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CONTENTS

PACK

IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW . i

A PHILANTHROPIST 39

A REVERSION TO TYPE 91

A HOPE DEFERRED 129

THE COURTING OF LADY JANE . .179

JULIA THE APOSTATE 217

MRS. DUD S SISTER. . ., ... 253

592771

IN THE VALLEY OF THE
SHADOW

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yet, and the red-and-yellow leaves danced
heartlessly in the wind. A year ago they
had gone on a nutting-party, and Clarice
had raced with the children and picked
up more than anybody else. Now
even to think of her brought that faint
odor of salts-of-lavender and beef-tea that
disheartened him so, somehow, when he
sat by her bed coaxing her into sipping
the stuff.

Some one was coming down the stairs.
It was Peter s step his new one since
last Friday, when they had all, it seemed,
begun to walk and talk and breathe a lit
tle differently. Belden hurried across the
room and caught him at the foot of the
steps.

" Well, old man, how goes it ? " he de
manded, with a determined cheerfulness.

His brother-in-law stared at him
emptily.

" It s to-morrow," he said, gripping the
newel-post, " to-morrow afternoon. Jame
son is coming they ll do it here. Jame-

[4]

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son brings his special nurse for the
the operation, but the other one is due at
five, and you get her just the same. I
told Henry to put up the dog-cart. I
don t know, though maybe the run
about no, the tire s loose. Still, it
might do "

" For heaven s sake, Peter, don t
bother about it ! I ll find a rig. What
else does he say ? "

" He says there s a good fighting
chance a very good one. He says her
grit alone Oh, Belden, what shall we
do ? What shall we do ? "

Peter sat down heavily on the lowest
stair.

" Only last week she was so well
and yet she really wasn t. I suppose he
knows. But it doesn t seem possible
I can t get it through my head. Poor
little Caddy ! She never had a sick day
in her life. No headaches, like most
women, even no nonsense Oh, Bel-
den, what shall we do ? "

[5]

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C Brace up, Peter ; think what a good
fighting chance means, think of that !
It s not as if Caddy were old ; she has
that on her side. She s seven years be
hind me, you know."

Peter scowled. " You re fifty, aren t
you ? "

" Not a bit. Only forty-eight, and
just that, too. Now you go out and get
the nurse, and I ll stay here. It ll do
you a lot of good. Don t mope around
in the house all day what s the use ? "

" I can t leave the house. Honestly,
Belden, I can t. I ve tried twice, and I
just walk right back. It s no good.
There s the cart and you won t be
long, will you ? "

Belden took up the reins with a vague
sense of momentary relief: it was some
thing to do. Under the influence of the
fresh autumn air his spirits rose ; he
found himself enjoying the swift rattle of
the cart and the beat of the horse s feet.
After all, think of Caddy s grit ; think of

[6]

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her fine constitution ! A fighting chance
that was little enough to say, though.
Why couldn t he have put it a little
stronger ? Hitchcock always was a pes
simist.

At the station the usual crowd of well-
dressed suburbanites quieted their horses
and waited impatiently for the express.
As Belden drew up into line, they greeted
him with a subdued interest ; coachmen
left their seats to ask how Mrs. Moore
was to-day, and when could one see her ?
A sudden mist came over his eyes as he
answered briefly, " Very soon I hope."

The train thundered in ; in an incredi
bly short time all the guests and com
muters were hurried off toward town
where was that nurse ?

As his glance wandered through the
thinning crowd, it was met suddenly and
squarely by two brown eyes set in a fresh
pink face framed by dark hair lightly
sprinkled with gray. The second that
he looked into that woman s eyes taught

[7]

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him her character, absolutely, as finally as
if he had grown up with her. One could
trust her to the last ditch, he thought.

She walked straight up to the cart.
" I am the nurse sent for by Dr. Hitch
cock. Are you Mr. Moore?"

"I am Mrs. Moore s brother Mr.
Belden," he explained. " Have you
your checks ? "

" That is all arranged, * she returned
briefly. " I am all ready. May I ask
you to hurry ? Dr. Hitchcock was anx
ious for me to see her before six, when
the fever begins."

His nerves were more sharply edged
than he knew : an instant irritation seized
him.

"There is plenty of room in the back
of the cart," he insisted, " the express
people are very uncertain. Would you
not better give me the checks ? "

She swung herself up beside him with
a firm, assured motion ; for a heavily built
woman she carried herself very lightly.

[8]

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" I think not," she said decidedly,
" the man has started, I am sure. I
would rather lose no time."

He bowed and started the horse : he
disliked her already. To a deep-seated,
involuntary disgust that any woman
should have to earn her living he added
a displeased wonder that one should
choose this method of doing it. There
must be disagreeable details connected
with it, embarrassments, absolute indig
nities : why did they not marry ? This
woman was good-looking enough. She
was very obstinate almost dictatorial.
His idea of womanhood was hopelessly
confused with clouds of white tulle, ap
pealing eyes, and a desire for guidance.
It was impossible to connect any of these
characteristics with the woman beside
him.

For a while they drove in silence.
Then compunction seized him and he
remarked on the beauty of the foliage.
She assented easily, but seemed no more

[9]

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relieved by the speech than embarrassed
by the silence. It was impossible to
treat her as a hired servant : one felt a
strong personality in her. Before they
reached the house he was searching for
conversation that should not bore her.

As they stepped into the wide hall,
where he observed with a shade of dis
pleasure that her luggage had come
before them, Dr. Hitchcock met them.

" Ah, Miss Strong, glad to see you.
Come right up. On time, as usual, of
course ! I was afraid you couldn t make
it. Jameson comes to-morrow, you
know "

They were up the stairs; Belden stood
idly in the hall where they had left him.
He had had an idea of showing her the
house, stating some of the facts of Clarice s
sudden and terrible need of her, indicating
that in a family so jarred from the very
foundations it would be wiser to look to
him than to the bewildered master of the
establishment; but this was not necessary.
[10]

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Evidently she persisted in dispensing
with his services.

His hand slipped to his vest pocket,
but he replaced the cigar uncertainly : it
seemed not quite the thing to smoke.
Ought he to go to Peter? In his mind s
eye he saw the poor fellow haunting the
landing by Caddy s door; he had an idea
that in some way he kept things quiet by
doing this. And how could one be sure
that the troubled creature wanted com
pany?

There was a violent ring at the bell, a
jarring of wheels on the asphalt. The
door flew open and the prettiest little
woman imaginable, all fluffy ends and
scarlet flowers and orris scent, rushed
toward him.

"Oh, Will! Oh, Will!" she gasped,
"isn t it terrible? Where is Peter? Can
I see her ? Oh, Will ! "

Instinctively he took her in his arms
one always did that with Peter s sister
and she put her head on his shoulder and

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cried a little, while he patted her and mur
mured, " There, there ! "

She was so manifestly comforted, and
it was so pleasant to comfort her this
was what a woman should be. He felt
a renewed sense of capacity, of readiness
for even the most terrible emergency.
He led her gently to the great cushioned
window-seat and listened sympathetically
to her excited babblings.

" It will kill Peter it will kill him !
In in a great m-many ways, you know,
Will, Peter isn t so so c-calm as Caddy.
He is just bound up in her. Sup
pose Oh, Will!"

"Don t cry, Sue dear, don t!" he said
soothingly. "She has a good chance a
fine chance, really. These things are
mostly resisting power, you know, and
grit, and think what a lot of grit Caddy s
got!"

" Oh, I know, I know ! Don t you
know when the baby died that first
baby and s-she was so weak she could
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hardly speak ? c Never mind, P- Peter,
we ll have another ! Oh, dear, she
was so pi-plucky, Will ! And now to
think "

He choked a little. " I know, I know,"
he murmured, cc Caddy s a brick. She
always was."

She sat up, not wholly withdrawing
from his arm, and patted her eyes, breath
ing brokenly. Little gusts of orris floated
toward him.

"Where are the children ?" she asked,
almost herself now.

" They re here Peter wants them one
minute and sends them away the next.
I should send them to grandmother s,
but he won t hear of it."

A light step sounded on the stair. The
nurse appeared on the lower landing.
She was dressed in cool blue gingham ;
the straps of her white apron marked
the firm, broad lines of her bust and
shoulder.

" Is this Mrs. Wylie ? " she said in

[13]

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her clear, assured voice. " Mrs. Moore
would like to see her a moment. Will
you come with me ? "

" I will come directly," and Sue gath
ered together her gloves and hand-bag.

<c She s very good-looking it s a pity
her hair is so gray," she breathed in his
ear. As the two women stood together
a moment on the landing he realized, not
for the first time, that Sue was a little too
small. But he had never thought her
sallow before.

Peter came in by the greenhouse door,
walking slowly, his hands behind his back.
He looked old for the first time in his
jolly, persistently boyish life.

<c Those chrysanthemums are all dry
ing up," he complained fretfully ; " not
one of the blamed servants has done a
thing since since O Lord, Will,
what shall we be doing this time to
morrow ? Where are the children ?
Where s Miss Strong? There s a wo
man for you ! Caddy took to her di-

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rectly. She s there now. She s talking
to her about the children. Oh, my
God ! "

Belden grasped his hand and they
walked silently up and down the hall.

" Aunt Lucia s coming to-night," Peter
resumed nervously. " She will drive me
mad. Take care of her, will you ? If I
could have choked her off but when
you think she was just like a mother to <
Cad all these years, what can you do ?
She s got a right. You d think she d
have got some sense from living with
Cad so long. I told Henry to go for
her and there you are," he added, as
the cart drew up before the open door.

Belden went slowly down the steps ;
he detested Aunt Lucia, and Clarice had
always stood between them.

" How do you do ? " he began, assist
ing her from the high seat. Her long
crape veil caught in the wheel, and the
numberless black and floating ends of
her costume wound themselves about

[15]

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him as he bent down to disentangle
her.

" Oh, Wilmot, this is a terrible day for
us all, is it not ? Be careful of the hem
of that veil, please. When I kissed
Clarice good-by last Christmas I little
thought what a good-by it was ! Is she
conscious ? You have muddied the boa,
I think, but never mind. Can I see her
once more ? "

" For Heaven s sake, Aunt Lucia,
anybody would think Caddy was in her
grave ! She s a long way from it yet,
thank God ! Of course she s conscious,
and spunky as the as ever. I don t
think you really needed to "

" My dear Wilmot, I prepared Clarice
for her confirmation, I dressed her for
her wedding, and I was here when the
children were born. If you think that I
would fail her in this crisis you have a
very poor idea of my character. But
then, I am perfectly aware that you al
ways had. Oh, there is Peter! My
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poor Peter ! " She rushed toward him,
and Belden smiled sardonically as his
brother-in-law planted a perfunctory kiss
on her chin.

"This may comfort you, Peter, as it
has me so often in such circumstances.
So short, so true, so helpful. c Under
neath are the everlasting arms / Do you
feel that, Peter ? "

"I I yes, indeed, Aunt Lucia
you must want a bite of something, I m
sure, driving so far."

Peter writhed miserably in Aunt Lu
cia s crape-and-jet arms.

" Not till I have seen her, Peter.
Afterwards I shouldn t mind. I have
brought such a beautiful address by
Bishop Hunter. It was delivered on
the occasion of the death of Governor

, unless I forgot to put it in with

my knitted shawl. I believe I did. I
will send for it directly. When my dear
husband he was so fond of Clarice
died, I read it more than anything else,

[17]

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except the Prayer-book, of course. You
will surely find it a help."

" Yes, Aunt Lucia. Your room is
ready, and "

" Not till I have seen her, Peter."

" Susy is there now, and Miss Strong
says nobody else this evening. To
morrow "

Aunt Lucia drew away.

" Do I understand that Susy Wylie
no relation at all is preferred before the
only mother Clarice has had for all these

5 "

years r

Peter winced. " But you weren t here,
Aunt Lucia," he argued wearily.

" Who is Miss Strong ? "

" Here she is ! " There was great re
lief in Peter s voice. " Miss Strong, my
aunt, Mrs. Wetherly."

" Mrs. Moore sends you her best love,
and wants you to get thoroughly rested,
so that you can see her the first thing in
the morning, Mrs. Wetherly. She says
you are not to let them frighten you."

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As if by magic the formidable frown
faded from Aunt Lucia s forehead. She
smiled approvingly at the nurse.

"Very well. I should like to ask you
a few questions Clarice was always
thoughtful."

They moved away together. The two
men stared at each other.

"How do you account for that?"
Belden queried.

" Oh, it s her calm way and her voice.
You want to do everything she says.
Norah says she s sure Mrs. Moore will
get well now, with her to take care of
her. By George, Will, if she pulls
Caddy through it ll be worth her while,
I tell you."

" Oh, they always do their best. And
they all have that habit, I fancy. It s
part of the training."

Peter looked up surprised.

" You don t like her, eh ? "

" How absurd. I never considered
her particularly. I don t care for mas-

[19]

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culine, dictatorial women, on general
principles "

" Oh, nonsense ! I tell you you ve
taken a grudge against her, and you want
to get rid of it as soon as possible."

" I suppose I have a right to my
opinion," Belden began hotly, but a
wave of remorse surged over him at
sight of the other man s drawn, nervous
face.

<c Any one would think we had noth
ing to do but scrap over a trained
nurse," he said lightly. " She s all you
say, I haven t a doubt, old man, and if
she pulls Caddy through, I ll sing her
praises louder than any of you." *

They sat in silence. A burst of laugh
ter from the kitchen-garden startled them,
and Belden started up as if to check it.

" Don t stop em it s the servants.
Why shouldn t they laugh ? " said Peter
quietly. " I ve been thinking it all over.
If Caddy if if she doesn t get well,
she doesn t want a lot of black and all
[20]

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that. It s bad for the children. And
she said the children oughtn t to grow
up without a mother think of that ! "

" I guess that s all right," said Belden
sadly. " Look at my boy there ! "

A slender, stoop-shouldered lad
slouched by the long hall-window, his
hands in his pockets, an unlighted ciga
rette in his mouth.

