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A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS

by

W. D. Howells

Author of "The Landlord at Lion's Head" "Ragged Lady" etc. 

New York and LondonHarper & Brothers Publishers1901

CONTENTS

 A Pair of Patient Lovers

 The Pursuit of the Piano

 A Difficult Case

 The Magic of a Voice

 A Circle in the Water

A PAIR OF PATIENT LOVERS

I. 

We first met Glendenning on the Canadian boat which carries you down therapids of the St. Lawrence from Kingston and leaves you at Montreal. When we saw a handsome young clergyman across the promenade-deck lookingup from his guide-book toward us, now and again, as if in default ofknowing any one else he would be very willing to know us, we decidedthat I must make his acquaintance. He was instantly and cordiallyresponsive to my question whether he had ever made the trip before, andhe was amiably grateful when in my quality of old habitué of the route Ipointed out some characteristic features of the scenery. I showed himjust where we were on the long map of the river hanging over his knee, and I added, with no great relevancy, that my wife and I were renewingthe fond emotion of our first trip down the St. Lawrence in thecharacter of bridal pair which we had spurned when it was really ours. Iexplained that we had left the children with my wife's aunt, so as torender the travesty more lifelike; and when he said, "I suppose you missthem, though, " I gave him my card. He tried to find one of his own togive me in return, but he could only find a lot of other people's cards. He wrote his name on the back of one, and handed it to me with a smile. "It won't do for me to put 'reverend' before it, in my own chirography, but that's the way I have it engraved. "

"Oh, " I said, "the cut of your coat bewrayed you, " and we had somelaughing talk. But I felt the eye of Mrs. March dwelling upon me withgrowing impatience, till I suggested, "I should like to make youacquainted with my wife, Mr. Glendenning. "

He said, Oh, he should be so happy; and he gathered his dangling mapinto the book and came over with me to where Mrs. March sat; and, likethe good young American husband I was in those days, I stood aside andleft the whole talk to her. She interested him so much more than I couldthat I presently wandered away and amused myself elsewhere. When I cameback, she clutched my arm and bade me not speak a word; it was the mostromantic thing in the world, and she would tell me about it when we werealone, but now I must go off again; he had just gone to get a book forher which he had been speaking of, and would be back the next instant, and it would not do to let him suppose we had been discussing him. 

II. 

I was sometimes disappointed in Mrs. March's mysteries when I came upclose to them; but I was always willing to take them on trust; and Isubmitted to the postponement of a solution in this case with more thanmy usual faith. She found time, before Mr. Glendenning reappeared, toask me if I had noticed a mother and daughter on the boat, the motherevidently an invalid, and the daughter very devoted, and both decidedlyladies; and when I said, "No. Why?" she answered, "Oh, nothing, " andthat she would tell me. Then she drove me away, and we did not meet tillI found her in our state-room just before the terrible mid-day meal theyused to give you on the _Corinthian_, and called dinner. 

She began at once, while she did something to her hair before the morselof mirror: "Why I wanted to know if you had noticed those people wasbecause they are the reason of his being here. "

"Did he tell you that?"

"Of course not. But I knew it, for he asked if I had seen them, or couldtell him who they were. "

"It seems to me that he made pretty good time to get so far as that. "

"I don't say he got so far himself, but you men never know how to takesteps for any one else. You can't put two and two together. But to mymind it's as plain as the nose on his face that he's seen that girlsomewhere and is taking this trip because she's on board. He said hehadn't decided to come till the last moment. "

"What wild leaps of fancy!" I said. "But the nose on his face ishandsome rather than plain, and I sha'n't be satisfied till I see himwith the lady. "

"Yes, he's quite Greek, " said Mrs. March, in assent to my opinion of hisnose. "Too Greek for a clergyman, almost. But he isn't vain of it. Thosebeautiful people are often quite modest, and Mr. Glendenning is verymodest. "

"And I'm very hungry. If you don't hurry your prinking, Isabel, we shallnot get any dinner. "

"I'm ready, " said my wife, and she continued with her eyes still on theglass: "He's got a church out in Ohio, somewhere; but he's aNew-Englander, and he's quite wild to get back. He thinks those peopleare from Boston: I could tell in a moment if I saw them. Well, now, I_am_ ready, " and with this she really ceased to do something to herhair, and came out into the long saloon with me where the table was set. Rows of passengers stood behind the rows of chairs, with a detaininggrasp on nearly all of them. We gazed up and down in despair. SuddenlyMrs. March sped forward, and I found that Mr. Glendenning had made asign to her from a distant point, where there were two vacant chairs forus next his own. We eagerly laid hands on them, and waited for the gongto sound for dinner. In this interval an elderly lady followed by ayoung girl came down the saloon toward us, and I saw signs, or ratheremotions, of intelligence pass between Mr. Glendenning and Mrs. Marchconcerning them. 

The older of these ladies was a tall, handsome matron, who bore herfifty years with a native severity qualified by a certain air of wonderat a world which I could well fancy had not always taken her at her ownestimate of her personal and social importance. She had the effect ofchallenging you to do less, as she advanced slowly between the wall ofstate-rooms and the backs of the people gripping their chairs, and eyedthem with a sort of imperious surprise that they should have left noplace for her. So at least I read her glance, while I read in that ofthe young lady coming after, and showing her beauty first over thisshoulder and then over that of her mother, chiefly a present amusement, behind which lay a character of perhaps equal pride, if not equalhardness. She was very beautiful, in the dark style which I cannot helpthinking has fallen into unmerited abeyance; and as she passed us Icould see that she was very graceful. She was dressed in a lady'sacceptance of the fashions of that day, which would be thought sogrotesque in this. I have heard contemporaneous young girls laugh at themere notion of hoops, but in 1870 we thought hoops extremely becoming;and this young lady knew how to hold hers a little on one side so as togive herself room in the narrow avenue, and not betray more than thediscreetest hint of a white stocking. I believe the stockings are blacknow. 

They both got by us, and I could see Mr. Glendenning following them withlonging but irresolute eyes, until they turned, a long way down thesaloon, as if to come toward us again. Then he hurried to meet them, andas he addressed himself first to one and then to the other, I knew himto be offering them his chair. So did my wife, and she said, "You mustgive up your place too, Basil, " and I said I would if she wished to seeme starve on the spot. But of course I went and joined Glendenning inhis entreaties that they would deprive us of our chances of dinner (Iknew what the second table was on the _Corinthian_); and I must say thatthe elder lady accepted my chair in the spirit which my secret grudgedeserved. She made me feel as if I ought to have offered it when theyfirst passed us; but it was some satisfaction to learn afterwards thatshe gave Mrs. March, for her ready sacrifice of me, as bad a half-houras she ever had. She sat next to my wife, and the young lady tookGlendenning's place, and as soon as we had left them she began trying tofind out from Mrs. March who he was, and what his relation to us was. The girl tried to check her at first, and then seemed to give it up, anddevoted herself to being rather more amiable than she otherwise mighthave been, my wife thought, in compensation for the severity of hermother's scrutiny. Her mother appeared disposed to hold Mrs. Marchresponsible for knowing little or nothing about Mr. Glendenning. 

"He seems to be an Episcopal clergyman, " she said, in a haughty summingup. "From his name I should have supposed he was Scotch and aPresbyterian. " She began to patronize the trip we were making, and toabuse it; she said that she did not see what could have induced them toundertake it; but one had to get back from Niagara somehow, and they hadbeen told at the hotel there that the boats were very comfortable. Shehad never been more uncomfortable in her life; as for the rapids, theymade her ill, and they were obviously so dangerous that she should noteven look at them again. Then, from having done all the talking and mostof the eating, she fell quite silent, and gave her daughter a chance tospeak to my wife. She had hitherto spoken only to her mother, but nowshe asked Mrs. March if she had ever been down the St. Lawrence before. 

When my wife explained, and asked her whether she was enjoying it, sheanswered with a rapture that was quite astonishing, in reference to hermother's expressions of disgust: "Oh, immensely! Every instant of it, "and she went on to expatiate on its peculiar charm in terms sointelligent and sympathetic that Mrs. March confessed it had been partof our wedding journey, and that this was the reason why we were nowtaking the trip. 

The young lady did not seem to care so much for this, and when shethanked my wife in leaving the table with her mother, and begged her tothank the gentlemen who had so kindly given up their places, she made nooverture to further acquaintance. In fact, we had been so simply andmerely made use of that, although we were rather meek people, we decidedto avoid our beneficiaries for the rest of the day; and Mr. Glendenning, who could not, as a clergyman, indulge even a just resentment, could aslittle refuse us his sympathy. He laughed at some hints of my wife'sexperience, which she dropped before she left us to pick up a meal fromthe lukewarm leavings of the _Corinthian's_ dinner, if we could. Shesaid she was going forward to get a good place on the bow, and wouldkeep two camp-stools for us, which she could assure us no one would getaway from her. 

We were somewhat surprised then to find her seated by the rail with theyounger lady of the two whom she meant to avoid if she meant anything bywhat she said. She was laughing and talking on quite easy terms with herapparently, and "There!" she triumphed as we came up, "I've kept yourcamp-stools for you, " and she showed them at her side, where she washolding her hand on them. "You had better put them here. "

The girl had stiffened a little at our approach, as I could see, but ayoung girl's stiffness is always rather amusing than otherwise, and Idid not mind it. Neither, that I could see, did Mr. Glendenning, and itsoon passed. It seemed that she had left her mother lying down in herstate-room, where she justly imagined that if she did not see the rapidsshe should suffer less alarm from them; the young lady had come franklyto the side of Mrs. March as soon as she saw her, and asked if she mightsit with her. She now talked to me for a decent space of time, and thenpresently, without my knowing how, she was talking to Mr. Glendenning, and they were comparing notes of Niagara; he was saying that he thoughthe had seen her at the Cataract House, and she was owning that she andher mother had at least stopped at that hotel. 

III. 

I have no wish, and if I had the wish I should not have the art, to keepback the fact that these young people were evidently very much takenwith each other. They showed their mutual pleasure so plainly that evenI could see it. As for Mrs. March, she was as proud of it as if she hadinvented them and set them going in their advance toward each other, like two mechanical toys. 

I confess that with reference to what my wife had told me of this younglady's behavior when she was with her mother, her submissiveness, herentire self-effacement, up to a certain point, I did not know quite whatto make of her present independence, not to say freedom. I thought shemight perhaps have been kept so strictly in the background, with youngmen, that she was rather disposed to make the most of any chance at themwhich offered. If the young man in this case was at no pains to hide hispleasure in her society, one might say that she was almost eager to showher delight in his. If it was a case of love at first sight, theearliest glimpse had been to the girl, who was all eyes for Glendenning. It was very pretty, but it was a little alarming, and perhaps a littledroll, even. She was actually making the advances, not consciously, buthelplessly; fondly, ignorantly, for I have no belief, nor had my wife (amuch more critical observer), that she knew how she was giving herselfaway. 

I thought perhaps that she was in the habit from pride, or somethinglike it, of holding herself in check, and that this blameless excesswhich I saw was the natural expansion from an inner constraint. But whatI really knew was that the young people got on very rapidly, in anacquaintance that prospered up to the last moment I saw them together. This was just before the _Corinthian_ drew up to her landing atMontreal, when Miss Bentley (we had learned her name) came to us fromthe point where she was standing with Glendenning and said that now shemust go to her mother, and took a sweet leave of my wife. She askedwhere we were going to stay in Montreal and whether we were going on toQuebec; and said her mother would wish to send Mrs. March her card. 

When she was gone, Glendenning explained, with rather superfluousapology, that he had offered to see the ladies to a hotel, for he wasafraid that at this crowded season they might not find it easy to getrooms, and he did not wish Mrs. Bentley, who was an invalid, to have anyanxieties about it. He bade us an affectionate, but not a disconsolateadieu, and when we had got into the modest conveyance (if an omnibus ismodest) which was to take us to the Ottawa House, we saw him drive offto the St. Lawrence Hall (it was twenty-five years ago) in one of thosevitreous and tinkling Montreal landaus, with Mrs. And Miss Bentley andMrs. Bentley's maid. 

We were still so young as to be very much absorbed in the love affairsof other people; I believe women always remain young enough for that;and Mrs. March talked about the one we fancied we had witnessed thebeginning of pretty much the whole evening. The next morning we gotletters from Boston, telling us how the children were and all that theywere doing and saying. We had stood it very well, as long as we did nothear anything about them, and we had lent ourselves in a sort ofsemi-forgetfulness of them to the associations of the past when theywere not; but now to learn that they were hearty and happy, and thatthey sent love and kisses, was too much. With one mind we renounced thenotion of going on to Quebec; we found that we could just get theten-o'clock train that would reach Boston by eleven that night, and wemade all haste and got it. We had not been really at peace, weperceived, till that moment since we had bidden the children good-bye. 

IV. 

Perhaps it was because we left Montreal so abruptly that Mrs. Marchnever received Mrs. Bentley's card. It may be at the Ottawa House tothis day, for all I know. What is certain is that we saw and heardnothing more of her or her daughter. Glendenning called to see us as hepassed through Boston on his way west from Quebec, but we were neitherof us at home and we missed him, to my wife's vivid regret. I ratherthink we expected him to find some excuse for writing after he reachedhis place in northern Ohio; but he did not write, and he became more andmore the memory of a young clergyman in the beginning of a love-affair, till one summer, while we were still disputing where we should spend thehot weather within business reach, there came a letter from him sayingthat he was settled at Gormanville, and wishing that he might tempt usup some afternoon before we were off to the mountains or seaside. Thisrevived all my wife's waning interest in him, and it was hard to keepthe answer I made him from expressing in a series of crucial inquiriesthe excitement she felt at his being in New England and so near Boston, and in Gormanville of all places. It was one of the places we hadthought of for the summer, and we were yet so far from havingrelinquished it that we were recurring from time to time in hope andfear to the advertisement of an old village mansion there, with amplegrounds, garden, orchard, ice-house, and stables, for a very low rentalto an unexceptionable tenant. We had no doubt of our own qualifications, but we had misgivings of the village mansion; and I am afraid that Irather unduly despatched the personal part of my letter, in my haste toask what Glendenning knew and what he thought of the Conwell place. However, the letter seemed to serve all purposes. There came a replyfrom Glendenning, most cordial, even affectionate, saying that theConwell place was delightful, and I must come at once and see it. Heprofessed that he would be glad to have Mrs. March come too, and hedeclared that if his joy at having us did not fill his modest rectory tobursting, he was sure it could stand the physical strain of ourpresence, though he confessed that his guest-chamber was tiny. 

"He wants _you_, Basil, " my wife divined from terms which gave me nosense of any latent design of parting us in his hospitality. "But, evidently, it isn't a chance to be missed, and you must go--instantly. Can you go to-morrow? But telegraph him you're coming, and tell him tohold on to the Conwell place; it may be snapped up any moment if it's sodesirable. "

I did not go till the following week, when I found that no one hadattempted to snap up the Conwell place. In fact, it rather snapped meup, I secured it with so little trouble. I reported it so perfect thatall my wife's fears of a latent objection to it were roused again. Butwhen I said I thought we could relinquish it, her terrors subsided; andI thought this the right moment to deliver a stroke that I had beenholding in reserve. 

"You know, " I began, "the Bentleys have their summer place there--theold Bentley homestead. It's their ancestral town, you know. "

"Bentleys? What Bentleys?" she demanded, opaquely. 

"Why, those people we met on the _Corinthian_, summer before last--youthought he was in love with the girl--"

A simultaneous photograph could alone reproduce Mrs. March's tumultuousand various emotions as she seized the fact conveyed in my words. Shepoured out a volume of mingled conjectures, assertions, suspicions, conclusions, in which there was nothing final but the decision that wemust not dream of going there; that it would look like thrustingourselves in, and would be in the worst sort of taste; they would allhate us, and we should feel that we were spies upon the young people;for of course the Bentleys had got Glendenning there to marry him, andin effect did not want any one to witness the disgraceful spectacle. 

I said, "That may be the nefarious purpose of the young lady, but, as Iunderstood Glendenning, it is no part of her mother's design. "

"What do you mean?"

"Miss Bentley may have got him there to marry him, but Mrs. Bentleyseems to have meant nothing more than an engagement at the worst. "

"What _do_ you mean? They're not engaged, are they?"

"They're not married, at any rate, and I suppose they're engaged. I didnot have it from Miss Bentley, but I suppose Glendenning may be trustedin such a case. "

"Now, " said my wife, with a severity that might well have appalled me, "if you will please to explain, Basil, it will be better for you. "

"Why, it is simply this. Glendenning seems to have made himself souseful to the mother and pleasing to the daughter after we left them inMontreal that he was tolerated on a pretence that there was reason forhis writing back to Mrs. Bentley after he got home, and, as Mrs. Bentleynever writes letters, Miss Bentley had the hard task of answering him. This led to a correspondence. "

"And to her moving heaven and earth to get him to Gormanville. I see! Ofcourse she did it so that no one knew what she was about!"

"Apparently. Glendenning himself was not in the secret. The Bentleyswere in Europe last summer, and he did not know that they had a place atGormanville till he came to live there. Another proof that Miss Bentleygot him there is the fact that she and her mother are Unitarians, andthat they would naturally be able to select the rector of the Episcopalchurch. "

"Go on, " said Mrs. March, not the least daunted. 

"Oh, there's nothing more. He is simply rector of St. Michael's atGormanville; and there is not the slightest proof that any young ladyhad a hand in getting him there. "

"As if I cared in the least whether she had! I suppose you will allowthat she had something to do with getting engaged to him, and that isthe _great_ matter. "

"Yes, I must allow that, if we are to suppose that young ladies haveanything to do with young men getting engaged to them; it doesn't seemexactly delicate. But the novel phase of this great matter is theposition of the young lady's mother in regard to it. From what I couldmake out she consents to the engagement of her daughter, but she don'tand won't consent to her marriage. " My wife glared at me with so littlespeculation in her eyes that I felt obliged to disclaim allresponsibility for the fact I had reported. "Thou canst not say _I_ didit. _They_ did it, and Miss Bentley, if any one, is to blame. It seems, from what Glendenning says, that the young lady and he wrote to eachother while she was abroad, and that they became engaged by letter. Thenthe affair was broken off because of her mother's opposition; but sincethey have met at Gormanville, the engagement has been renewed. So muchthey've managed against the old lady's will, but apparently on conditionthat they won't get married till she says. "

"Nonsense! How could she stop them?"

"She couldn't, I dare say, by any of the old romantic methods of aconvent or disinheritance; but she is an invalid; she wants to keep herdaughter with her, and she avails with the girl's conscience by beingsimply dependent and obstructive. The young people have carried theirengagement through, and now such hope as they have is fixed upon herfinally yielding in the matter of their marriage, though Glendenning wasobliged to confess that there was no sign of her doing so. Theyagree--Miss Bentley and he--that they cannot get married as they gotengaged, in spite of her mother--it would be unclerical if it wouldn'tbe unfilial--and they simply have to bide their time. "

My wife asked abruptly, "How many chambers are there in the Conwellplace?"

I said, and then she asked, "Is there a windmill or a force-pump?" Ianswered proudly that in Gormanville there was town water, but that ifthis should give out there were both a windmill and a force-pump on theConwell place. 

"It is very complete, " she sighed, as if this had removed all hope fromher, and she added, "I suppose we had better take it. "

V. 

We certainly did not take it for the sake of being near the Bentleys, neither of whom had given us particular reason to desire their furtheracquaintance, though the young lady had agreeably modified herself whenapart from her mother. In fact, we went to Gormanville because it was anexceptional chance to get a beautiful place for a very little money, where we could go early and stay late. But no sooner had we acted fromthis quite personal, not to say selfish, motive than we were rewardedwith the sweetest overtures of neighborliness by the Bentleys. Theywaited, of course, till we were settled in our house before they came tocall upon Mrs. March, but they had been preceded by several hospitableofferings from their garden, their dairy, and their hen-house, whichwere very welcome in the days of our first uncertainty as totrades-people. We analyzed this hospitality as an effect of that sort ofnature in Mrs. Bentley which can equally assert its superiority byblessing or banning. Evidently, since chance had again thrown us in herway, she would not go out of it to be offensive, but would continue init, and make the best of us. 

No doubt Glendenning had talked us into the Bentleys; and this my wifesaid she hated most of all; for we should have to live up to the notionof us imparted by a young man from the impressions of the moment when hesaw us purple in the light of his dawning love. In justice toGlendenning, however, I must say that he did nothing, by a show of hisown assiduities, to urge us upon the Bentleys after we came toGormanville. If we had not felt so sure of him, we might have thought hewas keeping his regard for us a little too modestly in the background. He made us one cool little call, the evening of our arrival, in which hehad the effect of anxiety to get away as soon as possible; and afterthat we saw him no more until he came with Miss Bentley and her mother aweek later. His forbearance was all the more remarkable because hischurch and his rectory were just across the street from the Conwellplace, at the corner of another street, where we could see their woodengothic in the cold shadow of the maples with which the green in front ofthem was planted. 

During all that time Glendenning's personal elevation remained invisibleto us, and we began to wonder if he were not that most lamentable offellow-creatures, a clerical snob. I am not sure still that he might nothave been so in some degree, there was such a mixture of joy that wasalmost abject in his genuine affection for us when Mrs. Bentley openlyapproved us on her first visit. I dare say he would not have quiteabandoned us in any case; but he must have felt responsible for us, andit must have been such a load off him when she took that turn with us. 

She called in the afternoon, and the young people dropped in again thesame evening, and took the trouble to win back our simple hearts. Thatis, Miss Bentley showed herself again as frank and sweet as she had beenon the boat when she joined my wife after dinner and left her mother inher state-room. Glendenning was again the Glendenning of our firstmeeting, and something more. He fearlessly led the way to intimacies offeeling with an expansion uncommon even in an accepted lover, and wemade our conclusions that however subject he might be to hisindefinitely future mother-in-law, he would not be at all so to hiswife, if she could help it. He took the lead, but because she gave ithim; and she displayed an aptness for conjugal submissiveness whichalmost amounted to genius. Whenever she spoke to either of us, it waswith one eye on him to see if he liked what she was saying. It was soperfect that I doubted if it could last; but my wife said a girl likethat could keep it up till she dropped. I have never been sure that sheliked us as well as he did; I think it was part of her intense loyaltyto seem to like us a great deal more. 

She was deeply in love, and nothing but her ladylike breeding kept herfrom being openly fond. I figured her in a sort of impassionedincandescence, such as only a pure and perhaps cold nature could burninto; and I amused myself a little with the sense of Glendenning'sapparent inadequacy. Sweet he was, and admirably gentle and fine; he hadan unfailing good sense, and a very ready wisdom, as I grew more andmore to perceive. But he was an inch or so shorter than Miss Bentley, and in his sunny blondness, with his golden red beard and hair, and hispinkish complexion, he wanted still more the effect of an emotionalequality with her. He was very handsome, with features excellentlyregular; his smile was celestially beautiful; innocent gay lights dancedin his blue eyes, through lashes and under brows that were a lighterblond than his beard and hair. 

VI. 

The next morning, which was of a Saturday, when I did not go to town, hecame over to us again from the shadow of his sombre maples, and fellsimply and naturally into talk about his engagement. He was much fullerin my wife's presence than he had been with me alone, and told us thehopes he had of Mrs. Bentley's yielding within a reasonable time. Heseemed to gather encouragement from the sort of perspective he got theaffair into by putting it before us, and finding her dissent to herdaughter's marriage so ridiculous in our eyes after her consent to herengagement that a woman of her great good sense evidently could notpersist in it. 

"There is no personal objection to myself, " he said, with a modestsatisfaction. "In fact, I think she really likes me, and only dislikesmy engagement to Edith. But she knows that Edith is incapable ofmarrying against her mother's will, or I of wishing her to do so; thoughthere is nothing else to prevent us. "

My wife allowed herself to say, "Isn't it rather cruel of her?"

"Why, no, not altogether; or not so much so as it might be in differentcircumstances. I make every allowance for her. In the first place, sheis a great sufferer. "

"Yes, I know, " my wife relented. 

"She suffers terribly from asthma. I don't suppose she has lain down inbed for ten years. She sleeps in an easy-chair, and she's never quitefree from her trouble; when there's a paroxysm of the disease, heranguish is frightful. I've never seen it, of course, but I have heardit; you hear it all through the house. Edith has the constant care ofher. Her mother has to be perpetually moved and shifted in her chair, and Edith does this for her; she will let no one else come near her;Edith must look to the ventilation, and burn the pastilles which helpher to breathe. She depends upon her every instant. " He had grown verysolemn in voice and face, and he now said, "When I think of what sheendures, it seems to me that it is I who am cruel even to dream oftaking her daughter from her. "

"Yes, " my wife assented. 

"But there is really no present question of that We are very happy as itis. We can wait, and wait willingly till Mrs. Bentley wishes us to waitno longer; or--"

He stopped, and we were both aware of something in his mind which he putfrom him. He became a little pale, and sat looking very grave. Then herose. "I don't know whether to say how welcome you would be at St. Michael's to-morrow, for you may not be--"

"_We_ are Unitarians, too, " said Mrs. March. "But we are coming to hear_you_. "

"I am glad you are coming _to church_, " said Glendenning, putting awaythe personal tribute implied with a gentle dignity that became him. 

VII. 

We waited a discreet time before returning the call of the Bentleyladies, but not so long as to seem conscious. In fact, we had beensoftened towards Mrs. Bentley by what Glendenning told us of hersuffering, and we were disposed to forgive a great deal of patronage andsuperiority to her asthma; they were not part of the disease, but stillthey were somehow to be considered with reference to it in her case. 

We were admitted by the maid, who came running down the hall stairway, with a preoccupied air, to the open door where we stood waiting. Therewere two great syringa-bushes on each hand close to the portal, whichwere in full flower, and which flung their sweetness through the doorwayand the windows; but when we found ourselves in the dim old-fashionedparlor, we were aware of this odor meeting and mixing with another whichdescended from the floor above--the smell of some medicated pastille. There was a sound of anxious steps overhead, and a hurried closing ofdoors, with the mechanical sound of labored breathing. 

"We have come at a bad time, " I suggested. 

"Yes, _why_ did they let us in?" cried my wife in an anguish ofcompassion and vexation. She repeated her question to Miss Bentley, whocame down almost immediately, looking pale, indeed, but steady, andmaking a brave show of welcome. 

"My mother would have wished it, " she said, "and she sent me as soon asshe knew who it was. You mustn't be distressed, " she entreated, with apathetic smile. "It's really a kind of relief to her; anything is thattakes her mind off herself for a moment. She will be so sorry to missyou, and you must come again as soon as you can. "

"Oh, we will, we will!" cried my wife, in nothing less than a passion ofmeekness; and Miss Bentley went on to comfort her. 

"It's dreadful, of course, but it isn't as bad as it sounds, and itisn't nearly so bad as it looks. She is used to it, and there is a greatdeal in that. Oh, _don't_ go!" she begged, at a movement Mrs. March madeto rise. "The doctor is with her just now, and I'm not needed. It willbe kind if you'll stay; it's a relief to be out of the room with a goodexcuse!" She even laughed a little as she said this; she went on to leadthe talk away from what was so intensely in our minds, and presently Iheard her and my wife speaking of other things. The power to do this isfrom some heroic quality in women's minds that we do not credit themwith; we think it their volatility, and I dare say I thought myself muchbetter, or at least more serious in my make, because I could not followthem, and did not lose one of those hoarse gasps of the suffereroverhead. Occasionally there came a stifling cry that made me jump, inwardly if not outwardly, but those women had their drama to play, andthey played it to the end. 

Miss Bentley came hospitably to the door with us, and waited there tillshe thought we could not see her turn and run swiftly up-stairs. 

"Why _did_ you stay, my dear?" I groaned. "I felt as if I werepersonally smothering Mrs. Bentley every moment we were there. "

"I _had_ to do it. She wished it, and, as she said, it was a relief tohave us there, though she was wishing us at the ends of the earth allthe time. But what a ghastly life!"

"Yes; and can you wonder that the poor woman doesn't want to give herup, to lose the help and comfort she gets from her? It's a wicked thingfor that girl to think of marrying. "

"What are you talking about, Basil? It's a wicked thing for her _not_ tothink of it! She is wearing her life out, _tearing_ it out, and sheisn't doing her mother a bit of good. Her mother would be just as well, and better, with a good strong nurse, who could lift her this way andthat, and change her about, without feeling her heart-strings wrung atevery gasp, as that poor child must. Oh, I _wish_ Glendenning was manenough to make her run off with him, and get married, in spite ofeverything. But, of course, that's impossible--for a clergyman! And hersacrifice began so long ago that it's become part of her life, andshe'll simply have to keep on. "

VIII. 

When her attack passed off, Mrs. Bentley sent and begged my wife to comeagain and see her. She went without me, while I was in town, but she wasso circumstantial in her report of her visit, when I came home, that Inever felt quite sure I had not been present. What most interested usboth was the extreme independence which the mother and daughter showedbeyond a certain point, and the daughter's great frankness in expressingher difference of feeling. We had already had some hint of this, thefirst day we met her, and we were not surprised at it now, my wife atfirst hand, or I at second hand. Mrs. Bentley opened the way for herdaughter by saying that the worst of sickness was that it made one suchan affliction to others. She lived in an atmosphere of devotion, shesaid, but her suffering left her so little of life that she could nothelp clinging selfishly to everything that remained. 

My wife perceived that this was meant for Miss Bentley, though it wasspoken to herself; and Miss Bentley seemed to take the same view of thefact. She said: "We needn't use any circumlocution with Mrs. March, mother. She knows just how the affair stands. You can say whatever youwish, though I don't know why you should wish to say anything. You havemade your own terms with us, and we are keeping them to the letter. Whatmore can you ask? Do you want me to break with Mr. Glendenning? I willdo that too, if you ask it. You have got everything _but_ that, and youcan have that at any time. But Arthur and I are perfectly satisfied asit is, and we can wait as long as you wish us to wait. "

Her mother said: "I'm not allowed to forget that for a single hour, " andMiss Bentley said, "I never remind you of it unless you make me, mother. You may be thinking of it all the time, but it isn't because of anythingI say. "

"Or that you _do_?" asked Mrs. Bentley; and her daughter answered, "Ican't help existing, of course. "

My wife broke off from the account she was giving me of her visit: "Youcan imagine how pleasant all this was for me, Basil, and how anxious Iwas to prolong my call!"

"Well, " I returned, "there were compensations. It was extremelyinteresting; it was life. You can't deny that, my dear. "

"It was more like death. Several times I was on the point of going, butyou know when there's been a painful scene you feel so sorry for thepeople who've made it that you can't bear to leave them to themselves. Idid get up to go, once, in mere self-defence, but they both urged me tostay, and I couldn't help staying till they could talk of other things. But now tell me what you think of it all. Which should your feeling bewith the most? That is what I want to get at before I tell you mine. "

"Which side was I on when we talked about them last?"

"Oh, when did we talk about them _last_? We are always talking aboutthem! I am getting no good of the summer at all. I shall go home in thefall more jaded and worn out than when I came. To think that we shouldhave this beautiful place, where we could be so happy and comfortable, if it were not for having this abnormal situation under our nose andeyes all the time!"

"Abnormal? I don't call it abnormal, " I began, and I was sensible of mywife's thoughts leaving her own injuries for my point of view so swiftlythat I could almost hear them whir. 

"Not abnormal!" she gasped. 

"No; only too natural. Isn't it perfectly natural for an invalid likethat to want to keep her daughter with her; and isn't it perfectlynatural for a daughter, with a New England sense of duty, to yield toher wish? You might say that she could get married and live at home, andthen she and Glendenning could both devote themselves--"

"No, no, " my wife broke in, "that wouldn't do. Marriage is marriage; andit puts the husband and wife with each other first; when it doesn't, it's a miserable mockery. "

"Even when there's a sick mother in the case?"

"A thousand sick mothers wouldn't alter the case. And that's what theyall three instinctively know, and they're doing the only thing they cando. "

"Then I don't see what we're complaining of. "

"Complaining of? We're complaining of its being all wrong and--romantic. Her mother has asked more than she had any right to ask, and MissBentley has tried to do more than she can perform, and that has madethem hate each other. "

"Should you say _hate_, quite?"

"It must come to that, if Mrs. Bentley lives. "

"Then let us hope she--"

"My dear!" cried Mrs. March, warningly. 

"Oh, come, now!" I retorted. "Do you mean to say that you haven'tthought how very much it would simplify the situation if--"

"Of course I have! And that is the wicked part of it. It's that that iswearing me out. It's perfectly hideous!"

"Well, fortunately we're not actively concerned in the affair, and weneedn't take any measures in regard to it. We are mere spectators, andas I see it the situation is not only inevitable for Mrs. Bentley, butit has a sort of heroic propriety for Miss Bentley. "

"And Glendenning?"

"Oh, Glendenning isn't provided for in my scheme. "

"Then I can tell you that your scheme, Basil, is worse than worthless. "

"I didn't brag of it, my dear, " I said, meekly enough. "I'm sorry forhim, but I can't help him. He must provide for himself out of hisreligion. "

IX. 

It was, indeed, a trying summer for our emotions, torn as we werebetween our pity for Mrs. Bentley and our compassion for her daughter. We had no repose, except when we centred our sympathies uponGlendenning, whom we could yearn over in tender regret without doing anyone else wrong, or even criticising another. He was our great stay inthat respect, and though a mere external witness might have thought thathe had the easiest part, we who knew his gentle and affectionate naturecould not but feel for him. We never concealed from ourselves certainfoibles of his; I have hinted at one, and we should have liked it betterif he had not been so sensible of the honor, from a worldly point, ofbeing engaged to Miss Bentley. But this was a very innocent vanity, andhe would have been willing to suffer for her mother and for herself, ifshe had let him. I have tried to insinuate how she would not let him, but freed him as much as possible from the stress of the situation, andassumed for him a mastery, a primacy, which he would never have assumedfor himself. We thought this very pretty of her, and in fact she wascapable of pretty things. What was hard and arrogant in her, and she wasnot without something of the kind at times, was like her mother; buteven she, poor soul, had her good points, as I have attempted tosuggest. We used to dwell upon them, when our talk with Glendenning grewconfidential, as it was apt to do; for it seemed to console him torealize that her daughter and he were making their sacrifice to a notwholly unamiable person. 

He confided equally in my wife and myself, but there were times when Ithink he rather preferred the counsel of a man friend. Once when we hadgone a walk into the country, which around Gormanville is of thepathetic Mid-Massachusetts loveliness and poverty, we sat down in ahillside orchard to rest, and he began abruptly to talk of his affair. Sometimes, he said, he felt that it was all an error, and he could notrid himself of the fear that an error persisted in was a wrong, andtherefore a species of sin. 

"That is very interesting, " I said. "I wonder if there is anything init? At first blush it looks so logical; but is it? Or are you simplygetting morbid? What is the error? What is your error?"

"You know, " he said, with a gentle refusal of my willingness to makelight of his trouble. "It is surely an error to allow a woman to giveher word when she can promise nothing more, and to let her hold herselfto it. "

I could have told him that I did not think the error in this case wasaltogether or mainly his, or the persistence in it; for it had seemed tome from the beginning that the love between him and Miss Bentley wasfully as much her affair as his, and that quite within the bounds ofmaidenly modesty she showed herself as passionately true to theirplighted troth. But of course this would not do, and I had to be contentwith the ironical suggestion that he might try offering to release MissBentley. 

"Don't laugh at me, " he implored, and I confess his tone would havetaken from me any heart to do so. 

"My dear fellow, " I said, "I see your point. But don't you think you arequite needlessly adding to your affliction by pressing it? You two arein the position which isn't at all uncommon with engaged people, ofhaving to wait upon exterior circumstances before you get married. Suppose you were prevented by poverty, as often happens? It would be ahardship as it is now; but in that case would your engagement be anyless an error than it is now? I don't think it would, and I don'tbelieve you think so either. "

"In that case we should not be opposing our wills to the will of someone else, who has a better claim to her daughter's allegiance than Ihave. It seems to me that our error was in letting her mother consent toour engagement if she would not or could not consent to our marriage. When it came to that we ought both to have had the strength to say thatthen there should be no engagement. It was my place to do that. I couldhave prevented the error which I can't undo. "

"I don't see how it could have been easier to prevent than to undo yourerror. I don't admit it's an error, but I call it so because you do. After all, an engagement is nothing but an open confession between twopeople that they are in love with each other and wish to marry. Thereneed be no sort of pledge or promise to make the engagement binding, ifthere is love. It's the love that binds. "

"Yes. "

"It bound you from your first acknowledgment of it, and unless you coulddeny your love now, or hereafter, it must always bind you. If you ownthat you still love each other, you are still engaged, no matter howmuch you release each other. Could you think of loving her and marryingsome one else? Could she love you and marry another? There isn't anyerror, unless you've mistaken your feeling for each other. If you have, I should decidedly say you couldn't break your engagement too soon. Infact, there wouldn't be any real engagement to break. "

"Of course you are right, " said Glendenning, but not so strenuously ashe might. 

I had a feeling that he had not put forward the main cause of hisunhappiness, though he had given a true cause; that he had made somelesser sense of wrong stand for a greater, as people often do inconfessing themselves; and I was not surprised when he presently added:"It is not merely the fact that she is bound in that way, and that heryoung life is passing in this sort of hopeless patience, butthat--that--I don't know how to put the ugly and wicked thing intowords, but I assure you that sometimes when I think--when I'm aware thatI know--Ah, I can't say it!"

"I fancy I understand what you mean, my dear boy, " I said, and in theright of my ten years' seniority I put my hand caressingly on hisshoulder, "and you are no more guilty than I am in knowing that if Mrs. Bentley were not in the way there would be no obstacle to yourhappiness. "

"But such a cognition is of hell, " he cried, and he let his face fallinto his hands and sobbed heartrendingly. 

"Yes, " I said, "such a cognition is of hell; you are quite right. So areall evil concepts and knowledges; but so long as they are merely thingsof our intelligence, they are no part of us, and we are not guilty ofthem. "

"No; I trust not, I trust not, " he returned, and I let him sob histrouble out before I spoke again; and then I began with a laugh ofunfeigned gayety. Something that my wife had hinted in one of our talksabout the lovers freakishly presented itself to my mind, and I said, "There is a way, and a very practical way, to put an end to the anomalyyou feel in an engagement which doesn't imply a marriage. "

"And what is that?" he asked, not very hopefully; but he dried his eyesand calmed himself. 

"Well, speaking after the manner of men, you might run off with MissBentley. "

All the blood in his body flushed into his face. "Don't!" he gasped, andI divined that what I had said must have been in his thoughts before, and I laughed again. "It wouldn't do, " he added, piteously. "Thescandal--I am a clergyman, and my parish--"

I perceived that no moral scruple presented itself to him; when it cameto the point, he was simply and naturally a lover, like any other man;and I persisted: "It would only be a seven days' wonder. I never heardof a clergyman's running away to be married; but they must havesometimes done it. Come, I don't believe you'd have to plead hard withMiss Bentley, and Mrs. March and I will aid and abet you to the limit ofour small ability. I'm sure that if I wrap up warm against the nightair, she will let me go and help you hold the rope-ladder taut. "

X. 

It was not very reverent to his cloth, or his recent tragical mood, butGlendenning was not offended; he laughed with a sheepish pleasure, andthat evening he came with Miss Bentley to call upon us. The visit passedwithout unusual confidences until they rose to go, when she saidabruptly to me: "I feel that we both owe you a great deal, Mr. March. Arthur has been telling me of your talk this afternoon, and I think thatwhat you said was all so wise and true! I don't mean, " she added, "yoursuggestion about putting an end to the anomaly!" and she and Glendenningboth laughed. 

My wife said, "That was very wicked, and I have scolded him for thinkingof such a thing. " She had, indeed, forgotten that she had put it in myhead, and made me wholly responsible for it. 

"Then you must scold me too a little, Mrs. March, " said the girl, "forI've sometimes wondered if I couldn't work Arthur up to the point ofmaking me run away with him, " which was a joke that wonderfully amusedus all. 

I said, "I shouldn't think it would be so difficult;" and she retorted:

"Oh, you've no idea how obdurate clergymen are;" and then she went on, seriously, to thank me for talking Glendenning out of his morbid mood. With the frankness sometimes characteristic of her she said that if hehad released her, it would have made no difference--she should stillhave felt herself bound to him; and until he should tell her that he nolonger cared for her, she should feel that he was bound to her. I saw nogreat originality in this reproduction of my own ideas. But when MissBentley added that she believed her mother herself would be shocked anddisappointed if they were to give each other up, I was aware of being inthe presence of a curious psychological fact. I so wholly lost myself inthe inquiry it invited that I let the talk flow on round me unheededwhile I questioned whether Mrs. Bentley did not derive a satisfactionfrom her own and her daughter's mutual opposition which she could neverhave enjoyed from their perfect agreement. She had made a certainconcession in consenting to the engagement, and this justified her toherself in refusing her consent to the marriage, while the ingratitudeof the young people in not being content with what she had done formed agrievance of constant avail with a lady of her temperament. From whatMiss Bentley let fall, half seriously, half jokingly, as well as what Iobserved, I divined a not unnatural effect of the strained relationsbetween her and her mother. She concentrated whatever resentment shefelt upon Miss Bentley, insomuch that it seemed as though she mightaltogether have withdrawn her opposition if it had been a questionmerely of Glendenning's marriage. So far from disliking him, she wasrather fond of him, and she had no apparent objection to him except asher daughter's husband. It had not always been so; at first she had anactive rancor against him; but this had gradually yielded to hisinvincible goodness and sweetness. 

"Who could hold out against him?" his betrothed demanded, fondly, whenthese facts had been more or less expressed to us; and it was not thefirst time that her love had seemed more explicit than his. He smiledround upon her, pressing the hand she put in his arm; for she asked thiswhen they stood on our threshold ready to go, and then he glanced at uswith eyes that fell bashfully from ours. 

"Oh, of course it will come right in time, " said my wife when they weregone, and I agreed that they need only have patience. We had all talkedourselves into a cheerful frame concerning the affair; we had seen it inits amusing aspects, and laughed about it; and that seemed almost initself to dispose of Mrs. Bentley's opposition. My wife and I decidedthat this could not long continue; that by-and-by she would become tiredof it, and this would happen all the sooner if the lovers submittedabsolutely, and did nothing to remind her of their submission. 

XI. 

The Conwells came home from Europe the next summer, and we did not goagain to Gormanville. But from time to time we heard of the Bentleys, and we heard to our great amaze that there was no change in thesituation, as concerned Miss Bentley and Glendenning. I think that laterit would have surprised us if we had learned that there was a change. Their lives all seemed to have adjusted themselves to the conditions, and we who were mere spectators came at last to feel nothing abnormal inthem. 

Now and then we saw Glendenning, and now and then Miss Bentley came tocall upon Mrs. March, when she was in town. Her mother had given up herBoston house, and they lived the whole year round at Gormanville, wherethe air was good for Mrs. Bentley without her apparently being thebetter for it; again, we heard in a roundabout way that theircircumstances were not so fortunate as they had been, and that they hadgiven up their Boston house partly from motives of economy. 

