THE METTLE OF THE PASTURE

BY

JAMES LANE ALLEN

Author of "The Choir Invisible, " "A Kentucky Cardinal, " etc. , etc. 

New York, 1903

To My Sister

PART FIRST

I

She did not wish any supper and she sank forgetfully back into thestately oak chair. One of her hands lay palm upward on her whitelap; in the other, which drooped over the arm of the chair, sheclasped a young rose dark red amid its leaves--an inverted torch oflove. 

Old-fashioned glass doors behind her reached from a high ceiling tothe floor; they had been thrown open and the curtains looped apart. Stone steps outside led downward to the turf in the rear of thehouse. This turf covered a lawn unroughened by plant or weed; butover it at majestic intervals grew clumps of gray pines anddim-blue, ever wintry firs. Beyond lawn and evergreens a flowergarden bloomed; and beyond the high fence enclosing this, tree-topsand house-tops of the town could be seen; and beyond these--away inthe west--the sky was naming now with the falling sun. 

A few bars of dusty gold hung poised across the darkening spaces ofthe supper room. Ripples of the evening air, entering through thewindows, flowed over her, lifting the thick curling locks at thenape of her neck, creeping forward over her shoulders and passingalong her round arms under the thin fabric of her sleeves. 

They aroused her, these vanishing beams of the day, these arrivingbreezes of the night; they became secret invitations to escape fromthe house into the privacy of the garden, where she could be alonewith thoughts of her great happiness now fast approaching. 

A servant entered noiselessly, bringing a silver bowl of frozencream. Beside this, at the head of the table before hergrandmother, he placed scarlet strawberries gathered that morningunder white dews. She availed herself of the slight interruptionand rose with an apology; but even when love bade her go, love alsobade her linger; she could scarce bear to be with them, but shecould scarce bear to be alone. She paused at her grandmother'schair to stroke the dry bronze puffs on her temples--a uniqueimpulse; she hesitated compassionately a moment beside her aunt, who had never married; then, passing around to the opposite side ofthe table, she took between her palms the sunburnt cheeks of ayouth, her cousin, and buried her own tingling cheek in his hair. Instinct at that moment drew her most to him because he was youngas she was young, having life and love before him as she had; only, for him love stayed far in the future; for her it came to-night. 

When she had crossed the room and reached the hall, she paused andglanced back, held by the tension of cords which she dreaded tobreak. She felt that nothing would ever be the same again in thehome of her childhood. Until marriage she would remain under itsdear honored roof, and there would be no outward interruption ofits familiar routine; but for her all the bonds of life would havebecome loosened from old ties and united in him alone whom thisevening she was to choose as her lot and destiny. Under theinfluence of that fresh fondness, therefore, which wells up sostrangely within us at the thought of parting from home and homepeople, even though we may not greatly care for them, she now stoodgazing at the picture they formed as though she were alreadycalling it back through the distances of memory and the changes offuture years. 

They, too, had shifted their positions and were looking at her withone undisguised expression of pride and love; and they smiled asshe smiled radiantly back at them, waving a last adieu with herspray of rose and turning quickly in a dread of foolish tears. 

"Isabel. "

It was the youthful voice of her grandmother. She faced them againwith a little frown of feigned impatience. 

"If you are going into the garden, throw something around yourshoulders. "

"Thank you, grandmother; I have my lace. "

Crossing the hall, she went into the front parlor, took from adamask sofa a rare shawl of white lace and, walking to a mirror, threw it over her head, absently noting the effect in profile. Shelifted this off and, breaking the rose from part of its stem, pinned that on her breast. Then, stepping aside to one of thelarge lofty windows, she stood there under the droop of thecurtains, sunk into reverie again and looking out upon the yard andthe street beyond. 

Hardly a sound disturbed the twilight stillness. A lamplighterpassed, torching the grim lamps. A sauntering carrier threw theevening newspaper over the gate, with his unintelligible cry. Adog-cart rumbled by, and later, a brougham; people were not yetreturned from driving on the country turnpikes. Once, some belatedgirls clattered past on ponies. But already little children, bare-armed, bare-necked, swinging lanterns, and attended by proudyoung mothers, were on their way to a summer-night festival in thepark. Up and down the street family groups were forming on theverandas. The red disks of cigars could be seen, and the laughterof happy women was wafted across the dividing fences and shrubbery, and vines. 

Breaking again through her reverie, which seemed to envelop her, wherever she went, like a beautiful cloud, she left the window andappeared at the front door. Palms stood on each side of thegranite steps, and these arched their tropical leaves far overtoward her quiet feet as she passed down. Along the pavement wereset huge green boxes, in which white oleanders grew, and flamingpomegranates, and crepe myrtle thickly roofed with pink. She wasused to hover about them at this hour, but she strolled past, unmindful now, the daily habit obliterated, the dumb little tiequite broken. The twisted newspaper lay white on the shadowedpavement before her eyes and she did not see that. She walked onuntil she reached the gate and, folding her hands about one of thebrass globes surmounting the iron spikes, leaned over and probedwith impatient eyes the long dusk of the street; as far as he couldbe seen coming she wished to see him. 

It was too early. So she filled her eyes with pictures of thedaylight fading over woods and fields far out in the country. Butthe entire flock of wistful thoughts settled at last about a largehouse situated on a wooded hill some miles from town. A lawnsloped upward to it from the turnpike, and there was a gravelleddriveway. She unlatched the gate, approached the house, passedthrough the wide hall, ascended the stairs, stood at the door ofhis room--waiting. Why did he not come? How could he linger?

Dreamily she turned back; and following a narrow walk, passed tothe rear of the house and thence across the lawn of turf toward thegarden. 

A shower had fallen early in the day and the grass had been cutafterwards. Afternoon sunshine had drunk the moisture, leaving thefragrance released and floating. The warmth of the cooling earthreached her foot through the sole of her slipper. On the plume ofa pine, a bird was sending its last call after the bright hours, while out of the firs came the tumult of plainer kinds as theymingled for common sleep. The heavy cry of the bullbat fell fromfar above, and looking up quickly for a sight of his winnowingwings under the vast purpling vault she beheld the earliest stars. 

Thus, everywhere, under her feet, over her head, and beyond thereach of vision, because inhabiting that realm into which thespirit alone can send its aspiration and its prayer, was oneinfluence, one spell: the warmth of the good wholesome earth, itsbreath of sweetness, its voices of peace and love and rest, themajesty of its flashing dome; and holding all these safe as in thehollow of a hand the Eternal Guardianship of the world. 

As she strolled around the garden under the cloudy flush of theevening sky dressed in white, a shawl of white lace over one arm, arose on her breast, she had the exquisiteness of a long past, during which women have been chosen in marriage for health andbeauty and children and the power to charm. The very curve of herneck implied generations of mothers who had valued grace. Generations of forefathers had imparted to her walk and bearingtheir courage and their pride. The precision of the eyebrow, thechiselled perfection of the nostril, the loveliness of the shortred lip; the well-arched feet, small, but sure of themselves; theeyes that were kind and truthful and thoughtful; the sheen of herhair, the fineness of her skin, her nobly cast figure, --all thesewere evidences of descent from a people, that had reached in herthe purity, without having lost the vigor, of one of its highesttypes. 

She had supposed that when he came the servant would receive himand announce his arrival, but in a little while the sound of a stepon the gravel reached her ear; she paused and listened. It wasfamiliar, but it was unnatural--she remembered this afterwards. 

She began to walk away from him, her beautiful head suddenly archedfar forward, her bosom rising and falling under her clasped hands, her eyes filling with wonderful light. Then regaining composurebecause losing consciousness of herself in the thought of him, sheturned and with divine simplicity of soul advanced to meet him. 

Near the centre of the garden there was an open spot where twopathways crossed; and it was here, emerging from the shrubbery, that they came in sight of each other. Neither spoke. Neithermade in advance a sign of greeting. When they were a few yardsapart she paused, flushing through her whiteness; and he, droppinghis hat from his hand, stepped quickly forward, gathered her handsinto his and stood looking down on her in silence. He was verypale and barely controlled himself. 

"Isabel!" It was all he could say. 

"Rowan!" she answered at length. She spoke under her breath andstood before him with her head drooping, her eyes on the ground. Then he released her and she led the way at once out of the garden. 

When they had reached the front of the house, sounds ofconversation on the veranda warned them that there were guests, andwithout concealing their desire to be alone they passed to a rusticbench under one of the old trees, standing between the house andthe street; they were used to sitting there; they had known eachother all their lives. 

A long time they forced themselves to talk of common and trivialthings, the one great meaning of the hour being avoided by each. Meanwhile it was growing very late. The children had long beforereturned drowsily home held by the hand, their lanterns dropped onthe way or still clung to, torn and darkened. No groups laughed onthe verandas; but gas-jets had been lighted and turned low aspeople undressed for bed. The guests of the family had gone. EvenIsabel's grandmother had not been able further to put away sleepfrom her plotting brain in order to send out to them a finalinquisitive thought--the last reconnoitring bee of all theIn-gathered hive. Now, at length, as absolutely as he could havewished, he was alone with her and secure from interruption. 

The moon had sunk so low that its rays fell in a silvery stream onher white figure; only a waving bough of the tree overhead stillbrushed with shadow her neck and face. As the evening waned, shehad less to say to him, growing always more silent in new dignity, more mute with happiness. 

He pushed himself abruptly away from her side and bending overtouched his lips reverently to the back of one of her hands, asthey lay on the shawl in her lap. 

"Isabel, " and then he hesitated. 

"Yes, " she answered sweetly. She paused likewise, requiringnothing more; it was enough that he should speak her name. 

He changed his position and sat looking ahead. Presently he beganagain, choosing his words as a man might search among terribleweapons for the least deadly. 

"When I wrote and asked you to marry me, I said I should cometo-night and receive your answer from your own lips. If youranswer had been different, I should never have spoken to you of mypast. It would not have been my duty. I should not have had theright. I repeat, Isabel, that until you had confessed your lovefor me, I should have had no right to speak to you about my past. But now there is something you ought to be told at once. "

She glanced up quickly with a rebuking smile. How could he wanderso far from the happiness of moments too soon to end? What was hispast to her?

He went on more guardedly. 

"Ever since I have loved you, I have realized what I should have totell you if you ever returned my love. Sometimes duty has seemedone thing, sometimes another. This is why I have waited solong--more than two years; the way was not clear. Isabel, it willnever be clear. I believe now it is wrong to tell you; I believeIt is wrong not to tell you. I have thought and thought--it iswrong either way. But the least wrong to you and to myself--thatis what I have always tried to see, and as I understand my duty, now that you are willing to unite your life with mine, there issomething you must know. "

He added the last words as though he had reached a difficultposition and were announcing his purpose to hold it. But he pausedgloomily again. 

She had scarcely heard him through wonderment that he could sochange at such a moment. Her happiness began to falter and darkenlike departing sunbeams. She remained for a space uncertain ofherself, knowing neither what was needed nor what was best; thenshe spoke with resolute deprecation:

"Why discuss with me your past life? Have I not known you always?"

These were not the words of girlhood. She spoke from the emotionsof womanhood, beginning to-night in the plighting of her troth. 

"You have trusted me too much, Isabel. "

Repulsed a second time, she now fixed her large eyes upon him withsurprise. The next moment she had crossed lightly once more thewidening chasm. 

"Rowan, " she said more gravely and with slight reproach, "I havenot waited so long and then not known the man whom I have chosen. "

"Ah, " he cried, with a gesture of distress. 

Thus they sat: she silent with new thoughts; he speechless with hisold ones. Again she was the first to speak. More deeply moved bythe sight of his increasing excitement, she took one of his handsinto both of hers, pressing it with a delicate tenderness. 

"What is it that troubles you, Rowan? Tell me! It is my duty tolisten. I have the right to know. "

He shrank from what he had never heard in her voicebefore--disappointment in him. And it was neither girlhood norwomanhood which had spoken now: it was comradeship which ispossible to girlhood and to womanhood through wifehood alone: shewas taking their future for granted. He caught her hand and liftedit again and again to his lips; then he turned away from her. 

Thus shut out from him again, she sat looking out into the night. 

But in a woman's complete love of a man there is something deeperthan girlhood or womanhood or wifehood: it is the maternal--thatdependence on his strength when he is well and strong, that passionof protection and defence when he is frail or stricken. Into hermood and feeling toward him even the maternal had forced its way. She would have found some expression for it but he anticipated her. 

"I am thinking of you, of my duty to you, of your happiness. "

She realized at last some terrible hidden import in all that he hadbeen trying to confess. A shrouded mysterious Shape of Evil wassuddenly disclosed as already standing on the threshold of theHouse of Life which they were about to enter together. The nightbeing warm, she had not used her shawl. Now she threw it over herhead and gathered the weblike folds tightly under her throat asthough she were growing cold. The next instant, with a swiftmovement, she tore it from her head and pushed herself as far aspossible away from him out into the moonlight; and she sat therelooking at him, wild with distrust and fear. 

He caught sight of her face. 

"Oh, I am doing wrong, " he cried miserably. "I must not tell youthis!"

He sprang up and hurried over to the pavement and began to walk toand fro. He walked to and fro a long time; and after waiting forhim to return, she came quickly and stood in his path. But when hedrew near her he put out his hand. 

"I cannot!" he repeated, shaking his head and turning away. 

Still she waited, and when he approached and was turning awayagain, she stepped forward and laid on his arm her quiveringfinger-tips. 

"You must, " she said. "You _shall_ tell me!" and if there wasanger in her voice, if there was anguish in it, there was theauthority likewise of holy and sovereign rights. But he thrust herall but rudely away, and going to the lower end of the pavement, walked there backward and forward with his hat pulled low over hiseyes--walked slowly, always more slowly. Twice he laid his hand onthe gate as though he would have passed out. At last he stoppedand looked back to where she waited in the light, her face setimmovably, commandingly, toward him. Then he came back and stoodbefore her. 

The moon, now sinking low, shone full on his face, pale, sad, veryquiet; and into his eyes, mournful as she had never known any eyesto be. He had taken off his hat and held it in his hand, and alight wind blew his thick hair about his forehead and temples. She, looking at him with senses preternaturally aroused, afterwardsremembered all this. 

Before he began to speak he saw rush over her face a look of finalentreaty that he would not strike her too cruel a blow. This, whenhe had ceased speaking, was succeeded by the expression of one whohas received a shock beyond all imagination. Thus they stoodlooking into each other's eyes; then she shrank back and startedtoward the house. 

He sprang after her. 

"You are leaving me!" he cried horribly. 

She walked straight on, neither quickening nor slackening her pacenor swerving, although his body began unsteadily to intercept hers. 

He kept beside her. 

"Don't! Isabel!" he prayed out of his agony. "Don't leave me likethis--!"

She walked on and reached the steps of the veranda. Crying out inhis longing he threw his arms around her and held her close. 

"You must not! You shall not! Do you know what you are doing, Isabel?"

She made not the least reply, not the least effort to extricateherself. But she closed her eyes and shuddered and twisted herbody away from him as a bird of the air bends its neck and head asfar as possible from a repulsive captor; and like the heart of sucha bird, he could feel the throbbing of her heart. 

Her mute submission to his violence stung him: he let her go. Shespread out her arms as though in a rising flight of her nature andthe shawl, tossed backward from her shoulders, fell to the ground:it was as if she cast off the garment he had touched. Then shewent quickly up the steps. Before she could reach the door heconfronted her again; he pressed his back against it. Shestretched out her hand and rang the bell. He stepped aside veryquickly--proudly. She entered, closing and locking noiselessly thedoor that no sound might reach the servant she had summoned. Asshe did so she heard him try the knob and call to her in anundertone of last reproach and last entreaty:

"_Isabel!--Isabel!--Isabel_!"

Hurrying through the hall, she ran silently up the stairs to herroom and shut herself in. 

Her first feeling was joy that she was there safe from him and fromevery one else for the night. Her instant need was to be alone. It was this feeling also that caused her to go on tiptoe around theroom and draw down the blinds, as though the glimmering windowswere large eyes peering at her with intrusive wounding stare. Thentaking her position close to a front window, she listened. He waswalking slowly backward and forward on the pavement reluctantly, doubtfully; finally he passed through the gate. As it clangedheavily behind him, Isabel pressed her hands convulsively to herheart as though it also had gates which had closed, never to reopen. 

Then she lighted the gas-jets beside the bureau and when she caughtsight of herself the thought came how unchanged she looked. Shestood there, just as she had stood before going down to supper, nowhere a sign of all the deep displacement and destruction thathad gone on within. 

But she said to herself that what he had told her would revealitself in time. It would lie in the first furrows deepening downher cheeks; it would be the earliest frost of years upon her hair. 

A long while she sat on the edge of the couch in the middle of theroom under the brilliant gaslight, her hands forgotten in her lap, her brows arched high, her eyes on the floor. Then her headbeginning to ache, a new sensation for her, she thought she shouldbind a wet handkerchief to it as she had often done for her aunt;but the water which the maid had placed in the room had becomewarm. She must go down to the ewer in the hall. As she did so, she recollected her shawl. 

It was lying on the wet grass where it had fallen. There was ahalf-framed accusing thought that he might have gone for it; butshe put the thought away; the time had passed for courtesies fromhim. When she stooped for the shawl, an owl flew viciously at her, snapping its bill close to her face and stirring the air with itswings. Unnerved, she ran back into the porch, but stopped thereashamed and looking kindly toward the tree in which it made itshome. 

An old vine of darkest green had wreathed itself about the pillarsof the veranda on that side; and it was at a frame-like opening inthe massive foliage of this that the upper part of her pure whitefigure now stood revealed in the last low, silvery, mystical light. The sinking of the moon was like a great death on the horizon, leaving the pall of darkness, the void of infinite loss. 

She hung upon this far spectacle of nature with sad intensity, figuring from it some counterpart of the tragedy taking placewithin her own mind. 

II

Isabel slept soundly, the regular habit of healthy years being toofirmly entrenched to give way at once. Meanwhile deep changes werewrought out in her. 

When we fall asleep, we do not lay aside the thoughts of the day, as the hand its physical work; nor upon awakening return to theactivity of these as it to the renewal of its toil, finding themundisturbed. Our most piercing insight yields no deeper conceptionof life than that of perpetual building and unbuilding; and duringwhat we call our rest, it is often most active in executing itsinscrutable will. All along the dark chimneys of the brain, clinging like myriads of swallows deep-buried and slumbrous inquiet and in soot, are the countless thoughts which lately wingedthe wide heaven of conscious day. Alike through dreaming andthrough dreamless hours Life moves among these, handling andconsidering each of the unredeemable multitude; and when morninglight strikes the dark chimneys again and they rush forth, somethat entered young have matured; some of the old have becomeinfirm; many of which have dropped in singly issue as companies;and young broods flutter forth, unaccountable nestlings of a night, which were not in yesterday's blue at all. Then there are themissing--those that went in with the rest at nightfall but werestruck from the walls forever. So all are altered, for while wehave slept we have still been subject to that on-moving energy ofthe world which incessantly renews us yet transmutes us--doublemystery of our permanence and our change. 

It was thus that nature dealt with Isabel on this night: hours ofswift difficult transition from her former life to that upon whichshe was now to enter. She fell asleep overwhelmed amid the ruinsof the old; she awoke already engaged with the duties of the new. At sundown she was a girl who had never confessed her love; atsunrise she was a woman who had discarded the man she had justaccepted. Rising at once and dressing with despatch, she enteredupon preparations for completing her spiritual separation fromRowan in every material way. 

The books he had lent her--these she made ready to return thismorning. Other things, also, trifles in themselves but until nowso freighted with significance. Then his letters and notes, howmany, how many they were! Thus ever about her rooms she moved onthis mournful occupation until the last thing had been disposed ofas either to be sent back or to be destroyed. 

And then while Isabel waited for breakfast to be announced, alwaysshe was realizing how familiar seemed Rowan's terrible confession, already lying far from her across the fields of memory--with a pathworn deep between it and herself as though she had been traversingthe distance for years; so old can sorrow grow during a littlesleep. When she went down they were seated as she had left themthe evening before, grandmother, aunt, cousin; and they looked upwith the same pride and fondness. But affection has so different aquality in the morning. Then the full soundless rides which comein at nightfall have receded; and in their stead is the glitteringbeach with thin waves that give no rest to the ear or to theshore--thin noisy edge of the deeps of the soul. 

This fresh morning mood now ruled them; no such wholesome reliefhad come to her. So that their laughter and high spirits jarredupon her strangely. She had said to herself upon leaving them theevening before that never again could they be the same to her orshe the same to them. But then she had expected to return isolatedby incommunicable happiness; now she had returned isolated byincommunicable grief. Nevertheless she glided Into her seat withfeigned cheerfulness, taking a natural part in their conversation;and she rose at last, smiling with the rest. 

But she immediately quitted the house, eager to be out of doorssurrounded by things that she loved but that could not observe heror question her in return--alone with things that know not evil. 

These were the last days of May. The rush of Summer had alreadycarried it far northward over the boundaries of Spring, and on thisSunday morning it filled the grounds of Isabel's home with earlywarmth. Quickened by the heat, summoned by the blue, drenched withshowers and dews, all things which have been made repositories ofthe great presence of Life were engaged in realizing the utmostthat it meant to them. 

It was in the midst of this splendor of light and air, fragrance, colors, shapes, movements, melodies and joys that Isabel, theloftiest receptacle of life among them all, soon sat in a secludedspot, motionless and listless with her unstanched and desperatewound. Everything seemed happy but herself; the very brilliancy ofthe day only deepened the shadow under which she brooded. As shehad slipped away from the house, she would soon have escaped fromthe garden had there been any further retreat. 

It was not necessary long to wait for one. Borne across the brownroofs and red chimneys of the town and exploding in the crystal airabove her head like balls of mellow music, came the sounds of thefirst church bells, the bells of Christ Church. 

They had never conveyed other meaning to her than that proclaimedby the town clock: they sounded the hour. She had been toountroubled during her young life to understand their aged argumentand invitation. 

Held In the arms of her father, when a babe, she had been dulychristened. His death had occurred soon afterwards, then hermother's. Under the nurture of a grandmother to whom religion wasa convenience and social form, she had received the strictestceremonial but in no wise any spiritual training. The firstconscious awakening of this beautiful unearthly sense had not takenplace until the night of her confirmation--a wet April evening whenthe early green of the earth was bowed to the ground, and thelilies-of-the-valley in the yard had chilled her fingers as she hadplucked them (chosen flower of her consecration); she and they butrising alike into their higher lives out of the same mysteriousMother. 

That night she had knelt among the others at the chancel and thebishop who had been a friend of her father's, having approached herin the long line of young and old, had laid his hands the moresoftly for his memories upon her brow with the impersonal prayer:

"_Defend, O Lord, this thy child with thy heavenly grace, that shemay continue thine forever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spiritmore and more, until she come unto thy Everlasting Kingdom_. "

For days afterwards a steady radiance seemed to Isabel to rest uponher wherever she went, shed straight from Eternity. She hadavoided her grandmother, secluded herself from the closestcompanions, been very thoughtful. 

Years had elapsed since. But no experience of the soul is everwasted or effaceable; and as the sound of the bells now reached heracross the garden, they reawoke the spiritual impulses which hadstirred within her at confirmation. First heard whispering then, the sacred annunciation now more eloquently urged that in herchurch, the hour of real need being come, she would find refuge, help, more than earthly counsellor. 

She returned unobserved to the house and after quick simplepreparation, was on her way. 

When she slipped shrinkingly into her pew, scarce any one hadarrived. Several women in mourning were there and two or threeaged men. It is the sorrowful and the old who head the human hostin its march toward Paradise: Youth and Happiness loiter far behindand are satisfied with the earth. Isabel looked around with apoignant realization of the broken company over into which she hadso swiftly crossed. 

She had never before been in the church when it was empty. Howhushed and solemn it waited in its noonday twilight--the Divinealready there, faithful keeper of the ancient compact; the humannot yet arrived. Here indeed was the refuge she had craved; herethe wounded eye of the soul could open unhurt and unafraid; and shesank to her knees with a quick prayer of the heart, scarce of thelips, for Isabel knew nothing about prayer in her own words--thatshe might have peace of mind during these guarded hours: therewould be so much time afterwards in which to remember--so manyyears in which to remember!

How still it was! At first she started at every sound: the barelyaudible opening and shutting of a pew door by some careful hand;the grating of wheels on the cobblestones outside as a carriage wasdriven to the entrance; the love-calls of sparrows building in theclimbing oak around the Gothic windows. 

Soon, however, her ear became sealed to all outward disturbance. She had fled to the church, driven by many young impulses, butamong them was the keen hope that her new Sorrow, which had begunto follow her everywhere since she awoke, would wait outside whenshe entered those doors: so dark a spirit would surely not stalkbehind her into the very splendor of the Spotless. But as she nowlet her eyes wander down the isle to the chancel railing where shehad knelt at confirmation, where bridal couples knelt in receivingthe benediction, Isabel felt that this new Care faced her fromthere as from its appointed shrine; she even fancied that in effectit addressed to her a solemn warning:

"Isabel, think not to escape me in this place! It is here thatRowan must seem to you most unworthy and most false; to havewronged you most cruelly. For it was here, at this altar, that youhad expected to kneel beside him and be blessed in your marriage. In years to come, sitting where you now sit, you may live to seehim kneel here with another, making her his wife. But for you, Isabel, this spot must ever mean the renunciation of marriage, thebier of love. Then do not think to escape me here, me, who amRemembrance. "

And Isabel, as though a command had been laid upon her, with hereyes fixed on the altar over which the lights of the stained glasswindows were joyously playing, gave herself up to memories of allthe innocent years that she had known Rowan and of the blind yearsthat she had loved him. 

She was not herself aware that marriage was the only sacrament ofreligion that had ever possessed interest for her. Recollectiontold her no story of how even as a child she had liked to go to thecrowded church with other children and watch the procession of thebrides--all mysterious under their white veils, and following oneand another so closely during springs and autumns that in truththey were almost a procession. Or with what excitement she hadwatched each walk out, leaning on the arm of the man she had chosenand henceforth to be called his in ail things to the end while theloud crash of the wedding march closed their separate pasts with asingle melody. 

But there were mothers in the church who, attracted by the child'sexpression, would say to each other a little sadly perhaps, thatlove and marriage were destined to be the one overshadowing orovershining experience in life to this most human and poetic soul. 

After she had learned of Rowan's love for her and had begun toreturn his love, the altar had thenceforth become the more personalsymbol of their destined happiness. Every marriage that shewitnessed bound her more sacredly to him. Only a few months beforethis, at the wedding of the Osborns--Kate being her closest friend, and George Osborn being Rowan's--he and she had been the onlyattendants; and she knew how many persons in the church werethinking that they might be the next to plight their vows; withcrimsoning cheeks she had thought it herself. 

Now there returned before Isabel's eyes the once radiant processionof the brides--but how changed! And bitter questioning sheaddressed to each! Had any such confession been made to any one ofthem--either before marriage or afterwards--by the man she hadloved? Was it for some such reason that one had been content tofold her hands over her breast before the birth of her child? Wasthis why another lived on, sad young wife, motherless? Was thiswhy in the town there were women who refused to marry at all? Sodoes a little knowledge of evil move backward and darken for useven the bright years in which it had no place. 

The congregation were assembling rapidly. Among those who passedfurther down were several of the girls of Isabel's set. How freshand sweet they looked as they drifted gracefully down the aislesthis summer morning! How light-hearted! How far away from her inher new wretchedness! Some, after they were seated, glanced backwith a smile. She avoided their eyes. 

A little later the Osborns entered, the bride and groom of a fewmonths before. Their pew was immediately in front of hers. Katewore mourning for her mother. As she seated herself, she liftedher veil halfway, turned and slipped a hand over the pew intoIsabel's. The tremulous pressure of the fingers spoke of presenttrouble; and as Isabel returned it with a quick response of herown, a tear fell from the hidden eyes. 

The young groom's eyes were also red and swollen, but for otherreasons; and he sat in the opposite end of the pew as far aspossible from his wife's side. When she a few moments later leanedtoward him with timidity and hesitation, offering him an openprayer-book, he took it coldly and laid it between them on thecushion. Isabel shuddered: her new knowledge of evil so cruellyopened her eyes to the full understanding of so much. 

Little rime was left for sympathy with Kate. Nearer the pulpit wasanother pew from which her thoughts had never been whollywithdrawn. She had watched it with the fascination of abhorrence;and once, feeling that she could not bear to see him come in withhis mother and younger brother, she had started to leave thechurch. But just then her grandmother had bustled richly in, followed by her aunt; and more powerful with Isabel already thanany other feeling was the wish to bury her secret--Rowan'ssecret--in the deepest vault of consciousness, to seal it upforever from the knowledge of the world. 

The next moment what she so dreaded took place. He walked quietlydown the aisle as usual, opened the pew for his mother and brotherwith the same courtesy, and the three bent their heads together inprayer. 

"Grandmother, " she whispered quickly, "will you let me pass! I amnot very well, I think I shall go home. "

Her grandmother, not heeding and with her eyes fixed upon the samepew, whispered in return;

"The Merediths are here, " and continued her satisfying scrutiny ofpersons seated around. 

Isabel herself had no sooner suffered the words to escape than sheregretted them. Resolved to control herself from this time on, sheunclasped her prayer-book, found the appointed reading, anddirected her thoughts to the service soon to begin. 

It was part of the confession of David that reached her, soundingacross how many centuries. Wrung from him who had been a young manhimself and knew what a young man is. With time enough afterwardsto think of this as soldier, priest, prophet, care-worn king, andfallible judge over men--with time enough to think of what his daysof nature had been when he tended sheep grazing the pastures ofBethlehem or abided solitary with the flock by night, lowlydespised work, under the herded stars. Thus converting a youngman's memories into an older man's remorses. 

As she began to read, the first outcry gripped and cramped herheart like physical pain; where all her life she had been repeatingmere words, she now with eyes tragically opened discerned forbiddenmeanings:

"_Thou art about my path and about my bed . . . The darkness is nodarkness to thee. . . . Thine eyes did see my substance being yetimperfect . . . Look well if there be any wickedness in me; andlead me in the way everlasting . . . Haste thee unto me . . . When I cry unto thee. O let not my heart be inclined to an evilthing_. "

She was startled by a general movement throughout the congregation. The minister had advanced to the reading desk and begun to read:

"_I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him: Father, Ihave sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy tobe called thy son_. "

Ages stretched their human wastes between these words of the NewTestament and those other words of the Old; but the parable ofChrist really finished the prayer of David: in each there was thesame young prodigal--the ever-falling youth of humanity. 

Another moment and the whole congregation knelt and began theconfession. Isabel also from long custom sank upon her knees andstarted to repeat the words, "We have erred and strayed from thyways like lost sheep. " Then she stopped. She declined to makethat confession with Rowan or to join in any service that he sharedand appropriated. 

The Commandments now remained and for the first time she shrankfrom them as being so awful and so near. All our lives we placidlysay over to ourselves that man is mortal; but not until deathknocks at the threshold and enters do we realize the terrors of ourmortality. All our lives we repeat with dull indifference that manis erring; but only when the soul most loved and trusted has goneastray, do we begin to realize the tragedy of human imperfection. So Isabel had been used to go through the service, with bowed headmurmuring at each response, "_Lord have mercy upon us and inclineour hearts to keep this law_. "

But the laws themselves had been no more to her than pious archaicstatements, as far removed as the cherubim, the candlesticks andthe cedar of Solomon's temple. If her thoughts had been forced tothe subject, she would have perhaps admitted the necessity of theserules for men and women ages ago. Some one of them might havemeant much to a girl in those dim days: to Rebecca pondering whoknows what temptation at the well; to Ruth tempted who knows how inthe corn and thinking of Boaz and the barn; to Judith plotting inthe camp; to Jephtha's daughter out on the wailing mountains. 

But to-day, sitting in an Episcopal church in the closing years ofthe nineteenth century, holding a copy of those old laws, andthinking of Rowan as the breaker of the greatest of them, Isabelfor the first time awoke to realization of how close they arestill--those voices from the far land of Shinar; how all the menand women around her in that church still waged their moral battlesover those few texts of righteousness; how the sad and sublimewandering caravans of the whole race forever pitch their nightlytents beneath that same mountain of command. 

Thick and low sounded the response of the worshippers. She couldhear her grandmother's sonorous voice, a mingling of worldlytriumph and indifference; her aunt's plaintive and aggrieved. Shecould hear Kate's needy and wounded. In imagination she could hearhis proud, noble mother's; his younger brother's. Against thesound of his responses she closed all hearing; and there low on herknees, in the ear of Heaven itself, she recorded against him herunforgiveness and her dismissal forever. 

An organ melody followed, thrillingly sweet; and borne outward onit the beseeching of the All-Merciful:

 "'Art thou weary, art thou languid, Art thou sore distressed? Come to me!' saith one; 'and, coming, Be at rest!'"

It was this hymn that brought her in a passion to her feet. 

With whatsoever other feelings she had sought the church, it was atleast with the hope that it had a message for her. She had indeedlistened to a personal message, but it was a message delivered tothe wrong person; for at every stage of the worship she, theinnocent, had been forgotten and slighted; Rowan, the guilty, hadbeen considered and comforted. David had his like in mind andbesought pardon for him; the prophet of old knew of a case like hisand blessed him; the apostle centuries afterward looked on and didnot condemn; Christ himself had in a way told the multitude thesame story that Rowan had told her, --counselling forgiveness. Thevery hymns of the church were on Rowan's side--every one gone insearch of the wanderer. For on this day Religion, universal motherof needy souls and a minister of all comforts, was in the mood todeal only with youth and human frailty. 

She rebelled. It was like commanding her to dishonor a woman'sstrongest and purest instincts. It called upon her to sympathizewith the evil that had blighted her life. And Rowan himself!--inher anger and suffering she could think of him in no other way thanas enjoying this immortal chorus of anxiety on his account; ashearing it all with complacency and self-approval. It had to herdistorted imagination the effect of offering a reward to him forhaving sinned; he would have received no such attention had heremained innocent. 

With one act of complete revulsion she spurned it all: the moralcasuistry that beguiled him, the church that cloaked him; spurnedpsalm and prophet and apostle, Christ and parable and song. 

"Grandmother, " she whispered, "I shall not wait for the sermon. "

A moment later she issued from the church doors and took her wayslowly homeward through the deserted streets, under the lonely blueof the unanswering sky. 

III

The Conyers homestead was situated in a quiet street on thesouthern edge of the town. All the houses in that block had beenbuilt by people of English descent near the close of the eighteenthor at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Each was set apartfrom each by lawns, yards and gardens, and further screened byshrubs and vines in accordance with old English custom. Where theygrew had once been the heart of a wilderness; and above each housestood a few old forest trees, indifferent guardsmen of the campinggenerations. 

The architects had given to the buildings good strong characters;the family living in each for a hundred years or more had longsince imparted reputation. Out of the windows girlish brides hadlooked on reddening springs and whitening winters until they hadbecome silver-haired grandmothers themselves; then had looked nomore; and succeeding eyes had watched the swift pageants of theearth, and the swifter pageants of mortal hope and passion. Out ofthe front doors, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons had gone awayto the cotton and sugar and rice plantations of the South, to newfarm lands of the West, to the professions in cities of the North. The mirrors within held long vistas of wavering forms and vanishingfaces; against the walls of the rooms had beaten unremembered tidesof strong and of gentle voices. In the parlors what scenes oflights and music, sheen of satins, flashing of gems; in the diningrooms what feastings as in hale England, with all the robust humorsof the warm land, of the warm heart. 

Near the middle of the block and shaded by forest trees, stood withits heirlooms and treasures the home of Isabel's grandmother. Knownto be heiress to this though rich in her own right was Isabelherself, that grandmother's idol, the only one of its beautifulwomen remaining yet to be married; and to celebrate withmagnificence in this house Isabel's marriage to Rowan Meredith hadlong been planned by the grandmother as the last scene of her ownsplendid social drama: having achieved that, she felt she should bewilling to retire from the stage--and to play only behind thecurtain. 

It was the middle of the afternoon of the same Sunday. In theparlors extending along the eastern side of the house there was asingle sound: the audible but healthful breathing of a sleeperlying on a sofa in the coolest corner. It was Isabel's grandmothernearing the end of her customary nap. 

Sometimes there are households in which two members suggest thesingle canvas of a mediaeval painter, depicting scenes thatrepresent a higher and a lower world: above may be peaks, clouds, sublimity, the Transfiguration; underneath, the pursuits andpassions of local worldly life--some story of loaves and fishes andof a being possessed by a devil. Isabel and her grandmother wererelated as parts of some such painting: the grandmother was thebottom of the canvas. 

In a little while she awoke and uncoiling her figure, rolled softlyover on her back and stretched like some drowsy feline of thejungle; then sitting up with lithe grace she looked down at theprint of her head on the pillow and deftly smoothed it out. Theaction was characteristic: she was careful to hide the traces ofher behavior, and the habit was so strong that it extended tothings innocent as slumber. Letting her hands drop to the sofa, she yawned and shook her head from side to side with that shortlaugh by which we express amusement at our own comfort and well-being. 

Beside the sofa, toe by toe and heel by heel, sat her slippers--thepads of this leopardess of the parlors. She peered over and workedher nimble feet into these. On a little table at the end of thesofa lay her glasses, her fan, and a small bell. She passed herfingers along her temples in search of small disorders in the scanttufts of her hair, put on her glasses, and took the fan. Then sheglided across the room to one of the front windows, sat down andraised the blind a few inches in order to peep out: so thewell-fed, well-fanged leopardess with lowered head gazes idlythrough her green leaves. 

It was very hot. With her nostrils close to the opening In theshutters, she inhaled the heated air of the yard of drying grass. On the white window-sill just outside, a bronze wasp was whirlingexcitedly, that cautious stinger which never arrives until summeris sure. The oleanders in the big green tubs looked wilted thoughabundantly watered that morning. 

She shot a furtive glance at the doors and windows of the housesacross the street. All were closed; and she formed her ownpictures of how people inside were sleeping, lounging, idly readinguntil evening coolness should invite them again to the verandas andthe streets. 

No one passed but gay strolling negroes. She was seventy years old, but her interest in life was insatiable; and it was in part, perhaps, the secret of her amazing vitality and youthfulness thather surroundings never bored her; she derived instant pleasure fromthe nearest spectacle, always exercising her powers humorously uponthe world, never upon herself. For lack of other entertainment shenow fell upon these vulnerable figures, and began to criticise andto laugh at them: she did not have to descend far to reach thislevel. Her undimmed eyes swept everything--walk, imitativemanners, imitative dress. 

Suddenly she withdrew her face from the blinds; young Meredith hadentered the gate and was coming up the pavement. If anything couldgreatly have increased her happiness at this moment it would havebeen the sight of him. He had been with Isabel until late thenight before; he had attended morning service and afterward gonehome with his mother and brother (she had watched the carriage asit rolled away down the street); he had returned at this unusualhour. Such eagerness had her approval; and coupling it withIsabel's demeanor upon leaving the table the previous evening, never before so radiant with love, she felt that she had ground forbelieving the final ambition of her life near its fulfilment. 

As he advanced, the worldly passions other nature--the junglepassions--she had no others--saluted him with enthusiasm. His headand neck and bearing, stature and figure, family and familyhistory, house and lands--she inventoried them all once more anddiscovered no lack. When he had rung the bell, she leaned back;in her chair and eavesdropped with sparkling eyes. 

"Is Miss Conyers at home?"

The maid replied apologetically:

"She wished to be excused to-day, Mr. Meredith. "

A short silence followed. Then he spoke as a man long conscious ofa peculiar footing:

"Will you tell her Mr. Meredith would like to see her, " and withoutwaiting to be invited he walked into the library across the hall. 

She heard the maid go upstairs with hesitating step. 

Some time passed before she came down. She brought a note andhanded it to him, saying with some embarrassment:

"She asked me to give you this note, Mr. Meredith. "

Listening with sudden tenseness of attention, Mrs. Conyers heardhim draw the sheet from the envelope and a moment later crush it. 

She placed her eyes against the shutters and watched him as hewalked away; then she leaned back in her chair, thoughtful andsurprised. What was the meaning of this? The events of the daywere rapidly reviewed: that Isabel had not spoken with her afterbreakfast; that she had gone to service at an unusual hour and hadleft the church before the sermon; that she had effaced herself atdinner and at once thereafter had gone up to her rooms, where shestill remained. 

Returning to the sofa she lay down, having first rung her bell. When the maid appeared, she rubbed her eyelids and sat sleepily upas though just awakened: she remembered that she had eavesdropped, and the maid must be persuaded that she had not. Guilt is a badlogician. 

"Where is your Miss Isabel?"

"She is in her room, Miss Henrietta. "

"Go up and tell her that I say come down into the parlors: it iscooler down here. And ask her whether she'd like some sherbet. Andbring me some--bring it before you go. "

A few moments later the maid reentered with the sherbet. Shelifted the cut-glass dish from the silver waiter with soft purringsof the palate, and began to attack the minute snow mountain aroundthe base and up the sides with eager jabs and stabs, depositing thespoonfuls upon a tongue as fresh as a child's. Momentarily sheforgot even her annoyance; food instantly absorbed and placated heras it does the carnivora. 

The maid reentered. 

"She says she doesn't wish any sherbet, Miss Henrietta. "

"Did she say she would come down?"

"She did not say, Miss Henrietta. "

"Go back and tell her I'd like to see her: ask her to come downinto the parlors. " Then she hurried hack to the sherbet. Shewanted her granddaughter, but she wanted that first. 

Her thoughts ascended meantime to Isabel in the room above. Shefinished the sherbet. She waited. Impatience darkened touneasiness and anger. Still she waited; and her finger nails beganto scratch audibly at the mahogany of her chair and a light to burnin the tawny eyes. 

In the room overhead Isabel's thoughts all this time weredescending to her grandmother. Before the message was deliveredit had been her intention to go down. Once she had even reachedthe head of the staircase; but then had faltered and shrunkback. When the message came, it rendered her less inclined torisk the interview. Coming at such an hour, that message wassuspicious. She, moreover, naturally had learned to dread hergrandmother's words when they looked most innocent. Thus she, too, waited--lacking the resolution to descend. 

As she walked homeward from church she realized that she must takesteps at once to discard Rowan as the duty of her social position. And here tangible perplexities instantly wove themselves across herpath. Conscience had promptly arraigned him at the altar ofreligion. It was easy to condemn him there. And no one had theright to question that arraignment and that condemnation. Butpublic severance of all relations with him in her social world--howshould she accomplish that and withhold her justification?

Her own kindred would wish to understand the reason. The branchesof these scattered far and near were prominent each in its sphere, and all were intimately bound together by the one passion ofclannish allegiance to the family past. She knew that Rowan'sattentions had continued so long and had been so marked, thather grandmother had accepted marriage between them as a foregoneconclusion, and in letters had disseminated these propheciesthrough the family connection. Other letters had even come backto Isabel, containing evidence only too plain that Rowan hadbeen discussed and accepted in domestic councils. Against allinward protests of delicacy, she had been forced to receivecongratulations that in this marriage she would preserve thetraditions of the family by bringing into it a man of good bloodand of unspotted name; the two idols of all the far separatedhearthstones. 

