A Collection of

Stories, Reviews and Essays

by

Willa Cather

CONTENTS

 PART I: STORIES

 Peter On the Divide Eric Hermannson's Soul The Sentimentality of William Tavener The Namesake The Enchanted Bluff The Joy of Nelly Deane The Bohemian Girl Consequences The Bookkeeper's Wife Ardessa Her Boss

 PART II: REVIEWS AND ESSAYS

 Mark Twain William Dean Howells Edgar Allan Poe Walt Whitman Henry James Harold Frederic Kate Chopin Stephen Crane Frank Norris When I Knew Stephen Crane On the Art of Fiction

PART I

STORIES

_Peter_

"No, Antone, I have told thee many times, no, thou shalt not sell ituntil I am gone. "

"But I need money; what good is that old fiddle to thee? The verycrows laugh at thee when thou art trying to play. Thy hand tremblesso thou canst scarce hold the bow. Thou shalt go with me to the Blueto cut wood to-morrow. See to it thou art up early. "

"What, on the Sabbath, Antone, when it is so cold? I get so verycold, my son, let us not go to-morrow. "

"Yes, to-morrow, thou lazy old man. Do not I cut wood upon theSabbath? Care I how cold it is? Wood thou shalt cut, and haul ittoo, and as for the fiddle, I tell thee I will sell it yet. " Antonepulled his ragged cap down over his low heavy brow, and went out. The old man drew his stool up nearer the fire, and sat stroking hisviolin with trembling fingers and muttering, "Not while I live, notwhile I live. "

Five years ago they had come here, Peter Sadelack, and his wife, andoldest son Antone, and countless smaller Sadelacks, here to thedreariest part of south-western Nebraska, and had taken up ahomestead. Antone was the acknowledged master of the premises, andpeople said he was a likely youth, and would do well. That he wasmean and untrustworthy every one knew, but that made littledifference. His corn was better tended than any in the county, andhis wheat always yielded more than other men's. 

Of Peter no one knew much, nor had any one a good word to say forhim. He drank whenever he could get out of Antone's sight longenough to pawn his hat or coat for whiskey. Indeed there were buttwo things he would not pawn, his pipe and his violin. He was alazy, absent minded old fellow, who liked to fiddle better than toplow, though Antone surely got work enough out of them all, for thatmatter. In the house of which Antone was master there was no one, from the little boy three years old, to the old man of sixty, whodid not earn his bread. Still people said that Peter was worthless, and was a great drag on Antone, his son, who never drank, and was amuch better man than his father had ever been. Peter did not carewhat people said. He did not like the country, nor the people, leastof all he liked the plowing. He was very homesick for Bohemia. Longago, only eight years ago by the calendar, but it seemed eightcenturies to Peter, he had been a second violinist in the greattheatre at Prague. He had gone into the theatre very young, and hadbeen there all his life, until he had a stroke of paralysis, whichmade his arm so weak that his bowing was uncertain. Then they toldhim he could go. Those were great days at the theatre. He had plentyto drink then, and wore a dress coat every evening, and there werealways parties after the play. He could play in those days, ay, thathe could! He could never read the notes well, so he did not playfirst; but his touch, he had a touch indeed, so Herr Mikilsdoff, wholed the orchestra, had said. Sometimes now Peter thought he couldplow better if he could only bow as he used to. He had seen all thelovely women in the world there, all the great singers and the greatplayers. He was in the orchestra when Rachel played, and he heardLiszt play when the Countess d'Agoult sat in the stage box and threwthe master white lilies. Once, a French woman came and played forweeks, he did not remember her name now. He did not remember herface very well either, for it changed so, it was never twice thesame. But the beauty of it, and the great hunger men felt at thesight of it, that he remembered. Most of all he remembered hervoice. He did not know French, and could not understand a word shesaid, but it seemed to him that she must be talking the music ofChopin. And her voice, he thought he should know that in the otherworld. The last night she played a play in which a man touched herarm, and she stabbed him. As Peter sat among the smoking gas jetsdown below the footlights with his fiddle on his knee, and looked upat her, he thought he would like to die too, if he could touch herarm once, and have her stab him so. Peter went home to his wife verydrunk that night. Even in those days he was a foolish fellow, whocared for nothing but music and pretty faces. 

It was all different now. He had nothing to drink and little to eat, and here, there was nothing but sun, and grass, and sky. He hadforgotten almost everything, but some things he remembered wellenough. He loved his violin and the holy Mary, and above all else hefeared the Evil One, and his son Antone. 

The fire was low, and it grew cold. Still Peter sat by the fireremembering. He dared not throw more cobs on the fire; Antone wouldbe angry. He did not want to cut wood tomorrow, it would be Sunday, and he wanted to go to mass. Antone might let him do that. He heldhis violin under his wrinkled chin, his white hair fell over it, andhe began to play "Ave Maria. " His hand shook more than ever before, and at last refused to work the bow at all. He sat stupefied for awhile, then arose, and taking his violin with him, stole out intothe old sod stable. He took Antone's shot-gun down from its peg, andloaded it by the moonlight which streamed in through the door. Hesat down on the dirt floor, and leaned back against the dirt wall. He heard the wolves howling in the distance, and the night windscreaming as it swept over the snow. Near him he heard the regularbreathing of the horses in the dark. He put his crucifix above hisheart, and folding his hands said brokenly all the Latin he had everknown, "_Pater noster, qui in cælum est. _" Then he raised his headand sighed, "Not one kreutzer will Antone pay them to pray for mysoul, not one kreutzer, he is so careful of his money, is Antone, hedoes not waste it in drink, he is a better man than I, but hardsometimes. He works the girls too hard, women were not made to workso. But he shall not sell thee, my fiddle, I can play thee no more, but they shall not part us. We have seen it all together, and wewill forget it together, the French woman and all. " He held hisfiddle under his chin a moment, where it had lain so often, then putit across his knee and broke it through the middle. He pulled offhis old boot, held the gun between his knees with the muzzle againsthis forehead, and pressed the trigger with his toe. 

In the morning Antone found him stiff, frozen fast in a pool ofblood. They could not straighten him out enough to fit a coffin, sothey buried him in a pine box. Before the funeral Antone carried totown the fiddle-bow which Peter had forgotten to break. Antone wasvery thrifty, and a better man than his father had been. 

 _The Mahogany Tree_, May 21, 1892

_On the Divide_

Near Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw stood Canute'sshanty. North, east, south, stretched the level Nebraska plain oflong rust-red grass that undulated constantly in the wind. To thewest the ground was broken and rough, and a narrow strip of timberwound along the turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcelyambition enough to crawl over its black bottom. If it had not beenfor the few stunted cottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks, Canute would have shot himself years ago. The Norwegians are atimber-loving people, and if there is even a turtle pond with a fewplum bushes around it they seem irresistibly drawn toward it. 

As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of anykind, for when he first squatted along the banks of RattlesnakeCreek there was not a human being within twenty miles. It was builtof logs split in halves, the chinks stopped with mud and plaster. The roof was covered with earth and was supported by one giganticbeam curved in the shape of a round arch. It was almost impossiblethat any tree had ever grown in that shape. The Norwegians used tosay that Canute had taken the log across his knee and bent it intothe shape he wished. There were two rooms, or rather there was oneroom with a partition made of ash saplings interwoven and boundtogether like big straw basket work. In one corner there was a cookstove, rusted and broken. In the other a bed made of unplaned planksand poles. It was fully eight feet long, and upon it was a heap ofdark bed clothing. There was a chair and a bench of colossalproportions. There was an ordinary kitchen cupboard with a fewcracked dirty dishes in it, and beside it on a tall box a tinwash-basin. 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 someragged clothing, conspicuous among which was a suit of dark cloth, apparently new, with a paper collar carefully wrapped in a red silkhandkerchief and pinned to the sleeve. Over the door hung a wolf anda badger skin, and on the door itself a brace of thirty or fortysnake skins whose noisy tails rattled ominously every time itopened. The strangest things in the shanty were the widewindow-sills. At first glance they looked as though they had beenruthlessly hacked and mutilated with a hatchet, but on closerinspection all the notches and holes in the wood took form andshape. There seemed to be a series of pictures. They were, in arough way, artistic, but the figures were heavy and labored, asthough they had been cut very slowly and with very awkwardinstruments. There were men plowing with little horned imps sittingon their shoulders and on their horses' heads. There were menpraying with a skull hanging over their heads and little demonsbehind them mocking their attitudes. There were men fighting withbig serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about thesepictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew in thisworld, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was alwaysthe scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was aserpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who hadfelt its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch ofthem was cut up in the same manner. Sometimes the work was very rudeand careless, and looked as though the hand of the workman hadtrembled. It would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the menfrom their evil geniuses but for one fact, the men were always graveand were either toiling or praying, while the devils were alwayssmiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been split forkindling and it was evident that the artist did not value his workhighly. 

It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled intohis shanty carrying a basket of cobs, and after filling the stove, sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over the fire, staring drearily out of the window at the wide gray sky. He knew byheart every individual clump of bunch grass in the miles of redshaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in allthe deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all the bitterbarrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plaguesof Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years hehad seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures haveleft. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles andmiles, black and smoking as the floor of hell. 

He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet heavilyas though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the window intothe hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in the strawbefore the shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning to spillthemselves, and the snowflakes were settling down over the whiteleprous patches of frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed even thesod away. He shuddered and began to walk, tramping heavily with hisungainly feet. He was the wreck of ten winters on the Divide and heknew what they meant. Men fear the winters of the Divide as a childfears night or as men in the North Seas fear the still dark cold ofthe polar twilight. 

His eyes fell upon his gun, and he took it down from the wall andlooked it over. He sat down on the edge of his bed and held thebarrel towards his face, letting his forehead rest upon it, and laidhis finger on the trigger. He was perfectly calm, there was neitherpassion nor despair in his face, but the thoughtful look of a manwho is considering. Presently he laid down the gun, and reachinginto the cupboard, drew out a pint bottle of raw white alcohol. Lifting it to his lips, he drank greedily. He washed his face in thetin basin and combed his rough hair and shaggy blond beard. Then hestood in uncertainty before the suit of dark clothes that hung onthe wall. For the fiftieth time he took them in his hands and triedto summon courage to put them on. He took the paper collar that waspinned to the sleeve of the coat and cautiously slipped it under hisrough beard, looking with timid expectancy into the cracked, splashed glass that hung over the bench. With a short laugh he threwit 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 oncein a while. He had been there for ten years, digging and plowing andsowing, and reaping what little the hail and the hot winds and thefrosts left him to reap. Insanity and suicide are very common thingson the Divide. They come on like an epidemic in the hot wind season. Those scorching dusty winds that blow up over the bluffs from Kansasseem to dry up the blood in men's veins as they do the sap in thecorn leaves. Whenever the yellow scorch creeps down over the tenderinside leaves about the ear, then the coroners prepare for activeduty; for the oil of the country is burned out and it does not takelong for the flame to eat up the wick. It causes no great sensationthere when a Dane is found swinging to his own windmill tower, andmost of the Poles after they have become too careless anddiscouraged to shave themselves keep their razors to cut theirthroats with. 

It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be very happy, but the present one came too late in life. It is useless for menthat have cut hemlocks among the mountains of Sweden for forty yearsto try to be happy in a country as flat and gray and as naked as thesea. It is not easy for men that have spent their youths fishing inthe Northern seas to be content with following a plow, and men thathave served in the Austrian army hate hard work and coarse clothingand the loneliness of the plains, and long for marches andexcitement and tavern company and pretty barmaids. After a man haspassed his fortieth birthday it is not easy for him to change thehabits and conditions of his life. Most men bring with them to theDivide only the dregs of the lives that they have squandered inother 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 alwaystaken liquor when he wanted it, as all Norwegians do, but after hisfirst year of solitary life he settled down to it steadily. Heexhausted whisky after a while, and went to alcohol, because itseffects were speedier and surer. He was a big man with a terribleamount of resistant force, and it took a great deal of alcohol evento move him. After nine years of drinking, the quantities he couldtake would seem fabulous to an ordinary drinking man. He never letit interfere with his work, he generally drank at night and onSundays. Every night, as soon as his chores were done, he began todrink. While he was able to sit up he would play on his mouth harpor hack away at his window sills with his jack knife. When theliquor went to his head he would lie down on his bed and stare outof the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and in solitudenot for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful lonelinessand level of the Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he putmountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. Allmountain peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plainsthat, because of their utter lack of spirituality and the madcaprice of their vice, were cursed of God. 

Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkennessis merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; abloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Canute was none of these, but he was morose and gloomy, and liquor took him through all thehells of Dante. As he lay on his giant's bed all the horrors of thisworld and every other were laid bare to his chilled senses. He was aman who knew no joy, a man who toiled in silence and bitterness. Theskull and the serpent were always before him, the symbols of eternalfutileness and of eternal hate. 

When the first Norwegians near enough to be called neighbors came, Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape from his bosom vice. But hewas not a social man by nature and had not the power of drawing outthe social side of other people. His new neighbors rather feared himbecause of his great strength and size, his silence and his loweringbrows. Perhaps, too, they knew that he was mad, mad from the eternaltreachery of the plains, which every spring stretch green and rustlewith the promises of Eden, showing long grassy lagoons full of clearwater and cattle whose hoofs are stained with wild roses. Beforeautumn the lagoons are dried up, and the ground is burnt dry andhard until it blisters 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 awfulstories of his size and strength and of the alcohol he drank. Theysaid 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 nervoushorse began kicking frantically. When Canute felt the bloodtrickling down in his eyes from a scalp wound in his head, he rousedhimself from his kingly indifference, and with the quiet stoicalcourage of a drunken man leaned forward and wound his arms about thehorse's hind legs and held them against his breast with crushingembrace. All through the darkness and cold of the night he laythere, matching strength against strength. When little Jim Petersonwent over the next morning at four o'clock to go with him to theBlue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse was on its foreknees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the story theNorwegians 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 agreat change in Canute's life. Ole Yensen was too drunk most of thetime to be afraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too garrulous tobe afraid of any one who listened to her talk, and Lena, theirpretty daughter, was not afraid of man nor devil. So it came aboutthat Canute went over to take his alcohol with Ole oftener than hetook it alone. After a while the report spread that he was going tomarry Yensen's daughter, and the Norwegian girls began to tease Lenaabout the great bear she was going to keep house for. No one couldquite see how the affair had come about, for Canute's tactics ofcourtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently never spoke to herat all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering on one side ofhim and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at her work. Sheteased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar in hiscoffee, but he took her rough jokes with silent wonder, never evensmiling. He took her to church occasionally, but the most watchfuland curious people never saw him speak to her. He would sit staringat her while she giggled and flirted with the other men. 

Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry. Shecame home every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to startleLena with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen's dances, and allthe other esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeksLena's head was completely turned, and she gave her father no restuntil he let her go to town to seek her fortune at the ironingboard. From the time she came home on her first visit she began totreat Canute with contempt. She had bought a plush cloak and kidgloves, had her clothes made by the dress-maker, and assumed airsand graces that made the other women of the neighborhood cordiallydetest her. She generally brought with her a young man from town whowaxed his mustache and wore a red necktie, and she did not evenintroduce 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 hedrank more and avoided the other Norwegians more carefully thanever. He lay around in his den and no one knew what he felt orthought, but little Jim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at Lenain church one Sunday when she was there with the town man, said thathe would not give an acre of his wheat for Lena's life or the townchap's either; and Jim's wheat was so wondrously worthless that thestatement was an exceedingly strong one. 

Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as nearly likethe town man's as possible. They had cost him half a millet crop;for tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants and they charge forit. He had hung those clothes in his shanty two months ago and hadnever put them on, partly from fear of ridicule, partly fromdiscouragement, and partly because there was something in his ownsoul that revolted at the littleness of the device. 

Lena was at home just at this time. Work was slack in the laundryand Mary had not been well, so Lena stayed at home, glad enough toget an opportunity to torment Canute once more. 

She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she worked. Mary was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding violentlyabout the young man who was coming out from town that night. Theyoung man had committed the fatal error of laughing at Mary'sceaseless babble and had never been forgiven. 

"He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running with him!I do not see why a daughter of mine should act so. I do not see whythe Lord should visit such a punishment upon me as to give me such adaughter. 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. You think it very fine now, but you will change your tune when youhave been married five years and see your children running naked andyour cupboard empty. Did Anne Hermanson come to any good end bymarrying 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 thereis Canuteson who has an 'eighty' proved up and fifty head of cattleand----"

"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. Besides he will keep. I can have all the fun I want, and when I amold and ugly like you he can have me and take care of me. The Lordknows there ain't nobody else going to marry him. "

Canute drew his hand back from the latch as though it were red hot. He was not the kind of a man to make a good eavesdropper, and hewished he had knocked sooner. He pulled himself together and struckthe door like a battering ram. Mary jumped and opened it with ascreech. 

"God! Canute, how you scared us! I thought it was crazy Lou, --he hasbeen tearing around the neighborhood trying to convert folks. I amafraid as death of him. He ought to be sent off, I think. He is justas liable as not to kill us all, or burn the barn, or poison thedogs. He has been worrying even the poor minister to death, and helaid up with the rheumatism, too! Did you notice that he was toosick to preach last Sunday? But don't stand there in the cold, --comein. Yensen isn't here, but he just went over to Sorenson's for themail; he won't be gone long. Walk right in the other room and sitdown. "

Canute followed her, looking steadily in front of him and notnoticing Lena as he passed her. But Lena's vanity would not allowhim to pass unmolested. She took the wet sheet she was wringing outand cracked him across the face with it, and ran giggling to theother side of the room. The blow stung his cheeks and the soapywater flew in his eyes, and he involuntarily began rubbing them withhis hands. Lena giggled with delight at his discomfiture, and thewrath in Canute's face grew blacker than ever. A big man humiliatedis vastly more undignified than a little one. He forgot the sting ofhis face in the bitter consciousness that he had made a fool ofhimself. He stumbled blindly into the living room, knocking his headagainst the door jamb because he forgot to stoop. He dropped into achair behind the stove, thrusting his big feet back helplessly oneither side of him. 

Ole was a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still andsilent, with his hands clenched on his knees, and the skin of hisface seemed to have shriveled up into little wrinkles that trembledwhen he lowered his brows. His life had been one long lethargy ofsolitude and alcohol, but now he was awakening, and it was as whenthe dumb stagnant heat of summer 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 memarry your 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? aman who drinks raw alcohol? a man who sleeps with rattle snakes? Getout of my house or I will kick you out for your impudence. " And Olebegan looking anxiously for his feet. 

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

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

"If you do not come with me, I will take you, --you had better come, "said Canute 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 ahood and shawl that hung there, and began wrapping her up. Lenascratched and fought like a wild thing. Ole stood in the door, cursing, and Mary howled and screeched at the top of her voice. Asfor Canute, he lifted the girl in his arms and went out of thehouse. She kicked and struggled, but the helpless wailing of Maryand Ole soon died away in the distance, and her face was held downtightly on Canute's shoulder so that she could not see whither hewas taking her. She was conscious only of the north wind whistlingin her ears, and of rapid steady motion and of a great breast thatheaved beneath her in quick, irregular breaths. The harder shestruggled the tighter those iron arms that had held the heels ofhorses crushed about her, until she felt as if they would crush thebreath from her, and lay still with fear. Canute was striding acrossthe level fields at a pace at which man never went before, drawingthe stinging north wind into his lungs in great gulps. He walkedwith his eyes half closed and looking straight in front of him, onlylowering them when he bent his head to blow away the snow flakesthat settled on her hair. So it was that Canute took her to hishome, even as his bearded barbarian ancestors took the fairfrivolous women of the South in their hairy arms and bore them downto their war ships. For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of theconventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shattersthe civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strongarm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning. 

When Canute reached his shanty he placed the girl upon a chair, where she sat sobbing. He stayed only a few minutes. He filled thestove with wood and lit the lamp, drank a huge swallow of alcoholand put the bottle in his pocket. He paused a moment, staringheavily at the weeping girl, then he went off and locked the doorand disappeared in the gathering gloom of the night. 

Wrapped in flannels and soaked with turpentine, the little Norwegianpreacher sat reading his Bible, when he heard a thundering knock athis door, and Canute entered, covered with snow and with his beardfrozen fast to his coat. 

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

Canute remained standing with his hat on and said quietly, "I wantyou to 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 belegal. "

A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian's eye. "I want you tocome over 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 my rheumatism 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 onwhile he hitched up his buggy. He went out and closed the doorsoftly after him. Presently he returned and found the frightenedminister crouching before the fire with his coat lying beside him. Canute helped him put it on and gently wrapped his head in his bigmuffler. Then he picked him up and carried him out and placed him inhis buggy. As he tucked the buffalo robes around him he said: "Yourhorse is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this storm. Iwill lead him. "

The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat shiveringwith the cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in the wind, he couldsee the horse struggling through the snow with the man ploddingsteadily beside him. Again the blowing snow would hide them from himaltogether. He had no idea where they were or what direction theywere going. He felt as though he were being whirled away in theheart of the storm, and he said all the prayers he knew. But at lastthe long four miles were over, and Canute set him down in the snowwhile he unlocked the door. He saw the bride sitting by the firewith her eyes red and swollen as though she had been weeping. Canuteplaced a huge chair for him, and said roughly, --

"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?" askedthe minister in a trembling voice. 

"No sir, I don't, and it is disgraceful he should force me into it!I won'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 ironhand on his stooped shoulder. The little preacher was a good man, but like most men of weak body he was a coward and had a horror ofphysical suffering, although he had known so much of it. So withmany qualms of conscience he began to repeat the marriage service. Lena sat sullenly in her chair, staring at the fire. Canute stoodbeside her, listening with his head bent reverently and his handsfolded on his breast. When the little 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 andplaced him in his buggy, and started off with him through the furyof the storm, floundering among the snow drifts that brought eventhe giant himself to his knees. 

After she was left alone, Lena soon ceased weeping. She was not of aparticularly sensitive temperament, and had little pride beyond thatof vanity. After the first bitter anger wore itself out, she feltnothing more than a healthy sense of humiliation and defeat. She hadno inclination 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 Canutesome day, any way. 

She grew tired of crying and looking into the fire, so she got upand began to look about her. She had heard queer tales about theinside of Canute's shanty, and her curiosity soon got the better ofher rage. One of the first things she noticed was the new black suitof clothes hanging on the wall. She was dull, but it did not take avain woman long to interpret anything so decidedly flattering, andshe was pleased in spite of herself. As she looked through thecupboard, the general air of neglect and discomfort made her pitythe man who lived there. 

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

It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled. Shelooked at the window sill and gave a little shudder and wondered ifthe man were crazy. Then she sat down again and sat a long timewondering what her Dick and Ole would do. 

"It is queer Dick didn't come right over after me. He surely came, for he would have left town before the storm began and he might justas well come right on as go back. If he'd hurried he would havegotten here before the preacher came. I suppose he was afraid tocome, for he knew Canuteson could pound him to jelly, the coward!"Her eyes flashed angrily. 

The weary hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly lonesome. Itwas an uncanny night and this was an uncanny place to be in. Shecould hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and shewas afraid of those snaky things on the window sills. She rememberedthe man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what shewould do if she saw crazy Lou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latchmust be loose and took the lamp to look at it. Then for the firsttime she saw the ugly brown snake skins whose death rattle soundedevery 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 upand shaking himself. The door opened and Canute stood before her, white as a snow 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 andfilled the stove. Then he went out and lay in the snow before thedoor. 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 tothe key-hole. She spoke lower than he had ever heard her speakbefore, so low that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hearher. 

"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 inthe snow at her feet, his face in his hands, sobbing on the doorstep. 

 _Overland Monthly_, January 1896

_Eric Hermannson's Soul_

I. 

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 somemysterious psychic force. Here and there among this cowering, sweating multitude crouched some poor wretch who had felt the pangsof an awakened conscience, but had not yet experienced that completedivestment of reason, that frenzy born of a convulsion of the mind, which, in the parlance of the Free Gospellers, is termed "theLight. " On the floor, before the mourners' bench, lay theunconscious figure of a man in whom outraged nature had sought herlast resort. This "trance" state is the highest evidence of graceamong the Free Gospellers, and indicates a close walking with God. 

Before the desk stood Asa Skinner, shouting of the mercy andvengeance of God, and in his eyes shone a terrible earnestness, analmost prophetic flame. Asa was a converted train gambler who usedto run between Omaha and Denver. He was a man made for the extremesof life; from the most debauched of men he had become the mostascetic. His was a bestial face, a face that bore the stamp ofNature's eternal injustice. The forehead was low, projecting overthe eyes, and the sandy hair was plastered down over it and thenbrushed back at an abrupt right angle. The chin was heavy, thenostrils were low and wide, and the lower lip hung loosely except inhis moments of spasmodic earnestness, when it shut like a steeltrap. Yet about those coarse features there were deep, ruggedfurrows, the scars of many a hand-to-hand struggle with the weaknessof 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 grayness caught from many avigil. It was as though, after Nature had done her worst with thatface, some fine chisel had gone over it, chastening and almosttransfiguring it. To-night, as his muscles twitched with emotion, and the perspiration dropped from his hair and chin, there was acertain convincing power in the man. For Asa Skinner was a manpossessed of a belief, of that sentiment of the sublime before whichall inequalities are leveled, that transport of conviction whichseems superior to all laws of condition, under which debauchees havebecome martyrs; which made a tinker an artist and a camel-driver thefounder of an empire. This was with Asa Skinner to-night, as hestood proclaiming the vengeance of God. 

It might have occurred to an impartial observer that Asa Skinner'sGod was indeed a vengeful God if he could reserve vengeance forthose of his creatures who were packed into the Lone Starschoolhouse that night. Poor exiles of all nations; men from thesouth and the north, peasants from almost every country of Europe, most of them from the mountainous, night-bound coast of Norway. Honest men for the most part, but men with whom the world had dealthardly; the failures of all countries, men sobered by toil andsaddened by exile, who had been driven to fight for the dominion ofan 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. To-night EricHermannson, the wildest lad on all the Divide, sat in his audiencewith a fiddle on his knee, just as he had dropped in on his way toplay for some dance. The violin is an object of particularabhorrence to the Free Gospellers. Their antagonism to the churchorgan is bitter enough, but the fiddle they regard as a veryincarnation of evil desires, singing forever of worldly pleasuresand inseparably associated with all forbidden things. 

Eric Hermannson had long been the object of the prayers of therevivalists. His mother had felt the power of the Spirit weeks ago, and special prayer-meetings had been held at her house for her son. But Eric had only gone his ways laughing, the ways of youth, whichare short enough at best, and none too flowery on the Divide. Heslipped away from the prayer-meetings to meet the Campbell boys inGenereau's saloon, or hug the plump little French girls atChevalier's dances, and sometimes, of a summer night, he even wentacross the dewy cornfields and through the wild-plum thicket to playthe fiddle for Lena Hanson, whose name was a reproach through allthe Divide country, where the women are usually too plain and toobusy and too tired to depart from the ways of virtue. On suchoccasions Lena, attired in a pink wrapper and silk stockings andtiny pink slippers, would sing to him, accompanying herself on abattered guitar. It gave him a delicious sense of freedom andexperience to be with a woman who, no matter how, had lived in bigcities and knew the ways of town-folk, who had never worked in thefields and had kept her hands white and soft, her throat fair andtender, 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 werenot altogether without their effect upon Eric. For days he had beenfleeing before them as a criminal from his pursuers, and over hispleasures had fallen the shadow of something dark and terrible thatdogged his steps. The harder he danced, the louder he sang, the morewas he conscious that this phantom was gaining upon him, that intime it would track him down. One Sunday afternoon, late in thefall, when he had been drinking beer with Lena Hanson and listeningto a song which made his cheeks burn, a rattlesnake had crawled outof the side of the sod house and thrust its ugly head in under thescreen door. He was not afraid of snakes, but he knew enough ofGospellism to feel the significance of the reptile lying coiledthere upon her doorstep. His lips were cold when he kissed Lenagood-by, and he went there no more. 

The final barrier between Eric and his mother's faith was hisviolin, and to that he clung as a man sometimes will cling to hisdearest sin, to the weakness more precious to him than all hisstrength. In the great world beauty comes to men in many guises, andart in a hundred forms, but for Eric there was only his violin. Itstood, 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 hisimpassioned pleading that night. 

"_Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?_ Is there a Saul hereto-night who has stopped his ears to that gentle pleading, who hasthrust a spear into that bleeding side? Think of it, my brother; youare offered this wonderful love and you prefer the worm that diethnot and the fire which will not be quenched. What right have you tolose one of God's precious souls? _Saul, Saul, why persecutest thoume?_"

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 fellupon his 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, a little more zeal, and he will be here. I can feel his cooling wingupon my 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 chantof terror 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 vagueyearning of these hungry lives, of these people who had starved allthe passions so long, only to fall victims to the basest of themall, 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 inthe forest. 

The minister rose suddenly to his feet and threw back his head, crying in 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 thelife-line. Take hold! Almighty God, my soul for his!" The ministerthrew his arms out and lifted his quivering face. 

Eric Hermannson rose to his feet; his lips were set and thelightning was in his eyes. He took his violin by the neck andcrushed it to splinters across his knee, and to Asa Skinner thesound was like the shackles of sin broken audibly asunder. 

II. 

For more than two years Eric Hermannson kept the austere faith towhich he had sworn himself, kept it until a girl from the East cameto spend a week on the Nebraska Divide. She was a girl of othermanners and conditions, and there were greater distances between herlife and Eric's than all the miles which separated Rattlesnake Creekfrom New York city. Indeed, she had no business to be in the West atall; but ah! across what leagues of land and sea, by what improbablechances, do the unrelenting 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 hadspent a year of his youth. When he had graduated from Harvard it wasstill customary for moneyed gentlemen to send their scapegrace sonsto rough it on ranches in the wilds of Nebraska or Dakota, or toconsign them to a living death in the sage-brush of the Black Hills. These young men did not always return to the ways of civilized life. But Wyllis Elliot had not married a half-breed, nor been shot in acow-punchers' brawl, nor wrecked by bad whisky, nor appropriated bya smirched adventuress. He had been saved from these things by agirl, his sister, who had been very near to his life ever since thedays when they read fairy tales together and dreamed the dreams thatnever come true. On this, his first visit to his father's ranchsince he left it six years before, he brought her with him. She hadbeen laid up half the winter from a sprain received while skating, and had had too much time for reflection during those months. Shewas restless and filled with a desire to see something of the wildcountry of which her brother had told her so much. She was to bemarried the next winter, and Wyllis understood her when she beggedhim to take her with him on this long, aimless jaunt across thecontinent, to taste the last of their freedom together. It comes toall women of her type--that desire to taste the unknown whichallures and terrifies, to run one's whole soul's length out to thewind--just once. 

It had been an eventful journey. Wyllis somehow understood thatstrain of gypsy blood in his sister, and he knew where to take her. They had slept in sod houses on the Platte River, made theacquaintance of the personnel of a third-rate opera company on thetrain to Deadwood, dined in a camp of railroad constructors at theworld's end beyond New Castle, gone through the Black Hills onhorseback, fished for trout in Dome Lake, watched a dance at CrippleCreek, where the lost souls who hide in the hills gathered for theirbesotted revelry. And now, last of all, before the return tothraldom, there was this little shack, anchored on the windy crestof the Divide, a little black dot against the flaming sunsets, ascented sea of cornland bathed in opalescent air and blindingsunlight. 

Margaret Elliot was one of those women of whom there are so many inthis day, when old order, passing, giveth place to new; beautiful, talented, critical, unsatisfied, tired of the world at twenty-four. For the moment the life and people of the Divide interested her. Shewas there but a week; perhaps had she stayed longer, that inexorableennui which travels faster even than the Vestibule Limited wouldhave overtaken her. The week she tarried there was the week thatEric Hermannson was helping Jerry Lockhart thresh; a week earlier ora week later, and there would have been no story to write. 

It was on Thursday and they were to leave on Saturday. Wyllis andhis sister were sitting on the wide piazza of the ranchhouse, staring out into the afternoon sunlight and protesting against thegusts of hot wind that blew up from the sandy river-bottom twentymiles 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 key-note of this country. "

Wyllis touched her hand that lay on the hammock and continuedgently:

"I hope it's paid you, Sis. Roughing it's dangerous business; ittakes the 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 childrenand were going to discover the ruins of Troy together some day. Doyou know, I believe I could just stay on here forever and let theworld go on its own gait. It seems as though the tension and strainwe used to talk of last winter were gone for good, as though onecould never give one's strength 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 thesky-line. 

"No, you're mistaken. This would bore you after a while. You can'tshake the fever of the other life. I've tried it. There was a timewhen the gay fellows of Rome could trot down into the Thebaid andburrow into the sandhills and get rid of it. But it's all toocomplex now. You see we've made our dissipations so dainty andrespectable that they've gone further in than the flesh, and takenhold of the ego proper. You couldn't rest, even here. The war-crywould 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 theart of silence from these taciturn Norwegians. I think I like silentmen. "

"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 hotwind through 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 theothers? I can talk to him; he seems quite like a human being. "

"Well, " said Wyllis, meditatively, "I don't read Bourget as much asmy cultured sister, and I'm not so well up in analysis, but I fancyit's because one keeps cherishing a perfectly unwarranted suspicionthat under that big, hulking anatomy of his, he may conceal a soulsomewhere. Nicht wahr?"

"Something like that, " said Margaret, thoughtfully, "except thatit's more than a suspicion, and it isn't groundless. He has one, andhe makes it known, somehow, without speaking. "

"I always have my doubts about loquacious souls, " Wyllis remarked, with the 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, theBernstein boy. That kind of blunt pathos can't be summoned at willin anybody. The earlier novelists rose to it, sometimes, unconsciously. But last night when I sang for him I was doubly sure. Oh, I haven't told you about that yet! Better light your pipe again. You see, he stumbled in on me in the dark when I was pumping away atthat old parlor organ to please Mrs. Lockhart. It's her householdfetish and I've forgotten how many pounds of butter she made andsold to buy it. Well, Eric stumbled in, and in some inarticulatemanner made me understand that he wanted me to sing for him. I sangjust the old things, of course. It's queer to sing familiar thingshere at the world's end. It makes one think how the hearts of menhave carried them around the world, into the wastes of Iceland andthe jungles of Africa and the islands of the Pacific. I think if onelived here long enough one would quite forget how to be trivial, andwould read only the great books that we never get time to read inthe world, and would remember only the great music, and the thingsthat are really worth while would stand out clearly against thathorizon over there. And of course I played the intermezzo from'Cavalleria Rusticana' for him; it goes rather better on an organthan most things do. He shuffled his feet and twisted his big handsup into knots and blurted out that he didn't know there was anymusic like that in the world. Why, there were tears in his voice, Wyllis! Yes, like Rossetti, I _heard_ his tears. Then it dawned uponme that it was probably the first good music he had ever heard inall his life. Think of it, to care for music as he does and never tohear it, never to know that it exists on earth! To long for it as welong for other perfect experiences that never come. I can't tell youwhat music means to that man. I never saw any one so susceptible toit. It gave him speech, he became alive. When I had finished theintermezzo, he began telling me about a little crippled brother whodied and whom he loved and used to carry everywhere in his arms. Hedid not wait for encouragement. He took up the story and told itslowly, 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, "andso you'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 agirl's philanthropy for you!"

Jerry Lockhart came out of the house screwing his chin over theunusual luxury of a stiff white collar, which his wife insisted uponas a necessary article of toilet while Miss Elliot was at the house. Jerry sat down on the step and smiled his broad, red smile atMargaret. 

"Well, I've got the music for your dance, Miss Elliot. Olaf Olesonwill bring his accordion and Mollie will play the organ, when sheisn't lookin' after the grub, and a little chap from Frenchtown willbring his fiddle--though the French don't mix with the Norwegiansmuch. "

"Delightful! Mr. Lockhart, that dance will be the feature of ourtrip, and it's so nice of you to get it up for us. We'll see theNorwegians in character 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 dancingall night with a gang of half-mad Norwegians and taking the carriageat four to catch the six o'clock train out of Riverton--well, it'stommy-rot, that's what it is!"

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

"But what do you want with the Norwegians? I thought you were tiredof dancing. "

"So I am, with some people. But I want to see a Norwegian dance, andI intend to. Come, Wyllis, you know how seldom it is that one reallywants to do anything nowadays. I wonder when I have really wanted togo to a party before. It will be something to remember next month atNewport, when we have to and don't want to. Remember your own theorythat contrast is about the only thing that makes life endurable. This is my party and Mr. Lockhart's; your whole duty to-morrow nightwill consist in being nice to the Norwegian girls. I'll warrant youwere adept enough at it once. And you'd better be very nice indeed, for if there are many such young valkyrs as Eric's sister amongthem, they would simply tie you up in a knot if they suspected youwere 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 ofhis plowshoe. 

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

Margaret made a gesture of impatience. 

"Those Free Gospellers have just cast an evil spell over thiscountry, haven't they?"

"Well, " said Lockhart, cautiously, "I don't just like to passjudgment on any Christian sect, but if you're to know the chosen bytheir works, the Gospellers can't make a very proud showin', an'that's a fact. They're responsible for a few suicides, and they'vesent a good-sized delegation to the state insane asylum, an' I don'tsee as they've made the rest of us much better than we were before. I had a little herdboy last spring, as square a little Dane as Iwant to work for me, but after the Gospellers got hold of him andsanctified him, the little beggar used to get down on his knees outon the prairie and pray by the hour and let the cattle get into thecorn, an' I had to fire him. That's about the way it goes. Nowthere's Eric; that chap used to be a hustler and the spryest dancerin all this section--called all the dances. Now he's got no ambitionand he's glum as a preacher. I don't suppose we can even get him tocome in to-morrow 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 usout and he said, 'I don't dance now, any more, '" said Lockhart, imitating the labored English of the Norwegian. 

"'The Miller of Hoffbau, the Miller of Hoffbau, O my Princess!'"chirped Wyllis, 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 theheart of the French settlement, for the mail. As the road laythrough the most attractive part of the Divide country, on severaloccasions Margaret Elliot and her brother had accompanied him. To-night Wyllis had business with Lockhart, and Margaret rode withEric, mounted on a frisky little mustang that Mrs. Lockhart hadbroken to the side-saddle. Margaret regarded her escort very much asshe did the servant who always accompanied her on long rides athome, and the ride to the village was a silent one. She was occupiedwith thoughts of another world, and Eric was wrestling with morethoughts than had ever been crowded into his head before. He rodewith his eyes riveted on that slight figure before him, as though hewished to absorb it through the optic nerves and hold it in hisbrain 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 heknew where to place her. The prophets of old, when an angel firstappeared unto 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 notafraid of anything but the ice and the devil, and he had prospectsbefore him when his father went down off the North Cape in the longArctic night, and his mother, seized by a violent horror ofseafaring life, had followed her brother to America. Eric waseighteen then, handsome as young Siegfried, a giant in stature, witha skin singularly pure and delicate, like a Swede's; hair as yellowas the locks of Tennyson's amorous Prince, and eyes of a fierce, burning blue, whose flash was most dangerous to women. He had inthose days a certain pride of bearing, a certain confidence ofapproach, that usually accompanies physical perfection. It was evensaid of him then that he was in love with life, and inclined tolevity, a vice most unusual on the Divide. But the sad history ofthose Norwegian exiles, transplanted in an arid soil and under ascorching sun, had repeated itself in his case. Toil and isolationhad sobered him, and he grew more and more like the clods amongwhich he labored. It was as though some red-hot instrument hadtouched for a moment those delicate fibers of the brain whichrespond to acute pain or pleasure, in which lies the power ofexquisite sensation, and had seared them quite away. It is a painfulthing to watch the light die out of the eyes of those Norsemen, leaving an expression of impenetrable sadness, quite passive, quitehopeless, a shadow that is never lifted. With some this change comesalmost at once, in the first bitterness of homesickness, with othersit 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 yearbefore they are put to rest in the little graveyard on the windyhill where exiles of all nations grow akin. 

The peculiar species of hypochondria to which the exiles of hispeople sooner or later succumb had not developed in Eric until thatnight at the Lone Star schoolhouse, when he had broken his violinacross his knee. After that, the gloom of his people settled downupon him, and the gospel of maceration began its work. "_If thineeye offend thee, pluck it out_, " et cetera. The pagan smile thatonce hovered about his lips was gone, and he was one with sorrow. Religion heals a hundred hearts for one that it embitters, but whenit destroys, its work is quick and deadly, and where the agony ofthe cross has been, joy will not come again. This man understoodthings literally: one must live without pleasure to die withoutfear; to save the soul it was 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 thatruns for some three miles through the French settlement, where theprairie is as level as the surface of a lake. There the fields offlax and wheat and rye are bordered by precise rows of slender, tapering Lombard poplars. It was a yellow world that Margaret Elliotsaw under the wide light of the setting sun. 

The girl gathered up her reins and called back to Eric, "It will besafe to 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 Westthat new-comers always ride a horse or two to death before they getbroken in to the country. They are tempted by the great open spacesand try to outride the horizon, to get to the end of something. Margaret galloped over the level road, and Eric, from behind, sawher long veil fluttering in the wind. It had fluttered just so inhis dreams last night and the night before. With a suddeninspiration of courage he overtook her and rode beside her, lookingintently at her half-averted face. Before, he had only stolenoccasional glances at it, seen it in blinding flashes, always withmore or less embarrassment, but now he determined to let every lineof it sink into his memory. Men of the world would have said that itwas an unusual face, nervous, finely cut, with clear, elegant linesthat 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, lefttheir unconscious memory in those eyes. But Eric read no meaning inthese details. To him this beauty was something more than color andline; it was as a flash of white light, in which one cannotdistinguish color because all colors are there. To him it was acomplete revelation, an embodiment of those dreams of impossibleloveliness that linger by a young man's pillow on midsummer nights;yet, because it held something more than the attraction of healthand youth and shapeliness, it troubled him, and in its presence hefelt as the Goths before the white marbles in the Roman Capitol, notknowing whether they were men or gods. At times he felt likeuncovering his head before it, again the fury seized him to breakand despoil, to find the clay in this spirit-thing and stamp uponit. Away from her, he longed to strike out with his arms, and takeand hold; it maddened him that this woman whom he could break in hishands should be so much stronger than he. But near her, he neverquestioned this strength; he admitted its potentiality as headmitted the miracles of the Bible; it enervated and conquered him. To-night, when he rode so close to her that he could have touchedher, he knew that he might as well reach out his hand to take astar. 

Margaret stirred uneasily under his gaze and turned questioningly inher saddle. 

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

Eric turned his eyes away. 

"I want to ask you if I go to New York to work, if I maybe hearmusic like 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 likeyou to go to New York--and be poor, you'd be out of atmosphere, someway, " she said, slowly. Inwardly she was thinking: "There he wouldbe altogether sordid, impossible--a machine who would carry one'strunks upstairs, perhaps. Here he is every inch a man, ratherpicturesque; why is it?" "No, " she added aloud, "I shouldn't likethat. "

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

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

"But I'll tell you what I do want you to do, Eric. I want you todance with us to-morrow night and teach me some of the Norwegiandances; they say you know them all. Won't you?"

Eric straightened himself in his saddle and his eyes flashed as theyhad done in the Lone Star schoolhouse when he broke his violinacross his knee. 

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

They had reached the rougher country now, where the road woundthrough a narrow cut in one of the bluffs along the creek, when abeat of hoofs ahead and the sharp neighing of horses made the poniesstart and Eric rose in his stirrups. Then down the gulch in front ofthem and over the steep clay banks thundered a herd of wild ponies, nimble as monkeys and wild as rabbits, such as horse-traders driveeast from the plains of Montana to sell in the farming country. Margaret's pony made a shrill sound, a neigh that was almost ascream, and started up the clay bank to meet them, all the wildblood of the range breaking out in an instant. Margaret called toEric just as he threw himself out of the saddle and caught herpony's bit. But the wiry little animal had gone mad and was kickingand biting like a devil. Her wild brothers of the range were allabout her, neighing, and pawing the earth, and striking her withtheir fore feet and snapping at her flanks. It was the old libertyof the range that the little beast fought for. 

"Drop the reins and hold tight, tight!" Eric called, throwing allhis weight upon the bit, struggling under those frantic fore feetthat now beat at his breast, and now kicked at the wild mustangsthat surged and tossed about him. He succeeded in wrenching thepony's head toward him and crowding her withers against the claybank, so that she could not roll. 

"Hold tight, tight!" he shouted again, launching a kick at asnorting animal that reared back against Margaret's saddle. If sheshould lose her courage and fall now, under those hoofs----He struckout again and again, kicking right and left with all his might. Already the negligent drivers had galloped into the cut, and theirlong quirts were whistling over the heads of the herd. As suddenlyas it had come, the struggling, frantic wave of wild life swept upout of the gulch and on across the open prairie, and with a longdespairing whinny of farewell the pony dropped her head and stoodtrembling in her sweat, shaking the foam and blood from her bit. 

Eric stepped close to Margaret's side and laid his hand on hersaddle. "You are not hurt?" he asked, hoarsely. As he raised hisface in the soft starlight she saw that it was white and drawn andthat his lips were working nervously. 

"No, no, not at all. But you, you are suffering; they struck you!"she cried 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 clenchedat his side. "But if they had hurt you, I would beat their brainsout with my hands, I would kill them all. I was never afraid before. You are the only beautiful thing that has ever come close to me. Youcame like an angel out of the sky. You are like the music you sing, you are like the stars and the snow on the mountains where I playedwhen I was a little boy. You are like all that I wanted once andnever had, you are all that they have killed in me. I die for youto-night, to-morrow, for all eternity. I am not a coward; I wasafraid because I love you more than Christ who died for me, morethan I am afraid of hell, or hope for heaven. I was never afraidbefore. If you had fallen--oh, my God!" he threw his arms outblindly and dropped his head upon the pony's mane, leaning limplyagainst the animal like a man struck by some sickness. His shouldersrose and fell perceptibly with his labored breathing. The horsestood 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 itwas steady 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 armand went slowly up the hill toward the house. "No, I'm not hurt, thanks to Eric. You must thank him for taking such good care of me. He's a mighty fine fellow. I'll tell you all about it in themorning, dear. I was pretty well shaken up and I'm going right tobed now. Good-night. "

When she reached the low room in which she slept, she sank upon thebed in 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, shetook from her dress a letter that had been waiting for her at thevillage post-office. It was closely written in a long, angular hand, covering a dozen pages of foreign note-paper, and began:--

"My Dearest Margaret: If I should attempt to say _how like a winterhath thine absence been_, I should incur the risk of being tedious. Really, it takes the sparkle out of everything. Having nothingbetter to do, and not caring to go anywhere in particular withoutyou, I remained in the city until Jack Courtwell noted my generaldespondency and brought me down here to his place on the sound tomanage some open-air theatricals he is getting up. 'As You Like It'is of course the piece selected. Miss Harrison plays Rosalind. Iwish you had been here to take the part. Miss Harrison reads herlines well, but she is either a maiden-all-forlorn or a tomboy;insists on reading into the part all sorts of deeper meanings andhighly colored suggestions wholly out of harmony with the pastoralsetting. Like most of the professionals, she exaggerates theemotional element and quite fails to do justice to Rosalind's facilewit and really brilliant mental qualities. Gerard will do Orlando, but rumor says he is épris of your sometime friend, Miss Meredith, and his memory 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 waterflows at her feet. The Constant, you will remember, I got becauseyou admired it. It is here in all its florid splendor, the wholedominated by a glowing sensuosity. The drapery of the female figureis as wonderful as you said; the fabric all barbaric pearl and gold, painted with an easy, effortless voluptuousness, and that white, gleaming line of African coast in the background recalls memories ofyou very precious to me. But it is useless to deny that Constantirritates me. Though I cannot prove the charge against him, hisbrilliancy always makes me suspect him of cheapness. "

Here Margaret stopped and glanced at the remaining pages of thisstrange love-letter. They seemed to be filled chiefly withdiscussions of pictures and books, and with a slow smile she laidthem by. 

She rose and began undressing. Before she lay down she went to openthe window. With her hand on the sill, she hesitated, feelingsuddenly as though some danger were lurking outside, some inordinatedesire waiting to spring upon her in the darkness. She stood therefor 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 begreat? Why should one try to read highly colored suggestions into alife like that? If only I could find one thing in it all thatmattered greatly, one thing that would warm me when I am alone! Willlife never give me that one great moment?"

As she raised the window, she heard a sound in the plum-bushesoutside. It was only the house-dog roused from his sleep, butMargaret started violently and trembled so that she caught the footof the bed for support. Again she felt herself pursued by someoverwhelming longing, some desperate necessity for herself, like theoutstretching of helpless, unseen arms in the darkness, and the airseemed heavy with sighs of yearning. She fled to her bed with thewords, "I love you more than Christ, who died for me!" ringing inher ears. 

III. 

About midnight the dance at Lockhart's was at its height. Even theold men who had come to "look on" caught the spirit of revelry andstamped the floor with the vigor of old Silenus. Eric took theviolin from the Frenchman, and Minna Oleson sat at the organ, andthe music grew more and more characteristic--rude, half-mournfulmusic, made up of the folk-songs of the North, that the villagerssing through the long night in hamlets by the sea, when they arethinking of the sun, and the spring, and the fishermen so long away. To Margaret some of it sounded like Grieg's Peer Gynt music. Shefound something irresistibly infectious in the mirth of these peoplewho were so seldom merry, and she felt almost one of them. Somethingseemed struggling for freedom in them to-night, something of thejoyous childhood of the nations which exile had not killed. Thegirls were all boisterous with delight. Pleasure came to them butrarely, and when it came, they caught at it wildly and crushed itsfluttering wings in their strong brown fingers. They had a hard lifeenough, most of them. Torrid summers and freezing winters, labor anddrudgery and ignorance, were the portion of their girlhood; a shortwooing, a hasty, loveless marriage, unlimited maternity, thanklesssons, premature age and ugliness, were the dower of their womanhood. But what matter? To-night there was hot liquor in the glass and hotblood in the heart; to-night they danced. 

