[Transcriber's Note: Some words which appear to be typos are printedthus in the original book. A list of these possible misprints follows: enthuiasms fragant increduously insistance trival] A VILLAGE OPHELIA BYANNE REEVE ALDRICH NEW YORK:_W. Dillingham Co. , Publishers_, MDCCCXCIX. CONTENTS A VILLAGE OPHELIA A STORY OF THE VERE DE VERE A LAMENTABLE COMEDY AN AFRICAN DISCOVERY AN EVENING WITH CALLENDER A VILLAGE OPHELIA On the East end of Long Island, from Riverhead to Greenport, a distanceof about thirty miles, two country roads run parallel. The North road is very near the Sound and away from the villages; lonelyfarm-houses are scattered at long intervals; in some places their numberincreases enough to form a little desolate settlement, but there isnever a shop, nor sign of village life. That, one must seek on the Southroad, with its small hamlets, to which the "North roaders, " as they aresomewhat condescendingly called, drive across to church, or to makepurchases. It was on the North road that I spent a golden August in the home ofMrs. Libby. Her small gray house was lovingly empaled about the frontand sides by snow-ball bushes and magenta French-lilacs, that grewtenderly close to the weather-worn shingles, and back of one sunburntfield, as far as the eye could see, stretched the expanse of dark, shining scrub-oaks, beyond which, one knew, was the hot, blue glitter ofthe Sound. Mrs. Libby was a large iron-gray widow of sixty, insatiably greedy ofsuch fleshly comforts as had ever come within her knowledge--softcushions, heavily sweetened dishes, finer clothing than her neighbors. She had cold eyes, and nature had formed her mouth and jaw like thelittle silver-striped adder that I found one day, mangled by somepassing cart, in the yellow dust of the road. Her lips were stretchedfor ever in that same flat, immutable smile. When she moved her head, you caught the gleam of a string of gold beads, half-hidden in a creaseof her stout throat. She had still a coarsely handsome figure, she wascalled a fine looking woman; and every afternoon she sat and sewed bythe window of her parlor, dressed in a tight, black gown, withimmaculate cuffs about her thick wrists. The neighbors--thin, overworkedwomen, with numerous children--were too tired and busy to be envious. They thought her very genteel. Her husband, before his last illness, hadkept a large grocery store in a village on the South side of the Island. It gave her a presumptive right to the difference in her ways, to thestuff gown of an afternoon, to the use of butter instead of lard in hercookery, to the extra thickness and brightness of her parlor carpet. For days I steeped my soul in the peace and quiet. In the long morningsI went down the grassy path to the beach, and lay on the yellow sands, as lost to the world as if I were in some vast solitude. I had had awound in my life, and with the natural instinct of all hurt creatures, Iwanted to hide and get close to the earth until it healed. I knew thatit must heal at last, but there are certain natures in which mentaltorture must have a physical outcome, and we are happier afterward if wehave called in no Greek chorus of friends to the tragedy, to witness andsing how the body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is nosense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under thefree sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take halfthe burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth withoutreproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearingmyself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner orlater ensue the indifference brought by time. Sometimes a flock of smallbrown sandbirds watched me curiously from a sodden bank of sea-weed, but that was all. This story is not of myself, however, or of the pain which I cured inthis natural way, and which is but a memory now. One gray morning a white mist settled heavily, and I could see but ashort distance on the dark waters for the fog. A fresh access of thesuffering which I was fighting, the wildness of my grief and struggles, wore me out, so that I fell asleep there on the rough sand, my mouthlaid against the salty pebbles, and my hands grasping the sharp, yielding grains, crushed as if some giant foot had trodden me into theearth. I was awakened by a soft speculative voice. "Another, perhaps, " Ithought it said. Starting up, I saw standing beside me a thin, shrinkingfigure, drenched like myself by the salt mist. From under a coarse, darkstraw hat, a small, delicate face regarded me shyly, yet calmly. It wasvery pale, a little sunken, and surrounded by a cloud of light, curlinghair, blown loose by the wind; the wide sensitive lips were almostcolorless, and the peculiar eyes, greenish and great-pupiled, weresurrounded by stained, discolored rings that might have been the resultof weary vigils, or of ill-health. The woman, who was possibly thirty, must once have been possessed of a fragile type of beauty, but it wasirretrievably lost now in the premature age that had evidently settledupon her. Struggling to a sitting posture, I saw that the thick white fog hadclosed densely, and that the woodland back of us was barelydistinguishable. We too seemed shut in, as in a room. "You live at Mrs. Libby's, " said the young woman, after a moment's hesitation. "I am AgnesRayne. I hope I did not frighten you. " "No, " I replied, brushing the sand from my damp clothing as I rose. "Iam afraid if you had not come by fortunately, I should have had athorough wetting. Can we get home before the storm begins?" "You would not have taken cold down here on the beach, " she remarked, turning and looking out to sea. It seemed strangely to me as if thoseodd eyes of hers could pierce the blinding mist. "I will not go backwith you. I have just come. " Whatever she did or said that might have seemed rude or brusque inanother, was sweet and courteous from her manner. "Very well, " I said. Then I paused, --my desire to meet her again was absurdly keen. Steppingcloser to her side, I extended my hand. "Will you come to see me, MissRayne? I am very lonely, and I should be so--grateful. " She touched my fingers lightly with a chilly little hand, yet she neverlooked at me as she replied, "Yes, some day. " As I plodded heavily through the wet sand, I was irresistibly impelledto turn my head. She was merely standing exactly as I left her, thinand straight, in the black gown that clung closely to her slender limbs, with the mass of light hair about her shoulders. Drenched as I was, when I reached home, with the large warm drops of thestorm's beginning, I stopped in the sitting-room a moment before goingto my room. The smell of ironing scented the house, but Mrs. Libby wasresting placidly in the rocking-chair, her feet on a cushioned stool. She was eating some peaches, tearing them apart from the stone withstrong, juice-dropping fingers, and dipping them in a saucer of coarsesugar before she devoured them. "Mrs. Libby, who is Agnes Rayne?" I asked. "She is old Martin Rayne's daughter, up to the corner. Seen her down tothe beach, I expect. Speak to you? Did? Well, she's as queer as Dick'shat-band, as folks say 'round here. Some say she's crazy--love-cracked, I guess she is. " Mrs. Libby paused to kill a fly that ventured too nearher saucer on the table at her side, with a quick blow of the fleshyhand. I used to turn away when Mrs. Libby killed flies. "Oh! _I_ d'know!She's just queer. Don't commess with anybody, nor ever go to meetin'. The minister called there once; he ain't ever been again, nor told howhe was treated, that's sure. They live queer, too. She don't ever makepies, ner p'serves, ner any kind of sauce. 'N' old Martin, he's childishnow. He always was as close-mouthed as a mussel. Nobody ever knewwhether he liked such goin's on or not. " I went up the high, narrow stairs, thoughtfully to my small room underthe eaves, dark with the storm, and smelling of must and dampness. Ismiled a little. It was more than probable that these people would countslight eccentricity in a lady--and this was undoubtedly a lady, whateverher birth and surroundings--as madness. After dinner I stood by thewindow a long time. Through the network of apple-boughs, I could seethe road. Mrs. Libby, coming heavily into the sitting-room, divined mythoughts. "If you're wondering how Agnes gets home, she goes cross-lots, rightthrough the scrub-oak 'n' poison ivy 'n black-b'ries, 'f she's in ahurry. She ain't afraid o' rain; like's not, she stays down to the shorethe whole 'durin' day. " "I suppose the people here talk about her. " "Most of 'em have too much to do to talk, " replied Mrs. Libby, smoothingdown her shining bands of hair before the hanging glass, and regardingher reflected large, white face and set smile, with dull satisfactionand vanity. "They're used to her now. " One glaring afternoon within the week, I sat out on the tiny porch, idlywatching a fat spider throw his ropes from the box-bush to the step. Ihad been sitting there for three hours, and only one creaking farm-wagonhad passed, and two dirty brown-legged children. The air was breathlessand spicy, and in the rough clearing opposite, the leaves seemed tocurve visibly in the intense heat. Did anything ever happen here? Itseemed to me as much out of the range of possible happenings as thegrave. "There's Agnes coming, " said Mrs. Libby, inarticulately. She heldbetween her lips some ravellings and bits of thread, and she was sittingby the open window, laboriously pushing her needle through a piece ofheavy unbleached cloth. The young woman who came swaying delicately along the path, withsomething of the motion of a tall stalk of grass in the wind, wore ascanty white gown, which defined almost cruelly the slenderness of form, that seemed to have returned to the meagre uncertainty of youngchildhood. To-day, her light hair was strained back from her wideforehead, and knotted neatly under the brim of her rough straw hat. Shelooked much older as she stood before me in the golden light. "Will you come home with me this afternoon?" she asked directly. "It isnot far; perhaps it might amuse you. " I consented gladly. As we walked along the narrow paths that skirted theroadside together, she turned to me, a sudden flush burning on her thinface. "I am afraid you think I am very cruel to bring you out this hotafternoon, but it is so long since I have talked to any one--so long! Ihave read your books, and then I said last night to myself: 'If I do notgo over it all to some one--tell it aloud, from beginning to end--put itinto words, I shall go mad. She is a woman who could understand. ' Yes, when I saw your hands on the beach that day, all bruised inside, and onone a little cut, where you had wrenched at the sand and stone beforeyou slept, I knew you were my escape. I am abject, but think of theyears I have been dying, here, if you despise me. " "No, " I said, "it is not abject. Sometimes in one's life comes a crisis, when one must snatch at some remedy, or else die, or go mad. If thereis not then something in us that makes us believe in a future, we, ofcourse, die; but I could never think it a cure myself, merely to be freeof the body, because I believe in the soul's immortality, and the bodyis such a diversion! Once rid of it, with all its imperious clamor to befed and warmed--nothing but utter freedom to think--the grave has neverappealed to me as an escape. Madness is a shade better, perhaps; butthen that depends on the form of the illusion. For me the body has gotto work out the soul's agony. For you, words may bring relief. Try--tryanything that suggests itself. " "Do not think you will hear anything new. It will bore you. Are youwilling to listen?" "I am indeed, " I replied. We had come to a lonely farm-house, its roofsmoss-grown and sunken, the grass knee-high about it. There was hardly asign of life about the place, though I could see an aged man smoking apipe peacefully in the shade of an apple tree at the back. Everythingwore an air of melancholy, desertion and loneliness. My companion lifted the gray gate's rusty latch. The grass was crushedenough to form a path to the front door, which stood open. She led theway into a large, low room off the little hall. The floor was bare. There was a large table in the centre, heaped with books, and somewithering flowers stood in a glass. A couple of common chairs, amattress, on which was thrown an antique curtain of faded blue as adrapery; on the white-washed wall, a tiny and coquetish slipper ofyellowish silk, nailed through the sole. This was all the furnishing. She stood looking around at the barrenness curiously, trying perhaps tosee it with the eyes of a stranger. "This is my room, " she said, "andthe very walls and floor are saturated with my sufferings. " She wentrestlessly to the window, and threw open the broken blind. As theradiance of the afternoon flooded the place with light, I seemed to seeit and its wasting occupant, here in this horrible desolation, in thechanging seasons, when the window gave on the bitter rigors of blue andwhite winter mornings, the land choked with snow, on the golden blur ofautumn, on the tender mists of April, draping the earth, and forever thecry of the waves on the shore haunting the air. That there was nothingof the mad woman about her, that she had retained reason in such aplace, in such a room, with an eating grief to bear, impressed me as oneof the marvels of the brain's endurance, with which nature sometimessurprises us. It seemed to me that this might be the hour of partialdeliverance to the poor soul who had evidently lived and died so much. "Why have you stayed here?" I asked. She had now taken the chairfronting me. We were stiffly seated as if for a business interview. Ihad a desire to take the poor figure in my arms, but I felt as if shewere as intangible as a spirit. When mental pain has devoured the body, as physical pain so often does, there is something thrice as etherealabout the wreck. "What difference could it make?" she asked in her slightly husky voice, with faint surprise. "It is only the old love-story of a village girlyou will hear. My mother was different from these people, but I hadnever known anything beside this life, except books. Of course you canunderstand how much else than love the man brought me. I was quitebeautiful then. Does it not seem strange that it could have been true! Iburst into real blossom for him--like Aaron's rod, was it not? And nowyou see, I am only the bare rod. " She dropped her lids and looked down at herself calmly. The warmth hadcurled the short hairs into a light halo around her forehead, the littleneck was bent, she had folded her hands in her lap. The piteouschild-like chest and limbs revealed by the tight white gown, broughttears to my eyes. There was something solemn, terrible, in this virginaldecay. "All that I was to be, was forced into growth at once. He made me a newself; he was in a sense creator, teacher, parent, friend, idol, lover. He was the world I have not known; he taught me that I could myselfwrite, create. I was nearer madness in those days than now, for when hethrew himself here--" She rose and pointed to the floor near thetable--"here on these boards at my feet, and begged me to listen to hislove, to be his wife--I, his wife!--it was as strange, as unreal as avision. --I had a month. " She did not raise her sweet, level voice, butthe eyes that she fixed on mine were dilated to blackness, and her facewas illumined with an inexpressible light of triumph. "I had one greatmonth of life. Even you cannot have had more in all your years of theworld than I in my month! And then he returned to his work again. Hewas very busy, you understand, a great man, even then, in the world ofletters. He could not come to see me, could not leave; but he wroteevery day. He will never put into his book such words as he wrote me; hegave me more than he has ever given the world. It may have his books. Ihave read them, but I have his very soul in these letters! "I told you he made me believe that I could write. 'What was I, what wasI, ' I used to ask myself, 'to be lifted from this to his height?' Andthen I had a secret, which began in that thought. I wrote a novel. It iseight years back now. I never mentioned it in my letters. I knew it wasgood, as good as his own work. He would be so proud! He talked ofpublishing-houses, books, authors. I had not forgotten one word. I sentit to a house, one of the largest and best, and it was accepted. It isstrange, but I was not at all surprised. Somehow I had never doubted itwould be accepted. And then I went to the city alone for a day. I hadonly a little time; it seemed to me the greatest act of my life to bethere, where he was, yet not to see him! But you see I had planned itall in those long nights when the autumn storms would not let me sleep. The rain would dash against this window, and half awake, I would seemyself when he should come, with my head against his arm, saying, 'Ihave been making something for you. Guess. ' And then he would laugh andsay, 'Perhaps--is it a cake for my tea, home-darling? Is it--is it acover for my writing-table? No, you do not sew. Tell me. ' And then Ishould say proudly. 