To the pride of all these relatives she added her own pride--thehighest. She was the last of the women in the direct line yetunwedded, and she was sensitive that her choice should not in honorand in worth fall short of the alliances that had preceded hers. Involved in this sense of pride she felt that she owed a duty tothe generations who had borne her family name in this country andto the still earlier generations who had given it distinction inEngland--land of her womanly ideals. To discard now without a wordof explanation the man whose suit she had long been understood tofavor would create wide disappointment and provoke keen question. 

Further difficulties confronted her from Rowan's side. His ownfamily and kindred were people strong and not to be trifled with, proud and conservative like her own. Corresponding resentmentswould be aroused among them, questions would be asked that had noanswers. She felt that her life in its most private and sacredrelation would be publicly arraigned and have open judgment passedupon it by conflicting interests and passions--and that the mysterywhich contained her justification must also forever conceal it. 

Nevertheless Rowan must be discarded; she must act quickly and forthe best. 

On the very threshold one painful necessity faced her: the reserveof years must be laid aside and her grandmother admitted toconfidence in her plans. Anything that she might do could notescape those watchful eyes long since grown impatient. Moreoverdespite differences of character, she and her grandmother hadalways lived together, and they must now stand together beforetheir world in regard to this step. 

"Did you wish to see me about anything, grandmother?"

Mrs. Conyers had not heard Isabel's quiet entrance. She was at thewindow still: she turned softly in her chair and looked across thedarkened room to where Isabel sat facing her--a barely discerniblewhite figure. 

From any other member other family she would roughly have demandedthe explanation she desired. She was the mother of strong men(they were living far from her now), and even in his manhood no oneof them had ever crossed her will without bearing away the scars ofher anger, and always of her revenge. But before this grandchild, whom she had reared from infancy, she felt the brute cowardicewhich is often the only tribute that a debased nature can pay tothe incorruptible. Her love must have its basis in some abjectemotion: it took its origin from fear. 

An unforeseen incident, occurring when Isabel was yet a child andall but daily putting forth new growths of nature, rendered veryclear even then the developing antagonism and prospectiverelationship of these two characters. In a company of ladies thegrandmother, drawing the conversation to herself, remarked with asuggestive laugh that as there were no men present she would tell acertain story. "Grandmother, " interposed Isabel, vaguely startled, "please do not say anything that you would not say before a man;"and for an instant, amid the hush, the child and the woman lookedat each other like two repellent intelligences, accidentallymeeting out of the heavens and the pit. 

This had been the first of a long series of antagonism and recoils, and as the child had matured, the purity and loftiness of hernature had by this very contact grown chilled toward austerity. Thus nature lends a gradual protective hardening to a tendersurface during abrasion with a coarser thing. It left Isabel morereserved with her grandmother than with any one else of all thepersons who entered into her life. 

For this reason Mrs. Conyers now foresaw that this interview wouldbe specially difficult. She had never enjoyed Isabel's confidencein regard to her love affairs--and the girl had had her share ofthese; every attempt to gain it had been met by rebuffs socourteous but decisive that they had always wounded her pride andsometimes had lashed her to secret fury. 

"Did you wish to see me about anything, grandmother?"

The reply came very quickly: "I wanted to know whether you werewell. "

"I am perfectly well. Why did you think of asking?"

"You did not seem well in church. "

"I had forgotten. I was not well in church. "

Mrs. Conyers bent over and drew a chair in front of her own. Shewished to watch Isabel's face. She had been a close student ofwomen's faces--and of many men's. 

"Sit here. There is a breeze through the window. "

"Thank you. I'd rather sit here. "

Another pause ensued. 

"Did you ever know the last of May to be so hot?"

"I cannot remember now. "

"Can you imagine any one calling on such an afternoon?"

There was no reply. 

"I am glad no one has been here. While I was asleep I thought Iheard the bell. "

There was no reply. 

"You were wise not to stay for the sermon. " Mrs. Conyers' voicetrembled with anger as she passed on and on, seeking a penetrablepoint for conversation. "I do not believe in using the church toteach young men that they should blame their fathers for their ownmisdeeds. If I have done any good in this world, I do not expectmy father and mother to be rewarded for it in the next; if I havedone wrong, I do not expect my children to be punished. I shallclaim the reward and I shall stand the punishment, and that is theend of it. Teaching young men to blame their parents because theyare prodigals is nonsense, and injurious nonsense. I hope you donot imagine, " she said, with a stroke of characteristic coarseness, "that you get any of your faults from me. "

"I have never held you responsible, grandmother. "

Mrs. Conyers could wait no longer. 

"Isabel, " she asked sharply, "why did you not see Rowan when hecalled a few minutes ago?"

"Grandmother, you know that I do not answer such questions. "

How often in years gone by such had been Isabel's answer! Thegrandmother awaited it now. To her surprise Isabel after somemoments of hesitation replied without resentment:

"I did not wish to see him. "

There was a momentary pause; then this unexpected weakness was metwith a blow. 

"You were eager enough to see him last night. "

"I can only hope, " murmured Isabel aloud though wholly to herself, "that I did not make this plain to him. "

"But what has happened since?"

Nothing was said for a while. The two women had been unable to seeeach other clearly. A moment later Isabel crossed the room quicklyand taking the chair in front of her grandmother, searched thattreacherous face imploringly for something better in it than shehad ever seen there. Could she trust the untrustworthy? Wouldfalseness itself for once be true?

"Grandmother, " she said, and her voice betrayed how she shrank fromher own words, "before you sent for me I was about to come down. Iwished to speak with you about a very delicate matter, a veryserious matter. You have often reproached me for not taking youinto my confidence. I am going to give you my confidence now. "

At any other moment the distrust and indignity contained in thetone of this avowal would not have escaped Mrs. Conyers. Butsurprise riveted her attention. Isabel gave her no time further:

"A thing has occurred in regard to which we must act together forour own sakes--on account of the servants in the house--on accountof our friends, so that there may be no gossip, no scandal. "

Nothing at times so startles us as our own words. As the girluttered the word "scandal, " she rose frightened as though it facedher and began to walk excitedly backward and forward. Scandal hadnever touched her life. She had never talked scandal; had neverthought scandal. Dwelling under the same roof with it as the masterpassion of a life and forced to encounter it in so many repulsiveways, she had needed little virtue to regard it with abhorrence. 

Now she perceived that it might be perilously near herself. Whenall questions were asked and no reasons were given, would not theseeds of gossip fly and sprout and bear their kinds about her path:and the truth could never be told. She must walk on through theyears, possibly misjudged, giving no sign. 

After a while she returned to her seat. 

"You must promise me one thing, " she said with white and tremblinglips. "I give you my confidence as far as I can; beyond that Iwill not go. And you shall not ask. You are not to try to findout from me or any one else more than I tell you. You must give meyour word of honor!"

She bent forward and looked her grandmother wretchedly in the eyes. 

Mrs. Conyers pushed her chair back as though a hand had struck herrudely in the face. 

"Isabel, " she cried, "do you forget to whom you are speaking?"

"Ah, grandmother, " exclaimed Isabel, reckless of her words byreason of suffering, "it is too late for us to be sensitive aboutour characters. "

Mrs. Conyers rose with insulted pride: "Do not come to me with yourconfidence until you can give it. "

Isabel recrossed the room and sank into the seat she had quitted. Mrs. Conyers remained standing a moment and furtively resumed hers. 

Whatever her failings had been--one might well say hercrimes--Isabel had always treated her from the level of her ownhigh nature. But Mrs. Conyers had accepted this dutiful demeanorof the years as a tribute to her own virtues. Now that Isabel, theone person whose respect she most desired, had openly avowed deepdistrust of her, the shock was as real as anything life could havedealt. 

She glanced narrowly at Isabel: the girl had forgotten her. 

Mrs. Conyers could shift as the wind shifts; and one of hercharacteristic resources in life had been to conquer by feigningdefeat: she often scaled her mountains by seeming to take a pathwhich led to the valleys. She now crossed over and sat down with apeace-making laugh. She attempted to take Isabel's hand, but itwas quickly withdrawn. Fearing that this movement indicated areceding confidence Mrs. Conyers ignored the rebuff and pressed herinquiry in a new, entirely practical, and pleasant tone:

"What is the meaning of all this, Isabel?"

Isabel turned upon her again a silent, searching, wretched look ofappeal. 

Mrs. Conyers realized that it could not be ignored: "You know thatI promise anything. What did I ever refuse you?"

Isabel sat up but still remained silent. Mrs. Conyers noted theindecision and shrugged her shoulders with a careless dismissal ofthe whole subject:

"Let us drop the subject, then. Do you think it will rain?"

"Grandmother, Rowan must not come here any more. " Isabel stoppedabruptly. "That is all. "

. . . "I merely wanted you to understand this at once. We must notinvite him here any more. "

. . . "If we meet him at the houses of our friends, we must do whatwe can not to be discourteous to them if he is their guest. "

. . . "If we meet Rowan alone anywhere, we must let him know thathe is not on the list of our acquaintances any longer. That isall. "

Isabel wrung her hands. 

Mrs. Conyers had more than one of the traits of the jungle: sheknew when to lie silent and how to wait. She waited longer now, but Isabel had relapsed into her own thoughts. For her theinterview was at an end; to Mrs. Conyers it was beginning. Isabel'swords and manner had revealed a situation far more serious than shehad believed to exist. A sense of personal slights and wounds gaveway to apprehension. The need of the moment was not passion andresentment, but tact and coolness and apparent unconcern. 

"What is the meaning of this, Isabel?" She spoke in a tone of frankand cordial interest as though the way were clear at last for theestablishment of complete confidence between them. 

"Grandmother, did you not give me your word?" said Isabel, sternly. Mrs. Conyers grew indignant: "But remember in what a light youplace me! I did not expect you to require me to be unreasonableand unjust. Do you really wish me to be kept in the dark in amatter like this? Must I refuse to speak to Rowan and have noreason? Close the house to him and not know why? Cut him in publicwithout his having offended me? If he should ask why I treat himin this way, what am I to tell him?"

"He will never ask, " said Isabel with mournful abstraction. 

"But tell _me_ why you wish me to act so strangely. "

"Believe that I have reasons. "

"But ought I not to know what these reasons are if I must act uponthem as though they were my own?"

Isabel saw the stirrings of a mind that brushed away honor as anobstacle and that was not to be quieted until it had beensatisfied. She sank back into her chair, saying very simply withdeep disappointment and with deeper sorrow:

"Ah, I might have known!"

Mrs. Conyers pressed forward with gathering determination:

"What happened last night?"

"I might have known that it was of no use, " repeated Isabel. 

Mrs. Conyers waited several moments and then suddenly changing hercourse feigned the dismissal of the whole subject: "I shall pay noattention to this. I shall continue to treat Rowan as I havealways treated him. "

Isabel started up: "Grandmother, if you do, you will regret it. "Her voice rang clear with hidden meaning and with hidden warning. 

It fell upon the ear of the other with threatening import. For herthere seemed to be in it indeed the ruin of a cherished plan, theloss of years of hope and waiting. Before such a possibility tactand coolness and apparent unconcern were swept away by passion, brutal and unreckoning: "Do you mean that you have refused Rowan?Or have you found out at last that he has no intention of marryingyou--has never had any?"

Isabel rose: "Excuse me, " she said proudly and turned away. Shereached the door and pausing there put out one of her hands againstthe lintel as if with weakness and raised the other to her foreheadas though with bewilderment and indecision. 

Then she came unsteadily back, sank upon her knees, and hid herface in her grandmother's lap, murmuring through her fingers: "Ihave been rude to you, grandmother! Forgive me! I do not knowwhat I have been saying. But any little trouble between us isnothing, nothing! And do as I beg you--let this be sacred andsecret! And leave everything to me!"

She crept closer and lifting her face looked up into hergrandmother's. She shrank back shuddering from what she saw there, burying her face in her hands; then rising she hurried from theroom, Mrs. Conyers sat motionless. 

Was it true then that the desire and the work of years for thismarriage had come to nothing? And was it true that thisgrandchild, for whom she had planned and plotted, did not evenrespect her and could tell her so to her face?

Those insulting words rang in her ears still: "_You must give meyour word of honor . . . It is too late to be sensitive about ourcharacters_. "

She sat perfectly still: and in the parlors there might have beenheard at intervals the scratching of her sharp finger nails againstthe wood of the chair. 

IV

The hot day ended. Toward sunset a thunder-shower drenched theearth, and the night had begun cool and refreshing. 

Mrs. Conyers was sitting on the front veranda, waiting forher regular Sunday evening visitor. She was no longer theself-revealed woman of the afternoon, but seemingly an affable, harmless old lady of the night on the boundary of her social world. She was dressed with unfailing: elegance--and her taste lavisheditself especially on black silk and the richest lace. The shade ofheliotrope satin harmonized with the yellowish folds of her hair. Her small, warm, unwrinkled hands were without rings, being toodelicately beautiful. In one she held a tiny fan, white and softlike the wing of a moth; on her lap lay a handkerchief as light assmoke or a web of gossamer. 

She rocked softly. She unfolded and folded the night-moth fansoftly. She touched the handkerchief to her rosy youthful lipssoftly. The south wind blew in her face softly. Everything abouther was softness, all her movements were delicate and refined. Even the early soft beauty of her figure was not yet lost. (When agirl of nineteen, she had measured herself by the proportions ofthe ideal Venus; and the ordeal had left her with a girdle ofgolden reflections. )

But if some limner had been told the whole truth of what she wasand been requested to imagine a fitting body for such a soul, hewould never have painted Mrs. Conyers as she looked. Nature is notfrank in her characterizations, lest we remain infants indiscernment. She allows foul to appear fair, and bids us becomeeducated in the hardy virtues of insight and prudence. Educationas yet had advanced but little; and the deepest students in thebotany of women have been able to describe so few kinds that noman, walking through the perfumed enchanted wood, knows at whatmoment he may step upon or take hold of some unknown deadly variety. 

As the moments passed, she stopped rocking and peered toward thefront gate under the lamp-post, saying to herself:

"He is late. "

At last the gate was gently opened and gently shut. 

"Ah, " she cried, leaning back in her chair smiling and satisfied. Then she sat up rigid. A change passed over her such as comes overa bird of prey when it draws its feathers in flat against its bodyto lessen friction in the swoop. She unconsciously closed thelittle fan, the little handkerchief disappeared somewhere. 

As the gate had opened and closed, on the bricks of the pavementwas heard only the tap of his stout walking-stick; for he was goutyand wore loose low shoes of the softest calfskin, and these made nonoise except the slurring sound of slippers. 

Once he stopped, and planting his cane far out in the grass, reached stiffly over and with undisguised ejaculations ofdiscomfort snipped off a piece of heliotrope in one of the tubs ofoleander. He shook away the raindrops and drew it through hisbuttonhole, and she could hear his low "Ah! ah! ah!" as he thrusthis nose down into it. 

"There's nothing like it, " he said aloud as though he hadconsenting listeners, "it outsmells creation. "

He stopped at another tub of flowers where a humming-bird moth wasgathering honey and jabbed his stick sharply at it, taking carethat the stick did not reach perilously near. 

"Get away, sir, " he said; "you've had enough, sir. Get away, sir. "

Having reached a gravel walk that diverged from the pavement, heturned off and went over to a rose-bush and walked around tappingthe roses on their heads as he counted them--cloth-of-gold roses. "Very well done, " he said, "a large family--a good sign. "

Thus he loitered along his way with leisure to enjoy all the chancetrifles that gladdened it; for he was one of the old who return atthe end of life to the simple innocent things that pleased them aschildren. 

She had risen and advanced to the edge of the veranda. 

"Did you come to see me or did you come to see my flowers?" shecalled out charmingly. 

"I came to see the flowers, madam, " he called back. "Most of all, the century plant: how is she?"

She laughed delightedly: "Still harping on my age, I see. "

"Still harping, but harping your praises. Century plants are notnecessarily old: they are all young at the beginning! I merelymeant you'd be blooming at a hundred. "

"You are a sly old fox, " she retorted with a spirit. "You give awoman a dig on her age and then try to make her think it acompliment. "

"I gave myself a dig that time: the remark had to be excavated, " hesaid aloud but as though confidentially to himself. Opendisrespect marked his speech and manner with her always; and sooneror later she exacted full punishment. 

Meantime he had reached the steps. There he stopped and taking offhis straw hat looked up and shook it reproachfully at the heavens. 

"What a night, what a night!" he exclaimed. "And what an injusticeto a man wading up to his knees in life's winters. "

"How do you do, " she said impatiently, always finding it hard toput up with his lingerings and delays. "Are you coming in?"

"Thank you, I believe I am. But no, wait. I'll not come in untilI have made a speech. It never occurred to me before and it willnever again. It's now or never. 

"The life of man should last a single year. He should have onespring for birth and childhood, for play and growth, for the endingof his dreams and the beginning of his love. One summer for strifeand toil and passion. One autumn in which to gather the fruits ofhis deeds and to live upon them, be they sweet or bitter. Onewinter in which to come to an end and wrap himself with resignationin the snows of nature. Thus he should never know the pain ofseeing spring return when there was nothing within himself to budor be sown. Summer would never rage and he have no conflicts norpassions. Autumn would not pass and he with idle hands neithergive nor gather. And winter should not end without extinguishinghis tormenting fires, and leaving him the peace of eternal cold. "

"Really, " she cried, "I have never heard anything as fine as thatsince I used to write compositions at boarding-school. "

"It may be part of one of mine!" he replied. "We forget ourselves, you know, and then we think we are original. "

"Second childhood, " she suggested. "Are you really coming in?"

"I am, madam, " he replied. "And guided by your suggestion, I comeas a second child. "

When he had reached the top step, he laid his hat and cane on theporch and took her hands in his--pressing them abstemiously. 

"Excuse me if I do not press harder, " he said, lowering his voiceas though he fancied they might be overheard. "I know you aresensitive in these little matters; but while I dislike to appearlukewarm, really, you know it is too late to be ardent, " and helooked at her ardently. 

She twisted her fingers out of his with coy shame. 

"What an old fox, " she repeated gayly. 

"Well, you know what goes with the fox--the foxess, or the foxina. "

She had placed his chair not quite beside hers yet designedly near, where the light of the chandelier in the hall would fall out uponhim and passers could see that he was there: she liked to have himappear devoted. For his part he was too little devoted to carewhether he sat far or near, in front or behind. As the lightstreamed out upon him, it illumined his noble head of soft, silveryhair, which fell over his ears and forehead, forgotten anddisordered, like a romping boy's. His complexion was ruddy--tooruddy with high living; his clean-shaven face beautiful withcandor, gayety, and sweetness; and his eyes, the eyes of a kindheart--saddened. He had on a big loose shirt collar such as menwore in Thackeray's time and a snow-white lawn tie. In the bosomof his broad-pleated shirt, made glossy with paraffin starch, therewas set an old-fashioned cluster-diamond stud--so enormous that itlooked like a large family of young diamonds in a golden nest. 

As he took his seat, he planted his big gold-headed ebony canebetween his knees, put his hat on the head of his cane, gave it atwirl, and looking over sidewise at her, smiled with an equalmixture of real liking and settled abhorrence. 

For a good many years these two had been--not friends: she wasincapable of so true a passion; he was too capable to misapply itso unerringly. Their association had assumed the character of oneof those belated intimacies, which sometimes spring up in the livesof aged men and women when each wants companionship but has beenleft companionless. 

Time was when he could not have believed that any tie whatsoeverwould ever exist between them. Her first husband had been hisfirst law partner; and from what he had been forced to observeconcerning his partner's fireside wretchedness during his few yearsof married life, he had learned to fear and to hate her. With hisquick temper and honest way he made no pretence of hiding hisfeeling--declined her invitations--cut her openly in society--andsaid why. When his partner died, not killed indeed butbroken-spirited, he spoke his mind on the subject more publicly andplainly still. 

She brewed the poison of revenge and waited. 

A year or two later when his engagement was announced her opportunitycame. In a single day it was done--so quietly, so perfectly, thatno one knew by whom. Scandal was set running--Scandal, which nopursuing messengers of truth and justice can ever overtake and dragbackward along its path. His engagement was broken; she whom he wasto wed in time married one of his friends; and for years his own lifeall but went to pieces. 

Time is naught, existence a span. One evening when she was oldMrs. Conyers, and he old Judge Morris, she sixty and he sixty-five, they met at an evening party. In all those years he had neverspoken to her, nurturing his original dislike and rather suspectingthat it was she who had so ruined him. But on this night there hadbeen a great supper and with him a great supper was a greatweakness: there had been wine, and wine was not a weakness at all, but a glass merely made him more than happy, more than kind. Soonafter supper therefore he was strolling through the emptied roomsin a rather lonesome way, his face like a red moon in a fog, beseeching only that it might shed its rays impartially on anyapproachable darkness. 

Men with wives and children can well afford to turn hard cold facesto the outside world: the warmth and tenderness of which they arecapable they can exercise within their own restricted enclosures. No doubt some of them consciously enjoy the contrast in their twoselves--the one as seen abroad and the other as understood at home. But a wifeless, childless man--wandering at large on the heart'sbleak common--has much the same reason to smile on all that he hasto smile on any: there is no domestic enclosure for him: hisaffections must embrace humanity. 

As he strolled through the rooms, then, in his appealing way, seeking whom he could attach himself to, he came upon her seated ina doorway connecting two rooms. She sat alone on a short sofa, possibly by design, her train so arranged that he must step over itif he advanced--the only being in the world that he hated. In theembarrassment of turning his back upon her or of trampling hertrain, he hesitated; smiling with lowered eyelids she motioned himto a seat by her side. 

"What a vivacious, agreeable old woman, " he soliloquized withenthusiasm as he was driven home that night, sitting in the middleof the carriage cushions with one arm swung impartially through thestrap on each side. "And she has invited me to Sunday eveningsupper. Me!--after all these years--in that house! I'll not go. "

But he went. 

"I'll not go again, " he declared as he reached home that night andthought it over. "She is a bad woman. "

But the following Sunday evening he reached for his hat and cane:"I must go somewhere, " he complained resentfully. "The saints ofmy generation are enjoying the saint's rest. Nobody is left but afew long-lived sinners, of whom I am a great part. They are thebest I can find, and I suppose they are the best I deserve. "

Those who live long miss many. Without exception his formerassociates at the bar had been summoned to appear before the Judgewho accepts no bribe. 

The ablest of the middle-aged lawyers often hurried over to consulthim in difficult cases. All of them could occasionally listenwhile he, praiser of a bygone time, recalled the great period ofpractice when he was the favorite criminal lawyer of the firstfamilies, defending their sons against the commonwealth which healways insisted was the greater criminal. The young men abouttown knew him and were ready to chat with him on streetcorners--but never very long at a time. In his old law offices hecould spend part of every day, guiding or guying his nephew Barbee, who had just begun to practice. But when all his social resourceswere reckoned, his days contained great voids and his nights werelonelier still. The society of women remained a necessity of hislife; and the only woman in town, always bright, always full ofideas, and always glad to see him (the main difficulty) was Mrs. Conyers. 

So that for years now he had been going regularly on Sundayevenings. He kept up apologies to his conscience regularly also;but it must have become clear that his conscience was not a fire tomake him boil; it was merely a few coals to keep him bubbling. 

In this acceptance of her at the end of life there was of coursemournful evidence of his own deterioration. During the yearsbetween being a young man and being an old one he had so fardescended toward her level, that upon renewing acquaintance withher he actually thought that she had improved. 

Youth with its white-flaming ideals is the great separator; bymiddle age most of us have become so shaken down, on life's roughroad, to a certain equality of bearing and forbearing, thatmiscellaneous comradeship becomes easy and rather comforting; whileextremely aged people are as compatible and as miserable asdisabled old eagles, grouped with a few inches of each other'sbeaks and claws on the sleek perches of a cage. 

This evening therefore, as he took his seat and looked across ather, so richly dressed, so youthful, soft, and rosy, he all butthanked heaven out loud that she was at home. 

"Madam, " he cried, "you are a wonderful and bewitching oldlady"--it was on the tip of his tongue to say "beldam. "

"I know it, " she replied briskly, "have you been so long in findingit out?"

"It is a fresh discovery every time I come. "

"Then you forget me in the meanwhile. "

"I never forget you unless I am thinking of Miss Isabel. How isshe?"

"Not well. "

"Then I'm not well! No one is well! Everybody must suffer if sheis suffering. The universe sympathizes. "

"She is not ill. She is in trouble. "

"But she must not be in trouble! She has done nothing to be introuble about. Who troubles her? What troubles her?"

"She will not tell. "

"Ah!" he cried, checking himself gravely and dropping the subject. 

She noted the decisive change of tone: it was not by this directroute that she would be able to enter his confidence. 

"What did you think of the sermon this morning?"

"The sermon on the prodigal? Well, it is too late for such sermonsto be levelled at me; and I never listen to those aimed at otherpeople. "

"At what other people do you suppose this one could have beendirected?" She asked the question most carelessly, lifting herimponderable handkerchief and letting it drop into her lap as asign of how little her interest weighed. 

"It is not my duty to judge. "

"We cannot help our thoughts, you know. "

"I think we can, madam; and I also think we can hold our tongues, "and he laughed at her very good-naturedly. "Sometimes we can evenhelp to hold other people's--if they are long. "

"Oh, what a rude speech to a lady!" she exclaimed gallantly. "Didyou see the Osborns at church? And did you notice him? What anunhappy marriage! He is breaking Kate's heart. And to think thathis character--or the lack of it--should have been discovered onlywhen it was too late! How can you men so cloak yourselves beforemarriage? Why not tell women the truth then instead of leavingthem to find it out afterward? Are he and Rowan as good friends asever?" The question was asked with the air of guilelessness. 

"I know nothing about that, " he replied dryly. "I never knew Rowanto drop his friends because they had failings: it would break upall friendships, I imagine. "

"Well, I cannot help _my_ thoughts, and I think George Osborn wasthe prodigal aimed at in the sermon. Everybody thought so. "

"How does she know what everybody thought?" commented the Judge tohimself. He tapped the porch nervously with his cane, sniffed hisheliotrope and said irrelevantly:

"Ah me, what a beautiful night! What a beautiful night!"

The implied rebuff provoked her. Irritation winged a venomouslittle shaft:

"At least no woman has ever held _you_ responsible for herunhappiness. "

"You are quite right, madam, " he replied, "the only irreproachablehusband in this world is the man who has no wife. "

"By the way, " she continued, "in all these years you have not toldme why you never married. Come now, confess!"

How well she knew! How often as she had driven through the streetsand observed him sitting alone in the door of his office or walkingaimlessly about, she had leaned back and laughed. 

"Madam, " he replied, for he did not like the question, "neitherhave you ever told me why you married three times. Come now, confess. "

It would soon be time for him to leave; and still she had notgained her point. 

"Rowan was here this afternoon, " she remarked carelessly. He wassitting so that the light fell sidewise on his face. She noted howalert it became, but he said nothing. 

"Isabel refused to see him. "

He wheeled round and faced her with pain and surprise. 

"Refused to see him!"

"She has told me since that she never intends to see him. "

"Never intends to see Rowan again!" he repeated the incrediblewords, "not see Rowan again!"

"She says we are to drop him from the list of our acquaintances. "

"Ah!" he cried with impetuous sadness, "they must not quarrel!They _must_ not!"

"But they _have_ quarrelled, " she replied, revealing her ownanxiety. "Now they must be reconciled. That is why I come toyou. I am Isabel's guardian; you were Rowan's. Each of us wishesthis marriage. Isabel loves Rowan. I know that; therefore it isnot her fault. Therefore it is Rowan's fault. Therefore he hassaid something or he has done something to offend her deeply. Therefore if you do not know what this Is, you must find out. Andyou must come and tell me. May I depend upon you?"

He had become grave. At length he said: "I shall go straight toRowan and ask him. "

"No!" she cried, laying her hand heavily on his arm, "Isabel boundme to secrecy. She does not wish this to be known. "

"Ah!" he exclaimed, angry at being entrapped into a brokenconfidence, "then Miss Isabel binds me also: I shall honor herwish, " and he rose. 

She kept her seat but yawned so that he might notice it. "You arenot going?"

"Yes, I am going. I have stayed too long already. Good night!Good night!" He spoke curtly over his shoulders as he hurried downthe steps. 

She had forgotten him before he reached the street, having no needjust then to keep him longer in mind. She had threshed out the onegrain of wheat, the single compact little truth, that she wanted. This was the certainty that Judge Morris, who was the old familylawyer of the Merediths, and had been Rowan's guardian, and hadindeed known him intimately from childhood, was in ignorance of anyreason for the present trouble; otherwise he would not have saidthat he should go to Rowan and ask the explanation. She knew himto be incapable of duplicity; in truth she rather despised himbecause he had never cultivated a taste for the delights andresources of hypocrisy. 

Her next step must be to talk at once with the other person vitallyinterested--Rowan's mother. She felt no especial admiration forthat grave, earnest, and rather sombre lady; but neither did shefeel admiration for her sterling knife and fork: still she madethem serviceable for the ulterior ends of being. 

Her plan then embraced a visit to Mrs. Meredith in the morning withthe view of discovering whether she was aware of the estrangement, and if aware whether she would in any unintentional way throw lightupon the cause of it. Moreover--and this was kept clearly inview--there would be the chance of meeting Rowan himself, whom shealso determined to see as soon as possible: she might find him athome, or she might encounter him on the road or riding over hisfarm. But this visit must be made without Isabel's knowledge. Itmust further be made to appear incidental to Mrs. Meredithherself---or to Rowan. She arranged therefore with that tortuousand superfluous calculation of which hypocrisy is such amaster--and mistress--that she would at breakfast, in Isabel'spresence, order the carriage, and announce her intention of goingout to the farm of Ambrose Webb. Ambrose Webb was a close neighborof the Merediths. He owned a small estate, most of which was goodgrass-land that was usually rented for pasture. She had for yearskept her cows there when dry. This arrangement furnished her theopportunity for more trips to the farm than interest in her dairywarranted; it made her Mrs. Meredith's most frequent incidentalvisitor. 

Having thus determined upon her immediate course for the promptunravelling of this mysterious matter, she dismissed it from hermind, passed into her bedroom and was soon asleep: a smile playedover the sweet old face. 

The Judge walked slowly across the town in the moonlight. 

It was his rule to get home to his rooms by ten o'clock; and peopleliving on the several streets leading that way were used to hearinghim come tapping along before that hour. If they sat in theirdoorways and the night was dark, they gave him a pleasant greetingthrough the darkness; if there was a moon or if he could be seenunder a lamp post, they added smiles. No one loved him supremely, but every one liked him a little--on the whole, a stable state fora man. For his part he accosted every one that he could see in abright cheery way and with a quick inquiring glance as though everyheart had its trouble and needed just a little kindness. He wasreasonably sure that the old had their troubles already and thatthe children would have theirs some day; so that it was merely thedifference between sympathizing with the present and sympathizingwith the future. As he careened along night after night, then, friendly little gusts of salutation blew the desolate driftingfigure over the homeward course. 

His rooms were near the heart of the town, In a shady street wellfilled with law offices: these were of red brick with greenshutters--green when not white with dust. The fire department wasin the same block, though he himself did not need to be safeguardedfrom conflagrations: the fires which had always troubled him couldnot have been reached with ladder and hose. There were two orthree livery stables also, the chairs of which he patronizedliberally, but not the vehicles. And there was a grocery, where hesometimes bought crystallized citron and Brazil nuts, a curiouskind of condiment of his own devising: a pound of citron to a poundof nuts, if all were sound. He used to keep little brown paperbags of these locked in his drawer with legal papers and munchedthem sometimes while preparing murder cases. 

At the upper corner of the block, opposite each other, were asaloon and the jail, two establishments which contributed little toeach other's support, though well inclined to do so. The lawoffices seemed of old to have started in a compact procession forthe jail, but at a certain point to have paused with theunderstanding that none should seek undue advantage by greaterproximity. Issuing from this street at one end and turning to theleft, you came to the courthouse--the bar of chancery; issuing fromit at the other end and turning to the right, you came to thehotel--the bar of corn. The lawyers were usually solicitors atlarge and impartial practitioners at each bar. In the court roomthey sometimes tried to prove an alibi for their clients; at thehotel they often succeeded in proving one for themselves. 

These law offices were raised a foot or two above the level of thestreet. The front rooms could be used for clients who were soimportant that they should be seen; the back rooms were for such asbrought business, but not necessarily fame. Driving through thisstreet, the wives of the lawyers could lean forward in theircarriages and if their husbands were busy, they could smile andbow; if their husbands were idle, they could look straight ahead. 

He passed under the shadow of the old court-house where in hisprime he had fought his legal battles against the commonwealth. Hehad been a great lawyer and he knew it (if he had married he mighthave been Chief Justice). Then he turned the corner and enteredthe street of jurisprudence and the gaol. About midway he reachedthe staircase opening from the sidewalk; to his rooms above. 

He was not poor and he could have lived richly had he wished. Butwhen a man does not marry there are so many other things that henever espouses; and he was not wedded to luxury. As he lighted thechandelier over the centre-table in his sitting room, the lightrevealed an establishment every article of which, if it had novirtues, at least possessed habits: certainly everything had itsown way. He put his hat and cane on the table, not caring to goback to the hatrack in his little hall, and seated himself in hisolive morocco chair. As he did so, everything in the room--thechairs, the curtains, the rugs, the card-table, the punch-bowl, theother walking-sticks, and the rubbers and umbrellas---seemed to sayin an affectionate chorus: "Well, now that you are in safe for thenight, we feel relieved. So good night and pleasant dreams to you, for we are going to sleep;" and to sleep they went. 

The gas alone flared up and said, "I'll stay up with him. "

He drew out and wiped his glasses and reached for the local Sundaypaper, his Sunday evening Bible. He had read it in the morning, but he always gleaned at night: he met so many of his friends byreading their advertisements. But to-night he spread it across hisknees and turning to the table lifted the top of a box of cigars, an orderly responsive family; the paper slipped to the floor andlay forgotten behind his heels. 

He leaned back in the chair with his cigar in his mouth and hiseyes directed toward the opposite wall, where in an oval frame hungthe life-size portrait of an old bulldog. The eyes were blue andwatery and as full of suffering as a seats; from the extremity ofthe lower jaw a tooth stood up like a shoemaker's peg; and over theentire face was stamped the majesty, the patience, and the manlywoes of a nature that had lived deeply and too long. The Judge'seyes rested on this comrade face. 

The events of the day had left him troubled. Any sermon on theprodigal always touches men; even if it does not prick theirmemories, it can always stir their imaginations. Whenever he heardone, his mind went back to the years when she who afterwards becameRowan's mother had cast him off, so settling life for him. Forafter that experience he had put away the thought of marriage. "Tobe so treated once is enough, " he had said sternly and proudly. True, in after years she had come back to him as far as friendshipcould bring her back, since she was then the wife of another; butevery year of knowing her thus had only served to deepen the senseof his loss. He had long since fallen into the habit of thinkingthis over of Sunday evenings before going to bed, and as the end oflife closed in upon him, he dwelt upon it more and more. 

These familiar thoughts swarmed back to-night, but with them weremingled new depressing ones. Nothing now perhaps could have causedhim such distress as the thought that Rowan and Isabel would nevermarry. All the love that he had any right to pour into any life, he had always poured with passionate and useless yearnings intoRowan's--son, of the only woman he had ever loved--the boy thatshould have been his own. 

There came an interruption. A light quick step was heard mountingthe stairs. A latch key was impatiently inserted in the hall door. A bamboo cane was dropped loudly into the holder of the hat-rack; asoft hat was thrown down carelessly somewhere--it sounded like awet mop flung into a corner; and there entered a young manstraight, slender, keen-faced, with red hair, a freckled skin, large thin red ears, and a strong red mouth. As he stepped forwardinto the light, he paused, parting the haircut of his eyes andblinking. 

"Good evening, uncle, " he said in a shrill key. 

"Well, sir. "

Barbee looked the Judge carefully over; he took the Judge's hat andcane from the table and hung them in the hall; he walked over andpicked up the newspaper from between the Judge's legs and placed itat his elbow; he set the ash tray near the edge of the table withineasy reach of the cigar. Then he threw himself into a chair acrossthe room, lighted a cigarette, blew the smoke toward the ceilinglike the steam of a little whistle signalling to stop work. 

"Well, uncle, " he said in a tone in which a lawyer might announceto his partner the settlement of a long-disputed point, "Margueriteis in love with me!"

The Judge smoked on, his eyes resting on the wall. 

"Yes, sir; in love with me. The truth had to come out sometime, and it came out to-night. And now the joy of life is gone for me!As soon as a woman falls in love with a man, his peace is at anend. But I am determined that it shall not interfere with mypractice. "

"What practice?"

"The practice of my profession, sir! The profession of yourselfand of the great men of the past: such places have to be filled. "

"Filled, but not filled with the same thing. "

"You should have seen the other hapless wretches there to-night!Pining for a smile! Moths begging the candle to scorch them! Andthe candle was as cold as the north star and as distant. "

Barbee rose and took a turn across the room and returning to hischair stood before it. 

"If Marguerite had only waited, had concealed herself a littlelonger! Why did she not keep me in doubt until I had won somegreat case! Think of a scene like this: a crowded court room someafternoon; people outside the doors and windows craning their necksto see and hear me; the judge nervous and excited; the members ofthe bar beside themselves with jealousy as I arise and confront thecriminal and jury. Marguerite is seated just behind the jury; Iknow why she chose that seat: she wished to study me to the bestadvantage. I try to catch her eye; she will not look at me. Forthree hours my eloquence storms. The judge acknowledges to a tear, the jurors reach for their handkerchiefs, the people in the courtroom sob like the skies of autumn. As I finish, the accused arisesand addresses the court: 'May it please your honor, in the face ofsuch a masterly prosecution, I can no longer pretend to beinnocent. Sir (addressing me), I congratulate you upon yourmagnificent service to the commonwealth. Gentlemen of the jury, you need not retire to bring in any verdict: I bring it in myself, I am guilty, and my only wish is to be hanged. I suggest that youhave it done at once in order that nothing may mar the success ofthis occasion!' That night Marguerite sends for me: that wouldhave been the time for declaration! I have a notion that if I canextricate myself without wounding this poor little innocent, toforswear matrimony and march on to fame. "

"March on to bed. "

"Marguerite is going to give a ball, uncle, a brilliant ball merelyto celebrate this irrepressible efflux and panorama of heremotions. Watch me at that ball, uncle! Mark the rising Romeo ofthe firm when Marguerite, the youthful Juliet of this town--"

A hand waved him quietly toward his bedroom. 

"Well, good night, sir, good night. When the lark sings atheaven's gate I'll greet thee, uncle. My poor Marguerite!--Goodnight, uncle, good night. "

He was only nineteen. 

The Judge returned to his thoughts. 

He must have thought a long time: the clock not far away strucktwelve. He took off his glasses, putting them negligently on theedge of the ash tray which tipped over beneath their weight andfell to the floor: he picked up his glasses, but let the ashes lie. Then he stooped down to take off his shoes, not without sounds ofbodily discomfort. 

Aroused by these sounds or for other reasons not to be discovered, there emerged from under a table on which was piled "The Lives ofthe Chief Justices" a bulldog, cylindrical and rigid with years. Having reached a decorous position before the Judge, by the slowaction of the necessary machinery he lowered the posterior end ofthe cylinder to the floor and watched him. 

"Well, did I get them off about right?"

The dog with a private glance of sympathy up into the Judge's facereturned to his black goatskin rug under the Chief Justices; andthe Judge, turning off the burners in the chandelier and striking amatch, groped his way in his sock feet to his bedroom--to the bedwith its one pillow. 

V

Out in the country next morning it was not yet break of dawn. Thestars, thickly flung about, were flashing low and yellow as atmidnight, but on the horizon the great change had begun. Not withcolors of rose or pearl but as the mysterious foreknowledge of themorning, when a vast swift herald rushes up from the east andsweeps onward across high space, bidding the earth be in readinessfor the drama of the sun. 

The land, heavy with life, lay wrapped in silence, steeped in rest. Not a bird in wet hedge or evergreen had drawn nimble head fromnimble wing. In meadow and pasture fold and herd had sunk downsatisfied. A black brook brawling through a distant wood soundedloud in the stillness. Under the forest trees around the home ofthe Merediths only drops of dew might have been heard splashingdownward from leaf to leaf. In the house all slept. The mind, wakefullest of happy or of suffering things, had lost consciousnessof joy and care save as these had been crowded down into thechamber which lies beneath our sleep, whence they made themselvesaudible through the thin flooring as the noise of dreams. 

Among the parts of the day during which man may match the elementsof the world within him to the world without--his songs with itssunrises, toil with noontide, prayer with nightfall, slumber withdark--there is one to stir within him the greatest sense ofresponsibility: the hour of dawn. 

If he awaken then and be alone, he is earliest to enter the silentempty theatre of the earth where the human drama is soon torecommence. Not a mummer has stalked forth; not an auditor sitswaiting. He himself, as one of the characters in this ancientmiracle play of nature, pauses at the point of separation betweenall that he has enacted and all that he will enact. Yesterday hewas in the thick of action. Between then and now lies the night, stretching like a bar of verdure across wearying sands. In thatverdure he has rested; he has drunk forgetfulness and self-renewalfrom those deep wells of sleep. Soon the play will be ordered onagain and he must take his place for parts that are new andconfusing to all. The servitors of the morning have entered andhung wall and ceiling with gorgeous draperies; the dust has beensprinkled; fresh airs are blowing; and there is music, the livingorchestra of the living earth. Well for the waker then if he canlook back upon the role he has played with a quiet conscience, andas naturally as the earth greets the sun step forth upon the stageto continue or to end his brief part in the long drama of destiny. 

The horizon had hardly begun to turn red when a young man, stretched on his bed by an open window, awoke from troubled sleep. He lay for a few moments without moving, then he sat up on the edgeof the bed. His hands rested listlessly on his kneecaps and hiseyes were fixed on the sky-line crimsoning above his distant woods. 

After a while he went over and sat at one of the windows, his eyesstill fixed on the path of the coming sun; and a great tragedy ofmen sat there within him: the tragedy that has wandered long andthat wanders ever, showing its face in all lands, retaining itsyouth in all ages; the tragedy of love that heeds not law, and thetragedy of law forever punishing heedless love. 

Gradually the sounds of life began. From the shrubs under hiswindow, from the orchard and the wet weeds of fence corners, thebirds reentered upon their lives. Far off in the meadows thecattle rose from their warm dry places, stretched themselves andawoke the echoes of the wide rolling land with peaceful lowing. Abrood mare in a grazing lot sent forth her quick nostril call tothe foal capering too wildly about her, and nozzled it withrebuking affection. On the rosy hillsides white lambs were leapingand bleating, or running down out of sight under the white sea-fogof the valleys. A milk cart rattled along the turnpike toward thetown. 

It had become broad day. 

He started up and crossed the hall to the bedroom opposite, andstood looking down at his younger brother. How quiet Dent's sleepwas; how clear the current of his life had run and would runalways! No tragedy would ever separate him and the woman he loved. 

When he went downstairs the perfect orderliness of his mother'shousekeeping had been before him. Doors and windows had beenopened to the morning freshness, sweeping and dusting had beendone, not a servant was in sight. His setters lay waiting on theporch and as he stepped out they hurried up with glistening eyesand soft barkings and followed him as he passed around to the barn. Work was in progress there: the play of currycombs, the whirl ofthe cutting-box, the noise of the mangers, the bellowing of calves, the rich streamy sounds of the milking. He called his men to himone after another, laying out the work of the day. 