" Well, well, we all have our load ! "
Peter s mood had changed utterly, to the
other s astonishment. He seemed gen
tler, more thoughtful, controlled beyond
belief.

" I don t see why we shouldn t smoke,"
he added, and they lighted cigars.

" You see, we talked it all over," he
said, half to himself, "and she s so reason
able and calm, herself. . . . She says
Margaret s going to grow up just like
her. That s a comfort. And there s
the boy."

Suddenly the cigar dropped from his
lips to the floor.

[21]

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"Good God, Belden!" he shouted,
" I kept thinking she d be here, too ! I
forgot I Oh, what rot ! Do you
think I ll stand it? Do you think I ll
put up with it ? Why didn t Hitchcock
know before ? It was his business to
know ! I tell you I ll ruin that man if it
takes every dollar I ve got ! "

Belden stared at him helplessly. Was
this Peter, this red-faced, scowling men
ace ? As he watched him silently the
nurse came in from the greenhouse.

" Mrs. Moore wants to say good night
to you, Mr. Moore," she said, her deep,
clear voice echoing strangely after the
hoarse passion of Peter s rage. " I found
these all picked were you going to
take them to her ? "

Peter drew a deep breath and put out
a shaking hand for the flowers.

" I don t know what s the matter with
me, Will I talk like a fool," he half whis
pered. " I can t get used to this damned
see-saw. First I m all ready for it, and

[22]

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then I m nearly wild. And so it goes
up and down, up and down."

" How is she ? Is it all settled for
to-morrow ? Hitchcock said that per
haps"

" Mrs. Moore is doing very well
really very well. She was a little excited
when Mrs. Wylie was with her, but she
is nicely sleepy now. I think it will be
better to stay only a moment. She will
get a good night s rest to-night, it is so
cool. The weather is on our side."

She smiled into his eyes and nodded
gravely. He brightened and squared
his shoulders. As he went quickly up
the stairs, Belden stopped the woman.

" Tell me," he said authoritatively,
" how is my sister, really ? What do
you consider her chance ? "

She looked him easily in the eyes.
" It is impossible to say," she returned
gravely. "Your sister is a very brave,
self-possessed woman, and seems to have
a good constitution. That is, of course,

[23]

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half the battle. But her case is very
complicated, and until the operation, no
one can tell. You may have every con
fidence in Dr. Jameson. He is a mag
nificent surgeon."

Before her non-committal eyes his own
fell baffled. He was more irritated than
he cared to own. Could she not see
that he was prepared for anything, that
his self-control was as great as her own ?
She treated him like a child ; those pro
fessional reserves, necessary, doubtless, in
the case of Peter and his excitable sister,
were wasted on him. Why could she
not see it ?

" I am quite aware of Dr. Jameson s
skill," he said coldly, " but I had hoped
that you would find yourself able to
break through the professional attitude
sufficiently to give me your real opinion,
which, of course, you must have formed."

She threw him a quick glance. " Ah,
my friend," he thought exultingly, " you
have a temper, then ! " But in an instant
it was gone.

[24]

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" I have told you all I was able to tell,"
she said evenly. " I have been here but
a short time, you know."

She turned and left the hall, and he,
chafing under a sense of merited rebuke,
conscious of a foolish petulance, went
discontentedly into the library. He
seemed to be continually at fault with
Miss Strong, but unable to resist the
effort to master her.

The evening was very lonely and still.
Peter had gone to his room early, and the
children had effaced themselves : Susy
was with them. Aunt Lucia read the
" Imitation of Christ," by the fire. Bel-
den s mind turned unconsciously to the
old days when Caddy and he dreamed
out their future in the nursery. It had
all come out just as she had planned,
except this. Poor little Caddy a fight
ing chance !

The next morning seemed to fly by
them : it was nine o clock, ten, eleven.

At this hour a feverish activity sud
denly spread through the house. They

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met and passed each other, hurrying,
troubled, secretive ; the servants stum
bled and quarrelled in their purposeless
haste. To Belden, quieting when he
could, sternly optimistic everywhere, at
heart heavy and uncertain, it seemed that
the one anchor of their hopes was this
calm, clear-eyed woman in her uniform
of authority !

Peter hung pathetically on her lightest
word ; the children, dazed and terrified,
ate and exercised at her command ; his
own boy, a strange hard look in his fur
tive eyes, followed her like a dog, and
Aunt Lucia submitted with unprecedented
meekness to an abrupt curtailment of her
interview with Clarice. He himself went
into the bedroom for a moment, half un
certain of the reality of the experience.
It was absurd to remember that he might
never see her, conscious, again his own
little Caddy.

He sat awkwardly on the side of the
bed.

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" Well, little woman, how goes it ? "

"Queen s taste, Will!"

" Good for you ! I m proud of the
Beldens, Caddy Billy acts like a drum-
major."

Her eyes softened.

"The dear boy," she murmured. Their
eyes met. " Look after him" hers said,
and his, " As long as I live! " He stooped
and kissed her lightly. " Mind you look
as well as this to-morrow ! "

" Oh, I shall be all right. Miss Strong
will take care of me. When I think how
I have the best of everything such care
I ve been a very happy woman, Will
dear."

His eyes filled. He threw her a kiss
and went out blindly.

A hand touched his arm. " You ve
done her good," said the nurse softly.
"You stayed just long enough. She ll
take her nap now."

He went heavily into his own room.
Below him a little porch led out from

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the smoking-room, and as he sat lost in
a miserable reverie, voices rose from it to
his window.

" Nobody knows what she s been to
me. As much like a mother as I d let
her. I did everything but the cigarettes,
and I meant to tell her I d do that too,
next month that s her birthday."

Was this his boy, that pleading, shaken
voice ? He looked out : the lad was
fingering Miss Strong s white apron ner
vously. She leaned over the railing of
the little porch, her hand on his shoulder.

"You tell her about it I ll never
smoke another one. It was the last
thing she asked me."

" I ll tell her she will be so pleased,
I know. She asked about you yester
day. I ll let you know as soon as I can."

Belden, a little later, hurried down
stairs, with a confused idea of thanking
her. On the threshold of the library he
paused, amazed. Dr. Hitchcock sat be
fore a small green baize table, studying
[28]

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five playing-cards held fan-shape in his
left hand. Opposite him sat Miss Strong,
holding the pack expectantly.

"You can give me two, my dear, I
think," he said as Belden entered. Look
ing up, he smiled apologetically.

" I dare say you are surprised," he
suggested, " but I have been much exas
perated, Mr. Belden, and a long experi
ence has taught me that nothing so
quickly clears the mind as throwing a
few hands of poker. Miss Strong an
invaluable person is kindly assisting
me. Did I say three ? Yes, of course.
Thank you. We are playing for beans
only, you see."

Belden watched them curiously. She
sat as imperturbably as by Caddy s bed
side, her eyes fixed thoughtfully on her
cards.

" And raise you three," she said.

"Five more. You will excuse me,
Belden, but your aunt, Mrs. Wetherly, is
a somewhat unusually irritating woman.

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I ll see you. Miss Strong ah, yes, two
pair, queens up."

" What has she done ? "

"She insists that Mrs. Moore shall
not only see Mr. Burchard, to which I
have not the least objection, but that he
shall hold a communion service, directly,
there. Now, if your sister had asked for
this herself, it would be another matter,
but unless this is the case I always re
gard it as a depressing agent. It is a
strain, in any case."

"I think Mrs. Moore will go through
with it very easily, doctor," Miss Strong
interposed, slipping the cards into their
leather envelope and gathering up the
beans. " She will be fresh from her nap,
and it will be very short. She has prom
ised Mrs. Wetherly, you know, and it
would distress her more to break it "

" All right, all right. Have it your
way. Much obliged."

He took the cards from her and went
out.

[30]

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

" My aunt is very trying," Belden
began.

" Oh, many people feel so about it,"
she assured him, "especially High Church
people. She only did what she thought
right."

He drew a breath of relief.

"You ll see she s not too tired?" he
asked; and as he went to luncheon he
wondered at the comfort he derived from
her mute nod.

He was roused from the table, where
the dishes left by them were untouched
for the most part, by a disturbance in the
hall.

" It s the priest," the waitress mur
mured, and with a frown he checked her
rising tears.

Aunt Lucia bustled through the room.

"You must come, Wilmot," she whis
pered eagerly, " she asked for you. Peter
is locked into his room, and neither of
the children has been confirmed. Susy,
of course, is a Presbyterian. Not that

[31]

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dear Mr. Burchard would object he is
so broad. But you have no excuse. Oh,
it is beautiful, Wilmot ! She looks so
lovely!"

He followed her wearily. What did
it matter ? It seemed to him ominous,
terrible but it would please Caddy.
She sat propped up in the bed. Her
cheeks were crimson, her eyes bright.
White chrysanthemums stood in silver
vases, candles burned softly on the white-
draped dresser. Mr. Burchard, in the
hall just beyond, was slipping his surplice
over his head. A faint odor of wine
mingled with the flowers.

Belden dared not look at her. She
was to him, in that moment, mystic, holy,
a thing apart. He dropped on his knees
beside a silvery white apron, his eyes on
the floor, his heart beating hard.

The clergyman entered slowly, the
service began. It was all a murmured
maze to him. Aunt Lucia sobbed quietly
beside him, but as he glanced at her he

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caught a light on her wet, uplifted face
that thrilled him strangely. Her deep
responses spoke a faith and surety that
swallowed for the moment all her little
sillinesses and obstinacies.

The solemn words grew in intensity,
the candles flickered audibly in the sacred
hush. The clergyman moved toward
the bed, and they heard Caddy s breath
draw out in a deep, shuddering sob ; her
teeth chattered against the cup.

Belden set his jaw; it was cruel, brutal!
They were killing her. His clinched fist
moved blindly toward his neighbor: he
touched her hand and gripped it fiercely.

In front of him on the wall hung a
large photograph of Billy s base-ball nine
in full uniform. He could have drawn
it from memory, afterwards. Billy, he
remembered, was a great catcher. He
held hard to that cool, firm hand.

" be amongst you and remain with you
always. Amen." There was a little stir.
The hand was drawn from his.

[33]

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

"Come, now," whispered Aunt Lucia,
and he walked, stumbling and stiff from
kneeling, from the room. At the door
he glanced a second backward, but only
Dr. Hitchcock was to be seen, bending
over the bed. Miss Strong had already
taken away candles and flowers, and
Caddy s triple mirror was back on the
dresser.

Mr. Burchard, in his long black cas
sock, offered his hand cordially.

" I am glad you could be with us, Mr.
Belden," he began, but the other broke
in :

"If you have tired her, if this
makes a difference " he muttered
fiercely, " you will have me to settle
with. Mind that ! "

He hurried down the stairs, his hands
still clinched. Peter was starting off with
the road-wagon. They nodded shortly
at each other.

From then the time raced on incredi
bly. The great surgeon, with his two
assistants, was in the hall ; he was on the

[34]

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

stairs ; he was lost to sight. There was
a momentary rush and bustle, the closing
of a door. Peter came out, whispering
to himself, and disappeared somewhere.
The others, clustered in the library, spoke
fitfully.

" They carried her on a cot into the
west room," somebody murmured close
to Belden. It was little Margaret. " I
saw her. She waved her hand at me ! I
threw her a kiss. Miss Strong smiled
at me I love Miss Strong."

Aunt Lucia sobbed. Susy bit her lip
and played with Billy s unwilling hand.

" Where s my father ? Where s he
gone ? " he demanded. cc Who s that
other woman with the apron ? "

Miss Strong appeared at the door.
" She has taken the ether very well in
deed ; they are much pleased," she said
softly. They hung on her words, they
overwhelmed her with questions. She
soothed them like children.

It grew suddenly clear to Belden that
Caddy would die. It must be so. He

[35]

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

wondered that they had hoped for any
thing else. He was sorry for them all.
He watched indifferently while Miss
Strong led the children away he knew
she was taking them to their father.
Later, while Aunt Lucia, on her knees,
read through streaming eyes from her
prayer-book, and Susy talked nervously
to him, he watched the firm, full figure
of the woman pacing up and down the
piazza outside, her arm drawn through
his restless boy s.

" God bless her ! " he said aloud.

Afterwards he could never recall the con
secutive happenings of the end. He
saw only separate pictures.

In one, a strange young man opened
the door and said the words that fright
ened them with delight.

In another, a drawn, old, white-faced
man surely not Dr. Jameson leaned
weakly in a chair, while a woman handed
him a tiny glass of colored liquid.

[36]

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

In yet another, a father hid his face
in his little daughter s bosom and sobbed,
with shaking shoulders ; his tall son
smiled bravely over the bent head.

In the last picture he himself bore a
part ; for when he came upon his shy,
suspicious boy clasped in the kind arms
of the woman whose brown eyes, once
seen, had haunted his thoughts ever since,
he gathered them both to him irresistibly.
As he laid his cheek against hers, he felt
that it was wet with tears.

" It lies with you now," he whispered
in her ear, " to give her back to us, well
and strong. He says you can. After
wards "

She drew away from him.

"I I must go. I am so glad I
will do my best," she answered unsteadily.

He caught her hand. "And after
wards ? " he repeated, a growing mastery
in his voice. She tried to meet his eyes,
but her own fell, conquered.

[37]

A PHILANTHROPIST

A PHILANTHROPIST

T SUSPECTED him from the first,"
JL said Miss Gould, with some irritation,
to her lodger. She spoke with irritation
because of the amused smile of the lodger.
He bowed with the grace that character
ized all his lazy movements.

"He looked very much like that Tom
Waters that I had at the Reformed
Drunkards* League last year. I even
thought he was Tom "

" I do not know Tom ? " hazarded
the lodger.