'It is nothing of that kind. It is a book, and thepeople whom you think such good judges say it must be a success!' I sawit again as I was coming down the stairs from the publisher's office. They had praised my work until the blood seemed all in my head and mademe dizzy, and the sounds of Broadway confused my country ears. "At home that dusk my letter stood against the mantel as I came inhere. I laughed when I saw the post-mark, to think I had been there. Ilaid it against my cheek softly where his hand had touched it, writingmy name. It so prolonged the pleasure--you know--you are a woman likethat. And at last I read it here. " She posed herself unconsciously bythe table. "It said, 'Have I loved you? I do not know. Curse me, andforget me. I am to be married to-day. '" A pin from my hair fell to the bare floor and broke the silence with itsfrivolous click. The tears were raining down my cheeks. She did not lookat me now. She stood grasping the table with one tense hand, her whiteface thrown a little back. Just as she had stood, I knew, eightpurgatorial years ago. The story was done. She sank into the chair. "And the book?" I asked at length. She roused from her reverie. "Oh! yes, the book. It had no purpose tolive for, you see. I sent for it, cancelled the agreement. They wrote tome twice about it, but I was firm; there was no reason why I shouldtrouble. I have everything I want, " and again her voice trailed intosilence. I looked about the strange, bare room, at the strange, slender figure, and I rose and folded her about with my arms; but she struggled in myembrace. "No, no, do not touch me!" she cried sharply, in a tone ofsuffering. My hands fell from her, and I knelt abashed at her side. "Oh!please forgive me. I cannot be touched. I hate it. You have been sogood, " she said, with compunction, regarding me with a certain remorse. I was not aggrieved at being repulsed. As I resumed my seat, I said, "You have only one life to live; snatch at least what you can out of theyears. Take my wisdom. You have the book yet? Good. Come back with me;we will get it published. Open your heart, make one effort at living:you can but fail. Come away from the sound of the waves and the windthrough the scrub-oaks; from this room and its memories. Be what youmight have been. " For the first time she faintly smiled. She shook her head. "I told you Iwas like Aaron's rod. See for yourself. The power of thought or interestin everything else has withered and wasted like my face and body. Mydays are almost as irresponsible as a child's now. I have gone back tothe carelessness of a little girl about the conditions of life. It wasonce, and once only for me. But you have given me relief, or rather Ihave given myself relief this afternoon. And now, will you leave me? Iam so glad to have said it all over, and yet, since I have done it, Icannot bear to see you. " The peculiarity of her voice and manner, of which I have spoken, thatmade all her words sweet and gentle, however unconventional they mightbe, left me unoffended. "Perhaps you are right;" I said, "yet I wish you would try my way. " Shedid not make any reply, and I left her standing with downcast eyes bythe door. Mrs. Libby still sat sewing by the window when I returned. "Have apleasant time?" she asked, a gleam of curiosity in her cold eyes. "Seemsto me you didn't stay long. " "No, not very long. " "See that queer room of hers? Folks ain't asked into it much. They saidshe took the minister right in there when he called. Kitchen table piledup with books, 'n papers, books 'round on the floor, 'n' a mattressa-layin' in a corner. Some of the boys peeked in one day when she wasdown to the beach, 'n' told all 'round how it looked. And a white shoeonto the wall. I expect it must be one o' hers she used to wear. It wasbefore I moved over from South side, but Mrs. Hikes says she had theflightiest clothes when he was courtin' her. Her mother left her somemoney, I guess, any way, 'n' there wasn't anything too rich, ner toogood, ner too foreign for her to wear. 'N' look at her now! Well, it's'long toward tea-time. You look tired. " I was indeed very tired. I could not assimilate the strange impressionsI had received. That night the moon-light streamed broadly into mywindow through the apple-boughs that showed black shadows on the floor. About midnight I opened my eyes suddenly. Mrs. Libby in a much-frillednight-dress was shaking my shoulder vigorously. "You'll have to get up. Agnes Rayne's dyin', 'n' she's took a notion tosee you. They've sent Hikeses' boy after you; bleedin' at the lungs isall I can get out of him. The Hikeses are all dumb as a stick ofcord-wood. " She sat down heavily on my bed, and put a pillow comfortably to her backwhile I dressed. Hikeses' boy sat waiting for me in the porch whistlingunder his breath. He was the tallest and lankiest of them all, and likesome ghostly cicerone, he never spoke, but led the way through the dewygrass into the white, glorious moonlight, and kept a few yards ahead ofme in the dusty road until we reached the Rayne farmhouse. Through the windows I saw a dim light, and figures moving. I pushed openthe door without knocking. A doctor, young and alert, had been summonedfrom the village, and the dull light from a kerosene lamp, set hastilyon the table, touched his curly red hair as he knelt by the mattress. Anold white-bearded man sat huddled in one of the shadowy corners, weepingthe tears of senility, and a tall, dust-colored woman, whom I rightlytook to be Mrs. Hikes, stood stolidly watching the doctor. Outside thecrickets were singing cheerily in the wet grass. "Oh, yes, so glad you've come, " murmured the doctor as he rose. Then I stepped closer to the little figure lying in the old bluecurtain, that was stiffened now with blood. The parted lips were gray;the whole face, except the vivid eyes, was dead. The night-dress wasthrown back from the poor throat and chest, stained here and there withspots of crimson on the white skin, that seemed stretched over the smallbones. I stooped beside her, in answer to an appealing look. She couldnot lift the frail, tired hand that lay by her, its fingers uncurled, the hand of one who, dying, relinquishes gladly its grasp on life. Thehands of the strong, torn from a world they love, clench and clutch atthe last; it is an involuntary hold on earth. The doctor moved away. Thewhining sobs of the old man became more audible. I put my ear to hercold lips. "His letters . . . The letters . . . And . . . My book . . . I told you of, takethem. Here, in the closet . . . By . . . The chimney. . . . " I could hardly distinguish the faint whispers. I raised my handimpatiently, and the old man stopped moaning. Mrs. Hikes and the doctorceased speaking in low undertones. Only a great moth, that had flutteredinside the lamp chimney thudded heavily from side to side. "Yes, yes. What shall I do with them?" She did not speak, and seeing her agonized eyes trying to tell mine, Icried aloud, "Give her brandy--something. She wants to speak. Oh, giveher a chance to speak!" The doctor stepped to my side. He lifted the wrist, let it fall, andshook his head. "Don't you see?" he said. I looked at the eyes, and saw. Some days later I went to the lonely house. The old man was sitting in aloose, disconsolate heap in his seat by the apple-tree. The tears rolleddown the wrinkles into his beard, when I spoke of his daughter. "There were some letters and papers she wished me to have, " I said. Inthe closet by the chimney. "If you are willing--" The old man shuffled into the house, and threw open the blinds of thedarkened room. Some one had set the books in neat piles on the table;the chairs were placed against the wall. The drapery had been washed andstretched smoothly across the mattress. There were two or three darkstains on the floor that could not be washed out. The slim littleslipper still decked the wall. I looked up at the door by the chimney. "Here's the key, " said the oldman, brokenly. "I found it to-day under the mattress. " I tried it, butit did not turn in the lock. I was hardly tall enough to reach it. Theold man fetched me a chair on which I stood, and after a moment or two Ifelt the rusty lock yield. The little door gave and opened. Nothing was there, nothing but the dust of years that blackened myfingers, as I put in my hand, unconvinced by my sense of sight. "Are you sure no one has been here, no one who could open the closet?" "Nobody, " he proclaimed in the cracked tone of extreme age. "She musthave wandered when she told you that. People wander when they are dying, you know. Her mother--but that was long ago. " He tapped the keythoughtfully on the mantel. "You see how the lock stuck, and the door. Idon't expect Agnes had it open for years. I expect she wandered, likeher mother. " He peered vaguely in at the empty space, and then turned tome. "I forget a great deal now. I'm getting an old man, a very old man, "he said, in an explanatory tone. "But did you know she had letters somewhere, a pile of papers? Youremember her getting letters, do you not, letters from her lover?" He looked up at me apologetically, with dim, watery blue eyes. "I don'texpect I remember much, " he confessed. "Not of later years. I could tellyou all about things when I was a boy, but I can't seem to remember muchthat's happened since mother died. That must have been along abouttwenty years ago. I'm all broken down now, old--very old. You see I am avery old man. " I left him shutting the room into darkness, and passed out into thesunlight, sorely perplexed. Mrs. Libby was baking when I returned, and the air of the kitchen wasfull of the sweet, hot smell that gushed from the oven door she had justopened. She stood placidly eating the remnants of dough that clung tothe pan. "Mrs. Libby, " said I, sinking down on the door-step, "what was the nameof Agnes Rayne's lover? You told me once you could not remember. Willyou try to think, please?" "Well, I was talking to Mrs. Hikes after the fun'r'l, " said Mrs. Libby, still devouring the dough. "He boarded to the Hikeses', you see, 'n' shehad it as pat as her own, " and then Mrs. Libby mentioned calmly a namethat now you can hardly pass a book-stall without reading, a name thatof late is a synonym for marvellous and unprecedented success in theliterary world. I had met this great man at a reception the winterbefore; let me rather say, I had stood reverently on the outskirts of acrowd of adorers that flocked around him. I looked so fixedly at Mrs. Libby that her smile broadened. "Don't know him, do you?" she queried. "I think I have met him, " I replied. "Was he engaged to Agnes Rayne?" Mrs. Libby waited to pierce a loaf of cake with a broom splint. She ranher thick fingers carefully along the splint and then turned the brownloaf on to a sieve. "Mrs. Hikes says she don't believe a word of it. Folks think he justcourted her one spell that summer, not real serious, just to pass thetime away, you might say, like many another young man. Mrs. Hikes says, she never heard of him writin' to her, or anything, 'n' if he had, oldHawkins that brings the mail couldn't have kep' it, any more'n he couldkeep the news he reads off postal cards. They talked enough first abouther being love-cracked, but there wa'n't any signs of it I could hear, excep' her trailin' 'round the beach, 'n' looking wimbly, 'n' not doin'jus' like other folks. She never _said_ a word to anybody. Might 'a'been it turned her some, " said Mrs. Libby, thoughtfully, rolling theflour in white scales from her heavy wrists. "Might 'a' been she wasqueer any way--sending off to the city for white silk gowns, 'n' thingsto wear in that old rack of boards, jus' because she was bein' courted. Most would 'a' kep' the money 'gainst their fittin' out. I guess thatwas all there was, jus' a little triflin', 'n' she took it in earnest. Well, it don't make any difference now, " she concluded coolly, as sheturned to her sink of baking-dishes. I sat listening stupidly to her heavy tread, to the cheery clash of thetins as she washed and put them in place. To never know any more! Yetafter all, I knew all that could be known, strangely enough. Then, witha long shiver, I remembered the small closet beside the chimney with itsempty, dusty shelves. "Mrs. Libby, " said I, rising, "I think I will go back to the cityto-morrow. " A STORY OF THE VERE DE VERE. The landlord called it an apartment-house, the tenants called theirthree or four little closets of rooms, flats, and perhaps if you or Ihad chanced to be in West ---- Street, near the river, and had glancedup at the ugly red brick structure, with the impracticable fire-escapecrawling up its front, like an ugly spider, we should have said it was acommon tenement house. Druse, however, had thought it, if a trifle dirty, a very magnificentand desirable dwelling. The entrance floor was tesselated with diamondsof blue and white; there was a row of little brass knobs andletter-boxes, with ill-written names or printed cards stuck askew in theopenings above them. Druse did not guess their uses at first, howshould she? She had never in all her fifteen years, been in the citybefore. How should one learn the ways of apartment-houses when one hadlived always in a little gray, weather-beaten house, on the veryoutskirts of a straggling village in Eastern Connecticut? It happened like this. One day, Tom, the fourth of the nine hungry andturbulent children, sent to the store on an errand, returned, bringing aletter. A letter, that was not a circular about fertilizers, or one ofthose polite and persuasive invitations to vote for a certain man for atown office, which penetrated even to the Hand's little gray kennel of ahouse toward election-time, was such a rarity that Mrs. Hand forgot thebread just done in the oven, and sank down wearily on the door-step toread it. "Well, you ain't a-goin', " she said to Drusilla, who stood quitepatiently by, with a faint color in her pale face. "No, sir, you ain'ta-goin' one step. She was too stuck-up to come here when she was alive, 'n' you ain't a-goin' to take care of her children dead, 'n' that's theend of it. " Druse made no reply. She never did. Instead, she bent her thin, childishback, and pulled the burning bread out of the oven. None the less, Druse went. It was all Pop's work. Pop was meek and soft; he cried gently of aSunday evening at church, the tears trickling down the furrowedleather-colored skin into the sparse beard, and on week-days he was wontto wear a wide and vacuous smile; yet somehow, if Pop said this or thatshould be, it was, --at least in the little house on the edge of thevillage. And Pop had said Druse should go. For after all, the case is hard, evenif one _is_ occupying a lofty position to rural eyes as a carpenter in"York, " with a city wife, who has flung her head contemptuously at theidea of visiting his ne'er-do-weel brother; the case is hard, no matterhow high one's station may be, to be left with three motherlesschildren, over-fond of the street, with no one to look after them, ormake ready a comfortable bit of dinner at night. And so, consideringthat Elviry was fourteen, and stronger than Druse, any way, and thatJohn Hand had promised to send a certain little sum to his brother everymonth, as well as to clothe Druse, Druse went to live in the fourth flatin the Vere de Vere. Perhaps that was not just the name, but it was something equallyhigh-sounding and aristocratic; and it seemed quite fitting that one ofthe dirty little cards that instructed the postman and the caller, should bear the pleasing name, "Blanche de Courcy. " But Druse had neverread novels. Her acquaintance with fiction had been made entirelythrough the medium of the Methodist Sunday School library, and theheroines did not, as a rule, belong to the higher rank in which, as weknow, the lords and ladies are all Aubreys, and Montmorencis, andMaudes, and Blanches. Still even Druse's untrained eye lingered withpleasure on the name, as she came in one morning, after having tastedthe delights of life in the Vere de Vere for a couple of weeks. She feltthat she now lived a very idle life. She had coaxed the three childreninto a regular attendance at school, and her uncle was always away untilnight. She could not find enough work to occupy her, though, true to hertraining, when there was nothing else to do she scrubbed everythingwooden and scoured everything tin. Still there were long hours when itwas tiresome to sit listening to the tramping overhead, or the quarrelsbelow, watching the slow hands of the clock; and Druse was afraid in thestreets yet, though she did not dare say so, because her bold, pertlittle cousins laughed at her. She was indeed terribly lonely. Her unclewas a man of few words; he ate his supper, and went to sleep after hispipe and the foaming pitcher of beer that had frightened Druse when shefirst came. For Druse had been a "Daughter of Temperance" in East Green. She had never seen any one drink beer before. She thought of the poemthat the minister's daughter (in pale blue muslin, tucked to the waist)had recited at the Temperance Lodge meeting. It began: "Pause, haughty man, whose lips are at the brim Of Hell's own draught, in yonder goblet rare--" She wished she had courage to repeat it. She felt if Uncle John couldhave heard Lucinda recite it--. Yet he might not think it meant him; hewas not haughty, although he was a carpenter, and the beer he drank outof one of the children's mugs. But it troubled Druse. She thought of itas she sat one afternoon, gravely crotcheting a tidy after an East Greenpattern, before it was time for the children to be back from school. Itwas a warm day in October, so warm that she had opened the window, letting in with the air the effluvia from the filthy street, and thediscordant noises. The lady in the flat above was whipping a refractorychild, whose cries came distinctly through the poor floors andpartitions of the Vere De Vere. Suddenly there was a loud, clumsy knock at the door. She opened it, anda small boy with a great basket of frilled and ruffled clothes, peepingfrom under the cover, confronted her. "Say, lady, " he asked, red and cross, "Is yer name De Courcy?" "No, it ain't, " replied Druse. "She's the back flat to the right, here. I'll show you, " she added, with the country instinct of "neighboring. " The boy followed her, grumbling, through the long narrow hall, and asDruse turned to go, after his loud pound on the door, it suddenly flewopen. Druse stood rooted to the ground. A dirty pink silk wrapper, witha long train covered with dirtier lace, is not a beautiful garment byfull daylight. Yet to untrained eyes it looked almost gorgeous, gathered about the handsome form. Miss De Courcy had failed to arrangeher hair for the afternoon, and it fell in heavy black folds on hershoulders, and her temples were bandaged by a white handkerchief. Perhaps it was not strange that Druse stood and gazed at her. The dark, brilliant eyes fixed themselves on the slight, flat-chested little form, clad in brown alpaca, on the pale hair drawn straight back from the paleface, and arranged in a tight knob at the back of the head. A whim seized the fair wearer of the negligée. "Come in and sit down, Iwant to talk to you. There, leave the clothes, boy. I'll pay your mothernext time, " and she pushed the boy out, and drew the young girl in witheasy audacity. Druse looked around the room in bewilderment. It was not exactly dirty, but things seemed to have been thrown in their places. The carpet wasbright, and much stained, rather than worn; hideous plaques and plushdecorations abounded. A crimson chair had lost a leg, and was pushedignominiously in a corner of the tiny room; a table was crowded withbottles and fragments of food, and a worn, velvet jacket andmuch-beplumed hat lay amongst them. A ragged lace skirt hung over theblue sofa, on one corner of which Miss De Courcy threw herself down, revealing a pair of high heeled scarlet slippers. "Sit down, " she said, in a rather metallic voice, that ill accorded with the rounded curves offace and figure. "I've got a beastly headache, " pushing up the bandageon her low brow. "What did you run for, when I opened the door? Did yourfolks tell you not to come in here, ever?" "Why, no, ma'am!" said Druse, raising her blue, flower-like eyeswonderingly. "Oh! well, " responded Miss De Courcy, with a hoarse little laugh ofamusement. "I thought they might have--thought maybe they objected toyour making 'cquaintances without a regular