When he returned to the house he saw his mother walking on thefront pavement; she held flowers freshly plucked for the breakfasttable: a woman of large mould, grave, proud, noble; an ideal of herplace and time. 

"Is the lord of the manor ready for his breakfast?" she asked asshe came forward, smiling. 

"I am ready, mother, " he replied without smiling, touching his lipsto her cheek. 

She linked her arm in his as they ascended the steps. At the topshe drew him gently around until they faced the landscape rollingwide before them. 

"It is so beautiful!" she exclaimed with a deep narrow love of herland. "I never see it without thinking of it as it will be yearshence. I can see you riding over it then and your children playingaround the house and some one sitting here where we stand, watchingthem at their play and watching you in the distance at your work. But I have been waiting a long time for her to take my place--andto take her own, " and she leaned heavily on his arm as a sign ofher dependence but out of weakness also (for she did not tell himall). "I am impatient to hear the voice of your children, Rowan. Do you never wish to hear them yourself?"

As they stood silent, footsteps approached through the hall andturning they saw Dent with a book in his hand. 

"Are you grand people never coming to breakfast?" he asked, frowning with pretended impatience, "so that a laboring man may goto his work?"

He was of short but well-knit figure. Spectacles and a thoughtfulface of great refinement gave him the student's stamp. Hisundergraduate course at college would end in a few weeks. Postgraduate work was to begin during the summer. An assistantprofessorship, then a full professorship--these were successivestations already marked by him on the clear track of life; and hewas now moving toward them with straight and steady aim. Sometimeswe encounter personalities which seem to move through the discordsof this life as though guided by laws of harmony; they know neitheroutward check nor inward swerving, and are endowed with thatpeaceful passion for toil which does the world's work and is one ofthe marks of genius. 

He was one of these--a growth of the new time not comprehended byhis mother. She could neither understand it nor him. The painwhich this had given him at first he had soon outgrown; and whatmight have been a tragedy to another nature melted away in thesteady sunlight of his entire reasonableness. Perhaps he realizedthat the scientific son can never be the idol of a household untilhe is born of scientific parents. 

As mother and elder son now turned to greet him, the mother was notherself aware that she still leaned upon the arm of Rowan and thatDent walked into the breakfast room alone. 

Less than usual was said during the meal. They were a reservedhousehold, inclined to the small nobilities of silence. (It isquestionable whether talkative families ever have much to say. )This morning each had especial reason for self-communing. 

When they had finished breakfast and came out into the hall. Dentpaused at one of the parlor doors. 

"Mother" he said simply, "come into the parlor a moment, will you?And Rowan, I should like to see you also. "

They followed him with surprise and all seated themselves. 

"Mother, " he said, addressing Her with a clear beautiful light inhis gray eyes, yet not without the reserve which he always felt andalways inspired, "I wish to tell you that I am engaged to PansyVaughan. And to tell you also, Rowan. You know that I finishcollege this year; she does also. We came to an understandingyesterday afternoon and I wish you both to know it at once. Weexpect to be married in the autumn as soon as I am of age and a manin my own right. Mother, Pansy is coming to see you; and Rowan, Ihope you will go to see Pansy. Both of you will like her and beproud of her when you know her. "

He rose as though he had rounded his communication to a perfectshape. "Now I must get to my work. Good morning, " and with asmile for each he walked quietly out of the room. He knew that hecould not expect their congratulations at that moment and thatfurther conference would be awkward for all. He could merely tellthem the truth and leave the rest to the argument of time. 

"But I cannot believe it, Rowan! I cannot!"

Mrs. Meredith sat regarding' her elder son with incredulity anddistress. The shock of the news was for certain reasons evengreater to him; so that he could not yet command himselfsufficiently to comfort her. After a few moments she resumed: "Idid not know that Dent had begun to think about girls. He neversaid so. He has never cared for society. He has seemed absorbedin his studies. And now--Dent in love. Dent engaged, Dent to bemarried in the autumn--why, Rowan, am I dreaming, am I in mysenses? And to this girl! She has entrapped him--poor, innocent, unsuspecting Dent! My poor, little, short-sighted bookworm. "Tears sprang to her eyes, but she laughed also. She had a mother'shope that this trouble would turn to comedy. She went on quickly:"Did you know anything about this? Has he ever spoken to you aboutit?"

"No, I am just as much surprised. But then Dent never speaks inadvance. "

She looked at him a little timidly: "I thought perhaps it was thisthat has been troubling you. You have been trying to hide it fromme. "

He dropped his eyes quickly and made no reply. 

"And do you suppose he is in earnest, Rowan?"

"He would never jest on such a subject. "

"I mean, do you think he knows his own mind?"

"He always does. "

"But would he marry against my wishes?"

"He takes it for granted that you will be pleased: he said so. "

"But how can he think I'll be pleased? I have never spoken to thisgirl in my life. I have never seen her except when we have passedthem on the turnpike. I never spoke to her father but once andthat was years ago when he came here one cold winter afternoon tobuy a shock of fodder from your father. "

She was a white character; but even the whiteness of ermine gainsby being necked with blackness. "How can he treat me with solittle consideration? It is just as if he had said: 'Good morning, mother. I am going to disgrace the family by my marriage, but Iknow you will be delighted---good morning. '"

"You forget that Dent does not think he will disgrace the family. He said you would be proud of her. "

"Well, when the day comes for me to be proud of this, there willnot be much left to be ashamed of. Rowan, for once I shallinterfere. "

"How can you interfere?"

"Then you must: you are his guardian. "

"I shall not be his guardian by the autumn. Dent has arranged thisperfectly, mother, as he always arranges everything. "

She returned to her point. "But he _must_ be kept from making sucha mistake! Talk to him as a man. Advise him, show him that hewill tie a millstone around his neck, ruin his whole life. I amwilling to leave myself out and to forget what is due me, what isdue you, what is due the memory of his father and of my father: forhis own sake he must not marry this girl. "

He shook his head slowly. "It is settled, mother, " he addedconsolingly, "and I have so much confidence in Dent that I believewhat he says: we shall be proud of her when we know her. "

She sat awhile in despair. Then she said with fresh access ofconviction: "This is what comes of so much science: it always tendsto make a man common in his social tastes. You need not smile atme in that pitying way, for it is true: it destroys aristocraticfeeling; and there is more need of aristocratic feeling in ademocracy than anywhere else: because it is the only thing that canbe aristocratic. That is what science has done for Dent! And thisgirl I--the public school has tried to make her uncommon, and theGirl's College has attempted, to make her more uncommon; and now Isuppose she actually thinks she _is_ uncommon: otherwise she wouldnever have imagined that she could marry a son of mine. Smile on, I know I amuse you! You think I am not abreast of the times. I amglad I am not. I prefer my own. Dent should have studied for thechurch--with his love of books, and his splendid mind, and hisgrave, beautiful character. Then he would never have thought ofmarrying beneath him socially; he would have realized that if hedid, he could never rise. Once in the church and with the rightkind of wife, he might some day have become a bishop: I have alwayswanted a bishop in the family. But he set his heart upon aprofessorship, and I suppose a professor does not have to beparticular about whom he marries. "

"A professor has to be particular only to please himself--and thewoman. His choice is not regulated by salaries and congregations. "

She returned to her point: "You breed fine cattle and fine sheep, and you try to improve the strain of your setters. You know howyou do it. What right has Dent to injure his children in the racefor life by giving them an inferior mother? Are not children to beas much regarded in their rights of descent as rams and poodles?"

"You forget that the first families in all civilizations have keptthemselves alive and at the summit by intermarriage with good, clean, rich blood of people whom they have considered beneath them. "

"But certainly my family is not among these. It is certainly aliveand it is certainly not dying out. I cannot discuss the subjectwith you, if you once begin that argument. Are you going to callon her?"

"Certainly. It was Dent's wish and it is right that I should. "

"Then I think I shall go with you, Rowan. Dent said she was comingto see me; but I think I should rather go to see her. Whenever Iwished to leave, I could get away, but if she came here, Icouldn't. "

"When should you like to go?"

"Oh, don't hurry me! I shall need time--a great deal of time! Doyou suppose they have a parlor? I am afraid I shall not shine inthe kitchen in comparison with the tins. "

She had a wry face; then her brow cleared and she added with relief:

"But I must put this whole trouble out of my mind at present! Itis too close to me, I cannot even see it. I shall call on the girlwith you and then I shall talk quietly with Dent. Until then Imust try to forget it. Besides, I got up this morning withsomething else on my mind. It is not Dent's unwisdom thatdistresses me. "

Her tone indicated that she had passed to a more important topic. If any one had told her that her sons were not equally dear, thewound of such injustice would never have healed. In all that shecould do for both there had never been maternal discrimination; butthe heart of a woman cannot help feeling things that the heart of amother does not; and she discriminated as a woman. This wasevident now as she waived her young son's affairs. 

"It is not Dent that I have been thinking of this morning, " sherepeated. "Why is it not you that come to tell me of yourengagement? Why have you not set Dent an example as to the kind ofwoman he ought to marry? How many more years must he and I wait?"

They were seated opposite each other. He was ready for riding outon the farm, his hat on his crossed knees, gloves and whip in hand. Her heart yearned over him as he pulled at his gloves, his headdropped forward so that his face was hidden. 

"Now that the subject has come up in this unexpected way, I want totell you how long I have wished to see you married. I have neverspoken because my idea is that a mother should not advise unlessshe believes it necessary. And in your case it has not beennecessary. I have known your choice, and long before it becameyours, it became mine. She is my ideal among them all. I knowwomen, Rowan, and I know she is worthy of you and I could not saymore. She is-high-minded and that quality is so rare in eithersex. Without it what is any wife worth to a high-minded man? AndI have watched her. With all her pride and modesty I havediscovered her secret--she loves you. Then why have you waited?Why do you still wait?"

He did not answer and she continued with deeper feeling:

"Life is so uncertain to all of us and of course to me! I want tosee you wedded to her, see her brought here as mistress of thishouse, and live to hear the laughter of your children. " Shefinished with solemn emotion: "It has been my prayer, Rowan. "

She became silent with her recollections of her own early life fora moment and then resumed:

"Nothing ever makes up for the loss of such years--the first yearsof happy marriage. If we have had these, no matter what happensafterward, we have not lived for nothing. It becomes easier for usto be kind and good afterward, to take an interest in life, tobelieve in our fellow-creatures, and in God. "

He sprang up. 

"Mother, I cannot speak with you about this now. " He turnedquickly and stood with his back to her, looking out of doors; andhe spoke over his shoulder and his voice was broken: "You have hadone disappointment this morning: it is enough. But do not think ofmy marrying--of my ever marrying. Dent must take my place at thehead of the house. It is all over with me! But I cannot speakwith you about this now, " and he started quickly to leave theparlors. She rose and put her arm around his waist, walking besidehim. 

"You do not mind my speaking to, you about this, Rowan?" she said, sore at having touched some trouble which she felt that he had longbeen hiding from her, and with full respect for the privacies ofhis life. 

"No, no, no!" he cried, choking with emotion. "Ah, mother, mother!"--and he gently disengaged himself from her arms. 

She watched him as he rode out of sight. Then she returned and satin the chair which he had, quitted, folding her hands in her lap. 

For her it was one of the moments when we are reminded that ourlives are not in our keeping, and that whatsoever is to befall usoriginates in sources beyond our power. Our wills may indeed reachthe length of our arms or as far as our voices can penetrate space;but without us and within us moves one universe that saves us orruins us only for its own purposes; and we are no more free amidits laws than the leaves of the forest are free to decide their ownshapes and season of unfolding, to order the showers by which theyare to be nourished and the storms which shall scatter them at last. 

Above every other she had cherished the wish for a marriage betweenRowan and Isabel Conyers; now for reasons unknown to her it seemedthat this desire was never to be realized. She did not know themeaning of what Rowan had just said to her; but she did not doubtthere was meaning behind it, grave meaning. Her next most seriousconcern would have been that in time Dent likewise should choose awife wisely; now he had announced to her his intention to wedprematurely and most foolishly; she could not altogether shake offthe conviction that he would do what he had said he should. 

As for Dent it was well-nigh the first anxiety that he had evercaused her. If her affection for him was less poignant, beingtenderness stored rather than tenderness exercised, this resultedfrom the very absence of his demand for it. He had always neededher so little, had always needed every one so little, unfolding hislife from the first and drawing from the impersonal universewhatever it required with the quietude and efficiency of aprospering plant. She lacked imagination, or she might havethought of Dent as a filial sunflower, which turned the blossom ofits life always faithfully and beautifully toward her, but stoodrooted in the soil of knowledge that she could not supply. 

What she had always believed she could see in him was theperpetuation under a new form of his father and the men of hisfather's line. 

These had for generations been grave mental workers: ministers, lawyers, professors in theological seminaries; narrow-minded, strong-minded; upright, unbending; black-browed, black-coated; witha passion always for dealing in justice and dealing out justice, human or heavenly; most of all, gratified when in theologicalseminaries, when they could assert themselves as inerrantinterpreters of the Most High. The portraits of two of them hungin the dining room now, placed there as if to watch the table andsee that grace was never left unsaid, that there be no levity atmeat nor heresy taken in with the pudding. Other portraits werealso in other rooms--they always had themselves painted forposterity, seldom or never their wives. 

Some of the books they had written were in the library, lucidexplanations of the First Cause and of how the Judge of all theearth should be looked at from without and from within. Some thatthey had most loved to read were likewise there: "Pollock's Courseof Time"; the slow outpourings of Young, sad sectary; Milton, withthe passages on Hell approvingly underscored--not as great poetry, but as great doctrine; nowhere in the bookcases a sign of the"Areopagitica, " of "Comus, " and "L'Allegro"; but most prominent thewritings of Jonathan Edwards, hoarsest of the whole flock of NewWorld theological ravens. 

Her marriage into this family had caused universal surprise. Ithad followed closely upon the scandals in regard to the wild youngRavenel Morris, the man she loved, the man she had promised tomarry. These scandals had driven her to the opposite extreme fromher first choice by one of life's familiar reactions; and in herwounded flight she had thrown herself into the arms of a man whompeople called irreproachable. He was a grave lawyer, one of thebest of his kind; nevertheless he and she, when joined for the onevoyage of two human spirits, were like a funeral barge lashed tosome dancing boat, golden-oared, white-sailed, decked with flowers. Hope at the helm and Pleasure at the prow. 

For she herself had sprung from a radically different stock: fromsanguine, hot-blooded men; congressmen shaping the worldly historyof their fellow-beings and leaving the non-worldly to take care ofitself; soldiers illustrious in the army and navy; hale countrygentlemen who took the lead in the country's hardy sports andpleasures; all sowing their wild oats early in life with hands thatno power could stay; not always living to reap, but always leavingenough reaping to be done by the sad innocent who never sow;fathers of large families; and even when breaking the hearts oftheir wives, never losing their love; for with their large openfrailties being men without crime and cowardice, tyrannies, meannesses. 

With these two unlike hereditary strains before her she had, duringthe years, slowly devised the maternal philosophy of her sons. 

Out of those grave mental workers had come Dent--her student. Sheloved to believe that in the making of him her own blood asserteditself by drawing him away from the tyrannical interpretation ofGod to the neutral investigation of the earth, from black theologyto sunlit science--so leaving him at work and at peace, theancestral antagonisms becoming neutralized by being blended. 

But Rowan! while he was yet a little fellow, and she and her younghusband would sit watching him at play, characteristics revealedthemselves which led her to shake her head rebukingly and say: "Hegets these traits from you. " At other times contradictorycharacteristics appeared and the father, looking silently at her, would in effect inquire: "Whence does he derive these?" On bothaccounts she began to look with apprehension toward this son'smaturing years. And always, as the years passed, evidence wasforced more plainly upon her that in him the two natures heinherited were antagonistic still; each alternately uppermost; bothin unceasing warfare; thus endowing him with a double nature whichmight in time lead him to a double life. So that even then she hadbegun to take upon herself the burden of dreading lest she shouldnot only be the mother of his life, but the mother of histragedies. She went over this again and again: "Am I to be themother of his tragedies?"

As she sat this young summer morning after he had left her sostrangely, all at once the world became autumn to her remembrance. 

An autumn morning: the rays of the sun shining upon the silverymists swathing the trees outside, upon the wet and many-coloredleaves; a little frost on the dark grass here and there; the firstfires lighted within; the carriage already waiting at the door; thebreakfast hurriedly choked down--in silence; the mournful noise ofhis trunk being brought downstairs--his first trunk. Then thegoing out upon the veranda and the saying good-by to him; andthen--the carriage disappearing in the silver mists, with a few redand yellow leaves whirled high from the wheels. 

That was the last of the first Rowan, --youth at the threshold ofmanhood. Now off for college, to his university in New England. As his father and she stood side by side (he being too frail totake that chill morning ride with his son) he waved his handprotectingly after him, crying out: "He is a good boy. " Andshe, having some wide vision of other mothers of the land whoduring these same autumn days were bidding God-speed to theiridols--picked youth of the republic--she with some wide vision ofthis large fact stood a proud mother among them all, feeling surethat he would take foremost place in his college for good honestwork and for high character and gentle manners and gallantbearing--with not a dark spot in him. 

It was toward the close of the first session, after she had learnedthe one kind of letter he always wrote, that his letters changed. She could not have explained how they were changed, could not haveheld the pages up to the inspection of any one else and have said, "See! it is here. " But she knew it was there, and it stayed there. She waited for his father to notice it; but if he ever noticed it, he never told her: nor did she ever confide her discovery to him. 

When vacation came, it brought a request from Rowan that he mightbe allowed to spend the summer with college friends farthernorth--camping, fishing, hunting, sailing, seeing more of hiscountry. His father's consent was more ready than her own. Thesecond session passed and with the second vacation the request wasrenewed. "Why does he not come home? Why does he not wish to comehome?" she said, wandering restlessly over the house with hisletter in her hands; going up to his bedroom and sitting down inthe silence of it and looking at his bed--which seemed so strangelywhite that day--looking at all the preparations she had made forhis comfort. "Why does he not come?"

Near the close of the third session he came quickly enough, summoned by his father's short fatal illness. 

Some time passed before she observed anything in him but naturalchanges after so long an absence and grief over his great loss. Heshut himself in his room for some days, having it out alone withhimself, a young man's first solemn accounting to a father who hasbecome a memory. Gradually there began to emerge his new care ofher, and tenderness, a boy's no more. And he stepped forwardeasily into his place as the head of affairs, as his brother'sguardian. But as time wore on and she grew used to him as so mucholder in mere course of nature, and as graver by his loss and hisfresh responsibilities, she made allowances for all these andbrushed them away and beheld constantly beneath them that otherchange. 

Often while she sat near him when they were reading, she would lookup and note that unaware a shadow had stolen out on his face. Shestudied that shadow. And one consolation she drew: that whatsoeverthe cause, it was nothing by which he felt dishonored. At suchmoments her love broke over him with intolerable longings. Sheremembered things that her mother had told her about her father;she recalled the lives of her brothers, his uncles. She yearned tosay: "What is it, Rowan? You can tell me anything, anything. Iknow so much more than you believe. "

But some restraint dissuaded her from bridging that reserve. Shemay have had the feeling that she spared him a good deal by her notknowing. 

For more than a year after his return he had kept aloof fromsociety--going into town only when business demanded, and acceptingno invitations to the gayeties of the neighborhood. He likedrather to have his friends come out to stay with him: sometimes hewas off with them for days during the fishing and hunting seasons. Care of the farm and its stock occupied a good deal of his leisure, and there were times when he worked hard in the fields--she thoughtso unnecessarily. Incessant activity of some kind had become hiscraving--the only ease. 

She became uneasy, she disapproved. For a while she allowed thingsto have their way, but later she interfered--though as always withher silent strength and irresistible gentleness. Making no commentupon his changed habits and altered tastes, giving no sign of herown purposes, she began the second year of his home-coming toaccept invitations for herself and formally reentered her socialworld; reassumed her own leadership there; demanded him as herescort; often filled the house with young guests; made it for hisgeneration what the home of her girlhood had been to her--in allsacrificing for him the gravity and love of seclusion which hadsettled over her during the solemn years, years which she knew tobe parts of a still more solemn future. 

She succeeded. She saw him again more nearly what he had beenbefore the college days--more nearly developing that type of lifewhich belonged to him and to his position. 

Finally she saw him in love as she wished; and at this point shegradually withdrew from society again, feeling that he needed herno more. 

VI

The noise of wheels on the gravel driveway of the lawn brought thereflections of Mrs. Meredith to an abrupt close. The sound wasextremely unpleasant to her; she did not feel in a mood toentertain callers this morning. Rising with regret, she lookedout. The brougham of Mrs. Conyers, flashing in the sun, was beingdriven toward the house--was being driven rapidly, as though speedmeant an urgency. 

If Mrs. Meredith desired no visitor at all, she particularlydisliked the appearance of this one. Rowan's words to her werefull of meaning that she did not understand; but they rendered itclear at least that his love affair had been interrupted, if notbeen ended. She could not believe this due to any fault of his;and friendly relations with the Conyers family was for herinstantly at an end with any wrong done to him. 

She summoned a maid and instructed her regarding the room in whichthe visitor was to be received (not in the parlors; they were toofull of solemn memories this morning). Then she passed down thelong hall to her bedchamber. 

The intimacy between these ladies was susceptible of exactanalysis; every element comprising it could have been valued asupon a quantitative scale. It did not involve any of thoseincalculable forces which constitute friendship--a noble mysteryremaining forever beyond unravelling. 

They found the first basis of their intimacy in a common wish forthe union of their offsprings. This subject had never beenmentioned between them. Mrs. Conyers would have discussed it hadshe dared; but she knew at least the attitude of the other. Furthermore, Mrs. Meredith brought to this association a beautifulweakness: she was endowed with all but preternatural insight intowhat is fine in human nature, but had slight power of discoveringwhat is base; she seemed endowed with far-sightedness in high, clear, luminous atmospheres, but was short-sighted in moraltwilights. She was, therefore, no judge of the character of herintimate. As for that lady's reputation, this was well known toher; but she screened herself against this reputation behind whatshe believed to be her own personal discovery of unsuspectedvirtues in the misjudged. She probably experienced as much pridein publicly declaring the misjudged a better woman than she wasreputed, as that lady would have felt in secretly declaring her tobe a worse one. 

On the part of Mrs. Conyers, the motives which she brought to theassociation presented nothing that must be captured and broughtdown from the heights, she was usually to be explained by miningrather than mounting. Whatever else she might not have been, shewas always ore; never rainbows. 

Throughout bird and animal and insect life there runs what isrecognized as the law of protective assimilation. It representsthe necessity under which a creature lives to pretend to besomething else as a condition of continuing to be itself. Therose-colored flamingo, curving its long neck in volutions thatsuggest the petals of a corolla, burying its head under its wingand lifting one leg out of sight, becomes a rank, marvellousflower, blooming on too slight a stalk in its marshes. An insectturns itself into one of the dried twigs of a dead stick. On themargin of a shadowed pool the frog is hued like moss--greennessbeside greenness. Mrs. Conyers availed herself of a kind ofprotective assimilation when she exposed herself to the environmentof Mrs. Meredith, adopting devices by which she would be taken forany object in nature but herself. Two familiar devices wereapplied to her habiliments and her conversations. Mrs. Meredithalways dressed well to the natural limit of her bountiful years;Mrs. Conyers usually dressed more than well and more than ageneration behind hers. On occasions when she visited Rowan'sunconcealed mother, she allowed time to make regarding herselfalmost an honest declaration. Ordinarily she Was a rose nearlyready to drop, which is bound with a thread of its own color tolook as much as possible like a bud that is nearly ready to open. 

Her conversations were even more assiduously tinged and fashionedby the needs of accommodation. Sometimes she sat in Mrs. Meredith's parlors as a soul sick of the world's vanities, an urbanspirit that hungered for country righteousness. During a walk oneday through the gardens she paused under the boughs of a weepingwillow and recited, "Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition--"She uniformly imparted to Mrs. Meredith the assurance that with heralone she could lay aside all disguises. 

This morning she alighted from her carriage at the end of thepavement behind some tall evergreens. As she walked toward thehouse, though absorbed with a serious purpose, she continued to beas observant of everything as usual. Had an eye been observant ofher, it would have been noticed that Mrs. Conyers in all herself-concealment did not conceal one thing--her walk. This oneelement of her conduct had its curious psychology. She had neverbeen able to forget that certain scandals set going many yearsbefore, had altered the course of Mrs. Meredith's life and of thelives of some others. After a lapse of so long a time she had nofear now that she should be discovered. Nevertheless it wasimpossible for her ever to approach this house without "comingdelicately. " She "came delicately" in the same sense that Agag, king of Amalek, walked when he was on his way to Saul, who wasabout to hew him to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. 

She approached the house now, observant of everything as shetripped. Had a shutter been hung awry; if a window shade had beendrawn too low or a pane of glass had not sparkled, or there hadbeen loose paper on the ground or moulted feathers on the bricks, she would have discovered this with the victorious satisfaction offinding fault. But orderliness prevailed. No; the mat at thefront door had been displaced by Rowan's foot as he had hurriedfrom the house. (The impulse was irresistible: she adjusted itwith her toe and planted herself on it with a sense of triumph. )

As she took out her own and Isabel's cards, she turned and lookedout across the old estate. This was the home she had designed forIsabel: the land, the house, the silver, the glass, the memories, the distinction--they must all be Isabel's. 

Some time passed before Mrs. Meredith appeared. Always a woman ofdignity and reserve, she had never before in her life perhaps worna demeanor so dignified and reserved. Her nature called for peace;but if Rowan had been wronged, then there was no peace--and asacred war is a cruel one. The instant that the two ladiesconfronted each other, each realized that each concealed somethingfrom the other. This discovery instantly made Mrs. Meredith coolerstill; it rendered Mrs. Conyers more cordial. 

"Isabel regretted that she could not come. "

"I am sorry. " The tone called for the dismissal of the subject. 

"This is scarcely a visit to you, " Mrs. Conyers went on; "I havebeen paying one of my usual pastoral calls: I have been to AmbroseWebb's to see if my cows are ready to return to town. Strawberriesare ripe and strawberries call for more cream, and more cream callsfor more calves, and more calves call for--well, we have all heardthem! I do not understand how a man who looks like Ambrose can sostimulate cattle. Of course my cows are not as fine and fat asRowan's--that is not to be expected. The country is looking verybeautiful. I never come for a drive without regretting that I livein town. " (She would have found the country intolerable for thesame reason that causes criminals to flock to cities. )

Constraint deepened as the visit was prolonged. Mrs. Conyersbegged Mrs. Meredith for a recipe that she knew to be bad; and whenMrs. Meredith had left the room for it, she rose and looked eagerlyout of the windows for any sign of Rowan. When Mrs. Meredithreturned, for the same reason she asked to be taken into thegarden, which was in its splendor of bloom. Mrs. Meredith culledfor her a few of the most resplendent blossoms--she could not haveoffered to any one anything less. Mrs. Conyers was careful not topin any one of these on; she had discovered that she possessed apeculiarity known to some florists and concealed by those women whosuffer from it--that flowers soon wilt when worn by them. 

Meanwhile as they walked she talked of flowers, of housekeeping;she discussed Marguerite's coming ball and Dent's brilliantgraduation. She enlarged upon this, praising Dent to thedisparagement of her own grandson Victor, now in retreat fromcollege on account of an injury received as centre-rush in hisfootball team. Victor, she protested, was above education; hiscollege was a kind of dormitory to athletics. 

When we are most earnest ourselves, we are surest to feel the lackof earnestness in others; sincerity stirred to the depths willtolerate nothing less. It thus becomes a new test of a companion. So a weak solution may not reveal a poison when a strong one will. Mrs. Meredith felt this morning as never before the real nature ofthe woman over whom for years she had tried to throw a concealingcharity; and Mrs. Conyers saw as never before in what an impossiblesoil she had tried to plant poison oak and call it castle ivy. 

The ladies parted with coldness. When she was once more seated inher carriage, Mrs. Conyers thrust her head through the window andtold the coachman to drive slowly. She tossed the recipe into apine tree and took in her head. Then she caught hold of a brownsilk cord attached to a little brown silk curtain in the front ofthe brougham opposite her face. It sprang aside, revealing alittle toilette mirror. On the cushion beside her lay somethingunder a spread newspaper. She quickly drew off her sombre visitinggloves; and lifting the newspaper, revealed under it a fresh pairof gloves, pearl-colored. She worked her tinted hands nimbly intothese. Then she took out a rose-colored scarf or shawl as light asa summer cloud. This she threw round her shoulders; it added nowarmth, it added color, meaning. There were a few other youthwardchanges and additions; and then the brown silk curtain closed overthe mirror. 

Another woman leaned back in a corner of the brougham. By a trickof the face she had juggled away a generation of her years. Thehands were moved backward on the horologe of mortality as we movebackward the pointers on the dial of a clock: her face ticked atthe hour of two in the afternoon of life instead of half-past five. 

There was still time enough left to be malicious. 

VII

One morning about a week later she entered her carriage and wasdriven rapidly away. A soft-faced, middle-aged woman with grayringlets and nervous eyes stepped timorously upon the veranda andwatched her departure with an expression of relief--Miss HarrietCrane, the unredeemed daughter of the household. 

She had been the only fruit of her mother's first marriage and shestill remained attached to the parental stem despite the mostvigorous wavings and shakings of that stem to shed its own product. Nearly fifty years of wintry neglect and summer scorching had notavailed to disjoin Harriet from organic dependence upon her mother. And of all conceivable failings in a child of hers that mothercould have found none so hard to forgive as the failure to attracta man in a world full of men nearly all bent upon being attracted. 

It was by no choice of Harriet's that she was born of a woman whovalued children as a kind of social collateral, high-classinvestments to mature after long periods with at least reasonableprofits for the original investors. Nor was it by any volition ofhers that she had commended herself to her mother in the beginningby being a beautiful and healthful child: initial pledge that shecould be relied upon to turn out lucrative in the end. The parentherself was secretly astounded that she had given birth to a childof so seraphic a disposition. 

Trouble and disappointment began with education, for education islong stout resistance. You cannot polish highly a stone that isnot hard enough to resist being highly polished. Harriet's softnature gave way before the advance of the serried phalanxes ofknowledge: learning passed her by; and she like the many "passedthrough school. "

By this time her mother had grown alarmed and she brought Harrietout prematurely, that she might be wedded before, so to speak, shewas discovered. Meantime Mrs. Crane herself had married a secondand a third time, with daughters by the last husband who werelittle younger than her eldest; and she laughingly protested thatnothing is more confusing to a woman than to have in the housechildren by two husbands. Hence further reason for desiringimmediate nuptials: she could remove from the parlors the trace ofbi-marital collaboration. 

At first only the most brilliant matches were planned for Harriet;these one by one unaccountably came to naught. Later the motherbegan to fall back: upon those young men who should be glad toembrace such an opportunity; but these less desirable young menfailed to take that peculiar view of their destinies. In themeanwhile the Misses Conyers had come on as debutantes and weresoon bespoken. At the marriage of the youngest, Harriet's motherhad her act as first bridesmaid and dressed her, already fading, asthough she were the very spirit of April. 

The other sisters were long since gone, scattered north and southwith half-grown families; and the big house was almost empty savewhen they came in troops to visit it. 

Harriet's downward career as an article of human merchandise hadpassed through what are perhaps not wholly unrecognizable stages. At first she had been displayed near the entrance for immediatepurchase by the unwary. Then she had been marked down as somethingthat might be secured at a reduced price; but intending buyerspreferred to pay more. By and by even this label was taken off andshe became a remnant of stock for which there was no convenientspace--being moved from shelf to shelf, always a little moreshop-worn, a little more out of style. What was really needed wasan auction. 

Mrs. Conyers did not take much to heart the teachings of her Bible;but it had at least defined for her one point of view: allcreatures worth saving had been saved in pairs. 

Bitter as were those years for Harriet, others more humiliatingfollowed. The maternal attempts having been discontinued, she, desperate with slights and insults, had put forth some efforts ofher own. But it was as though one had been placed in a boatwithout oars and told to row for life: the little boat under theinfluence of cosmic tides had merely drifted into shallows and nowlay there--forgotten. 

This morning as she sat idly rocking on the veranda, she felt thatnegative happiness which consists in the disappearance of apositively disagreeable thing. Then she began to study how sheshould spend the forenoon most agreeably. Isabel was upstairs; shewould have been perfectly satisfied to talk with her; but forseveral mornings Isabel had shown unmistakable preference to be letalone; and in the school of life Harriet had attained the highestproficiency in one branch of knowledge at least--never to get inanybody's way. Victor Fielding lay under the trees with a pipe anda book, but she never ventured near him. 

So Harriet bethought herself of a certain friend of hers on theother side of town, Miss Anna Hardage, who lived with her brother, Professor Hardage--two people to trust. 

She put on her hat which unfortunately she had chosen to trimherself, tied a white veil across the upper part of her face andgot out her second-best pair of gloves: Harriet kept her bestgloves for her enemies. In the front yard she pulled a handful ofwhite lilacs (there was some defect here or she would never havecarried white lilacs in soiled white gloves); and passed out of thegate. Her eyes were lighted up with anticipations, but ill musthave overtaken her in transit; for when she was seated with MissAnna in a little side porch looking out on the little green yard, they were dimmed with tears. 

"The same old story, " she complained vehemently. "The sameridicule that has been dinned into my ears since I was a child. "

"Ah, now, somebody has been teasing her about being an old maid, "said Miss Anna to herself, recognizing the signs. 

"This world is a very unprincipled place to live in, " continuedHarriet, her rage curdling into philosophy. 

"Ah, but it is the best there is just yet, " maintained Miss Anna, stoutly. "By and by we may all be able to do better--those of uswho get the chance. "

"What shall I care then?" said Harriet, scouting eternity as apalliative of contemporary woes. 

"Wait! you are tired and you have lost your temper from thirst:children always do. I'll bring something to cure you, fresh fromthe country, fresh from Ambrose Webb's farm. Besides, you have adark shade of the blues, my dear; and this remedy is capital forthe blues. You have but to sip a glass slowly--and where arethey?" And she hastened into the house. 

She returned with two glasses of cool buttermilk. 

The words and the deed were characteristic of one of the mostwholesome women that ever helped to straighten out a crooked and tocool a feverish world. Miss Anna's very appearance allayedirritation and became a provocation to good health, to good sense. Her mission in life seemed not so much to distribute honey as tosprinkle salt, to render things salubrious, to enable them to keeptheir tonic naturalness. Not within the range of womankind couldso marked a contrast have been found for Harriet as in this maidenlady of her own age, who was her most patient friend and whosupported her clinging nature (which still could not resist theattempt to bloom) as an autumn cornstalk supports a frost-nippedmorning-glory. 

If words of love had ever been whispered into Miss Anna's ear, nohuman being knew it now: but perhaps her heart also had its underchamber sealed with tears. Women not even behind her back jestedat her spinsterhood; and when that is true, a miracle takes placeindeed. No doubt Miss Anna was a miracle, not belonging to anycountry, race, or age; being one of those offerings to the worldwhich nature now and then draws from the deeps of womanhood: a puregift of God. 

The two old maids drained their rectifying beverage in the shadyporch. Whether from Miss Anna's faith in it or from the simplehealth-giving of her presence, Harriet passed through a process ofhealing; and as she handed back the empty glass, she smiledgratefully into Miss Anna's sparkling brown eyes. Nature had beenmerciful to her in this, that she was as easily healed as wounded. She now returned to the subject which had so irritated her, as werub pleasantly a spot from which a thorn has been extracted. 

"What do I care?" she said, straightening her hat as if to completeher recovery. "But if there is one thing that can make me angry, Anna, it is the middle-aged, able-bodied unmarried men of thistown. They are perfectly, _perfectly_ contemptible. "

"Oh, come now!" cried Miss Anna, "I am too old to talk about suchsilly things myself; but what does a woman care whether she ismarried or not if she has had offers? And you have had plenty ofgood offers, my dear. "

"No, I haven't!" said Harriet, who would tell the truth about thisrankling misfortune. 

"Well, then, it was because the men knew you wouldn't have them. "

"No, it wasn't!" said Harriet, "it was because they knew I would. "

"Nonsense!" cried Miss Anna, impatiently. "You mustn't try to palmoff so much mock modesty on me, Harriet. "

"Ah, I am too old to fib about it, Anna! I leave _that_ to my manysisters in misfortune. "

Harriet looked at her friend's work curiously: she was darningProfessor Hardage's socks. 

"Why do you do that, Anna? Socks are dirt cheap. You might aswell go out into the country and darn sheep. "

"Ah, you have never had a brother--my brother! so you cannotunderstand. I can feel his heels pressing against my stitches whenhe is walking a mile away. And I know whenever his fingers touchthe buttons I have put back. Besides, don't you like to see peoplemake bad things good, and things with holes in them whole again?Why, that is half the work of the world, Harriet! It is not hisfeet that make these holes, " continued Miss Anna, nicely, "it ishis shoes, his big, coarse shoes. And his clothes wear out sosoon. He has a tailor who misfits him so exactly from year to yearthat there is never the slightest deviation in the botch. I knowbeforehand exactly where all the creases will begin. So I darn andmend. The idea of his big, soft, strong feet making holes inanything! but, then, you have never tucked him in bed at night, mydear, so you know nothing about his feet. "

"Not I!" said Harriet, embarrassed but not shocked. 

Miss Anna continued fondly in a lowered voice: "You should haveheard him the other day when he pulled open a drawer: 'Why, Anna, 'he cried, 'where on earth did I get all these new socks? Thepair I left in here must have been alive: they've bred likerabbits. '--'Why, you've forgotten, ' I said. 'It's your birthday;and I have made you over, so that you are as good as new--_me_!'"

"I never have to be reminded of my birthday, " remarked Harriet, reflectively. "Anna, do you know that I have lived aboutone-eighth of the time since Columbus discovered America: doesn'tthat sound awful!"

"Ah, but you don't look it, " said Miss Anna, artistically, "andthat's the main object. "

"Oh, I don't feel it, " retorted Harriet, "and that's the mainobject too. I'm as young as I ever was when I'm away from home;but I declare, Anna, there are times when my mother can make mefeel I'm about the oldest thing alive. "

"Oh, come now! you mustn't begin to talk that way, or I'll have togive you more of the antidote. You are threatened with a relapse. "

"No more, " ordered Harriet with a forbidding hand, "and I repeatwhat I said. Of course you know I never gossip, Anna; but when Italk to you, I do not feel as though I were talking to anybody. "

"Why, of course not, " said Miss Anna, trying to make the most ofthe compliment, "I am nobody at all, just a mere nonentity, Harriet. "

"Anna, " said Harriet, after a pause of unusual length, "if it hadnot been for my mother, I should have been married long ago. Thousands of worse-looking women, and of actually worse women, marry every year in this world and marry reasonably well. It wasbecause she tried to marry me off: that was the bottom of thedeviltry--the men saw through her. "

"I am afraid they did, " admitted Miss Anna, affably, looking downinto a hole. 

"Of course I know I am not brilliant, " conceded Harriet, "but thenI am never commonplace. "

"I should like to catch any one saying such a thing. "

"Even if I were, commonplace women always make the best wives: dothey not?"

"Oh, don't ask that question in this porch, " exclaimed Miss Anna alittle resentfully. "What do I know about it!"

"My mother thinks I am a weak woman, " continued Harriet, musingly. "If my day ever comes, she will know that I am, strong, Anna, _strong_. "

"Ah, now, you must forgive your mother, " cried Miss Anna, havingreached a familiar turn in this familiar dialogue. "Whatever shedid, she did for the best. Certainly it was no fault of yours. But you could get married to-morrow if you wished and you know it, Harriet. " (Miss Anna offered up the usual little prayer to beforgiven. )

The balm of those words worked through Harriet's veins like apoison of joy. So long as a single human being expresses faith inus, what matters an unbelieving world? Harriet regularly visitedMiss Anna to hear these maddening syllables. She called for themas for the refilling of a prescription, which she preferred to getfresh every time rather than take home once for all and use asdirected. 

Among a primitive folk who seemed to have more moral troubles thanany other and to feel greater need of dismissing them by artificialmeans, there grew up the custom of using a curious expedient. Theychose a beast of the field and upon its head symbolically piled allthe moral hard-headedness of the several tribes; after which theunoffending brute was banished to the wilderness and the guiltymultitude felt relieved. However crude that ancient method oftransferring mental and moral burdens, it had at least thisredeeming feature: the early Hebrews heaped their sins upon acreature which they did not care for and sent it away. In moderntimes we pile our burdens upon our dearest fellow-creatures andkeep them permanently near us for further use. What human beingbut has some other upon whom he nightly hangs his troubles as hehangs his different garments upon hooks and nails in the wallsaround him? Have we ever suspected that when once the habit oftransferring our troubles has become pleasant to us, we thereafterhunt for troubles in order that we may have them to transfer, thatwe magnify the little ones in order to win the credit of havinglarge ones, and that we are wonderfully refreshed by making otherpeople despondent about us? Mercifully those upon whom the burdensare hung often become the better for their loads; they may not liveso long, but they are more useful. Thus in turn the weak developthe strong. 

For years Miss Anna had sacrificially demeaned herself in theservice of Harriet, who would now have felt herself a recreantfriend unless she had promptly detailed every annoyance of herlife. She would go home, having left behind her the infinitelittle swarm of stinging things--having transferred them to thehead of Miss Anna, around which they buzzed until they died. 

There was this further peculiarity in Harriet's visits: that themost important moments were the last; Just as a doctor, after hehas listened to the old story of his patient's symptoms, and hasprescribed and bandaged and patted and soothed, and has reached thedoor, turns, and noting a light in the patient's eye hears him makea remark which shows that all the time he has really been thinkingabout something else. 

Harriet now showed what was at the bottom of her own mind thismorning:

"What I came to tell you about, Anna, is that for a week life athome has been unendurable. There is some trouble, some terribletrouble; and no matter what goes wrong, my mother always holds meresponsible. Positively there are times when I wonder whether I, without my knowing it, may not be the Origin of Evil. "

Miss Anna made no comment, having closed the personal subject, andHarriet continued:

"It has scarcely been possible for me to stay in the house. Fortunately mother has been there very little herself. She goesand goes and drives and drives. Strange things have beenhappening. You know that Judge Morris has not missed coming onSunday evening for years. Last night mother sat on the verandawaiting for him and he did not come. I know, for I watched. Whathave I to do but watch other people's affairs?--I have none of myown. I believe the trouble is all between Isabel and Rowan. "

Miss Anna dropped her work and looked at Harriet with suddengravity. 

"I can give you no idea of the real situation because it is verydramatic; and you know, Anna, I am not dramatic: I am merelyhistorical: I tell my little tales. But at any rate Rowan has notbeen at the house for a week. He called last Sunday afternoon andIsabel refused to see him. I know; because what have I to do butto interest myself in people who have affairs of interest? ThenIsabel had his picture in her room: it has been taken down. Shehad some of his books: they are gone. The house has virtually beenclosed to company. Isabel has excused herself to callers. Motherwas to give a tea; the invitations were cancelled. At table Isabeland mother barely speak; but when I am not near, they talk a greatdeal to each other. And Isabel walks and walks and walks--in thegarden, in her rooms. I have waked up two or three times at nightand have seen her sitting at her window. She has always been verykind to me, Anna, " Harriet's voice faltered, "she and you: and Icannot bear to see her so unhappy. You would never believe that afew days would make such a change in her. The other morning I wentup to her room with a little bunch of violets which I had gatheredfor her myself. When she opened the door, I saw that she waspacking her trunks. And the dress she had ordered for Marguerite'sball was lying on the bed ready to be put in. As I gave her theflowers she stood looking at them a long time; then she kissed mewithout a word and quickly closed the door. "

When Harriet had gone. Miss Anna sat awhile in her porch with atroubled face. Then she went softly into the library, the windowsof which opened out upon the porch. Professor Hardage was standingon a short step-ladder before a bookcase, having just completed thearrangement of the top shelf. 