" No. I don t know whether I ever
mentioned him to you. He came twice

[41]

A PHILANTHROPIST

to the League, and we were really quite
hopeful about him, and the third time
he asked to have the meeting at his
house. We thought it a great sign
the best of signs, in fact. So as a great
favor we went there instead of meeting
at the Rooms. I was a little late I
lost the way and when I got there I
heard a great noise as if they were sing
ing different songs at the same time. I
hurried in to lead them they get so
mixed in the singing and it makes
me blush now to think of it! the wretch
had invited them all early, and and
they were all intoxicated !

" I am sorry I told you," she added
with dignity ; for the lodger, in an en
deavor to smile sympathetically, had lost
his way and was convulsed with a mirth
entirely unregretful.

" Not at all, not at all," he murmured
politely. " It is a delightful story. I
would not have missed it a choir of
reformed drunkards ! But do you not,

A PHILANTHROPIST

my dear Miss Gould, perceive in these
little setbacks a warning against further
attempts ? Do you still attend the
League ? It is not possible ! "

"Possible?" echoed his visitor; for
owing to certain recent and untoward
circumstances, Miss Gould was half re
clining in her lodger s great Indian chair,
sipping a glass of his 49 port. " Indeed
I do ! They had every one of them to
be reformed all over again ! It was most
disgraceful ! "

Her lodger checked a rising smile, and
leaned solicitously toward her, regarding
her firm, fine-featured face with flatter
ing attention.

" Are you growing stronger ? Can I
bring you anything ? " he inquired.

Miss Gould s color rose, half with anger
at her weakness of body, half with a vexed
consciousness of his amusement.

" Thank you, no," she returned coldly,
" I am ashamed to have been so weak-
minded. I must go now and tell Henry

[43]

A PHILANTHROPIST

to pile the wood again in the east corner.
There will probably come another tramp
very soon they are very prevalent this
month, I hear."

Her lodger left his low wicker seat
a proof of enormous excitement and
frowned at her.

" Do you seriously mean, Miss Gould,
that you are going to run the risk of an
other such such catastrophe? It is
absurd. I cannot believe it of you ! Is
there no other way "

But he had been standing a long while,
it occurred to him, and he retired to the
chair again. A splinter of wood on his
immaculate white flannel coat caught his
eye, and a slow smile spread over his
handsome, lazy face. It grew and grew
until at last a distinct chuckle penetrated
to the dusky corner where the Indian
chair leaned back against dull Oriental
draperies. Its occupant attempted to
rise, her face stern, her mouth unrelent
ing. He was at her side instantly.

[44]

A PHILANTHROPIST

" Take my arm and pardon me ! "
he said with an irresistible grace. "It
is only my fear for your comfort, you
know, Miss Gould. I cannot bear that
you should be at the mercy of every
drunken fellow that wishes to impose on
you ! "

As she crossed the hall that separated
her territory from his, her fine, full figure
erect, her dark head high in the air, a
whimsical regret came over him that they
were not younger and more foolish.

" I should certainly marry her to re
form her," he said to the birch log that
spluttered on his inimitable colonial fire-
dogs. And then, as the remembrance of
the events of the morning came to him,
he laughed again.

He had been disturbed at his leisurely
coffee and roll by a rapid and ceaseless
pounding, followed by a violent rattling,
and varied by stifled cries apparently
from the woodshed. The din seemed
to come from the lower part of the house,

[45]

A PHILANTHROPIST

and after one or two futile appeals to the
man who served as valet, cook, and
butler in his bachelor establishment, he
decided that he was alone in his half of
the house, and that the noise came from
Miss Gould s side. He strolled down the
beautiful winding staircase, and dragged
his crimson dressing-gown to the top of
the cellar stairs, the uproar growing mo
mentarily more terrific. Half-way down
the whitewashed steps he paused, viewing
the remarkable scene below him with in
terest and amazement. The cemented
floor was literally covered with neatly
chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in
a tide under the efforts of a large red-
faced man who, with the regularity of a
machine, stooped, grasped a billet in either
hand, shook them in the face of Miss
Gould, who cowered upon a soap-box at
his side, and flung them on the floor.
From the woodhouse near the cellar
muffled shouts were heard through a
storm of blows on the door. From the
rattling of this door, and the fact that

[46]

A PHILANTHROPIST

the red-faced man aimed every third stick
at it, the observer might readily conclude
that some one desirous of leaving the
woodhouse was locked within it.

For a moment the spectator on the
stairs stood stunned. The noise was
deafening ; the appearance of the man,
whose expression was one of settled rage
but whose actions were of the coldest regu
larity, was most bewildering, partially ob
scured as it was by the flying billets of
wood ; the mechanical attempts of Miss
Gould to rise from the soap-box, inva
riably checked by a fierce brandishing of
the stick just taken from the lessening
pile, were at once startling and fascinating,
inasmuch as she was methodically waved
back just as her knees had unbent for
the trial, and as methodically essayed her
escape again, alternately rising with dig
nity and sinking back in terror.

The red dressing-gown advanced a
step, and met her gaze. Dignity and ter
ror shifted to relief.

" Oh, Mr. Welles ! " she gasped. Her

[47]

A PHILANTHROPIST

lodger girded up his robe de chambre with
its red silk cord and advanced with decision
through the chaos of birch and hickory.
A struggle, sharp but brief, and he turned
to find Miss Gould offering a coil of
clothes-rope with which to bind the con
quered, whom conflict had sobered, for
he made no resistance.

" What do you mean by such idiotic
actions ? " the squire of dames demanded,
as he freed the maddened Henry from
his durance vile in the woodhouse and
confronted the red-faced man, who had
not uttered a word.

He cast a baffled glance at Miss Gould
and a triumphant smile at Henry before
replying. Then, disdaining the lady s
righteous indignation and the hired man s
threatening gestures, he faced the gentle
man in the scarlet robe and spoke as man
to man.

" Gov nor," he said with somewhat
thickened speech, " I come here an I
asked for a meal. An she tol me would

[48]

A PHILANTHROPIST

I work fer it? An I said yes. An she
come into this ol vault of a suller, an she
pointed to that ol heap o wood, an
she tol me ter move it over ter that
corner. An I done so fer half an hour.
An I says to that blitherin fool over
there, who was workin in that ol wood-
house, what the devil did she care w ich
corner the darned stuff was in ? An he
says that she didn t care a hang, but that
she d tell the next man that come along
to move it back to where I got it from ;
he said twas a matter er principle with
her not to give a man a bite fer nothin !
So I shut him in his ol house, an w en
she come down I gave her a piece of my
mind. I don t mind a little work, mis
ter, but when it come to shufflin kind-
lin s round in this ol tomb fer half an
hour an makin a fool o myself fer
nothin , I got my back up. My time
ain t so vallyble to me as tis to some,
gov nor, but it s worth a damn sight
more n that ! "

[49]

A PHILANTHROPIST

Miss Gould s lodger shuddered as he
remembered the quarter he had surrepti
tiously bestowed upon the man, and the
withering scorn that would be his portion
were the weakness known. He smiled
as he recalled the scene in the cellar when
he had helped Miss Gould up the stairs
and returned to soothe Henry, who re
gretted that he had left one timber of the
woodhouse upon another.

" Though I m bound to say, Mr.
Welles, that I see how he felt. I ve
often felt like a fool explainin how they
was to move that wood back an forth.
It does seem strange that Miss Gould
has to do it that way. Give em some-
thin an let em go, I say ! "

It was precisely his own view but
how fundamentally immoral the position
was he knew so well ! He recalled Miss
Gould s lectures on the subject, miracles
of eloquence and irrefutably correct in
deductions that interested him not nearly
so much as the lecturer.

" So firm, so positive, so wholesome ! "

[50]

A PHILANTHROPIST

he would murmur to himself in tacit apol
ogy for the instructive hours spent before
their common ground, the great fireplace
in the central hall. He never sat there
without remembering their first interview :
her resentment at an absolutely inexcusa
ble intrusion slowly melting before his
exquisite appreciation of every line and
corner of the old colonial homestead ;
her reserve waning at every touch of his
irresistible courtesy, till, to her own open
amazement, she rose to conduct this con
noisseur in antiquities through the rooms
whose delights he had perfectly foreseen,
he assured her, from the modelling of
the front porch ; her utter and instanta
neous refusal to consider for a second his
proposal to lodge a stranger in half of
her father s house ; and the nai ve and
conscientious struggle with her principles
when, with a logic none the less forcible
because it was so gracefully developed, he
convinced her that her plain duty lay
along the lines of his choice.

For as a philanthropist what could she

[5*]

A PHILANTHROPIST

do ? Here were placed in her hands
means she could not in conscience over
look. Rapidly translating his dollars
into converts, he juggled them before her
dazzled eyes ; he even hinted delicately
at Duty, with that exact conception of
the requirements of the stern daughter
felt by none so keenly as those who sys
tematically avoid her.

His good genius prompted him to
refer casually to soup-kitchens. Now
soup-kitchens were the delight of Miss
Gould s heart ; toward the establishment
of a soup-kitchen she had looked since
the day when her father s death had left
her the double legacy of his worldly goods
and his unworldly philanthropy.

Visions of dozens of Bacchic revellers,
riotous no more, but seated temperately
each before his steaming bowl, rose to her
delighted eyes ; she saw in fancy the
daughters and nieces of the reformed in
smiles and white aprons ladling the nu
tritious and attractive compound, earning

A PHILANTHROPIST

thus an honest wage ; she saw a neatly
balanced account-book and a triumphant
report ; she saw herself the respected and
deprecatory idol of a millennial village.
She wavered, hesitated, and was lost.

That very evening saw the establish
ment of a second menage in the north
side of the house, and though a swift re
gret chilled her manner for weeks, she
found herself little by little growing in
terested in her lodger, and conscious of
an increasing desire to benefit him, an
irritated longing to influence him for
good, to turn him from the butterfly
whims of a pretended invalid to an ap
preciation of the responsibilities of life.

For in all her well-ordered forty years
Miss Gould had never seen so indolent,
so capricious, so irresponsible a person.
That a man of easy means, fine educa
tion, sufficient health, and gray hair
should have nothing better to do than
collect willow-ware and fire-irons, read
the magazines, play the piano, and stroll

[53]

A PHILANTHROPIST

about in the sun seemed to her nothing
less than horrible.

Each day that added some new trea
sure to his perfectly arranged rooms, and
in consequence some new song to his
seductive repertoire, left a new sting in
her soul. She had been influencing
somebody or something all her life. She
had been educating and directing and
benefiting till she was forced to be grate
ful to that providential generosity that
caused new wickedness and ignorance to
spring constantly from this very soil she
had cleared; for if one reform had been
sufficient she would long since have been
obliged to leave the little village for
larger fields. She had ministered to the
starved mind as to the stunted body ;
the idle and dissolute quaked before her.
And yet here in her own household,
across her hall, lived the epitome of use-
lessness, indolence, selfishness, and she
was forced to admit it charm. What
corresponded to a sense of humor in her

[54]

A PHILANTHROPIST

caught at the discrepancy and worried
over it.

What ! was she not competent, then, to
influence her equals ? For in everything
but moral stamina she was forced to
admit that her lodger was her equal, if
no more. Widely travelled, well read,
well born, talented, handsome, deferen
tial but persistently amused at her,
irrevocably indolent, hopelessly selfish.

With the firm intention of turning the
occasions to his benefit, she had finally
accepted his regular and courteous invi
tation to take tea with him, and had
watched his graceful management of sam
ovar and tea-cup with open disfavor.
" A habit picked up in England," he
had assured her, when, with the frank
ness characteristic of her, she had criti
cised him for the effeminacy. And his
smiling explanation had sent a sudden
flush across her smooth, firm cheeks.
Was she provincial ? Did she seem to
him a New England villager and nothing

[55]

A PHILANTHROPIST

more ? She bit her lip, and the appeal
she had planned went unspoken that day.

But her desire could not rest, and as to
her strict notions the continual visits
from her side to his seemed unsuitable,
she gave in self-defence her own invita
tion, and Wednesday and Saturday after
noons saw her lodger across the hall
drinking her own tea with wine and plum-
cake by the shining kettle.

If she could command his admiration in
no other way, she felt, she might safely
rely on his deferential respect for the
owner of that pewter tea-service velvety,
shimmering, glistening dully, with shapes
that vaguely recalled Greek lamps and
Etruscan urns. And she piled wedges of
ambrosial plum-cake with yellow frosting
on sprigged china, and set out wine in
her great-grandfather s long-necked de
canter, and, with what she considered a
gracious tact, overlooked the flippancy of
her guest s desultory conversation, and
sincerely tried to discover the humorous

[56]

A PHILANTHROPIST

quality in her conversation that forced a
subdued chuckle now and then from her
listener.

She confided most of her schemes to
him, sometimes unconsciously, and grew
to depend more than she knew upon his
common sense and experience ; for,
though openly cynical of her works, he
would give her what she often realized to
be the best of practical advice, and his
amusing generalities, though to her mind
insults to humanity, had been so bitterly
proved true that she looked fearfully to
see his lightest adverse prophecy fulfilled.

After a cautious introduction of the
subject by asking his advice as to the
minimum of hours in the week one could
conscientiously allow a doubtful member
of the Weekly Culture Club to spend
upon Browning, she endeavored to get his
idea of that poet. Her famous theory
as to her ability to place any one satis
factorily in the scale of culture according
to his degree of appreciation of " Rabbi ben

[57]

A PHILANTHROPIST

Ezra " was unfortunately known to her
lodger before she could with any veri
similitude produce the book, and he was
wary of committing himself. The ex
quisite effrontery with which she finally
brought out her gray-green volume was
only equalled by the forbearing courtesy
with which he welcomed both it and her.
Nor did he offer any other comment
on her opening the book at a well-worn
page than an apologetic removal to the
only chair in the room more comfortable
than the one he was at the time occupy
ing. He listened in silence to her intel
ligent if somewhat sonorous rendering of
selected portions of cc Saul," thanking her
politely at the close, and only stipulating
that he should be allowed to return the
favor by a reading from one of his
own favorite poets. With a shocked re
membrance of certain yellow-covered vol
umes she had often cleared away from
the piazza, Miss Gould inquired if the
poet in question were English. On his

[58]

A PHILANTHROPIST

hearty affirmative she resigned herself
with no little interest to the opportunity
of seeing her way more clearly into this
baffling mind, horrified at his criticism of
the second reading for she had brought
the " Rabbi " forward at last.

"Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go ! "

she had intoned ; and, fixing her eye
sternly on the butterfly in white flannels,
she had asked him with a telling empha
sis what that meant to him ? With the
sweetest smile in the world, he had leaned
forward, sipped his tea, gazed thought
fully in the fire, and answered, with a
polite apology for the homeliness of the
illustration, that it reminded him most
strongly of a tack fixed in the seat of a
chair, with the attendant circumstances !
After a convulsive effort to include in
one terrible sentence all the scorn and

[59]

A PHILANTHROPIST

regret and pity that she felt, Miss Gould
had decided that silence was best, arid sat
back wondering why she suffered him
one instant in her parlor. He took
from the floor beside him at this point a
neat red volume, and, murmuring some
thing about his inability to do the poet
justice, he began to read. For one, two,
four minutes Miss Gould sat staring ;
then she interrupted him coldly :

cc And who is the author of that dog
gerel, Mr. Welles ? "

" Edward Lear, dear Miss Gould
and a great man, too."

" I think I might have been spared "
she began with such genuine anger that
any but her lodger would have quailed.
He, however, merely smiled.

" But the subtlety of it the immen
sity of the conception the power of
characterization!" he cried. "Just see
how quietly this is treated."

And to her amazement she let him go
on ; so that a chance visitor, entering un-

[60]

A PHILANTHROPIST

announced, might have been treated to
the delicious spectacle of a charming
middle-aged gentleman in white flannels
reading, near a birch fire and a priceless
pewter tea-service, to a handsome mid
dle-aged woman in black silk, the fol
lowing pregnant lines :

" There was an old person of Bow,
Whom nobody happened to know,
So they gave him some soap,
And said coldly, c We hope
You will go back directly to Bow !

And the illustration is worthy of the
text," he added enthusiastically, as he
passed the volume to her.

She had no sense of humor, but she
had a sense of justice, and it occurred to
her that after all an agreement was an
agreement. If to listen to insinuating
inanities was the price of his attention,
she would pay it. She had borne more
than this in order to do good.

So the readings continued, a source of
[61]

A PHILANTHROPIST

unmixed delight to her lodger and a great
spiritual discipline to herself.

As the days grew milder their inti
macy, profiting by the winter seclusion,
led him to accompany her on her various
errands. She was at first unwilling to
accept his escort it too clearly resem
bled a tacit consent to his idleness. But
his quiet persistence, together with his
evident cynicism as to the results of these
professional tours, accomplished, as usual,
his end ; and the wondering village might
observe on hot June mornings its bene
factress, languidly accompanied by a slen
der man in white flannels, balancing a
large white green-lined umbrella, picking
his way daintily along the dusty paths,
with a covered basket dangling from one
hand and a gray-green volume distending
one white pocket.

There was material, too, for the inter
ested observer in the picture of Miss
Gould distributing reading matter, fruit,
and lectures on household economy in
[6a]

A PHILANTHROPIST

the cottages of the mill-hands, while her
lodger pitched pennies with the delighted
children outside. It was on one of these
occasions that Miss Gould took the op
portunity to address Mr. Thomas Waters,
late of the paper and cardboard manu
facturing force, on the wickedness and
folly of his present course of action.
Mr. Waters had left his position on the
strength of his wife s financial success.
Mrs. Waters was a laundress, and the
summer boarders, together with Mr.
Welles, who alone went far toward es
tablishing the fortunes of the family, had
combined to place the head of the house
in his present condition of elegant leisure.
" I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after
all the interest we ve taken in you * Are
you not horribly ashamed to depend on
your wife in this lazy way ? " Miss Gould
demanded of the once member of the
Reformed Drunkards League. " How
many times have I explained to you that
nothing absolutely nothing is so dis-

[63]

A PHILANTHROPIST

graceful as a man who will not work ?
What were you placed in the world for ?
How do you justify your existence ? "

" How," replied her unabashed audi
ence, with a wave of his pipe toward the
front yard, where Mr. Welles was ami
ably superintending a wrestling match,
" does he justify hisn ? "

Had Miss Gould been less consistent
and less in earnest, there were many re
plies open to her. As it was, she colored
violently, bit her lip, made an inaudible
remark, and with a bitter glance at the
author of her confusion, now cheering
on to the conflict the scrambling Waters
children, she called their mother to ac
count for their presence in the yard at
this time on a school-day, and for the
first time in her life left the house with
out exacting a solemn promise of amend
ment from the head of the family.

" I guess I fixed her that time ! " Mr.
Waters remarked triumphantly, as he
summoned his second pair of twins from

[64]

A PHILANTHROPIST

the yard and demanded of them if the
gentleman had given them nickels or
dimes.

The gentleman in question became un
comfortably conscious, in the course of
their walk home, of an atmosphere not
wholly novel, that lost no strength in
this case from its studied repression.
That afternoon, as they sat in the shade
of the big elm, he in his flexible wicker
chair, she in a straight-backed, high-
seated legacy from her grandfather, the
whirlwind that Mr. Waters had so lightly
sown fell to the reaping of a victim too
amiable and unsuspecting not to escape
the sentence of any but so stern a judge
as the handsome and inflexible represen
tative of the moral order now before
him.

Miss Gould was looking her best in
a crisp lavender dimity, upon whose frills
Mrs. Waters had bestowed the grate
ful exercise of her highest art. Her sleek,
dark coils of hair, from which no one

[65]

A PHILANTHROPIST

stray lock escaped, framed her fresh
cheeks most admirably ; her strong white
hands appeared and disappeared with an
absolute regularity through the dark-
green wool out of which she was evolving
a hideous and useful shawl. To her
lodger, who alternately waved a palm-leaf
fan and drank lemonade, reading at in
tervals from a two-days-old newspaper,
and carrying on the desultory and amus
ing soliloquy that they were pleased to
consider conversation, she presented the
most attractive of pictures. " So firm,
so positive, so wholesome," he murmured
to himself, calling her attention to the
exquisite effect of the slanting rays that
struck the lawn in a dappled pattern of
flickering leaf-shadows, and remarking
the violet tinge thrown by the setting
sun on the old spire below in the mid
dle of the village. She did not answer
immediately, and when she did it was in
tones that he had learned from various
slight experiments to regard as finaL
[66]

A PHILANTHROPIST

" Mr. Welles," she said, bending upon
him that direct and placid regard that
rendered evasion difficult and paltering
impossible, " things have come to a
point " ; and she narrated the scene of
the morning.

" It is indeed a problem/ observed
her lodger gravely, " but what is one to
do? It is just such questions as this
that illustrate the futility "

" There is no question about it, Mr.
Welles," she interrupted gravely. " Tom
was right and I was wrong. There is no
use in my talking to him or anybody
while I while you while things are
as they are. You must make up your
mind, Mr. Welles."

"But, great heavens, dear Miss Gould,
what do you mean? What am I to
make up my mind about? Am I to
provide myself with an occupation, per
haps, for the sake of Tom Waters s prin
ciples ? Or am I "

"Yes. That is just it. You know

[67]

A PHILANTHROPIST

what I have always felt, Mr. Welles,
about it. But I never seemed to be
able to make you see. Now, as I say,
things have come to a point. You must
do something."

" But this is absurd, Miss Gould ! I
am not a child, and surely nobody can
dream of holding you in any way re
sponsible "

"/ hold myself responsible/ she re
plied simply, "and I have never approved
of it -never ! "

He shrugged his shoulders desperately.
She was imperturbable ; she was impossi
ble; she was beyond argument or persua
sion or ridicule.

" Suppose I say that I think the situa
tion is absurd, and that I refuse to be
placed at Mr. Waters s disposal?" he
suggested with a furtive glance. She
drew the ivory hook through the green
meshes a little faster.

" I should be obliged to refuse to re-

[68]

A PHILANTHROPIST

new your lease in the fall," she answered.
He started from his wicker chair.

" You cannot mean it, Miss Gould !
You would not be so so unkind, so
unjust ! "

"I should feel obliged to, Mr. Welles,
and I should not feel unjust."

He sank back into the yielding chair
with a sigh. After all, her fascination
had always lain in her great decision.
Was it not illogical to expect her to fail to
display it at such a crisis? There was a
long silence. The sun sank lower and
lower, the birds twittered happily around
them. Miss Gould s long white hook
slipped in and out of the wool, and her
lodger s eyes followed it absently. After
a while he rose, settled his white jacket
elaborately, and half turned as if to go
back to the house.

" I need not tell you how I regret this
unfortunate decision of yours," he said
politely, with a slight touch of the hauteur

[6 9 ]

A PHILANTHROPIST

that sat so well on his graceful person.
" I can only say that I am sorry you
yourself should regret it so little, and
that I hope it will not disturb our pleas
ant acquaintance during the weeks that
remain to me/

She bowed slightly with a dignified
gesture that often served her as a reply,
and he took a step toward her.

" Would we not better come in ? " he
suggested. " The sun is gone, and your
dress is thin. Let me send Henry after
the chairs," and his eyes dropped to her
hands again. They were nearly hidden
by the green wool, but the long needle
quivered like a leaf in the wind ; she
could not pass it between the thread and
her white forefinger. He hesitated a
moment, glanced at her face, smiled in
scrutably, and deliberately reseated him
self.

" What in the world could I do, you
see ? " he inquired meditatively, as if that
had been the subject under discussion for

[70]

A PHILANTHROPIST

some time. " I can t make cardboard
boxes, you know. It s perfectly useless,
my going into a factory. Wheels and
belts and things always give me the mad
dest longing to jump into them I
couldn t resist it ! And that would be
so unpleasant "

She dropped her wool and clasped her
hands under it.

" Oh, Mr. Welles," she cried eagerly,
" how absurd ! As if I meant that ! As
if I meant anything like it ! "

<c Had you thought of anything, then ? "
he asked interestedly.

She nodded gravely. " Why, yes,"
she said. " It wouldn t be right for me
to say you must do something, and then
offer no suggestions whatever, knowing
as I do how you feel about it. I thought
of such a good plan, and one that would
be the best possible answer to Tom "

<c Oh, good heavens ! " murmured her
lodger, but she went on quickly : " You
know I was going to open the soup-

[71]

A PHILANTHROPIST

kitchen in October. Well, I ve just
thought. Why not get the Rooms all
ready, and the reading-room moved over
there, and have lemonade and sandwiches
and sarsaparilla, and Kitty Waters to be
gin to serve right away, as she s begin
ning to run the streets again, and Annabel
Riley with her ? Then the Civic Club
can have its headquarters there, and peo
ple will begin to be used to it before cold
weather."

" And I am to serve sarsaparilla and
sandwiches with Kitty and Annabel ?
Really, dear Miss Gould, if you knew
how horribly ill sarsaparilla is certain to
make me I have loathed it from child
hood

" Oh, no, no, no ! " she interrupted,
with her sweet, tolerant smile. She smiled
at him as if he had been a child.

" You know I never meant that you
should work all day, Mr. Welles. It
isn t at all necessary. I have always felt
that an hour or two a day of intelligent,

A PHILANTHROPIST

cultivated work was fully equal to a
much longer space of manual labor that
is more mechanical, more tiresome."

" Better fifty years of poker than a
cycle of croquet ! " her lodger murmured.
" Yes, I have always felt that myself."

" And somebody must be there from
ten to twelve, say, in the mornings, in
what we call the office ; just to keep
an eye on things, and answer questions
about the kitchen, and watch the reading-
room, and recommend the periodicals,
and take the children s Civic League re
ports, and oversee the Rooms generally.
Now I d be there Wednesdays to meet
the mothers, and Mrs. Underwood Sat
urdays for the Band of Hope and the
kitchen-garden. It would be just Mon
days, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays
from ten to twelve, say ! "

" From ten to twelve, say," he re
peated absently, with his eyes on her
handsome, eager face. He had never
seen her so animated, so girlishly insist-

[73]

A PHILANTHROPIST

ent. She urged with the vivid earnest
ness of twenty years.

" My dear lady/ he brought out
finally, cc you are like Greek architecture
or Eastlake furniture or or c God Save
the Queen perfectly absolute ! And
I am so hideously relative But, after
all, why should a sense of humor be an
essential ? One is really more complete
I suppose Mahomet had none When
shall I begin ? "

The interested villagers were informed
early and regularly of the progress of the
latest scheme of their benefactress.
Henry and Mr. Waters furnished most
satisfactory and detailed bulletins to gath
erings of leisurely and congenial spirits,
who listened with incredulous amazement
to the accounts of Mr. Welles s pro
ceedings.

" Him an that hired man o his, they
have took more stuff over to them Rooms
than you c d shake a stick at ! I never
see nothing like it never ! Waxed that

[74]

A PHILANTHROPIST

floor, they have, and put more mats onto
it fur and colored. An the stuff
oh, Lord ! China all that blue china
he got fr m ol Mis Simms, an them ol
stoneware platters that Mis Rivers was
goin to fire away, an he give her two
dollars for the lot all that s scattered
round on tables and shelves. An that
ol black secr tary he got fr m Lord
knows where, an brakes growin in col
ored pots standin right up there, an
statyers o men an women no heads
onto em, some ain t got ; it s all one
to him he d buy any ol thing so s
twas broke, you might say. An them
ol straight chairs no upholsterin on
em, an some o them wicker kind that
bends any way, with pillers in em. An
cups and sassers, with a tea-pot n -kittle ;
an he makes tea himself an drinks it
I swear it s so. An a guitar, an , Lord,
the pictures ! You can t see no wall for
em!

