THE TROLL GARDEN

AND

SELECTED STORIES

By Willa Cather

Contents

_Selected Stories_

 On the Divide Eric Hermannson's Soul The Enchanted Bluff The Bohemian Girl

_The Troll Garden_

 Flavia and Her Artists The Sculptor's Funeral "A Death in the Desert" The Garden Lodge The Marriage of Phaedra A Wagner Matinee Paul's Case

SELECTED STORIES

On the Divide

Near Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw stood Canute'sshanty. North, east, south, stretched the level Nebraska plain of longrust-red grass that undulated constantly in the wind. To the west theground was broken and rough, and a narrow strip of timber wound alongthe turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcely ambition enough tocrawl over its black bottom. If it had not been for the few stuntedcottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks, Canute would have shothimself years ago. The Norwegians are a timber-loving people, and ifthere is even a turtle pond with a few plum bushes around it they seemirresistibly drawn toward it. 

As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of any kind, for when he first squatted along the banks of Rattlesnake Creek therewas not a human being within twenty miles. It was built of logs splitin halves, the chinks stopped with mud and plaster. The roof was coveredwith earth and was supported by one gigantic beam curved in the shape ofa round arch. It was almost impossible that any tree had ever grown inthat shape. The Norwegians used to say that Canute had taken the logacross his knee and bent it into the shape he wished. There weretwo rooms, or rather there was one room with a partition made of ashsaplings interwoven and bound together like big straw basket work. Inone corner there was a cook stove, rusted and broken. In the other abed made of unplaned planks and poles. It was fully eight feet long, andupon it was a heap of dark bed clothing. There was a chair and a benchof colossal proportions. There was an ordinary kitchen cupboard witha few cracked dirty dishes in it, and beside it on a tall box a tinwashbasin. Under the bed was a pile of pint flasks, some broken, some whole, all empty. On the wood box lay a pair of shoes of almostincredible dimensions. On the wall hung a saddle, a gun, and some raggedclothing, conspicuous among which was a suit of dark cloth, apparentlynew, with a paper collar carefully wrapped in a red silk handkerchiefand pinned to the sleeve. Over the door hung a wolf and a badger skin, and on the door itself a brace of thirty or forty snake skins whosenoisy tails rattled ominously every time it opened. The strangest thingsin the shanty were the wide windowsills. At first glance they looked asthough they had been ruthlessly hacked and mutilated with a hatchet, buton closer inspection all the notches and holes in the wood took form andshape. There seemed to be a series of pictures. They were, in a roughway, artistic, but the figures were heavy and labored, as though theyhad been cut very slowly and with very awkward instruments. There weremen plowing with little horned imps sitting on their shoulders and ontheir horses' heads. There were men praying with a skull hanging overtheir heads and little demons behind them mocking their attitudes. Therewere men fighting with big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. Allabout these pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grewin this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there wasalways the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there wasa serpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who had feltits sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch of themwas cut up in the same manner. Sometimes the work was very rude andcareless, and looked as though the hand of the workman had trembled. Itwould sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men from their evilgeniuses but for one fact, the men were always grave and were eithertoiling or praying, while the devils were always smiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been split for kindling and it was evidentthat the artist did not value his work highly. 

It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled into hisshanty carrying a basket of cobs, and after filling the stove, satdown on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over the fire, staringdrearily out of the window at the wide gray sky. He knew by heart everyindividual clump of bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie thatstretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful lovelinessof its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He hadseen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched bydrought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and inthe grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bonesthat the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen itstretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell. 

He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet heavily asthough they were burdens to him. He looked out of the window into thehog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in the straw before theshed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning to spill themselves, and thesnow flakes were settling down over the white leprous patches of frozenearth where the hogs had gnawed even the sod away. He shuddered andbegan to walk, trampling heavily with his ungainly feet. He was thewreck of ten winters on the Divide and he knew what that meant. Men fearthe winters of the Divide as a child fears night or as men in the NorthSeas fear the still dark cold of the polar twilight. His eyes fell uponhis gun, and he took it down from the wall and looked it over. Hesat down on the edge of his bed and held the barrel towards his face, letting his forehead rest upon it, and laid his finger on the trigger. He was perfectly calm, there was neither passion nor despair in hisface, but the thoughtful look of a man who is considering. Presentlyhe laid down the gun, and reaching into the cupboard, drew out a pintbottle of raw white alcohol. Lifting it to his lips, he drank greedily. He washed his face in the tin basin and combed his rough hair andshaggy blond beard. Then he stood in uncertainty before the suit of darkclothes that hung on the wall. For the fiftieth time he took them inhis hands and tried to summon courage to put them on. He took the papercollar that was pinned to the sleeve of the coat and cautiously slippedit under his rough beard, looking with timid expectancy into thecracked, splashed glass that hung over the bench. With a short laugh hethrew it down on the bed, and pulling on his old black hat, he went out, striking off across the level. 

It was a physical necessity for him to get away from his cabin once in awhile. He had been there for ten years, digging and plowing and sowing, and reaping what little the hail and the hot winds and the frosts lefthim to reap. Insanity and suicide are very common things on the Divide. They come on like an epidemic in the hot wind season. Those scorchingdusty winds that blow up over the bluffs from Kansas seem to dry up theblood in men's veins as they do the sap in the corn leaves. Whenever theyellow scorch creeps down over the tender inside leaves about the ear, then the coroners prepare for active duty; for the oil of the country isburned out and it does not take long for the flame to eat up the wick. It causes no great sensation there when a Dane is found swinging to hisown windmill tower, and most of the Poles after they have become toocareless and discouraged to shave themselves keep their razors to cuttheir throats with. 

It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be very happy, butthe present one came too late in life. It is useless for men that havecut hemlocks among the mountains of Sweden for forty years to try to behappy in a country as flat and gray and naked as the sea. It is not easyfor men that have spent their youth fishing in the Northern seas to becontent with following a plow, and men that have served in the Austrianarmy hate hard work and coarse clothing on the loneliness of the plains, and long for marches and excitement and tavern company and prettybarmaids. After a man has passed his fortieth birthday it is not easyfor him to change the habits and conditions of his life. Most men bringwith them to the Divide only the dregs of the lives that they havesquandered in other lands and among other peoples. 

Canute Canuteson was as mad as any of them, but his madness did nottake the form of suicide or religion but of alcohol. He had always takenliquor when he wanted it, as all Norwegians do, but after his first yearof solitary life he settled down to it steadily. He exhausted whiskyafter a while, and went to alcohol, because its effects were speedierand surer. He was a big man and with a terrible amount of resistantforce, and it took a great deal of alcohol even to move him. After nineyears of drinking, the quantities he could take would seem fabulous toan ordinary drinking man. He never let it interfere with his work, hegenerally drank at night and on Sundays. Every night, as soon as hischores were done, he began to drink. While he was able to sit up hewould play on his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills with hisjackknife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie down on his bedand stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone andin solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awfulloneliness and level of the Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when heput mountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. Allmountain peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that, because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice of theirvice, were cursed of God. 

Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness ismerely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloodyman, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Canute was none of these, but he wasmorose and gloomy, and liquor took him through all the hells of Dante. As he lay on his giant's bed all the horrors of this world and everyother were laid bare to his chilled senses. He was a man who knew nojoy, a man who toiled in silence and bitterness. The skull and theserpent were always before him, the symbols of eternal futileness and ofeternal hate. 

When the first Norwegians near enough to be called neighbors came, Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape from his bosom vice. But he wasnot a social man by nature and had not the power of drawing out thesocial side of other people. His new neighbors rather feared him becauseof his great strength and size, his silence and his lowering brows. Perhaps, too, they knew that he was mad, mad from the eternal treacheryof the plains, which every spring stretch green and rustle with thepromises of Eden, showing long grassy lagoons full of clear waterand cattle whose hoofs are stained with wild roses. Before autumn thelagoons are dried up, and the ground is burnt dry and hard until itblisters and cracks open. 

So instead of becoming a friend and neighbor to the men that settledabout him, Canute became a mystery and a terror. They told awful storiesof his size and strength and of the alcohol he drank. 

They said that one night, when he went out to see to his horses justbefore he went to bed, his steps were unsteady and the rotten planksof the floor gave way and threw him behind the feet of a fiery youngstallion. His foot was caught fast in the floor, and the nervous horsebegan kicking frantically. When Canute felt the blood trickling downinto his eyes from a scalp wound in his head, he roused himself from hiskingly indifference, and with the quiet stoical courage of a drunken manleaned forward and wound his arms about the horse's hind legs and heldthem against his breast with crushing embrace. All through the darknessand cold of the night he lay there, matching strength against strength. When little Jim Peterson went over the next morning at four o'clock togo with him to the Blue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse wason its fore knees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the storythe Norwegians tell of him, and if it is true it is no wonder that theyfeared and hated this Holder of the Heels of Horses. 

One spring there moved to the next "eighty" a family that made a greatchange in Canute's life. Ole Yensen was too drunk most of the time to beafraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too garrulous to be afraid ofany one who listened to her talk, and Lena, their pretty daughter, wasnot afraid of man nor devil. So it came about that Canute went over totake his alcohol with Ole oftener than he took it alone, After a whilethe report spread that he was going to marry Yensen's daughter, and theNorwegian girls began to tease Lena about the great bear she was goingto keep house for. No one could quite see how the affair had come about, for Canute's tactics of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparentlynever spoke to her at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chatteringon one side of him and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at herwork. She teased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar inhis coffee, but he took her rough jokes with silent wonder, never evensmiling. He took her to church occasionally, but the most watchful andcurious people never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring at herwhile she giggled and flirted with the other men. 

Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry. She camehome every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to startle Lenawith stories of ten cent theaters, firemen's dances, and all the otheresthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeks Lena's head wascompletely turned, and she gave her father no rest until he let her goto town to seek her fortune at the ironing board. From the time she camehome on her first visit she began to treat Canute with contempt. She hadbought a plush cloak and kid gloves, had her clothes made by the dressmaker, and assumed airs and graces that made the other women of theneighborhood cordially detest her. She generally brought with her ayoung man from town who waxed his mustache and wore a red necktie, andshe did not even introduce him to Canute. 

The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he knocked one of themdown. He gave no sign of suffering from her neglect except that he drankmore and avoided the other Norwegians more carefully than ever, He layaround in his den and no one knew what he felt or thought, but littleJim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at Lena in church one Sundaywhen she was there with the town man, said that he would not give anacre of his wheat for Lena's life or the town chap's either; and Jim'swheat was so wondrously worthless that the statement was an exceedinglystrong one. 

Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as nearly like thetown man as possible. They had cost him half a millet crop; fortailors are not accustomed to fitting giants and they charge for it. Hehad hung those clothes in his shanty two months ago and had never putthem on, partly from fear of ridicule, partly from discouragement, andpartly because there was something in his own soul that revolted at thelittleness of the device. 

Lena was at home just at this time. Work was slack in the laundry andMary had not been well, so Lena stayed at home, glad enough to get anopportunity to torment Canute once more. 

She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she worked. Marywas on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding violently about theyoung man who was coming out from town that night. The young man hadcommitted the fatal error of laughing at Mary's ceaseless babble and hadnever been forgiven. 

"He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running with him! I donot see why a daughter of mine should act so. I do not see why the Lordshould visit such a punishment upon me as to give me such a daughter. There are plenty of good men you can marry. "

Lena tossed her head and answered curtly, "I don't happen to want tomarry any man right away, and so long as Dick dresses nice and hasplenty of money to spend, there is no harm in my going with him. "

"Money to spend? Yes, and that is all he does with it I'll be bound. Youthink it very fine now, but you will change your tune when you have beenmarried five years and see your children running naked and your cupboardempty. Did Anne Hermanson come to any good end by marrying a town man?"

"I don't know anything about Anne Hermanson, but I know any of thelaundry girls would have Dick quick enough if they could get him. "

"Yes, and a nice lot of store clothes huzzies you are too. Now there isCanuteson who has an 'eighty' proved up and fifty head of cattle and--"

"And hair that ain't been cut since he was a baby, and a big dirtybeard, and he wears overalls on Sundays, and drinks like a pig. Besideshe will keep. I can have all the fun I want, and when I am old and uglylike you he can have me and take care of me. The Lord knows there ain'tnobody else going to marry him. "

Canute drew his hand back from the latch as though it were red hot. Hewas not the kind of man to make a good eavesdropper, and he wished hehad knocked sooner. He pulled himself together and struck the door likea battering ram. Mary jumped and opened it with a screech. 

"God! Canute, how you scared us! I thought it was crazy Lou--he has beentearing around the neighborhood trying to convert folks. I am afraid asdeath of him. He ought to be sent off, I think. He is just as liable asnot to kill us all, or burn the barn, or poison the dogs. He has beenworrying even the poor minister to death, and he laid up with therheumatism, too! Did you notice that he was too sick to preach lastSunday? But don't stand there in the cold, come in. Yensen isn't here, but he just went over to Sorenson's for the mail; he won't be gone long. Walk right in the other room and sit down. "

Canute followed her, looking steadily in front of him and not noticingLena as he passed her. But Lena's vanity would not allow him to passunmolested. She took the wet sheet she was wringing out and cracked himacross the face with it, and ran giggling to the other side of the room. The blow stung his cheeks and the soapy water flew in his eyes, andhe involuntarily began rubbing them with his hands. Lena giggled withdelight at his discomfiture, and the wrath in Canute's face grew blackerthan ever. A big man humiliated is vastly more undignified than a littleone. He forgot the sting of his face in the bitter consciousness thathe had made a fool of himself He stumbled blindly into the living room, knocking his head against the door jamb because he forgot to stoop. He dropped into a chair behind the stove, thrusting his big feet backhelplessly on either side of him. 

Ole was a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still and silent, with his hands clenched on his knees, and the skin of his face seemed tohave shriveled up into little wrinkles that trembled when he lowered hisbrows. His life had been one long lethargy of solitude and alcohol, but now he was awakening, and it was as when the dumb stagnant heat ofsummer breaks out into thunder. 

When Ole came staggering in, heavy with liquor, Canute rose at once. 

"Yensen, " he said quietly, "I have come to see if you will let me marryyour daughter today. "

"Today!" gasped Ole. 

"Yes, I will not wait until tomorrow. I am tired of living alone. "

Ole braced his staggering knees against the bedstead, and stammeredeloquently: "Do you think I will marry my daughter to a drunkard? a manwho drinks raw alcohol? a man who sleeps with rattle snakes? Get outof my house or I will kick you out for your impudence. " And Ole beganlooking anxiously for his feet. 

Canute answered not a word, but he put on his hat and went out into thekitchen. He went up to Lena and said without looking at her, "Get yourthings on and come with me!"

The tones of his voice startled her, and she said angrily, dropping thesoap, "Are you drunk?"

"If you do not come with me, I will take you--you had better come, " saidCanute quietly. 

She lifted a sheet to strike him, but he caught her arm roughly andwrenched the sheet from her. He turned to the wall and took down a hoodand shawl that hung there, and began wrapping her up. Lena scratchedand fought like a wild thing. Ole stood in the door, cursing, and Maryhowled and screeched at the top of her voice. As for Canute, helifted the girl in his arms and went out of the house. She kicked andstruggled, but the helpless wailing of Mary and Ole soon died away inthe distance, and her face was held down tightly on Canute's shoulder sothat she could not see whither he was taking her. She was conscious onlyof the north wind whistling in her ears, and of rapid steady motion andof a great breast that heaved beneath her in quick, irregular breaths. The harder she struggled the tighter those iron arms that had held theheels of horses crushed about her, until she felt as if they would crushthe breath from her, and lay still with fear. Canute was striding acrossthe level fields at a pace at which man never went before, drawing thestinging north winds into his lungs in great gulps. He walked with hiseyes half closed and looking straight in front of him, only loweringthem when he bent his head to blow away the snow flakes that settledon her hair. So it was that Canute took her to his home, even as hisbearded barbarian ancestors took the fair frivolous women of the Southin their hairy arms and bore them down to their war ships. For ever andanon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, andwith a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unableto cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what itcannot win by cunning. 

When Canute reached his shanty he placed the girl upon a chair, whereshe sat sobbing. He stayed only a few minutes. He filled the stovewith wood and lit the lamp, drank a huge swallow of alcohol and put thebottle in his pocket. He paused a moment, staring heavily at the weepinggirl, then he went off and locked the door and disappeared in thegathering gloom of the night. 

Wrapped in flannels and soaked with turpentine, the little Norwegianpreacher sat reading his Bible, when he heard a thundering knock at hisdoor, and Canute entered, covered with snow and his beard frozen fast tohis coat. 

"Come in, Canute, you must be frozen, " said the little man, shoving achair towards his visitor. 

Canute remained standing with his hat on and said quietly, "I want youto come over to my house tonight to marry me to Lena Yensen. "

"Have you got a license, Canute?"

"No, I don't want a license. I want to be married. "

"But I can't marry you without a license, man, it would not be legal. "

A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian's eye. "I want you to comeover to my house to marry me to Lena Yensen. "

"No, I can't, it would kill an ox to go out in a storm like this, and myrheumatism is bad tonight. "

"Then if you will not go I must take you, " said Canute with a sigh. 

He took down the preacher's bearskin coat and bade him put it on whilehe hitched up his buggy. He went out and closed the door softly afterhim. Presently he returned and found the frightened minister crouchingbefore the fire with his coat lying beside him. Canute helped him put iton and gently wrapped his head in his big muffler. Then he picked himup and carried him out and placed him in his buggy. As he tucked thebuffalo robes around him he said: "Your horse is old, he might flounderor lose his way in this storm. I will lead him. "

The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat shivering withthe cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in the wind, he could see thehorse struggling through the snow with the man plodding steadily besidehim. Again the blowing snow would hide them from him altogether. He hadno idea where they were or what direction they were going. He felt asthough he were being whirled away in the heart of the storm, and he saidall the prayers he knew. But at last the long four miles were over, andCanute set him down in the snow while he unlocked the door. He saw thebride sitting by the fire with her eyes red and swollen as thoughshe had been weeping. Canute placed a huge chair for him, and saidroughly, --

"Warm yourself. "

Lena began to cry and moan afresh, begging the minister to take herhome. He looked helplessly at Canute. Canute said simply, "If you are warm now, you can marry us. "

"My daughter, do you take this step of your own free will?" asked theminister in a trembling voice. 

"No, sir, I don't, and it is disgraceful he should force me into it! Iwon't marry him. "

"Then, Canute, I cannot marry you, " said the minister, standing asstraight as his rheumatic limbs would let him. 

"Are you ready to marry us now, sir?" said Canute, laying one iron handon his stooped shoulder. The little preacher was a good man, but likemost men of weak body he was a coward and had a horror of physicalsuffering, although he had known so much of it. So with many qualms ofconscience he began to repeat the marriage service. Lena sat sullenly inher chair, staring at the fire. Canute stood beside her, listening withhis head bent reverently and his hands folded on his breast. When thelittle man had prayed and said amen, Canute began bundling him up again. 

"I will take you home, now, " he said as he carried him out and placedhim in his buggy, and started off with him through the fury of thestorm, floundering among the snow drifts that brought even the gianthimself to his knees. 

After she was left alone, Lena soon ceased weeping. She was not of aparticularly sensitive temperament, and had little pride beyond that ofvanity. After the first bitter anger wore itself out, she felt nothingmore than a healthy sense of humiliation and defeat. She had noinclination to run away, for she was married now, and in her eyesthat was final and all rebellion was useless. She knew nothing abouta license, but she knew that a preacher married folks. She consoledherself by thinking that she had always intended to marry Canutesomeday, anyway. 

She grew tired of crying and looking into the fire, so she got up andbegan to look about her. She had heard queer tales about the inside ofCanute's shanty, and her curiosity soon got the better of her rage. One of the first things she noticed was the new black suit of clotheshanging on the wall. She was dull, but it did not take a vain woman longto interpret anything so decidedly flattering, and she was pleased inspite of herself. As she looked through the cupboard, the general air ofneglect and discomfort made her pity the man who lived there. 

"Poor fellow, no wonder he wants to get married to get somebody to washup his dishes. Batchin's pretty hard on a man. "

It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled. She lookedat the windowsill and gave a little shudder and wondered if the man werecrazy. Then she sat down again and sat a long time wondering what herDick and Ole would do. 

"It is queer Dick didn't come right over after me. He surely came, forhe would have left town before the storm began and he might just aswell come right on as go back. If he'd hurried he would have gotten herebefore the preacher came. I suppose he was afraid to come, for heknew Canuteson could pound him to jelly, the coward!" Her eyes flashedangrily. 

The weary hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly lonesome. It wasan uncanny night and this was an uncanny place to be in. She couldhear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and moreterrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She rememberedthe tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of thosesnaky things on the windowsills. She remembered the man who had beenkilled in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazyLou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the doorbecame unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took thelamp to look at it. Then for the first time she saw the ugly brown snakeskins whose death rattle sounded every time the wind jarred the door. 

"Canute, Canute!" she screamed in terror. 

Outside the door she heard a heavy sound as of a big dog getting up andshaking himself. The door opened and Canute stood before her, white as asnow drift. 

"What is it?" he asked kindly. 

"I am cold, " she faltered. 

He went out and got an armful of wood and a basket of cobs and filledthe stove. Then he went out and lay in the snow before the door. Presently he heard her calling again. 

"What is it?" he said, sitting up. 

"I'm so lonesome, I'm afraid to stay in here all alone. "

"I will go over and get your mother. " And he got up. 

"She won't come. "

"I'll bring her, " said Canute grimly. 

"No, no. I don't want her, she will scold all the time. "

"Well, I will bring your father. "

She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was close up to thekey-hole. She spoke lower than he had ever heard her speak before, solow that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hear her. 

"I don't want him either, Canute, --I'd rather have you. "

For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something like a groan. With a cry of fear she opened the door, and saw Canute stretched in thesnow at her feet, his face in his hands, sobbing on the doorstep. 

Eric Hermannson's Soul

It was a great night at the Lone Star schoolhouse--a night when theSpirit was present with power and when God was very near to man. Soit seemed to Asa Skinner, servant of God and Free Gospeller. Theschoolhouse was crowded with the saved and sanctified, robust menand women, trembling and quailing before the power of some mysteriouspsychic force. Here and there among this cowering, sweating multitudecrouched some poor wretch who had felt the pangs of an awakenedconscience, but had not yet experienced that complete divestment ofreason, that frenzy born of a convulsion of the mind, which, in theparlance of the Free Gospellers, is termed "the Light. " On the floorbefore the mourners' bench lay the unconscious figure of a man in whomoutraged nature had sought her last resort. This "trance" state is thehighest evidence of grace among the Free Gospellers, and indicates aclose walking with God. 

Before the desk stood Asa Skinner, shouting of the mercy and vengeanceof God, and in his eyes shone a terrible earnestness, an almostprophetic flame. Asa was a converted train gambler who used to runbetween Omaha and Denver. He was a man made for the extremes of life;from the most debauched of men he had become the most ascetic. His was abestial face, a face that bore the stamp of Nature's eternal injustice. The forehead was low, projecting over the eyes, and the sandy hair wasplastered down over it and then brushed back at an abrupt right angle. The chin was heavy, the nostrils were low and wide, and the lower liphung loosely except in his moments of spasmodic earnestness, when itshut like a steel trap. Yet about those coarse features there weredeep, rugged furrows, the scars of many a hand-to-hand struggle with theweakness of the flesh, and about that drooping lip were sharp, strenuouslines that had conquered it and taught it to pray. Over those seamedcheeks there was a certain pallor, a greyness caught from many a vigil. It was as though, after Nature had done her worst with that face, somefine chisel had gone over it, chastening and almost transfiguring it. Tonight, as his muscles twitched with emotion, and the perspirationdropped from his hair and chin, there was a certain convincing powerin the man. For Asa Skinner was a man possessed of a belief, of thatsentiment of the sublime before which all inequalities are leveled, thattransport of conviction which seems superior to all laws of condition, under which debauchees have become martyrs; which made a tinker anartist and a camel-driver the founder of an empire. This was with AsaSkinner tonight, as he stood proclaiming the vengeance of God. 

It might have occurred to an impartial observer that Asa Skinner's Godwas indeed a vengeful God if he could reserve vengeance for those ofhis creatures who were packed into the Lone Star schoolhouse that night. Poor exiles of all nations; men from the south and the north, peasantsfrom almost every country of Europe, most of them from the mountainous, night-bound coast of Norway. Honest men for the most part, but men withwhom the world had dealt hardly; the failures of all countries, mensobered by toil and saddened by exile, who had been driven to fight forthe dominion of an untoward soil, to sow where others should gather, theadvance guard of a mighty civilization to be. 

Never had Asa Skinner spoken more earnestly than now. He felt thatthe Lord had this night a special work for him to do. Tonight EricHermannson, the wildest lad on all the Divide, sat in his audience witha fiddle on his knee, just as he had dropped in on his way to play forsome dance. The violin is an object of particular abhorrence to the FreeGospellers. Their antagonism to the church organ is bitter enough, butthe fiddle they regard as a very incarnation of evil desires, singingforever of worldly pleasures and inseparably associated with allforbidden things. 

Eric Hermannson had long been the object of the prayers of therevivalists. His mother had felt the power of the Spirit weeks ago, andspecial prayer-meetings had been held at her house for her son. ButEric had only gone his ways laughing, the ways of youth, which are shortenough at best, and none too flowery on the Divide. 

He slipped away from the prayer-meetings to meet the Campbell boys inGenereau's saloon, or hug the plump little French girls at Chevalier'sdances, and sometimes, of a summer night, he even went across the dewycornfields and through the wild-plum thicket to play the fiddle for LenaHanson, whose name was a reproach through all the Divide country, wherethe women are usually too plain and too busy and too tired to departfrom the ways of virtue. On such occasions Lena, attired in a pinkwrapper and silk stockings and tiny pink slippers, would sing to him, accompanying herself on a battered guitar. It gave him a delicious senseof freedom and experience to be with a woman who, no matter how, hadlived in big cities and knew the ways of town folk, who had never workedin the fields and had kept her hands white and soft, her throat fairand tender, who had heard great singers in Denver and Salt Lake, and whoknew the strange language of flattery and idleness and mirth. 

Yet, careless as he seemed, the frantic prayers of his mother were notaltogether without their effect upon Eric. For days he had been fleeingbefore them as a criminal from his pursuers, and over his pleasures hadfallen the shadow of something dark and terrible that dogged his steps. The harder he danced, the louder he sang, the more was he conscious thatthis phantom was gaining upon him, that in time it would track him down. One Sunday afternoon, late in the fall, when he had been drinking beerwith Lena Hanson and listening to a song which made his cheeks burn, arattlesnake had crawled out of the side of the sod house and thrust itsugly head in under the screen door. He was not afraid of snakes, but heknew enough of Gospellism to feel the significance of the reptile lyingcoiled there upon her doorstep. His lips were cold when he kissed Lenagoodbye, and he went there no more. 

The final barrier between Eric and his mother's faith was his violin, and to that he clung as a man sometimes will cling to his dearest sin, to the weakness more precious to him than all his strength, In the greatworld beauty comes to men in many guises, and art in a hundred forms, but for Eric there was only his violin. 

It stood, to him, for all the manifestations of art; it was his onlybridge into the kingdom of the soul. 

It was to Eric Hermannson that the evangelist directed his impassionedpleading that night. 

"_Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?_ Is there a Saul here tonightwho has stopped his ears to that gentle pleading, who has thrust a spearinto that bleeding side? Think of it, my brother; you are offered thiswonderful love and you prefer the worm that dieth not and the fire whichwill not be quenched. What right have you to lose one of God's precioussouls? _Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?_"

A great joy dawned in Asa Skinner's pale face, for he saw that EricHermannson was swaying to and fro in his seat. The minister fell uponhis knees and threw his long arms up over his head. 

"O my brothers! I feel it coming, the blessing we have prayed for. Itell you the Spirit is coming! just a little more prayer, brothers, alittle more zeal, and he will be here. I can feel his cooling wing uponmy brow. Glory be to God forever and ever, amen!"

The whole congregation groaned under the pressure of this spiritualpanic. Shouts and hallelujahs went up from every lip. Another figurefell prostrate upon the floor. From the mourners' bench rose a chant ofterror and rapture:

 "Eating honey and drinking wine, _Glory to the bleeding Lamb!_ I am my Lord's and he is mine, _Glory to the bleeding Lamb!"_

The hymn was sung in a dozen dialects and voiced all the vague yearningof these hungry lives, of these people who had starved all the passionsso long, only to fall victims to the barest of them all, fear. 

A groan of ultimate anguish rose from Eric Hermannson's bowed head, and the sound was like the groan of a great tree when it falls in theforest. 

The minister rose suddenly to his feet and threw back his head, cryingin a loud voice:

"_Lazarus, come forth!_ Eric Hermannson, you are lost, going down atsea. In the name of God, and Jesus Christ his Son, I throw you the lifeline. Take hold! Almighty God, my soul for his!" The minister threw hisarms out and lifted his quivering face. 

Eric Hermannson rose to his feet; his lips were set and the lightningwas in his eyes. He took his violin by the neck and crushed it tosplinters across his knee, and to Asa Skinner the sound was like theshackles of sin broken audibly asunder. 

 II

For more than two years Eric Hermannson kept the austere faith to whichhe had sworn himself, kept it until a girl from the East came to spenda week on the Nebraska Divide. She was a girl of other manners andconditions, and there were greater distances between her life and Eric'sthan all the miles which separated Rattlesnake Creek from New York City. Indeed, she had no business to be in the West at all; but ah! acrosswhat leagues of land and sea, by what improbable chances, do theunrelenting gods bring to us our fate!

It was in a year of financial depression that Wyllis Elliot came toNebraska to buy cheap land and revisit the country where he had spenta year of his youth. When he had graduated from Harvard it was stillcustomary for moneyed gentlemen to send their scapegrace sons to roughit on ranches in the wilds of Nebraska or Dakota, or to consign them toa living death in the sagebrush of the Black Hills. These young men didnot always return to the ways of civilized life. But Wyllis Elliot hadnot married a half-breed, nor been shot in a cowpunchers' brawl, norwrecked by bad whisky, nor appropriated by a smirched adventuress. Hehad been saved from these things by a girl, his sister, who had beenvery near to his life ever since the days when they read fairy talestogether and dreamed the dreams that never come true. On this, hisfirst visit to his father's ranch since he left it six years before, hebrought her with him. She had been laid up half the winter from a sprainreceived while skating, and had had too much time for reflection duringthose months. She was restless and filled with a desire to see somethingof the wild country of which her brother had told her so much. She wasto be married the next winter, and Wyllis understood her when shebegged him to take her with him on this long, aimless jaunt across thecontinent, to taste the last of their freedom together. It comes to allwomen of her type--that desire to taste the unknown which allures andterrifies, to run one's whole soul's length out to the wind--just once. 

It had been an eventful journey. Wyllis somehow understood that strainof gypsy blood in his sister, and he knew where to take her. They hadslept in sod houses on the Platte River, made the acquaintance of thepersonnel of a third-rate opera company on the train to Deadwood, dinedin a camp of railroad constructors at the world's end beyond New Castle, gone through the Black Hills on horseback, fished for trout in DomeLake, watched a dance at Cripple Creek, where the lost souls who hidein the hills gathered for their besotted revelry. And now, last of all, before the return to thraldom, there was this little shack, anchored onthe windy crest of the Divide, a little black dot against the flamingsunsets, a scented sea of cornland bathed in opalescent air and blindingsunlight. 

Margaret Elliot was one of those women of whom there are so many in thisday, when old order, passing, giveth place to new; beautiful, talented, critical, unsatisfied, tired of the world at twenty-four. For the momentthe life and people of the Divide interested her. She was there but aweek; perhaps had she stayed longer, that inexorable ennui which travelsfaster even than the Vestibule Limited would have overtaken her. Theweek she tarried there was the week that Eric Hermannson was helpingJerry Lockhart thresh; a week earlier or a week later, and there wouldhave been no story to write. 

It was on Thursday and they were to leave on Saturday. Wyllis and hissister were sitting on the wide piazza of the ranchhouse, staring outinto the afternoon sunlight and protesting against the gusts of hot windthat blew up from the sandy riverbottom twenty miles to the southward. 

The young man pulled his cap lower over his eyes and remarked:

"This wind is the real thing; you don't strike it anywhere else. Youremember we had a touch of it in Algiers and I told you it came fromKansas. It's the keynote of this country. "

Wyllis touched her hand that lay on the hammock and continued gently:

"I hope it's paid you, Sis. Roughing it's dangerous business; it takesthe taste out of things. "

She shut her fingers firmly over the brown hand that was so like herown. 

"Paid? Why, Wyllis, I haven't been so happy since we were children andwere going to discover the ruins of Troy together some day. Do you know, I believe I could just stay on here forever and let the world go on itsown gait. It seems as though the tension and strain we used to talk oflast winter were gone for good, as though one could never give one'sstrength out to such petty things any more. "

Wyllis brushed the ashes of his pipe away from the silk handkerchiefthat was knotted about his neck and stared moodily off at the skyline. 

"No, you're mistaken. This would bore you after a while. You can't shakethe fever of the other life. I've tried it. There was a time when thegay fellows of Rome could trot down into the Thebaid and burrow into thesandhills and get rid of it. But it's all too complex now. You seewe've made our dissipations so dainty and respectable that they'vegone further in than the flesh, and taken hold of the ego proper. Youcouldn't rest, even here. The war cry would follow you. "

"You don't waste words, Wyllis, but you never miss fire. I talk morethan you do, without saying half so much. You must have learned the artof silence from these taciturn Norwegians. I think I like silent men. "

"Naturally, " said Wyllis, "since you have decided to marry the mostbrilliant talker you know. "

Both were silent for a time, listening to the sighing of the hot windthrough the parched morning-glory vines. Margaret spoke first. 

"Tell me, Wyllis, were many of the Norwegians you used to know asinteresting as Eric Hermannson?"

"Who, Siegfried? Well, no. He used to be the flower of the Norwegianyouth in my day, and he's rather an exception, even now. He hasretrograded, though. The bonds of the soil have tightened on him, Ifancy. "

"Siegfried? Come, that's rather good, Wyllis. He looks like adragon-slayer. What is it that makes him so different from the others? Ican talk to him; he seems quite like a human being. "

 "Well, " said Wyllis, meditatively, "I don't read Bourgetas much as my cultured sister, and I'm not so well up in analysis, butI fancy it's because one keeps cherishing a perfectly unwarrantedsuspicion that under that big, hulking anatomy of his, he may conceal asoul somewhere. _Nicht wahr?_"

"Something like that, " said Margaret, thoughtfully, "except that it'smore than a suspicion, and it isn't groundless. He has one, and he makesit known, somehow, without speaking. "

"I always have my doubts about loquacious souls, " Wyllis remarked, withthe unbelieving smile that had grown habitual with him. 

Margaret went on, not heeding the interruption. "I knew it from thefirst, when he told me about the suicide of his cousin, the Bernsteinboy. That kind of blunt pathos can't be summoned at will in anybody. Theearlier novelists rose to it, sometimes, unconsciously. But last nightwhen I sang for him I was doubly sure. Oh, I haven't told you about thatyet! Better light your pipe again. You see, he stumbled in on me in thedark when I was pumping away at that old parlour organ to please Mrs. Lockhart It's her household fetish and I've forgotten how many pounds ofbutter she made and sold to buy it. Well, Eric stumbled in, and in someinarticulate manner made me understand that he wanted me to sing forhim. I sang just the old things, of course. It's queer to sing familiarthings here at the world's end. It makes one think how the hearts of menhave carried them around the world, into the wastes of Iceland and thejungles of Africa and the islands of the Pacific. I think if one livedhere long enough one would quite forget how to be trivial, and wouldread only the great books that we never get time to read in the world, and would remember only the great music, and the things that are reallyworth while would stand out clearly against that horizon over there. Andof course I played the intermezzo from _Cavalleria Rusticana_ for him;it goes rather better on an organ than most things do. He shuffled hisfeet and twisted his big hands up into knots and blurted out that hedidn't know there was any music like that in the world. Why, there weretears in his voice, Wyllis! Yes, like Rossetti, I _heard_ his tears. Then it dawned upon me that it was probably the first good music he hadever heard in all his life. Think of it, to care for music as he doesand never to hear it, never to know that it exists on earth! To longfor it as we long for other perfect experiences that never come. Ican't tell you what music means to that man. I never saw any one sosusceptible to it. It gave him speech, he became alive. When I hadfinished the intermezzo, he began telling me about a little crippledbrother who died and whom he loved and used to carry everywhere in hisarms. He did not wait for encouragement. He took up the story and toldit slowly, as if to himself, just sort of rose up and told his own woeto answer Mascagni's. It overcame me. "

"Poor devil, " said Wyllis, looking at her with mysterious eyes, "and soyou've given him a new woe. Now he'll go on wanting Grieg andSchubert the rest of his days and never getting them. That's a girl'sphilanthropy for you!"

Jerry Lockhart came out of the house screwing his chin over the unusualluxury of a stiff white collar, which his wife insisted upon as anecessary article of toilet while Miss Elliot was at the house. Jerrysat down on the step and smiled his broad, red smile at Margaret. 

"Well, I've got the music for your dance, Miss Elliot. Olaf Olesonwill bring his accordion and Mollie will play the organ, when she isn'tlookin' after the grub, and a little chap from Frenchtown will bring hisfiddle--though the French don't mix with the Norwegians much. "

"Delightful! Mr. Lockhart, that dance will be the feature of our trip, and it's so nice of you to get it up for us. We'll see the Norwegians incharacter at last, " cried Margaret, cordially. 

"See here, Lockhart, I'll settle with you for backing her in thisscheme, " said Wyllis, sitting up and knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "She's done crazy things enough on this trip, but to talk of dancing allnight with a gang of half-mad Norwegians and taking the carriage at fourto catch the six o'clock train out of Riverton--well, it's tommyrot, that's what it is!"

"Wyllis, I leave it to your sovereign power of reason to decide whetherit isn't easier to stay up all night than to get up at three in themorning. To get up at three, think what that means! No, sir, I prefer tokeep my vigil and then get into a sleeper. "

"But what do you want with the Norwegians? I thought you were tired ofdancing. "

"So I am, with some people. But I want to see a Norwegian dance, and Iintend to. Come, Wyllis, you know how seldom it is that one really wantsto do anything nowadays. I wonder when I have really wanted to go to aparty before. It will be something to remember next month at Newport, when we have to and don't want to. Remember your own theory thatcontrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable. This is myparty and Mr. Lockhart's; your whole duty tomorrow night will consist inbeing nice to the Norwegian girls. I'll warrant you were adept enoughat it once. And you'd better be very nice indeed, for if there are manysuch young Valkyries as Eric's sister among them, they would simply tieyou up in a knot if they suspected you were guying them. "

Wyllis groaned and sank back into the hammock to consider his fate, while his sister went on. 

"And the guests, Mr. Lockhart, did they accept?"

Lockhart took out his knife and began sharpening it on the sole of hisplowshoe. 

"Well, I guess we'll have a couple dozen. You see it's pretty hard toget a crowd together here any more. Most of 'em have gone over to theFree Gospellers, and they'd rather put their feet in the fire than shake'em to a fiddle. "

Margaret made a gesture of impatience. "Those Free Gospellers have justcast an evil spell over this country, haven't they?"

"Well, " said Lockhart, cautiously, "I don't just like to pass judgmenton any Christian sect, but if you're to know the chosen by their works, the Gospellers can't make a very proud showin', an' that's a fact. They're responsible for a few suicides, and they've sent a good-sizeddelegation to the state insane asylum, an' I don't see as they've madethe rest of us much better than we were before. I had a little herdboylast spring, as square a little Dane as I want to work for me, but afterthe Gospellers got hold of him and sanctified him, the little beggarused to get down on his knees out on the prairie and pray by the hourand let the cattle get into the corn, an' I had to fire him. That'sabout the way it goes. Now there's Eric; that chap used to be a hustlerand the spryest dancer in all this section-called all the dances. Nowhe's got no ambition and he's glum as a preacher. I don't suppose we caneven get him to come in tomorrow night. "

"Eric? Why, he must dance, we can't let him off, " said Margaret, quickly. "Why, I intend to dance with him myself. "

"I'm afraid he won't dance. I asked him this morning if he'd help us outand he said, 'I don't dance now, any more, '" said Lockhart, imitatingthe laboured English of the Norwegian. 

"'The Miller of Hofbau, the Miller of Hofbau, O my Princess!'" chirpedWyllis, cheerfully, from his hammock. 

The red on his sister's cheek deepened a little, and she laughedmischievously. "We'll see about that, sir. I'll not admit that I ambeaten until I have asked him myself. "

Every night Eric rode over to St. Anne, a little village in the heartof the French settlement, for the mail. As the road lay through the mostattractive part of the Divide country, on several occasions MargaretElliot and her brother had accompanied him. Tonight Wyllis had businesswith Lockhart, and Margaret rode with Eric, mounted on a frisky littlemustang that Mrs. Lockhart had broken to the sidesaddle. Margaretregarded her escort very much as she did the servant who alwaysaccompanied her on long rides at home, and the ride to the village wasa silent one. She was occupied with thoughts of another world, and Ericwas wrestling with more thoughts than had ever been crowded into hishead before. 

He rode with his eyes riveted on that slight figure before him, asthough he wished to absorb it through the optic nerves and hold it inhis brain forever. He understood the situation perfectly. His brainworked slowly, but he had a keen sense of the values of things. Thisgirl represented an entirely new species of humanity to him, but he knewwhere to place her. The prophets of old, when an angel first appearedunto them, never doubted its high origin. 

Eric was patient under the adverse conditions of his life, but hewas not servile. The Norse blood in him had not entirely lost itsself-reliance. He came of a proud fisher line, men who were not afraidof anything but the ice and the devil, and he had prospects before himwhen his father went down off the North Cape in the long Arctic night, and his mother, seized by a violent horror of seafaring life, hadfollowed her brother to America. Eric was eighteen then, handsome asyoung Siegfried, a giant in stature, with a skin singularly pure anddelicate, like a Swede's; hair as yellow as the locks of Tennyson'samorous Prince, and eyes of a fierce, burning blue, whose flash was mostdangerous to women. 

He had in those days a certain pride of bearing, a certain confidence ofapproach, that usually accompanies physical perfection. It was even saidof him then that he was in love with life, and inclined to levity, avice most unusual on the Divide. But the sad history of those Norwegianexiles, transplanted in an arid soil and under a scorching sun, hadrepeated itself in his case. Toil and isolation had sobered him, andhe grew more and more like the clods among which he laboured. It was asthough some red-hot instrument had touched for a moment those delicatefibers of the brain which respond to acute pain or pleasure, in whichlies the power of exquisite sensation, and had seared them quite away. It is a painful thing to watch the light die out of the eyes of thoseNorsemen, leaving an expression of impenetrable sadness, quite passive, quite hopeless, a shadow that is never lifted. With some this changecomes almost at once, in the first bitterness of homesickness, withothers it comes more slowly, according to the time it takes each man'sheart to die. 

Oh, those poor Northmen of the Divide! They are dead many a year beforethey are put to rest in the little graveyard on the windy hill whereexiles of all nations grow akin. 

The peculiar species of hypochondria to which the exiles of his peoplesooner or later succumb had not developed in Eric until that night atthe Lone Star schoolhouse, when he had broken his violin across hisknee. After that, the gloom of his people settled down upon him, and thegospel of maceration began its work. 

_"If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, "_ et cetera. The pagan smilethat once hovered about his lips was gone, and he was one with sorrow. Religion heals a hundred hearts for one that it embitters, but when itdestroys, its work is quick and deadly, and where the agony of the crosshas been, joy will not come again. This man understood things literally:one must live without pleasure to die without fear; to save the soul, itwas necessary to starve the soul. 

The sun hung low above the cornfields when Margaret and her cavalierleft St. Anne. South of the town there is a stretch of road that runsfor some three miles through the French settlement, where the prairieis as level as the surface of a lake. There the fields of flax andwheat and rye are bordered by precise rows of slender, tapering Lombardpoplars. It was a yellow world that Margaret Elliot saw under the widelight of the setting sun. 

The girl gathered up her reins and called back to Eric, "It will be safeto run the horses here, won't it?"

"Yes, I think so, now, " he answered, touching his spur to his pony'sflank. They were off like the wind. It is an old saying in the West thatnewcomers always ride a horse or two to death before they get brokenin to the country. They are tempted by the great open spaces and try tooutride the horizon, to get to the end of something. Margaret gallopedover the level road, and Eric, from behind, saw her long veil flutteringin the wind. It had fluttered just so in his dreams last night and thenight before. With a sudden inspiration of courage he overtook her androde beside her, looking intently at her half-averted face. Before, hehad only stolen occasional glances at it, seen it in blinding flashes, always with more or less embarrassment, but now he determined to letevery line of it sink into his memory. Men of the world would have saidthat it was an unusual face, nervous, finely cut, with clear, elegantlines that betokened ancestry. Men of letters would have called it ahistoric face, and would have conjectured at what old passions, longasleep, what old sorrows forgotten time out of mind, doing battletogether in ages gone, had curved those delicate nostrils, left theirunconscious memory in those eyes. But Eric read no meaning in thesedetails. To him this beauty was something more than colour and line;it was a flash of white light, in which one cannot distinguish colourbecause all colours are there. To him it was a complete revelation, anembodiment of those dreams of impossible loveliness that linger by ayoung man's pillow on midsummer nights; yet, because it held somethingmore than the attraction of health and youth and shapeliness, ittroubled him, and in its presence he felt as the Goths before the whitemarbles in the Roman Capitol, not knowing whether they were men or gods. At times he felt like uncovering his head before it, again the furyseized him to break and despoil, to find the clay in this spirit-thingand stamp upon it. Away from her, he longed to strike out with his arms, and take and hold; it maddened him that this woman whom he could breakin his hands should be so much stronger than he. But near her, he neverquestioned this strength; he admitted its potentiality as he admittedthe miracles of the Bible; it enervated and conquered him. 

Tonight, when he rode so close to her that he could have touched her, heknew that he might as well reach out his hand to take a star. 

Margaret stirred uneasily under his gaze and turned questioningly in hersaddle. 

"This wind puts me a little out of breath when we ride fast, " she said. 

Eric turned his eyes away. 

"I want to ask you if I go to New York to work, if I maybe hear musiclike you sang last night? I been a purty good hand to work, " he asked, timidly. 

Margaret looked at him with surprise, and then, as she studied theoutline of his face, pityingly. 

"Well, you might--but you'd lose a good deal else. I shouldn't like youto go to New York--and be poor, you'd be out of atmosphere, someway, " she said, slowly. Inwardly she was thinking: _There he would bealtogether sordid, impossible--a machine who would carry one's trunksupstairs, perhaps. Here he is every inch a man, rather picturesque; whyis it?_ "No, " she added aloud, "I shouldn't like that. "

"Then I not go, " said Eric, decidedly. 

Margaret turned her face to hide a smile. She was a trifle amused and atrifle annoyed. Suddenly she spoke again. 

"But I'll tell you what I do want you to do, Eric. I want you to dancewith us tomorrow night and teach me some of the Norwegian dances; theysay you know them all. Won't you?"

Eric straightened himself in his saddle and his eyes flashed as they haddone in the Lone Star schoolhouse when he broke his violin across hisknee. 

"Yes, I will, " he said, quietly, and he believed that he delivered hissoul to hell as he said it. 

They had reached the rougher country now, where the road wound througha narrow cut in one of the bluffs along the creek, when a beat of hoofsahead and the sharp neighing of horses made the ponies start and Ericrose in his stirrups. Then down the gulch in front of them and over thesteep clay banks thundered a herd of wild ponies, nimble as monkeys andwild as rabbits, such as horse-traders drive east from the plains ofMontana to sell in the farming country. Margaret's pony made a shrillsound, a neigh that was almost a scream, and started up the clay bank tomeet them, all the wild blood of the range breaking out in an instant. Margaret called to Eric just as he threw himself out of the saddle andcaught her pony's bit. But the wiry little animal had gone mad and waskicking and biting like a devil. Her wild brothers of the range were allabout her, neighing, and pawing the earth, and striking her with theirforefeet and snapping at her flanks. It was the old liberty of the rangethat the little beast fought for. 