There was no reason why our intimacy with the lovers' affairs shouldcontinue, and it did not. Miss Bentley made mention of Glendenning, whenmy wife saw her, with what Mrs. March decided to be an abiding fealty, but without offer of confidence; and Glendenning, when we happened tomeet at rare intervals, did not invite me to more than formal inquiryconcerning the well-being of Mrs. Bentley and her daughter. 

He was undoubtedly getting older, and he looked it. He was one of thosegentle natures which put on fat, not from self-indulgence, but from wantof resisting force, and the clerical waistcoat that buttoned black tohis throat swayed decidedly beyond a straight line at his waist. Hisred-gold hair was getting thin, and though he wore it cut close allround, it showed thinner on the crown than on the temples, and his paleeyebrows were waning. He had a settled patience of look which would havebeen a sadness, if there had not been mixed with it an air of resolutecheerfulness. I am not sure that this kept it from being sad, either. 

Miss Bentley, on her part, was no longer the young girl she was when wemet on the _Corinthian_. She must then have been about twenty, and shewas now twenty-six, but she looked thirty. Dark people show their ageearly, and she showed hers in cheeks that grew thinner if not paler, andin a purple shadow under her fine eyes. The parting of her black hairwas wider than it once was, and she wore it smooth in apparent disdainof those arts of fluffing and fringing which give an air of vivacity, ifnot of youth. I should say she had always been a serious girl, and nowshe showed the effect of a life that could not have been gay for anyone. 

The lovers promised themselves, as we knew, that Mrs. Bentley wouldrelent, and abandon what was more like a whimsical caprice than asettled wish. But as time wore on, and she gave no sign of changing, Ihave wondered whether some change did not come upon them, which affectedthem towards each other without affecting their constancy. I fanciedtheir youthful passion taking on the sad color of patience, andcontenting itself more and more with such friendly companionship astheir fate afforded; it became, without marriage, that affectionatecomradery which wedded love passes into with the lapse of as many yearsas they had been plighted. "What, " I once suggested to my wife, in avery darkling mood--"what if they should gradually grow apart, and endin rejoicing that they had never been allowed to join their lives?Wouldn't that be rather Hawthornesque?"

"It wouldn't be true, " said Mrs. March, "and I don't see why you shouldput such a notion upon Hawthorne. If you can't be more cheerful aboutit, Basil, I wish you wouldn't talk of the affair at all. "

"Oh, I'm quite willing to be cheerful about it, my dear, " I returned;"and, if you like, we will fancy Mrs. Bentley coming round and ardentlywishing their marriage, and their gayly protesting that after havinggiven the matter a great deal of thought they had decided it would bebetter not to marry, but to live on separately for their own sake, justas they have been doing for hers so long. Wouldn't that be cheerful?"

Mrs. March said that if I wished to tease it was because I had no ideason the subject, and she would advise me to drop it. I did so, for thebetter part of the evening, but I could not relinquish it altogether. "Do you think, " I asked, finally, "that any sort of character will standthe test of such a prolonged engagement?"

"Why not? Very indifferent characters stand the test of marriage, andthat's indefinitely prolonged. "

"Yes, but it's not indefinite itself. Marriage is something verydistinct and permanent; but such an engagement as this has no sort offuture. It is a mere motionless present, without the inspiration of acommon life, and with no hope of release from durance except through achance that it will be sorrow instead of joy. I should think they wouldgo to pieces under the strain. "

"But as you see they don't, perhaps the strain isn't so great afterall. "

"Ah, " I confessed, "there is that wonderful adaptation of the human soulto any circumstances. It's the one thing that makes me respect ourfallen nature. Fallen? It seems to me that we ought to call it our risennature; it has steadily mounted with the responsibility that Adam tookfor it--or Eve. "

"I don't see, " said my wife, pursuing her momentary advantage, "why theyshould not be getting as much pleasure or happiness out of life as mostmarried people. Engagements are supposed to be very joyous, though Ithink they're rather exciting and restless times, as a general thing. Ifthey've settled down to being merely engaged, I've no doubt they'vedecided to make the best of being merely engaged as long as her motherlives. "

"There is that view of it, " I assented. 

XII. 

By the following autumn Glendenning had completed the seventh year ofhis engagement to Miss Bentley, and I reminded my wife that this seemedto be the scriptural length of a betrothal, as typified in the servicewhich Jacob rendered for Rachel. "But _he_ had a prospectivefather-in-law to deal with, " I added, "and Glendenning a mother-in-law. That may make a difference. "

Mrs. March did not join me in the humorous view of the affair which Itook. She asked me if I had heard anything from Glendenning lately; ifthat were the reason why I mentioned him. 

"No, " I said; "but I have some office business that will take me toGormanville to-morrow, and I did not know but you might like to go too, and look the ground over, and see how much we have been suffering forthem unnecessarily. " The fact was that we had now scarcely spoken ofGlendenning or the Bentleys for six months, and our minds were far toofull of our own affairs to be given more than very superficially totheirs at any time. "We could both go as well as not, " I suggested, "andyou could call upon the Bentleys while I looked after the company'sbusiness. "

"Thank you, Basil, I think I will let you go alone, " said my wife. "Buttry to find out how it is with them. Don't be so terriblystraightforward, and let it look as if that was what you came for. Don'tmake the slightest advance towards their confidence. But do let themopen up if they will. "

"My dear, you may depend upon my asking no leading questions whatever, and I shall behave with far more discretion than if you were with me. The danger is that I shall behave with too much, for I find that myinterest in their affair is very much faded. There is every probabilitythat unless Glendenning speaks of his engagement it won't be spoken ofat all. "

This was putting it rather with the indifference of the past six monthsthan with the feeling of the present moment. Since I had known that Iwas going to Gormanville, the interest I denied had renewed itselfpretty vividly for me, and I was intending not only to get everythingout of Glendenning that I decently could, but to give him as much goodadvice as he would bear. I was going to urge him to move upon theobstructive Mrs. Bentley with all his persuasive force, and I hadformulated some arguments for him which I thought he might use withsuccess. I did not tell my wife that this was my purpose, but all thesame I cherished it, and I gathered energy for the enforcement of myviews for Glendenning's happiness from the very dejection I was castinto by the outward effect of the Gormanville streets. They were all ina funeral blaze of their shade trees, which were mostly maples, but werehere and there a stretch of elms meeting in arches almost consciouslyGothic over the roadway; the maples were crimson and gold, and the elmsthe pale yellow that they affect in the fall. A silence hung under theirsad splendors which I found deepen when I got into what the inhabitantscalled the residential part. About the business centre there was somestir, and here in the transaction of my affairs I was in the thick of itfor a while. Everybody remembered me in a pleasant way, and I had tostop and pass the time of day, as they would have said, with a good manywhom I could not remember at once. It seemed to me that the maples infront of St. Michael's rectory were rather more depressingly gaudy thanelsewhere in Gormanville; but I believe they were only thicker. I foundGlendenning in his study, and he was so far from being cast down bytheir blazon that I thought him decidedly cheerfuller than when I sawhim last. He met me with what for him was ardor; and as he had asked memost cordially about my family, I thought it fit to inquire how theladies at the Bentley place were. 

"Why, very well, very well indeed, " he answered, brightly. "It's veryodd, but Edith and I were talking about you all only last night, andwishing we could see you again. Edith is most uncommonly well. Duringthe summer Mrs. Bentley had some rather severer attacks than usual, andthe care and anxiety told upon Edith, but since the cooler weather hascome she has picked up wonderfully. " He did not say that Mrs. Bentleyhad shared this gain, and I imagined that he had a reluctance to confessshe had not. He went on, "You're going to stay and spend the night withme, aren't you?"

"No, " I said; "I'm obliged to be off by the four-o'clock train. But if Imay be allowed to name the hospitality I could accept, I should sayluncheon. "

"Good!" cried Glendenning, gayly. "Let us go and have it at theBentleys'. "

"Far be it from me to say where you shall lunch me, " I returned. "Thequestion isn't where, but when and how, with me. "

He got his hat and stick, and as we started out of his door he began:"You'll be a little surprised at the informality, perhaps, but I'm gladyou take it so easily. It makes it easier for me to explain that I'malmost domesticated at the Bentley homestead; I come and go very much asif it were my own house. "

"My dear fellow, " I said, "I'm not surprised at anything in yourrelation to the Bentley homestead, and I won't vex you with any gladinferences. "

"Why, " he returned, a little bashfully, "there's no explicit change. Theaffair is just where it has been all along. But with the gradual declinein Mrs. Bentley--I'm afraid you'll notice it--she seems rather to wantme about, and at times I'm able to be of use to Edith, and so--"

He stopped, and I said, "Exactly. "

He went on: "Of course it's rather anomalous, and I oughtn't to let youget the impression that she has actually conceded anything. But sheshows herself much more--er, shall I say?--affectionate, and I can'thelp hoping there may be a change in her mood which will declare itselfin an attitude more favorable to--"

I said again, "Exactly, " and Glendenning resumed:

"In spite of Edith's not having been quite so well as usual--she'swonderfully well now--it's been a very happy summer with us, on accountof this change. It seems to have come about in a very natural way withMrs. Bentley, and out of a growing regard which I can't specificallyaccount for, as far as anything I've done is concerned. "

"I think I could account for it, " said I. "She must be a stonier-heartedold lady than I imagine if she hasn't felt your goodness, all along, Glendenning. "

"Why, you're very kind, " said the gentle creature. "You tempt me torepeat what she said, at the only time she expressed a wish to have meoftener with them: 'You've been very patient with a contrary old woman. But I sha'n't make you wait much longer. '"

"Well, I think that was very encouraging, my dear fellow. "

"Do you?" he asked, wistfully. "I thought so too, at first, but when Itold Edith she could not take that view of it. She said that she did notbelieve her mother had changed her mind at all, and that she only meantshe was growing older. "

"But, at any rate, " I argued, "it was pleasant to have her make an openrecognition of your patience. "

"Yes, that was pleasant, " he said, cheerfully again, "And it was thebeginning of the kind of relation that I have held ever since to herhousehold. I am afraid I am there a good half of my time, and I believeI dine there oftener than I do at home. I am quite on the footing of ason, with her. "

"There are some of the unregenerate, Glendenning, " I made bold to say, "who think it is your own fault that you weren't on the footing of ason-in-law with her long ago. If you'll excuse my saying so, you havebeen, if anything, too patient. It would have been far better for all ifyou had taken the bit in your teeth six or seven years back--"

He drew a deep breath. "It wouldn't have done; it wouldn't have done!Edith herself would never have consented to it. "

"Did you ever ask her?"

"No, " he said, innocently. "How could I?"

"And of course _she_ could never ask _you_, " I laughed. "My opinion isthat you have lost a great deal of time unnecessarily. I haven't theleast doubt that if you had brought a little pressure to bear with Mrs. Bentley herself, it would have sufficed. "

He looked at me with a kind of dismay, as if my words had carriedconviction, or had roused a conviction long dormant in his heart. "Itwouldn't have done, " he gasped. 

"It isn't too late to try, yet, " I suggested. 

"Yes, it's too late. We must wait now. " He hastened to add, "Until sheyields entirely of herself. "

He gave me a guilty glance when he drew near the Bentley place and wesaw a buggy standing at the gate. "The doctor!" he said, and he hurriedme up the walk to the door. 

The door stood open and we heard the doctor saying to some one within:"No, no, nothing organic at all, I assure you. One of the commonestfunctional disturbances. "

Miss Bentley appeared at the threshold with him, and she and Glendenninghad time to exchange a glance of anxiety and of smiling reassurance, before she put out her hand in greeting to me, a very glad and cordialgreeting, apparently. The doctor and I shook hands, and he got himselfaway with what I afterwards remembered as undue quickness, and left usto Miss Bentley. 

Glendenning was quite right about her looking better. She looked evengay, and there was a vivid color in her checks such as I had not seenthere for many years; her lips were red, her eyes brilliant. Her facewas still perhaps as thin as ever, but it was indescribably younger. 

I cannot say that there were the materials of a merrymaking amongst us, exactly, and yet I remember that luncheon as rather a gay one, with somelaughing. I had not been till now in discovering that Miss Bentley had acertain gift of humor, so shy and proud, if I may so express it, that itwould not show itself except upon long acquaintance, and I distinctlyperceived now that this enabled her to make light of a burden that mightotherwise have been intolerable. It qualified her to treat withcheerfulness the grimness of her mother, which had certainly not grownless since I saw her last, and to turn into something like a joke hervaletudinarian austerities of sentiment and opinion. She made a pleasantmock of the amenities which passed between her mother and Glendenning, whose gingerliness in the acceptance of the old lady's condescensionwould, I confess, have been notably comical without this gloss. It wasperfectly evident that Mrs. Bentley's favor was bestowed with a mentalreservation, and conditioned upon his forming no expectations from it, and poor Glendenning's eagerness to show that he took it upon theseterms was amusing as well as touching. I do not know how to express thatMiss Bentley contrived to eliminate herself from the affair, or to havethe effect of doing that, and to abandon it to them. I can only say thatshe left them to be civil to each other, and that, except when sherecurred to them in playful sarcasm from time to time, she devotedherself to me. 

Evidently, Mrs. Bentley was very much worse than she had been; herbreathing was painfully labored. But if her daughter had any anxietyabout her condition, she concealed it most effectually from us. Idecided that she had perhaps been asking the doctor as to certainsymptoms that had alarmed her, and it was in the rebound from heranxiety that her spirits had risen to the height I saw. Glendenningseized the moment of her absence after luncheon, when she helped hermother up to her room, to impart to me that this was his conclusion too. He said that he had not seen her so cheerful for a long time, and when Ipraised her in every way he basked in my appreciation of her as if ithad all been flattery for himself. She came back directly, and then Ihad a chance to see what she might have been under happier stars. Shecould not, at any moment, help showing herself an intellectual andcultivated woman, but her opportunities to show herself a woman of raresocial gifts had been scanted by circumstances and perhaps byconscience. It seemed to me that even in devoting herself to her motheras she had always done she need not have enslaved herself, and that itwas in this excess her inherited puritanism came out. She mightsometimes openly rebel against her mother's domination, as my wife and Ihad now and again seen her do; but inwardly she was almost passionatelysubmissive. Here I thought that Glendenning, if he had been a differentsort of man, might have been useful to her; he might have encouraged herin a little wholesome selfishness, and enabled her to withhold sacrificewhere it was needless. But I am not sure; perhaps he would have made hermore unhappy, if he had attempted this; perhaps he was the only sort ofman whom, in her sense of his own utter unselfishness, she could havegiven her heart to in perfect peace. She now talked brilliantly andjoyously to me, but all the time her eye sought his for his approval andsympathy; he, for his part, was content to listen in a sort of beatificpride in her which he did not, in his simple-hearted fondness, make anyeffort to mask. 

When we came away he made himself amends for his silence by a long hymnin worship of her, and I listened with all the acquiescence possible. Heasked me questions--whether I had noticed this thing or that about her, or remembered what she had said upon one point or another, and led up tocompliments of her which I was glad to pay. In the long ordeal they hadundergone they had at least kept all the freshness of their love. 

XIII. 

Glendenning and I went back to the rectory, and sat down in his study, or rather he made me draw a chair to the open door, and sat down himselfon a step below the threshold. The day was one of autumnal warmth; thehaze of Indian summer blued the still air, and the wind that now andthen stirred the stiff panoply of the trees was lullingly soft. Thispart of Gormanville quite overlooked the busier district about themills, where the water-power found its way, and it was something of aclimb even from the business street of the old hill village, which therival prosperity of the industrial settlement in the valley had throwninto an aristocratic aloofness. From the upper windows of the rectoryone could have seen only the red and yellow of the maples, but from thestudy door we caught glimpses past their boles of the outlying country, as it showed between the white mansions across the way. One of these, asI have already mentioned, was the Conwell place; and after we had talkedof the landscape awhile, Glendenning said: "By the way! Why don't youbuy the Conwell place? You liked it so much, and you were all so well inGormanville. The Conwells want to sell it, and it would be just thething for you, five or six months of the year. "

I explained, almost compassionately, the impossibility of a poorinsurance man thinking of a summer residence like the Conwell place, andI combated as well as I could the optimistic reasons of my friend in itsfavor. I was not very severe with him, for I saw that his optimism wasnot so much from his wish to have me live in Gormanville as from the newhope that filled him. It was by a perfectly natural, if not very logicaltransition that we were presently talking of this greater interestagain, and Glendenning was going over all the plans that it included. Iencouraged him to believe, as he desired, that a sea-voyage would be thething for Mrs. Bentley, and that it would be his duty to take her toEurope as soon as he was in authority to do so. They should always, hesaid, live in Gormanville, for they were greatly attached to the place, and they should keep up the old Bentley homestead in the style that hethought they owed to the region where the Bentleys had always lived. Itis a comfort to a man to tell his dreams, whether of the night or of theday, and I enjoyed Glendenning's pleasure in rehearsing these fondreveries of his. 

He interrupted himself to listen to the sound of hurried steps, anddirectly a man in his shirt-sleeves came running by on the sidewalkbeyond the maples. In a village like Gormanville any passer is ofinterest to the spectator, and a man running is of thrilling moment. Glendenning started to his feet, and moved forward for a better sight ofthe flying passer. He called out to the man, who shouted back somethingI could not understand, and ran on. 

"What did he say?"

"I don't know. " Glendenning's face as he turned to me again was quitewhite. "It is Mrs. Bentley's farmer, " he added, feebly, and I could seethat it was with an effort he kept himself from sinking. "Something hashappened. "

"Oh, I guess not, or not anything serious, " I answered, with an effortto throw off the weight I suddenly felt at my own heart. "People havebeen known to run for a plumber. But if you're anxious, let us go andsee what the matter is. "

I turned and got my hat; Glendenning came in for his, but seemed unableto find it, though he stood before the table where it lay. I had tolaugh, though I felt so little like it, as I put it in his hand. 

"Don't leave me, " he entreated, as we hurried out through the maples tothe sidewalk. "It has come at last, and I feel, as I always knew Ishould, like a murderer. "

"What rubbish!" I retorted. "You don't know that anything has happened. You don't know what the man's gone for. "

"Yes, I do, " he said. "Mrs. Bentley is--He's gone for the doctor. "

As he spoke a buggy came tearing down the street behind us; the doctorwas in it, and the man in shirt-sleeves beside him. We did not try tohail them, but as they whirled by the farmer turned his face, and againcalled something unintelligible to Glendenning. 

We made what speed we could after them, but they were long out of sightin the mile that it seemed to me we were an hour in covering before wereached the Bentley place. The doctor's buggy stood at the gate, and Iperceived that I was without authority to enter the house, on which someunknown calamity had fallen, no matter with what good-will I had come; Icould see that Glendenning had suffered a sudden estrangement, also, which he had to make a struggle against. But he went in, leaving mewithout, as if he had forgotten me. 

I could not go away, and I walked down the path to the gate, and waitedthere, in case I should be in any wise wanted. After a very long timethe doctor came bolting over the walk towards me, as if he did not seeme, but he brought himself up short with an "Oh!" before he actuallystruck against me. I had known him during our summer at the Conwellplace, where we used to have him in for our little ailments, and I wouldnever have believed that his round, optimistic face could look soworried. I read the worst in it; Glendenning was right; but I asked thedoctor, quite as if I did not know, whether there was anything seriousthe matter. 

"Serious--yes, " he said. "Get in with me; I have to see another patient, but I'll bring you back. " We mounted into his buggy, and he went on. "She's in no immediate danger, now. The faint lasted so long I didn'tknow whether we should bring her out of it, at one time, but the mostalarming part is over for the present. There is some trouble with theheart, but I don't think anything organic. "

"Yes, I heard you telling her daughter so, just before lunch. Isn't it afrequent complication with asthma?"

"Asthma? Her daughter? Whom are you talking about?"

"Mrs. Bentley. Isn't Mrs. Bentley--"

"No!" shouted the doctor, in disgust, "Mrs. Bentley is as well as ever. It's Miss Bentley. I wish there was a thousandth part of the chance forher that there is for her mother. "

XIV. 

I stayed over for the last train to Boston, and then I had to go homewithout the hope which Miss Bentley's first rally had given the doctor. My wife and I talked the affair over far into the night, and in thepaucity of particulars I was almost driven to their invention. But Imanaged to keep a good conscience, and at the same time to satisfy thedemand for facts in a measure by the indulgence of conjectures whichMrs. March continually took for them. The doctor had let fall, in histalk with me, that he had no doubt Miss Bentley had aggravated theaffection of the heart from which she was suffering by her exertions inlifting her mother about so much; and my wife said that it needed onlythat touch to make the tragedy complete. 

"Unless, " I suggested, "you could add that her mother had just told hershe would not oppose her marriage any longer, and it was the joy thatbrought on the access of the trouble that is killing her. "

"Did the doctor say that?" Mrs. March demanded, severely. 

"No. And I haven't the least notion that anything like it happened. Butif it had--"

"It would have been too tawdry. I'm ashamed of you for thinking of sucha thing, Basil. "

Upon reflection, I was rather ashamed myself; but I plucked up courageto venture: "It would be rather fine, wouldn't it, when that poor girlis gone, if Mrs. Bentley had Glendenning come and live with her, andthey devoted themselves to each other for her daughter's sake?"

"Fine! It would be ghastly. What are you thinking of, my dear? How wouldit be fine?"

"Oh, I mean dramatically, " I apologized, and, not to make bad worse, Isaid no more. 

The next day, which was Sunday, a telegram came for me, which I decided, without opening it, to be the announcement of the end. But it proved tobe a message from Mrs. Bentley, begging in most urgent terms that Mrs. March and I would come to her at once, if possible. These terms left thewidest latitude for surmise, but none for choice, in the sadcircumstances, and we looked up the Sunday trains for Gormanville, andwent. 

We found the poor woman piteously grateful, but by no means soprostrated as we had expected. She was rather, as often happens, stayedand held upright by the burden that had been laid upon her, and it waswith fortitude if not dignity that she appealed to us for our counsel, and if possible our help, in a matter about which she had alreadyconsulted the doctor. "The doctor says that the excitement cannot hurtEdith; it may even help her, to propose it. I should like to do it, butif you do not think well of it, I will not do it. I know it is too latenow to make up to her for the past, " said Mrs. Bentley, and here shegave way to the grief she had restrained hitherto. 

"There is no one else, " she went on, "who has been so intimatelyacquainted with the facts of my daughter's engagement--no one else thatI can confide in or appeal to. "

We both murmured that she was very good; but she put our politenesssomewhat peremptorily aside. 

"It is the only thing I can do now, and it is useless to do that now. Itwill be no reparation for the past, and it will be for myself and notfor her, as all that I have done in the past has been; but I wish toknow what you think of their getting married now. "

I am afraid that if we had said what we thought of such a tardy andfutile proof of penitence we should have brought little comfort to themother's heart, but we looked at each other in the disgust we both feltand said there would be a sacred fitness in it. 

She was apparently much consoled. 

It was touching enough, and I at least was affected by her tears; I amnot so sure my wife was. But she had instantly to consider how best topropose the matter to Miss Bentley, and to act upon her decision. 

After all, as she reported the fact to me later, it was very simple tosuggest her mother's wish to the girl, who listened to it with a perfectintelligence in which there was no bitterness. 

"They think I am going to die, " she said, quietly, "and I can understandhow she feels. It seems such a mockery; but if she wishes it; andArthur--"

It was my part to deal with Glendenning, and I did not find it so easy. 

"Marriage is for life and for earth, " he said, solemnly, and I thoughtvery truly. "In the resurrection we shall be one another's without it. Idon't like to go through the form of such a sacrament idly; it seemslike a profanation of its mystery. "

"But if Miss Bentley--"

"She will think whatever I do; I shall feel as she does, " he answered, with dignity. 

"Yes, I know, " I urged. "It would not be for her; it would not certainlybe for yourself. But if you could see it as the only form of reparationwhich her mother can now offer you both, and the only mode of expressingyour own forgiveness--Recollect how you felt when you thought that itwas Mrs. Bentley's death; try to recall something of that terribletime--"

"I don't forget that, " he relented. "It was in mercy to Edith and methat our trial is what it is: we have recognized that in the face ofeternity. I can forgive anything in gratitude for that. "

 * * * * *

I have often had to criticise life for a certain caprice with which shetreats the elements of drama, and mars the finest conditions of tragedywith a touch of farce. No one who witnessed the marriage of ArthurGlendenning and Edith Bentley had any belief that she would survive ittwenty-four hours; they themselves were wholly without hope in themoment which for happier lovers is all hope. To me it was like afuneral, but then most weddings are rather ghastly to look upon; and thestroke that life had in reserve perhaps finally restored the lostbalance of gayety in this. At any rate, Mrs. Glendenning did live, andshe is living yet, and in rather more happiness than comes to mostpeople under brighter auspices. After long contention among manydoctors, the original opinion that her heart trouble was functional, notorganic, has been elected final, and upon these terms she bids fair tolive as long as any of us. 

I do not know whether she will live as long as her mother, who seems tohave taken a fresh lease of years from her single act of self-sacrifice. I cannot say whether Mrs. Bentley feels herself deceived and defraudedby her daughter's recovery; but I have made my wife observe that itwould be just like life if she bore the young couple a sort of grudgefor unwittingly outwitting her. Certainly, on the day we lately spentwith them all at Gormanville, she seemed, in the slight attack of asthmafrom which she suffered, to come as heavily and exactingly upon both asshe used to come upon her daughter alone. But I was glad to see thatGlendenning eagerly bore the greater part of the common burden. He growsstouter and stouter, and will soon be the figure of a bishop. 

THE PURSUIT OF THE PIANO. 

I. 

Hamilton Gaites sat breakfasting by the window of a restaurant lookingout on Park Square, in Boston, at a table which he had chosen afterrejecting one on the Boylston Street side of the place because it wastoo noisy, and another in the little open space, among evergreens intubs, between the front and rear, because it was too chilly. The windwas east, but at his Park Square window it tempered the summer morningair without being a draught; and he poured out his coffee with a contentin his circumstance and provision which he was apt to feel when he hadtaken all the possible pains, even though the result was not perfect. But now, he had real French bread, as good as he could have got in NewYork, and the coffee was clear and bright. A growth of crisp greenwatercress embowered a juicy steak, and in its shade, as it were, laytwo long slices of bacon, not stupidly broiled to a crisp, butdelicately pink, and exemplarily lean. Gaites had already had acantaloupe, whose spicy fragrance lingered in the air and mingled withthe robuster odors of the coffee, the steak, and the bacon. 

He owned to being a fuss, but he contended that he was a cheerful fuss, and when things went reasonably well with him, he was so. They weregoing well with him now, not only in the small but in the large way. Hewas sitting there before that capital breakfast in less than half anhour after leaving the sleeping-car, where he had passed a very goodnight, and he was setting out on his vacation, after very successfulwork in the June term of court. He was in prime health; he had a goodconscience in leaving no interests behind him that could suffer in hisabsence; and the smile that he bent upon the Italian waiter as heretired, after putting down the breakfast, had some elements of abenediction. 

There was a good deal of Gaites's smile, when it was all on: he had agenerous mouth, full of handsome teeth, very white and even, which allshowed in his smile. His whole face took part in the smile, and it was acharming face, long and rather quaintly narrow, of an amiableaquilinity, and clean-shaven. His figure, tall and thin, comported wellwith his style of visage, and at a given moment, when he suddenly roseand leaned from the window, eagerly following something outside with hiseye, he had an alert movement that was very pleasant. 

The thing outside which had caught, and which now kept, his eye as longas he could see it, was a case in the shape of an upright piano, on theend of a long, heavy-laden truck, making its way with a slow, joltingprogress among the carts, carriages, and street cars, out of the squareround the corner toward Boylston Street. On the sloping front of thecase was inscribed an address, which seemed to gaze at Gaites with theeyes of the girl whom it named and placed, and to whom in the youngman's willing fancy it attributed a charming quality. Nothing, he felt, could be more suggestive, more expressive of something shy, somethingproud, something pure, something pastoral yet patrician, somethingunaffected and yet _chic_, in an unknown personality, than the legend:

 Miss Phyllis Desmond, Lower Merritt, New Hampshire. 

 Via S. B. & H. C. R. R. 

Like most lawyers, he had a vein of romance, and this now opened inpleasing conjectures concerning the girl. He knew just where LowerMerritt was, and so well what it was like that a vision of its whitepaint against the dark green curtain of the wooded heights around itfilled his sense as agreeably as so much white marble. There was thecottage of some summer people well above the village level, among pinesand birches, and overlooking the foamiest rush of the Saco, to which heinstantly destined the piano of Phyllis Desmond. He had never known thatthese people's name was Desmond, and he had certainly never supposedthat they had a daughter called Phyllis; but he divined these facts inlosing sight of the truck; and he imagined with as logical probabilitythat one of the little girls whom he used to see playing on thehill-slope before the cottage had grown up into the young lady whosename the piano bore. There was quite time enough for thistransformation; it was seven years since Gaites had run up into theWhite Mountains for a month's rest after his last term in the HarvardLaw School, and before beginning work in the office of the law firm inNew York where he had got a clerkship, and where he had now a juniorpartnership. The little girl was then just ten years old, and now, ofcourse, the young lady was seventeen, or would be when the piano reachedLower Merritt, for it was clearly meant to arrive on her birthday; itwas a birthday-present and a surprise. He had always liked the way thosenice people let their children play about barefoot; it would be incharacter with them to do a fond, pretty thing like that; and Gaitessmiled for pleasure in it, and then rather blushed in relating the brownlegs of the little girl, as he remembered seeing them in her races overher father's lawn, to the dignified young lady she had now become. 

He amused himself in mentally following the piano on its way to the SeaBoard & Hill Country R. R. Freight-depot, which he was quite able to dofrom a habit of Boston formed during his four years in the academiccourse and his three years in the law-school at Harvard. He knew that itwould cross Boylston into Charles Street, and keep along that level toCambridge; then it would turn into McLane Street, and again into Lynde, by this means avoiding the grades as much as possible, and arrivingthrough Causeway Street at the long, low freight-depot of the S. B. & H. C. , where it would be the first thing unloaded from the truck. It wouldstand indefinitely on the outer platform; and then, when the men inflat, narrow-peaked silk caps and grease-splotched overalls got round toit, with an air of as much personal indifference as if they were meremechanical agencies, it would be pulled and pushed into the dimness ofthe interior, cool, and pleasantly smelling of pine, and hemp, andflour, and dried fruit, and coffee, and tar, and leather, and fish. There it would abide, indefinitely again, till in the same largeimpersonal way it was pulled and pushed out on the platform beside thetrack, where a freight-car marked for the Hill Country division of theroad, with devices intelligible to the train-men, had been shunted downby a pony engine in obedience to mystical semaphoric gesticulations, from the brakeman risking his life for the purpose among the rails, addressed to the engineer keeping his hand on the pulse of thelocomotive, and his head out of the cab window to see how near he couldcome to killing the brakeman without doing it. 

Gaites witnessed the whole drama with an interest that held himsuspended between the gulps and morsels of his breakfast, and at timesquite arrested the processes of mastication and deglutition. That prettygirl's name on the slope of the piano-case continued to look at him fromthe end of the truck; it smiled at him from the outer platform of thefreight-house; it entreated him with a charming trepidation from the diminterior; again it smiled on the inner platform; and then, from thesafety of the car, where the case found itself ensconced among freightof a neat and agreeable character, the name had the effect of intrepidlyblowing him a kiss as the train-man slid the car doors together andfastened them. He drew a long breath when the train had backed andbumped down to the car, and the couplers had clashed together, and themaniac, who had not been mashed in dropping the coupling-pin into itssocket, scrambled out from the wheels, and frantically worked his armsto the potential homicide in the locomotive cab, and the train hadjolted forward on the beginning of its run. 

That was the last of the piano, and Gaites threw it off his mind, andfinished his breakfast at his leisure. He was going to spend hisvacation at Kent Harbor, where he knew some agreeable people, and wherehe knew that a young man had many chances of a good time, even if hewere not the youngest kind of young man. He had spent two of his Harvardvacations there, and he knew this at first hand. He could not and didnot expect to do so much two-ing on the rocks and up the river as heused; the zest of that sort of thing was past, rather; but he hadbrought his golf stockings with him, and a quiverful of the utensils ofthe game, in obedience to a lady who had said there were golf-links atKent, and she knew a young lady who would teach him to play. 

He was going to stop off at Burymouth, to see a friend, an old Harvardman, and a mighty good fellow, who had rather surprised people by givingup New York, and settling in the gentle old town on the Piscatamac. Theyaccounted for it as well as they could by his having married a Burymouthgirl; and since he had begun, most unexpectedly, to come forward inliterature, such of his friends as had seen him there said it was justthe place for him. Gaites had not yet seen him there, and he had aromantic curiosity, the survival of an intensified friendship of theirSenior year, to do so. He got to thinking of this good fellow rathervividly, when he had cleared his mind of Miss Desmond's piano, and hedid not see why he should not take an earlier train to Burymouth than hehad intended to take; and so he had them call him a coupé from therestaurant, and he got into it as soon as he left the breakfast-table. 

He gave the driver the authoritative address, "Sea Board Depot, " andleft him to take his own way, after resisting a rather silly impulse tobid him go through Charles Street. 

The man drove up Beacon, and down Temple through Staniford, andnaturally Gaites saw nothing of Miss Desmond's piano, which had comeinto his mind again in starting. He did not know the colonnadedstructure, with its stately _porte-cochère_, where his driver proposedto leave him, instead of the formless brick box which he remembered asthe Sea Board Depot, and he insisted upon that when the fellow got downto open the door. 

"Ain't no Sibbod Dippo, now, " the driver explained, contemptuously. "Guess Union Dippo'll do, though;" and Gaites, a little overcome withits splendor, found that it would. He faltered a moment in passing theconductor and porter at the end of the Pullman car on his train, andthen decided that it would be ridiculous to take a seat in it for theshort run to Burymouth. In the common coach he got a very good seat onthe shady side, where he put down his hand-bag. Then he looked at hiswatch, and as it was still fifteen minutes before train-time, heindulged a fantastic impulse. He left the car and hurried back throughthe station and out through the electrics, hacks, herdics, carts, andstring-teams of Causeway Street, and up the sidewalk of the streetopening into it, as far as the S. B. & H. C. Freight-depot. On the wayhe bet himself five dollars that Miss Desmond's piano would not bethere, and lost; for at the moment he came up it was unloading from theend of the truck which he had seen carrying it past the window of hisrestaurant. 

The fact amused him quite beyond the measure of anything intrinsicallyhumorous in it, and he staid watching the exertions of the heatedtruckman and two silk-capped, sarcastic-faced freight-men, till thepiano was well on the platform. He was so intent upon it that hisinterest seemed to communicate itself to a young girl coming from theother quarter, with a suburban, cloth-sided, crewel-initialed bag in herhand, as if she were going to a train. She paused in the stare she gavethe piano-case, and then slowed her pace with a look over her shoulderafter she got by. In this her eyes met his, and she blushed and hurriedon; but not so soon that he had not time to see she had a thin face of apathetic prettiness, gentle brown eyes with wistful brows, underordinary brown hair. She was rather little, and was dressed with a sortof unaccented propriety, which was as far from distinction as it wasfrom pretension. 

When Gaites got back to his car, a few minutes before the train was tostart, he found the seat where he had left his hand-bag and lightovercoat more than half full of a bulky lady, who looked stupidly up athim, and did not move or attempt any excuse for crowding him from hisplace. He had to walk the whole length of the car before he came to avacant seat. It was the last of the transverse seats, and at the momenthe dropped into it, the girl who had watched the unloading of the pianowith him passed him, and took the sidewise seat next the door. 

She took it with a weary resignation which somehow made Gaites ashamedof the haste with which he had pushed forward to the only good place, and he felt as guilty of keeping her out of it as if he had known shewas following him. He kept a remorseful eye upon her as she arranged herbag and umbrella about her, with some paper parcels which she must havehad sent to her at the station. She breathed quickly, as if from finalhurry, but somewhat also as if she were delicate; and tried to look asif she did not know he was watching her. She had taken off one of hergloves, and her hand, though little enough, showed an unexpected vigorwith reference to her face, and had a curious air of education. 

When the train pulled out of the station into the clearer light, sheturned her face from him toward the forward window, and the corner ofher mouth, which her half-averted profile gave him, had a kind ofpiteous droop which smote him to keener regret. Once it lifted in anupward curve, and a gay light came into the corner of her eye; then themouth drooped again, and the light went out. 

Gaites could bear it no longer; he rose and said, with a respectful bow:"Won't you take my seat? That seems such a very inconvenient place foryou, with the door opening and shutting. "

The girl turned her face promptly round and up, and answered, with aflush in her thin cheek, but no embarrassment in her tone, "No, I thankyou. This will do quite well, " and then she turned her face away asbefore. 

He had not meant his politeness for an overture to her acquaintance, buthe felt as justly snubbed as if he had; and he sank back into his seatin some disorder. He tried to hide his confusion behind the newspaper heopened between them; but from time to time he had a glimpse of her roundthe side of it, and he saw that the hand which clutched her bag all thewhile tightened upon it and then loosened nervously. 

II. 

"Ah, I see what you mean, " said Gaites, with a kind of finality, as hisfriend Birkwall walked him homeward through the loveliest of the lovelyold Burymouth streets. Something equivalent had been in his mind and onhis tongue at every dramatic instant of the afternoon; and, in fact, ever since he had arrived from the station at Birkwall's door, whereMrs. Birkwall met them and welcomed him. He had been sufficientlyimpressed with the aristocratic quiet of the vast square white oldwooden house, standing behind a high white board fence, in two acres ofgardened ground; but the fine hallway with its broad low stairway, thestately drawing-room with its carving, the library with its panellingand portraits, and the dining-room with its tall wainscoting, united togive him a sense of the pride of life in old Burymouth such as the rawsplendors of the millionaire houses in New York had never imparted tohim. 

"They knew how to do it, they knew how to do it!" he exclaimed, meaningthe people who had such houses built; and he said the same thing of theother Burymouth houses which Birkwall showed him, by grace of theirowners, after the mid-day dinner, which Gaites kept calling luncheon. 

"Be sure you get back in good time for _tea_, " said Mrs. Birkwall for aparting charge to her husband; and she bade Gaites, "Remember that it_is_ tea, please; _not_ dinner;" and he was tempted to kiss his hand toher with as much courtly gallantry as he could; for, standing under thetransom of the slender-pillared portal to watch them away, she lookedmost distinctly descended from ancestors, and not merely the daughter ofa father and mother, as most women do. Gaites said as much to Birkwall, and when they got home Birkwall repeated it to his wife, withoutinjuring Gaites with her. If he saw what Birkwall had meant in marryingher, and settling down to his literary life with her in the atmosphereof such a quiet place as Burymouth, when he might have chosen money andunrest in New York, she on her side saw what her husband meant in likingthe shrewd, able fellow who had such a vein of gay romance in hispracticality, and such an intelligent and respectful sympathy with hertradition and environment. 

She sent and asked several of her friends to meet him at tea; and if inthat New England disproportion of the sexes which at Burymouth isintensified almost to a pure gynocracy these friends were nearly allwomen, he found them even more agreeable than if they had been nearlyall men. It seemed to him that he had never heard better talk than thatof these sequestered ladies, who were so well bred and so well read, sohumorous and so dignified, who loved to laugh and who loved to think. Itwas all like something in a pleasant book, and Gaites was not altogetherto blame if it went to his head, and after the talk had been ofBurymouth, in which he professed so acceptable an interest, and then ofnovels, of which he had read about as many as they, he confided to thewhole table his experience with Miss Phyllis Desmond's piano. He managedthe psychology of the little incident so well that he imparted the veryquality he meant them to feel in it. 

"How perfectly charming!" said one of the ladies. "I don't wonder youfell in love with the name. It's fit for a shepherdess of high degree. "

"If _I_ were a man, " said the girl across the table who was not lesssweetly a girl because she would never see thirty-nine again, "I shouldsimply drop everything and follow that piano to Phyllis Desmond's door. "

"It's quite what I should like to do, " Gaites responded, with awell-affected air of passionate regret. "But I'm promised at KentHarbor--"

She did not wait for him to say more, but submitted, "Oh, well, ifyou're going to Kent _Harbor_, of course!" as if that would excuse andexplain any sort of dereliction; and then the talk went on about KentHarbor till Mrs. Birkwall asked, generally, as if it were part of theKent Harbor inquiry, "Didn't I hear that the Ashwoods were going totheir place at Upper Merritt, this year?"

Then there arose a dispute, which divided the company into nearly equalparties; as to whether the Ashwoods had got home from Europe yet. But itall ended in bringing the talk back to Phyllis Desmond's piano again, and in urging its pursuit upon Gaites, as something he owed to romance;at least he ought to do it for their sake, for now they should all beupon pins and needles till they knew who she was, and what she _could_be doing at Lower Merritt, N. H. 

At one time he had it on his tongue to say that there seemed to besomething like infection in his interest in that piano, and he was goingto speak of the young girl who seemed to share it, simply because shesaw him staring at it, and who faltered so long with him before thefreight-depot that she came near getting no seat in the train forBurymouth. But just at that moment the dispute about the Ashwoodsrenewed itself upon some fresh evidence which one of the ladiesrecollected and offered; and Gaites's chance passed. When it came againhe had no longer the wish to seize it. A lingering soreness from hisexperience with that young girl made itself felt in his netherconsciousness. He forbore the more easily because, mixed with this pain, was a certain insecurity as to her quality which he was afraid mightimpart itself to those patrician presences at the table. They would benice, and they would be appreciative, --but would they feel that she wasa lady, exactly, when he owned to the somewhat poverty-strickensimplicity of her dress in some details, more especially her threadgloves, which he could not consistently make kid? He was all the morebound to keep her from slight because he felt a little, a very littleashamed of her. 

He woke next morning in a wide, low, square chamber to the singing ofrobins in the garden, from which at breakfast he had lusciousstrawberries, and heaped bowls of June roses. When he started for histrain, he parted with Mrs. Birkwall as old friends as he was with herhusband; and he completed her conquest by running back to her from thegate, and asking, with a great air of secrecy, but loud enough forBirkwall to hear, whether she thought she could find him another girl inBurymouth, with just such a house and garden, and exactly like herselfin every way. 

"Hundreds!" she shouted, and stood a graceful figure between the flutedpillars of the portal, waving her hand to them till they were out ofsight behind the corner of the high board fence, over which the gardentrees hung caressingly, and brushed Gaites's shoulder in a shy, fondfarewell. 