" It s a mighty lucky thing, havin

[75]

A PHILANTHROPIST

this room, Thompson/ says he to that
hired man, c the things was spillin over.
We ll make it a bower o beauty,
Thompson, says he. c Yes, sir/ says
the man. That s all he ever says, you
might say. I never see nothin like it,
never, the way that hired man talks to
him; you d think he was the Queen o
Sheba.

" An he goes squintin about here an
there, changin this an that, an singm
away an laughin you d think he d
have a fit. Seems s if he loved to putter
about n fool with things in a room, like
women. I heard him say so myself. I
was helpin Miss Gould with the other
rooms she ain t seen his; she don t
know no more n the dead what he s got
in there an I was by the door when
he said it.

" Thompson/ says he, c if I don t
keep my present situation/ says he, c I
c n go out as a decorator an furnisher.
Don t you think I d succeed, Thomp-

[76]

A PHILANTHROPIST

son? says he. c Yes, sir, says Thomp
son.

" You see, we ve got to do something
Thompson, says he. c We ve got ter
justify our existence, Thompson, an he
commenced to laugh. c Yes, sir, says
Thompson. Beats all I ever see, the
way that man answers back ! "

An almost unprecedented headache,
brought on by her unremitting labor in
effecting the change in the Rooms, kept
Miss Gould in the house for two days
after the new headquarters had been sat
isfactorily arranged ; and as Mr. Welles
had refused to open his office for inspec
tion till it was completely furnished, she
did not enter that characteristic apart
ment till the third day of its official ex
istence.

As she went through the narrow hall
way connecting the four rooms on which
the social regeneration of her village de
pended, she caught the sweet low thrum
of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive

[77]

A PHILANTHROPIST

voice burst forth into a chant, whose lit
eral significance she was unable to grasp,
owing to lack of familiarity with the lan
guage in which it was couched, but whose
general tenor no one could mistake, so
tender and arch was the rendering.

With a vague thrill of apprehension she
threw open the door.

Sunk in cushions, a tea-cup on the
arm of his chair, a guitar resting on his
white flannel sleeve, reclined the director
of the Rooms. Over his head hung a
large and exquisite copy of the Botticelli
Venus. Miss Gould s horrified gaze fled
from this work of art to rest on a repre
sentation in bronze of the same repre
hensible goddess, clothed, to be sure, a
little more in accordance with the views
of a retired New England community,
yet leaving much to be desired in this
direction. Kitty Waters attentively filled
his empty cup, beaming the while, and
the once errant Annabel, sitting on a low
stool at his feet, with a red bow in her

[78]

A PHILANTHROPIST

pretty hair, and her great brown eyes
fixed adoringly on his face as he directed
the fascinating incomprehensible little
song straight at her charming self, was
obviously in no present danger of run
ning the streets.

" Good morning, Miss Gould ! " he
said cheerfully, rising and handing the
guitar to the abashed Annabel. "And
you are really quite recovered ? Cest
bien ! Business is dull, and we are amus
ing each other, you see. How do you
like the rooms ? I flatter myself "

" If you flattered none but yourself,
Mr. Welles, much harm would be avoid
ed," she interrupted with uncompromising
directness. " Kitty and Annabel, I can
not see how you can possibly tell how
many people may or may not be wanting
lunch ! "

" Billy Rider tells us when any one
comes," the director assured her. " They
don t come till twelve, anyway, and then
they want to see the room, mostly

[79]

A PHILANTHROPIST

which we show them, don t we, Anna
bel ? "

Annabel blushed, cast down her eyes,
lifted them, showed her dimples, and re
plied in the words, if not in the accents,
of Thompson : " Yes, sir ! "

" It s really going to be an education
in itself, don t you think so ? " he con
tinued. " It s amazing how the people
like it it s really quite gratifying. Per
haps it may be my mission to abolish
the chromo and the tidy from off the face
of New England ! We have had crowds
here just to look at the pictures."

" I don t doubt it ! " replied Miss
Gould briefly.

" And I got the most attractive sugar-
bowl from the little boy who brought
in the reports about picking up papers
and such things from the streets. He
said he ought to have five cents, so I
gave him a dime I hadn t five and
I bought the bowl. Annabel, my child,
bring me "

[80]

A PHILANTHROPIST

But Annabel and her fellow-waitress
had disappeared. Miss Gould sat in si
lence. At intervals her perplexed gaze
rested unconsciously on the Botticelli
Venus, from which she instantly with a
slight frown lowered it and regarded the
floor. When she at last met his eyes
the expression of her own was so trou
bled, the droop of her firm mouth so
pathetic and unusual, that he left his
chair and dragged the little stool to her
feet, assuming an attitude so boyish and
graceful that in spite of herself she smiled
at him.

" What is the matter ? " he asked con
fidentially. " Is anything wrong ? Don t
you like the room ? I enjoy it tremen
dously, myself. I ve been here almost
all the time since it was done. I think
Tom Waters must be tremendously im
pressed "

c < That s the trouble ; he is," said Miss
Gould simply.

" Trouble ? trouble ? Is his impres-
[81]

A PHILANTHROPIST

sion unfavorable ? Heavens, how un
fortunate ! " exclaimed the director airily.
" Surely, my application Does the
room fail to meet his approval, or "

" Yes, it does," she interrupted.
" He says it s no place for a man to be
in ; and he says the pictures are are
well, he says they are improper ! " glan
cing at the Venus.

" Ah ! " responded the director with
a suspicious sweetness. " He does not
care for the nude, then ? "

She sighed deeply. "Oh, Mr. Welles !"

" It is indeed to be regretted that Mr.
Waters s ideals are so high and shall
we say so elusive ? " proceeded the
director smoothly. " It is so difficult
so well-nigh impossible to satisfy him.
One devotes one s energies I may say
one slaves night and day to win some
slight mark of approval; and just as one
is about to reap the well-earned reward
a smile, a word of appreciation all is
forfeited ! It is hard indeed ! Would

[82]

A PHILANTHROPIST

you suggest the rearrangement of the
Rooms under Mr. Waters s direction ?
Thompson is at his service "

" Oh, Mr. Welles ! " she sighed hope
lessly. " It isn t only that ! It s not
alone the room, though Mrs. Under
wood wonders that I should think she
would be able to conduct the Band of
Hope in here, and Mrs. Rider says that
after what her husband told her she
should no more think of sitting here for
a mothers meeting than anything in
the world. It s the whole thing. Why
did you treat them all to lemonade the
first day ? Surely you knew that our
one aim is to prevent miscellaneous
charity. And Tom says you smoked in
here he smelt it."

" I smelt him, too," remarked the di
rector calmly. cc That was one reason
why I smoked."

" And and having Kitty and Anna
bel here all the time ! The Girls Club
are so j Well, the Girls Club like

[83]

A PHILANTHROPIST

the old rooms better, they say, and it s
so difficult to get them to work together
at best. And now we shall have to work
so hard

"And the men think it s just a joke,
the lemonade and everything, and the
room gave them such a wrong impres
sion, and they don t seem to want it,
anyway. Tom Waters says he can t
abide sarsaparilla "

"Great heavens!" the director broke
in, " is it possible? A point on which Mr.
Waters s opinion coincides with mine ?
I have not lived in vain ! But this is
too much; I have not deserved "

"Oh, don t!" she begged. "There
is more. When I corrected Annabel
for what I had heard about her her
impertinent behavior, she said that Mrs.
Underwood had never approved of the
whole thing, and that if I had consulted
her she would never have given her con
sent to your being here, and that I was
dictatorial I!"

A PHILANTHROPIST

Her lodger coughed and ejaculated,
" You, indeed ! "

" And when I said that their ingrati
tude actually made me wonder why I
worked so hard for them, she said oh,
dear ! It is all dreadful ! I don t know
what to do ! "

"I do ! " returned her lodger promptly.
"Go away and leave em! They aren t
fit to trouble you any more. Besides,
they re really not so bad, after all, you
know. There has to be just about so
much laziness and and that sort of
thing, don t you see. Look at me, for
instance ! Think of how much misdi
rected energy I balance ! And it gives
other people something to do. . . . Go
away and leave it all for a while ! " he
repeated smilingly.

" Go away ! But where ? Why should
I ? What do you mean ? " she stammered,
confused at something in his eyes, which
never left her face.

"To England you said you d like

[85]

A PHILANTHROPIST

to see it. With me for I certainly
couldn t stay here alone. Why do you
suppose I stay, dear lady? I used to
wonder myself. No, sit still, don t
get up ! I am about to make you an
offer of marriage ; indeed, I am seri
ous, Miss Gould !

" I don t see that it s ridiculous at
all. I see every practical reason in favor
of it. In the first place, if they are gos
siping oh, yes, Thompson told me,
and I wonder that they hadn t before:
these villages are dreadful places I
couldn t very well stay, you see; and then
where should I put all my things? In
the second place, I have so much stuff,
and there s no house fit for it but but
ours; and if we were married I could
have just twice as much room for it
and I m getting far too much for my
side. In the third place, I find that I
can t look forward with any pleasure to
travelling about alone, because, in the
fourth place, I ve grown so tremendously
[86]

A PHILANTHROPIST

fond of you, dear Miss Gould ! I think
you don t dislike me?"

She plucked the guitar strings ner
vously with her white, strong fingers.
The rich, vibrating tones of it filled the
room and confused her still more.

" People will say that I that we "
He caught her hand : it had never been
kissed before. " Would you rather I
went away and then there would be noth
ing left for them to say?" he asked softly.

She caught her breath.

"I m too "

" You are too charming not to have
some one who appreciates the fact as
thoroughly as I do," he interrupted
gallantly. " I think you do me so
much good, you know," he added, still
holding her hand. She looked at him
directly for the first time.

" Do I really? Is that true?" she de
manded, with a return of her old man
ner so complete and sudden as to startle
him. " If I thought that "

[87]

A PHILANTHROPIST

"You would?" he asked with a smile.
" I thought so ! Here is a village that
scorns your efforts and a respectful suitor
who implores them. Can you hesitate?"

His smile was irresistible, and she re
turned it half reprovingly. " Will you
never be serious ? " she said. " I won
der that I can " She stopped.

"That you can " he repeated, watch
ing her blush, but she would not finish.

" You must not think that I can give
up my work my real work so easily,"
she said, rising and looking down on him
with a return of her simple impressive
seriousness. " I shall have to consider.
I have been very much disturbed by their
conduct. I will see you after supper,"
and with a gesture that told him to re
main, she left the room, her head high as
she caught Annabel s voice from outside.
She turned in the door, however, and the
stern curves of her mouth melted with a
smile so sweet, a promise so gracious and
so tender, that when her eyes, frank and
[88]

A PHILANTHROPIST

direct as a boy s, left his, he looked long
at the closed door, wondering at the
quickening of his pulses.

A moment later he heard her voice,
imperious and clear, and the mumble of
Mr. Waters s unavailing if never-ending
excuses. He laughed softly to himself,
and touched the strings of the guitar that
she had struck. " I shall save the wor
thy Thomas much," he murmured to
himself, "and of course I do it to reform
her I cannot pull down the village and
die with the Philistines ! "

She went up the long main street, Mr.
Waters at her side and Annabel Riley
behind her. Her lodger watched her out
of sight, and prepared to lock up the
Rooms.

"So firm, so positive, so wholesome!"
he said, as he started after her.

[89]

A REVERSION TO TYPE

A REVERSION TO TYPE

SHE had never felt so tired of it all,
it seemed to her. The sun streamed
hot across the backs of the shining seats
into her eyes, but she was too tired to
get the window-pole. She watched the
incoming class listlessly, wondering whe
ther it would be worth while to ask one
of them to close the shutter. They chat
tered and giggled and bustled in, rattling
the chairs about, and begging one an
other s pardon vociferously, with that in
sistent politeness which marks a sharply
defined stage in the social evolution of the
young girl. They irritated her exces
sively these little airs and graces. She

[93]

A REVERSION TO TYPE

opened her book with a snap, and began
to call the roll sharply.

Midway up the room sat a tall, dark
girl, not handsome, but noticeably well
dressed. She looked politely at her ques
tioner when spoken to, but seemed as far
in spirit as the distant trees toward which
she directed her attention when not par
ticularly addressed. She seemed to have
a certain personality, a self-possession, a
source of interest other than collegiate ;
and this held her apart from the others in
the mind of the woman who sat before
the desk.

What was that girl thinking of, she
wondered, as she called another name and
glanced at the book to gather material
for a question. What a perfect taste had
combined that dark, brocaded vest with
the dull, rough cloth of the suit and
she dressed her hair so well ! She had a
beautiful band of pearls on one finger :
was it an engagement-ring ? No, that
would be a solitaire.

[94]

A REVERSION TO TYPE

And all this time she called names from
the interminable list, and mechanically
corrected the mistakes of their owners.
Her eyes went back to the girl in the
middle row, who turned her head and
yawned a little. They took their educa
tion very easily, these maidens.

How she had saved and denied herself,
and even consented to the indebtedness
she so hated, to gain that coveted Ger
man winter ! And how delightful it had
been !

Almost she saw again the dear home
of that blessed year : the kindly house
mother; the chubby Made hen, who
knitted her a silk purse, and cried when
she left; the father with his beloved
cello and his deep, honest voice.

How cunning the little Bertha had
been ! How pleasant it was to hear her
gay little voice when one came down the
shady street ! " Da ist sie, ja ! " she
would call to her mother, and then Her
mann would come up to her with his

[95]

A REVERSION TO TYPE

hands outstretched. Had she had a
hard day ? Was the lecture good ?
How brown his beard was, and how deep
and faithful his brown eyes were ! And
he used to sing why were there no bass
voices in the States ? " Kennst du das
Land" he used to sing, and his mother
cried softly to herself for pleasure. And
once she herself had cried a little.

"No," she said to the girl who was
reciting, " no, it takes the dative. I can
not seem to impress sufficiently on your
minds the necessity for learning that list
thoroughly. You may translate now."