"Are you never going to get down?" she asked, looking up at himfondly. 

He closed the book with a snap and a sigh and descended. Heranxious look recalled his attention, "Did I not hear Harriet harrowing you up again with her troubles?"he asked. "You poor, kind soul that try to bear everybody's!"

"Never mind about what I bear! What can you bear for dinner?"

"It is an outrage, Anna! What right has she to make herselfhappier by making you miserable, lengthening her life by shorteningyours? For these worries always clip the thread of life at theend: that is where all the small debts are collected as one. "

"Now you must not be down on Harriet! It makes her happier; and asto the end of my life, I shall be there to attend to that. "

"Suppose I moved away with you to some other college entirely outof her reach?"

"I shall not suppose it because you will never do it. If you did, Harriet would simply find somebody else to confide in; she _must_tell _everything_ to _somebody_. But if she told any one else, agood many of these stories would be all over town. She tells meand they get no further. "

"What right have you to listen to scandal in order to suppress it?"

"I don't even listen always: I merely stop the stream at itssource. "

"I object to your offering your mind as the banks to such a stream. Still I'm glad that I live near the banks, " and he kissed his handto her. 

"When one woman tells another anything and the other woman does nottell, remember it is not scandal--it is confidence. "

"Then there is no such thing as confidence, " he replied, laughing. 

He turned toward his shelves. 

"Now do rest, " she pleaded, "you look worn out. "

She had a secret notion that books instead of putting life intopeople took it out of them. At best they performed the function ofgrindstones: they made you sharper, but they made you thinner--gaveyou more edge and left you less substance. 

"I wish every one of those books had a lock and I had the bunch ofkeys. "

"Each has a lock and key; but the key cannot be put into yourpocket, Anna, my dear; it is the unlocking mind. And you are notto speak of books as a collection of locks and keys; they make upthe living tree of knowledge, though of course there is very littleof the tree in this particular bookcase. "

"I don't see any of it, " she remarked with wholesome literalness. 

"Well, here at the bottom are lexicons--think of them as roots andsoil. Above them lie maps and atlases: consider them the surface. Then all books are history of course. But here is a great centraltrunk rising out of the surface which is called History inespecial. On each side of that, running to the right and to theleft, are main branches. Here for instance is the large limb ofPhilosophy--a very weighty limb indeed. Here is the branch ofCriticism. Here is a bough consisting principally of leaves onwhich live unnamed venomous little insects that poison them and dieon them: their appointed place in creation. "

"And so there is no positive fruit anywhere, " she insisted with herpractical taste for the substantial. 

"It is all food, Anna, edible and nourishing to different mouthsand stomachs. Some very great men have lived on the roots ofknowledge, the simplest roots. And here is poetry for dates andwild honey; and novels for cocoanuts and mushrooms. And here isReligion: that is for manna. "

"What is at the very top?"

His eyes rested upon the highest row of books. 

"These are some of the loftiest growths, new buds of the mindopening toward the unknown. Each in its way shows the best thatman, the earth-animal, has been able to accomplish. Here is alittle volume for instance which tells what he ought to be--andnever is. This small volume deals with the noblest ideals of thegreatest civilizations. Here is what one of the finest of theworld's teachers had to say about justice. Aspiration is at thatend. This little book is on the sad loveliness of Greek girls; andthe volume beside it is about the brief human chaplets that Horaceand some other Romans wore--and then trod on. Thus the long storyof light and shadow girdles the globe. If you were nothing but aspirit, Anna, and could float in here some night, perhaps you wouldsee a mysterious radiance streaming upward from this shelf of bookslike the northern lights from behind the world--starting no oneknows where, sweeping away we know not whither--search-light of themortal, turned on dark eternity. "

She stood a little behind him and watched him in silence, hidingher tenderness. 

"If I were a book, " she said thoughtlessly, "where should I be?"

He drew the fingers of one hand lingeringly across the NewTestament. 

"Ah, now don't do that, " she cried, "or you shall have no dinner. Here, turn round! look at the dust! look at this cravat on one end!look at these hands! March upstairs. "

He laid his head over against hers. 

"Stand up!" she exclaimed, and ran out of the room. 

Some minutes later she came back and took a seat near the door. There was flour on her elbow; and she held a spoon in her hand. 

"Now you look like yourself, " she said, regarding him with approvalas he sat reading before the bookcase. "I started to tell you whatHarriet told me. "

He looked over the top of his book at her. 

"I thought you said you stopped the stream at its source. Now youpropose to let it run down to me--or up to me: how do you know itwill not run past me?"

"Now don't talk in that way, " she said, "this is something you willwant to know, " and she related what Harriet had chronicled. 

VIII

When she had left the room, he put back into its place the volumehe was reading: its power over him was gone. All the voices of allhis books, speaking to him from lands and ages, grew simultaneouslyhushed. He crossed the library to a front window opening upon thenarrow rocky street and sat with his elbow on the window-sill, thelarge fingers of one large hand unconsciously searching hisbrow--that habit of men of thoughtful years, the smoothing out ofthe inner problems. 

The home of Professor Hardage was not in one of the best parts ofthe town. There was no wealth here, no society as it impressivelycalls itself; there were merely well-to-do human beings of ordinaryintelligence and of kindly and unkindly natures. The houses, constructed of frame or of brick, were crowded wall against wallalong the sidewalk; in the rear were little gardens of flowers andof vegetables. The street itself was well shaded; and one foresttree, the roots of which bulged up through the mossy bricks of thepavement, hung its boughs before his windows. Throughout life hehad found so many companions in the world outside of mere people, and this tree was one. From the month of leaves to the month of noleaves--the period of long hot vacations--when his eyes were tiredand his brain and heart a little tired also, many a time itrefreshed him by all that it was and all that it stood for--thisgreen tent of the woods arching itself before his treasuredshelves. In it for him were thoughts of cool solitudes and offar-away greenness; with tormenting visions also of old lands, thecrystal-aired, purpling mountains of which, and valleys full offable, he was used to trace out upon the map, but knew that heshould never see or press with responsive feet. 

For travel was impossible to him. Part of his small salary went tothe family of a brother; part disappeared each year in the buyingof books--at once his need and his passion; there were the expensesof living; and Miss Anna always exacted appropriations. 

"I know we have not much, but then my little boys and girls havenothing; and the poor must help the poorer. "

"Very well, " he would reply, "but some day you will be a beggaryourself, Anna. "

"Oh, well then, if I am, I do not doubt that I shall be a thriftyold mendicant. And I'll beg for _you_! So don't you be uneasy;and give me what I want. "

She always looked like a middle-aged Madonna in the garb of ahousekeeper. Indeed, he was wont to call her the Madonna of theDishes; but at these times, and in truth for all deeper ways, hethought of her as the Madonna of the Motherless. Nevertheless hewas resolute that out of this many-portioned salary something mustyet be saved. 

"The time will come, " he threatened, "when some younger man willwant my professorship--and will deserve it. I shall either be putout or I shall go out; and then--decrepitude, uselessness, penury, unless something has been hoarded. So, Anna, out of the frailuncertain little basketful of the apples of life which the collegeauthorities present to me once a year, we must save a few for whatmay prove a long hard winter. "

Professor Hardage was a man somewhat past fifty, of ordinarystature and heavy figure, topped with an immense head. His was notwhat we call rather vaguely the American face. In Germany had hebeen seen issuing from the lecture rooms of a university, he wouldhave been thought at home and his general status had been assumed:there being that about him which bespoke the scholar, one of thosequiet self-effacing minds that have long since passed with entirehumility into the service of vast themes. In social life thecharacter of a noble master will in time stamp itself upon the lookand manners of a domestic; and in time the student acquires thelofty hall-mark of what he serves. 

It was this perhaps that immediately distinguished him and set himapart in every company. The appreciative observer said at once:"Here is a man who may not himself be great; but he is at leastgreat enough to understand greatness; he is used to greatness. "

As so often is the case with the strong American, he wasself-made--that glory of our boasting. But we sometimes forgetthat an early life of hardship, while it may bring out what is bestin a man, so often wastes up his strength and burns his ambition toashes in the fierce fight against odds too great. So that thepowers which should have carried him far carry him only a littledistance or leave him standing exhausted where he began. 

When Alfred Hardage was eighteen, he had turned his eyes toward aprofessorship in one of the great universities of his country;before he was thirty he had won a professorship in the small butrespectable college of his native town; and now, when past fifty, he had never won anything more. For him ambition was like thedeserted martin box in the corner of his yard: returning summersbrought no more birds. Had his abilities been even moreextraordinary, the result could not have been far otherwise. Hehad been compelled to forego for himself as a student the highestuniversity training, and afterward to win such position as theworld accorded him without the prestige of study abroad. 

It became his duty in his place to teach the Greek language and itsliterature; sometimes were added classes in Latin. This was theeasier problem. The more difficult problem grew out of the demand, that he should live intimately in a world of much littleness andnot himself become little; feel interested in trivial minds atstreet corners, yet remain companion and critic of some of thegreatest intellects of human kind; contend with occasional maliceand jealousy in the college faculty, yet hold himself above thesecarrion passions; retain his intellectual manhood, yet have hiscourses of study narrowed and made superficial for him; be free yetsubmit to be patronized by some of his fellow-citizens, becausethey did him the honor to employ him for so much as a year as sageand moral exampler to their sons. 

Usually one of two fates overtakes the obscure professional scholarin this country: either he shrinks to the dimensions of a truevillager and deserts the vastness of his library; or he repudiatesthe village and becomes a cosmopolitan recluse--lonely toiler amonghis books. Few possess the breadth and equipoise which will enablethem to pass from day to day along mental paths, which have theForum of Augustus or the Groves of the Academy at one end and thebabbling square of a modern town at the other; remaining equally athome amid ancient ideals and everyday realities. 

It was the fate of the recluse that threatened him. He had beenborn with the scholar's temperament--this furnished the direction;before he had reached the age of twenty-five he had lost his wifeand two sons--that furrowed the tendency. During the yearsimmediately following he had tried to fill an immense void of theheart with immense labors of the intellect. The void remained; yetundoubtedly compensation for loneliness had been found in thefixing of his affections upon what can never die--the inexhaustibledelight of learning. 

Thus the life of the book-worm awaited him but for an interferenceexcellent and salutary and irresistible. This was the constantcompanionship of a sister whose nature enabled her to find itscomplete universe in the only world that she had ever known: shewalking ever broad-minded through the narrowness of her littletown; remaining white though often threading its soiling ways; andfrom every life which touched hers, however crippled and confined, extracting its significance instead of its insignificance, shyharmonies instead of the easy discords which can so palpably bestruck by any passing hand. 

It was due to her influence, therefore, that his life achieved thetwofold development which left him normal in the middle years; thefresh pursuing scholar still but a man practically welded to thepeople among whom he lived--receiving their best and giving hisbest. 

But we cannot send our hearts out to play at large among our kind, without their coming to choose sooner or later playfellows to beloved more than the rest. 

Two intimacies entered into the life of Professor Hardage. Thefirst of these had been formed many years before with Judge RavenelMorris. They had discovered each other by drifting as lonely mendo in the world; each being without family ties, each lovingliterature, each having empty hours. The bond between them hadstrengthened, until it had become to each a bond of strengthindeed, mighty and uplifting. 

The other intimacy was one of those for which human speech willnever, perhaps, be called upon to body forth its describing word. In the psychology of feeling there are states which we gladlychoose to leave unlanguaged. Vast and deep-sounding as is theorchestra of words, there are scores which we never fling upon suchinstruments--realities that lie outside the possibility and thedesirability of utterance as there are rays of the sun that falloutside the visible spectrum of solar light. 

What description can be given in words of that bond between two, when the woman stands near the foot of the upward slope of life, and the man is already passing down on the sunset side, withlengthening afternoon shadows on the gray of his temples--betweenthem the cold separating peaks of a generation?

Such a generation of toiling years separated Professor Hardage fromIsabel Conyers. When, at the age of twenty, she returned afteryears of absence in an eastern college--it was a tradition of herfamily that its women should be brilliantly educated--he vergedupon fifty. To his youthful desires that interval was nothing; butto his disciplined judgment it was everything. 

"Even though it could be, " he said to himself, "it should not be, and therefore it shall not. "

His was an idealism that often leaves its holder poor indeed savein the possession of its own incorruptible wealth. No doubt alsothe life-long study of the ideals of classic time came to hisguidance now with their admonitions of exquisite balance, theirmoderation and essential justness. 

But after he had given up all hope of her, he did not hesitate todraw her to him in other ways; and there was that which drew herunfathomably to him--all the more securely since in her mind therewas no thought that the bond between them would ever involve thepossibility of love and marriage. 

His library became another home to her. One winter she read Greekwith him--authors not in her college course. Afterward he readmuch more Greek to her. Then they laid Greek aside, and he tookher through the history of its literature and through that othernoble one, its deathless twin. 

When she was not actually present, he yet took her with him throughthe wide regions of his studies---set her figure in old Greeklandscapes and surrounded it with dim shapes of loveliness--saw hersometimes as the perfection that went into marble--made her aportion of legend and story, linking her with Nausicaa andAndromache and the lost others. Then quitting antiquity with heraltogether, he passed downward with her into the days of chivalry, brought her to Arthur's court, and invested her with one characterafter another, trying her by the ladies of knightly ideals--readingher between the lines in all the king's idyls. 

But last and best, seeing her in the clear white light of her owncountry and time--as the spirit of American girlhood, pure, refined, faultlessly proportioned in mental and physical health, full of kindness, full of happiness, made for love, made formotherhood. All this he did in his hopeless and idealizing worshipof her; and all this and more he hid away: for he too had his crypt. 

So watching her and watching vainly over her, he was the first tosee that she was loved and that her nature was turning away fromhim, from all that he could offer--subdued by that one other call. 

"Now, Fates, " he said, "by whatsoever names men have blindly prayedto you; you that love to strike at perfection, and pass over amultitude of the ordinary to reach the rare, stand off for a fewyears! Let them be happy together in their love, their marriage, and their young children. Let the threads run freely and bejoyously interwoven. Have mercy at least for a few years!"

A carriage turned a corner of the street and was driven to thedoor. Isabel got out, and entered the hall without ringing. 

He met her there and as she laid her hands in his without a word, he held them and looked at her without a word. He could scarcelybelieve that in a few days her life could so have drooped as undera dreadful blight. 

"I have come to say good-by, " and with a quiver of the lips sheturned her face aside and brushed past him, entering the library. 

He drew his own chair close to hers when she had seated herself. 

"I thought you and your grandmother were going later: is not thisunexpected?"

"Yes, it is very unexpected. "

"But of course she is going with you?"

"No, I am going alone. "

"For the summer?"

"Yes, for the summer. I suppose for a long time. "

She continued to sit with her cheek leaning against the back of thechair, her eyes directed outward through the windows. He askedreluctantly:

"Is there any trouble?"

"Yes, there is trouble. "

"Can you tell me what it is?"

"No, I cannot tell you what it is. I cannot tell any one what itis. "

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No, there is nothing you can do. There is nothing any one can do. "

Silence followed for some time. He smiled at her sadly:

"Shall I tell you what the trouble is?"

"You do not know what it is. I believe I wish you did know. But Icannot tell you. "

"Is it not Rowan?"

She waited awhile without change of posture and answered at lengthwithout change of tone:

"Yes, it is Rowan. "

The stillness of the room became intense and prolonged; therustling of the leaves about the window sounded like noise. 

"Are you not going to marry him, Isabel?"

"No, I am not going to marry him. I am never going to marry him. "

She stretched out her hand helplessly to him. He would not take itand it fell to her side: at that moment he did not dare. But ofwhat use is it to have kept faith with high ideals through tryingyears if they do not reward us at last with strength in the crisesof character? No doubt they rewarded him now: later he reacheddown and took her hand and held it tenderly. 

"You must not go away. You must be reconciled, to him. Otherwiseit will sadden your whole summer. And it will sadden his. "

"Sadden, the whole summer, " she repeated, "a summer? It willsadden a life. If there is eternity, it will sadden eternity. "

"Is it so serious?"

"Yes, it is as serious as anything, could be. "

After a while she sat up wearily and turned her face to him for thefirst time. 

"Cannot you help me?" she asked. "I do not believe I can bearthis. I do not believe I can bear it. "

Perhaps it is the doctors who hear that tone oftenest--littlewonder that they are men so often with sad or with calloused faces. 

"What can I do?"

"I do not know what you can do. But cannot you do something? Youwere the only person in the world that I could go to. I did notthink I could ever come to you; but I had to come. Help me. "

He perceived that commonplace counsel would be better than nocounsel at all. 

"Isabel, " he asked, "are you suffering because you have wrongedRowan or because you think he has wronged you?"

"No, no, no, " she cried, covering her face with her hands, "I havenot wronged him! I have not wronged any one! He has wronged me!"

"Did he ever wrong you before?"

"No, he never wronged me before. But this covers everything--thewhole past. "

"Have you ever had any great trouble before, Isabel?"

"No, I have never had any great trouble before. At times in mylife I may have thought I had, but now I know. "

"You do not need to be told that sooner or later all of us havetroubles that we think we cannot bear. "

She shook her head wearily: "It does not do any good to think ofthat! It does not help me in the least!"

"But it does help if there is any one to whom we can tell ourtroubles. "

"I cannot tell mine. "

"Cannot you tell me?"

"No, I believe I wish you knew, but I could not tell you. No, I donot even wish you to know. "

"Have you seen Kate?"

She covered her face with her hands again: "No, no, no, " she cried, "not Kate!" Then she looked up at him with eyes suddenly kindling:"Have you heard what Kate's life has been since her marriage?"

"We have all heard, I suppose. "

"She has never spoken a word against him--not even to me from whomshe never had a secret. How could I go to her about Rowan? Evenif she had confided in me, I could not tell her this. "

"If you are going away, change of scene will help you to forget it. "

"No, it will help me to remember. "

"There is prayer, Isabel. "

"I know there is prayer. But prayer does not do any good. It hasnothing to do with this. "

"Enter as soon as possible into the pleasures of the people you areto visit. "

"I cannot! I do not wish for pleasure, "

"Isabel, " he said at last, "forgive him. "

"I cannot forgive him. "

"Have you tried?"

"No, I cannot try. If I forgave him, it would only be a change inme: it would not change him: it would not undo what he has done. "

"Do you know the necessity of self-sacrifice?"

"But how can I sacrifice what is best in me without loweringmyself? Is it a virtue in a woman to throw away what she holds tobe as highest?"

"Remember, " he said, returning to the point, "that, if you forgivehim, you become changed yourself. You no longer see what he hasdone as you see it now. That is the beauty of forgiveness: itenables us better to understand those whom we have forgiven. Perhaps it will enable you to put yourself in his place. "

She put her hands to her eyes with a shudder: "You do not know whatyou are saying, " she cried, and rose. 

"Then trust it all to time, " he said finally, "that is best! Timealone solves so much. Wait! Do not act! Think and feel as littleas possible. Give time its merciful chance. I'll come to see you. "

They had moved toward the door. She drew off her glove which shewas putting on and laid her hand once more in his. 

"Time can change nothing. I have decided. "

As she was going down the steps to the carriage, she turned andcame back. 

"Do not come to see me! I shall come to you to say good-by. It isbetter for you not to come to the house just now. I might not beable to see you. "

Isabel had the carriage driven to the Osborns'. 

The house was situated in a pleasant street of delightfulresidences. It had been newly built on an old foundation as abridal present to Kate from her father. She had furnished it witha young wife's pride and delight and she had lined it throughoutwith thoughts of incommunicable tenderness about the life historyjust beginning. Now, people driving past (and there were few intown who did not know) looked at it as already a prison and a doom. 

Kate was sitting in the hall with some work in her lap. SeeingIsabel she sprang up and met her at the door, greeting her asthough she herself were the happiest of wives. 

"Do you know how long it has been since you were here?" sheexclaimed chidingly. "I had not realized how soon young marriedpeople can be forgotten and pushed aside. "

"Forget you, dearest! I have never thought of you so much as sinceI was here last. "

"Ah, " thought Kate to herself, "she has heard. She has begun tofeel sorry for me and has begun to stay away as people avoid theunhappy. "

But the two friends, each smiling into the other's eyes, their armsaround each other, passed into the parlors. 

"Now that you are here at last, I shall keep you, " said Kate, rising from the seat they had taken. "I will send the carriagehome. George cannot be here to lunch and we shall have it all toourselves as we used to when we were girls together. "

"No, " exclaimed Isabel, drawing her down into the seat again, "Icannot stay. I had only a few moments and drove by just to speakto you, just to tell you how much I love you. "

Kate's face changed and she dropped her eyes. "Is so little of meso much nowadays?" she asked, feeling as though the friendship of alifetime were indeed beginning to fail her along with other things. 

"No, no, no, " cried Isabel. "I wish we could never be separated. "

She rose quickly and went over to the piano and began to turn overthe music. "It seems so long since I heard any music. What hasbecome of it? Has it all gone out of life? I feel as thoughthere were none any more. "

Kate came over and looked at one piece of music after anotherirresolutely. 

"I have not touched the piano for weeks. "

She sat down and her fingers wandered forcedly through a fewchords. Isabel stepped quickly to her side and laid restraininghands softly upon hers: "No; not to-day. "

Kate rose with averted face: "No; not any music to-day!"

The friends returned to their seat, on which Kate left her work. She took it up and for a few moments Isabel watched her in silence. 

"When did you see Rowan?"

"You know he lives in the country, " replied Isabel, with an air ofdefensive gayety. 

"And does he never come to town?"

"How should I know?"

Kate took this seriously and her head sank lower over her work:"Ah, " she thought to herself, "she will not confide in me anylonger. She keeps her secrets from me--me who shared them all mylife. "

"What is it you are making?"

Isabel stretched out her hand, but Kate with a cry threw her breastdownward upon her work. With laughter they struggled over it; Katereleased it and Isabel rising held it up before her. Then sheallowed it to drop to the floor. 

"Isabel!" exclaimed Kate, her face grown cold and hard. Shestooped with dignity and picked up the garment. 

"Oh, forgive me, " implored Isabel, throwing her arms around herneck. "I did not know what I was doing!" and she buried her faceon the young wife's shoulder. "I was thinking of myself: I cannottell you why!"

Kate released herself gently. Her face remained grave. She hadfelt the first wound of motherhood: it could not be healed at once. The friends could not look at each other. Isabel began to draw onher gloves and Kate did not seek to keep her longer. 

"I must go. Dear friend, have you forgiven me? I cannot tell youwhat was in my heart. Some day you will understand. Try toforgive till you do understand. "

Kate's mouth trembled: "Isabel, why are you so changed toward me?"

"Ah, I have not changed toward you! I shall never change towardyou!"

"Are you too happy to care for me any longer?"

"Ah, Kate, I am not too happy for anything. Some day you willunderstand. "

She leaned far out and waved her hand as she drove away, and thenshe threw herself back into the carriage. "Dear injured friend!Brave loyal woman'" she cried, "the men we loved have ruined bothour lives; and we who never had a secret from each other meet andpart as hypocrites to shield them. Drive home, " she said to thedriver. "If any one motions to stop, pay no attention. Drivefast. "

Mrs. Osborn watched the carriage out of sight and then walkedslowly back to her work. She folded the soft white fabric over thecushions and then laid her cheek against it and gave it its firstchristening--the christening of tears. 

IX

The court-house clock in the centre of the town clanged the hour often--hammered it out lavishly and cheerily as a lusty blacksmithstrikes with prodigal arm his customary anvil. Another clock in adignified church tower also struck ten, but with far greatersolemnity, as though reminding the town clock that time is not tobe measured out to man as a mere matter of business, but intonedsavingly and warningly as the chief commodity of salvation. Thenanother clock: in a more attenuated cobwebbed steeple also struckten, reaffirming the gloomy view of its resounding brother andinsisting that the town clock had treated the subject with sinfullevity. 

Nevertheless the town clock seemed to have the best of the argumenton this particular day; for the sun was shining, cool, breezes wereblowing, and the streets were thronged with people intent on makingbargains. Possibly the most appalling idea in most men's notionsof eternity is the dread that there will be no more bargainingthere. 

A bird's-eye view of the little town as it lay outspread on itshigh fertile plateau, surrounded by green woods and waving fields, would have revealed near one edge of it a large verdurous spotwhich looked like an overrun oasis. This oasis was enclosed by ahigh fence on the inside of which ran a hedge of lilacs, privet, and osage orange. Somewhere in it was an old one-story manorhouse of rambling ells and verandas. Elsewhere was a littlesummer-house, rose-covered; still elsewhere an arbor vine-hung; atvarious other places secluded nooks with seats, where the bushescould hide you and not hear you--a virtue quite above anythinghuman. Marguerite lived in this labyrinth. 

As the dissenting clocks finished striking, had you been standingoutside the fence near a little side gate used by grocers' andbakers' carts, you might have seen Marguerite herself. There camea soft push against the gate from within; and as it swung part ofthe way open, you might have observed that the push was deliveredby the toe of a little foot. A second push sent it still farther. Then there was a pause and then it flew open and stayed open. Atfirst there appeared what looked like an inverted snowy flagstaffbut turned out to be a long, closed white parasol; then Margueriteherself appeared, bending her head low under the privet leaves andholding her skirts close in, so that they might not be touched bythe whitewash on each edge. Once outside, she straightened herselfup with the lithe grace of a young willow, released her skirts, andbalancing herself on the point of her parasol, closed the gate withher toe: she was too dainty to touch it. 

The sun shone hot and Marguerite quickly raised her parasol. Itmade you think of some silken white myriad-fluted mushroom of thedark May woods; and Marguerite did not so much seem to have comeout of the house as out of the garden--to have slept there on itsgreen moss with the new moon on her eyelids--indeed to have beenborn there, in some wise compounded of violets and hyacinths; andas the finishing touch to have had squeezed into her nature a fewdrops of wildwood spritishness. 

She started toward the town with a movement somewhat like that of atall thin lily stalk swayed by zephyrs--with a lilt, a cadence, anever changing rhythm of joy: plain walking on the solid earth wasnot for her. At friendly houses along the way she peeped into openwindows, calling to friends; she stooped over baby carriages on thesidewalk, noting but not measuring their mysteries; she bowed tothe right and to the left at passing carriages; and people leanedfar out to bow and smile at her. Her passage through the town wassomewhat like that of a butterfly crossing a field. 

"Will he be there?" she asked. "I did not tell him I was coming, but he heard me say I should be there at half-past ten o'clock. Itis his duty to notice my least remark. "

When she reached her destination, the old town library, she mountedthe lowest step and glanced rather guiltily up and down the street. Three ladies were going up and two men were going down: no one wascoming toward Marguerite. 

"Now, why is he not here? He shall be punished for this. "

She paced slowly backward and forward yet a little while. Then shestarted resolutely in the direction of a street where most of thelaw offices were situated. Turning a corner, she came full uponJudge, Morris. 

"Ah, good morning, good morning, " he cried, putting his gold-headedcane under his arm and holding out both hands. "Where did yousleep last night? On rose leaves?"

"I was in grandmother's bed when I left off, " said Marguerite, looking up at the rim of her hat. 

"And where were you when you began again?"

"Still in grandmother's bed. I think I must have been there allthe time. I know all about your old Blackstone and all that kindof thing, " she continued, glancing at a yellow book under his armand speaking with a threat as though he had adjudged her ignorant. 

"Ah, then you will make a good lawyer's wife. "

"I supposed I'd make a good wife of any kind. Are you coming to myball?"

"Well, you know I am too old to make engagements far ahead. But Iexpect to be there. If I am not, my ghost shall attend. "

"How shall I recognize it? Does it dance? I don't want to mistakeit for Barbee. "

"Barbee shall not come if I can keep him at home. "

"And why, please?"

"I am afraid he is falling in love with you. "

"But why shouldn't he?"

"I don't wish my nephew to be flirted. "

"But how do you know I'd flirt him?"

"Ah, I knew your mother when she was young and your grandmotherwhen she was young: you're all alike. "

"We, are so glad we are, " said Marguerite, as she danced away fromhim under her parasol. 

Farther down the street she met Professor Hardage. 

"I know all about your old Odyssey--your old Horace and all thosethings, " she said threateningly. "I am not as ignorant as youthink. "

"I wish Horace had known you. "

"Would it have been nice?"

"He might have written an ode _Ad Margaritam_ instead of _AdLalagem_. "

"Then I might have been able to read it, " she said. "In school Icouldn't read the other one. But you mustn't think that I did notread a great deal of Latin. The professor used to say that I readmy Latin b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y, but that I didn't get much Englishout of it. I told him I got as much English out of it as theRomans did, and that they certainly ought to have known what it wasmeant for. "

"That must have taught him a lesson!"

"Oh, he said I'd do: I was called the girl who read Latinperfectly, regardless of English. And, then, I won a prize for anessay on the three most important things that the United States hascontributed to the civilizations of the Old World. I said theywere tobacco, wild turkeys and idle curiosity. Of course every oneknew about tobacco and turkeys; but wasn't it clever of me to thinkof idle curiosity? Now, wasn't it? I made a long list of thingsand then I selected these from my list. "

"I'd like to know what the other things were!"

"Oh, I've forgotten now! But they were very important at the time. Are you coming to my ball?"

"I hope to come. "

"And is Miss Anna coming?"

"Miss Anna is coming. She is coming as a man; and she is going tobring a lady. "

"How is she going to dress as a man?" said Marguerite, as shedanced away from him under her parasol. 

She strolled slowly on until she reached the street of justice andthe jail; turning into this, she passed up the side opposite thelaw offices. Her parasol rested far back on one shoulder; to anylateral observer there could have been no mistake regarding theface in front of it. She passed through a group of firemen sittingin their shirtsleeves in front of the engine-house, disappearedaround the corner, and went to a confectioner's. Presently shereentered the street, and this time walked along the side where thelaw offices were grouped. She disappeared around the corner andentered a dry-goods store. A few moments later she reentered thestreet for the third and last time. Just as she passed a certainlaw office, she dropped her packages. No one came out to pick themup. Marguerite did this herself--very slowly. Still no oneappeared. She gave three sharp little raps on the woodwork of thedoor. 

From the rear office a red head was thrust suddenly out like asurprised woodpecker's. Barbee hurried to the entrance and lookedup the street. He saw a good many people. He looked down thestreet and noticed a parasol moving away. 

"I supposed you were in the courthouse, " she said, glancing at himwith surprise. "Haven't you any cases?"

"One, " he answered, "a case of life and death. "

"You need not walk against me, Barbee; I am not a vine to needpropping. And you need not walk with me. I am quite used towalking alone: my nurse taught me years ago. "

"But now you have to learn _not_ to walk alone, Marguerite. "

"It will be very difficult. "

"It will be easy when the right man steps forward: am I the rightman?"

"I am going to the library. Good morning. "

"So am I going to the library. "

"Aren't all your authorities in your office?"

"All except one. "

They turned into the quiet shady street: they were not the first todo this. 

When they reached the steps, Marguerite sank down. 

"Why do I get so tired when I walk with you, Barbee? You exhaustme _very_ rapidly. "

He sat down not very near her, but soon edged a little closer. 

Marguerite leaned over and looked intently at his big, thin ear. 

"What a lovely red your ear is, seen against a clear sky. It wouldmake a beautiful lamp-shade. "

"You may have both of them--and all the fixtures--solid brass--anantique some day. "

He edged a little closer. 

Marguerite coughed and pointed across the street: "Aren't thosetrees beautiful?"

"Oh, don't talk to me about trees! What do I care about _wood_!You're the tree that I want to dig up, and take home, and plant, and live under, and be buried by. "

"That's a great deal--all in one sentence. "

"Are you never going to love me a little, Marguerite?"

"How can I tell?"

"Don't torture me. "

"What am I doing?"

"You are not doing anything, that's the trouble. The other nightI was sure you loved me. "

"I didn't say so. "

"But you looked it. "

"Then I looked all wrong: I shall change my looks. "

"Will you name the day?"

"What day?"

"_The_ day. "

"I'll name them all: Monday, Tuesday--"

"Ah, Lord--"

"Barbee, I'm going to sing you a love song--an old, old, old lovesong. Did you ever hear one?"

"I have been hearing mine for some time. "

"This goes back to grandmother's time. But it's the man's song:you ought to be singing it to me. "

"I shall continue to sing my own. "

Marguerite began to sing close to Barbee's ear:

 "I'll give to you a paper of pins, If that's the way that love begins, If you will marry me, me, me, If you will marry me. "

"Pins!" said Barbee; "why, that old-time minstrel must have beensinging when pins were just invented. You can have--"

Marguerite quieted him with a finger on his elbow:

 "I'll give to you a dress of red, Bound all around with golden thread, If you will marry me, me, me, If you will marry me. "

"How about a dress not simply bound with golden thread but made ofit, made of nothing else! and then hung all over with goldenornaments and the heaviest golden utensils?"

Marguerite sang on:

 "I'll give to you a coach and six, Every horse as black as pitch, If you will marry me, me, me, If you will marry me. "

"I'll make it two coaches and twelve white ponies. "

Marguerite sang on, this time very tenderly:

 "I'll give to you the key of my heart, That we may love and never part, If you will marry me, me, me, If you will marry me. "

"No man can give anything better, " said Barbee, moving closer (asclose as possible) and looking questioningly full into Marguerite'seyes. 

Marguerite glanced up and down the street. The moment wasopportune, the disposition of the universe seemed kind. The bigparasol slipped a little lower. 

"Marguerite. . . Please, Marguerite. . . _Marguerite_. "

The parasol was suddenly pulled down low and remained very still amoment: then a quiver ran round the fringe. It was still again, and there was another quiver. It swayed to and fro and round andround, and then stood very, very still indeed, and there was aviolent quiver. 

Then Marguerite ran into the library as out of a sudden shower; andBarbee with long slow strides returned to his office. 

"Anna, " said Professor Hardage, laying his book across his knee asthey sat that afternoon in the shady side porch, "I saw Margueritethis morning and she sent her compliments. They were very prettycompliments. I sometimes wonder where Marguerite came from--out ofwhat lands she has wandered. "

"Well, now that you have stopped reading, " said Miss Anna, layingdown her work and smoothing her brow (she never spoke to him untilhe did stop--perfect woman), "that Is what I have been waiting totalk to you about: do you wish to go with Harriet to Marguerite'sball?"

"I most certainly do not wish to go with Harriet to Marguerite'sball, " he said, laughing, "I am going with you. "

"Well, you most certainly are not going with me: I am going withHarriet. "

"Anna!"

"If I do not, who will? Now what I want you to do is to payHarriet some attention after I arrive with her. I shall take herinto supper, because if you took her in, she would never get any. But suppose that after supper you strolled carelessly up to us--youknow how men do--and asked her to take a turn with you. "

"What kind of a turn in Heaven's name?"

"Well, suppose you took her out into the yard--to one of thoselittle rustic seats of Marguerite's--and sat there with her forhalf an hour--in the darkest place you could possibly find. And Iwant you to try to hold her hand. "

"Why, Anna, what on earth--"

"Now don't you suppose Harriet would let you do it, " she saidindignantly. "But what I want her to have is the pleasure ofrefusing: it would be such a triumph. It would make her happy fordays: it might lengthen her life a little. "

"What effect do you suppose it would have on mine?"

His face softened as he mused on the kind of woman his sister was. 

"Now don't you try to do anything else, " she added severely. "Idon't like your expression. "

He laughed outright: "What do you suppose I'd do?"

"I don't suppose you'd do anything; but don't you do it!"

Miss Anna's invitation to Harriet had been written some days before. 

She had sent down to the book-store for ten cents' worth of tintednote paper and to the drugstore for some of Harriet's favoritesachet powder. Then she put a few sheets of the paper in a dinnerplate and sprinkled the powder over them and set the plate wherethe powder could perfume the paper but not the house. Miss Annawas averse to all odor-bearing things natural or artificial. Theperfect triumph of her nose was to perceive absolutely nothing. The only trial to her in cooking was the fact that so often shecould not make things taste good without making them smell good. 

In the course of time, bending over a sheet of this note paper, with an expression of high nasal disapproval. Miss Anna hadwritten the following note:

"A. Hardage, Esq. , presents the compliments of the season to MissCrane and begs the pleasure of her company to the ball. Theaforesaid Hardage, on account of long intimacy with the specifiedCrane, hopes that she (Crane) will not object to riding alone atnight in a one-horse rockaway with no side curtains. Crane to behugged on the way if Hardage so desires--and Hardage certainly willdesire. Hardage and Crane to dance at the ball together whiletheir strength lasts. "

Having posted this letter, Miss Anna went off to her orphan andfoundling asylum where she was virgin mother to the motherless, drawing the mantle of her spotless life around little waifsstraying into the world from hidden paths of shame. 

X

It was past one o'clock on the night of the ball. 

When dew and twilight had fallen on the green labyrinths ofMarguerite's yard, the faintest, slenderest moon might have beenseen bending over toward the spot out of drapery of violet cloud. It descended through the secluded windows of Marguerite's room andattended her while she dressed, weaving about her and leaving withher the fragrance of its divine youth passing away. Then itwithdrew, having appointed a million stars for torches. 

Matching the stars were globe-like lamps, all of one color, allof one shape, which Marguerite had had swung amid the interlacedgreenery of trees and vines: as lanterns around the gray bark hutsof slow-winged owls; as sun-tanned grapes under the arches of thevine-covered summer-house; as love's lighthouses above the reefsof tumbling rose-bushes: all to illumine the paths which led tonooks and seats. For the night would be very warm; and thenMarguerite--but was she the only one?

The three Marguerites, --grandmother, mother, anddaughter, --standing side by side and dressed each like each asnearly as was fitting, had awaited their guests. Three high-bornfragile natures, solitary each on the stem of its generation; notmade for blasts and rudeness. They had received their guests withthe graciousness of sincere souls and not without antiquedistinction; for in their veins flowed blood which had helped tomake manners gentle in France centuries ago. 

The eldest Marguerite introduced some of her aged friends, who hadventured forth to witness the launching of the frail life-boat, tothe youngest; the youngest Marguerite introduced some of hers tothe eldest; the Marguerite linked between made some of hers knownto her mother and to her child. 

Mrs. Conyers arrived early, leaning on the arm of her grandson, Victor Fielding. To-night she was ennobled with jewels--the oldfamily jewels of her last husband's family, not of her own. 

When the three Marguerites beheld her, a shadow fell on theirfaces. The change was like the assumption of a mask behind whichthey could efface themselves as ladies and receive as hostesses. While she lingered, they forebore even to exchange glances lestfeelings injurious to a guest should be thus revealed: so pure inthem was the strain of courtesy that went with profferedhospitality. (They were not of the kind who invite you to theirhouses and having you thus in their power try to pierce you withlittle insults which they would never dare offer openly in thestreet: verbal Borgias at their own tables and firesides. ) Themoment she left them, the three faces became effulgent again. 

A little later, strolling across the rooms toward them alone, cameJudge Morris, a sprig of wet heliotrope in his button-hole, pluckedfrom one of Marguerite's plants. The paraffin starch on his shirtfront and collar and cuffs gave to them the appearance andconsistency of celluloid--it being the intention of his oldlaundress to make him indeed the stiffest and most highly polishedgentleman of his high world. His noble face as always a sermon onkindness, sincerity, and peace; yet having this contradiction, thatthe happier it seemed, the sadder it was to look at: as though allhis virtues only framed his great wrong; so that the more clearlyyou beheld the bright frame, the more deeply you felt the darkpicture. 

As soon as they discovered him, the Marguerites with a commonimpulse linked their arms endearingly. Six little white feet cameregimentally forward; each of six little white hands madeindividual forward movements to be the first to lie within hispalm; six velvet eyes softened and glistened. 

Miss Anna came with Harriet; Professor Hardage came alone;Barbee--burgeoning Alcibiades of the ballroom--came withSelf-Confidence. He strolled indifferently toward the eldestMarguerite, from whom he passed superiorly to the central one; bythat time the third had vanished. 

Isabel came with the Osborns: George soon to be taken secretly homeby Rowan; Kate (who had forced herself to accompany him despite herbereavement), lacerated but giving no sign even to Isabel, whorelieved the situation by attaching herself momentarily to herhostesses. 

"Mamma, " protested Marguerite, with indignant eyes, "do you wishIsabel to stand here and eclipse your daughter? Station her on thefar side of grandmother, and let the men pass this way first!"

The Merediths were late. As they advanced to pay their respects, Isabel maintained her composure. An observer, who had been told towatch, might have noticed that when Rowan held out his hand, shedid not place hers in it; and that while she did not turn her faceaway from his face, her eyes never met his eyes. She stood alittle apart from the receiving group at the moment and spoke tohim quickly and awkwardly:

"As soon as you can, will you come and walk with me through theparlors? Please do not pay me any more attention. When theevening is nearly over, will you find me and take me to some placewhere we may not be interrupted? I will explain. "

Without waiting for his assent, she left him, and returned with alaugh to the side of Marguerite, who was shaking a fingerthreateningly at her. 

It was now past one o'clock: guests were already leaving. 

When Rowan went for Isabel, she was sitting with Professor Hardage. They were not talking; and her eyes had a look of strainedexpectancy. As soon as she saw him, she rose and held out her handto Professor Hardage; then without speaking and still withoutlooking at him, she placed the tips of her fingers on the elbow ofhis sleeve. As they walked away, she renewed her request in a lowvoice: "Take me where we shall be undisturbed. "

They left the rooms. It was an interval between the dances: theverandas were crowded. They passed out into the yard. Along thecool paths, college boys and college girls strolled by in couples, not caring who listened to their words and with that laughter ofyouth, the whole meaning of which is never realized save by thosewho hear it after they have lost it. Older couples sat here andthere in quiet nooks--with talk not meant to be heard and withoccasional laughter so different. 

They moved on, seeking greater privacy. Marguerite's lamps wereburnt out--brief flames as measured by human passion. But overheadburnt the million torches of the stars. How brief all humanpassion measured by that long, long light!

He stopped at last:

"Here?"

She placed herself as far as possible from him. 

The seat was at the terminus of a path in the wildest part ofMarguerite's garden. Overhead against the trunk of a tree asolitary lantern was flickering fitfully. It soon went out. Thedazzling lights of the ballroom, glimmering through boughs andvines, shot a few rays into their faces. Music, languorous, torturing the heart, swelled and died on the air, mingled with themurmurings of eager voices. Close around them in the darkness wasthe heavy fragrance of perishing blossoms--earth dials ofyesterday; close around them the clean sweetness of freshones--breath of the coming morn. It was an hour when the heart, surrounded by what can live no more and by what never before haslived, grows faint and sick with yearnings for its own past andforlorn with the inevitableness of change--the cruelty of allchange. 

For a while silence lasted. He waited for her to speak; she triedrepeatedly to do so. At length with apparent fear that he mightmisunderstand, she interposed an agitated command:

"Do not say anything. "

A few minutes later she began to speak to him, still struggling forher self-control. 