It had all been as nice as it could be, and he said so again and againto Birkwall, who _would_ go to the train with him, and who would _not_let him carry his own hand-bag. The good fellow clung hospitably to it, after Gaites had rechecked his trunk for Kent Harbor, and insisted uponcarrying it as they walked up and down the platform together at thestation. It seemed that the train from Boston which the Kent Harbortrain was to connect with was ten minutes late, and after some turnsthey prolonged their promenade northward as far as the freight-depot, Birkwall in the abstraction of a plot for a novel which he was seizingthese last moments to outline to his friend, and Gaites with a secretshame for the hope which was springing in his breast. 

On a side track stood a freight-car, from which the customary men insilk caps were pulling the freight, and standing it about loosely on theplatform. The car was detached from the parent train, which had left itnot only orphaned on this siding, but apparently disabled; for Gaitesheard the men talking about not having cut it out a minute too soon. Oneof them called, in at the broad low door, to some one inside, "All out?"and a voice from far within responded, "Case here, yet; _I_ can't handleit alone. "

The others went into the car, and then, with an interval for some heavybumping and some strong language, they reappeared at the door with thecase, which Gaites was by this time not surprised to find inscribed withthe name and address of Miss Phyllis Desmond. He remained watching it, while the men got it on the platform, so wholly inattentive toBirkwall's plot that the most besotted young author could not havefailed to feel his want of interest. Birkwall then turned his visionoutward upon the object which engrossed his friend, and started with an"Oh, hello!" and slapped him on the back. 

Gaites nodded in proud assent, and Birkwall went on: "I thought you werefaking the name last night; but I didn't want to give you away. It wasthe real thing, wasn't it, after all. "

"The real thing, " said Gaites, with his most toothful smile, and helaughed for pleasure in his friend's astonishment. 

"Well, " Birkwall resumed, "she seems to be following _you_ up, oldfellow. This will be great for Polly, and for Miss Seaward, who wantedyou to follow _her_ up; and for all Burymouth, for that matter. Why, Gaites, you'll be the tea-table talk for a week; you'll be married tothat girl before you know it. What is the use of flying in the face ofProvidence? Come! There's time enough to get a ticket, and have yourcheck changed from Kent Harbor to Lower Merritt, and the Hill Countryexpress will be along here at nine o'clock. You can't let that poorthing start off on her travels alone again!"

Gaites flushed in a joyful confusion, and put the joke by as well as hecould. But he was beginning to feel it not altogether a joke; it hadacquired an element of mystery, of fatality, which flattered while itawed him; and he could not be easy till he had asked one of thefreight-handlers what had happened to the car. He got an answer--flungover the man's shoulder--which seemed willing enough, but was whollyunintelligible in the clang and clatter of a passenger-train which camepulling in from the southward. 

"Here's the Hill Country express now!" said Birkwall. "You won't changeyour mind? Well, your Kent Harbor train backs down after this goes out. Don't worry about the piano. I'll find out what's happened to the car itwas in, and I'll see that it's put into a good strong one, next time. "

"Do! That's a good fellow!" said Gaites, and in repeated promises, demanded and given, to come again, they passed the time till the HillCountry train pulled out and the Kent Harbor train backed down. 

III. 

Gaites was going to stay a week with a friend out on the Point; andafter the first day he was so engrossed with the goings-on at KentHarbor that he pretty well forgot about Burymouth, and the piano of MissPhyllis Desmond lingered in his mind like the memory of a love one hasoutlived. He went to the golf links every morning in a red coat, and inplaid stockings which, if they did not show legs of all the desiredfulness, attested a length of limb which was perhaps all the moreremarkable for that reason. Then he came back to the beach and bathed;at half past one o'clock he dined at somebody's cottage, and afterwardssat smoking seaward in its glazed or canopied veranda till it was timeto go to afternoon tea at somebody else's cottage, where he chattedabout until he was carried off by his hostess to put on a black coat forseven or eight o'clock supper at the cottage of yet another lady. 

There was a great deal more society than there had been in his oldcollege-vacation days, when the Kent Harbor House reigned sole in aperhaps somewhat fabled despotism; but the society was of not lesssimple instincts, and the black coat which Gaites put on for supper wasnever of the evening-dress convention. Once when he had been outcanoeing on the river very late, his hostess made him go "just as hewas, " and he was consoled on meeting their bachelor host to find that hehad had the inspiration to wear a flannel shirt of much more outing typethan Gaites himself had on. 

The thing that he had to guard against was not to praise the riversunsets too much at any cottage on the Point; and in cottages on theriver, not to say a great deal of the surf on the rocks. But it was easyto respect the amiable local susceptibilities, and Gaites got on so wellthat he told people he was never going away. 

He had arrived at this extreme before he received the note from Mrs. Birkwall, which she made his prompt bread-and-butter letter the excuseof writing him. She wrote mainly to remind him of his promise to stayanother day with her husband on his way home through Burymouth; and shealleged an additional claim upon him because of what she said she hadmade Birkwall do for him. She had made him go down to the freight-depotevery day, and see what had become of Phyllis Desmond's piano; and shehad not dared write before, because it had been most unaccountablydelayed there for the three days that had now passed. Only that morning, however, she had gone down herself with Birkwall; and it showed what awoman could do when she took anything in hand. Without knowing of herapproach except by telepathy, the railroad people had bestirredthemselves, and she had seen them with her own eyes put the piano-caseinto a car, and had waited till the train had bumped and jolted off withit towards Mewers Junction. All the ladies of her supper party, shedeclared, had been keenly distressed at the delay of the piano inBurymouth, and she was now offering him the relief which she had sharedalready with them. 

He laughed aloud in reading this letter at breakfast, and he could notdo less than read it to his hostess, who said it was charming, and atonce took a vivid interest in the affair of the piano. She accepted inits entirety his theory of its being a birthday-present for the younggirl with that pretty name; and she professed to be in a quiver ofanxiety at its retarded progress. 

"And, by-the-way, " she added, with the logic of her sex, "I'm just goingto the station to see what's become of a trunk myself that I orderedexpressed from Chicago a week ago. If you're not doing anything thismorning--the tide isn't in till noon, and there'll be little or nobathing to look at before that--you'd better drive down with me. Orperhaps you're canoeing up the river with somebody?"

Gaites said he was not, and if he were he would plead a providentialindisposition rather than miss driving with her to the station. 

"Well, anyway, " she said, tangentially, "I can get June Alber to go too, and you can take her canoeing afterwards. "

But Miss Alber was already engaged for canoeing, and Gaites was obligedto drive off with his hostess alone. She said she did pity him, but shepitied him no longer than it took to get at the express agent. Then shebegan to pity herself, and much more energetically if not moresincerely, for it seemed that the agent had not been able to learnanything about her trunk, and was unwilling even to prophesy concerningit. Gaites left him to question at her hands, which struck him ascombining all the searching effects of a Röntgen-ray examination and theearlier procedure with the rack; and he wandered off, in a habit whichhe seemed to have formed, toward the freight-house. 

He amused himself thinking what he should do if he found PhyllisDesmond's piano there, but he was wholly unprepared to do anything whenhe actually found it standing on the platform, as if it had just beenput out of the freight-car which was still on the siding at the door. Hepassed instantly from the mood of gay conjecture in which he was playingwith the improbable notion of its presence to a violent indignation. 

"Why, look here!" he almost shouted to a man in a silk cap and greasedoveralls who was contemplating the inscription on the slope of itscover, "what's that piano doing _here_?"

The man seemed to accept him as one having authority to make thisdemand, and responded mildly, "Well, that's just what I was thinkingmyself. "

"That piano, " Gaites went on with unabated violence, "started fromBoston at the beginning of the week; and I happen to know that it's beenlying two or three days at Burymouth, instead of going on to LowerMerritt, as it ought to have done at once. It ought to have been inLower Merritt Wednesday afternoon at the latest, and here it is at KentHarbor Saturday morning!"

The man in the silk cap scanned Gaites's figure warily, as if it mightbe that of some official whale in disguise, and answered in a tone ofdreamy suggestion: "Must have got shifted into the wrong car at MewersJunction, somehow. Or maybe they started it wrong from Burymouth. "

Mrs. Maze was coming rapidly down the platform toward them, leaving theexpress agent to crawl flaccidly into his den at the end of thepassenger-station, with the air of having had all his joints started. 

"Just look at this, Mrs. Maze, " said Gaites when she drew near enough toread the address on the piano-case. She did look at it; then she lookedat Gaites's face, into which he had thrown a sort of stony calm; andthen she looked back at the piano-case. 

"No!" she exclaimed and questioned in one. 

Gaites nodded confirmation. 

"Then it won't be there in time for the poor thing's birthday?"

He nodded again. 

Mrs. Maze was a woman who never measured her terms, perhaps becausethere was nothing large enough to measure them with, and perhaps becausein their utmost expansion they were a tight fit for her emotions. 

"Well, it's an abominable outrage!" she began. She added: "It's aburning shame! They'll never get over it in the world; and when it comeslagging along after everything's over, she won't care a pin for it! Howdid it happen?"

Gaites mutely referred her, with a shrug, to the man in the silk cap, and he again hazarded his dreamy conjecture. 

"Well, it doesn't matter!" she said, with a bitterness that was a greatcomfort to Gaites. "What are you going to do about it?" she asked him. 

"I don't know what _can_ be done about it, " he answered, referringhimself to the man in the silk cap. 

The man said, "No freight out, now, till Monday. "

Mrs. Maze burst forth again: "If I had the least confidence in the worldin any human express company, I would send it by express and pay theexpressage myself. "

"Oh, I couldn't let you do that, Mrs. Maze, " Gaites protested. "Besides, I don't suppose they'd allow us to take it out of the freight, here, unless we had the bill of lading. "

"Well, " cried Mrs. Maze, passionately, "I can't bear to think of thatchild's suspense. It's perfectly heart-sickening. Why shouldn't theytelegraph? They ought to telegraph! If they let things go wanderinground the earth at this rate, the least they can do is to telegraph andrelieve people's minds. We'll go and make the station-master telegraph!"

But even when the station-master was found, and made to understand thecase, and to feel its hardship, he had his scruples. "I don't think I'vegot any right to do that, " he said. 

"Of coarse I'll pay for the telegram, " Mrs. Maze interpolated. 

"It ain't that exactly, " said the station-master. "It might look as if Iwas meddling myself. I rather not, Mrs. Maze. "

She took fire. "Then _I'll_ meddle myself!" she blazed. "There's nothingto hinder my telegraphing, I suppose!"

"_I_ can't hinder you, " the station-master admitted. 

"Well, then!" She pulled a bunch of yellow telegraph blanks toward her, and consumed three of them in her comprehensive despatch:

 _Miss Phyllis Desmond, Lower Merritt, N. H. 

 Piano left Boston Monday P. M. Broke down on way to Burymouth, where delayed four days. Sent by mistake to Kent Harbor from Mewers Junction. Forwarded to Lower Merritt Monday. _

"There! How will that do?" she asked Gaites, submitting the telegram tohim. 

"That seems to cover the ground, " he said, not so wholly hiding themisgiving he began to feel but that she demanded, "It explains everything, doesn't it?"

"Yes--"

"Very well; sign it, then!"

"I?"

"Certainly. She doesn't know me. "

"She doesn't know me, either, " said Gaites. He added: "And a man'sname--"

"To be sure! Why didn't I think of that?" and she affixed a signature inwhich the baptismal name gave away her romantic and impulsivegeneration--Elaine W. Maze. "_Now_, " she triumphed, as Gaiteshelped her into her trap--"_now_ I shall have a little peace of mylife!"

IV. 

Mrs. Maze had no great trouble in making Gaites stay over Sunday. Theargument she used was, "No freight out till Monday, you know. " Theinducement was June Alber, whom she said she had already engaged to gocanoeing with Gaites Sunday afternoon. 

That afternoon was exquisite. The sky was cloudless, and of one bluewith the river and the girl's eyes, as Gaites noted while she sat facinghim from the bow of the canoe. But the day was of the treacherousserenity of a weather-breeder, and the next morning brought a storm ofsuch violence that Mrs. Maze declared it would be a foolhardy risk ofhis life for Gaites to go; and again she enforced her logic with MissAlber, whom she said she had asked to one-o'clock dinner, with a fewother friends. 

Gaites stayed, of course, but he atoned for his weakness by startingearly Tuesday morning, so as to get the first Hill Country train fromBoston at Burymouth. He had decided that to get in as much change of airas possible he had better go to Craybrooks for the rest of his vacation. 

His course lay through Lower Merritt, and perhaps he would have time torun out from the train and ask the station-master (known to him from hisformer sojourn) who Miss Phyllis Desmond was. His mind was not so fullof Miss June Alber but that he wished to know. 

It was still raining heavily, and on the first cut beyond PorchesterJunction his train was stopped by a flagman, sent back from afreight-train. There was a wash-out just ahead, and the way would beblocked for several hours yet, if not longer. The express backed down toPorchester, and there seemed no choice for Gaites, if he insisted upongoing to Craybrooks, but to take the first train up the old Boston andMontreal line to Wells River and across by the Wing Road throughFabyans; and this was what he did, arriving very late, but quite in timefor all he had to do at Craybrooks. 

The next day the weather cleared up cold, after the storm, and the fatold ladies, who outnumber everybody but the thin young girls at summerhotels, made the landlord put the steam on in the corridors, and toastedthemselves before the log fires on the spectacular hall hearth. Gaiteswalked all day, and at night he lounged by the lamp, trying to read, andwished himself at Kent Harbor. The blue eyes of June Alber madethemselves one with the sky and the river again, and all three laughedat him for his folly in leaving the certain delight they embodied forthe vague good of a whim fulfilled. Was this the change he had come tothe mountains for? He could throw his hat into the clouds that hung solow in the defile where the hotel lurked, and that was something; but itwas not so much to the purpose, now that he had it, as June Alber andthe sky and the river, which he had no longer. As he drowsed by the firein a break of the semicircle of old ladies before it, he suddenly ceasedto think of June Alber and the Kent sky and river, and found himself asit were visually confronted with that pale, delicate girl in threadgloves; she was facing him from the bow of a canoe in the train atBoston, where he had first met her, and some one was saying, "Oh, she'sa Desmond, through and through. "

He woke to the sound of a quick snort, in which he suspected a terminalcharacter when he glanced round the semicircle of old ladies and foundthem all staring at him. From the pain in his neck he knew that his headhad been hanging forward on his breast, and, in the strong belief thathe had been publicly disgracing himself, he left the place, and went outon the piazza till his shame should be forgotten. Of course, the soundof the name Desmond had been as much a part of his dream as the sight ofthat pale girl's face; but he felt, while he paced the veranda, the pullof a strong curiosity to make sure of the fact. From time to time helooked in through the window, without courage to return. At last, whenthe semicircle was reduced to the bulks of the two ladies who had satnearest him, he went in, and took a place with a newspaper at the lampjust behind them. 

They stopped their talk and recognized him with an exchange ofconsciousness. Then, as if compelled by an irresistible importance intheir topic, they began again; that is, one of them began to talk again, and the other to listen, and Gaites from almost the first word joinedthe listener with all his might, though he diligently held up his paperbetween himself and the speaker and pretended to be reading. 

"Yes, " she said, "they must have had their summer home there nearlytwenty years. Lower Merritt was one of the first places opened up inthat part of the mountains, and I guess the Desmonds built the firstcottage there. "

The date given would make the young lady whom he remembered from herchildhood romps on her father's lawn somewhat older than he imagined, but not too old for the purposes of his romance. 

The speaker began to collect her needlework into the handkerchief on herlap as she went on, and he listened with an intensified abandon. 

"I guess, " she continued, "that they pass most of the year there. Afterhe lost his money, he had to give up his house in town, and I believethey have no other home now. They did use to travel some, winters, but Iguess they don't much any more; if they don't stay there the wholewinter through, I don't believe they get much farther now than Portland, or Burymouth, at the furthest. It seems to me as if I heard that one ofthe girls was going to Boston last winter to take piano lessons at theConservatory, so as to teach; but--"

She stopped with a definite air, and rolled her knitting up into herhandkerchief. Gaites made a merit to himself of rising abruptly andclosing his paper with a clash, as if he had been trying to read and hadnot been able for the talking near him. The ladies looked roundconscience-stricken; when they saw who it was, they looked indignant. 

V. 

In the necessity, which we all feel, of making practical excuses toourselves for a foolish action, he pretended that he had been atCraybrooks long enough, and that now, since he had derived all thebenefit to be got from the west-side air, it was best to begin hishomestretch on the other slope of the hills. His real reason was that hewished to stop at Lower Merritt and experience whatever fortuities mighthappen to him from doing so. He wished, in other words, to see PhyllisDesmond, or, failing this, to find out whether her piano had reachedher. 

It had now a pathos for him which had been wanting earlier in hisromance. It was no longer a gay surprise for a young girl's birthday; itwas the sober means of living to a woman who must work for her living. But he found it not the less charming for that; he had even a moreromantic interest in it, mingled with the sense of patronage, ofprotection, which is so agreeable to a successful man. 

He began to long for some new occasion of promoting the arrival of thepiano in Lower Merritt, and he was so far from regretting his formerinterventions that at the first junction where his train stopped heemployed the time in exploring the freight-house in the vain hope offinding it there, and urging the road to greater speed in its deliveryto Miss Desmond. He was now not at all ashamed of the stand he had takenin the matter at former opportunities, and he was not abashed when a manin a silk cap demanded, across the twilight of the freight-house, inaccents of the semi-sarcasm appropriate in addressing a personapparently not minding his own business, "Lost something?"

"Yes, I have, " answered Gaites with just effrontery. "I've lost anupright piano. I started with it from Boston ten days or a fortnightago, and I've found it everywhere I've stopped, and sometimes where Ididn't stop. How long, in the course of nature, ought an upright pianoto take in getting to this point from Boston, anyway?"

The man obviously tasted the sarcasm in Gaites's tone, and dropped itfrom his own, but he was sulkier if more respectful than before inanswering: "'D ought a come right through in a couple of days. 'D oughta been here a week ago. "

"Why isn't it here now, then?"

"Might 'a' got off on some branch road, by mistake, and waited theretill it was looked up. You see, " the man continued, resting an elbow onthe tall casing of a chest of drawers, and dropping to a moreconfidential level in his manner, "an upright piano ain't like apassenger. It don't kick if it's shunted off on the wrong line. As agene'l rule, freight don't complain of the route it travels by, and itain't in a hurry to arrive. "

"Oh!" said Gaites, with a sympathetic sneer. 

"But it ain't likely, " said the man, who now pushed his hat far back onhis head, in the interest of self-possession, "that it's gone wrong. With all these wash-outs and devilments, the last fo't-night, it mighta' been travellin' straight and not got the'a, yet. What d'you say wasthe address?"

"Lower Merritt, " said Gaites, beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. 

"Name?" persisted the man. 

"Miss Phyllis Desmond, " Gaites answered, now feeling really silly, butunable to get away without answering. 

"That ain't your name?" the man suggested, with reviving sarcasm. 

"No, it isn't!" Gaites retorted, angrily, aware that he was givinghimself away in fine shape. 

"Oh, I see, " the man mocked. "Friend o' the family. Well, I guess you'llfind your piano at Lower Merritt, all right, in two-three weeks. " He wasnow openly offensive, as with a sense of having Gaites in his power. 

A locomotive-bell rang, and Gaites started toward the doorway. "Is thatmy train?"

The man openly laughed. "Guess it is, if you're goin' to Lower Merritt. "As Gaites shot through the doorway toward his train, he added, in aninsolent drawl, "Miss--Des--mond!"

Gaites was so furious when he got back to the smoking-room of theparlor-car that he was sorry for several miles that he had not turnedback and kicked the man, even if it lost him his train. But this wasonly while he was under the impression that he was furious with the man. When he discovered that he was furious with himself, for having been allimaginable kinds of an ass, he perceived that he had done the wisestthing he could in leaving the man to himself, and taking up the line ofhis journey again. What remained mortifying was that he had bought histicket and checked his bag to Lower Merritt, which he wished never tohear of again, much less see. 

He rang for the porter and consulted him as to what could be done towardchanging the check on his bag from Lower Merritt to MiddlemountJunction; and as it appeared that this was quite feasible, since histicket would have carried him two stations beyond the Junction, he haddone it. He knew the hotel at Middlemount, and he decided to pass thenight there, and the next day to go back to Kent Harbor and June Alber, and let Lower Merritt and Phyllis Desmond take care of themselves fromthat time forward. 

While the driver of the Middlemount House barge was helping thestation-master-and-baggage-man (they were one) put the arrivingpassengers' trunks into the wagon for the Middlemount House, Gaitespaced up and down the long platform in the remnant of his excitement, and vowed himself to have nothing more to do with Miss Desmond's piano, even if it should turn up then and there and personally appeal to himfor help. In this humor he was not prepared to have anything of the kindhappen, and he stood aghast, in looking absently into a freight-carstanding on the track, to read, "Miss Phyllis Desmond, Lower Merritt, N. H. , " on the slope of the now familiar case just within the open doorway. It was as if the poor girl were personally there pleading for his helpwith the eyes whose tenderness he remembered. 

The united station-master-and-baggage-man, who appeared also to be thefreight agent, came lounging down the platform toward him. He was soexactly of the rustic railroad type that he confused Gaites with a doubtas to which functionary, of the many he now knew, this was. 

"Go'n' to walk over to the hotel?" he asked. 

"Yes, " Gaites faltered, and the man abruptly turned, and made thegesture for starting a locomotive to the driver of the Middlemountstage. 

"All right, Jim!" he shouted, and the stage drove off. 

"What time can I get a train for Lower Merritt this afternoon?" askedGaites. 

"Four o'clock, " said the man. "This freight goes out first;" and nowGaites noticed that up on a siding beyond the station an engine with atrain of freight-cars was fretfully fizzing. The engineer put asilk-capped head out of the cab window and looked back at thestation-master, who began to work his arms like a semaphore telegraph. Then the locomotive tooted, the bell rang, and the freight-train ranforward on the switch to the main track, and commenced backing down towhere they stood. Evidently it was going to pick up the car with PhyllisDesmond's piano in it. 

"When does this freight go out?" Gaites palpitated. 

"'Bout ten minutes, " said the station-master. 

"Does it stop at Lower Merritt?"

"Leaves this cah the'a, " said the man, as if surprised into theadmission. 

"Can I go on her?" Gaites pursued, breathlessly. 

"Well, I guess you'll have to talk to this man about that, " and thestation-master indicated, with a nod of his head, the freight conductor, who was swinging himself down from the caboose, now come abreast of themon the track. A brakeman had also jumped down, and the train fastened onto the waiting car, under his manipulation, with a final cluck and jolt. 

The conductor and station-master exchanged large oblong Manila-paperenvelopes, and the station-master said, casually, "Here's a man wants togo to Lower Merritt with you, Bill. "

The conductor looked amused and interested. "Eva travel in a caboose?"

"No. "

"Well, I guess you can stand it fo' five miles, anyway. "

He turned and left Gaites, who understood this for permission, andclambered into the car, where he found himself in a rude but far fromcomfortless interior. There was a sort of table or desk in the middle, with a heavy chair or two before it; round the side of the car were someleather-covered benches, suitable for the hard naps which seemed to betaken on them, if he could guess from the man in overalls asleep on one. 

The conductor came in, after the train started, and seemed disposed tobe sociable. He had apparently gathered from the station-master so muchof Gaites's personal history as had accumulated since he left theexpress train at Middlemount. 

"Thought you'd try a caboose for a little change from a pahla-cah, " hesuggested, humorously. 

"Well, yes, " Gaites partially admitted. "I did intend to stay over atMiddlemount when I left the express there, but I changed my mind anddecided to go on. It's very good of you to let me come with you. "

"'Tain't but a little way to Lowa Merritt, " the conductor explained, defensively. "Eva been the'a?"

"Oh, yes; I passed a week or so there once, after I left college. Areyou acquainted there?"

"I'm _from_ the'a. Used to wo'k fo' the Desmonds--got that summa placeup the side of the mountain--before I took to the ro-ad. "

"Oh, yes! Have they still got it?"

"Yes. Or it's got _them_. Be glad to sell it, I guess, since the old manlost his money. But Lowa Merritt's kind o' gone down as a summa roso't. Tryin' ha'd to bring it up, though. Know the Desmonds?"

"No, not personally. "

"Nice fo-aks, " said the conductor, providing himself for conversationalpurposes with a splinter from the floor. He put it between his teeth andcontinued: "I took ca' thei' hosses, one while, as long's they _had_any, before I went on the ro-ad. Old gentleman kep' up a show till hedied; then the fam'ly found out that they hadn't much of anything butthe place left. Girls had to do something, and one of 'em got a place ina school out West--smaht, _all_ of 'em; the second one kind o' runs thefahm; and the youngest, here, 's been fittin' for a music-teacha. Why, I've got a piano for her in this cah that we picked up at Middlemount, _now_. Been two wintas at the Conservatory in Boston. Got talent enough, they tell _me_. Undastand 't she means to go to Pohtland in the fall andtry to get pupils, _the'a_. "

"Not if _I_ can help it!" thought Gaites, with a swelling heart; andthen he blushed for his folly. 

VI. 

Gaites found some notable changes in the hotel at Lower Merritt since hehad last sojourned there. It no longer called itself a Hotel, but anInn, and it had a brand-new old-fashioned swinging sign before its door;its front had been cut up into several gables, and shingled to theground with shingles artificially antiquated, so that it looked muchgrayer than it naturally ought. Within it was equipped for electriclighting; and there was a low-browed æsthetic parlor, where, when Gaitesarrived and passed to a belated dinner in the dining-room, an orchestra, consisting of a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving theclosing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room was painted aself-righteous olive-green; it was thoroughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of thepillars, and a college-student head waiter ushered Gaites through thegloom to his place with a warning and hushing hand which made him feelas if he were being shown to a pew during prayers. 

He escaped as soon as possible from the refection which, from the soupto the ice-cream, had hardly grown lukewarm, and went out to walk by away that he knew well, and which had for him now a romantically patheticinterest. It was, of course, the way past the Desmond cottage, which, when he came in sight of it round the shoulder of upland where it stood, was curiously strange, curiously familiar. It needed painting badly, andthe grounds had a sadly neglected air. The naked legs of little girls nolonger twinkled over the lawn, which was grown neglectedly up tolow-bush blackberries. 

Gaites hurried past with a lump in his throat, and returned by anotherroad to the Inn, where his long ramble ended just as the dining-roomdoors were opened behind their nettings for supper. At this cheerfulermoment he found the head waiter much more conversible than at the hourof his retarded dinner, and Gaites made talk with him, as the youngfollow lingered beside his chair, with one eye on the door for thebehoof of other guests. 

Gaites said he had found great changes in Lower Merritt since he hadbeen there some years before, and he artfully led the talk up to theDesmonds. The head waiter was rather vague about their past; but he wasdistinct enough about their present, and said the young ladies happenedall to be at home. "I don't know, " he added, "whether you noticed ourlady orchestra when you came in to dinner to-day?"

"Yes, I did, " said Gaites. "I was very much interested. I thought theyplayed charmingly, and I was sorry that I got in only for the close ofthe last piece. "

"Well, " the head waiter consoled him, "you'll have a chance to hear themagain to-night; they're going to play for the hop. I don't know, " headded again, "whether you noticed the lady at the piano. "

"I noticed that she had a pretty head, which she carried gracefully, butit was against the window, and I couldn't make out the face. "

"That, " said the head waiter, with pride either in the fact or for theeffect it must produce, "was Miss Phyllis Desmond. "

Gaites started as satisfactorily as could be wished. "Indeed?"

"Yes; she's engaged to play here the whole summer. " The head waiterfumbled with the knife and fork at the place opposite, and blushed. "Butyou'll hear her to-night yourself, " he ended incoherently, and hurriedaway, to show another guest to his, or rather her, place. 

Gaites wondered why he felt suddenly angry; why he resented the headwaiter's blush as an impertinence and a liberty. After all, the fellowwas a student and probably a gentleman; and if he chose to help himselfthrough college by taking that menial rôle during the summer, ratherthan come upon the charity of his friends or the hard-earned savings ofa poor old father, what had any one to say against it? Gaites hadnothing to say against it; and yet that blush, that embarrassment of aman who had pulled out his chair for him, in relation to such a girl asMiss Phyllis Desmond, incensed him so much that he could not enjoy hissupper. He did not bow to the head waiter when he held the netting-dooropen for him to go out, and he felt the necessity of taking the eveningair in another stroll to cool himself off. 

Of course, if the poor girl was reduced to playing in the hotelorchestra for the money it would give her, she had come down to thelevel of the head waiter, and they must meet as equals. But the thoughtwas no less intolerable for that, and Gaites set out with the notion ofwalking away from it. At the station, however, which was in friendlyproximity to the Inn, his steps were stayed by the sound of girlishvoices, rising like sweetly varied pipes from beyond the freight-depot. Their youth invited his own to look them up, and he followed round tothe back of the depot, where he came upon a sight which had, perhapsfrom the waning light, a heightened charm. Against the curtain of lowpines which had been gradually creeping back upon the depot ever sincethe woods were cut away to make room for it, four girls were posed inattitudes instinctively dramatic and vividly eager, while as many menwere employed in getting what Gaites at once saw to be Miss PhyllisDesmond's piano into the wagon backed up to the platform of the depot. Their work was nearly accomplished, but at every moment of what stillremained to be done the girls emitted little shrieks, laughs, and moansof intense interest, and fluttered in their light summer dresses againstthe background of the dark evergreens like anxious birds. 

At last the piano was got into the middle of the wagon, the inclinedplanks withdrawn and loaded into it, and the tail-board snapped to. Three of the men stepped aside, and one of them jumped into the front ofthe wagon and gathered up the reins from the horses' backs. He calledwith mocking challenge to the group of girls, "Nobody goin' to git uphere and keep this piano from tippin' out?"

A wild clamor rose from the girls, settling at last into staccato cries. 

"You've got to _do_ it, Phyl!"

"Yes, Phyllis, you _must_ get in!"

"It's _your_ piano, Phyl. You've got to keep it from tipping out!"

"No, no! I won't! I can't! I'm not going to!" one voice answered to all, but apparently without a single reference to the event; for in the endthe speaker gave her hand to the man in the wagon, and with many smalllaughs and squeaks was pulled up over the hub and tire of a front wheel, and then stood staying herself against the piano-case, with a finallamentation of "Oh, it's a shame! I'll never speak to any of you again!How perfectly mean! _Oh!_" The last exclamation signalized the start ofthe horses at a brisk mountain trot, which the driver presently soberedto a walk. The three remaining girls followed, mocking and cheering, andafter them lounged the three remaining men, at a respectful distance, marking the social interval between them, which was to be bridged onlyin some such moment of supreme excitement as the present. 

It was no question with Gaites whether he should bring up the end of theprocession; he could not think of any consideration that would havestayed him. He scarcely troubled himself to keep at a fit remove fromthe rest; and as he followed in the deepening twilight he felt a sweet, unselfish gladness of heart that the poor girl whom he had seen so wanand sad in Boston should be the gay soul of this pretty triumph. 

The wagon drove into the grounds of the Desmond cottage, and backed upto the edge of the veranda. Lights appeared, and voices came fromwithin. One of the men, despatched to the barn for a hatchet, cameflickering back with a lantern also; lamps brought out of the house wereextinguished by the evening breeze (in spite of luminous hands held nearthe chimney to shelter them), amidst the joyful applause of all thegirls and the laughter of the men. A sound of hammering rose, and then asound of boards rending from the clutch of nails, and then a sound ofpieces thrown loosely into a pile. There was a continual flutter ofwomen's dresses and emotions, and this did not end even when the piano, disclosed from its casing and all its wraps, was pushed indoors, andplaced against the parlor wall, where a flash of lamp-light revealed itto Gaites in final position. 

He lingered still, in the shelter of some barberry-bushes at the cottagegate, and not till the last cry of gratitude had been answered by theunanimous disclaimer of the men rattling away in the wagon did he feelthat his pursuit of the piano had ended. 

VII. 

"Can you tell me, madam, " asked Gaites of an obviously approachabletabby next the chimney-corner, "which of the musicians is Miss Desmond?"

He had hurried back to the Inn, and got himself early into a dress suitthat proved wholly inessential, and was down among the first at the hop. This function, it seemed, was going on in the parlor, which summed initself the character of ball-room as well as drawing-room. The hop hadnow begun, and two young girl couples were doing what they could torebuke the sparse youth of Lower Merritt Inn for their lack of eagernessin the evening's pleasure by dancing alone. Gaites did not even noticethem, he was so intent upon the ladies of the orchestra, concerning whomhe was beginning to have a troubled mind, not to say a dark misgiving. 

"Oh, " the approachable tabby answered, "it's the one at the piano. Theviolinist is Miss Axewright, of South Newton. They were at theConservatory together in Boston, and they are such friends! Miss Desmondwould never have played here--intends to take pupils in Portland in thewinter--if Miss Axewright hadn't come, " and the pleasant old tabbypurred on, with a velvety pat here, and a delicate scratch there. ButGaites heard with one ear only; the other was more devotedly given tothe orchestra, which also claimed both his eyes. While he learned, aswith the mind of some one else, that the Desmonds had been very muchopposed to Phyllis's playing at the Inn, but had consented partly withtheir poverty, because they needed everything they could rake and scrapetogether, and partly with their will, because Miss Axewright was such anice girl, he was painfully adjusting his consciousness to the fact thatthe girl at the piano was not the girl whom he had seen at Boston andwhom he had so rashly and romantically decided to be Miss PhyllisDesmond. The pianist was indeed Miss Desmond, but to no purpose, if theviolinist was some one else; it availed as little that the violinist wasthe illusion that had lured him to Lower Merritt in pursuit of MissDesmond's piano, if she were really Miss Axewright of South Newton. 

What remained for him to do was to arrange for his departure by thefirst train in the morning; and he was subjectively accounting to thelandlord for his abrupt change of mind after he had engaged his room fora week, while he was intent with all his upper faculties upon thegraceful poses and movements of Miss Axewright. There was something soappealing in the pressure of her soft chin as it held the violin inplace against her round, girlish throat that Gaites felt a lump in hisown larger than his Adam's-apple would account for to the spectator; thedelicately arched wrist of the hand that held the bow, and therhythmical curve and flow of her arm in playing, were means of the spellwhich wove itself about him, and left him, as it were, bound hand andfoot. It was in this helpless condition that he rose at the urgence of afriendly young fellow who had chosen himself master of ceremonies, andtook part in the dancing; and at the end of the first half of theprogramme, while the other dancers streamed out on the verandas andthronged the stairways, he was aware of dangling his chains as helounged toward the ladies of the orchestra. The volunteer master ofceremonies had half shut himself across the piano in his eager talk withMiss Desmond, and he readily relinquished Miss Axewright to Gaites, whowillingly devoted himself to her, after Miss Desmond had risen inacknowledgment of his bow. He had then perceived that she was not nearlyso tall as she had seemed when seated; and a woman who sat tall andstood low was as much his aversion as if his own abnormally long legsdid not render him guilty of the opposite offence. 

Miss Desmond must have had other qualities and characteristics, but inhis absorption with Miss Axewright's he did not notice them. He sawagain the pretty, pathetic face, the gentle brown eyes, the ordinarybrown hair, the sentient hands, the slight, graceful figure, the wholeundistinguished, unpretentious presence, which had taken his fancy atBoston, and which he now perceived had kept it, under whatever erringimpressions, ever since. 

"I think we have met before, Miss Axewright, " he said boldly, and he hadthe pleasure of seeing her pensive little visage light up with aresponsive humor. 

"I think we have, " she replied; and Miss Desmond, whose habitual stateseemed to be intense inattention to whatever directly addressed itselfto her, cut in with the cry:

"You have met _before_!"

"Yes. Two weeks ago, in Boston, " said Gaites. "Miss Axewright and Istopped at the S. B. & H. C. Freight-depot to see that your pianostarted off all right. "

He explained himself further, and, "Well, I don't see what you did toit, " Miss Desmond pouted. "It just got here this afternoon. "

"Probably they 'throwed a spell' on it, as the country people say, "suggested the master of ceremonies. "But all's well that end's well. Thegreat thing is to have your piano, Miss Phyllis. I'm coming up to-morrowmorning to see if it's got here in good condition. "

"That's _some_ compensation, " said the girl ironically; and she added, with the kind of repellent lure with which women know how to leave menthe responsibility of any reciprocal approach, "I don't know whether itwon't need tuning first. "

"Well, I'm a piano-tunist myself, " the young fellow retorted, and theirbanter took a course that left Miss Axewright and Gaites to themselves. The dancers began to stray in again from the stairways and verandas. 

"Dear me!" said Miss Desmond, "it's time already;" and as she droppedupon the piano-stool she called to Miss Axewright with an authority oftone which Gaites thought augured well for her success as a teacher, "Millicent!"

VIII. 

The next morning when Gaites came down to breakfast he had a questionwhich solved itself contrary to his preference as he entered thedining-room. He was so early that the head waiter had to jump from hisown unfinished meal, and run to pull out his chair; and Gaites saw thathe left at his table the landlord's family, the clerk, the housekeeper, and Miss Axewright. It appeared that she was not only staying in thehotel, but was there on terms which indeed held her above the servants, but separated her from the guests. 

He hardly knew how to dissemble the feeling of humiliation mixed withindignation which flashed up in him, and which, he was afterwardsafraid, must have made him seem rather curt in his response to the headwaiter's civilities. Miss Axewright left the dining-room first, and hehurried out to look her up as soon as he had despatched the coffee andsteak which formed his breakfast, with a wholly unreasoned impulse tooffer her some sort of reparation for the slight the conditions put uponher. He found her sitting on the veranda beside the friendly tabby ofhis last night's acquaintance, and far, apparently, from feeling theneed of reparation through him. She was very nice, though, and afterchatting a little while she rose, and excused herself to the tabby, witha politeness that included Gaites, upon the ground of a promise to MissDesmond that she would come up, the first thing after breakfast, and seehow the piano was getting along. 

When she reappeared, in her hat, at the front of the Inn, Gaiteshappened to be there, and he asked her if he might walk with her andmake his inquiries too about the piano, in which, he urged, they weremutually interested. He had a notion to tell her all about his pursuitof Miss Desmond's piano, as something that would peculiarly interestMiss Desmond's friend; but though she admitted the force of hisreasoning as to their common concern in the fate of the piano, and hadallowed him to go with her to rejoice over its installation, some subtleinstinct kept him from the confidence he had intended, and they walkedon in talk (very agreeable talk, Gaites found it) which left the subjectof the piano altogether intact. 

This was fortunate for Miss Desmond, who wished to talk of nothing else. The piano had arrived in perfect condition. "But I don't know where thepoor thing _hasn't_ been, on the way, " said the girl. "It left Bostonfully two weeks ago, and it seems to have been wandering round to theends of the earth ever since. The first of last week, I heard from it atKent Harbor, of all places! I got a long despatch from there, from someunknown female, telling me it had broken down on the way to Burymouth, and been sent by mistake to Kent Harbor from Mewers Junction. Have youever been at Kent Harbor, Mr. Gaites?"

"Oh, yes, " said Gaites. This was the moment to come out with the historyof his relation to the piano; but he waited. 

"And can you tell me whether they happen to have a female freight agentthere?"

"Not to my knowledge, " said Gaites, with a mystical smile. 

"Then _do_ you know anybody there by the name of Elaine W. Maze?"

"Mrs. Maze? Yes, I know Mrs. Maze. She has a cottage, there. "

"And can you tell me _why_ Mrs. Maze should be telegraphing me about mypiano?"

There was a note of resentment in Miss Desmond's voice, and it silencedthe laughing explanation which Gaites had almost upon his tongue. Hefell very grave in answering, "I can't, indeed, Miss Desmond. "

"Perhaps she found out that it had been a long time on the way, and didit out of pure good-nature, to relieve your anxiety. "

This was what Miss Axewright conjectured, but it seemed to confirm MissDesmond's worst suspicions. 

"That is what I should like to be _sure_ of, " she said. 

Gaites thought of all his own anxieties and interferences in behalf ofthe piano of this ungrateful girl, and in her presence he resolved thathis lips should be forever sealed concerning them. She never would takethem in the right way. But he experimented with one suggestion. "Perhapsshe was taken with the beautiful name on the piano-case, and couldn'thelp telegraphing just for the pleasure of writing it. "

"Beautiful?" cried Miss Desmond. "It was my grandmother's name; and Iwonder they didn't call me for my great-grandmother, Daphne, and be donewith it. "

The young man who had chosen himself master of ceremonies at the hop thenight before now proposed from the social background where he hadhitherto kept himself, "_I_ will call you Daphne. "

"_You_ will call me Miss Desmond, if you please, Mr. Ellett. " The ownerof the name had been facing her visitors from the piano-stool with herback to the instrument. She now wheeled upon the stool, and struck somechords. "I wish you'd thought to bring your fiddle, Millicent. I shouldlike to try this piece. " The piece lay on the music-rest before her. 

"I will go and get it for her, " said the ex-master of ceremonies. 

"Do, " said Miss Desmond. 

"No, no, " Gaites protested. "I brought Miss Axewright, and I have thefirst claim to bring her fiddle. "

"I'm afraid you couldn't either of you find it, " Miss Axewright began. 

"We'll both try, " said the ex-master of ceremonies. "Where do you thinkit is?"

"Well, it's in the case on the piano. "

"That doesn't sound very intricate, " said Gaites, and they all laughed. 

As soon as the two men were out of the house, the ex-master ofceremonies confided: "That name is a very tender spot with Miss Desmond. She's always hated it since I knew her, and I can't remember when I_didn't_ know her. "

"Yes, I could see that--too late, " said Gaites. "But what I can'tunderstand is, Miss Axewright seemed to hate it, too. "

Mr. Ellett appeared greatly edified. "Did _you_ notice that?"

"I think I did. "

"Well, now I'll tell you just what I think. There aren't any two girlsin the world that like each other better than those two. But that showsjust how it is. Girls are terribly jealous, the best of them. Thereisn't a girl living that really likes to have another girl praised by aman, or anything about her, I don't care who the man is. It's a fact, whether you believe it or not, or whether you respect it. I don'trespect it myself. It's narrow-minded. I don't deny it: they _are_narrow-minded. All the same, we can't _help_ ourselves. At least, _I_can't. "

Mr. Ellett broke into a laugh of exhaustive intelligence and clappedGaites on the back. 

IX. 

Gaites, if he did not wholly accept Ellett's philosophy of the femalenature, acted in the light it cast upon the present situation. From thattime till the end of his stay at Lower Merritt, which proved to becoeval with the close of the Inn for the season, and with the retirementof the orchestra from duty, he said nothing more of Miss PhyllisDesmond's beautiful name. He went further, and altogether silencedhimself concerning his pursuit of her piano; he even sought occasions ofbeing silent concerning her piano in every way, or so it seemed to him, in his anxious avoidance of the topic. In all this matter he wasgoverned a good deal by the advice of Mr. Ellett, to whom he hadconfessed his pursuit of Miss Desmond's piano in all its particulars, and who showed a highly humorous appreciation of the facts. He was asort of second (he preferred to say second-hand) cousin of Miss Desmond, and, so far as he could make out, had been born engaged to her; and heshowed an intuition in the gingerly handling of her rather uncertaintemper which augured well for his future happiness. His future happinessseemed to be otherwise taken care of, for though he was a young man ofno particular prospects, and no profession whatever, he had a generouswillingness to liberate his affianced to an artistic career; or, atleast, there was no talk of her giving up her scheme of teaching thepiano-forte because she was engaged to be married, he was exactly fittedto become the husband of a wage-earning wife, and was so far from beingoffensive in this quality that everybody (including Miss Desmond, ratherfitfully) liked him; and he was universally known as Charley Ellett. 

