her mother could not 
 die! 
 
 There was no one, of course, at the La Chance station to 
 meet her, and she walked out through the crowd and took 
 the street-car without having seen a familiar face. It was 
 five o'clock in the afternoon then, and six when she walked 
 up the dusty country road and turned in through the gate 
 in the hedge. There was home — intimately a part of her 
 in every detail of its unforgotten appearance. The pines 
 stood up strong in their immortal verdure, the thick golden 
 hush of the summer afternoon lay like an enchantment about 
 the low brown house. And something horrible, unspeak- 
 ably horrible had happened there. Under the forgotten 
 dust and grime of her long railway journey, she was deadly 
 pale as she stepped up on the porch. Judith came to the 
 door, saw her sister, opened her arms with a noble gesture, 
 and clasped Sylvia to her in a strong and close embrace. 
 Not a word was spoken. The two clung to each other 
 silently, Sylvia weeping incessantly, holding fast to the 
 dear human body in her arms, feeling herself dissolved in 
 a very anguish of love and pain. Her wet cheek was pressed 
 against Judith's lips, the tears rained down in a torrent. All 
 the rich, untapped strength of her invincible youth was in 
 that healthful flood of tears. 
 
 There were none such in the eyes of Professor Marshall 
 as he came down the stairs to greet his daughter. Sylvia 
 was immeasurably shocked by his aspect. He did not look 
 like her father. She sought in vain in that gray counte- 
 nance for any trace of her father's expression. He came 
 forward with a slow, dragging step, and kissed his daugh- 
 ter, taking her hand — his, she noticed, felt like a sick man's, 
 parched, the skin like a dry husk. He spoke, in a. voice 
 which had no resonance, the first words that had been 
 
444 The Bent Twig 
 
 uttered: "You must be very tired, Sylvia. You would 
 better go and lie down. Your sister will go with you." 
 He himself turned away and walked slowly towards the 
 open door. Sylvia noticed that he shuffled his feet as he 
 walked. 
 
 Judith drew Sylvia away up the stairs to her own slant- 
 ceilinged room, and the two sat down on the bed, side by 
 side, with clasped hands. Judith now told briefly the out- 
 line of what had happened. Sylvia listened, straining her 
 swollen eyes to see her sister's face, wiping away the tears 
 which ran incessantly down her pale, grimy cheeks, re- 
 pressing her sobs to listen, although they broke out in one 
 burst after another. Her mother had gone down very 
 suddenly and they had cabled at once — then she grew better 
 — she had been unspeakably brave — fighting the disease by 
 sheer will-poweF — she had conquered it — she was gaining — 
 they were sorry they had cabled Sylvia — she had not known 
 she was going to die — none of them had dreamed she was 
 going to die — suddenly as the worst of her disease had 
 spent itself and the lungs "Vere beginning to clear — sud- 
 denly her heart had given way, and before the nurse could 
 call her husband and children to her, she was gone. They 
 had been there under the same roof, and had not been with 
 her at the last. The last time they had seen her, she was 
 alive and smiling at them — such a brave, wan shadow of her 
 usual smile — for a few moments they went about their 
 affairs, full of hope — and when they entered the sick- 
 room again 
 
 Sylvia could bear no more, screaming out, motioning 
 Judith imperiously to stop ; — she began to understand what 
 had happened to her; the words she had repeated so dully 
 were like thunder in her ears. Her mother was dead. 
 
 Judith took her sister again in her arms, holding her 
 close, as though she were the older. Sylvia was weeping 
 again, the furious, healing, inexhaustible tears of youth. 
 To both the sisters it seemed that they were passing an 
 hour of supreme bitterness ; but their strong young hearts, 
 clinging with unconscious tenacity to their right to joy, 
 
Home Again 445 
 
 were at that moment painfully opening and expanding be- 
 yond the narrow bounds of childhood. Henceforth they 
 were to be great enough to harbor joy — a greater joy — and 
 sorrow, side by side. 
 
 Moreover, as though their action-loving mother were still 
 watching over them, they found themselves confronted at 
 once with an inexorable demand for their strength and 
 courage. 
 
 Judith detached herself, and said in a firm voice : " Sylvia, 
 you mustn't cry any more. We must think what to do." 
 
 As Sylvia looked at her blankly, she went on : " Somehow 
 Lawrence must be taken away for a while — until Father's 
 — either you or I must go with him and stay, and the other 
 one be here with Father until he's — he's more like him- 
 self." 
 
 Sylvia, fresh from the desolation of solitude in sorrow, 
 cried out : " Oh, Judith, how can you ! Now's the time for 
 us all to stay together ! Why should we ? " 
 
 Judith went to the door and closed it before answering, 
 a precaution so extraordinary in that house of frank open- 
 ness that Sylvia was struck into silence by it. Standing by 
 the door, Judith said in a low tone, " You didn't notice — 
 anything — about Father ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, he looks ill. He is so pale — he frightened me ! " 
 
 Judith looked down at the floor and was silent a moment. 
 Sylvia's heart began to beat fast with a new foreboding. 
 " Why, what is the matter with " she began. 
 
 Judith covered her face with her hands. " I don't know 
 what to do I " she said despairingly. 
 
 No phrase coming from Judith could have struck a more 
 piercing alarm into her sister's heart. She ran to Judith, 
 pulled her hands down, and looked into her face anxiously. 
 " What do you mean, Judy — what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Why — it's five days now since Mother died, three days 
 since the funeral — and Father has hardly eaten a mouthful 
 — and I don't think he's slept at all. I know he hasn't taken 
 his clothes off. And — and — " she drew Sylvia again to 
 the bed, and sat down beside her, " he says such things . . « 
 
446 The Bent Twig 
 
 the night after Mother died Lawrence had cried so I was 
 afraid he would be sick, and I got him to bed and gave 
 him some hot milk," — the thought flashed from one to the 
 other almost palpably, " That is what Mother would have 
 done " — " and he went to sleep — he was perfectly worn out. 
 I went downstairs to find Father. It was after midnight. 
 He was walking around the house into one room after 
 another and out on the porch and even out in the garden, 
 as fast as he could walk. He looked so " She shud- 
 dered. " I went up to him and said, * Father, Father, what 
 are you doing ? ' He never stopped walking an instant, but 
 he said, as though I was a total stranger and we were in a 
 railway station or somewhere like that, ' I am looking for 
 my wife. I expect to come across her any moment, but 
 I can't seem to remember the exact place I was to meet 
 
 her. She must be somewhere about, and I suppose ' 
 
 and then, Sylvia, before I could help it, he opened the door 
 to Mother's room quick — and the men were there, and 
 
 the coffin " She stopped short, pressing her hand 
 
 tightly over her mouth to stop its quivering. Sylvia gazed at 
 her in horrified silence. 
 
 After a pause, Judith went on : " He turned around and 
 ran as fast as he could up the stairs to his study and 
 locked the door. He locked me out — the night after Mother 
 died. I called and called to him — he didn't answer. I was 
 afraid to call very loud for fear of waking Lawrence. I've 
 had to think of Lawrence too." She stopped again to draw 
 a long breath. She stopped and suddenly reached out im- 
 ploring hands to hold fast to Sylvia. " I'm so glad you 
 have come ! " she murmured. 
 
 This from Judith ran like a galvanic shock through Syl- 
 via's sorrow-sodden heart. She sat up, aroused as she had 
 never been before to a stern impulse to resist her emotion, 
 to fight it down. She clasped Judith's hand hard, and felt 
 the tears dry in her eyes. Judith went on : " If it hadn't 
 been for Lawrence — he's sick as it is. I've kept him in his 
 room — twice when he's been asleep I've managed to get 
 Father to eat something and lie down — there seem to be 
 
Home Again 447 
 
 times when he's so worn out that he doesn't know what 
 he's doing. But it comes back to him. One night I had 
 just persuaded him to lie down, when he sat up again 
 with that dreadful face and said very loud : ' Where is 
 my wife? Where is Barbara?' That was on the night 
 after the funeral. And the next day he came to me, out 
 in the garden, and said, — he never seems to know who 
 I am : ' I don't mind the separation from my wife, you 
 understand — it's not that — I'm not a child, I can endure 
 that — but I must know where she is. I must know where 
 she is ! ' He said it over and over, until his voice got 
 so loud he seemed to hear it himself and looked around — 
 and then he went back into the house and began walking 
 all around, opening and shutting all the doors. What 
 I'm afraid of is his meeting Lawrence and saying some- 
 thing like that. Lawrence would go crazy. I thought, 
 as soon as you came, you could take him away to the 
 Helman farm — the Helmans have been so good — and Mrs. 
 Helman offered to take Lawrence — only he oughtn't to 
 be alone — he needs one of us " 
 
 Judith was quiet now, and though very pale, spoke with 
 her usual firmness. Sylvia too felt herself iron under the 
 pressure of her responsibilities. She said : " Yes, I see. All 
 right — I'll go," and the two went together into Lawrence's 
 room. He was lying on the bed, his face in the pillows. At 
 the sound of their steps he turned over and showed a pitiful 
 white face. He got up and moved uncertainly towards 
 Sylvia, sinking into her arms and burying his face on her 
 shoulder. 
 