And they translated. H ow they drawled
it over, the beautiful, rich German.
Hermann had begged so, but she had
felt differently then. She had loved her
work in anticipation. To marry and settle
down she was not ready. It would be
so good to be independent. And now
But it was too late. That was years ago.
Hermann must have found some yellow-
braided, blue-eyed Dorothea by this

[96]

A REVERSION TO TYPE

some Mddchen who cared not for calcu
lus and Hebrew, but only to be what her
mother had been, wife and house-mother.
But this was treason. Our grand
mothers had thought that.

She looked at the girl in the middle
row. What beautiful hair she had !
What an idiot she was to give up four
years of her life to this round of work
and play and pretence of living ! Oh, to
go back to Germany to see Bertha
and her mother again, and hear the father s
cello ! Hermann had loved her so ! He
had said, so quietly and yet so surely :
" But thou wilt come back, my heart s
own. And always I wait here for thee.
Make me not wait long ! " He had
seemed too quiet then too slow and too
easily content. She had wanted quicker,
busier, more individual life. And now
her heart said, " O fool ! "

Was it too late ? Suppose she should
go, after all ? Suppose she should go,
and all should be as it had been, only a

[97]

A REVERSION TO TYPE

little older, a little more quiet and peace
ful ? The very fancy rilled her heart with
sudden calm. A love so deep and sure,
so broad and sweet could it not dignify
any woman s life ? And she had been
thought worthy and had refused this love!
O fool !

Suppose she went and found her
heart beat too quickly, and her face
flushed. She called on the bright girl in
the front row.

"And what havejy0# learned?" she said.

The girl coughed importantly. " It is
a poem of Goethe s," she announced in
her high, satisfied voice. " Kennst du das
Land "

" That will do," said the German as
sistant. " I fear we shall not have time
for it to-day. The hour is up. You may
go on with the translation for to-mor
row." And as the class rose with a grow
ing clamor she realized that though she
had been thinking steadily in German,
she had been talking in English. So that

[98]

A REVERSION TO TYPE

was why they had comprehended so well
and answered so readily ! And yet she
was too glad to be annoyed at the slip.
There were other things : her life was
not a German class !

As the girls crowded out, one stopped
by the desk. She laid her hand with the
pearl band on the third finger on the
teacher s arm. " You look tired," she
said. " I hope you re not ill ? "

" 111 ? " said the woman at the desk.
" I never felt better. I ve been neglect
ing my classes, I fear, in the study of
your green gown. It is so very pretty."

The girl smiled and colored a little.

" I m glad you like it," she said. " I
like it, too." Then, with a sudden feel
ing of friendship, an odd sense of inti
macy, a quick impulse of common femi
ninity, she added :

" I ve had some good times in this
dress. Wearing it up here makes me re
member them very strangely. It s queer,
what a difference it makes " She

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stopped and looked questioningly at the
older woman.

But the German assistant smiled at her.
" Yes," she said, " it is. And when you
have been teaching seven years the dif
ference becomes very apparent/ She
gathered up her books, still smiling in a
reminiscent way. And as she went out
of the door, she looked back at the glar
ing, sunny room as if already it were far
behind her, as if already she felt the
house-mother s kiss, and heard the cello,
and saw Klara s tiny daughter standing
by the door, throwing kisses, calling,
" Da ist sie,ja ! "

Lost in the dream, her eyes fixed ab
sently, she stumbled against her fellow-
assistant, who was making for the room
she had just left.

" I beg your pardon I wasn t look
ing. Oh, it s you!" she murmured
vaguely. Her fellow-assistant had a
headache, and forty-five written papers
to correct. She had just heard, too, a
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cutting criticism of her work made by
the self-appointed faculty critic ; the
criticism was cleverly worded, and had
just enough truth to fly quickly and hurt
her with the head of her department. So
she was not in the best of tempers.

" Yes, it s I," she said crossly. " If
you had knocked these papers an inch
farther, I should have invited you to cor
rect them. If you go about in that ab
stracted way much longer, my dear, Miss
Selbourne will inform the world (on the
very best authority) that you re in love. "

" I ? What nonsense ! "

It was a ridiculous thing to say, and she
flushed angrily at herself. It was only a
joke, of course.

The other woman laughed shortly.

" Dear me ! I really believe you are ! "
she exclaimed. " The girls were saying
at breakfast that Professor Tredick was
ruining himself in violets yesterday so
it was for you ! " and she went into the
lecture-room.

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A chattering crowd of girls closed in
behind her. One voice rose above the
rest :

" Well, I don t know what you call it,
then. He skated with her all the winter,
and at the Dickinson party they sat on
one sofa for an hour and talked steadily ! "

" Oh, nonsense ! She skates beauti
fully, that s all."

" She sits on a sofa beautifully, too."
A burst of laughter, and the door closed.

The German assistant smiled satirically.
It was all of a piece. At least, the
younger women were perfectly frank
about it : they did not feel themselves
forced to employ sarcasm in their refer
ences ; it was not necessary for them to
appear to have definitely chosen this life
in preference to any other. Four years
was little to lend to such an experiment.
But the older women, who sat on those
prim little platforms year after year a
sudden curiosity possessed her to know
how many of them were really satisfied.
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Could it be that they had preferred
actually preferred But she had, herself,
three years ago. She shook her head
decidedly. " Not for nine years, not for
nine ! " she murmured, as she caught
through the heavy door a familiar voice
raised to emphasize some French phrase.

And yet, somebody must teach them.
They could not be born with foreign
idioms and historical dates and mathe
matical formulae in their little heads.
She herself deplored the modern tendency
that sent a changing drift of young teach
ers through the colleges, to learn at the
expense of the students a soon relinquished
profession. But how ridiculous the posi
tion of the women who prided themselves
on the steadiness and continuity of their
service ! Surely they must find it an empty
success at times. They must regret.

She was passing through the chapel.
Two scrubbing-women were straightening
the chairs, their backs turned to her.

" From all I hear," said one, with a

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chuckle and a sly glance, "we ll be afther
gettin our invitations soon. *

" An to what ? " demanded the other
quickly.

" Sure, they say it s a weddin ."

cc Ah, now, hush yer noise, Mary
Nolan ; tis no such thing. I ve had
enough o husbands. I know when I m
doin well, an that s as I am ! "

" Tis strange that the men sh d think
different, now, but they do ! "

They laughed heartily and long. The
German assistant looked at the broad
backs meditatively. Just now they
seemed to her more consistent than any
other women in the great building.

She walked quickly across the greening
campus. The close-set brick buildings
seemed to press up against her ; every
window stood for some crowded, narrow
room, filled with books and tea-cups and
clothes and photographs hundreds of
them, and all alike. In her own room
she tried to reason herself out of this
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intolerable depression, to realize the ad
vantages of a quiet life in what was surely
the same pleasant, cultured atmosphere
to which she had so eagerly looked for
ward three years ago. Her room was
large, well furnished, perfectly heated ;
and if the condition of her closet would
have appeared nothing short of appall
ing to a householder, that condition was
owing to the hopeless exigencies of the
occasion. With the exception of that
whited sepulchre, all was neat, artistic,
eminently habitable. She surveyed it
critically : the " Mona Lisa," the large
"Melrose Abbey," the Burne-Jones dra
peries, and the " Blessed Damozel " that
spread a placid if monotonous culture
through the rooms of educated single
women. A proper appreciation of pol
ished wood, the sanitary and aesthetic
values of the open fire, a certain scheme
in couch-pillows, all linked it to the dozen
other rooms that occupied the same rela
tive ground-floor corners in a dozen other

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houses. Some of them had more books,
some ran to handsome photographs, some
afforded fads in old furniture; but it was
only a question of more or less. It looked
utterly impersonal to-day ; its very atmos
phere was artificial, typical, a pretended
self-sufficiency.

How many years more should she live
in it three, nine, thirteen ? The tide
of girls would ebb and flow with every
June and September; eighteen to twenty-
two would ring their changes through the
terms, and she could take her choice of
the two methods of regarding them : she
could insist on a perennial interest in the
separate personalities, and endure weari
ness for the sake of an uncertain influ
ence ; or she could mass them frankly as
the student body, and confine the con
nection to marking their class-room efforts
and serving their meat in the dining-room.
The latter was at once more honest and
more easy ; all but the most ambitious
or the most conscientious came to it
sooner or later.

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The youngest among the assistants,
themselves fresh from college, mingled
naturally enough with the students; they
danced and skated and enjoyed their
girlish authority. The older women,
seasoned to the life, settled there indefi
nitely, identified themselves more or less
with the town, amused themselves with
their little aristocracy of precedence, and
wove and interwove the complicated,
slender strands of college gossip. But a
woman of barely thirty, too old for
friendships with young girls, too young
to find her placid recreation in the stereo
typed round of social functions, that
seemed so perfectly imitative of the nor
mal and yet so curiously unsuccessful at
bottom what was there for her?

Her eyes were fixed on the hill-slope
view that made her room so desirable.
It occurred to her that its changelessness
was not necessarily so attractive a charac
teristic as the local poets practised them
selves in assuring her.

A light knock at the door recalled to

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her the utter lack of privacy that put her
at the mercy of laundress, sophomore,
and expressman. She regretted that she
had not put up the little sign whose
" Please do not disturb " was her only
means of defence.

" Come ! " she called shortly, and the
tall girl in the green dress stood in the
open door. A strange sense of long ac
quaintance, a vague feeling of familiarity,
surprised the older woman. Her expres
sion changed.

" Come in," she said cordially.

"I am I disturbing you?" asked the
girl doubtfully. She had a pile of books
on her arm ; her trim jacket and hat, and
something in the way she held her arm
ful, seemed curiously at variance with her
tam-o -shantered, golf-caped friends.

" I couldn t find out whether you had
an office hour, and I didn t know whether
I ought to have sent in my name it
seemed so formal, when it is only a mo
ment I need to see you "
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"Sit down," said the German assistant
pleasantly. "What can I do for you?"

" I have been talking with Fraulein
Miiller about my German, and she says
if you are willing to give me an outline
for advanced work and an examination
later on, I can go into a higher division
in a little while. Languages are always
easy for me, and I could go on much
quicker."

" Oh, certainly. I have thought more
than once that you were wasting your
time. The class is too large and too
slow. I will make you out an outline and
give it to you after class to-morrow,"
said the German assistant promptly.
" Meanwhile, won t you stay and make
me a little call ? I will light the fire and
make some tea, if that is an inducement."

"The invitation is inducement enough,
I assure you," smiled the girl, " but I
must not stay to-day, I think. If you
will let me come again, when I have no
work to bother you with, I should love to."
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There was something easily decisive in
her manner, something very different
from the other students, who refused
such invitations awkwardly, eager to be
pressed, and when finally assured of a
sincere welcome, prolonged their calls and
talked about themselves into the un
counted hours. Evidently she would
not stay this time ; evidently she would
like to come again.

As the door closed behind her the
German assistant dropped her cordial
smile and sank back listlessly in her
chair.

" After all, she s only a girl ! " she
murmured. For almost an hour she sat
looking fixedly at the unlit logs, hardly
conscious of the wasted time. Much
might have gone into that hour. There
was tea for her at one of the college
houses the hostess had a "day," and
went so far as to aspire to the exclusive
serving of a certain kind of tinned fancy
biscuit every Friday if she wanted to
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drop in. This hostess invited favored
students to meet the faculty and towns
people on these occasions, and the two
latter classes were expected to effect a
social fusion with the former which
linked it, to some minds, a little too ob
viously with professional duties.

She might call on the head of her de
partment, who was suffering from some
slight indisposition, and receive minute
advice as to the conduct of her classes,
mingled with general criticism of various
colleagues and their methods. She might
make a number of calls; but if there is
one situation in which the futility of these
social mockeries becomes most thoroughly
obvious, it is the situation presented by
an attempt to imitate the conventional
society life in a woman s college. And
yet she had gone over the whole ques
tion so often what a desert of awk
wardness and learned provincialism such
a college would be without the attempt !
How often she had cordially agreed to

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the statement that it was precisely be
cause of its insistence upon this connec
tion with the forms and relations of
normal life that her college was so suc
cessfully free from the tomboyishness or
the priggishness or the gaucherie of some
of the others ! And yet its very success
came from begging the question, after all.

She shook her head impatiently. A
strong odor of boiling chocolate crept
through the transom. Somebody began
to practise a monotonous accompaniment
on the guitar. Over her head a series of
startling bumps and jarring falls suggested
a troupe of baby elephants practising for
their first appearance in public. The
German assistant set her teeth.

" Before I die," she announced to her
image in the glass, " I propose to in
quire flatly of Miss Burgess if she does
pile her furniture in a heap and slide
down it on her toboggan ! There is no
other logical explanation of that horrible
disturbance."

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The face in the glass caught her atten
tion. It looked sallow, with lines under
the eyes. The hair rolled back a little
too severely for the prevailing mode,
and she recalled her late visitor s effec
tively adjusted side-combs, her soft, dark
waves.

" They have time for it, evidently,"
she mused, " and after all it is certainly
more important than modal auxiliaries ! "

And for half an hour she twisted and
looped and coiled, between the chiffonnier
and a hand-glass, fairly flushing with
pleasure at the result.

" Now," she said, looking cheerfully at
a pile of written papers, cc I 11 take a
walk, I think a real walk." And till
dinner-time she tramped some of the old
roads of her college days more girlish
than those days had found her, lighter-
footed, she thought, than before.

The flush was still in her cheeks as
she served her hungry tableful, and she
could not fail to catch the meaning of

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their frank stares. Pausing in the parlor
door to answer a question, she overheard
a bit of conversation :

cc Doesn t she look well with her hair
low ? Quite stunning, I think."

" Yes, indeed. If only she wouldn t
dress so old ! It makes her look older
than she is. That red waist she wears in
the evening is awfully becoming."

" Yes, I hate her in dark things."