To-night Eric Hermannson had renewed his youth. He was no longer thebig, silent Norwegian who had sat at Margaret's feet and lookedhopelessly into her eyes. To-night he was a man, with a man's rightsand a man's power. To-night he was Siegfried indeed. His hair wasyellow as the heavy wheat in the ripe of summer, and his eyesflashed like the blue water between the ice-packs in the North Seas. He was not afraid of Margaret to-night, and when he danced with herhe held her firmly. She was tired and dragged on his arm a little, but the strength of the man was like an all-pervading fluid, stealing through her veins, awakening under her heart some nameless, unsuspected existence that had slumbered there all these years andthat went out through her throbbing fingertips to his that answered. She wondered if the hoydenish blood of some lawless ancestor, longasleep, were calling out in her to-night, some drop of a hotterfluid that the centuries had failed to cool, and why, if this cursewere in her, it had not spoken before. But was it a curse, thisawakening, this wealth before undiscovered, this music set free? Forthe first time in her life her heart held something stronger thanherself, was not this worth while? Then she ceased to wonder. Shelost sight of the lights and the faces, and the music was drowned bythe beating of her own arteries. She saw only the blue eyes thatflashed above her, felt only the warmth of that throbbing hand whichheld hers and which the blood of his heart fed. Dimly, as in adream, she saw the drooping shoulders, high white forehead andtight, cynical mouth of the man she was to marry in December. For anhour she had been crowding back the memory of that face with all herstrength. 

"Let us stop, this is enough, " she whispered. His only answer was totighten the arm behind her. She sighed and let that masterfulstrength bear her where it would. She forgot that this man waslittle more than a savage, that they would part at dawn. The bloodhas no memories, no reflections, no regrets for the past, noconsideration 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 hadbeen slipping out in couples to climb the windmill tower into thecooler atmosphere, 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 hetremendously wished her to go. Well, why not? This was a night ofthe unusual, when she was not herself at all, but was living anunreality. To-morrow, yes, in a few hours, there would be theVestibule Limited and the world. 

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

Once at the top and seated on the platform, they were silent. Margaret wondered if she would not hunger for that scene all herlife, through all the routine of the days to come. Above themstretched the great Western sky, serenely blue, even in the night, with its big, burning stars, never so cold and dead and far away asin denser atmospheres. The moon would not be up for twenty minutesyet, and all about the horizon, that wide horizon, which seemed toreach around the world, lingered a pale, white light, as of auniversal dawn. The weary wind brought up to them the heavy odors ofthe cornfields. The music of the dance sounded faintly from below. Eric leaned on his elbow beside her, his legs swinging down on theladder. His great shoulders looked more than ever like those of thestone Doryphorus, who stands in his perfect, reposeful strength inthe Louvre, and had often made her wonder if such men died foreverwith 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 to-morrow?"

"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; half-way 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 allhis eternity, that was a bitter thought. 

"No, Eric, I will not forget. You have all been too kind to me forthat. 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 sohappy again, ever. You will be happy many nights yet, I only thisone. I will dream sometimes, maybe. "

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

She sighed, but did not answer him. He drew a little closer andlooked into 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 whenthey pray, and said falteringly, "If I own all the world, I give himyou. "

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

"Thank you, Eric; I believe you would. But perhaps even then Ishould not be happy. Perhaps I have too much of it already. "

She did not take her hand away from him; she did not dare. She satstill and waited for the traditions in which she had always believedto speak and save her. But they were dumb. She belonged to anultra-refined civilization which tries to cheat nature with elegantsophistries. Cheat nature? Bah! One generation may do it, perhapstwo, but the third---- Can we ever rise above nature or sink belowher? Did she not turn on Jerusalem as upon Sodom, upon St. Anthonyin his desert as upon Nero in his seraglio? Does she not always cryin brutal triumph: "I am here still, at the bottom of things, warming the roots of life; you cannot starve me nor tame me northwart me; I made the world, I rule it, and I am its destiny. "

This woman, on a windmill tower at the world's end with a giantbarbarian, heard that cry to-night, and she was afraid! Ah! theterror and the delight of that moment when first we fear ourselves!Until then we 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 armabout her to help her. That arm could have thrown Thor's hammer outin the cornfields yonder, yet it scarcely touched her, and his handtrembled as it had done in the dance. His face was level with hersnow and the moonlight fell sharply upon it. All her life she hadsearched the faces of men for the look that lay in his eyes. Sheknew that that look had never shone for her before, would nevershine for her on earth again, that such love comes to one only indreams or in impossible places like this, unattainable always. Thiswas Love's self, in a moment it would die. Stung by the agonizedappeal that emanated from the man's whole being, she leaned forwardand laid her lips on his. Once, twice and again she heard the deeprespirations rattle in his throat while she held them there, and theriotous force under her heart became an engulfing weakness. He drewher up to him until he felt all the resistance go out of her body, until every nerve relaxed and yielded. When she drew her face backfrom 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 loveshe had 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 timewhen he should pay for this. Ah, there would be no quailing then! Ifever a soul went fearlessly, proudly down to the gates infernal, hisshould go. For a moment he fancied he was there already, treadingdown the tempest of flame, hugging the fiery hurricane to hisbreast. He wondered whether in ages gone, all the countless years ofsinning in which men had sold and lost and flung their souls away, any man had ever so cheated Satan, had ever bartered his soul for sogreat a price. 

It seemed but a little while till dawn. 

The carriage was brought to the door and Wyllis Elliot and hissister said good-by. She could not meet Eric's eyes as she gave himher hand, but as he stood by the horse's head, just as the carriagemoved off, she gave him one swift glance that said, "I will notforget. " In a moment the carriage was gone. 

Eric changed his coat and plunged his head into the watertank andwent to the barn to hook up his team. As he led his horses to thedoor, a shadow fell across his path, and he saw Skinner rising inhis stirrups. His rugged face was pale and worn with looking afterhis 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 almostanguish in the yearning he felt for this soul. 

"Eric, I didn't look for this from you. I thought God had set hismark on you if he ever had on any man. And it is for things likethis that you set your soul back a thousand years from God. Ofoolish and perverse generation!"

Eric drew himself up to his full height and looked off to where thenew day was gilding the corn-tassels and flooding the uplands withlight. As his nostrils drew in the breath of the dew and themorning, something from the only poetry he had ever read flashedacross his mind, and he murmured, half to himself, with dreamyexultation:

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

 _Cosmopolitan_, April 1900

_The Sentimentality of William Tavener_

It takes a strong woman to make any sort of success of living in theWest, and Hester undoubtedly was that. When people spoke of WilliamTavener as the most prosperous farmer in McPherson County, theyusually added that his wife was a "good manager. " She was anexecutive woman, quick of tongue and something of an imperatrix. Theonly reason her husband did not consult her about his business wasthat she did not wait to be consulted. 

It would have been quite impossible for one man, within the limitedsphere of human action, to follow all Hester's advice, but in theend William usually acted upon some of her suggestions. When sheincessantly denounced the "shiftlessness" of letting a new threshingmachine stand unprotected in the open, he eventually built a shedfor it. When she sniffed contemptuously at his notion of fencing ahog corral with sod walls, he made a spiritless beginning on thestructure--merely to "show his temper, " as she put it--but in theend he went off quietly to town and bought enough barbed wire tocomplete the fence. When the first heavy rains came on, and the pigsrooted down the sod wall and made little paths all over it tofacilitate their ascent, he heard his wife relate with relish thestory of the little pig that built a mud house, to the minister atthe dinner table, and William's gravity never relaxed for aninstant. Silence, indeed, was William's refuge and his strength. 

William set his boys a wholesome example to respect their mother. People who knew him very well suspected that he even admired her. Hewas a hard man towards his neighbors, and even towards his sons;grasping, determined and ambitious. 

There was an occasional blue day about the house when William wentover the store bills, but he never objected to items relating to hiswife's gowns or bonnets. So it came about that many of the foolish, unnecessary little things that Hester bought for boys, she hadcharged to her personal account. 

One spring night Hester sat in a rocking chair by the sitting roomwindow, darning socks. She rocked violently and sent her long needlevigorously back and forth over her gourd, and it took only a verycasual glance to see that she was wrought up over something. Williamsat on the other side of the table reading his farm paper. If he hadnoticed his wife's agitation, his calm, clean-shaven face betrayedno sign of concern. He must have noticed the sarcastic turn of herremarks at the supper table, and he must have noticed the moodysilence of the older boys as they ate. When supper was but half overlittle Billy, the youngest, had suddenly pushed back his plate andslipped away from the table, manfully trying to swallow a sob. ButWilliam Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestichorizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke. 

After supper the boys had gone to the pond under the willows in thebig cattle corral, to get rid of the dust of plowing. Hester couldhear an occasional splash and a laugh ringing clear through thestillness of the night, as she sat by the open window. She satsilent for almost an hour reviewing in her mind many plans ofattack. But she was too vigorous a woman to be much of a strategist, and she usually came to her point with directness. At last she cuther thread and suddenly put her darning down, saying emphatically:

"William, I don't think it would hurt you to let the boys go to thatcircus in town to-morrow. "

William continued to read his farm paper, but it was not Hester'scustom to wait for an answer. She usually divined his arguments andassailed them one by one before he uttered them. 

"You've been short of hands all summer, and you've worked the boyshard, and a man ought use his own flesh and blood as well as he doeshis hired hands. We're plenty able to afford it, and it's littleenough our boys ever spend. I don't see how you can expect 'em to besteady and hard workin', unless you encourage 'em a little. I nevercould see much harm in circuses, and our boys have never been toone. Oh, I know Jim Howley's boys get drunk an' carry on when theygo, but our boys ain't that sort, an' you know it, William. Theanimals are real instructive, an' our boys don't get to see much outhere on the prairie. It was different where we were raised, but theboys have got no advantages here, an' if you don't take care, they'll grow up to be greenhorns. "

Hester paused a moment, and William folded up his paper, butvouchsafed no remark. His sisters in Virginia had often said thatonly a quiet man like William could ever have lived with HesterPerkins. Secretly, William was rather proud of his wife's "gift ofspeech, " and of the fact that she could talk in prayer meeting asfluently as a man. He confined his own efforts in that line to abrief prayer at Covenant meetings. 

Hester shook out another sock and went on. 

"Nobody was ever hurt by goin' to a circus. Why, law me! I rememberI went to one myself once, when I was little. I had most forgotabout it. It was over at Pewtown, an' I remember how I had set myheart on going. I don't think I'd ever forgiven my father if hehadn't taken me, though that red clay road was in a frightful wayafter the rain. I mind they had an elephant and six poll parrots, an' a Rocky Mountain lion, an' a cage of monkeys, an' two camels. My! but they were a sight to me then!"

Hester dropped the black sock and shook her head and smiled at therecollection. She was not expecting anything from William yet, andshe was fairly startled when he said gravely, in much the same tonein which he announced the hymns in prayer meeting:

"No, there was only one camel. The other was a dromedary. "

She peered around the lamp and looked at him keenly. 

"Why, William, how come you to know?"

William folded his paper and answered with some hesitation, "I wasthere, too. "

Hester's interest flashed up. --"Well, I never, William! To think ofmy finding it out after all these years! Why, you couldn't have beenmuch bigger'n our Billy then. It seems queer I never saw you whenyou was little, to remember about you. But then you Back Creek folksnever have anything to do with us Gap people. But how come you togo? Your father was stricter with you than you are with your boys. "

"I reckon I shouldn't 'a gone, " he said slowly, "but boys will dofoolish things. I had done a good deal of fox hunting the winterbefore, and father let me keep the bounty money. I hired Tom Smith'sTap to weed the corn for me, an' I slipped off unbeknownst to fatheran' went to the show. "

Hester spoke up warmly: "Nonsense, William! It didn't do you noharm, I guess. You was always worked hard enough. It must have beena big sight for a little fellow. That clown must have just tickledyou to death. "

William crossed his knees and leaned back in his chair. 

"I reckon I could tell all that fool's jokes now. Sometimes I can'thelp thinkin' about 'em in meetin' when the sermon's long. I mind Ihad on a pair of new boots that hurt me like the mischief, but Iforgot all about 'em when that fellow rode the donkey. I recall Ihad to take them boots off as soon as I got out of sight o' town, and walked home in the mud barefoot. "

"O poor little fellow!" Hester ejaculated, drawing her chair nearerand leaning her elbows on the table. "What cruel shoes they did useto make for children. I remember I went up to Back Creek to see thecircus wagons go by. They came down from Romney, you know. Thecircus men stopped at the creek to water the animals, an' theelephant got stubborn an' broke a big limb off the yellow willowtree that grew there by the toll house porch, an' the Scribners were'fraid as death he'd pull the house down. But this much I saw himdo; he waded in the creek an' filled his trunk with water, andsquirted it in at the window and nearly ruined Ellen Scribner's pinklawn dress that she had just ironed an' laid out on the bed ready towear to the circus. "

"I reckon that must have been a trial to Ellen, " chuckled William, "for she was mighty prim in them days. "

Hester drew her chair still nearer William's. Since the children hadbegun growing up, her conversation with her husband had been almostwholly confined to questions of economy and expense. Theirrelationship had become purely a business one, like that betweenlandlord and tenant. In her desire to indulge her boys she hadunconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitudetowards her husband. No debtor ever haggled with his usurer moredoggedly than did Hester with her husband in behalf of her sons. Thestrategic contest had gone on so long that it had almost crowded outthe memory of a closer relationship. This exchange of confidencesto-night, when common recollections took them unawares and openedtheir hearts, had all the miracle of romance. They talked on and on;of old neighbors, of old familiar faces in the valley where they hadgrown up, of long forgotten incidents of their youth--weddings, picnics, sleighing parties and baptizings. For years they had talkedof nothing else but butter and eggs and the prices of things, andnow they had as much to say to each other as people who meet after along separation. 

When the clock struck ten, William rose and went over to his walnutsecretary and unlocked it. From his red leather wallet he took out aten dollar bill and laid it on the table beside Hester. 

"Tell the boys not to stay late, an' not to drive the horses hard, "he said quietly, and went off to bed. 

Hester blew out the lamp and sat still in the dark a long time. Sheleft the bill lying on the table where William had placed it. Shehad a painful sense of having missed something, or lost something;she felt that somehow the years had cheated her. 

The little locust trees that grew by the fence were white withblossoms. Their heavy odor floated in to her on the night wind andrecalled a night long ago, when the first whip-poor-Will of theSpring was heard, and the rough, buxom girls of Hawkins Gap had heldher laughing and struggling under the locust trees, and searched inher bosom for a lock of her sweetheart's hair, which is supposed tobe on every girl's breast when the first whip-poor-Will sings. Twoof those same girls had been her bridesmaids. Hester had been a veryhappy bride. She rose and went softly into the room where Williamlay. He was sleeping heavily, but occasionally moved his hand beforehis face to ward off the flies. Hester went into the parlor and tookthe piece of mosquito net from the basket of wax apples and pearsthat her sister had made before she died. One of the boys hadbrought it all the way from Virginia, packed in a tin pail, sinceHester would not risk shipping so precious an ornament by freight. She went back to the bed room and spread the net over William'shead. 

Then she sat down by the bed and listened to his deep, regularbreathing until she heard the boys returning. She went out to meetthem and warn them not to waken their father. 

"I'll be up early to get your breakfast, boys. Your father says youcan go to the show. " As she handed the money to the eldest, she felta sudden throb of allegiance to her husband and said sharply, "Andyou be careful of that, an' don't waste it. Your father works hardfor his money. "

The boys looked at each other in astonishment and felt that they hadlost a powerful ally. 

 _Library_, May 12, 1900

_The Namesake_

Seven of us, students, sat one evening in Hartwell's studio on theBoulevard St. Michel. We were all fellow-countrymen; one from NewHampshire, one from Colorado, another from Nevada, several from thefarm lands of the Middle West, and I myself from California. LyonHartwell, though born abroad, was simply, as every one knew, "fromAmerica. " He seemed, almost more than any other one living man, tomean all of it--from ocean to ocean. When he was in Paris, hisstudio was always open to the seven of us who were there thatevening, and we intruded upon his leisure as often as we thoughtpermissible. 

Although we were within the terms of the easiest of all intimacies, and although the great sculptor, even when he was more than usuallysilent, was at all times the most gravely cordial of hosts, yet, onthat long remembered evening, as the sunlight died on the burnishedbrown of the horse-chestnuts below the windows, a perceptibledullness yawned through our conversation. 

We were, indeed, somewhat low in spirit, for one of our number, Charley Bentley, was leaving us indefinitely, in response to animperative summons from home. To-morrow his studio, just across thehall from Hartwell's, was to pass into other hands, and Bentley'sluggage was even now piled in discouraged resignation before hisdoor. The various bales and boxes seemed literally to weigh upon usas we sat in his neighbor's hospitable rooms, drearily putting inthe time until he should leave us to catch the ten o'clock expressfor Dieppe. 

The day we had got through very comfortably, for Bentley made it theoccasion of a somewhat pretentious luncheon at Maxim's. There hadbeen twelve of us at table, and the two young Poles were thirsty, the Gascon so fabulously entertaining, that it was near upon fiveo'clock when we put down our liqueur glasses for the last time, andthe red, perspiring waiter, having pocketed the reward of hisarduous and protracted services, bowed us affably to the door, flourishing his napkin and brushing back the streaks of wet, blackhair from his rosy forehead. Our guests having betaken themselvesbelated to their respective engagements, the rest of us returnedwith Bentley--only to be confronted by the depressing array beforehis door. A glance about his denuded rooms had sufficed to chill theglow of the afternoon, and we fled across the hall in a body andbegged Lyon Hartwell to take us in. 

Bentley had said very little about it, but we all knew what it meantto him to be called home. Each of us knew what it would mean tohimself, and each had felt something of that quickened sense ofopportunity which comes at seeing another man in any way counted outof the race. Never had the game seemed so enchanting, the chance toplay it such a piece of unmerited, unbelievable good fortune. 

It must have been, I think, about the middle of October, for Iremember that the sycamores were almost bare in the LuxembourgGardens that morning, and the terrace about the queens of Francewere strewn with crackling brown leaves. The fat red roses, out thesummer long on the stand of the old flower woman at the corner, hadgiven place to dahlias and purple asters. First glimpses of autumntoilettes flashed from the carriages; wonderful little bonnetsnodded at one along the Champs-Elysées; and in the Quarter anoccasional feather boa, red or black or white, brushed one's coatsleeve in the gay twilight of the early evening. The crisp, sunnyautumn air was all day full of the stir of people and carriages andof the cheer of salutations; greetings of the students, returnedbrown and bearded from their holiday, gossip of people come backfrom Trouville, from St. Valery, from Dieppe, from all over Brittanyand the Norman coast. Everywhere was the joyousness of return, thetaking up again of life and work and play. 

I had felt ever since early morning that this was the saddest of allpossible seasons for saying good-by to that old, old city of youth, and to that little corner of it on the south shore which since theDark Ages themselves--yes, and before--has been so peculiarly theland of the young. 

I can recall our very postures as we lounged about Hartwell's roomsthat evening, with Bentley making occasional hurried trips to hisdesolated workrooms across the hall--as if haunted by a feeling ofhaving forgotten something--or stopping to poke nervously at his_perroquets_, which he had bequeathed to Hartwell, gilt cage andall. Our host himself sat on the couch, his big, bronze-likeshoulders backed up against the window, his shaggy head, beakednose, and long chin cut clean against the gray light. 

Our drowsing interest, in so far as it could be said to be fixedupon anything, was centered upon Hartwell's new figure, which stoodon the block ready to be cast in bronze, intended as a monument forsome American battlefield. He called it "The Color Sergeant. " It wasthe figure of a young soldier running, clutching the folds of aflag, the staff of which had been shot away. We had known it in allthe stages of its growth, and the splendid action and feeling of thething had come to have a kind of special significance for the halfdozen of us who often gathered at Hartwell's rooms--though, intruth, there was as much to dishearten one as to inflame, in thecase of a man who had done so much in a field so amazinglydifficult; who had thrown up in bronze all the restless, teemingforce of that adventurous wave still climbing westward in our ownland across the waters. We recalled his "Scout, " his "Pioneer, " his"Gold Seekers, " and those monuments in which he had invested one andanother of the heroes of the Civil War with such convincing dignityand power. 

"Where in the world does he get the heat to make an idea like thatcarry?" Bentley remarked morosely, scowling at the clay figure. "Hang me, Hartwell, if I don't think it's just because you're notreally an American at all, that you can look at it like that. "

The big man shifted uneasily against the window. "Yes, " he repliedsmiling, "perhaps there is something in that. My citizenship wassomewhat belated and emotional in its flowering. I've half a mind totell you about it, Bentley. " He rose uncertainly, and, afterhesitating a moment, went back into his workroom, where he beganfumbling among the litter in the corners. 

At the prospect of any sort of personal expression from Hartwell, weglanced questioningly at one another; for although he made us feelthat he liked to have us about, we were always held at a distance bya certain diffidence of his. There were rare occasions--when he wasin the heat of work or of ideas--when he forgot to be shy, but theywere so exceptional that no flattery was quite so seductive as beingtaken for a moment into Hartwell's confidence. Even in the matter ofopinions--the commonest of currency in our circle--he was niggardlyand prone to qualify. No man ever guarded his mystery moreeffectually. There was a singular, intense spell, therefore, aboutthose few evenings when he had broken through this excessivemodesty, or shyness, or melancholy, and had, as it were, committedhimself. 

When Hartwell returned from the back room, he brought with him anunframed canvas which he put on an easel near his clay figure. Wedrew close about it, for the darkness was rapidly coming on. Despitethe dullness of the light, we instantly recognized the boy ofHartwell's "Color Sergeant. " It was the portrait of a very handsomelad in uniform, standing beside a charger impossibly rearing. Notonly in his radiant countenance and flashing eyes, but in every lineof his young body there was an energy, a gallantry, a joy of life, that arrested and challenged one. 

"Yes, that's where I got the notion, " Hartwell remarked, wanderingback to his seat in the window. "I've wanted to do it for years, butI've never felt quite sure of myself. I was afraid of missing it. Hewas an uncle of mine, my father's half-brother, and I was named forhim. He was killed in one of the big battles of Sixty-four, when Iwas a child. I never saw him--never knew him until he had been deadfor twenty years. And then, one night, I came to know him as wesometimes do living persons--intimately, in a single moment. "

He paused to knock the ashes out of his short pipe, refilled it, andpuffed at it thoughtfully for a few moments with his hands on hisknees. Then, settling back heavily among the cushions and lookingabsently out of the window, he began his story. As he proceededfurther and further into the experience which he was trying toconvey to us, his voice sank so low and was sometimes so chargedwith feeling, that I almost thought he had forgotten our presenceand was remembering aloud. Even Bentley forgot his nervousness inastonishment and sat breathless under the spell of the man's thusbreathing his memories out into the dusk. 

"It was just fifteen years ago this last spring that I first wenthome, and Bentley's having to cut away like this brings it all backto me. 

"I was born, you know, in Italy. My father was a sculptor, though Idare say you've not heard of him. He was one of those first fellowswho went over after Story and Powers, --went to Italy for 'Art, 'quite simply; to lift from its native bough the willing, iridescentbird. Their story is told, informingly enough, by some of thoseingenuous marble things at the Metropolitan. My father came oversome time before the outbreak of the Civil War, and was regarded asa renegade by his family because he did not go home to enter thearmy. His half-brother, the only child of my grandfather's secondmarriage, enlisted at fifteen and was killed the next year. I wasten years old when the news of his death reached us. My mother diedthe following winter, and I was sent away to a Jesuit school, whilemy father, already ill himself, stayed on at Rome, chipping away athis Indian maidens and marble goddesses, still gloomily seeking thething for which he had made himself the most unhappy of exiles. 

"He died when I was fourteen, but even before that I had been put towork under an Italian sculptor. He had an almost morbid desire thatI should carry on his work, under, as he often pointed out to me, conditions so much more auspicious. He left me in the charge of hisone intimate friend, an American gentleman in the consulate at Rome, and his instructions were that I was to be educated there and tolive there until I was twenty-one. After I was of age, I came toParis and studied under one master after another until I was nearlythirty. Then, almost for the first time, I was confronted by a dutywhich was not my pleasure. 

"My grandfather's death, at an advanced age, left an invalid maidensister of my father's quite alone in the world. She had suffered foryears from a cerebral disease, a slow decay of the faculties whichrendered her almost helpless. I decided to go to America and, ifpossible, bring her back to Paris, where I seemed on my way towardwhat my poor father had wished for me. 

"On my arrival at my father's birthplace, however, I found that thiswas not to be thought of. To tear this timid, feeble, shrinkingcreature, doubly aged by years and illness, from the spot where shehad been rooted for a lifetime, would have been little short ofbrutality. To leave her to the care of strangers seemed equallyheartless. There was clearly nothing for me to do but to remain andwait for that slow and painless malady to run its course. I wasthere something over two years. 

"My grandfather's home, his father's homestead before him, lay onthe high banks of a river in Western Pennsylvania. The little towntwelve miles down the stream, whither my great-grandfather used todrive his ox-wagon on market days, had become, in two generations, one of the largest manufacturing cities in the world. For hundredsof miles about us the gentle hill slopes were honeycombed with gaswells and coal shafts; oil derricks creaked in every valley andmeadow; the brooks were sluggish and discolored with crudepetroleum, and the air was impregnated by its searching odor. Thegreat glass and iron manufactories had come up and up the riveralmost to our very door; their smoky exhalations brooded over us, and their crashing was always in our ears. I was plunged into thevery incandescence of human energy. But, though my nerves tingledwith the feverish, passionate endeavor which snapped in the very airabout me, none of these great arteries seemed to feed me; thistumultuous life did not warm me. On every side were the great muddyrivers, the ragged mountains from which the timber was beingruthlessly torn away, the vast tracts of wild country, and thegulches that were like wounds in the earth; everywhere the glare ofthat relentless energy which followed me like a searchlight andseemed to scorch and consume me. I could only hide myself in thetangled garden, where the dropping of a leaf or the whistle of abird was the only incident. 

"The Hartwell homestead had been sold away little by little, untilall that remained of it was garden and orchard. The house, a squarebrick structure, stood in the midst of a great garden which slopedtoward the river, ending in a grassy bank which fell some forty feetto the water's edge. The garden was now little more than a tangle ofneglected shrubbery; damp, rank, and of that intense blue-greenpeculiar to vegetation in smoky places where the sun shines butrarely, and the mists form early in the evening and hang late in themorning. 

"I shall never forget it as I saw it first, when I arrived there inthe chill of a backward June. The long, rank grass, thick and softand falling in billows, was always wet until midday. The gravelwalks were bordered with great lilac-bushes, mock-orange, andbridal-wreath. Back of the house was a neglected rose garden, surrounded by a low stone wall over which the long suckers trailedand matted. They had wound their pink, thorny tentacles, layer uponlayer, about the lock and the hinges of the rusty iron gate. Eventhe porches of the house, and the very windows, were damp and heavywith growth: wistaria, clematis, honeysuckle, and trumpet vine. Thegarden was grown up with trees, especially that part of it which layabove the river. The bark of the old locusts was blackened by thesmoke that crept continually up the valley, and their featheryfoliage, so merry in its movement and so yellow and joyous in itscolor, seemed peculiarly precious under that somber sky. There weresycamores and copper beeches; gnarled apple-trees, too old to bear;and fall pear-trees, hung with a sharp, hard fruit in October; allwith a leafage singularly rich and luxuriant, and peculiarly vividin color. The oaks about the house had been old trees when mygreat-grandfather built his cabin there, more than a century before, and this garden was almost the only spot for miles along the riverwhere any of the original forest growth still survived. The smokefrom the mills was fatal to trees of the larger sort, and even thesehad the look of doomed things--bent a little toward the town andseemed to wait with head inclined before that on-coming, shriekingforce. 

"About the river, too, there was a strange hush, a tragicsubmission--it was so leaden and sullen in its color, and it flowedso soundlessly forever past our door. 

"I sat there every evening, on the high veranda overlooking it, watching the dim outlines of the steep hills on the other shore, theflicker of the lights on the island, where there was a boat-house, and listening to the call of the boatmen through the mist. The mistcame as certainly as night, whitened by moonshine or starshine. Thetin water-pipes went splash, splash, with it all evening, and thewind, when it rose at all, was little more than a sighing of the oldboughs and a troubled breath in the heavy grasses. 

"At first it was to think of my distant friends and my old life thatI used to sit there; but after awhile it was simply to watch thedays and weeks go by, like the river which seemed to carry themaway. 

"Within the house I was never at home. Month followed month, and yetI could feel no sense of kinship with anything there. Under the roofwhere my father and grandfather were born, I remained utterlydetached. The somber rooms never spoke to me, the old furniturenever seemed tinctured with race. This portrait of my boy uncle wasthe only thing to which I could draw near, the only link withanything I had ever known before. 

"There is a good deal of my father in the face, but it is my fathertransformed and glorified; his hesitating discontent drowned in akind of triumph. From my first day in that house, I continuallyturned to this handsome kinsman of mine, wondering in what terms hehad lived and had his hope; what he had found there to look likethat, to bound at one, after all those years, so joyously out of thecanvas. 

"From the timid, clouded old woman over whose life I had come towatch, I learned that in the backyard, near the old rose garden, there was a locust-tree which my uncle had planted. After his death, while it was still a slender sapling, his mother had a seat builtround it, and she used to sit there on summer evenings. His gravewas under the apple-trees in the old orchard. 

"My aunt could tell me little more than this. There were days whenshe seemed not to remember him at all. 

"It was from an old soldier in the village that I learned the boy'sstory. Lyon was, the old man told me, but fourteen when the firstenlistment occurred, but was even then eager to go. He was in thecourt-house square every evening to watch the recruits at theirdrill, and when the home company was ordered off he rode into thecity on his pony to see the men board the train and to wave themgood-by. The next year he spent at home with a tutor, but when hewas fifteen he held his parents to their promise and went into thearmy. He was color sergeant of his regiment and fell in a chargeupon the breastworks of a fort about a year after his enlistment. 

"The veteran showed me an account of this charge which had beenwritten for the village paper by one of my uncle's comrades who hadseen his part in the engagement. It seems that as his company wererunning at full speed across the bottom lands toward the fortifiedhill, a shell burst over them. This comrade, running beside myuncle, saw the colors waver and sink as if falling, and looked tosee that the boy's hand and forearm had been torn away by theexploding shrapnel. The boy, he thought, did not realize the extentof his injury, for he laughed, shouted something which his comradedid not catch, caught the flag in his left hand, and ran on up thehill. They went splendidly up over the breastworks, but just as myuncle, his colors flying, reached the top of the embankment, asecond shell carried away his left arm at the arm-pit, and he fellover the wall with the flag settling about him. 

"It was because this story was ever present with me, because I wasunable to shake it off, that I began to read such books as mygrandfather had collected upon the Civil War. I found that this warwas fought largely by boys, that more men enlisted at eighteen thanat any other age. When I thought of those battlefields--and Ithought of them much in those days--there was always that glory ofyouth above them, that impetuous, generous passion stirring the longlines on the march, the blue battalions in the plain. The bugle, whenever I have heard it since, has always seemed to me the verygolden throat of that boyhood which spent itself so gaily, soincredibly. 

"I used often to wonder how it was that this uncle of mine, whoseemed to have possessed all the charm and brilliancy allotted tohis family and to have lived up its vitality in one splendid hour, had left so little trace in the house where he was born and where hehad awaited his destiny. Look as I would, I could find no lettersfrom him, no clothing or books that might have been his. He had beendead but twenty years, and yet nothing seemed to have survivedexcept the tree he had planted. It seemed incredible and cruel thatno physical memory of him should linger to be cherished among hiskindred, --nothing but the dull image in the brain of that agedsister. I used to pace the garden walks in the evening, wonderingthat no breath of his, no echo of his laugh, of his call to his ponyor his whistle to his dogs, should linger about those shaded pathswhere the pale roses exhaled their dewy, country smell. Sometimes, in the dim starlight, I have thought that I heard on the grassesbeside me the stir of a footfall lighter than my own, and under theblack arch of the lilacs I have fancied that he bore me company. 

"There was, I found, one day in the year for which my old auntwaited, and which stood out from the months that were all of asameness to her. On the thirtieth of May she insisted that I shouldbring down the big flag from the attic and run it up upon the tallflagstaff beside Lyon's tree in the garden. Later in the morning shewent with me to carry some of the garden flowers to the grave in theorchard, --a grave scarcely larger than a child's. 

"I had noticed, when I was hunting for the flag in the attic, aleather trunk with my own name stamped upon it, but was unable tofind the key. My aunt was all day less apathetic than usual; sheseemed to realize more clearly who I was, and to wish me to be withher. I did not have an opportunity to return to the attic untilafter dinner that evening, when I carried a lamp up-stairs andeasily forced the lock of the trunk. I found all the things that Ihad looked for; put away, doubtless, by his mother, and stillsmelling faintly of lavender and rose leaves; his clothes, hisexercise books, his letters from the army, his first boots, hisriding-whip, some of his toys, even. I took them out and replacedthem gently. As I was about to shut the lid, I picked up a copy ofthe Æneid, on the fly-leaf of which was written in a slanting, boyish hand, Lyon Hartwell, January, 1862. 

He had gone to the wars in Sixty-three, I remembered. 

"My uncle, I gathered, was none too apt at his Latin, for the pageswere dog-eared and rubbed and interlined, the margins mottled withpencil sketches--bugles, stacked bayonets, and artillery carriages. In the act of putting the book down, I happened to run over thepages to the end, and on the fly-leaf at the back I saw his nameagain, and a drawing--with his initials and a date--of the Federalflag; above it, written in a kind of arch and in the same unformedhand:

 'Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?'

It was a stiff, wooden sketch, not unlike a detail from someEgyptian inscription, but, the moment I saw it, wind and colorseemed to touch it. I caught up the book, blew out the lamp, andrushed down into the garden. 

"I seemed, somehow, at last to have known him; to have been with himin that careless, unconscious moment and to have known him as he wasthen. 

"As I sat there in the rush of this realization, the wind began torise, stirring the light foliage of the locust over my head andbringing, fresher than before, the woody odor of the pale roses thatoverran the little neglected garden. Then, as it grew stronger, itbrought the sound of something sighing and stirring over my head inthe perfumed darkness. 

"I thought of that sad one of the Destinies who, as the Greeksbelieved, watched from birth over those marked for a violent oruntimely death. Oh, I could see him, there in the shine of themorning, his book idly on his knee, his flashing eyes lookingstraight before him, and at his side that grave figure, hidden inher draperies, her eyes following his, but seeing so muchfarther--seeing what he never saw, that great moment at the end, when he swayed above his comrades on the earthen wall. 

"All the while, the bunting I had run up in the morning flapped foldagainst fold, heaving and tossing softly in the dark--against a skyso black with rain clouds that I could see above me only the blur ofsomething in soft, troubled motion. 

"The experience of that night, coming so overwhelmingly to a man sodead, almost rent me in pieces. It was the same feeling that artistsknow when we, rarely, achieve truth in our work; the feeling ofunion with some great force, of purpose and security, of being gladthat we have lived. For the first time I felt the pull of race andblood and kindred, and felt beating within me things that had notbegun with me. It was as if the earth under my feet had grasped androoted me, and were pouring its essence into me. I sat there untilthe dawn of morning, and all night long my life seemed to be pouringout of me and running into the ground. "

 * * * * *

Hartwell drew a long breath that lifted his heavy shoulders, andthen let them fall again. He shifted a little and faced moresquarely the scattered, silent company before him. The darkness hadmade us almost invisible to each other, and, except for theoccasional red circuit of a cigarette end traveling upward from thearm of a chair, he might have supposed us all asleep. 

"And so, " Hartwell added thoughtfully, "I naturally feel an interestin fellows who are going home. It's always an experience. "

No one said anything, and in a moment there was a loud rap at thedoor, --the concierge, come to take down Bentley's luggage and toannounce that the cab was below. Bentley got his hat and coat, enjoined Hartwell to take good care of his _perroquets_, gave eachof us a grip of the hand, and went briskly down the long flights ofstairs. We followed him into the street, calling our good wishes, and saw him start on his drive across the lighted city to the GareSt. Lazare. 

 _McClure's_, March 1907

_The Enchanted Bluff_

We had our swim before sundown, and while we were cooking our supperthe oblique rays of light made a dazzling glare on the white sandabout us. The translucent red ball itself sank behind the brownstretches of corn field as we sat down to eat, and the warm layer ofair that had rested over the water and our clean sand-bar grewfresher and smelled of the rank ironweed and sunflowers growing onthe flatter shore. The river was brown and sluggish, like any otherof the half-dozen streams that water the Nebraska corn lands. On oneshore was an irregular line of bald clay bluffs where a fewscrub-oaks with thick trunks and flat, twisted tops threw lightshadows on the long grass. The western shore was low and level, withcorn fields that stretched to the sky-line, and all along thewater's edge were little sandy coves and beaches where slimcottonwoods and willow saplings flickered. 

The turbulence of the river in spring-time discouraged milling, and, beyond keeping the old red bridge in repair, the busy farmers didnot concern themselves with the stream; so the Sandtown boys wereleft in undisputed possession. In the autumn we hunted quail throughthe miles of stubble and fodder land along the flat shore, and, after the winter skating season was over and the ice had gone out, the spring freshets and flooded bottoms gave us our great excitementof the year. The channel was never the same for two successiveseasons. Every spring the swollen stream undermined a bluff to theeast, or bit out a few acres of corn field to the west and whirledthe soil away to deposit it in spumy mud banks somewhere else. Whenthe water fell low in midsummer, new sand-bars were thus exposed todry and whiten in the August sun. Sometimes these were banked sofirmly that the fury of the next freshet failed to unseat them; thelittle willow seedlings emerged triumphantly from the yellow froth, broke into spring leaf, shot up into summer growth, and with theirmesh of roots bound together the moist sand beneath them against thebatterings of another April. Here and there a cottonwood soonglittered among them, quivering in the low current of air that, evenon 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, that we built our watch-fire; not in the thicket of dancing willowwands, but on the level terrace of fine sand which had been addedthat spring; a little new bit of world, beautifully ridged withripple marks, and strewn with the tiny skeletons of turtles andfish, all as white and dry as if they had been expertly cured. Wehad been careful not to mar the freshness of the place, although weoften swam out to it on summer evenings and lay on the sand to rest. 

This was our last watch-fire of the year, and there were reasons whyI should remember it better than any of the others. Next week theother boys were to file back to their old places in the SandtownHigh School, but I was to go up to the Divide to teach my firstcountry school in the Norwegian district. I was already homesick atthe thought of quitting the boys with whom I had always played; ofleaving the river, and going up into a windy plain that was allwindmills and corn fields and big pastures; where there was nothingwilful or unmanageable in the landscape, no new islands, and nochance of unfamiliar birds--such as often 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 werefriends mainly because of the river. There were the two Hasslerboys, Fritz and Otto, sons of the little German tailor. They werethe youngest of us; ragged boys of ten and twelve, with sunburnedhair, weather-stained faces, and pale blue eyes. Otto, the elder, was the best mathematician in school, and clever at his books, buthe always dropped out in the spring term as if the river could notget on without him. He and Fritz caught the fat, horned catfish andsold them about the town, and they lived so much in the water thatthey were as brown and sandy as the river itself. 

There was Percy Pound, a fat, freckled boy with chubby cheeks, whotook half a dozen boys' story-papers and was always being kept infor reading detective stories behind his desk. There was Tip Smith, destined by his freckles and red hair to be the buffoon in all ourgames, though he walked like a timid little old man and had a funny, cracked laugh. Tip worked hard in his father's grocery store everyafternoon, and swept it out before school in the morning. Even hisrecreations were laborious. He collected cigarette cards and tintobacco-tags indefatigably, and would sit for hours humped up over asnarling little scroll-saw which he kept in his attic. His dearestpossessions were some little pill-bottles that purported to containgrains of wheat from the Holy Land, water from the Jordan and theDead Sea, and earth from the Mount of Olives. His father had boughtthese dull things from a Baptist missionary who peddled them, andTip seemed to derive great satisfaction from their remote origin. 

The tall boy was Arthur Adams. He had fine hazel eyes that werealmost too reflective and sympathetic for a boy, and such a pleasantvoice that we all loved to hear him read aloud. Even when he had toread poetry aloud at school, no one ever thought of laughing. To besure, he was not at school very much of the time. He was seventeenand should have finished the High School the year before, but he wasalways off somewhere with his gun. Arthur's mother was dead, and hisfather, who was feverishly absorbed in promoting schemes, wanted tosend the boy away to school and get him off his hands; but Arthuralways begged off for another year and promised to study. I rememberhim as a tall, brown boy with an intelligent face, always loungingamong a lot of us little fellows, laughing at us oftener than withus, but such a soft, satisfied laugh that we felt rather flatteredwhen we provoked it. In after-years people said that Arthur had beengiven to evil ways even as a lad, and it is true that we often sawhim with the gambler's sons and with old Spanish Fanny's boy, but ifhe learned anything ugly in their company he never betrayed it tous. We would have followed Arthur anywhere, and I am bound to saythat he led us into no worse places than the cattail marshes and thestubble fields. These, then, were the boys who camped with me thatsummer night upon the sand-bar. 

After we finished our supper we beat the willow thicket fordriftwood. By the time we had collected enough, night had fallen, and the pungent, weedy smell from the shore increased with thecoolness. We threw ourselves down about the fire and made anotherfutile effort to show Percy Pound the Little Dipper. We had tried itoften before, but he could never be got past the big one. 

"You see those three big stars just below the handle, with thebright one in the middle?" said Otto Hassler; "that's Orion's belt, and the bright one is the clasp. " I crawled behind Otto's shoulderand sighted up his arm to the star that seemed perched upon the tipof his steady forefinger. The Hassler boys did seine-fishing atnight, and they knew a good 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. "Any one might getlost and need to know that. "

We all looked up at it. 

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

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

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

We lay back and looked, meditating, at the dark cover of the world. The gurgle of the water had become heavier. We had often noticed amutinous, complaining note in it at night, quite different from itscheerful daytime chuckle, and seeming like the voice of a muchdeeper and more powerful stream. Our water had always these twomoods: the one of sunny complaisance, the other of inconsolable, passionate regret. 

"Queer how the stars are all in sort of diagrams, " remarked Otto. "You could do most any proposition in geometry with 'em. They alwayslook as if they meant something. Some folks say everybody's fortuneis all written 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 the stars don't keep any close tally on Sandtown folks. "

We were speculating on how many times we could count a hundredbefore the evening star went down behind the corn fields, 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. It came up like a galleon in full sail; an enormous, barbaric thing, red as an angry heathen god. 

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

"Go on, Perce. You got that out of _Golden Days_. Do you believethat, 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 werestill conjecturing when we heard a loud splash in the water. 

"Must have been a big cat jumping, " said Fritz. "They do sometimes. They must 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?"Fritz asked. He lay like a little brown Indian, close to the fire, his chin on his hand and his bare feet in the air. His brotherlaughed at him, but Arthur took his suggestion seriously. 

"Some of the Spaniards thought there was gold up here somewhere. Seven cities chuck full of gold, they had it, and Coronado and hismen came up to hunt it. The Spaniards were all over this countryonce. "

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

We all laughed at this. 

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

"I wonder where this river really does begin?" Tip mused. That wasan old and a favorite mystery which the map did not clearly explain. On the map the little black line stopped somewhere in westernKansas; but since rivers generally rose in mountains, it was onlyreasonable to suppose that ours came from the Rockies. Itsdestination, we knew, was the Missouri, and the Hassler boys alwaysmaintained that we could embark at Sandtown in flood-time, followour noses, and eventually arrive at New Orleans. Now they took uptheir old argument. "If us boys had grit enough to try it, itwouldn'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 Hasslerboys wanted to see the stock-yards in Kansas City, and Percy wantedto see a big store in Chicago. Arthur was interlocutor and did notbetray himself. 

"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 faraway. 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 railroadsor anything. You have to go on mules, and you run out of waterbefore you get 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 thishere rock goes up all by itself, like a monument. They call it theEnchanted Bluff down there, because no white man has ever been ontop of it. The sides are smooth rock, and straight up, like a wall. The Indians say that hundreds of years ago, before the Spaniardscame, there was a village away up there in the air. The tribe thatlived there had some sort of steps, made out of wood and bark, hungdown over the face of the bluff, and the braves went down to huntand carried water up in big jars swung on their backs. They kept abig supply of water and dried meat up there, and never went downexcept to hunt. They were a peaceful tribe that made cloth andpottery, and they went up there to get out of the wars. You see, they could pick off any war party that tried to get up their littlesteps. The Indians say they were a handsome people, and they hadsome sort of a 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 campedat the foot of the rock, wondering what to do, a war party from thenorth came along and massacred 'em to a man, with all the old folksand women looking on from the rock. Then the war party went on southand left the village to get down the best way they could. Of coursethey never got down. They starved to death up there, and when thewar party came back on their way north, they could hear the childrencrying from the edge of the bluff where they had crawled out, butthey didn't see a sign of a grown Indian, and nobody has ever beenup there since. "

We exclaimed at this dolorous legend and sat up. 

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

"Oh, pretty big. Big enough so that the rock doesn't look nearly astall as it is. The top's bigger than the base. The bluff is sort ofworn away for several hundred feet up. That's one reason it's sohard 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 alongonce and 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 somewayand pull a ladder up?"

Tip's little eyes were shining with excitement. "I know a way. Meand Uncle Bill talked it all over. There's a kind of rocket thatwould take a rope over--life-savers use 'em--and then you couldhoist a rope-ladder and peg it down at the bottom and make it tightwith guy-ropes on the other side. I'm going to climb that therebluff, and I've got it all planned 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 oftheir idols. There might be 'most anything up there. Anyhow, I wantto see. "

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

"Dead sure. Hardly anybody ever goes down there. Some hunters triedto cut steps in the rock once, but they didn't get higher than a mancan reach. The Bluff's all red granite, and Uncle Bill thinks it's aboulder the glaciers left. It's a queer place, anyhow. Nothing butcactus and desert for hundreds of miles, and yet right under thebluff there's good water and plenty of grass. That's why the bisonused to go down there. "

Suddenly we heard a scream above our fire, and jumped up to see adark, slim bird floating southward far above us--a whooping-crane, we knew by her cry and her long neck. We ran to the edge of theisland, hoping we might see her alight, but she wavered southwardalong the rivercourse until we lost her. The Hassler boys declaredthat by the look of the heavens it must be after midnight, so wethrew more wood on our fire, put on our jackets, and curled down inthe warm sand. Several of us pretended to doze, but I fancy we werereally thinking about Tip's Bluff and the extinct people. Over inthe wood the ring-doves were calling mournfully to one another, andonce we heard a dog bark, far away. "Somebody getting into oldTommy's melon patch, " Fritz murmured, sleepily, but nobody answeredhim. By and by Percy spoke out of the shadow. 

"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 restof us exactly what he finds, " remarked one of the Hassler boys, andto this we all readily assented. 

Somewhat reassured, I dropped off to sleep. I must have dreamedabout a race for the Bluff, for I awoke in a kind of fear that otherpeople were getting ahead of me and that I was losing my chance. Isat up in my damp clothes and looked at the other boys, who laytumbled in uneasy attitudes about the dead fire. It was still dark, but the sky was blue with the last wonderful azure of night. Thestars glistened like crystal globes, and trembled as if they shonethrough a depth of clear water. Even as I watched, they began topale and the sky brightened. Day came suddenly, almostinstantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue night, and itwas gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and all manner oflittle insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows. A breezesprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripened corn. 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 to ourisland 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 andwill go nowhere that his red touring-car cannot carry him. OttoHassler went on the railroad and lost his foot braking; after whichhe and Fritz succeeded their father as the town tailors. 

Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his life--he died beforehe was twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I was home on oneof my college vacations, he was sitting in a steamer-chair under acottonwood tree in the little yard behind one of the two Sandtownsaloons. He was very untidy and his hand was not steady, but when herose, unabashed, to greet me, his eyes were as clear and warm asever. When I had talked with him for an hour and heard him laughagain, I wondered how it was that when Nature had taken such painswith a man, from his hands to the arch of his long foot, she hadever lost him in Sandtown. He joked about Tip Smith's Bluff, anddeclared he was going down there just as soon as the weather gotcooler; he thought the Grand Cañon might be worth while, 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 summermorning. 

Tip Smith still talks about going to New Mexico. He married aslatternly, unthrifty country girl, has been much tied to aperambulator, and has grown stooped and gray from irregular mealsand broken sleep. But the worst of his difficulties are now over, and he has, as he says, come into easy water. When I was last inSandtown I walked home with him late one moonlight night, after hehad balanced his cash and shut up his store. We took the long wayaround and sat down on the schoolhouse steps, and between us wequite revived the romance of the lone red rock and the extinctpeople. Tip insists that he still means to go down there, but hethinks now he will wait until his boy, Bert, is old enough to gowith him. Bert has been let into the story, and thinks of nothingbut the Enchanted Bluff. 