introduction, you know. Haven't been here long, have you?" "No, " said Druse, looking down at her tidy, with a sudden homesickthrill. "No, I--I come from East Green, Connecticut. I ain't got used toit here, much. It's kind o' lonesome, days. I s'pose you don't mind it. It's different if you're used to it, I guess. " Somehow Druse did not feel as timid as usual, though her weak littlevoice, thin, like the rest of her, faltered a trifle, but then she hadnever called on a lady so magnificently dressed before. "Yes, I'm pretty well used to it by this, " replied Miss De Courcy, withthe same joyless little laugh, giving the lace skirt an absent-mindedkick with her red morocco toe. "I lived in the country before--when Iwas little. " "You did!" exclaimed Druse. "Then I guess you know how it is at first. When you think every Friday night (there ain't been but two, yet)'There, they're gettin' ready for Lodge meetin';' and every Sundayevenin' 'bout half-past seven: 'I guess it's mos' time for the Meth'dis'bell to ring. I must get my brown felt on, and--'" "Your what?" asked Miss De Courcy. "My brown felt, my hat, an'--oh! well, there's lots o' things I kind o'forget, and start to get ready for. An' I can't sleep much on account ofnot having Bell an' Virey an' Mimy to bed with me. It's so lonesomewithout 'em. The children here won't sleep with me. I did have Gusty onenight, but I woke her up four times hangin' on to her. I'm so used toholding Mimy in! Oh! I guess I'll get over it all right, but you knowhow it is yourself. " Miss De Courcy did not reply. She had closed her eyes, and now she gavethe bandage on her head an angry twich. "_Oh_, how it aches!" she saidthrough her shut teeth. "Here, give me that bottle on the stand, willyou? It'll make it worse, but _I_ don't care. My doctor's medicinedon't seem to do me much good, but I sort of keep on taking it, " shesaid to Druse, grandly as she poured out a brownish liquid into thecloudy glass that the good little housekeeper had eyed dubiously, beforegiving it to her. Miss De Courcy's doctor evidently believed in stimulants; a strong odorof Scotch whiskey filled the room. "It smells quite powerful, does'nt it?" she said. "It has something init to keep it, you know. It's very unpleasant to take, " she added, rolling up her brown eyes to Druse's compassionate face. "I do' know as it would do you any good, prob'ly it wouldn't, " saidDruse shyly, shifting the glass from one hand to the other, "but I usedto stroke Ma's head lots, when she had a chance to set down, and itached bad. " Miss De Courcy promptly stretched herself at full length, and settledher feet comfortably in the lace skirts, in which the high, sharp heelstore two additional rents, and pulled the bandage from her forehead. "Go ahead, " she said, laconically. Druse dragged a chair to the side ofthe couch, and for some minutes there was silence--that is, thecomparative silence that might exist in the Vere De Vere--while shedeftly touched the burning smooth flesh with her finger tips. Miss De Courcy opened her eyes drowsily. "I guess I'm going to get anap, after all. You're doing it splendid. You'll come and see me again, won't you? Say, don't tell your folks you was here to-day, will you?I'll tell you why. I--I've got a brother that drinks. It's awful. Hecomes to see me evenings a good deal, and some daytimes. They'd beafraid he'd be home, 'n' they wouldn't let you come again. He's cross, you see 'n' they'd never--let you come again 'f you--" Miss De Courcy was almost overpowered by sleep. She roused herself amoment and looked at Druse with dull pleading. "Don't you tell 'em, will you? Promise! I want you to come again. A girl isn't to blame ifher father--I mean her brother--" "Yes, ma'am, I'll promise, of course I will, " said Druse hastily, herthin little bosom swelling with compassion. "I won't never let 'em knowI know you, if you say so. No, ma'am, it's awful cruel to blame you foryour brother's drinkin'. I've got some pieces about it at home, aboutfolkses' families a-sufferin' for their drinkin'. I'd like to come againif you want me. I'm afraid I ain't much company, but I could stroke yourhead every time you have a headache. It's awful nice to know somebodythat's lived in the country and understands just how it is when youfirst--" Druse looked down. The doctor's remedy was apparently successful thistime, for with crimson cheeks and parted lips, Miss Blanche De Courcyhad forgotten her headache in a very profound slumber. Druse gazed ather with mingled admiration and pity. No wonder the room seemed alittle untidy. She would have liked to put it to rights, but fearing shemight waken her new friend, who was now breathing very heavily, she onlypulled the shade down, and with a last compassionate glance at thevictim of a brother's intemperance, she picked up her crocheting andtip-toed lightly from the room. After that life in the Vere De Vere was not so dreary. Druse was notsecretive, but she had the accomplishment of silence, and she kept herpromise to the letter. Druse could not feel that she could be muchconsolation to so elegant a being. Miss De Courcy was often _distraite_when she brought her crocheting in of an afternoon, or else she wasextremely, not to say boisterously gay, and talked or laughedincessantly, or sang at the upright piano that looked too large for thelittle parlor. The songs were apt to be compositions with such titlesas, "Pretty Maggie Kelly, " and "Don't Kick him when He's Down, " butDruse never heard anything more reprehensible, and she thought thembeautiful. Sometimes, quite often indeed, her hostess had the headaches that forcedher to resort to the doctor's disagreeable remedy from the black bottle, or was sleeping off a headache on the sofa. Miss De Courcy did not seemto have many women friends. Once, it is true, two ladies with brilliantgolden hair, and cheeks flushed perhaps by the toilsome ascent to thefourth floor, rustled loudly into the parlor. They were very gay, and sofinely dressed, one in a bright green plush coat, and the other in acombination of reds, that Druse made a frightened plunge for the doorand escaped, but not before one of the ladies had inquired, with a pealof laughter, "Who's the kid?" Druse had flushed resentfully, but she didnot care when her friend told her afterward, with a toss of the head, "_They're_ nothing. They just come here to see how I was fixed. " After a little Druse offered timidly to clean up the room for her, andquite regularly then, would appear on each Wednesday with her broom andduster, happy to be allowed to bring order out of chaos. "Well, you are a good little thing, " Miss De Courcy would say, pullingon her yellow gloves and starting for the street when the dust began tofly. She never seemed to be doing anything. A few torn books lay about, but Druse never saw her open them. She had warned Druse not to come inof an evening, for her brother might be home in a temper. Druse thoughtshe saw him once, such a handsome man with his hair lightly tinged withgray; he was turning down the hall as Druse came wearily up the stairs, and she saw him go in Miss De Courcy's room; but then again when Gustywas sick, and she had to go down at night and beg the janitress to comeup and see if it were the measles, there was a much younger man, withreddened eyes, from whose glance Druse shrank as she passed him, and hecertainly reeled a little, and he also went in Miss De Courcy's door, and from motives of delicacy she did not ask which was he, --though shefelt a deep curiosity to know. Not that Miss De Courcy refrained frommentioning him. On the contrary, she told heart-rending incidents of hiscruelty, as she tilted back and forth lazily in her rocking-chair, whileDruse sat by, spellbound, her thin hands clasped tightly over the workin her lap, neglecting even the bon-bons that Miss De Courcy lavishedupon her. One morning there was a cruel purple mark on the smooth dark skin ofMiss De Courcy's brow, and the round wrist was red and swollen. Druse'seyes flashed as she saw them. "I expect I'm as wicked as a murderer, "she said, "for I wish that brother of yours was dead. Yes, I do, 'n' I'dlike to kill him!" And the self-contained and usually stoical littlething burst into passionate tears, and hid her face in Miss De Courcy'slap. A dark flush passed over that young lady's face, and something glitteredin the hard blue eyes. She drew Druse tight against her heart, as thoughshe would never let her go, and then she laughed nervously, trying tosoothe her. "There, there, it ain't anything. They're all brutes, but Iwas ugly myself last night, 'n' made him mad. Tell me something aboutthe country, Druse, like you did the other day--anything. I don't care. " "Do you wish you was back there, too?" asked homesick Druse, wistfully. Druse could no more take root in the city than could a partridge-berryplant, set in the flinty earth of the back-yard. "Wish I was back? Yes, if I could go back where I used to live, " saidMiss De Courcy with her hoarse, abrupt little laugh. "No, I don'teither. Folks are pretty much all devils, city or country. " Druse shivered a little. She looked up with dumb pleading into thereckless, beautiful face she had learned to love so well from her humbletendings and ministerings. She had the nature to love where she served. She had no words to say, but Miss De Courcy turned away from thesorrowful, puzzled eyes of forget-me-not blue, the sole beauty of thehomely, irregular little face. "I was only a-joking, Druse, " she added, smiling. "Come, let's make somelemonade. " But Druse did not forget these and other words. She pondered over themas she lay in her stifling little dark bedroom at night, or attended toher work by day, and she waged many an imaginary battle for thebeautiful, idle woman who represented the grace of life to her. The fat janitress sometimes stopped to gossip a moment with Druse. "Ever seen Miss De Courcy on your floor?" she asked, one day, curiously. "Yes, ma'am, I--I've seen her, " replied Druse, truthfully, the colorrising to her pale cheeks. "O Lord!" ejaculated the janitress, heaving a portentous sigh from thedepths of her capacious, brown calico-covered bosom, "if I was the ownerof these here flats, instead of the old miser that's got 'em, wouldn't Ihave a clearin' out! Wouldn't I root the vice and wickedness out of someof 'em! Old Lowder don't care what he gits in here, so long's they paytheir rent!" Druse did not reply. She felt sure that the janitress meant Miss DeCourcy's drunken brother, and she was very glad that "old Lowder" wasnot so particular, for she shuddered to think how lonely she should bewere it not for the back flat to the right. Even the janitress, whoseemed so kind, was heartless to Miss De Courcy because she had adrunken brother! Druse began to find the world very, very cruel. The days went on, andthe two lives, so radically unlike, grew closer entwined. Druse lostnone of her stern, angular little ways. She did not learn to lounge, orto desire fine clothing. If either changed, an observer, had there beenone, might have noticed that Miss De Courcy did not need as muchmedicine as formerly, that the hard ring of her laugh was softened whenDruse went by, and that never an oath--and we have heard that ladies ofthe highest rank have been known to swear under strongprovocation--escaped the full red lips in Druse's presence. One morning Druse went about the household duties with aching limbs anda dizzy head. For the first since she had acted as her uncle'shousekeeper, she looked hopelessly at the kitchen floor, and left itunscrubbed: it was sweeping day, too, but the little rooms were leftunswept, and she lay all the morning in her dark bedroom, in increasingdizziness and pain. For some days she had been languid andindisposed, and now real illness overcame her; her head was burning, andvague fears of sickness assaulted her, and a dread of the loneliness ofthe black little room. She dragged herself down the hall. Miss De Courcyopened the door. Her own eyes were red and swollen as with unshed tears. She pulled Druse in impetuously. "I'm so glad you're come. I--Why, child, what is the matter with you?What ails you, Druse?" She took Druse's hot little hand in her's and led her to the mirror. Druse looked at herself with dull, sick eyes; her usually pallid facewas crimson, and beneath the skin, purplish angry discolorationsappeared in the flesh. "I guess I'm goin' to be sick, " she said, with a despairing cadence. "Iexpect it's somethin' catchin'. I'll go home. Let me go home. " She started for the door, but her limbs suddenly gave way, and shefell, a limp little heap on the floor. Miss De Courcy looked at her a moment in silence. Her eyes wanderedabout the room, and fell on a crumpled letter on the table. She paused amoment, then she turned decisively, and let down the folding-bed thatstood in the corner by day. She lifted the half-conscious Druse in herstrong young arms, and laid her on the bed. It was only a few minutes'work to remove the coarse garments, and wrap her in a perfumed, frillednightdress, that hung loosely on the spare little form. Miss De Courcysurveyed the feverish face against the pillows anxiously. Druse halfopened her dull eyes and moaned feebly; she lifted her thin arms andclasped them around Miss De Courcy's neck. "Ain't you good!" she saidthickly, drawing the cool cheek down against her hot brow. "I'm going for the doctor, Druse, " said Miss De Courcy, coaxingly. "Now, you lay right still, and I'll be back in no time. Don't you move;promise, Druse!" And Druse gave an incoherent murmur that passed for a promise. The doctor, who lived on the corner, a shabby, coarse little man, rousedher from a fevered dream. He asked a few questions perfunctorily, turnedthe small face to the light a moment, and cynically shrugged hisshoulders. "Small-pox, " was his laconic remark, when he had followed Miss De Courcyinto the next room. "Then she's going to stay right here, " said that young woman firmly. "Well, I guess _not_" replied the doctor, looking her over. "How aboutyour own complexion if you take it?" he added, planting a question heexpected to tell. Miss De Courcy's remark was couched in such forcible terms that I thinkI had better not repeat it. It ought to have convinced any doctorliving that her complexion was her own affair. "Oh! that's all right, " replied the man of science, unoffended, a tardyrecognition of her valor showing through his easy insolence. "But howabout the Board of Health, and how about me? She's better off in ahospital, any way. You can't take care of her, " with a scornful glanceat the draggled finery and striking hat. "What do you want to try itfor? I can't let the contagion spread all over the house, you know; howwould you get anything to eat? No, it's no use. She's got to go. I'm notgoing to ruin my reputation as a doctor, and--" Miss De Courcy smiled sweetly into the doctor's hard, common face. Shedrew a purse from her pocket, and selected several bills from a rollthat made his small eyes light up greedily, and pressing the littlepacket into his not too reluctant fingers, she remarked significantly, as she sat down easily on the top of a low table: "You're mistaken about what's the matter with her, doctor. She's gotthe chicken-pox. You just look at her again as you go out, and you'llsee that I am right. But it's just as well to be careful. You might maila note for me when you go out, and my wash-woman will buy things for me, and bring them up here to the door. I'll swear I won't go out till yousay I may, or till you take me to the hospital. And then, as you goalong, you can step into the front flat left, and tell her uncle she'stook bad with chicken-pox. He's got a lot of young ones, and he'll beglad enough to let me do it, see? And of course, chicken-pox is quiteserious sometimes. I should expect to pay a doctor pretty well to bringa patient out of it, " she added, with a placid smile. The doctor had turned, and was looking with deep interest at a chromo onthe wall. "I'll take another look at her. I may have been mistaken, doctorssometimes are--symptoms alike--and--m--m--you can get that letter readyfor me to mail. " Strange days and nights ensued. Druse had a dim knowledge of knocks atthe door at night, of curses and oaths muttered in the hall, of Miss DeCourcy's pleading whispers, of a final torrent of imprecations, and thenof a comparative lull; of days and nights so much alike in their fevereddull monotony that one could not guess where one ended and anotherbegan; of an occasional glimpse that melted into the general delirium, of Miss De Courcy's face, white, with heavy, dark-ringed eyes, bendingover her, and of Miss De Courcy's voice, softened and changed, withnever a harsh note; of her hand always ready with cooling drink for theblackened, dreadful mouth. Yes, in the first few days Druse wasconscious of this much, and of a vague knowledge that the rocking shipon which she was sailing in scorching heat, that burnt the flesh fromthe body, was Miss De Courcy's bed; and then complete darkness closedin upon the dizzy little traveller, sailing on and on in the black, burning night, further and further away from the world and from life. How could she guess how many days and nights she sailed thus? The shipstopped, that was all she knew; but still it was dark, so dark; and thenshe was in a strange land where the air was fire, and everything onetouched was raging with heat, and her hands, why had they bandaged herhands, so that she could not move them? "I can't see, " said Druse, in a faint, puzzled whisper. "Is it night?" And Miss De Courcy, bending over the bed, haggard and wan, and yearsolder in the ghostly gray dawn, said soothingly: "Yes, Druse, it's night, " for she knew Druse would never see the lightagain. "Miss De Courcy!" "Yes, Druse. " "I expect I've kept your brother out all this time. I hope he won't bemad. " "No, no, Druse; be quiet and sleep. " "I can't sleep. I wish it would be morning. I want to see you, Miss DeCourcy. Well, never mind. Somehow, I guess I ain't goin' to get better. If what I've had--ain't catchin'--I suppose you wouldn't want to--tokiss me, would you?" Without hesitation, the outcast bent her face, purified and celestialwith love and sacrifice; bent it over the dreadful Thing, loathsome anddecaying, beyond the semblance of human form or feature, on thebed, --bent and kissed, as a mother would have kissed. The gray dawn crept yet further into the room, the streets were growingnoisier, the Elevated trains rushed by the corner, the milkmen's cartsrumbled along the Avenue, the sparrows twittered loudly on theneighboring roofs. And yet it seemed so solemnly silent in the room. "Well, now!" said Druse, with pleased surprise, "I didn't expect youwould. What a long time it is gettin' light this mornin'. To think ofyou, a-takin' care of _me_, like this! An' I ain't never done a thingfor you excep' the headaches and sweepin', an' even that was nicer forme than for you. I knew you was awful good, but I never knew you wasreligious before, Miss De Courcy. Nobody but folks that has religiondoes such things, they say. I wish I could remember my prayers. Ain't itstrange, I've forgot them all? Couldn't you say one? Just a little one?" And Miss De Courcy, her face buried in her hands, said, "Lord, havemercy upon us, " and said no more. "Thank you, " said Druse, more feebly, and quite satisfied. "We won'tforget each other, an' you'll promise to come by'm'by. Won't you? I'llbe so pleased when you come!" "Yes, Druse, " whispered Miss De Courcy, "I promise. " And then the terrible form that had been Druse sat up in bed with amighty effort, and turned its sightless eyes joyfully toward Miss DeCourcy's tear-stained face. "It's morning! I can see you!" it said, and fell back into the faithfularms and upon the faithful breast. And so Druse, not having lived and died in vain, passed away foreverfrom the Vere De Vere. A LAMENTABLE COMEDY. I stood one July noon on the platform of the desolate station atWauchittic, the sole passenger waiting for the stage. The heat wasquivering in the air. I watched the departing train, whirling like alittle black ball down the narrow yellow road, cut between the greenfields, and was vaguely glad that I was not going to the end of theIsland on it. This was somewhere near the middle, and it was quite farenough from civilization. The village, like so many Long Island villages, was distant from therailroad. Only one or two farm-houses were in sight. There was hardly asound in the hot noonday air, now that the train had gone, except thewhistling of a cheerful station agent, who sat in the window of thelittle oven-like Queen Anne structure, in his shirt sleeves, looking outat me with lively interest. I had sought for a quiet country place inwhich to finish my novel, the book which would decide beyond doubtwhether I had a future as a writer, or whether I was doomed to sink tothe level of the ordinary literary hack, for into it I had put, I knew, all that was my best. As I looked absently down the track, I reviewed the past winter months, the long days and evenings spent at my desk in the stuffy littlelodgings to which I was limited by my narrow income, interruptedfrequently by invasions on various pretexts of the ill-fed chambermaid, who insisted on telling me her woes, or by my neighbor from the nextroom, the good little spinster, who always knocked to ask if she mightheat a flat-iron at my grate when I was in the midst of a bit of minutedescription. She would sit down, too, would poor withered Miss Jane, inmy little rocking-chair to wait while the iron heated, and she said sheoften told the landlady she did not know how I could write, I had somany interruptions. I had come to a place now, I thought, trying to quell the sense ofloneliness that oppressed me, as I looked around at the expanse ofstunted wood and scrub-oaks, where I could be perfectly undisturbed. Ifthe farmer's family with whom I was to board, were noisy or intrusive, one could take one's writing materials and go--well, somewhere--into thewoods, perhaps. I was only twenty-two, and I was sanguine. I saw a cloud of white dust down the road--nothing more, but thestation-agent, with a certainty born of long experience, shoutedencouragingly: "Thar she comes!" and presently I found myself in alarge, sombre and warm conveyance, very like the wagon known to the NewYork populace familiarly, if not fondly, as "the Black Maria. " The driver was a tow-headed lad of sixteen, so consumed with blushesthat, out of pity, I refrained from questions, and sat silently enduringthe heat behind the black curtains, while we traversed, it seemed to me, miles of dusty, white road, bordered by ugly, flat fields, or dwarfwoods and undergrowth, before we stopped at a smart white farm-house. The farmer's wife, hearing our approach, stood on the little porch towelcome me. Mrs. Hopper gave a peculiar glance at my begrimed person andface, and I followed her up the narrow stairs with an odd, homesicksinking of the heart, seized by a momentary pang of that "nostalgia ofthe pavement, " felt oftener by the poor than rich dwellers of the city, in exile. Perhaps I loved New York in an inverse ratio to what I hadsuffered in it. All the miseries of hope deferred, unremitting labor, and unnumbered petty cares attendant upon a straightened income, wereforgotten, and I yearned for its ugly, midsummer glare, even itsunsavory odors, and my stifling little chamber "_au troisième_" as Isurveyed the tiny bare room, with its blue and gray "cottage set, " itswhite-washed walls, hung with a solitary engraving of Lincoln and hisCabinet. It was not a beautiful spot, truly, yet I thought dubiously, asI drank in the silence, it might be a very good place in which to bringto an end the sufferings of my heroine, who had agonized through severalhundred pages of manuscript. "I expect you're tired, " said Mrs. Hopper, sitting down carefully on theedge of the feather-bed to which I was condemned. "It's a pretty quietplace here--ain't much of a village, but then you said you wanted aquiet place to write in. I guess you'll be s'prised--there's anotherorther here. Maybe you know him, his name's Longworth, John Longworth?Don't! Why, he lives to New York! No, he ain't right here in the house, he's across the street to the Bangses', but you'll see him, " she said, encouragingly. "It'll be awful pleasant for you two orthers to getacquainted. The Bangses don't keep cows, an' every night at milkin'time, over he comes to get a glass o' warm milk; guess he likes to talkto our men-folks. Old Bangs ain't much comp'ny for anybody, let alone awriter. He's got a man with him to wait on him; a kind o' nurse, Ib'lieve. He was near dead before he came here, though he looks prettysmart now--had a fever. Some of the folks here hev got it around he wasout of his head, a man so, a-settin' around out o' doors, writin' frommornin' till night. Lord, how mad it made the Bangses!" Mrs. Hopperindulged in an abrupt retrospective laugh of enjoyment. "They was so setup, havin' a writer there, an' Mary Bangs was pretty well taken downwhen I told her we was a-goin' to have one here. She acted as if shedidn't b'lieve there was more'n one orther to New York, an' that was Mr. Longworth, " continued Mrs. Hopper, regarding me with a proprietor'spride, as I removed my hat and hung it on a nail driven in the wall. Ismiled as I reflected that I, too, should doubtless be looked on withsuspicion as a fit subject for a straight-jacket, if I, an able-bodiedyoung woman, should sit "out o' doors" with my writing, while mypresumable betters were working. "Well, I guess I'll go down now, " said Mrs. Hopper, after a brief pause, in which she examined my gown. "I expect you want y'r dinner. We live agood piece from the store, Miss Marriott an' any time if you should getout of ink, don't make any bones of asking for it. We've got some righthere in the house, an' you're as welcome to it as if you was my owndaughter. " I was glad to find, at dinner, that the family consisted of Mr. And Mrs. Hopper only, with the exception of a couple of farm-hands, whoselumbering tread down the back-stairs wakened me each morning about four. I found Mr. Hopper a tall, bent old man, with meek, faded blue eyes, anda snowy frill of beard. He had an especially sweet and pathetic voice, with a little quaver in it, like a bashful girl's. He laid down his knife and fork, and looked at me with an air of gentleinquiry, as I took my seat at the table. "Mrs. Hopper tells me you're aliterary, " he said at length. I'm afraid I replied, "Yes?" with therising inflection of the village belle, nothing else occurring to me tosay. "Well, " said Mr. Hopper, softly, pushing back his chair, and rising toleave the table, "it's in our fam'ly some too. And in Ma's. One o' myuncles and one o' her brothers. " He shuffled out of the room with aplacid smile, as Mrs. Hopper said, deprecatingly, but with consciouspride, "La, pa, Jim never wrote more'n two or three pieces. " For a few days I took a vacation. I wandered about the "back lots, " downto the mill-dam, up and down the lonely, winding street where all theprim houses--and they were very far apart--wore a desolate, closedlook, as though the inhabitants were away, or dead. I grew accustomed tomy environments; the little bedroom began to seem like home to me. On myway to the post-office some one passed me on the sandy, yellow patch, aman clothed after the manner of civilization, whose garments, cut by nocountry tailor, were not covered by overalls. I knew it must be "theother orther. " None of the males in Wauchittic appeared in public, except on Sunday, save in overalls. It would have been, I think, considered unseemly, if not indecent. The man was young, with a worn, delicate face, marked by ill-health, andthough I had studiously avoided the yard near "milkin' time, " in spiteof Mrs. Hopper's transparent insistance each evening on my going out tosee the brindled heifer, I think my indifferent glance was assumed, forthough John Longworth, so far as I knew, had not his name inscribed onthe records of fame, and was probably a penny-a-liner on a third-ratenewspaper, I had the instinct of fellow-craft, that is, alas! strongestin the unknown and ardent young writer. He walked feebly, and hisbrilliant eyes were haggard and circled, as though by long illness. Isaw him drive by nearly every afternoon, accompanied by his nurse, agood-humored young fellow, who helped him tenderly into the carriage, and drove, while he lay back with the irritated expression that thesense of enforced idleness and invalidism gives a man in the heyday ofyouth. Mrs. Hopper, who was loquacious to a degree, told me long storiesof his parents' wealth, of the luxuries brought down with him, and ofthe beautiful pieces of furniture he had had sent down for his room, forhis physician had recommended him to an absolutely quiet place for theentire summer. She burned with an irrepressible desire to have me makethe acquaintance of this son of wealth and literature, either from thefeminine proclivity for match-making, or because, possibly, she thought, having an intense reverence for writers, that our conversation would beof an edifying and uncommon character. I fear she was disappointed, foron the occasion of our first meeting, --I believe Mr. Longworth came tosee Mrs. Hopper on some trifling business, and I happened to be writingon the front porch, --our remarks were certainly of the most commonplacetype, and I saw a shade of disappointment steal across her face, as shestood by triumphantly, having accomplished her wish to "get usacquainted. " Mr. Longworth overtook me the next day, as I was returning listlessly, toward noon, from a long walk, my arms full of glowing St. John's wort, the color of sunset. Back of me lay the long stretch of flat road, andthe fields on either side were scorched with the sun. The heat wasintolerable. Mr. Longworth would carry the flowers for me, and Iresigned them, knowing that nothing is more distasteful to a man than tobe treated like an invalid. And the bunch was really a heavy burden, --Ihad gathered such an enormous armful, together with some tender creepersof blackberry vine. We chatted of the place, of the people, and I foundthat my companion had a keen sense of humor. As we neared the house, after a moment's hesitancy, I asked him to come and rest on the littleporch, where a couple of splint rockers and a palm-leaf fan invited oneto comfort and coolness. He accepted the invitation with alacrity, though he chose to sit on the wooden steps, while I tilted lazily backand forth, overcome by the noonday lull and heat. He looked so boyish when he took off his hat, with the dark little curlsfalling over his forehead, that I thought he could not be older than I. The walk had perhaps been more than he could bear, for he was so palethat I could not help saying, "Pardon me, Mr. Longworth, but you lookso ill. Will you let me give you a glass of wine?" I had brought alittle with me. He looked slightly annoyed, but he answered gayly, "I suppose Mrs. Hopper has been telling you I am a confirmed invalid. Indeed I am almost well now, and I need Wilson about as much as I need aperambulator, but I knew if I did not bring him, my mother would give upBar Harbor, and insist on burying herself with me, either here or atsome other doleful spot, stagnation having been prescribed for me. Oh, well, I don't mind the quiet, " he continued, leaning his broad shouldersagainst the pillar, and pulling at a bit of the St. John's wort, for hehad thrown it down in a straggling heap on the floor of the porch. "I'mat work on--on a book, " he said with a boyish blush. "Yes, " I replied, smiling. "Mrs. Hopper told me that there was 'anorther, ' in Wauchittic. " "And that was what Mrs. Bangs told me the other day!" he declaredaudaciously. And then we both laughed with the foolish gaiety of youth, that rids itself thus of embarrassment. "It is my first book, " he confessed. "And mine, " I said. Our eyes met a little wistfully, as if each were striving to readwhether the other had gone through the same burning enthuiasms for work, the same loving belief in its success, the same despondent hours when itseemed an utter failure, devoid of sense or interest, and then, somehow, we felt suddenly a mutual confidence, a sense that we knew each otherwell, the instant _camaraderie_ of two voyagers who find that they havesailed the same seas, passed through the same dangers, and stopped atthe same ports. I heard Mrs. Hopper open the hall-door, caught a glimpse of her lookingout at us with satisfaction on her face, warm from the kitchen fire, and heard her close it, with much elaboration, and, tip-toe heavilyaway. "Yes, this is my first book, " he went on, as though we had not paused. "Of course I have had experience in writing before, magazine sketches, and that sort of thing, and beside that, I once had a mania fornewspaper work, and much to my mother's horror, I was really a reporteron one of the city papers--_The Earth_. " "Circulation guaranteed over 380, 000, " I continued, rather ashamed of myflippancy, although he laughed. "Exactly. Well, after a time I had an offer to go on the editorial staffof the _Eon_, through a friend who has influence with the management, and it was just then I was taken ill with this typhoid fever that hasleft me the wreck you see, " he said, with a whimsically sad smile. "Thatis not the worst, though, " he went on, a shadow falling over hisupturned face, "I cannot explain it, although my doctor pretends to. Ihad written--oh! say half-a-dozen chapters of this book before mysickness. As soon as I began to be convalescent, I wanted to amusemyself by going on with it. I had my plot roughly blocked out, mycharacters were entirely distinct in my mind, yet when I took up my penagain, I found I could not write connectedly. It was simply horrible. Ishall never forget that day. Of course I imagined I should never writeagain. I sent for two or three doctors, announced that I had paresis, and was told that it was madness for a man who had been as ill as I toattempt any sort of literary work for weeks, if not months. But thesense that I absolutely could not write preyed upon me. I used to do alittle each day in spite of their orders, but it is only now that I ambeginning to feel the confusion of ideas lessening, and the ability topresent them coherently growing Even yet I only write disconnected partsof the chapters I had planned. It is--oh! what is that pet word ofphrenologists? _continuity_, that I have not at my command. I supposeyou cannot quite understand the agony of such an experience, neverhaving gone through it. Only yesterday I tore up thirty pages ofmanuscript, and had more than half a mind to burn the whole thing. It isonly the consideration of the possibly great loss to the literary worldthat withholds me, you know, " he said with a half bitter laugh, throwingdown the ruins of the flowers he had pulled to pieces with his thin, nervous hands, and rising. "But I've been an unconscionable bore, even for a valetudinarian, and Ibelieve they are privileged to tax people's amiability. I hope I havn'ttired you so that you will forbid my coming again. I will promise not totalk about myself next time, " he said, as he turned to go down the path. I wondered what his book was like, as I lazily watched him cross thestreet in the noonday sun, and then I remembered with a twinge ofconscience that I had hardly written a thousand words since I came. Thissoft air, redolent of spicy midsummer odors, seemed to produce aninvincible indolence, even of thought. After the struggles of the pastwinter, I was feeling the reaction in utter relaxation of will andpurpose. I wondered, were I in Mr. Longworth's place, would I ever writeagain, from the mere love of it? Was the end, even if that end weresuccess, worth the pain of attaining it? And then, fearing to questionmyself further, I went to my room and began to write. Late July was very beautiful in Wauchittic. From the ocean, a dozenmiles distant, was wafted the faintest suggestion of the odor of thesea, the wide fields of lush pasture seemed to drink the sun. All nightthe murmur of the little stream falling over the mill-dam, filled thedark hours with soft whispers. The low woods, with their glitteringleaves of the scrub-oak, tempted me, and I discovered fairy glades intheir depths, where the grass was thin and pale, and strong ferns grewabout the roots of the trees. Sometimes Mr. Longworth would accompany meon my trips of exploration, and, happy in our youth and the gladness ofsummer, and forgetful of strict conventionality, we would spend longmornings together, writing and reading in an especially cosy spot at theedge of the woods back of the farm. Mr. Longworth was growing so strongthat Wilson's position was almost entirely a sinecure, and he spent mostof his time lounging in the one village store, relating remarkablestories of New York to a circle of open-mouthed idlers. Day by day, Iwatched the lessening pallor and the growing health of Mr. Longworth'sface, and saw him visibly gain strength. He could carry all the rugs andbooks and writing materials to our sylvan sanctum without fatigue, andhe was so boyishly proud of his health that he used to exhaust himselfwith too long walks, for which I administered lectures that he alwaysreceived submissively. One warm morning we had spent an hour in writing. I had grown tired, and throwing down my pen and pad, I left Mr. Longworth still at work, and strayed out into the field in the sun. There had been no rain for days, and the locusts filled the air withtheir _zeeing_. The wide field was dotted with