After he had quite converted Gaites to his theory of silence concerninghis outlived romance, he liked to indulge himself, when he got Gaitesalone with the young ladies, in speculations as to the wanderings ofMiss Desmond's piano. He could always get a rise out of Miss Desmond byreferring to the impertinent person who had telegraphed her about itfrom Kent Harbor, and he could put Gaites into a quiver of anxiety byasking him whether he had heard Mrs. Maze speak of the piano when he wasat Kent Harbor, or whether he had happened to see anything of it at anyof the junctions on his way to Lower Merritt. To these questions Gaitesfelt himself obliged to respond with lies point-blank, though there weretimes when he was tempted to come out with the truth, Miss Axewrightseemed so amiably indifferent, or so sympathetically interested, whenEllett was airing his conjectures or pushing his investigations. 

Still Gaites clung to the refuge of his lies, and upon the whole itserved him well, or at least enabled him to temporize in safety, whilehe was making the progress in Miss Axewright's affections which, if hehad not been her lover, he never would have imagined difficult. Theywent every day, between the afternoon and evening concerts, to walk inthe Cloister, a colonnade of pines not far from the Inn, which differedfrom some other cloisters in being so much devoted to love-making. Shewas in love with him, as he was with her; but in her proud maiden soulshe did not dream of bringing him to the confession she longed for. Thiscame the afternoon of the last day they walked in the Cloister, when itseemed as if they might go on walking there forever, and never emergefrom their fond, delicious, tremulous, trusting doubt of each other. 

She cried upon his shoulder, with her arms round his neck, and ownedthat she had loved him from the first moment she had seen him in frontof the S. B. & H. C. Freight-depot in Boston; and Gaites tried to makehis passion antedate this moment. To do so, he had to fall back upon thenotion of pre-existence, but she gladly admitted his hypothesis. 

The next morning brought another mood, a mood of sweet defiance, inwhich she was still more enrapturing. By this time the engagement wasknown to their two friends, and Miss Desmond came to the cars withCharley Ellett to see her off. As Gaites was going to Boston on the sametrain, they made it the occasion of seeing him off, too. Millicentopenly declared that they two were going together, that in fact she wastaking him home to show him to her family in South Newton and seewhether they liked him. 

Ellett put this aspect of the affair aside. "Well, then, " he said, "ifyou're going to be in Boston together, I think you ought to see the S. B. & H. C. Traffic-manager, and find out all about what kept Phyl'spiano so long on the road. _I_ think they owe her an explanation, andGaites is a lawyer, and he's just the man to get it, with damages. "

Gaites saw in Ellett's impudent, amusing face that he divinedMillicent's continued ignorance of his romance, and was bent onmischief. But the girl paid no heed to his talk, and Gaites could nothelp laughing. He liked the fellow; he even liked Miss Desmond, who wasso much softened by the occasion that she had all the thorny allure of aripened barberry in his fancy. They both hung about the seat, where hestood ready to take his place beside Millicent, till the conductorshouted, "All aboard!" Then they ran out, and waved to the loversthrough the window till the car started. 

When they could be seen no longer, Millicent let Gaites arrange theirhand-baggage together on the seat in front of them. It was a warm day, and she said she did believe she would take her hat off; and she gave itto him, odorous of her pretty hair, to put in the rack overhead. Afterhe had done this, and sat down definitively, she shrank unconsciouslycloser to him, knitting her fingers in those of his hand on the seatbetween them. 

"Now, " she said, "tell me all about yourself. "

"About myself?"

"Yes. About Phyllis Desmond's piano, and why you were so interested init. "

A DIFFICULT CASE. 

I. 

It was in the fervor of their first married years that the Ewberts cameto live in the little town of Hilbrook, shortly after HilbrookUniversity had been established there under the name of its founder, Josiah Hilbrook. The town itself had then just changed its name, incompliance with the conditions of his public benefactions, and inrecognition of the honor he had done it in making it a seat of learning. Up to a certain day it had been called West Mallow, ever since it wasset off from the original town of Mallow; but after a hundred andseventy years of this custom it began on that day to call itselfHilbrook, and thenceforward, with the curious American acquiescence inthe accomplished fact, no one within or without its limits called itWest Mallow again. 

The memory of Josiah Hilbrook himself began to be lost in the name hehad given the place; and except for the perfunctory mention of itsfounder in the ceremonies of Commencement Day, the university hardlyremembered him as a man, but rather regarded him as a locality. He had, in fact, never been an important man in West Mallow, up to the time hehad left it to seek his fortune in New York; and when he died, somewhatabruptly, and left his money, as it were, out of a clear sky, to hisnative place in the form of a university, a town hall, a soldiers'monument, a drinking-fountain, and a public library, hisfellow-townsmen, in making the due civic acknowledgment and acceptanceof his gifts, recalled with effort the obscure family to which hebelonged. 

He had not tried to characterize the university by his peculiarreligious faith, but he had given a church building, a parsonage, and afund for the support of preaching among them at Hilbrook to the smallbody of believers to which his people adhered. This sect had a name bywhich it was officially known to itself; but, like the Shakers, theQuakers, the Moravians, it early received a nickname, which it passivelyadopted, and even among its own members the body was rarely spoken of orthought of except as the Rixonites. 

Mrs. Ewbert fretted under the nickname, with an impatience perhaps thegreater because she had merely married into the Rixonite church, and hadaccepted its doctrine because she loved her husband rather than becauseshe had been convinced of its truth. From the first she complained thatthe Rixonites were cold; and if there was anything Emily Ewbert hadalways detested, it was coldness. No one, she once testified, need talkto her of their passive waiting for a sign, as a religious life; ifthere were not some strong, central belief, some rigorously formulatedcreed, some--

"Good old herb and root theology, " her husband interrupted. 

"Yes!" she heedlessly acquiesced. "Unless there is something like_that_, all the waiting in the world won't"--she cast about for somepowerful image--"won't keep the cold chills from running down _my_ backwhen I think of my duty as a Christian. "

"Then don't think of your duty as a Christian, my dear, " he pleaded, with the caressing languor which sometimes made her say, in reprobationof her own pleasure in it, that _he_ was a Rixonite, if there ever _was_one. "Think of your duty as a woman, or even as a mortal. "

"I believe you're thinking of making a sermon on that, " she retorted;and he gave a sad, consenting laugh, as if it were quite true, though infact he never really preached a sermon on mere femininity or meremortality. His sermons were all very good, however; and that was anotherthing that put her out of patience with his Rixonite parishioners--thatthey should sit there Sunday after Sunday, year in and year out, andlisten to his beautiful sermons, which ought to melt their hearts andbring tears into their eyes, and not seem influenced by them any morethan if they were so many dry chips. 

"But think how long they've had the gospel, " he suggested, in a pensiveself-derision which she would not share. 

"Well, one thing, Clarence, " she summed up, "I'm not going to let youthrow yourself away on them; and unless you see some of the universitypeople in the congregation, I want you to use your old sermons from thisout. They'll never know the difference; and I'm going to make you takeone of the old sermons along every Sunday, so as to be prepared. "

II. 

One good trait of Mrs. Ewbert was that she never meant half shesaid--she could not; but in this case there was more meaning than usualin her saying. It really vexed her that the university families, who hadall received them so nicely, and who appreciated her husband's spiritualand intellectual quality as fully as even she could wish, came some ofthem so seldom, and some of them never, to hear him at the Rixonitechurch. They ought, she said, to have been just suited by his preaching, which inculcated with the peculiar grace of his gentle, poetic nature arefinement of the mystical theology of the founder. The Rev. AdoniramRixon, who had seventy years before formulated his conception of thereligious life as a patient waiting upon the divine will, with aconstant reference of this world's mysteries and problems to the worldto come, had doubtless meant a more strenuous abeyance than ClarenceEwbert was now preaching to a third generation of his followers. He haddoubtless meant them to be eager and alert in this patience, but theversion of his gospel which his latest apostle gave taught a species ofacquiescence which was foreign to the thoughts of the founder. He put asgreat stress as could be asked upon the importance of a realizing faithin the life to come, and an implicit trust in it for the solution of theproblems and perplexities of this life; but so far from wishing hishearers to be constantly taking stock, as it were, of their spiritualcondition, and interrogating Providence as to its will concerning them, he besought them to rest in confidence of the divine mindfulness, securethat while they fulfilled all their plain, simple duties toward oneanother, God would inspire them to act according to his purposes in themore psychological crises and emergencies, if these should ever be partof their experience. 

In maintaining, on a certain Sunday evening, that his ideas were muchmore adapted to the spiritual nourishment of the president, the dean, and the several professors of Hilbrook University than to that of thehereditary Rixonites who nodded in a slumbrous acceptance of them, Mrs. Ewbert failed as usual to rouse her husband to a due sense of hisgrievance with the university people. 

"Well, " he said, "you know I can't _make_ them come, my dear. "

"Of course not. And I would be the last to have you lift a finger. But Iknow that you feel about it just as I do. "

"Perhaps; but I hope not so much as you _think_ you feel. Of course, I'mvery grateful for your indignation. But I know you don't undervalue thegood I may do to my poor sheep--they're _not_ an intellectual flock--intrying to lead them in the ways of spiritual modesty andunconsciousness. How do we know but they profit more by my preachingthan the faculty would? Perhaps our university friends are spirituallyunconscious enough already, if not modest. "

"I see what you mean, " said Mrs. Ewbert, provisionally suspending hersense of the whimsical quality in his suggestion. "But you need nevertell me that they wouldn't appreciate you more. "

"More than old Ransom Hilbrook?" he asked. 

"Oh, I hope _he_ isn't coming here to-night, again!" she implored, witha nervous leap from the point in question. "If he's coming here everySunday night"--

As he knew she wished, her husband represented that Hilbrook's havingcome the last Sunday night was no proof that he was going to make ahabit of it. 

"But he _stayed_ so late!" she insisted from the safety of her realbelief that he was not coming. 

"He came very early, though, " said Ewbert, with a gentle sigh, in whichher sympathetic penetration detected a retrospective exhaustion. 

"I shall tell him you're not well, " she went on: "I shall tell him youare lying down. You ought to be, now. You're perfectly worn out withthat long walk you took. " She rose, and beat up the sofa pillows with amenacing eye upon him. 

"Oh, I'm very comfortable here, " he said from the depths of hiseasy-chair. "Hilbrook won't come to-night. It's past the time. "

She glanced at the clock with him, and then desisted. "If he does, I'mdetermined to excuse you somehow. You ought never to have gone near him, Clarence. You've brought it upon yourself. "

Ewbert could not deny this, though he did not feel himself so much toblame for it as she would have liked to make out in her pity of him. Heowned that if he had never gone to see Hilbrook the old man wouldprobably never have come near them, and that if he had not tried so muchto interest him when he did come Hilbrook would not have stayed so long;and even in this contrite mind he would not allow that he ought not tohave visited him and ought not to have welcomed him. 

III. 

The minister had found his parishioner in the old Hilbrook homestead, which Josiah Hilbrook, while he lived, suffered Ransom Hilbrook tooccupy, and when he died bequeathed to him, with a sufficient income forall his simple wants. They were cousins, and they had both gone out intothe world about the same time: one had made a success of it, andremained; and the other had made a failure of it, and come back. Theywere both Rixonites, as the families of both had been in the generationbefore them. It could be supposed that Josiah Hilbrook, since he hadgiven the money for a Rixonite church and the perpetual pay of aRixonite minister in his native place, had died in the faith; and itmight have been supposed that Ransom Hilbrook, from his constantattendance upon its services, was living in the same faith. What wascertain was that the survivor lived alone in the family homestead on theslope of the stony hill overlooking the village. The house was gray withage, and it crouched low on the ground where it had been built a centurybefore, and anchored fast by the great central chimney characteristic ofthe early New England farmhouse. Below it staggered the trees of anapple orchard belted in with a stone wall, and beside it sagged thesheds whose stretch united the gray old house to the gray old barn, andmade it possible for Hilbrook to do his chores in rain or snow withoutleaving cover. There was a dooryard defined by a picket fence, and nearthe kitchen door was a well with a high pent roof, where there had oncebeen a long sweep. 

These simple features showed to the village on the opposite slope with adistinctness that made the place seem much lonelier than if it had beenmuch more remote. It gained no cheerfulness from its proximity, and whenthe windows of the house lighted up with the pale gleam of the sunset, they imparted to the village a sense of dreary solitude which its ownlamps could do nothing to relieve. 

Ransom Hilbrook came and went among the villagers in the same sort ofinaccessible contiguity. He did not shun passing the time of day withpeople he met; he was in and out at the grocer's, the meat man's, thebaker's, upon the ordinary domestic occasions; but he never darkened anyother doors, except on his visits to the bank where he cashed the checksfor his quarterly allowance. There had been a proposition to use himrepresentatively in the ceremonies celebrating the acceptance of thevarious gifts of Josiah Hilbrook; but he had not lent himself to this, and upon experiment the authorities found that he was right in his guessthat they could get along without him. 

He had not said it surlily, but sadly, and with a gentle deprecation oftheir insistence. While the several monuments that testified to hiscousin's wealth and munificence rose in the village beyond the brook, hecontinued in the old homestead without change, except that when hishousekeeper died he began to do for himself the few things that theailing and aged woman had done for him. How he did them was not known, for he invited no intimacy from his neighbors. But from the extent ofhis dealings with the grocer it was imagined that he lived mainly uponcanned goods. The fish man paid him a weekly visit, and once a week hegot from the meat man a piece of salt pork, which it was obvious to themeanest intelligence was for his Sunday baked beans. From his purchaseof flour and baking powder it was reasonably inferred that he now andthen made himself hot biscuit. Beyond these meagre facts everything wasconjecture, in which the local curiosity played somewhat actively, but, for the most part, with a growing acquiescence in the general ignorancenone felt authorized to dispel. There had been a time when somefulfilled a fancied duty to the solitary in trying to see him. But thevisitors who found him out of doors were not asked within, and wereobliged to dismiss themselves, after an interview across the pickets ofthe dooryard fence or from the trestles or inverted feed pails on whichthey were invited to seats in the barn or shed. Those who happened tofind their host more ceremoniously at home were allowed to come in, butwere received in rooms so comfortless from the drawn blinds or firelesshearths that they had not the spirits for the task of cheering him upwhich they had set themselves, and departed in greater depression thanthat they left him to. 

IV. 

Ewbert felt all the more impelled to his own first visit by the fame ofthese failures, but he was not hastened in it. He thought best to waitfor some sign or leading from Hilbrook; but when none came, except theapparent attention with which Hilbrook listened to his preaching, andthe sympathy which he believed he detected at times in the old eyesblinking upon him through his sermons, he felt urged to the visit whichhe had vainly delayed. 

Hilbrook's reception was wary and non-committal, but it was by no meansso grudging as Ewbert had been led to expect. After some ceremoniousmoments in the cold parlor Hilbrook asked him into the warm kitchen, where apparently he passed most of his own time. There was somethingcooking in a pot on the stove, and a small room opened out of thekitchen, with a bed in it, which looked as if it were going to be made, as Ewbert handsomely maintained. There was an old dog stretched on thehearth behind the stove, who whimpered with rheumatic apprehension whenhis master went to put the lamp on the mantel above him. 

In describing the incident to his wife Ewbert stopped at this point, andthen passed on to say that after they got to talking Hilbrook seemedmore and more gratified, and even glad, to see him. 

"Everybody's glad to see _you_, Clarence, " she broke out, with tenderpride. "But why do you say, 'After we got to talking'? Didn't you go totalking at once?"

"Well, no, " he answered, with a vague smile; "we did a good deal oflistening at first, both of us. I didn't know just where to begin, afterI got through my excuses for coming, and Mr. Hilbrook didn't offer anyopening. Don't you think he's a very handsome old man?"

"He has a pretty head, and his close-cut white hair gives it a neateffect, like a nice child's. He has a refined face; such a straight noseand a delicate chin. Yes, he is certainly good-looking. But what"--

"Oh, nothing. Only, all at once I realized that he had a sensitivenature. I don't know why I shouldn't have realized it before. I hadsomehow taken it for granted that he was a self-conscious hermit, wholived in a squalid seclusion because he liked being wondered at. But hedid not seem to be anything of the kind. I don't know whether he's agood cook, for he didn't ask me to eat anything; but I don't think he'sa bad housekeeper. "

"With his bed unmade at eight o'clock in the evening!"

"He may have got up late, " said Ewbert. "The house seemed very orderly, otherwise; and what is really the use of making up a bed till you needit!"

Mrs. Ewbert passed the point, and asked, "What did you talk about whenyou got started?"

"I found he was a reader, or had been. There was a case of good books inthe parlor, and I began by talking with him about them. "

"Well, what did he say about them?"

"That he wasn't interested in them. He had been once, but he was notnow. "

"I can understand that, " said Mrs. Ewbert philosophically. "Books _are_crowded out after your life fills up with other interests. "

"Yes. "

"Yes, what?" Mrs. Ewbert followed him up. 

"So far as I could make out, Mr. Hilbrook's life hadn't filled up withother interests. He did not care for the events of the day, as far as Itried him on them, and he did not care for the past. I tempted him withautobiography; but he seemed quite indifferent to his own history, though he was not reticent about it. I proposed the history of hiscousin in the boyish days which he said they had spent together; but heseemed no more interested in his cousin than in himself. Then I triedhis dog and his pathetic sufferings, and I said something about the pityof the poor old fellow's last days being so miserable. That seemed tostrike a gleam of interest from him, and he asked me if I thoughtanimals might live again. And I found--I don't know just how to put itso as to give you the right sense of his psychological attitude. "

"No matter! Put it any way, and I will take care of the right sense. Goon!" said Mrs. Ewbert. 

"I found that his question led up to the question whether men livedagain, and to a confession that he didn't or couldn't believe they did. "

"Well, upon my word!" Mrs. Ewbert exclaimed. "I don't see what businesshe has coming to church, then. Doesn't he understand that the idea ofimmortality is the very essence of Rixonitism! I think it was personallyinsulting to _you_, Clarence. What did you say?"

"I didn't take a very high hand with him. You know I don't embody theidea of immortality, and the church is no bad place even forunbelievers. The fact is, it struck me as profoundly pathetic. He wasn'tarrogant about it, as people sometimes are, --they seem proud of notbelieving; but he was sufficiently ignorant in his premises. He said hehad seen too many dead people. You know he was in the civil war. "

"No!"

"Yes, --through it all. It came out on my asking him if he were going tothe Decoration Day services. He said that the sight of the first greatbattlefield deprived him of the power of believing in a life hereafter. He was not very explanatory, but as I understood it the overwhelmingpresence of death had extinguished his faith in immortality; the deadriders were just like their dead horses"--

"Shocking!" Mrs. Ewbert broke in. 

"He said something went out of him. " Ewbert waited a moment beforeadding: "It was very affecting, though Hilbrook himself was as apatheticabout it as he was about everything else. He was not interested in notbelieving, even, but I could see that it had taken the heart out of lifefor him. If our life here does not mean life elsewhere, the interest ofit must end with our activities. When it comes to old age, as it haswith poor Hilbrook, it has no meaning at all, unless it has the hope ofmore life in it. I felt his forlornness, and I strongly wished to helphim. I stayed a long time talking; I tried to interest him in the factthat he was not interested, and"--

"Well, what?"

"If I didn't fatigue Hilbrook, I came away feeling perfectly exhaustedmyself. Were you uneasy at my being out so late?"

V. 

It was some time after the Ewberts had given up expecting him that oldHilbrook came to return the minister's visit. Then, as if some excusewere necessary, he brought a dozen eggs in a paper bag, which he said hehoped Mrs. Ewbert could use, because his hens were giving him more thanhe knew what to do with. He came to the back door with them; but Mrs. Ewbert always let her maid of all work go out Sunday evening, and shecould receive him in the kitchen herself. She felt obliged to make himthe more welcome on account of his humility, and she showed him into thelibrary with perhaps exaggerated hospitality. 

It was a chilly evening of April, and so early that the lamp was notlighted; but there was a pleasant glow from the fire on the hearth, andEwbert made his guest sit down before it. As he lay back in theeasy-chair, stretching his thin old hands toward the blaze, the delicacyof his profile was charming, and that senile parting of the lips withwhich he listened reminded Ewbert of his own father's looks in his lastyears; so that it was with an affectionate eagerness he set about makingHilbrook feel his presence acceptable, when Mrs. Ewbert left them tofinish up the work she had promised herself not to leave for the maid. It was much that Hilbrook had come at all, and he ought to be made torealize that Ewbert appreciated his coming. But Hilbrook seemedindifferent to his efforts, or rather, insensible to them, in theseveral topics that Ewbert advanced; and there began to be pauses, inwhich the minister racked his brain for some new thing to say, or foundhimself saying something he cared nothing for in a voice of hollowresolution, or falling into commonplaces which he tried to give vitalityby strenuousness of expression. He heard his wife moving about in thekitchen and dining room, with a clicking of spoons and knives and afaint clash of china, as she put the supper things away, and he wishedthat she would come in and help him with old Hilbrook; but he could notvery well call her, and she kept at her work, with no apparent purposeof leaving it. 

Hilbrook was a farmer, so far as he was anything industrially, andEwbert tried him with questions of crops, soils, and fertilizers; but hetried him in vain. The old man said he had never cared much for thosethings, and now it was too late for him to begin. He generally sold hisgrass standing, and his apples on the trees; and he had no animals aboutthe place except his chickens, --they took care of themselves. Ewberturged, for the sake of conversation, even of a disputative character, that poultry were liable to disease, if they were not looked after; butHilbrook said, Not if there were not too many of them, and so made anend of that subject. Ewbert desperately suggested that he must find themcompany, --they seemed sociable creatures; and then, in his utter dearth, he asked how the old dog was getting on. 

"Oh, he's dead, " said Hilbrook, and the minister's heart smote him witha pity for the survivor's forlornness which the old man's apathetic tonehad scarcely invited. He inquired how and when the old dog had died, andsaid how much Hilbrook must miss him. 

"Well, I don't know, " Hilbrook returned. "He wa'n't much comfort, andhe's out of his misery, anyway. " After a moment he added, with a gleamof interest: "I've been thinkin', since he went, of what we talked aboutthe other night, --I don't mean animals, but men. I tried to go over whatyou said, in my own mind, but I couldn't seem to make it. "

He lifted his face, sculptured so fine by age, and blinked at Ewbert, who was glad to fancy something appealing in his words and manner. 

"You mean as to a life beyond this?"

"Ah!"

"Well, let us see if we can't go over it together. "

Ewbert had forgotten the points he had made before, and he had to takeup the whole subject anew, he did so at first in an involuntarilypatronizing confidence that Hilbrook was ignorant of the ground; butfrom time to time the old man let drop a hint of knowledge thatsurprised the minister. Before they had done, it appeared that Hilbrookwas acquainted with the literature of the doctrine of immortality fromPlato to Swedenborg, and even to Mr. John Fiske. How well he wasacquainted with it Ewbert could not quite make out; but he hadrecurrently a misgiving, as if he were in the presence of a doubterwhose doubt was hopeless through his knowledge. In this bleak air itseemed to him that he at last detected the one thing in which the oldman felt an interest: his sole tie with the earth was the belief thatwhen he left it he should cease to be. This affected Ewbert as mostinteresting, and he set himself, with all his heart and soul, todislodge Hilbrook from his deplorable conviction. He would not perhapshave found it easy to overcome at once that repugnance which Hilbrook'sdoubt provoked in him, if it had been less gently, less simply owned. Asit was, it was not possible to deal with it in any spirit of mereauthority. He must meet it and overcome it in terms of affectionatepersuasion. 

It should not be difficult to overcome it; but Ewbert had not yetsucceeded in arraying his reasons satisfactorily against it when hiswife returned from her work in the kitchen, and sat down beside thelibrary table. Her coming operated a total diversion, in which Hilbrooklapsed into his apathy, and was not to be roused from it by theovertures to conversation which she made. He presently got to his feetand said he mast be going, against all her protests that it was veryearly. Ewbert wished to walk home with him; but Hilbrook would notsuffer this, and the minister had to come back from following him to thegate, and watching his figure lose itself in the dark, with a pang inhis heart for the solitude which awaited the old man under his own roof. He ran swiftly over their argument in his mind, and questioned himselfwhether he had used him with unfailing tenderness, whether he had lethim think that he regarded him as at all reprobate and culpable. He gaveup the quest as he rejoined his wife with a long, unconscious sigh thatmade her lift her head. 

"What is it, Clarence?"

"Nothing"--

"You look perfectly exhausted. You look worried. Was it something youwere talking about?"

Then he told her, and he had trouble to keep her resentment in bounds. She held that, as a minister, he ought to have rebuked the wretchedcreature; that it was nothing short of offensive to him for Hilbrook totake such a position. She said his face was all flushed, and that sheknew he would not sleep, and she should get him a glass of warm milk;the fire was out in the stove, but she could heat it over the lamp in atin cup. 

VI. 

Hilbrook did not come again till Ewbert had been to see him; and in themeantime the minister suffered from the fear that the old man wasstaying away because of some hurt which he had received in theircontroversy. Hilbrook came to church as before, and blinked at himthrough the two sermons which Ewbert preached on significant texts, andthe minister hoped he was listening with a sense of personal appeal inthem. He had not only sought to make them convincing as to the doctrineof another life, but he had dealt in terms of loving entreaty with thosewho had not the precious faith of this in their hearts, and he hadwished to convey to Hilbrook an assurance of peculiar sympathy. 

The day following the last of his sermons, Ewbert had to officiate atthe funeral of a little child whose mother had been stricken to theearth by her bereavement. The hapless creature had sent for him againand again, and had clung about his very soul, beseeching him forassurance that she should see her child hereafter, and have it hers, just as it was, forever, he had not had the heart to refuse her thisconsolation, and he had pushed himself, in giving it, beyond the boundsof imagination. When she confessed her own inability to see how it couldbe, and yet demanded of him that it should be, he answered her that ourinability to realize the fact had nothing to do with its reality. In thefew words he said over the little one, at the last, he recurred to thisposition, and urged it upon all his hearers; but in the moment of doingso a point that old Hilbrook had made in their talk suddenly presenteditself. He experienced inwardly such a collapse that he could not besure he had spoken, and he repeated his declaration in a voice of suchharsh defiance that he could scarcely afterwards bring himself down tothe meek level of the closing prayer. 

As they walked home together, his wife asked, "Why did you repeatyourself in that passage, Clarence, and why did you lift your voice so?It sounded like contradicting some one. I hope you were not thinking ofanything that wretched old man said?"

With the mystical sympathy by which the wife divines what is in herhusband's mind she had touched the truth, and he could not deny it. "Yes, yes, I was, " he owned in a sort of anguish, and she said:--

"Well, then, I wish he wouldn't come about any more. He has perfectlyobsessed you. I could see that the last two Sundays you were preachingright at him. " He had vainly hoped she had not noticed this, though hehad not concealed from her that his talk with Hilbrook had suggested histheme. "What are you going to do about him?" she pursued relentlessly. 

"I don't know, --I don't know, indeed, " said Ewbert; and perhaps becausehe did not know, he felt that he must do something, that he must atleast not leave him to himself. He hoped that Hilbrook would come tohim, and so put him under the necessity of doing something; but Hilbrookdid not come, and after waiting a fortnight Ewbert went to him, as washis duty. 

VII. 

The spring had advanced so far that there were now days when it waspleasant to be out in the soft warmth of the afternoons. The day whenEwbert climbed to the Hilbrook homestead it was even a little hot, andhe came up to the dooryard mopping his forehead with his handkerchief, and glad of the southwestern breeze which he caught at this point overthe shoulder of the hill. He had expected to go round to the side doorof the house, where he had parted with Hilbrook on his former visit; buthe stopped on seeing the old man at his front door, where he was lookingvaguely at a mass of Spanish willow fallen dishevelled beside it, as ifhe had some thought of lifting its tangled spray. The sun shone on hisbare head, and struck silvery gleams from his close-cropped white hair;there was something uncommon in his air, though his dress was plain andold-fashioned; and Ewbert wished that his wife were there to share hisimpression of distinction in Hilbrook's presence. 

He turned at Ewbert's cheerful hail, and after a moment of apparentuncertainty as to who he was, he came down the walk of broken brick andopened the gate to his visitor. 

"I was just out, looking round at the old things, " he said, with aneffort of apology. "This sort of weather is apt to make fools of us. Itgets into our heads, and before we know we feel as if we had somethingto do with the season. "

"Perhaps we have, " said the minister. "The spring is in us, too. "

The old man shook his head. "It was once, when we were children; nowthere's what we remember of it. We like to make believe aboutit, --that's natural; and it's natural we should make believe that thereis going to be a spring for us somewhere else like what we see for thegrass and bushes, here, every year; but I guess not. A tree puts out itsleaves every spring; but by and by the tree dies, and then it doesn'tput out its leaves any more. "

"I see what you mean, " said Ewbert, "and I allow that there is no realanalogy between our life and that of the grass and bushes; yet somehow Ifeel strengthened in my belief in the hereafter by each renewal of theearth's life. It isn't a proof, it isn't a promise; but it's asuggestion, an intimation. "

They were in the midst of a great question, and they sat down on thedecaying doorstep to have it out; Hilbrook having gone in for his hatand come out again, with its soft wide brim shading his thin face, frosted with half a week's beard. 

"But character, " the minister urged at a certain point, --"what becomesof character? You may suppose that life can be lavished by its Origin inthe immeasurable superabundance which we see in nature. Butcharacter, --that is a different thing; that cannot die. "

"The beasts that perish have character; my old dog had. Some are goodand some bad; they're kind and they're ugly. "

"Ah, excuse me! That isn't character; that's temperament. Men havetemperament, too; but the beasts haven't character. Doesn't that factprove something, --or no, not prove, but give us some reasonableexpectation of a hereafter?"

Hilbrook did not say anything for a moment. He broke a bit of fragrantspray from the flowering currant--which guarded the doorway on his sideof the steps; Ewbert sat next the Spanish willow--and softly twisted thestem between his thumb and finger. 

"Ever hear how I came to leave Hilbrook, --West Mallow, as it was then?"he asked at last. 

Ewbert was forced to own that he had heard a story, but he said, mainlyin Hilbrook's interest, that he had not paid much attention to it. 

"Thought there wa'n't much in it? Well, that's right, generallyspeakin'. Folks like to make up stories about a man that lives alonelike me, here; and they usually get in a disappointment. I ain't goin'to go over it. I don't care any more about it now than if it hadhappened to somebody else; but it did happen. Josiah got the girl, and Ididn't. I presume they like to make out that I've grieved over it eversince. Sho! It's forty years since I gave it a thought, that way. " Acertain contemptuous indignation supplanted the wonted gentleness of theold man, as if he spurned the notion of such sentimental folly. "I'veread of folks mournin' all their lives through, and in their old agegoin' back to a thing like that, as if it still meant somethin'. But itain't true; I don't suppose I care any more for losin' her now thanJosiah would for gettin' her if he was alive. It did make a differencefor a while; I ain't goin' to deny that. It lasted me four or fiveyears, in all, I guess; but I was married to somebody else when I wentto the war, "--Ewbert controlled a start of surprise; he had always takenit for granted that Hilbrook was a bachelor, --"and we had one child. Soyou may say that I was well over that first thing. _It wore out_; and ifit wa'n't that it makes me mad to have folks believin' that I'msufferin' from it yet, I presume I shouldn't think of it from one year'send to another. My wife and I always got on well together; she was agood woman. She died when I was away at the war, and the little boy diedafter I got back. I was sorry to lose her, and I thought losin' _him_would kill me. It didn't. It appeared one while as if I couldn't livewithout him, and I was always contrivin' how I should meet up with himsomewhere else. I couldn't figure it out. "

Hilbrook stopped, and swallowed dryly. Ewbert noticed how he had droppedmore and more into the vernacular, in these reminiscences; in theircontroversies he had used the language of books and had spoken like acultivated man, but now he was simply and touchingly rustic. 

"Well, " he resumed, "that wore out, too. I went into business, and Imade money and I lost it. I went through all that experience, and I gotenough of it, just as I got enough of fightin'. I guess I was no worsescared than the rest of 'em, but when it came to the end I'd 'bout madeup my mind that if there was another war I'd go to Canady; I was sick ofit, and I was sick of business even before I lost money. I lost prettymuch everything. Josiah--he was always a good enough friend ofmine--wanted me to start in again, and he offered to back me, but I saidno. I said if he wanted to do something for me, he could let me comehome and live on the old place, here; it wouldn't cost him anything likeso much, and it would be a safer investment. He agreed, and here I be, to make a long story short. "

Hilbrook had stiffened more and more, as he went on, in the sort ofdefiance he had put on when he first began to speak of himself, and atthe end of his confidence Ewbert did not venture any comment. Hisforbearance seemed to leave the old man freer to resume at the pointwhere he had broken off, and he did so with something of lingeringchallenge. 

"You asked me just now why I didn't think character, as we call it, gaveus some right to expect a life after this. Well, I'll try to tell you. Iconsider that I've been the rounds, as you may say, and that I've got asmuch character as most men. I've had about everything in my life thatmost have, and a great deal more than some. I've seen that everythingwears out, and that when a thing's worn out it's for good and all. Ithink it's reasonable to suppose that when I wear out it will be forgood and all, too. There isn't anything of us, as I look at it, exceptthe potentiality of experiences. The experiences come through thepassions that you can tell on the fingers of one hand: love, hate, hope, grief, and you may say greed for the thumb. When you've had them, that'sthe end of it; you've exhausted your capacity; you're used up, and so'syour character, --that often dies before the body does. "

"No, no!" Ewbert protested. "Human capacity is infinite;" but even whilehe spoke this seemed to him a contradiction in terms. "I mean that thepassions renew themselves with new occasions, new opportunities, andcharacter grows continually. You have loved twice, you have grievedtwice; in battle you hated more than once; in business you must havecoveted many times. Under different conditions, the passions, thepotentiality of experiences, will have a pristine strength. Can't yousee it in that light? Can't you draw some hope from that?"

"Hope!" cried Ransom Hilbrook, lifting his fallen head and staring atthe minister. "Why, man, you don't suppose I _want_ to live hereafter?Do you think I'm anxious to have it all over again, or _any_ of it? Isthat why you've been trying to convince me of immortality? I knowthere's something in what you say, --more than what you realize. I'veargued annihilation up to this point and that, and almost proved it tomy own mind; but there's always some point that I can't quite get over. If I had the certainty, the absolute certainty, that this was all therewas to be of it, I wouldn't want to live an hour longer, not a minute!But it's the uncertainty that keeps me. What I'm afraid of is, that if Iget out of it here, I might wake up in my old identity, with thepotentiality of new experiences in new conditions. That's it I'm tired. I've had enough. I want to be let alone. I don't want to do anythingmore, or have anything more done to me. I want to _stop_. "

Ewbert's first impression was that he was shocked; but he was too honestto remain in this conventional assumption. He was profoundly moved, however, and intensely interested. He realized that Hilbrook wasperfectly sincere, and he could put himself in the old man's place, andimagine why he should feel as he did. Ewbert blamed himself for nothaving conceived of such a case before; and he saw that if he were to doanything for this lonely soul, he must begin far back of the point fromwhich he had started with him. The old man's position had a kind ofdignity which did not admit of the sort of pity Ewbert had been feelingfor him, and the minister had before him the difficult and delicate taskof persuading Hilbrook, not that a man, if he died, should live again, but that he should live upon terms so kind and just that none of thefortuities of mortal life should be repeated in that immortality. Hemust show the immortal man to be a creature so happily conditioned thathe would be in effect newly created, before Hilbrook would consent toaccept the idea of living again. He might say to him that he wouldprobably not be consulted in the matter, since he had not been consultedas to his existence here; but such an answer would brutally ignore theclaim that such a man's developed consciousness could justly urge tosome share in the counsels of omnipotence. Ewbert did not know where tobegin, and in his despair he began with a laugh. 

"Upon my word, " he said, "you've presented a problem that would give anycasuist pause, and it's beyond my powers without some further thought. Your doubt, as I now understand it, is not of immortality, but ofmortality; and there I can't meet you in argument without entirelyforsaking my own ground. If it will not seem harsh, I will confess thatyour doubt is rather consoling to me; for I have so much faith in theLove which rules the world that I am perfectly willing to acceptreëxistence on any terms that Love may offer. You may say that this isbecause I have not yet exhausted the potentialities of experience, andam still interested in my own identity; and one half of this, at least, I can't deny. But even if it were otherwise, I should trust to findamong those Many Mansions which we are told of some chamber where Ishould be at rest without being annihilated; and I can even imagine mybeing glad to do any sort of work about the House, when I was tired ofresting. "

VIII. 

"I am _glad_ you said that to him!" cried Ewbert's wife, when he toldher of his interview with old Hilbrook. "That will give him something tothink about. What did he say?"

Ewbert had been less and less satisfied with his reply to Hilbrook, inwhich it seemed to him that he had passed from mockery to reproof, withno great credit to himself; and his wife's applause now set the seal tohis displeasure with it. 

"Oh, he said simply that he could understand a younger person feelingdifferently, and that he did not wish to set himself up as a censor. Buthe could not pretend that he was glad to have been called out ofnonentity into being, and that he could imagine nothing better thaneternal unconsciousness. "

"Well?"

"I told him that his very words implied the refusal of his being toaccept nonentity again; that they expressed, or adumbrated, theconception of an eternal consciousness of the eternal unconsciousness heimagined himself longing for. I'm not so sure they did, now. "

"Of _course_ they did. And _then_ what did he say?"

"He said nothing in direct reply; he sighed, and dropped his poor oldhead on his breast, and seemed very tired; so that I tried talking ofother things for a while, and then I came away. Emily, I'm afraid Iwasn't perfectly candid, perfectly kind, with him. "

"I don't see how you could have been more so!" she retorted, in tenderindignation with him against himself. "And I think what he said wasterrible. It was bad enough for him to pretend to believe that he wasnot going to live again, but for him to tell you that he was _afraid_ hewas!" An image sufficiently monstrous to typify Hilbrook's wickednessfailed to present itself to Mrs. Ewbert, and she went out to give themaid instructions for something unusually nourishing for Ewbert at theirmid-day dinner. "You look fairly fagged out, Clarence, " she said, whenshe came back; "and I insist upon your not going up to that dreadful oldman's again, --at least, not till you've got over this shock. "

"Oh, I don't think it has affected me seriously, " he returned lightly. 

"Yes, it has! yes, it has!" she declared. "It's just like your thinkingyou hadn't taken cold, the other day when you were caught in the rain;and the next morning you got up with a sore throat, and it was Sundaymorning, too. "

Ewbert could not deny this, and he had no great wish to see Hilbrooksoon again. He consented to wait for Hilbrook to come to him, beforetrying to satisfy these scruples of conscience which he had hinted at;and he reasonably hoped that the painful points would cease to ranklewith the lapse of time, if there should be a long interval before theymet. 

That night, before the Ewberts had finished their tea, there came a ringat the door, from which Mrs. Ewbert disconsolately foreboded a prematureevening call. "And just when I was counting on a long, quiet, restfultime for you, and getting you to bed early!" she lamented in undertoneto her husband; to the maid who passed through the room with aninquiring glance, to the front door, she sighed, still in undertone, "Ohyes, of course we're at _home_. "

They both listened for the voice at the door, to make out who was there;but the voice was so low that they were still in ignorance while themaid was showing the visitor into the library, and until she came backto them. 

"It's that old gentleman who lives all alone by himself on the hill overthe brook, " she explained; and Mrs. Ewbert rose with an air ofauthority, waving her husband to keep his seat. 

"Now, Clarence, I am simply not going to _let_ you go in. You are sickenough as it is, and if you are going to let that _awful_ old man spendthe whole evening here, and drain the life out of you! _I_ will see him, and tell him"--

"No, no, Emily! It won't do. I _must_ see him. It isn't true that I'msick. He's old, and he has a right to the best we can do for him. Thinkof his loneliness! I shall certainly not let you send him away. " Ewbertwas excitedly gulping his second cup of tea; he pushed his chair back, and flung his napkin down as he added, "You can come in, too, and seethat I get off alive. "

"I shall not come near you, " she answered resentfully; but Ewbert hadnot closed the door behind him, and she felt it her duty to listen. 

IX. 

Mrs. Ewbert heard old Hilbrook begin at once in a high senile keywithout any form of response to her husband's greeting: "There was onething you said to-day that I've been thinkin' over, and I've come downto talk with you about it. "

"Yes?" Ewbert queried submissively, though he was aware of being quiteas fagged as his wife accused him of being, after he spoke. 

"Yes, " Hilbrook returned. "I guess I ha'n't been exactly up and downwith myself. I guess I've been playing fast and loose with myself. Iguess you're right about my wantin' to have enough consciousness toenjoy my unconsciousness, " and the old gentleman gave a laugh of ratherweird enjoyment. "There are things, " he resumed seriously, "that aredeeper in us than anything we call ourselves. I supposed I had gone tothe bottom, but I guess I hadn't. All the while there was something downthere that I hadn't got at; but you reached it and touched it, and now Iknow it's there. I don't know but it's my Soul that's been havin' itssay all the time, and me not listenin'. I guess you made your point. "

Ewbert was still not so sure of that. He had thrown out that hastysuggestion without much faith in it at the time, and his faith in it hadnot grown since. 

"I'm glad, " he began, but Hilbrook pressed on as if he had not spoken. 

"I guess we're built like an onion, " he said, with a severity thatforbade Ewbert to feel anything undignified in the homely illustration. "You can strip away layer after layer till you seem to get to nothing atall; but when you've got to that nothing you've got to the very thingthat had the life in it, and that would have grown again if you had putit in the ground. "

"Exactly!" said Ewbert. 

"You made a point that I can't get round, " Hilbrook continued, and itwas here that Ewbert enjoyed a little instant of triumph. "But thatain't the point with _me_. I see that I can't prove that we shan't liveagain any more than you can prove that we shall. What I want you to do_now_ is to convince me, or to give me the least reason to believe, thatwe shan't live again on exactly the same terms that we live now. I don'twant to argue immortality any more; we'll take that for granted. But howis it going to be any different from mortality with the hope of deathtaken away?"