 _Harper's_, April 1909

_The Joy of Nelly Deane_

Nell and I were almost ready to go on for the last act of "QueenEsther, " and we had for the moment got rid of our three patientdressers, Mrs. Dow, Mrs. Freeze, and Mrs. Spinny. Nell was peeringover my shoulder into the little cracked looking-glass that Mrs. Dowhad taken from its nail on her kitchen wall and brought down to thechurch under her shawl that morning. When she realized that we werealone, Nell whispered to me in the quick, fierce way she had:

"Say, Peggy, won't you go up and stay with me to-night? ScottSpinny's asked to take me home, and I don't want to walk up with himalone. "

"I guess so, if you'll ask my mother. "

"Oh, I'll fix her!" Nell laughed, with a toss of her head whichmeant that she usually got what she wanted, even from people muchless tractable than my mother. 

In a moment our tiring-women were back again. The three oldladies--at least they seemed old to us--fluttered about us, moreagitated than we were ourselves. It seemed as though they wouldnever leave off patting Nell and touching her up. They kept tryingthings this way and that, never able in the end to decide which waywas best. They wouldn't hear to her using rouge, and as theypowdered her neck and arms, Mrs. Freeze murmured that she hoped wewouldn't get into the habit of using such things. Mrs. Spinnydivided her time between pulling up and tucking down the "illusion"that filled in the square neck of Nelly's dress. She didn't likethings much low, she said; but after she had pulled it up, she stoodback and looked at Nell thoughtfully through her glasses. While theexcited girl was reaching for this and that, buttoning a slipper, pinning down a curl, Mrs. Spinny's smile softened more and moreuntil, just before _Esther_ made her entrance, the old lady tiptoedup to her and softly tucked the illusion down as far as it would go. 

"She's so pink; it seems a pity not, " she whispered apologeticallyto Mrs. Dow. 

Every one admitted that Nelly was the prettiest girl in Riverbend, and the gayest--oh, the gayest! When she was not singing, she waslaughing. When she was not laid up with a broken arm, the outcome ofa foolhardy coasting feat, or suspended from school because she ranaway at recess to go buggy-riding with Guy Franklin, she was sure tobe up to mischief of some sort. Twice she broke through the ice andgot soused in the river because she never looked where she skated orcared what happened so long as she went fast enough. After thesecond of these duckings our three dressers declared that she wastrying to be a Baptist despite herself. 

Mrs. Spinny and Mrs. Freeze and Mrs. Dow, who were always hoveringabout Nelly, often whispered to me their hope that she wouldeventually come into our church and not "go with the Methodists";her family were Wesleyans. But to me these artless plans of theirsnever wholly explained their watchful affection. They had gooddaughters themselves, --except Mrs. Spinny, who had only the sullenScott, --and they loved their plain girls and thanked God for them. But they loved Nelly differently. They were proud of her prettyfigure and yellow-brown eyes, which dilated so easily and sparkledwith a kind of golden effervescence. They were always making prettythings for her, always coaxing her to come to the sewing-circle, where she knotted her thread, and put in the wrong sleeve, andlaughed and chattered and said a great many things that she shouldnot have said, and somehow always warmed their hearts. I think theyloved her for her unquenchable joy. 

All the Baptist ladies liked Nell, even those who criticized hermost severely, but the three who were first in fighting the battlesof our little church, who held it together by their prayers and thelabor of their hands, watched over her as they did over Mrs. Dow'scentury-plant before it blossomed. They looked for her on Sundaymorning and smiled at her as she hurried, always a little late, upto the choir. When she rose and stood behind the organ and sang"There Is a Green Hill, " one could see Mrs. Dow and Mrs. Freezesettle back in their accustomed seats and look up at her as if shehad just come from that hill and had brought them glad tidings. 

It was because I sang contralto, or, as we said, alto, in theBaptist choir that Nell and I became friends. She was so gay andgrown up, so busy with parties and dances and picnics, that I wouldscarcely have seen much of her had we not sung together. She likedme better than she did any of the older girls, who tried clumsily tobe like her, and I felt almost as solicitous and admiring as didMrs. Dow and Mrs. Spinny. I think even then I must have loved to seeher bloom and glow, and I loved to hear her sing, in "The Ninety andNine, "

 But one was out on the hills away

in her sweet, strong voice. Nell had never had a singing lesson, butshe had sung from the time she could talk, and Mrs. Dow used fondlyto say that it was singing so much that made her figure so pretty. 

After I went into the choir it was found to be easier to get Nellyto choir practice. If I stopped outside her gate on my way to churchand coaxed her, she usually laughed, ran in for her hat and jacket, and went along with me. The three old ladies fostered ourfriendship, and because I was "quiet, " they esteemed me a goodinfluence for Nelly. This view was propounded in a sewing-circlediscussion and, leaking down to us through our mothers, greatlyamused us. Dear old ladies! It was so manifestly for what Nell wasthat they loved her, and yet they were always looking for"influences" to change her. 

The "Queen Esther" performance had cost us three months of hardpractice, and it was not easy to keep Nell up to attending thetedious rehearsals. Some of the boys we knew were in the chorus ofAssyrian youths, but the solo cast was made up of older people, andNell found them very poky. We gave the cantata in the Baptist churchon Christmas eve, "to a crowded house, " as the Riverbend "Messenger"truly chronicled. The country folk for miles about had come inthrough a deep snow, and their teams and wagons stood in a long rowat the hitch-bars on each side of the church door. It was certainlyNelly's night, for however much the tenor--he was her schoolmaster, and naturally thought poorly of her--might try to eclipse her in hisdolorous solos about the rivers of Babylon, there could be no doubtas to whom the people had come to hear--and to see. 

After the performance was over, our fathers and mothers came back tothe dressing-rooms--the little rooms behind the baptistry where thecandidates for baptism were robed--to congratulate us, and Nellpersuaded my mother to let me go home with her. This arrangement maynot have been wholly agreeable to Scott Spinny, who stood glumlywaiting at the baptistry door; though I used to think he doggedNell's steps not so much for any pleasure he got from being with heras for the pleasure of keeping other people away. Dear little Mrs. Spinny was perpetually in a state of humiliation on account of hisbad manners, and she tried by a very special tenderness to make upto Nelly for the remissness of her ungracious son. 

Scott was a spare, muscular fellow, good-looking, but with a face soset and dark that I used to think it very like the castings he sold. He was taciturn and domineering, and Nell rather liked to provokehim. Her father was so easy with her that she seemed to enjoy beingordered about now and then. That night, when every one was praisingher and telling her how well she sang and how pretty she looked, Scott only said, as we came out of the dressing-room:

"Have you got your high shoes on?"

"No; but I've got rubbers on over my low ones. Mother doesn't care. "

"Well, you just go back and put 'em on as fast as you can. "

Nell made a face at him and ran back, laughing. Her mother, fat, comfortable Mrs. Deane, was immensely amused at this. 

"That's right, Scott, " she chuckled. "You can do enough more withher than I can. She walks right over me an' Jud. "

Scott grinned. If he was proud of Nelly, the last thing he wished todo was to show it. When she came back he began to nag again. "Whatare you going to do with all those flowers? They'll freeze stiff aspokers. "

"Well, there won't none of _your_ flowers freeze, Scott Spinny, sothere!" Nell snapped. She had the best of him that time, and theAssyrian youths rejoiced. They were most of them high-school boys, and the poorest of them had "chipped in" and sent all the way toDenver for _Queen Esther's_ flowers. There were bouquets from half adozen townspeople, too, but none from Scott. Scott was a prosperoushardware merchant and notoriously penurious, though he saved hisface, as the boys said, by giving liberally to the church. 

"There's no use freezing the fool things, anyhow. You get me somenewspapers, and I'll wrap 'em up. " Scott took from his pocket afolded copy of the Riverbend "Messenger" and began laboriously towrap up one of the bouquets. When we left the church door he borethree large newspaper bundles, carrying them as carefully as if theyhad been so many newly frosted wedding-cakes, and left Nell and meto shift for ourselves as we floundered along the snow-burdenedsidewalk. 

Although it was after midnight, lights were shining from many of thelittle wooden houses, and the roofs and shrubbery were so deep insnow that Riverbend looked as if it had been tucked down into a warmbed. The companies of people, all coming from church, tramping thisway and that toward their homes and calling "Good night" and "MerryChristmas" as they parted company, all seemed to us very unusual andexciting. 

When we got home, Mrs. Deane had a cold supper ready, and Jud Deanehad already taken off his shoes and fallen to on his fried chickenand pie. He was so proud of his pretty daughter that he must giveher her Christmas presents then and there, and he went into thesleeping-chamber behind the dining-room and from the depths of hiswife's closet brought out a short sealskin jacket and a round capand made Nelly put them on. 

Mrs. Deane, who sat busy between a plate of spice cake and a traypiled with her famous whipped-cream tarts, laughed inordinately athis behavior. 

"Ain't he worse than any kid you ever see? He's been running to thatcloset like a cat shut away from her kittens. I wonder Nell ain'tcaught on before this. I did think he'd make out now to keep 'emtill Christmas morning; but he's never made out to keep anythingyet. "

That was true enough, and fortunately Jud's inability to keepanything seemed always to present a highly humorous aspect to hiswife. Mrs. Deane put her heart into her cooking, and said that solong as a man was a good provider she had no cause to complain. Other people were not so charitable toward Jud's failing. I rememberhow many strictures were passed upon that little sealskin and how hewas censured for his extravagance. But what a public-spirited thing, after all, it was for him to do! How, the winter through, we allenjoyed seeing Nell skating on the river or running about the townwith the brown collar turned up about her bright cheeks and her hairblowing out from under the round cap! "No seal, " Mrs. Dow said, "would have begrudged it to her. Why should we?" This was at thesewing-circle, when the new coat was under grave discussion. 

At last Nelly and I got up-stairs and undressed, and the pad ofJud's slippered feet about the kitchen premises--where he wascarrying up from the cellar things that might freeze--ceased. Hecalled "Good night, daughter, " from the foot of the stairs, and thehouse grew quiet. But one is not a prima donna the first time fornothing, and it seemed as if we could not go to bed. Our light musthave burned long after every other in Riverbend was out. The muslincurtains of Nell's bed were drawn back; Mrs. Deane had turned downthe white counterpane and taken off the shams and smoothed thepillows for us. But their fair plumpness offered no temptation totwo such hot young heads. We could not let go of life even for alittle while. We sat and talked in Nell's cozy room, where there wasa tiny, white fur rug--the only one in Riverbend--before the bed;and there were white sash curtains, and the prettiest little deskand dressing-table I had ever seen. It was a warm, gay little room, flooded all day long with sunlight from east and south windows thathad climbing-roses all about them in summer. About the dresser werephotographs of adoring high-school boys; and one of Guy Franklin, much groomed and barbered, in a dress-coat and a boutonnière. Inever liked to see that photograph there. The home boys lookedproperly modest and bashful on the dresser, but he seemed to bestaring impudently all the time. 

I knew nothing definite against Guy, but in Riverbend all"traveling-men" were considered worldly and wicked. He traveled fora Chicago dry-goods firm, and our fathers didn't like him because heput extravagant ideas into our mothers' heads. He had very smoothand nattering ways, and he introduced into our simple community agreat variety of perfumes and scented soaps, and he always remindedme of the merchants in Cæsar, who brought into Gaul "those thingswhich effeminate the mind, " as we translated that delightfully easypassage. 

Nell was silting before the dressing-table in her nightgown, holdingthe new fur coat and rubbing her cheek against it, when I saw asudden gleam of tears in her eyes. "You know, Peggy, " she said inher quick, impetuous way, "this makes me feel bad. I've got a secretfrom my daddy. "

I can see her now, so pink and eager, her brown hair in two springybraids down her back, and her eyes shining with tears and withsomething even softer and more tremulous. 

"I'm engaged, Peggy, " she whispered, "really and truly. "

She leaned forward, unbuttoning her nightgown, and there on herbreast, hung by a little gold chain about her neck, was a diamondring--Guy Franklin's solitaire; every one in Riverbend knew it well. 

"I'm going to live in Chicago, and take singing lessons, and go tooperas, and do all those nice things--oh, everything! I know youdon't like him, Peggy, but you know you _are_ a kid. You'll see howit is yourself when you grow up. He's so _different_ from our boys, and he's just terribly in love with me. And then, Peggy, "--flushingall down over her soft shoulders, --"I'm awfully fond of him, too. Awfully. "

"Are you, Nell, truly?" I whispered. She seemed so changed to me bythe warm light in her eyes and that delicate suffusion of color. Ifelt as I did when I got up early on picnic mornings in summer, andsaw the dawn come up in the breathless sky above the river meadowsand make all the cornfields golden. 

"Sure I do, Peggy; don't look so solemn. It's nothing to look thatway about, kid. It's nice. " She threw her arms about me suddenly andhugged me. 

"I hate to think about your going so far away from us all, Nell. "

"Oh, you'll love to come and visit me. Just you wait. "

She began breathlessly to go over things Guy Franklin had told herabout Chicago, until I seemed to see it all looming up out thereunder the stars that kept watch over our little sleeping town. Wehad neither of us ever been to a city, but we knew what it would belike. We heard it throbbing like great engines, and calling to us, that far-away world. Even after we had opened the windows andscurried into bed, we seemed to feel a pulsation across all themiles of snow. The winter silence trembled with it, and the air wasfull of something new that seemed to break over us in soft waves. Inthat snug, warm little bed I had a sense of imminent change anddanger. I was somehow afraid for Nelly when I heard her breathing soquickly beside me, and I put my arm about her protectingly as wedrifted toward sleep. 

 * * * * *

In the following spring we were both graduated from the Riverbendhigh school, and I went away to college. My family moved to Denver, and during the next four years I heard very little of Nelly Deane. My life was crowded with new people and new experiences, and I amafraid I held her little in mind. I heard indirectly that Jud Deanehad lost what little property he owned in a luckless venture inCripple Creek, and that he had been able to keep his house inRiverbend only through the clemency of his creditors. Guy Franklinhad his route changed and did not go to Riverbend any more. Hemarried the daughter of a rich cattle-man out near Long Pine, andran a dry-goods store of his own. Mrs. Dow wrote me a long letterabout once a year, and in one of these she told me that Nelly wasteaching in the sixth grade in the Riverbend school. 

"Dear Nelly does not like teaching very well. The children try her, and she is so pretty it seems a pity for her to be tied down touncongenial employment. Scott is still very attentive, and I havenoticed him look up at the window of Nelly's room in a verydetermined way as he goes home to dinner. Scott continuesprosperous; he has made money during these hard times and now ownsboth our hardware stores. He is close, but a very honorable fellow. Nelly seems to hold off, but I think Mrs. Spinny has hopes. Nothingwould please her more. If Scott were more careful about hisappearance, it would help. He of course gets black about hisbusiness, and Nelly, you know, is very dainty. People do say hismother does his courting for him, she is so eager. If only Scottdoes not turn out hard and penurious like his father! We must allhave our schooling in this life, but I don't want Nelly's to be toosevere. She is a dear girl, and keeps her color. "

Mrs. Dow's own schooling had been none too easy. Her husband hadlong been crippled with rheumatism, and was bitter and faultfinding. Her daughters had married poorly, and one of her sons had falleninto evil ways. But her letters were always cheerful, and in one ofthem she gently remonstrated with me because I "seemed inclined totake a sad view of life. "

In the winter vacation of my senior year I stopped on my way home tovisit Mrs. Dow. The first thing she told me when I got into her oldbuckboard at the station was that "Scott had at last prevailed, " andthat Nelly was to marry him in the spring. As a preliminary step, Nelly was about to join the Baptist church. "Just think, you will behere for her baptizing! How that will please Nelly! She is to beimmersed to-morrow night. "

I met Scott Spinny in the post-office that morning, and he gave me ahard grip with one black hand. There was something grim andsaturnine about his powerful body and bearded face and his strong, cold hands. I wondered what perverse fate had driven him for eightyears to dog the footsteps of a girl whose charm was due toqualities naturally distasteful to him. It still seems strange to methat in easy-going Riverbend, where there were so many boys whocould have lived contentedly enough with my little grasshopper, itwas the pushing ant who must have her and all her careless ways. 

By a kind of unformulated etiquette one did not call upon candidatesfor baptism on the day of the ceremony, so I had my first glimpse ofNelly that evening. The baptistry was a cemented pit directly underthe pulpit rostrum, over which we had our stage when we sang "QueenEsther. " I sat through the sermon somewhat nervously. After theminister, in his long, black gown, had gone down into the water andthe choir had finished singing, the door from the dressing-roomopened, and, led by one of the deacons, Nelly came down the stepsinto the pool. Oh, she looked so little and meek and chastened! Herwhite cashmere robe clung about her, and her brown hair was brushedstraight back and hung in two soft braids from a little head benthumbly. As she stepped down into the water I shivered with the coldof it, and I remembered sharply how much I had loved her. She wentdown until the water was well above her waist, and stood white andsmall, with her hands crossed on her breast, while the minister saidthe words about being buried with Christ in baptism. Then, lying inhis arm, she disappeared under the dark water. "It will be like thatwhen she dies, " I thought, and a quick pain caught my heart. Thechoir began to sing "Washed in the Blood of the Lamb" as she roseagain, the door behind the baptistry opened, revealing those threedear guardians, Mrs. Dow, Mrs. Freeze, and Mrs. Spinny, and she wentup into their arms. 

I went to see Nell next day, up in the little room of many memories. Such a sad, sad visit! She seemed changed--a little embarrassed andquietly despairing. We talked of many of the old Riverbend girls andboys, but she did not mention Guy Franklin or Scott Spinny, exceptto say that her father had got work in Scott's hardware store. Shebegged me, putting her hands on my shoulders with something of herold impulsiveness, to come and stay a few days with her. But I wasafraid--afraid of what she might tell me and of what I might say. When I sat in that room with all her trinkets, the foolish harvestof her girlhood, lying about, and the white curtains and the littlewhite rug, I thought of Scott Spinny with positive terror and couldfeel his hard grip on my hand again. I made the best excuse I couldabout having to hurry on to Denver; but she gave me one quick look, and her eyes ceased to plead. I saw that she understood meperfectly. We had known each other so well. Just once, when I got upto go and had trouble with my veil, she laughed her old merry laughand told me there were some things I would never learn, for all myschooling. 

The next day, when Mrs. Dow drove me down to the station to catchthe morning train for Denver, I saw Nelly hurrying to school withseveral books under her arm. She had been working up her lessons athome, I thought. She was never quick at her books, dear Nell. 

 * * * * *

It was ten years before I again visited Riverbend. I had been inRome for a long time, and had fallen into bitter homesickness. Onemorning, sitting among the dahlias and asters that bloom so bravelyupon those gigantic heaps of earth-red ruins that were once thepalaces of the Cæsars, I broke the seal of one of Mrs. Dow's longyearly letters. It brought so much sad news that I resolved then andthere to go home to Riverbend, the only place that had ever reallybeen home to me. Mrs. Dow wrote me that her husband, after years ofillness, had died in the cold spell last March. "So good and patienttoward the last, " she wrote, "and so afraid of giving extratrouble. " There was another thing she saved until the last. Shewrote on and on, dear woman, about new babies and villageimprovements, as if she could not bear to tell me; and then it came:

"You will be sad to hear that two months ago our dear Nelly left us. It was a terrible blow to us all. I cannot write about it yet, Ifear. I wake up every morning feeling that I ought to go to her. Shewent three days after her little boy was born. The baby is a finechild and will live, I think, in spite of everything. He and herlittle girl, now eight years old, whom she named Margaret, afteryou, have gone to Mrs. Spinny's. She loves them more than if theywere her own. It seems as if already they had made her quite youngagain. I wish you could see Nelly's children. "

Ah, that was what I wanted, to see Nelly's children! The wish cameaching from my heart along with the bitter homesick tears; alongwith a quick, torturing recollection that flashed upon me, as Ilooked about and tried to collect myself, of how we two had sat inour sunny seat in the corner of the old bare school-room oneSeptember afternoon and learned the names of the seven hillstogether. In that place, at that moment, after so many years, how itall came back to me--the warm sun on my back, the chattering girlbeside me, the curly hair, the laughing yellow eyes, the stubbylittle finger on the page! I felt as if even then, when we sat inthe sun with our heads together, it was all arranged, written outlike a story, that at this moment I should be sitting among thecrumbling bricks and drying grass, and she should be lying in theplace I knew so well, on that green hill far away. 

 * * * * *

Mrs. Dow sat with her Christmas sewing in the familiar sitting-room, where the carpet and the wall-paper and the table-cover had allfaded into soft, dull colors, and even the chromo of Hagar andIshmael had been toned to the sobriety of age. In the bay-window thetall wire flower-stand still bore its little terraces of pottedplants, and the big fuchsia and the Martha Washington geranium hadblossomed for Christmas-tide. Mrs. Dow herself did not look greatlychanged to me. Her hair, thin ever since I could remember it, wasnow quite white, but her spare, wiry little person had all its oldactivity, and her eyes gleamed with the old friendliness behind hersilver-bowed glasses. Her gray house-dress seemed just like thoseshe used to wear when I ran in after school to take her angel-foodcake down to the church supper. 

The house sat on a hill, and from behind the geraniums I could seepretty much all of Riverbend, tucked down in the soft snow, and theair above was full of big, loose flakes, falling from a gray skywhich betokened settled weather. Indoors the hard-coal burner made atropical temperature, and glowed a warm orange from its isinglasssides. We sat and visited, the two of us, with a great sense ofcomfort and completeness. I had reached Riverbend only that morning, and Mrs. Dow, who had been haunted by thoughts of shipwreck andsuffering upon wintry seas, kept urging me to draw nearer to thefire and suggesting incidental refreshment. We had chattered allthrough the winter morning and most of the afternoon, taking up oneafter another of the Riverbend girls and boys, and agreeing that wehad reason to be well satisfied with most of them. Finally, after along pause in which I had listened to the contented ticking of theclock and the crackle of the coal, I put the question I had untilthen held back:

"And now, Mrs. Dow, tell me about the one we loved best of all. Since I got your letter I've thought of her every day. Tell me allabout Scott and Nelly. "

The tears flashed behind her glasses, and she smoothed the littlepink bag on her knee. 

"Well, dear, I'm afraid Scott proved to be a hard man, like hisfather. But we must remember that Nelly always had Mrs. Spinny. Inever saw anything like the love there was between those two. AfterNelly lost her own father and mother, she looked to Mrs. Spinny foreverything. When Scott was too unreasonable, his mother could 'mostalways prevail upon him. She never lifted a hand to fight her ownbattles with Scott's father, but she was never afraid to speak upfor Nelly. And then Nelly took great comfort of her little girl. Such a lovely child!"

"Had she been very ill before the little baby came?"

"No, Margaret; I'm afraid 't was all because they had the wrongdoctor. I feel confident that either Doctor Tom or Doctor Jonescould have brought her through. But, you see, Scott had offendedthem both, and they'd stopped trading at his store, so he would haveyoung Doctor Fox, a boy just out of college and a stranger. He gotscared and didn't know what to do. Mrs. Spinny felt he wasn't doingright, so she sent for Mrs. Freeze and me. It seemed like Nelly hadgot discouraged. Scott would move into their big new house beforethe plastering was dry, and though 't was summer, she had taken aterrible cold that seemed to have drained her, and she took nointerest in fixing the place up. Mrs. Spinny had been down with herback again and wasn't able to help, and things was just anyway. Wewon't talk about that, Margaret; I think 't would hurt Mrs. Spinnyto have you know. She nearly died of mortification when she sent forus, and blamed her poor back. We did get Nelly fixed up nicelybefore she died. I prevailed upon Doctor Tom to come in at the last, and it 'most broke his heart. 'Why, Mis' Dow, ' he said, 'if you'donly have come and told me how 't was, I'd have come and carried herright off in my arms. '"

"Oh, Mrs. Dow, " I cried, "then it needn't have been?"

Mrs. Dow dropped her needle and clasped her hands quickly. "Wemustn't look at it that way, dear, " she said tremulously and alittle sternly; "we mustn't let ourselves. We must just feel thatour Lord wanted her _then_, and took her to Himself. When it was allover, she did look so like a child of God, young and trusting, likeshe did on her baptizing night, you remember?"

I felt that Mrs. Dow did not want to talk any more about Nelly then, and, indeed, I had little heart to listen; so I told her I would gofor a walk, and suggested that I might stop at Mrs. Spinny's to seethe children. 

Mrs. Dow looked up thoughtfully at the clock. "I doubt if you'llfind little Margaret there now. It's half-past four, and she'll havebeen out of school an hour and more. She'll be most likely coastingon Lupton's Hill. She usually makes for it with her sled the minuteshe is out of the school-house door. You know, it's the old hillwhere you all used to slide. If you stop in at the church about sixo'clock, you'll likely find Mrs. Spinny there with the baby. Ipromised to go down and help Mrs. Freeze finish up the tree, andMrs. Spinny said she'd run in with the baby, if 't wasn't toobitter. She won't leave him alone with the Swede girl. She's like ayoung woman with her first. "

Lupton's Hill was at the other end of town, and when I got there thedusk was thickening, drawing blue shadows over the snowy fields. There were perhaps twenty children creeping up the hill or whizzingdown the packed sled-track. When I had been watching them for someminutes, I heard a lusty shout, and a little red sled shot past meinto the deep snow-drift beyond. The child was quite buried for amoment, then she struggled out and stood dusting the snow from hershort coat and red woolen comforter. She wore a brown fur cap, whichwas too big for her and of an old-fashioned shape, such as girlswore long ago, but I would have known her without the cap. Mrs. Dowhad said a beautiful child, and there would not be two like this inRiverbend. She was off before I had time to speak to her, going upthe hill at a trot, her sturdy little legs plowing through thetrampled snow. When she reached the top she never paused to takebreath, but threw herself upon her sled and came down with a whoopthat was quenched only by the deep drift at the end. 

"Are you Margaret Spinny?" I asked as she struggled out in a cloudof snow. 

"Yes, 'm. " She approached me with frank curiosity, pulling herlittle sled behind her. "Are you the strange lady staying at Mrs. Dow's?" I nodded, and she began to look my clothes over withrespectful interest. 

"Your grandmother is to be at the church at six o'clock, isn't she?"

"Yes, 'm. "

"Well, suppose we walk up there now. It's nearly six, and all theother children are going home. " She hesitated, and looked up at thefaintly gleaming track on the hill-slope. "Do you want anotherslide? Is that it?" I asked. 

"Do you mind?" she asked shyly. 

"No. I'll wait for you. Take your time; don't run. "

Two little boys were still hanging about the slide, and they cheeredher as she came down, her comforter streaming in the wind. 

"Now, " she announced, getting up out of the drift, "I'll show youwhere the church is. "

"Shall I tie your comforter again?"

"No, 'm, thanks. I'm plenty warm. " She put her mittened handconfidingly in mine and trudged along beside me. 

Mrs. Dow must have heard us tramping up the snowy steps of thechurch, for she met us at the door. Every one had gone except theold ladies. A kerosene lamp flickered over the Sunday-school chart, with the lesson-picture of the Wise Men, and the little barrel-stovethrew out a deep glow over the three white heads that bent above thebaby. There the three friends sat, patting him, and smoothing hisdress, and playing with his hands, which made theirs look so brown. 

"You ain't seen nothing finer in all your travels, " said Mrs. Spinny, and they all laughed. 

They showed me his full chest and how strong his back was; had mefeel the golden fuzz on his head, and made him look at me with hisround, bright eyes. He laughed and reared himself in my arms as Itook him up and held him close to me. He was so warm and tinglingwith life, and he had the flush of new beginnings, of the newmorning and the new rose. He seemed to have come so lately from hismother's heart! It was as if I held her youth and all her young joy. As I put my cheek down against his, he spied a pink flower in myhat, and making a gleeful sound, he lunged at it with both fists. 

"Don't let him spoil it, " murmured Mrs. Spinny. "He loves colorso--like Nelly. "

 _Century_, October 1911

_The Bohemian Girl_

The Trans-continental Express swung along the windings of the SandRiver Valley, and in the rear seat of the observation car a youngman sat greatly at his ease, not in the least discomfited by thefierce sunlight which beat in upon his brown face and neck andstrong back. There was a look of relaxation and of great passivityabout his broad shoulders, which seemed almost too heavy until hestood up and squared them. He wore a pale flannel shirt and a bluesilk necktie with loose ends. His trousers were wide and belted atthe waist, and his short sack-coat hung open. His heavy shoes hadseen good service. His reddish-brown hair, like his clothes, had aforeign cut. He had deep-set, dark blue eyes under heavy reddisheyebrows. His face was kept clean only by close shaving, and eventhe sharpest razor left a glint of yellow in the smooth brown of hisskin. His teeth and the palms of his hands were very white. Hishead, which looked hard and stubborn, lay indolently in the greencushion of the wicker chair, and as he looked out at the ripe summercountry a teasing, not unkindly smile played over his lips. Once, ashe 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 kindlymockery. He told himself, apparently, that there was no point ingetting excited; and he seemed a master hand at taking his ease whenhe could. Neither the sharp whistle of the locomotive nor thebrakeman's call disturbed him. It was not until after the train hadstopped that he rose, put on a Panama hat, took from the rack asmall valise and a flute-case, and stepped deliberately to thestation platform. The baggage was already unloaded, and the strangerpresented a check for a battered sole-leather steamer-trunk. 

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

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

"Just so. "

The agent shrugged his shoulders, looked scornfully at the smalltrunk, which was marked "N. E. , " and handed out a claim check withoutfurther comment. The stranger watched him as he caught one end ofthe trunk and dragged it into the express room. The agent's mannerseemed to remind him of something amusing. "Doesn't seem to be avery big place, " he remarked, looking about. 

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

That remark, apparently, was what Nils Ericson had wanted. Hechuckled quietly as he took a leather strap from his pocket andswung his valise around his shoulder. Then he settled his Panamasecurely on his head, turned up his trousers, tucked the flute-caseunder his arm, and started off across the fields. He gave the town, as he would have said, a wide berth, and cut through a great fencedpasture, emerging, when he rolled under the barbed wire at thefarther corner, upon a white dusty road which ran straight up fromthe river valley to the high prairies, where the ripe wheat stoodyellow and the tin roofs and weather-cocks were twinkling in thefierce sunlight. By the time Nils had done three miles, the sun wassinking and the farm-wagons on their way home from town camerattling by, covering him with dust and making him sneeze. When oneof the farmers pulled up and offered to give him a lift, heclambered in willingly. The driver was a thin, grizzled old man witha long lean neck and a foolish sort of beard, like a goat's. "Howfur ye goin'?" he asked, as he clucked to his horses and startedoff. 

"Do you go by the Ericson place?"

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

"Preacher Ericson's. "

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

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

"'Deed an' she has! She runs into town every night about this timefor her mail and meat for supper. Some folks say she's afraid herauto won't get 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 wholecounty, chargin' into town and out amongst her farms, an' up to hersons' places. Sure you ain't goin' to the wrong place?" He cranedhis neck and looked at Nils' flute-case with eager curiosity. "Theold woman ain't got any piany that I knows on. Olaf, he has a grand. His wife's musical; took lessons in Chicago. "

"I'm going up there to-morrow, " said Nils imperturbably. He saw thatthe driver 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 non-communicativeness, but he soonbroke out again. 

"I'm one o' Mis' Ericson's tenants. Look after one of her places. Idid own the place myself oncet, but I lost it a while back, in thebad years just after the World's Fair. Just as well, too, I say. Lets you out o' payin' taxes. The Ericsons do own most of the countynow. I remember the old preacher's fav'rite text used to be, 'Tothem that hath shall be given. ' They've spread somethingwonderful--run over this here country like bindweed. But I ain't onethat begretches it to 'em. Folks is entitled to what they kin git;and they're hustlers. Olaf, he's in the Legislature now, and alikely man fur Congress. Listen, if that ain't the old woman comin'now. Want I should stop her?"

Nils shook his head. He heard the deep chug-chug of a motorvibrating steadily in the clear twilight behind them. The palelights of the car swam over the hill, and the old man slapped hisreins and turned clear out of the road, ducking his head at thefirst of three angry snorts from behind. The motor was running at ahot, even speed, and passed without turning an inch from its course. The driver was a stalwart woman who sat at ease in the front seatand drove her car bareheaded. She left a cloud of dust and a trailof gasoline behind her. Her tenant threw back his head and sneezed. 

"Whew! I sometimes say I'd as lief be _before_ Mrs. Ericson asbehind her. She does beat all! Nearly seventy, and never letsanother soul touch that car. Puts it into commission herself everymorning, and keeps it tuned up by the hitch-bar all day. I neverstop work for a drink o' water that I don't hear her a-churnin' upthe road. I reckon her darter-in-laws never sets down easy nowadays. Never know when she'll pop in. Mis' Otto, she says to me: 'We're soafraid that thing'll blow up and do Ma some injury yet, she's soturrible venturesome. ' Says I: 'I wouldn't stew, Mis' Otto; the oldlady'll drive that car to the funeral of every darter-in-law she'sgot. ' That was after the old woman had jumped a turrible badculvert. "

The stranger heard vaguely what the old man was saying. Just now hewas experiencing something very much like homesickness, and he waswondering what 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 of sunflowers and ironweed, which the night dampbrought up from the draws and low places; perhaps, more than all, the dancing lights of the motor that had plunged by. He squared hisshoulders with a comfortable sense of strength. 

The wagon, as it jolted westward, climbed a pretty steady upgrade. The country, receding from the rough river valley, swelled more andmore gently, as if it had been smoothed out by the wind. On one ofthe last of the rugged ridges, at the end of a branch road, stood agrim square house with a tin roof and double porches. Behind thehouse stretched a row of broken, wind-racked poplars, and down thehill-slope to the left straggled the sheds and stables. The old manstopped his horses where the Ericsons' road branched across a drysand creek that wound about the foot 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. Goodnight. "

His passenger stepped down over the front wheel, and the old mandrove on reluctantly, looking back as if he would like to see howthe stranger would be received. 

As Nils was crossing the dry creek he heard the restive tramp of ahorse coming toward him down the hill. Instantly he flashed out ofthe road and stood behind a thicket of wild plum bushes that grew inthe sandy bed. Peering through the dusk, he saw a light horse, undertight rein, descending the hill at a sharp walk. The rider was aslender woman--barely visible against the dark hillside--wearing anold-fashioned derby hat and a long riding-skirt. She sat lightly inthe saddle, with her chin high, and seemed to be looking into thedistance. As she passed the plum thicket her horse snuffed the airand shied. She struck him, pulling him in sharply, with an angryexclamation, "_Blázne!_" in Bohemian. Once in the main road, she lethim out into a lope, and they soon emerged upon the crest of highland, where they moved along the skyline, silhouetted against theband of faint color that lingered in the west. This horse and rider, with their free, rhythmical gallop, were the only moving things tobe seen on the face of the flat country. They seemed, in the lastsad light of evening, not to be there accidentally, but as aninevitable detail of the landscape. 

Nils watched them until they had shrunk to a mere moving speckagainst the sky, then he crossed the sand creek and climbed thehill. When he reached the gate the front of the house was dark, buta light was shining from the side windows. The pigs were squealingin the hog corral, and Nils could see a tall boy, who carried twobig wooden buckets, moving about among them. Half way between thebarn and the house, the windmill wheezed lazily. Following the paththat ran around to the back porch, Nils stopped to look through thescreen door into the lamp-lit kitchen. The kitchen was the largestroom in the house; Nils remembered that his older brothers used togive dances there when he was a boy. Beside the stove stood a littlegirl with two light yellow braids and a broad, flushed face, peeringanxiously into a frying-pan. In the dining-room beyond, a large, broad-shouldered woman was moving about the table. She walked withan active, springy step. Her face was heavy and florid, almostwithout wrinkles, and her hair was black at seventy. Nils felt proudof her as he watched her deliberate activity; never a momentaryhesitation, or a movement that did not tell. He waited until shecame 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. "Bring the lamp, Hilda, and let me look. "

Nils laughed and unslung his valise. "What's the matter, Mother?Don't you know me?"

Mrs. Ericson put down the lamp. "You must be Nils. You don't lookvery different, 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 foryou to 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 andhave a tenant. Hilda, take some hot water up to the company room, and go call little Eric. "

The tow-haired child, who had been standing in mute amazement, tookup the tea-kettle and withdrew, giving Nils a long, admiring lookfrom the door of the kitchen stairs. 

"Who's the youngster?" Nils asked, dropping down on the bench behindthe kitchen 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 boypeered wonderingly in through the screen door. He had a fair, gentleface and big gray eyes, and wisps of soft yellow hair hung downunder his cap. Nils sprang up and pulled him into the kitchen, hugging him and slapping him on the shoulders. "Well, if it isn't mykid! Look at the size of him! Don't you know me, Eric?"

The boy reddened under his sunburn and freckles, and hung his head. "I guess it's Nils, " he said shyly. 

"You're a good guesser, " laughed Nils, giving the lad's hand aswing. To himself he was thinking: "That's why the little girllooked so friendly. He's taught her to like me. He was only six whenI went away, and he's remembered 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 cornfor supper, Nils. You used to like it. I guess you don't get much ofthat in the old country. Here's Hilda; she'll take you up to yourroom. You'll want 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 thathis room was ready. He put out his hand and she took it, with astartled glance up at his face. Little Eric dropped his towel, threwan arm about Nils and one about Hilda, gave them a clumsy squeeze, and then stumbled out to the porch. 

During supper Nils heard exactly how much land each of his eightgrown brothers farmed, how their crops were coming on, and how muchlive stock they were feeding. His mother watched him narrowly as shetalked. "You've got better looking, Nils, " she remarked abruptly, whereupon he grinned and the children giggled. Eric, although he waseighteen and as tall as Nils, was always accounted a child, beingthe last of so many sons. His face seemed childlike, too, Nilsthought, and he had the open, wandering eyes of a little boy. Allthe others had been men at his age. 

After supper Nils went out to the front porch and sat down on thestep to smoke a pipe. Mrs. Ericson drew a rocking-chair up near himand began to knit busily. It was one of the few old-world customsshe 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; Idon't like 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 theline of 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, liketheir mother. "

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

"His second wife has no children. She's too proud. She tears abouton horseback all the time. But she'll get caught up with, yet. Shesets herself very high, though nobody knows what for. They were lowenough Bohemians she came of. I never thought much of Bohemians;always drinking. "

Nils puffed away at his pipe in silence, and Mrs. Ericson knittedon. In a few moments she added grimly: "She was down here to-night, just before you came. She'd like to quarrel with me and come betweenme and Olaf, but I don't give her the chance. I suppose you'll bebringing a wife home some day. "

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

"Well, perhaps it's best as it is, " suggested Mrs. Ericsonhopefully. "You'd never be contented tied down to the land. Therewas roving blood in your father's family, and it's come out in you. I expect your own way of life suits you best. " Mrs. Ericson haddropped into a blandly agreeable tone which Nils well remembered. Itseemed to amuse him a good deal and his white teeth flashed behindhis pipe. His mother's strategies had always diverted him, even whenhe was a boy--they were so flimsy and patent, so illy proportionedto her vigor and force. "They've been waiting to see which way I'djump, " he reflected. He felt that Mrs. Ericson was pondering hiscase 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 apity you didn't come back the year after the World's Fair. Yourfather picked up a good bit of land cheap then, in the hard times, and I expect maybe he'd have give you a farm. It's too bad you putoff comin' back so long, for I always thought he meant to dosomething by you. "

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

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

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

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

Eric came round the house by the path just then, and Nils rose, witha yawn. "Mother, if you don't mind, Eric and I will take a littletramp before bed-time. It will make me sleep. "

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

Nils put his hand on Eric's shoulder, and the two tramped down thehill and across the sand creek into the dusty highroad beyond. Neither spoke. They swung along at an even gait, Nils puffing at hispipe. There was no moon, and the white road and the wide fields layfaint in the starlight. Over everything was darkness and thicksilence, and the smell of dust and sunflowers. The brothers followedthe road for a mile or more without finding a place to sit down. Finally Nils perched on a stile over the wire fence, and Eric sat onthe lower step. 

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

"Didn't I promise you I would?"

"Yes; but people don't bother about promises they make to babies. Did you really know you were going away for good when you went toChicago with 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. " Ericrubbed his shoulder against his brother's knee. 

"The hard thing was leaving home--you and father. It was easyenough, once I got beyond Chicago. Of course I got awful homesick;used to cry myself 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 cottonwoodstill by the window?"

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

"You remember how we always said the leaves were whispering whenthey rustled at night? Well, they always whispered to me about thesea. Sometimes they said names out of the geography books. In a highwind they had a desperate sound, like something trying to tearloose. "

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

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

II

The next morning Nils woke with the first flood of light that camewith dawn. The white-plastered walls of his room reflected the glarethat shone through the thin window-shades, and he found itimpossible to sleep. He dressed hurriedly and slipped down the halland up the back stairs to the half-story room which he used to sharewith his little brother. Eric, in a skimpy night-shirt, was sittingon the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes, his pale yellow hairstanding up in tufts all over his head. When he saw Nils, hemurmured something confusedly and hustled his long legs into histrousers. "I didn't expect you'd be up so early, Nils, " he said, ashis 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 mustteach you to box. " Nils thrust his hands into his pockets and walkedabout. "You haven't changed things much up here. Got most of my oldtraps, 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 doit, Nils? You were with father when he found Lou, weren't you?"

"Yes. Father was going off to preach somewhere, and, as we drovealong, Lou's place looked sort of forlorn, and we thought we'd stopand cheer him up. When we found him father said he'd been dead acouple days. He'd tied a piece of binding twine round his neck, madea noose in each end, fixed the nooses over the ends of a bent stick, and let the stick spring straight; 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 ofhogs left in the world, weren't there?"

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

"Oh, scat! He could have had lots of fun with other people's hogs. He was a chump, Lou Sandberg. To kill yourself for a pig--think ofthat, now!" Nils laughed all the way downstairs, and quiteembarrassed little Eric, who fell to scrubbing his face and hands atthe tin basin. While he was patting his wet hair at the kitchenlooking-glass, a heavy tread sounded on the stairs. The boy droppedhis comb. "Gracious, there's Mother. We must have talked too long. "He hurried out to the shed, slipped on his overalls, and disappearedwith 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 liketo manage the kitchen stove myself. " Mrs. Ericson paused with ashovel full of ashes in her hand. "I expect you will be wanting tosee your brothers as soon as possible. I'll take you up to Anders'place this morning. He's threshing, and most of our boys are overthere. "

"Will Olaf be there?"

Mrs. Ericson went on taking out the ashes, and spoke betweenshovels. "No; Olaf's wheat is all in, put away in his new barn. Hegot six thousand bushel this year. He's going to town to-day to getmen to finish roofing his barn. "

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

"Biggest one in the county, and almost done. You'll likely be herefor the barn-raising. He's going to have a supper and a dance assoon as everybody's done threshing. Says it keeps the voters in agood humor. I tell him that's all nonsense; but Olaf has a long headfor politics. "

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

Mrs. Ericson frowned as she blew into the faint smoke curling upabout the cobs. "Yes; he holds it in trust for the children, Hildaand her brothers. He keeps strict account of everything he raises onit, and puts the proceeds out at compound interest for them. "

Nils smiled as he watched the little flames shoot up. The door ofthe back stairs opened, and Hilda emerged, her arms behind her, buttoning up her long gingham apron as she came. He nodded to hergaily, and she twinkled at him out of her little blue eyes, set farapart over her wide cheek-bones. 

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

Nils turned to look at the little girl, who gripped thecoffee-grinder between her knees and ground so hard that her twobraids bobbed and her face flushed under its broad spattering offreckles. He noticed on her middle finger something that had notbeen there last night, and that had evidently been put on forcompany: a tiny gold ring with a clumsily set garnet stone. As herhand went round and round he touched the ring with the tip of hisfinger, smiling. 

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

III

Mrs. Olaf Ericson--Clara Vavrika, as many people still calledher--was moving restlessly about her big bare house that morning. Her husband had left for the county town before his wife was out ofbed--her lateness in rising was one of the many things the Ericsonfamily had against her. Clara seldom came downstairs before eighto'clock, and this morning she was even later, for she had dressedwith unusual care. She put on, however, only a tight-fitting blackdress, which people thereabouts thought very plain. She was a tall, dark woman of thirty, with a rather sallow complexion and a touch ofdull salmon red in her cheeks, where the blood seemed to burn underher brown skin. Her hair, parted evenly above her low forehead, wasso black that there were distinctly blue lights in it. Her blackeyebrows were delicate half-moons and her lashes were long andheavy. Her eyes slanted a little, as if she had a strain of Tartaror gypsy blood, and were sometimes full of fiery determination andsometimes 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 thenone saw to advantage her small, well-shaped head and delicate ears, and felt at once that here was a very positive, if not an altogetherpleasing, personality. 

The entire management of Mrs. Olaf's household devolved upon heraunt, Johanna Vavrika, a superstitious, doting woman of fifty. WhenClara was a little girl her mother died, and Johanna's life had beenspent in ungrudging service to her niece. Clara, like manyself-willed and discontented persons, was really very apt, withoutknowing it, to do as other people told her, and to let her destinybe decided for her by intelligences much below her own. It was herAunt Johanna who had humored and spoiled her in her girlhood, whohad got her off to Chicago to study piano, and who had finallypersuaded her to marry Olaf Ericson as the best match she would belikely to make in that part of the country. Johanna Vavrika had beendeeply scarred by smallpox in the old country. She was short andfat, homely and jolly and sentimental. She was so broad, and tooksuch short steps when she walked, that her brother, Joe Vavrika, always called her his duck. She adored her niece because of hertalent, because of her good looks and masterful ways, but most ofall because of her selfishness. 

Clara's marriage with Olaf Ericson was Johanna's particular triumph. She was inordinately proud of Olaf's position, and she found asufficiently exciting career in managing Clara's house, in keepingit above the criticism of the Ericsons, in pampering Olaf to keep himfrom finding fault with his wife, and in concealing from every oneClara's domestic infelicities. While Clara slept of a morning, Johanna Vavrika was bustling about, seeing that Olaf and the men hadtheir breakfast, and that the cleaning or the butter-making or thewashing was properly begun by the two girls in the kitchen. Then, atabout eight o'clock, she would take Clara's coffee up to her, and chatwith her while she drank it, telling her what was going on in thehouse. Old Mrs. Ericson frequently said that her daughter-in-law wouldnot know what day of the week it was if Johanna did not tell herevery morning. Mrs. Ericson despised and pitied Johanna, but did notwholly dislike her. The one thing she hated in her daughter-in-lawabove everything else was the way in which Clara could come it overpeople. It enraged her that the affairs of her son's big, barnlikehouse went on as well as they did, and she used to feel that in thisworld we have to wait over-long to see the guilty punished. "SupposeJohanna Vavrika died or got sick?" the old lady used to say to Olaf. "Your wife wouldn't know where to look for her own dish-cloth. " Olafonly shrugged his shoulders. The fact remained that Johanna did notdie, and, although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was lookingpoorly, she was never ill. She seldom left the house, and she sleptin a little room off the kitchen. No Ericson, by night or day, couldcome prying about there to find fault without her knowing it. Herone weakness was that she was an incurable talker, and she sometimesmade trouble without meaning to. 

This morning Clara was tying a wine-colored 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 tobring some prunes and honey and cloves from town. "

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

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

"Was he cross?" her niece asked indifferently. 

"Olaf? Oh, no! He was in fine spirits. He's never cross if you knowhow to take him. I never knew a man to make so little fuss aboutbills. I gave him a list of things to get a yard long, and he didn'tsay 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 ashrug. "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. The people have confidence in him. " Johanna beat up a pillow andheld it under her fat chin while she slipped on the case. Her niecelaughed. 

"Maybe we could make people believe we were wise, Aunty, if we heldour tongues. Why did you tell Mrs. Ericson that Norman threw meagain last Saturday and turned my foot? She's been talking to Olaf. "

Johanna fell into great confusion. "Oh, but, my precious, the oldlady asked for you, and she's always so angry if I can't give anexcuse. Anyhow, she needn't talk; she's always tearing up somethingwith that motor of hers. "

When her aunt clattered down to the kitchen, Clara went to dust theparlor. Since there was not much there to dust, this did not takevery long. Olaf had built the house new for her before theirmarriage, but her interest in furnishing it had been short-lived. Itwent, indeed, little beyond a bath-tub and her piano. They haddisagreed about almost every other article of furniture, and Clarahad said she would rather have her house empty than full of thingsshe didn't want. The house was set in a hillside, and the westwindows of the parlor looked out above the kitchen yard thirty feetbelow. The east windows opened directly into the front yard. At oneof the latter, Clara, while she was dusting, heard a low whistle. She did not turn at once, but listened intently as she drew hercloth 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 inhis hand, just outside the window. As she crossed the room he leanedagainst the 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 havebeen while Eric and I were out walking. Isn't she enterprising? Liftthis screen, won't you?"

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

He threw his hat on the piano. "Oh, I do sometimes. You see, I'mahead of her now. I'm supposed to be in Anders' wheat-field. But, aswe were leaving, Mother ran her car into a soft place beside theroad and sank up to the hubs. While they were going for horses topull her out, I cut away behind the stacks and escaped. " Nilschuckled. Clara's dull eyes lit up as she looked at him admiringly. 

"You've got them guessing already. I don't know what your mothersaid to Olaf over the telephone, but he came back looking as if he'dseen a ghost, and he didn't go to bed until a dreadful hour--teno'clock, I should think. He sat out on the porch in the dark like agraven image. It had been one of his talkative days, too. " They bothlaughed, easily and lightly, like people who have laughed a greatdeal together; but they remained standing. 