golden patches of thearnica blossom, or yellow daisy, as the farmers called it. I wanderedthrough the hot, knee-high grass, picking handfuls of the broad yellowsuns, then childishly threw them away, and pulled others, with greatheads of sweet red clover, and spears of timothy too. I was so happy. Mywhole being was filled with causeless peace and gladness. From time totime I glanced back to the shade of the oak trees, to the tall, slenderfigure, with the dark head bent over the white sheets of manuscript, andI sang softly a little song for very joy of my life. I looked up to thedeep, cloudless sky, around at the wide stretch of green in the goldensunlight, then almost unconsciously back once more to the edge of thewoods, where the spread rugs made a tiny home fit for the heart ofsummertide. Nor did I guess, even then, which was the dominant note ofthis wonderful chord that my life had unconsciously struck. I knew onlythat the world was far more beautiful than I had ever dreamed, and stillsinging under my breath the little cadence that seemed to fit the day, Iwandered slowly back, leaving a path crushed between the tall, sun-fadedgrasses as I went. Mr. Longworth laid down his work as I approached. A strange, absurdshyness possessed me, after the weeks of strengthening friendship andsimple good-fellowship, but I held out the great bunch of daisiesplayfully to him, as I seated myself on the pile of rugs. He reachedhis hand for them eagerly, and buried his face in their sunny depths. His eyes shone feverishly with his stress of work, and his thin cheekswere flushed. "You look tired, " I said. "You should not write so long. " Thus far, though we had often jested about it, we had never read eachother portions of our work. "When I get mine half done, " I had said, when he begged me to read him achapter. "When I can manage to make a chapter run smoothly to its end, " he hadreplied laughing, in turn, but now to-day, urged by some necessity foran absorbing topic into which I could plunge, losing my restlessness, Iinsisted that he should read fragments, at least, to me. He demurred at first. "I have told you how stupid it sounds, thesedisconnected bits, little descriptions, detached conversations. Sometimes I think I shall never use them after all. " He fingered thepages absently. "No, read it to me as it is, " I begged. "I must hear it. I understand, of course, how it is written. " And so, yielding to my entreaties, he read, while I leaned back againstthe tree trunk, listening at first critically, and interested, perhaps, because it was his work, then with clasped hands and shortening breath, leaning forward that I might lose no word. A little squirrel scamperedthrough the undergrowth back of us, and far in another field I couldhear Mr. Hopper's quavering voice, as he called to the haymakers. Sometimes a leaf rustled, falling to the ground, but it was very quiet. At last he laid down the leaves, and fixed his dark eyes eagerly on myface, as if he would read my thoughts, but my eyes were full of tears, and they were selfish tears. "My poor book!" I said, with a tendercontempt for it. "Do you mean--?" he began increduously. "I mean that this is wonderful, and that I know I shall never writeagain, " I said. "I do not know how it is, but I can read by the light ofyour book that you have genius, and that I am a failure. It is well thatsomething brought it home to me before I wasted any more time. " I meantto speak bravely, but I knew more than this. I knew that, with all myair-castles shattered, with the knowledge that to him literature was apastime, while to me it meant livelihood, I gloried more in his successthan I should in my own, that I was glad that he, and not I, was to havefame; and in the tumult of new emotions against which I struggled, mylip quivered, I turned aside my head, and felt, but I did not see, thehand that touched mine, thrilling me so that I drew away. "Miss Marriott--Kate--" "No, no, " I cried, facing him with my cheeks crimson, and speakingrapidly, "I want you to let me send a few pages for a reading to Mr. ----, the editor of ----'s Magazine; he is a friend of mine; he has beenso good to me. You say you have no publisher in view. I am certain hewill take this when it is finished, and you know what that means; itwill make your reputation, and--" "Ah, but you see, these are only fragments, " he said, sadly, regaininghis composure. "Suppose I am never able to weave them properly into theplot? You cannot know how discouraged I am sometimes. " "Will you not let me send them?" I asked eagerly. "It is quite true thatthey are only fragments, but no one could write such things and thenfail of success in elaborating; it is impossible. Come, let us go, it isnearly dinner-time, " I went on, not giving him time to speak, as I begangathering up the books and rugs. "No, do not talk of my book; it isover. It was only a fancy of mine. I ought to have known I could notreally write, and it came to me clearly this morning--so clearly! If youwill let me be godmother to yours, that will be a little consolation, " Isaid laughing, and having now his consent to send his MSS. To Mr. ----, I hurried him homeward, talking gaily of indifferent topics, andavoiding the tender, questioning eyes that sought my own. That there was bitterness in the realization that I had miserablyfailed, that my novel was stupid and lacked the elements of interest, Icannot deny. Why I had not seen it all before, I can never understand, but this morning, as I compared it with the brilliant and strange playof fancy that characterized Mr. Longworth's work, I felt it keenly andconclusively. In the long afternoon hours I spent that day alone with mymanuscript, I learned to face calmly the fact that I must go back tonewspaper work without the vestige of a hope that I should ever write areadable novel. What it meant to me to arrive at this conclusion no onewill understand who has not had the same hopes and the same downfall, yet through those hours in the little white-washed bed-room, with thelocust boughs tapping against the window, the memory that I strenuouslyput away of that warm clasp, of the new tenderness in the voice that hadcalled me by my name, softened the sharp pangs of disappointment; andhe, at least, would not fail as I had done. Toward sunset I laid away my dead book, and went down to thesitting-room where Mrs. Hopper sat placidly mending. She looked a trifleanxiously at my reddened eyelids. "Feel well?" she queried, plying theneedle swiftly. "You mustn't let things prey onto your mind, " sheadmonished, "or you won't get your money's worth of good out of theplace, and besides, Lord! what is there worth worryin' over, any how?Money ain't worth it, and love ain't worth it, " she declared, with akeen glance at me. "But, there, what _is_ the use of tellin anybodythat? I worried some before I married Pa. I guess it's natural. Ithought, thinks I, 'Mary Ann Bishop, he's years older'n you, 'n' he'sweakly, 'n' there ain't much doubt but what you'll be left a relic'. Nowlook, that was ten years ago, and Pa ain't no more out o' slew 'n' hewas then. 'N' then I thought, 'There, he's had one wife. ' (Pa was awidower. ) ''N' I expect he'll be always a-comparin' of us. ' It ain'thappened once, at least, not out loud, an' oh! how good he was to thatwoman! It didn't seem as if he _could_ be as good to his second. It wasall over the place, " said Mrs. Hopper laying down "Pa's" calico shirt, and speaking in low and impressive tones, as befits the subject ofdeath, "how he bought her a bran-new wig two weeks before she died, an'he let her be buried in that wig, that cost over thirty dollars! An' asfor a stone! Well, there, he went over to Gilsey's marble-yard to NewSidon, 'n' picked out a sixty-dollar tomb, 'n' never asked 'm to heaveoff a cent! An' that man, Miss Marriott, " said Mrs. Hopper, "he'd dojust as well by me as ever he done by her, 'n' I'm contented, 'n' I'mhappy. I can tell you, I'm a believer in marriage, " she said, with aproud smile, as she rose to get tea. Mr. Longworth brought over a neat package of manuscript that evening, which I sent, with a letter to Mr. ----. We sat talking on the porch, watching the moon rise and flood the dew-wet fields with a tide of whiteradiance. Occasionally we heard Mr. Or Mrs. Hopper in the lamp-litsitting-room making brief comments on neighborhood gossip, or the crops, and then Mrs. Hopper would go on silently sewing, and "Pa, " his whitehead bent over a "Farmer's Almanac, " made long and painful calculationson a scrap of paper in which he seemed to get much mysterious assistancefrom the almanac. Without, the cool night air touched my face gently. My head was burningand fevered with the day's emotions, but I felt the infinite peace ofthe evening calming me. "No, " I said firmly, "indeed I have decided wisely, Mr. Longworth. I amgoing back to my old work cheerfully, and shall never think again ofmy--my disappointment. I believe I can easily get work on my old paper, the "_Courier_, " and I have been offered an editorial position on a newfashion paper, beside my weekly letter to the "_Red Cañon Gazette_. '"Naturally I did not tell him that I had spent all my savings of a yearon this planned vacation, when I was to finish the book that shouldreimburse me. "You shall not go back to that wretched drudgery, " said Mr. Longworth, in his impetuous, nervous manner. "Do not imagine you are ever to do itagain. Tell me, " he said, lowering his voice, and leaning toward me sothat he could see my face, shaded by the vine-hung trellis. "Could yoube happy--" We heard Mr. Hopper moving around the room uneasily, and instinctivelyMr. Longworth paused. "Ma, " said the old man, a trifle reproachfully, "I'm afraid you don'ttry to make it cheerful for them young folks. Why don't you go out andset for a spell? I guess _I'll_ go. " "Stay where you are, Joseph, " said Mrs. Hopper, in loud tones ofdisapproval, that were wafted through the open window to us. "Did _we_want the old folks forever runnin' after us before _we_ was married?"Mr. Longworth tried not to steal a mirthful glance at me, but he foundit hard to resist. "Oh! pshaw, Ma, " replied the old man gently. "Thereain't none of that goin' on. He ain't a marryin' man, " and we heard hisslippered feet pattering softly over the oil-clothed entry, and his mildface beamed on us through the net door, which he held open for a momentbefore he came out and seated himself in the rocking-chair. "Well, now, this _is_ comfortable, " he said, with a cheerfully socialair. "I can tell you this is a night for authors. Here's a chance forpoetry!" with a wave of his thin, weather-worn hand toward the peacefulfields. "Made any this evenin'?" he inquired. "Ain't? well, I guessyou'll never come across a more inspirin' night, " he said, with somedisappointment. "I expected likely you'd have some you could say rightoff. Fer a plain farmer, I don't s'pose there's anybody fonder'n I am ofverses, " he said, musingly. "I b'lieve I told ye 'twas in our family. Iwish you could have met my uncle, Mis' Marriot, died on hisninety-second birthday, and had writ a long piece on each birthday for amatter of forty year. That ther man was talented, I tell ye. Therewasn't no occasion he couldn't write a piece onto. Why, the night Ma andme was married (we was married in Ma's sister's parlor) we hadn't more'nturned 'round from the minister, 'n before anybody had a chance t'congratulate us, uncle, he steps right up in front of us, an' sez he: 'Now you are married, an' man an' wife May you live happy this mortial life, An' when your days on this earth is o'er May you both meet together on the evergreen shore. ' "It come to him, jus' come to him that minute, like a flash, " said theold man, reflectively, the pathos of his sweet, tremulous voice lendingunspeakable melody to the preposterous stanza. Mr. Hopper had evidently settled himself for the remainder of theevening, and after a time Mr. Longworth bade us good-night, and wentacross to the Bangs homestead. All that night I tossed about on my uncomfortable feather-bed, orrather, when I found I could not sleep, I rose after a time, and wrappedin my dressing-gown, I sat by my tiny window, watching the shadows ofthe wind-blown locust-boughs on the moonlit grass below, full of thedreams which are the stuff that romances are made of, and which, thoughI had often used them as "material, " I had never known myself before;shy and tender dreams they were, that glorified that summer night, andkept me wakeful until dawn. The next day and the next I was ill and feverish, so ill that I couldnot rise. Mr. Longworth brought for me great bunches of choice flowers, for which he must have sent Wilson to the next town of New Sidon, and adainty basket of fruit. The third day I rose and dressed toward noon, and weak as I felt, I decided to walk down to the post-office, for Ithought perhaps the air would do me good, and beside, the mail was neverbrought up until after dark, and I longed to find if Mr. ---- hadwritten me as I expected, about the manuscript. I knew he would be veryprompt with me. I found several letters in the box for me, and eagerly scanning theenvelopes, I discovered the well-known buff tint, with the red device ofa female figure with a book clasped to the breast, that is the liveryof "----'s Magazine. " I tore it open, reading as I slowly walked. Mr. ---- had written as follows, in his hurried hand: "OFFICE OF ----'s MAGAZINE. "MY DEAR MISS MARRIOTT: "I return the MSS. You sent us, and I have no hesitation in saying thatyour friend is a genius. In fact, I was so chained by the somewhat wildand singular style that I sat up most of Tuesday night to go through itmyself. "Of course in their present disconnected state, the fragments are quiteunavailable to us, but when worked into a story, they ought to make asuccess. I hope we shall have the first reading of the completed book. Iunderstand it is the work of a beginner, but it bears none of the marksof the novice, and I can but think we have discovered the 'comingAmerican novelist. ' "By the way, how is your own book coming on? "Yours in haste, "---- ----. " I had walked on some distance from the post-office as I read this, forMr. ----'s chirography was almost undecipherable, even to one accustomedto it. I was just folding the letter to replace it in the envelope, whenI heard heavy footsteps hurrying behind me. I turned my head and sawWilson, quite red in the face with trying to overtake me. "Beg pardon, Miss, " he said, touching his hat, "I saw you coming out of the office, and--I'd like to speak to you a minute, if I may. " "What is it?" I asked, somewhat surprised. I stepped back from the path, and Wilson stooped down awkwardly, and picked a twig from a low bushthat grew by the fence. "Well, " he began, drawing a long breath, "I'vebeen thinking it over, and I've made up my mind to tell you. I expect Iought to have done it before, but my orders was so strict, and--you seeI'm saving up to get married, and a man hates to lose a good place, --butthat's neither here nor there, Miss, the truth is, I ain't Mr. Longworth's nurse, and I ain't his valley neither. I'm--I'm hisattendant. " "Well, what of it?" I said, with some irritation. How could Wilson'sabsurd distinctions matter to me? What did I care whether he calledhimself valet, or nurse, or attendant? To his credit, be it said that there was no tone of half-exultation, almost pardonable after my manner of annoyance, as he went on. Hisheavy, spatulate finger-tips were stripping the little twig bare of itsleaves. As he continued, I fixed my lowered eyes on that bit of alder. Iremember every tiny, bright brown knot on it, and how one worm-eatenleaf curled at its edges. "You see, " said Wilson, clumsily, "I mean I was his attendant up to theRetreat. It was a real high-toned place, and they did not take anydangerous ones, only folks like him. His people ain't the kind thatstand for price. They've got plenty, and they don't care what they pay. I dare say you've been in his father's store many a time, --Longworth &Whittles, one of the biggest and best dry-goods stores on Sixth avenue. The old gentleman's rolling in gold, and there ain't a nicer lady in NewYork City than Mrs. Longworth. You see, it was this way. Young Mr. Longworth didn't like business, and they sent him abroad to be educated, and when he come back he just fooled around and went out a good deal, and finally, he got in with some literary folks. One of his friends tookhim to their receptions, and he got it into his head he was going to bea writer. His folks didn't care, they'd have paid a publisher any priceto take his books if it would have done any good; but finally he took toshuttin' himself up in his room day and night, writin' all the time, and it told on him pretty well, for I guess he'd never wrote anythingbut cheques before. And then he'd burn it up as fast as he wrote, andnot eat, and not come out o' that room for days at a time. He kepta-saying it would be all right if it would only fit together but that'sjust where it is, it don't any of it fit together. And now he justwrites over and over the same things he wrote a year ago. He don't knowit, he burns 'em up, and then he thinks it's all different. He got sobad the doctors said he'd be better up to Dr. Balsam's Retreat, wherethey could kind of soothe him down, and make him think his health wasout of order, and get his mind off his writing, but he did have a prettybad fever up there, an' ever since he thinks he was editor or somethin'on some paper, and he can tell it off straight as a string. He's allright about everything else, and if you didn't know about it, you'dthink he was just what he says, sure enough. " "It's pretty near killed his mother. Seems funny; a young fellow withnothing to do but spend money, getting it into his head to write books!Well, they said I wasn't to tell anybody, and I _ain't_ told anybody butyou, and I thought as you was a writer, and pretty busy, I guessed youwouldn't want to waste your time over his book. They say, folks do, thatit's first-rate, as far as it goes; but you see it don't never get anyfarther, and it never will. I thought I'd better tell you about it, "said Wilson, his plebeian, kindly face crimson with a delicate pity thatwould have done honor to an aristocrat, and still working assiduously atthe little twig, "I knew you was a genuine writer yourself, and itseemed a pity for you to take up your valuable time helpin' him on, about something that can't amount to anything. " May he be forgiven that gentle falsehood! I looked for a moment at the wide-spread field and distant woodland, lying green in the peaceful sunshine, at the place grown so dear to me, that now whirled before my eyes. Far down the road a heavy farm-wagoncreaked its way toward us, in a cloud of white dust. "You did quite right to