The regret that she had not found
time to put on the red waist was so in
stant and keen that she laughed at her
self when alone in her room. She moved
vaguely about, aimlessly changing the
position of the furniture. How absurd !
To do one s hair differently, and take a
long walk, and feel as if an old life were
somehow far behind one !

Later she found herself before her
desk, hunting for her foreign letter-pa
per, and once started, her pen flew.
There were long meditative lapses, fol
lowed by nervous haste, as if to make up

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the lost time ; and just before the ten-
o clock bell she slipped out to mail a fat
brown-stamped envelope. The night-
watchman chuckled as he watched the
head shrouded in the golf-cape hood bend
a moment over the little white square.

" Maybe it s one o the maids, maybe
it s one o the teachers, maybe it s one o
the girls," he confided to his lantern ;
" they re all alike, come to that ! An a
good thing, too ! "

In the morning the German assistant
dismissed her last class early and took
train for Springfield. On the way to the
station a deferential clerk from the book
shop waylaid her.

" One moment, please. Those books
you spoke of. Mr. HartwelFs library is
up at auction and we re sending a man
to buy to-day. If you could get the
whole set for twenty-five dollars "

She smiled and shook her head. " I ve
changed my mind, thank you I can t
afford it. Yes, I suppose it is a bargain,

A REVERSION TO TYPE

but books are such a trouble to carry
about, you know. No, I don t think of
anything else."

What freedom, what a strange baseless
exhilaration ! Suppose suppose it was
all a mistake, and she should wake back
to the old stubborn, perfunctory reality !
Perhaps it was better, saner that quiet
taken-for-granted existence. Perhaps she
regretted but even with the half-fear at
her heart she laughed at that. If wake
she must, she loved the dream. How
she trusted that man ! tc Always I will
wait " and he would. But seven
years ! She threw the thought behind her.

The next days passed in a swift, con
fused flight. She knew they were all
discussing her, wondering at her changed
face, her fresh, becoming clothes ; they
decided that she had had money left her.

" Some of my girls saw you shopping
in Springfield last Saturday they say
you got some lovely waists," said her
fellow-assistant tentatively. " Was this

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one ? It s very sweet. You ought to
wear red a great deal, you look so well in
it. Did you know Professor Riggs spoke
of your hat with wild enthusiasm to Mrs.
Austin Sunday ? He said it was won
derful what a difference a stylish hat
made. Not that he meant, of course
Well, it s lovely to be able to get what
you want. Goodness knows, I wish I
could."

The other laughed. " Oh, it s per
fectly easy if you really want to," she
said, " it all depends on what you want,
you know."

For the first week she moved in a kind
of exaltation. It was partly that her
glass showed her a different woman : soft-
eyed, with cheeks tinted from the long,
restless walks through the spring that
was coming on with every warm, green
ing day. The excitement of the letter
hung over her. She pictured her an
nouncement, Fraulein Miiller s amazed
questions.

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" c But but I do not understand !
You are not well ?

" Perfectly, thank you/

" c But I am perfectly satisfied : I do
not wish to change. You are not sick,
then ?

" c Only of teaching, Fraulein.

C ( But the instructorship I was go
ing to recommend do not be alarmed ;
you shall have it surely !

" c You are very kind, but I have
taught long enough.

" c Then you do not find another po
sition ? Are you to be

Always here her heart sank. Was
she ? What real basis had all this sweet,
disturbing dream ? To write so to a
man after seven years ! It was not de
cent. She grew satiric. How embarrass
ing for him to read such a letter in the
bosom of an affectionate, flaxen-haired
family ! At least, she would never know
how he really felt, thank Heaven. And
what was left for her then? To her
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own mind she had burned her bridges
already. She was as far from this place
in fancy as if the miles stretched verita
bly between them. And yet she knew
no other life. She knew no other men.
He was the only one. In a flash of
shame it came over her that a woman
with more experience would never have
written such a letter. Everybody knew
that men forget, change, easily replace
first loves. Nobody but such a clois
tered, academic spinster as she would have
trusted a seven years promise. This
was another result of such lives as they
led such helpless, provincial women.
Her resentment grew against the place.
It had made her a fool.

It was Sunday afternoon, and she had
omitted, in deference to the day, the
short skirt and walking-hat of her week
day stroll. Sunk in accusing shame, her
cheeks flaming under her wide, dark hat,
her quick step more sweeping than she
knew, her eyes on the ground, she just

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escaped collision with a suddenly loom
ing masculine figure. A hasty apology,
a startled glance of appeal, a quick breath
that parted her lips, and she was past the
stranger. But not before she had caught
in his eyes a look that quickened her heart,
that soothed her angry humility. The
sudden sincere admiration, the involun
tary tribute to her charm, was new to her,
but the instinct of countless generations
made it as plain and as much her pre
rogative as if she had been the most suc
cessful debutante. She was not, then, an
object of pity, to be treasured for the
sake of the old days ; other men, too
the impulse outstripped thought, but she
caught up with it.

" How dreadful ! " she murmured,
with a consciousness of undreamed depths
in herself. " Of course he is the only
one the only one !" and across the
water she begged his forgiveness.

But through all her agony of doubt in
the days that followed, one shame was
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miraculously removed, one hope sang
faintly beneath : she, too, had her power !
A glance in the street had called her from
one army of her sisters to the other, and
the difference was inestimable.

Her classes stared at her with naive
admiration. The girls in the house
begged for her as a chaperon to Am-
herst entertainments, and sulked when a
report that the young hosts found her too
attractive to enable strangers to distinguish
readily between her and her charges ren
dered another selection advisable. The
fact that her interest in them was fitful,
sometimes making her merry and inti
mate, sometimes relegating them to a
connection purely professional, only left
her more interesting to them ; and boxes
of flowers, respectful solicitations to
spreads, and tempting invitations to long
drives through the lengthening afternoons
began to elect her to an obvious popu
larity. Once it would have meant much
to her ; she marvelled now at the little
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shade of jealousy with which her colleagues
assured her of it. How long must she
wait ? When would life be real again ?

She seemed to herself to move in a
dream that heightened and strained
quicker as it neared an inevitable shock
of waking to what ? Even at the best,
to what? Even supposing that she
put it boldly, as if it had been another
woman she should marry the man who
had asked her seven years ago, what was
there in the very obvious future thus as
sured her that could match the hopes her
heart held out ? How could it be at once
the golden harbor, the peaceful end of
hurried, empty years, and the delicious,
shifting unrest that made a tumult of her
days and nights ? Yet something told
her that it was ; something repeated in
sistently, " Always I will wait." . . .
He would keep faith, that grave, big
man !

But every day, as she moved with
tightened lips to the table where the mail
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lay spread, coloring at a foreign stamp,
paling with the disappointment, her hope
grew fainter. He dared not write and
tell her. It was over. Violet shadows
darkened her eyes ; a feverish flush made
her, as it grew and faded at the slightest
warning, more girlish than ever.

But the young life about her seemed
only to mock her own late weakened im
pulse. It was not the same. She was
playing heavy stakes : they hardly real
ized the game. All but one, they irri
tated her. This one, since her first short
call, had come and come again. No ex
planations, no confidences, had passed
between them ; their sympathy, deep-
rooted, expressed itself perfectly in the
ordinary conventional tone of two re
served if congenial natures. The girl did
not discuss herself, the woman dared not.
They talked of books, music, travel ;
never, as if by tacit agreement, of any of
the countless possible personalities in a
place so given to personal discussion.

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She could not have told how she knew
that the girl had come to college to please
a mother whose great regret was to have
missed such training, nor did she remem
ber when her incurious friend had learned
her tense determination of flight; she
could have sworn that she had never
spoken of it. Sometimes, so perfectly
did they appear to understand each other
beneath an indifferent conversation, it
seemed to her that the words must be the
merest symbols, and that the girl who
always caught her lightest shade of mean
ing knew to exactness her alternate hope
and fear, the rudderless tossing toward
and from her taunting harbor-light.

They sat by an open window, breathing
in the moist air from the fresh, upturned
earth. The gardeners were working over
the sprouting beds ; the sun came in warm
and sweet.

" Three weeks ago it was almost cold
at this time," said the girl. "In the
springtime I give up going home, and

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love the place. But two years more
two years ! "

cc Do you really mind it so much ?"

" I think what I mind the most is that
I don t like it more," said the girl slowly.
" Mamma wanted it so. She really loved
study. I don t, but if I did I should
love it more than this. This would seem
so childish. And if I just wanted a good
time, why, then this would seem such a
lot of trouble. All the good things here
seem seem remedies ! "

The older woman laughed nervously.
Three weeks three weeks and no word !

"You will be making epigrams, my
dear, if you don t take care," she said
lightly. " But you re going to finish just
the same ? The girls like you, your work
is good ; you ought to stay."

The girl flashed a look of surprise at
her. It was her only hint of sympathy.

cc You advise me to ? " she asked
quietly.

" I think it would be a pity to disap-

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point your mother," with a light hand
on her shoulder. "You are so young
four years is very little. Of course you
could do the work in half the time, but
you admit that you are not an ardent
student. If nobody came here but the
girls that really needed to, we shouldn t
have the reputation that we have. The
girls to whom this place means the last
word in learning and the last grace of
social life are estimable young women,
but not so pleasant to meet as you."

Three weeks but he had waited
seven years !

" I am very childish," said the girl.
" Of course I will stay. And some of it
I like very much. It s only that mam
ma doesn t understand. She overesti
mates it so. Somehow, the more com
plete it is, the more like everything else,
the more you have to find fault with on
all sides. I d rather have come when
mamma was a girl."

" I see. I have thought that, too."

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Ah, fool, give up your senseless hope !
You had your chance you lost it. Fate
cannot stop and wait while you grow wise.

" When that shadow covers the hill, I
will give it up forever. Then I will
write to Henry s wife and ask her to let
me come and help take care of the chil
dren. She will like it, and I can get
tutoring if I want it. I will make the
children love me, and there will be a
place where I shall be wanted and can
help," she thought.

The shadow slipped lower. The fresh
turf steeped in the last rays, the birds
sang, the warming earth seemed to have
touched the very core of spring. Her
hopes had answered the eager year, but
her miracle was too wonderful to be.

A light knock at the door, and a maid
came toward her, tray in hand. She lifted
the card carelessly her heart dropped
a moment and beat in hard, slow throbs.
Her eyes filled with tears ; her cheeks
were hot and brilliant.

[1*7]

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" I will be there in a moment." How
deep her voice sounded !

The girl slipped by her.

" I was going anyway," she said softly.
" Good-by ! Don t touch your hair
it s just right."

She did not wait for an answer, but
went out. As she passed by the little
reception-room a tall, eager man made
toward her with outstretched hands. Her
voice trembled as she laughed.

"No, no I m not the one," she
murmured, " but she she s coming ! "

[ I2 8]

A HOPE DEFERRED

A HOPE DEFERRED

MISS SABINA dropped a lump of
sugar into each of the little cups
and poured the coffee with a pretty care
fulness, handing one across the table and
rising with a grace that was almost girlish.

" Shall we drink it on the porch? " she
asked, in her gentle, deprecating voice
with the minor tone in it, that one asso
ciated with her as closely as her gray
dress, her quaint old-fashioned rings, and
the faint odor of dried rose-leaves not
attar or essence of rose, but dried rose-
leaves that went with her when she
walked.

For ten years she had asked this ques-

A HOPE DEFERRED

tion, pleasantly, deferentially ; and for ten
years M. Laroche had taken his cup, pre
ceded her to the door that opened directly
on the piazza, bowed low as he held it
for her to pass, and exclaimed with an
ever-fresh enthusiasm, " Ze porrch, by
all means ! "

It was a pleasant porch with a climbing
vine and a box of scarlet geraniums, and
directly in front of it a little unfenced
green with a small fountain the park
of the street, which was one of those clean
and faded byways of a rapidly growing
city that surprise the discoverer with a
sense of what the old town used to be
two generations ago. The rumble of the
city died away before one entered Maple
Avenue ; the women sat and gossiped
on the stoops ; the children played hap
pily in the park ; the late afternoon seemed
almost rural as the sun slanted through
the maples that shaded either side of the
narrow, dusty road.

Miss Sabina finished her coffee and

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wiped her fingers daintily. In the fading
glow her pale hair turned almost golden,
and her soft cheeks took a deeper tint
one realized what a charmingly pretty
girl she must have been. She looked
long at the green before them and broke
the friendly silence :

" How well the grass is looking, mon
sieur, for this time of year ! "

M. Laroche beamed expressively on
the grass. " But how charming, Mile.
Sabine, and how green ! It is also neat
so neat ! "

Miss Sabina sighed.

" I suppose that in England it is much,
much finer," she said softly. " I sup
pose we haven t the least idea of the
parks there one must see them."

M. Laroche shrugged his shoulders.

" Ah, ze parrks ! C est possible it
may be. But zey are damp, verry damp
n est-ce fas ? "

Miss Sabina smiled gently to herself,
with eyes that saw beyond the little green.

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" And the abbeys, monsieur ! West
minster and Oxford and Melrose ! Only
think of standing of my standing by
Melrose Abbey ! "

M. Laroche raised his brows eloquently
and appeared lost in contemplation of
the picture.

" Ah, yes ! Indeed ! " he sighed. " Zat
is a great abbey Mel-h-rose ! "

" And London, monsieur, and the
Tower ! And Fleet Street, and Picca
dilly, and the Strand ! How strange it
is to feel that you know them so well,
that you love them so well, and yet that
you ve never seen them. When we used
to play, my cousins and I, in Grand
father Endicott s house, and choose what
pictures we would have, I always took
c Melrose Abbey from the South and a
big engraving of Windsor Castle. The
children used to laugh at me, but I al
ways chose them. Cousin Frank used
to tease me and say that I d never get
there, and that girls couldn t travel around

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like boys. Grandmother Endicott, too,
she was so cold and distant toward me ;
you see, she hated poor mother so.
When Cousin Frank s will was read she
was very, very angry. I don t know
whether I told you that she said quite
publicly that it was absurd for a woman
of my age to be so crazy for travelling.
I thought that rather unkind, for she s
been so much herself. But then, she s
so old, perhaps she s not quite respon
sible. She s eighty-four, you know."