"I do not forget that to-night I have been acting a part, and thatI have asked you to act a part with me. I have walked with you andI have talked with you, and I am with you now to create animpression that is false; to pretend before those who see us thatnothing is changed. I do not forget that I have been doing thisthing which is unworthy of me. But it is the first time--try notto believe it to be my character. I am compelled to tell you thatit is one of the humiliations you have forced upon me. "

"I have understood this, " he said hastily, breaking the silence shehad imposed upon him. 

"Then let it pass, " she cried nervously. "It is enough that I havebeen obliged to observe my own hypocrisies, and that I have askedyou to countenance and to conceal them. "

He offered no response. And in a little while she went on:

"I ought to tell you one thing more. Last week I made all myarrangements to go away at once, for the summer, for a long time. I did not expect to see you again. Two or three times I started tothe station. I have stayed until now because it seemed best afterall to speak to you once more. This is my reason for being hereto-night; and it is the only apology I can offer to myself or toyou for what I am doing. "

There was a sad and bitter vehemence in her words; she quiveredwith passion. 

"Isabel, " he said more urgently, "there is nothing I am notprepared to tell you. "

When she spoke again, it was with difficulty and everything seemedto hang upon her question:

"Does any one else know?"

His reply was immediate:

"No one else knows. "

"Have you every reason to believe this?"

"I have every reason to believe this. "

"You kept your secret well, " she said with mournful irony. "Youreserved it for the one person whom it could most injure: myprivilege is too great!"

"It is true, " he said. 

She turned and looked at him. She felt the depth of convictionwith which he spoke, yet it hurt her. She liked his dignity andhis self-control, and would not have had them less; yet shegathered fresh bitterness from the fact that he did not lose them. But to her each moment disclosed its new and uncontrollableemotions; as words came, her mind quickly filled again with thethings she could not say. She now went on:

"I am forced to ask these questions, although I have no right toask them and certainly I have no wish. I have wanted to knowwhether I could carry out the plan that has seemed to me best foreach of us. If others shared your secret, I could not do this. Iam going away--I am going in the morning. I shall remain away along time. Since we have been seen together here to-night asusual, no one suspects now that for us everything has becomenothing. While I am away, no one can have the means of findingthis out. Before I return, there will be changes--there may bemany changes. If we meet with indifference then, it will bethought that we have become indifferent, one of us, or both of us:I suppose it will be thought to be you. There will be comment, comment that will be hard to stand; but this will be the quietestway to end everything--as far as anything can ever be ended. "

"Whatever you wish! I leave it all to you. "

She did not pause to heed his words:

"This will spare me the linking of my name with yours any furtherjust now; it will spare me all that I should suffer if the matterwhich estranges us should be discovered and be discussed. It willsave me hereafter, perhaps, from being pointed out as a woman whoso trusted and was so deceived. It may shield my life altogetherfrom some notoriety: I could be grateful for that!"

She was thinking of her family name, and of the many proud eyesthat were turned upon her in the present and out of the past. There was a sting for her in the remembrance and the sting passedinto her concluding words:

"I do not forget that when I ask you to do all this, I, who am notgiven to practising deception, am asking you to go on practisingyours. I am urging you to shirk the consequences of yourwrong-doing--to enjoy in the world an untarnished name after youhave tarnished your life. Do not think I forget that! Still I begyou to do as I say. This is another of the humiliations you haveled me to: that although I am separated from you by all that onceunited us, I must remain partner with you in the concealment of athing that would ruin you if it were known. "

She turned to him as though she experienced full relief through herhard and cruel words:

"Do I understand, then, that this is to be buried away by you--andby me--from the knowledge of the world?"

"No one else has any right to know it. I have told you that. "

"Then that is all!"

She gave a quick dismissal to the subject, so putting an end to theinterview. 

She started to rise from her seat; but impulses, new at theinstant, checked her: all the past checked her, all that she washerself and all that he had been to her. 

Perhaps what at each moment had angered her most was the fact thatshe was speaking, not he. She knew him to be of the blood ofsilent men and to have inherited their silence. This very trait ofhis had rendered association with him so endearing. Love had beenso divinely apart from speech, either his or her own: most intimatefor having been most mute. But she knew also that he was capableof speech, full and strong and quick enough upon occasion; and herheart had cried out that in a lifetime this was the one hour whenhe should not have given way to her or allowed her to say aword--when he should have borne her down with uncontrollablepleading. 

It was her own work that confronted her and she did not recognizeit. She had exhausted resources to convince him of herdetermination to cast him off at once; to render it plain thatfurther parley would to her be further insult. She had made himfeel this on the night of his confession; in the note of directrepulse she sent him by the hand of a servant in her own house thefollowing afternoon; by returning to him everything that he hadever given her; by her refusal to acknowledge his presence thisevening beyond laying upon him a command; and by every word thatshe had just spoken. And in all this she had thought only of whatshe suffered, not of what he must be suffering. 

Perhaps some late instantaneous recognition of this flashed uponher as she started to leave him--as she looked at him sittingthere, his face turned toward her in stoical acceptance of hisfate. There was something in the controlled strength of it thattouched her newly. She may have realized that if he had not beensilent, if he had argued, defended himself, pleaded, she would haverisen and walked back to the house without a word. It turned hernature toward him a little, that he placed too high a value uponher dismissal of him not to believe it irrevocable. 

Yet it hurt her: she was but one woman in the world; could thethought of this have made it easier for him to let her go away nowwithout a protest?

The air of the summer night grew unbearable for sweetness abouther. The faint music of the ballroom had no pity for her. Thereyoung eyes found joy in answering eyes, passed on and found joy inothers and in others. Palm met palm and then palms as soft andthen palms yet softer. Some minutes before, the laughter ofMarguerite in the shrubbery quite close by had startled Isabel. She had distinguished a voice. Now Marguerite's laughter reachedher again--and there was a different voice with hers. Change!change! one put away, the place so perfectly filled by another. 

A white moth of the night wandered into Rowan's face searching itsfeatures; then it flitted over to her and searched hers, its wingsfanning and clinging to her lips; and then it passed on, pursuingamid mistakes and inconstancies its life-quest lasting through afew darknesses. 

Fear suddenly reached down into her heart and drew up one question;and she asked that question in a voice low and cold and guarded:

"Sometime, when you ask another woman to marry you, will you thinkit your duty to tell her?"

"I will never ask any other woman. "

"I did not inquire for your intention; I asked what you wouldbelieve to be your duty. "

"It will never become my duty. But if it should, I would nevermarry without being true to the woman; and to be true is to tellthe truth. "

"You mean that you would tell her?"

"I mean that I would tell her. "

After a little silence she stirred in her seat and spoke, all heranger gone:

"I am going to ask you, if you ever do, not to tell her as you havetold me--after it is too late. If you cannot find some way ofletting her know the truth before she loves you, then do not tellher afterward, when you have won her life away from her. If thereis deception at all, then it is not worse to go on deceiving herthan it was to begin to deceive her. Tell her, if you must, whileshe is indifferent and will not care, not after she has givenherself to you and will then have to give you up. But what canyou, a man, know what it means to a woman to tell her this! Howcan you know, how can you ever, ever know!"

She covered her face with her hands and her voice broke with tears. 

"Isabel--"

"You have no right to call me by my name, and I have no right tohear it, as though nothing were changed between us. "

"I have not changed. "

"How could you tell me! Why did you ever tell me!" she criedabruptly, grief breaking her down. 

"There was a time when I did not expect to tell you. I expected todo as other men do. "

"Ah, you would have deceived me!" she exclaimed, turning upon himwith fresh suffering. "You would have taken advantage of myignorance and have married me and never have let me know! And youwould have called that deception love and you would have calledyourself a true man!"

"But I did not do this! It was yourself who helped me to see thatthe beginning of morality is to stop lying and deception. "

"But if you had this on your conscience already, what right had youever to come near me?"

"I had come to love you!"

"Did your love of me give you the right to win mine?"

"It gave me the temptation. "

"And what did you expect when you determined to tell me this? Whatdid you suppose such a confession would mean to me? Did youimagine that while it was still fresh on your lips, I would smilein your face and tell you it made no difference? Was I to hear youspeak of one whose youth and innocence you took away through herfrailties, and then step joyously into her place? Was this theunfeeling, the degraded soul you thought to be mine? Would I havebeen worthy even of the poor love you could give me, if I had donethat?"

"I expected you to marry me! I expected you to forgive. I havethis at least to remember: I lost you honestly when I could havewon you falsely. "

"Ah, you have no right to seek any happiness in what is all sadnessto me! And all the sadness, the ruin of everything, comes fromyour wrong-doing. "

"Remember that my wrong-doing did not begin with me. I bear myshare: it is enough: I will bear no more. "

A long silence followed. She spoke at last, checking her tears:

"And so this is the end of my dream! This is what life has broughtme to! And what have I done to deserve it? To leave home, to shunfriends, to dread scandal, to be misjudged, to bear the burden ofyour secret and share with you its shame, to see my years stretchout before me with no love in them, no ambitions, no ties--this iswhat life has brought me, and what have I done to deserve it?"

As her tears ceased, her eyes seemed to be looking into a futurethat lacked the relief of tears. As though she were already passedfar on into it and were looking back to this moment, she went on, speaking very slowly and sadly:

"We shall not see each other again in a long time, and whenever wedo, we shall be nothing to each other and we shall never speak ofthis. There is one thing I wish to tell you. Some day you mayhave false thoughts of me. You may think that I had no deepfeeling, no constancy, no mercy, no forgiveness; that it was easyto give you up, because I never loved you. I shall have enough tobear and I cannot bear that. So I want to tell you that you willnever know what my love for you was. A woman cannot speak till shehas the right; and before you gave me the right, you took it away. For some little happiness it may bring me hereafter let me tell youthat you were everything to me, everything! If I had taught myselfto make allowances for you, if I had seen things to forgive in you, what you told me would have been only one thing more and I mighthave forgiven. But all that I saw in you I loved. Rowan, and Ibelieved that I saw everything. Remember this, if false thoughtsof me ever come to you! I expect to live a long time: the memoryof my love of you will be the sorrow that will keep me alive. "

After a few moments of silent struggle she moved nearer. 

"Do not touch me, " she said; "remember that what love makes dear, it makes sacred. "

She put out a hand in the darkness and, closing her eyes overwelling tears, passed it for long remembrance over his features:letting the palm lie close against his forehead with her fingers inhis hair; afterward pressing it softly over his eyes and passing itaround his neck. Then she took her hand away as though fearful ofan impulse. Then she put her hand out again and laid her fingersacross his lips. Then she took her hand away, and leaning over, laid her lips on his lips:

"Good-by!" she murmured against his face, "good-by! good-by!good-by!"

Mrs. Conyers had seen Rowan and Isabel together in the parlorsearly in the evening. She had seen them, late in the evening, quitthe house. She had counted the minutes till they returned and shehad marked their agitation as they parted. The closest associationlasting from childhood until now had convinced her of thestraightforwardness of Isabel's character; and the events of thenight were naturally accepted by her as evidences of the renewal ofrelationship with Rowan, if not as yet of complete reconciliation. 

She herself had encountered during the evening unexpected slightsand repulses. Her hostesses had been cool, but she expected themto be cool: they did not like her nor she them. But Judge Morrishad avoided her; the Hardages had avoided her; each member of theMeredith family had avoided her; Isabel had avoided her; evenHarriet, when once she crossed the rooms to her, had with anincomprehensible flare of temper turned her back and sought refugewith Miss Anna. She was very angry. 

But overbalancing the indignities of the evening was now thissupreme joy of Isabel's return to what she believed to be Isabel'sdestiny. She sent her grandson home that she might have the drivewith the girl alone. When Isabel, upon entering the carriage, herhead and eyes closely muffled in her shawl, had withdrawn as far aspossible into one corner and remained silent on the way, sherefrained from intrusion, believing that she understood theemotions dominating her behavior. 

The carriage drew up at the door. She got out quickly and passedto her room--with a motive of her own. 

Isabel lingered. She ascended the steps without conscious will. At the top she missed her shawl: it had become entangled in thefringe of a window strap, had slipped from her bare shoulders asshe set her foot on the pavement, and now lay in the track of thecarriage wheels. As she picked it up, an owl flew viciously closeto her face. What memories, what memories came back to her! Witha shiver she went over to a frame-like opening in the foliage onone side of the veranda and stood looking toward the horizon wherethe moon had sunk on that other night--that first night of hersorrow. How long it was since then!

At any other time she would have dreaded the parting which musttake place with her grandmother: now what a little matter it seemed!

As she tapped and opened the door, she put her hand quickly beforeher eyes, blinded by the flood of light which streamed out into thedark hall. Every gas-jet was turned on--around the walls, in thechandelier; and under the chandelier stood her grandmother, waiting, her eyes fixed expectantly on the door, her countenancesoftened with returning affection, the fire of triumph in her eyes. 

She had unclasped from around her neck the diamond necklace of oldfamily jewels, and held it in the pool of her rosy palms, as thoughit were a mass of clear separate raindrops rainbow-kindled. It waslooped about the tips of her two upright thumbs; part of it hadslipped through the palms and flashed like a pendent arc of lightbelow. 

The necklace was an heirloom; it had started to grow in England ofold; it had grown through the generations of the family in the NewWorld. 

It had begun as a ring--given with the plighting of troth; it hadbecome ear-rings; it had become a pendant; it had become a tiara;it had become part of a necklace; it had become a necklace--completedcirclet of many hopes. 

As Isabel entered Mrs. Conyers started forward, smiling, to claspit around her neck as the expression of her love and pleasure; thenshe caught sight of Isabel's face, and with parted lips she stoodstill. 

Isabel, white, listless, had sunk into the nearest chair, and nowsaid, quietly and wearily, noticing nothing:

"Grandmother, do not get up to see me off in the morning. My trunkis packed; the others are already at the station. All myarrangements are made. I'll say good-by to you now, " and she stoodup. 

Mrs. Conyers stood looking at her. Gradually a change passed overher face; her eyes grew dull, the eyelids narrowed upon the balls;the round jaws relaxed; and instead of the smile, hatred camemysteriously out and spread itself rapidly over her features: truehorrible revelation. Her fingers tightened and loosened about thenecklace until it was forced out through them, until it glided, crawled, as though it were alive and were being strangled and werewrithing. She spoke with entire quietness:

"After all that I have seen to-night, are you not going to marryRowan?"

Isabel stirred listlessly as with remembrance of a duty:

"I had forgotten, grandmother, that I owe you an explanation. Ifound, after all, that I should have to see Rowan again: there wasa matter about which I was compelled to speak with him. That isall I meant by being with him to-night: everything now is endedbetween us. "

"And you are going away without giving me the reason of all this?"

Isabel gathered her gloves and shawl together and said with simpledistaste:

"Yes. "

As she did so, Mrs. Conyers, suddenly beside herself with aimlessrage, raised one arm and hurled the necklace against the oppositewall of the room. It leaped a tangled braid through the air and asit struck burst asunder, and the stones scattered and rattled alongthe floor and rolled far out on the carpet. 

She turned and putting up a little white arm, which shook as thoughpalsied, began to extinguish the lights. Isabel watched her amoment remorsefully:

"Good night, grandmother, and good-by. I am sorry to go away andleave you angry. "

As she entered her room, gray light was already creeping in throughthe windows, left open to the summer night. She went mournfully toher trunk. The tray had been lifted out and placed upon a chairnear by. The little tops to the divisions of the tray were allthrown back, and she could see that the last thing had been packedinto its place. Her hand satchel was open on her bureau, and shecould see the edge of a handkerchief and the little brown wickerneck of a cologne bottle. Beside the hand satchel were her purse, baggage checks, and travelling ticket: everything was in readiness. She looked at it all a long time:

"How can I go away? How can I, how can I?"

She went over to her bed. The sheet had been turned down, thepillow dented for her face. Beside the pillow was a tinyreading-stand and on this was a candle and a book--with thought ofher old habit of reading after she had come home from pleasureslike those of to-night--when they were pleasures. Beside the bookher maid had set a little cut-glass vase of blossoms which hadopened since she put them there--were just opening now. 

"How can I read? How can I sleep?"

She crossed to a large window opening on the lawn in the rear ofthe house--and looked for the last time out at the gray old pinesand dim blue, ever wintry firs. Beyond were house-tops andtree-tops of the town; and beyond these lay the country--stretchingaway to his home. Soon the morning light would be crimsoning thehorizon before his window. 

"How can I stay?" she said. "How can I bear to stay?"

She recalled her last words to him as they parted:

"Remember that you are forgotten!"

She recalled his reply:

"Forget that you are remembered!"

She sank down on the floor and crossed her arms on the window silland buried her face on her arms. The white dawn approached, touched her, and passed, and she did not heed. 

PART SECOND

I

The home of the Merediths lay in a region of fertile lands adaptedalike to tillage and to pasturage. The immediate neighborhood wasold, as civilization reckons age in the United States, and was wellconserved, It held in high esteem its traditions of itself, approved its own customs, was proud of its prides: a characteristiccommunity of country gentlemen at the side of each of whom acharacteristic lady lived and had her peculiar being. 

The ownership of the soil had long since passed into the hands ofcapable families--with this exception, that here and there betweenthe borders of large estates little farms were to be foundrepresenting all that remained from slow processes of partition andabsorption. These scant freeholds had thus their pathos, markingas they did the losing fight of successive holders against morefortunate, more powerful neighbors. Nothing in its way recordsmore surely the clash and struggle and ranking of men than theboundaries of land. There you see extinction and survival, theperpetual going under of the weak, the perpetual overriding of thestrong. 

Two such fragmentary farms lay on opposite sides of the Meredithestate. One was the property of Ambrose Webb, a married butchildless man who, thus exempt from necessity of raking the earthfor swarming progeny, had sown nearly all his land in grass andrented it as pasturage: no crops of children, no crops of grain. 

The other farm was of less importance. Had you ridden from thefront door of the Merediths northward for nearly a mile, you wouldhave reached the summit of a slope sweeping a wide horizon. Standing on this summit any one of these bright summer days, youcould have seen at the foot of the slope, less than a quarter of amile away on the steep opposite side, a rectangle of land coveringsome fifty acres. It lay crumpled into a rough depression in thelandscape. A rivulet of clear water by virtue of indomitable crookand turn made its way across this valley; a woodland stood in onecorner, nearly all its timber felled; there were a few patches ofgrain so small that they made you think of the variegated peasantstrips of agricultural France; and a few lots smaller still arounda stable. The buildings huddled confusedly into this valley seemedto have backed toward each other like a flock of sheep, encompassedby peril and making a last stand in futile defence of their rightto exist at all. 

What held the preeminence of castle in the collection of structureswas a small brick house with one upper bedroom. The front entrancehad no porch; and beneath the door, as stepping-stones of entrance, lay two circular slabs of wood resembling sausage blocks, one halfsuperposed. Over the door was a trellis of gourd vines nowprofusely, blooming and bee-visited. Grouped around this castle instill lower feudal and vital dependence was a log cabin of one roomand of many more gourd vines, an ice-house, a house for fowls, astable, a rick for hay, and a sagging shed for farm implements. 

If the appearance of the place suggested the struggles of a familyon the verge of extinction, this idea was further borne out by whatlooked like its determination to stand a long final siege at leastin the matter of rations, for it swarmed with life. In the quietcrystalline air from dawn till after sunset the sounds arising fromit were the clamor of a sincere, outspoken multitude of what mancalls the dumb creatures. Evidently some mind, full of energy andforethought, had made its appearance late in the history of thesefailing generations and had begun a fight to reverse failure andturn back the tide of aggression. As the first step inself-recovery this rugged island of poverty must be madeself-sustaining. Therefore it had been made to teem with animaland vegetable plenty. 

On one side of the house lay an orderly garden of vegetables andberry-bearing shrubs; the yard itself was in reality an orchard offruit trees, some warmed by the very walls; under the shed therewere beegums alive with the nectar builders; along the garden walkswere frames for freighted grape-vines. The work of regenerationhad been pushed beyond the limits of utilitarianism over into acertain crude domain of aesthetics. On one front window-sill whathad been the annual Christmas box of raisins had been turned into alittle hot-bed of flowering plants; and under the panes of glass adense forest of them, sun-drawn, looked like a harvest field sweptby a storm. On the opposite window ledge an empty drum of figs wasnow topped with hardy jump-up-johnnies. It bore some resemblanceto an enormous yellow muffin stuffed with blueberries. In thegarden big-headed peonies here and there fell over upon the youngonions. The entire demesne lay white and green with tidiness underyellow sun and azure sky; for fences and outhouses, even the trunksof trees several feet up from the ground, glistened with whitewash. So that everywhere was seen the impress and guidance of a spiritevoking abundance, order, even beauty, out of what could so easilyhave been squalor and despondent wretchedness. 

This was the home of Pansy Vaughan; and Pansy was the explanationof everything beautiful and fruitful, the peaceful Joan of Arc ofthat valley, seeing rapt visions of the glory of her people. 

In the plain upper room of the plain brick house, on her hard whitebed with her hard white thoughts, lay Pansy--sleepless throughoutthe night of Marguerite's ball. The youngest of the children sleptbeside her; two others lay in a trundle-bed across the room; andthe three were getting out of sleep all that there is in it fortired, healthy children. In the room below, her father and theeldest boy were resting; and through the rafters of the flooringshe could hear them both: her father a large, fluent, well-seasoned, self-comforting bassoon; and her brother a sappy, inexperiencedbassoon trying to imitate it. Wakefulness was a novel state forPansy herself, who was always tired when bedtime came and as fullof wild vitality as one of her young guineas in the summer wheat;so that she sank into slumber as a rock sinks into the sea, descending till it reaches the unstirred bottom. 

What kept her awake to-night was mortification that she had notbeen invited to the ball. She knew perfectly well that she was notentitled to an invitation, since the three Marguerites had neverheard of her. She had never been to a fashionable party even inthe country. But her engagement to Dent Meredith already linkedher to him socially and she felt the tugging of those links: whatwere soon to become her rights had begun to be her rights already. Another little thing troubled her: she had no flower to send himfor his button-hole, to accompany her note wishing him a pleasantevening. She could not bear to give him anything common; andPansy believed that no one was needed to tell her what a commonthing is. 

For a third reason slumber refused to descend and weigh down hereyelids: on the morrow she was to call upon Dent's mother, and thethought of this call preoccupied her with terror. She was one ofthe bravest of souls; but the terror which shook her was the terrorthat shakes them all--terror lest they be not loved. 

All her life she had looked with awe upward out of her valleytoward that great house. Its lawns with stately clumps ofevergreens, its many servants, its distant lights often seentwinkling in the windows at night, the tales that reached her ofwonderful music and faery dancing; the flashing family carriageswhich had so often whirled past her on the turnpike with scornfulfootman and driver--all these recollections revisited her to-night. In the morning she was to cross the boundary of this inaccessibleworld as one who was to hold a high position in it. 

How pictures came crowding back! One of the earliest recollectionsof childhood was hearing the scream of the Meredith peacocks asthey drew their gorgeous plumage across the silent summer lawns; athome they had nothing better than fussing guineas. She had nevercome nearer to one of those proud birds than handling a set of tailfeathers which Mrs. Meredith had presented to her mother for afamily fly brush. Pansy had good reason to remember because shehad often been required to stand beside the table and, one littlebare foot set alternately on the other little bare foot, wield thebrush over the dishes till arms and eyelids ached. 

Another of those dim recollections was pressing her face againstthe window-panes when the first snow began to fall on the scraggycedars in the yard; and as she began to sing softly to herself oneof the ancient ditties of the children of the poor, "Old Woman, picking Geese, " she would dream of the magical flowers which theytold her bloomed all winter in a glass house at the Merediths'while there was ice on the pines outside. Big red roses andicicles separated only by a thin glass--she could hardly believeit; and she would cast her eye toward their own garden where a fewblack withered stalks marked the early death-beds of the pinks andjonquils. 

But even in those young years Pansy had little time to look out ofwindows and to dream of anything. She must help, she must work;for she was the oldest of five children, and the others followed soclosely that they pushed her out of her garments. A hardy, self-helpful child life, bravened by necessities, never underminedby luxuries. For very dolls Pansy used small dried gourds, takingthe big round end of the gourd for the head of the doll and all therest of the gourd for all the rest of the body. 

One morning when she was fourteen, the other children were clingingwith tears to her in a poor, darkened room--she to be little motherto them henceforth: they never clung in vain. 

That same autumn when woods were turning red and wild grapesturning black and corn turning yellow, a cherished rockaway drawnby a venerated horse, that tried to stop for conversation on thehighroad whenever he passed a neighbor's vehicle, rattled out onthe turnpike with five children in it and headed for town: Pansydriving, taking herself and the rest to the public school. Foryears thereafter, through dark and bright days, she conveyed thatnest of hungry fledglings back and forth over bitter and wearymiles, getting their ravenous minds fed at one end of the route, and their ravenous bodies fed at the other. If the harness broke, Pansy got out with a string. If the horse dropped a shoe, ordropped himself, Pansy picked up what she could. In town she droveto the blacksmith shop and to all other shops whither businesscalled her. Her friends were the blacksmith and the tollgatekeeper, her teachers--all who knew her and they were few: she hadno time for friendships. At home the only frequent visitor wasAmbrose Webb, and Pansy did not care for Ambrose. The first timeshe remembered seeing him at dinner, she--a very little girl--hadwatched his throat with gloomy fascination. Afterward her mothertold her he had an Adam's apple; and Pansy, working obscurely atsome problem of theology, had secretly taken down the Bible andread the story of Adam and the fearful fruit. Ambrose becameassociated in her mind with the Fall of Man; she disliked theproximity. 

No time for friendships. Besides the labors at school, there wasthe nightly care of her father on her return, the mending of hisclothes; there was the lonely burning of her candle far into thenight as she toiled over lessons. When she had learned all thatcould be taught her at the school, she left the younger childrenthere and victoriously transferred herself for a finishing courseto a seminary of the town, where she was now proceeding to graduate. 

This was Pansy, child of plain, poor, farmer folk, immemoriallydwelling close to the soil; unlettered, unambitious, long-lived, abounding in children, without physical beauty, but marking thetrack of their generations by a path lustrous with right-doing. For more than a hundred years on this spot the land had lessenedaround them; but the soil had worked upward into their veins, asinto the stalks of plants, the trunks of trees; and that clean, thrilling sap of the earth, that vitality of the exhaustless motherwhich never goes for nothing, had produced one heavenly flower atlast--shooting forth with irrepressible energy a soul unspoiled andmorally sublime. When the top decays, as it always does in thelapse of time, whence shall come regeneration if not from below?It is the plain people who are the eternal breeding grounds of highdestinies. 

In the long economy of nature, this, perhaps, was the meaning andthe mission of this lofty child who now lay sleepless, shaken tothe core with thoughts of the splendid world over into which shewas to journey to-morrow. 

At ten o'clock next morning she set out. 

It had been a question with her whether she should go straightacross the fields and climb the fences, or walk around by theturnpike and open the gates. Her preference was for fields andfences, because that was the short and direct way, and Pansy wasused to the short and direct way of getting to the end of herdesires. But, as has been said, she had already fallen into thehabit of considering what was due her and becoming to her as ayoung Mrs. Meredith; and it struck her that this lady would notclimb field fences, at least by preference and with facility. Therefore she chose the highroad, gates, dust, and dignity. 

It could scarcely be said that she was becomingly raimented. Pansymade her own dresses, and the dresses declared the handiwork oftheir maker. The one she wore this morning was chieflycharacterized by a pair of sleeves designed by herself; from theelbow to the wrist there hung green pouches that looked like longpea-pods not well filled. Her only ornament was a large oval pinat her throat which had somewhat the relation to a cameo as thatborne by Wedgwood china. It represented a white horse drinking ata white roadside well; beside the shoulder of the horse stood awhite angel, many times taller, with an arm thrown caressinglyaround the horse's neck; while a stunted forest tree extended asolitary branch over the horse's tail. 

She had been oppressed with dread that she should not arrive intime. No time had been set, no one knew that she was coming, andthe forenoons were long. Nevertheless impatience consumed her toencounter Mrs. Meredith; and once on the way, inasmuch as Pansyusually walked as though she had been told to go for the doctor, but not to run, she was not long in arriving. 

When she reached the top of the drive in front of the Meredithhomestead, her face, naturally colorless, was a consistent red; andher heart, of whose existence she had never in her life beenreminded, was beating audibly. Although she said to herself thatit was bad manners, she shook out her handkerchief, which she hadherself starched and ironed with much care; and gathering herskirts aside, first to the right and then to the left, dusted hershoes, lifting each a little into the air, and she pulled somegrass from around the buttons. With the other half of herhandkerchief she wiped her brow; but a fresh bead of perspirationinstantly appeared; a few drops even stood on her dilatednostrils--raindrops on the eaves. Even had the day been cool shemust have been warm, for she wore more layers of clothing thanusual, having deposited some fresh strata in honor of her wealthymother-in-law. 

As Pansy stepped from behind the pines, with one long, quiveringbreath of final self-adjustment, she suddenly stood still, arrestedby the vision of so glorious a hue and shape that, for the moment, everything else was forgotten. On the pavement just before her, asthough to intercept her should she attempt to cross the Merediththreshold, stood a peacock, expanding to the utmost its great fanof pride and love. It confronted her with its high-born composureand insolent grace, all its jewelled feathers flashing in the sun;then with a little backward movement of its royal head andconvulsion of its breast, it threw out its cry, --the cry she hadheard in the distance through dreaming years, --warning all whoheard that she was there, the intruder. Then lowering its tail anddrawing its plumage in fastidiously against the body, it crossedher path in an evasive circle and disappeared behind the pines. 

"Oh, Dent, why did you ever ask me to marry you!" thought Pansy, ina moment of soul failure. 

Mrs. Meredith was sitting on the veranda and was partly concealedby a running rose. She was not expecting visitors; she had much tothink of this morning, and she rose wonderingly and reluctantly asPansy came forward: she did not know who it was, and she did notadvance. 

Pansy ascended the steps and paused, looking with wistful eyes atthe great lady who was to be her mother, but who did not even greether. 

"Good morning, Mrs. Meredith, " she said, in a shrill treble, holding herself somewhat in the attitude of a wooden soldier, "Isuppose I shall have to introduce myself: it is Pansy. "

The surprise faded from Mrs. Meredith's face, the reserve melted. With outstretched hands she advanced smiling. 

"How do you do. Pansy, " she said with motherly gentleness; "it isvery kind of you to come and see me, and I am very glad to knowyou. Shall we go in where it is cooler?"

They entered the long hall. Near the door stood a marble bust:each wall was lined with portraits. She passed between Dent'sancestors into the large darkened parlors. 

"Sit here, won't you?" said Mrs. Meredith, and she even pushedgently forward the most luxurious chair within her reach. To Pansyit seemed large enough to hold all the children. At home she wasused to chairs that were not only small, but hard. Wherever thebottom of a chair seemed to be in that household, there it was--ifit was anywhere. Actuated now by this lifelong faith in literalfurniture, she sat down with the utmost determination where she wasbid; but the bottom offered no resistance to her descending weightand she sank. She threw out her hands and her hat tilted over hereyes. It seemed to her that she was enclosed up to her neck inwhat might have been a large morocco bath-tub--which came to an endat her knees. She pushed back her hat, crimson. 

"That was a surprise, " she said, frankly admitting the fault, "butthere'll never be another such. "

"I am afraid you found it warm walking, Pansy, " said Mrs. Meredith, opening her fan and handing it to her. 

"Oh, no, Mrs. Meredith, I never fan!" said Pansy, decliningbreathlessly. "I have too much use for my hands. I'd rathersuffer and do something else. Besides, you know I am used towalking in the sun. I am very fond of botany, and I am out ofdoors for hours at a time when I can find the chance. "

Mrs. Meredith was delighted at the opportunity to make easy vaguecomment on a harmless subject. 

"What a beautiful study it must be, " she said with authority. 

"Must be!" exclaimed Pansy; "why, Mrs. Meredith, don't you _know_?Don't you understand botany?"

Pansy had an idea that in Dent's home botany was as familiarlyapprehended as peas and turnips in hers. 

"I am afraid not, " replied Mrs. Meredith, a little coolly. Hermission had been to adorn and people the earth, not to study it. And among persons of her acquaintance it was the prime duty of eachnot to lay bare the others' ignorance, but to make a littleknowledge appear as great as possible. It was discomfiting to havePansy charge upon what after all was only a vacant spot in hermind. She added, as defensively intimating that the subject hadanother dangerous side:

"When I was a girl, young ladies at school did not learn muchbotany; but they paid a great deal of attention to their manners. "

"Why did not they learn it after they had left school and afterthey had learned manners?" inquired Pansy, with ruthlessenthusiasm. "It is such a mistake to stop learning everythingsimply because you have stopped school. Don't you think so?"

"When a girl marries, my dear, she soon has other studies to takeup. She has a house and husband. The girls of my day, I amafraid, gave up their botanies for their duties: it may bedifferent now. "

"No matter how many children I may have, " said Pansy, positively, "I shall never--give--up--botany! Besides, you know, Mrs. Meredith, that we study botany only during the summer months, and Ido hope--" she broke off suddenly. 

Mrs. Meredith smoothed her dress nervously and sought to find herchair comfortable. 

"Your mother named you Pansy, " she remarked, taking a gloomy view ofthe present moment and of the whole future of this acquaintanceship. 

That this should be the name of a woman was to her a mistake, acrime. Her sense of fitness demanded that names should be given toinfants with reference to their adult characters and eventualpositions in life. She liked her own name "Caroline"; and sheliked "Margaret" and all such womanly, motherly, dignified, statelyappellatives. As for "Pansy, " it had been the name of one of herhusband's shorthorns, a premium animal at the county fairs; thesilver cup was on the sideboard in the dining room now. 

"Yes, Mrs. Meredith, " replied Pansy, "that was the name my mothergave me. I think she must have had a great love of flowers. Shenamed me for the best she had. I hope I shall never forget that, "and Pansy looked at Mrs. Meredith with a face of such gravity andpride that silence lasted in the parlors for a while. 

Buried in Pansy's heart was one secret, one sorrow: that her motherhad been poor. Her father wore his yoke ungalled; he loved roughwork, drew his religion from privations, accepted hardship as thechastening that insures reward. But that her mother's hands shouldhave been folded and have returned to universal clay without everhaving fondled the finer things of life--this to Pansy wasremembrance to start tears on the brightest day. 

"I think she named you beautifully, " said Mrs. Meredith, breakingthat silence, "and I am glad you told me, Pansy. " She lingered withquick approval on the name. 

But she turned the conversation at once to less personal channels. The beauty of the country at this season seemed to offer her aninoffensive escape. She felt that she could handle it at leastwith tolerable discretion. She realized that she was not deep onthe subject, but she did feel fluent. 

"I suppose you take the same pride that we all do in such abeautiful country. "

Sunlight instantly shone out on Pansy's face. Dent was ageologist; and since she conceived herself to be on trial beforeMrs. Meredith this morning, it was of the first importance that shedemonstrate her sympathy and intelligent appreciation of his fieldof work. 

"Indeed I do feel the greatest pride in it, Mrs. Meredith, " shereplied. "I study it a great deal. But of course you knowperfectly the whole formation of this region. "

Mrs. Meredith coughed with frank discouragement. 

"I do not know it, " she admitted dryly. "I suppose I ought to knowit, but I do not. I believe school-teachers understand thesethings. I am afraid I am a very ignorant woman. No one of myacquaintances is very learned. We are not used to scholarship. "

"I know all the strata, " said Pansy. "I tell the children storiesof how the Mastodon once virtually lived in our stable, and thatmillions of years ago there were Pterodactyls under their bed. "

"I think it a misfortune for a young woman to have much to say tochildren about Pterodactyls under their bed--is that the name?Such things never seem to have troubled Solomon, and I believe hewas reputed wise. " She did not care for the old-fashionedreference herself, but she thought it would affect Pansy. 

"The children in the public schools know things that Solomon neverheard of, " said Pansy, contemptuously. 

"I do not doubt it in the least, my dear. I believe it was not hisknowledge that made him rather celebrated, but his wisdom. But Iam not up in Solomon!" she admitted hastily, retreating from thesubject in new dismay. 

The time had arrived for Pansy to depart; but she reclined in hermorocco alcove with somewhat the stiffness of a tilted bottle andsomewhat the contour. She felt extreme dissatisfaction with hervisit and reluctance to terminate it. 

Her idea of the difference between people in society and otherpeople was that it hinged ornamentally upon inexhaustible andscanty knowledge. If Mrs. Meredith was a social leader, and sheherself had no social standing at all, it was mainly because thatlady was publicly recognized as a learned woman, and the world hadnot yet found out that she herself was anything but ignorant. Being ignorant was to her mind the quintessence of being common;and as she had undertaken this morning to prove to Dent's motherthat she was not common, she had only to prove that she waslearned. For days she had prepared for this interview with thatconception of its meaning. She had converted her mind into a kindof rapid-firing gun; she had condensed her knowledge intoconversational cartridges. No sooner had she taken up a mentalposition before Mrs. Meredith than the parlors resounded withlight, rapid detonations of information. That lady had but torelease the poorest, most lifeless, little clay pigeon of a remarkand Pansy shattered it in mid air and refixed suspicious eyes onthe trap. 

But the pigeons soon began to fly less frequently. And finallythey gave out. And now she must take nearly all her cartridgeshome! Mrs. Meredith would think her ignorant, therefore she wouldthink her common. If Pansy had only known what divine dulness, what ambrosial stupidity, often reclines on those Olympian heightscalled society!

As last she rose. Neither had mentioned Dent's name, though eachhad been thinking of him all the time. Not a word had been spokento indicate the recognition of a relationship which one of them sodesired and the other so dreaded. Pansy might merely have hurriedover to ask Mrs. Meredith for the loan of an ice-cream freezer orfor a setting of eggs. On the mother's part this silence waskindly meant: she did not think it right to take for granted whatmight never come to pass. Uppermost in her mind was the cruelty ofaccepting Pansy as her daughter-in-law this morning with thepossibility of rejecting her afterward. 

As Pansy walked reluctantly out into the hall, she stopped with adeep wish in her candid eyes. 

"Oh, Mrs. Meredith, I should so much like to see the portrait ofDent's father: he has often spoken to me about It. "

Mrs. Meredith led her away in silence to where the portrait hung, and the two stood looking at it side by side. She resisted aslight impulse to put her arm around the child. When they returnedto the front of the house, Pansy turned:

"Do you think you will ever love me?"

The carriage was at the door. "You must not walk, " said Mrs. Meredith, "the sun is too hot now. "

As Pansy stepped into the carriage, she cast a suspicious glance atthe cushions: Meredith upholstery was not to be trusted, and sheseated herself warily. 

Mrs. Meredith put her hand through the window: "You must come tosee me soon again, Pansy. I am a poor visitor, but I shall try tocall on you in a few days. "

She went back to her seat on the veranda. 

It has been said that her insight into goodness was her strength;she usually had a way of knowing at once, as regards the characterof people, what she was ever to know at all. Her impressions ofPansy unrolled themselves disconnectedly:

"She makes mistakes, but she does not know how to do wrong. Guileis not in her. She is so innocent that she does not realizesometimes the peril of her own words. She is proud--a great dealprouder than Dent. To her, life means work and duty; more thanthat, it means love. She is ambitious, and ambition, in her case, would be indispensable. She did not claim Dent: I appreciate that. She is a perfectly brave girl, and it is cowardice that makes somany women hypocrites. She will improve--she improved while shewas here. But oh, everything else! No figure, no beauty, nograce, no tact, no voice, no hands, no anything that is so muchneeded! Dent says there are cold bodies which he calls planetswithout atmosphere: he has found one to revolve about him. If sheonly had some clouds! A mist here and there, so that everythingwould not be so plain, so exposed, so terribly open! But neitherhas _he_ any clouds, any mists, any atmosphere. And if she onlywould not so try to expose other people! If she had not sotrampled upon me in my ignorance; and with such a sense of triumph!I was never so educated in my life by a visitor. The amount ofinformation she imparted in half an hour--how many months it wouldhave served the purpose of a well-bred woman! And her pride in herfamily--were there ever such little brothers and sisters outside aroyal family! And her devotion to her father, and remembrance ofher mother. I shall go to see her, and be received, I suppose, somewhere between the griddle and the churn. "

As Pansy was driven home, feeling under herself for the first timethe elasticity of a perfect carriage, she experimented with herposture. "This carriage is not to be sat in in the usual way, " shesaid. And indeed it was not. In the family rockaway there wasconstant need of muscular adjustment to different shocks atsuccessive moments; here muscular surrender was required: acomfortable collapse--and there you were!

Trouble awaited her at home. Owing to preoccupation with her visitshe had, before setting out, neglected much of her morning work. She had especially forgotten the hungry multitude of herdependants. The children, taking advantage of her absence, had fedonly themselves. As a consequence, the trustful lives around thehouse had suffered a great wrong, and they were attempting todescribe it to each other. The instant Pansy descended from thecarriage the ducks, massed around the doorsteps, discovered her, and with frantic outcry and outstretched necks ran to find out whatit all meant. The signal was taken up by other species and genera. In the stable lot the calves responded as the French horn end ofthe orchestra; and the youngest of her little brothers, who hadclimbed into a fruit tree as a lookout for her return, inscrambling hurriedly down, dropped to the earth with the bonelessthud of an opossum. 

Pansy walked straight up to her room, heeding nothing, leaving awailing wake. She locked herself in. It was an hour before dinnerand she needed all those moments for herself. 

She sat on the edge of her bed and new light brought newwretchedness. It was not, after all, quantity of information thatmade the chief difference between herself and Dent's mother. Theother things, all the other things--would she ever, ever acquirethem! Finally the picture rose before her of how the footman hadlooked as he had held the carriage door open for her, and the duckshad sprawled over his feet; and she threw herself on the bed, hatand all, and burst out crying with rage and grief and mortification. 

"She will think I am common, " she moaned, "and I am not common!Why did I say such things? It is not my way of talking. Why did Icriticise the way the portrait was hung? And she will think thisis what I really am, and it is not what I am! She will think I donot even know how to sit in a chair, and she will tell Dent, andDent will believe her, and what will become of me?"

"Pansy, " said Dent next afternoon, as they were in the woodstogether, "you have won my mother's heart. "

"Oh, Dent, " she exclaimed, tears starting, "I was afraid she wouldnot like me. How could she like me, knowing me no better?"

"She doesn't yet know that she likes you, " he replied, with hishonest thinking and his honest speech, "but I can see that shetrusts you and respects you; and with my mother everything elsefollows in time. "

"I was embarrassed. I did myself such injustice. "

"It is something you never did any one else. "

He had been at work in his quarry on the vestiges of creation; thequarry lay at an outcrop of that northern hill overlooking thevalley in which she lived. Near by was a woodland, and she hadcome out for some work of her own in which he guided her. They layon the grass now side by side. 

"I am working on the plan of our house, Pansy. I expect to beginto build in the autumn. I have chosen this spot for the site. Howdo you like it?"