 But a little later when their plan was told him, he turned 
 to Judith with a cry : " No, you go with me, Judy ! I want 
 you! You ' know' — about it." 
 
 Over his head the sisters looked at each other with 
 questioning eyes ; and Sylvia nodded her consent. Lawrence 
 had always belonged to Judith. 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 
 " Strange that we creatures of the petty ways, 
 Poor prisoners behind these fleshly bars, 
 Can sometimes think us thoughts with God ablaze, 
 Touching the fringes of the outer stars." 
 
 And so they went away, Lawrence very white, stooping 
 with the weight of his suitcase, his young eyes, blurred and 
 red, turned upon Judith with an infinite confidence in her 
 strength. Judith herself was pale, but her eyes were dry 
 and her lips firm in her grave, steadfast face, so like her 
 mother's, except for the absence of the glint of humor. Syl- 
 via kissed her good-bye, feeling almost a little fear of her 
 resolute sister; but as she watched them go down the path, 
 and noted the appealing drooping of the boy towards Judith, 
 Sylvia was swept with a great wave of love and admira- 
 tion — and courage. 
 
 She turned to face the difhcult days and nights before 
 her and forced herself to speak cheerfully to her father, 
 who sat in a chair on the porch, watching the departing 
 travelers and not seeing them. " How splendid Judith is ! " 
 she cried, and v/ent on with a break in the voice she tried 
 to control : " She will take Mother's place for us all ! " 
 
 Her father frowned slightly, as though she had inter- 
 rupted him in some effort where concentration was neces- 
 sary, but otherwise gave no sign that he heard her. 
 
 Sylvia watched him anxiously through the window. 
 Presently she saw him relax from his position of strained 
 attention with a great sigh, almost a groan, and lean back 
 in his chair, covering his eyes with his hands. When he 
 took them down, his face had the aged, ravaged expression 
 of exhaustion which had so startled her on her arrival. 
 Now she felt none of her frightened revulsion, but only an 
 
 448 
 
" The Outer Stars " 449 
 
 aching pity which sent her out to him in a rush, her arms 
 outstretched, crying to him brokenly that he still had his 
 children who loved him more than anything in the world. 
 
 For the first time in her life, her father repelled her, 
 shrinking away from her with a brusque, involuntary recoil 
 that shocked her, thrusting her arms roughly to one side, 
 and rising up hastily to retreat into the house. He said 
 in a bitter, recriminating tone, " You don't know what you 
 are talking about,'* and left her standing there, the tears 
 frozen in her eyes. He went heavily upstairs to his study 
 on the top floor and locked the door. Sylvia heard the 
 key turn. It shut, her into an intolerable solitude. She 
 had not thought before that anything could seem worse 
 than the desolation of her mother's absence. 
 
 She felt a deathlike sinking of her heart. She was 
 afraid of her father, who no longer seemed her father, 
 created to protect and cherish her, but some maniac stranger. 
 She felt an impulse like that of a terrified child to run 
 away, far away to some one who should stand before her 
 and bear the brunt. She started up from her chair with 
 panic haste, but the familiar room, saturated with recol- 
 lections of her mother's gallant spirit, stood about her like 
 a wall, shutting her in to the battle with her heart. Who 
 was there to summon whom she could endure as a spec- 
 tator of her father's condition? Her mother's empty chair 
 stood opposite her, against the wall. She looked at it 
 fixedly; and drawing a long breath sat down quietly. 
 
 This act of courage brought a reward in the shape of a 
 relaxation of the clutch on her throat and about her heart. 
 Her mother's wise materialism came to her mind now and 
 she made a heartsick resolve that she would lead as phys- 
 ically normal a life as possible, working out of doors, forc- 
 ing herself to eat, and that, above all things, she would 
 henceforth deny herself the weakening luxury of tears. 
 And yet but an hour later, as she bent over her mother's 
 flower-beds blazing in the sun, she found the tears again 
 streaming from her eyes. 
 
 She tried to wipe them away, but they continued to rain 
 
4£o The Bent Twig 
 
 down on her cheeks. Her tongue knew their saltness. She 
 was profoundly alarmed and cowed by this irresistible weak- 
 ness, and stood helplessly at bay among the languid roses. 
 The sensation of her own utter weakness, prostrate before 
 her dire need for strength, was as bitter as the taste of 
 her tears. 
 
 She stood there, among the sun-warmed flowers, looking 
 like a symbolic figure of youth triumphant . . . and she 
 felt herself to be in a black and windowless prison, where 
 the very earth under her feet was treacherous, where every- 
 thing betrayed her. 
 
 Then, out of her need, her very great need, out of the 
 wide and empty spaces of her inculcated unbelief, some- 
 thing rose up and overwhelmed her. The force stronger 
 than herself which she had longed to feel, blew upon her 
 like a wind out of eternity. 
 
 She found herself on her knees, her face hidden in her 
 hands, sending out a passionate cry which transcended 
 words. The child of the twentieth century, who had been 
 taught not to pray, was praying. 
 
 She did not know how long she knelt there before the 
 world emerged from the white glory which had whirled 
 down upon it, and hidden it from her. But when she came 
 to herself, her eyes were dry, and the weakening impulse 
 to tears had gone. She stretched out her hands before her, 
 and they did not tremble. The force stronger than herself 
 was now in her own heart. From her mother's garden 
 there rose a strong, fragrant exhalation, as sweet as 
 honey. 
 
 For more than an hour Sylvia worked steadily among the 
 flowers, consciously wrought upon by the healing emana- 
 tions from the crushed, spicy leaves, the warm earth, and 
 the hot, pure breath of the summer wind on her face. 
 
 Once she had a passing fancy that her mother stood near 
 her . . . smiling. 
 
CHAPTER XLIII 
 "Call now; is there any that will answer thee?" — Job. 
 
 When she went back to the silent, echoing house, she 
 felt calmer than at any time since she had read the telegram 
 in Naples. She did not stop to wash her earth-stained 
 hands, but went directly up the stairs to the locked door 
 at the top. She did not knock this time. She stood out- 
 side and said authoritatively in a clear, strong voice, the 
 sound of which surprised her, " Father dear, please open 
 the door and let me in." 
 
 There was a pause, and then a shuffle of feet. The door 
 opened and Professor Marshall appeared, his face very 
 white under the thick stubble of his gray, unshaven beard, 
 his shoulders bowed, his head hanging. Sylvia went to his 
 side, took his hand firmly in hers, and said quietly : " Father, 
 you must eat something. You haven't taken a bit of food 
 in two days. And then you must lie down and rest." She 
 poured all of her new strength into these quietly issued 
 commands, and permitted herself no moment's doubt of his 
 obedience to them. He lifted his head, looked at her, and 
 allowed her to lead him down the stairs and again into the 
 dining-room. Here he sat, quite spent, staring before him 
 until Sylvia returned from the kitchen with a plate of cold 
 meat and some bread. She sat down beside him, putting 
 out again consciously all her strength, and set the knife and 
 fork in his nerveless hands. In the gentle monologue 
 with which she accompanied his meal she did not mention 
 her mother, or anything but slight, casual matters about 
 the house and garden. She found herself speaking in a 
 hushed tone, as though not to awake a sleeping person. 
 Although she sat quite quietly, her hands loosely folded on 
 the table, her heart was thrilling and burning to a high 
 resolve. " Now it is my turn to help my father." 
 
 451 .- , 
 
452 The Bent Twig 
 
 After he had eaten a few mouthfuls and laid down the 
 knife and fork, she did not insist further, but rose to lead 
 him to the couch in the living-room. She dared not risk 
 his own room, the bed on which her mother had died. 
 
 " Now you must lie down and rest, Father," she said, 
 loosening his clothes and unlacing his shoes as though he 
 had been a sick child. He let her do what she would, and 
 as she pushed him gently back, he yielded and lay down 
 at full length. Sylvia sat down beside him, feeling her 
 strength ebbing. Her father lay on his back, his eyes wide 
 .Open. On the ceiling above him a circular flicker of light 
 danced and shimmered, reflected from a glass of water on 
 the table. His eyes fastened upon this, at first unwinkingly, 
 with a fixed intensity, and later with dropped lids and half- 
 upturned eyeballs. He was quite quiet, and finally seemed 
 asleep, although the line of white between his eyelids made 
 Sylvia shudder. 
 