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

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

Nils looked interested. "The other will?"

"Yes. A later one. They knew your father made another, but theynever knew what he did with it. They almost tore the old house topieces looking for it. They always suspected that he carried on aclandestine correspondence with you, for the one thing he would dowas to get his own mail himself. So they thought he might have sentthe new will to you for safekeeping. The old one, leaving everythingto your mother, was made long before you went away, and it'sunderstood among them that it cuts you out--that she will leave allthe property to the others. Your father made the second will toprevent that. I've been hoping you had it. It would be such fun tospring it on them. " Clara laughed mirthfully, a thing she did notoften 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, just for once. There never was such a family for having nothing everhappen to them but dinner and threshing. I'd almost be willing todie, just to have a funeral. _You_ wouldn't stand it for threeweeks. "

Nils bent over the piano and began pecking at the keys with thefinger of one hand. "I wouldn't? My dear young lady, how do you knowwhat I can stand? _You_ wouldn't wait to find out. "

Clara flushed darkly and frowned. "I didn't believe you would evercome back--" 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 will be here witha search-warrant pretty soon. " He swung round and faced her, thrusting his hands into his coat pockets. "Come, you ought to beglad to see me, if you want something to happen. I'm something, evenwithout a will. We can have 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 hadput the velvet ribbon about her throat that morning. 

"You know, I'm so tickled to see mother, " Nils went on. "I didn'tknow I was so proud of her. A regular pile-driver. How about littlepigtails, down at the house? Is Olaf doing the square thing by thosechildren?"

Clara frowned pensively. "Olaf has to do something that looks likethe square thing, now that he's a public man!" She glanced drolly atNils. "But he makes a good commission out of it. On Sundays they allget together here and figure. He lets Peter and Anders put in bigbills for the keep of the two boys, and he pays them out of theestate. They are always having what they call accountings. Olaf getssomething out of it, too. I don't know just how they do it, but it'sentirely a family matter, as they say. And when the Ericsons saythat--" Clara lifted her eyebrows. 

Just then the angry _honk-honk_ of an approaching motor sounded fromdown the road. Their eyes met and they began to laugh. They laughedas children do when they can not contain themselves, and can notexplain the cause of their mirth to grown people, but share itperfectly together. When Clara Vavrika sat down at the piano afterhe was gone, she felt that she had laughed away a dozen years. Shepractised as if the 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 withoutgetting herself talked about. She was a good deal talked aboutbefore he married her. "

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

Mrs. Ericson shrugged her massive shoulders. "Olaf don't seem tohave much luck, when it comes to wives. The first one was meekenough, but she was always ailing. And this one has her own way. Hesays if he quarreled with her she'd go back to her father, and thenhe'd lose the Bohemian vote. There are a great many Bohunks in thisdistrict. But when you find a man under his wife's thumb you canalways be sure there's a soft spot in him somewhere. "

Nils thought of his own father, and smiled. "She brought him a gooddeal of 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 agood deal of property some day, if old Vavrika don't marry again. But I don't consider a saloonkeeper's money as good as otherpeople's money. "

Nils laughed outright. "Come, Mother, don't let your prejudicescarry you that far. Money's money. Old Vavrika's a mighty decentsort of saloonkeeper. Nothing rowdy about him. "

Mrs. Ericson spoke up angrily: "Oh, I know you always stood up forthem! But hanging around there when you were a boy never did you anygood, Nils, nor any of the other boys who went there. There weren'tso many after her when she married Olaf, let me tell you. She knewenough to grab 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 thetrouble to find out that it was the one jolly house in this countryfor a boy to go to. All the rest of you were working yourselves todeath, and the houses were mostly a mess, full of babies and washingand flies. Oh, it was all right--I understand that; but you areyoung only once, and I happened to be young then. Now, Vavrika's wasalways jolly. He played the violin, and I used to take my flute, andClara played the piano, and Johanna used to sing Bohemian songs. Shealways had a big supper for us--herrings and pickles and poppyseedbread, and lots of cake and preserves. Old Joe had been in the armyin the old country, and he could tell lots of good stories. I cansee him cutting bread, at the head of the table, now. I don't knowwhat I'd have done when I was a kid if it hadn't been for theVavrikas, really. "

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

"So do the circuses, Mother, and they're a good thing. People oughtto get 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 wayfrom town. " Nils shook himself and prepared to greet his brother, who was waiting on the porch. 

Olaf was a big, heavy Norwegian, slow of speech and movement. Hishead was large and square, like a block of wood. When Nils, at adistance, tried to remember what his brother looked like, he couldrecall only his heavy head, high forehead, large nostrils, andpale-blue eyes, set far apart. Olaf's features were rudimentary: thething one noticed was the face itself, wide and flat and pale, devoid of any expression, betraying his fifty years as little as itbetrayed anything else, and powerful by reason of its verystolidness. When Olaf shook hands with Nils he looked at him fromunder his light eyebrows, but Nils felt that no one could ever saywhat that pale look might mean. The one thing he had always felt inOlaf was a heavy stubbornness, like the unyielding stickiness of wetloam 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 aboutready to settle down. " Nils saw his brother lower his big head. ("Exactly like a bull, " he thought. ) "Mother's been persuading me toslow down now, and go in for farming, " he went on lightly. 

Olaf made a deep sound in his throat. "Farming ain't learned in aday, " 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. "Of course, " he went on, "I shouldn't expect to make a big success, as you fellows have done. But then, I'm not ambitious. I won't wantmuch. A little land, and some cattle, maybe. "

Olaf still stared at the ground, his head down. He wanted to askNils what he had been doing all these years, that he didn't have abusiness somewhere he couldn't afford to leave; why he hadn't morepride than to come back with only a little sole-leather trunk toshow for himself, and to present himself as the only failure in thefamily. He did not ask one of these questions, but he made them allfelt distinctly. 

"Humph!" Nils thought. "No wonder the man never talks, when he canbutt his ideas into you like that without ever saying a word. Isuppose he uses that kind of smokeless powder on his wife all thetime. But I guess she has her innings. " He chuckled, and Olaf lookedup. "Never mind me, Olaf. I laugh without knowing why, like littleEric. He's another cheerful dog. "

"Eric, " said Olaf slowly, "is a spoiled kid. He's just let hismother's best cow go dry because he don't milk her right. I washoping you'd take him away somewhere and put him into business. Ifhe don't do any good among strangers, he never will. " This was along speech for Olaf, and as he finished it he climbed into hisbuggy. 

Nils shrugged his shoulders. "Same old tricks, " he thought. "Hitsfrom behind you every time. What a whale of a man!" He turned andwent round to the kitchen, where his mother was scolding little Ericfor letting the 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 littleBohemian settlement which lay at the other end of the county, tenlevel miles north of Olaf's farm. Clara rode up to see her fatheralmost every day. Vavrika's house was, so to speak, in the back yardof his saloon. The garden between the two buildings was inclosed bya high board fence as tight as a partition, and in summer Joe keptbeer-tables and wooden benches among the gooseberry bushes under hislittle cherry tree. At one of these tables Nils Ericson was seatedin the late afternoon, three days after his return home. Joe hadgone in to serve a customer, and Nils was lounging on his elbows, looking rather mournfully into his half-emptied pitcher, when heheard a laugh across the little garden. Clara, in her riding-habit, was standing at the back door of the house, under the grapevinetrellis that old Joe had grown there long ago. Nils rose. 

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

She shook her head. "No, I never come out here any more. Olafdoesn't like it. I must live up to my position, you know. "

"You mean to tell me you never come out and chat with the boys, asyou used 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 haveyou two been doing?"

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

Clara reached up and poked with her riding-whip at a white moth thatwas fluttering in the sunlight among the vine leaves. "I suppose youwill never 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 singinglazily above the empty beer-glasses. 

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

"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 leaveyou if 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, sixfeet four, with curly yellow hair and mustache, clapped him on theshoulder. "Not a God-damn a your money go in my drawer, you hear?Only next time you bring your flute, te-te-te-te-te-ty. " Joe waggedhis fingers in imitation of the flute-player's position. "My Clara, she come all-a-time Sundays an' play for me. She not like to play atEricson's place. " He shook his yellow curls and laughed. "Not aGod-damn a fun at Ericson's. You come a Sunday. You like-a fun. Noforget de flute. " Joe talked very rapidly and always tumbled overhis English. He seldom spoke it to his customers, and had neverlearned much. 

Nils swung himself into the saddle and trotted to the west end ofthe village, where the houses and gardens scattered intoprairie-land and the road turned south. Far ahead of him, in thedeclining light, he saw Clara Vavrika's slender figure, loitering onhorseback. He touched his mare with the whip, and shot along thewhite, level road, under the reddening sky. When he overtook Olaf'swife he saw that she had been crying. "What's the matter, ClaraVavrika?" 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 madeyou do it, Clara?"

"I suppose I really did it to oblige the neighbors"--Clara tossedher head. "People were beginning to wonder. "

"To wonder?"

"Yes--why I didn't get married. I suppose I didn't like to keep themin suspense. I've discovered that most girls marry out ofconsideration for the neighborhood. "

Nils bent his head toward her and his white teeth flashed. "I'd havegambled that one girl I knew would say, 'Let the neighborhood 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 gooff. That's what makes us get married: we can't stand the laugh. "

Nils looked sidewise at her. He had never seen her head droopbefore. Resignation was the last thing he would have expected ofher. "In your case, there wasn't something else?"

"Something else?"

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

Clara drew herself up. "Oh, I never thought you'd come back. Notafter I stopped writing to you, at least. _That_ was all over, longbefore I married Olaf. "

"It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you could doto me 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, ClaraVavrika, you are never going to stick it out. You'll cut away someday, and I've been thinking you might as well cut away with me. "

Clara threw up her chin. "Oh, you don't know me as well as youthink. I won't cut away. Sometimes, when I'm with father, I feellike it. But I can hold out as long as the Ericsons can. They'venever got the best of me yet, and one can live, so long as one isn'tbeaten. If I go back to father, it's all up with Olaf in politics. He knows that, and he never goes much beyond sulking. I've as muchwit as the Ericsons. I'll never leave them unless I can show them athing 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, andwho has more money. "

Nils whistled. "Dear me, you are demanding a good deal. TheEricsons, take the lot of them, are a bunch to beat. But I shouldthink the excitement of tormenting them would have worn off by thistime. "

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

"Then why don't you cut away? There are more amusing games than thisin the world. When I came home I thought it might amuse me to bullya few quarter sections out of the Ericsons; but I've almost decidedI can get more fun for my money somewhere else. "

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

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

Clara struck her horse with the whip, and in a bound she was farahead of him. Nils dropped one word, "Damn!" and whipped after her;but she leaned forward in her saddle and fairly cut the wind. Herlong riding-skirt rippled in the still air behind her. The sun wasjust sinking behind the stubble in a vast, clear sky, and theshadows drew across the fields so rapidly that Nils could scarcelykeep in sight the dark figure on the road. When he overtook her hecaught her horse by the bridle. Norman reared, and Nils wasfrightened 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--tomake me suffer 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. Theyflashed 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 andsmiled, as if there were an understanding between them. His motherscolded him for being late for supper. 

V

On Sunday afternoon Joe Vavrika, in his shirt-sleeves andcarpet-slippers, was sitting in his garden, smoking a long-tasseledporcelain pipe with a hunting scene painted on the bowl. Clara satunder the cherry tree, reading aloud to him from the weekly Bohemianpapers. She had worn a white muslin dress under her riding-habit, and the leaves of the cherry tree threw a pattern of sharp shadowsover her skirt. The black cat was dozing in the sunlight at herfeet, and Joe's dachshund was scratching a hole under the scarletgeraniums and dreaming of badgers. Joe was filling his pipe for thethird time since dinner, when he heard a knocking on the fence. Hebroke into a loud guffaw and unlatched the little door that led intothe street. He did not call Nils by name, but caught him by the handand dragged him in. Clara stiffened and the color deepened under herdark skin. Nils, too, felt a little awkward. He had not seen hersince the night when she rode away from him and left him alone onthe level road between the fields. Joe dragged him to the woodenbench 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. Igot somet'ing good for you. " Joe shook his finger at Nils and winkedhis blue eyes, a bright clear eye, full of fire, though the tinyblood-vessels on the ball were always a little distended. "I gotsomet'ing for you from"--he paused and waved his hand--"Hongarie. You know Hongarie? You wait!" He pushed Nils down on the bench, andwent through the back door of 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, didhe? He wanted a party and proceeded to arrange it. Isn't he fun?Don't be cross; let's give him a good time. "

Clara smiled and shook out her skirt. "Isn't that like father? Andhe has sat here so meekly all day. Well, I won't pout. I'm glad youcame. He doesn't have very many good times now any more. There areso few of his kind left. The second generation are a tame lot. "

Joe came back with a flask in one hand and three wine-glasses caughtby the stems between the fingers of the other. These he placed onthe table with an air of ceremony, and, going behind Nils, held theflask between him and the sun, squinting into it admiringly. "Youknow dis, Tokai? A great friend of mine, he bring dis to me, apresent out of Hongarie. You know how much it cost, dis wine? Chustso much what it weigh in gold. Nobody but de nobles drink him inBohemie. Many, many years I save him up, dis Tokai. " Joe whipped outhis official cork-screw and delicately removed the cork. "De old mandie what bring him to me, an' dis wine he lay on his belly in mycellar an' sleep. An' now, " carefully pouring out the heavy yellowwine, "an' now he wake up; and maybe he wake us up, too!" He carriedone of the glasses to his daughter and presented it with greatgallantry. 

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. Yousee!"

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

But Joe settled back in his wooden rocker and wagged his bigcarpet-slipper. "No-no-no-no-no-no-no! No play fiddle now any more:too much ache in de finger, " waving them, "all-a-time rheumatiz. Youplay de flute, te-tety-te-tety-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 howher eyes used to snap when we called her the Bohemian Girl?" Nilslifted his flute and began "When Other Lips and Other Hearts, " andJoe hummed the air in a husky baritone, waving his carpet-slipper. "Oh-h-h, das-a fine music, " he cried, clapping his hands as Nilsfinished. "Now 'Marble Halls, 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 bumble-bee. 

"There's one more you always played, " Clara said quietly; "Iremember that best. " She locked her hands over her knee and began"The Heart Bowed Down, " and sang it through without groping for thewords. She was singing with a good deal of warmth when she came tothe end of the old song:

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

Joe flashed out his red silk handkerchief and blew his nose, shakinghis head. "No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Too sad, too sad! I not like-a dat. Play quick 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 modelstudent of their class was a very homely girl in thick spectacles. Her name was Evelina Oleson; she had a long, swinging walk whichsomehow suggested the measure of that song, and they usedmercilessly to sing it at her. 

"Dat ugly Oleson girl, she teach in de school, " Joe gasped, "an' shestill walk chust like dat, yup-a, yup-a, yup-a, chust like a camelshe 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 Clarashe haf to, so she show she not jealous. So, we all drink to yourgirl. You not tell her name, eh? No-no-no, I no make you tell. Shepretty, eh? She make good sweetheart? I bet!" Joe winked and liftedhis glass. "How soon you 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. Mans say, 'You come to de church, an' get a hurry on you. ' Das-a waymans talks. "

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

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

"The way she wants to be kept?"

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

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

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

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

Nils dropped his elbows on the table and looked steadily across ather. "I've played with lots of girls since, but I haven't found onewho was such 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, likethe yellow drops of Tokai in the brown glass bottle. "Can you stillplay, or are 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. Itslipped out because she was confused enough to say just the wrongthing. 

"I work between times. " Nils' steady gaze still beat upon her. "Don't you worry about my working, Mrs. Ericson. You're getting likeall the rest of them. " He reached his brown, warm hand across thetable and dropped it on Clara's, which was cold as an icicle. "Lastcall for play, Mrs. Ericson!" Clara shivered, and suddenly her handsand cheeks grew warm. Her fingers lingered in his a moment, and theylooked at each other earnestly. Joe Vavrika had put the mouth of thebottle to his lips and was swallowing the last drops of the Tokai, standing. The sun, just about to sink behind his shop, glistened onthe bright glass, on his flushed face and curly yellow hair. "Look, "Clara whispered; "that's the way I want to grow old. "

VI

On the day of Olaf Ericson's barn-raising, his wife, for once in away, rose early. Johanna Vavrika had been baking cakes and fryingand boiling and spicing meats for a week beforehand, but it was notuntil the day before the party was to take place that Clara showedany interest in it. Then she was seized with one of her fitfulspasms of energy, and took the wagon and little Eric and spent theday on Plum Creek, gathering vines and swamp goldenrod to decoratethe barn. 

By four o'clock in the afternoon buggies and wagons began to arriveat the big unpainted building in front of Olaf's house. When Nilsand his mother came at five, there were more than fifty people inthe barn, and a great drove of children. On the ground floor stoodsix long tables, set with the crockery of seven flourishing Ericsonfamilies, lent for the occasion. In the middle of each table was abig yellow pumpkin, hollowed out and filled with woodbine. In onecorner of the barn, behind a pile of green-and-white-stripedwatermelons, was a circle of chairs for the old people; the youngerguests sat on bushel measures or barbed-wire spools, and thechildren tumbled about in the haymow. The box-stalls Clara hadconverted into booths. The framework was hidden by goldenrod andsheaves of wheat, and the partitions were covered with wildgrapevines full of fruit. At one of these Johanna Vavrika watchedover her cooked meats, enough to provision an army; and at the nexther kitchen girls had ranged the ice-cream freezers, and Clara wasalready cutting pies and cakes against the hour of serving. At thethird stall, little Hilda, in a bright pink lawn dress, dispensedlemonade throughout the afternoon. Olaf, as a public man, hadthought it inadvisable to serve beer in his barn; but Joe Vavrikahad come over with two demijohns concealed in his buggy, and afterhis arrival the wagon-shed was much frequented by the men. 

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

Nils leaned against the booth, talking to the excited little girland watching the people. The barn faced the west, and the sun, pouring in at the big doors, filled the whole interior with a goldenlight, through which filtered fine particles of dust from thehaymow, where the children were romping. There was a greatchattering from the stall where Johanna Vavrika exhibited to theadmiring women her platters heaped with fried chicken, her roasts ofbeef, boiled tongues, and baked hams with cloves stuck in the crispbrown fat and garnished with tansy and parsley. The older women, having assured themselves that there were twenty kinds of cake, notcounting cookies, and three dozen fat pies, repaired to the cornerbehind the pile of watermelons, put on their white aprons, and fellto their knitting and fancy-work. They were a fine company of oldwomen, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find them theretogether, 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;and several of almost heroic frame, not less massive than old Mrs. Ericson herself. Few of them wore glasses, and old Mrs. Svendsen, aDanish woman, who was quite bald, wore the only cap among them. Mrs. Oleson, who had twelve big grandchildren, could still show twobraids of yellow hair as thick as her own wrists. Among all thesegrandmothers there were more brown heads than white. They all had apleased, prosperous air, as if they were more than satisfied withthemselves and with life. Nils, leaning against Hilda'slemonade-stand, watched them as they sat chattering in fourlanguages, their fingers never lagging behind their tongues. 

"Look at them over there, " he whispered, detaining Clara as shepassed him. "Aren't they the Old Guard? I've just counted thirtyhands. I guess they've wrung many a chicken's neck and warmed many aboy's jacket for him in their time. "

In reality he fell into amazement when he thought of the Herculeanlabors those fifteen pairs of hands had performed: of the cows theyhad milked, the butter they had made, the gardens they had planted, the children and grandchildren they had tended, the brooms they hadworn out, the mountains of food they had cooked. It made him dizzy. Clara Vavrika smiled a hard, enigmatical smile at him and walkedrapidly away. Nils' eyes followed her white figure as she wenttoward the house. He watched her walking alone in the sunlight, looked at her slender, defiant shoulders and her little hard-sethead with its coils of blue-black hair. "No, " he reflected; "she'dnever be like them, not if she lived here a hundred years. She'donly grow more bitter. You can't tame a wild thing; you can onlychain it. People aren't all alike. I mustn't lose my nerve. " He gaveHilda's pigtail a parting tweak and set out after Clara. "Where to?"he asked, as he came upon her in the kitchen. 

"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 thecellar, where a basement window let in a stream of light. From aswinging shelf Clara selected several glass jars, each labeled inJohanna's careful hand. Nils took up a brown flask. "What's this? Itlooks good. "

"It is. It's some French brandy father gave me when I was married. Would you 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 tobe about you?"

Clara shrugged her shoulders. "Boys are always crazy about somebodyor other. I dare say some silly has been crazy about Evelina Oleson. You got over it in a hurry. "

"Because I didn't come back, you mean? I had to get on, you know, and it was 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 firstwent away. I began to wonder if you were really as you had seemed tome when I was a boy. I thought I'd like to see. I've had lots ofgirls, but no one ever pulled me the same way. The more I thoughtabout you, the more I remembered how it used to be--like hearing awild tune you can't resist, calling you out at night. It had been along while since anything had pulled me out of my boots, and Iwondered whether anything ever could again. " Nils thrust his handsinto his coat pockets and squared his shoulders, as his mothersometimes squared hers, as Olaf, in a clumsier manner, squared his. "So I thought I'd come back and see. Of course the family have triedto do me, and I rather thought I'd bring out father's will and makea fuss. But they can have their old land; they've put enough sweatinto it. " He took the flask and filled the two glasses carefully tothe brim. "I've found out what I want from the Ericsons. Drink_skoal_, Clara. " He lifted his glass, and Clara took hers withdowncast 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 wholefried chickens, and he did. Eli Swanson stowed away two wholecustard pies, and Nick Hermanson ate a chocolate layer cake to thelast crumb. There was even a cooky contest among the children, andone thin, slablike Bohemian boy consumed sixteen and won the prize, a ginger-bread pig which Johanna Vavrika had carefully decoratedwith red candies and burnt sugar. Fritz Sweiheart, the Germancarpenter, won in the pickle contest, but he disappeared soon aftersupper and was not seen for the rest of the evening. Joe Vavrikasaid that Fritz could have managed the pickles all right, but he hadsampled the demijohn in his buggy too often before sitting down tothe table. 

While the supper was being cleared away the two fiddlers began totune up for the dance. Clara was to accompany them on her oldupright piano, which had been brought down from her father's. Bythis time Nils had renewed old acquaintances. Since his interviewwith Clara in the cellar, he had been busy telling all the old womenhow young they looked, and all the young ones how pretty they were, and assuring the men that they had here the best farm-land in theworld. He had made himself so agreeable that old Mrs. Ericson'sfriends began to come up to her and tell how lucky she was to gether smart son back again, and please to get him to play his flute. Joe Vavrika, who could still play very well when he forgot that hehad rheumatism, caught up a fiddle from Johnny Oleson and played acrazy Bohemian dance tune that set the wheels going. When he droppedthe bow every one was ready to dance. 

Olaf, in a frock-coat and a solemn made-up necktie, led the grandmarch with his mother. Clara had kept well out of _that_ by stickingto the piano. She played the march with a pompous solemnity whichgreatly amused 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 byleading out Evelina Oleson, the homely school-teacher. His nextpartner was a very fat Swedish girl, who, although she was anheiress, had not been asked for the first dance, but had stoodagainst the wall in her tight, high-heeled shoes, nervouslyfingering a lace handkerchief. She was soon out of breath, so Nilsled her, pleased and panting, to her seat, and went over to thepiano, from which Clara had been watching his gallantry. "Ask OlenaYenson, " she whispered. "She waltzes beautifully. "

Olena, too, was rather inconveniently plump, handsome in a smooth, heavy way, with a fine color and good-natured, sleepy eyes. She wasredolent of violet sachet powder, and had warm, soft, white hands, but she danced divinely, moving as smoothly as the tide coming in. "There, that's something like, " Nils said as he released her. "You'll give me the next waltz, won't you? Now I must go and dancewith my little cousin. "

Hilda was greatly excited when Nils went up to her stall and heldout his arm. Her little eyes sparkled, but she declared that shecould not leave her lemonade. Old Mrs. Ericson, who happened alongat this moment, said she would attend to that, and Hilda came out, as pink as her pink dress. The dance was a schottische, and in amoment her yellow braids were fairly standing on end. "Bravo!" Nilscried encouragingly. "Where did 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 ortoo shy to dance, and told him that he must dance the next waltzwith Hilda. 

The boy screwed up his shoulders. "Aw, Nils, I can't dance. My feetare too 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 hasteto scramble 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 playfor them. "

"I'm obliged to you for teaching him. There's no reason why heshould grow 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, whichshe seldom bestowed on any one, and which seemed to say, "Yes, Iadmire you, but I am your equal. "

Clara was proving a much better host than Olaf, who, once the supperwas over, seemed to feel no interest in anything but the lanterns. He had brought a locomotive headlight from town to light the revels, and he kept skulking about it as if he feared the mere light from itmight set his new barn on fire. His wife, on the contrary, wascordial to every one, was animated and even gay. The deep salmoncolor in her cheeks burned vividly, and her eyes were full of life. She gave the piano over to the fat Swedish heiress, pulled herfather away from the corner where he sat gossiping with his cronies, and made him dance a Bohemian dance with her. In his youth Joe hadbeen a famous dancer, and his daughter got him so limbered up thatevery one sat round and applauded them. The old ladies wereparticularly delighted, and made them go through the dance again. From their corner where they watched and commented, the old womenkept time with their feet and hands, and whenever the fiddles struckup a new air old Mrs. Svendsen's white cap would begin to bob. 

Clara was waltzing with little Eric when Nils came up to them, brushed his brother aside, and swung her out among the dancers. "Remember how we used to waltz on rollers at the old skating-rink intown? I suppose people don't do that any more. We used to keep it upfor hours. You know, we never did moon around as other boys andgirls did. It was dead serious with us from the beginning. When wewere most in love with each other, we used to fight. You were alwayspinching people; your fingers were like little nippers. A regularsnapping-turtle, you were. Lord, how you'd like Stockholm! Sit outin the streets in front of cafés and talk all night in summer. Justlike a reception--officers and ladies and funny English people. Jolliest people in the world, the Swedes, once you get them going. Always drinking things--champagne and stout mixed, half-and-half;serve it out of big pitchers, and serve plenty. Slow pulse, youknow; they can stand a lot. Once they light up, they're glow-worms, I can tell you. "

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

"_I_ don't?"

"No; I could see that when you were looking at the old women therethis afternoon. They're the kind you really admire, after all; womenlike your 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 ofold dames 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, Clara Vavrika!" Nils laughed down at her sullen frown and beganmockingly to sing:

 "_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 atyou. "

"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 amongstthem. Besides, we'll give them something to talk about when we hitthe trail. Lord, it will be a godsend to them! They haven't hadanything so interesting to chatter about since the grasshopper year. It'll give them a new lease of life. And Olaf won't lose theBohemian vote, either. They'll have the laugh on him so that they'llvote two apiece. They'll send him to Congress. They'll never forgethis barn party, or us. They'll always remember us as we're dancingtogether now. We're making a legend. Where's my waltz, boys?" hecalled as they whirled past the fiddlers. 

The musicians grinned, looked at each other, hesitated, and began anew air; and Nils sang with them, as the couples fell from a quickwaltz to a 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, thatNils!" And old Mrs. Svendsen's cap lurched dreamily from side toside to the flowing 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 sharpblack shadows. The roads were white rivers of dust. The sky was adeep, crystalline blue, and the stars were few and faint. Everythingseemed to have succumbed, to have sunk to sleep, under the great, golden, tender, midsummer moon. The splendor of it seemed totranscend human life and human fate. The senses were too feeble totake it in, and every time one looked up at the sky one felt unequalto it, as if one were sitting deaf under the waves of a great riverof melody. Near the road, Nils Ericson was lying against a strawstack in Olaf's wheat-field. His own life seemed strange andunfamiliar to him, as if it were something he had read about, ordreamed, and forgotten. He lay very still, watching the white roadthat ran in front of him, lost itself among the fields, and then, ata distance, reappeared over a little hill. At last, against thiswhite band he saw something moving rapidly, and he got up and walkedto the edge of the field. "She is passing the row of poplars now, "he thought. He heard the padded beat of hoofs along the dusty road, 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 thebit and stroked his neck. 

"What are you doing out so late, Clara Vavrika? I went to the house, but Johanna 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 to-night; I have something tosay to you. I can't talk to you at the house, with Olaf sittingthere on the porch, weighing a thousand tons. "

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

Nils plodded on across the stubble. "Are you really going to spendthe rest of your life like this, night after night, summer aftersummer? Haven't you anything better to do on a night like this thanto wear yourself and Norman out tearing across the country to yourfather's and back? Besides, your father won't live forever, youknow. His little place will be shut up or sold, and then you'll havenobody but the Ericsons. You'll have to fasten down the hatches forthe winter then. "

Clara moved her head restlessly. "Don't talk about that. I try neverto think of it. If I lost father I'd lose everything, even my holdover the Ericsons. "

"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 itnow. "

"Of what?"

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

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

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 areyou afraid of all the time? Ah, you're afraid of losing it; that'swhat's the matter with you! And you will, Clara Vavrika, you will!When I used to know you--listen; you've caught a wild bird in yourhand, haven't you, and felt its heart beat so hard that you wereafraid it would shatter its little body to pieces? Well, you used tobe just like that, a slender, eager thing with a wild delight insideyou. That is how I remembered you. And I come back and find you--abitter woman. This is a perfect ferret fight here; you live bybiting and being bitten. Can't you remember what life used to be?Can't you remember that old delight? I've never forgotten it, orknown its like, on land or sea. "

He drew the horse under the shadow of the straw stack. Clara felthim take her foot out of the stirrup, and she slid softly down intohis arms. He kissed her slowly. He was a deliberate man, but hisnerves were steel when he wanted anything. Something flashed outfrom him like a knife out of a sheath. Clara felt everythingslipping away from her; she was flooded by the summer night. Hethrust his hand into his pocket, and then held it out at arm'slength. "Look, " he said. The shadow of the straw stack fell sharpacross his wrist, and in the palm of his hand she saw a silverdollar shining. "That's my pile, " he muttered; "will you go withme?"

Clara nodded, and dropped her forehead on his shoulder. 

Nils took a deep breath. "Will you go with me to-night?"

"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 nothingso dangerous as sitting still. You've only got one life, one youth, and you can let it slip through your fingers if you want to; nothingeasier. Most people do that. You'd be better off tramping the roadswith me than you are here. " Nils held back her head and looked intoher eyes. "But I'm not that kind of a tramp, Clara. You won't haveto take in sewing. I'm with a Norwegian shipping line; came over onbusiness with the New York offices, but now I'm going straight backto Bergen. I expect I've got as much money as the Ericsons. Fathersent me a little to get started. 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, butsomething seems to hold me. I'm afraid to pull against it. It comesout of the ground, I think. "

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

Clara clung to him and hid her face against his shoulder. "Notto-night, " she whispered. "Sit here and talk to me to-night. I don'twant to go anywhere to-night. I may never love you like this again. "

Nils laughed through his teeth. "You can't come that on me. That'snot my way, Clara Vavrika. Eric's mare is over there behind thestacks, and I'm off on the midnight. It's good-by, or off across theworld with me. My carriage won't wait. I've written a letter toOlaf; I'll mail it in town. When he reads it he won't bother us--notif I know him. He'd rather have the land. Besides, I could demand aninvestigation of his administration of Cousin Henrik's estate, andthat would be bad for a public man. You've no clothes, I know; butyou can sit up to-night, and we can get everything on the way. Where's your old dash, Clara Vavrika? What's become of your Bohemianblood? I used to think you had courage enough for anything. Where'syour nerve--what are you waiting for?"

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

"I never say that thing to any woman, Clara Vavrika. " He leanedback, lifted her gently from the ground, and whispered through histeeth: "But I'll never, never let you go, not to any man on earthbut me! Do you understand me? Now, wait here. "

Clara sank down on a sheaf of wheat and covered her face with herhands. She did not know what she was going to do--whether she wouldgo or stay. The great, silent country seemed to lay a spell uponher. The ground seemed to hold her as if by roots. Her knees weresoft under her. She felt as if she could not bear separation fromher old sorrows, from her old discontent. They were dear to her, they had kept her alive, they were a part of her. There would benothing left of her if she were wrenched away from them. Never couldshe pass beyond that sky-line against which her restlessness hadbeat so many times. She felt as if her soul had built itself a nestthere on that horizon at which she looked every morning and everyevening, and it was dear to her, inexpressibly dear. She pressed herfingers against her eyeballs to shut it out. Beside her she heardthe tramping of horses in the soft earth. Nils said nothing to her. He put his hands under her arms and lifted her lightly to hersaddle. Then he swung himself into his own. 

"We shall have to ride fast to catch the midnight train. A lastgallop, 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 landstretched untroubled under the azure night. Two shadows had passed. 

VIII

A year after the flight of Olaf Ericson's wife, the night train wassteaming across the plains of Iowa. The conductor was hurryingthrough one of the day-coaches, his lantern on his arm, when a lank, fair-haired boy sat up in one of the plush seats and tweaked him bythe 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 wasdrawn, as if he were in trouble. 

"Yes. But I was wondering whether I could get off at the next placeand get 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 RedOak?"

"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 boyadded, blushing. 

"Run away, " the conductor thought, as he slammed the coach doorbehind him. 

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 headwas aching violently. "Oh, what shall I do?" he thought, as helooked dully down at his big shoes. "Nils will be ashamed of me; Ihaven't got any spunk. "

Ever since Nils had run away with his brother's wife, life at homehad been hard for little Eric. His mother and Olaf both suspectedhim of complicity. Mrs. Ericson was harsh and fault-finding, constantly wounding the boy's pride; and Olaf was always getting heragainst him. 

Joe Vavrika heard often from his daughter. Clara had always beenfond of her father, and happiness made her kinder. She wrote himlong accounts of the voyage to Bergen, and of the trip she and Nilstook through Bohemia to the little town where her father had grownup and where she herself was born. She visited all her kinsmenthere, and sent her father news of his brother, who was a priest; ofhis sister, who had married a horse-breeder--of their big farm andtheir many children. These letters Joe always managed to read tolittle Eric. They contained messages for Eric and Hilda. Clara sentpresents, too, which Eric never dared to take home and which poorlittle Hilda never even saw, though she loved to hear Eric tellabout them when they were out getting the eggs together. But Olafonce saw Eric coming out of Vavrika's house, --the old man had neverasked 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 speakto Vavrika again, and after that night she would not allow him to goto town alone. So it was a long while before Eric got any more newsof his brother. But old Joe suspected what was going on, and hecarried Clara's letters about in his pocket. One Sunday he drove outto see a German friend of his, and chanced to catch sight of Eric, sitting by the cattle-pond in the big pasture. They went togetherinto Fritz Oberlies' barn, and read the letters and talked thingsover. Eric admitted that things were getting hard for him at home. That very night old Joe sat down and laboriously penned a statementof the case to his daughter. 

Things got no better for Eric. His mother and Olaf felt that, however closely he was watched, he still, as they said, "heard. "Mrs. Ericson could not admit neutrality. She had sent JohannaVavrika packing back to her brother's, though Olaf would much ratherhave kept her than Anders' eldest daughter, whom Mrs. Ericsoninstalled in her place. He was not so high-handed as his mother, andhe once sulkily told her that she might better have taught hergranddaughter to cook before she sent Johanna away. Olaf could haveborne a good deal for the sake of prunes spiced in honey, the secretof which Johanna had taken away with her. 

At last two letters came to Joe Vavrika: one from Nils, inclosing 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 onlywaiting for him to come. He was to leave New York on one of theboats of Nils' own line; the captain was one of their friends, andEric was to make himself known at once. 

Nils' directions were so explicit that a baby could have followedthem, Eric felt. And here he was, nearing Red Oak, Iowa, and rockingbackward and forward in despair. Never had he loved his brother somuch, and never had the big world called to him so hard. But therewas a lump in his throat which would not go down. Ever sincenightfall he had been tormented by the thought of his mother, alonein that big house that had sent forth so many men. Her unkindnessnow seemed so little, and her loneliness so great. He rememberedeverything she had ever done for him: how frightened she had beenwhen he tore his hand in the corn-sheller, and how she wouldn't letOlaf scold him. When Nils went away he didn't leave his mother allalone, or he would never have gone. Eric felt sure of 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 inthree minutes. "

"Yes, thank you. I'll let you know. " The conductor went out, and theboy doubled up with misery. He couldn't let his one chance go likethis. He felt for his breast pocket and crackled Nils' kind letterto give him courage. He didn't want Nils to be ashamed of him. Thetrain stopped. Suddenly he remembered his brother's kind, twinklingeyes, that always looked at you as if from far away. The lump in histhroat softened. "Ah, but Nils, Nils would _understand_!" hethought. "That's just it about Nils; he always understands. "

A lank, pale boy with a canvas telescope stumbled off the train tothe Red 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 bedand had cried herself to sleep. The old woman's knitting was in herlap, but her hands lay motionless on top of it. For more than anhour she had not moved a muscle. She simply sat, as only theEricsons and the mountains can sit. The house was dark, and therewas no sound but the croaking of the frogs down in the pond of thelittle pasture. 

Eric did not come home by the road, but across the fields, where noone could see him. He set his telescope down softly in the kitchenshed, and slipped noiselessly along the path to the front porch. Hesat down on the step without saying anything. Mrs. Ericson made nosign, and the frogs 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?"he asked 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 started and slid closer. "Oh, Mother, " he faltered, "I don'tcare about the farm. I came back because I thought you might beneeding 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, pale hair. His tears splashed down on the boards; happiness filledhis heart. 

 _McClure's_, August 1912

_Consequences_

Henry Eastman, a lawyer, aged forty, was standing beside theFlatiron building in a driving November rainstorm, signalingfrantically for a taxi. It was six-thirty, and everything on wheelswas engaged. The streets were in confusion about him, the sky was inturmoil above him, and the Flatiron building, which seemed about toblow down, threw water like a mill-shoot. Suddenly, out of thebrutal struggle of men and cars and machines and people tilting ateach other with umbrellas, a quiet, well-mannered limousine pausedbefore him, at the curb, and an agreeable, ruddy countenanceconfronted him through the open window of the car. 

"Don't you want me to pick you up, Mr. Eastman? I'm running directlyhome now. "

Eastman recognized Kier Cavenaugh, a young man of pleasure, wholived in the house on Central Park South, where he himself had anapartment. 

"Don't I?" he exclaimed, bolting into the car. "I'll risk gettingyour cushions wet without compunction. I came up in a taxi, but Ididn't hold it. Bad economy. I thought I saw your car down onFourteenth Street about half an hour ago. "

The owner of the car smiled. He had a pleasant, round face and roundeyes, and a fringe of smooth, yellow hair showed under the rim ofhis soft felt hat. "With a lot of little broilers fluttering intoit? You did. I know some girls who work in the cheap shops downthere. I happened to be down-town and I stopped and took a load ofthem home. I do sometimes. Saves their poor little clothes, youknow. Their shoes are never any good. "

Eastman looked at his rescuer. "Aren't they notoriously afraid ofcars and smooth young men?" he inquired. 

Cavenaugh shook his head. "They know which cars are safe and whichare chancy. They put each other wise. You have to take a bunch at atime, of course. The Italian girls can never come along; their menshoot. The girls understand, all right; but their fathers don't. Onegets to see queer places, sometimes, taking them home. "

Eastman laughed drily. "Every time I touch the circle of youracquaintance, Cavenaugh, it's a little wider. You must know New Yorkpretty well by this time. "

"Yes, but I'm on my good behavior below Twenty-third Street, " theyoung man replied with simplicity. "My little friends down therewould give me a good character. They're wise little girls. They havegrand ways with each other, a romantic code of loyalty. You can finda good many of the lost virtues among them. "

The car was standing still in a traffic block at Fortieth Street, when Cavenaugh suddenly drew his face away from the window andtouched Eastman's arm. "Look, please. You see that hansom with thebony gray horse--driver has a broken hat and red flannel around histhroat. Can you see who is inside?"

Eastman peered out. The hansom was just cutting across the line, andthe driver was making a great fuss about it, bobbing his head andwaving his whip. He jerked his dripping old horse into FortiethStreet and clattered off past the Public Library grounds towardSixth Avenue. "No, I couldn't see the passenger. Someone you know?"

"Could you see whether there was a passenger?" Cavenaugh asked. 

"Why, yes. A man, I think. I saw his elbow on the apron. No driverever behaves like that unless he has a passenger. "

"Yes, I may have been mistaken, " Cavenaugh murmured absent-mindedly. Ten minutes or so later, after Cavenaugh's car had turned off FifthAvenue into Fifty-eighth Street, Eastman exclaimed, "There's yoursame cabby, and his cart's empty. He's headed for a drink now, Isuppose. " The driver in the broken hat and the red flannel neckcloth was still brandishing the whip over his old gray. He wascoming from the west now, and turned down Sixth Avenue, under theelevated. 

Cavenaugh's car stopped at the bachelor apartment house betweenSixth and Seventh Avenues where he and Eastman lived, and they wentup in the elevator together. They were still talking when the liftstopped at Cavenaugh's floor, and Eastman stepped out with him andwalked down the hall, finishing his sentence while Cavenaugh foundhis latch-key. When he opened the door, a wave of fresh cigarettesmoke greeted them. Cavenaugh stopped short and stared into hishallway. "Now how in the devil--!" he exclaimed angrily. 

"Someone waiting for you? Oh, no, thanks. I wasn't coming in. I haveto work to-night. Thank you, but I couldn't. " Eastman nodded andwent up the two flights to his own rooms. 

Though Eastman did not customarily keep a servant he had this wintera man who had been lent to him by a friend who was abroad. Rollinsmet him at the door and took his coat and hat. 

"Put out my dinner clothes, Rollins, and then get out of here untilten o'clock. I've promised to go to a supper to-night. I shan't bedining. I've had a late tea and I'm going to work until ten. You mayput out some kumiss and biscuit for me. "

Rollins took himself off, and Eastman settled down at the big tablein his sitting-room. He had to read a lot of letters submitted asevidence in a breach of contract case, and before he got very far hefound that long paragraphs in some of the letters were written inGerman. He had a German dictionary at his office, but none here. Rollins had gone, and anyhow, the bookstores would be closed. Heremembered having seen a row of dictionaries on the lower shelf ofone of Cavenaugh's bookcases. Cavenaugh had a lot of books, thoughhe never read anything but new stuff. Eastman prudently turned downhis student's lamp very low--the thing had an evil habit ofsmoking--and went down two flights to Cavenaugh's door. 

The young man himself answered Eastman's ring. He was freshlydressed for the evening, except for a brown smoking jacket, and hisyellow hair had been brushed until it shone. He hesitated as heconfronted his caller, still holding the door knob, and his roundeyes and smooth forehead made their best imitation of a frown. WhenEastman began to apologize, Cavenaugh's manner suddenly changed. Hecaught his arm and jerked him into the narrow hall. "Come in, comein. Right along!" he said excitedly. "Right along, " he repeated ashe pushed Eastman before him into his sitting-room. "Well I'll--" hestopped short at the door and looked about his own room with an airof complete mystification. The back window was wide open and astrong wind was blowing in. Cavenaugh walked over to the window andstuck out his head, looking up and down the fire escape. When hepulled his head in, he drew down the sash. 

"I had a visitor I wanted you to see, " he explained with a nervoussmile. "At least I thought I had. He must have gone out that way, "nodding toward the window. 

"Call him back. I only came to borrow a German dictionary, if youhave one. Can't stay. Call him back. "

Cavenaugh shook his head despondently. "No use. He's beat it. Nowhere in sight. "

"He must be active. Has he left something?" Eastman pointed to avery dirty white glove that lay on the floor under the window. 

"Yes, that's his. " Cavenaugh reached for his tongs, picked up theglove, and tossed it into the grate, where it quickly shriveled onthe coals. Eastman felt that he had happened in upon somethingdisagreeable, possibly something shady, and he wanted to get away atonce. Cavenaugh stood staring at the fire and seemed stupid anddazed; so he repeated his request rather sternly, "I think I've seena German dictionary down there among your books. May I have it?"

Cavenaugh blinked at him. "A German dictionary? Oh, possibly! Thosewere my father's. I scarcely know what there is. " He put down thetongs and began to wipe his hands nervously with his handkerchief. 

Eastman went over to the bookcase behind the Chesterfield, openedthe door, swooped upon the book he wanted and stuck it under hisarm. He felt perfectly certain now that something shady had beengoing on in Cavenaugh's rooms, and he saw no reason why he shouldcome in for any hang-over. "Thanks. I'll send it back to-morrow, " hesaid curtly as he made for the door. 

Cavenaugh followed him. "Wait a moment. I wanted you to see him. Youdid see his glove, " glancing at the grate. 

Eastman laughed disagreeably. "I saw a glove. That's not evidence. Doyour friends often use that means of exit? Somewhat inconvenient. "

Cavenaugh gave him a startled glance. "Wouldn't you think so? For anold man, a very rickety old party? The ladders are steep, you know, and rusty. " He approached the window again and put it up softly. Ina moment he drew his head back with a jerk. He caught Eastman's armand shoved him toward the window. "Hurry, please. Look! Down there. "He pointed to the little patch of paved court four flights down. 

The square of pavement was so small and the walls about it were sohigh, that it was a good deal like looking down a well. Four tallbuildings backed upon the same court and made a kind of shaft, withflagstones at the bottom, and at the top a square of dark blue withsome stars in it. At the bottom of the shaft Eastman saw a blackfigure, a man in a caped coat and a tall hat stealing cautiouslyaround, not across the square of pavement, keeping close to the darkwall and avoiding the streak of light that fell on the flagstonesfrom a window in the opposite house. Seen from that height he was ofcourse fore-shortened and probably looked more shambling anddecrepit than he was. He picked his way along with exaggerated careand looked like a silly old cat crossing a wet street. When hereached the gate that led into an alley way between two buildings, he felt about for the latch, opened the door a mere crack, and thenshot out under the feeble lamp that burned in the brick arch overthe gateway. The door closed after him. 

"He'll get run in, " Eastman remarked curtly, turning away from thewindow. "That door shouldn't be left unlocked. Any crook could comein. I'll speak to the janitor about it, if you don't mind, " he addedsarcastically. 

"Wish you would. " Cavenaugh stood brushing down the front of hisjacket, first with his right hand and then with his left. "You sawhim, didn't you?"

"Enough of him. Seems eccentric. I have to see a lot of buggypeople. They don't take me in any more. But I'm keeping you and I'min a hurry myself. Good night. "

Cavenaugh put out his hand detainingly and started to say something;but Eastman rudely turned his back and went down the hall and out ofthe door. He had never felt anything shady about Cavenaugh before, and he was sorry he had gone down for the dictionary. In fiveminutes he was deep in his papers; but in the half hour when he wasloafing before he dressed to go out, the young man's curiousbehavior came into his mind again. 

Eastman had merely a neighborly acquaintance with Cavenaugh. He hadbeen to a supper at the young man's rooms once, but he didn'tparticularly like Cavenaugh's friends; so the next time he wasasked, he had another engagement. He liked Cavenaugh himself, if fornothing else than because he was so cheerful and trim and ruddy. Agood complexion is always at a premium in New York, especially whenit shines reassuringly on a man who does everything in the world tolose it. It encourages fellow mortals as to the inherent vigor ofthe human organism and the amount of bad treatment it will standfor. "Footprints that perhaps another, " etc. 

Cavenaugh, he knew, had plenty of money. He was the son of aPennsylvania preacher, who died soon after he discovered that hisancestral acres were full of petroleum, and Kier had come to NewYork to burn some of the oil. He was thirty-two and was still at it;spent his life, literally, among the breakers. His motor hit thePark every morning as if it were the first time ever. He took peopleout to supper every night. He went from restaurant to restaurant, sometimes to half-a-dozen in an evening. The head waiters were hishosts and their cordiality made him happy. They made a life-line forhim up Broadway and down Fifth Avenue. Cavenaugh was still fresh andsmooth, round and plump, with a lustre to his hair and white teethand a clear look in his round eyes. He seemed absolutely unweariedand unimpaired; never bored and never carried away. 

Eastman always smiled when he met Cavenaugh in the entrance hall, serenely going forth to or returning from gladiatorial combats withjoy, or when he saw him rolling smoothly up to the door in his carin the morning after a restful night in one of the remarkable newroadhouses he was always finding. Eastman had seen a good many youngmen disappear on Cavenaugh's route, and he admired this young man'sendurance. 

To-night, for the first time, he had got a whiff of somethingunwholesome about the fellow--bad nerves, bad company, something onhand that he was ashamed of, a visitor old and vicious, who musthave had a key to Cavenaugh's apartment, for he was evidently therewhen Cavenaugh returned at seven o'clock. Probably it was the sameman Cavenaugh had seen in the hansom. He must have been able to lethimself in, for Cavenaugh kept no man but his chauffeur; or perhapsthe janitor had been instructed to let him in. In either case, andwhoever he was, it was clear enough that Cavenaugh was ashamed ofhim and was mixing up in questionable business of some kind. 

Eastman sent Cavenaugh's book back by Rollins, and for the next fewweeks he had no word with him beyond a casual greeting when theyhappened to meet in the hall or the elevator. One Sunday morningCavenaugh telephoned up to him to ask if he could motor out to aroadhouse in Connecticut that afternoon and have supper; but whenEastman found there were to be other guests he declined. 

 * * * * *

On New Year's eve Eastman dined at the University Club at sixo'clock and hurried home before the usual manifestations of insanityhad begun in the streets. When Rollins brought his smoking coat, heasked him whether he wouldn't like to get off early. 

"Yes, sir. But won't you be dressing, Mr. Eastman?" he inquired. 