Hilbrook's apathy was gone, and his gentleness; he had suddenly an airand tone of fierce challenge. As he spoke he brought a clenched fistdown on the arm of his chair; he pushed his face forward and fixedEwbert with the vitreous glitter of his old eyes. Ewbert found himterrible, and he had a confused sense of responsibility for him, as ifhe had spiritually constituted him, in the charnel of unbelief, out ofthe spoil of death, like some new and fearfuler figment ofFrankenstein's. But if he had fortuitously reached him, through the oneinsincerity of his being, and bidden him live again forever, he must notforsake him or deny him. 

"I don't know how far you accept or reject the teachings of Scripture onthis matter, " he began rather vaguely, but Hilbrook stopped him. 

"You didn't go to the Book for the point you made _against_ me. But ifyou go to it now for the point I want you to make _for_ me, what are yougoing to find? Are you going to find the promise of a life any differentfrom the life we have here? I accept it all, --all that the Old Testamentsays, and all that the New Testament says; and what does it amount to onthis point?"

"Nothing but the assurance that if we live rightly here we shall behappy in the keeping of the divine Love there. That assurance iseverything to me. "

"It isn't to me!" cried the old man. "We are in the keeping of thedivine Love here, too, and are we happy? Are those who live rightlyhappy? It's because we're not conditioned for happiness here; and howare we going to be conditioned differently there? We are going to sufferto all eternity through our passions, our potentialities of experience, there just as we do here. "

"There may be other passions, other potentialities of experience, "Ewbert suggested, casting about in the void. 

"Like what?" Hilbrook demanded. "I've been trying to figure it, and Ican't. I should like you to try it. You can't imagine a new passion inthe soul any more than you can imagine a new feature in the face. Therethey are: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, chin; love, hate, greed, hope, fear!You can't add to them or take away from them. " The old man dropped fromhis defiance in an entreaty that was even more terrible to Ewbert. "Iwish you could. I should like to have you try. Maybe I haven't been overthe whole ground. Maybe there's some principle that I've missed. " Hehitched his chair closer to Ewbert's, and laid some tremulous fingers onthe minister's sleeve. "If I've got to live forever, what have I got tolive for?"

"Well, " said Ewbert, meeting him fully in his humility, "let us try tomake it out together. Let us try to think. Apparently, our way hasbrought us to a dead wall; but I believe there's light beyond it, if wecan only break through. Is it really necessary that we should discoversome new principle? Do we know all that love can do from our experienceof it here?"

"Have you seen a mother with her child?" Hilbrook retorted. 

"Yes, I know. But even that has some alloy of selfishness. Can't weimagine love in which there is no greed, --for greed, and not hate, isthe true antithesis of love which is all giving, while greed is allgetting, --a love that is absolutely pure?"

"_I_ can't, " said the old man. "All the love I ever felt had greed init; I wanted to keep the thing I loved for myself. "

"Yes, because you were afraid in the midst of your love. It was fearthat alloyed it, not greed. And in easily imaginable conditions in whichthere is no fear of want, or harm, or death, love would be pure; for itis these things that greed itself wants to save us from. You can imagineconditions in which there shall be no fear, in which love casteth outfear?"

"Well, " said Hilbrook provisionally. 

Ewbert had not thought of these points himself before, and he waspleased with his discovery, though afterwards he was aware that it wassomething like an intellectual juggle. "You see, " he temporized, "wehave got rid of two of the passions already, fear and greed, which arethe potentialities of our unhappiest experience in this life. In fact, we have got rid of three, for without fear and greed men cannot hate. "

"But how can we exist without them?" Hilbrook urged. "Shall we be madeup of two passions, --of love and hope alone?"

"Why not?" Ewbert returned, with what he felt a specious brightness. 

"Because we should not be complete beings with these two elementsalone. "

"Ah, as we know ourselves here, I grant you, " said the minister. "Butwhy should we not be far more simply constituted somewhere else? Haveyou ever read Isaac Taylor's Physical Theory of another Life? He arguesthat the immortal body would be a far less complex mechanism than themortal body. Why should not the immortal soul be simple, too? In fact, it would necessarily be so, being one with the body. I think I can putmy hand on that book, and if I can I must make you take it with you. "

He rose briskly from his chair, and went to the shelves, running hisfingers along the books with that subtlety of touch by which the studentknows a given book in the dark. He had heard Mrs. Ewbert stirring aboutin the rooms beyond with an activity in which he divined a menacingimpatience; and he would have been glad to get rid of old Hilbrookbefore her impatience burst in an irruption upon them. Perhaps becauseof this distraction he could not find the book, but he remained on foot, talking with an implication in his tone that they were both preparing topart, and were now merely finishing off some odds and ends of discoursebefore they said good-night. 

Old Hilbrook did not stir. He was far too sincere a nature, Ewbert saw, to conceive of such inhospitality as a hint for his departure, or he wastoo deeply interested to be aware of it. The minister was obliged to sitdown again, and it was eleven o'clock before Hilbrook rose to go. 

X. 

Ewbert went out to the gate with the old man, and when he came back tohis study, he found his wife there looking strangely tall and monumentalin her reproach. "I supposed you were in bed long ago, my dear, " heattempted lightly. 

"You _don't_ mean that you've been out in the night air without your haton!" she returned. "Well, this is too _much_!" Her long-pent-upimpatience broke in tears, and he strove in vain to comfort her withcaresses. "Oh, what a fatal day it was when you stirred that wretchedold creature up! _Why_ couldn't you leave him alone!"

"To his apathy? To his despair? Emily!" Ewbert dropped his arms from theembrace in which he had folded her woodenly unresponsive frame, andregarded her sadly. 

"Oh yes, of course, " she answered, rubbing her handkerchief into hereyes. "But you don't know that it was despair; and he was quite happy inhis apathy; and as it is, you've got him on your hands; and if he'sgoing to come here every night and stay till morning, it will kill you. You know you're not strong; and you get so excited when you sit uptalking. Look how flushed your cheeks are, now, and your eyes--as big!You won't sleep a wink to-night, --I know you won't. "

"Oh yes, I shall, " he answered bravely. "I believe I've done some goodwork with poor old Hilbrook; and you mustn't think he's tired me. I feelfresher than I did when he came. "

"It's because you're excited, " she persisted. "I know you won't sleep. "

"Yes, I shall. I shall just stay here, and read my nerves down a little. Then I'll come. "

"Oh yes!" Mrs. Ewbert exulted disconsolately, and she left him to hisbook. She returned to say: "If you _must_ take anything to make yousleepy, I've left some warm milk on the back of the stove. Promise meyou won't take any sulphonal! You know how you feel the next day!"

"No, no, I won't, " said Ewbert; and he kept his word, with the effect ofremaining awake all night. Toward morning he did not know but he haddrowsed; he was not aware of losing consciousness, and he started fromhis drowse with the word "consciousness" in his mind, as he had heardHilbrook speaking it. 

XI. 

Throughout the day, under his wife's watchful eye, he failed of the napshe tried for, and he had to own himself as haggard, when night cameagain, as the fondest anxiety of a wife could pronounce a husband. Hecould not think of his talk with old Hilbrook without an anguish ofbrain exhaustion; and yet he could not help thinking of it. He realizedwhat the misery of mere weakness must be, and the horror of not havingthe power to rest. He wished to go to bed before the hour when Hilbrookcommonly appeared, but this was so early that Ewbert knew he shouldmerely toss about and grow more and more wakeful from his prematureeffort to sleep. He trembled at every step outside, and at the sound offeet approaching the door on the short brick walk from the gate, he andhis wife arrested themselves with their teacups poised in the air. Ewbert was aware of feebly hoping the feet might go away again; but thebell rang, and then he could not meet his wife's eye. 

"If it is that old Mr. Hilbrook, " she said to the maid in transitthrough the room, "tell him that Mr. Ewbert is not well, but _I_ shallbe glad to see him, " and now Ewbert did not dare to protest. Hisforebodings were verified when he heard Hilbrook asking for him, butthough he knew the voice, he detected a difference in the tone thatpuzzled him. 

His wife did not give Hilbrook time to get away, if he had wished, without seeing her; she rose at once and went out to him. Ewbert heardher asking him into the library, and then he heard them in parley there;and presently they came out into the hall again, and went to the frontdoor together. Ewbert's heart misgave him of something summary on herpart, and he did not know what to make of the cheerful parting betweenthem. "Well, I bid you good-evening, ma'am, " he heard old Hilbrook saybriskly, and his wife return sweetly, "Good-night, Mr. Hilbrook. Youmust come soon again. "

"You may put your mind at rest, Clarence, " she said, as she reënteredthe dining room and met his face of surprise. "He didn't come to make acall; he just wanted to borrow a book, --Physical Theory of anotherLife. "

"How did you find it?" asked Ewbert, with relief. 

"It was where it always was, " she returned indifferently. "Mr. Hilbrookseemed to be very much interested in something you said to him about it. I do believe you _have_ done him good, Clarence; and now, if you canonly get a full night's rest, I shall forgive him. But I hope he won'tcome _very_ soon again, and will never stay so late when he does come. Promise me you won't go near him till he's brought the book back!"

XII. 

Hilbrook came the night after he had borrowed the book, full of talkabout it, to ask if he might keep it a little longer. Ewbert had sleptwell the intervening night, and had been suffered to see Hilbrook uponpromising his wife that he would not encourage the old man to stay; butHilbrook stayed without encouragement. An interest had come into hisapathetic life which renewed it, and gave vitality to a whole dead worldof things. He wished to talk, and he wished even more to listen, that hemight confirm himself from Ewbert's faith and reason in the conjectureswith which his mind was filled. His eagerness as to the conditions of afuture life, now that he had begun to imagine them, was insatiable, andEwbert, who met it with glad sympathy, felt drained of his own spiritualforces by the strength which he supplied to the old man. But the casewas so strange, so absorbing, so important, that he could not refusehimself to it. He could not deny Hilbrook's claim to all that he couldgive him in this sort; he was as helpless to withhold the succor hesupplied as he was to hide from Mrs. Ewbert's censoriously anxious eyethe nervous exhaustion to which it left him after each visit thatHilbrook paid him. But there was a drain from another source of which hewould not speak to her till he could make sure that the effect was notsome trick of his own imagination. 

He had been aware, in twice urging some reason upon Hilbrook, of acertain perfunctory quality in his performance. It was as if the truth, so vital at first, had perished in its formulation, and in therepetition he was sensible, or he was fearful, of an insincerity, ahollowness in the arguments he had originally employed so earnestlyagainst the old man's doubt. He recognized with dismay a quality ofquestion in his own mind, and he fancied that as Hilbrook waxed inbelief he himself waned. The conviction of a life hereafter was notsomething which he was _sharing_ with Hilbrook; he was _giving_ itabsolutely, and with such entire unreserve that he was impoverishing hisown soul of its most precious possession. 

So it seemed to him in those flaccid moods to which Hilbrook's visitsleft him, when mind and body were both spent in the effort he had beenmaking. In the intervals in which his strength renewed itself, he putthis fear from him as a hypochondriacal fancy, and he summoned acheerfulness which he felt less and less to meet the hopeful face of theold man. Hilbrook had renewed himself, apparently, in the measure thatthe minister had aged and waned. He looked, to Ewbert, younger andstronger. To the conventional question how he did, he one night answeredthat he never felt better in his life. "But you, " he said, casting aneye over the face and figure of the minister, who lay back in hiseasy-chair, with his hands stretched nerveless on the arms, "_you_, lookrather peaked. I don't know as I noticed it before, but come to think, Iseemed to feel the same way about it when I saw you in the pulpityesterday. "

"It was a very close day, " said Ewbert. "I don't know why I shouldn't beabout as well as usual. "

"Well, that's right, " said Hilbrook, in willing dismissal of the triflewhich had delayed him from the great matter in his mind. 

Some new thoughts had occurred to him in corroboration of the notionsthey had agreed upon in their last meeting. But in response Ewbert foundhimself beset by a strange temptation, --by the wish to take up thesenotions and expose their fallacy. They were indeed mere toys of theircommon fancy which they had constructed together in mutual supposition, but Ewbert felt a sacredness in them, while he longed so strangely tobreak them one by one and cast them in the old man's face. Like allimaginative people, he was at times the prey of morbid self-suggestions, whose nature can scarcely be stated without excess. The more monstrousthe thing appeared to his mind and conscience, the more fascinating itbecame. Once the mere horror of such a conception as catching a comelyparishioner about the waist and kissing her, when she had come to himwith a case of conscience, had so confused him in her presence as tomake him answer her wildly, not because he was really tempted to thewickedness, but because he realized so vividly the hideousness of theimpossible temptation. In some such sort he now trembled before oldHilbrook, thinking how dreadful it would be if he were suddenly to beginundoing the work of faith in him, and putting back in its place thedoubts which he had uprooted before. In a swift series of dramaticrepresentations he figured the old man's helpless amaze at thedemoniacal gayety with which he should mock his own seriousness in thepast, the cynical ease with which he should show the vanity of the hopeshe had been so fervent in awakening. He had throughout recognized theclaim that all the counter-doubts had upon the reason, and he saw howeffective he could make these if he were now to become their advocate. He pictured the despair in which he could send his proselyte totteringhome to his lonely house through the dark. 

He rent himself from the spell, but the last picture remained so realwith him that he went to the window and looked out, saying, "Is there amoon?"

"It ain't up yet, I guess, " said old Hilbrook, and from something in hismanner, rather than from anything he recollected of their talk, Ewbertfancied him to have asked a question, and to be now waiting for someanswer. He had not the least notion what the question could have been, and he began to walk up and down, trying to think of something to say, but feeling his legs weak under him and the sweat cold on his forehead. All the time he was aware of Hilbrook following him with an air ofcheerful interest, and patiently waiting till he should take up thethread of their discourse again. 

He controlled himself at last, and sank into his chair. "Where were we?"he asked. "I had gone off on a train of associations, and I don't justrecall our last point. "

Hilbrook stated it, and Ewbert said, "Oh, yes, " as if he recognized it, and went on from it upon the line of thought which it suggested. He wasaware of talking rationally and forcibly; but in the subjectiveundercurrent paralleling his objective thought he was holding discoursewith himself to an effect wholly different from that produced inHilbrook. 

"Well, sir, " said the old man when he rose to go at last, "I guessyou've settled it for me. You've made me see that there can be animmortal life that's worth living; and I was afraid there wa'n't! Ishouldn't care, now, if I woke up any morning in the other world. Iguess it would be all right; and that there would be new conditionsevery way, so that a man could go on and be himself, without feelin'that he was in any danger of bein' wasted. You've made me want to meetmy boy again; and I used to dread it; I didn't think I was fit for it. Idon't know whether you expect me to thank you; I presume you don't; butI"--he faltered, and his voice shook in sympathy with the old hand thathe put trembling into Ewbert's--"I _bless_ you!"

XIII. 

The time had come when the minister must seek refuge and counsel withhis wife. He went to her as a troubled child goes to its mother, and sheheard the confession of his strange experience with the motherlysympathy which performs the comforting office of perfect intelligence. If she did not grasp its whole significance, she seized what was perhapsthe main point, and she put herself in antagonism to the cause of hismorbid condition, while administering an inevitable chastisement for theneglect of her own prevision. 

"That terrible old man, " she said, "has simply been draining the lifeout of you, Clarence. I saw it from the beginning, and I warned youagainst it; but you wouldn't listen to me. _Now_ I suppose you _will_listen, after the doctor tells you that you're in danger of nervousprostration, and that you've got to give up everything and rest. _I_think you've been in danger of losing your reason, you've overworked itso; and I sha'n't be easy till I've got you safely away at the seaside, and out of the reach of that--that _vampire_. "

"Emily!" the minister protested. "I can't allow you to use suchlanguage. At the worst, and supposing that he has really been that drainupon me which you say (though I don't admit it), what is my life for butto give to others?"

"But _my_ life isn't for you to give to others, and _your_ life _is_mine, and I think I have some right to say what shall be done with it, and I don't choose to have it used up on old Hilbrook. " It passedthrough Ewbert's languid thought, which it stirred to a vague amusement, that the son of an older church than the Rixonite might have found inthis thoroughly terrestrial attitude of his wife a potent argument forsacerdotal celibacy; but he did not attempt to formulate it, and helistened submissively while she went on: "_One_ thing: I am certainlynot going to let you see him again till you've seen the doctor, and Ihope he won't come about. If he does, _I_ shall see him. "

The menace in this declaration moved Ewbert to another protest, which heworded conciliatingly: "I shall have to let you. But I know you won'tsay anything to convey a sense of responsibility to him. I couldn'tforgive myself if he were allowed to feel that he had been preying uponme. The fact is, I've been overdoing in every way, and nobody is toblame for my morbid fancies but myself. I _should_ blame myself veryseverely if you based any sort of superstition on them, and acted fromthat superstition. "

"Oh, you needn't be afraid!" said Mrs. Ewbert. "I shall take care of hisfeelings, but I shall have my own opinions, all the same, Clarence. "

Whether a woman with opinions so strong as Mrs. Ewbert's, and soindistinguishable from her prejudices, could be trusted to keep them toherself, in dealing with the matter in hand, was a question which herhusband felt must largely be left to her goodness of heart for its rightsolution. 

When Hilbrook came that night, as usual, she had already had it out withhim in several strenuous reveries before they met, and she was able towelcome him gently to the interview which she made very brief. His facefell in visible disappointment when she said that Mr. Ewbert would notbe able to see him, and perhaps there was nothing to uplift him in thereasons she gave, though she obscurely resented his continued dejectionas a kind of ingratitude. She explained that poor Mr. Ewbert was quitebroken down, and that the doctor had advised his going to the seasidefor the whole of August, where he promised everything from the air andthe bathing. Mr. Ewbert merely needed toning up, she said; but tocorrect the impression she might be giving that his breakdown was atrifling matter, she added that she felt very anxious about it, andwanted to get him away as soon as possible. She said with a confidentialeffect, as of something in which Hilbrook could sympathize with her:"You know it isn't merely his church work proper; it's his givinghimself spiritually to all sorts of people so indiscriminately. He can'tdeny himself to any one; and sometimes he's perfectly exhausted by it. You must come and see him as soon as he gets back, Mr. Hilbrook. He willcount upon it, I know; he's so much interested in the discussions he hasbeen having with you. "

She gave the old man her hand for good-by, after she had artfully stoodhim up, in a double hope, --a hope that he would understand that therewas some limit to her husband's nervous strength, and a hope that herclosing invitation would keep him from feeling anything personal in herhints. 

Hilbrook took his leave in the dreamy fashion age has with so manythings, as if there were a veil between him and experience which kepthim from the full realization of what had happened; and as she watchedhis bent shoulders down the garden walk, carrying his forward-droopinghead at a slant that scarcely left the crown of his hat visible, a fearcame upon her which made it impossible for her to recount all the factsof her interview to her husband. It became her duty, rather, to concealwhat was painful to herself in it, and she merely told him that Mr. Hilbrook had taken it all in the right way, and she had made him promiseto come and see them as soon as they got back. 

XIV. 

Events approved the wisdom of Mrs. Ewbert's course in so many respectsthat she confidently trusted them for the rest. Ewbert picked upwonderfully at the seaside, and she said to him again and again that itwas not merely those interviews with old Hilbrook which had drained hisvitality, but it was the whole social and religious keeping of theplace. Everybody, she said, had thrown themselves upon his sympathies, and he was carrying a load that nobody could bear up under. Sheaddressed these declarations to her lingering consciousness of RansomHilbrook, and confirmed herself, by their repetition, in the belief thathe had not taken her generalizations personally. She now extended theseso as to inculpate the faculty of the university, who ought to have feltit their duty not to let a man of Ewbert's intellectual quality staggeron alone among them, with no sign of appreciation or recognition in thework he was doing, not so much for the Rixonite church as for the wholecommunity. She took several ladies at the hotel into her confidence onthis point, and upon study of the situation they said it was a shame. After that she felt more bitter about it, and attributed her husband'scollapse to a concealed sense of the indifference of the universitypeople, so galling to a sensitive nature. 

She suggested this theory to Ewbert, and he denied it with blithederision, but she said that he need not tell _her_, and in confirmingherself in it she began to relax her belief that old Ransom Hilbrook hadpreyed upon him. She even went so far as to say that the onlyintellectual companionship he had ever had in the place was that whichhe found in the old man's society. When she discovered, after the fact, that Ewbert had written to him since they came away, she was not sosevere with him as she might have expected herself to be in view of anact which, if not quite clandestine, was certainly without her privity. She would have considered him fitly punished by Hilbrook's failure toreply, if she had not shared his uneasiness at the old man's silence. But she did not allow this to affect her good spirits, which wereessential to her husband's comfort as well as her own. She redoubled hercare of him in every sort, and among all the ladies who admired herdevotion to him there was none who enjoyed it as much as herself. Therewas none who believed more implicitly that it was owing to her foresightand oversight that his health mended so rapidly, and that at the end ofthe bathing season she was, as she said, taking him home quite anotherman. In her perfect satisfaction she suffered him his small joke aboutnot feeling it quite right to go with her if that were so; and though awoman of little humor, she even professed to find pleasure in his jokeafter she fully understood it. 

"All that I ask, " she said, as if it followed, "is that you won't spoileverything by letting old Hilbrook come every night and drain the lifeout of you again. "

"I won't, " he retorted, "if you'll promise to make the university peoplecome regularly to my sermons. "

He treated the notion of Hilbrook's visits lightly; but with his returnto the familiar environment he felt a shrinking from them in anexperience which was like something physical. Yet when he sat down thefirst night in his study, with his lamp in its wonted place, it was withan expectation of old Hilbrook in his usual seat so vivid that itsdefeat was more a shock than its fulfilment upon supernatural termswould have been. In fact, the absence of the old man was spectral; andthough Ewbert employed himself fully the first night in answering anaccumulation of letters that required immediate reply, it was withnervous starts from time to time, which he could trace to no othercause. His wife came in and out, with what he knew to be an accusingeye, as she brought up those arrears of housekeeping which always awaitthe housewife on the return from any vacation; and he knew that he didnot conceal his guilt from her. 

They both ignored the stress which had fallen back upon him, and whichaccumulated, as the days of the week went by, until the first Sundaycame. 

Ewbert dreaded to look in the direction of Hilbrook's pew, lest heshould find it empty; but the old man was there, and he sat blinking atthe minister, as his custom was, through the sermon, and thoughtfullypassing the tip of his tongue over the inner edge of his lower lip. 

Many came up to shake hands with the minister after church, and to tellhim how well he was looking, but Hilbrook was not among them. Some ofthe university people who had made a point of being there that morning, out of a personal regard for Ewbert, were grouped about his wife, in thechurch vestibule, where she stood answering their questions about hishealth. He glimpsed between the heads and shoulders of this gratifyinggroup the figure of Hilbrook dropping from grade to grade on the stepsoutside, till it ceased to be visible, and he fancied, with a pang, thatthe old man had lingered to speak with him, and had then given up andstarted home. 

The cordial interest of the university people was hardly a compensationfor the disappointment he shared with Hilbrook; but his wife was sohappy in it that he could not say anything to damp her joy. "Now, " shedeclared, on their way home, "I am perfectly satisfied that they willkeep coming. You never preached so well, Clarence, and if they have anyappreciation at all, they simply won't be able to keep away. I wish youcould have heard all the nice things they said about you. I guessthey've waked up to you, at last, and I do believe that the idea oflosing you has had a great deal to do with it. And _that_ is somethingwe owe to old Ransom Hilbrook more than to anything else. I saw the poorold fellow hanging about, and I couldn't help feeling for him. I knew hewanted to speak with you, and I'm not afraid that he will be a burdenagain. It will be such an inspiration, the prospect of having theuniversity people come every Sunday, now, that you can afford to give alittle of it to him, and I want you to go and see him soon; he evidentlyisn't coming till you do. "

XV. 

Ewbert had learned not to inquire too critically for a logical processin his wife's changes of attitude toward any fact. In her present moodhe recognized an effect of the exuberant good-will awakened by thehandsome behavior of the university people, and he agreed with her thathe must go to see old Hilbrook at once. In this good intention hispainful feeling concerning him was soothed, and Ewbert did not get up tothe Hilbrook place till well into the week. It was Thursday afternoonwhen he climbed through the orchard, under the yellowing leaves whichdappled the green masses of the trees like intenser spots of theSeptember sunshine. He came round by the well to the side door of thehouse, which stood open, and he did not hesitate to enter when he sawhow freely the hens were coming and going through it. They scuttled outaround him and between his legs, with guilty screeches, and left himstanding alone in the middle of the wide, low kitchen. A certaindiscomfort of the nerves which their flight gave him was heightened bysome details quite insignificant in themselves. There was no fire in thestove, and the wooden clock on the mantel behind it was stopped; thewind had carried in some red leaves from the maple near the door, andthese were swept against the farther wall, where they lay palpitating inthe draft. 

The neglect in all was evidently too recent to suggest any suppositionbut that of the master's temporary absence, and Ewbert went to thethreshold to look for his coming from the sheds or the barn. But thesewere all fast shut, and there was no sign of Hilbrook anywhere. Ewbertturned back into the room again, and saw the door of the old man'slittle bedroom standing slightly ajar. With a chill of apprehension hepushed it open, and he could not have experienced a more disagreeableeffect if the dark fear in his mind had been realized than he did to seeHilbrook lying in his bed alive and awake. His face showed like a finemask above the sheet, and his long, narrow hands rested on the coveringacross his breast. His eyes met those of Ewbert not only withoutsurprise, but without any apparent emotion. 

"Why, Mr. Hilbrook, " said the minister, "are you sick?"

"No, I am first-rate, " the old man answered. 

It was on the point of the minister's tongue to ask him, "Then what inthe world are you doing in bed?" but he substituted the lessauthoritative suggestion, "I am afraid I disturbed you--that I woke youout of a nap. But I found the door open and the hens inside, and Iventured to come in"--

Hilbrook replied calmly, "I heard you; I wa'n't asleep. "

"Oh, " said Ewbert, apologetically, and he did not know quite what to do;he had an aimless wish for his wife, as if she would have known what todo. In her absence he decided to shut the door against the hens, whowere returning adventurously to the threshold, and then he asked, "Isthere something I can do for you? Make a fire for you to get up by"--

"I ha'n't got any call to get up, " said Hilbrook; and, after givingEwbert time to make the best of this declaration, he asked abruptly, "What was that you said about my wantin' to be alive enough to know Iwas dead?"

"The consciousness of unconsciousness?"

"Ah!" the old man assented, as with satisfaction in having got thenotion right; and then he added, with a certain defiance: "There ain'tanything _in_ that. I got to thinking it over, when you was gone, andthe whole thing went to pieces. That idea don't prove anything at all, and all that we worked out of it had to go with it. "

"Well, " the minister returned, with an assumption of cosiness in histone which he did not feel, and feigning to make himself easy in thehard kitchen chair which he pulled up to the door of Hilbrook's room, "let's see if we can't put that notion together again. "

"_You_ can, if you want to, " said the old man, dryly "I got no interestin it any more; 'twa'n't nothing but a metaphysical toy, anyway. " Heturned his head apathetically on the pillow, and no longer faced hisvisitor, who found it impossible in the conditions of tacit dismissal tophilosophize further. 

"I was sorry, " Ewbert began, "not to be able to speak with you afterchurch, the other day. There were so many people"--

"That's all right, " said Hilbrook unresentfully. "I hadn't anything tosay, in particular. "

"But _I_ had, " the minister persisted. "I thought a great deal about youwhen I was away, and I went over our talks in my own mind a great manytimes. The more I thought about them, the more I believed that we hadfelt our way to some important truth in the matter. I don't say finaltruth, for I don't suppose that we shall ever reach that in this life. "

"Very likely, " Hilbrook returned, with his face to the wall. "I don'tsee as it makes any difference; or if it does, I don't care for it. "

Something occurred to Ewbert which seemed to him of more immediateusefulness than the psychological question. "Couldn't I get yousomething to eat, Mr. Hilbrook? If you haven't had any breakfast to-day, you must be hungry. "

"Yes, I'm hungry, " the old man assented, "but I don't want to eatanything. "

Ewbert had risen hopefully in making his suggestion, but now his heartsank. Here, it seemed to him, a physician rather than a philosopher wasneeded, and at the sound of wheels on the wagon track to the door hisimagination leaped to the miracle of the doctor's providential advent. He hurried to the threshold and met the fish-man, who was about toannounce himself with the handle of his whip on the clapboarding. Hegrasped the situation from the minister's brief statement, and confessedthat he had expected to find the old gentleman _dead_ in his bed someday, and he volunteered to send some of the women folks from the farm upthe road. When these came, concentrated in the person of the farmer'sbustling wife, who had a fire kindled in the stove and the kettle onbefore Ewbert could get away, he went for the doctor, and returned withhim to find her in possession of everything in the house except theowner's interest. Her usefulness had been arrested by an invisible butimpassable barrier, though she had passed and re-passed the threshold ofHilbrook's chamber with tea and milk toast. He said simply that he sawno object in eating; and he had not been sufficiently interested to turnhis head and look at her in speaking to her. 

With the doctor's science he was as indifferent as with the farm-wife'sservice. He submitted to have his pulse felt, and he could not helpbeing prescribed for, but he would have no agency in taking hismedicine. He said, as he had said to Mrs. Stephson about eating, that hesaw no object in it. 

The doctor retorted, with the temper of a man not used to having hiswill crossed, that he had better take it, if he had any object inliving, and Hilbrook answered that he had none. In his absolute apathyhe did not even ask to be let alone. 

"You see, " the baffled doctor fumed in the conference that he had withEwbert apart, "he doesn't really need any medicine. There's nothing thematter with him, and I only wanted to give him something to put an edgeto his appetite. He's got cranky living here alone; but there _is_ sucha thing as starving to death, and that's the only thing Hilbrook's indanger of. If you're going to stay with him--he oughtn't to be leftalone"--

"I can come up, yes, certainly, after supper, " said Ewbert, and hefortified himself inwardly for the question this would raise with hiswife. 

"Then you must try to interest him in something. Get him to talking, andthen let Mrs. Stephson come in with a good bowl of broth, and I guess wemay trust Nature to do the rest. "

XVI. 

When we speak of Nature, we figure her as one thing, with a fixedpurpose and office in the universal economy; but she is an immensenumber of things, and her functions are inexpressibly varied. Sheincludes decay as well as growth; she compasses death as well as birth. We call certain phenomena unnatural; but in a natural world how cananything be unnatural, except the supernatural? These facts gave Ewbertpause in view of the obstinate behavior of Ransom Hilbrook in dying forno obvious reason, and kept him from pronouncing it unnatural. The oldman, he reflected, had really less reason to live than to die, if itcame to reasons; for everything that had made the world home to him hadgone out of it, and left him in exile here. The motives had ceased; theinterests had perished; the strong personality that had persisted wassolitary amid the familiar environment grown alien. 

The wonder was that he should ever have been roused from his apatheticunfaith to inquiry concerning the world beyond this, and to a certaindegree of belief in possibilities long abandoned by his imagination. Ewbert had assisted at the miracle of this resuscitation upon termswhich, until he was himself much older, he could not question as totheir beneficence, and in fact it never came to his being quite frankwith himself concerning them. He kept his thoughts on this point in thatstate of solution which holds so many conjectures from precipitation inactual conviction. 

But his wife had no misgivings. Her dread was that in his devotion tothat miserable old man (as she called him, not always in compassion) heshould again contribute to Hilbrook's vitality at the expense, if notthe danger, of his own. She of course expressed her joy that Ewbert hadat last prevailed upon him to eat something, when the entreaty of hisnurse and the authority of his doctor availed nothing; and of course shefelt the pathos of his doing it out of affection for Ewbert, and merelyto please him, as Hilbrook declared. It did not surprise her that anyone should do anything for the love of Ewbert, but it is doubtful if shefully recognized the beauty of this last efflorescence of the aged life;and she perceived it her duty not to sympathize entirely with Ewbert'smorbid regret that it came too late. She was much more resigned than heto the will of Providence, and she urged a like submissiveness upon him. 

"Don't talk so!" he burst out. "It's horrible!" It was in the firsthours after Ewbert's return from Hilbrook's death-bed, and his spentnerves gave way in a gush of tears. 

"I see what you mean, " she said, after a pause in which he controlledhis sobs. "And I suppose, " she added, with a touch of bitterness, "thatyou blame _me_ for taking you away from him here when he was comingevery night and sapping your very life. You were very glad to have me doit at the time! And what use would there have been in your killingyourself, anyway? It wasn't as if he were a young man with a career ofusefulness before him, that might have been marred by his not believingthis or that. He had been a complete failure every way, and the end ofthe world had come for him. What did it matter whether such a manbelieved that there was another world or not?"

"Emily! Emily!" the minister cried out. "What are you saying?"

Mrs. Ewbert broke down in her turn. "I don't know _what_ I'm saying!"she retorted from behind her handkerchief. "I'm trying to show you thatit's your duty to yourself--and to me--and to people who can know how toprofit by your teaching and your example, not to give way as you'redoing, simply because a wornout old agnostic couldn't keep his hold onthe truth. I don't know what your Rixonitism is for if it won't let youwait upon the divine will in such a thing, _too_. You're moreconscientious than the worst kind of Congregationalist. And now for youto blame me"--

"Emily, I don't blame _you_, " said her husband. "I blame myself. "

"And you see that that's the same thing! You ought to thank me forsaving your life; for it was just as if you were pouring your heart'sblood into him, and I could see you getting more anæmic every day. Evennow you're not half as well as when you got home! And yet I do believethat if you could bring old Hilbrook back into a world that he was sickand tired of, you'd give your own life to do it. "

XVII. 

There was reason and there was justice in what she said, though theywere so chaotic in form, and Ewbert could not refuse to acquiesce. 

After all, he had done what he could, and he would not abandon himselfto a useless remorse. He rather set himself to study the lesson of oldHilbrook's life, and in the funeral sermon that he preached he urgedupon his hearers the necessity of keeping themselves alive through somerelation to the undying frame of things, which they could do only bycherishing earthly ties; and when these were snapped in the removal oftheir objects, by attaching the broken threads through an effort of thewill to yet other objects: the world could furnish these inexhaustibly. He touched delicately upon the peculiarities, the eccentricities, of thedeceased, and he did cordial justice to his gentleness, his blameless, harmless life, his heroism on the battlefields of his country. Hedeclared that he would not be the one to deny an inner piety, andcertainly not a steadfast courage, in Hilbrook's acceptance of whateverhis sincere doubts implied. 

The sermon apparently made a strong impression on all who heard it. Mrs. Ewbert was afraid that it was rather abstruse in certain passages, butshe felt sure that all the university people would appreciate these. Theuniversity people, to testify their respect for their founder, had comein a body to the obsequies of his kinsman; and Mrs. Ewbert augured thebest things for her husband's future usefulness from their presence. 

THE MAGIC OF A VOICE. 

I. 

There was a full moon, and Langbourne walked about the town, unable tocome into the hotel and go to bed. The deep yards of the houses gave outthe scent of syringas and June roses; the light of lamps came throughthe fragrant bushes from the open doors and windows, with the sound ofplaying and singing and bursts of young laughter. Where the houses stoodnear the street, he could see people lounging on the thresholds, andtheir heads silhouetted against the luminous interiors. Other houses, both those which stood further back and those that stood nearer, weredark and still, and to these he attributed the happiness of love infruition, safe from unrest and longing. 

His own heart was tenderly oppressed, not with desire, but with thememory of desire. It was almost as if in his faded melancholy he weresorry for the disappointment of some one else. 

At last he turned and walked back through the streets of dwellings tothe business centre of the town, where a gush of light came from theveranda of his hotel, and the druggist's window cast purple and yellowblurs out upon the footway. The other stores were shut, and he aloneseemed to be abroad. The church clock struck ten as he mounted the stepsof his hotel and dropped the remnant of his cigar over the side. 

He had slept badly on the train the night before, and he had promisedhimself to make up his lost sleep in the good conditions that seemed tooffer themselves. But when he sat down in the hotel office he was morewakeful than he had been when he started out to walk himself drowsy. 

The clerk gave him the New York paper which had come by the eveningtrain, and he thanked him, but remained musing in his chair. At times hethought he would light another cigar, but the hand that he carried tohis breast pocket dropped nervelessly to his knee again, and he did notsmoke. Through his memories of disappointment pierced a self-reproachwhich did not permit him the perfect self-complacency of regret; and yethe could not have been sure, if he had asked himself, that this pang didnot heighten the luxury of his psychological experience. 

He rose and asked the clerk for a lamp, but he turned back from thestairs to inquire when there would be another New York mail. The clerksaid there was a train from the south due at eleven-forty, but it seldombrought any mail; the principal mail was at seven. Langbourne thankedhim, and came back again to beg the clerk to be careful and not have himcalled in the morning, for he wished to sleep. Then he went up to hisroom, where he opened his window to let in the night air. He heard a dogbarking; a cow lowed; from a stable somewhere the soft thumping of thehorses' feet came at intervals lullingly. 

II. 

Langbourne fell asleep so quickly that he was aware of no moment ofwaking after his head touched the fragrant pillow. He woke so muchrefreshed by his first sound, soft sleep that he thought it must benearly morning. He got his watch into a ray of the moonlight and madeout that it was only a little after midnight, and he perceived that itmust have been the sound of low murmuring voices and broken laughter inthe next room which had wakened him. But he was rather glad to have beenroused to a sense of his absolute comfort, and he turned unresentfullyto sleep again. All his heaviness of heart was gone; he felt curiouslyglad and young; he had somehow forgiven the wrong he had suffered andthe wrong he had done. The subdued murmuring went on in the next room, and he kept himself awake to enjoy it for a while. Then he let himselfgo, and drifted away into gulfs of slumber, where, suddenly, he seemedto strike against something, and started up in bed. 

A laugh came from the next room. It was not muffled, as before, butfrank and clear. It was woman's laughter, and Langbourne easily inferredgirlhood as well as womanhood from it. His neighbors must have come bythe late train, and they had probably begun to talk as soon as they gotinto their room. He imagined their having spoken low at first for fearof disturbing some one, and then, in their forgetfulness, or theirbelief that there was no one near, allowed themselves greater freedom. There were survivals of their earlier caution at times, when theirvoices sank so low as scarcely to be heard; then there was a break fromit when they rose clearly distinguishable from each other. They werenever so distinct that he could make out what was said; but each voiceunmistakably conveyed character. 

Friendship between girls is never equal; they may equally love eachother, but one must worship and one must suffer worship. Langbourne readthe differing temperaments necessary to this relation in the differingvoices. That which bore mastery was a low, thick murmur, coming fromdeep in the throat, and flowing out in a steady stream of indescribablecoaxing and drolling. The owner of that voice had imagination and humorwhich could charm with absolute control her companion's lighter nature, as it betrayed itself in a gay tinkle of amusement and a succession ofnervous whispers. Langbourne did not wonder at her subjection; with thefirst sounds of that rich, tender voice, he had fallen under its spelltoo; and he listened intensely, trying to make out some phrase, someword, some syllable. But the talk kept its sub-audible flow, and he hadto content himself as he could with the sound of the voice. 

As he lay eavesdropping with all his might he tried to construct animage of the two girls from their voices. The one with the crystallinelaugh was little and lithe, quick in movement, of a mobile face, withgray eyes and fair hair; the other was tall and pale, with full, blueeyes and a regular face, and lips that trembled with humor; very demureand yet very honest; very shy and yet very frank; there was somethingalmost mannish in her essential honesty; there was nothing of femininecoquetry in her, though everything of feminine charm. She was a girl wholooked like her father, Langbourne perceived with a flash of divination. She dressed simply in dark blue, and her hair was of a dark mahoganycolor. The smaller girl wore light gray checks or stripes, and theshades of silver. 

The talk began to be less continuous in the next room, from which therecame the sound of sighs and yawns, and then of mingled laughter atthese. Then the talk ran unbrokenly on for a while, and again droppedinto laughs that recognized the drowse creeping upon the talkers. Suddenly it stopped altogether, and left Langbourne, as he felt, definitively awake for the rest of the night. 

He had received an impression which he could not fully analyze. Withsome inner sense he kept hearing that voice, low and deep, and rich withwhimsical suggestion. Its owner must have a strange, complex nature, which would perpetually provoke and satisfy. Her companionship would beas easy and reasonable as a man's, while it had the charm of a woman's. At the moment it seemed to him that life without this companionshipwould be something poorer and thinner than he had yet known, and that hecould not endure to forego it. Somehow he must manage to see the girland make her acquaintance. He did not know how it could be contrived, but it could certainly be contrived, and he began to dramatize theirmeeting on these various terms. It was interesting and it wasdelightful, and it always came, in its safe impossibility, to histelling her that he loved her, and to her consenting to be his wife. Heresolved to take no chance of losing her, but to remain awake, andsomehow see her before she could leave the hotel in the morning. Theresolution gave him calm; he felt that the affair so far was settled. 

Suddenly he started from his pillow; and again he heard that mellowlaugh, warm and rich as the cooing of doves on sunlit eaves. The sun wasshining through the crevices of his window-blinds; he looked at hiswatch; it was half-past eight. The sound of fluttering skirts and flyingfeet in the corridor shook his heart. A voice, the voice of the mellowlaugh, called as if to some one on the stairs, "I must have put it in mybag. It doesn't matter, anyway. "

He hurried on his clothes, in the vain hope of finding his lateneighbors at breakfast; but before he had finished dressing he heardwheels before the veranda below, and he saw the hotel barge drive away, as if to the station. There were two passengers in it; two women, whosefaces were hidden by the fringe of the barge-roof, but whose slenderfigures showed themselves from their necks down. It seemed to him thatone was tall and slight, and the other slight and little. 

III. 

He stopped in the hall, and then, tempted by his despair, he steppedwithin the open door of the next room and looked vaguely over it, withshame at being there. What was it that the girl had missed, and had comeback to look for? Some trifle, no doubt, which she had not cared tolose, and yet had not wished to leave behind. He failed to find anythingin the search, which he could not make very thorough, and he was goingguiltily out when his eye fell upon an envelope, perversely fallenbeside the door and almost indiscernible against the white paint, withthe addressed surface inward. 

This must be the object of her search, and he could understand why shewas not very anxious when he found it a circular from a nursery-man, containing nothing more valuable than a list of flowering shrubs. Hesatisfied himself that this was all without satisfying himself that hehad quite a right to do so; and he stood abashed in the presence of thesuperscription on the envelope somewhat as if Miss Barbara F. Simpson, Upper Ashton Falls, N. H. , were there to see him tampering with hercorrespondence. It was indelicate, and he felt that his whole behaviorhad been indelicate, from the moment her laugh had wakened him in thenight till now, when he had invaded her room. He had no more doubt thatshe was the taller of the two girls than that this was her name on theenvelope. He liked Barbara; and Simpson could be changed. He seemed tohear her soft throaty laugh in response to the suggestion, and with aleap of the heart he slipped the circular into his breast pocket. 

After breakfast he went to the hotel office, and stood leaning on thelong counter and talking with the clerk till he could gather courage tolook at the register, where he knew the names of these girls must bewritten. He asked where Upper Ashton Falls was, and whether it would bea pleasant place to spend a week. 