 With the disappearance of the instant need for self- 
 control and firmness, she felt an immense fatigue. It had 
 cost her dearly, this victory, slight as it was. She drooped 
 in her chair, exhausted and undone. She looked down at 
 the ash-gray, haggard face on the pillow, trying to find in 
 those ravaged features her splendidly life-loving father. 
 It was so quiet that she could hear the big clock in the 
 dining-room ticking loudly, and half-consciously she began 
 to count the swings of the pendulum : One — two — three — 
 four — five — six — seven — eight — nine — ten — eleven — twelve — 
 thirteen — fourteen 
 
 She awoke to darkness and the sound of her mother's 
 name loudly screamed. She started up, not remembering 
 where she was, astonished to find herself sitting in a chair. 
 As she stood bewildered in the dark, the clock in the dining- 
 room struck two. At once from a little distance, outside 
 the window apparently, she heard the same wild cry ringing 
 in her ears — " Bar-ba-ra!" All the blood in her body con- 
 gealed and the hair on her head seemed to stir itself, in 
 the instant before she recognized her father's voice. 
 
 The great impulse of devotion which had entered her 
 
" Call Now " 453 
 
 heart in the garden still governed her. Now she was not 
 afraid. She did not think of running away. She only knew 
 that she must find her father quickly and take care of him. 
 Outside on the porch, the glimmering light from the stars 
 showed her his figure, standing by one of the pillars, lean- 
 ing forward, one hand to his ear. As she came out of 
 the door, he dropped his hand, threw back his head, and 
 again sent out an agonizing cry — " Bar-ba-ra! Where are 
 you ? " It was not the broken wail of despair ; it was the 
 strong, searching cry of a lost child who thinks trustingly 
 that if he but screams loudly enough his mother must hear 
 him and come — and yet who is horribly frightened be- 
 cause she does not answer. But this was a man in his full 
 strength who called! It seemed the sound must reach 
 beyond the stars. Sylvia felt her very bones ringing with 
 it. She went along the porch to her father, and laid her 
 hand on his arm. Through his sleeve she could feel how 
 tense and knotted were the muscles. " Oh, Father, don't!" 
 she said in a low tone. He shook her off roughly, but did 
 not turn his head or look at her. Sylvia hesitated, not 
 daring to leave him and not daring to try to draw him away ; 
 and again was shaken by that terrible cry. 
 
 The intensity of his listening attitude seemed to hush 
 into breathlessness the very night about him, as it did 
 Sylvia. There was not a sound from the trees. They stood 
 motionless, as though carved in wood ; not a bird fluttered 
 a wing ; not a night-insect shrilled ; the brook, dried by the 
 summer heat to a thread, crept by noiselessly. As once more 
 the frantic cry resounded, it seemed to pierce this opaque si- 
 lence like a palpable missile, and to wing its way without 
 hindrance up to the stars. Not the faintest murmur came 
 in answer. The silence shut down again, stifling. Sylvia 
 and her father stood as though in the vacuum of a great 
 bell-glass which shut them away from the rustling, breath- 
 ing, living world. Sylvia said again, imploringly, " Oh, 
 Father! " He looked at her angrily, sprang from the 
 porch, and walked rapidly towards the road, stumbling 
 and tripping over the laces of his shoes, which Sylvia had 
 
454 The Bent Twig 
 
 loosened when she had persuaded him to lie down. Sylvia 
 ran after him, her long bounds bringing her up to his side 
 in a moment. The motion sent the blood racing through 
 her stiffened limbs again. She drew a long breath of libera- 
 tion. As she stepped along beside her father, peering in the 
 starlight at his dreadful face, half expecting him to turn 
 and strike her at any moment, she felt an immense relief. 
 The noise of their feet on the path was like a sane voice 
 of reality. Anything was more endurable than to stand 
 silent and motionless and hear that screaming call lose 
 itself in the grimly unanswering distance. 
 
 They were on the main road now, walking so swiftly that, 
 in the hot summer night, Sylvia felt her forehead beaded 
 and her light dress cling to her moist body. She took her 
 father's hand. It was parched like a sick man's, the skin 
 like a dry husk. After this, they walked hand-in-hand. 
 Professor Marshall continued to walk rapidly, scuffling in 
 his loose, unlaced shoes. They passed barns and farm- 
 houses, the latter sleeping, black in the starlight, with 
 darkened windows. In one, a poor little shack of two 
 rooms, there was a lighted pane, and as they passed, Sylvia 
 heard the sick wail of a little child. The sound pierced her 
 heart. She longed to go in and put her arms about the 
 mother. Now she understood. She tightened her hold on 
 her father's hand and lifted it to her lips. 
 
 He suffered this with no appearance of his former anger, 
 and soon after Sylvia was aware that his gait was slacken- 
 ing. She looked at him searchingly, and saw that he had 
 swung from unnatural tension to spent exhaustion. His 
 head was hanging and as he walked he wavered. She 
 put her hand under his elbow and turned him about on 
 the road. " Now we will go home," she said, drawing his 
 arm through hers. He made no resistance, not seeming 
 to know what she had done, and shuffled along wearily, 
 leaning all his weight on her arm. She braced her- 
 self against this drag, and led him slowly back, wiping 
 her face from time to time with her sleeve. There were 
 moments when she thought she must let him sink on the 
 
" Call Now " 455 
 
 road, but she fought through these, and as the sky was 
 turning faintly gray over their heads, and the implacably 
 silent stars were disappearing in this pale light, the two 
 stumbled up the walk to the porch. 
 
 Professor Marshall let himself be lowered into the 
 steamer chair. Sylvia stood by him until she was sure he 
 would not stir, and then hurried into the kitchen. In a few 
 moments she brought him a cup of hot coffee and a piece of 
 bread. He drank the one and ate the other without protest 
 She set the tray down and put a pillow under her father's 
 head, raising the foot-rest. He did not resist her. His 
 head fell back on the pillow, but his eyes did not close. 
 They were fixed on a distant point in the sky. 
 
 Sylvia tiptoed away into the house and sank down shiv- 
 ering into a chair. A great fit of trembling and nausea came 
 over her. She rose, walked into the kitchen, her footsteps 
 sounding in her ears like her mother's. There was some 
 coffee left, which she drank resolutely, and she cooked an 
 egg and forced it down, her mother's precepts loud in her 
 ears. Whatever else happened, she must have her body in 
 condition to be of use. 
 
 After this she went out to the porch again and lay down 
 in the hammock near her father. The dawn had brightened 
 into gold, and the sun was showing on the distant, level, 
 green horizon-line. 
 
 It was almost the first moment of physical relaxation she 
 had known, and to her immense, her awed astonishment it 
 was instantly filled with a pure, clear brilliance, the knowl- 
 edge that Austin Page lived and loved her. It was the first, 
 it was the only time she thought of anything but her father, 
 and this was not a thought, it was a vision. In the chaos 
 about her, a great sunlit rock had emerged. She laid hold 
 on it and knew that she would not sink. 
 
 But now, now she must think of nothing but her father! 
 There was no one else who could help her father. Could 
 she? Could any one? 
 
456 The Bent Twig 
 
 She herself, since her prayer among the roses, cherished 
 in her darkened heart a hope of dawn. But how could she 
 tell her father of that? Even if she had been able to force 
 him to listen to her, she had nothing that words could say, 
 nothing but the recollection of that burning hour in the 
 garden to set against the teachings of a lifetime. That had 
 changed life for her . . . but what could it mean to her 
 father ? How could she tell him of what was only a word- 
 less radiance ? Her father had taught her that death meant 
 the return of the spirit to the great, impersonal river of 
 life. If the spirit had been superb and splendid, like her 
 mother's, the river of life was the brighter for it, but that 
 was all. Her mother had lived, and now lived no more. 
 That was what they had tried to teach her to believe. That 
 was what her father had taught her — without, it now ap- 
 peared, believing it himself. 
 
 And yet she divined that it was not that he would not, 
 but that he could not now believe it. He was like a man 
 set in a vacuum fighting for the air without which life is 
 impossible. And she knew no way to break the imprison- 
 ing wall and let in air for him. Was there, indeed, any 
 air outside? There must be, or the race could not live 
 from one generation to the next. Every one whose love had 
 encountered death must have found an air to breathe or 
 have died. 
 
 Constantly through all these thoughts, that day and for 
 many days and months to come, there rang the sound of her 
 mother's name, screamed aloud. She heard it as though 
 she were again standing by her father under the stars. And 
 there had been no answer. 
 
 She felt the tears stinging at her eyelids and sat up, 
 terrified at the idea that her weakness was about to over- 
 take her. She would go again out to the garden where she 
 had found strength before. The morning sun was now hot 
 and glaring in the eastern sky. 
 
CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 "A bruised reed will He not break, and a dimly burning 
 wick will He not quench." — Isaiah. 
 