"Drop the reins and hold tight, tight!" Eric called, throwing all hisweight upon the bit, struggling under those frantic forefeet that nowbeat at his breast, and now kicked at the wild mustangs that surged andtossed about him. He succeeded in wrenching the pony's head toward himand crowding her withers against the clay bank, so that she could notroll. 

"Hold tight, tight!" he shouted again, launching a kick at a snortinganimal that reared back against Margaret's saddle. If she should loseher courage and fall now, under those hoofs--He struck out again andagain, kicking right and left with all his might. Already the negligentdrivers had galloped into the cut, and their long quirts were whistlingover the heads of the herd. As suddenly as it had come, the struggling, frantic wave of wild life swept up out of the gulch and on across theopen prairie, and with a long despairing whinny of farewell the ponydropped her head and stood trembling in her sweat, shaking the foam andblood from her bit. 

Eric stepped close to Margaret's side and laid his hand on her saddle. "You are not hurt?" he asked, hoarsely. As he raised his face in thesoft starlight she saw that it was white and drawn and that his lipswere working nervously. 

"No, no, not at all. But you, you are suffering; they struck you!" shecried in sharp alarm. 

He stepped back and drew his hand across his brow. 

"No, it is not that, " he spoke rapidly now, with his hands clenched athis side. "But if they had hurt you, I would beat their brains out withmy hands. I would kill them all. I was never afraid before. You are theonly beautiful thing that has ever come close to me. You came like anangel out of the sky. You are like the music you sing, you are like thestars and the snow on the mountains where I played when I was a littleboy. You are like all that I wanted once and never had, you are allthat they have killed in me. I die for you tonight, tomorrow, for alleternity. I am not a coward; I was afraid because I love you more thanChrist who died for me, more than I am afraid of hell, or hope forheaven. I was never afraid before. If you had fallen--oh, my God!" Hethrew his arms out blindly and dropped his head upon the pony's mane, leaning limply against the animal like a man struck by some sickness. His shoulders rose and fell perceptibly with his laboured breathing. Thehorse stood cowed with exhaustion and fear. Presently Margaret laid herhand on Eric's head and said gently:

"You are better now, shall we go on? Can you get your horse?"

"No, he has gone with the herd. I will lead yours, she is not safe. I will not frighten you again. " His voice was still husky, but it wassteady now. He took hold of the bit and tramped home in silence. 

When they reached the house, Eric stood stolidly by the pony's headuntil Wyllis came to lift his sister from the saddle. 

"The horses were badly frightened, Wyllis. I think I was prettythoroughly scared myself, " she said as she took her brother's arm andwent slowly up the hill toward the house. "No, I'm not hurt, thanks toEric. You must thank him for taking such good care of me. He's a mightyfine fellow. I'll tell you all about it in the morning, dear. I waspretty well shaken up and I'm going right to bed now. Good night. "

When she reached the low room in which she slept, she sank upon the bedin her riding dress, face downward. 

"Oh, I pity him! I pity him!" she murmured, with a long sigh ofexhaustion. She must have slept a little. When she rose again, she tookfrom her dress a letter that had been waiting for her at the villagepost-office. It was closely written in a long, angular hand, covering adozen pages of foreign note-paper, and began:

My Dearest Margaret: if I should attempt to say _how like a winter haththine absence been_, I should incur the risk of being tedious. Really, it takes the sparkle out of everything. Having nothing better to do, andnot caring to go anywhere in particular without you, I remained in thecity until Jack Courtwell noted my general despondency and brought medown here to his place on the sound to manage some open-air theatricalshe is getting up. _As You Like It_ is of course the piece selected. MissHarrison plays Rosalind. I wish you had been here to take the part. MissHarrison reads her lines well, but she is either a maiden-all-forlorn ora tomboy; insists on reading into the part all sorts of deeper meaningsand highly coloured suggestions wholly out of harmony with the pastoralsetting. Like most of the professionals, she exaggerates the emotionalelement and quite fails to do justice to Rosalind's facile wit andreally brilliant mental qualities. Gerard will do Orlando, but rumorsays he is _epris_ of your sometime friend, Miss Meredith, and hismemory is treacherous and his interest fitful. 

My new pictures arrived last week on the _Gascogne_. The Puvis deChavannes is even more beautiful than I thought it in Paris. A paledream-maiden sits by a pale dream-cow and a stream of anemic water flowsat her feet. The Constant, you will remember, I got because you admiredit. It is here in all its florid splendour, the whole dominated by aglowing sensuosity. The drapery of the female figure is as wonderful asyou said; the fabric all barbaric pearl and gold, painted with an easy, effortless voluptuousness, and that white, gleaming line of Africancoast in the background recalls memories of you very precious to me. Butit is useless to deny that Constant irritates me. Though I cannot provethe charge against him, his brilliancy always makes me suspect him ofcheapness. 

Here Margaret stopped and glanced at the remaining pages of this strangelove-letter. They seemed to be filled chiefly with discussions ofpictures and books, and with a slow smile she laid them by. 

She rose and began undressing. Before she lay down she went to open thewindow. With her hand on the sill, she hesitated, feeling suddenly asthough some danger were lurking outside, some inordinate desire waitingto spring upon her in the darkness. She stood there for a long time, gazing at the infinite sweep of the sky. 

"Oh, it is all so little, so little there, " she murmured. "Wheneverything else is so dwarfed, why should one expect love to be great?Why should one try to read highly coloured suggestions into a life likethat? If only I could find one thing in it all that mattered greatly, one thing that would warm me when I am alone! Will life never give methat one great moment?"

As she raised the window, she heard a sound in the plum bushes outside. It was only the house-dog roused from his sleep, but Margaret startedviolently and trembled so that she caught the foot of the bed forsupport. Again she felt herself pursued by some overwhelming longing, some desperate necessity for herself, like the outstretching ofhelpless, unseen arms in the darkness, and the air seemed heavy withsighs of yearning. She fled to her bed with the words, "I love you morethan Christ who died for me!" ringing in her ears. 

 III

About midnight the dance at Lockhart's was at its height. Even the oldmen who had come to "look on" caught the spirit of revelry and stampedthe floor with the vigor of old Silenus. Eric took the violin from theFrenchmen, and Minna Oleson sat at the organ, and the music grew moreand more characteristic--rude, half mournful music, made up of thefolksongs of the North, that the villagers sing through the long nightin hamlets by the sea, when they are thinking of the sun, and thespring, and the fishermen so long away. To Margaret some of it soundedlike Grieg's _Peer Gynt_ music. She found something irresistiblyinfectious in the mirth of these people who were so seldom merry, andshe felt almost one of them. Something seemed struggling for freedomin them tonight, something of the joyous childhood of the nationswhich exile had not killed. The girls were all boisterous with delight. Pleasure came to them but rarely, and when it came, they caught at itwildly and crushed its fluttering wings in their strong brown fingers. They had a hard life enough, most of them. Torrid summers and freezingwinters, labour and drudgery and ignorance, were the portion oftheir girlhood; a short wooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimitedmaternity, thankless sons, premature age and ugliness, were the dowerof their womanhood. But what matter? Tonight there was hot liquor in theglass and hot blood in the heart; tonight they danced. 

Tonight Eric Hermannson had renewed his youth. He was no longer the big, silent Norwegian who had sat at Margaret's feet and looked hopelesslyinto her eyes. Tonight he was a man, with a man's rights and a man'spower. Tonight he was Siegfried indeed. His hair was yellow as the heavywheat in the ripe of summer, and his eyes flashed like the blue waterbetween the ice packs in the north seas. He was not afraid of Margarettonight, and when he danced with her he held her firmly. She was tiredand dragged on his arm a little, but the strength of the man was likean all-pervading fluid, stealing through her veins, awakening under herheart some nameless, unsuspected existence that had slumbered there allthese years and that went out through her throbbing fingertips to histhat answered. She wondered if the hoydenish blood of some lawlessancestor, long asleep, were calling out in her tonight, some drop ofa hotter fluid that the centuries had failed to cool, and why, if thiscurse were in her, it had not spoken before. But was it a curse, thisawakening, this wealth before undiscovered, this music set free? For thefirst time in her life her heart held something stronger than herself, was not this worthwhile? Then she ceased to wonder. She lost sight ofthe lights and the faces and the music was drowned by the beating of herown arteries. She saw only the blue eyes that flashed above her, feltonly the warmth of that throbbing hand which held hers and which theblood of his heart fed. Dimly, as in a dream, she saw the droopingshoulders, high white forehead and tight, cynical mouth of the man shewas to marry in December. For an hour she had been crowding back thememory of that face with all her strength. 

"Let us stop, this is enough, " she whispered. His only answer was totighten the arm behind her. She sighed and let that masterful strengthbear her where it would. She forgot that this man was little more thana savage, that they would part at dawn. The blood has no memories, noreflections, no regrets for the past, no consideration of the future. 

"Let us go out where it is cooler, " she said when the music stopped;thinking, _I am growing faint here, I shall be all right in the openair_. They stepped out into the cool, blue air of the night. 

Since the older folk had begun dancing, the young Norwegians had beenslipping out in couples to climb the windmill tower into the cooleratmosphere, as is their custom. 

"You like to go up?" asked Eric, close to her ear. 

She turned and looked at him with suppressed amusement. "How high isit?"

"Forty feet, about. I not let you fall. " There was a note ofirresistible pleading in his voice, and she felt that he tremendouslywished her to go. Well, why not? This was a night of the unusual, whenshe was not herself at all, but was living an unreality. Tomorrow, yes, in a few hours, there would be the Vestibule Limited and the world. 

"Well, if you'll take good care of me. I used to be able to climb, whenI was a little girl. "

Once at the top and seated on the platform, they were silent. Margaretwondered if she would not hunger for that scene all her life, throughall the routine of the days to come. Above them stretched the greatWestern sky, serenely blue, even in the night, with its big, burningstars, never so cold and dead and far away as in denser atmospheres. Themoon would not be up for twenty minutes yet, and all about the horizon, that wide horizon, which seemed to reach around the world, lingered apale white light, as of a universal dawn. The weary wind brought up tothem the heavy odours of the cornfields. The music of the dance soundedfaintly from below. Eric leaned on his elbow beside her, his legsswinging down on the ladder. His great shoulders looked more than everlike those of the stone Doryphorus, who stands in his perfect, reposefulstrength in the Louvre, and had often made her wonder if such men diedforever with the youth of Greece. 

"How sweet the corn smells at night, " said Margaret nervously. 

"Yes, like the flowers that grow in paradise, I think. "

She was somewhat startled by this reply, and more startled when thistaciturn man spoke again. 

"You go away tomorrow?"

"Yes, we have stayed longer than we thought to now. "

"You not come back any more?"

"No, I expect not. You see, it is a long trip halfway across thecontinent. "

"You soon forget about this country, I guess. " It seemed to him nowa little thing to lose his soul for this woman, but that she shouldutterly forget this night into which he threw all his life and all hiseternity, that was a bitter thought. 

"No, Eric, I will not forget. You have all been too kind to me for that. And you won't be sorry you danced this one night, will you?"

"I never be sorry. I have not been so happy before. I not be so happyagain, ever. You will be happy many nights yet, I only this one. I willdream sometimes, maybe. "

The mighty resignation of his tone alarmed and touched her. It was aswhen some great animal composes itself for death, as when a great shipgoes down at sea. 

She sighed, but did not answer him. He drew a little closer and lookedinto her eyes. 

"You are not always happy, too?" he asked. 

"No, not always, Eric; not very often, I think. "

"You have a trouble?"

"Yes, but I cannot put it into words. Perhaps if I could do that, Icould cure it. "

He clasped his hands together over his heart, as children do when theypray, and said falteringly, "If I own all the world, I give him you. "

Margaret felt a sudden moisture in her eyes, and laid her hand on his. 

"Thank you, Eric; I believe you would. But perhaps even then I shouldnot be happy. Perhaps I have too much of it already. "

She did not take her hand away from him; she did not dare. She sat stilland waited for the traditions in which she had always believed to speakand save her. But they were dumb. She belonged to an ultra-refinedcivilization which tries to cheat nature with elegant sophistries. Cheatnature? Bah! One generation may do it, perhaps two, but the third--Canwe ever rise above nature or sink below her? Did she not turn onJerusalem as upon Sodom, upon St. Anthony in his desert as upon Neroin his seraglio? Does she not always cry in brutal triumph: "I am herestill, at the bottom of things, warming the roots of life; you cannotstarve me nor tame me nor thwart me; I made the world, I rule it, and Iam its destiny. "

This woman, on a windmill tower at the world's end with a giantbarbarian, heard that cry tonight, and she was afraid! Ah! the terrorand the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves! Until thenwe have not lived. 

"Come, Eric, let us go down; the moon is up and the music has begunagain, " she said. 

He rose silently and stepped down upon the ladder, putting his arm abouther to help her. That arm could have thrown Thor's hammer out in thecornfields yonder, yet it scarcely touched her, and his hand trembledas it had done in the dance. His face was level with hers now and themoonlight fell sharply upon it. All her life she had searched the facesof men for the look that lay in his eyes. She knew that that look hadnever shone for her before, would never shine for her on earth again, that such love comes to one only in dreams or in impossible places likethis, unattainable always. This was Love's self, in a moment it woulddie. Stung by the agonized appeal that emanated from the man's wholebeing, she leaned forward and laid her lips on his. Once, twice andagain she heard the deep respirations rattle in his throat whileshe held them there, and the riotous force under her head becamean engulfing weakness. He drew her up to him until he felt all theresistance go out of her body, until every nerve relaxed and yielded. When she drew her face back from his, it was white with fear. 

"Let us go down, oh, my God! let us go down!" she muttered. And thedrunken stars up yonder seemed reeling to some appointed doom as sheclung to the rounds of the ladder. All that she was to know of love shehad left upon his lips. 

"The devil is loose again, " whispered Olaf Oleson, as he saw Ericdancing a moment later, his eyes blazing. 

But Eric was thinking with an almost savage exultation of the time whenhe should pay for this. Ah, there would be no quailing then! if ever asoul went fearlessly, proudly down to the gates infernal, his should go. For a moment he fancied he was there already, treading down the tempestof flame, hugging the fiery hurricane to his breast. He wondered whetherin ages gone, all the countless years of sinning in which men had soldand lost and flung their souls away, any man had ever so cheated Satan, had ever bartered his soul for so great a price. 

It seemed but a little while till dawn. 

The carriage was brought to the door and Wyllis Elliot and his sistersaid goodbye. She could not meet Eric's eyes as she gave him her hand, but as he stood by the horse's head, just as the carriage moved off, shegave him one swift glance that said, "I will not forget. " In a momentthe carriage was gone. 

Eric changed his coat and plunged his head into the water tank and wentto the barn to hook up his team. As he led his horses to the door, ashadow fell across his path, and he saw Skinner rising in his stirrups. His rugged face was pale and worn with looking after his wayward flock, with dragging men into the way of salvation. 

"Good morning, Eric. There was a dance here last night?" he asked, sternly. 

"A dance? Oh, yes, a dance, " replied Eric, cheerfully. 

"Certainly you did not dance, Eric?"

"Yes, I danced. I danced all the time. "

The minister's shoulders drooped, and an expression of profounddiscouragement settled over his haggard face. There was almost anguishin the yearning he felt for this soul. 

"Eric, I didn't look for this from you. I thought God had set his markon you if he ever had on any man. And it is for things like this thatyou set your soul back a thousand years from God. O foolish and perversegeneration!"

Eric drew himself up to his full height and looked off to where the newday was gilding the corn-tassels and flooding the uplands with light. As his nostrils drew in the breath of the dew and the morning, somethingfrom the only poetry he had ever read flashed across his mind, and hemurmured, half to himself, with dreamy exultation:

"'And a day shall be as a thousand years, and a thousand years as aday. '"

The Enchanted Bluff

We had our swim before sundown, and while we were cooking our supper theoblique rays of light made a dazzling glare on the white sand aboutus. The translucent red ball itself sank behind the brown stretchesof cornfield as we sat down to eat, and the warm layer of air that hadrested over the water and our clean sand bar grew fresher and smelled ofthe rank ironweed and sunflowers growing on the flatter shore. The riverwas brown and sluggish, like any other of the half-dozen streams thatwater the Nebraska corn lands. On one shore was an irregular line ofbald clay bluffs where a few scrub oaks with thick trunks and flat, twisted tops threw light shadows on the long grass. The western shorewas low and level, with cornfields that stretched to the skyline, andall along the water's edge were little sandy coves and beaches whereslim cottonwoods and willow saplings flickered. 

The turbulence of the river in springtime discouraged milling, and, beyond keeping the old red bridge in repair, the busy farmers did notconcern themselves with the stream; so the Sandtown boys were left inundisputed possession. In the autumn we hunted quail through the milesof stubble and fodder land along the flat shore, and, after the winterskating season was over and the ice had gone out, the spring freshetsand flooded bottoms gave us our great excitement of the year. Thechannel was never the same for two successive seasons. Every spring theswollen stream undermined a bluff to the east, or bit out a few acres ofcornfield to the west and whirled the soil away, to deposit it in spumymud banks somewhere else. When the water fell low in midsummer, new sandbars were thus exposed to dry and whiten in the August sun. Sometimesthese were banked so firmly that the fury of the next freshet failed tounseat them; the little willow seedlings emerged triumphantly from theyellow froth, broke into spring leaf, shot up into summer growth, andwith their mesh of roots bound together the moist sand beneath themagainst the batterings of another April. Here and there a cottonwoodsoon glittered among them, quivering in the low current of air that, even on breathless days when the dust hung like smoke above the wagonroad, trembled along the face of the water. 

It was on such an island, in the third summer of its yellow green, thatwe built our watch fire; not in the thicket of dancing willow wands, buton the level terrace of fine sand which had been added that spring;a little new bit of world, beautifully ridged with ripple marks, andstrewn with the tiny skeletons of turtles and fish, all as white and dryas if they had been expertly cured. We had been careful not to mar thefreshness of the place, although we often swam to it on summer eveningsand lay on the sand to rest. 

This was our last watch fire of the year, and there were reasons why Ishould remember it better than any of the others. Next week the otherboys were to file back to their old places in the Sandtown High School, but I was to go up to the Divide to teach my first country school in theNorwegian district. I was already homesick at the thought of quittingthe boys with whom I had always played; of leaving the river, and goingup into a windy plain that was all windmills and cornfields andbig pastures; where there was nothing wilful or unmanageable in thelandscape, no new islands, and no chance of unfamiliar birds--such asoften followed the watercourses. 

Other boys came and went and used the river for fishing or skating, but we six were sworn to the spirit of the stream, and we were friendsmainly because of the river. There were the two Hassler boys, Fritz andOtto, sons of the little German tailor. They were the youngest of us;ragged boys of ten and twelve, with sunburned hair, weather-stainedfaces, and pale blue eyes. Otto, the elder, was the best mathematicianin school, and clever at his books, but he always dropped out in thespring term as if the river could not get on without him. He and Fritzcaught the fat, horned catfish and sold them about the town, and theylived so much in the water that they were as brown and sandy as theriver itself. 

There was Percy Pound, a fat, freckled boy with chubby cheeks, who tookhalf a dozen boys' story-papers and was always being kept in for readingdetective stories behind his desk. There was Tip Smith, destined byhis freckles and red hair to be the buffoon in all our games, though hewalked like a timid little old man and had a funny, cracked laugh. Tipworked hard in his father's grocery store every afternoon, and swept itout before school in the morning. Even his recreations were laborious. He collected cigarette cards and tin tobacco-tags indefatigably, andwould sit for hours humped up over a snarling little scroll-saw which hekept in his attic. His dearest possessions were some little pill bottlesthat purported to contain grains of wheat from the Holy Land, water fromthe Jordan and the Dead Sea, and earth from the Mount of Olives. Hisfather had bought these dull things from a Baptist missionary whopeddled them, and Tip seemed to derive great satisfaction from theirremote origin. 

The tall boy was Arthur Adams. He had fine hazel eyes that were almosttoo reflective and sympathetic for a boy, and such a pleasant voice thatwe all loved to hear him read aloud. Even when he had to read poetryaloud at school, no one ever thought of laughing. To be sure, he wasnot at school very much of the time. He was seventeen and shouldhave finished the High School the year before, but he was always offsomewhere with his gun. Arthur's mother was dead, and his father, whowas feverishly absorbed in promoting schemes, wanted to send the boyaway to school and get him off his hands; but Arthur always begged offfor another year and promised to study. I remember him as a tall, brownboy with an intelligent face, always lounging among a lot of us littlefellows, laughing at us oftener than with us, but such a soft, satisfiedlaugh that we felt rather flattered when we provoked it. In after-yearspeople said that Arthur had been given to evil ways as a lad, and it istrue that we often saw him with the gambler's sons and with old SpanishFanny's boy, but if he learned anything ugly in their company he neverbetrayed it to us. We would have followed Arthur anywhere, and I ambound to say that he led us into no worse places than the cattailmarshes and the stubble fields. These, then, were the boys who campedwith me that summer night upon the sand bar. 

After we finished our supper we beat the willow thicket for driftwood. By the time we had collected enough, night had fallen, and the pungent, weedy smell from the shore increased with the coolness. We threwourselves down about the fire and made another futile effort to showPercy Pound the Little Dipper. We had tried it often before, but hecould never be got past the big one. 

"You see those three big stars just below the handle, with the brightone in the middle?" said Otto Hassler; "that's Orion's belt, and thebright one is the clasp. " I crawled behind Otto's shoulder and sightedup his arm to the star that seemed perched upon the tip of his steadyforefinger. The Hassler boys did seine-fishing at night, and they knew agood many stars. 

Percy gave up the Little Dipper and lay back on the sand, his handsclasped under his head. "I can see the North Star, " he announced, contentedly, pointing toward it with his big toe. "Anyone might get lostand need to know that. "

We all looked up at it. 

"How do you suppose Columbus felt when his compass didn't point northany more?" Tip asked. 

Otto shook his head. "My father says that there was another North Staronce, and that maybe this one won't last always. I wonder what wouldhappen to us down here if anything went wrong with it?"

Arthur chuckled. "I wouldn't worry, Ott. Nothing's apt to happen to itin your time. Look at the Milky Way! There must be lots of good deadIndians. "

We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of the world. Thegurgle of the water had become heavier. We had often noticed a mutinous, complaining note in it at night, quite different from its cheerfuldaytime chuckle, and seeming like the voice of a much deeper and morepowerful stream. Our water had always these two moods: the one of sunnycomplaisance, the other of inconsolable, passionate regret. 

"Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams, " remarked Otto. "Youcould do most any proposition in geometry with 'em. They always lookas if they meant something. Some folks say everybody's fortune is allwritten out in the stars, don't they?"

"They believe so in the old country, " Fritz affirmed. 

But Arthur only laughed at him. "You're thinking of Napoleon, Fritzey. He had a star that went out when he began to lose battles. I guess thestars don't keep any close tally on Sandtown folks. "

We were speculating on how many times we could count a hundred beforethe evening star went down behind the cornfields, when someone cried, "There comes the moon, and it's as big as a cart wheel!"

We all jumped up to greet it as it swam over the bluffs behind us. Itcame up like a galleon in full sail; an enormous, barbaric thing, red asan angry heathen god. 

"When the moon came up red like that, the Aztecs used to sacrifice theirprisoners on the temple top, " Percy announced. 

"Go on, Perce. You got that out of _Golden Days_. Do you believe that, Arthur?" I appealed. 

Arthur answered, quite seriously: "Like as not. The moon was one oftheir gods. When my father was in Mexico City he saw the stone wherethey used to sacrifice their prisoners. "

As we dropped down by the fire again some one asked whether theMound-Builders were older than the Aztecs. When we once got upon theMound-Builders we never willingly got away from them, and we were stillconjecturing when we heard a loud splash in the water. 

"Must have been a big cat jumping, " said Fritz. "They do sometimes. Theymust see bugs in the dark. Look what a track the moon makes!"

There was a long, silvery streak on the water, and where the currentfretted over a big log it boiled up like gold pieces. 

"Suppose there ever _was_ any gold hid away in this old river?" Fritzasked. He lay like a little brown Indian, close to the fire, his chin onhis hand and his bare feet in the air. His brother laughed at him, butArthur took his suggestion seriously. 

"Some of the Spaniards thought there was gold up here somewhere. Sevencities chuck full of gold, they had it, and Coronado and his men came upto hunt it. The Spaniards were all over this country once. "

Percy looked interested. "Was that before the Mormons went through?"

We all laughed at this. 

"Long enough before. Before the Pilgrim Fathers, Perce. Maybe they camealong this very river. They always followed the watercourses. "

"I wonder where this river really does begin?" Tip mused. That was anold and a favorite mystery which the map did not clearly explain. On themap the little black line stopped somewhere in western Kansas; but sincerivers generally rose in mountains, it was only reasonable to supposethat ours came from the Rockies. Its destination, we knew, was theMissouri, and the Hassler boys always maintained that we could embarkat Sandtown in floodtime, follow our noses, and eventually arrive atNew Orleans. Now they took up their old argument. "If us boys had gritenough to try it, it wouldn't take no time to get to Kansas City and St. Joe. "

We began to talk about the places we wanted to go to. The Hassler boyswanted to see the stockyards in Kansas City, and Percy wanted to seea big store in Chicago. Arthur was interlocutor and did not betrayhimself. 

"Now it's your turn, Tip. "

Tip rolled over on his elbow and poked the fire, and his eyes lookedshyly out of his queer, tight little face. "My place is awful far away. My Uncle Bill told me about it. "

Tip's Uncle Bill was a wanderer, bitten with mining fever, who haddrifted into Sandtown with a broken arm, and when it was well haddrifted out again. 

"Where is it?"

"Aw, it's down in New Mexico somewheres. There aren't no railroads oranything. You have to go on mules, and you run out of water before youget there and have to drink canned tomatoes. "

"Well, go on, kid. What's it like when you do get there?"

Tip sat up and excitedly began his story. 

"There's a big red rock there that goes right up out of the sand forabout nine hundred feet. The country's flat all around it, and this hererock goes up all by itself, like a monument. They call it the EnchantedBluff down there, because no white man has ever been on top of it. Thesides are smooth rock, and straight up, like a wall. The Indians saythat hundreds of years ago, before the Spaniards came, there was avillage away up there in the air. The tribe that lived there had somesort of steps, made out of wood and bark, bung down over the face of thebluff, and the braves went down to hunt and carried water up in big jarsswung on their backs. They kept a big supply of water and dried meat upthere, and never went down except to hunt. They were a peaceful tribethat made cloth and pottery, and they went up there to get out of thewars. You see, they could pick off any war party that tried to get uptheir little steps. The Indians say they were a handsome people, andthey had some sort of queer religion. Uncle Bill thinks they wereCliff-Dwellers who had got into trouble and left home. They weren'tfighters, anyhow. 

"One time the braves were down hunting and an awful storm came up--akind of waterspout--and when they got back to their rock they foundtheir little staircase had been all broken to pieces, and only a fewsteps were left hanging away up in the air. While they were camped atthe foot of the rock, wondering what to do, a war party from the northcame along and massacred 'em to a man, with all the old folks and womenlooking on from the rock. Then the war party went on south and left thevillage to get down the best way they could. Of course they never gotdown. They starved to death up there, and when the war party came backon their way north, they could hear the children crying from the edgeof the bluff where they had crawled out, but they didn't see a sign of agrown Indian, and nobody has ever been up there since. "

We exclaimed at this dolorous legend and sat up. 

"There couldn't have been many people up there, " Percy demurred. "Howbig is the top, Tip?"

"Oh, pretty big. Big enough so that the rock doesn't look nearly as tallas it is. The top's bigger than the base. The bluff is sort of worn awayfor several hundred feet up. That's one reason it's so hard to climb. "

I asked how the Indians got up, in the first place. 

"Nobody knows how they got up or when. A hunting party came along onceand saw that there was a town up there, and that was all. "

Otto rubbed his chin and looked thoughtful. "Of course there must besome way to get up there. Couldn't people get a rope over someway andpull a ladder up?"

Tip's little eyes were shining with excitement. "I know a way. Me andUncle Bill talked it over. There's a kind of rocket that would take arope over--lifesavers use 'em--and then you could hoist a rope ladderand peg it down at the bottom and make it tight with guy ropes on theother side. I'm going to climb that there bluff, and I've got it allplanned out. "

Fritz asked what he expected to find when he got up there. 

"Bones, maybe, or the ruins of their town, or pottery, or some of theiridols. There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow, I want to see. "

"Sure nobody else has been up there, Tip?" Arthur asked. 

"Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters tried tocut steps in the rock once, but they didn't get higher than a man canreach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Bill thinks it's a boulderthe glaciers left. It's a queer place, anyhow. Nothing but cactus anddesert for hundreds of miles, and yet right under the Bluff there's goodwater and plenty of grass. That's why the bison used to go down there. "

Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to see a dark, slim bird floating southward far above us--a whooping crane, we knew byher cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge of the island, hoping wemight see her alight, but she wavered southward along the rivercourseuntil we lost her. The Hassler boys declared that by the look of theheavens it must be after midnight, so we threw more wood on our fire, put on our jackets, and curled down in the warm sand. Several of uspretended to doze, but I fancy we were really thinking about Tip's Bluffand the extinct people. Over in the wood the ring doves were callingmournfully to one another, and once we heard a dog bark, far away. "Somebody getting into old Tommy's melon patch, " Fritz murmuredsleepily, but nobody answered him. By and by Percy spoke out of theshadows. 

"Say, Tip, when you go down there will you take me with you?"

"Maybe. "

"Suppose one of us beats you down there, Tip?"

"Whoever gets to the Bluff first has got to promise to tell the rest ofus exactly what he finds, " remarked one of the Hassler boys, and to thiswe all readily assented. 

Somewhat reassured, I dropped off to sleep. I must have dreamed about arace for the Bluff, for I awoke in a kind of fear that other people weregetting ahead of me and that I was losing my chance. I sat up in mydamp clothes and looked at the other boys, who lay tumbled in uneasyattitudes about the dead fire. It was still dark, but the sky was bluewith the last wonderful azure of night. The stars glistened like crystalglobes, and trembled as if they shone through a depth of clear water. Even as I watched, they began to pale and the sky brightened. Day camesuddenly, almost instantaneously. I turned for another look at the bluenight, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and allmanner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows. A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripenedcorn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves. We stripped and plungedinto the river just as the sun came up over the windy bluffs. 

When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out toour island and talked over the whole project of the Enchanted Bluff, renewing our resolution to find it. 

Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever climbed theEnchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a stockbroker in Kansas City and will gonowhere that his red touring car cannot carry him. Otto Hassler wenton the railroad and lost his foot braking; after which he and Fritzsucceeded their father as the town tailors. 

Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his life--he died before hewas twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I was home on one of mycollege vacations, he was sitting in a steamer chair under a cottonwoodtree in the little yard behind one of the two Sandtown saloons. He wasvery untidy and his hand was not steady, but when he rose, unabashed, to greet me, his eyes were as clear and warm as ever. When I had talkedwith him for an hour and heard him laugh again, I wondered how it wasthat when Nature had taken such pains with a man, from his hands to thearch of his long foot, she had ever lost him in Sandtown. He joked aboutTip Smith's Bluff, and declared he was going down there just as soonas the weather got cooler; he thought the Grand Canyon might be worthwhile, too. 

I was perfectly sure when I left him that he would never get beyondthe high plank fence and the comfortable shade of the cottonwood. And, indeed, it was under that very tree that he died one summer morning. 

Tip Smith still talks about going to New Mexico. He marrieda slatternly, unthrifty country girl, has been much tied to aperambulator, and has grown stooped and grey from irregular meals andbroken sleep. But the worst of his difficulties are now over, and hehas, as he says, come into easy water. When I was last in Sandtown Iwalked home with him late one moonlight night, after he had balanced hiscash and shut up his store. We took the long way around and sat down onthe schoolhouse steps, and between us we quite revived the romance ofthe lone red rock and the extinct people. Tip insists that he stillmeans to go down there, but he thinks now he will wait until his boyBert is old enough to go with him. Bert has been let into the story, andthinks of nothing but the Enchanted Bluff. 

The Bohemian Girl

The transcontinental express swung along the windings of the Sand RiverValley, and in the rear seat of the observation car a young man satgreatly at his ease, not in the least discomfited by the fierce sunlightwhich beat in upon his brown face and neck and strong back. There wasa look of relaxation and of great passivity about his broad shoulders, which seemed almost too heavy until he stood up and squared them. Hewore a pale flannel shirt and a blue silk necktie with loose ends. Histrousers were wide and belted at the waist, and his short sack coat hungopen. His heavy shoes had seen good service. His reddish-brown hair, like his clothes, had a foreign cut. He had deep-set, dark blue eyesunder heavy reddish eyebrows. His face was kept clean only by closeshaving, and even the sharpest razor left a glint of yellow in thesmooth brown of his skin. His teeth and the palms of his hands were verywhite. His head, which looked hard and stubborn, lay indolently in thegreen cushion of the wicker chair, and as he looked out at the ripesummer country a teasing, not unkindly smile played over his lips. Once, as he basked thus comfortably, a quick light flashed in his eyes, curiously dilating the pupils, and his mouth became a hard, straightline, gradually relaxing into its former smile of rather kindly mockery. He told himself, apparently, that there was no point in getting excited;and he seemed a master hand at taking his ease when he could. Neitherthe sharp whistle of the locomotive nor the brakeman's call disturbedhim. It was not until after the train had stopped that he rose, put ona Panama hat, took from the rack a small valise and a flute case, andstepped deliberately to the station platform. The baggage was alreadyunloaded, and the stranger presented a check for a battered sole-leathersteamer trunk. 

"Can you keep it here for a day or two?" he asked the agent. "I may sendfor it, and I may not. "

"Depends on whether you like the country, I suppose?" demanded the agentin a challenging tone. 

"Just so. "

The agent shrugged his shoulders, looked scornfully at the small trunk, which was marked "N. E. , " and handed out a claim check without furthercomment. The stranger watched him as he caught one end of the trunk anddragged it into the express room. The agent's manner seemed to remindhim of something amusing. "Doesn't seem to be a very big place, " heremarked, looking about. 

"It's big enough for us, " snapped the agent, as he banged the trunk intoa corner. 

That remark, apparently, was what Nils Ericson had wanted. He chuckledquietly as he took a leather strap from his pocket and swung his valisearound his shoulder. Then he settled his Panama securely on his head, turned up his trousers, tucked the flute case under his arm, and startedoff across the fields. He gave the town, as he would have said, a wideberth, and cut through a great fenced pasture, emerging, when he rolledunder the barbed wire at the farther corner, upon a white dusty roadwhich ran straight up from the river valley to the high prairies, wherethe ripe wheat stood yellow and the tin roofs and weathercocks weretwinkling in the fierce sunlight. By the time Nils had done three miles, the sun was sinking and the farm wagons on their way home from town camerattling by, covering him with dust and making him sneeze. When one ofthe farmers pulled up and offered to give him a lift, he clambered inwillingly. The driver was a thin, grizzled old man with a long leanneck and a foolish sort of beard, like a goat's. "How fur ye goin'?" heasked, as he clucked to his horses and started off. 

"Do you go by the Ericson place?"

"Which Ericson?" The old man drew in his reins as if he expected to stopagain. 

"Preacher Ericson's. "

"Oh, the Old Lady Ericson's!" He turned and looked at Nils. "La, me! Ifyou're goin' out there you might a' rid out in the automobile. That's apity, now. The Old Lady Ericson was in town with her auto. You might 'a'heard it snortin' anywhere about the post-office er the butcher shop. "

"Has she a motor?" asked the stranger absently. 

"'Deed an' she has! She runs into town every night about this time forher mail and meat for supper. Some folks say she's afraid her auto won'tget exercise enough, but I say that's jealousy. "

"Aren't there any other motors about here?"

"Oh, yes! we have fourteen in all. But nobody else gets around likethe Old Lady Ericson. She's out, rain er shine, over the whole county, chargin' into town and out amongst her farms, an' up to her sons'places. Sure you ain't goin' to the wrong place?" He craned his neck andlooked at Nils' flute case with eager curiosity. "The old woman ain'tgot any piany that I knows on. Olaf, he has a grand. His wife's musical:took lessons in Chicago. "

"I'm going up there tomorrow, " said Nils imperturbably. He saw that thedriver took him for a piano tuner. 

"Oh, I see!" The old man screwed up his eyes mysteriously. He was alittle dashed by the stranger's noncommunicativeness, but he soon brokeout again. 

"I'm one o' Miss Ericson's tenants. Look after one of her places. I didown the place myself once, but I lost it a while back, in the bad yearsjust after the World's Fair. Just as well, too, I say. Lets you out o'payin' taxes. The Ericsons do own most of the county now. I rememberthe old preacher's favorite text used to be, 'To them that hath shall begiven. ' They've spread something wonderful--run over this here countrylike bindweed. But I ain't one that begretches it to 'em. Folks isentitled to what they kin git; and they're hustlers. Olaf, he's in theLegislature now, and a likely man fur Congress. Listen, if that ain'tthe old woman comin' now. Want I should stop her?"

Nils shook his head. He heard the deep chug-chug of a motor vibratingsteadily in the clear twilight behind them. The pale lights of the carswam over the hill, and the old man slapped his reins and turned clearout of the road, ducking his head at the first of three angry snortsfrom behind. The motor was running at a hot, even speed, and passedwithout turning an inch from its course. The driver was a stalwart womanwho sat at ease in the front seat and drove her car bareheaded. She lefta cloud of dust and a trail of gasoline behind her. Her tenant threwback his head and sneezed. 

"Whew! I sometimes say I'd as lief be _before_ Mrs. Ericson as behindher. She does beat all! Nearly seventy, and never lets another soultouch that car. Puts it into commission herself every morning, and keepsit tuned up by the hitch-bar all day. I never stop work for a drinko' water that I don't hear her a-churnin' up the road. I reckon herdarter-in-laws never sets down easy nowadays. Never know when she'll popin. Mis' Otto, she says to me: 'We're so afraid that thing'll blow upand do Ma some injury yet, she's so turrible venturesome. ' Says I: 'Iwouldn't stew, Mis' Otto; the old lady'll drive that car to the funeralof every darter-in-law she's got. ' That was after the old woman hadjumped a turrible bad culvert. "

The stranger heard vaguely what the old man was saying. Just now he wasexperiencing something very much like homesickness, and he was wonderingwhat had brought it about. The mention of a name or two, perhaps;the rattle of a wagon along a dusty road; the rank, resinous smell ofsunflowers and ironweed, which the night damp brought up from the drawsand low places; perhaps, more than all, the dancing lights of the motorthat had plunged by. He squared his shoulders with a comfortable senseof strength. 

The wagon, as it jolted westward, climbed a pretty steady up-grade. Thecountry, receding from the rough river valley, swelled more and moregently, as if it had been smoothed out by the wind. On one of the lastof the rugged ridges, at the end of a branch road, stood a grim squarehouse with a tin roof and double porches. Behind the house stretched arow of broken, wind-racked poplars, and down the hill slope to the leftstraggled the sheds and stables. The old man stopped his horses wherethe Ericsons' road branched across a dry sand creek that wound about thefoot of the hill. 

"That's the old lady's place. Want I should drive in?" "No, thank you. I'll roll out here. Much obliged to you. Good night. "

His passenger stepped down over the front wheel, and the old man droveon reluctantly, looking back as if he would like to see how the strangerwould be received. 

As Nils was crossing the dry creek he heard the restive tramp of a horsecoming toward him down the hill. Instantly he flashed out of the roadand stood behind a thicket of wild plum bushes that grew in the sandybed. Peering through the dusk, he saw a light horse, under tightrein, descending the hill at a sharp walk. The rider was a slenderwoman--barely visible against the dark hillside--wearing anold-fashioned derby hat and a long riding skirt. She sat lightly in thesaddle, with her chin high, and seemed to be looking into the distance. As she passed the plum thicket her horse snuffed the air and shied. She struck him, pulling him in sharply, with an angry exclamation, _"Blazne!"_ in Bohemian. Once in the main road, she let him out intoa lope, and they soon emerged upon the crest of high land, where theymoved along the skyline, silhouetted against the band of faint colourthat lingered in the west. This horse and rider, with their free, rhythmical gallop, were the only moving things to be seen on the face ofthe flat country. They seemed, in the last sad light of evening, not tobe there accidentally, but as an inevitable detail of the landscape. 

Nils watched them until they had shrunk to a mere moving speck againstthe sky, then he crossed the sand creek and climbed the hill. Whenhe reached the gate the front of the house was dark, but a light wasshining from the side windows. The pigs were squealing in the hogcorral, and Nils could see a tall boy, who carried two big woodenbuckets, moving about among them. Halfway between the barn and thehouse, the windmill wheezed lazily. Following the path that ran aroundto the back porch, Nils stopped to look through the screen door intothe lamplit kitchen. The kitchen was the largest room in the house; Nilsremembered that his older brothers used to give dances there when he wasa boy. Beside the stove stood a little girl with two light yellow braidsand a broad, flushed face, peering anxiously into a frying pan. In thedining-room beyond, a large, broad-shouldered woman was moving about thetable. She walked with an active, springy step. Her face was heavy andflorid, almost without wrinkles, and her hair was black at seventy. Nils felt proud of her as he watched her deliberate activity; never amomentary hesitation, or a movement that did not tell. He waited untilshe came out into the kitchen and, brushing the child aside, took herplace at the stove. Then he tapped on the screen door and entered. 

"It's nobody but Nils, Mother. I expect you weren't looking for me. "

Mrs. Ericson turned away from the stove and stood staring at him. "Bringthe lamp, Hilda, and let me look. "

Nils laughed and unslung his valise. "What's the matter, Mother? Don'tyou know me?"

Mrs. Ericson put down the lamp. "You must be Nils. You don't look verydifferent, anyway. "

"Nor you, Mother. You hold your own. Don't you wear glasses yet?"

"Only to read by. Where's your trunk, Nils?"

"Oh, I left that in town. I thought it might not be convenient for youto have company so near threshing-time. "

"Don't be foolish, Nils. " Mrs. Ericson turned back to the stove. "Idon't thresh now. I hitched the wheat land onto the next farm and havea tenant. Hilda, take some hot water up to the company room, and go calllittle Eric. "

The tow-haired child, who had been standing in mute amazement, took upthe tea-kettle and withdrew, giving Nils a long, admiring look from thedoor of the kitchen stairs. 

"Who's the youngster?" Nils asked, dropping down on the bench behind thekitchen stove. 

"One of your Cousin Henrik's. "

"How long has Cousin Henrik been dead?"

"Six years. There are two boys. One stays with Peter and one withAnders. Olaf is their guardeen. "

There was a clatter of pails on the porch, and a tall, lanky boy peeredwonderingly in through the screen door. He had a fair, gentle face andbig grey eyes, and wisps of soft yellow hair hung down under his cap. Nils sprang up and pulled him into the kitchen, hugging him and slappinghim on the shoulders. "Well, if it isn't my kid! Look at the size ofhim! Don't you know me, Eric?"

The boy reddened tinder his sunburn and freckles, and hung his head. "Iguess it's Nils, " he said shyly. 

"You're a good guesser, " laughed Nils giving the lad's hand a swing. Tohimself he was thinking: "That's why the little girl looked so friendly. He's taught her to like me. He was only six when I went away, and he'sremembered for twelve years. "

Eric stood fumbling with his cap and smiling. "You look just like Ithought you would, " he ventured. 

"Go wash your hands, Eric, " called Mrs. Ericson. "I've got cob corn forsupper, Nils. You used to like it. I guess you don't get much of that inthe old country. Here's Hilda; she'll take you up to your room. You'llwant to get the dust off you before you eat. "

Mrs. Ericson went into the dining-room to lay another plate, and thelittle girl came up and nodded to Nils as if to let him know that hisroom was ready. He put out his hand and she took it, with a startledglance up at his face. Little Eric dropped his towel, threw an arm aboutNils and one about Hilda, gave them a clumsy squeeze, and then stumbledout to the porch. 

During supper Nils heard exactly how much land each of his eight grownbrothers farmed, how their crops were coming on, and how much livestockthey were feeding. His mother watched him narrowly as she talked. "You've got better looking, Nils, " she remarked abruptly, whereupon hegrinned and the children giggled. Eric, although he was eighteen and astall as Nils, was always accounted a child, being the last of so manysons. His face seemed childlike, too, Nils thought, and he had the open, wandering eyes of a little boy. All the others had been men at his age. 

After supper Nils went out to the front porch and sat down on the stepto smoke a pipe. Mrs. Ericson drew a rocking-chair up near him and beganto knit busily. It was one of the few Old World customs she had kept up, for she could not bear to sit with idle hands. 

"Where's little Eric, Mother?"

"He's helping Hilda with the dishes. He does it of his own will; I don'tlike a boy to be too handy about the house. "

"He seems like a nice kid. "

"He's very obedient. "

Nils smiled a little in the dark. It was just as well to shift the lineof conversation. "What are you knitting there, Mother?"

"Baby stockings. The boys keep me busy. " Mrs. Ericson chuckled andclicked her needles. 

"How many grandchildren have you?"

"Only thirty-one now. Olaf lost his three. They were sickly, like theirmother. "

"I supposed he had a second crop by this time!"

"His second wife has no children. She's too proud. She tears about onhorseback all the time. But she'll get caught up with, yet. She setsherself very high, though nobody knows what for. They were low enoughBohemians she came of. I never thought much of Bohemians; alwaysdrinking. "

Nils puffed away at his pipe in silence, and Mrs. Ericson knitted on. Ina few moments she added grimly: "She was down here tonight, just beforeyou came. She'd like to quarrel with me and come between me and Olaf, but I don't give her the chance. I suppose you'll be bringing a wifehome some day. "

"I don't know. I've never thought much about it. "

"Well, perhaps it's best as it is, " suggested Mrs. Ericson hopefully. "You'd never be contented tied down to the land. There was roving bloodin your father's family, and it's come out in you. I expect your ownway of life suits you best. " Mrs. Ericson had dropped into a blandlyagreeable tone which Nils well remembered. It seemed to amuse him agood deal and his white teeth flashed behind his pipe. His mother'sstrategies had always diverted him, even when he was a boy--they were soflimsy and patent, so illy proportioned to her vigor and force. "They'vebeen waiting to see which way I'd jump, " he reflected. He felt that Mrs. Ericson was pondering his case deeply as she sat clicking her needles. 

"I don't suppose you've ever got used to steady work, " she went onpresently. "Men ain't apt to if they roam around too long. It's a pityyou didn't come back the year after the World's Fair. Your father pickedup a good bit of land cheap then, in the hard times, and I expect maybehe'd have give you a farm, it's too bad you put off comin' back so long, for I always thought he meant to do something by you. "

Nils laughed and shook the ashes out of his pipe. "I'd have missed a lotif I had come back then. But I'm sorry I didn't get back to see father. "

"Well, I suppose we have to miss things at one end or the other. Perhapsyou are as well satisfied with your own doings, now, as you'd have beenwith a farm, " said Mrs. Ericson reassuringly. 

"Land's a good thing to have, " Nils commented, as he lit another matchand sheltered it with his hand. 

His mother looked sharply at his face until the match burned out. "Onlywhen you stay on it!" she hastened to say. 

Eric came round the house by the path just then, and Nils rose, with ayawn. "Mother, if you don't mind, Eric and I will take a little trampbefore bedtime. It will make me sleep. "

"Very well; only don't stay long. I'll sit up and wait for you. I liketo lock up myself. "

Nils put his hand on Eric's shoulder, and the two tramped down the hilland across the sand creek into the dusty highroad beyond. Neither spoke. They swung along at an even gait, Nils puffing at his pipe. There was nomoon, and the white road and the wide fields lay faint in the starlight. Over everything was darkness and thick silence, and the smell of dustand sunflowers. The brothers followed the road for a mile or morewithout finding a place to sit down. Finally, Nils perched on a stileover the wire fence, and Eric sat on the lower step. 