The clerk said that it was about thirty miles up the road, and was oneof the nicest places in the mountains; Langbourne could not go to anicer; and there was a very good little hotel. "Why, " he said, "therewere two ladies here overnight that just left for there, on theseven-forty. Odd you should ask about it. "

Langbourne owned that it was odd, and then he asked if the ladies livedat Upper Ashton Falls, or were merely summer folks. 

"Well, a little of both, " said the clerk. "They're cousins, and they'vegot an aunt living there that they stay with. They used to go awaywinters, --teaching, I guess, --but this last year they stayed rightthrough. Been down to Springfield, they said, and just stopped the nightbecause the accommodation don't go any farther. Wake you up last night?I had to put 'em into the room next to yours, and girls usually talk. "

Langbourne answered that it would have taken a good deal of talking towake him the night before, and then he lounged across to the time-tablehanging on the wall, and began to look up the trains for Upper AshtonFalls. 

"If you want to go to the Falls, " said the clerk, "there's a throughtrain at four, with a drawing-room on it, that will get you there byfive. "

"Oh, I fancy I was looking up the New York trains, " Langbourne returned. He did not like these evasions, but in his consciousness of Miss Simpsonhe seemed unable to avoid them. The clerk went out on the veranda totalk with a farmer bringing supplies, and Langbourne ran to theregister, and read there the names of Barbara F. Simpson and Juliet D. Bingham. It was Miss Simpson who had registered for both, since her namecame first, and the entry was in a good, simple hand, which was like aman's in its firmness and clearness. He turned from the register decidedto take the four-o'clock train for Upper Ashton Falls, and met amessenger with a telegram which he knew was for himself before the boycould ask his name. His partner had fallen suddenly sick; his recall wasabsolute, his vacation was at an end; nothing remained for him but totake the first train back to New York. He thought how little prescienthe had been in his pretence that he was looking the New York trains up;but the need of one had come already, and apparently he should neverhave any use for a train to Upper Ashton Falls. 

IV. 

All the way back to New York Langbourne was oppressed by a sense of losssuch as his old disappointment in love now seemed to him never to haveinflicted. He found that his whole being had set toward the unseen ownerof the voice which had charmed him, and it was like a stretching andtearing of the nerves to be going from her instead of going to her. Hewas as much under duress as if he were bound by a hypnotic spell. Thevoice continually sounded, not in his ears, which were filled with thenoises of the train, as usual, but in the inmost of his spirit, where itwas a low, cooing, coaxing murmur. He realized now how intensely he musthave listened for it in the night, how every tone of it must havepervaded him and possessed him. He was in love with it, he was asentirely fascinated by it as if it were the girl's whole presence, herlooks, her qualities. The remnant of the summer passed in the fret ofbusiness, which was doubly irksome through his feeling of injury inbeing kept from the girl whose personality he constructed from the soundof her voice, and set over his fancy in an absolute sovereignty. Theimage he had created of her remained a dim and blurred vision throughoutthe day, but by night it became distinct and compelling. One evening, late in the fall, he could endure the stress no longer, and he yieldedto the temptation which had beset him from the first moment he renouncedhis purpose of returning in person the circular addressed to her as ameans of her acquaintance. He wrote to her, and in terms as dignified ashe could contrive, and as free from any ulterior import, he told her hehad found it in the hotel hallway and had meant to send it to her atonce, thinking it might be of some slight use to her. He had failed todo this, and now, having come upon it among some other papers, he sentit with an explanation which he hoped she would excuse him for troublingher with. 

This was not true, but he did not see how he could begin with her bysaying that he had found the circular in her room, and had kept it byhim ever since, looking at it every day, and leaving it where he couldsee it the last thing before he slept at night and the first thing afterhe woke in the morning. As to her reception of his story, he had totrust to his knowledge that she was, like himself, of country birth andbreeding, and to his belief that she would not take alarm at hisoverture. He did not go much into the world and was little acquaintedwith its usages, yet he knew enough to suspect that a woman of the worldwould either ignore his letter, or would return a cold and snubbingexpression of Miss Simpson's thanks for Mr. Stephen M. Langbourne'skindness. 

He had not only signed his name and given his address carefully in hopesof a reply, but he had enclosed the business card of his firm as a tokenof his responsibility. The partner in a wholesale stationery house oughtto be an impressive figure in the imagination of a village girl; but itwas some weeks before any answer came to Langbourne's letter. The replybegan with an apology for the delay, and Langbourne perceived that hehad gained rather than lost by the writer's hesitation; clearly shebelieved that she had put herself in the wrong, and that she owed him acertain reparation. For the rest, her letter was discreetly confined toan acknowledgment of the trouble he had taken. 

But this spare return was richly enough for Langbourne; it would havesufficed, if there had been nothing in the letter, that the handwritingproved Miss Simpson to have been the one who had made the entry of hername and her friend's in the hotel register. This was most important asone step in corroboration of the fact that he had rightly divined her;that the rest should come true was almost a logical necessity. Still, hewas puzzled to contrive a pretext for writing again, and he remainedwithout one for a fortnight. Then, in passing a seedsman's store whichhe used to pass every day without thinking, he one day suddenlyperceived his opportunity. He went in and got a number of the cataloguesand other advertisements, and addressed them then and there, in awrapper the seedsman gave him, to Miss Barbara F. Simpson, Upper AshtonFalls, N. H. 

Now the response came with a promptness which at least testified of thelingering compunction of Miss Simpson. She asked if she were right insupposing the seedsman's catalogues and folders had come to her fromLangbourne, and begged to know from him whether the seedsman in questionwas reliable: it was so difficult to get garden seeds that one couldtrust. 

The correspondence now established itself, and with one excuse oranother it prospered throughout the winter. Langbourne was not onlywilling, he was most eager, to give her proof of his reliability; hespoke of stationers in Springfield and Greenfield to whom he waspersonally known; and he secretly hoped she would satisfy herselfthrough friends in those places that he was an upright and trustworthyperson. 

Miss Simpson wrote delightful letters, with that whimsical quality whichhad enchanted him in her voice. The coaxing and caressing was not there, and could not be expected to impart itself, unless in those refuges ofdeep feeling supposed to lurk between the lines. But he hoped to provokeit from these in time, and his own letters grew the more earnest themore ironical hers became. He wrote to her about a book he was reading, and when she said she had not seen it, he sent it her; in one of herletters she casually betrayed that she sang contralto in the choir, andthen he sent her some new songs, which he had heard in the theatre, andwhich he had informed himself from a friend were contralto. He wasalways tending to an expression of the feeling which swayed him; but onher part there was no sentiment. Only in the fact that she was willingto continue this exchange of letters with a man personally unknown toher did she betray that romantic tradition which underlies all our younglife, and in those unused to the world tempts to things blameless inthemselves, but of the sort shunned by the worldlier wise. There was nogreat wisdom of any kind in Miss Simpson's letters; but Langbourne didnot miss it; he was content with her mere words, as they related thelittle events of her simple daily life. These repeated themselves fromthe page in the tones of her voice and filled him with a passionateintoxication. 

Towards spring he had his photograph taken, for no reason that he couldhave given; but since it was done he sent one to his mother in Vermont, and then he wrote his name on another, and sent it to Miss Simpson inNew Hampshire. He hoped, of course, that she would return a photographof herself; but she merely acknowledged his with some dry playfulness. Then, after disappointing him so long that he ceased to expect anything, she enclosed a picture. The face was so far averted that Langbournecould get nothing but the curve of a longish cheek, the point of a nose, the segment of a crescent eyebrow. The girl said that as they shouldprobably never meet, it was not necessary he should know her when he sawher; she explained that she was looking away because she had beenattracted by something on the other side of the photograph gallery justat the moment the artist took the cap off the tube of his camera, andshe could not turn back without breaking the plate. 

Langbourne replied that he was going up to Springfield on business thefirst week in May, and that he thought he might push on as far north asUpper Ashton Falls. To this there came no rejoinder whatever, but he didnot lose courage. It was now the end of April, and he could bear to waitfor a further verification of his ideal; the photograph had confirmedhim in its evasive fashion at every point of his conjecture concerningher. It was the face he had imagined her having, or so he now imagined, and it was just such a long oval face as would go with the figure heattributed to her. She must have the healthy palor of skin whichassociates itself with masses of dark, mahogany-colored hair. 

V. 

It was so long since he had known a Northern spring that he hadforgotten how much later the beginning of May was in New Hampshire; butas his train ran up from Springfield he realized the difference of theseason from that which he had left in New York. The meadows were greenonly in the damp hollows; most of the trees were as bare as inmidwinter; the willows in the swamplands hung out their catkins, and thewhite birches showed faint signs of returning life. In the woods werelong drifts of snow, though he knew that in the brown leaves along theiredges the pale pink flowers of the trailing arbutus were hiding theirwet faces. A vernal mildness overhung the landscape. A blue haze filledthe distances and veiled the hills; from the farm door-yards the smellof burning leaf-heaps and garden-stalks came through the window which helifted to let in the dull, warm air. The sun shone down from a pale sky, in which the crows called to one another. 

By the time he arrived at Upper Ashton Falls the afternoon had waned sofar towards evening that the first robins were singing their vespersfrom the leafless choirs of the maples before the hotel. He indulged thelandlord in his natural supposition that he had come up to make a timelyengagement for summer board; after supper he even asked what the priceof such rooms as his would be by the week in July, while he tried tolead the talk round to the fact which he wished to learn. 

He did not know where Miss Simpson lived; and the courage with which hehad set out on his adventure totally lapsed, leaving in its place anaccusing sense of silliness. He was where he was without reason, and indefiance of the tacit unwillingness of the person he had come to see;she certainly had given him no invitation, she had given him nopermission to come. For the moment, in his shame, it seemed to him thatthe only thing for him was to go back to New York by the first train inthe morning. But what then would the girl think of him? Such an act mustforever end the intercourse which had now become an essential part ofhis life. That voice which had haunted him so long, was he never to hearit again? Was he willing to renounce forever the hope of hearing it?

He sat at his supper so long, nervelessly turning his doubts over in hismind, that the waitress came out of the kitchen and drove him from thetable with her severe, impatient stare. 

He put on his hat, and with his overcoat on his arm he started out for awalk which was hopeless, but not so aimless as he feigned to himself. The air was lullingly warm still as he followed the long village streetdown the hill toward the river, where the lunge of rapids filled thedusk with a sort of humid uproar; then he turned and followed it backpast the hotel as far as it led towards the open country. At the edge ofthe village he came to a large, old-fashioned house, which struck him astypical, with its outward swaying fence of the Greek border pattern, andits gate-posts topped by tilting urns of painted wood. The house itselfstood rather far back from the street, and as he passed it he saw thatit was approached by a pathway of brick which was bordered with box. Stalks of last year's hollyhocks and lilacs from garden beds on eitherhand lifted their sharp points, here and there broken and hanging down. It was curious how these details insisted through the twilight. 

He walked on until the wooden village pathway ended in the country mud, and then again he returned up upon his steps. As he reapproached thehouse he saw lights. A brighter radiance streamed from the hall door, which was apparently open, and a softer glow flushed the windows of oneof the rooms that flanked the hall. 

As Langbourne came abreast of the gate the tinkle of a gay laugh rangout to him; then ensued a murmur of girls' voices in the room, andsuddenly this stopped, and the voice that he knew, the voice that seemednever to have ceased to sound in his nerves and pulses, rose in singingwords set to the Spanish air of _La Paloma_. 

It was one of the songs he had sent to Miss Simpson, but he did not needthis material proof that it was she whom he now heard. There was noquestion of what he should do. All doubt, all fear, had vanished; he hadagain but one impulse, one desire, one purpose. But he lingered at thegate till the song ended, and then he unlatched it and started up thewalk towards the door. It seemed to him a long way; he almost reeled ashe went; he fumbled tremulously for the bell-pull beside the door, whilea confusion of voices in the adjoining room--the voices which had wakedhim from his sleep, and which now sounded like voices in a dream--cameout to him. 

The light from the lamp hanging in the hall shone full in his face, andthe girl who came from that room beside it to answer his ring gave asort of conscious jump at sight of him as he uncovered and stoodbare-headed before her. 

VI. 

She must have recognized him from the photograph he had sent, and instature and figure he recognized her as the ideal he had cherished, though her head was gilded with the light from the lamp, and he couldnot make out whether her hair was dark or fair; her face was, of course, a mere outline, without color or detail against the luminous interior. 

He managed to ask, dry-tongued and with a heart that beat into histhroat, "Is Miss Simpson at home?" and the girl answered, with a high, gay tinkle:

"Yes, she's at home. Won't you walk in?"

He obeyed, but at the sound of her silvery voice his heart dropped backinto his breast. He put his hat and coat on an entry chair, and preparedto follow her into the room she had come out of. The door stood ajar, and he said, as she put out her hand to push it open, "I am Mr. Langbourne. "

"Oh, yes, " she answered in the same high, gay tinkle, which he fanciedhad now a note of laughter in it. 

An elderly woman of a ladylike village type was sitting with someneedlework beside a little table, and a young girl turned on thepiano-stool and rose to receive him. "My aunt, Mrs. Simpson, Mr. Langbourne, " said the girl who introduced him to these presences, andshe added, indicating the girl at the piano, "Miss Simpson. "

They all three bowed silently, and in the hush the sheet on the musicframe slid from the piano with a sharp clash, and skated across thefloor to Langbourne's feet. It was the song of _La Paloma_ which she hadbeen singing; he picked it up, and she received it from him with adrooping head, and an effect of guilty embarrassment. 

She was short and of rather a full figure, though not too full. She wasnot plain, but she was by no means the sort of beauty who had lived inLangbourne's fancy for the year past. The oval of her face was squared;her nose was arched; she had a pretty, pouting mouth, and below it adeep dimple in her chin; her eyes were large and dark, and they had thequestioning look of near-sighted eyes; her hair was brown. There was ahumorous tremor in her lips, even with the prim stress she put upon themin saying, "Oh, thank you, " in a thick whisper of the voice he knew. 

"And I, " said the other girl, "am Juliet Bingham. Won't you sit down, Mr. Langbourne!" She pushed towards him the arm-chair before her, and hedropped into it. She took her place on the hair-cloth sofa, and MissSimpson sank back upon the piano-stool with a painful provisionality, while her eyes sought Miss Bingham's in a sort of admiring terror. 

Miss Bingham was easily mistress of the situation; she did not try tobring Miss Simpson into the conversation, but she contrived to make Mrs. Simpson ask Langbourne when he arrived at Upper Ashton Falls; and sheherself asked him when he had left New York, with many appositesuppositions concerning the difference in the season in the twolatitudes. She presumed he was staying at the Falls House, and she said, always in her high, gay tinkle, that it was very pleasant there in thesummer time. He did not know what he answered. He was aware that fromtime to time Miss Simpson said something in a frightened undertone. Hedid not know how long it was before Mrs. Simpson made an errand out ofthe room, in the abeyance which age practises before youthful society inthe country; he did not know how much longer it was before Miss Binghamherself jumped actively up, and said, Now she would run over to Jenny's, if Mr. Langbourne would excuse her, and tell her that they could not gothe next day. 

"It will do just as well in the morning, " Miss Simpson pitifullyentreated. 

"No, she's got to know to-night, " said Miss Bingham, and she said sheshould find Mr. Langbourne there when she got back. He knew that incompliance with the simple village tradition he was being purposely leftalone with Miss Simpson, as rightfully belonging to her. Miss Binghambetrayed no intentionality to him, but he caught a glimpse of mockingconsciousness in the sidelong look she gave Miss Simpson as she wentout; and if he had not known before he perceived then, in the vanishingoval of her cheek, the corner of her arched eyebrow, the point of herclassic nose, the original of the photograph he had been treasuring asMiss Simpson's. 

VII. 

"It was _her_ picture I sent you, " said Miss Simpson. She was the firstto break the silence to which Miss Bingham abandoned them, but she didnot speak till her friend had closed the outer door behind her and wastripping down the brick walk to the gate. 

"Yes, " said Langbourne, in a dryness which he could not keep himselffrom using. 

The girl must have felt it, and her voice faltered a very little as shecontinued. "We--I--did it for fun. I meant to tell you. I--"

"Oh, that's all right, " said Langbourne. "I had no business to expectyours, or to send you mine. " But he believed that he had; that hisfaithful infatuation had somehow earned him the right to do what he haddone, and to hope for what he had not got; without formulating the fact, he divined that she believed it too. Between the man-soul and thewoman-soul it can never go so far as it had gone in their case withoutgiving them claims upon each other which neither can justly deny. 

She did not attempt to deny it. "I oughtn't to have done it, and I oughtto have told you at once--the next letter--but I--you said you werecoming, and I thought if you did come--I didn't really expect you to;and it was all a joke, --off-hand. "

It was very lame, but it was true, and it was piteous; yet Langbournecould not relent. His grievance was not with what she had done, but whatshe was; not what she really was, but what she materially was; herlooks, her figure, her stature, her whole presence, so different fromthat which he had been carrying in his mind, and adoring for a yearpast. 

If it was ridiculous, and if with her sense of the ridiculous she feltit so, she was unable to take it lightly, or to make him take itlightly. At some faint gleams which passed over her face he felt himselfinvited to regard it less seriously; but he did not try, evenprovisionally, and they fell into a silence that neither seemed to havethe power of breaking. 

It must be broken, however; something must be done; they could not sitthere dumb forever. He looked at the sheet of music on the piano andsaid, "I see you have been trying that song. Do you like it?"

"Yes, very much, " and now for the first time she got her voice fairlyabove a whisper. She took the sheet down from the music-rest and lookedat the picture of the lithographed title. It was of a tiled roof liftedamong cypresses and laurels with pigeons strutting on it and sailingover it. 

"It was that picture, " said Langbourne, since he must say something, "that I believe I got the song for; it made me think of the roof of anold Spanish house I saw in Southern California. "

"It must be nice, out there, " said Miss Simpson, absently staring at thepicture. She gathered herself together to add, pointlessly, "Juliet saysshe's going to Europe. Have you ever been?"

"Not to Europe, no. I always feel as if I wanted to see my own countryfirst. Is she going soon?"

"Who? Juliet? Oh, no! She was just saying so. I don't believe she'sengaged her passage yet. "

There was invitation to greater ease in this, and her voice began tohave the tender, coaxing quality which had thrilled his heart when heheard it first. But the space of her variance from his ideal was betweenthem, and the voice reached him faintly across it. 

The situation grew more and more painful for her, he could see, as wellas for him. She too was feeling the anomaly of their having beenintimates without being acquaintances. They necessarily met as strangersafter the exchange of letters in which they had spoken with theconfidence of friends. 

Langbourne cast about in his mind for some middle ground where theycould come together without that effect of chance encounter which hadreduced them to silence. He could not recur to any of the things theyhad written about; so far from wishing to do this, he had almost aterror of touching upon them by accident, and he felt that she shrankfrom them too, as if they involved a painful misunderstanding whichcould not be put straight. 

He asked questions about Upper Ashton Falls, but these led up to whatshe had said of it in her letters; he tried to speak of the winter inNew York, and he remembered that every week he had given her a fullaccount of his life there. They must go beyond their letters or theymust fall far back of them. 

VIII. 

In their attempts to talk he was aware that she was seconding all hisendeavors with intelligence, and with a humorous subtlety to which hecould not pretend. She was suffering from their anomalous position asmuch as he, but she had the means of enjoying it while he had not. Afterhalf an hour of these defeats Mrs. Simpson operated a diversion bycoming in with two glasses of lemonade on a tray and some slices ofsponge-cake. She offered this refreshment first to Langbourne and thento her niece, and they both obediently took a glass, and put a slice ofcake in the saucer which supported the glass. She said to each in turn, "Won't you take some lemonade? Won't you have a piece of cake?" and thenwent out with her empty tray, and the air of having fulfilled the dutiesof hospitality to her niece's company. 

"I don't know, " said Miss Simpson, "but it's rather early in the seasonfor _cold_ lemonade, " and Langbourne, instead of laughing, as her toneinvited him to do, said:

"It's very good, I'm sure. " But this seemed too stiffly ungracious, andhe added: "What delicious sponge-cake! You never get this out of NewEngland. "

"We have to do something to make up for our doughnuts, " Miss Simpsonsuggested. 

"Oh, I like doughnuts too, " said Langbourne. "But you can't get theright kind of doughnuts, either, in New York. "

They began to talk about cooking. He told her of the tamales which hehad first tasted in San Francisco, and afterward found superabundantlyin New York; they both made a great deal of the topic; Miss Simpson hadnever heard of tamales. He became solemnly animated in their exegesis, and she showed a resolute interest in them. 

They were in the midst of the forced discussion, when they heard a quickfoot on the brick walk, but they had both fallen silent when MissBingham flounced elastically in upon them. She seemed to take in with akeen glance which swept them from her lively eyes that they had not beengetting on, and she had the air of taking them at once in hand. 

"Well, it's all right about Jenny, " she said to Miss Simpson. "She'd agood deal rather go day after to-morrow, anyway. What have you beentalking about? I don't want to make you go over the same ground. Haveyou got through with the weather? The moon's out, and it feels more likethe beginning of June than the last of April. I shut the front dooragainst dor-bugs; I couldn't help it, though they won't be here for sixweeks yet. Do you have dor-bugs in New York, Mr. Langbourne?"

"I don't know. There may be some in the Park, " he answered. 

"We think a great deal of our dor-bugs in Upper Ashton, " said MissSimpson demurely, looking down. "We don't know what we should do withoutthem. "

"Lemonade!" exclaimed Miss Bingham, catching sight of the glasses andsaucers on the corner of the piano, where Miss Simpson had allowedLangbourne to put them. "Has Aunt Elmira been giving you lemonade whileI was gone? I will just see about that!" She whipped out of the room, and was back in a minute with a glass in one hand and a bit ofsponge-cake between the fingers of the other. "She had kept some for me!Have you sung _Paloma_ for Mr. Langbourne, Barbara?"

"No, " said Barbara, "we hadn't got round to it, quite. "

"Oh, do!" Langbourne entreated, and he wondered that he had not askedher before; it would have saved them from each ether. 

"Wait a moment, " cried Juliet Bingham, and she gulped the last draughtof her lemonade upon a final morsel of sponge-cake, and was down at thepiano while still dusting the crumbs from her fingers. She struck therefractory sheet of music flat upon the rack with her palm, and thentilted her head over her shoulder towards Langbourne, who had risen withsome vague notion of turning the sheets of the song. "Do you sing?"

"Oh, no. But I like--"

"Are you ready, Bab?" she asked, ignoring him; and she dashed into theaccompaniment. 

He sat down in his chair behind the two girls, where they could not seehis face. 

Barbara began rather weakly, but her voice gathered strength, and thenpoured full volume to the end, where it weakened again. He knew that shewas taking refuge from him in the song, and in the magic of her voice heescaped from the disappointment he had been suffering. He let his headdrop and his eyelids fall, and in the rapture of her singing he got backwhat he had lost; or rather, he lost himself again to the illusion whichhad grown so precious to him. 

Juliet Bingham sounded the last note almost as she rose from the piano;Barbara passed her handkerchief over her forehead, as if to wipe theheat from it, but he believed that this was a ruse to dry her eyes init: they shone with a moist brightness in the glimpse he caught of them. He had risen, and they all stood talking; or they all stood, and Juliettalked. She did not offer to sit down again, and after stiffly thankingthem both, he said he must be going, and took leave of them. Juliet gavehis hand a nervous grip; Barbara's touch was lax and cold; the partingwith her was painful; he believed that she felt it so as much as he. 

The girls' voices followed him down the walk, --Juliet's treble, andBarbara's contralto, --and he believed that they were making talkpurposely against a pressure of silence, and did not know what they weresaying. It occurred to him that they had not asked how long he wasstaying, or invited him to come again: he had not thought to ask if hemight; and in the intolerable inconclusiveness of this ending hefaltered at the gate till the lights in the windows of the parlordisappeared, as if carried into the hall, and then they twinkled intodarkness. From an upper entry window, which reddened with a momentaryflush and was then darkened, a burst of mingled laughter came. The girlsmust have thought him beyond hearing, and he fancied the laugh a burstof hysterical feeling in them both. 

IX. 

Langbourne went to bed as soon as he reached his hotel because he foundhimself spent with the experience of the evening; but as he rested fromhis fatigue he grew wakeful, and he tried to get its whole measure andmeaning before him. He had a methodical nature, with a necessity fororder in his motions, and he now balanced one fact against another nonethe less passionately because the process was a series of carefulrecognitions. He perceived that the dream in which he had lived for theyear past was not wholly an illusion. One of the girls whom he had heardbut not seen was what he had divined her to be: a dominant influence, acontrol to which the other was passively obedient. He had not erredgreatly as to the face or figure of the superior, but he had given allthe advantages to the wrong person. The voice, indeed, the spell whichhad bound him, belonged with the one to whom he had attributed it, andthe qualities with which it was inextricably blended in his fancy werehers; she was more like his ideal than the other, though he owned thatthe other was a charming girl too, and that in the thin treble of hervoice lurked a potential fascination which might have made itselfascendently felt if he had happened to feel it first. 

There was a dangerous instant in which he had a perverse question ofchanging his allegiance. This passed into another moment, almost asperilous, of confusion through a primal instinct of the man's by whichhe yields a double or a divided allegiance and simultaneously worshipsat two shrines; in still another breath he was aware that this wasmadness. 

If he had been younger, he would have had no doubt as to his right inthe circumstances. He had simply corresponded all winter with MissSimpson; but though he had opened his heart freely and had invited herto the same confidence with him, he had not committed himself, and hehad a right to drop the whole affair. She would have no right tocomplain; she had not committed herself either: they could both come offunscathed. But he was now thirty-five, and life had taught him somethingconcerning the rights of others which he could not ignore. By seekingher confidence and by offering her his, he had given her a claim whichwas none the less binding because it was wholly tacit. There had been atime when he might have justified himself in dropping the affair; thatwas when she had failed to answer his letter; but he had come to see herin defiance of her silence, and now he could not withdraw, simplybecause he was disappointed, without cruelty, without atrocity. 

This was what the girl's wistful eyes said to him; this was the reproachof her trembling lips; this was the accusation of her dejected figure, as she drooped in vision before him on the piano-stool and passed herhand soundlessly over the key-board. He tried to own to her that he wasdisappointed, but he could not get the words out of his throat; and nowin her presence, as it were, he was not sure that he was disappointed. 

X. 

He woke late, with a longing to put his two senses of her to the proofof day; and as early in the forenoon as he could hope to see her, hewalked out towards her aunt's house. It was a mild, dull morning, with amisted sunshine; in the little crimson tassels of the budded maplesoverhead the bees were droning. 

The street was straight, and while he was yet a good way off he saw thegate open before the house, and a girl whom he recognized as MissBingham close it behind her. She then came down under the maples towardshim, at first swiftly, and then more and more slowly, until finally shefaltered to a stop. He quickened his own pace and came up to her with a"Good-morning" called to her and a lift of his hat. She returned neithersalutation, and said, "I was coming to see you, Mr. Langbourne. " Hervoice was still a silver bell, but it was not gay, and her face wasseverely unsmiling. 

"To see _me_?" he returned. "Has anything--"

"No, there's nothing the matter. But--I should like to talk with you. "She held a little packet, tied with blue ribbon, in her intertwinedhands, and she looked urgently at him. 

"I shall be very glad, " Langbourne began, but she interrupted, --

"Should you mind walking down to the Falls?"

He understood that for some reason she did not wish him to pass thehouse, and he bowed. "Wherever you like. I hope Mrs. Simpson is well?And Miss Simpson?"

"Oh, perfectly, " said Miss Bingham, and they fenced with some questionsand answers of no interest till they had walked back through the villageto the Falls at the other end of it, where the saw in a mill waswhirring through a long pine log, and the water, streaked with sawdust, was spreading over the rocks below and flowing away with a smoothswiftness. The ground near the mill was piled with fresh-sawed, fragrantlumber and strewn with logs. 

Miss Bingham found a comfortable place on one of the logs, and beganabruptly:

"You may think it's pretty strange, Mr. Langbourne, but I want to talkwith you about Miss Simpson. " She seemed to satisfy a duty to conventionby saying Miss Simpson at the outset, and after that she called herfriend Barbara. "I've brought you your letters to her, " and she handedhim the packet she had been holding. "Have you got hers with you?"

"They are at the hotel, " answered Langbourne. 

"Well, that's right, then. I thought perhaps you had brought them. Yousee, " Miss Bingham continued, much more cold-bloodedly than Langbournethought she need, "we talked it over last night, and it's too silly. That's the way Barbara feels herself. The fact is, " she went onconfidingly, and with the air of saying something that he wouldappreciate, "I always thought it was some _young_ man, and so didBarbara; or I don't believe she would ever have answered your firstletter. "

Langbourne knew that he was not a young man in a young girl's sense; butno man likes to have it said that he is old. Besides, Miss Binghamherself was not apparently in her first quarter of a century, andprobably Miss Simpson would not see the earliest twenties again. Hethought none the worse of her for that; but he felt that he was not sounequally matched in time with her that she need take the attitude withregard to him which Miss Bingham indicated. He was not the least graynor the least bald, and his tall figure had kept its youthful lines. 

Perhaps his face manifested something of his suppressed resentment. Atany rate, Miss Bingham said apologetically, "I mean that if we had knownit was a _serious_ person we should have acted differently. I oughtn'tto have let her thank you for those seedsman's catalogues; but I thoughtit couldn't do any harm. And then, after your letters began to come, wedidn't know just when to stop them. To tell you the truth, Mr. Langbourne, we got so interested we couldn't _bear_ to stop them. Youwrote so much about your life in New York, that it was like a visitthere every week; and it's pretty quiet at Upper Ashton in the wintertime. "

She seemed to refer this fact to Langbourne for sympatheticappreciation; he said mechanically, "Yes. "

She resumed: "But when your picture came, I said it had _got_ to stop;and so we just sent back my picture, --or I don't know but what Barbaradid it without asking me, --and we did suppose that would be the last ofit; when you wrote back you were coming here, we didn't believe youreally would unless we said so. That's all there is about it; and ifthere is anybody to blame, I am the one. Barbara would never have doneit in the world if I hadn't put her up to it. "

In those words the implication that Miss Bingham had operated the wholeaffair finally unfolded itself. But distasteful as the fact was toLangbourne, and wounding as was the realization that he had been led onby this witness of his infatuation for the sake of the entertainmentwhich his letters gave two girls in the dull winter of a mountainvillage, there was still greater pain, with an additional embarrassment, in the regret which the words conveyed. It appeared that it was not hewho had done the wrong; he had suffered it, and so far from having tooffer reparation to a young girl for having unwarrantably wrought her upexpect of him a step from which he afterwards recoiled, he had the dutyof forgiving her a trespass on his own invaded sensibilities. It washumiliating to his vanity; it inflicted a hurt to something better thanhis vanity. He began very uncomfortably: "It's all right, as far as I'mconcerned. I had no business to address Miss Simpson in the firstplace--"

"Well, " Miss Bingham interrupted, "that's what I told Barbara; but shegot to feeling badly about it; she thought if you had taken the troubleto send back the circular that she dropped in the hotel, she couldn't doless than acknowledge it, and she kept on so about it that I had to lether. That was the first false step. "

These words, while they showed Miss Simpson in a more amiable light, didnot enable Langbourne to see Miss Bingham's merit so clearly. In themethodical and consecutive working of his emotions, he was aware that itwas no longer a question of divided allegiance, and that there couldnever be any such question again. He perceived that Miss Bingham had notsuch a good figure as he had fancied the night before, and that her eyeswere set rather too near together. While he dropped his own eyes, andstood trying to think what he should say in answer to her last speech, her high, sweet voice tinkled out in gay challenge, "How do, John?"

He looked up and saw a square-set, brown-faced young man advancingtowards them in his shirt-sleeves; he came deliberately, finding his wayin and out among the logs, till he stood smiling down, through a heavymustache and thick black lashes, into the face of the girl, as if shewere some sort of joke. The sun struck into her face as she looked up athim, and made her frown with a knot between her brows that pulled hereyes still closer together, and she asked, with no direct reference tohis shirt-sleeves, --"A'n't you forcing the season?"

"Don't want to let the summer get the start of you, " the young mangeneralized, and Miss Bingham said, --

"Mr. Langbourne, Mr. Dickery. " The young man silently shook hands withLangbourne, whom he took into the joke of Miss Bingham with anothersmile; and she went on: "Say, John, I wish you'd tell Jenny I don't seewhy we shouldn't go this afternoon, after all. "

"All right, " said the young man. 

"I suppose you're coming too?" she suggested. 

"Hadn't heard of it, " he returned. 

"Well, you have now. You've got to be ready at two o'clock. "

"That so?" the young fellow inquired. Then he walked away among thelogs, as casually as he had arrived, and Miss Bingham rose and shooksome bits of bark from her skirt. 

"Mr. Dickery is owner of the mills, " she explained, and she exploredLangbourne's face for an intelligence which she did not seem to findthere. He thought, indifferently enough, that this young man had heardthe two girls speak of him, and had satisfied a natural curiosity incoming to look him over; it did not occur to him that he had anyespecial relation to Miss Bingham. 

She walked up into the village with Langbourne, and he did not knowwhether he was to accompany her home or not. But she gave him no sign ofdismissal till she put her hand upon her gate to pull it open withoutasking him to come in. Then he said, "I will send Miss Simpson's lettersto her at once. "

"Oh, any time will do, Mr. Langbourne, " she returned sweetly. Then, asif it had just occurred to her, she added, "We're going afterMay-flowers this afternoon. Wouldn't you like to come too?"

"I don't know, " he began, "whether I shall have the time--"

"Why, you're not going away to-day!"

"I expected--I--But if you don't think I shall be intruding--"

"Why, _I_ should be delighted to have you. Mr. Dickery's going, andJenny Dickery, and Barbara. I don't _believe_ it will rain. "

"Then, if I may, " said Langbourne. 

"Why, certainly, Mr. Langbourne!" she cried, and he started away. But hehad gone only a few rods when he wheeled about and hurried back. Thegirl was going up the walk to the house, looking over her shoulder afterhim; at his hurried return she stopped and came down to the gate again. 

"Miss Bingham, I think--I think I had better not go. "

"Why, just as you feel about it, Mr. Langbourne, " she assented. 

"I will bring the letters this evening, if you will let me--if MissSimpson--if you will be at home. "

"We shall be very happy to see you, Mr. Langbourne, " said the girlformally, and then he went back to his hotel. 

XI. 

Langbourne could not have told just why he had withdrawn his acceptanceof Miss Bingham's invitation. If at the moment it was the effect of aquite reasonless panic, he decided later that it was because he wishedto think. It could not be said, however, that he did think, unlessthinking consists of a series of dramatic representations which the mindmakes to itself from a given impulse, and which it is quite powerless toend. All the afternoon, which Langbourne spent in his room, his mind wasthe theatre of scenes with Miss Simpson, in which he perpetually evolvedthe motives governing him from the beginning, and triumphed out of hisdifficulties and embarrassments. Her voice, as it acquiesced in all, nolonger related itself to that imaginary personality which had inhabitedhis fancy. That was gone irrevocably; and the voice belonged to thelikeness of Barbara, and no other; from her similitude, little, quaint, with her hair of cloudy red and her large, dim-sighted eyes, it playedupon the spiritual sense within him with the coaxing, drolling, mockingcharm which he had felt from the first. It blessed him with intelligentand joyous forgiveness. But as he stood at her gate that evening thisunmerited felicity fell from him. He now really heard her voice, throughthe open doorway, but perhaps because it was mixed with othervoices--the treble of Miss Bingham, and the bass of a man who must bethe Mr. Dickery he had seen at the saw mills--he turned and hurried backto his hotel, where he wrote a short letter saying that he had decidedto take the express for New York that night. With an instinctiverecognition of her authority in the affair, or with a cowardly shrinkingfrom direct dealing with Barbara, he wrote to Juliet Bingham, and headdressed to her the packet of letters which he sent for Barbara. Superficially, he had done what he had no choice but to do. He had beenasked to return her letters, and he had returned them, and brought theaffair to an end. 

In his long ride to the city he assured himself in vain that he wasdoing right if he was not sure of his feelings towards the girl. It wasquite because he was not sure of his feeling that he could not be surehe was not acting falsely and cruelly. 

The fear grew upon him through the summer, which he spent in the heatand stress of the town. In his work he could forget a little the despairin which he lived; but in a double consciousness like that of thehypochondriac, the girl whom it seemed to him he had deserted wasvisibly and audibly present with him. Her voice was always in his innerear, and it visualized her looks and movements to his inner eye. 

Now he saw and understood at last that what his heart had more than oncemisgiven him might be the truth, and that though she had sent back hisletters, and asked her own in return, it was not necessarily her wishthat he should obey her request. It might very well have been anexperiment of his feeling towards her, a mute quest of the impressionshe had made upon him, a test of his will and purpose, an overture to aclearer and truer understanding between them. This misgiving became aconviction from which he could not escape. 

He believed too late that he had made a mistake, that he had thrown awaythe supreme chance of his life. But was it too late? When he could bearit no longer, he began to deny that it was too late. He denied it evento the pathetic presence which haunted him, and in which the magic ofher voice itself was merged at last, so that he saw her more than heheard her. He overbore her weak will with his stronger will, and sethimself strenuously to protest to her real presence what he now alwayssaid to her phantom. When his partner came back from his vacation, Langbourne told him that he was going to take a day or two off. 

XII. 

He arrived at Upper Ashton Falls long enough before the early autumnaldusk to note that the crimson buds of the maples were now their crimsonleaves, but he kept as close to the past as he could by not going tofind Barbara before the hour of the evening when he had turned from hergate without daring to see her. It was a soft October evening now, as itwas a soft May evening then; and there was a mystical hint of unity inthe like feel of the dull, mild air. Again voices were coming out of theopen doors and windows of the house, and they were the same voices thathe had last heard there. 

He knocked, and after a moment of startled hush within Juliet Binghamcame to the door. "Why, Mr. Langbourne!" she screamed. 

"I--I should like to come in, if you will let me, " he gasped out. 

"Why, certainly, Mr. Langbourne, " she returned. 

He had not dwelt so long and so intently on the meeting at hand withoutconsidering how he should account for his coming, and he had formulateda confession of his motives. But he had never meant to make it to JulietBingham, and he now found himself unable to allege a word in explanationof his presence. He followed her into the parlor. Barbara silently gavehim her hand and then remained passive in the background, where Dickeryheld aloof, smiling in what seemed his perpetual enjoyment of the JulietBingham joke. She at once put herself in authority over the situation;she made Langbourne let her have his hat; she seated him when and whereshe chose; she removed and put back the lampshades; she pulled up andpulled down the window-blinds; she shut the outer door because of thenight air, and opened it because of the unseasonable warmth within. Sheexcused Mrs. Simpson's absence on account of a headache, and asked himif he would not have a fan; when he refused it she made him take it, andwhile he sat helplessly dangling it from his hand, she asked him aboutthe summer he had had, and whether he had passed it in New York. She wasvery intelligent about the heat in New York, and tactful in keeping theone-sided talk from falling. Barbara said nothing after a few faintattempts to take part in it, and Langbourne made briefer and brieferanswers. His reticence seemed only to heighten Juliet Bingham'ssatisfaction, and she said, with a final supremacy, that she had beenintending to go out with Mr. Dickery to a business meeting of thebook-club, but they would be back before Langbourne could get away; shemade him promise to wait for them. He did not know if Barbara looked anyprotest, --at least she spoke none, --and Juliet went out with Dickery. She turned at the door to bid Barbara say, if any one called, that shewas at the book-club meeting. Then she disappeared, but reappeared andcalled, "See here, a minute, Bab!" and at the outer threshold shedetained Barbara in vivid whisper, ending aloud, "Now you be sure to doboth, Bab! Aunt Elmira will tell you where the things are. " Again shevanished, and was gone long enough to have reached the gate and comeback from it. She was renewing all her whispered and out-spoken chargeswhen Dickery showed himself at her side, put his hand under her elbow, and wheeled her about, and while she called gayly over her shoulder tothe others, "Did you ever?" walked her definitively out of the house. 

Langbourne did not suffer the silence which followed her going topossess him. What he had to do he must do quickly, and he said, "MissSimpson, may I ask you one question?"

"Why, if you won't expect me to answer it, " she suggested quaintly. 

"You must do as you please about that. It has to come before I try toexcuse myself for being here; it's the only excuse I can offer. It'sthis: Did you send Miss Bingham to get back your letters from me lastspring?"

"Why, of course!"

"I mean, was it your idea?"

"We thought it would be better. "

The evasion satisfied Langbourne, but he asked, "Had I given you somecause to distrust me at that time?"

"Oh, no, " she protested. "We got to talking it over, and--and we thoughtwe had better. "

"Because I had come here without being asked?"

"No, no; it wasn't that, " the girl protested. 

"I know I oughtn't to have come. I know I oughtn't to have written toyou in the beginning, but you had let me write, and I thought you wouldlet me come. I tried always to be sincere with you; to make you feelthat you could trust me. I believe that I am an honest man; I thought Iwas a better man for having known you through your letters. I couldn'ttell you how much they had been to me. You seemed to think, because Ilived in a large place, that I had a great many friends; but I have veryfew; I might say I hadn't any--such as I thought I had when I waswriting to you. Most of the men I know belong to some sort of clubs; butI don't. I went to New York when I was feeling alone in the world, --itwas from something that had happened to me partly through my ownfault, --and I've never got over being alone there. I've never gone intosociety; I don't know what society is, and I suppose that's why I amacting differently from a society man now. The only change I ever hadfrom business was reading at night: I've got a pretty good library. After I began to get your letters, I went out more--to the theatre, andlectures, and concerts, and all sorts of things--so that I could havesomething interesting to write about; I thought you'd get tired ofalways hearing about me. And your letters filled up my life, so that Ididn't seem alone any more. I read them all hundreds of times; I shouldhave said that I knew them by heart, if they had not been as fresh atlast as they were at first. I seemed to hear you talking in them. " Hestopped as if withholding himself from what he had nearly said withoutintending, and resumed: "It's some comfort to know that you didn't wantthem back because you doubted me, or my good faith. "

"Oh, no, indeed, Mr. Langbourne, " said Barbara compassionately. 

"Then why did you?"

"I don't know. We--"

"No; _not_ 'we. ' _You!_"

She did not answer for so long that he believed she resented hisspeaking so peremptorily and was not going to answer him at all. At lastshe said, "I thought you would rather give them back. " She turned andlooked at him, with the eyes which he knew saw his face dimly, but sawhis thought clearly. 

"What made you think that?"

"Oh, I don't know. Didn't you want to?"