 As she stepped down the path, she saw a battered black 
 straw hat on the other side of the hedge. Cousin Parnelia's 
 worn old face and dim eyes looked at her through the gate. 
 Under her arm she held planchette. Sylvia stepped through 
 the gate and drew it inhospitably shut back of her. " What 
 is it, Cousin Parnelia ? " she said challengingly, determined 
 to protect her father. 
 
 The older woman's face was all aglow. " Oh, my dear ; 
 I've had such a wonderful message from your dear mother. 
 Last night " 
 
 Sylvia recoiled from the mad old creature. She could 
 not bear to have her sane, calm, strong mother's name on 
 those lips. Cousin Parnelia went on, full of confidence : " I 
 was sound asleep last night when I was awakened by the 
 clock's striking two. It sounded so loud that I thought 
 somebody had called to me. I sat up in bed and said, 
 1 What is it ? ' and then I felt a great longing to have 
 planchette write. I got out of bed in my nightgown and 
 sat down in the dark at the table. Planchette wrote so fast 
 , that I could hardly keep up with it. And when it stopped, 
 ' I lighted a match and see . . . here ... in your mother's 
 very handwriting" — fervently she held the bit of paper up 
 for Sylvia to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper 
 and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl pro- 
 duced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling 
 anything rather than her mother's handwriting. 
 
 " Read it — read it — it is too beautiful ! " quivered the 
 other, " and then let me show it to your father. It was 
 
 meant for him " 
 
 457 
 
458 The Bent Twig 
 
 Sylvia shook like a roughly plucked fiddle-string. She 
 seized the wrinkled old hand fiercely. " Cousin Parnelia, 
 I forbid you going anywhere near my father! You know 
 as well as I do how intensely he has always detested spirit- 
 ualism. To see you might be the thing that would " 
 
 The old woman broke in, protesting, her hat falling to 
 one side, her brown false front sliding with it and showing 
 the thin, gray hairs beneath. " But, Sylvia, this is the veryi 
 thing that would save him — such a beautiful, beautiful 
 message from your mother, — see! In her own hand- 
 writing ! " 
 
 Sylvia snatched the sheet of yellow paper. " That's not 
 my mother's handwriting! Do you think I am as crazy 
 as you are ! " She tore the paper into shreds and scattered 
 them from her, feeling a relief in the violence of her action. 
 The next moment she remembered how patient her mother 
 had always been with her daft kinswoman and seeing tears 
 in the blurred old eyes, went to put placating arms about 
 the other's neck. " Never mind, Cousin Parnelia," she said 
 with a vague kindness, " I know you mean to do what's 
 right — only we don't believe as you do, and Father must 
 not be excited ! " She turned sick as she spoke and shrank 
 away from the hedge, carrying her small old cousin with 
 her. Above the hedge appeared her father's gray face 
 and burning eyes. 
 
 He was not looking at her, but at Cousin Parnelia, who 
 now sprang forward, crying that she had had a beautiful, 
 beautiful message from Cousin Barbara. " It came last 
 night at two o'clock . . . just after the clock struck 
 two " 
 
 Professor Marshall looked quickly at his daughter, and 
 she saw that he too had heard the clock striking in the 
 dreadful night, and that he noted the coincidence. 
 
 " Just after the clock struck two she wrote the loveliest 
 message for you with planchette. Sylvia tore it up. 
 But I'm sure that if we try with faith, she will repeat 
 it . . ." 
 
 Professor Marshall's eyes were fixed on his wife's old 
 
"A Bruised Reed" 459 
 
 cousin. " Come in," he said in a hoarse voice. They were 
 almost the first words Sylvia had heard him say. 
 
 Cousin Parnelia hastened up the path to the house. Syl- 
 via followed with her father, at the last extremity of agi j 
 tation and perplexity. 
 
 When Cousin Parnelia reached the dining-room table, 
 she sat down by it, pushed the cloth to one side, and pro- 
 duced a fresh sheet of yellow paper from her shabby bag. 
 " Put yourselves in a receptive frame of mind," she said in 
 a glib, professional manner. Sylvia stiffened and tried to 
 draw her father away, but he continued to stand by the 
 table, staring at the blank sheet of paper with a strange, 
 wild expression on his white face. He did not take his eyes 
 from the paper. In a moment, he sat down suddenly, as 
 though his knees had failed him. 
 
 There was a long silence, in which Sylvia could hear the 
 roaring of the blood in her arteries. Cousin Parnelia put 
 one deeply veined, shrunken old hand on planchette and 
 the other over her eyes and waited, her wrinkled, common- 
 place old face assuming a solemn expression of importance. 
 The clock ticked loudly. 
 
 Planchette began to write — at first in meaningless flour- 
 ishes, then with occasional words, and finally Sylvia saw 
 streaming away from the pencil the usual loose, scrawling 
 handwriting. Several lines were written and then the pencil 
 stopped abruptly. Sylvia standing near her father heard 
 his breathing grow loud and saw in a panic that the veins 
 on his temples were swollen. 
 
 Cousin Parnelia took her hand off planchette, put on 
 her spectacles, read over what had been written, and gave 
 it to Professor Marshall. Sylvia was in such a state of 
 bewilderment that nothing her father could have done would 
 have surprised her. She half expected to see him dash 
 the paper in the old woman's face, half thought that any 
 moment he would fall, choking with apoplexy. 
 
 What he did was to take the paper and try to hold it 
 steadily enough to read. But his hand shook terribly. 
 
 " I will read it to you," said Cousin Parnelia, and she 
 
460 The Bent Twig 
 
 read aloud in her monotonous, illiterate voice : " ' I am well 
 and happy, dearest Elliott, and never far from you. When 
 you call to me, I hear you. All is not yet clear, but I 
 wish I could tell you more of the whole meaning. I am 
 
 near you this moment. I wish that ' The message 
 
 stopped there," explained Cousin Parnelia, laying down 
 the paper. 
 
 Professor Marshall leaned over it, straining his eyes to 
 the rude scrawls, passing his hand over his forehead as 
 though to brush away a web. He broke out in a loud, high 
 voice. " That is her handwriting. . . . Good God, her very 
 handwriting — the way she writes Elliott — it is from her!" 
 He snatched the paper up and took it to the window, 
 stumbling over the chairs blindly as he went. As he held it 
 up to the light, poring over it again, he began to weep, 
 crying out his wife's name softly, the tears streaming down 
 his unshaven cheeks. He came back to the table, and sank 
 down before it, still sobbing, still murmuring incessantly, 
 " Oh, Barbara — Barbara ! " and laid his head on his out- 
 stretched arms. 
 
 " Let him cry ! " whispered Cousin Parnelia sentimentally 
 to Sylvia, drawing her away into the hall. A few moments 
 later when they looked in, he had fallen asleep, his head 
 turned to one side so that Sylvia saw his face, tear-stained 
 and exhausted, but utterly relaxed and at peace, like that 
 of a little child in sleep. Crushed in one hand was the 
 yellow sheet of paper covered with coarse, wavering marks. 
 
CHAPTER XLV 
 
 * That our soul may swim 
 We sink our heart down, bubbling, under wave!' 
 
 The two sisters, their pale faces grave in the shadow of 
 their wide hats, were on their knees with trowels in a 
 border of their mother's garden. Judith had been giving 
 a report of Lawrence's condition, and Sylvia was just finish- 
 ing an account of what had happened at home, when the 
 gate in the osage-orange hedge clicked, and a blue-uni- 
 formed boy came whistling up the path. He made an 
 inquiry as to names, and handed Sylvia an envelope. She 
 opened it, read silently, " Am starting for America and 
 you at once. Felix." She stood looking at the paper for 
 a moment, her face quite unmoved from its quiet sadness. 
 The boy asked, "Any answer?" 
 
 " No," she said decisively, shaking her head. " No 
 answer." 
 
 As he lingered, lighting a cigarette, she put a question in 
 her turn, " Anything to pay ? " 
 
 " No," said the boy, putting the cigarette-box back in 
 his pocket, " Nothing to pay." He produced a worn and 
 greasy book, " Sign on this line," he said, and after she had 
 signed, he went away down the path, whistling. The 
 transaction was complete. 
 