tell me, Wilson, " I said, turning to go. "No oneshall hear of it from me. " I looked down at the buff envelope from "----'s Magazine, " which I hadcrushed in my hand, and smoothed it out mechanically, as I went on inthe increasing heat. It was only August, but my summer was over. AN AFRICAN DISCOVERY. "Of course it is very curious; but if you'll pardon me, my dear fellow, you might as well tell me you had found a philosopher's stone. " Still, the rough glass phial, with odd metal bands around its neck, hada fascination for me. I picked it up again, and tilted it idly back andforth in my hand, watching the slimy brown fluid, the color ofpoppy-juice, slip along its sides. Hilyard smoked on imperturbably. The color mounted under his bronzedskin up to the light rings of his hair; there was a momentary angryflash in his pale blue eyes, but it was only for an instant. "Perhaps you would like to try it, since you are so skeptical, " he said, grimly. "Thanks, I have no wish to poison myself, and I have no doubt it is apoison; but what I do doubt is the remarkable qualities you claim forit. How did you come across the vile stuff, anyway?" Hilyard stretched himself comfortably in his chair, and took his belovedpipe from his handsome mouth. "Oh! well, you know, " he said, lazily, "Idon't claim to be a Stanley by any means, but I did go a good bit intoAfrica. I wasn't bent on discovering anything, and I loafed around, andshot big game when there was any to shoot, and I learned some odd thingsfrom those devils of witch-doctors, as well as a few on my own account. You remember my old craze for medicine and chemistry?" "I fell in with a tribe of savages who interested me immensely. The artof torture was brought to a perfection among them that would have madethe persecutors of the Inquisition turn green with envy. It was refinedtorture, such as one would not expect to see save among those whopossessed mental powers equal to their cruelty. No decapitations, nostranglings, among these delicate fiends, I can assure you; nor werethey satisfied with a day's torment, that should culminate in death. Captives were kept for weeks, frequently for months: the wounds made byone day's torture were dressed at night, and stimulating drink given tokeep up the strength, that they might endure for a longer period. It wasthe custom to deliver prisoners or offenders to the family of the chiefor king for the first day's torment; then down through the variousnobles, or what corresponded to the aristocracy (and I assure you theclass distinctions were as closely drawn as in May-Fair), until, if theunfortunate possessed a fine physique, it was not unusual for almostevery family in the tribe to have had a day's amusement with him; and itwas considered a point of honor not to actually take life, but ratherlet it spend itself to the last drop, in agonies undreamed of among whatwe call the civilized, while to invent some new and horrible form oftorture conferred an honor upon the discoverer such as we give men whohave made some wonderful advance in art or science. "'How could I endure such sights?' Oh! well, one gets hardened toanything, you know, and to tell the truth, I was in search of a newsensation, and I found it. I watched with as much fascination as thesavages--no, more--for it was new to me and old to them. Oh! come, Lewis, you needn't draw off your chair; and that reproving, Sunday-school expression is rather refreshing from a man who upholdsvivisection. I tell you candidly that there is nothing on earthcomparable to the fearful, curious combination of pleasure and horrorwith which one watches torture one is powerless to stop. It is morbid, and probably loathsome. No. It is not morbid, after all; it is natural, and not a diseased state of mind. Have you never seen a sweet littlechild, with a face like an angel, pull the wings from a butterfly, orhalf kill a pet animal, and laugh joyfully when it writhed about? Ihave. The natural man loves bloodshed, and loves to hurt men andcreatures. It is bred in the bone with all of us, only, as far as thebody is concerned, this love is an almost impotent factor in moderncivilization, for we have deified the soul and intellect to such anextent, that it is them we seek to goad and wound, when the lust ofcruelty oppresses us, since they have grown to be considered the moreimportant part; and we know, too, that the embittered soul avengesitself upon its own body, so that we strike the subtler blow. What wecall teasing, is the most diluted form of the appetite. Well, this iswide of the mark, I suppose. At any rate, my dusky friends, presumablyhaving no sensitive souls to attack, did their very best with theirenemies' bodies, and as I was saying, theirs was no mean accomplishmentin that line. "I am not going to wound your susceptibilities by describing some of thefunctions which I have witnessed under that blazing sun. I will onlytell you that during one especial occasion of rejoicing, a feast wasgiven after a victory over a neighboring tribe, when the bound captiveswere piled together in black, shining heaps, that had a constantvermicular movement, each human pile guarded by a soldier. The chief atwhose right hand I sat, being filled with joy, as well as rather toomuch drink, began boasting to me of the glories of his tribe, of hispossessions, of the valor of his warriors, and above all of the greatwisdom and learning of his medicine-man, who was beyond all wizards, andupon whom witchcraft was powerless, and who prepared a poison for suchof the chief's enemies as it was not expedient to openly destroy; andthis poison, he explained to me, was of a secret and mysterious nature, and unknown to any other tribe. "My curiosity was somewhat aroused, and I questioned him, whereupon hetold me that the drug, being tasteless, was given in food or drink, andthat the victim was seized with a terrible and immeasurable sadness anddepth of despair, in which life appeared too horrible to endure, andwhich the unfortunate always ended by seizing a weapon of some sort andkilling himself; and the chief, being of an inquiring mind, had causedthe poison to be administered to a man who was carefully guarded andallowed no weapon. "'And what did he do?' I queried, for the chief assured me that the drugitself did not produce death, but only caused an irresistible desire forit. "The chief did not reply in words, but with a meaning smile, pointed toa vein on his black wrist, and set his sharp, pointed teeth against it, in a way that was a reply. "I was anxious to see for myself, naturally, suspecting somehocus-pocus, so I ventured to be respectfully dubious. "The chief was in an amiable mood; he bade me visit his tent with myservant at moon-rise, and he would prove that this was no lie, but thetruth. "When we went out, it was about eleven o'clock, and the surroundingjungle was full of the horrible noises of an African night; the wail ofthe small lemur, that sounds like the death-moan of a child; the moredistant roar of the lion in the black depths of the forest, too thickfor the moonlight to ever penetrate; the giant trees of the bombaxaround the encampment, wreathed with llianes and parasitical poisonvines that cast fantastic shadows on the ground, white with theperfectly white moonlight of the tropics, that reminds one of theelectric light in its purity of ray and the blackness of the shadowsthat contrast with it. "Noiselessly my black servant and I proceeded to the chief's enclosure. His slaves permitted us to pass, by his orders, and we found ourselvesin his tent, where he sat in grave silence on a pile of skins, the flareof a torch revealing fitfully the ugly face of the medicine-man, crouched with due humility on the earthen floor at his master's feet. After an exchange of compliments, his highness informed me that he hadordered one of his female slaves to be brought, that the poison hadalready been administered without her knowledge, and he also brieflyremarked, as a proof of his clemency, that it was fortunate for her thatthe white man had doubted the drink, as otherwise she would have beengiven over to torture, since she had proved unfaithful to her lord, thechief having bestowed her on one of his sentries, whom she had betrayedwith a soldier. "As he spoke sounds were heard outside, and, between two guards, theunfortunate woman was dragged into the tent. It was not lawful for herto address the chief, so she stood, panting, dishevelled, but silent, inthe yellow torchlight. Her hair was nearly straight and hung in tangleson her beautiful shoulders; without so much as a girdle for covering, she felt no shame, but only looked about with rolling, terrified eyes, the picture of a snared animal. "No one spoke. She stood swaying from side to side, her beautiful figurepliant as grass. "Finally, with a long moan, she threw herself at the chief's feet. Heregarded her impassively, and she gathered herself into a sittingposture, rocking to and fro, her head buried in her arms. " "And you made no remonstrance?" I said. "The poison had already been administered, my dear Lewis, " said Hilyard. "And beside, it was in the interest of science. It really seemed ashame to pick out such a beautiful creature; they are so rare in thosetribes, " he continued, regretfully. "Well, we sat there, perfectly mute, for about half an hour, I suppose. The chief was almost as impassive as an Englishman. I have seen theAlmehs in Cairo, but I have never seen real poetry of motion--mind morecompletely expressed by matter--than that woman's body translating theanguish she endured; languor turning to deep weariness, weariness toagony, agony to despair. There was not a note in the gamut of mentalsuffering that she left unstruck--that savage, whom one would not guesspossessed a mind. There came a pause. She looked about with a wild, fixed purpose in her eyes; like a panther she leaped on me with hersinuous body, in a second she had snatched the knife from my belt, andhad fallen on the earthen floor, her head almost severed from the trunkby the violence of the blow she had struck at her throat with the keenblade. The chief made a sign to the guards who had brought her in (oneof whom, by the way, was her deceived husband) to remove the body, andthen he inquired, with some satisfaction, if I believed in the drug. "I was about to leave on the morrow for the coast, and I begged with allhumility for the formula, or what answered for it, of the medicine-man, who shook his head decidedly. "From a corner of the tent he produced a small wicker cage, in thebottom of which lay coiled a snake of a bright orange yellow color, whose very triangular head showed it to be an especially venomousvariety of the _naja_ species. "Muttering a few words and crooning to it after the manner ofsnake-charmers, it presently became lethargic, and he seized it by theneck and poured a few drops from an earthen bottle down its throat; thenhe dropped its tawny coils into its cage again, and placed the cage infront of me. Soon the serpent roused. It glided frantically about itscage; like a trail of molten gold was its color. Suddenly it coiled uponitself in a spiral, and _stung itself to death_! "After the most profound praise and flattery, and the present of alittle glass medicine dropper which I chanced to have with me, and asmall quantity of arsenic, which he tested with very satisfactoryresults, on a dog, he gave me a portion of the drug, but I'm sorry tosay I could not prevail on the old scoundrel to give or sell the secretof its composition, " concluded Hilyard regretfully, lifting the phialwith tenderness. "I've tried to analyze it myself, and I sent it to acelebrated chemist, but the ingredients completely defy classification, and tests seem powerless to determine anything except that they arepurely vegetable, " he said, shaking the liquid angrily, and then risingto lock it in his cabinet. I, too, rose with a shudder, half-believing, half-sceptical, yet nonethe less with a strong distaste for the memory of the story I had justheard. I left Hilyard arranging the shelf of his cabinet, and openingthe long French window I walked out on the lawn. Under the elm I saw Mrs. Mershon, Amy's aunt, with whom we were allstaying. Kate Mershon was idly tossing a tennis-ball into the air, andmaking ineffectual strokes at it with a racquet, and at Mrs. Mershon'sfeet sat Amy, reading, the golden sunlight resting tenderly on her head, and bringing out the reddish tones of her hair. We were to be married ina month, and she looked so beautiful in the peace and quiet of thewaning day, that I wished we two were alone that I might take her in myyearning arms and raise that exquisite colorless face to my lips. Shenever seemed so lovely as when contrasted with Kate's mature, sensualbeauty, dark and rich as the Creole, and completely devoid of that touchof the pure and heavenly without which no woman's face is perfect to me. Amy was brilliant, full of raillery at times, but in the depths ofthose great clear eyes, like agates, in the candor of that white face, like a tea-rose, one read the beautiful chastity of soul in whosepresence passion becomes mixed with a reverence that sanctifies it. Later that evening, when the drawing-room was gay with light and music, and Kate was singing one of Judie's least objectionable songs, with averve and grace of gesture that the prima donna herself need not havedespised, Amy and I went out on the moonlit lawn, leaving Hilyardleaning over the piano, and Mrs. Mershon sleeping peacefully in acorner. We strolled up and down the gravelled path in a silence morepregnant than words, and I felt my darling's hands clasped on my arm, and heard her gown sweep the little pebbles along the walk. Something brought to my mind the conversation with Hilyard, and I halfthought to repeat it, but the night seemed too peaceful to sully bytelling a tale of such horrors, and beside, I fancied Amy dislikedHilyard, although he had been intimate with the family for years, and infact, he and Amy had almost grown up together; but he had beentravelling for three years, and since his return Amy declared that hehad grown cynical and hard, and altogether disagreeable, and as I reallyliked him, although our ideas on most subjects were radically opposed, Ithought I would not connect him, in Amy's mind, with an unpleasantstory. I looked down into the delicate face lifted to mine, and pressed afervent kiss on the cream-white cheek. There was usually, even in hertenderest moments, a certain virginal shrinking from a caress that wasan added charm, but to-night she moved closer to my side, and eventouched her lips to mine shyly, an occurrence so rare that I trembledwith joy, realizing as never before, that this sweet white flower wasall my own. I wanted to kiss her again, and with more fervor, upon themouth, but for her I had the feeling that I could not guard her, thisdear blossom of purest whiteness, too jealously. I would no more havepermitted myself, during our betrothal, to give her a very ardentcaress, the memory of which, however harmless it might seem to themajority of affianced people, might cause her a troubled thought, than Iwould have permitted a stranger to kiss my sister. Her maiden shynesswas a bloom which I did not wish to brush off. I took her hand in my ownas we turned to retrace our steps to the house, and stood looking downat her in the wonderful September moonlight. She seemed a vestal virgin, in her long, clinging dress of white wool, with a scarf thrown about herhead and throat. Within, Kate had finished her selections from opera and bouffe, and outinto the soft evening drifted her rich contralto in the yearning strainsof the "Blumenlied. " "I long to lay in blessing My hands upon thy hair, Praying that God may preserve thee So pure, so bright, so fair!" I bent over and touched my lips to Amy's forehead reverently. "God keepyou, my snow-flower!" I whispered. And then we went silently intogether. The next day was so fine that Mrs. Mershon decided to drive over to theneighboring town in the afternoon for some shopping, and Hilyard, needing some simple chemicals for an experiment, which he hoped to findthere at the chemist's, accompanied her. Kate and Amy and I had intendedto go to a friend's for tennis, but at luncheon I received a telegramcalling me to the city on urgent business. We were only a half hour'strip out, but I thought I might be detained until too late for dinner, so promising to return as early in the evening as possible, I hurriedoff. On arriving in New York, I found the affair which had threatened to bea prolix one, only demanded a few minutes' attention from me. I strolledinto the Club; there chanced to be no one there whom I cared to see; thecity was hot and ill-smelling, and I decided I could not do better thansurprise Amy by returning earlier than she expected, and accordingly Itook the first train out, walking up from the station. The little villa looked quite deserted as I approached. I wondered ifAmy and Kate had gone to the Waddells' without me. I went to the sidedoor, and hearing voices in the library, I went softly into the backdrawing-room, with the foolish, boyish thought that I would walk insuddenly and interrupt an exchange of confidences which I should pretendto have overheard. I do not know what impelled me to play such anantiquated, worn-out trick; however, I was just advancing into the roomthrough the wide-open but curtained doorway, when a chance sentencemade me pause, struck as by a blow in the face. Through an interstice, left by an ill-adjusted fold of the portière, I had a glimpse of theroom. My betrothed, in one of her favorite white negligées, wasstretched on the Turkish divan by the open fireplace, filled now with anenormous bowl of flowers. Her arms were raised above her head, and therewas an enigmatic smile on her lips; her face had the sleepy wisdom ofthe Sphinx. Kate was crouched on the floor by her side, listeningeagerly. Now and then she would say: "Oh! how clever you were!" "So henever guessed. " "Yes, yes, and then, what did he say then?" urging heron with a feverish greed for details, which my affianced did not disdainto impart lazily, the faint, contemptuous smile always upon the pinklips I had not ventured to kiss with ardor. I did not know that I was listening, as I stood there, panting forbreath, my hand clutched against my throat, lest I should groan in myagony. Phrase by phrase, I heard the whole dreadful story, told, without the shadow of regret or repentance, by the woman in whom Ibelieved as I believed in Heaven, told with cynical laughter instead, and impatient contempt of the innocence, sullied years ago byHilyard--the friend I trusted and loved. I could draw to-day exactly thepattern of that portière, the curling leaves of dull crimson, theintricate tracery of gold thread. "And Lewis?" suggested Kate, at length. Amy