"Not to-night. " Eastman handed him a bill. "Bring some change in themorning. There'll be fees. "

Rollins lost no time in putting everything to rights for the night, and Eastman couldn't help wishing that he were in such a hurry to beoff somewhere himself. When he heard the hall door close softly, hewondered if there were any place, after all, that he wanted to go. From his window he looked down at the long lines of motors and taxiswaiting for a signal to cross Broadway. He thought of some of theirprobable destinations and decided that none of those places pulledhim very hard. The night was warm and wet, the air was drizzly. Vapor hung in clouds about the _Times_ Building, half hid the top ofit, and made a luminous haze along Broadway. While he was lookingdown at the army of wet, black carriage-tops and their reflectedheadlights and tail-lights, Eastman heard a ring at his door. Hedeliberated. If it were a caller, the hall porter would havetelephoned up. It must be the janitor. When he opened the door, there stood a rosy young man in a tuxedo, without a coat or hat. 

"Pardon. Should I have telephoned? I half thought you wouldn't bein. "

Eastman laughed. "Come in, Cavenaugh. You weren't sure whether youwanted company or not, eh, and you were trying to let chance decideit? That was exactly my state of mind. Let's accept the verdict. "When they emerged from the narrow hall into his sitting-room, hepointed out a seat by the fire to his guest. He brought a tray ofdecanters and soda bottles and placed it on his writing table. 

Cavenaugh hesitated, standing by the fire. "Sure you weren'tstarting for somewhere?"

"Do I look it? No, I was just making up my mind to stick it outalone when you rang. Have one?" he picked up a tall tumbler. 

"Yes, thank you. I always do. "

Eastman chuckled. "Lucky boy! So will I. I had a very early dinner. New York is the most arid place on holidays, " he continued as herattled the ice in the glasses. "When one gets too old to hit therapids down there, and tired of gobbling food to heathenish dancemusic, there is absolutely no place where you can get a chop andsome milk toast in peace, unless you have strong ties of bloodbrotherhood on upper Fifth Avenue. But you, why aren't you startingfor somewhere?"

The young man sipped his soda and shook his head as he replied:

"Oh, I couldn't get a chop, either. I know only flashy people, ofcourse. " He looked up at his host with such a grave and candidexpression that Eastman decided there couldn't be anything verycrooked about the fellow. His smooth cheeks were positivelycherubic. 

"Well, what's the matter with them? Aren't they flashing to-night?"

"Only the very new ones seem to flash on New Year's eve. The olderones fade away. Maybe they are hunting a chop, too. "

"Well"--Eastman sat down--"holidays do dash one. I was just about towrite a letter to a pair of maiden aunts in my old home town, up-state; old coasting hill, snow-covered pines, lights in thechurch windows. That's what you've saved me from. "

Cavenaugh shook himself. "Oh, I'm sure that wouldn't have been goodfor you. Pardon me, " he rose and took a photograph from thebookcase, a handsome man in shooting clothes. "Dudley, isn't it? Didyou know him well?"

"Yes. An old friend. Terrible thing, wasn't it? I haven't got overthe jolt yet. "

"His suicide? Yes, terrible! Did you know his wife?"

"Slightly. Well enough to admire her very much. She must be terriblybroken up. I wonder Dudley didn't think of that. "

Cavenaugh replaced the photograph carefully, lit a cigarette, andstanding before the fire began to smoke. "Would you mind telling meabout him? I never met him, but of course I'd read a lot about him, and I can't help feeling interested. It was a queer thing. "

Eastman took out his cigar case and leaned back in his deep chair. "In the days when I knew him best he hadn't any story, like thehappy nations. Everything was properly arranged for him before hewas born. He came into the world happy, healthy, clever, straight, with the right sort of connections and the right kind of fortune, neither too large nor too small. He helped to make the world anagreeable place to live in until he was twenty-six. Then he marriedas he should have married. His wife was a Californian, educatedabroad. Beautiful. You have seen her picture?"

Cavenaugh nodded. "Oh, many of them. "

"She was interesting, too. Though she was distinctly a person of theworld, she had retained something, just enough of the large Westernmanner. She had the habit of authority, of calling out a specialtrain if she needed it, of using all our ingenious mechanicalcontrivances lightly and easily, without over-rating them. She andDudley knew how to live better than most people. Their house was themost charming one I have ever known in New York. You felt freedomthere, and a zest of life, and safety--absolute sanctuary--fromeverything sordid or petty. A whole society like that would justifythe creation of man and would make our planet shine with a soft, peculiar radiance among the constellations. You think I'm putting iton thick?"

The young man sighed gently. "Oh, no! One has always felt there mustbe people like that. I've never known any. "

"They had two children, beautiful ones. After they had been marriedfor eight years, Rosina met this Spaniard. He must have amounted tosomething. She wasn't a flighty woman. She came home and told Dudleyhow matters stood. He persuaded her to stay at home for six monthsand try to pull up. They were both fair-minded people, and I'm assure as if I were the Almighty, that she did try. But at the end ofthe time, Rosina went quietly off to Spain, and Dudley went to huntin the Canadian Rockies. I met his party out there. I didn't knowhis wife had left him and talked about her a good deal. I noticedthat he never drank anything, and his light used to shine throughthe log chinks of his room until all hours, even after a hard day'shunting. When I got back to New York, rumors were creeping about. Dudley did not come back. He bought a ranch in Wyoming, built a biglog house and kept splendid dogs and horses. One of his sisters wentout to keep house for him, and the children were there when theywere not in school. He had a great many visitors, and everyone whocame back talked about how well Dudley kept things going. 

"He put in two years out there. Then, last month, he had to comeback on business. A trust fund had to be settled up, and he wasadministrator. I saw him at the club; same light, quick step, samegracious handshake. He was getting gray, and there was somethingsofter in his manner; but he had a fine red tan on his face and saidhe found it delightful to be here in the season when everything isgoing hard. The Madison Avenue house had been closed since Rosinaleft it. He went there to get some things his sister wanted. That, of course, was the mistake. He went alone, in the afternoon, anddidn't go out for dinner--found some sherry and tins of biscuit inthe sideboard. He shot himself sometime that night. There werepistols in his smoking-room. They found burnt out candles beside himin the morning. The gas and electricity were shut off. I supposethere, in his own house, among his own things, it was too much forhim. He left no letters. "

Cavenaugh blinked and brushed the lapel of his coat. "I suppose, " hesaid slowly, "that every suicide is logical and reasonable, if oneknew all the facts. "

Eastman roused himself. "No, I don't think so. I've known too manyfellows who went off like that--more than I deserve, I think--andsome of them were absolutely inexplicable. I can understand Dudley;but I can't see why healthy bachelors, with money enough, likeourselves, need such a device. It reminds me of what Dr. Johnsonsaid, that the most discouraging thing about life is the number offads and hobbies and fake religions it takes to put people through afew years of it. "

"Dr. Johnson? The specialist? Oh, the old fellow!" said Cavenaughimperturbably. "Yes, that's interesting. Still, I fancy if one knewthe facts--Did you know about Wyatt?"

"I don't think so. "

"You wouldn't, probably. He was just a fellow about town who spentmoney. He wasn't one of the _forestieri_, though. Had connectionshere and owned a fine old place over on Staten Island. He went infor botany, and had been all over, hunting things; rusts, I believe. He had a yacht and used to take a gay crowd down about the SouthSeas, botanizing. He really did botanize, I believe. I never knewsuch a spender--only not flashy. He helped a lot of fellows and hewas awfully good to girls, the kind who come down here to get alittle fun, who don't like to work and still aren't really tough, the kind you see talking hard for their dinner. Nobody knows whatbecomes of them, or what they get out of it, and there are hundredsof new ones every year. He helped dozens of 'em; it was he who gotme curious about the little shop girls. Well, one afternoon when histea was brought, he took prussic acid instead. He didn't leave anyletters, either; people of any taste don't. They wouldn't leave anymaterial reminder if they could help it. His lawyers found that hehad just $314. 72 above his debts when he died. He had planned tospend all his money, and then take his tea; he had worked it outcarefully. "

Eastman reached for his pipe and pushed his chair away from thefire. "That looks like a considered case, but I don't thinkphilosophical suicides like that are common. I think they usuallycome from stress of feeling and are really, as the newspapers callthem, desperate acts; done without a motive. You remember when AnnaKarenina was under the wheels, she kept saying, 'Why am I here?'"

Cavenaugh rubbed his upper lip with his pink finger and made an effortto wrinkle his brows. "May I, please?" reaching for the whiskey. "But have you, " he asked, blinking as the soda flew at him, "haveyou ever known, yourself, cases that were really inexplicable?"

"A few too many. I was in Washington just before Captain Jack Purdenwas married and I saw a good deal of him. Popular army man, finerecord in the Philippines, married a charming girl with lots ofmoney; mutual devotion. It was the gayest wedding of the winter, andthey started for Japan. They stopped in San Francisco for a week andmissed their boat because, as the bride wrote back to Washington, they were too happy to move. They took the next boat, were both goodsailors, had exceptional weather. After they had been out for twoweeks, Jack got up from his deck chair one afternoon, yawned, putdown his book, and stood before his wife. 'Stop reading for a momentand look at me. ' She laughed and asked him why. 'Because you happento be good to look at. ' He nodded to her, went back to the stern andwas never seen again. Must have gone down to the lower deck andslipped overboard, behind the machinery. It was the luncheon hour, not many people about; steamer cutting through a soft green sea. That's one of the most baffling cases I know. His friends raked uphis past, and it was as trim as a cottage garden. If he'd so much asdropped an ink spot on his fatigue uniform, they'd have found it. Hewasn't emotional or moody; wasn't, indeed, very interesting; simplya good soldier, fond of all the pompous little formalities that makeup a military man's life. What do you make of that, my boy?"

Cavenaugh stroked his chin. "It's very puzzling, I admit. Still, ifone knew everything----"

"But we do know everything. His friends wanted to find something tohelp them out, to help the girl out, to help the case of the humancreature. "

"Oh, I don't mean things that people could unearth, " said Cavenaughuneasily. "But possibly there were things that couldn't be foundout. "

Eastman shrugged his shoulders. "It's my experience that when thereare 'things' as you call them, they're very apt to be found. Thereis no such thing as a secret. To make any move at all one has toemploy human agencies, employ at least one human agent. Even whenthe pirates killed the men who buried their gold for them, the bonestold the story. "

Cavenaugh rubbed his hands together and smiled his sunny smile. 

"I like that idea. It's reassuring. If we can have no secrets, itmeans that we can't, after all, go so far afield as we might, " hehesitated, "yes, as we might. "

Eastman looked at him sourly. "Cavenaugh, when you've practised lawin New York for twelve years, you find that people can't go far inany direction, except--" He thrust his forefinger sharply at thefloor. "Even in that direction, few people can do anything out ofthe ordinary. Our range is limited. Skip a few baths, and we becomepersonally objectionable. The slightest carelessness can rot a man'sintegrity or give him ptomaine poisoning. We keep up only byincessant cleansing operations, of mind and body. What we callcharacter, is held together by all sorts of tacks and strings andglue. "

Cavenaugh looked startled. "Come now, it's not so bad as that, isit? I've always thought that a serious man, like you, must know alot of Launcelots. " When Eastman only laughed, the younger mansquirmed about in his chair. He spoke again hastily, as if he wereembarrassed. "Your military friend may have had personalexperiences, however, that his friends couldn't possibly get a lineon. He may accidentally have come to a place where he saw himself intoo unpleasant a light. I believe people can be chilled by a draftfrom outside, somewhere. "

"Outside?" Eastman echoed. "Ah, you mean the far outside! Ghosts, delusions, eh?"

Cavenaugh winced. "That's putting it strong. Why not say tips fromthe outside? Delusions belong to a diseased mind, don't they? Thereare some of us who have no minds to speak of, who yet have hadexperiences. I've had a little something in that line myself and Idon't look it, do I?"

Eastman looked at the bland countenance turned toward him. "Notexactly. What's your delusion?"

"It's not a delusion. It's a haunt. "

The lawyer chuckled. "Soul of a lost Casino girl?"

"No; an old gentleman. A most unattractive old gentleman, whofollows me about. "

"Does he want money?"

Cavenaugh sat up straight. "No. I wish to God he wantedanything--but the pleasure of my society! I'd let him clean me outto be rid of him. He's a real article. You saw him yourself thatnight when you came to my rooms to borrow a dictionary, and he wentdown the fire-escape. You saw him down in the court. "

"Well, I saw somebody down in the court, but I'm too cautious totake it for granted that I saw what you saw. Why, anyhow, should Isee your haunt? If it was your friend I saw, he impressed medisagreeably. How did you pick him up?"

Cavenaugh looked gloomy. "That was queer, too. Charley Burke and Ihad motored out to Long Beach, about a year ago, sometime inOctober, I think. We had supper and stayed until late. When we werecoming home, my car broke down. We had a lot of girls along who hadto get back for morning rehearsals and things; so I sent them allinto town in Charley's car, and he was to send a man back to tow mehome. I was driving myself, and didn't want to leave my machine. Wehad not taken a direct road back; so I was stuck in a lonesome, woody place, no houses about. I got chilly and made a fire, and wasputting in the time comfortably enough, when this old party stepsup. He was in shabby evening clothes and a top hat, and had on hisusual white gloves. How he got there, at three o'clock in themorning, miles from any town or railway, I'll leave it to you tofigure out. _He_ surely had no car. When I saw him coming up to thefire, I disliked him. He had a silly, apologetic walk. His teethwere chattering, and I asked him to sit down. He got down like aclothes-horse folding up. I offered him a cigarette, and when hetook off his gloves I couldn't help noticing how knotted and spottyhis hands were. He was asthmatic, and took his breath with a wheeze. 'Haven't you got anything--refreshing in there?' he asked, noddingat the car. When I told him I hadn't, he sighed. 'Ah, you youngfellows are greedy. You drink it all up. You drink it all up, allup--up!' he kept chewing it over. "

Cavenaugh paused and looked embarrassed again. "The thing that wasmost unpleasant is difficult to explain. The old man sat there bythe fire and leered at me with a silly sort of admiration thatwas--well, more than humiliating. 'Gay boy, gay dog!' he wouldmutter, and when he grinned he showed his teeth, worn andyellow--shells. I remembered that it was better to talk casually toinsane people; so I remarked carelessly that I had been out with aparty and got stuck. 

"'Oh yes, I remember, ' he said, 'Flora and Lottie and Maybelle andMarcelline, and poor Kate. '

"He had named them correctly; so I began to think I had been hittingthe bright waters too hard. 

"Things I drank never had seemed to make me woody; but you can nevertell when trouble is going to hit you. I pulled my hat down andtried to look as uncommunicative as possible; but he kept croakingon from time to time, like this: 'Poor Kate! Splendid arms, but dopegot her. She took up with Eastern religions after she had her hairdyed. Got to going to a Swami's joint, and smoking opium. Temple ofthe Lotus, it was called, and the police raided it. '

"This was nonsense, of course; the young woman was in the pink ofcondition. I let him rave, but I decided that if something didn'tcome out for me pretty soon, I'd foot it across Long Island. Therewasn't room enough for the two of us. I got up and took another tryat my car. He hopped right after me. 

"'Good car, ' he wheezed, 'better than the little Ford. '

"I'd had a Ford before, but so has everybody; that was a safe guess. 

"'Still, ' he went on, 'that run in from Huntington Bay in the rainwasn't bad. Arrested for speeding, he-he. '

"It was true I had made such a run, under rather unusualcircumstances, and had been arrested. When at last I heard mylife-boat snorting up the road, my visitor got up, sighed, andstepped back into the shadow of the trees. I didn't wait to see whatbecame of him, you may believe. That was visitation number one. Whatdo you think of it?"

Cavenaugh looked at his host defiantly. Eastman smiled. 

"I think you'd better change your mode of life, Cavenaugh. Had manyreturns?" he inquired. 

"Too many, by far. " The young man took a turn about the room andcame back to the fire. Standing by the mantel he lit anothercigarette before going on with his story:

"The second visitation happened in the street, early in the evening, about eight o'clock. I was held up in a traffic block before thePlaza. My chauffeur was driving. Old Nibbs steps up out of thecrowd, opens the door of my car, gets in and sits down beside me. Hehad on wilted evening clothes, same as before, and there was somesort of heavy scent about him. Such an unpleasant old party! Athorough-going rotter; you knew it at once. This time he wasn'ttalkative, as he had been when I first saw him. He leaned back inthe car as if he owned it, crossed his hands on his stick and lookedout at the crowd--sort of hungrily. 

"I own I really felt a loathing compassion for him. We got down theavenue slowly. I kept looking out at the mounted police. But whatcould I do? Have him pulled? I was afraid to. I was awfully afraidof getting him into the papers. 

"'I'm going to the New Astor, ' I said at last. 'Can I take youanywhere?'

"'No, thank you, ' says he. 'I get out when you do. I'm due on West44th. I'm dining to-night with Marcelline--all that is left of her!'

"He put his hand to his hat brim with a grewsome salute. Such ascandalous, foolish old face as he had! When we pulled up at theAstor, I stuck my hand in my pocket and asked him if he'd like alittle loan. 

"'No, thank you, but'--he leaned over and whispered, ugh!--'but savea little, save a little. Forty years from now--a little--comes inhandy. Save a little. '

"His eyes fairly glittered as he made his remark. I jumped out. I'dhave jumped into the North River. When he tripped off, I asked mychauffeur if he'd noticed the man who got into the car with me. Hesaid he knew someone was with me, but he hadn't noticed just when hegot in. Want to hear any more?"

Cavenaugh dropped into his chair again. His plump cheeks were atrifle more flushed than usual, but he was perfectly calm. Eastmanfelt that the young man believed what he was telling him. 

"Of course I do. It's very interesting. I don't see quite where youare coming out though. "

Cavenaugh sniffed. "No more do I. I really feel that I've been putupon. I haven't deserved it any more than any other fellow of mykind. Doesn't it impress you disagreeably?"

"Well, rather so. Has anyone else seen your friend?"

"You saw him. "

"We won't count that. As I said, there's no certainty that you and Isaw the same person in the court that night. Has anyone else had alook in?"

"People sense him rather than see him. He usually crops up when I'malone or in a crowd on the street. He never approaches me when I'mwith people I know, though I've seen him hanging about the doors oftheatres when I come out with a party; loafing around the stageexit, under a wall; or across the street, in a doorway. To be frank, I'm not anxious to introduce him. The third time, it was I who cameupon him. In November my driver, Harry, had a sudden attack ofappendicitis. I took him to the Presbyterian Hospital in the car, early in the evening. When I came home, I found the old villain inmy rooms. I offered him a drink, and he sat down. It was the firsttime I had seen him in a steady light, with his hat off. 

"His face is lined like a railway map, and as to color--Lord, what aliver! His scalp grows tight to his skull, and his hair is dyeduntil it's perfectly dead, like a piece of black cloth. "

Cavenaugh ran his fingers through his own neatly trimmed thatch, andseemed to forget where he was for a moment. 

"I had a twin brother, Brian, who died when we were sixteen. I havea photograph of him on my wall, an enlargement from a kodak of him, doing a high jump, rather good thing, full of action. It seemed toannoy the old gentleman. He kept looking at it and lifting hiseyebrows, and finally he got up, tip-toed across the room, andturned the picture to the wall. 

"'Poor Brian! Fine fellow, but died young, ' says he. 

"Next morning, there was the picture, still reversed. "

"Did he stay long?" Eastman asked interestedly. 

"Half an hour, by the clock. "

"Did he talk?"

"Well, he rambled. "

"What about?"

Cavenaugh rubbed his pale eyebrows before answering. 

"About things that an old man ought to want to forget. Hisconversation is highly objectionable. Of course he knows me like abook; everything I've ever done or thought. But when he recallsthem, he throws a bad light on them, somehow. Things that weren'tmuch off color, look rotten. He doesn't leave one a shred ofself-respect, he really doesn't. That's the amount of it. " The youngman whipped out his handkerchief and wiped his face. 

"You mean he really talks about things that none of your friendsknow?"

"Oh, dear, yes! Recalls things that happened in school. Anythingdisagreeable. Funny thing, he always turns Brian's picture to thewall. "

"Does he come often?"

"Yes, oftener, now. Of course I don't know how he gets indown-stairs. The hall boys never see him. But he has a key to mydoor. I don't know how he got it, but I can hear him turn it in thelock. "

"Why don't you keep your driver with you, or telephone for me tocome down?"

"He'd only grin and go down the fire escape as he did before. He'soften done it when Harry's come in suddenly. Everybody has to bealone sometimes, you know. Besides, I don't want anybody to see him. He has me there. "

"But why not? Why do you feel responsible for him?"

Cavenaugh smiled wearily. "That's rather the point, isn't it? Why doI? But I absolutely do. That identifies him, more than his knowingall about my life and my affairs. "

Eastman looked at Cavenaugh thoughtfully. "Well, I should advise youto go in for something altogether different and new, and go in forit hard; business, engineering, metallurgy, something this oldfellow wouldn't be interested in. See if you can make him rememberlogarithms. "

Cavenaugh sighed. "No, he has me there, too. People never reallychange; they go on being themselves. But I would never make muchtrouble. Why can't they let me alone, damn it! I'd never hurtanybody, except, perhaps----"

"Except your old gentleman, eh?" Eastman laughed. "Seriously, Cavenaugh, if you want to shake him, I think a year on a ranch woulddo it. He would never be coaxed far from his favorite haunts. Hewould dread Montana. "

Cavenaugh pursed up his lips. "So do I!"

"Oh, you think you do. Try it, and you'll find out. A gun and ahorse beats all this sort of thing. Besides losing your haunt, you'dbe putting ten years in the bank for yourself. I know a good ranchwhere they take people, if you want to try it. "

"Thank you. I'll consider. Do you think I'm batty?"

"No, but I think you've been doing one sort of thing too long. Youneed big horizons. Get out of this. "

Cavenaugh smiled meekly. He rose lazily and yawned behind his hand. "It's late, and I've taken your whole evening. " He strolled over tothe window and looked out. "Queer place, New York; rough on thelittle fellows. Don't you feel sorry for them, the girls especially?I do. What a fight they put up for a little fun! Why, even that oldgoat is sorry for them, the only decent thing he kept. "

Eastman followed him to the door and stood in the hall, whileCavenaugh waited for the elevator. When the car came up Cavenaughextended his pink, warm hand. "Good night. "

The cage sank and his rosy countenance disappeared, his round-eyedsmile being the last thing to go. 

 * * * * *

Weeks passed before Eastman saw Cavenaugh again. One morning, justas he was starting for Washington to argue a case before the SupremeCourt, Cavenaugh telephoned him at his office to ask him about theMontana ranch he had recommended; said he meant to take his adviceand go out there for the spring and summer. 

When Eastman got back from Washington, he saw dusty trunks, just upfrom the trunk room, before Cavenaugh's door. Next morning, when hestopped to see what the young man was about, he found Cavenaugh inhis shirt sleeves, packing. 

"I'm really going; off to-morrow night. You didn't think it of me, did you?" he asked gaily. 

"Oh, I've always had hopes of you!" Eastman declared. "But you arein a hurry, it seems to me. "

"Yes, I am in a hurry. " Cavenaugh shot a pair of leggings into oneof the open trunks. "I telegraphed your ranch people, used yourname, and they said it would be all right. By the way, some of mycrowd are giving a little dinner for me at Rector's to-night. Couldn't you be persuaded, as it's a farewell occasion?" Cavenaughlooked at him hopefully. 

Eastman laughed and shook his head. "Sorry, Cavenaugh, but that'stoo gay a world for me. I've got too much work lined up before me. Iwish I had time to stop and look at your guns, though. You seem toknow something about guns. You've more than you'll need, but nobodycan have too many good ones. " He put down one of the revolversregretfully. "I'll drop in to see you in the morning, if you're up. "

"I shall be up, all right. I've warned my crowd that I'll cut awaybefore midnight. "

"You won't, though, " Eastman called back over his shoulder as hehurried down-stairs. 

The next morning, while Eastman was dressing, Rollins came ingreatly excited. 

"I'm a little late, sir. I was stopped by Harry, Mr. Cavenaugh'sdriver. Mr. Cavenaugh shot himself last night, sir. "

Eastman dropped his vest and sat down on his shoe-box. "You'redrunk, Rollins, " he shouted. "He's going away to-day!"

"Yes, sir. Harry found him this morning. Ah, he's quite dead, sir. Harry's telephoned for the coroner. Harry don't know what to do withthe ticket. "

Eastman pulled on his coat and ran down the stairway. Cavenaugh'strunks were strapped and piled before the door. Harry was walking upand down the hall with a long green railroad ticket in his hand anda look of complete stupidity on his face. 

"What shall I do about this ticket, Mr. Eastman?" he whispered. "Andwhat about his trunks? He had me tell the transfer people to comeearly. They may be here any minute. Yes, sir. I brought him home inthe car last night, before twelve, as cheerful as could be. "

"Be quiet, Harry. Where is he?"

"In his bed, sir. "

Eastman went into Cavenaugh's sleeping-room. When he came back tothe sitting-room, he looked over the writing table; railway folders, time-tables, receipted bills, nothing else. He looked up for thephotograph of Cavenaugh's twin brother. There it was, turned to thewall. Eastman took it down and looked at it; a boy in track clothes, half lying in the air, going over the string shoulders first, abovethe heads of a crowd of lads who were running and cheering. The facewas somewhat blurred by the motion and the bright sunlight. Eastmanput the picture back, as he found it. Had Cavenaugh entertained hisvisitor last night, and had the old man been more convincing thanusual? "Well, at any rate, he's seen to it that the old man can'testablish identity. What a soft lot they are, fellows like poorCavenaugh!" Eastman thought of his office as a delightful place. 

 _McClure's_, November 1915

_The Bookkeeper's Wife_

Nobody but the janitor was stirring about the offices of the RemsenPaper Company, and still Percy Bixby sat at his desk, crouched onhis high stool and staring out at the tops of the tall buildingsflushed with the winter sunset, at the hundreds of windows, so manyrectangles of white electric light, flashing against the broad wavesof violet that ebbed across the sky. His ledgers were all in theirplaces, his desk was in order, his office coat on its peg, and yetPercy's smooth, thin face wore the look of anxiety and strain whichusually meant that he was behind in his work. He was trying topersuade himself to accept a loan from the company without thecompany's knowledge. As a matter of fact, he had already acceptedit. His books were fixed, the money, in a black-leather bill-book, was already inside his waistcoat pocket. 

He had still time to change his mind, to rectify the false figuresin his ledger, and to tell Stella Brown that they couldn't possiblyget married next month. There he always halted in his reasoning, andwent back to the beginning. 

The Remsen Paper Company was a very wealthy concern, with easy, old-fashioned working methods. They did a longtime credit businesswith safe customers, who never thought of paying up very close ontheir large indebtedness. From the payments on these large accountsPercy had taken a hundred dollars here and two hundred there untilhe had made up the thousand he needed. So long as he stayed by thebooks himself and attended to the mail-orders he couldn't possiblybe found out. He could move these little shortages about fromaccount to account indefinitely. He could have all the time heneeded to pay back the deficit, and more time than he needed. 

Although he was so far along in one course of action, his mind stillclung resolutely to the other. He did not believe he was going to doit. He was the least of a sharper in the world. Being scrupulouslyhonest even in the most trifling matters was a pleasure to him. Hewas the sort of young man that Socialists hate more than they hatecapitalists. He loved his desk, he loved his books, which had nohandwriting in them but his own. He never thought of resenting thefact that he had written away in those books the good red yearsbetween twenty-one and twenty-seven. He would have hated to let anyone else put so much as a pen-scratch in them. He liked all the boysabout the office; his desk, worn smooth by the sleeves of his alpacacoat; his rulers and inks and pens and calendars. He had a greatpride in working economics, and he always got so far ahead whensupplies were distributed that he had drawers full of pencils andpens and rubber bands against a rainy day. 

Percy liked regularity: to get his work done on time, to have hishalf-day off every Saturday, to go to the theater Saturday night, tobuy a new necktie twice a month, to appear in a new straw hat on theright day in May, and to know what was going on in New York. He readthe morning and evening papers coming and going on the elevated, andpreferred journals of approximate reliability. He got excited aboutballgames and elections and business failures, was not above aninterest in murders and divorce scandals, and he checked the newsoff as neatly as he checked his mail-orders. In short, Percy Bixbywas like the model pupil who is satisfied with his lessons and histeachers and his holidays, and who would gladly go to school all hislife. He had never wanted anything outside his routine until hewanted Stella Brown to marry him, and that had upset everything. 

It wasn't, he told himself for the hundredth time, that she wasextravagant. Not a bit of it. She was like all girls. Moreover, shemade good money, and why should she marry unless she could betterherself? The trouble was that he had lied to her about his salary. There were a lot of fellows rushing Mrs. Brown's five daughters, andthey all seemed to have fixed on Stella as first choice and this orthat one of the sisters as second. Mrs. Brown thought it proper todrop an occasional hint in the presence of these young men to theeffect that she expected Stella to "do well. " It went without sayingthat hair and complexion like Stella's could scarcely be expected todo poorly. Most of the boys who went to the house and took the girlsout in a bunch to dances and movies seemed to realize this. Theymerely wanted a whirl with Stella before they settled down to one ofher sisters. It was tacitly understood that she came too high forthem. Percy had sensed all this through those slumbering instinctswhich awake in us all to befriend us in love or in danger. 

But there was one of his rivals, he knew, who was a man to bereckoned with. Charley Greengay was a young salesman who woretailor-made clothes and spotted waistcoats, and had a necktie forevery day in the month. His air was that of a young man who is outfor things that come high and who is going to get them. Mrs. Brownwas ever and again dropping a word before Percy about how the girlthat took Charley would have her flat furnished by the bestfurniture people, and her china-closet stocked with the best ware, and would have nothing to worry about but nicks and scratches. Itwas because he felt himself pitted against this pulling power ofGreengay's that Percy had brazenly lied to Mrs. Brown, and told herthat his salary had been raised to fifty a week, and that now hewanted to get married. 

When he threw out this challenge to Mother Brown, Percy was gettingthirty-five dollars a week, and he knew well enough that there wereseveral hundred thousand young men in New York who would do his workas well as he did for thirty. 

These were the factors in Percy's present situation. He went overthem again and again as he sat stooping on his tall stool. He hadquite lost track of time when he heard the janitor call good nightto the watchman. Without thinking what he was doing, he slid intohis overcoat, caught his hat, and rushed out to the elevator, whichwas waiting for the janitor. The moment the car dropped, it occurredto him that the thing was decided without his having made up hismind at all. The familiar floors passed him, ten, nine, eight, seven. By the time he reached the fifth, there was no possibility ofgoing back; the click of the drop-lever seemed to settle that. Themoney was in his pocket. Now, he told himself as he hurried out intothe exciting clamor of the street, he was not going to worry aboutit any more. 

 * * * * *

When Percy reached the Browns' flat on 123d Street that evening hefelt just the slightest chill in Stella's greeting. He could makethat all right, he told himself, as he kissed her lightly in thedark three-by-four entrance-hall. Percy's courting had beenprosecuted mainly in the Bronx or in winged pursuit of a Broadwaycar. When he entered the crowded sitting-room he greeted Mrs. Brownrespectfully and the four girls playfully. They were all piled onone couch, reading the continued story in the evening paper, andthey didn't think it necessary to assume more formal attitudes forPercy. They looked up over the smeary pink sheets of paper, andhanded him, as Percy said, the same old jolly:

"Hullo, Perc'! Come to see me, ain't you? So flattered!"

"Any sweet goods on you, Perc'? Anything doing in the bong-bong lineto-night?"

"Look at his new neckwear! Say, Perc', remember me. That tie wouldgo lovely with my new tailored waist. "

"Quit your kiddin', girls!" called Mrs. Brown, who was dryingshirt-waists on the dining-room radiator. "And, Percy, mind the rugswhen you're steppin' round among them gum-drops. "

Percy fired his last shot at the recumbent figures, and followedStella into the dining-room, where the table and two largeeasy-chairs formed, in Mrs. Brown's estimation, a proper backgroundfor a serious suitor. 

"I say, Stell', " he began as he walked about the table with hishands in his pockets, "seems to me we ought to begin buying ourstuff. " She brightened perceptibly. "Ah, " Percy thought, "so that_was_ the trouble!" "To-morrow's Saturday; why can't we make anafternoon of it?" he went on cheerfully. "Shop till we're tired, then go to Houtin's for dinner, and end up at the theater. "

As they bent over the lists she had made of things needed, Percyglanced at her face. She was very much out of her sisters' class andout of his, and he kept congratulating himself on his nerve. He wasgoing in for something much too handsome and expensive anddistinguished for him, he felt, and it took courage to be a plunger. To begin with, Stella was the sort of girl who had to be welldressed. She had pale primrose hair, with bluish tones in it, verysoft and fine, so that it lay smooth however she dressed it, andpale-blue eyes, with blond eyebrows and long, dark lashes. She wouldhave been a little too remote and languid even for the fastidiousPercy had it not been for her hard, practical mouth, with lips thatalways kept their pink even when the rest of her face was pale. Heremployers, who at first might be struck by her indifference, understood that anybody with that sort of mouth would get throughthe work. 

After the shopping-lists had been gone over, Percy took up thequestion of the honeymoon. Stella said she had been thinking ofAtlantic City. Percy met her with firmness. Whatever happened, hecouldn't leave his books now. 

"I want to do my traveling right here on Forty-second Street, with ahigh-price show every night, " he declared. He made out an itinerary, punctuated by theaters and restaurants, which Stella consented toaccept as a substitute for Atlantic City. 

"They give your fellows a week off when they're married, don'tthey?" she asked. 

"Yes, but I'll want to drop into the office every morning to lookafter my mail. That's only businesslike. "

"I'd like to have you treated as well as the others, though. " Stellaturned the rings about on her pale hand and looked at her polishedfinger-tips. 

"I'll look out for that. What do you say to a little walk, Stell'?"Percy put the question coaxingly. When Stella was pleased with himshe went to walk with him, since that was the only way in whichPercy could ever see her alone. When she was displeased, she saidshe was too tired to go out. To-night she smiled at himincredulously, and went to put on her hat and gray fur piece. 

Once they were outside, Percy turned into a shadowy side street thatwas only partly built up, a dreary waste of derricks and foundationholes, but comparatively solitary. Stella liked Percy's steady, sympathetic silences; she was not a chatterbox herself. She oftenwondered why she was going to marry Bixby instead of CharleyGreengay. She knew that Charley would go further in the world. Indeed, she had often coolly told herself that Percy would never govery far. But, as she admitted with a shrug, she was "weak toPercy. " In the capable New York stenographer, who estimated valuescoldly and got the most for the least outlay, there was somethingleft that belonged to another kind of woman--something that likedthe very things in Percy that were not good business assets. Howevermuch she dwelt upon the effectiveness of Greengay's dash and colorand assurance, her mind always came back to Percy's neat littlehead, his clean-cut face, and warm, clear, gray eyes, and she likedthem better than Charley's fullness and blurred floridness. Havingreckoned up their respective chances with no doubtful result, sheopposed a mild obstinacy to her own good sense. "I guess I'll takePercy, _anyway_, " she said simply, and that was all the good herclever business brain did her. 

 * * * * *

Percy spent a night of torment, lying tense on his bed in the dark, and figuring out how long it would take him to pay back the money hewas advancing to himself. Any fool could do it in five years, hereasoned, but he was going to do it in three. The trouble was thathis expensive courtship had taken every penny of his salary. Withcompetitors like Charley Greengay, you had to spend money or dropout. Certain birds, he reflected ruefully, are supplied with moreattractive plumage when they are courting, but nature hadn't been sothoughtful for men. When Percy reached the office in the morning heclimbed on his tall stool and leaned his arms on his ledger. He wasso glad to feel it there that he was faint and weak-kneed. 

 * * * * *

Oliver Remsen, Junior, had brought new blood into the Remsen PaperCompany. He married shortly after Percy Bixby did, and in the fivesucceeding years he had considerably enlarged the company's businessand profits. He had been particularly successful in encouragingefficiency and loyalty in the employees. From the time he came intothe office he had stood for shorter hours, longer holidays, and agenerous consideration of men's necessities. He came out of collegeon the wave of economic reform, and he continued to read and think agood deal about how the machinery of labor is operated. He knew moreabout the men who worked for him than their mere office records. 

Young Remsen was troubled about Percy Bixby because he took nosummer vacations--always asked for the two weeks' extra pay instead. Other men in the office had skipped a vacation now and then, butPercy had stuck to his desk for five years, had tottered to hisstool through attacks of grippe and tonsilitis. He seemed to havegrown fast to his ledger, and it was to this that Oliver objected. He liked his men to stay men, to look like men and live like men. Heremembered how alert and wide-awake Bixby had seemed to him when hehimself first came into the office. He had picked Bixby out as themost intelligent and interested of his father's employees, and sincethen had often wondered why he never seemed to see chances to forgeahead. Promotions, of course, went to the men who went after them. When Percy's baby died, he went to the funeral, and asked Percy tocall on him if he needed money. Once when he chanced to sit down byBixby on the elevated and found him reading Bryce's "AmericanCommonwealth, " he asked him to make use of his own large officelibrary. Percy thanked him, but he never came for any books. Oliverwondered whether his bookkeeper really tried to avoid him. 

One evening Oliver met the Bixbys in the lobby of a theater. Heintroduced Mrs. Remsen to them, and held them for some moments inconversation. When they got into their motor, Mrs. Remsen said:

"Is that little man afraid of you, Oliver? He looked like a scaredrabbit. "

Oliver snapped the door, and said with a shade of irritation:

"I don't know what's the matter with him. He's the fellow I've toldyou about who never takes a vacation. I half believe it's his wife. She looks pitiless enough for anything. "

"She's very pretty of her kind, " mused Mrs. Remsen, "but ratherchilling. One can see that she has ideas about elegance. "

"Rather unfortunate ones for a bookkeeper's wife. I surmise thatPercy felt she was overdressed, and that made him awkward with me. I've always suspected that fellow of good taste. "

After that, when Remsen passed the counting-room and saw Percyscrewed up over his ledger, he often remembered Mrs. Bixby, with hercold, pale eyes and long lashes, and her expression that wassomething between indifference and discontent. She rose behindPercy's bent shoulders like an apparition. 

One spring afternoon Remsen was closeted in his private office withhis lawyer until a late hour. As he came down the long hall in thedusk he glanced through the glass partition into the counting-room, and saw Percy Bixby huddled up on his tall stool, though it was toodark to work. Indeed, Bixby's ledger was closed, and he sat with histwo arms resting on the brown cover. He did not move a muscle whenyoung Remsen entered. 

"You are late, Bixby, and so am I, " Oliver began genially as hecrossed to the front of the room and looked out at the lightedwindows of other tall buildings. "The fact is, I've been doingsomething that men have a foolish way of putting off. I've beenmaking my will. "

"Yes, sir. " Percy brought it out with a deep breath. 

"Glad to be through with it, " Oliver went on. "Mr. Melton will bringthe paper back to-morrow, and I'd like to ask you to be one of thewitnesses. "

"I'd be very proud, Mr. Remsen. "

"Thank you, Bixby. Good night. " Remsen took up his hat just as Percyslid down from his stool. 

"Mr. Remsen, I'm told you're going to have the books gone over. "

"Why, yes, Bixby. Don't let that trouble you. I'm taking in a newpartner, you know, an old college friend. Just because he is afriend, I insist upon all the usual formalities. But it is aformality, and I'll guarantee the expert won't make a scratch onyour books. Good night. You'd better be coming, too. " Remsen hadreached the door when he heard "Mr. Remsen!" in a desperate voicebehind him. He turned, and saw Bixby standing uncertainly at one endof the desk, his hand still on his ledger, his uneven shouldersdrooping forward and his head hanging as if he were seasick. Remsencame back and stood at the other end of the long desk. It was toodark to see Bixby's face clearly. 

"What is it, Bixby?"

"Mr. Remsen, five years ago, just before I was married, I falsifiedthe books a thousand dollars, and I used the money. " Percy leanedforward against his desk, which took him just across the chest. 

"What's that, Bixby?" Young Remsen spoke in a tone of politesurprise. He felt painfully embarrassed. 

"Yes, sir. I thought I'd get it all paid back before this. I've putback three hundred, but the books are still seven hundred out oftrue. I've played the shortages about from account to account thesefive years, but an expert would find 'em in twenty-four hours. "

"I don't just understand how--" Oliver stopped and shook his head. 

"I held it out of the Western remittances, Mr. Remsen. They werecoming in heavy just then. I was up against it. I hadn't savedanything to marry on, and my wife thought I was getting more moneythan I was. Since we've been married, I've never had the nerve totell her. I could have paid it all back if it hadn't been for theunforeseen expenses. "

Remsen sighed. 

"Being married is largely unforeseen expenses, Percy. There's onlyone way to fix this up: I'll give you seven hundred dollars in cashto-morrow, and you can give me your personal note, with theunderstanding that I hold ten dollars a week out of your pay-checkuntil it is paid. I think you ought to tell your wife exactly howyou are fixed, though. You can't expect her to help you much whenshe doesn't know. "

 * * * * *

That night Mrs. Bixby was sitting in their flat, waiting for herhusband. She was dressed for a bridge party, and often looked withimpatience from her paper to the Mission clock, as big as a coffinand with nothing but two weights dangling in its hollow framework. Percy had been loath to buy the clock when they got their furniture, and he had hated it ever since. Stella had changed very little sinceshe came into the flat a bride. Then she wore her hair in aFloradora pompadour; now she wore it hooded close about her headlike a scarf, in a rather smeary manner, like an Impressionist'sbrush-work. She heard her husband come in and close the door softly. While he was taking off his hat in the narrow tunnel of a hall, shecalled to him:

"I hope you've had something to eat down-town. You'll have to dressright away. " Percy came in and sat down. She looked up from theevening paper she was reading. "You've no time to sit down. We muststart in fifteen minutes. "

He shaded his eyes from the glaring overhead light. 

"I'm afraid I can't go anywhere to-night. I'm all in. "

Mrs. Bixby rattled her paper, and turned from the theatrical page tothe fashions. 

"You'll feel better after you dress. We won't stay late. "

Her even persistence usually conquered her husband. She never forgotanything she had once decided to do. Her manner of following it upgrew more chilly, but never weaker. To-night there was no spring inPercy. He closed his eyes and replied without moving:

"I can't go. You had better telephone the Burks we aren't coming. Ihave to tell you something disagreeable. "

Stella rose. 

"I certainly am not going to disappoint the Burks and stay at hometo talk about anything disagreeable. "

"You're not very sympathetic, Stella. "

She turned away. 

"If I were, you'd soon settle down into a pretty dull proposition. We'd have no social life now if I didn't keep at you. "

Percy roused himself a little. 

"Social life? Well, we'll have to trim that pretty close for awhile. I'm in debt to the company. We've been living beyond ourmeans ever since we were married. "

"We can't live on less than we do, " Stella said quietly. "No use intaking that up again. "

Percy sat up, clutching the arms of his chair. 

"We'll have to take it up. I'm seven hundred dollars short, and thebooks are to be audited to-morrow. I told young Remsen and he'sgoing to take my note and hold the money out of my pay-checks. Hecould send me to jail, of course. "

Stella turned and looked down at him with a gleam of interest. 

"Oh, you've been playing solitaire with the books, have you? Andhe's found you out! I hope I'll never see that man again. Sugarface!" She said this with intense acrimony. Her forehead flusheddelicately, and her eyes were full of hate. Young Remsen was not heridea of a "business man. "

Stella went into the other room. When she came back she wore herevening coat and carried long gloves and a black scarf. This shebegan to arrange over her hair before the mirror above the falsefireplace. Percy lay inert in the Morris chair and watched her. Yes, he understood; it was very difficult for a woman with hair like thatto be shabby and to go without things. Her hair made herconspicuous, and it had to be lived up to. It had been the decidingfactor in his fate. 

Stella caught the lace over one ear with a large gold hairpin. Sherepeated this until she got a good effect. Then turning to Percy, she began to draw on her gloves. 

"I'm not worrying any, because I'm going back into business, " shesaid firmly. "I meant to, anyway, if you didn't get a raise thefirst of the year. I have the offer of a good position, and we canlive in an apartment hotel. "

Percy was on his feet in an instant. 

"I won't have you grinding in any office. That's flat. "

Stella's lower lip quivered in a commiserating smile. "Oh, I won'tlose my health. Charley Greengay's a partner in his concern now, andhe wants a private secretary. "

Percy drew back. 

"You can't work for Greengay. He's got too bad a reputation. You'vemore pride than that, Stella. "

The thin sweep of color he knew so well went over Stella's face. 

"His business reputation seems to be all right, " she commented, working the kid on with her left hand. 

"What if it is?" Percy broke out. "He's the cheapest kind of askate. He gets into scrapes with the girls in his own office. Thelast one got into the newspapers, and he had to pay the girl a wad. "

"He don't get into scrapes with his books, anyway, and he seems tobe able to stand getting into the papers. I excuse Charley. Hiswife's a pill. "

"I suppose you think he'd have been all right if he'd married you, "said Percy, bitterly. 

"Yes, I do. " Stella buttoned her glove with an air of finishingsomething, and then looked at Percy without animosity. "Charley andI both have sporty tastes, and we like excitement. You might as welllive in Newark if you're going to sit at home in the evening. Yououghtn't to have married a business woman; you need somebodydomestic. There's nothing in this sort of life for either of us. "

"That means, I suppose, that you're going around with Greengay andhis crowd?"

"Yes, that's my sort of crowd, and you never did fit into it. You'retoo intellectual. I've always been proud of you, Percy. You'rebetter style than Charley, but that gets tiresome. You will neverburn much red fire in New York, now, will you?"

Percy did not reply. He sat looking at the minute-hand of theeviscerated Mission clock. His wife almost never took the trouble toargue with him. 

"You're old style, Percy, " she went on. "Of course everybody marriesand wishes they hadn't, but nowadays people get over it. Some womengo ahead on the quiet, but I'm giving it to you straight. I'm goingto work for Greengay. I like his line of business, and I meet peoplewell. Now I'm going to the Burks'. "

Percy dropped his hands limply between his knees. 

"I suppose, " he brought out, "the real trouble is that you'vedecided my earning power is not very great. "

"That's part of it, and part of it is you're old-fashioned. " Stellapaused at the door and looked back. "What made you rush me, anyway, Percy?" she asked indulgently. "What did you go and pretend to be aspender and get tied up with me for?"

"I guess everybody wants to be a spender when he's in love, " Percyreplied. 

Stella shook her head mournfully. 

"No, you're a spender or you're not. Greengay has been broke threetimes, fired, down and out, black-listed. But he's always come back, and he always will. You will never be fired, but you'll always bepoor. " She turned and looked back again before she went out. 

 * * * * *

Six months later Bixby came to young Oliver Remsen one afternoon andsaid he would like to have twenty dollars a week held out of his payuntil his debt was cleared off. 

Oliver looked up at his sallow employee and asked him how he couldspare as much as that. 

"My expenses are lighter, " Bixby replied. "My wife has gone intobusiness with a ready-to-wear firm. She is not living with me anymore. "

Oliver looked annoyed, and asked him if nothing could be done toreadjust his domestic affairs. Bixby said no; they would probablyremain as they were. 

"But where are you living, Bixby? How have you arranged things?" theyoung man asked impatiently. 

"I'm very comfortable. I live in a boarding-house and have my ownfurniture. There are several fellows there who are fixed the sameway. Their wives went back into business, and they drifted apart. "

With a baffled expression Remsen stared at the uneven shouldersunder the skin-fitting alpaca desk coat as his bookkeeper went out. He had meant to do something for Percy, but somehow, he reflected, one never did do anything for a fellow who had been stung as hard asthat. 

 _Century_, May 1916

_Ardessa_

The grand-mannered old man who sat at a desk in the reception-roomof "The Outcry" offices to receive visitors and incidentally to keepthe time-book of the employees, looked up as Miss Devine entered atten minutes past ten and condescendingly wished him good morning. Hebowed profoundly as she minced past his desk, and with anindifferent air took her course down the corridor that led to theeditorial offices. Mechanically he opened the flat, black book athis elbow and placed his finger on D, running his eye along the lineof figures after the name Devine. "It's banker's hours she keeps, indeed, " he muttered. What was the use of entering so capricious arecord? Nevertheless, with his usual preliminary flourish he wrote10:10 under this, the fourth day of May. 

The employee who kept banker's hours rustled on down the corridor toher private room, hung up her lavender jacket and her trim springhat, and readjusted her side combs by the mirror inside her closetdoor. Glancing at her desk, she rang for an office boy, and reprovedhim because he had not dusted more carefully and because there werelumps in her paste. When he disappeared with the paste-jar, she satdown to decide which of her employer's letters he should see andwhich he should not. 

Ardessa was not young and she was certainly not handsome. Thecoquettish angle at which she carried her head was a mannerismsurviving from a time when it was more becoming. She shuddered atthe cold candor of the new business woman, and was insinuatinglyfeminine. 

Ardessa's employer, like young Lochinvar, had come out of the West, and he had done a great many contradictory things before he becameproprietor and editor of "The Outcry. " Before he decided to go toNew York and make the East take notice of him, O'Mally had acquireda punctual, reliable silver-mine in South Dakota. This silent friendin the background made his journalistic success comparatively easy. He had figured out, when he was a rich nobody in Nevada, that thequickest way to cut into the known world was through theprinting-press. He arrived in New York, bought a highly respectablepublication, and turned it into a red-hot magazine of protest, whichhe called "The Outcry. " He knew what the West wanted, and it provedto be what everybody secretly wanted. In six years he had done thething that had hitherto seemed impossible: built up a nationalweekly, out on the news-stands the same day in New York and SanFrancisco; a magazine the people howled for, a moving-picture filmof their real tastes and interests. 