"I began to think you never would come back, Nils, " said the boy softly. 

"Didn't I promise you I would?"

"Yes; but people don't bother about promises they make to babies. Didyou really know you were going away for good when you went to Chicagowith the cattle that time?"

"I thought it very likely, if I could make my way. "

"I don't see how you did it, Nils. Not many fellows could. " Eric rubbedhis shoulder against his brother's knee. 

"The hard thing was leaving home you and father. It was easy enough, once I got beyond Chicago. Of course I got awful homesick; used to crymyself to sleep. But I'd burned my bridges. "

"You had always wanted to go, hadn't you?"

"Always. Do you still sleep in our little room? Is that cottonwood stillby the window?"

Eric nodded eagerly and smiled up at his brother in the grey darkness. 

"You remember how we always said the leaves were whispering when theyrustled at night? Well, they always whispered to me about the sea. Sometimes they said names out of the geography books. In a high windthey had a desperate sound, like someone trying to tear loose. "

"How funny, Nils, " said Eric dreamily, resting his chin on his hand. "That tree still talks like that, and 'most always it talks to me aboutyou. "

They sat a while longer, watching the stars. At last Eric whisperedanxiously: "Hadn't we better go back now? Mother will get tired waitingfor us. " They rose and took a short cut home, through the pasture. 

 II

The next morning Nils woke with the first flood of light that came withdawn. The white-plastered walls of his room reflected the glare thatshone through the thin window shades, and he found it impossible tosleep. He dressed hurriedly and slipped down the hall and up the backstairs to the half-story room which he used to share with his littlebrother. Eric, in a skimpy nightshirt, was sitting on the edge of thebed, rubbing his eyes, his pale yellow hair standing up in tufts allover his head. When he saw Nils, he murmured something confusedly andhustled his long legs into his trousers. "I didn't expect you'd be up soearly, Nils, " he said, as his head emerged from his blue shirt. 

"Oh, you thought I was a dude, did you?" Nils gave him a playful tapwhich bent the tall boy up like a clasp knife. "See here: I must teachyou to box. " Nils thrust his hands into his pockets and walked about. "You haven't changed things much up here. Got most of my old traps, haven't you?"

He took down a bent, withered piece of sapling that hung over thedresser. "If this isn't the stick Lou Sandberg killed himself with!"

The boy looked up from his shoe-lacing. 

"Yes; you never used to let me play with that. Just how did he do it, Nils? You were with father when he found Lou, weren't you?"

"Yes. Father was going off to preach somewhere, and, as we drove along, Lou's place looked sort of forlorn, and we thought we'd stop and cheerhim up. When we found him father said he'd been dead a couple days. He'dtied a piece of binding twine round his neck, made a noose in each end, fixed the nooses over the ends of a bent stick, and let the stick springstraight; strangled himself. "

"What made him kill himself such a silly way?"

The simplicity of the boy's question set Nils laughing. He clappedlittle Eric on the shoulder. "What made him such a silly as to killhimself at all, I should say!"

"Oh, well! But his hogs had the cholera, and all up and died on him, didn't they?"

"Sure they did; but he didn't have cholera; and there were plenty ofbogs left in the world, weren't there?"

"Well, but, if they weren't his, how could they do him any good?" Ericasked, in astonishment. 

"Oh, scat! He could have had lots of fun with other people's hogs. Hewas a chump, Lou Sandberg. To kill yourself for a pig--think of that, now!" Nils laughed all the way downstairs, and quite embarrassed littleEric, who fell to scrubbing his face and hands at the tin basin. Whilehe was parting his wet hair at the kitchen looking glass, a heavy treadsounded on the stairs. The boy dropped his comb. "Gracious, there'sMother. We must have talked too long. " He hurried out to the shed, slipped on his overalls, and disappeared with the milking pails. 

Mrs. Ericson came in, wearing a clean white apron, her black hairshining from the application of a wet brush. 

"Good morning, Mother. Can't I make the fire for you?"

"No, thank you, Nils. It's no trouble to make a cob fire, and I like tomanage the kitchen stove myself" Mrs. Ericson paused with a shovel fullof ashes in her hand. "I expect you will be wanting to see your brothersas soon as possible. I'll take you up to Anders' place this morning. He's threshing, and most of our boys are over there. "

"Will Olaf be there?"

Mrs. Ericson went on taking out the ashes, and spoke between shovels. "No; Olaf's wheat is all in, put away in his new barn. He got sixthousand bushel this year. He's going to town today to get men to finishroofing his barn. "

"So Olaf is building a new barn?" Nils asked absently. 

"Biggest one in the county, and almost done. You'll likely be here forthe barn-raising. He's going to have a supper and a dance as soon aseverybody's done threshing. Says it keeps the voters in good humour. Itell him that's all nonsense; but Olaf has a head for politics. "

"Does Olaf farm all Cousin Henrik's land?"

Mrs. Ericson frowned as she blew into the faint smoke curling up aboutthe cobs. "Yes; he holds it in trust for the children, Hilda and herbrothers. He keeps strict account of everything he raises on it, andputs the proceeds out at compound interest for them. "

Nils smiled as he watched the little flames shoot up. The door of theback stairs opened, and Hilda emerged, her arms behind her, buttoningup her long gingham apron as she came. He nodded to her gaily, and shetwinkled at him out of her little blue eyes, set far apart over her widecheekbones. 

"There, Hilda, you grind the coffee--and just put in an extra handful;I expect your Cousin Nils likes his strong, " said Mrs. Ericson, as shewent out to the shed. 

Nils turned to look at the little girl, who gripped the coffee grinderbetween her knees and ground so hard that her two braids bobbed and herface flushed under its broad spattering of freckles. He noticed on hermiddle finger something that had not been there last night, and that hadevidently been put on for company: a tiny gold ring with a clumsily setgarnet stone. As her hand went round and round he touched the ring withthe tip of his finger, smiling. 

Hilda glanced toward the shed door through which Mrs. Ericson haddisappeared. "My Cousin Clara gave me that, " she whispered bashfully. "She's Cousin Olaf's wife. "

 III

Mrs. Olaf Ericson--Clara Vavrika, as many people still called her--wasmoving restlessly about her big bare house that morning. Her husband hadleft for the county town before his wife was out of bed--her latenessin rising was one of the many things the Ericson family had against her. Clara seldom came downstairs before eight o'clock, and this morningshe was even later, for she had dressed with unusual care. She puton, however, only a tight-fitting black dress, which people thereaboutsthought very plain. She was a tall, dark woman of thirty, with a rathersallow complexion and a touch of dull salmon red in her cheeks, wherethe blood seemed to burn under her brown skin. Her hair, parted evenlyabove her low forehead, was so black that there were distinctly bluelights in it. Her black eyebrows were delicate half-moons and her lasheswere long and heavy. Her eyes slanted a little, as if she had a strainof Tartar or gypsy blood, and were sometimes full of fiery determinationand sometimes dull and opaque. Her expression was never altogetheramiable; was often, indeed, distinctly sullen, or, when she wasanimated, sarcastic. She was most attractive in profile, for then onesaw to advantage her small, well-shaped head and delicate ears, and feltat once that here was a very positive, if not an altogether pleasing, personality. 

The entire management of Mrs. Olaf's household devolved upon her aunt, Johanna Vavrika, a superstitious, doting woman of fifty. When Clarawas a little girl her mother died, and Johanna's life had been spentin ungrudging service to her niece. Clara, like many self-willed anddiscontented persons, was really very apt, without knowing it, to doas other people told her, and to let her destiny be decided for herby intelligences much below her own. It was her Aunt Johanna who hadhumoured and spoiled her in her girlhood, who had got her off to Chicagoto study piano, and who had finally persuaded her to marry Olaf Ericsonas the best match she would be likely to make in that part of thecountry. Johanna Vavrika had been deeply scarred by smallpox in the oldcountry. She was short and fat, homely and jolly and sentimental. She was so broad, and took such short steps when she walked, that herbrother, Joe Vavrika, always called her his duck. She adored her niecebecause of her talent, because of her good looks and masterful ways, butmost of all because of her selfishness. 

Clara's marriage with Olaf Ericson was Johanna's particular triumph. Shewas inordinately proud of Olaf's position, and she found a sufficientlyexciting career in managing Clara's house, in keeping it above thecriticism of the Ericsons, in pampering Olaf to keep him from findingfault with his wife, and in concealing from every one Clara's domesticinfelicities. While Clara slept of a morning, Johanna Vavrika wasbustling about, seeing that Olaf and the men had their breakfast, andthat the cleaning or the butter-making or the washing was properly begunby the two girls in the kitchen. Then, at about eight o'clock, she wouldtake Clara's coffee up to her, and chat with her while she drank it, telling her what was going on in the house. Old Mrs. Ericson frequentlysaid that her daughter-in-law would not know what day of the week itwas if Johanna did not tell her every morning. Mrs. Ericson despised andpitied Johanna, but did not wholly dislike her. The one thing she hatedin her daughter-in-law above everything else was the way in which Claracould come it over people. It enraged her that the affairs of her son'sbig, barnlike house went on as well as they did, and she used to feelthat in this world we have to wait overlong to see the guilty punished. "Suppose Johanna Vavrika died or got sick?" the old lady used to say toOlaf. "Your wife wouldn't know where to look for her own dish-cloth. "Olaf only shrugged his shoulders. The fact remained that Johanna did notdie, and, although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was looking poorly, she was never ill. She seldom left the house, and she slept in a littleroom off the kitchen. No Ericson, by night or day, could come pryingabout there to find fault without her knowing it. Her one weakness wasthat she was an incurable talker, and she sometimes made trouble withoutmeaning to. 

This morning Clara was tying a wine-coloured ribbon about her throatwhen Johanna appeared with her coffee. After putting the tray on asewing table, she began to make Clara's bed, chattering the while inBohemian. 

"Well, Olaf got off early, and the girls are baking. I'm going downpresently to make some poppy-seed bread for Olaf. He asked for prunepreserves at breakfast, and I told him I was out of them, and to bringsome prunes and honey and cloves from town. "

Clara poured her coffee. "Ugh! I don't see how men can eat so much sweetstuff. In the morning, too!"

Her aunt chuckled knowingly. "Bait a bear with honey, as we say in theold country. "

"Was he cross?" her niece asked indifferently. 

"Olaf? Oh, no! He was in fine spirits. He's never cross if you know howto take him. I never knew a man to make so little fuss about bills. Igave him a list of things to get a yard long, and he didn't say a word;just folded it up and put it in his pocket. "

"I can well believe he didn't say a word, " Clara remarked with a shrug. "Some day he'll forget how to talk. "

"Oh, but they say he's a grand speaker in the Legislature. He knowswhen to keep quiet. That's why he's got such influence in politics. Thepeople have confidence in him. " Johanna beat up a pillow and held itunder her fat chin while she slipped on the case. Her niece laughed. 

"Maybe we could make people believe we were wise, Aunty, if we held ourtongues. Why did you tell Mrs. Ericson that Norman threw me again lastSaturday and turned my foot? She's been talking to Olaf. "

Johanna fell into great confusion. "Oh, but, my precious, the old ladyasked for you, and she's always so angry if I can't give an excuse. Anyhow, she needn't talk; she's always tearing up something with thatmotor of hers. "

When her aunt clattered down to the kitchen, Clara went to dust theparlour. Since there was not much there to dust, this did not take verylong. Olaf had built the house new for her before their marriage, buther interest in furnishing it had been short-lived. It went, indeed, little beyond a bathtub and her piano. They had disagreed about almosteven, other article of furniture, and Clara had said she would ratherhave her house empty than full of things she didn't want. The house wasset in a hillside, and the west windows of the parlour looked out abovethe kitchen yard thirty feet below. The east windows opened directlyinto the front yard. At one of the latter, Clara, while she was dusting, heard a low whistle. She did not turn at once, but listened intently asshe drew her cloth slowly along the round of a chair. Yes, there it was:

I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls. 

She turned and saw Nils Ericson laughing in the sunlight, his hat in hishand, just outside the window. As she crossed the room he leaned againstthe wire screen. "Aren't you at all surprised to see me, Clara Vavrika?"

"No; I was expecting to see you. Mother Ericson telephoned Olaf lastnight that you were here. "

Nils squinted and gave a long whistle. "Telephoned? That must have beenwhile Eric and I were out walking. Isn't she enterprising? Lift thisscreen, won't you?"

Clara lifted the screen, and Nils swung his leg across the window-sill. As he stepped into the room she said: "You didn't think you were goingto get ahead of your mother, did you?"

He threw his hat on the piano. "Oh, I do sometimes. You see, I'm aheadof her now. I'm supposed to be in Anders' wheat-field. But, as we wereleaving, Mother ran her car into a soft place beside the road and sankup to the hubs. While they were going for the horses to pull her out, I cut away behind the stacks and escaped. " Nils chuckled. Clara's dulleyes lit up as she looked at him admiringly. 

"You've got them guessing already. I don't know what your mother saidto Olaf over the telephone, but be came back looking as if he'd seena ghost, and he didn't go to bed until a dreadful hour--ten o'clock, Ishould think. He sat out on the porch in the dark like a graven image. It had been one of his talkative days, too. " They both laughed, easilyand lightly, like people who have laughed a great deal together; butthey remained standing. 

"Anders and Otto and Peter looked as if they had seen ghosts, too, overin the threshing field. What's the matter with them all?"

Clara gave him a quick, searching look. "Well, for one thing, they'vealways been afraid you have the other will. "

Nils looked interested. "The other will?"

"Yes. A later one. They knew your father made another, but they neverknew what he did with it. They almost tore the old house to pieceslooking for it. They always suspected that he carried on a clandestinecorrespondence with you, for the one thing he would do was to get hisown mail himself. So they thought he might have sent the new will toyou for safekeeping. The old one, leaving everything to your mother, wasmade long before you went away, and it's understood among them that itcuts you out--that she will leave all the property to the others. Yourfather made the second will to prevent that. I've been hoping youhad it. It would be such fun to spring it on them. " Clara laughedmirthfully, a thing she did not often do now. 

Nils shook his head reprovingly. "Come, now, you're malicious. "

"No, I'm not. But I'd like something to happen to stir them all up, justfor once. There never was such a family for having nothing ever happento them but dinner and threshing. I'd almost be willing to die, just tohave a funeral. _You_ wouldn't stand it for three weeks. "

Nils bent over the piano and began pecking at the keys with the fingerof one hand. "I wouldn't? My dear young lady, how do you know what I canstand? _You_ wouldn't wait to find out. "

Clara flushed darkly and frowned. "I didn't believe you would ever comeback--" she said defiantly. 

"Eric believed I would, and he was only a baby when I went away. However, all's well that ends well, and I haven't come back to be askeleton at the feast. We mustn't quarrel. Mother mill be here with asearch warrant pretty soon. " He swung round and faced her, thrusting hishands into his coat pockets. "Come, you ought to be glad to see me, ifyou want something to happen. I'm something, even without a will. We canhave a little fun, can't we? I think we can!"

She echoed him, "I think we can!" They both laughed and their eyessparkled. Clara Vavrika looked ten years younger than when she had putthe velvet ribbon about her throat that morning. 

"You know, I'm so tickled to see mother, " Nils went on. "I didn't knowI was so proud of her. A regular pile driver. How about little pigtails, down at the house? Is Olaf doing the square thing by those children?"

Clara frowned pensively. "Olaf has to do something that looks like thesquare thing, now that he's a public man!" She glanced drolly at Nils. "But he makes a good commission out of it. On Sundays they all gettogether here and figure. He lets Peter and Anders put in big bills forthe keep of the two boys, and he pays them out of the estate. They arealways having what they call accountings. Olaf gets something out ofit, too. I don't know just how they do it, but it's entirely a familymatter, as they say. And when the Ericsons say that--" Clara lifted hereyebrows. 

Just then the angry _honk-honk_ of an approaching motor sounded fromdown the road. Their eyes met and they began to laugh. They laughed aschildren do when they can not contain themselves, and can not explainthe cause of their mirth to grown people, but share it perfectlytogether. When Clara Vavrika sat down at the piano after he was gone, she felt that she had laughed away a dozen years. She practised as ifthe house were burning over her head. 

When Nils greeted his mother and climbed into the front seat of themotor beside her, Mrs. Ericson looked grim, but she made no commentupon his truancy until she had turned her car and was retracing herrevolutions along the road that ran by Olaf's big pasture. Then sheremarked dryly:

"If I were you I wouldn't see too much of Olaf's wife while you arehere. She's the kind of woman who can't see much of men without gettingherself talked about. She was a good deal talked about before he marriedher. "

"Hasn't Olaf tamed her?" Nils asked indifferently. 

Mrs. Ericson shrugged her massive shoulders. "Olaf don't seem to havemuch luck, when it comes to wives. The first one was meek enough, butshe was always ailing. And this one has her own way. He says if hequarreled with her she'd go back to her father, and then he'd lose theBohemian vote. There are a great many Bohunks in this district. But whenyou find a man under his wife's thumb you can always be sure there's asoft spot in him somewhere. "

Nils thought of his own father, and smiled. "She brought him a good dealof money, didn't she, besides the Bohemian vote?"

Mrs. Ericson sniffed. "Well, she has a fair half section in her ownname, but I can't see as that does Olaf much good. She will have a gooddeal of property some day, if old Vavrika don't marry again. But I don'tconsider a saloonkeeper's money as good as other people's money. "

Nils laughed outright. "Come, Mother, don't let your prejudices carryyou that far. Money's money. Old Vavrika's a mighty decent sort ofsaloonkeeper. Nothing rowdy about him. "

Mrs. Ericson spoke up angrily. "Oh, I know you always stood up for them!But hanging around there when you were a boy never did you any good, Nils, nor any of the other boys who went there. There weren't so manyafter her when she married Olaf, let me tell you. She knew enough tograb her chance. "

Nils settled back in his seat. "Of course I liked to go there, Mother, and you were always cross about it. You never took the trouble to findout that it was the one jolly house in this country for a boy to go to. All the rest of you were working yourselves to death, and the houseswere mostly a mess, full of babies and washing and flies. Oh, it was allright--I understand that; but you are young only once, and I happenedto be young then. Now, Vavrika's was always jolly. He played the violin, and I used to take my flute, and Clara played the piano, andJohanna used to sing Bohemian songs. She always had a big supper forus--herrings and pickles and poppy-seed bread, and lots of cake andpreserves. Old Joe had been in the army in the old country, and he couldtell lots of good stories. I can see him cutting bread, at the head ofthe table, now. I don't know what I'd have done when I was a kid if ithadn't been for the Vavrikas, really. "

"And all the time he was taking money that other people had worked hardin the fields for, " Mrs. Ericson observed. 

"So do the circuses, Mother, and they're a good thing. People ought toget fun for some of their money. Even father liked old Joe. "

"Your father, " Mrs. Ericson said grimly, "liked everybody. "

As they crossed the sand creek and turned into her own place, Mrs. Ericson observed, "There's Olaf's buggy. He's stopped on his way fromtown. " Nils shook himself and prepared to greet his brother, who waswaiting on the porch. 

Olaf was a big, heavy Norwegian, slow of speech and movement. His headwas large and square, like a block of wood. When Nils, at a distance, tried to remember what his brother looked like, he could recall only hisheavy head, high forehead, large nostrils, and pale blue eyes, set farapart. Olaf's features were rudimentary: the thing one noticed was theface itself, wide and flat and pale; devoid of any expression, betrayinghis fifty years as little as it betrayed anything else, and powerful byreason of its very stolidness. When Olaf shook hands with Nils he lookedat him from under his light eyebrows, but Nils felt that no one couldever say what that pale look might mean. The one thing he had alwaysfelt in Olaf was a heavy stubbornness, like the unyielding stickiness ofwet loam against the plow. He had always found Olaf the most difficultof his brothers. 

"How do you do, Nils? Expect to stay with us long?"

"Oh, I may stay forever, " Nils answered gaily. "I like this countrybetter than I used to. "

"There's been some work put into it since you left, " Olaf remarked. 

"Exactly. I think it's about ready to live in now--and I'm about readyto settle down. " Nils saw his brother lower his big head ("Exactly likea bull, " he thought. ) "Mother's been persuading me to slow down now, andgo in for farming, " he went on lightly. 

Olaf made a deep sound in his throat. "Farming ain't learned in a day, "he brought out, still looking at the ground. 

"Oh, I know! But I pick things up quickly. " Nils had not meant toantagonize his brother, and he did not know now why he was doing it. "Ofcourse, " he went on, "I shouldn't expect to make a big success, as youfellows have done. But then, I'm not ambitious. I won't want much. Alittle land, and some cattle, maybe. "

Olaf still stared at the ground, his head down. He wanted to ask Nilswhat he had been doing all these years, that he didn't have a businesssomewhere he couldn't afford to leave; why he hadn't more pride than tocome back with only a little sole-leather trunk to show for himself, andto present himself as the only failure in the family. He did not ask oneof these questions, but he made them all felt distinctly. 

"Humph!" Nils thought. "No wonder the man never talks, when he can butthis ideas into you like that without ever saying a word. I suppose heuses that kind of smokeless powder on his wife all the time. But I guessshe has her innings. " He chuckled, and Olaf looked up. "Never mindme, Olaf. I laugh without knowing why, like little Eric. He's anothercheerful dog. "

"Eric, " said Olaf slowly, "is a spoiled kid. He's just let his mother'sbest cow go dry because he don't milk her right. I was hoping you'd takehim away somewhere and put him into business. If he don't do any goodamong strangers, he never will. " This was a long speech for Olaf, and ashe finished it he climbed into his buggy. 

Nils shrugged his shoulders. "Same old tricks, " he thought. "Hits frombehind you every time. What a whale of a man!" He turned and went roundto the kitchen, where his mother was scolding little Eric for lettingthe gasoline get low. 

 IV

Joe Vavrika's saloon was not in the county seat, where Olaf and Mrs. Ericson did their trading, but in a cheerfuller place, a little Bohemiansettlement which lay at the other end of the county, ten level milesnorth of Olaf's farm. Clara rode up to see her father almost every day. Vavrika's house was, so to speak, in the back yard of his saloon. Thegarden between the two buildings was inclosed by a high board fenceas tight as a partition, and in summer Joe kept beer tables and woodenbenches among the gooseberry bushes under his little cherry tree. Atone of these tables Nils Ericson was seated in the late afternoon, threedays after his return home. Joe had gone in to serve a customer, andNils was lounging on his elbows, looking rather mournfully into hishalf-emptied pitcher, when he heard a laugh across the little garden. Clara, in her riding habit, was standing at the back door of the house, under the grapevine trellis that old Joe had grown there long ago. Nilsrose. 

"Come out and keep your father and me company. We've been gossiping allafternoon. Nobody to bother us but the flies. "

She shook her head. "No, I never come out here any more. Olaf doesn'tlike it. I must live up to my position, you know. "

"You mean to tell me you never come out and chat with the boys, as youused to? He _has_ tamed you! Who keeps up these flower-beds?"

"I come out on Sundays, when father is alone, and read the Bohemianpapers to him. But I am never here when the bar is open. What have youtwo been doing?"

"Talking, as I told you. I've been telling him about my travels. I findI can't talk much at home, not even to Eric. "

Clara reached up and poked with her riding-whip at a white moth that wasfluttering in the sunlight among the vine leaves. "I suppose you willnever tell me about all those things. "

"Where can I tell them? Not in Olaf's house, certainly. What's thematter with our talking here?" He pointed persuasively with his hatto the bushes and the green table, where the flies were singing lazilyabove the empty beer glasses. 

Clara shook her head weakly. "No, it wouldn't do. Besides, I am goingnow. "

"I'm on Eric's mare. Would you be angry if I overtook you?"

Clara looked back and laughed. "You might try and see. I can leave youif I don't want you. Eric's mare can't keep up with Norman. "

Nils went into the bar and attempted to pay his score. Big Joe, six feetfour, with curly yellow hair and mustache, clapped him on the shoulder. "Not a Goddamn a your money go in my drawer, you hear? Only next timeyou bring your flute, te-te-te-te-te-ty. " Joe wagged his fingers inimitation of the flute player's position. 

"My Clara, she come all-a-time Sundays an' play for me. She not like toplay at Ericson's place. " He shook his yellow curls and laughed. "Not aGoddamn a fun at Ericson's. You come a Sunday. You like-a fun. No forgetde flute. " Joe talked very rapidly and always tumbled over his English. He seldom spoke it to his customers, and had never learned much. 

Nils swung himself into the saddle and trotted to the west of thevillage, where the houses and gardens scattered into prairie land andthe road turned south. Far ahead of him, in the declining light, he sawClara Vavrika's slender figure, loitering on horseback. He touched hismare with the whip, and shot along the white, level road, under thereddening sky. When he overtook Olaf's wife he saw that she had beencrying. "What's the matter, Clara Vavrika?" he asked kindly. 

"Oh, I get blue sometimes. It was awfully jolly living there withfather. I wonder why I ever went away. "

Nils spoke in a low, kind tone that he sometimes used with women:"That's what I've been wondering these many years. You were the lastgirl in the country I'd have picked for a wife for Olaf. What made youdo it, Clara?"

"I suppose I really did it to oblige the neighbours"--Clara tossed herhead. "People were beginning to wonder. "

"To wonder?"

"Yes--why I didn't get married. I suppose I didn't like to keep them insuspense. I've discovered that most girls marry out of consideration forthe neighbourhood. "

Nils bent his head toward her and his white teeth flashed. "I'd havegambled that one girl I knew would say, 'Let the neighbourhood bedamned. '"

Clara shook her head mournfully. "You see, they have it on you, Nils;that is, if you're a woman. They say you're beginning to go off. That'swhat makes us get married: we can't stand the laugh. "

Nils looked sidewise at her. He had never seen her head droop before. Resignation was the last thing he would have expected of her. "In yourcase, there wasn't something else?"

"Something else?"

"I mean, you didn't do it to spite somebody? Somebody who didn't comeback?"

Clara drew herself up. "Oh, I never thought you'd come back. Not afterI stopped writing to you, at least. _That_ was all over, long before Imarried Olaf. "

"It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you could do tome was to marry Olaf?"

Clara laughed. "No; I didn't know you were so fond of Olaf. "

Nils smoothed his horse's mane with his glove. "You know, Clara Vavrika, you are never going to stick it out. You'll cut away some day, and I'vebeen thinking you might as well cut away with me. "

Clara threw up her chin. "Oh, you don't know me as well as you think. Iwon't cut away. Sometimes, when I'm with father, I feel like it. But Ican hold out as long as the Ericsons can. They've never got the best ofme yet, and one can live, so long as one isn't beaten. If I go back tofather, it's all up with Olaf in politics. He knows that, and he nevergoes much beyond sulking. I've as much wit as the Ericsons. I'll neverleave them unless I can show them a thing or two. "

"You mean unless you can come it over them?"

"Yes--unless I go away with a man who is cleverer than they are, and whohas more money. "

Nils whistled. "Dear me, you are demanding a good deal. The Ericsons, take the lot of them, are a bunch to beat. But I should think theexcitement of tormenting them would have worn off by this time. "

"It has, I'm afraid, " Clara admitted mournfully. 

"Then why don't you cut away? There are more amusing games than this inthe world. When I came home I thought it might amuse me to bully a fewquarter sections out of the Ericsons; but I've almost decided I can getmore fun for my money somewhere else. "

Clara took in her breath sharply. "Ah, you have got the other will! Thatwas why you came home!"

"No, it wasn't. I came home to see how you were getting on with Olaf. "

Clara struck her horse with the whip, and in a bound she was far aheadof him. Nils dropped one word, "Damn!" and whipped after her; but sheleaned forward in her saddle and fairly cut the wind. Her long ridingskirt rippled in the still air behind her. The sun was just sinkingbehind the stubble in a vast, clear sky, and the shadows drew across thefields so rapidly that Nils could scarcely keep in sight the dark figureon the road. When he overtook her he caught her horse by the bridle. Norman reared, and Nils was frightened for her; but Clara kept her seat. 

"Let me go, Nils Ericson!" she cried. "I hate you more than any ofthem. You were created to torture me, the whole tribe of you--to make mesuffer in every possible way. "

She struck her horse again and galloped away from him. Nils set histeeth and looked thoughtful. He rode slowly home along the desertedroad, watching the stars come out in the clear violet sky. 

They flashed softly into the limpid heavens, like jewels let fall intoclear water. They were a reproach, he felt, to a sordid world. As heturned across the sand creek, he looked up at the North Star and smiled, as if there were an understanding between them. His mother scolded himfor being late for supper. 

 V

On Sunday afternoon Joe Vavrika, in his shirt sleeves and carpetslippers, was sitting in his garden, smoking a long-tasseled porcelainpipe with a hunting scene painted on the bowl. Clara sat under thecherry tree, reading aloud to him from the weekly Bohemian papers. Shehad worn a white muslin dress under her riding habit, and the leavesof the cherry tree threw a pattern of sharp shadows over her skirt. Theblack cat was dozing in the sunlight at her feet, and Joe's dachshundwas scratching a hole under the scarlet geraniums and dreaming ofbadgers. Joe was filling his pipe for the third time since dinner, when he heard a knocking on the fence. He broke into a loud guffaw andunlatched the little door that led into the street. He did not call Nilsby name, but caught him by the hand and dragged him in. Clara stiffenedand the colour deepened under her dark skin. Nils, too, felt a littleawkward. He had not seen her since the night when she rode away from himand left him alone on the level road between the fields. Joe dragged himto the wooden bench beside the green table. 

"You bring de flute, " he cried, tapping the leather case under Nils'arm. "Ah, das-a good' Now we have some liddle fun like old times. I gotsomet'ing good for you. " Joe shook his finger at Nils and winked hisblue eye, a bright clear eye, full of fire, though the tiny bloodvesselson the ball were always a little distended. "I got somet'ing for youfrom"--he paused and waved his hand--"Hongarie. You know Hongarie? Youwait!" He pushed Nils down on the bench, and went through the back doorof his saloon. 

Nils looked at Clara, who sat frigidly with her white skirts drawntight about her. "He didn't tell you he had asked me to come, did he?He wanted a party and proceeded to arrange it. Isn't he fun? Don't becross; let's give him a good time. "

Clara smiled and shook out her skirt. "Isn't that like Father? And hehas sat here so meekly all day. Well, I won't pout. I'm glad you came. He doesn't have very many good times now any more. There are so few ofhis kind left. The second generation are a tame lot. "

Joe came back with a flask in one hand and three wine glasses caught bythe stems between the fingers of the other. These he placed on the tablewith an air of ceremony, and, going behind Nils, held the flask betweenhim and the sun, squinting into it admiringly. "You know dis, Tokai? Agreat friend of mine, he bring dis to me, a present out of Hongarie. Youknow how much it cost, dis wine? Chust so much what it weigh in gold. Nobody but de nobles drink him in Bohemie. Many, many years I save himup, dis Tokai. " Joe whipped out his official corkscrew and delicatelyremoved the cork. "De old man die what bring him to me, an' dis wine helay on his belly in my cellar an' sleep. An' now, " carefully pouringout the heavy yellow wine, "an' now he wake up; and maybe he wake usup, too!" He carried one of the glasses to his daughter and presented itwith great gallantry. 

Clara shook her head, but, seeing her father's disappointment, relented. "You taste it first. I don't want so much. "

Joe sampled it with a beatific expression, and turned to Nils. "Youdrink him slow, dis wine. He very soft, but he go down hot. You see!"

After a second glass Nils declared that he couldn't take any morewithout getting sleepy. "Now get your fiddle, Vavrika, " he said as heopened his flute case. 

But Joe settled back in his wooden rocker and wagged his big carpetslipper. "No-no-no-no-no-no-no! No play fiddle now any more: too muchache in de finger, " waving them, "all-a-time rheumatic. You play deflute, te-tety-tetety-te. Bohemie songs. "

"I've forgotten all the Bohemian songs I used to play with you andJohanna. But here's one that will make Clara pout. You remember how hereyes used to snap when we called her the Bohemian Girl?" Nils lifted hisflute and began "When Other Lips and Other Hearts, " and Joe hummed theair in a husky baritone, waving his carpet slipper. "Oh-h-h, das-a finemusic, " he cried, clapping his hands as Nils finished. "Now 'MarbleHalls, Marble Halls'! Clara, you sing him. "

Clara smiled and leaned back in her chair, beginning softly:

 "I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls, With vassals and serfs at my knee, "

and Joe hummed like a big bumblebee. 

"There's one more you always played, " Clara said quietly, "I rememberthat best. " She locked her hands over her knee and began "The HeartBowed Down, " and sang it through without groping for the words. She wassinging with a good deal of warmth when she came to the end of the oldsong:

 "For memory is the only friend That grief can call its own. "

Joe flashed out his red silk handkerchief and blew his nose, shaking hishead. "No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Too sad, too sad! I not like-a dat. Playquick somet'ing gay now. "

Nils put his lips to the instrument, and Joe lay back in his chair, laughing and singing, "Oh, Evelina, Sweet Evelina!" Clara laughed, too. Long ago, when she and Nils went to high school, the model student oftheir class was a very homely girl in thick spectacles. Her name wasEvelina Oleson; she had a long, swinging walk which somehow suggestedthe measure of that song, and they used mercilessly to sing it at her. 

"Dat ugly Oleson girl, she teach in de school, " Joe gasped, "an' shestill walks chust like dat, yup-a, yup-a, yup-a, chust like acamel she go! Now, Nils, we have some more li'l drink. Oh, yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-_yes_! Dis time you haf to drink, and Clara shehaf to, so she show she not jealous. So, we all drink to your girl. Younot tell her name, eh? No-no-no, I no make you tell. She pretty, eh? Shemake good sweetheart? I bet!" Joe winked and lifted his glass. "How soonyou get married?"

Nils screwed up his eyes. "That I don't know. When she says. "

Joe threw out his chest. "Das-a way boys talks. No way for mans. Manssay, 'You come to de church, an' get a hurry on you. ' Das-a way manstalks. "

"Maybe Nils hasn't got enough to keep a wife, " put in Clara ironically. "How about that, Nils?" she asked him frankly, as if she wanted to know. 

Nils looked at her coolly, raising one eyebrow. "Oh, I can keep her, allright. "

"The way she wants to be kept?"

"With my wife, I'll decide that, " replied Nils calmly. "I'll give herwhat's good for her. "

Clara made a wry face. "You'll give her the strap, I expect, like oldPeter Oleson gave his wife. "

"When she needs it, " said Nils lazily, locking his hands behind his headand squinting up through the leaves of the cherry tree. "Do you rememberthe time I squeezed the cherries all over your clean dress, and AuntJohanna boxed my ears for me? My gracious, weren't you mad! You had bothhands full of cherries, and I squeezed 'em and made the juice fly allover you. I liked to have fun with you; you'd get so mad. "

"We _did_ have fun, didn't we? None of the other kids ever had so muchfun. We knew how to play. "

Nils dropped his elbows on the table and looked steadily across at her. "I've played with lots of girls since, but I haven't found one who wassuch good fun. "

Clara laughed. The late afternoon sun was shining full in her face, and deep in the back of her eyes there shone something fiery, like theyellow drops of Tokai in the brown glass bottle. "Can you still play, orare you only pretending?"

"I can play better than I used to, and harder. "

"Don't you ever work, then?" She had not intended to say it. It slippedout because she was confused enough to say just the wrong thing. 

"I work between times. " Nils' steady gaze still beat upon her. "Don'tyou worry about my working, Mrs. Ericson. You're getting like all therest of them. " He reached his brown, warm hand across the table anddropped it on Clara's, which was cold as an icicle. "Last call for play, Mrs. Ericson!" Clara shivered, and suddenly her hands and cheeks grewwarm. Her fingers lingered in his a moment, and they looked at eachother earnestly. Joe Vavrika had put the mouth of the bottle to his lipsand was swallowing the last drops of the Tokai, standing. The sun, justabout to sink behind his shop, glistened on the bright glass, on hisflushed face and curly yellow hair. "Look, " Clara whispered, "that's theway I want to grow old. "

 VI

On the day of Olaf Ericson's barn-raising, his wife, for once in a way, rose early. Johanna Vavrika had been baking cakes and frying and boilingand spicing meats for a week beforehand, but it was not until the daybefore the party was to take place that Clara showed any interest in it. Then she was seized with one of her fitful spasms of energy, and tookthe wagon and little Eric and spent the day on Plum Creek, gatheringvines and swamp goldenrod to decorate the barn. 

By four o'clock in the afternoon buggies and wagons began to arrive atthe big unpainted building in front of Olaf's house. When Nils and hismother came at five, there were more than fifty people in the barn, anda great drove of children. On the ground floor stood six long tables, set with the crockery of seven flourishing Ericson families, lent forthe occasion. In the middle of each table was a big yellow pumpkin, hollowed out and filled with woodbine. In one corner of the barn, behinda pile of green-and-white striped watermelons, was a circle of chairsfor the old people; the younger guests sat on bushel measures orbarbed-wire spools, and the children tumbled about in the haymow. Thebox stalls Clara had converted into booths. The framework was hidden bygoldenrod and sheaves of wheat, and the partitions were covered 'Withwild grapevines full of fruit. At one of these Johanna Vavrika watchedover her cooked meats, enough to provision an army; and at the next herkitchen girls had ranged the ice-cream freezers, and Clara was alreadycutting pies and cakes against the hour of serving. At the third stall, little Hilda, in a bright pink lawn dress, dispensed lemonade throughoutthe afternoon. Olaf, as a public man, had thought it inadvisable toserve beer in his barn; but Joe Vavrika had come over with two demijohnsconcealed in his buggy, and after his arrival the wagon shed was muchfrequented by the men. 

"Hasn't Cousin Clara fixed things lovely?" little Hilda whispered, whenNils went up to her stall and asked for lemonade. 

Nils leaned against the booth, talking to the excited little girl andwatching the people. The barn faced the west, and the sun, pouring inat the big doors, filled the whole interior with a golden light, through which filtered fine particles of dust from the haymow, where thechildren were romping. There was a great chattering from the stall whereJohanna Vavrika exhibited to the admiring women her platters heaped withfried chicken, her roasts of beef, boiled tongues, and baked hamswith cloves stuck in the crisp brown fat and garnished with tansy andparsley. The older women, having assured themselves that there weretwenty kinds of cake, not counting cookies, and three dozen fat pies, repaired to the corner behind the pile of watermelons, put on theirwhite aprons, and fell to their knitting and fancywork. They were a finecompany of old women, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find themthere together, where the sun made bright patches on the floor and sentlong, quivering shafts of gold through the dusky shade up among therafters. There were fat, rosy old women who looked hot in their bestblack dresses; spare, alert old women with brown, dark-veined hands; andseveral of almost heroic frame, not less massive than old Mrs. Ericsonherself. Few of them wore glasses, and old Mrs. Svendsen, a Danishwoman, who was quite bald, wore the only cap among them. Mrs. Oleson, who had twelve big grandchildren, could still show two braids of yellowhair as thick as her own wrists. Among all these grandmothers there weremore brown heads than white. They all had a pleased, prosperous air, asif they were more than satisfied with themselves and with life. Nils, leaning against Hilda's lemonade stand, watched them as they satchattering in four languages, their fingers never lagging behind theirtongues. 

"Look at them over there, " he whispered, detaining Clara as she passedhim. "Aren't they the Old Guard? I've just counted thirty hands. I guessthey've wrung many a chicken's neck and warmed many a boy's jacket forhim in their time. "

In reality he fell into amazement when he thought of the Herculeanlabours those fifteen pairs of hands had performed: of the cows theyhad milked, the butter they had made, the gardens they had planted, thechildren and grandchildren they had tended, the brooms they had wornout, the mountains of food they had cooked. It made him dizzy. ClaraVavrika smiled a hard, enigmatical smile at him and walked rapidly away. Nils' eyes followed her white figure as she went toward the house. He watched her walking alone in the sunlight, looked at her slender, defiant shoulders and her little hard-set head with its coils ofblue-black hair. "No, " he reflected; "she'd never be like them, not ifshe lived here a hundred years. She'd only grow more bitter. You can'ttame a wild thing; you can only chain it. People aren't all alike. Imustn't lose my nerve. " He gave Hilda's pigtail a parting tweak andset out after Clara. "Where to?" he asked, as he came upon her in thekitchen. 

"I'm going to the cellar for preserves. "

"Let me go with you. I never get a moment alone with you. Why do youkeep out of my way?"

Clara laughed. "I don't usually get in anybody's way. "

Nils followed her down the stairs and to the far corner of the cellar, where a basement window let in a stream of light. From a swinging shelfClara selected several glass jars, each labeled in Johanna's carefulhand. Nils took up a brown flask. "What's this? It looks good. "

"It is. It's some French brandy father gave me when I was married. Wouldyou like some? Have you a corkscrew? I'll get glasses. "

When she brought them, Nils took them from her and put them down onthe window-sill. "Clara Vavrika, do you remember how crazy I used to beabout you?"

Clara shrugged her shoulders. "Boys are always crazy about somebody oranother. I dare say some silly has been crazy about Evelina Oleson. Yougot over it in a hurry. "

"Because I didn't come back, you mean? I had to get on, you know, and itwas hard sledding at first. Then I heard you'd married Olaf. "

"And then you stayed away from a broken heart, " Clara laughed. 

"And then I began to think about you more than I had since I first wentaway. I began to wonder if you were really as you had seemed to me whenI was a boy. I thought I'd like to see. I've had lots of girls, but noone ever pulled me the same way. The more I thought about you, themore I remembered how it used to be--like hearing a wild tune youcan't resist, calling you out at night. It had been a long while sinceanything had pulled me out of my boots, and I wondered whether anythingever could again. " Nils thrust his hands into his coat pockets andsquared his shoulders, as his mother sometimes squared hers, as Olaf, ina clumsier manner, squared his. "So I thought I'd come back and see. Ofcourse the family have tried to do me, and I rather thought I'd bringout father's will and make a fuss. But they can have their old land;they've put enough sweat into it. " He took the flask and filled thetwo glasses carefully to the brim. "I've found out what I want from theEricsons. Drink _skoal_, Clara. " He lifted his glass, and Clara tookhers with downcast eyes. "Look at me, Clara Vavrika. _Skoal!_"

She raised her burning eyes and answered fiercely: "_Skoal!_"

The barn supper began at six o'clock and lasted for two hilarioushours. Yense Nelson had made a wager that he could eat two whole friedchickens, and he did. Eli Swanson stowed away two whole custard pies, and Nick Hermanson ate a chocolate layer cake to the last crumb. Therewas even a cooky contest among the children, and one thin, slablikeBohemian boy consumed sixteen and won the prize, a gingerbread pigwhich Johanna Vavrika had carefully decorated with red candies and burntsugar. Fritz Sweiheart, the German carpenter, won in the pickle contest, but he disappeared soon after supper and was not seen for the rest ofthe evening. Joe Vavrika said that Fritz could have managed the picklesall right, but he had sampled the demijohn in his buggy too often beforesitting down to the table. 

While the supper was being cleared away the two fiddlers began to tuneup for the dance. Clara was to accompany them on her old upright piano, which had been brought down from her father's. By this time Nils hadrenewed old acquaintances. Since his interview with Clara in the cellar, he had been busy telling all the old women how young they looked, andall the young ones how pretty they were, and assuring the men thatthey had here the best farmland in the world. He had made himself soagreeable that old Mrs. Ericson's friends began to come up to her andtell how lucky she was to get her smart son back again, and please toget him to play his flute. Joe Vavrika, who could still play very wellwhen he forgot that he had rheumatism, caught up a fiddle from JohnnyOleson and played a crazy Bohemian dance tune that set the wheels going. When he dropped the bow every one was ready to dance. 

Olaf, in a frock coat and a solemn made-up necktie, led the grand marchwith his mother. Clara had kept well out of _that_ by sticking to thepiano. She played the march with a pompous solemnity which greatlyamused the prodigal son, who went over and stood behind her. 

"Oh, aren't you rubbing it into them, Clara Vavrika? And aren't youlucky to have me here, or all your wit would be thrown away. "

"I'm used to being witty for myself. It saves my life. "

The fiddles struck up a polka, and Nils convulsed Joe Vavrika by leadingout Evelina Oleson, the homely schoolteacher. His next partner was avery fat Swedish girl, who, although she was an heiress, had not beenasked for the first dance, but had stood against the wall in her tight, high-heeled shoes, nervously fingering a lace handkerchief. She was soonout of breath, so Nils led her, pleased and panting, to her seat, and went over to the piano, from which Clara had been watching hisgallantry. "Ask Olena Yenson, " she whispered. "She waltzes beautifully. "

Olena, too, was rather inconveniently plump, handsome in a smooth, heavyway, with a fine colour and good-natured, sleepy eyes. She was redolentof violet sachet powder, and had warm, soft, white hands, but she danceddivinely, moving as smoothly as the tide coming in. "There, that'ssomething like, " Nils said as he released her. "You'll give me the nextwaltz, won't you? Now I must go and dance with my little cousin. "

Hilda was greatly excited when Nils went up to her stall and held outhis arm. Her little eyes sparkled, but she declared that she could notleave her lemonade. Old Mrs. Ericson, who happened along at this moment, said she would attend to that, and Hilda came out, as pink as her pinkdress. The dance was a schottische, and in a moment her yellow braidswere fairly standing on end. "Bravo!" Nils cried encouragingly. "Wheredid you learn to dance so nicely?"

"My Cousin Clara taught me, " the little girl panted. 

Nils found Eric sitting with a group of boys who were too awkward or tooshy to dance, and told him that he must dance the next waltz with Hilda. 

The boy screwed up his shoulders. "Aw, Nils, I can't dance. My feet aretoo big; I look silly. "

"Don't be thinking about yourself. It doesn't matter how boys look. "

Nils had never spoken to him so sharply before, and Eric made haste toscramble out of his corner and brush the straw from his coat. 

Clara nodded approvingly. "Good for you, Nils. I've been trying toget hold of him. They dance very nicely together; I sometimes play forthem. "

"I'm obliged to you for teaching him. There's no reason why he shouldgrow up to be a lout. "

"He'll never be that. He's more like you than any of them. Only hehasn't your courage. " From her slanting eyes Clara shot forth one ofthose keen glances, admiring and at the same time challenging, which sheseldom bestowed on any one, and which seemed to say, "Yes, I admire you, but I am your equal. "

Clara was proving a much better host than Olaf, who, once the supper wasover, seemed to feel no interest in anything but the lanterns. He hadbrought a locomotive headlight from town to light the revels, and hekept skulking about as if he feared the mere light from it might set hisnew barn on fire. His wife, on the contrary, was cordial to every one, was animated and even gay. The deep salmon colour in her cheeks burnedvividly, and her eyes were full of life. She gave the piano over to thefat Swedish heiress, pulled her father away from the corner where hesat gossiping with his cronies, and made him dance a Bohemian dance withher. In his youth Joe had been a famous dancer, and his daughter gothim so limbered up that every one sat around and applauded them. The oldladies were particularly delighted, and made them go through the danceagain. From their corner where they watched and commented, the old womenkept time with their feet and hands, and whenever the fiddles struck upa new air old Mrs. Svendsen's white cap would begin to bob. 

Clara was waltzing with little Eric when Nils came up to them, brushedhis brother aside, and swung her out among the dancers. "Remember howwe used to waltz on rollers at the old skating rink in town? I supposepeople don't do that any more. We used to keep it up for hours. Youknow, we never did moon around as other boys and girls did. It was deadserious with us from the beginning. When we were most in love with eachother, we used to fight. You were always pinching people; your fingerswere like little nippers. A regular snapping turtle, you were. Lord, howyou'd like Stockholm! Sit out in the streets in front of cafes and talkall night in summer, just like a reception--officers and ladies andfunny English people. Jolliest people in the world, the Swedes, once youget them going. Always drinking things--champagne and stout mixed, half-and-half, serve it out of big pitchers, and serve plenty. Slowpulse, you know; they can stand a lot. Once they light up, they'reglowworms, I can tell you. "

"All the same, you don't really like gay people. "

"_I_ don't?"