 Sylvia looked after the retreating figure and then turned 
 to Judith as though there had been no interruption. 
 "... and you can see for yourself how little use I am to 
 him now. Since he got Cousin Parnelia in the house, there's 
 nothing anybody else could do for him. Even you couldn't, 
 if you could leave Lawrence. Not for a while, anyhow. I 
 suppose he'll come slowly out of this to be himself again 
 . but I'm not sure that he will. And for now, I actually 
 
 46 7 
 
462 The Bent Twig 
 
 believe that he'd be easier in his mind if we were both 
 away. I never breathe a word of criticism about planchette, 
 of course. But he knows. There's that much left of his 
 old self. He knows how I must feel. He's really ever so 
 much better too. you know. He's taken up his classes in 
 the Summer School again. He said he had ' a message ' 
 from Mother that he was to go back to his work bravely ; 
 and the very next day he went over to the campus, and 
 taught all his classes as though nothing had happened. Isn't 
 it awfully, terribly touching to see how even such a poor, 
 incoherent make-believe of a ' message ' from Mother has 
 more power to calm him than anything we could do with 
 our whole hearts? But how can he! I can't understand 
 it ! I can't bear it, to come in on him and Cousin Parnelia, 
 in their evenings, and see them bent over that grotesque 
 planchette and have him look up at me so defiantly, as 
 though he were just setting his teeth and saying he wouldn't 
 care what I thought of him. He doesn't really care either. 
 He doesn't think of anything but of having evening come 
 when he can get another ' message ' from Mother . . . from 
 Mother ! Mother ! " 
 
 "Well, perhaps it would be as well for us not 
 to be here for a while," murmured Judith. There 
 were deep dark rings under her eyes, as though she had 
 slept badly for a long time. " Perhaps it may be better 
 later on. I can take Lawrence back with me when I go 
 to the hospital. I want to keep him near me of course, 
 dear little Lawrence. My little boy ! He'll be my life now. 
 He'll be what I have to live for." 
 
 Something in the quality of her quiet voice sent a chill to 
 Sylvia's heart. " Why, Judy dear, after you are married 
 of course you and Arnold can keep Lawrence with you. 
 That'll be the best for him, a real home, with you. Oh, 
 Judy dear," she laid down her trowel, fighting hard against 
 a curious sickness which rose within her. She tried to 
 speak lightly. Oh, Judy dear, when are you going to be 
 married? Or don't you want to speak about it now, for a 
 while? You never write long letters, I know — but your 
 
" That Our Soul May Swim " 463 
 
 late ones haven't had any news in them! You positively 
 haven't so much as mentioned Arnold's name lately." 
 
 As she spoke, she knew that she was voicing an uneasi- 
 ness which had been an unacknowledged occupant of her 
 mind for a long time. But she looked confidently to see 
 one of Judith's concise, comprehensive statements make her 
 dim apprehensions seem fantastic and far-fetched, as Judith 
 always made any flight of the imagination appear. But 
 nothing which Sylvia's imagination might have been able 
 to conceive would have struck her such a blow as the fact 
 which Judith now produced, in a dry, curt phrase : " I'm not 
 going to be married." 
 
 Sylvia did not believe her ears. She looked up wildly 
 as Judith rose from the ground, and advanced upon her 
 sister with a stern, white face. Before she had finished 
 speaking, she had said more than Sylvia had ever heard her 
 say about a matter personal to her; but even so, her iron 
 words were few. " Sylvia, I want to tell you about it, of 
 course. I've got to. But I won't say a word, unless you can 
 keep quiet, and not make a fuss. I couldn't stand that. 
 I've got all I can stand as it is." 
 
 She stood by an apple-tree and now broke from it a 
 small, leafy branch, which she held as she spoke. There 
 was something shocking in the contrast between the steady 
 rigor of her voice and the fury of her fingers as they tore 
 and stripped and shredded the leaves. " Arnold is an in- 
 curable alcoholic," she said ; " Dr. Rivedal has pronounced 
 him hopeless. Dr. Charton and Dr. Pansard (they're the 
 best specialists in that line) have had him under observa- 
 tion and they say the same thing. He's had three dreadful 
 attacks lately. We . . . none of their treatment does any 
 good. It's been going on too long — from the time he was 
 first sent away to school, at fourteen, alone! There was 
 an inherited tendency, anyhow. Nobody took it seriously, 
 that and — and the other things boys with too much money 
 do. Apparently everybody thought it was just the way boys 
 are — if anybody thought anything about it, except that it 
 was a bother. He never had anybody, you know — never, 
 
464 The Bent Twig 
 
 never anybody who . . ." her voice rose, threatened to 
 break. She stopped, swallowed hard, and began again : 
 "The trouble is he has no constitution left — nothing for a 
 doctor to work with. It's not Arnold's fault. If he had 
 come out to us, that time in Chicago when he wanted to — 
 
 we — he could — with Mother to " Her steady voice 
 
 gave way abruptly. She cast the ravaged, leafless branch 
 violently to the ground and stood looking down at it. 
 There was not a fleck of color in her beautiful, stony face. 
 
 Sylvia concentrated all her will-power on an effort to 
 speak as Judith would have her, quietly, without heroics; 
 but when she broke her silence she found that she had no 
 control of her voice. She tried to say, " But, Judith dear, 
 if Arnold is like that — doesn't he need you more than ever? 
 You are a nurse. How can you abandon him now ! " But 
 she could produce only a few, broken, inarticulate words 
 in a choking voice before she was obliged to stop short, lest 
 she burst out in the flood of horror which Judith had 
 forbidden. 
 
 Broken and inarticulate as they were, Judith knew what 
 was the meaning of those words. The corners of her mouth 
 twitched uncontrollably. She bit her marble lower lip 
 repeatedly before she could bring out the few short phrases 
 
 which fell like clods on a coffin. " If I — if we Arnold 
 
 and I are in love with each other." She stopped, drew a 
 painful breath, and said again : " Arnold and I are in love 
 with each other. Do you know what that means? He is 
 the only man I could not take care of — Arnold! If I 
 should try, we would soon be married, or lovers. If we 
 
 were married or lovers, we would soon have " She 
 
 had overestimated her strength. Even she was not strong 
 enough to go on. 
 
 She sat down on the ground, put her long arms around 
 her knees, and buried her face in them. She was not 
 weeping. She sat as still as though carved in stone. 
 
 Sylvia herself was beyond tears. She sat looking down 
 at the moist earth on the trowel she held, drying visibly in 
 the hot sun, turning to dust, and falling away in a crum- 
 
" That Our Soul May Swim " 465 
 
 bling, impalpable powder. It was like seeing a picture of 
 her heart. She thought of Arnold with an indignant, pas- 
 sionate pity — how could Judith ? But she was so 
 
 close to Judith's suffering that she felt the dreadful rigidity 
 of her body. The flat, dead tones of the man in the 
 Pantheon were in her ears. It seemed to her that Life was 
 an adventure perilous and awful beyond imagination. 
 There was no force to cope with it, save absolute integrity. 
 Everything else was a vain and foolish delusion, a two- 
 edged sword which wounded the wielding hand. 
 
 She did not move closer to Judith, she did not put out 
 her hand. Judith would not like that. She sat quite mo- 
 tionless, looking into black abysses of pain, of responsi- 
 bilities not met, feeling press upon her the terrifying close- 
 ness of all human beings to all other human beings — there 
 in the sun of June a cold sweat stood on her fore- 
 head. . . . 
 
 But then she drew a long breath. Why, there was 
 Austin! The anguished contraction of her heart relaxed. 
 The warm blood flowed again through her veins. There 
 was Austin! 
 
 She was rewarded for her effort to bring herself to 
 Judith's ways, when presently her sister moved and 
 reached out blindly for her hand. At this she opened her 
 arms and took Judith in. No word was spoken. Their 
 mother was there with them. 
 
 Sylvia looked out over the proud, dark head, now heavy 
 on her bosom, and felt herself years older. She did not 
 try to speak. She had nothing to say. There was nothing 
 she could do, except to hold Judith and love her. 
 
 There was nothing, nothing left but love. 
 
CHAPTER XLVI 
 A LONG TALK WITH ARNOLD 
 
 The tall, lean young man, sitting his galloping horse very 
 slackly, riding fast with a recklessly loose rein, and staring 
 with bloodshot eyes down at the dust of the road, gave 
 an exclamation, brought the mare upon her haunches, and 
 sprang down from the saddle. A woman, young, tall, 
 grave, set like a pearl in her black mourning dress, stood 
 up from the roadside brook and advanced to meet him. 
 They looked at each other as people do who meet after 
 death has passed by. They stammered vague words, their 
 eyes brimming. 
 
 " I — she was always so good to me," said Arnold, his 
 voice breaking and quavering as he wrung Sylvia's hand 
 again and again. " I never knew — saw much of her, I 
 know — but when I was a little boy, I used — I used to dream 
 about her at night." His thin, sallow face flushed with his 
 earnestness. " I don't believe — honestly, Sylvia, I don't be- 
 lieve her own children loved her any more than I did. Fve 
 thought so many times how different everything would 
 have been if I'd — I don't suppose you remember, but years 
 ago when you and she were in Chicago, I ran away from 
 school to go out there, and ask if " 
 
 Sylvia remembered, had thought of nothing else from 
 the moment she had seen far down the road the horseman 
 vainly fleeing the black beast on his crupper. She shook 
 her head now, her hand at her throat, and motioned him 
 to silence. " Don't ! Don't ! " she said urgently. " Yes, I 
 remember. I remember." 
 