"I like it very well. For one reason, I can always see the oldplace from it. "

"My father left his estate to be equally divided between Rowan andme. Of course he could not divide the house; that goes to Rowan:it is a good custom for this country as it was a good custom forour forefathers in England. But I get an equivalent and am tobuild for myself on this part of the land: my portion is over here. You see we have always been divided only by a few fences and theydo not divide at all. "

"The same plants grow on each side, Dent. "

"There is one thing I have to tell you. If you are coming into ourfamily, you ought to know it beforehand. There is a shadow overour house. It grows deeper every year and we do not know what itmeans. That is, my mother and I do not know. It is some secret inRowan's life. He has never offered to tell us, and of course wehave never asked him, and in fact mother and I have never evenspoken to each other on the subject. "

It was the first time she had even seen sadness in his eyes; andshe impulsively clasped his hand. He returned the pressure andthen their palms separated. No franker sign of their love had everpassed between them. 

He went on very gravely: "Rowan was the most open nature I ever sawwhen he was a boy. I remember this now. I did not think of itthen. I believe he was the happiest. You know we are allpantheists of some kind nowadays. I could never see muchdifference between a living thing that stands rooted in the earthlike a tree and a living thing whose destiny it is to move the footperpetually over the earth, as man. The union is as close in onecase as in the other. Do you remember the blind man of the NewTestament who saw men as trees walking? Rowan seemed to me, as Irecall him now, to have risen out of the earth through my fatherand mother--a growth of wild nature, with the seasons in his face, with the blood of the planet rising into his veins as intimately asit pours into a spring oak or into an autumn grape-vine. I oftenheard Professor Hardage call him the earth-born. He never calledany one else that. He was wild with happiness until he went tocollege. He came back all changed; and life has been uphill withhim ever since. Lately things have grown worse. The other day Iwas working on the plan of our house; he came in and looked over myshoulder: 'Don't build, Dent, ' he said, 'bring your wife here, ' andhe walked quickly out of the room. I knew what that meant: he hasbeen unfortunate in his love affair and is ready to throw up thewhole idea of marrying. This is our trouble, Pansy. It mayexplain anything that may have been lacking in my mother'streatment of you; she is not herself at all. " He spoke with greattenderness and he looked disturbed. 

"Can I do anything?" What had she been all her life butburden-bearer, sorrow-sharer?

"Nothing. "

"If I ever can, will you tell me?"

"This is the only secret I have kept from you, Pansy. I am sureyou have kept none from me. I believe that if I could readeverything in you, I should find nothing I did not wish to know. "

She did not reply for a while. Then she said solemnly: "I have onesecret. There is something I try to hide from every human beingand I always shall. It is not a bad secret, Dent. But I do notwish to tell you what it is, and I feel sure you will never ask me. "

He turned his eyes to her clear with unshakable confidence: "Inever will. "

Pansy was thinking of her mother's poverty. 

They sat awhile in silence. 

He had pulled some stems of seeding grass and drew them slowlyacross his palm, pondering Life. Then he began to talk to her inthe way that made them so much at home with one another. 

"Pansy, men used to speak of the secrets of Nature: there is notthe slightest evidence that Nature has a secret. They used tospeak of the mysteries of the Creator. I am not one of those whoclaim to be authorities on the traits of the Creator. Some of myancestors considered themselves such. But I do say that men arecoming more and more to think of Him as having no mysteries. Wehave no evidence, as the old hymn declares, that He loves to movein a mysterious way. The entire openness of Nature and of theCreator--these are the new ways of thinking. They will be the onlyways of thinking in the future unless civilization sinks again intodarkness. What we call secrets and mysteries of the universe arethe limitations of our powers and our knowledge. The little thatwe actually do know about Nature, how open it is, how unsecretive!There is nowhere a sign that the Creator wishes to hide from useven what is Life. If we ever discover what Life is, no doubt weshall then realize that it contained no mystery. "

She loved to listen, feeling that he was drawing her to his way ofthinking for the coming years. 

"It was the folly and the crime of all ancient religions that theirpriesthoods veiled them; whenever the veil was rent, like the veilof Isis, it was not God that men found behind it: it was nothing. The religions of the future will have no veils. As far as they canset before their worshippers truth at all, it will be truth as openas the day. The Great Teacher in the New Testament--what aneternal lesson on light itself: that is the beauty of his Gospel. And his Apostles--where do you find him saying to them, 'Preach myword to all men as the secrets of a priesthood and the mysteries ofthe Father'?

"It is the tragedy of man alone that he has his secrets. No doubtthe time will come when I shall have mine and when I shall have tohide things from you, Pansy, as Rowan has his and hides things fromus. Life is full of things that we cannot tell because they wouldinjure us; and of things that we cannot tell because they wouldinjure others. But surely we should all like to live in a timewhen a man's private life will be his only life. "

After a silence he came back to her with a quiet laugh: "Here I amtalking about the future of the human race, and we have neveragreed upon our marriage ceremony! What a lover!"

"I want the most beautiful ceremony in the world. "

"The ceremony of your church?" he asked with great respect, thoughwincing. 

"My church has no ceremony: every minister in it has his own; andrather than have one of them write mine, I think I should ratherwrite it myself: shouldn't you?"

"I think I should, " he said, laughing. 

He drew a little book out of his breast pocket: "Perhaps you willlike this: a great many people have been married by it. "

"I want the same ceremony that is used for kings and queens, forthe greatest and the best people of the earth. I will marry you byno other!"

"A good many of them have used this, " and he read to her theceremony of his church. 

When he finished neither spoke. 

It was a clear summer afternoon. Under them was the strength ofrocks; around them the noiseless growth of needful things; abovethem the upward-drawing light: two working children of the NewWorld, two pieces of Nature's quietism. 

II

It was the second morning after Marguerite's ball. 

Marguerite, to herself a girl no longer, lay in the middleof a great, fragrant, drowsy bed of carved walnut, once hergrandmother's. She had been dreaming; she had just awakened. Thesun, long since risen above the trees of the yard, was slantingthrough the leaves and roses that formed an outside lattice to herwindow-blinds. 

These blinds were very old. They had been her grandmother's whenshe was Marguerite's age; and one day, not long before this, Marguerite, pillaging the attic, had found them and brought themdown, with adoring eyes, and put them up before her own windows. They were of thin muslin, and on them were painted scenesrepresenting the River of Life, with hills and castles, valleys andstreams, in a long series; at the end there was a faint vision of acrystal dome in the air--the Celestial City--nearly washed away. You looked at these scenes through the arches of a ruined castle. A young man (on one blind) has just said farewell to his parents onthe steps of the castle and is rowing away down the River of Life. At the prow of his boat is the figurehead of a winged woman holdingan hour-glass. 

Marguerite lay on her side, sleepily contemplating the whole scenebetween her thick, bosky lashes. She liked everything but thewinged woman holding the hour-glass. Had she been that woman, shewould have dropped the hour-glass into the blue, burying water, andhave reached up her hand for the young man to draw her into theboat with him. And she would have taken off her wings and castthem away upon the hurrying river. To have been alone with him, nohour-glass, no wings, rowing away on Life's long voyage, pastcastles and valleys, and never ending woods and streams! As to theCelestial City, she would have liked her blinds better if the rainsof her grandmother's youth had washed it away altogether. It wasnot the desirable end of such a journey: she did not care to land_there_. 

Marguerite slipped drowsily over to the edge of the bed in order tobe nearer the blinds; and she began to study what was left of theface of the young man just starting on his adventures from thehouse of his fathers. Who was he? Of whom did he cause her tothink? She sat up in bed and propped her face in the palms of herhands--the April face with its October eyes--and lapsed into whathad been her dreams of the night. The laces of her nightgowndropped from her wrists to her elbows; the masses of her hair, likesunlit autumn maize, fell down over her neck and shoulders into thepurity of the bed. 

Until the evening of her party the world had been to Margueritesomething that arranged all her happiness and never interferedwith it. Only soundness and loveliness of nature, inborn, undestroyable, could have withstood such luxury, indulgence, surfeit as she had always known. 

On that night which was designed to end for her the life ofchildhood, she had, for the first time, beheld the symbol of theworld's diviner beauty--a cross. All her guests had individuallygreeted her as though each were happier in her happiness. Exceptone--he did not care. He had spoken to her upon entering with themanner of one who wished himself elsewhere, he alone brought notribute to her of any kind, in his eyes, by his smile, through thepressure of his hand. 

The slight wounded her at the moment; she had not expected to havea guest to whom she would be nothing and to whom it would seem nounkindness to let her know this. The slight left its trail of painas the evening wore on and he did not come near her. Severaltimes, while standing close to him, she had looked her surprise, had shadowed her face with coldness for him to see. For the firsttime in her life she felt herself rejected, suffered thefascination of that pain. Afterward she had intentionally pressedso close to him in the throng of her guests that her arm brushedhis sleeve. At last she had disengaged herself from all others andhad even gone to him with the inquiries of a hostess; and he hadforced himself to smile at her and had forgotten her while he spoketo her--as though she were a child. All her nature was exquisitelyloosened that night, and quivering; it was not a time to be sowounded and to forget. 

She did not forget as she sat in her room after all had gone. Shetook the kindnesses and caresses, the congratulations and triumphs, of those full-fruited hours, pressed them together and derivedmerely one clear drop of bitterness--the languorous poison of onehaunting desire. It followed her into her sleep and through thenext day; and not until night came again and she had passed throughthe gateway of dreams was she happy: for in those dreams it was hewho was setting out from the house of his fathers on a voyage downthe River of Life; and he had paused and turned and called her tocome to him and be with him always. 

Marguerite lifted her face from her palms, as she finished herrevery. She slipped to the floor out of the big walnut bed, andcrossing to the blinds laid her fingers on the young man'sshoulder. It was the movement with which one says: "I have come. "

With a sigh she drew one of the blinds aside and looked out uponthe leaves and roses of her yard and at the dazzling sunlight. Within a few feet of her a bird was singing. "How can you?" shesaid. "If you loved, you would be silent. Your wings would droop. You could neither sing nor fly. " She turned dreamily back into herroom and wandered over to a little table on which her violin lay inits box. She lifted the top and thrummed the strings. "How couldI ever have loved you?"

She dressed absent-mindedly. How should she spend the forenoon?Some of her friends would be coming to talk over the party; therewould be callers; there was the summer-house, her hammock, herphaeton; there were nooks and seats, cool, fragrant; there were hermother and grandmother to prattle to and caress. "No, " she said, "not any of them. One person only. I must see _him_. "

She thought of the places where she could probably see him if heshould be in town that day. There was only one--the library. Often, when there, she had seen him pass in and out. He had noneed to come for books or periodicals, all these he could have athome; but she had heard the librarian and him at work; over thefiles of old papers containing accounts of early agriculturalaffairs and the first cattle-shows of the state. She resolved togo to the library: what desire had she ever known that she had notgratified?

When Marguerite, about eleven o'clock, approached the library alittle fearfully, she saw Barbee pacing to and fro on the sidewalkbefore the steps. She felt inclined to turn back; he was the lastperson she cared to meet this morning. Play with him had suddenlyended as a picnic in a spring grove is interrupted by a tempest. 

"I ought to tell him at once, " she said; and she went forward. 

He came to meet her--with a countenance dissatisfied andreproachful. It struck her that his thin large ears lookedyellowish instead of red and that his freckles had apparentlyspread and thickened. She asked herself why she had never beforerealized how boyish he was. 

"Marguerite, " he said at once, as though the matter were to betaken firmly in hand, "you treated me shabbily the night of yourparty. It was unworthy of you. And I will not stand it. Youought not be such a child!"

Her breath was taken away. She blanched and her eyes dilated asshe looked at him: the lash of words had never been laid on her. 

"Are you calling me to account?" she asked. "Then I shall call youto an account. When you came up to speak to grandmother and tomamma and me, you spoke to us as though you were an indifferentsuitor of mine--as though I were a suitor of yours. As soon as youwere gone, mamma said to me: 'What have you been doing, Marguerite, that he should think you are in love with him--that he should treatus as though we all wished to catch him?'"

"That was a mistake of your mother's. But after what had passedbetween us--"

"No matter what had passed between us, I do not think that a _man_would virtually tell a girl's mother on her: a boy might. "

He grew ashen; and he took his hand out of his pockets andstraightened himself from his slouchy lounging posture, and stoodbefore her, his head in the air on his long neck like a young stagaffronted and enraged. 

"It is true, I have sometimes been too much like a boy with you, "he said. "Have you made it possible for me to be anything else?"

"Then I'll make it possible for you now: to begin, I am too old tobe called to account for my actions--except by those who have theright. "

"You mean, that I have no right--after what has passed--"

"Nothing has passed between us!"

"Marguerite, " he said, "do you mean that you do not love me?"

"Can you not see?"

She was standing on the steps above him. The many-fluted parasolwith its long silken fringes rested on one shoulder. Her face inthe dazzling sunlight, under her hat, had lost its gayety. Hereyes rested upon his with perfect quietness. 

"I do not believe that you yourself know whether you love me, " hesaid, laughing pitifully. His big mouth twitched and his love hadcome back into his eyes quickly enough. 

"Let me tell you how I know, " she said, with more kindness. "If Iloved you, I could not stand here and speak of it to you in thisway. I could not tell you you are not a man. Everything in mewould go down before you. You could do with my life what youpleased. No one in comparison with you would mean anything tome--not even mamma. As long as I was with you, I should never wishto sleep; if you were away from me, I should never wish to waken. If you were poor, if you were in trouble, you would be all thedearer to me--if you only loved me, only loved me!"

Who is it that can mark down the moment when we ceased to bechildren? Gazing backward in after years, we sometimes attemptdimly to fix the time. "It probably occurred on that day, " wedeclare; "it may have taken place during that night. It coincidedwith that hardship, or with that mastery of life. " But a child cansuffer and can triumph as a man or a woman, yet remain a child. Like man and woman it can hate, envy, malign, cheat, lie, tyrannize; or bless, cheer, defend, drop its pitying tears, pourout its heroic spirit. Love alone among the passions parts the twoeternities of a lifetime. The instant it is born, the child whichwas its parent is dead. 

As Marguerite suddenly ceased speaking, frightened by the secretimport of her own words, her skin, which had the satinlike finenessand sheen of white poppy leaves, became dyed from brow to breastwith a surging flame of rose. She turned partly away from Barbee, and she waited for him to go. 

He looked at her a moment with torment in his eyes; then, liftinghis hat without a word, he turned and walked proudly down thestreet toward his office. 

Marguerite did not send a glance after him. What can make us socruel to those who vainly love us as our vain love of some oneelse? What do we care for their suffering? We see it in theirfaces, hear it in their speech, feel it as the tragedy of theirlives. But we turn away from them unmoved and cry out at theheartlessness of those whom our own faces and words and sorrow donot touch. 

She lowered her parasol, and pressing her palm against one cheekand then the other, to force back the betraying blood, hurriedagitated and elated into the library. A new kind of excitementfilled her: she had confessed her secret, had proved her fidelityto him she loved by turning off the playmate of childhood. Whodoes not know the relief of confessing to some one who does notunderstand?

The interior of the library was an immense rectangular room. Bookshelves projected from each side toward the middle, formingalcoves. Seated in one of these alcoves, you could be seen only bypersons who should chance to pass. The library was never crowdedand it was nearly empty now. Marguerite lingered to speak with thelibrarian, meantime looking carefully around the room; and thenmoved on toward the shelves where she remembered having once seen acertain book of which she was now thinking. It had not interestedher then; she had heard it spoken of since, but it had notinterested her since. Only to-day something new within herselfdrew her toward it. 

No one was in the alcove she entered. After a while she found herbook and seated herself in a nook of the walls with her face turnedin the one direction from which she could be discovered by any onepassing. While she read, she wished to watch: might he not pass?

It was a very old volume, thumbed by generations of readers. Pageswere gone, the halves of pages worn away or tattered. It wasprinted in an old style of uncertain spelling so that the period ofits authorship could in this way be but doubtfully indicated. Ostensibly it came down from the ruder, plainer speech of oldEnglish times, which may have found leisure for such "A Booke ofFolly. "

Marguerite's eyes settled first on the complete title: "LadyBluefields' First Principles of Courting for Ye Use of Ye Ladies;but Plainly Set Down for Ye Good of Ye Beginners. "

"I am not a beginner, " thought Marguerite, who had been in lovethree days; and she began to read:

"_Now of all artes ye most ancient is ye lovely arte of courting. It is ye earliest form of ye chase. It is older than hawking orhunting ye wilde bore. It is older than ye flint age or ye stoneaye, being as old as ye bones in ye man his body and in ye womanher body. It began in ye Garden of Eden and is as old as ye olddevil himself_. "

Marguerite laughed: she thought Lady Bluefields delightful. 

"_Now ye only purpose in all God His world of ye arte of courtingis to create love where love is not, or to make it grow where ithas begun. But whether ye wish to create love or to blow ye littlecoal into ye big blaze, ye principles are ye same; for ye bellowsthat will fan nothing into something will easily roast ye sparkinto ye roaring fire; and ye grander ye fire, ye grander ye arte_. "

Marguerite laughed again. Then she stopped reading and tested thepassage in the light of her experience. A bellows and--nothing tobegin. Then something. Then a spark. Then a name. She returnedto the book with the conclusion that Lady Bluefields was a woman ofexperience. 

"_This little booke will not contain any but ye first principles:if is enough for ye stingy price ye pay. But ye woman who buys yefirst principles and fails, must then get ye larger work on ye LastPrinciples of Courting, with ye true account of ye mysteries whichset ye principles to going: it is ye infallible guide to yeirresistible love. Ye pay more for ye Big Booke, and God knows itis worth ye price: it is written for ye women who are ye difficultcases--ye floating derelicts in ye ocean of love, ye hidden snags, terror of ye seafaring men_. "

This did not so much interest Marguerite. She skipped two or threepages which seemed to go unnecessarily into the subject ofderelicts and snags. "I am not quite sure as to what a derelictis: I do not think I am one; out certainly I am not a snag. "

"_Now ye only reason for ye lovely arts of courtinge is ye purposeto marry. If ye do not expect to marry, positively ye must notcourt: flirting is ye dishonest arte. Courting is ye honest arte;if ye woman knows in ye woman her heart that she will not make yeman a good wife, let her not try to Cage ye man: let her keep yecat or cage ye canary: that is enough for her_. "

"I shall dispose of my canary at once. It goes to Miss HarrietCrane. "

"_Now of all men there is one ye woman must not court: ye marriedman. Positively ye must not court such a man. If he wishes tocourt ye, ye must make resistance to him with all ye soul; if youwish to court him, ye must resist yourself. If he is a married manand happy, let him alone. If he is married and unhappy, let himbear his lot and beat his wife_. "

Marguerite's eyes flashed. "It is well the writer did not live inthis age, " she thought. 

"_Ye men to court are three kinds: first ye swain; second ye oldbachelor; third ye widower. Ye old bachelor is like ye greenchimney of ye new house--hard to kindle. But ye widower is like yefamiliar fireplace. Ye must court according to ye kind. Yebachelor and ye widower are treated in ye big booke_. "

"The swain is left, " said Marguerite. "How and when is the swainto be courted?"

"_Now ye beauty of ye swain is that ye can court him at all seasonsof ye year. Ye female bird will signal for ye mate only when yewoods are green; but even ye old maid can go to ye icy spinnet anddrum wildly in ye dead of winter with ye aching fingers and yeswain mate will sometimes come to her out of ye cold_. "

Marguerite was beginning to think that nearly every one treated inLady Bluefields' book was too advanced in years: it was toocharitable to the problems of spinsters. "Where do the young comein?" she asked impatiently. 

"_Ye must not court ye young swain with ye food or ye wine. Thatis for ye old bachelors and ye widowers to whom ye food and wineare dear, but ye woman who gives them not dear enough. Ye womangives them meat and drink and they give ye woman hope: it is yebargain: let each be content with what each gets. But if ye swainbe bashful and ye know that he cannot speak ye word that he hastried to speak, a glass of ye wine will sometimes give him thatmissing word. Ye wine passes ye word to him and he passes ye wordto you: and ye keep it! When ye man is soaked with wine he doesnot know what he loves nor cares: he will hug ye iron post in yestreet or ye sack of feathers in ye man his bed and talk to it asthough nothing else were dear to him in all ye world. It is not yelove that makes him do this; it is ye wine and ye man his owndevilish nature. No; ye must marry with wine, but ye must courtwith water. Ye love that will not begin with water will not lastwith wine_. "

This did not go to the heart of the matter. Marguerite turned overseveral pages. 

"_In ye arte of courting, it is often ye woman her eyes that settleye man his fate, But if ye woman her eyes are not beautiful, shemust not court with them but with other members of ye woman herbody. Ye greatest use of ye ugly eyes is to see but not be seen. If ye try to court with ye ugly eyes, ye scare ye man away or makehim to feel sick; and ye will be sorry. Ye eyes must be beautifuland ye eyes must have some mystery. They must not be like yewindows of ye house in summer when ye curtains are taken down andye shutters are taken off. As ye man stands outside he must wantto see all that is within, but he must not be able. What ye manloves ye woman for is ye mystery in her; if ye woman contain nomystery, let her marry if she must; but not aspire to court. (Thisis enough for ye stingy price ye pay: if ye had paid more money, yewould have received more instruction. )_"

Marguerite thought it very little instruction for any money. Shefelt disappointed and provoked. She passed on to "Clothes. " "Whatcan she teach me on that subject?" she thought. 

"_When ye court with ye clothes, ye must not lift ye dress above yeankle bone_. "

"Then I know what kind of ankle bone _she_ had, " said Marguerite, bitter for revenge on Lady Bluefields. 

"_Ye clothes play a greate part in ye arte of courtinge_. "

Marguerite turned the leaf; but she found that the other pages onthe theme were too thumbed and faint to be legible. 

She looked into the subject of "Hands": learning where the palmsshould be turned up and when turned down; the meaning of a crookedforefinger, and of full moons rising on the horizons of the fingernails; why women with freckled hands should court bachelors. Alsohow the feet, if of such and such sizes and configurations, must bekept as "_ye two dead secrets_. " Similarly how dimples must beborn and not made--with a caution against "_ye dimple under yenose_" (reference to "Big Booke"--well worth the money, etc. ). 

When she reached the subject of the kiss, Marguerite thoughtguiltily of the library steps. 

"_Ye kiss is ye last and ye greatest act in all ye lovely arte ofcourtinge. Ye eyes, ye hair, ye feet, ye dimple, ye whole trunk, are of no account if they do not lead up to ye kiss. There are twokinds of ye kiss: ye kiss that ye give and ye kiss that ye take. Ye kiss that ye take is ye one ye want. Ye woman often wishes togive ye man one but cannot; and ye man often wishes to take one (ormore) from ye woman but cannot; and between her not being able togive and his not being able to take, there is suffering enough inthis ill-begotten and ill-sorted world. Ye greatest enemy of yekiss that ye earth has ever known is ye sun; ye greatest friend isye night_. 

"_Ye most cases where ye woman can take ye kiss are put down in ye'Big Booke_. '

"_When ye man lies sick in ye hospital and ye woman bends over himand he is too weak to raise his head, she can let her head falldown on his; it is only the law of gravitation. But not while sheis giving him ye physick. If ye woman is riding in ye carriage andye horses run away; and ye man she loves is standing in ye bushesand rushes out and seizes ye horses but is dragged, when he lies inye road in ye swoon, ye woman can send ye driver around behind yecarriage and kiss him then--as she always does in ye women theirnovels but never does in ye life. There is one time when any womancan freely kiss ye man she loves: in ye dreame. It is ye safestway, and ye best. No one knows; and it does not disappoint as itoften does disappoint when ye are awake_. 

"_Lastly when ye beautiful swain that ye woman loved is dead, sheway go into ye room where he lies white and cold and kiss him then:but she waited too long_. "

Marguerite let the book fall as though an arrow had pierced her. At the same time she heard the librarian approaching. She quicklyrestored the volume to its place and drew out another book. Thelibrarian entered the alcove, smiled at Marguerite, peeped over hershoulder into the book she was reading, searched for another, andtook it away. When she disappeared, Marguerite rose and looked;Lady Bluefields was gone. 

She could not banish those heart-breaking words: "_When yebeautiful swain that ye woman loved is dead_. " The longing of thepast days, the sadness, the languor that was ecstasy and pain, swept back over her as she sat listening now, hoping for anotherfootstep. Would he not come? She did not ask to speak with him. If she might only see him, only feel him near for a few moments. 

She quitted the library slowly at last, trying to escape notice;and passed up the street with an unconscious slight drooping ofthat aerial figure. When she reached her yard, the tree-topswithin were swaying and showing the pale gray under-surfaces oftheir leaves. A storm was coming. She turned at the gate, her hatin her hand, and looked toward the cloud with red lightningsdarting from it: a still white figure confronting that noondaydarkness of the skies. 

"Grandmother never loved but once, " she said. "Mamma never lovedbut once: it is our fate. "

III

"Anna, " said Professor Hardage that same morning, coming out of hislibrary into the side porch where Miss Anna, sitting in a greenchair and wearing a pink apron and holding a yellow bowl with ablue border, was seeding scarlet cherries for a brown roll, "seewhat somebody has sent _me_. " He held up a many-colored bouquettied with a brilliant ribbon; to the ribbon was pinned anold-fashioned card. 

"Ah, now, that is what comes of your being at the ball, " said MissAnna, delighted and brimming with pride. "Somebody fell in lovewith you. I told you you looked handsome that night, " and shebeckoned impatiently for the bouquet. 

He surrendered it with a dubious look. She did not consider thelittle tumulus of Flora, but devoured the name of the builder. Herface turned crimson; and leaning over to one side, she dropped thebouquet into the basket for cherry seed. Then she continued herdutiful pastime, her head bent so low that he could see nothing butthe part dividing the soft brown hair of her fine head. 

He sat down and laughed at her: "I knew you'd get me into trouble. "

It was some moments before she asked in a guilty voice: "What didyou _do_?"

"What did you tell me to do?"

"I asked you to be kind to Harriet, " she murmured mournfully. 

"You told me to take her out into the darkest place I could findand to sit there with her and hold her hand. "

"I did not tell you to hold her hand. I told you to _try_ to holdher hand. "

"Well! I builded better than you knew: give me my flowers. "

"What did you do?" she asked again, in a voice that admitted theworst. 

"How do I know? I was thinking of something else! But here comesHarriet, " he said, quickly standing up and gazing down the street. 

"Go in, " said Miss Anna, "I want to see Harriet alone. "

"_You_ go in. The porch isn't dark; but I'll stay here with her!"

"Please. "

When he had gone, Miss Anna leaned over and lifting the bouquetfrom the sticking cherry seed tossed it into the yard--tossed it_far_. 

Harriet came out into the porch looking wonderfully fresh. "How doyou do, Anna?" she said with an accent of new cordiality, established cordiality. 

The accent struck Miss Anna's ear as the voice of the bouquet. Shehad at once discovered also that Harriet was beautifullydressed--even to the point of wearing her best gloves. 

"Oh, good morning, Harriet, " she replied, giving the yellow bowl anunnecessary shake and speaking quite incidentally as though thevisit were not of the slightest consequence. She did not inviteHarriet to be seated. Harriet seated herself. 

"Aren't you well, Anna?" she inquired with blank surprise. 

"I am always well. "

"Is any one ill, Anna?"

"Not to my knowledge. "

Harriet knew Miss Anna to have the sweetest nature of all women. She realized that she herself was often a care to her friend. Acertain impulse inspired her now to give assurance that she had notcome this morning to weigh her down with more troubles. 

"Do you know, Anna, I never felt so well! Marguerite's ball reallybrought me out. I have turned over a new leaf of destiny and I amgoing out more after this. What right has a woman to give up lifeso soon? I shall go out more, and I shall read more, and be adifferent woman, and cease worrying you. Aren't women readinghistory now? But then they are doing everything. Still that isno reason why I should not read a little, because my mind is reallya blank on the subject of the antiquities. Of course I can get theancient Hebrews out of the Bible; but I ought to know more aboutthe Greeks and Romans. Now oughtn't I?"

"You don't want to know anything about the Greeks and the Romans, Harriet, " said Miss Anna. "Content yourself with the earliestHebrews. You have gotten along very well without the Greeks andthe Romans--for--a--long--time. "

Harriet understood at last; there was no mistaking now. She was avery delicate instrument and much used to being rudely played upon. Her friend's reception of her to-day had been so unaccountable thatat one moment she had suspected that her appearance might be atfault. Harriet had known women to turn cold at the sight of a newgown; and it had really become a life principle not to dress evenas well as she could, because she needed the kindness that flowsout so copiously from new clothes to old clothes. But it wasembarrassment that caused her now to say rather aimlessly:

"I believe I feel overdressed. What possessed me?"

"Don't overdress again, " enjoined Miss Anna in stern confidence. "Never try to change yourself in anyway. I like you better as youare--a--great--deal--better. "

"Then you shall have me as you like me, Anna dear, " repliedHarriet, faithfully and earnestly, with a faltering voice; and shelooked out into the yard with a return of an expression very oldand very weary. Fortunately she was short-sighted and was thusunable to see her bouquet which made such a burning blot on thegreen grass, with the ribbon trailing beside it and the card stillholding on as though determined to see the strange adventurethrough to the end. 

"Good-by, Anna, " she said, rising tremblingly, though at thebeginning of her visit. 

"Oh, good-by, Harriet, " replied Miss Anna, giving a cheerful shaketo the yellow bowl. 

As Harriet walked slowly down the street, a more courageouslydressed woman than she had been for years, her chin quivered andshe shook with sobs heroically choked back. 

Miss Anna went into the library and sat down near the door. Herface which had been very white was scarlet again: "What was it youdid--tell me quickly. I cannot stand it. "

He came over and taking her cheeks between his palms turned herface up and looked down into her eyes. But she shut them quickly. "What do you suppose I did? Harriet and I sat for half an hour inanother room. I don't remember what I did; but it could not havebeen anything very bad: others were all around us. "

She opened her eyes and pushed him away harshly: "I have woundedHarriet in her most sensitive spot; and then I insulted her after Iwounded her, " and she went upstairs. 

Later he found the bouquet on his library table with the card stuckin the top. The flowers stayed there freshly watered till thepetals strewed his table: they were not even dusted away. 

As for Harriet herself, the wound of the morning must havepenetrated till it struck some deep flint in her composition; forshe came back the next day in high spirits and severelyunderdressed--in what might be called toilet reduced to its lowestterms, like a common fraction. She had restored herself to thefooting of an undervalued intercourse. At the sight of her MissAnna sprang up, kissed her all over the face, was atoningly cordialwith her arms, tried in every way to say: "See, Harriet, I bare myheart! Behold the dagger of remorse!"

Harriet saw; and she walked up and took the dagger by the handleand twisted it to the right and to the left and drove it in deeperand was glad. 

"How do you like this dress, Anna?" she inquired with the sweetestsolicitude. "Ah, there is no one like a friend to bring you toyour senses! You were right. I am too old to change, too old todress, too old even to read: thank you, Anna, as always. "

Many a wound of friendship heals, but the wounder and the woundedare never the same to each other afterward. So that the twocomrades were ill at ease and welcomed a diversion in the form of avisitor. It happened to be the day of the week when Miss Annareceived her supply of dairy products from the farm of AmbroseWebb. He came round to the side entrance now with two shining tinbuckets and two lustreless eyes. 

The old maids stood on the edge of the porch with their armswrapped around each other, and talked to him with nervous gayety. He looked up with a face of dumb yearning at one and then at theother, almost impartially. 

"Aren't you well, Mr. Webb?" inquired Miss Anna, bending overtoward him with a healing smile. 

"Certainly I am well, " he replied resentfully. "There is nothingthe matter with me. I am a sound man. "

"But you were certainly groaning, " insisted Miss Anna, "for I heardyou; and you must have been groaning about _something_. "

He dropped his eyes, palpably crestfallen, and scraped the brickswith one foot. 

Harriet nudged Miss Anna not to press the point and threw herselfgallantly into the breach of silence. 

"I am coming out to see you sometime, Mr. Webb, " she saidthreateningly; "I want to find out whether you are taking good careof my calf. Is she growing?"

"Calves always grow till they stop, " said Ambrose, axiomatically. 

"How high is she?"

He held his hand up over an imaginary back. 

"Why, that is _high_! When she stops growing, Anna, I am going tosell her, sell her by the pound. She is my beef trust. Now don'tforget, Mr. Webb, that I am coming out some day. "

"I'll be there, " he said, and he gave her a peculiar look. 

"You know, Anna, " said Harriet, when they were alone again, "thathis wife treats him shamefully. I have heard mother talking aboutit. She says his wife is the kind of woman that fills a house asstraw fills a barn: you can see it through every crack. Thataccounts for his heavy expression, and for his dull eyes, and forthe groaning. They say that most of the time he sits on the fenceswhen it is clear, and goes into the stable when it rains. "

"Why, I'll have to be kinder to him than ever, " said Miss Anna. "But how do you happen to have a calf, Harriet?" she added, struckby the practical fact. 

"It was the gift of my darling mother, my dear, the only presentshe has made me that I can remember. It was an orphan, and youwouldn't have it in your asylum, and my mother was in a peculiarmood, I suppose. She amused herself with the idea of making mesuch a present. But Anna, watch that calf, and see if thereby doesnot hang a tale. I am sure, in some mysterious way, my destiny isbound up with it. Calves do have destinies, don't they, Anna?"

"Oh, don't ask _me_, Harriet! Inquire of their Creator; or try themarket-house. "

It was at the end of this visit that Harriet as usual imparted toMiss Anna the freshest information regarding affairs at home: thatIsabel had gone to spend the summer with friends at the seashore, and was to linger with other friends in the mountains duringautumn; that her mother had changed her own plans, and was to keepthe house open, and had written for the Fieldings--Victor's motherand brothers and sisters--to come and help fill the house; thateverything was to be very gay. 

"I cannot fathom what is under it all, " said Harriet, with herhand on the side gate at leaving. "But I know that mother andIsabel have quarrelled. I believe mother has transferred heraffections--and perhaps her property. She has rewritten her willsince Isabel went away. What have I to do, Anna, but interestmyself in other people's affairs? I have none of my own. And shenever calls Isabel's name, but pets Victor from morning till night. And her expression sometimes! I tell you, Anna, that when I seeit, if I were a bird and could fly, gunshot could not catch me. Isee a summer before me! If there is ever a chance of my doing_anything_, don't be shocked if I do it;" and in Harriet's eyesthere were two mysterious sparks of hope--two little rising suns. 

"What did she mean?" pondered Miss Anna. 

IV

"Barbee, " said Judge Morris one morning a fortnight later, "whathas become of Marguerite? One night not long ago you complained ofher as an obstacle in the path of your career: does she still annoyyou with her attentions? You could sue out a writ of habeas corpusin your own behalf if she persists. I'd take the case. I believeyou asked me to mark your demeanor on the evening of that party. Itried to mark it; but I did not discover a great deal of demeanorto mark. "

The two were sitting in the front office. The Judge, with nothingto do, was facing the street, his snow-white cambric handkerchiefthrown across one knee, his hands grasping the arms of his chair, the newspaper behind his heels, his straw hat and cane on the floorat his side, and beside them the bulldog--his nose thrust againstthe hat. 

Barbee was leaning over his desk with his fingers plunged in hishair and his eyes fixed on the law book before him--unopened. Heturned and remarked with dry candor:

"Marguerite has dropped me. "

"If she has, it's a blessed thing. "

"There was more depth to her than I thought. "

"There always is. Wait until you get older. "

"I shall have to work and climb to win her. "

"You might look up meantime the twentieth verse of the twenty-ninthchapter of Genesis. "

Barbee rose and took down a Bible from among the law books: it hadbeen one of the Judge's authorities, a great stand-by for referenceand eloquence in his old days of pleading. He sat down and readthe verse and laid the volume aside with the mere comment: "Allthis time I have been thinking her too much of a child; I find thatshe has been thinking the same of me. "

"Then she has been a sound thinker. "

"The result is she has wandered away after some one else. I knowthe man; and I know that he is after some one else. Why do peopledesire the impossible person? If I had been a Greek sculptor andhad been commissioned to design as my masterwork the world's Friezeof Love, it should have been one long array of marble shapes, eachin pursuit of some one fleeing. But some day Marguerite will befound sitting pensive on a stone--pursuing no longer; and when Iappear upon the scene, having overtaken her at last, she will sigh, but she will give me her hand and go with me: and I'll have tostand it. That is the worst of it. I shall have to stand it--thatshe preferred the other man. "

The Judge did not care to hear Barbee on American themes with Greekimagery. He yawned and struggled to his feet with difficulty. "I'll take a stroll, " he said; "it is all I can take. "

Barbee sprang forward and picked up for him his hat and cane. Thedog, by what seemed the slow action of a mental jackscrew, elevatedhis cylinder to the tops of his legs; and presently the two stiffold bodies turned the corner of the street, one slanting, oneprone: one dotting the bricks with his three legs, the other withhis four. 

Formerly the man and the brute had gone each his own way, meetingonly at meal time and at irregular hours of the night in theJudge's chambers. The Judge had his stories regarding the originof their intimacy. He varied these somewhat according to thesensibilities of the persons to whom they were related--and therewere not many habitues of the sidewalks who did not hear themsooner or later. "No one could disentangle fact and fiction andaffection in them. 

"Some years ago, " he said one day to Professor Hardage, "I was agood deal gayer than I am now and so was he. We cemented afriendship in a certain way, no matter what: that is a story I'mnot going to tell. And he came to live with me on that footing offriendship. Of course he was greatly interested in the life of hisown species at that time; he loved part of it, he hated part; buthe was no friend to either. By and by he grew older. Age removeda good deal of his vanity, and I suppose it forced him to part withsome portion of his self-esteem. But I was growing older myselfand no doubt getting physically a little helpless. I suppose Imade senile noises when I dressed and undressed, expressive of mydecorative labors. This may have been the reason; possibly not;but at any rate about this time he conceived it his duty to give uphis friendship as an equal and to enter my employ as a servant. Hebecame my valet--without wages--and I changed his name to 'Brown. '

"Of course you don't think this true; well, then, don't think ittrue. But you have never seen him of winter mornings get up beforeI do and try to keep me out of the bath-tub. He'll station himselfat the bath-room door; and as I approach he will look at me with anair of saying; 'Now don't climb into that cold water! Stand on theedge of it and lap it if you wish! But don't get into it. Drinkit, man, don't wallow in it. ' He waits until I finish, and then hespeaks his mind plainly again: 'Now see how wet you are! Andto-morrow you will do the same thing. ' And he will stalk away, suspicious of the grade of my intelligence. 

"He helps me to dress and undress. You'd know this if you studiedhis face when I struggle to brush the dust off of my back andshoulders: the mortification, the sense of injustice done him, inhis having been made a quadruped. When I stoop over to take off myshoes, if I do it without any noise and he lies anywhere near, verywell; but if I am noisy about it, he always comes and takes a seatbefore me and assists. Then he makes his same speech: 'What ashame that you should have to do this for yourself, when I am hereto do it for you, but have no hands. '

"You know his portrait in my sitting room. When it was broughthome and he discovered it on the wall, he looked at it fromdifferent angles, and then came across to me with a wound and agrievance: 'Why have you put that thing there? How can you, whohave me, tolerate such a looking object as that? See the meannessin his face! See how used up he is and how sick of life! See whata history is written all over him--his crimes and disgraces! Andyou can care for him when you have _me_, your Brown. ' After I amdead, I expect him to publish a memorial volume entitled'Reminiscences of the late Judge Ravenel Morris, By his formerFriend, afterward his Valet, _Taurus-Canis_. '"

The long drowsing days of summer had come. Business was almostsuspended; heat made energy impossible. Court was not in session, farmers were busy with crops. From early morning to late afternoonthe streets were well-nigh deserted. 

Ravenel Morris found life more active for him during this idlestseason of his native town. Having no business to prefer, peoplewere left more at leisure to talk with him; more acquaintances satfanning on their doorsteps and bade him good night as he passedhomeward. There were festivals in the park; and he could rest onone of the benches and listen to the band playing tunes. He hadthe common human heart in its love of tunes. When tunes stopped, music stopped for him. If anything were played in which there wasno traceable melody, when the instruments encountered a tumult ofchords and dissonances, he would exclaim though with regretfultoleration:

"What are they trying to do now? What is it all about? Why can'tmusic be simple and sweet? Do noise and confusion make it betteror greater?"

One night Barbee had him serenaded. He gave the musiciansinstruction as to the tunes, how they were to be played, in whatsuccession, at what hour of the night. The melodists groupedthemselves in the middle of the street, and the Judge came out on alittle veranda under one of his doors and stood there, a greatsilver-haired figure, looking down. The moonlight shone upon him. He remained for a while motionless, wrapped loosely in what lookedlike a white toga. Then with a slight gesture of the hand full ofmournful dignity he withdrew. 

It was during these days that Barbee, who always watched over himwith a most reverent worship and affection, made a discovery. TheJudge was breaking; that brave life was beginning to sink andtotter toward its fall and dissolution. There were moments whenthe cheerfulness, which had never failed him in the midst of trial, failed him now when there was none; when the ancient springs ofstrength ceased to run and he was discovered to be feeble. Sometimes he no longer read his morning newspaper; he would sit forlong periods in the front door of his office, looking out into thestreet and caring not who passed, not even returning salutations:what was the use of saluting the human race impartially? Or goinginto the rear office, he would reread pages and chapters of what atdifferent times in his life had been his favorite books: "Rabelais"and "The Decameron" when he was young; "Don Quixote" later, and"Faust"; "Clarissa" and "Tom Jones" now and then; and Shakespearealways; and those poems of Burns that tell sad truths; and theaccount of the man in Thackeray who went through so much that waslarge and at the end of life was brought down to so much that waslow. He seemed more and more to feel the need of grasping throughbooks the hand of erring humanity. And from day to day hisconversations with Barbee began to take more the form of counselsabout life and duty, about the ideals and mistakes and virtues andweaknesses in men. He had a good deal to say about the ethics ofcharacter in the court room and in the street. 

One afternoon Barbee very thoughtfully asked him a question:"Uncle, I have wanted to know why you always defended and neverprosecuted. The State is supposed to stand for justice, and theState is the accuser; in always defending the accused and so inworking against the State, have you not always worked againstjustice?"