"No; I could tell that when you were looking at the old women there thisafternoon. They're the kind you really admire, after all; women likeyour mother. And that's the kind you'll marry. "

"Is it, Miss Wisdom? You'll see who I'll marry, and she won't have adomestic virtue to bless herself with. She'll be a snapping turtle, and she'll be a match for me. All the same, they're a fine bunch of olddames over there. You admire them yourself. 

"No, I don't; I detest them. "

"You won't, when you look back on them from Stockholm or Budapest. Freedom settles all that. Oh, but you're the real Bohemian Girl, ClaraVavrika!" Nils laughed down at her sullen frown and began mockingly tosing:

 "Oh, how could a poor gypsy maiden like me Expect the proud bride of a baron to be?"

Clara clutched his shoulder. "Hush, Nils; every one is looking at you. "

"I don't care. They can't gossip. It's all in the family, as theEricsons say when they divide up little Hilda's patrimony amongst them. Besides, we'll give them something to talk about when we hit thetrail. Lord, it will be a godsend to them! They haven't had anything sointeresting to chatter about since the grasshopper year. It'll givethem a new lease of life. And Olaf won't lose the Bohemian vote, either. They'll have the laugh on him so that they'll vote two apiece. They'llsend him to Congress. They'll never forget his barn party, or us. They'll always remember us as we're dancing together now. We're makinga legend. Where's my waltz, boys?" he called as they whirled past thefiddlers. 

The musicians grinned, looked at each other, hesitated, and began a newair; and Nils sang with them, as the couples fell from a quick waltz toa long, slow glide:

 "When other lips and other hearts Their tale of love shall tell, In language whose excess imparts The power they feel so well. "

The old women applauded vigorously. "What a gay one he is, that Nils!"And old Mrs. Svendsen's cap lurched dreamily from side to side to theflowing measure of the dance. 

 "Of days that have as ha-a-p-py been, And you'll remember me. "

 VII

The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. The reaped fields layyellow in it. The straw stacks and poplar windbreaks threw sharp blackshadows. The roads were white rivers of dust. The sky was a deep, crystalline blue, and the stars were few and faint. Everything seemed tohave succumbed, to have sunk to sleep, under the great, golden, tender, midsummer moon. The splendour of it seemed to transcend human life andhuman fate. The senses were too feeble to take it in, and every time onelooked up at the sky one felt unequal to it, as if one were sitting deafunder the waves of a great river of melody. Near the road, Nils Ericsonwas lying against a straw stack in Olaf's wheat field. His own lifeseemed strange and unfamiliar to him, as if it were something he hadread about, or dreamed, and forgotten. He lay very still, watching thewhite road that ran in front of him, lost itself among the fields, andthen, at a distance, reappeared over a little hill. At last, againstthis white band he saw something moving rapidly, and he got up andwalked to the edge of the field. "She is passing the row of poplarsnow, " he thought. He heard the padded beat of hoofs along the dustyroad, and as she came into sight he stepped out and waved his arms. Then, for fear of frightening the horse, he drew back and waited. Clarahad seen him, and she came up at a walk. Nils took the horse by the bitand stroked his neck. 

"What are you doing out so late, Clara Vavrika? I went to the house, butJohanna told me you had gone to your father's. "

"Who can stay in the house on a night like this? Aren't you outyourself?"

"Ah, but that's another matter. "

Nils turned the horse into the field. 

"What are you doing? Where are you taking Norman?"

"Not far, but I want to talk to you tonight; I have something to say toyou. I can't talk to you at the house, with Olaf sitting there on theporch, weighing a thousand tons. "

Clara laughed. "He won't be sitting there now. He's in bed by this time, and asleep--weighing a thousand tons. "

Nils plodded on across the stubble. "Are you really going to spend therest of your life like this, night after night, summer after summer?Haven't you anything better to do on a night like this than to wearyourself and Norman out tearing across the country to your father'sand back? Besides, your father won't live forever, you know. His littleplace will be shut up or sold, and then you'll have nobody but theEricsons. You'll have to fasten down the hatches for the winter then. "

Clara moved her head restlessly. "Don't talk about that. I try never tothink of it. If I lost Father I'd lose everything, even my hold over theEricsons. "

"Bah! You'd lose a good deal more than that. You'd lose your race, everything that makes you yourself. You've lost a good deal of it now. "

"Of what?"

"Of your love of life, your capacity for delight. "

Clara put her hands up to her face. "I haven't, Nils Ericson, I haven't!Say anything to me but that. I won't have it!" she declared vehemently. 

Nils led the horse up to a straw stack, and turned to Clara, lookingat her intently, as he had looked at her that Sunday afternoon atVavrika's. "But why do you fight for that so? What good is the powerto enjoy, if you never enjoy? Your hands are cold again; what are youafraid of all the time? Ah, you're afraid of losing it; that's what'sthe matter with you! And you will, Clara Vavrika, you will! When I usedto know you--listen; you've caught a wild bird in your hand, haven'tyou, and felt its heart beat so hard that you were afraid it wouldshatter its little body to pieces? Well, you used to be just like that, a slender, eager thing with a wild delight inside you. That is how Iremembered you. And I come back and find you--a bitter woman. This isa perfect ferret fight here; you live by biting and being bitten. Can'tyou remember what life used to be? Can't you remember that old delight?I've never forgotten it, or known its like, on land or sea. "

He drew the horse under the shadow of the straw stack. Clara felt himtake her foot out of the stirrup, and she slid softly down into hisarms. He kissed her slowly. He was a deliberate man, but his nerves weresteel when he wanted anything. Something flashed out from him like aknife out of a sheath. Clara felt everything slipping away from her; shewas flooded by the summer night. He thrust his hand into his pocket, and then held it out at arm's length. "Look, " he said. The shadow of thestraw stack fell sharp across his wrist, and in the palm of his hand shesaw a silver dollar shining. "That's my pile, " he muttered; "will you gowith me?"

Clara nodded, and dropped her forehead on his shoulder. 

Nils took a deep breath. "Will you go with me tonight?"

"Where?" she whispered softly. 

"To town, to catch the midnight flyer. "

Clara lifted her head and pulled herself together. "Are you crazy, Nils?We couldn't go away like that. "

"That's the only way we ever will go. You can't sit on the bank andthink about it. You have to plunge. That's the way I've always done, and it's the right way for people like you and me. There's nothing sodangerous as sitting still. You've only got one life, one youth, andyou can let it slip through your fingers if you want to; nothing easier. Most people do that. You'd be better off tramping the roads with me thanyou are here. " Nils held back her head and looked into her eyes. "ButI'm not that kind of a tramp, Clara. You won't have to take in sewing. I'm with a Norwegian shipping line; came over on business with the NewYork offices, but now I'm going straight back to Bergen. I expectI've got as much money as the Ericsons. Father sent me a little to getstarted. They never knew about that. There, I hadn't meant to tell you;I wanted you to come on your own nerve. "

Clara looked off across the fields. "It isn't that, Nils, but somethingseems to hold me. I'm afraid to pull against it. It comes out of theground, I think. "

"I know all about that. One has to tear loose. You're not needed here. Your father will understand; he's made like us. As for Olaf, Johannawill take better care of him than ever you could. It's now or never, Clara Vavrika. My bag's at the station; I smuggled it there yesterday. "

Clara clung to him and hid her face against his shoulder. "Not tonight, "she whispered. "Sit here and talk to me tonight. I don't want to goanywhere tonight. I may never love you like this again. "

Nils laughed through his teeth. "You can't come that on me. That's notmy way, Clara Vavrika. Eric's mare is over there behind the stacks, andI'm off on the midnight. It's goodbye, or off across the world with me. My carriage won't wait. I've written a letter to Olaf, I'll mail itin town. When he reads it he won't bother us--not if I know him. He'drather have the land. Besides, I could demand an investigation of hisadministration of Cousin Henrik's estate, and that would be bad for apublic man. You've no clothes, I know; but you can sit up tonight, andwe can get everything on the way. Where's your old dash, Clara Vavrika?What's become of your Bohemian blood? I used to think you had courageenough for anything. Where's your nerve--what are you waiting for?"

Clara drew back her head, and he saw the slumberous fire in her eyes. "For you to say one thing, Nils Ericson. "

"I never say that thing to any woman, Clara Vavrika. " He leaned back, lifted her gently from the ground, and whispered through his teeth: "ButI'll never, never let you go, not to any man on earth but me! Do youunderstand me? Now, wait here. "

Clara sank down on a sheaf of wheat and covered her face with her hands. She did not know what she was going to do--whether she would go or stay. The great, silent country seemed to lay a spell upon her. The groundseemed to hold her as if by roots. Her knees were soft under her. Shefelt as if she could not bear separation from her old sorrows, from herold discontent. They were dear to her, they had kept her alive, theywere a part of her. There would be nothing left of her if she werewrenched away from them. Never could she pass beyond that skylineagainst which her restlessness had beat so many times. She felt as ifher soul had built itself a nest there on that horizon at whichshe looked every morning and every evening, and it was dear to her, inexpressibly dear. She pressed her fingers against her eyeballs to shutit out. Beside her she heard the tramping of horses in the soft earth. Nils said nothing to her. He put his hands under her arms and lifted herlightly to her saddle. Then he swung himself into his own. 

"We shall have to ride fast to catch the midnight train. A last gallop, Clara Vavrika. Forward!"

There was a start, a thud of hoofs along the moonlit road, two darkshadows going over the hill; and then the great, still land stretcheduntroubled under the azure night. Two shadows had passed. 

 VII

A year after the flight of Olaf Ericson's wife, the night train wassteaming across the plains of Iowa. The conductor was hurrying throughone of the day coaches, his lantern on his arm, when a lank, fair-hairedboy sat up in one of the plush seats and tweaked him by the coat. 

"What is the next stop, please, sir?"

"Red Oak, Iowa. But you go through to Chicago, don't you?" He lookeddown, and noticed that the boy's eyes were red and his face was drawn, as if he were in trouble. 

"Yes. But I was wondering whether I could get off at the next place andget a train back to Omaha. "

"Well, I suppose you could. Live in Omaha?"

"No. In the western part of the State. How soon do we get to Red Oak?"

"Forty minutes. You'd better make up your mind, so I can tell thebaggageman to put your trunk off. "

"Oh, never mind about that! I mean, I haven't got any, " the boy added, blushing. 

"Run away, " the conductor thought, as he slammed the coach door behindhim. 

Eric Ericson crumpled down in his seat and put his brown hand to hisforehead. He had been crying, and he had had no supper, and his head wasaching violently. "Oh, what shall I do?" he thought, as he looked dullydown at his big shoes. "Nils will be ashamed of me; I haven't got anyspunk. "

Ever since Nils had run away with his brother's wife, life at home hadbeen hard for little Eric. His mother and Olaf both suspected him ofcomplicity. Mrs. Ericson was harsh and faultfinding, constantly woundingthe boy's pride; and Olaf was always setting her against him. 

Joe Vavrika heard often from his daughter. Clara had always been fond ofher father, and happiness made her kinder. She wrote him long accountsof the voyage to Bergen, and of the trip she and Nils took throughBohemia to the little town where her father had grown up and where sheherself was born. She visited all her kinsmen there, and sent her fathernews of his brother, who was a priest; of his sister, who had married ahorse-breeder--of their big farm and their many children. These lettersJoe always managed to read to little Eric. They contained messages forEric and Hilda. Clara sent presents, too, which Eric never dared to takehome and which poor little Hilda never even saw, though she loved tohear Eric tell about them when they were out getting the eggs together. But Olaf once saw Eric coming out of Vavrika's house--the old man hadnever asked the boy to come into his saloon--and Olaf went straight tohis mother and told her. That night Mrs. Ericson came to Eric's roomafter he was in bed and made a terrible scene. She could be veryterrifying when she was really angry. She forbade him ever to speak toVavrika again, and after that night she would not allow him to go totown alone. So it was a long while before Eric got any more news of hisbrother. But old Joe suspected what was going on, and he carried Clara'sletters about in his pocket. One Sunday he drove out to see a Germanfriend of his, and chanced to catch sight of Eric, sitting by the cattlepond in the big pasture. They went together into Fritz Oberlies' barn, and read the letters and talked things over. Eric admitted that thingswere getting hard for him at home. That very night old Joe sat down andlaboriously penned a statement of the case to his daughter. 

Things got no better for Eric. His mother and Olaf felt that, howeverclosely he was watched, he still, as they said, "heard. " Mrs. Ericsoncould not admit neutrality. She had sent Johanna Vavrika packing back toher brother's, though Olaf would much rather have kept her than Anders'eldest daughter, whom Mrs. Ericson installed in her place. He was notso highhanded as his mother, and he once sulkily told her that she mightbetter have taught her granddaughter to cook before she sent Johannaaway. Olaf could have borne a good deal for the sake of prunes spiced inhoney, the secret of which Johanna had taken away with her. 

At last two letters came to Joe Vavrika: one from Nils, enclosing apostal order for money to pay Eric's passage to Bergen, and one fromClara, saying that Nils had a place for Eric in the offices of hiscompany, that he was to live with them, and that they were only waitingfor him to come. He was to leave New York on one of the boats of Nils'own line; the captain was one of their friends, and Eric was to makehimself known at once. 

Nils' directions were so explicit that a baby could have followed them, Eric felt. And here he was, nearing Red Oak, Iowa, and rocking backwardand forward in despair. Never had he loved his brother so much, andnever had the big world called to him so hard. But there was a lump inhis throat which would not go down. Ever since nightfall he had beentormented by the thought of his mother, alone in that big house thathad sent forth so many men. Her unkindness now seemed so little, and herloneliness so great. He remembered everything she had ever done for him:how frightened she had been when he tore his hand in the corn-sheller, and how she wouldn't let Olaf scold him. When Nils went away he didn'tleave his mother all alone, or he would never have gone. Eric felt sureof that. 

The train whistled. The conductor came in, smiling not unkindly. "Well, young man, what are you going to do? We stop at Red Oak in threeminutes. "

"Yes, thank you. I'll let you know. " The conductor went out, and the boydoubled up with misery. He couldn't let his one chance go like this. He felt for his breast pocket and crackled Nils' letter to give himcourage. He didn't want Nils to be ashamed of him. The train stopped. Suddenly he remembered his brother's kind, twinkling eyes, that alwayslooked at you as if from far away. The lump in his throat softened. "Ah, but Nils, Nils would _understand_!" he thought. "That's just it aboutNils; he always understands. "

A lank, pale boy with a canvas telescope stumbled off the train to theRed Oak siding, just as the conductor called, "All aboard!"

The next night Mrs. Ericson was sitting alone in her woodenrocking-chair on the front porch. Little Hilda had been sent to bed andhad cried herself to sleep. The old woman's knitting was on her lap, buther hands lay motionless on top of it. For more than an hour she had notmoved a muscle. She simply sat, as only the Ericsons and the mountainscan sit. The house was dark, and there was no sound but the croaking ofthe frogs down in the pond of the little pasture. 

Eric did not come home by the road, but across the fields, where no onecould see him. He set his telescope down softly in the kitchen shed, andslipped noiselessly along the path to the front porch. He sat down onthe step without saying anything. Mrs. Ericson made no sign, and thefrogs croaked on. At last the boy spoke timidly. 

"I've come back, Mother. "

"Very well, " said Mrs. Ericson. 

Eric leaned over and picked up a little stick out of the grass. 

"How about the milking?" he faltered. 

"That's been done, hours ago. "

"Who did you get?"

"Get? I did it myself. I can milk as good as any of you. "

Eric slid along the step nearer to her. "Oh, Mother, why did you?" heasked sorrowfully. "Why didn't you get one of Otto's boys?"

"I didn't want anybody to know I was in need of a boy, " said Mrs. Ericson bitterly. She looked straight in front of her and her mouthtightened. "I always meant to give you the home farm, " she added. 

The boy stared and slid closer. "Oh, Mother, " he faltered, "I don't careabout the farm. I came back because I thought you might be needing me, maybe. " He hung his head and got no further. 

"Very well, " said Mrs. Ericson. Her hand went out from her suddenlyand rested on his head. Her fingers twined themselves in his soft, palehair. His tears splashed down on the boards; happiness filled his heart. 

THE TROLL GARDEN

Flavia and Her Artists

As the train neared Tarrytown, Imogen Willard began to wonder why shehad consented to be one of Flavia's house party at all. She had not feltenthusiastic about it since leaving the city, and was experiencing aprolonged ebb of purpose, a current of chilling indecision, underwhich she vainly sought for the motive which had induced her to acceptFlavia's invitation. 

Perhaps it was a vague curiosity to see Flavia's husband, who had beenthe magician of her childhood and the hero of innumerable Arabian fairytales. Perhaps it was a desire to see M. Roux, whom Flavia had announcedas the especial attraction of the occasion. Perhaps it was a wish tostudy that remarkable woman in her own setting. 

Imogen admitted a mild curiosity concerning Flavia. She was in the habitof taking people rather seriously, but somehow found it impossible totake Flavia so, because of the very vehemence and insistence with whichFlavia demanded it. Submerged in her studies, Imogen had, of late years, seen very little of Flavia; but Flavia, in her hurried visits to NewYork, between her excursions from studio to studio--her luncheons withthis lady who had to play at a matinee, and her dinners with that singerwho had an evening concert--had seen enough of her friend's handsomedaughter to conceive for her an inclination of such violence andassurance as only Flavia could afford. The fact that Imogen had shownrather marked capacity in certain esoteric lines of scholarship, andhad decided to specialize in a well-sounding branch of philology atthe Ecole des Chartes, had fairly placed her in that category of"interesting people" whom Flavia considered her natural affinities, andlawful prey. 

When Imogen stepped upon the station platform she was immediatelyappropriated by her hostess, whose commanding figure and assurance ofattire she had recognized from a distance. She was hurried into a hightilbury and Flavia, taking the driver's cushion beside her, gathered upthe reins with an experienced hand. 

"My dear girl, " she remarked, as she turned the horses up the street, "Iwas afraid the train might be late. M. Roux insisted upon coming up byboat and did not arrive until after seven. "

"To think of M. Roux's being in this part of the world at all, andsubject to the vicissitudes of river boats! Why in the world did he comeover?" queried Imogen with lively interest. "He is the sort of man whomust dissolve and become a shadow outside of Paris. "

"Oh, we have a houseful of the most interesting people, " said Flavia, professionally. "We have actually managed to get Ivan Schemetzkin. Hewas ill in California at the close of his concert tour, you know, and heis recuperating with us, after his wearing journey from the coast. Thenthere is Jules Martel, the painter; Signor Donati, the tenor; ProfessorSchotte, who has dug up Assyria, you know; Restzhoff, the Russianchemist; Alcee Buisson, the philologist; Frank Wellington, the novelist;and Will Maidenwood, the editor of _Woman_. Then there is my secondcousin, Jemima Broadwood, who made such a hit in Pinero's comedy lastwinter, and Frau Lichtenfeld. _Have_ you read her?"

Imogen confessed her utter ignorance of Frau Lichtenfeld, and Flaviawent on. 

"Well, she is a most remarkable person; one of those advanced Germanwomen, a militant iconoclast, and this drive will not be long enough topermit of my telling you her history. Such a story! Her novels were thetalk of all Germany when I was there last, and several of them have beensuppressed--an honor in Germany, I understand. 'At Whose Door' has beentranslated. I am so unfortunate as not to read German. "

"I'm all excitement at the prospect of meeting Miss Broadwood, "said Imogen. "I've seen her in nearly everything she does. Her stagepersonality is delightful. She always reminds me of a nice, clean, pink-and-white boy who has just had his cold bath, and come down allaglow for a run before breakfast. "

"Yes, but isn't it unfortunate that she will limit herself to thoseminor comedy parts that are so little appreciated in this country? Oneought to be satisfied with nothing less than the best, ought one?" Thepeculiar, breathy tone in which Flavia always uttered that word "best, "the most worn in her vocabulary, always jarred on Imogen and always madeher obdurate. 

"I don't at all agree with you, " she said reservedly. "I thoughteveryone admitted that the most remarkable thing about Miss Broadwood isher admirable sense of fitness, which is rare enough in her profession. "

Flavia could not endure being contradicted; she always seemed to regardit in the light of a defeat, and usually colored unbecomingly. Now shechanged the subject. 

"Look, my dear, " she cried, "there is Frau Lichtenfeld now, coming tomeet us. Doesn't she look as if she had just escaped out of Valhalla?She is actually over six feet. "

Imogen saw a woman of immense stature, in a very short skirt and abroad, flapping sun hat, striding down the hillside at a long, swinginggait. The refugee from Valhalla approached, panting. Her heavy, Teutonicfeatures were scarlet from the rigor of her exercise, and her hair, under her flapping sun hat, was tightly befrizzled about her brow. Shefixed her sharp little eyes upon Imogen and extended both her hands. 

"So this is the little friend?" she cried, in a rolling baritone. 

Imogen was quite as tall as her hostess; but everything, she reflected, is comparative. After the introduction Flavia apologized. 

"I wish I could ask you to drive up with us, Frau Lichtenfeld. "

"Ah, no!" cried the giantess, drooping her head in humorous caricatureof a time-honored pose of the heroines of sentimental romances. "It hasnever been my fate to be fitted into corners. I have never known thesweet privileges of the tiny. "

Laughing, Flavia started the ponies, and the colossal woman, standingin the middle of the dusty road, took off her wide hat and waved thema farewell which, in scope of gesture, recalled the salute of a plumedcavalier. 

When they arrived at the house, Imogen looked about her with keencuriosity, for this was veritably the work of Flavia's hands, thematerialization of hopes long deferred. They passed directly into alarge, square hall with a gallery on three sides, studio fashion. Thisopened at one end into a Dutch breakfast room, beyond which was thelarge dining room. At the other end of the hall was the music room. There was a smoking room, which one entered through the librarybehind the staircase. On the second floor there was the same generalarrangement: a square hall, and, opening from it, the guest chambers, or, as Miss Broadwood termed them, the "cages. "

When Imogen went to her room, the guests had begun to return from theirvarious afternoon excursions. Boys were gliding through the halls withice water, covered trays, and flowers, colliding with maids and valetswho carried shoes and other articles of wearing apparel. Yet, all thiswas done in response to inaudible bells, on felt soles, and in hushedvoices, so that there was very little confusion about it. 

Flavia had at last built her house and hewn out her seven pillars; therecould be no doubt, now, that the asylum for talent, the sanatorium ofthe arts, so long projected, was an accomplished fact. Her ambitionhad long ago outgrown the dimensions of her house on Prairie Avenue;besides, she had bitterly complained that in Chicago traditions wereagainst her. Her project had been delayed by Arthur's doggedly standingout for the Michigan woods, but Flavia knew well enough that certain ofthe _rarae aves_--"the best"--could not be lured so far away from theseaport, so she declared herself for the historic Hudson and knew noretreat. The establishing of a New York office had at length overthrownArthur's last valid objection to quitting the lake country for threemonths of the year; and Arthur could be wearied into anything, as thosewho knew him knew. 

Flavia's house was the mirror of her exultation; it was a temple to thegods of Victory, a sort of triumphal arch. In her earlier days she hadswallowed experiences that would have unmanned one of less torrentialenthusiasm or blind pertinacity. But, of late years, her determinationhad told; she saw less and less of those mysterious persons withmysterious obstacles in their path and mysterious grievances against theworld, who had once frequented her house on Prairie Avenue. In the steadof this multitude of the unarrived, she had now the few, the select, "the best. " Of all that band of indigent retainers who had once fed ather board like the suitors in the halls of Penelope, only Alcee Buissonstill retained his right of entree. He alone had remembered thatambition hath a knapsack at his back, wherein he puts alms to oblivion, and he alone had been considerate enough to do what Flavia had expectedof him, and give his name a current value in the world. Then, asMiss Broadwood put it, "he was her first real one, "--and Flavia, likeMohammed, could remember her first believer. 

"The House of Song, " as Miss Broadwood had called it, was the outcomeof Flavia's more exalted strategies. A woman who made less a point ofsympathizing with their delicate organisms, might have sought to plungethese phosphorescent pieces into the tepid bath of domestic life;but Flavia's discernment was deeper. This must be a refuge where theshrinking soul, the sensitive brain, should be unconstrained; wherethe caprice of fancy should outweigh the civil code, if necessary. Sheconsidered that this much Arthur owed her; for she, in her turn, hadmade concessions. Flavia had, indeed, quite an equipment of epigramsto the effect that our century creates the iron genii which evolve itsfairy tales: but the fact that her husband's name was annually paintedupon some ten thousand threshing machines in reality contributed verylittle to her happiness. 

Arthur Hamilton was born and had spent his boyhood in the West Indies, and physically he had never lost the brand of the tropics. His father, after inventing the machine which bore his name, had returned to theStates to patent and manufacture it. After leaving college, Arthur hadspent five years ranching in the West and traveling abroad. Upon hisfather's death he had returned to Chicago and, to the astonishment ofall his friends, had taken up the business--without any demonstrationof enthusiasm, but with quiet perseverance, marked ability, and amazingindustry. Why or how a self-sufficient, rather ascetic man of thirty, indifferent in manner, wholly negative in all other personal relations, should have doggedly wooed and finally married Flavia Malcolm was aproblem that had vexed older heads than Imogen's. 

While Imogen was dressing she heard a knock at her door, and a youngwoman entered whom she at once recognized as Jemima Broadwood--"Jimmy"Broadwood she was called by people in her own profession. While therewas something unmistakably professional in her frank _savoir-faire_, "Jimmy's" was one of those faces to which the rouge never seems tostick. Her eyes were keen and gray as a windy April sky, and so far fromhaving been seared by calcium lights, you might have fancied they hadnever looked on anything less bucolic than growing fields and countryfairs. She wore her thick, brown hair short and parted at the side; and, rather than hinting at freakishness, this seemed admirably in keepingwith her fresh, boyish countenance. She extended to Imogen a large, well-shaped hand which it was a pleasure to clasp. 

"Ah! You are Miss Willard, and I see I need not introduce myself. Flaviasaid you were kind enough to express a wish to meet me, and I preferredto meet you alone. Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Why, certainly not, " said Imogen, somewhat disconcerted and lookinghurriedly about for matches. 

"There, be calm, I'm always prepared, " said Miss Broadwood, checkingImogen's flurry with a soothing gesture, and producing an oddlyfashioned silver match-case from some mysterious recess in her dinnergown. She sat down in a deep chair, crossed her patent-leather Oxfords, and lit her cigarette. "This matchbox, " she went on meditatively, "oncebelonged to a Prussian officer. He shot himself in his bathtub, and Ibought it at the sale of his effects. "

Imogen had not yet found any suitable reply to make to this ratherirrelevant confidence, when Miss Broadwood turned to her cordially: "I'mawfully glad you've come, Miss Willard, though I've not quite decidedwhy you did it. I wanted very much to meet you. Flavia gave me yourthesis to read. "

"Why, how funny!" ejaculated Imogen. 

"On the contrary, " remarked Miss Broadwood. "I thought it decidedlylacked humor. "

"I meant, " stammered Imogen, beginning to feel very much like Alicein Wonderland, "I meant that I thought it rather strange Mrs. Hamiltonshould fancy you would be interested. "

Miss Broadwood laughed heartily. "Now, don't let my rudeness frightenyou. Really, I found it very interesting, and no end impressive. Yousee, most people in my profession are good for absolutely nothing else, and, therefore, they have a deep and abiding conviction that in someother line they might have shone. Strange to say, scholarship is theobject of our envious and particular admiration. Anything in typeimpresses us greatly; that's why so many of us marry authors ornewspapermen and lead miserable lives. " Miss Broadwood saw that she hadrather disconcerted Imogen, and blithely tacked in another direction. "You see, " she went on, tossing aside her half-consumed cigarette, "someyears ago Flavia would not have deemed me worthy to open the pages ofyour thesis--nor to be one of her house party of the chosen, for thatmatter. I've Pinero to thank for both pleasures. It all depends on theclass of business I'm playing whether I'm in favor or not. Flavia ismy second cousin, you know, so I can say whatever disagreeable things Ichoose with perfect good grace. I'm quite desperate for someone to laughwith, so I'm going to fasten myself upon you--for, of course, one can'texpect any of these gypsy-dago people to see anything funny. I don'tintend you shall lose the humor of the situation. What do you think ofFlavia's infirmary for the arts, anyway?"

"Well, it's rather too soon for me to have any opinion at all, " saidImogen, as she again turned to her dressing. "So far, you are the onlyone of the artists I've met. "

"One of them?" echoed Miss Broadwood. "One of the _artists_? My offensemay be rank, my dear, but I really don't deserve that. Come, now, whatever badges of my tribe I may bear upon me, just let me divest youof any notion that I take myself seriously. "

Imogen turned from the mirror in blank astonishment and sat down on thearm of a chair, facing her visitor. "I can't fathom you at all, Miss Broadwood, " she said frankly. "Why shouldn't you take yourselfseriously? What's the use of beating about the bush? Surely you knowthat you are one of the few players on this side of the water who haveat all the spirit of natural or ingenuous comedy?"

"Thank you, my dear. Now we are quite even about the thesis, aren'twe? Oh, did you mean it? Well, you _are_ a clever girl. But you see itdoesn't do to permit oneself to look at it in that light. If we do, wealways go to pieces and waste our substance astarring as the unhappydaughter of the Capulets. But there, I hear Flavia coming to take youdown; and just remember I'm not one of them--the artists, I mean. "

Flavia conducted Imogen and Miss Broadwood downstairs. As they reachedthe lower hall they heard voices from the music room, and dim figureswere lurking in the shadows under the gallery, but their hostess ledstraight to the smoking room. The June evening was chilly, and a firehad been lighted in the fireplace. Through the deepening dusk, thefirelight flickered upon the pipes and curious weapons on the wall andthrew an orange glow over the Turkish hangings. One side of the smokingroom was entirely of glass, separating it from the conservatory, whichwas flooded with white light from the electric bulbs. There was aboutthe darkened room some suggestion of certain chambers in the ArabianNights, opening on a court of palms. Perhaps it was partially thismemory-evoking suggestion that caused Imogen to start so violently whenshe saw dimly, in a blur of shadow, the figure of a man, who sat smokingin a low, deep chair before the fire. He was long, and thin, and brown. His long, nerveless hands drooped from the arms of his chair. A brownmustache shaded his mouth, and his eyes were sleepy and apathetic. WhenImogen entered he rose indolently and gave her his hand, his mannerbarely courteous. 

"I am glad you arrived promptly, Miss Willard, " he said with anindifferent drawl. "Flavia was afraid you might be late. You had apleasant ride up, I hope?"

"Oh, very, thank you, Mr. Hamilton, " she replied, feeling that he didnot particularly care whether she replied at all. 

Flavia explained that she had not yet had time to dress for dinner, as she had been attending to Mr. Will Maidenwood, who had become faintafter hurting his finger in an obdurate window, and immediately excusedherself As she left, Hamilton turned to Miss Broadwood with a ratherspiritless smile. 

"Well, Jimmy, " he remarked, "I brought up a piano box full of fireworksfor the boys. How do you suppose we'll manage to keep them until theFourth?"

"We can't, unless we steel ourselves to deny there are any on thepremises, " said Miss Broadwood, seating herself on a low stool byHamilton's chair and leaning back against the mantel. "Have you seenHelen, and has she told you the tragedy of the tooth?"

"She met me at the station, with her tooth wrapped up in tissue paper. I had tea with her an hour ago. Better sit down, Miss Willard;" he roseand pushed a chair toward Imogen, who was standing peering into theconservatory. "We are scheduled to dine at seven, but they seldom getaround before eight. "

By this time Imogen had made out that here the plural pronoun, thirdperson, always referred to the artists. As Hamilton's manner did notspur one to cordial intercourse, and as his attention seemed directedto Miss Broadwood, insofar as it could be said to be directed to anyone, she sat down facing the conservatory and watched him, unable to decidein how far he was identical with the man who had first met FlaviaMalcolm in her mother's house, twelve years ago. Did he at all rememberhaving known her as a little girl, and why did his indifference hurt herso, after all these years? Had some remnant of her childish affectionfor him gone on living, somewhere down in the sealed caves of herconsciousness, and had she really expected to find it possible to befond of him again? Suddenly she saw a light in the man's sleepy eyes, an unmistakable expression of interest and pleasure that fairly startledher. She turned quickly in the direction of his glance, and saw Flavia, just entering, dressed for dinner and lit by the effulgence of her mostradiant manner. Most people considered Flavia handsome, and there wasno gainsaying that she carried her five-and-thirty years splendidly. Herfigure had never grown matronly, and her face was of the sort that doesnot show wear. Its blond tints were as fresh and enduring as enamel--andquite as hard. Its usual expression was one of tense, often strained, animation, which compressed her lips nervously. A perfect scream ofanimation, Miss Broadwood had called it, created and maintained bysheer, indomitable force of will. Flavia's appearance on any scenewhatever made a ripple, caused a certain agitation and recognition, and, among impressionable people, a certain uneasiness, For all her sparklingassurance of manner, Flavia was certainly always ill at ease and, evenmore certainly, anxious. She seemed not convinced of the establishedorder of material things, seemed always trying to conceal her feelingthat walls might crumble, chasms open, or the fabric of her life flyto the winds in irretrievable entanglement. At least this was theimpression Imogen got from that note in Flavia which was so manifestlyfalse. 

Hamilton's keen, quick, satisfied glance at his wife had recalled toImogen all her inventory of speculations about them. She looked at himwith compassionate surprise. As a child she had never permitted herselfto believe that Hamilton cared at all for the woman who had taken himaway from her; and since she had begun to think about them again, ithad never occurred to her that anyone could become attached to Flavia inthat deeply personal and exclusive sense. It seemed quite as irrationalas trying to possess oneself of Broadway at noon. 

When they went out to dinner Imogen realized the completeness ofFlavia's triumph. They were people of one name, mostly, like kings;people whose names stirred the imagination like a romance or a melody. With the notable exception of M. Roux, Imogen had seen most of thembefore, either in concert halls or lecture rooms; but they lookednoticeably older and dimmer than she remembered them. 

Opposite her sat Schemetzkin, the Russian pianist, a short, corpulentman, with an apoplectic face and purplish skin, his thick, iron-grayhair tossed back from his forehead. Next to the German giantess sat theItalian tenor--the tiniest of men--pale, with soft, light hair, muchin disorder, very red lips, and fingers yellowed by cigarettes. FrauLichtenfeld shone in a gown of emerald green, fitting so closely as toenhance her natural floridness. However, to do the good lady justice, let her attire be never so modest, it gave an effect of barbaricsplendor. At her left sat Herr Schotte, the Assyriologist, whosefeatures were effectually concealed by the convergence of his hair andbeard, and whose glasses were continually falling into his plate. This gentleman had removed more tons of earth in the course of hisexplorations than had any of his confreres, and his vigorous attack uponhis food seemed to suggest the strenuous nature of his accustomed toil. His eyes were small and deeply set, and his forehead bulged fiercelyabove his eyes in a bony ridge. His heavy brows completed the leoninesuggestion of his face. Even to Imogen, who knew something of his workand greatly respected it, he was entirely too reminiscent of the StoneAge to be altogether an agreeable dinner companion. He seemed, indeed, to have absorbed something of the savagery of those early types of lifewhich he continually studied. 

Frank Wellington, the young Kansas man who had been two years out ofHarvard and had published three historical novels, sat next to Mr. WillMaidenwood, who was still pale from his recent sufferings and carriedhis hand bandaged. They took little part in the general conversation, but, like the lion and the unicorn, were always at it, discussing, every time they met, whether there were or were not passages in Mr. Wellington's works which should be eliminated, out of considerationfor the Young Person. Wellington had fallen into the hands of a greatAmerican syndicate which most effectually befriended struggling authorswhose struggles were in the right direction, and which had guaranteedto make him famous before he was thirty. Feeling the security of hisposition he stoutly defended those passages which jarred upon thesensitive nerves of the young editor of _Woman_. Maidenwood, in thesmoothest of voices, urged the necessity of the author's recognizingcertain restrictions at the outset, and Miss Broadwood, who joined theargument quite without invitation or encouragement, seconded him withpointed and malicious remarks which caused the young editor manifestdiscomfort. Restzhoff, the chemist, demanded the attention of the entirecompany for his exposition of his devices for manufacturing ice creamfrom vegetable oils and for administering drugs in bonbons. 

Flavia, always noticeably restless at dinner, was somewhat apathetictoward the advocate of peptonized chocolate and was plainly concernedabout the sudden departure of M. Roux, who had announced that it wouldbe necessary for him to leave tomorrow. M. Emile Roux, who sat atFlavia's right, was a man in middle life and quite bald, clearly withoutpersonal vanity, though his publishers preferred to circulate only thoseof his portraits taken in his ambrosial youth. Imogen was considerablyshocked at his unlikeness to the slender, black-stocked Rolla he hadlooked at twenty. He had declined into the florid, settled heaviness ofindifference and approaching age. There was, however, a certain look ofdurability and solidity about him; the look of a man who has earned theright to be fat and bald, and even silent at dinner if he chooses. 

Throughout the discussion between Wellington and Will Maidenwood, thoughthey invited his participation, he remained silent, betraying no signeither of interest or contempt. Since his arrival he had directed mostof his conversation to Hamilton, who had never read one of his twelvegreat novels. This perplexed and troubled Flavia. On the night of hisarrival Jules Martel had enthusiastically declared, "There are schoolsand schools, manners and manners; but Roux is Roux, and Paris setsits watches by his clock. " Flavia bad already repeated this remark toImogen. It haunted her, and each time she quoted it she was impressedanew. 

Flavia shifted the conversation uneasily, evidently exasperated andexcited by her repeated failures to draw the novelist out. "MonsieurRoux, " she began abruptly, with her most animated smile, "I remember sowell a statement I read some years ago in your 'Mes Etudes des Femmes'to the effect that you had never met a really intellectual woman. May Iask, without being impertinent, whether that assertion still representsyour experience?"

"I meant, madam, " said the novelist conservatively, "intellectual ina sense very special, as we say of men in whom the purely intellectualfunctions seem almost independent. "

"And you still think a woman so constituted a mythical personage?"persisted Flavia, nodding her head encouragingly. 

"_Une Meduse_, madam, who, if she were discovered, would transmute usall into stone, " said the novelist, bowing gravely. "If she existed atall, " he added deliberately, "it was my business to find her, andshe has cost me many a vain pilgrimage. Like Rudel of Tripoli, I havecrossed seas and penetrated deserts to seek her out. I have, indeed, encountered women of learning whose industry I have been compelledto respect; many who have possessed beauty and charm and perplexingcleverness; a few with remarkable information and a sort of fatalfacility. "

"And Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, and your own Mme. Dudevant?" queriedFlavia with that fervid enthusiasm with which she could, on occasion, utter things simply incomprehensible for their banality--at her feats ofthis sort Miss Broadwood was wont to sit breathless with admiration. 

"Madam, while the intellect was undeniably present in the performancesof those women, it was only the stick of the rocket. Although thiswoman has eluded me I have studied her conditions and perturbances asastronomers conjecture the orbits of planets they have never seen. If she exists, she is probably neither an artist nor a woman with amission, but an obscure personage, with imperative intellectual needs, who absorbs rather than produces. "

Flavia, still nodding nervously, fixed a strained glance ofinterrogation upon M. Roux. "Then you think she would be a woman whosefirst necessity would be to know, whose instincts would be satisfiedonly with the best, who could draw from others; appreciative, merely?"

The novelist lifted his dull eyes to his interlocutress with anuntranslatable smile and a slight inclination of his shoulders. "Exactlyso; you are really remarkable, madam, " he added, in a tone of coldastonishment. 

After dinner the guests took their coffee in the music room, whereSchemetzkin sat down at the piano to drum ragtime, and give hiscelebrated imitation of the boardingschool girl's execution of Chopin. He flatly refused to play anything more serious, and would practice onlyin the morning, when he had the music room to himself. Hamilton and M. Roux repaired to the smoking room to discuss the necessity of extendingthe tax on manufactured articles in France--one of those conversationswhich particularly exasperated Flavia. 

After Schemetzkin had grimaced and tortured the keyboard with maliciousvulgarities for half an hour, Signor Donati, to put an end to historture, consented to sing, and Flavia and Imogen went to fetch Arthurto play his accompaniments. Hamilton rose with an annoyed look andplaced his cigarette on the mantel. "Why yes, Flavia, I'll accompanyhim, provided he sings something with a melody, Italian arias orballads, and provided the recital is not interminable. "

"You will join us, M. Roux?"

"Thank you, but I have some letters to write, " replied the novelist, bowing. 

As Flavia had remarked to Imogen, "Arthur really played accompanimentsremarkably well. " To hear him recalled vividly the days of herchildhood, when he always used to spend his business vacations at hermother's home in Maine. He had possessed for her that almost hypnoticinfluence which young men sometimes exert upon little girls. It was asort of phantom love affair, subjective and fanciful, a precocity ofinstinct, like that tender and maternal concern which some little girlsfeel for their dolls. Yet this childish infatuation is capable ofall the depressions and exaltations of love itself, it has its bitterjealousies, cruel disappointments, its exacting caprices. 

Summer after summer she had awaited his coming and wept at hisdeparture, indifferent to the gayer young men who had called her theirsweetheart and laughed at everything she said. Although Hamilton neversaid so, she had been always quite sure that he was fond of her. Whenhe pulled her up the river to hunt for fairy knolls shut about by low, hanging willows, he was often silent for an hour at a time, yet shenever felt he was bored or was neglecting her. He would lie in the sandsmoking, his eyes half-closed, watching her play, and she was alwaysconscious that she was entertaining him. Sometimes he would take a copyof "Alice in Wonderland" in his pocket, and no one could read it as hecould, laughing at her with his dark eyes, when anything amused him. No one else could laugh so, with just their eyes, and without moving amuscle of their face. Though he usually smiled at passages that seemednot at all funny to the child, she always laughed gleefully, because hewas so seldom moved to mirth that any such demonstration delighted herand she took the credit of it entirely to herself Her own inclinationhad been for serious stories, with sad endings, like the Little Mermaid, which he had once told her in an unguarded moment when she had a cold, and was put to bed early on her birthday night and cried because shecould not have her party. But he highly disapproved of this preference, and had called it a morbid taste, and always shook his finger at herwhen she asked for the story. When she had been particularly good, orparticularly neglected by other people, then he would sometimes meltand tell her the story, and never laugh at her if she enjoyed the "sadending" even to tears. When Flavia had taken him away and he came nomore, she wept inconsolably for the space of two weeks, and refusedto learn her lessons. Then she found the story of the Little Mermaidherself, and forgot him. 

Imogen had discovered at dinner that he could still smile at onesecretly, out of his eyes, and that he had the old manner of outwardlyseeming bored, but letting you know that he was not. She was intenselycurious about his exact state of feeling toward his wife, and morecurious still to catch a sense of his final adjustment to the conditionsof life in general. This, she could not help feeling, she might getagain--if she could have him alone for an hour, in some place wherethere was a little river and a sandy cove bordered by drooping willows, and a blue sky seen through white sycamore boughs. 

That evening, before retiring, Flavia entered her husband's room, wherehe sat in his smoking jacket, in one of his favorite low chairs. 

"I suppose it's a grave responsibility to bring an ardent, serious youngthing like Imogen here among all these fascinating personages, " sheremarked reflectively. "But, after all, one can never tell. These grave, silent girls have their own charm, even for facile people. "

"Oh, so that is your plan?" queried her husband dryly. "I was wonderingwhy you got her up here. She doesn't seem to mix well with the faciles. At least, so it struck me. "

Flavia paid no heed to this jeering remark, but repeated, "No, afterall, it may not be a bad thing. "

"Then do consign her to that shaken reed, the tenor, " said her husbandyawning. "I remember she used to have a taste for the pathetic. "

"And then, " remarked Flavia coquettishly, "after all, I owe her mother areturn in kind. She was not afraid to trifle with destiny. "

But Hamilton was asleep in his chair. 

Next morning Imogen found only Miss Broadwood in the breakfast room. 

"Good morning, my dear girl, whatever are you doing up so early? Theynever breakfast before eleven. Most of them take their coffee in theirroom. Take this place by me. "

Miss Broadwood looked particularly fresh and encouraging in her blueserge walking skirt, her open jacket displaying an expanse of stiff, white shirt bosom, dotted with some almost imperceptible figure, anda dark blue-and-white necktie, neatly knotted under her wide, rollingcollar. She wore a white rosebud in the lapel of her coat, and decidedlyshe seemed more than ever like a nice, clean boy on his holiday. Imogenwas just hoping that they would breakfast alone when Miss Broadwoodexclaimed, "Ah, there comes Arthur with the children. That's the rewardof early rising in this house; you never get to see the youngsters atany other time. "

Hamilton entered, followed by two dark, handsome little boys. The girl, who was very tiny, blonde like her mother, and exceedingly frail, hecarried in his arms. The boys came up and said good morning with an easeand cheerfulness uncommon, even in well-bred children, but the littlegirl hid her face on her father's shoulder. 

"She's a shy little lady, " he explained as he put her gently down in herchair. "I'm afraid she's like her father; she can't seem to get used tomeeting people. And you, Miss Willard, did you dream of the White Rabbitor the Little Mermaid?"

"Oh, I dreamed of them all! All the personages of that buriedcivilization, " cried Imogen, delighted that his estranged manner of thenight before had entirely vanished and feeling that, somehow, the oldconfidential relations had been restored during the night. 

"Come, William, " said Miss Broadwood, turning to the younger of the twoboys, "and what did you dream about?"

"We dreamed, " said William gravely--he was the more assertive of the twoand always spoke for both--"we dreamed that there were fireworks hiddenin the basement of the carriage house; lots and lots of fireworks. "

His elder brother looked up at him with apprehensive astonishment, whileMiss Broadwood hastily put her napkin to her lips and Hamilton droppedhis eyes. "If little boys dream things, they are so apt not to cometrue, " he reflected sadly. This shook even the redoubtable William, andhe glanced nervously at his brother. "But do things vanish just becausethey have been dreamed?" he objected. 

"Generally that is the very best reason for their vanishing, " saidArthur gravely. 

"But, Father, people can't help what they dream, " remonstrated Edwardgently. 

"Oh, come! You're making these children talk like a Maeterlinckdialogue, " laughed Miss Broadwood. 

Flavia presently entered, a book in her hand, and bade them all goodmorning. "Come, little people, which story shall it be this morning?"she asked winningly. Greatly excited, the children followed her intothe garden. "She does then, sometimes, " murmured Imogen as they left thebreakfast room. 

"Oh, yes, to be sure, " said Miss Broadwood cheerfully. "She reads astory to them every morning in the most picturesque part of the garden. The mother of the Gracchi, you know. She does so long, she says, for thetime when they will be intellectual companions for her. What do you sayto a walk over the hills?"

As they left the house they met Frau Lichtenfeld and the bushyHerr Schotte--the professor cut an astonishing figure in golfstockings--returning from a walk and engaged in an animated conversationon the tendencies of German fiction. 

"Aren't they the most attractive little children, " exclaimed Imogen asthey wound down the road toward the river. 

"Yes, and you must not fail to tell Flavia that you think so. She willlook at you in a sort of startled way and say, 'Yes, aren't they?' andmaybe she will go off and hunt them up and have tea with them, to fullyappreciate them. She is awfully afraid of missing anything good, isFlavia. The way those youngsters manage to conceal their guilty presencein the House of Song is a wonder. "

"But don't any of the artist-folk fancy children?" asked Imogen. 

"Yes, they just fancy them and no more. The chemist remarked the otherday that children are like certain salts which need not be actualizedbecause the formulae are quite sufficient for practical purposes. Idon't see how even Flavia can endure to have that man about. "

"I have always been rather curious to know what Arthur thinks of itall, " remarked Imogen cautiously. 

"Thinks of it!" ejaculated Miss Broadwood. "Why, my dear, what would anyman think of having his house turned into an hotel, habited by freakswho discharge his servants, borrow his money, and insult his neighbors?This place is shunned like a lazaretto!"

"Well, then, why does he--why does he--" persisted Imogen. 