He knew that the fact which their words veiled was now the first thingin their mutual consciousness. He spoke the truth in saying, "No, Inever wanted to, " but this was only a mechanical truth, and he knew it. He had an impulse to put the burden of the situation on her, and pressher to say why she thought he wished to do so; but his next emotion wasshame for this impulse. A thousand times, in these reveries in which hehad imagined meeting her, he had told her first of all how he hadoverheard her talking in the room next his own in the hotel, and of thepower her voice had instantly and lastingly had upon him. But now, witha sense spiritualized by her presence, he perceived that this, if it wasnot unworthy, was secondary, and that the right to say it was not yetestablished. There was something that must come before this, --somethingthat could alone justify him in any further step. If she could answerhim first as he wished, then he might open his whole heart to her, atwhatever cost; he was not greatly to blame, if he did not realize thatthe cost could not be wholly his, as he asked, remotely enough from herquestion, "After I wrote that I was coming up here, and you did notanswer me, did you think I was coming?"

She did not answer, and he felt that he had been seeking a meanadvantage. He went on: "If you didn't expect it, if you never thoughtthat I was coming, there's no need for me to tell you anything else. "

Her face turned towards him a very little, but not so much as even toget a sidelong glimpse of him; it was as if it were drawn by a magneticattraction; and she said, "I didn't know but you would come. "

"Then I will tell you why I came--the only thing that gave me the rightto come against your will, if it _was_ against it. I came to ask you tomarry me. Will you?"

She now turned and looked fully at him, though he was aware of being amere blur in her near-sighted vision. 

"Do you mean to ask it now?"

"Yes. "

"And have you wished to ask it ever since you first saw me?"

He tried to say that he had, but he could not; he could only say, "Iwish to ask it now more than ever. "

She shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure how you want me to answer you. "

"Not sure?"

"No. I'm afraid I might disappoint you again. "

He could not make out whether she was laughing at him. He sat, notknowing what to say, and he blurted out, "Do you mean that you won't?"

"I shouldn't want you to make another mistake. "

"I don't know what you"--he was going to say "mean, " but hesubstituted--"wish. If you wish for more time, I can wait as long as youchoose. "

"No, I might wish for time, if there was anything more. But if there'snothing else you have to tell me--then, no, I cannot marry you. "

Langbourne rose, feeling justly punished, somehow, but bewildered asmuch as humbled, and stood stupidly unable to go. "I don't know what youcould expect me to say after you've refused me--"

"Oh, I don't expect anything. "

"But there _is_ something I should like to tell you. I know that Ibehaved that night as if--as if I hadn't come to ask you--what I have; Idon't blame you for not trusting me now. But it is no use to tell youwhat I intended if it is all over. "

He looked down into his hat, and she said in a low voice, "I think Iought to know. Won't you--sit down?"

He sat down again. "Then I will tell you at the risk of--But there'snothing left to lose! You know how it is, when we think about a personor a place before we've seen them: we make some sort of picture of them, and expect them to be like it. I don't know how to say it; you do lookmore like what I thought than you did at first. I suppose I must seem afool to say it; but I thought you were tall, and that youwere--well!--rather masterful--"

"Like Juliet Bingham?" she suggested, with a gleam in the eye next him. 

"Yes, like Juliet Bingham. It was your voice made me think--it was yourvoice that first made me want to see you, that made me write to you, inthe beginning. I heard you talking that night in the hotel, where youleft that circular; you were in the room next to mine; and I wanted tocome right up here then; but I had to go back to New York, and so Iwrote to you. When your letters came, I always seemed to hear youspeaking in them. "

"And when you saw me you were disappointed. I knew it. "

"No; not disappointed--"

"Why not? My voice didn't go with my looks; it belonged to a tall, strong-willed girl. "

"No, " he protested. "As soon as I got away it was just as it always hadbeen. I mean that your voice and your looks went together again. "

"As soon as you got away?" the girl questioned. 

"I mean--What do you care for it, anyway!" he cried, in self-scornfulexasperation. 

"I know, " she said thoughtfully, "that my voice isn't like me; I'm notgood enough for it. It ought to be Juliet Bingham's--"

"No, no!" he interrupted, with a sort of disgust that seemed not todisplease her, "I can't imagine it!"

"But we can't any of us have everything, and she's got enough as it is. She's a head higher than I am, and she wants to have her way ten timesas bad. "

"I didn't mean that, " Langbourne began. "I--but you must think me enoughof a simpleton already. "

"Oh, no, not near, " she declared. "I'm a good deal of a simpleton myselfat times. "

"It doesn't matter, " he said desperately; "I love you. "

"Ah, that belongs to the time when you thought I looked differently. "

"I don't want you to look differently. I--"

"You can't expect me to believe that now. It will take time for me to dothat. "

"I will give you time, " he said, so simply that she smiled. 

"If it was my voice you cared for I should have to live up to it, somehow, before you cared for me. I'm not certain that I ever could. Andif I couldn't? You see, don't you?"

"I see that I was a fool to tell you what I have, " he so far assertedhimself. "But I thought I ought to be honest. "

"Oh, you've been _honest_!" she said. 

"You have a right to think that I am a flighty, romantic person, " heresumed, "and I don't blame you. But if I could explain, it has been avery real experience to me. It was your nature that I cared for in yourvoice. I can't tell you just how it was; it seemed to me that unless Icould hear it again, and always, my life would not be worth much. Thiswas something deeper and better than I could make you understand. Itwasn't merely a fancy; I do not want you to believe that. "

"I don't know whether fancies are such very bad things. I've had some ofmy own, " Barbara suggested. 

He sat still with his hat between his hands, as if he could not find achance of dismissing himself, and she remained looking down at her skirtwhere it tented itself over the toe of her shoe. The tall clock in thehall ticked second after second. It counted thirty of them at leastbefore he spoke, after a preliminary noise in his throat. 

"There is one thing I should like to ask: If you had cared for me, wouldyou have been offended at my having thought you looked differently?"

She took time to consider this. "I might have been vexed, or hurt, Isuppose, but I don't see how I could really have been offended. "

"Then I understand, " he began, in one of his inductive emotions; but sherose nervously, as if she could not sit still, and went to the piano. The Spanish song he had given her was lying open upon it, and she strucksome of the chords absently, and then let her fingers rest on the keys. 

"Miss Simpson, " he said, coming stiffly forward, "I should like to hearyou sing that song once more before I--Won't you sing it?"

"Why, yes, " she said, and she slipped laterally into the piano-seat. 

At the end of the first stanza he gave a long sigh, and then he wassilent to the close. 

As she sounded the last notes of the accompaniment Juliet Bingham burstinto the room with somehow the effect to Langbourne of having lain inwait outside for that moment. 

"Oh, I just _knew_ it!" she shouted, running upon them. "I bet Johnanything! Oh, I'm so happy it's come out all right; and now I'm going tohave the first--"

She lifted her arms as if to put them round his neck; he stood dazed, and Barbara rose from the piano-stool and confronted her with nothingless than horror in her face. 

Juliet Bingham was beginning again, "Why, haven't you--"

"_No!_" cried Barbara. "I forgot all about what you said! I justhappened to sing it because he asked me, " and she ran from the room. 

"Well, if I ever!" said Juliet Bingham, following her with astonishedeyes. Then she turned to Langbourne. "It's perfectly ridiculous, and Idon't see how I can ever explain it. I don't think Barbara has shown agreat deal of tact, " and Juliet Bingham was evidently prepared to makeup the defect by a diplomacy which she enjoyed. "I don't know where tobegin exactly; but you must certainly excuse my--manner, when I camein. "

"Oh, certainly, " said Langbourne in polite mystification. 

"It was all through a misunderstanding that I don't think _I_ was toblame for, to say the least; but I can't explain it without makingBarbara appear perfectly--Mr. Langbourne, _will_ you tell whether youare engaged?"

"No! Miss Simpson has declined my offer, " he answered. 

"Oh, then it's all right, " said Juliet Bingham, but Langbourne looked asif he did not see why she should say that. "Then I can understand; I seethe whole thing now; and I didn't want to make _another_ mistake. Ah--won't you--sit down?"

"Thank you. I believe I will go. "

"But you have a right to know--"

"Would my knowing alter the main facts?" he asked dryly. 

"Well, no, I can't say it would, " Juliet Bingham replied with an air ofcandor. "And, as you _say_, perhaps it's just as well, " she added withan air of relief. 

Langbourne had not said it, but he acquiesced with a faint sigh, andabsently took the hand of farewell which Juliet Bingham gave him. "Iknow Barbara will be very sorry not to see you; but I guess it'sbetter. "

In spite of the supremacy which the turn of affairs had given her, Juliet Bingham looked far from satisfied, and she let Langbourne go witha sense of inconclusiveness which showed in the parting inclinationtowards him; she kept the effect of this after he turned from her. 

He crept light-headedly down the brick walk with a feeling that thedarkness was not half thick enough, though it was so thick that it hidfrom him a figure that leaned upon the gate and held it shut, as ifforcibly to interrupt his going. 

"Mr. Langbourne, " said the voice of this figure, which, though sounnaturally strained, he knew for Barbara's voice, "you have got to_know_! I'm ashamed to tell you, but I should be more ashamed not to, after what's happened. Juliet made me promise when she went out to thebook-club meeting that if I--if you--if it turned out as _you_ wanted, Iwould sing that song as a sign--It was just a joke--like my sending herpicture. It was my mistake and I am sorry, and I beg your pardon--I--"

She stopped with a quick catch in her breath, and the darkness roundthem seemed to become luminous with the light of hope that broke uponhim within. 

"But if there really was no mistake, " he began. He could not getfurther. 

She did not answer, and for the first time her silence was sweeter thanher voice. He lifted her tip-toe in his embrace, but he did not wish hertaller; her yielding spirit lost itself in his own, and he did notregret the absence of the strong will which he had once imagined hers. 

A CIRCLE IN THE WATER. 

I. 

The sunset struck its hard red light through the fringe of leaflesstrees to the westward, and gave their outlines that black definitionwhich a French school of landscape saw a few years ago, and now seems tosee no longer. In the whole scene there was the pathetic repose which wefeel in some dying day of the dying year, and a sort of impersonalmelancholy weighed me down as I dragged myself through the woods towardthat dreary November sunset. 

Presently I came in sight of the place I was seeking, and partly becauseof the insensate pleasure of having found it, and partly because of thecheerful opening in the boscage made by the pool, which cleared itsspace to the sky, my heart lifted. I perceived that it was not so lateas I had thought, and that there was much more of the day left than Ihad supposed from the crimson glare in the west. I threw myself down onone of the grassy gradines of the amphitheatre, and comforted myselfwith the antiquity of the work, which was so great as to involve itsorigin in a somewhat impassioned question among the local authorities. Whether it was a Norse work, a temple for the celebration of theearliest Christian, or the latest heathen, rites among the firstdiscoverers of New England, or whether it was a cockpit where theEnglish officers who were billeted in the old tavern near by foughttheir mains at the time of our Revolution, it had the charm of a ruin, and appealed to the fancy with whatever potency belongs to themouldering monuments of the past. The hands that shaped it were alldust, and there was no record of the minds that willed it to prove thatit was a hundred, or that it was a thousand, years old. There were youngoaks and pines growing up to the border of the amphitheatre on allsides; blackberry vines and sumach bushes overran the gradines almost tothe margin of the pool which filled the centre; at the edge of the watersome clumps of willow and white birch leaned outward as if to mirrortheir tracery in its steely surface. But of the life that the thinginarticulately recorded, there was not the slightest impulse left. 

I began to think how everything ends at last. Love ends, sorrow ends, and to our mortal sense everything that is mortal ends, whether thatwhich is spiritual has a perpetual effect beyond these eyes or not. Thevery name of things passes with the things themselves, and

 "Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till by broad spreading, it disperse to naught. "

But if fame ended, did not infamy end, too? If glory, why not shame?What was it, I mused, that made an evil deed so much more memorable thana good one? Why should a crime have so much longer lodgment in ourminds, and be of consequences so much more lasting than the sort ofaction which is the opposite of a crime, but has no precise name withus? Was it because the want of positive quality which left it nameless, characterized its effects with a kind of essential debility? Was evilthen a greater force than good in the moral world? I tried to recallpersonalities, virtuous and vicious, and I found a fatal want ofdistinctness in the return of those I classed as virtuous, and a luridvividness in those I classed as vicious. Images, knowledges, concepts, zigzagged through my brain, as they do when we are thinking, or believewe are thinking; perhaps there is no such thing as we call thinking, except when we are talking. I did not hold myself responsible in thiswill-less revery for the question which asked itself, Whether, then, evil and not good was the lasting principle, and whether that whichshould remain recognizable to all eternity was not the good effect butthe evil effect?

Something broke the perfect stillness of the pool near the oppositeshore. A fish had leaped at some unseasonable insect on the surface, orone of the overhanging trees had dropped a dead twig upon it, and in thelazy doubt which it might be, I lay and watched the ever-widening circlefade out into fainter and fainter ripples toward the shore, till itweakened to nothing in the eye, and, so far as the senses wereconcerned, actually ceased to be. The want of visible agency in it mademe feel it all the more a providential illustration; and because thething itself was so pretty, and because it was so apt as a case inpoint, I pleased myself a great deal with it. Suddenly it repeateditself; but this time I grew a little impatient of it, before the circledied out in the wider circle of the pool. I said whimsically to myselfthat this was rubbing it in; that I was convinced already, and needed nofurther proof; and at the same moment the thing happened a third time. Then I saw that there was a man standing at the top of the amphitheatrejust across from me, who was throwing stones into the water. He cast afourth pebble into the centre of the pool, and then a fifth and a sixth;I began to wonder what he was throwing at; I thought it too childish forhim to be amusing himself with the circle that dispersed itself tonaught, after it had done so several times already. I was sure that hesaw something in the pool, and was trying to hit it, or frighten it. Hisfigure showed black against the sunset light, and I could not make itout very well, but it held itself something like that of a workman, andyet with a difference, with an effect as of some sort of discipline; andI thought of an ex-recruit, returning to civil life, after serving hisfive years in the army; though I do not know why I should have gone sofar afield for this notion; I certainly had never seen an ex-recruit, and I did not really know how one would look. I rose up, and we bothstood still, as if he were abashed in his sport by my presence. The manmade a little cast forward with his hand, and I heard the rattle as ofpebbles dropped among the dead leaves. 

Then he called over to me, "Is that you, Mr. March?"

"Yes, " I called back, "what is wanted?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just looking for you. " He did not move, and after amoment I began to walk round the top of the amphitheatre toward him. When I came near him I saw that he had a clean-shaven face, and he worea soft hat that seemed large for his close-cropped head; he had on asack coat buttoned to the throat, and of one dark color with his loosetrousers. I knew him now, but I did not know what terms to put myrecognition in, and I faltered. "What do you want with me?" I asked, asif I did not know him. 

"I was at your house, " he answered, "and they told me that you hadwalked out this way. " He hesitated a moment, and then he added, ratherhuskily, "You don't know me!"

"Yes, " I said. "It is Tedham, " and I held out my hand, with no definiteintention, I believe, but merely because I did know him, and this wasthe usual form of greeting between acquaintances after a longseparation, or even a short one, for that matter. But he seemed to finda special significance in my civility, and he took my hand and held itsilently, while he was trying to speak. Evidently, he could not, and Isaid aimlessly, "What were you throwing at?"

"Nothing. I saw you lying down, over there, and I wanted to attract yourattention. " He let my hand go, and looked at me apologetically. 

"Oh! was that all?" I said. "I thought you saw something in the water. "

"No, " he answered, as if he felt the censure which I had not been ableto keep out of my voice. 

II. 

I do not know why I should have chosen to take this simple fact as proofof an abiding want of straight-forwardness in Tedham's nature. I do notknow why I should have expected him to change, or why I should have feltauthorized at that moment to renew his punishment for it. I certainlyhad said and thought very often that he had been punished enough, andmore than enough. In fact, his punishment, like all the otherpunishments that I have witnessed in life, seemed to me wholly out ofproportion to the offence; it seemed monstrous, atrocious, and when Igot to talking of it I used to become so warm that my wife would warn mepeople would think I wanted to do something like Tedham myself if I wenton in that way about him. Yet here I was, at my very first encounterwith the man, after his long expiation had ended, willing to add atleast a little self-reproach to his suffering. I suppose, as nearly as Ican analyse my mood, I must have been expecting, in spite of all reasonand experience, that his anguish would have wrung that foible out ofhim, and left him strong where it had found him weak. Tragedy befallsthe light and foolish as well as the wise and weighty natures, but itdoes not render them wise and weighty; I had often made this sagereflection, but I failed to apply it to the case before me now. 

After waiting a little for the displeasure to clear away from my face, Tedham smiled as if in humorous appreciation, and I perceived, asnothing else could have shown me so well, that he was still the oldTedham. There was an offer of propitiation in this smile, too, and I didnot like that, either; but I was touched when I saw a certain hope dieout of his eye at the failure of his appeal to me. 

"Who told you I was here?" I asked, more kindly. "Did you see Mrs. March?"

"No, I think it must have been your children. I found them in front ofyour house, and I asked them for you, without going to the door. "

"Oh, " I said, and I hid the disappointment I felt that he had not seenmy wife; for I should have liked such a leading as her behavior towardhim would have given me for my own. I was sure she would have known himat once, and would not have told him where to find me, if she had notwished me to be friendly with him. 

"I am glad to see you, " I said, in the absence of this leading; and thenI did not know what else to say. Tedham seemed to me to be looking verywell, but I could not notify this fact to him, in the circumstances; heeven looked very handsome; he had aged becomingly, and a clean-shavenface suited him as well as the full beard he used to wear; but I couldspeak of these things as little as of his apparent health. I did notfeel that I ought even to ask him what I could do for him. I did notwant to have anything to do with him, and, besides, I have alwaysregarded this formula as tantamount to saying that you cannot, or willnot, do anything for the man you employ it upon. 

The silence which ensued was awkward, but it was better than anything Icould think of to say, and Tedham himself seemed to feel it so. He said, presently, "Thank you. I was sure you would not take my coming to youthe wrong way. In fact I had no one else to come to--after I----" Tedhamstopped, and then, "I don't know, " he went on, "whether you've kept runof me; I don't suppose you have; I got out to-day at noon. "

I could not say anything to that, either; there were very few openingsfor me, it appeared, in the conversation, which remained one-sided asbefore. 

"I went to the cemetery, " he continued. "I wanted to realize that thosewho had died were dead, it was all one thing as long as I was in there;everybody was dead; and then I came on to your house. "

The house he meant was a place I had taken for the summer a little outof town, so that I could run in to business every day, and yet have mymornings and evenings in the country; the fall had been so mild that wewere still eking out the summer there. 

"How did you know where I was staying?" I asked, with a willingness tomake any occasion serve for saying something. 

Tedham hesitated. "Well, I stopped at the office in Boston on my wayout, and inquired. I was sure nobody would know me there. " He said thisapologetically, as if he had been taking a liberty, and explained: "Iwanted to see you very much, and I was afraid that if I let the day goby I should miss you somehow. "

"Oh, all right, " I said. 

We had remained standing at the point where I had gone round to meethim, and it seemed, in the awkward silence that now followed, as if Iwere rooted there. I would very willingly have said something leading, for my own sake, if not for his, but I had nothing in mind but that Ihad better keep there, and so I waited for him to speak. I believed hewas beating about the bush in his own thoughts, to find some indirect orsinuous way of getting at what he wanted to know, and that it was onlybecause he failed that he asked bluntly, "March, do you know where mydaughter is?"

"No, Tedham, I don't, " I said, and I was glad that I could say it bothwith honesty and with compassion. I was truly sorry for the man; in away, I did pity him; at the same time I did not wish to be mixed up inhis affairs; in washing my hands of them, I preferred that there shouldbe no stain of falsehood left on them. 

"Where is my sister-in-law?" he asked next, and now at least I could notcensure him for indirection. 

"I haven't met her for several years, " I answered. "I couldn't say frommy own knowledge where she was. "

"But you haven't heard of her leaving Somerville?"

"No, I haven't. "

"Do you ever meet her husband?"

"Yes, sometimes, on the street; but I think not lately; we don't oftenmeet. "

"The last time you saw _her_, did she speak of me?"

"I don't know--I believe--yes. It was a good many years ago. "

"Was she changed toward me at all?"

This was a hard question to answer, but I thought I had better answer itwith the exact truth. "No, she seemed to feel just the same as everabout it. "

I do not believe Tedham cared for this, after all, though he made a showof having to collect himself before he went on. "Then you think mydaughter is with her?"

"I didn't say that. I don't know anything about it. "

"March, " he urged, "don't _you_ think I have a right to see mydaughter?"

"That's something I can't enter into, Tedham. "

"Good God!" said the man. "If you were in my place, wouldn't you want tosee her? You know how fond I used to be of her; and she is all that Ihave got left in the world. "

I did indeed remember Tedham's affection for his daughter, whom Iremembered as in short frocks when I last saw them together. It wasbefore my own door in town. Tedham had driven up in a smart buggy behinda slim sorrel, and I came out, at a sign he made me through thebow-window with his whip, and saw the little maid on the seat therebeside him. They were both very well dressed, though still in mourningfor the child's mother, and the whole turnout was handsomely set up. Tedham was then about thirty-five, and the child looked about nine. Thecolor of her hair was the color of his fine brown beard, which had asyet no trace of gray in it; but the light in her eyes was another light, and her smile, which was of the same shape as his, was of anotherquality, as she leaned across him and gave me her pretty little glovedhand with a gay laugh. "I should think you would be afraid of such afiery sorrel dragon as that, " I said, in recognition of the colt'slifting and twitching with impatience as we talked. 

"Oh, I'm not afraid with papa!" she said, and she laughed again as hetook her hand in one of his and covered it out of sight. 

I recalled, now, looking at him there in the twilight of the woods, howhappy they had both seemed that sunny afternoon in the city square, asthey flashed away from my door and glanced back at me and smiledtogether. I went into the house and said to my wife with a formulationof the case which pleased me, "If there is anything in the world thatTedham likes better than to ride after a good horse, it is to ride aftera good horse with that little girl of his. " "Yes, " said my wife, "but agood horse means a good deal of money; even when a little girl goes withit. " "That is so, " I assented, "but Tedham has made a lot lately in realestate, they say, and I don't know what better he could do with hismoney; or, I don't believe _he_ does. " We said no more, but we bothfelt, with the ardor of young parents, that it was a great virtue, asaving virtue, in Tedham to love his little girl so much; I wasafterward not always sure that it was. Still, when Tedham appealed to menow in the name of his love for her, he moved my heart, if not myreason, in his favor; those old superstitions persist. 

"Why, of course, you want to see her. But I couldn't tell you where sheis. "

"You could find out for me. "

"I don't see how, " I said; but I did see how, and I knew as well as hewhat his next approach would be. I felt strong against it, however, andI did not perceive the necessity of being short with him in a matter notinvolving my own security or comfort. 

"I could find out where Hasketh is, " he said, naming the husband of hissister-in-law; "but it would be of no use for me to go there. Theywouldn't see me. " He put this like a question, but I chose to let it beits own answer, and he went on. "There is no one that I can ask to actfor me in the matter but you, and I ask _you_, March, to go to mysister-in-law for me. "

I shook my head. "That I can't do, Tedham. "

"Ah!" he urged, "what harm could it do you?"

"Look here, Tedham!" I said. "I don't know why you feel authorized tocome to me at all. It is useless your saying that there is no one else. You know very well that the authorities, some of them--thechaplain--would go and see Mrs. Hasketh for you. He could have a greatdeal more influence with her than any one else could, if he felt likesaying a good word for you. As far as I am concerned, you have expiatedyour offence fully; but I should think you yourself would see that youought not to come to me with this request; or you ought to come to melast of all men. "

"It is just because of that part of my offence which concerned you thatI come to you. I knew how generous you were, and after you told me thatyou had no resentment--I acknowledge that it is indelicate, if youchoose to look at it in that light, but a man like me can't afford tolet delicacy stand in his way. I don't want to flatter you, or get youto do this thing for me on false pretences. But I thought that if youwent to Mrs. Hasketh for me, she would remember that you had overlookedsomething, and she would be more disposed to--to--be considerate. "

"I can't do it, Tedham, " I returned. "It would be of no use. Besides, Idon't like the errand. I'm not sure that I have any business tointerfere. I am not sure that you have any right to disturb the shapethat their lives have settled into. I'm sorry for you, I pity you withall my heart. But there are others to be considered as well as you. And--simply, I can't. "

"How do you know, " he entreated, "that my daughter wouldn't be as gladto see me as I to see her?"

"I don't know it. I don't know anything about it. That's the reason Ican't have anything to do with it. I can't justify myself in meddlingwith what doesn't concern me, and in what I'm not sure but I should domore harm than good. I must say good-night. It's getting late, and theywill be anxious about me at home. " My heart smote me as I spoke the lastword, which seemed a cruel recognition of Tedham's homelessness. But Iheld out my hand to him for parting, and braced myself against my inwardweakness. 

He might well have failed to see my hand. At any rate he did not takeit. He turned and started to walk out of the woods by my side. We camepresently to some open fields. Beyond them was the road, and after wehad climbed the first wall, and found ourselves in a somewhat lighterplace, he began to speak again. 

"I thought, " he said, "that if you had forgiven me, I could take it as asign that I had suffered enough to satisfy everybody. "

"We needn't dwell upon my share in the matter, Tedham, " I answered, askindly as I could. "That was entirely my own affair. "

"You can't think, " he pursued, "how much your letter was to me. It camewhen I was in perfect despair--in those awful first days when it seemedas if I could _not_ bear it, and yet death itself would be no relief. Oh, they don't _know_ how much we suffer! If they did, they wouldforgive us anything, everything! Your letter was the first gleam of hopeI had. I don't know how you came to write it!"

"Why, of course, Tedham, I felt sorry for you--"

"Oh, did you, did you?" He began to cry, and as we hurried along overthe fields, he sobbed with the wrenching, rending sobs of a man. "I_knew_ you did, and I believe it was God himself that put it into yourheart to write me that letter and take off that much of the blame fromme. I said to myself that if I ever lived through it, I would try totell you how much you had done for me. I don't blame you for refusing todo what I've asked you now. I can see how you may think it isn't best, and I thank you all the same for that letter. I've got it here. " He tooka letter out of his breast-pocket, and showed it to me. "It isn't thefirst time I've cried over it. "

I did not say anything, for my heart was in my throat, and we stumbledalong in silence till we climbed the last wall, and stood on thesidewalk that skirted the suburban highway. There, under thestreet-lamp, we stopped a moment, and it was he who now offered me hishand for parting. I took it, and we said, together, "Well, good-by, " andmoved in different directions. I knew very well that I should turn back, and I had not gone a hundred feet away when I faced about. He wasshambling off into the dusk, a most hapless figure. "Tedham!" I calledafter him. 

"Well?" he answered, and he halted instantly; he had evidently knownwhat I would do as well as I had. 

We reapproached each other, and when we were again under the lamp Iasked, a little awkwardly, "Are you in need of money, Tedham?"

"I've got my ten years' wages with me, " he said, with a lightness thatmust have come from his reviving hope in me. He drew his hand out of hispocket, and showed me the few dollars with which the State inhumanlyturns society's outcasts back into the world again. 

"Oh, that won't do. " I said. "You must let me lend you something. "

"Thank you, " he said, with perfect simplicity. "But you know I can'ttell when I shall be able to pay you. "

"Oh, that's all right. " I gave him a ten-dollar note which I had loosein my pocket; it was one that my wife had told me to get changed at thegrocery near the station, and I had walked off to the old temple, or theold cockpit, and forgotten about it. 

Tedham took the note, but he said, holding it in his hand, "I would amillion times rather you would let me go home with you and see Mrs. March a moment. "

"I can't do that, Tedham, " I answered, not unkindly, I hope. "I knowwhat you mean, and I assure you that it wouldn't be the least use. It'sbecause I feel so sure that my wife wouldn't like my going to see Mrs. Hasketh, that I--"

"Yes, I know that, " said Tedham. "That is the reason why I should liketo see Mrs. March. I believe that if I could see her, I could convinceher. "

"She wouldn't see you, my dear fellow, " said I, strangely finding myselfon these caressing terms with him. "She entirely approved of what I did, the letter I wrote you, but I don't believe she will ever feel just as Ido about it. Women are different, you know. "

"Yes, " he said, drawing a long, quivering breath. 

We stood there, helpless to part. He did not offer to leave me, and Icould not find it in my heart to abandon him. After a most painful time, he drew another long breath, and asked, "Would you be willing to let metake the chances?"

"Why, Tedham, " I began, weakly; and upon that he began walking with meagain. 

III. 

I went to my wife's room, after I reached the house, and faced her withconsiderable trepidation. I had to begin rather far off, but I certainlybegan in a way to lead up to the fact. "Isabel, " I said, "Tedham is outat last. " I had it on my tongue to say poor Tedham, but I suppressed thequalification in actual speech as likely to prove unavailing, or worse. 

"Is that what kept you!" she demanded, instantly. "Have you seen him?"

"Yes, " I admitted. I added, "Though I am afraid I was rather late, anyway. "

"I knew it was he, the moment you spoke, " she said, rising on the loungewhere she had been lying, and sitting up on it; with the book she hadbeen reading shut on her thumb, she faced me across the table where herlamp stood. "I had a presentiment when the children said there was somestrange-looking man here, asking for you, and that they had told himwhere to find you. I couldn't help feeling a little uneasy about it. What did he want with you, Basil?"

"Well, he wanted to know where his daughter was. "

"You didn't tell him!"

"I didn't know. Then he wanted me to go to Mrs. Hasketh and find out. "

"You didn't say you would?"

"I said most decidedly I wouldn't, " I returned, and I recalled myseverity to Tedham in refusing his prayer with more satisfaction than ithad given me at the time. "I told him that I had no business tointerfere, and that I was not sure it would be right even for me tomeddle with the course things had taken. " I was aware of weakening mycase as I went on; I had better left her with a dramatic conception of adownright and relentless refusal. 

"I don't see why you felt called upon to make excuses to him, Basil. Hisimpudence in coming to you, of all men, is perfectly intolerable. Isuppose it was that sentimental letter you wrote him. "

"You didn't think it sentimental at the time, my dear. You approved ofit. "

"I didn't approve of it, Basil; but if you felt so strongly that youought to do it, I felt that I ought to let you. I have never interferedwith your sense of duty, and I never will. But I am glad that you didn'tfeel it your duty to that wretch to go and make more trouble on hisaccount. He has made quite enough already; and it wasn't his fault thatyou were not tried and convicted in his place. "

"There wasn't the slightest danger of that--"

"He tried to put the suspicion on you, and to bring the disgrace on yourwife and children. "

"Well, my dear, we agreed to forget all that long ago. And I don'tthink--I never thought--that Tedham would have let the suspicion rest onme. He merely wanted to give it that turn, when the investigation began, so as to gain time to get out to Canada. "

My wife looked at me with a glance in which I saw tender affectiondangerously near contempt. "You are a very forgiving man, Basil, " shesaid, and I looked down sheepishly. "Well, at any rate, you have had thesense not to mix yourself up in his business. Did he pretend that hecame straight to you, as soon as he got out? I suppose he wanted you tobelieve that he appealed to you before he tried anybody else. "

"Yes, he stopped at the Reciprocity office to ask for my address, andafter he had visited the cemetery he came on out here. And, if you mustknow, I think Tedham is still the old Tedham. Put him behind a goodhorse, with a pocketful of some one else's money, in a handsome suit ofclothes, and a game-and-fish dinner at Tafft's in immediate prospect, and you couldn't see any difference between the Tedham of to-day and theTedham of ten years ago, except that the actual Tedham is clean-shavedand wears his hair cut rather close. "

"Basil!"

"Why do you object to the fact? Did you imagine he had changedinwardly?"

"He must have suffered. "

"But does suffering change people? I doubt it. Certain materialaccessories of Tedham's have changed. But why should that change Tedham?Of course, he has suffered, and he suffers still. He threw out somehints of what he had been through that would have broken my heart if Ihadn't hardened it against him. And he loves his daughter still, and hewants to see her, poor wretch. "

"I suppose he does!" sighed my wife. 

"He would hardly take no for an answer from me, when I said I wouldn'tgo to the Haskeths for him; and when I fairly shook him off, he wantedme to ask you to go. "

"And what did you say?" she asked, not at all with the resentment I hadcounted upon equally with the possible pathos; you never can tell in theleast how any woman will take anything, which is perhaps the reason whymen do not trust women more. 

"I told him that it would not be the smallest use to ask you; that youhad forgiven that old affair as well as I had, but that women weredifferent, and that I knew you wouldn't even see him. "

"Well, Basil, I don't know what right you had to put me in that odiouslight, " said my wife. 

"Why, good heavens! _Would_ you have seen him?"

"I don't know whether I would or not. That's neither here nor there. Idon't think it was very nice of you to shift the whole responsibility onme. "

"How did I do that? It seems to me that I kept the whole responsibilitymyself. "

"Yes, altogether too much. What became of him, then?"

"We walked along a little farther, and then--"

"Then, what? Where is the man?"

"He's down in the parlor, " I answered hardily, in the voice of some oneelse. 

My wife stood up from the lounge, and I rose, too, for whatever penaltyshe chose to inflict. 

"Well, Basil, that is what I call a very cowardly thing. "

"Yes, my dear, it is; I ought to have protected you against his appeal. But you needn't see him. It's practically the same as if he had not comehere. I can send him away. "

"And you call that practically the same! No, _I_ am the one that willhave to do the refusing now, and it is all off your shoulders. And youknew I was not feeling very well, either! Basil, how could you?"

"I don't know. The abject creature drove me out of my senses. I supposethat if I had respected him more, or believed in him more, I should havehad more strength to refuse him. But his limpness seemed to impartitself to me, and I--I gave way. But really you needn't see him, Isabel. I can tell him we have talked it over, and I concluded, entirely ofmyself, that it was best for you not to meet him, and--"

"He would see through that in an instant. And if he is still the falsecreature you think he is, we owe him the truth, more than any other kindof man. You must understand _that_, Basil!"

"Then you are going to--"

"Don't speak to me, Basil, please, " she said, and with an air of highoffence she swept out of the room, and out to the landing of the stairs. There she hesitated a moment, and put her hand to her hair, mechanically, to feel if it were in order, and then she went ondownstairs without further faltering. It was I who descended slowly, andwith many misgivings. 

IV. 

Tedham was sitting in the chair I had shown him when I brought him in, and in the half-light of one gas-burner in the chandelier he looked, with his rough, clean clothes, and his slouch hat lying in his lap, likesome sort of decent workingman; his features, refined by the mentalsuffering he had undergone, and the pallor of a complexion so seldomexposed to the open air, gave him the effect of a workingman just out ofthe hospital. His eyes were deep in their sockets, and showed fineshadows in the overhead light, and I must say he looked veryinteresting. 

At the threshold my wife paused again; then she went forward, turningthe gas up full as she passed under the chandelier, and gave him herhand, where he had risen from his chair. 

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Tedham, " she said; and I should have found myastonishment overpowering, I dare say, if I had not felt that I was socompletely in the hands of Providence, when she added, "Won't you comeout to dinner with us? We were just going to sit down, when Mr. Marchcame in. I never know when he will be back, when he starts off on theseSaturday afternoon tramps of his. "

The children seemed considerably mystified at the appearance of ourguest, but they had that superior interest in the dinner appropriate totheir years, and we got through the ordeal, in which, I believe, Isuffered more than any one else, much better than I could have hoped. Icould not help noting in Tedham a certain strangeness to the use of afour-pronged fork, at first, but he rapidly overcame this; and if it hadnot been for a terrible moment when, after one of the courses, he began, mechanically, to scrape his plate with his knife, there would not havebeen anything very odd in his behavior, or anything to show that it wasthe first dinner in polite society that he had taken for so many years. 

The man's mind had apparently stiffened more than his body. It used tobe very agile, if light, but it was not agile now. It worked slowlytoward the topics which we found with difficulty, in our necessity ofavoiding the only topics of real interest between us, and I couldperceive that his original egotism, intensified by the long years inwhich he had only himself for company, now stood in the way of hisentering into the matters brought forward, though he tried to do so. They were mostly in the form of reminiscences of this person and thatwhom we had known in common, and even in this shape they had to be verycarefully handled so as not to develop anything leading. The thing thatdid most to relieve the embarrassment of the time was the sturdy hungerTedham showed, and his delight in the cooking; I suppose that I cannotmake others feel the pathos I found in this. 

After dinner we shut the children into the library, and kept Tedham withus in the parlor. 

My wife began at once to say, "Mr. March has told me why you wanted tosee me, Mr. Tedham. "

"Yes, " he said, as if he were afraid to say more lest he should injurehis cause. 

"I think that it would not be the least use for me to go to Mrs. Hasketh. In the first place I do not know her very well, and I have notseen her for years, I am not certain she would see me. "

Tedham turned the hollows of his eyes upon my wife, and asked, huskily, "Won't you try?"

"Yes, " she answered, most unexpectedly to me, "I will try to see her. But if I do see her, and she refuses to tell me anything about yourdaughter, what will you do? Of course, I shall have to tell her I comefrom you, and for you. "

"I thought, " Tedham ventured, with a sort of timorous slyness, "thatperhaps you might approach it casually, without any reference to me. "

"No, I couldn't do that, " my wife said. 

He went on as if he had not heard her: "If she did not know that theinquiries were made in my behalf, she might be willing to say whether mydaughter was with her. "

There was in this suggestion a quality of Tedham's old insinuation, butcoarser, inferior, as if his insinuation had degenerated into somethinglike mere animal cunning. I felt rather ashamed for him, but to mysurprise, my wife seemed only to feel sorry, and did not repel hissuggestion in the way I had thought she would. 

"No, " she said, "that wouldn't do. She has kept account of the time, youmay be sure, and she would ask me at once if I was inquiring in yourbehalf, and I should have to tell her the truth. "

"I didn't know, " he returned, "but you might evade the point, somehow. So much being at stake, " he added, as if explaining. 

Still my wife was not severe with him. "I don't understand, quite, " shesaid. 

"Being the turning-point in my life, I can't begin to do anything, to beanything, till I have seen my daughter. I don't know where to findmyself. If I could see her, and she did not cast me off, then I shouldknow where I was. Or, if she did, I should. You understand that. "

"But, of course, there is another point of view. "

"My daughter's?"

"Mrs. Hasketh's. "

"I don't care for Mrs. Hasketh. She did what she has done for thechild's sake. It was the best thing for the child at the time--the onlything; I know that. But I agreed to it because I had to. "

He continued: "I consider that I have expiated the wrong I did. There isno sense in the whole thing, if I haven't. They might as well have letme go in the beginning. Don't you think that ten years out of my life isenough for a thing that I never intended to go as far as it did, and athing that I was led into, partly, for the sake of others? I have triedto reason it out, and not from my own point of view at all, and that isthe way I feel about it. Is it to go on forever, and am I never to berid of the consequences of a single act? If you and Mr. March couldcondone--"

"Oh, you mustn't reason from us, " my wife broke in. "We are very sillypeople, and we do not look at a great many things as others do. You havegot to reckon with the world at large. "

"I _have_ reckoned with the world at large, and I have paid thereckoning. But why shouldn't my daughter look at this thing as you do?"

Instead of answering, my wife asked, "When did you hear from her last?"

Tedham took a few thin, worn letters from his breast-pocket "There isMr. March's letter, " he said, laying one on his knee. He handed my wifeanother. 

She read it, and asked, "May Mr. March see it?"

Tedham nodded, and I took the little paper in turn. The letter waswritten in a child's stiff, awkward hand. It was hardly more than apiteous cry of despairing love. The address was Mrs. Hasketh's, inSomerville, and the date was about three months after Tedham'spunishment began. "Is that the last you have heard from her?" I asked. 

Tedham nodded as he took the letter from me. 

"But surely you have heard something more about her in all this time?"my wife pursued. 

"Once from Mrs. Hasketh, to make me promise that I would leave the childto her altogether, and not write to her, or ask to see her. When I wentto the cemetery to-day, I did not know but I should find her grave, too. "

"Well, it is cruel!" cried my wife. "I will go and see Mrs. Hasketh, but--you ought to feel yourself that it's hopeless. "

"Yes, " he admitted. "There isn't much chance unless she should happen tothink the same way you do: that I had suffered enough, and that it wastime to stop punishing me. "

My wife looked compassionately at him, and she began with a sympathythat I have not always known her to show more deserving people, "If itwere a question of that alone it would be very easy. But suppose yourdaughter were so situated that it would be--disadvantageous to her tohave it known that you were her father?"

"You mean that I have no right to mend my broken-up life--what there isleft of it--by spoiling hers? I have said that to myself. But then, onthe other hand, I have had to ask myself whether I had any right to keepher from choosing for herself about it. I sha'n't force myself on her. Iexpect to leave her free. But if the child cares for me, as she used to, hasn't that love--not mine for her, but hers for me--got some rightstoo?"

His voice sank almost to a hush, and the last word was scarcely morethan a breathing. "All I want is to know where she is, and to let herknow that I am in the world, and where she can find me. I think sheought to have a chance to decide. "

"I am afraid Mrs. Hasketh may think it would be better, for her sake, _not_ to have the chance, " my wife sighed, and she turned her look fromTedham upon me, as if she wished me rather than him to answer. 

"The only way to find out is to ask her, " I answered, non-committally, and rather more lightly than I felt about it. In fact, the turn theaffair had taken interested me greatly. It involved that awful mysteryof the ties by which, unless we are born of our fathers and mothers fornothing more than the animals are, we are bound to them in all thethings of life, in duty and in love transcending every question ofinterest and happiness. The parents' duty to the children is obvious andplain, but the child's duty to its parents is something subtler and morespiritual. It is to be more delicately, more religiously, regarded. Noone, without impiety, can meddle with it from the outside, or interferein its fulfilment. This and much more I said to my wife when we came totalk the matter over after Tedham left us. Above all, I urged somethingthat came to me so forcibly at the moment that I said I had alwaysthought it, and perhaps I really believed that I had. "Why should we tryto shield people from fate? Isn't that always wrong? One is fated to beborn the child of a certain father, and one can no more escape theconsequences of his father's misdeeds than the doer himself can. Perhapsthe pain and the shame come from the wish and the attempt to do so, morethan from the fact itself. The sins of the fathers shall be visited uponthe children. But the children are innocent of evil, and this visitationmust be for their good, and will be, if they bear it willingly. "

"Well, don't try to be that sort of blessing to _your_ children, Basil, "said my wife, personalizing the case, as a woman must. 

After that we tried to account to each other for having consented to dowhat Tedham asked us. Perhaps we accused each other somewhat for doingit. 

"I didn't know, my dear, but you were going to ask him to come and staywith us, " I said. 

"I did want to, " she replied. "It seemed so forlorn, letting him go outinto the night, and find a place for himself, when we could just as wellhave let him stay as not. Why shouldn't we have offered him a bed forthe night, as we would any other acquaintance?"

"Well, you must allow that the circumstances were peculiar!"

"But if he was sentenced to pay a certain penalty, and has paid it, why, as he said, shouldn't we stop punishing him?"

"I suppose we can't. There seems to be an instinctive demand for eternalperdition, for hell, in the human heart, " I suggested. 