 There was a moment's silence, filled by the murmur of 
 the little brook at their feet. The mare, which had been 
 drinking deeply, now lifted her head, the water running 
 
 466 
 
A Long Talk with Arnold 467 
 
 from the corners of her mouth. She gave a deep breath 
 of satisfaction, and began cropping the dense green grass 
 which grew between the water and the road. Her master 
 tossed the reins over the pommel and let her go. He began 
 speaking again on a different note. " But, Sylvia, what in 
 the world — here, can't we go up under those trees a few 
 minutes and have a talk ? I can keep my eye on the mare/" 
 As they took the few steps he asked again, " How ever 
 does it happen that you're here at Lydford Junction of all 
 awful holes ? " 
 
 Sylvia took an abrupt resolution, sat down on the pine- 
 needles, and said, very directly, " I am on my way to Austin 
 Farm to see if Austin Page still wants to marry me." Her 
 manner had the austere simplicity of one who has been 
 moving in great and grave emotions. 
 
 Arnold spoke with an involuntary quickness : " But 
 you've heard, haven't you, about his giving up all his Colo- 
 rado . . ." 
 
 Sylvia flushed a deep crimson and paid with a moment 
 of bitter, shamed resentment for the other bygone moments 
 of calculation. " Yes, yes, of course." She spoke with a 
 stern impatience. " Did you suppose it was for his fortune 
 
 that " She paused and said humbly, " Of course, it's 
 
 natural that you should think that of me." 
 
 Arnold attempted no self-exculpation. He sat down by 
 her, his riding-crop across his knees. " Could you — do you 
 feel like telling me about it ? " he asked. 
 
 She nodded. It came to her like an inspiration that only 
 if she opened her heart utterly to Arnold, could he open 
 his sore heart to her. " There's not much to tell. I don't 
 know where to begin. Perhaps there's too much to tell, 
 after all. I didn't know what any of it meant till now. 
 It's the strangest thing, Arnold, how little people know 
 what is growing strong in their lives! I supposed all the 
 time I only liked him because he was so rich. I thought it 
 must be so. I thought that was the kind of girl I was. 
 And then, besides, I'd — perhaps you didn't know how much 
 I'd liked Felix Morrison." 
 
468 The Bent Twig 
 
 Arnold nodded. " I sort of guessed so. You were 
 awfully game, then, Sylvia. You're game now — it's awfully 
 white to fall in love with a man because he's rich and then 
 stick to him when he's " 
 
 Sylvia waved her hand impatiently. " Oh, you don't 
 understand. It's not because I think I ought to — Heavens, 
 no! Let me try to tell you. Listen! When the news 
 came, about this Colorado business — I was about crazy for 
 a while. I just went to pieces. I knew I ought to answer 
 his letter, but I couldn't. , I see now, looking back, that I 
 had just crumpled up under the weight of my weakness. 
 I didn't know it then. I kept saying to myself that I was 
 only putting off deciding till I could think more about it, 
 but I know now that I had decided to give him up, never 
 to see him again — Felix was there, you know — I'd decided 
 to give Austin up because he wasn't rich any more. Did 
 you know I was that base sort of a woman? Do you sup- 
 pose he will ever be willing to take me back? — now after 
 this long time ? It's a month since I got his letter." 
 
 Arnold bent his riding-crop between his thin, nervous 
 hands. " Are you sure now, Sylvia, are you sure now, 
 dead sure ? " he asked. " It would be pretty hard on Aus- 
 tin if you — afterwards — he's such a square, straight sort 
 of a man, you ought to be awfully careful not to " 
 
 Sylvia said quickly, her quiet voice vibrant, her face 
 luminous : " Oh, Arnold, I could never tell you how sure 
 I am. There just isn't anything else. Over there in Paris, 
 I tried so hard to think about it — and I couldn't get any- 
 where at all. The more I tried, the baser I grew ; the more 
 I loved the things I'd have to give up, the more I hung 
 on to them. Thinking didn't do a bit of good, though I 
 
 almost killed myself thinking — thinking All I'd done 
 
 was to think out an ingenious, low, mean compromise to 
 justify myself in giving him up. And then, after Judith's 
 cablegram came, I started home — Arnold, what a journey 
 that was ! — and I found — I found Mother was gone, just 
 gone away forever — and I found Father out of his head with 
 sorrow — and Judith told me about — about her trouble. It 
 
A Long Talk with Arnold 469 
 
 was like going through a long black corridor. It seemed as 
 though I'd never come out on the other side. But when I 
 
 did A door that I couldn't ever, ever break down — 
 
 somehow it's been just quietly opened, and I've gone through 
 it into the only place where it's worth living. It's the 
 last thing Mother did for me — what nobody but Mother 
 could have done. I don't want to go back. I couldn't if 
 I wanted to. Those things don't matter to me now. I don't 
 think they're wrong, the ease, the luxury, if you can have 
 them without losing something finer. And I suppose some 
 people's lives are arranged so they don't lose the finer. But 
 mine wouldn't be. I see that now. And I don't care at all — 
 it all seems so unimportant to me, what I was caring about, 
 before. Nothing matters now but Austin. He is the only 
 thing that has lived on for me. I'm down on my knees with 
 thankfulness that he just exists, even if he can't forgive 
 me — even if he doesn't care for me any more — even if I 
 shouldn't ever see him again — even if he should die — he 
 would be like Mother, he couldn't die, for me. He's there. 
 I know what he is. Somehow everything's all right — be- 
 cause there's Austin." 
 
 She broke off, smiling palely and quietly at the man 
 beside her. He raised his eyes to hers for an instant and 
 then dropped them. Sylvia went on. " I don't pretend to 
 know all the ins and outs of this Colorado business. It 
 may be that it was quixotic on Austin's part. Maybe it 
 has upset business conditions out there a lot. It's too com- 
 plicated to be sure about how anything, I suppose, is likely 
 to affect an industrial society. But I'm sure about how 
 it has affected the people who live in the world — it's a great 
 golden deed that has enriched everybody — not just Austin's 
 coal-miners, but everybody who had heard of it. The sky 
 is higher because of it. Everybody has a new conception 
 of the good that's possible. And then for me, it means that 
 a man who sees an obligation nobody else sees and meets 
 it — why, with such a man to help, anybody, even a weak 
 fumbling person like me, can be sure of at least loyally 
 trying to meet the debts life brings. It's awfully hard to 
 
47° The Bent Twig 
 
 know what they are, and to meet them — and it's too hor^ 
 rible if you don't." 
 
 She stopped, aware that the life of the man beside her 
 was one of the unpaid debts so luridly present to her mind. 
 
 " Sylvia," said Arnold, hesitating, " Sylvia, all this sounds 
 so — look here, are you sure you're in love with Austin ? " 
 
 She looked at him, her eyes steady as stars. " Aren't 
 there as many ways of being in love, as there are people? " 
 she asked. " I don't know — I don't know if it's what every- 
 body would call being in love — but " She met his eyes, 
 
 and unashamed, regally, opened her heart to him with a 
 look. " I can't live without Austin," she said quickly, in a 
 low tone. 
 
 He looked at her long, and turned away. " Oh yes, 
 you're in love with him, all right ! " he murmured finally, 
 " and I don't believe that the Colorado business or any 
 of the rest of what you're saying has much to do with 
 anything. Austin's a live man and you're in love with him ; 
 and that's all there is to it. You're lucky ! " He took out 
 his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead and the back of 
 his neck. Sylvia, looking at him more closely, was shocked 
 to see how thin and haggard was his face. He asked now, 
 " Did you ever think that maybe what Austin was thinking 
 about when he chucked the money was what you'd say, how 
 you'd take it? I should imagine," he added with a faint 
 smile, " that he is hard to please if he's not pretty well 
 satisfied." 
 
 Sylvia was startled. " No. Why no," she said, " I 
 thought I'd looked at every single side of it, but I never 
 dreamed of that." 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean he did it for that ! Lord, no ! I 
 suppose it's been in his mind for years. But afterwards, 
 don't you suppose he thought . . . he'd been run after for 
 his money such a terrible lot, you know . . . don't you 
 suppose he thought he'd be sure of you one way or the 
 other, about a million times surer than he could have been 
 any other way; if you stuck by him, don't you see, with 
 old Felix there with all his fascinations, plus Molly's 
 
A Long Talk with Arnold 471 
 
 money." He turned on her with a sudden confused wonder 
 in his face. "God! What a time he took to do it! I 
 hadn't realized all his nerve till this minute. He must have 
 known what it meant, to leave you there with Felix ... to 
 
 risk losing you as well as Any other man would have 
 
 tried to marry you first and then ! Well, what a dead- 
 game sport he was! And all for a lot of dirty Polacks 
 who'd never laid eyes on him ! " 
 
 He took his riding-cap from his head and tossed it on 
 the dried pine-needles. Sylvia noticed that his dry, thin 
 hair was already receding from his parchment-like fore- 
 head. There were innumerable fine lines about his eyes. 
 One eyelid twitched spasmodically at intervals. He looked 
 ten years older than his age. He looked like a man who 
 would fall like a rotten tree at the first breath of sickness. 
 