"Bah!" interrupted Miss Broadwood impatiently, "why did he in the firstplace? That's the question. "

"Marry her, you mean?" said Imogen coloring. 

"Exactly so, " said Miss Broadwood sharply, as she snapped the lid of hermatchbox. 

"I suppose that is a question rather beyond us, and certainly one whichwe cannot discuss, " said Imogen. "But his toleration on this one pointpuzzles me, quite apart from other complications. "

"Toleration? Why this point, as you call it, simply is Flavia. Who couldconceive of her without it? I don't know where it's all going to end, I'm sure, and I'm equally sure that, if it were not for Arthur, I shouldn't care, " declared Miss Broadwood, drawing her shoulderstogether. 

"But will it end at all, now?"

"Such an absurd state of things can't go on indefinitely. A man isn'tgoing to see his wife make a guy of herself forever, is he? Chaoshas already begun in the servants' quarters. There are six differentlanguages spoken there now. You see, it's all on an entirely falsebasis. Flavia hasn't the slightest notion of what these people arereally like, their good and their bad alike escape her. They, on theother hand, can't imagine what she is driving at. Now, Arthur is worseoff than either faction; he is not in the fairy story in that he seesthese people exactly as they are, _but_ he is utterly unable to seeFlavia as they see her. There you have the situation. Why can't he seeher as we do? My dear, that has kept me awake o' nights. This man whohas thought so much and lived so much, who is naturally a critic, reallytakes Flavia at very nearly her own estimate. But now I am entering upona wilderness. From a brief acquaintance with her you can know nothing ofthe icy fastnesses of Flavia's self-esteem. It's like St. Peter's; youcan't realize its magnitude at once. You have to grow into a sense ofit by living under its shadow. It has perplexed even Emile Roux, thatmerciless dissector of egoism. She has puzzled him the more because hesaw at a glance what some of them do not perceive at once, and what willbe mercifully concealed from Arthur until the trump sounds; namely, thatall Flavia's artists have done or ever will do means exactly as much toher as a symphony means to an oyster; that there is no bridge by whichthe significance of any work of art could be conveyed to her. "

"Then, in the name of goodness, why does she bother?" gasped Imogen. "She is pretty, wealthy, well-established; why should she bother?"

"That's what M. Roux has kept asking himself. I can't pretend to analyzeit. She reads papers on the Literary Landmarks of Paris, the Loves ofthe Poets, and that sort of thing, to clubs out in Chicago. To Flaviait is more necessary to be called clever than to breathe. I would give agood deal to know that glum Frenchman's diagnosis. He has beenwatching her out of those fishy eyes of his as a biologist watches ahemisphereless frog. "

For several days after M. Roux's departure Flavia gave an embarrassingshare of her attention to Imogen. Embarrassing, because Imogen had thefeeling of being energetically and futilely explored, she knew not forwhat. She felt herself under the globe of an air pump, expected to yieldup something. When she confined the conversation to matters of generalinterest Flavia conveyed to her with some pique that her one endeavorin life had been to fit herself to converse with her friends upon thosethings which vitally interested them. "One has no right to accept theirbest from people unless one gives, isn't it so? I want to be able togive--!" she declared vaguely. Yet whenever Imogen strove to pay hertithes and plunged bravely into her plans for study next winter, Flaviagrew absent-minded and interrupted her by amazing generalizations orby such embarrassing questions as, "And these grim studies really havecharm for you; you are quite buried in them; they make other things seemlight and ephemeral?"

"I rather feel as though I had got in here under false pretenses, "Imogen confided to Miss Broadwood. "I'm sure I don't know what it isthat she wants of me. "

"Ah, " chuckled Jemima, "you are not equal to these heart to heart talkswith Flavia. You utterly fail to communicate to her the atmosphere ofthat untroubled joy in which you dwell. You must remember that she getsno feeling out of things herself, and she demands that you impart yoursto her by some process of psychic transmission. I once met a blind girl, blind from birth, who could discuss the peculiarities of the Barbizonschool with just Flavia's glibness and enthusiasm. Ordinarily Flaviaknows how to get what she wants from people, and her memory iswonderful. One evening I heard her giving Frau Lichtenfeld some randomimpressions about Hedda Gabler which she extracted from me five yearsago; giving them with an impassioned conviction of which I was neverguilty. But I have known other people who could appropriate your storiesand opinions; Flavia is infinitely more subtle than that; she cansoak up the very thrash and drift of your daydreams, and take the verythrills off your back, as it were. "

After some days of unsuccessful effort, Flavia withdrew herself, andImogen found Hamilton ready to catch her when she was tossed afield. He seemed only to have been awaiting this crisis, and at once theirold intimacy reestablished itself as a thing inevitable and beautifullyprepared for. She convinced herself that she had not been mistaken inhim, despite all the doubts that had come up in later years, and thisrenewal of faith set more than one question thumping in her brain. "Howdid he, how can he?" she kept repeating with a tinge of her childishresentment, "what right had he to waste anything so fine?"

When Imogen and Arthur were returning from a walk before luncheon onemorning about a week after M. Roux's departure, they noticed an absorbedgroup before one of the hall windows. Herr Schotte and Restzhoff saton the window seat with a newspaper between them, while Wellington, Schemetzkin, and Will Maidenwood looked over their shoulders. Theyseemed intensely interested, Herr Schotte occasionally pounding hisknees with his fists in ebullitions of barbaric glee. When imogenentered the hall, however, the men were all sauntering toward thebreakfast room and the paper was lying innocently on the divan. Duringluncheon the personnel of that window group were unwontedly animated andagreeable all save Schemetzkin, whose stare was blanker than ever, asthough Roux's mantle of insulting indifference had fallen upon him, inaddition to his own oblivious self-absorption. Will Maidenwood seemedembarrassed and annoyed; the chemist employed himself with making politespeeches to Hamilton. Flavia did not come down to lunch--and there wasa malicious gleam under Herr Schotte's eyebrows. Frank Wellingtonannounced nervously that an imperative letter from his protectingsyndicate summoned him to the city. 

After luncheon the men went to the golf links, and Imogen, at the firstopportunity, possessed herself of the newspaper which had been left onthe divan. One of the first things that caught her eye was an articleheaded "Roux on Tuft Hunters; The Advanced American Woman as He SeesHer; Aggressive, Superficial, and Insincere. " The entire interview wasnothing more nor less than a satiric characterization of Flavia, aquiverwith irritation and vitriolic malice. No one could mistake it; it wasdone with all his deftness of portraiture. Imogen had not finished thearticle when she heard a footstep, and clutching the paper she startedprecipitately toward the stairway as Arthur entered. He put out hishand, looking critically at her distressed face. 

"Wait a moment, Miss Willard, " he said peremptorily, "I want to seewhether we can find what it was that so interested our friends thismorning. Give me the paper, please. "

Imogen grew quite white as he opened the journal. She reached forwardand crumpled it with her hands. "Please don't, please don't, " shepleaded; "it's something I don't want you to see. Oh, why will you? it'sjust something low and despicable that you can't notice. "

Arthur had gently loosed her hands, and he pointed her to a chair. Helit a cigar and read the article through without comment. When he hadfinished it he walked to the fireplace, struck a match, and tossed theflaming journal between the brass andirons. 

"You are right, " he remarked as he came back, dusting his hands with hishandkerchief. "It's quite impossible to comment. There are extremes ofblackguardism for which we have no name. The only thing necessary is tosee that Flavia gets no wind of this. This seems to be my cue to act;poor girl. "

Imogen looked at him tearfully; she could only murmur, "Oh, why did youread it!"

Hamilton laughed spiritlessly. "Come, don't you worry about it. Youalways took other people's troubles too seriously. When you were littleand all the world was gay and everybody happy, you must needs get theLittle Mermaid's troubles to grieve over. Come with me into the musicroom. You remember the musical setting I once made you for the Lay ofthe Jabberwock? I was trying it over the other night, long after youwere in bed, and I decided it was quite as fine as the Erl-King music. How I wish I could give you some of the cake that Alice ate and make youa little girl again. Then, when you had got through the glass door intothe little garden, you could call to me, perhaps, and tell me all thefine things that were going on there. What a pity it is that you evergrew up!" he added, laughing; and Imogen, too, was thinking just that. 

At dinner that evening, Flavia, with fatal persistence, insisted uponturning the conversation to M. Roux. She had been reading one of hisnovels and had remembered anew that Paris set its watches by his clock. Imogen surmised that she was tortured by a feeling that she had notsufficiently appreciated him while she had had him. When she firstmentioned his name she was answered only by the pall of silence thatfell over the company. Then everyone began to talk at once, as thoughto correct a false position. They spoke of him with a fervid, defiantadmiration, with the sort of hot praise that covers a double purpose. Imogen fancied she could see that they felt a kind of relief at what theman had done, even those who despised him for doing it; that they felta spiteful hate against Flavia, as though she had tricked them, and acertain contempt for themselves that they had been beguiled. She wasreminded of the fury of the crowd in the fairy tale, when once the childhad called out that the king was in his night clothes. Surely thesepeople knew no more about Flavia than they had known before, but themere fact that the thing had been said altered the situation. Flavia, meanwhile, sat chattering amiably, pathetically unconscious of hernakedness. 

Hamilton lounged, fingering the stem of his wineglass, gazing down thetable at one face after another and studying the various degreesof self-consciousness they exhibited. Imogen's eyes followed his, fearfully. When a lull came in the spasmodic flow of conversation, Arthur, leaning back in his chair, remarked deliberately, "As for M. Roux, his very profession places him in that class of men whom societyhas never been able to accept unconditionally because it has never beenable to assume that they have any ordered notion of taste. He andhis ilk remain, with the mountebanks and snake charmers, peopleindispensable to our civilization, but wholly unreclaimed by it; peoplewhom we receive, but whose invitations we do not accept. "

Fortunately for Flavia, this mine was not exploded until just before thecoffee was brought. Her laughter was pitiful to hear; it echoed throughthe silent room as in a vault, while she made some tremulously lightremark about her husband's drollery, grim as a jest from the dying. Noone responded and she sat nodding her head like a mechanical toy andsmiling her white, set smile through her teeth, until Alcee Buisson andFrau Lichtenfeld came to her support. 

After dinner the guests retired immediately to their rooms, and Imogenwent upstairs on tiptoe, feeling the echo of breakage and the dust ofcrumbling in the air. She wondered whether Flavia's habitual note ofuneasiness were not, in a manner, prophetic, and a sort of unconsciouspremonition, after all. She sat down to write a letter, but she foundherself so nervous, her head so hot and her hands so cold, that shesoon abandoned the effort, just as she was about to seek Miss Broadwood, Flavia entered and embraced her hysterically. 

"My dearest girl, " she began, "was there ever such an unfortunate andincomprehensible speech made before? Of course it is scarcely necessaryto explain to you poor Arthur's lack of tact, and that he meant nothing. But they! Can they be expected to understand? He will feel wretchedlyabout it when he realizes what he has done, but in the meantime? And M. Roux, of all men! When we were so fortunate as to get him, and he madehimself so unreservedly agreeable, and I fancied that, in his way, Arthur quite admired him. My dear, you have no idea what that speech hasdone. Schemetzkin and Herr Schotte have already sent me word that theymust leave us tomorrow. Such a thing from a host!" Flavia paused, chokedby tears of vexation and despair. 

Imogen was thoroughly disconcerted; this was the first time she had everseen Flavia betray any personal emotion which was indubitably genuine. She replied with what consolation she could. "Need they take itpersonally at all? It was a mere observation upon a class of people--"

"Which he knows nothing whatever about, and with whom he has nosympathy, " interrupted Flavia. "Ah, my dear, you could not be _expected_to understand. You can't realize, knowing Arthur as you do, his entirelack of any aesthetic sense whatever. He is absolutely _nil_, stone deafand stark blind, on that side. He doesn't mean to be brutal, it isjust the brutality of utter ignorance. They always feel it--they are sosensitive to unsympathetic influences, you know; they know it the momentthey come into the house. I have spent my life apologizing for him andstruggling to conceal it; but in spite of me, he wounds them; his veryattitude, even in silence, offends them. Heavens! Do I not know? Isit not perpetually and forever wounding me? But there has never beenanything so dreadful as this--never! If I could conceive of any possiblemotive, even!"

"But, surely, Mrs. Hamilton, it was, after all, a mere expression ofopinion, such as we are any of us likely to venture upon any subjectwhatever. It was neither more personal nor more extravagant than many ofM. Roux's remarks. "

"But, Imogen, certainly M. Roux has the right. It is a part of hisart, and that is altogether another matter. Oh, this is not the onlyinstance!" continued Flavia passionately, "I've always had that narrow, bigoted prejudice to contend with. It has always held me back. Butthis--!"

"I think you mistake his attitude, " replied Imogen, feeling a flush thatmade her ears tingle. "That is, I fancy he is more appreciative than heseems. A man can't be very demonstrative about those things--not if heis a real man. I should not think you would care much about saving thefeelings of people who are too narrow to admit of any other point ofview than their own. " She stopped, finding herself in the impossibleposition of attempting to explain Hamilton to his wife; a task which, if once begun, would necessitate an entire course of enlightenment whichshe doubted Flavia's ability to receive, and which she could offer onlywith very poor grace. 

"That's just where it stings most"--here Flavia began pacing thefloor--"it is just because they have all shown such tolerance and havetreated Arthur with such unfailing consideration that I can find noreasonable pretext for his rancor. How can he fail to see the value ofsuch friendships on the children's account, if for nothing else! Whatan advantage for them to grow up among such associations! Even though hecares nothing about these things himself he might realize that. Is therenothing I could say by way of explanation? To them, I mean? If someonewere to explain to them how unfortunately limited he is in thesethings--"

"I'm afraid I cannot advise you, " said Imogen decidedly, "but that, atleast, seems to me impossible. "

Flavia took her hand and glanced at her affectionately, noddingnervously. "Of course, dear girl, I can't ask you to be quite frank withme. Poor child, you are trembling and your hands are icy. Poor Arthur!But you must not judge him by this altogether; think how much he missesin life. What a cruel shock you've had. I'll send you some sherry, Goodnight, my dear. "

When Flavia shut the door Imogen burst into a fit of nervous weeping. 

Next morning she awoke after a troubled and restless night. At eighto'clock Miss Broadwood entered in a red and white striped bathrobe. 

"Up, up, and see the great doom's image!" she cried, her eyes sparklingwith excitement. "The hall is full of trunks, they are packing. Whatbolt has fallen? It's you, _ma cherie_, you've brought Ulysseshome again and the slaughter has begun!" she blew a cloud of smoketriumphantly from her lips and threw herself into a chair beside thebed. 

Imogen, rising on her elbow, plunged excitedly into the story of theRoux interview, which Miss Broadwood heard with the keenest interest, frequently interrupting her with exclamations of delight. When Imogenreached the dramatic scene which terminated in the destruction of thenewspaper, Miss Broadwood rose and took a turn about the room, violentlyswitching the tasselled cords of her bathrobe. 

"Stop a moment, " she cried, "you mean to tell me that he had such aheaven-sent means to bring her to her senses and didn't use it--that heheld such a weapon and threw it away?"

"Use it?" cried Imogen unsteadily. "Of course he didn't! He bared hisback to the tormentor, signed himself over to punishment in that speechhe made at dinner, which everyone understands but Flavia. She was herefor an hour last night and disregarded every limit of taste in hermaledictions. "

"My dear!" cried Miss Broadwood, catching her hand in inordinate delightat the situation, "do you see what he has done? There'll be no end toit. Why he has sacrificed himself to spare the very vanity that devourshim, put rancors in the vessels of his peace, and his eternal jewelgiven to the common enemy of man, to make them kings, the seed of Banquokings! He is magnificent!"

"Isn't he always that?" cried Imogen hotly. "He's like a pillar ofsanity and law in this house of shams and swollen vanities, where peoplestalk about with a sort of madhouse dignity, each one fancying himself aking or a pope. If you could have heard that woman talk of him! Why, she thinks him stupid, bigoted, blinded by middleclass prejudices. Shetalked about his having no aesthetic sense and insisted that her artistshad always shown him tolerance. I don't know why it should get on mynerves so, I'm sure, but her stupidity and assurance are enough to driveone to the brink of collapse. "

"Yes, as opposed to his singular fineness, they are calculated to dojust that, " said Miss Broadwood gravely, wisely ignoring Imogen's tears. "But what has been is nothing to what will be. Just wait until Flavia'sblack swans have flown! You ought not to try to stick it out; that wouldonly make it harder for everyone. Suppose you let me telephone yourmother to wire you to come home by the evening train?"

"Anything, rather than have her come at me like that again. It puts mein a perfectly impossible position, and he _is_ so fine!"

"Of course it does, " said Miss Broadwood sympathetically, "and thereis no good to be got from facing it. I will stay because such thingsinterest me, and Frau Lichtenfeld will stay because she has no money toget away, and Buisson will stay because he feels somewhat responsible. These complications are interesting enough to cold-blooded folklike myself who have an eye for the dramatic element, but they aredistracting and demoralizing to young people with any serious purpose inlife. "

Miss Broadwood's counsel was all the more generous seeing that, for her, the most interesting element of this denouement would be eliminated byImogen's departure. "If she goes now, she'll get over it, " soliloquizedMiss Broadwood. "If she stays, she'll be wrung for him and the hurt maygo deep enough to last. I haven't the heart to see her spoiling thingsfor herself. " She telephoned Mrs. Willard and helped Imogen to pack. Sheeven took it upon herself to break the news of Imogen's going to Arthur, who remarked, as he rolled a cigarette in his nerveless fingers:

"Right enough, too. What should she do here with old cynics like you andme, Jimmy? Seeing that she is brim full of dates and formulae and otherpositivisms, and is so girt about with illusions that she still castsa shadow in the sun. You've been very tender of her, haven't you? I'vewatched you. And to think it may all be gone when we see her next. 'Thecommon fate of all things rare, ' you know. What a good fellow youare, anyway, Jimmy, " he added, putting his hands affectionately on hershoulders. 

Arthur went with them to the station. Flavia was so prostrated by theconcerted action of her guests that she was able to see Imogen onlyfor a moment in her darkened sleeping chamber, where she kissed herhysterically, without lifting her head, bandaged in aromatic vinegar. On the way to the station both Arthur and Imogen threw the burden ofkeeping up appearances entirely upon Miss Broadwood, who blithely roseto the occasion. When Hamilton carried Imogen's bag into the car, MissBroadwood detained her for a moment, whispering as she gave her a large, warm handclasp, "I'll come to see you when I get back to town; and, inthe meantime, if you meet any of our artists, tell them you have leftCaius Marius among the ruins of Carthage. "

The Sculptor's Funeral

A group of the townspeople stood on the station siding of a littleKansas town, awaiting the coming of the night train, which was alreadytwenty minutes overdue. The snow had fallen thick over everything; inthe pale starlight the line of bluffs across the wide, white meadowssouth of the town made soft, smoke-colored curves against the clear sky. The men on the siding stood first on one foot and then on the other, their hands thrust deep into their trousers pockets, their overcoatsopen, their shoulders screwed up with the cold; and they glanced fromtime to time toward the southeast, where the railroad track wound alongthe river shore. They conversed in low tones and moved about restlessly, seeming uncertain as to what was expected of them. There was but one ofthe company who looked as though he knew exactly why he was there; andhe kept conspicuously apart; walking to the far end of the platform, returning to the station door, then pacing up the track again, his chinsunk in the high collar of his overcoat, his burly shoulders droopingforward, his gait heavy and dogged. Presently he was approached by atall, spare, grizzled man clad in a faded Grand Army suit, who shuffledout from the group and advanced with a certain deference, craning hisneck forward until his back made the angle of a jackknife three-quartersopen. 

"I reckon she's agoin' to be pretty late ag'in tonight, Jim, " heremarked in a squeaky falsetto. "S'pose it's the snow?"

"I don't know, " responded the other man with a shade of annoyance, speaking from out an astonishing cataract of red beard that grewfiercely and thickly in all directions. 

The spare man shifted the quill toothpick he was chewing to the otherside of his mouth. "It ain't likely that anybody from the East will comewith the corpse, I s'pose, " he went on reflectively. 

"I don't know, " responded the other, more curtly than before. 

"It's too bad he didn't belong to some lodge or other. I like anorder funeral myself. They seem more appropriate for people of somereputation, " the spare man continued, with an ingratiating concessionin his shrill voice, as he carefully placed his toothpick in his vestpocket. He always carried the flag at the G. A. R. Funerals in the town. 

The heavy man turned on his heel, without replying, and walked up thesiding. The spare man shuffled back to the uneasy group. "Jim's ez fullez a tick, ez ushel, " he commented commiseratingly. 

Just then a distant whistle sounded, and there was a shuffling of feeton the platform. A number of lanky boys of all ages appeared as suddenlyand slimily as eels wakened by the crack of thunder; some came from thewaiting room, where they had been warming themselves by the red stove, or half-asleep on the slat benches; others uncoiled themselves frombaggage trucks or slid out of express wagons. Two clambered down fromthe driver's seat of a hearse that stood backed up against the siding. They straightened their stooping shoulders and lifted their heads, anda flash of momentary animation kindled their dull eyes at that cold, vibrant scream, the world-wide call for men. It stirred them like thenote of a trumpet; just as it had often stirred the man who was cominghome tonight, in his boyhood. 

The night express shot, red as a rocket, from out the eastward marshlands and wound along the river shore under the long lines of shiveringpoplars that sentineled the meadows, the escaping steam hanging in graymasses against the pale sky and blotting out the Milky Way. In a momentthe red glare from the headlight streamed up the snow-covered trackbefore the siding and glittered on the wet, black rails. The burly manwith the disheveled red beard walked swiftly up the platform towardthe approaching train, uncovering his head as he went. The group ofmen behind him hesitated, glanced questioningly at one another, andawkwardly followed his example. The train stopped, and the crowdshuffled up to the express car just as the door was thrown open, the spare man in the G. A. B. Suit thrusting his head forward withcuriosity. The express messenger appeared in the doorway, accompanied bya young man in a long ulster and traveling cap. 

"Are Mr. Merrick's friends here?" inquired the young man. 

The group on the platform swayed and shuffled uneasily. Philip Phelps, the banker, responded with dignity: "We have come to take charge of thebody. Mr. Merrick's father is very feeble and can't be about. "

"Send the agent out here, " growled the express messenger, "and tell theoperator to lend a hand. "

The coffin was got out of its rough box and down on the snowy platform. The townspeople drew back enough to make room for it and then formed aclose semicircle about it, looking curiously at the palm leaf which layacross the black cover. No one said anything. The baggage man stood byhis truck, waiting to get at the trunks. The engine panted heavily, andthe fireman dodged in and out among the wheels with his yellow torch andlong oilcan, snapping the spindle boxes. The young Bostonian, one ofthe dead sculptor's pupils who had come with the body, looked about himhelplessly. He turned to the banker, the only one of that black, uneasy, stoop-shouldered group who seemed enough of an individual to beaddressed. 

"None of Mr. Merrick's brothers are here?" he asked uncertainly. 

The man with the red heard for the first time stepped up and joined thegroup. "No, they have not come yet; the family is scattered. The bodywill be taken directly to the house. " He stooped and took hold of one ofthe handles of the coffin. 

"Take the long hill road up, Thompson--it will be easier on the horses, "called the liveryman as the undertaker snapped the door of the hearseand prepared to mount to the driver's seat. 

Laird, the red-bearded lawyer, turned again to the stranger: "We didn'tknow whether there would be anyone with him or not, " he explained. "It'sa long walk, so you'd better go up in the hack. " He pointed to a single, battered conveyance, but the young man replied stiffly: "Thank you, butI think I will go up with the hearse. If you don't object, " turning tothe undertaker, "I'll ride with you. "

They clambered up over the wheels and drove off in the starlight tip thelong, white hill toward the town. The lamps in the still village wereshining from under the low, snow-burdened roofs; and beyond, on everyside, the plains reached out into emptiness, peaceful and wide as thesoft sky itself, and wrapped in a tangible, white silence. 

When the hearse backed up to a wooden sidewalk before a naked, weatherbeaten frame house, the same composite, ill-defined group thathad stood upon the station siding was huddled about the gate. The frontyard was an icy swamp, and a couple of warped planks, extending from thesidewalk to the door, made a sort of rickety footbridge. The gate hungon one hinge and was opened wide with difficulty. Steavens, the youngstranger, noticed that something black was tied to the knob of the frontdoor. 

The grating sound made by the casket, as it was drawn from the hearse, was answered by a scream from the house; the front door was wrenchedopen, and a tall, corpulent woman rushed out bareheaded into the snowand flung herself upon the coffin, shrieking: "My boy, my boy! And thisis how you've come home to me!"

As Steavens turned away and closed his eyes with a shudder ofunutterable repulsion, another woman, also tall, but flat and angular, dressed entirely in black, darted out of the house and caught Mrs. Merrick by the shoulders, crying sharply: "Come, come, Mother; youmustn't go on like this!" Her tone changed to one of obsequioussolemnity as she turned to the banker: "The parlor is ready, Mr. Phelps. "

The bearers carried the coffin along the narrow boards, while theundertaker ran ahead with the coffin-rests. They bore it into a large, unheated room that smelled of dampness and disuse and furniture polish, and set it down under a hanging lamp ornamented with jingling glassprisms and before a "Rogers group" of John Alden and Priscilla, wreathed with smilax. Henry Steavens stared about him with the sickeningconviction that there had been some horrible mistake, and that he hadsomehow arrived at the wrong destination. He looked painfully aboutover the clover-green Brussels, the fat plush upholstery, among thehand-painted china plaques and panels, and vases, for some mark ofidentification, for something that might once conceivably have belongedto Harvey Merrick. It was not until he recognized his friend in thecrayon portrait of a little boy in kilts and curls hanging above thepiano that he felt willing to let any of these people approach thecoffin. 

"Take the lid off, Mr. Thompson; let me see my boy's face, " wailedthe elder woman between her sobs. This time Steavens looked fearfully, almost beseechingly into her face, red and swollen under its massesof strong, black, shiny hair. He flushed, dropped his eyes, and then, almost incredulously, looked again. There was a kind of power abouther face--a kind of brutal handsomeness, even, but it was scarred andfurrowed by violence, and so colored and coarsened by fiercer passionsthat grief seemed never to have laid a gentle finger there. The longnose was distended and knobbed at the end, and there were deep lineson either side of it; her heavy, black brows almost met across herforehead; her teeth were large and square and set far apart--teeth thatcould tear. She filled the room; the men were obliterated, seemed tossedabout like twigs in an angry water, and even Steavens felt himself beingdrawn into the whirlpool. 

The daughter--the tall, rawboned woman in crepe, with a mourning comb inher hair which curiously lengthened her long face sat stiffly upon thesofa, her hands, conspicuous for their large knuckles, folded in herlap, her mouth and eyes drawn down, solemnly awaiting the opening of thecoffin. Near the door stood a mulatto woman, evidently a servant inthe house, with a timid bearing and an emaciated face pitifully sad andgentle. She was weeping silently, the corner of her calico apron liftedto her eyes, occasionally suppressing a long, quivering sob. Steavenswalked over and stood beside her. 

Feeble steps were heard on the stairs, and an old man, tall and frail, odorous of pipe smoke, with shaggy, unkept gray hair and a dingy beard, tobacco stained about the mouth, entered uncertainly. He went slowly upto the coffin and stood, rolling a blue cotton handkerchief between hishands, seeming so pained and embarrassed by his wife's orgy of griefthat he had no consciousness of anything else. 

"There, there, Annie, dear, don't take on so, " he quavered timidly, putting out a shaking hand and awkwardly patting her elbow. She turnedwith a cry and sank upon his shoulder with such violence that hetottered a little. He did not even glance toward the coffin, butcontinued to look at her with a dull, frightened, appealing expression, as a spaniel looks at the whip. His sunken cheeks slowly reddened andburned with miserable shame. When his wife rushed from the room herdaughter strode after her with set lips. The servant stole up to thecoffin, bent over it for a moment, and then slipped away to the kitchen, leaving Steavens, the lawyer, and the father to themselves. The old manstood trembling and looking down at his dead son's face. The sculptor'ssplendid head seemed even more noble in its rigid stillness than inlife. The dark hair had crept down upon the wide forehead; the faceseemed strangely long, but in it there was not that beautiful and chasterepose which we expect to find in the faces of the dead. The brows wereso drawn that there were two deep lines above the beaked nose, and thechin was thrust forward defiantly. It was as though the strain of lifehad been so sharp and bitter that death could not at once wholly relaxthe tension and smooth the countenance into perfect peace--as though hewere still guarding something precious and holy, which might even yet bewrested from him. 

The old man's lips were working under his stained beard. He turned tothe lawyer with timid deference: "Phelps and the rest are comin' back toset up with Harve, ain't they?" he asked. "Thank 'ee, Jim, thank 'ee. "He brushed the hair back gently from his son's forehead. "He was a goodboy, Jim; always a good boy. He was ez gentle ez a child and the kindestof 'em all--only we didn't none of us ever onderstand him. " The tearstrickled slowly down his beard and dropped upon the sculptor's coat. 

"Martin, Martin. Oh, Martin! come here, " his wife wailed from the top ofthe stairs. The old man started timorously: "Yes, Annie, I'm coming. " Heturned away, hesitated stood for a moment in miserable indecision; thenhe reached back and patted the dead man's hair softly, and stumbled fromthe room. 

"Poor old man, I didn't think he had any tears left. Seems as if hiseyes would have gone dry long ago. At his age nothing cuts very deep, "remarked the lawyer. 

Something in his tone made Steavens glance up. While the mother had beenin the room the young man had scarcely seen anyone else; but now, fromthe moment he first glanced into Jim Laird's florid face and bloodshoteyes, he knew that he had found what he had been heartsick at notfinding before--the feeling, the understanding, that must exist insomeone, even here. 

The man was red as his beard, with features swollen and blurred bydissipation, and a hot, blazing blue eye. His face was strained--that ofa man who is controlling himself with difficulty--and he kept pluckingat his beard with a sort of fierce resentment. Steavens, sitting bythe window, watched him turn down the glaring lamp, still its janglingpendants with an angry gesture, and then stand with his hands lockedbehind him, staring down into the master's face. He could not helpwondering what link there could have been between the porcelain vesseland so sooty a lump of potter's clay. 

From the kitchen an uproar was sounding; when the dining-room dooropened the import of it was clear. The mother was abusing the maid forhaving forgotten to make the dressing for the chicken salad which hadbeen prepared for the watchers. Steavens had never heard anything inthe least like it; it was injured, emotional, dramatic abuse, unique andmasterly in its excruciating cruelty, as violent and unrestrained as hadbeen her grief of twenty minutes before. With a shudder of disgust thelawyer went into the dining room and closed the door into the kitchen. 

"Poor Roxy's getting it now, " he remarked when he came back. "TheMerricks took her out of the poorhouse years ago; and if her loyaltywould let her, I guess the poor old thing could tell tales that wouldcurdle your blood. She's the mulatto woman who was standing in here awhile ago, with her apron to her eyes. The old woman is a fury; therenever was anybody like her for demonstrative piety and ingeniouscruelty. She made Harvey's life a hell for him when he lived at home;he was so sick ashamed of it. I never could see how he kept himself sosweet. "

"He was wonderful, " said Steavens slowly, "wonderful; but until tonightI have never known how wonderful. "

"That is the true and eternal wonder of it, anyway; that it can comeeven from such a dung heap as this, " the lawyer cried, with a sweepinggesture which seemed to indicate much more than the four walls withinwhich they stood. 

"I think I'll see whether I can get a little air. The room is so closeI am beginning to feel rather faint, " murmured Steavens, struggling withone of the windows. The sash was stuck, however, and would not yield, sohe sat down dejectedly and began pulling at his collar. The lawyer cameover, loosened the sash with one blow of his red fist, and sent thewindow up a few inches. Steavens thanked him, but the nausea which hadbeen gradually climbing into his throat for the last half-hour left himwith but one desire--a desperate feeling that he must get away from thisplace with what was left of Harvey Merrick. Oh, he comprehended wellenough now the quiet bitterness of the smile that he had seen so oftenon his master's lips!

He remembered that once, when Merrick returned from a visit home, hebrought with him a singularly feeling and suggestive bas-relief of athin, faded old woman, sitting and sewing something pinned to her knee;while a full-lipped, full-blooded little urchin, his trousers held upby a single gallows, stood beside her, impatiently twitching her gown tocall her attention to a butterfly he had caught. Steavens, impressed bythe tender and delicate modeling of the thin, tired face, had asked himif it were his mother. He remembered the dull flush that had burned upin the sculptor's face. 

The lawyer was sitting in a rocking chair beside the coffin, his headthrown back and his eyes closed. Steavens looked at him earnestly, puzzled at the line of the chin, and wondering why a man should conceala feature of such distinction under that disfiguring shock of beard. Suddenly, as though he felt the young sculptor's keen glance, he openedhis eyes. 

"Was he always a good deal of an oyster?" he asked abruptly. "He wasterribly shy as a boy. "

"Yes, he was an oyster, since you put it so, " rejoined Steavens. "Although he could be very fond of people, he always gave one theimpression of being detached. He disliked violent emotion; he wasreflective, and rather distrustful of himself--except, of course, asregarded his work. He was surefooted enough there. He distrusted menpretty thoroughly and women even more, yet somehow without believing illof them. He was determined, indeed, to believe the best, but he seemedafraid to investigate. "

"A burnt dog dreads the fire, " said the lawyer grimly, and closed hiseyes. 

Steavens went on and on, reconstructing that whole miserable boyhood. All this raw, biting ugliness had been the portion of the man whosetastes were refined beyond the limits of the reasonable--whose mind wasan exhaustless gallery of beautiful impressions, and so sensitive thatthe mere shadow of a poplar leaf flickering against a sunny wall wouldbe etched and held there forever. Surely, if ever a man had the magicword in his fingertips, it was Merrick. Whatever he touched, he revealedits holiest secret; liberated it from enchantment and restored it to itspristine loveliness, like the Arabian prince who fought the enchantressspell for spell. Upon whatever he had come in contact with, he had lefta beautiful record of the experience--a sort of ethereal signature; ascent, a sound, a color that was his own. 

Steavens understood now the real tragedy of his master's life; neitherlove nor wine, as many had conjectured, but a blow which had fallenearlier and cut deeper than these could have done--a shame not his, andyet so unescapably his, to bide in his heart from his very boyhood. Andwithout--the frontier warfare; the yearning of a boy, cast ashore upon adesert of newness and ugliness and sordidness, for all that is chastenedand old, and noble with traditions. 

At eleven o'clock the tall, flat woman in black crepe entered, announcedthat the watchers were arriving, and asked them "to step into the diningroom. " As Steavens rose the lawyer said dryly: "You go on--it'll be agood experience for you, doubtless; as for me, I'm not equal to thatcrowd tonight; I've had twenty years of them. "

As Steavens closed the door after him be glanced back at the lawyer, sitting by the coffin in the dim light, with his chin resting on hishand. 

The same misty group that had stood before the door of the express carshuffled into the dining room. In the light of the kerosene lamp theyseparated and became individuals. The minister, a pale, feeble-lookingman with white hair and blond chin-whiskers, took his seat beside asmall side table and placed his Bible upon it. The Grand Army man satdown behind the stove and tilted his chair back comfortably against thewall, fishing his quill toothpick from his waistcoat pocket. The twobankers, Phelps and Elder, sat off in a corner behind the dinner table, where they could finish their discussion of the new usury law and itseffect on chattel security loans. The real estate agent, an old manwith a smiling, hypocritical face, soon joined them. The coal-and-lumberdealer and the cattle shipper sat on opposite sides of the hardcoal-burner, their feet on the nickelwork. Steavens took a book fromhis pocket and began to read. The talk around him ranged through varioustopics of local interest while the house was quieting down. When itwas clear that the members of the family were in bed the Grand Army manhitched his shoulders and, untangling his long legs, caught his heels onthe rounds of his chair. 

"S'pose there'll be a will, Phelps?" he queried in his weak falsetto. 

The banker laughed disagreeably and began trimming his nails with apearl-handled pocketknife. 

"There'll scarcely be any need for one, will there?" he queried in histurn. 

The restless Grand Army man shifted his position again, getting hisknees still nearer his chin. "Why, the ole man says Harve's done rightwell lately, " he chirped. 

The other banker spoke up. "I reckon he means by that Harve ain't askedhim to mortgage any more farms lately, so as he could go on with hiseducation. "

"Seems like my mind don't reach back to a time when Harve wasn't bein'edycated, " tittered the Grand Army man. 

There was a general chuckle. The minister took out his handkerchief andblew his nose sonorously. Banker Phelps closed his knife with a snap. "It's too bad the old man's sons didn't turn out better, " he remarkedwith reflective authority. "They never hung together. He spent moneyenough on Harve to stock a dozen cattle farms and he might as well havepoured it into Sand Creek. If Harve had stayed at home and helped nursewhat little they had, and gone into stock on the old man's bottomfarm, they might all have been well fixed. But the old man had to trusteverything to tenants and was cheated right and left. "

"Harve never could have handled stock none, " interposed the cattleman. "He hadn't it in him to be sharp. Do you remember when he boughtSander's mules for eight-year-olds, when everybody in town knew thatSander's father-in-law give 'em to his wife for a wedding presenteighteen years before, an' they was full-grown mules then. "

Everyone chuckled, and the Grand Army man rubbed his knees with a spasmof childish delight. 

"Harve never was much account for anything practical, and he shore wasnever fond of work, " began the coal-and-lumber dealer. "I mind the lasttime he was home; the day he left, when the old man was out to the barnhelpin' his hand hitch up to take Harve to the train, and Cal Moots waspatchin' up the fence, Harve, he come out on the step and sings out, inhis ladylike voice: 'Cal Moots, Cal Moots! please come cord my trunk. '"

"That's Harve for you, " approved the Grand Army man gleefully. "I kinhear him howlin' yet when he was a big feller in long pants and hismother used to whale him with a rawhide in the barn for lettin' thecows git foundered in the cornfield when he was drivin' 'em home frompasture. He killed a cow of mine that-a-way onc't--a pure Jersey and thebest milker I had, an' the ole man had to put up for her. Harve, he waswatchin' the sun set acros't the marshes when the anamile got away; heargued that sunset was oncommon fine. "

"Where the old man made his mistake was in sending the boy East toschool, " said Phelps, stroking his goatee and speaking in a deliberate, judicial tone. "There was where he got his head full of traipsing toParis and all such folly. What Harve needed, of all people, was a coursein some first-class Kansas City business college. "

The letters were swimming before Steavens's eyes. Was it possible thatthese men did not understand, that the palm on the coffin meant nothingto them? The very name of their town would have remained forever buriedin the postal guide had it not been now and again mentioned in the worldin connection with Harvey Merrick's. He remembered what his master hadsaid to him on the day of his death, after the congestion of both lungshad shut off any probability of recovery, and the sculptor had askedhis pupil to send his body home. "It's not a pleasant place to be lyingwhile the world is moving and doing and bettering, " he had said with afeeble smile, "but it rather seems as though we ought to go back to theplace we came from in the end. The townspeople will come in for a lookat me; and after they have had their say I shan't have much to fear fromthe judgment of God. The wings of the Victory, in there"--with a weakgesture toward his studio--"will not shelter me. "

The cattleman took up the comment. "Forty's young for a Merrick to cashin; they usually hang on pretty well. Probably he helped it along withwhisky. "

"His mother's people were not long-lived, and Harvey never had a robustconstitution, " said the minister mildly. He would have liked to saymore. He had been the boy's Sunday-school teacher, and had been fond ofhim; but he felt that he was not in a position to speak. His own sonshad turned out badly, and it was not a year since one of them had madehis last trip home in the express car, shot in a gambling house in theBlack Hills. 

"Nevertheless, there is no disputin' that Harve frequently looked uponthe wine when it was red, also variegated, and it shore made an oncommonfool of him, " moralized the cattleman. 

Just then the door leading into the parlor rattled loudly, and everyonestarted involuntarily, looking relieved when only Jim Laird came out. His red face was convulsed with anger, and the Grand Army man duckedhis head when he saw the spark in his blue, bloodshot eye. They were allafraid of Jim; he was a drunkard, but he could twist the law to suit hisclient's needs as no other man in all western Kansas could do; andthere were many who tried. The lawyer closed the door gently behind him, leaned back against it and folded his arms, cocking his head a littleto one side. When he assumed this attitude in the courtroom, ears werealways pricked up, as it usually foretold a flood of withering sarcasm. 

"I've been with you gentlemen before, " he began in a dry, even tone, "when you've sat by the coffins of boys born and raised in this town;and, if I remember rightly, you were never any too well satisfied whenyou checked them up. What's the matter, anyhow? Why is it that reputableyoung men are as scarce as millionaires in Sand City? It might almostseem to a stranger that there was some way something the matter withyour progressive town. Why did Ruben Sayer, the brightest young lawyeryou ever turned out, after he had come home from the university asstraight as a die, take to drinking and forge a check and shoot himself?Why did Bill Merrit's son die of the shakes in a saloon in Omaha? Whywas Mr. Thomas's son, here, shot in a gambling house? Why did youngAdams burn his mill to beat the insurance companies and go to the pen?"

The lawyer paused and unfolded his arms, laying one clenched fistquietly on the table. "I'll tell you why. Because you drummednothing but money and knavery into their ears from the time they woreknickerbockers; because you carped away at them as you've been carpinghere tonight, holding our friends Phelps and Elder up to them for theirmodels, as our grandfathers held up George Washington and John Adams. But the boys, worse luck, were young and raw at the business you putthem to; and how could they match coppers with such artists as Phelpsand Elder? You wanted them to be successful rascals; they were onlyunsuccessful ones--that's all the difference. There was only one boyever raised in this borderland between ruffianism and civilization whodidn't come to grief, and you hated Harvey Merrick more for winning outthan you hated all the other boys who got under the wheels. Lord, Lord, how you did hate him! Phelps, here, is fond of saying that he could buyand sell us all out any time he's a mind to; but he knew Harve wouldn'thave given a tinker's damn for his bank and all his cattle farms puttogether; and a lack of appreciation, that way, goes hard with Phelps. 

"Old Nimrod, here, thinks Harve drank too much; and this from such asNimrod and me!"

"Brother Elder says Harve was too free with the old man's money--fellshort in filial consideration, maybe. Well, we can all remember thevery tone in which brother Elder swore his own father was a liar, inthe county court; and we all know that the old man came out of thatpartnership with his son as bare as a sheared lamb. But maybe I'mgetting personal, and I'd better be driving ahead at what I want tosay. "

The lawyer paused a moment, squared his heavy shoulders, and went on:"Harvey Merrick and I went to school together, back East. We were deadin earnest, and we wanted you all to be proud of us some day. Wemeant to be great men. Even I, and I haven't lost my sense of humor, gentlemen, I meant to be a great man. I came back here to practice, andI found you didn't in the least want me to be a great man. You wanted meto be a shrewd lawyer--oh, yes! Our veteran here wanted me to get himan increase of pension, because he had dyspepsia; Phelps wanted a newcounty survey that would put the widow Wilson's little bottom farminside his south line; Elder wanted to lend money at 5 per cent a monthand get it collected; old Stark here wanted to wheedle old women up inVermont into investing their annuities in real estate mortgages that arenot worth the paper they are written on. Oh, you needed me hard enough, and you'll go on needing me; and that's why I'm not afraid to plug thetruth home to you this once. 

"Well, I came back here and became the damned shyster you wanted meto be. You pretend to have some sort of respect for me; and yet you'llstand up and throw mud at Harvey Merrick, whose soul you couldn't dirtyand whose hands you couldn't tie. Oh, you're a discriminating lot ofChristians! There have been times when the sight of Harvey's name insome Eastern paper has made me hang my head like a whipped dog; and, again, times when I liked to think of him off there in the world, awayfrom all this hog wallow, doing his great work and climbing the big, clean upgrade he'd set for himself. 

"And we? Now that we've fought and lied and sweated and stolen, andhated as only the disappointed strugglers in a bitter, dead littleWestern town know how to do, what have we got to show for it? HarveyMerrick wouldn't have given one sunset over your marshes for all you'vegot put together, and you know it. It's not for me to say why, in theinscrutable wisdom of God, a genius should ever have been called fromthis place of hatred and bitter waters; but I want this Boston man toknow that the drivel he's been hearing here tonight is the onlytribute any truly great man could ever have from such a lot of sick, side-tracked, burnt-dog, land-poor sharks as the here-present financiersof Sand City--upon which town may God have mercy!"

The lawyer thrust out his hand to Steavens as he passed him, caught uphis overcoat in the hall, and had left the house before the Grand Armyman had had time to lift his ducked head and crane his long neck aboutat his fellows. 

Next day Jim Laird was drunk and unable to attend the funeral services. Steavens called twice at his office, but was compelled to start Eastwithout seeing him. He had a presentiment that he would hear from himagain, and left his address on the lawyer's table; but if Laird foundit, he never acknowledged it. The thing in him that Harvey Merrick hadloved must have gone underground with Harvey Merrick's coffin; for itnever spoke again, and Jim got the cold he died of driving across theColorado mountains to defend one of Phelps's sons, who had got intotrouble out there by cutting government timber. 

"A Death in the Desert"

Everett Hilgarde was conscious that the man in the seat across theaisle was looking at him intently. He was a large, florid man, wore aconspicuous diamond solitaire upon his third finger, and Everett judgedhim to be a traveling salesman of some sort. He had the air of anadaptable fellow who had been about the world and who could keep cooland clean under almost any circumstances. 

The "High Line Flyer, " as this train was derisively called amongrailroad men, was jerking along through the hot afternoon over themonotonous country between Holdridge and Cheyenne. Besides the blondman and himself the only occupants of the car were two dusty, bedraggled-looking girls who had been to the Exposition at Chicago, and who were earnestly discussing the cost of their first trip out ofColorado. The four uncomfortable passengers were covered with a sedimentof fine, yellow dust which clung to their hair and eyebrows like goldpowder. It blew up in clouds from the bleak, lifeless country throughwhich they passed, until they were one color with the sagebrush andsandhills. The gray-and-yellow desert was varied only by occasionalruins of deserted towns, and the little red boxes of station houses, where the spindling trees and sickly vines in the bluegrass yards madelittle green reserves fenced off in that confusing wilderness of sand. 

As the slanting rays of the sun beat in stronger and stronger throughthe car windows, the blond gentleman asked the ladies' permission toremove his coat, and sat in his lavender striped shirt sleeves, with ablack silk handkerchief tucked carefully about his collar. He had seemedinterested in Everett since they had boarded the train at Holdridge, andkept glancing at him curiously and then looking reflectively out ofthe window, as though he were trying to recall something. But whereverEverett went someone was almost sure to look at him with that curiousinterest, and it had ceased to embarrass or annoy him. Presently thestranger, seeming satisfied with his observation, leaned back in hisseat, half-closed his eyes, and began softly to whistle the "SpringSong" from _Proserpine_, the cantata that a dozen years before had madeits young composer famous in a night. Everett had heard that air onguitars in Old Mexico, on mandolins at college glees, on cottage organsin New England hamlets, and only two weeks ago he had heard it played onsleighbells at a variety theater in Denver. There was literally no wayof escaping his brother's precocity. Adriance could live on the otherside of the Atlantic, where his youthful indiscretions were forgotten inhis mature achievements, but his brother had never been able to outrun_Proserpine_, and here he found it again in the Colorado sand hills. Notthat Everett was exactly ashamed of _Proserpine_; only a man of geniuscould have written it, but it was the sort of thing that a man of geniusoutgrows as soon as he can. 

Everett unbent a trifle and smiled at his neighbor across the aisle. Immediately the large man rose and, coming over, dropped into the seatfacing Hilgarde, extending his card. 

"Dusty ride, isn't it? I don't mind it myself; I'm used to it. Born andbred in de briar patch, like Br'er Rabbit. I've been trying to place youfor a long time; I think I must have met you before. "

"Thank you, " said Everett, taking the card; "my name is Hilgarde. You'veprobably met my brother, Adriance; people often mistake me for him. "

The traveling man brought his hand down upon his knee with suchvehemence that the solitaire blazed. 