O'Mally bought "The Outcry" to make a stir, not to make a career, but he had got built into the thing more than he ever intended. Ithad made him a public man and put him into politics. He found thepublicity game diverting, and it held him longer than any other gamehad ever done. He had built up about him an organization of which hewas somewhat afraid and with which he was vastly bored. On his staffthere were five famous men, and he had made every one of them. Atfirst it amused him to manufacture celebrities. He found he couldtake an average reporter from the daily press, give him a "line" tofollow, a trust to fight, a vice to expose, --this was all in thatgood time when people were eager to read about their ownwickedness, --and in two years the reporter would be recognized as anauthority. Other people--Napoleon, Disraeli, Sarah Bernhardt--haddiscovered that advertising would go a long way; but Marcus O'Mallydiscovered that in America it would go all the way--as far as youwished to pay its passage. Any human countenance, plastered inthree-sheet posters from sea to sea, would be revered by theAmerican people. The strangest thing was that the owners of thesegrave countenances, staring at their own faces on newsstands andbillboards, fell to venerating themselves; and even he, O'Mally, wasmore or less constrained by these reputations that he had createdout of cheap paper and cheap ink. 

Constraint was the last thing O'Mally liked. The most engaging andunusual thing about the man was that he couldn't be fooled by thesuccess of his own methods, and no amount of "recognition" couldmake a stuffed shirt of him. No matter how much he was advertised asa great medicine-man in the councils of the nation, he knew that hewas a born gambler and a soldier of fortune. He left his dignifiedoffice to take care of itself for a good many months of the yearwhile he played about on the outskirts of social order. He likedbeing a great man from the East in rough-and-tumble Western citieswhere he had once been merely an unconsidered spender. 

O'Mally's long absences constituted one of the supreme advantages ofArdessa Devine's position. When he was at his post her duties werenot heavy, but when he was giving balls in Goldfield, Nevada, shelived an ideal life. She came to the office every day, indeed, toforward such of O'Mally's letters as she thought best, to attend tohis club notices and tradesmen's bills, and to taste the sense ofher high connections. The great men of the staff were all about her, as contemplative as Buddhas in their private offices, eachmeditating upon the particular trust or form of vice confided to hiscare. Thus surrounded, Ardessa had a pleasant sense of being at theheart of things. It was like a mental massage, exercise withoutexertion. She read and she embroidered. Her room was pleasant, andshe liked to be seen at ladylike tasks and to feel herself agraceful contrast to the crude girls in the advertising andcirculation departments across the hall. The younger stenographers, who had to get through with the enormous office correspondence, andwho rushed about from one editor to another with wire baskets fullof letters, made faces as they passed Ardessa's door and saw hercool and cloistered, daintily plying her needle. But no matter howhard the other stenographers were driven, no one, not even one ofthe five oracles of the staff, dared dictate so much as a letter toArdessa. Like a sultan's bride, she was inviolate in her lord'sabsence; she had to be kept for him. 

Naturally the other young women employed in "The Outcry" officesdisliked Miss Devine. They were all competent girls, trained in theexacting methods of modern business, and they had to make good everyday in the week, had to get through with a great deal of work orlose their position. O'Mally's private secretary was a mystery tothem. Her exemptions and privileges, her patronizing remarks, formedan exhaustless subject of conversation at the lunch-hour. Ardessahad, indeed, as they knew she must have, a kind of "purchase" on heremployer. 

When O'Mally first came to New York to break into publicity, heengaged Miss Devine upon the recommendation of the editor whoseailing publication he bought and rechristened. That editor was aconservative, scholarly gentleman of the old school, who wasretiring because he felt out of place in the world of brighter, breezier magazines that had been flowering since the new centurycame in. He believed that in this vehement world young O'Mally wouldmake himself heard and that Miss Devine's training in an editorialoffice would be of use to him. 

When O'Mally first sat down at a desk to be an editor, all the cardsthat were brought in looked pretty much alike to him. Ardessa was athis elbow. She had long been steeped in literary distinctions and inthe social distinctions which used to count for much more than theydo now. She knew all the great men, all the nephews and clients ofgreat men. She knew which must be seen, which must be made welcome, and which could safely be sent away. She could give O'Mally on theinstant the former rating in magazine offices of nearly every namethat was brought in to him. She could give him an idea of the man'sconnections, of the price his work commanded, and insinuate whetherhe ought to be met with the old punctiliousness or with the newjoviality. She was useful in explaining to her employer thesignificance of various invitations, and the standing of clubs andassociations. At first she was virtually the social mentor of thebullet-headed young Westerner who wanted to break into everything, the solitary person about the office of the humming new magazine whoknew anything about the editorial traditions of the eighties andnineties which, antiquated as they now were, gave an editor, asO'Mally said, a background. 

Despite her indolence, Ardessa was useful to O'Mally as a socialreminder. She was the card catalogue of his ever-changing personalrelations. O'Mally went in for everything and got tired ofeverything; that was why he made a good editor. After he was throughwith people, Ardessa was very skilful in covering his retreat. Sheread and answered the letters of admirers who had begun to bore him. When great authors, who had been dined and fêted the month before, were suddenly left to cool their heels in the reception-room, thrownupon the suave hospitality of the grand old man at the desk, it wasArdessa who went out and made soothing and plausible explanations asto why the editor could not see them. She was the brake that checkedthe too-eager neophyte, the emollient that eased the severing ofrelationships, the gentle extinguisher of the lights that failed. When there were no longer messages of hope and cheer to be sent toardent young writers and reformers, Ardessa delivered, as sweetly aspossible, whatever messages were left. 

In handling these people with whom O'Mally was quite through, Ardessa had gradually developed an industry which was immenselygratifying to her own vanity. Not only did she not crush them; sheeven fostered them a little. She continued to advise them in thereception-room and "personally" received their manuscripts longafter O'Mally had declared that he would never read another linethey wrote. She let them outline their plans for stories andarticles to her, promising to bring these suggestions to theeditor's attention. She denied herself to nobody, was gracious evento the Shakspere-Bacon man, the perpetual-motion man, thetravel-article man, the ghosts which haunt every magazine office. The writers who had had their happy hour of O'Mally's favor keptfeeling that Ardessa might reinstate them. She answered theirletters of inquiry in her most polished and elegant style, and evengave them hints as to the subjects in which the restless editor wasor was not interested at the moment: she feared it would be uselessto send him an article on "How to Trap Lions, " because he had justbought an article on "Elephant-Shooting in Majuba Land, " etc. 

So when O'Mally plunged into his office at 11:30 on this, the fourthday of May, having just got back from three-days' fishing, he foundArdessa in the reception-room, surrounded by a little court ofdiscards. This was annoying, for he always wanted his stenographerat once. Telling the office boy to give her a hint that she wasneeded, he threw off his hat and topcoat and began to race throughthe pile of letters Ardessa had put on his desk. When she entered, he did not wait for her polite inquiries about his trip, but brokein at once. 

"What is that fellow who writes about phossy jaw still hanging roundhere for? I don't want any articles on phossy jaw, and if I did, Iwouldn't want his. "

"He has just sold an article on the match industry to 'The New Age, 'Mr. O'Mally, " Ardessa replied as she took her seat at the editor'sright. 

"Why does he have to come and tell us about it? We've nothing to dowith 'The New Age. ' And that prison-reform guy, what's he loafingabout for?"

Ardessa bridled. 

"You remember, Mr. O'Mally, he brought letters of introduction fromGovernor Harper, the reform Governor of Mississippi. "

O'Mally jumped up, kicking over his waste-basket in his impatience. 

"That was months ago. I went through his letters and went through him, too. He hasn't got anything we want. I've been through with GovernorHarper a long while. We're asleep at the switch in here. And let metell you, if I catch sight of that causes-of-blindness-in-babieswoman around here again, I'll do something violent. Clear them out, Miss Devine! Clear them out! We need a traffic policeman in thisoffice. Have you got that article on 'Stealing Our National WaterPower' ready for me?"

"Mr. Gerrard took it back to make modifications. He gave it to me atnoon on Saturday, just before the office closed. I will have itready for you to-morrow morning, Mr. O'Mally, if you have not toomany letters for me this afternoon, " Ardessa replied pointedly. 

"Holy Mike!" muttered O'Mally, "we need a traffic policeman for thestaff, too. Gerrard's modified that thing half a dozen timesalready. Why don't they get accurate information in the firstplace?"

He began to dictate his morning mail, walking briskly up and downthe floor by way of giving his stenographer an energetic example. Her indolence and her ladylike deportment weighed on him. He wantedto take her by the elbows and run her around the block. He didn'tmind that she loafed when he was away, but it was becoming harderand harder to speed her up when he was on the spot. He knew hiscorrespondence was not enough to keep her busy, so when he was intown he made her type his own breezy editorials and various articlesby members of his staff. 

Transcribing editorial copy is always laborious, and the only way tomake it easy is to farm it out. This Ardessa was usually cleverenough to do. When she returned to her own room after O'Mally hadgone out to lunch, Ardessa rang for an office boy and saidlanguidly, "James, call Becky, please. "

In a moment a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteencame rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudyclothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she wererunning to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. WhileMiss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with hershoulders drawn up and her elbows drawn in, apparently trying tohide herself in her insufficient open-work waist. Her wild, blackeyes followed Miss Devine's hands desperately. Ardessa sighed. 

"This seems to be very smeary copy again, Becky. You don't keep yourmind on your work, and so you have to erase continually. "

Becky spoke up in wailing self-vindication. 

"It ain't that, Miss Devine. It's so many hard words he uses that Ihave to be at the dictionary all the time. Look! Look!" She produceda bunch of manuscript faintly scrawled in pencil, and thrust itunder Ardessa's eyes. "He don't write out the words at all. He justbegins a word, and then makes waves for you to guess. "

"I see you haven't always guessed correctly, Becky, " said Ardessa, with a weary smile. "There are a great many words here that wouldsurprise Mr. Gerrard, I am afraid. "

"And the inserts, " Becky persisted. "How is anybody to tell wherethey go, Miss Devine? It's mostly inserts; see, all over the top andsides and back. "

Ardessa turned her head away. 

"Don't claw the pages like that, Becky. You make me nervous. Mr. Gerrard has not time to dot his i's and cross his t's. That is whatwe keep copyists for. I will correct these sheets for you, --it wouldbe terrible if Mr. O'Mally saw them, --and then you can copy themover again. It must be done by to-morrow morning, so you may have towork late. See that your hands are clean and dry, and then you willnot smear it. "

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Miss Devine. Will you tell the janitor, please, it's all right if I have to stay? He was cross because I washere Saturday afternoon doing this. He said it was a holiday, andwhen everybody else was gone I ought to--"

"That will do, Becky. Yes, I will speak to the janitor for you. Youmay go to lunch now. "

Becky turned on one heel and then swung back. 

"Miss Devine, " she said anxiously, "will it be all right if I getwhite shoes for now?"

Ardessa gave her kind consideration. 

"For office wear, you mean? No, Becky. With only one pair, you couldnot keep them properly clean; and black shoes are much lessconspicuous. Tan, if you prefer. "

Becky looked down at her feet. They were too large, and her skirtwas as much too short as her legs were too long. 

"Nearly all the girls I know wear white shoes to business, " shepleaded. 

"They are probably little girls who work in factories or departmentstores, and that is quite another matter. Since you raise thequestion, Becky, I ought to speak to you about your new waist. Don'twear it to the office again, please. Those cheap open-work waistsare not appropriate in an office like this. They are all very wellfor little chorus girls. "

"But Miss Kalski wears expensive waists to business more open thanthis, and jewelry--"

Ardessa interrupted. Her face grew hard. 

"Miss Kalski, " she said coldly, "works for the business department. You are employed in the editorial offices. There is a greatdifference. You see, Becky, I might have to call you in here at anytime when a scientist or a great writer or the president of auniversity is here talking over editorial matters, and such clothesas you have on to-day would make a bad impression. Nearly all ourconnections are with important people of that kind, and we ought tobe well, but quietly, dressed. "

"Yes, Miss Devine. Thank you, " Becky gasped and disappeared. Heavenknew she had no need to be further impressed with the greatness of"The Outcry" office. During the year and a half she had been thereshe had never ceased to tremble. She knew the prices all the authorsgot as well as Miss Devine did, and everything seemed to her to bedone on a magnificent scale. She hadn't a good memory for longtechnical words, but she never forgot dates or prices or initials ortelephone numbers. 

Becky felt that her job depended on Miss Devine, and she was so gladto have it that she scarcely realized she was being bullied. Besides, she was grateful for all that she had learned from Ardessa;Ardessa had taught her to do most of the things that she wassupposed to do herself. Becky wanted to learn, she had to learn;that was the train she was always running for. Her father, IsaacTietelbaum, the tailor, who pressed Miss Devine's skirts and kepther ladylike suits in order, had come to his client two years agoand told her he had a bright girl just out of a commercial highschool. He implored Ardessa to find some office position for hisdaughter. Ardessa told an appealing story to O'Mally, and broughtBecky into the office, at a salary of six dollars a week, to helpwith the copying and to learn business routine. When Becky firstcame she was as ignorant as a young savage. She was rapid at hershorthand and typing, but a Kafir girl would have known as muchabout the English language. Nobody ever wanted to learn more thanBecky. She fairly wore the dictionary out. She dug up her old schoolgrammar and worked over it at night. She faithfully mastered MissDevine's fussy system of punctuation. 

There were eight children at home, younger than Becky, and they wereall eager to learn. They wanted to get their mother out of the threedark rooms behind the tailor shop and to move into a flat up-stairs, where they could, as Becky said, "live private. " The youngTietelbaums doubted their father's ability to bring this changeabout, for the more things he declared himself ready to do in hiswindow placards, the fewer were brought to him to be done. "Dyeing, Cleaning, Ladies' Furs Remodeled"--it did no good. 

Rebecca was out to "improve herself, " as her father had told her shemust. Ardessa had easy way with her. It was one of those rarerelationships from which both persons profit. The more Becky couldlearn from Ardessa, the happier she was; and the more Ardessa couldunload on Becky, the greater was her contentment. She easily brokeBecky of the gum-chewing habit, taught her to walk quietly, toefface herself at the proper moment, and to hold her tongue. Beckyhad been raised to eight dollars a week; but she didn't care half somuch about that as she did about her own increasing efficiency. Themore work Miss Devine handed over to her the happier she was, andthe faster she was able to eat it up. She tested and tried herselfin every possible way. She now had full confidence that she wouldsurely one day be a high-priced stenographer, a real "businesswoman. "

Becky would have corrupted a really industrious person, but abilious temperament like Ardessa's couldn't make even a feeble standagainst such willingness. Ardessa had grown soft and had lost theknack of turning out work. Sometimes, in her importance andserenity, she shivered. What if O'Mally should die, and she werethrust out into the world to work in competition with the brazen, competent young women she saw about her everywhere? She believedherself indispensable, but she knew that in such a mischancefulworld as this the very powers of darkness might rise to separate herfrom this pearl among jobs. 

When Becky came in from lunch she went down the long hall to thewash-room, where all the little girls who worked in the advertisingand circulation departments kept their hats and jackets. There wereshelves and shelves of bright spring hats, piled on top of oneanother, all as stiff as sheet-iron and trimmed with gay flowers. Atthe marble wash-stand stood Rena Kalski, the right bower of thebusiness manager, polishing her diamond rings with a nail-brush. 

"Hullo, kid, " she called over her shoulder to Becky. "I've got aticket for you for Thursday afternoon. "

Becky's black eyes glowed, but the strained look on her face drewtighter than ever. 

"I'll never ask her, Miss Kalski, " she said rapidly. "I don't dare. I have to stay late to-night again; and I know she'd be hard toplease after, if I was to try to get off on a week-day. I thank you, Miss Kalski, but I'd better not. "

Miss Kalski laughed. She was a slender young Hebrew, handsome in animpudent, Tenderloin sort of way, with a small head, reddish-brownalmond eyes, a trifle tilted, a rapacious mouth, and a beautifulchin. 

"Ain't you under that woman's thumb, though! Call her bluff. Sheisn't half the prima donna she thinks she is. On my side of the hallwe know who's who about this place. "

The business and editorial departments of "The Outcry" wereseparated by a long corridor and a great contempt. Miss Kalski driedher rings with tissue-paper and studied them with an appraising eye. 

"Well, since you're such a 'fraidy-calf, '" she went on, "maybe I canget a rise out of her myself. Now I've got you a ticket out of thatshirt-front, I want you to go. I'll drop in on Devine thisafternoon. "

When Miss Kalski went back to her desk in the business manager'sprivate office, she turned to him familiarly, but not impertinently. 

"Mr. Henderson, I want to send a kid over in the editorialstenographers' to the Palace Thursday afternoon. She's a nice kid, only she's scared out of her skin all the time. Miss Devine's herboss, and she'll be just mean enough not to let the young one off. Would you say a word to her?"

The business manager lit a cigar. 

"I'm not saying words to any of the high-brows over there. Try itout with Devine yourself. You're not bashful. "

Miss Kalski shrugged her shoulders and smiled. 

"Oh, very well. " She serpentined out of the room and crossed theRubicon into the editorial offices. She found Ardessa typingO'Mally's letters and wearing a pained expression. 

"Good afternoon, Miss Devine, " she said carelessly. "Can we borrowBecky over there for Thursday afternoon? We're short. "

Miss Devine looked piqued and tilted her head. 

"I don't think it's customary, Miss Kalski, for the businessdepartment to use our people. We never have girls enough here to dothe work. Of course if Mr. Henderson feels justified--"

"Thanks awfully, Miss Devine, "--Miss Kalski interrupted her with theperfectly smooth, good-natured tone which never betrayed a hint ofthe scorn every line of her sinuous figure expressed, --"I will tellMr. Henderson. Perhaps we can do something for you some day. "Whether this was a threat, a kind wish, or an insinuation, no mortalcould have told. Miss Kalski's face was always suggesting insolencewithout being quite insolent. As she returned to her own domain shemet the cashier's head clerk in the hall. "That Devine woman's acrime, " she murmured. The head clerk laughed tolerantly. 

That afternoon as Miss Kalski was leaving the office at 5:15, on herway down the corridor she heard a typewriter clicking away in theempty, echoing editorial offices. She looked in, and found Beckybending forward over the machine as if she were about to swallow it. 

"Hello, kid. Do you sleep with that?" she called. She walked up toBecky and glanced at her copy. "What do you let 'em keep you upnights over that stuff for?" she asked contemptuously. "The worldwouldn't suffer if that stuff never got printed. "

Rebecca looked up wildly. Not even Miss Kalski's French pansy hat orher ear-rings and landscape veil could loosen Becky's tenacious mindfrom Mr. Gerrard's article on water power. She scarcely knew whatMiss Kalski had said to her, certainly not what she meant. 

"But I must make progress already, Miss Kalski, " she panted. 

Miss Kalski gave her low, siren laugh. 

"I should say you must!" she ejaculated. 

 * * * * *

Ardessa decided to take her vacation in June, and she arranged thatMiss Milligan should do O'Mally's work while she was away. MissMilligan was blunt and noisy, rapid and inaccurate. It would be justas well for O'Mally to work with a coarse instrument for a time; hewould be more appreciative, perhaps, of certain qualities to whichhe had seemed insensible of late. Ardessa was to leave for EastHampton on Sunday, and she spent Saturday morning instructing hersubstitute as to the state of the correspondence. At noon O'Mallyburst into her room. All the morning he had been closeted with a newwriter of mystery-stories just over from England. 

"Can you stay and take my letters this afternoon, Miss Devine? You're not leaving until to-morrow. "

Ardessa pouted, and tilted her head at the angle he was tired of. 

"I'm sorry, Mr. O'Mally, but I've left all my shopping for thisafternoon. I think Becky Tietelbaum could do them for you. I willtell her to be careful. "

"Oh, all right. " O'Mally bounced out with a reflection of Ardessa'sdisdainful expression on his face. Saturday afternoon was always ahalf-holiday, to be sure, but since she had weeks of freedom when hewas away--However--

At two o'clock Becky Tietelbaum appeared at his door, clad in thesober office suit which Miss Devine insisted she should wear, hernote-book in her hand, and so frightened that her fingers were coldand her lips were pale. She had never taken dictation from theeditor before. It was a great and terrifying occasion. 

"Sit down, " he said encouragingly. He began dictating while he shookfrom his bag the manuscripts he had snatched away from the amazedEnglish author that morning. Presently he looked up. 

"Do I go too fast?"

"No, sir, " Becky found strength to say. 

At the end of an hour he told her to go and type as many of theletters as she could while he went over the bunch of stuff he hadtorn from the Englishman. He was with the Hindu detective in anopium den in Shanghai when Becky returned and placed a pile ofpapers on his desk. 

"How many?" he asked, without looking up. 

"All you gave me, sir. "

"All, so soon? Wait a minute and let me see how many mistakes. " Hewent over the letters rapidly, signing them as he read. "They seemto be all right. I thought you were the girl that made so manymistakes. "

Rebecca was never too frightened to vindicate herself. 

"Mr. O'Mally, sir, I don't make mistakes with letters. It's onlycopying the articles that have so many long words, and when thewriting isn't plain, like Mr. Gerrard's. I never make many mistakeswith Mr. Johnson's articles, or with yours I don't. "

O'Mally wheeled round in his chair, looked with curiosity at herlong, tense face, her black eyes, and straight brows. 

"Oh, so you sometimes copy articles, do you? How does that happen?"

"Yes, sir. Always Miss Devine gives me the articles to do. It's goodpractice for me. "

"I see. " O'Mally shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking that hecould get a rise out of the whole American public any day easierthan he could get a rise out of Ardessa. "What editorials of minehave you copied lately, for instance?"

Rebecca blazed out at him, reciting rapidly:

"Oh, 'A Word about the Rosenbaums, ' 'Useless Navy-Yards, ' 'WhoKilled Cock Robin'--"

"Wait a minute. " O'Mally checked her flow. "What was that oneabout--Cock Robin?"

"It was all about why the secretary of the interior dismissed--"

"All right, all right. Copy those letters, and put them down thechute as you go out. Come in here for a minute on Monday morning. "

Becky hurried home to tell her father that she had taken theeditor's letters and had made no mistakes. On Monday she learnedthat she was to do O'Mally's work for a few days. He disliked MissMilligan, and he was annoyed with Ardessa for trying to put her overon him when there was better material at hand. With Rebecca he goton very well; she was impersonal, unreproachful, and she fairlypanted for work. Everything was done almost before he told her whathe wanted. She raced ahead with him; it was like riding a goodmodern bicycle after pumping along on an old hard tire. 

On the day before Miss Devine's return O'Mally strolled over for achat with the business office. 

"Henderson, your people are taking vacations now, I suppose? Couldyou use an extra girl?"

"If it's that thin black one, I can. "

O'Mally gave him a wise smile. 

"It isn't. To be honest, I want to put one over on you. I want youto take Miss Devine over here for a while and speed her up. I can'tdo anything. She's got the upper hand of me. I don't want to fireher, you understand, but she makes my life too difficult. It's myfault, of course. I've pampered her. Give her a chance over here;maybe she'll come back. You can be firm with 'em, can't you?"

Henderson glanced toward the desk where Miss Kalski's lightning eyewas skimming over the printing-house bills that he was supposed toverify himself. 

"Well, if I can't, I know who can, " he replied, with a chuckle. 

"Exactly, " O'Mally agreed. "I'm counting on the force of MissKalski's example. Miss Devine's all right, Miss Kalski, but sheneeds regular exercise. She owes it to her complexion. I can'tdiscipline people. "

Miss Kalski's only reply was a low, indulgent laugh. 

O'Mally braced himself on the morning of Ardessa's return. He toldthe waiter at his club to bring him a second pot of coffee and tobring it hot. He was really afraid of her. When she presentedherself at his office at 10:30 he complimented her upon her tan andasked about her vacation. Then he broke the news to her. 

"We want to make a few temporary changes about here, Miss Devine, for the summer months. The business department is short of help. Henderson is going to put Miss Kalski on the books for a while tofigure out some economies for him, and he is going to take you over. Meantime I'll get Becky broken in so that she could take your workif you were sick or anything. "

Ardessa drew herself up. 

"I've not been accustomed to commercial work, Mr. O'Mally. I've nointerest in it, and I don't care to brush up in it. "

"Brushing up is just what we need, Miss Devine. " O'Mally begantramping about his room expansively. "I'm going to brush everybodyup. I'm going to brush a few people out; but I want you to stay withus, of course. You belong here. Don't be hasty now. Go to your roomand think it over. "

Ardessa was beginning to cry, and O'Mally was afraid he would losehis nerve. He looked out of the window at a new sky-scraper that wasbuilding, while she retired without a word. 

At her own desk Ardessa sat down breathless and trembling. The onething she had never doubted was her unique value to O'Mally. Shehad, as she told herself, taught him everything. She would say a fewthings to Becky Tietelbaum, and to that pigeon-breasted tailor, herfather, too! The worst of it was that Ardessa had herself brought itall about; she could see that clearly now. She had carefully trainedand qualified her successor. Why had she ever civilized Becky? Whyhad she taught her manners and deportment, broken her of thegum-chewing habit, and made her presentable? In her original stateO'Mally would never have put up with her, no matter what herability. 

Ardessa told herself that O'Mally was notoriously fickle; Beckyamused him, but he would soon find out her limitations. The wisething, she knew, was to humor him; but it seemed to her that shecould not swallow her pride. Ardessa grew yellower within the hour. Over and over in her mind she bade O'Mally a cold adieu and mincedout past the grand old man at the desk for the last time. But eachexit she rehearsed made her feel sorrier for herself. She thoughtover all the offices she knew, but she realized that she could nevermeet their inexorable standards of efficiency. 

While she was bitterly deliberating, O'Mally himself wandered in, rattling his keys nervously in his pocket. He shut the door behindhim. 

"Now, you're going to come through with this all right, aren't you, Miss Devine? I want Henderson to get over the notion that my peopleover here are stuck up and think the business department are oldshoes. That's where we get our money from, as he often reminds me. You'll be the best-paid girl over there; no reduction, of course. You don't want to go wandering off to some new office wherepersonality doesn't count for anything. " He sat down confidentiallyon the edge of her desk. "Do you, now, Miss Devine?"

Ardessa simpered tearfully as she replied. 

"Mr. O'Mally, " she brought out, "you'll soon find that Becky is notthe sort of girl to meet people for you when you are away. I don'tsee how you can think of letting her. "

"That's one thing I want to change, Miss Devine. You're toosoft-handed with the has-beens and the never-was-ers. You're toomuch of a lady for this rough game. Nearly everybody who comes inhere wants to sell us a gold-brick, and you treat them as if theywere bringing in wedding presents. Becky is as rough as sandpaper, and she'll clear out a lot of dead wood. " O'Mally rose, and tappedArdessa's shrinking shoulder. "Now, be a sport and go through withit, Miss Devine. I'll see that you don't lose. Henderson thinksyou'll refuse to do his work, so I want you to get moved in therebefore he comes back from lunch. I've had a desk put in his officefor you. Miss Kalski is in the bookkeeper's room half the time now. "

Rena Kalski was amazed that afternoon when a line of office boysentered, carrying Miss Devine's effects, and when Ardessa herselfcoldly followed them. After Ardessa had arranged her desk, MissKalski went over to her and told her about some matters of routinevery good-naturedly. Ardessa looked pretty badly shaken up, and Renabore no grudges. 

"When you want the dope on the correspondence with the paper men, don't bother to look it up. I've got it all in my head, and I cansave time for you. If he wants you to go over the printing billsevery week, you'd better let me help you with that for a while. Ican stay almost any afternoon. It's quite a trick to figure out theplates and over-time charges till you get used to it. I've workedout a quick method that saves trouble. "

When Henderson came in at three he found Ardessa, chilly, but civil, awaiting his instructions. He knew she disapproved of his tastes andhis manners, but he didn't mind. What interested and amused him wasthat Rena Kalski, whom he had always thought as cold-blooded as anadding-machine, seemed to be making a hair-mattress of herself tobreak Ardessa's fall. 

At five o'clock, when Ardessa rose to go, the business manager saidbreezily:

"See you at nine in the morning, Miss Devine. We begin on thestroke. "

Ardessa faded out of the door, and Miss Kalski's slender backsquirmed with amusement. 

"I never thought to hear such words spoken, " she admitted; "but Iguess she'll limber up all right. The atmosphere is bad over there. They get moldy. "

 * * * * *

After the next monthly luncheon of the heads of departments, O'Mallysaid to Henderson, as he feed the coat-boy:

"By the way, how are you making it with the bartered bride?"

Henderson smashed on his Panama as he said:

"Any time you want her back, don't be delicate. "

But O'Mally shook his red head and laughed. 

"Oh, I'm no Indian giver!"

 _Century_, May 1918

_Her Boss_

Paul Wanning opened the front door of his house in Orange, closed itsoftly behind him, and stood looking about the hall as he drew offhis gloves. 

Nothing was changed there since last night, and yet he stood gazingabout him with an interest which a long-married man does not oftenfeel in his own reception hall. The rugs, the two pillars, theSpanish tapestry chairs, were all the same. The Venus di Medicistood on her column as usual and there, at the end of the hall(opposite the front door), was the full-length portrait of Mrs. Wanning, maturely blooming forth in an evening gown, signed with thename of a French painter who seemed purposely to have made hissignature indistinct. Though the signature was largely what one paidfor, one couldn't ask him to do it over. 

In the dining room the colored man was moving about the table setfor dinner, under the electric cluster. The candles had not yet beenlighted. Wanning watched him with a homesick feeling in his heart. They had had Sam a long while, twelve years, now. His warm hall, thelighted dining-room, the drawing room where only the flicker of thewood fire played upon the shining surfaces of many objects--theyseemed to Wanning like a haven of refuge. It had never occurred tohim that his house was too full of things. He often said, and hebelieved, that the women of his household had "perfect taste. " Hehad paid for these objects, sometimes with difficulty, but alwayswith pride. He carried a heavy life-insurance and permitted himselfto spend most of the income from a good law practise. He wished, during his life-time, to enjoy the benefits of his wife'sdiscriminating extravagance. 

Yesterday Wanning's doctor had sent him to a specialist. Today thespecialist, after various laboratory tests, had told him mostdisconcerting things about the state of very necessary, but hithertowholly uninteresting, organs of his body. 

The information pointed to something incredible; insinuated that hisresidence in this house was only temporary; that he, whose time was sofull, might have to leave not only his house and his office and hisclub, but a world with which he was extremely well satisfied--theonly world he knew anything about. 

Wanning unbuttoned his overcoat, but did not take it off. He stoodfolding his muffler slowly and carefully. What he did not understandwas, how he could go while other people stayed. Sam would be movingabout the table like this, Mrs. Wanning and her daughters would bedressing upstairs, when he would not be coming home to dinner anymore; when he would not, indeed, be dining anywhere. 

Sam, coming to turn on the parlor lights, saw Wanning and steppedbehind him to take his coat. 

"Good evening, Mr. Wanning, sah, excuse me. You entahed so quietly, sah, I didn't heah you. "

The master of the house slipped out of his coat and went languidlyupstairs. 

He tapped at the door of his wife's room, which stood ajar. 

"Come in, Paul, " she called from her dressing table. 

She was seated, in a violet dressing gown, giving the last touches toher coiffure, both arms lifted. They were firm and white, like her neckand shoulders. She was a handsome woman of fifty-five, --still awoman, not an old person, Wanning told himself, as he kissed hercheek. She was heavy in figure, to be sure, but she had kept, on thewhole, presentable outlines. Her complexion was good, and she woreless false hair than either of her daughters. 

Wanning himself was five years older, but his sandy hair did notshow the gray in it, and since his mustache had begun to grow whitehe kept it clipped so short that it was unobtrusive. His fresh skinmade him look younger than he was. Not long ago he had overheard thestenographers in his law office discussing the ages of theiremployers. They had put him down at fifty, agreeing that his twopartners must be considerably older than he--which was not the case. Wanning had an especially kindly feeling for the little new girl, acopyist, who had exclaimed that "Mr. Wanning couldn't be fifty; heseemed so boyish!"

Wanning lingered behind his wife, looking at her in the mirror. 

"Well, did you tell the girls, Julia?" he asked, trying to speakcasually. 

Mrs. Wanning looked up and met his eyes in the glass. "The girls?"

She noticed a strange expression come over his face. 

"About your health, you mean? Yes, dear, but I tried not to alarmthem. They feel dreadfully. I'm going to have a talk with Dr. Searesmyself. These specialists are all alarmists, and I've often heard ofhis frightening people. "

She rose and took her husband's arm, drawing him toward thefireplace. 

"You are not going to let this upset you, Paul? If you take care ofyourself, everything will come out all right. You have always beenso strong. One has only to look at you. "

"Did you, " Wanning asked, "say anything to Harold?"

"Yes, of course. I saw him in town today, and he agrees with me thatSeares draws the worst conclusions possible. He says even the youngmen are always being told the most terrifying things. Usually theylaugh at the doctors and do as they please. You certainly don't looklike a sick man, and you don't feel like one, do you?"

She patted his shoulder, smiled at him encouragingly, and rang forthe maid to come and hook her dress. 

When the maid appeared at the door, Wanning went out through thebathroom to his own sleeping chamber. He was too much dispirited toput on a dinner coat, though such remissness was always noticed. Hesat down and waited for the sound of the gong, leaving his dooropen, on the chance that perhaps one of his daughters would come in. 

When Wanning went down to dinner he found his wife already at herchair, and the table laid for four. 

"Harold, " she explained, "is not coming home. He has to attend afirst night in town. "

A moment later their two daughters entered, obviously "dressed. "They both wore earrings and masses of hair. The daughters' nameswere Roma and Florence, --Roma, Firenze, one of the young men whocame to the house often, but not often enough, had called them. Tonight they were going to a rehearsal of "The Dances of theNations, "--a benefit performance in which Miss Roma was to lead theSpanish dances, her sister the Grecian. 

The elder daughter had often been told that her name suited heradmirably. She looked, indeed, as we are apt to think theunrestrained beauties of later Rome must have looked, --but as theirportrait busts emphatically declare they did not. Her head wasmassive, her lips full and crimson, her eyes large and heavy-lidded, her forehead low. At costume balls and in living pictures she wasalways Semiramis, or Poppea, or Theodora. Barbaric accessoriesbrought out something cruel and even rather brutal in her handsomeface. The men who were attracted to her were somehow afraid of her. 

Florence was slender, with a long, graceful neck, a restless head, and a flexible mouth--discontent lurked about the corners of it. Hershoulders were pretty, but her neck and arms were too thin. Roma wasalways struggling to keep within a certain weight--her chin andupper arms grew persistently more solid--and Florence was alwaysstriving to attain a certain weight. Wanning used sometimes towonder why these disconcerting fluctuations could not go the otherway; why Roma could not melt away as easily as did her sister, whohad to be sent to Palm Beach to save the precious pounds. 

"I don't see why you ever put Rickie Allen in charge of the Englishcountry dances, " Florence said to her sister, as they sat down. "Heknows the figures, of course, but he has no real style. "

Roma looked annoyed. Rickie Allen was one of the men who came to thehouse almost often enough. 

"He is absolutely to be depended upon, that's why, " she said firmly. 

"I think he is just right for it, Florence, " put in Mrs. Wanning. "It's remarkable he should feel that he can give up the time; such abusy man. He must be very much interested in the movement. "

Florence's lip curled drolly under her soup spoon. She shot anamused glance at her mother's dignity. 

"Nothing doing, " her keen eyes seemed to say. 

Though Florence was nearly thirty and her sister a little beyond, there was, seriously, nothing doing. With so many charms and so muchpreparation, they never, as Florence vulgarly said, quite pulled itoff. They had been rushed, time and again, and Mrs. Wanning hadrepeatedly steeled herself to bear the blow. But the young men wentto follow a career in Mexico or the Philippines, or moved toYonkers, and escaped without a mortal wound. 

Roma turned graciously to her father. 

"I met Mr. Lane at the Holland House today, where I was lunchingwith the Burtons, father. He asked about you, and when I told himyou were not so well as usual, he said he would call you up. Hewants to tell you about some doctor he discovered in Iowa, who cureseverything with massage and hot water. It sounds freakish, but Mr. Lane is a very clever man, isn't he?"

"Very, " assented Wanning. 

"I should think he must be!" sighed Mrs. Wanning. "How in the worlddid he make all that money, Paul? He didn't seem especiallypromising years ago, when we used to see so much of them. "

"Corporation business. He's attorney for the P. L. And G. , " murmuredher husband. 

"What a pile he must have!" Florence watched the old negro's slowmovements with restless eyes. "Here is Jenny, a Contessa, with aglorious palace in Genoa that her father must have bought her. Surely Aldrini had nothing. Have you seen the baby count's pictures, Roma? They're very cunning. I should think you'd go to Genoa andvisit Jenny. "

"We must arrange that, Roma. It's such an opportunity. " Though Mrs. Wanning addressed her daughter, she looked at her husband. "Youwould get on so well among their friends. When Count Aldrini washere you spoke Italian much better than poor Jenny. I remember whenwe entertained him, he could scarcely say anything to her at all. "

Florence tried to call up an answering flicker of amusement upon hersister's calm, well-bred face. She thought her mother was ratheroutdoing herself tonight, --since Aldrini had at least managed to saythe one important thing to Jenny, somehow, somewhere. Jenny Lane hadbeen Roma's friend and schoolmate, and the Count was an ephemeralhope in Orange. Mrs. Wanning was one of the first matrons to declarethat she had no prejudices against foreigners, and at the dinnersthat were given for the Count, Roma was always put next him to actas interpreter. 

Roma again turned to her father. 

"If I were you, dear, I would let Mr. Lane tell me about his doctor. New discoveries are often made by queer people. "

Roma's voice was low and sympathetic; she never lost her dignity. 

Florence asked if she might have her coffee in her room, while shedashed off a note, and she ran upstairs humming "Bright Lights" andwondering how she was going to stand her family until the summerscattering. Why could Roma never throw off her elegant reserve andcall things by their names? She sometimes thought she might like hersister, if she would only come out in the open and howl about herdisappointments. 

Roma, drinking her coffee deliberately, asked her father if theymight have the car early, as they wanted to pick up Mr. Allen andMr. Rydberg on their way to rehearsal. 

Wanning said certainly. Heaven knew he was not stingy about his car, though he could never quite forget that in his day it was the youngmen who used to call for the girls when they went to rehearsals. 

"You are going with us, Mother?" Roma asked as they rose. 

"I think so dear. Your father will want to go to bed early, and Ishall sleep better if I go out. I am going to town tomorrow to pourtea for Harold. We must get him some new silver, Paul. I am quiteashamed of his spoons. "

Harold, the only son, was a playwright--as yet "unproduced"--and hehad a studio in Washington Square. 

A half-hour later, Wanning was alone in his library. He would notpermit himself to feel aggrieved. What was more commendable than amother's interest in her children's pleasures? Moreover, it was hiswife's way of following things up, of never letting die grass growunder her feet, that had helped to push him along in the world. Shewas more ambitious than he, --that had been good for him. He wasnaturally indolent, and Julia's childlike desire to possess materialobjects, to buy what other people were buying, had been the spurthat made him go after business. It had, moreover, made his housethe attractive place he believed it to be. 

"Suppose, " his wife sometimes said to him when the bills came infrom Céleste or Mme. Blanche, "suppose you had homely daughters; howwould you like that?"

He wouldn't have liked it. When he went anywhere with his threeladies, Wanning always felt very well done by. He had no complaintto make about them, or about anything. That was why it seemed sounreasonable--He felt along his back incredulously with his hand. Harold, of course, was a trial; but among all his business friends, he knew scarcely one who had a promising boy. 

The house was so still that Wanning could hear a faint, metallictinkle from the butler's pantry. Old Sam was washing up the silver, which he put away himself every night. 

Wanning rose and walked aimlessly down the hall and out through thedining-room. 

"Any Apollinaris on ice, Sam? I'm not feeling very well tonight. "

The old colored man dried his hands. 

"Yessah, Mistah Wanning. Have a little rye with it, sah?"

"No, thank you, Sam. That's one of the things I can't do any more. I've been to see a big doctor in the city, and he tells me there'ssomething seriously wrong with me. My kidneys have sort of gone backon me. "

It was a satisfaction to Wanning to name the organ that had betrayedhim, while all the rest of him was so sound. 

Sam was immediately interested. He shook his grizzled head andlooked full of wisdom. 

"Don't seem like a gen'leman of such a temperate life ought to haveanything wrong thar, sah. "

"No, it doesn't, does it?"

Wanning leaned against the china closet and talked to Sam for nearlyhalf an hour. The specialist who condemned him hadn't seemed half somuch interested. There was not a detail about the examination andthe laboratory tests in which Sam did not show the deepest concern. He kept asking Wanning if he could remember "straining himself" whenhe was a young man. 

"I've knowed a strain like that to sleep in a man for yeahs andyeahs, and then come back on him, 'deed I have, " he said, mysteriously. "An' again, it might be you got a floatin' kidney, sah. Aftah dey once teah loose, dey sometimes don't make no troublefor quite a while. "

When Wanning went to his room he did not go to bed. He sat up untilhe heard the voices of his wife and daughters in the hall below. Hisown bed somehow frightened him. In all the years he had lived inthis house he had never before looked about his room, at that bed, with the thought that he might one day be trapped there, and mightnot get out again. He had been ill, of course, but his room hadseemed a particularly pleasant place for a sick man; sunlight, flowers, --agreeable, well-dressed women coming in and out. 

Now there was something sinister about the bed itself, about itsposition, and its relation to the rest of the furniture. 

II

The next morning, on his way downtown, Wanning got off the subwaytrain at Astor Place and walked over to Washington Square. Heclimbed three flights of stairs and knocked at his son's studio. Harold, dressed, with his stick and gloves in his hand, opened thedoor. He was just going over to the Brevoort for breakfast. Hegreeted his father with the cordial familiarity practised by all the"boys" of his set, clapped him on the shoulder and said in hislight, tonsilitis voice:

"Come in, Governor, how delightful! I haven't had a call from you ina long time. "

He threw his hat and gloves on the writing table. He was a perfectgentleman, even with his father. 

Florence said the matter with Harold was that he had heard peoplesay he looked like Byron, and stood for it. 

What Harold would stand for in such matters was, indeed, the bestdefinition of him. When he read his play "The Street Walker" indrawing rooms and one lady told him it had the poetic symbolism ofTchekhov, and another said that it suggested the biting realism ofBrieux, he never, in his most secret thoughts, questioned the acumenof either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the nextroom and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of theabsurd, --a throaty staccato, with never a downward inflection, trustfully striving to please. 

"Just going out?" his father asked. "I won't keep you. Your mothertold you I had a discouraging session with Seares?"

"So awfully sorry you've had this bother, Governor; just as sorry asI can be. No question about it's coming out all right, but it's adownright nuisance, your having to diet and that sort of thing. AndI suppose you ought to follow directions, just to make us all feelcomfortable, oughtn't you?" Harold spoke with fluent sympathy. 

Wanning sat down on the arm of a chair and shook his head. "Yes, they do recommend a diet, but they don't promise much from it. "

Harold laughed precipitately. "Delicious! All doctors are, aren'tthey? So profound and oracular! The medicine-man; it's quite thesame idea, you see; with tom-toms. "

Wanning knew that Harold meant something subtle, --one of thesubtleties which he said were only spoiled by being explained--so hecame bluntly to one of the issues he had in mind. 

"I would like to see you settled before I quit the harness, Harold. "

Harold was absolutely tolerant. 

He took out his cigarette case and burnished it with hishandkerchief. 

"I perfectly understand your point of view, dear Governor, butperhaps you don't altogether get mine. Isn't it so? I am settled. What you mean by being settled, would unsettle me, completely. I'mcut out for just such an existence as this; to live four floors upin an attic, get my own breakfast, and have a charwoman to do forme. I should be awfully bored with an establishment. I'm quitecontent with a little diggings like this. "

Wanning's eyes fell. Somebody had to pay the rent of even suchmodest quarters as contented Harold, but to say so would be rude, and Harold himself was never rude. Wanning did not, this morning, feel equal to hearing a statement of his son's uncommercial ideals. 

"I know, " he said hastily. "But now we're up against hard facts, myboy. I did not want to alarm your mother, but I've had a time limitput on me, and it's not a very long one. "

Harold threw away the cigarette he had just lighted in a burst ofindignation. 

"That's the sort of thing I consider criminal, Father, absolutelycriminal! What doctor has a right to suggest such a thing? Seareshimself may be knocked out tomorrow. What have laboratory tests gotto do with a man's will to live? The force of that depends upon hisentire personality, not on any organ or pair of organs. "

Harold thrust his hands in his pockets and walked up and down, verymuch stirred. "Really, I have a very poor opinion of scientists. They ought to be made serve an apprenticeship in art, to get someconception of the power of human motives. Such brutality!"

Harold's plays dealt with the grimmest and most depressing matters, but he himself was always agreeable, and he insisted upon highcheerfulness as the correct tone of human intercourse. 

Wanning rose and turned to go. There was, in Harold, simply noreality, to which one could break through. The young man took up hishat and gloves. 

"Must you go? Let me step along with you to the sub. The walk willdo me good. "

Harold talked agreeably all the way to Astor Place. His father heardlittle of what he said, but he rather liked his company and his wishto be pleasant. 

Wanning went to his club for luncheon, meaning to spend theafternoon with some of his friends who had retired from business andwho read the papers there in the empty hours between two and seven. He got no satisfaction, however. When he tried to tell these men ofhis present predicament, they began to describe ills of their own inwhich he could not feel interested. Each one of them had atreacherous organ of which he spoke with animation, almost withpride, as if it were a crafty business competitor whom he wasconstantly outwitting. Each had a doctor, too, for whom he wasardently soliciting business. They wanted either to telephone theirdoctor and make an appointment for Wanning, or to take him then andthere to the consulting room. When he did not accept theseinvitations, they lost interest in him and remembered engagements. He called a taxi and returned to the offices of McQuiston, Wade, andWanning. 

Settled at his desk, Wanning decided that he would not go home todinner, but would stay at the office and dictate a long letter to anold college friend who lived in Wyoming. He could tell Douglas Brownthings that he had not succeeded in getting to any one else. Brown, out in the Wind River mountains, couldn't defend himself, couldn'tslap Wanning on the back and tell him to gather up the sunbeams. 

He called up his house in Orange to say that he would not be homeuntil late. Roma answered the telephone. He spoke mournfully, butshe was not disturbed by it. 

"Very well, Father. Don't get too tired, " she said in her wellmodulated voice. 

When Wanning was ready to dictate his letter, he looked out from hisprivate office into the reception room and saw that his stenographerin her hat and gloves, and furs of the newest cut, was just leaving. 

"Goodnight, Mr. Wanning, " she said, drawing down her dotted veil. 

Had there been important business letters to be got off on the nightmail, he would have felt that he could detain her, but not foranything personal. Miss Doane was an expert legal stenographer, andshe knew her value. The slightest delay in dispatching officebusiness annoyed her. Letters that were not signed until the nextmorning awoke her deepest contempt. She was scrupulous inprofessional etiquette, and Wanning felt that their relations, though pleasant, were scarcely cordial. 

As Miss Doane's trim figure disappeared through the outer door, little Annie Wooley, the copyist, came in from the stenographers'room. Her hat was pinned over one ear, and she was scrambling intoher coat as she came, holding her gloves in her teeth and herbattered handbag in the fist that was already through a sleeve. 

"Annie, I wanted to dictate a letter. You were just leaving, weren'tyou?"

"Oh, I don't mind!" she answered cheerfully, and pulling off her oldcoat, threw it on a chair. "I'll get my book. "

She followed him into his room and sat down by a table, --though shewrote with her book on her knee. 

Wanning had several times kept her after office hours to take hisprivate letters for him, and she had always been good-natured aboutit. On each occasion, when he gave her a dollar to get her dinner, she protested, laughing, and saying that she could never eat so muchas that. 

She seemed a happy sort of little creature, didn't pout when she wasscolded, and giggled about her own mistakes in spelling. She wasplump and undersized, always dodging under the elbows of tallerpeople and clattering about on high heels, much run over. She hadbright black eyes and fuzzy black hair in which, despite MissDoane's reprimands, she often stuck her pencil. She was the girl whocouldn't believe that Wanning was fifty, and he had liked her eversince he overheard that conversation. 

Tilting back his chair--he never assumed this position when hedictated to Miss Doane--Wanning began: "To Mr. D. E. Brown, SouthForks, Wyoming. "

He shaded his eyes with his hand and talked off a long letter tothis man who would be sorry that his mortal frame was breaking up. He recalled to him certain fine months they had spent together onthe Wind River when they were young men, and said he sometimeswished that like D. E. Brown, he had claimed his freedom in a bigcountry where the wheels did not grind a man as hard as they did inNew York. He had spent all these years hustling about and gettingready to live the way he wanted to live, and now he had a puncturethe doctors couldn't mend. What was the use of it?

Wanning's thoughts were fixed on the trout streams and the greatsilver-firs in the canyons of the Wind River Mountains, when he wasdisturbed by a soft, repeated sniffling. He looked out between hisfingers. Little Annie, carried away by his eloquence, was fairlypanting to make dots and dashes fast enough, and she was sopping hereyes with an unpresentable, end-of-the-day handkerchief. 