 He now faced around to her with a return to everyday 
 matters. "See here, Sylvia, I've just got it through my 
 head. Are you waiting here for that five-fifteen train to 
 West Lydford and then are you planning to walk out to 
 the Austin Farm ? Great Scott ! don't do that, in this heat. 
 I'll just run back to the village and get a car and take 
 you there in half an hour." He rose to his feet, but Sylvia 
 sprang up quickly, catching at his arm in a panic. " No ! no ! 
 Arnold, you don't understand. I haven't written Austin 
 a word — he doesn't know I'm coming. At first in Paris I 
 couldn't — I was so despicable — and then afterwards I 
 couldn't either, — though it was all right then. There aren't 
 any words. It's all too big, too deep to talk about. I 
 didn't want to, either. I wanted to see him — to see if he 
 still, if he wants me now. He could write anything. He'd 
 feel he'd have to. How would I ever know but that it was 
 only because he thought he ought to? I thought I would 
 just go to him all by myself, without his knowing I was 
 coming. / can tell — the first moment he looks at me I can 
 tell — for all my life, I'll be sure, one way or the other. 
 That first look, what's in him will show! He can't hide 
 anything then, not even to be kind. I'll know! I'll 
 know!" 
 
472 The Bent Twig 
 
 Arnold sat down again with no comment. Evidently he 
 understood. He leaned his head back against the rough 
 bark of the pine, and closed his eyes. There was a painful 
 look of excessive fatigue about his whole person. He 
 glanced up and caught Sylvia's compassionate gaze on him. 
 " I haven't been sleeping very well lately," he said very 
 dryly. " It breaks a fellow up to lose sleep." Sylvia 
 nodded. Evidently he was not minded to speak of his own 
 troubles. He had not mentioned Judith. 
 
 She looked up thoughtfully at the well-remembered high 
 line of the mountain against the sky. Her mother's girl- 
 hood eyes had looked at that high line. She fell into a 
 brooding meditation, and presently, obeying one of her sure 
 instincts, she sat down by Arnold, and began to talk to him 
 about what she divined for the moment would most touch 
 and move him; she began to talk about her mother. He 
 was silent, his worn, sallow face impassive, but she knew 
 he was listening. 
 
 She told one incident after another of her mother's life, 
 incidents which, she told him, she had not noted at the 
 time, incidents which were now windows in her own life, 
 letting in the sunlight her mother loved so well. " All the 
 time I was growing up, I was blind, I didn't see anything. 
 I don't feel remorseful, I suppose that is the way children 
 have to be. But I didn't see her. There were so many 
 minor differences between us . . . tastes, interests. I al- 
 ways said hatefully to myself that Mother didn't understand 
 me. And it was true too. As if it matters ! What if she 
 didn't! She never talked morality to us, anyhow. She 
 never talked much at all. She didn't need to. She was 
 herself. No words would express that. She lived her life. 
 And there it is now, there it always will be for me, food 
 for me to live on. I thought she had died. But she has 
 never been so living for me. She's part of me now, for 
 always. And just because I see the meaning of her life, 
 why, there's the meaning of mine as clear as morning. How 
 can poor Father crave those ' messages ' from her ! Every- 
 thing is a message from her. We've lived with her. We 
 
A Long Talk with Arnold 473 
 
 have her in our hearts. It's all brightness when I think of 
 her. And I see by that brightness what's in my heart, and 
 that's Austin . . . Austin ! " On the name, her voice rose, 
 expanded, soared, wonderfully rang in the ensuing 
 silence. . . . 
 
 Arnold said slowly, without opening his eyes : " Yes, yes, 
 I see. I see how it is all right with you and Austin. He's 
 big enough for you, all of you. And Felix — he's not 
 so bad either — but he has, after all, a yellow streak. Poor 
 Felix!" 
 
 This brought up to Sylvia the recollection of the day, so 
 short a time ago when she had sat on the ground thus, 
 much as she now sat next to Arnold, and had felt Judith's 
 body rigid and tense. There was nothing rigid about 
 Arnold. He was relaxed in an exhausted passivity, a beaten 
 man. Let what would, befall. He seemed beyond feeling. 
 She knew that probably never again, so life goes, could 
 they speak together thus, like disembodied spirits, freed for 
 once from the blinding, entangling tragic web of self-con- 
 sciousness. She wondered again if he would find it in his 
 heart to speak to her of Judith She remembered something 
 else she had meant to ask him, if she could ever find words 
 for her question ; and she found that, in that hour of high 
 seriousness, they came quite without effort. " Arnold, 
 when I was in Paris, I met Professor Saunders. I ran 
 across him by accident. He told me some dreadful things. 
 I thought they couldn't all be true. But I wondered " 
 
 Arnold opened his eyes and turned them on her. She 
 saw again, as she had so many times, the honesty of them. 
 They were bloodshot, yellowed, set deep in dark hollows; 
 but it was a good gaze they gave. " Oh, don't take poor 
 old Saunders too seriously. He went all to pieces in the 
 end. He had a lot to say about Madrina, I suppose. I 
 shouldn't pay much attention to it. Madrina's not such 
 a bad lot as he makes her out. Madrina's all right if you 
 don't want anything out of her. She's the way she is, that's 
 all. It's not fair to blame her. We're all like that," he 
 ended with a pregnant, explanatory phrase which fell with 
 
474 The Bent Twig 
 
 an immense significance on Sylvia's ear. " Madrina's all 
 right when she's got what she wants." 
 
 The girl pondered in silence on this characterization. 
 After a time Arnold roused himself to say again : " I mean 
 she wouldn't go out of her way to hurt anybody, for any- 
 thing. She's not the kind that enjoys seeing other folks 
 squirm. Only she wants things the way she wants them. 
 Don't let anything old Saunders said worry you. I suppose 
 he laid all my worthlessness at Madrina's door too. He'd 
 got into that way of thinking, sort of dotty on the subject 
 anyhow. He was terribly hard hit, you know. I don't deny 
 either that Madrina did keep him strung on hot wire for 
 several years. I don't suppose it occurred to her that there 
 was any reason why she shouldn't if he were fool enough. 
 I never could see that he wasn't some to blame too. All 
 he had to do — all they any of them ever had to do, was to 
 get out and stay out. Madrina'd never lift a finger to 
 hinder. Even Saunders, I guess, would have had to admit 
 that Madrina always had plenty of dignity. And as for 
 me, great Scott! what could you expect a woman like 
 Madrina to do with a boy like me! She never liked me, 
 for one thing; and then I always bored her almost more 
 than she could stand. But she never showed her impa- 
 tience, never once. She's really awfully good-natured in 
 her way. She wanted to make me into a salon sort of per- 
 son, somebody who'd talk at her teas — converse, don't 
 you know. You see me, don't you! It was hard on hen 
 If she'd had you, now — I always thought you were the only 
 person in the world she ever really cared for. She does, 
 ]you know. All this year you've been with her, she's seemed 
 so different, more like a real woman. Maybe she's had her 
 troubles too. Maybe she's been deathly lonely. Don't you 
 go back on her too hard. Madrina's no vampire. That's 
 just old Saunders' addled wits. She's one of the nicest peo- 
 ple in the world to live with, if you don't need her for any- 
 thing. And she really does care a lot for you, Sylvia. That 
 time out in Chicago, when we were all kids, when I wanted 
 to go to live with your mother, I remember that Madrina 
 
A Long Talk with Arnold 475 
 
 suggested to her (and Madrina would have done it in a 
 minute, too) — she suggested that they change off, she take 
 you to bring up and I go out to live with your mother. " 
 He stopped to look at the woman beside him. " I don't 
 know about you, Sylvia, but I guess it would have made 
 some difference in my life ! " 
 
 Sylvia drew back, horrified that he was even in thought, 
 even for a moment robbing her of her mother. " Oh, what 
 I would have been — I can't bear to think of what kind of 
 woman I would have been without my mother ! " The idea 
 was terrible to her. She shrank away from her aunt as never 
 before in her life. The reminiscence brought an idea, evi- 
 dently as deeply moving, into Arnold's mind. The words 
 burst from him, " I might now be married to Judith ! " He 
 put his hands over his eyes and cast himself down among 
 the pine-needles. 
 