"So I was right after all, and if you're not Adriance Hilgarde, you'rehis double. I thought I couldn't be mistaken. Seen him? Well, I guess!I never missed one of his recitals at the Auditorium, and he playedthe piano score of _Proserpine_ through to us once at the Chicago PressClub. I used to be on the _Commercial_ there before I _146_ beganto travel for the publishing department of the concern. So you'reHilgarde's brother, and here I've run into you at the jumping-off place. Sounds like a newspaper yarn, doesn't it?"

The traveling man laughed and offered Everett a cigar, and plied himwith questions on the only subject that people ever seemed to care totalk to Everett about. At length the salesman and the two girls alightedat a Colorado way station, and Everett went on to Cheyenne alone. 

The train pulled into Cheyenne at nine o'clock, late by a matter of fourhours or so; but no one seemed particularly concerned at its tardinessexcept the station agent, who grumbled at being kept in the officeovertime on a summer night. When Everett alighted from the train hewalked down the platform and stopped at the track crossing, uncertain asto what direction he should take to reach a hotel. A phaeton stood nearthe crossing, and a woman held the reins. She was dressed in white, andher figure was clearly silhouetted against the cushions, though it wastoo dark to see her face. Everett had scarcely noticed her, when theswitch engine came puffing up from the opposite direction, and theheadlight threw a strong glare of light on his face. Suddenly the womanin the phaeton uttered a low cry and dropped the reins. Everett startedforward and caught the horse's head, but the animal only lifted itsears and whisked its tail in impatient surprise. The woman sat perfectlystill, her head sunk between her shoulders and her handkerchief pressedto her face. Another woman came out of the depot and hurried toward thephaeton, crying, "Katharine, dear, what is the matter?"

Everett hesitated a moment in painful embarrassment, then lifted hishat and passed on. He was accustomed to sudden recognitions in the mostimpossible places, especially by women, but this cry out of the nighthad shaken him. 

While Everett was breakfasting the next morning, the headwaiter leanedover his chair to murmur that there was a gentleman waiting to see himin the parlor. Everett finished his coffee and went in the directionindicated, where he found his visitor restlessly pacing the floor. Hiswhole manner betrayed a high degree of agitation, though his physiquewas not that of a man whose nerves lie near the surface. He wassomething below medium height, square-shouldered and solidly built. Histhick, closely cut hair was beginning to show gray about the ears, andhis bronzed face was heavily lined. His square brown hands werelocked behind him, and he held his shoulders like a man conscious ofresponsibilities; yet, as he turned to greet Everett, there was anincongruous diffidence in his address. 

"Good morning, Mr. Hilgarde, " he said, extending his hand; "I found yourname on the hotel register. My name is Gaylord. I'm afraid my sisterstartled you at the station last night, Mr. Hilgarde, and I've comearound to apologize. "

"Ah! The young lady in the phaeton? I'm sure I didn't know whether Ihad anything to do with her alarm or not. If I did, it is I who owe theapology. "

The man colored a little under the dark brown of his face. 

"Oh, it's nothing you could help, sir, I fully understand that. You see, my sister used to be a pupil of your brother's, and it seems you favorhim; and when the switch engine threw a light on your face it startledher. "

Everett wheeled about in his chair. "Oh! _Katharine_ Gaylord! Is itpossible! Now it's you who have given me a turn. Why, I used to know herwhen I was a boy. What on earth--"

"Is she doing here?" said Gaylord, grimly filling out the pause. "You'vegot at the heart of the matter. You knew my sister had been in badhealth for a long time?"

"No, I had never heard a word of that. The last I knew of her she wassinging in London. My brother and I correspond infrequently and seldomget beyond family matters. I am deeply sorry to hear this. There aremore reasons why I am concerned than I can tell you. "

The lines in Charley Gaylord's brow relaxed a little. 

"What I'm trying to say, Mr. Hilgarde, is that she wants to see you. Ihate to ask you, but she's so set on it. We live several miles out oftown, but my rig's below, and I can take you out anytime you can go. "

"I can go now, and it will give me real pleasure to do so, " saidEverett, quickly. "I'll get my hat and be with you in a moment. "

When he came downstairs Everett found a cart at the door, and CharleyGaylord drew a long sigh of relief as he gathered up the reins andsettled back into his own element. 

"You see, I think I'd better tell you something about my sister beforeyou see her, and I don't know just where to begin. She traveledin Europe with your brother and his wife, and sang at a lot of hisconcerts; but I don't know just how much you know about her. "

"Very little, except that my brother always thought her the most giftedof his pupils, and that when I knew her she was very young and verybeautiful and turned my head sadly for a while. "

Everett saw that Gaylord's mind was quite engrossed by his grief. He waswrought up to the point where his reserve and sense of proportion hadquite left him, and his trouble was the one vital thing in the world. "That's the whole thing, " he went on, flicking his horses with the whip. 

"She was a great woman, as you say, and she didn't come of a greatfamily. She had to fight her own way from the first. She got to Chicago, and then to New York, and then to Europe, where she went up likelightning, and got a taste for it all; and now she's dying here like arat in a hole, out of her own world, and she can't fall back into ours. We've grown apart, some way--miles and miles apart--and I'm afraid she'sfearfully unhappy. "

"It's a very tragic story that you are telling me, Gaylord, " saidEverett. They were well out into the country now, spinning along overthe dusty plains of red grass, with the ragged-blue outline of themountains before them. 

"Tragic!" cried Gaylord, starting up in his seat, "my God, man, nobodywill ever know how tragic. It's a tragedy I live with and eat with andsleep with, until I've lost my grip on everything. You see she had madea good bit of money, but she spent it all going to health resorts. It'sher lungs, you know. I've got money enough to send her anywhere, but thedoctors all say it's no use. She hasn't the ghost of a chance. It's justgetting through the days now. I had no notion she was half so bad beforeshe came to me. She just wrote that she was all run down. Now that she'shere, I think she'd be happier anywhere under the sun, but she won'tleave. She says it's easier to let go of life here, and that to go Eastwould be dying twice. There was a time when I was a brakeman with a runout of Bird City, Iowa, and she was a little thing I could carry on myshoulder, when I could get her everything on earth she wanted, and shehadn't a wish my $80 a month didn't cover; and now, when I've got alittle property together, I can't buy her a night's sleep!"

Everett saw that, whatever Charley Gaylord's present status in the worldmight be, he had brought the brakeman's heart up the ladder with him, and the brakeman's frank avowal of sentiment. Presently Gaylord went on:

"You can understand how she has outgrown her family. We're all a prettycommon sort, railroaders from away back. My father was a conductor. Hedied when we were kids. Maggie, my other sister, who lives with me, wasa telegraph operator here while I was getting my grip on things. We hadno education to speak of. I have to hire a stenographer because I can'tspell straight--the Almighty couldn't teach me to spell. The things thatmake up life to Kate are all Greek to me, and there's scarcely a pointwhere we touch any more, except in our recollections of the old timeswhen we were all young and happy together, and Kate sang in a churchchoir in Bird City. But I believe, Mr. Hilgarde, that if she can seejust one person like you, who knows about the things and people she'sinterested in, it will give her about the only comfort she can havenow. "

The reins slackened in Charley Gaylord's hand as they drew up before ashowily painted house with many gables and a round tower. "Here we are, "he said, turning to Everett, "and I guess we understand each other. "

They were met at the door by a thin, colorless woman, whom Gaylordintroduced as "my sister, Maggie. " She asked her brother to show Mr. Hilgarde into the music room, where Katharine wished to see him alone. 

When Everett entered the music room he gave a little start of surprise, feeling that he had stepped from the glaring Wyoming sunlight into someNew York studio that he had always known. He wondered which it was ofthose countless studios, high up under the roofs, over banks andshops and wholesale houses, that this room resembled, and he lookedincredulously out of the window at the gray plain that ended in thegreat upheaval of the Rockies. 

The haunting air of familiarity about the room perplexed him. Was ita copy of some particular studio he knew, or was it merely the studioatmosphere that seemed so individual and poignantly reminiscent herein Wyoming? He sat down in a reading chair and looked keenly about him. Suddenly his eye fell upon a large photograph of his brother above thepiano. Then it all became clear to him: this was veritably his brother'sroom. If it were not an exact copy of one of the many studios thatAdriance had fitted up in various parts of the world, wearying of themand leaving almost before the renovator's varnish had dried, it was atleast in the same tone. In every detail Adriance's taste was so manifestthat the room seemed to exhale his personality. 

Among the photographs on the wall there was one of Katharine Gaylord, taken in the days when Everett had known her, and when the flash of hereye or the flutter of her skirt was enough to set his boyish heart in atumult. Even now, he stood before the portrait with a certain degreeof embarrassment. It was the face of a woman already old in her firstyouth, thoroughly sophisticated and a trifle hard, and it told ofwhat her brother had called her fight. The camaraderie of her frank, confident eyes was qualified by the deep lines about her mouth and thecurve of the lips, which was both sad and cynical. Certainly she hadmore good will than confidence toward the world, and the bravado ofher smile could not conceal the shadow of an unrest that was almostdiscontent. The chief charm of the woman, as Everett had known her, layin her superb figure and in her eyes, which possessed a warm, lifegivingquality like the sunlight; eyes which glowed with a sort of perpetual_salutat_ to the world. Her head, Everett remembered as peculiarlywell-shaped and proudly poised. There had been always a little of theimperatrix about her, and her pose in the photograph revived all his oldimpressions of her unattachedness, of how absolutely and valiantly shestood alone. 

Everett was still standing before the picture, his hands behind himand his head inclined, when he heard the door open. A very tall womanadvanced toward him, holding out her hand. As she started to speak, shecoughed slightly; then, laughing, said, in a low, rich voice, a triflehusky: "You see I make the traditional Camille entrance--with the cough. How good of you to come, Mr. Hilgarde. "

Everett was acutely conscious that while addressing him she was notlooking at him at all, and, as he assured her of his pleasure in coming, he was glad to have an opportunity to collect himself. He had notreckoned upon the ravages of a long illness. The long, loose foldsof her white gown had been especially designed to conceal the sharpoutlines of her emaciated body, but the stamp of her disease wasthere; simple and ugly and obtrusive, a pitiless fact that could not bedisguised or evaded. The splendid shoulders were stooped, there was aswaying unevenness in her gait, her arms seemed disproportionatelylong, and her hands were transparently white and cold to the touch. Thechanges in her face were less obvious; the proud carriage of the head, the warm, clear eyes, even the delicate flush of color in her cheeks, all defiantly remained, though they were all in a lower key--older, sadder, softer. 

She sat down upon the divan and began nervously to arrange the pillows. "I know I'm not an inspiring object to look upon, but you must be quitefrank and sensible about that and get used to it at once, for we've notime to lose. And if I'm a trifle irritable you won't mind?--for I'mmore than usually nervous. "

"Don't bother with me this morning, if you are tired, " urged Everett. "Ican come quite as well tomorrow. "

"Gracious, no!" she protested, with a flash of that quick, keen humorthat he remembered as a part of her. "It's solitude that I'm tired todeath of--solitude and the wrong kind of people. You see, the minister, not content with reading the prayers for the sick, called on me thismorning. He happened to be riding by on his bicycle and felt it hisduty to stop. Of course, he disapproves of my profession, and I thinkhe takes it for granted that I have a dark past. The funniest featureof his conversation is that he is always excusing my own vocation tome--condoning it, you know--and trying to patch up my peace with myconscience by suggesting possible noble uses for what he kindly calls mytalent. "

Everett laughed. "Oh! I'm afraid I'm not the person to call after sucha serious gentleman--I can't sustain the situation. At my best I don'treach higher than low comedy. Have you decided to which one of the nobleuses you will devote yourself?"

Katharine lifted her hands in a gesture of renunciation and exclaimed:"I'm not equal to any of them, not even the least noble. I didn't studythat method. "

She laughed and went on nervously: "The parson's not so bad. His Englishnever offends me, and he has read Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, all fivevolumes, and that's something. Then, he has been to New York, and that'sa great deal. But how we are losing time! Do tell me about New York;Charley says you're just on from there. How does it look and taste andsmell just now? I think a whiff of the Jersey ferry would be as flagonsof cod-liver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and whatdoes he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, orhave they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the GardenTheatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changesof weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguidedaspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall?What do people go to see at the theaters, and what do they eat and drinkthere in the world nowadays? You see, I'm homesick for it all, from theBattery to Riverside. Oh, let me die in Harlem!" She was interruptedby a violent attack of coughing, and Everett, embarrassed by herdiscomfort, plunged into gossip about the professional people he had metin town during the summer and the musical outlook for the winter. He wasdiagraming with his pencil, on the back of an old envelope he found inhis pocket, some new mechanical device to be used at the Metropolitan inthe production of the _Rheingold_, when he became conscious that she waslooking at him intently, and that he was talking to the four walls. 

Katharine was lying back among the pillows, watching him throughhalf-closed eyes, as a painter looks at a picture. He finished hisexplanation vaguely enough and put the envelope back in his pocket. Ashe did so she said, quietly: "How wonderfully like Adriance you are!"and he felt as though a crisis of some sort had been met and tided over. 

He laughed, looking up at her with a touch of pride in his eyes thatmade them seem quite boyish. "Yes, isn't it absurd? It's almost asawkward as looking like Napoleon--but, after all, there are someadvantages. It has made some of his friends like me, and I hope it willmake you. "

Katharine smiled and gave him a quick, meaning glance from under herlashes. "Oh, it did that long ago. What a haughty, reserved youth youwere then, and how you used to stare at people and then blush and lookcross if they paid you back in your own coin. Do you remember that nightwhen you took me home from a rehearsal and scarcely spoke a word to me?"

"It was the silence of admiration, " protested Everett, "very crude andboyish, but very sincere and not a little painful. Perhaps you suspectedsomething of the sort? I remember you saw fit to be very grown-up andworldly. 

"I believe I suspected a pose; the one that college boys usually affectwith singers--'an earthen vessel in love with a star, ' you know. But itrather surprised me in you, for you must have seen a good deal of yourbrother's pupils. Or had you an omnivorous capacity, and elasticity thatalways met the occasion?"

"Don't ask a man to confess the follies of his youth, " said Everett, smiling a little sadly; "I am sensitive about some of them even now. ButI was not so sophisticated as you imagined. I saw my brother's pupilscome and go, but that was about all. Sometimes I was called on to playaccompaniments, or to fill out a vacancy at a rehearsal, or to order acarriage for an infuriated soprano who had thrown up her part. But theynever spent any time on me, unless it was to notice the resemblance youspeak of. "

"Yes", observed Katharine, thoughtfully, "I noticed it then, too; but ithas grown as you have grown older. That is rather strange, when you havelived such different lives. It's not merely an ordinary family likenessof feature, you know, but a sort of interchangeable individuality;the suggestion of the other man's personality in your face like an airtransposed to another key. But I'm not attempting to define it; it'sbeyond me; something altogether unusual and a trifle--well, uncanny, "she finished, laughing. 

"I remember, " Everett said seriously, twirling the pencil between hisfingers and looking, as he sat with his head thrown back, out under thered window blind which was raised just a little, and as it swung backand forth in the wind revealed the glaring panorama of the desert--ablinding stretch of yellow, flat as the sea in dead calm, splotched hereand there with deep purple shadows; and, beyond, the ragged-blue outlineof the mountains and the peaks of snow, white as the white clouds--"Iremember, when I was a little fellow I used to be very sensitive aboutit. I don't think it exactly displeased me, or that I would have had itotherwise if I could, but it seemed to me like a birthmark, or somethingnot to be lightly spoken of. People were naturally always fonder ofAd than of me, and I used to feel the chill of reflected light prettyoften. It came into even my relations with my mother. Ad went abroad tostudy when he was absurdly young, you know, and mother was all brokenup over it. She did her whole duty by each of us, but it was sort ofgenerally understood among us that she'd have made burnt offerings of usall for Ad any day. I was a little fellow then, and when she sat aloneon the porch in the summer dusk she used sometimes to call me to her andturn my face up in the light that streamed out through the shutters andkiss me, and then I always knew she was thinking of Adriance. "

"Poor little chap, " said Katharine, and her tone was a trifle huskierthan usual. "How fond people have always been of Adriance! Now tell methe latest news of him. I haven't heard, except through the press, fora year or more. He was in Algeria then, in the valley of the Chelif, riding horseback night and day in an Arabian costume, and in hisusual enthusiastic fashion he had quite made up his mind to adopt theMohammedan faith and become as nearly an Arab as possible. How manycountries and faiths has he adopted, I wonder? Probably he was playingArab to himself all the time. I remember he was a sixteenth-century dukein Florence once for weeks together. "

"Oh, that's Adriance, " chuckled Everett. "He is himself barely longenough to write checks and be measured for his clothes. I didn't hearfrom him while he was an Arab; I missed that. "

"He was writing an Algerian suite for the piano then; it must be inthe publisher's hands by this time. I have been too ill to answer hisletter, and have lost touch with him. "

Everett drew a letter from his pocket. "This came about a month ago. It's chiefly about his new opera, which is to be brought out in Londonnext winter. Read it at your leisure. "

"I think I shall keep it as a hostage, so that I may be sure you willcome again. Now I want you to play for me. Whatever you like; but ifthere is anything new in the world, in mercy let me hear it. For ninemonths I have heard nothing but 'The Baggage Coach Ahead' and 'She Is MyBaby's Mother. '"

He sat down at the piano, and Katharine sat near him, absorbed in hisremarkable physical likeness to his brother and trying to discover injust what it consisted. She told herself that it was very much as thougha sculptor's finished work had been rudely copied in wood. He was ofa larger build than Adriance, and his shoulders were broad and heavy, while those of his brother were slender and rather girlish. His face wasof the same oval mold, but it was gray and darkened about the mouth bycontinual shaving. His eyes were of the same inconstant April color, but they were reflective and rather dull; while Adriance's were alwayspoints of highlight, and always meaning another thing than the thingthey meant yesterday. But it was hard to see why this earnest man shouldso continually suggest that lyric, youthful face that was as gay as hiswas grave. For Adriance, though he was ten years the elder, and thoughhis hair was streaked with silver, had the face of a boy of twenty, somobile that it told his thoughts before he could put them into words. Acontralto, famous for the extravagance of her vocal methods and of heraffections, had once said to him that the shepherd boys who sang in theVale of Tempe must certainly have looked like young Hilgarde; and thecomparison had been appropriated by a hundred shyer women who preferredto quote. 

As Everett sat smoking on the veranda of the Inter-Ocean House thatnight, he was a victim to random recollections. His infatuation forKatharine Gaylord, visionary as it was, had been the most serious of hisboyish love affairs, and had long disturbed his bachelor dreams. He waspainfully timid in everything relating to the emotions, and his hurthad withdrawn him from the society of women. The fact that it was all sodone and dead and far behind him, and that the woman had lived herlife out since then, gave him an oppressive sense of age and loss. Hebethought himself of something he had read about "sitting by the hearthand remembering the faces of women without desire, " and felt himself anoctogenarian. 

He remembered how bitter and morose he had grown during his stay at hisbrother's studio when Katharine Gaylord was working there, and how hehad wounded Adriance on the night of his last concert in New York. Hehad sat there in the box while his brother and Katharine were calledback again and again after the last number, watching the roses go upover the footlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano, brooding, in his sullen boy's heart, upon the pride those two felt ineach other's work--spurring each other to their best and beautifullycontending in song. The footlights had seemed a hard, glittering linedrawn sharply between their life and his; a circle of flame set aboutthose splendid children of genius. He walked back to his hotel aloneand sat in his window staring out on Madison Square until long aftermidnight, resolving to beat no more at doors that he could never enterand realizing more keenly than ever before how far this glorious worldof beautiful creations lay from the paths of men like himself. He toldhimself that he had in common with this woman only the baser uses oflife. 

Everett's week in Cheyenne stretched to three, and he saw no prospect ofrelease except through the thing he dreaded. The bright, windy days ofthe Wyoming autumn passed swiftly. Letters and telegrams came urginghim to hasten his trip to the coast, but he resolutely postponed hisbusiness engagements. The mornings he spent on one of Charley Gaylord'sponies, or fishing in the mountains, and in the evenings he sat in hisroom writing letters or reading. In the afternoon he was usually at hispost of duty. Destiny, he reflected, seems to have very positive notionsabout the sort of parts we are fitted to play. The scene changes and thecompensation varies, but in the end we usually find that we have playedthe same class of business from first to last. Everett had been astopgap all his life. He remembered going through a looking glasslabyrinth when he was a boy and trying gallery after gallery, only atevery turn to bump his nose against his own face--which, indeed, was nothis own, but his brother's. No matter what his mission, east or west, by land or sea, he was sure to find himself employed in his brother'sbusiness, one of the tributary lives which helped to swell the shiningcurrent of Adriance Hilgarde's. It was not the first time that his dutyhad been to comfort, as best he could, one of the broken things hisbrother's imperious speed had cast aside and forgotten. He made noattempt to analyze the situation or to state it in exact terms; buthe felt Katharine Gaylord's need for him, and he accepted it as acommission from his brother to help this woman to die. Day by day hefelt her demands on him grow more imperious, her need for him grow moreacute and positive; and day by day he felt that in his peculiar relationto her his own individuality played a smaller and smaller part. Hispower to minister to her comfort, he saw, lay solely in his link withhis brother's life. He understood all that his physical resemblancemeant to her. He knew that she sat by him always watching for somecommon trick of gesture, some familiar play of expression, some illusionof light and shadow, in which he should seem wholly Adriance. He knewthat she lived upon this and that her disease fed upon it; that it sentshudders of remembrance through her and that in the exhaustion whichfollowed this turmoil of her dying senses, she slept deep and sweet anddreamed of youth and art and days in a certain old Florentine garden, and not of bitterness and death. 

The question which most perplexed him was, "How much shall I know? Howmuch does she wish me to know?" A few days after his first meeting withKatharine Gaylord, he had cabled his brother to write her. He had merelysaid that she was mortally ill; he could depend on Adriance to say theright thing--that was a part of his gift. Adriance always said notonly the right thing, but the opportune, graceful, exquisite thing. Hisphrases took the color of the moment and the then-present condition, sothat they never savored of perfunctory compliment or frequent usage. Healways caught the lyric essence of the moment, the poetic suggestionof every situation. Moreover, he usually did the right thing, theopportune, graceful, exquisite thing--except, when he did very cruelthings--bent upon making people happy when their existence touched his, just as he insisted that his material environment should be beautiful;lavishing upon those near him all the warmth and radiance of his richnature, all the homage of the poet and troubadour, and, when they wereno longer near, forgetting--for that also was a part of Adriance's gift. 

Three weeks after Everett had sent his cable, when he made his dailycall at the gaily painted ranch house, he found Katharine laughing likea schoolgirl. "Have you ever thought, " she said, as he entered themusic room, "how much these seances of ours are like Heine's 'FlorentineNights, ' except that I don't give you an opportunity to monopolize theconversation as Heine did?" She held his hand longer than usual, asshe greeted him, and looked searchingly up into his face. "You are thekindest man living; the kindest, " she added, softly. 

Everett's gray face colored faintly as he drew his hand away, forhe felt that this time she was looking at him and not at a whimsicalcaricature of his brother. "Why, what have I done now?" he asked, lamely. "I can't remember having sent you any stale candy or champagnesince yesterday. "

She drew a letter with a foreign postmark from between the leaves of abook and held it out, smiling. "You got him to write it. Don't say youdidn't, for it came direct, you see, and the last address I gave him wasa place in Florida. This deed shall be remembered of you when I am withthe just in Paradise. But one thing you did not ask him to do, for youdidn't know about it. He has sent me his latest work, the new sonata, the most ambitious thing he has ever done, and you are to play it for medirectly, though it looks horribly intricate. But first for the letter;I think you would better read it aloud to me. "

Everett sat down in a low chair facing the window seat in which shereclined with a barricade of pillows behind her. He opened the letter, his lashes half-veiling his kind eyes, and saw to his satisfaction thatit was a long one--wonderfully tactful and tender, even for Adriance, who was tender with his valet and his stable boy, with his old gondolierand the beggar-women who prayed to the saints for him. 

The letter was from Granada, written in the Alhambra, as he sat by thefountain of the Patio di Lindaraxa. The air was heavy, with the warmfragrance of the South and full of the sound of splashing, runningwater, as it had been in a certain old garden in Florence, long ago. The sky was one great turquoise, heated until it glowed. The wonderfulMoorish arches threw graceful blue shadows all about him. He hadsketched an outline of them on the margin of his notepaper. Thesubtleties of Arabic decoration had cast an unholy spell over him, and the brutal exaggerations of Gothic art were a bad dream, easilyforgotten. The Alhambra itself had, from the first, seemed perfectlyfamiliar to him, and he knew that he must have trod that court, sleek and brown and obsequious, centuries before Ferdinand rode intoAndalusia. The letter was full of confidences about his work, anddelicate allusions to their old happy days of study and comradeship, andof her own work, still so warmly remembered and appreciatively discussedeverywhere he went. 

As Everett folded the letter he felt that Adriance had divined the thingneeded and had risen to it in his own wonderful way. The letter wasconsistently egotistical and seemed to him even a trifle patronizing, yet it was just what she had wanted. A strong realization of hisbrother's charm and intensity and power came over him; he felt thebreath of that whirlwind of flame in which Adriance passed, consumingall in his path, and himself even more resolutely than he consumedothers. Then he looked down at this white, burnt-out brand that laybefore him. "Like him, isn't it?" she said, quietly. 

"I think I can scarcely answer his letter, but when you see him next youcan do that for me. I want you to tell him many things for me, yet theycan all be summed up in this: I want him to grow wholly into his bestand greatest self, even at the cost of the dear boyishness that is halfhis charm to you and me. Do you understand me?"

"I know perfectly well what you mean, " answered Everett, thoughtfully. "I have often felt so about him myself. And yet it's difficult toprescribe for those fellows; so little makes, so little mars. "

Katharine raised herself upon her elbow, and her face flushed withfeverish earnestness. "Ah, but it is the waste of himself that I mean;his lashing himself out on stupid and uncomprehending people until theytake him at their own estimate. He can kindle marble, strike fire fromputty, but is it worth what it costs him?"

"Come, come, " expostulated Everett, alarmed at her excitement. "Where isthe new sonata? Let him speak for himself. "

He sat down at the piano and began playing the first movement, which wasindeed the voice of Adriance, his proper speech. The sonata was the mostambitious work he had done up to that time and marked the transitionfrom his purely lyric vein to a deeper and nobler style. Everett playedintelligently and with that sympathetic comprehension which seemspeculiar to a certain lovable class of men who never accomplish anythingin particular. When he had finished he turned to Katharine. 

"How he has grown!" she cried. "What the three last years have done forhim! He used to write only the tragedies of passion; but this is thetragedy of the soul, the shadow coexistent with the soul. This is thetragedy of effort and failure, the thing Keats called hell. This is mytragedy, as I lie here spent by the racecourse, listening to the feet ofthe runners as they pass me. Ah, God! The swift feet of the runners!"

She turned her face away and covered it with her straining hands. Everett crossed over to her quickly and knelt beside her. In allthe days he had known her she had never before, beyond an occasionalironical jest, given voice to the bitterness of her own defeat. Hercourage had become a point of pride with him, and to see it goingsickened him. 

"Don't do it, " he gasped. "I can't stand it, I really can't, I feel ittoo much. We mustn't speak of that; it's too tragic and too vast. "

When she turned her face back to him there was a ghost of the old, brave, cynical smile on it, more bitter than the tears she could notshed. "No, I won't be so ungenerous; I will save that for the watchesof the night when I have no better company. Now you may mix me anotherdrink of some sort. Formerly, when it was not _if_ I should ever singBrunnhilde, but quite simply when I _should_ sing Brunnhilde, I wasalways starving myself and thinking what I might drink and what I mightnot. But broken music boxes may drink whatsoever they list, and noone cares whether they lose their figure. Run over that theme at thebeginning again. That, at least, is not new. It was running in his headwhen we were in Venice years ago, and he used to drum it on his glass atthe dinner table. He had just begun to work it out when the late autumncame on, and the paleness of the Adriatic oppressed him, and he decidedto go to Florence for the winter, and lost touch with the theme duringhis illness. Do you remember those frightful days? All the people whohave loved him are not strong enough to save him from himself! WhenI got word from Florence that he had been ill I was in Nice fillinga concert engagement. His wife was hurrying to him from Paris, but Ireached him first. I arrived at dusk, in a terrific storm. They hadtaken an old palace there for the winter, and I found him in thelibrary--a long, dark room full of old Latin books and heavy furnitureand bronzes. He was sitting by a wood fire at one end of the room, looking, oh, so worn and pale!--as he always does when he is ill, youknow. Ah, it is so good that you _do_ know! Even his red smoking jacketlent no color to his face. His first words were not to tell me how illhe had been, but that that morning he had been well enough to put thelast strokes to the score of his _Souvenirs d'Automne_. He was as Imost like to remember him: so calm and happy and tired; not gay, as heusually is, but just contented and tired with that heavenly tirednessthat comes after a good work done at last. Outside, the rain poureddown in torrents, and the wind moaned for the pain of all the world andsobbed in the branches of the shivering olives and about the walls ofthat desolated old palace. How that night comes back to me! There wereno lights in the room, only the wood fire which glowed upon the hardfeatures of the bronze Dante, like the reflection of purgatorial flames, and threw long black shadows about us; beyond us it scarcely penetratedthe gloom at all, Adriance sat staring at the fire with the wearinessof all his life in his eyes, and of all the other lives that must aspireand suffer to make up one such life as his. Somehow the wind with allits world-pain had got into the room, and the cold rain was in our eyes, and the wave came up in both of us at once--that awful, vague, universalpain, that cold fear of life and death and God and hope--and we werelike two clinging together on a spar in midocean after the shipwreck ofeverything. Then we heard the front door open with a great gust of windthat shook even the walls, and the servants came running with lights, announcing that Madam had returned, _'and in the book we read no morethat night. '_"

She gave the old line with a certain bitter humor, and with the hard, bright smile in which of old she had wrapped her weakness as in aglittering garment. That ironical smile, worn like a mask through somany years, had gradually changed even the lines of her face completely, and when she looked in the mirror she saw not herself, but the scathingcritic, the amused observer and satirist of herself. Everett droppedhis head upon his hand and sat looking at the rug. "How much you havecared!" he said. 

"Ah, yes, I cared, " she replied, closing her eyes with a long-drawn sighof relief; and lying perfectly still, she went on: "You can't imaginewhat a comfort it is to have you know how I cared, what a relief it isto be able to tell it to someone. I used to want to shriek it out to theworld in the long nights when I could not sleep. It seemed to me that Icould not die with it. It demanded some sort of expression. And now thatyou know, you would scarcely believe how much less sharp the anguish ofit is. "

Everett continued to look helplessly at the floor. "I was not sure howmuch you wanted me to know, " he said. 

"Oh, I intended you should know from the first time I looked into yourface, when you came that day with Charley. I flatter myself that I havebeen able to conceal it when I chose, though I suppose women alwaysthink that. The more observing ones may have seen, but discerning peopleare usually discreet and often kind, for we usually bleed a littlebefore we begin to discern. But I wanted you to know; you are so likehim that it is almost like telling him himself. At least, I feel nowthat he will know some day, and then I will be quite sacred from hiscompassion, for we none of us dare pity the dead. Since it was what mylife has chiefly meant, I should like him to know. On the whole I am notashamed of it. I have fought a good fight. "

"And has he never known at all?" asked Everett, in a thick voice. 

"Oh! Never at all in the way that you mean. Of course, he is accustomedto looking into the eyes of women and finding love there; when hedoesn't find it there he thinks he must have been guilty of somediscourtesy and is miserable about it. He has a genuine fondness foreveryone who is not stupid or gloomy, or old or preternaturally ugly. Granted youth and cheerfulness, and a moderate amount of wit and sometact, and Adriance will always be glad to see you coming around thecorner. I shared with the rest; shared the smiles and the gallantriesand the droll little sermons. It was quite like a Sunday-school picnic;we wore our best clothes and a smile and took our turns. It was hiskindness that was hardest. I have pretty well used my life up atstanding punishment. "

"Don't; you'll make me hate him, " groaned Everett. 

Katharine laughed and began to play nervously with her fan. "It wasn'tin the slightest degree his fault; that is the most grotesque part ofit. Why, it had really begun before I ever met him. I fought my way tohim, and I drank my doom greedily enough. "

Everett rose and stood hesitating. "I think I must go. You ought to bequiet, and I don't think I can hear any more just now. "

She put out her hand and took his playfully. "You've put in three weeksat this sort of thing, haven't you? Well, it may never be to your gloryin this world, perhaps, but it's been the mercy of heaven to me, and itought to square accounts for a much worse life than yours will ever be. "

Everett knelt beside her, saying, brokenly: "I stayed because I wantedto be with you, that's all. I have never cared about other women since Imet you in New York when I was a lad. You are a part of my destiny, andI could not leave you if I would. "

She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. "No, no; don'ttell me that. I have seen enough of tragedy, God knows. Don't show meany more just as the curtain is going down. No, no, it was only a boy'sfancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled itfor a moment. One does not love the dying, dear friend. If some fancy ofthat sort had been left over from boyhood, this would rid you of it, and that were well. Now go, and you will come again tomorrow, as long asthere are tomorrows, will you not?" She took his hand with a smile thatlifted the mask from her soul, that was both courage and despair, andfull of infinite loyalty and tenderness, as she said softly:

 For ever and for ever, farewell, Cassius; If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then, this parting was well made. 

The courage in her eyes was like the clear light of a star to him as hewent out. 

On the night of Adriance Hilgarde's opening concert in Paris Everett satby the bed in the ranch house in Wyoming, watching over the last battlethat we have with the flesh before we are done with it and free of itforever. At times it seemed that the serene soul of her must have leftalready and found some refuge from the storm, and only the tenaciousanimal life were left to do battle with death. She labored under adelusion at once pitiful and merciful, thinking that she was in thePullman on her way to New York, going back to her life and her work. When she aroused from her stupor it was only to ask the porter to wakenher half an hour out of Jersey City, or to remonstrate with him aboutthe delays and the roughness of the road. At midnight Everett and thenurse were left alone with her. Poor Charley Gaylord had lain down on acouch outside the door. Everett sat looking at the sputtering night lampuntil it made his eyes ache. His head dropped forward on the foot of thebed, and he sank into a heavy, distressful slumber. He was dreaming ofAdriance's concert in Paris, and of Adriance, the troubadour, smilingand debonair, with his boyish face and the touch of silver gray inhis hair. He heard the applause and he saw the roses going up over thefootlights until they were stacked half as high as the piano, and thepetals fell and scattered, making crimson splotches on the floor. Downthis crimson pathway came Adriance with his youthful step, leading hisprima donna by the hand; a dark woman this time, with Spanish eyes. 

The nurse touched him on the shoulder; he started and awoke. Shescreened the lamp with her hand. Everett saw that Katharine was awakeand conscious, and struggling a little. He lifted her gently on his armand began to fan her. She laid her hands lightly on his hair and lookedinto his face with eyes that seemed never to have wept or doubted. "Ah, dear Adriance, dear, dear, " she whispered. 

Everett went to call her brother, but when they came back the madness ofart was over for Katharine. 

Two days later Everett was pacing the station siding, waiting for thewestbound train. Charley Gaylord walked beside him, but the two men hadnothing to say to each other. Everett's bags were piled on the truck, and his step was hurried and his eyes were full of impatience, as hegazed again and again up the track, watching for the train. Gaylord'simpatience was not less than his own; these two, who had grown so close, had now become painful and impossible to each other, and longed for thewrench of farewell. 

As the train pulled in Everett wrung Gaylord's hand among the crowd ofalighting passengers. The people of a German opera company, en routeto the coast, rushed by them in frantic haste to snatch their breakfastduring the stop. Everett heard an exclamation in a broad German dialect, and a massive woman whose figure persistently escaped from her stays inthe most improbable places rushed up to him, her blond hair disorderedby the wind, and glowing with joyful surprise she caught his coat sleevewith her tightly gloved hands. 

"_Herr Gott_, Adriance, _lieber Freund_, " she cried, emotionally. 

Everett quickly withdrew his arm and lifted his hat, blushing. "Pardonme, madam, but I see that you have mistaken me for Adriance Hilgarde. I am his brother, " he said quietly, and turning from the crestfallensinger, he hurried into the car. 

The Garden Lodge

When Caroline Noble's friends learned that Raymond d'Esquerre was tospend a month at her place on the Sound before he sailed to fill hisengagement for the London opera season, they considered it anotherstriking instance of the perversity of things. That the month was May, and the most mild and florescent of all the blue-and-white Mays themiddle coast had known in years, but added to their sense of wrong. D'Esquerre, they learned, was ensconced in the lodge in the appleorchard, just beyond Caroline's glorious garden, and report went thatat almost any hour the sound of the tenor's voice and of Caroline'scrashing accompaniment could be heard floating through the open windows, out among the snowy apple boughs. The Sound, steel-blue and dotted withwhite sails, was splendidly seen from the windows of the lodge. Thegarden to the left and the orchard to the right had never been soriotous with spring, and had burst into impassioned bloom, as if toaccommodate Caroline, though she was certainly the last woman to whomthe witchery of Freya could be attributed; the last woman, as herfriends affirmed, to at all adequately appreciate and make the most ofsuch a setting for the great tenor. 

Of course, they admitted, Caroline was musical--well, she ought tobe!--but in that, as in everything, she was paramountly cool-headed, slow of impulse, and disgustingly practical; in that, as in everythingelse, she had herself so provokingly well in hand. Of course, it wouldbe she, always mistress of herself in any situation, she, who wouldnever be lifted one inch from the ground by it, and who would go onsuperintending her gardeners and workmen as usual--it would be she whogot him. Perhaps some of them suspected that this was exactly why shedid get him, and it but nettled them the more. 

Caroline's coolness, her capableness, her general success, especiallyexasperated people because they felt that, for the most part, shehad made herself what she was; that she had cold-bloodedly set aboutcomplying with the demands of life and making her position comfortableand masterful. That was why, everyone said, she had married HowardNoble. Women who did not get through life so well as Caroline, who couldnot make such good terms either with fortune or their husbands, who didnot find their health so unfailingly good, or hold their looks so well, or manage their children so easily, or give such distinction to all theydid, were fond of stamping Caroline as a materialist, and called herhard. 

The impression of cold calculation, of having a definite policy, whichCaroline gave, was far from a false one; but there was this to be saidfor her--that there were extenuating circumstances which her friendscould not know. 

If Caroline held determinedly to the middle course, if she was apt toregard with distrust everything which inclined toward extravagance, itwas not because she was unacquainted with other standards than her own, or had never seen another side of life. She had grown up in Brooklyn, in a shabby little house under the vacillating administration of herfather, a music teacher who usually neglected his duties to writeorchestral compositions for which the world seemed to have no especialneed. His spirit was warped by bitter vindictiveness and puerileself-commiseration, and he spent his days in scorn of the labor thatbrought him bread and in pitiful devotion to the labor that brought himonly disappointment, writing interminable scores which demanded of theorchestra everything under heaven except melody. 

It was not a cheerful home for a girl to grow up in. The mother, whoidolized her husband as the music lord of the future, was left to alifelong battle with broom and dustpan, to neverending conciliatoryovertures to the butcher and grocer, to the making of her own gownsand of Caroline's, and to the delicate task of mollifying Auguste'sneglected pupils. 

The son, Heinrich, a painter, Caroline's only brother, had inherited allhis father's vindictive sensitiveness without his capacity for slavishapplication. His little studio on the third floor had been muchfrequented by young men as unsuccessful as himself, who met there togive themselves over to contemptuous derision of this or that artistwhose industry and stupidity had won him recognition. Heinrich, when heworked at all, did newspaper sketches at twenty-five dollars a week. Hewas too indolent and vacillating to set himself seriously to his art, too irascible and poignantly self-conscious to make a living, too muchaddicted to lying late in bed, to the incontinent reading of poetry, andto the use of chloral to be anything very positive except painful. Attwenty-six he shot himself in a frenzy, and the whole wretched affairhad effectually shattered his mother's health and brought on the declineof which she died. Caroline had been fond of him, but she felt a certainrelief when he no longer wandered about the little house, commentingironically upon its shabbiness, a Turkish cap on his head and acigarette hanging from between his long, tremulous fingers. 

After her mother's death Caroline assumed the management of thatbankrupt establishment. The funeral expenses were unpaid, and Auguste'spupils had been frightened away by the shock of successive disasters andthe general atmosphere of wretchedness that pervaded the house. Augustehimself was writing a symphonic poem, Icarus, dedicated to the memoryof his son. Caroline was barely twenty when she was called upon to facethis tangle of difficulties, but she reviewed the situation candidly. The house had served its time at the shrine of idealism; vague, distressing, unsatisfied yearnings had brought it low enough. Hermother, thirty years before, had eloped and left Germany with her musicteacher, to give herself over to lifelong, drudging bondage at thekitchen range. Ever since Caroline could remember, the law in the househad been a sort of mystic worship of things distant, intangible andunattainable. The family had lived in successive ebullitions of generousenthusiasm, in talk of masters and masterpieces, only to come down tothe cold facts in the case; to boiled mutton and to the necessity ofturning the dining-room carpet. All these emotional pyrotechnics hadended in petty jealousies, in neglected duties, and in cowardly fear ofthe little grocer on the corner. 

From her childhood she had hated it, that humiliating and uncertainexistence, with its glib tongue and empty pockets, its poetic ideals andsordid realities, its indolence and poverty tricked out in paper roses. Even as a little girl, when vague dreams beset her, when she wanted tolie late in bed and commune with visions, or to leap and sing becausethe sooty little trees along the street were putting out their firstpale leaves in the sunshine, she would clench her hands and go tohelp her mother sponge the spots from her father's waistcoat or pressHeinrich's trousers. Her mother never permitted the slightest questionconcerning anything Auguste or Heinrich saw fit to do, but from thetime Caroline could reason at all she could not help thinking that manythings went wrong at home. She knew, for example, that her father'spupils ought not to be kept waiting half an hour while he discussedSchopenhauer with some bearded socialist over a dish of herrings and aspotted tablecloth. She knew that Heinrich ought not to give a dinner onHeine's birthday, when the laundress had not been paid for a month andwhen he frequently had to ask his mother for carfare. Certainly Carolinehad served her apprenticeship to idealism and to all the embarrassinginconsistencies which it sometimes entails, and she decided to denyherself this diffuse, ineffectual answer to the sharp questions of life. 

When she came into the control of herself and the house she refusedto proceed any further with her musical education. Her father, who hadintended to make a concert pianist of her, set this down as anotheritem in his long list of disappointments and his grievances againstthe world. She was young and pretty, and she had worn turned gowns andsoiled gloves and improvised hats all her life. She wanted the luxury ofbeing like other people, of being honest from her hat to her boots, ofhaving nothing to hide, not even in the matter of stockings, and she waswilling to work for it. She rented a little studio away from that houseof misfortune and began to give lessons. She managed well and was thesort of girl people liked to help. The bills were paid and Auguste wenton composing, growing indignant only when she refused to insist thather pupils should study his compositions for the piano. She began toget engagements in New York to play accompaniments at song recitals. She dressed well, made herself agreeable, and gave herself a chance. She never permitted herself to look further than a step ahead, and setherself with all the strength of her will to see things as they are andmeet them squarely in the broad day. There were two things she fearedeven more than poverty: the part of one that sets up an idol and thepart of one that bows down and worships it. 

When Caroline was twenty-four she married Howard Noble, then a widowerof forty, who had been for ten years a power in Wall Street. Then, forthe first time, she had paused to take breath. It took a substantialnessas unquestionable as his; his money, his position, his energy, the bigvigor of his robust person, to satisfy her that she was entirely safe. Then she relaxed a little, feeling that there was a barrier to becounted upon between her and that world of visions and quagmires andfailure. 

Caroline had been married for six years when Raymond d'Esquerre cameto stay with them. He came chiefly because Caroline was what she was;because he, too, felt occasionally the need of getting out of Klingsor'sgarden, of dropping down somewhere for a time near a quiet nature, acool head, a strong hand. The hours he had spent in the garden lodgewere hours of such concentrated study as, in his fevered life, he seldomgot in anywhere. She had, as he told Noble, a fine appreciation of theseriousness of work. 

One evening two weeks after d'Esquerre had sailed, Caroline was in thelibrary giving her husband an account of the work she had laid out forthe gardeners. She superintended the care of the grounds herself. Hergarden, indeed, had become quite a part of her; a sort of beautifuladjunct, like gowns or jewels. It was a famous spot, and Noble was veryproud of it. 

"What do you think, Caroline, of having the garden lodge torn down andputting a new summer house there at the end of the arbor; a big rusticaffair where you could have tea served in midsummer?" he asked. 

"The lodge?" repeated Caroline looking at him quickly. "Why, that seemsalmost a shame, doesn't it, after d'Esquerre has used it?"

Noble put down his book with a smile of amusement. 

"Are you going to be sentimental about it? Why, I'd sacrifice the wholeplace to see that come to pass. But I don't believe you could do it foran hour together. "

"I don't believe so, either, " said his wife, smiling. 

Noble took up his book again and Caroline went into the music room topractice. She was not ready to have the lodge torn down. She had gonethere for a quiet hour every day during the two weeks since d'Esquerrehad left them. It was the sheerest sentiment she had ever permittedherself. She was ashamed of it, but she was childishly unwilling to letit go. 

Caroline went to bed soon after her husband, but she was not able tosleep. The night was close and warm, presaging storm. The wind hadfallen, and the water slept, fixed and motionless as the sand. She roseand thrust her feet into slippers and, putting a dressing gown overher shoulders, opened the door of her husband's room; he was sleepingsoundly. She went into the hall and down the stairs; then, leaving thehouse through a side door, stepped into the vine-covered arbor that ledto the garden lodge. The scent of the June roses was heavy in the stillair, and the stones that paved the path felt pleasantly cool through thethin soles of her slippers. Heat-lightning flashed continuously from thebank of clouds that had gathered over the sea, but the shore was floodedwith moonlight and, beyond, the rim of the Sound lay smooth and shining. Caroline had the key of the lodge, and the door creaked as she openedit. She stepped into the long, low room radiant with the moonlight whichstreamed through the bow window and lay in a silvery pool along thewaxed floor. Even that part of the room which lay in the shadow wasvaguely illuminated; the piano, the tall candlesticks, the pictureframes and white casts standing out as clearly in the half-light asdid the sycamores and black poplars of the garden against the still, expectant night sky. Caroline sat down to think it all over. She hadcome here to do just that every day of the two weeks since d'Esquerre'sdeparture, but, far from ever having reached a conclusion, she hadsucceeded only in losing her way in a maze of memories--sometimesbewilderingly confused, sometimes too acutely distinct--where there wasneither path, nor clue, nor any hope of finality. She had, she realized, defeated a lifelong regimen; completely confounded herself by fallingunaware and incontinently into that luxury of reverie which, even asa little girl, she had so determinedly denied herself, she had beendeveloping with alarming celerity that part of one which sets up an idoland that part of one which bows down and worships it. 

It was a mistake, she felt, ever to have asked d'Esquerre to comeat all. She had an angry feeling that she had done it rather inself-defiance, to rid herself finally of that instinctive fear of himwhich had always troubled and perplexed her. She knew that she hadreckoned with herself before he came; but she had been equal to so muchthat she had never really doubted she would be equal to this. She hadcome to believe, indeed, almost arrogantly in her own malleability andendurance; she had done so much with herself that she had come to thinkthat there was nothing which she could not do; like swimmers, overbold, who reckon upon their strength and their power to hoard it, forgettingthe ever-changing moods of their adversary, the sea. 