Wanning rambled on in his dictation. Why was she crying? What did itmatter to her? He was a man who said good-morning to her, whosometimes took an hour of the precious few she had left at the endof the day and then complained about her bad spelling. When theletter was finished, he handed her a new two dollar bill. 

"I haven't got any change tonight; and anyhow, I'd like you to eat awhole lot. I'm on a diet, and I want to see everybody else eat. "

Annie tucked her notebook under her arm and stood looking at thebill which she had not taken up from the table. 

"I don't like to be paid for taking letters to your friends, Mr. Wanning, " she said impulsively. "I can run personal letters offbetween times. It ain't as if I needed the money, " she addedcarelessly. 

"Get along with you! Anybody who is eighteen years old and has asweet tooth needs money, all they can get. "

Annie giggled and darted out with the bill in her hand. 

Wanning strolled aimlessly after her into the reception room. 

"Let me have that letter before lunch tomorrow, please, and be surethat nobody sees it. " He stopped and frowned. "I don't look verysick, do I?"

"I should say you don't!" Annie got her coat on after considerabletugging. "Why don't you call in a specialist? My mother called aspecialist for my father before he died. "

"Oh, is your father dead?"

"I should say he is! He was a painter by trade, and he fell off aseventy-foot stack into the East River. Mother couldn't get anythingout of the company, because he wasn't buckled. He lingered for fourmonths, so I know all about taking care of sick people. I wasattending business college then, and sick as he was, he used to giveme dictation for practise. He made us all go into professions; thegirls, too. He didn't like us to just run. "

Wanning would have liked to keep Annie and hear more about herfamily, but it was nearly seven o'clock, and he knew he ought, inmercy, to let her go. She was the only person to whom he had talkedabout his illness who had been frank and honest with him, who hadlooked at him with eyes that concealed nothing. When he broke thenews of his condition to his partners that morning, they shut himoff as if he were uttering indecent ravings. All day they had methim with a hurried, abstracted manner. McQuiston and Wade went outto lunch together, and he knew what they were thinking, perhapstalking, about. Wanning had brought into the firm valuable business, but he was less enterprising than either of his partners. 

III

In the early summer Wanning's family scattered. Roma swallowed herpride and sailed for Genoa to visit the Contessa Jenny. Harold wentto Cornish to be in an artistic atmosphere. Mrs. Wanning andFlorence took a cottage at York Harbor where Wanning was supposed tojoin them whenever he could get away from town. He did not often getaway. He felt most at ease among his accustomed surroundings. Hekept his car in the city and went back and forth from his office tothe club where he was living. Old Sam, his butler, came in fromOrange every night to put his clothes in order and make himcomfortable. 

Wanning began to feel that he would not tire of his office in ahundred years. Although he did very little work, it was pleasant togo down town every morning when the streets were crowded, the skyclear, and the sunshine bright. From the windows of his privateoffice he could see the harbor and watch the ocean liners come downthe North River and go out to sea. 

While he read his mail, he often looked out and wondered why he hadbeen so long indifferent to that extraordinary scene of humanactivity and hopefulness. How had a short-lived race of beings theenergy and courage valiantly to begin enterprises which they couldfollow for only a few years; to throw up towers and buildsea-monsters and found great businesses, when the frailest of thematerials with which they worked, the paper upon which they wrote, the ink upon their pens, had more permanence in this world thanthey? All this material rubbish lasted. The linen clothing andcosmetics of the Egyptians had lasted. It was only the human flamethat certainly, certainly went out. Other things had a fightingchance; they might meet with mishap and be destroyed, they mightnot. But the human creature who gathered and shaped and hoarded andfoolishly loved these things, he had no chance--absolutely none. Wanning's cane, his hat, his topcoat, might go from beggar to beggarand knock about in this world for another fifty years or so; but nothe. 

In the late afternoon he never hurried to leave his office now. Wonderful sunsets burned over the North River, wonderful starstrembled up among the towers; more wonderful than anything he couldhurry away to. One of his windows looked directly down upon thespire of Old Trinity, with the green churchyard and the palesycamores far below. Wanning often dropped into the church when hewas going out to lunch; not because he was trying to make his peacewith Heaven, but because the church was old and restful andfamiliar, because it and its gravestones had sat in the same placefor a long while. He bought flowers from the street boys and keptthem on his desk, which his partners thought strange behavior, andwhich Miss Doane considered a sign that he was failing. 

But there were graver things than bouquets for Miss Doane and thesenior partner to ponder over. 

The senior partner, McQuiston, in spite of his silvery hair andmustache and his important church connections, had rich naturaltaste for scandal. --After Mr. Wade went away for his vacation, inMay, Wanning took Annie Wooley out of the copying room, put her at adesk in his private office, and raised her pay to eighteen dollars aweek, explaining to McQuiston that for the summer months he wouldneed a secretary. This explanation satisfied neither McQuiston norMiss Doane. 

Annie was also paid for overtime, and although Wanning attended tovery little of the office business now, there was a great deal ofovertime. Miss Doane was, of course, 'above' questioning a chit likeAnnie; but what was he doing with his time and his new secretary, she wanted to know?

If anyone had told her that Wanning was writing a book, she wouldhave said bitterly that it was just like him. In his youth Wanninghad hankered for the pen. When he studied law, he had intended tocombine that profession with some tempting form of authorship. Hadhe remained a bachelor, he would have been an unenterprisingliterary lawyer to the end of his days. It was his wife'srestlessness and her practical turn of mind that had made him amoney-getter. His illness seemed to bring back to him the illusionswith which he left college. 

As soon as his family were out of the way and he shut up the Orangehouse, he began to dictate his autobiography to Annie Wooley. It wasnot only the story of his life, but an expression of all histheories and opinions, and a commentary on the fifty years of eventswhich he could remember. 

Fortunately, he was able to take great interest in this undertaking. He had the happiest convictions about the clear-cut style he wasdeveloping and his increasing felicity in phrasing. He meant topublish the work handsomely, at his own expense and under his ownname. He rather enjoyed the thought of how greatly disturbed Haroldwould be. He and Harold differed in their estimates of books. Allthe solid works which made up Wanning's library, Harold consideredbeneath contempt. Anybody, he said, could do that sort of thing. 

When Wanning could not sleep at night, he turned on the light besidehis bed and made notes on the chapter he meant to dictate the nextday. 

When he returned to the office after lunch, he gave instructionsthat he was not to be interrupted by telephone calls, and shuthimself up with his secretary. 

After he had opened all the windows and taken off his coat, he fellto dictating. He found it a delightful occupation, the solace ofeach day. Often he had sudden fits of tiredness; then he would liedown on the leather sofa and drop asleep, while Annie read "TheLeopard's Spots" until he awoke. 

Like many another business man Wanning had relied so long onstenographers that the operation of writing with a pen had becomelaborious to him. When he undertook it, he wanted to cut everythingshort. But walking up and down his private office, with the strongafternoon sun pouring in at his windows, a fresh air stirring, allthe people and boats moving restlessly down there, he could saythings he wanted to say. It was like living his life over again. 

He did not miss his wife or his daughters. He had become again themild, contemplative youth he was in college, before he had aprofession and a family to grind for, before the two needs whichshape our destiny had made of him pretty much what they make ofevery man. 

At five o'clock Wanning sometimes went out for a cup of tea and tookAnnie along. He felt dull and discouraged as soon as he was alone. So long as Annie was with him, he could keep a grip on his ownthoughts. They talked about what he had just been dictating to her. She found that he liked to be questioned, and she tried to begreatly interested in it all. 

After tea, they went back to the office. Occasionally Wanning losttrack of time and kept Annie until it grew dark. He knew he had oldMcQuiston guessing, but he didn't care. One day the senior partnercame to him with a reproving air. 

"I am afraid Miss Doane is leaving us, Paul. She feels that MissWooley's promotion is irregular. "

"How is that any business of hers, I'd like to know? She has all mylegal work. She is always disagreeable enough about doing anythingelse. "

McQuiston's puffy red face went a shade darker. 

"Miss Doane has a certain professional pride; a strong feeling foroffice organization. She doesn't care to fill an equivocal position. I don't know that I blame her. She feels that there is something notquite regular about the confidence you seem to place in thisinexperienced young woman. "

Wanning pushed back his chair. 

"I don't care a hang about Miss Doane's sense of propriety. I need astenographer who will carry out my instructions. I've carried outMiss Doane's long enough. I've let that schoolma'am hector me foryears. She can go when she pleases. "

That night McQuiston wrote to his partner that things were in a badway, and they would have to keep an eye on Wanning. He had been seenat the theatre with his new stenographer. 

That was true. Wanning had several times taken Annie to the Palaceon Saturday afternoon. When all his acquaintances were off motoringor playing golf, when the down-town offices and even the streetswere deserted, it amused him to watch a foolish show with adelighted, cheerful little person beside him. 

Beyond her generosity, Annie had no shining merits of character, butshe had the gift of thinking well of everything, and wishing well. When she was there Wanning felt as if there were someone who caredwhether this was a good or a bad day with him. Old Sam, too, waslike that. While the old black man put him to bed and made himcomfortable, Wanning could talk to him as he talked to little Annie. Even if he dwelt upon his illness, in plain terms, in detail, he didnot feel as if he were imposing on them. 

People like Sam and Annie admitted misfortune, --admitted it almostcheerfully. Annie and her family did not consider illness or any ofits hard facts vulgar or indecent. It had its place in their schemeof life, as it had not in that of Wanning's friends. 

Annie came out of a typical poor family of New York. Of eightchildren, only four lived to grow up. In such families the stream oflife is broad enough, but runs shallow. In the children, vitality isexhausted early. The roots do not go down into anything very strong. Illness and deaths and funerals, in her own family and in those ofher friends, had come at frequent intervals in Annie's life. Sincethey had to be, she and her sisters made the best of them. There wassomething to be got out of funerals, even, if they were managedright. They kept people in touch with old friends who had moveduptown, and revived kindly feelings. 

Annie had often given up things she wanted because there wassickness at home, and now she was patient with her boss. What hepaid her for overtime work by no means made up to her what she lost. 

Annie was not in the least thrifty, nor were any of her sisters. Shehad to make a living, but she was not interested in getting all shecould for her time, or in laying up for the future. Girls like Annieknow that the future is a very uncertain thing, and they feel noresponsibility about it. The present is what they have--and it isall they have. If Annie missed a chance to go sailing with theplumber's son on Saturday afternoon, why, she missed it. As for thetwo dollars her boss gave her, she handed them over to her mother. Now that Annie was getting more money, one of her sisters quit a jobshe didn't like and was staying at home for a rest. That was allpromotion meant to Annie. 

The first time Annie's boss asked her to work on Saturday afternoon, she could not hide her disappointment. He suggested that they mightknock off early and go to a show, or take a run in his car, but shegrew tearful and said it would be hard to make her familyunderstand. Wanning thought perhaps he could explain to her mother. He called his motor and took Annie home. 

When his car stopped in front of the tenement house on EighthAvenue, heads came popping out of the windows for six storys up, andall the neighbor women, in dressing sacks and wrappers, gazed downat the machine and at the couple alighting from it. A motor meant awedding or the hospital. 

The plumber's son, Willy Steen, came over from the corner saloon tosee what was going on, and Annie introduced him at the doorstep. 

Mrs. Wooley asked Wanning to come into the parlor and invited him tohave a chair of ceremony between the folding bed and the piano. 

Annie, nervous and tearful, escaped to the dining-room--the cheerfulspot where the daughters visited with each other and with theirfriends. The parlor was a masked sleeping chamber and store room. 

The plumber's son sat down on the sofa beside Mrs. Wooley, as if hewere accustomed to share in the family councils. Mrs. Wooley waitedexpectant and kindly. She looked the sensible, hard-working womanthat she was, and one could see she hadn't lived all her life onEighth Avenue without learning a great deal. 

Wanning explained to her that he was writing a book which he wantedto finish during the summer months when business was not so heavy. He was ill and could not work regularly. His secretary would have totake his dictation when he felt able to give it; must, in short, bea sort of companion to him. He would like to feel that she could goout in his car with him, or even to the theater, when he felt likeit. It might have been better if he had engaged a young man for thiswork, but since he had begun it with Annie, he would like to keepher if her mother was willing. 

Mrs. Wooley watched him with friendly, searching eyes. She glancedat Willy Steen, who, wise in such distinctions, had decided thatthere was nothing shady about Annie's boss. He nodded his sanction. 

"I don't want my girl to conduct herself in any such way as willprejudice her, Mr. Wanning, " she said thoughtfully. "If you've gotdaughters, you know how that is. You've been liberal with Annie, andit's a good position for her. It's right she should go to businessevery day, and I want her to do her work right, but I like to haveher home after working hours. I always think a young girl's time isher own after business hours, and I try not to burden them when theycome home. I'm willing she should do your work as suits you, if it'sher wish; but I don't like to press her. The good times she missesnow, it's not you nor me, sir, that can make them up to her. Theseyoung things has their feelings. "

"Oh, I don't want to press her, either, " Wanning said hastily. "Isimply want to know that you understand the situation. I've made hera little present in my will as a recognition that she is doing morefor me than she is paid for. "

"That's something above me, sir. We'll hope there won't be noquestion of wills for many years yet, " Mrs. Wooley spoke heartily. "I'm glad if my girl can be of any use to you, just so she don'tprejudice herself. "

The plumber's son rose as if the interview were over. 

"It's all right, Mama Wooley, don't you worry, " he said. 

He picked up his canvas cap and turned to Wanning. "You see, Annieain't the sort of girl that would want to be spotted circulatingaround with a monied party her folks didn't know all about. She'dlose friends by it. "

After this conversation Annie felt a great deal happier. She wasstill shy and a trifle awkward with poor Wanning when they wereoutside the office building, and she missed the old freedom of herSaturday afternoons. But she did the best she could, and Willy Steentried to make it up to her. 

In Annie's absence he often came in of an afternoon to have a cup oftea and a sugar-bun with Mrs. Wooley and the daughter who was"resting. " As they sat at the dining-room table, they discussedAnnie's employer, his peculiarities, his health, and what he hadtold Mrs. Wooley about his will. 

Mrs. Wooley said she sometimes felt afraid he might disinherit hischildren, as rich people often did, and make talk; but she hoped forthe best. Whatever came to Annie, she prayed it might not be in theform of taxable property. 

IV

Late in September Wanning grew suddenly worse. His family hurriedhome, and he was put to bed in his house in Orange. He kept askingthe doctors when he could get back to the office, but he lived onlyeight days. 

The morning after his father's funeral, Harold went to the office toconsult Wanning's partners and to read the will. Everything in thewill was as it should be. There were no surprises except a codicilin the form of a letter to Mrs. Wanning, dated July 8th, requestingthat out of the estate she should pay the sum of one thousanddollars to his stenographer, Annie Wooley, "in recognition of herfaithful services. "

"I thought Miss Doane was my father's stenographer, " Haroldexclaimed. 

Alec McQuiston looked embarrassed and spoke in a low, guarded tone. 

"She was, for years. But this spring, --" he hesitated. 

McQuiston loved a scandal. He leaned across his desk toward Harold. 

"This spring your father put this little girl, Miss Wooley, acopyist, utterly inexperienced, in Miss Doane's place. Miss Doanewas indignant and left us. The change made comment here in theoffice. It was slightly--No, I will be frank with you, Harold, itwas very irregular. "

Harold also looked grave. "What could my father have meant by such arequest as this to my mother?"

The silver haired senior partner flushed and spoke as if he weretrying to break something gently. 

"I don't understand it, my boy. But I think, indeed I prefer tothink, that your father was not quite himself all this summer. A manlike your father does not, in his right senses, find pleasure in thesociety of an ignorant, common little girl. He does not make apractise of keeping her at the office after hours, often until eighto'clock, or take her to restaurants and to the theater with him;not, at least, in a slanderous city like New York. "

Harold flinched before McQuiston's meaning gaze and turned aside inpained silence. He knew, as a dramatist, that there are darkchapters in all men's lives, and this but too clearly explained whyhis father had stayed in town all summer instead of joining hisfamily. 

McQuiston asked if he should ring for Annie Wooley. 

Harold drew himself up. "No. Why should I see her? I prefer not to. But with your permission, Mr. McQuiston, I will take charge of thisrequest to my mother. It could only give her pain, and might awakendoubts in her mind. "

"We hardly know, " murmured the senior partner, "where aninvestigation would lead us. Technically, of course, I cannot agreewith you. But if, as one of the executors of the will, you wish toassume personal responsibility for this bequest, under thecircumstances--irregularities beget irregularities. "

"My first duty to my father, " said Harold, "is to protect mymother. "

That afternoon McQuiston called Annie Wooley into his private officeand told her that her services would not be needed any longer, andthat in lieu of notice the clerk would give her two weeks' salary. 

"Can I call up here for references?" Annie asked. 

"Certainly. But you had better ask for me, personally. You must knowthere has been some criticism of you here in the office, MissWooley. "

"What about?" Annie asked boldly. 

"Well, a young girl like you cannot render so much personal serviceto her employer as you did to Mr. Wanning without causingunfavorable comment. To be blunt with you, for your own good, mydear young lady, your services to your employer should terminate inthe office, and at the close of office hours. Mr. Wanning was a verysick man and his judgment was at fault, but you should have knownwhat a girl in your station can do and what she cannot do. "

The vague discomfort of months flashed up in little Annie. She hadno mind to stand by and be lectured without having a word to say forherself. 

"Of course he was sick, poor man!" she burst out. "Not as anybodyseemed much upset about it. I wouldn't have given up myhalf-holidays for anybody if they hadn't been sick, no matter whatthey paid me. There wasn't anything in it for me. "

McQuiston raised his hand warningly. 

"That will do, young lady. But when you get another place, rememberthis: it is never your duty to entertain or to provide amusement foryour employer. "

He gave Annie a look which she did not clearly understand, althoughshe pronounced him a nasty old man as she hustled on her hat andjacket. 

When Annie reached home she found Willy Steen sitting with hermother and sister at the dining-room table. This was the first daythat Annie had gone to the office since Wanning's death, and herfamily awaited her return with suspense. 

"Hello yourself, " Annie called as she came in and threw her handbaginto an empty armchair. 

"You're off early, Annie, " said her mother gravely. "Has the willbeen read?"

"I guess so. Yes, I know it has. Miss Wilson got it out of the safefor them. The son came in. He's a pill. "

"Was nothing said to you, daughter?"

"Yes, a lot. Please give me some tea, mother. " Annie felt that herswagger was failing. 

"Don't tantalize us, Ann, " her sister broke in. "Didn't you getanything?"

"I got the mit, all right. And some back talk from the old man thatI'm awful sore about. "

Annie dashed away the tears and gulped her tea. 

Gradually her mother and Willy drew the story from her. Willyoffered at once to go to the office building and take his standoutside the door and never leave it until he had punched old Mr. McQuiston's face. He rose as if to attend to it at once, but Mrs. Wooley drew him to his chair again and patted his arm. 

"It would only start talk and get the girl in trouble, Willy. Whenit's lawyers, folks in our station is helpless. I certainly believedthat man when he sat here; you heard him yourself. Such a gentlemanas he looked. "

Willy thumped his great fist, still in punching position, down onhis knee. 

"Never you be fooled again, Mama Wooley. You'll never get anythingout of a rich guy that he ain't signed up in the courts for. Rich istight. There's no exceptions. "

Annie shook her head. 

"I didn't want anything out of him. He was a nice, kind man, and hehad his troubles, I guess. He wasn't tight. "

"Still, " said Mrs. Wooley sadly, "Mr. Wanning had no call to holdout promises. I hate to be disappointed in a gentleman. You've hadconfining work for some time, daughter; a rest will do you good. "

 _Smart Set_, October 1919

PART II

REVIEWS AND ESSAYS

_Mark Twain_

If there is anything which should make an American sick anddisgusted at the literary taste of his country, and almost swervehis allegiance to his flag it is that controversy between Mark Twainand Max O'Rell, in which the Frenchman proves himself a wit and agentleman and the American shows himself little short of a clown andan all around tough. The squabble arose apropos of Paul Bourget'snew book on America, "Outre Mer, " a book which deals more fairly andgenerously with this country than any book yet written in a foreigntongue. Mr. Clemens did not like the book, and like all men of hisclass, and limited mentality, he cannot criticise without becomingpersonal and insulting. He cannot be scathing without being ablackguard. He tried to demolish a serious and well considered workby publishing a scurrilous, slangy and loosely written article aboutit. In this article Mr. Clemens proves very little against Mr. Bourget and a very great deal against himself. He demonstratesclearly that he is neither a scholar, a reader or a man of lettersand very little of a gentleman. His ignorance of French literatureis something appalling. Why, in these days it is as necessary for aliterary man to have a wide knowledge of the French masterpieces asit is for him to have read Shakespeare or the Bible. What man whopretends to be an author can afford to neglect those models of styleand composition. George Meredith, Thomas Hardy and Henry Jamesexcepted, the great living novelists are Frenchmen. 

Mr. Clemens asks what the French sensualists can possibly teach thegreat American people about novel writing or morality? Well, itwould not seriously hurt the art of the classic author of "Puddin'Head Wilson" to study Daudet, De Maupassant, Hugo and George Sand, whatever it might do to his morals. Mark Twain is a humorist of akind. His humor is always rather broad, so broad that the politeworld can justly call it coarse. He is not a reader nor a thinkernor a man who loves art of any kind. He is a clever Yankee who hasmade a "good thing" out of writing. He has been published in theNorth American Review and in the Century, but he is not and neverwill be a part of literature. The association and companionship ofcultured men has given Mark Twain a sort of professional veneer, butit could not give him fine instincts or nice discriminations orelevated tastes. His works are pure and suitable for children, justas the work of most shallow and mediocre fellows. House dogs anddonkeys make the most harmless and chaste companions for younginnocence in the world. Mark Twain's humor is of the kind thatteamsters use in bantering with each other, and his laugh is thegruff "haw-haw" of the backwoodsman. He is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands on the river steamerand chewed uncured tobacco when he was three years old. Thoroughlylikeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters. It isan unfortunate feature of American literature that a hostler withsome natural cleverness and a great deal of assertion receives thesame recognition as a standard American author that a man likeLowell does. The French academy is a good thing after all. It atleast divides the sheep from the goats and gives a sheep theconsolation of knowing that he is a sheep. 

It is rather a pity that Paul Bourget should have written "OutreMer, " thoroughly creditable book though it is. Mr. Bourget is anovelist, and he should not content himself with being an essayist, there are far too many of them in the world already. He can developstrong characters, invent strong situations, he can write the truthand he should not drift into penning opinions and platitudes. WhenGod has made a man a creator, it is a great mistake for him to turncritic. It is rather an insult to God and certainly a very greatwrong to man. 

 _Nebraska State Journal_, May 5, 1895

I got a letter last week from a little boy just half-past seven whohad just read "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer. " He said: "Ifthere are any more books like them in the world, send them to mequick. " I had to humbly confess to him that if there were any othersI had not the good fortune to know of them. What a red-letter-day itis to a boy, the day he first opens "Tom Sawyer. " I would rathersail on the raft down the Missouri again with "Huck" Finn and Jimthan go down the Nile in December or see Venice from a gondola inMay. Certainly Mark Twain is much better when he writes of hisMissouri boys than when he makes sickley romances about Joan of Arc. And certainly he never did a better piece of work than "Prince andPauper. " One seems to get at the very heart of old England in thatdearest of children's books, and in its pages the frail boy king, and his gloomy sister Mary who in her day wrought so much woe forunhappy England, and the dashing Princess Elizabeth who lived torule so well, seem to live again. A friend of Mr. Clemens' once toldme that he said he wrote that book so that when his little daughtersgrew up they might know that their tired old jester of a fathercould be serious and gentle sometimes. 

 _The Home Monthly_, May 1897

_William Dean Howells_

Certainly now in his old age Mr. Howells is selecting queer titlesfor his books. A while ago we had that feeble tale, "The Coast ofBohemia, " and now we have "My Literary Passions. " "Passions, "literary or otherwise, were never Mr. Howells' forte and surely noman could be further from even the coast of Bohemia. 

Apropos of "My Literary Passions" which has so long strung out inthe Ladies' Home Journal along with those thrilling articles abouthow Henry Ward Beecher tied his necktie and what kind of coffee Mrs. Hall Cain likes, why did Mr. Howells write it? Doesn't Mr. Howellsknow that at one time or another every one raves over Don Quixote, imitates Heine, worships Tourgueneff and calls Tolstoi a prophet?Does Mr. Howells think that no one but he ever had youth andenthusiasm and aspirations? Doesn't he know that the only thing thatmakes the world worth living in at all is that once, when we areyoung, we all have that great love for books and impersonal things, all reverence and dream? We have all known the time when Porthos, Athos and d'Artagan were vastly more real and important to us thanthe folks who lived next door. We have all dwelt in that countrywhere Anna Karenina and the Levins were the only people who matteredmuch. We have all known that intoxicating period when we thought we"understood life, " because we had read Daudet, Zola and Guy deMaupassant, and like Mr. Howells we all looked back rather fondlyupon the time when we believed that books were the truth and art wasall. After a while books grow matter of fact like everything elseand we always think enviously of the days when they were new andwonderful and strange. That's a part of existence. We lose our firstkeen relish for literature just as we lose it for ice-cream andconfectionery. The taste grows older, wiser and more subdued. Wewould all wear out of very enthusiasm if it did not. But why shouldMr. Howells tell the world this common experience in detail asthough it were his and his alone. He might as well write a detailedaccount of how he had the measles and the whooping cough. It was allright and proper for Mr. Howells to like Heine and Hugo, but, in thewords of the circus clown, "We've all been there. "

 _Nebraska State Journal_, July 14, 1895

_Edgar Allan Poe_

 My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting its roses, Its old agitations Of myrtles and roses. 

 For now, while so quietly Lying, it fancies A holier odor About it, of pansies-- A rosemary odor Commingled with pansies. With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies. 

 --Edgar Allan Poe. 

The Shakespeare society of New York, which is really about the onlyuseful literary organization in this country, is making vigorousefforts to redress an old wrong and atone for a long neglect. Sunday, Sept. 22, it held a meeting at the Poe cottage onKingsbridge road near Fordham, for the purpose of starting anorganized movement to buy back the cottage, restore it to itsoriginal condition and preserve it as a memorial of Poe. So it hascome at last. After helping build monuments to Shelley, Keats andCarlyle we have at last remembered this man, the greatest of ourpoets and the most unhappy. I am glad that this movement is in thehands of American actors, for it was among them that Poe found hisbest friends and warmest admirers. Some way he always seemed tobelong to the strolling Thespians who were his mother's people. 

Among all the thousands of life's little ironies that make historyso diverting, there is none more paradoxical than that Edgar Poeshould have been an American. Look at his face. Had we ever anotherlike it? He must have been a strange figure in his youth, amongthose genial, courtly Virginians, this handsome, pale fellow, violent in his enthusiasm, ardent in his worship, but spirituallycold in his affections. Now playing heavily for the mere excitementof play, now worshipping at the shrine of a woman old enough to behis mother, merely because her voice was beautiful; now swimming sixmiles up the James river against a heavy current in the glaring sunof a June midday. He must have seemed to them an unreal figure, asort of stage man who was wandering about the streets with his maskand buskins on, a theatrical figure who had escaped by some strangemischance into the prosaic daylight. His speech and actions wereunconsciously and sincerely dramatic, always as though done foreffect. He had that nervous, egotistic, self-centered nature commonto stage children who seem to have been dazzled by the footlightsand maddened by the applause before they are born. It was in hisblood. With the exception of two women who loved him, lived for him, died for him, he went through life friendless, misunderstood, withthat dense, complete, hopeless misunderstanding which, as Amielsaid, is the secret of that sad smile upon the lips of the great. Men tried to befriend him, but in some way or other he hurt anddisappointed them. He tried to mingle and share with other men, buthe was always shut from them by that shadow, light as gossamer butunyielding as adamant, by which, from the beginning of the world, art has shielded and guarded and protected her own, thatGod-concealing mist in which the heroes of old were hidden, immersedin that gloom and solitude which, if we could but know it here, isbut the shadow of God's hand as it falls upon his elect. 

We lament our dearth of great prose. With the exception of HenryJames and Hawthorne, Poe is our only master of pure prose. We lamentour dearth of poets. With the exception of Lowell, Poe is our onlygreat poet. Poe found short story writing a bungling makeshift. Heleft it a perfect art. He wrote the first perfect short stories inthe English language. He first gave the short story purpose, method, and artistic form. In a careless reading one can not realize thewonderful literary art, the cunning devices, the masterly effectsthat those entrancing tales conceal. They are simple and directenough to delight us when we are children, subtle and artisticenough to be our marvel when we are old. To this day they are thewonder and admiration of the French, who are the acknowledgedmasters of craft and form. How in his wandering, laborious life, bound to the hack work of the press and crushed by an ever-growingburden of want and debt, did he ever come upon all this deep andmystical lore, this knowledge of all history, of all languages, ofall art, this penetration into the hidden things of the East? AsSteadman says, "The self training of genius is always a marvel. " Thepast is spread before us all and most of us spend our lives inlearning those things which we do not need to know, but geniusreaches out instinctively and takes only the vital detail, by somesort of spiritual gravitation goes directly to the right thing. 

Poe belonged to the modern French school of decorative anddiscriminating prose before it ever existed in France. He rivalledGautier, Flaubert and de Maupassant before they were born. Heclothed his tales in a barbaric splendor and persuasive unrealitynever before heard of in English. No such profusion of color, oriental splendor of detail, grotesque combinations and mysticaleffects had ever before been wrought into language. There are talesas grotesque, as monstrous, unearthly as the stone griffens andgargoyles that are cut up among the unvisited niches and towers ofNotre Dame, stories as poetic and delicately beautiful as the goldenlace work chased upon an Etruscan ring. He fitted his words togetheras the Byzantine jewelers fitted priceless stones. He found theinner harmony and kinship of words. Where lived another man whocould blend the beautiful and the horrible, the gorgeous and thegrotesque in such intricate and inexplicable fashion? Who coulddelight you with his noun and disgust you with his verb, thrill youwith his adjective and chill you with his adverb, make you run thewhole gamut of human emotions in a single sentence? Sitting in thatmiserable cottage at Fordham he wrote of the splendor of dreampalaces beyond the dreams of art. He hung those grimy walls withdream tapestries, paved those narrow halls with black marble andpolished onyx, and into those low-roofed chambers he brought all thetreasured imagery of fancy, from the "huge carvings of untutoredEgypt" to "mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strangeconvolute censers, together with multitudinous, flaring andflickering tongues of purple and violet fire. " Hungry and ragged hewrote of Epicurean feasts and luxury that would have beggared thepurpled pomp of pagan Rome and put Nero and his Golden House toshame. 

And this mighty master of the organ of language, who knew its everystop and pipe, who could awaken at will the thin silver tones of itsslenderest reeds or the solemn cadence of its deepest thunder, whocould make it sing like a flute or roar like a cataract, he was borninto a country without a literature. He was of that ornate schoolwhich usually comes last in a national literature, and he camefirst. American taste had been vitiated by men like Griswold and N. P. Willis until it was at the lowest possible ebb. Willis wasconsidered a genius, that is the worst that could possibly be said. In the North a new race of great philosophers was growing up, butPoe had neither their friendship nor encouragement. He went indeed, sometimes, to the chilly _salon_ of Margaret Fuller, but he wasalways a discord there. He was a mere artist and he had no businesswith philosophy, he had no theories as to the "higher life" and the"true happiness. " He had only his unshapen dreams that battled withhim in dark places, the unborn that struggled in his brain forbirth. What time has an artist to learn the multiplication table orto talk philosophy? He was not afraid of them. He laughed at Willis, and flung Longfellow's lie in his teeth, the lie the rest of theworld was twenty years in finding. He scorned the obtrusive learningof the transcendentalists and he disliked their hard talkativewomen. He left them and went back to his dream women, his_Berenice_, his _Ligeia_, his _Marchesa Aphrodite_, pale and cold asthe mist maidens of the North, sad as the Norns who weep for humanwoe. 

The tragedy of Poe's life was not alcohol, but hunger. He died whenhe was forty, when his work was just beginning. Thackeray had nottouched his great novels at forty, George Eliot was almost unknownat that age. Hugo, Goethe, Hawthorne, Lowell and Dumas all did theirgreat work after they were forty years old. Poe never did his greatwork. He could not endure the hunger. This year the Drexel Institutehas put over sixty thousand dollars into a new edition of Poe'spoems and stories. He himself never got six thousand for themaltogether. If one of the great and learned institutions of the landhad invested one tenth of that amount in the living author fortyyears ago we should have had from him such works as would have madethe name of this nation great. But he sold "The Masque of the RedDeath" for a few dollars, and now the Drexel Institute pays apublisher thousands to publish it beautifully. It is enough to makeSatan laugh until his ribs ache, and all the little devils laugh andheap on fresh coals. I don't wonder they hate humanity. It's sodense, so hopelessly stupid. 

Only a few weeks before Poe's death he said he had never had time oropportunity to make a serious effort. All his tales were merelyexperiments, thrown off when his day's work as a journalist wasover, when he should have been asleep. All those voyages into themystical unknown, into the gleaming, impalpable kingdom of pureromance from which he brought back such splendid trophies, were butexperiments. He was only getting his tools into shape getting readyfor his great effort, the effort that never came. 

Bread seems a little thing to stand in the way of genius, but itcan. The simple sordid facts were these, that in the bittereststorms of winter Poe seldom wrote by a fire, that after he wastwenty-five years old he never knew what it was to have enough toeat without dreading tomorrow's hunger. Chatterton had only himselfto sacrifice, but Poe saw the woman he loved die of want before hisvery eyes, die smiling and begging him not to give up his work. Theysaw the depths together in those long winter nights when she lay inthat cold room, wrapped in Poe's only coat, he, with one handholding hers, and with the other dashing off some of the mostperfect masterpieces of English prose. And when he would wince andturn white at her coughing, she would always whisper: "Work on, mypoet, and when you have finished read it to me. I am happy when Ilisten. " O, the devotion of women and the madness of art! They arethe two most awesome things on earth, and surely this man knew bothto the full. 

I have wondered so often how he did it. How he kept his purposealways clean and his taste always perfect. How it was that hardlabor never wearied nor jaded him, never limited his imagination, that the jarring clamor about him never drowned the fine harmoniesof his fancy. His discrimination remained always delicate, and fromthe constant strain of toil his fancy always rose strong andunfettered. Without encouragement or appreciation of any sort, without models or precedents he built up that pure style of his thatis without peer in the language, that style of which every sentenceis a drawing by Vedder. Elizabeth Barrett and a few great artistsover in France knew what he was doing, they knew that in literaturehe was making possible a new heaven and a new earth. But he neverknew that they knew it. He died without the assurance that he was orever would be understood. And yet through all this, with the wholeworld of art and letters against him, betrayed by his own people, hemanaged to keep that lofty ideal of perfect work. What he sufferednever touched or marred his work, but it wrecked his character. Poe's character was made by his necessity. He was a liar and anegotist; a man who had to beg for bread at the hands of hispublishers and critics could be nothing but a liar, and had he nothad the insane egotism and conviction of genius, he would havebroken down and written the drivelling trash that his countrymendelighted to read. Poe lied to his publishers sometimes, there is nodoubt of that, but there were two to whom he was never false, hiswife and his muse. He drank sometimes too, when for very ugly andrelentless reasons he could not eat. And then he forgot what hesuffered. For Bacchus is the kindest of the gods after all. WhenAphrodite has fooled us and left us and Athene has betrayed us inbattle, then poor tipsy Bacchus, who covers his head with vineleaves where the curls are getting thin, holds out his cup to us andsays, "forget. " It's poor consolation, but he means it well. 

The Transcendentalists were good conversationalists, that in factwas their principal accomplishment. They used to talk a great dealof genius, that rare and capricious spirit that visits earth soseldom, that is wooed by so many, and won by so few. They had grandtheories that all men should be poets, that the visits of that rarespirit should be made as frequent and universal as afternoon calls. O, they had plans to make a whole generation of little geniuses. Butshe only laughed her scornful laughter, that deathless lady of theimmortals, up in her echoing chambers that are floored with dawn androofed with the spangled stars. And she snatched from them the onlyman of their nation she had ever deigned to love, whose lips she hadtouched with music and whose soul with song. In his youth she hadshown him the secrets of her beauty and his manhood had been onepursuit of her, blind to all else, like Anchises, who on the nightthat he knew the love of Venus, was struck sightless, that he mightnever behold the face of a mortal woman. For Our Lady of Genius hasno care for the prayers and groans of mortals, nor for theirhecatombs sweet of savor. Many a time of old she has foiled theplans of seers and none may entreat her or take her by force. Shefavors no one nation or clime. She takes one from the millions, andwhen she gives herself unto a man it is without his will or that ofhis fellows, and he pays for it, dear heaven, he pays!

 "The sun comes forth and many reptiles spawn, He sets and each ephemeral insect then Is gathered unto death without a dawn, And the immortal stars awake again. "

Yes, "and the immortal stars awake again. " None may thwart theunerring justice of the gods, not even the Transcendentalists. Whatmatter that one man's life was miserable, that one man was broken onthe wheel? His work lives and his crown is eternal. That the work ofhis age was undone, that is the pity, that the work of his youth wasdone, that is the glory. The man is nothing. There are millions ofmen. The work is everything. There is so little perfection. Welament our dearth of poets when we let Poe starve. We are like theHebrews who stoned their prophets and then marvelled that the voiceof God was silent. We will wait a long time for another. There areGriswold and N. P. Willis, our chosen ones, let us turn to them. Their names are forgotten. God is just. They are, "Gathered unto death without a dawn. And the immortal stars awake again. "

 _The Courier_, October 12, 1895

You can afford to give a little more care and attention to thisimaginative boy of yours than to any of your other children. Hisnerves are more finely strung and all his life he will need yourlove more than the others. Be careful to get him the books he likesand see that they are good ones. Get him a volume of Poe's shortstories. I know many people are prejudiced against Poe because ofthe story that he drank himself to death. But that myth has beenexploded long ago. Poe drank less than even the average man of histime. No, the most artistic of all American story tellers did notdie because he drank too much, but because he ate too little. Andyet we, his own countrymen who should be so proud of him, are notcontent with having starved him and wronged him while he lived, wemust even go on slandering him after he has been dead almost fiftyyears. But get his works for this imaginative boy of yours and hewill tell you how great a man the author of "The Gold Bug" and "TheMasque of the Red Death" was. Children are impartial critics andsometimes very good ones. They do not reason about a book, they justlike it or dislike it intensely, and after all that is theconclusion of the whole matter. I am very sure that "The Fall of theHouse of Usher, " "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Black Cat" willgive this woolgathering lad of yours more pleasure than a newbicycle could. 

 _The Home Monthly_, May 1897

_Walt Whitman_

Speaking of monuments reminds one that there is more talk about amonument to Walt Whitman, "the good, gray poet. " Just why theadjective good is always applied to Whitman it is difficult todiscover, probably because people who could not understand him atall took it for granted that he meant well. If ever there was a poetwho had no literary ethics at all beyond those of nature, it was he. He was neither good nor bad, any more than are the animals hecontinually admired and envied. He was a poet without an exclusivesense of the poetic, a man without the finer discriminations, enjoying everything with the unreasoning enthusiasm of a boy. He wasthe poet of the dung hill as well as of the mountains, which isadmirable in theory but excruciating in verse. In the same paragraphhe informs you that, "The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, "and that "The malformed limbs are tied to the table, what is removeddrop horribly into a pail. " No branch of surgery is poetic, and thathopelessly prosaic word "pail" would kill a whole volume of sonnets. Whitman's poems are reckless rhapsodies over creation in general, some times sublime, some times ridiculous. He declares that theocean with its "imperious waves, commanding" is beautiful, and thatthe fly-specks on the walls are also beautiful. Such catholic tastemay go in science, but in poetry their results are sad. The poet'stask is usually to select the poetic. Whitman never bothers to dothat, he takes everything in the universe from fly-specks to thefixed stars. His "Leaves of Grass" is a sort of dictionary of theEnglish language, and in it is the name of everything in creationset down with great reverence but without any particular connection. 

But however ridiculous Whitman may be there is a primitive elementalforce about him. He is so full of hardiness and of the joy of life. He looks at all nature in the delighted, admiring way in which theold Greeks and the primitive poets did. He exults so in the redblood in his body and the strength in his arms. He has such apassion for the warmth and dignity of all that is natural. He has nocode but to be natural, a code that this complex world has so longoutgrown. He is sensual, not after the manner of Swinbourne andGautier, who are always seeking for perverted and bizarre effects onthe senses, but in the frank fashion of the old barbarians who ateand slept and married and smacked their lips over the mead horn. Heis rigidly limited to the physical, things that quicken his pulses, please his eyes or delight his nostrils. There is an element ofpoetry in all this, but it is by no means the highest. If a joyouselephant should break forth into song, his lay would probably bevery much like Whitman's famous "song of myself. " It would have justabout as much delicacy and deftness and discriminations. He says:

"I think I could turn and live with the animals. They are so placidand self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long. They donot sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake inthe dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sickdiscussing their duty to God. Not one is dissatisfied nor not one isdemented with the mania of many things. Not one kneels to anothernor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one isrespectable or unhappy, over the whole earth. " And that is not ironyon nature, he means just that, life meant no more to him. Heaccepted the world just as it is and glorified it, the seemly andunseemly, the good and the bad. He had no conception of a differencein people or in things. All men had bodies and were alike to him, one about as good as another. To live was to fulfil all natural lawsand impulses. To be comfortable was to be happy. To be happy was theultimatum. He did not realize the existence of a conscience or aresponsibility. He had no more thought of good or evil than thefolks in Kipling's Jungle book. 

And yet there is an undeniable charm about this optimistic vagabondwho is made so happy by the warm sunshine and the smell of springfields. A sort of good fellowship and whole-heartedness in everyline he wrote. His veneration for things physical and material, forall that is in water or air or land, is so real that as you read himyou think for the moment that you would rather like to live so ifyou could. For the time you half believe that a sound body and astrong arm are the greatest things in the world. Perhaps no bookshows so much as "Leaves of Grass" that keen senses do not make apoet. When you read it you realize how spirited a thing poetryreally is and how great a part spiritual perceptions play inapparently sensuous verse, if only to select the beautiful from thegross. 

 _Nebraska State Journal_, January 19, 1896

_Henry James_

Their mania for careless and hasty work is not confined to thelesser men. Howells and Hardy have gone with the crowd. Now thatStevenson is dead I can think of but one English speaking author whois really keeping his self-respect and sticking for perfection. Ofcourse I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student ofhuman actions and motives, Henry James. In the last four years hehas published, I believe, just two small volumes, "The Lesson of theMaster" and "Terminations, " and in those two little volumes of shortstories he who will may find out something of what it means to bereally an artist. The framework is perfect and the polish isabsolutely without flaw. They are sometimes a little hard, alwayscalculating and dispassionate, but they are perfect. I wish Jameswould write about modern society, about "degeneracy" and the newwoman and all the rest of it. Not that he would throw any light onit. He seldom does; but he would say such awfully clever thingsabout it, and turn on so many side-lights. And then his sentences!If his character novels were all wrong one could read him foreverfor the mere beauty of his sentences. He never lets his phrases runaway with him. They are never dull and never too brilliant. Hesubjects them to the general tone of his sentence and has his wholeparagraph partake of the same predominating color. You are neverstartled, never surprised, never thrilled or never enraptured;always delighted by that masterly prose that is as correct, asclassical, as calm and as subtle as the music of Mozart. 

 _The Courier_, November 16, 1895

It is strange that from "Felicia" down, the stage novel has neverbeen a success. Henry James' "Tragic Muse" is the only theatricalnovel that has a particle of the real spirit of the stage in it, aglimpse of the enthusiasm, the devotion, the exaltation and thesordid, the frivolous and the vulgar which are so strangely andinextricably blended in that life of the green room. For althoughHenry James cannot write plays he can write passing well of thepeople who enact them. He has put into one book all those inevitableattendants of the drama, the patronizing theatre goer who loves itabove all things and yet feels so far superior to it personally; theold tragedienne, the queen of a dying school whose word is law andwhose judgments are to a young actor as the judgments of God; and ofcourse there is the girl, the aspirant, the tragic muse who beatsand beats upon those brazen doors that guard the unapproachableuntil one fine morning she beats them down and comes into herkingdom, the kingdom of unborn beauty that is to live through her. It is a great novel, that book of the master's, so perfect as anovel that one does not realize what a masterly study it is of thelife and ends and aims of the people who make plays live. 

 _Nebraska State Journal_, March 29, 1896

_Harold Frederic_

 "THE MARKET-PLACE. " Harold Frederic. $1. 50. New York: F. A. Stokes & Co. Pittsburg: J. R. Weldin & Co. 

Unusual interest is attached to the posthumous work of that greatman whose career ended so prematurely and so tragically. The storyis a study in the ethics and purposes of money-getting, in theromantic element in modern business. In it finance is presented notas being merely the province of shrewdness, or greediness, or pettypersonal gratification, but of great projects, of greatbrain-battles, a field for the exercising of talent, daring, imagination, appealing to the strength of a strong man, filling thesame place in men's lives that was once filled by the incentives ofwar, kindling in man the desire for the leadership of men. The heroof the story, "Joel Thorpe, " is one of those men, huge of body, keenof brain, with cast iron nerves, as sound a heart as most men, and amagnificent capacity for bluff. He has lived and risked and lost ina dozen countries, been almost within reach of fortune a dozentimes, and always missed her until, finally, in London, by promotinga great rubber syndicate he becomes a multi-millionaire. He marriesthe most beautiful and one of the most impecunious peeresses inEngland and retires to his country estate. There, as a gentleman ofleisure, he loses his motive in life, loses power for lack ofopportunity, and grows less commanding even in the eyes of his wife, who misses the uncompromising, barbaric strength which took her bystorm and won her. Finally he evolves a gigantic philanthropicscheme of spending his money as laboriously as he made it. 

Mr. Frederic says:

 "Napoleon was the greatest man of his age--one of the greatest men of all ages--not only in war but in a hundred other ways. He spent the last six years of his life at St. Helena in excellent health, with companions that he talked freely to, and in all the extraordinarily copious reports of his conversations there, we don't get a single sentence worth repeating. The greatness had entirely evaporated from him the moment he was put on an island where he had nothing to do. "

It is very fitting that Mr. Frederic's last book should be in praiseof action, the thing that makes the world go round; of force, however misspent, which is the sum of life as distinguished from theinertia of death. In the forty-odd years of his life he wrote almostas many pages as Balzac, most of it mere newspaper copy, it is true, read and forgotten, but all of it vigorous and with the stamp of astrong man upon it. And he played just as hard as he worked--alas, it was the play that killed him! The young artist who illustratedthe story gave to the pictures of "Joel Thorpe" very much the lookof Harold Frederic himself, and they might almost stand for hisportraits. I fancy the young man did not select his modelcarelessly. In this big, burly adventurer who took fortune and womenby storm, who bluffed the world by his prowess and fought his way tothe front with battle-ax blows, there is a great deal of HaroldFrederic, the soldier of fortune, the Utica milk boy who fought hisway from the petty slavery of a provincial newspaper to the foremostranks of the journalists of the world and on into literature, intoliterature worth the writing. The man won his place in England muchas his hero won his, by defiance, by strong shoulder blows, by hisself-sufficiency and inexhaustible strength, and when he finishedhis book he did not know that his end would be so much less gloriousthan his hero's, that it would be his portion not to fall manfullyin the thick of the combat and the press of battle, but to diepoisoned in the tent of Chryseis. For who could foresee a tragedy soneedless, so blind, so brutal in its lack of dignity, or know thatsuch strength could perish through such insidious weakness, that sogreat a man could be stung to death by a mania born in little minds?

In point of execution and literary excellence, both "The MarketPlace" and "Gloria Mundi" are vastly inferior to "The Damnation ofTheron Ware, " or that exquisite London idyl, "March Hares. " Thefirst 200 pages of "Theron Ware" are as good as anything in Americanfiction, much better than most of it. They are not so much the workof a literary artist as of a vigorous thinker, a man of strongopinions and an intimate and comprehensive knowledge of men. Thewhole work, despite its irregularities and indifference to form, isfull of brain stuff, the kind of active, healthful, masterfulintellect that some men put into politics, some into science and afew, a very few, into literature. Both "Gloria Mundi" and "TheMarket Place" bear unmistakable evidences of the slack rein and thehasty hand. Both of them contain considerable padding, the stamp ofthe space writer. They are imperfectly developed, and are not packedwith ideas like his earlier novels. Their excellence is in flashes;it is not the searching, evenly distributed light which permeateshis more careful work. There were, as we know too well, good reasonswhy Mr. Frederic should work hastily. He needed a large income andhe worked heroically, writing many thousands of words a day toobtain it. From the experience of the ages we have learned to expectto find, coupled with great strength, a proportionate weakness, andusually it devours the greater part, as the seven lean kine devouredthe seven fat in Pharaoh's vision. Achilles was a god in all hisnobler parts, but his feet were of the earth and to the earth theyheld him down, and he died stung by an arrow in the heel. 

 _Pittsburg Leader_, June 10, 1899

_Kate Chopin_

 "THE AWAKENING. " Kate Chopin. $1. 25. Chicago: H. S. Stone & Co. Pittsburg: J. R. Weldin & Co. 