 Sylvia spoke quickly lest she lose courage. " Arnold ! 
 Arnold! What are you going to do with yourself now? 
 I'm so horribly anxious about you. I haven't dared speak 
 before " 
 
 He turned over and lay on his back, staring up into the 
 dark green of the pine. " I'm going to drink myself to 
 death as soon as I can," he said very quietly. " The doctors 
 say it won't take long." 
 
 She looked at his wasted face and gave a shocked, pity- 
 ing exclamation, thinking that it would be illness and not 
 drink which was to come to his rescue soon. 
 
 He looked at her askance, with his bloodshot eyes. " Can 
 you give me any single reason why I shouldn't ? " he chal- 
 lenged her. 
 
 Sylvia, the modern, had no answer. She murmured 
 weakly, " Why must any of us try to be decent ? " 
 
 " That's for the rest of you," he said. " I'm counted out. 
 The sooner I get myself out of the way, the better for 
 everybody. That's what Judith thinks." 
 
 The bitterness of his last phrase was savage. Sylvia cried 
 out against it. " Arnold ! That's cruel of you ! It's kill- 
 ing Judith ! " 
 
476 The Bent Twig 
 
 " She can't care for me," he said, with a deep, burning 
 resentment. " She can't ever have cared a rap, or she 
 wouldn't be able to " 
 
 Sylvia would not allow him to go on. " You must not 
 say such a thing, Arnold. You know Judith's only reason is 
 — she feels if she — if she had children and they were " 
 
 He interrupted her with an ugly hardness. " Oh, I know 
 what her reason is, all right. It's the latest fad. An)* 
 magazine article can tell you all about it. And I don't take 
 any stock in it, I tell you. It's just insanity to try to guess 
 at every last obligation you may possibly have ! You've got 
 to live your life, and have some nerve about it! If Judith 
 and I love each other, what is it to anybody else if we get 
 married? Maybe we wouldn't have any children. Maybe 
 they'd be all right — how could they be anything else with 
 Judith for their mother? And anyhow, leave that to 
 them! Let them take care of themselves! We've had to 
 do it for ourselves! What the devil did my father do for 
 me, I'd like to know, that I should die to keep my children 
 unborn? My mother was a country girl from up here in 
 the mountains. Since I've been staying here winters, I've 
 met some of her people. Her aunt told me that my father 
 
 was as drunk as a lord on his wedding night What 
 
 did he think of his son ? Why should I think of mine ? " 
 
 He was so evidently talking wildly, desperately, that 
 Sylvia made no attempt to stop him, divining with an 
 aching pity what lay under his dreadful words. But when 
 he said again, " It's simply that Judith doesn't care enough 
 about me to stick by me, now I'm down and out. She 
 can't bear me in her narrow little good world ! " Judith's 
 sister could keep her silence no more. 
 
 " Look here, Arnold, I haven't meant to tell you, but I 
 can't have you thinking that. Listen! You know Judith, 
 how splendid and self-controlled she is. She went all 
 through the sorrow of Mother's death without once break- 
 ing down, not once. But the night before I started to come 
 here, in the middle of the night, I heard such a sound from 
 Judith's room ! It frightened me, so I could hardly get my 
 
A Long Talk with Arnold 477 
 
 breath! It was Judith crying, crying terribly, so that she 
 couldn't keep it back any more. I never knew her to cry 
 before. I didn't dare go into her room — Mother would — 
 but I didn't dare. And yet I couldn't leave her there alone 
 in such awful trouble. I stood by the door in the dark — 
 
 oh, Arnold, I don't know how long — and heard her 
 
 When it began to be light she was quiet, and I went back to 
 bed ; and after a while I tiptoed in. She had gone to sleep 
 at last. Arnold, there under her cheek was that old base- 
 ball cap of yours ... all wet, all wet with her tears, 
 Judith's tears." 
 
 Before she had finished she was sorry she had spoken. 
 Arnold's face was suffused with purple. He put his hand 
 up to his collar and wrenched at it, clenched his fists, and 
 finally, flinging his riding-crop far from him, hid his face 
 in his hands and burst into tears. " Isn't it damnable ! " 
 he said over and over. " Isn't it damnable ! " 
 
 Sylvia had nothing more to say. It seemed indeed 
 damnable to her. She wondered again at Judith's invincible 
 force of will. That alone was the obstacle — no, it was 
 something back of Judith's will, something which even 
 Arnold recognized ; for now, to her astonishment, he looked 
 up, his face smeared like a weeping child's, and said in a 
 low tone, " You know, of course, that Judith's right." 
 
 The testimony was wrung out of him. But it came. The 
 moment was one never to be forgotten. 
 
 Out of her passionate pity was born strength that was 
 not to be denied. She took his hand in hers, his dry, sick 
 man's hand. " Arnold, you asked me to give you a reason 
 why you should get the best you can out of yourself. I'll 
 give you a reason. Judith is a reason. Austin is a reason. 
 I'm a reason. I am never going to let you go. Judith 
 can't be the one to help you get through the best you can, 
 even though it may not be so very well — poor, poor 
 Judith, who would die to be able to help you! Mother 
 wasn't allowed to. She wanted to, I see that now. But I 
 can. I'm not a thousandth part as strong or as good as 
 they; but if we hang together! All my life is going to 
 
478 The Bent Twig 
 
 be settled for me in a few hours. I don't know how it's 
 going to be. But however it is, you will always be in my 
 life. For as long as you live," she caught her breath at 
 the realization of how little that phrase meant, " for as long 
 as you live, you are going to be what you wanted to be, 
 what you ought to have been, my brother — my mother's 
 son." 
 
 He clung to her hand, he clung to it with such a grip 
 that her fingers ached — and she blessed the pain for what 
 It meant. 
 
CHAPTER XLVII 
 " . . . AND ALL THE TRUMPETS SOUNDED!" 
 
 They had told her at the farm, the old man and the old 
 woman who had looked so curiously at her, that Mr. Page 
 had gone on up the wood-road towards the upper pasture. 
 He liked to go there sometimes, they said, to look at the 
 sunset from a big rock that stood in the edge of the white 
 birch woods. They added, in extenuation of this, that 
 of course somebody had to go up there anyhow, once in a 
 while, to salt the sheep. 
 
 Sylvia had passed on, passed the great, square, many- 
 chimneyed house, passed the old-fashioned garden, and 
 struck into the wood-road beyond the bars. The sun was 
 so low now, almost below the edge of the Notch, that the 
 rays were level and long behind her. So she had walked, 
 bathed in luminous gold at Versailles, on the day when 
 Austin had first told her that he loved her, on the day she 
 had told him the truth. From the first moment she had 
 seen him how he had always brought out from her the 
 truest and best, finer and truer than anything she had 
 thought was in her, like a reflection from his own integrity. 
 His eyes that day, what clear wells of loyalty and honor 
 . . . how her mother would have loved him! And that 
 other day, when he said farewell and went away to his 
 ordeal . . . she closed her eyes for an instant, pierced with 
 the recollection of his gaze on her! What was she, what 
 poor thing transfigured to divinity, that such passion, such 
 tenderness had been hers . . . even for a moment . . . 
 even if now . . . 
 
 She looked timidly up the green tunnel of the arching 
 trees, fearing to see him at any moment. And yet how 
 she hastened her steps towards where he was! The 
 
 479 
 
480 The Bent Twig 
 
 moments were too long till she should find her heart's 
 home! 
 
 After a time, there came a moment of such terrible 
 throbbing of the heart, such trembling, that she could 
 not go on. She sat down on a rock beside the road and 
 pressed her shaking hands on her cheeks. No, it was too 
 awful. She had been insane to think of putting every- 
 thing, her whole life, to the test of a moment's shock. She 
 would go back. She would write him. . . . 
 
 She looked up and saw her mother's gallant figure stand 
 ing there before her. She smiled, and started on. Strange 
 that she had thought her mother could be dead. Her first 
 instinct had been right. Her mother, her mother could 
 not die. 
 
 The road turned sharply to the left. She came out from 
 the white birches. She was in the edge of the pasture, 
 sweet-fern at her feet, a group of sheep raising startled 
 heads to gaze at her, the sun's rim red on the horizon 
 below her. And up there, the sunlight on his face, abov? 
 her, stood Austin. 
 
 The sight of him was like a great burst of music in her 
 heart, like a great flood of light. Her doubts, her uncer- 
 tainties, they were gone out, as utterly as night goes be- 
 fore the sun. Her ears rang to a sound like singing 
 voices. For a moment she did not feel the ground under 
 her feet. . . . 
 
 Austin looked down and saw her. He stood like a man 
 in a dream. 
 
 And then he knew. He knew. And Sylvia knew. He 
 gave a great cry of welcome which was to ring in her ears 
 for all her life, like a benediction. He ran down to meet 
 her, and took her in his arms. 
 
 THE END 
 

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