The Judge sat with his face turned away and spoke as he sat--verygravely and quietly: "I always defended because the State canpunish only the accused, and the accused is never the onlycriminal. In every crime there are three criminals. The firstcriminal is the Origin of Evil. I don't know what the Origin ofEvil is, or who he is; but if I could have dragged the Origin ofEvil into the court room, I should have been glad to try to have ithanged, or have him hanged. I should have liked to argue thegreatest of all possible criminal cases: the case of the CommonPeople vs. The Devil--so nominated. The second criminal is allthat coworked with the accused as involved in his nature, in histemptation, and in his act. If I could have arraigned all theother men and women who have been forerunners or copartners of theaccused as furthering influences in the line of his offence, Ishould gladly have prosecuted them for their share of the guilt. But most of the living who are accessory can no more be discoveredand summoned than can the dead who also were accessory. You haveleft the third criminal; and the State is forced to single him outand let the full punishment fall upon him alone. Thus it does notpunish the guilty--it punishes the last of the guilty. It does noteven punish him for his share of the guilt: it can never know whatthat share is. This is merely a feeling of mine, I do not upholdit. Of course I often declined to defend also. "

They returned to this subject another afternoon as the two sattogether a few days later:

"There was sometimes another reason why I felt unwilling toprosecute: I refer to cases in which I might be taking advantage ofthe inability of a fellow-creature to establish his own innocence. I want you to remember this--nothing that I have ever said to youis of more importance: a good many years ago I was in Paris. Oneafternoon I was walking through the most famous streets in thecompany of a French scholar and journalist, a deep student of thegenius of French civilization. As we passed along, he pointed outvarious buildings with reference to the history that had been madeand unmade within them. At one point he stopped and pointed to acertain structure with a high wall in front of it and to a hole inthat wall. 'Do you know what that is?' he asked. He told me. Anyperson can drop a letter into that box, containing any kind ofaccusation against any other person; it is received by theauthorities and it becomes their duty to act upon its contents. Doyou know what that means? Can you for a moment realize what isinvolved? A man's enemy, even his so-called religious enemy, anyassassin, any slanderer, any liar, even the mercenary who agrees tohire out his honor itself for the wages of a slave, can deposit ananonymous accusation against any one whom he hates or wishes toruin; and it becomes the duty of the authorities to respect hiscommunication as much as though it came before a court of highestequity. An innocent man may thus become an object of suspicion, may be watched, followed, arrested and thrown into prison, disgraced, ruined in his business, ruined in his family; and if inthe end he is released, he is never even told what he has beencharged with, has no power of facing his accuser, of bringing himto justice, of recovering damages from the State. While he himselfis kept in close confinement, his enemy may manufacture evidencewhich he alone would be able to disprove; and the chance is nevergiven him to disprove it. "

The Judge turned and looked at Barbee in simple silence. 

Barbee sprang to his feet: "It is a damned shame!" he cried. "Damnthe French! damn such a civilization. "

"Why damn the French code? In our own country the same thing goeson, not as part of our system of jurisprudence, but as part of oursystem of--well, we'll say--morals. In this country any man'ssecret personal enemy, his so-called religious enemy for instance, may fabricate any accusation against him. He does not drop it intothe dark crevice of a dead wall, but into the blacker hole of aliving ear. A perfectly innocent man by such anonymous oruntraceable slander can be as grossly injured in reputation, inbusiness, in his family, out of a prison in this country as in aprison in France. Slander may circulate about him and he willnever even know what it is, never be confronted by his accuser, never have power of redress. 

"Now what I wish you to remember is this: that in the very natureof the case a man is often unable to prove his innocence. All overthe world useful careers come to nothing and lives are wrecked, because men may be ignorantly or malignantly accused of things ofwhich they cannot stand up and prove that they are innocent. Neverforget that it is impossible for a man finally to demonstrate hispossession of a single great virtue. A man cannot so prove hisbravery. He cannot so prove his honesty or his benevolence or hissobriety or his chastity, or anything else. As to courage, allthat he can prove is that in a given case or in all tested cases hewas not a coward. As to honesty, all that he can prove is that inany alleged instance he was not a thief. A man cannot evendirectly prove his health, mental or physical: all that he canprove is that he shows no unmistakable evidences of disease. Butan enemy may secretly circulate the charge that these evidencesexist; and all the evidences to the contrary that the man himselfmay furnish will never disperse that impression. It is so forevery great virtue. His final possession of a single virtue can beproved by no man. 

"This was another reason why I was sometimes unwilling to prosecutea fellow-creature; it might be a case in which he alone wouldactually know whether he were innocent, but his simple word wouldnot be taken, and his simple word would be the only proof that hecould give. I ask you, as you care for my memory, never to takeadvantage of the truth that the man before you, as the accused, mayin the nature of things be unable to prove his innocence. Some dayyou are going to be a judge. Remember you are always a judge; andremember that a greater Judge than you will ever be gave you therule: 'Judge as you would be judged. ' The great root of the matteris this: that all human conduct is judged; but a very small part ofhuman conduct is ever brought to trial. "

He had many visitors at his office during these idle summer days. He belonged to a generation of men who loved conversation--whenthey conversed. All the lawyers dropped in. The report of hisfailing strength brought these and many others. 

He saw a great deal of Professor Hardage. One morning as the twomet, he said with more feeling than he usually allowed himself toshow: "Hardage, I am a lonesome old man; don't you want me to comeand see you every Sunday evening? I always try to get home by teno'clock, so that you couldn't get tired of me; and as I never fallasleep before that time, you wouldn't have to put me to bed. Iwant to hear you talk, Hardage. My time is limited; and you haveno right to shut out from me so much that you know--your learning, your wisdom, yourself. And I know a few things that I have pickedup in a lifetime. Surely we ought to have something to say to eachother. "

But when he came, Professor Hardage was glad to let him find reliefin his monologues--fragments of self-revelation. This last phaseof their friendship had this added significance: that the Judge nolonger spent his Sunday evenings with Mrs. Conyers. The lastsocial link binding him to womankind had been broken. It was afinal loosening and he felt it, felt the desolation in which itleft him. His cup of life had indeed been drained, and he turnedaway from the dregs. 

One afternoon Professor Hardage found him sitting with his familiarShakespeare on his knees. As he looked up, he stretched out hishand in eager welcome and said: "Listen once more;" and he read thegreat kindling speech of King Henry to his English yeomen on theeve of battle. 

He laid the book aside. 

"Of course you have noticed how Shakespeare likes this word'mettle, ' how he likes the _thing_. The word can be seen from afarover the vast territory of his plays like the same battle-flag setup in different parts of a field. It is conspicuous in the heroicEnglish plays, and in the Roman and in the Greek; it waves alikeover comedy and tragedy as a rallying signal to human nature. Iimagine I can see his face as he writes of the mettle ofchildren--the mettle of a boy--the quick mettle of a schoolboy--alad of mettle--the mettle of a gentleman--the mettle of thesex--the mettle of a woman, Lady Macbeth--the mettle of a king--themettle of a speech--even the mettle of a rascal--mettle in death. I love to think of him, a man who had known trouble, writing thewords: 'The insuppressive mettle of our spirits. '

"But this particular phrase--the mettle of the pasture--belongsrather to our century than to his, more to Darwin than to thetheatre of that time. What most men are thinking of now, if theythink at all, is of our earth, a small grass-grown planet hung inspace. And, unaccountably making his appearance on it, is man, apasturing animal, deriving his mettle from his pasture. The oldquestion comes newly up to us: Is anything ever added to him? Isanything ever lost to him? Evolution--is it anything more thanchange? Civilizations--are they anything but differentarrangements of the elements of man's nature with reference to thepreeminence of some elements and the subsidence of others?

"Suppose you take the great passions: what new one has been added, what old one has been lost? Take all the passions you find inGreek literature, in the Roman. Have you not seen them reappear inAmerican life in your own generation? I believe I have met them inmy office. You may think I have not seen Paris and Helen, but Ihave. And I have seen Orestes and Agamemnon and Clytemnestra andOedipus. Do you suppose I have not met Tarquin and Virginia andLucretia and Shylock--to come down to nearer times--and seen Learand studied Macbeth in the flesh? I knew Juliet once, and behindlocked doors I have talked with Romeo. They are all here in anyAmerican commonwealth at the close of our century: the greattragedies are numbered--the oldest are the newest. So thatsometimes I fix my eyes only on the old. I see merely the planetwith its middle green belt of pasture and its poles of snow andice; and wandering over that green belt for a little while man thepasturing animal--with the mystery of his ever being there and themystery of his dust--with nothing ever added to him, nothing everlost out of him--his only power being but the power to vary theuses of his powers. 

"Then there is the other side, the side of the new. I like tothink of the marvels that the pasturing animal has accomplished inour own country. He has had new thoughts, he has done things neverseen elsewhere or before. But after all the question remains, whatis our characteristic mettle? What is the mettle of the American?He has had new ideas; but has he developed a new virtue or carriedany old virtue forward to characteristic development? Has he addedto the civilizations of Europe the spectacle of a single virtuetranscendently exercised? We are not braver than other bravepeople, we are not more polite, we are not more honest or moretruthful or more sincere or kind. I wish to God that some virtue, say the virtue of truthfulness, could be known throughout the worldas the unfailing mark of the American--the mettle of his pasture. Not to lie in business, not to lie in love, not to lie inreligion--to be honest with one's fellow-men, with women, withGod--suppose the rest of mankind would agree that this virtueconstituted the characteristic of the American! That would be famefor ages. 

"I believe that we shall sometime become celebrated for preeminencein some virtue. Why, I have known young fellows in my office thatI have believed unmatched for some fine trait or noble quality. You have met them in your classes. "

He broke off abruptly and remained silent for a while. 

"Have you seen Rowan lately?" he asked, with frank uneasiness: andreceiving the reply which he dreaded, he soon afterward arose andpassed brokenly down the street. 

For some weeks now he had been missing Rowan; and this was thesecond cause of his restlessness and increasing loneliness. Thefailure of Rowan's love affair was a blow to him: it had so linkedhim to the life of the young--was the last link. And since then hehad looked for Rowan in vain; he had waited for him of mornings athis office, had searched for him on the streets, scanning all youngmen on horseback or in buggies; had tried to find him in thelibrary, at the livery stable, at the bank where he was a depositorand director. There was no ground for actual uneasiness concerningRowan's health, for Rowan's neighbors assured him in response tohis inquiries that he was well and at work on the farm. 

"If he is in trouble, why does he not come and tell me? Am I notworth coming to see? Has he not yet understood what he is to me?But how can he know, how can the young ever know how the old lovethem? And the old are too proud to tell. " He wrote letters andtore them up. 

As we stand on the rear platform of a train and see the mountainsaway from which we are rushing rise and impend as if to overwhelmus, so in moving farther from his past very rapidly now, it seemedto follow him as a landscape growing always nearer and clearer. His mind dwelt more on the years when hatred had so ruined him, costing him the only woman he had ever asked to be his wife, costing him a fuller life, greater honors, children to leave behind. 

He was sitting alone in his rear office the middle of oneafternoon, alone among his books. He had outspread before himseveral that are full of youth. Barbee was away, the street wasvery quiet. No one dropped in--perhaps all were tired of hearinghim talk. It was not yet the hour for Professor Hardage to walkin. A watering-cart creaked slowly past the door and the gush ofthe drops of water sounded like a shower and the smell of the dustwas strong. Far away in some direction were heard the cries ofschool children at play in the street. A bell was tolling; a greenfly, entering through the rear door, sang loud on the dustywindow-panes and then flew out and alighted on a plant ofnightshade springing up rank at the doorstep. 

He was not reading and his thoughts were the same old thoughts. Atlength on the quiet air, coming nearer, were heard the easy roll ofwheels and the slow measured step of carriage horses. The soundcaught his ear and he listened with quick eagerness. Then he rosetrembling and waited. The carriage had stopped at the door; amoment later there was a soft low knock on the lintel and Mrs. Meredith entered. He met her but she said: "May I go in there?"and entered the private office. 

She brought with her such grace and sweetness of full womanly yearsthat as she seated herself opposite him and lifted her veil awayfrom the purity of her face, it was like the revelation of a shrineand the office became as a place of worship. She lifted the veilfrom the dignity and seclusion of her life. She did not speak atonce but looked about her. Many years had passed since she hadentered that office, for it had long ago seemed best to each ofthem that they should never meet. He had gone back to his seat atthe desk with the opened books lying about him as though he hadbeen searching one after another for the lost fountain of youth. He sat there looking at her, his white hair falling over hisleonine head and neck, over his clear mournful eyes. The sweetnessof his face, the kindness of it, the shy, embarrassed, almostguilty look on it from the old pain of being misunderstood--theterrible pathos of it all, she saw these; but whatever heremotions, she was not a woman to betray them at such a moment, insuch a place. 

"I do not come on business, " she said. "All the business seems tohave been attended to; life seems very easy, too easy: I have solittle to do. But I am here, Ravenel, and I suppose I must try tosay what brought me. "

She waited for some time, unable to speak. 

"Ravenel, " she said at length, "I cannot go on any longer withouttelling you that my great sorrow in life has been the wrong I didyou. "

He closed his eyes quickly and stretched out his hand against her, as though to shut out the vision of things that rose before him--asthough to stop words that would unman him. 

"But I was a young girl! And what does a young girl understandabout her duty in things like that? I know it changed your wholelife; you will never know what it has meant in mine. "

"Caroline, " he said, and he looked at her with brimming eyes, "ifyou had married me, I'd have been a great man. I was not greatenough to be great without you. The single road led the wrongway--to the wrong things!"

"I know, " she said, "I know it all. And I know that tears do notefface mistakes, and that our prayers do not atone for our wrongs. "

She suddenly dropped her veil and rose, "Do not come out to help me, " she said as he struggled up also. 

He did not wish to go, and he held out his hand and she folded hersoft pure hands about it; then her large noble figure moved to theside of his and through her veil--her love and sorrow hidden fromhim--she lifted her face and kissed him. 

V

And during these days when Judge Morris was speaking his mind aboutold tragedies that never change, and new virtues--about scandal andguilt and innocence--it was during these days that the scandalstarted and spread and did its work on the boy he loved--and no onehad told him. 

The summer was drawing to an end. During the last days of it Katewrote to Isabel:

"I could not have believed, dearest friend, that so long a timewould pass without my writing. Since you went away it has beeneternity. And many things have occurred which no one foresaw orimagined. I cannot tell you how often I have resisted the impulseto write. Perhaps I should resist now; but there are some matterswhich you ought to understand; and I do not believe that any oneelse has told you or will tell you. If I, your closest friend, have shrunk, how could any one else be expected to perform the duty?

"A week or two after you left I understood why you went awaymysteriously, and why during that last visit to me you were unlikeyourself. I did not know then that your gayety was assumed, andthat you were broken-hearted beneath your brave disguises. But Iremember your saying that some day I should know. The whole truthhas come out as to why you broke your engagement with Rowan, andwhy you left home. You can form no idea what a sensation the newsproduced. For a while nothing else was talked of, and I am gladfor your sake that you were not here. 

"I say the truth came out; but even now the town is full ofdifferent stories, and different people believe different things. But every friend of yours feels perfectly sure that Rowan wasunworthy of you, and that you did right in discarding him. It issafe to say that he has few friends left among yours. He seldomcomes to town, and I hear that he works on the farm like a commonhand as he should. One day not long after you left I met him onthe street. He was coming straight up to speak to me as usual. But I had the pleasure of staring him in the eyes and of walkingdeliberately past him as though he were a stranger--except that Igave him one explaining look. I shall never speak to him. 

"His mother has the greatest sympathy of every one. They say thatno one has told her the truth: how could any one tell her suchthings about her own son? Of course she must know that you droppedhim and that we have all dropped him. They say that she is greatlysaddened and that her health seems to be giving way. 

"I do not know whether you have heard the other sensation regardingthe Meredith family. You refused Rowan; and now Dent is going tomarry a common girl in the neighborhood. Of course Dent Meredithwas always noted for being a quiet little bookworm, near-sighted, and without any knowledge of girls. So it doesn't seem veryunnatural for him to have collected the first specimen that he cameacross as he walked about over the country. This marriage which isto take place in the autumn is the second shock to his mother. 

"You will want to hear of other people. And this reminds me that afew of your friends have turned against you and insist that thesestories about Rowan are false, and even accuse you of startingthem. This brings me to Marguerite. 

"Soon after her ball she had typhoid fever. In her delirium ofwhom do you suppose she incessantly and pitifully talked? Everyone had supposed that she and Barbee were sweethearts--and had beenfor years. But Barbee's name was never on her lips. It was allRowan, Rowan, Rowan. Poor child, she chided him for being so coldto her; and she talked to him about the river of life and about hisstarting on the long voyage from the house of his fathers; andbegged to be taken with him, and said that in their family thewomen never loved but once. When she grew convalescent, there wasa consultation of the grandmother and the mother and the doctors:one passion now seemed to constitute all that was left ofMarguerite's life; and that was like a flame burning her strengthaway. 

"They did as the doctor said had to be done. Mrs. Meredith hadbeen very kind during her illness, had often been to the house. They kept from her of course all knowledge of what Marguerite haddisclosed in her delirium. So when Marguerite by imperceptibledegrees grew stronger, Mrs. Meredith begged that she might be movedout to the country for the change and the coolness and the quiet;and the doctors availed themselves of this plan as a solution oftheir difficulty--to lessen Marguerite's consuming desire bygratifying it. So she and her mother went out to the Merediths'. The change proved beneficial. I have not been driving myself, although the summer has been so long and hot; and during theafternoons I have so longed to see the cool green lanes with thesun setting over the fields. But of course people drive a greatdeal and they often meet Mrs. Meredith with Marguerite in thecarriage beside her. At first it was Marguerite's mother andMarguerite. Then it was Mrs. Meredith and Marguerite; and now itis Rowan and Marguerite. They drive alone and she sits with herface turned toward him--in open idolatry. She is to stay out thereuntil she is quite well. How curiously things work around! If heever proposes, scandal will make no difference to Marguerite. 

"How my letter wanders! But so do my thoughts wander. If you onlyknew, while I write these things, how I am really thinking of otherthings. But I must go on in my round-about way. What I startedout to say was that when the scandals, I mean the truth, spreadover the town about Rowan, the three Marguerites stood by him. Youcould never have believed that the child had such fire and strengthand devotion in her nature. I called on them one day and wascoldly treated simply because I am your closest friend. Margueritepointedly expressed her opinion of a woman who deserts a manbecause he has his faults. Think of this child's sitting in moralcondemnation upon you!

"The Hardages also--of course you have no stancher friends thanthey are--have stood up stubbornly for Rowan. Professor Hardagebecame very active in trying to bring the truth out of what hebelieves to be gossip and misunderstanding. And Miss Anna has alsoremained loyal to him, and in her sunny, common-sense way floutsthe idea of there being any truth in these reports. 

"I must not forget to tell you that Judge Morris now spends hisSunday evenings with Professor Hardage. No one has told him: theyhave spared him. Of course every one knows that he was onceengaged to Rowan's mother and that scandal broke the engagement andseparated them for life. Only in his case it was long afterwardfound out that the tales were not true. 

"I have forgotten Barbee. He and Marguerite had quarrelled beforeher illness--no one knows why, unless she was already under theinfluence of her fatal infatuation for Rowan. Barbee has gone towork. A few weeks ago he won his first serious case in court andattracted attention. They say his speech was so full of dignityand unnecessary rage that some one declared he was simply trying torecover his self-esteem for Marguerite's having called him trivialand not yet altogether grown up. 

"Of course you must have had letters of your own, telling you ofthe arrival of the Fieldings--Victor's mother and sisters; and thehouse is continually gay with suppers and parties. 

"How my letter wanders! It is a sick letter, Isabel, a deadletter. I must not close without going back to the Merediths oncemore. People have been driving out to see the little farm and thecurious little house of Dent Meredith's bride elect--a girl calledPansy Something. It lies near enough to the turnpike to be in fullview--too full view. They say it is like a poultry farm and thatthe bride is a kind of American goose girl: it will be a marriagebetween geology and the geese. The geese will have the best of it. 

"Dearest friend, what shall I tell you of my own life--of mynights, of the mornings when I wake, of these long, lonesome, summer afternoons? Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing! I shouldrather write to you how, my thoughts go back to the years of ourgirlhood together when we were so happy, Isabel, so happy, sohappy! What ideals we formed as to our marriages and our futures!

"KATE. 

"P. S. --I meant to tell you that of course I shall do everything inmy power to break up the old friendship between George and Rowan. Indeed, I have already done it. "

VI

This letter brought Isabel home at once through three days ofcontinuous travel. From the station she had herself drivenstraight to Mrs. Osborn's house, and she held the letter in herhand as she went. 

Her visit lasted for some time and it was not pleasant. When Mrs. Osborn hastened down, surprised at Isabel's return and prepared togreet her with the old warmth, her greeting was repelled and sheherself recoiled, hurt and disposed to demand an explanation. 

"Isabel, " she said reproachfully, "is this the way you come back tome?"

Isabel did not heed but spoke: "As soon as I received this letter, I determined to come home. I wished to know at once what thesethings are that are being said about Rowan. What are they?"

Mrs. Osborn hesitated: "I should rather not tell you. "

"But you must tell me: my name has been brought into this, and Imust know. "

While she listened her eyes flashed and when she spoke her voicetrembled with excitement and anger. "These things are not true, "she said. "Only Rowan and I know what passed between us. I toldno one, he told no one, and it is no one's right to know. A greatwrong has been done him and a great wrong has been done me; and Ishall stay here until these wrongs are righted. "

"And is it your feeling that you must begin with me?" said Mrs. Osborn, bitterly. 

"Yes, Kate; you should not have believed these things. Youremember our once saying to each other that we would try never tobelieve slander or speak slander or think slander? It is unworthyof you to have done so now. "

"Do you realize to whom you are speaking, and that what I have donehas been through friendship for you?"

Isabel shook her head resolvedly. "Your friendship for me cannotexact of you that you should be untrue to yourself and false toothers. You say that you refuse to speak to Rowan on the street. You say that you have broken up the friendship between Mr. Osbornand him. Rowan is the truest friend Mr. Osborn has ever had; youknow this. But in breaking off that friendship, you have done morethan you have realized: you have ended my friendship with you. "

"And this is gratitude for my devotion to you and my willingness tofight your battles!" said Mrs. Osborn, rising. 

"You cannot fight my battles without fighting Rowan's. My wish tomarry him or not to marry him is one thing; my willingness to seehim ruined is another. "

Isabel drove home. She rang the bell as though she were astranger. When her maid met her at the door, overjoyed at herreturn, she asked for her grandmother and passed at once into herparlors. As she did so, Mrs. Conyers came through the hall, dressed to go out. At the sound of Isabel's voice, she, who havingonce taken hold of a thing never let it go, dropped her parasol;and as she stooped to pick it up, the blood rushed to her face. 

"I wish to speak to you, " said Isabel, coming quickly out into thehall as though to prevent her grandmother's exit. Her voice waslow and full of shame and indignation. 

"I am at your service for a little while, " said Mrs. Conyers, carelessly; "later I am compelled to go out. " She entered theparlors, followed by Isabel, and, seating herself in the nearestchair, finished buttoning her glove. 

Isabel sat silent a moment, shocked by her reception. She had notrealized that she was no longer the idol of that household and ofits central mind; and we are all loath to give up faith in ourbeing loved still, where we have been loved ever. She was notaware that since she had left home she had been disinherited. Shewould not have cared had she known; but she was now facing what wasinvolved in the disinheritance--dislike; and in the beginning ofdislike there was the ending of the old awe with which thegrandmother had once regarded the grandchild. 

But she came quickly back to the grave matter uppermost in hermind. "Grandmother, " she said, "I received a few days ago a letterfrom Kate Osborn. In it she told me that there were stories incirculation about Rowan. I have come home to find out what thesestories are. On the way from the station I stopped at Mrs. Osborn's, and she told me. Grandmother, this is your work. "

Mrs. Conyers pushed down the thumb of her glove. 

"Have I denied it? But why do you attempt to deny that it is alsoyour work?"

Isabel sat regarding her with speechless, deepening horror. Shewas not prepared for this revelation. Mrs. Conyers did not wait, but pressed on with a certain debonair enjoyment of her advantage. 

"You refused to recognize my right to understand a matter thataffected me and affected other members of the family as well asyourself. You showed no regard for the love I had cherished foryou many a year. You put me aside as though I had no claim uponyour confidence--I believe you said I was not worthy of it; but mymemory is failing--perhaps I wrong you. "

"It is _true_!" said Isabel, with triumphant joy in reaffirming iton present grounds. "It is _true_!"

"Very well, " said Mrs. Conyers, "we shall let that pass. It was ofconsequence then; it is of no consequence now: these littlepersonal matters are very trivial. But there was a serious matterthat you left on my hands; the world always demands an explanationof what it is compelled to see and cannot understand. If noexplanation is given, it creates an explanation. It was my duty tosee that it did not create an explanation in this case. Whateverit may have been that took place between you and Rowan, I did notintend that the responsibility should rest upon you, even thoughyou may have been willing that it should rest there. You discardedRowan; I was compelled to prevent people from thinking that Rowandiscarded you. Your reason for discarding him you refused toconfide to me; I was compelled therefore to decide for myself whatit probably was. Ordinarily when a man is dropped by a girl undersuch circumstances, it is for this, " she tapped the tips of herfingers one by one as she went on, "or for this, or for this, orfor this; you can supply the omitted words--nearly any one can--theworld always does. You see, it becomes interesting. As I had notyour authority for stating which one of these was the real reason, I was compelled to leave people at liberty to choose forthemselves. I could only say that I myself did not know; but thatcertainly it was for some one of these reasons, or two of them, orfor all of them. "

"You have tried to ruin him!" Isabel cried, white with suffering. 

"On the contrary, I received my whole idea of this from you. Nothing that I said to others about him was quite so bad as whatyou said to me; for you knew the real reason of your discardinghim, and the reason was so bad--or so good--that you could not evenconfide it to me, your natural confidant. You remember saying thatwe must drop him from the list of our acquaintances, must notreceive him at the house, or recognize him in society, or speak, tohim in public. I protested that this would be very unjust to him, and that he might ask me at least the grounds for so insulting him;you assured me that he would never dare ask. And now you affect tobe displeased with me for believing what you said, and trying todefend you from criticism, and trying to protect the good name ofthe family. "

"Ah, " cried Isabel, "you can give fair reasons for foul deeds. Youalways could. We often do, we women. The blacker our conduct, thebetter the names with which we cover it. If you would only gloryopenly in what you have done and stand by it! Not a word of whatyou have said is true, as you have said it. When I left home not ahuman being but yourself knew that there had been trouble betweenRowan and me. It need never have become public, had you let thematter be as I asked you to do, and as you solemnly promised thatyou would. It is you who have deliberately made the trouble andscattered the gossip and spread the scandal. Why do you not avowthat your motive was revenge, and that your passion was notjustice, but malice. Ah, you are too deep a woman to try to seemso shallow!"

"Can I be of any further service to you?" said Mrs. Conyers withperfect politeness, rising. "I am sorry that the hour of myengagement has come. Are you to be in town long?"

"I shall be here until I have undone what you have done, " criedIsabel, rising also and shaking with rage. "The decencies of lifecompel me to shield you still, and for that reason I shall stay inthis house. I am not obliged to ask this as a privilege; it is myright. "

"Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing you often. "

Isabel went up to her room as usual and summoned her maid, andordered her carriage to be ready in half an hour. 

Half an hour later she came down and drove to the Hardages'. Sheshowed no pleasure in seeing him again, and he no surprise inseeing her. 

"I have been expecting you, " he said; "I thought you would bebrought back by all this. "

"Then you have heard what they are saying about Rowan?"

"I suppose we have all heard, " he replied, looking at hersorrowfully. 

"You have not believed these things?"

"I have denied them as far as I could. I should have denied thatanything had occurred; but you remember I could not do that afterwhat you told me. You said something had occurred. "

"Yes, I know, " she said. "But you now have my authority at leastto say that these things are not true. What I planned for the besthas been misused and turned against him and against me. Have youseen him?"

"He has been in town, but I have not seen him. "

"Then you must see him at once. Tell me one thing: have you heardit said that I am responsible for the circulation of these stories?"

"Yes. "

"Do you suppose he has heard that? And could he believe it? Yetmight he not believe it? But how could he, how could he!"

"You must come here and stay with us. Anna will want you. " Hecould not tell her his reason for understanding that she would notwish to stay at home. 

"No, I should like to come; but it is better for me to stay athome. But I wish Rowan to come to see me here. Judge Morris--hashe done nothing?"

"He does not know. No one has told him. "

Her expression showed that she did not understand. 

"Years ago, when he was about Rowan's age, scandals like these werecirculated about him. We know how much his life is wrapped up InRowan. He has not been well this summer: we spared him. "

"But you must tell him at once. Say that I beg him to write toRowan to come to see him. I want Rowan to tell him everything--andto tell you everything. "

All the next day Judge Morris stayed in his rooms. The end of lifeseemed suddenly to have been bent around until it touched thebeginning. At last he understood. 

"It was _she_ then, " he said. "I always suspected her; but I hadno proof of her guilt; and if she had not been guilty, she couldnever have proved her innocence. And now for years she has smiledat me, clasped my hands, whispered into my ear, laughed in my eyes, seemed to be everything to me that was true. Well, she has beeneverything that is false. And now she has fallen upon the son ofthe woman whom she tore from me. And the vultures of scandal aretearing at his heart. And he will never be able to prove hisinnocence!"

He stayed in his rooms all that day. Rowan, in answer to hissummons, had said that he should come about the middle of theafternoon; and it was near the middle of the afternoon now. As hecounted the minutes, Judge Morris was unable to shut out from hismind the gloomier possibilities of the case. 

"There is some truth behind all this, " he said. "She broke herengagement with him, --at least, she severed all relations with him;and she would not do that without grave reason. " He was compelledto believe that she must have learned from Rowan himself the thingsthat had compelled her painful course. Why had Rowan neverconfided these things to him? His mind, while remaining the mindof a friend, almost the mind of a father toward a son, became alsothe mind of a lawyer, a criminal lawyer, with the old, fixed, humanbloodhound passion for the scent of crime and the footsteps ofguilt. 

It was with both attitudes that he himself answered Rowan's ring;he opened the door half warmly and half coldly. In former yearswhen working up his great cases involving life and death, it hadbeen an occasional custom of his to receive his clients, if theywere socially his friends, not in his private office, but in hisrooms; it was part of his nature to show them at such crises hisunshaken trust in their characters. He received Rowan in his roomsnow. It was a clear day; the rooms had large windows; and thelight streaming in took from them all the comfort which theyacquired under gaslight: the carpets were faded, the rugs were wornout and lay in the wrong places. It was seen to be a desolateplace for a desolated life. 

"How are you, Rowan?" he said, speaking as though he had seen himthe day before, and taking no note of changes in his appearance. Without further words he led the way into his sitting room andseated himself in his leather chair. 

"Will you smoke?"

They had often smoked as they sat thus when business was beforethem, or if no business, questions to be intimately discussed aboutlife and character and good and bad. Rowan did not heed theinvitation, and the Judge lighted a cigar for himself. He was along time in lighting it, and burned two or three matches at theend of it after it was lighted, keeping a cloud of smoke before hiseyes and keeping his eyes closed. When the smoke rose and he layback in his chair, he looked across at the young man with the eyesof an old lawyer who had drawn the truth out of the breast of manya criminal by no other command than their manly light. Rowan satbefore him without an effort at composure. There was somethingabout him that suggested a young officer out of uniform, come homewith a browned face to try to get himself court-martialled. Hespoke first:

"I have had Isabel's letter, and I have come to tell you. "

"I need not say to you, tell me the whole truth. "

"No, you need not say that to me. I should have told you long ago, if it had been a duty. But it was not a duty. You had not theright to know; there was no reason why you should know. This was amatter which concerned only the woman whom I was to marry. " Hismanner had the firm and quiet courtesy that was his birthright. 

A little after dark, Rowan emerged into the street. His carriagewas waiting for him and he entered it and went home. Some minuteslater, Judge Morris came down and walked to the Hardages'. He rangand asked for Professor Hardage and waited for him on thedoor-step. When Professor Hardage appeared, he said to him verysolemnly: "Get your hat. "

The two men walked away, the Judge directing their course towardthe edge of the town. "Let us get to a quiet place, " he said, "where we can talk without being overheard. " It was a pleasantsummer night and the moon was shining, and they stepped off thesidewalk and took the middle of the pike. The Judge spoke at last, looking straight ahead. 

"He had a child, and when he asked Isabel to marry him he told her. "

They walked on for a while without anything further being said. When Professor Hardage spoke, his tone was reflective:

"It was this that made it impossible for her to marry him. Herlove for him was everything to her; he destroyed himself for herwhen he destroyed himself as an ideal. Did he tell you the story?"

"Told everything. "

By and by the Judge resumed: "It was a student's love affair, andhe would have married her. She said that if she married him, therewould never be any happiness for her in life; she was not in hissocial class, and, moreover, their marriage would never beunderstood as anything but a refuge from their shame, and neitherof them would be able to deny this. She disappeared sometime afterthe birth of the child. More than a year later, maybe it was twoyears, he received a letter from her stating that she was marriedto a man in her own class and that her husband suspected nothing, and that she expected to live a faithful wife to him and be themother of his children. The child had been adopted, the traces ofits parentage had been wiped out, those who had adopted it could domore for its life and honor than he could. She begged him not totry to find her or ruin her by communicating the past to herhusband. That's about all. "

"The old tragedy--old except to them. "

"Old enough. Were we not speaking the other day of how the oldtragedies are the new ones? I get something new out of this; youget the old. What strikes me about it is that the man has declinedto shirk--that he has felt called upon not to injure any other lifeby his silence. I wish I had a right to call it the mettle of ayoung American, his truthfulness. As he put the case to me, whathe got out of it was this: Here was a girl deceiving her husbandabout her past--otherwise he would never have married her. As theworld values such things, what it expected of Rowan was that heshould go off and marry a girl and conceal his past. He said thathe would not lie to a classmate in college, he would not cheat aprofessor; was it any better silently to lie to and cheat the womanthat he loved and expected to make the mother of his children?Whatever he might have done with any one else, there was somethingin the nature of the girl whom he did come to love that made itimpossible: she drove untruthfulness out of him as health drivesaway disease. He saved his honor with her, but he lost her. "

"She saved her honor through giving up him. But it is high ground, it is a sad hilltop, that each has climbed to. "

"Hardage, we can climb so high that we freeze. "

They turned back. The Judge spoke again with a certain sad pride:

"I like their mettle, it is Shakespearean mettle, it is Americanmettle. We lie in business, and we lie in religion, and we lie towomen. Perhaps if a man stopped lying to a woman, by and by hemight begin to stop lying for money, and at last stop lying withhis Maker. But this boy, what can you and I do for him? We cannever tell the truth about this; and as we can try to clear him, unless we ourselves lie, we shall leave him the victim of a flockof lies. "

Isabel remained at home a week. 

During her first meeting with Rowan, she effaced all evidences thatthere had ever been a love affair between them. They resumed theirsocial relations temporarily and for a definite purpose--this waswhat she made him understand at the outset and to the end. Allthat she said to him, all that she did, had no further significancethan her general interest in his welfare and her determination tosilence the scandal for which she herself was in a way innocentlyresponsible. Their old life without reference to it was assumed tobe ended; and she put all her interest into what she assumed to behis new life; this she spoke of as a certainty, keeping herself outof it as related to it in any way. She forced him to talk abouthis work, his plans, his ambitions; made him feel always not onlythat she did not wish to see him suffer, but that she expected tosee him succeed. 

They were seen walking together and driving together. He demurred, but she insisted. "I will not accept such a sacrifice, " he said, but she overruled him by her reply: "It is not a sacrifice; it is avindication of myself, that you cannot oppose. " But he knew thatthere was more in it than what she called vindication of herself;there was the fighting friendship of a comrade. 

During these days, Isabel met cold faces. She found herself afresh target for criticism, a further source of misunderstanding. And there was fresh suffering, too, which no one could haveforeseen. Late one twilight when she and Rowan were driving, theypassed Marguerite driving also, she being still a guest at theMerediths', and getting well. Each carriage was driving slowly, and the road was not wide, and the wheels almost locked, and therewas time enough for everything to be seen. And the next day, Marguerite went home from the Merediths' and passed into a secondlong illness. 

The day came for Isabel to leave--she was going away to remain along time, a year, two years. They had had their last drive andtwilight was falling when they returned to the Hardages'. She wasstanding on the steps as she gave him both her hands. 

"Good-by, " she said, in the voice of one who had finished her work. "I hardly know what to say--I have said everything. Perhaps Iought to tell you my last feeling is, that you will make life asuccess, that nothing will pull you down. I suppose that the lifeof each of us, if it is worth while, is not made up of one greateffort and of one failure or of one success, but of many efforts, many failures, partial successes. But I am afraid we all try atfirst to realize our dreams. Good-by!"

"Marry me, " he said, tightening his grasp on her hands and speakingas though he had the right. 

She stepped quickly back from him. She felt a shock, a delicatewound, and she said with a proud tear: "I did not think you wouldso misjudge me in all that I have been trying to do. "

She went quickly in. 

VII

It was a morning in the middle of October when Dent and Pansy weremarried. 

The night before had been cool and clear after a rain and along-speared frost had fallen. Even before the sun lifted itselfabove the white land, a full red rose of the sky behind the rottingbarn, those early abroad foresaw what the day would be. Nature hadtaken personal interest in this union of her two children, whoworshipped her in their work and guarded her laws in theircharacters, and had arranged that she herself should be present inbridal livery. 

The two prim little evergreens which grew one on each side of thedoor-step waited at respectful attention like heavily powderedfestal lackeys. The scraggy aged cedars of the yard stood about ingreen velvet and brocade incrusted with gems. The doorstepsthemselves were softly piled with the white flowers of the frost, and the bricks of the pavement strewn with multitudinous shells andstars of dew and air. Every poor stub of grass, so economicallycropped by the geese, wore something to make it shine. In the backyard a clothes-line stretched between a damson and a peach tree, and on it hung forgotten some of Pansy's father's underclothes; butNature did what she could to make the toiler's raiment look likediamonded banners, flung bravely to the breeze in honor of his newson-in-law. Everything--the duck troughs, the roof of the stable, the cart shafts, the dry-goods box used as a kennel--had uglinesshidden away under that prodigal revelling ermine of decoration. The sun itself had not long risen before Nature even drew over thata bridal veil of silver mist, so that the whole earth was leftwrapped in whiteness that became holiness. 

Pansy had said that she desired a quiet wedding, so that sheherself had shut up the ducks that they might not get to Mrs. Meredith. And then she had made the rounds and fed everything; andnow a certain lethargy and stupor of food quieted all creatures andgave to the valley the dignity of a vocal solitude. 

The botanist bride was not in the least abashed during theceremony. Nor proud: Mrs. Meredith more gratefully noticed this. And she watched closely and discovered with relief that Pansy didnot once glance at her with uneasiness or for approval. The motherlooked at Dent with eyes growing dim. "She will never seem to bethe wife of my son, " she said, "but she will make her children looklike his children. "

And so it was all over and they were gone--slipped away through thehiding white mists without a doubt of themselves, without a doubtof each other, mating as naturally as the wild creatures who neverknow the problems of human selection, or the problems thatcivilization leaves to be settled after selection has been made. 

Mrs. Meredith and Rowan and the clergyman were left with the fatherand the children, and with an unexampled wedding collation--one ofPansy's underived masterpieces. The clergyman frightened theyounger children; they had never seen his like either with respectto his professional robes or his superhuman clerical voice--theirimaginations balancing unsteadily between the impossibility of hisbeing a man in a nightgown and the impossibility of his being awoman with a mustache. 

After his departure their fright and apprehensions settled on Mrs. Meredith. They ranged themselves on chairs side by side against awall, and sat confronting her like a class in the public schoolfated to be examined in deadly branches. None moved except whenshe spoke, and then all writhed together but each in a differentway; the most comforting word from her produced a family spasm withindividual proclivities. Rowan tried to talk with the fatherabout crops: they were frankly embarrassed. What can a young manwith two thousand acres of the best land say to an old man withfifty of the poorest?

The mother and son drove home in silence. She drew one of hishands into her lap and held it with close pressure. They did notlook at each other. 

As the carriage rolled easily over the curved driveway, through thenoble forest trees they caught glimpses of the house now standingclear in afternoon sunshine. Each had the same thought of howempty it waited there without Dent--henceforth less than a son, yethow much more; more than brother, but how much less. How a briefceremony can bind separated lives and tear bound ones apart!

"Rowan, " she said, as they walked slowly from the carriage to theporch, she having clasped his arm more intimately, "there issomething I have wanted to do and have been trying to do for a longtime. It must not be put off any longer. We must go over thehouse this afternoon. There are a great many things that I wish toshow you and speak to you about--things that have to be dividedbetween you and Dent. "

"Not to-day! not to-day!" he cried, turning to her with quickappeal. But she shook her head slowly, with brave cheerfulness. 

"Yes; to-day. Now; and then we shall be over with it. Wait for mehere. " She passed down the long hall to her bedroom, and as shedisappeared he rushed into the parlors and threw himself on a couchwith his hands before his face; then he sprang up and came out intothe hall again and waited with a quiet face. 

When she returned, smiling, she brought with her a large bunch ofkeys, and she took his arm dependently as they went up the widestaircase. She led him to the upper bedrooms first--in earlieryears so crowded and gay with guests, but unused during later ones. The shutters were closed, and the afternoon sun shot yellow shaftsagainst floors and walls. There was a perfume of lavender, of roseleaves. 

"Somewhere in one of these closets there is a roll of linen. " Sheopened one after another, looking into each. "No; it is not here. Then it must be in there. Yes; here it is. This linen was spunand woven from flax grown on your great-great-grandfather's land. Look at it! It is beautifully made. Each generation of the familyhas inherited part and left the rest for generations yet to come. Half of it is yours, half is Dent's. When it has been divideduntil there is no longer enough to divide, that will be the last ofthe home-made linen of the old time. It was a good time, Rowan; itproduced masterful men and masterful women, not mannish women. Perhaps the golden age of our nation will some day prove to havebeen the period of the home-spun Americans. "

As they passed on she spoke to him with an increasing, almostunnatural gayety. He had a new appreciation of what her charm musthave been when she was a girl. The rooms were full of memories toher; many of the articles that she caressed with her fingers, andlingered over with reluctant eyes, connected themselves with daysand nights of revelry and the joy of living; also with prides anddeeds which ennobled her recollection. 

"You and Dent know that your father divided equally all that hehad. But everything in the house is mine, and I have made no willand shall not make any. What is mine belongs to you two alike. Still, I have made a list of things that I think he would ratherhave, and a list of things for you--merely because I wish to givesomething to each of you directly. "

In a room on a lower floor she unlocked a closet, the walls ofwhich were lined with shelves. She peeped in; then she withdrewher head and started to lock the door again; but she changed hermind and laughed. 

"Do you know what these things are?" She touched a large box, andhe carried it over to the bed and she lifted the top off, exposingthe contents. "Did you ever see anything so _black_? This wasthe clerical robe in which one of your ancestors used to read hissermons. He is the one who wrote the treatise on 'God Properly andUnproperly Understood. ' He was the great seminarian in yourfather's family--the portrait in the hall, you know. I shall notdecide whether you or Dent must inherit this; decide foryourselves; I imagine you will end it in the quarrel. How black itis, and what black sermons flew out of it--ravens, instead of whitedoves, of the Holy Spirit. He was the friend of Jonathan Edwards. "She made a wry face as he put the box back into the closet; and shelaughed again as she locked it in. 

"Here are some things from my side of the family. " And she drewopen a long drawer and spoke with proud reticence. They stoodlooking down at part of the uniform of an officer of theRevolution. She lifted one corner of it and disclosed a swordbeneath. She lifted another corner of the coat and exposed a rollof parchment. "I suppose I should have had this parchment framedand hung up downstairs, so that it would be the first thing seen byany one entering the front door; and this sword should have beensuspended over the fireplace, or have been exposed under a glasscase in the parlors; and the uniform should have been fitted on atailor's manikin; and we should have lectured to our guests on ourworship of our ancestors--in the new American way, in theChino-American way. But I'm afraid we go to the other extreme, Rowan; perhaps we are proud of the fact that we are not boastful. Instead of concerning ourselves with those who shed glory on us, wehave concerned ourselves with the question whether we are sheddingglory on them. Still, I wonder whether our ancestors may notpossibly be offended that we say so little about them!"

She led him up and down halls and from floor to floor. 