"Well, then, I believe that your instinct, Basil--"

"Oh, _I_ don't claim it, exclusively!"

"Is a survival of savagery, and the sooner we get rid of it the better. How queer he seems. It is the old Tedham, but all faded in--or out. "

"Yes, he affected me like an etching of himself from a wornout plate. Still, I'm afraid there's likeness enough left to make trouble, yet. Ihope you realize what you have gone in for, Isabel?"

She answered from the effort that I could see she was making, to braceherself already for the work before us:

"Well, we must do this because we can't help doing it, and because, whatever happens, we had no right to refuse. You must come with me, Basil!"

"I? To Mrs. Hasketh's?"

"Certainly. I will do the talking, but I shall depend upon your moralsupport. We will go over to Somerville to-morrow afternoon. We hadbetter not lose any time. "

"To-morrow is Sunday. "

"So much the better. They will be sure to be at home, if they're thereat all, yet. "

She said they, but I knew that she did not expect poor old Haskethreally to count in the matter, any more than she expected me to do so. 

V. 

The Haskeths lived in a house that withdrew itself behind tall gardentrees in a large lot sloping down the hillside, in one of the quieterold streets of their suburb. The trees were belted in by a board fence, painted a wornout white, as far as it was solid, which was to the heightof one's shoulder; there it opened into a panel work of sticks crossedX-wise, which wore a coat of aged green; the strip above them was setwith a bristling row of rusty nails, which were supposed to keep outpeople who could perfectly well have gone in at the gate as we did. There was a brick walk from the gate to the door, which was not so farback as I remembered it (perhaps because the leaves were now off thetrees), and there was a border of box on either side of the walk. Altogether there was an old-fashioned keeping in the place which Ishould have rather enjoyed if I had been coming on any other errand; butnow it imparted to me a notion of people set in their ways, of somethingsevere, something hopelessly forbidding. 

I do not think there had ever been much intimacy between the Tedhams andthe Haskeths, before Tedham's calamity came upon him. But Mrs. Haskethdid not refuse her share of it. She came forward, and probably made herhusband come forward, in Tedham's behalf, and do what hopelessly couldbe done to defend him where there was really no defence, and the onlything to be attempted was to show circumstances that might perhaps tendto the mitigation of his sentence. I do not think they did. Tedham hadconfessed himself and had been proven such a thorough rogue, and thecompany had lately suffered so much through operations like his, that, even if it could have had mercy, as an individual may, mercy was felt tobe bad morals, and the case was unrelentingly pushed. His sentence wasof those sentences which an eminent jurist once characterized as ratherdramatic; it was pronounced not so much in relation to his particularoffence, as with the purpose of striking terror into all offenders likehim, who were becoming altogether too common. He was made to suffer formany other peculators, who had been, or were about to be, and was giventhe full penalty. I was in court when it was pronounced with greatsolemnity by the judge, who read him a lecture in doing so; I could haveread the judge another, for I could not help feeling that it was, morethan all the sentences I had ever heard pronounced, wholly out ofkeeping with the offence. I met Hasketh coming out of the court-room, and I said that I thought it was terribly severe. He agreed with me, andas I knew that he and Tedham had never liked each other, I inferred akindliness in him which made me his friend, in the way one is the friendof a man one never meets. He was a man of few words, and he now simplysaid, "It was unjust, " and we parted. 

For several months after Tedham's conviction, I did not think we oughtto intrude upon the Haskeths; but then my wife and I both felt that weought, in decency, to make some effort to see them. They seemed pleased, but they made us no formal invitation to come again, and we never did. That day, however, I caught a glimpse of Tedham's little girl, as sheflitted through the hall, after we were seated in the parlor; she was inblack, a forlorn little shadow in the shadow; and I recalled now, as westood once more on the threshold of the rather dreary house, a certaingentleness of bearing in the child, which I found infinitely pathetic, at that early moment of her desolation. She had something of poorTedham's own style and grace, too, which had served him so ill, and thisheightened the pathos for me. In that figure I had thought of hisdaughter ever since, as often as I had thought of her at all; which wasnot very often, to tell the truth, after the first painful impression ofTedham's affair began to die away in me, or to be effaced by theaccumulating cares and concerns of my own life. But now that we hadreturned into the presence of that bitter sorrow, as it were, the littlething reappeared vividly to me in just the way I had seen her so longago. My sense of her forlornness, of her most hapless orphanhood, wasintensified by the implacable hate with which Mrs. Hasketh had thenspoken of her father, in telling us that the child was henceforth tobear her husband's name, and had resentfully scorned the merit Tedhamtried to make of giving her up to them. "And if I can help it, " she hadended, with a fierceness I had never forgotten, "she shall not hear himmentioned again, or see him as long as I live. "

My wife and I now involuntarily dropped our voices, or rather they sankinto our throats, as we sat waiting in the dim parlor, after the maidtook our cards to Mr. And Mrs. Hasketh. We tried to make talk, but wecould not, and we were funereally quiet, when Hasketh came pottering andpeering in, and shook hands with both of us. He threw open half a blindat one of the windows, and employed himself in trying to put up theshade, to gain time, as I thought, before he should be obliged to tellus that his wife could not see us. Then he came to me, and asked, "Won'tyou let me take your hat?" as such people do, in expression of a vaguehospitality; and I let him take it, and put it mouth down on the marblecentre-table, beside the large, gilt-edged, black-bound family Bible. Hedrew a chair near me, in a row with my wife and myself, and said, "It isquite a number of years since we met, Mrs. March, " and he looked acrossme at her. 

"Yes, I am almost afraid to think how many, " she answered. 

"Family well?"

"Yes, our children are both very well, Mr. Hasketh. You seem to belooking very well, too. "

"Thank you, I have nothing to complain of. I am not so young as I was. But that is about all. "

"I hope Mrs. Hasketh is well?"

"Yes, thank you, she is quite well, for her. She is never very strong. She will be down in a moment. "

"Oh, I shall be so glad to see her. "

The conversation, which might be said to have flagged from thebeginning, stopped altogether at this point, and though I was promptedby several looks from my wife to urge it forward, I could think ofnothing to do so with, and we sat without speaking till we heard thestir of skirts on the stairs in the hall outside, and then my wife said, "Ah, that is Mrs. Hasketh. "

I should have known it was Mrs. Hasketh without this sort ofanticipation, I think, even if I had never seen her before, she was solike my expectation of what that sort of woman would be in the lapse oftime, with her experience of life. The severity that I had seen come andgo in her countenance in former days was now so seated that she had noother expression, and I may say without caricature that she gave us afrown of welcome. That is, she made us feel, in spite of a darkenedcountenance, that she was really willing to see us in her house, andthat she took our coming as a sign of amity. I suppose that theinduration of her spirit was the condition of her being able to bear atall what had been laid on her to bear, and her burden had certainly notbeen light. 

At her appearance her husband, without really stirring at all, had theeffect of withdrawing into the background, where, indeed, I tacitlyjoined him; and the two ladies remained in charge of the drama, while heand I conversed, as it were, in dumb show. Apart from my sympathy withher in the matter, I was very curious to see how my wife would play herpart, which seemed to me far the more difficult of the two, since shemust make all the positive movements. 

After some civilities so obviously perfunctory that I admired the forceof mind in the women who uttered them, my wife said, "Mrs. Hasketh, wehave come on an errand that I know will cause you pain, and I needn'tsay that we haven't come willingly. "

"Is it about Mr. Tedham?" asked Mrs. Hasketh, and I remembered now thatshe had always used as much ceremony in speaking of him; it seemedrather droll now, but still it would not have been in character with herto call him simply Tedham, as we did, in speaking of him. 

"Yes, " said my wife. "I don't know whether you had kept exact account ofthe time. It was a surprise to us, for we hadn't. He is out, you know. "

"Yes--at noon, yesterday. I wasn't likely to forget the day, or thehour, or the minute. " Mrs. Hasketh said this without relaxing theseverity of her face at all, and I confess my heart went down. 

But my wife seemed not to have lost such courage as she had come with, at least. "He has been to see us--"

"I presumed so, " said Mrs. Hasketh, and as she said nothing more, Mrs. March took the word again. 

"I shall have to tell you why he came--why _we_ came. It was somethingthat we did not wish to enter into, and at first my husband refusedoutright. But when I saw him, and thought it over, I did not see how wecould refuse. After all, it is something you must have expected, andthat you must have been expecting at once, if you say--"

"I presume, " Mrs. Hasketh said, "that he wished you to ask after hisdaughter. I can understand why he did not come to us. " She let one ofthose dreadful silences follow, and again my wife was forced to speak. 

"It is something that we didn't mean to press at all, Mrs. Hasketh, andI won't say anything more. Only, if you care to send any word to him hewill be at our house this evening again, and I will give him yourmessage. " She rose, not in resentment, as I could see (and I knew thatshe had not come upon this errand without making herself Tedham'spartisan in some measure) but with sincere good feeling and appreciationof Mrs. Hasketh's position. I rose with her, and Hasketh rose too. 

"Oh, don't go!" Mrs. Hasketh broke out, as if surprised. "You couldn'thelp coming, and I don't blame you at all. I don't blame Mr. Tedhameven. I didn't suppose I should ever forgive him. But there! that's alllong ago, and the years do change us. They change us all, Mrs. March, and I don't feel as if I had the right to judge anybody the way I usedto judge _him_. Sometimes it surprises me. I did hate him, and I don'tpresume I've got very much love for him now, but I don't want to punishhim any more. That's gone out of me. I don't know how it came to go, butit went. I wish he hadn't ever got anything more to do with us, but I'mafraid we haven't had all our punishment yet, whatever _he_ has. Itseems to me as if the sight of Mr. Tedham would make me sick. "

I found such an insufficiency in this statement of feeling that I wantedto laugh, but I perceived that it did not appeal to my wife's sense ofhumor. She said, "I can understand how you feel about it, Mrs. Hasketh. "

Mrs. Hasketh seemed grateful for the sympathy. "I presume, " she went on, and I noted how often she used the quaint old-fashioned Yankee word, "that you feel as if you had almost as much right to hate him as I had, and that if you could overlook what he tried to do to you, I mightoverlook what he did do to his own family. But as I see it, the case isdifferent. He failed when he tried to put the blame on Mr. March, and hesucceeded only too well in putting the shame on his own family. Youcould forgive it, and it would be all the more to your credit becauseyou forgave it, but his family might have forgiven it ten times over, and still they would be in disgrace through him. That is the way Ilooked at it. "

"And I assure you, Mrs. Hasketh, that is the way I looked at it, too, "said my wife. 

"So, when it seems hard that I should have taken his child from him, "the woman continued, as if still arguing her case, and she probably wasarguing it with herself, "and did what I could to make her forget him, Ithink it had better be considered whose sake I was doing it for, andwhether I had any right to do different. I did not think I had at thetime, or when I had to begin to act. I knew how I felt toward Mr. Tedham; I never liked him; I never wanted my sister to marry him; andwhen his trouble came, I told Mr. Hasketh that it was no more than I hadexpected all along. He was that kind of a man, and he was sure to showit, one way or other, sooner or later; and I was not disappointed whenhe did what he did. I had to guard against my own feeling, and to putmyself out of the question, and that was what I tried to do when I gothim to give up the child to us and let her take our name. It was thesame as a legal adoption, and he freely consented to it, or as freely ashe could, considering where he was. But he knew it was for her good aswell as we did. There was nobody for her to look to but us, and he knewthat; his own family had no means, and, in fact, he _had_ no family buthis father and mother, and when they died, that same first year, therewas no one left to suffer from him but his child. The question was howmuch she ought to be allowed to suffer, and whether she should beallowed to suffer at all, if it could be helped. If it was to beprevented, it was to be by deadening her to him, by killing out heraffection for him, and much as I hated Mr. Tedham, I could not bringmyself to do that, though I used to think I would do it. He was veryfond of her, I don't deny that; I don't think it was any merit in him tolove such a child, but it was the best thing about him, and I waswilling it should count. But then there was another thing that Icouldn't bring myself to, and that was to tell the child, up and down, all about it; and I presume that there I was weak. Well, you may say I_was_ weak! But I couldn't, I simply couldn't. She was only betweenseven and eight when it happened--"

"I thought she was older, " I ventured to put in, remembering myimpressions as to her age the last time I saw her with her father. 

"No, " said Mrs. Hasketh, "she always appeared rather old for her age, and that made me all the more anxious to know just how much of thetrouble she had taken in. I suppose it was all a kind of awful mysteryto her, as most of our trials are to children; but when her father wastaken from her, she seemed to think it was something she mustn't askabout; there are a good many things in the world that children feel thatway about--how they come into it, for one thing, and how they go out ofit; and by and by she didn't speak of it. She had some of his lightness, and I presume that helped her through; I was afraid it did sometimes. Then, at other times, I thought she had got the notion he was in forlife, and that was the reason she didn't speak of him; she had given himup. Then I used to wonder whether it wasn't my duty to take her to seehim--where he was. But when I came to find out that you had to see themthrough the bars, and with the kind of clothes they wear, I felt that Imight as well kill the child at once; it was for her sake I didn't takeher. You may be sure I wasn't anxious for the responsibility of _not_doing it either, the way I knew I felt toward Mr. Tedham. "

I did not like her protesting so much as this; but I saw that it was acondition of her being able to deal with herself in the matter, and Ihad no doubt she was telling the truth. 

"You never can know just how much of a thing children have taken in, orhow much they have understood, " she continued, repeating herself, as shedid throughout, "and I had to keep this in mind when I had my talks withFay about her father. She wanted to write to him at first, and of courseI let her--"

My wife and I could not forbear exchanging a glance of intelligence, which Mrs. Hasketh intercepted. 

"I presume he told you?" she asked. 

"Yes, " I said, "he showed us the letter. "

"Well, it was something that had to be done. As long as she questionedme about him, I put her off the best way I could, and after a while sheseemed to give up questioning me of her own accord. Perhaps she reallybegan to understand it, or some of the cruel little things she playedwith said something. I was always afraid of the other children throwingit up to her, and that was one reason we went away for three or fouryears and let our place here. "

"I didn't know you were gone, " I said toward Hasketh, who cleared histhroat to explain:

"I had some interests at that time in Canada. We were at Quebec. "

"It shows what a rush our life is, " I philosophized, with theimplication that Hasketh and I had been old friends, and I ought to havenoticed that I had not met him during the time of his absence. The factwas we had never come so near intimacy as when we exchanged confidencesconcerning the severity of Tedham's sentence in coming out of thecourt-room together. 

"_I_ hadn't any interest in Canada, except to get the child away, " saidMrs. Hasketh. "Sometimes it seemed strange _we_ should be in Canada, andnot Mr. Tedham! She got acquainted with some little girls who were goingto a convent school there as externes--outside pupils, you know, " Mrs. Hasketh explained to my wife. "She got very fond of one of them--she isa child of very warm affections. I never denied that Mr. Tedham had warm_affections_--and when her little girl friend went into the convent togo on with her education there, Fay wanted to go too, and--we let her. That was when she was twelve, and Mr. Hasketh felt that he ought to comeback and look after his business here; and we left her in the convent. Just as soon as she was out of the way, and out of the question, itseemed as if I got to feeling differently toward Mr. Tedham. I don'tmean to say I ever got to like him, or that I do to this day; but I sawthat he had some rights, too, and for years and years I wanted to takethe child and tell her when he was coming out. I used to ask myself whatright I even had to keep the child from the suffering. The suffering washers by rights, and she ought to go through it. I got almost crazythinking it over. I got to thinking that her share of her father's shamemight be the very thing, of all things, that was to discipline her andmake her a good and useful woman; and that's much more than being ahappy one, Mrs. March; we can't any of us be truly happy, no matterwhat's done for us. I tried to make believe that I was sparing heralone, but I knew I was sparing myself, too, and that made it harder todecide. " She suddenly addressed herself to us both: "What would _you_have done?"

My wife and I looked at each other in a dismay in which a glance fromold Hasketh assured us that we had his sympathy. It would have been farsimpler if Mrs. Hasketh had been up and down with us as Tedham'semissaries, and refused to tell us anything of his daughter, and left usto report to him that he must find her for himself if he found her atall. This was what we had both expected, and we had come prepared totake back that answer to Tedham, and discharge our whole duty towardshim in its delivery. This change in the woman who had hated him sofiercely, but whose passion had worn itself down to the underlyingconscience with the lapse of time, certainly complicated the case. I wassilent; my wife said: "I don't know _what_ I should have done, Mrs. Hasketh;" and Mrs. Hasketh resumed:

"If I did wrong in trying to separate her life from her father's, I waspunished for it, because when I wanted to undo my work, I didn't knowhow to begin; I presume that's the worst of a wrong thing. Well, I neverdid begin; but now I've got to. The time's come, and I presume it's aseasy now as it ever could be; easier. He's out and it's over, as far asthe law is concerned; and if she chooses she can see him. I'll prepareher for it as well as I can, and he can come if she wishes it. "

"Do you mean that he can see her _here_?" my wife asked. 

"Yes, " said Mrs. Hasketh, with a sort of strong submission. 

"At once? To-day?"

"No, " Mrs. Hasketh faltered. "I didn't want him to see her just thefirst day, or before I saw him; and I thought he might try to. She'svisiting at some friends in Providence; but she'll be back to-morrow. Hecan come to-morrow night, if she says so. He can come and find out. Butif he was anything of a man he wouldn't want to. "

"I'm afraid, " I ventured, "he isn't anything of _that_ kind of man. "

VI. 

"Now, how unhandsome life is!" I broke out, at one point on our wayhome, after we had turned the affair over in every light, and thendropped it, and then taken it up again. "It's so graceless, sotasteless! Why didn't Tedham die before the expiration of his term andsolve all this knotty problem with dignity? Why should he have lived onin this shabby way and come out and wished to see his daughter? If therehad been anything dramatic, anything artistic in the man's nature, hewould have renounced the claim his mere paternity gives him on her love, and left word with me that he had gone away and would never be heard ofany more. That was the least he could have done. If he had wanted to dothe thing heroically--and I wouldn't have denied him thatsatisfaction--he would have walked into that pool in the old cockpit andlain down among the autumn leaves on its surface, and made an end of thewhole trouble with his own burdensome and worthless existence. Thatwould truly have put an end to the evil he began. "

"I wouldn't be--impious, Basil, " said my wife, with a moment'shesitation for the word. Then she sighed and added, "Yes, it seems as ifthat would be the only thing that could end it. There doesn't reallyseem to be any provision in life for ending such things. He will have togo on and make more and more trouble. Poor man! I feel almost as sorryfor him as I do for her. I guess he hasn't expiated his sin yet, asfully as he thinks he has. "

"And then, " I went on, with a strange pleasure I always get out of thepoignancy of a despair not my own, "suppose that this isn't all. Supposethat the girl has met some one who has become interested in her, andwhom she will have to tell of this stain upon her name?"

"Basil!" cried my wife, "that is cruel of you! You _knew_ I was keepingaway from that point, and it seems as if you tried to make it asafflicting as you could--the whole affair. "

"Well, I don't believe it's as bad as that. Probably she hasn't met anyone in that way; at any rate, it's pure conjecture on my part, and myconjecture doesn't make it so. "

"It doesn't unmake it, either, for you to say that now, " my wifelamented. 

"Well, well! Don't let's think about it, then. The case is bad enough asit stands, Heaven knows, and we've got to grapple with it as soon as weget home. We shall find Tedham waiting for us, I dare say, unlesssomething has happened to him. I wonder if anything can have been goodenough to happen to Tedham, overnight. "

I got a little miserable fun out of this, but my wife would not laugh;she would not be placated in any way; she held me in a sort responsiblefor the dilemma I had conjectured, and inculpated me in some measure forthat which had really presented itself. 

When we reached home she went directly to her room and had a cup of teasent to her there, and the children and I had rather a solemn time atthe table together. A Sunday tea-table is solemn enough at the best, with its ghastly substitution of cold dishes or thin sliced things forthe warm abundance of the week-day dinner; with the gloom of Mrs. March's absence added, this was a very funereal feast indeed. 

We went on quite silently for a while, for the children saw I waspreoccupied; but at last I asked, "Has anybody called this afternoon?"

"I don't know exactly whether it was a call or not, " said my daughter, with a nice feeling for the social proprieties which would have amusedme at another time. "But that strange person who was here last night, was here again. "

"Oh!"

"He said he would come in the evening. I forgot to tell you. Papa, whatkind of person is he?"

"I don't know. What makes you ask?"

"Why, we think he wasn't always a workingman. Tom says he looks as if hehad been in some kind of business, and then failed. "

"What makes you think that, Tom?" I asked the boy. 

"Oh, I don't know. He speaks so well. "

"He always spoke well, poor fellow, " I said with a vague amusement. "Andyou're quite right, Tom. He was in business once and he failed--badly. "

I went up to my wife's room and told her what the children had said ofTedham's call, and that he was coming back again. 

"Well, then, I think I shall let you see him alone, Basil. I'mcompletely worn out, and besides there's no reason why I should see him. I hope you'll get through with him quickly. There isn't really anythingfor you to say, except that we have seen the Haskeths, and that if he isstill bent upon it he can find his daughter there to-morrow evening. Iwant you to promise me that you will confine yourself to that, Basil, and not say a single word more. There is no sense in our involvingourselves in the affair. We have done all we could, and more than he hadany right to ask of us, and now I am determined that he shall not getanything more out of you. Will you promise?"

"You may be sure, my dear, that I don't wish to get any more involved inthis coil of sin and misery than you do, " I began. 

"That isn't promising, " she interrupted. "I want you to promise you'llsay just that and no more. "

"Oh, I'll promise fast enough, if that's all you want, " I said. 

"I don't trust you a bit, Basil, " she lamented. "Now, I will explain toyou all about it. I've thought the whole thing over. "

She did explain, at much greater length than she needed, and she wasstill giving me some very solemn charges when the bell rang, and I knewthat Tedham had come. "Now, remember what I've told you, " she calledafter me, as I went to the door, "and be sure to tell me, when you comeback, just how he takes it and every word he says. Oh, dear, I knowyou'll make the most dreadful mess of it!"

By this time I expected to do no less, but I was so curious to seeTedham again that I should have been willing to do much worse, ratherthan forego my meeting with him. I hope that there was some betterfeeling than curiosity in my heart, but I will, for the present, call itcuriosity. 

I met him in the hall at the foot of the stairs, and put a witlesscheeriness into the voice I bade him good-evening with, while I gave himmy hand and led the way into the parlor. 

The twenty-four hours that had elapsed since I saw him there before hadestranged him in a way that I find it rather hard to describe. He hadshrunk from the approach to equality in which we had parted, and therewas a sort of consciousness of disgrace in his look, such as might haveshown itself if he had passed the time in a low debauch. But undoubtedlyhe had done nothing of the kind, and this effect in him was from apurely moral cause. He sat down on the edge of a chair, instead ofleaning back, as he had done the night before. 

"Well, Tedham, " I began, "we have seen your sister-in-law, and I may aswell tell you at once that, so far as she is concerned, there will benothing in the way of your meeting your daughter. The Haskeths areliving at their old place in Somerville, and your daughter will be withthem there to-morrow night--just at this moment she is away--and you canfind her there, then, if you wish. "

Tedham kept those deep eye-hollows of his bent upon me, and listenedwith a passivity which did not end when I ceased to speak. I had saidall that my wife had permitted me to say in her charge to me, and theincident ought to have been closed, as far as we were concerned. ButTedham's not speaking threw me off my guard. I could not let the matterend so bluntly, and I added, in the same spirit one makes a scrawl atthe bottom of a page, "Of course, it's for you to decide whether youwill or not. "

"What do you mean?" asked Tedham, feebly, but as if he were physicallylaying hold of me for help. 

"Why, I mean--I mean--my dear fellow, you know what I mean! Whether youhad better do it. " This was the very thing I had not intended to do, forI saw how wise my wife's plan was, and how we really had nothing more todo with the matter, after having satisfied the utmost demands ofhumanity. 

"You think I had better not, " said Tedham. 

"No, " I said, but I felt that I was saying it too late, "I don't thinkanything about it. "

"I have been thinking about it, too, " said Tedham, as if I had confessedand not denied having an opinion in the matter. "I have been thinkingabout it ever since I saw you last night, and I don't believe I haveslept, for thinking of it. I know how you and Mrs. March feel about it, and I have tried to see it from your point of view, and now I believe Ido. I am not going to see my daughter; I am going away. "

He stood up, in token of his purpose, and at the same moment my wifeentered the room. She must have been hurrying to do so from the moment Ileft her, for she had on a fresh dress, and her hair had the effect ofbeing suddenly, if very effectively, massed for the interview from thedispersion in which I had lately seen it. She swept me with a glance ofreproach, as she went up to Tedham, in the pretence that he had risen tomeet her, and gave him her hand. I knew that she divined all that hadpassed between us, but she said:

"Mr. March has told you that we have seen Mrs. Hasketh, and that you canfind your daughter at her house to-morrow evening?"

"Yes, and I have just been telling him that I am not going to see her. "

"That is very foolish--very wrong!" my wife began. 

"I know you must say so, " Tedham replied, with more dignity and forcethan I could have expected, "and I know how kind you and Mr. March havebeen. But you must see that I am right--that she is the only one to beconsidered at all. "

"Right! How are you right? Have _you_ been suggesting that, my dear?"demanded my wife, with a gentle despair of me in her voice. 

It almost seemed to me that I had, but Tedham came to my rescue mostunexpectedly. 

"No, Mrs. March, he hasn't said anything of the kind to me; or, if hehas, I haven't heard it. But you intimated, yourself, last night, thatshe might be so situated--"

"I was a wicked simpleton, " cried my wife, and I forebore to triumph, even by a glance at her; "to put my doubts between you and your daughterin any way. It was romantic, and--and--disgusting. It's not only yourright to see her, it's your _duty_. At least it's your duty to let herdecide whether she will let you see her. What nonsense! Of course shewill! She must bear her part in it. She ought not to escape it, even ifshe could. Now you must just drop all idea of going away, and you muststay, and you must go to see your daughter. There is no other way todo. "

Tedham shook his head stubbornly. "She has borne her share, already, andI won't inflict my penalty on her innocence--"

"Innocence? It's _because_ she is innocent that it must be inflictedupon her! That is what innocence is in the world for!"

Tedham looked back at her in a dull bewilderment. "I can't get back tothat. It seemed so once; but now it looks selfish, and I'm afraid of it. I am not the one to take that ground. It might do for you--"

"Well, then, let it do for me!" I confess that I was astonished at thisturn, or should have been, if I could be astonished at any turn a womantakes. "I will see her for you, if you wish, and I will tell her justhow it is with you, and then she can decide for herself. You havecertainly no right to decide for her, whether she will see you or not, have you?"

"No, " Tedham admitted. 

"Well, then, sit down and listen. "

He sat down, and my wife reasoned it all out with him. She convinced me, perfectly, so that what Tedham proposed to do seemed not onlysentimental and foolish, but unnatural and impious. I confess that Iadmired her casuistry, and gave it my full support. She was a woman who, in the small affairs of the tastes and the nerves and the prejudicescould be as illogical as the best of her sex, but with a question largeenough to engage the hereditary powers of her New England nature sheshowed herself a dialectician worthy of her Puritan ancestry. 

Tedham rose when she had made an end; and when we both expected him toagree with her and obey her, he said, "Very likely you are right. I oncesaw it all that way myself, but I don't see it so now, and I can't doit. Perhaps we shouldn't care for each other; at any rate, it's too muchto risk, and I can't do it. Good-by. " He began sidling toward the door. 

I would have detained him, but my wife made me a sign not to interfere. "But surely, Mr. Tedham, " she pleaded, "you are going to leave some wordfor her--or for Mrs. Hasketh to give her?"

"No, " he answered, "I don't think I will. If I don't appear, then shewon't see me, and that will be all there is of it. "

"Yes, but Mrs. Hasketh will probably tell her that you have asked abouther, and will prepare her for your coming, and then if you don't come--"

"What time is it, March?" Tedham asked. 

I took out my watch. "It's nine o'clock. " I was surprised to find it nolater. 

"I can get over to Somerville before ten, can't I? I'll go and tell Mrs. Hasketh I am not coming. "

We could not prevent his getting away, by force, and we had used all thearguments we could have hoped to detain him with. As he opened the doorto go out into the night, "But, Tedham!" I called to him, "if anythinghappens, where are we to find you, hear of you?"

He hesitated. "I will let you know. Well, good-night. "

"I suppose this isn't the end, Isabel, " I said, after we had turned fromlooking blankly at the closed door, and listening to Tedham's steps, fainter and fainter on the board-walk to the gate. 

"There never is an end to a thing like this!" she returned, with apassionate sigh of pity. "Oh, what a terrible thing an evil deed is! It_can't_ end. It has to go on and on forever. Poor wretch! He thought hehad got to the end of his misdeed, when he had suffered the punishmentfor it, but it was only just beginning then! Now, you see, it has aperfectly new lease of life. It's as if it had just happened, as far asthe worst consequences are concerned. "

"Yes, " I assented. "By the way, that was a great idea of yours about theoffice of innocence in the world, Isabel!"

"Why, Basil!" she cried, "you don't suppose I believed in such amonstrous thing as that, do you?"

"You made me believe in it. "

"Well, then, I can tell you that I merely said it so as to convince himthat he ought to let his daughter decide whether she would see him ornot, and it had nothing whatever to do with the matter. Do you think youcould find me anything to eat, dear? I'm perfectly famishing, and itdoesn't seem as if I could stir a step till I've had a bite ofsomething. "

She sank down on the sofa in the hall in proof of her statement, and Iwent out into the culinary regions (deserted of their dwellers after ourearly tea) and made her up a sandwich along with the one I had theSunday-night habit of myself. I found some half-bottles of ale on theice, and I brought one of them, too. Before we had emptied it weresigned ourselves to what we could not help in Tedham's case; perhapswe even saw it in a more hopeful light. 

VII. 

The next day was one of those lax Mondays which come before the Tuesdaysand Wednesdays when business has girded itself up for the week, and Igot home from the office rather earlier than usual. My wife met me with, "Why, what has happened?"

"Nothing, " I said; "I had a sort of presentiment that something hadhappened here. "

"Well, nothing at all has happened, and you have had your presentimentfor your pains, if that's what you hurried home for. "

I justified myself as well as I could, and I added, "That wretchedTedham has been in my mind all day. I think he has made a ridiculousmistake. As if he could stop the harm by taking himself off! The harmgoes on independently of him; it is hardly his harm any more. "

"That is the way it has seemed to me, too, all day, " said my wife. "Youdon't suppose he has been out of my mind either? I wish we had never hadanything to do with him. "

A husband likes to abuse his victory, when he has his wife quite at hismercy, but the case was so entirely in my favor that for once I forbore. I could see that she was suffering for having put into Tedham's head thenotion which had resulted in this error, and I considered that she wasprobably suffering enough. Besides, I was afraid that if I said anythingit would bring out the fact that I had myself intimated the questionagain which his course had answered so mistakenly. I could well imaginethat she was grateful for my forbearance, and I left her to thisadmirable state of mind while I went off to put myself a little in shapeafter my day's work and my journey out of town. I kept thinking howperfectly right in the affair Tedham's simple, selfish instinct hadbeen, and how our several consciences had darkened counsel; that quaintTuscan proverb came into ray mind: _Lascia fare Iddio, ch' è un buonvecchio_. We had not been willing to let God alone, or to trust hisleading; we had thought to improve on his management of the case, and toinvent a principle for poor Tedham that should be better for him to actupon than the love of his child, which God had put into the man's heart, and which was probably the best thing that had ever been there. Well, wehad got our come-uppings, as the country people say, and however wemight reason it away we had made ourselves responsible for the event. 

There came a ring at the door that made my own heart jump into my mouth. I knew it was Tedham come back again, and I was still in the throes ofbuttoning on my collar when my wife burst into my room. I smiled roundat her as gayly as I could with the collar-buttoning grimace on my face. "All right, I'll be down in a minute. You just go and talk to himtill--"

"_Him_?" she gasped back; and I have never been quite sure of her syntaxto this day. "_Them!_ It's Mr. And Mrs. Hasketh, and some young lady! Isaw them through the window coming up the walk. "

"Good Lord! You don't suppose it's Tedham's daughter?"

"How do I know? Oh, how _could_ you be dressing at a time like this!"

It did seem to me rather heinous, and I did not try to defend myself, even when she added, from her access of nervousness, in something like awhimper, "It seems to me you're _always_ dressing, Basil!"

"I'll be right with you, my dear, " I answered, penitently; and, in fact, by the time the maid brought up the Haskeths' cards I was ready to godown. We certainly needed each other's support, and I do not know but wedescended the stairs hand in hand, and entered the parlor leaning uponeach other's shoulders. The Haskeths, who were much more deeplyconcerned, were not apparently so much moved. We shook hands with them, and then Mrs. Hasketh said to us in succession, "My niece, Mrs. March;Mr. March, my niece. "

The young girl had risen, and stood veiled before us, and a sort ofheart-breaking appeal expressed itself in the gentle droop of herfigure, which did the whole office of her hidden face. The Haskeths weredressed, as became their years, in a composite fashion of no particularperiod; but I noticed at once, with the fondness I have for what ispretty in the modes, that Miss Tedham wore one of the latest costumes, and that she was not only a young girl, but a young lady, with all thatbelongs to the outward seeming of one of the gentlest of the kind. Itstruck me as the more monstrous, therefore, that she should be involvedin the coil of her father's inexpiable offence, which entangled herwhether he stayed or whether he went. It was well enough that theHaskeths should still be made miserable through him; it belonged totheir years and experience; they would soon end, at any rate, and it didnot matter whether their remnant of life was dark or bright. But thischild had a right to a long stretch of unbroken sunshine. As I stood andlooked at her I felt the heart-burning, the indefinable indignation thatwe feel in the presence of death when it is the young and fair who havedied. Here is a miscalculation, a mistake. It ought not to have been. 

I thought that my wife, in the effusion of sympathy, would have perhapstaken the girl in her arms; but probably she knew that the dropped veilwas a sign that there was to be no embracing. She put out her hand, andthe girl took it with her gloved hand; but though the outward forms oftheir greeting were so cold, I fancied an instant understanding andkindness between them. 

"My niece, " Mrs. Hasketh explained, when we were all seated, "came homethis afternoon, instead of this morning, when we expected her. "

My wife said, "Oh, yes, " and after a moment, a very painful moment, inwhich I think we all tried to imagine something that would delay thereal business, Mrs. Hasketh began again. 

"Mrs. March, " she said, in a low voice, and with a curious, apologetickind of embarrassment, "we have come--Fay wanted we should come and askif you knew about her father--"

"Why, didn't he come to you last night?" my wife began. 

"Yes, he did, " said Mrs. Hasketh, in a crest-fallen sort, "But wethought--we thought--you might know where he was. And Fay--Did he tellyou what he was going to do?"

"Yes, " my wife gasped back. 

The young girl put aside her veil in turning to my wife, and showed aface which had all the ill-starred beauty of poor Tedham, with somethingmore in it that she never got from that handsome reprobate--conscience, soul--whatever we choose to call a certain effluence of heaven whichblesses us with rest and faith whenever we behold it in any humancountenance. She was very young-looking, and her voice had a wistfulinnocence. 

"Do you think my father will be here again to-night? Oh, I must see him!"

I perceived that my wife could not speak, and I said, to gain time, "Why, I've been expecting him to come in at any moment;" and this wastrue enough. 

"I guess he's not very far off, " said old Hasketh. "I don't believe butwhat he'll turn up. " Within the comfort these words were outwardlyintended to convey to the anxious child, I felt an inner contempt ofTedham, a tacit doubt of the man's nature, which was more to me than theexplicit faith in his return. For some reason Hasketh had not trustedTedham's decision, and he might very well have done this withoutimpugning anything but the weakness of his will. 

My wife now joined our side, apparently because it was the only theoryof the case that could be openly urged. "Oh, yes, I am sure. In fact hepromised my husband to let him know later where he was. Didn't youunderstand him so, my dear?"

I had not understood him precisely to this effect, but I answered, "Yes, certainly, " and we began to reassure one another more and more. Wetalked on and on to one another, but all the time we talked at the younggirl, or for her encouragement; but I suppose the rest felt as I did, that we were talking provisionally, or without any stable ground ofconviction. For my part, though I indulged that contempt of Tedham, Istill had a lurking fear that the wretch had finally and foreverdisappeared, and I had a vision, very disagreeable and definite, ofTedham lying face downward in the pool of the old cockpit and shone onby the stars in the hushed circle of the woods. Simultaneously I heardhis daughter saying, "I can't understand why he shouldn't have come tous, or should have put it off. He couldn't think I didn't wish to seehim. " And now I looked at my wife aghast, for I perceived that theHaskeths must have lacked the courage to tell her that her father haddecided himself not to see her again, and that they had brought her tous that we might stay her with some hopes, false or true, of meeting himsoon. "I don't know what they mean, " she went on, appealing from them tous, "by saying that it might be better if I never saw him again!"

"I don't say that any more, child, " said Mrs. Hasketh, with affectinghumility. "I'm sure there isn't any one in the whole world that I wouldbless the sight of half as much. "

"I could have come before, if I'd known where he was; or, if I had onlyknown, I might have been here Saturday!" She broke into a piteouslamentation, with tears and sobs that wrung my heart and made me feellike one of a conspiracy of monsters. "But he couldn't--hecouldn't--have thought I didn't _want_ to see him!"

It was a very trying moment for us all, and I think that if we had, anyof us, had our choice, we should have preferred to be in her placerather than our own. We miserably did what we could to comfort her, andwe at last silenced her with I do not know what pretences. The affairwas quite too much for me, and I made a feint of having heard thechildren calling me, and I went out into the hall. I felt that there wasa sort of indecency in my witnessing that poor young thing's emotion;women might see it, but a man ought not. Perhaps old Hasketh felt thesame; he followed me out, and when we were beyond hearing, even if hehad spoken aloud, he dropped his voice to a thick murmur and said, "Thishas all been a mistake. We have had to get out of it with the girl thebest we could; and we don't dare to let her know that Tedham isn'tcoming back any more. You noticed from what she said that my wife triedto make believe it might be well if he didn't; but she had to drop_that_; it set the girl wild. She hasn't got anything but the one idea:that she and her father belong to each other, and that they must betogether for the rest of their lives. A curious thing about it is, " andHasketh sank his voice still lower to say this, "that she thinks that ifhe's taken the punishment that was put upon him he has atoned for whathe did; and if any one tries to make him suffer more he does worse thanTedham did, and he's flying in the face of Providence. Perhaps it's so. I'm afraid, " Hasketh continued, with the satisfaction men take inblaming their wives under the cover of sympathy, "that Mrs. Hasketh isgoing to feel it more and more, as time goes on, unless Tedham turns up. I was never in favor of trying to have the child forget him, or beseparated from him in any way. That kind of thing can't be made to work, and I don't suppose, when you come to boil it down, that it'sessentially right. This universe, I take it, isn't an accident in anyparticular, and if she's his daughter it's because she was meant to be, and to bear and share with him. You see it was a great mistake not toprepare the child for it sooner, and tell her just when Tedham would beout, so that if she wanted to see him she could. She thinks she ought tohave been there at the prison waiting to speak to him the first one. Ithought it was a mistake to have her away, and I guess that's the wayMrs. Hasketh looks at it herself, now. "

A stir of garments made itself heard from the parlor at last, and weknew the ladies had risen. In a loud voice Hasketh began to say thatthey had a carriage down at the gate, and I said they had better let meshow them the way down; and as my wife followed the others into thehall, I pulled open the outer door for them. On the threshold stood aman about to ring, who let his hand drop from the bell-pull. "Why, Tedham!" I shouted, joyfully. 

The light from the hall-lamp struck full on his face; we allinvoluntarily shrank back, except the girl, who looked, not at the manbefore her, but first at her aunt and then at her uncle, timorously, andmurmured some inaudible question. They did not answer, and now Tedhamand his daughter looked at each other, with what feeling no one can everfully say. 

VIII. 

It always seemed to me as if we had witnessed something like the returnof one from the dead, in this meeting. We were talking it over oneevening some weeks later, and "It would be all very well, " Iphilosophized, "if the dead came back at once, but if one came backafter ten years, it would be difficult. "

"It was worse than coming back from the dead, " said my wife. "But I hopethat is the end of it so far as we are concerned. I am sure I am glad tobe out of it, and I don't wish to see any of them ever again. "

"Why, I don't know about that, " I returned, and I began to laugh. "Youknow Hubbell, our inspector of agencies?"

"What has he got to do with it?"

"Hubbell has had a romantic moment. He thinks that in view of therestitution Tedham made as far as he could, and his excellentrecord--elsewhere--it would be a fine thing for the Reciprocity toemploy him again in our office, and he wanted to suggest it to theactuary. "

"Basil! You didn't allow him to do such a cruel thing as that?"

"No, my dear, I am happy to say that I sat upon that dramatic climax. "

This measurably consoled my wife, but she did not cease to denounce theidea for some moments. When she ended, I asked her if she would allowthe company to employ Tedham in a subordinate place in another city, andwhen she signified that this might be suffered, I said that this waswhat would probably be done. Then I added, seriously, that I thoroughlyliked the notion of it, and that I took it for a testimony that poor oldTedham was right, and that he had at last fully expiated his offenceagainst society. 

His daughter continued to live with her aunt and uncle, but Tedham usedto spend his holidays with them, and, however incongruously, they got ontogether very well, I believe. The girl kept the name of Hasketh, and Ido not suppose that many people knew her relation to Tedham. It appearedthat our little romantic supposition of a love affair, which the reunionof father and child must shatter, was for the present quite gratuitous. But if it should ever come to that, my wife and I had made up our mindsto let God manage. We said that we had already had one narrow escape inproposing to better the divine way of doing, and we should not interfereagain. Still I cannot truly say that we gave Providence our entireconfidence as long as there remained the chance of further evil throughthe sort of romance we had dreaded for the girl. Till she was marriedthere was an incompleteness, a potentiality of trouble, in the incidentapparently closed that haunted us with a distrustful anxiety. We had towait several years for the end, but it came eventually, and she wasmarried to a young Englishman whom she had met in Canada, and whom shetold all about her unhappy family history before she permitted herselfto accept him. 

During the one brief interview I had with him, for the purpose offurther blackening her father's character (for so I understood herinsistence that I should see the young man), he seemed not only whollyunmoved by the facts, but was apparently sorry that poor Tedham had notdone much worse things, and many more of them, that he might forgive himfor her sake. 

They went to live abroad after they were married; and by and by Tedhamjoined them. So far now as human vision can perceive, the trouble hemade, the evil he did, is really at an end. Love, which can alone arrestthe consequences of wrong, had ended it, and in certain luminous momentsit seemed to us that we had glimpsed, in our witness of this experience, an infinite compassion encompassing our whole being like a sea, whereevery trouble of our sins and sorrows must cease at last like a circlein the water.