And d'Esquerre was a man to reckon with. Caroline did not deceiveherself now upon that score. She admitted it humbly enough, and sinceshe had said good-by to him she had not been free for a moment fromthe sense of his formidable power. It formed the undercurrent of herconsciousness; whatever she might be doing or thinking, it went on, involuntarily, like her breathing, sometimes welling up until suddenlyshe found herself suffocating. There was a moment of this tonight, and Caroline rose and stood shuddering, looking about her in the blueduskiness of the silent room. She had not been here at night before, andthe spirit of the place seemed more troubled and insistent than ever ithad in the quiet of the afternoons. Caroline brushed her hair back fromher damp forehead and went over to the bow window. After raising itshe sat down upon the low seat. Leaning her head against the sill, andloosening her nightgown at the throat, she half-closed her eyesand looked off into the troubled night, watching the play of theheat-lightning upon the massing clouds between the pointed tops of thepoplars. 

Yes, she knew, she knew well enough, of what absurdities this spell waswoven; she mocked, even while she winced. His power, she knew, lay notso much in anything that he actually had--though he had so much--orin anything that he actually was, but in what he suggested, in what heseemed picturesque enough to have or be and that was just anythingthat one chose to believe or to desire. His appeal was all the morepersuasive and alluring in that it was to the imagination alone, in thatit was as indefinite and impersonal as those cults of idealism whichso have their way with women. What he had was that, in his merepersonality, he quickened and in a measure gratified that somethingwithout which--to women--life is no better than sawdust, and to thedesire for which most of their mistakes and tragedies and astonishinglypoor bargains are due. 

D'Esquerre had become the center of a movement, and the Metropolitanhad become the temple of a cult. When he could be induced to cross theAtlantic, the opera season in New York was successful; when hecould not, the management lost money; so much everyone knew. It wasunderstood, too, that his superb art had disproportionately little to dowith his peculiar position. Women swayed the balance this way or that;the opera, the orchestra, even his own glorious art, achieved at such acost, were but the accessories of himself; like the scenery and costumesand even the soprano, they all went to produce atmosphere, were the meremechanics of the beautiful illusion. 

Caroline understood all this; tonight was not the first time that shehad put it to herself so. She had seen the same feeling in other people, watched for it in her friends, studied it in the house night after nightwhen he sang, candidly putting herself among a thousand others. 

D'Esquerre's arrival in the early winter was the signal for a femininehegira toward New York. On the nights when he sang women flocked tothe Metropolitan from mansions and hotels, from typewriter desks, schoolrooms, shops, and fitting rooms. They were of all conditionsand complexions. Women of the world who accepted him knowingly as theysometimes took champagne for its agreeable effect; sisters of charityand overworked shopgirls, who received him devoutly; withered women whohad taken doctorate degrees and who worshipped furtively through prismspectacles; business women and women of affairs, the Amazons who dweltafar from men in the stony fastnesses of apartment houses. They allentered into the same romance; dreamed, in terms as various as the huesof fantasy, the same dream; drew the same quick breath when he steppedupon the stage, and, at his exit, felt the same dull pain of shoulderingthe pack again. 

There were the maimed, even; those who came on crutches, who were pittedby smallpox or grotesquely painted by cruel birth stains. These, too, entered with him into enchantment. Stout matrons became slender girlsagain; worn spinsters felt their cheeks flush with the tenderness oftheir lost youth. Young and old, however hideous, however fair, theyyielded up their heat--whether quick or latent--sat hungering for themystic bread wherewith he fed them at this eucharist of sentiment. 

Sometimes, when the house was crowded from the orchestra to the last rowof the gallery, when the air was charged with this ecstasy of fancy, he himself was the victim of the burning reflection of his power. Theyacted upon him in turn; he felt their fervent and despairing appeal tohim; it stirred him as the spring drives the sap up into an old tree;he, too, burst into bloom. For the moment he, too, believed again, desired again, he knew not what, but something. 

But it was not in these exalted moments that Caroline had learned tofear him most. It was in the quiet, tired reserve, the dullness, even, that kept him company between these outbursts that she found thatexhausting drain upon her sympathies which was the very pithand substance of their alliance. It was the tacit admission ofdisappointment under all this glamour of success--the helplessness ofthe enchanter to at all enchant himself--that awoke in her an illogical, womanish desire to in some way compensate, to make it up to him. 

She had observed drastically to herself that it was her eighteenth yearhe awoke in her--those hard years she had spent in turning gowns andplacating tradesmen, and which she had never had time to live. Afterall, she reflected, it was better to allow one's self a little youth--todance a little at the carnival and to live these things when they arenatural and lovely, not to have them coming back on one and demandingarrears when they are humiliating and impossible. She went over tonightall the catalogue of her self-deprivations; recalled how, in the lightof her father's example, she had even refused to humor her innocenttaste for improvising at the piano; how, when she began to teach, afterher mother's death, she had struck out one little indulgence afteranother, reducing her life to a relentless routine, unvarying asclockwork. It seemed to her that ever since d'Esquerre first came intothe house she had been haunted by an imploring little girlish ghost thatfollowed her about, wringing its hands and entreating for an hour oflife. 

The storm had held off unconscionably long; the air within the lodge wasstifling, and without the garden waited, breathless. Everything seemedpervaded by a poignant distress; the hush of feverish, intolerableexpectation. The still earth, the heavy flowers, even the growingdarkness, breathed the exhaustion of protracted waiting. Caroline feltthat she ought to go; that it was wrong to stay; that the hour and theplace were as treacherous as her own reflections. She rose and began topace the floor, stepping softly, as though in fear of awakening someone, her figure, in its thin drapery, diaphanously vague and white. Stillunable to shake off the obsession of the intense stillness, she sat downat the piano and began to run over the first act of the _Walkure_, thelast of his roles they had practiced together; playing listlessly andabsently at first, but with gradually increasing seriousness. Perhaps itwas the still heat of the summer night, perhaps it was the heavy odorsfrom the garden that came in through the open windows; but as she playedthere grew and grew the feeling that he was there, beside her, standingin his accustomed place. In the duet at the end of the first act sheheard him clearly: _"Thou art the Spring for which I sighed in Winter'scold embraces. "_ Once as he sang it, he had put his arm about her, his one hand under her heart, while with the other he took her rightfrom the keyboard, holding her as he always held _Sieglinde_ when hedrew her toward the window. She had been wonderfully the mistress ofherself at the time; neither repellent nor acquiescent. She rememberedthat she had rather exulted, then, in her self-control--which he hadseemed to take for granted, though there was perhaps the whisper of aquestion from the hand under her heart. _"Thou art the Spring for whichI sighed in Winter's cold embraces. "_ Caroline lifted her hands quicklyfrom the keyboard, and she bowed her head in them, sobbing. 

The storm broke and the rain beat in, spattering her nightdress untilshe rose and lowered the windows. She dropped upon the couch and beganfighting over again the battles of other days, while the ghosts of theslain rose as from a sowing of dragon's teeth, The shadows of things, always so scorned and flouted, bore down upon her merciless andtriumphant. It was not enough; this happy, useful, well-ordered lifewas not enough. It did not satisfy, it was not even real. No, the otherthings, the shadows-they were the realities. Her father, poor Heinrich, even her mother, who had been able to sustain her poor romance and keepher little illusions amid the tasks of a scullion, were nearer happinessthan she. Her sure foundation was but made ground, after all, and thepeople in Klingsor's garden were more fortunate, however barren thesands from which they conjured their paradise. 

The lodge was still and silent; her fit of weeping over, Carolinemade no sound, and within the room, as without in the garden, was theblackness of storm. Only now and then a flash of lightning showed awoman's slender figure rigid on the couch, her face buried in her hands. 

Toward morning, when the occasional rumbling of thunder was heard nomore and the beat of the raindrops upon the orchard leaves was steadier, she fell asleep and did not waken until the first red streaks of dawnshone through the twisted boughs of the apple trees. There was a momentbetween world and world, when, neither asleep nor awake, she felt herdream grow thin, melting away from her, felt the warmth under her heartgrowing cold. Something seemed to slip from the clinging hold of herarms, and she groaned protestingly through her parted lips, followingit a little way with fluttering hands. Then her eyes opened wide and shesprang up and sat holding dizzily to the cushions of the couch, staringdown at her bare, cold feet, at her laboring breast, rising and fallingunder her open nightdress. 

The dream was gone, but the feverish reality of it still pervaded herand she held it as the vibrating string holds a tone. In the last hourthe shadows had had their way with Caroline. They had shown her thenothingness of time and space, of system and discipline, of closed doorsand broad waters. Shuddering, she thought of the Arabian fairy tale inwhich the genie brought the princess of China to the sleeping princeof Damascus and carried her through the air back to her palace at dawn. Caroline closed her eyes and dropped her elbows weakly upon her knees, her shoulders sinking together. The horror was that it had not comefrom without, but from within. The dream was no blind chance; it was theexpression of something she had kept so close a prisoner that she hadnever seen it herself, it was the wail from the donjon deeps when thewatch slept. Only as the outcome of such a night of sorcery could thething have been loosed to straighten its limbs and measure itself withher; so heavy were the chains upon it, so many a fathom deep, it wascrushed down into darkness. The fact that d'Esquerre happened to be onthe other side of the world meant nothing; had he been here, beside her, it could scarcely have hurt her self-respect so much. As it was, she waswithout even the extenuation of an outer impulse, and she could scarcelyhave despised herself more had she come to him here in the night threeweeks ago and thrown herself down upon the stone slab at the door there. 

Caroline rose unsteadily and crept guiltily from the lodge and along thepath under the arbor, terrified lest the servants should be stirring, trembling with the chill air, while the wet shrubbery, brushing againsther, drenched her nightdress until it clung about her limbs. 

At breakfast her husband looked across the table at her with concern. "It seems to me that you are looking rather fagged, Caroline. It was abeastly night to sleep. Why don't you go up to the mountains until thishot weather is over? By the way, were you in earnest about letting thelodge stand?"

Caroline laughed quietly. "No, I find I was not very serious. I haven'tsentiment enough to forego a summer house. Will you tell Baker to cometomorrow to talk it over with me? If we are to have a house party, Ishould like to put him to work on it at once. "

Noble gave her a glance, half-humorous, half-vexed. "Do you know I amrather disappointed?" he said. "I had almost hoped that, just for once, you know, you would be a little bit foolish. "

"Not now that I've slept over it, " replied Caroline, and they both rosefrom the table, laughing. 

The Marriage of Phaedra

The sequence of events was such that MacMaster did not make hispilgrimage to Hugh Treffinger's studio until three years after thatpainter's death. MacMaster was himself a painter, an American of theGallicized type, who spent his winters in New York, his summers inParis, and no inconsiderable amount of time on the broad waters between. He had often contemplated stopping in London on one of his return tripsin the late autumn, but he had always deferred leaving Paris until theprick of necessity drove him home by the quickest and shortest route. 

Treffinger was a comparatively young man at the time of his death, andthere had seemed no occasion for haste until haste was of no avail. Then, possibly, though there had been some correspondence between them, MacMaster felt certain qualms about meeting in the flesh a man who inthe flesh was so diversely reported. His intercourse with Treffinger'swork had been so deep and satisfying, so apart from other appreciations, that he rather dreaded a critical juncture of any sort. He had alwaysfelt himself singularly inept in personal relations, and in this case hehad avoided the issue until it was no longer to be feared or hoped for. There still remained, however, Treffinger's great unfinished picture, the _Marriage of Phaedra_, which had never left his studio, and of whichMacMaster's friends had now and again brought report that it was thepainter's most characteristic production. 

The young man arrived in London in the evening, and the next morningwent out to Kensington to find Treffinger's studio. It lay in one of theperplexing bystreets off Holland Road, and the number he found on adoor set in a high garden wall, the top of which was covered with brokengreen glass and over which a budding lilac bush nodded. Treffinger'splate was still there, and a card requesting visitors to ring for theattendant. In response to MacMaster's ring, the door was opened by acleanly built little man, clad in a shooting jacket and trousers thathad been made for an ampler figure. He had a fresh complexion, eyes ofthat common uncertain shade of gray, and was closely shaven except forthe incipient muttonchops on his ruddy cheeks. He bore himself ina manner strikingly capable, and there was a sort of trimness andalertness about him, despite the too-generous shoulders of his coat. Inone hand he held a bulldog pipe, and in the other a copy of _SportingLife_. While MacMaster was explaining the purpose of his call he noticedthat the man surveyed him critically, though not impertinently. He wasadmitted into a little tank of a lodge made of whitewashed stone, theback door and windows opening upon a garden. A visitor's book and a pileof catalogues lay on a deal table, together with a bottle of ink andsome rusty pens. The wall was ornamented with photographs and coloredprints of racing favorites. 

"The studio is h'only open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays, "explained the man--he referred to himself as "Jymes"--"but of course wemake exceptions in the case of pynters. Lydy Elling Treffinger 'erselfis on the Continent, but Sir 'Ugh's orders was that pynters was to 'avethe run of the place. " He selected a key from his pocket and threw openthe door into the studio which, like the lodge, was built against thewall of the garden. 

MacMaster entered a long, narrow room, built of smoothed planks, painteda light green; cold and damp even on that fine May morning. The room wasutterly bare of furniture--unless a stepladder, a model throne, and arack laden with large leather portfolios could be accounted such--andwas windowless, without other openings than the door and the skylight, under which hung the unfinished picture itself. MacMaster had neverseen so many of Treffinger's paintings together. He knew the painterhad married a woman with money and had been able to keep such ofhis pictures as he wished. These, with all of _182_ his replicas andstudies, he had left as a sort of common legacy to the younger men ofthe school he had originated. 

As soon as he was left alone MacMaster sat down on the edge of the modelthrone before the unfinished picture. Here indeed was what he had comefor; it rather paralyzed his receptivity for the moment, but graduallythe thing found its way to him. 

At one o'clock he was standing before the collection of studies done for_Boccaccio's Garden_ when he heard a voice at his elbow. 

"Pardon, sir, but I was just about to lock up and go to lunch. Areyou lookin' for the figure study of Boccaccio 'imself?" James queriedrespectfully. "Lydy Elling Treffinger give it to Mr. Rossiter to takedown to Oxford for some lectures he's been agiving there. "

"Did he never paint out his studies, then?" asked MacMaster withperplexity. "Here are two completed ones for this picture. Why did hekeep them?"

"I don't know as I could say as to that, sir, " replied James, smilingindulgently, "but that was 'is way. That is to say, 'e pynted out veryfrequent, but 'e always made two studies to stand; one in watercolorsand one in oils, before 'e went at the final picture--to say nothinkof all the pose studies 'e made in pencil before he begun on thecomposition proper at all. He was that particular. You see, 'e wasn't sokeen for the final effect as for the proper pyntin' of 'is pictures. 'Eused to say they ought to be well made, the same as any other h'articleof trade. I can lay my 'and on the pose studies for you, sir. " Herummaged in one of the portfolios and produced half a dozen drawings, "These three, " he continued, "was discarded; these two was the pose hefinally accepted; this one without alteration, as it were. 

"That's in Paris, as I remember, " James continued reflectively. "It wentwith the _Saint Cecilia_ into the Baron H---'s collection. Could youtell me, sir, 'as 'e it still? I don't like to lose account of them, butsome 'as changed 'ands since Sir 'Ugh's death. "

"H---'s collection is still intact, I believe, " replied MacMaster. "Youwere with Treffinger long?"

"From my boyhood, sir, " replied James with gravity. "I was a stable boywhen 'e took me. "

"You were his man, then?"

"That's it, sir. Nobody else ever done anything around the studio. I always mixed 'is colors and 'e taught me to do a share of thevarnishin'; 'e said as 'ow there wasn't a 'ouse in England as coulddo it proper. You ayn't looked at the _Marriage_ yet, sir?" he askedabruptly, glancing doubtfully at MacMaster, and indicating with histhumb the picture under the north light. 

"Not very closely. I prefer to begin with something simpler; that'srather appalling, at first glance, " replied MacMaster. 

"Well may you say that, sir, " said James warmly. "That one regularkilled Sir 'Ugh; it regular broke 'im up, and nothink will ever convinceme as 'ow it didn't bring on 'is second stroke. "

When MacMaster walked back to High Street to take his bus his mind wasdivided between two exultant convictions. He felt that he had notonly found Treffinger's greatest picture, but that, in James, he haddiscovered a kind of cryptic index to the painter's personality--a cluewhich, if tactfully followed, might lead to much. 

Several days after his first visit to the studio, MacMaster wrote toLady Mary Percy, telling her that he would be in London for some timeand asking her if he might call. Lady Mary was an only sister of LadyEllen Treffinger, the painter's widow, and MacMaster had known herduring one winter he spent at Nice. He had known her, indeed, very well, and Lady Mary, who was astonishingly frank and communicative uponall subjects, had been no less so upon the matter of her sister'sunfortunate marriage. 

In her reply to his note Lady Mary named an afternoon when she would bealone. She was as good as her word, and when MacMaster arrived hefound the drawing room empty. Lady Mary entered shortly after he wasannounced. She was a tall woman, thin and stiffly jointed, and her bodystood out under the folds of her gown with the rigor of cast iron. This rather metallic suggestion was further carried out in her heavilyknuckled hands, her stiff gray hair, and her long, bold-featured face, which was saved from freakishness only by her alert eyes. 

"Really, " said Lady Mary, taking a seat beside him and giving him a sortof military inspection through her nose glasses, "really, I had begun tofear that I had lost you altogether. It's four years since I saw youat Nice, isn't it? I was in Paris last winter, but I heard nothing fromyou. "

"I was in New York then. "

"It occurred to me that you might be. And why are you in London?"

"Can you ask?" replied MacMaster gallantly. 

Lady Mary smiled ironically. "But for what else, incidentally?"

"Well, incidentally, I came to see Treffinger's studio and hisunfinished picture. Since I've been here, I've decided to stay thesummer. I'm even thinking of attempting to do a biography of him. "

"So that is what brought you to London?"

"Not exactly. I had really no intention of anything so serious when Icame. It's his last picture, I fancy, that has rather thrust it upon me. The notion has settled down on me like a thing destined. "

"You'll not be offended if I question the clemency of such a destiny, "remarked Lady Mary dryly. "Isn't there rather a surplus of books on thatsubject already?"

"Such as they are. Oh, I've read them all"--here MacMaster faced LadyMary triumphantly. "He has quite escaped your amiable critics, " headded, smiling. 

"I know well enough what you think, and I daresay we are not much onart, " said Lady Mary with tolerant good humor. "We leave that to peopleswho have no physique. Treffinger made a stir for a time, but itseems that we are not capable of a sustained appreciation of suchextraordinary methods. In the end we go back to the pictures we findagreeable and unperplexing. He was regarded as an experiment, I fancy;and now it seems that he was rather an unsuccessful one. If you've cometo us in a missionary spirit, we'll tolerate you politely, but we'lllaugh in our sleeve, I warn you. "

"That really doesn't daunt me, Lady Mary, " declared MacMaster blandly. "As I told you, I'm a man with a mission. "

Lady Mary laughed her hoarse, baritone laugh. "Bravo! And you've come tome for inspiration for your panegyric?"

MacMaster smiled with some embarrassment. "Not altogether for thatpurpose. But I want to consult you, Lady Mary, about the advisabilityof troubling Lady Ellen Treffinger in the matter. It seems scarcelylegitimate to go on without asking her to give some sort of grace to myproceedings, yet I feared the whole subject might be painful to her. Ishall rely wholly upon your discretion. "

"I think she would prefer to be consulted, " replied Lady Maryjudicially. "I can't understand how she endures to have the wretchedaffair continually raked up, but she does. She seems to feel a sort ofmoral responsibility. Ellen has always been singularly conscientiousabout this matter, insofar as her light goes, --which rather puzzles me, as hers is not exactly a magnanimous nature. She is certainly trying todo what she believes to be the right thing. I shall write to her, andyou can see her when she returns from Italy. "

"I want very much to meet her. She is, I hope, quite recovered in everyway, " queried MacMaster, hesitatingly. 

"No, I can't say that she is. She has remained in much the samecondition she sank to before his death. He trampled over pretty muchwhatever there was in her, I fancy. Women don't recover from wounds ofthat sort--at least, not women of Ellen's grain. They go on bleedinginwardly. "

"You, at any rate, have not grown more reconciled, " MacMaster ventured. 

"Oh I give him his dues. He was a colorist, I grant you; but that isa vague and unsatisfactory quality to marry to; Lady Ellen Treffingerfound it so. "

"But, my dear Lady Mary, " expostulated MacMaster, "and just repress meif I'm becoming too personal--but it must, in the first place, have beena marriage of choice on her part as well as on his. "

Lady Mary poised her glasses on her large forefinger and assumed anattitude suggestive of the clinical lecture room as she replied. "Ellen, my dear boy, is an essentially romantic person. She is quiet about it, but she runs deep. I never knew how deep until I came against her on theissue of that marriage. She was always discontented as a girl; she foundthings dull and prosaic, and the ardor of his courtship was agreeableto her. He met her during her first season in town. She is handsome, andthere were plenty of other men, but I grant you your scowling brigandwas the most picturesque of the lot. In his courtship, as in everythingelse, he was theatrical to the point of being ridiculous, but Ellen'ssense of humor is not her strongest quality. He had the charm ofcelebrity, the air of a man who could storm his way through anythingto get what he wanted. That sort of vehemence is particularly effectivewith women like Ellen, who can be warmed only by reflected heat, and shecouldn't at all stand out against it. He convinced her of his necessity;and that done, all's done. "

"I can't help thinking that, even on such a basis, the marriage shouldhave turned out better, " MacMaster remarked reflectively. 

"The marriage, " Lady Mary continued with a shrug, "was made on the basisof a mutual misunderstanding. Ellen, in the nature of the case, believedthat she was doing something quite out of the ordinary in accepting him, and expected concessions which, apparently, it never occurred to him tomake. After his marriage he relapsed into his old habits of incessantwork, broken by violent and often brutal relaxations. He insulted herfriends and foisted his own upon her--many of them well calculated toarouse aversion in any well-bred girl. He had Ghillini constantly at thehouse--a homeless vagabond, whose conversation was impossible. I don'tsay, mind you, that he had not grievances on his side. He had probablyoverrated the girl's possibilities, and he let her see that he wasdisappointed in her. Only a large and generous nature could have bornewith him, and Ellen's is not that. She could not at all understand thatodious strain of plebeian pride which plumes itself upon not havingrisen above its sources. "

As MacMaster drove back to his hotel he reflected that Lady Mary Percyhad probably had good cause for dissatisfaction with her brother-in-law. Treffinger was, indeed, the last man who should have married intothe Percy family. The son of a small tobacconist, he had grown up asign-painter's apprentice; idle, lawless, and practically letterlessuntil he had drifted into the night classes of the Albert League, whereGhillini sometimes lectured. From the moment he came under the eye andinfluence of that erratic Italian, then a political exile, his lifehad swerved sharply from its old channel. This man had been at onceincentive and guide, friend and master, to his pupil. He had taken theraw clay out of the London streets and molded it anew. Seemingly he haddivined at once where the boy's possibilities lay, and had thrown asideevery canon of orthodox instruction in the training of him. Underhim Treffinger acquired his superficial, yet facile, knowledge of theclassics; had steeped himself in the monkish Latin and medieval romanceswhich later gave his work so naive and remote a quality. That was thebeginning of the wattle fences, the cobble pave, the brown roof beams, the cunningly wrought fabrics that gave to his pictures such a richnessof decorative effect. 

As he had told Lady Mary Percy, MacMaster had found the imperativeinspiration of his purpose in Treffinger's unfinished picture, the _Marriage of Phaedra_. He had always believed that the key toTreffinger's individuality lay in his singular education; in the _Romande la Rose_, in Boccaccio, and Amadis, those works which had literallytranscribed themselves upon the blank soul of the London street boy, and through which he had been born into the world of spiritual things. Treffinger had been a man who lived after his imagination; and his mind, his ideals and, as MacMaster believed, even his personal ethics, had tothe last been colored by the trend of his early training. There was inhim alike the freshness and spontaneity, the frank brutality and thereligious mysticism, which lay well back of the fifteenth century. Inthe _Marriage of Phaedra_ MacMaster found the ultimate expression ofthis spirit, the final word as to Treffinger's point of view. 

As in all Treffinger's classical subjects, the conception was whollymedieval. This Phaedra, just turning from her husband and maidens togreet her husband's son, giving him her first fearsome glance fromunder her half-lifted veil, was no daughter of Minos. The daughter of_heathenesse_ and the early church she was; doomed to torturing visionsand scourgings, and the wrangling of soul with flesh. The venerableTheseus might have been victorious Charlemagne, and Phaedra's maidensbelonged rather in the train of Blanche of Castile than at the Cretancourt. In the earlier studies Hippolytus had been done with a more pagansuggestion; but in each successive drawing the glorious figure bad beendeflowered of something of its serene unconsciousness, until, in thecanvas under the skylight, he appeared a very Christian knight. This male figure, and the face of Phaedra, painted with such magicalpreservation of tone under the heavy shadow of the veil, were plainlyTreffinger's highest achievements of craftsmanship. By what labor he hadreached the seemingly inevitable composition of the picture--with itstwenty figures, its plenitude of light and air, its restful distancesseen through white porticoes--countless studies bore witness. 

From James's attitude toward the picture MacMaster could well conjecturewhat the painter's had been. This picture was always uppermost inJames's mind; its custodianship formed, in his eyes, his occupation. He was manifestly apprehensive when visitors--not many camenowadays--lingered near it. "It was the _Marriage_ as killed 'im, " hewould often say, "and for the matter 'o that, it did like to 'av beenthe death of all of us. "

By the end of his second week in London MacMaster had begun the notesfor his study of Hugh Treffinger and his work. When his researchesled him occasionally to visit the studios of Treffinger's friends anderstwhile disciples, he found their Treffinger manner fading as thering of Treffinger's personality died out in them. One by one they werestealing back into the fold of national British art; the hand thathad wound them up was still. MacMaster despaired of them and confinedhimself more and more exclusively to the studio, to such of Treffinger'sletters as were available--they were for the most part singularlynegative and colorless--and to his interrogation of Treffinger's man. 

He could not himself have traced the successive steps by which he wasgradually admitted into James's confidence. Certainly most of his adroitstrategies to that end failed humiliatingly, and whatever it was thatbuilt up an understanding between them must have been instinctive andintuitive on both sides. When at last James became anecdotal, personal, there was that in every word he let fall which put breath and blood intoMacMaster's book. James had so long been steeped in that penetratingpersonality that he fairly exuded it. Many of his very phrases, mannerisms, and opinions were impressions that he had taken on like wetplaster in his daily contact with Treffinger. Inwardly he was linedwith cast-off epitheliums, as outwardly he was clad in the painter'sdiscarded coats. If the painter's letters were formal and perfunctory, if his expressions to his friends had been extravagant, contradictory, and often apparently insincere--still, MacMaster felt himself notentirely without authentic sources. It was James who possessedTreffinger's legend; it was with James that he had laid aside his pose. Only in his studio, alone, and face to face with his work, as it seemed, had the man invariably been himself. James had known him in the oneattitude in which he was entirely honest; their relation had fallenwell within the painter's only indubitable integrity. James's reportof Treffinger was distorted by no hallucination of artistic insight, colored by no interpretation of his own. He merely held what hehad heard and seen; his mind was a sort of camera obscura. His verylimitations made him the more literal and minutely accurate. 

One morning, when MacMaster was seated before the _Marriage of Phaedra_, James entered on his usual round of dusting. 

"I've 'eard from Lydy Elling by the post, sir, " he remarked, "an' she'sgive h'orders to 'ave the 'ouse put in readiness. I doubt she'll be 'ereby Thursday or Friday next. "

"She spends most of her time abroad?" queried MacMaster; on the subjectof Lady Treffinger James consistently maintained a very delicatereserve. 

"Well, you could 'ardly say she does that, sir. She finds the 'ouse abit dull, I daresay, so durin' the season she stops mostly with LydyMary Percy, at Grosvenor Square. Lydy Mary's a h'only sister. " After afew moments he continued, speaking in jerks governed by the rigor of hisdusting: "H'only this morning I come upon this scarfpin, " exhibiting avery striking instance of that article, "an' I recalled as 'ow Sir 'Ughgive it me when 'e was acourting of Lydy Elling. Blowed if I ever see aman go in for a 'oman like 'im! 'E was that gone, sir. 'E never went inon anythink so 'ard before nor since, till 'e went in on the _Marriage_there--though 'e mostly went in on things pretty keen; 'ad the measleswhen 'e was thirty, strong as cholera, an' come close to dyin' of 'em. 'E wasn't strong for Lydy Elling's set; they was a bit too stiff for'im. A free an' easy gentleman, 'e was; 'e liked 'is dinner with a fewfriends an' them jolly, but 'e wasn't much on what you might call bigaffairs. But once 'e went in for Lydy Elling 'e broke 'imself to newpaces; He give away 'is rings an' pins, an' the tylor's man an' the'aberdasher's man was at 'is rooms continual. 'E got 'imself put upfor a club in Piccadilly; 'e starved 'imself thin, an' worrited 'imselfwhite, an' ironed 'imself out, an' drawed 'imself tight as a bow string. It was a good job 'e come a winner, or I don't know w'at'd 'a been topay. "

The next week, in consequence of an invitation from Lady EllenTreffinger, MacMaster went one afternoon to take tea with her. He wasshown into the garden that lay between the residence and the studio, where the tea table was set under a gnarled pear tree. Lady Ellen roseas he approached--he was astonished to note how tall she was-and greetedhim graciously, saying that she already knew him through her sister. MacMaster felt a certain satisfaction in her; in her reassuring poiseand repose, in the charming modulations of her voice and the indolentreserve of her full, almond eyes. He was even delighted to find herface so inscrutable, though it chilled his own warmth and made the openfrankness he had wished to permit himself impossible. It was a longface, narrow at the chin, very delicately featured, yet steeled by animpassive mask of self-control. It was behind just such finely cut, close-sealed faces, MacMaster reflected, that nature sometimes hidastonishing secrets. But in spite of this suggestion of hardness hefelt that the unerring taste that Treffinger had always shown in largermatters had not deserted him when he came to the choosing of a wife, andhe admitted that he could not himself have selected a woman who lookedmore as Treffinger's wife should look. 

While he was explaining the purpose of his frequent visits to the studioshe heard him with courteous interest. "I have read, I think, everythingthat has been published on Sir Hugh Treffinger's work, and it seems tome that there is much left to be said, " he concluded. 

"I believe they are rather inadequate, " she remarked vaguely. Shehesitated a moment, absently fingering the ribbons of her gown, thencontinued, without raising her eyes; "I hope you will not think me tooexacting if I ask to see the proofs of such chapters of your work ashave to do with Sir Hugh's personal life. I have always asked thatprivilege. "

MacMaster hastily assured her as to this, adding, "I mean to touch ononly such facts in his personal life as have to do directly with hiswork--such as his monkish education under Ghillini. "

"I see your meaning, I think, " said Lady Ellen, looking at him withwide, uncomprehending eyes. 

When MacMaster stopped at the studio on leaving the house he stood forsome time before Treffinger's one portrait of himself, that brigand ofa picture, with its full throat and square head; the short upper lipblackened by the close-clipped mustache, the wiry hair tossed down overthe forehead, the strong white teeth set hard on a short pipestem. Hecould well understand what manifold tortures the mere grain of the man'sstrong red and brown flesh might have inflicted upon a woman like LadyEllen. He could conjecture, too, Treffinger's impotent revolt againstthat very repose which had so dazzled him when it first defied hisdaring; and how once possessed of it, his first instinct had been tocrush it, since he could not melt it. 

Toward the close of the season Lady Ellen Treffinger left town. MacMaster's work was progressing rapidly, and he and James wore awaythe days in their peculiar relation, which by this time had much offriendliness. Excepting for the regular visits of a Jewish picturedealer, there were few intrusions upon their solitude. Occasionallya party of Americans rang at the little door in the garden wall, but usually they departed speedily for the Moorish hall and tinklingfountain of the great show studio of London, not far away. 

This Jew, an Austrian by birth, who had a large business in Melbourne, Australia, was a man of considerable discrimination, and at onceselected the _Marriage of Phaedra_ as the object of his especialinterest. When, upon his first visit, Lichtenstein had declared thepicture one of the things done for time, MacMaster had rather warmedtoward him and had talked to him very freely. Later, however, the man'srepulsive personality and innate vulgarity so wore upon him that, themore genuine the Jew's appreciation, the more he resented it and themore base he somehow felt it to be. It annoyed him to see Lichtensteinwalking up and down before the picture, shaking his head and blinkinghis watery eyes over his nose glasses, ejaculating: "Dot is a chem, achem! It is wordt to gome den dousant miles for such a bainting, eh? Tomake Eurobe abbreciate such a work of ardt it is necessary to take itaway while she is napping. She has never abbreciated until she has lost, but, " knowingly, "she will buy back. "

James had, from the first, felt such a distrust of the man that he wouldnever leave him alone in the studio for a moment. When Lichtensteininsisted upon having Lady Ellen Treffinger's address James rose to thepoint of insolence. "It ayn't no use to give it, noway. Lydy Treffingernever has nothink to do with dealers. " MacMaster quietly repented hisrash confidences, fearing that he might indirectly cause Lady Ellenannoyance from this merciless speculator, and he recalled with chagrinthat Lichtenstein had extorted from him, little by little, pretty muchthe entire plan of his book, and especially the place in it which the_Marriage of Phaedra_ was to occupy. 

By this time the first chapters of MacMaster's book were in the handsof his publisher, and his visits to the studio were necessarily lessfrequent. The greater part of his time was now employed with theengravers who were to reproduce such of Treffinger's pictures as heintended to use as illustrations. 

He returned to his hotel late one evening after a long and vexing day atthe engravers to find James in his room, seated on his steamer trunk bythe window, with the outline of a great square draped in sheets restingagainst his knee. 

"Why, James, what's up?" he cried in astonishment, glancing inquiringlyat the sheeted object. 

"Ayn't you seen the pypers, sir?" jerked out the man. 

"No, now I think of it, I haven't even looked at a paper. I've been atthe engravers' plant all day. I haven't seen anything. "

James drew a copy of the _Times_ from his pocket and handed it to him, pointing with a tragic finger to a paragraph in the social column. Itwas merely the announcement of Lady Ellen Treffinger's engagement toCaptain Alexander Gresham. 

"Well, what of it, my man? That surely is her privilege. "

James took the paper, turned to another page, and silently pointed toa paragraph in the art notes which stated that Lady Treffinger hadpresented to the X--gallery the entire collection of paintings andsketches now in her late husband's studio, with the exception of hisunfinished picture, the _Marriage Of Phaedra_, which she had sold fora large sum to an Australian dealer who had come to London purposely tosecure some of Treffinger's paintings. 

MacMaster pursed up his lips and sat down, his overcoat still on. "Well, James, this is something of a--something of a jolt, eh? It neveroccurred to me she'd really do it. "

"Lord, you don't know 'er, sir, " said James bitterly, still staring atthe floor in an attitude of abandoned dejection. 

MacMaster started up in a flash of enlightenment, "What on earth haveyou got there, James? It's not-surely it's not--"

"Yes, it is, sir, " broke in the man excitedly. "It's the _Marriage_itself. It ayn't agoing to H'Australia, no'ow!"

"But man, what are you going to do with it? It's Lichtenstein's propertynow, as it seems. "

"It ayn't, sir, that it ayn't. No, by Gawd, it ayn't!" shouted James, breaking into a choking fury. He controlled himself with an effortand added supplicatingly: "Oh, sir, you ayn't agoing to see it go toH'Australia, w'ere they send convic's?" He unpinned and flung aside thesheets as though to let _Phaedra_ plead for herself. 

MacMaster sat down again and looked sadly at the doomed masterpiece. The notion of James having carried it across London that night ratherappealed to his fancy. There was certainly a flavor about such ahighhanded proceeding. "However did you get it here?" he queried. 

"I got a four-wheeler and come over direct, sir. Good job I 'appened to'ave the chaynge about me. "

"You came up High Street, up Piccadilly, through the Haymarket andTrafalgar Square, and into the Strand?" queried MacMaster with a relish. 

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir, " assented James with surprise. 

MacMaster laughed delightedly. "It was a beautiful idea, James, but I'mafraid we can't carry it any further. "

"I was thinkin' as 'ow it would be a rare chance to get you to take the_Marriage_ over to Paris for a year or two, sir, until the thing blowsover?" suggested James blandly. 

"I'm afraid that's out of the question, James. I haven't the right stuffin me for a pirate, or even a vulgar smuggler, I'm afraid. " MacMasterfound it surprisingly difficult to say this, and he busied himself withthe lamp as he said it. He heard James's hand fall heavily on the trunktop, and he discovered that he very much disliked sinking in the man'sestimation. 

"Well, sir, " remarked James in a more formal tone, after a protractedsilence; "then there's nothink for it but as 'ow I'll 'ave to make waywith it myself. "

"And how about your character, James? The evidence would be heavyagainst you, and even if Lady Treffinger didn't prosecute you'd be donefor. "

"Blow my character!--your pardon, sir, " cried James, starting to hisfeet. "W'at do I want of a character? I'll chuck the 'ole thing, anddamned lively, too. The shop's to be sold out, an' my place is goneany'ow. I'm agoing to enlist, or try the gold fields. I've lived toolong with h'artists; I'd never give satisfaction in livery now. You know'ow it is yourself, sir; there ayn't no life like it, no'ow. "

For a moment MacMaster was almost equal to abetting James in his theft. He reflected that pictures had been whitewashed, or hidden in the cryptsof churches, or under the floors of palaces from meaner motives, and tosave them from a fate less ignominious. But presently, with a sigh, heshook his head. 

"No, James, it won't do at all. It has been tried over and over again, ever since the world has been agoing and pictures amaking. It was triedin Florence and in Venice, but the pictures were always carried away inthe end. You see, the difficulty is that although Treffinger told youwhat was not to be done with the picture, he did not say definitely whatwas to be done with it. Do you think Lady Treffinger really understandsthat he did not want it to be sold?"

"Well, sir, it was like this, sir, " said James, resuming his seat on thetrunk and again resting the picture against his knee. "My memory is asclear as glass about it. After Sir 'Ugh got up from 'is first stroke, 'etook a fresh start at the _Marriage_. Before that 'e 'ad been workingat it only at night for a while back; the _Legend_ was the big picturethen, an' was under the north light w'ere 'e worked of a morning. Butone day 'e bid me take the _Legend_ down an' put the _Marriage_ in itsplace, an' 'e says, dashin' on 'is jacket, 'Jymes, this is a start forthe finish, this time. '

"From that on 'e worked at the night picture in the mornin'--a thingcontrary to 'is custom. The _Marriage_ went wrong, and wrong--an' Sir'Ugh agettin' seedier an' seedier every day. 'E tried models an' models, an' smudged an' pynted out on account of 'er face goin' wrong in theshadow. Sometimes 'e layed it on the colors, an' swore at me an' thingsin general. He got that discouraged about 'imself that on 'is low days'e used to say to me: 'Jymes, remember one thing; if anythink 'appens tome, the _Marriage_ is not to go out of 'ere unfinished. It's worth thelot of 'em, my boy, an' it's not agoing to go shabby for lack of pains. ''E said things to that effect repeated. 

"He was workin' at the picture the last day, before 'e went to 'is club. 'E kept the carriage waitin' near an hour while 'e put on a stroke an'then drawed back for to look at it, an' then put on another, carefullike. After 'e 'ad 'is gloves on, 'e come back an' took away the brushesI was startin' to clean, an' put in another touch or two. 'It's acomin', Jymes, ' 'e says, 'by gad if it ayn't. ' An' with that 'e goes out. It wascruel sudden, w'at come after. 

"That night I was lookin' to 'is clothes at the 'ouse when they brought'im 'ome. He was conscious, but w'en I ran downstairs for to 'elp lift'im up, I knowed 'e was a finished man. After we got 'im into bed 'ekept lookin' restless at me and then at Lydy Elling and ajerkin' of 'is'and. Finally 'e quite raised it an' shot 'is thumb out toward the wall. 'He wants water; ring, Jymes, ' says Lydy Elling, placid. But I knowed 'ewas pointin' to the shop. 

"'Lydy Treffinger, ' says I, bold, 'he's pointin' to the studio. He meansabout the _Marriage_; 'e told me today as 'ow 'e never wanted it soldunfinished. Is that it, Sir 'Ugh?'

"He smiled an' nodded slight an' closed 'is eyes. 'Thank you, Jymes, 'says Lydy Elling, placid. Then 'e opened 'is eyes an' looked long and'ard at Lydy Elling. 

"'Of course I'll try to do as you'd wish about the picture, 'Ugh, ifthat's w'at's troublin' you, ' she says quiet. With that 'e closed 'iseyes and 'e never opened 'em. He died unconscious at four that mornin'. 

"You see, sir, Lydy Elling was always cruel 'ard on the _Marriage_. Fromthe first it went wrong, an' Sir 'Ugh was out of temper pretty constant. She came into the studio one day and looked at the picture an 'asked'im why 'e didn't throw it up an' quit aworriting 'imself. He answeredsharp, an' with that she said as 'ow she didn't see w'at there was tomake such a row about, no'ow. She spoke 'er mind about that picture, free; an' Sir 'Ugh swore 'ot an' let a 'andful of brushes fly at 'isstudy, an' Lydy Elling picked up 'er skirts careful an' chill, an'drifted out of the studio with 'er eyes calm and 'er chin 'igh. If therewas one thing Lydy Elling 'ad no comprehension of, it was the usefulnessof swearin'. So the _Marriage_ was a sore thing between 'em. She isuncommon calm, but uncommon bitter, is Lydy Elling. She's never comeanear the studio since that day she went out 'oldin' up of 'er skirts. W'en 'er friends goes over she excuses 'erself along o' the strain. Strain--Gawd!" James ground his wrath short in his teeth. 

"I'll tell you what I'll do, James, and it's our only hope. I'll seeLady Ellen tomorrow. The _Times_ says she returned today. You take thepicture back to its place, and I'll do what I can for it. If anything isdone to save it, it must be done through Lady Ellen Treffinger herself, that much is clear. I can't think that she fully understands thesituation. If she did, you know, she really couldn't have any motive--"He stopped suddenly. Somehow, in the dusky lamplight, her small, close-sealed face came ominously back to him. He rubbed his foreheadand knitted his brows thoughtfully. After a moment he shook his headand went on: "I am positive that nothing can be gained by highhandedmethods, James. Captain Gresham is one of the most popular men inLondon, and his friends would tear up Treffinger's bones if he wereannoyed by any scandal of our making--and this scheme you propose wouldinevitably result in scandal. Lady Ellen has, of course, every legalright to sell the picture. Treffinger made considerable inroads uponher estate, and, as she is about to marry a man without income, shedoubtless feels that she has a right to replenish her patrimony. "

He found James amenable, though doggedly skeptical. He went down intothe street, called a carriage, and saw James and his burden into it. Standing in the doorway, he watched the carriage roll away throughthe drizzling mist, weave in and out among the wet, black vehicles anddarting cab lights, until it was swallowed up in the glare and confusionof the Strand. "It is rather a fine touch of irony, " he reflected, "that he, who is so out of it, should be the one to really care. PoorTreffinger, " he murmured as, with a rather spiritless smile, he turnedback into his hotel. "Poor Treffinger; _sic transit gloria_. "

The next afternoon MacMaster kept his promise. When he arrived at LadyMary Percy's house he saw preparations for a function of some sort, buthe went resolutely up the steps, telling the footman that his businesswas urgent. Lady Ellen came down alone, excusing her sister. She wasdressed for receiving, and MacMaster had never seen one so beautiful. The color in her cheeks sent a softening glow over her small, delicatelycut features. 

MacMaster apologized for his intrusion and came unflinchingly to theobject of his call. He had come, he said, not only to offer her hiswarmest congratulations, but to express his regret that a great work ofart was to leave England. 

Lady Treffinger looked at him in wide-eyed astonishment. Surely, shesaid, she had been careful to select the best of the pictures for theX--- gallery, in accordance with Sir Hugh Treffinger's wishes. 

"And did he--pardon me, Lady Treffinger, but in mercy set my mind atrest--did he or did he not express any definite wish concerning this onepicture, which to me seems worth all the others, unfinished as it is?"

Lady Treffinger paled perceptibly, but it was not the pallor ofconfusion. When she spoke there was a sharp tremor in her smooth voice, the edge of a resentment that tore her like pain. "I think his man hassome such impression, but I believe it to be utterly unfounded. I cannotfind that he ever expressed any wish concerning the disposition of thepicture to any of his friends. Unfortunately, Sir Hugh was not alwaysdiscreet in his remarks to his servants. "

"Captain Gresham, Lady Ellingham, and Miss Ellingham, " announced aservant, appearing at the door. 

There was a murmur in the hall, and MacMaster greeted the smilingCaptain and his aunt as he bowed himself out. 

To all intents and purposes the _Marriage of Phaedra_ was alreadyentombed in a vague continent in the Pacific, somewhere on the otherside of the world. 

A Wagner Matinee

I received one morning a letter, written in pale ink on glassy, blue-lined notepaper, and bearing the postmark of a little Nebraskavillage. This communication, worn and rubbed, looking as though it hadbeen carried for some days in a coat pocket that was none too clean, wasfrom my Uncle Howard and informed me that his wife had been left a smalllegacy by a bachelor relative who had recently died, and that it wouldbe necessary for her to go to Boston to attend to the settling ofthe estate. He requested me to meet her at the station and render herwhatever services might be necessary. On examining the date indicatedas that of her arrival I found it no later than tomorrow. He hadcharacteristically delayed writing until, had I been away from home fora day, I must have missed the good woman altogether. 

The name of my Aunt Georgiana called up not alone her own figure, at once pathetic and grotesque, but opened before my feet a gulf ofrecollection so wide and deep that, as the letter dropped from myhand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions ofmy existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the familiarsurroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farm boymy aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my handscracked and sore from the corn husking. I felt the knuckles of my thumbtentatively, as though they were raw again. I sat again before herparlor organ, fumbling the scales with my stiff, red hands, while she, beside me, made canvas mittens for the huskers. 

The next morning, after preparing my landlady somewhat, I set out forthe station. When the train arrived I had some difficulty in finding myaunt. She was the last of the passengers to alight, and it was not untilI got her into the carriage that she seemed really to recognize me. Shehad come all the way in a day coach; her linen duster had become blackwith soot, and her black bonnet gray with dust, during the journey. Whenwe arrived at my boardinghouse the landlady put her to bed at once and Idid not see her again until the next morning. 

Whatever shock Mrs. Springer experienced at my aunt's appearance sheconsiderately concealed. As for myself, I saw my aunt's misshapen figurewith that feeling of awe and respect with which we behold explorers whohave left their ears and fingers north of Franz Josef Land, or theirhealth somewhere along the Upper Congo. My Aunt Georgiana had been amusic teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the lattersixties. One summer, while visiting in the little village among theGreen Mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, shehad kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all thevillage lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one ofthose extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-onesometimes inspires in an angular, spectacled woman of thirty. When shereturned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her, and the upshot ofthis inexplicable infatuation was that she eloped with him, eluding thereproaches of her family and the criticisms of her friends by going withhim to the Nebraska frontier. Carpenter, who, of course, had no money, had taken a homestead in Red Willow County, fifty miles from therailroad. There they had measured off their quarter section themselvesby driving across the prairie in a wagon, to the wheel of which they hadtied a red cotton handkerchief, and counting off its revolutions. Theybuilt a dugout in the red hillside, one of those cave dwellings whoseinmates so often reverted to primitive conditions. Their water they gotfrom the lagoons where the buffalo drank, and their slender stock ofprovisions was always at the mercy of bands of roving Indians. Forthirty years my aunt had not been further than fifty miles from thehomestead. 

But Mrs. Springer knew nothing of all this, and must have beenconsiderably shocked at what was left of my kinswoman. Beneath thesoiled linen duster which, on her arrival, was the most conspicuousfeature of her costume, she wore a black stuff dress, whoseornamentation showed that she had surrendered herself unquestioninglyinto the hands of a country dressmaker. My poor aunt's figure, however, would have presented astonishing difficulties to any dressmaker. Originally stooped, her shoulders were now almost bent together over hersunken chest. She wore no stays, and her gown, which trailed unevenlybehind, rose in a sort of peak over her abdomen. She wore ill-fittingfalse teeth, and her skin was as yellow as a Mongolian's from constantexposure to a pitiless wind and to the alkaline water which hardens themost transparent cuticle into a sort of flexible leather. 