A Creole "Bovary" is this little novel of Miss Chopin's. Not thatthe heroine is a creole exactly, or that Miss Chopin is aFlaubert--save the mark!--but the theme is similar to that whichoccupied Flaubert. There was, indeed, no need that a second "MadameBovary" should be written, but an author's choice of themes isfrequently as inexplicable as his choice of a wife. It is governedby some innate temperamental bias that cannot be diagrammed. This isparticularly so in women who write, and I shall not attempt to saywhy Miss Chopin has devoted so exquisite and sensitive, well-governed a style to so trite and sordid a theme. She writesmuch better than it is ever given to most people to write, and hersis a genuinely literary style; of no great elegance or solidity; butlight, flexible, subtle and capable of producing telling effectsdirectly and simply. The story she has to tell in the presentinstance is new neither in matter nor treatment. "Edna Pontellier, "a Kentucky girl, who, like "Emma Bovary, " had been in love withinnumerable dream heroes before she was out of short skirts, married"Leonce Pontellier" as a sort of reaction from a vague and visionarypassion for a tragedian whose unresponsive picture she used to kiss. She acquired the habit of liking her husband in time, and even ofliking her children. Though we are not justified in presuming thatshe ever threw articles from her dressing table at them, as thecharming "Emma" had a winsome habit of doing, we are told that "shewould sometimes gather them passionately to her heart, she wouldsometimes forget them. " At a creole watering place, which isadmirably and deftly sketched by Miss Chopin, "Edna" met "RobertLebrun, " son of the landlady, who dreamed of a fortune awaiting himin Mexico while he occupied a petty clerical position in NewOrleans. "Robert" made it his business to be agreeable to hismother's boarders, and "Edna, " not being a creole, much against hiswish and will, took him seriously. "Robert" went to Mexico but foundthat fortunes were no easier to make there than in New Orleans. Hereturns and does not even call to pay his respects to her. Sheencounters him at the home of a friend and takes him home with her. She wheedles him into staying for dinner, and we are told she sentthe maid off "in search of some delicacy she had not thought of forherself, and she recommended great care in the dripping of thecoffee and having the omelet done to a turn. "

Only a few pages back we were informed that the husband, "M. Pontellier, " had cold soup and burnt fish for his dinner. Such islife. The lover of course disappointed her, was a coward and ranaway from his responsibilities before they began. He was afraid tobegin a chapter with so serious and limited a woman. She rememberedthe sea where she had first met "Robert. " Perhaps from the samemotive which threw "Anna Keraninna" under the engine wheels, shethrew herself into the sea, swam until she was tired and then letgo. 

 "She looked into the distance, and for a moment the old terror flamed up, then sank again. She heard her father's voice, and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was a hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. "

"Edna Pontellier" and "Emma Bovary" are studies in the same femininetype; one a finished and complete portrayal, the other a hastysketch, but the theme is essentially the same. Both women belong toa class, not large, but forever clamoring in our ears, that demandsmore romance out of life than God put into it. Mr. G. Barnard Shawwould say that they are the victims of the over-idealization oflove. They are the spoil of the poets, the Iphigenias of sentiment. The unfortunate feature of their disease is that it attacks onlywomen of brains, at least of rudimentary brains, but whosedevelopment is one-sided; women of strong and fine intuitions, butwithout the faculty of observation, comparison, reasoning aboutthings. Probably, for emotional people, the most convenient thingabout being able to think is that it occasionally gives them a restfrom feeling. Now with women of the "Bovary" type, this relaxationand recreation is impossible. They are not critics of life, but, inthe most personal sense, partakers of life. They receive impressionsthrough the fancy. With them everything begins with fancy, andpassions rise in the brain rather than in the blood, the poor, neglected, limited one-sided brain that might do so much betterthings than badgering itself into frantic endeavors to love. Forthese are the people who pay with their blood for the fine ideals ofthe poets, as Marie Delclasse paid for Dumas' great creation, "Marguerite Gauthier. " These people really expect the passion oflove to fill and gratify every need of life, whereas nature onlyintended that it should meet one of many demands. They insist uponmaking it stand for all the emotional pleasures of life and art, expecting an individual and self-limited passion to yield infinitevariety, pleasure and distraction, to contribute to their lives whatthe arts and the pleasurable exercise of the intellect gives to lesslimited and less intense idealists. So this passion, when set upagainst Shakespeare, Balzac, Wagner, Raphael, fails them. They havestaked everything on one hand, and they lose. They have driven theblood until it will drive no further, they have played their nervesup to the point where any relaxation short of absolute annihilationis impossible. Every idealist abuses his nerves, and everysentimentalist brutally abuses them. And in the end, the nerves geteven. Nobody ever cheats them, really. Then "the awakening" comes. Sometimes it comes in the form of arsenic, as it came to "EmmaBovary, " sometimes it is carbolic acid taken covertly in the policestation, a goal to which unbalanced idealism not infrequently leads. "Edna Pontellier, " fanciful and romantic to the last, chose the seaon a summer night and went down with the sound of her first lover'sspurs in her ears, and the scent of pinks about her. And next time Ihope that Miss Chopin will devote that flexible, iridescent style ofhers to a better cause. 

 _Pittsburg Leader_, July 8, 1899

_Stephen Crane_

 "WAR IS KIND. " Stephen Crane. $2. 50. New York: F. A. Stokes & Co. Pittsburg: J. R. Weldin & Co. 

This truly remarkable book is printed on dirty gray blotting paper, on each page of which is a mere dot of print over a large I ofvacancy. There are seldom more than ten lines on a page, and itwould be better if most of those lines were not there at all. EitherMr. Crane is insulting the public or insulting himself, or he hasdeveloped a case of atavism and is chattering the primeval nonsenseof the apes. His "Black Riders, " uneven as it was, was a casket ofpolished masterpieces when compared with "War Is Kind. " And it isnot kind at all, Mr. Crane; when it provokes such verses as these, it is all that Sherman said it was. 

The only production in the volume that is at all coherent is thefollowing, from which the book gets its title:

 Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind, Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky, And the affrighted steed ran on alone. Do not weep, War is kind. 

 Hoarse booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them. Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-- A field where a thousand corpses lie. 

 Do not weep, babe, for war is kind, Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, Raged at the breast, gulped and died. Do not weep, War is kind. 

 Swift-blazing flag of the regiment, Eagle with crest of red and gold, These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing, And a field where a thousand corpses lie. 

 Mother whose heart hung humble as a button On the bright, splendid shroud of your son, Do not weep, War is kind. 

Of course, one may have objections to hearts hanging like humblebuttons, or to buttons being humble at all, but one should not stopto quarrel about such trifles with a poet who can perpetrate thefollowing:

 Thou art my love, And thou art the beard On another man's face-- Woe is me. 

 Thou art my love, And thou art a temple, And in this temple is an altar, And on this temple is my heart-- Woe is me. 

 Thou art my love, And thou art a wretch. Let these sacred love-lies choke thee. For I am come to where I know your lies as truth And your truth as lies-- Woe is me. 

Now, if you please, is the object of these verses animal, mineral orvegetable? Is the expression, "Thou art the beard on another man'sface, " intended as a figure, or was it written by a barber?Certainly, after reading this, "Simple Simon" is a ballade ofperfect form, and "Jack and Jill" or "Hickity, Pickity, My BlackHen, " are exquisite lyrics. But of the following what shall be said:

 Now let me crunch you With full weight of affrighted love. I doubted you --I doubted you-- And in this short doubting My love grew like a genie For my further undoing. 

 Beware of my friends, Be not in speech too civil, For in all courtesy My weak heart sees specters, Mists of desire Arising from the lips of my chosen; Be not civil. 

This is somewhat more lucid as evincing the bard's exquisitesensitiveness:

 Ah, God, the way your little finger moved As you thrust a bare arm backward. And made play with your hair And a comb, a silly gilt comb --Ah, God, that I should suffer Because of the way a little finger moved. 

Mr. Crane's verselets are illustrated by some Bradley pictures, which are badly drawn, in bad taste, and come with bad grace. Onpage 33 of the book there are just two lines which seem tocompletely sum up the efforts of both poet and artist:

 "My good friend, " said a learned bystander, "Your operations are mad. "

Yet this fellow Crane has written short stories equal tosome of Maupassant's. 

 _Pittsburg Leader_, June 3, 1899

After reading such a delightful newspaper story as Mr. Frank Norris'"Blix, " it is with assorted sensations of pain and discomfort thatone closes the covers of another newspaper novel, "Active Service, "by Stephen Crane. If one happens to have some trifling regard forpure English, he does not come forth from the reading of this novelunscathed. The hero of this lurid tale is a newspaper man, and heedits the Sunday edition of the New York "Eclipse, " and delights inpublishing "stories" about deformed and sightless infants. "Theoffice of the 'Eclipse' was at the top of an immense building onBroadway. It was a sheer mountain to the heights of which theinterminable thunder of the streets rose faintly. The Hudson was abroad path of silver in the distance. " This leaves little doubt asto the fortunate journal which had secured Rufus Coleman as itsSunday editor. Mr. Coleman's days were spent in collecting yellowsensations for his paper, and we are told that he "planned for eachedition as for a campaign. " The following elevating passage is oneof the realistic paragraphs by which Mr. Crane makes the routine ofColeman's life known to us:

 Suddenly there was a flash of light and a cage of bronze, gilt and steel dropped magically from above. Coleman yelled "Down!" * * * A door flew open. Coleman stepped upon the elevator. "Well, Johnnie, " he said cheerfully to the lad who operated the machine, "is business good?" "Yes, sir, pretty good, " answered the boy, grinning. The little cage sank swiftly. Floor after floor seemed to be rising with marvelous speed; the whole building was winging straight into the sky. There was soaring lights, figures and the opalescent glow of ground glass doors marked with black inscriptions. Other lights were springing heavenward. All the lofty corridors rang with cries. "Up!" "Down!" "Down!" "Up!!" The boy's hand grasped a lever and his machine obeyed his lightest movement with sometimes an unbalancing swiftness. 

Later, when Coleman reached the street, Mr. Crane describes thecable cars as marching like panoplied elephants, which is ratherfar, to say the least. The gentleman's nights were spent somethingas follows:

 "In the restaurant he first ordered a large bottle of champagne. The last of the wine he finished in somber mood like an unbroken and defiant man who chews the straw that litters his prison house. During his dinner he was continually sending out messenger boys. He was arranging a poker party. Through a window he watched the beautiful moving life of upper Broadway at night, with its crowds and clanging cable cars and its electric signs, mammoth and glittering like the jewels of a giantess. 

 "Word was brought to him that poker players were arriving. He arose joyfully, leaving his cheese. In the broad hall, occupied mainly by miscellaneous people and actors, all deep in leather chairs, he found some of his friends waiting. They trooped upstairs to Coleman's rooms, where, as a preliminary, Coleman began to hurl books and papers from the table to the floor. A boy came with drinks. Most of the men, in order to prepare for the game, removed their coats and cuffs and drew up the sleeves of their shirts. The electric globes shed a blinding light upon the table. The sound of clinking chips arose; the elected banker spun the cards, careless and dextrous. "

The atmosphere of the entire novel is just that close andenervating. Every page is like the next morning taste of a champagnesupper, and is heavy with the smell of stale cigarettes. There is nofresh air in the book and no sunlight, only the "blinding light shedby the electric globes. " If the life of New York newspaper men is asunwholesome and sordid as this, Mr. Crane, who has experienced it, ought to be sadly ashamed to tell it. Next morning when Coleman wentfor breakfast in the grill room of his hotel he ordered eggs ontoast and a pint of champagne for breakfast and discoursed affablyto the waiter. 

 "May be you had a pretty lively time last night, Mr. Coleman?"

 "Yes, Pat, " answered Coleman. "I did. It was all because of an unrequitted affection, Patrick. " The man stood near, a napkin over his arm. Coleman went on impressively. "The ways of the modern lover are strange. Now, I, Patrick, am a modern lover, and when, yesterday, the dagger of disappointment was driven deep into my heart, I immediately played poker as hard as I could, and incidentally got loaded. This is the modern point of view. I understand on good authority that in old times lovers used to languish. That is probably a lie, but at any rate we do not, in these times, languish to any great extent. We get drunk. Do you understand Patrick?"

 The waiter was used to a harangue at Coleman's breakfast time. He placed his hand over his mouth and giggled. "Yessir. "

 "Of course, " continued Coleman, thoughtfully. "It might be pointed out by uneducated persons that it is difficult to maintain a high standard of drunkenness for the adequate length of time, but in the series of experiments which I am about to make, I am sure I can easily prove them to be in the wrong. "

 "I am sure, sir, " said the waiter, "the young ladies would not like to be hearing you talk this way. "

 "Yes; no doubt, no doubt. The young ladies have still quite medieval ideas. They don't understand. They still prefer lovers to languish. "

 "At any rate, sir, I don't see that your heart is sure enough broken. You seem to take it very easy. "

 "Broken!" cried Coleman. "Easy? Man, my heart is in fragments. Bring me another small bottle. "

After this Coleman went to Greece to write up the war for the"Eclipse, " and incidentally to rescue his sweetheart from the handsof the Turks and make "copy" of it. Very valid arguments might beadvanced that the lady would have fared better with the Turks. Onthe voyage Coleman spent all his days and nights in the card roomand avoided the deck, since fresh air was naturally disagreeable tohim. For all that he saw of Greece or that Mr. Crane's readers seeof Greece Coleman might as well have stayed in the card room of thesteamer, or in the card room of his New York hotel for that matter. Wherever he goes he carries the atmosphere of the card room with himand the "blinding glare of the electrics. " In Greece he makes lovewhen he has leisure, but he makes "copy" much more ardently, and onthe whole is quite as lurid and sordid and showy as his worst Sundayeditions. Some good bits of battle descriptions there are, of the"Red Badge of Courage" order, but one cannot make a novel of cleverdescriptions of earthworks and poker games. The book concerns itselfnot with large, universal interests or principles, but with a yellowjournalist grinding out yellow copy in such a wooden fashion thatthe Sunday "Eclipse" must have been even worse than most. In spiteof the fact that Mr. Crane has written some of the most artisticshort stories in the English language, I begin to wonder whether, blinded by his youth and audacity, two qualities which the Americanpeople love, we have not taken him too seriously. It is a gravematter for a man in good health and with a bank account to havewritten a book so coarse and dull and charmless as "Active Service. "Compared with this "War was kind, " indeed. 

 _Pittsburg Leader_, November 11, 1899

_Frank Norris_

A new and a great book has been written. The name of it is"McTeague, a Story of San Francisco, " and the man who wrote it isMr. Frank Norris. The great presses of the country go on year afteryear grinding out commonplace books, just as each generation goes onbusily reproducing its own mediocrity. When in this enormous outputof ink and paper, these thousands of volumes that are yearly rushedupon the shelves of the book stores, one appears which contains bothpower and promise, the reader may be pardoned some enthusiasm. Excellence always surprises: we are never quite prepared for it. Inthe case of "McTeague, a Story of San Francisco, " it is even moresurprising than usual. In the first place the title is not alluring, and not until you have read the book, can you know that there is anadmirable consistency in the stiff, uncompromising commonplacenessof that title. In the second place the name of the author is as yetcomparatively unfamiliar, and finally the book is dedicated to amember of the Harvard faculty, suggesting that whether it be a storyof San Francisco or Dawson City, it must necessarily be vaporous, introspective and chiefly concerned with "literary" impressions. Mr. Norris is, indeed, a "Harvard man, " but that he is a good many otherkinds of a man is self-evident. His book is, in the language of Mr. Norman Hapgood, the work of "a large human being, with a firmstomach, who knows and loves the people. "

In a novel of such high merit as this, the subject matter is theleast important consideration. Every newspaper contains theessential material for another "Comedie Humaine. " In this case"McTeague, " the central figure, happens to be a dentist practicingin a little side street of San Francisco. The novel opens with thisdescription of him:

 "It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductor's coffee joint on Polk street. He had a thick, gray soup, heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. Once in his office, or, as he called it on his sign-board, 'Dental Parlors, ' he took off his coat and shoes, unbuttoned his vest, and, having crammed his little stove with coke, he lay back in his operating chair at the bay window, reading the paper, drinking steam beer, and smoking his huge porcelain pipe while his food digested; crop-full, stupid and warm. "

McTeague had grown up in a mining camp in the mountains. Heremembered the years he had spent there trundling heavy cars of orein and out of the tunnel under the direction of his father. Forthirteen days out of each fortnight his father was a steady, hard-working shift-boss of the mine. Every other Sunday he became anirresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazed with alcohol. Hismother cooked for the miners. Her one ambition was that her sonshould enter a profession. He was apprenticed to a traveling quackdentist and after a fashion, learned the business. 

 "Then one day at San Francisco had come the news of his mother's death; she had left him some money--not much, but enough to set him up in business; so he had cut loose from the charlatan and had opened his 'Dental Parlors' on Polk street, an 'accommodation street' of small shops in the residence quarter of the town. Here he had slowly collected a clientele of butcher boys, shop girls, drug clerks and car conductors. He made but few acquaintances. Polk street called him the 'doctor' and spoke of his enormous strength. For McTeague was a young giant, carrying his huge shock of blonde hair six feet three inches from the ground; moving his immense limbs, heavy with ropes of muscle, slowly, ponderously. His hands were enormous, red, and covered with a fell of stiff yellow hair; they were as hard as wooden mallets, strong as vices, the hands of the old-time car boy. Often he dispensed with forceps and extracted a refractory tooth with his thumb and finger. His head was square-cut, angular; the jaw salient: like that of the carnivora. 

 "But for one thing McTeague would have been perfectly contented. Just outside his window was his signboard--a modest affair--that read: 'Doctor McTeague. Dental Parlors. Gas Given;' but that was all. It was his ambition, his dream, to have projecting from that corner window a huge gilded tooth, a molar with enormous prongs, something gorgeous and attractive. He would have it some day, but as yet it was far beyond his means. "

Then Mr. Norris launches into a description of the street in which"McTeague" lives. He presents that street as it is on Sunday, as itis on working days; as it is in the early dawn when the workmen aregoing out with pickaxes on their shoulders, as it is at ten o'clockwhen the women are out purchasing from the small shopkeepers, as itis at night when the shop girls are out with the soda-fountaintenders and the motor cars dash by full of theatre-goers, and theSalvationists sing before the saloon on the corner. In four pages hereproduces the life in a by-street of a great city, the littletragedy of the small shopkeeper. There are many ways of handlingenvironment--most of them bad. When a young author has very littleto say and no story worth telling, he resorts to environment. It isfrequently used to disguise a weakness of structure, as ladies whopaint landscapes put their cows knee-deep in water to conceal thedefective drawing of the legs. But such description as one meetsthroughout Mr. Norris' book is in itself convincing proof of power, imagination and literary skill. It is a positive and active force, stimulating the reader's imagination, giving him an actual command, a realizing sense of this world into which he is suddenlytransplanted. It gives to the book perspective, atmosphere, effectsof time and distance, creates the illusion of life. This power ofmature, and accurate and comprehensive description is very unusualamong the younger American writers. Most of them observe the worldthrough a temperament, and are more occupied with their medium thanthe objects they see. And temperament is a glass which distorts mostastonishingly. But this young man sees with a clear eye, andreproduces with a touch firm and decisive, strong almost tobrutalness. Yet this hand that can depict so powerfully the brutestrength and brute passions of a "McTeague, " can deal very finelyand adroitly with the feminine element of his story. This is hisportrait of the little Swiss girl, "Trina, " whom the dentistmarries:

 "Trina was very small and prettily made. Her face was round and rather pale; her eyes long and narrow and blue, like the half-opened eyes of a baby; her lips and the lobes of her tiny ears were pale, a little suggestive of anaemia. But it was to her hair that one's attention was most attracted. Heaps and heaps of blue-black coils and braids, a royal crown of swarthy bands, a veritable sable tiara, heavy, abundant and odorous. All the vitality that should have given color to her face seemed to have been absorbed by that marvelous hair: It was the coiffure of a queen that shadowed the temples of this little bourgeoise. "

The tragedy of the story dates from a chance, a seeming stroke ofgood fortune, one of those terrible gifts of the Danai. A few weeksbefore her marriage "Trina" drew $5 000 from a lottery ticket. Fromthat moment her passion for hoarding money becomes the dominanttheme of the story, takes command of the book and its characters. After their marriage the dentist is disbarred from practice. Theymove into a garret where she starves her husband and herself to savethat precious hoard. She sells even his office furniture, everythingbut his concertina and his canary bird, with which he stubbornlyrefuses to part and which are destined to become very importantaccessories in the property room of the theatre where this drama isplayed. This removal from their first home is to this story whatGervaise's removal from her shop is to L'Assommoir; it is the fatalepisode of the third act, the sacrifice of self-respect, thebeginning of the end. From that time the money stands between"Trina" and her husband. Outraged and humiliated, hating her for hermeanness, demoralized by his idleness and despair, he begins toabuse her. The story becomes a careful and painful study of thedisintegration of this union, a penetrating and searching analysisof the degeneration of these two souls, the woman's corroded bygreed, the man's poisoned by disappointment and hate. 

And all the while this same painful theme is placed in a lower key. Maria, the housemaid who took care of "McTeague's" dental parlors inhis better days, was a half-crazy girl from somewhere in CentralAmerica, she herself did not remember just where. But she had awonderful story about her people owning a dinner service of puregold with a punch bowl you could scarcely lift, which rang like achurch bell when you struck it. On the strength of this story"Zercow, " the Jew junk man, marries her, and believing that sheknows where this treasure is hidden, bullies and tortures her toforce her to disclose her secret. At last "Maria" is found with herthroat cut, and "Zercow" is picked up by the wharf with a sack fullof rusty tin cans, which in his dementia he must have thought thefabled dinner service of gold. 

From this it is a short step to "McTeague's" crime. He kills hiswife to get possession of her money, and escapes to the mountains. While he is on his way south, pushing toward Mexico, he is overtakenby his murdered wife's cousin and former suitor. Both men are halfmad with thirst, and there in the desert wastes of Death's Valley, they spring to their last conflict. The cousin falls, but before hedies he slips a handcuff over "McTeague's" arm, and so the authorleaves his hero in the wastes of Death's Valley, a hundred milesfrom water, with a dead man chained to his arm. As he stands therethe canary bird, the survivor of his happier days, to which he hadclung with stubborn affection, begins "chittering feebly in itslittle gilt prison. " It reminds one a little of Stevenson's use ofpoor "Goddedaal's" canary in "The Wrecker. " It is just such sharp, sure strokes that bring out the high lights in a story and separateexcellence from the commonplace. They are at once dramatic andrevelatory. Lacking them, a novel which may otherwise be a good one, lacks its chief reason for being. The fault with many worthyattempts at fiction lies not in what they are, but in what they arenot. 

Mr. Norris' model, if he will admit that he has followed one, isclearly no less a person than M. Zola himself. Yet there is nodiscoverable trace of imitation in his book. He has simply taken amethod which has been most successfully applied in the study ofFrench life and applied it in studying American life, as one usescertain algebraic formulae to solve certain problems. It is perhapsthe only truthful literary method of dealing with that part ofsociety which environment and heredity hedge about like the walls ofa prison. It is true that Mr. Norris now and then allows his"method" to become too prominent, that his restraint savors ofconstraint, yet he has written a true story of the people, courageous, dramatic, full of matter and warm with life. He hasaddressed himself seriously to art, and he seems to have no ambitionto be clever. His horizon is wide, his invention vigorous and bold, his touch heavy and warm and human. This man is not limited byliterary prejudices: he sees the people as they are, he is close tothem and not afraid of their unloveliness. He has looked at truth inthe depths, among men begrimed by toil and besotted by ignorance, and still found her fair. "McTeague" is an achievement for a youngman. It may not win at once the success which it deserves, but Mr. Norris is one of those who can afford to wait. 

 _The Courier_, April 8, 1899

If you want to read a story that is all wheat and no chaff, read"Blix. " Last winter that brilliant young Californian, Mr. Norris, published a remarkable and gloomy novel, "McTeague, " a book deep ininsight, rich in promise and splendid in execution, but entirelywithout charm and as disagreeable as only a great piece of work canbe. And now this gentleman, who is not yet thirty, turns around andgives us an idyll that sings through one's brain like a summer windand makes one feel young enough to commit all manner ofindiscretions. It may be that Mr. Norris is desirous of showing ushis versatility and that he can follow any suit, or it may have beena process of reaction. I believe it was after M. Zola had completedone of his greatest and darkest novels of Parisian life that he wentdown to the seaside and wrote "La Reve, " a book that every girlshould read when she is eighteen, and then again when she is eighty. Powerful and solidly built as "McTeague" is, one felt that theremethod was carried almost too far, that Mr. Norris was tooconsciously influenced by his French masters. But "Blix" belongs tono school whatever, and there is not a shadow of pedantry or prideof craft in it from cover to cover. "Blix" herself is the method, the motives and the aim of the book. The story is an exhalation ofyouth and spring; it is the work of a man who breaks loose andforgets himself. Mr. Norris was married only last summer, and themarch from "Lohengrin" is simply sticking out all over "Blix. " It isthe story of a San Francisco newspaper man and a girl. The newspaperman "came out" in fiction, so to speak, in the drawing room of Mr. Richard Harding Davis, and has languished under that gentleman'schaperonage until he has come to be regarded as a fellow careful ofnothing but his toilet and his dinner. Mr. Davis' reporters allbathed regularly and all ate nice things, but beyond that theirtastes were rather colorless. I am glad to see one red-bloodednewspaper man, in the person of "Landy Rivers, " of San Francisco, break into fiction; a real live reporter with no sentimental loyaltyfor his "paper, " and no Byronic poses about his vices, and noastonishing taste about his clothes, and no money whatever, which isthe natural and normal condition of all reporters. "Blix" herselfwas just a society girl, and "Landy" took her to theatres andparties and tried to make himself believe he was in love with her. But it wouldn't work, for "Landy" couldn't love a society girl, notthough she were as beautiful as the morning and terrible as an armywith banners, and had "round full arms, " and "the skin of her facewas white and clean, except where it flushed into a most charmingpink upon her smooth, cool cheeks. " For while "Landy Rivers" was atcollege he had been seized with the penchant for writing shortstories, and had worshiped at the shrines of Maupassant and Kipling, and when a man is craft mad enough to worship Maupassant truly andknow him well, when he has that tingling for technique in hisfingers, not Aphrodite herself, new risen from the waves, couldtempt him into any world where craft was not lord and king. So ithappened that their real love affair never began until one morningwhen "Landy" had to go down to the wharf to write up a whaleback, and "Blix" went along, and an old sailor told them a story and"Blix" recognized the literary possibilities of it, and they hadlunch in a Chinese restaurant, and "Landy" because he was anewspaper man and it was the end of the week, didn't have any changeabout his clothes, and "Blix" had to pay the bill. And it was inthat green old tea house that "Landy" read "Blix" one of hisfavorite yarns by Kipling, and she in a calm, off-handed way, recognized one of the fine, technical points in it, and "Landy"almost went to pieces for joy of her doing it. That scene in theChinese restaurant is one of the prettiest bits of color you'll findto rest your eyes upon, and mighty good writing it is. I wonder, though if when Mr. Norris adroitly mentioned the "clack and snarl"of the banjo "Landy" played, he remembered the "silver snarlingtrumpets" of Keats? After that, things went on as such things will, and "Blix" quit the society racket and went to queer places with"Landy, " and got interested in his work, and she broke him ofwearing red neckties and playing poker, and she made him work, shedid, for she grew to realize how much that meant to him, and shejacked him up when he didn't work, and she suggested an ending forone of his stories that was better than his own; just this big, splendid girl, who had never gone to college to learn how to writenovels. And so how, in the name of goodness, could he help lovingher? So one morning down by the Pacific, with "Blix" and "The SevenSeas, " it all came over "Landy, " that "living was better thanreading and life was better than literature. " And so it is; once, and only once, for each of us; and that is the tune that sings andsings through one's head when one puts the book away. 

 _The Courier_, January 13, 1900

AN HEIR APPARENT. 

Last winter a young Californian, Mr. Frank Norris, published a novelwith the unpretentious title, "McTeague: a Story of San Francisco. "It was a book that could not be ignored nor dismissed with a word. There was something very unusual about it, about its solidity andmass, the thoroughness and firmness of texture, and it came downlike a blow from a sledge hammer among the slighter and moresprightly performances of the hour. 

The most remarkable thing about the book was its maturity andcompactness. It has none of the ear-marks of those entertaining"young writers" whom every season produces as inevitably as itsdebutantes, young men who surprise for an hour and then settle downto producing industriously for the class with which their peculiartrick of phrase has found favor. It was a book addressed to theAmerican people and to the critics of the world, the work of a youngman who had set himself to the art of authorship with an almightyseriousness, and who had no ambition to be clever. "McTeague" wasnot an experiment in style nor a pretty piece of romantic folly, itwas a true story of the people--having about it, as M. Zola wouldsay, "the smell of the people"--courageous, dramatic, full of matterand warm with life. It was realism of the most uncompromising kind. The theme was such that the author could not have expected suddenpopularity for his book, such as sometimes overtakes monstrositiesof style in these discouraging days when Knighthood is in Flower tothe extent of a quarter of a million copies, nor could he have hopedfor pressing commissions from the fire-side periodicals. The lifestory of a quack dentist who sometimes extracted molars with hisfingers, who mistreated and finally murdered his wife, is not, initself, attractive. But, after all, the theme counts for verylittle. Every newspaper contains the essential subject matter foranother _Comedie Humaine_. The important point is that a manconsiderably under thirty could take up a subject so grim andunattractive, and that, for the mere love of doing things well, hewas able to hold himself down to the task of developing itcompletely, that he was able to justify this quack's existence inliterature, to thrust this hairy, blonde dentist with the "salientjaw of the carnivora, " in amongst the immortals. 

It was after M. Zola had completed one of the greatest and gloomiestof his novels of Parisian life, that he went down by the sea andwrote "La Reve, " that tender, adolescent story of love and purityand youth. So, almost simultaneously with "McTeague, " Mr. Norrispublished "Blix, " another San Francisco story, as short as"McTeague" was lengthy, as light as "McTeague" was heavy, as poeticand graceful as "McTeague" was somber and charmless. Here is a manworth waiting on; a man who is both realist and poet, a man who canteach

 "Not only by a comet's rush, But by a rose's birth. "

Yet unlike as they are, in both books the source of power is thesame, and, for that matter, it was even the same in his first book, "Moran of the Lady Letty. " Mr. Norris has dispensed with theconventional symbols that have crept into art, with the trite, half-truths and circumlocutions, and got back to the physical basisof things. He has abjured tea-table psychology, and the analysis offigures in the carpet and subtile dissections of intellectualimpotencies, and the diverting game of words and the wholeliterature of the nerves. He is big and warm and sometimes brutal, and the strength of the soil comes up to him with very little lossin the transmission. His art strikes deep down into the roots oflife and the foundation of Things as They Are--not as we tell eachother they are at the tea-table. But he is realistic art, notartistic realism. He is courageous, but he is without bravado. 

He sees things freshly, as though they had not been seen before, anddescribes them with singular directness and vividness, not withmorbid acuteness, with a large, wholesome joy of life. Nowhere isthis more evident than in his insistent use of environment. I recallthe passage in which he describes the street in which McTeaguelives. He represents that street as it is on Sunday, as it is onworking days, as it is in the early dawn when the workmen are goingout with pickaxes on their shoulders, as it is at ten o'clock whenthe women are out marketing among the small shopkeepers, as it is atnight when the shop girls are out with the soda fountain tenders andthe motor cars dash by full of theater-goers, and the Salvationistssing before the saloon on the corner. In four pages he reproduces indetail the life in a by-street of a great city, the little tragedyof the small shopkeeper. There are many ways of handlingenvironment--most of them bad. When a young author has very littleto say and no story worth telling, he resorts to environment. It isfrequently used to disguise a weakness of structure, as ladies whopaint landscapes put their cows knee-deep in water to conceal thedefective drawing of the legs. But such description as one meetsthroughout Mr. Norris' book is in itself convincing proof of power, imagination and literary skill. It is a positive and active force, stimulating the reader's imagination, giving him an actual command, a realizing sense of this world into which he is suddenlytransported. It gives to the book perspective, atmosphere, effectsof time and distance, creates the illusion of life. This power ofmature and comprehensive description is very unusual among theyounger American writers. Most of them observe the world through atemperament, and are more occupied with their medium than theobjects they watch. And temperament is a glass which distorts mostastonishingly. But this young man sees with a clear eye, andreproduces with a touch, firm and decisive, strong almost tobrutalness. 

Mr. Norris approaches things on their physical side; his charactersare personalities of flesh before they are anything else, typesbefore they are individuals. Especially is this true of his women. His Trina is "very small and prettily made. Her face was round andrather pale; her eyes long and narrow and blue, like the half-openedeyes of a baby; her lips and the lobes of her tiny ears were pale, alittle suggestive of anaemia. But it was to her hair that one'sattention was most attracted. Heaps and heaps of blue-black coilsand braids, a royal crown of swarthy bands, a veritable sable tiara, heavy, abundant and odorous. All the vitality that should have givencolor to her face seems to have been absorbed by that marveloushair. It was the coiffure of a queen that shadowed the temples ofthis little bourgeoise. " Blix had "round, full arms, " and "the skinof her face was white and clean, except where it flushed into a mostcharming pink upon her smooth, cool cheeks. " In this grasp of theelement of things, this keen, clean, frank pleasure at color andodor and warmth, this candid admission of the negative of beauty, which is co-existent with and inseparable from it, lie much of hispower and promise. Here is a man catholic enough to include theextremes of physical and moral life, strong enough to handle thecrudest colors and darkest shadows. Here is a man who has anappetite for the physical universe, who loves the rank smells ofcrowded alley-ways, or the odors of boudoirs, or the delicateperfume exhaled from a woman's skin; who is not afraid of Pan, be heever so shaggy, and redolent of the herd. 

Structurally, where most young novelists are weak, Mr. Norris isvery strong. He has studied the best French masters, and he hasadopted their methods quite simply, as one selects an algebraicformula to solve his particular problem. As to his style, that is, as expression always is, just as vigorous as his thought compels itto be, just as vivid as his conception warrants. If God Almighty hasgiven a man ideas, he will get himself a style from one source oranother. Mr. Norris, fortunately, is not a conscious stylist. He hastoo much to say to be exquisitely vain about his medium. He has thekind of brain stuff that would vanquish difficulties in anyprofession, that might be put to building battleships, or solvingproblems of finance, or to devising colonial policies. Let us bethankful that he has put it to literature. Let us be thankful, moreover, that he is not introspective and that his intellect doesnot devour itself, but feeds upon the great race of man, and, aboveall, let us rejoice that he is not a "temperamental" artist, butsomething larger, for a great brain and an assertive temperamentseldom dwell together. 

There are clever men enough in the field of American letters, andthe fault of most of them is merely one of magnitude; they are notlarge enough; they travel in small orbits, they play on mutedstrings. They sing neither of the combats of Atriedes nor the laborsof Cadmus, but of the tea-table and the Odyssey of the Rialto. Flaubert said that a drop of water contained all the elements of thesea, save one--immensity. Mr. Norris is concerned only with seriousthings, he has only large ambitions. His brush is bold, his color istaken fresh from the kindly earth, his canvas is large enough tohold American life, the real life of the people. He has come intothe court of the troubadours singing the song of Elys, the song ofwarm, full nature. He has struck the true note of the common life. He is what Mr. Norman Hapgood said the great American dramatist mustbe: "A large human being, with a firm stomach, who knows and lovesthe people. "

 _The Courier_, April 7, 1900

_When I Knew Stephen Crane_

It was, I think, in the spring of '94 that a slender, narrow-chestedfellow in a shabby grey suit, with a soft felt hat pulled low overhis eyes, sauntered into the office of the managing editor of theNebraska State Journal and introduced himself as Stephen Crane. Hestated that he was going to Mexico to do some work for the BachellerSyndicate and get rid of his cough, and that he would be stopping inLincoln for a few days. Later he explained that he was out of moneyand would be compelled to wait until he got a check from the Eastbefore he went further. I was a Junior at the Nebraska StateUniversity at the time, and was doing some work for the StateJournal in my leisure time, and I happened to be in the managingeditor's room when Mr. Crane introduced himself. I was just off therange; I knew a little Greek and something about cattle and a goodhorse when I saw one, and beyond horses and cattle I considerednothing of vital importance except good stories and the people whowrote them. This was the first man of letters I had ever met in theflesh, and when the young man announced who he was, I dropped into achair behind the editor's desk where I could stare at him withoutbeing too much in evidence. 

Only a very youthful enthusiasm and a large propensity for heroworship could have found anything impressive in the young man whostood before the managing editor's desk. He was thin to emaciation, his face was gaunt and unshaven, a thin dark moustache straggled onhis upper lip, his black hair grew low on his forehead and wasshaggy and unkempt. His grey clothes were much the worse for wearand fitted him so badly it seemed unlikely he had ever been measuredfor them. He wore a flannel shirt and a slovenly apology for anecktie, and his shoes were dusty and worn gray about the toes andwere badly run over at the heel. I had seen many a tramp printercome up the Journal stairs to hunt a job, but never one whopresented such a disreputable appearance as this story-maker man. Hewore gloves, which seemed rather a contradiction to the generalslovenliness of his attire, but when he took them off to search hispockets for his credentials, I noticed that his hands weresingularly fine; long, white, and delicately shaped, with thin, nervous fingers. I have seen pictures of Aubrey Beardsley's handsthat recalled Crane's very vividly. 

At that time Crane was but twenty-four, and almost an unknown man. Hamlin Garland had seen some of his work and believed in him, andhad introduced him to Mr. Howells, who recommended him to theBacheller Syndicate. "The Red Badge of Courage" had been publishedin the State Journal that winter along with a lot of other syndicatematter, and the grammatical construction of the story was so faultythat the managing editor had several times called on me to edit thecopy. In this way I had read it very carefully, and through thecareless sentence-structure I saw the wonder of that remarkableperformance. But the grammar certainly was bad. I remember one ofthe reporters who had corrected the phrase "it don't" for the tenthtime remarked savagely, "If I couldn't write better English thanthis, I'd quit. "

Crane spent several days in the town, living from hand to mouth andwaiting for his money. I think he borrowed a small amount from themanaging editor. He lounged about the office most of the time, and Ifrequently encountered him going in and out of the cheap restaurantson Tenth Street. When he was at the office he talked a good deal ina wandering, absent-minded fashion, and his conversation wasuniformly frivolous. If he could not evade a serious question by ajoke, he bolted. I cut my classes to lie in wait for him, confidentthat in some unwary moment I could trap him into seriousconversation, that if one burned incense long enough and ardentlyenough, the oracle would not be dumb. I was Maupassant mad at thetime, a malady particularly unattractive in a Junior, and I made afrantic effort to get an expression of opinion from him on "LeBonheur. " "Oh, you're Moping, are you?" he remarked with a sarcasticgrin, and went on reading a little volume of Poe that he carried inhis pocket. At another time I cornered him in the Funny Man's roomand succeeded in getting a little out of him. We were taughtliterature by an exceedingly analytical method at the University, and we probably distorted the method, and I was busy trying to findthe least common multiple of _Hamlet_ and the greatest commondivisor of _Macbeth_, and I began asking him whether stories wereconstructed by cabalistic formulae. At length he sighed wearily andshook his drooping shoulders, remarking:

"Where did you get all that rot? Yarns aren't done by mathematics. You can't do it by rule any more than you can dance by rule. Youhave to have the itch of the thing in your fingers, and if youhaven't, --well, you're damned lucky, and you'll live long andprosper, that's all. "--And with that he yawned and went down thehall. 

Crane was moody most of the time, his health was bad and he seemedprofoundly discouraged. Even his jokes were exceedingly drastic. Hewent about with the tense, preoccupied, self-centered air of a manwho is brooding over some impending disaster, and I conjecturedvainly as to what it might be. Though he was seemingly entirely idleduring the few days I knew him, his manner indicated that he was inthe throes of work that told terribly on his nerves. His eyes Iremember as the finest I have ever seen, large and dark and full oflustre and changing lights, but with a profound melancholy alwayslurking deep in them. They were eyes that seemed to be burningthemselves out. 

As he sat at the desk with his shoulders drooping forward, his headlow, and his long, white fingers drumming on the sheets of copypaper, he was as nervous as a race horse fretting to be on thetrack. Always, as he came and went about the halls, he seemed like aman preparing for a sudden departure. Now that he is dead it occursto me that all his life was a preparation for sudden departure. Iremember once when he was writing a letter he stopped and asked meabout the spelling of a word, saying carelessly, "I haven't time tolearn to spell. "

Then, glancing down at his attire, he added with an absent-mindedsmile, "I haven't time to dress either; it takes an awful slice outof a fellow's life. "

He said he was poor, and he certainly looked it, but four yearslater when he was in Cuba, drawing the largest salary ever paid anewspaper correspondent, he clung to this same untidy manner ofdress, and his ragged overalls and buttonless shirt were eyesores tothe immaculate Mr. Davis, in his spotless linen and neat khakiuniform, with his Gibson chin always freshly shaven. When I firstheard of his serious illness, his old throat trouble aggravated intoconsumption by his reckless exposure in Cuba, I recalled a passagefrom Maeterlinck's essay, "The Pre-Destined, " on those doomed toearly death: "As children, life seems nearer to them than to otherchildren. They appear to know nothing, and yet there is in theireyes so profound a certainty that we feel they must know all. --Inall haste, but wisely and with minute care do they preparethemselves to live, and this very haste is a sign upon which motherscan scarce bring themselves to look. " I remembered, too, the youngman's melancholy and his tenseness, his burning eyes, and his way ofslurring over the less important things, as one whose time is short. 

I have heard other people say how difficult it was to induce Craneto talk seriously about his work, and I suspect that he wasparticularly averse to discussions with literary men of widereducation and better equipment than himself, yet he seemed to feelthat this fuller culture was not for him. Perhaps the unreasoninginstinct which lies deep in the roots of our lives, and which guidesus all, told him that he had not time enough to acquire it. 

Men will sometimes reveal themselves to children, or to people whomthey think never to see again, more completely than they ever do totheir confreres. From the wise we hold back alike our folly and ourwisdom, and for the recipients of our deeper confidences we seldomselect our equals. The soul has no message for the friends with whomwe dine every week. It is silenced by custom and convention, and weplay only in the shallows. It selects its listeners willfully, andseemingly delights to waste its best upon the chance wayfarer whomeets us in the highway at a fated hour. There are moments too, whenthe tides run high or very low, when self-revelation is necessary toevery man, if it be only to his valet or his gardener. At such amoment, I was with Mr. Crane. 

The hoped for revelation came unexpectedly enough. It was on thelast night he spent in Lincoln. I had come back from the theatre andwas in the Journal office writing a notice of the play. It waseleven o'clock when Crane came in. He had expected his money toarrive on the night mail and it had not done so, and he was out ofsorts and deeply despondent. He sat down on the ledge of the openwindow that faced on the street, and when I had finished my notice Iwent over and took a chair beside him. Quite without invitation onmy part, Crane began to talk, began to curse his trade from thefirst throb of creative desire in a boy to the finished work of themaster. The night was oppressively warm; one of those dry winds thatare the curse of that country was blowing up from Kansas. The white, western moonlight threw sharp, blue shadows below us. The streetswere silent at that hour, and we could hear the gurgle of thefountain in the Post Office square across the street, and the twangof banjos from the lower verandah of the Hotel Lincoln, where thecolored waiters were serenading the guests. The drop lights in theoffice were dull under their green shades, and the telegraph sounderclicked faintly in the next room. In all his long tirade, Cranenever raised his voice; he spoke slowly and monotonously and evencalmly, but I have never known so bitter a heart in any man as herevealed to me that night. It was an arraignment of the wages oflife, an invocation to the ministers of hate. 

Incidentally he told me the sum he had received for "The Red Badgeof Courage, " which I think was something like ninety dollars, and herepeated some lines from "The Black Riders, " which was then inpreparation. He gave me to understand that he led a double literarylife; writing in the first place the matter that pleased himself, and doing it very slowly; in the second place, any sort of stuffthat would sell. And he remarked that his poor was just as bad as itcould possibly be. He realized, he said, that his limitations wereabsolutely impassable. "What I can't do, I can't do at all, and Ican't acquire it. I only hold one trump. "

He had no settled plans at all. He was going to Mexico whollyuncertain of being able to do any successful work there, and heseemed to feel very insecure about the financial end of his venture. The thing that most interested me was what he said about his slowmethod of composition. He declared that there was little money instory-writing at best, and practically none in it for him, becauseof the time it took him to work up his detail. Other men, he said, could sit down and write up an experience while the physical effectof it, so to speak, was still upon them, and yesterday's impressionsmade to-day's "copy. " But when he came in from the streets to writeup what he had seen there, his faculties were benumbed, and he sattwirling his pencil and hunting for words like a schoolboy. 

I mentioned "The Red Badge of Courage, " which was written in ninedays, and he replied that, though the writing took very little time, he had been unconsciously working the detail of the story outthrough most of his boyhood. His ancestors had been soldiers, and hehad been imagining war stories ever since he was out ofknickerbockers, and in writing his first war story he had simplygone over his imaginary campaigns and selected his favoriteimaginary experiences. He declared that his imagination was hidebound; it was there, but it pulled hard. After he got a notion for astory, months passed before he could get any sort of personalcontract with it, or feel any potency to handle it. "The detail of athing has to filter through my blood, and then it comes out like anative product, but it takes forever, " he remarked. I distinctlyremember the illustration, for it rather took hold of me. 

I have often been astonished since to hear Crane spoken of as "thereporter in fiction, " for the reportorial faculty of superficialreception and quick transference was what he conspicuously lacked. His first newspaper account of his shipwreck on the filibuster"Commodore" off the Florida coast was as lifeless as the "copy" of apolice court reporter. It was many months afterwards that theliterary product of his terrible experience appeared in thatmarvellous sea story "The Open Boat, " unsurpassed in its vividnessand constructive perfection. 

At the close of our long conversation that night, when the copy boycame in to take me home, I suggested to Crane that in ten years hewould probably laugh at all his temporary discomfort. Again his bodytook on that strenuous tension and he clenched his hands, saying, "Ican't wait ten years, I haven't time. "

The ten years are not up yet, and he has done his work and gatheredhis reward and gone. Was ever so much experience and achievementcrowded into so short a space of time? A great man dead attwenty-nine! That would have puzzled the ancients. Edward Garnettwrote of him in The Academy of December 17, 1899: "I cannot remembera parallel in the literary history of fiction. Maupassant, Meredith, Henry James, Mr. Howells and Tolstoy, were all learning theirexpression at an age where Crane had achieved his and achieved ittriumphantly. " He had the precocity of those doomed to die in youth. I am convinced that when I met him he had a vague premonition of theshortness of his working day, and in the heart of the man there wasthat which said, "That thou doest, do quickly. "

At twenty-one this son of an obscure New Jersey rector, with but ascant reading knowledge of French and no training, had rivaled intechnique the foremost craftsmen of the Latin races. In the sixyears since I met him, a stranded reporter, he stood in the firingline during two wars, knew hairbreadth 'scapes on land and sea, andestablished himself as the first writer of his time in the picturingof episodic, fragmentary life. His friends have charged him withfickleness, but he was a man who was in the preoccupation of haste. He went from country to country, from man to man, absorbing all thatwas in them for him. He had no time to look backward. He had noleisure for _camaraderie_. He drank life to the lees, but at thebanquet table where other men took their ease and jested over theirwine, he stood a dark and silent figure, sombre as Poe himself, notwishing to be understood; and he took his portion in haste, with hisloins girded, and his shoes on his feet, and his staff in his hand, like one who must depart quickly. 

 _The Library_, June 23, 1900

_On the Art of Fiction_

One is sometimes asked about the "obstacles" that confront youngwriters who are trying to do good work. I should say the greatestobstacles that writers today have to get over, are the dazzlingjournalistic successes of twenty years ago, stories that surprisedand delighted by their sharp photographic detail and that werereally nothing more than lively pieces of reporting. The whole aimof that school of writing was novelty--never a very important thingin art. They gave us, altogether, poor standards--taught us tomultiply our ideas instead of to condense them. They tried to make astory out of every theme that occurred to them and to get returns onevery situation that suggested itself. They got returns, of a kind. But their work, when one looks back on it, now that the novelty uponwhich they counted so much is gone, is journalistic and thin. Theespecial merit of a good reportorial story is that it shall beintensely interesting and pertinent today and shall have lost itspoint by tomorrow. 

Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearlythe whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventionsof form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve thespirit of the whole--so that all that one has suppressed and cutaway is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were intype on the page. Millet had done hundreds of sketches of peasantssowing grain, some of them very complicated and interesting, butwhen he came to paint the spirit of them all into one picture, "TheSower, " the composition is so simple that it seems inevitable. Allthe discarded sketches that went before made the picture what itfinally became, and the process was all the time one of simplifying, of sacrificing many conceptions good in themselves for one that wasbetter and more universal. 

Any first rate novel or story must have in it the strength of adozen fairly good stories that have been sacrificed to it. A goodworkman can't be a cheap workman; he can't be stingy about wastingmaterial, and he cannot compromise. Writing ought either to be themanufacture of stories for which there is a market demand--abusiness as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfastfoods--or it should be an art, which is always a search forsomething for which there is no market demand, something new anduntried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do withstandardized values. The courage to go on without compromise doesnot come to a writer all at once--nor, for that matter, does theability. Both are phases of natural development. In the beginningthe artist, like his public, is wedded to old forms, old ideals, andhis vision is blurred by the memory of old delights he would like torecapture. 

 _The Borzoi_, 1920