rolled her head restlessly on the pillow. The soft golden hair wasloosened from its pins, and fell over the slender shoulders. "Oh! well, one must marry, you know, " she said, indifferently. I moved away silently and unnoticed. I went to brush my hair aside frommy wet forehead, and noticed, parenthetically, that my hand was soiledwith blood, where my nails had bitten the palm. With the death of loveand faith in me had come an immense capacity for cunning, concealmentand cruelty, the trinity of power that abides in certain beasts. Camealso a dull purpose, growing each moment in strength. I do not remember that I felt a single throe of expiring love, the lovethat had filled my heart to the brim. An immeasurable nausea of disgustovercame me, to the exclusion of other ideas, a fixed sense that a thingso dangerous in its angelic disguise, so poisonous and loathsome, mustnot remain on earth; this jest of Satan must be removed lest itcontaminate all with whom it came in contact. Yet did there live anybeing uncontaminated already? Were not all vile, even as she was vile?My brain reeled. Surely to the eyes of any beholder, she was theincarnation of purity! That which animated me was not a personal senseof grievance so much as the inborn, natural desire one feels toexterminate a pest, to crush a reptile, the more dangerous that itcrawls through flowers to kill. As I have said, I felt power forstrategy, unknown to my nature before, rising in me. Certain ideas weresuggested to me, on which I acted with coolness and promptness. I feltlike a minister of God's will, charged with destruction. It no longerremained for me to decide what to do: some power dwelling in me impelledme, against which I could not, even if I would, have struggled. I went to my room, still unobserved, washed my face and hands, andlooking in the mirror, saw my face reflected, calm and placid, unmarkedby the last half-hour. I descended the stairs, and came in by the porch. Amy sprang up from the couch as I entered, gaily humming a tune. Itchanced to be the song to which we had listened the night before: "I fain would lay in blessing, "-- She drew her loose tea-gown about her, and tried to gather up theunfastened masses of golden hair, with a charming blush. "Lewis!" she exclaimed. "Where did you come from? How you frightenedme!" "Well, you see, after all, I was not detained so long, and I thought ifI hurried back, we might go to the Waddells'! I heard nothing of you, soI just ran up to get off the city dust concluding you had gone onwithout me. In fact, I was starting over there, when I thought you mightbe in here, so I came back--and found you. But it's rather late to go, don't you think?" said I. I had retreated to the window and stood withmy back studiously turned, while my betrothed repaired the ravages madein her toilet by her siesta. "Yes, indeed, " said Kate, "It is too late by far, and so hot! Let us belazy until dinner. Do you want to read to us while we embroider? I knowyou do!" and going to the book-case, she brought one of Hamerton'sbooks which I had been reading aloud to them the day before. Amy had quietly disappeared, and came down in an incredibly short timein a fresh, simple gown, with her work in her hand. I read until dinner, or rather until it was time to dress, and then I laid the book aside, and went up-stairs with the rest. Hilyard and Mrs. Mershon might returnat any time. I stole downstairs, and into the room devoted to Hilyard'schemical experiments. Fool! I had forgotten to bring a cup or bottlewith me. I looked hurriedly around the bare room, and discovering abroken bottle on a shelf, I took the key of the cabinet from its placeand unlocked it. Yes, there in the corner stood the rough glass bottle, with the metalaround it. I removed the stopper, and having no idea of the amountnecessary to produce the desired result, poured out severaltablespoonfuls, filling up the phial from the faucet at the rough sinkin one corner of the room. I replaced the phial, locked the cabinet, and concealing the broken bottle in my dressing-gown, lest I should meetone of the servants, I retraced my steps to my own room. I was notwholly credulous of its marvellous properties, although Hilyard was notgiven to boasting or lying--except to women--but I believed it at leastto be a poison, and I believed that it defied analysis, as he said. I took from my drawer a pocket flask of sherry, and emptying all but awine glass, I added the drug, first tasting and inhaling it, to makesure it had neither perceptible flavor nor odor. Then I locked the flaskin my dressing-case as the dinner-bell rang. We were a merry party that night. Mrs. Mershon went to sleep as usual inthe easy-chair in the corner, but Hilyard was gayer than I had seen himfor weeks. A capital mimic, he gave us some of his afternoon'sexperiences in the little country town, occasionally rousing Mrs. Mershon with a start by saying, "Isn't that so, Aunt?" and she, with acorroborative nod and smile, would doze off again. Cards were suggested, but, mindful of my hand, its palm still empurpled and scarified, Isuggested that Kate sing for us instead, and we kept her at the pianountil she insisted that Amy should take her place. Amy was tired, she declared, and indeed, the rose-white face did lookpaler than its wont, but she went to the piano and sang Gounod's "AveMaria, " and two or three airs from Mozart. She always sang sacred music. Then she sank into a chair, looking utterly fatigued. "There, Amy, " I exclaimed, "I have just the thing for you. I went intoLafitte's to-day to order some claret down, and he insisted on filling aflask with some priceless sherry for me. I'll bring you a glass. " Amyprotested, "indeed she did not need it, she should be better to-morrow, "with a languid glance from those clear eyes; but I ran up to my room, and returned with the flask. "Just my clumsiness, " I said, ruefully looking at the flask, "I uncorkedit, to see if it were really all he said, and I've spilled nearly thewhole of it. " "Oh! come now, Lewis, " laughed Hilyard, "Is that the best story you caninvent?" I laughed too, as I brought a glass, and poured out all that remained. Hilyard, I had managed, should hold the glass, and as I assumed toexamine the flask, he carried the wine to Amy. Not that I wished, incase of future inquiries, to implicate him, but I felt a melodramaticdesire that he should give his poison to Amy with his own hand: the wishto seethe the kid in its mother's milk. I watched her slowly drain the glass, without one pang that I had givenher death to drink. I experienced an atrocious satisfaction in feelingthat no chance whim had deterred her from consuming it all. I took theflask to my room again, saying that I had forgotten a letter from mymother, which I wished Amy to read, as it contained a tender message forher. As I stood alone in my room a fear overcame me that I had been acredulous fool. Suppose the whole story of the drug were a fabrication, what a farce were this! Who ever heard of a poison with so strange aneffect? True, but who had ever heard of chloroform a century ago? Let itgo that he was a discoverer, and I the first to profit by it. I wouldtake this ground, at least until it was disproved; time enough then todevise other means. Amy's room was next to mine; on the other side slept--and soundly, too, I would wager--her aunt. Indeed, our rooms connected by a door, alwayslocked and without a key, of course. By a sudden impulse I took out mybunch of keys. Fortune favored me; an old key, that of my room atCollege, not only fitted perfectly, but opened it as softly as onecould wish, and the door itself never creaked. Locking it again, I wentinto Amy's room through the hall. A low light was burning. I lookedabout anxiously. Would she find the necessary means at hand withoutarousing the household? It must be. Suicide must be quite apparent, andthe instrument must be suggested by its presence, without any search. Among the trinkets in the large tray on her bureau, lay a tiny daggerwith a sheath. I remembered the day Hilyard gave it to her. The rainyday when we were all looking over his Eastern curiosities, and she hadadmired it, and he had insisted on her accepting it. The handle was ofcarved jade, representing a lizard whose eyes were superb rubies, and aband of uncut rubies ran around the place where the little curved bladebegan. Ah! that was it! The very stones made one dream of drops ofblood. I laid it carelessly on the bureau, at the edge of the tray. Ifshe noticed its displacement, she would think the maid had been lookingat it, and the very fact of her picking it up and laying it among herother trinkets would bring it to her thoughts when she awoke, with mindset on death. _His_ poison, _his_ dagger--what fitness! Heaven itselfwas helping me, and approving my ridding earth of this Lamia whose bloodran evil. When I gave Amy the letter, she took it languidly, saying she would readit in her room; she was going to bed; the wine had made her drowsy; andthe others, too, declaring themselves worn with the great heat of theday, we bade each other good-night, and the house was soon silent. I undressed on going to my room, since, in case of certain events, itwould be to my interest to appear to have just risen from bed, and Ieven lay down, wrapped in my dressing-gown, and put out my light. Ialmost wondered that I felt no greater resentment and rage at Hilyard, yet my sense of justice precluded it. As well blame the tree aroundwhich the poison vine creeps and clings. I looked deeper than would theworld, which doubtless, judging from the surface, would have condemnedhim rather than her, had all been known. She of the Madonna face and theangel smile, anything but wronged? Never! The world would have acquittedher triumphantly had she committed all the sins of the Borgias. Formyself, alas! I had heard her own lips condemn her, when, led by wantonrecklessness, or the occult sense of sympathy, she had talked to hercousin this afternoon. Hilyard? Yes, it had chanced to be Hilyard, butshe, and not he, was most to blame. Hers was not a sin wept over andexpiated by remorse and tears; it was the soul, the essence of being, that was corrupt to the very core in her. Had madness seized me when Ilistened? I know not. I know I lay calmly and quietly, certain onlythat it was well she was to die, certain that, if this failed, she mustdie in another way before night came again, pitying neither her normyself in the apathy which held me, believing myself only the instrumentof some mighty power which was directing me, and against whose will Icould not rebel, if I wished. For some time I could hear my betrothed moving about in her room; thenall was quiet, and she had doubtless lain down to sleep. By themoonlight that filled my room I consulted my watch after a little while, feeling that I had lost all sense of time, and found that it was halfpast twelve, and that we had been upstairs over an hour. I concluded itwould hardly be safe to open the door yet; she might not be asleep. Foranother half hour I lay patiently waiting. My mind was not excited, andI reviewed rather the trifling events of my few hours in the city thanwhat had transpired since. At last I rose, and in the dead quiet I moved softly to the connectingdoor. I knew that it was concealed in Amy's room by a heavy portière, and as it opened on my side, I had only to hide myself behind thecurtain's folds--as once before on that previous day, alas!--and, unguessed by her, watch her at my ease. The key moved gently in the lock; the lock yielded; a moment more and Ihad pulled a tiny fold of the curtain aside, and commanded a full viewof the silent room. It was flooded with moonlight, and as light as day. The bed was curtained, after the English fashion, but I fancied I couldhear a slight rustle of the coverings, as though one were roused, andstirring restlessly. So light was the room that I could discern thearticles on the bureau and dressing-table. A branch of a great elm, which grew at the side of the house, stretched across one window, andits leaves, dancing in the night-breeze, made an ever-changing patternin shadow on the carpet. Did ever accepted lover keep such a tryst asmine before? And she, just waking from her first sleep behind thedelicate white curtains of that bed, her tryst was with death, not withlove. From the grove back of the house came a whip-poor-will's plaintive song, pulsing in a tide of melody on the moonlit air. Was it a moan from thebed, half-coherent and hopeless in cadence? Heaven grant that she wakenno one until it is too late, I thought fervently. I heard her step fromthe bed. Once I would have hidden my eyes as devoutly as the paganblinded himself lest he should see Artemis, on whom it was desecrationto look, but now I hesitated no more to gaze on her than on any otherbeautiful hateful thing which I should crush. Her loveliness stirredneither my senses nor my compassion; both were forever dead, I knew, towoman. Full in the stream of moonlight she stood, the soft, white foldsof her nightdress enveloping her from the throat to the small feet theyhalf hid. Her eyes were wide open, she was awake. She remained for some moments by the window, meditating, apparently. Shetalked to herself rapidly and in low undertones. What would I have givento be able to hear all she thus said! Her expression was one of deepmental agony, and I began to feel a growing confidence. How can wordsexpress the hideousness of the change of countenance, the indescribablehorror and distress of a creature that is being pressed closer andcloser toward a yawning gulf of blackness from which there is no escape?How relate the outward signs of an inward terror at which we can butvaguely guess? Would that I could have penetrated to the depths of thatsoul for one instant to realize completely the bitterness of the dregsit was draining! She advanced to the middle of the room; she stretchedout both arms with a gesture of horror and despair. A long, convulsiveshudder shook her from head to foot. Her eyes filled with the unearthlyfear of one who sees walls closing in on her, of one bound, who seesflames creeping closer and closer. In one instant I could see her passthe line dividing mere mental anguish from insanity; the unmistakablelight of madness shone in her glance. With a cry of delight she seizedthe little dagger. She was rushing down the corridor like the wind. Should I follow her? I hesitated a moment. I heard a long, low cry ofmental agony; all the sounds of a house aroused from slumber by somedreadful calamity. Had she gone to Hilyard's room, to die on his threshold? It was silentonce more, except for the exclamations from the different bed-chambers, and the hurrying sounds of footsteps down the corridor. Then I, too, following the rest of the household, entered the room of death. Amy satcurled up on the side of the bed, laughing like a pleased child at thered stream that trickled from Hilyard's breast among the light bedcoverings, and dripped slowly to the floor. * * * * * Although I am never gay any more, I am not unhappy, for I am more thansatisfied with the effect of Hilyard's African drug. It is true that itdid not fulfill with accuracy all that he claimed for it; perhaps I gavean overdose, or too little. If that is the case, he suffered for nothaving been more exact. He should have mentioned, in telling his littlestory, the amount necessary. However, as I say, I have no reason to findfault with its results in this case. In looking over the effects of the deceased for Mrs. Mershon, Iconcluded that I should probably meet with no occasion to use the littleglass phial again, and as the drug seemed to be rather uncertain in itsultimate effect, I decided, after some reflection, to throw it away, andaccordingly I emptied it out of the laboratory window on the flower-bedbeneath. I half expected to see the rose-bushes wither under it, but itonly shone slimily on the leaves for a while, and then was washed off bya timely shower. My friends have not tormented me with condolences, for as one of themwrote me, the grief that had befallen me was beyond the reach of humanconsolation. There are few indeed who lose a friend by death, and abetrothed wife by madness, in one terrible night. My fidelity, it issaid, is most pathetic, to her who is hopelessly lost to me, for thoughyears have passed by, I am still so devoted to her memory, that no otherwoman has claimed a moment of my attention. And my sister who is rathersentimental in her expressions, declares that the love I had for Amydrained my nature dry. I think she is possibly right. AN EVENING WITH CALLENDER. The room was filled with a blue haze of tobacco smoke, and I had madeall of it, for Callender, it seemed to me, had foresworn most of his oldhabits. He used not once to lie back languidly in a lounging-chair, neither smoking, nor talking, nor drinking punch, when a chum came tosee him. Indeed, after the first effervescence of our meeting, naturalafter a separation of four years, had subsided, I found such a differentTom Callender from the one who had wrung my hand in parting on the deckof the _Marius_, that I had indulged in sundry speculations, and Istudied him attentively beneath half-closed lids, as I apparentlywatched the white rings from my cigar melt into the air. Where, precisely, was the change? It was hard to say. The long, thinfigure was nerveless in its poses; the slender brown hand that had hada characteristic vigor, lying listlessly open on the arm of his chair, no longer looked capable of a tense, muscular grasp of life; theslightly elongated oval of the face, with its complexion and hair likethe Japanese, was scarcely more hollowed or lined than before, but ithad lost that expression of expectation, which is one of the distinctivemarks of youth in the face. He had been politely attentive to myexperiences in Rio Janeiro, with which I have no doubt I bored himunutterably, but when I asked about old friends, or social life, helapsed into the indifference of the man for whom such things no longerexist: reminiscence did not interest him. I asked him about the playsnow on at the leading theatres--he had not seen them; about the newprima donna--he had not heard her. Finally I broke a long silence bypicking up a book from the table at my side. "Worth reading?" I asked, nibbling at it here and there. (It was a novel, with "Thirty-fifththousand" in larger letters than the title on the top of its yellowcover. ) As I spoke, a peculiar name, the name of a character on the leafI was just turning, brought suddenly to my mind one of the few women Ihad known who bore it. "By the way, Callender, " I said animatedly, striking down the page thathad recalled her with my finger, "What has become of your littleblue-stocking friend? Don't you know--her book was just out when Isailed, --'On Mount