I owed to this woman most of the good that ever came my way in myboyhood, and had a reverential affection for her. During the yearswhen I was riding herd for my uncle, my aunt, after cooking the threemeals--the first of which was ready at six o'clock in the morning-andputting the six children to bed, would often stand until midnight ather ironing board, with me at the kitchen table beside her, hearing merecite Latin declensions and conjugations, gently shaking me when mydrowsy head sank down over a page of irregular verbs. It was to her, ather ironing or mending, that I read my first Shakespeare', and her oldtextbook on mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. She taught me my scales and exercises, too--on the little parlor organ, which her husband had bought her after fifteen years, during which shehad not so much as seen any instrument, but an accordion that belongedto one of the Norwegian farmhands. She would sit beside me by the hour, darning and counting while I struggled with the "Joyous Farmer, " but sheseldom talked to me about music, and I understood why. She was a piouswoman; she had the consolations of religion and, to her at least, hermartyrdom was not wholly sordid. Once when I had been doggedly beatingout some easy passages from an old score of _Euryanthe_ I had foundamong her music books, she came up to me and, putting her hands over myeyes, gently drew my head back upon her shoulder, saying tremulously, "Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh, dearboy, pray that whatever your sacrifice may be, it be not that. "

When my aunt appeared on the morning after her arrival she was still ina semi-somnambulant state. She seemed not to realize that she was in thecity where she had spent her youth, the place longed for hungrily halfa lifetime. She had been so wretchedly train-sick throughout the journeythat she had no recollection of anything but her discomfort, and, to allintents and purposes, there were but a few hours of nightmare betweenthe farm in Red Willow County and my study on Newbury Street. I hadplanned a little pleasure for her that afternoon, to repay her for someof the glorious moments she had given me when we used to milk togetherin the straw-thatched cowshed and she, because I was more than usuallytired, or because her husband had spoken sharply to me, would tell meof the splendid performance of the _Huguenots_ she had seen in Paris, in her youth. At two o'clock the Symphony Orchestra was to give a Wagnerprogram, and I intended to take my aunt; though, as I conversed with herI grew doubtful about her enjoyment of it. Indeed, for her own sake, I could only wish her taste for such things quite dead, and thelong struggle mercifully ended at last. I suggested our visiting theConservatory and the Common before lunch, but she seemed altogether tootimid to wish to venture out. She questioned me absently about variouschanges in the city, but she was chiefly concerned that she hadforgotten to leave instructions about feeding half-skimmed milk toa certain weakling calf, "old Maggie's calf, you know, Clark, " sheexplained, evidently having forgotten how long I had been away. She wasfurther troubled because she had neglected to tell her daughter aboutthe freshly opened kit of mackerel in the cellar, which would spoil ifit were not used directly. 

I asked her whether she had ever heard any of the Wagnerian operas andfound that she had not, though she was perfectly familiar with theirrespective situations, and had once possessed the piano score of _TheFlying Dutchman_. I began to think it would have been best to get herback to Red Willow County without waking her, and regretted havingsuggested the concert. 

From the time we entered the concert hall, however, she was a trifleless passive and inert, and for the first time seemed to perceive hersurroundings. I had felt some trepidation lest she might become awareof the absurdities of her attire, or might experience some painfulembarrassment at stepping suddenly into the world to which she had beendead for a quarter of a century. But, again, I found how superficiallyI had judged her. She sat looking about her with eyes as impersonal, almost as stony, as those with which the granite Rameses in amuseum watches the froth and fret that ebbs and flows about hispedestal-separated from it by the lonely stretch of centuries. I haveseen this same aloofness in old miners who drift into the Brown Hotel atDenver, their pockets full of bullion, their linen soiled, their haggardfaces unshaven; standing in the thronged corridors as solitary as thoughthey were still in a frozen camp on the Yukon, conscious that certainexperiences have isolated them from their fellows by a gulf nohaberdasher could bridge. 

We sat at the extreme left of the first balcony, facing the arch of ourown and the balcony above us, veritable hanging gardens, brilliant astulip beds. The matinee audience was made up chiefly of women. Onelost the contour of faces and figures--indeed, any effect of linewhatever-and there was only the color of bodices past counting, theshimmer of fabrics soft and firm, silky and sheer: red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, purple, ecru, rose, yellow, cream, and white, all thecolors that an impressionist finds in a sunlit landscape, with here andthere the dead shadow of a frock coat. My Aunt Georgiana regarded themas though they had been so many daubs of tube-paint on a palette. 

When the musicians came out and took their places, she gave a littlestir of anticipation and looked with quickening interest down over therail at that invariable grouping, perhaps the first wholly familiarthing that had greeted her eye since she had left old Maggie and herweakling calf. I could feel how all those details sank into her soul, for I had not forgotten how they had sunk into mine when I came freshfrom plowing forever and forever between green aisles of corn, where, asin a treadmill, one might walk from daybreak to dusk without perceivinga shadow of change. The clean profiles of the musicians, the gloss oftheir linen, the dull black of their coats, the beloved shapes of theinstruments, the patches of yellow light thrown by the green-shadedlamps on the smooth, varnished bellies of the cellos and the bass violsin the rear, the restless, wind-tossed forest of fiddle necks and bows-Irecalled how, in the first orchestra I had ever heard, those long bowstrokes seemed to draw the heart out of me, as a conjurer's stick reelsout yards of paper ribbon from a hat. 

The first number was the _Tannhauser_ overture. When the horns drew outthe first strain of the Pilgrim's chorus my Aunt Georgiana clutchedmy coat sleeve. Then it was I first realized that for her this broke asilence of thirty years; the inconceivable silence of the plains. Withthe battle between the two motives, with the frenzy of the Venusbergtheme and its ripping of strings, there came to me an overwhelming senseof the waste and wear we are so powerless to combat; and I saw again thetall, naked house on the prairie, black and grim as a wooden fortress;the black pond where I had learned to swim, its margin pitted withsun-dried cattle tracks; the rain-gullied clay banks about the nakedhouse, the four dwarf ash seedlings where the dishcloths were alwayshung to dry before the kitchen door. The world there was the flat worldof the ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak;to the west, a corral that reached to sunset; between, the conquests ofpeace, dearer bought than those of war. 

The overture closed; my aunt released my coat sleeve, but she saidnothing. She sat staring at the orchestra through a dullness of thirtyyears, through the films made little by little by each of the threehundred and sixty-five days in every one of them. What, I wondered, didshe get from it? She had been a good pianist in her day I knew, and hermusical education had been broader than that of most music teachers ofa quarter of a century ago. She had often told me of Mozart's operas andMeyerbeer's, and I could remember hearing her sing, years ago, certainmelodies of Verdi's. When I had fallen ill with a fever in her house sheused to sit by my cot in the evening--when the cool, night wind blewin through the faded mosquito netting tacked over the window, and I laywatching a certain bright star that burned red above the cornfield--andsing "Home to our mountains, O, let us return!" in a way fit to breakthe heart of a Vermont boy near dead of homesickness already. 

I watched her closely through the prelude to _Tristan and Isolde_, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings andwinds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bowsthat drove obliquely downward, like the pelting streaks of rain in asummer shower. Had this music any message for her? Had she enough leftto at all comprehend this power which had kindled the world since shehad left it? I was in a fever of curiosity, but Aunt Georgiana satsilent upon her peak in Darien. She preserved this utter immobilitythroughout the number from _The Flying Dutchman_, though her fingersworked mechanically upon her black dress, as though, of themselves, theywere recalling the piano score they had once played. Poor old hands!They had been stretched and twisted into mere tentacles to hold andlift and knead with; the palms unduly swollen, the fingers bent andknotted--on one of them a thin, worn band that had once been a weddingring. As I pressed and gently quieted one of those groping hands Iremembered with quivering eyelids their services for me in other days. 

Soon after the tenor began the "Prize Song, " I heard a quick drawnbreath and turned to my aunt. Her eyes were closed, but the tears wereglistening on her cheeks, and I think, in a moment more, they were inmy eyes as well. It never really died, then--the soul that can suffer soexcruciatingly and so interminably; it withers to the outward eye only;like that strange moss which can lie on a dusty shelf half a century andyet, if placed in water, grows green again. She wept so throughout thedevelopment and elaboration of the melody. 

During the intermission before the second half of the concert, Iquestioned my aunt and found that the "Prize Song" was not new to her. Some years before there had drifted to the farm in Red Willow County ayoung German, a tramp cowpuncher, who had sung the chorus at Bayreuth, when he was a boy, along with the other peasant boys and girls. Of aSunday morning he used to sit on his gingham-sheeted bed in the hands'bedroom which opened off the kitchen, cleaning the leather of his bootsand saddle, singing the "Prize Song, " while my aunt went about her workin the kitchen. She had hovered about him until she had prevailed uponhim to join the country church, though his sole fitness for this step, insofar as I could gather, lay in his boyish face and his possession ofthis divine melody. Shortly afterward he had gone to town on the Fourthof July, been drunk for several days, lost his money at a faro table, ridden a saddled Texan steer on a bet, and disappeared with a fracturedcollarbone. All this my aunt told me huskily, wanderingly, as though shewere talking in the weak lapses of illness. 

"Well, we have come to better things than the old _Trovatore_ at anyrate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with a well-meant effort at jocularity. 

Her lip quivered and she hastily put her handkerchief up to her mouth. From behind it she murmured, "And you have been hearing this eversince you left me, Clark?" Her question was the gentlest and saddest ofreproaches. 

The second half of the program consisted of four numbers from the_Ring_, and closed with Siegfried's funeral march. My aunt wept quietly, but almost continuously, as a shallow vessel overflows in a rainstorm. From time to time her dim eyes looked up at the lights which studded theceiling, burning softly under their dull glass globes; doubtless theywere stars in truth to her. I was still perplexed as to what measure ofmusical comprehension was left to her, she who had heard nothing butthe singing of gospel hymns at Methodist services in the square frameschoolhouse on Section Thirteen for so many years. I was wholly unableto gauge how much of it had been dissolved in soapsuds, or worked intobread, or milked into the bottom of a pail. 

The deluge of sound poured on and on; I never knew what she found in theshining current of it; I never knew how far it bore her, or past whathappy islands. From the trembling of her face I could well believe thatbefore the last numbers she had been carried out where the myriad gravesare, into the gray, nameless burying grounds of the sea; or into someworld of death vaster yet, where, from the beginning of the world, hopehas lain down with hope and dream with dream and, renouncing, slept. 

The concert was over; the people filed out of the hall chatteringand laughing, glad to relax and find the living level again, but mykinswoman made no effort to rise. The harpist slipped its green feltcover over his instrument; the flute players shook the water from theirmouthpieces; the men of the orchestra went out one by one, leaving thestage to the chairs and music stands, empty as a winter cornfield. 

I spoke to my aunt. She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly. "I don'twant to go, Clark, I don't want to go!"

I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert hall, laythe black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs; the tall, unpaintedhouse, with weather-curled boards; naked as a tower, the crook-backedash seedlings where the dishcloths hung to dry; the gaunt, moltingturkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen door. 

Paul's Case

_A Study in Temperament_

It was Paul's afternoon to appear before the faculty of the PittsburghHigh School to account for his various misdemeanors. He had beensuspended a week ago, and his father had called at the Principal'soffice and confessed his perplexity about his son. Paul entered thefaculty room suave and smiling. His clothes were a trifle outgrown, andthe tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn;but for all that there was something of the dandy about him, and hewore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a redcarnation in his buttonhole. This latter adornment the faculty somehowfelt was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boyunder the ban of suspension. 

Paul was tall for his age and very thin, with high, cramped shouldersand a narrow chest. His eyes were remarkable for a certain hystericalbrilliancy, and he continually used them in a conscious, theatrical sortof way, peculiarly offensive in a boy. The pupils were abnormally large, as though he were addicted to belladonna, but there was a glassy glitterabout them which that drug does not produce. 

When questioned by the Principal as to why he was there Paul stated, politely enough, that he wanted to come back to school. This was a lie, but Paul was quite accustomed to lying; found it, indeed, indispensablefor overcoming friction. His teachers were asked to state theirrespective charges against him, which they did with such a rancor andaggrievedness as evinced that this was not a usual case, Disorder andimpertinence were among the offenses named, yet each of his instructorsfelt that it was scarcely possible to put into words the real cause ofthe trouble, which lay in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of theboy's; in the contempt which they all knew he felt for them, and whichhe seemingly made not the least effort to conceal. Once, when he hadbeen making a synopsis of a paragraph at the blackboard, his Englishteacher had stepped to his side and attempted to guide his hand. Paulhad started back with a shudder and thrust his hands violently behindhim. The astonished woman could scarcely have been more hurt andembarrassed had he struck at her. The insult was so involuntary anddefinitely personal as to be unforgettable. In one way and another hehad made all his teachers, men and women alike, conscious of the samefeeling of physical aversion. In one class he habitually sat with hishand shading his eyes; in another he always looked out of the windowduring the recitation; in another he made a running commentary on thelecture, with humorous intention. 

His teachers felt this afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolizedby his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fellupon him without mercy, his English teacher leading the pack. He stoodthrough it smiling, his pale lips parted over his white teeth. (His lipswere continually twitching, and he had a habit of raising his eyebrowsthat was contemptuous and irritating to the last degree. ) Older boysthan Paul had broken down and shed tears under that baptism of fire, buthis set smile did not once desert him, and his only sign of discomfortwas the nervous trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons ofhis overcoat, and an occasional jerking of the other hand that held hishat. Paul was always smiling, always glancing about him, seeming to feelthat people might be watching him and trying to detect something. This conscious expression, since it was as far as possible from boyishmirthfulness, was usually attributed to insolence or "smartness. "

As the inquisition proceeded one of his instructors repeated animpertinent remark of the boy's, and the Principal asked him whether hethought that a courteous speech to have made a woman. Paul shrugged hisshoulders slightly and his eyebrows twitched. 

"I don't know, " he replied. "I didn't mean to be polite or impolite, either. I guess it's a sort of way I have of saying things regardless. "

The Principal, who was a sympathetic man, asked him whether he didn'tthink that a way it would be well to get rid of. Paul grinned and saidhe guessed so. When he was told that he could go he bowed gracefully andwent out. His bow was but a repetition of the scandalous red carnation. 

His teachers were in despair, and his drawing master voiced the feelingof them all when he declared there was something about the boy whichnone of them understood. He added: "I don't really believe that smile ofhis comes altogether from insolence; there's something sort of hauntedabout it. The boy is not strong, for one thing. I happen to know that hewas born in Colorado, only a few months before his mother died out thereof a long illness. There is something wrong about the fellow. "

The drawing master had come to realize that, in looking at Paul, onesaw only his white teeth and the forced animation of his eyes. One warmafternoon the boy had gone to sleep at his drawing board, and his masterhad noted with amazement what a white, blue-veined face it was; drawnand wrinkled like an old man's about the eyes, the lips twitching evenin his sleep, and stiff with a nervous tension that drew them back fromhis teeth. 

His teachers left the building dissatisfied and unhappy; humiliated tohave felt so vindictive toward a mere boy, to have uttered this feelingin cutting terms, and to have set each other on, as it were, in thegruesome game of intemperate reproach. Some of them remembered havingseen a miserable street cat set at bay by a ring of tormentors. 

As for Paul, he ran down the hill whistling the "Soldiers' Chorus" from_Faust_, looking wildly behind him now and then to see whether some ofhis teachers were not there to writhe under his lightheartedness. As itwas now late in the afternoon and Paul was on duty that evening as usherat Carnegie Hall, he decided that he would not go home to supper. Whenhe reached the concert hall the doors were not yet open and, as it waschilly outside, he decided to go up into the picture gallery--alwaysdeserted at this hour--where there were some of Raffelli's gay studiesof Paris streets and an airy blue Venetian scene or two that alwaysexhilarated him. He was delighted to find no one in the gallery but theold guard, who sat in one corner, a newspaper on his knee, a black patchover one eye and the other closed. Paul possessed himself of the peaceand walked confidently up and down, whistling under his breath. After awhile he sat down before a blue Rico and lost himself. When he bethoughthim to look at his watch, it was after seven o'clock, and he rose witha start and ran downstairs, making a face at Augustus, peering out fromthe cast room, and an evil gesture at the Venus de Milo as he passed heron the stairway. 

When Paul reached the ushers' dressing room half a dozen boys were therealready, and he began excitedly to tumble into his uniform. It was oneof the few that at all approached fitting, and Paul thought it verybecoming-though he knew that the tight, straight coat accentuated hisnarrow chest, about which he was exceedingly sensitive. He was alwaysconsiderably excited while he dressed, twanging all over to the tuningof the strings and the preliminary flourishes of the horns in the musicroom; but tonight he seemed quite beside himself, and he teased andplagued the boys until, telling him that he was crazy, they put him downon the floor and sat on him. 

Somewhat calmed by his suppression, Paul dashed out to the front ofthe house to seat the early comers. He was a model usher; gracious andsmiling he ran up and down the aisles; nothing was too much troublefor him; he carried messages and brought programs as though it were hisgreatest pleasure in life, and all the people in his section thoughthim a charming boy, feeling that he remembered and admired them. Asthe house filled, he grew more and more vivacious and animated, and thecolor came to his cheeks and lips. It was very much as though this werea great reception and Paul were the host. Just as the musicians came outto take their places, his English teacher arrived with checks for theseats which a prominent manufacturer had taken for the season. Shebetrayed some embarrassment when she handed Paul the tickets, and ahauteur which subsequently made her feel very foolish. Paul was startledfor a moment, and had the feeling of wanting to put her out; whatbusiness had she here among all these fine people and gay colors? Helooked her over and decided that she was not appropriately dressed andmust be a fool to sit downstairs in such togs. The tickets had probablybeen sent her out of kindness, he reflected as he put down a seat forher, and she had about as much right to sit there as he had. 

When the symphony began Paul sank into one of the rear seats with a longsigh of relief, and lost himself as he had done before the Rico. It wasnot that symphonies, as such, meant anything in particular to Paul, but the first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious andpotent spirit within him; something that struggled there like the geniein the bottle found by the Arab fisherman. He felt a sudden zest oflife; the lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed intounimaginable splendor. When the soprano soloist came on Paul forgot eventhe nastiness of his teacher's being there and gave himself up tothe peculiar stimulus such personages always had for him. The soloistchanced to be a German woman, by no means in her first youth, and themother of many children; but she wore an elaborate gown and a tiara, andabove all she had that indefinable air of achievement, that world-shineupon her, which, in Paul's eyes, made her a veritable queen of Romance. 

After a concert was over Paul was always irritable and wretched until hegot to sleep, and tonight he was even more than usually restless. He hadthe feeling of not being able to let down, of its being impossible togive up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that couldbe called living at all. During the last number he withdrew and, afterhastily changing his clothes in the dressing room, slipped out to theside door where the soprano's carriage stood. Here he began pacingrapidly up and down the walk, waiting to see her come out. 

Over yonder, the Schenley, in its vacant stretch, loomed big and squarethrough the fine rain, the windows of its twelve stories glowing likethose of a lighted cardboard house under a Christmas tree. All theactors and singers of the better class stayed there when they were inthe city, and a number of the big manufacturers of the place lived therein the winter. Paul had often hung about the hotel, watching the peoplego in and out, longing to enter and leave schoolmasters and dull carebehind him forever. 

At last the singer came out, accompanied by the conductor, whohelped her into her carriage and closed the door with a cordial _aufwiedersehen_ which set Paul to wondering whether she were not an oldsweetheart of his. Paul followed the carriage over to the hotel, walkingso rapidly as not to be far from the entrance when the singer alighted, and disappeared behind the swinging glass doors that were opened by aNegro in a tall hat and a long coat. In the moment that the door wasajar it seemed to Paul that he, too, entered. He seemed to feel himselfgo after her up the steps, into the warm, lighted building, into anexotic, tropical world of shiny, glistening surfaces and basking ease. He reflected upon the mysterious dishes that were brought into thedining room, the green bottles in buckets of ice, as he had seen them inthe supper party pictures of the _Sunday World_ supplement. A quickgust of wind brought the rain down with sudden vehemence, and Paul wasstartled to find that he was still outside in the slush of the graveldriveway; that his boots were letting in the water and his scantyovercoat was clinging wet about him; that the lights in front of theconcert hall were out and that the rain was driving in sheets betweenhim and the orange glow of the windows above him. There it was, whathe wanted--tangibly before him, like the fairy world of a Christmaspantomime--but mocking spirits stood guard at the doors, and, as therain beat in his face, Paul wondered whether he were destined always toshiver in the black night outside, looking up at it. 

He turned and walked reluctantly toward the car tracks. The end had tocome sometime; his father in his nightclothes at the top of the stairs, explanations that did not explain, hastily improvised fictions thatwere forever tripping him up, his upstairs room and its horrible yellowwallpaper, the creaking bureau with the greasy plush collarbox, andover his painted wooden bed the pictures of George Washington and JohnCalvin, and the framed motto, "Feed my Lambs, " which had been worked inred worsted by his mother. 

Half an hour later Paul alighted from his car and went slowly downone of the side streets off the main thoroughfare. It was a highlyrespectable street, where all the houses were exactly alike, andwhere businessmen of moderate means begot and reared large families ofchildren, all of whom went to Sabbath school and learned the shortercatechism, and were interested in arithmetic; all of whom were asexactly alike as their homes, and of a piece with the monotony in whichthey lived. Paul never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder ofloathing. His home was next to the house of the Cumberland minister. Heapproached it tonight with the nerveless sense Of defeat, the hopelessfeeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he hadalways had when he came home. The moment he turned into Cordelia Streethe felt the waters close above his head. After each of these orgiesof living he experienced all the physical depression which follows adebauch; the loathing of respectable beds, of common food, of a housepenetrated by kitchen odors; a shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colorless mass of everyday existence; a morbid desire for cool thingsand soft lights and fresh flowers. 

The nearer he approached the house, the more absolutely unequal Paulfelt to the sight of it all: his ugly sleeping chamber; the coldbathroom with the grimy zinc tub, the cracked mirror, the drippingspiggots; his father, at the top of the stairs, his hairy legs stickingout from his nightshirt, his feet thrust into carpet slippers. He wasso much later than usual that there would certainly be inquiries andreproaches. Paul stopped short before the door. He felt that he couldnot be accosted by his father tonight; that he could not toss again onthat miserable bed. He would not go in. He would tell his father that hehad no carfare and it was raining so hard he had gone home with one ofthe boys and stayed all night. 

Meanwhile, he was wet and cold. He went around to the back of thehouse and tried one of the basement windows, found it open, raised itcautiously, and scrambled down the cellar wall to the floor. There hestood, holding his breath, terrified by the noise he had made, but thefloor above him was silent, and there was no creak on the stairs. Hefound a soapbox, and carried it over to the soft ring of light thatstreamed from the furnace door, and sat down. He was horribly afraid ofrats, so he did not try to sleep, but sat looking distrustfully at thedark, still terrified lest he might have awakened his father. In suchreactions, after one of the experiences which made days and nights outof the dreary blanks of the calendar, when his senses were deadened, Paul's head was always singularly clear. Suppose his father had heardhim getting in at the window and had come down and shot him for aburglar? Then, again, suppose his father had come down, pistol in hand, and he had cried out in time to save himself, and his father had beenhorrified to think how nearly he had killed him? Then, again, supposea day should come when his father would remember that night, andwish there had been no warning cry to stay his hand? With this lastsupposition Paul entertained himself until daybreak. 

The following Sunday was fine; the sodden November chill was brokenby the last flash of autumnal summer. In the morning Paul had to go tochurch and Sabbath school, as always. On seasonable Sunday afternoonsthe burghers of Cordelia Street always sat out on their front stoops andtalked to their neighbors on the next stoop, or called to those acrossthe street in neighborly fashion. The men usually sat on gay cushionsplaced upon the steps that led down to the sidewalk, while the women, intheir Sunday "waists, " sat in rockers on the cramped porches, pretendingto be greatly at their ease. The children played in the streets; therewere so many of them that the place resembled the recreation grounds ofa kindergarten. The men on the steps--all in their shirt sleeves, their vests unbuttoned--sat with their legs well apart, their stomachscomfortably protruding, and talked of the prices of things, or toldanecdotes of the sagacity of their various chiefs and overlords. Theyoccasionally looked over the multitude of squabbling children, listenedaffectionately to their high-pitched, nasal voices, smiling to see theirown proclivities reproduced in their offspring, and interspersed theirlegends of the iron kings with remarks about their sons' progress atschool, their grades in arithmetic, and the amounts they had saved intheir toy banks. 

On this last Sunday of November Paul sat all the afternoon on the loweststep of his stoop, staring into the street, while his sisters, in theirrockers, were talking to the minister's daughters next door about howmany shirtwaists they had made in the last week, and bow many wafflessomeone had eaten at the last church supper. When the weather was warm, and his father was in a particularly jovial frame of mind, the girlsmade lemonade, which was always brought out in a red-glass pitcher, ornamented with forget-me-nots in blue enamel. This the girls thoughtvery fine, and the neighbors always joked about the suspicious color ofthe pitcher. 

Today Paul's father sat on the top step, talking to a young man whoshifted a restless baby from knee to knee. He happened to be the youngman who was daily held up to Paul as a model, and after whom it was hisfather's dearest hope that he would pattern. This young man was of aruddy complexion, with a compressed, red mouth, and faded, nearsightedeyes, over which he wore thick spectacles, with gold bows that curvedabout his ears. He was clerk to one of the magnates of a great steelcorporation, and was looked upon in Cordelia Street as a young man witha future. There was a story that, some five years ago--he was now barelytwenty-six--he had been a trifle dissipated, but in order to curb hisappetites and save the loss of time and strength that a sowing ofwild oats might have entailed, he had taken his chief's advice, oftreiterated to his employees, and at twenty-one had married the firstwoman whom he could persuade to share his fortunes. She happened tobe an angular schoolmistress, much older than he, who also wore thickglasses, and who had now borne him four children, all nearsighted, likeherself. 

The young man was relating how his chief, now cruising in theMediterranean, kept in touch with all the details of the business, arranging his office hours on his yacht just as though he were at home, and "knocking off work enough to keep two stenographers busy. " Hisfather told, in turn, the plan his corporation was considering, ofputting in an electric railway plant in Cairo. Paul snapped his teeth;he had an awful apprehension that they might spoil it all before he gotthere. Yet he rather liked to hear these legends of the iron kings thatwere told and retold on Sundays and holidays; these stories of palacesin Venice, yachts on the Mediterranean, and high play at Monte Carloappealed to his fancy, and he was interested in the triumphs of thesecash boys who had become famous, though he had no mind for the cash-boystage. 

After supper was over and he had helped to dry the dishes, Paulnervously asked his father whether he could go to George's to get somehelp in his geometry, and still more nervously asked for carfare. Thislatter request he had to repeat, as his father, on principle, did notlike to hear requests for money, whether much or little. He asked Paulwhether he could not go to some boy who lived nearer, and told him thathe ought not to leave his schoolwork until Sunday; but he gave him thedime. He was not a poor man, but he had a worthy ambition to come upin the world. His only reason for allowing Paul to usher was that hethought a boy ought to be earning a little. 

Paul bounded upstairs, scrubbed the greasy odor of the dishwater fromhis hands with the ill-smelling soap he hated, and then shook over hisfingers a few drops of violet water from the bottle he kept hidden inhis drawer. He left the house with his geometry conspicuously under hisarm, and the moment he got out of Cordelia Street and boarded a downtowncar, he shook off the lethargy of two deadening days and began to liveagain. 

The leading juvenile of the permanent stock company which played at oneof the downtown theaters was an acquaintance of Paul's, and the boyhad been invited to drop in at the Sunday-night rehearsals wheneverhe could. For more than a year Paul had spent every available momentloitering about Charley Edwards's dressing room. He had won a placeamong Edwards's following not only because the young actor, who couldnot afford to employ a dresser, often found him useful, but because herecognized in Paul something akin to what churchmen term "vocation. "

It was at the theater and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; therest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul's fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love. The moment heinhaled the gassy, painty, dusty odor behind the scenes, he breathedlike a prisoner set free, and felt within him the possibility of doingor saying splendid, brilliant, poetic things. The moment the crackedorchestra beat out the overture from _Martha_, or jerked at the serenadefrom _Rigoletto_, all stupid and ugly things slid from him, and hissenses were deliciously, yet delicately fired. 

Perhaps it was because, in Paul's world, the natural nearly always worethe guise of ugliness, that a certain element of artificiality seemed tohim necessary in beauty. Perhaps it was because his experience oflife elsewhere was so full of Sabbath-school picnics, petty economies, wholesome advice as to how to succeed in life, and the inescapable odorsof cooking, that he found this existence so alluring, these smartly cladmen and women so attractive, that he was so moved by these starry appleorchards that bloomed perennially under the limelight. 

It would be difficult to put it strongly enough how convincinglythe stage entrance of that theater was for Paul the actual portal ofRomance. Certainly none of the company ever suspected it, least of allCharley Edwards. It was very like the old stories that used to floatabout London of fabulously rich Jews, who had subterranean halls there, with palms, and fountains, and soft lamps and richly appareled womenwho never saw the disenchanting light of London day. So, in the midst ofthat smoke-palled city, enamored of figures and grimy toil, Paul hadhis secret temple, his wishing carpet, his bit of blue-and-whiteMediterranean shore bathed in perpetual sunshine. 

Several of Paul's teachers had a theory that his imagination had beenperverted by garish fiction, but the truth was that he scarcely everread at all. The books at home were not such as would either tempt orcorrupt a youthful mind, and as for reading the novels that some of hisfriends urged upon him--well, he got what he wanted much more quicklyfrom music; any sort of music, from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made hisimagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and picturesenough of his own. It was equally true that he was not stagestruck-not, at any rate, in the usual acceptation of that expression. He had nodesire to become an actor, any more than he had to become a musician. Hefelt no necessity to do any of these things; what he wanted was to see, to be in the atmosphere, float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after blue league, away from everything. 

After a night behind the scenes Paul found the schoolroom more than everrepulsive; the bare floors and naked walls; the prosy men who never worefrock coats, or violets in their buttonholes; the women with their dullgowns, shrill voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions thatgovern the dative. He could not bear to have the other pupils think, fora moment, that he took these people seriously; he must convey to themthat he considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a jest, anyway. He had autographed pictures of all the members of the stockcompany which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incrediblestories of his familiarity with these people, of his acquaintance withthe soloists who came to Carnegie Hall, his suppers with them and theflowers he sent them. When these stories lost their effect, and hisaudience grew listless, he became desperate and would bid all the boysgood-by, announcing that he was going to travel for a while; going toNaples, to Venice, to Egypt. Then, next Monday, he would slip back, conscious and nervously smiling; his sister was ill, and he should haveto defer his voyage until spring. 

Matters went steadily worse with Paul at school. In the itch to let hisinstructors know how heartily he despised them and their homilies, andhow thoroughly he was appreciated elsewhere, he mentioned once or twicethat he had no time to fool with theorems; adding--with a twitch ofthe eyebrows and a touch of that nervous bravado which so perplexedthem--that he was helping the people down at the stock company; theywere old friends of his. 

The upshot of the matter was that the Principal went to Paul's father, and Paul was taken out of school and put to work. The manager atCarnegie Hall was told to get another usher in his stead; the doorkeeperat the theater was warned not to admit him to the house; and CharleyEdwards remorsefully promised the boy's father not to see him again. 

The members of the stock company were vastly amused when some of Paul'sstories reached them--especially the women. They were hardworking women, most of them supporting indigent husbands or brothers, and they laughedrather bitterly at having stirred the boy to such fervid and floridinventions. They agreed with the faculty and with his father that Paul'swas a bad case. 

The eastbound train was plowing through a January snowstorm; the dulldawn was beginning to show gray when the engine whistled a mile out ofNewark. Paul started up from the seat where he had lain curled in uneasyslumber, rubbed the breath-misted window glass with his hand, and peeredout. The snow was whirling in curling eddies above the white bottomlands, and the drifts lay already deep in the fields and along thefences, while here and there the long dead grass and dried weed stalksprotruded black above it. Lights shone from the scattered houses, and agang of laborers who stood beside the track waved their lanterns. 

Paul had slept very little, and he felt grimy and uncomfortable. Hehad made the all-night journey in a day coach, partly because he wasashamed, dressed as he was, to go into a Pullman, and partly because hewas afraid of being seen there by some Pittsburgh businessman, who mighthave noticed him in Denny & Carson's office. When the whistle awoke him, he clutched quickly at his breast pocket, glancing about him with anuncertain smile. But the little, clay-bespattered Italians were stillsleeping, the slatternly women across the aisle were in open-mouthedoblivion, and even the crumby, crying babies were for the nonce stilled. Paul settled back to struggle with his impatience as best he could. 

When he arrived at the Jersey City station he hurried through hisbreakfast, manifestly ill at ease and keeping a sharp eye about him. After he reached the Twenty-third Street station, he consulted a cabmanand had himself driven to a men's-furnishings establishment that wasjust opening for the day. He spent upward of two hours there, buyingwith endless reconsidering and great care. His new street suit he puton in the fitting room; the frock coat and dress clothes he had bundledinto the cab with his linen. Then he drove to a hatter's and a shoehouse. His next errand was at Tiffany's, where he selected his silverand a new scarf pin. He would not wait to have his silver marked, he said. Lastly, he stopped at a trunk shop on Broadway and had hispurchases packed into various traveling bags. 

It was a little after one o'clock when he drove up to the Waldorf, andafter settling with the cabman, went into the office. He registered fromWashington; said his mother and father had been abroad, and that hehad come down to await the arrival of their steamer. He told his storyplausibly and had no trouble, since he volunteered to pay for them inadvance, in engaging his rooms; a sleeping room, sitting room, and bath. 

Not once, but a hundred times, Paul had planned this entry into NewYork. He had gone over every detail of it with Charley Edwards, and inhis scrapbook at home there were pages of description about New Yorkhotels, cut from the Sunday papers. When he was shown to his sittingroom on the eighth floor he saw at a glance that everything was as itshould be; there was but one detail in his mental picture that theplace did not realize, so he rang for the bellboy and sent him down forflowers. He moved about nervously until the boy returned, puttingaway his new linen and fingering it delightedly as he did so. When theflowers came he put them hastily into water, and then tumbled into a hotbath. Presently he came out of his white bathroom, resplendent in hisnew silk underwear, and playing with the tassels of his red robe. Thesnow was whirling so fiercely outside his windows that he could scarcelysee across the street, but within the air was deliciously soft andfragrant. He put the violets and jonquils on the taboret beside thecouch, and threw himself down, with a long sigh, covering himself witha Roman blanket. He was thoroughly tired; he had been in such haste, he had stood up to such a strain, covered so much ground in the lasttwenty-four hours, that he wanted to think how it had all come about. Lulled by the sound of the wind, the warm air, and the cool fragrance ofthe flowers, he sank into deep, drowsy retrospection. 

It had been wonderfully simple; when they had shut him out of thetheater and concert hall, when they had taken away his bone, thewhole thing was virtually determined. The rest was a mere matter ofopportunity. The only thing that at all surprised him was his owncourage-for he realized well enough that he had always been tormented byfear, a sort of apprehensive dread that, of late years, as the meshes ofthe lies he had told closed about him, had been pulling the muscles ofhis body tighter and tighter. Until now he could not remember the timewhen he had not been dreading something. Even when he was a little boyit was always there--behind him, or before, or on either side. There hadalways been the shadowed corner, the dark place into which he dared notlook, but from which something seemed always to be watching him--andPaul had done things that were not pretty to watch, he knew. 

But now he had a curious sense of relief, as though he had at lastthrown down the gauntlet to the thing in the corner. 

Yet it was but a day since he had been sulking in the traces; butyesterday afternoon that he had been sent to the bank with Denny &Carson's deposit, as usual--but this time he was instructed to leave thebook to be balanced. There was above two thousand dollars in checks, andnearly a thousand in the bank notes which he had taken from the bookand quietly transferred to his pocket. At the bank he had made out anew deposit slip. His nerves had been steady enough to permit of hisreturning to the office, where he had finished his work and asked fora full day's holiday tomorrow, Saturday, giving a perfectly reasonablepretext. The bankbook, he knew, would not be returned before Monday orTuesday, and his father would be out of town for the next week. Fromthe time he slipped the bank notes into his pocket until he boarded thenight train for New York, he had not known a moment's hesitation. It wasnot the first time Paul had steered through treacherous waters. 

How astonishingly easy it had all been; here he was, the thing done;and this time there would be no awakening, no figure at the top of thestairs. He watched the snowflakes whirling by his window until he fellasleep. 

When he awoke, it was three o'clock in the afternoon. He bounded up witha start; half of one of his precious days gone already! He spent morethan an hour in dressing, watching every stage of his toilet carefullyin the mirror. Everything was quite perfect; he was exactly the kind ofboy he had always wanted to be. 

When he went downstairs Paul took a carriage and drove up Fifth Avenuetoward the Park. The snow had somewhat abated; carriages and tradesmen'swagons were hurrying soundlessly to and fro in the winter twilight; boysin woolen mufflers were shoveling off the doorsteps; the avenue stagesmade fine spots of color against the white street. Here and there onthe corners were stands, with whole flower gardens blooming under glasscases, against the sides of which the snowflakes stuck and melted;violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley--somehow vastly morelovely and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow. The Park itself was a wonderful stage winterpiece. 

When he returned, the pause of the twilight had ceased and the tune ofthe streets had changed. The snow was falling faster, lights streamedfrom the hotels that reared their dozen stories fearlessly up intothe storm, defying the raging Atlantic winds. A long, black stream ofcarriages poured down the avenue, intersected here and there by otherstreams, tending horizontally. There were a score of cabs about theentrance of his hotel, and his driver had to wait. Boys in livery wererunning in and out of the awning stretched across the sidewalk, up anddown the red velvet carpet laid from the door to the street. Above, about, within it all was the rumble and roar, the hurry and toss ofthousands of human beings as hot for pleasure as himself, and on everyside of him towered the glaring affirmation of the omnipotence ofwealth. 

The boy set his teeth and drew his shoulders together in a spasm ofrealization; the plot of all dramas, the text of all romances, the nerve-stuff of all sensations was whirling about him like thesnowflakes. He burnt like a faggot in a tempest. 

When Paul went down to dinner the music of the orchestra came floatingup the elevator shaft to greet him. His head whirled as he stepped intothe thronged corridor, and he sank back into one of the chairs againstthe wall to get his breath. The lights, the chatter, the perfumes, thebewildering medley of color--he had, for a moment, the feeling ofnot being able to stand it. But only for a moment; these were his ownpeople, he told himself. He went slowly about the corridors, throughthe writing rooms, smoking rooms, reception rooms, as though he wereexploring the chambers of an enchanted palace, built and peopled for himalone. 

When he reached the dining room he sat down at a table near a window. The flowers, the white linen, the many-colored wineglasses, the gaytoilettes of the women, the low popping of corks, the undulatingrepetitions of the _Blue Danube_ from the orchestra, all flooded Paul'sdream with bewildering radiance. When the roseate tinge of his champagnewas added--that cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and foamedin his glass--Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world atall. This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; thiswas what all the struggle was about. He doubted the reality of hispast. Had he ever known a place called Cordelia Street, a place wherefagged-looking businessmen got on the early car; mere rivets in amachine they seemed to Paul, --sickening men, with combings of children'shair always hanging to their coats, and the smell of cooking in theirclothes. Cordelia Street--Ah, that belonged to another time and country;had he not always been thus, had he not sat here night after night, from as far back as he could remember, looking pensively over just suchshimmering textures and slowly twirling the stem of a glass like thisone between his thumb and middle finger? He rather thought he had. 

He was not in the least abashed or lonely. He had no especial desire tomeet or to know any of these people; all he demanded was the right tolook on and conjecture, to watch the pageant. The mere stage propertieswere all he contended for. Nor was he lonely later in the evening, inhis lodge at the Metropolitan. He was now entirely rid of his nervousmisgivings, of his forced aggressiveness, of the imperative desireto show himself different from his surroundings. He felt now that hissurroundings explained him. Nobody questioned the purple; he had only towear it passively. He had only to glance down at his attire to reassurehimself that here it would be impossible for anyone to humiliate him. 

He found it hard to leave his beautiful sitting room to go to bed thatnight, and sat long watching the raging storm from his turret window. When he went to sleep it was with the lights turned on in his bedroom;partly because of his old timidity, and partly so that, if he shouldwake in the night, there would be no wretched moment of doubt, nohorrible suspicion of yellow wallpaper, or of Washington and Calvinabove his bed. 

Sunday morning the city was practically snowbound. Paul breakfastedlate, and in the afternoon he fell in with a wild San Francisco boy, a freshman at Yale, who said he had run down for a "little flyer" overSunday. The young man offered to show Paul the night side of the town, and the two boys went out together after dinner, not returning to thehotel until seven o'clock the next morning. They had started out in theconfiding warmth of a champagne friendship, but their parting in theelevator was singularly cool. The freshman pulled himself together tomake his train, and Paul went to bed. He awoke at two o'clock in theafternoon, very thirsty and dizzy, and rang for icewater, coffee, andthe Pittsburgh papers. 

On the part of the hotel management, Paul excited no suspicion. Therewas this to be said for him, that he wore his spoils with dignity and inno way made himself conspicuous. Even under the glow of his wine he wasnever boisterous, though he found the stuff like a magician's wand forwonder-building. His chief greediness lay in his ears and eyes, and hisexcesses were not offensive ones. His dearest pleasures were thegray winter twilights in his sitting room; his quiet enjoyment of hisflowers, his clothes, his wide divan, his cigarette, and his sense ofpower. He could not remember a time when he had felt so at peace withhimself. The mere release from the necessity of petty lying, lying everyday and every day, restored his self-respect. He had never lied forpleasure, even at school; but to be noticed and admired, to assert hisdifference from other Cordelia Street boys; and he felt a good dealmore manly, more honest, even, now that he had no need for boastfulpretensions, now that he could, as his actor friends used to say, "dressthe part. " It was characteristic that remorse did not occur to him. Hisgolden days went by without a shadow, and he made each as perfect as hecould. 

On the eighth day after his arrival in New York he found the wholeaffair exploited in the Pittsburgh papers, exploited with a wealth ofdetail which indicated that local news of a sensational nature was at alow ebb. The firm of Denny & Carson announced that the boy's father hadrefunded the full amount of the theft and that they had no intention ofprosecuting. The Cumberland minister had been interviewed, and expressedhis hope of yet reclaiming the motherless lad, and his Sabbath-schoolteacher declared that she would spare no effort to that end. The rumorhad reached Pittsburgh that the boy had been seen in a New York hotel, and his father had gone East to find him and bring him home. 

Paul had just come in to dress for dinner; he sank into a chair, weakto the knees, and clasped his head in his hands. It was to be worse thanjail, even; the tepid waters of Cordelia Street were to close over himfinally and forever. The gray monotony stretched before him inhopeless, unrelieved years; Sabbath school, Young People's Meeting, theyellow-papered room, the damp dishtowels; it all rushed back upon himwith a sickening vividness. He had the old feeling that the orchestrahad suddenly stopped, the sinking sensation that the play was over. Thesweat broke out on his face, and he sprang to his feet, looked about himwith his white, conscious smile, and winked at himself in the mirror, With something of the old childish belief in miracles with which hehad so often gone to class, all his lessons unlearned, Paul dressed anddashed whistling down the corridor to the elevator. 

He had no sooner entered the dining room and caught the measure of themusic than his remembrance was lightened by his old elastic power ofclaiming the moment, mounting with it, and finding it all-sufficient. The glare and glitter about him, the mere scenic accessories had again, and for the last time, their old potency. He would show himself that hewas game, he would finish the thing splendidly. He doubted, more thanever, the existence of Cordelia Street, and for the first time he drankhis wine recklessly. Was he not, after all, one of those fortunatebeings born to the purple, was he not still himself and in his ownplace? He drummed a nervous accompaniment to the Pagliacci music andlooked about him, telling himself over and over that it had paid. 

He reflected drowsily, to the swell of the music and the chill sweetnessof his wine, that he might have done it more wisely. He might havecaught an outbound steamer and been well out of their clutches beforenow. But the other side of the world had seemed too far away and toouncertain then; he could not have waited for it; his need had beentoo sharp. If he had to choose over again, he would do the same thingtomorrow. He looked affectionately about the dining room, now gildedwith a soft mist. Ah, it had paid indeed!

Paul was awakened next morning by a painful throbbing in his head andfeet. He had thrown himself across the bed without undressing, and hadslept with his shoes on. His limbs and hands were lead heavy, and histongue and throat were parched and burnt. There came upon him one ofthose fateful attacks of clearheadedness that never occurred except whenhe was physically exhausted and his nerves hung loose. He lay still, closed his eyes, and let the tide of things wash over him. 

His father was in New York; "stopping at some joint or other, " he toldhimself. The memory of successive summers on the front stoop fell uponhim like a weight of black water. He had not a hundred dollars left; andhe knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall thatstood between all he loathed and all he wanted. The thing was windingitself up; he had thought of that on his first glorious day in New York, and had even provided a way to snap the thread. It lay on his dressingtable now; he had got it out last night when he came blindly up fromdinner, but the shiny metal hurt his eyes, and he disliked the looks ofit. 

He rose and moved about with a painful effort, succumbing now and againto attacks of nausea. It was the old depression exaggerated; all theworld had become Cordelia Street. Yet somehow he was not afraid ofanything, was absolutely calm; perhaps because he had looked into thedark corner at last and knew. It was bad enough, what he saw there, butsomehow not so bad as his long fear of it had been. He saw everythingclearly now. He had a feeling that he had made the best of it, that hehad lived the sort of life he was meant to live, and for half an hour hesat staring at the revolver. But he told himself that was not the way, so he went downstairs and took a cab to the ferry. 

When Paul arrived in Newark he got off the train and took another cab, directing the driver to follow the Pennsylvania tracks out of the town. The snow lay heavy on the roadways and had drifted deep in the openfields. Only here and there the dead grass or dried weed stalksprojected, singularly black, above it. Once well into the country, Pauldismissed the carriage and walked, floundering along the tracks, hismind a medley of irrelevant things. He seemed to hold in his brain anactual picture of everything he had seen that morning. He rememberedevery feature of both his drivers, of the toothless old woman from whomhe had bought the red flowers in his coat, the agent from whom he hadgot his ticket, and all of his fellow passengers on the ferry. His mind, unable to cope with vital matters near at hand, worked feverishly anddeftly at sorting and grouping these images. They made for him a partof the ugliness of the world, of the ache in his head, and the bitterburning on his tongue. He stooped and put a handful of snow into hismouth as he walked, but that, too, seemed hot. When he reached a littlehillside, where the tracks ran through a cut some twenty feet below him, he stopped and sat down. 

The carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold, he noticed, their red glory all over. It occurred to him that all the flowers he hadseen in the glass cases that first night must have gone the same way, long before this. It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite oftheir brave mockery at the winter outside the glass; and it was a losinggame in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by whichthe world is run. Paul took one of the blossoms carefully from his coatand scooped a little hole in the snow, where he covered it up. Then hedozed awhile, from his weak condition, seemingly insensible to the cold. 

The sound of an approaching train awoke him, and he started to his feet, remembering only his resolution, and afraid lest he should be too late. He stood watching the approaching locomotive, his teeth chattering, his lips drawn away from them in a frightened smile; once or twice heglanced nervously sidewise, as though he were being watched. Whenthe right moment came, he jumped. As he fell, the folly of his hasteoccurred to him with merciless clearness, the vastness of what he hadleft undone. There flashed through his brain, clearer than ever before, the blue of Adriatic water, the yellow of Algerian sands. 

He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrownswiftly through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while hislimbs were gently relaxed. Then, because the picture-making mechanismwas crushed, the disturbing visions flashed into black, and Paul droppedback into the immense design of things.