" Ah," said M. Laroche, with admira
tion, cc she is verry old, verry old indeed,
your grandmozzer ! "

He was as charmingly attentive, as gal
lantly interested, as if he had not heard it
all before a hundred times over. Every
movement of his expressive, whimsical
face meant courteous regard ; every atti
tude of his figure, a little bent now, in
clothes a little shabby, but so exquisitely
mended and brushed and polished that
the necessity for such artistic care seemed

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almost fortunate, expressed close and def
erential sympathy with the eager, vivid
soul beside him.

And the interest might well have been
unfeigned, for under those smooth gray
folds beat a vigorous, determined heart
that forty years of denial and monotony
could not still nor tame. The soft, calm
eyes of this New England spinster had
never looked beyond her native town ;
but in fancy she had voyaged the seas for
years, and in her dreams she wandered
through strange and wonderful streets of
foreign lands and heard the speech of all
the peoples of the world. No school
boy was ever more thirsty for the ends of
the earth than she ; this little stay-at-
home knew all the routes by sea and
land, and delighted in the customs of the
fortunate dwellers in the places of her
lifelong desire.

To-night her hand shook as she laid
the coffee-cup aside, and the flush in her
cheeks did not die with the sunset. A

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twinge of remorse defied her tremulous
joy ; a nervous fear of her unworthiness
came over her, and it was with an un
certain voice that she approached her
friend.

" It seems as if I were almost too old,
monsieur. Perhaps some younger per
son ought to have it, after all. I ve gone
on so long without it

" I asked Mr. Alden about it last Sun
day, after morning service. I said it
seemed dreadful to be so perfectly happy,
and Cousin Frank just dead ! But how
can I help it ? Frank knew just how I d
feel. It s just as he said : c When I go
to heaven, Sabina shall go to Europe, if
she s alive, and I don t know which of
us ill be the happier/ And then to
think of Miss Ellsworth and her friends
going, and wanting me to go with them
it seemed too good to be true ! I
asked Mr. Alden if he thought Grand
mother Endicott ought to have said the
will was blasphemous, and he said no,

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that it was a nice will and a kind one.
And I nearly cried right there. I could
just get out, Oh, Mr. Alden, you don t
know what this means to me you don t
know ! and then I had to run right away,
or I d have broken down."

M. Laroche nodded sympathetically.
" Zat is a good man, M. Aldenne, tres
aimable most kind. I sink every one
likes heem. It is but yesterday zat he
has asked me, c And where do you go
when Mees Sabina is away, monsieur ?
You will not find anozzer soch landlady,
hein ? I sink not. He is a kind man."

" Miss Ellsworth wanted me to take
some German lessons, and there was a
f Life of Goethe she wanted me to read.
But I couldn t do that. The time s so
short now. And I m too old to go to
school again. So I just had to tell her
then and there.

" ( Miss Ellsworth, I said, c it isn t quite
the same with me as tis with you.
You ve been before and you know all the

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places from experience, not just as I do
from books, so I m glad to go with you.
But I must tell you, Miss Ellsworth,
that I m not going to learn, the way you
are. I m just going for pleasure and
happiness and comfort, and nothing else.
You know how it is with me. All my
life I ve had to stay right here, and I
could only live decently and as father
would have wanted me to live we re
Endicotts, you know, if we are the poor
branch by scrimping and saving and
being very, very careful, and making
things last. Almost the last thing poor
father said to me was to keep things up.
cc c <c There s just enough, Sabina, if
you re careful, to do it," he said. " I
want you should always have the house
neat, and a good, plain, nice little dinner
with the silver, and a cup of coffee after,
and a bottle of wine kept, in case mother
should ever come in. And the engrav
ings and the pianoforte and those mahog
any things, and the mother-o -pearl cabi-

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net never let em go, Sabina. When
they come in to our funerals I don t
want anybody to be ashamed of the Endi-
cotts it s a gentleman s house."

" c So I ve kept everything up, I said,
c though many s the time I d have given
the world to let Hannah go, and do for
myself, and sell the things, and just get
to Europe, and tramp through it, if I had
to, like those two teachers from your
school. But of course twould have
been ridiculous a woman of my age !
And I didn t dare take the money for
the funeral and if sickness should come,
and go with that, for it would break
father s heart he had it all planned out.
And of course a woman doesn t need
to go tisn t as if I were a man

M. Laroche pursed his lips and shook
his head thoughtfully.

" But if zat is ze sing you want, what
deeference is it zat you are not a man ? "
he asked luminously.

Miss Sabina threw him a grateful
glance.

[140]

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C c So you see, Miss Ellsworth/ I said,
c here s my chance. Now, I don t care
if I don t understand them in Paris or
Berlin. I can see them, I can hear them,
I can walk on the sidewalks and breathe
the air, can t I ? I can see the shops
and the houses and the palaces and the
canals, and how the sky looks there. I
can go from one country to another, and
be on the ocean, and perhaps I can see
the Alps. I don t need to know French
and German to appreciate them, do I ?
I want to just go and drink it in and
realize that it s really I that I m there.
There s only ten weeks or so, and then
I ll come home, but I ll live on it all the
rest of my life ! Oh, monsieur, what
will I care that I haven t any money
then ? "

Her eyes were glowing, her breath
came fast ; she was home again, in fancy,
with her precious load of memories and
experiences, and down on her knees be
fore the treasures that were to adorn her
henceforth quiet life.

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M. Laroche looked at her with admira
tion.

" Mam selle, vous etes vrande dame^

o

vous" he said, wondering at the pink
flush and the thrown-back head.

She sank back, ashamed of such a dis
play of feeling.

" I run on like a chatterbox of a girl,"
she said shyly. " You ll think I m a self
ish, talkative old thing, monsieur."

He bowed gallantly.

" Zat would never be, Mile. Sabine,"
he said. " And your affairs, are zey not
mine ? But yes ! Indeed ! "

They sat quietly for a time, in the
dusk, watching the evening star grow
before them, enjoying the cool stillness
and the scent of the freshly watered
green. The young people strolling by
now and then smiled at them for a con
tented pair of middle-aged friends, and
thought their pleasant quiet the placid
repose of those who have tacitly done
with life and its strong tides of feeling.

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They could not know that the woman
with the softly parted hair was all a-trem-
ble for romance, thirsty for adventure,
bohemian-souled and utterly fearless ;
they could not see the heart of the little
foreigner with the shabby clothes and gray
imperial, how it was eaten up with home
sickness and regret with all his grati
tude to his gentle hostess for France,
with her queen city, her familiar sights and
smells, her zest and color, and more than
all, the fishing-coast where his mother had
rocked him to sleep in sight of the sails.

They sighed together, and blushed,
and glanced quickly aside, and Miss
Sabina rose hastily and slipped through
the long French window.

"Shall I sing?" she asked, not waiting
for an answer to a question of such long
usage. While she felt through the dusk
to the old pianoforte, M. Laroche lit his
cigarette and waited with gentle expecta
tion. The lilacs from the next yard
drifted in and met the faint odor from

[143]

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the old china rose-jar that stood on the
polished mahogany table inside. The
first few notes of the piano carried with
them to him who knew the room so well
a never-fading picture of the peaceful,
old-time parlor : the willow plates in the
mother-o -pearl cabinet, the "Sistine Ma
donna " and Correggio s " Holy Night/
the dim oil-paintings that great-grand
mother Endicott had made so long ago,
the bronze Chinese idol that squatted
near the rose-jar, the dusky, elusive pier-
glass with its dull gilding of another gen
eration and its mysterious, haunting
reflections they were all confused with
the tune that Miss Sabina s sweet, reedy
voice had so often quavered through ; a
tune that she would not have known by
its title of " Fair Harvard " :

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
That I gaze on so fondly to-day,

Were to change by to-morrow and to fleet

in my arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away,

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Thou wouldst still be adored as this moment

thou art,

Let thy loveliness fade as it will,
And around the dear ruin each wish of my

heart
Would entwine itself verdantly still.

Miss Sabina knew other songs
"When other lips and other hearts,"
and " Joys that we ve tasted," and
"Come with thy lute to the fountain";
but into this one she threw most mar
vellously all the passion of her yet girl
ish, tender heart ; and the yellow keys
yielded to her tremulous touch a throb
bing, jarring melody that came to the
listener like an old perfume from some
dusty, just found rose-jar of a long-
dead beauty.

It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,

And thy cheeks unprofaned.by a tear,
That the fervor and faith of a soul can be

known,

To which time will but make thee more
dear.

CHS]

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M. Laroche smiled.

" c And zy chicks onprofenned by a
tearr/ " he repeated softly. " Ah, yes !
Indeed!"

No ; the heart that has truly lov d never

forgets,

But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god, when he

sets,

The same look which she turn d when he
rose.

The last faint quaver died away, there
was a light rustle of skirts, and Miss Sa-
bina stood at the window.

" Good night, monsieur, * she said
softly.

M. Laroche tossed away the end of
his cigarette.

" Vous chant ez tres bien, mademoiselle"
he said, with his inimitable bow. " Good
night."

And with this, his invariable phrase,
he went to his room off the piazza.

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Miss Sabina had been waiting a long
time when he came to breakfast the next
morning, heavy-eyed from a night which
he admitted to have been sleepless, and
too tired to present his apologies with
the whimsical grace that gave his sim
plest words and acts such a kindly flavor.
His hostess watched his untouched plate
with concern, and suddenly cut short her
small, friendly confidences of ways and
means for the summer, struck by his
languid manner and weary eyes.

"Why, monsieur, you re eating noth
ing ! Is it the headache again ? You
surely won t go out to-day and try to
teach it s too much ! "

He tried to rally, and smiled bravely
at her anxious eyes, made his little nega
tive gesture that was half gratitude to the
questioner, and would have turned the
talk ; but Miss Sabina was alarmed in
earnest. The thought that he might be
alone and sick in the summer cut sharply
for a second, and her quick fancy saw

EH?]

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him in the agony of his terrible head
aches, housed with strangers, lonely and
too proud to ask for help. Her eyes
filled with tears, and she leaned impul
sively across the table.

" Oh, monsieur, you re ill you re
really ill ! " she cried. " Go to the doc
tor promise me you ll go ! You ve
not been the same for a week, now;
you ve been so tired and worn. I ve
noticed it ever since last week. It was
when I first got the notice from Cousin
Frank s lawyer that the money was in the
bank that you had that terrible headache;
don t you know how we sat and talked
till so late, and I was so excited ? And
I ve been talking so much and planning
so hard that I haven t thought oh, I m
very selfish, monsieur! It s terrible to
think of you being sick just when I m
so happy. You ll go to the doctor?
Promise me you will ! "

He shook his head.

" But zere is no need for a doctorre,
[ I4 8]

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Mile. Sabine, indeed no ! It is only to
day I am well to-morrow. Not to
sleep, it makes one weary for the day
ri est-ce pas? It is not a good country
for sleep, I have found. In France I
have always slept, ah, most easily ! But
here, no. In France "

He paused a moment, and the room
was perfectly still. He looked at her,
but he did not see her, and Miss Sabina
had a strange, swift memory of her little
brother who died at school, and the look
in his eyes when he cried to be taken
home.

It was over in a moment, and M. La-
roche shrugged his shoulders lightly.

" One imagines I come to America to
sleep, hein ? " he asked her, with such a
humorous, friendly smile that she half
forgot her anxiety. But before he left
for the old school, where dwindling classes
lessened his scanty salary every year, she
had made him promise to see the doctor
before night.

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" And a cup of tea with your lunch
don t forget, monsieur ! " she called after
him as he walked off she hated to real
ize how slowly, nowadays. They were
good friends, these two, and they knew
it well : if she came back and he was not
there her heart contracted and seemed
to wait while she caught her breatli and
shook the thought away.

" We re not so old as that," she whis
pered under her breath. " We re not
really old, either of us ! "

All day she thought about him, and to
her just quickened sight much that the
excitement of the past had made trivial
loomed suddenly large before her. She
realized how quiet he had grown of late,
how seldom he essayed the jokes, the small
kindly nonsense, the half-serious homage
to her charm of personality that bright
ened her life so much that had been,
indeed, almost her only social pleasure.
It occurred to her that he had been less
quick of comprehension than ever before,

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less ready to follow her mood with that
wonderful delicacy of perception that had
enabled her shy, secluded, half troubled
at the restlessness of her own eager heart
to talk to him as she had never been
able to talk to her only sister. She re
membered how every innocent ruse for
concealing the scantiness of a meal had
succeeded of late, and how unconsciously
he had, at any excuse of hers, eaten what
he would once have indignantly insisted
that she should share. But more than
all this, he had talked as he had never
talked before of his childhood and his
childhood s home. Miss Sabina had
learned her Paris well from him long
ago. For years in the winter evenings,
when they could not enjoy the piazza
and the green, they had sat by the Frank
lin grate in the sitting-room, and she had
followed him breathlessly through " Les
Miserables " his rapid and broken
translation heightening incalculably the
sense of strangeness and intensity or

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he had led her about Paris and its out
skirts till she had grown to an actual
intimacy with that city of his dreams ; for
hitherto it had been Paris that he had
spoken of as his home, where he had
lived since he was a boy of ten with his
older brother Jules, who had written a
<c French Grammar for Beginners " and
was enrolled by M. Laroche among the
great lights of his native literature.

But of late when he spoke of France
it was to no city that he carried his eager
listener, but to a little fishing-village,
with the nets drying on the sand, and the
setting sun on the sails, and the clatter of
his white-capped mother s sabots as she
led him down to the beach to kiss his
sunburnt father. The rush and clamor
of