Latmos, '--'On Latmos Top, '--what was it?" A dark flush burnt its way up to the black, straight hair. "She is--dead, " Callender replied, with a hopeless pause before thehopeless word. "Dead!" I echoed, unable to associate the idea of death with theincarnation of life that I remembered. Callender did not reply. He rose, with the slight limp so familiar to mein the past, but which I noticed now as if I had never seen it before, and went to a desk at the far end of the spacious room. I smoked onmeditatively. It was odd, I thought, that chance had guided me straightas an arrow, to the cause of the change in my friend. One might haveknown, though, that he, the misogynist of our class, would have come togrief, sooner or later, over a woman. They always end by that. I heard him unlocking a drawer, turning over some papers, and presentlyhe limped back to his chair, bringing a heavy envelope. He took from ita photograph, which he gave to me in silence. Yes, that was she, yet notthe same--oh! not the same--as when I had seen her the few times fouryears ago. These solemn eyes were looking into the eyes of death, andthe face, frightfully emaciated, yet so young and brave, sunk in therich masses of hair. It was too pitiful. Callender had taken a package of manuscript from the envelope; the longsupple fingers were busy among the leaves, and he bent his head to seethe numbered pages. At last, having arranged them in order, he leanedback again in his chair, holding the papers tenderly in his hand. Therewas nothing of the _poseur_ in Callender; his childlike simplicity ofmanner invested him with a touching dignity even though he owned himselfvanquished, where another man would have faced life more bravely, norhave held it entirely worthless because of one narrow grave which shutforever from the light a woman who had never loved him. "I think you would like to read this, " he said at length. "And I wouldlike to have you. To her, it cannot matter. I wanted to marry her, toward the end, so I could take care of her. --She was poor, youknow--but she would not consent. She left me this, without any message. I knew her so well, she thought it would be easier for me to forgether; but now I shall never forget her. " He gave me the little package of leaves, whose rough edges showed thatthey had been hurriedly cut from a binding, and then he fell again intohis old lethargic attitude. I am not an imaginative man, but a faintodor from the paper brought like a flash to my mind the brilliant, mutinous face, radiant with color and life, that I had seen last acrossa sea of white shoulders and black coats at a reception a few weeksbefore I went to South America. The writing was the hurried, illegiblehand of an author. I thought grimly that I had probably chanced upon amuch weakened and Americanized Marie Bashkirtseff, for though I had onlybeen home a few weeks, it goes without saying that I had read a part atleast of the ill-fated young Russian's dairy. Yet in the presence of thegrief-stricken face, outlined against the dark leather chair-back, Ifelt a pang of shame at a thought bordering on levity. There was indeedone likeness: both were the unexpurgated records of hearts laidruthlessly bare; both were instinct with life: in every line one couldfeel the warm blood throbbing. A few of the pages of this journal, which I copy word for word from themanuscript lying before me, I give the reader. Call the dead writer anegotist, if you will: wonder at Callender's love for this self-centrednature; I think she was an artist, and as an artist, her experience isof value to art. "_December_--18--. "I have just torn out some pages written a year or so ago. A diary ofthe introspective type is doubtless a pandering to egotism, but I havealways detested that affectation which ignores the fact that each personis to him or herself the most interesting soul--yes, and body--in theuniverse, and now there is nothing of such infinite importance to me asthis. I fear I shall never write again. All thought or plan, in proseor verse, seems dead in me: broken images and pictures that are wildlydisconnected float through my tired mind. I have driven myself all day. I have been seated at my desk, with my pen in my hand, looking blanklyat the paper. No words, no words! Just before my first book went topress, I overworked. I was in a fever; poems, similes, ran through myexcited hours. I could not write fast enough. In that mental debauch Ibelieve that I squandered the energy of years, and now I can conceive nomore. If I could only sleep, perhaps I could write. Oh! long, longnights, crowded with the fearful acceleration of trival thoughts crushedone upon another, crowding so fast. 'My God, ' I pray, 'Let me sleep, only sleep, ' and conquered by this abject need, this wearinessunutterable, I am fain to believe that this gift, common to the bruteand slave, is better than anything my mind can gain for me, and thereis nothing so entirely desirable in all the world as a few hours'oblivion. What a dream came to me this Autumn! The doctor had given me an opiate. At first it had no effect. I tossed as restlessly as before on my hardbed, sighing vainly for the sleep that refused to come. The noises inthe street vexed me. The light from an opposite window disturbed mytired eyes. At last, I slept. Oh! the glow, the radiance unspeakable ofthat dream! I was in a long, low room. A fire leaped on the hearth, asthough it bore a charmed life. Upon the floor was laid a crimson carpet. There were great piles of crimson mattresses and cushions about theroom, the ceiling was covered with a canopy of red silk, drawn to acentre, whence depended a lantern, filling the room with a soft rosytwilight. The mantel was a bank of blood-red roses, and they alsobloomed and died a fragant death in great bowls set here and there aboutthe floor. And in the centre of this glowing, amorous room was a greatcouch of red cushions, and I saw myself there, in the scented warmth, one elbow plunged in the cushions, with a certain expectation in myface. It was very quiet. Far down an echoing, distant corridor I heardfootsteps, and I smiled and pushed the roses about with my foot, for Iwas waiting, and I knew that soft foot-fall drawing nearer, nearer. Myheart filled the silence with its beating. I looked about the room. Wasit ready? Yes, all was ready. The very flowers were waiting to becrushed by his careless feet. The fire had died to a steady ardent glow. How close the steps were drawing! A moment more-- I opened my eyes suddenly. I heard a door shut loudly, the sounds ofboots and clothing flung hurriedly down came through the thin partition, and I knew that the lodger in the next room had tramped heavily up thestairs, and was hastening to throw his clumsy body on the bed. Elsie was breathing softly by my side, and my incredulous, disappointedeyes saw only the reflection on the ceiling, like two great tears oflight, and I slept no more until the morning. I read this, and it sounds coherent. Perhaps I have been needlesslyalarmed, perhaps the fear that is so terrible that I have not written itlest it seems to grow real, is only a foolish fear. I must write, I mustmake myself a name. To bring him that, in lieu of dower, would besomething; but poor, unknown, and of an obscure birth. --Will I not haveearned a short lease of happiness, if I achieve fame for his sake? I will barter all for one week, --no, one day--of happiness. I do notwish to grow old, to outlive my illusions. Only a short respite fromcares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, andlaughter, and ecstatic tears, and intense emotion. I can so wellunderstand the slave in the glorious "_Un nuit de Cléopatre_, " whoresolved a life-time into twelve hours, and having no more left todesire, drank death as calmly as it were a draught of wine. _January_, 9, 18--. "Elsie, my poor little sister, is ill. Only a childish ailment, but Ihave not written for three days, and she has lain, feeble and languid, in my arms, and I have told her stories. We have moved again, and here, thank God! the furniture, and the carpets and the paper do not swear ateach other so violently. I say, thank God! with due reverence. I amtruly and devoutly grateful for the release from that sense of unrestcaused by the twisted red and green arabesques on the floor. Here all issombre. The walls are a dull shade, the carpet neutral, the furniturethe faded brocatelle dedicate to boarding-houses; but it is not so bad. The golden light lies along the floor, and is reflected on my 'Birth ofVenus' on the wall. Above my desk is a small shelf of my best-lovedbooks, --loved now; perhaps I shall destroy them next year, havingabsorbed all their nutriment, even as now, 'I burn all I used toworship. I worship all I used to burn. ' Under the bookrack is a copy ofSevern's last sketch of Keats, the vanquished, dying head of the slainpoet, more brutally killed than the world counts. The eyes are closedand sunken; the mouth, once so prone to kiss, droops pitifully at thecorners; the beautiful temples are hollow. Underneath I have written thewords of de Vigny, the words as true as death, if as bitter: 'Hope isthe greatest of all our follies. ' I need no other curb to my mad dreamsthan this. "It has been cold, so cold to-day. I left Elsie asleep, and went to theoffice of the ---- Magazine with an article I wrote a month or so ago. The truth is, Elsie should have a doctor, and I have no money to payhim. I was almost sure Mr. ---- would take this. He was out, and Iwaited a long time in vain, and finally walked back in the wind andblowing dust, chilled to the heart. I wished to write in the afternoon, but I was so beaten with the weather that I threw myself on the bed byElsie to try to collect my thoughts. It was no use. I found my eyes andmind wandering vaguely about the room. I was staring at the paper friezeof garlanded roses, and the ugly, dingy paper below it of a hideouslilac. What fiend ever suggested to my landlady the combination ofcrimson roses and purplish paper? How I hate my environments! Povertyand sybaritism go as ill together as roses and purple paper, but I havealways been too much given up to the gratification of the eyes and ofthe senses. How well I remember in my first girlhood, how I used to fillbowls with roses, lilacs and heliotrope, in the country June, andputting beneath my cheek a little pillow, whose crimson silk gave medelight, shut my eyes in my rough, unfinished little room, and the valesof Persia and the scented glades of the tropics were mine to wanderthrough. Yes, a dreamer's Paradise, for I was only sixteen then, anduntroubled by any thoughts of Love; yet sometimes Its shadow would enterand vaguely perplex me, a strange shape, waiting always beyond, in themidst of my glowing gardens, and I sighed with a prescient pain. Howhave I known Love since those days? As yet it has brought me but twothings--Sorrow and Expectation. In that fragmentary love-time that wasmine, I well remember one evening after he left me, that I threw myselfon the floor, and kissing the place where his dear foot had been set, Iprayed, still prostrate, the prayer I have so often prayed since. Ibegged of God to let me barter for seven perfect days of love, all theyears that He had, perhaps, allotted to me. But my hot lips plead invain against the dusty floor, and it was to be that instead; he was toleave me while love was still incomplete. But I know we shall meetagain, and I wait. He loved me, and does not that make waiting easy? "My book _must_, it _shall_ succeed. It shall wipe out the stain on mybirth, it shall be enough to the world that I am what I am. To-night Ishall write half the night. No, there is Elsie. To-morrow, then, allday. I shall not move from the desk. Oh! I have pierced my heart, towrite with its blood. It is an ink that ought to survive through thecenturies. Yet if it achieve my purpose for me, I care not if it isforgotten in ten years. "_February_ 12, 18--. "I have seen him to-day, the only man I have ever loved. He loves me nomore. It is ended. What did _I_ say? I do not remember. I knew it all, the moment he entered the room. When he went, I said: 'We shall nevermeet again, I think. Kiss me on the lips once, as in the old days. ' "He looked down at me curiously. He hesitated a moment--then he bent andkissed my mouth. The room whirled about me. Strange sounds were in myears; for one moment he loved me again. I threw myself in a chair, andburied my face in my hands. I cried out to God in my desperate misery. It was over, and he was gone--he who begged once for a kiss, as a slavemight beg for bread! "And now in all this world are but two good things left me, my Art andlittle Elsie. Oh! my book, I clung to it in that bitter moment, as thework which should save my reason to live for the child. " "_February_ 18, 18-- "I have written continuously. I drugged myself with writing as if itwere chloral, against the stabs of memory that assaulted me. There willbe chapters I shall never read, those that I wrote as I sat by my deskthe day after the 12th, the cold, gray light pouring in on me, sometimesholding my pen suspended while I was having a mortal struggle with mywill, forcing back thoughts, driving my mind to work as though it werea brute. I conquered through the day. My work did not suffer; as I readit over I saw that I had never written better, in spite of certain painsthat almost stopped my heart. But at night! ah! if I had had a room tomyself, would I have given myself one moment of rest that night? Would Inot have written on until I slept from fatigue? "But that could not be. Elsie moved restlessly; the light disturbed her. For a moment I almost hated her plaintive little voice, God forgive me!and then I undressed and slipped into bed, and so quietly I lay besideher, that she thought I slept. I breathed evenly and lightly--I ought tobe able to countefeit sleep by this, I have done it times enough. "Well, it is of no avail to re-live that night. I thought there was nohope left in me, but I have been cheating myself, it seems, for itfought hard, every inch of the ground, for survival that night, thoughnow I am sure it will never lift its head again. "And now, as I said, there is nothing left in all earth for me but mysister and my Art. "_Poëte, prends ton luth_. " "_May_ 10, 18--. "My book is a success, that is, the world calls it a success; but in allthe years to come he will never love me again, therefore to me it is afailure, having failed of its purpose, its reason for being. What doeshe care for the fame it has brought me, since he no longer loves me? "Had it only come a year ago! "I went to see Mrs. ---- to-day, and I started to hear his voice in thehall, as I sat waiting in the dim drawing-room. He was just going out, having been upstairs, Mrs. ---- said, to look at the children's fernery;and I, as I heard that voice, I could have gone out and thrown myself athis feet across the threshold, those cadences so stole into my heart andhead, bringing the old madness back. I had one of the sharp attacks ofpain at the heart, and Mrs ---- sent me home in the carriage. Elsie isin the country, well and strong. I am so glad. These illnesses frightenher sorely. I am perhaps growing thin and weak, but I cannot die, alas!Let the beauty go. I no longer care to preserve it. "When I reached home, I lay in the twilight for some time on the sofa, not having strength to get up to my room. There is, there can be, nopossible help or hope in my trouble, no fruition shall follow thepromises Spring time held for me. "Oh, God! if there be a God! but why do I wish to pray? Have I notprayed before, and not only no answer was vouchsafed, but no sensationof a listening Power, a loving Presence, assuaged my pain. Yet, human orbrute, we must make our groans, though futile, when we are in the graspof a mortal agony. "_June_ 20, 18--. "I have been thankless. I have been faithless. Let me bless God's name, for He has heard my prayer at last, and he will let me die--very soon. "It was so cool in the doctor's office this morning. The vines about thewindow made lovely shadows on the white curtains and the floor. Thelight was soft. His round, ruddy German face was almost pale as hestammered out technical terms, in reply to my questions. "'Oh, Mees!' he said, throwing up his fat hands. 'You ask so mooch! Den, if I frighten you, you faints, you gets worse. No, no, I will not haveit!' "But at last, reassured by my calmness, he told me, as I leaned on theback of his high office chair. A month more, or perhaps two. Not verymuch pain, he thought. But certain. And I, faithless, have believed thegood God did not listen when I prayed! "Little Elsie is safe and happy with our aunt. Already she seldom talksof me. Yet I have had her, my care, my charge, for almost six years. Children soon forget. There will be a little money for her education, and Aunt wishes to adopt her. There is nothing that I need grieve toleave behind. "If he had still loved me, if it were circumstance that kept our livesapart, I could send for him then; but to die in arms that held me onlyout of compassion--glad to relinquish their burden as soon as mightbe--no, I must go without seeing his face again. "And to-night I can only feel the great gladness that it is to be. Suppose I knew that there were twenty-five more such years as these!Suppose it should be a mistake, and I had to live! * * * * * I looked from these last written words to the photograph. My eyes wereblurred, but Tom only leaned back, motionless as before, apathetic asbefore. "How long--" I began, tentatively. "She lived a week after that, " Callender replied, in his dry, emotionless voice. "And the man?" "He was my brother, " replied Callender. "She never saw him again. Hemarried Miss Stockweis about a month after. " I thought of Ralph Callender, cold, correct, slightly bored, as I havealways known him, of Miss Stockweis, a dull, purse-proud blonde. I seized the poor little photograph and raised it reverently to my lips. "Forgive me, Tom, " I said, slightly abashed. (I never could control myimpulses. ) "The best thing you can do is to thank God for her death. Think of a woman like that--" "Thank you, " said Tom wearily. "Yes, I _am_ glad. " And then I grasped the thin brown hand in my own for a moment, and feltit respond faintly to my clasp. We sat as quietly as before in the cheerful, smoke-filled room, Ipuffing slightly at my Ajar, and Tom's sleepless eyes fixed absently onthe wall; and then presently I went to the window and watched the dullgray dawn creep over the still sleeping city. "Well, here's another day, " I said with a sigh, turning back to theroom. "I must go, old fellow. " There was no reply. Startled, I bent over the chair, and looked in theface, scarcely more ivory-white than before. And then I saw that forCallender there would be no more days. THE END.