"Of course you know this room--the nursery. Here is where youbegan to be a bad boy; and you began before you can remember. Didyou never see these things before? They were your firstsoldiers--I have left them to Dent. And here are some of Dent'sthings that I have left to you. For one thing, his castanets. Hisfather and I never knew why he cried for castanets. He said thatDent by all the laws of spiritual inheritance from his side shouldbe wanting the timbrel and harp--Biblical influence, youunderstand; but that my influence interfered and turned timbrel andharp into castanets. Do you remember the day when you ran awaywith Dent and took him to a prize fight? After that you wantedboxing-gloves, and Dent was crazy for a sponge. You fought him, and he sponged you. Here is the sponge; I do not know where thegloves are. And here are some things that belong to both of you;they are mine; they go with me. " She laid her hand on a little boxwrapped and tied, then quickly shut the closet. 

In a room especially fragrant with lavender she opened a press inthe wall and turned her face away from him for a moment. 

"This is my bridal dress. This was my bridal veil; it has been thebridal veil of girls in my family for a good many generations. These were my slippers; you see I had a large foot; but it was wellshaped--it was a woman's foot. That was my vanity--not to have alittle foot. I leave these things to you both. I hope each of youmay have a daughter to wear the dress and the veil. " For the firsttime she dashed some tears from her eyes. "I look to my sons forsons and daughters. "

It was near sunset when they stood again at the foot of thestaircase. She was white and tired, but her spirit refused to beconquered. 

"I think I shall He down now, " she said, "so I shall say good nightto you here, Rowan. Fix the tray for me yourself, pour me out sometea, and butter me a roll. " They stood looking into each other'seyes. She saw things in his which caused her suddenly to draw hisforehead over and press her lips to one and then to the other, again and again. 

The sun streamed through the windows, level and red, lighting upthe darkened hall, lighting up the head and shoulders of his mother. 

An hour later he sat at the head of his table alone--a tablearranged for two instead of three. At the back of his chair waitedthe aged servitor of the household, gray-haired, discreet, knowingmany things about earlier days on which rested the seal ofincorruptible silence. A younger servant performed the duties. 

He sat at the head of his table and excused the absence of hismother and forced himself with the pride and dignity of his race togive no sign of what had passed that day. His mother's maidentered, bringing him in a crystal vase a dark red flower for hiscoat. She had always given him that same dark red flower after hehad turned into manhood. "It is your kind, " she said; "Iunderstand. "

He arranged the tray for her, pouring out her tea, buttering therolls. Then he forced himself to eat his supper as usual. Fromold candlesticks on the table a silver radiance was shed on themassive silver, on the gem-like glass. Candelabra on themantelpiece and the sideboard lighted up the browned oak of thewalls. 

He left the table at last, giving and hearing a good night. Theservants efficiently ended their duties and put out the lights. Inthe front hall lamps were left burning; there were lamps andcandles in the library. He went off to a room on the ground floorin one ell of the house; it was his sitting room, smoking room, thelounging place of his friends. In one corner stood a large desk, holding old family papers; here also were articles that he himselfhad lately been engaged on--topics relating to scientificagriculture, soils, and stock-raising. It was the road by whichsome of the country gentlemen who had been his forefathers passedinto a larger life of practical affairs--going into the Legislatureof the state or into the Senate; and he had thought of this as afuture for himself. For an hour or two he looked through familypapers. 

Then he put them aside and squarely faced the meaning of the day. His thoughts traversed the whole track of Dent's life--one straighttrack upward. No deviations, no pitfalls there, no rising andfalling. And now early marriage and safety from so many problems;with work and honors and wifely love and children: work and restand duty to the end. Dent had called him into his room thatmorning after he was dressed for his wedding and had started tothank him for his love and care and guardianship and then hadbroken down and they had locked their arms around each other, trying not to say what could not be said. 

He lived again through that long afternoon with his mother. Whathad the whole day been to her and how she had risen to meet withnobility all its sadnesses! Her smile lived before him; and hereyes, shining with increasing brightness as she dwelt upon thingsthat meant fading sunlight: she fondling the playthings of hisinfancy, keeping some of them to be folded away with her at last;touching her bridal dress and speaking her reliance on her sons forsons and daughters; at the close of the long trying day standing atthe foot of the staircase white with weariness and pain, but sobrave, so sweet, so unconquerable. He knew that she was notsleeping now, that she was thinking of him, that she had borneeverything and would bear everything not only because it was due toherself, but because it was due to him. 

He turned out the lights and sat at a window opening upon thenight. The voices of the land came in to him, the voices of thevanished life of its strong men. 

He remembered the kind of day it was when he first saw through itsautumn trees the scattered buildings of his university. Whatimpressions it had made upon him as it awaited him there, gray withstateliness, hoary with its honors, pervaded with the very breathand spirit of his country. He recalled his meeting with hisprofessors, the choosing of his studies, the selection of a placein which to live. Then had followed what had been the greatspectacle and experience of his life--the assembling of pickedyoung men, all eager like greyhounds at the slips to show what wasin them, of what stuff they were made, what strength and hardihoodand robust virtues, and gifts and grace for manly intercourse. Hehad been caught up and swept off his feet by that influence. Looking back as he did to that great plateau which was his home, for the first time he had felt that he was not only a youth of anAmerican commonwealth, but a youth of his whole country. Theywere all American youths there, as opposed to English youths andGerman youths and Russian youths. There flamed up in him thefierce passion, which he believed to be burning in them all, toshow his mettle--the mettle of his state, the mettle of his nation. To him, newly come into this camp of young men, it lay around thewalls of the university like a white spiritual host, chosen youthsto be made into chosen men. And he remembered how little he thenknew that about this white host hung the red host of thosecamp-followers, who beleaguer in outer darkness every army of men. 

Then had followed warfare, double warfare: the ardent attack onwork and study; athletic play, good fellowship, visits late atnight to the chambers of new friends--chambers rich in furnitureand pictures, friends richer in old names and fine manners andbeautiful boyish gallant ways; his club and his secret society, andthe whole bewildering maddening enchantment of student life, wherework and duty and lights and wine and poverty and want and fleshand spirit strive together each for its own. At this point he putthese memories away, locked them from himself in their long silence. 

Near midnight he made his way quietly back into the main hall. Heturned out the lamps and lighted his bedroom candle and startedtoward the stairway, holding it in front of him a little above hishead, a low-moving star through the gloom. As he passed betweentwo portraits, he paused with sudden impulse and, going over toone, held his candle up before the face and studied it once more. A man, black-browed, black-robed, black-bearded, looked down intohis eyes as one who had authority to speak. He looked far downupon his offspring, and he said to him: "You may be one of thosewho through the flesh are chosen to be damned. But if He choosesto damn you, then be damned, but do not question His mercy or Hisjustice: it is not for you to alter the fixed and the eternal. "

He crossed with his candle to the opposite wall and held it upbefore another face: a man full of red blood out to the skin;full-lipped, red-lipped; audacious about the forehead and brows, and beautiful over his thick careless hair through which a girl'sfingers seemed lately to have wandered. He looked level out at hisoffspring as though he still stood throbbing on the earth and hespoke to him: "I am not alive to speak to you with my voice, but Ihave spoken to you through my blood. When the cup of life isfilled, drain it deep. Why does nature fill it if not to have youempty it?"

He blew his candle out in the eyes of that passionate face, andholding it in his hand, a smoking torch, walked slowly backward andforward in the darkness of the hall with only a little palemoonlight struggling in through a window here and there. 

Then with a second impulse he went over and stood close to the darkimage who had descended into him through the mysteries of nature. "You, " he said, "who helped to make me what I am, you had theconscience and not the temptation. And you, " he said, turning tothe hidden face across the hall, "who helped to make me what I am, you had the temptation and not the conscience. What does either ofyou know of me who had both?

"And what do I know about either of you, " he went on, taking upagain the lonely vigil of his walk and questioning; "you whopreached against the Scarlet Woman, how do I know you were not thescarlet man? I may have derived both from you--both conscience andsin--without hypocrisy. All those years during which your face washardening, your one sincere prayer to God may have been that Hewould send you to your appointed place before you were found out bymen on earth. And you with your fresh red face, you may have laindown beside the wife of your youth, and have lived with her allyour years, as chaste as she. "

He resumed his walk, back and forth, back and forth; and histhoughts changed:

"What right have I to question them, or judge them, or bring themforward in my life as being responsible for my nature? If I rollback the responsibility to them, had they not fathers? and had nottheir fathers fathers? and if a man rolls back his deeds upon thosewho are his past, then where will responsibility be found at all, and of what poor cowardly stuff is each of us?"

How silent the night was, how silent the great house! Only hisslow footsteps sounded there like the beating of a heavy heartresolved not to fail. 

At last they died away from the front of the house, passing inwarddown a long hallway and growing more muffled; then the sound ofthem ceased altogether: he stood noiselessly before his mother'sdoor. 

He stood there, listening if he might hear in the intense stillnessa sleeper's breathing. "Disappointed mother, " he said as silentlyas a spirit might speak to a spirit. 

Then he came back and slowly began to mount the staircase. 

"Is it then wrong for a man to do right? Is it ever right to dowrong?" he said finally. "Should I have had my fling and neverhave cared and never have spoken? Is there a true place fordeception in the world? May our hypocrisy with each other be avirtue? If you have done evil, shall you live the whitedsepulchre? Ah, Isabel, how easily I could have deceived you! Doesa woman care what a man may have done, if he be not found out? Isnot her highest ideal for him a profitable reputation, not aspotless character? No, I will not wrong you by these thoughts. It was you who said to me that you once loved all that you saw inme, and believed that you saw everything. All that you asked of mewas truthfulness that had no sorrow. "

He reached the top of the stairs and began to feel his way towardhis room. 

"To have one chance in life, in eternity, for a white name, and tolose it!"

VIII

Autumn and winter had passed. Another spring was nearly gone. OneMonday morning of that May, the month of new growths and of oldgrowths with new starting-points on them, Ambrose Webb was walkingto and fro across the fresh oilcloth in his short hall; the frontdoor and the back door stood wide open, as though to indicate thereceptivity of his nature in opposite directions; all the windowswere wide open, as though to bring out of doors into his house: hewas much more used to the former; during married life the open hadbeen more friendly than the interior. But he was now also masterof the interior and had been for nearly a year. 

Some men succeed best as partial automata, as dogs for instancethat can be highly trained to pull little domestic carts. Ambrosehad grown used to pulling his cart: he had expected to pull it forthe rest of his days; and now the cart had suddenly broken downbehind him and he was left standing in the middle of the longlife-road. But liberty was too large a destiny for a mind of thatorder; the rod of empire does not fit such hands; it wasintolerable to Ambrose that he was in a world where he could do ashe pleased. 

On this courageous Monday, therefore, --whatsoever he was to doduring the week he always decided on Mondays, --after months ofirresolution he finally determined to make a second dash forslavery. But he meant to be canny; this time he would choose awoman who, if she ruled him, would not misrule him; what he couldstand was a sovereign, not a despot, and he believed that he hadfound this exceptionally gifted and exceptionally moderated being:it was Miss Anna Hardage. 

From the day of Miss Anna's discovery that Ambrose had a dominatingconsort, she had been, she had declared she should be, much kinderto him. When his wife died, Miss Anna had been kinder still. Affliction present, affliction past, her sympathy had not failedhim. 

He had fallen into the habit of lingering a little whenever he tookhis dairy products around to the side porch. Every true man yearnsfor the eyes of some woman; and Ambrose developed the feeling thathe should like to live with Miss Anna's. He had no gift forjudging human conduct except by common human standards; and so atbottom he believed that Miss Anna in her own way had been tellinghim that if the time ever came, she could be counted on to do theright thing by him. 

So Ambrose paced the sticky oilcloth this morning as a man who hasreached the hill of decision. He had bought him a new buggy andnew harness. Hitched to the one and wearing the other was hisfavorite roan mare with a Roman nose and a white eye, now dozing atthe stiles in the front yard. He had curried her and had combedher mane and tail and had had her newly shod, and altogether shemay have felt too comfortable to keep awake. He himself seemed tohave received a coating of the same varnish as his buggy. Had youpinned a young beetle in the back of his coat or on either leg ofhis trousers, as a mere study in shades of blackness, it must havebeen lost to view at the distance of a few yards through sheerharmony with its background. Under his Adam's apple there was agreen tie--the bough to the fruit. His eyes sparkled as thoughthey had lately been reset and polished by a jeweller. 

What now delayed and excited him at this last moment before settingout was uncertainty as to the offering he should bear Miss Anna. Fundamental instincts vaguely warned him that love's altar must beapproached with gifts. He knew that some brought fortune, somewarlike deeds, some fame, some the beauty of their strength andyouth. He had none of these to offer; but he was a plain farmer, and he could give her what he had so often sold her--a pound ofbutter. 

He had awaited the result of the morning churning; but the butterhad tasted of turnips, and Ambrose did not think that the taste ofturnips represented the flavor of his emotion. Nevertheless, therewas one thing that she preferred even to butter; he would ensnareher in her own weakness, catch her in her own net: he would takeher a jar of cream. 

Miss Anna was in her usual high spirits that morning. She wastrying a new recipe for some dinner comfort for Professor Hardage, when her old cook, who also answered the doorbell, returned to thekitchen with word that Mr. Webb was in the parlor. 

"Why, I paid him for his milk, " exclaimed Miss Anna, withoutceasing to beat and stir. "And what is he doing in the parlor?Why didn't he come around to the side door? I'll be back in amoment. " She took off her apron from an old habit of doing sowhenever she entered the parlor. 

She gave her dairyman the customary hearty greeting, hurried backto get him a glass of water, inquired dispassionately about grass, inundated him with a bounteous overflow of her impersonal humanity. But he did not state his business, and she grew impatient to returnto her confection. 

"Do I owe you for anything, Mr. Webb?" she suddenly asked, gropingfor some clew to this lengthening labyrinthine visit. 

He rose and going to the piano raked heavily off of the top of it aglass jar and brought it over to her and resumed his seat with aspeaking countenance. 

"Cream!" cried Miss Anna, delighted, running her practised eyedownward along the bottle to discover where the contents usuallybegan to get blue: it was yellow to the bottom. "How much is it?I'm afraid we are too poor to buy so much cream all at once. "

"It has no price; it is above price. "

"How much is it, Mr. Webb?" she insisted with impatience. 

"It is a free gift. "

"Oh, what a beautiful present!" exclaimed Miss Anna, holding it upto the light admiringly. "How can I ever thank you. "

"Don't thank me: you could have the dairy! You could have thecows, the farm. "

"O dear, no!" cried Miss Anna, "that would be altogether too much!One bottle goes far beyond all that I ever hoped for. "

"I wish ail women were like you. "

"O dear, no! that would not do at all! I am an old maid, and womenmust marry, must, must! What would become of the world?"

"You need not be an old maid unless you wish. "

"Now, I had never thought of that!" observed Miss Anna, in a verypeculiar tone. "But we'll not talk about myself; let us talk aboutyourself. You are looking extremely well--now aren't you?"

"No one has a better right. It is due you to let you know this. There's good timber in me yet. "

"Due _me_! I am not interested in timber. "

"Anna, " he said, throwing his arms around one of his knees, "ourhour has come--we need not wait any longer. "

"Wait for _what_?" inquired Miss Anna, bending toward him with thescrutiny of a near-sighted person trying to make out some loominghorror. 

"Our marriage. "

Miss Anna rose as by an inward explosion. 

"Go, _buzzard_!"

He kept his seat and stared at her with a dropped jaw. Habit waspowerful in him; and there was something in her anger, in thatcomplete sweeping of him out other way, that recalled the domesticusages of former years and brought to his lips an involuntarytime-worn expression:

"I meant nothing offensive. "

"I do not know what you meant, and I do not care: go!"

He rose and stood before her, and with a flash of sincere anger hespoke his honest mind: "It was you who put the notion in my head. You encouraged me, encouraged me systematically; and now you arepretending. You are a bad woman. "

"I think I am a bad woman after what has happened to me thismorning, " said Miss Anna, dazed and ready to break down. 

He hesitated when he reached the door, smarting with his honesthurt; and he paused there and made a request. 

"At least I hope that you will never mention this; it might injureme. " He did not explain how, but he seemed to know. 

"Do you suppose I'd tell my Maker if He did not already know it?"She swept past him into the kitchen. 

"As soon as you have done your work, go clean the parlor, " she saidto the cook. "Give it a good airing. And throw that cream away, throw the bottle away. "

A few moments later she hurried with her bowl into the pantry;there she left it unfinished and crept noiselessly up thebackstairs to her room. 

That evening as Professor Hardage sat opposite to her, reading, while she was doing some needlework, he laid his book down with theidea of asking her some question. But he caught sight of herexpression and studied it a few moments. It was so ludicrous acommingling of mortification and rage that he laughed outright. 

"Why, Anna, what on earth is the matter?"

At the first sound of his voice she burst into hysterical sobs. 

He came over and tried to draw her fingers away from her eyes. "Tell me all about it. "

She shook her head frantically. 

"Yes, tell me, " he urged. "Is there anything in all these yearsthat you have not told me?"

"I cannot, " she sobbed excitedly. "I am disgraced. "

He laughed. "What has disgraced you?"

"A man. "

"Good heavens!" he cried, "has somebody been making love to you?"

"Yes. "

His face flushed. "Come, " he said seriously, "what is the meaningof this, Anna?"

She told him. 

"Why aren't you angry with him?" she complained, drying her eyes. "You sit there and don't say a word!"

"Do you expect me to be angry with any soul for loving you andwishing to be loved by you? He cast his mite into the treasury, Anna. "

"I didn't mind the mite, " she replied. "But he said I encouragedhim, that I encouraged him _systematically_. "

"Did you expect him to be a philosopher?"

"I did not expect him to be a--" She hesitated at the harsh word. 

"I'm afraid you expected him to be a philosopher. Haven't you beenkind to him?"

"Why, of course. "

"Systematically kind?"

"Why, of course. "

"Did you have any motive?"

"You know I had no motive--aren't you ashamed!"

"But did you expect him to be genius enough to understand that?Did you suppose that he could understand such a thing as kindnesswithout a motive? Don't be harsh with him, Anna, don't be hard onhim: he is an ordinary man and judged you by the ordinary standard. You broke your alabaster box at his feet, and he secretly suspectedthat you were working for something more valuable than the box ofointment. The world is full of people who are kind without amotive; but few of those to whom they are kind believe this. "

Before Miss Anna fell asleep that night, she had resolved to tellHarriet. Every proposal of marriage is known at least to threepeople. The distinction in Miss Anna's conduct was not in telling, but in not telling until she had actually been asked. 

Two mornings later Ambrose was again walking through his hall. There is one compensation for us all in the large miseries oflife--we no longer feel the little ones. His experience in hissuit for Miss Anna's hand already seemed a trifle to Ambrose, whohad grown used to bearing worse things from womankind. Miss Annawas not the only woman in the world, he averred, by way of swiftindemnification. Indeed, in the very act of deciding upon her, hehad been thinking of some one else. The road of life had dividedequally before him: he had chosen Miss Anna as a traveller choosesthe right fork; the left fork remained and he was now preparing tofollow that: it led to Miss Harriet Crane. 

As Ambrose now paced his hallway, revolving certain detailsconnected with his next venture and adventure, the noise of anapproaching carriage fell upon his ear, and going to the front doorhe recognized the brougham of Mrs. Conyers. But it was MissHarriet Crane who leaned forward at the window and bowed smilinglyto him as he hurried out. 

"How do you do, Mr. Webb?" she said, putting out her hand andshaking his cordially, at the same time giving him a glance ofnew-born interest. "You know I have been threatening to come outfor a long time. I must owe you an enormous bill for pasturage, "she picked up her purse as she spoke, "and I have come to pay mydebts. And then I wish to see my calf, " and she looked into hiseyes very pleasantly. 

"You don't owe me anything, " replied Ambrose. "What is grass?What do I care for grass? My mind is set on other things. "

He noticed gratefully how gentle and mild she looked; there wassuch a beautiful softness about her and he had had hardness enough. He liked her ringlets: they were a novelty; and there hung aroundher, in the interior of the carriage, a perfume that was unusual tohis sense and that impressed him as a reminder of her high socialposition. But Ambrose reasoned that if a daughter of his neighborcould wed a Meredith, surely he ought to be able to marry a Crane. 

"If you want to see the calf, " he said, but very reluctantly, "I'llsaddle my horse and we'll go over to the back pasture. "

"Don't saddle your horse, " objected Harriet, opening the carriagedoor and moving over to the far cushion, "ride with me. "

He had never ridden in a brougham, and as he got in very nervouslyand awkwardly, he reversed his figure and tried to sit on thelittle front seat on which lay Harriet's handkerchief and parasol. 

"Don't ride backwards, Mr. Webb, " suggested Harriet. "Unless youare used to it, you are apt to have a headache, " and she tapped thecushion beside her as an invitation to him. "Now tell me about mycalf, " she said after they were seated side by side. 

As she introduced this subject, Ambrose suddenly looked out of thewindow. She caught sight of his uneasy profile. 

"Now, don't tell me that there's any bad hews about it!" she cried. "It is the only pet I have. "

"Miss Harriet, " he said, turning his face farther away, "you forgethow long your calf has been out here; it isn't a calf any longer:it has had a calf. "

He spoke so sternly that Harriet, who all her life had wincedbefore sternness, felt herself in some wise to be blamed. Andcoolness was settling down upon them when she desired only amelting and radiant warmth. 

"Well, " she objected apologetically, "isn't it customary? What'sthe trouble? What's the objection? This is a free country!Whatever is natural is right! Why are you so displeased?"

About the same hour the next Monday morning Ambrose was againpacing his hallway and thinking of Harriet. At least she was notyrant: the image of her softness rose before him again. "I makeno mistake this time. "

His uncertainty at the present moment was concerned solely with theproblem of what his offering should be in this case: under whatimage should love present itself? The right thought came to him byand by; and taking from his storeroom an ornamental basket with atop to it, he went out to his pigeon house and selected two bluesquabs. They were tender and soft and round; without harshness, cruelty, or deception. Whatever they seemed to be, that they were;and all that they were was good. 

But as Ambrose walked back to the house, he lifted the top of thebasket and could but admit that they did look bare. Might theynot, as a love token, be--unrefined? He crossed to a flower bed, and, pulling a few rose-geranium leaves, tucked them here and thereabout the youngsters. 

It was not his intention to present these to Harriet in person: hehad accompanied the cream--he would follow the birds; they shouldprecede him twenty-four hours and the amative poison would have achance to work. 

During that forenoon his shining buggy drawn by his roan mare, herself symbolic of softness, drew up before the entrance of theConyers homestead. Ambrose alighted; he lifted the top of thebasket--all was well. 

"These pets are for your Miss Harriet, " he said to the maid whoanswered his ring. 

As the maid took the basket through the hall after having watchedhim drive away, incredulous as to her senses, she met Mrs. Conyers, who had entered the hall from a rear veranda. 

"Who rang?" she asked; "and what is that?"

The maid delivered her instructions. Mrs. Conyers took the basketand looked in. 

"Have them broiled for my supper, " she said with a little click ofthe teeth, and handing the basket to the maid, passed on into herbedroom. 

Harriet had been spending the day away from home. She returnedlate. The maid met her at the front door and a few moments ofconversation followed. She hurried into the supper room; Mrs. Conyers sat alone. 

"Mother, " exclaimed Harriet with horror, "have you _eaten_ mysquabs?"

Mrs. Conyers stabbed at a little pile of bones on the side plate. "This is what is left of them, " she said, touching a napkin to hergustatory lips. "There are your leaves, " she added, pointing to alittle vase in front of Harriet's plate. "When is he going to sendyou some more? But tell him we have geraniums. "

The next day Ambrose received a note:

"Dear Mr. Webb: I have been thinking how pleasant my visit to youwas that morning. It has not been possible for me to get thecarriage since or I should have been out to thank you for yourbeautiful present. The squabs appealed to me. A man who lovesthem must have tender feeling; and that is what all my life I havebeen saying: Give me a man with a heart! Sometime when you are intown, I may meet you on the street somewhere and then I can thankyou more fully than I do now. I shall always cherish the memory ofyour kind deed. You must give me the chance to thank you verysoon, or I shall fear that you do not care for my thanks. I take awalk about eleven o'clock. 

 "Sincerely yours, "HARRIET CRANE. "

Ambrose must have received the note. A few weeks later Miss Annaone morning received one herself delivered by a boy who had riddenin from the farm; the boy waited with a large basket while she read:

"Dearest Anna: It is a matter of very little importance to mentionto you of course, but I am married. My husband and I were marriedat ------ yesterday afternoon. He met me at an appointed place andwe drove quietly out of town. What I want you to do at once is, send me some clothes, for I left all the Conyers apparel where itbelonged. Send me something of everything. And as soon as I ampinned in, I shall invite you out. Of course I shall now giveorders for whatever I desire; and then I shall return to Mrs. Conyers the things I used on my bridal trip. 

"This is a very hurried note, and of course I have not very much tosay as yet about my new life. As for my husband, I can at leastdeclare with perfect sincerity that he is mine. I have made onediscovery already, Anna: he cannot be bent except where he hasalready been broken. I am discovering the broken places and shallgovern him accordingly. 

"Do try to marry, Anna! You have no idea how a married woman feelstoward one of her sex who is single. 

"I want you to be sure to stand at the windows about five o'clockthis afternoon and see the Conyers' cows all come travelling home:they graze no more these heavenly pastures. It will be the firstintimation that Mrs. Conyers receives that I am no longer theunredeemed daughter of her household. Her curiosity will, ofcourse, bring her out here as fast as the horse can travel. But, oh, Anna, my day has come at last! At last she shall realize thatI am strong, _strong_! I shall receive her with the front doorlocked and talk to her out of the window; and I expect to talk toher a long, _long_ time. I shall have the flowers moved from theporch to keep them from freezing during that interview. 

"As soon as I am settled, as one has so much more time in thecountry than in town, I may, after all, take up that course ofreading: would you object?

"It's a wise saying that every new experience brings some newtrouble: I longed for youth before I married; but to marry afteryou are old--that, Anna, is sorrow indeed. 

 "Your devoted friend, "HARRIET CRANE WEBB. 

"P. S. Don't send any but the _plainest_ things; for I remember, noble friend, how it pains you to see me _overdressed_. "

IX

It was raining steadily and the night was cold. Miss Anna camehurriedly down into the library soon after supper. She had on anold waterproof; and in one hand she carried a man's cottonumbrella--her own--and in the other a pair of rubbers. As she satdown and drew these over her coarse walking shoes, she talked inthe cheery tone of one who has on hand some congenial business. 

"I may get back late and I may not get back at all; it depends uponhow the child is. But I wish it would not rain when poor littlechildren are sick at night--it is the one thing that gives me theblues. And I wish infants could speak out and tell their symptoms. When I see grown people getting well as soon as they can minutelynarrate to you all their ailments, my heart goes out to babies. Think how they would crow and gurgle, if they could only say whatit is all about. But I don't see why people at large should not belicensed to bring in a bill when their friends insist upondescribing their maladies to them: doctors do. But I must begoing. Good night. "

She rose and stamped her feet into the rubbers to make them fitsecurely; and then she came across to the lamp-lit table besidewhich he sat watching her fondly--his book dropped the while uponhis lap. He grasped her large strong hand in his large stronghand; and she leaned her side against his shoulder and put her armaround his neck. 

"You are getting younger, Anna, " he said, looking up into her faceand drawing her closer. 

"Why not?" she answered with a voice of splendid joy. "Harriet ismarried; what troubles have I, then? And she patronizes--ormatronizes--me and tyrannizes over Ambrose: so the world is reallysucceeding at last. But I wish her husband had not asked me_first_; that is her thorn. "

"And the thorn will grow!"

"Now, don't sit up late!" she pleaded. "I turned your bed down andarranged the pillows wrong end out as you will have them; and I putout your favorite night-shirt--the one with the sleeves torn offabove the elbows and the ravellings hanging down just as yourequire. Aren't you tired of books yet? Are you never going toget tired? And the same books! Why, I get fresh babies every fewyears--a complete change. "

"How many generations of babies do you suppose there have beensince this immortal infant was born?" he asked, laying his handreverently over the book on his lap as if upon the head of a divinechild. 

"I don't know and I don't care, " she replied. "I wish the immortalinfant would let you alone. " She stooped and kissed his brow, andwrung his hand silently, and went out into the storm. He heard herclose the street door and heard the rusty click of her cottonumbrella as she raised it. Then he turned to the table at hiselbow and kindled his deep-bowled pipe and drew over his legs theskirts of his long gown, coarse, austere, sombre. 

He looked comfortable. A rainy night may depress a woman nursing asick child that is not her own--a child already fighting for itsfeeble, unclaimed, repudiated life, in a world of weeping clouds;but such a night diffuses cheer when the raindrops are heardtapping the roof above beloved bookshelves, tapping thewindow-panes; when there is low music in the gutter on the backporch; when a student lamp, throwing its shadow over the ceilingand the walls, reserves its exclusive lustre for lustrouspages--pages over which men for centuries have gladly burnt out theoil of their brief lamps, their iron and bronze, their silver andgold and jewelled lamps--many-colored eyes of the nights of ages. 

It was now middle September of another year and Professor Hardagehad entered upon the work of another session. The interval hadleft no outward mark on him. The mind stays young a long time whennourished by a body such as his; and the body stays young a longtime when mastered by such a mind. Day by day faithfully to doone's work and to be restless for no more; without bitterness toaccept obscurity for ambition; to possess all vital passions and togovern them; to stand on the world's thoroughfare and see the younggenerations hurrying by, and to put into the hands of a youth hereand there a light which will burn long after our own personal taperis extinguished; to look back upon the years already gone as notwithout usefulness and honor, and forward to what may remain assafe at least from failure or any form of shame, and thus for one'sself to feel the humility of the part before the greatness of thewhole of life, and yet the privileges and duties of the individualto the race--this brings blessedness if it does not always bringhappiness, and it had brought both to him. 

He sat at peace beside his lamp. The interval had brought changesto his towns-people. As he had walked home this afternoon, he hadpaused and looked across at some windows of the second story of afamiliar corner. The green shutters, tightly closed, were graywith cobweb and with dust. One sagged from a loosened hinge andflapped in the rising autumn wind, showing inside a window sashalso dust-covered and with a newspaper crammed through a brokenpane. Where did Ravenel Morris live now? Did he live at all?

Accustomed as he was to look through the distances of humanhistory, to traverse the areas of its religions and see how itsgreat conflicting faiths have each claimed the unique name ofrevelation for itself, he could not anywhere discover what to himwas clear proof either of the separate existence of the soul or ofits immortal life hereafter. The security of that belief wasdenied him. He had wished for it, had tried to make it his. Butwhile it never became a conviction, it remained a force. Under allthat reason could affirm or could deny, there dwelt unaccountableconfidence that the light of human life, leaping from headland toheadland, --the long transmitted radiance of thought, --was not to goout with the inevitable physical extinction of the species on thisplanet. Somewhere in the universe he expected to meet his own, allwhom he had loved, and to see this friend. Meantime, he acceptedthe fact of death in the world with that uncomplaining submissionto nature which is in the strength and sanity of genius. Asacquaintances left him, one after another, memory but kindledanother lamp; hope but disclosed another white flower on itsmysterious stem. 

He sat at peace. The walls of the library showed their changes. There were valuable maps on Caesar's campaigns which had been senthim from Berlin; there were other maps from Athens; there wassomething from the city of Hannibal, and something from Tiber. Indeed, there were not many places in Isabel's wandering from whichshe had not sent home to him some proof that he was remembered. And always she sent letters which were more than maps or books, being in themselves charts to the movements of her spirit. Theywere regular; they were frank; they assured him how increasinglyshe needed his friendship. When she returned, she declared shewould settle down to be near him for the rest of life. Few nameswere mentioned in these letters: never Rowan's; never Mrs. Osborn's--that lifelong friendship having been broken; and in truthsince last March young Mrs. Osborn's eyes had been sealed to thereading of all letters. But beneath everything else, he couldalways trace the presence of one unspoken certainty--that she waspassing through the deeps without herself knowing what height orwhat heath her feet would reach at last, there to abide. 

As he had walked homeward this afternoon through the dust, something else had drawn his attention: he was passing the Conyershomestead, and already lights were beginning to twinkle in the manywindows; there was to be a ball that night, and he thought of theunconquerable woman ruling within, apparently gaining still invitality and youth. "Unjailed malefactors often attain greatages, " he said to himself, as he turned away and thought of thelives she had helped to blight and shorten. 

As the night advanced, he fell under the influence of his book, wasdrawn out of his poor house, away from his obscure town, hisunknown college, quitted his country and his age, passing backwarduntil there fell around him the glorious dawn of the race beforethe sunrise of written history: the immortal still trod the earth;the human soldier could look away from his earthly battle-field andsee, standing on a mountain crest, the figure and the authority ofhis Divine Commander. Once more it was the flower-dyed plain, blood-dyed as well; the ships drawn up by the gray, the wrinkledsea; over on the other side, well-built Troy; and the crisis of thelong struggle was coming. Hector, of the glancing plume, had comeback to the city for the last time, mindful of his end. 

He read once more through the old scene that is never old, and thenput his book aside and sat thoughtful. "_I know not if the godswill not overthrow me. . . . I have very sore shame if, like acoward, I shrink away from battle; moreover mine own soulforbiddeth me. . . . Destiny . . . No man hast escaped, be hecoward or be he valiant, when once he hath been born_. "

His eyes had never rested on any spot in human history, howeverseparated in time and place, where the force of those words did notseem to reign. Whatsoever the names under which men have conceivedand worshipped their gods or their God, however much they havebelieved that it was these or it was He who overthrew them and madetheir destinies inescapable, after all, it is the high compulsionof the soul itself, the final mystery of personal choice, thatsends us forth at last to our struggles and to our peace: "_mineown soul forbiddeth me_"--there for each is right and wrong, theeternal beauty of virtue. 

He did not notice the sound of approaching wheels, and that thesound ceased at his door. 

A moment later and Isabel with light footsteps stood before him. He sprang up with a cry and put his arms around her and held her. 

"You shall never go away again. "

"No, I am never going away again; I have come back to marry Rowan. "

These were her first words to him as they sat face to face. Andshe quickly went on:

"How is he?"

He shook his head reproachfully at her: "When I saw him at least heseemed better than you seem. "

"I knew he was not well--I have known it for a long time. But yousaw him--in town--on the street--with his friends--attending tobusiness?"

"Yes--in town--on the street--with his friends--attending tobusiness. "

"May I stay here? I ordered my luggage to be sent here. "

"Your room is ready and has always been ready and waiting since theday you left. I think Anna has been putting fresh flowers in itall autumn. You will find some there to-night. She has insistedof late that you would soon be coming home. "

An hour later she came down into the library again. She hadremoved the traces of travel, and she had travelled slowly and wasnot tired. All this enabled him to see how changed she was; andwithout looking older, how strangely oldened and grown how quiet ofspirit. She had now indeed become sister for him to those imagesof beauty that were always haunting him--those far, dim images ofthe girlhood of her sex, with their faces turned away from the sunand their eyes looking downward, pensive in shadow, too freightedwith thoughts of their brief fate and their immortality. 

"I must have a long talk with you before I try to sleep. I mustempty my heart to you once. "

He knew that she needed the relief, and that what she asked of himduring these hours would be silence. 

"I have tried everything, and everything has failed. I have triedabsence, but absence has not separated me from him. I have triedsilence, but through the silence I have never ceased speaking tohim. Nothing has really ever separated us; nothing ever can. Itis more than will or purpose, it is my life. It is more than lifeto me, it is love. "

She spoke very quietly, and at first she seemed unable to progressvery far from the beginning. After every start, she soon came backto that one beginning. 

"It is of no use to weigh the right and the wrong of it: I triedthat at first, and I suppose that is why I made sad mistakes. Youmust not think that I am acting now from a sense of duty to him orto myself. Duty does not enter into my feeling: it is love; allthat I am forbids me to do anything else. "

But after a while she went back and bared before him in a way thehistory of her heart. "The morning after he told me, I went tochurch. I remember the lessons of the day and the hymns, and how Ileft the church before the sermon, because everything seemed to beon his side, and no one was on mine. He had done wrong and wasguilty; and I had been wrong and was innocent; and the churchcomforted him and overlooked me; and I was angry and walked out ofit. 

"And do you remember the day I came to see you and you proposedeverything to me, and I rejected everything? You told me to goaway for a while, to throw myself into the pleasures of otherpeople; you reminded me of prayer and of the duty of forgiveness;you told me to try to put myself in his place, and reminded me ofself-sacrifice, and then said at last that I must leave it to time, which sooner or later settles everything. I rejected everythingthat you suggested. But I have accepted everything since, and havelearned a lesson and a service from each: the meaning of prayer andof forgiveness and of self-sacrifice; and what the lapse of timecan do to bring us to ourselves and show us what we wish. I say, Ihave lived through all these, and I have gotten something out ofthem all; but however much they may mean, they never constitutelove; and it is my love that brings me back to him now. "

Later on she recurred to the idea of self-sacrifice: much otherdeepest feeling seemed to gather about that. 

"I am afraid that you do not realize what it means to a woman whena principle like this is involved. Can any man ever know? Does hedream what it means to us women to sacrifice ourselves as theyoften require us to do? I have been travelling in old lands--soold that the history of each goes back until we can follow it withour eyes no longer. But as far as we can see, we see thissorrow--the sorrow of women who have wished to be first in the loveof the men they have loved. You, who read everything! Cannot yousee them standing all through history, the sad figures of girls whohave only asked for what they gave, love in its purity and itssingleness--have only asked that there should have been no otherbefore them? And cannot you see what a girl feels when sheconsents to accept anything less, --that she is lowered to herselffrom that time on, --has lost her own ideal of herself, as well asher ideal of the man she loves? And cannot you see how she lowersherself in his eyes also and ceases to be his ideal, through herwillingness to live with him on a lower plane? That is our wound. That is our trouble and our sorrow: I have found it wherever I havegone. "

Long before she said this to him, she had questioned him closelyabout Rowan. He withheld from her knowledge of some things whichhe thought she could better bear to learn later and by degrees. 

"I knew he was not well, " she said; "I feared it might be worse. Let me tell you this: no one knows him as I do. I must speakplainly. First, there was his trouble; that shadowed forhim one ideal in his life. Then this drove him to a kind ofself-concealment; and that wounded another ideal--his love ofcandor. Then he asked me to marry him, and he told me the truthabout himself and I turned him off. Then came the scandals thattried to take away his good name, and I suppose have taken it away. And then, through all this, were the sufferings he was causingothers around him, and the loss of his mother. I have livedthrough all these things with him while I have been away, and Iunderstand; they sap life. I am going up to write to him now, and will you post the letter to-night? I wish him to come tosee me at once, and our marriage must take place as soon aspossible--here--very quietly. "

Rowan came the next afternoon. She was in the library; and hewent in and shut the door, and they were left alone. 

Professor Hardage and Miss Anna sat in an upper room. He had nobook and she had no work; they were thinking only of the twodownstairs. And they spoke to each other in undertones, breakingthe silence with brief sentences, as persons speak when awaitingnews from sick-rooms. 

Daylight faded. Outside the lamplighter passed, torching the grimylamps. Miss Anna spoke almost in a whisper: "Shall I have somelight sent in?"

"No, Anna. "

"Did you tell him what the doctors have said about his health?"

"No; there was bad news enough without that for one day. And thenhappiness might bring back health to him. The trouble thatthreatens him will have to be put down as one of the consequencesof all that has occurred to him--as part of what he is and of whathe has done. The origin of disease may lie in our troubles--ournervous shocks, our remorses, and better strivings. "

The supper hour came. 

"I do not wish any supper, Anna. "

"Nor I. How long they stay together!"

"They have a great deal to say to each other, Anna. "

"I know, I know. Poor children!"

"I believe he is only twenty-five. "

"When Isabel comes up, do you think I ought to go to her room andsee whether she wants anything?"

"No, Anna. "

"And she must not know that we have been sitting up, as though wefelt sorry for them and could not go on with our own work. "

"I met Marguerite and Barbee this afternoon walking together. Isuppose she will come back to him at last. But she has had herstorm, and he knows it, and he knows there will never be any stormfor him. She is another one of those girls of mine--not sad, butwith half the sun shining on them. But half a sun shiningsteadily, as it will always shine on her, is a great deal. "

"Hush!" said Miss Anna, in a whisper, "he is gone! Isabel iscoming up the steps. "

They heard her and then they did not hear her, and then again andthen not again. 

Miss Anna started up:

"She needs me!"

He held her back:

"No, Anna! Not to help is to help. "

X

One afternoon late in the autumn of the following year, when awaiting stillness lay on the land and shimmering sunlight opened upthe lonely spaces of woods and fields, the Reaper who comes to allmen and reaps what they have sown, approached the home of theMerediths and announced his arrival to the young master of thehouse: he would await his pleasure. 

Rowan had been sitting up, propped by his pillows. It was the roomof his grandfather as it had been that of the man preceding; thebed had been their bed; and the first to place it where it stoodmay have had in mind a large window, through which as he woke fromhis nightly sleep he might look far out upon the land, upon rollingstately acres. 

Rowan looked out now: past the evergreens just outside to theshining lawn beyond; and farther away, upon fields of brownshocks--guiltless harvest; then toward a pasture on the horizon. He could see his cattle winding slowly along the edge of a russetwoodland on which the slanting sunlight fell. Against the blue skyin the silvery air a few crows were flying: all went in the samedirection but each went without companions. He watched their wingscuriously with lonely, following eyes. Whither home passed they?And by whose summons? And with what guidance?

A deep yearning stirred him, and he summoned his wife and the nursewith his infant son. He greeted her; then raising himself on oneelbow and leaning over the edge of the bed, he looked a long timeat the boy slumbering on the nurse's lap. 

The lesson of his brief span of years gathered into his gaze. 

"Life of my life, " he said, with that lesson on his lips, "sign ofmy love, of what was best in me, this is my prayer for you: may youfind one to love you such as your father found; when you come toask her to unite her life with yours, may you be prepared to tellher the truth about yourself, and have nothing to tell that wouldbreak her heart and break the hearts of others. May it be said ofyou that you are a better man than your father. "

He had the child lifted and he kissed his forehead and his eyes. "By the purity of your own life guard the purity of your sons forthe long honor of our manhood. " Then he made a sign that the nurseshould withdraw. 

When she had withdrawn, he put his face down on the edge of thepillow where his wife knelt, her face hidden. His hair fell overand mingled with her hair. He passed his arm around her neck andheld her close. 

"All your troubles came to you because you were true to thehighest. You asked only the highest from me, and the highest wasmore than I could give. But be kind to my memory. Try to forgetwhat is best forgotten, but remember what is worth remembering. Judge me for what I was; but judge me also for what I wished to be. Teach my son to honor my name; and when he is old enough tounderstand, tell him the truth about his father. Tell him what itwas that saddened our lives. As he looks into his mother's face, it will steady him. "

He put both arms around her neck. 

"I am tired of it all, " he said. "I want rest. Love has been morecruel to me than death. "

A few days later, an afternoon of the same autumnal stillness, theybore him across his threshold with that gentleness which so oftencomes too late--slowly through his many-colored woods, some leavesdrifting down upon the sable plumes and lodging in them---along theturnpike lined with dusty thistles--through the watching town, along procession, to the place of the unreturning. 

They laid him along with his fathers.